ESSAYS FROM 'THE GUARDIAN'

By WALTER HORATIO PATER

NOTES BY THE E-TEXT EDITOR:

Reliability: Although I have done my best to ensure that the text youread is error-free in comparison with an exact reprint of the standardedition--Macmillan's 1910 Library Edition--please exercise scholarlycaution in using it. It is not intended as a substitute for theprinted original but rather as a searchable supplement. My e-texts mayprove convenient substitutes for hard-to-get works in a course whereboth instructor and students accept the possibility of someimperfections in the text, but if you are writing a scholarly article, dissertation, or book, you should use the standard hard-copy editionsof any works you cite. 

Pagination and Paragraphing: To avoid an unwieldy electronic copy, Ihave transferred original pagination to brackets. A bracketed numeralsuch as [22] indicates that the material immediately following thenumber marks the beginning of the relevant page. I have preservedparagraph structure except for first-line indentation. 

Hyphenation: I have not preserved original hyphenation since an e-textdoes not require line-end or page-end hyphenation. 

Greek typeface: For this full-text edition, I have transliteratedPater's Greek quotations. If there is a need for the original Greek, it can be viewed at my site, http://www. Ajdrake. Com/etexts, aVictorianist archive that contains the complete works of Walter Paterand many other nineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions. 

CONTENTS

1. English Literature: 1-16

2. Amiel's "Journal Intime": 17-37

3. Browning: 39-51

4. "Robert Elsmere": 53-70

5. Their Majesties' Servants: 71-88

6. Wordsworth: 89-104

7. Mr. Gosse's Poems: 105-118

8. Ferdinand Fabre: 119-134

9. The "Contes" of M. Augustin Filon: 135-149

ESSAYS FROM 'THE GUARDIAN'

WALTER HORATIO PATER

E-text Editor: Alfred J. Drake, Ph. D. Electronic Version 1. 0 / Date10-12-01

PATER'S NOTE: The nine papers contained in the following volumeoriginally appeared anonymously in The Guardian newspaper. 

E-TEXT EDITOR'S NOTE: I have not preserved the title pages of thisvolume, but have instead moved dates to each essay's end and includedany necessary title-page material in the heading area of the firstsubstantive page. 

I. ENGLISH LITERATURE

FOUR BOOKS FOR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

[3] THE making of an anthology of English prose is what must haveoccurred to many of its students, by way of pleasure to themselves, orof profit to other persons. Such an anthology, the compass and varietyof our prose literature being considered, might well follow exclusivelysome special line of interest in it; exhibiting, for instance, what isso obviously striking, its imaginative power, or its (legitimately)poetic beauty, or again, its philosophical capacity. Mr. Saintsbury'swell-considered Specimens of English Prose Style, from Malory toMacaulay (Kegan Paul), a volume, as we think, which bears fresh witnessto the truth of the old remark that it takes a scholar indeed to make a[4] good literary selection, has its motive sufficiently indicated inthe very original "introductory essay, " which might well stand, alongwith the best of these extracts from a hundred or more deceased mastersof English, as itself a document or standard, in the matter of prosestyle. The essential difference between poetry and prose--"that otherbeauty of prose"--in the words of the motto he has chosen from Dryden, the first master of the sort of prose he prefers:--that is Mr. Saintsbury's burden. It is a consideration, undoubtedly, of greatimportance both for the writer and the critic; in England especially, where, although (as Mr. Saintsbury rightly points out, in correction ofan imperfectly informed French critic of our literature) the radicaldistinction between poetry and prose has ever been recognized by itsstudents, yet the imaginative impulse, which is perhaps the richest ofour purely intellectual gifts, has been apt to invade the province ofthat tact and good judgment, alike as to matter and manner, in which weare not richer than other people. Great poetry and great prose, itmight be found, have most of their qualities in common. But [5] theirindispensable qualities are different, or even opposed; and it is justthe indispensable qualities of prose and poetry respectively, which itis so necessary for those who have to do with either to bear ever inmind. Order, precision, directness, are the radical merits of prosethought; and it is more than merely legitimate that they should formthe criterion of prose style, because within the scope of thosequalities, according to Mr. Saintsbury, there is more than just thequiet, unpretending usefulness of the bare sermo pedestris. Acting onlanguage, those qualities generate a specific and unique beauty--"thatother beauty of prose"--fitly illustrated by these specimens, which thereader needs hardly be told, after what has been now said, are far frombeing a collection of "purple patches. "

Whether or not he admits their practical cogency, an attentive readerwill not fail to be interested in the attempt Mr. Saintsbury has madeto give technical rules of metre for the production of the true proserhythm. Any one who cares to do so might test the validity of thoserules in the nearest possible way, by applying them to the variedexamples in this wide [6] survey of what has been actually well done inEnglish prose, here exhibited on the side of their strictly prosaicmerit--their conformity, before all other aims, to laws of a structureprimarily reasonable. Not that that reasonable prose structure, orarchitecture, as Mr. Saintsbury conceives it, has been always, or evengenerally, the ideal, even of those chosen writers here in evidence. Elizabethan prose, all too chaotic in the beauty and force whichoverflowed into it from Elizabethan poetry, and incorrect with anincorrectness which leaves it scarcely legitimate prose at all: then, in reaction against that, the correctness of Dryden, and his followersthrough the eighteenth century, determining the standard of a prose inthe proper sense, not inferior to the prose of the Augustan age inLatin, or of the "great age in France": and, again in reaction againstthis, the wild mixture of poetry and prose, in our wild nineteenthcentury, under the influence of such writers as Dickens and Carlyle:such are the three periods into which the story of our prose literaturedivides itself. And Mr. Saintsbury has his well-timed, practicalsuggestions, upon a survey of them. 

[7] If the invasion of the legitimate sphere of prose in England by thespirit of poetry, weaker or stronger, has been something far deeperthan is indicated by that tendency to write unconscious blank verse, which has made it feasible to transcribe about one-half of Dickens'sotherwise so admirable Barnaby Rudge in blank-verse lines, a tendency(outdoing our old friend M. Jourdain) commoner than Mr. Saintsburyadmits, such lines being frequent in his favourite Dryden; yet, on theother hand, it might be maintained, and would be maintained by itsFrench critics, that our English poetry has been too apt to dispensewith those prose qualities, which, though not the indispensablequalities of poetry, go, nevertheless, to the making of all first-ratepoetry--the qualities, namely, of orderly structure, and suchqualities generally as depend upon second thoughts. A collection ofspecimens of English poetry, for the purpose of exhibiting theachievement of prose excellences by it (in their legitimate measure) isa desideratum we commend to Mr. Saintsbury. It is the assertion, thedevelopment, the product of those very different indispensablequalities of poetry, in the presence [8] of which the English is equalor superior to all other modern literature--the native, sublime, andbeautiful, but often wild and irregular, imaginative power in Englishpoetry from Chaucer to Shakespeare, with which Professor Minto deals, in his Characteristics of English Poets (Blackwood), lately reprinted. That his book should have found many readers we can well understand, inthe light of the excellent qualities which, in high degree, have goneto the making of it: a tasteful learning, never deserted by that holdupon contemporary literature which is so animating an influence in thestudy of what belongs to the past. Beginning with an elaborate noticeof Chaucer, full of the minute scholarship of our day, he never forgetsthat his subject is, after all, poetry. The followers of Chaucer, andthe precursors of Shakespeare, are alike real persons to him--oldLangland reminding him of Carlyle's "Gospel of Labour. " The product ofa large store of reading has been here secreted anew for the reader whodesires to see, in bird's-eye view, the light and shade of a long andvaried period of poetic literature, by way of preparation forShakespeare, [9] (with a full essay upon whom the volume closes, )explaining Shakespeare, so far as he can be explained by literaryantecedents. 

That powerful poetry was twin-brother to a prose, of more varied, butcertainly of wilder and more irregular power than the admirable, thetypical, prose of Dryden. In Dryden, and his followers through theeighteenth century, we see the reaction against the exuberance andirregularity of that prose, no longer justified by power, butcognizable rather as bad taste. But such reaction was effective onlybecause an age had come--the age of a negative, or agnosticphilosophy--in which men's minds must needs be limited to thesuperficialities of things, with a kind of narrowness amounting to apositive gift. What that mental attitude was capable of, in the way ofan elegant, yet plain-spoken, and life-like delineation of men's moodsand manners, as also in the way of determining those moods and mannersthemselves to all that was lively, unaffected, and harmonious, can beseen nowhere better than in Mr. Austin Dobson's Selections from Steele(Clarendon Press) prefaced by his careful "Life. " The well-knownqualities of [10] Mr. Dobson's own original work are a sufficientguarantee of the taste and discrimination we may look for in acollection like this, in which the random lightnings of the first ofthe essayists are grouped under certain heads--"Character Sketches, ""Tales and Incidents, " "Manners and Fashions, " and the like--so as todiminish, for the general reader, the scattered effect of short essayson a hundred various subjects, and give a connected, book-likecharacter to the specimens. 

Steele, for one, had certainly succeeded in putting himself, and hisway of taking the world--for this pioneer of an everybody's literaturehad his subjectivities--into books. What a survival of one long-pastday, for instance, in "A Ramble from Richmond to London"! What truthto the surface of common things, to their direct claim on our interest!yet with what originality of effect in that truthfulness, when hewrites, for instance:

"I went to my lodgings, led by a light, whom I put into the discourseof his private economy, and made him give me an account of the charge, hazard, profit, and loss of a family that depended upon a link. "

[11] It was one of his peculiarities, he tells us, to live by the eyefar more than by any other sense (a peculiarity, perhaps, in anEnglishman), and this is what he sees at the early daily service thencommon in some City churches. Among those who were come only to see orbe seen, "there were indeed a few in whose looks there appeared aheavenly joy and gladness upon the entrance of a new day, as if theyhad gone to sleep with expectation of it. "

The industrious reader, indeed, might select out of these specimensfrom Steele, a picture, in minute detail, of the characteristic mannersof that time. Still, beside, or only a little way beneath, such apicture of passing fashion, what Steele and his fellows really dealwith is the least transitory aspects of life, though still merelyaspects--those points in which all human nature, great or little, findswhat it has in common, and directly shows itself up. The naturalstrength of such literature will, of course, be in the line of itstendencies; in transparency, variety, and directness. To theunembarrassing matter, the unembarrassed style! Steele is, perhaps, the most impulsive writer of the school [12] to which he belongs; heabounds in felicities of impulse. Yet who can help feeling that hisstyle is regular because the matter he deals with is the somewhatuncontentious, even, limited soul, of an age not imaginative, andunambitious in its speculative flight? Even in Steele himself we mayobserve with what sureness of instinct the men of that age turned asideat the contact of anything likely to make them, in any sense, forgetthemselves. 

No one indicates better than Charles Lamb, to whose memory Mr. AlfredAinger has done such good service, the great and peculiar change whichwas begun at the end of the last century, and dominates our own; thatsudden increase of the width, the depth, the complexity of intellectualinterest, which has many times torn and distorted literary style, evenwith those best able to comprehend its laws. In Mrs. Leicester'sSchool, with other Writings in Prose and Verse (Macmillan), Mr. Aingerhas collected and annotated certain remains of Charles and Mary Lamb, too good to lie unknown to the present generation, in forgottenperiodicals or inaccessible reprints. The story of the Odyssey, abbreviated [13] in very simple prose, for children--of all ages--willspeak for itself. But the garland of graceful stories which gives nameto the volume, told by a party of girls on the evening of theirassembling at school, are in the highest degree characteristic of thebrother and sister who were ever so successful in imparting to otherstheir own enjoyment of books and people. The tragic circumstance whichstrengthened and consecrated their natural community of interest had, one might think, something to do with the far-reaching pensiveness evenof their most humorous writing, touching often the deepest springs ofpity and awe, as the way of the highest humour is--a way, however, verydifferent from that of the humorists of the eighteenth century. Butone cannot forget also that Lamb was early an enthusiastic admirer ofWordsworth: of Wordsworth, the first characteristic power of thenineteenth century, his essay on whom, in the Quarterly Review, Mr. Ainger here reprints. Would that he could have reprinted it asoriginally composed, and ungarbled by Gifford, the editor! Lamb, likeWordsworth, still kept the charm of a serenity, [14] a precision, unsurpassed by the quietest essayist of the preceding age. But it mighthave been foreseen that the rising tide of thought and feeling, on thestrength of which they too are borne upward, would sometimes overflowbarriers. And so it happens that these simple stories are touched, much as Wordsworth's verse-stories were, with tragic power. Dealingwith the beginnings of imagination in the minds of children, theyrecord, with the reality which a very delicate touch preserves fromanything lugubrious, not those merely preventible miseries of childhoodover which some writers have been apt to gloat, but the contact ofchildhood with the great and inevitable sorrows of life, into whichchildren can enter with depth, with dignity, and sometimes with a kindof simple, pathetic greatness, to the discipline of the heart. Let thereader begin with the "Sea Voyage, " which is by Charles Lamb; and, whatMr. Ainger especially recommends, the "Father's Wedding-Day, " by hissister Mary. 

The ever-increasing intellectual burden of our age is hardly likely toadapt itself to the exquisite, but perhaps too delicate and limited, [15] literary instruments of the age of Queen Anne. Yet Mr. Saintsburyis certainly right in thinking that, as regards style, Englishliterature has much to do. Well, the good quality of an age, thedefect of which lies in the direction of intellectual anarchy andconfusion, may well be eclecticism: in style, as in other things, it iswell always to aim at the combination of as many excellences aspossible--opposite excellences, it may be--those other beauties ofprose. A busy age will hardly educate its writers in correctness. Letits writers make time to write English more as a learned language; andcompleting that correction of style which had only gone a certain wayin the last century, raise the general level of language towards theirown. If there be a weakness in Mr. Saintsbury's view, it is perhaps ina tendency to regard style a little too independently of matter. Andthere are still some who think that, after all, the style is the man;justified, in very great varieties, by the simple consideration of whathe himself has to say, quite independently of any real or supposedconnection with this or that literary age or school. Let us close withthe words of a most [16] versatile master of English--happily not yetincluded in Mr. Saintsbury's book--a writer who has dealt with all theperturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, asidiomatic, as easy and elegant, as Steele's:

"I wish you to observe, " says Cardinal Newman, "that the mere dealer inwords cares little or nothing for the subject which he is embellishing, but can paint and gild anything whatever to order; whereas the artist, whom I am acknowledging, has his great or rich visions before him, andhis only aim is to bring out what he thinks or what he feels in a wayadequate to the thing spoken of, and appropriate to the speaker. "

17th February 1886

II. AMIEL'S "JOURNAL INTIME"

Amiel's Journal. The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel. Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Mrs. Humphry Ward. Twovols. Macmillans. 

[19] CERTAIN influential expressions of opinion have attracted muchcuriosity to Amiel's Journal Intime, both in France, where the book hasalready made its mark, and in England, where Mrs. Humphry Ward'stranslation is likely to make it widely known among all serious loversof good literature. Easy, idiomatic, correct, this English versionreads like an excellent original English work, and gives fresh proofthat the work of translation, if it is to be done with effect, must bedone by those who, possessing, like Mrs. Ward, original literary gifts, are willing to make a long act of self-denial or self-effacement [20]for the benefit of the public. In this case, indeed, the work is notwholly one of self-effacement, for the accomplished translator hasprefaced Amiel's Journal by an able and interesting essay of seventypages on Amiel's life and intellectual position. And certainly thereis much in the book, thus effectively presented to the English reader, to attract those who interest themselves in the study of the finertypes of human nature, of literary expression, of metaphysical andpractical philosophy; to attract, above all, those interested in suchphilosophy, at points where it touches upon questions of religion, andespecially at the present day. 

Henri-Frédéric Amiel was born at Geneva in 1821. Orphaned of both hisparents at the age of twelve, his youth was necessarily "a little bareand forlorn, " and a deep interest in religion became fixed in himearly. His student days coming to an end, the years which followed, from 1842 to 1848--Wanderjahre, in which he visited Holland, Italy, Sicily, and the principal towns of Germany--seem to have been thehappiest of his life. In 1849 he became a Professor at Geneva, andthere is little more to tell of him in [21] the way of outward events. He published some volumes of verse; to the last apparently still onlyfeeling after his true literary métier. Those last seven years were along struggle against the disease which ended his life, consumption, atthe age of fifty-three. The first entry in his Journal is in 1848. From that date to his death, a period of over twenty-five years, thisJournal was the real object of all the energies of his richly-endowednature: and from its voluminous sheets his literary executors haveselected the deeply interesting volumes now presented in English. 

With all its gifts and opportunities it was a melancholylife--melancholy with something not altogether explained by thesomewhat pessimistic philosophy exposed in the Journal, nor by theconsumptive tendency of Amiel's physical constitution, causing him froma very early date to be much preoccupied with the effort to reconcilehimself with the prospect of death, and reinforcing the far fromsanguine temperament of one intellectually also a poitrinaire. 

You might think him at first sight only an admirable specimen of athoroughly well-educated [22] man, full, of course, of the modernspirit; stimulated and formed by the influences of the variedintellectual world around him; and competing, in his turn, with manyvery various types of contemporary ability. The use of his book tocultivated people might lie in its affording a kind of standard bywhich they might take measure of the maturity and producible quality oftheir own thoughts on a hundred important subjects. He will write apage or two, giving evidence of that accumulated power and attainmentwhich, with a more strenuous temperament, might have sufficed for aneffective volume. Continually, in the Journal, we pause over thingsthat would rank for beauties among widely differing models of the bestFrench prose. He has said some things in Pascal's vein not unworthy ofPascal. He had a right to compose "Thoughts": they have the force inthem which makes up for their unavoidable want of continuity. 

But if, as Amiel himself challenges us to do, we look below the surfaceof a very equable and even smoothly accomplished literary manner, wediscover, in high degree of development, that perplexity or complexityof soul, the expression [23] of which, so it be with an adequateliterary gift, has its legitimate, because inevitable, interest for themodern reader. Senancour and Maurice de Guérin in one, seem to havebeen supplemented here by a larger experience, a far greater education, than either of them had attained to. So multiplex is the result thatminds of quite opposite type might well discover in these pages theirown special thought or humour, happily expressed at last (they mightthink) in precisely that just shade of language themselves had searchedfor in vain. And with a writer so vivid and impressive as Amiel, thosevarieties of tendency are apt to present themselves as so manycontending persons. The perplexed experience gets the apparentclearness, as it gets also the animation, of a long dialogue; only, thedisputants never part company, and there is no real conclusion. "Thisnature, " he observes, of one of the many phases of character he hasdiscovered in himself, "is, as it were, only one of the men which existin me. It is one of my departments. It is not the whole of myterritory, the whole of my inner kingdom"; and again, "there are tenmen in me, according to time, place, surrounding, [24] and occasion;and, in my restless diversity, I am for ever escaping myself. "

Yet, in truth, there are but two men in Amiel--two sufficiently opposedpersonalities, which the attentive reader may define for himself;compare with, and try by each other--as we think, correct also by eachother. There is the man, in him and in these pages, who would be "theman of disillusion, " only that he has never really been "the man ofdesires"; and who seems, therefore, to have a double weariness abouthim. He is akin, of course, to Obermann, to René, even to Werther, and, on our first introduction to him, we might think that we had to doonly with one more of the vague "renunciants, " who in real lifefollowed those creations of fiction, and who, however delicate, interesting as a study, and as it were picturesque on the stage oflife, are themselves, after all, essentially passive, uncreative, andtherefore necessarily not of first-rate importance in literature. Taken for what it is worth, the expression of this mood--the culture ofennui for its own sake--is certainly carried to its ideal of negationby Amiel. But the completer, the positive, soul, which will merelytake [25] that mood into its service (its proper service, as we hold, is in counteraction to the vulgarity of purely positive natures) isalso certainly in evidence in Amiel's "Thoughts"--that other, and farstronger person, in the long dialogue; the man, in short, possessed ofgifts, not for the renunciation, but for the reception and use, of allthat is puissant, goodly, and effective in life, and for the varied andadequate literary reproduction of it; who, under favourablecircumstances, or even without them, will become critic, or poet, andin either case a creative force; and if he be religious (as Amiel wasdeeply religious) will make the most of "evidence, " and almostcertainly find a Church. 

The sort of purely poetic tendency in his mind, which made Amiel knownin his own lifetime chiefly as a writer of verse, seems to berepresented in these volumes by certain passages of naturaldescription, always sincere, and sometimes rising to real distinction. In Switzerland it is easy to be pleased with scenery. But the record ofsuch pleasure becomes really worth while when, as happens with Amiel, we feel that there has been, and with success, an intellectual [26]effort to get at the secret, the precise motive, of the pleasure; todefine feeling, in this matter. Here is a good description of aneffect of fog, which we commend to foreigners resident in London:

"Fog has certainly a poetry of its own--a grace, a dreamy charm. Itdoes for the daylight what a lamp does for us at night; it turns themind towards meditation; it throws the soul back on itself. The sun, as it were, sheds us abroad in nature, scatters and disperses us; mistdraws us together and concentrates us--it is cordial, homely, chargedwith feeling. The poetry of the sun has something of the epic in it;that of fog and mist is elegiac and religious. Pantheism is the childof light; mist engenders faith in near protectors. When the greatworld is shut off from us, the house becomes itself a small universe. Shrouded in perpetual mist, men love each other better; for the onlyreality then is the family, and, within the family, the heart; and thegreatest thoughts come from the heart--so says the moralist. "

It is of Swiss fog, however, that he is speaking, as, in what follows, of Swiss frost:

[27] "Three snowstorms this afternoon. Poor blossoming plum-trees andpeach-trees! What a difference from six years ago, when thecherry-trees, adorned in their green spring dress and laden with theirbridal flowers, smiled at my departure along the Vaudois fields, andthe lilacs of Burgundy threw great gusts of perfume into my face!" Theweather is seldom talked of with so much real sensitiveness to it as inthis:

"The weather is rainy, the whole atmosphere grey; it is a timefavourable to thought and meditation. I have a liking for such days asthese; they revive one's converse with oneself and make it possible tolive the inner life: they are quiet and peaceful, like a song in aminor key. We are nothing but thought, but we feel our life to itsvery centre. Our very sensations turn to reverie. It is a strangestate of mind; it is like those silences in worship which are not theempty moments of devotion, but the full moments, and which are sobecause at such times the soul, instead of being polarized, dispersed, localized, in a single impression or thought, feels her own totalityand is conscious of herself. "

[28] "Every landscape, " he writes, "is, as it were, a state of thesoul": and again, "At bottom there is but one subject of study; theforms and metamorphoses of mind: all other subjects may be reduced tothat; all other studies bring us back to this study. " And, in truth, if he was occupied with the aspects of nature to such an excellentliterary result, still, it was with nature only as a phenomenon of themoral order. His interest, after all, is, consistently, that of themoralist (in no narrow sense) who deals, from predilection, with thesort of literary work which stirs men--stirs their intellect--throughfeeling; and with that literature, especially, as looked at through themeans by which it became capable of thus commanding men. The powers, the culture, of the literary producer: there, is the centre of Amiel'scuriosity. 

And if we take Amiel at his own word, we must suppose that but forcauses, the chief of which were bad health and a not long life, he toowould have produced monumental work, whose scope and character he wouldwish us to conjecture from his "Thoughts. " Such indications therecertainly are in them. He was [29] meant--we see it in the variety, the high level both of matter and style, the animation, the gravity, ofone after another of these thoughts--on religion, on poetry, onpolitics in the highest sense; on their most abstract principles, andon the authors who have given them a personal colour; on the genius ofthose authors, as well as on their concrete works; on outlying isolatedsubjects, such as music, and special musical composers--he was meant, if people ever are meant for special lines of activity, for the bestsort of criticism, the imaginative criticism; that criticism which isitself a kind of construction, or creation, as it penetrates, throughthe given literary or artistic product, into the mental and innerconstitution of the producer, shaping his work. Of such criticalskill, cultivated with all the resources of Geneva in the nineteenthcentury, he has given in this Journal abundant proofs. Corneille, Cherbuliez; Rousseau, Sismondi; Victor Hugo, and Joubert; Mozart andWagner--all who are interested in these men will find a value in whatAmiel has to say of them. Often, as for instance in his excellentcriticism of Quinet, he has to make large exceptions [30]; limitations, skilfully effected by the way, in the course of a really appreciativeestimate. Still, through all, what we feel is that we have to do withone who criticises in this fearlessly equitable manner only because heis convinced that his subject is of a real literary importance. Apowerful, intellectual analysis of some well-marked subject, in suchform as makes literature enduring, is indeed what the world might havelooked for from him: those institutes of aesthetics, for instance, which might exist, after Lessing and Hegel, but which certainly do notexist yet. "Construction, " he says--artistic or literaryconstruction--"rests upon feeling, instinct, and, " alas! also, "uponwill. " The instinct, at all events, was certainly his. And over andabove that he had possessed himself of the art of expressing, in quitenatural language, very difficult thoughts; those abstract andmetaphysical conceptions especially, in which German mind has beenrich, which are bad masters, but very useful ministers towards theunderstanding, towards an analytical survey, of all that the intellecthas produced. 

But something held him back: not so much [31] a reluctancy oftemperament, or of physical constitution (common enough cause why menof undeniable gifts fail of commensurate production) but a cause purelyintellectual--the presence in him, namely, of a certain vein ofopinion; that other, constituent but contending, person, in his complexnature. "The relation of thought to action, " he writes, "filled mymind on waking, and I found myself carried towards a bizarre formula, which seems to have something of the night still clinging about it. Action is but coarsened thought. " That is but an ingeniousmetaphysical point, as he goes on to show. But, including in "action"that literary production in which the line of his own proper activitylay, he followed--followed often--that fastidious utterance to acynical and pessimistic conclusion. 

Maia, as he calls it, the empty "Absolute" of the Buddhist, the"Infinite, " the "All, " of which those German metaphysicians he lovedonly too well have had so much to say: this was for ever to give thego-by to all positive, finite, limited interests whatever. The vaguepretensions of an abstract expression acted on him with all the forceof a prejudice. "The ideal, " he admits, [32] "poisons for me allimperfect possession"; and again, "The Buddhist tendency in me bluntsthe faculty of free self-government, and weakens the power of action. Ifeel a terror of action and am only at ease in the impersonal, disinterested, and objective line of thought. " But then, again, withhim "action" meant chiefly literary production. He quotes withapproval those admirable words from Goethe, "In der Beschrankung zeigtsich erst der Meister"; yet still always finds himself wavering between"frittering myself away on the infinitely little, and longing afterwhat is unknown and distant. " There is, doubtless, over and above thephysical consumptive tendency, an instinctive turn of sentiment in thistouching confession. Still, what strengthened both tendencies was thatmetaphysical prejudice for the "Absolute, " the false intellectualconscience. "I have always avoided what attracted me, and turned myback upon the point where secretly I desired to be"; and, of course, that is not the way to a free and generous productivity, in literature, or in anything else; though in literature, with Amiel at all events, itmeant the fastidiousness which [33] is incompatible with any but thevery best sort of production. 

And as that abstract condition of Maia, to the kind and quantity ofconcrete literary production we hold to have been originally possiblefor him; so was the religion he actually attained, to what might havebeen the development of his profoundly religious spirit, had he beenable to see that the old-fashioned Christianity is itself but theproper historic development of the true "essence" of the New Testament. There, again, is the constitutional shrinking, through a kind ofmetaphysical prejudice, from the concrete--that fear of the actual--inthis case, of the Church of history; to which the admissions, whichform so large a part of these volumes, naturally lead. Assenting, onprobable evidence, to so many of the judgments of the religious sense, he failed to see the equally probable evidence there is for thebeliefs, the peculiar direction of men's hopes, which complete thosejudgments harmoniously, and bring them into connection with the facts, the venerable institutions of the past--with the lives of the saints. By failure, as we think, of that historic sense, of [34] which he couldspeak so well, he got no further in this direction than the glacialcondition of rationalistic Geneva. "Philosophy, " he says, "can neverreplace religion. " Only, one cannot see why it might not replace areligion such as his: a religion, after all, much like Seneca's. 

"I miss something, " he himself confesses, "common worship, a positivereligion, shared with other people. Ah! when will the Church to whichI belong in heart rise into being?" To many at least of those who candetect the ideal through the disturbing circumstances which belong toall actual institutions in the world, it was already there. Pascal, from considerations to which Amiel was no stranger, came to the largehopes of the Catholic Church; Amiel stopped short at a faith almosthopeless; and by stopping short just there he really failed, as wethink, of intellectual consistency, and missed that appeasing influencewhich his nature demanded as the condition of its full activity, as aforce, an intellectual force, in the world--in the special business ofhis life. "Welcome the unforeseen, " he says again, by way of a counselof perfection in the matter of culture, "but give to [35] your lifeunity, and bring the unforeseen within the lines of your plan. " Bring, we should add, the Great Possibility at least within the lines of yourplan--your plan of action or production; of morality; especially ofyour conceptions of religion. And still, Amiel too, be it remembered(we are not afraid to repeat it), has said some things in Pascal's veinnot unworthy of Pascal. 

And so we get only the Journal. Watching in it, in the way we havesuggested, the contention of those two men, those two minds in him, andobserving how the one might have ascertained and corrected theshortcomings of the other, we certainly understand, and can sympathizewith Amiel's despondency in the retrospect of a life which seemed tohave been but imperfectly occupied. But, then, how excellent aliterary product, after all, the Journal is. And already we have foundthat it improves also on second reading. A book of "thoughts" shouldbe a book that may be fairly dipped into, and yield good quotablesayings. Here are some of its random offerings:

"Look twice, if what you want is a just [36] conception; look once, ifwhat you want is a sense of beauty. "

"It is not history which teaches conscience to be honest; it is theconscience which educates history. Fact is corrupting--it is we whocorrect it by the persistence of our ideal. "

"To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. Todo what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. "

"Duty has the virtue of making us feel the reality of a positive world, while at the same time detaching us from it. "

"As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously todwell in Him. "

"He also (the Son of Man), He above all, is the great Misunderstood, the least comprehended. "

"The pensée writer is to the philosopher what the dilettante is to theartist. "

There are some, we know, who hold that genius cannot, in the nature ofthings, be "sterile"; that there are no "mute" Miltons, or the like. Well! genius, or only a very distinguished talent, the gift which Amielnursed so jealously did come into evidence. And the [37] reader, wehope, sees also already how well his English translator has done herwork. She may justly feel, as part at least of the reward of a labourwhich must have occupied much time, so many of the freshest hours ofmind and spirit, that she has done something to help her author in theachievement of his, however discouraged still irrepressible, desire, bygiving additional currency to a book which the best sort of readerswill recognize as an excellent and certainly very versatile companion, not to be forgotten. 

17th March 1886

III. BROWNING

An Introduction to the Study of Browning. By Arthur Symons. Cassells. 

[41] WHETHER it be true or not that Mr. Browning is justly chargeablewith "obscurity"--with a difficulty of manner, that is, beyond theintrinsic difficulty of his matter--it is very probable that anIntroduction to the study of his works, such as this of Mr. Symons, will add to the number of his readers. Mr. Symons's opening essay onthe general characteristics of Mr. Browning is a just and acceptableappreciation of his poetry as a whole, well worth reading, even at thislate day. We find in Mr. Symons the thoughtful and practised yetenthusiastic student in literature--in intellectual problems; alwaysquiet and sane, praising Mr. Browning with tact, with a real refinementand grace; saying well many [42] things which every competent reader ofthe great poet must feel to be true; devoting to the subject he loves acritical gift so considerable as to make us wish for work from hishands of larger scope than this small volume. His book is, according tohis intention, before all things a useful one. Appreciating Mr. Browning fairly, as we think, in all his various efforts, his aim is topoint his readers to the best, the indisputable, rather than to thedubious portions of his author's work. Not content with his ownexcellent general criticism of Mr. Browning, he guides the reader tohis works, or division of work, seriatim, making of each a distinct andspecial study, and giving a great deal of welcome information about thepoems, the circumstances of their composition, and the like, withdelightful quotations. Incidentally, his Introduction has the interestof a brief but effective selection from Mr. Browning's poems; and hehas added an excellent biography. 

Certainly we shall not quarrel with Mr. Symons for reckoning Mr. Browning, among English poets, second to Shakespeare alone--"He comesvery near the gigantic total of [43] Shakespeare. " The quantity of hiswork? Yes! that too, in spite of a considerable unevenness, is a signof genius. "So large, indeed, appear to be his natural endowments thatwe cannot feel as if even thirty volumes would have come near toexhausting them. " Imaginatively, indeed, Mr. Browning has been amultitude of persons; only (as Shakespeare's only untried style was thesimple one) almost never simple ones; and certainly he has controlledthem all to profoundly interesting artistic ends by his own powerfulpersonality. The world and all its action, as a show of thought, thatis the scope of his work. It makes him pre-eminently a modern poet--apoet of the self-pondering, perfectly educated, modern world, which, having come to the end of all direct and purely external experiences, must necessarily turn for its entertainment to the world within:--

"The men and women who live and move in that new world of his creationare as varied as life itself; they are kings and beggars, saints andlovers, great captains, poets, painters, musicians, priests and Popes, Jews, gipsies and dervishes, street-girls, princesses, dancers with thewicked [44] witchery of the daughter of Herodias, wives with thedevotion of the wife of Brutus, joyous girls and malevolentgrey-beards, statesmen, cavaliers, soldiers of humanity, tyrants andbigots, ancient sages and modern spiritualists, heretics, scholars, scoundrels, devotees, rabbis, persons of quality and men of lowestate--men and women as multiform as nature or society has made them. "

The individual, the personal, the concrete, as distinguished from, yetrevealing in its fulness, the general, the universal--that is Mr. Browning's chosen subject-matter: "Every man is for him an epitome ofthe universe, a centre of creation. " It is always the particular soul, and the particular act or episode, as the flower of the particularsoul--the act or episode by which its quality comes to the test--inwhich he interests us. With him it is always "a drama of the interior, a tragedy or comedy of the soul, to see thereby how each soul becomesconscious of itself. " In the Preface to the later edition of Sordello, Mr. Browning himself told us that to him little else seems worth studyexcept the development of a soul, the incidents, the story, of that. And, [45] in fact, the intellectual public generally agrees with him. It is because he has ministered with such marvellous vigour, andvariety, and fine skill to this interest, that he is the most modern, to modern people the most important, of poets. 

So much for Mr. Browning's matter; for his manner, we hold Mr. Symonsright in thinking him a master of all the arts of poetry. "Theseextraordinary little poems, " says Mr. Symons of "Johannes Agricola" and"Porphyria's Lover"--

"Reveal not only an imagination of intense fire and heat, but an almostfinished art--a power of conceiving subtle mental complexities withclearness and of expressing them in a picturesque form and in perfectlyric language. Each poem renders a single mood, and renders itcompletely. "

Well, after all, that is true of a large portion of Mr. Browning'swork. A curious, an erudite artist, certainly, he is to some extent anexperimenter in rhyme or metre, often hazardous. But in spite of thedramatic rudeness which is sometimes of the idiosyncrasy, the true andnative colour of his multitudinous dramatis personae, or monologists, Mr. Symons is right in [46] laying emphasis on the grace, the finishedskill, the music, native and ever ready to the poet himself--tender, manly, humorous, awe-stricken--when speaking in his own proper person. Music herself, the analysis of the musical soul, in the characteristicepisodes of its development is a wholly new range of poetic subject inwhich Mr. Browning is simply unique. Mr. Symons tells us:--

"When Mr. Browning was a mere boy, it is recorded that he debatedwithin himself whether he should not become a painter or a musician aswell as a poet. Finally, though not, I believe, for a good many years, he decided in the negative. But the latent qualities of painter andmusician had developed themselves in his poetry, and much of his finestand very much of his most original verse is that which speaks thelanguage of painter and musician as it had never before been spoken. No English poet before him has ever excelled his utterances on music, none has so much as rivalled his utterances on art. 'Abt Vogler' isthe richest, deepest, fullest poem on music in the language. It is notthe theories of the poet, but the instincts of the [47] musician, thatit speaks. 'Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, ' another special poem onmusic, is unparalleled for ingenuity of technical interpretation: 'AToccata of Galuppi's' is as rare a rendering as can anywhere be foundof the impressions and sensations caused by a musical piece; but 'AbtVogler' is a very glimpse into the heaven where music is born. "

It is true that "when the head has to be exercised before the heartthere is chilling of sympathy. " Of course, so intellectual a poet (andonly the intellectual poet, as we have pointed out, can be adequate tomodern demands) will have his difficulties. They were a part of thepoet's choice of vocation, and he was fully aware of them:--

"Mr. Browning might say, as his wife said in an early preface, I nevermistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for thehour of the poet--as indeed he has himself said, to much the sameeffect, in a letter printed many years ago: I never pretended to offersuch literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game atdominoes to an idle man. "

"Moreover, while a writer who deals with [48] easy themes has no excuseif he is not pellucid to a glance, one who employs his intellect andimagination on high and hard questions has a right to demand acorresponding closeness of attention, and a right to say with BishopButler, in answer to a similar complaint: 'It must be acknowledged thatsome of the following discourses are very abstruse and difficult, or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to add that those aloneare judges whether or no, and how far this is a fault, who are judgeswhether or no, and how far it might have been avoided--those only whowill be at the trouble to understand what is here said, and to see howfar the things here insisted upon, and not other things, might havebeen put in a plainer manner. '"

In Mr. Symons's opinion Pippa Passes is Mr. Browning's most perfectpiece of work, for pregnancy of intellect, combined with faultlessexpression in a perfectly novel yet symmetrical outline: and he is verylikely right. He is certainly right in thinking Mas they formerlystood, Mr. Browning's most delightful volumes. It is only to beregretted [49] that in the later collected edition of the works thosetwo magical old volumes are broken up and scattered under otherheadings. We think also that Mr. Symons in his high praise does nomore than justice to The Ring and the Book. The Ring and the Book isat once the largest and the greatest of Mr. Browning's works, theculmination of his dramatic method, and the turning-point moredecisively than Dramatis Personae of his style. Yet just here herightly marks a change in Mr. Browning's manner:--

"Not merely the manner of presentment, the substance, and also thestyle and versification have undergone a change. I might point to theprofound intellectual depth of certain pieces as its characteristic, or, equally, to the traces here and there of an apparent carelessnessof workmanship; or, yet again, to the new and very marked partialityfor scenes and situations of English and modern rather than mediævaland foreign life. "

Noble as much of Mr. Browning's later work is, full of intellect, alivewith excellent passages (in the first volume of the Dramatic Idyls [50]perhaps more powerful than in any earlier work); notwithstanding allthat, we think the change here indicated matter of regret. After all, we have to conjure up ideal poets for ourselves out of those who standin or behind the range of volumes on our book-shelves; and our idealBrowning would have for his entire structural type those two volumes ofMen and Women with Pippa Passes. 

Certainly, it is a delightful world to which Mr. Browning has given usthe key, and those volumes a delightful gift to our age-record of somuch that is richest in the world of things, and men, and theirworks--all so much the richer by the great intellect, the greatimagination, which has made the record, transmuted them intoimperishable things of art:--

"'With souls should souls have place'--this, with Mr. Browning, issomething more than a mere poetical conceit. It is the condensedexpression of an experience, a philosophy, and an art. Like the loversof his lyric, Mr. Browning has renounced the selfish serenities ofwild-wood and dream-palace; he has fared up and down among men, listening to the music of humanity, [51] observing the acts of men, andhe has sung what he has heard, and he has painted what he has seen. Will the work live? we ask; and we can answer only in his own words--

 It lives, If precious be the soul of man to man. "

9th November 1887

IV. "ROBERT ELSMERE"

[55] THOSE who, in this bustling age, turn to fiction not merely for alittle passing amusement, but for profit, for the higher sort ofpleasure, will do well, we think (after a conscientious perusal on ourown part) to bestow careful reading on Robert Elsmere. A chef d'oeuvreof that kind of quiet evolution of character through circumstance, introduced into English literature by Miss Austen, and carried toperfection in France by George Sand (who is more to the point, because, like Mrs. Ward, she was not afraid to challenge novel-readers to aninterest in religious questions), it abounds in sympathy with people aswe find them, in aspiration towards something better--towards a certainideal--in a refreshing sense of second thoughts everywhere. The authorclearly has developed a remarkable natural aptitude for literature byliberal reading and most patient care [56] in composition--compositionin that narrower sense which is concerned with the building of a goodsentence; as also in that wider sense, which ensures, in a work likethis, with so many joints, so many currents of interest, a final unityof impression an the part of the reader, and easy transition by himfrom one to the other. Well-used to works of fiction which tell allthey have to tell in one thin volume, we have read Mrs. Ward's threevolumes with unflagging readiness. 

For, in truth, that quiet method of evolution, which she pursuesundismayed to the end, requires a certain lengthiness; and the reader'sreward will be in a secure sense that he has been in intercourse withno mere flighty remnants, but with typical forms, of character, firmlyand fully conceived. We are persuaded that the author might havewritten a novel which should have been all shrewd impressions ofsociety, or all humorous impressions of country life, or all quiet funand genial caricature. Actually she has chosen to combine something ofeach of these with a very sincerely felt religious interest; and whowill deny that to trace the influence of religion upon human characteris one of the [57] legitimate functions of the novel? In truth, themodern "novel of character" needs some such interest, to lift itsufficiently above the humdrum of life; as men's horizons are enlargedby religion, of whatever type it may be--and we may say at once thatthe religious type which is dear to Mrs. Ward, though avowedly "broad, "is not really the broadest. Having conceived her work thus, she hasbrought a rare instinct for probability and nature to the difficulttask of combining this religious motive and all the learned thought itinvolves, with a very genuine interest in many varieties of averagemundane life. 

We should say that the author's special ethical gift lay in adelicately intuitive sympathy, not, perhaps, with all phases ofcharacter, but certainly with the very varied class of personsrepresented in these volumes. It may be congruous with this, perhaps, that her success should be more assured in dealing with the charactersof women than with those of men. The men who pass before us in herpages, though real and tangible and effective enough, seem, nevertheless, from time to time to reveal their joinings. They arecomposite of many different men we seem to have [58] known, and fancywe could detach again from the ensemble and from each other. And theirgoodness, when they are good, is--well! a little conventional; the kindof goodness that men themselves discount rather largely in theirestimates of each other. Robert himself is certainly worth knowing--areally attractive union of manliness and saintliness, of shrewd senseand unworldly aims, and withal with that kindness and pity the absenceof which so often abates the actual value of those other gifts. Mrs. Ward's literary power is sometimes seen at its best (it is a proof ofher high cultivation of this power that so it should be) in theanalysis of minor characters, both male and female. Richard Leyburn, deceased before the story begins, but warm in the memory of the few whohad known him, above all of his great-souled daughter Catherine, strikes us, with his religious mysticism, as being in this way one ofthe best things in the book:--

"Poor Richard Leyburn! Yet where had the defeat lain?

"'Was he happy in his school life?' Robert asked gently. 'Was teachingwhat he liked?'

[59] "'Oh! yes, only--' and then added hurriedly, as though drawn on inspite of herself by the grave sympathy of his look, 'I never knewanybody so good who thought himself of so little account. He alwaysbelieved that he had missed everything, wasted everything, and thatanybody else would have made infinitely more out of his life. He vasalways blaming, scourging himself. And all the time he was thenoblest, purest, most devoted--'

"She stopped. Her voice had passed beyond her control. Elsmere wasstartled by the feeling she showed. Evidently he had touched one ofthe few sore places in this pure heart. It was as though her memory ofher father had in it elements of almost intolerable pathos, as thoughthe child's brooding love and loyalty were in perpetual protest evennow after this lapse of years against the verdict which anover-scrupulous, despondent soul had pronounced upon itself. Did shefeel that he had gone uncomforted out of life--even by her--even byreligion? Was that the sting?"

A little later she gives the record of his last hours:--

[60] "'Catherine! Life is harder, the narrower way narrower than ever. I die--and memory caught still the piteous long-drawn breath by whichthe voice was broken--'in much--much perplexity about many things. Youhave a clear soul, an iron will. Strengthen the others. Bring themsafe to the day of account. '"

And then the smaller--some of them, ethically, very small--women; LadyWynnstay, Mrs. Fleming, Mrs. Thornburgh; above all, Robert's delightfulIrish mother, and Mrs. Darcy; how excellent they are! Mrs. Darcy weseem to have known, yet cannot have enough of, rejoiced to catch sightof her capital letter on the page, as we read on. In truth, if a highand ideal purpose, really learned in the school of Wordsworth and amongthe Westmorland hills which Mrs. Ward describes so sympathetically, with fitting dignity and truth of style, has accompanied the authorthroughout; no less plain, perhaps more pleasing to some readers, isthe quiet humour which never fails her, and tests, while it relieves, the sincerity of her more serious thinking:--

"At last Mrs. Darcy fluttered off, only, however, to come hurrying backwith little, short, [61] scudding steps, to implore them all to come totea with her as soon as possible in the garden that was her specialhobby, and in her last new summer-house. 

"'I build two or three every summer, ' she said; 'now there aretwenty-one! Roger laughs at me, ' and there was a momentary bitternessin the little eerie face; 'but how can one live without hobbies?That's one--then I've two more. My album--oh, you will all write in myalbum, won't you? When I was young--when I was Maid of Honour'--andshe drew herself up slightly--'everybody had albums. Even the dearQueen herself! I remember how she made M. Guizot write in it;something quite stupid, after all. Those hobbies--the garden and thealbum--are quite harmless, aren't they? They hurt nobody, do they?'Her voice dropped a little, with a pathetic expostulating intonation init, as of one accustomed to be rebuked. "

Mrs. Ward's women, as we have said, are more organic, sympathetic, andreally creative, than her men, and make their vitality evident bybecoming, quite naturally, the centres of very [62] life-like anddramatic groups of people, family or social; while her men are the verygenii of isolation and division. It is depressing to see so reallynoble a character as Catherine soured, as we feel, and lowered, as timegoes on, from the happy resignation of the first volume (in whichsolemn, beautiful, and entire, and so very real, she is like a poem ofWordsworth) down to the mere passivity of the third volume, and theclosing scene of Robert Elsmere's days, very exquisitely as thisepisode of unbelieving yet saintly biography has been conceived andexecuted. Catherine certainly, for one, has no profit in thedevelopment of Robert's improved gospel. The "stray sheep, " we think, has by no means always the best of the argument, and her story isreally a sadder, more testing one than his. Though both alike, weadmit it cordially, have a genuine sense of the eternal moral charm of"renunciation, " something even of the thirst for martyrdom, for thosewonderful, inaccessible, cold heights of the Imitation, eternal also intheir aesthetic charm. 

These characters and situations, pleasant or profoundly interesting, which it is good to have [63] come across, are worked out, not in rapidsketches, nor by hazardous epigram, but more securely by patientanalysis; and though we have said that Mrs. Ward is most successful infemale portraiture, her own mind and culture have an unmistakablevirility and grasp and scientific firmness. This indispensableintellectual process, which will be relished by admirers of GeorgeEliot, is relieved constantly by the sense of a charming landscapebackground, for the most part English. Mrs. Ward has been a truedisciple in the school of Wordsworth, and really undergone itsinfluence. Her Westmorland scenery is more than a mere background; itsspiritual and, as it were, personal hold on persons, as understood bythe great poet of the Lakes, is seen actually at work, in theformation, in the refining, of character. It has been a stormy day:--

"Before him the great hollow of High Fell was just coming out from thewhite mists surging round it. A shaft of sunlight lay across its upperend, and he caught a marvellous apparition of a sunlit valley hung inair, a pale strip of blue above it, a white thread of stream wavering[64] through it, and all around it and below it the rollingrain-clouds. "

There is surely something of "natural magic" in that! The wildercapacity of the mountains is brought out especially in a weird story ofa haunted girl, an episode well illustrating the writer's moreimaginative psychological power; for, in spite of its quiet generaltenour, the book has its adroitly managed elements ofsensation--witness the ghost, in which the average human susceptibilityto supernatural terrors takes revenge on the sceptical Mr. Wendover, and the love-scene with Madame de Netteville, which, like those otherexciting passages, really furthers the development of the properethical interests of the book. The Oxford episodes strike us as beingnot the author's strongest work, as being comparatively conventional, coming, as they do, in a book whose predominant note is reality. Yether sympathetic command over, her power of evoking, the genius ofplaces, is clearly shown in the touches by which she brings out the sowell-known grey and green of college and garden--touches which bringthe real Oxford to the mind's eye better than any elaborate description[65] --for the beauty of the place itself resides also in delicatetouches. The book passes indeed, successively, through distinct, broadly conceived phases of scenery, which, becoming veritable parts ofits texture, take hold on the reader, as if in an actual sojourn in theplaces described. Surrey--its genuine though almost suburban wildness, with the vicarage and the wonderful abode, above all, the ancientlibrary of Mr. Wendover, all is admirably done, the landscape naturallycounting for a good deal in the development of the profoundlymeditative, country-loving souls of Mrs. Ward's favourite characters. 

Well! Mrs. Ward has chosen to use all these varied gifts andaccomplishments for a certain purpose. Briefly, Robert Elsmere, apriest of the Anglican Church, marries a very religious woman; there isthe perfection of "mutual love"; at length he has doubts about"historic Christianity"; he gives up his orders; carries his learning, his fine intellect, his goodness, nay, his saintliness, into a kind ofUnitarianism; the wife becomes more intolerant than ever; there is along and faithful effort on both sides, eventually successful, on thepart of these mentally [66] divided people, to hold together; endingwith the hero's death, the genuine piety and resignation of which isthe crowning touch in the author's able, learned, and thoroughlysincere apology for Robert Elsmere's position. 

For good or evil, the sort of doubts which troubled Robert Elsmere areno novelty in literature, and we think the main issue of the "religiousquestion" is not precisely where Mrs. Ward supposes--that it hasadvanced, in more senses than one, beyond the point raised by Renan'sVie de Jésus. Of course, a man such as Robert Elsmere came to be oughtnot to be a clergyman of the Anglican Church. The priest is still, andwill, we think, remain, one of the necessary types of humanity; and heis untrue to his type, unless, with whatever inevitable doubts in thisdoubting age, he feels, on the whole, the preponderance in it of thoseinfluences which make for faith. It is his triumph to achieve as muchfaith as possible in an age of negation. Doubtless, it is part of theideal of the Anglican Church that, under certain safeguards, it shouldfind room for latitudinarians even among its clergy. Still, withthese, as [67] with all other genuine priests, it is the positive notthe negative result that justifies the position. We have littlepatience with those liberal clergy who dwell on nothing else than thedifficulties of faith and the propriety of concession to the oppositeforce. Yes! Robert Elsmere was certainly right in ceasing to be aclergyman. But it strikes us as a blot on his philosophicalpretensions that he should have been both so late in perceiving thedifficulty, and then so sudden and trenchant in dealing with so greatand complex a question. Had he possessed a perfectly philosophic orscientific temper he would have hesitated. This is not the place todiscuss in detail the theological position very ably and seriouslyargued by Mrs. Ward. All we can say is that, one by one, Elsmere'sobjections may be met by considerations of the same genus, and not lessequal weight, relatively to a world so obscure, in its origin andissues, as that in which we live. 

Robert Elsmere was a type of a large class of minds which cannot besure that the sacred story is true. It is philosophical, doubtless, and a duty to the intellect to recognize our doubts, [68] to locatethem, perhaps to give them practical effect. It may be also a moralduty to do this. But then there is also a large class of minds whichcannot be sure it is false--minds of very various degrees ofconscientiousness and intellectual power, up to the highest. They willthink those who are quite sure it is false unphilosophical through lackof doubt. For their part, they make allowance in their scheme of lifefor a great possibility, and with some of them that bare concession ofpossibility (the subject of it being what it is) becomes the mostimportant fact in the world. 

The recognition of it straightway opens wide the door to hope and love;and such persons are, as we fancy they always will be, the nucleus of aChurch. Their particular phase of doubt, of philosophic uncertainty, has been the secret of millions of good Christians, multitudes ofworthy priests. They knit themselves to believers, in various degrees, of all ages. As against the purely negative action of the scientificspirit, the high-pitched Grey, the theistic Elsmere, the "ritualisticpriest, " the quaint Methodist Fleming, both so admirably sketched, present [69] perhaps no unconquerable differences. The question of theday is not between one and another of these, but in another sort ofopposition, well defined by Mrs. Ward herself, between--

"Two estimates of life--the estimate which is the offspring of thescientific spirit, and which is for ever making the visible worldfairer and more desirable in mortal eyes; and the estimate of SaintAugustine. "

To us, the belief in God, in goodness at all, in the story ofBethlehem, does not rest on evidence so diverse in character and forceas Mrs. Ward supposes. At his death Elsmere has started what to uswould be a most unattractive place of worship, where he preaches anadmirable sermon on the purely human aspect of the life of Christ. Butwe think there would be very few such sermons in the new church orchapel, for the interest of that life could hardly be very varied, whenall such sayings as that "though He was rich, for our sakes He becamepoor" have ceased to be applicable to it. It is the infinite nature ofChrist which has led to such diversities of genius in preaching as St. Francis, and Taylor, and Wesley. 

[70] And after all we fear we have been unjust to Mrs. Ward's work. Ifso, we should read once more, and advise our readers to read, theprofoundly thought and delicately felt chapter--chapter forty-three inher third volume--in which she describes the final spiritual reunion, on a basis of honestly diverse opinion, of the husband and wife. Herview, we think, could hardly have been presented more attractively. For ourselves we can only thank her for pleasure and profit in thereading of her book, which has refreshed actually the first and deepestsprings of feeling, while it has charmed the literary sense. 

28th March 1888

V. THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS

Annals of the English Stage, from Thomas Betterton to Edmund Kean. ByDr. Doran, F. S. A. Edited and revised by Robert W. Lowe. John C. Nimmo. 

[73] THOSE who care for the history of the drama as a branch ofliterature, or for the history of that general development of humanmanners of which the stage has been always an element and a very livelymeasure or index, will be grateful to Mr. Lowe for this revised andcharmingly illustrated edition of Dr. Doran's pleasant old book. Threehundred years and more of a singularly varied and vivacious sort ofhistory!--it was a bold thing to undertake; and Dr. Doran did his workwell--did it with adequate "love. " These Annals of the English Stage, from Thomas Betterton to Edmund [74] Kean, are full of the colours oflife in their most emphatic and motley contrasts, as is natural inproportion as the stage itself concentrates and artificiallyintensifies the character and conditions of ordinary life. The longstory of "Their Majesties' Servants, " treated thus, becomes from age toage an agreeable addition to those personal memoirs--Evelyn's, and thelike--which bring the influence and charm of a visible countenance tothe dry tenour of ordinary history, and the critic's work upon itnaturally becomes, in the first place, a mere gathering of some of theflowers which lie so abundantly scattered here and there. 

A history of the English stage must necessarily be in part a history ofone of the most delightful of subjects--old London, of which from timeto time we catch extraordinary glimpses in Dr. Doran's pages. From 1682to 1695, as if the Restoration had not come, there was but one theatrein London. In Charles I. 's time Shoreditch was the dramatic quarter ofLondon par excellence. --

"The popular taste was not only there directed towards the stage, butit was a district [75] wherein many actors dwelt, and consequentlydied. The baptismal register of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, containsChristian names which appear to have been chosen with reference to theheroines of Shakespeare; and the record of burials bears the name ofmany an old actor of mark whose remains now lie within the churchyard. "

Earlier and later, the Surrey side of the Thames was the favouritelocality for play-houses. The Globe was there, and the Bear-garden, represented in Mr. Lowe's luxurious new edition by delightful woodcuts. For this new edition adds to the original merits of the work the verysubstantial charm of abundant illustrations, first-rate in subject andexecution, and of three kinds--copper-plate likenesses of actors andother personages connected with theatrical history; a series ofdelicate, picturesque, highly detailed woodcuts of theatricaltopography, chiefly the little old theatres; and, by way of tail-piecesto the chapters, a second series of woodcuts of a vigour and reality ofinformation, within very limited compass, which make one think ofCallot and the German [76] "little masters, " depicting Garrick andother famous actors in their favourite scenes. 

In the vignettes of the Bear-garden and the Swan Theatre, for instance, the artist has managed to throw over his minute plate a wonderful airof pleasantness, a light which, though very delicate, is verytheatrical. The river and its tiny craft, the little gabled houses ofthe neighbourhood, with a garden or two dropped in, tell delightfullyin the general effect. They are worthy to rank with Cruikshank'sillustrations of Jack Sheppard and The Tower of London, as mementoes ofthe little old smokeless London before the century of Johnson, thoughthat, too, as Dr. Doran bears witness, knew what fogs could be. Thenthere is the Fortune Theatre near Cripplegate, and, most charming ofall, two views--street and river fronts--the Duke's Theatre, DorsetGarden, in Fleet Street, designed by Wren, decorated byGibbons--graceful, naïve, dainty, like the work of a very refinedPalladio, working minutely, perhaps more delicately than at Vicenza, inthe already crowded city on the Thames side. 

[77] The portraits of actors and other theatrical celebrities rangefrom Elizabeth, from the melodramatic costumes and faces of thecontemporaries of Shakespeare, to the conventional costumes, the rotundexpression, of the age of the Georges, masking a power of imaginativeimpersonation probably unknown in Shakespeare's day. Edward Burbage, like Shakespeare's own portrait, is, we venture to think, a triflestolid. Field--Nathaniel Field, author of The Fatal Dowry, and anactor of reputation--in his singular costume, and with a face ofperhaps not quite reassuring subtlety, might pass for the original ofthose Italian, or Italianized, voluptuaries in sin which pleased thefancy of Shakespeare's age. Mixed up with many striking, thoroughlydramatic physiognomies, it must be confessed that some of theseportraits scarcely help at all to explain the power of the players towhom they belonged. That, perhaps, is what we might naturally expect;the more, in proportion as the dramatic art is a matter in which manyvery subtle and indirect channels to men's sympathy are called intoplay. Edward Alleyn, from the portrait preserved at [78] his noblefoundation at Dulwich, like a fine Holbein, figures, in blent strengthand delicacy, as a genial, or perhaps jovial, soul, finding time forsentiment, --Prynne (included, we suppose, in this company, like theskull at the feast) as a likable if somewhat melancholic young man;while Garrick and his wife playing cards, after Zoffany, present a pairof just very nice young people. On the other hand, the tail-pieces, chiefly devoted to Garrick, prove what a wonderful natural varietythere was in Garrick's soul, and are well worth comparative study. Noticeable again, among the whole-plate portraits, is the thoroughlyreassuring countenance of Steele, the singularly fine heads of John, Charles, and Fanny Kemble, while the certainly plain, pinchedcountenance of William Davenant reminds one of Charles Kean, and mightwell have lighted up, as did his, when the soul came into it, intopower and charm, as the speaking eyes assure us even in its repose. 

The Renaissance inherited the old foolish prejudice of Roman times, when, although the writers of plays were the intimate friends ofemperors, the actors were thought infamous. [79] Still, on the whole, actors fared better in England than in Romanist France, where Molièrewas buried with less ceremony than a favourite dog. Very different wasthe treatment of the eminent Mrs. Oldfield, who died in 1730:--

"Poor 'Narcissa' after death (says Walpole) was attired in a Hollandnightdress, with tucker and double ruffles of Brunswick lace, of whichlatter material she also wore a headdress, and a pair of new kidgloves. In this dress the deceased actress received such honour asactress never received before, nor has ever received since. The ladylay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber. Had she been really a queen thepublic could not have thronged more eagerly to the spectacle; and afterthe lying in state there was a funeral of as much ceremony as has beenobserved at the obsequies of many a queen. There were anthems andprayers and a sermon; and Dr. Parker, who officiated, remarked, whenall was over, to a few particular friends, and with some equivocation, as it seems to me, that he 'buried her very willingly, and with muchsatisfaction. '"

Yet even in England players had need of [80] powerful protectors. "Wit, " said Chesterfield, opposing an unjust licensing Act, "Wit, mylords! is the property of those who have it, and too often the onlyproperty they have to depend on. " Wit, indeed, with the other giftsthat make good company, has largely gone with theatrical talents, toooften little to the benefit of the gifted persons. Theatrical society, rather than the theatre, has made the lives of actors as we see them inthese volumes, in many cases so tragic, even sordidly tragic. 

If misery and madness abound in stage life, so also does an indomitablecheerfulness, always at least a cheerful countenance. Dr. Doran's bookabounds, as might be expected, with admirable impromptus and the like;one might collect a large posy of them. Foote, seeing a sweep on ablood-horse, remarked, "There goes Warburton on Shakespeare!" When heheard that the Rockingham Cabinet was fatigued to death and at itswits' end, he exclaimed that it could not have been the length of thejourney which had tired it. Again, when Lord Carmarthen, at a party, told him his handkerchief was hanging from his pocket, Foote replaced[81] it with a "Thank you, my lord; you know the company better thanI. " Jevon, a century earlier, was in the habit of taking greatliberties with authors and audience. He made Settle half mad and thehouse ecstatic when having, as Lycurgus, Prince of China, to "fall onhis sword, " he placed it flat on the stage, and, falling over it, "died, " according to the direction of the acting copy. Quaint enough, but certainly no instance of anybody's wit, is the account of how aFrench translation of a play of Vanbrugh--not architect of Blenheimonly, but accomplished in many other ways--appeared at the Odéon, in1862, with all fitting raptures, as a posthumous work of Voltairerecently discovered. The Voltairean wit vas found as "delightful inthis as in the last century. "

Of Shakespeare on the stage Dr. Doran has a hundred curious things tonote:--that Richard the Third, for instance, who has retained a sounflattering possession of the stage, was its "first practically usefulpatron. " We see Queen Elizabeth full of misgiving at a difficult timeat the popularity of Richard the Second:--"The deposition and death ofKing Richard the [82] Second. " "Tongues whisper to the Queen that thisplay is part of a great plot to teach her subjects how to murderkings. " It is perhaps not generally known that Charles Shakespeare, William's brother, survived till the Restoration. 

Oldys says, à propos of the restoration of the stage at that time:--

"The actors were greedily inquisitive into every little circumstance, more especially in Shakespeare's dramatic character, which his brothercould relate of him. But he, it seems, was so stricken in years, andpossibly his memory so weakened by infirmities, that he could give thembut little light into their inquiries; and all that could berecollected from him of his brother Will in that station was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act apart in one of his own comedies, wherein being present to personate adecrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak anddrooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported andcarried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among somecompany who were eating, and one of them sang a song. "

[83] This description applies to old Adam in As You Like It. Many arethe evidences that Shakespeare's reputation had from time to time astruggle to maintain itself. James Howard, in Pepys's day--

"Belonged to the faction which affected to believe that there was nopopular love for Shakespeare, to render whom palatable he arrangedRomeo and Juliet for the stage, with a double dénouement--one serious, the other hilarious. If your heart were too sensitive to bear thedeaths of the loving pair, you had only to go on the succeedingafternoon to see them wedded, and set upon the way of a well-assureddomestic felicity. "

In 1678 Rymer asserted (was it undesignedly a true testimony to theacting of his time?) that Shakespeare had depicted Brutus and Cassiusas "Jack Puddins. "

Here, as in many another detail, we are reminded, of course, of thedifference between our own and past times in mimic as in real life. ForPrynne one of the great horrors of the stage was the introduction ofactresses from France by Henrietta Maria, to take the place of young[84] male actors of whom Dr. Doran has some interesting notices. Whothe lady was who first trod the stage as a professional actress is notknown, but her part was Desdemona. And yet it was long after that--

"Edward Kynaston died (in 1712). He lies buried in the churchyard ofSt. Paul's, Covent Garden. If not the greatest actor of his day, Kynaston was the greatest of the 'boy-actresses. ' So exalted was hisreputation 'that, ' says Downes, 'it has since been disputable among thejudicious, whether any woman that succeeded him so sensibly touched theaudience as he. '"

In Charles II. 's time it was a custom to return the price of admissionto all persons who left the theatre before the close of the first act. Consequently, many shabby persons were wont to force their way inwithout paying, on the plea that they did not intend to remain beyondthe time limited. Hence much noisy contention, to the great discomforteven of Royalty. The brawling, drinking habits of the time were evenmore discomforting. An angry word, passed one April evening of 1682between the son of Sir Edward Dering and a hot-blooded young [85]Welshman, led to recrimination and sword-drawing. The two young fellowsnot having elbow-room in the pit, clambered on to the stage, and foughtthere, to the greater comfort of the audience, and with a more excitedfury on the part of the combatants. The mingling of the public with theplayers was a practice which so annoyed the haughty French actor, Baron, that to suggest to the audience the absurdity of it, he wouldturn his back on them for a whole act, and play to the audience on thestage. Sometimes the noise was so loud that an actor's voice wouldscarcely be heard. It was about 1710 that the word encore wasintroduced at the operatic performances in the Haymarket, and very muchobjected to by plain-going Englishmen. It was also the custom of somewho desired the repetition of a song to cry Altra volta! Altra volta!

Even indirectly the history of the stage illustrates life, and affordsmany unexpected lights on historical characters. Oliver Cromwell, though he despised the stage, could condescend to laugh at, and with, men of less dignity than actors. Buffoonery was not entirely expelled[86] from his otherwise grave court. Oxford and Drury Lane itselfdispute the dignity of giving birth to Nell Gwynne with Hereford, wherea mean house is still pointed out as the first home of this mother of aline of dukes, whose great-grandson was to occupy the neighbouringpalace as Bishop of Hereford for forty years. At her burial in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Archbishop Tenison preached the sermon. Whenthis was subsequently made the ground of exposing him to the reproof ofQueen Mary, she remarked that the good doctor, no doubt, had saidnothing but what the facts authorized. 

"Who should act genteel comedy perfectly, " asks Walpole, "but people offashion, that have sense?" And, in truth, the seventeenth century gavemany ladies to the stage, Mrs. Barry being the most famous of them. Like many eminent actors, she was famous for the way in which she wouldutter one single expression in a play. Dr. Doran gives some curiousinstances from later actors. "What mean my grieving subjects?" utteredin the character of Queen Elizabeth, was invested by her with suchemphatic grace and dignity as to call up murmurs of approbation [87]which swelled into thunders of applause. Her noble head is hereengraved after Kneller, like the head of a magnificent visionary man. 

Should we really care for the greatest actors of the past could we havethem before us? Should we find them too different from our accent ofthought, of feeling, of speech, in a thousand minute particulars whichare of the essence of all three? Dr. Doran's long and interestingrecords of the triumphs of Garrick, and other less familiar, but intheir day hardly less astonishing, players, do not relieve one of thedoubt. Garrick himself, as sometimes happens with people who have beenthe subject of much anecdote and other conversation, here as elsewhere, bears no very distinct figure. One hardly sees the wood for the trees. On the other hand, the account of Betterton, "perhaps the greatest ofEnglish actors, " is delightfully fresh. That intimate friend ofDryden, Tillatson, Pope, who executed a copy of the actor's portrait byKneller which is still extant, was worthy of their friendship; hiscareer brings out the best elements in stage life. The stage in thesevolumes presents itself indeed not merely [88] as a mirror of life, butas an illustration of the utmost intensity of life, in the fortunes andcharacters of the players. Ups and downs, generosity, dark fates, themost delicate goodness, have nowhere been more prominent than in theprivate existence of those devoted to the public mimicry of men andwomen. Contact with the stage, almost throughout its history, presentsitself as a kind of touchstone, to bring out the bizarrerie, thetheatrical tricks and contrasts, of the actual world. 

27th June 1888

VI. WORDSWORTH

The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. With anIntroduction by John Morley. Macmillans. 

The Recluse. By William Wordsworth. Macmillans. 

Selections from Wordsworth. By William Knight and other Members of theWordsworth Society. With Preface and Notes. Kegan Paul. 

[91] THE appearance, so close to each other, of Professor Knight'scareful and elaborately annotated Selections from William Wordsworth, of Messrs. Macmillan's collected edition of the poet's works, with thefirst book of The Recluse, now published for the first time, and of anexcellent introductory essay by Mr. John Morley, forms a welcome proofthat the study of the [92] most philosophic of English poets isincreasing among us. Surely nothing could be better, hardly anythingmore directly fitted than careful reading of Wordsworth, to counter thefaults and offences of our busy generation, in regard both to thoughtand taste, and to remind people, amid the enormous expansion, at thepresent time, of all that is material and mechanical in life, of theessential value, the permanent ends, of life itself. In the collectededition the poems are printed with the dates, so far as can beascertained, in the order of their composition--an arrangement whichhas indisputable recommendations for the student of Wordsworth'sgenius; though the former method of distributing his work into largegroups of subject had its value, as throwing light upon his poeticmotives, and more especially as coming from himself. 

In his introductory essay Mr. Morley has dwelt strongly on thecircumstance of Wordsworth's remarkable personal happiness, as havinghad much to do with the physiognomy of his poetic creation--a calm, irresistible, well-being--almost mystic in character, and yet doubtless[93] connected with physical conditions. Long ago De Quincey noted itas a strongly determinant fact in Wordsworth's literary career, pointing, at the same time, to his remarkable good luck also, on thematerial side of life. The poet's own flawless temperament, his finemountain atmosphere of mind (so to express it), had no doubt a gooddeal to do with that. What a store of good fortune, what a goodlycontribution to happiness, in the very best sense of that term, isreally involved in a cheerful, grateful, physical temperament;especially, in the case of a poet--a great poet--who will, of course, have to face the appropriate trials of a great poet. 

Coleridge and other English critics at the beginning of the presentcentury had a great deal to say concerning a psychological distinctionof much importance (as it appeared to them) between the fancy and theimagination. Stripped of a great deal of somewhat obscure metaphysicaltheory, this distinction reduced itself to the certainly vital one, with which all true criticism more or less directly has to do, betweenthe lower and higher degrees of intensity in the [94] poet's conceptionof his subject, and his concentration of himself upon his work. It wasWordsworth who made most of this distinction, assuming it as the basisfor the final classification (abandoned, as we said, in the newedition) of his poetical writings. And nowhere is the distinction morerealizable than in Wordsworth's own work. For though what may becalled professed Wordsworthians, including Matthew Arnold, found avalue in all that remains of him--could read anything he wrote, "eventhe 'Thanksgiving Ode, '--everything, I think, except 'Vaudracour andJulia, '"--yet still the decisiveness of such selections as those madeby Arnold himself, and now by Professor Knight, hint at a certain veryobvious difference of level in his poetic work. 

This perpetual suggestion of an absolute duality between his lower andhigher moods, and the poetic work produced in them, stimulating thereader to look below the immediate surface of his poetry, makes thestudy of Wordsworth an excellent exercise for the training of thosemental powers in us, which partake both of thought and imagination. Itbegets in those [95] who fall in with him at the right moment of theirspiritual development, a habit of reading between the lines, a faith inthe effect of concentration and collectedness of mind on the rightappreciation of poetry, the expectation that what is really worthhaving in the poetic order will involve, on their part, a certaindiscipline of the temper not less than of the intellect. Wordsworthmeets them with the assurance that he has much to give them, and of avery peculiar kind, if they will follow a certain difficult way, andseems to possess the secret of some special mental illumination. Tofollow that way is an initiation, by which they will become able todistinguish, in art, speech, feeling, manners, in men and lifegenerally, what is genuine, animated, and expressive from what is onlyconventional and derivative, and therefore inexpressive. 

A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, whichponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developedconsciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the generaltemper of our modern poetry. Critics of literary history have again[96] and again remarked upon it; it is a characteristic which revealsitself in many different forms, but is strongest and most sympatheticin what is strongest and most serious in modern literature; it isexemplified by writers as unlike Wordsworth as the French romanticistpoets. As a curious chapter in the history of the human mind, itsgrowth might be traced from Rousseau and St. Pierre to Chateaubriand, from Chateaubriand to Victor Hugo; it has no doubt some obscurerelationship to those pantheistic theories which have greatly occupiedpeople's minds in many modern readings of philosophy; it makes as muchdifference between the modern and the earlier landscape art as there isbetween the roughly outlined masks of a Byzantine mosaic and a portraitby Reynolds or Romney. Of this new landscape sense the poetry ofWordsworth is the elementary and central exposition; he is moreexclusively occupied with its development than any other poet. Wordsworth's own character, as we have already observed, was dominatedby a certain contentment, a sort of naturally religious placidity, notoften found in union with a poetic sensibility so [97] active as his;and this gentle sense of well-being was favourable to the quiet, habitual observation of the inanimate, or imperfectly animate, world. His life of eighty placid years was almost without what, with mosthuman beings, count for incidents. His flight from the active world, so genially celebrated in this newly published poem of The Recluse; hisflight to the Vale of Grasmere, like that of some pious youth to theChartreuse, is the most marked event of his existence. His life'schanges are almost entirely inward ones; it falls into broad, untroubled, perhaps somewhat monotonous, spaces; his biographers havevery little to tell. What it really most resembles, different as itssuperficies may look, is the career of those early mediaeval religiousartists, who, precisely because their souls swarmed with heavenlyvisions, passed their fifty or sixty years in tranquil, systematicindustry, seemingly with no thoughts beyond it. This placid lifedeveloped in Wordsworth, to an extraordinary degree, an innatesensibility to natural sights and sounds--the flower and its shadow onthe stone, the cuckoo and its echo. The poem of [98] "Resolution andIndependence" is a storehouse of such records; for its fulness oflovely imagery it may be compared to Keats's "Saint Agnes' Eve. " Toread one of his greater pastoral poems for the first time is like a dayspent in a new country; the memory is crowded for a while with itsprecise and vivid incidents:--

 The pliant harebell swinging in the breeze, On some grey rock: The single sheep, and the one blasted tree, And the bleak music from that old stone wall:-- In the meadows and the lower ground, Was all the sweetness of a common dawn:-- And that green corn all day is rustling in thine ears!

Clear and delicate at once as he is in the outlining of visibleimagery, he is more finely scrupulous still in the noting of sounds; heconceives of noble sound as even moulding the human countenance tonobler types, and as something actually "profaned" by visible form orcolour. He has a power likewise of realizing and conveying to theconsciousness of his reader abstract and elementary impressions, silence, darkness, absolute motionlessness, or, again, the wholecomplex sentiment of a particular place, the abstract expression ofdesolation in the long [99] white road, of peacefulness in a particularfolding of the hills. 

That sense of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but arhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what wasfor him almost literal fact. To him every natural object seemed topossess something of moral or spiritual life, to be really capable of acompanionship with man, full of fine intimacies. An emanation, aparticular spirit, belonged not to the moving leaves or water only, butto the distant peak arising suddenly, by some change of perspective, above the nearer horizon of the hills, to the passing space of lightacross the plain, to the lichened Druidic stone even, for a certainweird fellowship in it with the moods of men. That he awakened "a sortof thought in sense" is Shelley's just estimate of this element inWordsworth's poetry. 

It was through nature, ennobled in this way by the semblance of passionand thought, that the poet approached the spectacle of human life. Forhim, indeed, human life is, in the first instance, only an additional, and as it were incidental grace, upon this expressive landscape. 

[100] When he thought of men and women, it was of men and women as inthe presence and under the influence of those effective naturalobjects, and linked to them by many associations. Such influences havesometimes seemed to belittle those who are the subject of them, at theleast to be likely to narrow the range of their sympathies. ToWordsworth, on the contrary, they seemed directly to dignify humannature, as tending to tranquillize it. He raises physical nature tothe level of human thought, giving it thereby a mystic power andexpression; he subdues man to the level of nature, but gives himtherewith a certain breadth and vastness and solemnity. 

Religious sentiment, consecrating the natural affections and rights ofthe human heart, above all that pitiful care and awe for the perishinghuman clay of which relic-worship is but the corruption, has always hadmuch to do with localities, with the thoughts which attach themselvesto definite scenes and places. And what is true of it everywhere istruest in those secluded valleys, where one generation after anothermaintains the same abiding-place; and [101] it was on this side thatWordsworth apprehended religion most strongly. Having so much to dowith the recognition of local sanctities, the habit of connecting thevery trees and stones of a particular spot of earth with the greatevents of life, till the low walls, the green mounds, thehalf-obliterated epitaphs, seemed full of oracular voices, even thereligion of those people of the dales appeared but as another linkbetween them and the solemn imageries of the natural world. And, again, this too tranquillized them, by bringing them under the rule oftraditional, narrowly localized observances. "Grave livers, " theyseemed to him under this aspect, of stately speech, and something ofthat natural dignity of manners which underlies the highest courtesy. 

And, seeing man thus as a part of nature, elevated and solemnized inproportion as his daily life and occupations brought him intocompanionship with permanent natural objects, he was able to appreciatepassion in the lowly. He chooses to depict people from humble life, because, being nearer to nature than others, they are on the whole moreimpassioned, certainly [102] more direct in their expression ofpassion, than other men; it is for this direct expression of passionthat he values their humble words. In much that he said in exaltationof rural life he was but pleading indirectly for that sincerity, thatperfect fidelity to one's own inward presentations, to the precisefeatures of the picture within, without which any profound poetry isimpossible. It was not for their tameness, but for their impassionedsincerity, that he chose incidents and situations from common life, "related in a selection of language really used by men. " He constantlyendeavours to bring his language nearer to the real language of men;but it is to the real language of men, not on the dead level of theirordinary intercourse, but in certain select moments of vivid sensation, when this language is winnowed and ennobled by sentiment. There arepoets who have chosen rural life for their subject for the sake of itspassionless repose; and there are times when Wordsworth himself extolsthe mere calm and dispassionate survey of things as the highest aim ofpoetical culture. But it was not for such passionless calm that hepreferred the scenes of [103] pastoral life; and the meditative poet, sheltering himself from the agitations of the outward world, is inreality only clearing the scene for the exhibition of great emotions, and what he values most is the almost elementary expression ofelementary feelings. 

In Wordsworth's prefatory advertisement to the first edition of ThePrelude, published in 1850, it is stated that that work was intended tobe introductory to The Recluse: and that The Recluse, if completed, would have consisted of three parts. The second part is The Excursion. The third part was only planned; but the first book of the first partwas left in manuscript by Wordsworth--though in manuscript, it is said, in no great condition of forwardness for the printers. This book, nowfor the first time printed in extenso (a very noble passage from itfound place in that prose advertisement to The Excursion), is the greatnovelty of this latest edition of Wordsworth's poetic works. It waswell worth adding to the poet's great bequest to English literature. The true student of his work, who has formulated for himself what hesupposes to be the leading characteristics [104] of Wordsworth'sgenius, will feel, we think, a lively interest in putting them to testby the many and various striking passages in what is there presentedfor the first time. 

17th February 1889

VII. MR. GOSSE'S POEMS

On Viol and Flute. By Edmund Gosse. 

[107] PERHAPS no age of literature, certainly no age of literature inEngland, has been so rich as ours in excellent secondary poetry; and itis with our poetry (in a measure) as with our architecture, constrainedby the nature of the case to be imitative. Our generation, quitereasonably, is not very proud of its architectural creations; confessesthat it knows too much--knows, but cannot do. And yet we could namecertain modern churches in London, for instance, to which posterity maywell look back puzzled. --Could these exquisitely pondered buildingshave been indeed works of the nineteenth century? Were they not thesubtlest creations of the age in which Gothic art was spontaneous? Intruth, we have had instances of workmen, who, through long, large, [108] devoted study of the handiwork of the past, have done the thingbetter, with a more fully enlightened consciousness, with fullintelligence of what those early workmen only guessed at. Andsomething like this is true of some of our best secondary poetry. Itis the least that is true--the least that can fairly be said in praiseof the poetic work of Mr. Edmund Gosse. 

Of course there can be no exact parallel between arts so different asarchitecture and poetic composition: But certainly in the poetry of ourday also, though it has been in some instances powerfully initiativeand original, there is great scholarship, a large comparativeacquaintance with the poetic methods of earlier workmen, and a verysubtle intelligence of their charm. Of that fine scholarship in thismatter there is no truer example than Mr. Gosse. It is manifestedespecially in the even finish of his varied work, in the equality ofhis level--a high level--in species of composition so varied as thethree specimens which follow. 

Far away, in late spring, "by the sea in the south, " the swallows arestill lingering around "white Algiers. " In Mr. Gosse's "Return of[109] the Swallows, " the northern birds--lark and thrush--have longbeen calling to them:--

 And something awoke in the slumbering heart Of the alien birds in their African air, And they paused, and alighted, and twittered apart, And met in the broad white dreamy square, And the sad slave woman, who lifted up From the fountain her broad-lipped earthen cup, Said to herself, with a weary sigh, "To-morrow the swallows will northward fly. "

Compare the following stanzas, from a kind of palinode, "1870-1871, "years of the Franco-German war and the Parisian Commune:--

 The men who sang that pain was sweet Shuddered to see the mask of death Storm by with myriad thundering feet; The sudden truth caught up our breath Our throats like pulses beat. 

 The songs of pale emaciate hours, The fungus-growth of years of peace, Withered before us like mown flowers; We found no pleasure more in these When bullets fell in showers. 

 For men whose robes are dashed with blood, What joy to dream of gorgeous stairs, Stained with the torturing interlude That soothed a Sultan's midday prayers, In old days harsh and rude?

[110]

 For men whose lips are blanched and white, With aching wounds and torturing thirst, What charm in canvas shot with light, And pale with faces cleft and curst, Past life and life's delight?

And then Mr. Gosse's purely descriptive power, his aptitude forstill-life and landscape, is unmistakably vivid and sound. Take, foran instance, this description of high-northern summer:--

 The ice-white mountains clustered all around us, But arctic summer blossomed at our feet; The perfume of the creeping sallows found us, The cranberry-flowers were sweet. 

 Below us through the valley crept a river, Cleft round an island where the Lap-men lay; Its sluggish water dragged with slow endeavour The mountain snows away. 

 There is no night-time in the northern summer, But golden shimmer fills the hours of sleep, And sunset fades not, till the bright new-comer, Red sunrise, smites the deep. 

 But when the blue snow-shadows grew intenser Across the peaks against the golden sky, And on the hills the knots of deer grew denser, And raised their tender cry, [111]

 And wandered downward to the Lap-men's dwelling, We knew our long sweet day was nearly spent, And slowly, with our hearts within us swelling, Our homeward steps we bent. 

"Sunshine before Sunrise!" There's a novelty in that, for poetic useat least, so far as we know, though we remember one fine paragraphabout it in Sartor Resartus. The grim poetic sage of Chelsea, however, had never seen what he describes: not so Mr. Gosse, whose acquaintancewith northern lands and northern literature is special. We have indeedpicked out those stanzas from a quiet personal record of certainamorous hours of early youth in that quaint arctic land, Mr. Gosse'sdescription of which, like his pretty poem on Lübeck, made one thinkthat what the accomplished group of poets to which he belongs requiresis, above all, novelty of motive, of subject. 

He takes, indeed, the old themes, and manages them better than theirold masters, with more delicate cadences, more delicate transitions ofthought, through long dwelling on earlier practice. He seems topossess complete command of the technique of poetry--every form of whatmay be called skill of hand in it; and what marks in [112] him thefinal achievement of poetic scholarship is the perfect balance his workpresents of so many and varied effects, as regards both matter andform. The memories of a large range of poetic reading are blent intoone methodical music so perfectly that at times the notes seem almostsimple. Sounding almost all the harmonies of the modern lyre, he has, perhaps as a matter of course, some of the faults also, the "spasmodic"and other lapses, which from age to age, in successive changes oftaste, have been the "defects" of excellent good "qualities. " He iscertainly not the--

 Pathetic singer, with no strength to sing, as he says of the white-throat on the tulip-tree, Whose leaves unfinished ape her faulty song. 

In effect, a large compass of beautiful thought and expression, frompoetry old and new, have become to him matter malleable anew for afurther and finer reach of literary art. And with the perfect grace ofan intaglio, he shows, as in truth the minute intaglio may do, thefaculty of structure, the logic of poetry. "The New Endymion" is agood instance of such sustained [113] power. Poetic scholar!--If wemust reserve the sacred name of "poet" to a very small number, thathumbler but perhaps still rarer title is due indisputably to Mr. Gosse. His work is like exquisite modern Latin verse, into the academic shapeof which, discreet and coy, comes a sincere, deeply felt consciousnessof modern life, of the modern world as it is. His poetry, accordingwith the best intellectual instincts of our critical age, is as pointedout recently by a clever writer in the Nineteenth Century, itself akind of exquisite, finally revised criticism. 

Not that he fails in originality; only, the graces, inborn certainly, but so carefully educated, strike one more. The sense of hisoriginality comes to one as but an after-thought; and certainly onesign of his vocation is that he has made no conscious effort to beoriginal. In his beautiful opening poem of the "White-throat, " givinghis book its key-note, he seems, indeed, to accept that position, reasons on and justifies it. Yet there is a clear note of originality(so it seems to us) in the peculiar charm of his strictly personalcompositions; and, generally, in such touches as he gives us of thesoul, the life, of the [114] nineteenth century. Far greater, wethink, than the charm of poems strictly classic in interest, such asthe "Praise of Dionysus, " exquisite as that is, is the charm of thosepieces in which, so to speak, he transforms, by a kind ofcolour-change, classic forms and associations into those--say! ofThames-side--pieces which, though in manner or subject promising aclassic entertainment, almost unaware bring you home. --No! after all, it is not imagined Greece, dreamy, antique Sicily, but the presentworld about us, though mistakable for a moment, delightfully, for theland, the age, of Sappho, of Theocritus:--

 There is no amaranth, no pomegranate here, But can your heart forget the Christmas rose, The crocuses and snowdrops once so dear?

Quite congruously with the placid, erudite, quality of his culture, although, like other poets, he sings much of youth, he is often mostsuccessful in the forecast, the expression, of the humours, theconsiderations, that in truth are more proper to old age:--

 When age comes by and lays his frosty hands So lightly on mine eyes, that, scarce aware

[115]

 Of what an endless weight of gloom they bear, I pause, unstirred, and wait for his commands. When time has bound these limbs of mine with bands, And hushed mine ears, and silvered all my hair, May sorrow come not, nor a vain despair Trouble my soul that meekly girdled stands. 

 As silent rivers into silent lakes, Through hush of reeds that not a murmur breaks, Wind, mindful of the poppies whence they came, So may my life, and calmly burn away, As ceases in a lamp at break of day The flagrant remnant of memorial flame. 

Euthanasia!--Yet Mr. Gosse, with all his accomplishment, is still ayoung man. His youthful confidence in the perpetuity of poetry, of thepoetical interests in life, creed-less as he may otherwise seem to be, is, we think, a token, though certainly an unconscious token, of thespontaneous originality of his muse. For a writer of his peculiarphilosophic tenets, at all events, the world itself, in truth, mustseem irretrievably old or even decadent. 

Old, decadent, indeed, it would seem with Mr. Gosse to be alsoreturning to the thoughts, the fears, the consolations, of its youth inGreece, in Italy:--

[116]

 Nor seems it strange indeed To hold the happy creed That all fair things that bloom and die Have conscious life as well as I. 

 Then let me joy to be Alive with bird and tree, And have no haughtier aim than this, To be a partner in their bliss. 

Convinced, eloquent, --again and again the notes of Epicurean philosophyfall almost unconsciously from his lips. With poetry at hand, heappears to feel no misgivings. A large faith he might seem to have inwhat is called "natural optimism, " the beauty and benignity of nature, if let alone, in her mechanical round of changes with man and beast andflower. Her method, however, certainly involves forgetfulness for theindividual; and to this, to the prospect of oblivion, poetry, too, mayhelp to brace us, if, unlike so genial and cheerful a poet as Mr. Gosse, we need bracing thereto:--

 Now, giant-like, the tall young ploughmen go Between me and the sunset, footing slow; My spirit, as an uninvited guest, Goes with them, wondering what desire, what aim, May stir their hearts and mine with common flame, Or, thoughtless, do their hands suffice their soul?

[117]

 I know not, care not, for I deem no shame To hold men, flowers, and trees and stars the same, Myself, as these, one atom in the whole. 

That is from one of those half-Greek, half-English idylls, remindingone of Frederick Walker's "Ploughman, " of Mason's "Evening Hymn, " inwhich Mr. Gosse is at his best. A favourite motive, he has treated iteven more melodiously in "Lying in the Grass":--

 I do not hunger for a well-stored mind, I only wish to live my life, and find My heart in unison with all mankind. 

 My life is like the single dewy star That trembles on the horizon's primrose-bar, -- A microcosm where all things living are. 

 And if, among the noiseless grasses, Death Should come behind and take away my breath, I should not rise as one who sorroweth;

 For I should pass, but all the world would be Full of desire and young delight and glee, And why should men be sad through loss of me?

 The light is flying; in the silver-blue The young moon shines from her bright window through: The mowers are all gone, and I go too. 

A vein of thought as modern as it is old! More not less depressing, certainly, to our over-meditative [118], susceptible, nervous, modernage, than to that antiquity which was indeed the genial youth of theworld, but, sweetly attuned by his skill of touch, it is the sum ofwhat Mr. Gosse has to tell us of the experience of life. Or is it, after all, to quote him once more, that beyond those ever-recurringpagan misgivings, those pale pagan consolations, our generation feelsyet cannot adequately express--

 The passion and the stress Of thoughts too tender and too sad to be Enshrined in any melody she knows?

29th October 1890

VIII. FERDINAND FABRE

[NORINE]: AN IDYLL OF THE CEVENNES

[121] A FRENCH novelist who, with much of Zola's undoubted power, writes always in the interest of that high type of Catholicism whichstill prevails in the remote provinces of France, of that high type ofmorality of which the French clergy have nobly maintained the ideal, isworth recommending to the more serious class of English readers. Something of the gift of François Millet, whose peasants are veritablepriests, of those older religious painters who could portray saintlyheads so sweetly and their merely human protégés so truly, seems indeedto have descended to M. Ferdinand Fabre. In the Abbé Tigrane, inLucifer, and elsewhere, he has delineated, with wonderful power andpatience, a strictly ecclesiastical portraiture-- [122] shrewd, passionate, somewhat melancholy heads, which, though they are often ofpeasant origin, are never by any chance undignified. The passions hetreats of in priests are, indeed, strictly clerical, most often theirambitions--not the errant humours of the mere man in the priest, butmovements of spirit properly incidental to the clerical type itself. Turning to the secular brothers and sisters of these peasantecclesiastics, at first sight so strongly contrasted with them, M. Fabre shows a great acquaintance with the sources, the effects, ofaverage human feeling; but still in contact--in contact, as itsconscience, its better mind, its ideal--with the institutions ofreligion. What constitutes his distinguishing note as a writer is therecognition of the religious, the Catholic, ideal, interveningmasterfully throughout the picture he presents of life, as the onlymode of poetry realizable by the poor; and although, of course, it doesa great deal more beside, certainly doing the high work of poetryeffectively. For his background he has chosen, has made his own andconveys very vividly to his readers, a district of France, gloomy, inspite of its almonds, its [123] oil and wine, but certainly grandiose. The large towns, the sparse hamlets, the wide landscape of theCevennes, are for his books what the Rhineland is to those delightfulauthors, Messrs. Erckmann-Chatrian. In Les Courbezon, the French Vicarof Wakefield, as Sainte-Beuve declared, with this imposing background, the Church and the world, as they shape themselves in the Cevennes, thepriest and the peasant, occupy about an equal share of interest. Sometimes, as in the charming little book we wish now to introduce, unclerical human nature occupies the foreground almost exclusively;though priestly faces will still be found gazing upon us from time totime. 

In form, the book is a bundle of letters from a Parisian littérateur tothe friend of his boyhood, now the curé of one of those mountainvillages. He is refreshing himself, in the midst of dusty, sophisticated Paris, with memories of their old, delightfulexistence--vagabonde, libre, agreste, pastorale--in their uplandvalley. He can appeal safely to the aged curé's friendly justice, evenin exposing delicacies of sentiment which most men conceal:--

[124] "As for you, frank, certain of your own mind, joyous of heart, methinks scarce understanding those whose religion makes their soulstremble instead of fortifying them--you, I am sure, take things by thelarge and kindly side of human life. "

The story our Parisian has to tell is simple enough, and we have nointention of betraying it, but only to note some of the faces, thescenes, that peep out in the course of it. 

The gloom of the Cevennes is the impression M. Fabre most commonlyconveys. In this book it is rather the cheerful aspect of summer, those upland valleys of the Cevennes presenting then a symphony in red, so to call it--as in a land of cherries and goldfinches; and he has agenial power certainly of making you really feel the sun on the backsof the two boys out early for a long ramble, of old peasants restingthemselves a little, with spare enjoyment, ere the end:--

"As we turned a sharp elbow of the stream the aspect of the countrychanged. It seemed to me entirely red. Cherries in enormous buncheswere hanging everywhere over our heads. .. . 

[125] "It was a hut, rather low, rather dark. A log of chestnut wassmouldering in a heap of ashes. Every object was in its place: thetable, the chairs, the plates ranged on the dresser. A fairy, intruth, reigned there, and, by the touch of her wand, broughtcleanliness and order on every side. 

"'Is it you, Norine?' asked a voice from a dark corner, three stepsfrom the fireplace. 

"'Yes, mon grand, it is I! The heat was growing greater every moment, and I have taken in the goats. '

"Norine unclosed the window. A broad light spread over the floor ofbeaten earth, like a white cloth. The cottage was illuminated. I sawan old man seated on a wooden stool in a recess, where an ample sergecurtain concealed a bed. He held himself slightly bent, the two handsheld forth, one over the other, on the knob of a knotty staff, highlypolished. In spite of eighty years, Norine's grandfather--le grand, asthey say up there--had not lost a hair: beautiful white locks fell overhis shoulders--crisp, thick, outspread. I thought of those fine wigsof tow or hemp with which the distaff of [126] our Prudence was alwaysentangled. He was close shaved, after the manner of our peasants; andthe entire mask was to be seen disengaged, all its admirable linesfree, commanded by a full-sized nose, below which the good, thick lipswere smiling, full of kindness. The eyes, however, though still clearand soft in expression, had a certain fixity which startled me. Heraised himself. His stature seemed to me beyond proportion. He wasreally beautiful, with the contentment of his face, straight as thetrunk of a chestnut, his old velvet coat thrown back, his shirt ofcoarse cloth open at the breast, so that one saw the play of the ribs. 

"'Monsieur le neveu!' he cried; 'where are you? Come to me! I amblind. '

"I approached. He felt me, with ten fingers, laying aside his staff. 

"'And you would not take offence if a poor peasant like me embracedyou?'

"'Quick, Jalaguier!' I cried, throwing myself into his arms. 'Quick!'He pressed me till the joints started. Leaned upon his broad chest, Iheard the beating of his heart. It beat under my ears with a burdenlike our bell at [126] Camplong. What powerful vitality in Norine'sgrand! 'It does an old man good:--a good hug!' he said, letting me go. "

The boyish visitors are quite ready to sit down there to dinner:--

"With the peasant of the Cevennes (M. Fabre tells us) the meal is whatnature meant it to be--a few moments for self-recovery after fatigue, ashort space of silence of a quite elevated character, almost sacred. The poor human creature has given the sweat of his brow to extort froman ungrateful soil his daily bread; and now he eats that well-savouredbread in silent self-respect. 

"'It is a weary thing to be thinking always of one's work (says thegrand to the somewhat sparing Norine). We must also think of oursustenance. You are too enduring, my child! it is a mistake to demandso much of your arms. In truth, le bon Dieu has cut you out after thepattern of your dead father. Every morning, in my prayers, I put in mycomplaint thereanent. My poor boy died from going too fast. He couldnever sit still when it was a question of gathering a few sous from the[128] fields; and those fields took and consumed him. '"

The boy fancies that the blind eyes are turned towards a particularspot in the landscape, as if they saw:--

"'I often turn my eyes in that direction (the old man explains) fromhabit. One might suppose that a peasant had the scent of the earth onwhich he has laboured. I have given so much of the sweat of mybrow--there--towards Rocaillet! Angélique, my dead wife, was ofRocaillet; and when she married me, brought a few morsels of land inher apron. What a state they're in now!--those poor morsels of land weused to weed and rake and hoe, my boy and I! What superb crops ofvetches we mowed then, for feeding, in due time, our lambs, our calves!All is gone to ruin since my blindness, and especially since Angéliqueleft me for the churchyard, never to come back. ' He paused to my greatrelief. For every one of those phrases he modulated under thefig-trees more sadly than the Lamentations of Jeremiah on Jeudi Saintoverset me--was like death. "

[129] That is good drawing, in its simple and quiet way! The actualscene, however, is cheerful enough on this early summer day--asymphony, as we said, in cherries and goldfinches, in which the highervalleys of the Cevennes abound. In fact, the boys witness theaccordailles, the engagement, of Norine and Justin Lebasset. Thelatter is calling the birds to sing good luck to the event:--

"He had a long steady look towards the fruit-trees, and then whistled, on a note at once extremely clear and extremely soft. He paused, watched awhile, recommenced. The note became more rapid, moresonorous. What an astounding man he was, this Justin Lebasset!Upright, his red beard forward, his forehead thrown back, his eyes onthe thick foliage of the cherry-trees, his hands on his haunches, in anattitude of repose, easy, superb, he was like some youthful pagan god, gilded with red gold, on his way across the country--like Pan, if hechose to amuse himself by charming birds. You should have seen theenthusiastic glances with which Norine watched him. Upright--she too, slim, at full height, inclining from [130] time to time towards Justinwith a movement of irresistible fascination, she followed the notes ofher mate; and sometimes, her, lips half opening, added thereto asigh--something of a sigh, an aspiration, a prayer, towards thegoldfinch, withdrawn into the shadows. 

"The leaves were shaken in the clear, burning green; and, on a sudden, a multitude of goldfinches, the heads red in the wind, the wings halfspread, were fluttering from branch to branch. I could have fancied, amid the quivering of the great bunches of fruit, that they werecherries on the wing. Justin suffered his pipe to die away: the birdswere come at his invitation, and performed their prelude. "

It is forty years afterwards that the narrator, now a man of letters inParis, writes to his old friend, with tidings of Justin and Norine:--

"In 1842 (he observes) you were close on fifteen; I scarcely twelve. Inmy eyes your age made you my superior. And then, you were so strong, so tender, so amiteux, to use a word from up there--a charming word. And so God, Who had His designs for you, whereas I, in spite of mypious childhood, wandered on [131] my way as chance bade me, led you bythe hand, attached, ended by keeping you for Himself. He did welltruly when He chose you and rejected me!"

His finding the pair in the wilds of Paris is an adventure, in which, in fact, a goldfinch again takes an important part--a goldfinch who isfound to understand the Cevenol dialect:--

"The goldfinch (escaped from its cage somewhere, into the dreary courtof the Institute) has seen me: is looking at me. If he chose to makehis way into my apartment, he would be very welcome. I feel a strongimpulse to try him with that unique patois word, which, whistled aftera peculiar manner, when I was a boy never failed to succeed in themountains of Orb--Béni! Béni! Viens! Viens! I dare not! He mighttake fright and fly away altogether. "

In effect, the Cevenol bird, true to call, introduces Norine, hisrightful owner, whose husband Justin is slowly dying. Towards the endof a hard life, faithful to their mountain ideal, they have not losttheir dignity, though in a comparatively sordid medium: [132]

"As for me, my dear Arribas, I remained in deep agitation, an attentivespectator of the scene; and while Justin and Norine, set both alike inthe winepress of sorrow, le pressoir de la douleur, as your good booksexpress it, murmured to each other their broken consoling words, I sawthem again, in thought, young, handsome, in the full flower of life, under the cherry-trees, the swarming goldfinches, of blind BarthélemyJalaguier. Ah me! It was thus that, five-and-forty years after, inthis dark street of Paris, that festive day was finishing, blessed, inthe plenitude of nature, by that august old man, celebrated by thealternate song of all the birds of Rocaillet. "

Justin's one remaining hope is to go home to those native mountains, ifit may be, with the dead body of his boy, dead "the very morning onwhich he should have received the tonsure from the hands of Mgr. L'Archevêque, " and buried now temporarily at the cemetery ofMontparnasse:--

Theodore calls me. I saw him distinctly to-night. He gave me a sign. After all said, life is heavy, sans le fillot, and but [133] for you itwere well to be released from it. .. . '

"I have seen Justin Lebasset die, dear Arribas, and was touched, edified, to the bottom of my soul. God grant, when my hour comes, Imay find that calm, that force, in the last struggle with life. Not acomplaint! not a sigh! Once only he gave Norine a sorrowful, heartrending look; then, from lips already cold, breathed that oneword, 'Theodore!' Marcus Aurelius used to say: 'A man should leave theworld as a ripe olive falls from the tree that bore it, and with a kissfor the earth that nourished it. ' Well! the peasant of Rocaillet hadthe beautiful, noble, simple death of the fruit of the earth, going tothe common receptacle of all mortal beings, with no sense that he wastorn away. Pardon, I pray, my quotation from Marcus Aurelius, whopersecuted the Christians. I give it with the same respect with whichyou would quote some holy writer. Ah! my dear Arribas! not all thesaints have received canonization. "

It is to the priestly character, in truth, that M. Fabre always comesback for tranquillizing [134] effect; and if his peasants havesomething akin to Wordsworth's, his priests may remind one of thosesolemn ecclesiastical heads familiar in the paintings and etchings ofM. Alphonse Legros. The reader travelling in Italy, or Belgiumperhaps, has doubtless visited one or more of those spacioussacristies, introduced to which for the inspection of some more thanusually recherché work of art, one is presently dominated by theirreverend quiet: simple people coming and going there, devout, or atleast on devout business, with half-pitched voices, not without touchesof kindly humour, in what seems to express like a picture the mostgenial side, midway between the altar and the home, of theecclesiastical life. Just such interiors we seem to visit under themagic of M. Fabre's well-trained pen. He has a real power of takingone from Paris, or from London, to places and people certainly verydifferent from either, to the satisfaction of those who seek in fictionan escape. 

12th June 1889

IX. THE "CONTES" OF M. AUGUSTIN FILON

TALES OF A HUNDRED YEARS SINCE ["CONTES DU CENTENAIRE. " PAR AUGUSTINFILON. PARIS: HACHETTE ET CIE. ]

[137] IT was a happy thought of M. Filon to put into the mouth of animaginary centenarian a series of delightfully picturesque studieswhich aim at the minute presentment of life in France under the oldrégime, and end for the most part with the Revolution. A genialcentenarian, whose years have told happily on him, he appreciates notonly those humanities of feeling and habit which were peculiar to thelast century and passed away with it, but also that permanent humanitywhich has but undergone a change of surface in the new world of ourown, wholly different though it may look. With a sympathetic sense oflife as it is always, [138] M. Filon has transplanted the creations ofhis fancy into an age certainly at a greater distance from ourselvesthan can be estimated by mere lapse of time, and where a fully detailedantiquarian knowledge, used with admirable tact and economy, is indeedserviceable in giving reality of effect to scene and character. Intruth, M. Filon's very lively antiquarianism carries with it a genuineair of personal memory. With him, as happens so rarely, an intimateknowledge of historic detail is the secret of life, of the impressionof life; puts his own imagination on the wing; secures the imaginativecooperation of the reader. A stately age--to us, perhaps, in thecompany of the historic muse, seeming even more stately than itactually was--it is pleasant to find it, as we do now and again onthese pages, in graceful déshabille. With perfect lightness of touch, M. Filon seems to have a complete command of all the physiognomicdetails of old France, of old Paris and its people--how they made aholiday; how they got at the news; the fashions. Did the Englishreader ever hear before of the beautifully dressed doll which came oncea month [139] from Paris to Soho to teach an expectant world of fashionhow to dress itself? Old Paris! For young lovers at their windows; forevery one fortunate enough to have seen it: "Qu'il est joli ce paysagedu Paris nocturne d'il y a cent ans!" We think we shall best dojustice to an unusually pretty book by taking one of M. Filon's stories(not because we are quite sure it is the cleverest of them) with a viewto the more definite illustration of his method, therein. 

Christopher Marteau was a warden of the corporation of Luthiers. Hedealt in musical instruments, as his father and grandfather had donebefore him, at the sign of Saint Cecilia. With his wife, his onlychild Phlipote, and Claude his apprentice, who was to marry Phlipote, he occupied a good house of his own. Of course the disposition of theyoung people, bred together from their childhood, does not at firstentirely concur with the parental arrangements. But the story tells, reassuringly, how--to some extent how sadly--they came heartily to doso. M. Marteau was no ordinary shopkeeper. The various distinguishedpeople who had fingered his clavecins, and turned over the [140] foliosof music, for half a century past, had left their memories behind them;M. De Voltaire, for instance, who had caressed the head of Phlipotewith an aged, skeleton hand, leaving, apparently, no very agreeableimpression on the child, though her father delighted to recall theincident, being himself a demi-philosophe. He went to church, that isto say, only twice a year, on the Feast of St. Cecilia and on theSunday when the Luthiers offered the pain bénit. It was his opinionthat everything in the State needed reform except the Corporations. The relations of the husband to his affectionate, satiric, pleasure-seeking wife, who knew so well all the eighteen theatres whichthen existed in Paris, are treated with much quiet humour. On Sundaysthe four set forth together for a country holiday. At such timesPhlipote would walk half-a-dozen paces in advance of her father andmother, side by side with her intended. But they never talked to eachother: the hands, the eyes, never met. Of what was Phlipote dreaming?and what was in the thoughts of Claude?

It happened one day that, like sister and brother, the lovers exchangedconfidences. "It [141] is not always, " observes Phlipote, whom everyone excepting Claude on those occasions sought with admiring eyes--

"'It is not always one loves those one is told to love. '

"'What, have you, too, a secret, my little Phlipote?'

"'I too, Claude! Then what may be yours?'

"'Listen, Phlipote!' he answered. 'We don't wish to be husband andwife, but we can be friends--good and faithful friends, helping eachother to change the decision of our parents. '

"'Were I but sure you would not betray me--'

"'Would you like me to confess first? The woman I love--Ah! but youwill laugh at my folly!'

"'No, Claude! I shall not laugh. I know too well what one suffers. '

"'Especially when love is hopeless. '

"'Hopeless?'

"'Alas! I have never spoken to her. Perhaps never shall!'

[142] "'Well! as for me, I don't even know the name of him to whom myheart is given!'

"'Ah! poor Phlipote!'

"'Poor Claude!'

"They had approached each other. The young man took the tiny hand ofhis friend, pressing it in his own. 

"'The woman I adore is Mademoiselle Guimard!'

"'What! Guimard of the Opera?--the fiancée of Despréaux?'"

Claude still held the hands of Phlipote, who was trembling now, andalmost on fire at the story of this ambitious love. In return shereveals her own. It was Good Friday. She had come with her mother tothe Sainte Chapelle to hear Mademoiselle Coupain play the organ andwitness the extraordinary spectacle of the convulsionnaires, broughtthither to be touched by the relic of the True Cross. In the press ofthe crowd at this exciting scene Phlipote faints, or nearly faints, when a young man comes kindly to their aid. "She is so young!" heexplains to the mother, "she seems so delicate!" "He looked at me, "she tells Claude--"he looked at [143] me, through his half-closedeyelids; and his words were like a caress. "--

"'And have you seen him no More?' asks Claude, full of sympathy. 

"'Yes! once again. He pretended to be looking at the window of theLittle Dunkirk, over the way, but with cautious glances towards ourhouse. Only, as he did not know what storey we live on, he failed todiscover me behind my curtain, where I was but half visible. '

"'You should have shown yourself. '

"'Oh, Claude!' she cried, with a delicious gesture of timidity, ofshame. 

"So they prattled for a long time; he talking of the great Guimard, sheof her unknown lover, scarce listening to, but completely understandingeach other. 

"'Holloa!'cries the loud voice of Christopher Marteau. 'What are youdoing out there?'

"The young people arose. Phlipote linked her arm gaily in that ofClaude. 'How contented I feel!' she says; 'how good it is to have afriend--to have you whom I used to detest, because I thought you werein love with me. Now, when I know you can't bear me, I [144] shall benicely in love with you. ' The soft warmth of her arm seemed to passthrough Claude, and gave him strange sensations. He resumed naïvely, 'Yes! and how odd it is after all that I am not in love with you. Youare so pretty!' Phlipote raised her finger coquettishly, 'Nocompliments, monsieur. Since we are not to marry each other, it isforbidden to pay court to me!'"

From that day a close intimacy established itself between the formerlyaffianced pair, now become accomplices in defeating the good intentionsof their elders. In long conversations, they talked in turn, or bothtogether, of their respective loves. Phlipote allows Claude entranceto her chamber, full of admiration for its graceful arrangements, itsvirgin cleanliness. He inspects slowly all the familiar objects dailytouched by her, her books, her girlish ornaments. One day she criedwith an air of mischief, "If she were here in my place, what would youdo?" and no sooner were the words uttered than his arms were round herneck. "'Tis but to teach you what I would do were she here. " Theywere a little troubled by this adventure. 

[145] And the next day was a memorable one. By the kind contrivance ofPhlipote herself, Claude gains the much-desired access to the object ofhis affections, but to his immense disillusion. If he could but speakto her, he fancies he should find the courage, the skill, to bend her. Breathless, Phlipote comes in secret with the good news. The greatactress desires some one to tune her clavecin:--

"'Papa would have gone; but I begged him so earnestly to take me to theThéâtre Français that he could not refuse; and it is yourself will gothis evening to tune the clavecin of your beloved. '

"'Phlipote, you've a better heart than I! This morning I saw agentleman, who resembled point by point your description of the unknownat the Sainte Chapelle, prowling about our shop. '

"'And you didn't tell me!'

"Claude hung his head. 

"'But why not?' the young girl asks imperiously. 'Why not?'

"'In truth I could hardly say, hardly understand, myself. Do youforgive me, Phlipote?'

"'I suppose I must. So make yourself as smart as you can, to pleaseyour goddess. '"

[146] Next day she hears the story of Claude's grievous disappointmenton seeing the great actress at home--plain, five-and-forty, ill-tempered. He had tuned the clavecin and taken flight. 

And now for Phlipote's idol! It was agreed that Whitsunday should bespent at Versailles. On that day the royal apartments were open to thepublic, and at the hour of High Mass the crowd flowed back towards thevestibule of the chapel to witness what was called the procession ofthe Cordons Bleus. The "Blue Ribbons" were the knights of the Order DuSaint-Esprit in their robes of ceremony, who came to range themselvesin the choir according to the date of their creation. The press was sogreat that the parents were separated from the young people. Claude, however, at the side of Phlipote, realized the ideal of a faithful andjealous guardian. The hallebardes of the Suisses rang on the marblepavement of the gallery. Royalty, now unconsciously presenting itsceremonies for the last time, advanced through a cloud of splendour;but before the Queen appeared it was necessary that all the knights ofthe order down to the youngest should pass by, slow, solemn, majestic. 

[147] They wore, besides their ribbons of blue moiré, the silver doveon the shoulder, and the long mantle of sombre blue velvet lined withyellow satin. Phlipote watched mechanically the double file of haughtyfigures passing before them: then, on a sudden, with a feeble cry, falls fainting into the arms of Claude. 

Recovered after a while, under shelter of the great staircase, she weptas those weep whose heart is broken by a great blow. Claude, without aword, sustained, soothed her. A sentiment of gratitude mingled itselfwith her distress. "How good he is!" she thought. 

"It was a pity, " says her mother a little later "a pity you did not seethe Cordons Bleus. Fancy! You will laugh at me! But in one of thehandsomest of the Chevaliers I felt sure I recognized the stranger whohelped us at the Sainte Chapelle, and was so gallant with you. "

Phlipote did not laugh. "You are deceived, mother!" she said in afaint voice. "Pardi!" cries the father. "'Tis what I always say. Yourstranger was some young fellow from a shop. "

Two months later the young people receive [148] the nuptialbenediction, and continue the musical business when the elders retireto the country. At first a passionate lover, Claude was afterwards agood and devoted husband. Phlipote never again opened her lipsregarding the vague love which for a moment had flowered in her heart:only sometimes, a cloud of reverie veiled her eyes, which seemed toseek sadly, beyond the circle of her slow, calm life, a brilliant butchimeric image visible for her alone. 

And once again she saw him. It was in the terrible year 1794. Sheknew the hour at which the tumbril with those condemned to die passedthe windows; and at the first signal would close them and draw thecurtain. But on this day some invincible fascination nailed her to herplace. There were ten faces; but she had eyes for one alone. She hadnot forgotten, could not mistake, him--that pale head, so proud andfine, but now thin with suffering; the beautiful mobile eyes, nowencircled with the signs of sorrow and watching. The convict's shirt, open in large, broad folds, left bare the neck, delicate as a woman's, and made for that youthful face an aureole, of innocence, of martyrdom. His looks [149] met hers. Did he recognize her? She could not havesaid. She remained there, paralyzed with emotion, till the moment whenthe vision disappeared. 

Then she flung herself into her chamber, fell on her knees, lostherself in prayer. There was a distant roll of drums. The man to whomshe had given her maiden soul was gone. 

"Cursed be their anger, for it was cruel!" says the reader. ButMonsieur Filon's stories sometimes end as merrily as they begin; andalways he is all delicacy--a delicacy which keeps his large yet minuteantiquarian knowledge of that vanished time ever in service to a directinterest in humanity as it is permanently, alike before and after '93. His book is certainly one well worth possessing. 

THE END

16th July 1890