Essays Speculative and Suggestive  

• the whole world shined with clear light, and none were

hindered in their labour/ but the minds of men wore night around them, and terrified their souls with self-created shadows.

What strikes us most in this new style is the dissolution of the previous periodic structure of sentences, and the addition of a hitherto unapprehended colour- value to the rich sonority of ample Latin verbs and nouns. Writers of hymns in rhyme presently availed themselves of these peculiarities. The noble blending of long and short words, which we noticed in a quotation from Horace, now came to be employed with different purpose. It gave singular majesty to the religious emotion of stanzas like the following :

Duih me mori est necesse, Noli mihi tune deesse ; In trernenda mortis hora Yeni Jesu absque moru ;

Tuere me et libera. Cum me jubes emigrare, Jesu care tune appare ; O ainator arnplectende, Temet ipsum tune ostende

In cruce salutifera.

We have travelled far away from Regulus. Is it possible that the language should be called the same ?

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The Vulgate the word of God divulged, translated from its Hebrew and its Greek into Latin for the common people of the Western world what a success this book of Jerome's had, and how it modified and moulded all the silent centuries that made us what we are ! No other vulgarisateur has done a millionth part of what S. Jerome did. Luther, Tyndal, Diodati, the innumerable scribes of the Bible Society, have spread abroad the sacred writings of the Jewish and the Christian Church. Into each nation where these versions penetrate, they bring a great and powerful tradition. Many of them, the earlier in each case, rank as monuments of style. Eleven centuries after the death of Jerome, two youthful nations, the English and the German, became vocal for the first time in vernacular translations of the Bible, and based the rules of written language on their precedents. But what was this in comparison with Jerome's work ? His Bible scattered and displaced the classics, erased the memories of Rome and insolent Greece, undid Olympus, brought the wrecks of the old world and the nebulous elements of the modern world, Celts, Teutons, Norsemen, Goths, and what not, into relation with the penetrative secrets of the Oriental mind, the potent metaphysic of the Greek.

There is a book, steeped in the style of the Vulgate, which possesses peculiar value as a link between the ancient and the modern world. I mean the l Confessions ' of S. Augustine. Nothing like it had appeared before, so far as we have know- ledge of antiquity. No self-revelation of a human soul had hitherto been made with such free confidence. Nowhere else could the same introspective analysis of doubts and motives and desires be found. Subjectivity had never spoken out so candidly, with less reserve, with less regard to artistic or rhetorical effect. The distinguishing note of this book is that the author of it has found his true self in God, and pours his heart out to the God who understands him. In this respect, S. Augustine anticipates the movement of the modern world, and inaugurates a literature which only started into plenitude of being nine centuries after his death in the body. So tardy is the evolution of the human mind.

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8. Augustine paints in his 'Confessions' the entire life of his hybrid epoch : a pagan father and a Christian mother ; the schools of African grammarians and Italian rhetoricians ; the baths: the Carthaginian circus stained with blood, the lawless lives of Roman cities ; the church at Milan and its perils, the origin of monastic societies and the first beginnings of ecclesiastical music ; conversions to the Christian faith, baptisms, pagan honours paid to tombs of martyrs ; Manichean, Pelagian, Neoplatonic, Arian heresies. We are introduced to men wavering between philosophy and faith, Athens and Jerusalem, uncertain which path to follow. We watch Latin Christianity in the making ; and the man who relates all this is one who powerfully helped to fix its outlines. The ' Con- fessions ' paint the second half of the fourth century in the spirit and the manner of a modern artist. Their style possesses corresponding interest, because, although Augustine was him- self a celebrated professor of rhetoric, his diction is anything but classical. We find no trace of that laborious attempt to reproduce the phrases and recapture the rhythms of past literature, which marks the poetry of Claudian and Ausonius. Augustine speaks in the new language, the Latin which was moulding itself on Christian lines of thought for modern uses.

The famous passage which describes Augustine's passion of sorrow upon the death of a dearly beloved friend might be chosen as an adequate example of this now style :

Quo dolore contenebratum est cor meum ; et quicquid adspiciebam, mors erat. Et erat mihi supplicium, et paterna doraus mira infelicitas ; et quidquid cum illo communicaveram, sine illo in cruciatum immanem verterat. Expetebant eum undique oculi mei, et non dabatur mihi ; et oderam omnia, quia non haberent eum ; nee mihi jam dicere poterant : ecce veniet, sicut cum viveret, quando absens erat. Factus eram ipse mihi magna queestio, et interrogabam animam meam quare tristis esset, et quare conturbaret me valde ; et nihil noverat respondere mihi. Et si dicebam : spera in Deum, juste non obtemperabat ; quia verior erat et melior homo, quern carissimum amiserat, quam phantasma, in quod eperare jubebatur. Solus fletus erat dulcis mihi, et successerat amico meo in deliciis animi mei. Et nunc, Domine, jam ilia transierunt, et tempore lenitum est vulnus meum.

NATIONAL STYLE 193

It would be delightful to linger in quotations over the plangent melody of S. Augustine's prose, so resonant with the modern cry of emotion :

Quo vobis adhuc et adhuc ambulare vias difficiles et laboriosas ? Non est requies, ubi quceritis cam. Quserite quod queeritis ; sed ibi non est, ubi quosritis. Beatam vitam quceritis in regione mortis : non est illic.

But enough has been cited to indicate the style of the 'Confessions/ This style fell, like every form of culture, into decay during fche Middle Ages. But when the Revival of Learning began, it was not so much from Cicero as from Augustine that the founder of humanism drew inspiration and borrowed his manner. Petrarch adored Cicero, but he loved and felt at home with Augustine. To Augustine, as to a bosom friend, he confided the troubles of his own heart in the dialogues entitled ' Secretum.' The ' Confessions ' were for him scaturientes lachrymis Confessionum libri pages running over with the fount of tears. When he climbed the Mont Ventoux with his brother Gherardo in 1386, this book was in his pocket. Lying there, with the Alps outstretched before him and the Rhone majestically sweeping toward the sea, he drew it forth, and by an accident similar to that which happened to Augustine with Alypius in their garden at Milan, his eyes chanced to fall upon this suggestive passage :

Et eunt homines admirari alta montium et ingentes fluctus tnaris, et latissimos lapsus fluminum, et oceani ambitum, et gyros siderum, et relinquunt se ipsos.

And men go abroad to gaze with wonder at the heights of mountains and the mighty billows of the deep, and the lordly width of rivers flowing down, and the circuit of ocean, and the revolutions of the stars, and leave themselves unheeded.

Few things are more touching in the history of literature than this spiritual comradeship Petrarch clasping hands with Augustine across the Lethe of nine mediaeval centuries ; the last man of the classic age and the first man of the modern mingling their souls in sympathy of sentiment.

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Latin detains the analyst of national style, not without reason, seeing that this language is the parent of so many modern tongues and the mistress of all modern literature.

Italian might be regarded as a prolongation of Latin into a third period of existence. It retains some of the Roman qualities. Dante could write :

Dopo la dolorosa rotta quando Carlo Magno perde la santa gesta, Non sono si terribilmente Orlando.

Tasso made lines of sounding vocables like this : Immense solitudini d' arena.

Machiavelli used a pen of steel, writing with a compressed energy and simple regard for perspicuity which was worthy of an Augustan.

Monumental strength is not, however, the specific quality of the Italian language, and has rarely been aimed at by Italian writers. The abundance of definite and indefinite articles, the conjugation of verbs by auxiliaries, the frequency of terminations in essero, ebbero, ossono, give a languor and indecision to the style. Italian loiters and seems to hesitate. Its characteristic is not rapidity, not robustness. The beauty of liquid numbers and sonorous vowel-sounds makes it the language of melody, and gives to the best Italian rhythms the charm of a sustained cantilena.

I observed above, that the languages which exhibit the highest capacity for style are those which combine loyalty to their native traditions with plasticity, becoming with each successive phase of culture more perfect instruments for the expression of those ideas which are gradually introduced into the common stock of civilisation. Now this is what the Italian language has hitherto missed. Italian writers have failed to cultivate the language on its plastic side, and to keep it duly open to the influx of ideas. The result is

NATIONAL STYLE 196

that Italian, in spite of its fine quality and classic finish, does not take a very high rank as an organ of style.

This is due to accidents of growth, which find no exact parallel in the history of any other nation. Long before French attained to fixity, and while English was lisping in the cradle, Italian produced a monumental poem, the 'Divine Comedy.' Then followed Petrarch and Boccaccio, giving exquisite form, in verse and prose, to the vernacular of medi- aeval Tuscany. The Eevival of Learning directed attention to antique masterpieces, and interrupted the natural develop- ment of the mother tongue. When poets like Poliziano and Ariosto, prose idyllists like Sannazzaro, men of letters like Bembo, historians like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, resumed Italian for the serious work of literature, the spirit of the age already turned to criticism. Dialects flourished in every province, and humanism supplied the common culture of the nation. It was thought necessary to imitate the Tuscan classics Petrarch for verse aad Boccaccio for prose in order to obtain one type of style for the scattered members of the Italian family. Thus, writers who aimed at correctness began already to look backward at a time when the intel- lectual conditions of Europe demanded a free forward move- ment. After the close of the sixteenth century Italian literature was either scholarly, jejune, stiff, and empty of ideas, because it followed models which were out of harmony with the advance of modern thought ; or it was capricious, fantastic, and barocco, because it tried to innovate within the same narrow sphere of style.

Only men of the highest natural endowments could move freely and express contemporary thought and feeling in diction which had been so artificially and critically elaborated. At the beginning of this century Leopardi handled his mother tongue in verse and prose with greater mastery than any other writer of that age. It may therefore be well to select passages from his works which illustrate this classic style in its perfection.

Piti volte io mi maraviglio meco medesimo come, ponghiamo caso, Virgilio, eaempio supremo di per fez Lone agli scrittori, sia venuto e man-

o2

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tengasi in questa sommita di gloria. Perocche, quantunque io presuma poco di me stesso, e creda non poter mai godere e conoscere ciascheduna parte d' ogni suo pregio e d' ogni suo magistero ; tuttavia tengo per certo che il massimo numero de' suoi lettori e lodatori non iscorge ne' poemi suoi pin che una bellezza per ogni dieci o venti che a me, con molto rileggerli o meditarli, viene pur fatto di scoprirvi. In vero io mi per- suado che 1' altezza della stima e della riverenza verso gli scrittori sommi, provenga comunemente, in quelli eziandio che li leggono e trat- tano, piuttosto da consuetudine ciecamente abbracciata, che da giudizio proprio e dal conoscere in quelli per veruna guisa un merito tale.

It is impossible to overrate the art displayed in the construc- tion of this paragraph the ease with which the periods are kept in hand, the halance of the clauses, and the harmony of the cadences. Yet we are left with an impression of cum- brous labour and circumlocution. The style seems stationary, as though it could with difficulty be made to move along. The thought is inadequate to the verbal machinery which has been set going for its utterance. In poetry the case is different :

Che fai tu, luna, in ciel? dimmi, che fai,

Silenziosa luna ?

Sorgi la sera, e vai

Contemplando i deserti ; indi ti posi.

Ancor non sei tu paga

Di riandare i sempiterni calli ?

Ancor non prendi a schivo, ancor sei vaga

Di mirar queste valli ?

There we have the supreme beauty of Italian verse the sus- tained cantilena of words which naturally sing and fall into apparently inevitable rhythm. The poet seems to be merely speaking. But the music is so clear, the movement of the lines of varying length is so majestic, the thought is so per- spicuous, that we seek no higher satisfaction of the intellectual senses.

This noble manner of Leopardi could not lend itself to light or rapid effects. It remains meditative, and culminates in passages like the following, which describes the poet's thoughts at night beneath the stars upon the lava of Vesuvius :

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Sovente in queste piagge,

Che, desolate, a bruno

Veste il flotto indurate, e par che ondeggi,

Seggo la notte ; e su la mesta landa

In purissimo azzurro

Veggo dall' alto fiammeggiar le stelle,

Cui di lontan fa specchio

II mare, e tutto di scintille in giro

Per lo voto seren brillare il mondo.

E poi che gli occhi a quelle luci appunto,

Ch' a lor sembrano un punto,

E sono immense in guisa

Che un punto a petto a lor son terra e mare

Veracemente ; a cui

L' uomo non pur, ma questo

Globo ove 1" uomo e nulla,

Sconosciuto e del tutto : e quando miro

Quegli ancor piu senz* alcun fin remoti

Nodi quasi di stelle,

Ch' a noi paion qual nebbia, a cui non 1' uomo

E non la terra sol, ma tutte in uno,

Del numero infinite e della mole,

Cor 1' aureo sole insiem, le nostre stelle

O sono ignote, o cosl paion come

Essi alia terra, un punto

Di luce nebulosa : al pensier mio

Che sembri allora, o prole

Dell' uomo ?

This winding labyrinth of words is brought to a conclusion, as regards both sense and sound, so logically and so naturally that we hardly pause to wonder at the art of style, the sus- pension of thought, required for the achievement. It seems like the unpremeditated utterance of a divine being whose habitual speech is melody. And there is good foundation for this first impression. If we reflect upon the poetry which men like Heine and Matthew Arnold have produced in their attempts at unrhymed verse of varying lengths, we shall per- ceive the incontestable superiority of Italian as a musical vehicle. The verbal artist cannot obtain similar results with German, French, or English. Italian largely owes its quality to what it has retained of Latin structure and of Latin collocation.

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There is another circumstance which must not be neglected in the general survey of the growth of Italian style. The nation was not only divided by dialects and united mainly by a common tendency toward humanistic culture. It was also for several centuries deprived of free political life, a central capital, and a press adequate to the intellectual requirements of an expansive people. Neither by public speaking, nor by the conversation of enlightened coteries, nor yet by journalism, had the Italian language proper opportunities for unfolding its capacities and marching front to front with modern thought. Almost suddenly, within our lifetime, these disabilities were removed ; and no sooner could Italy proclaim herself in fact a nation, than the classic style, of which Leopardi was so great a nineteenth century master, began to be displaced by revolutionary modes of expression which cause pain to the purists, and which no sane critic of language can regard as final. The difficulty under which a mother tongue, artificially and critically fashioned like Italian, suffers when it copes with ordinary affairs of modern life, is illustrated by the fabrication of feeble vocables like panificio, birrificio, cottonificio, and by newspaper jargon, of which the following sentence from a police-court report is only a fair specimen :

Tosto avvenuto 1' attentato la cameriera si e resa latitante e finora non si pote mettersi sulle tracce. L' ufficiale ieri stava molto male, tanto che vociferavasi fosse resa necessaria 1' amputazione della mano.

With reference to the jingle of inharmonious and weakly phrases which are now invading the minor literature of Italy, I remember the late Duke of Sermoneta inveighing in my presence against the diction of the Chambers, its barbarous neologisms, its total want of taste, its violation of the genius of the language. 'Why cannot they use the golden speech of the fourteenth century ? ' he asked. * Everything can be expressed in Italian of that epoch/ Alas, I thought to myself, tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur. Style which sufficed the writer of the 'Fioretti di San Francesco* will not grapple with the exigencies of an age of scientific

NATIONAL STYLE 199

discoveries and crumbling theologies and social and political revolutions.

VI

French, being an analytical language, is encumbered with auxiliary verbs, prepositions, explanatory and supplementary conjunctions ' lex auxiliaires avoir et 6tre, le verbe faire, les conjunctions encombrantes ; toute cette pouillerie de notre prose franqaise,' as a French critic puts it. Compared with Italian, the vowel-sounds are poor, the volume and natural rhythm of the vocables mediocre. Compared with English, French lacks variety and compass. Compared with German, the vocabulary is limited ; those concrete and suggestive words which give scope to the metaphysical imagination are wanting.

French might be described as the least endowed by nature of the European languages. It often happens, however, that when the soil is poor, industry and tillage succeed in raising finer crops than wave upon the fatter glebe of luckier neigh- bours. So the intelligent attention paid to style in France, and conscious and persistent cultivation of the language by refined thinkers, the usage of a society pervious to ideas, of a Court where dulness and grossness were accounted crimes, of academies devoted to the study of diction, of drawing-rooms in which piquancy of phrase gave point to conversation, of a capital electric with the brain-life of modern civility this effort to attain perfection, carried on through centuries by an enlightened and exquisitely polished race, has rendered French unrivalled in certain of the very highest qualities of verbal utterance.

Style is not so much a matter of linguistic resources, as of the art and tact with which those resources are husbanded for use. If the French are less liberally endowed than some of their neighbours, they have made more of the wealth at their disposal. Every word of their comparatively limited vocabulary has been vitalised, penetrated with suggestions, cut and polished like a diamond of many facets, imbued with psychological colour and association. The beauty of French

200 NOTES ON STYLE

style consists in the parsimony of the means employed, and the manifold variety produced by the manipulation of those means the feeling for exact values whereby simple words are thrown into relief by juxtaposition and selection, the justice of perception which discovers the right phrase and sets it in precisely the right context, the strength which comes from reserve, and the flexibility which is due to unerring veracity of statement. In this way, some of the effects which might seem to have been denied to the French language effects of picturesque and coloured description, effects of mystery, effects of aerial indistinctness and haunt- ing sweetness are just those in which it is at present unrivalled.

' La nature de cette langue,' says Guy de Maupassant, 'est d'etre claire, logique et nerveuse.' It is the language of logical precision, of lucidity and scientific accuracy, of intelligence, curiosity, criticism, propriety. ' Elle ne se laisse pas affaiblir, obscurcir ou corrompre.' It is the language of aphorism, of epigram, of definition, of psychological dis- crimination. Braced in the austere struggle after truth of utterance, purged by the pursuit of exactitude, taught to be satisfied with veracity of phrase, there is nothing subtle in thought or evanescent in sentiment which escapes the grasp of its fine nervous organ of expression.

This makes French the perfect instrument of prose ; not of sublime poetry, for that demands qualities which the language has failed to develop; not, peradventure, of the noblest oratory, for that requires a density and volume incompatible with the transparency specific to French ways of thinking ; but of written prose, inexhaustible in crisp variety of rhythm and elasticity of phrase, never unmindful of the laws which separate prose from metrical utterance.

'Get art de la Prose fran9aise,' exclaims Paul Bourget, in a passage from which I have already quoted, 'heritage magnifique de la grande civilisation romaine. Le jour ou cet art disparaitrait, la conscience frar^aise serait bien malade, car dans 1'ordre de I'intelligence elle aurait perdu sa plus indisputable suprmatie. Les langues se parlent sur toute

NATIONAL STYLE 201

la surface du monde ; il est probable qu'ii ne s'e*crit qu'une seule prose, si Ton prend le mot dans le sens lapidaire et de"finitif oft pouvait 1'entendre un Tite-Live ou un Salluste ; cette prose, c'est la notre. Inferieurs dans la poe*sie aux subtils et divins potes Anglais, initie's a la musique par les maitres allemands, et aux arts plastiques par nos voisins du midi, nous sommes les rois absolus de cette forme de la Phrase 6crite.'

There is little to gainsay in this enthusiastic, yet carefully measured, vindication by a French writer of his nation's claim to supremacy. Tardily, perhaps, yet definitely, we English people have como to acknowledge our own inferiority in the art of prose, and the necessity we are under of learning the rules of that art from French masters.

When we proceed to consider style as a branch of rhetoric, it will be apparent what the phrase italicised above implies. For the present, I wish to invite comparison between a passage from M. Kenan's translation of the Book of Job and the already quoted Latin of the Vulgate :

Que ne suis-je mort des le sein de ma mre, Au sortir de ses entrailles, que n'expirai-je !

Pourquoi deux genoux sont-ils venus me recevoir, Et deux seins m'inviter a les sucer?

Maintenant je serais couche, je me reposerais, Je dormirais dans une paix profonde,

Avec les rois et les grands de la terre, Qui se batissent des mausole'es,

Avec les princes qui possedent 1'or, Et remplissent leur maison d'argent ;

Ou bien, comme 1'avorton cache", je n'existerais pas, Comme les enfans qui n'ont pas vu la Iumi6re.

La les me*chants cessent leurs violences, La se repose I'nomme epuise".

This illustrates the limpidity and clearness of French style, its grace of simple outline ; but it also illustrates the want of

202 NOTES ON STYLE

majesty, the sacrifice of grandeur, which we notice in the French language when it competes with one more sombre and poetical. * Quelle joie pour Jacob, quelle all^gresse pour Israel,' in the French version of the Psalms, contrasts but poorly with our own, ' Then shall Jacob rejoice, and Israel shall be glad/

VII

There is little in common between the languages of which we have been thinking and German their Teutonic cousin in the Aryan family. The complicated syntax of German and its extraordinary richness render this language unrivalled for the disengagement and articulation of the minutest shades of thought. If natural resources and capacity for expression were sufficient to constitute style, then Gern^an literature ought to rank first among the literatures of Europe ; but the exact opposite is the fact. Like the Eoman Commonwealth, in Livy's famous phrase, the German language * magnitudine laborat sua,' it flounders in its own voluminousness. That it is both difficult and clumsy schwierig und schwerfdllig even Germans, if they are candid, admit. Foreigners know, to their cost, that the perusal of an ordinary book of German erudition demands thrice the time and twice the expenditure of brain-force which are required by a French treatise. This is partly due to the genius and history of the language, which, until quite recently, has had no pains bestowed upon its style. But it is even more the fault of German writers, who seem, as a rule, culpably indifferent to propriety and beauty of expres- sion. Abandoning themselves to the facility of their native speech, revelling in its exuberance, abusing its plasticity, inventing neologisms, importing foreign phrases wholesale, they scribble without giving a thought to the art of diction, and apparently without caring for precision in their ideas. Whatever comes to the pen-point is put down on paper. If one cumbrous sentence fails to hit the mark, instead of blot- ting and remodelling, they produce a second and a third to modify the imperfect impression. The result is that serious

NATIONAL STYLE 208

thinkers are content to put forth simple thoughts in jargon like the following :

Es bleibt uns deshalb nichts iibrig als den Begriff der Kimst so zu sagen lemmatisch aufzunehmen, was bei alien besonderen philosophi- schen Wissenschaften, wenn sie vereinzelt betrachtet werden sollen, der Fall 1st. Denn erst die gesammte Philosophic ist die Brkenntniss des Universums als in sich eine organische Totalitat, die sich aus ihrem eigenen Begriffe entwickelt, und in ihrer sich zu sioh verhaltenden Noth- wendigkeit zum Ganzen in sich zuriiokgebend, sich mit sich als eine Welt der Wahrheit zusammenschliesst. In der Krone dieser wissen- schaftlichen Nothwendigkeit ist jeder einzelne Theil ebensosehr einer Seits ein in sich zuriickkehrender Kreis, als er anderer Seits zugleich einen nothwendigen Zusammenhang mit anderen Gebieten hat, ein Riickwarts, aus dem er sich herleitet, wie ein Vorwarts, zu dem er selbst in sich sich weiter treibt, insofern er fruchtbar Anderes wieder aus sich erzeugt und fur die wissenschaftliche Erkenntniss hervorgehen lasst.

This passage could not be translated literally into French ; and the fact that it is incapable of conversion into style of absolute veracity justifies our entertaining grave doubts as to the soundness of its sense. When we succeed in grasping the meaning, however, we find that it conveys a not very original remark upon the relation of the subordinate branches of philo- sophy to science in general, which might have been briefly and modestly set forth. But to have expressed this notion with French lucidity would have shorn the writer's thought of its hazy impressiveness. The verbiage of Hegel adds a kind of mystic grandeur, what the Greeks called cre/w/oTiys, to commonplace ideas enough; and his reckless abuse of the inexhaustible resources of the German language invests the cobwebs of the speculative fancy with something like a mythological concreteness.

The great strength of German lies in the unparalleled com- pass and wealth of its vocabulary. There is nothing which cannot be expressed in German by a native word, homely, picturesque, appealing straight to the intelligence alike of learned and unlearned. The phraseology of abstract thought is concrete here ; it is also of native growth, not imported from the Greek or Latin. Instead of incarnation, Germans

204 NOTES ON STYLE

speak of Fleischwerden or Verfleischung. Instead of relation, definition, they use Verhtiltniss, Bestimmung ; instead of con- cept, Begriff. Some of their philosophical expressions, suoh for instance as Weltanschauung, display an inimitable apti- tude. Even the terms of physical science are not remote from common life. Schwefel-saure explains itself more easily than Acidus Sulphuricus.

Abstract disquisitions retain a vividness and picturesqueness in German, which they never had in any other literature but the Greek. We have, perhaps, to thank this quality of the language what may be called the mythopoeic energy of its vocabulary for the cloud-castle-realm of German metaphysics. Ideas and distinctions which have no sound basis in fact, and which are incapable of being expressed in a less imaginative speech, obtain a specious aspect of reality and impose upon the mind when clothed with phraseology so < vital and so concrete.

The same verbal privileges render German an admirable vehicle for literal translation. Few turns of phrase and few metrical effects are incapable of imitation in this language. The native genius of the tongue, however, is so alien to classic literature, that its ingenious versions from Greek and Latin have the appearance of rough plaster- casts, rather than of reproductions in some precious material. It is in dealing with the masterpieces of a cognate literature, with Shake- speare's plays, for example, that the inexhaustible riches of the mother speech of Germany are best exhibited.

Considering the compass of German vocabulary and the plasticity of the language as an instrument of style, it is greatly to be deplored that average German writers are so slovenly in the construction of their sentences, and so indolent in their adoption of foreign and inharmonious elements. 1

1 I ran through two numbers of a local German newspaper the other day, and noted the following barbarisms: Konstatiren, konveniren, passiren, prosperiren, kompromettiren, blamiren, pramiren, projektiren, reformiren, publiziren, korrigiren, patronisen, kulmirinen, kursiren, prasi- diren, Debatte, Diskussion, Direktion, Hotelier, Instruktor, Beferat, Kon- kurrenz, Aktionar, Fraktionen, interressant, respektable, Konzessionar,

NATIONAL STYLE 205

Carelessness, want of taste and tact, insensibility to form, contempt for the genius and specific beauty of the native idiom, seem to be ingrained vices of this literature. When we reflect on what good German style might be what it has been in the hands of men like Heine, Schopenhauer, Helmholz it is really irritating not to be able to take up a book without at once stumbling upon uglinesses like the following :

Bei einer intelligenten, sehr suggestiblen Warterin wirkten die Suggestions a ech6ance so machtig, dass sie mir erklarte, sie sei absolut iiberwaltigt und ware gezwungen, sogar einen Mord zu begehen, wenn ich ihr denselben suggeriren wiirde, so furchtbar sei der Trieb, auch den grossten Unsinn zu begehen.

It may be conceded that in an essay on Hypnotism, the French phrase Suggestions d echeance is appropriate by reason of its technical significance. Still we ask where is the necessity for intelligent, suggestible, absolut, suggeriren ? Why was the verb zu begehen tautologically repeated in so short a sentence ? Why could not a little pains have been bestowed on bettering the lame amorphous clauses on which it limps to a conclusion ?

German prose, except in the case of a few rare stylists, suffers from unwieldiness, cumbrous garrulity, circumlocu- tion, and painfully prolonged suspension of thought through labyrinths of qualifying clauses, parentheses, and otiose

Varianten, eventuell, konstant, series, Stationen, Accord, Tapet, Billet, splendid, Details, Honneurs. Some phrases were peculiarly offensive, as these : Diese auffallige Coincidencz, diese theatercoup massige Insceni- rung; Emission der Aktien ; hindurchpilotirtes Projekt ; Kompetentester ; plausibeln Rentabilitatsberechnungen. It may be urged that these abominations are only discoverable in journalistic jargon. But news- papers form the principal literature of the middle and lower classes. Thus this commercial patois infiltrates common speech, and renders the talk of all but highly polished people insufferable. If we have to seek a valid excuse for the prevalent vulgarity of German prose, it should, perhaps, be found in the social backwardness of the German people. They need expressions which have become current through the usage of more cultivated nations, especially the French, and which carry connotations hitherto denied to their own Gothic vocabulary.

90e NOTES ON STYLE

excrescences. But there is another aspect of the literature. In poetry and in simple narration it is not easy to match its spontaneous and artless beauties. Heine's lyrics, for example, have a lightness of touch, a purity of phrase, an irreproducible grace of rhythm and haunting melody, the exact parallel to which can nowhere else he found. The same qualities are noticeable in the Marchen and in tales which have been written in their manner. Sincere homeliness, deep, true emotion, penetrating to the root and marrow of the human heart, kindliness and honesty combined with shrewdness and a broad calm survey of the world, are the notes of this part of German literature. No other modern idiom has a set of words like Gemiith, Innigkeit, fromm, bicder, hold, expressive of the most lovable qualities of character. Their exact equivalents cannot be found in English, French, Italian. There is some- thing idiosyncratic to German emotion and to Gerpaan spiritual temperament in their form and sound.

VIII

English is the most composite of modern languages, including as it does Teutonic, Celtic, Latin, and French elements in the body of the idiom. It is also reduced to the simplest grammatical form. Nouns are not declined : genders, except for persons, have been discarded ; verbs are conjugated mainly by the help of auxiliaries. To say that English has no grammar would be an exaggeration. But it certainly has less of grammar than any other literary language.

The variety of its vocabulary and the simplicity of its grammar are two main advantages of English, rendering it full of verbal suggestiveness and manageable as an instru- ment of expression. Among its prominent drawbacks may be reckoned imperfect (though copious) vowel-sounds, the frequency of sibilants, and the wearisome recurrence of little words like the, a, which, that, of. Glad as we may be for many reasons to have abolished the genders of sexless things, we cannot but feel that a certain loss is involved in this

NATIONAL STYLE 207

simplification. Declined substantives, adjectives, articles, relatives, participles, animate the diction of both poetry and prose, and help to determine the logical order of sentences by means of their terminal forms.

Owing to the complicated pedigree of the English language, our metrical systems offer insurmountable difficulties to the analyst. We have to deal with verse which depends for its effect on accent rather than quantity, and in which two traditions that of Anglo-Saxon rhythm and that of classical scansion by feet have become inextricably intertwined. In addition to these double influences, the old alliterative forms of poetry demand attention. The ear in English versification is still reminiscent of lines which were governed by consonants repeated in emphatic places of the metre. Blank verse of highly elaborated structure combines three factors (native rhythm, classical scansion, and alliterative appeal to the sense of recurrent consonantal sounds) in proportions varying with the poet's aim or instinct. It is impossible to analyse the versification of Milton's ' Paradise Lost ' wholly by the laws of Greek and Latin prosody. It is equally impossible to explain it, as Dr. Guest in his learned treatise on English Rhythms would have us do, by reference only to the sections and the pauses of Anglo-Saxon measures. The peculiar charm of Miltonic blank verse is due to the admixture of both systems in a hybrid peculiar to England after the introduction of humanistic studies. Again, it is impossible to overlook the deliberate alliteration of such lines as the following :

• Far off from these a slow and silent stream,

Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks Forthwith his former state and being forgets, Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

The flexibility of English renders our versification not unlike that of the Greeks. It is true that the uncertainty of our syllabic utterance, and the insensibility of our ear to quanti- tative values, preclude us from acclimatising metres (like the hexameter), which depend upon dactyls and spondees. Yet

208 NOTES ON STYLE

the iambic and trochaic measures of dramatic dialogue in Attic Greek and in English, owing to the way in which both languages blend short and long words, are closely similar.

Take this example :

Ah, dear Juliet,

Why art thou yet so fair ? Shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour ? For fear of that, I still will stay with thee : And never from this palace of dim night Depart again : here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chamber-maids ; 0, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh.

Some of the loveliest effects in English poetry are obtained by the artful use of monosyllables :

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all ! What hast thou then more than thou hadst before ? No, love, my love, that thou mayst true love call : And mine was thine before thou hadst this more.

Some of its most striking rhetorical effects depend upon a single polysyllabic word set at the right point in a rush of monosyllables :

Can man by no means creep out of himself, And leave the slough of viperous grief behind ?

An English poet is compelled to get value out of the short words in which our language abounds. According to his use of them, the line may run like :

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts,

or may linger like :

Showers, hails, snows, frosts, and two-edged winds that prime ;

for short words in English, according to their weight and volume, either wing the verse with feathers, or encumber it with chains of lead.

NATIONAL STYLE 209

The hybrid nature of English prosody renders emphasis a main feature of our versification. Accentual rhythm formed the original and native groundwork of English prosody. This soon began to be modified by scansion. Learned poets, familiar with the quantitative systems of antiquity, allowed their ear to be governed in the act of composition by memories of Greek or Latin metres. Yet exactitude in the quantitative structure even of iambics has not been insisted on, and con- sequently the most remarkable effects may be produced in English by violations of classical rules which would have made an Attic audience shudder. No other literature more often illustrates than ours the metrical and rhetorical impor- tance of a word placed so as to surprise the hearer's sense or to arrest his attention by some bold irregularity. Notice the value of the verb streams in this line of Marlowe :

See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament.

English prose is also hybrid ; but in some respects the amalgam has not been made so successfully as in the case of poetry. Starting with the simplicity of Anglo-Saxon and early English style, where the leading characteristics of our syntax are already defined, prose underwent a thorough French remodelling during the reigns of the Norman and Angevine monarchs. The result of this first period of fusion is visible in the style of Sir Thomas Malory's ' Morte d' Arthur'; it may be illustrated by the passage in which King Arthur departs for his last journey across the waters of the west :

• Now put me into the barge,' said the King ; and so he did softly ;

and there received him three queens with great mourning, and so those three queens set them down, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head. And then that queen said, * Ah ! dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me ? Alas ! this wound on your head hath taken overmuch cold.' And so then they rowed from the land, and Sir Bedi- vere beheld all those ladies go from him ; then Sir Bedivere cried, Ah I my lord Arthur, what shall become of me now ye go from me, and leave me here alone among mine enemies ? ' ' Comfort thyself/ said King Arthur, ' and do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust for to trust in ; for I will into the vale of Avilion for to heal me of my grievous

210 NOTES ON STYLE

wound ; and if them never hear more of me, pray for my soul. 1 But evermore the queens and ladies wept and shrieked that it was pity for to hear them. And as soon as Sir Bedivere had lost sight of the barge, he wept and wailed ; and so he went all the night, and in the morn- ing he was ware between two hills of a chapel and a hermitage.

Translation played a very important part in the moulding of English literature. The 'Morte <T Arthur* was avowedly a condensed version of several French romances, executed at a time when French had hardly ceased to be the language of the court and law. During the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the English Bible assumed that shape which is familiar to every one in the old authorised version. It was the translation of books already well known through the Latin of the Vulgate ; and though the translators went at first hand to the original languages of both Old and New Testaments, their choice of rhythm, phrase, and vocable was to a great extent determined by Jerome's example.

Why died I not from the womb ? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly ?

Why did the knees prevent me ? or why the breasts that I should suck?

For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept : then had I been at rest.

With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves ;

Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver :

Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been ; as infants which never saw light.

There the wicked cease from troubling ; and there the weary be at rest.

The mixture of native with French or Latin words with present, quiet, counsellor, desolate, prince, infant, cease has been accomplished; but the syntax still retains its early English simplicity.

While the Bible was circulating among the people through the medium of the press, England awoke to the new learning, and submitted to the charm of Italian humanism. A third process of iusioa now further modified our prose style.

NATFONAL STYLE 211

Writers, belonging for the most part to the scholarly classes, began to use their mother tongue according to the rules of Latin syntax. They did not merely transplant a multitude of Latin nouns, adjectives, and verbs with slight terminal alteration into the vocabulary. In so far as they did so they were only continuing the process already at work in the style of the Bible. But they also constructed periodic sentences, and built up paragraphs in the manner of the Roman rheto- ricians. It would be interesting to trace the development of this humanistic use of language through Bacon, Jonson, Burton, Chillingworth, Sir Thomas Browne, and Jeremy Taylor. These masters of English prose were obeying an instinct somewhat similar to that which moved the poets in their attempt to assimilate English verse rhythms to classical metres. But the language did not lend itself kindly to the periodic structure they affected. What had been done in Latin by means of terminal forms declined nouns and adjectives, inflected verbs, genders those natural artifices of the tongue, which secured lucid and logical arrangement in the most complicated windings of a sentence had now to be attempted by linking together and interconnecting the short phrases which are proper to the genius of English. Consequently, those labyrinthine edifices seem to be compact of loosely welded parts, not wrought into a vitally organic whole. The incoherence and awkwardness of humanistic prose in England reach their climax in some of Milton's cumbrous periods. Sentence, sub-sentence, parenthesis, quali- fying clause;, are only kept together by a liberal expenditure of what may be described as verbal hooks and eyes. This passage on Marriage from the ' Doctrine of Divorce ' illus- trates the intricacy of Milton's style, together with its rhetorical sublimity :

Marriage is a covenant the very being whereof consists in unfeigned love and peace ; and of matrimonial love, no doubt but that was chiefly meant which by the ancient sages was thus parabled : that Love, if he be not twin-bom, yet hath a wondrous brother like him, called Anteros, whom while he seeks all about, his chance is to meet with many false and feigning desires, that wander singly up and down in his Ukepess,

212 NOTES ON STYLE

By them, in their borrowed garb, Love, though not wholly blind, as Poets wrong him, yet having but one eye, as being an archer aiming, and that eye not the quickest in this dark region here below, which is not Love's proper sphere, partly out of the simplicity and credulity which is natural to him, often deceived, embraces and consorts him with the obvious and suborned striplings, as if they were his mother's own sons, for so he thinks them. But after a while, as his manner is, when soaring up into the high tower of his Apogeeum, above the shadow of the earth, he darts out the rays of his most piercing eyesight, upon the impostures and trim disguises that were used with him, and discerns that this is not his genuine brother, as he imagined : he has no longer the power to hold fellowship with such a personated mate ; for straight his arrows lose their golden heads and shed their purple feathers, his silken braids un- twine, and slip their knots, and that original and fiery virtue given him by Fate all on a sudden goes out, and leaves him undeified and despoiled of all his force ; till, finding Anteros at last, he kindles and repairs the almost faded ammunition of his deity, by the reflection of a co-equal and homogeneal fire. Thus mine author sung it to me ; and by the leave of those who would be counted the only grave ones, this is no mere ama- torious novel (though to be wise and skilful in these matters, men, heretofore of greatest name in virtue, have esteemed it one of the highest arcs that human contemplation, circling upwards, can make from the globy sea whereon she stands) : but this is a deep and serious verity, showing that love in marriage cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual.

If we inquire what English prose gained in this humanistic period, we shall find that the range and compass of the lan- guage were widely extended, that new and richer rhythms were added to its cadences, and that its capacity for the construction of majestic monumental sentences was proved.

There are sicknesses that walk in darkness ; and there are exter- minating angels, that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature ; whom we cannot see, but we feel their force, and sink under their sword ; and from heaven the veil descends that wraps our heads in the fatal sentence.

It was surely a great gain to have learned to write thus with Jeremy Taylor, or as thus with Thomas Browne :

But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.

NATIONAL STYLE 213

In our English literature, the language of poetry has never liflfered essentially from the language of prose. Think of Tonson's, Milton's, Dryden's use of both. Think of the simultaneous revival of Elizabethan wealth and colour in the diction of both poetry and prose during the nineteenth sentury. Yet English has been, upon the whole, most success- fully handled for the purposes of verse. That is due, I think, partly to the genius of the idiom and its literary history, partly to the attitude of writers. The simplicity of our grammar, combined with the richness and variety of our vocabulary, renders the language specially fit for poetic utter- ince, where the phrase is always brief and vibrating ; less fit for organised and periodic eloquence, to which it was so ruth- lessly adapted by the humanistic stylists. The humanists improved versification by their sympathy with classic metre. They went near to ruining prose by their imitation of Latin syntactical forms, and checked the natural evolution of our oratio soluta on the lines of early French. Something has always remained of lumbering and slipshod in the structure of long English sentences. Authors, who had no skill in building up periods like Taylor's or Browne's, thought them- selves justified by those eminent examples in floundering through jungles of plethoric phrases loosely tacked together by conjunctions.

The incoherence of bad English prose is only less desolating than that of common German prose. 1 will illustrate my meaning by examples of slipshod, clumsy, or obscure sentences extracted from the published essays of the late Mark Pattison. I choose him because he is upon the whole a vigorous writer, and because he was invariably a severe critic merciless to those who fell short of an ideal of scholarship which he had formed. It is difficult to believe, however, that the man who wrote as follows, can have thought with the exactitude pertaining to true scholarship.

In England it was known from Poggio's report in 1418 that no inedited new classics were to be hoped for. 1

1 Pattison's Essays, vol. i. p. 91.

ai4 NOTES O

What Pattison has said here is thai the English, after Poggia's report in 1418, did not expect the discovery of any fresh and inedited classics. What he meant to say was, that no such classics were to be hoped for in England.

The conflicting claims of his Muse and a fiery Turk which he had bought at the Frankfort fair had once liked to have proved fatal to him. 1

This is awkward and of doubtful grammar, as is also the following from the same paragraph :

Perhaps we have to thank the road for a good deal more than we often think of the ocean of mediocre Latin terse which the sixteenth century bequeathed to us.

To any one who is at all an artist in language, a sentence so caeophonously crowded with four thats as the one which I shall now quote, gives absolute pain : 2

We are not quite sure that that Father is not giving us Tollius amplified with that latitude of invention which local history at that period allowed itself.

The next specimen contains two of the commonest and vulgarest faults of slipshod English : 3

Of the period of thirty years, 1563-1594, not more than half was actually spent by Scaliger under his patron's roof. But it was always open to him, and his books and papers his only property- -seem to have been deposited in one of his Poitevin chateaux.

The it and his which I have italicised, are the peccant parts of this intolerable sentence. A roof ought never to be open ; and it would have been no advantage to Scaliger should he have been always able to reckon upon finding an open roof in his patron's mansion. After the repeated him, his, and his, the third his both logically and grammatically refers to Scaliger. Yet the brain, tortured by reiteration, eventually relegates it to the patron who kept a portion of his roof always open for a scholar guest.

1 Pattison's Essays, vol. i. p. 98. 2 Ibid. p. 110.

3 Ibid. p. 139.

NATIONAL STYLE 215

The following sentence might be proposed as a puzzle to school-boys. Examine and analyse its structure. You will find it difficult to determine whether Scaliger or Muretus was the old friend and the guest : l

In September, 1562, Muretus came to France, and as an old friend of his father, Julius Coesar Scaliger, and his guest at Agen, Joseph was as much with him as Muret's only occasional visit to Paris from Charlieu made possible.

Take the next, and explain to which of the plurals in this pro- position the italicised word their should logically be referred : 2

Not so many places were ravaged by the Protestants as suffered from the Catholic troops, but as many or more in proportion to their numbers.

I have chosen these instances of slovenly writing almost at random from Mr. Pattison's justly famous Quarterly articles on the Stephenses and Scaliger, and from the fragment of his * Life of Joseph Scaliger.' They show that in England even a thinker so vigorous, a man of learning so exact, and a critic so scrupulous as the late Rector of Lincoln College, is capable of ignoring the graces of form, and violating the rules of language. Mr. Pattison pours contempt on French schon-geisterei, girds at the shallowness of Italian erudition, and utters the astonishing paradox that ' disgust at pedantry prevents French writing from ever rising above the level of good drawing-room conversation." 3 Yet when he uses his own mother tongue, he blunders into linguistic errors which would have brought the ferule of the pedagogue down with force upon the knuckles of Poliziano, and which M. Nisard would have accounted more discreditable than a false quantity. If learning, long study of the Greek and Latin classics, and the aristocratic habit of mind which lends an almost arrogant hauteur to this exacting scholar, could not preserve him from such ugly vulgarisms, we have the right to demand more of schon-geisterei and less of scientific pedantry.

1 Partisan's Essays, vol. i. p. 206. 2 Ibid. p. 236.

3 Ibid. p. 116.

216 NOTES ON STYLE

Less attention has hitherto been paid to prose in England than to poetry. Spontaneity and freedom I had almost written insubordination are distinctive notes of the English literary spirit, We do not readily submit to the discipline of academies or the dictates of arch-critics. We are intolerant of rules, and jealous lest so-called * correction ' should impair the native force of the idiom. What genius and instinct enable us to do, is done vigorously and well. Therefore poetry, being, as Mr. M. Arnold observed, mainly a matter of genius, has thriven in our island ; and without self- laudation we can challenge all literatures, except perhaps the Greek, to match the English in this field. But the rhythms, the cadences, the necessary limitations, the specific graces of prose style, considered as a branch of literary art, have been neglected. Few people who read English prose reflect upon the manner of a writer. They are satisfied if they can grasp his meaning, and require from him no more, being apparently unconscious of the psychological relation between thought and its expression. Much has still to be done by us before the just medium between bald, breathless prepositions and cumbrous, long-winded periods shall be reached. The elasticity, the vivid clarity of phrase, the distinction of each several proposition, which characterise the more felicitously developed organ of written speech in France, have yet to be attained by us. It might almost be asserted that we are at present as far behind the French as the Germans are behind ourselves in the art of average prose.

$art ffi PERSONAL STYLE

A SURVEY of language, however superficial, makes it evident that when we speak of style, we have to take into account those qualities of national character which are embodied in national speech. If two men could be born of precisely the same physical, mental, and moral nature, at precisely the same moment of history, and under precisely the same social con- ditions ; and if these men learned different languages in the cradle, and used those languages in after life, they would be unable to deliver exactly the same message to the world through literature. The dominant qualities of each mother tongue would impose definite limitations on their power of expressing thoughts, however similar or identical those thoughts might be.

We cannot conceive two men born with the same physical, mental, and moral nature, at the same moment, under pre- cisely the same conditions, and using the same language. They would be identical ; and everything they uttered would be clothed with exactly the same words. The absurdity of this conception brings home to us the second aspect of style. Style is not merely a sign of those national qualities which are generic to established languages, and which constitute the so-called genius of a race. It is also the sign of personal qualities, specific to individuals, which constitute the genius of a man. Whatever a man utters from his heart and head is the index of his character. The more remarkable a person

218 NOTES ON STYLE

is, the more strongly he is differentiated from the average of human beings, the more salient will be the characteristic notes of his expression. But even the commonest people have, each of them, a specific style. The marks of difference become microscopical as we descend from Dante or Shakespeare to the drudges of the clerk's desk in one of our great cities. Yet these marks exist, and are no less significant of individuality than the variations between leaf and leaf upon the lime trees of an avenue.

It may be asked whether the manner of expression peculiar to any person is a complete index to his character whether, in other words, there is ' an art to find the mind's construc- tion* in the style. Not altogether and exhaustively. Not all the actions and the utterances of an individual betray the secret of his personality. You may live with men and women through years, by day, by night, yet you will never know the whole about them. No human being knows the whole about himself.

The deliberate attitude adopted by a literary writer implies circumspection ; invites suppression, reservation, selection ; is compatible with affectation, dissimulation, hypocrisy. So much cannot be claimed for critical analysis as that we should pretend to reproduce a man's soul after close examination of his work. What we may assert with confidence is that the qualities of style are intimately connected with the qualities and limitations of the writer, and teach us much about him. He wrote thus and thus, because he was this or this. In the exercise of style it is impossible for any one to transcend his inborn and acquired faculties of ideation, imagination, sense- perception, verbal expression just as it is impossible in the exercise of strength for an athlete to transcend the limits of his physical structure, powers of innervation, dexterity, and courage. 1 The work of art produced by a writer is therefore, of necessity, complexioned and determined by the inboarn and acquired faculties of the individual. This is what we mean by the hackneyed epigram : 'Le style c'est 1'homme.'

See Emile Heimequin, La Critique Scientifique, pp. 64-67, for a lull and luminous, exposition of these points.

PERSONAL STYLE 21

II

Certain broad distinctions of moral and emotional tempera- ment may undoubtedly be detected in literary style. A tendency toward exaggeration, toward self-revelation, toward emphasis upon the one side ; a tendency to reserve, to diminished tone in colouring, to parsimony of rhetorical resource upon the other : these indicate expansiveness or reticence in the writer. Victor Hugo differs by the breadth of the whole heavens from Leopardi. One man is ironical by nature, another sentimental. Sterne and Heine have a common gift of humour ; but the quality of humour in each case is conditioned by sympathetic or by caustic under- currents of emotion. Sincerity and affectation, gaiety and melancholy, piety and scepticism, austerity and sensuality penetrate style so subtly and unmistakably that a candid person cannot pose as the mere slave of convention, a boon companion cannot pass muster for an anchorite, the founder of a religious sect cannot play the part of an agnostic. In dramatic work the artist creates characters alien from his own personality, and exhibits people widely different from himself acting and talking as they ought to do. This he achieves by sympathy and intuition. Yet all except the very greatest fail to render adequately what they have not felt and been. In playwrights of the second order, like our Fletcher, or of the third order, like our Byron, the individual who writes the tragedy and shapes the characters is always apparent under every mask he chooses to assume. And even the style of the greatest, their manner of presenting the varieties of human nature, betrays individual peculiarities. ^Bschylus sees men and women differently from Sophocles, Corneille from Racine, Shakespeare from Goethe.

In like manner the broad distinctions of mental tempera- ment may be traced in style. The abstract thinker differs from the concrete thinker in his choice of terms ; the analytical from the synthetic ; the ratiocinative from the intuitive ; the logical frt>m the imaginative ; the scientific from the poetical. One man thinks in images, another in formal propositions.

220 NOTES ON STYLE

One is diffuse, and gets his thought out by reiterated state- ment. Another makes epigrams, and finds some difficulty in expanding their sense or throwing light upon them by illus- trations. One arrives at conclusions by the way of argument. Another clothes assertion with the tropes and metaphors of rhetoric.

The same is true of physical and sesthetical qualities. They are felt inevitable in style. The sedentary student does not use the same figures of speech as come naturally to the muscular and active lover of field sports. According as the sense for colour, or for sound, or for light, or for form shall preponderate in a writer's constitutions, his language will abound in references to the world, viewed under conditions of colour, sound, light, or form. He will insensibly dwell upon those aspects of things which stimulate his sensibility and haunt his memory. Thus, too, predilections for sea or moun- tains, for city-life or rural occupations, for flowers, precious stones, scents, birds, animals, insects, different kinds of food, torrid or temperate climates, leave their mark on literary style.

Acquired faculties a ad habits find thoir expression in style no less than inborn qualities. Education, based upon humanism or scientific studies ; contact with powerful per- sonalities at an impressible period of youth ; enthusiasm aroused for this or that great masterpiece of literature ; social environment ; high or low birth ; professional training for the bar, the church, medicine, or commerce ; life in the army, at sea, upon a farm, and so forth, tinge the mind and give a more or less perceptible colour to language.

The use of words itself yields, upon analysis, valuable results illustrative of the various temperaments of authors. A man's vocabulary marks him out as of this sort or that sort his preference for certain syntactical forms, for short sentences or for periods, for direct or inverted propositions, for plain or figurative statement, for brief or amplified illus- trations. Some .compose sentences, but do not build para- graphs like Emerson; some write chapters, but cannot construct a book. Nor is punctuation to be disregarded,

PEESONAL STYLE 221

inasmuch as stops enable us to measure a writer's sense of time-values, and the importance he attaches to several degrees of rest and pause.

Ill

It is impossible to do more than indicate some of the leading points which illustrate the meaning of the saying that style is the man ; anyone can test them and apply them for himself. We not only feel that Walter Scott did not write like Thackeray, but we also know that he could not write like Thackeray, and vice versd. This impossibility of one man producing work in exactly the same manner as another makes all deliberate attempts at imitation assume the form of parody or caricature. The sacrifice of individuality involved in scrupulous addiction to one great master of Latin prose, Cicero, condemned the best stylists of the Renaissance men like Muretus to lifeless and eventually worthless production. Meanwhile the exact psychology is wanting which would render our intuitions regarding the indissoluble link between style and personal character irrefutable. 1

Literary style is more a matter of sentiment, emotion, involuntary habits of feeling and observing, constitutional sympathy with the world and men, tendencies of curiosity and liking, than of the pure intellect. The style of scientific works, affording little scope for the exercise of these psycho- logical elements, throws less light upon their authors' tempera- ment than does the style of poems, novels, essays, books of travel, descriptive criticism. In the former case all that need be aimed at is lucid exposition of fact and vigorous reasoning. In the latter, the fact to be stated, the truth to be arrived at, being of a more complex nature, involves a process akin to that of the figurative arts. The stylist has here to produce

While I was engaged in writing this essay, a young French author, now, alas 1 dead, sent me a book which may be considered as an important contribution to the psychology of style. It is entitled, La Critique Scientifique, par Emile Hennequin. Paris : Perrin et Cie., 1888.

222 NOTES ON STYLE

the desired effect by suggestions of infinite subtlety, and to present impressions made upon his sensibility.

Autobiographies, epistolary correspondence, notes of table- talk, are of the highest value in determining the correlation between a writer's self and his style. We not only derive a mass of information about Goethe's life from Eckermann, but we also discover from those conversations in how true a sense the style of Goethe's works grew out of his temperament and experience. Gibbon and Rousseau, Alfieri and Goldoni, Samuel Johnson in his ' Life * by Boswell, John Stuart Mill in his autobiographical essay, Petrarch in his ' Secretum ' and fragment of personal confessions, have placed similar keys within our reach for unlocking the secret of their several manners.

The rare cases in which men of genius have excelled in more than one branch of art are no less instructive. Michel Angelo the sonnet-writer helps us to understand Michel Angelo the sculptor. Rossetti the painter throws light on Rossetti the poet ; William Blake the lyrist upon William Blake the draughtsman. We find, on comparing the double series of work offered by such eminent and exceptionally gifted individuals, that their styles in literature and plastic art possess common qualities, which mark the men and issue from their personalities. Michel Angelo in the sonnets is as abstract, as ideal, as form-loving, as indifferent to the charm of brilliant colour, as neglectful of external nature as Michel Angelo in his statues and the frescoes of the Sis tine Chapel. Rossetti's pictures, with their wealth of colour, their elaborate execution, their sharp incisive vision, their deep imaginative mysticism and powerful perfume of intellectual sensuousness, present a close analogue to his ballads, sonnets, and descrip- tive poems. With these and similar instances in our mind, we are prepared to hear that Victor Hugo designed pictures in the style of Gustave Dor6; nor would it surprise us to discover that Gustave Dor& had left odes or fiction in the manner x>f Victor Hugo.

The problems suggested by style as a sign and index of personality may be approached from many points of view, I

PERSONAL STYLE 223

have not aimed at exhaustiveness even of suggestion in my treatment of the topic ; and while saying much which will appear perhaps trivial and obvious, have omitted some of the subtler and more interesting aspects of the matter. A syste- matic criticism of personal style would require a volume, and would demand physiological and psychological knowledge which is rarely found in combination with an extensive study of literatures and arts.

fart IF THE ART OF STYLE

' THE choice and command of language/ said Gibbon, ' is the fruit of exercise.' Every writer has it in his power to improve his faculty of expression, as every athlete can imnrove his muscular development by practice.

The final end of all style is precision, veracity of utterance, truth to the thing to be presented. The thing itself will differ in simplicity and complexity, in scientific aridity and in emotional richness, in imaginative grandeur and in passionate intensity. Style, regarded from the point of view of art, adapts itself to these differences in the subject- matter. Whether consciously or unconsciously, is not at present the question. It suffices to say that style (if worthy of the name) finds the pure phrase the fitting mode of utterance. It rejects superfluities, admits ornament where ornament is part and parcel of the thing to be presented, seeks beauty in truth, selects, discards, mindful always that there is one and only one absolutely right way of saying anything.

This is as true of poetry as of prose. Phrases like :

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong :

or like :

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is ; What if my leaves are falling like its own 1

THE AKT OF STYLE 226

have to be regarded as simple propositions, no less simple than these which follow :

So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the British Isles. It had lasted a hundred and five days. The garrison had been reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about three thousand- All these propositions are right, are veracious, are good in style, in so far as they are adequate to the speaker's thought and perception of fact in the first two cases to the highly charged and complex matter which Wordsworth and Shelley sought to deliver, in the third to the definite issue which Macaulay had to report. Criticism might question whether the siege of Londonderry was really ' the most memorable in the annals of the British Isles.' But criticism, knowing Macaulay's view of English history, would have no right to challenge his statement on the ground of style. Criticism might object to Wordsworth's identification of Duty with Cosmic Law, and to Shelley's pathetic sympathy with autumn woodlands. But criticism, having seized each poet's point of view, would have no right to challenge his statement on the ground of style. In each case the verbal expression is correspondent to the thing presented.

Precision being the main purpose of a writer, he will pay minute attention to the grammar and logic of language, so that there may be no obscurity, or incoherence in his method of expression. With the same object he will study the qualities of words, remembering that the right word used in the right place constitutes the perfection of style. Words will be weighed in their sonority, their colour- value, their suggestiveness, their derivation and metaphysical usage. He will show his taste by the avoidance of foreign vocables, neologisms, obsolete terms, unless the rhetoric of his subject- matter renders such verba insolenlia helpful to the meaning. To be meticulous (as Sir Thomas Browne would say), in the adoption of new phrases or the resuscitation of old words is hardly less reprehensible than to be reckless in the ill- considered use of them. Justice of perception consists in

Q

226 NOTES ON STYLE

knowing how and when and where to deviate from the beaten track ; and in nothing do writers of equal excellence reveal their individual proclivities more plainly than in their selec- tion of uncommon vocables or turns of phrase.

The art of style, like all arts of expression, does not aim exclusively at precision. It is a fine art, and demands beauty as the concomitant of truth. We have a sense for the beauty of language in itself, just as we have a sense for the beauty of sounds, colours, forms. This sense claims to be gratified by harmonious and rhythmic utterance. Students of style will therefore take pains to avoid unnecessary tautology, to vary the openings and outlines of propositions, t3 alternate long and short sentences, and to connect these into well-built para- graphs. They will be sensible that, as every idea has its one right verbal form, so every phrase ought to have its own dis- tinctive cadence. Goethe used to say that each poetic motive brought with it a rhythm and a stanza proper to itself ; and this remark might be extended to the minutest particles of thought conveyed in language.

Only slovenly writers who never felt the beauty of verbal form, and brutal writers who do wilful violence to language, ignore the duty of seeking the right phrase. Those for whom style is an art will differ immeasurably in their power to use it. The unknown painter struggling with a task beyond his faculty cannot charm our senses with tho suave and luminous achievements of a Titian or Veronese. But even humble workers are able to do much by love and care, toward lifting their utterance above the dead level of commonplace. Let them rewrite sentences, recast paragraphs, remould chapters, seeking at every step a bettering of their best, a closer union with the melody which penetrates the intellectual ear. Striving thus, we become sensible of what is meant by art in style. We grow more vigorous ; and when there comes some vital thought to utter, the clothing words spring forth with more of freshness, strength, and music.

The lucid exposition of ideas in ordered sequence, the weaving of sentences into coherent paragraphs, the unfolding of arguments by natural yet logically constructed steps, the

THE ART OF STYLE 227

presentation of scenes and pictures by .successions of con- tributory images these operations of the literary craftsman demand close attention to what is called transition. Style, it has been said, consists in the art of transition : that is, the art of moving easily and convincingly from point to point, supplying the needful ' connective tissue ' of language without clumsiness and without the obtrusive pedantry of scholastic distinctions. Nor let it be imagined that this is a mere matter of stylistic grace. The art of transition and connection has quite as much to do with veracity of thought as with elegance of expression. It was upon this art, as the one thing needful to sound rhetoric, that Socrates discoursed in his golden way to Pheedrus on the banks of tho Ilissus. This is what Buffon meant by the words which so impressed Gustavo Flaubert : * Toutes les beautes intellectuelles qui so trouvent dans un beau style, tous les rapports dont il est compost, sont autant de ve"rites aussi utiles, et peut-etre plus pre"cieusos pour 1'esprit public, que celles qui peuvent faire le fond du sujet.'

II

While. bestowing minute attention on tho niceties of lan- guage, young writers should bear in mind that no rules of composition, no rhetoric which professes to teach the art of treating subjects appropriately, can supply the two requisites of a good style vigorous and well-digested thought, which constitutes its matter ; and pure idiomatic diction, which constitutes its crowning grace of form.

6 Authors/ said De Quincey, in his unfinished essay on Style, ' have always been a dangerous class for any language.' They have been dangerous because they are liable to sub- stitute sophistry and declamation for solid thinking, and because the habit of writing books alienates their language from the vivacity of the vernacular and the raciness of spoken idiom.

Few men of letters nowadays would dare to follow Swift and Sterne, those classics of our prose, in their bold use of colloquialisms. Goethe prided himself on 'having never thought much about thinking/ We might argue in favour

228 NOTES ON STYLE

of not thinking overmuch about writing. A fastidious avoid- ance of what is plain and common may lead us insensibly into the worst of all faults affectation and stylistic pedantry ; may blind us to the fact that what we say is more important than how we say it, and that the first condition of good writing is strong feeling and clear thinking.

Englishmen, however, incline toward carelessness rather than scrupulousness in the matter of language. It will be long before our journalists and novelists deserve the reproach which George Sand is said to have addressed to Flaubert, and which, in my opinion, Flaubert, that martyr to verbal nicety, deserved : ' You regard expression as an end in itself ; it is but an effect.'

The purity of idiom in English literature runs its chief risks from bookish phrases, from misapplied terms like 'predica- ment* and * category, 1 from nouns in 'ist 1 and 'ism' (' scientist,' ' educationalist,' ' evolutionism '), from evil metaphors involved in verbs like 'to avail oneself of,' from hackneyed forms of artificial sentences, which save the writer trouble and blind him to the duty of saying freshly what he thinks and feels. From the great curse of German, the whole- sale incorporation of foreign words into the language, we are fortunately delivered by the genius of our mother speech. We cannot construct endless ugly verbs in iren, or adopt French vocables with mutilated terminations. Nor again is it within the power of English writers to construct flaccid sentences of between two hundred and three hundred words, in which the attention of the reader is suspended till the close falls on the separable particle of the leading verb. That is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, which can be found only in Germany.

De Quincey, in the essay already quoted from, inveighs against ' the tumid and tumultuary structure of our sentences.' He delivers his impeachment in the following period, which, except that it is artfully conducted to a climax, might seem designed to illustrate the fault he is attacking :

Ever since a more bookish air was impressed upon composition without much effort by the Latinised and artificial phraseology, by

THE ART OF STYLE 229

forms of expression consecrated to books, and by long-tailed words in osity and ation, either because writers felt that already, in this one act of preference shown to the artificial vocabulary, they had done enough to establish a differential character of regular composition, and on that consideration thought themselves entitled to neglect the combination of their words into sentences or periods ; or because there is a real natural sympathy between the Latin phraseology and a Latin structure of sentence ; certain it is and remarkable, that our popular style in the common limited sense of arrangement applied to words or the syntax of sentences, has laboured with two faults that might have been thought incompatible ; it has been artificial, by artifices peculiarly adapted to the powers of the Latin language, and yet at the very same time careless and disordinate.

Every artist in style ought to be able to construct a period like this. But he should be cautious in the exercise of his power, reserving it for solemn and exceptional occasions. De Quincey wrote before tbe days of Macaulay, the Saturday Review, and Mr. Matthew Arnold. Whatever may be urged against our average prose style now, it can no longer be called 'tumid and tumultuary.' From neither a good nor a bad author of the present time would it be easy to extract a sentence with as many inversions, parentheses, suspensions, as many resounding Latin words, and an apodosis so long suspended, as mark the example I have just quoted. Short propositions and easy writing have become fashionable. Simplicity of structure is even ostentatiously paraded.

Ill

Among means toward the acquisition of pure style, the most important is ' industrious and select reading.'

When Ben Jonson, in the Poetaster, administered his purge to Marston, he bade that crabbed writer break his fast upon 'old Cato's principles, 1 then 'taste a piece of Terence, suck his phrase instead of liquorice.' Plautus and Ennius among the Komans were to be shunned as meat too crude for queasy stomachs. So was Lycophron among the Greeks. But Callimachus, Theocritus, and 'high Homer* might be read with profit. In the sixteenth century these were needful

23Q NOTES ON STYLE

precepts. There were then few models of written style except the ancients and some masterpieces of Italian. But even in that limited field criticism exercised its judgment, pointing out which authors were to be preferred because of their lucidity.

The case is altered now. We have a rich and varied modern literature to choose from. The first duty of a student should be to make himself acquainted with the classics of his own nation. This forms a copious vocabulary, and fills the ear with native rhythms both in prose and verse. Each language, however, has its specific strength and beauty. Therefore it is desirable to study Greek and Latin for clear- cut form in style, Italian for melodious flow, French for limpidity and finish. By observing what is excellent in each of these literatures, and in what points they differ from our own, by translating passages from their great writers into English, and considering how the genius of our tongue may assimilate their graces, the novice gradually forms a style.

Although a man's stylo is the sign of his faculties, yet he possesses the power of moulding it upon that of the writers he prefers as George Sand moulded hers on Rousseau, Mr. Ruskin his on the Bible and Hooker, Mr. R. L. Stevenson his on the multitude of authors whom it was his habit, while a youth, assiduously to imitate. Nothing is more disastrous than to take as model some illustrious artist whose tricks are more easily assimilated than his excellences. Lyly, through the vogue of Euphuism, injured English prose in the seventeenth century, and Marino ruined the poetry of the Italians. Johnson was noxious at the end of the last century. Carlyle debased the standard of narrative and critical diction in the second half of the nineteenth century. Macaulay, in spite of his sterling merit, is accountable for much that is flashy and short-winded in contemporary style.

The control exercised by famous authors over the forms of national literature through successive centuries is one of the most curious aspects of the present inquiry. We have only to think of the influence of Cicero and Virgil over Latin prose and poetry ; of Boccaccio and Petrarch over Italian.

THE ART OF STYLE 231

Men are in all ways more imitative than wo usually allow. This might be further illustrated by the predominance of fashion at certain epochs. It became the custom among us in England, about the middle of the seventeenth century, to write with eyes fixed steadily on France as the exponent of the classical tradition. During the last hundred years we have been writing in conscious and admiring sympathy with our Elizabethan ancestors. After allowance has been made for divergence from the models fashionable at each of these epochs divergences due in the one case to national genius, and in the other to historical and social changes within the English people the specific notes of the two periods in our literature may be roughly explained by reference respectively to dominance of French and Elizabethan fashion. 1

IV

Stylo, as we have seen, is a twofold phenomenon, involving both the genius of nations exemplified in language, and the genius of individuals who uso the language. Thus considered, the art of style consists, for each person, in the method of employing his faculties of thought and feeling, and his command of any given language, to the best advantage.

But style also varies with the nature of the subject-matter, the state of the writer's mind at any given moment, and the end to be attained by utterance. The style of poetry differs essentially from that of prose ; and neglect of this fact leads to hybrid composition, which offends the purest taste. Poetical prose and word-painting are common with those writers who have not made up their minds in what direction thoir powers lie who would fain be poets, and yet choose the seemingly more facile vehicle of prose to utter their emotions.

• That is good rhetoric for the hustings which is bad for

a book,' said De Quincey. ' In the senate, and for the same

1 I hope to pursue this subject further in an essay on ' Elizabethan and Victorian Poetry.'

282 NOTES ON STYLE

reason in a newspaper, it is good to reiterate your meaning.' The orator has to repeat his arguments, and to place the same points in new lights, lest their force should escape bhe fugitive attention of an audience. It would be imperti- nent in the writer of a book to claim the privileges of a public speaker. His readers are able to perpend his sentences, to pause and ponder, to resume the chain of reasoning by casting their eyes backward over the pages they have traversed. Yet, even in books, some subjects demand a. more oratorical method of treatment than others. When it is the writer's aim to persuade his readers, to carry them gently along with him, to infiltrate their minds with unfamiliar or difficult ideas, he j&ay-indiilga in repetition. This made the style of J. S. Mill effective. But it also rendered that style leceptive by its very lucidity, hiding the thinness of some thoughts which were presented under aspects so agreeably varied.

That is good rhetoric for the pulpit which is bad for the bar ; and conversely a forensic style is intolerable within the precincts of a church. Lord Brougham was right to study Demosthenes ; but Bossuet, and South, and Newman are proper models for a canon of S. Paul's. The reason is apparent. On the hustings, in the senate, before juries, in the pulpit, men appeal to different passions and emotions : they are not only dealing with different orders of ideas, but are attempting to impress different sensibilities, and to influence the reason by different kinds of argument. The mood of the speaker differs in each case ; he feels a different stimulus and draws his inspiration from different sources. The same man is frequently a first-rate preacher and a powerful platform orator ; he may also be an excellent parliamentary speaker. But the change of attitude implied in each of these positions necessitates an alteration in his style. The personality of Mr. Gladstone, the character of the individual moulding his manner of expression, appears alike in that great rhetorician's books, letters, lay- sermons, speeches to the House, and addresses to Midlothian monster meetings. They display common qualities of eloquence and

THE ART OF STYLE 233

casuistical subtlety, combined with imperfect powers of criticism ; but these are variously, if slightly, modified according to the matter and the mode" of presentation.

Within the stricter limits of writing the same rhetorical principles hold good. If a man of science sits down to pen a treatise which will be read by experts in the libraries, and discussed in the learned societies of Europe, he confines himself to exact statement and the lucid order of marshalled arguments. If he desires to popularise the same ideas, he abounds in illustrations and elucidations, introducing matter which would have been irrelevant in the handling of his theme for scientific students.

History, fiction, biography, albeit they are three species of prose narrative, demand different styles. It is indeed possible to lend the glamour of romance to history, as Michelet did in his ' Hist Jre de France,' or to treat it from the biographical point of view, as Carlyle did his * Frederick/ Yet history cannot be mistaken for deliberate fiction or for pure biography. Fiction, in like manner, may be composed upon the lines of history or biography ; but in so far as it assumes the gravity of the one or the veracity of the other, it fails to communicate the impressions we expect from romance. This is proved sufficiently by current language. We say that the sixth and seventh books of Thucydides are as engrossing as any novel, that the last three books of Herodotus have the movement of a drama, that the incidents of Cellini's autobiography surpass the boldest inventions of an imaginative writer. That means that we look for certain qualities in fiction of which we are now and then reminded in the lives of men or the episodes of national story. Biography, again, can be written from the point of view of fiction that was common enough in past ages ; or from the point of view of history that is a favourite practice nowadays. But whether we regard Plutarch's * Lives * and Machiavelli's * Castruccio Castracane,' which represent the one method, or the many ' Lives and Times * of eminent persons which are fashionable at the present date, it is obvious in each case that the writers were aiming at what should pass for full-length portraits of individuals. Biography differs from

234 NOTES ON STYLE

fiction, since it appeals to the sense of veracity, and does not seek to create illusion ; from history, since it discards details which will not 4hrow the central figure into high relief.

Within the sphere of dramatic poetry, it is clear that tragedy, comedy, melodrama, farce, owing to their different tone and subject-matter, require different arts of rhetoric. You cannot write an idyll in the same manner as a satire, or pronounce the panegyric of a deceased emperor in the style appropriate to a discourse on bees. The choice of vehicle in each of these cases may be the same. Prose may be used for every species of the drama. Idylls, satires, panegyrics, didactic poems, may be composed in the same metre hexameters, or heroic couplets, or blank verse. Yet the matter to bo handled and the mental attitude of the writer while handling it, necessitate unmistakable differences of literary mood and form.

These are truisms with which every student is familiar. The excuse for repeating them is twofold. In the first place we have to insist upon the indissoluble nexus between thought and language, whereby a change in the writer's mental atti- tude, a change in his mental material, induces a correspond- ing quality of differentiated style. In the second place they enable us to point out a further sense in which stylo may be regarded as an art to be acquired by practice through the study of acknowledged masterpieces in each of the branches of literature.

A man's own style will to a large extent be made or marred by the masters under whose influence he falls, or by the impress of a prevalent ideal. If this were not so, we should be unable to trace the tradition of Virgilian style in Latin literature, or to define the predominance of Boccaccio in the literature of the Italian Renaissance. We could not discuss the characteristics of a given epoch or the manner of a well- marked school : by which terms we are wont to indicate the co-operative action of gregarious writers and their liability to imitation, A deeper meaning might be given to these aspects of transmitted style, But this is not the place to entertain

THE ART OF STYLE 235

speculative questions which have been already discussed in a former essay. 1

For the present, it is enough to point out that a writer, having developed his command of language, improved his taste by reading, and discovered the compass of his organ of expression, seeks further instruction when he wishes to apply his power of style to any special form of prose or poetry. If he is ambitious to compose an epic, he will inquire how Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Milton, set about their task ; or the taste of his age may direct him to the Scandinavian Sagas, the Nibelungen, the Song of Roland, and the ' Morte d' Arthur.' If he is an orator, he will consult Demosthenes, Cicero, Burke, Bossuet. If his bent be toward tragedy, he will meditate the Attic and Elizabethan dramatists, the French classics, Goethe and Schiller. If he attempts satire, he will see what Archilochus and Aristophanes, Juvenal and Persius, Rabelais and Regnier, Cervantes and Swift, Dryden and Pope, Heine and Victor Hugo, have done before him. If history attract his genius, Herodotus and Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus, Machiavelli and Michelet, Gibbon and Macaulay, Von Ranke and Mommsen, claim his attention. And so forth through the whole long list of literary species.

We cannot, in the present conditions of culture, affirm that any monuments of art are absolutely authoritative. The choice is large. The canons of criticism are liberal. The instincts of the individual, whether at variance with the general tendency of his age, or submissive to its influence, will determine his selection of a model. Still, it is certain that some model, whether deliberately chosen or passively assimilated, exercises a control over the writer's manner. If the art of style could be reduced to a fixed science, then certain masterpieces in each branch of literature would have to be recognised as indisputable standards, and production would cease or merge in imitation. But the intellectual bias of the century forbids such a relapse into the pedantry of classicism. Taste, therefore, and the rules of comparative

1 See above, Essay No. 2, on the Application of Evolutionary Prin- ciples to Art and Literature.

236 NOTES ON STYLE

study under which we work now, force the artist to reflect upon the various creations of numerous predecessors in any field which he has undertaken. And thus the great monu- ments of past ages are continually moulding and impressing the style of the present, crossing and recrossing, blending their influences. Ever more and more, the literature of the Occidental races tends to become a complicated mass of hybrids.

DEMOCRATIC ART WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO WALT WHITMAN

DURING the first half of this century, the rival merits of classical and romantic art were stormily debated. There is no need to revive that discussion. People of sense now recognise the truth that in whatever style an artist works, the style will be classical, provided the work itself be good, sincere, and representative of sterling thought. Yet a few words have to be said about this bygone phase of European criticism, since it forms a necessary prelude to the treatment of Democratic Art.

The romantic revolt against those canons of taste which prevailed in Europe after the Revival of Learning, was in some respects analogous to the insurgence of realism against idealism. It took its origin in a desire for free and spon- taneous artistic form. It started from the conviction that there was something radically insincere in the orthodox rules regarding dignity of sentiment, sustained diction, and heroic action. The study of medieval antiquities, the revived enthusiasm for Shakespeare, and the powerful impact of the German mind aroused from its long lethargy, provoked a reaction against humanistic traditions, which acquired revo- lutionary force in France. Romantic poets, novelists, and painters declared their abhorrence of the conventional ' grand style.* They sought inspiration from hitherto neglected masterpieces of the Middle Ages. They delighted in the crudest aspects of human life and nature. To be striking,

238 DEMOCRATIC ART

vivid, passionate, and grotesque was their main object. Pro- portion and harmony gave place to \^pp>rd incoherence. The gutter, the hospital, the galleys were ransacked for examples of pathos and nobility. Witches and vampires superseded the Pantheon of Olympus. Murder, rape, suicide, disgust of life in love-lorn youths and maidens, formed the motive principles of wild unhealthy faction. It was a time of spasms and contortions, of Sturm und Drang and Welt- schmerz ; of Goethe's Werther, De Musset's Bolla, Byron's Manfred, Heine's Batcliffe, Schiller's Bobbers. Sense and stateliness, the precepts of Boileau, Voltaire's pellucid irony, Pope's correction, Lessing's moderation, were assailed with ridicule and sarcasm. The great but essentially imperfect work of men like Victor Hugo, Delacroix, Gautier, testified to the vitality of this reactionary movement. It found a prose Shakespeare in Balzac, and produced a monumental masterpiece in Goethe's Faust.

Meanwhile a thorough-going emancipation of taste and judgment had been effected. The freedom for which the earlier romanticists had fought was gained. New forms of expression and new standards of artistic excellence prevailed. Pseudo-classical insincerity and hollowness were purged away ; and it became apparent that romanticism, in its turn, was not devoid of pedantry. The main result of this romantic revolu- tion was the discovery that no subject in human history or life, no object in the eternal world of nature, is unpoetical or unfitted for artistic treatment. At the same time, all methods of handling, all ways of seizing and presenting the material of art, obtained an equal right to exist. At the end of the conflict, criticism only demanded that style should realise the end proposed by the artist, that workmanship should be honest, the craftsman conscientious, and the pro- duct faithful to the concept. *

This in itself was a great gain. Yet if this had been all, the prospect for the future would not have been cheering. As their names imply, both classicism and romanticism were derivative and not spontaneous ways of conceiving the art problem. The class* cal schools of modern times rehandled

DEMOCRATIC ART 289

material and observed rules supplied from Greece and Eome through scholarship. The romantic schools reverted to the literature and the architecture of feudalism. Classicism was essentially aristocratic. Romanticism was revolutionary ; but it drew its inspiration from sources no less aristocratic. Neither mode possessed finality, because neither corresponded to the cardinal phenomenon of the nineteenth century, which is the advent of the people. The point to which we have been brought by their conflict in the sphere of art and letters is that a new mode of utterance, which may be termed the Democratic, has been rendered possible. Tlio shams of the classicists, the spasms of the romanticists, have alike to be abandoned. Neither on a mock Parnassus nor on a paste- board Blocksberg can the poets of the age now worship. The artist walks the world at large beneath the light of natural day. Despising nothing which the past can teach, rejecting nothing which the present offers, he aims at manifesting what he finds of beautiful and striking in the outer and the inner worlds : secure the while that if he feels sincerely and labours conscientiously, his work will be of sterling value, no matter what the style may be or what kind of subject has attracted him.

II

This, speaking broadly, is the initial condition of Demo- cratic Art : an art free in its choice of style, frea in its choice of subject ; an art which has recovered sobriety after the delirium of romantic revolution ; but which retains from that reactionary movement one precious principle that nothing in nature or in man is unpoetical, if treated by a mind which feels its poetry and can interpret it.

This however, is only the beginning, the attitude, the opportunity of Democratic Art. There remains a graver question to be considered. How shall the poet and the artist adjust themselves to what I have called the cardinal fact of our epoch, to the advent of the people ? Classical and feudal art were essentially aristocratic. Modern classicism and romanticism were in a derivative sense aristocratic also. The

240 DEMOCRATIC ART

latter, it is true, brought certain aspects of the people into prominence. But it did so hysterically, in a spirit of revolt, without clear intelligence of the altered political and social conditions to which serious art must henceforth respond.

Under these conditions an art for the people, of the people, seems imperatively demanded, unless art, including literature, shall relax its hold upon reality and subside into agreeable trifling.

Up to the present moment there are but few signs of any vital resurrection of the spirit. Not only in Europe, but in America also, culture continues to be mainly reprcductive and imitative. The conflict of romanticism with classicism liberated taste; yet artists still handle worn-out themes in the old formal ways, without the earlier grasp upon them, without fervour of conviction, and without power to awake popular enthusiasm.

Ill

So far as I am aware, only one living author has approached this problem with a full sense of its present urgency and ultimate preponderance. I allude to Walt Whitman, whose whole life has been employed in attempting to lay foundations for a new national literature. Whatever we may think about Whitman's actual performance, it is impossible fco neglect his teaching or his practice, when we entertain the question of Democratic Art. For this reason I propose to examine what he has written directly and indirectly upon the topic.

A short but pregnant essay, entitled * Democratic Vistas, contains the pith of Whitman's theoretical opinions. It starts with a declaration of the author's intention to use * the words America and Democracy ' as { convertible terms/ ' The United States/ he says, ' are destined to surmount the gorgeous history of Feudalism, or else prove the most tremen- dous failure of time/ Whitman points out that while America advances rapidly to a dominant position in wealth and strength and all material qualities of national greatness, a literature corresponding to that modern Democracy with which she is identified, has not as yet appeared. * Feudalism,

DEMOCRATIC ART 241

caste, the ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from political institutions, still hold essentially by their spirit, even in this country, entire possession of the most important fields, indeed the very subsoil of education and of social standards and literature.' From this proposition he advances to the assertion that * Democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of arts, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences/

The claims here advanced for the art demanded by America and Democracy are perhaps excessive. Yet Walt Whitman has to be attended to when he writes upon this subject. ' He is Democracy/ said Thoreau, speaking of him. And his opinions, although audacious in the extreme, are those of a powerful thinker as well as a sagacious observer.

In the Old World we shall possibly find thorn only in part valuable ; since they are specially uttered for the instruction of the United States. England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, cannot be expected to break with their historical tra- ditions, and to discard all * that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite conditions.' Whatever may be the triumph of Democracy in Europe, this is requiring too much of nations born in the purple, and adorned with so many illustrious monuments of ancestral genius. It may also be doubted whether Whitman is wise in exhorting the miscellaneous population of North America to found a new culture which shall ' displace all that exists/

The mental progress of humanity is not effected by abrupt divisions and sudden dislocations. Every process of change implies absorption, blending, compromise, recombination. As in the case of a glacier, if movement implies fracture, it also involves regelation. The spirit of an age or race yields to that of its successor, but abides within it still as an essential ingredient assumed, transformed, and carried forward. Modern forces evolve themselves inside the sphere of men and manners, which have been shaped by influences derived from remote antiquity. We are the complex outcome of a tenfold

B

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mingled ancestry, not any portion of which has been, or can be, absolutely cast aside. To escape the fatality of hereditary transmission is hopeless. No individual man can be wholly original, in the sense of being independent of his progenitors and predecessors. Far more impossible is it for whole nations to fling themselves adrift from their moorings, or to construct an ideal world of culture corresponding to temporary con- ditions however urgent and imposing. The advent of the people, paramount as it is in the experience of the nineteenth century, will not revolutionise the laws which govern human society. Language, the instrument of thought and the vehicle of utterance, remains an uncontrollable witness to the dependence of the present on the past. No one has been so insane as to pretend that odes and epics could be written in Volapiik. 1

After making these deductions, Whitman's claim for a new start in culture deserves serious consideration. Democracy is a fact, the main fact, I repeat it, of our epoch. It is more than a political phenomenon. It contains the germ of a religious enthusiasm. If the modern world is destined to be remodelled by Democracy and in some form or other this must happen then what is applicable to America will in a large measure

1 Whitman himself seems willing to concede the point on which I have insisted in this paragraph. He says, in an article on the ' Poetry of the Future * (North American Review, February, 1881 why not included in his ' November Boughs,' I know not) : ' I see that this world of the West, as part of all, fuses inseparably with the East, and with all, as time does the ever new, yet old, old human race " the same subject continued," as the novels of our grandfathers had it for chapter-heads. If we are not to hospitably receive and complete the inaugurations of the old civilisa- tions, and change their small scale to the largest, broadest scale, what on earth are we for ? ' That is common sense. Here Whitman puts his position with regard to the innovatory and superseding destiny of the United States in a reasonable light. Wishing to do him justice, I have quoted the passage ; although I am not aware that he has republished the article in which it occurs. It may appear in one of the many collec- tions of his works in prose and verse with which I am unacquainted. At any rate, the essay ought to be read by students of Whitman, for it is full of fine things.

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apply to Europe also. We need not accept the postulate that Democracy must prove itself beyond cavil by creating intel- lectual types which shall displace all that previously existed. But we may believe that Democracy will and ought to produce arts and a literature differing in essential points from those of classical antiquity and romantic feudalism. We may admit that Graeco-Rornan and mediaeval ideals are inadequate to the modern, democratic, scientific stage upon which humanity has definitely entered. We may even be so sanguine as to hope that this new phase of development contains an ideality of its own, capable of contributing hitherto unapprehended sources of inspiration to the artist.

This is the problem offered to investigation in my present essay. I wish to consider it mainly from the point of view furnished by Whitman's writings.

IV

There are two aspects under which the problem of Demo- cratic Art must bo regarded. In the first place we have to ask what sort of art, including literature under thh title, Democracy requires. To this question Whitman, in his ' Democratic Vistas,' gives an answer : turbid in expression, far from lucid, but pregnant with sympathetic intelligence of the main issues. In the second place we have to ask what elements are furnished to the artist by the people, which have not already been worked out in the classical and feudal forms and their derivatives. Whitman attempts to supply us with an answer to this second question also, not in his speculative essays, but in the mass of imaginative compositions which he designates by the name of poems or notes for poems. His report upon both topics may be postponed for the moment, while we revert to the revolution effected by the romantic movement of a hundred years ago. It behoves us to review the clearance of obsolete obstructions, and to survey the new ground gained, whereon our hopes are founded of a future reconstruction.

Delivered from scholastic traditions regarding style and

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the right subjects to be handled delivered from pedantry anc blind reactionary fervour delivered from dependence upor aristocratic and ecclesiastical authority sharing the emanci- pation of the intellect by modern science and the enfranchise- ment of the individual by new political conceptions the artist is brought immediately face to face with the wonderful world of men and things he has to interpret and to recreate, The whole of nature, seen for the first time with sane eyes, the whole of humanity, liberated for the first time from caste and class distinctions, invite his sympathy. Now dawns upon his mind the beauty, the divinity, which lies enfolded in the simplest folk, the commonest objects presented to his senses. He perceives the dignity of humble occupations, the grace inhe- rent in each kind of labour well performed. He discovers that Love is a deity in the cottage no less than in king's chambers ; not with the supercilious condescension <of Tasso's ' Aminta ' or Guarini's * Pastor Fido,' but with a reverent recognition of the pr&sens deus in the heart of every man and woman. In order to make Florizel and Perdita charming, it is no longer necessary that they should be prince and princess in disguise ; aor need the tale of 'Daphnis and Chloe ' now be written with that lame conclusion of lost children restored to wealthy bigh-born parents. Heroism steps forth from the tent of Achilles ; chivalry descends from the arm-gaunt charger of the knight ; loyalty is seen to be no mere devotion to a dynasty; passionate friendship quits the brotherhood of Py lades and the dear embraces of Peirithous. None of these high virtues are lost to us. On the contrary, we find them everywhere. They are brought within reach, instead of being relegated to some remote region in the past, or deemed the apecial property of privileged classes. The engine-driver steering his train at night over perilous viaducts, the life-boat man, the member of a fire-brigade assailing houses toppling k> their ruin among flames ; these are found to be no less heroic than Theseus grappling the Minotaur in Cretan labyrinths. And so it is with the chivalrous respect for womanhood and weakness, with loyal self-dedication to a principle or cause, with comradeship uniting men in brother-

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hood, with passion fit for tragedy, with beauty shedding light from heaven on human habitations. They were thought to dwell far off in antique fable or dim mediaeval legend. They appeared to our fancy clad in glittering armour, plumed and spurred, surrounded with the aureole of noble birth. We now behold them at our house-doors, in the streets and fields around us. Conversely, our eyes are no longer shut to the sordidness and baseness which royal palaces and princely hearts may harbour to the meanness of the Court of the Valois, to the vulgarity of the Court of Charles II., to the vile tone of a Prince Regent, to the dishonour, dishonesty, and disloyalty toward women which have always, more or less, prevailed in so-called good society.

This extended recognition of the noble and the lovely qualities in human life, the qualities upon which pure art must seize, is due partially to what we call democracy. But it implies something more than that word is commonly supposed to denote a new and more deeply religious way of looking at mankind, a gradual triumph after so many centuries of the spirit which is Christ's, an enlarged faculty for piercing below externals and appearances to the truth and essence of things. God, the divine, is recognised as immanent in nature, and in the soul and body of humanity ; not external to these things, not conceived of as creative from outside, or as incarnated in any single personage, but as all-pervasive, all-constitutive, everywhere and in all. That is the democratic philosophy ; and science has contributed in no small measure to pro- duce it.

Meanwhile, we need not preach the abandonment of high time-honoured themes. Why should we seek to break the links which bind us to the best of that far past from which we came ? Achilles has not ceased to be a fit subject for poem or statue because we discern heroism in an engine- driver. Lovely knights and Flora Macdonald, Peirithous and Pylades, King Cophetua and Burd Helen, abide with all the lustre of their strength, and grace, and charm. They have lost nothing because others have gained because we now acknowledge that the chivalry, the loyalty, the comrade-

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ship, the love, the pathos, which made their stories admirable, are shared by living men and women, whose names have not been sounded through fame's silver trumpet.

I have hitherto touched but lightly upon the extension of the sphere of beauty which may be expected from Democratic Art. Through it we shall be led to discover the infinite varieties of lovely form which belong peculiarly to the people. Caste and high birth have no monopoly of physical come- liness. It may even be maintained that social conditions render it impossible for them to display more than a some- what limited range of beauty. Goethe, I think, defined good society as that which furnished no material for poetry. We might apply this paradox to plastic art, and say that polished gentlemen and ladies do not furnish the best materials for sculpture and painting. How hardly shall they who wear evening clothes and ball-dresses enter into the kingdom of art 1 There is a characteristic beauty in each several kind of diurnal service, which waits to be elucidated. The superb poise of the mower, as he swings his scythe ; the muscles of the blacksmith, bent for an unerring stroke upon the anvil ; the bowed form of the reaper, with belt tightened round his loins ; the thresher's arm uplifted, while he swings the flail ; the elasticity of oarsmen rising from their strain against the wave ; the jockey's grip across his saddle ; the mountaineer's slow, swinging stride ; the girl at the spinning-wheel, or carrying the water-bucket on her head, or hanging linen on the line, or busied with her china-closet : in each and every motive of this kind and the list might be indefinitely prolonged, for all trades and occupations have some distin- guishing peculiarity there appears a specific note of grace inalienable from the work performed. The artists of previous ages did not wholly neglect this truth. Indeed, they were eager to avail themselves of picturesque suggestions on the lines here indicated. Yet they used these motives mainly as adjuncts to themes of greater moment, and subordinated them to what was deemed some loftier subject. Consequently, these aspects of life did not receive the attention they deserve; and the stores of beauty inherent in human

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industries have been only partially developed. It is the business of Democratic Art to unfold them fully. The time has come when the noble and beautiful qualities of the people demand a prominent place among worthy artistic motives.

An arduous task lies before the arts, if they are to bring themselves into proper relation with the people ; not, as is vulgarly supposed, because the people will debase their standard, but because it will be hard for them to express the real dignity, and to satisfy the keen perceptions and the pure taste of the people.

There is a danger lest the solution of this problem should suffer from being approached too consciously. What we want is simplicity, emotional directness, open-mindedness, intelligent sympathy, keen and yet reverent curiosity, the scientific com- bined with the religious attitude toward fact. It will not do to be doctrinaire or didactic. Patronage and condescension are the worst of evils here. The spirit of Count Tolstoi, if that could descend in some new Pentecost, would prepare the world for Democratic Art.

Above all things, the middle-class conception of life must be transcended. Decency, comfort, sobriety, maintenance of appearances, gradual progression up a social ladder which is scaled by tenths of inches, the chapel or the church, tho gig or the barouche, tho growing balance at one's banker's, the addition of esquire to our name or of a red rosette to our button-hole, the firm resolve to keep well abreast with next- door neighbours, if not ahead of them, in business and respect- ability all these things, which characterise the middle-class man wherever he appears, are good in their way. It were well that the people should incorporate these virtues. But there are corresponding defects in the bourgeoisie which have to be steadily rejected an unwillingness to fraternise, an incapacity for comradeship, a habit of looking down on so- called inferiors, a contempt for hand- labour, a confusion of morality with prejudice and formula, a tendency to stifle religion in the gas of dogmas and dissenting shibboleths, an obstinate insensibility to ideas. Snobbery and Pharisaism, in one form or another, taint the middle-class to its core.

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Self-righteousness, and personal egotism, and ostrich-fear corrode it. We need to deliver our souls from these besetting sins, and to rise above them into more ethereal atmosphere. The man of letters, the artist, who would fain prove himself adequate to Democracy in its noblest sense, must emerge from earthy vapours of complacent self, and artificial circumstances, and decaying feudalism, It is his privilege to be free, and to. represent freedom. It is his function to find a voice, a mode of utterance, an ideal of form, which shall be on a par with nature delivered from unscientific canons of interpretation, and with mankind delivered from obsolescent class distinctions.

Whitman offers enormous difficulties to the critic who wishes to deal fairly with him. The grotesqueness of his language and the uncouth structure of his sentences render it almost impossible to do justice to the breadth of his thought and the sublimity of his imagination. He ought to be taken in large draughts, to be lived with in long solitudes. His peculiar mode of utterance suffers cruelly by quotation. Yet it is needful to extract his very words, in order to escape from the vagueness of a summary.

The inscription placed upon the forefront of ' Leaves of Grass ' contains this phrase : ' I speak the word of the modern, the word EN-MASSE.' What this word means for Whitman is expressed at large throughout his writings. We might throw light upon it from the following passage : l

I speak the pass-word primeval I give the sign of democracy ; By God ! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

Thus Democracy implies the absolute equality of heritage possessed by every man and woman in the good and evil of

1 Walt Whitman, 24. I quote from the New York edition of 1867, being unable to follow the changes in subsequent re-issues of Whitman's works.

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this life. It also involves the conception that there is nothing beautiful or noble which may not be discovered in the simplest human being. As regards physical structure : l

Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it.

As regards emotion and passions which throb and pulsate in the individual : 2

Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes out of its ribs.

' Whoever ' and ' wherever ' are the emphatic words in these quotations. The human body in itself is august ; the heart has tragedy implicit in its life-beats. It does not signify whose body, or whose heart. Here, there, and every- where, the seeing eye finds majesty, the sentient intelligence detects the stuff of drama.

The same principle is applied to the whole sphere of nature. Miracles need not be sought in special occurrences, in pheno- mena which startle us out of our ordinary way of regarding the universe : 3

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,

Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same ;

Every spear of grass the frames, limbs, organs of men and women, and

all that concern them, All these to me are unspeakable miracles.

At this point science shakes hands with the democratic ideal. We are not forced to gaze upon the starry heavens, or to shudder at islands overwhelmed by volcanic threes, in order to spy out the marvellous. Wonders are always present in the material world, as in the spiritual : 4

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

1 Starting from Paumanok,' 14. 2 Walt Whitman, 33.

1 Miracles.' 4 Walt Whitman, 154.

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The heroic lies within our reach, if we but stretch a finger forth to touch it : l

Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than

the Gods of the antique wars ;

Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction, Their brawny limbs passing safe over charred lathstheir white fore- heads whole and unhurt out of the flames.

Whitman expels miracles from the region of mysticism, only to find a deeper mysticism in the world of which he forms a part, and miracles in commonplace occurrences. He de- thrones the gods of old pantheons, because he sees God every- where around him. He discrowns the heroes of myth and romance ; but greets their like again among his living com- rades. What is near to his side, beneath his feet, upon the trees around him, in the men and women he consorts with, bears comparison with things far off and rarities imagined : 2

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. . . And the running blackberry would adorn the parlours of heaven. . . And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer's girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking short-cake.

It is the faculty of the seer, of one who has understood the wonder of the world, whose eyes pierce below the surface, to recognise divinity in all that lives and breathes upon our planet : 3

Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all ; From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured

light; But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of

gold-coloured light ; From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams,

cffulgently flowing for ever.

Pursuing this line of thought into the region of plastic art, we find the elements of dignity and beauty apparent in all forms of sane and healthy manhood : 4

1 Walt Whitman, 41. 2 Ibid. 31.

8 ' Leaves of Grass,' 4. 4 * I sing the Body Electric,' 2.

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The expression of the face balks account ;

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips

and wrists ; It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees

dress does not hide him ; The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and

flannel.

To see him pass convoys as much as the best poem, perhaps more ; You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

Minor passages from Whitman's writings might bo culled in plenty which illustrate these general principles. He is peculiarly rich in subjects indicated for the sculptor or the painter, glowing with his own religious sense of beauty inherent in the simplest folk : 1

The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons, The beauty of wood- boys and wood-men, with their clear, unfcrimmed faces.

Coming home with the silent and dark-cheeked bush-boy riding behind him at the drape of the day.

The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horsesthe block sways

underneath on its tied-over chain ; The negro that drives the dray of the stone -yard steady and tall he

stands, poised on one leg on the string-piece ; His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and loosens over hi

hip-band ; His glance is calm and commanding he tosses the slouch of his hat

away from his forehead ; The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache falls on the black of his

polished and perfect limbs.

Detached from their context, the paragraphs which I have quoted suffer from apparent crudity and paradox. It is only by absorbing Whitman's poems in copious draughts, as I have said, by submitting to his manner and sympathising with his mood, that a conception can be formed of the wealth with which he scatters plastic suggestions, and of the precision with which he notes down line and colour.

1 ' Song of the Broad Axe,' 3 ; Walt Whitman, 33 ; ibid. 13.

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The essence of Democratic Art, so far as Whitman helps us to understand it, has been sufficiently indicated. The divine in nature and humanity is everywhere, if we can pene- trate the husk of commonplace and reach the poetry of things. There are, indeed, degrees in its manifestation. Special revelations, as in the life of Buddha or of Christ for instance, do not rank in the same class with the ' ever recur- ring miracle of the sunrise.' The heroism of an engine-driver, performing his duty, has not exactly the same moral quality, the same complexity of spiritual forces in play together at one moment, as the self-dedication of Menoikeus for the welfare of his native city, or the oblation of their lives by Cratinus and Aristodemus in order to save Athens from a god-sent plague.

The pioneer of Democratic Art wishes mainly to remind the world that our eyes have too long been blinded to one cardinal truth the truth that virtues and beauties, wherever found, are of like quality, and their essence equally divine. Whitman insists upon this truth in a passage which sounds paradoxical, but the grotesqueness of which is calculated to arouse intelligence : l

Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with

shirts bagged out at their waists ;

The snag- toothed hostler, with red hair, redeeming sins past and to come> Selling all he possesses, travelling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother,

and sit by him while he is tried for forgery.

The resplendent manhood of Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, c starred from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries,' is of like quality with that of the three reapers. Do what we will, our imagina- tion cannot transcend the stalwart strength of thews and sinews. We can clothe this strength with grace, gift it with ethereal charm, inspire it with ideal fancy, wrap it around in religious mystery. But the beautiful, strong body of the man remains the central fact for art. In like manner, the spirit of Christ revives in the poor, ugly drudge, ' despised and rejected of men,' like Paul, of presence weak, of speech contemptible/ 1 Walt Whitman, 41.

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who devotes his substance and his time to support and, if possible, to save an erring brother.

This piercing through gauds and trimmings, this unmasking and unbaring of appearances, this recognition of divinity in all things, is the secret of Democratic Art. It is not altogether different from what Jesus meant when he said : ' Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these, ye do it unto me.' Nor does the supreme doctrine of redemption through self-sacrifice and suffering lose in significance if we extend it from One, imagined a pitiful and condescending God, to all who for a worthy cause have endured humiliation, pain, an agonising death. Not to make Christ less, but to make him the chief of a multitude, the type and symbol of triumphant heroism, do we think of the thousands who have died on battle-fields, in torture-chambers, at the stake, from lingering misery, as expiators and redeemers, in whom the lamp of the divine spirit shines clearly for those who have the eyes to see.

VI

The most perplexing branch of our inquiry has to be affronted, when we ask the question ; What kind of literature and art is demanded by Democracy ? How is Art to prove its power by satisfying the needs and moral aspirations of the people who are sovereign in a democratic age ?

The conditions under which art exists at the present time render a satisfactory answer to this question well-nigh im- possible. In the past epochs, Greek, Mediae val, Italian, Elizabethan, Louis XIV., Persian, Japanese, the arts had a certain unconscious and spontaneous rapport with the nations which begat them, and with the central life-force of those nations at the moment of their flourishing. Whether that central energy was aristocratic, as in Hellas ; or monarchic, as in France ; or religious, as in mediaeval Europe ; or intel- lectual, as in Renaissance Italy ; or national, as in Elizabethan England ; or widely diffused like a fine gust of popular in- telligence, as in Japan ; signified comparatively little. Art expressed what the people had of noblest and sincerest, and

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was appreciated by the people. No abrupt division separated bhe nation from the poets who gave a voice to the nation. The case is altered now. On the one hand we have huge uncultivated populations, trained to mechanical industries and money-making, aggregated in unwieldy cities or distributed Dver vast tracts of imperfectly subdued territory, composed of heterogeneous racial elements, the colluvies omnium gentium, reduced by commerce and science and politics to a complex }f shrewdly-acting, keenly-trafficking, dumbly-thinking per- sonalities, bound together by superficial education in the sommonest rudiments of knowledge, without strong national notes of difference, and without any specific bias toward a particular form of self-expression. On the other hand we have cosmopolitan men of letters, poets, painters, sculptors, irchitects, living for the most part upon the traditions of the past, working these up into new shapes of beauty with power ind subtlety, but taking no direct hold on the masses, of whom they are contentedly ignorant, manifesting in no region of the world a marked national type of utterance, embodying no religion in their work, destined apparently to bequeath to bhe future an image of the nineteenth century in its confused Titanic energy, diffused culture, and mental chaos.

Is Democratic Art possible in these circumstances ? Can we hope that the men who write poems, paint pictures, carve statues, shall enter once again into vital rapport with the people who compose the nations the people who are now 30 far more puissant and important than they ever were before in the world's history ? Is there to be any place for art in the real life of the future ? Or are we about to realise bhe dream of Dupont in De Musset's satirical dialogue ?

Sur deux rayons de fer un chemin magnifique De Paris a Peking ceindra ma republique. Lu, cent peuples divers, confondant leur jargon, Feront une Babel d'un colossal wagon. La, de sa roue en feu le coche humanitaire Usera jusqu'aux os les muscles de la terre. Du haut de ce vaisseau les hommes stup6faits Ne verront qu'une mer de choux et de navets,

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Le monde sera propre et net comme une 6cuelle ; L'humanitairerie en fera sa gamelle, Et le globe rase", sans barbe ni cheveux, Comme un grand potiron roulera dans les cieux.

In a word, do the people, in this democratic age, possess qualities which are capable of evoking a great art from the sympathy of men of genius ? Or is art destined to subside lower and lower into a kind of Byzantine decrepitude, as the toy of a so-called cultivated minority ?

It is questionable whether Whitman will help us to see light in these perplexities. Yet he has a burning belief in Democracy ; and, what is more, he is one of tho very few great writers now alive who was born among the people, who has lived with the people, who understands and loves them thoroughly, and who dedicated his health and energies to their service in a time of overwhelming national anxiety.

VII

Whitman is firmly persuaded that the real greatness of a nation or an epoch has never been, and can never be, tested by material prosperity. The wealth and strength, the mechanical industries, the expansive vigour, the superabun- dant population of a state, constitute its body only. These will impose upon the world, control the present, and be a fact to reckon with for many generations. Yet these must eventually pass away, and sink into oblivion, unless the race attains to consciousness and noble spiritual life. Literature and art compose the soul which informs that colossal body with vitality, and which will continue to exist after the material forces of the race have crumbled into nothingness. Hellas lives ideally in Homer, Pheidias, JEschylus ; Israel, in the Prophets and the Psalms ; the Middles Ages, in Dante ; Feudalism, in Shakespeare. But where is Phoenicia, where is Carthage ? Nothing survives to symbolise their greatness, because they lacked ideas and ideal utterance.

In America, Whitman finds the material conditions of a

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puissant nation ; but he does not find the spirit of a nation. The body is there, growing larger and grander every day, for ever acquiring fresh equipments and more powerful appliances. Meanwhile the soul, the ideality of art and literature, com- mensurate with this gigantic frame, is wanting.

Viewed, to-day, from a point of view sufficiently over-arching, the problem of humanity all over the civilised world is social and religious, and is to be finally met and treated by literature. The priest departs, the divine literatus conies. 1 Never was anything more wanted than, to-day, and here in The States, the poet of the modern is wanted, or the great literatus of the modern. 2

What is our religion ? he asks. ' A lot of churches, sects, &c., the most dismal phantasms I know, usurp the name of religion/'

What is our national prosperity ? , * The magician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents ; and money-making is our magician's serpent, remaining to-day sole master of the field.'

What does our huge material expansion amount to ? 'It is as if we were somehow being endowed with a vast and more and more thoroughly appointed body, and then left with little or no soul/

What are our cities ? * A sort of dry and flat Sahara appears these cities, crowded with petty grotesques, malfor- mations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics.'

What is our boasted culture ? ' Do you term that per- petual, pistareen, paste-pot work American art, American drama, taste, verse ? ' Instead of poets corresponding to the pitch and vigour of the race, he sees c a parcel of dandies and ennuyees, dapper little gentlemen from abroad, who flood us with their thin sentiment of parlours, parasols, piano -songs, tinkling rhymes, the five hundredth importation, or whimpering and crying about something, chasing one aborted conceit

1 These, and all other italics, are mine ; intended to direct attention to the main points, as I conceive them, in my quotations from Whitman.

2 This and the following extracts are taken from ' Democratic Vistas.'

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after another, and for ever occupied in dyspeptic amours with dyspeptic women.' 1

After this fashion, with superfluous reiteration, and con- siderable asperity, Whitman pours forth his deep-felt conviction of America's spiritual inadequacy.

But what does he demand in lieu of those ' most dismal phantasms, which usurp the name of religion ; ' in lieu of 1 the magician's serpent, money- making ; ' in lieu of the 1 Sahara of frivolous and petty cities ; ' in lieu of ' paste-pot work,' and ' dapper little gentlemen/ and 'tinkling rhymes,' and ' dyspeptic amours ' ? Democracy in the cradle, in its stronghold, as it seems, is infected with these congenital diseases. Let us attempt to analyse what he proposes, and how he thinks the vital forces of the future are to be developed.

Whitman maintains that the cardinal elements of national greatness are robust character, independent personality, sincere religiousness. He contends that the democratic idea, properly grasped and sytematically applied to conduct, will suffice to reconstitute society upon a sound basis, and to supply the modern nations with the ideality they lack.

Of all this, and these lamentable conditions, to breathe into them the breath recuperative of sane and heroic life, I say a new founded literature, not merely to copy and reflect existing surfaces, or pander to what is called taste not only to amuse, pass away time, celebrate the beautiful, the refined; the past, or exhibit technical, rhythmic, or grammatical dexterity but a literature underlying life, religious, consistent with science, handling the elements and forces with competent power, teaching and training men and, as perhaps the most precious of its results, achieving the redemption of women out of those incredible holds and webs of silliness, millinery, and every kind of dyspeptic depletion and thus insuring to The States a strong and sweet female race, a race of perfect mothers is what is needed.

1 ' Dyspeptic amours with dyspeptic women,' is a fine motto for the American society novel. So is another of Whitman's phrases : * The sly settee and the adulterous, unwholesome couple,' for the modern French novel,

S

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In culture, as it at present exists, the forces are alien and antagonistic to Democracy. Therefore Whitman attacks it vigorously in a long polemical argument :

" Dominion strong is the body's ; dominion stronger is the mind's. What has filled, and fills to-day our intellect, our fancy, furnishing the standards therein, is yet foreign. The great poems Shakespeare in- cludedare poisonous to the idea of the pride and dignity of the common people, the life-blood of Democracy. The models of our litera- ture, as we get it from other lands, ultramarine, have had their birth in courts, and basked and grown in castle sunshine ; all smells of princes' favours. Of workers of a certain sort, we have, indeed, plenty, contri- buting after their kind; many elegant, many learned, all complacent. But, touched by the national test, or tried by the standards of Demo- cratic personality, they wither to ashes. I say I have not seen a single writer, artist, lecturer, or what not, that has confronted the voiceless, but ever erect and active, pervading, underlying will and typic aspiration of the land, in a spirit kindred to itself.

Culture is good enough in its way ; but it ii=t not what forms a manly personality, as sound and simple faith. * As now taught, accepted, and carried out, are not the processes of culture rapidly creating a class of supercilious infidels, who believe in nothing ? Shall a man lose himself in countless masses of adjustments, and be so shaped with reference to this, that, and the other, that the simply good and healthy, and brave parts of him are reduced and chipped away, like the bordering of box in a garden ? You can cultivate corn, and roses, and orchards ; but who shall cultivate the primeval forests, the mountain peaks, the ocean, and the tumbling gorgeousness of the clouds ? Lastly is the readily given reply that culture only seeks to help, systematise, and put in attitude the elements of fertility and power, a conclusive reply ? ' The only culture useful to Democracy is bound to aim less at polish and refinement of taste than at the bracing of character. 'It must have for its spinal meaning the formation of typical personality of character, eligible to the uses of the high average of men and not restricted by condi- tions ineligible to the masses. The best culture will always be that of the manly and courageous instincts, and loving perceptions, and of self-respect/

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Since you cannot cultivate the primeval forests, and so forth, you must study and assimilate them. Since the people do not need to be refined in taste, but to be braced in charac- ter, you must penetrate their character and reproduce it in ideal conceptions. The right formative influences for modern literature and art have therefore to be sought in the people themselves ; in the principles of independence and equality, of freedom, brotherhood, and comradeship, which are inherent in Democracy, and by right of which Democracy enfolds a religious ideal comparable to the spiritual liberty of the Gospel.

Did you, too, O friend, suppose Democracy was only for elections, for politics, or for a party name ? I say Democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs in Religion, Literature, colleges, and schools Democracy in all public and private life, and in the Army and Navy. I have intimated that, as a paramount scheme, it has yet few or no full realisers and believers. I do not see, either, that it owes any serious thanks to noted propagand- ists or champions, or has been essentially helped, though often harmed by them. ... It is not yet, there or anywhere, the fully received, the fervid, the absolute faith. I submit, therefore, that the fruition of Democracy on aught like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future.

Meanwhile, for those who believe that national greatness can only be tested by the spirit which a people manifests, it remains to fix attention firmly en the permanent and indestructible significance of arts and letters :

The literature, songs, aesthetics, etc., of a country are of importance principally because they furnish the materials and suggestions of per- sonality for tlie, women and men of that country, and enforce them in a thousand effective ways.

But what has culture, as yet, done to strengthen the personality of the millions of America ?

When I mix with these interminable swarms of alert turbulent good-natured, independent citizens, mechanics, clerks, young persons at the idea of this mass of men, so fresh and free, so loving and so proud, a singular awe falls upon me. I feel, with dejection and amaze, ment, that among our geniuses and talented writers or speakers, few or

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none have yet really spoken to this people, or created a single image- making work that could be called for them or absorbed the central spirit and the idiosyncrasies which are theirs, and which, thus, in highest ranges, so far remain entirely uncelebrated, unexpressed.

Yet I have dreamed, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our fate, whose long unravelling stretches mysteriously through time dreamed out, portrayed, hinted already- -a little or a larger band a band of brave and true, unprecedented yet armed and equipped at every point the members separated, it may be, by different dates and states, or south, or north, or east, or west Pacific or Atlantic a year, a century here, and other centuries there but always one, compact in soul, conscience-conserving, God inculcating, inspired achievers, not only in Literature, the greatest art, but achievers in all art a new undying order, dynasty, from age to age transmitted a band, a class, at least as fit to cope with current years, our dangers, needs, as those who, for their times, so well, in armour or in cowl, upheld and made illus- trious, the feudal, priestly world. To offset chivalry, indeed, those vanquished countless knights, and the old altars, abbeys, all their priests, ages and strings of ages, a knightlier and more sacred cause to-day demands, and shall supply, in a New World, to larger, grander work, more than the counterpart and tally of them.

VIII

So far I have followed Whitman in his polemic against the culture of his country and this century. Many of his prophetic utterances will appear inapplicable to Europe. Yet Democracy, whether we like it or not, has to be faced and accepted in the Old as well as the New World. Here, therefore, as across the Atlantic, Democracy is bound to produce an ideal of its own, or to ' prove the most tremendous failure of time.' Here, as there, * long enough have the people been listening to poems in which common humanity, deferential, bends low, humiliated, acknowledging superiors.' And yet, here, as there, the people have arrived at empire. It is no longer possible to apostrophise them in the words of Campanella's famous sonnet :

The people is a beast of muddy brain

That knows not its own strength, and therefore stands Loaded with wood and stone ; the powerless hands Of a mere child guide it with bit and rein :

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One kick would be enough to break the chain ;

But the beast fears, and what the child demand

It does ; nor its own terror understands,

Confused and stupefied by bugbears vain. Most wonderful ! with its own hand it ties

And gags itself gives itself death and war

For pence doled out by kings from its own store. Its own are all things between earth and heaven ;

But this it knows not ; and if one arise

To tell this truth, it kills him unforgiven.

In Europe, again, as in America, the founts of earlier inspiration are failing. Classical antiquity and romance cannot supply perennial nutriment for modern art. The literary revolution which I described at the beginning of this essay, dethroned those elder deities and threw the sanctuary of the spirit open. Science, the sister of Democracy, brings man face to face with nature, and with God in nature. A more ethereal spirituality than has yet been dreamed of begins to penetrate our conceptions of the universe, of law, of duty, of human rights and destinies. Art and literature, if they are to hold their own, must adapt themselves to these altered conditions. They must have a faith not in their own excellence as art, and in their several styles and rhythms but in their mission and their power to present the genius of the age, its religion and its character, with the same force as the Greek sculptors presented paganism and the Italian painters presented mediaeval Catholicity. If they cannot ascend to this endeavour they are lost.

' Literature, strictly considered, 1 says Whitman, t has never recognised the People, and, whatever may be said, does not to-day. ... I know nothing more rare, even in this country, than a fit scientific estimate and reverent appreciation of the People of their measureless wealth of latent power and capacity, their vast artistic contrasts of lights and shades, with, in America, their entire reliability in emergencies, and a certain breadth of historic grandeur, of peace or war, far surpassing all the vaunted samples of book-heroes, or any haut-ton coteries, in all the records of the world,'

This assertion he proceeds to support by reference to the

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great American war. 'Probably no future age can know, but I well know, how the gist of this fiercest and most reso- lute of the world's warlike contentions resided exclusively in the unnamed, unknown rank and file; and how the brunt of its labour of death was, to all essential purposes, Volun- teered.' * Grand common stock ! to me the accomplished and convincing growth, prophetic of the future ; proof un- deniable to sharpest sense of perfect beauty, tenderness, and pluck, that never feudal lord, nor Greek, nor Roman breed yet rivalled/

We now understand what Whitman means by ' the divine average * ; why he exclaims : ' Ever the most precious in the common. Ever the fresh breeze of field, or hill, or lake is more than any palpitation of fans, though of ivory, and redolent with perfume ; and the air is more than the costliest perfumes. 1

Finally, something must be said about Whitman's attitude toward the past. His polemic against contemporary culture, his firm insistence upon the fact that ' the mind, which alone builds the permanent edifice, haughtily builds for itself,' and that consequently a great nation like America, a new principle like Democracy, is bound to find its own ideal expression or ' to prove the most tremendous failure of time ' all this may blind us to his reverence for the arts and literatures of races and of ages which have passed away. How easy it would be to assume a contempt for history in Whitman is clear enough to students of his writings. From the pages which he dedicates to the use and value of bygone literatures it will be sufficient to extract the following paragraph :

Gathered by geniuses of city, race, or age, and put by them in the highest of art's forms, namely, the literary form, the peculiar combina- tions, and the outshows of that city, race, and age, its particular modes of the universal attributes and passions, its faiths, heroes, lovers and gods, wars, traditions, struggles, crimes, emotions, joys (or the subtle spirit of these) having been passed on to us to illumine our own selfhood and its experiences what they supply, indispensable and highest, if taken away, nothing else in all the world's boundless storehouses could make up to us or ever return again.

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(This is an emphatic reassertion of the principle that 'dominion strong is the body's ; dominion stronger is the mind's. 1 Not for an age or nation, but for all humanity and all time, abides the truth that material strength and greatness are but bone, and thew, and sinew; literature and art constitute the soul. Therefore the prophets, poets, thinkers, builders, sculptors, painters, musicians of past ages and of foreign lands, abide imperishable, shining like suns and stars fixed in the firmament of man's immortal mind. Stupendous are they indeed, but distant, unfamiliar ; appealing indirectly to modern hearts and brains. Our admiration for them, the use we make of them, the lessons we learn from them, must not degrade us into the frivolity of imitative culture. We have to bear steadfastly in mind that it is our duty to emulate them by creating corresponding monuments of our own spirit, suns and stars which shall shine with them ' in the spaces of that other heaven, the Kosmic intellect, the soul/

Ye powerful and resplendent ones ! ye were, in your atmospheres, grown not for America, but rather for her foes, the feudal and the old while our genius is Democratic and modern. Yet could ye, indeed, but breathe your breath of life into our New World's nostrils not to enslave us, as now, but, for our needs, to breed a spirit like your own perhaps (dare we say it ?) to dominate, even destroy, what yourselves have left ! On your plane, and no less, but even higher and wider, will I mete and measure for our wants to-day and here. I demand races of orbic bards, with unconditional, uncompromising sway. Come forth, sweet demo- cratic despots of the west 1

IX

Thus, the upshot of Walt Whitman's message is that the people, substantial as they are, and full of all the qualities which might inspire a world-literature, have up to the present time found no representative in poetry and art. The sacer vates of Democracy has not appeared. 'The fruition of Democracy, on aught like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future.'

This is not the place to inquire how far Whitman has

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himself fulfilled the conditions of writing for the people. Judged by his acceptance in America, he can hardly be said to have succeeded in his own lifetime. The many-headed beast there, if it has not literally 'trampled him in gore,' turns a deaf ear to his voice, and treats him with indifference. Hitherto he has won more respect from persons of culture in Great Britain than from the divine average of The States.

After reading the foregoing pages, some one will perhaps object that Democratic Art is nothing new, and that the thing itself called for the invention of no such name to designate it. 4 Have not the eyes of all but pedants and precisians been open to the poetry of common objects and of humble people ? ' He will then point to Theocritus and Longus ; cite Virgil's Georgics and Bucolics ; enlarge upon Dutch painting ; run through the list of Defoe, Hogarth, Smollett, Morland, Wilkie, Crabbe ; and wind up with special references to certain passages of the Elizabethan Drama.

Such reasoning does not meet the arguments advanced by Whitman ; nor does it satisfy the claims which those who comprehend the word Democracy put forward. Yet it is worthy of consideration, if only for the sake of .defining what is meant by Democratic Art.

The faculty for seeing beauty in the simplest people and the commonest things has, indeed, been granted to all poets and all artists worthy of the name. But this faculty, in the age on which we now have entered, will need to be exercised in a very different way and with far other earnestness.

When we consider Greek pastorals in verse and prose, or Latin didactic poems upon rural life, we detect a note of con- .descension, a scrupulous avoidance of bare fact, a studious selection of details agreeable to the cultivated sense. The rustics pose, or are transfigured. Their humanity is toned down to elegance, and the landscape is sketched in accordance with the literary ideal of Arcadia. This way of treatment implies a suppression of the true and a suggestion of the

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false. While exalting imaginary virtues of simplicity, con- tentment, and industry, these idyllic and didactic poets ignore reality and make playthings of their models. From their insincerity we have derived the intolerable sham of the modern pastoral. What Democratic Art demands is an intelligent representation of peasant-life in its actuality : not such a distorted picture as Zola painted in ' La Terre, 1 where all the ugliest details are artfully extracted and agglomerated ; but something which shall reveal the essential qualities of human virtue and vice, of passion and endurance, struggle and achievement, capacity for high and sordid action, in tillers of the soil. The poet and the artist must repel the tempta- tion to prettify his subject by the addition of masquerade refinement, or to vilify it by exposing only what is brutal. He must be ready to extract its specific quality from the phase of life he treats, believing that it contains its own tragedy, its own dignity, its suffering, crime, pride, nobility, and baseness. Ho must be able to recognise that there is as much real beauty in the peasant's husk as in the prince's a russet beech-nut being no less beautiful than the ruddy rind of a pomegranate. He must feel that the implements of labour, the attire of reaper or of milkmaid, the woodland ways and field-paths of such folk, the light falling upon their home- stead, and the simplicity of its interior, offer peculiar elements of loveliness which are wanting to the sumptuous buildings, stately terraces, and splendid costumes of Versailles or Villa d'Este.

In Dutch painting we find a genuine species, but a narrow species, of the type in question. There is no note of con- descension, no avoidance of fact, no selection of details pleasing to the cultivated taste. Sensuous enjoyment of a vulgar sort has been sympathetically felt, and rendered with artistic delight in its surroundings. The beauty of the husk, such as it is, receives ample justice. Loving care has been expended on the development of light and shadow, colour, the modelling of household gear, the delineation of industries and occupations. But the result is unspiritual ; the poetry, for the most part, is poetry of the pot-house. Democratic Art

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wants more than this. It does not merely look for humorous, or comic, or sensual suggestions from the people.

Hogarth and the painters of his kind, who have addicted themselves to satire, need not detain us long. In * The Idle Apprentice/ as in * Marriage a la Mode,' Hogarth exposed the vices of society. His touch was impartial ; and, in so far, he deserves to be called democratic. But the true note of Democratic Art, its interpretation of the people to themselves, its creation of a popular ideal, its vindication of the loveliness and dignity of human life apart from class distinctions, its recognition of the beauty wKich is inseparable from certain crafts and occupations, its perception of the divine in average human beings, cannot be demanded from Hogarth and his school. They, as satirists, show us chiefly that men can be bad alike in palaces and hovels.

We find more sterling quality in Crabbe : if only Crabbe were not so grim, so weighed down with the prosaic misery of existence. Crabbe has the democratic sympathy ; but circumstances prevented him from ascending to the democratic exultation. And here, too, Wordsworth, who might be claimed as a pioneer of Democratic Art in England, fails to strike the right note. He has much of the needful feeling, but too much of the interdicted condescension. In all his work there remains a certain aloofness from the subject, and a tendency to improve it for moral purpose. Born in an aristocratic age, he preaches to the people, or ostentatiously takes lessons from them, or shows obtrusively that he is studying them. There is in Wordsworth little of frank comradeship or hearty faith, an excessive amount of what Whitman calls ' copious dribble ' about men and forces discerned by him in a complacent, purblind fashion.

It is hardly worth while pausing to consider whether Elizabethan poetry is Democratic. The whole body of literature belonging to that age was produced under the influence of monarchical and feudal ideas, and is therefore representative of an order which Democracy displaces. Its true greatness consists in a burning national enthusiasm ; but the nation is still regarded as a hierarchy of well-defined

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classes. The sovereign, peers spiritual and temporal, clerks and clergy, untitled gentry, lawyers in their several degrees, yeomen, merchants, artisans, and peasants, build up society. Each class has its own duties, its own privileges, and enjoys that self-respect which proceeds from the sense of an assured immutable position in the commonwealth. There is, there- fore, nothing really democratic in the manliness, the freedom, and the joyousness of Elizabethan poetry. Even the realistic dramas of Hey wood and Dekker, which so delightfully set forth the beauty of humble lives and the virtues of the people, are not democratic. Whitman is right in saying that

• Shakespeare is incarnated, uncompromising Feudalism in

literature ' ; nor is the truth of this remark affected by the fact that when Shakespeare lived, the feudal order he so vividly portrayed had practically become a thing of the past. Its vigour and utility decayed during the Wars of the Roses. But time's mutations are slowly effected in Great Britain ; and three centuries since Shakespeare's entrance upon his career as dramatist have not sufficed to purge the English mind of feudal notions. They survive, amid all changes of society, in the form of snobbery, class prejudice, lord worship, and stupid talk about the lower orders.

This being the case, it is not easy to indicate anything in our literature and art which bears the democratic hall-mark. Other European nations present the same general features of decayed, yet still pervasive feudalism. Switzerland, where democracy has been achieved in practice, has developed no genius for art creation.

Yet a few examples may be selected, which seem in part at least to yield the quality desired. Blake's lyrics, George Sand's village stories, Gotthelf's Ulrich,' George Eliot's ' Silas Marner,' Pierre Loti's * Mon Frere Yves,' Rudyard Kipling's * Soldiers Three,' Clough's ' Bothie,' some of Thomas Hardy's Wessex Novels, in literature, are on the right track. So is the great work of the Russian novelists, Turgeneff, Tolstoi, Dostoieffsky.

In art we may speak of Millet, so profound in feeling, so dumbly eloquent, so tragic ; of Mason, who, in spite of

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superficial affectation, expressed the poetry of simple life with a wonderful sense of music ; of Frederick Walker, whose young working-men and vagrant women assumed the grandeur of Pheidias without loss of reality ; of Hamo Thornycroft, whose statue of the 'Mower' deserves to be placed in the same rank with Walker's picture, ' At the Gate. 1

These instances are not meant to be exhaustive ; nor are all the works mentioned of equal merit. I fear that, with the exception of Millet's pictures and the Russian novels, they would find but little favour in the eyes of our aspiring and exacting critic Whitman. Such as they are, however, they illustrate to some extent the ideality which must in course of time be extracted from the people, if art is to regain vitality under the conditions of a Democratic age.

The duty of art in the immediate future is to manifest the immanence of the divine in nature and man. While doing so pursuing her own chase of beauty, not moralising and not preaching, but seeing and unmasking the God hidden in the husk of things art will once more serve the permanent spiritual needs of humanity. This is Democratic Art. The kingdom of the Father has passed ; the kingdom of the Son is passing ; the kingdom of the Spirit begins.

LANDSCAPE

I

A VOLUME might be devoted to landscape, if this subject were to be exhaustively discussed. Nor could the task be performed without full knowledge of the arts and extensive familiarity with the work of innumerable painters in all countries. My aim is not of this ambitious nature. In the present essay I wish to indicate what it is in modern ways of thinking and of feeling, which has given so great an import- ance to scenery in our literature and figurative art.

It is an error to suppose that the ancients were insensible to the charm and beauty of external nature. Much has been written about their attitude toward landscape and the parsi- mony of picturesque description in their poetry. Yet sufficient stress is rarely laid upon the difference between the Greeks and the Romans in this matter. Nor has it been made clear enough, perhaps, that classical literature in its later stages exhibits more of what we may call the modern feeling than we find in Homer and the Attic writers.

The Greek way of regarding nature differed widely from ours, and encouraged a different order of artistic symbolism. In their religion the Greeks deifiqd the powers of the universe under concrete forms of human personality. When they gazed upon sky, earth, and sea, the image of an idealised man or woman intervened between their imaginative reason and the natural object. The mystery of the woods and wilds was Pan. Fauns and Hamadryads started from the leafy shade of forest trees. Tritons blew blasts upon their conch- shells, careering on the crests of stormy billows. Nereids swam up from azure deeps to glide across the surface of calm

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ocean. Naiads shrank from sight among fern- tufted fountains. The evening star lured shepherds to his love, leaning in twilight from the ridge of (Eta. The dawn, a rosy-fingered damsel, left the couch of gray and shadowy Tithonus. The sun-god stopped his steeds in mid-career at Hera's word, or lent his flaming chariot to mortals for their ruin. The maiden moon bent down at night to kiss her sweetheart in the solitude of Latmos.

Haunted by such conceptions, the poet and the artist could not look on nature as we do. A multitude of fancy-fashioned beings, with distinct characters and with legends of their own, arose between his mind and the external world. Sculpture, the dominant art of the race in its best period, gave substantial shape to these creatures of myth-making imagination. When utterance was sought in verse or in plastic symbolism for the feelings stirred by landscape, all vagueness, all sense of the infinite, which might peradventure have been present to the artist's mind, slumbered there unexpressed and inarticu- late. Graceful human forms emerged, and took their place in the forefront of his vision. The rest was but a background, blurred and indistinct. The sentiments belonging to it had no opportunity of coming to self-consciousness.

How widely and deeply this anthropomorphic sympathy with nature penetrated the Hellenic imagination, and deter- mined its poetical creativeness, may be seen in the legends of metamorphosis. The reed by the river-margin had to be a girl pursued by Pan. The cypress was a slender youth on whom the wood-god doted. The pine, nodding to its fall from some high precipice, had erewhile been a maiden rudely clasped by the north wind. A daffodil reflected in the mirror of a lakelet was Narcissus pining at the sight of his own loveliness. Hyacinths, anemones, sunflowers, almond-blossoms, crocuses all the * children of the spring ' and ' nurslings of the meadows, 1 as Chseremon called them were thought of as fair boys or girls beloved by deities. So, when a Greek felt their charm, his mind instinctively reverted to the human tales of passion and of fate, whereof they were for him the living emblems. He did not moralise the pathos of their

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ephemeral bloom like Herrick, or apply them to his own emotions in didactic mood like Wordsworth. He told their stories again, and spoke of them as Adonis, Clytia, Phyllis, Hyacinthus, Myrrha.

This, then, was the Greek way of regarding nature ; and it persisted in their poetry and art long after the faculty of making myths had been exhausted. Another kind of senti- ment for landscape, as we shall presently see, grew up in the course of centuries. But so tenacious and conservative are the forms of art when they have once been stereotyped in verse and plastic shape, that the old legends, hallowed by association, kept their grasp upon the people's mind.

Turning from Greece to Home, we find ourselves upon an alien soil. The Latin religion, though it had racial affinities with the Hellenic, and though these were emphasised by the early adoption of Greek literature as a standard, remained more abstract in its character, more rigid and utilitarian, less poetical and picturesque. Owing to the barrenness of their mythology, Romans wore able to view nature with eyes undazzled by the mirage of the mythopoeic fancy. The stiff gods and goddesses of Ovid's * Fasti ' Robigo, Terminus, and the rest of them intervened with no legendary charm of human fate and passion and of human adolescence between the Latin mind and landscape. Accordingly we find in the earliest and the latest of the Latin poets a feeling akin to our own the feeling of the natural man returning to the womb which bore him and the breasts which gave him suck when these came close to Nature in her solitudes. The deep and solemn passion of Lucretius, the pathos of Virgil, their common love for the Saturnian earth, their sense of things and thoughts too deep for tears, sounded in Latin poetry a note we do not hear among the Hellenes. There is in their verse the mystery, the awe, the feeling after an indwelling deity, the communion with nature as nature, which we are accustomed to call modern.

I have elsewhere pointed out that we must look for hybrids in all creations of the Roman genius. By modelling their art upon the Greek type, the Romans precluded themselves from

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developing a purely national style ; and this is perhaps one reason why the difference between them and their Greek masters, in the matter of landscape, was not made more manifest. We are able, however, to perceive this difference when we have once recognised that their employment of the Greek mythology of metamorphosis remained conventional and artificial.

Virgil deserves Lord Tennyson's felicitous epithet of * land- scape-lover ' more than any of his predecessors. Before he began to work, Greek art, in Sicilian idyls, and in mural paintings, had entered on a new phase. This Virgil con- tinued, adding a richness of colour, a variety of observation, and a glow of emotion all his own, to the transcripts from nature which abound in his poems. These pictures, however, are suggestions rather than descriptions, exhibiting the finest sense of what is right and fitting in the use of language for pictorial effect.

Horace joins with Pergius, Juvenal, and Martial in his keen appreciation of rural simplicity and homeliness, contrasted with the luxuries and vices of the city. Epicurean, Stoic, satirist, man of the world, they are alike true lovers of the country. Their enthusiasm for the farm, the wholesome fare, the rustic table, and the sturdy serving-lad who waits upon them with the blush of honesty and healthful youth, is unaf- fected. Their vignettes from Sabino or Tuscan hill-sides arc touched with the truth and sincerity which spring from real appreciation and keen observation. The same may be said of Ovid and tne elegiac poets, though the former, in his great descriptive poem of the ' Metamorphoses,' was hampered and overweighted by the burden of a mythology which had no vital hold on his belief.

Catullus freed himself more completely than any of these poets from foreign influences. An Athenian or a Sicilian could hardly have written the episode of Ariadne in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, with its fresh and vigo- rous sketches of scenery ; or the lines on Sirmium, with its deep home-feeling ; or the address to the boat, with its affec- tionate sympathy for the rock-pluming forests where the planks from which the skiff was built were hewn.

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While Latin literature was growing, that of Greece was declining. The process of decadence, however, advanced slowly ; and some minor beauties, which had been unde- veloped in the earlier stages, now assumed prominence. We find a distinct feeling for landscape, timid and subdued, but delicately true, in the Idyls of Theocritus. The poets of the Anthology, with Meleager at their head, show that the sense of nature had begun to disengage itself from merely mytho- logical associations. Meleager can see flowers without think- ing of boys and girls beloved by deities. He calls the narcissus * rain-lover,' and the lilies are for him * mountain- wanderers.' With the decay of sculpture, painting became an art of more importance. We have many indications that wall-frescoes were a common feature of Grasco-Roman archi- tecture. The treatise of Philostratus called CIKOVCS possesses considerable interest, as determining the character of these pictures. It is clear that though figure-subjects of the sculp- turesque type still formed the staple of plastic art, scenery was being treated with some degree of intelligent apprecia- tion ; and the same conclusion may be arrived at after a study of the Pompeian frescoes. This tendency of painting reacted upon literature. The books of the Greek novelists abound in exquisite landscape detail. Nature is always used as a background to humanity. But this background is sympa- thetically felt, and its main features are touched with an evident perception of their own attractiveness. In the hands of the novelists language becomes singularly euphuistic. They develop rhetorical conceits, and coin quaint imagery to convey the aesthetic impression made by natural objects on the human sensibilities.

The Roman poets of the Silver Age respond to this im- pulse. Passing over Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Statius, from all of whose works lovely pieces of land- scape-description might be culled, I will invite attention to Ausonius, in whom, at the very close of the classical period, modern sentiment seems ready to expand. His poem on the Moselle has always been admired for its mastery of descrip- tive verse. His elegy on Roses may be read in another essay

T

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of this collection, and its prolonged influence through modern literature has there been traced. 1 I shall not therefore dwell on these compositions here. But in order to show bow mural painting affected literature, and how a refined feeling for natural beauty was then combined with Hellenic mythology? I will translate the opening lines of his mystical idyl, ' Cupido Cruci Affixus,' together with its dedication in prose to the poet's c son ' Gregorius. The verses describe a fresco in a friend's house, which represented the crucifixion of Cupid by the heroines in Elysium dames of ancient story, who had long since died for love and the god's flagellation by his mother with a scourge of roses.

' Tell me,' begins the dedicatory epistle ; * did you ever see some shadowy fancy painted on a wall ? I am sure you have, and that you have kept it in remembrance. At Treves, for instance, in the dining-room of $3olus, there is this picture which I will describe : Cupid is being crucified by women who were lovers not those of our times, sinners by their own will but dames of the heroic age, who justify their conscience and force the god to bow they whose fate in the fields of lamentation our Virgil hath sung. I gazed upon this work of art with admiration, both for its beauty and its subject. Soon afterwards, the emotion of wonder in my mind merged in a foolish impulse to write verses. Except the theme, nothing pleases me in this production. Yet I submit my by-blow of the Muses to your kind attention. We love even our warts and scars if they are part of us, and not content with having paid the debt to our own natural frailty, seek that these defects in us should win affection. Yet why should I go about to win from you a favourable hearing for the eclogue? I am sure that you will take with kindness what you know to be a thing of mine. This I regard more than that you should praise it. Farewell.

• In those shadowy fields whereof the Muse of Maro sings,

where myrtle groves yield gloomy shelter to lost souls of

lovers, the dames of old were once assembled for their mystic

rites, and each bore emblems of her doom according as she

1 The Pathos of the Rose in Poetry.'

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died on earth. 1 They wandered in woodland vast beneath the niggard light, among tresses of wavering reeds and heavy- headed poppies, by silent lakes without a flaw and rivulets that have no murmur in their ripple. Along the margin of those waters, dimly seen through twilight, pine flowers upon whose petals writ in tears are names of princes and of boys Narcissus gazing on his own fair face, and Crocus of the golden curls, and Hyacinth the son of (Ebalus, and Adonis dyed in purple hue, and Salaminian Aias stamped with his deep tragic groan. These remembrances of death and sorrow, symbols of lamentation and of love, recall to mind the anguish of stern fates erewhile assoiled and buried in the tomb, and bring before those heroines the memory of scenes enacted by them also in the world above.'

The sentiment for nature to which I want to call attention in these lines is exhibited by the poet's sense of atmosphere, his feeling for tone, his subordination of the figures to the composition. The whole forms a picture ; and even the Greek mythology of the flowers is so treated as to recede into a region of symbolic spirituality. The landscape suggested by these two hexameters :

Inter arundineasque comas gravidumque papaver Et tacitoa sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos

I transcribe the original of these lines :

Aeris in campis, memorat quos Musa Maronis, Myrteus amentes ubi lucus opacat amantes, Orgia ducebant heroides et sua quteque, Ut quondam occiderant, leti argumenta gerebant, Errantes silva in magna et sub luce maligna, Inter arundineasque comas gravidumque papaver Et tacitos sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos : Quorum per ripas nebuloso lumine marcent Fleti olim regum et puerorum nomina flores, Mirator Narcissus et (Ebalides Hyacinthus, Et Crocus auricomans et murice pictus Adonis, Et tragico scriptus gemitu Salaminius Aias. Omnia quee lacrimis et amoribus anxia mrostis Exercent memores obita jam morte dolores, Rursus in amissum revocant hcroidas eevum.

276 LANDSCAPE

is no less charming than their rhythm is melodiously melan- choly. We are transferred to some quiet Umbrian or Tuscan valley after sunset, when the waning pallor of the west slumbers in pools of scarcely flowing water.

II

The nascent feeling for landscape which we see unfolding in the latest period of Greek and Koman art, had no oppor- tunity of attaining to independence during the first eight centuries which succeeded to the downfall of the Empire. Such sentiments as had existed in the classical age were con- nected immediately or remotely with polytheism. Christianity introduced a vehemently hostile spirit, which in its reactionary fervour opposed God to nature. The whole fabric of mytho- logical religion was suppressed, and nothing appeared to take its place.

Under the then prevalent conceptions of the universe, no intelligent being could take either scientific or artistic interest in a world considered radically evil and doomed to wrathful overthrow. Man's one business was to work out his salvation, to disengage himself from the earth on which his first parents had yielded to sin, and to wean his heart from the enjoyment of terrestrial delights. Whether he succeeded or not matters little to our argument. In either case the theoretical attitude of mind implied in mediaeval Christianity was inimical to knowledge and to art. Beauty came to be regarded as a snare. The phenomena of nature were vilipended as not worth a thought ; or if any attention was paid to them in lapidaries, bestiaries, and the like, the childish monastic intellect whimsically subjected them to a system of allegorical interpretation.

Under these influences both literature and the plastic arts decayed. Architecture, the most abstract and utilitarian of the fine arts, bridged over the long tract of sesthetical vacuity between the death of Claudian and the re-birth of poetry in Provence. It owed this continued existence to its disconnec- tion from ideas, and to its ecclesiastical service. Architecture

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was useful, and it was innocent. Accordingly, it lived a stunted life, while the sister arts were slumbering in the torpor of suspended energy.

The Scandinavians and Teutons, who now had to be absorbed into the fellowship of nations and to be educated by the Church, brought with them nothing which could constitute a new condition for the sense of natural beauty. Like the Greeks, they looked at the world from the point of view of mythology. The cosmic forces were personified in their religious legends as ideal men and women. Stupendous remnants of their pagan imagination survive in Eddie literature. But the study of these sources shows that Norse poetry was ill-adapted to fostering that sympathy with nature qua nature, which had begun to germinate in the later stages of Greece-Roman culture. Such as it was, the dominant civilising energy, that of the Latin Church, laid it under a strict interdict.

Renan observes that the most important product of the Middle Ages was a sentiment of the infinite. This remark, vague as it seems, bears strongly on the subject we are now discussing. Classical polytheism interpolated a multitude of ideal personalities between the mind and nature. All these were swept away, discredited, consigned to oblivion, transmuted into devils, during the ascendency of mediaeval Christianity. The soul was left face to face with God, while men and women continued daily to be born and die upon our planet. Thus a vacuum, vast as the universe, arose through the dispeopling of all that intermediate region which had been agreeably filled by gods and goddesses of various degrees. There was the self-conscious spirit of man ; there was the transcendent reality of God ; there was the earth on which man dwelt, and the heavens to cover it as with a canopy. Instead of a Pantheon or Olympus, swarming with deities in lieu of a comfortable world inhabited by semi- human personalities infinity and fact environed human con- sciousness. Infinity, the vague, incalculable, all-embracing sphere, which God in ways unrealised by mortal fancy filled. Fact, the hard, stern, brutal fabric of man's dwelling-place,

278 LANDSCAPE

with its sufferings acute or blunted, its passions which were sins, its labour which was a curse, its pleasures which were temptations. Infinity and fact, both shadowy, unreal, and unimaginable ; God's world and the devil's world ; each only valuable to the soul in its rapport with man's eternal destiny when time should be no more. That was the new medium within which the genius of our race, when it recovered from the torpor of the glacial epoch, had to move. Infinity and fact. What would happen should theology relax her grasp upon the intellect, and men once more begin to gaze around with curious delight on their terrestrial dwelling-place ?

Looking back upon the past, we are able to perceive that when the twilight of the modern age appeared, when the ancient gods had been forgotten and Christianity had lost a portion of its poignant spell, the arts and science of the present time were quickening, like seeds th&t slumber through the winter and await the spring. But an intermediate stage of long duration had to be traversed. To this we give the name of Renaissance. In it the intellect of man came pain- fully and gladly to new life through the discovery of itself and nature.

I cannot expatiate over the prospect here presented to reflection. Having indicated the broad aspect of the Middle Ages in relation to the topic of this essay, it is now my business to show in what way man recovered that nascent sympathy with nature, which had been so rudely interrupted. Landscape is a minor detail in the history of the Renaissance. But it is the one we have to keep in view.

The Latin songs of the thirteenth century, in so far as these touch nature, reveal a genial thawing of the spirit. 1 They dwell on the charm of spring-time in the country, and connect the freedom of the open air with pleasures of the senses. Classical literature is at work as a form -giving influence. But the artistic touch on mythology has altered. Bacchus and Venus and Neptune have ceased to be person- alities. They reappear as names and symbols.

1 This subject has been more fully treated in my discourse upon the Carmina Vagorum, entitled * Wine, Women, and Song.*

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The German lyrics of the Minnesingers, the ProvenQal lyrics of the Troubadours, the Celtic romances of Arthur and his Knights, when these touch nature, are in like manner vernal. The magic of the May pervades them ; the mystery of the woodland enfolds them. They are the utterances of generations for whom life has revived, who have escaped the winter of their discontent and bondage, to whom the world is once more full of wonder-breeding interest.

Humanity, as is natural, engages the poet's first attention. The earth is felt chiefly through the delightfulness of healthy sensations. The stars, and clouds, and tempests of the heavens, the ever-recurring miracle of sunrise, the solemn pageant of sunsetting, are almost as though they were not in this literature. A copse in April, a blooming garden, a grove where birds sing, a storm -swept sea-beach these are the landscape pictures of that epoch. But gods and goddesses are absent ; the flowers are flowers, not Crocus or Adonis ; the birds are birds, not Philomela wailing for her ancient wrong ; the oaks contain no Hamadryads, and the fountains murmur without Nymphs. Nature, though as yet a mere back-scene to humanity, has emerged as Nature.

At last comes Dante, with his keen incisive touch on natural things, his intense laconic descriptions of the world as it appears : l

Dolce color d' oriental zaffiro.

Conobbi il tremolar della marina.

A noi venia la creatura bell a

Bianco vestita e nella faccia quale Par tremolando la mattutina stella.

1 Soft colour of oriental sapphire I saw and knew the light atremble on the sea-marge. Toward us came the beauteous being, clothed in white and with a countenance that was as is the dawn-star when it trembles. Like to a lark which circles free in air, singing at first, and then keeps silence, satisfied with the last sweetness of the note that fills her soul. In semblance of a lion when he couches. We walked on through the evening, gazing intently forward so far as eyes could reach, with faces turned to meet the last and lucent rays of daylight.

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Qual lodoletta, che in aere si spazia

Prima cantando, e poi tace con ten ta DelF ultima dolcezza che la sazia.

A guisa di Icon quando si posa.

Noi andavam per lo vespero attenti

Oltre, quanto potean gli occhi allungarsi, Contro i raggi serotini e lucenti.

In these, and in a hundred similar passages of the ' Divine Comedy,' we feel that the poet has transcended the vagueness of the Middle Ages. A new spirit is awake in the world Man looks again with open eyes on nature, sees the earth as the ancients saw it, but without the medium of myth through which the Greeks and Romans viewed it.

Contemporaneously with Dante though Dante hardly shared this movement there began what is known as the Revival of Learning : that resuscitation of classical literature and art which exercised so potent an influence over the mind of Europe. In so far as the sesthetical appreciation of external nature is concerned, this contact with antiquity was not an unmixed blessing. It did much to emancipate the mind from theological preoccupations. It established a sense of historical continuity, and restored a truer feeling for the relation between mankind and the material universe. But it brought back the old mythology which had previously intervened between the mind and natural objects. And this mythology was no longer believed in. It reappeared as mere machinery, and literary or artistic artifice. Furthermore, the uncritical respect for classical tradition imposed fettering restrictions on creative fancy. For a long space of time, poets thought that they must imitate Virgil or Horace in their descriptions ; painters only introduced scenery as an accessory to figure-subjects. Though men could paint the external world like Titian, they dealt sparingly and occasionally with its aspects. To manu- facture Tritons, Nymphs, and Fauns was an easy matter for dexterous masters of the human form. These antique per- sonalities were accepted in lieu of waves and woods and streams. They had the double advantage of being less

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difficult to deal with than the real things they symbolised, and also of possessing the passport of classical tradition. This way of representing nature in figurative art harmonised with the intellectual conditions of the Renaissance. Accordingly, landscape, or the portraiture of Nature as she is, remained in a subordinate position.

This fact ought not to be attributed to the Revival of Learning only. There is profound truth in the saying that ' the proper study of mankind is man.' Man awakening to free consciousness at the end of the Middle Ages seized first upon himself as the subject of the highest art. Nature had to wait her turn. And her turn came when the cycle of purely human motives, within the sphere of that period's ideality, had been exhausted. It was at the close of the Italian Renaissance, after Europe had been saturated with the new learning, when science too was born, and men were gazing with purged eyes upon the heavens of Copernicus and 1 thy clear stars, Galileo/ that landscape attained to inde- pendence. Five great painters initiated this new departure in the arts. These were Peter Paul Rubens, Nicholas Poussin, Claude Lorraine, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Rosa a Fleming strongly influenced by Italian ideas, three Italianated Frenchmen, and a Neapolitan. 1

Before their appearance on the scene, landscape-painting had here and there been practised with great ability and sense of beauty on both sides of the Alps. Nothing can surpass the refined fidelity to detail with which John van Eyck drew and coloured that airy prospect over river, city, and snow-clad mountains, seen from the quiet mediaeval loggia, in his picture of La Vierge au Donateur. Few transcripts from external nature are more impressive in their map-like, patiently symbolic style than Durer's Fortune, S. Hubert, and Knight on Horseback in the sombre forest. Gentile da Fabriano's sunrise upon Tuscan hills is like the dawn of life in its quaint childish naivet6. It would be peevish to demand more con- centrated poetry in the delineation of blue crags and sun-

1 Eubens, 1577-1640. N. Poussin, 1594-1665. Claude, 1600-1682. G. Poussin, 1613-1675. S. Bosa, 1615-1673.

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swept valleys than Titian gave us, or sweeter idyllic bits of country than the minor Venetians Bissolo, Basaiti, Cima, Cordegliaghi introduced as backgrounds to their sacred compositions. Giorgione in his masterpiece at Castelfranco translated the feeling of broad champaign and gently swelling lawns into pure harmonies of gold and brown and green and yellow. Tintoretto proved himself the master of a fitful, passionate, suggestive scenery, turbid with emotion and sur- charged with meaning, tuned by imagination to the spiritual key-note of his varying themes. The gentle twilight reaches of Umbrian valleys in Perugino's and young Baphael's pictures have a melancholy charm peculiar to that region. Francia caught their grace, and painted lands of afterglow and dewy peace, with slender stems defined against the spaces of a dreamy, lucid evening sky. Lionardo da Vinci's drawings show that this versatile magician of the arts could sketch a bit of forest with the subtlety of a French draughtsman. Correggio makes us rest beside his holy travellers in pleasant woodlands by the side of babbling water-brooks. 1

Everywhere, in fact, this art was waiting, ready to emerge. But it had not occurred to masters of the sixteenth century that landscape might be treated as an object in itself. They remained at the same point as the poets Sannazzaro, Poliziano, Boiardo, Ariosto whose descriptive episodes are exquisite, but are never allowed to divert attention from the action and passion of humanity. These remarks might be applied with equal truth to Shakespeare and the rest of the Elizabethan poets.

1 The picture by Van Eyck above referred to is in the Louvre. Diirer's are engravings. Gentile da Fabriano's sunrise is in the predella of his Adoration of the Magi, in the Florentine Academy. Titian's Marriage of S. Catherine is a good example of his landscape National Gallery. For Tintoretto's power over scenery, I would point to the Temptation of Adam, in the Scuola di S. Rocco and in the Accademia at Venice ; to the Murder of Abel, in the Accademia ; the Crucifixion, at S. Cassiano ; the Last Judgment, at the Madonna dell' Orto ; the Temptation of Christ, at S. Rocco. Perugino's and Francia's pictures need not be particularised. With regard to Lionardo, I was thinking of a little chalk drawing in the Queen's library at Windsor. At Parma there are beautiful landscape bits by Correggio.

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The importance of Rubens, Claude, the two Poussins, and Salvator Rosa is that they emancipated landscape from its traditional dependence upon human motives, and proved that Nature in herself is worthy of our sympathy and admiration. However critics may he inclined to estimate the value of their work, this at least is incontestable. Rubens fills his canvas with a stretch of rolling country fields and miry roads and hedges open to the flying lights and shadows of a breezy morning sky. Claude concentrates his thought upon the luminosity of atmosphere ; whatever else he paints, he is always aiming at that. Gaspar Poussin delights in the brown mystery of heavy-foliaged trees with thunder-clouds or sultry heavens above them. Salvator Rosa transports us to the ravines of the Abruzzi, where rocks are splintered and chestnut-boughs hang broken from the giant stems. Clinging still to the tradition that some historical or mythological subject is required to make a picture, these masters introduce Abraham, Odysseus, a sacrifice to Pan, or possibly S. Jerome with his skull, somewhere into their composition. But the relation between the human motive and the landscape is reversed. The former, which had hitherto been all-important, is now subordinated to the latter. The artist's energies are bestowed on working out the scene, the atmospheric luminosity, the open champaign, the massive foliage, and the mighty clouds. The figures are carelessly sketched in, and little heed is paid to emphasizing their action. They are lost, as it were, in the space, diminished by the majesty of nature. Man takes his position as a portion of the world, not as the being for whom the earth and heavens were created. He is drawn upon those broad canvases to scale with trees which overtop him, and with tracts of hill and vale on which he toils a moving speck.

It would be interesting to pursue this subject further. But I am not writing a history of the development of land- scape painting. It is my business to deal with ideas rather than with schools of art and pictures. Yet the work of the Dutch masters (independent of Claude and Poussin and Salvator Rosa, contemporaneous in date or somewhat later) cannot be neglected. They contributed even more than these

• 4 LANDSCAPE

ten to the emancipation of art in this direction. They ankly ignored the old tradition of historical motives in tfidscape. The aspects of the earth and sea and sky, the >mmon occupations of mankind upon the fields and in their vvellings, proved for them sufficient sources of inspiration. >utch painting filled the seventeenth and a portion of the ghteenth century with powerful production, at a time when le resources of Italy were exhausted. It delivered art from le pedantry of humanism, and anticipated the European wolt against classical canons of perfection. Still, the ssentially modern enthusiasm for nature, of which I shall bortly have to speak, was not the guiding light of the Dutch ainters. Barely, if ever, do we detect in them a touch of pirituality, a hint of mystery, an imaginative sense of some- tiing underlying nature. This must be sought elsewhere, 'he first day-break of impassioned naturalism meets us in he work of Norfolk drawing-masters, by the side of English treams and lakes, within sight of Snowdon and Helvellyn. ?he water-colour painters of our school, at the close of the ast century, continued landscape on lines suggested by the )utch. Their choice of subject was, however, more poetic ; heir sentiment more delicate ; their will to wait on Nature's noods and to interpret her suggestions more evident. Here ye perceive the dawning of that sun which climbed the leavens with Turner.

All this while, in literature, classical standards of taste jontinued to prevail. External nature was treated by the )oets of Europe throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth jenturies with the condescension proper to polite scholars. The religion of that age was formal. Science went slowly lorwards, burrowing like a mole beneath the surface of received ideas, and altering the fundamental relations of thought mainly by the demonstration of astronomical laws. A. thoroughgoing change was being gradually prepared in our conception of the universal order. Crude guesses, pre- figuring the solid discoveries of geology, the study of primitive society, and the science of comparative biology, jostled with substantial acquisitions of exact knowledge in chemistry and

LANDSCAPE 285

the classification of beasts and vegetables. Man's place in the world was on the point of being apprehended. Never- theless, the inevitable collision between theology and science the coming reconstruction of opinion regarding the relation of God to the universe and of mankind to this planet had as yet been hardly dreamed of. It is true that the elaborate structures of orthodox divinity were on the verge of being rudely shaken. Yet few minds forecast the revolution ; and theologians imagined that they were moving with the current of modern thought when they borrowed a shallow scheme of teleological optimism from what they deigned to notice in the sciences.

Ill

The great creation of the Middle Ages, according to M. Kenan, was the sentiment of the Infinite. We have further defined this saying by showing how Christianity banished from heaven and earth the antique deities and demi-gods, the girls and boys transmuted into trees and flowers and water- falls, leaving man alone in a world of which he had no positive knowledge, face to face with a supreme abstraction, God. This God, imagined omniscient and omnipresent, was also imagined as separate from both nature and man. He had brought the universe into existence by his word ; and he could dissolve it in the twinkling of an eye. The Infinite thus became the sole eventual reality. All else was illusion, mirage, depending on the divine caprice.

But our mind cannot remain satisfied with abstractions. The vacuum created by the demolition of mythological lumber was therefore filled to some extent by another set of polytheistic deities Christ, Mary, Saints, Martyrs, Angels, Devils. These, however, unlike the deities of paganism, had no relation to nature. So far as the material universe was concerned, that remained empty. The hierarchy of the Church triumphant were moral entities personified ideals of human love, struggle, patience, faith, purity, and sorrowing experience.

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When at last man's affection for his home prevailed over the figments of scholastic theology, humanism attempted to fill up the void of nature by reintroducing the personalities of classical mythology. These having lost their hold upon the faith of men, were ineffectual mere chimara bombycinantes in vacuo, monsters of the fancy spinning cocoons in the abyss of nothing. The Infinite remained a yawning gulf, requiring to be tenanted. With every year, nature became more and more a problem for curiosity, a tantalising complex of facts which had to be accounted for.

The force which was growing while theology declined, and which was destined to control the future, attracted slight attention and roused comparatively feeble jealousy. Bruno indeed suffered martyrdom for attempting to connect God vitally with nature. Galileo was gagged for a different kind of indiscretion. Spinoza, after his harmless life and obscure death, won the reputation of a venomous atheist. Still the reconstructive energy of modern thought moved onwards, acting most effectively where it was least articulate. Theology slighted nature from the outset, and continued to regard the material universe as a field in which the curiosity of man might be allowed to range. She failed to perceive that the Infinite, brought into paramount importance by herself, would eventually have to be identified with nature. Science, mean- while, the real and rising force, waxed in obscurity, wisely refraining from hostile contact with waning orthodoxy, until it became a giant which might not be withstood. Like the gourd of Jonah's vision, it grew and overspread the heavens. Silently, imperceptibly, science asserted its right and power to solve the problem of Infinity, and filled the void of nature with a living spirit. God was re-discovered in the universe. That whole, of which man forms a part, appeared the manifestation of Deity.

While this process in the groundwork of thought was unfolding, various causes contributed to the decay of mediaeval Christian mythology. The principal of these may be enumerated : first, criticism applied to documents and historical testimony ; second, the politico -religious move-

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ment of the Reformation; last, but not least, although it seems remote from things of mortal lifethe substitution of the sun for the earth as the centre of our sidereal system.

Pagan myths, reintroduced by humanism like a spectral corps de ballet on the empty scene of nature, had never been accepted -by the modern mind as more than metaphorical. The vacuum, the blank created by the downfall of paganism, the void space out of which issued our sense of Infinity, seemed as though it would become more forlorn and oppres- sive than ever. Such, indeed, it was in the Protestant theology of the last century, when any palpitating human heart took heed of it. But science had already begun to occupy this void with a hundred forms of knowledge with the new astronomy, with chemistry, with electricity, with geology, biology, and the clinching doctrine of the conservation of energy. All tended to the conclusion that infinity and fact, the dual constituents of our environment, form one coherent being of which humanity is an important integer.

The notion of a spirit immanent in Nature, sustaining sun, and stars, and man, and beasts, and trees, was not new. It had been held by many antique sages. Virgil expressed it in his perfect literary way : !

One Life through all the immense creation runs, One Spirit is the moon's, the sea's, the sun's ; All forms in the air that fly, on the earth that creep, And the unknown nameless creatures of the dee|> Each breathing thing obeys one Mind's control, And in all substance is a single soul.

Orphic poets, Stoics, and Neoplatonists uttered the same idea with keener, more mystic ardour. Under the dominance of Christianity this notion had no opportunity of moulding thought. But it reappeared in the dawn of modern science, at the moment when Copernicus revolutionised our theory of the universe. Bruno maintained it with a burning rhetoric, a passion of conviction, and a cogency of demonstration for the

1 I borrow Mr. F. W. H. Myers' admirable version from * Essays Classical,' p. 173.

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imaginative reason, which brought him to the stake. Other philosophers of sundry sects and orders, mystics, deists, pro- fessed pantheists, developed it in various ways to suit their several speculations. It was rhymed by Pope in well-turned couplets :

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body nature is, and God the soul ;

That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,

Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame,

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars and blossoms in the trees,

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ;

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,

As the rapt seraph that adores and burns :

To him, no high, no low, no great, no small ;

He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

4

In these meditations of the poets and the sages there inhered an element of visionary unsubstantial rapture. Attractive as the speculation may have seemed to minds of a certain stamp, it rested on no arguments of probability derived from fact. Theology was justified in neglecting such cloud- castles as the dreams of a disordered mind, until the moment when science, steadily accumulating knowledge without prophesying, had prepared a theory of the universe which necessitated either the abandonment of God as the supreme hypothesis, or else the acceptation of the world as God made manifest in fact, co-extensive with infinity.

It is not needful to pursue this analysis, or to force a con- clusion as to the right way of solving the suggested problem. Else I should have to show to what a large extent the idealists of Germany, from Kant to Hegel, by their methods of criticism and a priori speculation, stimulated the growing conception of inherent spirituality and unity in nature. For the purpose of this essay it is enough to have pointed out how the modern enthusiasm, which we may call cosmic, sprang up in close connection with ideas like these, and how it is related

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to the development of science which has given sueh ideas a foundation of probability. Whether we call ourselves idealists or materialists signifies little. What remains indisputable is that man's interest in the world around him has been enor- mously developed by the decline of mediaeval theology and the progressive expansion of scientific curiosity. That alone constitutes a new sphere of thought for art to work in, preg- nant with ideality denied to Greece and Borne, to the Middle Ages and the Eenaissance. It helps to account for the im- portance of landscape in the present century, and en- courages a belief that there remains a wide scope for it in the future.

Poetry, being the most articulate of the arts, the most sus- ceptive and expressive of pure thought, is the first to indicate the entrance of formative ideas into the aesthetic region. We must therefore interrogate the poets of this century at its commencement, in order to understand the change in our emotional attitude towards nature. For this purpose it will suffice to select Goethe, Wordsworth, and Shelley. When we compare the fervour of their verses with the colder utterance of Virgil or of Pope, it becomes evident that the venerable conception of Spirit immanent in the Universe has acquired a fuller certainty, a deeper glow, a warmer passion of enthu- siasm. This conception now rests on inferences from the discoveries of physical science, and is inflamed with a hope that the cosmos shall be found at length to be an animated organism. It has passed from the realm of philosophical suggestion or rhetorical exposition into the region of religious conviction. Spirit gazing upon nature finds spirit there. The intellect is warmed with the vision of infinity made vital, instead of being refrigerated by a mere mechanical void. At the same time, by comparing the purely descriptive passages of these poets with those of their immediate predecessors Thomson, Gray, Cowper we shall discern how this modern metaphysical intuition has given a new touch and tone to art. Writers of the last century regarded nature as outside them, as a group of objects to be observed and catalogued, moralised perhaps, enjoyed, but never with the sense of spiritual affinity.

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With Wordsworth and the poets of his time, nature owns something correspondent to man's consciousness. A positive mythology, importing the imagination into science if I may so express this revolution in thought ahout the universe replaces the anthropomorphism of the Greeks, and fills at last the vacuum created by mediasval theology.

IV

Of Goethe's pantheism no better example can be found than the Proemium to ' Gott und Welt/ This poem has been already quoted in a previous essay ; l and for this reason I shall not reproduce my English version of it here, contenting myself with the observation that this sublime hymn is the poetical counterpart of that philosophy which Bruno preached so fervently, and which Spinoza in his colder mood denuded of its religious elements faith, hope, enthusiasm, inspiration. It expresses in lofty verse what Herbert Spencer has condensed in well-weighed words of prose.

Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that he (man) is ever in presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.

The scientific philosopher does not qualify that Energy by any other name. The poet calls it God.

From Wordsworth we must not expect the deliberate pantheism of a Bruno or a Goethe. Through whatever pro- cesses of thought he passed, this man was at bottom a believing Christian. On that very account his passion for nature, and the deep conviction expressed in his earlier works that the external universe is penetrated by a spirit which also fills the soul of man, have greater value for our present purpose. They prove how instinctively the modern intellect, at the beginning of our century, opened to the cosmic enthusiasm.

1 At the end of * The Philosophy of Evolution,' p. 26.

LANDSCAPE 291

Those lines composed above Tintern Abbey, in which Wordsworth describes the two phases of nature-worship he had lived through the earlier glowing and unreasoned, corresponding to the heat of youthful ardour ; the later reflective and religious, persisting through the ' years that bring the philosophic mind ' have been so often recited that they dwell in the hearts of every one.

Nature then

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite ; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur ; other gifts Have followed ; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublimo Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

Thus with Wordsworth the youth's love, simple and sensuous, for the beauty of the world became in manhood a deep mystic insight, piercing behind the veil of nature to

u2

292 LANDSCAPE

the spirit which constitutes both thought and the objects of

thought. To God he cries :

Thou, Thou alone

Art everlasting, and the blessed spirits That Thou includest as the sea her waves !

Yet God, for him, does not include souls only, as the ocean includes the billows on its surface. God also includes nature, and thus the poet can call nature

The nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.

It is thus, too, that Lucy drew her beauty, grace, and goodness 'by silent sympathy' from woods, and clouds, and stars, and rivulets, and murmuring sounds. Nature being the robe of life woven perpetually by God, becomes at once the oracle and the audience of humanity. Man takes the meadows, woods, and mountains, and ' all that we behold from this green earth/ into his confidence, feeling that they are kindred to himself. In nature, as in the mind of man, there dwells one spirit, from whom we gather strength, and who sustains our aspiration. This is the meaning of that apparent paradox :

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

But, quitting this region of high speculation, let us see how Wordsworth's mysticism gave tone to his descriptions of landscape. I will select the poem on the Simplon Pass, than which nothing nobler in blank verse has been written during this century.

Brook and road

Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass, And with them did we journey several hours At a slow step. The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls,

LANDSCAPE 293

And in the narrow rent, at every turn,

Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,

The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,

The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,

Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside

As if a voice were in them, the sick sight

And giddy prospect of the raving stream,

The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,

Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light

Were all like workings of one mind, the features

Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,

Characters of the great Apocalypse,

The types and symbols of Eternity,

Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.

For the sake of comparison, here are two passages from Gray's letters, one describing the ascent to the Grande Chartreuse, the other the descent of the Mont Cenis :

It is six miles to the top ; the road runs winding up it, commonly not six feet broad ; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine trees hanging overhead ; on the other a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent, that sometimes tumbling among the fragments of stone that have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is still made greater by the echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to form one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes I ever beheld. Add to this the strange views made by the crags and cliffs on the other hand; the cascades that in many places throw themselves from the very summit down into the vale, and the river below ; and many other particulars impossible to describe ; you will conclude we had no occasion to repent our pains.

It was six miles to the top, where a plain opens itself about as many more in breadth, covered perpetually with very deep snow, and in the midst of that a great lake of unfathomable depth, from whence a river takes its rise, and tumbles over monstrous rocks quite down the other side of the mountain. The descent is six miles more, but infinitely more steep than the going up ; and here the men perfectly fly down with you, stepping from stone to stone with incredible swiftness in places where none but they could go three paces without falling. The immensity of the precipices, the roaring of the river and torrents that run into it, the huge crags covered with ice and snow, and the clouds below you and

294 LANDSCAPE

about you, are objects it is impossible to conceive without seeing them ; and though we had heard many strange descriptions of the scene, none of them at all came up to it.

Sixty years had elapsed between these descriptions by Gray and the lines on the Simplon Pass by Wordsworth. What a change there is in the way of feeling nature ! It may be objected that I am comparing prose with poetry. But Gray's Latin verses on the Grande Chartreuse and the touch on nature in his English poems at large have the same quality of appreciative observation from a point external to the object, whereas Wordsworth's lines are distinguished by sympathy with things that speak intelligibly to his soul because they form a part of that in which he lives and moves and has his being. The prcesens deus of Wordsworth quis deus incertum, tamen est deus finds no place in Gray's philosophy.

Shelley's poetry, more than any other in our language, is imbued with a mystical Platonism, which displays itself, so far as our present subject is concerned, under a twofold aspect. In nature Shelley seems to have divined an omni- present, all-sustaining, vitalising spirit, which assumed for his imagination the specific attributes of intellectual or ideal beauty. In Alastor he describes the fate of one who is for ever haunted by this beauty, burning dimly through things of sense, and eluding the neophyte in every appearance which takes form and fascination from the immanent splendour. In vain Alastor pursues his vision across the world : in vain the fairest creatures and sublimest scenes are offered to his gaze : it is only in sleep that his soul is comforted by the divine intuition ; and he dies unsatisfied, to blend with that which lured him through far lands disconsolate.

He, I ween,

Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Actseon-like, and fled affrighted.

This is one side to Shelley's Platonism. But not the less is there a Spirit of Life, an anima mundi, the power and vital heat of which is felt in thunder and the voice of birds, in the choral dances of the planets, in herbs and stones, in

LANDSCAPE 295

stars and exhalations and the soul of man. This life of the world has for one of its main manifestations the ideal beauty which led Alastor captive. The supreme expression of the world-soul, conceived as beauty, intangible, elusive, un- approachable, is given in that song which a voice in the air sings to Asia ]

Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle

With their love the breath between them ;

And thy smiles before they dwindle

Make the cold air fire ; then screen them

In those looks, where whoso gazes

Faints, entangled in their mazes.

Child of Light 1 thy limbs are burning

Through the vest which seems to hide them ;

As the radiant lines of morning

Through the clouds ere they divide them ;

And this atmosphere divinest

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.

Fair are others ! none beholds thee,

But thy voice sounds low and tender

Like the fairest, for it folds thee

From the sight, that liquid splendour,

And all feel, yet see thee never,

As I feel now, lost for ever !

Lamp of earth ! where'er thou movest

Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,

And the souls of whom thou lovest

Walk upon the winds with brightness,

Till they fail, as I am failing,

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing t

The relation of man's soul to the world-soul, conceived by the poet as Life, Light, Love, and Beauty, is defined with more than usual precision in the following stanza from ' Adonais.' Keats has died :

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely ; he doth bear

His part, while the one spirit's plastic stress

Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there

Prometheus Unbound, Act ii., Scene 5,

296 LANDSCAPE

All new successions to the forms they wear ; Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees, and beasts, and men, into the heaven 's light.

It is apparent that, for Shelley, the beauty which hunted Alastor to his death on this earth, the beauty which in the mind of Asia was as a keen flame shining through the alabaster of the universe, has become the attribute of power, vitality, continuous and all-pervasive energy. This is not poetry borrowing the forms of pantheistic speculation, but pantheism assuming to itself the faith and passion which transmutes speculative thought into religion. To this under- lying intuition of indwelling deity Shelley owes the magic of his verse, whenever he deals directly with nature. Those aerial conceptions of living creatures in the elements, the ministry of the cloud, the wizardry of the west wind, the sympathies of the sensitive plant, the incantations of the Witch of Atlas, the raptures of the loves of earth and moon, the daemon of the whirlwind, the chariot-races of the hours, the primeval genii of Prometheus Unbound all these creations of the poet's mythopoeic fancy are vitally connected with the poet's belief in the universe as a manifestation of spiritual force. For him it is not that subordinate divinities fairies, angels, fiends, nymphs, fauns, and so forth exist separately everywhere upon a slightly different plane from that of human nature ; but everywhere, and in all things, in plants and beasts and men and earth and sky, eternally abides a genius and a spirit, whose particular epiphanies constitute one moving whole, a stream of life, a po'os as the Greek sage called it. * All things pass, and nothing stays ; the cosmos may be compared to the flow of a river, into which it is impossible to plunge twice and find it the same flood. 1 Yes : but the stream, though ever changing, is perennially one ; and all things, including man, are drops which go to make its continuity.

LANDSCAPE 297

If we were aiming at completeness, now would be the time to analyse the feeling for nature expressed by other poets of this century : in England by Byron, Scott, Coleridge, Keats ; by Tennyson, Bossetti, Swinburne, Arnold, Boden Noel, Browning, Morris. This is not necessary. The result would hardly repay us for the tedium of the process. It will suffice to bear in mind that, during the nineteenth century, a special sensitiveness to landscape, varying in kind according to the temperament of each individual, has been the note of all our poets good, bad, and indifferent. The exaltation of enthusiasm which distinguishes Goethe, Wordsworth, Shelley, appears rarely in their contemporaries and successors. Only perhaps in Boden Noel does the cult of nature rise to the fervour-point of philosophical and religious inspiration. Many critics will maintain that the poet is the better artist when he does not philosophise his emotions ; that Scott and Keats stand on a superior ground as landscape-painters to Shelley and Wordsworth. Yet, however this point may be settled, no one will deny the fact that literature in our age is penetrated through and through with a sympathy for nature which we do not find in the work of the last century, and which culminates in the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, Boden Noel.

To what extent painting has been directly influenced by this enthusiasm admits of much debate. It cannot, however, be doubted that the curiosity from which science sprang, and which so powerfully stimulated our poets, affected painting and controlled its practice. Artists, though they may not be self-conscious with regard to the main currents of con- temporary thought, are subject to its stress. They enjoy one privilege denied to men of letters. Their vehicle of expression excludes reasoning ; it offers them no inducement to formulate vague longings and emotions which escape too easily through language. Having to solve problems of com- position, to study the forms of objects in their physical pre- sentment, to grapple with technical difficulties of execution,

298 LANDSCAPE

they dally not with metaphysic. Deeply as these men enjoy the beauties of the world around us, subtly and profoundly as they comprehend them with a far finer touch upon their quality than those who have not sought to translate them into pictures it is their duty and their pleasure to reproduce aspects, not to penetrate mysteries. From the passion which takes hold of poets and of mystics they are freed by the conditions of their art, albeit they too may be mystics and poets in the esoteric chambers of their soul.

The landscape-painter stands in the same relation to nature as the sculptor to the nude. Praxiteles, modelling a Venus, runs less risk of personal disturbance than the poet, lover of beauty, shut up for hours together with a living woman in a studio.

If this be the case, the founders of the modern schools of landscape might repudiate the suggestion that their work is in any way connected with the philosophical ideas which I have analysed. Nevertheless, they were children of their age, and obeyed its leading impulse. Art requires a spiritual element to move in, and responds with elasticity to the con- ditions of the faith men live by. So we may still regard landscape-painting as a species vitally related to science, and to religious mysticism modified by science.

The ideality of any art depends, as I have previously attempted to demonstrate, upon the thoughts common to the artist and his audience, which the former seeks to express. Sculpture was congenial to the anthropomorphic mythology of Hellas. Painting was congenial to the more emotional mythology of mediaeval Christendom. These two arts drew abundant ideality from these two spheres of thought. But when a new religious sense arose in Europe when theistic conceptions, especially among the northern races, lost that sensuous concreteness which is adapted to sesthetical present- ment then it was found that the capacities of painting were by no means exhausted. The same art, obeying the thought- stress of the moving age, lent its powers to the nascent enthusiasm for nature. Pictures of saints and martyrs were succeeded by pictures of the world we live in. Painting ceased

LANDSCAPE 299

to be the handmaid of the Church, because the Church was losing hold upon the intellect. She became in turn the friend and .teacher of generations for whom the earth was growing daily more divine. Now, in the work of the landscape- painters, spirit still speaks to spirit ; the spirit of the artist who perceives, interprets, and preserves the beauty of earth, sea, and sky, to the spirit of men ready to receive it. What we owe to these hierophants of nature is incalculable. They are continually training our eyes to see, our minds to under- stand the world. They show how sympathy, emotion, passion, thought may be associated with inanimate things for a masterpiece of landscape-painting, like a symphony in music, is penetrated with the maker's thought and feeling. Having passed through the artist's intellect, the scene becomes trans- figured into a symbol of what the artist felt. His subjectivity inheres in it for ever after.

So vast is the field of nature, so comparatively little of that field has as yet been subdued, that the resources of art to be derived therefrom seem inexhaustible. Nor have we any reason to apprehend that the religion of the future will fail to supply this branch of art with ideality.

NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES

SOME who read these lines will perhaps remember that enchanted region of Val Bregaglia, where the forest stretches downward from Soglio to Castasegna, through several miles of majesty and loveliness : the long aisles of secular chestnut- trees interlacing their branches overhead, the golden weight of foliage and fruit upon the boughs, the firm short sward and yielding moss around gray venerable stems, the sun and shadow falling on lilac crocuses and russet drift of scattered leaves ; and, above all, the sculptured cliffs of Monte Zocco, with Bondasca's snaky glaciers uplifted in the luminous expanse of azure air, which separates those sphinxes of the Alps from our verdurous haunt among the clustering trees.

In such a place, earth, the ancient mother, seems to enfold man with loving-kindness and a soothing tenderness of beauty. Yet those splintered mountains, older far than man or forest, the frozen rivers and the waste of stones descending from their girdle, the deep untroubled blue to which they rear their javelin points of cloven granite, the limitless and living atmosphere which softens them and makes the vision to our eyes endurable all these things remind us of the unity in nature, whereby in some mysterious manner our tranquil pleasure in the woodland is linked with primeval forces far away and unapproachable, yet ever near and active in our being with the universal power that brought us into life, with cosmic tumult and with order, with interstellar serenity and gloom, with the everlasting clasp of God, who holds mankind and mountains in the hollow of His hand and binds the fabric of the world together in one vital whole.

NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES 301

Here I wandered one September morning; and, as it chanced, a reprint of Blake's ' Marriage of Heaven and Hell ' was in my pocket. Wishful to enjoy the scene and temper my delight with meditation, I flung myself upon the grass beneath an overshadowing tree, and read the sentences which follow :

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.

How do you know but every Bird that cuts the airy way,

Is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five ?

One thought fills immensity.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive.

As I read, there happened to me something like that which happened to Petrarch upon the summit of Mont Ventoux. 1

Blake's sentences, pregnant with mysticism, struck a deep chord and chimed with thoughts which were already stirring in me. For a while, I entered into spiritual union with nature, and felt as though the genii of those giant chestnut-trees might pace across the sward, or Pan appear, and saw that everything is infinite, and knew the thought which fills immensity, and hailed * a world of delight ' in the hawk which hovered in the azure depth of air above the glaciers of Bondasca.

Such moments do not last long, but they leave impressions which contain the germs of future speculation. And so I have written this account of a September morning in the woods of Castasegna in order to introduce some reflections upon the value, real or metaphorical, which mythology still possesses in an age of scientific thought.

1 See above, p. 193.

302 NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES

II

Minute attention has been paid to the origins of myths and sagas; but we have lost sight of their enduring symbolical importance. Those ancient stories which our remote fore- fathers held to be the sum and abstract of world-wisdom, have been submitted to solar, meteorological, linguistic explanations. Learned and ingenious scholars have resolved them into tales about the sun and stars, the storms and clouds, and also into a disease of language. These methods, carried to extravagance, provoked a reaction of common sense, and another school of students are now seeking less mechanical solutions of the problem, by treating myths as relics of pre- historic culture, custom, and religion.

Few have the temerity to regard mythology as a necessary moment in human thought, the significanc.e of which is by no means exhausted. At a distant period, myths were certainly ways of explaining the spiritual essence of the world and man to the imagination. That essence must, except in symbol and parable, remain for ever inscrutable and incognisable for the human mind. It is therefore by no means proved that the intuitions embodied in the myths of races like the Greek are even now devoid of actuality.

Nature myths assume an indwelling spirit in the universe, and express the sense of it by ascribing personality to inorganic things and vegetables. Allegory myths attribute independent existence to the moral and intellectual qualities of human beings. In the antique polytheistic systems, notably in the Hellenic, these two kinds were never wholly distinguished ; for, when a natural object comes to be personified, the being thus evolved assumes the properties of humanity. Further- more, all polytheisms known to us are composite of still more ancient creeds, combining divers elements of nature-worship and moral allegory in heterogeneous admixture. Still, for the purpose of analysis, the two species may be isolated, especially as we can no longer treat of either from the purely religious point of view. The utmost we can do is to raise the question whether the myths of antiquity do nofc still supply a suggestive

NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES 803

way of regarding the universe as a spiritual whole, and man in his relation to it as a part thereof.

Ill

Were they wholly fanciful, those myths and allegories of the earliest philosophers and poets? The seers who gave them form lived closer to all-nourishing earth than we do, pent as we are in populous cities and clouded with the culture of four thousand years. Perhaps they hold an element of truth conveyed in symbol, to the significance of which we have been blinded by theological exclusiveness, and by the positive preoccupations of the scientific genius. Their truth, if truth they had, lay in their recognition of the universe as one live thing, and their belief in larger moral forces than those of individual men and women.

We cannot return to the state of thought about the world, out of which the primitive myths sprang. The habit of attributing a personality like that of a man to everything in nature belongs to the far distant past, and will not be revived. But in its place the modern theory of the universe tends to establish the conviction that men and beasts and plants and inorganic substances are parts of one mind-penetrated unity. That abrupt separation of men from their environment, which formed the leading principle of philosophy and religion during the last two thousand years, begins to disappear. We recognise it as a necessary stage of thought, in the passage from grosser to more refined conceptions of the spirit which sustains and animates the hierarchy of being. We can no longer deny our kinship with the lower lives wherefrom we issued.

It is interesting to notice how the intuitions of early thinkers tally with the last results of modern science. A poet writing in the mystic East, six centuries ago, described the ascent of man from nature in these verses : ]

First man appeared in the class of inorganic things Next he passed therefrom into that of plants.

From the * Mathnavi ' of Jalalu *d Din.

04 NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES

For years he lived as one of the plants,

Remembering nought of his inorganic state so different ;

And when he passed from the vegetive to the animal state,

He had no remembrance of his life as a plant,

Except the inclination he felt to the world of plants, %

Especially at the time of spring and sweet flowers ;

Like the inclination of infants toward their mothers,

Which know not the cause of their inclination to the breast.

Again, the great Creator, as you know,

Drew man out of the animal into the human state.

Thus man passed from one order of* nature to another,

Till he became wise and knowing and strong as he is now.

Of his first souls he has now no remembrance,

And he will be again changed from his present soul.

Jalalu 'd Din conceived evolution in a different way from ours. But he arrived at the clear and logical conclusion that man, having emerged from elements and plants, and animals, retains a sympathy with them, loves and admires and uses them because they are the stock from which he sprang.

IV

Unless we reject what is implied in the evolutionary theory of the Origin of Man, we are forced to concede that the old Hellenic religion a religion which has survived in all imagina- tive minds contained a truth neglected and down-trodden by Christian theology. It rested on the following proposi- tions. Not only man, but all things in the world, are full of soul. Soul can communicate with soul, not only in its human form, but also in nature ; man's soul with the soul of forces that control his life, and with the soul of dimly sentient things beneath hjm in the scale of being. Our contemplation of the external universe is therefore not the mere inspection of matter alien to ourselves, but a communion with that from which we came and into which we go, itself penetrated with the thought that constitutes our essence. Only, in the rhythm of the universal life, it would appear that the creatures of each stage, while in that stage, cannot overleap the barriers of their defined personality, cannot mingle freely by sympathy and

NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES 306

understanding with the creatures of another stage. Man, so long as he is man, has his most distinct affinities to man alone, and is forced to think of spirit as human. This does not, hewever, prevent him from entering into a sub-conscious intercourse with beings which are not human, and from recognising their essential spirituality. But when he does this in faith and earnestness, he represents his sense of their kinship with himself in terms of his own existence. To put it otherwise, he feigns men and women in the objects of the outer world the trees, the flowers, the stars, the rivers, and the mountains. Their participation in the divine life, of which he too is part, inevitably is expressed as personality, because he knows himself to be a person. He cannot even escape from thinking of God, or the spirit of the whole, as a person. This may or may not correspond to the fact ; for what personality is, we cannot define. It is only a term for denot- ing the conditions under which alone consciousness is known to us at present. And we are compelled, being what we call persons, recognising personality as the sine qud non of our conscious life, to find personality in natural things whenever we confess their common essence with ourselves.

Thus, then, we obtain a theory for the validity of ancient nature myths. The truth that they contained was the per- ception of spirituality in the material world ; and though the crude imagery (zoomorphic and anthropomorphic) in which that truth was veiled may deprive them now of all but a symbolical value, yet they claim reverent consideration in an age which has to reappropriate their underlying principle.

Dryads, oreads, fauns, nymphs of wave and fountain, satyrs and Pan, Narcissus, Hyacinth, and Clytia, are but forms found for uttering man's sense of his affinity to woods and flowers and waters. When the Greek boy saw the hamadryad step- ping from Jier oak upon the anemone-starred sward around it, he did not wholly indulge a vision or yield to an hallucina- tion. The oak-tree has a life, a soul, a particle of the divine aura, and with the recognition of this fact a nymph starts from the graceful stem to greet the soul of child-like man. When the Thessalian shepherd climbed at eve the crags of

806 NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES

(Eta, because he thought that Hesperus was calling to him for his love, he did not wholly dream : for who has not known the persuasions of the evening star, and dimly felt his heart drawn forth to it with longing? We cannot behold hama* dryads hurrying across the lawn, or astral gods leaning to us from the saffron-tinted mountain crests. That way of feeling the spirituality of nature and of expressing our sense of affinity with natural things is perhaps for ever closed. It is indeed probable that both hamadryad and ethereal Hesperus were never seen except in reverie or pious act of faith by Greeks. Yet surely our intellectual life will be richer, and our intuition into the world will be truer, when we yield once more to the belief upon which those myths were founded, when we cease from standing aloof from nature and repelling the constant spiritual intimations she is giving us.

Thus far I have been dealing with nature myths. For those myths which may properly be called allegories, a similar method of analysis can be adopted. But here the subject- matter itself is different, and the inquiry will lead to other considerations regarding the validity of ancient fables. I shall seek to give some reasons why we should not so lightly reject, as we are wont to do, those personified abstractions which men of former ages drew from the substance of their souls and called realities.

The essence of allegory consists in extracting some marked portion of our psychology from its environments, and present- ing it alone for contemplation. We think of wisdom solely, or strength solely, or physical beauty solely ; but having thought of these qualities in isolation, we are at once com- pelled to clothe them with bodies and regard them as persons. Human thought labours here under the same necessity as when it expresses our sense of affinity with nature in the forms of myth. When this step has been taken, the personage brought into ideal being cannot be merely wise, or merely strong, or merely beautiful. Together with personality, it

NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES 307

has put on the multiplicity of human attributes. Therefore we obtain the complex deities called Pallas, Herakles, and Aphrodite. The main abstraction to which they owe exist- ence persists in them, and dominates their doings ; but in the legends told about them other moral elements appear. The fables of Pallas, Herakles, and Aphrodite teach how humanity on a colossal scale, swayed severally by laws of wisdom, strength, and beauty, will behave under conditions similar to those of our experience what their vigour and their frailty are, to what temptations they are subject, what special advantages they enjoy, and what distinctive functions they perform. Studying these moral qualities abstracted and incarnate in the allegory or the god, man learns to compre- hend their influences clearly, to recognise his own proclivities and addictions with precision, to submit to those which attract him, to shrink from those which repel.

There is an ideal truth in allegory of this kind ; and the physical types which artists and poets have created to express it are not fortuitous. We have, indeed, never seen a person wholly wise, or wholly strong, or wholly beautiful. Yet the thoughts of wisdom, strength, and beauty are present to us ; and if these could take shape as human persons, they would find a body corresponding to their spiritual essence.

To return to the paganism which worshipped these abstrac- tions as deities would be impossible, and if it were possible it would be undesirable. Until proof be gained of intermediate gods, of angels and devils, of planetary powers and genii, we do not need to hold the creations of our mind in superstitious awe. Yet surely our moral life would be richer, our sense of spiritual potencies would be more vivid, if we were in the habit of inculcating lessons of conduct and discriminating the several types to which we may assimilate ourselves by some such striking "examples as polytheism held up for imitation and avoidance. The devotion of Hippolytus to Artemis waa not a vain thing ; nor was the need Orestes felt for purifica- tion before his mother's Furies an idle fancy. To answer that Artemis and the Furies were but the figments of antique sages and poets avails little, for who shall contend that the

308 NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES

real people of Herodotus's history are more substantially present to him than the fictitious people in Shakespeare's plays ? So long as you can touch a man and hear him speak, he differs indeed from the hero of an epic ; but the memory of a man preserved in record differs little from the figment of a man in living poetry. It may even be contended that King Arthur of the story-books has exerted more solid influence than ever did King Arthur in the flesh, and that Hamlet is more philosophically effective than Democritus or Heraclitus. In fact, it is impossible to preserve that hard and fast line which the understanding is apt to draw between the person- ages of actual existence and the personages of poetry, allegory, and fable. Only as ideals, as typifying a spiritual quality which endures and works for ever in the world of men, have either any true importance. This is why some German critics sought to prove that had Christ been but a myth, mankind would not have been the poorer*

There is another point of view from which one might defend the allegories contained in antique polytheistic religions. Their ideal veracity consists in this, that the spiritual qualities of humanity do not manifest themselves in individuals alone, but in races, classes, congeries of men. The race, the class, the community include and determine indi- viduals in no less true a sense than that in which individuals compose and constitute those larger aggregations. It is therefore not only permissible but right and proper to regard the broader species of spiritual qualities as abiding potencies, external to the individual, claiming his homage or abhorrence in other words, as the lords to which he is addicted, or the tyrants against which he struggles. Lust dwells in this man's heart ; but lust, in a far more formidable shape, is abroad in a huge city. Are we logically justified in refusing actual exist- ence to the holiness which conserved Israel, or to the lechery which ruined Corinth ? We need not be afraid lest we should sap the roots of monotheism by attributing reality to the collective vices and virtues of our common humanity. We recognise the reality of vice and virtue in the individual; why not therefore on a larger scale in the species and the

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genus? Catholic Christianity has remained monotheistic. Yet it allows a hierarchy of angels, a hierarchy of devils, and a whole multitude of saints, each one of whom personifies and symbolises some specific form of moral excellence. I am not contending, as I have already intimated, for the restitution of polytheism in its cruder forms, for the belief in angels, saints, and devils. I wish only to remind the present generation that, just as the makers of nature myths had a clearer intui- tion into the spirituality of the universe than we have now, so the makers of allegorical myths had a more vivid sense than we have of the spiritual potencies which surround us in the collective moral atmosphere of humanity at large.

The chief defects of allegory in mediaeval and modern times are due to the want of real belief in it by those who make it. Neither Christianity nor science will suffer us to accept the pagan point of view here any more than in the case of nature myths. Instead, therefore, of forming an essential part of religion, allegory is confined to poetry and plastic art, where it has hitherto lacked substantiality and conviction. The modern poet and the artist, though they treat of temperance or sloth as personalities, imagine that they are but using figures. They do not therefore put either their heart or their faith into their creation. Yet if we could but come to think of lust and anger, chastity and temperance, remorse and revenge, forgiveness and repentance, not as mere abstractions from ourselves, but as powers external to our soul, endowed with penetrative force to influence our lives, this would render the inner drama of the moral consciousness more real and poignant. To do so with absolute belief in these ideas as agencies independent of ourselves is perhaps im- possible ; just as it is impossible to believe again in nymphs and fauns. Polytheism cannot be resuscitated, and a recur- rence to demOnolatry would imply the abdication of the reason. Still, in those points where art and poetry touch ethics, it would be of benefit to humane culture if we could resume the habit of contemplating the broader species of our spiritual qualities in forms of personality adapted to their several essences. Possibly the sculpture and the painting

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and the verse of the future may yet produce monumental embodiments of vices and of virtues, through familiarity with which posterity will sensibly learn how awful in ugliness are the one kind, how awful in beauty are the other. What right, moreover, have we, after all is said and done, to deny that each collective vice and each collective virtue of humanity may be a spiritual entity a something corresponding to demonic or angelic essences ? It is difficult to see that any harm should come to us, even though we submitted to regard them as living potencies influencing mankind.

VI

Such speculations border the abyss of mysticism, and require a more minute development than I can give them here. It will be well in conclusion to recapitulate the points wherein nature myths and allegory myths differ, and the points they have in common.

The nature myth extracts spirit from the external world, and invests that spirit with human personality in forms appropriate to the impression made upon the human mind by each particular object. The allegorical myth abstracts from the human soul specific qualities, contemplates these as objects, and while doing so is forced to provide them with physical embodiments and personalities corresponding to their spiritual essence. Man, so long as he is man, cannot think a person except as both body and spirit. He cannot idealise his own spiritual properties except as embodied. He cannot detach the spirit he feels in tree or flower except as em- bodied. His reason may assure him that this is a delusion. Both Christianity and science may warn him off that path of so-called falsehood. Christianity, indeed, by its lore of angels and devils, has accepted the principle of allegorical myths, while it rejects the nature myths as pagan. Science bids us cast both aside, and in so far is more logical. Where Christi- anity and science agree in condemning nature myths, they do so at the expense of making men deaf and blind to the inherent spirituality of the universe. All through the Middle

NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES an

Ages the best thinkers remained in the grossest ignorance and darkness with regard to nature on account of the false attitude forced upon them by theology. In modern times materialism, which is perhaps the hollowest and shabbiest idolum speeds which has ever haunted the cavern of man's intellect, owes its arrogance to a similar false attitude assumed by physics. Yet dogmatic theology is losing its rigid grasp apon the mind and heart of man, while science is leading us back by circuitous routes to the primitive belief in a life- penetrated universe. This being the case, we can indulge the expectation that though the Hellenic point of view with respect to myths of nature and of allegory may never be resumed, yet we shall be able better in the future to appre- ciate their value. Both poetry and art may be destined, on a far more elevated platform and with far profounder assurance of the truth, to use them both again for the illumination and instruction of mankind.

VII

The arts are not bound to occupy themselves exclusively with subjects of the present epoch. It is true that they are exhorted to do so by critics who profess themselves indignant with ' the idle singer of an empty day.' Such critics, how- ever, have forgotten the treasures of old-world speculation, the jewels of experience collected by our ancestors in times when life was simpler, the types of ever-recurring tragedy and ever-fresh emotion which lie embedded in primeval myths and allegories. View them as we may, the thoughts of bygone races, of men who laid the foundations of knowledge, who first used language with a conscious purpose, who were closer to the origins of life than we are, deserve reverent study by all thinkers who accept man's emergence from the common stuff of nature. They possess not merely an antiquarian or an historic interest. They have something to say to us, which we run the risk of ignoring in this positive age.

It is not in the cruder myths of savage tribes that modern art can seek material for profitable treatment. These

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are too remote from our sympathies, although we recognise their value as the first stage in the development of human thought. We must not reject them as alien to ourselves, or abhor them for their absurdities and indecencies. On the contrary, it is our duty to use them as the keys to those nobler forms of faith, which sprang up with the growth of the progressive races.

The secondary stages of mythology, when it has become the vehicle of thoughts and feelings essentially akin to ours, without losing its elder sense of the divinity in nature, are those which still abound in artistic motives of the highest beauty. Erudition enables us to 'approach the repositories of Oriental, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Semitic, Hellenic wisdom with intelligent insight. Yet we stand far enough aloof from them to be dominated by no religious preoccupations, and no local or national predilections. By the aid of criticism we can divest the legends of the world's young prime of their archaic trappings, and can discern what they preserve of permanent truth and durable instruction. Taste and sympathy reveal the large and simple grandeur of their outlines, the depth and universality of their emotion.

Examining a tale of Greek or Norse mythology, say the story of Perseus or that of Balder, is like opening a sealed jar of precious wine. Its fragrance spreads abroad through all the palace of the soul ; and the noble vintage, upon being tasted, courses through blood and brain with the matured elixir of stored-up summers.

Goethe says that he was wont to carry the subjects of his poems many years unspoken in his mind. By this means they became a portion of himself, secretly drawing nourish- ment from all that he experienced and learned upon the paths of life. When the time came to give them utterance and form, it was found that they suggested more than at the first glance met the ear and eye. They had acquired a many- sidedness, a vitality, a power of varied application, from their lengthy sojourn in secluded chambers of his consciousness. Myths have the same incommensurable and inexhaustible potency. Having slumbered for generations in the thought

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of mighty races, when they sprang to light in their due season, they were endowed with virtues far beyond their seeming. Pregnancy is the note of a true myth. The stuff of man's self has been absorbed and wrought into its substance by a process so analogous to growth, that the more we seek to fathom it the more we find there. The very quaintness of each detail is suggestive, capable of divers applications, fit for varied uses. The wisdom it presents in symbolic shape has been so worn into harmony with human needs and human experience, that it cannot lose its value till the end of time.

Our artists, whether poets, painters, or musicians, are there- fore right to employ the legends of past ages for the expression of thoughts and emotions belonging to the present. If used with true imaginative insight, there is no cause to fear lest the strain of modern adaptation should destroy the mystic beauty of the antique form. Myths, by reason of their symbolic pregnancy and spontaneity of origin, are everlastingly elastic. Thus Goethe found nothing fitter to his purpose than the Faust legend, when he planned the drama of the nineteenth century. Shelley poured his spirit of revolt and aspiration into the legend of Prometheus. Wagner, wishing to create a new musical drama, extracted material from the story of Tannhauser, from Norse mythology, and from episodes of the Arthurian cycle. William Morris combined the mystic tales of many nations in his ' Earthly Paradise.' Tennyson rehandled the substance of Malory's ' Morte d* Arthur/ Landor touched the height of poetry in the tale of ' Rhaicos,' which transports us to a time when man might love a Hamadryad. In the poem of Agamemnon's meeting with Iphigeneia, he interpreted for modern minds the sublime pathos of the allegory of Lethe. In each and all of these instances, and in many more which might be mentioned, the poet's instinct- was a sound one.

For plastic art, myths and allegories are of even higher value than for poetry. This is because they embody per- manent ideas in sensuous form. They are therefore, by their very essence, exactly of the quality which figurative art demands. I need, at the present moment, only point to the

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use which two of our greatest English painters, Mr. Watts and Mr. Burne- Jones, have made of this material. I think it will be admitted that if we look for ideality in contemporary English painting, we shall find this mainly in the work of these two masters. And it is in the region of the myth and allegory that both have brought their poetic qualities con- spicuously to view. Mr. Burne-Jones, in particular, has proved that it is possible to treat legends so familiar as that of Perseus or the Sleeping Beauty, allegories so old as that of the Days of Creation, mythical tales so trite as that of Pan and Syrinx, with freshness and originality, evolving from their kernel something which is vitally in sympathy with modern thought.

VIII

The line of thought which I have followed in this essay would have appeared preposterous and paradoxical a century ago, when mythology was treated from the point of view of Lempriere, and when the artistic handling of allegorical themes proceeded upon imitation of Graeco-Roman or late Eenaissance work. It will probably find but scanty accept- ance even now. Yet there are present conditions favourable to its reception by tolerant minds which were lacking in the immediate past. The revolution effected by the romantic movement has delivered us from pseudo-classicism. At the same time spirituality has been restored to the material universe by science, which forces us to regard the cosmos as a single whole, penetrated throughout with life-producing energy.

IS POETEY AT BOTTOM A CEITICISM OF LIFE?

A REVIEW OF MATTHEW ARNOLD'S SELECTION FROM WORDSWORTH. 1

IT is both interesting and instructive to hear what masters of a craft may choose to say upon the subject of their art. The interest is rather increased than diminished by the limitation or the imperfection of their view, inseparable from personal inclination, idiosyncrasy of genius, or absorbing previous course of study. When Herrick exclaims, ' There's no lust like to poetry ; ' when Goethe asserts, c Die Kunst ist nur Gestaltung ; ' when Shelley writes, ' Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds,' we feel in each of these utterances too partial to express a universal truth, too profound to be regarded as a merely casual remark the dominating bias and instinctive leanings of a lifetime. If, then, we remember that Mr. Matthew Arnold is equally eminent as a critic and a poet, we shall not be too much surprised to read the following account of poetry given in the preface to his selection from Wordsworth :

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 : Hpwtojij

At first sight this definition will strike most people as a paradox. It would be scarcely less startling to hear, as

1 Poems of Wordsworth. Chosen and Edited by Matthew Arnold. Golden Treasury Series. Macmillan, 1879.

816 j IS POETRY AT BOTTOM

indeed we might perhaps hear from a new school of writers upon art, that ' Criticism Js at bottom the poetrvof things/ inasmuch as it is the critic's function to select the quin^esseHfial element of all he touches, and to present that only in choice form to the public he professes to instruct. Yet, when we return to Mr. Arnold, and compare the passage above quoted with the fuller expression of the same view upon a preceding page, the apparent paradox is reduced to the proportions of a sound and valuable generalisation : ,-*.&'<+ \

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, whatever it may be, of the ideas

On.man, on nature, and on human life', which he has acquired for himself.

A vital element in this description of poetic greatness is the further determination of the ideas in question as moral :

It is said that to call these ide&sjnoral 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.

With the substance of these passages there are few who, after mature reflection on the nature of poetry, will not agree. That the weight of Mr. Arnold's authority should be unhesitatingly given against what he calls the poetry of revolt and the poetry of indifference to morals, is a matter for rejoicing to all who thmK the dissemination of sound views on literature important. It is good to be reminded at the present moment that Omar Khayyam failed of true greatness because he was a reactionary, and that Theophile Gautier took up his abode in what can never be more than a wayside halting-place. From time to time critics arise who attempt to persuade us that it does

A CRITICISM OF LIFE? 317

not so much matter what a poet says as how he says it, and that the highest poetical achievements are those which com- bine a certain vagueness of meaning with sensuous melody and colour of verbal composition. Yet, if one thing is proved with certainty by the whole history of literature down to our own time, it is that the self -preservative instinct of humanity rejects such art as does not contribute to its intellectual nutrition and moral sustenance. It cannot afford to continue long in contact with ideas that run counter to the principles of its own progress. It cannot bestow more than passing notice upon trifles, however exquisitely finished. Poetry will not, indeed, live without style or its equivalent. But style alone will never confer enduring and cosmopolitan fame upon a poet. He must have placed himself in accord with the permanent emotions, the conservative forces of the race ; he must have uttered what contributes to the building up of vital structure in the social organism, in order to gain more than a temporary or a partial hearing. Though style is an indispensable condition of success in poetry, it is by matter, and not by form, that a poet has to take his final rank*

Of the two less perfect kinds of poetry, the poetry of revolt and the poetry of indifference, the latter has by far the slighter chance of survival. Powerful negation implies that which it rebels against. The energy of the rebellious spirit is itself a kind of moral greatness. We are braced and hardened by contact with impassioned revolutionaries, with Lucretius, Voltaire, Leopardi. Something necessary to the onward progress of mankind the vigour of antagonism, the operative force of the antithesis is communicated by them. They are in a high sense ethical by the exhibition of hardihood, self-reliance, hatred of hypocrisy. Even Omar's secession from the mosque to the tavern symbolises a neces- sary and recurring moment of experience. It is, moreover, dignified by the pathos of the poet's view of life. Meleager's sensuality is condoned by the delicacy of his sentiment. Tone counts for much in the poetry of revolt against morals. It is only the Stratons, the Beccadellis, the Baudelaires, who, in spite of their consummate form, are consigned to poetical

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perdition by vulgarity, perversity, obliquity of vision. But the carving of cherry-stones in verse, the turning of triolets and rondeaux, the seeking after sound or colour without heed for sense, is all foredoomed to final failure. The absolute neglect which has fallen on the melodious Italian sonnet- writers of the sixteenth century is due to their cult of art for art's sake, and their indifference to the realities of life, If we ask why Machiavelli's Mandragora is inferior to Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, in spite of its profound knowledge of human nature, its brilliant wit, its irresistible humour, its biting satire, and its incomparably closer workmanship, we can only answer that Shakespeare's conception of life was healthy, natural, exhilarating, while Machiavelli's, without displaying the earnestness of revolt, was artificial, morbid, and depressing. The sympathies which every great work of art stimulates tend in the case of Shakespeare's play to foster, in the case of Machiavelli's to stunt, the all-essential elements of social happiness and vigour. In point of form, the Mandragora has better right to be a classic comedy than the Merry Wives of Windsor. But the application of ideas to life in it is so unsound and so perverse that common sense rejects it ; we tire of living in so false a world.

Without multiplying instances, it can be affirmed, with no dread of opposition, that all art, to bo truly great art, to be permanent and fresh and satisfying through a hundred generations, to yield the bread and wine of daily sustenance for men and women in successive ages, must be moralised must be in harmony with those principles of conduct, that tone of feeling, which it is the self-preservative instinct of civilised humanity to strengthen. This does not mean that the artist should be consciously didactic _or_ obtrusively ethical. The objects of ethics and of art are distinct. The OQeajgalyjes andjnstruots ; the other_embodies and delights. ButTsince all the arts give form to thougfit and^leelmg, it follows that the greatest art is that which includes in its synthesis the fullest complex of thoughts and feelings. The more complete the poet's grasp of human nature as a whole,

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the most complete his presentation of life in organised com- plexity, the greater he will be. Now the whole struggle of the human race from barbarism to civilisation is one con- tinuous effort to maintain and to extend its moral dignity. It is by the conservation and alimentation of moral qualities that we advance. The organisation of our faculties into a perfect whole is moral harmony. Therefore artists who aspire to greatness can neither be adverse nor indifferent to ethics. In each case they proclaim their own inadequacy to the subject-matter of their art, humanity. In each case they present a maimed and partial portrait of their hero, man. In each case they must submit, however exquisite their style, however acute their insight, to be excluded from the supreme company of the immortals. We need do no more than name the chiefs of European poetry Homer, Pindar, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere in order to recognise the fact that these owe their superiority to the completeness of their representation, to their firm grasp upon the harmony of human faculties in large morality. It is this which makes classical and humane literature convertible terms. It is this which has led all classes and ages of men back and back to these great poets as to their familiar friends and teachers, * the everlasting solace of mankind.*

While substantially agreeing with Mr. Arnold, it may be possible to take exception to the form of his definition. He lays_tqo_reat stress, perhaps, on the L phrases, _ap^watwn^ot ideas, and criticism. The first might be qualified as mis- lea3mg~T>ecause it seems to attribute an ulterior purpose to the poet; the second as tending to confound two separate faculties, the creative and the judicial. Plato's conception of poetry as an inspiration, a divine instinct, may be nearer to the truth. The application ol_ ideas ^houldjaot jje -toocon- scious, elsojhe jDoetjinks into the preacher. The criticism of Hie "should not be too much his object, else the poet mighj; as well ^have written essays. What is wanted is that, however spontaneous his utterance may be, however he may aim at only beauty in his work, or * sing but as the linnet sings,* his message should be adequate to healthy and mature humanity.

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His intelligence of what is noble and enduring, his expression of a full harmonious personality, is enough to moralise his work. It is even better that he should not turn aside to com- ment. That is the function of the homilist. We must learn how to live from him less by his precepts, than by his examples and by being in his company. It would no doubt be misunderstanding Mr. Arnold to suppose that he estimates poetry by the gnomic sentences conveyed in it, or that he intends to say that the greatest poets have deliberately used their art as the vehicle of moral teaching. Yet there is a double danger in the wording of his definitions. On the one hand, if we accept them too literally, we run the risk of encouraging that false view of poetry which led the Byzantines to prefer Euripides to Sophocles, because he contained a greater number of quotable maxims ; which brought the humanists of the sixteenth century to the incomprehensible conclusion that Seneca had improved upon the Greek drama by infusing more of sententious gravity into his speeches ; which caused Tasso to invent an ex post facto allegory for the Germalemme, and Spenser to describe Ariosto's mad Orlando, the triumphant climax of that poet's irony, as ' a good governor and a virtuous man.' On the other hand, there is the peril of forgetting that the prime aim of all art is at bottom only presentation. That, and that alone, distinguishes the arts, including poetry, from every other operation of the intellect, and justifies Hegel's general definition of artistic beauty as 'Die sinnliche Erscheinung der Idee/ Poetry is not so much a criticism of life as a revelation of life, a pre- sentment of life according to the poet's capacity for observing and displaying it in forms that reproduce it_for his readers. The poet is less a judge than a seer and reporter. If he judges, it is as light falling upon an" object, showing its inequalities, discovering its loveliness, may be said to judge. The greatest poet is not the poet who has said the best things about life, but he whose work most fully and faithfully reflects life in its breadth and largeness, eliminating what is accidental, trivial, temporary, local, or transmuting simple motives into symbols of the universal by his treatment. He teaches less

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by what he inculcates than by what he shows ; and the truth of Plato's above-mentioned theory is that he may himself be unaware of the far-reaching lessons he communicates. From Shakespeare we could better afford to lose the profound remarks on life in Timon or Troilus and Crcssida, than the delineation of Othello's passion. The speeches of Nestor in the Iliad are less valuable than the portrait of Achilles ; and what Achilles says about fame, heroism, death, and friendship could be sooner spared than the presentment of his action.

The main thing to keep in mind is this, that the world will very willingly let die in poetry what does not contribute to its intellectual strength and moral vigour. In the long run, therefore, poetry full of matter and moralised wins the day. But jLmjist, before all else, be poetry. The application of the soundest moral ideas, the finest criticism of life, will not save it from oblivion, if it fails in the essential qualities that constitute a work of art. Imagination, or the power to see clearly and to project forcibly f"Tahcy, or the power to flash new light on things familiar, and by their combination to delight the mind with novelty ; creative genius, or the power of giving form and substance, life and beauty to the figments of the brain ; st^le, or the power to sustain a flawless and unwavering distinction of utterance; dramatic .energy, or the power to make men and women move before us with self-evident reality in fiction ; passion, syinpathy, enthusiasm, or the power of feeling and communicating feeling, of understanding and arousing emotion ; lyrical inspiration, or the power of spontaneous singing these are among the many elements that go to make up poetry, These, no doubt, are alluded to by Mr. Arnold in the clause referring to ' poetic beauty and poetic truth.' But it is needful to insist upon them, after having dwelt so long upon the matter and the moral tone of poetry. No sane critic can deny that the possession of one or more of these qualities in any very eminent degree will save a poet from the neglect to which moral revolt or indifference might otherwise con- demn him. Ariosto's commonplaceness of feeling, Shelley's

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crude and discordant opinions, Leopardi's overwhelming pessimism, Heine's morbid sentimentality, Byron's super- ficiality and cynicism, are cloaked and covgred by the saving virtues of imagination, lyrical inspiration, poetic style, humour, intensity and sweep of passion. The very greatest poets of the world have combined all these qualities, together with that sound humanity which confers upon them immortal freshness. Of Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, ^schylus, Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare, Moliere, Goethe, it is only possible to say that one or other element of poetic achievement has been displayed more eminently than the rest, that one or other has been held more obviously in abeyance, when we come to distinguish each great master from his peers. But lesser men may rest their claims to immortality upon slighter merits; and among these merits it will be found impossible to exclude what we call form, style, and the several poetic qualities above enumerated. To borrow a burlesque metaphor from the Oxford schools, a poet may win his second-class on his moral philosophy papers, if the others do not drag him down below the level of recognition ; or he may win upon his taste papers, if he has not been plucked in divinity. It is only the supreme few whom we expect to be equally good all round. Shelley and Leopardi have, perhaps, the same prospect of survival on their artistic merits as Wordsworth on the strength of his moral ideas.

It will be seen that we have now arrived at Mr. Arnold's attempt to place Wordsworth among the European poets of the last two centuries. Omitting Goethe and living men, it seems, to Mr. Arnold, indubitable that to Wordsworth belongs the palm. This distinction of being the second greatest modern poet since the death of Moliere is awarded to Wordsworth on his moral philosophy paper. * Where, then, is Wordsworth's superiority ? It is here : he deals jwith

more powerfully/ There is some occult fascination in the game of marking competitors for glory, and publishing class- lists of poets, artists, and other eminent persons. For myself, I confess that it seems about as reasonable to enter Words-

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worth, Dryden, Voltaire, Leopardi, Klopstock, and all the rest of them for the stakes of poetical primacy, and to announce with a flourish of critical trumpets that Wordsworth is the winner, as to run the moss-rose against the jessamine, carnation, clematis, crown imperial, double daisy, and other favourites of the flower-garden. Lovers of poets and of flowers will have their partialities ; and those who have best cultivated powers of reflection and expression will most plausibly support their preference with arguments. There the matter ends ; for, both in the case of the poets and the flowers, the qualities which stimulate our several admirations are too various in kind to be compared. Mr. Arnold has undoubtedly given excellent reasons for the place he assigns to Wordsworth. But it is dangerous for Wordsworth's advocate to prove too much. He has already gained a firm, a permanent, an honourable place upon the muster-roll of English poets. Why undertake the task of proving him the greatest ? Parnassus is a sort of heaven, and we know what answer was given to the sons of Zebedee.

The final test of greatness in a poet is his adequacy to human nature at its best ; his feeling for the balance of sense, emotion, will, intellect in moral harmony ; his faculty for regarding the whole of life, and representing it in all its largeness. If this be true, dramatic and epical poetry must be the most enduring, the most instructive monuments of creative genius in verse. These forms bring into quickest play and present in fullest activity the many-sided motives of our life on earth. Yet the lyrist has a sphere scarcely second in importance to that of the epic and dramatic poets. The thought and feeling he expresses may, if his nature be adequate, embrace the whole gamut of humanity ; and if his expression be sufficient, he may give the form of universality to his experience, creating magic mirrors wherein all men shall see their own hearts reflected and glorified without violation of reality or truth. Wordsworth's fame will rest upon his lyrics, if we extend the term to include his odes, sonnets, and some narrative poems in stanzas on these, and on a few of his meditative pieces in blank verse. His long

Y2

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philosophical experiments the * Prelude,' the * Excursion ' will be read for the light they cast upon the poet's mind, and for occasional passages of authentic inspiration. Taken as a whole, they are too unequal in execution, too imperfectly penetrated with the vital spirit of true poetry, to stand the test of time or wake the enthusiasm of centuries of students. Those, then, who love and reverence Wordsworth, for whom from earliest boyhood he has been a name of worship, will thank the delicate and sympathetic critic who has here collected Wordsworth's masterpieces in the compass of three hundred pages. They will also thank him for the preface in which he has pointed out the sterling qualities of Wordsworth's poetry. After speaking of Wordsworth's debt to Burns, who first in a century of false taste used 'a style of perfect plainness, relying for effect solely on the weight and force of that which, with entire fidelity it utters,' Mr. Arnold introduces the following paragraph as to Wordsworth's handling of that style :

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

• Bevolution and Independence ' ; but it is as bald as the bare mountain-

tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur.

This is assuredly the truest and finest description which has yet been written of Wordsworth's manner at its best; and the account rendered of the secret of his charm is no less to the point : * 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 elementary affections and duties, and because of the extra- ordinary power with which, in case after case, he shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make us share it.' At the same time Mr. Arnold recognises the poet's inequalities, and

A CRITICISM OF LIFE? 325

the critical importance of his essay consists mainly in the broad and clear distinction he has made between what is more and less valuable in his work. ' In Wordsworth's case, the accident, for so itjnay almost bo 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." ' The object, therefore, of Mr. Arnold is

• to disengage the poems which show his power, and to present

them to the English-speaking public and to the world.' He thinks that the volume ' contains everything, or nearly everything, which may best serve him with the majority of lovers of poetry, nothing which may disserve him. 1 Tastes will differ considerably about both clauses of this sentence ; for while Words worthians may complain that too much has been omitted, others who are anxious that our great and beloved poet should appear before the world with only his best singing robes around him, may desire an even stricter censorship than Mr. Arnold's. In the second lyric, 'To a Butterfly,' we find this stanza :

Float near me ; do not yet depart !

Dead times revive in thee :

Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art,

A solemn image to my heart,

My father's family !

No excellence of moral sentiment can redeem the banality of these lines. The last verse, sincerely felt as it may be, respectable as is the emotion it expresses, is from the point of view of art a bathos. A really fine narrative, the ' Brothers,' contains abundance of writing which, were it not Words- worth's, might be described, in the favourite phrase of * tenth- rate critics, 1 as prose cut into lengths of ten syllables :

And now, at last

From perils manifold, with some small wealth Acquired by traffic 'mid the Indian isles, To his paternal home he is returned, With a determined purpose to resume The life he had lived there.

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This is bald ; but it is not ' bald as the bare mountain-tops are bald/ It is bald as a letter of introduction is bald, bald as the baldest passages of Crabbe. Can we expect Italians, accustomed to the grandly simple manner of Leopardi's country poems, to accept this ? Or choose another example from a ballad called the ' Power of Music ' :

An Orpheus ! An Orpheus ! yes, Faith may grow bold, And take to herself all the wonders of old ; Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.

This is neither bald nor yet genuine ; it begins with a conceit, and the epithet applied to the Pantheon is uncouth in its falseness. Can we expect our American cousins to tolerate the style of this opening stanza for the sake of the noble democratic spirit which breathes through the poem? The

• Character of the Happy Warrior ' is both conceived and

written in the poet's stateliest mood ; yet it halts at intervals on lines like these :

But makes his moral being his prime care .... By objects, which might force the soul to abate Her feeling, rendered more compassionate.

Will Frenchmen, habituated to look for sustained evenness of style in composition, recognise the ' Happy Warrior ' as a classic? These examples introduce a grave matter for consideration. No lover of Wordsworth could desire the exclusion of the * Brothers,' or the ' Power of Music/ or the ' Happy Warrior,' from a selection of his poetry, however willingly they might leave the * Butterfly' alone. Yet the failure of perfect art in these three fine poems must prove an obstacle to their final acceptance by readers who make no national, or what Mr. Arnold would call provincial, allowance for Wordsworth. No such allowances are demanded by the work of Keats or Shelley, when subjected to an equally rigorous process of sifting, as that applied to Wordsworth in this volume.

Still if, after study of the greatest literatures of Europe,

A CRITICISM OF LIFE? 327

we feel convinced that Wordsworth is a classic, it does not greatly signify what other nations now think about him. As nothing can confer world-wide celebrity on an inferior poet, however popular at home, so nothing can prevent a classic from attaining his right place in the long run. There is something slightly ridiculous in waiting upon French opinion, and expressing gratitude to M. Henry Cochin or to any other foreign critic for a sensible remark upon Shakespeare. How- ever, as the question has been started whether Wordsworth is likely to become a poet of cosmopolitan fame, it is worth while to consider what these chances are. Mr. Arnold, com- paring him with the acknowledged masters of the art in Europe, comes to the conclusion that he has * left a body of poetical work superior in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness, to that which any of the others has left.' What these qualities are we have already seen. It is the superior depth, genuineness, sincerity, and truth of Wordsworth's humanity, the solid and abiding vigour of his grasp upon the realities of existence, upon the joys that cannot be taken from us, upon the goods of life which suffer no deduction by chance and change, and are independent of all accidents of fortune, that render Words- worth's poems indestructible. He is always found upon the side of that which stimulates the stored- up moral forces of mankind. If I remember rightly, he says that he meant his works ' to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to day- light, by making the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous/ This promise he has kept. When he touches the antique, it is to draw from classic myth or history a lesson weighty with wisdom applicable to our present experience. ' Laodamia ' has no magic to compete with the * Bride of Corinth ' ; but we rise from its perusal with passions purified by terror and compassion. ' Dion ' closes on this note :

Him only pleasure leads, and peace attends, Him, only him, the shield of Jove defends,

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When he writes a poem on a flower, it is to draw forth thoughts of joy or strength, or consolation. His ' Daffodils ' have not the pathos which belongs to Herrick's, nor has he composed anything in this style to match the sublimity of Leopardi's 'Ginestra.' But Leopardi crushes the soul of hope out of us by the abyss of dreadful contemplation into which the broom upon the lava of Vesuvius plunges him. Wordsworth never does this. The worst that can be said of him is that, as Mr. Swinburne said in a preface to Byron, he shreds Nature's vegetables into a domestic saucepan for daily service. Still the homely pot au feu of the moralist has no less right to exist than a wizard's cauldron of sublimity, and probably will be found to last and wear longer. Wordsworth has said nothing so exquisite as Poliziano upon the fragility of rose-leaves, nor has he used the rose, like Ariosto, for similitudes of youthful beauty. But the moralising of these Italian amourists softens and relaxes. Wordsworth's poems on the Celandine brace and invigorate. His enthusiasms are sober and solid. Excepting the ode on Immortality, where much that cannot be proved is taken for granted, and excepting an occasional exaggeration of some favourite tenet, as in this famous stanza

One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil, and of good, Than all the sages can

his impulsive utterances are based on a sound foundation, and will bear the test both of experience and analysis. In this respect he differs from Shelley, whose far more fiery and , magnetic enthusiasms do not convince us of their absolute sincerity, and are often at variance with probability. In the case of Shelley we must be contented with the noble, the, audacious ardour he communicates. The further satisfaction \ of feeling that his judgments are as right as his aspirations j are generous, is too frequently denied. Wordsworth does not/ soar so high, nor on so powerful a pinion, but he is a safer' guide. His own comparison between the nightingale and the stockdove might bs used $s ajj allegory of the two poets,

A CRITICISM OF LIFE? 329

Their several addresses to the skylark give some measure of their different qualities.

The tone of a poet, the mood he communicates, the atmo- sphere he surrounds us with, is more important even than what he says. This tone is the best or the worst we get from him ; it makes it good or bad to be with him. Now it is always good to be with Wordsworth. His personality is like a climate at once sedative and stimulative. I feel inclined to compare it to the influence of the high Alps, austere but kindly, demanding some effort of renunciation, but yielding in return a constant sustenance, and soothing the tired nerves that need a respite from the passions and the fever of the world. The landscape in these regions, far above the plains and cities where men strive, is grave and sober. It has none of the allurements of the south no waving forests, or dancing waves, or fretwork of sun and shadow cast by olive branches on the flowers. But it has also no deception, and no languor, and no decay. In autumn the bald hillsides assume their robes of orange and of crimson, faintly, delicately spread upon the barren rocks. The air is singularly clear and lucid, suffering no illusion, but satisfying the sense of vision with a marvellous sincerity. And when winter comes, the world for months together is clad in flawless purity of blue and white, with shy, rare, unexpected beauty shed upon the scene from hues of sunrise or sunset. On first acquaintance this Alpine landscape is repellent and severe. We think it too ascetic to be lived in. But familiarity convinces us that it is good and wholesome to abide in it. We learn to love its reserve even more than the prodigality of beauty showered on fortunate islands where the orange and the myrtle flower in never- ending summer. Something of the sort is experienced by those who have yielded themselves to Wordsworth's influence. The luxuriance of Keats, the splendour of Shelley, the oriental glow of Coleridge, the torrid energy of Byron, though good in themselves and infinitely precious, are felt to be less permanent, less uniformly satisfying, less continuously bracing, than the sober simplicity of the poet from whose ruggedness at first we shrank,

330 IS POETRY AT BOTTOM

It is a pity that Wordsworth could not rest satisfied in leaving this tone to its natural operation on his readers ' in a wise passiveness.' He passes too readily over from the poet to the moraliser, clenching lessons which need no enforcement by precepts that remind us of the preacher. This leads to a not unnatural movement of revolt in his audience, and often spoils the severe heauty of his art. We do not care to have a somewhat dull but instructive episode from ordinary village life interrupted by a stanza of admonition like the following :

O Eeader ! had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring,

O gentle Header 1 you would find

A tale in everything.

What more I have to say is short,

And you must kindly take it :

It is no tale ; but, should you think,

Perhaps a tale you'll make it.

After this the real pathos of ' Simon Lee ' cannot fail to fall somewhat flat. And yet it is not seldom that Words- worth's didactic reflections contain the pith of his sublimes t poetry. Beautiful as the tale of the c White Doe ' is SBsthetically, it can bear the closing stanzas of precept :

Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well ; Small difference lies between thy creed and mine : This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell ; His death was mourned by sympathy divine.

The Being, that is in the clouds and air, That is in the green leaves among the groves, Maintains a deep and reverential care For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.

The Pleasure-house is dust : behind, before, There is no common waste, no common gloom ; But Nature, in due course of time, once more Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

She leaves these objects to a slow decay, That what we are, and have been, may be known Bat, at the coming of the milder day, These monuments shall all be overgrown.,

A CKITICISM OF LIFE P 331

Up to this point the application of moral ideas has been made with perfect success. The artistic charm has not been broken. But the last stanza falls into the sermonising style, as though the poet's inspiration failed him, and a pedagogue, with no clear conception of the unalterable order of the material universe, had taken his place :

One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals,

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.

The tone I have attempted to describe, as of some clear upland climate, at once soothing and invigorating, austere but gifted with rare charms for those who have submitted to its influence, this tone, unique in poetry, outside the range, perhaps, of Scandinavian literature, will secure for Wordsworth, in England at any rate, an immortality of love and fame. He is, moreover, the poet of man's dependence upon Nature. More deeply, because more calmly, than Shelley, with the passionate enthusiasms of youth subdued to the firm convictions of maturity, he expressed for modern men that creed which, for want of a better word, we designate as Pantheism, but which might be described as the inner soul of Science, the bloom of feeling and enthusiasm destined to ennoble and to poetise our knowledge of the world and of ourselves. In proportion as the sciences make us more intimately acquainted with man's relation to the universe, while the sources of life and thought remain still inscrutable, Wordsworth must take stronger and firmer hold on minds which recognise a mystery in Nature far beyond our ken. What Science is not called on to supply, the fervour and the piety that humanise her truths, and bring them into harmony with permanent emotions of the soul, may be found in all that Wordsworth wrote.

The time might come, indeed may not be distant, when lines like those which I have quoted above (p. 291) from the poem composed at Tintern Abbey should be sung in hours of worship by congregations for whom the ' cosmic emotion ' is a reality and a religion.

382 IS POETRY AT BOTTOM

Wordsworth, again, is the poet of the simple and the permanent in social life. He has shown that average human nature may he made to yield the motives of the noblest poems, instinct with passion, glowing with beauty, needing only the insight and the touch of the artist to disengage them from the coarse material of commonplace.

The moving accident is not my trade : To freeze the blood I have no ready arts : 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.

Should the day arrive when society shall be remodelled upon principles of true democracy, when ' plain living and high thinking ' shall become the rule, when the vulgarity of manners inseparable from decaying feudalism shall have disappeared, when equality shall be rightly apprehended and refinement be the common mark of humble and wealthy homes should this golden age of a grander civilisation dawn upon the nations, then Wordsworth will be recognised as the prophet and apostle of the world's rejuvenescence. He, too, has something to give, a quiet dignity, a nobleness and lofti- ness of feeling joined to primitive simplicity, the tranquillity of self-respect, the calm of self-assured uprightness, which it would be very desirable for the advocates of fraternity and equality to assimilate. Of science and democracy Words- worth in his lifetime was suspicious. It is almost a paradox to proclaim him the poet of democracy and science. Yet there is that in his work which renders it congenial to the mood of men powerfully influenced by scientific ideas, and expecting from democracy the regeneration of society at no incalculably distant future.

After all, Wordsworth is essentially an English poet. He has the limitations no less than the noble qualities of the English character powerfully impressed upon him. Shelley brought into English literature a new ideality, a new element of freedom and expansion. Mazzini greeted Byron with enthusiastic panegyric as the poet of emancipation. Words- worth moves in a very different region from that of either

A CRITICISM OF LIFE? 383

Byron or Shelley. He remains a stiff, consistent, immitigable Englishman ; and it may be questioned whether his stubborn English temperament, his tough insular and local personality, no less than a certain homeliness in his expression, may not prove an obstacle to his acceptance as a cosmopolitan poet, I find a curious note on British literature in the ' Democratic Vistas ' of Walt Whitman, a portion of which, though it is long, may here be not unprofitably cited :

I add that, while England is among the greatest of lands in politica freedom, or the idea of it, and in stalwart personal character, &c., the spirit of English literature is not great at least, is not greatest and its products are no models for us. With the exception of Shakespeare, there is no first-class genius, or approaching to first-class, in that literature which, with a truly vast amount of value and of artificial beauty (largely from the classics), is almost always material, sensual, not spiritual almost always congests, makes plethoric, not frees, expands, dilates is cold, anti-democratic, loves to be sluggish and stately, and shows much of that characteristic of vulgar persons, the dread of saying or doing something not at all improper in itself, but unconventional, and that may be laughed at. In its best, the sombre pervades it it is moody, melancholy, and to give it its due, expresses in characters and plots these qualities in an unrivalled manner. Yet not as the black thunder- storms, and in great normal, crashing passions, as of the Greek dramatists clearing the air, refreshing afterward, bracing with power ; but as in Hamlet, moping, sick, uncertain, and leaving ever after a secret taste for the blues, the morbid, the luxury of woe.

This is a severe verdict to be spoken by one whose main interest in life appears to be the building up of American personality by means of great literature. To the Americans, destined to be by far the most numerous of * the English- speaking public,' our poetry cannot remain a matter of indifference, nor can their criticism of it be passed over by us with neglect. They are in the unique position of possessing our language as their mother tongue, and at the same time of contemplating our literature from a point of view that is the opposite of insular. Comparing English poetry with the spirit of the American people, whom he knows undoubtedly far better than the refined students of Boston, Walt Whitman comes to the conclusion that there is but little in it that will

334 IS POETRY AT BOTTOM A CRITICISM OF LIFE?

suit their needs or help them forward on the path of their development. Yet I cannot but think that, had he read Wordsworth, he would have made at least a qualified excep- tion in his favour. 1 Wordsworth is not ' somhre, moody, melancholy,' is certainly not afraid of the ' unconventional/ does not borrow * artificial beauty ' from the classics or else- where. In fact, the faults here found with English poetry in general are contradicted in an eminent degree by his best poetry. But, though this seems clear enough, it remains true that in Wordsworth we find a ponderosity, a personal and patriotic egoism, a pompousness, a self-importance in dwelling upon details that have value chiefly for the poet himself or for the neighbourhood he lives in, which may not unnaturally appear impertinent or irksome to readers of a different nationality. Will the essential greatness of Wordsworth, whereof so much has been already said, his humanity, his wisdom, his healthiness, his bracing tone, his adequacy to the finer inner spirit of a scientific and democratic age will these solid and imperishable qualities overcome the occasionally defective utterance, the want of humour and lightness, the obstinate insularity of character, the somewhat repellent intensity of local interest, which cannot but be found in him?

1 This I gather from the modification of the above passage in favour of ' the cheerful ' name of Walter Scott.

IS MUSIC THE TYPE OR MEASURE OF ALL ART?

ME. MATTHEW ARNOLD'S definition of Poetry as * at bottom a Criticism of Life/ insisted somewhat too strenuously on the purely intellectual and moral aspects of art. There is a widely different way of regarding the same subject-matter, which finds acceptance with many able thinkers of the present time. This ignores the criticism of life altogether, and dwells with emphasis upon sensuous presentation, emotional sugges- tion, and technical perfection, as the central and essential qualities of art. In order to steer a safe course between the Scylla of excessive intellectuality and the Charybdis of excessive sensuousness, it will be well to examine what a delicate and philosophical critic has published on this second theory of the arts. With this object in view, I choose a paper by Mr. Walter Pater on ' The School of Giorgione. 5 1 The opinion that art has a sphere independent of intellectual or ethical intention is here advocated with lucidity, singular charm of style, and characteristic reserve.

Mr. Pater opens the discussion by very justly condemning the tendency of popular critics 4 to regard all products of art as various forms of poetry.' 'For this criticism,' he says,

• poetry, music, and painting are but translations into different

languages of one and the same fixed quantity of imaginative thought, supplemented by certain technical qualities of colour in painting, of sound in music, of rhythmical words in poetry.' ' In this way/ he adds, ' the sensuous element in art, and with it almost everything in art that is essentially artistic, is

1 Fortnightly Review, October 1887.

336 IS MUSIC THE TYPE

made a matter of indifference.' He then proceeds to point out that each of the fine arts has its own sphere, its own untranslatable mode of expression, its own way of reaching the imaginative reason through the senses, its own special responsibilities to its material.

So far, every intelligent student of the subject will agree with him. Nor will there be any substantial difference of opinion as to the second point on which he insists namely, that each of the arts, while pursuing its own object, and obey- ing its own laws, may sometimes assimilate the quality of a sister-art. This, adopting German phraseology, Mr. Pater terms the Anders-streben of an art, or the reaching forward from its own sphere into the sphere of another art. We are familiar with the thought that Greek dramatic poetry borrowed some- thing of its form from sculpture, and that the Italian romantic epic was determined to a great extent by the analogy of painting. Nor is it by any means an innovation in criticism to refer all the artistic products of a nation to some dominant fine art, for which that nation possessed a special aptitude, and which consequently gave colour and complexion to its whole aesthetical activity. Accordingly, Mr. Pater, both in the doctrine of the independence of each art, and also in the doctrine of the Anders-streben of one art toward another, advances nothing which excites opposition.

At this point, however, he passes into a region of more questionable speculation. Having rebuked popular criticism for using poetry as the standard whereby to judge the arts, he proceeds to make a similar use of music ; for he lays it down that all the arts in common aspire ' towards the principle of music, music being the typical, or ideally consummate art, the object of the great Anders-streben of all art, of all that is artistic, or partakes of artistic qualities/

The reason for this assertion is stated with precision : l

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it. That the mere matter of a

Fortnightly Review, p. 528. The italics are Mr. Pater's.

OR MEASURE OF ALL ART? 337

poem, for instance, its subject, its given incidents or situation; that the mere matter of a picture, the actual circumstances of an event, the actual topography of a landscape, should be nothing without the form, the spirit of the handling ; that this form, this mode of handling, should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the matter; this is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in different

Having illustrated the meaning of this paragraph by refer- ences to painting, poetry, furniture, dress, and the details of daily intercourse, Mr. Pater proceeds as follows : l

Art, then, is thus always striving to be independent of the mere intelligence, to become a matter of pure perception, to get rid of its responsibilities to its subject or material ; the ideal examples of poetry and painting being those in which the constituent elements of the composi- tion are so welded together that the material or subject no longer strikes the intellect only ; nor the form, the eye or ear only ; but form and matter, in their union or identity, present one single effect to the imaginative reason, that complex faculty for which every thought and feeling is twin-born with its sensible analogue or symbol.

It is the art of music which most completely realises this artistic ideal, this perfect identification of form and matter, this strange chemistry, uniting, in the integrity of pure light, contrasted elements. In its ideal, consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the matter, the subject from the expression ; they inhere in and completely saturate each other ; and to it, therefore, to the condition of its perfect moments, all the arts may be supposed constantly to tend and aspire. Music, then, not poetry, as is so often supposed, is the true type or measure of consummate art. Therefore, although each art has its incommunicable element, its untranslatable order of impressions, its unique mode of reaching the imaginative reason, yet the arts may be represented as continually struggling after the law or principle of music, to a condition which music alone com- pletely realises ; and one of the chief functions of aesthetic criticism, dealing with the concrete products of art, new or old, is to estimate the degree in which each of those products approaches in this sense to musical law..

If this means that art, as art, aspires toward a complete absorption of the matter into the form toward such a blending of the animative thought or emotion with the

1 Fortnightly Review, p. 530.

338 IS MUSIC THE TYPE

embodying vehicle that the shape produced shall be the only right and perfect manifestation of a spiritual content to the senses, so that, while we contemplate the work, we cannot conceive their separation then in this view there is nothing either new or perilous. It was precisely this which consti- tuted the consummate excellence of Greek sculpture. The sculptor found so apt a shape for the expression of ideal personality, that his marble became an apocalypse of god- hood. It was precisely this, again, which made the poetry of Virgil artistically perfect. In the words of the most eloquent of Virgil's panegyrists : * What is meant by the vague praise bestowed on Virgil's unequalled style is practically this, that he has been, perhaps, more successful than any other poet in fusing together the expressed and the suggested emotion; that he has discovered the hidden music which can give to every shade of feeling its distinction, its permanence, and its charm ; that his thoughts seem to come to us on wings of melodies prepared for them from the foundation of the world.' 1

But it does not seem that Mr. Pater means this only. We have the right to conclude from passages which may be emphasised, that he has in view the more questionable notion that the fine arts in their most consummate moments all aspire toward vagueness of intellectual intention that a [well-defined subject in poetry and painting and sculpture is a hindrance to artistic quality that the delight of the eye or ,of the ear is of more moment than the thought of the brain. Art, he says, is 'always striving to be independent of the mere intelligence, to become a matter of pure perception, to get red of its responsibilities to its subject or material.' 'Lyrical poetry,' he says, 'just because in it you are least able to detach the matter from the form without a deduction of something from that matter itself, is, at least artistically, the highest and most complete form of poetry. And the very perfection of such poetry often seems to depend in part on a certain suppression or vagueness of mere subject, so that the

1 Essays, Classical,' by F. W. H. Myers, p. 115.

OR MEASURE OF ALL ART ? 339

definite meaning almost expires, or reaches us through ways not distinctly traceable by the understanding.' !

This is ingenious ; and it cannot be denied that the theory has a plausible appearance. Yet, were we to carry Mr. Pater's principles to their logical extremity, we should have to prefer Pope's ' Verses by a Person of Quality ' to the peroration of the ' Dunciad,' and a noble specimen of Japanese screen-painting to Turner's Te'me'raire or Raphael's School of Athens.

So far as the art of poetry goes, he seems to overstate a truth which is finely and exactly expressed by Mr. Myers in the essay on Virgil from which I have already quoted. The passage is long ; but it puts so well the point which Mr. Pater has perhaps exaggerated, regarding the importance of the sensuous and suggestive elements in poetry, that I venture to think my readers will be glad to be reminded of it : 2

The range of human thoughts and emotions greatly transcends the range of such symbols as man has invented to express them; and it becomes, therefore, the business of Art to use these symbols in a double way. They must be used for the direct representation of thought and feeling ; but they must also be combined by so subtle an imagination as to suggest much which there is no means of directly expressing. And this can be done ; for experience shows that it is possible so to arrange forms, colours, and sounds as to stimulate the imagination in a new and inexplicable way. This power makes the painter's art an imaginative as well as an imitative one ; and gives birth to the art of the musician, whose symbols are hardly imitative at all, but express emotions which, till music suggests them, have been not only unknown, but unimaginable. Poetry is both an imitative and an imaginative art. As a choice and condensed form of emotional speech, it possesses the reality which depends on its directly recalling our previous thoughts and feelings. But as a system of rhythmical and melodious effects not indebted for their potency to their associated ideas alone it appeals also to that mysterious power by which mere arrangements of sound can convey an emotion which no one could have predicted beforehand, and which no known laws can explain.

And, indeed, in poetry of the first order, almost every word (to use

1 Fortnightly Review, p. 529. Here the italics are not Mr. Pater's, but mine.

8 ' Essays, Classical,' pp. 113-115.

_ r

840 IS MUSIC THE TYPE

a mathematical metaphor) is raised to a higher power. It continues to be an articulate sound and a logical step in the argument; but it becomes also a musical sound and a centre of emotional force. It becomes a musical sound that is to say, its consonants and vowels are arranged to bear a relation to the consonants and vowels near it a relation of which accent, quantity, rhyme, assonance, and alliteration are specialised forms, but which may be of a character more subtle than any of these. And it becomes a centre of emotional force ; that is to say, the complex associations which it evokes modify the associa- tions evoked by other words in the same passage in a way quite distinct from grammatical or logical connection. The poet, therefore, must avoid two opposite dangers. If he thinks too exclusively of the music and the colouring of his verses of the imaginative means of suggesting thought and feeling what he writes will lack reality and sense. But if he cares only to communicate definite thought and feeling according to the ordinary laws of eloquent speech, his verse is likely to be deficient in magical and suggestive power.

This is right. This makes equitable allowance for the claims alike of the material and the form of art the intel- lectual and emotional content, the sensuous and artificial embodiment.

But to return to Mr. Pater. His doctrine that art is ' always striving to be independent of the mere intelligence/ his assertion that the perfection of lyrical poetry ' often seems to depend in part on a certain suppression or vagueness of mere subject/ contradict the utterances of the greatest crafts- men in the several arts Milton's sublime passages on the function of Poetry ; Sidney's and Shelley's Defences of Poesy ; Goethe's doctrine of * the motive ' ; Kossetti's canon that ' fundamental brain- work ' is the characteristic of all great art ; Michel Angelo's and Beethoven's observations upon their own employment of sculpture and music, wfiigidly applied, his principles would tend to withdraw art from the sphere of spirituality altogether. Yet, considered as paradoxes, they have real value, inasmuch as they recall attention to the sensuous side of art, and direct the mind from such antagonistic paradoxes as the one propounded by Mr. Matthew Arnold in his preface to Wordsworth,

It is difficult to see in what way Mr. Pater can evade the strictures he has passed upon his brethren, the popular critics.

OR MEASURE OF ALL ART P 841

Whether a man selects poetry or selects music as the 'true type or measure of consummate art/ to which 'in common all the arts aspire,' will depend doubtless partly upon personal susceptibilities, and partly upon the theory he has formed of art in general. Both the popular critics and Mr. Pater take up their position upon equally debatable ground. The case stands thus. Mr. Pater is of opinion that the best poetry is that in which there is the least appeal to 'mere intelligence/ in which the verbal melody and the suggestive way of handling it are more important than the intellectual content. He thinks that the best pictures are those in which the ' mere subject ' is brought into the least prominence. Holding these views, he selects music as the ' true type and measure of consummate art.' Herein he is consistent; for music, by reason of its limitations, is the least adapted of all arts for the expression of an intellectual content. The popular critic, on the other hand, is of opinion that the best poetry is that which has the clearest, the most human, and the most impressive motive. He thinks that the best pictures are those which, beside being delightful by their drawing and colour, give food for meditation and appeal to mental faculty. Holding these views, he selects poetry as the ' true type and measure of consummate art.' Herein he too is consistent; for poetry, by reason of its limitations, is the best adapted of all arts for appealing to intelligence and embodying motives with lucidity.

Mr. Pater and the popular critic are equally right or equally wrong. We are, in fact, confronting two different conceptions of art, each of which is partial and one-sided, because the one insists too strongly on the sensuous form, the other on the mental stuff, of art.

Suppose a man does not accept Mr. Pater's doctrine; supposing he starts from another point of view, and demands some defined conception in a work of art as well as a sensuous appeal to our imaginative reason ; supposing he regards art in its highest manifestation as a mode of utterance for what is spiritual in man, as a language for communicating the ideal world of thought and feeling in sensible form ; then he will

342 IS MUSIC THE TYPE

be tempted to select not music but poetry as his type and measure. Thus it is manifest that critics who refer to the standard of ppetry, and critics who refer to the standard of music, differ in this mainly that they hold divergent theories regarding the function of art in general.

The debatable point for consideration is whether either the popular critic rebuked by Mr. Pater or Mr. Pater himself can legitimately choose one of the arts as the * type and measure ' for the rest. I maintain that both are expressing certain personal predilections, whereby the abiding relations of the arts run some risk of being overlooked. What the matter really comes to is this : while the one proclaims his preference for sensuous results, the other proclaims a preference for defined intelligible content. Each does violence by his selec- tion to one or other of the arts. The critic who demands a meaning at any cost, will find it hard to account for his appreciation of music or of architecture. Mr. Pater, in order to complete his theory, is forced to depreciate the most sublime and powerful masterpieces of poetry. In his view drama and epic doff their caps before a song, in which verbal melody and the communication of a mood usurp upon invention, passion, cerebration, definite meaning.

Just as the subjectivity of any age or nation erects one art into the measure of the rest, so the subjectivity of a particular critic will induce him to choose poetry or music, or it may be sculpture, as his standard, ^he fact remains that each art possesses its own strength and its own weakness, and that no one of the arts, singly and by itself, achieves the whole purpose of art. That jpurpose is to express the content of human thought and feeling in sensuously beautiful form by means of various vehicles, imposing various restrictions, and implying various methods of employment. If we seek the maximum of intelligibility, we find it in poetry ; but at the same time we have here the minimum of immediate effect upon the senses. If we seek the maximum of sensuous effect, we find it in music ; but at the same time we have here the minimum of appeal to intelligence. Architecture, in its inability to express definite ideas, stands next to music ; but its sensuous

OR MEASURE OF ALL ART? 343

influence upon the mind is feebler. As a compensation, it possesses the privilege of permanence, of solidity of impressive magnitude, of undefinable but wonder-waking symbolism. Sculpture owes its power to the complete and concrete pre- sentation of human form, to the perfect incarnation of ideas in substantial shapes of bronze or stone, on which light and shadows from the skies can fall : this it alone of all the arts displays. It has affinities with architecture on the one hand, owing to the material it uses, and to poetry on the other, owing to the intelligibility of its motives. Painting is remote from architecture ; but it holds a place where sculpture, poetry, and music let their powers be felt. Though dependent on design, it can tell a story better than sculpture ; and in this respect painting more nearly approaches poetry. It can communicate a mood without relying upon definite or strictly intelligible motives; in this respect it borders upon music. Of all the arts, painting is the most flexible, the most mimetic, the most illusory. It cannot satisfy our understanding like poetry ; it cannot flood our souls with the same noble sensuous joy as music ; it cannot present such perfect and full shapes as sculpture ; it cannot affect us with the sense of stability or with the mysterious suggestions which belong to architecture. But it partakes of all the other arts through its speciality of surface-delineation, and adds its own delightful gift of colour, second in sensuous potency only to sound.

Such is the prism of the arts ; each distinct, but homo- geneous, and tinctured at their edges with hues borrowed from the sister-arts. Their differences derive from the several vehicles they are bound to employ. Their unity is the spiritual substance which they express in common. Abstract beauty, the tSe'a roO /caXov, is one and indivisible. But the concrete shapes which manifest this beauty, decompose it, just as the prism analyses white light into colours. ' Multse terricolis linguae cosies tibus una.'

It is by virtue of this separateness and by virtue of these sympathies that we are justified in calling the poetry of Sophocles or Landor, the painting of Michel Angelo or Man- tegna, the music of Gluck or Cherubini, sculpturesque ; Loren-

844 IS MUSIC THE TYPE OR MEASURE OF ALL ART ?

zetti's frescoes and Dante's * Paradise,' architectural; Tin- toretto's Crucifixion and the Genius of the Vatican, poetical ; Shelley's lyrics in Prometheus Unbound and Titian's Three Ages, musical ; the fa9ade of the Certosa at Pa via, pictorial ; and so forth, as suggestion and association lead us.

But let it be remembered that this discrimination of an Anders- streben in the arts, is after all but fanciful. It is at best a way of expressing our sense of something subjective in the styles of artists or of epochs, not of something in the arts themselves. Let it be still more deeply remembered that if we fix upon any one art as the type and measure for the rest, we are either indulging a personal partiality, or else uttering an arbitrary, and therefore inconclusive, sosthetical hypothesis. The main fact to bear steadily in mind is that beauty is the sensuous manifestation of the idea that is, of the spiritual element in man and in the world-^and that the arts, each in its own way, conveys this Keauty to our per- cipient self. We have to abstain on the one hand from any ^theory which emphasises the didactic function of art, and on the other from any theory, however plausible, which diverts attention from the one cardinal truth : namely, that fine and liberal art, as distinguished from mechanical art or the arts of the kitchen and millinery, exists for the embodiment of thought and emotion in forms of various delightfulness, appealing to what has been called the imaginative reason, that complex faculty which is neither mere understanding nor mere sense, by means of divers sensuous suggestions, and several modes of concrete presentation.

THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

SOME five years ago there appeared a little volume, named ' Ros Rosarum ex Horto Poetarum,' and bearing upon its title-page the well-known initials of E. V. B., under which the Hon. Mrs. Richard Cavendish Boyle has given several works of combined literary and artistic merit to the world. This volume is an anthology culled from the poetry of all languages and ages upon the theme of the rose. To make such a collection at once complete would have been almost impossible ; and a book not quite complete, like Mrs. Boyle's * Ros Rosarum, 7 has the advantage of suggestiveness and stimulation to the fancy of the reader, which an exhaustive anthology of rose-literature would have failed to convey.

Studying its pages with close attention, I observed that Mrs. Boyle had omitted two important passages in Latin poetry which may be regarded as the twin fountain-heads of a large amount of verses written upon roses in the modern world. On turning to Catullus and Ausonius and comparing the passages in question with some stanzas by Poliziano, Ariosto, Tasso, Guarini, Spenser, Herrick, Waller, Ronsard, and other modern poets, I was so much struck with the examples of literary derivation they afforded, that I composed the following essay, which I now present as an attempt to study the forms of hybridism in poetry.

The first of the two passages in question occurs in the second Epithalamium of Catullus :

Ut flos in sffiptis secretus nascitur hortis, Ignotus pecori, nullo contusus aratro,

346 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

Quern mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber ; Multi ilium pueri, multro optavere puellas : Idem quom tenui carptus defloruit ungui, Nulli ilium pueri, nullro optavere puellro : Sic virgo dum intacta manet, dum cara suis est, Quom castum amisit polluto corpore florem, Nee pueris jocunda manet, nee cara puellis.

It will be noticed that Catullus does not specialise the rose. He speaks indifferently of a flower. But when we examine the imitations of these lines by modern poets, we shall see how their instinct appropriated to the rose the honours of the suggestion. I may also point out that the poet dwells only on the fact that a flower, up-growing on its native stalk, nourished into bloom by the powers of nature, is desirable to all who gaze upon it ; but when it has been plucked, the cut flower raises no desire ; and so, Catullus says, it is with maidens also.

For English readers I will roughly paraphrase these un- translatable hexameters :

The flower that, closed by garden walls, doth blow, Which no plough wounds, and no rude cattle know, But breezes fan, sun fosters, showers shoot higher, It many lads and many maids desire ; The same, when cropped by cruel hand it fades, No lads at all desire it, nor no maids : E'en so the girl, so long her youth doth last Untouched, on her kind friends affection cast ; But when she stoops to folly, sheds her bloom, For lads, for maids, hath ilown her chaste perfume.

The second of the two classic passages to which I have referred is an Idyll by Ausonius. This poet, who lived from 309 to 892 A.D., was half pagan and half Christian. His genius floated in the atmosphere of the decaying Roman Empire, between influences of the past and future. But what his religious creed was does not greatly signify. As a writer, he expressed, at the latest close of antique culture, something of the spirit which appears in medieval, and which pervades modern literature, the spirit of sympathy

THE PATHOS OF THE ROBE IN POETRY 347

with nature, and the sense of pathos in ephemeral things. It was Ausonius, then, who wrote the following Idyll on the Eose :

Ver erat et blando mordentia frigora sensu

Spirabat croceo mane revecta dies. Strictior Eoos praecesserat aura jugales,

^Estiferum suadens anticipare diem. Errabam riguis per quadrua compita in hortis,

Mature cupiens me vegetare die. Vidi concretas per gramina flexa pruinas

Pendere, aut olerum stare cacuminibus ; Caulibus et patulis teretes colludere guttas,

Et coelestis aquae pondere tune gravidas. Vidi Paestano candere rosaria cultu,

Exoriente novo roscida Lucifero. Kara pruinosis canebat gemma frutetis,

Ad primi radios interitura die. Ambigeres, raperetve rosis Aurora ruborcm,

An daret, et flores tingeret orta dies. Bos unus, color unus, et unum mane duorum,

Sideris et floris nam domina una Venus. Forsan et unus odor : sed celsior ille per auras

Difflatur, spirat proximus ille magis. Communis Paphie dea sideris et dea floris

Praecipit unius muricis esse habitum. Momentum intererat, quo se nascentia florum

Qermina comparibus dividerent spatiis. Haec viret angusto foliorum tecta galero :

Haec tenui folio purpura rubra notat. Haec aperit primi fastigia celsa obelisci,

Mucronem absolvens purpurei capitis. Vertice collectos ilia exsinuabat amictus,

Jam meditans foliis se numerare suis : Nee mora, ridentis calathi patefecit honorem,

Prodens inclusi semina densa croci. Ha8C modo, qua9 toto rutilaverat igne comarum

Pallida collapsis deseritur foliis. Mirabar celerem fugitiva aetate rapinam,

Et, dum nascuntur, consenuisse rosas. Ecce, et defluxit rutili coma punica floris,

Dum loquor, et tellus teota rubore micat. Tot species tantosque ortus variosque novatus Una dies aperit, conficit una dies.

348 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

Conquerimur, Natura, brevis quod gratia florum est ?

Ostentata oculis illioo dona rapis. Quam longa una dies, aetas tarn longa rosarum,

Quas pubescentes juncta seneota premit. Quam modo nascentem rutilus conspexit Ecus,

Hano rediens sero vespere vidit anum. Sed bene, quod paucis licet interitura diebus,

Succedens sevum prorogat ipsa suum. Collige, virgo, rosas, dum flos novus et nova pubes,

Et memor esto sevum sic properare tuum.

In the course of our analysis we shall see what parts of this Idyll were selected for imitation by modern poets, and what parts they omitted. The beautiful imaginative lines (12-22) in which the morning star and the rose are brought beneath the common guardianship of Venus, have, so far as I know, not been seized upon ; although one thqught contained in them, that possibly the star may be no less fragrant than the flower, is very modern in its fancy. But first it will be well to call attention to the fact that, while Catullus used the flower of his metaphor only as a symbol of virginity, Ausonius enters into communion with the rose herself as a living creature. For him the flower is no mere emblem. The reflections upon human life which it suggests are only brought forward at the conclusion of his poem, which, in its main structure, is a studied picture of external objects lovingly observed. Another point should be noticed. His sympathy with the short bloom-time of the rose makes him draw from nature pathos which he afterwards applies to man. Hitherto, in classic literature, the rose had been a symbol of love and gladness, celebrated as the ornament of Aphrodite, the pledge of passion, and the chief decoration of life's banquet. In all the authors who praised the rose, from Sappho to the false Anacreon and Philostratus, I remember none who dwelt with insistence on its brevity of beauty. Writing even of dead roses, the anonymous poet of the Anacreontics thinks of their perfume.

THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 349

It remained for Ausonius, in the crepuscular interspace between the sunset of the antique and the night which came before the sunrise of the modern age, to develop thus elaborately the motive of fragility in rose life and in human loveliness. For English readers I have made a translation of his Idyll, which may enable them ' as in a glass darkly ' to perceive its subdued lustre.

'Twas spring, and dawn returning breathed new-born

From saffron skies the bracing chill of morn.

Before day's orient chargers went a breeze,

That whispered : Rise, the sweets of morning seize !

In watered gardens where the cross-paths ran,

Freshness and health I sought ere noon began :

I watched from bending grasses how the rime

In clusters hung, or gemmed the beds of thyme ;

How the round beads, on herb and leaf outspread,

Rolled with the weight of dews from heaven's height shed ;

Saw the rose-gardens in their Psestan bloom

Hoar 'neath the dawn-star rising through the gloom.

On every bush those separate splendours gleam,

Doomed to be quenched by day's first arrowy beam.

Here might one doubt : doth morn from roses steal

Their redness, or the rose with dawn anneal ?

One hue, one dew, one morn makes both serene ;

Of star and flower one Venus reigns the queen.

Perchance one scent have they ; the star's o'erhead

Far, far exhales, the flower's at hand is shed.

Goddess of star, goddess of rose no less,

The Paphian flings o'er both her crimson dress.

Now had the moment passed wherein the brood

Of clustering buds seemed one twin sisterhood.

This flower, enlaced with leaves, shows naught but green

That shoots a roseate streak from forth the screen :

One opes her pyramid and purple spire,

Emerging into plenitude of fire ;

Another thrusts her verdant veil aside,

Counting her petals one by one with pride :

Expands her radiant cup of gorgeous hue,

And brings dense hidden veins of gold to view :

She who had burned erewhile, a flower of flame,

Now pales and droops her fainting head with shame :

So that I mused how swift time steals all worth,

How roses age and wither with their birth ;

360 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

Yea, while I speak, the flower with crimson crowned Hath fallen and shed her glories on the ground. So many births, forms, fates with changes fraught, One day begins and one day brings to naught ! Grieve we that flowers should have so short a grace, That Nature shows and steals her gifts apace ? Long as the day, so long the red rose lasts ; Eld following close on youth her beauty blasts : That flower which Phosphor newly-born had known, Hesper returning finds a wrinkled crone : Yet well if, though some brief days past she die, Her life be lengthened through posterity ! Pluck roses, girl, when flower, when youth is new, Mindful the while that thus time flies for you.

These, then, are the two Latin sources which I wish to bring before the students of rose-literature in modern poetry. One of them is a passage from a marriage song by Catullus, the other an Idyll by Ausonius. I have next to show how, after the revival of letters, they were severally or in combina- tion used by European poets. In this part of my task I shall not seek after exhaustiveness, but shall content myself with such specimens as occur readily to the memory.

I said that the Greek and Latin poets of a good period rarely used the rose as a symbol of human fragility. This requires some modification. The myths connected with flowers hyacinth, narcissus, anemone are themselves sug- gestive of sadness ; but in these a god's beloved has become a plant which blooms each year with the recurring season. Therefore, this contemplation of the flower derives its senti- ment rather from the promise of continuity and immortality in nature, than from the pathos of temporal decay. The rose, it may be parenthetically observed, in one version of the death of Adonis, was said to have sprung from his blood, the anemone from Aphrodite's tears. 1

af/xa X^ et * T ^ to irdrra irorl x afyta frfoov rfarci, r& 5i Sdicpva r&

1 Bion's Lament far Adorns, 64-06. The lines are probably a late interpolation.

THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 351

Tears the Paphian shed, drop by drop for the drops of Adonis' Blood, and on earth each drop, as it fell, grew into a blossom ; Roses sprang from the blood, and the tears gave birth to the wind- flower.

Those beautiful similes, again, in which Homer and Virgil likened a young man stricken by death upon the battlefield to a poppy, or hyacinth, or olive broken from its stem, were symbols, not of the short prime of beauty, but of its sudden and unseasonable extinction ; nor was the rose, so far as I remember, employed even in this way. That was reserved for a modern poet, Ariosto, who compared tbe mouth of dying Zerbino to a waning rose. 1

Languidetta come rosa, Rosa non colta in sua stagione, si ch' ella Impallidisca in su la siepe ombrosa.

Languid like a rose,

A rose not plucked in her due season, so That she must fade upon the dim hedgerows.

Yet two passages may be noticed in which poets of a good age compared the rose in her brief season to the fleeting loveliness of youth. 2

Kal rb fi68ov Ka\6v tffri, KO.) 6 xp6vos avrb papaivct ' Kal rb fov /coAoi/ farw iv efafu, Kal raxv yi\p ' Kal Ka\\os Ka\6v tffrt rb irai$tK6v, a\\* b\lyov ($.

Fair is the rose, but time consumes her flower ; Fair the spring violet, but soon it fades ; And fair is boyish beauty, but short-lived.

Ovid, perhaps with these lines in his memory, wrote as follows : 3

Nee viola semper, nee hiantia lilia florent ;

Et viget amissa spina relicta rosa. Et-tibi jam cani venient, formose, capilli ; Jam venient rug qua tibi corpus arent.

1 Orl. Fur. xxiv. 80.

2 Theocritus, Idyll xxiii. 29. This Idyll is probably not by Theocritus, but by an imitator.

3 Ars Amandi, ii. 115.

362 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

Not always violets nor lilies bloom ; The sharp thorn bristles in the rose's room. And thus for thee, fair boy, shall gray hairs grow, While envious time delves wrinkles on thy brow.

I might also quote an epigram of Rufinus to Rhodocleia, in which he bids her bind blossoms on her brow, reminding her the while that :

aj/0eTs Kal \*fftis Kal arv Kal 6 ffretyavos.

For time fades thee as he fades the roses ; Nor they nor thou may revive again.

Such, before the date of Ausonius, were the slender contribu- tions of classic poets to the pathos of rose -literature.

With the revival of letters in the fifteenth century, the passages from Catullus and Ausonius which I have chosen as the themes for my discourse fell like seeds on fertile soil in Italy, and bore abundant flowers of poetry, which spread their perfume, afterwards, through Europe. The melancholy which survived from mediae valism at that epoch, and the vivid interest in nature which characterised the Renaissance, com- bined to draw the attention of scholar-poets to the Idyll of Ausonius. This Idyll, or elegy, as it might better be called, reappears, but slightly altered, and with some distinctive additions, in the ' Corinto ' of Lorenzo de' Medici :

L* altra mattina in un mio piccolo orto Andavo : e '1 sol sorgente con suoi rai Uscia, non gia ch* io lo vedessi scorto.

Sonvi piantati dentro alcuni rosai ; A quai rivolsi le mie vaghe ciglie Per quel che visto non avevo mai.

Branvi rose candide e vermiglie : Alouna a foglia a foglia al sol si spiega ; Stretto prima, poi par s' apra scompiglie ;

Altra piu giovinetta si dislega Appena dalla boccia : eravi ancora Chi le sue chiuse foglie all' aer niega ;

Altra cadendo a pid il terreno inflora. Cosi le vidi nascere e morire E passaz lor vaghezza in men d' un' ora.

Quando languenti e pallide vidi ire

THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 353

Le foglie a terra, allor mi venne a mente Che vana cosa e il giovenil fiorire.

Ogni arbore ha i suoi fiori : e immantinente Poi le tenere frondi al sol si piegano Quando rinnovellar P aere si sente.

I piocol f rutti ancor informi allegano ; Ch' a poco a poco talor tanto ingrossano, Che pel gran peso i forti rami piegano,

Ne senza gran periglio portar possano II proprio peso ; appena regger sogliono Crescendo, ad or ad ora se P addossono.

Vien poi P autunno, e maturi si cogliono I dolci pomi : e passato il bel tempo, Di fior di frutti e fronde al fin si spogliono.

Cogli la rosa, o ninfa, or ch' 6 il bel tempo.

I will give my own English version of this piece :

Into a little close of mine I went

One morning, when the sun with his fresh light

Was rising all refulgent and unshent. Rose-trees are planted there in order bright,

Whereto I turned charmed eyes, and long did stay,

Taking my fill of that new-found delight. Bed and white roses bloomed upon the spray ;

One opened, leaf by leaf, to greet the morn,

Shyly at first, then in sweet disarray ; Another, yet a youngling, newly born,

Scarce struggled from the bud, and there were some Whose petals closed them from the air forlorn ; Another fell, and showered the grass with bloom ;

Thus I beheld the roses dawn and die,

And one short hour their loveliness consume. But while I watched those languid petals lie

Colourless on cold earth, I could but think

How vain a thing is youthful bravery. Trees have their time to bloom on winter's brink ;

Then the rathe blossoms wither in an hour,

When the brief days of spring toward summer sink : The fruit/ as yet unformed, is tart and sour ;

Little by little it grows large, and weighs

The strong boughs down with slow persistent power Nor without peril can the branches raise

Their burden ; now they stagger 'neath the weight

Still growing, and are bent above the ways ;

A A

354 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

Soon autumn comes, and the ripe, ruddy freight

Is gathered : the glad season will not stay ;

Flowers, fruit, and leaves are now all desolate. Pluck the rose, therefore, maiden, while 'tis May !

Here we have the Collige virgo rosas, ' Gather ye roses while ye may/ translated from the autumn of antique to the April of modern poetry, and that note is echoed through all the love-literature of the Renaissance. Lorenzo, be it observed, has followed his model, not only in the close, but also in the opening of the passage. Side by side with this Florentine transcript from Ausonius I will now place Polizi- ano's looser, but more poetical handling of the same theme, subjoining my version of his ballata.

I' mi trovai, fanciulle, un bel mattino

Di mezzo maggio in un verde giardino. Eran d' intorno violette e gigli

Fra 1' erba verde, e vaghi fior novelli, Azurri gialli candidi e vermigli :

Ond' io porsi la mano a cor di quelli

Per adornar e' mie' biondi capelli E cinger di grillanda el vago crino. I' mi trovai, etc.

Ma poi ch' i' ebbi pien di fiori un lembo,

Vidi le rose e non pur d' un colore : Io corsi allor per empier tutto el grembo,

Perch' era si soave il loro odore

Che tutto mi senti' destar el core Di dolce voglia e d' un placer divino. I' mi trovai, etc.

I' posi mente : quelle rose allora,

Mai non vi potre' dir quant' eran belle :

Quale scoppiava della boccia ancora ; Qual' erano un po' passe e qual novelle. Amor mi disse allor : Va* co* di quelle

Che piu vedi fiorite in sullo spino. I' mi trovai, etc.

Quando la rosa ogni suo' foglia spande,

Quando e piu bella, quando e piu gradita ; Allora e buona a mettere in ghirlande,

THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 355

Prima che sua belleza sia fuggita : Sicche, fanciulle, mentre 6 piti fiorita, Coglian la bella rosa del giardino. I* mi trovai, etc.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

Violets and lilies grew on every side

Mid the green grass, and young flowers wonderful, Golden, and white, and red, and azure-eyed ;

Toward which I stretched my hands, eager to pull

Plenty to make my fair curls beautiful, To crown my rippling curls with garlands gay.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

But when my lap was full of flowers I spied Roses at last, roses of every hue ;

Therefore I ran to pluck their ruddy pride, Because their perfume was so sweet and true That all my soul went forth with pleasure new,

With yearning and desire too soft to say.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

I gazed and gazed. Hard task it were to tell

How lovely were the roses in that hour : One was but peeping from her verdant shell,

And some were faded, some were scarce in flower.

Then Love said : Go, pluck from the blooming bower Those that thou seest ripe upon the spray.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

For when the full rose quits her tender sheath,

When she is sweetest and most fair to see, Then is the- time to place her in thy wreath,

Before her beauty and her freshness flee.

Gather ye therefore roses with great glee, Sweet girls, or e'er their perfume pass away.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

AA2

866 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

Much might be written about the different styles in which Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano severally treated the theme suggested to them by Ausonius. Lorenzo is minute in detail, sober in reflection ; Poliziano employs slighter touches with an airier grace and freer flight of fancy. The one produces a careful study from nature by the light of his classical model; the other sings a new song, soaring high above the beaten track of imitation. The description of the rose-garden, of the roses in their several degrees of expan- sion, and the concluding moral, have been all etherealised in the ballata. But space forbids me to enter into further critical particulars.

Before quitting Poliziano, I will collect a few passages from his poems which seem to be derived from the same source of Latin inspiration. In his * Giostra ' (lib. i. sfc. 78) he thus describes the rose :

Ma vie pin lieta pin ridente e bella Ardisce aprire il seno al sol la rosa : Questa di verde gemma s' inoappella : Quella si mostra allo sportel vezzosa ; L' altra che 'n dolce foco ardea pur ora Languida cade e il bel pratello infiora.

This pretty little picture may be said to represent the three ages of the rose. Though I cannot do justice to the original, these verses may be accepted as a bad copy of a graceful miniature :

Trembles the virgin violet in air,

With downcast eyes that seem love's sight to shun ;

But far more glad, more smiling, and more fair,

The rose expands her bosom to the sun ;

This bud in verdant wreaths her head doth bear ;

That opes her half -blown petals one by one :

And she who erewhile flames of love displayed,

Drooping declines, and strews with bloom the glade.

In the ' Orfeo ' he paraphrased the admonition of the last lines of the Idyll thus :

Digli, zampogna mia, come via fugge Cogli anni insieme la belleza snella

THE fATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETKY 857

E digli come il tempo n& distrugge, Ne 1' eta persa mai si rinnovella : Digli che sappi usar suo' forma bella, Che sempre mai non saran rose e viole.

Or, as follows in English :

Nay, tell her, pipe of mine, how swift doth flee

Beauty together with our years amain ; Tell her how time destroys all rarity,

Nor youth once lost can be renewed again ;

Tell her to use the gifts that yet remain ; Hoses and violets blossom not alway.

To this refrain of Collige virgo rosas he ia for ever

returning :

Deh, non insuperbir per tuo' belleza, Dama ; ch' un breve tempo te la fura. Canuta torner& la bionda treza Che del bel viso adorna la figura. Mentre che il fiore 6 nella sua vagheza, Coglilo ; che belleza poco dura. Fresca & la rosa da mattina, e a sera Ell' ha perduto suo' belleza altera.

Nay, be not overproud of thy great grace, Lady 1 for brief time is thy thief and mine.

White will he turn those golden curls that lace Thy forehead and thy cheeks so marble -fine.

Lo ! while the flower still flourisheth apace, Pluck it ; for beauty but awhile doth shine.

Fair is the rose at dawn ; but long ere night

Her freshness fades, her pride hath vanished quite.

Thus Florentine poets used the rose as a reminder to girls that they should enjoy their youth in season. The graver simile of Catullus was not to their purpose. It first makes its entrance, into Italian poetry in these stanzas of Ariosto, which are closely copied from the Latin : *

La verginella e simile alia rosa, Ch' in bel giardin su la nativa spina

1 Orl Fur. i. 42, 43.

358 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

Mentre sola e sicura si riposa,

Ne gregge n& pastor se le avvicina ;

L' aura soave e P alba rugiadosa,

L' acqua, la terra, al suo favor s' incbina :

Giovani vaghi e dame innamorate

Amano averne e seni e temple ornate.

Ma non si tosto dal materno stelo Bimossa viene, dal suo ceppo verde, Che quanto avea dagli uomini e dal cielo Favor, grazia, e belleza, tutto perde. La vergine che '1 fior, di che piu zelo Che de' begli occhi e della vita aver de, Lascia altrui c6rre, il pregio ch' avea innante Perde nel cor di tutti gli altri amanti.

The translation made by Rose of the * Orlando Furioso ' shall here be quoted :

The virgin has her image in the rose, Sheltered in garden on its native stock, Which there in solitude and safe repose Blooms, unapproached by shepherd or by flock. For this earth teems, and freshening water flows, And breeze and dewy dawn their sweets unlock ; With such the wistful youth his bosom dresses, With such the enamoured damsel braids her tresses.

But wanton hands no sooner this displace From the maternal stem, where it had grown, Than all was withered ; whatsoever grace It found with man or heaven ; bloom, beauty gone. The damsel who should hold in higher place Than light or life the flower which is her own, Suffering the spoiler's hand to crop the prize, Forfeits her worth in every other's eyes.

Thus far I have traced the separate working of the two themes in Lorenzo de' Medici's, Poliziano's, and Ariosto's poetry. Tasso, while expanding in the main the motive of Ausonius, borrows one touch from Catullus in the following famous passage of the * Gerusalemme Liberata ' : l

1 Canto xvi. 15.

THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 359

Deh ! mira, egli cant6, spuntar la rosa Dal verde suo modesta e verginella, Che mezzo aperta ancora e mezzo ascosa Quanto si mostra men tanto e piu bella. Ecco poi nudo il sen gi& baldanzosa Dispiega ; ecco poi langue e non par quella ; Quella non par, che desiata avanti Fu da mille donzelle e mille amanti.

Cosl trapassa al trapassar d' un giorno Delia vita mortale il fiore e il verde : Ne perehe faccia indietro april ritorno, Si rinfiora ella mai ne si rinverde. Cogliam la rosa in sul mattino adorno Di questo dl, che tosto il seren perde ; Cogliam d' amor la rosa ; amiamo or quando Esser si puote riamato amando.

A translation made by Thomas Bayley from these stanzas hall be given, instead of any other, because it has been ihosen by Mrs. Boyle in her book : l

Mark ye (he sings) in modest maiden guise The red rose peeping from her leafy nest ; Half opening, now half closed, the jewel lies, More bright her beauty seems the more represt.

But lo ! with bosom bared, the vaunting flower Now droops, now dies, alas I how changed the while, From that sweet rose that wooed, in happier hour, The young man's homage and the maiden's smile.

Thus, in the passing of a day, the flower, The freshness of man's little life is o'er, Though April skies return with sun and shower, The flower may bloom not, life return no more.

Cull, then, the rose, for night is coming ; haste While o'er its leaves the matin dew is poured ; Cull, then, the rose of love while yet thou mayest Living be loved adoring be adored.

Notwithstanding many pretty and ingenious turns, this version is obviously imperfect through not following the

1 Ros Rosarum, p. 68.

360 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

metre of the original. And Mrs. Boyle might have done well to use the two stanzas in which Fairfax availed himself of Spenser's splendid paraphrase. Those who are curious in subtle points of translation should consult a letter which appeared not long ago in the Academy upon the various renderings of Tasso's song. The writer of that letter put together with much skill one version, combining the best portions of all.

Before leaving Italy for the North, let us see how Guarini handled the rose bequeathed to him from Catullus and Ausonius by Lorenzo de 1 Medici, Poliziano, Ariosto, and Tasso. Amarilli, the heroine of the c Pastor Fido,' has been betrothed, for high reasons of state, to Silvio, a young hunter, who has no mind for marriage ; and her father is naturally anxious lest a long engagement in these circumstances should prove the ruin of her happiness. He uses this beautiful, but somewhat too artificial, expansion of the Catullian theme, combined with Ariosto's simile of Zerbino's death, for the expression of his uneasiness :

Come in vago giardin rosa gentile

Che nelle verdi sue tenere spoglie

Pure dianzi era rinchiusa,

E sotto P ombra del notturno velo

Incolta e sconosciuta

Stava, posando in sul materno stelo ;

Al subito apparir del primo raggio,

Che spunti in Oriente,

31 desta e si risente,

E scopre al sol, ohe la vagheggia e mira,

II suo vermiglio ed odorato seno,

Dov' ape susurrando

Nei mattutini albori

Yola, suggendo i rugiadosi umori ;

Ma s' allor non si coglie,

Sicche del mezzodl senta le fiamme,

Cade al cader del sole

Si scolorita in sulla siepe ombrosa,

Ch' appena si pu6 dir : questa fu rosa.

Cosi la verginella,

Mentre cura materna

THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 361

La custodisce e chiude,

Chiude anch' ella il suo petto

Air amoroso affetto ;

Ma se lascivo sguardo

Di Cupido amator vien che la miri,

E n' oda ella i sospiri,

Gli apre subito il core,

E nel tenero sen riceve amore :

E se vergogna il cela,

temenza 1' affrena,

La misera, tacendo,

Per soverchio desio tutto si strugge.

Cosl manca belttt se '1 foco dura,

E perdendo stagion perde ventura.

In the following translation I have attempted to render the effect of those partly-rhymed and carefully-rhythmed lyrics, which Italian poets used in their dramatic work, and which Milton adopted from them in his choruses of Samson Agonistes :

As on fair garden lawns a gentle rose,

Who, lapped in tender sheaths of budding green,

Erewhile was shut from view,

And 'neath the shadow of night's sheltering hem,

Uncultured and unknown,

Abode in peace on the maternal stem,

With the first sudden beams that spring

O'er the dim East and day reveal,

Starts into life, begins to feel,

And opens to the sun's admiring gaze

Her crimson bosom laden with perfume,

Where the deep humming bee,

Bathed in cool light of morn,

Goes sucking honey-dews of darkness born ;

But, if none pluck her then,

If she but feel the fiery shafts of noon,

Falls with the falling of the sun,

So all discoloured on the dim hedgerows

That one can scarcely say : ' This was a rose ! '

E'en thus the girl,

What time a mother's care

Wards her frail flower and guards,

Guards also her own breast

362 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY

From love and love's unrest ;

But if the wanton gaze

Of amorous lover chance on her to turn,

If she but hear his sighs that yearn,

She opens out her heart

And to her tender bosom takes love in ;

Then should shame hide her smart,

Or fear her will restrain,

The child in speechless pain

Through too much longing must decline and part.

Thus beauty fades, if the fire burneth long ;

And time's delay doth work her grievous wrong.

The extreme subtlety and rhetorical minuteness with which this image is wrought somewhat impair its pictorial power. But we must remember that this effect was calculated for an audience sensitive to the cadences of rhythmical declamation in the age which had invented modern music. For them 'the linked sweetness long drawn out 1 of Guarini's verbal melody had a pecular charm. In order to show how poeta can employ similar natural suggestions to point opposite lessons, let us set Guarini's 'all discoloured* rose beside Shakespeare's

Pale primroses,

That die unmarried ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady Most incident to maids.

Finally, notice how Shakespeare puts the central thought of Guarini, when he chooses, into a single phrase :

She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek.

Here the word damask brings the rose before us, as a little earlier in Twelfth-Night the Duke gives the old analogy between the rose and woman's beauty in a couplet :

For women are as roses, whose fair flower, Being onoe displayed, doth fall that very hour.

THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 363

It is now time to trace the influence of the Catullian and Ausonian motives over English and French poetry. Spenser's magnificent paraphrase from Tasso follows the original closely, but omits, whether intentionally or not, to dwell upon the line derived through Ariosto from Catullus. 1

The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay : Ah ! see, whoso fair thing dost fain to see, In springing flower the image of the day. Ah ! see the Virgin Hose, how sweetly she Dost first peep forth with bashful modesty, That fairer seems the less ye see her may. Lo, see soon after how more bold and free Her bared bosom she doth broad display ;

Lo, see soon after how she fades and falls away.

So passeth, in the passing of a day,

Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower ; Ne more doth flourish after first decay, That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower Of many a lady and many a paramour. Gather therefore the rose whilst yet in prime, For soon comes age that will her pride deflower : Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time,

Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.

It so happens that none of the pieces which I have hitherto presented in this essay, with the exception of Tasso 's stanzas and Bayley's version of them, occur in Mrs. Boyle's book. This does not prove the poverty of her anthology, but the extraordinary richness of rose-literature. In tracing the influence of Ausonius and Catullus upon modern poetry, I shall, from this point forward, be able to refer to the pages of ' Ros Rosarum.' Ronsard's sonnet, * Comme on voit sur la branche,' is interesting, as a somewhat faithful study from Catullus ; but the maiden rose for whom he wrote it, had been cropped by death, not by dishonour. 2 His more cele- brated lyric, * Mignonne, allez voir si la rose,' which has been so elegantly translated by Mr. Andrew Lang, refines upon the motive of Ausonius. 3 Here, in the French ' Cueillez, cueillez

1 Faery Queen, ii. xii. 74, 75.

• Ros Rosarum, p. 78. 8 Ibid. p. 79.

864 THE PATHOS 0# THE ROSE Itf POETRY

votre jeunesse,' we recognise the Latin Collige virgo rosam. In another sonnet Ronsard renders the leading theme of the same idyll thus : l

Un soleil voit naltre et mourir la Rose.

When we turn to English poetry, we find in Samuel Daniel's sonnet, * Look, Delia/ a pretty close rendering of Tasso's stanzas. 2 William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, applied the metaphor of the rose to the waning of human life, without any particular reference to youthful beauty. 3 But the dominant note sounds again in Herrick's incomparable ' Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' and in Waller's graceful 1 Go, lovely Rose.' 4 For a final touch I will transcribe a little fragment of Herrick's. It occurs in a poem which was borrowed straight from the lines of Theocritus quoted above

(p. 351) : 6

This to your coyness I will tell ; And having spoke it once, farewell. The lily will not long endure, Nor the snow continue pure ; The rose, the violet, one day Sees both these lady flowers decay, And you must fade as well as they.

If I am right in reading ' sees ' in the last line but one, then even here, too, we have a reminiscence of the Ausonian idyll.

From the analysis which I have partly made and partly suggested in the foregoing pages, it will be seen how much modern poetry owes to now almost neglected sources in antique literature, and with what varied gracefulness of new life the singers of the past four centuries invested themes which they derived from scholarship. Other students, who have traversed different fields of European poetry, will probably be able to complete the pedigree which I have endeavoured to establish in its main outlines from Ausonius o Waller.

1 Ros Rosarum, p. 80. 2 Ibid. p. 119.

8 Ibid. p. 138. 4 Ibid. pp. 147, 150.

5 Ibid. p. 148. It is from * The Cruel Maid.'

A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN WITH VICTORIAN POETRY

ENGLISH literature, under the Tudors and the first king of the house of Stuart, owed much of its unexampled richness to a felicitous combination of circumstances. Feudalism had received a mortal wound in the Wars of the Roses, and was dying. The people came to knowledge of itself, and acquired solidity during the reigns of Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Elizabeth. Englishmen were brought into the fellowship of European nations through Wolsey's audacious diplomacy. They began to feel their force as an important factor, which had henceforth to be reckoned with in peace or war. Grave perils attended the formation of Great Britain into a separate and self-sustaining integer of Europe ; nor was it until the Protectorate that these islands made their full weight recog- nised. None of the perils, however, which shook England during the period of consolidation, sufficed to disturb the equilibrium of government and social order. On the other hand, they stimulated patriotism, and braced the nation with a sense of its own dignity. Our final rupture with Rome, after the trials of Queen Mary's reign were over, satisfied the opinion of a large majority. Our collision with Spain, in the crisis marked by the Armada, took a turn which filled the population with reverent and religious enthusiasm. These two decisive passages in English history promoted the pride of the race, and inspired it with serious ardour. Instead of weakening the Crown or the Qhurch, they had the effect of rendering both necessary to the nation. Then, when Scotland was united to England and Ireland, at the accession of James,

366 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

a disciplined and nobly expansive people thought themselves for a moment on the pinnacle of felicity.

While the English were thus becoming a powerful and self-conscious nation, those intellectual changes which divided the mediaeval from the modern period, and which we know by the names of Renaissance and Reformation, took place. It is a peculiarity of this transition time in our islands, that what used to be called 'the new learning,' with its new theories of education, its new way of regarding nature, and its new conceptions of human life, was introduced simultane- ously with the Reformation. Italy had accomplished the Revival of Learning ; Germany had revolted against Catholic- ism. France had felt both movements unequally and partially, amid the confusion of civil wars and the clash of contending sects. Italy, after the Tridentine Council, was relapsing into reactionary dulness. Germany was dismembered by strifes and schisms. France underwent the throes of a passionate struggle, which subordinated the intellectual aspects of both Renaissance and Reformation to political interest. England alone, meanwhile, enjoyed the privilege of receiving that two- fold influx of the modern spirit without an overwhelming strain upon her vital forces. The Marian persecution was severe enough to test the bias of the people, and to remind them of the serious points at issue, without rending society to its foundations. Humanism reached our shores when its first enthusiasms enthusiasms which seemed in Italy to have brought again the gods and vices of the pagan past had tempered their delirium. We have only to compare men like More, Ascham, Colet, Buchanan, Camden, Cheke, the pioneers of our Renaissance, with Filelfo, Poggio, Poliziano, Pontano, in order to perceive how far more sober and healthy was the tone of the new learning in Great Britain than in Italy.

In this connection it is worthy of notice that humanism, before it moulded the minds of the English, had already permeated Italian and French literature. Classical erudition had been adapted to the needs of modern thought. Antique authors had been collected, printed, annotated, and translated. They were fairly mastered in the south, and assimilated to

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 367

the style of the vernacular. By these means much of the learning popularised by our poets, essayists, and dramatists came to us at second-hand, and bore the stamp of con- temporary genius. In like manner, the best works of Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature were introduced into Great Britain together with the classics. The age favoured translation, and English readers, before the close of the sixteenth century, were in possession of a cosmopolitan library in their mother tongue, including choice specimens of ancient and modern masterpieces.

These circumstances sufficiently account for the richness and variety of Elizabethan literature. They also help to explain two points which must strike every student of that literature its native freshness, and its marked unity of style.

Elizabethan literature was fresh and native, because it was the utterance of a youthful race, aroused to vigorous self- consciousness under conditions which did not depress or exhaust its energies. The English opened frank eyes upon the discovery of the world and man, which had been effected by the Renaissance. They were not wearied with collecting, collating, correcting, transmitting to the press. All the hard work of assimilating the humanities had been done for them. They had only to survey and to enjoy, to feel and to express, to lay themselves open to delighful influences, to con the noble lessons of the past, to thrill beneath the beauty and the awe of an authentic revelation. Criticism had not laid its cold, dry finger on the blossoms of the fancy. The ne^v learning was still young enough to be a thing of wonder and entrancing joy. To absorb it sufficed. Like the blood made in the veins of a growing man by strong meat and sound wine, it coursed to the brain and created a fine frenzy. That was a period of bright ideas, stimulating creative faculty, animating the people with hope and expectation, undimmed, untarnished by the corrosion of the analytic reason. ' Nobly wild, not mad/ the adolescent giants of that age, Marlowe and Raleigh, Spenser and Shakespeare, broke into spontaneous numbers, charged with the wisdom and the passion of the ages fused in a divine clairvoyance.

368 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

Elizabethan literature has a marked unity of style. We notice a strong generic similarity in those poets which veils their specific differences. That is perhaps the first and most salient point of contrast between Elizabethan and Victorian literature. It makes a cautious critic pause. After the lapse of two centuries, he asks himself, will Byron, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, Tennyson, Campbell, William Morris, Rogers, Swinburne, Clough, Rossetti, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Matthew Arnold, and the rest of them, seem singing to one dominant tune, in spite of their so obvious differences? Will our posterity discern in them the note in common which we find in Sidney, Herrick, Spenser, Shake- speare, Fletcher, Marlowe, Jonson, Barnfield, Dekker, Marston, Chapman, Raleigh, Drayton, Drummond, Webster, and the rest of those great predecessors ? The question has to be asked ; but the answer is not easily given. We can neither reject ourselves into the past nor project ourselves into the future, with certainty sufficient to decide whether what looks like similarity in the Elizabethan poets, and what looks like diversity in the Victorian poets, are illusions of the present.

Yet something can be attempted in explanation of the apparent puzzle. The circumstances of the Elizabethan age favoured unity of style. The language, to begin with, had recently been remade under the influence of new ideals and new educational systems. Far more than lapse of years and wastes of desolating warfare separated sixteenth-century English from the speech of Chaucer. The spirit itself, which shapes language to the use of mind, had changed through the action of quickening conceptions and powerfully excited energies. And to this change in the spirit the race was eagerly responsive. In a certain way all writers felt the Bible, Greece, Rome, Italy, France, Germany; all strove to be in tune with the new learning. At the same time, criticism was hardly in its cradle ; you find a trace of it in Jonson, Bacon, Selden, Camden; but it does not touch the general. The people were anything but analytical, and poetry issued from th0 very people's hearts, as melody from the strings of the -violoncello. The spontaneity which we have

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 869

already noted as a main mark of Elizabethan utterance, led thus to unity of style. The way in which classical master- pieces were then studied, conduced to the same result. Those perennial sources of style were enjoyed in their entirety, absorbed, assimilated, reproduced with freedom. They were not closely scrutinised, examined with the microscope, studied with the view of emphasising this or that peculiarity a single critic found in them. And the same holds good about contemporary foreign literatures. Everything which these literatures contained was grist for the English mill ; not models to be copied, but stuff to be used.

Now compare the intellectual conditions of the Victorian age. Take language first. Instead of having no literary past, except Chaucer, Skelton, the English Bible, and Sir Thomas Malory behind our backs, we have the long self-conscious period between Dryden and Byron, during which our mother tongue was carefully elaborated upon a definite system, Victorian poetry has to reckon with Elizabethan poetry and the poetry of Queen Anne for English people call their epochs by the names of queens. This constitutes at the outset a great difference, making for diversity in style. A writer has more models to choose from, more openings for the exercise of his personal predilections. And the mental attitude has altered also. We are highlj conscious of our aims, profoundly analytical. All study oi literature has become critical and comparative. The scientifu spirit makes itself powerfully felt in the domain of art It is impossible for people of the present to be as fresh and native as the Elizabethans were. Such a mighty stream, navies Styx interfusa, in the shape of accumulated erudition, grave national experiences, spirit-quelling doubts, insurgent philosophies, and all too aching pressing facts and fears, divides the men of this time from the men of that. It is enough now to have indicated these points. The argument will return to some of them in detail. For the moment we may safely assert that a prominent note of Elizabethar as distinguished from Victorian literature is unity of tone

B B

370 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

due to the felicitous circumstances of the nation in that earlier period.

II

What, then, is the characteristic of Elizabethan poetry? 'I think the answer to this question lies in the words freedom, adolescence, spontaneity; mainly freedom. The writers of that age were free from the bondage to great [names, Virgil or Cicero or Seneca. They owned no allegiance to great languages, like the Latin ; to famous canons of taste, like the Aristotelian unities ; to scholastic authority and academical prescription. They were politically and socially free, adoring the majesty of England in the person of their sovereign, and flattering a national ideal when they burned poetic incense to Elizabeth. That strain of servility which jars upon our finer sense in the. romantic epics of Ariosto and Tasso is wholly absent from ' The Faery Queen.' They were notably free in all that appertains to religion. Where but in England could a playwright have used words at once so just and so bold as these of Dekker ?

The best of men

That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit : The first true gentleman that ever breathed.

A delicate taste can hardly be offended by this reference to Christ, and yet we feel that it could not have been made except in an age of undisputed liberty. Their freedom was the freedom of young strength, untrammelled energies, with El Dorado in the western main, and boundless regions for the mind to traverse. This makes their touch on truth and goodness and beauty so right, so natural, so unerring. They have the justice of perception, the clarity of vision, the cleanliness of feeling which belong to generous and healthy manhood in its earliest prime. The consequence of this freedom was that each man in that age wrote what he thought best, wrote out of himself, and sang spontaneously. He had no fear of academies, of censorship, of critical coteries,

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 871

of ecolesiastical censure, before his eyes. How different in this respeot was the liberty of Shakespeare from the servitude of Tasso. At the same time, as we have already seen, this spontaneity was controlled by a strong sense of national unity. The English were possessed with an ideal, which tuned their impassioned utterances to one keynote. The spirit of the people was patriotic, highly moralised, intensely human, animated by a robust belief in reality; martial, yet jealous of domestic peace; assiduous in toil, yet quick to overleap material obstacles and revel in the dreams of the imagination; manly, but delicate; inured to hardship, but not quelled as yet by disappointment and the disillusion of experience. In a word, Elizabethan poetry is the utterance of * a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks .... like an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam.'

Freedom being thus the dominant note of Elizabethan poetry, it follows that the genius of the race will return to it with love and admiration at epochs marked by the resurgent spirit of liberty. This is why the literature of the Victorian age has been so powerfully influenced by that of Elizabeth. The French Revolution shook Europe to the centre, and opened illimitable vistas at the commencement of the century. In 1815, England, after her long struggle with Napoleon, stood crowned with naval and military laurels, in possession of a hardly-earned peace. It is not to be wondered that critics like Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, editors like Gifford, historians like Collier, should have ransacked the forgotten treasures of the Shakespearian drama at this moment. Poetry aimed at Elizabethan phraseology and used Elizabethan metres. Byron adapted the Spenserian and octave stanzas to his purposes of satire and- description : Keats and Shelley treated the heroic couplet with Elizabethan laxity of structure and variety of cadence; Wordsworth and Coleridge revived the Elizabethan rhythms of blank verse. The sonnet was culti- vated, and lyrical measures assumed bewildering forms of richness. At the same time, a revolt began against those

BB2

872 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

canons of taste which had prevailed in the last century. Wordsworth denounced conventional poetic diction ; it savoured of literary treason to profess a particular partiality for Pope; fancy was preferred to sense, exuberance of imagery to chastened style, audacity of invention to logic and correctness.

This return to Elizabethanism has marked the whole course of Victorian poetry. But times are changed, and we ourselves are changed in them. The men of this century have never recaptured ' the first fine careless rapture * of the sixteenth century. What were dreams then, have become sober expect- ations. Instead of El Dorado we have conquered California, the gold-fields of Australia, the diamond mines of South Africa. Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries North America was won and lost ; East India was gained by heroism and adventure worthy of a Drake and Raleigh ; and now the crown of that vast empire on the forehead of our Queen weighs heavy with the sense of serious responsibilities. The English race is no longer adolescent ; we cannot model our national genius like a beautiful young hero rejoicing in his naked strength and scattering armies by his shout : the sculptor who did so would forget the years which have ploughed wrinkles on that hero's forehead, the steam-engines which are his chariot, the ironclad navies which waft him over ocean, the electricity which plays like lightning in his eyes. Victorian poets cannot be spontaneous in the same sense as our ancestors were. Like lago, they are nothing if not critical. Science has imposed on them her burden of analysis, and though science reveals horizons far beyond the dreams of Bacon, it fills the soul with something well-nigh kin to hope- lessness. Man shrinks before the Universe. We have lived through so much ; we have seen so many futile philosophies rise like mushrooms and perish ; we have tried so many political experiments, and listened to so many demagogues of various complexions, that a world-fatigue has penetrated deep into our spirit. The masterpiece of the century is Goethe's Faust, and its hero suffers from the Welt-schmerz. A simple faith in God and the Bible yields to critical inquiry, compara-

WITH VICTOBIAN K)ETR 373

tive theology, doubts and difficulties of all kinds. Religious liberty in this age consists more in the right to disbelieve as we think best than to believe according to our conscience. Pessimism, already strong in Byron, has grown and gathered strength with introspection until we find it lurking in nearly all the sincerest utterances of the present. We are oppressed with social problems which admit of no solution, due to the vast increase of our population, to the industrial changes which have turned England from an agricultural into a manufacturing country, to the unequal distribution of wealth, the development of huge, hideous towns, the seething multi- tudes of vicious and miserable paupers which they harbour. We watch the gathering of revolutionary storm-clouds, hear the grumbling of thunder in the distance, and can only sit meanwhile in darkness so gigantic and unmanageable are the forces now in labour for some mighty birth of time. Who can be optimistic under these conditions ? * Merry England ' sounds like a mockery now. Instead of merry England the Victorian poet has awful, earnest, grimly menacing London io sing in. His temptation, especially in the third period of our century, is to retire from the world into an artificial paradise of art, and there, among exotic fragrances and foreign airs, to seek a refuge from the sombre problems forced upon him by the actualities of life. These things were not felt so much at the beginning of the century ; they are bringing it to a close in sadness and strong searchings of soul.

Ill

Elizabethan genius found its main expression in the drama. No epic worthy of the name was produced in the sixteenth century, for Spenser's * Faery Queen ' has not the right to be so styled. But every great national epoch which attains to utterance through art has a specific clairvoyance, and England in the age we call Elizabethan was clairvoyant for the drama ; that is to say, men wrought with an unerring instinct in this field, and the lesser talents were lifted into the sphere of the greater when they entered it. After the drama, and closely

374 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

associated with it, came those songs for music in which the English of the sixteenth century excelled. The lyric rapture, that which has been called the lyric cry, penetrates all verbal music of that period. We find it modulating blank verse and controlling the rhythms of the couplet and the stanza. The best subsidiary work of the age consisted of transla- tions, adaptations, and free handlings of antique themes in narrative verse. Chapman's * Homer,' Fairfax's * Tasso,' Marlowe's ' Hero and Leander,' Shakespeare's ' Venus and Adonis ' and the ' Rape of Lucrece,' rank among the master- pieces of Elizabethan poetry. But drama and song, when all accounts are settled, remain the crowning glories of that literature.

The Victorian age can boast no national drama. Poetical plays have indeed been produced which do credit to the talents of their authors. 1 Yet the century haa riot expressed its real stuff, nor shown its actual clairvoyance in that line. We cannot point to a Victorian drama as we do to an Elizabethan drama, and challenge the world to match it. This is due perhaps in part to those incalculable changes which have substituted the novel for the drama. The public of the present time is a public of readers rather than of hearers, and the muster-roll of brilliant novelists, from Scott and Jane Austen, through Thackeray and Dickens, down to George Eliot and George Meredith, can be written off against the playwrights |of the sixteenth century. Poetry, surveyed from a sufficient altitude, claims these imaginative makers, though they used the vehicle of prose. Even less than the sixteenth has the nineteenth produced an epic, and for similar reasons. Tennyson chose the right name for his Arthurian string of studies when he called them ' Idylls of the King.' To claim for them epical coherence was only a brilliant afterthought. It is not given to any race under the conditions of conscious culture to create a genuine epic. *That rare flower of art puts forth its bloom in the first dawn of national existence. If we

1 Darley, Landor, Beddoes, Home, Procter, Shelley, Browning, Taylor, Swinburne, and possibly Tennyson, demand commemoration in a footnote.

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 375

except the ' Iliad ' and the * Odyssey/ how few real epics does the human race possess 1 The German ' Nibelungen Lied ' is a late rifacimento of Scandinavian sagas. Sir Thomas Malory's l Morte d' Arthur,' our nearest approach to a true epic, is the digest of a score of previous romances. The 1 Song of Roland ' is an epical lyric. We call the * ^Bneid ' an epic because it throbs with the sense of Rome. Tanta molis erat Eomanam condere gentem. We call the 'Divine Comedy ' an epic because it embalms the spirit of the Middle Ages at their close ; we call * Paradise Lost * and ' Paradise Regained ' epics because they carry such a weight of meaning and are so monumentally constructed. But the '-ZEneid,' the * Divine Comedy,' and Milton's 'Paradise* are not epics in the proper sense of the word : they are the products of reflection and individual genius, not the self-expression of a nation in its youth. And just as the novel has absorbed our forces for the drama, so has it satisfied our thirst for epical narration. In that hybrid form where poetry assumes the garb of prose, both drama and epic for the modern world lie embedded.

What, then, are the specific channels of Victorian utterance in verse ? To define them is difficult, because they are so subtly varied and so inextricably interwoven. Yet I think they may be superficially described as the idyll and the lyric. Under the idyll I should class all narrative and descriptive poetry, of which this age has been extraordinarily prolific ; sometimes assuming the form of minstrelsy, as in the lays of Scott ; sometimes approaching to the classic style, as in the Hellenics of Landor ; sometimes rivalling the novelette, as in the work of Tennyson ; sometimes aiming at psychological analysis, as in the portraits drawn by Robert Browning ; sometimes con- fining art to bare history, as in Crabbe ; sometimes indulging flights of pure artistic fancy, as in Keats' ' Endymion ' and ' Lamia.' Under its many metamorphoses the narrative and descriptive poetry of our century bears the stamp of the idyll, because it is fragmentary and because it results in a picture. Here it inclines to the drama, here it borrows tone from the epic ; in one plaoe it is lyrical, in another it is didactic ; fancy

376 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

has presided over the birth of this piece, reflection has attended the production of that. But in each case the artist has seen his subject within narrow compass, treated that as a complete whole, and given to the world a poem in the narrative and descriptive style, reminding us of the epic in its general form, of the drama or the lyric in its particular treatment. Those who have read the technical lessons which the idylls of Theocritus convey, will understand why I classify this exuberant jungle of Victorian poetry under the common title of idyll.

No literature and no age has been more fertile of lyric poetry than English literature in the age of Victoria. The fact is apparent. I should superfluously burden my readers if I were to prove the point by reference to Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Rossetti, Clough, Swinburne, Arnold, Tennyson, and I do not know how many of less illustrious but splendid names, in detail. The causes are not far to seek. Without a comprehensive vehicle like the epic, which belongs to the first period of national life, or the drama, which belongs to its secondary period, our poets of a later day have had to sing from their inner selves, subjectively, intro- spectively, obeying impulses from nature and the world, which touched them not as they were Englishmen, but as they were this man or that woman. They had no main current of literature wherein to plunge themselves, and cry : l Ma naufragar m' & dolce in questo mar.' * They could not forego what made them individuals ; tyrannous circumstances of thought and experience rendered their sense of personality too acute. When they sang, they sang with their particular voice ; and the lyric is the natural channel for such song. I But what a complex thing is this Victorian lyric ! It includes Wordsworth's sonnets and Rossetti's ballads, Coleridge's ' Ancient Mariner ' and Keats' odes, Clough's ' Easter Day ' and Tennyson's ' Maud,' Swinburne's ' Songs before Sunrise ' and Browning's ' Dramatis Persons,' Thomson's * City of Dreadful Night ' and Mary Robinson's * Handful of Honey-

1 ' To drown in this great tide is sweet for me.'

WITH VICTOBIAN POETRY 377

suckles/ Andrew Lang's Ballades and Sharp's ' Weird of Michael Scot, 1 Dobson's dealings with the eighteenth century and Noel's 'Little Child's Monument,' Barnes's Dorsetshire Poems and Buchanan's London Lyrics, the songs from

• Empedocles on Etna ' and Ebenezer Jones's ' Pagan Drinking

Chant,' Shelley's Ode to the West Wind and Mrs. Browning's 1 Pan is Dead,' Newman's hymns and Gosse's Chant Royal. The kaleidoscope presented by this lyric is so inexhaustible that any man with the fragment of a memory might pair off scores of poems by admired authors, and yet not fall upon the same parallels as those which I have made.

The genius of our century, debarred from epic, debarred from drama, falls back upon idyllic and lyrical expression. In the idyll it satisfies its objective craving after art. In the lyric it pours forth personality. It would be wrong, however, to limit the wealth of our poetry to these two branches. Such poems as Wordsworth's ' Excursion,' Byron's ' Don Juan ' and * Childe Harold,' Mrs. Browning's ' Aurora Leigh,' William Morris's 'Earthly Paradise,' Clough's 'Amours de Voyage,' are not to be classified in either species. They are partly autobiographical, and in part the influence of the tale makes itself distinctly felt in them. Nor again can we omit the translations, of which so many have been made ; some of them real masterpieces and additions to our literature. Gary's Dante, Rossetti's versions from the early Tuscan lyrists, FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam, are eminent examples. But the list might be largely extended. Then again Morris's ' Song of Sigurd,' Swinburne's ' Tristram of Lyonesse,' E. Arnold's ' Light of Asia,' deserve a place apart, as epical rehandlings of memorable themes.

IV

In all this Victorian poetry we find the limitations of our epoch, together with its eminent qualities. Criticism and contemplation have penetrated literature with a deeper and more pervasive thoughtfulness. Our poets have lost spontaneity and joyful utterance. But they have acquired a keener sense of the problems which perplex humanity. The

378 A COMPAKISON OF ELIZABETHAN

author of * In Memoriam ' struck a false note when he exclaimed :

J I sing but as the linnet sings.

Nothing can be more unlike a linnet's song than the meta- physical numbers of that justly valued threnody. Clough came closer to the truth when he hinted at the poet's problem in this age as thus :

To finger idly some old Gordian knot, Unskilled" to sunder and too weak to cleave, And with much toil attain to half-believe.

The most characteristic work of the century has a double object, artistic and philosophical. Poetry is used to express some theory of life. In Byron the world-philosophy is cynical or pessimistic. Shelley interweaves his pantheism with visions of human perfectibility. Wordsworth proclaims an esoteric cult of nature. Swinburne at one time rails against the tyrant gods, at another preaches the gospel of republican revolt. Matthew Arnold embodies a system of ethical and sBsthetical criticism in his verse. Clough expresses the changes which the Christian faith has undergone, and the perplexities of conduct. Thomson indulges the blackest pessimism, a pessimism more dolorous than Leopardi's. Browning is animated by a robust optimism, turning fearless somersaults upon the brink of the abyss. Mrs. Browning condenses speculations upon social and political problems. Eoden Noel, too little appreciated to be rightly understood, attempts a world-embracing metaphysic of mysticism. Even those poets who do not yield so marked a residuum of philosophy are touched to sadness and gravity by the intel- lectual atmosphere in which they work. Virgil's great line : Sunt lacrimas rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt

might be chosen as a motto for the corpus poetarum of our epoch. In reading what the age has produced, certain phrases linger in our memory

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

The still, sad music of humanity,

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 379

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Tears from the depth of some divine despair.

Seek, seeker, in thyself, submit to find

In the stones bread and life in the blank mind.

These haunt us like leading -phrases, the master notes of the whole music.

Starting with enthusiasm at the commencement of the century, our poets have gradually lost such glow of hope as inspired them with spontaneous numbers in its earlier decades. The wide survey of elder and contemporary literatures sub- mitted to their gaze has rendered them more assimilative, reproductive, imitative, reminiscent than spontaneous. When Matthew Arnold defined poetry in general to be ' a criticism of life,' he uttered a curious and pregnant paradox. It would be hardly a paradox to assert that Victorian poetry is in large measure the criticism of all existing literatures. More and more we have dedicated our powers to the study of technic- alities, to the cultivation of the graces, the elaboration of ornament, and to the acclimatisation upon English soil of flowers borrowed from alien gardens of the Muses. We have forgotten what George Sand said to Flaubert about style :

• Tu la consid&res comme un but, elle n'est qu'un effet.'

The result is a polychromatic abundance of what may be called cultured poetry, which does not reach the heart of the people, and does not express its spirit. That is due, no doubt, in part to the fact that there is less of aspiration than of meditation to deal with now, less of an actual joy in eventful living than of serious reflection upon the meanings and the purposes of life. Yet this poetry is true to the spirit of a critical and cultured age ; and when the time comes to gather up the jewels of Victorian literature, it will be dis- covered how faithfully the poets have uttered the thoughts of the educated minority.

A comprehensive survey of our poetry is rendered difficult by the fact that no type, like the drama of the sixteenth century, has controlled its movement. We cannot regard it

380 A COMPARISON 0? ELIZABETHAN

as a totality composed of many parts, progressing through several stages of development. In this respect, again, it obeys the intellectual conditions of the century. Its inner unity will eventually be found, not in the powerful projection of a nation's soul, but in the careful analysis and subtle delineation of thoughts and feelings which agitated society during one of the most highly self-conscious and specu- lative periods which the world has passed through. The genius of the age is scientific, not artistic. In such an age poetry must perforce be auxiliary to science, showing how individual minds have been touched to fine issues of rhythmic utterance by the revolutions in thought which history, philo- sophy, and criticism are effecting.

Passing from these general reflections to points of com- parison in detail, we must remember that Victorian poetry started with a return to Elizabethan, and that this motive impulse has never wholly been lost sight of. The two periods may be fitly compared in that which both possess in common, a copious and splendid lyric. Our means of studying Eliza- bethan lyric poetry have been largely increased in the past years by the labours of Mr. Thomas Oliphant, Professor Arber, Mr. W. J. Linton, and Mr. A. H. Bullen. To the last- named of these gentlemen we owe three volumes of lyrics culled from Elizabethan song-books, which are a perfect mine of hitherto neglected treasures. 1 Taken in connection with the songs from the dramatists and the collected lyrics of men like Sidney, Raleigh, Spenser, Herrick, these books furnish us with a tolerably complete body of poems in this species.

What strikes us in the whole of this great mass of lyric poetry, is its perfect adaptation to music, its limpidity and

1 They are published by Mr. J. C. Nimmo, the last of them, called

• Love Poems from the Song-Books of the Seventeenth Century,' being

privately printed.

WITH VICTOKIAN POETRY 881

directness of utterance. Like Shelley's skylark, the poet has been

Pouring his full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Each composition is meant to be sung, and can be sung, because the poet's soul was singing when he made it. They are not all of one kind or of equal simplicity. The lyrics from the song-books, for example, have not the intensity of some songs introduced into the dramas of that period, 'in which,' as Mr. Pater once observed while speaking of the verses sung by Mariana's page in Measure for Measure, ' the kindling power and poetry of the whole play seems to pass for a moment into an actual strain of music. 1 They are rarely so high-strung and weighty with meaning as Webster's dirges or as Ford's and Shirley's solemn descants on the transitori- ness of earthly love and glory. Nor, again, do we often welcome in them that fulness of romantic colour which makes the lyrics of Beaumont and Fletcher so resplendent. This is perhaps because their melodies are not the outgrowth of dramatic situations, but have their life and being in the aerial element of musical sound. For the purposes of singing they are exactly adequate, being substantial enough to sustain and animate the notes and yet so slight as not to overburden these with too much meditation and emotion. We feel that they have arisen from the natural marrying of musical words to musical phrases in the minds which made them. They are the right verbal counterpart to vocal and instrumental melody, never perplexing and surcharging the tones which need language for a vehicle with complexities of fancy, invo- lutions of ideas, or the disturbing tyranny of vehement passions. And this right quality of song, the presence of which indicates widespread familiarity with musical require- ments in England of the sixteenth century, may be likewise found in the more deliberate lyrics of dramatic or literary poets in Jonson's and Shakespeare's stanzas, in the lofty odes of Spenser and the jewelled workmanship of Herrick. We discover but little of this quality in the lyrics of the

882 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

Victorian age. It is noticeable that those poets upon whom we are apt to set the least store now, as Byron, Scott, Hood, Campbell, Moore, Barry Cornwall, Mrs. Hemans, possessed it in greater perfection than their more illustrious contemporaries.

I once asked an eminent musician, the late Madame Goldschmidt, why Shelley's lyrics were ill-adapted to music. She made me read aloud to her the * Song of Pan ' and those lovely lines ' To the Night,' ' Swiftly walk o'er the western wave, Spirit of Night ! ' Then she pointed out how the verbal melody seemed intended to be self-sufficing in these lyrics, how full of complicated thoughts and changeful images the verse is, how packed with consonants the words are, how the tone of emotion alters, and how no one melodic phrase could be found to fit the daedal woof of the poetic emotion.

' Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,

Star-inwrought !

Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, Kiss her until she be wearied out

1 How different that is,' said Madame Goldschmidt, * from the largo of your Milton :

• Let the bright Seraphim in burning row,

Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow ! !

• How different it is from Heine's simplicity :

Auf Fliigeln des Gesanges Herzliebchen trag' ich dich fort.

' I can sing them,' and she did sing them then and there, much to my delight; 'and I can sing Dryden, but I could not sing your Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats ; no, and not much of your Tennyson either. Tennyson has sought out all the solid, sharp words, and put them together ; music cannot come between.' This was long ago, and it gave me many things to think over, until I could comprehend to what

1 Madame Goldschmidt sang these lines from the book of Handel's Samps&n. In Milton they begin with where, not let.

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 383

extent the best lyrics of the Victorian age are not made to be sung.

Madame Goldschmidt's remarks were only partially true perhaps. There is no reason, if we possessed a Schubert, why Coleridge's ' Kubla Khan ' should not be set to music ; and Handel could surely have written alternate choruses and solos for a considerable part of Wordsworth's ' Ode to Duty.' Yet the fact remains that Victorian lyrics are not so singable as Elizabethan lyrics; and the reason is that they are far more complex, not in their verbal structure merely, but in the thoughts, images, emotions which have prompted them. The words carry too many, too various, too con- templative suggestions. Nothing can be lyrically more lovely than :

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.

Or than :

Fair are others : none beholds thee :

But thy voice sounds low and tender Like the fairest, for it folds thee

From the sight, that liquid splendour ; And all feel, yet see thee never, As I feel now, lost for ever !

Or than :

Will no one tell me what she sings ? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago ; Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matters of to-day ? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again.

But Wordsworth in the last of these examples is meditative, reflective, questioning ; his stanza will not suit the directness of musical melody. But the finest phrases in the specimens from Keats and Shelley, * charmed magic casements/ ' perilous seas,' ' that liquid splendour/ perplex and impede the movement of song.

884 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

It is not precisely in poignancy or depth or gravity c thought that the Victorian differ from the Elizabethan lyristi What can be more poignant than :

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot : Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

What can be deeper than :

Of what is't fools make such vain keeping ? Sin their conception, their birth weeping ; Their life a general mist of error, Their death a hideous storm of terror.

What can be graver than :

The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things ;

There is no armour against fate, Death lays his icy hand on kings.

For pure poignancy, profundity, and weight, Elizabeths lyrics will compare not unfavourably with Victorian. Tl difference does not consist in the ore worked by the lyrist but in their way of handling it. In this latter age a po allows himself far wider scope of treatment when he writ* a song. He does not think of the music of voice or viol, bi of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears < the soul. The result is a wealthier and fuller symphon reaching the imaginative sense not upon the path of music sound, but appealing to the mental ear and also to thi 'inward eye which is the bliss of solitude.' The Victoria lyric, superior in its range, suggestiveness, variety, ai richness, inferior in its spontaneity and birdlike intonatio corresponds to the highly- strung and panharmonic instrumei of the poet's spirit which produced it, and to the manifo sympathies of the reader's mind for which it was intende It is iridescent with the intermingled hues of fancy, GOJ templation, gnomic wisdom, personal passion, discursr

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 385

rhetoric, idyllic picture-painting. Modes of complicated expression, involving serried reasoning, audacious metaphors elliptical imagery, and rapid modulation from one key of feeling to another, which a playwright like Shakespeare employed only in his dramatic dialogue, find themselves at home in the lyrical poetry of our age.

VI

For another point of comparison, let us take some of those ' lyrical interbreathings ' in Elizabethan dramatic dialogue which are surcharged with sweetness, and contrast these with the sweetness of Victorian verse. I might select Shakespeare's lines upon the flowers scattered by Perdita in The Winter's Tale. But I prefer to choose my examples from less illustrious sources. Here, then, is the sweetness of Fletcher :

I do her wrong, much wrong ; she's young and blessed, Fair as the spring, and as his blossoms tender ; But I, a nipping north-wind, my head hung With hails and frosty icicles : are the souls so too, When they depart hence lame, and old, and loveless ? Ah, no ! 'tis ever youth there : age and death Follow our flesh no more ; and that forced opinion, That spirits have no sexes, I believe not.

Here is the sweetness of Ford :

For he is like to something I remember, A great while since, a long, long time ago.

Here is the sweetness of Dekker :

No, my dear lady, I could weary stars, And force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes By my late watching, but to wait on you. When at your prayers you kneel before the altar, Methinks I'm singing with some quire in heaven, So blest I hold me in your company.

Here is the sweetness of Massinger :

This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,

C C

386 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, In all the bravery my friends could show me, In all the faith my innocence could give me, In the best language my true tongue could tell me, And in the broken sighs my sick heart lent me, I sued and served.

The sweetness of these passages, none of which are singular, or such as may not be easily matched with scores of equal passages from the same and other playwrights, is like the sweetness of honey distilling from the honeycomb. It falls unsought and unpremeditated with the perfume of wilding flowers. Nay more, like honey from the jaws of Samson's lion, we feel it to be ex forti dulcedo, the sweetness of strength.

When we turn to the sweetness of Victorian poetry, we rarely find exactly the same quality. In Keats it is over- loaded ; in Coleridge it is sultry ; in William Morris it is cloying ; in Swinburne it is inebriating ; in Shelley it is volatilised ; in Wordsworth it is somewhat thin and arid ; in Tennyson it is sumptuous ; in Bossetti it is powerfully perfumed. We have exchanged the hedgerow flowers for heavy-headed double roses, and instead of honey we are not unfrequently reminded pardon the expression of jam. Poets who, by happy accident or deliberate enthusiasm, have at some moment come nearest to the Elizabethan simplicity and liquidity of utterance, catch this honeyed sweetness best. We feel that Browning caught it when he wrote :

A footfall there

Suffices to upturn to the warm air Half-germinating spices ; mere decay Produces richer life, and day by day New pollen on the lily petal grows, And still more labyrinthine buds the rose.

Tennyson produced something different when he wrote that musical idyll' Come down, maid, from yonder mountain height/ which closes upon two incomparable lines of linked melody long drawn out :

WITH VICTORIAN POETKY 387

The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Here, as in the former instance of lyric verse, it would be unreasonable to contend that Elizabethan poets surpassed the Victorian. On the contrary, the latter know more distinctly what they are about, and sustain the sweetness of their style at a more equal level. They are capable of a more perfectly even flow of sugared verse. What we have to notice is that the quality has altered, and that the change is due to the more involved, more concentrated intellectual conditions of the later age. Poets are no longer contented with impulsive expression. And as I said before, they cannot 'recapture the first fine careless rapture ' of their adolescent masters in the art of song. The wayward breezes and the breath of wild flowers in the earlier sweetness escape them.

VII

The freedom and spontaneity of the Elizabethan age had attendant drawbacks. Owing to the absence of reflection and self-criticism, poets fell into the vices of extravagance and exaggeration, bombast and euphuism. In their use of language, the indulgence of their fancy, the expression of sentiment and the choice of imagery, they sought after emphasis, and displayed but little feeling for the virtue of reserve. All the playwrights, without even the exception of Shakespeare, are tainted with these blemishes. Jonson, who was an excellent critic when he dictated mature opinions in prose, showed a lack of taste and selection in his dramas. There is a carelessness, a want of balance, a defect of judg- ment in the choice of materials and their management, a slovenliness of execution, throughout the work of that period. Superfluities of every kind abound, and at the same time we are distressed by singular baldness in details. What can be poorer, for example, than Jonson's translations from Virgil and Catullus, more clumsy and superfluous than his trans- lations from Sallust and Tacitus ? Poets seem to have been satisfied with saying, ' This will do, 1 instead of labouring till

c c 2

388 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

the thing was as it had to be. They tossed their beauties like foam upon the tide of tumultuous and energetic inspira- tion. Yet even in this carelessness and unconsidered fecundity we recognise some of the noblest qualities of the Elizabethan genius. There is nothing small or mean or compassed in that art. Its vices are the vices of the prodigal, not of the miser ; of the genial spendthrift, whose imprudence lies nearer to generosity than to wanton waste. We pardon many faults for the abounding vigour which marks these poets ; for their wealth of suggestive ideas, their true sym- pathy with nature, their insight into the workings of the human heart, their profuse stream of fresh and healthy feeling.

When the Elizabethan spirit declined in England, it was the business of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to impose limits on all this ' unchartered freedom ' of the intellect. Then the good and bad effects of critical canons and academical authority came to light. We had our Dryden and our Pope, our Goldsmith and Swift, our Addison and Steele, our Fielding and Johnson. But we had also a deplorable lack of real poetry in comparison with the foison of Elizabethan harvests. If not miserly, the English genius, so far as fancy and imagination are concerned, became thrifty. It erred by caution rather than by carelessness. It doled its treasures out like one who has a well-filled purse indeed, but who is not hopeful of turning all he touches into gold like Midas.

At the beginning of the Victorian age one sign of the return to Elizabethanism was the license which poets allowed themselves in matters pertaining to their art. Keats, in ' Endymion,' Shelley, in ' The Revolt of Islam,' Byron, in nearly every portion of his work, displayed Elizabethan faults of emphasis, unpruned luxuriance, defective balance. It was impossible, however, for the nineteenth century to be as euphuistic or as chaotic as the sixteenth. Taste, trained by critical education, and moulded by the writers of Queen Anne's reign, might rebel against rules, but could not help regarding them. In spite of these restraints, however, poets

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 389

who almost exactly reproduced the Elizabethans in their blemishes and virtues, like Wells and Beddoes, poets who caricatured them with a pathetic touch of difference, like Sydney Dobell and Alexander Smith, appeared about the middle of the century. And then Browning loomed on the horizon, surely the brawniest neo-Elizabethan Titan whom our age has seen, and whom it has latterly chosen to adore. As years advanced, mere haphazard fluency grew to be less and less admired ; and while keeping still within the sphere of romantic as opposed to classical art, the English poets aimed at chastened diction, correct form, polished versification. Tennyson, who represents the height of the Victorian period, brought poetic style again to the Milfconic or Virgilian point of finish. In him a just conception of the work as a whole, a cousciousness of his aims and how to attain them, together with a high standard of verbal execution, are combined with richness of fancy and sensuous magnificence worthy of an Elizabethan poet in all his glory.

When, therefore, we compare the two epochs upon this point of taste and style, we are able to award the palm of excellence to the latter. Having lost much, we have gained at least what is implied in artistic self-control, without relapsing into the rigidity of the last century.

VIII

The freedom, about which I have said so much, as forming the main note of Elizabethan poetry, accounts for the boldness with which men of letters treated moral topics, and for their clear-sighted outlook over a vast sphere of ethical casuistry. Not to the spirit of that age, but to the genius of our nation, I ascribe the manly instinct which guided these pioneers of exploration and experience through many a hazardous passage. The touch of the Elizabethan poets in such matters was almost uniformly right. They may show themselves gross, plain-spoken, voluptuous. We should not tolerate Jonson's Crispinus, or Shakespeare's Mercutio, or Marlowe's Hero and Leander at the present day. But they were not

390 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

prurient or wilfully provocative. It is impossible to imagine an Elizabethan Aretino, or an Elizabethan Beccadelli writers, that is to say, who deliberately attempt to interest those who read their works in moral garbage. Of garbage there is enough in that literature, and more than enough ; but only in the same sense as there were open drains and kennels in the streets of London, by the brink of which high-tempered gentlemen walked, and duels were fought, while dreams of love warmed young imaginations, and wise debates on state- craft or the destinies of empires were held by greybeards. Of such kind is the rivulet of filth in Elizabethan poetry, coursing, as the sewer then coursed, along the paths of men, dividing human habitations.

We have forced the sewage, which is inseparable from humanity, to run underneath our streets and houses. We have prohibited the entrance of unsavoury topics into our literature. If Marston were born again among us we should stop our noses, and bid the fellow stand aloof. Even Thomas Carlyle has been christened by even Mr. Swinburne, Copro- stomos, or some such Byzantine title, indicating intolerable coarseness. This shows how resolute we are to root out physical noisomeness, and with what sincerity we prefer typhoid poison to the plague accompanied by evil odours. It does not prove that we are spiritually cleaner than our ancestors. The right deduction is that the race has preserved its wholesomeness under conditions altered by a change of manners. Neither then nor now, in the age of Elizabeth or in the age of Victoria, has the English race devoted its deliberate attention to nasbiness.

In breadth of view, variety of subject, our Victorian poets rival the Elizabethan. Life has been touched again at all points and under every aspect with equal boldness and with almost equal manliness. But since the drama has ceased to be the leading form of literature, the treatment of moral topics has of necessity become more analytical and reflective. If space allowed, this opinion might be supported by a com- parison of the two epochs with regard to philosophic poetry. In sententious maxims, apophthegms on human fate, pithy

WITH VICTOKIAN POETKY 391

saws, and proverbial hints for conduct, Elizabethan literature abounds. But we do not here meet with poems steeped in a pervading tone of thought thought issuing from the writer's self, shaping his judgments, controlling his sensations, model- ling his language, forcing the reader to sojourn for a season in the brain-wrought palace of his mood. For instance, Shakespeare uttered the surest word of imaginative doubt, of that scepticism which makes man question his own sub- stantiality, when Prospero exclaimed :

We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

Mars ton in one phrase expressed man's desire to escape from self, that impossible desire which underlies all reaction against the facts of personal existence :

Can man by no means creep out of himself, And lea\ e the slough of viperous grief behind ?

Webster reiterated a dark conviction of man's impotence in lines like these :

We are merely the stars' tennis-balls, struck and bandied Which way please them.

Yet neither these nor any other Elizabethan poets elaborated their far-reaching views on life into schemes of versified philosophy. We do not find among them a Shelley or a Thomson. Pungent as the gnomic sentences of that age may be, they have relief and background in a large sane sympathy with man's variety of vital functions. The rapier of penetrative scrutiny is plunged and replunged into the deepest and most sensitive recesses of our being. But the thinker speedily withdraws his weapon, and suffers imagination to play with equal curiosity upon the stuff of action, passion, diurnal interests, the woof of sentient self-satisfied existence. Regarding human nature as a complex whole, those poets seized on its generic aspects and touched each aspect with brief incisive precision. Our poets are apt to concentrate

392 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

their mind upon one aspect, and to sublimate this into an all-engrossing element, which gives a certain sustained colour to their work. Less rich in gnomic wisdom, they are more potent in the communication of settled moods more ' sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought/ It follows that while the Elizabethans had nothing of what Goethe called l lazzaretto poetry,' we have much. The affectations of our age do not run toward verbal euphuism, but toward sickliness of senti- ment and a simulated discontent with the world around us. A man of Mr. Mallock's calibre would not have set society in the sixteenth century at work upon the problem, ' Is life worth living ? ' Schopenhauer and Hartmann could hardly have existed then, and they assuredly would not have found disciples. But in an age which produces essayists and philosophers of this sort, poetry cannot fail to be introspective and tinged with morbidity. Fortunately, though this is so, few verses have been written by Englishmen during the nineteenth century of which their authors need repent upon the death-bed.

IX

The Elizabethan poets, far more truly than their Italian predecessors, if we except Dante, and more truly than any of their contemporaries in other countries, loved external nature for its own sake. There is hardly any aspect of the visible world, from the flowers of the field to the storm-clouds of the zenith, from the stars in their courses to the moonlight sleeping on a bank, from the embossed foam, covering the sea- verge, to the topless Apennines, which was not seized with fine objective sensibility and illustrated with apt imagery by Shakespeare and his comrades. Yet, keenly appreciative of nature as these poets were, nature remained a background to humanity in all their pictures. Her wonders were treated as adjuncts to man, who moved across the earth and viewed its miracles upon his passage. Therefore, although imaginatively and sympathetically handled, these things were lightly and casually sketched.

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 393

The case is different with the literature of this century, for reasons which can be stated. In the first place, our poets have mostly been men leading a solitary life, in close con- nection with nature, withdrawn from the busy hum of populous cities. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Rossetti : it is clear, by only mentioning the leading poets of our age, that this is the fact ; and to enlarge the list would be to prove the point superfluously. Unlike the writers of the Restoration and Queen Anne's reign, Victorian poets have not breathed the atmosphere of society, the town, the coffee-house. Even if they lived in London, the town, the coffee-house, society had ceased to exist for them. Unlike the writers of Elizabeth's and James's reigns, they have not had the theatre, with its paramount interest in human action and passion, its vast and varied audience, to concentrate their gaze on man. And while circumstance divided them in this way from what Pope called * the proper study of mankind,' the special forms of poetry they cultivated idyllic and con- templative verse, lyric in its extended sense, descriptive and reflective led them perforce to nature as a source of inspira- tion. They worked, moreover, through a period in which the sister art of painting devoted herself continually more and more to the delineation of the outer world in landscape. And this brings us to the decisive difference, the deep and underlying reason why external nature has exercised so powerful and penetrative an influence over contemporary poetr/.* What we call science, that main energy of the age, which has sapped old systems of thought, and is creating a new basis for religion, forces man to regard himself as part and parcel of the universe. He is no longer merely in it, moving through it, viewing it and turning it round, as Sir Thomas Browne delightfully said, for his recreation. He knows himself to be, in a deep and serious sense, of it, obedient to the elements, owning allegiance to the sun.

Even the poets of the beginning of the century, who resented the impact of science most even Keats, who cried :

Do not all charms fly

At the mere touch of cold philosophy ?

394 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

bowed to the dominant spirit of the nineteenth century. Keats, 'the Elizabethan born out of due time,' as he has' been called, kept himself indeed unspotted from the contagion of science. Yet his passion for nature, moving though it did on lines traced by Spenser, has a far greater intensity, a far more fiery self-abandonment to the intoxication of earth, than would have been possible in the sixteenth century. Professor Conington used to formulate Keats' craving after nature in a somewhat ribald epigram : ' Would thou wert a lollipop, then I could suck thee.' The modern spirit took this form of sensuous imaginative subjectivity in Keats. In Byron it became a kind of lust, burning but disembodied, an escapement of the defrauded and disillusioned soul into com- munings with forces blindly felt to be in better and more natural tune with him than men were. Shelley's metaphysical mind was touched by nature to utterances of rapt philosophy, which may some day form the sacred songs of universal religion. * Prometheus Unbound* and the peroration of

• Adonais ' enclose in liquid numbers that sense of spirituality

permeating the material world upon which our future hopes are founded. Wordsworth, working apart from his contem- poraries, expressed man's affinity to nature and man's depen- dence on the cosmic order with greater reserve. Still, it is difficult to go farther in nature- worship than Wordsworth did in those sublimely pathetic lines written above Tintern Abbey ; and nothing indicates the difference between the Victorian and the Elizabethan touch on the world better than his blank verse fragment describing a pedestrian journey through the Simplon Pass.

In the course of the nineteenth century it might seem as though this passion for nature the passion of Keats, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth had declined. To assume this would, however, be a great mistake. What has steadily declined is the Elizabethan strain, the way of looking upon nature from outside. The modern strain, the way of looking upon nature as congenial to man, has strengthened, but with fear and rending of the heart, and doubt. The time is not yet ripe for poetry to resume the results of science with imaginative

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 395

grasp. What has been called the cosmic enthusiasm is too undefined as yet, too unmanageable, too pregnant with anxious and agitating surmise, to find free utterance in emotional literature. In our days science is more vitally poetical than art ; it opens wider horizons and excites the spirit more than verse can do. Where are the fictions of the fancy compared with the vistas revealed by astronomers, biologists, physicists, geologists ? Yet signs are not wanting I see them in some of the shorter poems of Lord Tennyson, I see them in the great neglected work of Roden Noel, I see them in the fugitive attempts of many lesser men than these which justify a sober critic in predicting that our century's enthusiasm for nature is but the prelude to a more majestic poetry, combining truth with faith and fact with imagination, than the world has ever known.

X

It will have been noticed that in this essay the terms Elizabethan and Victorian are used with considerable laxity. The object is to define two periods of English literature, the one extending from Wyatt to Milton, or, roughly speaking, from the year 1580 to the year 1650, the other covering the whole of the nineteenth century, and dating from the publica- tion of Walter Savage Landor's * Gebir.' These two periods are divided by a space of a hundred and fifty years, during which our literature developed upon lines divergent from the course taken by the Renaissance of the sixteenth century. I have contended that Victorian literature is marked by a reaction in favour of Elizabethanism, and that the general scope and tone of poetry in these periods are closely similar.

Form is a matter of such prominence in art that I shall perhaps be excused for recapitulating some points upon this topic. During the Restoration and Queen Anne's reign, versifiers lost the power and liking for that English unrhymed iambic, which began with Marlowe and culminated with Milton. They dropped the use of lyric measures, rarely employed the sestine or the octave or the Spenserian stanza, and so utterly neglected the sonnet, that even a poet of Gray's

396 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN

exquisite tact was unable to produce a tolerable specimen. The song became neat, terse, epigrammatic, shorn of pictur- esqueness, sparkling with elegance. But the dominant metre of the eighteenth century was the rhyming couplet. Poets used this form with a fine sense of its point, with a sustained respect for its structural limitations ; not as the Elizabethans had employed it, loosely, with variety of pause and period, and with frequent enjambements from one line to another. The wilding graces which we appreciate in the couplets of Marlowe, Beaumont, Spenser, Fletcher, were abhorred by the school of versifiers at whose head stands Pope.

In close connection with these changes in the form of poetry the intermediate period of a hundred and fifty years exhibits a marked alteration of artistic aim and feeling. Diction is connoted, luxuriant shoots are pruned ; wit, sense, and taste words recurring with significant frequency in the literature of the eighteenth century are cultivated at the expense of imagination and capricious fancy. At the height of the epoch a conceit is held in abomination, and a play on words regarded as a crime. The point and polish of Pope, the limpid purity of Goldsmith, the weighty eloquence of Johnson, were the climax of this counter movement in our literature. Didactic, satirical, epistolary compositions assumed predominance under the reign of criticism, sense, restricted form.

With the dawn of the Victorian age a second reaction set in. It was indicated by the Rowley poems of Chatterton, the lyrics of Blake, the sonnets of Bowles, the blank verse of Cowper and of Landor. Then the current ran strongly, as we have already seen, toward Elizabethan metres, Elizabethan modes of workmanship, and ways of regarding art and nature. The English Renaissance of the sixteenth century became renascent in the nineteenth.

It has been the purpose of the foregoing pages to show in what way this renascent Elizabethanism of the Victorian epoch differs from that of the earlier period ; how the altered conditions of English life, especially in the growth of great cities and the emergence of grave social problems through

WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 397

the development of mechanical industry, have saddened and subdued the tone of our poets ; how criticism and the physical sciences, together with changes in religious thought, have affected their outlook over the world and man; why they have become more contemplative and analytical, less spon- taneous, with a tendency to pessimism, instead of the genial optimism of their predecessprs ; and finally to what extent the absence of a commanding type of national art, like the drama, has forced them into idyllic, descriptive, meditative, and lyrical forms of utterance.

It is impossible to condense the net result of this comparison in a single formula. Yet one of the principal conclusions to which it leads us may be singled out. When we survey the literatures of these two epochs, we shall be struck with the generalising force and breadth of the earlier, the particularising subtlety and minuteness of the latter. The Elizabethans seem to sing with one voice, although the key in which their melody is cast may vary. They treat of nature and of man from a common point of view, albeit the world and humanity affect them differently. The Victorians have each a voice of his own, an attitude toward man and nature determined by specific mental faculty. Each has been born something separate, and made something still more separate by education. Elizabethan art is instinctive, Victorian art reflective. The material submitted to the workman in the one age is a com- plex whole ; and this is surveyed in its superficies, seized in its salient aspects. In the other age the complex has been disintegrated, parcelled into details by the operation of sym- pathies and intuitions proper to distinct individualities. Our first question with regard to an Elizabethan is : What grasp and grip does he possess upon the common stuff of art ? Our first question with regard to a Victorian is : How does the man envisage things, from what point of view does he start, by what specific spirit is he controlled ? Thus in the nine- teenth century we come face to face with individualities who affect us mainly through the tone of their particular natures. The poets are critical and self-conscious in creation. We are critical and self-conscious in submission to their influence, in

398 ELIZABETHAN AND VICTORIAN POETRY

estimating their achievement. This intimate and pungent personality, settling the poet's attitude toward things, mould- ing his moral sympathies, flavouring his philosophy of life and conduct, colouring his style, separating him from fellow- workers, is the leading characteristic of Victorian literature that which distinguishes it most markedly from the Elizabethan.

While many points have been passed in review much has naturally been omitted, and the method of treatment has necessitated the suppression of important modifications. It would in the one case have been interesting to raise the question how far Puritanism influenced the national tone in literature : whether, for example, the abeyance into which music fell after the Commonwealth had anything to do with the decline of song and spontaneous melody. It would have been desirable in the second case, while treating of Besfcora- tion, Queen Anne, and Georgian poetry, to have qualified some sweeping statements by an examination of a lyrist like Gray, and to have shown to what extent the three main periods marked out shade into one another at their edges. But two Greek proverbs, no less than want of space, warn me to lay down the pen here. ' Nothing overmuch/ ' The half is better than the whole.'

APPENDIX

DARWIN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT GOD

No small interest attaches to the religious opinions of a man who influenced our thoughts about the world so much as the late Charles Darwin did. His biography, written by his son Francis Darwin, contains a chapter on Religion, in which some valuable details are communicated. 1 I do not think that more ought to be desired or expected from a man of Darwin's stamp than the sus- pended judgment wluch concludes his trenchant and yet cautious utterances upon the subject of theology. ' The safest conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is 'beyond the scope of man's intellect ; but man can do his duty,' 2 Having arrived at the opinion that ontology is hardly a fit topic for the human reason, Darwin states his own attitude in the following modest phrases : 8

What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one but myself. But as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates. ... In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic .would be the more correct description of my state of mind.

It is clear from this quotation that Darwin did not accept Atheist and Agnostic as convertible terms. If we collect the sense of all his dicta upon the relation of the world to a Divine Being, we shall perceive that he regarded a God as the most reasonable hypothesis, but that many things in the order of the universe, ' the increased amount of suffering through the world,' 4 for instance, were obstacles to his maintenance of this hypothesis in full faith. What he meant by Agnosticism appears to have been an indecision

1 Vol. i. cap. viii. 2 P. 307. s P, 304. P. 307.

400 APPENDIX

as to the definition of God, and a profound doubt as to the power possessed by man of reaching Him. One paragraph from his letter dictated in answer to a German student puts this very plainly : l

He considers that the theory of Evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God ; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God.

Critical investigation of the so-called evidences of Christianity, and the comparison of other religions, brought him to a practical abandonment of revelation. 2 He felt that the immortality of the soul has to be regarded as an open question. 3 He discussed Pes- simism with a clear perception of its ground and issues ; and on the whole he pronounced himself a moderate Optimist. 4 He re- jected the subjective or sentimental * argument for the existence of an intelligent God, drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons.' 5 At the same time, he recorded his opinion that the argument drawn from reason was more cogent with his mind. He could not bring him- self to regard { this immense and wonderful universe, including man, with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity.' 6 In like manner the argument derived, partly from subjective instinct, partly from reason, for the immortality of the soul, had consider- able weight with him. 7 His chief doubt, in valuing these argu- ments from instinct and reason, was whether the mind of man can be trusted to draw any conclusions in the matter. 8 Returning at last to the point from which we started, he declares : * I cannot

1 P. 307.

2 P. 307, ' For myself,' etc. P. 308, ' But I had gradually, 1 down to

• had some weight with me.'

8 P. 307, As for a future life,' etc.

4 P. 307, ' Nor can I overlook,' etc. P. 309-11, * Some writers indeed,' down to * variation and natural selection.'

P. 312, * Formerly I was led,' etc.

6 P. 312. Compare p. 306, * But I may say that the impossibility,' etc. Also p. 316, ' Nevertheless, you have expressed,' etc.

7 P. 312, ' With respect to immortality,' down to * will not appear so dreadful.'

P. 313, ' But then arises the doubt,' etc. P. 316, But then with me the horrid doubt,' etc.

9 P. 313.

APPENDIX 401

pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mastery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us ; and I for

one niustTe^contenf to remain anXgnostic.'

What Darwin meant by being an Agnostic seems pretty clear now ; and it is also pretty clear why he felt sometimes that he

• deserved to be called a Theist.' 1

Agnostic is the vague denomination for a genus including several species. According to their temperament or to their earlier associations, Agnostics lean either to Atheism or to Theism. They agree in pronouncing the problem of the universe to be insoluble ; but they are variously coloured by divers inclinations toward the faiths they have abandoned. One is an Optimist by natural bent, another is a Pessimist. But their common link is a certain nega- tive relation to creeds they formerly professed. Among Agnostics, Darwin leant toward Theism. Habit, instinct, and reason drew him in that direction. It was long before he worked off his early belief in revelation, and the nature of that belief continued to qualify his reasoning when he entertained theological speculations.

I gather from several passages in this chapter that Darwin never transcended the conception of Deity as Providence, as a designing Person, with purpose in each detail of creation. 2 These passages are in part directed against teleology. But they also show that their author still thought of God from Paley's point of view. 3 He continued to regard God as the theologians of English orthodoxy made Him as a being constructing the world from outside, planning its contrivances and directing each event to a calculated end. Darwin never speaks as though the conception of Deity immanent in the universe were tenable.

For example, he remarks that while he (Darwin) is designedly shooting a bird in order to obtain food, the lightning is destroying a good man. * Do you believe,' he asks, ' that God designedly killed this man ? Many or most persons believe this : I can't and don't.' Here a dilemma is stated : either God made the lightning kill a good man in the same way as I killed a bird, or He did not. It does not occur to him that there is no dilemma except upon his own assumption that God directed the flash of lightning with the providential design of killing the good man, just as he (Darwin) discharged his gun with the purpose of killing the bird. Then he

1 P. 312, When thus reflecting, 1 Ac.

8 P. 313, The mind refuses,' down to p. 316, * existed in the moon. 1

3 This is confirmed by a very emphatic confidence about Paley in a letter to Sir John Lubbock. Life, vol. ii. p. 219.

D D

402 APPENDIX

proceeds to another instance : ' If you believe so (i.e. that God designedly killed this man), do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant ? I believe that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no reason to believe that their first birth or production should bo necessarily designed.' All through this reasoning he argues on the hypothesis that God must have used the lightning in the destruction of the man and the swallow in the death of the gnat with the same kind of purpose as that with which the sportsman uses his gun. This proves, I think, that he had not come to reflect on the notion of Deity without a remnant of Paleyism. He argued, as no other man had equal right to argue, against current conceptions of design in Nature and special providences in physical occurrences. 1 But the old habit of regarding God only as Providence, only as Designer, prevented him from seeing that, so far as God or the order of the universe is concerned, lightning, swallow, and sports- man stand precisely upon one level with regard to the good man, gnat, and pheasant they respectively destroy. The difficulties which lie in the way of regarding the universe as the sport of chance were manifest to Darwin. His reason demanded a supreme Law a God of some sort ; but Paley's extra-mundane God still haunted him, and prevented him from ever entertaining the notion that God may be Himself the supreme Law and Life of the universe. Would such a God be personal ? Agnostics leaning to theism are not bound to answer that question. No theologies have made us comprehend what a personal God means. We do not know what personality actually is, either in ourselves or in any other being ; yet the idea of God, regarded as the Law and Life of the universe planned we know not how, and pursuing its develop- ment on paths beyond the ken of human senses and intelligence accords with Darwin's own dictum : 2 * The theory of Evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God.'

1 See in particular p. 309, * Although I did not think,' down to 1 which the wind blows.' P. 307.

APPENDIX 403

THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE

NOTHING is known by human beings which is not in the con- sciousness of collective or individual humanity in the mind of the race or of the person.

What this means is, that man cannot get outside himself, cannot leap off his own shadow, cannot obtain a conception of the universe except as a mode of his own consciousness. He is man, and must accept the universe as apprehended by his manhood.

It does not therefore follow that what man knows is the universe. It does not follow that man's sense and thought create the outer world. It does not even follow that the laws of human consciousness are the laws of Being. The utmost we are justified in saying is, that man forms an ifitfigral part of the world, and that his consciousness is consequently a substantial portion of the whole.

All that Philosophy can do is to analyse the ,masg of human thoughts and feelings, to ascertain the limits within which we apprehend the world, and to show the direction in which our fgigulties may be applied. Philosophy must abandpn qntologicql explanations of the universe. These have invariably proved their own futility, being successively left behind and supersede_d in the progress of relative science, by which is meant the development of human thought and knowledge about the world.

The science of God and the science of Being, Theology and Ontology, have no foundation except in the sj^bj activity of man. Both are seen to involve impertinences, naivetes, solemn self- complacences, the egotism of Narcissus doting _on his own perfec- tions mirrored in the darkness of the river of the universe.

This does not precludes sincere belief in man's power to obtain partial knowledge of the world. Such knowledge, so far as it goes, rests on a firm basis ; for man is, ex hypoth&&i. an integer in the universe, and his consciousness accordingly represents a factor of the universal order. The mistake of theology and ontology is to transfer this partial knowledge to the account of the whole. These ^e^stylejl sciences are only doing what polytheism and royjibnlogy 'dicfTThey are attempting to account for the whole by the experi- ence of a part of it, which experience varies according to the stages of the growth of the creature we call man.

It may be demandecl_of me, then, why, holding these views,

• " D D 2

404 APPENDIX

professing the Agnostic creed, I speak of God as Law, brought back to us by modern science ?

The answer is simple. It rests upon the root conception that man, in all his qualities, but most essentially in the highest part of him, his mind, forms a real portion of the world. Being a portion, he cannot apprehend the whole : to do that was the pretension of theologians and ontologists. Yet this part, this man, raised to self- consciousness, increasing always in his grasp on partial knowledge, is brought continually more and more into the presence of a Force, a Life, a Being, call it what you will, which he is bound to recognise and worship as the essence which fas^iojoed. him and which keeps him in existence.

Man has the right to use time-honoured language, and to designate his apprehension of the unity in Nature by that vener- able title, God. He is only doing now what all the men from whom he is descended did before him. Mumbo Jumbo, Indra, Shiva, Jahve, Zeus, Odin, Balder, Christ, Allah what are these but names for the Inscrutable, adapted, to the modes of thought which gave them currency ? God is the same, and His years do not change. It is only our way of presenting the unknown to human imagination which varies.

We are at liberty to leave God out of our account, and to maintain that we can do without this hypothesis. But how shall we then stand ? We must remain face to face with the infinite organism of the universe, which, albeit we can never know it in itself, is always being presented to our limited intelligence as more completely and organically^one. The mystery flies before us, and will ever fly. ~TEe more we say we know, and the more we really know, the less can we afford to omit the elements of unsearchableness and awe-inspiring unity which have produced religions.

In these circumstances we are led back to the primitive con- ditions of human thought. We must still acknowledge a power from which we spring, which includes all things, which is the real reality of all we partly grasp by knowledge. JJvadeJt as we will, we are driven to the conclusion, at which the earliest men arrived, that human intelligence alone is insufficient to account for the universe, and that there is a Something beyond, with which man is indissoluble '.connected, and which has to be approached in the spirit of devotion. This Something, now as then, compels ^everemge and inspires awe. We may call it God or not as we think fit. Meanwhile it sufegiat^ the one paramount fact, in comparison with

APPENDIX 405

which all other facts are unimportant. It is variously ^envisaged by successive generations, according to the tenor, of their sensi- bilities and the nature of their speculation. ^aTlhere ever, or is there now, any other God but this ?

The augmentation of knowledge only increases our sense of the reality and iflfl^rutability of Being. Science and Agnosticism are therefore pathswhereby we are brought back to religion under forms adapted to present conceptions of the world we live in, and of which we are a part.

To these reflections I append (without fear of trespass) some verses, in which the same thoughts have found emotional utterances. They were suggested by the problems of death and doubtful immor- tality, than which none other rack the heart of man in his impo- tence. and ignorance more cruelly :

Since none returns to us upon the way

Which leads through darkness to the land of light,

What of that perilous journey can we say ?

Nothing. We watch the frost of sickness

Our darlings : blood and nerve with age grow weak ;

And sleep prepares our soul for endless night.

Were it not well to take our ease, nor seek An answer to the question all will ask ? Against the bars of pitiless death we break

Those qofrrjjpg wings, which no ethereal task Of poet or of sage hath taught to afonp- Surely 'twere well beneath the sun to ijasfc,

Like flowers to bloom, like flowers to fade and djrp_op, Drinking the dews of morning and of eve. Rank after rank dim generations troop

Down to the grave. The very rose we weave Into a garland for the brow we love, Has blood within it ; to the petals cleave

The scent and hue&.of human clay. Above Yon mountain tops, what once were tears distil In fleecy rain, making the streams whereof

Men drink. Oh, cease, with weak, persistent will To storm the heights of nature. 'Tis enough That living, suffering, we must climb the hill.

Make the plain ways of life less stern and rough : Build not cloud-castles on the inconstant air ; Nor strive in vain to cast the viperous slough

406 APPENDIX

Of fate that clings around these limbs so fair. Kiss the rod rather ; learn to face the doom Which we with all things that have beauty share.

The world we breathe in is a chrysolite,

No chance, no dreadful drift of dateless days

May tarnish. Those long ages infinite

Which wafted us over unfooted ways,

When from dim whirling vapour sun and earth,

And all the spheres that in their cycles blaze,

Grew into being with a gradual birth,

These shall endure, though all men 'neath the sod

Turn a deaf ear alike to grief and mirth.

We know not elsewhere any other God Than that which permeates the living whole, Alike in sentient clay and senseless clod.

Call it Power, Motion, Life, Creator, Soul. There is no name for force that over nerve And granite sweeps with absolute control,

Compelling germs invisible and curve Of comet to the one resistless law, Wherefrom the noblest creature cannot swerve,

Nay, nor the meanest. Overmastering awe Sublimes the sort of man that thinks and feels, When toward the source of life he never saw,

With genuflection meek he trembling steals, Divining in the void a Yea and Nay, Godhood akin to Manhood, which reveals

Beyond the night of death a dawn of day. Nor blame we man, if mid the weltering sea That rings him round with impotent dismay,

He crowd those chasms of immensity

With phantoms of his own trail thought, and cry

To what seems loftiest in things low as he.

It may be that we shall not surely die :

It may be that the powers to whom we pray,

Are waiting in the calm crystalline sky

To breathe by death these clouds of life away, Yet were it wasteful, think you, in the span Of endless things, if what was once mute clay,

APPENDIX 407

Should for some few years be a vocal man,

Then turn to inarticulate dust again ?

Look up. 'Tis night. The ceaseless caravan

Of stars innumerous across the plain

Of heaven, we know not whence, we know not whither,

In long continuous procession strain.

Add glasses to your aching eyes, and wither

The sense of seeing with perpetual toil :

In those faint films a million globes together

Stream onward ; deep by deep the skies recoil ; And all the unpeopled gulfs with suns are rife. Then ere your spirit falters, trim the oil

In midnight lamps ; peruse the hidden strife One drop of water, like a mimic world, Constrains within its sphere ; the throbbing strife,

The palpitating blood-beats. Life is hurled Hither and thither reckless on the tide Of Being : yet the basest worm encurled

Within a tortured sinew hath not died Save by some dread immutable decree. Life's continuity no flaws divide,

Nor lapse, nor languor. On the restless sea, Whereof our souls are waves a little while, There is no room for death : it cannot be.

Here cease ; aspire no more ; seek not to pile Dust of delusion on your heart's despair. Faith, Instinct, Science, Hope, can but beguile

Your ignorance with guesses light as air.

It may be, is your limit. Life may be

But Thought, your Thought, the terrible and fair,

Clasping the universe inviolably ; And you, victorious in the overthrow Of all that clogs and cramps mortality,

May be as God. Him, knowing not, we know : Him from the blackness of our self's abyss We cry to, when the shadows round us grow.

This hope is yours ; but ah, you know not this J

408 APPENDIX

NOTES ON THEISM

IT is possible for a man to be a theist in the etymological sense of that word, i.e. one who feels that the whole of his own and the world's interests are bound up with the idea of Theos God and yet not to acknowledge himself a theist in the sense given to the word by professed theists, such as the Kev. Mr. Voysey, who lifts his voice in England now.

I am not prepared to predicate so much of God as they do ; nor do I think that we have arrived at that stage of knowledge in which a new definition, satisfying human needs and authoritative for human wills, can be given to the complex notion Deity. Unless the idea of God should ultimately be eliminated from the stock of human concepts, it must be remoulded to suit the changes which have taken place in our theory of the universe. The time is still far off before that can be effected ; and the process, if it is to lead to serious belief, must be a very gradual and instinctive act of assimilation carried on in the minds of multitudes and masses.

Meanwhile professed theists seem to retain more of the theo- logical systems they are undermining than is justified by logic. They ought surely to abstain from such ways of thought as find expression in phraseology like ' God's purposes,' ' God works out His gracious ends.' To attribute personality to God is to attribute something which has significance only in relation to man's pheno- menal existence. This does not prevent us from believing that mind and moral consciousness are somehow essential factors in the universe ; for this reason, that we find them present and paramount in man i.e. in the only portion of the universe we are really acquainted with. But we are not hereby pledged to the corollary that God must be a Person, a righteous Judge, a loving Buler, a Father. The words I have italicised cease to be significant when we pass in imagination beyond the range of human relationship.

Theism, like Unitarianism, is a necessary phase in the process of disintegration, which must be gone through before the new process of assimilation and integration can commence. It is our duty to regard with deep interest and respect all attempts to base religion upon sounder foundations, all schemes for facilitating the transition from mythological Christianity without loss of religious fervour, all

APPENDIX 409

efforts to accommodate the sanctities of religious reverence with the earnestness of scientific seeking after truth, all heartfelt endeavours to worship God, not on this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem,* but literally ' in spirit and in truth/

II

What sensible man can doubt that we must, for the present, at all events, acquiesce in suspension of judgment with regard to the nature of the Supreme Being ?

Let us remember that all attempts to present God to the imaginative reason have been, are, and will ever be nothing better than symbols of an unknown, unknowable power. This will render the exercise of patience, now demanded from us as the proof of faith, more easy. What we are called upon to do, is to get on as well as we can through life and in death, not indeed without faith, but without the definite symbolic forms which made faith comfortable to our forefathers.

The revolution in all our conceptions of the world which has been performed during the last three centuries is so tremendous, that no dogmatic theology of any sort can gain a hold upon our minds. At this stage, it is surely enough if, having displaced the old con- ception of an extra-mundane Creator, who governed a universe which had man for its centre, we have not thereby abandoned the belief in God. Quis Deus incertum ; est Deus. Let us, in reverence and humility, retain our religious attitude. Let us, so far as we are able, refer our aspirations to God, as the only Life, the only Love, the only Law, the ground of all Reality, the source of all Being. So long as we do this, we keep alive the sacred flame in Vesta's temple of the human heart, and march in the procession of saints, martyrs, and confessors. What must of necessity remain at present blank and abstract in our idea of God may possibly again be filled up and rendered concrete when the human mind is prepared for a new synthesis of faith and science. That, in its turn, will have to be decomposed like elder, simpler syntheses; and so forth perpetually, until the inevitable day of Qdtter-Ddmmerung, the day of dying for our planet, comes. Meanwhile for man, through all these transformations of the religious idea, abides one motto fixed : roii? favras cv 8pav, ' while living do thy duty.* !

1 These words were written before the publication of Darwin's Life, vol. i. p. 307. See p. 399, above.

410 APPENDIX

III

What constitutes a theist in this age is that a man should be prepared to render up himself in faith and submission to God that is, to the order of the world, however little he may hope to under- stand it, and whatever his lot in it may have to be. Different ages, involving different states of knowledge and different experiences of human life, are forced to regard the one all-being, all- sustaining inscrutable God in divers ways. David did not invent his God, nor Sophocles his, nor St. Paul his, nor Cleanthes his, nor Marcus Aurelius his, nor Mahomet his. No ; God was found by these men, revealed to these men, thus and thus and thus. Yet some discoveries, some revelations of God, are more consistent with the contemporary possibilities of Theism than others. It is easier for us to cry with David : * O put thy trust in God ; for I will yet give Him thanks, who is the help of my countenance and my God 1 ' It is easier for us to say with Sophocles : * 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.' l It is easier for us to pray with Cleanthes : * Lead thou me, God, and thou Law, the daughter of God, whithersoever I am by you appointed to go ; for I will follow unreluctant ; or should I refuse through sin or cowardice upgrown in me, none the less shall I follow.' It is easier to exclaim with Marcus Aurelius : ' Everything harmonises with me which is harmony to thee, O Universe ! Nothing for me is too early nor too late which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature ! from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. The poet says, " Dear city of Cecrops " ; and wilt not thou say, " Dear city of God " ? ' 2 It is easier, I repeat, to think and feel with these men than to cast our all of faith upon the die thrown by St. Paul : ' If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain.' It is not true that we are ' of all men most miserable,' even though Christ be not risen, even though we shall not rise. Utterances like this of St. Paul, however serviceable they may have been in a past age, lead mankind awry now from the more virile religion, the purer, the deeper, the more

1 Translated by Mr. Matthew Arnold.

• Translated by Dr. George Long.

APPENDIX 411

indestructible, which bids men trust in God even though he slay them, body and soul.

IV

' Vain, shallow, and unthinking optimist ! Inconclusive agnostic ! You reject St. Paul's theism. Well, but how will the theism of your chosen prophets sound the bottomless abysses shown to us by modern science ? They knew nothing of those immeasurable gulfs and distances, that time, that space, those unhomely haunts of human thought with nothing human in them of all such things they knew nothing at all, your David, Sophocles, Cleanthes, Marcus Aurelius. You, who have the insight granted by three centuries of exploration, how is your theism going to deal with the incalculable aeons of the cosmic origins inanimate chaos, slowly stirring into fiery strife of gaseous vortices and clashing atoms the tardy concentration of sidereal systems, in furious combustion first, then cooling to white -furnace glow, then building solid planets with their crust of rock and spilth of water, half- dead themselves, but heated by fire belched from the living sun ; the long, stern struggle for existence among things which breathe upon our tiny globe ; the procession of species evolved by laws of which they were unconscious, doomed successively to supersede and to exterminate the weaker? How will your theism square with this? Next, how will any theism, yours or your prophets', or St. Paul's, or Mahomet's, or Buddha's, adapt itself to the facts of human experience to the omnipresence of evil and disease, to the dreadful lives lived by the majority of men since men appeared upon this planet, to the anguished misery of captives and convicts, to the clash between natural appetite and social law, to the morbid torments of moral madness and slow-fretting physical cancers, to the unutterable lusts and cruelties and loathsomeness of your own heart, to the dumb, blind, ignorant agonies of dread and longing and self-accusation and hopeless helplessness with which you labour in the dark night-watches, before which you quail in the presence of cold, implacable nature -forces? How will your theism adapt itself to this ? Is it not ridiculous for you to prate of God ? Nay, the superior personalities, whom you imagine to exist, scale over scale, ascending immeasurably far above you in the hierarchy of life, are they not also under the same doom as you, creatures of the same relentless law, enveloped in the same impermeable gloom of ignorance and futile yearning ? '

I have often listened to this voice, and said not a word. There

412 APPENDIX

is no answer. But the soul is illogical, indomitable, unconquerable, haughtily affronting fate, knowing itself to be the last and best thing knowable by men, in spite of all these desolating, dread- inspiring, freezing, heart-breaking billows of the infinite which surge around its rock in darkness. Poor, illogical, indomitable soul of man ! She cries to God in the world- storm, yields to God, drowns in God, finds no other God than this.

Ka\? 5' cLKotovras obSlv

SutnraXcT re 8/ya.

' Nay, but the soul cries to those who listen not, caught in the clutches of whirlpools with which it were too vain to wrestle. Who hath heard God speak ? To whom hath God responded ? ' Perchance that is the fact. Perchance none listens. Perchance the whirlpools will close over us and suck us down. If there is a God, we shall not cry in vain. If there is none, the struggle of life shall not last through all eternity. Self, agonised and tortured as it is, must now repose on this alternative.

THE CRITERION OF ART

IN works of art, only what is in a true sense human will be found finally good and permanent. It must be agreeable to the normal perceptions of human beings who are capable of understanding and appreciating art. The test of excellence must be a common sense or agreement of opinion between normal men and women gifted with atcr0r)<ns or sensuous perception.

It may, parenthetically, be remarked that all perception is sensuous. We cannot perceive the truth that two and two make four without acquiring experience of duality through one or other of the senses. We cannot grasp the meaning of language without the help of hearing, of eyesight, of sense of touch. By far the larger number of our expressions for mental or aesthetic qualities, as taste, godt, gusto, Geschmack, flair, fiuto, tact, sensibility, comprehension, are transferred from the region of the senses and used metaphorically.

The common perception of normal men and women, who are not insensible to beauty, not impervious to ideas, will ultimately decide the question whether any work of art is first rate, second rate, or worthless.

APPENDIX 413

This common perception is not the sense of the majority at any moment. Contemporaries are notoriously inadequate to judge with accuracy. It was only a small minority who appreciated Shelley and Keats in their lifetime.

It is not even the sense of the whole world at any given epoch. For instance, we are now sure that Gothic architecture possesses eminent qualities ; and in the fourteenth century no other style was considered beautiful. But Palladio and Wren, with the consent of all cultivated persons in Europe, judged it barbarous. What is there in common between L. B. Alberti and Pugin on the subject of pointed architecture ?

Each individual has but a limited perceptive faculty, and this is still further limited by the prevalent state of the age in which he lives.

It follows that a final verdict regarding works of art can only be arrived at very slowly, and after considerable variations of opinion among those even who are the best qualified to judge. The consensus regarding Homer, Pheidias, Virgil, Dante, Shake- speare, now amounts to certainty. The agreement about a poet like D. G. Bossetti has not reached that point. A man who utters authoritative opinions for or against Bossetti carries the weight only of his own perception, backed up in either case by the per- ceptions of a limited number of men who feel like him. In the long-run, Bossetti will be definitely placed by the accumulation of such perceptions.

The greatest art communicates the greatest amount of satisfac- tion to the greatest number of normal human beings through the greatest length of time. Inferior art, the art of a Merino in poetry or of a Bernini in sculpture, may enjoy temporary applause. But even during the furore it creates, men of pure and trained percep- tion will recognise its inferiority to the art of Ariosto and Michel Angelo. Art of first-rate quality may never win more than limited applause, because it appeals to highly specialised perceptions ; but it is sure, in the lapse of ages, to win ' fit audience, though few.' Popularity implies the adaptation of the work to aggregate per- ceptions. Beally corrupt art is only adapted to corrupt perceptions, and in a corrupt age it may be popular. It cannot maintain this popularity, for the final court of appeal is the Areopagus of sound and normal human beings. These will unanimously reject Merino and accept Shakespeare. They may differ about Bossetti ; yet it is much to have obtained a minority of votes from the Areopagus.

414 APPENDIX

I will conclude with a simile. The final verdict about works of art and men of genius may be compared to one of those composite photographs (devised by Mr. Francis Galton *) which are obtained by the superposition, one above the other, of many negatives taken from different individuals. Each separate face has left its filmy impress on the composite photograph; and all the faces have contributed to form a type the type of a criminal, the type of a consumptive person, the type of a certain family. Blurred in some of its outlines and details as the ultimate result may be, such a composite photograph has an unmistakable generic individuality, which is even more instructive, even more convincing for the student of criminal, consumptive subject, specific family, than the mere aggregate of single photographs which compose it. It yields, not the person, but the type. Even so the final verdict of criticism is the total result of countless personal judgments, superimposed, the one above the other, coalescing in their points of agreement, shading off into blurred outlines at points of disagreement, but combining to produce a type which is an image of fundamental truth.

NOTE ON ' REALISM AND IDEALISM'

THE inevitable infusion of a subjective element into every attempt made by men to reproduce nature, on which I have insisted with reference to figurative art, may be still further illustrated. It appears in all reports made by credible witnesses of events which have been noticed by them. A precisely identical account cannot be expected by ten witnesses of the same occurrence, though each has been anxious to relate the literal truth. Furthermore, it is impossible to obtain exactly similar reports of such reports from every ten veracious persons who have heard one or more of them from the lips of original witnesses. Thus the element of sub- jectivity in the primary reports is multiplied in the secondary accounts transmitted of the fact. When there exists a strong sub- jective prepossession on the part of the witness, then the event becomes spontaneously idealised in a definite direction. The con- currence of several such subjective prepossessions, colouring the

1 * Inquiries into Human Faculty,' p. 340.

APPENDIX 415

report of an event which is extremely interesting to all the witnesses concerned, results in an ideal which comes to be accepted for the literal fact.

This is perhaps the proper explanation of miraculous occurrences attested by fairly good evidence. The genesis of those potent ideals which give force to religions may, in like manner, be referred to subjective faculties exercised by many witnesses in sympathy. We find it difficult, for example, to interpret the Gospels without postulating the existence of an historical Christ. But given that basis of reality, the large element of idealism in the Gospels can be comprehended by this hypothesis of subjective intervention without ascribing mala fides to the witnesses. In the redaction of several parallel reports to one coherent narrative, the subjective element was not eliminated, but intensified and harmonised upon certain lines. The ideal which formed a factor in each separate report obtained substantiality. In this way four main ideal portraits of Christ were produced, which have been subsequently elaborated into one highly idealised conception by the slow con- tinuous process of centuries.

II

Another instance might be chosen from a different region. History has been contemptuously called the chronicle of lies and illusions. In so far as this is true, it results from the impossibility of seeing facts except through our own senses and the reports of other persons. The data of history arrive to us coloured by sub- jectivity ; and the historian, eager as he may be to eliminate the truth, judges the material he has to deal with through the medium of his personal impressibility. Thus a contemporary history, like Kinglake's * Crimean War,' cannot be written without bias. The greater the art-work, the more energetic the attempt to realise, the keener the effort to extract fact from inferences and statistics, the more imaginative and idealistic will the product be. In this way we are led to the conclusion that the past can never be known to us except in its broadest, simplest outlines. The crossing, blend- ing, interminglement, and quasi-chemical combination of divers subjectivities which any chapter of history implies, render the attempt to 'reach pure truth impossible. Yet we must not, there- fore, on this account, despair of history. Persistent endeavour in the direction of reality, in the sublimation and elimination of subjective elements, brings us to a residuum which has at least its own generic authenticity.

416 APPENDIX

III

In other departments of literature, notably in romance and fiction, the same principles hold good. We have heard much lately of realistic novels. But even Zola, with his notebook and his catalogues of objects, is compelled to idealise, because he cannot seize reality except as a mode of his own sensuous and mental being. There are as many ways of perceiving and conceiving fact as there are individuals. A novel cannot bo the exact representa- tion of reality, because it must be the representation of what some human being finds in reality. This has been tersely and vigorously put by M. Guy de Maupassant in the preface to his * Pierre et Jean.' l ' How childish, moreover/ he exclaims, * to believe in reality, since we each carry our own in our thought and in our organs I Our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell, of taste, differing from one person to another, create as many truths as there are men upon earth. And our minds, taking instruction from these organs, so diversely impressed, understand, analyse, judge, as if each of us belonged to a different race. Each one of us, therefore, forms for himself an illusion of the world ; and the writer has no other mission than to reproduce faithfully this illusion, with all the contrivances of art that he has learned and has at his command/

In the main, this doctrine carries conviction. Yet M. de Maupassant must be taken to task for one or two exaggerated statements. It is not childish to believe in reality because the individual cannot perceive it or reproduce it without the admixture of his subjectivity. It is not true that there are as many truths as there are men upon the earth ; else the delusions of maniacs, who mistake a wreath of yellow paper for a crown of gold, or a dirty cotton gown for the bridal robe of a daughter of Zion, would be truths ; else colour-blindness would rank on equal terms with com- plete vision. Nor conversely is it true that the conceptions which we each of us form of the world are merely illusions. The fact is, that we do believe in reality, although we admit our inability to seize it or express it except in terms of our own thought and senses. The fact is, that we are capable of distinguishing normal from abnormal impressions of reality, and that only the former have any lasting value for us. The fact is, that while we recognise a

1 I quote from Mr, Henry James's translation, Fortnightly Review, March, 1888, p. 366.

APPENDIX 417

certain element of inadequacy, a certain admixture of illusion, in all subjective perceptions and in all subjective renderings of reality, we are well aware that some are nearer to the truth than others. Dante's and Shakespeare's, Raphael's and Pheidias's impressions of reality, though tinctured with subjective colours, appeal to our sense of truth more forcibly than Marino's and Cyril Tourneur's, than Fuseli's and Bernini's. If it were not so, criticism would be impossible, and humanity would have to renounce its claim to common sense. The pursuit of knowledge, even of such relative knowledge as mankind can hope for, would have to be abandoned as absurd. We should not be able to communicate with one another in the expectation of being understood. We should be precluded from legislating for the common benefit of society. The human race would be reduced to an aggregation of isolated world- making monads.

Truth lies in the avoidance of paradoxical extremes. Full recognition of the play of subjectivity in individuals must not blind us to the fact that, over and above and independent of this subjectivity, we are conscious of a standard relation to reality, by reference to which we are enabled to form judgments. The race is larger than thi> individuals which compose it ; and constant appeal must be made to the common from tho personal perception.

This being the case, criticism finds, when it surveys the several products of any marked historical epoch, that they present more notes of similarity than of difference. Tho notes of difference belong to individual artists ; the notes of similarity belong to the period which produced them, and the tribe from which they sprang. Having ascertained the specific note belonging to a particular epoch, criticism compares this with the note of other equally differentiated epochs. At this point the generic note emerges, that which con- stitutes humanity at large. From such studies, whereby a standard has been gained, criticism returns to the consideration of species and particulars. The specific falls into its place of relation to the generic, and the individual is inspected as subordinated to the species which he helps to integrate.

Subjectivity holds sway throughout the process. The particular sees reality through the spectacles of self. The species sees it through spectacles of race and period. Mankind sees it through spectacles of generic human properties. Neither particular, nor species, nor yet genus eliminates the subjective element or repro-

E E

418 APPENDIX

duccs reality. Transmutation into human stuff or idealisation is the condition under which man works.

NOTE ON 'THE MODEL'

THE female form has less variety than the male. It cannot symbolise so many modes of vigorous existence. There are several positions which it cannot assume with grace as in the act of running, the spreading abroad of the limbs, and wherever the belly and pelvis are extended by physical effort. Raphael, in his drawing of Roxana visited by Alexander, and in his fresco of Venus rising in her car, upon the Farnesina ceiling, adopted graceless female attitudes. No Greek artist, so far as I remember, fell into this fault of showing how the female figure sprawls. The Greeks took pains to drape or partially drape women in their statues ; or when they modelled the nude, they selected attitudes of self-restrained repose or of marked sexual suggestivencss attitude of self-restraint in the Venus de' Medici, attitude of sexual suggestiveness in the Venus Accroupie.

If we divest ourselves of sexual associations, we shall recognise that the male is more ready-made in plastic quality to the artist's hand, more capable of varied posturing, more representative of human energies and activities. It requires less management in order to bring out its qualities and tone down its defects.

On the other side, the female presents finer suavities of contour, higher elements of voluptuousness. There are numerous modes of emotion all the tender, imploring, shrinking, languishing, seductive, yielding, timid, wavering modes which the female expresses, and which are inappropriate to the male.

The activity of the male, the passivity of the female, are seen in their respective physical types. The male is classical, the female romantic. The male is sculpturesque, the female musical.

Thus it is chiefly when the body is used as an index of human activity, vigorous capacity, ebullient passion, solid strength, that the male predominates in art. Organically, as an instrument of action, it is far more potent and more varied in resources.

But when we use the body as the index of human susceptibilities, sensibilities, allurements, in this less active and less intellectual region the female asserts predominance.

APPENDIX 419

Michel Angelo treated the female nude (especially in his Night and Dawn at San Lorenzo) in the male key ; and obtained some noticeable tragic effects therefrom.

Praxiteles treated the male nude (especially in his Apollo Sauroktonos and the Neapolitan torso of Bacchus) in the female key, and obtained some noticeable sensuous effects therefrom.

Artists of a (i.) distinctly intellectual order, like Michel Angelo and Signorelli, use the male nude for decorative purposes roof of Sistine Chapel, arabesques at Orvicto. Artists of a (ii.) sensual type, like Correggio, use either the hermaphroditic male for decorative purposes (Parma cupolas) or the female ; as indeed do all decorators of theatres, baths, places of enjoyment built for men. The first class of artists appeal to a sublime and abstract sense of form ; the second, to natural instincts.

Draughtsmen like Bartolozzi have treated the male and female nude together in a mixed key, sacrificing the essential qualities of each, not to an animal desire, but to a flaccid sentiment, which marks the decadence of art. This is not the case with antique hermaphroditic statues. These consciously confuse the male and female keys, employing a Mixo-Lydian mood, for purposes of undisguised voluptuousness.

The colourist gets silvery tones from the female, tawny tones from the male ; smooth surfaces and soft chiaroscuro from the female, abrupt lights and shades with angular modelling of surface from the male.

He does best who utilises these sexual differences by properly accentuating the contrasts of male and female. But a Guido may give us a middle region for the male, which is the region of adolescence. See his Samson at Bologna. Praxiteles again may do the like. See his Hermes at Olympia, where adolescence, not hermaphroditism, is suggested. To go beyond this in attributing female qualities of tone and surface to the male is hazardous, though it is sometimes very effective, as, for instance, in Bazzi's St. Sebastian.

PBIOEITY OF THOUGHT TO LANGUAGE

IT is a pernicious delusion to suppose that language creates thought more than thought creates language. The contrary is true. This may be exemplified from the Platonic philosophy.

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420 APPENDIX

Plato saw that in language there were both good and goodness, particular and abstract quality of good. He rightly inferred an idea corresponding to the abstract, and recognised goodness as a thought expressed by language. Upon this perception he founded his theory of ideas. What is weak in that theory is the extension of abstract thought expressed in language to thoughts which have no abstract equivalents in language. He saw there was an idea of goodness as apart from good ; so he said there was an idea of horseness as apart from horse. Here, instead of language creating thought, thought seeks to create a language not in use among men. That is an extreme instance. But it might amply be shown that thought, in all its complex stages, forces language in order to obtain expression. The phraseology of metaphysics, from Aristotle downwards, abounds in examples of the concrete being warped to serve the abstract. After asserting this, I do not deny the reflex action of language upon thought, the fettering of thought by language which has once been fixed, and very often badly fixed, to adumbrate some stage of painfully emergent thought. Meta- phorical expressions of all sorts, indicating the shifts of thought to find utterance, are instances. But these confirm the view that thought is prior to language.

COLOUR-SENSE AND LANGUAGE

THE sense of colour cannot be judged by colour-nomenclature.

People, in a primitive state of society, may be acutely sensitive to colours, as indeed they have all their senses in fine working order, and yet may have no names to denote the shades of hue.

This is due mainly to the fact that colours are not connected with utility. The brain is lazy, and only coins words which are necessary. It can dispense with a wide vocabulary for pigments, since these involve no grave concerns of life or business.

Suppose the currency were established, not on varying weights of precious metals, but on varying tints of red, blue, yellow ; then we should soon find a nomenclature springing up to denote the finest gradations of those colours.

That is not the case. In the early stages of civilisation, colour involves neither affairs of life and death, nor affairs of property.

APPENDIX 421

Language, therefore, leaves it alone, at least such language as enters into literature.

Xenophanes describes the rainbow by the simplest generic words :

Kal tyoivlKsov Kal x\(ap^v I

But while this scientific man was so describing it, practical workmen were weaving all the colours of the rainbow into Athene's peplus. Those workmen must have known how to ask for dyes at the colourman's. Perhaps they used phrases like Venetian red, chrome yellow, verditer, epinards vomis, cadmium, burnt sienna, vandyke brown, merda d'oca, umber, peacock blue ; phrases, that is to say, which even now scarcely show their heads in literature.

Persian poetry affords a parallel instance. It deals with colour broadly, by generalities, by salient tones arresting simple attention. Yet Persian carpets exhibit the finest blending of the most subtly matched and graduated tints. And the older these carpets are, the more are they prized for their exquisite solution of problems in the art of colour.

With the advance of civilisation to the point which we have reached, the nomenclature of colours becomes more rich, but always, as it were, by haphazard. We talk of pink, lilac, mauve, magenta, lemon, fawn, dove, peacock, gris de perle, always using metaphors from natural objects, or the mere lingo of commerce. And even these words to express tints of colour are employed with diffidence in literature, although literature has grown reckless in its exercise of means for appealing through language to the intellect, and summoning up pictures for the mental eye.

We are at a different point with regard to colour from that which primitive peoples occupied. The art of painting, critically examined and reflected on, has forced us to distinguish hues. Widely extended commerce 1 in articles of dress and furniture has made its language current. Literature has passed into a descriptive and pictorial stage. Science has drawn attention to the value. which colours possess for the discrimination of substances and the analysis of. tissues. Lastly, we have discovered that our lives and deaths - H depend on colour-blindness, through the employment of coloured lights as railway signals.

It would be little short of miraculous if, under these influences, the susceptibility to tints of colours, and the corresponding nomen- clature to denote them, were not largely augmented.

422 APPENDIX

Our experience, however, must not make us draw a wrong con- clusion from the poverty of language to express colour in earlier ages of civilisation. As it is, we have no proper nomenclature only such as we pick up from commerce and the colour-men. The shifts we submit to in order to communicate sensations of colour ought rather to teach us that in the Homeric or other early ages colours were fully appreciated by the senses, but had not found their analogues in language.

INDEX

ABGAEUS, epistle of, 71

Academy, 360

Acting, art of, 91

Addison, 388

^Eschylus, 39-40, 178, 219, 255,

319, 322 ; quoted, 38, 179 Agathon, dramatist, 40-1 Agnosticism, 400-4, 411 Alberti, L. B., 413 Alfieri, 222 Allegories, 300-14 Amadeo, architect, 84 Ambrose, St., 187 Anacreon, 348 Angelo, Michel, 47, 58, 80, 84, 101,

105, 124, 136, 143, 146, 149, 163,

222, 340, 343, 413, 419 Anne, Queen, 369, 388, 393, 395,

398

Anthropology, 29 Apocrypha, 33

• Arabian Nights,' 159

Arber, Prof., 380 Arcadius, 187 Archilochus, 235 Architecture, 44-6, 50, 100, 102,

138, 342, 413 Aretino, 106, 161, 390; quoted,

155-6 Ariosto, poet, 50, 195, 282, 320,

328, 345, 358, 360, 363, 370, 413 ;

quoted, 351, 357-8 Aristarchus, 61 Aristodemus, 252 Aristophanes, 107, 156, 158, 235 ;

quoted, 178 Aristotle, 41, 149, 175, 181, 420 ;

quoted, 56, 58, 61, 90, 118, 123-4,

150, 153 ; interpretation of, 69-

70

Arnold, Sir Edward, 377

Arnold, Matthew, 197, 216, 229, 297; on Wordsworth's poetry, 315-16, 319-327, 340; quoted, 335, 379

Art, evolution in, 6-9, 27-52 ; criti- cism of, 67-8 ; in relation to science and morality, 95-107; realism in, 111 seq. ; beauty, composition, &c., in, 137-154 ; caricature in, 155-165 ; obscenity in, 160-3 ; democratic, 237-268 ; landscape, 269-99 ; music the type of all, 335-344 ; the criterion of, 412-14

Arthur, King, 308

Arts, provinces of the, 79-94, 151

Arundel Society, 54

Ascham, 366

Astronomy and religion, 3-4

Atheism, 16, 399

Athens, 107

Attic Drama, 31, 38-41

Augustine, St., 187 ; * Confessions of,' 191-3

Aurelius, Marcus, 119, 411 ; quoted, 410

Ausonius, poet, 188, 192, 345-6, 352-364 ; quoted, 273-6 ; * Idyl on the Kose,' 347-50

Ausonius, Gregorius, 274

Austen, Jane, 374

Autotype Company, 130 n.

BACH, 101

Bacon, Lord, 76, 211, 368, 372

Baifo, poet, 164

Balzac, 51, 238

Barnes, 377

424

INDEX

Barnfield, 368

Bartolozzi, painter, 135, 419

Basaiti, painter, 282

Baudelaire, poet, 317

Bayley, Thomas, 559, 363

Bazzi, sculptor, 419

Beaumont, dramatist, 34, 49, 381,

396

Beccadelli, poet, 317, 390 Beddoes, poet, 374 n., 389 Beethoven, 90, 340 Bellini, Gian, 46, 54, 57, 116 n. Bembo, poet, 74, 105, 195 Bernini, sculptor, 413, 417 Bible, 210-11, 230, 368-9 ; inter- pretation of the, 69 ; criticisn of the, 72

Bible Society, 191 Biology and evolution, 2, 5, 27-9 Bion's Lament for Adonis,' 350 n. Bissolo, painter, 282 Blake, William, 24, 54, 57, 115, 136, 222, 267, 396 ; quoted, 301 Boccaccio, 49, 104, 195, 230, 234 Boiardo, poet, 49, 282 Boileau, 61, 238 Bolingbroke, Lord, 119 Bologna, 419 Bologna, Gian, 101 Bondasca, glaciers of, 300-1 Bonifazio, painter, 143 Borgia, Boderigo, 109 Borromeo, Carlo, 106 Bossuet, 232, 235 Boswell's ' Life of Johnson,' 222 Botticelli, painter, 46, 49, 54 Bourget, Paul, 201 ; quoted, 200 Bowles, poet, 396 Boyle, Hon. Mrs. B. C., 345, 359,

360, 363

Bramante, architect, 84 Bronzino, painter, 49 Brougham, Lord, 232 Brown, Dr., 158 Browne, Sir Thomas, 211, 213,

225 ; quoted, 100, 212, 393 Browning, Mrs., 368, 377-8 Browning, Bobert, 297, 368, 374 w.,

375, 378, 389 ; quoted, 386 Brunelleschi, architect, 84 Bruno, Giordano, 2, 4, 26, 106,

286-7, 290 Buchanan, Bobert, 366, 377

Buddha, 252, 411 Buffon, quoted, 277 Bullen, A. H., 380 Buonarroti, 104 Burke, Edmund, 235 Burne- Jones, painter, 314 Burns, Bobert, 324 Burton, 211

Byron, Lord, 219, 238, 297, 322, 328-333, 368-88, 393-4

CALLIMACHUS, 229

Calvin, 69

• Cambyses,' play, 34

Camdcn, 366, 368

Campanella, poet, 105 ; quoted,

260-1

Campbell, poet, 368, 382 Caracci, Annibale, 54-5, 57 Caricature in art, 155-65 Carlyle, Thomas, 230, 233, 390 Carpaccio, painter, 54 Gary's ' Dante,' 377 Castasegna, 300-1 Castelfranco, 282 Castiglione, 106 Cato, 229 Catullus, 272, 348-52, 357-60, 363,

387 ; quoted, 345-6 Cellini, Benvenuto, 82, 101, 106,

233

Cervantes, 61, 235 Chserernon, dramatist, 40-1, 270 Chapman, 368 ; ' Homer,' 374 Characterisation in art, 137-154 Charles II., 245 Chartres Cathedral, 84, 102 Chatterton, poet, 396 Chaucer, poet, 368-9 Cheke, 366

Cherubim, composer, 101, 343 Chillingworth, 211 Chopin, composer, 101 Christian dogma, 10, 16 Christianity, 2-3, 19; astronomy

and, 3 ; evolution of, 5, 19-21 ;

and allegory, 309 seq. Cicero, 70, 187-8, 193, 221, 230,

235, 370 ; quoted, 166 Cima, painter, 282

, 187, 192, 276

INDEX

425

Cleanthes (the Stoic), 9, 10, 18-19,

411 ; quoted, 410 Clough, A. H., 267, 368, 376-7 ;

quoted, 378

Cochin, M. Henry, 327 Coleridge, S. T., 297,329, 368, 371,

376, 383, 386, 393 Colet, 366 Collier, 371

Composition in art, 137-154 Compte, Auguste, 25 Conington, Prof., 394 Constantine, 71 Contarini, 106 Copernicus, theory of, 2-3, 281,

287

Cordegliaghi, painter, 282 Corinth, 308 Corneille, 219 Cornwall, Barry, 382 Correggio, painter, 6, 47, 282, 419 Cowper, poet, 289, 396 Crabbe, 264, 260, 326, 375 Cratinus, 252 Criticism, 6-9 ; principles of,

53-78

Crowne, dramatist, B6 Culture, philosophy of, 7

DA FABBIANO, Gentile, 281, 282 n.

da Vinci, Lionardo, 47, 100, 112, 129, 142, 145, 156, 282

Dancing, art of, 91

Daniel, Samuel, 364

Dante, 24, 104, 149, 157, 194, 218, 235, 319, 322, 344, 392, 413, 417 ; Divine Comedy,' 61-2, 279-80, 375 ; ' Paradiso,' 164

Darley, 374 n.

Darwin, Charles, 7, 27 ; ' Life of,' 28 n., 399-402, 409 n. ; ' Origin of Species,' 71 ; his thoughts about God, 399-402

Darwin, Francis, 399

Darwinism and theology, 10, 27-8, 71

D'Aumale, Due, 134

Davenant, dramatist, 9, 34, 36, 49

David, King, 411; quoted, 202, 410

David, artist, 125

de Foix, Gaston, 142

de' Medici, Cosimo, 106

de' Medici Giovanni, 106

de' Medici Lorenzo, 127, 356, 358,

360 ; quoted, 352-4 de Musset, 238 ; quoted, 254-5 de Quincey, on style, 227-232 Death, 17-18, 405 Defoe, Daniel, 264 Dekker, dramatist, 267, 368;

quoted, 370, 385 Del Carretto, Ilaria, 142 Del Sarto, Andrea, 47, 143 Delacroix, 238 Democritus, 70, 308 Demosthenes, 142, 181, 232, 235 Determinism, 22-3 Dickens, Charles, 374 Diodati, 191 Dionysius, painter, 124 Dobell, Sydney, 389 Dobson, 377 Dore, Gustav, 222 Dossi, Dosso, painter, 57 Dostoievsky, 267 Dowden, Prof., 25 n. Drama, evolution of the, 33-41,

49

Drummond, 368 Dryden, 101, 171, 213, 235, 323,

369, 382-8 ; quoted, 183 Dudley, Lord, 134 Durer, Albert, 129, 281, 282 n.

ECKBKMANN, 146, 222

Elgin marbles, 54, 121-3

Eliot, George, 158, 267, 374

Elizabeth, Queen, 75, 365

Elizabethan drama, 33 8

poetry, 365-398

Emerson, 220

Ennius. 229

Euripides, 40-1, 56, 123, 180, 320

Evolution, philosophy of, 1-26 ; and religion, 2-4, 400-2; of the mind, 14- 15 ; in art and .literature, 6-9, 27-52 ; in sculp- ture, 41-2 ; of the drama, 33-41

FAIRFAX, 360, 374 Farnesina, 134, 418

426

INDEX

Fielding, Henry, 61, 388 Filelfo, 366

1 Fioretti di San Francesco,' 198 Fischer, Kuno, 65 FitzGerald, Edward, 377 Flandrin, artist, 130-3 Flaubert, Gustav, 227-8, 379 Fletcher, dramatist, 34, 36, 219,

368, 381, 396 ; quoted, 385 Florence, 116 n. Ford, dramatist, 36, 381 ; quoted,

385 Fortnightly Review, 335-339 n.,

416 n.

Fra Angelico, painter, 6, 54-5, 81 Fra Bartolommeo, painter, 46, 49,

143

Fra Lippo Lippi, painter, 46 Francia, painter, 282 Fuseli, painter, 121, 417

GALILEO, 281, 286

Galton, Francis, 29, 414

Gautier, The"ophile, 238, 316

Geology, 27-9, 64

Gherardo, 193

Ghirlandajo, painter, 49

Gibbon, 222, 235 ; quoted, 172, 224

Gifford, 371

Gilray, caricaturist, 156

Giordano, painter, 163

Giorgione, painter, 47, 112, 161, 282 ; School of,' 335

Giotto, painter, 46, 55, 57, 104, 146

Gladstone, W. E., 232-3; on Homer, 69

Gluck, composer, 343

Goethe, 2, 51, 219, 222, 235, 289, 297, 322 ; on God and nature, 1 ; on criticism, 6, 8 ; Proemium to Gott und Welt,' 26, 290 ; on art, 79 ; Werther,' 238 ; on his poems, 312 ; Faust,' 313, 372 ; on poetry, 315, 340

Goldoni, 222

Goldschmidt, Madame, 382-3

Goldsmith, 51, 388, 396

Gosse, Edmund, 377

Gotthelfs ' Ulrich,' 267

Grande Chartreuse, 293-4

Gray, poet, 289, 395 ; quoted, 293-4

Greene, dramatist, 9, 35, 39

Greuze, painter, 101

Guarini, poet, 345 ; * Pastor Fido,'

244, 360 ; quoted, 360-2 Guest, Dr., 76, 207 Guicciardini, historian, 195 Guido, painter, 57, 419

HALLAM'S ' Literature of Europe,' 8 Handel, composer, 382 n., 383 Hardy, Thomas, 267 Hartmann, 392 Haydon's ' Autobiography,' quoted,

121-3

Hazlitt, 371 ; quoted, 153 Hegel, 2, 164, 203, 288, 320 ; on

mind, 11, 52, 65 Heine, Heinrich, 197, 205-6, 219,

235, 238, 321 ; quoted, 382 Helmholz, 205 Hemans, Mrs., 382 Henniquin, Emile, 218 n., 221 n. Henry VII., 365 Henry VIII., 365 Heraclitus, 70, 308; quoted, 62-3 Herodotus, 180, 233, 235 Herrick, poet, 271, 328, 345, 368,

380-1 ; on poetry, 315 ; quoted,

364

Heywood's ' Interludes,' 34, 267 Hogarth, 264, 266 Homer, 67, 229, 235, 255, 269,

316, 319, 321, 351, 375, 413;

interpretation of, 69 ; quoted,

176, 181 Honorius, 186 Hood, poet, 382 Hooker, 230

Horace, 61, 190, 272, 280, 319 Home, 374 n. Hughes, William, 37, 75 Hugo, Victor, 219, 222, 235, 238 Humility, 22 Hunt, William, 115 Huxley, Professor, 28

IDEALISM and Realism, 108-127,

414-18

Immortality, hope of, 18, 405 Ingres, pamter, 57, 129 Intellect (see under Mind) Italian Renaissance, 103-7

INDEX

427

JALALU 'D DIN, poet, 303-4

James I., 366, 393

James, Henry, 416 n.

Jerome, St., 187-8, 191, 210, 283

Johnson, Samuel, 230, 388, 396;

Life of,' 222 Jones, Ebenezer, 377 Jonson, Ben, 36-7, 211, 213, 368,

381, 387, 389 ; ' Poetaster,' 229 Joubert, quoted, 119 Julius II., 106 Juvenal, 184, 235, 272

KANT, 65, 288 ; quoted, 153 Keats, 295, 297, 326, 329, 368, 371,

375-6, 382, 386-8, 392-4, 413 ;

quoted, 383, 393 Khayyam, Omar, 316-17, 377 ' King Darius,' play, 34 Kinglake's * Crimean War,' 415 Kipling, Kudyard, 267 Klopstock, poet, 323 Knowledge, the limits of, 403- 7 Kyd, poet, 35

LAERTIUS, Diogenes, 70

Lamb, Charles, 371

Landor, W. S., 313, 343, 368,

374 n., 375, 395-6 Landscape in Literature and Art,

269-299

Landseer, Sir Edwin, 158 Lang, Andrew, 363, 377 Languages, 174-216 Lempriere, 314 Leopardi, 317, 322-3, 326, 328,

378 ; quoted, 195-8, 219 Lesage, 61 Lessing, 147, 238 Life, mystery of, 5, 405 Linton, W. J., 380 Literature, evolution in, 6-9,

27-52 ; province of, 91 seq. Livy, 184, 187-8, 235 ; ' Discourses

upon,' 104 ; quoted, 202 Lodge, poet, 35 Long, Dr. George, 410 n. Longinus, 61

Lorenzctti, painter, 343-4 Lorraine, Claude, 281, 283 Loti, Pierre, 267

Lotze, 65 Lucan, 273 Lucca, 142

Lucretius, 164, 271, 317 Luini , painter, 54 Luther, Martin, 191 Luxembourg, 130 Lycophron, 229 Lyell, Sir Charles, 27 Lyly, 230

MACAULAY, Lord, 229, 230, 235;

quoted, 225 Machiavelli, 104, 194-5, 233, 235,

318

Mahomet, 410-11 Mallock, Mr., 392 Malory, Sir Thomas, 369, 375 ;

quoted, 209-10

Mantegna, painter, 46, 54, 343 Marino, poet, 50, 57, 164, 230, 413,

417 Marlowe, dramatist, 34-9, 367-8,

374, 389, 395-6 ; quoted, 140-1,

209 Marston, poet, 368, 390; quoted,

391

Martial, 272 Mary, Queen, 365 Mason, painter, 267-8 Massinger, dramatist, 36 ; quoted,

385-6 Maupassant, Guy de, quoted, 200,

416

Mazzini, 332 Meleager, poet, 273, 317 Mendelssohn, 101 Menoikeus, 252 Meredith, George, 374 Michelet, 235 ; * Histoire de France,'

233

Milan, 142, 187, 192-3 Mill, John Stuart, 222, 232 Millet, painter, 267-8 Milton, 164, 213, 235, 361, 395 ;

4 Paradise Lost,' 75-6, 207, 375 ;

quoted,' 1Q1, 153, 158, 340, 382;

on marriage, 211-12 Mind, importance of, 11, 12, 17;

definition of, 12-14 ; evolution

of, 28-9 Miracle-plays, 33-4

428

INDEX

Miracles, 4

Model, the, 113, 119-122, 128-136,

144, 418-19 Moliere, 319, 322 Molza, poet, 105 Mommsen, 235 Mont Cenis, 293 Mont Ventoux, 193, 301 Monte Zocco, 300 Moore, poet, 382 More, Sir Thomas, 366 Morland, 264 Morris, William, 297, 368, 386;

1 Earthly Paradise,' 313, 377 Morrison, J. Cotter, 20 n. Mozart, 58, 90, 101 Muretus, 221 Museeus, 70 Music, province of, 82 seq., 100-1,

138, 151 ; the type of all art,

335-344

Myers, F. W. H., 287 n, 338-9 n. Myths, 300-14

NAPLES, 87

Napoleon I., 371

Nash, poet, 35

National Style, 174-216

Nature Myths and Allegories, 300-

14

Neri, Filippo, 106 New Testament, 186 Newman, Cardinal, 232, 377 Newton, Sir Isaac, 27 Nimmo, J. C., 380 n. Nisard, M., 215 Noel, Roden, 297, 377-8, 395 Norton, dramatist, 37 Novalis, quoted, 89 Novel, evolution of the, 51

OKEN, 8

Oliphant, Thomas, 380

Olympia, 419

Orvieto, 419

Ovid, 271-2; quoted, 351-2

PAINTING (see under Art)

Paley, 401-2

Palladio, architect, 45, 413

Palma, junior, painter, 57

Parma, 282 n.

Parthenon, the, 84, 87, 122-3, 139,

179, 185 Pascal, 136 Pater, Walter, 340-2 ; School of

Giorgione,' 335 seq. ; quoted, 381 Pattison, Mark, 213-15 Pauson, painter, 124 Pavia, 344 Peele, poet, 35 Pembroke, Lord, 75 Pericles, 127 Persius, 235, 272 Perugino, painter, 6, 46, 54, 80,

282 Petrarch, 105, 193, 195, 222, 230,

301 Pheidias, sculptor, 31, 42, 48, 57,

70, 80, 101, 107, 123, 126-7, 139,

145, 179, 255, 268, 413, 417 Philostratus, 273, 348 Phocion, 142 Phrynichus, 39, 41 Pindar, poet, 178-9, 182, 319, 321 ;

quoted, 52 Plato, 181, 420 ; interpretation of,

69, 70, 107, 180; qiwted,SO,W2,

140, 153 ; on poetry, 319-20 Plautus, 229 Plutarch, 70, 233 Poetry, sphere of, 89, 91-102, 131,

151, 164, 289, 339 ; Elizabethan

and Victorian, 231 n., 365-398 ;

Pathos of the Eose in, 274 n.,

345-64 ; a criticism of life, 315-

34

Poggio, 366 Poliziano, poet, 106, 195, 215, 282,

328, 345, 358, 360,366; quoted,

354-7

Polygnotus, painter, 124 Pontano, 366, Pope, Alexander, 119, 167, 235, 238,

289, 339, 372, 388, 396, quoted,

288, 393

Portugal, Cardinal of, 142 Poussin, Gaspar, 54, 281, 283 Poussin, Nicholas, 281, 283 Praxiteles, sculptor, 42, 179, 298,

419

Procter, 374 n. Psalms, quoted, 202, 410

INDEX

429

Ptolemy, 3 Pugin, 413 Pulci, poet, 49 Punch, 156 Pythagoras, 70

QUINTILIAN, 188

RABELAIS, 235

Racine, 219

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 367-8, 380

Raphael, 47, 54, 80, 101, 112, 129,

134, 145-6, 163, 282, 339, 417-

18 Realism and Idealism 108-127,

414-18 Regnier, 235 Religion, 96 ; and astronomy, 3-4 ;

and science, 9, 10, 16, 405 ;

optimism of, 18 ; evolution of,

19-21, 76; and art, 101, 120,

145 ; Darwin's thoughts on, 399-

402

Religions, nature of, 2-5, 81 Rembrandt, 163 Renan, M., 201 ; quoted, 202, 277,

285

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 121, 125 Richardson, Samuel, 51 Robinson, Mary, 376 Rogers, Samuel, 368 Romano, Giulio, 84 Rousard, poet, 345 ; quoted, 313-4 Rosa, Salvator, 281, 283 Rose, Mr., 358 Rose in Poetry, Pathos of the,

274 n., 345-64 Rossetti, D. G., 222, 297, 340, 368,

376-7, 386, 393, 413 Rossinij 101-2 Rousseau, J. J. 222, 230 Rubens, Peter Paul, 55, 143, 281,

283

Rufinus, poet, 352 Ruskin, John, 8, 126, 176, 230

SACKYILLE, dramatist, 37 S. Lorenzo, Library of, 84

St. Paul, 20, 411 ; quoted, 18, 77, 410 ; interpretation of, 69

St. Peter's, Rome, 84

Sainte-Beuve, quoted, 119

Sallust, poet, 387

San Miniato, 142

Sand, George, 51, 230, 267 ; quoted, 228, 379

Sannazzaro, poet, 105, 195, 282

Sappho, poet, 149, 184, 348

Sarpi, 106

Saturday Review, 229

Scaliger, Joseph, 214-15

Schiller, poet, 153, 235, 238

Schopenhauer, 65, 205, 392

Schubert, 383

Science, in evolution, 9-11, 16 ; and religion, 16, 20-26, 81, 405 ; and immortality, 18 ; and art, 95 seq.

• Scientific Movement in Literature,'

25

Scopas, sculptor, 42, 48

Scott, Sir Walter, 51, 221, 297, 334 n., 374-5, 382

Sculpture, 139, 142, 343 ; evolution in, 41-3, 48 ; province of, 81 seq., 151 ; realism in, 111 seq.

Selden, 368

Seneca, 35, 39, 320, 370 ; quoted, 101-2

Sermoneta, Duke of, 198

Serpentine, 151

4 Service of Man,' 20

Shakespeare, William, 9, 27, 31, 34-7, 58, 153, 157-8, 204, 218- 19, 237, 255, 282, 308, 318-22, 327, 367-8, 371, 374, 381, 385-9, 413, 417 ; criticism of his works, 72-5 ; Walt Whitman on, 258, 267; quoted, 362, 391-2

Sharp, 377

Shelley, 289, 297, 313, 321-33, 344, 368, 371, 374 n., 376-8, 386-94, 413; quoted, 115, 140, 160-1, 225-6, 294-6, 381-3 ; on poetiy, 315, 340

Shirley, dramatist, 36, 381

Sidney, Sir Philip, 37, 340, 368, 380; criticism of his works, 73-4

Siena, 46

Signorelli, painter, 46, 54, 80, 419

480

INDEX

Silius Italicus, 273

Simplon Pass, poem on the, 292-4,

394

Skelton, 369 Smith, Alexander, 389 Smollett, 264 Socrates, 107, 227 Soglio, 300 ' Song of Boland,' 62 Sophocles, 40-1, 56, 107, 123, 142,

219, 319-22, 343, 411; quoted,

177, 179, 410 South, Bishop, 232 Southampton, Lord, 75 Spectator, 26 n. Spencer, Herbert, 7, 27; qivoted,

290 Spenser, 320, 345, 360, 367-8,

380-1, 394-6; 'Faery Queen,'

75-6, 363, 370, 373 Spinoza, 286, 290 Statius, 273 Steele, 388 Sterne, 51, 219, 227 Stevenson, B. L., 230 Stirling, Earl of, 364 Straton, poet, 317 Strauss, 101 Strozzi, 106 Style, Notes on, 166-173; National,

174-216 ; Personal, 217-223 ;

Art of ,224-236 Swift, Dean, 163, 227, 235, 388;

on style, 168 Swinburne, 297, 328, 368, 374 n.,

376-8, 386, 390 Sydney, critic, 35 Symond's * Wine, Women, and

Song,' 278 n.

TACITUS, 184, 187, 235, 387

Taine, M., 7

Tannhauser,' 101

Tasso, poet, 50, 57, 74-5, 235, 244,

320, 345, 358-64, 370-1, 389;

quoted, 158, 194, 359 Taylor, Jeremy, 211, 213, 374 n. ;

quoted, 212 Tennyson, Lord, 297, 313, 368,

374 n., 375-6, 382, 386, 393, 395 ;

quoted, 118, 378, 386-7; on

Virgil, 272

Terence, 229

Thackeray, W. M., 221, 374 Theism, notes on, 408-12 Theocritus, 57, 229, 264, 273, 364,

376 ; quoted, 351- Theodosius, Emperor, 186-7 Theology (see Keligion) Thespis, 39, 41

Thomson, poet, 289, 376, 378, 391 Thoreau, quoted, 241 Thornycroft, Hamo, 268 Thucydides, 107, 180, 233, 235 Tiepolo, painter, 54 Tintern Abbey, 291, 331, 394 Tintoretto, painter, 139, 143, 146-7,

163, 282, 344 Tiraboschi, 8 Titian, painter, 112, 147, 149, 226,

280, 282, 344 Tolstoi, Count, 247, 267 Tourneur, Cyril, 36, 417 Turgeneff, 267 Turin, 108

Turner, painter, 284, 339 Tyndall, Prof., 26 n., 191

VAL, Bregaglia, 300

Valerius, Flaccus, 273

Valla, 71

Van Eyck, John, 112, 281, 282 n.

Vasari, Giorgio, 49, 116 n.

Velasqi 3z, painter, 112, 149

Venice, 282 n.

Veronese, Paul, 226

Versailles, Palace of, 84

Victoria, Queen, 372

Victorian Poetry, 365-98

Vienna, 129 n., 130 n.

Virgil, 70, 86, 186, 230, 234-5,

264, 271-4, 280, 289, 319, 322,

338-9, 351, 370, 387, 413;

^Eneid, 171, 375: quoted, 183,

287, 378 Volapuk, 242 Voltaire, 238, 317, 323 Von Banke, 235 Voysey, Bev. Mr., 408 Vulgate, the, 187-91, 210

WAONEE, ( Walker, Fre

1JNDEX 431

Waller, poet, 345, 364 Wordsworth, 164, 266,271, 289-

Watts, painter, 314 290, 297, 368, 371-2, 376-8,

Webster, poet, 36, 49, 368, 381 ; 382-3, 386, 393-4 ; quoted, 114,

quoted, 391 140, 225-6, 291-4, 325-34, 383 ;

Wells, poet, 389 Arnold on, 315, 322-7

West, painter, 121, 125 Wren, Sir Christopher, 167, 413

Whitman, Walt, quoted, 175, Wyatt, 395

333-4 ; and Democratic Art, 237-

268

Wilde, Oscar, 75, n. XENOPHANES, quoted, 421 Wilkie, Sir David, 264 Wilson, dramatist, 36

Windsor, 282, n. ZOLA, Emile, 126, 416 ; ' La Terre,'

Wolsey, Cardinal, 365 265

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