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Title: Essays in criticism
First and second series complete
Author: Matthew Arnold
Release date: November 16, 2025 [eBook #77244]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: A. L. Burt, 1900
Credits: Tim Lindell, KD Weeks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS IN CRITICISM ***
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Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_.
Footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are
referenced.
This text includes both the ten essays in the ‘First Series’ and the
nine essays of the ‘Second Series’. The Table of Contents numbers them
consectively from I. to XIX. However the essay headings for the second
series retain their original numbering from I. to IX. There is no
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headings have been retained as printed.
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see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.
[Illustration: MATTHEW ARNOLD.]
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM
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By MATTHEW ARNOLD
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Author of “MEROPE: A TRAGEDY,” “THE POPULAR
EDUCATION OF FRANCE,” “CULTURE AND ANARCHY,”
“POEMS,” etc., etc. [leaf] [leaf]
[leaf] [leaf]
[Illustration]
_FIRST AND SECOND SERIES COMPLETE_
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A. L. BURT, PUBLISHER, 52-58 DUANE
STREET, NEW YORK [leaf] [leaf] [leaf] [leaf]
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PREFACE.
(1865,)
Several of the Essays which are here collected and reprinted had the
good or the bad fortune to be much criticized at the time of their first
appearance. I am not now going to inflict upon the reader a reply to
those criticisms; for one or two explanations which are desirable, I
shall elsewhere, perhaps, be able some day to find an opportunity; but,
indeed, it is not in my nature,—some of my critics would rather say, not
in my power,—to dispute on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very
obstinately. To try and approach truth on one side after another, not to
strive or cry, nor to persist in pressing forward, on any one side, with
violence and self-will,—it is only thus, it seems to me, that mortals
may hope to gain any vision of the mysterious Goddess, whom we shall
never see except in outline, but only thus even in outline. He who will
do nothing but fight impetuously towards her on his own, one, favorite,
particular line, is inevitably destined to run his head into the folds
of the black robe in which she is wrapped.
So it is not to reply to my critics that I write this preface, but to
prevent a misunderstanding, of which certain phrases that some of them
use make me apprehensive. Mr. Wright, one of the many translators of
Homer, has published a letter to the Dean of Canterbury, complaining of
some remarks of mine, uttered now a long while ago, on his version of
the _Iliad_. One cannot be always studying one’s own works, and I was
really under the impression, till I saw Mr. Wright’s complaint, that I
had spoken of him with all respect. The reader may judge of my
astonishment, therefore, at finding, from Mr. Wright’s pamphlet, that I
had “declared with much solemnity that there is not any proper reason
for his existing.” That I never said; but, on looking back at my
Lectures on translating Homer, I find that I did say, not that Mr.
Wright, but that Mr. Wright’s version of the _Iliad_, repeating in the
main the merits and defects of Cowper’s version, as Mr. Sotheby’s
repeated those of Pope’s version, had, if I might be pardoned for saying
so, no proper reason for existing. Elsewhere I expressly spoke of the
merit of his version; but I confess that the phrase, qualified as I have
shown, about its want of a proper reason for existing, I used. Well, the
phrase had, perhaps, too much vivacity; we have all of us a right to
exist, we and our works; an unpopular author should be the last person
to call in question this right. So I gladly withdraw the offending
phrase, and I am sorry for having used it; Mr. Wright, however, would
perhaps be more indulgent to my vivacity, if he considered that we are
none of us likely to be lively much longer. My vivacity is but the last
sparkle of flame before we are all in the dark, the last glimpse of
color before we all go into drab,—the drab of the earnest, prosaic,
practical, austerely literal future. Yes, the world will soon be the
Philistines’! and then, with every voice, not of thunder, silenced, and
the whole earth filled and ennobled every morning by the magnificent
roaring of the young lions of the _Daily Telegraph_, we shall all yawn
in one another’s faces with the dismallest, the most unimpeachable
gravity.
But I return to my design in writing this Preface. That design was,
after apologizing to Mr. Wright for my vivacity of five years ago, to
beg him and others to let me bear my own burdens, without saddling the
great and famous University to which I have the honor to belong with any
portion of them. What I mean to deprecate is such phrases as, “his
professorial assault,” “his assertions issued _ex cathedrâ_,” “the
sanction of his name as the representative of poetry,” and so on. Proud
as I am of my connection with the University of Oxford,[1] I can truly
say, that knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking when one tries
to pull out a few more stops in that powerful but at present somewhat
narrow-toned organ, the modern Englishman, I have always sought to stand
by myself, and to compromise others as little as possible. Besides this,
my native modesty is such, that I have always been shy of assuming the
honorable style of Professor, because this is a title I share with so
many distinguished men,—Professor Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor
Frickel, and others,—who adorn it, I feel, much more than I do.
Footnote 1:
When the above was written the author had still the Chair of Poetry at
Oxford, which he has since vacated.
However, it is not merely out of modesty that I prefer to stand alone,
and to concentrate on myself, as a plain citizen of the republic of
letters, and not as an office-bearer in a hierarchy, the whole
responsibility for all I write; it is much more out of genuine devotion
to the University of Oxford, for which I feel, and always must feel, the
fondest, the most reverential attachment. In an epoch of dissolution and
transformation, such as that on which we are now entered, habits, ties,
and associations are inevitably broken up, the action of individuals
becomes more distinct, the shortcomings, errors, heats, disputes, which
necessarily attend individual action, are brought into greater
prominence. Who would not gladly keep clear, from all these passing
clouds, an august institution which was there before they arose, and
which will be there when they have blown over?
It is true, the _Saturday Review_ maintains that our epoch of
transformation is finished; that we have found our philosophy; that the
British nation has searched all anchorages for the spirit, and has
finally anchored itself, in the fulness of perfected knowledge, on
Benthamism. This idea at first made a great impression on me; not only
because it is so consoling in itself, but also because it explained a
phenomenon which in the summer of last year had, I confess, a good deal
troubled me. At that time my avocations led me travel almost daily on
one of the Great Eastern Lines,—the Woodford Branch. Every one knows
that the murderer, Müller, perpetrated his detestable act on the North
London Railway, close by. The English middle class, of which I am myself
a feeble unit, travel on the Woodford Branch in large numbers. Well, the
demoralization of our class,—the class which (the newspapers are
constantly saying it, so I may repeat it without vanity) has done all
the great things which have ever been done in England,—the
demoralization, I say, of our class, caused by the Bow tragedy, was
something bewildering. Myself a transcendentalist (as the _Saturday
Review_ knows), I escaped the infection; and, day after day, I used to
ply my agitated fellow-travelers with all the consolations which my
transcendentalism would naturally suggest to me. I reminded them how
Cæsar refused to take precautions against assassination, because life
was not worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for it. I
reminded them what insignificant atoms we all are in the life of the
world. “Suppose the worst to happen,” I said, addressing a portly
jeweler from Cheapside; “suppose even yourself to be the victim; _il n’y
a pas d’homme nécessaire_. We should miss you for a day or two upon the
Woodford Branch; but the great mundane movement would still go on, the
gravel walks of your villa would still be rolled, dividends would still
be paid at the Bank, omnibuses would still run, there would still be the
old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street.” All was of no avail.
Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle-class,
their passionate, absorbing, almost bloodthirsty clinging to life. At
the moment I thought this over-concern a little unworthy; but the
_Saturday Review_ suggests a touching explanation of it. What I took for
the ignoble clinging to life of a comfortable worldling, was, perhaps,
only the ardent longing of a faithful Benthamite, traversing an age
still dimmed by the last mists of transcendentalism, to be spared long
enough to see his religion in the full and final blaze of its triumph.
This respectable man, whom I imagined to be going up to London to serve
his shop, or to buy shares, or to attend an Exeter Hall meeting, or to
assist at the deliberations of the Marylebone Vestry, was even, perhaps,
in real truth, on a pious pilgrimage, to obtain from Mr. Bentham’s
executors a secret bone of his great, dissected master.
And yet, after all, I cannot but think that the _Saturday Review_ has
here, for once, fallen a victim to an idea,—a beautiful but a deluding
idea,—and that the British nation has not yet, so entirely as the
reviewer seems to imagine, found the last word of its philosophy. No, we
are all seekers still! seekers often make mistakes, and I wish mine to
redound to my own discredit only, and not to touch Oxford. Beautiful
city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual
life of our century, so serene!
“There are our young barbarians, all at play!”
And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the
moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the
Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps
ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to
perfection,—to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another
side?—nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable
dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic! who hast given thyself so
prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to
the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and
unpopular names, and impossible loyalties! what example could ever so
inspire us to keep down the Philistine in ourselves, what teacher could
ever so save us from that bondage to which we are all prone, that
bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of
Schiller, makes it his friend’s highest praise (and nobly did Schiller
deserve the praise) to have left miles out of sight behind him;—the
bondage of “=was uns alle bändigt, DAS GEMEINE!=” She will forgive me,
even if I have unwittingly drawn upon her a shot or two aimed at her
unworthy son; for she is generous, and the cause in which I fight is,
after all, hers. Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare against
the Philistines, compared with the warfare which this queen of romance
has been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after we are
gone?
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 1
II. THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES 31
III. MAURICE DE GUERIN 59
IV. EUGENIE DE GUERIN 89
V. HEINRICH HEINE 115
VI. PAGAN AND MEDIÆVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 143
VII. A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY 164
VIII. JOUBERT 195
IX. SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE 226
X. MARCUS AURELIUS 253
XI. THE STUDY OF POETRY 279
XII. MILTON 308
XIII. THOMAS GRAY 315
XIV. JOHN KEATS 331
XV. WORDSWORTH 343
XVI. BYRON 364
XVII. SHELLEY 385
XVIII. COUNT LEO TOLSTOI 409
XIX. AMIEL 432
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM.
--------------
I.
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT
TIME.
Many objections have been made to a proposition which, in some remarks
of mine on translating Homer, I ventured to put forth; a proposition
about criticism, and its importance at the present day. I said: “Of the
literature of France and Germany, as of the intellect of Europe in
general, the main effort, for now many years, has been a critical
effort; the endeavor, in all branches of knowledge, theology,
philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it
really is.” I added, that owing to the operation in English literature
of certain causes, “almost the last thing for which one would come to
English literature is just that very thing which now Europe most
desires,—criticism;” and that the power and value of English literature
was thereby impaired. More than one rejoinder declared that the
importance I here assigned to criticism was excessive, and asserted the
inherent superiority of the creative effort of the human spirit over its
critical effort. And the other day, having been led by a Mr. Shairp’s
excellent notice of Wordsworth[2] to turn again to his biography, I
found, in the words of this great man, whom I, for one, must always
listen to with the profoundest respect, a sentence passed on the
critic’s business, which seems to justify every possible disparagement
of it. Wordsworth says in one of his letters:—
“The writers in these publications” (the Reviews), “while they prosecute
their inglorious employment, cannot be supposed to be in a state of mind
very favorable for being affected by the finer influences of a thing so
pure as genuine poetry.”
And a trustworthy reporter of his conversation quotes a more elaborate
judgment to the same effect:—
“Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, infinitely lower than the
inventive; and he said to-day that if the quantity of time consumed in
writing critiques on the works of others were given to original
composition, of whatever kind it might be, it would be much better
employed; it would make a man find out sooner his own level, and it
would do infinitely less mischief. A false or malicious criticism may do
much injury to the minds of others, a stupid invention, either in prose
or verse, is quite harmless.”
Footnote 2:
I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in England during the
last century, and still followed in France, of printing a notice of
this kind,—a notice by a competent critic,—to serve as an introduction
to an eminent author’s works, might be revived among us with
advantage. To introduce all succeeding editions of Wordsworth, Mr.
Shairp’s notice might, it seems to me, excellently serve; it is
written from the point of view of an admirer, nay, of a disciple, and
that is right; but then the disciple must be also, as in this case he
is, a critic, a man of letters, not, as too often happens, some
relation or friend with no qualification for his task except affection
for his author.
It is almost too much to expect of poor human nature, that a man capable
of producing some effect in one line of literature, should, for the
greater good of society, voluntarily doom himself to impotence and
obscurity in another. Still less is this to be expected from men
addicted to the composition of the “false or malicious criticism” of
which Wordsworth speaks. However, everybody would admit that a false or
malicious criticism had better never have been written. Everybody, too,
would be willing to admit, as a general proposition, that the critical
faculty is lower than the inventive. But is it true that criticism is
really, in itself, a baneful and injurious employment; is it true that
all time given to writing critiques on the works of others would be much
better employed if it were given to original composition, of whatever
kind this may be? Is it true that Johnson had better have gone on
producing more _Irenes_ instead of writing his _Lives of the Poets_;
nay, is it certain that Wordsworth himself was better employed in making
his Ecclesiastical Sonnets than when he made his celebrated Preface, so
full of criticism, and criticism of the works of others? Wordsworth was
himself a great critic, and it is to be sincerely regretted that he has
not left us more criticism; Goethe was one of the greatest of critics,
and we may sincerely congratulate ourselves that he has left us so much
criticism. Without wasting time over the exaggeration which Wordsworth’s
judgment on criticism clearly contains, or over an attempt to trace the
causes,—not difficult, I think, to be traced,—which may have led
Wordsworth to this exaggeration, a critic may with advantage seize an
occasion for trying his own conscience, and for asking himself of what
real service at any given moment the practice of criticism either is or
may be made to his own mind and spirit, and to the minds and spirits of
others.
The critical power is of lower rank than the creative. True; but in
assenting to this proposition, one or two things are to be kept in mind.
It is undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, that a free
creative activity, is the highest function of man; it is proved to be so
by man’s finding in it his true happiness. But it is undeniable, also,
that men may have the sense of exercising this free creative activity in
other ways than in producing great works of literature or art; if it
were not so, all but a very few men would be shut out from the true
happiness of all men. They may have it in well-doing, they may have it
in learning, they may have it even in criticizing. This is one thing to
be kept in mind. Another is, that the exercise of the creative power in
the production of great works of literature or art, however high this
exercise of it may rank, is not at all epochs and under all conditions
possible; and that therefore labor may be vainly spent in attempting it,
which might with more fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it
possible. This creative power works with elements, with materials; what
if it has not those materials, those elements, ready for its use? In
that case it must surely wait till they are ready. Now, in literature,—I
will limit myself to literature, for it is about literature that the
question arises,—the elements with which the creative power works are
ideas; the best ideas on every matter which literature touches, current
at the time. At any rate we may lay it down as certain that in modern
literature no manifestation of the creative power not working with these
can be very important or fruitful. And I say _current_ at the time, not
merely accessible at the time; for creative literary genius does not
principally show itself in discovering new ideas, that is rather the
business of the philosopher. The grand work of literary genius is a work
of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery; its gift
lies in the faculty of being happily inspired by a certain intellectual
and spiritual atmosphere, by a certain order of ideas, when it finds
itself in them; of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them in
the most effective and attractive combinations,—making beautiful works
with them, in short. But it must have the atmosphere, it must find
itself amidst the order of ideas, in order to work freely; and these it
is not so easy to command. This is why great creative epochs in
literature are so rare, this is why there is so much that is
unsatisfactory in the productions of many men of real genius; because,
for the creation of a master-work of literature two powers must concur,
the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not
enough without the moment; the creative power has, for its happy
exercise, appointed elements, and those elements are not in its own
control.
Nay, they are more within the control of the critical power. It is the
business of the critical power, as I said in the words already quoted,
“in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art,
science, to see the object as in itself it really is.” Thus it tends, at
last, to make an intellectual situation of which the creative power can
profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not
absolutely true, yet true by comparison with that which it displaces; to
make the best ideas prevail. Presently these new ideas reach society,
the touch of truth is the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth
everywhere; out of this stir and growth come the creative epochs of
literature.
Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considerations of the general
march of genius and of society,—considerations which are apt to become
too abstract and impalpable,—every one can see that a poet, for
instance, ought to know life and the world before dealing with them in
poetry; and life and the world being in modern times very complex
things, the creation of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a great
critical effort behind it; else it must be a comparatively poor, barren,
and short-lived affair. This is why Byron’s poetry had so little
endurance in it, and Goethe’s so much; both Byron and Goethe had a great
productive power, but Goethe’s was nourished by a great critical effort
providing the true materials for it, and Byron’s was not; Goethe knew
life and the world, the poet’s necessary subjects, much more
comprehensively and thoroughly than Byron. He knew a great deal more of
them, and he knew them much more as they really are.
It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our
literature, through the first quarter of this century, had about it in
fact something premature; and that from this cause its productions are
doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied
and do still accompany them to prove hardly more lasting than the
productions of far less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes
from its having proceeded without having its proper data, without
sufficient materials to work with. In other words, the English poetry of
the first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of
creative force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so empty of
matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth even, profound as he is, yet
so wanting in completeness and variety. Wordsworth cared little for
books, and disparaged Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much
that I cannot wish him different; and it is vain, no doubt, to imagine
such a man different from what he is, to suppose that he _could_ have
been different. But surely the one thing wanting to make Wordsworth an
even greater poet than he is,—his thought richer, and his influence of
wider application,—was that he should have read more books, among them,
no doubt, those of that Goethe whom he disparaged without reading him.
But to speak of books and reading may easily lead to a misunderstanding
here. It was not really books and reading that lacked to our poetry at
this epoch; Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense
reading. Pindar and Sophocles—as we all say so glibly, and often with so
little discernment of the real import of what we are saying—had not many
books; Shakespeare was no deep reader. True; but in the Greece of Pindar
and Sophocles, in the England of Shakespeare, the poet lived in a
current of ideas in the highest degree animating and nourishing to the
creative power; society was, in the fullest measure, permeated by fresh
thought, intelligent and alive. And this state of things is the true
basis for the creative power’s exercise, in this it finds its data, its
materials, truly ready for its hand; all the books and reading in the
world are only valuable as they are helps to this. Even when this does
not actually exist, books and reading may enable a man to construct a
kind of semblance of it in his own mind, a world of knowledge and
intelligence in which he may live and work. This is by no means an
equivalent to the artist for the nationally diffused life and thought of
the epochs of Sophocles or Shakespeare; but, besides that it may be a
means of preparation for such epochs, it does really constitute, if many
share in it, a quickening and sustaining atmosphere of great value. Such
an atmosphere the many-sided learning and the long and widely-combined
critical effort of Germany formed for Goethe, when he lived and worked.
There was no national glow of life and thought there as in the Athens of
Pericles or the England of Elizabeth. That was the poet’s weakness. But
there was a sort of equivalent for it in the complete culture and
unfettered thinking of a large body of Germans. That was his strength.
In the England of the first quarter of this century there was neither a
national glow of life and thought, such as we had in the age of
Elizabeth, nor yet a culture and a force of learning and criticism such
as were to be found in Germany. Therefore the creative power of poetry
wanted, for success in the highest sense, materials and a basis; a
thorough interpretation of the world was necessarily denied to it.
At first sight it seems strange that out of the immense stir of the
French Revolution and its age should not have come a crop of works of
genius equal to that which came out of the stir of the great productive
time of Greece, or out of that of the Renascence, with its powerful
episode the Reformation. But the truth is that the stir of the French
Revolution took a character which essentially distinguished it from such
movements as these. These were, in the main, disinterestedly
intellectual and spiritual movements; movements in which the human
spirit looked for its satisfaction in itself and in the increased play
of its own activity. The French Revolution took a political, practical
character. The movement, which went on in France under the old _régime_
from 1700 to 1789, was far more really akin than that of the Revolution
itself to the movement of the Renascence; the France of Voltaire and
Rousseau told far more powerfully upon the mind of Europe than the
France of the Revolution. Goethe reproached this last expressly with
having “thrown quiet culture back.” Nay, and the true key to how much in
our Byron, even in our Wordsworth, is this!—that they had their source
in a great movement of feeling, not in a great movement of mind. The
French Revolution, however,—that object of so much blind love and so
much blind hatred,—found undoubtedly its motive-power in the
intelligence of men, and not in their practical sense; this is what
distinguishes it from the English Revolution of Charles the First’s
time. This is what makes it a more spiritual event than our Revolution,
an event of much more powerful and world-wide interest, though
practically less successful; it appeals to an order of ideas which are
universal, certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a thing, Is it rational?
1642 asked of a thing, Is it legal? or, when it went furthest, Is it
according to conscience? This is the English fashion, a fashion to be
treated, within its own sphere, with the highest respect; for its
success, within its own sphere, has been prodigious. But what is law in
one place is not law in another; what is law here to-day is not law even
here to-morrow; and as for conscience, what is binding on one man’s
conscience is not binding on another’s. The old woman who threw her
stool at the head of the surpliced minister in St. Giles’s Church at
Edinburgh obeyed an impulse to which millions of the human race may be
permitted to remain strangers. But the prescriptions of reason are
absolute, unchanging, of universal validity; _to count by tens is the
easiest way of counting_—that is a proposition of which every one, from
here to the Antipodes, feels the force; at least I should say so if we
did not live in a country where it is not impossible that any morning we
may find a letter in the _Times_ declaring that a decimal coinage is an
absurdity. That a whole nation should have been penetrated with an
enthusiasm for pure reason, and with an ardent zeal for making its
prescriptions triumph, is a very remarkable thing, when we consider how
little of mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, comes into
the motives which alone, in general, impel great masses of men. In spite
of the extravagant direction given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the
crimes and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution
derives from the force, truth, and universality of the ideas which it
took for its law, and from the passion with which it could inspire a
multitude for these ideas, a unique and still living power; it is—it
will probably long remain—the greatest, the most animating event in
history. And as no sincere passion for the things of the mind, even
though it turn out in many respects an unfortunate passion, is ever
quite thrown away and quite barren of good, France has reaped from tiers
one fruit—the natural and legitimate fruit though not precisely the
grand fruit she expected: she is the country in Europe where _the
people_ is most alive.
But the mania for giving an immediate political and practical
application to all these fine ideas of the reason was fatal. Here an
Englishman is in his element: on this theme we can all go on for hours.
And all we are in the habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a great deal
of truth. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and for themselves cannot
be too much lived with; but to transport them abruptly into the world of
politics, and practice, violently to revolutionize this world to their
bidding,—that is quite another thing. There is the world of ideas and
there is the world of practice; the French are often for suppressing the
one and the English the other; but neither is to be suppressed. A member
of the House of Commons said to me the other day: “That a thing is an
anomaly, I consider to be no objection to it whatever.” I venture to
think he was wrong; that a thing is an anomaly _is_ an objection to it,
but absolutely and in the sphere of ideas: it is not necessarily, under
such and such circumstances, or at such and such a moment, an objection
to it in the sphere of politics and practice. Joubert has said
beautifully: “C’est la force et le droit qui règlent toutes choses dans
le monde; la force en attendant le droit.” (Force and right are the
governors of this world; force till right is ready.) _Force till right
is ready_; and till right is ready, force, the existing order of things,
is justified, is the legitimate ruler. But right is something moral, and
implies inward recognition, free assent of the will; we are not ready
for right,—_right_, so far as we are concerned, _is not ready_,—until we
have attained this sense of seeing it and willing it. The way in which
for us it may change and transform force, the existing order of things,
and become, in its turn, the legitimate ruler of the world, should
depend on the way in which, when our time comes, we see it and will it.
Therefore for other people enamored of their own newly discerned right,
to attempt to impose it upon us as ours, and violently to substitute
their right for our force, is an act of tyranny, and to be resisted. It
sets at naught the second great half of our maxim, _force till right is
ready_. This was the grand error of the French Revolution; and its
movement of ideas, by quitting the intellectual sphere and rushing
furiously into the political sphere, ran, indeed, a prodigious and
memorable course, but produced no such intellectual fruit as the
movement of ideas of the Renascence, and created, in opposition to
itself, what I may call an _epoch of concentration_. The great force of
that epoch of concentration was England; and the great voice of that
epoch of concentration was Burke. It is the fashion to treat Burke’s
writings on the French Revolution as superannuated and conquered by the
event; as the eloquent but unphilosophical tirades of bigotry and
prejudice. I will not deny that they are often disfigured by the
violence and passion of the moment, and that in some directions Burke’s
view was bounded, and his observation therefore at fault. But on the
whole, and for those who can make the needful corrections, what
distinguishes these writings is their profound, permanent, fruitful,
philosophical truth. They contain the true philosophy of an epoch of
concentration, dissipate the heavy atmosphere which its own nature is
apt to engender round it, and make its resistance rational instead of
mechanical.
But Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings
thought to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought. It is
his accident that his ideas were at the service of an epoch of
concentration, not of an epoch of expansion; it is his characteristic
that he so lived by ideas, and had such a source of them welling up
within him, that he could float even an epoch of concentration and
English Tory politics with them. It does not hurt him that Dr. Price and
the Liberals were enraged with him; it does not even hurt him that
George the Third and the Tories were enchanted with him. His greatness
is that he lived in a world which neither English Liberalism nor English
Toryism is apt to enter;—the world of ideas, not the world of catchwords
and party habits. So far is it from being really true of him that he “to
party gave up what was meant for mankind,” that at the very end of his
fierce struggle with the French Revolution, after all his invectives
against its false pretensions, hollowness, and madness, with his sincere
conviction of its mischievousness, he can close a memorandum on the best
means of combating it, some of the last pages he ever wrote,—the
_Thoughts on French Affairs_, in December 1791,—with these striking
words:—
“The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The remedy must be
where power, wisdom, and information, I hope, are more united with good
intentions than they can be with me. I have done with this subject, I
believe, forever. It has given me many anxious moments for the last two
years. _If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of
men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw
that way. Every fear, every hope will forward it; and then they who
persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear
rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs
of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and
obstinate._”
That return of Burke upon himself has always seemed to me one of the
finest things in English literature, or indeed in any literature. That
is what I call living by ideas: when one side of a question has long had
your earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when you hear
all around you no language but one, when your party talks this language
like a steam-engine and can imagine no other,—still to be able to think,
still to be irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought
to the opposite side of the question, and, like Balaam, to be unable to
speak anything _but what the Lord has put in your mouth_. I know nothing
more striking, and I must add that I know nothing more un-English.
For the Englishman in general is like my friend the Member of
Parliament, and believes, point-blank, that for a thing to be an anomaly
is absolutely no objection to it whatever. He is like the Lord Auckland
of Burke’s day, who, in a memorandum on the French Revolution, talks of
“certain miscreants, assuming the name of philosophers, who have
presumed themselves capable of establishing a new system of society.”
The Englishman has been called a political animal, and he values what is
political and practical so much that ideas easily become objects of
dislike in his eyes, and thinkers “miscreants,” because ideas and
thinkers have rashly meddled with politics and practice. This would be
all very well if the dislike and neglect confined themselves to ideas
transported out of their own sphere, and meddling rashly with practice;
but they are inevitably extended to ideas as such, and to the whole life
of intelligence; practice is everything, a free play of the mind is
nothing. The notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being
a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essential
provider of elements without which a nation’s spirit, whatever
compensations it may have for them, must, in the long run, die of
inanition, hardly enters into an Englishman’s thoughts. It is noticeable
that the word _curiosity_, which in other languages is used in a good
sense, to mean, as a high and fine quality of man’s nature, just this
disinterested love of a free play of the mind on all subjects, for its
own sake,—it is noticeable, I say, that this word has in our language no
sense of the kind, no sense but a rather bad and disparaging one. But
criticism, real criticism is essentially the exercise of this very
quality. It obeys an instinct prompting it to try to know the best that
is known and thought in the world, irrespectively of practice, politics,
and everything of the kind; and to value knowledge and thought as they
approach this best, without the intrusion of any other considerations
whatever. This is an instinct for which there is, I think, little
original sympathy in the practical English nature, and what there was of
it has undergone a long benumbing period of blight and suppression in
the epoch of concentration which followed the French Revolution.
But epochs of concentration cannot well endure forever; epochs of
expansion, in the due course of things, follow them. Such an epoch of
expansion seems to be opening in this country. In the first place all
danger of a hostile forcible pressure of foreign ideas upon our practice
has long disappeared; like the traveler in the fable, therefore, we
begin to wear our cloak a little more loosely. Then, with a long peace,
the ideas of Europe steal gradually and amicably in, and mingle, though
in infinitesimally small quantities at a time, with our own notions.
Then, too, in spite of all that is said about the absorbing and
brutalizing influence of our passionate material progress, it seems to
me indisputable that this progress is likely, though not certain, to
lead in the end to an apparition of intellectual life; and that man,
after he has made himself perfectly comfortable and has now to determine
what to do with himself next, may begin to remember that he has a mind,
and that the mind may be made the source of great pleasure. I grant it
is mainly the privilege of faith, at present, to discern this end to our
railways, our business, and our fortune-making; but we shall see if,
here as elsewhere, faith is not in the end the true prophet. Our ease,
our traveling, and our unbounded liberty to hold just as hard and
securely as we please to the practice to which our notions have given
birth, all tend to beget an inclination to deal a little more freely
with these notions themselves, to canvass them a little, to penetrate a
little into their real nature. Flutterings of curiosity, in the foreign
sense of the word, appear amongst us, and it is in these that criticism
must look to find its account. Criticism first; a time of true creative
activity, perhaps,—which, as I have said, must inevitably be preceded
amongst us by a time of criticism,—hereafter, when criticism has done
its work.
It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly
discern what rule for its course, in order to avail itself of the field
now opening to it, and to produce fruit for the future, it ought to
take. The rule may be summed up in one word,—_disinterestedness_. And
how is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from what
is called “the practical view of things;” by resolutely following the
law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all
subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing to lend itself to any of
those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas, which
plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought
often to be attached to them, which in this country at any rate are
certain to be attached to them quite sufficiently, but which criticism
has really nothing to do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply
to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its
turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas. Its
business is to do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability; but
its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of
practical consequences and applications, questions which will never fail
to have due prominence given to them. Else criticism, besides being
really false to its own nature, merely continues in the old rut which it
has hitherto followed in this country, and will certainly miss the
chance now given to it. For what is at present the bane of criticism in
this country? It is that practical considerations cling to it and stifle
it. It subserves interests not its own. Our organs of criticism are
organs of men and parties having practical ends to serve, and with them
those practical ends are the first thing and the play of mind the
second; so much play of mind as is compatible with the prosecution of
those practical ends is all that is wanted. An organ like the _Révue des
Deux Mondes_, having for its main function to understand and utter the
best that is known and thought in the world, existing, it may be said,
as just an organ for a free play of the mind, we have not. But we have
the _Edinburgh Review_, existing as an organ of the old Whigs, and for
as much play of the mind as may suit its being that; we have the
_Quarterly Review_, existing as an organ of the Tories, and for as much
play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the _British Quarterly
Review_, existing as an organ of the political Dissenters, and for as
much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the _Times_,
existing as an organ of the common, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman,
and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that. And so on
through all the various fractions, political and religious, of our
society; every fraction has, as such, its organ of criticism, but the
notion of combining all fractions in the common pleasure of a free
disinterested play of mind meets with no favor. Directly this play of
mind wants to have more scope, and to forget the pressure of practical
considerations a little, it is checked, it is made to feel the chain. We
saw this the other day in the extinction, so much to be regretted, of
the _Home and Foreign Review_. Perhaps in no organ of criticism in this
country was there so much knowledge, so much play of mind; but these
could not save it. The _Dublin Review_ subordinates play of mind to the
practical business of English and Irish Catholicism, and lives. It must
needs be that men should act in sects and parties, that each of these
sects and parties should have its organ, and should make this organ
subserve the interests of its action; but it would be well, too, that
there should be a criticism, not the minister of these interests, not
their enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent of them. No other
criticism will ever attain any real authority or make any real way
towards its end,—the creating a current of true and fresh ideas.
It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure intellectual
sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, has been so
directly polemical and controversial, that it has so ill accomplished,
in this country, its best spiritual work; which is to keep man from a
self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him
towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in
itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things. A polemical
practical criticism makes men blind even to the ideal imperfection of
their practice, makes them willingly assert its ideal perfection, in
order the better to secure it against attack: and clearly this is
narrowing and baneful for them. If they were reassured on the practical
side, speculative considerations of ideal perfection they might be
brought to entertain, and their spiritual horizon would thus gradually
widen. Sir Charles Adderly says to the Warwickshire farmers:
“Talk of the improvement of breed! Why, the race we ourselves represent,
the men and women, the old Anglo-Saxon race, are the best breed in the
whole world.... The absence of a too enervating climate, too unclouded
skies, and a too luxurious nature, has produced so vigorous a race of
people and has rendered us so superior to all the world.”
Mr. Roebuck says to the Sheffield cutlers:
“I look around me and ask what is the state of England? Is not property
safe? Is not every man able to say what he likes? Can you not walk from
one end of England to the other in perfect security? I ask you whether,
the world over or in past history, there is anything like it? Nothing. I
pray that our unrivaled happiness may last.”
Now obviously there is a peril for poor human nature in words and
thoughts of such exuberant self-satisfaction, until we find ourselves
safe in the streets of the Celestial City.
“Das wenige verschwindet leicht dem Blicke
Der vorwärts sieht, wie viel noch übrig bleibt—”
says Goethe; “the little that is done seems nothing when we look forward
and see how much we have yet to do.” Clearly this is a better line of
reflection for weak humanity, so long as it remains on this earthly
field of labor and trial.
But neither Sir Charles Adderley nor Mr. Roebuck is by nature
inaccessible to considerations of this sort. They only lose sight of
them owing to the controversial life we all lead, and the practical form
which all speculation takes with us. They have in view opponents whose
aim is not ideal, but practical; and in their zeal to uphold their own
practice against these innovators, they go so far as even to attribute
to this practice an ideal perfection. Somebody has been wanting to
introduce a six-pound franchise, or to abolish church-rates, or to
collect agricultural statistics by force, or to diminish local
self-government. How natural, in reply to such proposals, very likely
improper or ill-timed, to go a little beyond the mark and to say
stoutly, “Such a race of people as we stand, so superior to all the
world! The old Anglo-Saxon race, the best breed in the whole world! I
pray that our unrivaled happiness may last! I ask you whether, the world
over or in past history, there is anything like it?” And so long as
criticism answers this dithyramb by insisting that the old Anglo-Saxon
race would be still more superior to all others if it had no
church-rates, or that our unrivaled happiness would last yet longer with
a six-pound franchise, so long will the strain, “The best breed in the
whole world!” swell louder and louder, everything ideal and refining
will be lost out of sight, and both the assailed and their critics will
remain in a sphere, to say the truth, perfectly unvital, a sphere in
which spiritual progression is impossible. But let criticism leave
church-rates and the franchise alone, and in the most candid spirit,
without a single lurking thought of practical innovation, confront with
our dithyramb this paragraph on which I stumbled in a newspaper
immediately after reading Mr. Roebuck:—
“A shocking child murder has just been committed at Nottingham. A girl
named Wragg left the workhouse there on Saturday morning with her young
illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards found dead on Mapperly
Hills, having been strangled. Wragg is in custody.”
Nothing but that; but, in juxtaposition with the absolute eulogies of
Sir Charles Adderley and Mr. Roebuck, how eloquent, how suggestive are
those few lines! “Our old Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in the whole
world!”—how much that is harsh and ill-favored there is in this best!
_Wragg!_ If we are to talk of ideal perfection, of “the best in the
whole world,” has any one reflected what a touch of grossness in our
race, what an original shortcoming in the more delicate spiritual
perceptions, is shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous
names,—Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg! In Ionia and Attica they were
luckier in this respect than “the best race in the world;” by the
Ilissus there was no Wragg, poor thing! And “our unrivaled
happiness;”—what an element of grimness, bareness, and hideousness mixes
with it and blurs it; the workhouse, the dismal Mapperly Hills,—how
dismal those who have seen them will remember;—the gloom, the smoke, the
cold, the strangled illegimate child! “I ask you whether, the world over
or in past history, there is anything like it?” Perhaps not, one is
inclined to answer; but at any rate, in that case, the world is very
much to be pitied. And the final touch,—short, bleak and inhuman: _Wragg
is in custody_. The sex lost in the confusion of our unrivaled
happiness; or (shall I say?) the superfluous Christian name lopped off
by the straightforward vigor of our old Anglo-Saxon breed! There is
profit for the spirit in such contrasts as this; criticism serves the
cause of perfection by establishing them. By eluding sterile conflict,
by refusing to remain in the sphere where alone narrow and relative
conceptions have any worth and validity, criticism may diminish its
momentary importance, but only in this way has it a chance of gaining
admittance for those wider and more perfect conceptions to which all its
duty is really owed. Mr. Roebuck will have a poor opinion of an
adversary who replies to his defiant songs of triumph only by murmuring
under his breath, _Wragg is in custody_; but in no other way will these
songs of triumph be induced gradually to moderate themselves, to get rid
of what in them is excessive and offensive, and to fall into a softer
and truer key.
It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect action which I am
thus prescribing for criticism, and that, by embracing in this manner
the Indian virtue of detachment and abandoning the sphere of practical
life, it condemns itself to a slow and obscure work. Slow and obscure it
may be, but it is the only proper work of criticism. The mass of mankind
will never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very
inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas
reposes, and must repose, the general practice of the world. That is as
much as saying that whoever sets himself to see things as they are will
find himself one of a very small circle; but it is only by this small
circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get
current at all. The rush and roar of practical life will always have a
dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and
tend to draw him into its vortex; most of all will this be the case
where that life is so powerful as it is in England. But it is only by
remaining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the point of view
of the practical man, that the critic can do the practical man any
service; and it is only by the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own
course, and by at last convincing even the practical man of his
sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which perpetually
threaten him.
For the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, and yet in these
distinctions truth and the highest culture greatly find their account.
But it is not easy to lead a practical man,—unless you reassure him as
to your practical intentions, you have no chance of leading him,—to see
that a thing which he has always been used to look at from one side
only, which he greatly values, and which, looked at from that side,
quite deserves, perhaps, all the prizing and admiring which he bestows
upon it,—that this thing, looked at from another side, may appear much
less beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims to our
practical allegiance. Where shall we find language innocent enough, how
shall we make the spotless purity of our intentions evident enough, to
enable us to say to the political Englishman that the British
Constitution itself, which, seen from the practical side, looks such a
magnificent organ of progress and virtue, seen from the speculative
side,—with its compromises, its love of facts, its horror of theory, its
studied avoidance of clear thoughts,—that, seen from this side, our
august Constitution sometimes looks,—forgive me, shade of Lord Somers!—a
colossal machine for the manufacture of Philistines? How is Cobbett to
say this and not be misunderstood, blackened as he is with the smoke of
a lifelong conflict in the field of political practice? how is Mr.
Carlyle to say it and not be misunderstood, after his furious raid into
this field with his _Latter-day Pamphlets_? how is Mr. Ruskin, after his
pugnacious political economy? I say, the critic must keep out of the
region of immediate practice in the political, social, humanitarian
sphere, if he wants to make a beginning for that more free speculative
treatment of things, which may perhaps one day make its benefits felt
even in this sphere, but in a natural and thence irresistible manner.
Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain exposed to
frequent misunderstandings, and nowhere so much as in this country. For
here people are particularly indisposed even to comprehend that without
this free disinterested treatment of things, truth and the highest
culture are out of the question. So immersed are they in practical life,
so accustomed to take all their notions from this life and its
processes, that they are apt to think that truth and culture themselves
can be reached by the processes of this life, and that it is an
impertinent singularity to think of reaching them in any other. “We are
all _terræ filii_,” cries their eloquent advocate; “all Philistines
together. Away with the notion of proceeding by any other course than
the course dear to the Philistines; let us have a social movement, let
us organize and combine a party to pursue truth and new thought, let us
call it _the liberal party_, and let us all stick to each other, and
back each other up. Let us have no nonsense about independent criticism,
and intellectual delicacy, and the few and the many. Don’t let us
trouble ourselves about foreign thought; we shall invent the whole thing
for ourselves as we go along. If one of us speaks well, applaud him; if
one of us speaks ill, applaud him too; we are all in the same movement,
we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of truth.” In this way the
pursuit of truth becomes really a social, practical, pleasurable affair,
almost requiring a chairman, a secretary, and advertisements; with the
excitement of an occasional scandal, with a little resistance to give
the happy sense of difficulty overcome; but, in general, plenty of
bustle and very little thought. To act is so easy, as Goethe says; to
think is so hard! It is true that the critic has many temptations to go
with the stream, to make one of the party movement, one of these _terræ
filii_; it seems ungracious to refuse to be a _terræ filius_, when so
many excellent people are; but the critic’s duty is to refuse, or, if
resistance is vain, at least to cry with Obermann: _Périssons en
résistant_.
How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had ample opportunity of
experiencing when I ventured some time ago to criticize the celebrated
first volume of Bishop Colenso.[3] The echoes of the storm which was
then raised I still, from time to time, hear grumbling around me. That
storm arose out of a misunderstanding almost inevitable. It is a result
of no little culture to attain to a clear perception that science and
religion are two wholly different things. The multitude will for ever
confuse them; but happily that is of no great real importance, for while
the multitude imagines itself to live by its false science, it does
really live by its true religion. Dr. Colenso, however, in his first
volume did all he could to strengthen the confusion,[4] and to make it
dangerous. He did this with the best intentions, I freely admit, and
with the most candid ignorance that this was the natural effect of what
he was doing; but, says Joubert, “Ignorance, which in matters of morals
extenuates the crime, is itself, in intellectual matters, a crime of the
first order.” I criticized Bishop Colenso’s speculative confusion.
Immediately there was a cry raised: “What is this? here is a liberal
attacking a liberal. Do not you belong to the movement? are not you a
friend of truth? Is not Bishop Colenso in pursuit of truth? then speak
with proper respect of his book. Dr. Stanley is another friend of truth,
and you speak with proper respect of his book; why make these invidious
differences? both books are excellent, admirable, liberal; Bishop
Colenso’s perhaps the most so, because it is the boldest, and will have
the best practical consequences for the liberal cause. Do you want to
encourage to the attack of a brother liberal his, and your, and our
implacable enemies, the _Church and State Review_ or the _Record_,—the
High Church rhinoceros and the Evangelical hyena? Be silent, therefore;
or rather speak, speak as loud as ever you can! and go into ecstasies
over the eighty and odd pigeons.”
-----
Footnote 3:
So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and controversy, that
I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time from the occasion
which called them forth, the essays in which I criticized Dr.
Colenso’s book; I feel bound, however, after all that has passed, to
make here a final declaration of my sincere impenitence for having
published them. Nay, I cannot forbear repeating yet once more, for his
benefit and that of his readers, this sentence from my original
remarks upon him; _There is truth of science and truth of religion;
truth of science does not become truth of religion till it is made
religious_. And I will add: Let us have all the science there is from
the men of science; from the men of religion let us have religion.
Footnote 4:
It has been said I make it “a crime against literary criticism and the
higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant.” Need I point out
that the ignorant are not informed by being confirmed in a confusion?
-----
But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indiscriminate method. It is
unfortunately possible for a man in pursuit of truth to write a book
which reposes upon a false conception. Even the practical consequences
of a book are to genuine criticism no recommendation of it, if the book
is, in the highest sense, blundering. I see that a lady who herself,
too, is in pursuit of truth, and who writes with great ability, but a
little too much, perhaps, under the influence of the practical spirit of
the English liberal movement, classes Bishop Colenso’s book and M.
Renan’s together, in her survey of the religious state of Europe, as
facts of the same order, works, both of them, of “great importance;”
“great ability, power, and skill;” Bishop Colenso’s, perhaps, the most
powerful; at least, Miss Cobbe gives special expression to her gratitude
that to Bishop Colenso “has been given the strength to grasp, and the
courage to teach, truths of such deep import.” In the same way, more
than one popular writer has compared him to Luther. Now it is just this
kind of false estimate which the critical spirit is, it seems to me,
bound to resist. It is really the strongest possible proof of the low
ebb at which, in England, the critical spirit is, that while the
critical hit in the religious literature of Germany is Dr. Strauss’s
book, in that of France M. Renan’s book, the book of Bishop Colenso is
the critical hit in the religious literature of England. Bishop
Colenso’s book reposes on a total misconception of the essential
elements of the religious problem, as that problem is now presented for
solution. To criticism, therefore, which seeks to have the best that is
known and thought on this problem, it is, however well meant, of no
importance whatever. M. Renan’s book attempts a new synthesis of the
elements furnished to us by the Four Gospels. It attempts, in my
opinion, a synthesis, perhaps premature, perhaps impossible, certainly
not successful. Up to the present time, at any rate, we must acquiesce
in Fleury’s sentence on such recastings of the Gospel-story: _Quiconque
s’imagine la pouvoir mieux écrire, ne l’entend pas_. M. Renan had
himself passed by anticipation a like sentence on his own work, when he
said: “If a new presentation of the character of Jesus were offered to
me, I would not have it; its very clearness would be, in my opinion, the
best proof of its insufficiency.” His friends may with perfect justice
rejoin that at the sight of the Holy Land, and of the actual scene of
the Gospel-story, all the current of M. Renan’s thoughts may have
naturally changed, and a new casting of that story irresistibly
suggested itself to him; and that this is just a case for applying
Cicero’s maxim: Change of mind is not inconsistency—_nemo doctus unquam
mutationem consilii inconstantiam dixit esse_. Nevertheless, for
criticism, M. Renan’s first thought must still be the truer one, as long
as his new casting so fails more fully to commend itself, more fully (to
use Coleridge’s happy phrase about the Bible) to _find_ us. Still M.
Renan’s attempt is, for criticism, of the most real interest and
importance, since, with all its difficulty, a fresh synthesis of the New
Testament _data_,—not a making war on them, in Voltaire’s fashion, not a
leaving them out of mind, in the world’s fashion, but the putting a new
construction upon them, the taking them from under the old, traditional,
conventional point of view and placing them under a new one,—is the very
essence of the religious problem, as now presented; and only by efforts
in this direction can it receive a solution.
Again, in the same spirit in which she judges Bishop Colenso, Miss
Cobbe, like so many earnest liberals of our practical race, both here
and in America, herself sets vigorously about a positive reconstruction
of religion, about making a religion of the future out of hand, or at
least setting about making it. We must not rest, she and they are always
thinking and saying, in negative criticism, we must be creative and
constructive; hence we have such works as her recent _Religious Duty_,
and works still more considerable, perhaps, by others, which will be in
every one’s mind. These works often have much ability; they often spring
out of sincere convictions, and a sincere wish to do good; and they
sometimes, perhaps, do good. Their fault is (if I may be permitted to
say so) one which they have in common with the British College of
Health, in the New Road. Every one knows the British College of Health;
it is that building with the lion and the statue of the Goddess Hygeia
before it; at least I am sure about the lion, though I am not absolutely
certain about the Goddess Hygeia. This building does credit, perhaps, to
the resources of Dr. Morrison and his disciples; but it falls a good
deal short of one’s idea of what a British College of Health ought to
be. In England, where we hate public interference and love individual
enterprise, we have a whole crop of places like the British College of
Health; the grand name without the grand thing. Unluckily, creditable to
individual enterprise as they are, they tend to impair our taste by
making us forget what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character
properly belongs to a public institution. The same may be said of the
religions of the future of Miss Cobbe and others. Creditable, like the
British College of Health, to the resources of their authors, they yet
tend to make us forget what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful
character properly belongs to religious constructions. The historic
religions, with all their faults, have had this; it certainly belongs to
the religious sentiment, when it truly flowers, to have this; and we
impoverish our spirit if we allow a religion of the future without it.
What then is the duty of criticism here? To take the practical point of
view, to applaud the liberal movement and all its works,—its New Road
religions of the future into the bargain,—for their general utility’s
sake? By no means; but to be perpetually dissatisfied with these works,
while they perpetually fall short of a high and perfect ideal.
For criticism, these are elementary laws; but they never can be popular,
and in this country they have been very little followed, and one meets
with immense obstacles in following them. That is a reason for asserting
them again and again. Criticism must maintain its independence of the
practical spirit and its aims. Even with well-meant efforts of the
practical spirit it must express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere of
the ideal they seem impoverishing and limiting. It must not hurry on to
the goal because of its practical importance. It must be patient, and
know how to wait; and flexible, and know how to attach itself to things
and how to withdraw from them. It must be apt to study and praise
elements that for the fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted, even
though they belong to a power which in the practical sphere may be
maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual shortcomings or
illusions of powers that in the practical sphere may be beneficent. And
this without any notion of favoring or injuring, in the practical
sphere, one power or the other; without any notion of playing off, in
this sphere, one power against the other. When one looks, for instance,
at the English Divorce Court—an institution which perhaps has its
practical conveniences, but which in the ideal sphere is so hideous; an
institution which neither makes divorce impossible nor makes it decent,
which allows a man to get rid of his wife, or a wife of her husband, but
makes them drag one another first, for the public edification, through a
mire of unutterable infamy,—when one looks at this charming institution,
I say, with its crowded trials, its newspaper reports, and its money
compensations, this institution in which the gross unregenerate British
Philistine has indeed stamped an image of himself,—one may be permitted
to find the marriage theory of Catholicism refreshing and elevating. Or
when Protestantism, in virtue of its supposed rational and intellectual
origin, gives the law to criticism too magisterially, criticism may and
must remind it that its pretensions, in this respect, are illusive and
do it harm; that the Reformation was a moral rather than an intellectual
event; that Luther’s theory of grace no more exactly reflects the mind
of the spirit than Bossuet’s philosophy of history reflects it; and that
there is no more antecedent probability of the Bishop of Durham’s stock
of ideas being agreeable to perfect reason than of Pope Pius the
Ninth’s. But criticism will not on that account forget the achievements
of Protestantism in the practical and moral sphere; nor that, even in
the intellectual sphere, Protestantism, though in a blind and stumbling
manner, carried forward the Renascence, while Catholicism threw itself
violently across its path.
I lately heard a man of thought and energy contrasting the want of ardor
and movement which he now found amongst young men in this country with
what he remembered in his own youth, twenty years ago. “What reformers
we were then!” he exclaimed; “What a zeal we had! how we canvassed every
institution in Church and State, and were prepared to remodel them all
on first principles!” He was inclined to regret, as a spiritual
flagging, the lull which he saw. I am disposed rather to regard it as a
pause in which the turn to a new mode of spiritual progress is being
accomplished. Everything was long seen, by the young and ardent amongst
us, in inseparable connection with politics and practical life. We have
pretty well exhausted the benefits of seeing things in this connection,
we have got all that can be got by so seeing them. Let us try a more
disinterested mode of seeing them; let us betake ourselves more to the
serener life of the mind and spirit. This life, too, may have its
excesses and dangers; but they are not for us at present. Let us think
of quietly enlarging our stock of true and fresh ideas, and not, as soon
as we get an idea or half an idea, be running out with it into the
street, and trying to make it rule there. Our ideas will, in the end,
shape the world all the better for maturing a little. Perhaps in fifty
years’ time it will in the English House of Commons be an objection to
an institution that it is an anomaly, and my friend the Member of
Parliament will shudder in his grave. But let us in the meanwhile rather
endeavor that in twenty years’ time it may, in English literature, be an
objection to a proposition that it is absurd. That will be a change so
vast, that the imagination almost fails to grasp it. _Ab integro
sæclorum nascitur ordo._
If I have insisted so much on the course which criticism must take where
politics and religion are concerned, it is because, where these burning
matters are in question, it is most likely to go astray. I have wished,
above all, to insist on the attitude which criticism should adopt
towards things in general; on its right tone and temper of mind. But
then comes another question as to the subject-matter which literary
criticism should most seek. Here, in general, its course is determined
for it by the idea which is the law of its being; the idea of a
disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and
thought in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and true
ideas. By the very nature of things, as England is not all the world,
much of the best that is known and thought in the world cannot be of
English growth, must be foreign; by the nature of things, again, it is
just this that we are least likely to know, while English thought is
streaming in upon us from all sides, and takes excellent care that we
shall not be ignorant of its existence. The English critic of
literature, therefore, must dwell much on foreign thought, and with
particular heed on any part of it, which, while significant and fruitful
in itself, is for any reason specially likely to escape him. Again,
judging is often spoken of as the critic’s one business, and so in some
sense it is; but the judgment which almost insensibly forms itself in a
fair and clear mind, along with fresh knowledge, is the valuable one;
and thus knowledge, and ever fresh knowledge, must be the critic’s great
concern for himself. And it is by communicating fresh knowledge, and
letting his own judgment pass along with it,—but insensibly, and in the
second place, not the first, as a sort of companion and clue, not as an
abstract lawgiver,—that the critic will generally do most good to his
readers. Sometimes, no doubt, for the sake of establishing an author’s
place in literature, and his relation to a central standard (and if this
is not done, how are we to get at our _best in the world_?) criticism
may have to deal with a subject-matter so familiar that fresh knowledge
is out of the question, and then it must be all judgment; an enunciation
and detailed application of principles. Here the great safeguard is
never to let oneself become abstract, always to retain an intimate and
lively consciousness of the truth of what one is saying, and, the moment
this fails us, to be sure that something is wrong. Still, under all
circumstances, this mere judgment and application of principles is, in
itself, not the most satisfactory work to the critic; like mathematics,
it is tautological, and cannot well give us, like fresh learning, the
sense of creative activity.
But stop, some one will say; all this talk is of no practical use to us
whatever; this criticism of yours is not what we have in our minds when
we speak of criticism; when we speak of critics and criticism, we mean
critics and criticism of the current English literature of the day; when
you offer to tell criticism its function, it is to this criticism that
we expect you to address yourself. I am sorry for it, for I am afraid I
must disappoint these expectations. I am bound by my own definition of
criticism: _a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best
that is known and thought in the world_. How much of current English
literature comes into this “best that is known and thought in the
world?” Not very much I fear; certainly less, at this moment, than of
the current literature of France or Germany. Well, then, am I to alter
my definition of criticism, in order to meet the requirements of a
number of practising English critics, who, after all, are free in their
choice of a business? That would be making criticism lend itself just to
one of those alien practical considerations, which, I have said, are so
fatal to it. One may say, indeed, to those who have to deal with the
mass—so much better disregarded—of current English literature, that they
may at all events endeavor, in dealing with this, to try it, so far as
they can, by the standard of the best that is known and thought in the
world; one may say, that to get anywhere near this standard, every
critic should try and possess one great literature, at least, besides
his own; and the more unlike his own, the better. But, after all, the
criticism I am really concerned with,—the criticism which alone can much
help us for the future, the criticism which, throughout Europe, is at
the present day meant, when so much stress is laid on the importance of
criticism and the critical spirit,—is a criticism which regards Europe
as being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great
confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a common result;
and whose members have, for their proper outfit, a knowledge of Greek,
Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special, local, and
temporary advantages being put out of account, that modern nation will
in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make most progress, which most
thoroughly carries out this program. And what is that but saying that we
too, all of us, as individuals, the more thoroughly we carry it out,
shall make the more progress?
There is so much inviting us!—what are we to take? what will nourish us
in growth towards perfection? That is the question which, with the
immense field of life and of literature lying before him, the critic has
to answer; for himself first, and afterwards for others. In this idea of
the critic’s business the essays brought together in the following pages
have had their origin; in this idea, widely different as are their
subjects, they have, perhaps, their unity.
I conclude with what I said at the beginning: to have the sense of
creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being
alive, and it is not denied to criticism to have it; but then criticism
must be sincere, simple, flexible, ardent, ever widening its knowledge.
Then it may have, in no contemptible measure, a joyful sense of creative
activity; a sense which a man of insight and conscience will prefer to
what he might derive from a poor, starved, fragmentary, inadequate
creation. And at some epochs no other creation is possible.
Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity belongs only to
genuine creation; in literature we must never forget that. But what true
man of letters ever can forget it? It is no such common matter for a
gifted nature to come into possession of a current of true and living
ideas, and to produce amidst the inspiration of them, that we are likely
to underrate it. The epochs of Æschylus and Shakespeare make us feel
their pre-eminence. In an epoch like those is, no doubt, the true life
of literature; there is the promised land, towards which criticism can
only beckon. That promised land it will not be ours to enter, and we
shall die in the wilderness: but to have desired to enter it, to have
saluted it from afar, is already, perhaps, the best distinction among
contemporaries; it will certainly be the best title to esteem with
posterity.
II.
THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES.
It is impossible to put down a book like the history of the French
Academy, by Pellisson and D’Olivet, which M. Charles Livet has lately
re-edited, without being led to reflect upon the absence, in our own
country, of any institution like the French Academy, upon the probable
causes of this absence, and upon its results. A thousand voices will be
ready to tell us that this absence is a signal mark of our national
superiority; that it is in great part owing to this absence that the
exhilarating words of Lord Macaulay, lately given to the world by his
very clever nephew, Mr. Trevelyan, are so profoundly true: “It may
safely be said that the literature now extant in the English language is
of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years
ago was extant in all the languages of the world together.” I dare say
this is so; only, remembering Spinoza’s maxim that the two great banes
of humanity are self-conceit and the laziness coming from self-conceit,
I think it may do us good, instead of resting in our pre-eminence with
perfect security, to look a little more closely why this is so, and
whether it is so without any limitations.
But first of all I must give a very few words to the outward history of
the French Academy. About the year 1629, seven or eight persons in
Paris, fond of literature, formed themselves into a sort of little club
to meet at one another’s houses and discuss literary matters. Their
meetings got talked of, and Cardinal Richelieu, then minister and
all-powerful, heard of them. He himself had a noble passion for letters,
and for all fine culture; he was interested by what he heard of the
nascent society. Himself a man in the grand style, if ever man was, he
had the insight to perceive what a potent instrument of the grand style
was here to his hand. It was the beginning of a great century for
France, the seventeenth; men’s minds were working, the French language
was forming. Richelieu sent to ask the members of the new society
whether they would be willing to become a body with a public character,
holding regular meetings. Not without a little hesitation,—for
apparently they found themselves very well as they were, and these seven
or eight gentlemen of a social and literary turn were not perfectly at
their ease as to what the great and terrible minister could want with
them,—they consented. The favors of a man like Richelieu are not easily
refused, whether they are honestly meant or no; but this favor of
Richelieu’s was meant quite honestly. The Parliament, however, had its
doubts of this. The Parliament had none of Richelieu’s enthusiasm about
letters and culture; it was jealous of the apparition of a new public
body in the State; above all, of a body called into existence by
Richelieu. The King’s letters-patent, establishing and authorizing the
new society, were granted early in 1635; but, by the old constitution of
France, these letters-patent required the verification of the
Parliament. It was two years and a half—towards the autumn of
1637—before the Parliament would give it; and it then gave it only after
pressing solicitations, and earnest assurances of the innocent
intentions of the young Academy. Jocose people said that this society,
with its mission to purify and embellish the language, filled with
terror a body of lawyers like the French Parliament, the stronghold of
barbarous jargon and of chicane.
This improvement of the language was in truth the declared grand aim for
the operations of the Academy. Its statutes of foundation, approved by
Richelieu before the royal edict establishing it was issued, say
expressly: “The Academy’s principal function shall be to work with all
the care and all the diligence possible at giving sure rules to our
language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the
arts and sciences.” This zeal for making a nation’s great instrument of
thought,—its language,—correct and worthy, is undoubtedly a sign full of
promise,—a weighty earnest of future power. It is said that Richelieu
had it in his mind that French should succeed Latin in its general
ascendency, as Latin had succeeded Greek; if it was so, even this wish
has to some extent been fulfilled. But, at any rate, the _ethical_
influences of style in language,—its close relations, so often pointed
out, with character,—are most important. Richelieu, a man of high
culture, and, at the same time, of great character felt them profoundly;
and that he should have sought to regularize, strengthen, and perpetuate
them by an institution for perfecting language, is alone a striking
proof of his governing spirit and of his genius.
This was not all he had in his mind, however. The new Academy, now
enlarged to a body of forty members, and meant to contain all the chief
literary men of France, was to be a _literary tribunal_. The works of
its members were to be brought before it previous to publication, were
to be criticized by it, and finally, if it saw fit, to be published with
its declared approbation. The works of other writers, not members of the
Academy, might also, at the request of these writers themselves, be
passed under the Academy’s review. Besides this, in essays and
discussions the Academy examined and judged works already published,
whether by living or dead authors, and literary matters in general. The
celebrated opinion on Corneille’s _Cid_, delivered in 1637 by the
Academy at Richelieu’s urgent request, when this poem, which strongly
occupied public attention, had been attacked by M. de Scudéry, shows how
fully Richelieu designed his new creation to do duty as a supreme court
of literature, and how early it in fact began to exercise this function.
One[5] who had known Richelieu declared, after the Cardinal’s death,
that he had projected a yet greater institution than the Academy, a sort
of grand European college of art, science, and literature, a Prytaneum,
where the chief authors of all Europe should be gathered together in one
central home, there to live in security, leisure and honor;—that was a
dream which will not bear to be pulled about too roughly. But the
project of forming a high court of letters for France was no dream;
Richelieu in great measure fulfilled it. This is what the Academy, by
its idea, really is; this is what it has always tended to become; this
is what it has, from time to time, really been; by being, or tending to
be this, far more than even by what it has done for the language, it is
of such importance in France. To give the law, the tone to literature,
and that tone a high one, is its business. “Richelieu meant it,” says M.
Sainte-Beuve, “to be a _haut jury_,”—a jury the most choice and
authoritative that could be found on all important literary matters in
question before the public; to be, as it in fact became in the latter
half of the eighteenth century, “a sovereign organ of opinion.” “The
duty of the Academy is,” says M. Renan, “_maintenir la délicatesse de
l’esprit français_”—to keep the fine quality of the French spirit
unimpaired; it represents a kind of “_maîtrise en fait de bon ton_”—the
authority of a recognized master in matters of tone and taste. “All
ages,” says M. Renan again, “have had their inferior literature; but the
great danger of our time is that this inferior literature tends more and
more to get the upper place. No one has the same advantage as the
Academy for fighting against this mischief;” the Academy, which, as he
says elsewhere, has even special facilities, for “creating a form of
intellectual culture _which shall impose itself on all around_.” M.
Sainte-Beuve and M. Renan are, both of them, very keen-sighted critics;
and they show it signally by seizing and putting so prominently forward
this character of the French Academy.
-----
Footnote 5:
La Mesnardière.
-----
Such an effort to set up a recognized authority, imposing on us a high
standard in matters of intellect and taste, has many enemies in human
nature. We all of us like to go our own way, and not to be forced out of
the atmosphere of commonplace habitual to most of us;—“_was uns alle
bändigt_,” says Goethe, “_das Gemeine_.” We like to be suffered to lie
comfortably in the old straw of our habits, especially of our
intellectual habits, even though this straw may not be very clean and
fine. But if the effort to limit this freedom of our lower nature finds,
as it does and must find, enemies in human nature, it finds also
auxiliaries in it. Out of the four great parts, says Cicero, of the
_honestum_, or good, which forms the matter on which _officium_, or
human duty, finds employment, one is the fixing of a _modus_ and an
_ordo_, a measure and an order, to fashion and wholesomely constrain our
action, in order to lift it above the level it keeps if left to itself,
and to bring it nearer to perfection. Man alone of living creatures, he
says, goes feeling after “_quid sit_ ordo, _quid sid quod_ deceat, _in
factis dictisque qui_ modus—the discovery of an _order_, a law of _good
taste_, a _measure_ for his words and actions.” Other creatures
submissively follow the law of their nature; man alone has an impulse
leading him to set up some other law to control the bent of his nature.
This holds good, of course, as to moral matters, as well as intellectual
matters: and it is of moral matters that we are generally thinking when
we affirm it. But it holds good as to intellectual matters too. Now,
probably, M. Sainte-Beuve had not these words of Cicero in his mind when
he made, about the French nation, the assertion I am going to quote;
but, for all that, the assertion leans for support, one may say, upon
the truth conveyed in those words of Cicero, and wonderfully illustrates
and confirms them. “In France,” says M. Sainte-Beuve, “the first
consideration for us is not whether we are amused and pleased by a work
of art or mind, nor is it whether we are touched by it. What we seek
above all to learn is, whether _we were right_ in being amused with it,
and in applauding it, and in being moved by it.” Those are very
remarkable words, and they are, I believe, in the main quite true. A
Frenchman has, to a considerable degree, what one may call a conscience
in intellectual matters; he has an active belief that there is a right
and a wrong in them, that he is bound to honor and obey the right, that
he is disgraced by cleaving to the wrong. All the world has, or
professes to have, this conscience in moral matters. The word
_conscience_ has become almost confined, in popular use, to the moral
sphere, because this lively susceptibility of feeling is, in the moral
sphere, so far more common than in the intellectual sphere; the
livelier, in the moral sphere, this susceptibility is, the greater
becomes a man’s readiness to admit a high standard of action, an ideal
authoritatively correcting his everyday moral habits; here, such willing
admission of authority is due to sensitiveness of conscience. And a like
deference to a standard higher than one’s own habitual standard in
intellectual matters, a like respectful recognition of a superior ideal,
is caused, in the intellectual sphere, by sensitiveness of intelligence.
Those whose intelligence is quickest, openest, most sensitive, are
readiest with this deference; those whose intelligence is less delicate
and sensitive are less disposed to it. Well, now we are on the road to
see why the French have their Academy and we have nothing of the kind.
What are the essential characteristics of the spirit of our nation? Not,
certainly, an open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible
intelligence. Our greatest admirers would not claim for us that we have
these in a preeminent degree; they might say that we had more of them
than our detractors gave us credit for; but they would not assert them
to be our essential characteristics. They would rather allege, as our
chief spiritual characteristics, energy and honesty; and, if we are
judged favorably and positively, not invidiously and negatively, our
chief characteristics are, no doubt, these:—energy and honesty, not an
open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible intelligence. Openness of
mind and flexibility of intelligence were very signal characteristics of
the Athenian people in ancient times; everybody will feel that. Openness
of mind and flexibility of intelligence are remarkable characteristics
of the French people in modern times; at any rate, they strikingly
characterize them as compared with us; I think everybody, or almost
everybody, will feel that. I will not now ask what more the Athenian or
the French spirit has than this, nor what shortcomings either of them
may have as a set-off against this; all I want now to point out is that
they have this, and that we have it in a much lesser degree.
Let me remark, however, that not only in the moral sphere, but also in
the intellectual and spiritual sphere, energy and honesty are most
important and fruitful qualities; that, for instance, of what we call
genius energy is the most essential part. So, by assigning to a nation
energy and honesty as its chief spiritual characteristics,—by refusing
to it, as at all eminent characteristics, openness of mind and
flexibility of intelligence,—we do not by any means, as some people
might at first suppose, relegate its importance and its power of
manifesting itself with effect from the intellectual to the moral
sphere. We only indicate its probable special line of successful
activity in the intellectual sphere, and, it is true, certain
imperfections and failings to which, in this sphere, it will always be
subject. Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an
affair of genius; therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterized by
energy may well be eminent in poetry;—and we have Shakespeare. Again,
the highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a
faculty of divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry;
therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be
eminent in science;—and we have Newton. Shakespeare and Newton: in the
intellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And what that energy,
which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon,
is freedom; entire independence of all authority, prescription, and
routine,—the fullest room to expand as it will. Therefore, a nation
whose chief spiritual characteristic is energy, will not be very apt to
set up, in intellectual matters, a fixed standard, an authority, like an
academy. By this it certainly escapes certain real inconveniences and
dangers, and it can, at the same time, as we have seen, reach undeniably
splendid heights in poetry and science. On the other hand, some of the
requisites of intellectual work are specially the affair of quickness of
mind and flexibility of intelligence. The form, the method of evolution,
the precision, the proportions, the relations of the parts to the whole,
in an intellectual work, depend mainly upon them. And these are the
elements of an intellectual work which are really most communicable from
it, which can most be learned and adopted from it, which have,
therefore, the greatest effect upon the intellectual performance of
others. Even in poetry, these requisites are very important; and the
poetry of a nation, not eminent for the gifts on which they depend,
will, more or less, suffer by this shortcoming. In poetry, however, they
are, after all, secondary, and energy is the first thing; but in prose
they are of first-rate importance. In its prose literature, therefore,
and in the routine of intellectual work generally, a nation with no
particular gifts for these will not be so successful. These are what, as
I have said, can to a certain degree be learned and appropriated, while
the free activity of genius cannot. Academies consecrate and maintain
them, and, therefore, a nation with an eminent turn for them naturally
establishes academies. So far as routine and authority tend to embarrass
energy and inventive genius, academies may be said to be obstructive to
energy and inventive genius, and, to this extent, to the human spirit’s
general advance. But then this evil is so much compensated by the
propagation, on a large scale, of the mental aptitudes and demands which
an open mind and a flexible intelligence naturally engender, genius
itself, in the long run, so greatly finds its account in this
propagation, and bodies like the French Academy have such power for
promoting it, that the general advance of the human spirit is perhaps,
on the whole, rather furthered than impeded by their existence.
How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose! how much better, in
general, do the productions of its spirit show in the qualities of
genius than in the qualities of intelligence! One may constantly remark
this in the work of individuals; how much more striking, in general,
does any Englishman,—of some vigor of mind, but by no means a poet,—seem
in his verse than in his prose! His verse partly suffers from his not
being really a poet, partly, no doubt, from the very same defects which
impair his prose, and he cannot express himself with thorough success in
it. But how much more powerful a personage does he appear in it, by dint
of feeling, and of originality and movement of ideas, than when he is
writing prose! With a Frenchman of like stamp, it is just the reverse:
set him to write poetry, he is limited, artificial, and impotent; set
him to write prose, he is free, natural, and effective. The power of
French literature is in its prose-writers, the power of English
literature is in its poets. Nay, many of the celebrated French poets
depend wholly for their fame upon the qualities of intelligence which
they exhibit,—qualities which are the distinctive support of prose; many
of the celebrated English prose-writers depend wholly for their fame
upon the qualities of genius and imagination which they
exhibit,—qualities which are the distinctive support of poetry. But, as
I have said, the qualities of genius are less transferable than the
qualities of intelligence; less can be immediately learned and
appropriated from their product; they are less direct and stringent
intellectual agencies, though they may be more beautiful and divine.
Shakspeare and our great Elizabethan group were certainly more gifted
writers than Corneille and his group; but what was the sequel to this
great literature, this literature of genius, as we may call it,
stretching from Marlow to Milton? What did it lead up to in English
literature? To our provincial and second-rate literature of the
eighteenth century. What on the other hand, was the sequel to the
literature of the French “great century,” to this literature of
intelligence, as by comparison with our Elizabethan literature, we may
call it; what did it lead up to? To the French literature of the
eighteenth century, one of the most powerful and pervasive intellectual
agencies that have ever existed,—the greatest European force of the
eighteenth century. In science, again, we had Newton, a genius of the
very highest order, a type of genius in science, if ever there was one.
On the continent, as a sort of counterpart to Newton, there was
Leibnitz; a man, it seems to me (though on these matters I speak under
correction), of much less creative energy of genius, much less power of
divination than Newton, but rather a man of admirable intelligence, a
type of intelligence in science, if ever there was one. Well, and what
did they each directly lead up to in science? What was the intellectual
generation that sprang from each of them? I only repeat what the men of
science have themselves pointed out. The man of genius was continued by
the English analysts of the eighteenth century, comparatively powerless
and obscure followers of the renowned master. The man of intelligence
was continued by successors like Bernouilli, Euler, Lagrange, and
Laplace, the greatest names in modern mathematics.
What I want the reader to see is, that the question as to the utility of
academies to the intellectual life of a nation is not settled when we
say, for instance: “Oh, we have never had an academy and yet we have,
confessedly, a very great literature.” It still remains to be asked:
“What sort of a great literature? a literature great in the special
qualities of genius, or great in the special qualities of intelligence?”
If in the former, it is by no means sure that either our literature, or
the general intellectual life of our nation, has got already, without
academics, all that academics can give. Both the one and the other may
very well be somewhat wanting in those qualities of intelligence out of
a lively sense for which a body like the French Academy, as I have said,
springs, and which such a body does a great deal to spread and confirm.
Our literature, in spite of the genius manifested in it, may fall short
in form, method, precision, proportions, arrangement,—all of them, I
have said, things where intelligence proper comes in. It may be
comparatively weak in prose, that branch of literature where
intelligence proper is, so to speak, all in all. In this branch it may
show many grave faults to which the want of a quick, flexible
intelligence, and of the strict standard which such an intelligence
tends to impose, makes it liable; it may be full of haphazard,
crudeness, provincialism, eccentricity, violence, blundering. It may be
a less stringent and effective intellectual agency, both upon our own
nation and upon the world at large, than other literatures which show
less genius, perhaps, but more intelligence.
The right conclusion certainly is that we should try, so far as we can,
to make up our shortcomings; and that to this end, instead of always
fixing our thoughts upon the points in which our literature, and our
intellectual life generally, are strong, we should from time to time,
fix them upon those in which they are weak, and so learn to perceive
clearly what we have to amend. What is our second great spiritual
characteristic,—our honesty,—good for, if it is not good for this? But
it will,—I am sure it will,—more and more, as time goes on, be found
good for this.
Well, then, an institution like the French Academy,—an institution owing
its existence to a national bent towards the things of the mind, towards
culture, towards clearness, correctness, and propriety in thinking and
speaking, and, in its turn, promoting this bent,—sets standards in a
number of directions, and creates, in all these directions, a force of
educated opinion, checking and rebuking those who fall below these
standards, or who set them at nought. Educated opinion exists here as in
France; but in France the Academy serves as a sort of center and
rallying-point to it, and gives it a force which it has not got here.
Why is all the _journeyman-work_ of literature, as I may call it, so
much worse done here than it is in France? I do not wish to hurt any
one’s feelings; but surely this is so. Think of the difference between
our books of reference and those of the French, between our biographical
dictionaries (to take a striking instance) and theirs; think of the
difference between the translations of the classics turned out for Mr.
Bohn’s library and those turned out for M. Nisard’s collection! As a
general rule, hardly any one amongst us, who knows French and German
well, would use an English book of reference when he could get a French
or German one; or would look at an English prose translation of an
ancient author when he could get a French or German one. It is not that
there do not exist in England, as in France, a number of people
perfectly well able to discern what is good, in these things, from what
is bad, and preferring what is good; but they are isolated, they form no
powerful body of opinion, they are not strong enough to set a standard,
up to which even the journeyman-work of literature must be brought, if
it is to be vendible. Ignorance and charlatanism in work of this kind
are always trying to pass off their wares as excellent, and to cry down
criticism as the voice of an insignificant, over-fastidious minority;
they easily persuade the multitude that this is so when the minority is
scattered about as it is here; not so easily when it is banded together
as in the French Academy. So, again, with freaks in dealing with
language; certainly all such freaks tend to impair the power and beauty
of language; and how far more common they are with us than with the
French! To take a very familiar instance. Every one has noticed the way
in which the _Times_ chooses to spell the word “diocese;” it always
spells it diocess,[6] deriving it, I suppose, from _Zeus_ and _census_.
The _Journal des Débats_ might just as well write “diocess” instead of
“diocèse,” but imagine the _Journal des Débats_ doing so! Imagine an
educated Frenchman indulging himself in an orthographical antic of this
sort, in face of the grave respect with which the Academy and its
dictionary invest the French language! Some people will say these are
little things; they are not; they are of bad example. They tend to
spread the baneful notion that there is no such thing as a high, correct
standard in intellectual matters; that every one may as well take his
own way; they are at variance with the severe discipline necessary for
all real culture; they confirm us in habits of wilfulness and
eccentricity, which hurt our minds, and damage our credit with serious
people. The late Mr. Donaldson was certainly a man of great ability, and
I, who am not an Orientalist, do not pretend to judge his _Jashar_: but
let the reader observe the form which a foreign Orientalist’s judgment
of it naturally takes. M. Renan calls it a _tentative malheureuse_, a
failure, in short; this it may be, or it may not be; I am no judge. But
he goes on: “It is astonishing that a recent article” (in a French
periodical, he means) “should have brought forward as the last word of
German exegesis a work like this, composed by a doctor of the University
of Cambridge, and universally condemned by German critics.” You see what
he means to imply: an extravagance of this sort could never have come
from Germany, where there is a great force of critical opinion
controlling a learned man’s vagaries, and keeping him straight; it comes
from the native home of intellectual eccentricity of all kinds,[7]—from
England, from a doctor of the University of Cambridge:—and I dare say he
would not expect much better things from a doctor of the University of
Oxford. Again, after speaking of what Germany and France have done for
the history of Mahomet: “America and England,” M. Renan goes on, “have
also occupied themselves with Mahomet.” He mentions Washington Irving’s
_Life of Mahomet_, which does not, he says, evince much of an historical
sense, a _sentiment historique fort élevé_; “but,” he proceeds, “this
book shows a real progress, when one thinks that in 1829 Mr. Charles
Forster published two thick volumes, which enchanted the English
_révérends_, to make out that Mahomet was the little horn of the he-goat
that figures in the eighth chapter of Daniel, and that the Pope was the
great horn. Mr. Forster founded on this ingenious parallel a whole
philosophy of history, according to which the Pope represented the
Western corruption of Christianity, and Mahomet the Eastern; thence the
striking resemblances between Mahometanism and Popery.” And in a note M.
Renan adds: “This is the same Mr. Charles Forster who is the author of a
mystification about the Sinaitic inscriptions, in which he declares he
finds the primitive language.” As much as to say: “It is an Englishman,
be surprised at no extravagance.” If these innuendoes had no ground, and
were made in hatred and malice, they would not be worth a moment’s
attention; but they come from a grave Orientalist, on his own subject,
and they point to a real fact;—the absence, in this country, of any
force of educated literary and scientific opinion, making aberrations
like those of the author of _The One Primeval Language_ out of the
question. Not only the author of such aberrations, often a very clever
man, suffers by the want of check, by the not being kept straight, and
spends force in vain on a false road, which, under better discipline, he
might have used with profit on a true one; but all his adherents, both
“reverends” and others, suffer too, and the general rate of information
and judgment is in this way kept low.
-----
Footnote 6:
The _Times_ has now (1868) abandoned this spelling and adopted the
ordinary one.
Footnote 7:
A critic declares I am wrong in saying that M. Renan’s language
implies this. I still think that there is a shade, a _nuance_ of
expression, in M. Renan’s language, which does imply this; but, I
confess, the only person who can really settle such a question is M.
Renan himself.
-----
In a production which we have all been reading lately, a production
stamped throughout with a literary quality very rare in this country,
and of which I shall have a word to say presently—_urbanity_; in this
production, the work of a man never to be named by any son of Oxford
without sympathy, a man who alone in Oxford of his generation, alone of
many generations, conveyed to us in his genius that same charm, that
same ineffable sentiment which this exquisite place itself conveys,—I
mean Dr. Newman,—an expression is frequently used which is more common
in theological than in literary language, but which seems to me fitted
to be of general service; the _note_ of so and so, the note of
catholicity, the note of antiquity, the note of sanctity, and so on.
Adopting this expressive word, I say that in the bulk of the
intellectual work of a nation which has no center, no intellectual
metropolis like an academy, like M. Sainte-Beuve’s “sovereign organ of
opinion,” like M. Renan’s “recognized authority in matters of tone and
taste,”—there is observable a _note of provinciality_. Now to get rid of
provinciality is a certain stage of culture; a stage the positive result
of which we must not make of too much importance, but which is,
nevertheless, indispensable, for it brings us on to the platform where
alone the best and highest intellectual work can be said fairly to
begin. Work done after men have reached this platform is _classical_;
and that is the only work which, in the long run, can stand. All the
_scoriæ_ in the work of men of great genius who have not lived on this
platform are due to their not having lived on it. Genius raises them to
it by moments, and the portions of their work which are immortal are
done at these moments; but more of it would have been immortal if they
had not reached this platform at moments only, if they had had the
culture which makes men live there.
The less a literature has felt the influence of a supposed center of
correct information, correct judgment, correct taste, the more we shall
find in it this note of provinciality. I have shown the note of
provinciality as caused by remoteness from a center of correct
information. Of course the note of provinciality from the want of a
center of correct taste is still more visible, and it is also still more
common. For here great—even the greatest—powers of mind most fail a man.
Great powers of mind will make him inform himself thoroughly, great
powers of mind will make him think profoundly, even with ignorance and
platitude all round him; but not even great powers of mind will keep his
taste and style perfectly sound and sure, if he is left too much to
himself, with no “sovereign organ of opinion” in these matters near him.
Even men like Jeremy Taylor and Burke suffer here. Take this passage
from Taylor’s funeral sermon on Lady Carbery:—
“So have I seen a river, deep and smooth, passing with a still foot and
a sober face, and paying to the _fiscus_, the great exchequer of the
sea, a tribute large and full; and hard by it a little brook, skipping
and making a noise upon its unequal and neighbor bottom; and after all
its talking and bragged motion, it paid to its common audit no more than
the revenues of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel: so have I
sometimes compared the issues of her religion to the solemnities and
famed outsides of another’s piety.”
That passage has been much admired, and, indeed, the genius in it is
undeniable. I should say, for my part, that genius, the ruling divinity
of poetry, had been too busy in it, and intelligence, the ruling
divinity of prose, not busy enough. But can any one, with the best
models of style in his head, help feeling the note of provinciality
there, the want of simplicity, the want of measure, the want of just the
qualities that make prose classical? If he does not feel what I mean,
let him place beside the passage of Taylor this passage from the
Panegyric of St. Paul, by Taylor’s contemporary, Bossuet:—
“Il ira, cet ignorant dans l’art de bien dire, avec cette locution rude,
avec cette phrase qui sent l’étranger il ira en cette Grèce polie, la
mère des philosophes et des orateurs; et malgré la résistance du monde,
il y établira plus d’Eglises que Platon n’y a gagné de disciples par
cette éloquence qu’on a crue divine.”
There we have prose without the note of provinciality—classical prose,
prose of the center.
Or take Burke, our greatest English prose-writer, as I think; take
expressions like this:—
“Blindfold themselves, like bulls that shut their eyes when they push,
they drive, by the point of their bayonets, their slaves, blindfolded,
indeed, no worse than their lords, to take their fictions for
currencies, and to swallow down paper pills by thirty-four millions
sterling at a dose.”
Or this:—
“They used it” (the royal name) “as a sort of navel-string, to nourish
their unnatural offspring from the bowels of royalty itself. Now that
the monster can purvey for its own subsistence, it will only carry the
mark about it, as a token of its having torn the womb it came from.”
Or this:—
“Without one natural pang, he” (Rousseau) “casts away, as a sort of
offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends his
children to the hospital of foundlings.”
Or this:—
“I confess I never liked this continual talk of resistance and
revolution, or the practice of making the extreme medicine of the
constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of society
dangerously valetudinary; it is taking periodical doses of mercury
sublimate, and swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides to
our love of liberty.”
I say that is extravagant prose; prose too much suffered to indulge its
caprices; prose at too great a distance from the center of good taste;
prose, in short, with the note of provinciality. People may reply, it is
rich and imaginative; yes, that is just it, it is _Asiatic_ prose, as
the ancient critics would have said; prose somewhat barbarously rich and
overloaded. But the true prose is Attic prose.
Well, but Addison’s prose is Attic prose. Where, then, it may be asked,
is the note of provinciality in Addison? I answer, in the commonplace of
his ideas.[8] This is a matter worth remarking. Addison claims to take
leading rank as a moralist. To do that, you must have ideas of the first
order on your subject—the best ideas, at any rate, attainable in your
time—as well as to be able to express them in a perfectly sound and sure
style. Else you show your distance from the center of ideas by your
matter; you are provincial by your matter, though you may not be
provincial by your style. It is comparatively a small matter to express
oneself well, if one will be content with not expressing much, with
expressing only trite ideas; the problem is to express new and profound
ideas in a perfectly sound and classical style. He is the true classic,
in every age, who does that. Now Addison has not, on his subject of
morals, the force of ideas of the moralists of the first class—the
classical moralists; he has not the best ideas attainable in or about
his time, and which were, so to speak, in the air then, to be seized by
the finest spirits; he is not to be compared for power, searchingness,
or delicacy of thought to Pascal or La Bruyère or Vauvenargues; he is
rather on a level, in this respect, with a man like Marmontel.
Therefore, I say, he has the note of provinciality as a moralist; he is
provincial by his matter, though not by his style.
-----
Footnote 8:
A critic says this is paradoxical, and urges that many second-rate
French academicians have uttered the most commonplace ideas possible.
I agree that many second-rate French academicians have uttered the
most commonplace ideas possible; but Addison is not a second-rate man.
He is a man of the order, I will not say of Pascal, but at any rate of
La Bruyère and Vauve-nargues; why does he not equal them? I say
because of the medium in which he finds himself, the atmosphere in
which he lives and works; an atmosphere which tells unfavorably, or
rather _tends_ to tell unfavorably (for that is the truer way of
putting it) either upon style or else upon ideas; tends to make even a
man of great ability either a Mr. Carlyle or else a Lord Macaulay.
It is to be observed, however, that Lord Macaulay’s style has in its
turn suffered by his failure in ideas, and this cannot be said of
Addison’s.
-----
To illustrate what I mean by an example. Addison, writing as a moralist
on fixedness in religious faith, says:—
“Those who delight in reading books of controversy do very seldom arrive
at a fixed and settled habit of faith. The doubt which was laid revives
again, and shows itself in new difficulties; and that generally for this
reason,—because the mind, which is perpetually tossed in controversies
and disputes, is apt to forget the reasons which had once set it at
rest, and to be disquieted with any former perplexity when it appears in
a new shape, or is started by a different hand.”
It may be said, that is classical English, perfect in lucidity, measure,
and propriety. I make no objection; but, in my turn, I say that the idea
expressed is perfectly trite and barren, and that it is a note of
provinciality in Addison, in a man whom a nation puts forward as one of
its great moralists, to have no profounder and more striking idea to
produce on this great subject. Compare, on the same subject, these words
of a moralist really of the first order, really at the center by his
ideas,—Joubert:—
“L’expérience de beaucoup d’opinions donne à l’esprit beaucoup de
flexibilité et l’affermit dans celles qu’il croit les meilleures.”
With what a flash of light that touches the subject! how it sets us
thinking! What a genuine contribution to moral science it is!
In short, where there is no center like an academy, if you have genius
and powerful ideas, you are apt not to have the best style going; if you
have precision of style and not genius, you are apt not to have the best
ideas going.
The provincial spirit, again, exaggerates the value of its ideas for
want of a high standard at hand by which to try them. Or rather, for
want of such a standard, it gives one idea too much prominence at the
expense of others; it orders its ideas amiss; it is hurried away by
fancies; it likes and dislikes too passionately, too exclusively. Its
admiration weeps hysterical tears, and its disapprobation foams at the
mouth. So we get the _eruptive_ and the _aggressive_ manner in
literature; the former prevails most in our criticism, the latter in our
newspapers. For, not having the lucidity of a large and centrally placed
intelligence, the provincial spirit has not its graciousness; it does
not persuade, it makes war; it has not urbanity, the tone of the city,
of the center, the tone which always aims at a spiritual and
intellectual effect, and not excluding the use of banter, never disjoins
banter itself from politeness, from felicity. But the provincial tone is
more violent, and seems to aim rather at an effect upon the blood and
senses than upon the spirit and intellect; it loves hard-hitting rather
than persuading. The newspaper, with its party spirit, its
thorough-goingness, its resolute avoidance of shades and distinctions,
its short, highly-charged, heavy-shotted articles, its style so unlike
that style _lenis minimèque pertinax_—easy and not too violently
insisting,—which the ancients so much admired, is its true literature;
the provincial spirit likes in the newspaper just what makes the
newspaper such bad food for it,—just what made Goethe say, when he was
pressed hard about the immorality of Byron’s poems, that, after all,
they were not so immoral as the newspapers. The French talk of the
_brutalité des journaux anglais_. What strikes them comes from the
necessary inherent tendencies of newspaper-writing not being checked in
England by any center of intelligent and urbane spirit, but rather
stimulated by coming in contact with a provincial spirit. Even a
newspaper like the _Saturday Review_, that old friend of all of us, a
newspaper expressly aiming at an immunity from the common
newspaper-spirit, aiming at being a sort of organ of reason,—and, by
thus aiming, it merits great gratitude and has done great good,—even the
_Saturday Review_, replying to some foreign criticism on our precautions
against invasion, falls into a strain of this kind:—
“To do this” (to take these precautions) “seems to us eminently worthy
of a great nation, and to talk of it as unworthy of a great nation,
seems to us eminently worthy of a great fool.”
There is what the French mean when they talk of the _brutalité des
journaux anglais_; there is a style certainly as far removed from
urbanity as possible,—a style with what I call the note of
provinciality. And the same note may not unfrequently be observed even
in the ideas of this newspaper, full as it is of thought and cleverness:
certain ideas allowed to become fixed ideas, to prevail too absolutely.
I will not speak of the immediate present, but, to go a little while
back, it had the critic who so disliked the Emperor of the French; it
had the critic who so disliked the subject of my present
remarks—academies; it had the critic who was so fond of the German
element in our nation, and, indeed, everywhere; who ground his teeth if
one said _Charlemagne_ instead of _Charles the Great_, and, in short,
saw all things in Teutonism, as Malebranche saw all things in God.
Certainly any one may fairly find faults in the Emperor Napoleon or in
academies, and merit in the German element; but it is a note of the
provincial spirit not to hold ideas of this kind a little more easily,
to be so devoured by them, to suffer them to become crotchets.
In England there needs a miracle of genius like Shakspeare’s to produce
balance of mind, and a miracle of intellectual delicacy like Dr.
Newman’s to produce urbanity of style. How prevalent all round us is the
want of balance of mind and urbanity of style! How much, doubtless, it
is to be found in ourselves,—in each of us! but, as human nature is
constituted, every one can see it clearest in his contemporaries. There,
above all, we should consider it, because they and we are exposed to the
same influences; and it is in the best of one’s contemporaries that it
is most worth considering, because one then most feels the harm it does,
when one sees what they would be without it. Think of the difference
between Mr. Ruskin exercising his genius, and Mr. Ruskin exercising his
intelligence; consider the truth and beauty of this:—
“Go out, in the spring-time, among the meadows that slope from the
shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There,
mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass
grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths,
beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom,—paths that
forever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in
scented undulation, steep to the blue water studded here and there with
new-mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness,—look up
towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll
silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines....”
There is what the genius, the feeling, the temperament in Mr. Ruskin,
the original and incommunicable part, has to do with; and how exquisite
it is! All the critic could possibly suggest, in the way of objection,
would be, perhaps, that Mr. Ruskin is there trying to make prose do more
than it can perfectly do; that what he is there attempting he will
never, except in poetry, be able to accomplish to his own entire
satisfaction: but he accomplishes so much that the critic may well
hesitate to suggest even this. Place beside this charming passage
another,—a passage about Shakspeare’s names, where the intelligence and
judgment of Mr. Ruskin, the acquired, trained, communicable part in him,
are brought into play,—and see the difference:—
“Of Shakspeare’s names I will afterwards speak at more length; they are
curiously—often barbarously—mixed out of various traditions and
languages. Three of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed.
Desdemona—‘δυσδαιμονία,’ _miserable fortune_—is also plain enough.
Othello is, I believe, ‘the careful;’ all the calamity of the tragedy
arising from the single flaw and error in his magnificently collected
strength. Ophelia, ‘serviceableness,’ the true, lost wife of Hamlet, is
marked as having a Greek name by that of her brother, Laertes; and its
signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that brother’s last word
of her, where her gentle preciousness is opposed to the uselessness of
the churlish clergy:—‘A _ministering_ angel shall my sister be, when
thou liest howling.’ Hamlet is, I believe, connected in some way with
‘homely,’ the entire event of the tragedy turning on betrayal of home
duty. Hermione (ἕρμο), ‘pillar-like’ (ἥ εἶδος ἕχε χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης);
Titania (τιτήνη), ‘the queen;’ Benedick and Beatrice, ‘blessed and
blessing;’ Valentine and Proteus, ‘enduring or strong’ (_valens_), and
‘changeful.’ Iago and Iachimo have evidently the same root—probably the
Spanish Iago, Jacob, ‘the supplanter.’”
Now, really, what a piece of extravagance all that is! I will not say
that the meaning of Shakspeare’s names (I put aside the question as to
the correctness of Mr. Ruskin’s etymologies) has no effect at all, may
be entirely lost sight of; but to give it that degree of prominence is
to throw the reins to one’s whim, to forget all moderation and
proportion, to lose the balance of one’s mind altogether. It is to show
in one’s criticism, to the highest excess, the note of provinciality.
Again there is Mr. Palgrave, certainly endowed with a very fine critical
tact: his _Golden Treasury_ abundantly proves it. The plan of
arrangement which he devised for that work, the mode in which he
followed his plan out, nay, one might even say, merely the
juxtaposition, in pursuance of it, of two such pieces as those of
Wordsworth and Shelley which form the 285th and 286th in his collection,
show a delicacy of feeling in these matters which is quite indisputable
and very rare. And his notes are full of remarks which show it too. All
the more striking, conjoined with so much justness of perception, are
certain freaks and violences in Mr. Palgrave’s criticism, mainly
imputable, I think, to the critic’s isolated position in this country,
to his feeling himself too much left to take his own way, too much
without any central authority representing high culture and sound
judgment, by which he may be, on the one hand, confirmed as against the
ignorant, on the other, held in respect when he himself is inclined to
the liberties. I mean such things as this note on Milton’s line,—
“The great Emathian conqueror bade spare”....
“When Thebes was destroyed, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar to be
spared. _He was as incapable of appreciating the poet as Louis XIV. of
appreciating Racine; but even the narrow and barbarian mind of Alexander
could understand the advantage of a showy act of homage to poetry._” A
note like that I call a freak or a violence; if this disparaging view of
Alexander and Louis XIV., so unlike the current view, is wrong,—if the
current view is, after all, the truer one of them,—the note is a freak.
But, even if its disparaging view is right, the note is a violence; for,
abandoning the true mode of intellectual action—persuasion, the
instilment of conviction,—it simply astounds and irritates the hearer by
contradicting without a word of proof or preparation, his fixed and
familiar notions; and this is mere violence. In either case, the
fitness, the measure, the centrality, which is the soul of all good
criticism, is lost, and the note of provinciality shows itself.
Thus, in the famous _Handbook_, marks of a fine power of perception are
everywhere discernible, but so, too, are marks of the want of sure
balance, of the check and support afforded by knowing one speaks before
good and severe judges. When Mr. Palgrave dislikes a thing, he feels no
pressure constraining him either to try his dislike closely or to
express it moderately; he does not mince matters, he gives his dislike
all its own way; both his judgments and his style would gain if he were
under more restraint. “The style which has filled London with the dead
monotony of Gower or Harley Streets, or the pale commonplace of
Belgravia, Tyburnia, and Kensington; which has pierced Paris and Madrid
with the feeble frivolities of the Rue Rivoli and the Strada de Toledo.”
He dislikes the architecture of the Rue Rivoli, and he puts it on a
level with the architecture of Belgravia and Gower Street; he lumps them
all together in one condemnation, he loses sight of the shade, the
distinction, which is everything here; the distinction, namely, that the
architecture of the Rue Rivoli expresses show, splendor,
pleasure,—unworthy things, perhaps, to express alone and for their own
sakes, but it expresses them; whereas the architecture of Gower Street
and Belgravia merely expresses the impotence of the architect to express
anything. Then, as to style: “sculpture which stands in a contrast with
Woolner hardly more shameful than diverting.” ... “passing from Davy or
Faraday to the art of the mountebank or the science of the
spirit-rapper.” ... “it is the old, old story with Marochetti, the frog
trying to blow himself out to bull dimensions. He may puff and he
puffed, but he will never do it.” We all remember that shower of
amenities on poor M. Marochetti. Now, here Mr. Palgrave himself enables
us to form a contrast which lets us see just what the presence of an
academy does for style; for he quotes a criticism by M. Gustave Planche
on this very M. Marochetti. M. Gustave Planche was a critic of the very
first order, a man of strong opinions, which he expressed with severity;
he, too, condemns M. Marochetti’s work, and Mr. Palgrave calls him as a
witness to back what he has himself said; certainly Mr. Palgrave’s
translation will not exaggerate M. Planche’s urbanity in dealing with M.
Marochetti, but, even in this translation, see the difference in
sobriety, in measure, between the critic writing in Paris and the critic
writing in London:—
“These conditions are so elementary, that I am at a perfect loss to
comprehend how M. Marochetti has neglected them. There are soldiers here
like the leaden playthings of the nursery: it is almost impossible to
guess whether there is a body beneath the dress. We have here no
question of style, not even of grammar; it is nothing beyond mere matter
of the alphabet of art. To break these conditions is the same as to be
ignorant of spelling.”
That is really more formidable criticism than Mr. Palgrave’s, and yet in
how perfectly temperate a style! M. Planche’s advantage is, that he
feels himself to be speaking before competent judges, that there is a
force of cultivated opinion for him to appeal to. Therefore, he must not
be extravagant, and he need not storm; he must satisfy the reason and
taste,—that is his business. Mr. Palgrave, on the other hand, feels
himself to be speaking before a promiscuous multitude, with the few good
judges so scattered through it as to be powerless; therefore, he has no
calm confidence and no self-control; he relies on the strength of his
lungs; he knows that big words impose on the mob, and that, even if he
is outrageous, most of his audience are apt to be a great deal more
so.[9]
Again, the first two volumes of Mr. Kinglake’s _Invasion of the Crimea_
were certainly among the most successful and renowned English books of
our time. Their style was one of the most renowned things about them,
and yet how conspicuous a fault in Mr. Kinglake’s style is this
over-charge of which I have been speaking! Mr. James Gordon Bennett, of
the _New York Herald_, says, I believe, that the highest achievement of
the human intellect is what he calls “a good editorial.” This is not
quite so; but, if it were so, on what a height would these two volumes
by Mr. Kinglake stand! I have already spoken of the Attic and the
Asiatic styles; besides these, there is the Corinthian style. That is
the style for “a good editorial,” and Mr. Kinglake has really reached
perfection in it. It has not the warm glow, blithe movement, and soft
pliancy of life, as the Attic style has; it has not the over-heavy
richness and encumbered gait of the Asiatic style; it has glitter
without warmth, rapidity without ease, effectiveness without charm. Its
characteristic is, that it has no _soul_; all it exists for, is to get
its ends, to make its points, to damage its adversaries, to be admired,
to triumph. A style so bent on effect at the expense of soul,
simplicity, and delicacy; a style so little studious of the charm of the
great models; so far from classic truth and grace, must surely be said
to have the note of provinciality. Yet Mr. Kinglake’s talent is a really
eminent one, and so in harmony with our intellectual habits and
tendencies, that to the great bulk of English people, the faults of his
style seem its merits; all the more needful that criticism should not be
dazzled by them.
-----
Footnote 9:
When I wrote this I had before me the first edition of Mr. Palgrave’s
_Handbook_. I am bound to say that in the second edition much strong
language has been expunged, and what remains, softened.
-----
We must not compare a man of Mr. Kinglake’s literary talent with French
writers like M. de Bazancourt. We must compare him with M. Thiers. And
what a superiority in style has M. Thiers from being formed in a good
school, with severe traditions, wholesome restraining influences! Even
in this age of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, his style has nothing
Corinthian about it, its lightness and brightness make it almost Attic.
It is not quite Attic, however; it has not the infallible sureness of
Attic taste. Sometimes his head gets a little hot with the fumes of
patriotism, and then he crosses the line, he loses perfect measure, he
declaims, he raises a momentary smile. France condemned ‘à être l’effroi
du monde _dont elle pourrait être l’amour_,’—Cæsar, whose exquisite
simplicity M. Thiers so much admires, would not have written like that.
There is, if I may be allowed to say so, the slightest possible touch of
fatuity in such language,—of that failure in good sense which comes from
too warm a self-satisfaction. But compare this language with Mr.
Kinglake’s Marshal St. Arnaud—“dismissed from the presence” of Lord
Raglan or Lord Stratford, “cowed and pressed down” under their “stern
reproofs,” or under “the majesty of the great Elchi’s Canning brow and
tight, merciless lips!” The failure in good sense and good taste there
reaches far beyond what the French mean by _fatuity_; they would call it
by another word, a word expressing blank defect of intelligence, a word
for which we have no exact equivalent in English,—_bête_. It is the
difference between a venial, momentary, good-tempered excess, in a man
of the world, of an amiable and social weakness,—vanity; and a serious,
settled, fierce, narrow, provincial misconception of the whole relative
value of one’s own things and the things of others. So baneful to the
style of even the cleverest man may be the total want of checks.
In all I have said, I do not pretend that the examples given prove my
rule as to the influence of academies; they only illustrate it. Examples
in plenty might very likely be found to set against them; the truth of
the rule depends, no doubt, on whether the balance of all the examples
is in its favor or not; but actually to strike this balance is always
out of the question. Here, as everywhere else, the rule, the idea, if
true, commends itself to the judicious, and then the examples make it
clearer still to them. This is the real use of examples, and this alone
is the purpose which I have meant mine to serve. There is also another
side to the whole question,—as to the limiting and prejudicial operation
which academies may have; but this side of the question it rather
behoves the French, not us, to study.
The reader will ask for some practical conclusion about the
establishment of an Academy in this country, and perhaps I shall hardly
give him the one he expects. But nations have their own modes of acting,
and these modes are not easily changed; they are even consecrated, when
great things have been done in them. When a literature has produced
Shakspeare and Milton, when it has even produced Barrow and Burke, it
cannot well abandon its traditions; it can hardly begin, at this late
time of day, with an institution like the French Academy. I think
academies with a limited, special, scientific scope, in the various
lines of intellectual work,—academies like that of Berlin, for
instance,—we with time may, and probably shall, establish. And no doubt
they will do good; no doubt the presence of such influential centers of
correct information will tend to raise the standard amongst us for what
I have called the _journeyman-work_ of literature, and to free us from
the scandal of such biographical dictionaries as Chalmers’s, or such
translations as a recent one of Spinoza, or perhaps, such philological
freaks as Mr. Forster’s about the one primeval language. But an academy
quite like the French Academy, a sovereign organ of the highest literary
opinion, a recognized authority in matters of intellectual tone and
taste, we shall hardly have, and perhaps we ought not to wish to have
it. But then every one amongst us with any turn for literature will do
well to remember to what shortcomings and excesses, which such an
academy tends to correct, we are liable; and the more liable, of course,
for not having it. He will do well constantly to try himself in respect
of these, steadily to widen his culture, severely to check in himself
the provincial spirit; and he will do this the better the more he keeps
in mind that all mere glorification by ourselves of ourselves or our
literature, in the strain of what, at the beginning of these remarks I
quoted from Lord Macaulay, is both vulgar, and, besides being vulgar
retarding.
III.
MAURICE DE GUÉRIN.
I will not presume to say that I now know the French language well; but
at a time when I knew it even less well than at present,—some fifteen
years ago,—I remember pestering those about me with this sentence, the
rhythm of which had lodged itself in my head, and which, with the
strangest pronunciation possible, I kept perpetually declaiming: “_Les
dieux jaloux ont enfoui quelque part les témoignages de la descendance
des choses; mais au bord de quel Océan ont-ils roulé la pierre qui les
couvre, ô Macarée!_”
These words came from a short composition called the _Centaur_, of which
the author, Georges-Maurice de Guérin, died in the year 1839, at the age
of twenty-eight, without having published anything. In 1840, Madame Sand
brought out the _Centaur_ in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, with a short
notice of its author, and a few extracts from his letters. A year or two
afterwards she reprinted these at the end of a volume of her novels; and
there it was that I fell in with them. I was so much struck with the
_Centaur_ that I waited anxiously to hear something more of its author,
and of what he had left; but it was not till the other day—twenty years
after the first publication of the _Centaur_ in the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_, that my anxiety was satisfied. At the end of 1860 appeared two
volumes with the title _Maurice de Guérin_, _Reliquiæ_, containing the
_Centaur_, several poems of Guérin, his journals, and a number of his
letters, collected and edited by a devoted friend, M. Trebutien, and
preceded by a notice of Guérin by the first of living critics, M.
Sainte-Beuve.
The grand power of poetry is its interpretative power; by which I mean,
not a power of drawing out in black and white an explanation of the
mystery of the universe, but the power of so dealing with things as to
awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of
our relations with them. When this sense is awakened in us, as to
objects without us, we feel ourselves to be in contact with the
essential nature of those objects, to be no longer bewildered and
oppressed by them, but to have their secret, and to be in harmony with
them; and this feeling calms and satisfies us as no other can. Poetry,
indeed, interprets in another way besides this; but one of its two ways
of interpreting, of exercising its highest power, is by awakening this
sense in us. I will not now inquire whether this sense is illusive,
whether it can be proved not to be illusive, whether it does absolutely
make us possess the real nature of things; all I say is, that poetry can
awaken it in us, and that to awaken it is one of the highest powers of
poetry. The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate
sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal
to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnæus or
Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or
plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in
their life; it is Shakspeare, with his
“daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty;”
it is Wordsworth, with his
“voice ... heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides;”
it is Keats, with his
“moving waters at their priestlike task
Of cold ablution round Earth’s human shores;”
it is Chateaubriand, with his, “_cîme indéterminée des forêts_;” it is
Senancour, with his mountain birch-tree: “_Cette écorce blanche, lisse
et crevassée; cette tige agreste; ces branches qui s’inclinent vers la
terre; la mobilité des feuilles, et tout cet abandon, simplicité de la
nature, attitude des déserts._”
Eminent manifestations of this magical power of poetry are very rare and
very precious; the compositions of Guérin manifest it, I think, in
singular eminence. Not his poems, strictly so called,—his verse,—so much
as his prose; his poems in general take for their vehicle that favorite
meter of French poetry, the Alexandrine; and, in my judgment, I confess
they have thus, as compared with his prose, a great disadvantage to
start with. In prose, the character of the vehicle for the composer’s
thoughts is not determined beforehand; every composer has to make his
own vehicle; and who has ever done this more admirably than the great
prose-writers of France,—Pascal, Bossuet, Fénelon, Voltaire? But in
verse the composer has (with comparatively narrow liberty of
modification) to accept his vehicle ready-made; it is therefore of vital
importance to him that he should find at his disposal a vehicle adequate
to convey the highest matters of poetry. We may even get a decisive test
of the poetical power of a language and nation by ascertaining how far
the principal poetical vehicle which they have employed, how far (in
plainer words) the established national meter for high poetry, is
adequate or inadequate. It seems to me that the established meter of
this kind in France,—the Alexandrine,—is inadequate; that as a vehicle
for high poetry it is greatly inferior to the hexameter or to the
iambics of Greece (for example), or to the blank verse of England.
Therefore the man of genius who uses it is at a disadvantage as compared
with the man of genius who has for conveying his thoughts a more
adequate vehicle, metrical or not. Racine is at a disadvantage as
compared with Sophocles or Shakspeare, and he is likewise at a
disadvantage as compared with Bossuet.
The same may be said of our own poets of the eighteenth century, a
century which gave them as the main vehicle for their high poetry
a meter inadequate (as much as the French Alexandrine, and nearly
in the same way) for this poetry,—the ten-syllable couplet. It is
worth remarking, that the English poet of the eighteenth century
whose compositions wear best and give one the most entire
satisfaction,—Gray,—hardly uses that couplet at all: this
abstinence, however, limits Gray’s productions to a few short
compositions, and (exquisite as these are) he is a poetical nature
repressed and without free issue. For English poetical production
on a great scale, for an English poet deploying all the forces of
his genius, the ten-syllable couplet was, in the eighteenth
century, the established, one may almost say the inevitable,
channel. Now this couplet, admirable (as Chaucer uses it) for
story-telling not of the epic pitch, and often admirable for a few
lines even in poetry of a very high pitch, is for continuous use
in poetry of this latter kind inadequate. Pope, in his _Essay on
Man_, is thus at a disadvantage compared with Lucretius in his
poem on Nature: Lucretius has an adequate vehicle, Pope has not.
Nay, though Pope’s genius for didactic poetry was not less than
that of Horace, while his satirical power was certainly greater,
still one’s taste receives, I cannot but think, a certain
satisfaction when one reads the Epistles and Satires of Horace,
which it fails to receive when one reads the Satires and Epistles
of Pope. Of such avail is the superior adequacy of the vehicle
used to compensate even an inferiority of genius in the user! In
the same way Pope is at a disadvantage as compared with Addison.
The best of Addison’s composition (the “Coverley Papers” in the
_Spectator_, for instance) wears better than the best of Pope’s,
because Addison has in his prose an intrinsically better vehicle
for his genius than Pope in his couplet. But Bacon has no such
advantage over Shakspeare; nor has Milton, writing prose (for no
contemporary English prose-writer must be matched with Milton
except Milton himself), any such advantage over Milton writing
verse: indeed, the advantage here is all the other way.
It is in the prose remains of Guérin,—his journals, his letters, and the
striking composition which I have already mentioned, the _Centaur_,—that
his extraordinary gift manifests itself. He has a truly interpretative
faculty; the most profound and delicate sense of the life of Nature, and
the most exquisite felicity in finding expressions to render that sense.
To all who love poetry, Guérin deserves to be something more than a
name; and I shall try, in spite of the impossibility of doing justice to
such a master of expression by translations, to make English readers see
for themselves how gifted an organization his was, and how few artists
have received from Nature a more magical faculty of interpreting her.
In the winter of the year 1832 there was collected in Brittany, around
the well-known Abbé Lamennais, a singular gathering. At a lonely place,
La Chênaie, he had founded a religious retreat, to which disciples,
attracted by his powers or by his reputation, repaired. Some came with
the intention of preparing themselves for the ecclesiastical profession;
others merely to profit by the society and discourse of so distinguished
a master. Among the inmates were men whose names have since become known
to all Europe,—Lacordaire and M. de Montalembert; there were others, who
have acquired a reputation, not European, indeed, but considerable,—the
Abbé Gerbet, the Abbé Rohrbacher; others, who have never quitted the
shade of private life. The winter of 1832 was a period of crisis in the
religious world of France: Lamennais’s rupture with Rome, the
condemnation of his opinions by the Pope, and his revolt against that
condemnation, were imminent. Some of his followers, like Lacordaire, had
already resolved not to cross the Rubicon with their leader, not to go
into rebellion against Rome; they were preparing to separate from him.
The society of La Chênaie was soon to dissolve; but, such as it is shown
to us for a moment, with its voluntary character, its simple and severe
life in common, its mixture of lay and clerical members, the genius of
its chiefs, the sincerity of its disciples,—above all, its paramount
fervent interest in matters of spiritual and religious concernment,—it
offers a most instructive spectacle. It is not the spectacle we most of
us think to find in France, the France we have imagined from common
English notions, from the streets of Paris, from novels; it shows us
how, wherever there is greatness like that of France, there are, as its
foundation, treasures of fervor, pure-mindedness, and spirituality
somewhere, whether we know of them or not;—a store of that which Goethe
calls _Halt_;—since greatness can never be founded upon frivolity and
corruption.
On the evening of the 18th of December in this year 1832, M. de
Lamennais was talking to those assembled in the sitting-room of La
Chênaie of his recent journey to Italy. He talked with all his usual
animation; “but,” writes one of his hearers, a Breton gentleman, M. de
Marzan, “I soon became inattentive and absent, being struck with the
reserved attitude of a young stranger some twenty-two years old, pale in
face, his black hair already thin over his temples, with a southern eye,
in which brightness and melancholy were mingled. He kept himself
somewhat aloof, seeming to avoid notice rather than to court it. All the
old faces of friends which I found about me at this my re-entry into the
circle of La Chênaie failed to occupy me so much as the sight of this
stranger, looking on, listening, observing, and saying nothing.”
The unknown was Maurice de Guérin. Of a noble but poor family, having
lost his mother at six years old, he had been brought up by his father,
a man saddened by his wife’s death, and austerely religious, at the
château of Le Cayla, in Languedoc. His childhood was not gay; he had not
the society of other boys; and solitude, the sight of his father’s
gloom, and the habit of accompanying the curé of the parish on his
rounds among the sick and dying, made him prematurely grave and familiar
with sorrow. He went to school first at Toulouse, then at the Collège
Stanislas at Paris, with a temperament almost as unfit as Shelley’s for
common school life. His youth was ardent, sensitive, agitated, and
unhappy. In 1832 he procured admission to La Chênaie to brace his spirit
by the teaching of Lamennais, and to decide whether his religious
feelings would determine themselves into a distinct religious vocation.
Strong and deep religious feelings he had, implanted in him by nature,
developed in him by the circumstances of his childhood; but he had also
(and here is the key to his character) that temperament which opposes
itself to the fixedness of a religious vocation, or of any vocation of
which fixedness is an essential attribute; a temperament mobile,
inconstant, eager, thirsting for new impressions, abhorring rules,
aspiring to a “renovation without end;” a temperament common enough
among artists, but with which few artists, who have it to the same
degree as Guérin, unite a seriousness and a sad intensity like his.
After leaving school, and before going to La Chênaie, he had been at
home at Le Cayla with his sister Eugénie (a wonderfully gifted person,
whose genius so competent a judge as M. Sainte-Beuve is inclined to
pronounce even superior to her brother’s) and his sister Eugénie’s
friends. With one of these friends he had fallen in love,—a slight and
transient fancy, but which had already called his poetical powers into
exercise; and his poems and fragments, in a certain green note-book (_le
Cahier Vert_) which he long continued to make the depository of his
thoughts, and which became famous among his friends, he brought with him
to La Chênaie. There he found among the younger members of the Society
several who, like himself, had a secret passion for poetry and
literature; with these he became intimate, and in his letters and
journal we find him occupied, now with a literary commerce established
with these friends, now with the fortunes, fast coming to a crisis, of
the Society, and now with that for the sake of which he came to La
Chênaie,—his religious progress and the state of his soul.
On Christmas-day, 1832, having been then three weeks at La Chênaie, he
writes thus of it to a friend of his family, M. de Bayne:—
“La Chênaie is a sort of oasis in the midst of the steppes of Brittany.
In front of the château stretches a very large garden cut in two by a
terrace with a lime avenue, at the end of which is a tiny chapel. I am
extremely fond of this little oratory, where one breathes a twofold
peace,—the peace of solitude and the peace of the Lord. When spring
comes we shall walk to prayers between two borders of flowers. On the
east side, and only a few yards from the château, sleeps a small mere
between two woods, where the birds in warm weather sing all day long;
and then,—right, left, on all sides,—woods, woods, everywhere woods. It
looks desolate just now that all is bare and the woods are rust-color,
and under this Brittany sky, which is always clouded and so low that it
seems as if it were going to fall on your head; but as soon as spring
comes the sky raises itself up, the woods come to life again, and
everything will be full of charm.”
Of what La Chênaie will be when spring comes he has a foretaste on the
3d of March.
“To-day” (he writes in his journal) “has enchanted me. For the first
time for a long while the sun has shown himself in all his beauty. He
has made the buds of the leaves and flowers swell, and he has waked up
in me a thousand happy thoughts. The clouds assume more and more their
light and graceful shapes, and are sketching, over the blue sky, the
most charming fancies. The woods have not yet got their leaves, but they
are taking an indescribable air of life and gaiety, which gives them
quite a new physiognomy. Everything is getting ready for the great
festival of Nature.”
Storm and snow adjourn this festival a little longer. On the 11th of
March he writes:—
“It has snowed all night. I have been to look at our primroses; each of
them has its small load of snow, and was bowing its head under its
burden. These pretty flowers, with their rich yellow color, had a
charming effect under their white hoods. I saw whole tufts of them
roofed over by a single block of snow; all these laughing flowers thus
shrouded and leaning one upon another, made one think of a group of
young girls surprised by a shower, and sheltering under a white apron.”
The burst of spring comes at last, though late. On the 5th of April we
find Guérin “sitting in the sun to penetrate himself to the very marrow
with the divine spring.” On the 3d of May, “one can actually _see_ the
progress of the green; it has made a start from the garden to the
shrubberies, it is getting the upper hand all along the mere; it leaps,
one may say, from tree to tree, from thicket to thicket, in the fields
and on the hillsides; and I can see it already arrived at the forest
edge and beginning to spread itself over the broad back of the forest.
Soon it will have overrun everything as far as the eye can reach, and
all those wide spaces between here and the horizon will be moving and
sounding like one vast sea, a sea of emerald.”
Finally, on the 16th of May, he writes to M. de Bayne that “the gloomy
and bad days,—bad because they bring temptation by their gloom,—are,
thanks to God and the spring, over; and I see approaching a long file of
shining and happy days, to do me all the good in the world. This
Brittany of ours,” he continues, “gives one the idea of the grayest and
most wrinkled old woman possible suddenly changed back by the touch of a
fairy’s wand into a girl of twenty, and one of the loveliest in the
world; the fine weather has so decked and beautified the dear old
country.” He felt, however, the cloudiness and cold of the “dear old
country” with all the sensitiveness of a child of the South. “What a
difference,” he cries, “between the sky of Brittany, even on the finest
day, and the sky of our South! Here the summer has, even on its highdays
and holidays, something mournful, overcast, and stinted about it. It is
like a miser who is making a show; there is a niggardliness in his
magnificence. Give me our Languedoc sky, so bountiful of light, so blue,
so largely vaulted!” And somewhat later, complaining of the short and
dim sunlight of a February day in Paris, “What a sunshine,” he exclaims,
“to gladden eyes accustomed to all the wealth of light of the
South!—_aux larges et libérales effusions de lumière du ciel du Midi_.”
In the long winter of La Chênaie his great resource was literature. One
has often heard that an educated Frenchman’s reading seldom goes much
beyond French and Latin, and that he makes the authors in these two
languages his sole literary standard. This may or may not be true of
Frenchmen in general, but there can be no question as to the width of
the reading of Guérin and his friends, and as to the range of their
literary sympathies. One of the circle, Hippolyte la Morvonnais,—a poet
who published a volume of verse, and died in the prime of life,—had a
passionate admiration for Wordsworth, and had even, it is said, made a
pilgrimage to Rydal Mount to visit him; and in Guérin’s own reading I
find, besides the French names of Bernardin de St. Pierre,
Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, the names of Homer, Dante,
Shakspeare, Milton, and Goethe; and he quotes both from Greek and from
English authors in the original. His literary tact is beautifully fine
and true. “Every poet,” he writes to his sister, “has his own art of
poetry written on the ground of his own soul; there is no other. Be
constantly observing Nature in her smallest details, and then write as
the current of your thoughts guides you;—that is all.” But with all this
freedom from the bondage of forms and rules, Guérin marks with perfect
precision the faults of the _free_ French literature of his time,—the
_littérature facile_,—and judges the romantic school and its prospects
like a master: “that youthful literature which has put forth all its
blossom prematurely, and has left itself a helpless prey to the
returning frost, stimulated as it has been by the burning sun of our
century, by this atmosphere charged with a perilous heat, which has
overhastened every sort of development, and will most likely reduce to a
handful of grains the harvest of our age.” And the popular
authors,—those “whose name appears once and disappears forever, whose
books, unwelcome to all serious people, welcome to the rest of the
world, to novelty-hunters and novel-readers, fill with vanity these vain
souls, and then, falling from hands heavy with the languor of satiety,
drop forever into the gulf of oblivion;” and those, more noteworthy,
“the writers of books celebrated, and, as works of art, deserving
celebrity, but which have in them not one grain of that hidden manna,
not one of those sweet and wholesome thoughts which nourish the human
soul and refresh it when it is weary,”—these he treats with such
severity that he may in some sense be described, as he describes
himself, as “invoking with his whole heart a classical restoration.” He
is best described, however, not as a partisan of any school, but as an
ardent seeker for that mode of expression which is the most natural,
happy, and true. He writes to his sister Eugénie:—
“I want you to reform your system of composition; it is too loose, too
vague, too Lamartinian. Your verse is too sing-song; it does not _talk_
enough. Form for yourself a style of your own, which shall be your real
expression. Study the French language by attentive reading, making it
your care to remark constructions, turns of expression, delicacies of
style, but without ever adopting the manner of any master. In the works
of these masters we must learn our language, but we must use it each in
our own fashion.”[10]
-----
Footnote 10:
Part of these extracts date from a time a little after Guérin’s
residence at La Chênaie; but already, amidst the readings and
conversations of La Chênaie, his literary judgment was perfectly
formed.
-----
It was not, however, to perfect his literary judgment that Guérin came
to La Chênaie. The religious feeling, which was as much a part of his
essence as the passion for Nature and the literary instinct, shows
itself at moments jealous of these its rivals, and alarmed at their
predominance. Like all powerful feelings, it wants to exclude every
other feeling and to be absolute. One Friday in April, after he has been
delighting himself with the shapes of the clouds and the progress of the
spring, he suddenly bethinks himself that the day is Good Friday, and
exclaims in his diary:—
“My God, what is my soul about that it can thus go running after such
fugitive delights on Good Friday, on this day all filled with thy death
and our redemption? There is in me I know not what damnable spirit, that
awakens in me strong discontents, and is forever prompting me to rebel
against the holy exercises and the devout collectedness of soul which
are the meet preparation for these great solemnities of our faith. Oh
how well can I trace here the old leaven, from which I have not yet
perfectly cleared my soul!”
And again, in a letter to M. de Marzan: “Of what, my God, are we made,”
he cries, “that a little verdure and a few trees should be enough to rob
us of our tranquillity and to distract us from thy love?” And writing,
three days after Easter Sunday, in his journal he records the reception
at La Chênaie of a fervent neophyte, in words which seem to convey a
covert blame of his own want of fervency:—
“Three days have passed over our heads since the great festival. One
anniversary the less for us yet to spend of the death and resurrection
of our Saviour! Every year thus bears away with it its solemn festivals;
when will the everlasting festival be here? I have been witness of a
most touching sight; François has brought us one of his friends whom he
has gained to the faith. This neophyte joined us in our exercises during
the Holy week, and on Easter day he received the communion with us.
François was in raptures. It is a truly good work which he has thus
done. François is quite young, hardly twenty years old; M. de la M. is
thirty, and is married. There is something most touching and beautifully
simple in M. de la M. letting himself thus be brought to God by quite a
young man; and to see friendship, on François’s side, thus doing the
work of an Apostle, is not less beautiful and touching.”
Admiration for Lamennais worked in the same direction with this feeling.
Lamennais never appreciated Guérin; his combative, rigid, despotic
nature, of which the characteristic was energy, had no affinity with
Guérin’s elusive, undulating, impalpable nature, of which the
characteristic was delicacy. He set little store by his new disciple,
and could hardly bring himself to understand what others found so
remarkable in him, his own genuine feeling towards him being one of
indulgent compassion. But the intuition of Guérin, more discerning than
the logic of his master, instinctively felt what there was commanding
and tragic in Lamennais’s character, different as this was from his own;
and some of his notes are among the most interesting records of
Lamennais which remain.
“‘Do you know what it is,’ M. Féli[11] said to us on the evening of the
day before yesterday, ‘which makes man the most suffering of all
creatures? It is that he has one foot in the finite and the other in the
infinite, and that he is torn asunder, not by four horses, as in the
horrible old times, but between two worlds.’ Again he said to us as we
heard the clock strike: ‘If that clock knew that it was to be destroyed
the next instant, it would still keep striking its hour until that
instant arrived. My children, be as the clock; whatever may be going to
happen to you, strike always your hour.’”
-----
Footnote 11:
The familiar name given to M. de Lamennais by his followers at La
Chênaie.
-----
Another time Guérin writes:
“To-day M. Féli startled us. He was sitting behind the chapel, under the
two Scotch firs; he took his stick and marked out a grave on the turf,
and said to Elie, ‘It is there I wish to be buried, but no tombstone!
only a simple hillock of grass. Oh, how well I shall be there!’ Elie
thought he had a presentiment that his end was near. This is not the
first time he has been visited by such a presentiment; when he was
setting out for Rome, he said to those here: ‘I do not expect ever to
come back to you; you must do the good which I have failed to do.’ He is
impatient for death.”
Overpowered by the ascendency of Lamennais, Guérin, in spite of his
hesitations, in spite of his confession to himself that, “after a three
weeks’ close scrutiny of his soul, in the hope of finding the pearl of a
religious vocation hidden in some corner of it,” he had failed to find
what he sought, took, at the end of August 1833, a decisive step. He
joined the religious order which Lamennais had founded. But at this very
moment the deepening displeasure of Rome with Lamennais determined the
Bishop of Rennes to break up, in so far as it was a religious
congregation, the Society of La Chênaie, to transfer the novices to
Ploërmel, and to place them under other superintendence. In September,
Lamennais, “who had not yet ceased,” writes M. de Marzan, a faithful
Catholic, “to be a Christian and a priest, took leave of his beloved
colony of La Chênaie, with the anguish of a general who disbands his
army down to the last recruit, and withdraws annihilated from the field
of battle.” Guérin went to Ploërmel. But here, in the seclusion of a
real religious house, he instantly perceived how alien to a spirit like
his,—a spirit which, as he himself says somewhere, “had need of the open
air, wanted to see the sun and the flowers,”—was the constraint and the
monotony of a monastic life, when Lamennais’s genius was no longer
present to enliven this life for him. On the 7th of October he renounced
the novitiate, believing himself a partisan of Lamennais in his quarrel
with Rome, reproaching the life he had left with demanding passive
obedience instead of trying “to put in practice the admirable alliance
of order with liberty, and of variety with unity,” and declaring that,
for his part, he preferred taking the chances of a life of adventure to
submitting himself to be “_garotté par un réglement_,—tied hand and foot
by a set of rules.” In real truth, a life of adventure, or rather a life
free to wander at its own will, was that to which his nature
irresistibly impelled him.
For a career of adventure, the inevitable field was Paris. But before
this career began, there came a stage, the smoothest, perhaps, and the
most happy in the short life of Guérin. M. la Morvonnais, one of his La
Chênaie friends,—some years older than Guérin, and married to a wife of
singular sweetness and charm,—had a house by the seaside at the mouth of
one of the beautiful rivers of Brittany, the Arguenon. He asked Guérin,
when he left Ploërmel, to come and stay with him at this place, called
Le Val de l’Arguenon, and Guérin spent the winter of 1833-4 there. I
grudge every word about Le Val and its inmates which is not Guérin’s
own, so charming is the picture drawn of them, so truly does his talent
find itself in its best vein as he draws it.
“How full of goodness” (he writes in his journal of the 7th of December)
“is Providence to me! For fear the sudden passage from the mild and
temperate air of a religious life to the torrid clime of the world
should be too trying to my soul, it has conducted me, after I have left
my sacred shelter, to a house planted on the frontier between the two
regions, where, without being in solitude, one is not yet in the world;
a house whose windows look on the one side towards the plain where the
tumult of men is rocking, on the other towards the wilderness where the
servants of God are chanting. I intend to write down the record of my
sojourn here, for the days here spent are full of happiness, and I know
that in the time to come I shall often turn back to the story of these
past felicities. A man, pious, and a poet; a woman, whose spirit is in
such perfect sympathy with his that you would say they had but one being
between them; a child, called Marie like her mother, and who sends, like
a star, the first rays of her love and thought through the white cloud
of infancy; a simple life in an old-fashioned house; the ocean, which
comes morning and evening to bring us its harmonies; and lastly, a
wanderer who descends from Carmel and is going to Babylon, and who has
laid down at this threshold his staff and his sandals, to take his seat
at the hospitable table;—here is matter to make a biblical poem of, if I
could only describe things as I can feel them!”
Every line written by Guérin during this stay at Le Val is worth
quoting, but I have only room for one extract more:
“Never” (he writes, a fortnight later, on the 20th of December), “never
have I tasted so inwardly and deeply the happiness of home-life. All the
little details of this life, which in their succession makes up the day,
are to me so many stages of a continuous charm carried from one end of
the day to the other. The morning greeting, which in some sort renews
the pleasure of the first arrival, for the words with which one meets
are almost the same, and the separation at night, through the hours of
darkness and uncertainty, does not ill represent longer separations;
then breakfast, during which you have the fresh enjoyment of having met
together again; the stroll afterwards, when we go out and bid Nature
good morning; the return and setting to work in an old paneled chamber
looking out on the sea, inaccessible to all the stir of the house, a
perfect sanctuary of labor; dinner, to which we are called, not by a
bell, which reminds one too much of school or a great house, but by a
pleasant voice; the gaiety, the merriment, the talk flitting from one
subject to another and never dropping so long as the meal lasts; the
crackling fire of dry branches to which we draw our chairs directly
afterwards, the kind words that are spoken round the warm flame which
sings while we talk; and then, if it is fine, the walk by the seaside,
when the sea has for its visitors a mother with her child in her arms,
this child’s father and a stranger, each of these two last with a stick
in his hand; the rosy lips of the little girl, which keep talking at the
same time with the waves,—now and then tears shed by her and cries of
childish fright at the edge of the sea; our thoughts, the father’s and
mine, as we stand and look at the mother and child smiling at one
another, or at the child in tears and the mother trying to comfort it by
her caresses and exhortations; the Ocean, going on all the while rolling
up his waves and noises; the dead boughs which we go and cut, here and
there, out of the copse-wood, to make a quick and bright fire when we
get home,—this little taste of the woodman’s calling which brings us
closer to Nature and makes us think of M. Féli’s eager fondness for the
same work; the hours of study and poetical flow which carry us to
supper-time; this meal, which summons us by the same gentle voice as its
predecessor, and which is passed amid the same joys, only less loud,
because evening sobers everything, tones everything down; then our
evening, ushered in by the blaze of a cheerful fire, and which with its
alternations of reading and talking brings us at last to bed-time:—to
all the charms of a day so spent add the dreams which follow it, and
your imagination will still fall far short of these home-joys in their
delightful reality.”
I said the foregoing should be my last extract, but who could resist
this picture of a January evening on the coast of Brittany?—
“All the sky is covered over with gray clouds just silvered at the
edges. The sun, who departed a few minutes ago, has left behind him
enough light to temper for awhile the black shadows, and to soften down,
as it were, the approach of night. The winds are hushed, and the
tranquil ocean sends up to me, when I go out on the doorstep to listen,
only a melodious murmur, which dies away in the soul like a beautiful
wave on the beach. The birds, the first to obey the nocturnal influence,
make their way towards the woods, and you hear the rustle of their wings
in the clouds. The copses which cover the whole hillside of Le Val,
which all the day-time are alive with the chirp of the wren, the
laughing whistle of the woodpecker,[12] and the different notes of a
multitude of birds, have no longer any sound in their paths and
thickets, unless it be the prolonged high call of the blackbirds at play
with one another and chasing one another, after all the other birds have
their heads safe under their wings. The noise of man, always the last to
be silent, dies gradually out over the face of the fields. The general
murmur fades away, and one hears hardly a sound except what comes from
the villages and hamlets, in which, up till far into the night, there
are cries of children and barking of dogs. Silence wraps me round;
everything seeks repose except this pen of mine, which perhaps disturbs
the rest of some living atom asleep in a crease of my note-book, for it
makes its light scratching as it puts down these idle thoughts. Let it
stop, then! for all I write, have written, or shall write, will never be
worth setting against the sleep of an atom.”
-----
Footnote 12:
“The woodpecker _laughs_,” says White of Selborne; and here is Guérin,
in Brittany, confirming his testimony.
-----
On the 1st of February we find him in a lodging at Paris. “I enter the
world” (such are the last words written in his journal at Le Val) “with
a secret horror.” His outward history for the next five years is soon
told. He found himself in Paris, poor, fastidious, and with health which
already, no doubt, felt the obscure presence of the malady of which he
died—consumption. One of his Brittany acquaintances introduced him to
editors, tried to engage him in the periodical literature of Paris; and
so unmistakable was Guérin’s talent that even his first essays were
immediately accepted. But Guérin’s genius was of a kind which unfitted
him to get his bread in this manner. At first he was pleased with the
notion of living by his pen; “_je n’ai qu’à écrire_,” he says to his
sister,—“I have only got to write.” But to a nature like his, endued
with the passion for perfection, the necessity to produce, to produce
constantly, to produce whether in the vein or out of the vein, to
produce something good or bad or middling, as it may happen, but at all
events _something_,—is the most intolerable of tortures. To escape from
it he betook himself to that common but most perfidious refuge of men of
letters, that refuge to which Goldsmith and poor Hartley Coleridge had
betaken themselves before him,—the profession of teaching. In September,
1834, he procured an engagement at the Collège Stanislas, where he had
himself been educated. It was vacation-time, and all he had to do was to
teach a small class composed of boys who did not go home for the
holidays,—in his own words, “scholars left like sick sheep in the fold,
while the rest of the flock are frisking in the fields.” After the
vacation he was kept on at the college as a supernumerary. “The master
of the fifth class has asked for a month’s leave of absence; I am taking
his place, and by this work I get one hundred francs (£4). I have been
looking about for pupils to give private lessons to, and I have found
three or four. Schoolwork and private lessons together fill my day from
half-past seven in the morning till half-past nine at night. The college
dinner serves me for breakfast, and I go and dine in the evening at
twenty-four _sous_, as a young man beginning life should.” To better his
position in the hierarchy of public teachers it was necessary that he
should take the degree of _agrégé-èslettres_, corresponding to our
degree of Master of Arts; and to his heavy work in teaching, there was
thus added that of preparing for a severe examination. The drudgery of
this life was very irksome to him, although less insupportable than the
drudgery of the profession of letters; inasmuch as to a sensitive man
like Guérin, to silence his genius is more tolerable than to hackney it.
Still the yoke wore him deeply, and he had moments of bitter revolt; he
continued, however, to bear it with resolution, and on the whole with
patience, for four years. On the 15th of November, 1838, he married a
young Creole lady of some fortune, Mademoiselle Caroline de Gervain,
“whom,” to use his own words, “Destiny, who loves these surprises, has
wafted from the farthest Indies into my arms.” The marriage was happy,
and it insured to Guérin liberty and leisure; but now “the blind Fury
with the abhorred shears” was hard at hand. Consumption declared itself
in him: “I pass my life,” he writes, with his old playfulness and calm,
to his sister on the 8th of April, 1839, “within my bed-curtains, and
wait patiently enough, thanks to Caro’s[13] goodness, books, and dreams,
for the recovery which the sunshine is to bring with it.” In search of
this sunshine he was taken to his native country, Languedoc, but in
vain. He died at Le Cayla on the 19th of July, 1839.
-----
Footnote 13:
His wife.
-----
The vicissitudes of his inward life during these five years were
more considerable. His opinions and tastes underwent great, or what
seem to be great, changes. He came to Paris the ardent partisan of
Lamennais: even in April, 1834, after Rome had finally condemned
Lamennais,—“To-night there will go forth from Paris,” he writes,
“with his face set to the west, a man whose every step I would fain
follow, and who returns to the desert for which I sigh. M. Féli
departs this evening for La Chênaie.” But in October, 1835,—“I
assure you,” he writes to his sister, “I am at last weaned from M.
de Lamennais; one does not remain a babe and suckling for ever; I am
perfectly freed from his influence.” There was a greater change than
this. In 1834 the main cause of Guérin’s aversion to the literature
of the French romantic school, was that this literature, having had
a religious origin, had ceased to be religious: “it has forgotten,”
he says, “the house and the admonitions of its Father.” But his
friend M. de Marzan tells us of a “deplorable revolution” which, by
1836, had taken place in him. Guérin had become intimate with the
chiefs of this very literature; he no longer went to church; “the
bond of a common faith, in which our friendship had its birth,
existed between us no longer.” Then, again, “this interregnum was
not destined to last.” Reconverted to his old faith by suffering and
by the pious efforts of his sister Eugénie, Guérin died a Catholic.
His feelings about society underwent a like change. After “entering
the world with a secret horror,” after congratulating himself when
he had been some months at Paris on being “disengaged from the
social tumult, out of the reach of those blows which, when I live in
the thick of the world, bruise me, irritate me, or utterly crush
me,” M. Sainte-Beuve tells us of him, two years afterwards,
appearing in society “a man of the world, elegant, even fashionable;
a talker who could hold his own against the most brilliant talkers
of Paris.”
In few natures, however, is there really such essential consistency as
in Guérin’s. He says of himself, in the very beginning of his journal:
“I owe everything to poetry, for there is no other name to give to the
sum total of my thoughts; I owe to it whatever I now have pure, lofty
and solid in my soul; I owe to it all my consolations in the past; I
shall probably owe to it my future.” Poetry, the poetical instinct, was
indeed the basis of his nature; but to say so thus absolutely is not
quite enough. One aspect of poetry fascinated Guérin’s imagination and
held it prisoner. Poetry is the interpretress of the natural world, and
she is the interpretress of the moral world; it was as the interpretress
of the natural world that she had Guérin for her mouthpiece. To make
magically near and real the life of Nature, and man’s life only so far
as it is a part of that Nature, was his faculty; a faculty of
naturalistic, not of moral interpretation. This faculty always has for
its basis a peculiar temperament, an extraordinary delicacy of
organization and susceptibility to impressions; in exercising it the
poet is in a great degree passive (Wordsworth thus speaks of a _wise
passiveness_); he aspires to be a sort of human Æolian harp, catching
and rendering every rustle of Nature. To assist at the evolution of the
whole life of the world is his craving, and intimately to feel it all:
... “The glow, the thrill of life,
Where, where do these abound?”
is what he asks: he resists being riveted and held stationary by any
single impression, but would be borne on forever down an enchanted
stream. He goes into religion and out of religion into society and out
of society, not from the motives which impel men in general, but to feel
what it is all like; he is thus hardly a moral agent, and, like the
passive and ineffectual Uranus of Keats’s poem, he may say:
... “I am but a voice;
My life is but the life of winds and tides;
No more than winds and tides can I avail.”
He hovers over the tumult of life, but does not really put his hand to
it.
No one has expressed the aspirations of this temperament better than
Guérin himself. In the last year of his life he writes:—
“I return, as you see, to my old brooding over the world of Nature, that
line which my thoughts, irresistibly take; a sort of passion which gives
me enthusiasm, tears, bursts of joy, and an eternal food for musing; and
yet I am neither philosopher nor naturalist, nor anything learned
whatsoever. There is one word which is the God of my imagination, the
tyrant, I ought rather to say, that fascinates it, lures it onward,
gives it work to do without ceasing, and will finally carry it I know
not where; the word _life_.”
And in one place in his journal he says:—
“My imagination welcomes every dream, every impression, without
attaching itself to any, and goes on forever seeking something new.”
And again in another:—
“The longer I live, and the clearer I discern between true and false in
society, the more does the inclination to live, not as a savage or a
misanthrope, but as a solitary man on the frontiers of society, on the
outskirts of the world, gain strength and grow in me. The birds come and
go and make nests around our habitations, they are fellow-citizens of
our farms and hamlets with us; but they take their flight in a heaven
which is boundless, but the hand of God alone gives and measures to them
their daily food, but they build their nests in the heart of the thick
bushes, or hang them in the height of the trees. So would I, too, live,
hovering round society, and having always at my back a field of liberty
vast as the sky.”
In the same spirit he longed for travel. “When one is a wanderer,” he
writes to his sister, “one feels that one fulfils the true condition of
humanity.” And the last entry in his journal is,—“The stream of travel
is full of delight. Oh, who will set me adrift on this Nile!”
Assuredly it is not in this temperament that the active virtues have
their rise. On the contrary, this temperament, considered in itself
alone, indisposes for the discharge of them. Something morbid and
excessive, as manifested in Guérin, it undoubtedly has. In him, as in
Keats, and as in another youth of genius, whose name, but the other day
unheard of, Lord Houghton has so gracefully written in the history of
English poetry,—David Gray,—the temperament, the talent itself, is
deeply influenced by their mysterious malady; the temperament is
_devouring_; it uses vital power too hard and too fast, paying the
penalty in long hours of unutterable exhaustion and in premature death.
The intensity of Guérin’s depression is described to us by Guérin
himself with the same incomparable touch with which he describes happier
feelings; far oftener than any pleasurable sense of his gift he has “the
sense profound, near, immense, of my misery, of my inward poverty.” And
again: “My inward misery gains upon me; I no longer dare look within.”
And on another day of gloom he does look within, and here is the
terrible analysis:—
“Craving, unquiet, seeing only by glimpses, my spirit is stricken by all
those ills which are the sure fruit of a youth doomed never to ripen
into manhood. I grow old and wear myself out in the most futile mental
strainings, and make no progress. My head seems dying, and when the wind
blows I fancy I feel it, as if I were a tree, blowing through a number
of withered branches in my top. Study is intolerable to me, or rather it
is quite out of my power. Mental work brings on, not drowsiness, but an
irritable and nervous disgust which drives me out, I know not where,
into the streets and public places. The Spring, whose delights used to
come every year stealthily and mysteriously to charm me in my retreat,
crushes me this year under a weight of sudden hotness. I should be glad
of any event which delivered me from the situation in which I am. If I
were free I would embark for some distant country where I could begin
life anew.”
Such is this temperament in the frequent hours when the sense of its own
weakness and isolation crushes it to the ground. Certainly it was not
for Guérin’s happiness, or for Keats’s, as men count happiness, to be as
they were. Still the very excess and predominance of their temperament
has given to the fruits of their genius a unique brilliancy and flavor.
I have said that poetry interprets in two ways; it interprets by
expressing with magical felicity the physiognomy and movement of the
outward world, and it interprets by expressing, with inspired
conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man’s moral and
spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative both by
having _natural magic_ in it, and by having _moral profundity_. In both
ways it illuminates man; it gives him a satisfying sense of reality; it
reconciles him with himself and the universe. Thus Æschylus’s “δράσαντι
παθεῖν” and his “ὰνήριθμον γέλασμα” are alike interpretative. Shakspeare
interprets both when he says,
“Full many a glorious morning have I seen,
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovran eye;”
and when he says,
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them as we will.”
These great poets unite in themselves the faculty of both kinds of
interpretation, the naturalistic and the moral. But it is observable
that in the poets who unite both kinds, the latter (the moral) usually
ends by making itself the master. In Shakspeare the two kinds seem
wonderfully to balance one another; but even in him the balance leans;
his expression tends to become too little sensuous and simple, too much
intellectualized. The same thing may be yet more strongly affirmed of
Lucretius and of Wordsworth. In Shelley there is not a balance of the
two gifts, nor even a co-existence of them, but there is a passionate
straining after them both, and this is what makes Shelley, as a man, so
interesting: I will not now inquire how much Shelley achieves as a poet,
but whatever he achieves, he in general fails to achieve natural magic
in his expression; in Mr. Palgrave’s charming _Treasury_ may be seen a
gallery of his failures.[14] But in Keats and Guérin, in whom the
faculty of naturalistic interpretation is overpoweringly predominant,
the natural magic is perfect; when they speak of the world they speak
like Adam naming by divine inspiration the creatures; their expression
corresponds with the thing’s essential reality. Even between Keats and
Guérin, however, there is a distinction to be drawn. Keats has, above
all, a sense of what is pleasurable and open in the life of nature; for
him she is the _Alma Parens_: his expression has, therefore, more than
Guérin’s, something genial, outward, and sensuous. Guérin has, above
all, a sense of what there is adorable and secret in the life of Nature;
for him she is the _Magna Parens_; his expression has, therefore, more
than Keats’s, something mystic, inward, and profound.
-----
Footnote 14:
Compare, for example, his “Lines Written in the Euganean Hills,” with
Keats’s “Ode to Autumn” (_Golden Treasury_, pp. 256, 284). The latter
piece _renders_ Nature; the former _tries to render_ her. I will not
deny, however, that Shelley has natural magic in his rhythm; what I
deny is, that he has it in his language. It always seems to me that
the right sphere for Shelley’s genius was the sphere of music, not of
poetry; the medium of sounds he can master, but to master the more
difficult medium of words he has neither intellectual force enough nor
sanity enough.
-----
So he lived like a man possessed; with his eye not on his own career,
not on the public, not on fame, but on the Isis whose veil he had
uplifted. He published nothing: “There is more power and beauty,” he
writes, “in the well-kept secret of one’s-self and one’s thoughts, than
in the display of a whole heaven that one may have inside one.” “My
spirit,” he answers the friends who urge him to write, “is of the
home-keeping order, and has no fancy for adventure; literary adventure
is above all distasteful to it; for this, indeed (let me say so without
the least self-sufficiency), it has a contempt. The literary career
seems to me unreal, both in its own essence and in the rewards which one
seeks from it, and therefore fatally marred by a secret absurdity.” His
acquaintances, and among them distinguished men of letters, full of
admiration for the originality and delicacy of his talent, laughed at
his self-depreciation, warmly assured him of his powers. He received
their assurances with a mournful incredulity, which contrasts curiously
with the self-assertion of poor David Gray, whom I just now mentioned.
“It seems to me intolerable,” he writes, “to appear to men other than
one appears to God. My worst torture at this moment is the over-estimate
which generous friends form of me. We are told that at the last judgment
the secret of all consciences will be laid bare to the universe; would
that mine were so this day, and that every passer-by could see me as I
am!” “High above my head,” he says at another time, “far, far away, I
seem to hear the murmur of that world of thought and feeling to which I
aspire so often, but where I can never attain. I think of those of my
own age who have wings strong enough to reach it, but I think of them
without jealousy, and as men on earth contemplate the elect and their
felicity.” And, criticising his own composition, “When I begin a
subject, my self-conceit” (says this exquisite artist) “imagines I am
doing wonders; and when I have finished, I see nothing but a wretched
made-up imitation, composed of odds and ends of color stolen from other
people’s palettes, and tastelessly mixed together on mine.” Such was his
_passion for perfection_, his disdain for all poetical work not
perfectly adequate and felicitous. The magic of expression, to which by
the force of this passion he won his way, will make the name of Maurice
de Guérin remembered in literature.
I have already mentioned the _Centaur_, a sort of prose poem by Guérin,
which Madame Sand published after his death. The idea of this
composition came to him, M. Sainte-Beuve says, in the course of some
visits which he made with his friend, M. Trebutien, a learned
antiquarian, to the Museum of Antiquities in the Louvre. The free and
wild life which the Greeks expressed by such creations as the Centaur
had, as we might well expect, a strong charm for him; under the same
inspiration he composed a _Bacchante_, which was meant by him to form
part of a prose poem on the adventures of Bacchus in India. Real as was
the affinity which Guérin’s nature had for these subjects, I doubt
whether, in treating them, he would have found the full and final
employment of his talent. But the beauty of his _Centaur_ is
extraordinary; in its whole conception and expression this piece has in
a wonderful degree that natural magic of which I have said so much, and
the rhythm has a charm which bewitches even a foreigner. An old Centaur
on his mountain is supposed to relate to Melampus, a human questioner,
the life of his youth. Untranslatable as the piece is, I shall conclude
with some extracts from it:—
“THE CENTAUR.
“I had my birth in the caves of these mountains. Like the stream of this
valley, whose first drops trickle from some weeping rock in a deep
cavern, the first moment of my life fell in the darkness of a remote
abode, and without breaking the silence. When our mothers draw near to
the time of their delivery, they withdraw to the caverns, and in the
depth of the loneliest of them, in the thickest of its gloom, bring
forth, without uttering a plaint, a fruit silent as themselves. Their
puissant milk makes us surmount, without weakness or dubious struggle,
the first difficulties of life; and yet we leave our caverns later than
you your cradles. The reason is that we have a doctrine that the early
days of existence should be kept apart and enshrouded, as days filled
with the presence of the gods. Nearly the whole term of my growth was
passed in the darkness where I was born. The recesses of my dwelling ran
so far under the mountain that I should not have known on which side was
the exit, had not the winds, when they sometimes made their way through
the opening, sent fresh airs in, and a sudden trouble. Sometimes, too,
my mother came back to me, having about her the odors of the valleys, or
streaming from the waters which were her haunt. Her returning thus,
without a word said of the valleys or the rivers, but with the
emanations from them hanging about her, troubled my spirit, and I moved
up and down restlessly in my darkness. ‘What is it,’ I cried, ‘this
outside world whither my mother is borne, and what reigns there in it so
potent as to attract her so often?’ At these moments my own force began
to make me unquiet. I felt in it a power which could not remain idle;
and betaking myself either to toss my arms or to gallop backwards and
forwards in the spacious darkness of the cavern, I tried to make out
from the blows which I dealt in the empty space, or from the transport
of my course through it, in what direction my arms were meant to reach,
or my feet to bear me. Since that day, I have wound my arms round the
bust of Centaurs, and round the body of heroes, and round the trunk of
oaks; my hands have assayed the rocks, the waters, plants without
number, and the subtlest impressions of the air,—for I uplift them in
the dark and still nights to catch the breaths of wind, and to draw
signs whereby I may augur my road; my feet,—look, O Melampus, how worn
they are! And yet, all benumbed as I am in this extremity of age, there
are days when, in broad sunlight, on the mountain-tops, I renew these
gallopings of my youth in the cavern, and with the same object,
brandishing my arms and employing all the fleetness which yet is left to
me.
. . . . . . . .
“O Melampus, thou who wouldst know the life of the Centaurs, wherefore
have the gods willed that thy steps should lead thee to me, the oldest
and most forlorn of them all? It is long since I have ceased to practise
any part of their life. I quit no more this mountain summit to which age
has confined me. The point of my arrows now serves me only to uproot
some tough-fibred plant; the tranquil lakes know me still, but the
rivers have forgotten me. I will tell thee a little of my youth; but
these recollections, issuing from a worn memory, come like the drops of
a niggardly libation poured from a damaged urn.
“The course of my youth was rapid and full of agitation. Movement was my
life, and my steps knew no bound. One day when I was following the
course of a valley seldom entered by the Centaurs, I discovered a man
making his way up the stream-side on the opposite bank. He was the first
whom my eyes had lighted on: I despised him. ‘Behold,’ I cried, ‘at the
utmost but the half of what I am! How short are his steps! and his
movement how full of labor! Doubtless he is a Centaur overthrown by the
gods, and reduced by them to drag himself along thus.’
. . . . . . . .
“Wandering along at my own will like the rivers, feeling wherever I went
the presence of Cybele, whether in the bed of the valleys, or on the
height of the mountains, I bounded whither I would, like a blind and
chainless life. But when Night, filled with the charm of the gods,
overtook me on the slopes of the mountain, she guided me to the mouth of
the caverns, and there tranquillized me as she tranquillizes the billows
of the sea. Stretched across the threshold of my retreat, my flanks
hidden within the cave, and my head under the open sky, I watched the
spectacle of the dark. The sea-gods, it is said, quit during the hours
of darkness their palaces under the deep; they seat themselves on the
promontories, and their eyes wander over the expanse of the waves. Even
so I kept watch, having at my feet an expanse of life like the hushed
sea. My regards had free range, and traveled to the most distant points.
Like sea beaches which never lose their wetness, the line of mountains
to the west retained the imprint of gleams not perfectly wiped out by
the shadows. In that quarter still survived, in pale clearness,
mountain-summits naked and pure. There I beheld at one time the god Pan
descend, ever solitary; at another, the choir of the mystic divinities;
or I saw pass some mountain nymph charm-struck by the night. Sometimes
the eagles of Mount Olympus traversed the upper sky, and were lost to
view among the far-off constellations, or in the shade of the dreaming
forests.
“Thou pursuest after wisdom, O Melampus, which is the science of the
will of the gods; and thou roamest from people to people like a mortal
driven by the destinies. In the times when I kept my night-watches
before the caverns, I have sometimes believed that I was about to
surprise the thought of the sleeping Cybele, and that the mother of the
gods, betrayed by her dreams, would let fall some of her secrets; but I
have never made out more than sounds which faded away in the murmur of
night, or words inarticulate as the bubbling of the rivers.
“‘O Macareus,’ one day said the great Chiron to me, whose old age I
tended; ‘we are, both of us, Centaurs of the mountain; but how different
are our lives! Of my days all the study is (thou seest it) the search
for plants; thou, thou art like those mortals who have picked up on the
waters or in the woods, and carried to their lips, some pieces of the
reed-pipe thrown away by the god Pan. From that hour these mortals,
having caught from their relics of the god a passion for wild life, or
perhaps smitten with some secret madness, enter into the wilderness,
plunge among the forests, follow the course of the streams, bury
themselves in the heart of the mountains, restless, and haunted by an
unknown purpose. The mares beloved of the winds in the farthest Scythia
are not wilder than thou, nor more cast down at nightfall, when the
North Wind has departed. Seekest thou to know the gods. O Macareus, and
from what source men, animals, and the elements of the universal fire
have their origin? But the aged Ocean, the father of all things, keeps
locked within his own breast these secrets; and the nymphs, who stand
around, sing as they weave their eternal dance before him, to cover any
sound which might escape from his lips half-opened by slumber. The
mortals, dear to the gods for their virtue, have received from their
hands lyres to give delight to man, or the seeds of new plants to make
him rich; but from their inexorable lips, nothing!’
. . . . . . . .
“Such were the lessons which the old Chiron gave me. Waned to the very
extremity of life, the Centaur yet nourished in his spirit the most
lofty discourse.
. . . . . . . .
“For me, O Melampus, I decline into my last days, calm as the setting of
the constellations. I still retain enterprise enough to climb to the top
of the rocks, and there I linger late, either gazing on the wild and
restless clouds, or to see come up from the horizon the rainy Hyades,
the Pleiades, or the great Orion; but I feel myself perishing and
passing quickly away, like a snow-wreath floating on the stream; and
soon shall I be mingled with the waters which flow in the vast bosom of
Earth.”
IV.
EUGÉNIE DE GUÉRIN.
Who that had spoken of Maurice de Guérin could refrain from speaking of
his sister Eugénie, the most devoted of sisters, one of the rarest and
most beautiful of souls? “There is nothing fixed, no duration, no
vitality in the sentiments of women towards one another; their
attachments are mere pretty knots of ribbon, and no more. In all the
friendships of women I observe this slightness of the tie. I know no
instance to the contrary, even in history. Orestes and Pylades have no
sisters.” So she herself speaks of the friendships of her own sex. But
Electra can attach herself to Orestes, if not to Chrysothemis. And to
her brother Maurice, Eugénie de Guérin was Pylades and Electra in one.
The name of Maurice de Guérin,—that young man so gifted, so attractive,
so careless of fame, and so early snatched away; who died at
twenty-nine; who, says his sister, “let what he did be lost with a
carelessness so unjust to himself, set no value on any of his own
productions, and departed hence without reaping the rich harvest which
seemed his due;” who, in spite of his immaturity, in spite of his
fragility, exercised such a charm, “furnished to others so much of that
which all live by,” that some years after his death his sister found in
a country-house where he used to stay, in the journal of a young girl
who had not known him, but who heard her family speak of him, his name,
the date of his death, and these words, “_it était leur vie_” (he was
their life); whose talent, exquisite as that of Keats, with much less of
sunlight, abundance, inventiveness, and facility in it than that of
Keats, but with more of distinction and power, had “that winning,
delicate, and beautifully happy turn of expression” which is the stamp
of the master,—is beginning to be well known to all lovers of
literature. This establishment of Maurice’s name was an object for which
his sister Eugénie passionately labored. While he was alive, she placed
her whole joy in the flowering of this gifted nature; when he was dead,
she had no other thought than to make the world know him as she knew
him. She outlived him nine years, and her cherished task for those years
was to rescue the fragments of her brother’s composition, to collect
them, to get them published. In pursuing this task she had at first
cheering hopes of success; she had at last baffling and bitter
disappointment. Her earthly business was at an end; she died. Ten years
afterwards, it was permitted to the love of a friend, M. Trebutien, to
effect for Maurice’s memory what the love of a sister had failed to
accomplish. But those who read, with delight and admiration, the journal
and letters of Maurice de Guérin, could not but be attracted and touched
by this sister Eugénie, who met them at every page. She seemed hardly
less gifted, hardly less interesting, than Maurice himself. And
presently Mr. Trebutien did for the sister what he had done for the
brother. He published the journal of Mdlle. Eugénie de Guérin, and a few
(too few, alas!) of her letters.[15] The book has made a profound
impression in France; and the fame which she sought only for her brother
now crowns the sister also.
-----
Footnote 15:
A volume of these, also, has just been brought out by M. Trebutien.
One good book, at least, in the literature of the year 1865!
-----
Parts of Mdlle. de Guérin’s journal were several years ago printed for
private circulation, and a writer in the _National Review_ had the good
fortune to fall in with them. The bees of our English criticism do not
often roam so far afield for their honey, and this critic deserves
thanks for having flitted upon in his quest of blossom to foreign parts,
and for having settled upon a beautiful flower found there. He had the
discernment to see that Mdlle. de Guérin was well worth speaking of, and
he spoke of her with feeling and appreciation. But that, as I have said,
was several years ago; even a true and feeling homage needs to be from
time to time renewed, if the memory of its object is to endure; and
criticism must not lose the occasion offered by Mdlle. de Guérin’s
journal being for the first time published to the world, of directing
notice once more to this religious and beautiful character.
Eugénie de Guérin was born in 1805, at the château of Le Cayla, in
Languedoc. Her family, though reduced in circumstances, was noble; and
even when one is a saint one cannot quite forget that one comes of the
stock of the Guarini of Italy, or that one counts among one’s ancestors
a Bishop of Senlis, who had the marshaling of the French order of battle
on the day of Bouvines. Le Cayla was a solitary place, with its terrace
looking down upon a stream-bed and valley; “one may pass days there
without seeing any living thing but the sheep, without hearing any
living thing but the birds.” M. de Guérin, Eugénie’s father, lost his
wife when Eugénie was thirteen years old, and Maurice seven; he was left
with four children,—Eugénie, Marie, Erembert, and Maurice,—of whom
Eugénie was the eldest, and Maurice was the youngest. This youngest
child, whose beauty and delicacy had made him the object of his mother’s
most anxious fondness, was commended by her in dying to the care of his
sister Eugénie. Maurice at eleven years old went to school at Toulouse;
then he went to the Collège Stanislas at Paris; then he became a member
of the religious society which M. de Lamennais had formed at La Chênaie
in Brittany; afterwards he lived chiefly at Paris, returning to Le
Cayla, at the age of twenty-nine, to die. Distance, in those days, was a
great obstacle to frequent meetings of the separated members of a French
family of narrow means. Maurice de Guérin was seldom at Le Cayla after
he had once quitted it, though his few visits to his home were long
ones; but he passed five years,—the period of his sojourn in Brittany,
and of his first settlement in Paris,—without coming home at all. In
spite of the check from these absences, in spite of the more serious
check from a temporary alteration in Maurice’s religious feelings, the
union between the brother and sister was wonderfully close and firm. For
they were knit together, not only by the tie of blood and early
attachment, but also by the tie of a common genius. “We were,” says
Eugénie, “two eyes looking out of one head.” She, on her part, brought
to her love for her brother the devotedness of a woman, the intensity of
a recluse, almost the solicitude of a mother. Her home duties prevented
her from following the wish, which often arose in her, to join a
religious sisterhood. There is a trace,—just a trace,—of an early
attachment to a cousin; but he died when she was twenty-four. After
that, she lived for Maurice. It was for Maurice that, in addition to her
constant correspondence with him by letter, she began in 1834 her
journal, which was sent to him by portions as it was finished. After his
death she tried to continue it, addressing it to “Maurice in heaven.”
But the effort was beyond her strength; gradually the entries become
rarer and rarer; and on the last day of December 1840 the pen dropped
from her hand: the journal ends.
Other sisters have loved their brothers, and it is not her affection for
Maurice, admirable as this was, which alone could have made Eugénie de
Guérin celebrated. I have said that both brother and sister had genius:
M. Sainte-Beuve goes so far as to say that the sister’s genius was
equal, if not superior, to her brother’s. No one has a more profound
respect for M. Sainte-Beuve’s critical judgments than I have, but it
seems to me that this particular judgment needs to be a little explained
and guarded. In Maurice’s special talent, which was a talent for
interpreting nature, for finding words which incomparably render the
subtlest impressions which nature makes upon us, which bring the
intimate life of nature wonderfully near to us, it seems to me that his
sister was by no means his equal. She never, indeed, expresses herself
without grace and intelligence; but her words, when she speaks of the
life and appearances of nature, are in general but intellectual signs;
they are not like her brother’s—symbols equivalent with the thing
symbolized. They bring the notion of the thing described to the mind,
they do not bring the feeling of it to the imagination. Writing from the
Nivernais, that region of vast woodlands in the center of France: “It
does one good,” says Eugénie, “to be going about in the midst of this
enchanting nature, with flowers, birds, and verdure all round one, under
this large and blue sky of the Nivernais. How I love the gracious form
of it, and those little white clouds here and there, like cushions of
cotton, hung aloft to rest the eye in this immensity!” It is pretty and
graceful, but how different from the grave and pregnant strokes of
Maurice’s pencil! “I have been along the Loire, and seen on its banks
the plains where nature is puissant and gay; I have seen royal and
antique dwellings, all marked by memories which have their place in the
mournful legend of humanity,—Chambord, Blois, Amboise, Chenonceaux; then
the towns on the two banks of the river,—Orleans, Tours, Saumur, Nantes;
and at the end of it all, the Ocean rumbling. From these I passed back
into the interior of the country, as far as Bourges and Nevers, a region
of vast woodlands, in which murmurs of an immense range and fulness”
(_ce beau torrent de rumeurs_, as, with an expression worthy of
Wordsworth, he elsewhere calls them) “prevail and never cease.” Words
whose charm is like that of the sounds of the murmuring forest itself,
and whose reverberations, like theirs, die away in the infinite distance
of the soul.
Maurice’s life was in the life of nature, and the passion for it
consumed him; it would have been strange if his accent had not caught
more of the soul of nature than Eugénie’s accent, whose life was
elsewhere. “You will find in him,” Maurice says to his sister of a
friend whom he was recommending to her, “you will find in him that which
you love, and which suits you better than anything else,—_l’onction,
l’effusion, la mysticité_.” Unction, the pouring out of the soul, the
rapture of the mystic, were dear to Maurice also; but in him the bent of
his genius gave even to those a special direction of its own. In Eugénie
they took the direction most native and familiar to them; their object
was the religious life.
And yet, if one analyzes this beautiful and most interesting character
quite to the bottom, it is not exactly as a saint that Eugénie de Guérin
is remarkable. The ideal saint is a nature like Saint François de Sales
or Fénelon; a nature of ineffable sweetness and serenity, a nature in
which struggle and revolt is over, and the whole man (so far as is
possible to human infirmity) swallowed up in love. Saint Theresa (it is
Mdlle. de Guérin herself who reminds us of it) endured twenty years of
unacceptance and of repulse in her prayers; yes, but the Saint Theresa
whom Christendom knows is Saint Theresa repulsed no longer! it is Saint
Theresa accepted, rejoicing in love, radiant with ecstasy. Mdlle. de
Guérin is not one of these saints arrived at perfect sweetness and calm,
steeped in ecstasy; there is something primitive, indomitable in her,
which she governs, indeed, but which chafes, which revolts. Somewhere in
the depths of that strong nature there is a struggle, an impatience, an
inquietude, an ennui, which endures to the end, and which leaves one,
when one finally closes her journal, with an impression of profound
melancholy. “There are days,” she writes to her brother, “when one’s
nature rolls itself up, and becomes a hedgehog. If I had you here at
this moment, here close by me, how I should prick you! how sharp and
hard!” “Poor soul, poor soul,” she cries out to herself another day,
“what is the matter, what would you have? Where is that which will do
you good? Everything is green, everything is in bloom, all the air has a
breath of flowers. How beautiful it is! well, I will go out. No, I
should be alone, and all this beauty, when one is alone, is worth
nothing. What shall I do then? Read, write, pray, take a basket of sand
on my head like that hermit-saint, and walk with it? Yes, work, work!
keep busy the body which does mischief to the soul! I have been too
little occupied to-day, and that is bad for one, and it gives a certain
ennui which I have in me time to ferment.”
_A certain ennui which I have in me_: her wound is there. In vain she
follows the counsel of Fénelon: “If God tires you, _tell him that he
tires you_.” No doubt she obtained great and frequent solace and
restoration from prayer: “This morning I was suffering; well, at present
I am calm, and this I owe to faith simply to faith, to an act of faith.
I can think of death and eternity without trouble, without alarm. Over a
deep of sorrow there floats a divine calm, a suavity which is the work
of God only. In vain have I tried other things at a time like this:
nothing human comforts the soul, nothing human upholds it:—
‘A l’enfant il faut sa mère,
A mon âme il faut mon Dieu.’”
Still the ennui reappears, bringing with it hours of unutterable
forlornness, and making her cling to her one great earthly
happiness,—her affection for her brother,—with an intenseness, an
anxiety, a desperation in which there is something morbid, and by which
she is occasionally carried into an irritability, a jealousy which she
herself is the first, indeed, to censure, which she severely represses,
but which nevertheless leaves a sense of pain.
Mdlle. de Guérin’s admirers have compared her to Pascal, and in some
respects the comparison is just. But she cannot exactly be classed with
Pascal, any more than with Saint Francois de Sales. Pascal is a man, and
the inexhaustible power and activity of his mind leave him no leisure
for ennui. He has not the sweetness and serenity of the perfect saint;
he is, perhaps, “der strenge, kranke Pascal—_the severe, morbid
Pascal_,”—as Goethe (and, strange to say, Goethe at twenty-three, an age
which usually feels Pascal’s charm most profoundly) calls him. But the
stress and movement of the lifelong conflict waged in him between his
soul and his reason keep him full of fire, full of agitation, and keep
his reader, who witnesses this conflict, animated and excited; the sense
of forlornness and dejected weariness which clings to Eugénie de Guérin
does not belong to Pascal. Eugénie de Guérin is a woman, and longs for a
state of firm happiness, for an affection in which she may repose. The
inward bliss of Saint Theresa or Fénelon would have satisfied her;
denied this, she cannot rest satisfied with the triumphs of
self-abasement, with the somber joy of trampling the pride of life and
of reason underfoot, of reducing all human hope and joy to
insignificance; she repeats the magnificent words of Bossuet, words
which both Catholicism and Protestantism have uttered with indefatigable
iteration: “On trouve au fond de tout le vide et le néant—_at the bottom
of everything one finds emptiness and nothingness_,” but she feels, as
every one but the true mystic must ever feel, their incurable sterility.
She resembles Pascal, however, by the clearness and firmness of her
intelligence, going straight and instinctively to the bottom of any
matter she is dealing with, and expressing herself about it with
incomparable precision; never fumbling with what she has to say, never
imperfectly seizing or imperfectly presenting her thought. And to this
admirable precision she joins a lightness of touch, a feminine ease and
grace, a flowing facility which are her own. “I do not say,” writes her
brother Maurice, an excellent judge, “that I find in myself a dearth of
expression; but I have not this abundance of yours, this productiveness
of soul which streams forth, which courses along without ever failing,
and always with an infinite charm.” And writing to her of some
composition of hers, produced after her religious scruples had for a
long time kept her from the exercise of her talent: “You see, my dear
Tortoise,” he writes, “that your talent is no illusion, since after a
period, I know not how long, of poetical inaction,—a trial to which any
half-talent would have succumbed,—it rears its head again more vigorous
than ever. It is really heart-breaking to see you repress and bind down,
with I know not what scruples, your spirit, which tends with all the
force of its nature to develop itself in this direction. Others have
made it a case of conscience for you to resist this impulse, and I make
it one for you to follow it.” And she says of herself, on one of her
freer days: “It is the instinct of my life to write, as it is the
instinct of the fountain to flow.” The charm of her expression is not a
sensuous and imaginative charm like that of Maurice, but rather an
intellectual charm; it comes from the texture of the style rather than
from its elements; it is not so much in the words as in the turn of the
phrase, in the happy cast and flow of the sentence. Recluse as she was,
she had a great correspondence: every one wished to have letters from
her; and no wonder.
To this strength of intelligence and talent of expression she joined a
great force of character. Religion had early possessed itself of this
force of character, and reinforced it: in the shadow of the Cevennes, in
the sharp and tonic nature of this region of Southern France, which has
seen the Albigensians, which has seen the Camisards, Catholicism too is
fervent and intense. Eugénie de Guérin was brought up amidst strong
religious influences, and they found in her a nature on which they could
lay firm hold. I have said that she was not a saint of the order of
Saint François de Sales or Fénelon; perhaps she had too keen an
intelligence to suffer her to be this, too forcible and impetuous a
character. But I did not mean to imply the least doubt of the reality,
the profoundness, of her religious life. She was penetrated by the power
of religion; religion was the master-influence of her life; she derived
immense consolations from religion, she earnestly strove to conform her
whole nature to it; if there was an element in her which religion could
not perfectly reach, perfectly transmute, she groaned over this element
in her, she chid it, she made it bow. Almost every thought in her was
brought into harmony with religion; and what few thoughts were not thus
brought into harmony were brought into subjection.
Then she had her affection for her brother; and this, too, though
perhaps there might be in it something a little over-eager, a little too
absolute, a little too susceptible, was a pure, a devoted affection. It
was not only passionate, it was tender. It was tender, pliant, and
self-sacrificing to a degree that not in one nature out of a
thousand,—of natures with a mind and will like hers,—is found
attainable. She thus united extraordinary power of intelligence,
extraordinary force of character, and extraordinary strength of
affection; and all these under the control of a deep religious feeling.
This is what makes her so remarkable, so interesting. I shall try and
make her speak for herself, that she may show us the characteristic
sides of her rare nature with her own inimitable touch.
It must be remembered that her journal is written for Maurice only; in
her lifetime no eye but his ever saw it. “_Ceci n’est pas pour le
public_,” she writes; “_c’est de l’intime, c’est de l’âme, c’est pour
un_.” “This is not for the public; it contains my inmost thoughts, my
very soul; it is for _one_.” And Maurice, this _one_, was a kind of
second self to her. “We see things with the same eyes; what you find
beautiful, I find beautiful; God has made our souls of one piece.” And
this genuine confidence in her brother’s sympathy gives to the entries
in her journal a naturalness and simple freedom rare in such
compositions. She felt that he would understand her, and be interested
in all that she wrote.
One of the first pages of her journal relates an incident of the
home-life of Le Cayla, the smallest detail of which Maurice liked to
hear; and in relating it she brings this simple life before us. She is
writing in November, 1834:—
“I am furious with the gray cat. The mischievous beast has made away
with a little half-frozen pigeon, which I was trying to thaw by the side
of the fire. The poor little thing was just beginning to come round; I
meant to tame him; he would have grown fond of me; and there is my whole
scheme eaten up by a cat! This event, and all the rest of to-day’s
history, has passed in the kitchen. Here I take up my abode all the
morning and a part of the evening, ever since I am without Mimi.[16] I
have to superintend the cook; sometimes papa comes down, and I read to
him by the oven, or by the fireside, some bits out of the _Antiquities
of the Anglo-Saxon Church_. This book struck Pierril[17] with
astonishment. _Que de mouts aqui dédins!_ What a lot of words there are
inside it!’ This boy is a real original. One evening he asked me if the
soul was immortal; then afterwards, what a philosopher was? We had got
upon great questions, as you see. When I told him that a philosopher was
a person who was wise and learned: ‘Then, mademoiselle, you are a
philosopher.’ This was said with an air of simplicity and sincerity
which might have made even Socrates take it as a compliment; but it made
me laugh so much that my gravity as catechist was gone for that evening.
A day or two ago Pierril left us, to his great sorrow: his time with us
was up on Saint Brice’s day. Now he goes about with his little dog,
truffle-hunting. If he comes this way I shall go and ask him if he still
thinks I look like a philosopher.”
-----
Footnote 16:
The familiar name of her sister Marie.
Footnote 17:
A servant-boy at Le Cayla.
-----
Her good sense and spirit made her discharge with alacrity her household
tasks in this patriarchal life of Le Cayla, and treat them as the most
natural thing in the world. She sometimes complains, to be sure, of
burning her fingers at the kitchen-fire. But when a literary friend of
her brother expresses enthusiasm about her and her poetical nature: “The
poetess,” she says, “whom this gentleman believes me to be, is an ideal
being, infinitely removed from the life which is actually mine—a life of
occupations, a life of household-business, which takes up all my time.
How could I make it otherwise? I am sure I do not know; and, besides, my
duty is in this sort of life, and I have no wish to escape from it.”
Among these occupations of the patriarchal life of the châtelaine of Le
Cayla intercourse with the poor fills a prominent place:—
“To-day,” she writes on the 9th of December, 1834, “I have been warming
myself at every fireside in the village. It is a round which Mimi and I
often make, and in which I take pleasure. To-day we have been seeing
sick people, and holding forth on doses and sick-room drinks. ‘Take
this, do that;’ and they attend to us just as if we were the doctor. We
prescribed shoes for a little thing who was amiss from having gone
barefoot; to the brother, who, with a bad headache, was lying quite
flat, we prescribed a pillow; the pillow did him good, but I am afraid
it will hardly cure him. He is at the beginning of a bad feverish cold:
and these poor people live in the filth of their hovels like animals in
their stable; the bad air poisons them. When I come home to Le Cayla I
seem to be in a palace.”
She had books, too; not in abundance, not for the fancying them; the
list of her library is small, and it is enlarged slowly and with
difficulty. The _Letters of Saint Theresa_, which she had long wished to
get, she sees in the hands of a poor servant girl, before she can
procure them for herself. “What then?” is her comment: “very likely she
makes a better use of them than I could.” But she has the _Imitation_,
the _Spiritual Works_ of Bossuet and Fénelon, the _Lives of the Saints_,
Corneille, Racine, André Chénier, and Lamartine; Madame de Staël’s book
on Germany, and French translations of Shakspeare’s plays, Ossian, the
_Vicar of Wakefield_, Scott’s _Old Mortality_ and _Redgauntlet_, and the
_Promessi Sposi_ of Manzoni. Above all, she has her own mind; her
meditations in the lonely fields, on the oak-grown hill-side of “The
Seven Springs;” her meditations and writing in her own room, her
_chambrette_, her _délicieux chez moi_, where every night, before she
goes to bed, she opens the window to look out upon the sky,—the balmy
moonlit sky of Languedoc. This life of reading, thinking, and writing
was the life she liked best, the life that most truly suited her. “I
find writing has become almost a necessity to me. Whence does it arise,
this impulse to give utterance to the voice of one’s spirit, to pour out
my thoughts before God and one human being? I say one human being,
because I always imagine that you are present, that you see what I
write. In the stillness of a life like this my spirit is happy, and, as
it were, dead to all that goes on up-stairs or down-stairs, in the house
or out of the house. But this does not last long. ‘Come, my poor
spirit,’ I then say to myself, ‘we must go back to the things of this
world.’ And I take my spinning, or a book, or a saucepan, or I play with
Wolf or Trilby. Such a life as this I call heaven upon earth.”
Tastes like these, joined with a talent like Mdlle. de Guérin’s,
naturally inspire thoughts of literary composition. Such thoughts she
had, and perhaps she would have been happier if she had followed them;
but she never could satisfy herself that to follow them was quite
consistent with the religious life, and her projects of composition were
gradually relinquished:—
“Would to God that my thoughts, my spirit, had never taken their flight
beyond the narrow round in which it is my lot to live! In spite of all
that people say to the contrary, I feel that I cannot go beyond my
needlework and my spinning without going too far: I feel it, I believe
it: well, then I will keep in my proper sphere; however much I am
tempted, my spirit shall not be allowed to occupy itself with great
matters until it occupies itself with them in Heaven.”
And again:—
“My journal has been untouched for a long while. Do you want to know
why? It is because the time seems to me misspent which I spend in
writing it. We owe God an account of every minute; and is it not a wrong
use of our minutes to employ them in writing a history of our transitory
days?”
She overcomes her scruples, and goes on writing the journal; but again
and again they return to her. Her brother tells her of the pleasure and
comfort something she has written gives to a friend of his in
affliction. She answers:—
“It is from the Cross that those thoughts come, which your friend finds
so soothing, so unspeakably tender. None of them come from me. I feel my
own aridity; but I feel, too, that God, when he will, can make an ocean
flow upon this bed of sand. It is the same with so many simple souls,
from which proceed the most admirable things; because they are in direct
relation with God, without false science and without pride. And thus I
am gradually losing my taste for books; I say to myself: ‘What can they
teach me which I shall not one day know in Heaven? let God be my master
and my study here!’ I try to make him so, and I find myself the better
for it. I read little; I go out little; I plunge myself in the inward
life. How infinite are the sayings, doings, feelings, events of that
life! Oh, if you could but see them! But what avails it to make them
known? God alone should be admitted to the sanctuary of the soul.”
Beautifully as she says all this, one cannot, I think, read it without a
sense of disquietude, without a presentiment that this ardent spirit is
forcing itself from its natural bent, that the beatitude of the true
mystic will never be its earthly portion. And yet how simple and
charming is her picture of the life of religion which she chose as her
ark of refuge, and in which she desired to place all her happiness:—
“Cloaks, clogs, umbrellas, all the apparatus of winter, went with us
this morning to Andillac, where we have passed the whole day; some of it
at the curé’s house, the rest in church. How I like this life of a
country Sunday, with its activity, its journeys to church, its
liveliness! You find all your neighbors on the road; you have a curtsey
from every woman you meet, and then, as you go along, such a talk about
the poultry, the sheep and cows, the good man and the children! My great
delight is to give a kiss to these children, and see them run away and
hide their blushing faces in their mother’s gown. They are alarmed at
_las doumaϊsèlos_,[18] as at a being of another world. One of these
little things said the other day to its grandmother, who was talking of
coming to see us: ‘_Minino_, you mustn’t go to that castle; there is a
black hole there.’ What is the reason that in all ages the noble’s
château has been an object of terror? Is it because of the horrors that
were committed there in old times? I suppose so.”
-----
Footnote 18:
The young lady.
-----
This vague horror of the château, still lingering in the mind of the
French peasant fifty years after he has stormed it, is indeed curious,
and is one of the thousand indications how unlike aristocracy on the
Continent has been to aristocracy in England. But this is one of the
great matters with which Mdlle. de Guérin would not have us occupied;
let us pass to the subject of Christmas in Languedoc:—
“Christmas is come; the beautiful festival, the one I love most, and
which gives me the same joy as it gave the shepherds of Bethlehem. In
real truth, one’s whole soul sings with joy at this beautiful coming of
God upon earth,—a coming which here is announced on all sides of us by
music and by our charming _nadalet_.[19] Nothing at Paris can give you a
notion of what Christmas is with us. You have not even the
midnight-mass. We all of us went to it, papa at our head, on the most
perfect night possible. Never was there a finer sky than ours was that
midnight; so fine that papa kept perpetually throwing back the hood of
his cloak, that he might look up at the sky. The ground was white with
hoar-frost, but we were not cold; besides, the air, as we met it, was
warmed by the bundles of blazing torchwood which our servants carried in
front of us to light us on our way. It was delightful, I do assure you;
and I should like you to have seen us there on our road to church, in
those lanes with the bushes along their banks as white as if they were
in flower. The hoar-frost makes the most lovely flowers. We saw a long
spray so beautiful that we wanted to take it with us as a garland for
the communion-table, but it melted in our hands: all flowers fade so
soon! I was very sorry about my garland; it was mournful to see it drip
away, and get smaller and smaller every minute!”
-----
Footnote 19:
A peculiar peal rung at Christmas-time by the church bells of
Languedoc.
-----
The religious life is at bottom everywhere alike; but it is curious to
note the variousness of its setting and outward circumstance.
Catholicism has these so different from Protestantism! and in
Catholicism these accessories have, it cannot be denied, a nobleness and
amplitude which in Protestantism is often wanting to them. In
Catholicism they have, from the antiquity of this form of religion, from
its pretensions to universality, from its really widespread prevalence,
from its sensuousness, something European, august, and imaginative: in
Protestantism they often have, from its inferiority in all these
respects, something provincial, mean, and prosaic. In revenge,
Protestantism has a future before it, a prospect of growth in alliance
with the vital movement of modern society; while Catholicism appears to
be bent on widening the breach between itself and the modern spirit, to
be fatally losing itself in the multiplication of dogmas, Mariolatry,
and miracle-mongering. But the style and circumstance of actual
Catholicism is grander than its present tendency, and the style and
circumstance of Protestantism is meaner than its tendency. While I was
reading the journal of Mdle. de Guérin there came into my hands the
memoir and poems of a young Englishwoman, Miss Emma Tatham; and one
could not but be struck with the singular contrast which the two
lives,—in their setting rather than in their inherent quality,—present.
Miss Tatham had not, certainly, Mdlle. de Guérin’s talent, but she had a
sincere vein of poetic feeling, a genuine aptitude for composition. Both
were fervent Christians, and, so far, the two lives have a real
resemblance; but, in the setting of them, what a difference! The
Frenchwoman is a Catholic in Languedoc; the Englishwoman is a Protestant
at Margate; Margate, that brick-and-mortar image of English
Protestantism, representing it in all its prose, all its
uncomeliness,—let me add, all its salubrity. Between the external form
and fashion of these two lives, between the Catholic Mdle. de Guérin’s
_nadalet_ at the Languedoc Christmas, her chapel of moss at Easter-time,
her daily reading of the life of a saint, carrying her to the most
diverse times, places, and peoples,—her quoting, when she wants to fix
her mind upon the staunchness which the religious aspirant needs, the
words of Saint Macedonius to a hunter whom he met in the mountains, “I
pursue after God, as you pursue after game,”—her quoting, when she wants
to break a village girl of disobedience to her mother, the story of the
ten disobedient children whom at Hippo Saint Augustine saw
palsied;—between all this and the bare, blank, narrowly English setting
of Miss Tatham’s Protestantism, her “union in church-fellowship with the
worshipers at Hawley Square Chapel, Margate;” her “singing with soft,
sweet voice, the animating lines—
‘My Jesus to know, and feel His blood flow,
’Tis life everlasting, ’tis heaven below;’”
her “young female teachers belonging to the Sunday-school,” and her “Mr.
Thomas Rowe, a venerable class-leader,”—what a dissimilarity! In the
ground of the two lives, a likeness; in all their circumstance, what
unlikeness! An unlikeness, it will be said, in that which is
non-essential and indifferent. Non-essential,—yes; indifferent,—no. The
signal want of grace and charm in English Protestantism’s setting of its
religious life is not an indifferent matter; it is a real weakness.
_This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone._
I have said that the present tendency of Catholicism,—the Catholicism of
the main body of the Catholic clergy and laity,—seems likely to
exaggerate rather than to remove all that in this form of religion is
most repugnant to reason; but this Catholicism was not that of Mdlle. de
Guérin. The insufficiency of her Catholicism comes from a doctrine which
Protestantism, too, has adopted, although Protestantism, from its
inherent element of freedom, may find it easier to escape from it; a
doctrine with a certain attraction for all noble natures, but, in the
modern world at any rate, incurably sterile,—the doctrine of the
emptiness and nothingness of human life, of the superiority of
renouncement to activity, of quietism to energy; the doctrine which
makes effort for things on this side of the grave a folly, and joy in
things on this side of the grave a sin. But her Catholicism is
remarkably free from the faults which Protestants commonly think
inseparable from Catholicism; the relation to the priest, the practice
of confession, assume, when she speaks of them, an aspect which is not
that under which Exeter Hall knows them, but which,—unless one is of the
number of those who prefer regarding that by which men and nations die
to regarding that by which they live,—one is glad to study. “_La
confession_,” she says twice in her journal, “_n’est qu’une expansion du
repentir dans l’amour_;” and her weekly journey to the confessional in
the little church of Cahuzac is her “_cher pélerinage_;” the little
church is the place where she has “_laissé tant de misères_.”
“This morning,” she writes on 28th of November, “I was up before
daylight, dressed quickly, said my prayers, and started with Marie for
Cahuzac. When we got there, the chapel was occupied, which I was not
sorry for. I like not to be hurried, and to have time, before I go in,
to lay bare my soul before God. This often takes me a long time, because
my thoughts are apt to be flying about like these autumn leaves. At ten
o’clock I was on my knees, listening to words the most salutary that
were ever spoken; and I went away, feeling myself a better being. Every
burden thrown off leaves us with a sense of brightness; and when the
soul has lain down the load of its sins at God’s feet, it feels as if it
had wings. What an admirable thing is confession! What comfort, what
light, what strength is given me every time after I have said, _I have
sinned_.”
This blessing of confession is the greater, she says, “the more the
heart of the priest to whom we confide our repentance is like that
divine heart which ‘has so loved us.’ This is what attaches me to M.
Bories.” M. Bories was the curé of her parish, a man no longer young,
and of whose loss, when he was about to leave them, she thus speaks:—
“What a grief for me! how much I lose in losing this faithful guide of
my conscience, heart, and mind, of my whole self, which God has
appointed to be in his charge, and which let itself be in his charge so
gladly! He knew the resolves which God had put in my heart, and I had
need of his help to follow them. Our new curé cannot supply his place:
he is so young! and then he seems so inexperienced, so undecided! It
needs firmness to pluck a soul out of the midst of the world, and to
uphold it against the assaults of flesh and blood. It is Saturday, my
day for going to Cahuzac; I am just going there, perhaps I shall come
back more tranquil. God has always given me some good thing there, in
that chapel where I have left behind me so many miseries.”
Such is confession for her when the priest is worthy; and, when he is
not worthy, she knows how to separate the man from the office:—
“To-day I am going to do something which I dislike; but I will do it,
with God’s help. Do not think I am on my way to the stake; it is only
that I am going to confess to a priest in whom I have not confidence,
but who is the only one here. In this act of religion the man must
always be separated from the priest, and sometimes the man must be
annihilated.”
The same clear sense, the same freedom from superstition, shows itself
in all her religious life. She tells us, to be sure, how once, when she
was a little girl, she stained a new frock, and on praying, in her
alarm, to an image of the Virgin which hung in her room, saw the stains
vanish: even the austerest Protestant will not judge such Mariolatry as
this very harshly. But, in general, the Virgin Mary fills in the
religious parts of her journal no prominent place; it is Jesus, not
Mary. “Oh, how well has Jesus said: ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden.’ It is only there, only in the bosom of God, that we
can rightly weep, rightly rid ourselves of our burden.” And again: “The
mystery of suffering makes one grasp the belief of something to be
expiated, something to be won. I see it in Jesus Christ, the Man of
Sorrow. _It was necessary that the Son of Man should suffer._ That is
all we know in the troubles and calamities of life.”
And who has ever spoken of justification more impressively and piously
than Mdlle. de Guérin speaks of it, when, after reckoning the number of
minutes she has lived, she exclaims:—
“My God, what have we done with all these minutes of ours, which thou,
too, wilt one day reckon? Will there be any of them to count for eternal
life? will there be many of them? will there be one of them? ‘If thou, O
Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide
it!’ This close scrutiny of our time may well make us tremble, all of us
who have advanced more than a few steps in life; for God will judge us
otherwise than as he judges the lilies of the field. I have never been
able to understand the security of those who placed their whole
reliance, in presenting themselves before God, upon a good conduct in
the ordinary relations of human life. As if all our duties were confined
within the narrow sphere of this world! To be a good parent, a good
child, a good citizen, a good brother or sister, is not enough to
procure entrance into the kingdom of heaven. God demands other things
besides these kindly social virtues of him whom he means to crown with
an eternity of glory.”
And, with this zeal for the spirit and power of religion, what prudence
in her counsels of religious practice; what discernment, what measure!
She has been speaking of the charm of the _Lives of the Saints_, and she
goes on:—
“Notwithstanding this, the _Lives of the Saints_ seem to me, for a great
many people, dangerous reading. I would not recommend them to a young
girl, or even to some women who are no longer young. What one reads has
such power over one’s feelings; and these, even in seeking God,
sometimes go astray. Alas, we have seen it in poor C.’s case. What care
one ought to take with a young person; with what she reads, what she
writes, her society, her prayers,—all of them matters which demand a
mother’s tender watchfulness! I remember many things I did at fourteen,
which my mother, had she lived, would not have let me do. I would have
done anything for God’s sake; I would have cast myself into an oven, and
assuredly things like that are not God’s will; He is not pleased by the
hurt one does to one’s health through that ardent but ill-regulated
piety which, while it impairs the body, often leaves many a fault
flourishing. And, therefore, Saint François de Sales used to say to the
nuns who asked his leave to go bare-foot: ‘Change your brains and keep
your shoes.’”
Meanwhile Maurice, in a five years’ absence, and amid the distractions
of Paris, lost, or seemed to his sister to lose, something of his
fondness for his home and its inmates: he certainly lost his early
religious habits and feelings. It is on this latter loss that Mdlle. de
Guérin’s journal oftenest touches,—with infinite delicacy, but with
infinite anguish:—
“Oh, the agony of being in fear for a soul’s salvation, who can describe
it! That which caused our Saviour the keenest suffering, in the agony of
his Passion, was not so much the thought of the torments he was to
endure, as the thought that these torments would be of no avail for a
multitude of sinners; for all those who set themselves against their
redemption, or who do not care for it. The mere anticipation of this
obstinacy and this heedlessness has power to make sorrowful, even unto
death, the divine Son of Man. And this feeling all Christian souls,
according to the measure of faith and love granted them, more or less
share.”
Maurice returned to Le Cayla in the summer of 1837, and passed six
months there. This meeting entirely restored the union between him and
his family. “These six months with us,” writes his sister, “he ill, and
finding himself so loved by us all, had entirely reattached him to us.
Five years without seeing us, had perhaps made him a little lose sight
of our affection for him; having found it again, he met it with all the
strength of his own. He had so firmly renewed, before he left us, all
family-ties, that nothing but death could have broken them.” The
separation in religious matters between the brother and sister gradually
diminished, and before Maurice died it had ceased. I have elsewhere
spoken of Maurice’s religious feeling and his character. It is probable
that his divergence from his sister in this sphere of religion was never
so wide as she feared, and that his reunion with her was never so
complete as she hoped. “His errors were passed,” she says, “his
illusions were cleared away; by the call of his nature, by original
disposition, he had come back to sentiments of order. I knew all, I
followed each of his steps; out of the fiery sphere of the passions
(which held him but a little moment) I saw him pass into the sphere of
the Christian life. It was a beautiful soul, the soul of Maurice.” But
the illness which had caused his return to Le Cayla reappeared after he
got back to Paris in the winter of 1837-8. Again he seemed to recover;
and his marriage with a young Creole lady, Mdlle. Caroline de Gervain,
took place in the autumn of 1838. At the end of September in that year
Mdlle. de Guérin had joined her brother in Paris; she was present at his
marriage, and stayed with him and his wife for some months afterwards.
Her journal recommences in April 1839. Zealously as she promoted her
brother’s marriage, cordial as were her relations with her
sister-in-law, it is evident that a sense of loss, of loneliness,
invades her, and sometimes weighs her down. She writes in her journal on
the 4th of May:—
“God knows when we shall see one another again! My own Maurice, must it
be our lot to live apart, to find that this marriage which I had so much
share in bringing about, which I hoped would keep us so much together,
leaves us more asunder than ever? For the present and for the future,
this troubles me more than I can say. My sympathies, my inclinations,
carry me more towards you than towards any other member of our family. I
have the misfortune to be fonder of you than of anything else in the
world, and my heart had from of old built in you its happiness. Youth
gone and life declining, I looked forward to quitting the scene with
Maurice. At any time of life a great affection is a great happiness; the
spirit comes to take refuge in it entirely. O delight and joy which will
never be your sister’s portion! Only in the direction of God shall I
find an issue for my heart to love as it has the notion of loving, as it
has the power of loving.”
For such complainings, in which there is undoubtedly something
morbid,—complainings which she herself blamed, to which she seldom gave
way, but which, in presenting her character, it is not just to put
wholly out of sight,—she was called by the news of an alarming return of
her brother’s illness. For some days the entries in the journal show her
agony of apprehension. “He coughs, he coughs still! Those words keep
echoing forever in my ears, and pursue me wherever I go; I cannot look
at the leaves on the trees without thinking that the winter will come,
and then the consumptive die.” She went to him, and brought him back by
slow stages to Le Cayla, dying. He died on the 19th of July 1839.
Thenceforward the energy of life ebbed in her; but the main chords of
her being, the chord of affection, the chord of religious longing, the
chord of intelligence, the chord of sorrow, gave, so long as they
answered to the touch at all, a deeper and finer sound than ever. Always
she saw before her, “that beloved pale face;” “that beautiful head, with
all its different expressions, smiling, suffering, dying,” regarded her
always:—
“I have seen his coffin in the same room, in the same spot where I
remember seeing, when I was a very little girl, his cradle, when I was
brought home from Gaillac, where I was then staying, for his
christening. This christening was a grand one, full of rejoicing, more
than that of any of the rest of us; specially marked. I enjoyed myself
greatly, and went back to Gaillac next day, charmed with my new little
brother. Two years afterwards I came home, and brought with me a frock
for him of my own making. I dressed him in the frock, and took him out
with me along by the warren at the north of the house, and there he
walked a few steps alone,—his first walking alone,—and I ran with
delight to tell my mother the news: ‘Maurice, Maurice has begun to walk
by himself!’—Recollections which, coming back to-day, break one’s
heart.”
The shortness and suffering of her brother’s life filled her with an
agony of pity. “Poor beloved soul, you have had hardly any happiness
here below; your life has been so short, your repose so rare. O God,
uphold me, establish my heart in thy faith! Alas, I have too little of
this supporting me! How we have gazed at him and loved him, and kissed
him,—his wife, and we, his sisters; he lying lifeless in his bed, his
head on the pillow as if he were asleep! Then we followed him to the
churchyard, to the grave, to his last resting-place, and prayed over
him, and wept over him; and we are here again, and I am writing to him
again, as if he were staying away from home, as if he were in Paris. My
beloved one, can it be, shall we never see one another again on earth?”
But in heaven?—and here, though love and hope finally prevailed, the
very passion of the sister’s longing sometimes inspired torturing
inquietudes:—
“I am broken down with misery. I want to see him. Every moment I pray to
God to grant me this grace. Heaven, the world of spirits, is it so far
from us? O depth, O mystery of the other life which separates us! I, who
was so eagerly anxious about him, who wanted so to know all that
happened to him,—wherever he may be now, it is over! I follow him unto
the three abodes; I stop wistfully before the place of bliss, I pass on
to the place of suffering,—to the gulf of fire. My God, my God, no! Not
there let my brother be! not there! And he is not: his soul, the soul of
Maurice, among the lost ... horrible fear, no! But in purgatory, where
the soul is cleansed by suffering, where the failings of the heart are
expiated, the doubtings of the spirit, the half-yieldings to evil?
Perhaps my brother is there and suffers, and calls to us amidst his
anguish of repentance, as he used to call to us amidst his bodily
suffering: ‘Help me, you who love me.’ Yes, beloved one, by prayer. I
will go and pray; prayer has been such a power to me, and I will pray to
the end. Prayer! Oh! and prayer for the dead; it is the dew of
purgatory.”
Often, alas, the gracious dew would not fall; the air of her soul was
parched; the arid wind, which was somewhere in the depths of her being,
blew. She marks in her journal the 1st of May, “this return of the
loveliest month in the year,” only to keep up the old habit; even the
mouth of May can no longer give her any pleasure: “_Tout est changé_—all
is changed.” She is crushed by “the misery which has nothing good in it,
the tearless, dry misery, which bruises the heart like a hammer.”
“I am dying to everything. I am dying of a slow moral agony, a condition
of unutterable suffering. Lie there, my poor journal! be forgotten with
all this world which is fading away from me. I will write here no more
until I come to life again, until God re-awakens me out of this tomb in
which my soul lies buried. Maurice, my beloved! it was not thus with me
when I had _you_! The thought of Maurice could revive me from the most
profound depression: to have him in the world was enough for me. With
Maurice, to be buried alive would have not seemed dull to me.”
And, as a burden to this funeral strain, the old _vide et néant_ of
Bossuet, profound, solemn, sterile:—
“So beautiful in the morning, and in the evening, _that!_ how the
thought disenchants one, and turns one from the world! I can understand
that Spanish grandee who, after lifting up the winding-sheet of a
beautiful queen, threw himself into the cloister and became a great
saint. I would have all my friends at La Trappe, in the interest of
their eternal welfare. Not that in the world one cannot be saved, not
that there are not in the world duties to be discharged as sacred and as
beautiful as there are in the cloister, but....”
And there she stops, and a day or two afterwards her journal comes to an
end. A few fragments, a few letters carry us on a little later, but
after the 22d of August 1845 there is nothing. To make known her
brother’s genius to the world was the one task she set herself after his
death; in 1840 came Madame Sand’s noble tribute to him in the _Révue des
Deux Mondes_; then followed projects of raising a yet more enduring
monument to his fame, by collecting and publishing his scattered
compositions; these projects I have already said, were baffled;—Mdlle.
de Guérin’s letter of the 22d of August 1845 relates to this
disappointment. In silence, during nearly three years more, she faded
away at Le Cayla. She died on the 31st of May 1848.
M. Trebutien has accomplished the pious task in which Mdlle. de Guérin
was baffled, and has established Maurice’s fame; by publishing this
journal he has established Eugénie’s also. She was very different from
her brother; but she too, like him, had that in her which preserves a
reputation. Her soul had the same characteristic quality as his
talent,—_distinction_. Of this quality the world is impatient; it chafes
against it, rails at it, insults it, hates it;—it ends by receiving its
influence, and by undergoing its law. This quality at last inexorably
corrects the world’s blunders, and fixes the world’s ideals. It procures
that the popular poet shall not finally pass for a Pindar, nor the
popular historian for a Tacitus, nor the popular preacher for a Bossuet.
To the circle of spirits marked by this rare quality, Maurice and
Eugénie de Guérin belong; they will take their place in the sky which
these inhabit, and shine close to one another, _lucida sidera_.
V.
HEINRICH HEINE.
“I know not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should one day be laid on
my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have loved it, has always been to me but
a divine plaything. I have never attached any great value to poetical
fame; and I trouble myself very little whether people praise my verses
or blame them. But lay on my coffin a _sword_; for I was a brave soldier
in the Liberation War of humanity.”
Heine had his full share of love of fame, and cared quite as much as his
brethren of the _genus irritabile_ whether people praised his verses or
blamed them. And he was very little of a hero. Posterity will certainly
decorate his tomb with the emblem of the laurel rather than with the
emblem of the sword. Still, for his contemporaries, for us, for the
Europe of the present century, he is significant chiefly for the reason
which he himself in the words just quoted assigns. He is significant
because he was, if not pre-eminently a brave, yet a brilliant, a most
effective soldier in the Liberation War of humanity.
To ascertain the master-current in the literature of an epoch, and to
distinguish this from all minor currents, is one of the critic’s highest
functions; in discharging it he shows how far he possesses the most
indispensable quality of his office,—justness of spirit. The living
writer who has done most to make England acquainted with German authors,
a man of genius, but to whom precisely this one quality of justness of
spirit is perhaps wanting,—I mean Mr. Carlyle,—seems to me in the result
of his labors on German literature to afford a proof how very necessary
to the critic this quality is. Mr. Carlyle has spoken admirably of
Goethe; but then Goethe stands before all men’s eyes, the manifest
center of German literature; and from this central source many rivers
flow. Which of these rivers is the main stream? which of the courses of
spirit which we see active in Goethe is the course which will most
influence the future, and attract and be continued by the most powerful
of Goethe’s successors?—that is the question. Mr. Carlyle attaches, it
seems to me, far too much importance to the romantic school of
Germany,—Tieck, Novalis, Jean Paul Richter,—and gives to these writers,
really gifted as two, at any rate, of them are, an undue prominence.
These writers, and others with aims and a general tendency the same as
theirs, are not the real inheritors and continuators of Goethe’s power;
the current of their activity is not the main current of German
literature after Goethe. Far more in Heine’s works flows this main
current, Heine, far more than Tieck or Jean Paul Richter, is the
continuator of that which, in Goethe’s varied activity, is the most
powerful and vital; on Heine, of all German authors who survived Goethe,
incomparably the largest portion of Goethe’s mantle fell. I do not
forget that when Mr. Carlyle was dealing with German literature, Heine,
though he was clearly risen above the horizon, had not shone forth with
all his strength; I do not forget, too, that after ten or twenty years
many things may come out plain before the critic which before were hard
to be discerned by him; and assuredly no one would dream of imputing it
as a fault to Mr. Carlyle that twenty years ago he mistook the central
current in German literature, overlooked the rising Heine, and attached
undue importance to that romantic school which Heine was to destroy; one
may rather note it as a misfortune, sent perhaps as a delicate
chastisement to a critic, who,—man of genius as he is, and no one
recognizes his genius more admirably than I do,—has, for the functions
of the critic, a little too much of the self-will and eccentricity of a
genuine son of Great Britain.
Heine is noteworthy, because he is the most important German successor
and continuator of Goethe in Goethe’s most important line of activity.
And which of Goethe’s lines of activity is this?—His line of activity as
“a soldier in the war of liberation of humanity.”
Heine himself would hardly have admitted this affiliation, though he was
far too powerful-minded a man to decry, with some of the vulgar German
liberals, Goethe’s genius. “The wind of the Paris Revolution,” he writes
after the three days of 1830, “blew about the candles a little in the
dark night of Germany, so that the red curtains of a German throne or
two caught fire; but the old watchmen, who do the police of the German
kingdoms, are already bringing out the fire engines, and will keep the
candles closer snuffed for the future. Poor, fast-bound German people,
lose not all heart in thy bonds! The fashionable coating of ice melts
off from my heart, my soul quivers and my eyes burn, and that is a
disadvantageous state of things for a writer, who should control his
subject-matter and keep himself beautifully objective, as the artistic
school would have us, and as Goethe has done; he has come to be eighty
years old doing this, and minister, and in good condition:—poor German
people! that is thy greatest man!”
But hear Goethe himself: “If I were to say what I had really been to the
Germans in general, and to the young German poets in particular, I
should say I had been their _liberator_.”
Modern times find themselves with an immense system of institutions,
established facts, accredited dogmas, customs, rules, which have come to
them from times not modern. In this system their life has to be carried
forward; yet they have a sense that this system is not of their own
creation, that it by no means corresponds exactly with the wants of
their actual life, that, for them, it is customary, not rational. The
awakening of this sense is the awakening of the modern spirit. The
modern spirit is now awake almost everywhere; the sense of want of
correspondence between the forms of modern Europe and its spirit,
between the new wine of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the
old bottles of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, or even of the
sixteenth and seventeenth, almost every one now perceives; it is no
longer dangerous to affirm that this want of correspondence exists;
people are even beginning to be shy of denying it. To remove this want
of correspondence is beginning to be the settled endeavor of most
persons of good sense. Dissolvents of the old European system of
dominant ideas and facts we must all be, all of us who have any power of
working; what we have to study is that we may not be acrid dissolvents
of it.
And how did Goethe, that grand dissolvent in an age when there were
fewer of them than at present, proceed in his task of dissolution, of
liberation of the modern European from the old routine? He shall tell us
himself. “Through me the German poets have become aware that, as man
must live from within outwards, so the artist must work from within
outwards, seeing that, make what contortions he will, he can only bring
to light his own individuality. I can clearly mark where this influence
of mine has made itself felt; there arises out of it a kind of poetry of
nature, and only in this way is it possible to be original.”
My voice shall never be joined to those which decry Goethe, and if it is
said that the foregoing is a lame and impotent conclusion to Goethe’s
declaration that he had been the liberator of the Germans in general,
and of the young German poets in particular, I say it is not. Goethe’s
profound, imperturbable naturalism is absolutely fatal to all routine
thinking, he puts the standard, once for all, inside every man instead
of outside him; when he is told, such a thing must be so, there is
immense authority and custom in favor of its being so, it has been held
to be so for a thousand years, he answers with Olympian politeness, “But
_is_ it so? is it so to _me_?” Nothing could be more really subversive
of the foundations on which the old European order rested; and it may be
remarked that no persons are so radically detached from this order, no
persons so thoroughly modern, as those who have felt Goethe’s influence
most deeply. If it is said that Goethe professes to have in this way
deeply influenced but a few persons, and those persons poets, one may
answer that he could have taken no better way to secure, in the end, the
ear of the world; for poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive,
and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.
Nevertheless the process of liberation, as Goethe worked it, though
sure, is undoubtedly slow; he came, as Heine says, to be eighty years
old in thus working it, and at the end of that time the old Middle-Age
machine was still creaking on, the thirty German courts and their
chamberlains subsisted in all their glory; Goethe himself was a
minister, and the visible triumph of the modern spirit over prescription
and routine seemed as far off as ever. It was the year 1830; the German
sovereigns had passed the preceding fifteen years in breaking the
promises of freedom they had made to their subjects when they wanted
their help in the final struggle with Napoleon. Great events were
happening in France; the revolution, defeated in 1815, had arisen from
its defeat, and was wresting from its adversaries the power. Heinrich
Heine, a young man of genius, born at Hamburg,[20] and with all the
culture of Germany, but by race a Jew; with warm sympathies for France,
whose revolution had given to his race the rights of citizenship, and
whose rule had been, as is well known, popular in the Rhine provinces,
where he passed his youth; with a passionate admiration for the great
French Emperor, with a passionate contempt for the sovereigns who had
overthrown him, for their agents, and for their policy,—Heinrich Heine
was in 1830 in no humor for any such gradual process of liberation from
the old order of things as that which Goethe had followed. His counsel
was for open war. Taking that terrible modern weapon, the pen, in his
hand, he passed the remainder of his life in one fierce battle. What was
that battle? the reader will ask. It was a life and death battle with
Philistinism.
-----
Footnote 20:
Heine’s birthplace was not Hamburg, but Düsseldorf.—ED.
-----
_Philistinism!_—we have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have
not the word because we have so much of the thing. At Soli, I imagine,
they did not talk of solecisms; and here, at the very headquarters of
Goliath, nobody talks of Philistinism. The French have adopted the term
_épicier_ (grocer), to designate the sort of being whom the Germans
designate by the Philistine; but the French term,—besides that it casts
a slur upon a respectable class, composed of living and susceptible
members, while the original Philistines are dead and buried long ago,—is
really, I think, in itself much less apt and expressive than the German
term. Efforts have been made to obtain in English some term equivalent
to _Philister_ or _épicier_; Mr. Carlyle has made several such efforts:
“respectability with its thousand gigs,” he says;—well, the occupant of
every one of these gigs is, Mr. Carlyle means, a Philistine. However,
the word _respectable_ is far too valuable a word to be thus perverted
from its proper meaning; if the English are ever to have a word for the
thing we are speaking of,—and so prodigious are the changes which the
modern spirit is introducing, that even we English shall perhaps one day
come to want such a word,—I think we had much better take the term
_Philistine_ itself.
_Philistine_ must have originally meant, in the mind of those who
invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the
chosen people, of the children of the light. The party of change, the
would-be remodelers of the old traditional European order, the invokers
of reason against custom, the representatives of the modern spirit in
every sphere where it is applicable, regarded themselves, with the
robust self-confidence natural to reformers as a chosen people, as
children of the light. They regarded their adversaries as humdrum
people, slaves to routine, enemies to light; stupid and oppressive, but
at the same time very strong. This explains the love which Heine, that
Paladin of the modern spirit, has for France; it explains the preference
which he gives to France over Germany: “the French,” he says, “are the
chosen people of the new religion, its first gospels and dogmas have
been drawn up in their language; Paris is the new Jerusalem, and the
Rhine is the Jordan which divides the consecrated land of freedom from
the land of the Philistines.” He means that the French, as a people,
have shown more accessibility to ideas than any other people; that
prescription and routine have had less hold upon them than upon any
other people; that they have shown most readiness to move and to alter
at the bidding (real or supposed) of reason. This explains, too, the
detestation which Heine had for the English: “I might settle in
England,” he says, in his exile, “if it were not that I should find
there two things, coal-smoke and Englishmen; I cannot abide either.”
What he hated in English was the “ächtbrittische Beschränktheit,” as he
calls it,—the _genuine British narrowness_. In truth, the English,
profoundly as they have modified the old Middle-Age order, great as is
the liberty which they have secured for themselves, have in all their
changes proceeded, to use a familiar expression, by the rule of thumb;
what was intolerably inconvenient to them they have suppressed, and as
they have suppressed it, not because it was irrational, but because it
was practically inconvenient, they have seldom in suppressing it
appealed to reason, but always, if possible, to some precedent, or form,
or letter, which served as a convenient instrument for their purpose,
and which saved them from the necessity of recurring to general
principles. They have thus become, in a certain sense, of all people the
most inaccessible to ideas and the most impatient of them; inaccessible
to them, because of their want of familiarity with them; and impatient
of them because they have got on so well without them, that they despise
those who, not having got on as well as themselves, still make a fuss
for what they themselves have done so well without. But there has
certainly followed from hence, in this country, somewhat of a general
depression of pure intelligence: Philistia has come to be thought by us
the true Land of Promise, and it is anything but that; the born lover of
ideas, the born hater of commonplaces, must feel in this country, that
the sky over his head is of brass and iron. The enthusiast for the idea,
for reason, values reason, the idea, in and for themselves; he values
them, irrespectively of the practical conveniences which their triumph
may obtain for him; and the man who regards the possession of these
practical conveniences as something sufficient in itself, something
which compensates for the absence or surrender of the idea, of reason,
is, in his eyes, a Philistine. This is why Heine so often and so
mercilessly attacks the liberals; much as he hates conservatism he hates
Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks conservatism itself ignobly,
not as a child of light, not in the name of the idea, is a Philistine.
Our Cobbett is thus for him, much as he disliked our clergy and
aristocracy whom Cobbett attacked, a Philistine with six fingers on
every hand and on every foot six toes, four-and-twenty in number: a
Philistine, the staff of whose spear is like a weaver’s beam. Thus he
speaks of him:—
“While I translate Cobbett’s words, the man himself comes bodily before
my mind’s eye, as I saw him at that uproarious dinner at the Crown and
Anchor Tavern, with his scolding red face and his radical laugh, in
which venomous hate mingles with a mocking exultation at his enemies’
surely approaching downfall. He is a chained cur, who falls with equal
fury on every one whom he does not know, often bites the best friend of
the house in his calves, barks incessantly, and just because of this
incessantness of his barking cannot get listened to, even when he barks
at a real thief. Therefore the distinguished thieves who plunder England
do not think it necessary to throw the growling Cobbett a bone to stop
his mouth. This makes the dog furiously savage, and he shows all his
hungry teeth. Poor old Cobbett! England’s dog! I have no love for thee,
for every vulgar nature my soul abhors; but thou touchest me to the
inmost soul with pity, as I see how thou strainest in vain to break
loose and to get at those thieves, who make off with their booty before
thy very eyes, and mock at thy fruitless springs and thine impotent
howling.”
There is balm in Philistia as well as in Gilead. A chosen circle of
children of the modern spirit, perfectly emancipated from prejudice and
commonplace, regarding the ideal side of things in all its efforts for
change, passionately despising half-measures and condescension to human
folly and obstinacy,—with a bewildered, timid, torpid multitude
behind,—conducts a country to the government of Herr von Bismarck. A
nation regarding the practical side of things in its efforts for change,
attacking not what is irrational, but what is pressingly inconvenient,
and attacking this as one body, “moving altogether if it move at all,”
and treating children of light like the very harshest of stepmothers,
comes to the prosperity and liberty of modern England. For all that,
however, Philistia (let me say it again) is not the true promised land,
as we English commonly imagine it to be; and our excessive neglect of
the idea, and consequent inaptitude for it, threatens us, at a moment
when the idea is beginning to exercise a real power in human society,
with serious future inconvenience, and, in the meanwhile, cuts us off
from the sympathy of other nations, which feel its power more than we
do.
But, in 1830, Heine very soon found that the fire-engines of the German
governments were too much for his direct efforts at incendiarism. “What
demon drove me,” he cries, “to write my _Reisebilder_, to edit a
newspaper, to plague myself with our time and its interests, to try and
shake the poor German Hodge out of his thousand years’ sleep in his
hole? What good did I get by it? Hodge opened his eyes, only to shut
them again immediately; he yawned, only to begin snoring again the next
minute louder than ever; he stretched his stiff ungainly limbs, only to
sink down again directly afterwards, and lie like a dead man in the old
bed of his accustomed habits. I must have rest; but where am I to find a
resting-place? In Germany I can no longer stay.”
This is Heine’s jesting account of his own efforts to rouse Germany: now
for his pathetic account of them; it is because he unites so much wit
with so much pathos that he is so effective a writer:—
“The Emperor Charles the Fifth sate in sore straits, in the Tyrol,
encompassed by his enemies. All his knights and courtiers had forsaken
him; not one came to his help. I know not if he had at that time the
cheese face with which Holbein has painted him for us. But I am sure
that under lip of his, with its contempt for mankind, stuck out even
more than it does in his portraits. How could he but contemn the tribe
which in the sunshine of his prosperity had fawned on him so devotedly,
and now, in his dark distress, left him all alone? Then suddenly his
door opened, and there came in a man in disguise, and, as he threw back
his cloak, the Kaiser recognized in him his faithful Conrad von der
Rosen, the court jester. This man brought him comfort and counsel, and
he was the court jester!
“O German fatherland! dear German people! I am thy Conrad von der Rosen.
The man whose proper business was to amuse thee, and who in good times
should have catered only for thy mirth, makes his way into thy prison in
time of need; here, under my cloak, I bring thee thy scepter and crown;
dost thou not recognize me, my Kaiser? If I cannot free thee, I will at
least comfort thee, and thou shalt at least have one with thee who will
prattle with thee about thy sorest affliction, and whisper courage to
thee, and love thee, and whose best joke and best blood shall be at thy
service. For thou, my people, art the true Kaiser, the true lord of the
land; thy will is sovereign, and more legitimate far than that purple
_Tel est notre plaisir_, which invokes a divine right with no better
warrant than the anointings of shaven and shorn jugglers; thy will, my
people, is the sole rightful source of power. Though now thou liest down
in thy bonds, yet in the end will thy rightful cause prevail; the day of
deliverance is at hand, a new time is beginning. My Kaiser, the night is
over, and out there glows the ruddy dawn.
“‘Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou art mistaken; perhaps thou takest
a headsman’s gleaming axe for the sun, and the red of dawn is only
blood.’
“‘No, my Kaiser, it is the sun, though it is rising in the west; these
six thousand years it has always risen in the east; it is high time
there should come a change.’
“‘Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou hast lost the bells out of thy red
cap, and it has now such an odd look, that red cap of thine!’
“‘Ah, my Kaiser, thy distress has made me shake my head so hard and
fierce, that the fool’s bells have dropped off my cap; the cap is none
the worse for that.’
“‘Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, what is that noise of breaking and
cracking outside there?’
“‘Hush! that is the saw and the carpenter’s axe, and soon the doors of
thy prison will be burst open, and thou wilt be free, my Kaiser!’
“‘Am I then really Kaiser? Ah, I forgot, it is the fool who tells me
so!’
“‘Oh, sigh not, my dear master, the air of thy prison makes thee so
desponding! when once thou hast got thy rights again, thou wilt feel
once more the bold imperial blood in thy veins, and thou wilt be proud
like a Kaiser, and violent, and gracious, and unjust, and smiling, and
ungrateful, as princes are.’
“‘Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, when I am free, what wilt thou do
then?’
“‘I will then sew new bells on to my cap.’
“‘And how shall I recompense thy fidelity?’
“‘Ah, dear master, by not leaving me to die in a ditch!’”
I wish to mark Heine’s place in modern European literature, the scope of
his activity, and his value. I cannot attempt to give here a detailed
account of his life, or a description of his separate works. In May 1831
he went over his Jordan, the Rhine, and fixed himself in his new
Jerusalem, Paris. There, henceforward, he lived, going in general to
some French watering-place in the summer, but making only one or two
short visits to Germany during the rest of his life. His works, in verse
and prose, succeeded each other without stopping; a collected edition of
them, filling seven closely-printed octavo volumes, has been published
in America;[21] in the collected editions of few people’s works is there
so little to skip. Those who wish for a single good specimen of him
should read his first important work, the work which made his
reputation, the _Reisebilder_, or “Traveling Sketches:” prose and verse,
wit and seriousness, are mingled in it, and the mingling of these is
characteristic of Heine, and is nowhere to be seen practised more
naturally and happily than in his _Reisebilder_. In 1847 his health,
which till then had always been perfectly good, gave way. He had a kind
of paralytic stroke. His malady proved to be a softening of the spinal
marrow: it was incurable; it made rapid progress. In May 1848, not a
year after his first attack, he went out of doors for the last time; but
his disease took more than eight years to kill him. For nearly eight
years he lay helpless on a couch, with the use of his limbs gone, wasted
almost to the proportions of a child, wasted so that a woman could carry
him about; the sight of one eye lost, that of the other greatly dimmed,
and requiring, that it might be exercised, to have the palsied eyelid
lifted and held up by the finger; all this, and, besides this, suffering
at short intervals paroxysms of nervous agony. I have said he was not
pre-eminently brave; but in the astonishing force of spirit with which
he retained his activity of mind, even his gayety, amid all his
suffering, and went on composing with undiminished fire to the last, he
was truly brave. Nothing could clog that aërial lightness. “Pouvez-vous
siffler?” his doctor asked him one day, when he was almost at his last
gasp;—“siffler,” as every one knows, has the double meaning of _to
whistle_ and _to hiss_:—“Hélas! non,” was his whispered answer; “pas
même une comédie de M. Scribe!” Μ. Scribe is, or was, the favorite
dramatist of the French Philistine. “My nerves,” he said to some one who
asked him about them in 1855, the year of the great Exhibition in Paris,
“my nerves are of that quite singularly remarkable miserableness of
nature, that I am convinced they would get at the Exhibition the grand
medal for pain and misery.” He read all the medical books which treated
of his complaint. “But,” said he to some one who found him thus engaged,
“what good this reading is to do me I don’t know, except that it will
qualify me to give lectures in heaven on the ignorance of doctors on
earth about diseases of the spinal marrow.” What a matter of grim
seriousness are our own ailments to most of us! yet with this gayety
Heine treated his to the end. That end, so long in coming, came at last.
Heine died on the 17th of February, 1856, at the age of fifty-eight. By
his will he forbade that his remains should be transported to Germany.
He lies buried in the cemetery of Montmartre, at Paris.
-----
Footnote 21:
A complete edition has at last appeared in Germany.
-----
His direct political action was null, and this is neither to be wondered
at nor regretted; direct political action is not the true function of
literature, and Heine was a born man of letters. Even in his favorite
France the turn taken by public affairs was not at all what he wished,
though he read French politics by no means as we in England, most of us,
read them. He thought things were tending there to the triumph of
communism; and to a champion of the idea like Heine, what there is gross
and narrow in communism was very repulsive, “It is all of no use,” he
cried on his death-bed, “the future belongs to our enemies, the
Communists, and Louis Napoleon is their John the Baptist.” “And yet,”—he
added with all his old love for that remarkable entity, so full of
attraction for him, so profoundly unknown in England, the French
people,—“do not believe that God lets all this go forward merely as a
grand comedy. Even though the Communists deny him to-day, he knows
better than they do, that a time will come when they will learn to
believe in him.” After 1831, his hopes of soon upsetting the German
Governments had died away, and his propagandism took another, a more
truly literary, character. It took the character of an intrepid
application of the modern spirit to literature. To the ideas with which
the burning questions of modern life filled him, he made all his
subject-matter minister. He touched all the great points in the career
of the human race, and here he but followed the tendency of the wide
culture of Germany; but he touched them with a wand which brought them
all under a light where the modern eye cares most to see them, and here
he gave a lesson to the culture of Germany,—so wide, so impartial, that
it is apt to become slack and powerless, and to lose itself in its
materials for want of a strong central idea round which to group all its
other ideas. So the mystic and romantic school of Germany lost itself in
the Middle Ages, was overpowered by their influence, came to ruin by its
vain dreams of renewing them. Heine, with a far profounder sense of the
mystic and romantic charm of the Middle Age than Gœrres, or Brentano, or
Arnim, Heine the chief romantic poet of Germany, is yet also much more
than a romantic poet; he is a great modern poet, he is not conquered by
the Middle Age, he has a talisman by which he can feel,—along with but
above the power of the fascinating Middle Age itself,—the power of
modern ideas.
A French critic of Heine thinks he has said enough in saying that Heine
proclaimed in German countries, with beat of drum, the ideas of 1789,
and that at the cheerful noise of his drum the ghosts of the Middle Age
took to flight. But this is rather too French an account of the matter.
Germany, that vast mine of ideas, had no need to import ideas, as such,
from any foreign country; and if Heine had carried ideas, as such, from
France into Germany, he would but have been carrying coals to Newcastle.
But that for which France, far less meditative than Germany, is eminent,
is the prompt, ardent, and practical application of an idea, when she
seizes it, in all departments of human activity which admit it. And that
in which Germany most fails, and by failing in which she appears so
helpless and impotent, is just the practical application of her
innumerable ideas. “When Candide,” says Heine himself, “came to
Eldorado, he saw in the streets a number of boys who were playing with
gold-nuggets instead of marbles. This degree of luxury made him imagine
that they must be the king’s children, and he was not a little
astonished when he found that in Eldorado gold-nuggets are of no more
value than marbles are with us, and that the schoolboys play with them.
A similar thing happened to a friend of mine, a foreigner, when he came
to Germany and first read German books. He was perfectly astounded at
the wealth of ideas which he found in them; but he soon remarked that
ideas in Germany are as plentiful as gold-nuggets in Eldorado, and that
those writers whom he had taken for intellectual princes, were in
reality only common schoolboys.” Heine was, as he called himself, a
“Child of the French Revolution,” an “Initiator,” because he vigorously
assured the Germans that ideas were not counters or marbles, to be
played with for their own sake; because he exhibited in literature
modern ideas applied with the utmost freedom, clearness, and
originality. And therefore he declared that the great task of his life
had been the endeavor to establish a cordial relation between France and
Germany. It is because he thus operates a junction between the French
spirit, and German ideas and German culture, that he founds something
new, opens a fresh period, and deserves the attention of criticism far
more than the German poets his contemporaries, who merely continue an
old period till it expires. It may be predicted that in the literature
of other countries, too, the French spirit is destined to make its
influence felt,—as an element, in alliance with the native spirit, of
novelty and movement,—as it has made its influence felt in German
literature; fifty years hence a critic will be demonstrating to our
grandchildren how this phenomenon has come to pass.
We in England, in our great burst of literature during the first thirty
years of the present century, had no manifestation of the modern spirit,
as this spirit manifests itself in Goethe’s works or Heine’s. And the
reason is not far to seek. We had neither the German wealth of ideas,
nor the French enthusiasm for applying ideas. There reigned in the mass
of the nation that inveterate inaccessibility to ideas, that
Philistinism,—to use the German nickname,—which reacts even on the
individual genius that is exempt from it. In our greatest literary
epoch, that of the Elizabethan age, English society at large was
accessible to ideas, was permeated by them, was vivified by them, to a
degree which has never been reached in England since. Hence the unique
greatness in English literature of Shakspeare and his contemporaries.
They were powerfully upheld by the intellectual life of their nation;
they applied freely in literature the then modern ideas,—the ideas of
the Renascence and the Reformation. A few years afterwards the great
English middle class, the kernel of the nation, the class whose
intelligent sympathy had upheld a Shakspeare, entered the prison of
Puritanism, and had the key turned on its spirit there for two hundred
years. _He enlargeth a nation_, says Job, _and straiteneth it again_.
In the literary movement of the beginning of the nineteenth century the
signal attempt to apply freely the modern spirit was made in England by
two members of the aristocratic class, Byron and Shelley. Aristocracies
are, as such, naturally impenetrable by ideas; but their individual
members have a high courage and a turn for breaking bounds; and a man of
genius, who is the born child of the idea, happening to be born in the
aristocratic ranks, chafes against the obstacles which prevent him from
freely developing it. But Byron and Shelley did not succeed in their
attempt freely to apply the modern spirit in English literature; they
could not succeed in it; the resistance to baffle them, the want of
intelligent sympathy to guide and uphold them, were too great. Their
literary creation, compared with the literary creation of Shakspeare and
Spenser, compared with the literary creation of Goethe and Heine, is a
failure. The best literary creation of that time in England proceeded
from men who did not make the same bold attempt as Byron and Shelley.
What, in fact, was the career of the chief English men of letters, their
contemporaries? The gravest of them, Wordsworth, retired (in Middle-Age
phrase) into a monastery. I mean, he plunged himself in the inward life,
he voluntarily cut himself off from the modern spirit. Coleridge took to
opium. Scott became the historiographer-royal of feudalism. Keats
passionately gave himself up to a sensuous genius, to his faculty for
interpreting nature; and he died of consumption at twenty-five.
Wordsworth, Scott, and Keats have left admirable works; far more solid
and complete works than those which Byron and Shelley have left. But
their works have this defect,—they do not belong to that which is the
main current of the literature of modern epochs, they do not apply
modern ideas to life; they constitute, therefore, _minor currents_, and
all other literary work of our day, however popular, which has the same
defect, also constitutes but a minor current. Byron and Shelley will
long be remembered, long after the inadequacy of their actual work is
clearly recognized for their passionate, their Titanic effort to flow in
the main stream of modern literature; their names will be greater than
their writings; _stat magni nominis umbra_.
Heine’s literary good fortune was superior to that of Byron and Shelley.
His theater of operations was Germany, whose Philistinism does not
consist in her want of ideas, or in her inaccessibility to ideas, for
she teems with them and loves them, but, as I have said, in her feeble
and hesitating application of modern ideas to life. Heine’s intense
modernism, his absolute freedom, his utter rejection of stock classicism
and stock romanticism, his bringing all things under the point of view
of the nineteenth century, were understood and laid to heart by Germany,
through virtue of her immense, tolerant intellectualism, much as there
was in all Heine said to affront and wound Germany. The wit and ardent
modern spirit of France Heine joined to the culture, the sentiment, the
thought of Germany. This is what makes him so remarkable; his wonderful
clearness, lightness, and freedom, united with such power of feeling,
and width of range. Is there anywhere keener wit than in his story of
the French abbé who was his tutor, and who wanted to get from him that
_la religion_ is French for _der Glaube_: “Six times did he ask me the
question: ‘Henry, what is _der Glaube_ in French?’ and six times, and
each time with a greater burst of tears, did I answer him—‘It is _le
crédit_.’ And at the seventh time, his face purple with rage, the
infuriated questioner screamed out: ‘It is _la religion_;’ and a rain of
cuffs descended upon me, and all the other boys burst out laughing.
Since that day I have never been able to hear _la religion_ mentioned,
without feeling a tremor run through my back, and my cheeks grow red
with shame.” Or in that comment on the fate of Professor Saalfeld, who
had been addicted to writing furious pamphlets against Napoleon, and who
was a professor at Göttingen, a great seat, according to Heine, of
pedantry and Philistinism: “It is curious,” says Heine, “the three
greatest adversaries of Napoleon have all of them ended miserably.
Castlereagh cut his own throat; Louis the Eighteenth rotted upon his
throne; and Professor Saalfeld is still a professor at Göttingen.” It is
impossible to go beyond that.
What wit, again, in that saying which every one has heard: “The
Englishman loves liberty like his lawful wife, the Frenchman loves her
like his mistress, the German loves her like his old grandmother.” But
the turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying is not so well known;
and it is by that turn he shows himself the born poet he is,—full of
delicacy and tenderness, of inexhaustible resource, infinitely new and
striking:—
“And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how things may turn out. The
grumpy Englishman, in an ill-temper with his wife, is capable of some
day putting a rope round her neck, and taking her to be sold at
Smithfield. The inconstant Frenchman may become unfaithful to his adored
mistress, and be seen fluttering about the Palais Royal after another.
_But the German will never quite abandon his old grandmother_; he will
always keep for her a nook by the chimney-corner, where she can tell her
fairy stories to the listening children.”
Is it possible to touch more delicately and happily both the weakness
and the strength of Germany;—pedantic, simple, enslaved, free,
ridiculous, admirable Germany?
And Heine’s verse,—his _Lieder_? Oh, the comfort, after dealing with
French people of genius, irresistibly impelled to try and express
themselves in verse, launching out into a deed which destiny has sown
with so many rocks for them,—the comfort of coming to a man of genius,
who finds in verse his freest and most perfect expression, whose voyage
over the deep of poetry destiny makes smooth! After the rhythm, to us,
at any rate, with the German paste in our composition, so deeply
unsatisfying, of—
“Ah! que me dites-vous, et que vous dit mon âme?
Que dit le ciel à l’aube et la flamme à la flamme?”
what a blessing to arrive at rhythms like—
“Take, oh, take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn—”
or—
“Siehst sehr sterbeblässlich aus,
Doch getrost! du bist zu Haus—”
in which one’s soul can take pleasure! The magic of Heine’s poetical
form is incomparable; he chiefly uses a form of old German popular
poetry, a ballad-form which has more rapidity and grace than any
ballad-form of ours; he employs this form with the most exquisite
lightness and ease, and yet it has at the same time the inborn fulness,
pathos, and old-world charm of all true forms of popular poetry. Thus in
Heine’s poetry, too, one perpetually blends the impression of French
modernism and clearness, with that of German sentiment and fulness; and
to give this blended impression is, as I have said, Heine’s great
characteristic. To feel it, one must read him; he gives it in his form
as well as in his contents, and by translation I can only reproduce it
so far as his contents give it. But even the contents of many of his
poems are capable of giving a certain sense of it. Here, for instance,
is a poem in which he makes his profession of faith to an innocent
beautiful soul, a sort of Gretchen, the child of some simple mining
people having their hut among the pines at the foot of the Hartz
Mountains, who reproaches him with not holding the old articles of the
Christian creed:—
“Ah, my child, while I was yet a little boy, while I yet sate upon my
mother’s knee, I believed in God the Father, who rules up there in
Heaven, good and great;
“Who created the beautiful earth, and the beautiful men and women
thereon; who ordained for sun, moon, and stars their courses.
“When I got bigger, my child, I comprehended yet a great deal more than
this, and comprehended, and grew intelligent; and I believe on the Son
also;
“On the beloved Son, who loved us, and revealed love to us; and, for his
reward, as always happens, was crucified by the people.
“Now, when I am grown up, have read much, have traveled much, my heart
swells within me, and with my whole heart I believe on the Holy Ghost.
“The greatest miracles were of his working, and still greater miracles
doth he even now work; he burst in sunder the oppressor’s stronghold,
and he burst in sunder the bondsman’s yoke.
“He heals old death-wounds, and renews the old right; all mankind are
one race of noble equals before him.
“He chases away the evil clouds and the dark cobwebs of the brain, which
have spoilt love and joy for us, which day and night have loured on us.
“A thousand knights, well harnessed, has the Holy Ghost chosen out to
fulfil his will, and he has put courage into their souls.
“Their good swords flash, their bright banners wave; what, thou wouldst
give much, my child, to look upon such gallant knights?
“Well, on me, my child, look! kiss me, and look boldly upon me! one of
those knights of the Holy Ghost am I.”
One has only to turn over the pages of his _Romancero_,—a collection of
poems written in the first years of his illness, with his whole power
and charm still in them, and not, like his latest poems of all,
painfully touched by the air of his _Matrazzen-gruft_, his
“mattress-grave,”—to see Heine’s width of range; the most varied figures
succeed one another,—Rhampsinitus, Edith with the Swan Neck, Charles the
First, Marie Antoinette, King David, a heroine of _Mabille_, Melisanda
of Tripoli, Richard Cœur de Lion, Pedro the Cruel, Firdusi, Cortes, Dr.
Döllinger;—but never does Heine attempt to be _hübsch objectiv_,
“beautifully objective,” to become in spirit an old Egyptian, or an old
Hebrew, or a Middle-Age knight, or a Spanish adventurer, or an English
royalist; he always remains Heinrich Heine, a son of the nineteenth
century. To give a notion of his tone, I will quote a few stanzas at the
end of the _Spanish Atridæ_, in which he describes, in the character of
a visitor at the court of Henry of Transtamare at Segovia, Henry’s
treatment of the children of his brother, Pedro the Cruel. Don Diego
Albuquerque, his neighbor, strolls after dinner through the castle with
him:
“In the cloister-passage, which leads to the kennels where are kept the
king’s hounds, that with their growling and yelping let you know a long
way off where they are.
“There I saw, built into the wall, and with a strong iron grating for
its outer face, a cell like a cage.
“Two human figures sate therein, two young boys; chained by the leg,
they crouched in the dirty straw.
“Hardly twelve years old seemed the one, the other not much older; their
faces fair and noble, but pale and wan with sickness.
“They were all in rags, almost naked; and their lean bodies showed
wounds, the marks of ill-usage; both of them shivered with fever.
“They looked up at me out of the depth of their misery; ‘who,’ I cried
in horror to Don Diego, ‘are these pictures of wretchedness?’
“Don Diego seemed embarrassed; he looked round to see that no one was
listening; then he gave a deep sigh; and at last, putting on the easy
tone of a man of the world, he said:
“‘These are a pair of king’s sons, who were early left orphans; the name
of their father was King Pedro, the name of their mother, Maria de
Padilla.
“‘After the great battle of Navarette, when Henry of Transtamare had
relieved his brother, King Pedro, of the troublesome burden of the
crown.
“‘And likewise of that still more troublesome burden, which is called
life, then Don Henry’s victorious magnanimity had to deal with his
brother’s children.
“‘He has adopted them, as an uncle should; and he has given them free
quarters in his own castle.
“‘The room which he has assigned to them is certainly rather small, but
then it is cool in summer, and not intolerably cold in winter.
“‘Their fare is rye-bread, which tastes as sweet as if the goddess Ceres
had baked it express for her beloved Proserpine.
“‘Not unfrequently, too, he sends a scullion to them with garbanzos, and
then the young gentlemen know that it is Sunday in Spain.
“‘But it is not Sunday every day, and garbanzos do not come every day;
and the master of the hounds gives them the treat of his whip.
“‘For the master of the hounds, who has under his superintendence the
kennels and the pack, and the nephews’ cage also.
“‘Is the unfortunate husband of that lemon-faced woman with the white
ruff, whom we remarked to-day at dinner.
“‘And she scolds so sharp, that often her husband snatches his whip, and
rushes down here, and gives it to the dogs and to the poor little boys.
“‘But his majesty has expressed his disapproval of such proceedings, and
has given orders that for the future his nephews are to be treated
differently from the dogs.
“‘He has determined no longer to entrust the disciplining of his nephews
to a mercenary stranger, but to carry it out with his own hands.’
“Don Diego stopped abruptly; for the seneschal of the castle joined us,
and politely expressed his hope that we had dined to our satisfaction.”
Observe how the irony of the whole of that, finishing with the grim
innuendo of the last stanza but one, is at once truly masterly and truly
modern.
No account of Heine is complete which does not notice the Jewish element
in him. His race he treated with the same freedom with which he treated
everything else, but he derived a great force from it, and no one knew
this better than he himself. He has excellently pointed out how in the
sixteenth century there was a double renascence,—a Hellenic renascence
and a Hebrew renascence,—and how both have been great powers ever since.
He himself had in him both the spirit of Greece and the spirit of Judæa;
both these spirits reach the infinite, which is the true goal of all
poetry and all art,—the Greek spirit by beauty, the Hebrew spirit by
sublimity. By his perfection of literary form, by his love of clearness,
by his love of beauty, Heine is Greek; by his intensity, by his
untamableness, by his “longing which cannot be uttered,” he is Hebrew.
Yet what Hebrew ever treated the things of the Hebrews like this?—
“There lives at Hamburg, in a one-roomed lodging in the Baker’s Broad
Walk, a man whose name is Moses Lump; all the week he goes about in wind
and rain, with his pack on his back, to earn his few shillings; but when
on Friday evening he comes home, he finds the candlestick with seven
candles lighted, and the table covered with a fair white cloth, and he
puts away from him his pack and his cares, and he sits down to table
with his squinting wife and yet more squinting daughter, and eats fish
with them, fish which has been dressed in beautiful white garlic sauce,
sings therewith the grandest psalms of King David, rejoices with his
whole heart over the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt,
rejoices, too, that all the wicked ones who have done the children of
Israel hurt, have ended by taking themselves off; that King Pharaoh,
Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Antiochus, Titus, and all such people, are well
dead, while he, Moses Lump, is yet alive, and eating fish with wife and
daughter; and I can tell you, Doctor, the fish is delicate and the man
is happy, he has no call to torment himself about culture, he sits
contented in his religion and in his green bedgown, like Diogenes in his
tub, he contemplates with satisfaction his candles, which he on no
account will snuff for himself; and I can tell you, if the candles burn
a little dim, and the snuffers-woman, whose business it is to snuff
them, is not at hand, and Rothschild the Great were at that moment to
come in, with all his brokers, bill discounters, agents, and chief
clerks, with whom he conquers the world, and Rothschild were to say:
‘Moses Lump, ask of me what favor you will, and it shall be granted
you;’—Doctor, I am convinced, Moses Lump would quietly answer: ‘Snuff me
those candles!’ and Rothschild the Great would exclaim with admiration:
‘If I were not Rothschild, I would be Moses Lump.’”
There Heine shows us his own people by its comic side; in the poem of
the _Princess Sabbath_ he shows it to us by a more serious side. The
Princess Sabbath, “the _tranquil Princess_, pearl and flower of all
beauty, fair as the Queen of Sheba, Solomon’s bosom friend, that blue
stocking from Ethiopia, who wanted to shine by her _esprit_, and with
her wise riddles made herself in the long run a bore” (with Heine the
sarcastic turn is never far off), this princess has for her betrothed a
prince whom sorcery has transformed into an animal of lower race, the
Prince Israel.
“A dog with the desires of a dog, he wallows all the week long in the
filth and refuse of life, amidst the jeers of the boys in the street.
“But every Friday evening, at the twilight hour, suddenly the magic
passes off, and the dog becomes once more a human being.
“A man with the feelings of a man, with head and heart raised aloft, in
festal garb, in almost clean garb, he enters the halls of his Father.
“Hail, beloved halls of my royal Father! Ye tents of Jacob, I kiss with
my lips your holy door-posts!”
Still more he shows us this serious side in his beautiful poem on Jehuda
ben Halevy, a poet belonging to “the great golden age of the Arabian,
Old-Spanish, Jewish school of poets,” a contemporary of the
troubadours:—
“He, too,—the hero whom we sing,—Jehuda ben Halevy, too, had his
lady-love; but she was of a special sort.
“She was no Laura, whose eyes, mortal stars, in the cathedral on Good
Friday kindled that world-renowned flame.
“She was no châtelaine, who in the blooming glory of her youth presided
at tourneys, and awarded the victor’s crown.
“No casuistess in the Gay Science was she, no lady _doctrinaire_, who
delivered her oracles in the judgment-chamber of a Court of Love.
“She, whom the Rabbi loved, was a woe-begone poor darling, a mourning
picture of desolation ... and her name was Jerusalem.”
Jehuda ben Halevy, like the Crusaders, makes his pilgrimage to
Jerusalem; and there, amid the ruins, sings a song of Sion which has
become famous among his people:—
“That lay of pearled tears is the wide-famed Lament, which is sung in
all the scattered tents of Jacob throughout the world.
“On the ninth day of the month which is called Ab, on the anniversary of
Jerusalem’s destruction by Titus Vespasianus.
“Yes, that is the song of Sion, which Jehuda ben Halevy sang with his
dying breath amid the holy ruins of Jerusalem.
“Barefoot, and in penitential weeds, he sate there upon the fragment of
a fallen column; down to his breast fell,
“Like a gray forest, his hair; and cast a weird shadow on the face which
looked out through it,—his troubled pale face, with the spiritual eyes.
“So he sate and sang, like unto a seer out of the foretime to look upon;
Jeremiah, the Ancient, seemed to have risen out of his grave.
“But a bold Saracen came riding that way, aloft on his barb, lolling in
his saddle, and brandishing a naked javelin;
“Into the breast of the poor singer he plunged his deadly shaft, and
shot away like a winged shadow.
“Quietly flowed the Rabbi’s life-blood, quietly he sang his song to an
end; and his last dying sigh was Jerusalem!”
But, most of all, Heine shows us this side in a strange poem describing
a public dispute, before King Pedro and his Court, between a Jewish and
a Christian champion, on the merits of their respective faiths. In the
strain of the Jew all the fierceness of the old Hebrew genius, all its
rigid defiant Monotheism, appear:—
“Our God has not died like a poor innocent lamb for mankind; he is no
gushing philanthropist, no declaimer.
“Our God is not love, caressing is not his line; but he is a God of
thunder, and he is a God of revenge.
“The lightnings of his wrath strike inexorably every sinner, and the
sins of the fathers are often visited upon their remote posterity.
“Our God, he is alive, and in his hall of heaven he goes on existing
away, throughout all the eternities.
“Our God, too is a God in robust health, no myth, pale and thin as
sacrificial wafers, or as shadows by Cocytus.
“Our God is strong. In his hand he upholds sun, moon, and stars; thrones
break, nations reel to and fro, when he knits his forehead.
“Our God loves music, the voice of the harp and the song of feasting;
but the sound of church-bells he hates, as he hates the grunting of
pigs.”
Nor must Heine’s sweetest note be unheard,—his plaintive note, his note
of melancholy. Here is a strain which came from him as he lay, in the
winter night, on his “mattress-grave” at Paris, and let his thoughts
wander home to Germany, “the great child, entertaining herself with her
Christmas-tree.” “Thou tookest,”—he cries to the German exile,—
“Thou tookest thy flight towards sunshine and happiness; naked and poor
returnest thou back. German truth, German shirts,—one gets them worn to
tatters in foreign parts.
“Deadly pale are thy looks, but take comfort, thou art at home! one lies
warm in German earth, warm as by the old pleasant fireside.
“Many a one, alas, became crippled, and could get home no more!
longingly he stretches out his arms; God have mercy upon him!”
God have mercy upon him! for what remain of the days of the years of his
life are few and evil. “Can it be that I still actually exist? My body
is so shrunk that there is hardly anything of me left but my voice, and
my bed makes me think of the melodious grave of the enchanter Merlin,
which is in the forest of Broceliand in Brittany, under high oaks whose
tops shine like green flames to heaven. Ah, I envy thee those trees,
brother Merlin, and their fresh waving! for over my mattress-grave here
in Paris no green leaves rustle; and early and late I hear nothing but
the rattle of carriages, hammering, scolding, and the jingle of the
piano. A grave without rest, death without the privileges of the
departed, who have no longer any need to spend money, or to write
letters, or to compose books. What a melancholy situation!”
He died, and has left a blemished name; with his crying faults,—his
intemperate susceptibility, his unscrupulousness in passion, his
inconceivable attacks on his enemies, his still more inconceivable
attacks on his friends, his want of generosity, his sensuality, his
incessant mocking,—how could it be otherwise? Not only was he not one of
Mr. Carlyle’s “respectable” people, he was profoundly _dis_respectable;
and not even the merit of not being a Philistine can make up for a man’s
being that. To his intellectual deliverance there was an addition of
something else wanting, and that something else was something immense;
the old-fashioned, laborious, eternally needful moral deliverance.
Goethe says that he was deficient in _love_; to me his weakness seems to
be not so much a deficiency in love as a deficiency in self-respect, in
true dignity of character. But on this negative side of one’s criticism
of a man of great genius, I for my part, when I have once clearly marked
that this negative side is and must be there, have no pleasure in
dwelling. I prefer to say of Heine something positive. He is not an
adequate interpreter of the modern world. He is only a brilliant soldier
in the Liberation War of humanity. But, such as he is, he is (and
posterity too, I am quite sure, will say this), in the European poetry
of that quarter of a century which follows the death of Goethe,
incomparably the most important figure.
What a spendthrift, one is tempted to cry, is Nature! With what
prodigality, in the march of generations, she employs human power,
content to gather almost always little result from it, sometimes none!
Look at Byron, that Byron whom the present generation of Englishmen are
forgetting; Byron, the greatest natural force, the greatest elementary
power, I cannot but think which has appeared in our literature since
Shakspeare. And what became of this wonderful production of nature? He
shattered himself, he inevitably shattered himself to pieces against the
huge, black, cloud-topped, interminable precipice of British
Philistinism. But Byron, it may be said, was eminent only by his genius,
only by his inborn force and fire; he had not the intellectual equipment
of a supreme modern poet; except for his genius he was an ordinary
nineteenth-century English gentleman, with little culture and with no
ideas. Well, then, look at Heine. Heine had all the culture of Germany;
in his head fermented all the ideas of modern Europe. And what have we
got from Heine? A half-result, for want of moral balance, and of
nobleness of soul and character. That is what I say; there is so much
power, so many seem able to run well, so many give promise of running
well;—so few reach the goal, so few are chosen. _Many are called, few
chosen._
VI.
PAGAN AND MEDIÆVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.
I read the other day in the _Dublin Review_:—“We Catholic are apt to be
cowed and scared by the lordly oppression of public opinion, and not to
bear ourselves as men in the face of the anti-Catholic society of
England. It is good to have an habitual consciousness that the public
opinion of Catholic Europe looks upon Protestant England with a mixture
of impatience and compassion, which more than balances the arrogance of
the English people towards the Catholic Church in these countries.”
The Holy Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman, can take very good care
of herself, and I am not going to defend her against the scorn of Exeter
Hall. Catholicism is not a great visible force in this country, and the
mass of mankind will always treat lightly even things the most
venerable, if they do not present themselves as visible forces before
its eyes. In Catholic countries, as the _Dublin Review_ itself says with
triumph, they make very little account of the greatness of Exeter Hall.
The majority has eyes only for the things of the majority, and in
England the immense majority is Protestant. And yet, in spite of all the
shocks which the feeling of a good Catholic, like the writer in the
_Dublin Review_, has in this Protestant country inevitably to undergo,
in spite of the contemptuous insensibility to the grandeur of Rome which
he finds so general and so hard to bear, how much has he to console him,
how many acts of homage to the greatness of his religion may he see if
he has his eyes open! I will tell him of one of them. Let him go in
London to that delightful spot, that Happy Island in Bloomsbury, the
reading-room of the British Museum. Let him visit its sacred quarter,
the region where its theological books are placed. I am almost afraid to
say what he will find there, for fear Mr. Spurgeon, like a second Caliph
Omar, should give the library to the flames. He will find an immense
Catholic work, the collection of the Abbé Migne, lording it over that
whole region, reducing to insignificance the feeble Protestant forces
which hang upon its skirts. Protestantism is duly represented, indeed:
the librarian knows his business too well to suffer it to be otherwise;
all the varieties of Protestantism are there; there is the Library of
Anglo-Catholic Theology, learned, decorous, exemplary, but a little
uninteresting; there are the works of Calvin, rigid, militant, menacing;
there are the works of Dr. Chalmers, the Scotch thistle valiantly doing
duty as the rose of Sharon, but keeping something very Scotch about it
all the time; there are the works of Dr. Channing, the last word of
religious philosophy in a land where every one has some culture, and
where superiorities are discountenanced,—the flower of moral and
intelligent mediocrity. But how are all these divided against one
another, and how, though they were all united, are they dwarfed by the
Catholic Leviathan, their neighbor! Majestic in its blue and gold unity,
this fills shelf after shelf and compartment after compartment, its
right mounting up into heaven among the white folios of the _Acta
Sanctorum_, its left plunging down into hell among the yellow octavos of
the _Law Digest_. Everything is there, in that immense _Patrologiæ
Cursus Completus_, in that _Encyclopédie Théologique_, that _Nouvelle
Encyclopédie Théologique_, that _Troisième Encyclopédie Théologique_;
religion, philosophy, history, biography, arts, sciences, bibliography,
gossip. The work embraces the whole range of human interests; like one
of the great Middle-Age Cathedrals, it is in itself a study for a life.
Like the net in Scripture, it drags everything to land, bad and good,
lay and ecclesiastical, sacred and profane, so that it be but matter of
human concern. Wide-embracing as the power whose product it is! a power,
for history at any rate, eminently _the Church_; not, perhaps, the
Church of the future, but indisputably the Church of the past and, in
the past, the Church of the multitude.
This is why the man of imagination—nay, and the philosopher too, in
spite of her propensity to burn him—will always have a weakness for the
Catholic Church; because of the rich treasures of human life which have
been stored within her pale. The mention of other religious bodies, or
of their leaders, at once calls up in our mind the thought of men of a
definite type as their adherents; the mention of Catholicism suggests no
such special following. Anglicanism suggests the English episcopate;
Calvin’s name suggests Dr. Candlish; Chalmers’s, the Duke of Argyll;
Channing’s, Boston society; but Catholicism suggests,—what shall I
say?—all the pell-mell of the men and women of Shakspeare’s plays. This
abundance the Abbé Migne’s collection faithfully reflects. People talk
of this or that work which they would choose, if they were to pass their
life with only one; for my part I think I would choose the Abbé Migne’s
collection. _Quicquid agunt homines_,—everything, as I have said, is
there. Do not seek in it splendor of form, perfection of editing; its
paper is common, its type ugly, its editing indifferent, its printing
careless. The greatest and most baffling crowd of misprints I ever met
in my life occurs in a very important page of the introduction to the
_Dictionnaire des Apocryphes_. But this is just what you have in the
world,—quantity rather than quality. Do not seek in it impartiality, the
critical spirit; in reading it you must do the criticism for yourself;
it loves criticism as little as the world loves it. Like the world, it
chooses to have things all its own way, to abuse its adversary, to back
its own notion through thick and thin, to put forward all the _pros_ for
its own notion, to suppress all the _contras_; it does just all that the
world does, and all that the critical shrinks from. Open the
_Dictionnaire des Erreurs Sociales_: “The religious persecutions of
Henry the Eighth’s and Edward the Sixth’s time abated a little in the
reign of Mary, to break out again with new fury in the reign of
Elizabeth.” There is a summary of the history of religious persecution
under the Tudors! But how unreasonable to reproach the Abbé Migne’s work
with wanting a criticism, which, by the very nature of things, it cannot
have, and not rather to be grateful to it for its abundance, its
variety, its infinite suggestiveness, its happy adoption, in many a
delicate circumstance, of the urbane tone and temper of the man of the
world, instead of the acrid tone and temper of the fanatic!
Still, in spite of their fascinations, the contents of this collection
sometimes rouse the critical spirit within one. It happened that lately,
after I had been thinking much of Marcus Aurelius and his times, I took
down the _Dictionnaire des Origines du Christianisme_, to see what it
had to say about paganism and pagans. I found much what I expected. I
read the article, _Révélation Évangélique, sa Nécessité_. There I found
what a sink of iniquity was the whole pagan world; how one Roman fed his
oysters on his slaves, how another put a slave to death that a curious
friend might see what dying was like; how Galen’s mother tore and bit
her waiting-women when she was in a passion with them. I found this
account of the religion of paganism: “Paganism invented a mob of
divinities with the most hateful character, and attributed to them the
most monstrous and abominable crimes. It personified in them
drunkenness, incest, kidnapping, adultery, sensuality, knavery, cruelty,
and rage.” And I found that from this religion there followed such
practice as was to be expected: “What must naturally have been the state
of morals under the influence of such a religion, which penetrated with
its own spirit the public life, the family life, and the individual life
of antiquity?”
The colors in this picture are laid on very thick, and I for my part
cannot believe that any human societies, with a religion and practice
such as those just described, could ever have endured as the societies
of Greece and Rome endured, still less have done what the societies of
Greece and Rome did. We are not brought far by descriptions of the vices
of great cities, or even of individuals driven mad by unbounded means of
self-indulgence. Feudal and aristocratic life in Christendom has
produced horrors of selfishness and cruelty not surpassed by the grandee
of pagan Rome; and then, again, in antiquity there is Marcus Aurelius’s
mother to set against Galen’s. Eminent examples of vice and virtue in
individuals prove little as to the state of societies. What, under the
first emperors, was the condition of the Roman poor upon the Aventine
compared with that of our poor in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green? What,
in comfort, morals, and happiness, were the rural population of the
Sabine country under Augustus’s rule, compared with the rural population
of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire under the rule of Queen Victoria?
But these great questions are not now for me. Without trying to answer
them, I ask myself, when I read such declamation as the foregoing, if I
can find anything that will give me a near, distinct sense of the real
difference in spirit and sentiment between paganism and Christianity,
and of the natural effect of this difference upon people in general. I
take a representative religious poem of paganism,—of the paganism which
all the world has in its mind when it speaks of paganism. To be a
representative poem, it must be one for popular use, one that the
multitude listens to. Such a religious poem may be at the end of one of
the best and happiest of Theocritus’s idylls, the fifteenth. In order
that the reader may the better go along with me in the line of thought I
am following, I will translate it; and, that he may see the medium in
which religious poetry of this sort is found existing, the society out
of which it grows, the people who form it and are formed by it, I will
translate the whole, or nearly the whole, of the idyll (it is not long)
in which the poem occurs.
The idyll is dramatic. Somewhere about two hundred and eighty years
before the Christian era, a couple of Syracusan women, staying at
Alexandria, agreed on the occasion of a great religious solemnity,—the
feast of Adonis,—to go together to the palace of King Ptolemy
Philadelphus, to see the image of Adonis, which the queen Arsinoe,
Ptolemy’s wife, had had decorated with peculiar magnificence. A hymn, by
a celebrated performer, was to be recited over the image. The names of
the two women are Gorgo and Praxinoe; their maids, who are mentioned in
the poem, are called Eunoe and Eutychis. Gorgo comes by appointment to
Praxinoe’s house to fetch her, and there the dialogue begins:—
_Gorgo._—Is Praxinoe at home?
_Praxinoe._—My dear Gorgo, at last! Yes, here I am. Eunoe, find a
chair,—get a cushion for it.
_Gorgo._—It will do beautifully as it is.
_Praxinoe._—Do sit down.
_Gorgo._—Oh, this gad-about spirit! I could hardly get to you, Praxinoe,
through all the crowd and all the carriages. Nothing but heavy boots,
nothing but men in uniform. And what a journey it is! My dear child, you
really live _too_ far off.
_Praxinoe._—It is all that insane husband of mine. He has chosen to come
out here to the end of the world, and take a hole of a place,—for a
house it is not,—on purpose that you and I might not be neighbors. He is
always just the same; anything to quarrel with one! anything for spite!
_Gorgo._—My dear, don’t talk so of your husband before the little
fellow. Just see how astonished he looks at you. Never mind, Zopyrio, my
pet, she is not talking about papa.
_Praxinoe._—Good heavens! the child does really understand.
_Gorgo._—Pretty papa!
_Praxinoe._—That pretty papa of his the other day (though I told him
beforehand to mind what he was about), when I sent him to a shop to buy
soap and rouge, brought me home salt instead;—stupid, great, big,
interminable animal!
_Gorgo._—Mine is just the fellow to him.... But never mind now, get on
your things and let us be off to the palace to see the Adonis. I hear
the Queen’s decorations are something splendid.
_Praxinoe._—In grand people’s houses everything is grand. What things
you have seen in Alexandria! What a deal you will have to tell to
anybody who has never been here!
_Gorgo._—Come, we ought to be going.
_Praxinoe._—Every day is holiday to people who have nothing to do.
Eunoe, pick up your work; and take care, lazy girl, how you leave it
lying about again; the cats find it just the bed they like. Come, stir
yourself, fetch me some water, quick! I wanted the water first, and the
girl brings me the soap. Never mind; give it me. Not all that,
extravagant! Now pour out the water;—stupid! why don’t you take care of
my dress? That will do. I have got my hands washed as it pleased God.
Where is the key of the large wardrobe? Bring it here;—quick!
_Gorgo._—Praxinoe, you can’t think how well that dress, made full, as
you have got it, suits you. Tell me, how much did it cost?—the dress by
itself, I mean.
_Praxinoe._—Don’t talk of it, Gorgo: more than eight guineas of good
hard money. And about the work on it I have almost worn my life out.
_Gorgo._—Well, you couldn’t have done better.
_Praxinoe._—Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and put my hat properly on my
head;—properly. No, child (_to her little boy_), I am not going to take
you; there’s a bogy on horseback, who bites. Cry as much as you like;
I’m not going to have you lamed for life. Now we’ll start. Nurse, take
the little one and amuse him; call the dog in, and shut the street-door.
(_They go out._) Good heavens! what a crowd of people! How on earth are
we ever to get through all this? They are like ants: you can’t count
them. My dearest Gorgo, what will become of us? here are the royal Horse
Guards. My good man, don’t ride over me! Look at that bay horse rearing
bolt upright; what a vicious one! Eunoe, you mad girl, do take
care!—that horse will certainly be the death of the man on his back. How
glad I am now, that I left the child safe at home!
_Gorgo._—All right, Praxinoe, we are safe behind them; and they have
gone on to where they are stationed.
_Praxinoe._—Well, yes, I begin to revive again. From the time I was a
little girl I have had more horror of horses and snakes than of anything
in the world. Let us get on; here’s a great crowd coming this way upon
us.
_Gorgo_ (_to an old woman_).—Mother, are you from the palace?
_Old Woman._—Yes, my dears.
_Gorgo._—Has one a tolerable chance of getting there?
_Old Woman._—My pretty young lady, the Greeks got to Troy by dint of
trying hard; trying will do anything in this world.
_Gorgo._—The old creature has delivered herself of an oracle and
departed.
_Praxinoe._—Women can tell you everything about everything, Jupiter’s
marriage with Juno not excepted.
_Gorgo._—Look, Praxinoe, what a squeeze at the palace gates!
_Praxinoe._—Tremendous! Take hold of me, Gorgo; and you, Eunoe, take
hold of Eutychis!—tight hold, or you’ll be lost. Here we go in all
together. Hold tight to us, Eunoe! Oh, dear! oh, dear! Gorgo, there’s my
scarf torn right in two. For heaven’s sake, my good man, as you hope to
be saved, take care of my dress!
_Stranger._—I’ll do what I can, but it doesn’t depend upon me.
_Praxinoe._—What heaps of people! They push like a drove of pigs.
_Stranger._—Don’t be frightened, ma’am, we are all right.
_Praxinoe._—May you be all right, my dear sir, to the last day you live,
for the care you have taken of us! What a kind, considerate man! There
is Eunoe jammed in a squeeze. Push, you goose, push! Capital! We are all
of us the right side of the door, as the bridegroom said when he had
locked himself in with the bride.
_Gorgo._—Praxinoe, come this way. Do but look at that work, how delicate
it is!—how exquisite! Why, they might wear it in heaven.
_Praxinoe._—Heavenly patroness of needlewomen, what hands were hired to
do that work? Who designed those beautiful patterns? They seem to stand
up and move about, as if they were real;—as if they were living things,
and not needlework. Well, man is a wonderful creature! And look, look,
how charming he lies there on his silver couch, with just a soft down on
his cheeks, that beloved Adonis,—Adonis, whom one loves even though he
is dead!
_Another Stranger._—You wretched women, do stop your incessant chatter!
Like turtles, you go on forever. They are enough to kill one with their
broad lingo—nothing but _a, a, a_.
_Gorgo._—Lord, where does the man come from? What is it to you if we
_are_ chatterboxes? Order about your own servants! Do you give orders to
Syracusan women? If you want to know, we came originally from Corinth,
as Bellerophon did; we speak Peloponnesian. I suppose Dorian women may
be allowed to have a Dorian accent.
_Praxinoe._—Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no more masters than
the one we’ve got! We don’t the least care for _you_; pray don’t trouble
yourself for nothing.
_Gorgo._—Be quiet, Praxinoe! That first-rate singer, the Argive woman’s
daughter, is going to sing the _Adonis_ hymn. She is the same who was
chosen to sing the dirge last year. We are sure to have something
first-rate from _her_. She is going through her airs and graces ready to
begin.—
So far the dialogue; and, as it stands in the original, it can hardly be
praised too highly. It is a page torn fresh out of the book of human
life. What freedom! What animation! What gaiety! What naturalness! It is
said that Theocritus, in composing this poem, borrowed from a work of
Sophron, a poet of an earlier and better time; but, even if this is so,
the form is still Theocritus’s own, and how excellent is that form, how
masterly! And this in a Greek poem of the decadence!—for Theocritus’s
poetry, after all, is poetry of the decadence. When such is Greek poetry
of the decadence, what must be Greek poetry of the prime?
Then the singer begins her hymn:—
“Mistress, who loveth the haunts of Golgi, and Idalium, and high-peaked
Eryx, Aphrodite that playest with gold! how have the delicate-footed
Hours, after twelve months, brought thy Adonis back to thee from the
ever-flowing Acheron! Tardiest of the immortals are the boon Hours, but
all mankind wait their approach with longing, for they ever bring
something with them. O Cypris, Dione’s child! thou didst change—so is
the story among men—Berenice from mortal to immortal, by dropping
ambrosia into her fair bosom; and in gratitude to thee for this, O thou
of many names and many temples! Berenice’s daughter, Arsinoe, lovely
Helen’s living counterpart, makes much of Adonis with all manner of
braveries.
“All fruits that the tree bears are laid before him, all treasures of
the garden in silver baskets, and alabaster boxes, gold-inlaid, of
Syrian ointment; and all confectionery that cunning women make on their
kneading-tray, kneading up every sort of flowers with white meal, and
all that they make of sweet honey and delicate oil, and all winged and
creeping things are here set before him. And there are built for him
green bowers with wealth of tender anise, and little boy-loves flutter
about over them, like young nightingales trying their new wings on the
tree, from bough to bough. Oh, the ebony, the gold, the eagle of white
ivory that bears aloft his cup-bearer to Cronos-born Zeus! And up there,
see! a second couch strewn for lovely Adonis, scarlet coverlets softer
than sleep itself (so Miletus and the Samian wool-grower will say);
Cypris has hers, and the rosy-armed Adonis has his, that eighteen or
nineteen-year-old bridegroom. His kisses will not wound, the hair on his
lip is yet light.
“Now, Cypris, good-night, we leave thee with thy bridegroom; but
to-morrow morning, with the earliest dew, we will one and all bear him
forth to where the waves splash upon the sea-strand, and letting loose
our locks, and letting fall our robes, with bosoms bare, we will set up
this, our melodious strain:
“‘Beloved Adonis, alone of the demigods (so men say) thou art permitted
to visit both us and Acheron! This lot had neither Agamemnon, nor the
mighty moon-struck hero Ajax, nor Hector the first-born of Hecuba’s
twenty children, nor Patroclus, nor Pyrrhus who came home from Troy, nor
those yet earlier Lapithæ and the sons of Deucalion, nor the Pelasgians,
the root of Argos and of Pelop’s isle. Be gracious to us now, loved
Adonis, and be favorable to us for the year to come! Dear to us hast
thou been at this coming, dear to us shalt thou be when thou comest
again.’”
The poem concludes with a characteristic speech from Gorgo:—
“Praxinoe, certainly women are wonderful things. That lucky woman to
know all that! and luckier still to have such a splendid voice! And now
we must see about getting home. My husband has not had his dinner. That
man is all vinegar, and nothing else; and if you keep him waiting for
his dinner, he’s dangerous to go near. Adieu, precious Adonis, and may
you find us all well when you come next year!”
So, with the hymn still in her ears, says the incorrigible Gorgo.
But what a hymn that is! Of religious emotion, in our acceptation of the
words, and of the comfort springing from religious emotion, not a
particle. And yet many elements of religious emotion are contained in
the beautiful story of Adonis. Symbolically treated, as the thoughtful
man might treat it, as the Greek mysteries undoubtedly treated it, this
story was capable of a noble and touching application, and could lead
the soul to elevating and consoling thoughts. Adonis was the sun in his
summer and in his winter course, in his time of triumph and his time of
defeat; but in his time of triumph still moving towards his defeat, in
his time of defeat still returning towards his triumph. Thus he became
an emblem of the power of life and the bloom of beauty, the power of
human life and the bloom of human beauty, hastening inevitably to
diminution and decay, yet in that very decay finding
“Hope, and a renovation without end.”
But nothing of this appears in the story as prepared for popular
religious use, as presented to the multitude in a popular religious
ceremony. Its treatment is not devoid of a certain grace and beauty, but
it has nothing whatever that is elevating, nothing that is consoling,
nothing that is in our sense of the word religious. The religious
ceremonies of Christendom, even on occasion of the most joyful and
mundane matters, present the multitude with strains of profoundly
religious character, such as the _Kyrie eleison_ and the _Te Deum_. But
this Greek hymn to Adonis adapts itself exactly to the tone and temper
of a gay and pleasure-loving multitude,—of light-hearted people, like
Gorgo and Praxinoe, whose moral nature is much of the same caliber as
that of Phillina in Goethe’s _Wilhelm Meister_, people who seem never
made to be serious, never made to be sick or sorry. And, if they happen
to be sick or sorry, what will they do then? But that we have no right
to ask. Phillina, within the enchanted bounds of Goethe’s novel, Gorgo
and Praxinoe, within the enchanted bounds of Theocritus’s poem, never
will be sick and sorry, never can be sick and sorry. The ideal,
cheerful, sensuous, pagan life is not sick or sorry. No; yet its natural
end is in the sort of life which Pompeii and Herculaneum bring so
vividly before us,—a life which by no means in itself suggests the
thought of horror and misery, which even, in many ways, gratifies the
senses and the understanding; but by the very intensity and
unremittingness of its appeal to the senses and the understanding, by
its stimulating a single side of us too absolutely, ends by fatiguing
and revolting us; ends by leaving us with a sense of confinement, of
oppression,—with a desire for an utter change, for clouds, storms,
effusion, and relief.
In the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the clouds and storms
had come, when the gay sensuous pagan life was gone, when men were not
living by the senses and understanding, when they were looking for the
speedy coming of Antichrist, there appeared in Italy, to the north of
Rome, in the beautiful Umbrian country at the foot of the Apennines, a
figure of the most magical power and charm, St. Francis. His century is,
I think, the most interesting in the history of Christianity after its
primitive age, more interesting than even the century of the
Reformation; and one of the chief figures, perhaps the very chief, to
which this interest attaches itself, is St. Francis. And why? Because of
the profound popular instinct which enabled him, more than any man since
the primitive age, to fit religion for popular use. He brought religion
to the people. He founded the most popular body of ministers of religion
that has ever existed in the Church. He transformed monachism by
uprooting the stationary monk, delivering him from the bondage of
property, and sending him, as a mendicant friar, to be a stranger and
sojourner, not in the wilderness, but in the most crowded haunts of men,
to console them and to do them good. This popular instinct of his is at
the bottom of his famous marriage with poverty. Poverty and suffering
are the condition of the people, the multitude, the immense majority of
mankind; and it was towards this _people_ that his soul yearned. “He
listens,” it was said of him, “to those to whom God himself will not
listen.”
So in return, as no other man he was listened to. When an Umbrian town
or village heard of his approach, the whole population went out in
joyful procession to meet him, with green boughs, flags, music, and
songs of gladness. The master, who began with two disciples, could in
his own lifetime (and he died at forty-four) collect to keep Whitsuntide
with him, in presence of an immense multitude, five thousand of his
Minorites. And thus he found fulfilment to his prophetic cry: “I hear in
my ears the sound of the tongues of all the nations who shall come unto
us; Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Englishmen. The Lord will make of us
a great people, even unto the ends of the earth.”
Prose could not satisfy this ardent soul, and he made poetry. Latin was
too learned for this simple, popular nature, and he composed in his
mother tongue, in Italian. The beginnings of the mundane poetry of the
Italians are in Sicily, at the court of kings; the beginnings of their
religious poetry are in Umbria, with St. Francis. His are the humble
upper waters of a mighty stream; at the beginning of the thirteenth
century it is St. Francis, at the end, Dante. Now it happens that St.
Francis, too, like the Alexandrian songstress, has his hymn for the sun,
for Adonis. _Canticle of the Sun_, _Canticle of the Creatures_,—the poem
goes by both names. Like the Alexandrian hymn, it is designed for
popular use, but not for use by King Ptolemy’s people; artless in
language, irregular in rhythm, it matches with the childlike genius that
produced it, and the simple natures that loved and repeated it:—
“O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise, glory,
honor, and all blessing!
“Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures; and specially our
brother the sun, who brings us the day, and who brings us the light;
fair is he, and shining with a very great splendor: O Lord, he signifies
to us thee!
“Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, the
which he has set clear and lovely in heaven.
“Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and cloud,
calms and all weather, by the which thou upholdest in life all
creatures.
“Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto
us, and humble, and precious, and clean.
“Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom thou givest us
light in the darkness; and he is bright, and pleasant, and very mighty,
and strong.
“Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth sustain us
and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruits, and flowers of many
colors, and grass.
“Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for his love’s
sake, and who endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are they who
peaceably shall endure, for thou, O most Highest, shalt give them a
crown!
“Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the body, from whom no
man escapeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin! Blessed are they who
are found walking by thy most holy will, for the second death shall have
no power to do them harm.
“Praise ye, and bless ye the Lord, and give thanks unto him, and serve
him with great humility.”
It is natural that man should take pleasure in his senses. But it is
natural, also, that he should take refuge in his heart and imagination
from his misery. And when one thinks what human life is for the vast
majority of mankind, how little of a feast for their senses it can
possibly be, one understands the charm for them of a refuge offered in
the heart and imagination. Above all, when one thinks what human life
was in the Middle Ages, one understands the charm of such a refuge.
Now, the poetry of Theocritus’s hymn is poetry treating the world
according to the demand of the senses; the poetry of St. Francis’s hymn
is poetry treating the world according to the demand of the heart and
imagination. The first takes the world by its outward, sensible side;
the second by its inward, symbolical side. The first admits as much of
the world as is pleasure-giving; the second admits the whole world,
rough and smooth, painful and pleasure-giving, all alike, but all
transfigured by the power of a spiritual emotion, all brought under a
law of super-sensual love, having its seat in the soul. It can thus even
say: “Praised be my Lord for _our sister, the death of the body_.”
But these very words are, perhaps, an indication that we are touching
upon an extreme. When we see Pompeii, we can put our finger upon the
pagan sentiment in its extreme. And when we read of Monte Alverno and
the _stigmata_; when we read of the repulsive, because self-caused,
sufferings of the end of St. Francis’s life; when we find him even
saying, “I have sinned against my brother the ass,” meaning by these
words that he had been too hard upon his own body; when we find him
assailed, even himself, by the doubt “whether he who had destroyed
himself by the severity of his penances could find mercy in eternity,”
we can put our finger on the mediæval Christian sentiment in its
extreme. Human nature is neither all senses and understanding, nor all
heart and imagination. Pompeii was a sign that for humanity at large the
measure of sensualism had been overpassed; St. Francis’s doubt was a
sign that for humanity at large the measure of spiritualism had been
overpassed. Humanity, in its violent rebound from one extreme, had swung
from Pompeii to Monte Alverno; but it was sure not to stay there.
The Renascence is, in part, a return towards the pagan spirit, in the
special sense in which I have been using the word pagan; a return
towards the life of the senses and the understanding. The Reformation,
on the other hand, is the very opposite to this; in Luther there is
nothing Greek or pagan; vehemently as he attacked the adoration of St.
Francis, Luther had himself something of St. Francis in him; he was a
thousand times more akin to St. Francis than to Theocritus or to
Voltaire. The Reformation—I do not mean the inferior piece given under
that name, by Henry the Eighth and a second-rate company, in this
island, but the real Reformation, the German Reformation, Luther’s
Reformation—was a reaction of the moral and spiritual sense against the
carnal and pagan sense; it was a religious revival like St. Francis’s,
but this time against the Church of Rome, not within her; for the carnal
and pagan sense had now, in the government of the Church of Rome
herself, its prime representative. But the grand reaction against the
rule of the heart and imagination, the strong return towards the rule of
the senses and understanding, is in the eighteenth century. And this
reaction has had no more brilliant champion than a man of the
nineteenth, of whom I have already spoken; a man who could feel not only
the pleasurableness but the poetry of the life of the senses (and the
life of the senses has its deep poetry); a man who, in his very last
poem, divided the whole world into “barbarians and Greeks,”—Heinrich
Heine. No man has reproached the Monte Alverno extreme in sentiment, the
Christian extreme, the heart and imagination subjugating the senses and
understanding, more bitterly than Heine; no man has extolled the Pompeii
extreme, the pagan extreme, more rapturously.
“All through the Middle Age these sufferings, this fever, this
over-tension lasted; and we moderns still feel in all our limbs the pain
and weakness from them. Even those of us who are cured have still to
live with a hospital atmosphere all around us, and find ourselves as
wretched in it as a strong man among the sick. Some day or other, when
humanity shall have got quite well again, when the body and soul shall
have made their peace together, the fictitious quarrel which
Christianity has cooked up between them will appear something hardly
comprehensible. The fairer and happier generations, offspring of
unfettered unions, that will rise up and bloom in the atmosphere of a
religion of pleasure, will smile sadly when they think of their poor
ancestors, whose life was passed in melancholy abstinence from the joys
of this beautiful earth, and who faded away into specters, from the
mortal compression which they put upon the warm and glowing emotions of
sense. Yes, with assurance, I say it, our descendants will be fairer and
happier than we are; for I am a believer in progress, and I hold God to
be a kind being who has intended man to be happy.”
That is Heine’s sentiment, in the prime of life, in the glow of
activity, amid the brilliant whirl of Paris. I will no more blame it
than I blamed the sentiment of the Greek hymn to Adonis. I wish to
decide nothing as of my own authority; the great art of criticism is to
get oneself out of the way and to let humanity decide. Well, the
sentiment of the “religion of pleasure” has much that is natural in it;
humanity will gladly accept it if it can live by it; to live by it one
must never be sick or sorry, and the old, ideal, limited, pagan world
never, I have said, _was_ sick or sorry, never at least shows itself to
us sick or sorry:—
“What pipes and timbrels! What wild ecstasy!”
For our imagination, Gorgo and Praxinoe cross the human stage chattering
in their blithe Doric,—_like turtles_, as the cross stranger said,—and
keep gaily chattering on till they disappear. But in the new, real,
immense, post-pagan world,—in the barbarian world,—the shock of accident
is unceasing, the serenity of existence is perpetually troubled, not
even a Greek like Heine can get across the mortal stage without bitter
calamity. How does the sentiment of the “religion of pleasure” serve
then? does it help, does it console? Can a man live by it? Heine again
shall answer; Heine just twenty years older, stricken with incurable
disease, waiting for death:—
“The great pot stands smoking before me, but I have no spoon to help
myself. What does it profit me that my health is drunk at banquets out
of gold cups and in most exquisite wines, if I myself, while these
ovations are going on, lonely and cut off from the pleasures of the
world, can only just wet my lips with barley-water? What good does it do
me that all the roses of Shiraz open their leaves and burn for me with
passionate tenderness? Alas! Shiraz is some two thousand leagues from
the Rue d’Amsterdam, where in the solitude of my sick chamber all the
perfume I smell is that of hot towels. Alas! the mockery of God is heavy
upon me! The great author of the universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven,
has determined to make the petty earthly author, the so-called
Aristophanes of Germany, feel to his heart’s core what pitiful
needle-pricks his cleverest sarcasms have been, compared with the
thunderbolts which his divine humor can launch against feeble
mortals!...
“In the year 1340, says the Chronicle of Limburg, all over Germany
everybody was strumming and humming certain songs more lovely and
delightful than any which had ever yet been known in German countries;
and all people, old and young, the women particularly, were perfectly
mad about them, so that from morning till night you heard nothing else.
Only the Chronicle adds, the author of these songs happened to be a
young clerk, afflicted with leprosy, and living apart from all the world
in a desolate place. The excellent reader does not require to be told
how horrible a complaint was leprosy in the Middle Ages, and how the
poor wretches who had this incurable plague were banished from society,
and had to keep at a distance from every human being. Like living
corpses, in a gray gown reaching down to the feet, and with the hood
brought over their face, they went about, carrying in their hands an
enormous rattle, called Saint Lazarus’s rattle. With this rattle they
gave notice of their approach, that every one might have time to get out
of their way. This poor clerk, then, whose poetical gift the Limburg
Chronicle extols, was a leper, and he sate moping in the dismal deserts
of his misery, whilst all Germany, gay and tuneful, was praising his
songs.
“Sometimes, in my somber visions of the night, I imagine that I see
before me the poor leprosy-stricken clerk of the Limburg Chronicle, and
then from under his gray hood his distressed eyes look out upon me in a
fixed and strange fashion; but the next instant he disappears, and I
hear dying away in the distance, like the echo of a dream, the dull
creak of Saint Lazarus’s rattle.”
We have come a long way from Theocritus there? the expression of that
has nothing of the clear, positive, happy, pagan character; it has much
more the character of one of the indeterminate grotesques of the
suffering Middle Age. Profoundness and power it has, though at the same
time it is not truly poetical; it is not natural enough for that, there
is too much waywardness in it, too much bravado. But as a condition of
sentiment to be popular,—to be a comfort for the mass of mankind, under
the pressure of calamity, to live by,—what a manifest failure is this
last word of the religion of pleasure! One man in many millions, a
Heine, may console himself, and keep himself erect in suffering, by a
colossal irony of this sort, by covering himself and the universe with
the red fire of this sinister mockery; but the many millions
cannot,—cannot if they would. That is where the sentiment of a religion
of sorrow has such a vast advantage over the sentiment of a religion of
pleasure; in its power to be a general, popular, religious sentiment, a
stay for the mass of mankind, whose lives are full of hardship. It
really succeeds in conveying far more joy, far more of what the mass of
mankind are so much without, than its rival. I do not mean joy in
prospect only, but joy in possession, actual enjoyment of the world.
Mediæval Christianity is reproached with its gloom and austerities; it
assigns the material world, says Heine, to the devil. But yet what a
fulness of delight does St. Francis manage to draw from this material
world itself, and from its commonest and most universally enjoyed
elements,—sun, air, earth, water, plants! His hymn expresses a far more
cordial sense of happiness, even in the material world, than the hymn of
Theocritus. It is this which made the fortune of Christianity,—its
gladness, not its sorrow; not its assigning the spiritual world to
Christ, and the material world to the devil, but its drawing from the
spiritual world a source of joy so abundant that it ran over upon the
material world and transfigured it.
I have said a great deal of harm of paganism; and, taking paganism to
mean a state of things which it is commonly taken to mean, and which did
really exist, no more harm than it well deserved. Yet I must not end
without reminding the reader, that before this state of things appeared,
there was an epoch in Greek life,—in pagan life,—of the highest possible
beauty and value. That epoch by itself goes far towards making Greece
the Greece we mean when we speak of Greece,—a country hardly less
important to mankind than Judæa. The poetry of later paganism lived by
the senses and understanding; the poetry of mediæval Christianity lived
by the heart and imagination. But the main element of the modern
spirit’s life is neither the senses and understanding, nor the heart and
imagination; it is the imaginative reason. And there is a century in
Greek life,—the century preceding the Peloponnesian war, from about the
year 530 to the year 430 B. C.,—in which poetry made, it seems to me,
the noblest, the most successful effort she has ever made as the
priestess of the imaginative reason, of the element by which the modern
spirit, if it would live right, has chiefly to live. Of this effort, of
which the four great names are Simonides, Pindar, Æschylus, Sophocles, I
must not now attempt more than the bare mention; but it is right, it is
necessary, after all I have said, to indicate it. No doubt that effort
was imperfect. Perhaps everything, take it at what point in its
existence you will, carries within itself the fatal law of its own
ulterior development. Perhaps, even of the life of Pindar’s time,
Pompeii was the inevitable bourne. Perhaps the life of their beautiful
Greece could not afford to its poets all that fulness of varied
experience, all that power of emotion, which
‘... the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
affords the poet of after-times. Perhaps in Sophocles the thinking-power
a little overbalances the religious sense, as in Dante the religious
sense overbalances the thinking-power. The present has to make its own
poetry, and not even Sophocles and his compeers, any more than Dante and
Shakspeare, are enough for it. That I will not dispute; nor will I set
up the Greek poets, from Pindar to Sophocles, as objects of blind
worship. But no other poets so well show to the poetry of the present
the way it must take; no other poets have lived so much by the
imaginative reason; no other poets have made their work so well
balanced; no other poets, who have so well satisfied the thinking-power,
have so well satisfied, the religious sense:—
“Oh! that my lot may lead me in the path of holy innocence of word and
deed, the path which august laws ordain, laws that in the highest
empyrean had their birth, of which Heaven is the father alone, neither
did the race of mortal men beget them, nor shall oblivion ever put them
to sleep. The power of God is mighty in them, and groweth not old.”
Let St. Francis,—nay, or Luther either,—beat that!
VII.
A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY.
Everybody has this last autumn[22] been either seeing the Ammergau
Passion Play or hearing about it; and to find any one who has seen it
and not been deeply interested and moved by it, is very rare. The
peasants of the neighboring country, the great and fashionable world,
the ordinary tourist, were all at Ammergau, and were all delighted; but
what is said to have been especially remarkable was the affluence there
of ministers of religion of all kinds. That Catholic peasants, whose
religion has accustomed them to show and spectacle, should be attracted
by an admirable scenic representation of the great moments in the
history of their religion, was natural; that tourists and the
fashionable world should be attracted by what was at once the fashion
and a new sensation of a powerful sort, was natural; that many of the
ecclesiastics present should be attracted there, was natural too. Roman
Catholic priests mustered strong, of course. The Protestantism of a
great number of the Anglican clergy is supposed to be but languid, and
Anglican ministers at Ammergau were sympathizers to be expected. But
Protestant ministers of the most unimpeachable sort, Protestant
Dissenting ministers, were there, too, and showing favor and sympathy;
and this, to any one who remembers the almost universal feeling of
Protestant Dissenters in this country, not many years ago, towards Rome
and her religion,—the sheer abhorrence of Papists and all their
practices,—could not but be striking. It agrees with what is seen also
in literature, in the writings of Dissenters of the younger and more
progressive sort, who show a disposition for regarding the Church of
Rome historically rather than polemically, a wish to do justice to the
undoubted grandeur of certain institutions and men produced by that
Church, quite novel, and quite alien to the simple belief of earlier
times, that between Protestants and Rome there was a measureless gulf
fixed. Something of this may, no doubt, be due to that keen eye for
Nonconformist business in which our great bodies of Protestant
Dissenters, to do them justice, are never wanting; to a perception that
the case against the Church of England may be yet further improved by
contrasting her with the genuine article in her own ecclesiastical line,
by pointing out that she is neither one thing nor the other to much
purpose, by dilating on the magnitude, reach, and impressiveness, on the
great place in history, of her rival, as compared with anything she can
herself pretend to. Something of this there is, no doubt, in some of the
modern Protestant sympathy for things Catholic. But in general that
sympathy springs, in Churchmen and Dissenters alike, from another and a
better cause,—from the spread of larger conceptions of religion, of man,
and of history, than were current formerly. We have seen lately in the
newspapers, that a clergyman, who in a popular lecture gave an account
of the Passion Play at Ammergau, and enlarged on its impressiveness, was
admonished by certain remonstrants, who told him it was his business,
instead of occupying himself with these sensuous shows, to learn to walk
by faith, not by sight, and to teach his fellow-men to do the same. But
this severity seems to have excited wonder rather than praise; so far
had those wider notions about religion and about the range of our
interest in religion, of which I have just spoken, conducted us. To this
interest I propose to appeal in what I am going to relate. The Passion
Play at Ammergau, with its immense audiences, the seriousness of its
actors, the passionate emotion of its spectators, brought to my mind
something of which I had read an account lately; something produced, not
in Bavaria nor in Christendom at all, but far away in that wonderful
East, from which, whatever airs of superiority Europe may justly give
itself, all our religion has come and where religion, of some sort or
other, has still an empire over men’s feelings such as it has nowhere
else. This product of the remote East I wish to exhibit while the
remembrance of what has been seen at Ammergau is still fresh; and we
will see whether that bringing together of strangers and enemies who
once seemed to be as far as the poles asunder, which Ammergau in such a
remarkable way effected, does not hold good and find a parallel even in
Persia.
-----
Footnote 22:
1871.
-----
Count Gobineau, formerly Minister of France at Teheran and at Athens,
published, a few years ago, an interesting book on the present state of
religion and philosophy in Central Asia. He is favorably known also by
his studies in ethnology. His accomplishments and intelligence deserve
all respect, and in his book on religion and philosophy in Central Asia
he has the great advantage of writing about things which he has followed
with his own observation and inquiry in the countries where they
happened. The chief purpose of his book is to give a history of the
career of Mirza Ali Mahommed, a Persian religious reformer, the original
_Bâb_, and the founder of _Bâbism_, of which most people in England have
at least heard the name. Bab means _gate_, the door or gate of life; and
in the ferment which now works in the Mahometan East, Mirza Ali
Mahommed,—who seems to have been made acquainted by Protestant
missionaries with our Scriptures and by the Jews of Shiraz with Jewish
traditions, to have studied, besides, the religion of the Ghebers, the
old national religion of Persia, and to have made a sort of amalgam of
the whole with Mahometanism,—presented himself, about five-and-twenty
twenty years ago, as _the door_, _the gate_ of life; found disciples,
sent forth writings, and finally became the cause of disturbances which
led to his being executed on the 19th of July, 1849, in the citadel of
Tabriz. The Bâb and his doctrines are a theme on which much might be
said; but I pass them by, except for one incident in the Bâb’s life,
which I will notice. Like all religious Mahometans, he made the
pilgrimage to Mecca; and his meditations at that center of his religion
first suggested his mission to him. But soon after his return to Bagdad
he made another pilgrimage; and it was in this pilgrimage that his
mission became clear to him, and that his life was fixed. “He desired”—I
will give an abridgment of Count Gobineau’s own words—“to complete his
impressions by going to Kufa, that he might visit the ruined mosque
where Ali was assassinated, and where the place of his murder is still
shown. He passed several days there in meditation. The place appears to
have made a great impression on him; he was entering on a course which
might and must lead to some such catastrophe as had happened on the very
spot where he stood, and where his mind’s eye showed him the Imam Ali
lying at his feet, with his body pierced and bleeding. His followers say
that he then passed through a sort of moral agony which put an end to
all the hesitations of the natural man within him. It is certain that
when he arrived at Shiraz, on his return, he was a changed man. No
doubts troubled him any more: he was penetrated and persuaded; his part
was taken.”
This Ali also, at whose tomb the Bâb went through the spiritual crisis
here recorded, is a familiar name to most of us. In general our
knowledge of the East goes but a very little way; yet almost every one
has at least heard the name of Ali, the Lion of God, Mahomet’s young
cousin, the first person, after his wife, who believed in him, and who
was declared by Mahomet in his gratitude his brother, delegate, and
vicar. Ali was one of Mahomet’s best and most successful captains. He
married Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet; his sons, Hassan and
Hussein, were, as children, favorites with Mahomet, who had no son of
his own to succeed him, and was expected to name Ali as his successor.
He named no successor. At his death (the year 632 of our era) Ali was
passed over, and the first caliph, or _vicar_ and _lieutenant_ of
Mahomet in the government of the state, was Abu-Bekr; only the spiritual
inheritance of Mahomet, the dignity of Imam, or _Primate_, devolved by
right on Ali and his children. Ali, lion of God as in war he was, held
aloof from politics and political intrigue, loved retirement and prayer,
was the most pious and disinterested of men. At Abu-Bekr’s death he was
again passed over in favor of Omar. Omar was succeeded by Othman, and
still Ali remained tranquil. Othman was assassinated, and then Ali,
chiefly to prevent disturbance and bloodshed, accepted (A. D. 655) the
caliphate. Meanwhile, the Mahometan armies had conquered Persia, Syria,
and Egypt; the Governor of Syria, Moawiyah, an able and ambitious man,
set himself up as caliph, his title was recognized by Amrou, the
Governor of Egypt, and a bloody and indecisive battle was fought in
Mesopotamia between Ali’s army and Moawiyah’s. Gibbon shall tell the
rest:—“In the temple of Mecca three Charegites or enthusiasts discoursed
of the disorders of the church and state; they soon agreed that the
deaths of Ali, of Moawiyah, and of his friend Amrou, the Viceroy of
Egypt, would restore the peace and unity of religion. Each of the
assassins chose his victim, poisoned his dagger, devoted his life, and
secretly repaired to the scene of action. Their resolution was equally
desperate; but the first mistook the person of Amrou, and stabbed the
deputy who occupied his seat; the prince of Damascus was dangerously
hurt by the second; Ali, the lawful caliph, in the mosque of Kufa,
received a mortal wound from the hand of the third.”
The events through which we have thus rapidly run ought to be kept in
mind, for they are the elements of Mahometan history: any right
understanding of the state of the Mahometan world is impossible without
them. For that world is divided into the two great sects of Shiahs and
Sunis. The Shiahs are those who reject the first three caliphs as
usurpers, and begin with Ali as the first lawful successor of Mahomet;
the Sunis recognize Abu-Bekr, Omar, and Othman, as well as Ali, and
regard the Shiahs as impious heretics. The Persians are Shiahs, and the
Arabs and Turks are Sunis. Hussein, one of Ali’s two sons, married a
Persian princess, the daughter of Yezdejerd the last of the Sassanian
kings, the king whom the Mahometan conquest of Persia expelled; and
Persia, through this marriage, became specially connected with the house
of Ali. “In the fourth age of the Hegira,” says Gibbon, “a tomb, a
temple, a city, arose near the ruins of Kufa. Many thousands of the
Shiahs repose in holy ground at the feet of the vicar of God; and the
desert is vivified by the numerous and annual visits of the Persians,
who esteem their devotion not less meritorious than the pilgrimage of
Mecca.”
But to comprehend what I am going to relate from Count Gobineau, we must
push our researches into Mahometan history a little further than the
assassination of Ali. Moawiyah died in the year 680 of our era, nearly
fifty years after the death of Mahomet. His son Yezid succeeded him on
the throne of the caliphs at Damascus. During the reign of Moawiyah
Ali’s two sons, the Imams, Hassan and Hussein, lived with their families
in religious retirement at Medina, where their grandfather Mahomet was
buried. In them the character of abstention and renouncement, which we
have noticed in Ali himself, was marked yet more strongly; but, when
Moawiyah died, the people of Kufa, the city on the lower Euphrates where
Ali had been assassinated, sent offers to make Hussein caliph if he
would come among them, and to support him against the Syrian troops of
Yezid. Hussein seems to have thought himself bound to accept the
proposal. He left Medina, and, with his family and relations, to the
number of about eighty persons, set out on his way to Kufa. Then ensued
the tragedy so familiar to every Mahometan, and to us so little known,
the tragedy of Kerbela. “O death,” cries the bandit-minstrel of Persia,
Kurroglou, in his last song before his execution, “O death, whom didst
thou spare? Were even Hassan and Hussein, those footstools of the throne
of God on the seventh heaven, spared by thee. _No! thou madest them
martyrs at Kerbela._”
We cannot do better than again have recourse to Gibbon’s history for an
account of this famous tragedy. “Hussein traversed the desert of Arabia
with a timorous retinue of women and children; but, as he approached the
confines of Irak, he was alarmed by the solitary or hostile face of the
country, and suspected either the defection or the ruin of his party.
His fears were just; Obeidallah, the governor of Kufa, had extinguished
the first sparks of an insurrection; and Hussein, in the plain of
Kerbela, was encompassed by a body of 5000 horse, who intercepted his
communication with the city and the river. In a conference with the
chief of the enemy he proposed the option of three conditions:—that he
should be allowed to return to Medina, or be stationed in a frontier
garrison against the Turks, or safely conducted to the presence of
Yezid. But the commands of the caliph or his lieutenant were stern and
absolute, and Hussein was informed that he must either submit as a
captive and a criminal to the Commander of the Faithful, or expect the
consequences of his rebellion. “Do you think,” replied he, “to terrify
me with death?” And during the short respite of a night he prepared,
with calm and solemn resignation, to encounter his fate. He checked the
lamentations of his sister Fatima, who deplored the impending ruin of
his house. “Our trust,” said Hussein, “is in God alone. All things, both
in heaven and earth, must perish and return to their Creator. My
brother, my father, my mother, were better than I, and every Mussulman
has an example in the Prophet.” He pressed his friends to consult their
safety by a timely flight; they unanimously refused to desert or survive
their beloved master, and their courage was fortified by a fervent
prayer and the assurance of paradise. On the morning of the fatal day he
mounted on horseback, with his sword in one hand and the Koran in the
other; the flanks and rear of his party were secured by the tent-ropes
and by a deep trench, which they had filled with lighted fagots,
according to the practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced with
reluctance; and one of their chiefs deserted, with thirty followers, to
claim the partnership of inevitable death. In every close onset or
single combat the despair of the Fatimites was invincible; but the
surrounding multitudes galled them from a distance with a cloud of
arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain. A truce was
allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the battle at length
expired by the death of the last of the companions of Hussein.”
The details of Hussein’s own death will come better presently; suffice
it at this moment to say he was slain, and that the women and children
of his family were taken in chains to the Caliph Yezid at Damascus.
Gibbon concludes the story thus: “In a distant age and climate, the
tragic scene of the death of Hussein will awaken the sympathy of the
coldest reader. On the annual festival of his martyrdom, in the devout
pilgrimage to his sepulcher, his Persian votaries abandon their souls to
the religious phrenzy of sorrow and indignation.”
Thus the tombs of Ali and of his son, the Meshed Ali and the Meshed
Hussein, standing some thirty miles apart from one another in the plain
of the Euphrates, had, when Gibbon wrote, their yearly pilgrims and
their tribute of enthusiastic mourning. But Count Gobineau relates, in
his book of which I have spoken, a development of these solemnities
which was unknown to Gibbon. Within the present century there has
arisen, on the basis of this story of the martyrs of Kerbela, a drama, a
Persian national drama, which Count Gobineau, who has seen and heard it,
is bold enough to rank with the Greek drama as a great and serious
affair, engaging the heart and life of the people who have given birth
to it; while the Latin, English, French, and German drama is, he says,
in comparison a mere pastime or amusement, more or less intellectual and
elegant. To me it seems that the Persian _tazyas_—for so these pieces
are called—find a better parallel in the Ammergau Passion Play than in
the Greek drama. They turn entirely on one subject—the sufferings of the
_Family of the Tent_, as the Imam Hussein and the company of persons
gathered around him at Kerbela are called. The subject is sometimes
introduced by a prologue, which may perhaps one day, as the need of
variety is more felt, become a piece by itself; but at present the
prologue leads invariably to the martyrs. For instance: the Emperor
Tamerlane, in his conquering progress through the world, arrives at
Damascus. The keys of the city are brought to him by the governor; but
the governor is a descendant of one of the murderers of the Imam
Hussein; Tamerlane is informed of it, loads him with reproaches, and
drives him from his presence. The emperor presently sees the governor’s
daughter splendidly dressed, thinks of the sufferings of the holy women
of the Family of the Tent, and upbraids and drives her away as he did
her father. But after this he is haunted by the great tragedy which has
been thus brought to his mind, and he cannot sleep and cannot be
comforted. He calls his vizier, and his vizier tells him that the only
way to soothe his troubled spirit is to see a _tazya_. And so the
_tazya_ commences. Or, again (and this will show how strangely, in the
religious world which is now occupying us, what is most familiar to us
is blended with that of which we know nothing): Joseph and his brethren
appear on the stage, and the old Bible story is transacted. Joseph is
thrown into the pit and sold to the merchants, and his blood-stained
coat is carried by his brothers to Jacob; Jacob is then left alone,
weeping and bewailing himself; the angel Gabriel enters, and reproves
him for his want of faith and constancy, telling him that what he
suffers is not a hundredth part of what Ali, Hussein, and the children
of Hussein will one day suffer. Jacob seems to doubt it; Gabriel, to
convince him, orders the angels to perform a _tazya_ of what will one
day happen at Kerbela. And so the _tazya_ commences.
These pieces are given in the first ten days of the month of Moharrem,
the anniversary of the martyrdom at Kerbela. They are so popular that
they now invade other seasons of the year also; but this is the season
when the world is given up to them. King and people, every one is in
mourning; and at night and while the _tazyas_ are not going on,
processions keep passing, the air resounds with the beating of breasts
and with litanies of “O Hassan! Hussein!” while the Seyids,—a kind of
popular friars claiming to be descendants of Mahomet, and in whose
incessant popularizing and amplifying of the legend of Kerbela in their
homilies during pilgrimages and at the tombs of the martyrs, the
_tazyas_, no doubt, had their origin,—keep up by their sermons and hymns
the enthusiasm which the drama of the day has excited. It seems as if no
one went to bed; and certainly no one who went to bed could sleep.
Confraternities go in procession with a black flag and torches, every
man with his shirt torn open, and beating himself with the right hand on
the left shoulder in a kind of measured cadence to accompany a canticle
in honor of the martyrs. These processions come and take post in the
theaters where the Seyids are preaching. Still more noisy are the
companies of dancers, striking a kind of wooden castanets together, at
one time in front of their breasts, at an other time behind their heads,
and marking time with music and dance to a dirge set up by the
bystanders, in which the names of the Imams perpetually recur as a
burden. Noisiest of all are the Berbers, men of a darker skin and
another race, their feet and the upper part of their body naked, who
carry, some of them tambourines and cymbals, others iron chains and long
needles. One of their race is said to have formerly derided the Imams in
their affliction, and the Berbers now appear in expiation of that crime.
At first their music and their march proceed slowly together, but
presently the music quickens, the chain and needle-bearing Berbers move
violently round, and begin to beat themselves with their chains and to
prick their arms and cheeks with the needles—first gently, then with
more vehemence; till suddenly the music ceases, and all stops. So we are
carried back, on this old Asiatic soil, where beliefs and usages are
heaped layer upon layer and ruin upon ruin, far past the martyred Imams,
past Mahometanism, past Christianity, to the priests of Baal gashing
themselves with knives and to the worship of Adonis.
The _tekyas_, or theaters for the drama which calls forth these
celebrations, are constantly multiplying. The king, the great
functionaries, the towns, wealthy citizens like the king’s goldsmith, or
any private person who has the means and the desire, provide them. Every
one sends contributions; it is a religious act to furnish a box or to
give decorations for a _tekya_; and as religious offerings, all gifts
down to the smallest are accepted. There are tekyas for not more than
three or four hundred spectators, and there are tekyas for three or four
thousand. At Ispahan there are representations which bring together more
than twenty thousand people. At Teheran, the Persian capital, each
quarter of the town has its tekyas, every square and open place is
turned to account for establishing them, and spaces have been expressly
cleared, besides, for fresh tekyas. Count Gobineau describes
particularly one of these theaters,—a tekya of the best class, to hold
an audience of about four thousand,—at Teheran. The arrangements are
very simple. The tekya is a walled parallelogram, with a brick platform,
_sakou_, in the center of it; this sakou is surrounded with black poles
at some distance from each other, the poles are joined at the top by
horizontal rods of the same color, and from these rods hang colored
lamps, which are lighted for the praying and preaching at night when the
representation is over. The _sakou_, or central platform, makes the
stage; in connection with it, at one of the opposite extremities of the
parallelogram lengthwise, is a reserved box, _tâgnumâ_, higher than the
_sakou_. This box is splendidly decorated, and is used for peculiarly
interesting and magnificent tableaux,—the court of the Caliph, for
example—which occur in the course of the piece. A passage of a few feet
wide is left free between the stage and this box; all the rest of the
space is for the spectators, of whom the foremost rows are sitting on
their heels close up to this passage, so that they help the actors to
mount and descend the high steps of the _tâgnumâ_ when they have to pass
between that and the _sakou_. On each side of the _tâgnumâ_ are boxes,
and along one wall of the enclosure are other boxes with fronts of
elaborate woodwork, which are left to stand as a permanent part of the
construction; facing these, with the floor and stage between, rise tiers
of seats as in an amphitheater. All places are free; the great people
have generally provided and furnished the boxes, and take care to fill
them; but if a box is not occupied when the performance begins, any
ragged street-urchin or beggar may walk in and seat himself there. A row
of gigantic masts runs across the middle of the space, one or two of
them being fixed in the _sakou_ itself; and from these masts is
stretched an immense awning which protects the whole audience. Up to a
certain height these masts are hung with tiger and panther skins, to
indicate the violent character of the scenes to be represented. Shields
of steel and of hippopotamus skin, flags, and naked swords, are also
attached to these masts. A sea of color and splendor meets the eye all
round. Woodwork and brickwork disappear under cushions, rich carpets,
silk hangings, India muslin embroidered with silver and gold, shawls
from Kerman and from Cashmere. There are lamps, lusters of colored
crystal, mirrors, Bohemian and Venetian glass, porcelain vases of all
degrees of magnitude from China and from Europe, paintings and
engravings, displayed in profusion everywhere. The taste may not always
be soberly correct, but the whole spectacle has just the effect of
prodigality, color, and sumptuousness which we are accustomed to
associate with the splendors of the Arabian Nights.
In marked contrast with this display is the poverty of scenic
contrivance and stage illusion. The subject is far too interesting and
too solemn to need them. The actors are visible on all sides, and the
exits, entrances, and stage-play of our theaters are impossible; the
imagination of the spectator fills up all gaps and meets all
requirements. On the Ammergau arrangements one feels that the
archæologists and artists of Munich have laid their correct finger; at
Teheran there has been no schooling of this sort. A copper basin of
water represents the Euphrates; a heap of chopped straw in a corner is
the sand of the desert of Kerbela, and the actor goes and takes up a
handful of it, when his part requires him to throw, in Oriental fashion,
dust upon his head. There is no attempt at proper costume; all that is
sought is to do honor to the personages of chief interest by dresses and
jewels which would pass for rich and handsome things to wear in modern
Persian life. The power of the actors is in their genuine sense of the
seriousness of the business they are engaged in. They are, like the
public around them, penetrated with this, and so the actor throws his
whole soul into what he is about, the public meets the actor halfway,
and effects of extraordinary impressiveness are the result. “The actor
is under a charm,” says Count Gobineau; “he is under it so strongly and
completely that almost always one sees Yezid himself (the usurping
caliph), the wretched Ibn-Said (Yezid’s general), the infamous Shemer
(Ibn-Said’s lieutenant), at the moment they vent the cruellest insults
against the Imams whom they are going to massacre, or against the women
of the Imam’s family whom they are ill-using, burst into tears and
repeat their part with sobs. The public is neither surprised nor
displeased at this; on the contrary, it beats its breast at the sight,
throws up its arms towards heaven with invocations of God, and redoubles
its groans. So it often happens that the actor identifies himself with
the personage he represents to such a degree that, when the situation
carries him away, he cannot be said to act, he _is_ with such truth,
such complete enthusiasm, such utter self-forgetfulness, what he
represents, that he reaches a reality at one time sublime, at another
terrible, and produces impressions on his audience which it would be
simply absurd to look for from our more artificial performances. There
is nothing stilted, nothing false, nothing conventional; nature, and the
facts represented, themselves speak.”
The actors are men and boys, the parts of angels and women being filled
by boys. The children who appear in the piece are often the children of
the principal families of Teheran; their appearance in this religious
solemnity (for such it is thought) being supposed to bring a blessing
upon them and their parents. “Nothing is more touching,” says Count
Gobineau, “than to see these little things of three or four years old,
dressed in black gauze frocks with large sleeves, and having on their
heads small round black caps embroidered with silver and gold, kneeling
beside the body of the actor who represents the martyr of the day,
embracing him, and with their little hands covering themselves with
chopped straw for sand in sign of grief. These children evidently,” he
continues, “do not consider themselves to be acting; they are full of
the feeling that what they are about is something of deep seriousness
and importance; and though they are too young to comprehend fully the
story, they know, in general, that it is a matter sad and solemn. They
are not distracted by the audience, and they are not shy, but go through
their prescribed part with the utmost attention and seriousness, always
crossing their arms respectfully to receive the blessing of the Imam
Hussein; the public beholds them with emotions of the liveliest
satisfaction and sympathy.”
The dramatic pieces themselves are without any author’s name. They are
in popular language, such as the commonest and most ignorant of the
Persian people can understand, free from learned Arabic words,—free,
comparatively speaking, from Oriental fantasticality and hyperbole. The
Seyids, or popular friars, already spoken of, have probably had a hand
in the composition of many of them. The Moollahs, or regular
ecclesiastical authorities, condemn the whole thing. It is an innovation
which they disapprove and think dangerous; it is addressed to the eye,
and their religion forbids to represent religious things to the eye; it
departs from the limits of what is revealed and appointed to be taught
as the truth, and brings in novelties and heresies;—for these dramas
keep growing under the pressure of the actor’s imagination and emotion,
and of the imagination and emotion of the public, and receive new
developments every day. The learned, again, say that these pieces are a
heap of lies, the production of ignorant people, and have no words
strong enough to express their contempt for them. Still, so irresistible
is the vogue of these sacred dramas that, from the king on the throne to
the beggar in the street, every one, except perhaps the Moollahs,
attends them, and is carried away by them. The Imams and their families
speak always in a kind of lyrical chant, said to have rhythmical
effects, often of great pathos and beauty; their persecutors, the
villains of the piece, speak always in prose.
The stage is under the direction of a choragus, called _oostad_, or
“master,” who is a sacred personage by reason of the functions which he
performs. Sometimes he addresses to the audience a commentary on what is
passing before them, and asks their compassion and tears for the
martyrs; sometimes in default of a Seyid, he prays and preaches. He is
always listened to with veneration, for it is he who arranges the whole
sacred spectacle which so deeply moves everybody. With no attempt at
concealment, with the book of the piece in his hand, he remains
constantly on the stage, gives the actors their cue, puts the children
and any inexperienced actor in their right places, dresses the martyr in
his winding-sheet when he is going to his death, holds the stirrup for
him to mount his horse, and inserts a supply of chopped straw into the
hands of those who are about to want it. Let us now see him at work.
The theater is filled, and the heat is great; young men of rank, the
king’s pages, officers of the army, smart functionaries of State, move
through the crowd with water-skins slung on their backs, dealing out
water all round, in memory of the thirst which on these solemn days the
Imams suffered in the sands of Kerbela. Wild chants and litanies, such
as we have already described, are from time to time set up, by a
dervish, a soldier, a workman in the crowd. These chants are taken up,
more or less, by the audience: sometimes they flag and die away for want
of support, sometimes they are continued till they reach a paroxysm, and
then abruptly stop. Presently a strange, insignificant figure in a green
cotton garment, looking like a petty tradesman of one of the Teheran
bazaars, mounts upon the _sakou_. He beckons with his hand to the
audience, who are silent directly, and addresses them in a tone of
lecture and expostulation, thus:—
“Well, you seem happy enough, Mussulmans, sitting there at your ease
under the awning; and you imagine Paradise already wide open to you. Do
you know what Paradise is? It is a garden, doubtless, but such a garden
as you have no idea of. You will say to me: ‘Friend, tell us what it is
like.’ I have never been there, certainly; but plenty of prophets have
described it, and angels have brought news of it. However, all I will
tell you is, that there is room for all good people there, for it is
330,000 cubits long. If you do not believe, inquire. As for getting to
be one of the good people, let me tell you it is not enough to read the
Koran of the Prophet (the salvation and blessing of God be upon him!);
it is not enough to do everything which this divine book enjoins; it is
not enough to come and weep at the _tazyas_, as you do every day, you
sons of dogs you, who know nothing which is of any use; it behoves,
besides, that your good works (if you ever do any, which I greatly
doubt) should be done in the name and for the love of Hussein. It is
Hussein, Mussulmans, who is the door to Paradise; it is Hussein,
Mussulmans, who upholds the world; it is Hussein, Mussulmans, by whom
comes salvation! Cry, Hassan, Hussein!”
And all the multitude cry: “O Hassan! O Hussein!”
“That is well; and now cry again.” And again all cry: “O Hassan! O
Hussein!” “And now,” the strange speaker goes on, “pray to God to keep
you continually in the love of Hussein. Come, make your cry to God.”
Then the multitude, as one man, throw up their arms into the air, and
with a deep and long-drawn cry exclaim: “_Ya Allah!_ O God!”
Fifes, drums, and trumpets break out; the _kernas_, great copper
trumpets five or six feet long, give notice that the actors are ready
and that the _tazya_ is to commence. The preacher descends from the
_sakou_, and the actors occupy it.
To give a clear notion of the cycle which these dramas fill, we should
begin, as on the first day of the Moharrem the actors begin, with some
piece relating to the childhood of the Imams, such as, for instance, the
piece called _The Children Digging_. Ali and Fatima are living at Medina
with their little sons Hassan and Hussein. The simple home and
occupations of the pious family are exhibited; it is morning, Fatima is
seated with the little Hussein on her lap, dressing him. She combs his
hair, talking caressingly to him all the while. A hair comes out with
the comb; the child starts. Fatima is in distress at having given the
child even this momentary uneasiness, and stops to gaze upon him
tenderly. She falls into an anxious reverie, thinking of her fondness
for the child, and of the unknown future in store for him. While she
muses, the angel Gabriel stands before her. He reproves her weakness: “A
hair falls from the child’s head,” he says, “and you weep; what would
you do if you knew the destiny that awaits him, the countless wounds
with which that body shall one day be pierced, the agony that shall rend
your own soul!” Fatima, in despair, is comforted by her husband Ali, and
they go together into the town to hear Mahomet preach. The boys and some
of their little friends begin to play; every one makes a great deal of
Hussein; he is at once the most spirited and the most amiable child of
them all. The party amuse themselves with digging, with making holes in
the ground and building mounds. Ali returns from the sermon and asks
what they are about; and Hussein is made to reply in ambiguous and
prophetic answers, which convey that by these holes and mounds in the
earth are prefigured interments and tombs. Ali departs again; there rush
in a number of big and fierce boys, and begin to pelt the little Imams
with stones. A companion shields Hussein with his own body, but he is
struck down with a stone, and with another stone Hussein, too, is
stretched on the ground senseless. Who are those boy-tyrants and
persecutors? They are Ibn-Said, and Shemer, and others, the future
murderers at Kerbela. The audience perceive it with a shudder; the
hateful assailants go off in triumph; Ali re-enters, picks up the
stunned and wounded children, brings them round, and takes Hussein back
to his mother Fatima.
But let us now come at once to the days of martyrdom and to Kerbela. One
of the most famous pieces of the cycle is a piece called the _Marriage
of Kassem_, which brings us into the very middle of these crowning days.
Count Gobineau has given a translation of it, and from this translation
we will take a few extracts. Kassem is the son of Hussein’s elder
brother, the Imam Hassan, who had been poisoned by Yezid’s instigation
at Medina. Kassem and his mother are with the Imam Hussein at Kerbela;
there, too, are the women and children of the holy family, Omm-Leyla,
Hussein’s wife, the Persian princess, the last child of Yezdejerd the
last of the Sassanides; Zeyneb, Hussein’s sister, the offspring, like
himself, of Ali and Fatima, and the granddaughter of Mahomet; his nephew
Abdallah, still a little child; finally, his beautiful daughter Zobeyda.
When the piece begins, the Imam’s camp in the desert has already been
cut off from the Euphrates and besieged several days by the Syrian
troops under Ibn-Said and Shemer, and by the treacherous men of Kufa.
The Family of the Tent were suffering torments of thirst. One of the
children had brought an empty water-bottle, and thrown it, a silent
token of distress, before the feet of Abbas, the uncle of Hussein; Abbas
had sallied out to cut his way to the river, and had been slain.
Afterwards Ali-Akber, Hussein’s eldest son, had made the same attempt
and met with the same fate. Two younger brothers of Ali-Akber followed
his example, and were likewise slain. The Imam Hussein had rushed amidst
the enemy, beaten them from the body of Ali-Akber, and brought the body
back to his tent; but the river was still inaccessible. At this point
the action of the _Marriage of Kassem_ begins. Kassem, a youth of
sixteen, is burning to go out and avenge his cousin. At one end of the
_sakou_ is the Imam Hussein seated on his throne; in the middle are
grouped all the members of his family; at the other end lies the body of
Ali-Akber, with his mother Omm-Leyla, clothed and veiled in black,
bending over it. The _kernas_ sound, and Kassem, after a solemn appeal
from Hussein and his sister Zeyneb to God and to the founders of their
house to look upon their great distress, rises and speaks to himself:
_Kassem._—“Separate thyself from the women of the harem, Kassem.
Consider within thyself for a little; here thou sittest, and presently
thou wilt see the body of Hussein, that body like a flower, torn by
arrows and lances like thorns, Kassem.
“Thou sawest Ali-Akber’s head severed from his body on the field of
battle, and yet thou livedst!
“Arise, obey that which is written of thee by thy father; to be slain,
that is thy lot, Kassem!
“Go, get leave from the son of Fatima, most honorable among women, and
submit thyself to thy fate, Kassem.”
Hussein sees him approach. “Alas,” he says, “it is the orphan
nightingale of the garden of Hassan, my brother!” Then Kassem speaks:
_Kassem._—“O God, what shall I do beneath this load of affliction? My
eyes are wet with tears, my lips are dried up with thirst. To live is
worse than to die. What shall I do, seeing what hath befallen Ali-Akber?
If Hussein suffereth me not to go forth, oh misery! For then what shall
I do, O God, in the day of the resurrection, when I see my father
Hassan? When I see my mother in the day of the resurrection, what shall
I do, O God, in my sorrow and shame before her? All my kinsmen are gone
to appear before the Prophet: shall not I also one day stand before the
Prophet; and what shall I do, O God, in that day?”
Then he addresses the Imam:—
“Hail, threshold of the honor and majesty on high, threshold of heaven,
threshold of God! In the roll of martyrs thou art the chief; in the book
of creation thy story will live for ever. An orphan, a fatherless child,
downcast and weeping, comes to prefer a request to thee.”
Hussein bids him tell it, and he answers:—
“O light of the eyes of Mahomet the mighty, O lieutenant of Ali the
lion! Abbas has perished, Ali-Akber has suffered martyrdom. O my uncle,
thou hast no warriors left, and no standard-bearer! The roses are gone
and gone are their buds; the jessamine is gone, the poppies are gone. I
alone, I am still left in the garden of the Faith, a thorn, and
miserable. If thou hast any kindness for the orphan, suffer me to go
forth and fight.”
Hussein refuses. “My child,” he says, “thou wast the light of the eyes
of the Imam Hassan, thou art my beloved remembrance of him; ask me not
this; urge me not, entreat me not; to have lost Ali-Akber is enough.”
Kassem answers:—“That Kassem should live and Ali-Akber be
marytred—sooner let the earth cover me! O king, be generous to the
beggar at thy gate. See how my eyes run over with tears and my lips are
dried up with thirst. Cast thine eyes toward the waters of the heavenly
Euphrates! I die of thirst; grant me, O thou marked of God, a full
pitcher of the water of life! it flows in the Paradise which awaits me.”
Hussein still refuses; Kassem breaks forth in complaints and
lamentations, his mother comes to him and learns the reason. She then
says:—
“Complain not against the Imam, light of my eyes; only by his order can
the commission of martyrdom be given. In that commission are sealed
two-and-seventy witnesses, all righteous, and among the two-and-seventy
is thy name. Know that thy destiny of death is commanded in the writing
which thou wearest on thine arm.”
This writing is the testament of his father Hassan. He bears it in
triumph to the Imam Hussein, who finds written there that he should, on
the death-plain of Kerbela, suffer Kassem to have his will, but that he
should marry him first to his daughter Zobeyda. Kassem consents, though
in astonishment. “Consider,” he says, “there lies Ali-Akber, mangled by
the enemies’ hands! Under this sky of ebon blackness, how can joy show
her face? Nevertheless if thou commandest it, what have I to do but
obey? Thy commandment is that of the Prophet, and his voice is that of
God.” But Hussein has also to overcome the reluctance of the intended
bride and of all the women of his family.
“Heir of the vicar of God,” says Kassem’s mother to the Imam, “bid me
die, but speak not to me of a bridal. If Zobeyda is to be a bride and
Kassem a bridegroom, where is the henna to tinge their hands, where is
the bridal chamber?” “Mother of Kassem,” answers the Imam solemnly, “yet
a few moments, and in this field of anguish the tomb shall be for
marriage-bed, and the winding-sheet for bridal garment!” All give way to
the will of their sacred Head. The women and children surround Kassem,
sprinkle him with rose-water, hang bracelets and necklaces on him, and
scatter bon-bons around; and then the marriage procession is formed.
Suddenly drums and trumpets are heard, and the Syrian troops appear.
Ibn-Said and Shemer are at their head. “The Prince of the Faith
celebrates a marriage in the desert,” they exclaim tauntingly; “we will
soon change his festivity into mourning.” They pass by, and Kassem takes
leave of his bride. “God keep thee, my bride,” he says, embracing her,
“for I must forsake thee!” “One moment,” she says, “remain in thy place
one moment! thy countenance is as the lamp which giveth us light; suffer
me to turn around thee as the butterfly turneth, gently, gently!” And
making a turn around him, she performs the ancient Eastern rites of
respect from a new-married wife to her husband. Troubled, he rises to
go: “The reins of my will are slipping away from me!” he murmurs. She
lays hold of his robe: “Take off thy hand,” he cries, “we belong not to
ourselves!”
Then he asks the Imam to array him in his winding-sheet. “O nightingale
of the divine orchard of martyrdom,” says Hussein, as he complies with
his wish, “I clothe thee with thy winding-sheet, I kiss thy face; there
is no fear, and no hope, but of God!” Kassem commits his little brother
Abdallah to the Imam’s care. Omm-Leyla looks up from her son’s corpse,
and says to Kassem: “When thou enterest the garden of Paradise, kiss for
me the head of Ali-Akber!”
The Syrian troops again appear. Kassem rushes upon them and they all go
off fighting. The Family of the Tent, at Hussein’s command, put the
Koran on their heads and pray, covering themselves with sand. Kassem
reappears victorious. He has slain Azrek, a chief captain of the
Syrians, but his thirst is intolerable. “Uncle,” he says to the Imam,
who asks him what reward he wishes for his valor, “my tongue cleaves to
the roof of my mouth; the reward I wish is _water_.” “Thou coverest me
with shame, Kassem,” his uncle answers; “what can I do? Thou askest
water; there is no water!”
_Kassem._—“If I might but wet my mouth, I could presently make an end of
the men of Kufa.”
_Hussein._—“As I live, I have not one drop of water!”
_Kassem._—“Were it but lawful, I would wet my mouth with my own blood.”
_Hussein._—“Beloved child, what the Prophet forbids, that cannot I make
lawful.”
_Kassem._—“I beseech thee, let my lips be but once moistened, and I will
vanquish thine enemies!”
Hussein presses his own lips to those of Kassem, who, refreshed, again
rushes forth, and returns bleeding and stuck with darts, to die at the
Imam’s feet in the tent. So ends the marriage of Kassem.
But the great day is the tenth day of the Moharrem, when comes the death
of the Imam himself. The narrative of Gibbon well sums up the events of
this great tenth day. “The battle at length expired by the death of the
last of the companions of Hussein. Alone, weary, and wounded, he seated
himself at the door of his tent. He was pierced in the mouth with a
dart. He lifted his hands to heaven—they were full of blood—and he
uttered a funeral prayer for the living and the dead. In a transport of
despair, his sister issued from the tent, and adjured the general of the
Kufians that he would not suffer Hussein to be murdered before his eyes.
A tear trickled down the soldier’s venerable beard; and the boldest of
his men fell back on every side as the dying Imam threw himself among
them. The remorseless Shemer—a name detested by the faithful—reproached
their cowardice; and the grandson of Mahomet was slain with three and
thirty strokes of lances and swords. After they had trampled on his
body, they carried his head to the castle of Kufa, and the inhuman
Obeidallah (the governor) struck him on the mouth with a cane. ‘Alas!’
exclaimed an aged Mussulman, ‘on those lips have I seen the lips of the
Apostle of God!’”
For this catastrophe no one _tazya_ suffices; all the companies of
actors unite in a vast open space; booths and tents are pitched round
the outside circle for the spectators; in the center is the Imam’s camp,
and the day ends with its conflagration.
Nor are there wanting pieces which carry on the story beyond the death
of Hussein. One which produces an extraordinary effect is _The Christian
Damsel_. The carnage is over, the enemy are gone. To the awe-struck
beholders, the scene shows the silent plain of Kerbela and the tombs of
the martyrs. Their bodies, full of wounds, and with weapons sticking in
them still, are exposed to view; but around them all are crowns of
burning candles, circles of light, to show that they have entered into
glory. At one end of the _sakou_ is a high tomb by itself; it is the
tomb of the Imam Hussein, and his pierced body is seen stretched out
upon it. A brilliant caravan enters, with camels, soldiers, servants,
and a young lady on horseback, in European costume, or what passes in
Persia for European costume. She halts near the tombs and proposes to
encamp. Her servants try to pitch a tent; but wherever they drive a pole
into the ground, blood springs up, and a groan of horror bursts from the
audience. Then the fair traveler, instead of encamping, mounts into the
_tâgnumâ_, lies down to rest there, and falls asleep. Jesus Christ
appears to her, and makes known that this is Kerbela, and what has
happened here. Meanwhile, an Arab of the desert, a Bedouin who had
formerly received Hussein’s bounty, comes stealthily, intent on plunder,
upon the _sakou_. He finds nothing, and in a paroxysm of brutal fury he
begins to ill-treat the corpses. Blood flows. The feeling of Asiatics
about their dead is well known, and the horror of the audience rises to
its height. Presently the ruffian assails and wounds the corpse of the
Imam himself, over whom white doves are hovering; the voice of Hussein,
deep and mournful, calls from his tomb: “_There is no God but God!_” The
robber flies in terror; the angels, the prophets, Mahomet, Jesus Christ,
Moses, the Imams, the holy women, all come upon the _sakou_, press round
Hussein, load him with honors. The Christian damsel wakes, and embraces
Islam, the Islam of the sect of the Shiahs.
Another piece closes the whole story, by bringing the captive women and
children of the Iman’s family to Damascus, to the presence of the Caliph
Yezid. It is in this piece that there comes the magnificent tableau,
already mentioned, of the court of the caliph. The crown jewels are lent
for it, and the dresses of the ladies of Yezid’s court, represented by
boys chosen for their good looks, are said to be worth thousands and
thousands of pounds; but the audience see them without favor, for this
brilliant court of Yezid is cruel to the captives of Kerbela. The
captives are thrust into a wretched dungeon under the palace walls; but
the Caliph’s wife had formerly been a slave of Mahomet’s daughter
Fatima, the mother of Hussein and Zeyneb. She goes to see Zeyneb in
prison, her heart is touched, she passes into an agony of repentance,
returns to her husband, upbraids him with his crimes, and intercedes for
the women of the holy family, and for the children, who keep calling for
the Imam Hussein. Yezid orders his wife to be put to death, and sends
the head of Hussein to the children. Sekyna, the Imam’s youngest
daughter, a child of four years old, takes the beloved head in her arms,
kisses it, and lies down beside it. Then Hussein appears to her as in
life: “Oh! my father,” she cries, “where wast thou? I was hungry, I was
cold, I was beaten—where wast thou?” But now she sees him again, and is
happy. In the vision of her happiness she passes away out of this
troublesome life, she enters into rest, and the piece ends with her
mother and her aunts burying her.
These are the martyrs of Kerbela; and these are the sufferings which
awaken in an Asiatic audience sympathy so deep and serious, transports
so genuine of pity, love, and gratitude, that to match them at all one
must take the feelings raised at Ammergau. And now, where are we to
look, in the subject-matter of the Persian passion-play, for the source
of all this emotion?
Count Gobineau suggests that it is to be found in the feeling of
patriotism; and that our Indo-European kinsmen, the Persians, conquered
by the Semitic Arabians, find in the sufferings of Hussein a portrait of
their own martyrdom. “Hussein,” says Count Gobineau, “is not only the
son of Ali, he is the husband of a princess of the blood of the Persian
kings; he, his father Ali, the whole body of Imams taken together,
represent the nation, represent Persia, invaded, ill-treated, despoiled,
stripped of its inhabitants, by the Arabians. The right which is
insulted and violated in Hussein, is identified with the right of
Persia. The Arabians, the Turks, the Afghans,—Persia’s implacable and
hereditary enemies,—recognize Yezid as legitimate caliph; Persia finds
therein an excuse for hating them the more, and identifies herself the
more with the usurper’s victims. It is _patriotism_ therefore, which has
taken the form, here, of the drama to express itself.” No doubt there is
much truth in what Count Gobineau thus says; and it is certain that the
division of Shiahs and Sunis has its true cause in a division of races,
rather than in a difference of religious belief.
But I confess that if the interest of the Persian passion-plays had
seemed to me to lie solely in the curious evidence they afford of the
workings of patriotic feeling in a conquered people, I should hardly
have occupied myself with them at all this length. I believe that they
point to something much more interesting. What this is, I cannot do more
than simply indicate; but indicate it I will, in conclusion, and then
leave the student of human nature to follow it out for himself.
When Mahomet’s cousin Jaffer, and others of his first converts,
persecuted by the idolaters of Mecca, fled in the year of our era 615,
seven years before the Hegira, into Abyssinia, and took refuge with the
King of that country, the people of Mecca sent after the fugitives to
demand that they should be given up to them. Abyssinia was then already
Christian. The king asked Jaffer and his companions what was this new
religion for which they had left their country. Jaffer answered: “We
were plunged in the darkness of ignorance, we were worshipers of idols.
Given over to all our passions, we knew no law but that of the
strongest, when God raised up among us a man of our own race, of noble
descent, and long held in esteem by us for his virtues. This apostle
called us to believe in one God, to worship God only, to reject the
superstitions of our fathers, to despise divinities of wood and stone.
He commanded us to eschew wickedness, to be truthful in speech, faithful
to our engagements, kind and helpful to our relations and neighbors. He
bade us respect the chastity of women, and not to rob the orphan. He
exhorted us to prayer, alms-giving, and fasting. We believed in his
mission, and we accepted the doctrines and the rule of life which he
brought to us from God. For this our countrymen have persecuted us; and
now they want to make us return to their idolatry.” The king of
Abyssinia refused to surrender the fugitives, and then, turning again to
Jaffer, after a few more explanations, he picked up a straw from the
ground, and said to him: “Between your religion and ours there is not
the thickness of this straw difference.”
That is not quite so; yet thus much we may affirm, that Jaffer’s account
of the religion of Mahomet is a great deal truer than the accounts of it
which are commonly current amongst us. Indeed, for the credit of
humanity, as more than a hundred millions of men are said to profess the
Mahometan religion, one is glad to think so. To popular opinion
everywhere, religion is proved by miracles. All religions but a man’s
own are utterly false and vain; the authors of them are mere impostors;
and the miracles which are said to attest them, fictitious. We forget
that this is a game which two can play at; although the believer of each
religion always imagines the prodigies which attest his own religion to
be fenced by a guard granted to them alone. Yet how much more safe is
it, as well as more fruitful, to look for the main confirmation of a
religion in its intrinsic correspondence with urgent wants of human
nature, in its profound necessity! Differing religions will then be
found to have much in common, but this will be an additional proof of
the value of that religion which does most for that which is thus
commonly recognized as salutary and necessary. In Christendom one need
not go about to establish that the religion of the Hebrews is a better
religion than the religion of the Arabs, or that the Bible is a greater
book than the Koran. The Bible _grew_, the Koran _was made_; there lies
the immense difference in depth and truth between them! This very
inferiority may make the Koran, for certain purposes and for people at a
low stage of mental growth, a more powerful instrument than the Bible.
From the circumstances of its origin, the Koran has the intensely
dogmatic character, it has the perpetual insistence on the motive of
future rewards and punishments, the palpable exhibition of paradise and
hell, which the Bible has not. Among the little known and little
advanced races of the great African continent, the Mahometan
missionaries, by reason of the sort of power which this character of the
Koran gives, are said to be more successful than ours. Nevertheless even
in Africa it will assuredly one day be manifest, that whereas the
Bible-people trace themselves to Abraham through Isaac, and the
Koran-people trace themselves to Abraham through Ishmael, the difference
between the religion of the Bible and the religion of the Koran is
almost as the difference between Isaac and Ishmael. I mean that the
seriousness about righteousness, which is what the hatred of idolatry
really means, and the profound and inexhaustible doctrines that the
righteous Eternal loveth righteousness, that there is no peace for the
wicked, that the righteous is an everlasting foundation, are exhibited
and inculcated in the Old Testament with an authority, majesty, and
truth which leave the Koran immeasurably behind, and which, the more
mankind grows and gains light, the more will be felt to have no fellows.
Mahomet was no doubt acquainted with the Jews and their documents, and
gained something from this source for his religion. But his religion is
not a mere plagiarism from Judea, any more than it is a mere mass of
falsehood. No; in the seriousness, elevation, and moral energy of
himself and of that Semitic race from which he sprang and to which he
spoke, Mahomet mainly found that scorn and hatred of idolatry, that
sense of the worth and truth of righteousness, judgment, and justice,
which make the real greatness of him and his Koran, and which are thus
rather an independent testimony to the essential doctrines of the Old
Testament, than a plagiarism from them. The world needs righteousness,
and the Bible is the grand teacher of it, but for certain times and
certain men Mahomet too, in his way, was a teacher of righteousness.
But we know how the Old Testament conception of righteousness ceased
with time to have the freshness and force of an intuition, became
something petrified, narrow, and formal, needed renewing. We know how
Christianity renewed it, carrying into these hard waters of Judaism a
sort of warm gulf-stream of tender emotion, due chiefly to qualities
which may be summed up as those of inwardness, mildness, and
self-renouncement. Mahometanism had no such renewing. It began with a
conception of righteousness, lofty indeed, but narrow, and which we may
call old Jewish; and there it remained. It is not a _feeling_ religion.
No one would say that the virtues of gentleness, mildness, and
self-sacrifice were its virtues; and the more it went on, the more the
faults of its original narrow basis became visible, more and more it
became fierce and militant, less and less was it amiable. Now, what are
Ali, and Hassan, and Hussein and the Imams, but an insurrection of noble
and pious natures against this hardness and aridity of the religion
round them? an insurrection making its authors seem weak, helpless, and
unsuccessful to the world and amidst the struggles of the world, but
enabling them to know the joy and peace for which the world thirsts in
vain, and inspiring in the heart of mankind an irresistible sympathy.
“The twelve Imams,” says Gibbon, “Ali, Hassan, Hussein, and the lineal
descendants of Hussein, to the ninth generation, without arms, or
treasures, or subjects, successively enjoyed the veneration of the
people. Their names were often the pretense of sedition and civil war;
but these royal saints despised the pomp of the world, submitted to the
will of God and the injustice of man, and devoted their innocent lives
to the study and practice of religion.”
Abnegation and mildness, based on the depth of the inner life, and
visited by unmerited misfortune, made the power of the first and famous
Imams, Ali, Hassan, and Hussein, over the popular imagination. “O
brother,” said Hassan, as he was dying of poison, to Hussein who sought
to find out and punish his murderer, “O brother, let him alone till he
and I meet together before God!” So his father Ali had stood back from
his rights instead of snatching at them. So of Hussein himself it was
said by his successful rival, the usurping Caliph Yezid: “God loved
Hussein, _but he would not suffer him to attain to anything_.” They
might attain to nothing, they were too pure, these great ones of the
world as by birth they were; but the people, which itself also can
attain to so little, loved them all the better on that account, loved
them for their abnegation and mildness, felt that they were dear to God,
that God loved them, and that they and their lives filled a void in the
severe religion of Mahomet. These saintly self-deniers, these resigned
sufferers, who would not strive nor cry, supplied a tender and pathetic
side in Islam. The conquered Persians, a more mobile, more
impressionable, and gentler race than their concentrated, narrow, and
austere Semitic conquerors, felt the need of it most, and gave most
prominence to the ideals which satisfied the need; but in Arabs and
Turks also, and in all the Mahometan world, Ali and his sons excite
enthusiasm and affection. Round the central sufferer, Hussein, has come
to group itself everything which is most tender and touching. His person
brings to the Mussulman’s mind the most human side of Mahomet himself,
his fondness for children,—for Mahomet had loved to nurse the little
Hussein on his knee, and to show him from the pulpit to his people. The
Family of the Tent is full of women and children, and their devotion and
sufferings,—blameless and saintly women, lovely and innocent children.
There, too, are lovers with their story, the beauty and the love of
youth; and all follow the attraction of the pure and resigned Imam, all
die for him. The tender pathos from all these flows into the pathos from
him and enhances it, until finally there arises for the popular
imagination an immense ideal of mildness and self-sacrifice, melting and
overpowering the soul.
Even for us, to whom almost all the names are strange, whose interest in
the places and persons is faint, who have them before us for a moment
to-day, to see them again, probably, no more forever,—even for us,
unless I err greatly, the power and pathos of this ideal are
recognizable. What must they be for those to whom every name is
familiar, and calls up the most solemn and cherished associations; who
have had their adoring gaze fixed all their lives upon this exemplar of
self-denial and gentleness, and who have no other? If it was superfluous
to say to English people that the religion of the Koran has not the
value of the religion of the Old Testament, still more is it superfluous
to say that the religion of the Imams has not the value of Christianity.
The character and discourse of Jesus Christ possess, I have elsewhere
often said, two signal powers: mildness and sweet reasonableness. The
latter, the power which so puts before our view duty of every kind as to
give it the force of an intuition, as to make it seem,—to make the total
sacrifice of our ordinary self seem,—the most simple, natural, winning,
necessary thing in the world, has been hitherto applied with but a very
limited range, it is destined to an infinitely wider application, and
has a fruitfulness which will yet transform the world. Of this the Imams
have nothing, except so far as all mildness and self-sacrifice have in
them something of sweet reasonableness and are its indispensable
preliminary. This they have, _mildness and self-sacrifice_; and we have
seen what an attraction it exercises. Could we ask for a stronger
testimony to Christianity? Could we wish for any sign more convincing,
that Jesus Christ was indeed, what Christians call him, _the desire of
all nations_? So salutary, so necessary is what Christianity contains,
that a religion,—a great, powerful, successful religion,—arises without
it, and the missing virtue forces its way in! Christianity may say to
these Persian Mahometans, with their gaze fondly turned towards the
martyred Imams, what in our Bible God says by Isaiah to Cyrus, their
great ancestor:—“_I girded thee, though thou hast not known me._” It is
a long way from Kerbela to Calvary; but the sufferers of Kerbela hold
aloft to the eyes of millions of our race the lesson so loved by the
sufferer of Calvary. For he said: “Learn of me, that I am _mild_, and
_lowly of heart_; and ye shall find _rest unto your souls_.”
VIII.
JOUBERT.
Why should we ever treat of any dead authors but the famous ones? Mainly
for this reason: because, from these famous personages, home or foreign,
whom we all know so well, and of whom so much has been said, the amount
of stimulus which they contain for us has been in a great measure
disengaged; people have formed their opinion about them, and do not
readily change it. One may write of them afresh, combat received
opinions about them, even interest one’s readers in so doing; but the
interest one’s readers receive has to do, in general, rather with the
treatment than with the subject; they are susceptible of a lively
impression rather of the course of the discussion itself,—its turns,
vivacity, and novelty,—than of the genius of the author who is the
occasion of it. And yet what is really precious and inspiring, in all
that we get from literature, except this sense of an immediate contact
with genius itself, and the stimulus towards what is true and excellent
which we derive from it? Now in literature, besides the eminent men of
genius who have had their deserts in the way of fame, besides the
eminent men of ability who have often had far more than their deserts in
the way of fame, there are a certain number of personages who have been
real men of genius,—by which I mean, that they have had a genuine gift
for what is true and excellent, and are therefore capable of emitting a
life-giving stimulus,—but who, for some reason or other, in most cases
for very valid reasons, have remained obscure, nay, beyond a narrow
circle in their own country, unknown. It is salutary from time to time
to come across a genius of this kind, and to extract his honey. Often he
has more of it for us, as I have already said, than greater men; for,
though it is by no means true that from what is new to us there is most
to be learnt, it is yet indisputably true that from what is new to us we
in general learn most.
Of a genius of this kind, Joseph Joubert, I am now going to speak. His
name is, I believe, almost unknown in England; and even in France, his
native country, it is not famous. M. Sainte-Beuve has given of him one
of his incomparable portraits; but,—besides that even M. Sainte-Beuve’s
writings are far less known amongst us than they deserve to be,—every
country has its own point of view from which a remarkable author may
most profitably be seen and studied.
Joseph Joubert was born (and his date should be remarked) in 1754, at
Montignac, a little town in Périgord. His father was a doctor with small
means and a large family; and Joseph, the eldest, had his own way to
make in the world. He was for eight years, as pupil first, and
afterwards as an assistant-master, in the public school of Toulouse,
then managed by the Jesuits, who seem to have left in him a most
favorable opinion, not only of their tact and address, but of their
really good qualities as teachers and directors. Compelled by the
weakness of his health to give up, at twenty-two, the profession of
teaching, he passed two important years of his life in hard study, at
home at Montignac; and came in 1778 to try his fortune in the literary
world of Paris, then perhaps the most tempting field which has ever yet
presented itself to a young man of letters. He knew Diderot, D’Alembert,
Marmontel, Laharpe; he became intimate with one of the celebrities of
the next literary generation, then, like himself, a young
man,—Chateaubriand’s friend, the future Grand Master of the University,
Fontanes. But, even then, it began to be remarked of him, that M.
Joubert “_s’inquiétait de perfection bien plus que de gloire_—cared far
more about perfecting himself than about making himself a reputation.”
His severity of morals may perhaps have been rendered easier to him by
the delicacy of his health; but the delicacy of his health will not by
itself account for his changeless preference of being to seeming,
knowing to showing, studying to publishing; for what terrible public
performers have some invalids been! This preference he retained all
through his life, and it is by this that he is characterized. “He has
chosen,” Chateaubriand (adopting Epicurus’s famous words) said of him,
“_to hide his life_.” Of a life which its owner was bent on hiding there
can be but little to tell. Yet the only two public incidents of
Joubert’s life, slight as they are, do all concerned in them so much
credit that they deserve mention. In 1790 the Constituent Assembly made
the office of justice of the peace elective throughout France. The
people of Montignac retained such an impression of the character of
their young townsman,—one of Plutarch’s men of virtue, as he had lived
amongst them, simple, studious, severe,—that, though he had left them
for years, they elected him in his absence without his knowing anything
about it. The appointment little suited Joubert’s wishes or tastes; but
at such a moment he thought it wrong to decline it. He held it for two
years, the legal term, discharging its duties with a firmness and
integrity which were long remembered; and then, when he went out of
office, his fellow-townsmen reelected him. But Joubert thought that he
had now accomplished his duty towards them, and he went back to the
retirement which he loved. That seems to me a little episode of the
great French Revolution worth remembering. The sage who was asked by the
king, why sages were seen at the doors of kings, but not kings at the
doors of sages, replied, that it was because sages knew what was good
for them, and kings did not. But at Montignac the king—for in 1790 the
people in France was king with a vengeance—knew what was good for him,
and came to the door of the sage.
The other incident was this. When Napoleon, in 1809, reorganized the
public instruction of France, founded the University, and made M. de
Fontanes its Grand Master, Fontanes had to submit to the Emperor a list
of persons to form the council or governing body of the new University.
Third on his list, after two distinguished names, Fontanes placed the
unknown name of Joubert. “This name,” he said in his accompanying
memorandum to the Emperor, “is not known as the two first are; and yet
this is the nomination to which I attach most importance. I have known
M. Joubert all my life. His character and intelligence are of the very
highest order. I shall rejoice if your Majesty will accept my guarantee
for him.” Napoleon trusted his Grand Master, and Joubert became a
councilor of the University. It is something that a man, elevated to the
highest posts of State, should not forget his obscure friends; or that,
if he remembers and places them, he should regard in placing them their
merit rather than their obscurity. It is more, in the eyes of those whom
the necessities, real or supposed, of a political system have long
familiarized with such cynical disregard of fitness in the distribution
of office, to see a minister and his master alike zealous, in giving
away places, to give them to the best men to be found.
Between 1792 and 1809 Joubert had married. His life was passed between
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where his wife’s family lived,—a pretty little
Burgundian town, by which the Lyons railroad now passes,—and Paris.
Here, in a house in the Rue St.-Honoré, in a room very high up, and
admitting plenty of the light which he so loved,—a room from which he
saw, in his own words, “a great deal of sky and very little
earth,”—among the treasures of a library collected with infinite pains,
taste, and skill, from which every book he thought ill of was rigidly
excluded,—he never would possess either a complete Voltaire or a
complete Rousseau,—the happiest hours of his life were passed. In the
circle of one of those women who leave a sort of perfume in literary
history, and who have the gift of inspiring successive generations of
readers with an indescribable regret not to have known them,—Pauline de
Montmorin, Madame de Beaumont,—he had become intimate with nearly all
which at that time, in the Paris world of letters or of society, was
most attractive and promising. Amongst his acquaintances one only misses
the names of Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant. Neither of them was
to his taste, and with Madame de Staël he always refused to become
acquainted; he thought she had more vehemence than truth, and more heat
than light.
Years went on, and his friends became conspicuous authors or statesmen;
but Joubert remained in the shade. His constitution was of such
fragility that how he lived so long, or accomplished so much as he did,
is a wonder: his soul had, for its basis of operations, hardly any body
at all: both from his stomach and from his chest he seems to have had
constant suffering, though he lived by rule, and was as abstemious as a
Hindoo. Often, after overwork in thinking, reading, or talking, he
remained for days together in a state of utter prostration,—condemned to
absolute silence and inaction; too happy if the agitation of his mind
would become quiet also, and let him have the repose of which he stood
in so much need. With this weakness of health, these repeated
suspensions of energy, he was incapable of the prolonged contention of
spirit necessary for the creation of great works. But he read and
thought immensely; he was an unwearied note-taker, a charming
letter-writer; above all, an excellent and delightful talker. The gaiety
and amenity of his natural disposition were inexhaustible; and his
spirit, too, was of astonishing elasticity; he seemed to hold on to life
by a single thread only, but that single thread was very tenacious. More
and more, as his soul and knowledge ripened more and more, his friends
pressed to his room in the Rue St.-Honoré; often he received them in
bed, for he seldom rose before three o’clock in the afternoon; and at
his bedroom-door, on his bad days, Madame Joubert stood sentry, trying,
not always with success, to keep back the thirsty comers from the
fountain which was forbidden to flow. Fontanes did nothing in the
University without consulting him, and Joubert’s ideas and pen were
always at his friend’s service.
When he was in the country, at Villeneuve, the young priests of his
neighborhood used to resort to him, in order to profit by his library
and by his conversation. He, like our Coleridge, was particularly
qualified to attract men of this kind and to benefit them: retaining
perfect independence of mind, he was a religious philosopher. As age
came on, his infirmities became more and more overwhelming; some of his
friends, too, died; others became so immersed in politics, that Joubert,
who hated politics, saw them seldomer than of old; but the moroseness of
age and infirmity never touched him, and he never quarreled with a
friend or lost one. From these miseries he was preserved by that quality
in him of which I have already spoken; a quality which is best expressed
by a word, not of common use in English,—alas, we have too little in our
national character of the quality which this word expresses,—his inborn,
his constant amenity. He lived till the year 1824. On the 4th of May in
that year he died, at the age of seventy. A day or two after his death
M. de Chateaubriand inserted in the _Journal des Débats_ a short notice
of him, perfect for its feeling, grace, and propriety. _On ne vit dans
la mémoire du monde_, he says and says truly, _que par des travaux pour
le monde_,—“a man can live in the world’s memory only by what he has
done for the world.” But Chateaubriand used the privilege which his
great name gave him to assert, delicately but firmly, Joubert’s real and
rare merits, and to tell the world what manner of man had just left it.
Joubert’s papers were accumulated in boxes and drawers. He had not meant
them for publication; it was very difficult to sort them and to prepare
them for it. Madame Joubert, his widow, had a scruple about giving them
a publicity which her husband, she felt, would never have permitted.
But, as her own end approached, the natural desire to leave of so
remarkable a spirit some enduring memorial, some memorial to outlast the
admiring recollection of the living who were so fast passing away, made
her yield to the entreaties of his friends, and allow the printing, but
for private circulation only, of a volume of his fragments.
Chateaubriand edited it; it appeared in 1838, fourteen years after
Joubert’s death. The volume attracted the attention of those who were
best fitted to appreciate it, and profoundly impressed them. M.
Sainte-Beuve gave of it, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, the admirable
notice of which I have already spoken; and so much curiosity was excited
about Joubert, that the collection of his fragments, enlarged by many
additions, was at last published for the benefit of the world in
general. It has since been twice reprinted. The first or preliminary
chapter has some fancifulness and affectation in it; the reader should
begin with the second.
I have likened Joubert to Coleridge; and indeed the points of
resemblance between the two men are numerous. Both of them great and
celebrated talkers, Joubert attracting pilgrims to his upper chamber in
the Rue St.-Honoré, as Coleridge attracted pilgrims to Mr. Gilman’s at
Highgate; both of them desultory and incomplete writers,—here they had
an outward likeness with one another. Both of them passionately devoted
to reading in a class of books, and to thinking on a class of subjects,
out of the beaten line of the reading and thought of their day; both of
them ardent students and critics of old literature, poetry, and the
metaphysics of religion; both of them curious explorers of words, and of
the latent significance hidden under the popular use of them; both of
them, in a certain sense, conservative in religion and politics, by
antipathy to the narrow and shallow foolishness of vulgar modern
liberalism;—here they had their inward and real likeness. But that in
which the essence of their likeness consisted is this,—that they both
had from nature an ardent impulse for seeking the genuine truth on all
matters they thought about, and a gift for finding it and recognizing it
when it was found. To have the impulse for seeking this truth is much
rarer than most people think; to have the gift for finding it is, I need
not say, very rare indeed. By this they have a spiritual relationship of
the closest kind with one another, and they become, each of them, a
source of stimulus and progress for all of us.
Coleridge had less delicacy and penetration than Joubert, but more
richness and power; his production, though far inferior to what his
nature at first seemed to promise, was abundant and varied. Yet in all
his production how much is there to dissatisfy us! How many reserves
must be made in praising either his poetry, or his criticism, or his
philosophy! How little either of his poetry, or of his criticism, or of
his philosophy, can we expect permanently to stand! But that which will
stand of Coleridge is this: the stimulus of his continual effort,—not a
moral effort, for he had no morals,—but of his continual instinctive
effort, crowned often with rich success, to get at and to lay bare the
real truth of his matter in hand, whether that matter were literary, or
philosophical, or political, or religious; and this in a country where
at that moment such an effort was almost unknown; where the most
powerful minds threw themselves upon poetry, which conveys truth,
indeed, but conveys it indirectly; and where ordinary minds were so
habituated to do without thinking altogether, to regard considerations
of established routine and practical convenience as paramount, that any
attempt to introduce within the domain of these the disturbing element
of thought, they were prompt to resent as an outrage. Coleridge’s great
usefulness lay in his supplying in England, for many years and under
critical circumstances, by the spectacle of this effort of his, a
stimulus to all minds capable of profiting by it; in the generation
which grew up around him. His action will still be felt as long as the
need for it continues. When, with the cessation of the need, the action
too has ceased, Coleridge’s memory, in spite of the disesteem—nay,
repugnance—which his character may and must inspire, will yet forever
remain invested with that interest and gratitude which invests the
memory of founders.
M. de Rémusat, indeed, reproaches Coleridge with his _jugements
saugrenus_; the criticism of a gifted truth-finder ought not to be
_saugrenu_, so on this reproach we must pause for a moment. _Saugrenu_
is a rather vulgar French word, but, like many other vulgar words, very
expressive; used as an epithet for a judgment, it means something like
_impudently absurd_. The literary judgments of one nation about another
are very apt to be _saugrenus_. It is certainly true, as M. Sainte-Beuve
remarks in answer to Goethe’s complaint against the French that they
have undervalued Du Bartas, that as to the estimate of its own authors
every nation is the best judge; the _positive_ estimate of them, be it
understood, not, of course, the estimate of them in comparison with the
authors of other nations. Therefore a foreigner’s judgments about the
intrinsic merit of a nation’s authors will generally, when at complete
variance with that nation’s own be wrong; but there is a permissible
wrongness in these matters, and to that permissible wrongness there is a
limit. When that limit is exceeded, the wrong judgment becomes more than
wrong, it becomes _saugrenu_, or impudently absurd. For instance, the
high estimate which the French have of Racine is probably in great
measure deserved; or, to take a yet stronger case, even the high
estimate which Joubert had of the Abbé Delille is probably in great
measure deserved; but the common disparaging judgment passed on Racine
by English readers is not _saugrenu_, still less is that passed by them
on the Abbé Delille _saugrenu_, because the beauty of Racine, and of
Delille too, so far as Delille’s beauty goes, is eminently in their
language, and this is a beauty which a foreigner cannot perfectly
seize;—this beauty of diction, _apicibus verborum ligata_, as M.
Sainte-Beuve, quoting Quintilian, says of Chateaubriand’s. As to
Chateaubriand himself, again, the common English judgment, which stamps
him as a mere shallow rhetorician, all froth and vanity, is certainly
wrong, one may even wonder that we English should judge Chateaubriand so
wrongly, for his power goes far beyond beauty of diction; it is a power,
as well, of passion and sentiment, and this sort of power the English
can perfectly well appreciate. One production of Chateaubriand’s,
_René_, is akin to the most popular productions of Byron,—to the _Childe
Harold_ or _Manfred_,—in spirit, equal to them in power, superior to
them in form. But this work, I hardly know why, is almost unread in
England. And only consider this criticism of Chateaubriand’s on the true
pathetic! “It is a dangerous mistake, sanctioned, like so many other
dangerous mistakes, by Voltaire, to suppose that the best works of
imagination are those which draw most tears. One could name this or that
melodrama, which no one would like to own having written, and which yet
harrows the feelings far more than the _Æneid_. The true tears are those
which are called forth by the _beauty_ of poetry; there must be as much
admiration in them as sorrow. They are the tears which come to our eyes
when Priam says to Achilles, ἔτλην δ’, oἷ’ οὔπω ...—‘And I have
endured,—the like whereof no soul upon the earth hath yet endured,—to
carry to my lips the hand of him who slew my child;’ or when Joseph
cries out: ‘I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.’” Who
does not feel that the man who wrote that was no shallow rhetorician,
but a born man of genius, with the true instinct of genius for what is
really admirable? Nay, take these words of Chateaubriand, an old man of
eighty, dying, amidst the noise and bustle of the ignoble revolution of
February 1848: “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, quand donc, quand donc serai-je
délivré de tout ce monde, ce bruit; quand donc, quand donc cela
finira-t-il?” Who, with any ear, does not feel that those are not the
accents of a trumpery rhetorician, but of a rich and puissant
nature,—the cry of the dying lion? I repeat it, Chateaubriand is most
ignorantly underrated in England; and we English are capable of rating
him far more correctly if we knew him better. Still Chateaubriand has
such real and great faults, he falls so decidedly beneath the rank of
the truly greatest authors, that the depreciatory judgment passed on him
in England, though ignorant and wrong, can hardly be said to transgress
the limits of permissible ignorance; it is not a _jugement saugrenu_.
But when a critic denies genius to a literature which has produced
Bossuet and Molière, he passes the bounds; and Coleridge’s judgments on
French literature and the French genius are undoubtedly, as M. de
Rémusat calls them, _saugrenus_.
And yet, such is the impetuosity of our poor human nature, such its
proneness to rush to a decision with imperfect knowledge, that his
having delivered a _saugrenu_ judgment or two in his life by no means
proves a man not to have had, in comparison with his fellow-men in
general, a remarkable gift for truth, or disqualifies him for being, by
virtue of that gift, a source of vital stimulus for us. Joubert had far
less smoke and turbid vehemence in him than Coleridge; he had also a far
keener sense of what was absurd. But Joubert can write to M. Molé (the
M. Molé who was afterwards Louis Philippe’s well-known minister): “As to
your Milton, whom the merit of the Abbé Delille” (the Abbé Delille
translated _Paradise Lost_) “makes me admire, and with whom I have
nevertheless still plenty of fault to find, why, I should like to know,
are you scandalized that I have not enabled myself to read him? I don’t
understand the language in which he writes, and I don’t much care to. If
he is a poet one cannot put up with, even in the prose of the younger
Racine, am I to blame for that? If by force you mean beauty manifesting
itself with power, I maintain that the Abbé Delille has more force than
Milton.” That, to be sure, is a petulant outburst in a private letter;
it is not, like Coleridge’s, a deliberate proposition in a printed
philosophical essay. But is it possible to imagine a more perfect
specimen of a _saugrenu_ judgment? It is even worse than Coleridge’s,
because it is _saugrenu_ with reasons. That, however, does not prevent
Joubert from having been really a man of extraordinary ardor in the
search for truth, and of extraordinary fineness in the perception of it;
and so was Coleridge.
Joubert had around him in France an atmosphere of literary,
philosophical, and religious opinion as alien to him as that in England
was to Coleridge. This is what makes Joubert, too, so remarkable, and it
is on this account that I begged the reader to remark his date. He was
born in 1754; he died in 1824. He was thus in the fulness of his powers
at the beginning of the present century, at the epoch of Napoleon’s
consulate. The French criticism of that day—the criticism of Laharpe’s
successors, of Geoffroy and his colleagues in the _Journal des
Débats_—had a dryness very unlike the telling vivacity of the early
Edinburgh reviewers, their contemporaries, but a fundamental narrowness,
a want of genuine insight, much on a par with theirs. Joubert, like
Coleridge, has no respect for the dominant oracle; he treats his
Geoffroy with about as little deference as Coleridge treats his Jeffrey.
“Geoffroy,” he says in an article in the _Journal des Débats_
criticising Chateaubriand’s _Génie du Christianisme_—“Geoffroy in this
article begins by holding out his paw prettily enough; but he ends by a
volley of kicks, which lets the whole world see but too clearly the four
iron shoes of the four-footed animal.” There is, however, in France a
sympathy with intellectual activity for its own sake, and for the sake
of its inherent pleasurableness and beauty, keener than any which exists
in England; and Joubert had more effect in Paris,—though his
conversation was his only weapon, and Coleridge wielded besides his
conversation his pen,—than Coleridge had or could have in London. I
mean, a more immediate, appreciable effect; an effect not only upon the
young and enthusiastic, to whom the future belongs, but upon formed and
important personages to whom the present belongs, and who are actually
moving society. He owed this partly to his real advantages over
Coleridge. If he had, as I have already said, less power and richness
than his English parallel, he had more tact and penetration. He was more
_possible_ than Coleridge; his doctrine was more intelligible than
Coleridge’s, more receivable. And yet with Joubert, the striving after a
consummate and attractive clearness of expression came from no mere
frivolous dislike of labor and inability for going deep, but was a part
of his native love of truth and perfection. The delight of his life he
found in truth, and in the satisfaction which the enjoying of truth
gives to the spirit; and he thought the truth was never really and
worthily said, so long as the least cloud, clumsiness, and repulsiveness
hung about the expression of it.
Some of his best passages are those in which he upholds this doctrine.
Even metaphysics he would not allow to remain difficult and abstract: so
long as they spoke a professional jargon, the language of the schools,
he maintained,—and who shall gainsay him?—that metaphysics were
imperfect; or, at any rate, had not yet reached their ideal perfection.
“The true science of metaphysics,” he says, “consists not in rendering
abstract that which is sensible, but in rendering sensible that which is
abstract; apparent that which is hidden; imaginable, if so it may be,
that which is only intelligible; and intelligible, finally, that which
an ordinary attention fails to seize.”
And therefore:—
“Distrust, in books on metaphysics, words which have not been able to
get currency in the world, and are only calculated to form a special
language.”
Nor would he suffer common words to be employed in a special sense by
the schools:—
“Which is the best, if one wants to be useful and to be really
understood, to get one’s words in the world, or to get them in the
schools. I maintain that the good plan is to employ words in their
popular sense rather than in their philosophical sense; and the better
plan still, to employ them in their natural sense rather than in their
popular sense. By their natural sense, I mean the popular and universal
acceptation of them brought to that which in this is essential and
invariable. To prove a thing by definition proves nothing, if the
definition is purely philosophical; for such definitions only bind him
who makes them. To prove a thing by definition, when the definition
expresses the necessary, inevitable, and clear idea which the world at
large attaches to the object, is, on the contrary, all in all; because
then what one does is simply to show people what they do really think,
in spite of themselves and without knowing it. The rule that one is free
to give to words what sense one will, and that the only thing needful is
to be agreed upon the sense one gives them, is very well for the mere
purposes of argumentation, and may be allowed in the schools where this
sort of fencing is to be practised; but in the sphere of the true-born
and noble science of metaphysics, and in the genuine world of
literature, it is good for nothing. One must never quit sight of
realities, and one must employ one’s expressions simply as media,—as
glasses, through which one’s thoughts can be best made evident. I know,
by my own experience, how hard this rule is to follow; but I judge of
its importance by the failure of every system of metaphysics. Not one of
them has succeeded; for the simple reason, that in every one ciphers
have been constantly used instead of values, artificial ideas instead of
native ideas, jargon instead of idiom.”
I do not know whether the metaphysician will ever adopt Joubert’s rules;
but I am sure that the man of letters, whenever he has to speak of
metaphysics, will do well to adopt them. He, at any rate, must
remember:—
“It is by means of familiar words that style takes hold of the reader
and gets possession of him. It is by means of these that great thoughts
get currency and pass for true metal, like gold and silver which have
had a recognized stamp put upon them. They beget confidence in the man
who, in order to make his thoughts more clearly perceived, uses them;
for people feel that such an employment of the language of common human
life betokens a man who knows that life and its concerns, and who keeps
himself in contact with them. Besides, these words make a style frank
and easy. They show that an author has long made the thought or the
feeling expressed his mental food; that he has so assimilated them and
familiarized them, that the most common expressions suffice him in order
to express ideas which have become every-day ideas to him by the length
of time they have been in his mind. And lastly, what one says in such
words looks more true; for, of all the words in use, none are so clear
as those which we call common words; and clearness is so eminently one
of the characteristics of truth, that often it even passes for truth
itself.”
These are not, in Joubert, mere counsels of rhetoric; they come from his
accurate sense of perfection, from his having clearly seized the fine
and just idea that beauty and light are properties of truth, and that
truth is incompletely exhibited if it is exhibited without beauty and
light:—
“Be profound with clear terms and not with obscure terms. What is
difficult will at last become easy; but as one goes deep into things,
one must still keep a charm, and one must carry into these dark depths
of thought, into which speculation has only recently penetrated, the
pure and antique clearness of centuries less learned than ours, but with
more light in them.”
And elsewhere he speaks of those “spirits, lovers of light, who, when
they have an idea to put forth, brood long over it first, and wait
patiently till it _shines_, as Buffon enjoined, when he defined genius
to be the aptitude for patience; spirits who know by experience that the
driest matter and the dullest words hide within them the germ and spark
of some brightness, like those fairy nuts in which were found diamonds
if one broke the shell and was the right person; spirits who maintain
that, to see and exhibit things in beauty, is to see and show things as
in their essence they really are, and not as they exist for the eye of
the careless, who do not look beyond the outside; spirits hard to
satisfy, because of a keen-sightedness in them, which makes them discern
but too clearly both the models to be followed and those to be shunned;
spirits active though meditative, who cannot rest except in solid
truths, and whom only beauty can make happy; spirits far less concerned
for glory than for perfection, who, because their art is long and life
is short, often die without leaving a monument, having had their own
inward sense of life and fruitfulness for their best reward.”
No doubt there is something a little too ethereal in all this, something
which reminds one of Joubert’s physical want of body and substance; no
doubt, if a man wishes to be a great author, it is to consider too
curiously, to consider as Joubert did; it is a mistake to spend so much
of one’s time in setting up one’s ideal standard of perfection, and in
contemplating it. Joubert himself knew this very well: “I cannot build a
house for my ideas,” said he; “I have tried to do without words, and
words take their revenge on me by their difficulty.” “If there is a man
upon earth tormented by the cursed desire to get a whole book into a
page, a whole page into a phrase, and this phrase into one word,—that
man is myself.” “I can sow, but I cannot build.” Joubert, however, makes
no claim to be a great author; by renouncing all ambition to be this, by
not trying to fit his ideas into a house, by making no compromise with
words in spite of their difficulty, by being quite single-minded in his
pursuit of perfection, perhaps he is enabled to get closer to the truth
of the objects of his study, and to be of more service to us by setting
before us ideals, than if he had composed a celebrated work. I doubt
whether, in an elaborate work on the philosophy of religion, he would
have got his ideas about religion to _shine_, to use his own expression,
as they shine when he utters them in perfect freedom. Penetration in
these matters is valueless without soul, and soul is valueless without
penetration; both of these are delicate qualities, and, even in those
who have them, easily lost; the charm of Joubert is, that he has and
keeps both. Let us try and show that he does.
“One should be fearful of being wrong in poetry when one thinks
differently from the poets, and in religion when one thinks differently
from the saints.
“There is a great difference between taking for idols Mahomet and
Luther, and bowing down before Rousseau and Voltaire. People at any rate
imagined they were obeying God when they followed Mahomet, and the
Scriptures when they hearkened to Luther. And perhaps one ought not too
much to disparage that inclination which leads mankind to put into the
hands of those whom it thinks the friends of God the direction and
government of its heart and mind. It is the subjection to irreligious
spirits which alone is fatal, and, in the fullest sense of the word,
depraving.
“May I say it? It is not hard to know God, provided one will not force
oneself to define him.
“Do not bring into the domain of reasoning that which belongs to our
innermost feeling. State truths of sentiment, and do not try to prove
them. There is a danger in such proofs; for in arguing it is necessary
to treat that which is in question as something problematic: now that
which we accustom ourselves to treat as problematic ends by appearing to
us as really doubtful. In things that are visible and palpable, never
prove what is believed already; in things that are certain and
mysterious,—mysterious by their greatness and by their nature,—make
people believe them, and do not prove them; in things that are matters
of practice and duty, command, and do not explain. ‘Fear God,’ has made
many men pious; the proofs of the existence of God have made many men
atheists. From the defense springs the attack; the advocate begets in
his hearer a wish to pick holes; and men are almost always led on, from
the desire to contradict the doctor, to the desire to contradict the
doctrine. Make truth lovely, and do not try to arm her; mankind will
then be far less inclined to contend with her.
“Why is even a bad preacher almost always heard by the pious with
pleasure? _Because he talks to them about what they love._ But you who
have to expound religion to children of this world, you who have to
speak to them of that which they once loved perhaps, or which they would
be glad to love,—remember that they do not love it yet, and to make them
love it take heed to speak with power.
“You may do what you like, mankind will believe no one but God; and he
only can persuade mankind who believes that God has spoken to him. No
one can give faith unless he has faith; the persuaded persuade, as the
indulgent disarm.
“The only happy people in the world are the good man, the sage, and the
saint; but the saint is happier than either of the others, so much is
man by his nature formed for sanctity.”
The same delicacy and penetration which he here shows in speaking of the
inward essence of religion. Joubert shows also in speaking of its
outward form, and of its manifestation in the world:—
“Piety is not a religion, though it is the soul of all religions. A man
has not a religion simply by having pious inclinations, any more than he
has a country simply by having philanthropy. A man has not a country
until he is a citizen in a state, until he undertakes to follow and
uphold certain laws, to obey certain magistrates, and to adopt certain
ways of living and acting.
“Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy; it is more than all
this; it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble engagement.”
Who, again, has ever shown with more truth and beauty the good and
imposing side of the wealth and splendor of the Catholic Church, than
Joubert in the following passage?—
“The pomps and magnificence with which the Church is reproached are in
truth the result and the proof of her incomparable excellence. From
whence, let me ask, have come this power of hers and these excessive
riches, except from the enchantment into which she threw all the world?
Ravished with her beauty, millions of men from age to age kept loading
her with gifts, bequests, cessions. She had the talent of making herself
loved, and the talent of making men happy. It is that which wrought
prodigies for her; it is from thence that she drew her power.”
“She had the talent of making herself _feared_,”—one should add that
too, in order to be perfectly just; but Joubert, because he is a true
child of light, can see that the wonderful success of the Catholic
Church must have been due really to her good rather than to her bad
qualities; to her making herself loved rather than to her making herself
feared.
How striking and suggestive, again, is this remark on the Old and New
Testaments:—
“The Old Testament teaches the knowledge of good and evil; the Gospel,
on the other hand, seems written for the predestinated; it is the book
of innocence. The one is made for earth, the other seems made for
heaven. According as the one or the other of these books takes hold of a
nation, what may be called the _religious humors_ of nations differ.”
So the British and North American Puritans are the children of the Old
Testament, as Joachim of Flora and St. Francis are the children of the
New. And does not the following maxim exactly fit the Church of England,
of which Joubert certainly never thought when he was writing it?—“The
austere sects excite the most enthusiasm at first; but the temperate
sects have always been the most durable.”
And these remarks on the Jansenists and Jesuits, interesting in
themselves, are still more interesting because they touch matters we
cannot well know at first-hand, and which Joubert, an impartial
observer, had had the means of studying closely. We are apt to think of
the Jansenists as having failed by reason of their merits; Joubert shows
us how far their failure was due to their defects:—
“We ought to lay stress upon what is clear in Scripture, and to pass
quickly over what is obscure; to light up what in Scripture is troubled,
by what is serene in it; what puzzles and checks the reason, by what
satisfies the reason. The Jansenists have done just the reverse. They
lay stress upon what is uncertain, obscure, afflicting, and they pass
lightly over all the rest; they eclipse the luminous and consoling
truths of Scripture, by putting between us and them its opaque and
dismal truths. For example, ‘Many are called;’ there is a clear truth:
‘Few are chosen;’ there is an obscure truth. ‘We are children of wrath;’
there is a somber, cloudy, terrifying truth: ‘We are all the children of
God;’ ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance;’
there are truths which are full of clearness, mildness, serenity, light.
The Jansenists trouble our cheerfulness, and shed no cheering ray on our
trouble. They are not, however, to be condemned for what they say,
because what they say is true; but they are to be condemned for what
they fail to say, for that is true too,—truer, even, than the other;
that is, its truth is easier for us to seize, fuller, rounder, and more
complete. Theology, as the Jansenists exhibit her, has but the half of
her disk.”
Again:—
“The Jansenists erect ‘grace’ into a kind of fourth person of the
Trinity. They are, without thinking or intending it, Quaternitarians.
St. Paul and St. Augustine, too exclusively studied, have done all the
mischief. Instead of ‘grace,’ say help, succor, a divine influence, a
dew of heaven; then one can come to a right understanding. The word
‘grace’ is a sort of talisman, all the baneful spell of which can be
broken by translating it. The trick of personifying words is a fatal
source of mischief in theology.”
Once more:—
“The Jansenists tell men to love God; the Jesuits make men love him. The
doctrine of these last is full of loosenesses, or, if you will, of
errors; still,—singular as it may seem, it is undeniable,—they are the
better directors of souls.
“The Jansenists have carried into religion more thought than the
Jesuits, and they go deeper; they are faster bound with its sacred
bonds. They have in their way of thinking an austerity which incessantly
constrains the will to keep the path of duty; all the habits of their
understanding, in short, are more Christian. But they seem to love God
without affection, and solely from reason, from duty, from justice. The
Jesuits, on the other hand, seem to love him from pure inclination; out
of admiration, gratitude, tenderness; for the pleasure of loving him, in
short. In their books of devotion you find joy, because with the Jesuits
nature and religion go hand in hand. In the books of the Jansenists
there is a sadness and a moral constraint, because with the Jansenists
religion is forever trying to put nature in bonds.”
The Jesuits have suffered, and deservedly suffered, plenty of discredit
from what Joubert gently calls their “loosenesses;” let them have the
merit of their amiability.
The most characteristic thoughts one can quote from any writer are
always his thoughts on matters like these; but the maxims of Joubert are
purely literary subjects also, have the same purged and subtle delicacy;
they show the same sedulousness in him to preserve perfectly true the
balance of his soul. Let me begin with this, which contains a truth too
many people fail to perceive:—
“Ignorance, which in matters of morals extenuates the crime, is itself,
in matters of literature, a crime of the first order.”
And here is another sentence, worthy of Goethe, to clear the air at
one’s entrance into the region of literature:—
“With the fever of the senses, the delirium of the passions, the
weakness of the spirit; with the storms of the passing time and with the
great scourges of human life,—hunger, thirst, dishonor, diseases, and
death,—authors may as long as they like go on making novels which shall
harrow our hearts; but the soul says all the while, ‘You hurt me.’”
And again:—
“Fiction has no business to exist unless it is more beautiful than
reality. Certainly the monstrosities of fiction may be found in the
booksellers’ shops; you buy them there for a certain number of francs,
and you talk of them for a certain number of days; but they have no
place in literature, because in literature the one aim of art is the
beautiful. Once lose sight of that, and you have the mere frightful
reality.”
That is just the right criticism to pass on these “monstrosities:” _they
have no place in literature_, and those who produce them are not really
men of letters. One would think that this was enough to deter from such
production any man of genuine ambition. But most of us, alas! are what
we must be, not what we ought to be,—not even what we know we ought to
be.
The following, of which the first part reminds one of Wordsworth’s
sonnet, “If thou indeed derive thy light from heaven,” excellently
defines the true salutary function of literature, and the limits of this
function:—
“Whether one is an eagle or an ant, in the intellectual world, seems to
me not to matter much; the essential thing is to have one’s place marked
there, one’s station assigned, and to belong decidedly to a regular and
wholesome order. A small talent, if it keeps within its limits and
rightfully fulfils its task, may reach the goal just as well as a
greater one. To accustom mankind to pleasures which depend neither upon
the bodily appetites nor upon money, by giving them a taste for the
things of the mind, seems to me, in fact, the one proper fruit which
nature has meant our literary productions to have. When they have other
fruits, it is by accident, and, in general, not for good. Books which
absorb our attention to such a degree that they rob us of all fancy for
other books, are absolutely pernicious. In this way they only bring
fresh crotchets and sects into the world; they multiply the great
variety of weights, rules, and measures already existing; they are
morally and politically a nuisance.”
Who can read these words and not think of the limiting effect exercised
by certain works in certain spheres and for certain periods; exercised
even by the works of men of genius or virtue,—by the works of Rousseau,
the works of Wesley, the works of Swedenborg? And what is it which makes
the Bible so admirable a book, to be the one book of those who can have
only one, but the miscellaneous character of the contents of the Bible?
Joubert was all his life a passionate lover of Plato; I hope other
lovers of Plato will forgive me for saying that their adored object has
never been more truly described than he is here:—
“Plato shows us nothing, but he brings brightness with him; he puts
light into our eyes, and fills us with a clearness by which all objects
afterwards become illuminated. He teaches us nothing; but he prepares
us, fashions us, and makes us ready to know all. Somehow or other, the
habit of reading him augments in us the capacity for discerning and
entertaining whatever fine truths may afterwards present themselves.
Like mountain-air, it sharpens our organs, and gives us an appetite for
wholesome food.”
“Plato loses himself in the void” (he says again); “but one sees the
play of his wings, one hears their rustle.” And the conclusion is: “It
is good to breathe his air, but not to live upon him.”
As a pendant to the criticism on Plato, this on the French moralist
Nicole is excellent:—
“Nicole is a Pascal without style. It is not what he says which is
sublime, but what he thinks; he rises, not by the natural elevation of
his own spirit, but by that of his doctrines. One must not look to the
form in him, but to the matter, which is exquisite. He ought to be read
with a direct view of practice.”
English people have hardly ears to hear the praises of Bossuet, and the
Bossuet of Joubert is Bossuet at his very best; but this is a far truer
Bossuet than the “declaimer” Bossuet of Lord Macaulay, himself a born
rhetorician, if ever there was one:—
“Bossuet employs all our idioms, as Homer employed all the dialects. The
language of kings, of statesmen, and of warriors; the language of the
people and of the student, of the country and of the schools, of the
sanctuary and of the courts of law; the old and the new, the trivial and
the stately, the quiet and the resounding,—he turns all to his use; and
out of all this he makes a style, simple, grave, majestic. His ideas
are, like his words, varied,—common and sublime together. Times and
doctrines in all their multitude were ever before his spirit, as things
and words in all their multitude were ever before it. He is not so much
a man as a human nature, with the temperance of a saint, the justice of
a bishop, the prudence of a doctor, and the might of a great spirit.”
After this on Bossuet, I must quote a criticism on Racine, to show that
Joubert did not indiscriminately worship all the French gods of the
grand century:—
“Those who find Racine enough for them are poor souls and poor wits;
they are souls and wits which have never got beyond the callow and
boarding-school stage. Admirable, as no doubt he is, for his skill in
having made poetical the most humdrum sentiments and the most middling
sort of passions, he can yet stand us in stead of nobody but himself. He
is a superior writer; and, in literature, that at once puts a man on a
pinnacle. But he is not an inimitable writer.”
And again: “The talent of Racine is in his works, but Racine himself is
not there. That is why he himself became disgusted with them.” “Of
Racine, as of his ancients, the genius lay in taste. His elegance is
perfect, but it is not supreme, like that of Virgil.” And, indeed, there
is something _supreme_ in an elegance which exercises such a fascination
as Virgil’s does; which makes one return to his poems again and again,
long after one thinks one has done with them; which makes them one of
those books that, to use Joubert’s words, “lure the reader back to them,
as the proverb says good wine lures back the wine-bibber.” And the
highest praise Joubert can at last find for Racine is this, that he is
the Virgil of the ignorant;—“_Racine est le Virgile des ignorants._”
Of Boileau, too, Joubert says: “Boileau is a powerful poet, but only in
the world of half poetry.” How true is that of Pope also! And he adds:
“Neither Boileau’s poetry nor Racine’s flows from the fountain-head.” No
Englishman, controverting the exaggerated French estimate of these
poets, could desire to use fitter words.
I will end with some remarks on Voltaire and Rousseau, remarks in which
Joubert eminently shows his prime merit as a critic,—the soundness and
completeness of his judgments. I mean that he has the faculty of judging
with all the powers of his mind and soul at work together in due
combination; and how rare is this faculty! how seldom is it exercised
towards writers who so powerfully as Voltaire and Rousseau stimulate and
call into activity a single side in us!
“Voltaire’s wits came to their maturity twenty years sooner than the
wits of other men, and remained in full vigor thirty years longer. The
charm which our style in general gets from our ideas, his ideas get from
his style. Voltaire is sometimes afflicted, sometimes strongly moved;
but serious he never is. His very graces have an effrontery about them.
He had correctness of judgment, liveliness of imagination, nimble wits,
quick taste, and a moral sense in ruins. He is the most debauched of
spirits, and the worst of him is that one gets debauched along with him.
If he had been a wise man, and had had the self-discipline of wisdom,
beyond a doubt half his wit would have been gone; it needed an
atmosphere of _licence_ in order to play freely. Those people who read
him every day, create for themselves, by an invincible law, the
necessity of liking him. But those people who, having given up reading
him, gaze steadily down upon the influences which his spirit has shed
abroad, find themselves in simple justice and duty compelled to detest
him. It is impossible to be satisfied with him, and impossible not to be
fascinated by him.”
The literary sense in us is apt to rebel against so severe a judgment on
such a charmer of the literary sense as Voltaire, and perhaps we English
are not very liable to catch Voltaire’s vices, while of some of his
merits we have signal need; still, as the real definitive judgment on
Voltaire, Joubert’s is undoubtedly the true one. It is nearly identical
with that of Goethe. Joubert’s sentence on Rousseau is in some respects
more favorable:—
“That weight in the speaker (_auctoritas_) which the ancients talk of,
is to be found in Bossuet more than in any other French author; Pascal,
too, has it, and La Bruyère; even Rousseau has something of it, but
Voltaire not a particle. I can understand how a Rousseau—I mean a
Rousseau cured of his faults—might at the present day do much good, and
may even come to be greatly wanted; but under no circumstances can a
Voltaire be of any use.”
The peculiar power of Rousseau’s style has never been better hit off
than in the following passage:—
“Rousseau imparted, if I may so speak, _bowels of feeling_ to the words
he used (_donna des entrailles à tous les mots_), and poured into them
such a charm, sweetness so penetrating, energy so puissant, that his
writings have an effect upon the soul something like that of those
illicit pleasures which steal away our taste and intoxicate our reason.”
The final judgment, however, is severe, and justly severe:—
“Life without actions; life entirely resolved into affections and
half-sensual thoughts; do-nothingness setting up for a virtue;
cowardliness with voluptuousness; fierce pride with nullity underneath
it; the strutting phrase of the most sensual of vagabonds, who has made
his system of philosophy and can give it eloquently forth: there is
Rousseau! A piety in which there is no religion; a severity which brings
corruption with it; a dogmatism which serves to ruin all authority:
there is Rousseau’s philosophy! To all tender, ardent, and elevated
natures, I say: Only Rousseau can detach you from religion, and only
true religion can cure you of Rousseau.”
I must yet find room, before I end, for one at least of Joubert’s
sayings on political matters; here, too, the whole man shows himself;
and here, too, the affinity with Coleridge is very remarkable. How true,
how true in France especially, is this remark on the contrasting
direction taken by the aspirations of the community in ancient and in
modern states:—
“The ancients were attached to their country by three things,—their
temples, their tombs, and their forefathers. The two great bonds which
united them to their government were the bonds of habit and antiquity.
With the moderns, hope and the love of novelty have produced a total
change. The ancients said _our forefathers_, we say _posterity_: we do
not, like them, love our _patria_, that is to say, the country and the
laws of our fathers, rather we love the laws and the country of our
children; the charm we are most sensible to is the charm of the future,
and not the charm of the past.”
And how keen and true is this criticism on the changed sense of the word
“liberty”:—
“A great many words have changed their meaning. The word _liberty_, for
example, had at bottom among the ancients the same meaning as the word
_dominion_. _I would be free_ meant, in the mouth of the ancient, _I
would take part in governing or administering the State_; in the mouth
of a modern it means, _I would be independent_. The word _liberty_ has
with us a moral sense; with them its sense was purely political.”
Joubert had lived through the French Revolution, and to the modern cry
for liberty he was prone to answer:—
“Let your cry be for free souls rather even than for free men. Moral
liberty is the one vitally important liberty, the one liberty which is
indispensable; the other liberty is good and salutary only so far as it
favors this. Subordination is in itself a better thing than
independence. The one implies order and arrangement; the other implies
only self-sufficiency with isolation. The one means harmony, the other a
single tone; the one is the whole, the other is but the part.”
“Liberty! liberty!” he cries again; “in all things let us have
_justice_, and then we shall have enough liberty.”
Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty! The wise man
will never refuse to echo those words; but then, such is the
imperfection of human governments, that almost always, in order to get
justice, one has first to secure liberty.
I do not hold up Joubert as a very astonishing and powerful genius, but
rather as a delightful and edifying genius. I have not cared to exhibit
him as a sayer of brilliant epigrammatic things, such things as “Notre
vie est du vent tissu . . . les dettes abrègent la vie . . . celui qui a
de l’imagination sans érudition a des ailes et n’a pas de pieds (_Our
life is woven wind_ . . . _debts take from life_ . . . _the man of
imagination without learning has wings and no feet_),” though for such
sayings he is famous. In the first place, the French language is in
itself so favorable a vehicle for such sayings, that the making them in
it has the less merit; at least half the merit ought to go, not to the
maker of the saying, but to the French language. In the second place,
the peculiar beauty of Joubert is not there; it is not in what is
exclusively intellectual,—it is in the union of _soul_ with intellect,
and in the delightful, satisfying result which this union produces.
“Vivre, c’est penser et sentir son âme . . . le bonheur est de sentir
son âme bonne ... toute vérité nue et crue n’a pas assez passé par l’âme
... les hommes ne sont justes qu’envers ceux qu’ils aiment (_The essence
of life lies in thinking and being conscious of one’s soul ... happiness
is the sense of one’s soul being good ... if a truth is nude and crude,
that is a proof it has not been steeped long enough in the soul, ... man
cannot even be just to his neighbor, unless he loves him_);” it is much
rather in sayings like these that Joubert’s best and innermost nature
manifests itself. He is the most prepossessing and convincing of
witnesses to the good of loving light. Because he sincerely loved light,
and did not prefer to it any little private darkness of his own, he
found light; his eye was single, and therefore his whole body was full
of light. And because he was full of light, he was also full of
happiness. In spite of his infirmities, in spite of his sufferings, in
spite of his obscurity, he was the happiest man alive; his life was as
charming as his thoughts. For certainly it is natural that the love of
light, which is already, in some measure, the possession of light,
should irradiate and beatify the whole life of him who has it. There is
something unnatural and shocking where, as in the case of Coleridge, it
does not. Joubert pains us by no such contradiction; “the same
penetration of spirit which made him such delightful company to his
friends, served also to make him perfect in his own personal life, by
enabling him always to perceive and do what was right;” he loved and
sought light till he became so habituated to it, so accustomed to the
joyful testimony of a good conscience, that, to use his own words, “he
could no longer exist without this, and was obliged to live without
reproach if he would live without misery.”
Joubert was not famous while he lived, and he will not be famous now
that he is dead. But, before we pity him for this, let us be sure what
we mean, in literature, by _famous_. There are the famous men of
genius in literature,—the Homers, Dantes, Shakspeares: of them we need
not speak; their praise is forever and ever. Then there are the famous
men of ability in literature: their praise is in their own generation.
And what makes this difference? The work of the two orders of men is
at the bottom the same,—_a criticism of life_. The end and aim of all
literature, if one considers it attentively, is, in truth, nothing but
that. But the criticism which the men of genius pass upon human life
is permanently acceptable to mankind; the criticism which the men of
ability pass upon human life is transitorily acceptable. Between
Shakspeare’s criticism of human life and Scribe’s the difference is
there;—the one is permanently acceptable, the other transitorily.
Whence then, I repeat, this difference? It is that the acceptableness
of Shakspeare’s criticism depends upon its inherent truth: the
acceptableness of Scribe’s upon its suiting itself, by its
subject-matter, ideas, mode of treatment, to the taste of the
generation that hears it. But the taste and ideas of one generation
are not those of the next. This next generation in its turn
arrives;—first its sharpshooters, its quick-witted, audacious light
troops; then the elephantine main body. The imposing array of its
predecessor it confidently assails, riddles it with bullets, passes
over its body. It goes hard then with many once popular reputations,
with many authorities once oracular. Only two kinds of authors are
safe in the general havoc. The first kind are the great abounding
fountains of truth, whose criticism of life is a source of
illumination and joy to the whole human race forever,—the Homers, the
Shakspeares. These are the sacred personages, whom all civilized
warfare respects. The second are those whom the out-skirmishers of the
new generation, its forerunners,—quick-witted soldiers, as I have
said, the select of the army,—recognize, though the bulk of their
comrades behind might not, as of the same family and character with
the sacred personages, exercising like them an immortal function, and
like them inspiring a permanent interest. They snatch them up, and set
them in a place of shelter, where the on-coming multitude may not
overwhelm them. These are the Jouberts. They will never, like the
Shakspeares, command the homage of the multitude; but they are safe;
the multitude will not trample them down. Except these two kinds, no
author is safe. Let us consider, for example, Joubert’s famous
contemporary, Lord Jeffrey. All his vivacity and accomplishment avail
him nothing; of the true critic he had in an eminent degree no
quality, except one,—curiosity. Curiosity he had, but he had no gift
for truth; he cannot illuminate and rejoice us; no intelligent
out-skirmisher of the new generation cares about him, cares to put him
in safety; at this moment we are all passing over his body. Let us
consider a greater than Jeffrey, a critic whose reputation still
stands firm,—will stand, many people think, forever,—the great apostle
of the Philistines, Lord Macaulay. Lord Macaulay was, as I have
already said, a born rhetorician; a splendid rhetorician doubtless,
and, beyond that, an _English_ rhetorician also, an _honest_
rhetorician; still, beyond the apparent rhetorical truth of things he
never could penetrate; for their vital truth, for what the French call
the _vraie vérité_, he had absolutely no organ; therefore his
reputation, brilliant as it is, is not secure. Rhetoric so good as his
excites and gives pleasure; but by pleasure alone you cannot
permanently bind men’s spirits to you. Truth illuminates and gives
joy, and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men’s spirits
are indissolubly held. As Lord Macaulay’s own generation dies out, as
a new generation arrives, without those ideas and tendencies of its
predecessor which Lord Macaulay so deeply shared and so happily
satisfied, will he give the same pleasure? and, if he ceases to give
this, has he enough of light in him to make him last? Pleasure the new
generation will get from its own novel ideas and tendencies; but light
is another and a rarer thing, and must be treasured where-ever it can
be found. Will Macaulay be saved, in the sweep and pressure of time,
for his light’s sake, as Johnson has already been saved by two
generations, Joubert by one? I think it very doubtful. But for a
spirit of any delicacy and dignity, what a fate, if he could foresee
it! to be an oracle for one generation, and then of little or no
account forever. How far better, to pass with scant notice through
one’s own generation, but to be singled out and preserved by the very
iconoclasts of the next, then in their turn by those of the next, and
so, like the lamp of life itself, to be handed on from one generation
to another in safety! This is Joubert’s lot, and it is a very enviable
one. The new men of the new generations, while they let the dust
deepen on a thousand Laharpes, will say of him: “He lived in the
Philistine’s day, in a place and time when almost every idea current
in literature had the mark of Dagon upon it, and not the mark of the
children of light. Nay, the children of light were as yet hardly so
much as heard of: the Canaanite was then in the land. Still, there
were even then a few, who, nourished on some secret tradition, or
illumined, perhaps, by a divine inspiration, kept aloof from the
reigning superstitions, never bowed the knee to the gods of Canaan;
and one of these few was called _Joubert_.”
IX.
SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE.
“By the sentence of the angels, by the decree of the saints, we
anathematize, cut off, curse, and execrate Baruch Spinoza, in the
presence of these sacred books with the six hundred and thirteen
precepts which are written therein, with the anathema wherewith Joshua
anathematized Jericho; with the cursing wherewith Elisha cursed the
children; and with all the cursings which are written in the Book of the
Law: cursed be he by day, and cursed by night; cursed when he lieth
down, and cursed when he riseth up; cursed when he goeth out, and cursed
when he cometh in; the Lord pardon him never; the wrath and fury of the
Lord burn upon this man, and bring upon him all the curses which are
written in the Book of the Law. The Lord blot out his name under heaven.
The Lord set him apart for destruction from all the tribes of Israel,
with all the curses of the firmament which are written in the Book of
this Law.... There shall be no man speak to him, no man write to him, no
man show him any kindness, no man stay under the same roof with him, no
man come nigh him.”
With these amenities, the current compliments of theological parting,
the Jews of the Portuguese synagogue at Amsterdam took in 1656 (and not
in 1660, as has till now been commonly supposed) their leave of their
erring brother, Baruch or Benedict Spinoza. They remained children of
Israel, and he became a child of modern Europe.
That was in 1656, and Spinoza died in 1677, at the early age of
forty-four. Glory had not found him out. His short life—a life of
unbroken diligence, kindliness, and purity—was passed in seclusion. But
in spite of that seclusion, in spite of the shortness of his career, in
spite of the hostility of the dispensers of renown in the 18th
century,—of Voltaire’s disparagement and Bayle’s detraction,—in spite of
the repellent form which he has given to his principal work, in spite of
the exterior semblance of a rigid dogmatism alien to the most essential
tendencies of modern philosophy, in spite, finally, of the immense
weight of disfavor cast upon him by the long-repeated charge of atheism,
Spinoza’s name has silently risen in importance, the man and his work
have attracted a steadily increasing notice, and bid fair to become soon
what they deserve to become,—in the history of modern philosophy the
central point of interest. An avowed translation of one of his
works,—his _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_,—has at last made its
appearance in English. It is the principal work which Spinoza published
in his lifetime; his book on ethics, the work on which his fame rests,
is posthumous.
The English translator has not done his task well. Of the character of
his version there can, I am afraid, be no doubt; one such passage as the
following is decisive:—
“I confess that, _while with them_ (the theologians) _I have never been
able sufficiently to admire the unfathomed mysteries of Scripture, I
have still found them giving utterance to nothing but Aristotelian and
Platonic speculations_, artfully dressed up and cunningly accommodated
to Holy Writ, lest the speakers should show themselves too plainly to
belong to the sect of the Grecian heathens. _Nor was it enough for these
men to discourse with the Greeks; they have further taken to raving with
the Hebrew prophets._”
This professes to be a translation of these words of Spinoza: “Fateor,
eos nunquam satis mirari potuisse Scripturæ profundissima mysteria;
attamen præter Aristotelicorum vel Platonicorum speculationes nihil
docuisse video, atque his, ne gentiles sectari viderentur, Scripturam
accommodaverunt. Non satis his fuit cum Graecis insanire, sed prophetas
cum iisdem deliravisse voluerunt.” After one such specimen of a
translator’s force, the experienced reader has a sort of instinct that
he may as well close the book at once, with a smile or a sigh, according
as he happens to be a follower of the weeping or of the laughing
philosopher. If, in spite of this instinct, he persists in going on with
the English version of the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, he will
find many more such specimens. It is not, however, my intention to fill
my space with these, or with strictures upon their author. I prefer to
remark, that he renders a service to literary history by pointing out,
in his preface, how “to Bayle may be traced the disfavor in which the
name of Spinoza was so long held;” that, in his observations on the
system of the Church of England, he shows a laudable freedom from the
prejudices of ordinary English Liberals of that advanced school to which
he clearly belongs; and lastly, that, though he manifests little
familiarity with Latin, he seems to have considerable familiarity with
philosophy, and to be well able to follow and comprehend speculative
reasoning. Let me advise him to unite his forces with those of some one
who has that accurate knowledge of Latin which he himself has not, and
then, perhaps, of that union a really good translation of Spinoza will
be the result. And, having given him this advice, let me again turn, for
a little, to the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_ itself.
This work, as I have already said, is a work on the interpretation of
Scripture,—it treats of the Bible. What was it exactly which Spinoza
thought about the Bible and its inspiration? That will be, at the
present moment, the central point of interest for the English readers of
his Treatise. Now, it is to be observed, that just on this very point
the Treatise, interesting and remarkable as it is, will fail to satisfy
the reader. It is important to seize this notion quite firmly, and not
to quit hold of it while one is reading Spinoza’s work. The scope of
that work is this. Spinoza sees that the life and practice of Christian
nations professing the religion of the Bible, are not the due fruits of
the religion of the Bible; he sees only hatred, bitterness, and strife,
where he might have expected to see love, joy, and peace in believing;
and he asks himself the reason of this. The reason is, he says, that
these people misunderstand their Bible. Well, then, is his conclusion, I
will write a _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. I will show these people,
that, taking the Bible for granted, taking it to be all which it asserts
itself to be, taking it to have all the authority which it claims, it is
not what they imagine it to be, it does not say what they imagine it to
say. I will show them what it really does say, and I will show them that
they will do well to accept this real teaching of the Bible, instead of
the phantom with which they have so long been cheated. I will show their
governments that they will do well to remodel the national churches, to
make of them institutions informed with the spirit of the true Bible,
instead of institutions informed with the spirit of this false phantom.
The comments of men, Spinoza said, had been foisted into the Christian
religion; the pure teaching of God had been lost sight of. He
determined, therefore, to go again to the Bible, to read it over and
over with a perfectly unprejudiced mind, and to accept nothing as its
teaching which it did not clearly teach. He began by constructing a
method, or set of conditions indispensable for the adequate
interpretation of Scripture. These conditions are such, he points out,
that a perfectly adequate interpretation of Scripture is now impossible.
For example, to understand any prophet thoroughly, we ought to know the
life, character, and pursuits of that prophet, under what circumstances
his book was composed, and in what state and through what hands it has
come down to us; and, in general, most of this we cannot now know.
Still, the main sense of the Books of Scripture may be clearly seized by
us. Himself a Jew with all the learning of his nation, and a man of the
highest natural powers, Spinoza had in the difficult task of seizing
this sense every aid which special knowledge or pre-eminent faculties
could supply.
In what then, he asks, does Scripture, interpreted by its own aid, and
not by the aid of Rabbinical traditions or Greek philosophy, allege its
own divinity to consist? In a revelation given by God to the prophets.
Now all knowledge is a divine revelation; but prophecy, as represented
in Scripture, is one of which the laws of human nature, considered in
themselves alone, cannot be the cause. Therefore nothing must be
asserted about it, except what is clearly declared by the prophets
themselves; for they are our only source of knowledge on a matter which
does not fall within the scope of our ordinary knowing faculties. But
ignorant people, not knowing the Hebrew genius and phraseology, and not
attending to the circumstances of the speaker, often imagine the
prophets, to assert things which they do not.
The prophets clearly declare themselves to have received the revelation
of God through the means of words and images;—not, as Christ, through
immediate communication of the mind with the mind of God. Therefore the
prophets excelled other men by the power and vividness of their
representing and imagining faculty, not by the perfection of their mind.
This is why they perceived almost everything through figures, and
express themselves so variously, and so improperly, concerning the
nature of God. Moses imagined that God could be seen, and attributed to
him the passions of anger and jealousy; Micaiah imagined him sitting on
a throne, with the host of heaven on his right and left hand; Daniel as
an old man, with a white garment and white hair; Ezekiel as a fire; the
disciples of Christ thought they saw the Spirit of God in the form of a
dove; the apostles in the form of fiery tongues.
Whence, then, could the prophets be certain of the truth of a revelation
which they received through the imagination, and not by a mental
process?—for only an idea can carry the sense of its own certainty along
with it, not an imagination. To make them certain of the truth of what
was revealed to them, a reasoning process came in; they had to rely on
the testimony of a sign; and (above all) on the testimony of their own
conscience, that they were good men, and spoke for God’s sake. Either
testimony was incomplete without the other. Even the good prophet needed
for his message the confirmation of a sign; but the bad prophet, the
utterer of an immoral doctrine, had no certainty for his doctrine, no
truth in it, even though he confirmed it by a sign. The testimony of a
good conscience was, therefore, the prophet’s grand source of certitude.
Even this, however, was only a moral certitude, not a mathematical; for
no man can be perfectly sure of his own goodness.
The power of imagining, the power of feeling what goodness is, and the
habit of practising goodness, were therefore the sole essential
qualifications of a true prophet. But for the purpose of the message,
the revelation, which God designed him to convey, these qualifications
were enough. The sum and substance of this revelation was simply:
_Believe in God, and lead a good life_. To be the organ of this
revelation, did not make a man more learned; it left his scientific
knowledge as it found it. This explains the contradictory and
speculatively false opinions about God, and the laws of nature, which
the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles entertained. Abraham and the
patriarchs knew God only as _El Sadai_, the power which gives to every
man that which suffices him; Moses knew him as _Jehovah_, a
self-existent being, but imagined him with the passions of a man. Samuel
imagined that God could not repent of his sentences; Jeremiah, that he
could. Joshua, on a day of great victory, the ground being white with
hail, seeing the daylight last longer than usual, and imaginatively
seizing this as a special sign of the help divinely promised to him,
declared that the sun was standing still. To be obeyers of God
themselves, and inspired leaders of others to obedience and good life,
did not make Abraham and Moses metaphysicians, or Joshua a natural
philosopher. His revelation no more changed the speculative opinions of
each prophet, than it changed his temperament or style. The wrathful
Elisha required the natural sedative of music, before he could be the
messenger of good fortune to Jehoram. The high-bred Isaiah and Nahum
have the style proper to their condition, and the rustic Ezekiel and
Amos the style proper to theirs. We are not therefore bound to pay heed
to the speculative opinions of this or that prophet, for in uttering
these he spoke as a mere man: only in exhorting his hearers to obey God
and lead a good life was he the organ of a divine revelation.
To know and love God is the highest blessedness of man, and of all men
alike; to this all mankind are called, and not any one nation in
particular. The divine law, properly named, is the method of life for
attaining this height of human blessedness: this law is universal,
written in the heart, and one for all mankind. Human law is the method
of life for attaining and preserving temporal security and prosperity:
this law is dictated by a lawgiver, and every nation has its own. In the
case of the Jews, this law was dictated, by revelation, through the
prophets; its fundamental precept was to obey God and to keep his
commandments, and it is therefore, in a secondary sense, called divine;
but it was, nevertheless, framed in respect of temporal things only.
Even the truly moral and divine precept of this law, to practise for
God’s sake justice and mercy towards one’s neighbor, meant for the
Hebrew of the Old Testament this Hebrew neighbor only, and had respect
to the concord and stability of the Hebrew commonwealth. The Jews were
to obey God and to keep his commandments, that they might continue long
in the land given to them, and that it might be well with them there.
Their election was a temporal one, and lasted only so long as their
State. It is now over; and the only election the Jews now have is that
of the _pious_, the _remnant_ which takes place, and has always taken
place, in every other nation also. Scripture itself teaches that there
is a universal divine law, that this is common to all nations alike, and
is the law which truly confers eternal blessedness. Solomon, the wisest
of the Jews, knew this law, as the few wisest men in all nations have
ever known it; but for the mass of the Jews, as for the mass of mankind
everywhere, this law was hidden, and they had no notion of its moral
action, its _vera vita_ which conducts to eternal blessedness, except so
far as this action was enjoined upon them by the prescriptions of their
temporal law. When the ruin of their State brought with it the ruin of
their temporal law, they would have lost altogether their only clue to
eternal blessedness.
Christ came when that fabric of the Jewish State, for the sake of
which the Jewish law existed, was about to fall; and he proclaimed the
universal divine law. A certain moral action is prescribed by this
law, as a certain moral action was prescribed by the Jewish law: but
he who truly conceives the universal divine law conceives God’s
decrees adequately as eternal truths, and for him moral action has
liberty and self-knowledge; while the prophets of the Jewish law
inadequately conceived God’s decrees as mere rules and commands, and
for them moral action had no liberty and no self-knowledge. Christ,
who beheld the decrees of God as God himself beholds them,—as eternal
truths,—proclaimed the love of God and the love of our neighbor as
_commands_, only because of the ignorance of the multitude: to those
to whom it was “given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God,” he
announced them, as he himself perceived them, as eternal truths. And
the apostles, like Christ, spoke to many of their hearers “as unto
carnal not spiritual;” presented to them, that is, the love of God and
their neighbor as a divine command authenticated by the life and death
of Christ, not as an eternal idea of reason carrying its own warrant
along with it. The presentation of it as this latter their hearers
“were not able to bear.” The apostles, moreover, though they preached
and confirmed their doctrine by signs as prophets, wrote their
Epistles, not as prophets, but as doctors and reasoners. The
essentials of their doctrine, indeed, they took not from reason, but,
like the prophets, from fact and revelation; they preached belief in
God and goodness of life as a catholic religion existing by virtue of
the passion of Christ, as the prophets had preached belief in God and
goodness of life as a national religion existing by virtue of the
Mosaic covenant: but while the prophets announced their message in a
form purely dogmatical the apostles developed theirs with the forms of
reasoning and argumentation, according to each apostle’s ability and
way of thinking, and as they might best commend their message to their
hearers; and for their reasonings they themselves claim no divine
authority, submitting them to the judgment of their hearers. Thus each
apostle built essential religion on a non-essential foundation of his
own, and, as St. Paul says, avoided building on the foundations of
another apostle, which might be quite different from his own. Hence
the discrepancies between the doctrine of one apostle and
another,—between that of St. Paul, for example, and that of St. James;
but these discrepancies are in the non-essentials not given to them by
revelation, and not in essentials. Human churches, seizing these
discrepant non-essentials as essentials, one maintaining one of them,
another another, have filled the world with unprofitable disputes,
have “turned the Church into an academy, and religion into a science,
or rather a wrangling,” and have fallen into endless schism.
What, then, are the essentials of religion according both to the Old and
to the New Testament? Very few and very simple. The precept to love God
and our neighbor. The precepts of the first chapter of Isaiah: “Wash
you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine
eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the
oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow.” The precepts of
the Sermon on the Mount, which add to the foregoing the injunction that
we should cease to do evil and learn to do well, not to our brethren and
fellow-citizens only, but to all mankind. It is by following these
precepts that belief in God is to be shown: if we believe in him, we
shall keep his commandment; and this is his commandment, that we love
one another. It is because it contains these precepts that the Bible is
properly called the Word of God, in spite of its containing much that is
mere history, and, like all history, sometimes true, sometimes false; in
spite of its containing much that is mere reasoning, and, like all
reasoning, sometimes sound, sometimes hollow. These precepts are also
the precepts of the universal divine law written in our hearts; and it
is only by this that the divinity of Scripture is established;—by its
containing, namely, precepts identical with those of this inly-written
and self-proving law. This law was in the world, as St. John says,
before the doctrine of Moses or the doctrine of Christ. And what need
was there, then, for these doctrines? Because the world at large “knew
not” this original divine law, in which precepts are ideas, and the
belief in God the knowledge and contemplation of him. Reason gives us
this law, reason tells us that it leads to eternal blessedness, and that
those who follow it have no need of any other. But reason could not have
told us that the moral action of the universal divine law,—followed not
from a sense of its intrinsic goodness, truth, and necessity, but simply
in proof of obedience (for both the Old and New Testament are but one
long discipline of obedience), simply because it is so commanded by
Moses in virtue of the covenant, simply because it is so commanded by
Christ in virtue of his life and passion,—can lead to eternal
blessedness, which means, for reason, eternal knowledge. Reason could
not have told us this, and this is what the Bible tells us. This is that
“thing which had been kept secret since the foundation of the world.” It
is thus that by means of the foolishness of the world God confounds the
wise, and with things that are not brings to nought things that are. Of
the truth of the promise thus made to obedience without knowledge, we
can have no mathematical certainty; for we can have a mathematical
certainty only of things deduced by reason from elements which she in
herself possesses. But we can have a moral certainty of it; a certainty
such as the prophets had themselves, arising out of the goodness and
pureness of those to whom this revelation has been made, and rendered
possible for us by its contradicting no principles of reason. It is a
great comfort to believe it; because “as it is only the very small
minority who can pursue a virtuous life by the sole guidance of reason,
we should, unless we had this testimony of Scripture, be in doubt
respecting the salvation of nearly the whole human race.”
It follows from this that philosophy has her own independent sphere, and
theology hers, and that neither has the right to invade and try to
subdue the other. Theology demands perfect obedience, philosophy perfect
knowledge; the obedience demanded by theology and the knowledge demanded
by philosophy are alike saving. As speculative opinions about God,
theology requires only such as are indispensable to the reality of this
obedience; the belief that God is, that he is a rewarder of them that
seek him, and that the proof of seeking him is a good life. These are
the fundamentals of faith, and they are so clear and simple that none of
the inaccuracies provable in the Bible narrative the least affect them,
and they have indubitably come to us uncorrupted. He who holds them may
make, as the patriarchs and prophets did, other speculations about God
most erroneous, and yet their faith is complete and saving. Nay, beyond
these fundamentals, speculative opinions are pious or impious, not as
they are true or false, but as they confirm or shake the believer in the
practice of obedience. The truest speculative opinion about the nature
of God is impious if it makes its holder rebellious; the falsest
speculative opinion is pious if it makes him obedient. Governments
should never render themselves the tools of ecclesiastical ambition by
promulgating as fundamentals of the national Church’s faith more than
these, and should concede the fullest liberty of speculation.
But the multitude, which respects only what astonishes, terrifies, and
overwhelms it, by no means takes this simple view of its own religion.
To the multitude, religion seems imposing only when it is subversive of
reason, confirmed by miracles, conveyed in documents materially sacred
and infallible, and dooming to damnation all without its pale. But this
religion of the multitude is not the religion which a true
interpretation of Scripture finds in Scripture. Reason tells us that a
miracle,—understanding by a miracle a breach of the laws of nature,—is
impossible, and that to think it possible is to dishonor God; for the
laws of nature are the laws of God, and to say that God violates the
laws of nature is to say that he violates his own nature. Reason sees,
too, that miracles can never attain their professed object,—that of
bringing us to a higher knowledge of God; since our knowledge of God is
raised only by perfecting and clearing our conceptions, and the alleged
design of miracles is to baffle them. But neither does Scripture
anywhere assert, as a general truth, that miracles are possible. Indeed,
it asserts the contrary; for Jeremiah declares that Nature follows an
invariable order. Scripture, however, like Nature herself, does not lay
down speculative propositions (_Scriptura definitiones non tradit, ut
nec etiam natura_). It relates matters in such an order and with such
phraseology as a speaker (often not perfectly instructed himself) who
wanted to impress his hearers with a lively sense of God’s greatness and
goodness would naturally employ; as Moses, for instance, relates to the
Israelites the passage of the Red Sea without any mention of the east
wind which attended it, and which is brought accidentally to our
knowledge in another place. So that to know exactly what Scripture means
in the relation of each seeming miracle, we ought to know (besides the
tropes and phrases of the Hebrew language) the circumstances, and
also,—since every one is swayed in his manner of presenting facts by his
own preconceived opinions, and we have seen what those of the prophets
were,—the preconceived opinions of each speaker. But this mode of
interpreting Scripture is fatal to the vulgar notion of its verbal
inspiration, of a sanctity and absolute truth in all the words and
sentences of which it is composed. This vulgar notion is, indeed, a
palpable error. It is demonstrable from the internal testimony of the
Scriptures themselves, that the books from the first of the Pentateuch
to the last of Kings were put together, after the first destruction of
Jerusalem, by a compiler (probably Ezra) who designed to relate the
history of the Jewish people from its origin to that destruction; it is
demonstrable, moreover, that the compiler did not put his last hand to
the work, but left it with its extracts from various and conflicting
sources sometimes unreconciled, left it with errors of text and
unsettled readings. The prophetic books are mere fragments of the
prophets, collected by the Rabbins where they could find them, and
inserted in the Canon according to their discretion. They, at first,
proposed to admit neither the Book of Proverbs nor the Book of
Ecclesiastes into the Canon, and only admitted them because there were
found in them passages which commended the law of Moses. Ezekiel also
they had determined to exclude; but one of their number remodeled him,
so as to procure his admission. The Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and
Daniel are the work of a single author, and were not written till after
Judas Maccabeus had restored the worship of the Temple. The Book of
Psalms was collected and arranged at the same time. Before this time,
there was no Canon of the sacred writings, and the great synagogue, by
which the Canon was fixed, was first convened after the Macedonian
conquest of Asia. Of that synagogue none of the prophets were members;
the learned men who composed it were guided by their own fallible
judgment. In like manner the uninspired judgment of human counsels
determined the Canon of the New Testament.
Such, reduced to the briefest and plainest terms possible, stripped of
the developments and proofs with which he delivers it, and divested of
the metaphysical language in which much of it is clothed by him, is the
doctrine of Spinoza’s treatise on the interpretation of Scripture. By
the whole scope and drift of its argument, by the spirit in which the
subject is throughout treated, his work undeniably is most interesting
and stimulating to the general culture of Europe. There are errors and
contradictions in Scripture; and the question which the general culture
of Europe, well aware of this, asks with real interest is: What then?
What follows from all this? What change is it, if true, to produce in
the relations of mankind to the Christian religion? If the old theory of
Scripture inspiration is to be abandoned, what place is the Bible
henceforth to hold among books? What is the new Christianity to be like?
How are governments to deal with National Churches founded to maintain a
very different conception of Christianity? Spinoza addresses himself to
these questions. All secondary points of criticism he touches with the
utmost possible brevity. He points out that Moses could never have
written: “And the Canaanite was then in the land,” because the Canaanite
was in the land still at the death of Moses. He points out that Moses
could never have written: “There arose not a prophet since in Israel
like unto Moses.” He points out how such a passage as, “These are the
kings that reigned in Edom _before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel_,” clearly indicates an author writing not before the
times of the Kings. He points out how the account of Og’s iron bedstead:
“Only Og the king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold,
his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the
children of Ammon?”—probably indicates an author writing after David had
taken Rabbath, and found there “abundance of spoil,” amongst it this
iron bedstead, the gigantic relic of another age. He points out how the
language of this passage, and of such a passage as that in the Book of
Samuel: “Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus
he spake: Come and let us go to the seer; for he that is now called
prophet was aforetime called seer”—is certainly the language of a writer
describing the events of a long-past age, and not the language of a
contemporary. But he devotes to all this no more space than is
absolutely necessary. He apologizes for delaying over such matters so
long: _non est cur circa hæc diu detinear—nolo tædiosâ lectione lectorem
detinere_. For him the interesting question is, not whether the
fanatical devotee of the letter is to continue, for a longer or for a
shorter time, to believe that Moses sate in the land of Moab writing the
description of his own death, but what he is to believe when he does not
believe this. Is he to take for the guidance of his life a great gloss
put upon the Bible by theologians, who, “not content with going mad
themselves with Plato and Aristotle, want to make Christ and the
prophets go mad with them too,”—or the Bible itself? Is he to be
presented by his national church with metaphysical formularies for his
creed, or with the real fundamentals of Christianity? If with the
former, religion will never produce its due fruits. A few elect will
still be saved; but the vast majority of mankind will remain without
grace and without good works, hateful and hating one another. Therefore
he calls urgently upon governments to make the national church what it
should be. This is the conclusion of the whole matter for him; a fervent
appeal to the State, to save us from the untoward generation of
metaphysical Article-makers. And therefore, anticipating Mr. Gladstone,
he called his book _The Church in its Relations with the State_.
Such is really the scope of Spinoza’s work. He pursues a great object,
and pursues it with signal ability. But it is important to observe that
he nowhere distinctly gives his own opinion about the Bible’s
fundamental character. He takes the Bible as it stands, as he might take
the phenomena of nature, and he discusses it as he finds it. Revelation
differs from natural knowledge, he says, not by being more divine or
more certain than natural knowledge, but by being conveyed in a
different way; it differs from it because it is a knowledge “of which
the laws of human nature considered in themselves alone cannot be the
cause.” What is really its cause, he says, we need not here inquire
(_verum nec nobis jam opus est propheticæ cognitionis causam scire_),
for we take Scripture, which contains this revelation, as it stands, and
do not ask how it arose (_documentorum causas nihil curamus_).
Proceeding on this principle, Spinoza leaves the attentive reader
somewhat baffled and disappointed, clear, as is his way of treating his
subject, and remarkable as are the conclusions with which he presents
us. He starts we feel, from what is to him a hypothesis, and we want to
know what he really thinks about this hypothesis. His greatest novelties
are all within limits fixed for him by this hypothesis. He says that the
voice which called Samuel was an imaginary voice; he says that the
waters of the Red Sea retreated before a strong wind; he says that the
Shunammite’s son was revived by the natural heat of Elisha’s body; he
says that the rainbow which was made a sign to Noah appeared in the
ordinary course of nature. Scripture itself, rightly interpreted, says,
he affirms, all this. But he asserts that the divine voice which uttered
the commandments on Mount Sinai was a real voice _vera vox_. He says,
indeed, that this voice could not really give to the Israelites that
proof which they imagined it gave to them of the existence of God, and
that God on Sinai was dealing with the Israelites only according to
their imperfect knowledge. Still he asserts the divine voice to have
been a real one; and for this reason, that we do violence to Scripture
if we do not admit it to have been a real one (_nisi Scripturæ vim
inferre velimus, omnino concedendum est, Israëlitas veram vocem
audivisse_). The attentive reader wants to know what Spinoza himself
thought about this _vera vox_ and its possibility; he is much more
interested in knowing this than in knowing what Spinoza considered
Scripture to affirm about the matter.
The feeling of perplexity thus caused is not diminished by the language
of the chapter on miracles. In this chapter Spinoza broadly affirms a
miracle to be an impossibility. But he himself contrasts the method of
demonstration _à priori_, by which he claims to have established this
proposition, with the method which he has pursued in treating of
prophetic revelation. “This revelation,” he says, “is a matter out of
human reach, and therefore I was bound to take it as I found it.”
_Monere volo, me aliâ prorsus methodo circa miracula processisse, quam
circa prophetiam ... quod etiam consulto feci, quia de prophetiâ,
quandoquidem ipsa captum humanum superat et quæstio mere theologica est,
nihil affirmare, neque etiam scire poteram in quo ipsa potissimum
constiterit, nisi ex fundamentis revelatis._ The reader feels that
Spinoza, proceeding on a hypothesis, has presented him with the
assertion of a miracle, and afterwards, proceeding _à priori_, has
presented him with the assertion that a miracle is impossible. He feels
that Spinoza does not adequately reconcile these two assertions by
declaring that any event really miraculous, if found recorded in
Scripture, must be “a spurious addition made to Scripture by
sacrilegious men.” Is, then, he asks the _vera vox_ of Mount Sinai in
Spinoza’s opinion a spurious addition made to Scripture by sacrilegious
men; or, if not, how is it not miraculous?
Spinoza, in his own mind, regarded the Bible as a vast collection of
miscellaneous documents, many of them quite disparate and not at all to
be harmonized with others; documents of unequal value and of varying
applicability, some of them conveying ideas salutary for one time,
others for another. But in the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_ he by no
means always deals in this free spirit with the Bible. Sometimes he
chooses to deal with it in the spirit of the veriest worshiper of the
letter; sometimes he chooses to treat the Bible as if all its parts were
(so to speak) equipollent; to snatch an isolated text which suits his
purpose, without caring whether it is annulled by the context, by the
general drift of Scripture, or by other passages of more weight and
authority. The great critic thus becomes voluntarily as uncritical as
Exeter Hall. The Epicurean Solomon, whose _Ecclesiastes_ the Hebrew
doctors, even after they had received it into the canon, forbade the
young and weak-minded among their community to read, Spinoza quotes as
of the same authority with the severe Moses; he uses promiscuously, as
documents of identical force, without discriminating between their
essentially different character, the softened cosmopolitan teaching of
the prophets of the captivity and the rigid national teaching of the
instructors of Israel’s youth. He is capable of extracting, from a
chance expression of Jeremiah, the assertion of a speculative idea which
Jeremiah certainly never entertained, and from which he would have
recoiled in dismay,—the idea, namely, that miracles are impossible; just
as the ordinary Englishman can extract from God’s words to Noah, _Be
fruitful and multiply_, an exhortation to himself to have a large
family. Spinoza, I repeat, knew perfectly well what this verbal mode of
dealing with the Bible was worth: but he sometimes uses it because of
the hypothesis from which he set out; because of his having agreed “to
take Scripture as it stands, and not to ask how it arose.”
No doubt the sagacity of Spinoza’s rules for Biblical interpretation,
the power of his analysis of the contents of the Bible, the interest of
his reflections on Jewish history, are, in spite of this, very great,
and have an absolute worth of their own, independent of the silence or
ambiguity of their author upon a point of cardinal importance. Few
candid people will read his rules of interpretation without exclaiming
that they are the very dictates of good sense, that they have always
believed in them; and without adding, after a moment’s reflection, that
they have passed their lives in violating them. And what can be more
interesting, than to find that perhaps the main cause of the decay of
the Jewish polity was one of which from our English Bible, which
entirely mistranslates the 26th verse of the 20th chapter of Ezekiel, we
hear nothing,—the perpetual reproach of impurity and rejection cast upon
the priesthood of the tribe of Levi? What can be more suggestive, after
Mr. Mill and Dr. Stanley have been telling us how great an element of
strength to the Hebrew nation was the institution of prophets, than to
hear from the ablest of Hebrews how this institution seems to him to
have been to his nation one of her main elements of weakness? No
intelligent man can read the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_ without
being profoundly instructed by it; but neither can he read it without
feeling that, as a speculative work, it is, to use a French military
expression, _in the air_; that, in a certain sense, it is in want of a
base and in want of supports; that this base and these supports are, at
any rate, not to be found in the work itself, and, if they exist, must
be sought for in other works of the author.
The genuine speculative opinions of Spinoza, which the _Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_ but imperfectly reveals, may in his Ethics and in
his Letters be found set forth clearly. It is, however, the business of
criticism to deal with every independent work as with an independent
whole, and, instead of establishing between the _Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_ and the Ethics of Spinoza a relation which Spinoza
himself has not established,—to seize, in dealing with the _Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_, the important fact that this work has its source,
not in the axioms and definition of the Ethics, but in a hypothesis. The
Ethics are not yet translated into English, and I have not here to speak
of them. Then will be the right time for criticism to try and seize the
special character and tendencies of that remarkable work, when it is
dealing with it directly. The criticism of the Ethics is far too serious
a task to be undertaken incidentally, and merely as a supplement to the
criticism of the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. Nevertheless, on
certain governing ideas of Spinoza, which receive their systematic
expression, indeed, in the Ethics, and on which the _Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_ is not formally based, but which are yet never
absent from Spinoza’s mind in the composition of any work, which breathe
through all his works, and fill them with a peculiar effect and power, I
have a word or two to say.
A philosopher’s real power over mankind resides not in his metaphysical
formulas, but in the spirit and tendencies which have led him to adopt
those formulas. Spinoza’s critic, therefore, has rather to bring to
light that spirit and those tendencies of his author, than to exhibit
his metaphysical formulas. Propositions about substance pass by mankind
at large like the idle wind, which mankind at large regards not; it will
not even listen to a word about these propositions, unless it first
learns what their author was driving at with them, and finds that this
object of his is one with which it sympathizes, one, at any rate, which
commands its attention. And mankind is so far right that this object of
the author is really, as has been said, that which is most important,
that which sets all his work in motion, that which is the secret of his
attraction for other minds, which, by different ways, pursue the same
object.
Mr. Maurice, seeking for the cause of Goethe’s great admiration for
Spinoza, thinks that he finds it in Spinoza’s Hebrew genius. “He spoke
of God,” says Mr. Maurice, “as an actual being, to those who had fancied
him a name in a book. The child of the circumcision had a message for
Lessing and Goethe which the pagan schools of philosophy could not
bring.” This seems to me, I confess, fanciful. An intensity and
impressiveness, which came to him from his Hebrew nature, Spinoza no
doubt has; but the two things which are most remarkable about him, and
by which, as I think, he chiefly impressed Goethe, seem to me not to
come to him from his Hebrew nature at all,—I mean his denial of final
causes, and his stoicism, a stoicism not passive, but active. For a mind
like Goethe’s,—a mind profoundly impartial and passionately aspiring
after the science, not of men only, but of universal nature,—the popular
philosophy which explains all things by reference to man, and regards
universal nature as existing for the sake of man, and even of certain
classes of men, was utterly repulsive. Unchecked, this philosophy would
gladly maintain that the donkey exists in order that the invalid
Christian may have donkey’s milk before breakfast; and such views of
nature as this were exactly what Goethe’s whole soul abhorred. Creation,
he thought, should be made of sterner stuff; he desired to rest the
donkey’s existence on larger grounds. More than any philosopher who has
ever lived, Spinoza satisfied him here. The full exposition of the
counter-doctrine to the popular doctrine of final causes is to be found
in the Ethics; but this denial of final causes was so essential an
element of all Spinoza’s thinking that we shall, as has been said
already, find it in the work with which we are here concerned, the
_Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, and, indeed, permeating that work and
all his works. From the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_ one may take as
good a general statement of this denial as any which is to be found in
the Ethics:—
“Deus naturam dirigit, prout ejus leges universales, non autem prout
humanæ naturæ particulares leges exigunt, adeoque Deus non solius humani
generis, sed totius naturæ rationem habet. (_God directs nature,
according as the universal laws of nature, but not according as the
particular laws of human nature require; and so God has regard, not of
the human race only, but of entire nature._)”
And, as a pendant to this denial by Spinoza of final causes, comes his
stoicism:—
“Non studemus, ut natura nobis, sed contra ut nos naturæ pareamus. (_Our
desire is not that nature may obey us, but, on the contrary, that we may
obey nature._)”
Here is the second source of his attractiveness for Goethe; and Goethe
is but the eminent representative of a whole order of minds whose
admiration has made Spinoza’s fame. Spinoza first impresses Goethe and
any man like Goethe, and then he composes him; first he fills and
satisfies his imagination by the width and grandeur of his view of
nature, and then he fortifies and stills his mobile, straining,
passionate poetic temperament by the moral lesson he draws from his view
of nature. And a moral lesson not of mere resigned acquiescence, not of
melancholy quietism, but of joyful activity within the limits of man’s
true sphere:—
“Ipsa hominis essentia est conatus quo unusquisque suum esse conservare
conatur.... Virtus hominis est ipsa hominis essentia, quatenus a solo
conatu suum esse conservandi definitur.... Felicitas in eo consistit
quod homo suum esse conservare potest.... Lætitia est hominis transitio
ad majorem perfectionem.... Tristitia est hominis transitio ad minorem
perfectionem. (_Man’s very essence is the effort wherewith each man
strives to maintain his own being.... Man’s virtue is this very essence,
so far as it is defined by this single effort to maintain his own
being.... Happiness consists in a man’s being able to maintain his own
being.... Joy is man’s passage to a greater perfection.... Sorrow is
man’s passage to a lesser perfection._)”
It seems to me that by neither of these, his grand characteristic
doctrines, is Spinoza truly Hebrew or truly Christian. His denial of
final causes is essentially alien to the spirit of the Old Testament,
and his cheerful and self-sufficing stoicism is essentially alien to the
spirit of the New. The doctrine that “God directs nature, not according
as the particular laws of human nature, but according as the universal
laws of nature require,” is at utter variance with that Hebrew mode of
representing God’s dealings, which makes the locusts visit Egypt to
punish Pharaoh’s hardness of heart, and the falling dew avert itself
from the fleece of Gideon. The doctrine that “all sorrow is a passage to
a lesser perfection” is at utter variance with the Christian recognition
of the blessedness of sorrow, working “repentance to salvation not to be
repented of;” of sorrow, which, in Dante’s words, “re-marries us to
God.”
Spinoza’s repeated and earnest assertions that the love of God is man’s
_summum bonum_ do not remove the fundamental diversity between his
doctrine and the Hebrew and Christian doctrines. By the love of God he
does not mean the same thing which the Hebrew and Christian religions
mean by the love of God. He makes the love of God to consist in the
knowledge of God; and, as we know God only through his manifestation of
himself in the laws of all nature, it is by knowing these laws that we
love God, and the more we know them the more we love him. This may be
true, but this is not what the Christian means by the love of God.
Spinoza’s ideal is the intellectual life; the Christian’s ideal is the
religious life. Between the two conditions there is all the difference
which there is between the being in love, and the following, with
delighted comprehension, a reasoning of Plato. For Spinoza, undoubtedly,
the crown of the intellectual life is a transport, as for the saint the
crown of the religious life is a transport; but the two transports are
not the same.
This is true; yet it is true, also, that by thus crowning the
intellectual life with a sacred transport, by thus retaining in
philosophy, amid the discontented murmurs of all the army of atheism,
the name of God, Spinoza maintains a profound affinity with that which
is truest in religion, and inspires an indestructible interest. One of
his admirers, M. Van Vloten, has recently published at Amsterdam a
supplementary volume to Spinoza’s works, containing the interesting
document of Spinoza’s sentence of excommunication, from which I have
already quoted, and containing, besides, several lately found works
alleged to be Spinoza’s, which seem to me to be of doubtful
authenticity, and, even if authentic, of no great importance. M. Van
Vloten (who, let me be permitted to say in passing, writes a Latin which
would make one think that the art of writing Latin must be now a lost
art in the country of Lipsius) is very anxious that Spinoza’s
unscientific retention of the name of God should not afflict his readers
with any doubts as to his perfect scientific orthodoxy:—
“It is a great mistake,” he cries, “to disparage Spinoza as merely one
of the dogmatists before Kant. By keeping the name of God, while he did
away with his person and character, he has done himself an injustice.
Those who look to the bottom of things will see, that, long ago as he
lived, he had even then reached the point to which the post-Hegelian
philosophy and the study of natural science has only just brought our
own times. Leibnitz expressed his apprehension lest those who did away
with final causes should do away with God at the same time. But it is in
his having done away with final causes, _and with God along with them_,
that Spinoza’s true merit consists.”
Now it must be remarked that to use Spinoza’s denial of final causes in
order to identify him with the Coryphæi of atheism, is to make a false
use of Spinoza’s denial of final causes, just as to use his assertion of
the all-importance of loving God to identify him with the saints would
be to make a false use of his assertion of the all-importance of loving
God. He is no more to be identified with the post-Hegelian philosophers
than he is to be identified with St. Augustine. Unction, indeed,
Spinoza’s writings have not; that name does not precisely fit any
quality which they exhibit. And yet, so all-important in the sphere of
religious thought is the power of edification, that in this sphere a
great fame like Spinoza’s can never be founded without it. A court of
literature can never be very severe to Voltaire: with that inimitable
wit and clear sense of his, he cannot write a page in which the fullest
head may not find something suggestive: still, because, handling
religious ideas, he yet, with all his wit and clear sense, handles them
wholly without the power of edification, his fame as a great man is
equivocal. Strauss has treated the question of Scripture miracles with
an acuteness and fulness which even to the most informed minds is
instructive; but because he treats it almost wholly without the power of
edification, his fame as a serious thinker is equivocal. But in Spinoza
there is not a trace either of Voltaire’s passion for mockery or of
Strauss’s passion for demolition. His whole soul was filled with desire
of the love and knowledge of God, and of that only. Philosophy always
proclaims herself on the way to the _summum bonum_; but too often on the
road she seems to forget her destination, and suffers her hearers to
forget it also. Spinoza never forgets his destination: “The love of God
is man’s highest happiness and blessedness, and the final end and aim of
all human actions;”—“The supreme reward for keeping God’s Word is that
Word itself—namely, to know him and with free will and pure and constant
heart love him:” these sentences are the keynote to all he produced, and
were the inspiration of all his labors. This is why he turns so sternly
upon the worshipers of the letter,—the editors of the _Masora_, the
editor of the _Record_,—because their doctrine imperils our love and
knowledge of God. “What!” he cries, “our knowledge of God to depend upon
these perishable things, which Moses can dash to the ground and break to
pieces like the first tables of stone, or of which the originals can be
lost like the original book of the Covenant, like the original book of
the Law of God, like the book of the Wars of God!... which can come to
us confused, imperfect, mis-written by copyists, tampered with by
doctors! And you accuse others of impiety! It is you who are impious, to
believe that God would commit the treasure of the true record of himself
to any substance less enduring than the heart!”
And Spinoza’s life was not unworthy of this elevated strain. A
philosopher who professed that knowledge was its own reward, a devotee
who professed that the love of God was its own reward, this philosopher
and this devotee believed in what he said. Spinoza led a life the most
spotless, perhaps, to be found among the lives of philosophers; he lived
simple, studious, even-tempered, kind; declining honors, declining
riches, declining notoriety. He was poor, and his admirer Simon de Vries
sent him two thousand florins:—he refused them. The same friend left him
his fortune;—he returned it to the heir. He was asked to dedicate one of
his works to the magnificent patron of letters in his century, Louis the
Fourteenth;—he declined. His great work, his Ethics, published after his
death, he gave injunctions to his friends to publish anonymously, for
fear he should give his name to a school. Truth, he thought, should bear
no man’s name. And finally,—“Unless,” he said, “I had known that my
writings would in the end advance the cause of true religion, I would
have suppressed them,—_tacuissem_.” It was in this spirit that he lived;
and this spirit gives to all he writes not exactly unction,—I have
already said so,—but a kind of sacred solemnity. Not of the same order
as the saints, he yet follows the same service: _Doubtless thou art our
Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us
not_.
Therefore he has been, in a certain sphere, edifying, and has inspired
in many powerful minds an interest and an admiration such as no other
philosopher has inspired since Plato. The lonely precursor of German
philosophy, he still shines when the light of his successors is fading
away; they had celebrity, Spinoza has fame. Not because his peculiar
system of philosophy has had more adherents than theirs; on the
contrary, it has had fewer. But schools of philosophy arise and fall;
their bands of adherents inevitably dwindle; no master can long persuade
a large body of disciples that they give to themselves just the same
account of the world as he does; it is only the very young and the very
enthusiastic who can think themselves sure that they possess the whole
mind of Plato, or Spinoza, or Hegel, at all. The very mature and the
very sober can even hardly believe that these philosophers possessed it
themselves enough to put it all into their works, and to let us know
entirely how the world seemed to them. What a remarkable philosopher
really does for human thought, is to throw into circulation a certain
number of new and striking ideas and expressions, and to stimulate with
them the thought and imagination of his century or of after-times. So
Spinoza has made his distinction between adequate and inadequate ideas a
current notion for educated Europe. So Hegel seized a single pregnant
sentence of Heracleitus, and cast it, with a thousand striking
applications, into the world of modern thought. But to do this is only
enough to make a philosopher noteworthy; it is not enough to make him
great. To be great, he must have something in him which can influence
character, which is edifying; he must, in short, have a noble and lofty
character himself, a character,—to recur to that much-criticised
expression of mine,—_in the grand style_. This is what Spinoza had; and
because he had it, he stands out from the multitude of philosophers, and
has been able to inspire in powerful minds a feeling which the most
remarkable philosophers, without this grandiose character, could not
inspire. “There is no possible view of life but Spinoza’s,” said
Lessing. Goethe has told us how he was calmed and edified by him in his
youth, and how he again went to him for support in his maturity. Heine,
the man (in spite of his faults) of truest genius that Germany has
produced since Goethe,—a man with faults, as I have said, immense
faults, the greatest of them being that he could reverence so
little,—reverenced Spinoza. Hegel’s influence ran off him like water: “I
have seen Hegel,” he cries, “seated with his doleful air of a hatching
hen upon his unhappy eggs, and I have heard his dismal clucking. How
easily one can cheat oneself into thinking that one understands
everything, when one has learned only how to construct dialectical
formulas!” But of Spinoza, Heine said: “His life was a copy of the life
of his divine kinsman, Jesus Christ.”
And therefore, when M. Van Vloten violently presses the parallel with
the post-Hegelians, one feels that the parallel with St. Augustine is
the far truer one. Compared with the soldier of irreligion M. Van Vloten
would have him to be, Spinoza is religious. “It is true,” one may say to
the wise and devout Christian, “Spinoza’s conception of beatitude is not
yours, and cannot satisfy you, but whose conception of beatitude would
you accept as satisfying? Not even that of the devoutest of your
fellow-Christians. Fra Angelico, the sweetest and most inspired of
devout souls, has given us, in his great picture of the Last Judgment,
his conception of beatitude. The elect are going round in a ring on long
grass under laden fruit-trees; two of them, more restless than the
others, are flying up a battlemented street,—a street blank with all the
ennui of the Middle Ages. Across a gulf is visible, for the delectation
of the saints, a blazing caldron in which Beelzebub is sousing the
damned. This is hardly more your conception of beatitude than Spinoza’s
is. But ‘in my Father’s house are many mansions;’ only, to reach any one
of these mansions, there are needed the wings of a genuine sacred
transport, of an ‘immortal longing.’” These wings Spinoza had; and,
because he had them, his own language about himself, about his
aspirations and his course, are true: his foot is in the _vera vita_,
his eye on the beatific vision.
X.
MARCUS AURELIUS.
Mr. Mill says, in his book on Liberty, that “Christian morality is in
great part merely a protest against paganism; its ideal is negative
rather than positive, passive rather than active.” He says, that, in
certain most important respects, “it falls far below the best morality
of the ancients.” Now, the object of systems of morality is to take
possession of human life, to save it from being abandoned to passion or
allowed to drift at hazard, to give it happiness by establishing it in
the practice of virtue; and this object they seek to attain by
prescribing to human life fixed principles of action, fixed rules of
conduct. In its uninspired as well as in its inspired moments, in its
days of languor and gloom as well as in its days of sunshine and energy,
human life has thus always a clue to follow, and may always be making
way towards its goal. Christian morality has not failed to supply to
human life aids of this sort. It has supplied them far more abundantly
than many of its critics imagine. The most exquisite document after
those of the New Testament, of all the documents the Christian spirit
has ever inspired,—the _Imitation_,—by no means contains the whole of
Christian morality; nay, the disparagers of this morality would think
themselves sure of triumphing if one agreed to look for it in the
_Imitation_ only. But even the _Imitation_ is full of passages like
these: “Vita sine proposito languida et vaga est;”—“Omni die renovare
debemus propositum nostrum, dicentes: nunc hodiè perfectè incipiamus,
quia nihil est quod hactenus fecimus;”—“Secundum propositum nostrum est
cursus profectûs nostri;”—“Raro etiam unum vitium perfectè vincimus, et
ad _quotidianum_ profectum non accendimur;” “Semper aliquid certi
proponendum est;” “Tibi ipsi violentiam frequenter fac;” (_A life
without a purpose is a languid, drifting thing;—Every day we ought to
renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let us make a sound
beginning, for what we have hitherto done is nought;—Our improvement is
in proportion to our purpose;—We hardly ever manage to get completely
rid even of one fault, and do not set our hearts on daily
improvement;—Always place a definite purpose before thee;—Get the habit
of mastering thine inclination._) These are moral precepts, and moral
precepts of the best kind. As rules to hold possession of our conduct,
and to keep us in the right course through outward troubles and inward
perplexity, they are equal to the best ever furnished by the great
masters of morals—Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius.
But moral rules, apprehended as ideas first, and then rigorously
followed as laws, are, and must be, for the sage only. The mass of
mankind have neither force of intellect enough to apprehend them clearly
as ideas, nor force of character enough to follow them strictly as laws.
The mass of mankind can be carried along a course full of hardship for
the natural man, can be borne over the thousand impediments of the
narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is
impossible to rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a
sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid
upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear. Honor to the sages who
have felt this, and yet have borne it! Yet, even for the sage, this
sense of labor and sorrow in his march towards the goal constitutes a
relative inferiority; the noblest souls of whatever creed, the pagan
Empedocles as well as the Christian Paul, have insisted on the necessity
of an inspiration, a joyful emotion, to make moral action perfect; an
obscure indication of this necessity is the one drop of truth in the
ocean of verbiage with which the controversy on justification by faith
has flooded the world. But, for the ordinary man, this sense of labor
and sorrow constitutes an absolute disqualification; it paralyzes him;
under the weight of it, he cannot make way towards the goal at all. The
paramount virtue of religion is, that it has _lighted up_ morality; that
it has supplied the emotion and inspiration needful for carrying the
sage along the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man along
it at all. Even the religious with most dross in them have had something
of this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with unexampled
splendor. “Lead me, Zeus and Destiny!” says the prayer of Epictetus,
“whithersoever I am appointed to go; I will follow without wavering;
even though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow all the
same.” The fortitude of that is for the strong, for the few; even for
them the spiritual atmosphere with which it surrounds them is bleak and
gray, But, “Let thy loving spirit lead me forth into the land of
righteousness;”—“The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and
thy God thy glory;”—“Unto you that fear my name shall the sun of
righteousness arise with healing in his wings,” says the Old Testament;
“Born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God;”—“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God;”—“Whatsoever is born of God, overcometh the world,” says the
New. The ray of sunshine is there, the glow of a divine warmth;—the
austerity of the sage melts away under it, the paralysis of the weak is
healed; he who is vivified by it renews his strength; “all things are
possible to him;” “he is a new creature.”
Epictetus says: “Every matter has two handles, one of which will bear
taking hold of, the other not. If thy brother sin against thee, lay not
hold of the matter by this, that he sins against thee; for by this
handle the matter will not bear taking hold of. But rather lay hold of
it by this, that he is thy brother, thy born mate; and thou wilt take
hold of it by what will bear handling.” Jesus, being asked whether a man
is bound to forgive his brother as often as seven times, answers: “I say
not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven.”
Epictetus here suggests to the reason grounds for forgiveness of
injuries which Jesus does not; but it is vain to say that Epictetus is
on that account a better moralist than Jesus, if the warmth, the
emotion, of Jesus’s answer fires his hearer to the practice of
forgiveness of injuries, while the thought in Epictetus’s leaves him
cold. So with Christian morality in general: its distinction is not that
it propounds the maxim, “Thou shalt love God and thy neighbor,” with
more development, closer reasoning, truer sincerity, than other moral
systems; it is that it propounds this maxim with an inspiration which
wonderfully catches the hearer and makes him act upon it. It is because
Mr. Mill has attained to the perception of truths of this nature, that
he is,—instead of being, like the school from which he proceeds, doomed
to sterility,—a writer of distinguished mark and influence, a writer
deserving all attention and respect; it is (I must be pardoned for
saying) because he is not sufficiently leavened with them, that he falls
just short of being a great writer.
That which gives to the moral writings of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius
their peculiar character and charm, is their being suffused and softened
by something of this very sentiment whence Christian morality draws its
best power. Mr. Long has recently published in a convenient form a
translation of these writings, and has thus enabled English readers to
judge Marcus Aurelius for themselves; he has rendered his countrymen a
real service by so doing. Mr. Long’s reputation as a scholar is a
sufficient guarantee of the general fidelity and accuracy of his
translation; on these matters, besides, I am hardly entitled to speak,
and my praise is of no value. But that for which I and the rest of the
unlearned may venture to praise Mr. Long is this; that he treats Marcus
Aurelius’s writings, as he treats all the other remains of Greek and
Roman antiquity which he touches, not as a dead and dry matter of
learning, but as documents with a side of modern applicability and
living interest, and valuable mainly so far as this side in them can be
made clear; that as in his notes on Plutarch’s Roman Lives he deals with
the modern epoch of Cæsar and Cicero, not as food for schoolboys, but as
food for men, and men engaged in the current of contemporary life and
action, so in his remarks and essays on Marcus Aurelius he treats this
truly modern striver and thinker not as a Classical Dictionary hero, but
as a present source from which to draw “example of life, and instruction
of manners.” Why may not a son of Dr. Arnold say, what might naturally
here be said by any other critic, that in this lively and fruitful way
of considering the men and affairs of ancient Greece and Rome, Mr. Long
resembles Dr. Arnold?
One or two little complaints, however, I have against Mr. Long, and I
will get them off my mind at once. In the first place, why could he not
have found gentler and juster terms to describe the translation of his
predecessor, Jeremy Collier,—the redoubtable enemy of stage plays,—than
these: “a most coarse and vulgar copy of the original?” As a matter of
taste, a translator should deal leniently with his predecessor; but
putting that out of the question, Mr. Long’s language is a great deal
too hard. Most English people who knew Marcus Aurelius before Mr. Long
appeared as his introducer, knew him through Jeremy Collier. And the
acquaintance of a man like Marcus Aurelius is such an imperishable
benefit, that one can never lose a peculiar sense of obligation towards
the man who confers it. Apart from this claim upon one’s tenderness,
however, Jeremy Collier’s version deserves respect for its genuine
spirit and vigor, the spirit and vigor of the age of Dryden. Jeremy
Collier too, like Mr. Long, regarded in Marcus Aurelius the living
moralist, and not the dead classic; and his warmth of feeling gave to
his style an impetuosity and rhythm which from Mr Long’s style (I do not
blame it on that account) are absent. Let us place the two side by side.
The impressive opening of Marcus Aurelius’s fifth book, Mr. Long
translates thus:—
“In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be
present: I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I
dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for
which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie
in the bed clothes and keep myself warm?—But this is more pleasant.—Dost
thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or
exertion?”
Jeremy Collier has:—
“When you find an unwillingness to rise early in the morning, make this
short speech to yourself: ‘I am getting up now to do the business of a
man; and am I out of humor for going about that which I was made for,
and for the sake of which I was sent into the world? Was I then designed
for nothing but to doze and batten beneath the counterpane? I thought
action had been the end of your being.’”
In another striking passage, again, Mr. Long has:—
“No longer wonder at hazard; for neither wilt thou read thy own memoirs,
nor the acts of the ancient Romans and Hellenes, and the selections from
books which thou wast reserving for thy old age. Hasten then to the end
which thou hast before thee, and, throwing away idle hopes, come to
thine own aid, if thou carest at all for thyself, while it is in thy
power.”
Here his despised predecessor has:—
“Don’t go too far in your books and overgrasp yourself. Alas, you have
no time left to peruse your diary, to read over the Greek and Roman
history: come, don’t flatter and deceive yourself; look to the main
chance, to the end and design of reading, and mind life more than
notion: I say, if you have a kindness for your person, drive at the
practice and help yourself, for that is in your own power.”
It seems to me that here for style and force Jeremy Collier can (to say
the least) perfectly stand comparison with Mr. Long. Jeremy Collier’s
real defect as a translator is not his coarseness and vulgarity, but his
imperfect acquaintance with Greek; this is a serious defect, a fatal
one; it rendered a translation like Mr. Long’s necessary. Jeremy
Collier’s work will now be forgotten, and Mr. Long stands master of the
field; but he may be content, at any rate, to leave his predecessor’s
grave unharmed, even if he will not throw upon it, in passing, a handful
of kindly earth.
Another complaint I have against Mr. Long is, that he is not quite
idiomatic and simple enough. It is a little formal, at least, if not
pedantic, to say _Ethic_ and _Dialectic_, instead of _Ethics_ and
_Dialectics_, and to say “_Hellenes_ and Romans” instead of “_Greeks_
and Romans.” And why, too,—the name of Antoninus being preoccupied by
Antoninus Pius,—will Mr. Long call his author Marcus, _Antoninus_
instead of Marcus _Aurelius_? Small as these matters appear, they are
important when one has to deal with the general public, and not with a
small circle of scholars; and it is the general public that the
translator of a short masterpiece on morals, such as is the book of
Marcus Aurelius, should have in view; his aim should be to make Marcus
Aurelius’s work as popular as the _Imitation_, and Marcus Aurelius’s
name as familiar as Socrates’s. In rendering or naming him, therefore,
punctilious accuracy of phrase is not so much to be sought as
accessibility and currency; everything which may best enable the Emperor
and his precepts _vilotare per ora virum_. It is essential to render him
in language perfectly plain and unprofessional, and to call him by the
name by which he is best and most distinctly known. The translators of
the Bible talk of _pence_ and not _denarii_, and the admirers of
Voltaire do not celebrate him under the name of Arouet.
But, after these trifling complaints are made, one must end, as one
began, in unfeigned gratitude to Mr. Long for his excellent and
substantial reproduction in English of an invaluable work. In general
the substantiality, soundness, and precision of Mr. Long’s rendering are
(I will venture, after all, to give my opinion about them) as
conspicuous as the living spirit with which he treats antiquity; and
these qualities are particularly desirable in the translator of a work
like that of Marcus Aurelius, of which the language is often corrupt,
almost always hard and obscure. Any one who wants to appreciate Mr.
Long’s merits as a translator may read, in the original and in Mr.
Long’s translation, the seventh chapter of the tenth book; he will see
how, through all the dubiousness and involved manner of the Greek, Mr.
Long has firmly seized upon the clear thought which is certainly at the
bottom of that troubled wording, and, in distinctly rendering this
thought, has at the same time thrown round its expression a
characteristic shade of painfulness and difficulty which just suits it.
And Marcus Aurelius’s book is one which, when it is rendered so
accurately as Mr. Long renders it, even those who know Greek tolerably
well may choose to read rather in the translation than in the original.
For not only are the contents here incomparably more valuable than the
external form, but this form, the Greek of a Roman, is not exactly one
of those styles which have a physiognomy, which are an essential part of
their author, which stamp an indelible impression of him on the reader’s
mind. An old Lyons commentator finds, indeed, in Marcus Aurelius’s
Greek, something characteristic, something specially firm and imperial;
but I think an ordinary mortal will hardly find this: he will find
crabbed Greek, without any great charm of distinct physiognomy. The
Greek of Thucydides and Plato has this charm, and he who reads them in a
translation, however accurate, loses it, and loses much in losing it;
but the Greek of Marcus Aurelius, like the Greek of the New Testament,
and even more than the Greek of the New Testament, is wanting in it. If
one could be assured that the English Testament were made perfectly
accurate, one might be almost content never to open a Greek Testament
again; and, Mr. Long’s version of Marcus Aurelius being what it is, an
Englishman who reads to live, and does not live to read, may henceforth
let the Greek original repose upon its shelf.
The man whose thoughts Mr. Long has thus faithfully reproduced, is
perhaps the most beautiful figure in history. He is one of those
consoling and hope-inspiring marks, which stand forever to remind our
weak and easily discouraged race how high human goodness and
perseverance have once been carried, and may be carried again. The
interest of mankind is peculiarly attracted by examples of signal
goodness in high places; for that testimony to the worth of goodness is
the most striking which is borne by those to whom all the means of
pleasure and self-indulgence lay open, by those who had at their command
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Marcus Aurelius was the
ruler of the grandest of empires; and he was one of the best of men.
Besides him, history presents one or two sovereigns eminent for their
goodness, such as Saint Louis or Alfred. But Marcus Aurelius has, for us
moderns, this great superiority in interest over Saint Louis or Alfred,
that he lived and acted in a state of society modern by its essential
characteristics, in an epoch akin to our own, in a brilliant center of
civilization. Trajan talks of “our enlightened age” just as glibly as
the _Times_ talks of it. Marcus Aurelius thus becomes for us a man like
ourselves, a man in all things tempted as we are. Saint Louis inhabits
an atmosphere of mediæval Catholicism, which the man of the nineteenth
century may admire, indeed, may even passionately wish to inhabit, but
which, strive as he will, he cannot really inhabit. Alfred belongs to a
state of society (I say it with all deference to the _Saturday Review_
critic who keeps such jealous watch over the honor of our Saxon
ancestors) half barbarous. Neither Alfred nor Saint Louis can be morally
and intellectually as near to us as Marcus Aurelius.
The record of the outward life of this admirable man has in it little of
striking incident. He was born at Rome on the 26th of April, in the year
121 of the Christian era. He was nephew and son-in-law to his
predecessor on the throne, Antoninus Pius. When Antoninus died, he was
forty years old, but from the time of his earliest manhood he had
assisted in administering public affairs. Then, after his uncle’s death
in 161, for nineteen years he reigned as emperor. The barbarians were
pressing on the Roman frontier, and a great part of Marcus Aurelius’s
nineteen years of reign was passed in campaigning. His absences from
Rome were numerous and long. We hear of him in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt,
Greece; but, above all, in the countries on the Danube, where the war
with the barbarians was going on,—in Austria, Moravia, Hungary. In these
countries much of his Journal seems to have been written; parts of it
are dated from them; and there, a few weeks before his fifty-ninth
birthday, he fell sick and died.[23] The record of him on which his fame
chiefly rests is the record of his inward life,—his _Journal_, or
_Commentaries_, or _Meditations_, or _Thoughts_, for by all these names
has the work been called. Perhaps the most interesting of the records of
his outward life is that which the first book of this work supplies,
where he gives an account of his education, recites the names of those
to whom he is indebted for it, and enumerates his obligations to each of
them. It is a refreshing and consoling picture, a priceless treasure for
those, who, sick of the “wild and dreamlike trade of blood and guile,”
which seems to be nearly the whole of what history has to offer to our
view, seek eagerly for that substratum of right thinking and well-doing
which in all ages must surely have somewhere existed, for without it the
continued life of humanity would have been impossible. “From my mother I
learnt piety and beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds
but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of
living, far removed from the habits of the rich.” Let us remember that,
the next time we are reading the sixth satire of Juvenal. “From my tutor
I learnt” (hear it, ye tutors of princes!) “endurance of labor, and to
want little and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other
people’s affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander.” The vices
and foibles of the Greek sophist or rhetorician—the _Græculus
esuriens_—are in everybody’s mind; but he who reads Marcus Aurelius’s
account of his Greek teachers and masters, will understand how it is
that, in spite of the vices and foibles of individual _Græculi_, the
education of the human race owes to Greece a debt which can never be
overrated. The vague and colorless praise of history leaves on the mind
hardly any impression of Antoninus Pius: it is only from the private
memoranda of his nephew that we learn what a disciplined, hard-working,
gentle, wise, virtuous man he was; a man who, perhaps, interests mankind
less than his immortal nephew only because he has left in writing no
record of his inner life,—_caret quia vate sacro_.
-----
Footnote 23:
He died on the 17th of March, A. D. 180.
-----
Of the outward life and circumstances of Marcus Aurelius, beyond these
notices which he has himself supplied, there are few of much interest
and importance. There is the fine anecdote of his speech when he heard
of the assassination of the revolted Avidius Cassius, against whom he
was marching; _he was sorry_, he said, _to be deprived of the pleasure
of pardoning him_. And there are one or two more anecdotes of him which
show the same spirit. But the great record for the outward life of a man
who has left such a record of his lofty inward aspirations as that which
Marcus Aurelius has left, is the clear consenting voice of all his
contemporaries,—high and low, friend and enemy, pagan and Christian,—in
praise of his sincerity, justice, and goodness. The world’s charity does
not err on the side of excess, and here was a man occupying the most
conspicuous station in the world, and professing the highest possible
standard of conduct;—yet the world was obliged to declare that he walked
worthily of his profession. Long after his death, his bust was to be
seen in the houses of private men through the wide Roman empire. It may
be the vulgar part of human nature which busies itself with the
semblance and doings of living sovereigns, it is its nobler part which
busies itself with those of the dead; these busts of Marcus Aurelius, in
the homes of Gaul, Britain, and Italy, bear witness, not to the inmates’
frivolous curiosity about princes and palaces, but to their reverential
memory of the passage of a great man upon the earth.
Two things, however, before one turns from the outward to the inward
life of Marcus Aurelius, force themselves upon one’s notice, and demand
a word of comment; he persecuted the Christians, and he had for his son
the vicious and brutal Commodus. The persecution at Lyons, in which
Attalus and Pothinus suffered, the persecution at Smyrna, in which
Polycarp suffered, took place in his reign. Of his humanity, of his
tolerance, of his horror of cruelty and violence, of his wish to refrain
from severe measures against the Christians, of his anxiety to temper
the severity of these measures when they appeared to him indispensable,
there is no doubt: but, on the one hand, it is certain that the letter,
attributed to him, directing that no Christian should be punished for
being a Christian, is spurious; it is almost certain that his alleged
answer to the authorities of Lyons, in which he directs that Christians
persisting in their profession shall be dealt with according to law, is
genuine. Mr. Long seems inclined to try and throw doubt over the
persecution at Lyons, by pointing out that the letter of the Lyons
Christians relating it, alleges it to have been attended by miraculous
and incredible incidents. “A man,” he says, “can only act consistently
by accepting all this letter or rejecting it all, and we cannot blame
him for either.” But it is contrary to all experience to say that
because a fact is related with incorrect additions, and embellishments,
therefore it probably never happened at all; or that it is not, in
general, easy for an impartial mind to distinguish between the fact and
the embellishments. I cannot doubt that the Lyons persecution took
place, and that the punishment of Christians for being Christians was
sanctioned by Marcus Aurelius. But then I must add that nine modern
readers out of ten, when they read this, will, I believe, have a
perfectly false notion of what the moral action of Marcus Aurelius, in
sanctioning that punishment, really was. They imagine Trajan, or
Antoninus Pius, or Marcus Aurelius, fresh from the perusal of the
Gospel, fully aware of the spirit and holiness of the Christian saints
ordering their extermination because he loved darkness rather than
light. Far from this, the Christianity which these emperors aimed at
repressing was, in their conception of it, something philosophically
contemptible, politically subversive, and morally abominable. As men,
they sincerely regarded it much as well-conditioned people, with us,
regard Mormonism; as rulers, they regarded it much as Liberal statesmen,
with us, regard the Jesuits. A kind of Mormonism, constituted as a vast
secret society, with obscure aims of political and social subversion,
was what Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius believed themselves to be
repressing when they punished Christians. The early Christian apologists
again and again declare to us under what odious imputations the
Christians lay, how general was the belief that these imputations were
well-grounded, how sincere was the horror which the belief inspired. The
multitude, convinced that the Christians were atheists who ate human
flesh and thought incest no crime, displayed against them a fury so
passionate as to embarrass and alarm their rulers. The severe
expressions of Tacitus, _exitiabilis superstitio—odio humani generis
convicti_, show how deeply the prejudices of the multitude imbued the
educated class also. One asks oneself with astonishment how a doctrine
so benign as that of Jesus Christ can have incurred misrepresentation so
monstrous. The inner and moving cause of the misrepresentation lay, no
doubt, in this,—that Christianity was a new spirit in the Roman world,
destined to act in that world as its dissolvent; and it was inevitable
that Christianity in the Roman world, like democracy in the modern
world, like every new spirit with a similar mission assigned to it,
should at its first appearance occasion an instinctive shrinking and
repugnance in the world which it was to dissolve. The outer and palpable
causes of the misrepresentation were, for the Roman public at large, the
confounding of the Christians with the Jews, that isolated, fierce, and
stubborn race, whose stubbornness, fierceness, and isolation, real as
they were, the fancy of a civilized Roman yet further exaggerated; the
atmosphere of mystery and novelty which surrounded the Christian rites;
the very simplicity of Christian theism. For the Roman statesman, the
cause of mistake lay in that character of secret assemblages which the
meetings of the Christian community wore, under a State-system as
jealous of unauthorized associations as in the State-system of modern
France.
A Roman of Marcus Aurelius’s time and position could not well see the
Christians except through the mist of these prejudices. Seen through
such a mist, the Christians appeared with a thousand faults not their
own; but it has not been sufficiently remarked that faults really their
own many of them assuredly appeared with besides, faults especially
likely to strike such an observer as Marcus Aurelius, and to confirm him
in the prejudices of his race, station, and rearing. We look back upon
Christianity after it has proved what a future it bore within it, and
for us the sole representatives of its early struggles are the pure and
devoted spirits through whom it proved this; Marcus Aurelius saw it with
its future yet unshown, and with the tares among its professed progeny
not less conspicuous than the wheat. Who can doubt that among the
professing Christians of the second century, as among the professing
Christians of the nineteenth, there was plenty of folly, plenty of rabid
nonsense, plenty of gross fanaticism? who will even venture to affirm
that, separated in great measure from the intellect and civilization of
the world for one or two centuries, Christianity, wonderful as have been
its fruits, had the development perfectly worthy of its inestimable
germ? Who will venture to affirm that, by the alliance of Christianity
with the virtue and intelligence of men like the Antonines,—of the best
product of Greek and Roman civilization, while Greek and Roman
civilization had yet life and power,—Christianity and the world, as well
as the Antonines themselves, would not have been gainers? That alliance
was not to be. The Antonines lived and died with an utter misconception
of Christianity; Christianity grew up in the Catacombs, not on the
Palatine. And Marcus Aurelius incurs no moral reproach by having
authorized the punishment of the Christians; he does not thereby become
in the least what we mean by a _persecutor_. One may concede that it was
impossible for him to see Christianity as it really was;—as impossible
as for even the moderate and sensible Fleury to see the Antonines as
they really were;—one may concede that the point of view from which
Christianity appeared something anti-civil and anti-social, which the
State had the faculty to judge and the duty to suppress, was inevitably
his. Still, however, it remains true that this sage, who made perfection
his aim and reason his law, did Christianity an immense injustice and
rested in an idea of State-attributes which was illusive. And this is,
in truth, characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, that he is blameless, yet,
in a certain sense, unfortunate; in his character, beautiful as it is,
there is something melancholy, circumscribed, and ineffectual.
For of his having such a son as Commodus, too, one must say that he is
not to be blamed on that account, but that he is unfortunate.
Disposition and temperament are inexplicable things; there are natures
on which the best education and example are thrown away; excellent
fathers may have, without any fault of theirs, incurably vicious sons.
It is to be remembered, also, that Commodus was left, at the perilous
age of nineteen, master of the world; while his father, at that age, was
but beginning a twenty years’ apprenticeship to wisdom, labor, and
self-command, under the sheltering teachership of his uncle Antoninus.
Commodus was a prince apt to be led by favorites; and if the story is
true which says that he left, all through his reign, the Christians
untroubled, and ascribes this lenity to the influence of his mistress
Marcia, it shows that he could be led to good as well as to evil. But
for such a nature to be left at a critical age with absolute power, and
wholly without good counsel and direction, was the more fatal. Still one
cannot help wishing that the example of Marcus Aurelius could have
availed more with his own only son. One cannot but think that with such
virtue as his there should go, too, the ardor which removes mountains,
and that the ardor which removes mountains might have even won Commodus.
The word _ineffectual_ again rises to one’s mind; Marcus Aurelius saved
his own soul by his righteousness, and he could do no more. Happy they
who can do this! but still happier, who can do more!
Yet, when one passes from his outward to his inward life, when one turns
over the pages of his _Meditations_,—entries jotted down from day to
day, amid the business of the city or the fatigues of the camp, for his
own guidance and support, meant for no eye but his own, without the
slightest attempt at style, with no care, even, for correct writing, not
to be surpassed for naturalness and sincerity,—all disposition to carp
and cavil dies away, and one is overpowered by the charm of a character
of such purity, delicacy, and virtue. He fails neither in small things
nor in great; he keeps watch over himself both that the great springs of
action may be right in him, and that the minute details of action may be
right also. How admirable in a hard-tasked ruler, and a ruler too, with
a passion for thinking and reading, is such a memorandum as the
following:—
“Not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in
a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect
of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by
alleging urgent occupation.”
And, when that ruler is a Roman emperor, what an “idea” is this to be
written down and meditated by him:—
“The idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity
administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech,
and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the
freedom of the governed.”
And, for all men who “drive at practice,” what practical rules may not
one accumulate out of these _Meditations_:—-
“The greatest part of what we say or do being unnecessary, if a man
takes this away, he will have more leisure and less uneasiness.
Accordingly, on every occasion a man should ask himself: ‘Is this one of
the unnecessary things?’ Now a man should take away not only unnecessary
acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for thus superfluous acts will not
follow after.”
And again:—
“We ought to check in the series of our thoughts everything that is
without a purpose and useless, but most of all the over curious feeling
and the malignant; and a man should use himself to think of those things
only about which if one should suddenly ask, ‘What hast thou now in thy
thoughts?’ with perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, ‘This
or That;’ so that from thy words it should be plain that everything in
thee is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, and
one that cares not for thoughts about sensual enjoyments, or any rivalry
or envy and suspicion, or anything else for which thou wouldst blush if
thou shouldst say thou hadst it in thy mind.”
So, with a stringent practicalness worthy of Franklin, he discourses on
his favorite text, _Let nothing be done without a purpose_. But it is
when he enters the region where Franklin cannot follow him, when he
utters his thoughts on the ground-motives of human action, that he is
most interesting; that he becomes the unique, the incomparable Marcus
Aurelius. Christianity uses language very liable to be misunderstood
when it seems to tell men to do good, not, certainly, from the vulgar
motives of worldly interest, or vanity, or love of human praise, but
“that their Father which seeth in secret may reward them openly.” The
motives of reward and punishment have come, from the misconception of
language of this kind, to to be strangely overpressed by many Christian
moralists, to the deterioration and disfigurement of Christianity.
Marcus Aurelius says, truly and nobly:—
“One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it down
to his account as a favor conferred. Another is not ready to do this,
but still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he
knows what he has done. A third in a manner does not even know what he
has done, _but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks
for nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit_. As a
horse when he has run, a dog when he has caught the game, a bee when it
has made its honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call
out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine
goes on to produce again the grapes in season. Must a man, then, be one
of these, who in a manner acts thus without observing it? Yes.”
And again:—
“What more dost thou want when thou hast done a man a service? Art thou
not content that thou hast done something conformable to thy nature, and
dost thou seek to be paid for it, _just as if the eye demanded a
recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking_?”
Christianity, in order to match morality of this strain, has to correct
its apparent offers of external reward, and to say: _The kingdom of God
is within you_.
I have said that it is by its accent of emotion that the morality of
Marcus Aurelius acquires a special character, and reminds one of
Christian morality. The sentences of Seneca are stimulating to the
intellect; the sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to the character;
the sentences of Marcus Aurelius find their way to the soul. I have said
that religious emotion has the power to _light up_ morality: the emotion
of Marcus Aurelius does not quite light up his morality, but it suffuses
it; it has not power to melt the clouds of effort and austerity quite
away, but it shines through them and glorifies them; it is a spirit, not
so much of gladness and elation, as of gentleness and sweetness; a
delicate and tender sentiment, which is less than joy and more than
resignation. He says that in his youth he learned from Maximus, one of
his teachers, “cheerfulness in all circumstances as well as in illness;
_and a just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity_:”
and it is this very admixture of sweetness with his dignity which makes
him so beautiful a moralist. It enables him to carry even into his
observation of nature, a delicate penetration, a sympathetic tenderness,
worthy of Wordsworth; the spirit of such a remark as the following has
hardly a parallel, so far as my knowledge goes, in the whole range of
Greek and Roman literature:—
“Figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the
very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar
beauty to the fruit. And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion’s
eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and
many other things,—though they are far from being beautiful, in a
certain sense,—still, because they come in the course of nature, have a
beauty in them, and they please the mind; so that if a man should have a
feeling and a deeper insight with respect to the things which are
produced in the universe, there is hardly anything which comes in the
course of nature which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed
so as to give pleasure.”
But it is when his strain passes to directly moral subjects that his
delicacy and sweetness lend to it the greatest charm. Let those who can
feel the beauty of spiritual refinement read this, the reflection of an
emperor who prized mental superiority highly:—
“Thou sayest, ‘Men cannot admire the sharpness of thy wits,’ Be it so;
but there are many other things of which thou canst not say, ‘I am not
formed for them by nature.’ Show those qualities, then, which are
altogether in thy power,—sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor,
aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with few things,
benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling,
magnanimity. Dost thou not see how many qualities thou art at once able
to exhibit, as to which there is no excuse of natural incapacity and
unfitness, and yet thou still remainest voluntarily below the mark? Or
art thou compelled, through being defectively furnished by nature, to
murmur, and to be mean, and to flatter, and to find fault with thy poor
body, and to try to please men, and to make great display, and to be so
restless in thy mind? No, indeed; but thou mightest have been delivered
from these things long ago. Only, if in truth thou canst be charged with
being rather slow and dull of comprehension, thou must exert thyself
about this also, not neglecting nor yet taking pleasure in thy dulness.”
The same sweetness enables him to fix his mind, when he sees the
isolation and moral death caused by sin, not on the cheerless thought of
the misery of this condition, but on the inspiriting thought that man is
blest with the power to escape from it:—
“Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity,—for
thou wast made by nature a part, but now thou hast cut thyself off,—yet
here is this beautiful provision, that it is in thy power again to unite
thyself. God has allowed this to no other part,—after it has been
separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But consider the
goodness with which he has privileged man; for he has put it in his
power, when he has been separated, to return and to be united and to
resume his place.”
It enables him to control even the passion for retreat and solitude, so
strong in a soul like his, to which the world could offer no abiding
city:—
“Men seek retreat for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and
mountains; and thou, too, art wont to desire such things very much. But
this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in
thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For no
where either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man
retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such
thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect
tranquillity. Constantly, then, give to thyself this retreat, and renew
thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which as soon
as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul
completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the
things to which thou returnest.”
Against this feeling of discontent and weariness, so natural to the
great for whom there seems nothing left to desire or to strive after,
but so enfeebling to them, so deteriorating, Marcus Aurelius never
ceased to struggle. With resolute thankfulness he kept in remembrance
the blessings of his lot; the true blessings of it, not the false:—
“I have to thank Heaven that I was subjected to a ruler and a father
(Antoninus Pius) who was able to take away all pride from me, and to
bring me to the knowledge that it is possible for a man to live in a
palace without either guards, or embroidered dresses, or any show of
this kind; but that it is in such a man’s power to bring himself very
near to the fashion of a private person, without being for this reason
either meaner in thought or more remiss in action with respect to the
things which must be done for public interest.... I have to be thankful
that my children have not been stupid nor deformed in body; that I did
not make more proficiency in rhetoric, poetry, and the other studies, by
which I should perhaps have been completely engrossed, if I had seen
that I was making great progress in them; ... that I knew Apollonius,
Rusticus, Maximus; ... that I received clear and frequent impressions
about living according to nature, and what kind of a life that is, so
that, so far as depended on Heaven, and its gifts, help, and
inspiration, nothing hindered me from forthwith living according to
nature, though I still fall short of it through my own fault, and
through not observing the admonitions of Heaven, and, I may almost say,
its direct instructions; that my body has held out so long in such a
kind of life as mine; that though it was my mother’s lot to die young,
she spent the last years of her life with me; that whenever I wished to
help any man in his need, I was never told that I had not the means of
doing it; that, when I had an inclination to philosophy, I did not fall
into the hands of a sophist.”
And, as he dwelt with gratitude on these helps and blessings vouchsafed
to him, his mind (so, at least, it seems to me) would sometimes revert
with awe to the perils and temptations of the lonely height where he
stood, to the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, in their
hideous blackness and ruin; and then he wrote down for himself such a
warning entry as this, significant and terrible in its abruptness:—
“A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial,
childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent,
tyrannical!”
Or this:—
“About what am I now employing my soul? On every occasion I must ask
myself this question, and inquire, What have I now in this part of me
which they call the ruling principle, and whose soul have I now?—that of
a child, or of a young man, or of a weak woman, or of a tyrant, or of
one of the lower animals in the service of man, or of a wild beast?”
The character he wished to attain he knew well, and beautifully he has
marked it, and marked, too his sense of shortcoming:—
“When thou hast assumed these names,—good, modest, true, rational,
equal-minded, magnanimous,—take care that thou dost not change these
names; and, if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them. If thou
maintainest thyself in possession of these names without desiring that
others should call thee by them, thou wilt be another being, and wilt
enter on another life. For to continue to be such as thou hast hitherto
been, and to be torn in pieces and defiled in such a life, is the
character of a very stupid man, and one overfond of his life, and like
those half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who though covered with
wounds and gore still entreat to be kept to the following day, though
they will be exposed in the same state to the same claws and bites.
Therefore fix thyself in the possession of these few names: and if thou
art able to abide in them, abide as if thou wast removed to the Happy
Islands.”
For all his sweetness and serenity, however, man’s point of life
“between two infinities” (of that expression Marcus Aurelius is the real
owner) was to him anything but a Happy Island, and the performances on
it he saw through no veils of illusion. Nothing is in general more
gloomy and monotonous than declamations on the hollowness and
transitoriness of human life and grandeur: but here, too, the great
charm of Marcus Aurelius, his emotion, comes in to relieve the monotony
and to break through the gloom; and even on this eternally used topic he
is imaginative, fresh, and striking:—
“Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. Thou wilt see all these
things, people marrying, bringing up children, sick, dying, warring,
feasting, trafficking, cultivating the ground, flattering, obstinately
arrogant, suspecting, plotting, wishing for somebody to die, grumbling
about the present, loving, heaping up treasure, desiring to be consuls
or kings. Well then that life of these people no longer exists at all.
Again, go to the times of Trajan. All is again the same. Their life too
is gone. But chiefly thou shouldst think of those whom thou hast thyself
known distracting themselves about idle things, neglecting to do what
was in accordance with their proper constitution, and to hold firmly to
this and to be content with it.”
Again:—
“The things which are much valued in life are empty, and rotten, and
trifling; and people are like little dogs, biting one another, and
little children quarreling, crying, and then straightway laughing. But
fidelity, and modesty, and justice, and truth, are fled
‘Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.’
What then is there which still detains thee here?”
And once more:—
“Look down from above on the countless herds of men, and their countless
solemnities, and the infinitely varied voyagings in storms and calms,
and the differences among those who are born, who live together, and
die. And consider too the life lived by others in olden time, and the
life now lived among barbarous nations, and how many know not even thy
name, and how many will soon forget it, and how they who perhaps now are
praising thee will very soon blame thee, and that neither a posthumous
name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else.”
He recognized, indeed, that (to use his own words) “the prime principle
in man’s constitution is the social;” and he labored sincerely to make
not only his acts towards his fellow-men, but his thoughts also,
suitable to this conviction:—
“When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues of those who
live with thee; for instance, the activity of one, and the modesty of
another, and the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a
fourth.”
Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to live in a state of
rapture at the spectacle afforded to him by his fellow-creatures; above
all it is hard, when such a man is placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed,
and has had the meanness and perversity of his fellow-creatures thrust,
in no common measure, upon his notice,—has had, time after time, to
experience how “within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom
thou art now a beast and an ape.” His true strain of thought as to his
relations with his fellow-men is rather the following. He has been
enumerating the higher consolations which may support a man at the
approach of death, and he goes on:—
“But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach
thy heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the
objects from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those
with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right to
be offended with men, but it is thy duty to care for them and to bear
with them gently; and yet to remember that thy departure will not be
from men who have the same principles as thyself. For this is the only
thing, if there be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach
us to life, to be permitted to live with those who have the same
principles as ourselves. But now thou seest how great is the distress
caused by the difference of those who live together, so that thou mayest
say: ‘Come quick, O death, lest perchance I too should forget myself.’”
_O faithless and perverse generation! how long shall I be with you? how
long shall I suffer you?_ Sometimes this strain rises even to passion:—
“Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live as on a
mountain. Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was
meant to live. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is
better than to live as men do.”
It is remarkable how little of a merely local and temporary character,
how little of those _scoriæ_ which a reader has to clear away before he
gets to the precious ore, how little that even admits of doubt or
question, the morality of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. Perhaps as to one
point we must make an exception. Marcus Aurelius is fond of urging as a
motive for man’s cheerful acquiescence in whatever befalls him, that
“whatever happens to every man _is for the interest of the universal_;”
that the whole contains nothing _which is not for its advantage_; that
everything which happens to a man is to be accepted, “even if it seems
disagreeable, _because it leads to the health of the universe_.” And the
whole course of the universe, he adds, has a providential reference to
man’s welfare: “_all other things have been made for the sake of
rational beings_.” Religion has in all ages freely used this language,
and it is not religion which will object to Marcus Aurelius’s use of it;
but science can hardly accept as severely accurate this employment of
the terms _interest_ and _advantage_. To a sound nature and a clear
reason the proposition that things happen “for the interest of the
universal,” as men conceive of interest, may seem to have no meaning at
all, and the proposition that “all things have been made for the sake of
rational beings” may seem to be false. Yet even to this language, not
irresistibly cogent when it is thus absolutely used, Marcus Aurelius
gives a turn which makes it true and useful, when he says: “The ruling
part of man can make a material for itself out of that which opposes it,
as fire lays hold of what falls into it, and rises higher by means of
this very material;”—when he says: “What else are all things except
exercises for the reason? Persevere then until thou shalt have made all
things thine own, as the stomach which is strengthened makes all things
its own, as the blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of
everything that is thrown into it;”—when he says: “Thou wilt not cease
to be miserable till thy mind is in such a condition, that, what luxury
is to those who enjoy pfleasure, such shall be to thee, in every matter
which presents itself, the doing of the things which are conformable to
man’s constitution; for a man ought to consider as an enjoyment
everything which it is in his power to do according to his own
nature,—and it is in his power everywhere.” In this sense it is, indeed,
most true that “all things have been made for the sake of rational
beings;” that “all things work together for good.”
In general, however, the action Marcus Aurelius prescribes is action
which every sound nature must recognize as right, and the motives he
assigns are motives which every clear reason must recognize as valid.
And so he remains the especial friend and comforter of all clear-headed
and scrupulous, yet pure-hearted and upward striving men, in those ages
most especially that walk by sight, not by faith, but yet have no open
vision. He cannot give such souls, perhaps, all they yearn for, but he
gives them much; and what he gives them, they can receive.
Yet no, it is not for what he thus gives them that such souls love him
most! it is rather because of the emotion which lends to his voice so
touching an accent, it is because he too yearns as they do for something
unattained by him. What an affinity for Christianity had this persecutor
of the Christians! The effusion of Christianity, its relieving tears,
its happy self-sacrifice, were the very element, one feels, for which
his soul longed; they were near him, they brushed him, he touched them,
he passed them by. One feels, too, that the Marcus Aurelius one reads
must still have remained, even had Christianity been fully known to him,
in a great measure himself; he would have been no Justin;—but how would
Christianity have affected him? in what measure would it have changed
him? Granted that he might have found, like the _Alogi_ of modern times,
in the most beautiful of the Gospels, the Gospel which has leavened
Christendom most powerfully, the Gospel of St. John, too much Greek
metaphysics, too much _gnosis_; granted that this Gospel might have
looked too like what he knew already to be a total surprise to him:
what, then, would he have said to the Sermon on the Mount, to the
twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew? What would have become of his
notions of the _exitiabilis superstitio_, of the “obstinacy of the
Christians”? Vain question! yet the greatest charm of Marcus Aurelius is
that he makes us ask it. We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender,
thankful, blameless; yet, with all this, agitated, stretching out his
arms for something beyond,—_tendentemque manus ripæ uterioris amore_.
I.
THE STUDY OF POETRY.[24]
-----
Footnote 24:
Published in 1880 as the General Introduction to _The English Poets_,
edited by T. H. Ward.
-----
“The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy
of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever
surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an
accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received
tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has
materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached
its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry
the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine
illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea _is_ the
fact. The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious
poetry.”
Let me be permitted to quote these words of my own, as uttering the
thought which should, in my opinion, go with us and govern us in all our
study of poetry. In the present work it is the course of one great
contributory stream to the world-river of poetry that we are invited to
follow. We are here invited to trace the stream of English poetry. But
whether we set ourselves, as here, to follow only one of the several
streams that make the mighty river of poetry, or whether we seek to know
them all, our governing thought should be the same. We should conceive
of poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been the custom to
conceive of it. We should conceive of it as capable of higher uses, and
called to higher destinies, than those which in general men have
assigned to it hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we
have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to
sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most
of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced
by poetry. Science, I say, will appear incomplete without it. For finely
and truly does Wordsworth call poetry “the impassioned expression which
is in the countenance of all science”; and what is a countenance without
its expression? Again, Wordsworth finely and truly calls poetry “the
breath and finer spirit of all knowledge”: our religion, parading
evidences such as those on which the popular mind relies now; our
philosophy, pluming itself on its reasonings about causation and finite
and infinite being; what are they but the shadows and dreams and false
shows of knowledge? The day will come when we shall wonder at ourselves
for having trusted to them, for having taken them seriously; and the
more we perceive their hollowness, the more we shall prize “the breath
and finer spirit of knowledge” offered to us by poetry.
But if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, we must also
set our standard for poetry high, since poetry, to be capable of
fulfilling such high destinies, must be poetry of a high order of
excellence. We must accustom ourselves to a high standard and to a
strict judgment. Sainte-Beuve relates that Napoleon one day said, when
somebody was spoken of in his presence as a charlatan: “Charlatan as
much as you please; but where is there _not_ charlatanism?”—“Yes,”
answers Sainte-Beuve, “in politics, in the art of governing mankind,
that is perhaps true. But in the order of thought, in art, the glory,
the eternal honor is that charlatanism shall find no entrance; herein
lies the inviolableness of that noble portion of man’s being.” It is
admirably said, and let us hold fast to it. In poetry, which is thought
and art in one, it is the glory, the eternal honor, that charlatanism
shall find no entrance; that this noble sphere be kept inviolate and
inviolable. Charlatanism is for confusing or obliterating the
distinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only
half-sound, true and untrue or only half-true. It is charlatanism,
conscious or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate these. And
in poetry, more than anywhere else, it is unpermissible to confuse or
obliterate them. For in poetry the distinction between excellent and
inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or only
half-true, is of paramount importance. It is of paramount importance
because of the high destinies of poetry. In poetry, as a criticism of
life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of
poetic truth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will find, we
have said, as time goes on and as other helps fail, its consolation and
stay. But the consolation and stay will be of power in proportion to the
power of the criticism of life. And the criticism of life will be of
power in proportion as the poetry conveying it is excellent rather than
inferior, sound rather than unsound or half-sound, true rather than
untrue or half-true.
The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will be found to have a
power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can. A
clearer, deeper sense of the best in poetry, and of the strength and joy
to be drawn from it, is the most precious benefit which we can gather
from a poetical collection such as the present. And yet in the very
nature and conduct of such a collection there is inevitably something
which tends to obscure in us the consciousness of what our benefit
should be, and to distract us from the pursuit of it. We should
therefore steadily set it before our minds at the outset, and should
compel ourselves to revert constantly to the thought of it as we
proceed.
Yes; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best, the really
excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, should be
present in our minds and should govern our estimate of what we read. But
this real estimate, the only true one, is liable to be superseded, if we
are not watchful, by two other kinds of estimate, the historic estimate
and the personal estimate, both of which are fallacious. A poet or a
poem may count to us historically, they may count to us on grounds
personal to ourselves, and they may count to us really. They may count
to us historically. The course of development of a nation’s language,
thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a
poet’s work as a stage in this course of development we may easily bring
ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it
really is, we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise in
criticising it; in short, to over-rate it. So arises in our poetic
judgments the fallacy caused by the estimate which we may call historic.
Then, again, a poet or a poem may count to us on grounds personal to
ourselves. Our personal affinities, likings, and circumstances, have
great power to sway our estimate of this or that poet’s work, and to
make us attach more importance to it as poetry than in itself it really
possesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high importance. Here
also we over-rate the object of our interest, and apply to it a language
of praise which is quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source of a
second fallacy in our poetic judgments—the fallacy caused by an estimate
which we may call personal.
Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how naturally the study of the
history and development of a poetry may incline a man to pause over
reputations and works once conspicuous but now obscure, and to quarrel
with a careless public for skipping, in obedience to mere tradition and
habit, from one famous name or work in its national poetry to another,
ignorant of what it misses, and of the reason for keeping what it keeps,
and of the whole process of growth in its poetry. The French have become
diligent students of their own early poetry, which they long neglected;
the study makes many of them dissatisfied with their so-called classical
poetry, the court-tragedy of the seventeenth century, a poetry which
Pellisson long ago reproached with its want of the true poetic stamp,
with its _politesse stérile et rampante_, but which nevertheless has
reigned in France as absolutely as if it had been the perfection of
classical poetry indeed. The dissatisfaction is natural; yet a lively
and accomplished critic, M. Charles d’Héricault, the editor of Clément
Marot, goes too far when he says that “the cloud of glory playing round
a classic is a mist as dangerous to the future of a literature as it is
intolerable for the purposes of history.” “It hinders,” he goes on, “it
hinders us from seeing more than one single point, the culminating and
exceptional point; the summary, fictitious and arbitrary, of a thought
and of a work. It substitutes a halo for a physiognomy, it puts a statue
where there was once a man, and hiding from us all trace of the labor,
the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures, it claims not study but
veneration; it does not show us how the thing is done, it imposes upon
us a model. Above all, for the historian this creation of classic
personages is inadmissible; for it withdraws the poet from his time,
from his proper life, it breaks historical relationships, it blinds
criticism by conventional admiration, and renders the investigation of
literary origins unacceptable. It gives us a human personage no longer,
but a God seated immovable amidst His perfect work, like Jupiter on
Olympus; and hardly will it be possible for the young student, to whom
such work is exhibited at such a distance from him, to believe that it
did not issue ready made from that divine head.”
All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must plead for a
distinction. Everything depends on the reality of a poet’s classic
character. If he is a dubious classic, let us sift him; if he is a false
classic, let us explode him. But if he is a real classic, if his work
belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true and right
meaning of the word _classic_, _classical_), then the great thing for us
is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, and to
appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which has not the
same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what is
formative; this is the great benefit to be got from the study of poetry.
Everything which interferes with it, which hinders it, is injurious.
True, we must read our classic with open eyes, and not with eyes blinded
with superstition; we must perceive when his work comes short, when it
drops out of the class of the very best, and we must rate it, in such
cases, at its proper value. But the use of this negative criticism is
not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling us to have a clearer sense
and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly excellent. To trace the labor,
the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures of a genuine classic, to
acquaint oneself with his time and his life and his historical
relationships, is mere literary dilettantism, unless it has that clear
sense and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be said that the more we
know about a classic the better we shall enjoy him; and, if we lived as
long as Methuselah and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and
wills of perfect steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is
plausible in theory. But the case here is much the same as the case with
the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The elaborate
philological groundwork which we require them to lay is in theory an
admirable preparation for appreciating the Greek and Latin authors
worthily. The more thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall
be able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors. True, if time were not so
short, and schoolboys’ wits not so soon tired and their power of
attention exhausted; only, as it is, the elaborate philological
preparation goes on, but the authors are little known and less enjoyed.
So with the investigator of “historic origins” in poetry. He ought to
enjoy the true classic all the better for his investigations; he often
is distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and with the less good he
overbusies himself, and is prone to over-rate it in proportion to the
trouble which it has cost him.
The idea of tracing historic origins and historical relationships cannot
be absent from a compilation, like the present. And naturally the poets
to be exhibited in it will be assigned to those persons for exhibition
who are known to prize them highly, rather than to those who have no
special inclination towards them. Moreover the very occupation with an
author, and the business of exhibiting him, disposes us to affirm and
amplify his importance. In the present work, therefore, we are sure of
frequent temptation to adopt the historic estimate, or the personal
estimate, and to forget the real estimate; which latter, nevertheless,
we must employ if we are to make poetry yield us its full benefit. So
high is that benefit, the benefit of clearly feeling and of deeply
enjoying the really excellent, the truly classic in poetry, that we do
well, I say, to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in
studying poets and poetry, and to make the desire of attaining it the
one principle to which, as the _Imitation_ says, whatever we may read or
come to know, we always return. _Cum multa legeris et cognoveris, ad
unum semper oportet redire principium._
The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our judgment and
our language when we are dealing with ancient poets; the personal
estimate when we are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any
rate modern. The exaggerations due to the historic estimate are not in
themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. Their report hardly enters
the general ear; probably they do not always impose even on the literary
men who adopt them. But they lead to a dangerous abuse of language. So
we hear Cædmon, amongst our own poets, compared to Milton. I have
already noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished French critic for
“historic origins.” Another eminent French critic, M. Vitet, comments
upon that famous document of the early poetry of his nation, the
_Chanson de Roland_. It is indeed a most interesting document. The
_joculator_ or _jongleur_ Taillefer, who was with William the
Conqueror’s army at Hastings, marched before the Norman troops, so said
the tradition, singing “of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, and
of the vassals who died at Roncevaux;” and it is suggested that in the
_Chanson de Roland_ by one Turoldus or Théroulde, a poem preserved in a
manuscript of the twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we
have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, of the chant
which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigor and freshness; it is not
without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a
document of some poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic
value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monument of epic
genius. In its general design he finds the grandiose conception, in its
details he finds the constant union of simplicity with greatness, which
are the marks, he truly says, of the genuine epic, and distinguish it
from the artificial epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; this is
the sort of praise which is given to Homer, and justly given. Higher
praise there cannot well be, and it is the praise due to epic poetry of
the highest order only, and to no other. Let us try, then, the _Chanson
de Roland_ at its best. Roland, mortally wounded, lays himself down
under a pine-tree, with his face turned towards Spain and the enemy—
“De plusurs choses à remembrer li prist,
De tantes teres cume li bers cunquist,
De dulce France, des humes de sun lign,
De Carlemagne sun seignor ki l’nurrit.”[25]
That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable poetic quality of
its own. It deserves such praise, and such praise is sufficient for it.
But now turn to Homer—
Ὣς φάτο· τοὺς δ ἤδη κατέχεν φυσίζοος αἶα
ἐ Λακεδαίμονι αὖθι, φίλῃ ἐν πατρίδι λαίῃ[26]
-----
Footnote 25:
“Then began he to call many things to remembrance,—all the lands which
his valour conquered, and pleasant France, and the men of his lineage,
and Charlemagne his liege lord who nourished him.”—_Chanson de
Roland_, iii. 939-942.
Footnote 26:
“So said she; they long since in Earth’s soft arms were reposing,
There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedæmon.”
_Iliad_, iii. 243, 244 (translated by Dr. Hawtry).
-----
We are here in another world, another order of poetry altogether; here
is rightly due such supreme praise as that which M. Vitet gives to the
_Chanson de Roland_. If our words are to have any meaning, if our
judgments are to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise
upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior.
Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry
belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us
most good, than to have always in one’s mind lines and expressions of
the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of
course we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may
be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, when we
have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible touchstone for
detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the
degree of this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside
them. Short passages, even single lines, will serve our turn quite
sufficiently. Take the two lines which I have just quoted from Homer,
the poet’s comment on Helen’s mention of her brothers;—or take his
Ἆ δειλώ, τί σφῶϊ δόμεν Πηλῆϊ ἄνακτι
θνητᾷ; ὑμεῖς δ’ ἐστὸν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε.
ἦ ἵνα δυστήνοισι μετ’ ἀνδράσιν ἄλγε’ ἔχητον;[27]
the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus;—or take finally his
Καὶ σέ, γέρον, τὸ πρίν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὂλβιον εἶναι·[28]
the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. Take that
incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino’s tremendous words—
“Io no piangeva; sì dentro impietrai.
Piangevan elli....”[29]
take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil—
“Io son fatta da Dio, sua mercè, tale,
Che la vostra miseria non mi tange,
Nè flamma d’esto incendio non m’assale....”[30]
take the simple, but perfect, single line—
“In la sua vòlontade è nostra pace.”[31]
Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth’s expostulation
with sleep—
“Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge....”
and take, as well, Hamlet’s dying request to Horatio—
“If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story....”
Take of Milton that Miltonic passage—
“Darken’d so, yet shone
Above them all the archangel; but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrench’d, and care
Sat on his faded cheek..”
add two such lines as—
“And courage never to submit or yield
And what is else not to be overcome....”
and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proserpine, the loss
“... which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world.”
These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even of
themselves to keep clear and sound our judgments about poetry, to save
us from fallacious estimates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate.
-----
Footnote 27:
“Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, to a mortal? but ye
are without old age, and immortal. Was it that with men born to misery
ye might have sorrow?”—_Iliad_, xvii. 443-445.
Footnote 28:
“Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we hear,
happy.”—_Iliad_, xxiv. 543.
Footnote 29:
“I wailed not, so of stone grew I within;—_they_ wailed.”—_Inferno_,
xxxiii. 39, 40.
Footnote 30:
“Of such sort hath God, thanked be His mercy, made me, that your
misery toucheth me not, neither doth the flame of this fire strike
me.”—_Inferno_, ii. 91-93.
Footnote 31:
“In His will is our peace.”—_Paradiso_, iii. 85.
-----
The specimens I have quoted differ widely from one another, but they
have in common this: the possession of the very highest poetical
quality. If we are thoroughly penetrated by their power, we shall find
that we have acquired a sense enabling us, whatever poetry may be laid
before us, to feel the degree in which a high poetical quality is
present or wanting there. Critics give themselves great labor to draw
out what in the abstract constitutes the characters of a high quality of
poetry. It is much better simply to have recourse to concrete
examples;—to take specimens of poetry of the high, the very highest
quality, and to say: The characters of a high quality of poetry are what
is expressed _there_. They are far better recognized by being felt in
the verse of the master, than by being perused in the prose of the
critic. Nevertheless if we are urgently pressed to give some critical
account of them, we may safely, perhaps, venture on laying down, not
indeed how and why the characters arise, but where and in what they
arise. They are in the matter and substance of the poetry, and they are
in its manner and style. Both of these, the substance and matter on the
one hand, the style and manner on the other, have a mark, an accent, of
high beauty, worth, and power. But if we are asked to define this mark
and accent in the abstract, our answer must be: No, for we should
thereby be darkening the question, not clearing it. The mark and accent
are as given by the substance and matter of that poetry, by the style
and manner of that poetry, and of all other poetry which is akin to it
in quality.
Only one thing we may add as to the substance and matter of poetry,
guiding ourselves by Aristotle’s profound observation that the
superiority of poetry over history consists in its possessing a higher
truth and a higher seriousness (φιλοσοφώτερον χαὶ σπουδαιότερον). Let us
add, therefore, to what we have said, this: that the substance and
matter of the best poetry acquire their special character from
possessing, in an eminent degree, truth and seriousness. We may add yet
further, what is in itself evident, that to the style and manner of the
best poetry their special character, their accent, is given by their
diction, and, even yet more, by their movement. And though we
distinguish between the two characters, the two accents, of superiority,
yet they are nevertheless vitally connected one with the other. The
superior character of truth and seriousness, in the matter and substance
of the best poetry, is inseparable from the superiority of diction and
movement marking its style and manner. The two superiorities are closely
related, and are in steadfast proportion one to the other. So far as
high poetic truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet’s matter and
substance, so far also, we may be sure, will a high poetic stamp of
diction and movement be wanting to his style and manner. In proportion
as this high stamp of diction and movement, again, is absent from a
poet’s style and manner, we shall find, also, that high poetic truth and
seriousness are absent from his substance and matter.
So stated, these are but dry generalities; their whole force lies in
their application. And I could wish every student of poetry to make the
application of them for himself. Made by himself, the application would
impress itself upon his mind far more deeply than made by me. Neither
will my limits allow me to make any full application of the generalities
above propounded; but in the hope of bringing out, at any rate, some
significance in them, and of establishing an important principle more
firmly by their means, I will, in the space which remains to me, follow
rapidly from the commencement the course of our English poetry with them
in my view.
Once more I return to the early poetry of France, with which our own
poetry, in its origins, is indissolubly connected. In the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, that seed-time of all modern language and
literature, the poetry of France had a clear predominance in Europe. Of
the two divisions of that poetry, its productions in the _langue d’oil_
and its productions in the _langue d’oc_, the poetry of the _langue
d’oc_, of southern France, of the troubadours, is of importance because
of its effect on Italian literature;—the first literature of modern
Europe to strike the true and grand note, and to bring forth, as in
Dante and Petrarch it brought forth, classics. But the predominance of
French poetry in Europe, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is
due to its poetry of the _langue d’oil_, the poetry of northern France
and of the tongue which is now the French language. In the twelfth
century the bloom of this romance-poetry was earlier and stronger in
England, at the court of our Anglo-Norman kings, than in France itself.
But it was a bloom of French poetry; and as our native poetry formed
itself, it formed itself out of this. The romance-poems which took
possession of the heart and imagination of Europe in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries are French; “they are,” as Southey justly says,
“the pride of French literature, nor have we anything which can be
placed in competition with them.” Themes were supplied from all
quarters; but the romance-setting which was common to them all, and
which gained the ear of Europe, was French. This constituted for the
French poetry, literature, and language, at the height of the Middle
Age, an unchallenged predominance. The Italian Brunetto Latini, the
master of Dante, wrote his _Treasure_ in French because, he says, “la
parleure en est plus délitable et plus commune à toutes gens.” In the
same century, the thirteenth, the French romance-writer, Christian of
Troyes, formulates the claims, in chivalry and letters, of France, his
native country, as follows:—
“Or vous ert par ce livre apris,
Que Gresse ot de chevalerie
Le premier los et de clergie;
Puis vint chevalerie à Rome,
Et de la clergie la some,
Qui ore est en France venue.
Diex doinst qu’ele i soit retenu
Et que li lius li abelisse
Tant que de France n’isse
L’onor qui s’i est arestée!”
“Now by this book you will learn that first Greece had the renown for
chivalry and letters: then chivalry and the primacy in letters passed to
Rome, and now it is come to France. God grant it may be kept there; and
that the place may please it so well, that the honor which has come to
make stay in France may never depart thence!”
Yet it is now all gone, this French romance poetry, of which the weight
of substance and the power of style are not unfairly represented by this
extract from Christian of Troyes. Only by means of the historic estimate
can we persuade ourselves now to think that any of it is of poetical
importance.
But in the fourteenth century there comes an Englishman nourished on
this poetry; taught his trade by this poetry, getting words, rhyme,
meter from this poetry; for even of that stanza which the Italians used,
and which Chaucer derived immediately from the Italians, the basis and
suggestion was probably given in France. Chaucer (I have already named
him) fascinated his contemporaries, but so too did Christian of Troyes
the Wolfram of Eschenbach. Chaucer’s power of fascination, however, is
enduring; his poetical importance does not need the assistance of the
historic estimate; it is real. He is a genuine source of joy and
strength, which is flowing still for us and will flow always. He will be
read, as time goes on, far more generally than he is read now. His
language is a cause of difficulty for us; but so also, and I think in
quite as great a degree, is the language of Burns. In Chaucer’s case, as
in that of Burns, it is a difficulty to be unhesitatingly accepted and
overcome.
If we ask ourselves wherein consists the immense superiority of
Chaucer’s poetry over the romance-poetry—why it is that in passing from
this to Chaucer we suddenly feel ourselves to be in another world, we
shall find that his superiority is both in the substance of his poetry
and in the style of his poetry. His superiority in substance is given by
his large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of human life,—so unlike
the total want, in the romance-poets, of all intelligent command of it.
Chaucer has not their helplessness; he has gained the power to survey
the world from a central, a truly human point of view. We have only to
call to mind the Prologue to _The Canterbury Tales_. The right comment
upon it is Dryden’s: “It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb,
that _here is God’s plenty_.” And again: “He is a perpetual fountain of
good sense.” It is by a large, free, sound representation of things,
that poetry, this high criticism of life, has truth of substance; and
Chaucer’s poetry has truth of substance.
Of his style and manner, if we think first of the romance-poetry and
then of Chaucer’s divine liquidness of diction, his divine fluidity of
movement, it is difficult to speak temperately. They are irresistible,
and justify all the rapture with which his successors speak of his “gold
dew-drops of speech.” Johnson misses the point entirely when he finds
fault with Dryden for ascribing to Chaucer the first refinement of our
numbers, and says that Gower also can show smooth numbers and easy
rhymes. The refinement of our numbers means something far more than
this. A nation may have versifiers with smooth numbers and easy rhymes,
and yet may have no real poetry at all. Chaucer is the father of our
splendid English poetry; he is our “well of English undefiled,” because
by the lovely charm of his diction, the lovely charm of his movement, he
makes an epoch and founds a tradition. In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton,
Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid diction, the fluid
movement, of Chaucer; at one time it is his liquid diction of which in
these poets we feel the virtue, and at another time it is his fluid
movement. And the virtue is irresistible.
Bounded as in space, I must yet find room for an example of Chaucer’s
virtue, as I have given examples to show the virtue of the great
classics. I feel disposed to say that a single line is enough to show
the charm of Chaucer’s verse; that merely one line like this—
“O martyr souded[32] in virginitee!”
has a virtue of manner and movement such as we shall not find in all the
verse of romance-poetry;—but this is saying nothing. The virtue is such
as we shall not find, perhaps, in all English poetry, outside the poets
whom I have named as the special inheritors of Chaucer’s tradition. A
single line, however, is too little if we have not the strain of
Chaucer’s verse well in our memory; let us take a stanza. It is from
_The Prioress’s Tale_, the story of the Christian child murdered in a
Jewry—
“My throte is cut unto my nekke-bone
Said_è_ this child, and as by way of kinde
I should have dyed, yea, longè time agone
But Jesu Christ, as ye in book_è_s finde,
Will that his glory last and be in minde,
And for the worship of his mother dere
Yet may I sing _O Alma_ loud and clere.”
Wordsworth has modernized this Tale, and to feel how delicate and
evanescent is the charm of verse, we have only to read Wordsworth’s
first three lines of this stanza after Chaucer’s—
“My throat is cut unto the bone, I trow,
Said this young child, and by the law of kind
I should have died, yea, many hours ago.”
The charm is departed. It is often said that the power of liquidness and
fluidity in Chaucer’s verse was dependent upon a free, a licentious
dealing with language, such as is now impossible; upon a liberty, such
as Burns too enjoyed, of making words like _neck_, _bird_, into a
dissyllable by adding to them, and words like _cause_, _rhyme_, into a
dissyllable by sounding the _e_ mute. It is true that Chaucer’s fluidity
is conjoined with this liberty, and is admirably served by it; but we
ought not to say that it was dependent upon it. It was dependent upon
his talent. Other poets with a like liberty do not attain to the
fluidity of Chaucer; Burns himself does not attain to it. Poets, again,
who have a talent akin to Chaucer’s, such as Shakespeare or Keats, have
known how to attain to his fluidity without the like liberty.
-----
Footnote 32:
The French _soudé_; soldered, fixed fast.
-----
And yet Chaucer is not one of the great classics. His poetry transcends
and effaces, easily and without effort, all the romance-poetry of
Catholic Christendom; it transcends and effaces all the English poetry
contemporary with it, it transcends and effaces all the English poetry
subsequent to it down to the age of Elizabeth. Of such avail is poetic
truth of substance, in its natural and necessary union with poetic truth
of style. And yet, I say, Chaucer is not one of the great classics. He
has not their accent. What is wanting to him is suggested by the mere
mention of the name of the first great classic of Christendom, the
immortal poet who died eighty years before Chaucer,—Dante. The accent of
such verse as
“In la sua voluntade è nostra pace....”
is altogether beyond Chaucer’s reach; we praise him, but we feel that
this accent is out of the question for him. It may be said that it was
necessarily out of the reach of any poet in the England of that stage of
growth. Possibly; but we are to adopt a real, not a historic, estimate
of poetry. However we may account for its absence, something is wanting,
then, to the poetry of Chaucer, which poetry must have before it can be
placed in the glorious class of the best. And there is no doubt what
that something is. It is the οπουδαιότης, the high and excellent
seriousness, which Aristotle assigns as one of the grand virtues of
poetry. The substance of Chaucer’s poetry, his view of things and his
criticism of life, has largeness, freedom, shrewdness, benignity; but it
has not this high seriousness. Homer’s criticism of life has it, Dante’s
has it, Shakespeare’s has it. It is this chiefly which gives to our
spirits what they can rest upon; and with the increasing demands of our
modern ages upon poetry, this virtue of giving us what we can rest upon
will be more and more highly esteemed. A voice from the slums of Paris,
fifty or sixty years after Chaucer, the voice of poor Villon out of his
life of riot and crime, has at its happy moments (as, for instance, in
the last stanza of _La Belle Heaulmière_[33]) more of this important
poetic virtue of seriousness than all the productions of Chaucer. But
its apparition in Villon, and in men like Villon, is fitful; the
greatness of the great poets, the power of their criticism of life, is
that their virtue is sustained.
-----
Footnote 33:
The name _Heaulmière_ is said to be derived from a headdress (helm)
worn as a mark by courtesans. In Villon’s ballad, a poor old creature
of this class laments her days of youth and beauty. The last stanza of
the ballad runs thus—
“Ainsi le bon temps regretons
Entre nous, pauvres vieilles sott
Assises bas, à croppetons,
Tout en ung tas comme pelottes;
A petit feu de chenevottes
Tost allumées, tost estainctes,
Et jadis fusmes si mignottes!
Ainsi en prend à maintz et maintes.”
“Thus amongst ourselves we regret the good time, poor silly old
things, low-seated on our heels, all in a heap like so many balls: by
a little fire of hemp-stalks, soon lighted, soon spent. And once we
were such darlings! So fares it with many and many a one.”
-----
To our praise, therefore, of Chaucer as a poet there must be this
limitation; he lacks the high seriousness of the great classics, and
therewith an important part of their virtue. Still, the main fact for us
to bear in mind about Chaucer is his sterling value according to that
real estimate which we firmly adopt for all poets. He has poetic truth
of substance, though he has not high poetic seriousness, and
corresponding to his truth of substance he has an exquisite value of
style and manner. With him is born our real poetry.
For my present purpose I need not dwell on our Elizabethan poetry, or on
the continuation and close of this poetry in Milton. We all of us
profess to be agreed in the estimate of this poetry; we all of us
recognize it as great poetry, our greatest, and Shakespeare and Milton
as our poetical classics. The real estimate, here, has universal
currency. With the next age of our poetry divergency and difficulty
began. An historic estimate of that poetry has established itself; and
the question is, whether it will be found to coincide with the real
estimate.
The age of Dryden, together with our whole eighteenth century which
followed it, sincerely believed itself to have produced poetical
classics of its own, and even to have made advance, in poetry, beyond
all its predecessors. Dryden regards as not seriously disputable the
opinion “that the sweetness of English verse was never understood or
practised by our fathers.” Cowley could see nothing at all in Chaucer’s
poetry. Dryden heartily admired it, and, as we have seen, praised its
matter admirably; but of its exquisite manner and movement all he can
find to say is that “there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it,
which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.” Addison, wishing to
praise Chaucer’s numbers, compares them with Dryden’s own. And all
through the eighteenth century, and down even into our own times, the
stereotyped phrase of approbation for good verse found in our early
poetry has been, that it even approached the verse of Dryden, Addison,
Pope, and Johnson.
Are Dryden and Pope poetical classics? Is the historic estimate, which
represents them as such, and which has been so long established that it
cannot easily give way, the real estimate? Wordsworth and Coleridge, as
is well known, denied it; but the authority of Wordsworth and Coleridge
does not weigh much with the young generation, and there are many signs
to show that the eighteenth century and its judgments are coming into
favor again. Are the favorite poets of the eighteenth century classics?
It is impossible within my present limits to discuss the question fully.
And what man of letters would not shrink from seeming to dispose
dictatorially of the claims of two men who are, at any rate, such
masters in letters as Dryden and Pope; two men of such admirable talent,
both of them, and one of them, Dryden, a man, on all sides, of such
energetic and genial power? And yet, if we are to gain the full benefit
from poetry, we must have the real estimate of it. I cast about for some
mode of arriving, in the present case, at such an estimate without
offence. And perhaps the best way is to begin, as it is easy to begin,
with cordial praise.
When we find Chapman, the Elizabethan translator of Homer, expressing
himself in his preface thus: “Though truth in her very nakedness sits in
so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora and Ganges few eyes can sound
her, I hope yet those few here will so discover and confirm that, the
date being out of her darkness in this morning of our poet, he shall now
gird his temples with the sun,”—we pronounce that such a prose is
intolerable. When we find Milton writing: “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,”—we pronounce that such a prose has its own
grandeur, but that it is obsolete and inconvenient. But when we find
Dryden telling us: “What Virgil wrote in the vigor of his age, in plenty
and at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining years;
struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius,
liable to be misconstrued in all I write,”—then we exclaim that here at
last we have the true English prose, a prose such as we would all gladly
use if we only knew how. Yet Dryden was Milton’s contemporary.
But after the Restoration the time had come when our nation felt the
imperious need of a fit prose. So, too, the time had likewise come when
our nation felt the imperious need of freeing itself from the absorbing
preoccupation which religion in the Puritan age had exercised. It was
impossible that this freedom should be brought about without some
negative excess, without some neglect and impairment of the religious
life of the soul; and the spiritual history of the eighteenth century
shows us that the freedom was not achieved without them. Still, the
freedom was achieved; the preoccupation, an undoubtedly baneful and
retarding one if it had continued, was got rid of. And as with religion
amongst us at that period, so it was also with letters. A fit prose was
a necessity; but it was impossible that a fit prose should establish
itself amongst us without some touch of frost to the imaginative life of
the soul. The needful qualities for a fit prose are regularity,
uniformity, precision, balance. The men of letters, whose destiny it may
be to bring their nation to the attainment of a fit prose, must of
necessity, whether they work in prose or in verse, give a predominating,
an almost exclusive attention to the qualities of regularity,
uniformity, precision, balance. But an almost exclusive attention to
these qualities involves some repression and silencing of poetry.
We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glorious founder, Pope as
the splendid high priest, of our age of prose and reason, of our
excellent and indispensable eighteenth century. For the purposes of
their mission and destiny their poetry, like their prose, is admirable.
Do you ask me whether Dryden’s verse, take it almost where you will, is
not good?
“A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged.”
I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the inaugurator of an age of
prose and reason. Do you ask me whether Pope’s verse, take it almost
where you will, is not good?
“To Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down;
Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own.”
I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the high priest of an age of
prose and reason. But do you ask me whether such verse proceeds from men
with an adequate poetic criticism of life, from men whose criticism of
life has a high seriousness, or even, without that high seriousness, has
poetic largeness, freedom, insight, benignity? Do you ask me whether the
application of ideas to life in the verse of these men, often a powerful
application, no doubt, is a powerful _poetic_ application? Do you ask me
whether the poetry of these men has either the matter or the inseparable
manner of such an adequate poetic criticism; whether it has the accent
of
“Absent thee from felicity awhile....”
or of
“And what is else not to be overcome....”
or of
“O martyr souded in virginitee!”
I answer: It has not and cannot have them; it is the poetry of the
builders of an age of prose and reason. Though they may write in verse,
though they may in a certain sense be masters of the art of
versification, Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are
classics of our prose.
Gray is our poetical classic of that literature and age; the position of
Gray is singular, and demands a word of notice here. He has not the
volume or the power of poets who, coming in times more favorable, have
attained to an independent criticism of life. But he lived with the
great poets, he lived, above all, with the Greeks, through perpetually
studying and enjoying them; and he caught their poetic point of view for
regarding life, caught their poetic manner. The point of view and the
manner are not self-sprung in him, he caught them of others; and he had
not the free and abundant use of them. But whereas Addison and Pope
never had the use of them, Gray had the use of them at times. He is the
scantiest and frailest of classics in our poetry, but he is a classic.
And now, after Gray, we are met, as we draw towards the end of the
eighteenth century, we are met by the great name of Burns. We enter now
on times where the personal estimate of poets begins to be rife, and
where the real estimate of them is not reached without difficulty. But
in spite of the disturbing pressures of personal partiality, of national
partiality, let us try to reach a real estimate of the poetry of Burns.
By his English poetry Burns in general belongs to the eighteenth
century, and has little importance for us.
“Mark ruffian Violence, distain’d with crimes,
Rousing elate in these degenerate times;
View unsuspecting Innocence a prey,
As guileful Fraud points out the erring way;
While subtle Litigation’s pliant tongue
The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong!”
Evidently this is not the real Burns, or his name and fame would have
disappeared long ago. Nor is Clarinda’s love-poet, Sylvander, the real
Burns either. But he tells us himself: “These English songs gravel me to
death. I have not the command of the language that I have of my native
tongue. In fact, I think that my ideas are more barren in English than
in Scotch. I have been at _Duncan Gray_ to dress it in English, but all
I can do is desperately stupid.” We English turn naturally, in Burns, to
the poems in our own language, because we can read them easily; but in
those poems we have not the real Burns.
The real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems. Let us boldly say that
of much of this poetry, a poetry dealing perpetually with Scotch drink,
Scotch religion, and Scotch manners, a Scotchman’s estimate is apt to be
personal. A Scotchman is used to this world of Scotch drink, Scotch
religion, and Scotch manners; he has a tenderness for it; he meets its
poet half way. In this tender mood he reads pieces like the _Holy Fair_
or _Halloween_. But this world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and
Scotch manners is against a poet, not for him, when it is not a partial
countryman who reads him; for in itself it is not a beautiful world, and
no one can deny that it is of advantage to a poet to deal with a
beautiful world. Burns’s world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and
Scotch manners, is often a harsh, a sordid, a repulsive world; even the
world of his _Cotter’s Saturday Night_ is not a beautiful world. No
doubt a poet’s criticism of life may have such truth and power that it
triumphs over its world and delights us. Burns may triumph over his
world, often he does triumph over his world, but let us observe how and
where. Burns is the first case we have had where the bias of the
personal estimate tends to mislead; let us look at him closely, he can
bear it.
Many of his admirers will tell us that we have Burns, convivial,
genuine, delightful, here—
Leeze me on drink! it gies us mair
Than either school or college;
It kindles wit, it waukens lair,
It pangs us fou o’ knowledge.
Be’t whisky gill or penny wheep
Or ony stronger portion,
It never fails, on drinking deep,
To kittle up our notion
By night or day.”
There is a great deal of that sort of thing in Burns, and it is
unsatisfactory, not because it is bacchanalian poetry, but because it
has not that accent of sincerity which bacchanalian poetry, to do it
justice, very often has. There is something in it of bravado, something
which makes us feel that we have not the man speaking to us with his
real voice; something, therefore, poetically unsound.
With still more confidence will his admirers tell us that we have the
genuine Burns, the great poet, when his strain asserts the independence,
equality, dignity, of men, as in the famous song _For a’ that and a’
that_
“A prince can mak’ a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Guid faith he mauna fa’ that!
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their dignities, and a’ that,
The pith o’ sense, and pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.”
Here they find his grand, genuine touches; and still more, when this
puissant genius, who so often set morality at defiance, falls
moralizing—
“The sacred lowe o’ weel-placed love
Luxuriantly indulge it;
But never tempt th’ illicit rove,
Tho’ naething should divulge it.
I waive the quantum o’ the sin,
The hazard o’ concealing,
But och! it hardens a’ within,
And pertrifies the feeling.”
Or in a higher strain—
Who made the heart, ’tis He alone
Decidedly can try us
He knows each chord, its various tone;
Each spring its various bias.
Then at the balance let’s be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What’s _done_ we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.”
Or in a better strain yet, a strain, his admirers will say,
unsurpassable—
“To make a happy fire-side clime
To weans and wife,
That’s the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.”
There is criticism of life for you, the admirers of Burns will say to
us; there is the application of ideas to life! There is, undoubtedly.
The doctrine of the last-quoted lines coincides almost exactly with what
was the aim and end, Xenophon tells us, of all the teaching of Socrates.
And the application is a powerful one; made by a man of vigorous
understanding, and (need I say?) a master of language.
But for the supreme poetical success more is required than the powerful
application of ideas to life; it must be an application under the
conditions fixed by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Those
laws fix as an essential condition, in the poet’s treatment of such
matters as are here in question, high seriousness;—the high seriousness
which comes from absolute sincerity. The accent of high seriousness,
born of absolute sincerity, is what gives to such verse as
“In la sua volontade è nostra pace ...”
to such criticism of life as Dante’s, its power. Is this accent felt in
the passages which I have been quoting from Burns? Surely not; surely,
if our sense is quick, we must perceive that we have not in those
passages a voice from the very inmost soul of the genuine Burns; he is
not speaking to us from these depths, he is more or less preaching. And
the compensation for admiring such passages less, from missing the
perfect poetic accent in them, will be that we shall admire more the
poetry where that accent is found.
No; Burns, like Chaucer, comes short of the high seriousness of the
great classics, and the virtue of matter and manner which goes with that
high seriousness is wanting to his work. At moments he touched it in a
profound and passionate melancholy, as in those four immortal lines
taken by Byron as a motto for _The Bride of Abydos_, but which have in
them a depth of poetic quality such as resides in no verse of Byron’s
own—
“Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met, or never parted,
We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”
But a whole poem of that quality Burns cannot make; the rest, in the
_Farewell to Nancy_, is verbiage.
We arrive best at the real estimate of Burns, I think, by conceiving his
work as having truth of matter and truth of manner, but not the accent
or the poetic virtue of the highest masters. His genuine criticism of
life, when the sheer poet in him speaks, is ironic; it is not—
“Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest, they must be best
Because they are Thy will!”
It is far rather: _Whistle owre the lave o’t!_ Yet we may say of him as
of Chaucer, that of life and the world, as they come before him, his
view is large, free, shrewd, benignant,—truly poetic, therefore; and his
manner of rendering what he sees is to match. But we must note, at the
same time, his great difference from Chaucer. The freedom of Chaucer is
heightened, in Burns, by a fiery, reckless energy; the benignity of
Chaucer deepens, in Burns, into an overwhelming sense of the pathos of
things;—of the pathos of human nature, the pathos, also, of non-human
nature. Instead of the fluidity of Chaucer’s manner, the manner of Burns
has spring, bounding swiftness. Burns is by far the greater force,
though he has perhaps less charm. The world of Chaucer is fairer,
richer, more significant than that of Burns; but when the largeness and
freedom of Burns get full sweep, as in _Tam o’ Shanter_, or still more
in that puissant and splendid production, _The Jolly Beggars_, his world
may be what it will, his poetic genius triumphs over it. In the world of
_The Jolly Beggars_ there is more than hideousness and squalor, there is
bestiality; yet the piece is a superb poetic success. It has a breadth,
truth, and power which make the famous scene in Auerbach’s Cellar, of
Goethe’s _Faust_, seem artificial and tame beside it, and which are only
matched by Shakespeare and Aristophanes.
Here, where his largeness and freedom serve him so admirably, and also
in those poems and songs where to shrewdness he adds infinite archness
and wit, and to benignity infinite pathos, where his manner is flawless,
and a perfect poetic whole is the result,—in things like the address to
the mouse whose home he had ruined, in things like _Duncan Gray_, _Tam
Glen_, _Whistle and I’ll come to you my Lad_, _Auld Lang Syne_ (this
list might be made much longer),—here we have the genuine Burns, of whom
the real estimate must be high indeed. Not a classic, nor with the
excellent οπουδαιότης of the great classics, nor with a verse rising to
a criticism of life and a virtue like theirs; but a poet with thorough
truth of substance and an answering truth of style, giving us a poetry
sound to the core. We all of us have a leaning towards the pathetic, and
may be inclined perhaps to prize Burns most for his touches of piercing,
sometimes almost intolerable, pathos; for verse like—
“We twa hae paidl’t i’ the burn
From mornin’ sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne....”
where he is as lovely as he is sound. But perhaps it is by the
perfection of soundness of his lighter and archer masterpieces that he
is poetically most wholesome for us. For the votary misled by a personal
estimate of Shelley, as so many of us have been, are, and will be,—of
that beautiful spirit building his many-colored haze of words and
images.
“Pinnacled dim in the intense inane”—
no contact can be wholesomer than the contact with Burns at his archest
and soundest. Side by side with the
“On the brink of the night and the morning
My coursers are wont to respire,
But the Earth has just whispered a warning
That their flight must be swifter than fire ...”
of _Prometheus Unbound_, how salutary, how very salutary, to place this
from _Tam Glen_—
‘My minnie does constantly deave me
And bids me beware o’ young men;
They flatter, she says, to deceive me;
But wha can think sae o’ Tam Glen?”
But we enter on burning ground as we approach the poetry of times so
near to us—poetry like that of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth—of which
the estimates are so often not only personal, but personal with passion.
For my purpose, it is enough to have taken the single case of Burns, the
first poet we come to of whose work the estimate formed is evidently apt
to be personal, and to have suggested how we may proceed, using the
poetry of the great classics as a sort of touchstone, to correct this
estimate, as we had previously corrected by the same means the historic
estimate where we met with it. A collection like the present, with its
succession of celebrated names and celebrated poems, offers a good
opportunity to us for resolutely endeavoring to make our estimates of
poetry real. I have sought to point out a method which will help us in
making them so, and to exhibit it in use so far as to put any one who
likes in a way of applying it for himself.
At any rate the end to which the method and the estimate are designed to
lead, and from leading to which, if they do lead to it, they get their
whole value,—the benefit of being able clearly to feel and deeply to
enjoy the best, the truly classic, in poetry,—is an end, let me say it
once more at parting, of supreme importance. We are often told that an
era is opening in which we are to see multitudes of a common sort of
readers, and masses of a common sort of literature; that such readers do
not want and could not relish anything better than such literature, and
that to provide it is becoming a vast and profitable industry. Even if
good literature entirely lost currency with the world, it would still be
abundantly worth while to continue to enjoy it by oneself. But it never
will lose currency with the world, in spite of momentary appearances; it
never will lose supremacy. Currency and supremacy are insured to it, not
indeed by the world’s deliberate and conscious choice, but by something
far deeper,—by the instinct of self-preservation in humanity.
XII.
MILTON[34]
-----
Footnote 34:
An address delivered in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, on the
13th of February 1888, at the unveiling of a Memorial Window presented
by Mr. George W. Childs of Philadelphia.
-----
The most eloquent voice of our century uttered, shortly before leaving
the world, a warning cry against “the Anglo-Saxon contagion.” The
tendencies and aims, the view of life and the social economy of the
ever-multiplying and spreading Anglo-Saxon race, would be found
congenial, this prophet feared, by all the prose, all the vulgarity
amongst mankind, and would invade and overpower all nations. The true
ideal would be lost, a general sterility of mind and heart would set in.
The prophet had in view, no doubt, in the warning thus given, us and our
colonies, but the United States still more. There the Anglo-Saxon race
is already most numerous, there it increases fastest; there material
interests are most absorbing and pursued with most energy; there the
ideal, the saving ideal, of a high and rare excellence, seems perhaps to
suffer most danger of being obscured and lost. Whatever one may think of
the general danger to the world from the Anglo-Saxon contagion, it
appears to me difficult to deny that the growing greatness and influence
of the United States does bring with it some danger to the ideal of a
high and rare excellence. The _average man_ is too much a religion
there; his performance is unduly magnified, his shortcomings are not
duly seen and admitted. A lady in the State of Ohio sent to me only the
other day a volume on American authors; the praise given throughout was
of such high pitch that in thanking her I could not forbear saying that
for only one or two of the authors named was such a strain of praise
admissible, and that we lost all real standard of excellence by praising
so uniformly and immoderately. She answered me with charming good
temper, that very likely I was quite right, but it was pleasant to her
to think that excellence was common and abundant. But excellence is not
common and abundant; on the contrary, as the Greek poet long ago said,
excellence dwells among rocks hardly accessible, and a man must almost
wear his heart out before he can reach her. Whoever talks of excellence
as common and abundant, is on the way to lose all right standard of
excellence. And when the right standard of excellence is lost, it is not
likely that much which is excellent will be produced.
To habituate ourselves, therefore, to approve, as the Bible says, things
that are really excellent, is of the highest importance. And some
apprehension may justly be caused by a tendency in Americans to take,
or, at any rate, attempt to take, profess to take, the average man and
his performances too seriously, to over-rate and over-praise what is not
really superior.
But we have met here to-day to witness the unveiling of a gift in
Milton’s honor, and a gift bestowed by an American, Mr. Childs of
Philadelphia; whose cordial hospitality so many Englishmen, I myself
among the number, have experienced in America. It was only last autumn
that Stratford-upon-Avon celebrated the reception of a gift from the
same generous donor in honor of Shakespeare. Shakespeare and Milton—he
who wishes to keep his standard of excellence high, cannot choose two
better objects of regard and honor. And it is an American who has chosen
them, and whose beautiful gift in honor of one of them, Milton, with Mr.
Whittier’s simple and true lines inscribed upon it, is unveiled to-day.
Perhaps this gift in honor of Milton, of which I am asked to speak, is,
even more than the gift in honor of Shakespeare, one to suggest edifying
reflections to us.
Like Mr. Whittier, I treat the gift of Mr. Childs as a gift in honor of
Milton, although the window given is in memory of his second wife,
Catherine Woodcock, the “late espoused saint” of the famous sonnet, who
died in child-bed at the end of the first year of her marriage with
Milton, and who lies buried here with her infant. Milton is buried in
Cripplegate, but he lived for a good while in this parish of St.
Margaret’s, Westminster, and here he composed part of _Paradise Lost_,
and the whole of _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_. When death
deprived him of the Catherine whom the new window commemorates, Milton
had still some eighteen years to live, and Cromwell, his “chief of men,”
was yet ruling England. But the Restoration, with its “Sons of Belial,”
was not far off; and in the meantime Milton’s heavy affliction had laid
fast hold upon him, his eyesight had failed totally, he was blind. In
what remained to him of life he had the consolation of producing the
_Paradise Lost_ and the _Samson Agonistes_, and such a consolation we
may indeed count as no slight one. But the daily life of happiness in
common things and in domestic affections—a life of which, to Milton as
to Dante, too small a share was given—he seems to have known most, if
not only, in his one married year with the wife who is here buried. Her
form “vested all in white,” as in his sonnet he relates that after her
death she appeared to him, her face veiled, but with “love, sweetness,
and goodness” shining in her person,—this fair and gentle daughter of
the rigid sectarist of Hackney, this lovable companion with whom Milton
had rest and happiness one year, is a part of Milton indeed, and in
calling up her memory, we call up his.
And in calling up Milton’s memory we call up, let me say, a memory upon
which, in prospect of the Anglo-Saxon contagion and of its dangers
supposed and real, it may be well to lay stress even more than upon
Shakespeare’s. If to our English race an inadequate sense for perfection
of work is a real danger, if the discipline of respect for a high and
flawless excellence is peculiarly needed by us, Milton is of all our
gifted men the best lesson, the most salutary influence. In the sure and
flawless perfection of his rhythm and diction he is as admirable as
Virgil or Dante, and in this respect he is unique amongst us. No one
else in English literature and art possesses the like distinction.
Thomson, Cowper, Wordsworth, all of them good poets who have studied
Milton, followed Milton, adopted his form, fail in their diction and
rhythm if we try them by that high standard of excellence maintained by
Milton constantly. From style really high and pure Milton never departs;
their departures from it are frequent.
Shakespeare is divinely strong, rich, and attractive. But sureness of
perfect style Shakespeare himself does not possess. I have heard a
politician express wonder at the treasures of political wisdom in a
certain celebrated scene of _Troilus and Cressida_; for my part I am at
least equally moved to wonder at the fantastic and false diction in
which Shakespeare has in that scene clothed them. Milton, from one end
of _Paradise Lost_ to the other, is in his diction and rhythm constantly
a great artist in the great style. Whatever may be said as to the
subject of his poem, as to the conditions under which he received his
subject and treated it, that praise, at any rate, is assured to him.
For the rest, justice is not at present done, in my opinion, to Milton’s
management of the inevitable matter of a Puritan epic, a matter full of
difficulties, for a poet. Justice is not done to the _architectonics_,
as Goethe would have called them, of _Paradise Lost_; in these, too, the
power of Milton’s art is remarkable. But this may be a proposition which
requires discussion and development for establishing it, and they are
impossible on an occasion like the present.
That Milton, of all our English race, is by his diction and rhythm the
one artist of the highest rank in the great style whom we have; this I
take as requiring no discussion, this I take as certain.
The mighty power of poetry and art is generally admitted. But where the
soul of this power, of this power at its best, chiefly resides, very
many of us fail to see. It resides chiefly in the refining and elevation
wrought in us by the high and rare excellence of the great style. We may
feel the effect without being able to give ourselves clear account of
its cause, but the thing is so. Now, no race needs the influences
mentioned, the influences of refining and elevation, more than ours; and
in poetry and art our grand source for them is Milton.
To what does he owe this supreme distinction? To nature first and
foremost, to that bent of nature for inequality which to the worshippers
of the average man is so unacceptable; to a gift, a divine favor. “The
older one grows,” says Goethe, “the more one prizes natural gifts,
because by no possibility can they be procured and stuck on.” Nature
formed Milton to be a great poet. But what other poet has shown so
sincere a sense of the grandeur of his vocation, and a moral effort so
constant and sublime to make and keep himself worthy of it? The Milton
of religious and political controversy, and perhaps of domestic life
also, is not seldom disfigured by want of amenity, by acerbity. The
Milton of poetry, on the other hand, is one of those great men “who are
modest”—to quote a fine remark of Leopardi, that gifted and stricken
young Italian, who in his sense for poetic style is worthy to be named
with Dante and Milton—“who are modest, because they continually compare
themselves, not with other men, but with that idea of the perfect which
they have before their mind.” The Milton of poetry is the man, in his
own magnificent phrase, of “devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that
can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim
with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of
whom he pleases.” And finally, the Milton of poetry is, in his own words
again, the man of “industrious and select reading.” Continually he lived
in companionship with high and rare excellence, with the great Hebrew
poets and prophets, with the great poets of Greece and Rome. The Hebrew
compositions were not in verse, and can be not inadequately represented
by the grand, measured prose of our English Bible. The verse of the
poets of Greece and Rome no translation can adequately reproduce. Prose
cannot have the power of verse; verse-translation may give whatever of
charm is in the soul and talent of the translator himself, but never the
specific charm of the verse and poet translated. In our race are
thousands of readers, presently there will be millions, who know not a
word of Greek and Latin, and will never learn those languages. If this
host of readers are ever to gain any sense of the power and charm of the
great poets of antiquity, their way to gain it is not through
translations of the ancients, but through the original poetry of Milton,
who has the like power and charm, because he has the like great style.
Through Milton they may gain it, for, in conclusion, Milton is English;
this master in the great style of the ancients is English. Virgil, whom
Milton loved and honored, has at the end of the _Æneid_ a noble passage,
where Juno, seeing the defeat of Turnus and the Italians imminent, the
victory of the Trojan invaders assured, entreats Jupiter that Italy may
nevertheless survive and be herself still, may retain her own mind,
manners, and language, and not adopt those of the conqueror.
“Sit Latium, sint Albani per secula reges!”
Jupiter grants the prayer; he promises perpetuity and the future to
Italy—Italy reinforced by whatever virtue the Trojan race has, but
Italy, not Troy. This we may take as a sort of parable suiting
ourselves. All the Anglo-Saxon contagion, all the flood of Anglo-Saxon
commonness, beats vainly against the great style but cannot shake it,
and has to accept its triumph. But it triumphs in Milton, in one of our
own race, tongue, faith, and morals. Milton has made the great style no
longer an exotic here; he has made it an inmate amongst us, a leaven,
and a power. Nevertheless he, and his hearers on both sides of the
Atlantic, are English, and will remain English—
“Sermonem Ausonii patrium moresque tenebunt.”
The English race overspreads the world, and at the same time the ideal
of an excellence the most high and the most rare abides a possession
with it forever.
III.
THOMAS GRAY.
James Brown, Master of Pembroke Hall at Cambridge, Gray’s friend and
executor, in a letter written a fortnight after Gray’s death to another
of his friends, Dr. Wharton of Old Park, Durham, has the following
passage:—[35]
“Everything is now dark and melancholy in Mr. Gray’s room, not a trace
of him remains there; it looks as if it had been for some time
uninhabited, and the room bespoke for another inhabitant. The thoughts I
have of him will last, and will be useful to me the few years I can
expect to live. He never spoke out, but I believe from some little
expressions I now remember to have dropped from him, that for some time
past he thought himself nearer his end than those about him
apprehended.”
-----
Footnote 35:
Prefixed to the Selection from Gray in Ward’s _English Poets_, vol.
iv. 1880.
-----
_He never spoke out._ In these four words is contained the whole history
of Gray, both as a man and as a poet. The words fell naturally, and as
it were by chance, from their writer’s pen; but let us dwell upon them,
and press into their meaning, for in following it we shall come to
understand Gray.
He was in his fifty-fifth year when he died, and he lived in ease and
leisure, yet a few pages hold all his poetry; _he never spoke out_ in
poetry. Still, the reputation which he had achieved by his few pages is
extremely high. True, Johnson speaks of him with coldness and
disparagement. Gray disliked Johnson, and refused to make his
acquaintance; one might fancy that Johnson wrote with some irritation
from this cause. But Johnson was not by nature fitted to do justice to
Gray and to his poetry; this by itself is a sufficient explanation of
the deficiencies of his criticism of Gray. We may add a further
explanation of them which is supplied by Mr. Cole’s papers. “When
Johnson was publishing his Life of Gray,” says Mr. Cole, “I gave him
several anecdotes, _but he was very anxious as soon as possible to get
to the end of his labors_.” Johnson was not naturally in sympathy with
Gray, whose life he had to write, and when he wrote it he was in a hurry
besides. He did Gray injustice, but even Johnson’s authority failed to
make injustice, in this case, prevail. Lord Macaulay calls the Life of
Gray the worst of Johnson’s Lives, and it had found many censurers
before Macaulay. Gray’s poetical reputation grew and flourished in spite
of it. The poet Mason, his first biographer, in his epitaph equaled him
with Pindar. Britain has known, says Mason,
“... a Homer’s fire in Milton’s strains,
A Pindar’s rapture in the lyre of Gray.”
The immense vogue of Pope and of his style of versification had at first
prevented the frank reception of Gray by the readers of poetry. The
_Elegy_ pleased; it could not but please: but Gray’s poetry, on the
whole, astonished his contemporaries at first more than it pleased them;
it was so unfamiliar, so unlike the sort of poetry in vogue. It made its
way, however, after his death, with the public as well as with the few;
and Gray’s second biographer, Mitford, remarks that “the works which
were either neglected or ridiculed by their contemporaries have now
raised Gray and Collins to the rank of our two greatest lyric poets.”
Their reputation was established, at any rate, and stood extremely high,
even if they were not popularly read. Johnson’s disparagement of Gray
was called “petulant,” and severely blamed. Beattie, at the end of the
eighteenth century, writing to Sir William Forbes, says: “Of all the
English poets of this age Mr. Gray is most admired, and I think with
justice.” Cowper writes: “I have been reading Gray’s works, and think
him the only poet since Shakespeare entitled to the character of
sublime. Perhaps you will remember that I once had a different opinion
of him. I was prejudiced.” Adam Smith says: “Gray joins to the sublimity
of Milton the elegance and harmony of Pope; and nothing is wanting to
render him, perhaps, the first poet in the English language, but to have
written a little more.” And, to come nearer to our own times, Sir James
Mackintosh speaks of Gray thus: “Of all English poets he was the most
finished artist. He attained the highest degree of splendor of which
poetical style seemed to be capable.”
In a poet of such magnitude, how shall we explain his scantiness of
production? Shall we explain it by saying that to make of Gray a poet of
this magnitude is absurd; that his genius and resources were small, and
that his production, therefore, was small also, but that the popularity
of a single piece, the _Elegy_,—a popularity due in great measure to the
subject,—created for Gray a reputation to which he has really no right?
He himself was not deceived by the favor shown to the _Elegy_. “Gray
told me with a good deal of acrimony,” writes Dr. Gregory, “that the
_Elegy_ owed its popularity entirely to the subject, and that the public
would have received it as well if it had been written in prose.” This is
too much to say; the _Elegy_ is a beautiful poem, and in admiring it the
public showed a true feeling for poetry. But it is true that the _Elegy_
owed much of its success to its subject, and that it has received a too
unmeasured and unbounded praise.
Gray himself, however, maintained that the _Elegy_ was not his best work
in poetry, and he was right. High as is the praise due to the _Elegy_,
it is yet true that in other productions of Gray he exhibits poetical
qualities even higher than those exhibited in the _Elegy_. He deserves,
therefore, his extremely high reputation as a poet, although his critics
and the public may not always have praised him with perfect judgment. We
are brought back, then, to the question: How, in a poet so really
considerable, are we to explain his scantiness of production?
Scanty Gray’s production, indeed, is; so scanty that to supplement our
knowledge of it by a knowledge of the man is in this case of peculiar
interest and service. Gray’s letters and the records of him by his
friends have happily made it possible for us thus to know him, and to
appreciate his high qualities of mind and soul. Let us see these in the
man first, and then observe how they appear in his poetry; and why they
cannot enter into it more freely and inspire it with more strength,
render it more abundant.
We will begin with his acquirements. “Mr. Gray was,” writes his friend
Temple, “perhaps the most learned man in Europe. He knew every branch of
history both natural and civil; had read all the original historians of
England, France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism,
metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of his study.
Voyages and travels of all sorts were his favorite amusements; and he
had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening.” The
notes in his interleaved copy of Linnæus remained to show the extent and
accuracy of his knowledge in the natural sciences, particularly in
botany, zoology, and entomology. Entomologists testified that his
account of English insects was more perfect than any that had then
appeared. His notes and papers, of which some have been published,
others remain still in manuscript, give evidence, besides, of his
knowledge of literature ancient and modern, geography and topography,
painting, architecture and antiquities, and of his curious researches in
heraldry. He was an excellent musician. Sir James Mackintosh reminds us,
moreover, that to all the other accomplishments and merits of Gray we
are to add this: “That he was the first discoverer of the beauties of
nature in England, and has marked out the course of every picturesque
journey that can be made in it.”
Acquirements take all their value and character from the power of the
individual storing them. Let us take, from amongst Gray’s observations
on what he read, enough to show us his power. Here are criticisms on
three very different authors, criticisms without any study or
pretension, but just thrown out in chance letters to his friends. First,
on Aristotle:—
‘In the first place he is the hardest author by far I ever meddled
with. Then he has a dry conciseness that makes one imagine one is
perusing a table of contents rather than a book; it tastes for all the
world like chopped hay, or rather like chopped logic; for he has a
violent affection to that art, being in some sort his own invention;
so that he often loses himself in little trifling distinctions and
verbal niceties, and what is worse, leaves you to extricate yourself
as you can. Thirdly, he has suffered vastly by his transcribers, as
all authors of great brevity necessarily must. Fourthly and lastly, he
has abundance of fine, uncommon things, which make him well worth the
pains he gives one. You see what you have to expect.”
Next, on Isocrates:—
“It would be strange if I should find fault with you for reading
Isocrates; I did so myself twenty years ago, and in an edition at
least as bad as yours. The Panegyric, the De Pace, Areopagitic, and
Advice to Philip, are by far the noblest remains we have of this
writer, and equal to most things extant in the Greek tongue; but it
depends on your judgment to distinguish between his real and
occasional opinion of things, as he directly contradicts in one place
what he has advanced in another; for example, in the Panathenaic and
the De Pace, on the naval power of Athens; the latter of the two is
undoubtedly his own undisguised sentiment.”
After hearing Gray on Isocrates and Aristotle, let us hear him on
Froissart:—
“I rejoice you have met with Froissart, he is the Herodotus of a
barbarous age; had he but had the luck of writing in as good a
language, he might have been immortal. His locomotive disposition (for
then there was no other way of learning things), his simple curiosity,
his religious credulity, were much like those of the old Grecian. When
you have _tant chevauché_ as to get to the end of him, there is
Monstrelet waits to take you up, and will set you down at Philip de
Commines; but previous to all these, you should have read
Villehardouin and Joinville.”
Those judgments, with their true and clear ring, evince the high quality
of Gray’s mind, his power to command and use his learning. But Gray was
a poet; let us hear him on a poet, on Shakespeare. We must place
ourselves in the full midst of the eighteenth century and of its
criticism: Gray’s friend, West, had praised Racine for using it in his
dramas “the language of the times and that of the purest sort”; and he
had added: “I will not decide what style is fit for our English stage,
but I should rather choose one that bordered upon Cato, than upon
Shakespeare.” Gray replies:—
“As to matter of style, I have this to say: The language of the age is
never the language of poetry; except among the French, whose verse,
where the thought does not support it, differs in nothing from prose.
Our poetry, on the contrary, has a language peculiar to itself, to
which almost every one that has written has added something. In truth,
Shakespeare’s language is one of his principal beauties; and he has no
less advantage over your Addisons and Rowes in this, than in those
other great excellences you mention. Every word in him is a picture.
Pray put me the following lines into the tongue of our modern
dramatics—
‘But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass’—
and what follows? To me they appear untranslatable; and if this be the
case, our language is greatly degenerated.”
It is impossible for a poet to lay down the rules of his own art with
more insight, soundness, and certainty. Yet at that moment in England
there was perhaps not one other man, besides Gray, capable of writing
the passage just quoted.
Gray’s quality of mind, then, we see; his quality of soul will no less
bear inspection. His reserve, his delicacy, his distaste for many of the
persons and things surrounding him in the Cambridge of that day,—“this
silly, dirty place,” as he calls it,—have produced an impression of Gray
as being a man falsely fastidious, finical, effeminate. But we have
already had that grave testimony to him from the Master of Pembroke
Hall: “The thoughts I have of him will last, and will be useful to me
the few years I can expect to live.” And here is another to the same
effect from a younger man, from Gray’s friend Nicholls:—
“You know,” he writes to his mother, from abroad, when he heard of
Gray’s death, “that I considered Mr. Gray as a second parent, that I
thought only of him, built all my happiness on him, talked of him
forever, wished him with me whenever I partook of any pleasure, and
flew to him for revenge whenever I felt any uneasiness. To whom now
shall I talk of all I have seen here? Who will teach me to read, to
think, to feel? I protest to you, that whatever I did or thought had a
reference to him. If I met with any chagrins, I comforted myself that
I had a treasure at home; if all the world had despised and hated me,
I should have thought myself perfectly recompensed in his friendship.
There remains only one loss more; if I lose you, I am left alone in
the world. At present I feel that I have lost half of myself.”
Testimonies such as these are not called forth by a fastidious
effeminate weakling; they are not called forth, even, by mere qualities
of mind; they are called forth by qualities of soul. And of Gray’s high
qualities of soul, of his σπουδαιότης, his excellent seriousness, we may
gather abundant proof from his letters. Writing to Mason who had just
lost his father, he says:—
“I have seen the scene you describe, and know how dreadful it is; I
know too I am the better for it. We are all idle and thoughtless
things, and have no sense, no use in the world any longer than that
sad impression lasts; the deeper it is engraved the better.”
And again, on a like occasion to another friend:—
“He who best knows our nature (for he made us what we are) by such
afflictions recalls us from our wandering thoughts and idle merriment,
from the insolence of youth and prosperity, to serious reflection, to
our duty, and to himself; nor need we hasten to get rid of these
impressions. Time (by appointment of the same Power) will cure the
smart and in some hearts soon blot out all the traces of sorrow; but
such as preserve them longest (for it is partly left in our own power)
do perhaps best acquiesce in the will of the chastiser.”
And once more to Mason, in the very hour of his wife’s death; Gray was
not sure whether or not his letter would reach Mason before the end:—
“If the worst be not yet past, you will neglect and pardon me; but if
the last struggle be over, if the poor object of your long anxieties
be no longer sensible to your kindness or to her own sufferings, allow
me, at least an idea (for what could I do, were I present, more than
this?) to sit by you in silence and pity from my heart not her, who is
at rest, but you, who lose her. May he, who made us, the Master of our
pleasures and of our pains, support you! Adieu.”
Seriousness, character, was the foundation of things with him; where
this was lacking he was always severe, whatever might be offered to him
in its stead. Voltaire’s literary genius charmed him, but the faults of
Voltaire’s nature he felt so strongly that when his young friend
Nicholls was going abroad in 1771, just before Gray’s death, he said to
him: “I have one thing to beg of you which you must not refuse.”
Nicholls answered: “You know you have only to command; what is it?”—“Do
not go to see Voltaire,” said Gray; and then added: “No one knows the
mischief that man will do.” Nicholls promised compliance with Gray’s
injunction; “But what,” he asked, “could a visit from me
signify?”—“Every tribute to such a man signifies,” Gray answered. He
admired Dryden, admired him, even, too much; had too much felt his
influence as a poet. He told Beattie “that if there was any excellence
in his own numbers he had learned it wholly from that great poet;” and
writing to Beattie afterwards he recurs to Dryden, whom Beattie, he
thought, did not honor as a poet: “Remember Dryden,” he writes, “and be
blind to all his faults.” Yes, his faults as a poet; but on the man
Dryden, nevertheless, his sentence is stern. Speaking of the
Poet-Laureateship, “Dryden,” he writes to Mason, “was as disgraceful to
the office from his character, as the poorest scribbler could have been
from his verses.” Even where crying blemishes were absent, the want of
weight and depth of character in a man deprived him, in Gray’s judgment,
of serious significance. He says of Hume: “Is not that _naïveté_ and
good-humor, which his admirers celebrate in him, owing to this, that he
has continued all his days an infant, but one that has unhappily been
taught to read and write?”
And with all this strenuous seriousness, a pathetic sentiment, and an
element, likewise, of sportive and charming humor. At Keswick, by the
lakeside on an autumn evening, he has the accent of the _Rêveries_, or
of Obermann, or Wordsworth:—
“In the evening walked down alone to the lake by the side of Crow Park
after sunset and saw the solemn coloring of light draw on, the last
gleam of sunshine fading away on the hill-tops, the deep serene of the
waters, and the long shadows of the mountains thrown across them, till
they nearly touched the hithermost shore. At a distance heard the
murmur of many waterfalls, not audible in the daytime. Wished for the
Moon, but she was _dark to me and silent hid in her vacant interlunar
cave_.”
Of his humor and sportiveness his delightful letters are full; his humor
appears in his poetry too, and is by no means to be passed over there.
Horace Walpole said that “Gray never wrote anything easily but things of
humor; humor was his natural and original turn.”
Knowledge, penetration, seriousness, sentiment, humor, Gray had them
all; he had the equipment and endowment for the office of poet. But very
soon in his life appear traces of something obstructing, something
disabling; of spirits failing, and health not sound; and the evil
increases with years. He writes to West in 1737:—
“Low spirits are my true and faithful companions; they get up with me,
go to bed with me, make journeys and returns as I do; nay, pay visits
and will even affect to be jocose and force a feeble laugh with me;
but most commonly we sit alone together, and are the prettiest insipid
company in the world.”
The tone is playful, Gray was not yet twenty-one. “Mine,” he tells West
four or five years later, “mine, you are to know, is a white Melancholy,
or rather _Leucocholy_, for the most part; which, though it seldom
laughs or dances, nor ever amounts to what one calls joy or pleasure,
yet is a good easy sort of a state.” But, he adds in the same letter:—
“But there is another sort, black indeed, which I have now and then
felt, that has something in it like Tertullian’s rule of faith, _Credo
quia impossibile est_; for it believes, nay, is sure of everything
that is unlikely, so it be but frightful; and on the other hand
excludes and shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and everything
that is pleasurable; from this the Lord deliver us! for none but he
and sunshiny weather can do it.”
Six or seven years pass, and we find him writing to Wharton from
Cambridge thus:—
“The spirit of laziness (the spirit of this place) begins to possess
even me, that have so long declaimed against it. Yet has it not so
prevailed, but that I feel that discontent with myself, that _ennui_,
that ever accompanies it in its beginnings. Time will settle my
conscience, time will reconcile my languid companion to me; we shall
smoke, we shall tipple, we shall doze together, we shall have our
little jokes, like other people, and our long stories. Brandy will
finish what port began; and, a month after the time, you will see in
some corner of a London Evening Post, ‘Yesterday died the Rev. Mr.
John Gray, Senior-Fellow of Clare Hall, a facetious companion, and
well-respected by all who knew him.’”
The humorous advertisement ends, in the original letter, with a
Hogarthian touch which I must not quote. Is it Leucocholy or is it
Melancholy which predominates here? at any rate, this entry in his
diary, six years later, is black enough:—
“_Insomnia crebra, atque expergiscenti surdus quidam doloris sensus;
frequens etiam in regione sterni oppressio, et cardialgia gravis, fere
sempiterna._”
And in 1757 he writes to Hurd:—
“To be employed is to be happy. This principle of mine (and I am
convinced of its truth) has, as usual, no influence on my practice. I
am alone, and _ennuyé_ to the last degree, yet do nothing. Indeed I
have no excuse; my health (which you have so kindly inquired after) is
not extraordinary. It is no great malady, but several little ones,
that seem brewing no good to me.”
From thence to the end his languor and depression, though still often
relieved by occupation and travel, keep fatally gaining on him. At last
the depression became constant, became mechanical. “Travel I must,” he
writes to Dr. Wharton, “or cease to exist. Till this year I hardly knew
what _mechanical_ low spirits were; but now I even tremble at an east
wind.” Two months afterwards he died.
What wonder, that with this troublous cloud, throughout the whole term
of his manhood, brooding over him and weighing him down, Gray, finely
endowed though he was, richly stored with knowledge though he was, yet
produced so little, found no full and sufficient utterance, “_never_,”
as the Master of Pembroke Hall said, “_spoke out_.” He knew well enough,
himself, how it was with him.
“My _verve_ is at best, you know” (he writes to Mason), “of so delicate
a constitution, and has such weak nerves, as not to stir out of its
chamber above three days in a year.” And to Horace Walpole he says: “As
to what you say to me civilly, that I ought to write more, I will be
candid, and avow to you, that till fourscore and upward, whenever the
humor takes me, I will write; because I like it, and because I like
myself better when I do so. If I do not write much, it is because I
cannot.” How simply said, and how truly also! Fain would a man like Gray
speak out if he could, he “likes himself better” when he speaks out; if
he does not speak out, “it is because I cannot.”
Bonstetten, that mercurial Swiss who died in 1832 at the age of
eighty-seven, having been younger and livelier from his sixtieth year to
his eightieth than at any other time in his life, paid a visit in his
early days to Cambridge, and saw much of Gray, to whom he attached
himself with devotion. Gray, on his part, was charmed with his young
friend; “I never saw such a boy,” he writes; “our breed is not made on
this model.” Long afterwards Bonstetten published his reminiscences of
Gray. “I used to tell Gray,” he says, “about my life and my native
country, but _his_ life was a sealed book to me; he never would talk of
himself, never would allow me to speak to him of his poetry. If I quoted
lines of his to him, he kept silence like an obstinate child. I said to
him sometimes: ‘Will you have the goodness to give me an answer?’ But
not a word issued from his lips.” _He never spoke out._ Bonstetten
thinks that Gray’s life was poisoned by an unsatisfied sensibility, was
withered by his having never loved; by his days being passed in the
dismal cloisters of Cambridge, in the company of a set of monastic
bookworms, “whose existence no honest woman ever came to cheer.”
Sainte-Beuve, who was much attracted and interested by Gray, doubts
whether Bonstetten’s explanation of him is admissible; the secret of
Gray’s melancholy he finds rather in the sterility of his poetic talent,
“so distinguished, so rare, but so stinted;” in the poet’s despair at
his own unproductiveness.
But to explain Gray, we must do more than allege his sterility, as we
must look further than to his reclusion at Cambridge. What caused his
sterility? Was it his ill-health, his hereditary gout? Certainly we will
pay all respect to the powers of hereditary gout for afflicting us poor
mortals. But Goethe, after pointing out that Schiller, who was so
productive, was “almost constantly ill,” adds the true remark that it is
incredible how much the spirit can do, in these cases, to keep up the
body. Pope’s animation and activity through all the course of what he
pathetically calls “that long disease, my life,” is an example
presenting itself signally, in Gray’s own country and time, to confirm
what Goethe here says. What gave the power to Gray’s reclusion and
ill-health to induce his sterility?
The reason, the indubitable reason as I cannot but think it, I have
already given elsewhere. Gray, a born poet, fell upon an age of prose.
He fell upon an age whose task was such as to call forth in general
men’s powers of understanding, wit and cleverness, rather than their
deepest powers of mind and soul. As regards literary production, the
task of the eighteenth century in England was not the poetic
interpretation of the world, its task was to create a plain, clear,
straightforward, efficient prose. Poetry obeyed the bent of mind
requisite for the due fulfilment of this task of the century. It was
intellectual, argumentative, ingenious; not seeing things in their truth
and beauty, not interpretative. Gray, with the qualities of mind and
soul of a genuine poet, was isolated in his century. Maintaining and
fortifying them by lofty studies, he yet could not fully educe and enjoy
them; the want of a genial atmosphere, the failure of sympathy in his
contemporaries, were too great. Born in the same year with Milton, Gray
would have been another man; born in the same year with Burns, he would
have been another man. A man born in 1608 could profit by the larger and
more poetic scope of the English spirit in the Elizabethan age; a man
born in 1759 could profit by that European renewing of men’s minds of
which the great historical manifestation is the French Revolution.
Gray’s alert and brilliant young friend, Bonstetten, who would explain
the void in the life of Gray by his having never loved, Bonstetten
himself loved, married, and had children. Yet at the age of fifty he was
bidding fair to grow old, dismal and torpid like the rest of us, when he
was roused and made young again for some thirty years, says M.
Sainte-Beuve, by the events of 1789. If Gray, like Burns, had been just
thirty years old when the French Revolution broke out, he would have
shown, probably, productiveness and animation in plenty. Coming when he
did, and endowed as he was, he was a man born out of date, a man whose
full spiritual flowering was impossible. The same thing is to be said of
his great contemporary, Butler, the author of the _Analogy_. In the
sphere of religion, which touches that of poetry, Butler was impelled by
the endowment of his nature to strive for a profound and adequate
conception of religious things, which was not pursued by his
contemporaries, and which at that time, and in that atmosphere of mind,
was not fully attainable. Hence, in Butler too, a dissatisfaction, a
weariness, as in Gray; “great labor and weariness, great disappointment,
pain and even vexation of mind.” A sort of spiritual east wind was at
that time blowing; neither Butler nor Gray could flower. They _never
spoke out_.
Gray’s poetry was not only stinted in quantity by reason of the age
wherein he lived, it suffered somewhat in quality also. We have seen
under what obligation to Dryden Gray professed himself to be—“if there
was any excellence in his numbers, he had learned it wholly from that
great poet.” It was not for nothing that he came when Dryden had lately
“embellished,” as Johnson says, English poetry; had “found it brick and
left it marble.” It was not for nothing that he came just when “the
English ear,” to quote Johnson again, “had been accustomed to the
mellifluence of Pope’s numbers, and the diction of poetry had grown more
splendid.” Of the intellectualities, ingenuities, personifications, of
the movement and diction of Dryden and Pope, Gray caught something,
caught too much. We have little of Gray’s poetry, and that little is not
free from the faults of his age. Therefore it was important to go for
aid, as we did, to Gray’s life and letters, to see his mind and soul
there, and to corroborate from thence that high estimate of his quality
which his poetry indeed calls forth, but does not establish so amply and
irresistibly as one could desire.
For a just criticism it does, however, clearly establish it. The
difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and
all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and
composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the
soul. The difference between the two kinds of poetry is immense. They
differ profoundly in their modes of language, they differ profoundly in
their modes of evolution. The poetic language of our eighteenth century
in general is the language of men composing _without their eye on the
object_, as Wordsworth excellently said of Dryden; language merely
recalling the object, as the common language of prose does, and then
dressing it out with a certain smartness and brilliancy for the fancy
and understanding. This is called “splendid diction.” The evolution of
the poetry of our eighteenth century is likewise intellectual; it
proceeds by ratiocination, antithesis, ingenious turns and conceits.
This poetry is often eloquent, and always, in the hands of such masters
as Dryden and Pope, clever; but it does not take us much below the
surface of things, it does not give us the emotion of seeing things in
their truth and beauty. The language of genuine poetry, on the other
hand, is the language of one composing with his eye on the object; its
evolution is that of a thing which has been plunged in the poet’s soul
until it comes forth naturally and necessarily. This sort of evolution
is infinitely simpler than the other, and infinitely more satisfying;
the same thing is true of the genuine poetic language likewise. But they
are both of them also infinitely harder of attainment; they come only
from those who, as Emerson says, “live from a great depth of being.”
Goldsmith disparaged Gray who had praised his _Traveller_, and indeed in
the poem on the _Alliance of Education and Government_ had given him
hints which he used for it. In retaliation let us take from Goldsmith
himself a specimen of the poetic language of the eighteenth century.
“No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale”—
there is exactly the poetic diction of our prose century! rhetorical,
ornate,—and, poetically, quite false. Place beside it a line of genuine
poetry, such as the
“In cradle of the rude, imperious surge
of Shakespeare; and all its falseness instantly becomes apparent.
Dryden’s poem on the death of Mrs. Killigrew is, says Johnson,
“undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language ever has produced.” In
this vigorous performance Dryden has to say, what is interesting enough,
that not only in poetry did Mrs. Killigrew excel, but she excelled in
painting also. And thus he says it—
“To the next realm she stretch’d her sway,
For Painture near adjoining lay—
A plenteous province and alluring prey.
A Chamber of Dependencies was framed
(As conquerors will never want pretence
When arm’d, to justify the offence),
And the whole fief, in right of Poetry, she claim’d.”
The intellectual, ingenious, superficial evolution of poetry of this
school could not be better illustrated. Place beside it Pindar’s
αἰὼν ὰσφαλὴς
οὐχ ἔγεντ’ οὔτ’ Αἰακίδᾳ παρὰ Πηλεῖ
οὔτε παρ’ ἀντιθέῳ Κάδμῳ ...
“A secure time fell to the lot neither of Peleus the son of Æacus, nor
of the godlike Cadmus; howbeit these are said to have had, of all
mortals, the supreme of happiness, who heard the golden-snooded Muses
sing,—on the mountain the one heard them, the other in seven-gated
Thebes.”
There is the evolution of genuine poetry, and such poetry kills Dryden’s
the moment it is put near it.
Gray’s production was scanty, and scanty, as we have seen, it could not
but be. Even what he produced is not always pure in diction, true in
evolution. Still, with whatever drawbacks, he is alone, or almost alone
(for Collins has something of the like merit) in his age. Gray said
himself that “the style he aimed at was extreme conciseness of
expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical.” Compared, not with the
work of the great masters of the golden ages of poetry, but with the
poetry of his own contemporaries in general, Gray’s may be said to have
reached, in style, the excellence at which he aimed; while the evolution
also of such a piece as his _Progress of Poesy_ must be accounted not
less noble and sound than its style.
IV.
JOHN KEATS.[36]
-----
Footnote 36:
Prefixed to the Selection from Keats in Ward’s _English Poets_, vol.
iv. 1880.
-----
Poetry, according to Milton’s famous saying, should be “simple,
sensuous, impassioned.” No one can question the eminency, in Keat’s
poetry, of the quality of sensuousness. Keats as a poet is abundantly
and enchantingly sensuous; the question with some people will be,
whether he is anything else. Many things may be brought forward which
seem to show him as under the fascination and sole dominion of sense,
and desiring nothing better. There is the exclamation in one of his
letters: “O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts!” There is
the thesis, in another, “that with a great Poet the sense of Beauty
overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all
consideration.” There is Haydon’s story of him, how “he once covered his
tongue and throat as far as he could reach with Cayenne pepper, in order
to appreciate the delicious coldness of claret in all its glory—his own
expression.” One is not much surprised when Haydon further tells us, of
the hero of such a story, that once for six weeks together he was hardly
ever sober. “He had no decision of character,” Haydon adds; “no object
upon which to direct his great powers.”
Character and self-control, the _virtus verusque labor_ so necessary for
every kind of greatness, and for the great artist, too, indispensable,
appear to be wanting, certainly, to this Keats of Haydon’s portraiture.
They are wanting also to the Keats of the _Letters to Fanny Brawne_.
These letters make as unpleasing an impression as Haydon’s anecdotes.
The editor of Haydon’s journals could not well omit what Haydon said of
his friend, but for the publication of the _Letters to Fanny Brawne_ I
can see no good reason whatever. Their publication appears to me, I
confess, inexcusable; they ought never to have been published. But
published they are, and we have to take notice of them. Letters written
when Keats was near his end, under the throttling and unmanning grasp of
mortal disease, we will not judge. But here is a letter written some
months before he was taken ill. It is printed just as Keats wrote it.
“You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as
though I was dissolving—I should be exquisitely miserable without the
hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far
from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will
it? I have no limit now to my love.... Your note came in just here. I
cannot be happier away from you. ’Tis richer than an Argosy of
Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that
Men could die Martyrs for religion—I have shuddered at it. I shudder
no more—I could be martyred for my Religion—Love is my religion—I
could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are
its only tenet. You have ravished me away by a Power I cannot resist;
and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you
I have endeavoured often ‘to reason against the reasons of my Love.’ I
can do that no more—the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I
cannot breathe without you.”
A man who writes love-letters in this strain is probably predestined,
one may observe, to misfortune in his love-affairs; but that is nothing.
The complete enervation of the writer is the real point for remark. We
have the tone, or rather the entire want of tone, the abandonment of all
reticence and all dignity, of the merely sensuous man, of the man who
“is passion’s slave.” Nay, we have them in such wise that one is tempted
to speak even as _Blackwood_ or the _Quarterly_ were in the old days
wont to speak; one is tempted to say that Keats’s love-letter is the
love-letter of a surgeon’s apprentice. It has in its relaxed
self-abandonment something underbred and ignoble, as of a youth ill
brought up, without the training which teaches us that we must put some
constraint upon our feelings and upon the expression of them. It is the
sort of love-letter of a surgeon’s apprentice which one might hear read
out in a breach of promise case, or in the Divorce Court. The sensuous
man speaks in it, and the sensuous man of a badly bred and badly trained
sort. That many who are themselves also badly bred and badly trained
should enjoy it, and should even think it a beautiful and characteristic
production of him whom they call their “lovely and beloved Keats,” does
not make it better. These are the admirers whose pawing and fondness
does not good but harm to the fame of Keats; who concentrate attention
upon what in him is least wholesome and most questionable; who worship
him, and would have the world worship him too, as the poet of
‘Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair,
Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast.’
This sensuous strain Keats had, and a man of his poetic powers could
not, whatever his strain, but show his talent in it. But he has
something more, and something better. We who believe Keats to have been
by his promise, at any rate, if not fully by his performance, one of the
very greatest of English poets, and who believe also that a merely
sensuous man cannot either by promise or by performance be a very great
poet, because poetry interprets life, and so large and noble a part of
life is outside of such a man’s ken,—we cannot but look for signs in him
of something more than sensuousness, for signs of character and virtue.
And indeed the elements of high character Keats undoubtedly has, and the
effort to develop them; the effort is frustrated and cut short by
misfortune, and disease, and time, but for the due understanding of
Keats’s worth the recognition of this effort, and of the elements on
which it worked, is necessary.
Lord Houghton, who praises very discriminatingly the poetry of Keats,
has on his character also a remark full of discrimination. He says: “The
faults of Keats’s disposition were precisely the contrary of those
attributed to him by common opinion.” And he gives a letter written
after the death of Keats by his brother George, in which the writer,
speaking of the fantastic _Johnny Keats_ invented for common opinion by
Lord Byron and by the reviewers, declares indignantly: “John was the
very soul of manliness and courage, and as much like the Holy Ghost as
_Johnny Keats_.” It is important to note this testimony, and to look
well for whatever illustrates and confirms it.
Great weight is laid by Lord Houghton on such a direct profession of
faith as the following: “That sort of probity and disinterestedness,”
Keats writes to his brothers, “which such men as Bailey possess, does
hold and grasp the tip-top of any spiritual honors that can be paid to
anything in this world.” Lord Houghton says that “never have words more
effectively expressed the conviction of the superiority of virtue above
beauty than those.” But merely to make a profession of faith of the kind
here made by Keats is not difficult; what we should rather look for is
some evidence of the instinct for character, for virtue, passing into
man’s life, passing into his work.
Signs of virtue, in the true and large sense of the word, the instinct
for virtue passing into the life of Keats and strengthening it, I find
in the admirable wisdom and temper of what he says to his friend Bailey
on the occasion of a quarrel between Reynolds and Haydon:—
“Things have happened lately of great perplexity; you must have heard
of them; Reynolds and Haydon retorting and recriminating, and parting
forever. The same thing has happened between Haydon and Hunt. It is
unfortunate; men should bear with each other; there lives not the man
who may not be cut up, aye, lashed to pieces, on his weakest side. The
best of men have but a portion of good in them.... The sure way,
Bailey, is first to know a man’s faults, and then be passive. If,
after that, he insensibly draws you towards him, then you have no
power to break the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds
or Haydon, I was well read in their faults; yet, knowing them, I have
been cementing gradually with both. I have an affection for them both,
for reasons almost opposite; and to both must I of necessity cling,
supported always by the hope that when a little time, a few years,
shall have tried me more fully in their esteem, I may be able to bring
them together.”
Butler has well said that “endeavoring to enforce upon our own minds a
practical sense of virtue, or to beget in others that practical sense of
it which a man really has himself, is a virtuous _act_.” And such an
“endeavoring” is that of Keats in those words written to Bailey. It is
more than mere words; so justly thought and so discreetly urged as it
is, it rises to the height of a virtuous _act_. It is proof of
character.
The same thing may be said of some words written to his friend Charles
Brown, whose kindness, willingly exerted whenever Keats chose to avail
himself of it, seemed to free him from any pressing necessity of earning
his own living. Keats felt that he must not allow this state of things
to continue. He determined to set himself to “fag on as others do” at
periodical literature, rather than to endanger his independence and his
self-respect; and he writes to Brown:—
“I had got into a habit of mind of looking towards you as a help in
all difficulties. This very habit would be the parent of idleness and
difficulties. You will see it is a duty I owe to myself to break the
neck of it. I do nothing for my subsistence—make no exertion. At the
end of another year you shall applaud me, not for verses, but for
conduct.”
He had not, alas, another year of health before him when he announced
that wholesome resolve; it then wanted but six months of the day of his
fatal attack. But in the brief time allowed to him he did what he could
to keep his word.
What character, again, what strength and clearness of judgment, in his
criticism of his own productions, of the public, and of the “literary
circles!” His words after the severe reviews of _Endymion_ have often
been quoted; they cannot be quoted too often:—
“Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of
beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My
own criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what
_Blackwood_ or the _Quarterly_ could possibly inflict; and also, when
I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my
own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. J. S. is
perfectly right in regard to the “slip-shod Endymion.” That it is so
is no fault of mine. No! though it may sound a little paradoxical, it
is as good as I had power to make it by myself.”
And again, as if he had foreseen certain of his admirers gushing over
him, and was resolved to disengage his responsibility:—
“I have done nothing, except for the amusement of a few people who
refine upon their feelings till anything in the un-understandable way
will go down with them. I have no cause to complain, because I am
certain anything really fine will in these days be felt. I have no
doubt that if I had written _Othello_ I should have been cheered. I
shall go on with patience.”
Young poets almost inevitably overrate what they call “the might of
poesy,” and its power over the world which now is. Keats is not a dupe
on this matter any more than he is a dupe about the merit of his own
performances:—
“I have no trust whatever in poetry. I don’t wonder at it; the marvel
is to me how people read so much of it.”
His attitude towards the public is that of a strong man, not of a
weakling avid of praise, and made to “be snuff’d out by an article”:—
“I shall ever consider the public as debtors to me for verses, not
myself to them for admiration, which can I do without.”
And again, in a passage where one may perhaps find fault with the
capital letters, but surely with nothing else:—
“I have not the slightest feel of humility towards the public or to
anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the Principle of Beauty,
and the Memory of great Men.... I would be subdued before my friends,
and thank them for subduing me; but among multitudes of men I have no
feel of stooping; I hate the idea of humility to them. I never wrote
one single line of poetry with the least shadow of thought about their
opinion. Forgive me for vexing you, but it eases me to tell you; I
could not live without the love of my friends: I would jump down Etna
for any great public good—but I hate a mawkish popularity. I cannot be
subdued before them. My glory would be to daunt and dazzle the
thousand jabberers about pictures and books.”
Against these artistic and literary “jabberers,” amongst whom Byron
fancied Keats, probably, to be always living, flattering them and
flattered by them, he has yet another outburst:—
“Just so much as I am humbled by the genius above my grasp, am I
exalted and look with hate and contempt upon the literary world. Who
could wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous, who
are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?”
And he loves Fanny Brawne the more, he tells her, because he believes
that she has liked him for his own sake and for nothing else. “I have
met with women who I really think would like to be married to a Poem and
to be given away by a Novel.”
There is a tone of too much bitterness and defiance in all this, a tone
which he with great propriety subdued and corrected when he wrote his
beautiful preface to _Endymion_. But the thing to be seized is, that
Keats had flint and iron in him, that he had character; that he was, as
his brother George says, “as much like the Holy Ghost as _Johnny
Keats_,”—as that imagined sensuous weakling, the delight of the literary
circles of Hampstead.
It is a pity that Byron, who so misconceived Keats, should never have
known how shrewdly Keats, on the other hand, had characterized _him_, as
“a fine thing” in the sphere of “the worldly, theatrical, and
pantomimical.” But indeed nothing is more remarkable in Keats than his
clear-sightedness, his lucidity; and lucidity is in itself akin to
character and to high and severe work. In spite, therefore, of his
overpowering feeling for beauty, in spite of his sensuousness, in spite
of his facility, in spite of his gift of expression, Keats could say
resolutely:—
“I know nothing, I have read nothing; and I mean to follow Solomon’s
directions: ‘Get learning, get understanding.’ There is but one way
for me. The road lies through application, study, and thought. I will
pursue it.”
And of Milton, instead of resting in Milton’s incomparable phrases,
Keats could say, although indeed all the while “looking upon fine
phrases,” as he himself tells us, “like a lover”—
“Milton had an exquisite passion for what is properly, in the sense of
ease and pleasure, poetical luxury; and with that, it appears to me,
he would fain have been content, if he could, so doing, preserve his
self-respect and feeling of duty performed; but there was working in
him, as it were, that same sort of thing which operates in the great
world to the end of a prophecy’s being accomplished. Therefore he
devoted himself rather to the ardors than the pleasures of song,
solacing himself at intervals with cups of old wine.”
In his own poetry, too, Keats felt that place must be found for “the
ardors rather than the pleasures of song,” although he was aware that he
was not yet ripe for it—
“But, my flag is not unfurl’d
On the Admiral-staff, and to philosophize
I dare not yet.”
Even in his pursuit of “the pleasures of song,” however, there is that
stamp of high work which is akin to character, which is character
passing into intellectual production. “_The best sort of poetry_—that,”
he truly says, “is all I care for, all I live for.” It is curious to
observe how this severe addiction of his to the best sort of poetry
affects him with a certain coldness, as if the addiction had been to
mathematics, towards those prime objects of a sensuous and passionate
poet’s regard, love and women. He speaks of “the opinion I have formed
of the generality of women, who appear to me as children to whom I would
rather give a sugar-plum than my time.” He confesses “a tendency to
class women in my books with roses and sweetmeats—they never see
themselves dominant;” and he can understand how the unpopularity of his
poems may be in part due to “the offense which the ladies,” not
unnaturally “take at him” from this cause. Even to Fanny Brawne he can
write “a flint-worded letter,” when his “mind is heaped to the full”
with poetry:—
“I know the generality of women would hate me for this; that I should
have so unsoftened, so hard a mind as to forget them; forget the
brightest realities for the dull imaginations of my own brain.... My
heart seems now made of iron—I could not write a proper answer to an
invitation to Idalia.”
The truth is that “the yearning passion for the Beautiful,” which was
with Keats, as he himself truly says, the master-passion, is not a
passion, of the sensuous or sentimental man, is not a passion of the
sensuous or sentimental poet. It is an intellectual and spiritual
passion. It is “connected and made one,” as Keats declares that in his
case it was, “with the ambition of the intellect.” It is, as he again
says, “the mighty _abstract idea_ of Beauty in all things.” And in his
last days Keats wrote: “If I should die, I have left no immortal work
behind me—nothing to make my friends proud of my memory; _but I have
loved the principle of beauty in all things_, and if I had had time I
would have made myself remembered.” He _has_ made himself remembered,
and remembered as no merely sensuous poet could be; and he has done it
by having “loved the principle of beauty in all things.”
For to see things in their beauty is to see things in their truth, and
Keats knew it. “What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth,” he
says in prose; and in immortal verse he has said the same thing—
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
No, it is not all; but it is true, deeply true, and we have deep need to
know it. And with beauty goes not only truth, joy goes with her also;
and this too Keats saw and said, as in the famous first line of his
_Endymion_ it stands written—
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”
It is no small thing to have so loved the principle of beauty as to
perceive the necessary relation of beauty with truth, and of both with
joy. Keats was a great spirit, and counts for far more than many even of
his admirers suppose, because this just and high perception made itself
clear to him. Therefore a dignity and a glory shed gleams over his life,
and happiness, too, was not a stranger to it. “Nothing startles me
beyond the moment,” he says; “the setting sun will always set me to
rights, or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its
existence and pick about the gravel.” But he had terrible
bafflers,—consuming disease and early death. “I think,” he writes to
Reynolds, “If I had a free and healthy and lasting organization of
heart, and lungs as strong as an ox’s, so as to be able to bear unhurt
the shock of extreme thought and sensation without weariness, I could
pass my life very nearly alone, though it should last eighty years. But
I feel my body too weak to support me to the height; I am obliged
continually to check myself, and be nothing.” He had against him even
more than this; he had against him the blind power which we call
Fortune. “O that something fortunate,” he cries in the closing months of
his life, “had ever happened to me or my brothers!—then I might
hope,—but despair is forced upon me as a habit.” So baffled and so
sorely tried,—while laden, at the same time, with a mighty formative
thought requiring health, and many days, and favoring circumstances, for
its adequate manifestation,—what wonder if the achievement of Keats be
partial and incomplete?
Nevertheless, let and hindered as he was, and with a short term and
imperfect experience,—“young,” as he says of himself, “and writing at
random, straining after particles of light in the midst of a great
darkness, without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one
opinion,”—notwithstanding all this, by virtue of his feeling for beauty
and of his perception of the vital connection of beauty with truth,
Keats accomplished so much in poetry, that in one of the two great modes
by which poetry interprets, in the faculty of naturalistic
interpretation, in what we call natural magic, he ranks with
Shakespeare. “The tongue of Kean,” he says in an admirable criticism of
that great actor and of his enchanting elocution, “the tongue of Kean
must seem to have robbed the Hybla bees and left them honeyless. There
is an indescribable _gusto_ in his voice; in _Richard_, ‘Be stirring
with the lark tomorrow, gentle Norfolk!’ comes from him as through the
morning atmosphere towards which he yearns.” This magic, this
“indescribable _gusto_ in the voice,” Keats himself, too, exhibits in
his poetic expression. No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare,
has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his
perfection of loveliness. “I think,” he said humbly, “I shall be among
the English poets after my death.” He is; he is with Shakespeare.
For the second great half of poetic interpretation, for that faculty of
moral interpretation which is in Shakespeare, and is informed by him
with the same power of beauty as his naturalistic interpretation, Keats
was not ripe. For the architectonics of poetry, the faculty which
presides at the evolution of works like the _Agamemnon_ or _Lear_, he
was not ripe. His _Endymion_, as he himself well saw, is a failure, and
his _Hyperion_, fine things as it contains, is not a success. But in
shorter things, where the matured power of moral interpretation, and the
high architectonics which go with complete poetic development, are not
required, he is perfect. The poems which follow prove it,—prove it far
better by themselves than anything which can be said about them will
prove it. Therefore I have chiefly spoken here of the man, and of the
elements in him which explain the production of such work. Shakespearian
work it is; not imitative, indeed, of Shakespeare, but Shakespearian,
because its expression has that rounded perfection and felicity of
loveliness of which Shakespeare is the great master. To show such work
is to praise it. Let us now end by delighting ourselves with a fragment
of it, too broken to find a place among the pieces which follow, but far
too beautiful to be lost. It is a fragment of an ode for May-day. O
might I, he cries to May, O might I
“... thy smiles
Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles,
By bards who died content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan!
O, give me their old vigor, and unheard
Save of the quiet primrose, and the span
Of heaven, and few years,
Rounded by thee, my song should die away,
Content as theirs,
Rich in the simple worship of a day!”
V.
WORDSWORTH.[37]
-----
Footnote 37:
The preface to _The Poems of Wordsworth_, chosen and edited by Matthew
Arnold, 1879.
-----
I remember hearing Lord Macaulay say, after Wordsworth’s death, when
subscriptions were being collected to found a memorial of him, that ten
years earlier more money could have been raised in Cambridge alone, to
do honor to Wordsworth, than was now raised all through the country.
Lord Macaulay had, as we know, his own heightened and telling way of
putting things, and we must always make allowance for it. But probably
it is true that Wordsworth has never, either before or since, been so
accepted and popular, so established in possession of the minds of all
who profess to care for poetry, as he was between the years 1830 and
1840, and at Cambridge. From the very first, no doubt, he had his
believers and witnesses. But I have myself heard him declare that, for
he knew not how many years, his poetry had never brought him in enough
to buy his shoe-strings. The poetry-reading public was very slow to
recognize him, and was very easily drawn away from him. Scott effaced
him with this public, Byron effaced him.
The death of Byron, seemed, however, to make an opening for Wordsworth.
Scott, who had for some time ceased to produce poetry himself, and stood
before the public as a great novelist; Scott, too genuine himself not to
feel the profound genuineness of Wordsworth, and with an instinctive
recognition of his firm hold on nature and of his local truth, always
admired him sincerely, and praised him generously. The influence of
Coleridge upon young men of ability was then powerful, and was still
gathering strength; this influence told entirely in favor of
Wordsworth’s poetry. Cambridge was a place where Coleridge’s influence
had great action, and where Wordsworth’s poetry, therefore, flourished
especially. But even amongst the general public its sale grew large, the
eminence of its author was widely recognized, and Rydal Mount became an
object of pilgrimage. I remember Wordsworth relating how one of the
pilgrims, a clergyman, asked him if he had ever written anything besides
the _Guide to the Lakes_. Yes, he answered modestly, he had written
verses. Not every pilgrim was a reader, but the vogue was established
and the stream of pilgrims came.
Mr. Tennyson’s decisive appearance dates from 1842. One cannot say that
he effaced Wordsworth as Scott and Byron had effaced him. The poetry of
Wordsworth had been so long before the public, the suffrage of good
judges was so steady and so strong in its favor, that by 1842 the
verdict of posterity, one may almost say, had been already pronounced,
and Wordsworth’s English fame was secure. But the vogue, the ear and
applause of the great body of poetry-readers, never quite thoroughly
perhaps his, he gradually lost more and more, and Mr. Tennyson gained
them. Mr. Tennyson drew to himself, and away from Wordsworth, the
poetry-reading public, and the new generations. Even in 1850, when
Wordsworth died, this diminution of popularity was visible, and
occasioned the remark of Lord Macaulay which I quoted at starting.
The diminution has continued. The influence of Coleridge has waned, and
Wordsworth’s poetry can no longer draw succor from this ally. The poetry
has not, however, wanted eulogists; and it may be said to have brought
its eulogists luck, for almost every one who has praised Wordsworth’s
poetry has praised it well. But the public has remained cold, or, at
least, undetermined. Even the abundance of Mr. Palgrave’s fine and
skilfully chosen specimens of Wordsworths, in the _Golden Treasury_,
surprised many readers, and gave offense to not a few. To tenth-rate
critics and compilers, for whom any violent shock to the public taste
would be a temerity not to be risked, it is still quite permissible to
speak of Wordsworth’s poetry, not only with ignorance, but with
impertinence. On the Continent he is almost unknown.
I cannot think, then, that Wordsworth has, up to this time, at all
obtained his deserts. “Glory,” said M. Renan the other day, “glory after
all is the thing which has the best chance of not being altogether
vanity.” Wordsworth was a homely man, and himself would certainly never
have thought of talking of glory as that which, after all, has the best
chance of not being altogether vanity. Yet we may well allow that few
things are less vain than _real_ glory. Let us conceive of the whole
group of civilized nations as being, for intellectual and spiritual
purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working
towards a common result; a confederation whose members have a due
knowledge both of the past, out of which they all proceed, and of one
another. This was the ideal of Goethe, and it is an ideal which will
impose itself upon the thoughts of our modern societies more and more.
Then to be recognized by the verdict of such a confederation as a
master, or even as a seriously and eminently worthy workman, in one’s
own line of intellectual or spiritual activity, is indeed glory; a glory
which it would be difficult to rate too highly. For what could be more
beneficent, more salutary? The world is forwarded by having its
attention fixed on the best things; and here is a tribunal, free from
all suspicion of national and provincial partiality, putting a stamp on
the best things, and recommending them for general honor and acceptance.
A nation, again, is furthered by recognition of its real gifts and
successes; it is encouraged to develop them further. And here is an
honest verdict, telling us which of our supposed successes are really,
in the judgment of the great impartial world, and not only in our own
private judgment only, successes, and which are not.
It is so easy to feel pride and satisfaction in one’s own things, so
hard to make sure that one is right in feeling it! We have a great
empire. But so had Nebuchadnezzar. We extol the “unrivaled happiness” of
our national civilization. But then comes a candid friend, and remarks
that our upper class is materialized, our middle class vulgarized, and
our lower class brutalized. We are proud of our painting, our music. But
we find that in the judgment of other people our painting is
questionable, and our music non-existent. We are proud of our men of
science. And here it turns out that the world is with us; we find that
in the judgment of other people, too, Newton among the dead, and Mr.
Darwin among the living, hold as high a place as they hold in our
national opinion.
Finally, we are proud of our poets and poetry. Now poetry is nothing
less than the most perfect speech of man, that in which he comes nearest
to being able to utter the truth. It is no small thing, therefore, to
succeed eminently in poetry. And so much is required for duly estimating
success here, that about poetry it is perhaps hardest to arrive at a
sure general verdict, and takes longest. Meanwhile, our own conviction
of the superiority of our national poets is not decisive, is almost
certain to be mingled, as we see constantly in English eulogy of
Shakespeare, with much of provincial infatuation. And we know what was
the opinion current amongst our neighbors the French—people of taste,
acuteness, and quick literary tact—not a hundred years ago, about our
great poets. The old _Biographie Universelle_ notices the pretension of
the English to a place for their poets among the chief poets of the
world, and says that this is a pretension which to no one but an
Englishman can ever seem admissible. And the scornful, disparaging
things said by foreigners about Shakespeare and Milton, and about our
national over-estimate of them, have been often quoted, and will be in
every one’s remembrance.
A great change has taken place, and Shakespeare is now generally
recognized, even in France, as one of the greatest of poets. Yes, some
anti-Gallican cynic will say, the French rank him with Corneille and
with Victor Hugo! But let me have the pleasure of quoting a sentence
about Shakespeare, which I met with by accident not long ago in the
_Correspondant_, a French review which not a dozen English people, I
suppose, look at. The writer is praising Shakespeare’s prose. With
Shakespeare, he says, “prose comes in whenever the subject, being more
familiar, is unsuited to the majestic English iambic.” And he goes on:
“Shakespeare is the king of poetic rhythm and style, as well as the king
of the realm of thought; along with his dazzling prose, Shakespeare has
succeeded in giving us the most varied, the most harmonious verse which
has ever sounded upon the human ear since the verse of the Greeks.” M.
Henry Cochin, the writer of this sentence, deserves our gratitude for
it; it would not be easy to praise Shakespeare, in a single sentence,
more justly. And when a foreigner and a Frenchman writes thus of
Shakespeare, and when Goethe says of Milton, in whom there was so much
to repel Goethe rather than to attract him, that “nothing has been ever
done so entirely in the sense of the Greeks as _Samson Agonistes_,” and
that “Milton is in very truth a poet whom we must treat with all
reverence,” then we understand what constitutes a European recognition
of poets and poetry as contradistinguished from a merely national
recognition, and that in favor both of Milton and of Shakespeare the
judgment of the high court of appeal has finally gone.
I come back to M. Renan’s praise of glory, from which I started. Yes,
real glory is a most serious thing, glory authenticated by the
Amphiotyonic Court of final appeal, definite glory. And even for poets
and poetry, long and difficult as may be the process of arriving at the
right award, the right award comes at last, the definite glory rests
where it is deserved. Every establishment of such a real glory is good
and wholesome for mankind at large, good and wholesome for the nation
which produced the poet crowned with it. To the poet himself it can
seldom do harm; for he, poor man, is in his grave, probably, long before
his glory crowns him.
Wordsworth has been in his grave for some thirty years, and certainly
his lovers and admirers cannot flatter themselves that this great and
steady light of glory as yet shines over him. He is not fully recognized
at home; he is not recognized at all abroad. Yet I firmly believe that
the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shakespeare and
Milton, of which all the world now recognizes the worth, undoubtedly the
most considerable in our language from the Elizabethan age to the
present time. Chaucer is anterior; and on other grounds, too, he cannot
well be brought into the comparison. But taking the roll of our chief
poetical names, besides Shakespeare and Milton, from the age of
Elizabeth downwards, and going through it,—Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray,
Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, Scott, Campbell, Moore, Byron,
Shelley, Keats (I mention those only who are dead),—I think it certain
that Wordsworth’s name deserves to stand, and will finally stand, above
them all. Several of the poets named have gifts and excellences which
Wordsworth has not. But taking the performance of each as a whole, I say
that Wordsworth seems to me to have left a body of poetical work
superior in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring
freshness, to that which any one of the others has left.
But this is not enough to say. I think it certain, further, that if we
take the chief poetical names of the Continent since the death of
Molière, and, omitting Goethe, confront the remaining names with that of
Wordsworth, the result is the same. Let us take Klopstock, Lessing,
Schiller, Uhland, Rückert, and Heine for Germany; Filicaia, Alfieri,
Manzoni, and Leopardi for Italy; Racine, Boileau, Voltaire, André
Chenier, Béranger, Lamartine, Musset, M. Victor Hugo (he has been so
long celebrated that although he still lives I may be permitted to name
him) for France. Several of these, again, have evidently gifts and
excellences to which Wordsworth can make no pretension. But in real
poetical achievement it seems to me indubitable that to Wordsworth, here
again, belongs the palm. It seems to me that Wordsworth has left behind
him a body of poetical work which wears, and will wear, better on the
whole than the performance of any one of these personages, so far more
brilliant and celebrated, most of them, than the homely poet of Rydal.
Wordsworth’s performance in poetry is on the whole, in power, in
interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness, superior to
theirs.
This is a high claim to make for Wordsworth. But if it is a just claim,
if Wordsworth’s place among the poets who have appeared in the last two
or three centuries is after Shakespeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe,
indeed, but before all the rest, then in time Wordsworth will have his
due. We shall recognize him in his place, as we recognize Shakespeare
and Milton; and not only we ourselves shall recognize him, but he will
be recognized by Europe also. Meanwhile, those who recognize him already
may do well, perhaps, to ask themselves whether there are not in the
case of Wordsworth certain special obstacles which hinder or delay his
due recognition by others, and whether these obstacles are not in some
measure removable.
The _Excursion_ and the _Prelude_, his poems of greatest bulk, are by no
means Wordsworth’s best work. His best work is in his shorter pieces,
and many indeed are there of these which are of first-rate excellence.
But in his seven volumes the pieces of high merit are mingled with a
mass of pieces very inferior to them; so inferior to them that it seems
wonderful how the same poet should have produced both. Shakespeare
frequently has lines and passages in a strain quite false, and which are
entirely unworthy of him. But one can imagine him smiling if one could
meet him in the Elysian Fields and tell him so; smiling and replying
that he knew it perfectly well himself, and what did it matter? But with
Wordsworth the case is different. Work altogether inferior, work quite
uninspired, flat and dull, is produced by him with evident
unconsciousness of its defects, and he presents it to us with the same
faith and seriousness as his best work. Now a drama or an epic fill the
mind, and one does not look beyond them; but in a collection of short
pieces the impression made by one piece requires to be continued and
sustained by the piece following. In reading Wordsworth the impression
made by one of his fine pieces is too often dulled and spoiled by a very
inferior piece coming after it.
Wordsworth composed verses during a space of some sixty years; and it is
no exaggeration to say that within one single decade of those years,
between 1798 and 1808, almost all his really first-rate work was
produced. A mass of inferior work remains, work done before and after
this golden prime, imbedding the first-rate work and clogging it,
obstructing our approach to it, chilling, not unfrequently, the
high-wrought mood with which we leave it. To be recognized far and wide
as a great poet, to be possible and receivable as a classic, Wordsworth
needs to be relieved of a great deal of the poetical baggage which now
encumbers him. To administer this relief is indispensable, unless he is
to continue to be a poet for the few only,—a poet valued far below his
real worth by the world.
There is another thing. Wordsworth classified his poems not according to
any commonly received plan of arrangement, but according to a scheme of
mental physiology. He has poems of the fancy, poems of the imagination,
poems of sentiment and reflection, and so on. His categories are
ingenious but far-fetched, and the result of his employment of them is
unsatisfactory. Poems are separated one from another which possess a
kinship of subject or of treatment far more vital and deep than the
supposed unity of mental origin, which was Wordsworth’s reason for
joining them with others.
The tact of the Greeks in matters of this kind was infallible. We may
rely upon it that we shall not improve upon the classification adopted
by the Greeks for kinds of poetry; that their categories of epic,
dramatic, lyric, and so forth, have a natural propriety, and should be
adhered to. It may sometimes seem doubtful to which of two categories a
poem belongs; whether this or that poem is to be called, for instance,
narrative or lyric, lyric or elegiac. But there is to be found in every
good poem a strain, a predominant note, which determines the poem as
belonging to one of these kinds rather than the other; and here is the
best proof of the value of the classification, and of the advantage of
adhering to it. Wordsworth’s poems will never produce their due effect
until they are freed from their present artificial arrangement, and
grouped more naturally.
Disengaged from the quantity of inferior work which now obscures them,
the best poems of Wordsworth, I hear many people say, would indeed stand
out in great beauty, but they would prove to be very few in number,
scarcely more than a half a dozen. I maintain, on the other hand, that
what strikes me with admiration, what establishes in my opinion
Wordsworth’s superiority, is the great and ample body of powerful work
which remains to him, even after all his inferior work has been cleared
away. He gives us so much to rest upon, so much which communicates his
spirit and engages ours!
This is of very great importance. If it were a comparison of single
pieces, or of three or four pieces, by each poet, I do not say that
Wordsworth would stand decisively above Gray, or Burns, or Coleridge, or
Keats, or Manzoni, or Heine. It is in his ampler body of powerful work
that I find his superiority. His good work itself, his work which
counts, is not all of it, of course, of equal value. Some kinds of
poetry are in themselves lower kinds than others. The ballad kind is a
lower kind; the didactic kind, still more, is a lower kind. Poetry of
this latter sort counts, too, sometimes, by its biographical interest
partly, not by its poetical interest pure and simple; but then this can
only be when the poet producing it has the power and importance of
Wordsworth, a power and importance which he assuredly did not establish
by such didactic poetry alone. Altogether, it is, I say, by the great
body of powerful and significant work which remains to him, after every
reduction and deduction has been made, that Wordsworth’s superiority is
proved.
To exhibit this body of Wordsworth’s best work, to clear away
obstructions from around it, and to let it speak for itself, is what
every lover of Wordsworth should desire. Until this has been done,
Wordsworth, whom we, to whom he is dear, all of us know and feel to be
so great a poet, has not had a fair chance before the world. When once
it has been done, he will make his way best, not by our advocacy of him,
but by his own worth and power. We may safely leave him to make his way
thus, we who believe that a superior worth and power in poetry finds in
mankind a sense responsive to it and disposed at last to recognize it.
Yet at the outset, before he has been duly known and recognized, we may
do Wordsworth a service, perhaps, by indicating in what his superior
power and worth will be found to consist, and in what it will not.
Long ago, in speaking of Homer, I said that the noble and profound
application of ideas to life is the most essential part of poetic
greatness. I said that a great poet receives his distinctive character
of superiority from his application, under the conditions immutably
fixed by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth, from his
application, I say, to his subject, whatever it may be, of the ideas.
“On man, on nature, and on human life,”
which he has acquired for himself. The line quoted is Wordsworth’s own;
and his superiority arises from his powerful use, in his best pieces,
his powerful application to his subject, of ideas “on man, on nature,
and on human life.”
Voltaire, with his signal acuteness, most truly remarked that “no nation
has treated in poetry moral ideas with more energy and depth than the
English nation.” And he adds: “There, it seems to me, is the great merit
of the English poets.” Voltaire does not mean, by “treating in poetry
moral ideas,” the composing moral and didactic poems;—that brings us but
a very little way in poetry. He means just the same thing as was meant
when I spoke above “of the noble and profound application of ideas to
life”; and he means the application of these ideas under the conditions
fixed for us by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth. If it is
said that to call these ideas _moral_ ideas is to introduce a strong and
injurious limitation, I answer that it is to do nothing of the kind,
because moral ideas are really so main a part of human life. The
question, _how to live_, is itself a moral idea; and it is the question
which most interests every man, and with which, in some way or other, he
is perpetually occupied. A large sense is of course to be given to the
term _moral_. Whatever bears upon the question, “how to live,” comes
under it.
“Nor love thy life, nor hate; but, what thou liv’st,
Live well; how long or short, permit to heaven.”
In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once perceives, a
moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats consoles the forward-bending
lover on the Grecian Urn, the lover arrested and presented in immortal
relief by the sculptor’s hand before he can kiss, with the line,
“Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair—”
he utters a moral idea. When Shakespeare says, that
“We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep,”
he utters a moral idea.
Voltaire was right in thinking that the energetic and profound treatment
of moral ideas, in this large sense, is what distinguishes the English
poetry. He sincerely meant praise, not dispraise or hint of limitation;
and they err who suppose that poetic limitation is a necessary
consequence of the fact, the fact being granted as Voltaire states it.
If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound
application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny,
then to prefix to the term ideas here the term moral makes hardly any
difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree
moral.
It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at
bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his
powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life,—to the question:
How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion;
they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had
their day; they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional
dealers; they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, at times,
even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a poetry which might take
for its motto Omar Kheyam’s words: “Let us make up in the tavern for the
time which we have wasted in the mosque.” Or we find attractions in a
poetry indifferent to them; in a poetry where the contents may be what
they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude
ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let
our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word _life_, until we
learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas
is a poetry of revolt against _life_; a poetry of indifference towards
moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards _life_.
Epictetus had a happy figure for things like the play of the senses, or
literary form and finish, or argumentative ingenuity, in comparison with
“the best and master thing” for us, as he called it, the concern, how to
live. Some people were afraid of them, he said, or they disliked and
undervalued them. Such people were wrong; they were unthankful or
cowardly. But the things might also be over-prized, and treated as final
when they are not. They bear to life the relation which inns bear to
home. “As if a man, journeying home, and finding a nice inn on the road,
and liking it, were to stay forever at the inn! Man, thou hast forgotten
thine object; thy journey was not _to_ this, but _through_ this. ‘But
this inn is taking.’ And how many other inns, too, are taking, and how
many fields and meadows! but as places of passage merely. You have an
object, which is this: to get home, to do your duty to your family,
friends, and fellow-countrymen, to attain inward freedom, serenity,
happiness, contentment. Style takes your fancy, arguing takes your
fancy, and you forget your home and want to make your abode with them
and to stay with them, on the plea that they are taking. Who denies that
they are taking? but as places, of passage, as inns. And when I say
this, you suppose me to be attacking the care for style, the care for
argument. I am not; I attack the resting in them, the not looking to the
end which is beyond them.”
Now, when we come across a poet like Théophile Gautier, we have a poet
who has taken up his abode at an inn, and never got farther. There may
be inducements to this or that one of us, at this or that moment, to
find delight in him, to cleave to him; but after all, we do not change
the truth about him,—we only stay ourselves in his inn along with him.
And when we come across a poet like Wordsworth, who sings
“Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope.
And melancholy fear subdued by faith,
Of blessed consolations in distress,
Of moral strength and intellectual power,
Of joy in widest commonalty spread”—
then we have a poet intent on “the best and master thing,” and who
prosecutes his journey home. We say, for brevity’s sake, that he deals
with _life_, because he deals with that in which life really consists.
This is what Voltaire means to praise in the English poets,—this dealing
with what is really life. But always it is the mark of the greatest
poets that they deal with it; and to say that the English poets are
remarkable for dealing with it, is only another way of saying, what is
true, that in poetry the English genius has especially shown its power.
Wordsworth deals with it, and his greatness lies in his dealing with it
so powerfully. I have named a number of celebrated poets above all of
whom he, in my opinion, deserves to be placed. He is to be placed above
poets like Voltaire, Dryden, Pope, Lessing, Schiller, because these
famous personages, with a thousand gifts and merits, never, or scarcely
ever, attain the distinctive accent and utterance of the high and
genuine poets—
“Quique pii vates et Phœbo digna locuti,”
at all. Burns, Keats, Heine, not to speak of others in our list, have
this accent;—who can doubt it? And at the same time they have treasures
of humor, felicity, passion, for which in Wordsworth we shall look in
vain. Where, then, is Wordsworth’s superiority? It is here; he deals
with more of _life_ than they do; he deals with _life_, as a whole, more
powerfully.
No Wordsworthian will doubt this. Nay, the fervent Wordsworthian will
add, as Mr. Leslie Stephen does, that Wordsworth’s poetry is precious
because his philosophy is sound; that his “ethical system is as
distinctive and capable of exposition as Bishop Butler’s;” that his
poetry is informed by ideas which “fall spontaneously into a scientific
system of thought.” But we must be on our guard against the
Wordsworthians, if we want to secure for Wordsworth his due rank as a
poet. The Wordsworthians are apt to praise him for the wrong things, and
to lay far too much stress upon what they call his philosophy. His
poetry is the reality, his philosophy,—so far, at least, as it may put
on the form and habit of “a scientific system of thought,” and the more
that it puts them on,—is the illusion. Perhaps we shall one day learn to
make this proposition general, and to say: Poetry is the reality,
philosophy the illusion. But in Wordsworth’s case, at any rate, we
cannot do him justice until we dismiss his formal philosophy.
The _Excursion_ abounds with philosophy, and therefore the _Excursion_
is to the Wordsworthian what it never can be to the disinterested lover
of poetry,—a satisfactory work. “Duty exists,” says Wordsworth, in the
_Excursion_; and then he proceeds thus—
“... Immutably survive,
For our support, the measures and the forms,
Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,
Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not.”
And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that here is a sweet
union of philosophy and poetry. But the disinterested lover of poetry
will feel that the lines carry us really not a step farther than the
proposition which they would interpret; that they are a tissue of
elevated but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry.
Or let us come direct to the center of Wordsworth’s philosophy, as “an
ethical system, as distinctive and capable of systematical exposition as
Bishop Butler’s”—
“... One adequate support
For the calamities of mortal life
Exists, one only;—an assured belief
That the procession of our fate, howe’er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power;
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good.”
That is doctrine such as we hear in church too, religious and
philosophic doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves passages of
such doctrine, and brings them forward in proof of his poet’s
excellence. But however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here
presented, none of the characters of _poetic_ truth, the kind of truth
which we require from a poet, and in which Wordsworth is really strong.
Even the “intimation” of the famous Ode, those cornerstones of the
supposed philosophic system of Wordsworth,—the idea of the high
instincts and affections coming out in childhood, testifying of a divine
home recently left, and fading away as our life proceeds,—this idea, of
undeniable beauty as a play of fancy, has itself not the character of
poetic truth of the best kind; it has no real solidity. The instinct of
delight in Nature and her beauty had no doubt extraordinary strength in
Wordsworth himself as a child. But to say that universally this instinct
is mighty in childhood, and tends to die away afterwards, is to say what
is extremely doubtful. In many people, perhaps with the majority of
educated persons, the love of nature is nearly imperceptible at ten
years old, but strong and operative at thirty. In general we may say of
these high instincts of early childhood, the base of the alleged
systematic philosophy of Wordsworth, what Thucydides says of the early
achievements of the Greek race: “It is impossible to speak with
certainty of what is so remote; but from all that we can really
investigate, I should say that they were no very great things.”
Finally, the “scientific system of thought” in Wordsworth gives us at
least such poetry as this, which the devout Wordsworthian accepts—
“O for the coming of that glorious time
When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth
And best protection, this Imperial Realm,
While she exacts allegiance, shall admit
An obligation, on her part, to _teach_
Them who are born to serve her and obey;
Binding herself by statute to secure,
For all the children whom her soil maintains,
The rudiments of letters, and inform
The mind with moral and religious truth.”
Wordsworth calls Voltaire dull, and surely the production of these
un-Voltairian lines must have been imposed on him as a judgment! One can
hear them being quoted at a Social Science Congress; one can call up the
whole scene. A great room in one of our dismal provincial towns; dusty
air and jaded afternoon daylight; benches full of men with bald heads
and women in spectacles; an orator lifting up his face from a manuscript
written within and without to declaim these lines of Wordsworth; and in
the soul of any poor child of nature who may have wandered in thither,
an unutterable sense of lamentation, and mourning, and woe!
“But turn we,” as Wordsworth says, “from these bold, bad men,” the
haunters of Social Science Congresses. And let us be on our guard, too,
against the exhibitors and extollers of a “scientific system of thought”
in Wordsworth’s poetry. The poetry will never be seen aright while they
thus exhibit it. The cause of its greatness is simple, and may be told
quite simply. Wordsworth’s poetry is great because of the extraordinary
power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the
joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties; and
because of the extraordinary power with which, in case after case, he
shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make us share it.
The source of joy from which he thus draws is the truest and most
unfailing source of joy accessible to man. It is also accessible
universally. Wordsworth brings us word, therefore, according to his own
strong and characteristic line, he brings us word
“Of joy in widest commonalty spread.”
Here is an immense advantage for a poet. Wordsworth tells of what all
seek, and tells of it at its truest and best source, and yet a source
where all may go and draw for it.
Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that everything is precious which
Wordsworth, standing even at this perennial and beautiful source, may
give us. Wordsworthians are apt to talk as if it must be. They will
speak with the same reverence of _The Sailor’s Mother_, for example, as
of _Lucy Gray_. They do their master harm by such lack of
discrimination. _Lucy Gray_ is a beautiful success; _The Sailor’s
Mother_ is a failure. To give aright what he wishes to give, to
interpret and render successfully, is not always within Wordsworth’s own
command. It is within no poet’s command; here is the part of the Muse,
the inspiration, the God, the “not ourselves.” In Wordsworth’s case, the
accident, for so it may almost be called, of inspiration, is of peculiar
importance. No poet, perhaps, is so evidently filled with a new and
sacred energy when the inspiration is upon him; no poet, when it fails
him, is so left “weak as is a breaking wave.” I remember hearing him say
that “Goethe’s poetry was not inevitable enough.” The remark is striking
and true; no line in Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but its maker knew
well how it came there. Wordsworth is right, Goethe’s poetry is not
inevitable; not inevitable enough. But Wordsworth’s poetry, when he is
at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself. It might
seem that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem, but wrote
his poem for him. He has no style. He was too conversant with Milton not
to catch at times his master’s manner, and he has fine Miltonic lines;
but he has no assured poetic style of his own, like Milton. When he
seeks to have a style he falls into ponderosity and pomposity. In the
_Excursion_ we have his style, as an artistic product of his own
creation; and although Jeffrey completely failed to recognize
Wordsworth’s real greatness, he was yet not wrong in saying of the
_Excursion_, as a work of poetic style: “This will never do.” And yet
magical as is that power, which Wordsworth has not, of assured and
possessed poetic style, he has something which is an equivalent for it.
Every one who has any sense for these things feels the subtle turn, the
heightening, which is given to a poet’s verse by his genius for style.
We can feel it in the
“After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well”—
of Shakespeare; in the
“... though fall’n on evil days,
On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues”—
of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton’s power of poetic
style which gives such worth to _Paradise Regained_, and makes a great
poem of a work in which Milton’s imagination does not soar high.
Wordsworth has in constant possession, and at command, no style of this
kind; but he had too poetic a nature, and had read the great poets too
well, not to catch, as I have already remarked, something of it
occasionally. We find it not only in his Miltonic lines; we find it in
such a phrase as this, where the manner is his own, not Milton’s—
“the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow barricadoed evermore
Within the walls of cities;”
although even here, perhaps, the power of style which is undeniable, is
more properly that of eloquent prose than the subtle heightening and
change wrought by genuine poetic style. It is style, again, and the
elevation given by style, which chiefly makes the effectiveness of
_Laodameia_. Still the right sort of verse to choose from Wordsworth, if
we are to seize his true and most characteristic form of expression, is
a line like this from _Michael_—
“And never lifted up a single stone.”
There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style,
strictly so called, at all; yet it is expression of the highest and most
truly expressive kind.
Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of perfect plainness, relying
for effect solely on the weight and force of that which with entire
fidelity it utters, Burns could show him.
“The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low
And stain’d his name.”
Every one will be conscious of a likeness here to Wordsworth; and if
Wordsworth did great things with this nobly plain manner, we must
remember, what indeed he himself would always have been forward to
acknowledge, that Burns used it before him.
Still Wordsworth’s use of it has something unique and unmatchable.
Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to
write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises
from two causes; from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth
feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural
character of his subject itself. He can and will treat such a subject
with nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere naturalness.
His expression may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem
of _Resolution and Independence_; but it is bald as the bare mountain
tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur.
Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound
truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is unique. His
best poems are those which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a
warm admiration for _Laodameia_ and for the great _Ode_; but if I am to
tell the very truth, I find _Laodameia_ not wholly free from something
artificial, and the great _Ode_ not wholly free from something
declamatory. If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show
Wordsworth’s unique power, I should rather choose poems such as
_Michael_, _The Fountain_, _The Highland Reaper_. And poems with the
peculiar and unique beauty which distinguishes these, Wordsworth
produced in considerable number; besides very many other poems of which
the worth, although not so rare as the worth of these, is still
exceedingly high.
On the whole, then, as I said at the beginning, not only is Wordsworth
eminent by reason of the goodness of his best work, but he is eminent
also by reason of the great body of good work which he has left to us.
With the ancients I will not compare him. In many respects the ancients
are far above us, and yet there is something that we demand which they
can never give. Leaving the ancients, let us come to the poets and
poetry of Christendom. Dante, Shakespeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe, are
altogether larger and more splendid luminaries in the poetical heaven
than Wordsworth. But I know not where else, among the moderns, we are to
find his superiors.
To disengage the poems which show his power, and to present them to the
English-speaking public and to the world, is the object of this volume.
I by no means say that it contains all which in Wordsworth’s poems is
interesting. Except in the case of _Margaret_, a story composed
separately from the rest of the _Excursion_, and which belongs to a
different part of England, I have not ventured on detaching portions of
poems, or on giving any piece otherwise than as Wordsworth himself gave
it. But under the conditions imposed by this reserve, the volume
contains, I think, everything, or nearly everything, which may best
serve him with the majority of lovers of poetry, nothing which may
disserve him.
I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians; and if we are to get Wordsworth
recognized by the public and by the world, we must recommend him not in
the spirit of a clique, but in the spirit of disinterested lovers of
poetry. But I am a Wordsworthian myself. I can read with pleasure and
edification _Peter Bell_, and the whole series of _Ecclesiastical
Sonnets_, and the address to Mr. Wilkinson’s spade, and even the
_Thanksgiving Ode_;—everything of Wordsworth, I think, except
_Vaudracour and Julia_. It is not for nothing that one has been brought
up in the veneration of a man so truly worthy of homage; that one has
seen him and heard him, lived in his neighborhood, and been familiar
with his country. No Wordsworthian has a tenderer affection for this
pure and sage master than I, or is less really offended by his defects.
But Wordsworth is something more than the pure and sage master of a
small band of devoted followers, and we ought not to rest satisfied
until he is seen to be what he is. He is one of the very chief glories
of English Poetry; and by nothing is England so glorious as by her
poetry. Let us lay aside every weight which hinders our getting him
recognized as this, and let our one study be to bring to pass, as widely
as possible and as truly as possible, his own word concerning his poems:
‘They will co-operate with the benign tendencies in human nature and
society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser,
better, and happier.’
VI.
BYRON.[38]
-----
Footnote 38:
Preface to _Poetry of Byron_, chosen and arranged by Matthew Arnold,
1881.
-----
When at last I held in my hand the volume of poems which I had chosen
from Wordsworth, and began to turn over its pages, there arose in me
almost immediately the desire to see beside it, as a companion volume, a
like collection of the best poetry of Byron. Alone amongst our poets of
the earlier part of this century, Byron and Wordsworth not only furnish
material enough for a volume of this kind, but also, as it seems to me,
they both of them gain considerably by being thus exhibited. There are
poems of Coleridge and of Keats equal, if not superior, to anything of
Byron or Wordsworth; but a dozen pages or two will contain them, and the
remaining poetry is of a quality much inferior. Scott never, I think,
rises as a poet to the level of Byron and Wordsworth at all. On the
other hand, he never falls below his own usual level very far; and by a
volume of selections from him, therefore, his effectiveness is not
increased. As to Shelley there will be more question; and indeed Mr.
Stopford Brooke, whose accomplishments, eloquence, and love of poetry we
must all recognize and admire, has actually given us Shelley in such a
volume. But for my own part I cannot think that Shelley’s poetry, except
by snatches and fragments, has the value of the good work of Wordsworth
and Byron; or that it is possible for even Mr. Stopford Brooke to make
up a volume of selections from him which, for real substance, power, and
worth, can at all take rank with a like volume from Byron or Wordsworth.
Shelley knew quite well the difference between the achievement of such a
poet as Byron and his own. He praises Byron too unreservedly, but he
sincerely felt, and he was right in feeling, that Byron was a greater
poetical power than himself. As a man, Shelley is at a number of points
immeasurably Byron’s superior; he is a beautiful and enchanting spirit,
whose vision, when we call it up, has far more loveliness, more charm
for our soul, than the vision of Byron. But all the personal charm of
Shelley cannot hinder us from at last discovering in his poetry the
incurable want, in general, of a sound subject-matter, and the incurable
fault, in consequence, of unsubstantiality. Those who extol him as the
poet of clouds, the poet of sunsets, are only saying that he did not, in
fact, lay hold upon the poet’s right subject-matter; and in honest
truth, with all his charm of soul and spirit, and with all his gift of
musical diction and movement, he never, or hardly ever, did. Except, as
I have said, for a few short things and single stanzas, his original
poetry is less satisfactory than his translations, for in these the
subject-matter was found for him. Nay, I doubt whether his delightful
Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far more read than they are now,
will not resist the wear and tear of time better, and finally come to
stand higher, than his poetry.
There remain to be considered Byron and Wordsworth. That Wordsworth
affords good material for a volume of selections, and that he gains by
having his poetry thus presented, is an old belief of mine which led me
lately to make up a volume of poems chosen out of Wordsworth, and to
bring it before the public. By its kind reception of the volume, the
public seems to show itself a partaker in my belief. Now Byron also
supplies plenty of material for a like volume, and he too gains, I
think, by being so presented. Mr. Swinburne urges, indeed, that “Byron,
who rarely wrote anything either worthless or faultless, can only be
judged or appreciated in the mass; the greatest of his works was his
whole work taken together.” It is quite true that Byron rarely wrote
anything either worthless or faultless; it is quite true also that in
the appreciation of Byron’s power a sense of the amount and variety of
his work, defective though much of his work is, enters justly into our
estimate. But although there may be little in Byron’s poetry which can
be pronounced either worthless or faultless, there are portions of it
which are far higher in worth and far more free from fault than others.
And although, again, the abundance and variety of his production is
undoubtedly a proof of his power, yet I question whether by reading
everything which he gives us we are so likely to acquire an admiring
sense even of his variety and abundance, as by reading what he gives us
at his happier moments. Varied and abundant he amply proves himself even
by this taken alone. Receive him absolutely without omission or
compression, follow his whole out-pouring stanza by stanza and line by
line from the very commencement to the very end, and he is capable of
being tiresome.
Byron has told us himself that the _Giaour_ “is but a string of
passages.” He has made full confession of his own negligence. “No one,”
says he, “has done more through negligence to corrupt the language.”
This accusation brought by himself against his poems is not just; but
when he goes on to say of them, that “their faults, whatever they may
be, are those of negligence and not of labor,” he says what is perfectly
true. “_Lara_,” he declares, “I wrote while undressing after coming home
from balls and masquerades, in the year of revelry, 1814. The _Bride_
was written in four, the _Corsair_ in ten days.” He calls this “a
humiliating confession, as it proves my own want of judgment in
publishing, and the public’s in reading, things which cannot have
stamina for permanence.” Again he does his poems injustice; the producer
of such poems could not but publish them, the public could not but read
them. Nor could Byron have produced his work in any other fashion; his
poetic work could not have first grown and matured in his own mind, and
then come forth as an organic whole; Byron had not enough of the artist
in him for this, nor enough of self-command. He wrote, as he truly tells
us, to relieve himself, and he went on writing because he found the
relief become indispensable. But it was inevitable that works so
produced should be, in general, “a string of passages,” poured out, as
he describes them, with rapidity and excitement, and with new passages
constantly suggesting themselves, and added while his work was going
through the press. It is evident that we have here neither deliberate
scientific construction, nor yet the instinctive artistic creation of
poetic wholes; and that to take passages from work produced as Byron’s
was is a very different thing from taking passages out of the _Œdipus_
or the _Tempest_, and deprives the poetry far less of its advantage.
Nay, it gives advantage to the poetry, instead of depriving it of any.
Byron, I said, has not a great artist’s profound and patient skill in
combining an action or in developing a character,—a skill which we must
watch and follow if we are to do justice to it. But he has a wonderful
power of vividly conceiving a single incident, a single situation; of
throwing himself upon it, grasping it as if it were real and he saw and
felt it, and of making us see and feel it too. The _Giaour_ is, as he
truly called it, “a string of passages,” not a work moving by a deep
internal law of development to a necessary end; and our total impression
from it cannot but receive from this, its inherent defect, a certain
dimness and indistinctness. But the incidents of the journey and death
of Hassan, in that poem, are conceived and presented with a vividness
not to be surpassed; and our impression from them is correspondingly
clear and powerful. In _Lara_, again, there is no adequate development
either of the character of the chief personage or of the action of the
poem; our total impression from the work is a confused one. Yet such an
incident as the disposal of the slain Ezzelin’s body passes before our
eyes as if we actually saw it. And in the same way as these bursts of
incident, bursts of sentiment also, living and vigorous, often occur in
the midst of poems which must be admitted to be but weakly-conceived and
loosely-combined wholes. Byron cannot but be a gainer by having
attention concentrated upon what is vivid, powerful, effective in his
work, and withdrawn from what is not so.
Byron, I say, cannot but be a gainer by this, just as Wordsworth is a
gainer by a like proceeding. I esteem Wordsworth’s poetry so highly, and
the world, in my opinion, has done it such scant justice, that I could
not rest satisfied until I had fulfilled, on Wordsworth’s behalf, a
long-cherished desire;—had disengaged, to the best of my power, his good
work from the inferior work joined with it, and had placed before the
public the body of his good work by itself. To the poetry of Byron the
world has ardently paid homage; full justice from his contemporaries,
perhaps even more than justice, his torrent of poetry received. His
poetry was admired, adored, “with all its imperfections on its head,”—in
spite of negligence, in spite of diffuseness, in spite of repetitions,
in spite of whatever faults it possessed. His name is still great and
brilliant. Nevertheless the hour of irresistible vogue has passed away
for him; even for Byron it could not but pass away. The time has come
for him, as it comes for all poets, when he must take his real and
permanent place, no longer depending upon the vogue of his own day and
upon the enthusiasm of his contemporaries. Whatever we may think of him,
we shall not be subjugated by him as they were; for, as he cannot be for
us what he was for them, we cannot admire him so hotly and
indiscriminately as they. His faults of negligence, of diffuseness, of
repetition, his faults of whatever kind, we shall abundantly feel and
unsparingly criticise; the mere interval of time between us and him
makes disillusion of this kind inevitable. But how then will Byron
stand, if we relieve him too, so far as we can, of the encumbrance of
his inferior and weakest work, and if we bring before us his best and
strongest work in one body together? That is the question which I, who
can even remember the latter years of Byron’s vogue, and have myself
felt the expiring wave of that mighty influence, but who certainly also
regard him, and have long regarded him, without illusion, cannot but ask
myself, cannot but seek to answer. The present volume is an attempt to
provide adequate data for answering it.
Byron has been over-praised, no doubt. “Byron is one of our French
superstitions,” says M. Edmond Scherer; but where has Byron not been a
superstition? He pays now the penalty of this exaggerated worship.
“Alone among the English poets his contemporaries, Byron,” said M.
Taine, “_atteint à la cîme_,—gets to the top of the poetic mountain.”
But the idol that M. Taine had thus adored M. Scherer is almost for
burning. “In Byron,” he declares, “there is a remarkable inability ever
to lift himself into the region of real poetic art,—art impersonal and
disinterested,—at all. He has fecundity, eloquence, wit, but even these
qualities themselves are confined within somewhat narrow limits. He has
treated hardly any subject but one,—himself; now the man, in Byron, is
of a nature even less sincere than the poet. This beautiful and blighted
being is at bottom a coxcomb. He posed all his life long.”
Our poet could not well meet with more severe and unsympathetic
criticism. However, the praise often given to Byron has been so
exaggerated as to provoke, perhaps, a reaction in which he is unduly
disparaged. “As various in composition as Shakespeare himself, Lord
Byron has embraced,” says Sir Walter Scott, “every topic of human life,
and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its slightest to its
most powerful and heart-astounding tones.” It is not surprising that
some one with a cool head should retaliate, on such provocation as this,
by saying: “He has treated hardly any subject but one, _himself_.” “In
the very grand and tremendous drama of _Cain_,” says Scott, “Lord Byron
has certainly matched Milton on his own ground.” And Lord Byron has done
all this, Scott adds “while managing his pen with the careless and
negligent ease of a man of quality.” Alas, “managing his pen with the
careless and negligent ease of a man of quality,” Byron wrote in his
_Cain_—
“Souls that dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in
His everlasting face, and tell him that
His evil is not good;”
or he wrote—
“... And _thou_ would’st go on aspiring
To the great double Mysteries! the _two Principles_!”[39]
One has only to repeat to oneself a line from _Paradise Lost_ in order
to feel the difference.
-----
Footnote 39:
The italics are in the original.
-----
Sainte-Beuve, speaking of that exquisite master of language, the Italian
poet Leopardi, remarks how often we see the alliance, singular though it
may at first sight appear, of the poetical genius with the genius for
scholarship and philology. Dante and Milton are instances which will
occur to every one’s mind. Byron is so negligent in his poetical style,
he is often, to say the truth, so slovenly, slipshod, and infelicitous,
he is so little haunted by the true artist’s fine passion for the
correct use and consummate management of words, that he may be described
as having for this artistic gift the insensibility of the
barbarian;—which is perhaps only another and a less flattering way of
saying, with Scott, that he “manages his pen with the careless and
negligent ease of a man of quality.” Just of a piece with the rhythm of
“Dare you await the event of a few minutes’
Deliberation?”
or of
“All shall be void—
Destroy’d!”
is the diction of
‘Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which had not seen the sun to rise;
or of
“... there let him lay!”
or of the famous passage beginning
“He who hath bent him o’er the dead;”
with those trailing relatives, that crying grammatical solecism, that
inextricable anacolouthon! To class the work of the author of such
things with the work of the authors of such verse as
“In the dark backward and abysm of time”—
or as
“Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line,
Or the tale of Troy divine”—
is ridiculous. Shakespeare and Milton, with their secret of consummate
felicity in diction and movement, are of another and an altogether
higher order from Byron, nay, for that matter, from Wordsworth also;
from the author of such verse as
“Sol hath dropt into his harbour”—
or (if Mr. Ruskin pleases) as
“Parching summer hath no warrant”
as from the author of
“All shall be void—
Destroy’d!”
With a poetical gift and a poetical performance of the very highest
order, the slovenliness and tunelessness of much of Byron’s production,
the pompousness and ponderousness of much of Wordsworth’s are
incompatible. Let us admit this to the full.
Moreover, while we are hearkening to M. Scherer, and going along with
him in his faultfinding, let us admit, too, that the man in Byron is in
many respects as unsatisfactory as the poet. And, putting aside all
direct moral criticism of him,—with which we need not concern ourselves
here,—we shall find that he is unsatisfactory in the same way. Some of
Byron’s most crying faults as a man,—his vulgarity, his affectation,—are
really akin to the faults of commonness, of want of art, in his
workmanship as a poet. The ideal nature for the poet and artist is that
of the finely touched and finely gifted man, the εὐφυής of the Greeks;
now, Byron’s nature was in substance not that of the εὐφυής at all, but
rather, as I have said, of the barbarian. The want of fine perception
which made it possible for him to formulate either the comparison
between himself and Rousseau, or his reason for getting Lord Delawarr
excused from a “licking” at Harrow, is exactly what made possible for
him also his terrible dealings in, _An ye wool_; _I have redde thee_;
_Sunburn me_; _Oons, and it is excellent well_. It is exactly, again,
what made possible for him his precious dictum that Pope is a Greek
temple, and a string of other criticisms of the like force; it is
exactly, in fine, what deteriorated the quality of his poetic
production. If we think of a good representative of that finely touched
and exquisitely gifted nature which is the ideal nature for the poet and
artist,—if we think of Raphael, for instance, who truly is εὐφυής just
as Byron is not,—we shall bring into clearer light the connection in
Byron between the faults of the man and the faults of the poet. With
Raphael’s character Byron’s sins of vulgarity and false criticism would
have been impossible, just as with Raphael’s art Byron’s sins of common
and bad workmanship.
Yes, all this is true, but it is not the whole truth about Byron
nevertheless; very far from it. The severe criticism of M. Scherer by no
means gives us the whole truth about Byron, and we have not yet got it
in what has been added to that criticism here. The negative part of the
true criticism of him we perhaps have; the positive part, by far the
more important, we have not. Byron’s admirers appeal eagerly to foreign
testimonies in his favor. Some of these testimonies do not much move me;
but one testimony there is among them which will always carry, with me
at any rate, very great weight,—the testimony of Goethe. Goethe’s
sayings about Byron were uttered, it must however be remembered, at the
height of Byron’s vogue, when that puissant and splendid personality was
exercising its full power of attraction. In Goethe’s own household there
was an atmosphere of glowing Byron-worship; his daughter-in-law was a
passionate admirer of Byron, nay, she enjoyed and prized his poetry, as
did Tieck and so many others in Germany at that time, much above the
poetry of Goethe himself. Instead of being irritated and rendered
jealous by this, a nature like Goethe’s was inevitably led by it to
heighten, not lower, the note of his praise. The Time-Spirit, or
_Zeit-Geist_, he would himself have said, was working just then for
Byron. This working of the _Zeit-Geist_ in his favor was an advantage
added to Byron’s other advantages, an advantage of which he had a right
to get the benefit. This is what Goethe would have thought and said to
himself; and so he would have been led even to heighten somewhat his
estimate of Byron, and to accentuate the emphasis of praise. Goethe
speaking of Byron at that moment was not and could not be quite the same
cool critic as Goethe speaking of Dante, or Molière, or Milton. This, I
say, we ought to remember in reading Goethe’s judgments on Byron and his
poetry. Still, if we are careful to bear this in mind, and if we quote
Goethe’s praise correctly,—which is not always done by those who in this
country quote it,—and if we add to it that great and due qualification
added to it by Goethe himself,—which so far as I have seen has never yet
been done by his quoters in this country at all,—then we shall have a
judgment on Byron, which comes, I think, very near to the truth, and
which may well command our adherence.
In his judicious and interesting Life of Byron, Professor Nichol quotes
Goethe as saying that Byron “is undoubtedly to be regarded as the
greatest genius of our century.” What Goethe did really say was “the
greatest _talent_,” not “the greatest _genius_.” The difference is
important, because, while talent gives the notion of power in a man’s
performance, genius gives rather the notion of felicity and perfection
in it; and this divine gift of consummate felicity by no means, as we
have seen, belongs to Byron and to his poetry. Goethe said that Byron
“must unquestionably be regarded as the greatest talent of the
century.”[40] He said of him moreover: “The English may think of Byron
what they please, but it is certain that they can point to no poet who
is his like. He is different from all the rest, and in the main
greater.” Here, again, Professor Nichol translates: “They can show no
(living) poet who is to be compared to him;”—inserting the word
_living_, I suppose, to prevent its being thought that Goethe would have
ranked Byron, as a poet, above Shakespeare and Milton. But Goethe did
not use, or, I think, mean to imply, any limitation such as is added by
Professor Nichol. Goethe said simply, and he meant to say, “_no_ poet.”
Only the words which follow[41] ought not, I think, to be rendered, “who
is to be compared to him,” that is to say, “_who is his equal as a
poet_.” They mean rather, “who may properly be compared with him,” “_who
is his parallel_.” And when Goethe said that Byron was “in the main
greater” than all the rest of the English poets, he was not so much
thinking of the strict rank, as poetry, of Byron’s production; he was
thinking of that wonderful personality of Byron which so enters into his
poetry, and which Goethe called “a personality such, for its eminence,
as has never been yet, and such as is not likely to come again.” He was
thinking of that “daring, dash, and grandiosity,”[42] of Byron, which
are indeed so splendid; and which were, so Goethe maintained, of a
character to do good, because “everything great is formative,” and what
is thus formative does us good.
-----
Footnote 40:
“Der ohne Frage als das grösste Talent des Jahrhunderts anzusehen
ist.”
Footnote 41:
“Der ihm zu vergleichen wäre.”
Footnote 42:
“Byron’s Kühnheit, Keckheit und Grandiosität, ist das nicht alles
bildend?—Alles Grosse bildet, sobald wir es gewahr werden.”
-----
The faults which went with this greatness, and which impaired Byron’s
poetical work, Goethe saw very well. He saw the constant state of
warfare and combat, the “negative and polemical working,” which makes
Byron’s poetry a poetry in which we can so little find rest; he saw the
_Hang zum Unbegrenzten_, the straining after the unlimited, which made
it impossible for Byron to produce poetic wholes such as the _Tempest_
or _Lear_; he saw the _zu viel Empirie_, the promiscuous adoption of all
the matter offered to the poet by life, just as it was offered, without
thought or patience for the mysterious transmutation to be operated on
this matter by poetic form. But in a sentence which I cannot, as I say,
remember to have yet seen quoted in any English criticism of Byron,
Goethe lays his finger on the cause of all these defects in Byron, and
on his real source of weakness both as a man and as a poet. “The moment
he reflects, he is a child,” says Goethe;—“_sobald er reflectirt ist er
ein Kind_.”
Now if we take the two parts of Goethe’s criticism of Byron, the
favorable and the unfavorable, and put them together, we shall have, I
think, the truth. On the one hand, a splendid and puissant personality—a
personality “in eminence such as has never been yet, and is not likely
to come again”; of which the like, therefore, is not to be found among
the poets of our nation, by which Byron “is different from all the rest,
and in the main greater.” Byron is, moreover, “the greatest talent of
our century.” On the other hand, this splendid personality and unmatched
talent, this unique Byron, “is quite too much in the dark about
himself;”[43] nay, “the moment he begins to reflect, he is a child.”
There we have, I think, Byron complete; and in estimating him and
ranking him we have to strike a balance between the gain which accrues
to his poetry, as compared with the productions of other poets, from his
superiority, and the loss which accrues to it from his defects.
-----
Footnote 43:
“Gar zu dunkel über sich selbst.”
-----
A balance of this kind has to be struck in the case of all poets except
the few supreme masters in whom a profound criticism of life exhibits
itself in indissoluble connection with the laws of poetic truth and
beauty. I have seen it said that I allege poetry to have for its
characteristic this: that it is a criticism of life; and that I make it
to be thereby distinguished from prose, which is something else. So far
from it, that when I first used this expression, _a criticism of life_,
now many years ago, it was to literature in general that I applied it,
and not to poetry in especial. “The end and aim of all literature,” I
said, “is, if one considers it attentively, nothing but that: _a
criticism of life_.” And so it surely is; the main end and aim of all
our utterance, whether in prose or in verse, is surely a criticism of
life. We are not brought much on our way, I admit, towards an adequate
definition of poetry as distinguished from prose by that truth; still a
truth it is, and poetry can never prosper if it is forgotten. In poetry,
however, the criticism of life has to be made conformably to the laws of
poetic truth and poetic beauty. Truth and seriousness of substance and
matter, felicity and perfection of diction and manner, as these are
exhibited in the best poets, are what constitute a criticism of life
made in conformity with the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty; and
it is by knowing and feeling the work of those poets, that we learn to
recognize the fulfilment and non-fulfilment of such conditions.
The moment, however, that we leave the small band of the very best
poets, the true classics, and deal with poets of the next rank, we shall
find that perfect truth and seriousness of matter, in close alliance
with perfect truth and felicity of manner, is the rule no longer. We
have now to take what we can get, to forego something here, to admit
compensation for it there; to strike a balance, and to see how our poets
stand in respect to one another when that balance has been struck. Let
us observe how this is so.
We will take three poets, among the most considerable of our century:
Leopardi, Byron, Wordsworth. Giacomo Leopardi was ten years younger than
Byron, and he died thirteen years after him; both of them, therefore,
died young—Byron at the age of thirty-six, Leopardi at the age of
thirty-nine. Both of them were of noble birth, both of them suffered
from physical defect, both of them were in revolt against the
established facts and beliefs of their age; but here the likeness
between them ends. The stricken poet of Recanati had no country, for an
Italy in his day did not exist; he had no audience, no celebrity. The
volume of his poems, published in the very year of Byron’s death, hardly
sold, I suppose, its tens, while the volumes of Byron’s poetry were
selling their tens of thousands. And yet Leopardi has the very qualities
which we have found wanting to Byron; he has the sense for form and
style, the passion for just expression, the sure and firm touch of the
true artist. Nay, more, he has a grave fulness of knowledge, an insight
into the real bearings of the questions which as a sceptical poet he
raises, a power of seizing the real point, a lucidity, with which the
author of _Cain_ has nothing to compare. I can hardly imagine Leopardi
reading the
“... And _thou_ would’st go on aspiring
To the great double Mysteries! the _two Principles_!”
or following Byron in his theological controversy with Dr. Kennedy,
without having his features overspread by a calm and fine smile, and
remarking of his brilliant contemporary, as Goethe did, that “the moment
he begins to reflect, he is a child.” But indeed whoever wishes to feel
the full superiority of Leopardi over Byron in philosophic thought, and
in the expression of it, has only to read one paragraph of one poem, the
paragraph of _La Ginestra_, beginning
“Sovente in queste piagge,”
and ending
“Non so se il riso o la pietà prevale.”
In like manner, Leopardi is at many points the poetic superior of
Wordsworth too. He has a far wider culture than Wordsworth, more mental
lucidity, more freedom from illusions as to the real character of the
established fact and of reigning conventions; above all, this Italian,
with his pure and sure touch, with his fineness of perception, is far
more of the artist. Such a piece of pompous dulness as
“O for the coming of that glorious time,”
and all the rest of it, or such lumbering verse as Mr. Ruskin’s enemy,
“Parching summer hath no warrant”—
would have been as impossible to Leopardi as to Dante. Where, then, is
Wordsworth’s superiority? for the worth of what he has given us in
poetry I hold to be greater, on the whole, than the worth of what
Leopardi has given us. It is in Wordsworth’s sound and profound sense
“Of joy in widest commonalty spread;”
whereas Leopardi remains with his thoughts ever fixed upon the _essenza
insanabile_, upon the _acerbo, indegno mistero delle cose_. It is in the
power with which Wordsworth feels the resources of joy offered to us in
nature, offered to us in the primary human affections and duties, and in
the power with which, in his moments of inspiration, he renders this
joy, and makes us, too, feel it; a force greater than himself seeming to
lift him and to prompt his tongue, so that he speaks in a style far
above any style of which he has the constant command, and with a truth
far beyond any philosophic truth of which he has the conscious and
assured possession. Neither Leopardi nor Wordsworth are of the same
order with the great poets who made such verse as
Τλητὸν γὰρ Moῖραι θυμὸν θέσαν ὰνθρώποισιν·
or as
“In la sua volontade e nostra pace;”
or as
“... Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all.”
But as compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at many points less
lucid, though far less a master of style, far less of an artist, gains
so much by his criticism of life being, in certain matters of profound
importance, healthful and true, whereas Leopardi’s pessimism is not,
that the value of Wordsworth’s poetry, on the whole, stands higher for
us than that of Leopardi’s, as it stands higher for us, I think, than
that of any modern poetry except Goethe’s.
Byron’s poetic value is also greater, on the whole, than Leopardi’s; and
his superiority turns in the same way upon the surpassing worth of
something which he had and was, after all deduction has been made for
his shortcomings. We talk of Byron’s _personality_, “a personality in
eminence such as has never been yet, and is not likely to come again;”
and we say that by this personality Byron is “different from all the
rest of English poets, and in the main greater.” But can we not be a
little more circumstantial, and name that in which the wonderful power
of this personality consisted? We can; with the instinct of a poet Mr.
Swinburne has seized upon it and named it for us. The power of Byron’s
personality lies in “the splendid and imperishable excellence which
covers all his offences and outweighs all his defects: _the excellence
of sincerity and strength_.”
Byron found our nation, after its long and victorious struggle with
revolutionary France, fixed in a system of established facts and
dominant ideas which revolted him. The mental bondage of the most
powerful part of our nation, of its strong middle-class, to a narrow and
false system of this kind, is what we call British Philistinism. That
bondage is unbroken to this hour, but in Byron’s time it was even far
more deep and dark than it is now. Byron was an aristocrat, and it is
not difficult for an aristocrat to look on the prejudices and habits of
the British Philistine with scepticism and disdain. Plenty of young men
of his own class Byron met at Almack’s or at Lady Jersey’s, who regarded
the established facts and reigning beliefs of the England of that day
with as little reverence as he did. But these men, disbelievers in
British Philistinism in private, entered English public life, the most
conventional in the world, and at once they saluted with respect the
habits and ideas of British Philistinism as if they were a part of the
order of creation, and as if in public no sane man would think of
warring against them. With Byron it was different. What he called the
_cant_ of the great middle part of the English nation, what we call its
Philistinism, revolted him; but the cant of his own class, deferring to
this Philistinism and profiting by it, while they disbelieved in it,
revolted him even more. “Come what may,” are his own words, “I will
never flatter the million’s canting in any shape.” His class in general,
on the other hand, shrugged their shoulders at this cant, laughed at it,
pandered to it, and ruled by it. The falsehood, cynicism, insolence,
misgovernment, oppression, with their consequent unfailing crop of human
misery, which were produced by this state of things, roused Byron to
irreconcilable revolt and battle. They made him indignant, they
infuriated him; they were so strong, so defiant, so maleficent,—and yet
he felt that they were doomed. “You have seen every trampler down in
turn,” he comforts himself with saying, “from Buonaparte to the simplest
individuals.” The old order, as after 1815 it stood victorious, with its
ignorance and misery below, its cant, selfishness, and cynicism above,
was at home and abroad equally hateful to him. “I have simplified my
politics,” he writes, “into an utter detestation of all existing
governments.” And again: “Give me a republic. The king-times are fast
finishing; there will be blood shed like water and tears like mist, but
the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I
foresee it.”
Byron himself gave the preference, he tells us, to politicians and
doers, far above writers and singers. But the politics of his own day
and of his own class,—even of the Liberals of his own class,—were
impossible for him. Nature had not formed him for a Liberal peer, proper
to move the Address in the House of Lords, to pay compliments to the
energy and self-reliance of British middle-class Liberalism, and to
adapt his politics to suit it. Unfitted for such politics, he threw
himself upon poetry as his organ; and in poetry his topics were not
Queen Mab, and the Witch of Atlas, and the Sensitive Plant—they were the
upholders of the old order. George the Third and Lord Castlereagh and
the Duke of Wellington and Southey, and they were the canters and
tramplers of the great world, and they were his enemies and himself.
Such was Byron’s personality, by which “he is different from all the
rest of English poets, and in the main greater.” But he posed all his
life, says M. Scherer. Let us distinguish. There is the Byron who posed,
there is the Byron with his affectations and silliness, the Byron whose
weakness Lady Blessington, with a woman’s acuteness, so admirably
seized; “his great defect is flippancy and a total want of
self-possession.” But when this theatrical and easily criticized
personage betook himself to poetry, and when he had fairly warmed to his
work, then he became another man; then the theatrical personage passed
away; then a higher power took possession of him and filled him; then at
last came forth into light that true and puissant personality, with its
direct strokes, its ever-welling force, its satire, its energy, and its
agony. This is the real Byron; whoever stops at the theatrical
preludings does not know him. And this real Byron may well be superior
to the stricken Leopardi, he may well be declared “different from all
the rest of English poets, and in the main greater,” in so far as it is
true of him, as M. Taine well says, that “all other souls, in comparison
with his, seem inert”; in so far as it is true of him that with superb,
exhaustless energy, he maintained, as Professor Nichol well says, “the
struggle that keeps alive, if it does not save, the soul;” in so far,
finally, as he deserves (and he does deserve) the noble praise of him
which I have already quoted from Mr. Swinburne; the praise for “the
splendid and imperishable excellence which covers all his offences and
outweighs all his defects: _the excellence of sincerity and strength_.”
True, as a man, Byron could not manage himself, could not guide his ways
aright, but was all astray. True, he has no light, cannot lead us from
the past to the future; “the moment he reflects, he is a child.” The way
out of the false state of things which enraged him he did not see,—the
slow and laborious way upward; he had not the patience, knowledge,
self-discipline, virtue, requisite for seeing it. True, also, as a poet,
he has no fine and exact sense for word and structure and rhythm; he has
not the artist’s nature and gifts. Yet a personality of Byron’s force
counts for so much in life, and a rhetorician of Byron’s force counts
for so much in literature! But it would be most unjust to label Byron,
as M. Scherer is disposed to label him, as a rhetorician only. Along
with his astounding power and passion he had a strong and deep sense for
what is beautiful in nature, and for what is beautiful in human action
and suffering. When he warms to his work, when he is inspired, Nature
herself seems to take the pen from him as she took it from Wordsworth,
and to write for him as she wrote for Wordsworth, though in a different
fashion, with her own penetrating simplicity. Goethe has well observed
of Byron, that when he is at his happiest his representation of things
is as easy and real as if he were improvising. It is so; and his verse
then exhibits quite another and a higher quality from the rhetorical
quality,—admirable as this also in its own kind of merit is,—of such
verse as
“Minions of splendor shrinking from distress,”
and of so much more verse of Byron’s of that stamp. Nature, I say, takes
the pen for him; and then, assured master of a true poetic style though
he is not, any more than Wordsworth, yet as from Wordsworth at his best
there will come such verse as
“Will no one tell me what she sings?”
so from Byron, too, at his best, there will come such verse as
“He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away.”
Of verse of this high quality, Byron has much; of verse of a quality
lower than this, of a quality rather rhetorical than truly poetic, yet
still of extraordinary power and merit, he has still more. To separate,
from the mass of poetry which Byron poured forth, all this higher
portion, so superior to the mass, and still so considerable in quantity,
and to present it in one body by itself, is to do a service, I believe,
to Byron’s reputation, and to the poetic glory of our country.
Such a service I have in the present volume attempted to perform. To
Byron, after all the tributes which have been paid to him, here is yet
one tribute more—
“Among thy mightier offerings here are mine!”
not a tribute of boundless homage certainly, but sincere; a tribute
which consists not in covering the poet with eloquent eulogy of our own,
but in letting him, at his best and greatest, speak for himself. Surely
the critic who does most for his author is the critic who gains readers
for his author himself, not for any lucubrations on his author:—gains
more readers for him, and enables those readers to read him with more
admiration.
And in spite of his prodigious vogue, Byron has never yet, perhaps, had
the serious admiration which he deserves. Society read him and talked
about him, as it reads and talks about _Endymion_ to-day; and with the
same sort of result. It looked in Byron’s glass as it looks in Lord
Beaconsfield’s, and sees, or fancies that it sees, its own face there;
and then it goes its way, and straightway forgets what manner of man it
saw. Even of his passionate admirers, how many never got beyond the
theatrical Byron, from whom they caught the fashion of deranging their
hair, or of knotting their neck-handkerchief, or of leaving their
shirt-collar unbuttoned; how few profoundly felt his vital influence,
the influence of his splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity
and strength!
His own aristocratic class, whose cynical make-believe drove him to
fury; the great middle-class, on whose impregnable Philistinism he
shattered himself to pieces,—how little have either of these felt
Byron’s vital influence! As the inevitable break-up of the old order
comes, as the English middle-class slowly awakens from its intellectual
sleep of two centuries, as our actual present world, to which this sleep
has condemned us, shows itself more clearly,—our world of an aristocracy
materialized and null, a middle-class purblind and hideous, a lower
class crude and brutal,—we shall turn our eyes again, and to more
purpose, upon this passionate and dauntless soldier of a forlorn hope,
who, ignorant of the future and unconsoled by its promises, nevertheless
waged against the conversation of the old impossible world so fiery
battle; waged it till he fell,—waged it with such splendid and
imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength.
Wordsworth’s value is of another kind. Wordsworth has an insight into
permanent sources of joy and consolation for mankind which Byron has
not; his poetry gives us more which we may rest upon than Byron’s,—more
which we can rest upon now, and which men may rest upon always. I place
Wordsworth’s poetry, therefore, above Byron’s on the whole, although in
some points he was greatly Byron’s inferior, and although Byron’s poetry
will always, probably, find more readers than Wordsworth, and will give
pleasure more easily. But these two, Wordsworth and Byron, stand, it
seems to me, first and preeminent in actual performance, a glorious
pair, among the English poets of this century. Keats had probably,
indeed, a more consummate poetic gift than either of them: but he died
having produced too little and being as yet too immature to rival them.
I for my part can never even think of equalling with them any other of
their contemporaries;—either Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in
a mist of opium; or Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in
the void his luminous wings in vain. Wordsworth and Byron stand out by
themselves. When the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to
recount her poetic glories in the century which has then just ended, the
first names with her will be these.
VII.
SHELLEY[44]
-----
Footnote 44:
Published in _The Nineteenth Century_, January, 1888.
-----
Nowadays all things appear in print sooner or later; but I have heard
from a lady who knew Mrs. Shelley a story of her which, so far as I
know, has not appeared in print hitherto. Mrs. Shelley was choosing a
school for her son, and asked the advice of this lady, who gave for
advice—to use her own words to me—“Just the sort of banality, you know,
one does come out with: Oh, send him somewhere where they will teach him
to think for himself!” I have had far too long a training as a school
inspector to presume to call an utterance of this kind a _banality_;
however, it is not on this advice that I now wish to lay stress, but
upon Mrs. Shelley’s reply to it. Mrs. Shelley answered: “Teach him to
think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other
people!”
To the lips of many and many a reader of Professor Dowden’s volumes a
cry of this sort will surely rise, called forth by Shelley’s life as
there delineated. I have read those volumes with the deepest interest,
but I regret their publication, and am surprised, I confess, that
Shelley’s family should have desired or assisted it. For my own part, at
any rate, I would gladly have been left with the impression, the
ineffaceable impression, made upon me by Mrs. Shelley’s first edition of
her husband’s collected poems. Medwin and Hogg and Trelawny had done
little to change the impression made by those four delightful volumes of
the original edition of 1839. The text of the poems has in some places
been mended since; but Shelley is not a classic, whose various readings
are to be noted with earnest attention. The charm of the poems flowed in
upon us from that edition and the charm of the character. Mrs. Shelley
had done her work admirably; her introductions to the poems of each
year, with Shelley’s prefaces and passages from his letters, supplied
the very picture of Shelley to be desired. Somewhat idealized by tender
regret and exalted memory Mrs. Shelley’s representation no doubt was.
But without sharing her conviction that Shelley’s character, impartially
judged, “would stand in fairer and brighter light than that of any
contemporary,” we learned from her to know the soul of affection, of
“gentle and cordial goodness,” of eagerness and ardor for human
happiness, which was in this rare spirit,—so mere a monster unto many.
Mrs. Shelley in her general preface to her husband’s poems: “I abstain
from any remark on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch
as the passions which they engendered inspired his poetry; this is not
the time to relate the truth.” I for my part could wish, I repeat, that
that time had never come.
But come it has, and Professor Dowden has given us the Life of Percy
Bysshe Shelley in two very thick volumes. If the work was to be done,
Professor Dowden has indeed done it thoroughly. One or two things in his
biography of Shelley I could wish different, even waiving the question
whether it was desirable to relate in full the occurrences of Shelley’s
private life. Professor Dowden holds a brief for Shelley; he pleads for
Shelley as an advocate pleads for his client, and this strain of
pleading, united with an attitude of adoration which in Mrs. Shelley had
its charm, but which Professor Dowden was not bound to adopt from her,
is unserviceable to Shelley, nay, injurious to him, because it
inevitably begets, in many readers of the story which Professor Dowden
has to tell, impatience and revolt. Further, let me remark that the
biography before us is of prodigious length, although its hero died
before he was thirty years old, and that it might have been considerably
shortened if it had been more plainly and simply written. I see that one
of Professor Dowden’s critics, while praising his style for “a certain
poetic quality of fervor and picturesqueness,” laments that in some
important passages Professor Dowden “fritters away great opportunities
for sustained and impassioned narrative.” I am inclined much rather to
lament that Professor Dowden has not steadily kept his poetic quality of
fervor and picturesqueness more under control. Is it that the Home
Rulers have so loaded the language that even an Irishman who is not one
of them catches something of their full habit of style? No, it is
rather, I believe, that Professor Dowden, of poetic nature himself, and
dealing with a poetic nature like Shelley, is so steeped in sentiment by
his subject that in almost every page of the biography the sentiment
runs over. A curious note of his style, suffused with sentiment, is that
it seems incapable of using the common word _child_. A great many births
are mentioned in the biography, but always it is a poetic _babe_ that is
born, not a prosaic _child_. And so, again, André Chénier is not
guillotined, but “too foully done to death.” Again, Shelley after his
runaway marriage with Harriet Westbrook was in Edinburgh without money
and full of anxieties for the future, and complained of his hard lot in
being unable to get away, in being “chained to the filth and commerce of
Edinburgh.” Natural enough; but why should Professor Dowden improve the
occasion as follows? “The most romantic of northern cities could lay no
spell upon his spirit. His eye was not fascinated by the presences of
mountains and the sea, by the fantastic outlines of aërial piles seen
amid the wreathing smoke of Auld Reekie, by the gloom of the Canongate
illuminated with shafts of sunlight streaming from its interesting wynds
and alleys; nor was his imagination kindled by storied house or palace,
and the voices of old, forgotten, far-off things, which haunt their
walls.” If Professor Dowden, writing a book in prose, could have brought
himself to eschew poetic excursions of this kind and to tell his story
in a plain way, lovers of simplicity, of whom there are some still left
in the world, would have been gratified, and at the same time his book
would have been the shorter by scores of pages.
These reserves being made, I have little except praise for the manner in
which Professor Dowden has performed his task; whether it was a task
which ought to be performed at all, probably did not lie with him to
decide. His ample materials are used with order and judgment; the
history of Shelley’s life develops itself clearly before our eyes; the
documents of importance for it are given with sufficient fulness,
nothing essential seems to have been kept back, although I would gladly,
I confess, have seen more of Miss Clairmont’s journal, whatever
arrangement she may in her later life have chosen to exercise upon it.
In general all documents are so fairly and fully cited, that Professor
Dowden’s pleadings for Shelley, though they may sometimes indispose and
irritate the reader, produce no obscuring of the truth; the documents
manifest it of themselves. Last but not least of Professor Dowden’s
merits, he has provided his book with an excellent index.
Undoubtedly this biography, with its full account of the occurrences of
Shelley’s private life, compels one to review one’s former impression of
him. Undoubtedly the brilliant and attaching rebel who in thinking for
himself had of old our sympathy so passionately with him, when we come
to read his full biography makes us often and often inclined to cry out:
“My God! he had far better have thought like other people.” There is a
passage in Hogg’s capitally written and most interesting account of
Shelley which I wrote down when I first read it and have borne in mind
ever since; so beautifully it seemed to render the true Shelley. Hogg
has been speaking of the intellectual expression of Shelley’s features,
and he goes on: “Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the
intellect; for there was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and
especially (though this will surprise many) that air of profound
religious veneration that characterizes the best work and chiefly the
frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls) of the great
masters of Florence and of Rome.” What we have of Shelley in poetry and
prose suited with this charming picture of him; Mrs. Shelley’s account
suited with it; it was a possession which one would gladly have kept
unimpaired. It still subsists, I must now add; it subsists even after
one has read the present biography; it consists, but so as by fire. It
subsists with many a scar and stain; never again will it have the same
pureness and beauty which it had formerly. I regret this, as I have
said, and I confess I do not see what has been gained. Our ideal Shelley
was the true Shelley after all; what has been gained by making us at
moments doubt it? What has been gained by forcing upon as much in him
which is ridiculous and odious, by compelling any fair mind, if it is to
retain with a good conscience its ideal Shelley, to do that which I
propose to do now? I propose to mark firmly what is ridiculous and
odious in the Shelley brought to our knowledge by the new materials, and
then to show that our former beautiful and lovable Shelley nevertheless
survives.
Almost everybody knows the main outline of the events of Shelley’s life.
It will be necessary for me, however, up to the date of his second
marriage, to go through them here. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at
Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex, on the 4th of August 1792. He was
of an old family of country gentlemen, and the heir to a baronetcy. He
had one brother and five sisters, but the brother so much younger than
himself as to be no companion for him in his boyhood at home, and after
he was separated from home and England he never saw him. Shelley was
brought up at Field Place with his sisters. At ten years old he was sent
to a private school at Isleworth, where he read Mrs. Radcliffe’s
romances and was fascinated by a popular scientific lecturer. After two
years of private school he went in 1804 to Eton. Here he took no part in
cricket or football, refused to fag, was known as “mad Shelley” and much
tormented; when tormented beyond endurance he could be dangerous.
Certainly he was not happy at Eton; but he had friends, he boated, he
rambled about the country. His school lessons were easy to him, and his
reading extended far beyond them; he read books on chemistry, he read
Pliny’s _Natural History_, Godwin’s _Political Justice_, Lucretius,
Franklin, Condorcet. It is said he was called “atheist Shelley” at Eton,
but this is not so well established as his having been called “mad
Shelley.” He was full, at any rate, of new and revolutionary ideas, and
he declared at a later time that he was twice expelled from the school
but recalled through the interference of his father.
In the spring of 1810 Shelley, now in his eighteenth year, entered
University College, Oxford, as an exhibitioner. He had already written
novels and poems; a poem on the Wandering Jew, in seven or eight cantos,
he sent to Campbell, and was told by Campbell, that there were but two
good lines in it. He had solicited the correspondence of Mrs. Hemans,
then Felicia Browne and unmarried; he had fallen in love with a charming
cousin, Harriet Grove. In the autumn of 1810 he found a publisher for
his verse; he also found a friend in a very clever and free-minded
commoner of his college, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who has admirably
described the Shelley of those Oxford days, with his chemistry, his
eccentric habits, his charm of look and character, his conversation, his
shrill discordant voice. Shelley read incessantly. Hume’s _Essays_
produced a powerful impression on him; his free speculation led him to
what his father, and worse still his cousin Harriet, thought “detestable
principles”; his cousin and family became estranged from him. He, on his
part, became more and more incensed against the “bigotry” and
“intolerance” which produced such estrangement. “Here I swear, and as I
break my oaths, may Infinity, Eternity, blast me—here I swear that never
will I forgive intolerance.” At the beginning of 1811 he prepared and
published what he called a “leaflet for letters,” having for its title
_The Necessity of Atheism_. He sent copies to all the bishops, to the
Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, and to the heads of houses. On Lady Day he
was summoned before the authorities of his College, refused to answer
the question whether he had written _The Necessity of Atheism_, told the
Master and Fellows that “their proceedings would become a court of
inquisitors but not free men in a free country,” and was expelled for
contumacy. Hogg wrote a letter of remonstrance to the authorities was in
his turn summoned before them and questioned as to his share in the
“leaflet,” and, refusing to answer, he also was expelled.
Shelley settled with Hogg in lodgings in London. His father, excusably
indignant, was not a wise man and managed his son ill. His plan of
recommending Shelley to read Paley’s _Natural Theology_, and of _reading
it with him himself_, makes us smile. Shelley, who about this time wrote
of his younger sister, then at school at Clapham, “There are some hopes
of this dear little girl, she would be a divine little scion of
infidelity if I could get hold of her,” was not to have been cured by
Paley’s _Natural Theology_ administered through Mr. Timothy Shelley. But
by the middle of May Shelley’s father had agreed to allow him two
hundred pounds a year. Meanwhile in visiting his sisters at their school
in Clapham, Shelley made the acquaintance of a schoolfellow of theirs,
Harriet Westbrook. She was a beautiful and lively girl, with a father
who had kept a tavern in Mount Street, but had now retired from
business, and one sister much older than herself, who encouraged in
every possible way the acquaintance of her sister of sixteen with the
heir to a baronetcy and a great estate. Soon Shelley heard that Harriet
met with cold looks at her school for associating with an atheist; his
generosity and his ready indignation against “intolerance” were roused.
In the summer Harriet wrote to him that she was persecuted not at school
only but at home also, that she was lonely and miserable, and would
gladly put an end to her life. Shelley went to see her; she owned her
love for him, and he engaged himself to her. He told his cousin Charles
Grove that his happiness had been blighted when the other Harriet,
Charles’s sister, cast him off; that now the only thing worth living for
was self-sacrifice. Harriet’s persecutors became yet more troublesome,
and Shelley, at the end of August, went off with her to Edinburgh and
they were married. The entry in the register is this:—
“_August 28, 1811._—Percy Bysshe Shelley, farmer, Sussex, and Miss
Harriet Westbrook, St. Andrew Church Parish, daughter of Mr. John
Westbrook, London.”
After five weeks in Edinburgh the young farmer and his wife came
southwards and took lodgings at York, under the shadow of what Shelley
calls that “gigantic pile of superstition,” the Minster. But his friend
Hogg was in a lawyer’s office in York, and Hogg’s society made the
Minster endurable. Mr. Timothy Shelley’s happiness in his son was
naturally not increased by the runaway marriage; he stopped his
allowance, and Shelley determined to visit “this thoughtless man,” as he
calls his parent, and to “try the force of truth” upon him. Nothing
could be effected; Shelley’s mother, too, was now against him. He
returned to York to find that in his absence his friend Hogg had been
making love to Harriet, who had indignantly repulsed him. Shelley was
shocked, but after a “terrible day” of explanation from Hogg, he “fully,
freely pardoned him,” promised to retain him still as “his friend, his
bosom friend,” and “hoped soon to convince him how lovely virtue was.”
But for the present it seemed better to separate. In November he and
Harriet, with her sister Eliza, took a cottage at Keswick. Shelley was
now in great straits for money; the great Sussex neighbor of the
Shelleys, the Duke of Norfolk, interposed in his favor, and his father
and grandfather seem to have offered him at this time an income of £2000
a year, if he would consent to entail the family estate. Shelley
indignantly refused to “forswear his principles,” by accepting “a
proposal so insultingly hateful.” But in December his father agreed,
though with an ill grace, to grant him his allowance of £200 a year
again, and Mr. Westbrook promised to allow a like sum to his daughter.
So after four months of marriage the Shelleys began 1812 with an income
of £400 a year.
Early in February they left Keswick and proceeded to Dublin, where
Shelley, who had prepared an address to the Catholics, meant to “devote
himself towards forwarding the great ends of virtue and happiness in
Ireland.” Before leaving Keswick he wrote to William Godwin, “the
regulator and former of his mind,” making profession of his mental
obligations to him, of his respect and veneration, and soliciting
Godwin’s friendship. A correspondence followed; Godwin pronounced his
young disciple’s plans for “disseminating the doctrines of philanthropy
and freedom” in Ireland to be unwise; Shelley bowed to his mentor’s
decision and gave up his Irish campaign, quitting Dublin on the 4th of
April 1812. He and Harriet wandered first to Nant-Gwillt in South Wales,
near the upper Wye, and from thence after a month or two to Lynmouth in
North Devon, where he busied himself with his poem of _Queen Mab_, and
with sending to sea boxes and bottles containing a _Declaration of
Rights_ by him, in the hope that the winds and waves might carry his
doctrines where they would do good. But his Irish servant, bearing the
prophetic name of Healy, posted the _Declaration_ on the walls of
Barnstaple and was taken up; Shelley found himself watched and no longer
able to enjoy Lynmouth in peace. He moved in September, 1812, to
Tremadoc, in North Wales, where he threw himself ardently into an
enterprise for recovering a great stretch of drowned land from the sea.
But at the beginning of October he and Harriet visited London, and
Shelley grasped Godwin by the hand at last. At once an intimacy arose,
but the future Mary Shelley—Godwin’s daughter by his first wife, Mary
Wollstonecraft—was absent on a visit in Scotland when the Shelleys
arrived in London. They became acquainted, however, with the second Mrs.
Godwin, on whom we have Charles Lamb’s friendly comment: “A very
disgusting woman, and wears green spectacles!”; with the amiable Fanny,
Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter by Imlay, before her marriage with
Godwin; and probably also with Jane Clairmont, the second Mrs. Godwin’s
daughter by a first marriage, and herself, afterwards the mother of
Byron’s Allegra. Complicated relationships, as in the Theban story! and
there will be not wanting, presently, something of the Theban horrors.
During this visit of six weeks to London Shelley renewed his intimacy
with Hogg; in the middle of November he returned to Tremadoc. There he
remained until the end of February 1813, perfectly happy with Harriet,
reading widely, and working at his _Queen Mab_ and at the notes to that
poem. On the 26th of February an attempt was made, or so he fancied, to
assassinate him, and in high nervous excitement he hurriedly left
Tremadoc and repaired with Harriet to Dublin again. On this visit to
Ireland he saw Killarney, but early in April he and Harriet were back
again in London.
There in June 1813 their daughter Ianthe was born; at the end of July
they moved to Bracknell, in Berkshire. They had for neighbors there a
Mrs. Boinville and her married daughter, whom Shelley found to be
fascinating women, with a culture which to his wife was altogether
wanting. Cornelia Turner, Mrs. Boinville’s daughter, was melancholy,
required consolation, and found it, Hogg tells us, in Petrarch’s poetry;
“Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and caught the soft
infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest melancholy as every true
poet ought.” Peacock, a man of keen and cultivated mind, joined the
circle at Bracknell. He and Harriet, not yet eighteen, used sometimes to
laugh at the gushing sentiment and enthusiasm of the Bracknell circle;
Harriet had also given offense to Shelley by getting a wet-nurse for her
child; in Professor Dowden’s words, “the beauty of Harriet’s motherly
relation to her babe was marred in Shelley’s eyes by the introduction
into his home of a hireling nurse to whom was delegated the mother’s
tenderest office.” But in September Shelley wrote a sonnet to his child
which expresses his deep love for the mother also, to whom in March,
1814, he was remarried in London, lest the Scotch marriage should prove
to have been in any point irregular. Harriet’s sister Eliza, however,
whom Shelley had at first treated with excessive deference, had now
become hateful to him. And in the very month of the London marriage we
find him writing to Hogg that he is staying with the Boinvilles, having
“escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and friendship combine,
from the dismaying solitude of myself.” Cornelia Turner, he adds, whom
he once thought cold and reserved, “is the reverse of this, as she is
the reverse of everything bad; she inherits all the divinity of her
mother.” Then comes a stanza, beginning
“Thy dewy looks sink in my breast,
Thy gentle words stir poison there.”
It has no meaning, he says; it is only written in thought. “It is
evident from this pathetic letter,” says Professor Dowden, “that
Shelley’s happiness in his home had been fatally stricken.” This is a
curious way of putting the matter. To me what is evident is rather that
Shelley had, to use Professor Dowden’s words again—for in these things
of high sentiment I gladly let him speak for me—“a too vivid sense that
here (in the society of the Boinville family) were peace and joy and
gentleness and love.” In April come some more verses to the Boinvilles,
which contain the first good stanza that Shelley wrote. In May comes a
poem to Harriet, of which Professor Dowden’s prose analysis is as poetic
as the poem itself. “If she has something to endure (from the Boinville
attachment), it is not much, and all her husband’s weal hangs upon her
loving endurance, for see how pale and wildered anguish has made him!”
Harriet, unconvinced, seems to have gone off to Bath in resentment, from
whence, however, she kept up a constant correspondence with Shelley, who
was now of age, and busy in London raising money on post-obit bonds for
his own wants and those of the friend and former of his mind, Godwin.
And now, indeed, it was to become true that if from the inflammable
Shelley’s devotion to the Boinville family poor Harriet had had
“something to endure,” yet this was “not much” compared with what was to
follow. At Godwin’s house Shelley met Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, his
future wife, then in her seventeenth year. She was a gifted person, but,
as Professor Dowden says, she “had breathed during her entire life an
atmosphere of free thought.” On the 8th of June Hogg called at Godwin’s
with Shelley; Godwin was out, but “a door was partially and softly
opened, a thrilling voice called ‘Shelley!’ a thrilling voice answered
‘Mary!’” Shelley’s summoner was “a very young female, fair and
fair-haired, pale indeed, and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of
tartan.” Already they were “Shelley” and “Mary” to one another; “before
the close of June they knew and felt,” says Professor Dowden, “that each
was to the other inexpressibly dear.” The churchyard of St. Pancras,
where her mother was buried, became “a place now doubly sacred to Mary,
since on one eventful day Bysshe here poured forth his griefs, his
hopes, his love, and she, in sign of everlasting union, placed her hand
in his.” In July Shelley gave her a copy of _Queen Mab_, printed but not
published, and under the tender dedication to Harriet he wrote: “Count
Slobendorf was about to marry a woman who, attracted solely by his
fortune, proved her selfishness by deserting him in prison.” Mary added
an inscription on her part: “I love the author beyond all powers of
expression ... by that love we have promised to each other, although I
may not be yours I can never be another’s,”—and a good deal more to the
same effect.
Amid these excitements Shelley was for some days without writing to
Harriet, who applied to Hookham the publisher to know what had happened.
She was expecting her confinement; “I always fancy something dreadful
has happened,” she wrote, “if I do not hear from him ... I cannot endure
this dreadful state of suspense.” Shelley then wrote to her, begging her
to come to London; and when she arrived there, he told her the state of
his feelings, and proposed separation. The shock made Harriet ill; and
Shelley, says Peacock, “between his old feelings towards Harriet, and
his new passion for Mary, showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his
speech, the state of a mind ‘suffering, like a little kingdom, the
nature of an insurrection.’” Godwin grew uneasy about his daughter, and
after a serious talk with her, wrote to Shelley. Under such
circumstances, Professor Dowden tells us, “to youth, swift and decisive
measures seem the best.” In the early morning of the 28th of July 1814
“Mary Godwin stepped across her father’s threshold into the summer air,”
she and Shelley went off together in a post-chaise to Dover, and from
thence crossed to the Continent.
On the 14th of August the fugitives were at Troyes on their way to
Switzerland. From Troyes Shelley addressed a letter to Harriet, of which
the best description I can give is that it is precisely the letter which
a man in the writer’s circumstances should not have written.
“MY DEAREST HARRIET (he begins). I write to you from this detestable
town; I write to show that I do not forget you; I write to urge you to
come to Switzerland, where you will at last find one firm and constant
friend to whom your interests will be always dear—by whom your
feelings will never wilfully be injured. From none can you expect this
but me—all else are either unfeeling or selfish, or have beloved
friends of their own.”
Then follows a description of his journey with Mary from Paris, “through
a fertile country, neither interesting from the character of its
inhabitants nor the beauty of the scenery, with a mule to carry our
baggage, as Mary, who has not been sufficiently well to walk, fears the
fatigue of walking.” Like St. Paul to Timothy, he ends with
commissions:—
“I wish you to bring with you the two deeds which Tahourdin has to
prepare for you, as also a copy of the settlement. Do not part with
any of your money. But what shall be done about the books? You can
consult on the spot. With love to my sweet little Ianthe, ever most
affectionately yours, S.
“I write in great haste; we depart directly.”
Professor Dowden’s flow of sentiment is here so agitating, that I
relieve myself by resorting to a drier world. Certainly my comment on
this letter shall not be his, that it “assures Harriet that her
interests were still dear to Shelley, though now their lives had moved
apart.” But neither will I call the letter an odious letter, a hideous
letter. I prefer to call it, applying an untranslated French word, a
_bête_ letter. And it is _bête_ from what is the signal, the disastrous
want and weakness of Shelley, with all his fine intellectual gifts—his
utter deficiency in humour.
Harriet did not accept Shelley’s invitation to join him and Mary in
Switzerland. Money difficulties drove the travellers back to England in
September. Godwin would not see Shelley, but he sorely needed,
continually demanded and eagerly accepted, pecuniary help from his
erring “spiritual son.” Between Godwin’s wants and his own, Shelley was
hard pressed. He got from Harriet, who still believed that he would
return to her, twenty pounds which remained in her hands. In November
she was confined; a son and heir was born to Shelley. He went to see
Harriet, but “the interview left husband and wife each embittered
against the other.” Friends were severe; “when Mrs. Boinville wrote, her
letter seemed cold and even sarcastic,” says Professor Dowden.
“Solitude,” he continues, “unharassed by debts and duns, with Mary’s
companionship, the society of a few friends, and the delights of study
and authorship, would have made these winter months to Shelley months of
unusual happiness and calm.” But, alas! creditors were pestering, and
even Harriet gave trouble. In January, 1815, Mary had to write in her
journal this entry: “Harriet sends her creditors here; nasty woman. Now
we must change our lodgings.”
One day about this time Shelley asked Peacock, “Do you think Wordsworth
could have written such poetry if he ever had dealings with
money-lenders?” Not only had Shelley dealings with money-lenders, he now
had dealings with bailiffs also. But still he continued to read largely.
In January, 1815, his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, died. Shelley
went down into Sussex; his father would not suffer him to enter the
house, but he sat outside the door and read _Comus_, while the reading
of his grandfather’s will went on inside. In February was born Mary’s
first child, a girl, who lived but a few days. All the spring Shelley
was ill and harassed, but by June it was settled that he should have an
allowance from his father of £1000 a year, and that his debts (including
£1200 promised by him to Godwin) should be paid. He on his part paid
Harriet’s debts and allowed her £200 a year. In August he took a house
on the borders of Windsor Park, and made a boating excursion up the
Thames as far as Lechlade, an excursion which produced his first entire
poem of value, the beautiful _Stanza in Lechlade Churchyard_. They were
followed, later in the autumn, by _Alastor_. Henceforth, from this
winter of 1815 until he was drowned between Leghorn and Spezzia in July,
1822, Shelley’s literary history is sufficiently given in the delightful
introductions prefixed by Mrs. Shelley to the poems of each year. Much
of the history of his life is there given also; but with some of those
“occurrences of his private life” on which Mrs. Shelley forbore to
touch, and which are now made known to us in Professor Dowden’s book, we
have still to deal.
Mary’s first son, William, was born in January, 1816, and in February we
find Shelley declaring himself “strongly urged, by the perpetual
experience of neglect or enmity from almost every one but those who are
supported by my resources, to desert my native country, hiding myself
and Mary from the contempt which we so unjustly endure.” Early in May he
left England with Mary and Miss Clairmont; they met Lord Byron at Geneva
and passed the summer by the Lake of Geneva in his company. Miss
Clairmont had already in London, without the knowledge of the Shelleys,
made Byron’s acquaintance and become his mistress. Shelley determined,
in the course of the summer, to go back to England, and, after all, “to
make that most excellent of nations my perpetual resting-place.” In
September he and his ladies returned; Miss Clairmont was then expecting
her confinement. Of her being Byron’s mistress the Shelleys were now
aware; but “the moral indignation,” says Professor Dowden, “which
Byron’s act might justly arouse, seems to have been felt by neither
Shelley nor Mary.” If Byron and Claire Clairmont, as she was now called,
loved and were happy, all was well.
The eldest daughter of the Godwin household, the amiable Fanny, was
unhappy at home and in deep dejection of spirits. Godwin was, as usual,
in terrible straits for money. The Shelleys and Miss Clairmont settled
themselves at Bath; early in October Fanny Godwin passed through Bath
without their knowing it, travelled on to Swansea, took a bedroom at the
hotel there, and was found in the morning dead, with a bottle of
laudanum on the table beside her and these words in her handwriting:—
“I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an
end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate,[45] and
whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have
hurt their health in endeavoring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to
hear of my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the
blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as ...”
There is no signature.
-----
Footnote 45:
She was Mary Wollstonecraft’s natural daughter by Imlay.
-----
A sterner tragedy followed. On the 9th of November 1816 Harriet Shelley
left the house in Brompton where she was then living, and did not
return. On the 10th of December her body was found in the Serpentine;
she had drowned herself. In one respect Professor Dowden resembles
Providence: his ways are inscrutable. His comment on Harriet’s death is:
“There is no doubt she wandered from the ways of upright living.” But he
adds: “That no act of Shelley’s, during the two years which immediately
preceded her death, tended to cause the rash act which brought her life
to its close, seems certain.” Shelley had been living with Mary all the
time; only that!
On the 30th of December, 1816, Mary Godwin and Shelley were married. I
shall pursue “the occurrences of Shelley’s private life” no further. For
the five years and a half which remain, Professor Dowden’s book adds to
our knowledge of Shelley’s life much that is interesting; but what was
chiefly important we knew already. The new and grave matter which we did
not know, or knew in the vaguest way only, but which Shelley’s family
and Professor Dowden have now thought it well to give us in full, ends
with Shelley’s second marriage.
I regret, I say once more, that it has been given. It is a sore trial
for our love of Shelley. What a set! what a world! is the exclamation
that breaks from us as we come to an end of this history of “the
occurrences of Shelley’s private life.” I used the French word _bête_
for a letter of Shelley’s; for the world in which we find him I can only
use another French word, _sale_. Godwin’s house of sordid horror, and
Godwin’s preaching and holding the hat, and the green-spectacled Mrs.
Godwin, and Hogg the faithful friend, and Hunt the Horace of this
precious world, and, to go up higher, Sir Timothy Shelley, a great
country gentleman, feeling himself safe while “the exalted mind of
Norfolk [the drinking Duke] protects me with the world,” and Lord Byron
with his deep grain of coarseness and commonness, his affectation, his
brutal selfishness—what a set! The history carries us to Oxford, and I
think of the clerical and respectable Oxford of those old times, the
Oxford of Copleston and the Kebles and Hawkins, and a hundred more, with
the relief Keble declares himself to experience from Izaak Walton,
“When, wearied with the tale thy times disclose,
The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose.”
I am not only thinking of morals and the house of Godwin, I am thinking
also of tone, bearing, dignity. I appeal to Cardinal Newman, if
perchance he does me the honor to read these words, is it possible to
imagine Copleston or Hawkins declaring himself safe “while the exalted
mind of the Duke of Norfolk protects me with the world”?
Mrs. Shelley, after her marriage and during Shelley’s closing years,
becomes attractive; up to her marriage her letters and journal do not
please. Her ability is manifest, but she is not attractive. In the world
discovered to us by Professor Dowden as surrounding Shelley up to 1817,
the most pleasing figure is Poor Fanny Godwin; after Fanny Godwin, the
most pleasing figure is Harriet Shelley herself.
Professor Dowden’s treatment of Harriet is not worthy—so much he must
allow me in all kindness, but also in all seriousness, to say—of either
his taste or his judgment. His pleading for Shelley is constant, and he
does more harm than good to Shelley by it. But here his championship of
Shelley makes him very unjust to a cruelly used and unhappy girl. For
several pages he balances the question whether or not Harriet was
unfaithful to Shelley before he left her for Mary, and he leaves the
question unsettled. As usual Professor Dowden (and it is his signal
merit) supplies the evidence decisive against himself. Thornton Hunt,
not well disposed to Harriet, Hogg, Peacock, Trelawny, Hookham, and a
member of Godwin’s own family, are all clear in their evidence that up
to her parting from Shelley Harriet was perfectly innocent. But that
precious witness, Godwin, wrote in 1817 that “she had proved herself
unfaithful to her husband before their separation.... Peace be to her
shade!” Why, Godwin was the father of Harriet’s successor. But Mary
believed the same thing. She was Harriet’s successor. But Shelley
believed it too. He had it from Godwin. But he was convinced of it
earlier. The evidence for this is, that, in writing to Southey in 1820,
Shelley declares that “the single passage of a life, otherwise not only
spotless but spent in an impassioned pursuit of virtue, which looks like
a blot,” bears that appearance “merely because I regulated my domestic
arrangements without deferring to the notions of the vulgar, although I
might have done so quite as conveniently had I descended to their base
thoughts.” From this Professor Dowden concludes that Shelley believed he
could have got a divorce from Harriet had he so wished. The conclusion
is not clear. But even were the evidence perfectly clear that Shelley
believed Harriet unfaithful when he parted from her, we should have to
take into account Mrs. Shelley’s most true sentence in her introduction
to _Alastor_: “In all Shelley did, he, at the time of doing it, believed
himself justified to his own conscience.”
Shelley’s asserting a thing vehemently does not prove more than that he
chose to believe it and did believe it. His extreme and violent changes
of opinion about people show this sufficiently. Eliza Westbrook is at
one time “a diamond not so large” as her sister Harriet but “more highly
polished;” and then: “I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul. I
sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my
unbounded abhorrence for this miserable wretch.” The antipathy, Hogg
tells us, was as unreasonable as the former excess of deference. To his
friend Miss Hitchener he says: “Never shall that intercourse cease,
which has been the day-dawn of my existence, the sun which has shed
warmth on the cold drear length of the anticipated prospect of life.” A
little later, and she has become “the Brown Demon, a woman of desperate
views and dreadful passions, but of cool and undeviating revenge!” Even
Professor Dowden admits that this is absurd; that the real Miss
Hitchener was not seen by Shelley, either when he adored or when he
detested.
Shelley’s power of persuading himself was equal to any occasion; but
would not his conscientiousness and high feeling have prevented his
exerting this power at poor Harriet’s expense? To abandon her as he did,
must he not have known her to be false! Professor Dowden insists always
on Shelley’s “conscientiousness.” Shelley himself speaks of his
“impassioned pursuit of virtue.” Leigh Hunt compared his life to that of
“Plato himself, or, still more, a Pythagorean,” and added that he “never
met a being who came nearer, perhaps so near, to the height of
humanity,” to being an “angel of charity.” In many respects Shelley
really resembled both a Pythagorean and an angel of charity. He loved
high thoughts, he cared nothing for sumptuous lodging, fare, and
raiment, he was poignantly afflicted at the sight of misery, he would
have given away his last farthing, would have suffered in his own
person, to relieve it. But in one important point he was like neither a
Pythagorean nor an angel: he was extremely inflammable. Professor Dowden
leaves no doubt on the matter. After reading his book, one feels
sickened for ever of the subject of irregular relations; God forbid that
I should go into the scandals about Shelley’s “Neapolitan charge,” about
Shelley and Emilia Viviani, about Shelley and Miss Clairmont, and the
rest of it! I will say only that it is visible enough that when the
passion of love was aroused in Shelley (and it was aroused easily) one
could not be sure of him, his friends could not trust him. We have seen
him with the Boinville family. With Emilia Viviani he is the same. If he
is left much alone with Miss Clairmont, he evidently makes Mary uneasy;
nay, he makes Professor Dowden himself uneasy. And I conclude that an
entirely human inflammability, joined to an inhuman want of humor and a
superhuman power of self-deception, are the causes which chiefly explain
Shelley’s abandonment of Harriet in the first place, and then his
behavior to her and his defense of himself afterwards.
His misconduct to Harriet, his want of humor his self-deception, are
fully brought before us for the first time by Professor Dowden’s book.
Good morals and good criticism alike forbid that when all this is laid
bare to us we should deny, or hide, or extenuate it. Nevertheless I go
back after all to what I said at the beginning; still our ideal Shelley,
the angelic Shelley, subsists. Unhappily the data for this Shelley we
had and knew long ago, while the data for the unattractive Shelley are
fresh; and what is fresh is likely to fix our attention more than what
is familiar. But Professor Dowden’s volumes, which give so much, which
give too much, also afford data for picturing anew the Shelley who
delights, as well as for picturing for the first time a Shelley who, to
speak plainly, disgusts; and with what may renew and restore our
impression of the delightful Shelley I shall end.
The winter at Marlow, and the ophthalmia caught among the cottages of
the poor, we knew, but we have from Professor Dowden more details of
this winter and of Shelley’s work among the poor; we have above all, for
the first time I believe, a line of verse of Shelley’s own which sums up
truly and perfectly this most attractive side of him—
“I am the friend of the unfriended poor.”
But that in Shelley on which I would especially dwell is that in him
which contrasts most with the ignobleness of the world in which we have
seen him living, and with the pernicious nonsense which we have found
him talking. The Shelley of “marvelous gentleness,” of feminine
refinement with gracious and considerate manners, “a perfect gentleman,
entirely without arrogance or aggressive egotism,” completely devoid of
the proverbial and ferocious vanity of authors and poets, always
disposed to make little of his own work and to prefer that of others, of
reverent enthusiasm for the great and wise, of high and tender
seriousness, of heroic generosity, and of a delicacy in rendering
services which was equal to his generosity—the Shelley who was all this
is the Shelley with whom I wish to end. He may talk nonsense about
tyrants and priests, but what a high and noble ring in such a sentence
as the following, written by a young man who is refusing £2000 a year
rather than consent to entail a great property!
“That I should entail £120,000 of command over labour, of power to
remit this, to employ it for benevolent purposes, on one whom I know
not—who might, instead of being the benefactor of mankind, be its
bane, or use this for the worst purposes, which the real delegates of
my chance-given property might convert into a most useful instrument
of benevolence! No! this you will not suspect me of.”
And again:—
“I desire money because I think I know the use of it. It commands
labor, it give leisure; and to give leisure to those who will employ
it in the forwarding of truth is the noblest present an individual can
make to the whole.”
If there is extravagance here, it is extravagance of a beautiful and
rare sort, like Shelley’s “underhand ways” also, which differed
singularly, the cynic Hogg tells us, from the underhand ways of other
people; “the latter were concealed because they were mean, selfish,
sordid; Shelley’s secrets, on the contrary (kindnesses done by stealth),
were hidden through modesty, delicacy, generosity, refinement of soul.”
His forbearance to Godwin, to Godwin lecturing and renouncing him and at
the same time holding out, as I have said, his hat to him for alms, is
wonderful; but the dignity with which he at last, in a letter perfect
for propriety of tone, reads a lesson to his ignoble father-in-law, is
in the best possible style:—
“Perhaps it is well that you should be informed that I consider your
last letter to be written in a style of haughtiness and encroachment
which neither awes nor imposes on me; but I have no desire to
transgress the limits which you place to our intercourse, nor in any
future instance will I make any remarks but such as arise from the
strict question in discussion.”
And again—
“My astonishment, and, I will confess, when I have been treated with
most harshness and cruelty by you, my indignation, has been extreme,
that, knowing as you do my nature, any considerations should have
prevailed on you to have been thus harsh and cruel. I lamented also
over my ruined hopes of all that your genius once taught me to expect
from your virtue, when I found that for yourself, your family, and
your creditors, you would submit to that communication with me which
you once rejected and abhorred, and which no pity for my poverty or
suffering, assumed willingly for you, could avail to extort.”
Moreover, though Shelley has no humor, he can show as quick and sharp a
tact as the most practised man of the world. He has been with Byron and
the Countess Guiccioli, and he writes of the latter—
“La Guiccioli is a very pretty, sentimental, innocent Italian, who has
sacrificed an immense future for the sake of Lord Byron, and who, if I
know anything of my friend, of her, and of human nature, will
hereafter have plenty of opportunity to repent her rashness,”
Tact also, and something better than tact, he shows in his dealings, in
order to befriend Leigh Hunt, with Lord Byron. He writes to Hunt:—
“Particular circumstances, or rather, I should say, particular
dispositions in Lord Byron’s character, render the close and exclusive
intimacy with him, in which I find myself, intolerable to me; thus
much, my best friend, I will confess and confide to you. No feelings
of my own shall injure or interfere with what is now nearest to
them—your interest; and I will take care to preserve the little
influence I may have over this Proteus, in whom such strange extremes
are reconciled, until we meet.”
And so we have comeback again, at last, to our original Shelley—to the
Shelley of the lovely and well-known picture, to the Shelley with
“flushed, feminine, artless face,” the Shelley “blushing like a girl,”
of Trelawny. Professor Dowden gives us some further attempts at
portraiture. One by a Miss Rose, of Shelley at Marlow:—
“He was the most interesting figure I ever saw; his eyes like a
deer’s, bright but rather wild; his white throat unfettered; his
slender but to me almost faultless shape; his brown long coat with
curling lambs’ wool collar and cuffs—in fact, his whole appearance—are
as fresh in my recollection as an occurrence of yesterday.”
Feminine enthusiasm may be deemed suspicious, but a Captain Kennedy must
surely be able to keep his head. Captain Kennedy was quartered at
Horsham in 1813, and saw Shelley when he was on a stolen visit, in his
father’s absence, at Field Place:—
“He received me with frankness and kindliness, as if he had known me
from childhood, and at once won my heart. I fancy I see him now as he
sate by the window, and hear his voice, the tones of which impressed
me with his sincerity and simplicity. His resemblance to his sister
Elizabeth was as striking as if they had been twins. His eyes were
most expressive; his complexion beautifully fair, his features
exquisitely fine; his hair was dark, and no peculiar attention to its
arrangement was manifest. In person he was slender and gentlemanlike,
but inclined to stoop; his gait was decidedly not military. The
general appearance indicated great delicacy of constitution. One would
at once pronounce of him that he was different from other men. There
was an earnestness in his manner and such perfect gentleness of
breeding and freedom from everything artificial as charmed every one.
I never met a man who so immediately won upon me.”
Mrs. Gisborne’s son, who knew Shelley well at Leghorn, declared Captain
Kennedy’s description of him to be “the best and most truthful I have
ever seen.”
To all this we have to add the charm of the man’s writings—of Shelley’s
poetry. It is his poetry, above everything else, which for many people
establishes that he is an angel. Of his poetry I have not space now to
speak. But let no one suppose that a want of humor and a self-delusion
such as Shelley’s have no effect upon a man’s poetry. The man Shelley,
in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not
entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty
and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in
poetry, no less than in life, he is “a beautiful _and ineffectual_
angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.”
VIII.
COUNT LEO TOLSTOI.[46]
-----
Footnote 46:
Published in the _Fortnightly Review_, December, 1887.
-----
In reviewing at the time of its first publication, thirty years ago,
Flaubert’s remarkable novel of _Madame Bovary_, Sainte-Beuve observed
that in Flaubert we come to another manner, another kind of inspiration,
from those which had prevailed hitherto; we find ourselves dealing, he
said, with a man of a new and different generation from novelists like
George Sand. The ideal has ceased, the lyric vein is dried up; the new
men are cured of lyricism and the ideal; “a severe and pitiless truth
has made its entry, as the last word of experience, even into art
itself.” The characters of the new literature of fiction are “science, a
spirit of observation, maturity, force, a touch of hardness.” _L’idéal a
cessé, le lyrique a tari._
The spirit of observation and the touch of hardness (let us retain these
mild and inoffensive terms) have since been carried in the French novel
very far. So far have they been carried, indeed, that in spite of the
advantage which the French language, familiar to the cultivated classes
everywhere, confers on the French novel, this novel has lost much of its
attraction for those classes; it no longer commands their attention as
it did formerly. The famous English novelists have passed away, and have
left no successors of like fame. It is not the English novel, therefore,
which has inherited the vogue lost by the French novel. It is a novel of
a country new to literature, or at any rate unregarded, till lately, by
the general public of readers: it is the novel of Russia. The Russian
novel has now the vogue, and deserves to have it. If fresh literary
productions maintain this vogue and enhance it, we shall all be learning
Russian.
The Slav nature, or at any rate the Russian nature, the Russian nature
as it shows itself in the Russian novels, seems marked by an extreme
sensitiveness, a consciousness most quick and acute both for what the
man’s self is experiencing, and also for what others in contact with him
are thinking and feeling. In a nation full of life, but young, and newly
in contact with an old and powerful civilization, this sensitiveness and
self-consciousness are prompt to appear. In the Americans, as well as in
the Russians, we see them active in a high degree. They are somewhat
agitating and disquieting agents to their possessor, but they have, if
they get fair play, great powers for evoking and enriching a literature.
But the Americans, as we know, are apt to set them at rest in the manner
of my friend Colonel Higginson of Boston. “As I take it, Nature said,
some years since: “Thus far the English is my best race; but we have had
Englishmen enough; we need something with a little more buoyancy than
the Englishman; let us lighten the structure, even at some peril in the
process. Put in one drop more of the nervous fluid, and make the
American.” With that drop, a new range of promise opened on the human
race, and a lighter, finer, more highly organized type of mankind was
born.” People who by this sort of thing give rest to their sensitive and
busy self-consciousness may very well, perhaps, be on their way to great
material prosperity, to great political power; but they are scarcely on
the right way to a great literature, a serious art.
The Russian does not assuage his sensitiveness in this fashion. The
Russian man of letters does not make Nature say: “The Russian is my best
race.” He finds relief to his sensitiveness in letting his perceptions
have perfectly free play, and in recording their reports with perfect
fidelity. The sincereness with which the reports are given has even
something childlike and touching. In the novel of which I am going to
speak there is not a line, not a trait, brought in for the glorification
of Russia, or to feel vanity; things and characters go as nature takes
them, and the author is absorbed in seeing how nature takes them and in
relating it. But we have here a condition of things which is highly
favorable to the production of good literature, of good art. We have
great sensitiveness, subtlety, and finesse, addressing themselves with
entire disinterestedness and simplicity to the representation of human
life. The Russian novelist is thus master of a spell to which the
secrets of human nature—both what is external and what is internal,
gesture and manner no less than thought and feeling—willingly make
themselves known. The crown of literature is poetry, and the Russians
have not yet had a great poet. But in that form of imaginative
literature which in our day is the most popular and the most possible,
the Russians at the present moment seem to me to hold, as Mr. Gladstone
would say, the field. They have great novelists, and one of their great
novelists I wish now to speak.
Count Leo Tolstoi is about sixty years old, and tells us that he shall
write novels no more. He is now occupied with religion and with the
Christian life. His writings concerning these great matters are not
allowed, I believe, to obtain publication in Russia, but instalments of
them in French and English reach us from time to time. I find them very
interesting, but I find his novel of _Anna Karénine_ more interesting
still. I believe that many readers prefer to _Anna Karénine_ Count
Tolstoi’s other great novel, _La Guerre et la Paix_. But in the novel
one prefers, I think, to have the novelist dealing with the life which
he knows from having lived it, rather than with the life which he knows
from books or hearsay. If one has to choose a representative work of
Thackeray, it is _Vanity Fair_ which one could take rather than _The
Virginians_. In like manner I take _Anna Karénine_ as the novel best
representing Count Tolstoi. I use the French translation; in general, as
I long ago said, work of this kind is better done in France than in
England, and _Anna Karénine_ is perhaps also a novel which goes better
into French than into English, just as Frederika Bremer’s _Home_ goes
into English better than into French. After I have done with _Anna
Karénine_ I must say something of Count Tolstoi’s religious writings. Of
these too I use the French translation, so far as it is available. The
English translation, however, which came into my hands late, seems to be
in general clear and good. Let me say in passing that it has neither the
same arrangement, nor the same titles, nor altogether the same contents,
with the French translation.
There are many characters in _Anna Karénine_—too many if we look in it
for a work of art in which the action shall be vigorously one, and to
that one action everything shall converge. There are even two main
actions extending throughout the book, and we keep passing from one of
them to the other—from the affairs of Anna and Wronsky to the affairs of
Kitty and Levine. People appear in connection with these two main
actions whose appearance and proceedings do not in the least contribute
to develop them; incidents are multiplied which we expect are to lead to
something important, but which do not. What, for instance, does the
episode of Kitty’s friend Warinka and Levine’s brother Serge Ivanitch,
their inclination for one another and its failure to come to anything,
contribute to the development of either the character or the fortunes of
Kitty and Levine? What does the incident of Levine’s long delay in
getting to church to be married, a delay which as we read of it seems to
have significance, really import? It turns out to import absolutely
nothing, and to be introduced solely to give the author the pleasure of
telling us that all Levine’s shirts had been packed up.
But the truth is we are not to take _Anna Karénine_ as a work of art; we
are to take it as a piece of life. A piece of life it is. The author has
not invented and combined it, he has seen it; it has all happened before
his inward eye, and it was in this wise that it happened. Levine’s
shirts were packed up, and he was late for his wedding in consequence;
Warinka and Serge Ivanitch met at Levine’s country-house and went out
walking together; Serge was very near proposing, but did not. The author
saw it all happening so—saw it, and therefore relates it; and what his
novel in this way loses in art it gains in reality.
For this is the result which, by his extraordinary fineness of
perception, and by his sincere fidelity to it, the author achieves; he
works in us a sense of the absolute reality of his personages and their
doings. Anna’s shoulders, and masses of hair, and half-shut eyes; Alexis
Karénine’s up-drawn eyebrows, and tired smile, and cracking
finger-joints; Stiva’s eyes suffused with facile moisture—these are as
real to us as any of those outward peculiarities which in our own circle
of acquaintance we are noticing daily, while the inner man of our own
circle of acquaintance, happily or unhappily, lies a great deal less
clearly revealed to us than that of Count Tolstoi’s creations.
I must speak of only a few of these creations, the chief personages and
no more. The book opens with “Stiva,” and who that has once made Stiva’s
acquaintance will ever forget him? We are living, in Count Tolstoi’s
novel, among the great people of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the nobles
and the high functionaries, the governing class of Russia. Stépane
Arcadiévitch—“Stiva”—is Prince Oblonsky, and descended from Rurik,
although to think of him as anything except “Stiva” is difficult. His
_air souriant_, his good looks, his satisfaction; his “ray,” which made
the Tartar waiter at the club joyful in contemplating it; his pleasure
in oysters and champagne, his pleasure in making people happy and in
rendering services; his need of money, his attachment to the French
governess, his distress at his wife’s distress, his affection for her
and the children; his emotion and suffused eyes, while he quite
dismisses the care of providing funds for household expenses and
education; and the French attachment, contritely given up to-day only to
be succeeded by some other attachment to-morrow—no never, certainly,
shall we come to forget Stiva. Anna, the heroine, is Stiva’s sister. His
wife Dolly (these English diminutives are common among Count Tolstoi’s
ladies) is daughter of the Prince and Princess Cherbatzky, grandees who
show us Russian high life by its most respectable side; the Prince, in
particular, is excellent—simple, sensible, right-feeling; a man of
dignity and honor. His daughters, Dolly and Kitty, are charming. Dolly,
Stiva’s wife, is sorely tried by her husband, full of anxieties for the
children, with no money to spend on them or herself, poorly dressed,
worn and aged before her time. She has moments of despairing doubt
whether the gay people may not be after all in the right, whether virtue
and principle answer; whether happiness does not dwell with
adventuresses and profligates, brilliant and perfectly dressed
adventuresses and profligates, in a land flowing with roubles and
champagne. But in a quarter of an hour she comes right again and is
herself—a nature straight, honest, faithful, loving, sound to the core;
such she is and such she remains; she can be no other. Her sister Kitty
is at bottom of the same temper, but she has her experience to get,
while Dolly, when the book begins, has already acquired hers. Kitty is
adored by Levine, in whom we are told that many traits are to be found
of the character and history of Count Tolstoi himself. Levine belongs to
the world of great people by his birth and property, but he is not at
all a man of the world. He has been a reader and thinker, he has a
conscience, he has public spirit and would ameliorate the condition of
the people, he lives on his estate in the country, and occupies himself
zealously with local business, schools and agriculture. But he is shy,
apt to suspect and to take offence, somewhat impracticable, out of his
element in the gay world of Moscow. Kitty likes him, but her fancy has
been taken by a brilliant guardsman, Count Wronsky, who has paid her
attentions. Wronsky is described to us by Stiva; he is “one of the
finest specimens of the _jeunesse dorée_ of St. Petersburg; immensely
rich, handsome, aide-de-camp to the emperor, great interest at his back,
and a good fellow notwithstanding; more than a good fellow, intelligent
besides and well read—a man who has a splendid career before him.” Let
us complete the picture by adding that Wronsky is a powerful man, over
thirty, bald at the top of his head, with irreproachable manners, cool
and calm, but a little haughty. A hero, one murmurs to oneself, too much
of the Guy Livingstone type, though without the bravado and
exaggeration. And such is, justly enough perhaps, the first impression,
an impression which continues all through the first volume; but Wronsky,
as we shall see, improves towards the end.
Kitty discourages Levine, who retires in misery and confusion. But
Wronsky is attracted by Anna Karénine, and ceases his attentions to
Kitty. The impression made on her heart by Wronsky was not deep; but she
is so keenly mortified with herself, so ashamed, and so upset, that she
falls ill, and is sent with her family to winter abroad. There she
regains health and mental composure, and discovers at the same time that
her liking for Levine was deeper than she knew, that it was a genuine
feeling, a strong and lasting one. On her return they meet, their hearts
come together, they are married; and in spite of Levine’s waywardness,
irritability, and unsettlement of mind, of which I shall have more to
say presently, they are profoundly happy. Well, and who could help being
happy with Kitty? So I find myself adding impatiently. Count Tolstoi’s
heroines are really so living and charming that one takes them, fiction
though they are, too seriously.
But the interest of the book centers in Anna Karénine. She is Stiva’s
sister, married to a high official at St. Petersburg, Alexis Karénine.
She has been married to him nine years, and has one child, a boy named
Serge. The marriage had not brought happiness to her, she had found in
it no satisfaction to her heart and soul, she had a sense of want and
isolation; but she is devoted to her boy, occupied, calm. The charm of
her personality is felt even before she appears, from the moment when we
hear of her being sent for as the good angel to reconcile Dolly with
Stiva. Then she arrives at the Moscow station from St. Petersburg, and
we see the gray eyes with their long eyelashes, the graceful carriage,
the gentle and caressing smile on the fresh lips, the vivacity
restrained but waiting to break through, the fulness of life, the
softness and strength joined, the harmony, the bloom, the charm. She
goes to Dolly, and achieves, with infinite tact and tenderness, the task
of reconciliation. At a ball a few days later, we add to our first
impression of Anna’s beauty, dark hair, a quantity of little curls over
her temples and at the back of her neck, sculptural shoulders, firm
throat, and beautiful arms. She is in a plain dress of black velvet with
a pearl necklace, a bunch of forget-me-nots in the front of her dress,
another in her hair. This is Anna Karénine.
She had traveled from St. Petersburg with Wronsky’s mother; had seen him
at the Moscow station, where he came to meet his mother, had been struck
with his looks and manner, and touched by his behavior in an accident
which happened while they were in the station to a poor workman crushed
by a train. At the ball she meets him again; she is fascinated by him
and he by her. She had been told of Kitty’s fancy, and had gone to the
ball meaning to help Kitty; but Kitty is forgotten, or any rate
neglected; the spell which draws Wronsky and Anna is irresistible. Kitty
finds herself opposite to them in a quadrille together:—
“She seemed to remark in Anna the symptoms of an over-excitement which
she herself knew from experience—that of success. Anna appeared to her
as if intoxicated with it. Kitty knew to what to attribute that
brilliant and animated look, that happy and triumphant smile, those
half-parted lips, those movements full of grace and harmony.”
Anna returns to St. Petersburg, and Wronsky returns there at the same
time; they meet on the journey, they keep meeting in society, and Anna
begins to find her husband, who before had not been sympathetic,
intolerable. Alexis Karénine is much older than herself, a bureaucrat, a
formalist, a poor creature; he has conscience, there is a root of
goodness in him, but on the surface and until deeply stirred he is
tiresome, pedantic, vain, exasperating. The change in Anna is not in the
slightest degree comprehended by him; he sees nothing which an
intelligent man might in such a case see, and does nothing which an
intelligent man would do. Anna abandons herself to her passion for
Wronsky.
I remember M. Nisard saying to me many years ago at the École Normale in
Paris, that he respected the English because they are _une nation qui
sait se gêner_—people who can put constraint on themselves and go
through what is disagreeable. Perhaps in the Slav nature this valuable
faculty is somewhat wanting; a very strong impulse is too much regarded
as irresistible, too little as what can be resisted and ought to be
resisted however difficult and disagreeable the resistance may be. In
our high society with its pleasure and dissipation, laxer notions may to
some extent prevail; but in general an English mind will be startled by
Anna’s suffering herself to be so overwhelmed and irretrievably carried
away by her passion, by her almost at once regarding it, apparently, as
something which it was hopeless to fight against. And this I say
irrespectively of the worth of her lover. Wronsky’s gifts and graces
hardly qualify him, one might think, to be the object of so
instantaneous and mighty a passion on the part of a woman like Anna. But
that is not the question. Let us allow that these passions are
incalculable; let us allow that one of the male sex scarcely does
justice, perhaps, to the powerful and handsome guardsman and his
attractions. But if Wronsky had been even such a lover as Alcibiades or
the Master of Ravenswood, still that Anna, being what she is and her
circumstances being what they are, should show not a hope, hardly a
thought, of conquering her passion, of escaping from its fatal power, is
to our notions strange and a little bewildering.
I state the objection; let me add that it is the triumph of Anna’s charm
that it remains paramount for us nevertheless; that throughout her
course, with its failures, errors, and miseries, still the impression of
her large, fresh, rich, generous, delightful nature, never leaves
us—keeps our sympathy, keeps even, I had almost said, our respect.
To return to the story. Soon enough poor Anna begins to experience the
truth of what the Wise Man told us long ago, that “the way of
transgressors is hard.” Her agitation at a steeple-chase where Wronsky
is in danger attracts her husband’s notice and provokes his
remonstrance. He is bitter and contemptuous. In a transport of passion
Anna declares to him that she is his wife no longer; that she loves
Wronsky, belongs to Wronsky. Hard at first, formal, cruel, thinking only
of himself, Karénine, who, as I have said, has a conscience, is touched
by grace at the moment when Anna’s troubles reach their height. He
returns to her to find her with a child just born to her and Wronsky,
the lover in the house and Anna apparently dying. Karénine has words of
kindness and forgiveness only. The noble and victorious effort
transfigures him, and all that her husband gains in the eyes of Anna,
her lover Wronsky loses. Wronsky comes to Anna’s bedside, and standing
there by Karénine, buries his face in his hands. Anna says to him, in
the hurried voice of fever:—
“‘Uncover your face; look at that man; he is a saint. Yes, uncover
your face; uncover it,’ she repeated with an angry air. ‘Alexis,
uncover his face; I want to see him.’
“Alexis took the hands of Wronsky and uncovered his face, disfigured
by suffering and humiliation.
“‘Give him your hand; pardon him.’
“Alexis stretched out his hand without even seeking to restrain his
tears.
“‘Thank God, thank God!’ she said; ‘all is ready now. How ugly those
flowers are.’ she went on, pointing to the wallpaper; ‘they are not a
bit like violets. My God, my God! when will all this end? Give me
morphine, doctor—I want morphine. Oh, my God, my God!’”
She seems dying, and Wronsky rushes out and shoots himself. And so, in a
common novel, the story would end. Anna would die, Wronsky would commit
suicide, Karénine would survive, in possession of our admiration and
sympathy. But the story does not always end so in life; neither does it
end so in Count Tolstoi’s novel. Anna recovers from her fever, Wronsky
from his wound. Anna’s passion for Wronsky reawakens, her estrangement
from Karénine returns. Nor does Karénine remain at the height at which
in the forgiveness scene we saw him. He is formal, pedantic, irritating.
Alas! even if he were not all these, perhaps even his _pince-nez_, and
his rising eyebrows, and his cracking finger-joints, would have been
provocation enough. Anna and Wronsky depart together. They stay for a
time in Italy, then return to Russia. But her position is false, her
disquietude incessant, and happiness is impossible for her. She takes
opium every night, only to find that “not poppy nor mandragora shall
ever medicine her to that sweet sleep which she owed yesterday.”
Jealousy and irritability grow upon her; she tortures Wronsky, she
tortures herself. Under these trials Wronsky, it must be said, comes out
well, and rises in our esteem. His love for Anna endures; he behaves, as
our English phrase is, “like a gentleman”; his patience is in general
exemplary. But then Anna, let us remember, is to the last, through all
the fret and misery, still Anna; always with something which charms;
nay, with something in her nature, which consoles and does good. Her
life, however, was becoming impossible under its existing conditions. A
trifling misunderstanding brought the inevitable end. After a quarrel
with Anna, Wronsky had gone one morning into the country to see his
mother; Anna summons him by telegraph to return at once, and receives an
answer from him that he cannot return before ten at night. She follows
him to his mother’s place in the country, and at the station hears what
leads her to believe that he is not coming back. Maddened with jealousy
and misery, she descends the platform and throws herself under the
wheels of a goods train passing through the station. It is over—the
graceful head is untouched, but all the rest is a crushed, formless
heap. Poor Anna!
We have been in a world which misconducts itself nearly as much as the
world of a French novel all palpitating with “modernity.” But there are
two things in which the Russian novel—Count Tolstoi’s novel at any
rate—is very advantageously distinguished from the type of novel now so
much in request in France. In the first place, there is no fine
sentiment, at once tiresome and false. We are not told to believe, for
example, that Anna is wonderfully exalted and ennobled by her passion
for Wronsky. The English reader is thus saved from many a groan of
impatience. The other thing is yet more important. Our Russian novelist
deals abundantly with criminal passion and with adultery, but he does
not seem to feel himself owing any service to the goddess Lubricity, or
bound to put in touches at this goddess’s dictation. Much in _Anna
Karénine_ is painful, much is unpleasant, but nothing is of a nature to
trouble the senses, or to please those who wish their senses troubled.
This taint is wholly absent. In the French novels where it is so
abundantly present its baneful effects do not end with itself. Burns
long ago remarked with deep truth that it _petrifies feeling._ Let us
revert for a moment to the powerful novel of which I spoke at the
outset, _Madame Bovary_. Undoubtedly the taint in question is present in
_Madame Bovary_, although to a much less degree than in more recent
French novels, which will be in every one’s mind. But _Madame Bovary_,
with this taint, is a work of _petrified feeling_; over it hangs an
atmosphere of bitterness, irony, impotence; not a personage in the book
to rejoice or console us; the springs of freshness and feeling are not
there to create such personages. Emma Bovary follows a course in some
respects like that of Anna, but where, in Emma Bovary, is Anna’s charm?
The treasures of compassion, tenderness, insight, which alone, amid such
guilt and misery, can enable charm to subsist and to emerge, are wanting
to Flaubert. He is cruel with the cruelty of petrified feeling, to his
poor heroine; he pursues her without pity or pause, as with malignity;
he is harder upon her himself than any reader even, I think, will be
inclined to be.
But where the springs of feeling have carried Count Tolstoi, since he
created Anna ten or twelve years ago, we have now to see.
We must return to Constantine Dmitrich Levine. Levine, as I have already
said, thinks. Between the age of twenty and that of thirty-five he had
lost, he tells us, the Christian belief in which he had been brought up,
a loss of which examples nowadays abound certainly everywhere, but which
in Russia, as in France, is among all young men of the upper and
cultivated class more a matter of course, perhaps, more universal, more
avowed, than it is with us. Levine had adopted the scientific notions
current all round him; talked of cells, organisms, the indestructibility
of matter, the conservation of force, and was of opinion, with his
comrades of the university, that religion no longer existed. But he was
of a serious nature, and the question what his life meant, whence it
came, whither it tended, presented themselves to him in moments of
crisis and affliction with irresistible importunity, and getting no
answer, haunted him, tortured him, made him think of suicide.
Two things, meanwhile, he noticed. One was, that he and his university
friends had been mistaken in supposing that Christian belief no longer
existed; they had lost it, but they were not all the world. Levine
observed that the persons to whom he was most attached, his own wife
Kitty amongst the number, retained it and drew comfort from it; that the
women generally, and almost the whole of the Russian common people,
retained it and drew comfort from it. The other was, that his scientific
friends, though not troubled like himself by questionings about the
meaning of human life, were untroubled by such questionings, not because
they had got an answer to them, but because, entertaining themselves
intellectually with the consideration of the cell theory, and evolution,
and the indestructibility of matter, and the conservation of force, and
the like, they were satisfied with this entertainment, and did not
perplex themselves with investigating the meaning and object of their
own life at all.
But Levine noticed further that he himself did not actually proceed to
commit suicide; on the contrary, he lived on his lands as his father had
done before him, busied himself with all the duties of his station,
married Kitty, was delighted when a son was born to him. Nevertheless he
was indubitably not happy at bottom, restless and disquieted, his
disquietude sometimes amounting to agony.
Now on one of his bad days he was in the field with his peasants, and
one of them happened to say to him, in answer to a question from Levine
why one farmer should in a certain case act more humanly than another:
“Men are not all alike: one man lives for his belly, like Mitiovuck,
another for his soul, for God, like old Plato.”[47]—“What do you call,”
cried Levine, “living for his soul, for God?” The peasant answered:
“It’s quite simple—living by the rule of God, of the truth. All men are
not the same, that’s certain. You yourself, for instance, Constantine
Dmitrich, you wouldn’t do wrong by a poor man.” Levine gave no answer,
but turned away with the phrase, _living by the rule of God, of the
truth_, sounding in his ears.
-----
Footnote 47:
A common name among Russian peasants.
-----
Then he reflected that he had been born of parents professing this rule,
as their parents again had professed it before them; that he had sucked
it in with his mother’s milk; that some sense of it, some strength and
nourishment from it, had been ever with him although he knew it not;
that if he had tried to do the duties of his station it was by help of
the secret support ministered by this rule; that if in his moments of
despairing restlessness and agony, when he was driven to think of
suicide, he had yet not committed suicide, it was because this rule had
silently enabled him to do his duty in some degree, and had given him
some hold upon life and happiness in consequence.
The words came to him as a clue of which he could never again lose
sight, and which with full consciousness and strenuous endeavor he must
henceforth follow. He sees his nephews and nieces throwing their milk at
one another and scolded by Dolly for it. He says to himself that these
children are wasting their subsistence because they have not to earn it
for themselves and do not know its value, and he exclaims inwardly: “I,
a Christian, brought up in the faith, my life filled with the benefits
of Christianity, living on these benefits without being conscious of it,
I, like these children, I have been trying to destroy what makes and
builds up my life.” But now the feeling has been borne in upon him,
clear and precious, that what he has to do is _be good_; he has “cried
to _Him_.” What will come of it?
“I shall probably continue to get out of temper with my coachman, to
get into useless arguments, to air my ideas unseasonably; I shall
always feel a barrier between the sanctuary of my soul and the soul of
other people, even that of my wife; I shall always be holding her
responsible for my annoyances and feeling sorry for it directly
afterwards. I shall continue to pray without being able to explain to
myself why I pray; but my inner life has won its liberty; it will no
longer be at the mercy of events, and every minute of my existence
will have a meaning sure and profound which it will be in my power to
impress on every single one of my actions, that of _being good_.”
With these words the novel of _Anna Karénine_ ends. But in Levine’s
religious experiences Count Tolstoi was relating his own, and the
history is continued in three autobiographical works translated from
him, which have within the last two or three years been published in
Paris: _Ma Confession_, _Ma Religion_, and _Que Faire_. Our author
announces further, “two great works,” on which he has spent six years:
one a criticism of dogmatic theology, the other a new translation of the
four Gospels, with a concordance of his own arranging. The results which
he claims to have established in these two works, are, however,
indicated sufficiently in the three published volumes which I have named
above.
These autobiographical volumes show the same extraordinary penetration,
the same perfect sincerity, which are exhibited in the author’s novel.
As autobiography they are of profound interest, and they are full,
moreover, of acute and fruitful remarks. I have spoken of the advantages
which the Russian genius possesses for imaginative literature. Perhaps
for Biblical exegesis, for the criticism of religion and its documents,
the advantage lies more with the older nations of the West. They will
have more of the experience, width of knowledge, patience, sobriety,
requisite for these studies; they may probably be less impulsive, less
heady.
Count Tolstoi regards the change accomplished in himself during the last
half-dozen years, he regards his recent studies and the ideas which he
has acquired through them, as epoch-making in his life and of capital
importance:—
“Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the doctrine of Jesus,
and all my life suddenly changed. I ceased to desire that which
previously I desired, and, on the other hand, I took to desiring what
I had never desired before. That which formerly used to appear good in
my eyes appeared evil, that which used to appear evil appeared good.”
The novel of _Anna Karénine_ belongs to that past which Count Tolstoi
has left behind him; his new studies and the works founded on them are
what is important; light and salvation are there. Yet I will venture to
express my doubt whether these works contain, as their contribution to
the cause of religion and to the establishment of the true mind and
message of Jesus, much that had not already been given or indicated by
Count Tolstoi in relating, in _Anna Karénine_, Levine’s mental history.
Points raised in that history are developed and enforced; there is an
abundant and admirable exhibition of knowledge of human nature,
penetrating insight, fearless sincerity, wit, sarcasm, eloquence, style.
And we have too the direct autobiography of a man not only interesting
to us from his soul and talent, but highly interesting also from his
nationality, position, and course of proceeding. But to light and
salvation in the Christian religion we are not, I think, brought very
much nearer than in Levine’s history. I ought to add that what was
already present in that history seems to me of high importance and
value. Let us see what it amounts to.
I must be general and I must be brief; neither my limits nor my purpose
permit the introduction of what is abstract. But in Count Tolstoi’s
religious philosophy there is very little which is abstract, arid. The
idea of _life_ is his master idea in studying and establishing religion.
He speaks impatiently of St. Paul as a source, in common with the
Fathers and the Reformers, of that ecclesiastical theology which misses
the essential and fails to present Christ’s Gospel aright. Yet Paul’s
“law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus freeing me from the law of
sin and death” is the pith and ground of all Count Tolstoi’s theology.
Moral life is the gift of God, is God, and this true life, this union
with God to which we aspire, we reach through Jesus. We reach it through
union with Jesus and by adopting his life. This doctrine is proved true
for us by the life in God, to be acquired through Jesus, being what our
nature feels after and moves to, by the warning of misery if we are
served from it, the sanction of happiness if we find it. Of the access
for _us_, at any rate, to the spirit of life, us who are born in
Christendom, are in touch, conscious or unconscious, with Christianity,
this is the true account. Questions over which the churches spend so
much labor and time—questions about the Trinity, about the godhead of
Christ, about the procession of the Holy Ghost, are not vital; what is
vital is the doctrine of access to the spirit of life through Jesus.
Sound and saving doctrine, in my opinion, this is. It may be gathered in
a great degree from what Count Tolstoi had already given us in the novel
of _Anna Karénine_. But of course it is greatly developed, in the
special works which have followed. Many of these developments are, I
will repeat, of striking force, interest, and value. In _Anna Karénine_
we had been told of the scepticism of the upper and educated classes in
Russia. But what reality is added by such an anecdote as the following
from _Ma Confession_:—
“I remember that when I was about eleven years old we had a visit one
Sunday from a boy, since dead, who announced to my brother and me, as
great news, a discovery just made at his public school. This discovery
was to the effect that God had no existence, and that everything which
we were taught about Him was pure invention.”
Count Tolstoi touched, in _Anna Karénine_, on the failure of science to
tell a man what his life means. Many a sharp stroke does he add in his
latter writings:—
“Development is going on, and there are laws which guide it. You
yourself are a part of the whole. Having come to understand the whole
so far as is possible, and having comprehended the law of development,
you will comprehend also your place in that whole, you will understand
yourself.
“In spite of all the shame the confession costs me, there was a time,
I declare, when I tried to look as if I was satisfied with this sort
of thing!”
But the men of science may take comfort from hearing that Count Tolstoi
treats the men of letters no better than them, although he is a man of
letters himself:—
“The judgment which my literary companions passed on life was to the
effect that life in general is in a state of progress, and that in
this development we, the men of letters, take the principal part. The
vocation of us artists and poets is to instruct the world; and to
prevent my coming out with the natural question, ‘What am I, and what
am I to teach?’ it was explained to me that it was useless to know
that, and that the artist and the poet taught without perceiving how.
I passed for a superb artist, a great poet, and consequently it was
but natural I should appropriate this theory. I, the artist, the
poet—I wrote, I taught, without myself knowing what. I was paid for
what I did. I had everything: splendid fare and lodging, women,
society; I had _la gloire_. Consequently, what I taught was very good.
This faith in the importance of poetry and of the development of life
was a religion, and I was one of its priests—a very agreeable and
advantageous office.
“And I lived ever so long in this belief, never doubting but that it
was true!”
The adepts of this literary and scientific religion are not numerous, to
be sure, in comparison with the mass of the people, and the mass of the
people, as Levine had remarked, find comfort still in the old religion
of Christendom; but of the mass of the people our literary and
scientific instructors make no account. Like Solomon and Schopenhauer,
these gentlemen, and “society” along with them, are, moreover, apt to
say that life is, after all, vanity: but then they all know of no life
except their own.
“It used to appear to me that the small number of cultivated, rich,
and idle men, of whom I was one, composed the whole of humanity, and
that the millions and millions of other men who had lived and are
still living were not in reality men at all. Incomprehensible as it
now seems to me, that I should have gone on considering life without
seeing the life which was surrounding me on all sides, the life of
humanity; strange as it is to think that I should have been so
mistaken, and have fancied my life, the life of the Solomons and the
Schopenhauers, to be the veritable and normal life, while the life of
the masses was but a matter of no importance—strangely odd as this
seems to me now,—so it was, notwithstanding.”
And this pretentious minority, who call themselves “society,” “the
world,” and to whom their own life, the life of “the world,” seems the
only life worth naming, are all the while miserable! Our author found it
so in his own experience:—
“In my life, an exceptionally happy one from a worldly point of view,
I can number such a quantity of sufferings endured for the sake of
“the world,” that they would be enough to furnish a martyr for Jesus.
All the most painful passages in my life, beginning with the orgies
and duels of my student days, the wars I have been in, the illnesses,
and the abnormal and unbearable conditions in which I am living
now—all this is but one martyrdom endured in the name of the doctrine
of the world. Yes, and I speak of my own life, exceptionally happy
from the world’s point of view.
“Let any sincere man pass his life in review, and he will perceive
that never, not once, has he suffered through practising the doctrine
of Jesus; the chief part of the miseries of his life have proceeded
solely from his following, contrary to his inclination, the spell of
the doctrine of the world.”
On the other hand, the simple, the multitudes, outside of this spell,
are comparatively contented:—
“In opposition to what I saw in our circle, where life without faith
is possible, and where I doubt whether one in a thousand would confess
himself a believer, I conceive that among the people (in Russia) there
is not one sceptic to many thousands of believers. Just contrary to
what I saw in our circle, where life passes in idleness, amusements,
and discontent with life, I saw that of these men of the people the
whole life was passed in severe labor, and yet they were contented
with life. Instead of complaining like the persons in our world of the
hardship of their lot, these poor people received sickness and
disappointments without any revolt, without opposition, but with a
firm and tranquil confidence that so it was to be, that it could not
be otherwise, and that it was all right.”
All this is but development, sometimes rather surprising, but always
powerful and interesting, of what we have already had in the pages of
_Anna Karénine_. And like Levine in that novel, Count Tolstoi was driven
by his inward struggle and misery very near to suicide. What is new in
the recent books is the solution and cure announced. Levine had accepted
a provisional solution of the difficulties oppressing him; he had lived
right on, so to speak, obeying his conscience, but not asking how far
all his actions hung together and were consistent:—
“He advanced money to a peasant to get him out of the clutches of a
money-lender, but did not give up the arrears due to himself; he
punished thefts of wood strictly, but would have scrupled to impound a
peasant’s cattle trespassing on his fields; he did not pay the wages
of a laborer whose father’s death caused him to leave work in the
middle of harvest, but he pensioned and maintained his old servants;
he let his peasants wait while he went to give his wife a kiss after
he came home, but would not have made them wait while he went to visit
his bees.”
Count Tolstoi has since advanced to a far more definite and stringent
rule of life—the positive doctrine, he thinks, of Jesus. It is the
determination and promulgation of this rule which is the novelty in our
author’s recent works. He extracts this essential doctrine, or rule of
Jesus, from the Sermon on the Mount, and presents it in a body of
commandments—Christ’s commandments; the pith, he says, of the New
Testament, as the Decalogue is the pith of the Old. These all-important
commandments of Christ are “commandments of peace,” and five in number.
The first commandment is: “Live in peace with all men; treat no one as
contemptible and beneath you. Not only allow yourself no anger, but do
not rest until you have dissipated even unreasonable anger in others
against yourself.” The second is: “No libertinage and no divorce; let
every man have one wife and every woman one husband.” The third: “Never
on any pretext take an oath of service of any kind; all such oaths are
imposed for a bad purpose.” The fourth: “Never employ force against the
evil-doer; bear whatever wrong is done to you without opposing the
wrong-doer or seeking to have him punished.” The fifth and last:
“Renounce all distinction of nationality; do not admit that men of
another nation may ever be treated by you as enemies; love all men alike
as alike near to you; do good to all alike.”
If these five commandments were generally observed, says Count Tolstoi,
all men would become brothers. Certainly the actual society in which we
live would be changed and dissolved. Armies and wars would be renounced;
courts of justice, police, property, would be renounced also. And
whatever the rest of us may do, Count Tolstoi at least will do his duty
and follow Christ’s commandments sincerely. He has given up rank,
office, and property, and earns his bread by the labor of his own hands.
“I believe in Christ’s commandments,” he says, “and this faith changes
my whole former estimate of what is good and great, bad and low, in
human life.” At present—
“Everything which I used to think bad and low—the rusticity of the
peasant, the plainness of lodging, food, clothing, manners—all this
has become good and great in my eyes. At present I can no longer
contribute to anything which raises me externally above others, which
separates me from them. I cannot, as formerly, recognize either in my
own case or in that of others any title, rank, or quality beyond the
title and quality of man. I cannot seek fame and praise; I cannot seek
a culture which separates me from men. I cannot refrain from seeking
in my whole existence—in my lodging, my food, my clothing, and my ways
of going on with people—whatever, far from separating me from the mass
of mankind, draws me nearer to them.”
Whatever else we have or have not in Count Tolstoi, we have at least a
great soul and a great writer. In his Biblical exegesis, in the
criticism by which he extracts and constructs his Five Commandments of
Christ which are to be the rule of our lives, I find much which is
questionable along with much which is ingenious and powerful. But I have
neither space, nor, indeed, inclination, to criticise his exegesis here.
The right moment, besides, for criticising this will come when the “two
great works,” which are in preparation, shall have appeared.
For the present I limit myself to a single criticism only—a general one.
Christianity cannot be packed into any set of commandments. As I have
somewhere or other said, “Christianity is a _source_; no one supply of
water and refreshment that comes from it can be called the sum of
Christianity. It is a mistake, and may lead to much error, to exhibit
any series of maxims, even those of the Sermon on the Mount, as the
ultimate sum and formula into which Christianity may be run up.”
And the reason mainly lies in the character of the Founder of
Christianity and in the nature of his utterances. Not less important
than the teachings given by Jesus in the _temper_ of their giver, his
temper of sweetness and reasonableness, of _epieikeia_. Goethe calls him
a _Schäwrmer_, a fanatic; he may much more rightly be called an
opportunist. But he is an opportunist of an opposite kind from those who
in politics, that “wild and dreamlike trade” of insincerity, give
themselves this name. They push or slacken, press their points hard or
let them be, as may best suit the interests of their self-aggrandizement
and of their party. Jesus has in view simply “the rule of God, of the
truth.” But this is served by waiting as well as by hasting forward, and
sometimes served better.
Count Tolstoi sees rightly that whatever the propertied and satisfied
classes may think, the world, ever since Jesus Christ came, is judged;
“a new earth” is in prospect. It was ever in prospect with Jesus, and
should be ever in prospect with his followers. And the ideal in prospect
has to be realized. “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do
them.” But they are to be done through a great and widespread and
long-continued change, and a change of the inner man to begin with. The
most important and fruitful utterances of Jesus, therefore, are not
things which can be drawn up as a table of stiff and stark external
commands, but the things which have most soul in them; because these can
best sink down into our soul, work there, set up an influence, form
habits of conduct, and prepare the future. The Beatitudes are on this
account more helpful than the utterances from which Count Tolstoi builds
up his Five Commandments. The very _secret_ of Jesus, “He that loveth
his life shall lose it, he that will lose his life shall save it,” does
not give us a command to be taken and followed in the letter, but an
idea to work in our mind and soul, and of inexhaustible value there.
Jesus paid tribute to the government and dined with the publicans,
although neither the empire of Rome nor the high finance of Judea were
compatible with his ideal and with the “new earth” which that ideal must
in the end create. Perhaps Levine’s provisional solution, in a society
like ours, was nearer to “the rule of God, of the truth,” than the more
trenchant solution which Count Tolstoi has adopted for himself since. It
seems calculated to be of more use. I do not know how it is in Russia,
but in an English village the determination of “our circle” to earn
their bread by the work of their hands would produce only dismay, not
fraternal joy, amongst that “majority” who are so earning it already.
“There are plenty of us to compete as things stand,” the gardeners,
carpenters, and smiths would say; “pray stick to your articles, your
poetry, and nonsense; in manual labor you will interfere with us, and be
taking the bread out of our mouths.”
So I arrive at the conclusion that Count Tolstoi has perhaps not done
well in abandoning the work of the poet and artist, and that he might
with advantage return to it. But whatever he may do in the future, the
work which he has already done, and his work in religion as well as his
work in imaginative literature, is more than sufficient to signalize him
as one of the most marking, interesting, and sympathy-inspiring men of
our time—an honor, I must add, to Russia, although he forbids us to heed
nationality.
IX.
AMIEL.[48]
-----
Footnote 48:
Published in _Macmillan’s Magazine_, September 1887.
-----
It is somewhat late to speak of Amiel, but I was late in reading him.
Goethe says that in seasons of cholera one should read no books but such
as are tonic, and certainly in the season of old age this precaution is
as salutary as in seasons of cholera. From what I heard I could clearly
make out that Amiel’s Journal was not a tonic book: the extracts from it
which here and there I fell in with did not much please me; and for a
good while I left the book unread.
But what M. Edmond Scherer writes I do not easily resist reading, and I
found that M. Scherer had prefixed to Amiel’s Journal a long and
important introduction. This I read; and was not less charmed by the
_mitis sapientia_, the understanding, kindness and tenderness, with
which the character of Amiel himself, whom M. Scherer had known in
youth, was handled, than interested by the criticism on the Journal.
Then I read Mrs. Humphry Ward’s interesting notice, and then—for all
biography is attractive, and of Amiel’s life and circumstances I had by
this time become desirous of knowing more—the _Etude Biographique_ of
Mademoiselle Berthe Vadier.
Of Amiel’s cultivation, refinement, and high feeling, of his singular
graces of spirit and character, there could be no doubt. But the
specimens of his work given by his critics left me hesitating. A poetess
herself, Mademoiselle Berthe Vadier is much occupied with Amiel’s
poetry, and quotes it abundantly. Even Victor Hugo’s poetry leaves me
cold, I am so unhappy as not to be able to admire _Olympio_; what am I
to say, then, to Amiel’s
“Journée
Illuminée,
Riant soleil d’avril,
En quel songe
Se plonge
Mon cœur, et que veut-il”?
But M. Scherer and other critics, who do not require us to admire
Amiel’s poetry, maintain that in his Journal he has left “a book which
will not die,” a book describing a malady of which “the secret is
sublime and the expression wonderful”; a marvel of “speculative
intuition,” a “psychological experience of the utmost value.” M. Scherer
and Mrs. Humphry Ward give Amiel’s Journal very decidedly the preference
over the letters of an old friend of mine, Obermann. The quotations made
from Amiel’s Journal by his critics failed, I say, to enable me quite to
understand this high praise. But I remember the time when a new
publication by George Sand or by Sainte-Beuve was an event bringing to
me a shock of pleasure, and a French book capable of renewing that
sensation is seldom produced now. If Amiel’s Journal was of the high
quality alleged, what a pleasure to make acquaintance with it, what a
loss to miss it! In spite, therefore, of the unfitness of old age to
bear atonic influences, I at last read Amiel’s Journal,—read it
carefully through. Tonic it is not; but it is to be read with profit,
and shows, moreover, powers of great force and value, though not quite,
I am inclined to think, in the exact line which his critics with one
consent indicate.
In speaking of Amiel at present, after so much has been written about
him, I may assume that the main outlines of his life are known to my
readers: that they know him to have been born in 1821 and to have died
in 1881, to have passed the three or four best years of his youth at the
University of Berlin, and the remainder of his life mostly at Geneva, as
a professor, first of æsthetics, afterwards of philosophy. They know
that his publications and lectures, during his lifetime, disappointed
his friends, who expected much from his acquirements, talents, and
vivacity; and that his fame rests upon two volumes of extracts from many
thousand pages of a private journal, _Journal Intime_, extending over
more than thirty years, from 1848 to 1881, which he left behind him at
his death. This Journal explains his sterility; and displays in
explaining it, say his critics, such sincerity, with such gifts of
expression and eloquence, of profound analysis and speculative
intuition, as to make it most surely “one of those books which will not
die.”
The sincerity is unquestionable. As to the gifts of eloquence and
expression, what are we to say? M. Scherer speaks of an “ever new
eloquence” pouring itself in the pages of the Journal: M. Paul Bourget,
of “marvelous pages” where the feeling for nature finds an expression
worthy of Shelley or Wordsworth: Mrs. Humphry Ward, of “magic of style,”
of “glow and splendor of expression,” of the “poet and artist” who
fascinates us in Amiel’s prose. I cannot quite agree. Obermann has been
mentioned: it seems to me that we have only to place a passage from
Sénancour beside a passage from Amiel, to perceive the difference
between a feeling for nature which gives magic to style and one which
does not. Here and throughout I am to use as far as possible Mrs.
Humphry Ward’s translation, at once spirited and faithful, of Amiel’s
Journal. I will take a passage where Amiel has evidently some
reminiscence of Sénancour (whose work he knew well), is inspired by
Sénancour—a passage which has been extolled by M. Paul Bourget:—
“Shall I ever enjoy again those marvelous reveries of past days,—as,
for instance, once, when I was still quite a youth in the early dawn
sitting amongst the ruins of the castle of Faucigny; another time in
the mountains above Lancy, under the mid-day sun, lying under a tree
and visited by three butterflies; and again another night on the sandy
shore of the North Sea, stretched full length upon the beach, my eyes
wandering over the Milky Way? Will they ever return to me, those
grandiose, immortal, cosmogonic dreams in which one seems to carry the
world in one’s breast, to touch the stars, to possess the infinite?
Divine moments, hours of ecstasy, when thought flies from world to
world, penetrates the great enigma, breathes with a respiration large,
tranquil, and profound like that of the ocean, and hovers serene and
boundless like the blue heaven! Visits from the Muse Urania, who
traces around the foreheads of those she loves the phosphorescent
nimbus of contemplative power, and who pours into their hearts the
tranquil intoxication, if not the authority of genius,—moments of
irresistible intuition in which a man feels himself great as the
universe and calm like God!... What hours, what memories!”
And now for Obermann’s turn, Obermann by the Lake of Bienne:—
“My path lay beside the green waters of the Thiele. Feeling inclined
to muse, and finding the night so warm that there was no hardship in
being all night out of doors, I took the road to Saint Blaise. I
descended a steep bank, and got upon the shore of the lake where its
ripple came up and expired. The air was calm; every one was at rest; I
remained there for hours. Towards morning the moon shed over the earth
and waters the ineffable melancholy of her last gleams. Nature seems
unspeakably grand, when, plunged in a long reverie, one hears the
rippling of the waters upon a solitary strand, in the calm of a night
still enkindled and luminous with the setting moon.
“Sensibility beyond utterance, charm and torment of our vain years;
vast consciousness of a nature everywhere greater than we are, and
everywhere impenetrable; all-embracing passion, ripened wisdom,
delicious self-abandonment—everything that a mortal heart can contain
of life-weariness and yearning, I felt it all, I experienced it all,
in this memorable night. I have made a grave step towards the age of
decline, I have swallowed up ten years of life at once. Happy the
simple, whose heart is always young!”
No translation can render adequately the cadence of diction, the “dying
fall” of reveries like those of Sénancour or Rousseau. But even in a
translation we must surely perceive that the magic of style is with
Sénancour’s feeling for nature, not Amiel’s; and in the original this is
far more manifest still.
Magic of style is creative: its possessor himself creates, and he
inspires and enables his reader in some sort to create after him. And
creation gives the sense of life and joy; hence its extraordinary value.
But eloquence may exist without magic of style, and this eloquence,
accompanying thoughts of rare worth and depth, may heighten their effect
greatly. And M. Scherer says that Amiel’s speculative philosophy is “on
a far other scale of vastness” than Sénancour’s, and therefore he gives
the preference to the eloquence of Amiel, which clothes and conveys this
vaster philosophy. Amiel was no doubt greatly Sénancour’s superior in
culture and instruction generally; in philosophical reading and what is
called philosophical thought he was immensely his superior. My sense for
philosophy, I know, is as far from satisfying Mr. Frederic Harrison as
my sense for Hugo’s poetry is from satisfying Mr. Swinburne. But I am
too old to change and too hardened to hide what I think; and when I am
presented with philosophical speculations and told that they are “on a
high scale of vastness,” I persist in looking closely at them and in
honestly asking myself what I find to be their positive value. And we
get from Amiel’s powers of “speculative intuition” things like this—
“Created spirits in the accomplishment of their destinies tend, so to
speak, to form constellations and milky ways within the empyrean of
the divinity; in becoming gods, they surround the throne of the
sovereign with a sparkling court.”
Or this—
“Is not mind the universal virtuality, the universe latent? If so, its
zero would be the germ of the infinite, which is expressed
mathematically by the double zero (00).”
Or, to let our philosopher develop himself at more length, let us take
this return to the zero, which Mrs. Humphry Ward prefers here to render
by _nothingness_:—
“This psychological reinvolution is an anticipation of death; it
represents the life beyond the grave, the return to Scheol, the soul
fading into the world of ghosts or descending into the region of _Die
Mütter_; it implies the simplification of the individual who, allowing
all the accidents of personality to evaporate, exists henceforward
only in the invisible state, the state of point, of potentiality, of
pregnant nothingness. Is not this the true definition of mind? is not
mind, dissociated from space and time, just this? Its development,
past or future, is contained in it just as a curve is contained in its
algebraical formula. This nothing is an all. This _punctum_ without
dimensions is a _punctum saliens_.”
French critics throw up their hands in dismay at the violence which the
Germanized Amiel, propounding his speculative philosophy, often does to
the French language. My objection is rather that such speculative
philosophy, as that of which I have been quoting specimens has no value,
is perfectly futile. And Amiel’s Journal contains far too much of it.
What is futile we may throw aside; but when Amiel tells us of his
“protean nature essentially metamorphosable, polarizable, and virtual,”
when he tells us of his longing for “totality,” we must listen, although
these phrases may in France, as M. Paul Bourget says, “raise a shudder
in a humanist trained on Livy and Pascal.” But these phrases stood for
ideas which did practically rule, in a great degree, Amiel’s life, which
he often develops not only with great subtlety, but also with force,
clearness, and eloquence, making it both easy and interesting to us to
follow him. But still, when we have the ideas present before us, I shall
ask, what is their value, what does Amiel obtain in them for the service
of either himself or other people?
Let us take first what, adopting his own phrase, we may call his
“bedazzlement with the infinitê,” his thirst for “totality.” _Omnis
determinatio est negatio._ Amiel has the gift and the bent for making
his soul “the capacity for all form, not _a_ soul but _the_ soul.” He
finds it easier and more natural “to be _man_ than _a_ man.” His
permanent instinct is to be “a subtle and fugitive spirit which no base
can absorb or fix entirely.” It costs him an effort to affirm his own
personality: “the infinite draws me to it, the _Henosis_ of Plotinus
intoxicates me like a philter.”
It intoxicates him until the thought of absorption and extinction, the
_Nirvâna_ of Buddhism, becomes his thought of refuge:—
“The individual life is a nothing ignorant of itself, and as soon as
this nothing knows itself, individual life is abolished in principle.
For as soon as the illusion vanishes, Nothingness resumes its eternal
sway, the suffering of life is over, error has disappeared, time and
form have for this enfranchised individuality ceased to be; the
colored air-bubble has burst in the infinite space, and the misery of
thought has sunk to rest in the changeless repose of all—embracing
Nothing.”
With this bedazement with the infinite and this drift towards Buddhism
comes the impatience with all production, with even poetry and art
themselves, because of their necessary limits and imperfection:—
“Composition demands a concentration, decision, and pliancy which I no
longer possess. I cannot fuse together materials and ideas. If we are
to give anything a form we must, so to speak, be the tyrants of it. We
must treat our subject brutally and not be always trembling lest we
should be doing it a wrong. We must be able to transmute and absorb it
into our own substance. This sort of confident effrontery is beyond
me; my whole nature tends to that impersonality which respects and
subordinates itself to the object; it is love of truth which holds me
back from concluding and deciding.”
The desire for the all, the impatience with what is partial and limited,
the fascination of the infinite, are the topics of page after page in
the Journal. It is a prosaic mind which has never been in contact with
ideas of this sort, never felt their charm. They lend themselves well to
poetry, but what are we to say of their value as ideas to be lived with,
dilated on, made the governing ideas of life? Except for use in passing,
and with the power to dismiss them again, they are unprofitable.
Shelley’s
“Life like a dome of many-colored glass
Stains the white radiance of eternity
Until death tramples it to fragments”
has value as a splendid image nobly introduced in a beautiful and
impassioned poem. But Amiel’s “colored air-bubble,” as a positive piece
of “speculative intuition,” has no value whatever. Nay, the thoughts
which have positive truth and value, the thoughts to be lived with and
dwelt upon, the thoughts which are a real acquisition for our minds, are
precisely thoughts which counteract the “vague aspiration and
indeterminate desire” possessing Amiel and filling his Journal: they are
thoughts insisting on the need of limit, the feasibility of performance.
Goethe says admirably—
“Wer grosses will muss sich zusammenraffen:
In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister.”
“He who will do great things must pull himself together: it is in
working within limits that the master comes out.” Buffon says not less
admirably—
“Tout sujet est un; et quelque vaste qu’il soit, il peut être renfermé
dans un seul discours.”
“Every subject is one; and however vast it may be is capable of being
contained in a single discourse.” The ideas to live with, the ideas of
sterling value to us, are, I repeat, ideas of this kind: ideas staunchly
counteracting and reducing the power of the infinite and indeterminate,
not paralyzing us with it.
And indeed we have not to go beyond Amiel himself for proof of this.
Amiel was paralyzed by living in these ideas of “vague aspiration and
indeterminate desire,” of “confounding his personal life in the general
life,” by feeding on these ideas, treating them as august and precious,
and filling hundreds of pages of Journal with them. He was paralyzed by
it, he became impotent and miserable. And he knew it, and tells us of it
himself with a power of analysis and with a sad eloquence which to me
are much more interesting and valuable than his philosophy of Maïa and
the Great Wheel. “By your natural tendency,” he says to himself, “you
arrive at disgust with life, despair, pessimism.” And again: “Melancholy
outlook on all sides. Disgust with myself.” And again: “I cannot deceive
myself as to the fate in store for me: increasing isolation, inward
disappointment, enduring regrets, a melancholy neither to be consoled
nor confessed, a mournful old age, a slow agony, a death in the desert.”
And all this misery by his own fault, his own mistakes. “To live is to
conquer incessantly; one must have the courage to be happy. I turn in a
vicious circle; I have never had clear sight of my true vocation.”
I cannot, therefore, fall in with that particular line of admiration
which critics, praising Amiel’s Journal, have commonly followed. I
cannot join in celebrating his prodigies of speculative intuition, the
glow and splendor of his beatific vision of absolute knowledge, the
marvelous pages in which his deep and vast philosophic thought is laid
bare, the secret of his sublime malady is expressed. I hesitate to admit
that all this part of the Journal has even a very profound pyschological
interest: its interest is rather pathological. In reading it we are not
so much pursuing a study of psychology as a study of mental pathology.
But the Journal reveals a side in Amiel which his critics, so far as I
have seen, have hardly noticed, a side of real power, originality, and
value. He says himself that he never had clear sight of his true
vocation: well, his true vocation, it seems to me, was that of a
literary critic. Here he is admirable: M. Scherer was a true friend when
he offered to introduce him to an editor, and suggested an article on
Uhland. There is hardly a literary criticism in these two volumes which
is not masterly, and which does not make one desire more of the same
kind. And not Amiel’s literary criticism only, but his criticism of
society, politics, national character, religion, is in general well
informed, just, and penetrating in an eminent degree. Any one single
page of this criticism is worth, in my opinion, a hundred of Amiel’s
pages about the Infinite Illusion and the Great Wheel. It is to this
side in Amiel that I desire now to draw attention. I would have
abstained from writing about him if I had only to disparage and to find
fault, only to say that he had been overpraised, and that his dealings
with Maïa seemed to me profitable neither for himself nor for others.
Let me first take Amiel as a critic of literature, and of the literature
which he naturally knew best, French literature. Hear him as a critic on
the best of critics, Sainte-Beuve, of whose death (1869) he had just
heard:—
“The fact is, Sainte-Beuve leaves a greater void behind him than
either Béranger or Lamartine; their greatness was already distant,
historical; he was still helping us to think. The true critic supplies
all the world with a basis. He represents the public judgment, that is
to say, the public reason, the touchstone, the scales, the crucible,
which tests the value of each man and the merit of each work.
Infallibility of judgment is perhaps rarer than anything else, so fine
a balance of qualities does it demand—qualities both natural and
acquired, qualities of both mind and heart. What years of labor, what
study and comparison, are needed to bring the critical judgment to
maturity! Like Plato’s sage, it is only at fifty that the critic is
risen to the true height of his literary priesthood, or, to put it
less pompously, of his social function. Not till then has he compassed
all modes of being, and made every shade of appreciation his own. And
Saint-Beuve joined to this infinitely refined culture a prodigious
memory and an incredible multitude of facts and anecdotes stored up
for the service of his thought.”
The criticism is so sound, so admirably put, and so charming, that one
wishes Sainte-Beuve could have read it himself.
Try Amiel next on the touchstone afforded by that “half genius, half
charlatan,” Victor Hugo:—
“I have been again looking through Victor Hugo’s _Paris_ (1867). For
ten years event after event has given the lie to the prophet, but the
confidence of the prophet in his own imaginings is not therefore a
whit diminished. Humility and common sense are only fit for
Lilliputians. Victor Hugo superbly ignores everything which he has not
foreseen. He does not know that pride limits the mind, and that a
limitless pride is a littleness of soul. If he could but learn to rank
himself with other men and France with other nations, he would see
things more truly, and would not fall into his insane exaggerations,
his extravagant oracles. But proportion and justness his chords will
never know. He is vowed to the Titanic; his gold is always mixed with
lead, his insight with childishness, his reason with madness. He
cannot be simple; like the blaze of a house on fire, his light is
blinding. In short, he astonishes but provokes, he stirs but annoys.
His note is always half or two-thirds false, and that is why he
perpetually makes us feel uncomfortable. The great poet in him cannot
get clear of the charlatan. A few pricks of Voltaire’s irony would
have made the inflation of this genius collapse, and rendered him
stronger by rendering him saner. It is a public misfortune that the
most powerful poet of France should not have better understood his
_rôle_, and that, unlike the Hebrew prophets who chastised because
they loved, he flatters his fellow-citizens from system and from
pride. France is the world, Paris is France, Hugo is Paris. Bow down
and worship, ye nations!”
Finally, we will hear Amiel on a consummate and supreme French classic,
as perfect as Hugo is flawed, La Fontaine:—
“Went through my La Fontaine yesterday, and remarked his omissions....
He has not an echo of chivalry haunting him. His French history dates
from Louis XIV. His geography extends in reality but a few square
miles, and reaches neither the Rhine nor the Loire, neither the
mountains nor the sea. He never invents his subjects, but indolently
takes them ready-made from elsewhere. But with all this, what an
adorable writer, what a painter, what an observer, what a master of
the comic and the satirical, what a teller of a story! I am never
tired of him, though I know half his fables by heart. In the matter of
vocabulary, turns of expression, tones, idioms, his language is
perhaps the richest of the great period, for it combines skilfully the
archaic with the classical, the Gaulish element with what is French.
Variety, finesse, sly fun, sensibility, rapidity, conciseness,
suavity, grace, gaiety—when necessary nobleness, seriousness,
grandeur—you find everything in our fabulist. And the happy epithets,
and the telling proverbs, and the sketches dashed off and the
unexpected audacities, and the point driven well home! One cannot say
what he has not, so many diverse aptitudes he has.
“Compare his _Woodcutter and Death_ with Boileau’s, and you can
measure the prodigious difference between the artist and the critic
who wanted to teach him better. La Fontaine brings visibly before you
the poor peasant under the monarchy, Boileau but exhibits a drudge
sweating under his load. The first is a historic witness, the second a
school-versifier. La Fontaine enables you to reconstruct the whole
society of his age; the pleasant old soul from Champagne, with his
animals, turns out to be the one and only Homer of France.
“His weak side is his epicureanism, with its tinge of grossness. This,
no doubt, was what made Lamartine dislike him. The religious string is
wanting to his lyre, he has nothing which shows him to have known
either Christianity or the high tragedies of the soul. Kind Nature is
his goddess, Horace his prophet, and Montaigne his gospel. In other
words, his horizon is that of the Renascence. This islet of paganism
in the midst of a Catholic society is very curious; the paganism is
perfectly simple and frank.”
These are but notes, jottings in his Journal and Amiel passed from them
to broodings over the infinite, and personality, and totality. Probably
the literary criticism which he did so well, and for which he shows a
true vocation, gave him nevertheless but little pleasure because he did
it thus fragmentarily, and by fits and starts. To do it thoroughly, to
make his fragments into wholes, to fit them for coming before the
public, composition with its toils and limits was necessary. Toils and
limits composition indeed has; yet all composition is a kind of
creation, creation gives, as I have already said, pleasure, and when
successful and sustained, more than pleasure joy. Amiel, had he tried
the experiment with literary criticism, where lay his true vocation,
would have found it so. Sainte-Beuve, whom he so much admires, would
have been the most miserable of men if his production had been but a
volume or two of middling poems and a journal. But Sainte-Beuve’s motto,
as Amiel himself notices, was that of the Emperor Severus: _Laboremus_.
“Work,” Sainte-Beuve confesses to a friend, “is my sore burden, but it
is also my great resource. I eat my heart out when I am not up to the
neck in work; there you have the secret of the life I lead.” If M.
Scherer’s introduction to the _Revue Germanique_ could but have been
used, if Amiel could but have written the article on Uhland, and
followed it up by plenty of articles more!
I have quoted largely from Amiel’s literary criticism, because this side
of him has, so far as I have observed, received so little attention and
yet deserves attention so eminently. But his more general criticism,
too, shows, as I have said, the same high qualities as his criticism of
authors and books. I must quote one or two of his aphorisms; _L’esprit
sert bien à tout, mais ne suffit à rien_: “Wits are of use for
everything, sufficient for nothing.” _Une société vit de sa foi et se
développe par la science_: “A society lives on its faith and develops
itself by science.” _L’État liberal est irréalisable avec une religion
antilibérale, et presque irréalisable avec l’absence de religion_:
“Liberal communities are impossible with an anti-liberal religion, and
almost impossible with the absence of religion.” But epigrammatic
sentences of this sort are perhaps not so very difficult to produce, in
French at any rate. Let us take Amiel when he has room and verge enough
to show what he can really say which is important about society,
religion, national life and character. We have seen what an influence
his years passed in Germany had upon him: we have seen how severely he
judges Victor Hugo’s faults; the faults of the French nation at large he
judges with a like severity. But what a fine and just perception does
the following passage show of the deficiencies of Germany, the advantage
which the western nations have in their more finished civilization:—
“It is in the novel that the average vulgarity of German society, and
its inferiority to the societies of France and England are most
clearly visible. The notion of a thing’s _jarring on the taste_ is
wanting to German æsthetics. Their elegance knows nothing of grace;
they have no sense of the enormous distance between distinction
(gentlemanly, ladylike) and their stiff _Vornehmlichkeit_. Their
imagination lacks style, training, education and knowledge of the
world; it is stamped with an ill-bred air even in its Sunday clothes.
The race is practical and intelligent, but common and ill-mannered.
Ease, amiability, manners, wit, animation, dignity, charm, are
qualities which belong to others.
“Will that inner freedom of soul, that profound harmony of all the
faculties, which I have so often observed among the best Germans, ever
come to the surface? Will the conquerors of to-day ever civilize their
forms of life? It is by their future novels that we shall be able to
judge. As soon as the German novel can give us quite good society, the
Germans will be in the raw stage no longer.”
And this pupil of Berlin, this devourer of German books, this victim,
say the French critics, to the contagion of German style, after three
hours, one day, of a _Geschichte der Æsthetik in Deutschland_, breaks
out:—
“Learning and even thought are not everything. A little _esprit_,
point, vivacity, imagination, grace, would do no harm. Do these
pedantic books leave a single image or sentence, a single striking or
new fact, in the memory when one lays them down! No, nothing but
fatigue and confusion. Oh, for clearness, terseness, brevity! Diderot,
Voltaire, or even Galiani! A short article by Sainte-Beuve, Scherer,
Renan, Victor Cherbuliez, gives one more pleasure, and makes one
ponder and reflect more than a thousand of these German pages crammed
to the margin and showing the work itself rather than its result. The
Germans heap the faggots for the pile, the French bring the fire.
Spare me your lucubrations, give me facts or ideas. Keep your vats,
your must, your dregs, to yourselves; I want wine fully made, wine
which will sparkle in the glass, and kindle my spirits instead of
oppressing them.”
Amiel may have been led away _deteriora sequi_: he may have Germanized
until he has become capable of the verb _dépersonnaliser_ and the noun
_réimplication_; but after all, his heart is in the right place: _videt
meliora probatque_. He remains at bottom the man who said: _Le livre
serait mon ambition._ He adds, to be sure, that it would be _son
ambition_, “if ambition were not vanity, and vanity of vanities.”
Yet this disenchanted brooder, “full of a tranquil disgust at the
futility of our ambitions, the void of our existence,” bedazzled with
the infinite, can observe the world and society with consummate keenness
and shrewdness, and at the same time with a delicacy which to the man of
the world is in general wanting. Is it possible to analyze _le grand
monde_, high society, as the Old World knows it and America knows it
not, more acutely than Amiel does in what follows?—
“In society people are expected to behave as if they lived on ambrosia
and concerned themselves with no interests but such as are noble.
Care, need, passion, do not exist. All realism is suppressed as
brutal. In a word, what is called _le grand monde_ gives itself for
the moment the flattering illusion that it is moving in an ethereal
atmosphere and breathing the air of the gods. For this reason all
vehemence, any cry of nature, all real suffering, all heedless
familiarity, any genuine sign of passion, are startling and
distasteful in this delicate _milieu_, and at once destroy the
collective work, the cloud-palace, the imposing architectural creation
raised by common consent. It is like the shrill cock-crow which breaks
the spell of all enchantments, and puts the fairies to flight. These
select gatherings produce without intending it a sort of concert for
eye and ear, an improvised work of art. By the instinctive
collaboration of everybody concerned, wit and taste hold festival, and
the associations of reality are exchanged for the associations of
imagination. So understood, society is a form of poetry; the
cultivated classes deliberately recompose the idyll of the past, and
the buried world of Astræa. Paradox or not, I believe that these
fugitive attempts to reconstruct a dream, whose only end is beauty,
represent confused reminiscences of an age of gold haunting the human
heart; or rather, aspirations towards a harmony of things which
every-day reality denies to us, and of which art alone gives us a
glimpse.”
I remember reading in an American newspaper a solemn letter by an
excellent republican, asking what were a shopman’s or a laborer’s
feelings when he walked through Eaton or Chatsworth. Amiel will tell
him: they are “reminiscences of an age of gold haunting the human heart,
aspirations towards a harmony of things which every-day reality denies
to us.” I appeal to my friend the author of _Triumphant Democracy_
himself, to say whether these are to be had in walking through
Pittsburg.
Indeed it is by contrast with American life that _Nirvâna_ appears to
Amiel so desirable:—
“For the Americans, life means devouring, incessant activity. They
must win gold, predominance, power; they must crush rivals, subdue
nature. They have their heart set on the means, and never for an
instant think of the end. They confound being with individual being,
and the expansion of self with happiness. This means that they do not
live by the soul, that they ignore the immutable and eternal, bustle
at the circumference of their existence because they cannot penetrate
to its center. They are restless, eager, positive, because they are
superficial. To what end all this stir, noise, greed, struggle? It is
all a mere being stunned and deafened!”
Space is failing me, but I must yet find room for a less indirect
criticism of democracy than the foregoing remarks on American life:—
“_Each function to the most worthy_: this maxim is the professed rule
of all constitutions, and serves to test them. Democracy is not
forbidden to apply it; but Democracy rarely does apply it, because she
holds, for example, that the most worthy man is the man who pleases
her, whereas he who pleases her is not always the most worthy; and
because she supposes that reason guides the masses, whereas in reality
they are most commonly led by passion. And in the end every falsehood
has to be expiated, for truth always takes its revenge.”
What publicists and politicians have to learn is, that “the ultimate
ground upon which every civilization rests is the average morality of
the masses and a sufficient amount of practical righteousness.” But
where does duty find its inspiration and sanctions? In religion. And
what does Amiel think of the traditional religion of Christendom, the
Christianity of the Churches? He tells us repeatedly; but a month or two
before his death, with death in full view, he tells us with peculiar
impressiveness:—
“The whole Semitic dramaturgy has come to seem to me a work of the
imagination. The apostolic documents have changed in value and meaning
to my eyes. The distinction between belief and truth has grown clearer
and clearer to me. Religious psychology has become a simple
phenomenon, and has lost its fixed and absolute value. The apologetics
of Pascal, Leibnitz, Secrétan, appear to me no more convincing than
those of the Middle Age, for they assume that which is in question—a
revealed doctrine, a definite and unchangeable Christianity.”
Is it possible, he asks, to receive at this day the common doctrine of a
Divine Providence directing all the circumstances of our life, and
consequently inflicting upon us our miseries as means of education?
“Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of the laws
of nature? Hardly. But what this faith makes objective we may take
subjectively. The moral being may moralize his suffering in turning
the natural fact to account for the education of his inner man. What
he cannot change he calls the will of God, and to will what God wills
brings him peace.”
But can a religion, Amiel asks again, without miracles, without
unverifiable mystery, be efficacious, have influence with the many? And
again he answers:—
“Pious fiction is still fiction. Truth has superior rights. The world
must adapt itself to truth, not truth to the world. Copernicus upset
the astronomy of the Middle Age; so much the worse for the astronomy.
The Everlasting Gospel is revolutionizing the Churches; what does it
matter?”
This is water to our mill, as the Germans say, indeed. But I have come
even thus late in the day to speak of Amiel, not because I found him
supplying water for any particular mill, either mine or any other, but
because it seemed to me that by a whole important side he was eminently
worth knowing, and that to this side of him the public, here in England
at any rate, had not had its attention sufficiently drawn. If in the
seventeen thousand pages of the Journal there are many pages still
unpublished in which Amiel exercises his true vocation of critic, of
literary critic more especially, let his friends give them to us, let M.
Scherer introduce them to us, let Mrs. Humphry Ward translate them for
us. But _sat patriæ Priamoque datum_: Maïa has had her full share of
space already: I will not ask for a word more about the infinite
illusion, or the double zero, or the Great Wheel.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
The Roman number of the sixth essay of Series One at p. 143 (_Pagan and
Mediæval Religious Sentiment_) was missing, and has been added here.
Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,
and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the
original.
x.4 what is our puny war[e]fare against the Removed.
Philistines
8.19 But the prescriptions of[ of[ reason Repeated.
41.16 perceive [e/c]learly what we have to amend Replaced.
52.30 what a pi[e]ce of extravagance Inserted.
57.36 behoves the Fren[e/c]h Replaced.
75.21 the laughing whistle of the woodpecker[./,] Replaced.
79.22 Uranus of Keats’s p[e/o]em Replaced.
85.3 with some ex[rt/tr]acts from it Transposed.
85.33 to attract her so often?[”/’] Replaced.
87.31 In the times whe[u/n] I kept my night-watches Inverted.
87.32 I have sometimes believed tha[s/t] I was Replaced.
94.11 whom Christendom knows i[n/s] Saint Theresa Replaced.
repulsed
97.8 s[n/h]e joined a great force Replaced.
97.9 this force of charac[s/t]er, Replaced.
97.19 of her re[i/l]igious life. Replaced.
99.28 to escape from it.[”] Added.
103.28 but it melted in our[ our] hands Repeated.
108.36 [‘]Change your brains Added.
108.39 lose, or seemed to his sister to [c]lose Removed.
112.10 the world of sp[i]rits Inserted.
112.25 prayer has[ has] been such a power to me Repeated.
119.34 It was a life and death battle with Replaced.
Philistinism[,/.]
125.22 ‘And how shall I recompense thy fidelity?[”/’] Replaced.
137.25 his pack and] and] his cares Repeated.
149.39 _Praxinoe[.]_ Added.
162.2 It really suc[e/c]eeds Replaced.
163.14 Of all this uni[n]telligible world Inserted.
178.32 to the audi[a/e]nce Replaced.
179.1 tell us what it is like.[”/’] Replaced.
179.23 th[r]ow up their arms Inserted.
203.23 passed by them on th[ǝ/e] Abbé Delille Turned.
212.4 is the soul of all re[ /l]igions. Restored.
214.35 to put nature in bonds.[”] Added.
229.13 show their governments that[ that] they will Redundant.
do well
234.31 was[ was] known as “mad Shelley” Repeated.
237.7 that mira[a]cles are possible. Removed.
240.20 the phe[e]nomena of nature Removed.
259.24 publication of[ of] the _Centaur_ Repeated.
269.22 to[ to] be strangely overpressed Repeated.
299.13 their mission and destiny their[ their] poetry Redundant.
299.17 in the forest ranged.[’/”] Replaced.
308.23 some d[o/a]nger to the ideal Replaced.
313.4 have the power of[ of] verse Removed.
316.5 “When Johnson was publishing his Life of Replaced.
Gray[./,]”
322.36 could have been from his verses.[”] Added.
325.6 I e[ʌ/v]en tremble at an east wind. Inverted.
329.24 quite false[.] Added.
330.9 Αἰακίδᾳ παρὰ Πηλ[εῖ] Added.
330.23 “[t]he style he aimed at Added.
332.13 I ha[y/v]e a sensation Replaced.
333.20 and creamy breast.[’] Added.
334.32 between Haydon [u/a]nd Hunt. Replaced.
337.19 she has li[n]ked him for his own sake Removed.
338.35 ob[ej/je]cts of a sensuous Transposed.
341.31 he [h]is perfect. Removed.
351.6 the best poems of Word[s]worth Inserted.
358.7 [“]O for the coming of that glorious time Added.
367.11 out of the [_Æ/Œ_]_dipus_ Replaced.
370.14 correct use and consumma[ma]te management of
words,
374.3 Here, again, Profess[e/o]r Nichol translates: Replaced.
374.38 Kühnheit, Keckheit und Grandiosit[a/ä]t Replaced.
375.33 when I first used this express[s/i]on Replaced.
378.23 “In la sua volontade e nostra pace;[”] Added.
382.33 which B[ry/yr]on poured forth Transposed.
387.39 in which Professor Dowd[o/e]n has performed Replaced.
388.19 one’s former impress[s]ion of him Removed.
390.37 that [“]their proceedings would become Added.
393.18 where [b/h]e threw himself Replaced.
393.28 and wears green spectacles!”[;] Added.
402.10 was perfectl[y] innocent.
418.36 our admiration and sympathy[,/.] Replaced.
418.28 How ugly those flowers are.[”/’] Replaced.
420.15 that it _petrifies feeling_[,/.] Replaced.
422.9 [e/c]ried Levine, Replaced.
426.19 what am I to teach?[”/’] Added.
431.33 in abandoning the work [a/o]f the poet Replaced.
436.39 in its algebraical fo[r]mula. Inserted.
437.1 French critics throw [n/u]p their hands Inverted.
442.5 L[a] Fontaine Restored.
445.3 Victor Cherbuli[o/e]z Replaced.
447.20 Religious p[ys/sy]chology Transposed.
447.21 The apologetics of Pascal[,] Added.
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