PROM THE INCOME OF THE FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND THE BEQUEST OF Millard mskn lyibrarian of the University 1868-1883 1905 , . M^ Wrapt with the aurorean vapour rolling high. An august image stood, majestical. With lifted arm, far ofT, 'twixt earth and sky.' One has only to quote the finer passages to correct any transient unjust impression that a critical ex- amination may produce. ' Life's image, born of the brain In the form which the hand hath fashioned, Shall for ever unmarr'd retain Life's moment the most impassioned ; 150 MR. ROBERT LYTTON'S POEMS All power that in act hath been Put forth, shall perish never ; And life's beauty once felt and seen Is life beautified for ever.' Here the lines are crisper, and the thought clearer to vision, but the same criticism is applicable to them, I think. The 'Chronicles and Characters' are a legend of the ages, differing from M. Victor Hugo's, inasmuch as Mr. Lytton's aim, when he keeps to it rigorously, is less to exhibit the gradual development of the deeper and sweeter nature of humanity than to make note of mental progress and the growth of human culture. Hugo starts with Eve and ends with the judgement trump ; Mr. Lytton from mythology downward to the present time, over which he pronounces a short optimistic sermon by way of epilogue : — ' Rejoice in the good that God gives By the hand of beneficent 111, And be glad that He leaves to our lives Means to make them heroical still.' Hugo does not touch on Neoplatonism or the philosophies. He finds themes in the Old Testament and the New, and in the New it is Christ raising Lazarus. Divine love active on behalf of humanity, and the hardness of the priests : — ' Ceux qui virent cela crurent en J^sus-Christ. Or, les prfitres, selon qn'au livre il est dcrit, S'assemblSrent, troubles, chez le prSteur de Rome ; Sachant que Christ avait ressuscit^ cet homme, Et que tous avaient vu le sSpulcre s'ouvrir, lis dirent: " II est temps de le faire mourir.'" Mr. Lytton ventures on the Passion of the Cross, and an intellectual Satan claiming his place among 151 ^REVIEWS the progressive steps of man as Prince of this World, addressing the Angel of the Watch thus : — ' Look on me. I am Man's mind's eternal protest against Law, Man's life's eternal protest against Love. A time there may be, though it must be far, When man, by knowledge reconciled to Law In things material, shall convert to good All that for ages I have made to them Material evil, ' When man no more My work provides, thine own shall lack provision ; Whose task on earth is but the consequence Of my procedure ; temporary both.' Hugo does not look on evil with the same reposeful sentiment. His Ratbert is hard and horrible. His mountain Momotombo has a word to say against men — or their priests. He paints black deadly black, and touches it with no light lancet-point. With the ex- ception of the powerful 'Irene' in the Byzantine episodes, Mr. Lytton shows the intellectual temper towards the devil and his doings — 'the only critic of God's works who does not praise them ' ; and when he abandons that, he is, by the impulse of his mind, dramatic. The philosopher insists to escape being compromised by a positive violent condemnation of 'beneficent 111,' unless he is forced to it by some character bare of all suggestive humours, unprovoca- tive of the sedater irony he loves, though always without irreverence to indulge. It will be seen that his 'Legend of the Ages' has a distinct mark of its own. If he fails, it is not in conception ; and he fails in execution only from having attempted more than was possible for poet to accomplish. He has taken the widest field he could select, and made it as difficult to himself as ingenuity could devise to build up a 152 MR. ROBERT LYTTON'S POEMS complete work in it. There could have been no artistic prompting in him, for example, to write the mediaeval pieces (' Fair Yoland with the Yellow Hair,' 'Trial by Combat') after the mediaeval manner. I presume so, for these poems are positive failures. Compare them with Mr. Morris's 'Haystack in the Floods ' in his first volume of poems. This low-toned mediaevalism, depending upon colour, monotony, and mist, must spring out of a poet's nature, and is not to be seized in passing. Mr. Lytton has not the archaic tongue. The mediaevalism of Hugo's pro- digious combat between Roland and Oliver and of his Aymerillot, is based on huge outlines and the child- like simplicity of the filling in. No paladin of the army of the great Charles being willing to oblige him by taking Narbonne, Aymerillot, a modest little fellow of twenty years, without plume or scutcheon, under- takes the business single-handed : — ' Charles, plus rayonnant que I'archange celeste, S'^cria : " Tu seras, pour ce propos hautain, Aymery de Narbonne et comte palatin, Et Ton te parlera d'une fa^on civile. Va fils ! " Le lendemain Aymery prit la ville.' It is a veritable coup de tonnerre du moyen age. At the close of the fifth day of tough fighting on the borders of the Rhone, Oliver proposes a settlement of their dispute to Roland : — ' " Roland, nous n'en iinirons point. Tant qu'il nous restera quelque trongon au poing, Nous lutterons ainsi que lions et panthSres. Ne vaudrait-il pas mieux que nous devinssions frferes? ]^coute, j'ai ma scEur, la belle Aude au bras Wane ; l&pouse-la." " Pardieu ! je venx bien," dit Roland. " Et maintenant buvons, car I'affaife Stait chaude.'' C'est ainsi que Roland £pousa la belle Aude.' 153 REVIEWS This is the breath of primitive medisevalism. It would have been wiser and, I think, more in harmony with Mr. Lytton's design, had he also gone to legendary sources for this feature, instead of tasking invention and colouring his work in a known style that he was in no way bound to undertake. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, at least, there were plenty of salient legends if he thought fit to shun the fountain of Malory and the Arthurian cycles; and there was Froissart for a guide, and the Proven9al and Spanish romances to choose from. These poems and 'Last Words,' a representation of the sentimentalism of modern days, discredit his executive power, as would be the case with that of almost any poet who attempted as much as he has done in these seven hundred pages of verse. •The Dead Pope,' 'The Duke's Laboratory,' 'Adol- phus, Duke of Gueldres,' are scenic illustrations of the idea in progress. ' The Scroll and its Interpreters' keeps close to the thought. ' One asks me why Is Evil everywhere ? and I reply That everywrhere there may be g^ro^h of Good. Would I forego that growth, even if I could ? By no means.' It is the learned Jew, Ben Enoch, speaking. But the poem contains a great deal of the writer's studious mind, and deserves an attentive perusal. The con- cluding couplet, given to Time passing in the silence after the interlocutors have exchanged farewells, does not compliment us for the pains we have been taking, and is not wanted. It is in the ' Siege of Constantinople ' that he shows 154 MR. ROBERT LYTTON'S POEMS his strength in perfection. I object to the terminating line, — ' Iq this way Venice took Constantinople,' which reminds us of the 'C'est ainsi que Roland,', etc., and does not come well at the close of a long rhymed chronicle, though it should be after the old chronicler's fashion. He is a master of the narrative rhymed ten- syllable couplet. He can be smooth, crisp, and terse in it, flowing and redundant at will. The narrative hurries or is retarded for natural scenic passages, taking its course like a full-sailed imperial barge, little impeded by reason of its rich lading. It is, in fact, a fine epical poem of the two sieges, with blind old Enrico Dandolo for the central figure, among crowds of Oriental barbarians and the chivalry of Europe. More vigorous and better sustained narrative verse it would be hard to find. It is as distinctively Mr. Lytton's as the simpler style of the 'Jason' is peculiar to Mr. Morris, and without mannerism. For an example of flexibility, the catalogue of the knights marshalled under Dandolo may be viewed as without parallel for spirited conciseness in this exceedingly difficult form of verse, which more than any other tempts to dis- tension and flatness. He has caught at times some- thing of the simple graphic manner distinguishing the chronicler of St. Louis' crusade; but no effort of imitation is anywhere visible. The descriptions of scenery, battles, pomp, and splendour are dwelt on as the circumstances prompt them, and the result, in the reader's mind, is a sense of completeness and finish only attainable by poets that have an abounding energy and have learnt to command it. Mr. Lytton is one of the few poets who can narrate. The press 155 REVIEWS of narrative holds in check his tendency to dramatise, which is perhaps attributable to a poetic reaction against a rather too despotic intellectual ascendancy. I will give one example of it from the 'Thanatos Athanatou,' when the Angel of the Watch, to terminate his colloquy with Satan, says :■ — < Put forth thy hand. SATAN Where art thou ? feebly sounds Thy voice, vain angel : strongs in word, but weak In act to hold what now I seize. Thy voice Floats to me fainter, fainter ! and thy form Fades further, further, further, from my ken. Thou fiiest, cherub ! THE ANGEL . Self-deceiver, no ! Here, where I was, I am ; and what I held I hold. But thee thine ever-changing; place Hath changed already. Prince of passing ills, Already in the Past thy footstep strays. Seeking the future.' The effective instance of a subtle idea put in action will show what I mean, and it is proof of an artistic nature that it is never allowed to obtrude on his narrative verse. The allocutions are not prolonged; the dialogues are short and emphatic. Description is rich and simple, and there are no hints of a depth beyond the fathoming of vulgar sight. 'Licinius,' written in the same verse as the 'Siege,' is more epigrammatic, aims higher, and is not generally so flowing, for there Mr. Lytton seeks to give the shadow of a meaning behind the visible one, and passages of very splendid description are here and there marred by dislocated lines, and a — to my mind — objectionable style of painting in catalogue, ex. gr. — ' Evening. At mornlthelbattle.' 156 MR. ROBERT LYTTON'S POEMS The rejection of the verb does not give stateliness, but a twang of pertness oddly discordant with the theme. The opening of ' Licinius ' is a contrast to the poet's ease of manner when he is breathing the robuster air of the chroniclers. These first lines have the effect of stammering : — ' It was the fall and evening of a time In whose large daylight, ere it sank, sublime And strong, as bulks of brazen gods, that stand, Bare-bodied, with helm'd head and arm&d hand, All massive monumental thoughts of hers Rome's mind had mark'd in stately characters Against the world's horizon,' One cannot say that the lines are confused; but they seem to hesitate and come uncertainly, not as introductory lines should come. Further on they are exceedingly vigorous. The conception of ' Licinius ' is clear and full of grandeur. The stout old Roman preparing to give battle for the gods of his country and his ancestry is finely imagined; but against the ' objection that this tough veteran of the wars, of a purely Conservative Pagan spirit, should be found antedating a Christian dream, in which Apollo speaks philosophy, and Love — our frank friend Cupid — becomes transformed to a divinity worthy of presiding over modern tea-tables, I can only oppose the plea that the writing is magnificent, and the poem too good to be over-shadowed, were the objections ten times more forcible. This also may be said of the tale of Candaules' queen, evidently not one of the later pieces of Mr. Lytton's composition, as I suppose the ' Siege of Constantinople' to be. The poem should be re- vised. To find among a succession of beautiful verses one like the following, in which it would almost be 157 REVIEWS thought that the poet having preferred the luscious to the severe method of treatment — the style of the Eve of St. Agnes to that of the Laodamia — prudently tempered it with a dash of the grotesque, is, astonishing : — ' Last she with listless long-delaying hand The golden sandals loosed from her white feet, And loosed from her warm waist the golden band. The milk-white tunic slided off its sweet Snow-surfaced slope, and left half-bare her bland FuU-orb^d breast. But in the fainting heat Of his bewilder'd heart and fever'd sight. Here Gyges in the curtain groaned outright.' Keats, when his hero is in a like condition of ineffable anguish, says, Porphyro grew faint, and has been reproached for it as for a bit of simpering unmanliness. The miserable Gyges may certainly have sounded this loud note of warning to all the peeping Toms of after time : it is but too easy for the reader to comprehend his feelings, but in what a line does the poet crave sympathy for the sufferer. Very ' little labour is required to render this poem enjoyable throughout. The voluptuousness of colouring proper to the subject is pervaded with tragic sentiment, and we are made conscious that the fair woman, in the supreme beauty of her nakedness, is being outraged, and will have blood for it. * Croesus and Adrastus ' claims higher critical praise for its workmanship, and is simple and pathetic. In both these poems a good story is well told. The same excellent narrative faculty is shown in the 'Apple of Life,' which shadows out a poem of old Oriental wisdom. It is the Brahminical legend trans- ferred to the courts of King Solomon. The Hindoo 158 MR. ROBERT LYTTON'S POEMS king slaughters his fair unfaithful wife, but Solo- mon dissolves into wise sentences. Voluminous lines are well suited to the pompous gravity of the Eastern tale, with its semi-transparent mysticism and rich descriptive passages : — ' In cluster, high Icunps, spices, odours, each side Burning- inward and onward from cinnamon ceilings, down distances vast, Of voluptuous vistas, illumined deep halls, through whose silentness pass'd King Solomon sighing : where columns colossal stood, gathered in groves As the trees of the forest in Libanus— there where the wind, as it moves Whispers " I, too, am Solomon's servant ! " huge trunks hid in garlands of gold, ,On whose tops the skilled sculptors of Sidon had granted men's gaze to behold How the phoenix that sits on the cedar's lone summit 'mid fragrance and fire. Ever dying and living, hath loaded with splendours her funeral pyre ; How the stork builds her nest on the pine-top ; the date from the palm- branch depends ; And the shaft of the blossoming aloe soars crowning the life which it ends. And from hall on to hall, in the doors, mute, magnificent slaves, watchful-eyed, Bow'd to earth as King Solomon pass'd them.' » The king gives the apple of life to his beautiful Shulamite. She in turn hurries to present it to her lover. Prince Azariah, and calls to him very musically : — ' Ope the door, ope the lattice I Arise I Let me in, O my love ! It is I, Thee the bride of King Solomon loveth. Love, tarry not. Love, shall I die At thy door ? I am sick of desire. For my love is more comely than gold, More precious to me is my love than the throne of a king that is old. Behold, I have pass'd through the city, unseen of the watchmen. I stand By the doors of the house of my love till my love lead me in by the hand.' But the author's strength is best exhibited by some extracts from the ' Siege of Constantinople,' where he has a fuller theme and larger space. Here is a scene in the court of Alexius, the usurper:— ' At the Emperor's right hand Tracing upon the floor with snaky wand Strange shapes, was standing the astrologer And mystic, Ishmael the son of Shur, 159 REVIEWS A swarthy, lean, and melancholy man, With eyes in caverns, an Arabian, Who seem'd to notice nothing:, save his own Strange writing on the floor before the throne. At the Emperor's feet, half-jiaked and half-robed. With rivulets of emeroldes that throbb'd Green fire as her rich breathings billow'd all Their thrill'd and glittering drops, crouch'd Jezraal, The fair Egyptian, with strange-colour'd eyes Full of fierce change and somnolent surprise. She, with upslanted shoulder leaning couch'd On one smooth elbow, sphynx-like, calm, and crouch'd, Tho' motionless, yet seem'd to move, — its slim Fine slope so glidingly each glossy limb Curved on the marble, melting out and in Her gemmy tunic, downward to her thin Clear ankles, ankleted with dull pale gold, Thick gushing thro' a jewell'd hoop, down roll'd All round her, rivers of dark slumbrous hair. Sweeping her burnish'd breast, sharp-slanted, bare. And sallow shoulder.' For a contrast take the description of the Venetian fleet passing down the Dardanelles, and coming within view of the Constantinople of the Lower Empire : — ' In his strong pines, adown the displaced deep, Shoulders the Pelegrino,— half asleep. With wavy fins each side a scarlet breast Slanted. Hard by, more huge than all the rest — Air's highest, water's deepest, denizen — A citadel of ocean, thronged with men That tramp in silk and steel round battlements Of windy wooden streets, 'mid terraced tents And turrets, under shoals of sails unfurl'd, — That vaunting monster Venice calls " The World." ' And now is past each purple promontory Of Sestos and Abydos, famed in story. And now all round the deep blue bay arise Into the deep blue air, o'er galleries Of marble, marble galleries ; and lids O'er lids of shining streets ; dusk pyramids O'er pyramids ; and temple walls o'er walls Of glowing gardens, whence white sunlight falls From sleepy palm to palm ; and palace tops O'ertopp'd by palaces. Nought ever stops 160 MR. ROBERT LYTTON'S POEMS The stTU£:gling: glory, from the time he leaves '' His myrtle-mufBed base, and higher heaves His mountain march from golden-grated bower To bronzen-gated wall,— and on, from tower To tower, until at last deliciously All melts in azure summer and sweet sky. Then after anthem sung, sonorous all The bronzen trumpets to the trumpets call ; Sounding across the sea from baric to bark Where floats the Winged Lion of St. Mark, The mighty signal for assault.' Domenico Tintoretto's painting of the storming of Constantinople by Venetians and crusaders in the hall of the Great Council of the Palazzo Ducale, together with the capture of Zara by Tintoretto, and of Cattaro by Vicentino, a strange confusion of red masts and long lances pushed by men-at-arms, and flying arrows and old engines of war, may have been in Mr. Lytton's vision when he wrote the vivid passage which suc- ceeds : — ' Swift from underneath upspout Thick showers of hissing arrows that down-rain Their rattling drops upon the walls, and stain The blood-streak'd bay. The floating forest groans And creaks, and reels, and cracks. The rampart stones Clatter and shriek beneath the driven darts. And on the shores, and at the gates, upstarts, One after one, each misshaped monster fell Of creaking ram and cumbrous mangonel. Great stones, down jumping, chop, and split, and crush The rocking towers ; wherefrom the spearmen rush. The morning star of battle, marshalling all That movement massive and majesticsU, Gay through the tumult which it guides doth go The grand grey head of gallant Dandolo, With what a full heart following that fine head— Thine, noble Venice, by thy noblest led ! In his blithe-dancing turret o'er the sea, Glad as the grey sea-eagle, hovers he Through sails in flocks and masts in avenues. 34— L 161 REVIEWS ' Pietro Albert!, the Venetian, whom His sword lights, shining naked 'twixt his teeth Sharp-g:ripp'd, through rushing arrows, wrapt with death, Leaps from his ship into the waves ; now stands On the socik'd shore ; now climbs with bleeding hands And knees the wall ; now left, now right, swift, bright Wild weapons round him whirl and sing ; now right. Now left he smites. ' In clattering cataract The invading host roll down. Disrupt, distract. The invaded break and fly. The great church bells Toll madly, and the battering mangonels Bellow. The priests in long procession plant The cross before them, passing suppliant To meet the marching conquest.' Historical scene-painting done with so broad and firm a hand is rare at any time, and greatly to be praised. The poem is maintained throughout at this elevated pitch, devoid of any sensible strain. The valedictory lines of Thomas Miintzer to Martin Luther are also in conception and execution very good, and harmonious to the general design of the volumes. My personal distaste for broken metres, that lose their music in the attempt to symbolise the effects of an operatic libretto, may make me unjust to the *Opis and Arge,' and the scenic lyrics of ' Thanatos Athana- tou,' and it seems to me that this last poem should not have had the heavy drag on it of the lengthened dialectical encounter of the rival Princes of Good and Evil. It might be divided into parts. But it is finely imagined, and, as an intellectual conception, a grand centre-piece. 162 MRS. MEYNELL'S TWO BOOKS OF ESSAYS ^ The gift for talking well has been said to transcend excellent singing in charm. We can admit that the writing of good prose in our unschooled composite English is an achievement beyond any save the highest flight of song. Mrs. Meynell has practised on either instrument, poetry being, of course, her first love. To the metrical themes attempted by her she brings emotion, sincerity, a sufficient measure of the minstrel's skill, together with an exquisite play upon our finer chords, quite her own, not to be heard from another. Some of her lines have the living tremour in them. The poems are beautiful in idea as in grace of touch; and they are unambitious, born modest; they do not lend themselves to clamorous advocacy of their merits. 'Quid eniqi contendat hirundo cygnis?' — her verse has the swallow's wing and challenges none. It is in her essays that her singular powers have their range, and without sacrifice of the poet she is. Readers with a turn for literature have noticed of late a column once weekly in the Autolycus basket of the 'Pall Mall Gazette,' considering it princely journalism. Mrs. Meynell's second volume is her selection from these criticisms and essays, as was I The National Review, Aug. 1896. ' The Rhythm of Life,' and ' The Colour of Life.' (John Lane). 163 REVIEWS her foregoing from the series printed in the ' National Observer.' They are small books, and they contain much substance, both to refresh and to instruct. But it is not as a quintessential extract that they com- mend themselves to us, though they are full of matter. The essays have, in these days of the overflow, the merit of saying just enough on the subject, leaving the reader to think. They can be read repeatedly, because they are compact and suggestive, and at the same time run with clearness. The surprise coming on us from their combined grace of manner and sanity of thought, is like one's dream of what the recognition of a new truth would be. Conceivably the writer was fastidious to the extreme degree during the term of scholarship, but that is now shown only in a style having ' the walk of the Goddess ' ; and when she speaks her wise things, it is the voice of one standing outside the curtain of the Oracle, humbly among her hearers. She has no pretensions to super- excellence, however confirmed her distastes. Her rule of the firiSev ayav has become the law of her nature, as it may be seen at a first reading. Mrs. Meynell discountenances nimiety in any form, the much scorn, the shout of encomium, the exhibi- tion of the copious vocabulary. Part of her education was influenced insensibly by one whom she respected for ' his gentle and implacable judgement ' ; and as he ' disliked violence chiefly because violence is apt to confess its own limits,' she received her guidance in criticism as in conduct. Her scorn, when it is roused, is lightly phrased, her wit glances, her irony is invisible, though it slays; and if she admires she withholds exclamations. Intemperateness, redun- 164 MRS. MEYNELL'S BOOKS OF ESSAYS dancy, the ampoule and pretentious, are discarded by her, nor may her heroes be guilty. She cuts her way for herself through that wood to a precision never emphatic unless it be intentionally, for the signification; and this precision she contrives to render flexible, conversational even ; she achieves the literary miracle of subordinating compressed choice language to grace of movement, an easy and pleasant flow until her theme closes. Her theme, too, is held in hand, to be rolled out like the develops ment of a sonnet, because of that same succinctness of idea inspiring to direct her equable delivery. The papers outside the descriptive and the critical are little sermons, ideal sermons — let no one uninstructed by them take fright at the title, they are not preach- ments ; they are of the sermon's right length, of about as long to read as the passage of a cathedral chant in the ear, and keeping throughout to the plain step of daily speech, they leave a sense of stilled singing on the mind they fill. In all her writing we read of a brain that has found its untrammelled medium for utterance, with stores to deliver. Necessarily, where an intellect is at work, ours should be active, and we should know the roots of the words. She does not harp on a point ; she pays her readers the compliment of assuming that they have intelligence. But she does not oifer them puzzles. The writing is limpid in its depths. By what strict discipline her task of preparation was done may be gathered in part from her essay on 'Composure' and on 'Rejection.' They are lessons in the composition of sound and vibrant English, a sensitive English retaining dignity. Simple Saxon 165 REVIEWS is too much a brawler ; and emotion, imagination, the eye on things, will be shrouded by obtrusive Latin. The voice we know is not the familiar voice when we hear it through a horn. But seasonable notes of the horn will help to elevation and the more embracing discourse. Latin oifers that advantage if the words are discreetly chosen. The greater suppleness in a tongue of long usage by many races must, as Littre argues, make it an instrument of expression for the larger meanings and the delicate — the voluble semi- tones that the Teutonic cannot rival. Mrs. Meynell's plea is not for a return of the learnedness of the old coining Divines, Men entendu ; she pleads for the eighteenth century's happy refuge in the language of greater tranquillity, 'Johnson's tranquillity,' as an ethical need of our day. 'We want to quell the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the poise and pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong movement expresses it.' They are not the times when Othello has lago by the throat. Passion knows no tongue but plain Saxon with us. Mrs. Meynell's allusion is to the times for transmitting ideas, or summarily narrating events; and in that respect Lowell was of a like opinion, at a period when the mania for mother Saxon was wrenching our parents in literary language asunder to the state of divorce. Yet we have so Saxonized ' ation ' and 'ition' as to make those polysyllables derived from the French repugnant if they are not electively handled; and the 'tranquillity of Johnson,' in Rasselas, for example, conveys the scenes to our musing fancy as effectively as a sleeper's dreams are presented by the sonorous trumpet of his nose. 166 MRS. MEYNELL'S BOOKS OF ESSAYS We are not, however, counselled to return to the Johnsonian stalk, the marching of words like men- at-arms in plated steel, under which the Saxon was a trampled stubble. 'One of the most charming things that a writer of English can achieve is the repayment of the united teaching by linking their results so exquisitely in his own practice that the words of the two schools shall be made to meet each other with a surprise and delight that shall prove them at once gayer strangers and sweeter companions than the world knew they were.' By this linking of results our scholarly literature may get to a rhythm of life having the colour of life. How it is when ' pure Saxon ' reigns is to be seen in Freeman's History, where the hopping native monosyllables and stumpy trochees are multiplied to knock the sense of a situation upon our understanding until vision and connection are lost within us for lack of the one compendious Latin word. A powerful personal sentiment was required to preserve the equilibrium in Johnson, with whom Latin was his lingual club. The balance of the tongues is the task for us, and it is hard to maintain even where there is no strong predilection for the one or the other. Mrs. Meynell herself may be lured in the cooler moment to a slight inclination. In the first sentence of ' Rushes and Reeds ' we have : 'Taller than the grass and lower than the trees, there is another growth that feels the implicit spring.' One seems to have the enfolded spring of the year on an encloistered grass-plot when it is capped by this Latinity. We are commonly sensible of the library's atmosphere only in the apposite condensing term for 167 REVIEWS the subject treated. She is too sensitively responsive to the natural world, to the humanity about her and the cry of a present time, for the exercise of doctorial pedantry. Her stores of knowledge, stores of reflec- tion, burden her reader as little as she is hampered by them. Her eloquence is shown by repression, with the effect. Occasionally, as in * The Lesson of Landscape, Sun, Cloud, Winds of the World,' — notably the great south-west — her hand is loosened. Her disposition is to a firm grasp of the reins, and her characteristic is everywhere the undertone. We have had our eminent masters of style. We have had the stylist of the picked English, in which we saw the picking; the stylist in elegant English, se dandinant — very pardonably — under the conscious- ness of acknowledged elegance. Mrs. Meynell has much of Pyrrha's charm, the style correcting wealth and attaining to simplicity by trained art, the method unobtruded. Her probed diction has the various music in the irregular footing of prose, and if the sentences remind us passingly of the Emersonian shortness, they are not abrupt, they are smoothly sequent. It may be seen that she would not push for rivalry; the attraction is in her reserve. She must be a diligent reader of the Saintly Lives. Her manner presents to me the image of one accustomed to walk in holy places and keep the eye of a fresh mind on our tangled world, happier in observing than in speaking; careful to speak but briefly to such ear-beaten people, and then only when reflections press, the spirit is fervent, or observation calls for an exposure of some hopeful or some doubtful tendencies. 168 MRS. MEYNELL'S BOOKS OF ESSAYS Her use of the undertone in the painting of a portrait, the sketching of a scene, is an artistic revelation. The few affirmative strokes placed among the retiring features of the gentleman in a 'Remembrance' surpass vividness in the impression. They make a Rembrandt canvas. The scene *At Monastery Gates,' soberly coloured as it is, remains with us; we are drawn by an allurement, that is not the writer's invitation, to share her feeling. She feels deeply, saying little. A funny incident occurring in the monastery is related with an unformed smile, and the laughters are in it. Like the hero of her portrait, she has ' compassion on the multitude.' The tenderness inspiring the thoughtfulness of the ' Domus Angusta ' is not stressed for an effect of pathos, but the reader's mind and heart are touched, enlarged, one may say with truth. 'The narrow house is a small human nature compelled to a large human destiny, charged with a fate too great, a history too various, for its slight capacities.' . . . 'That narrow house — there is sometimes a message from its living windows. Its bewilderment, its reluctance, its defect, show by moments from eyes that are apt to express none but common things. There are allusions, involuntary appeals in those brief glances. Far front me and from my friends be the misfortune of meeting such looks in reply to pain of our inflicting. To be clever and sensitive, and to hurt the foolish and the stolid — wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world ? Not I, by this heavenly light.' The undertone rises there to a point of shrillness for once. Poor average humanity — the world of the 169 REVIEWS inarticulate — has long wanted such an advocate. Could Portia plead better before the court ? It is in Portia's tone. A similar impressive reserve is notice- able whenever this writer touches on children. There is not the word of affectionateness ; her knowledge and her maternal love of them are shown in her ready entry into the childish state and transcript of its germinal ideas, the feelings of the young, — a common subject for the sentimentalising hand, from which nothing is gathered. Only deep love could furnish the intimate knowledge to expound them so. Perhaps the most poetic, most suggestive also, of the essays in these two books is the one on 'The Illusion of Historic Time,' treating of the child's views of historical events, illuminatingly and delightfully describing what the child has for his great possession in the early days, and what the man has lost, though not absolutely lost if he imagined when he was a child. ' Rome was founded when we began Roman history, and that is why it seems so long ago. Suppose the man of thirty-five heard, at that present age, for the first time of Romulus. Why, Romulus would be nowhere. But he built his wall when every one was seven years old. It is by good fortune that " ancient " history is taught in the only ancient days. ... By learning something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges the sense of time for all mankind.' The essay is in its essence a concentrated treatise on the imagination of childhood and the uses in nourishing it; a piece of work of more than the literary value for which it is remarkable. It is work that philosophers may read with enlivenment ; instructed, perhaps. 170 MRS. MEYNELL'S BOOKS OF ESSAYS Mrs. Meynell indicates here and there that the * sense of humour ' is the touch within us restraining from excess. Were such the case, our people would be convicted of deficiency where the common belief is in their having a fair endowment. They can laugh ; they can also extravagate, can be ultra-solemn in bodies, in journals, past measure overblown, pan- anglicanly tedious, and they are peculiar for their dogged merriment in coursing the toy-shop hare of a rank absurdity or flattering national habit round and round the field years after its creaking mechanism should have told them it has an acuter sensibility of the excessive than they. No, the principle of restraint, the leaning to proportion, is an intellectual attribute, and humour is apart from the intellect as an influence ; it is often foreign to the intellect, unsanctioned, a helot at holiday or native claiming license under the dominant lord. Restraint comes of an habitual government of our faculties by the Comic Spirit — the livelier element of common sense, which has mounted to the intellectual station perforce of being more imaginative than the ordinary assemblage in debate over needs and customs. It is Right Reason's right hand weapon. Mrs. Meynell's paper on 'Pathos' (shani pathos — the craze for detecting it in a broad grin) would alone be sufficient to show that she has the comic insight eminently among modern writers. She is armed for penetrative criticism, and armoured to blunt the point of attack. Were it creative with her, she would no doubt not be so securely clad. Comic creative energy somewhat shakes composure, and is tricksy, given to take different forms for covert purposes. Nothing so much provokes dyavaKTrjo-i's in 171 REVIEWS English critics. The writer guilty of this offence shall run the gauntlet of them all down the line at every new publication, up to the end. Can she be more tolerant — or less consistent? In the passive mani- festation of it, seeing that she is critical chiefly to admire, and courteous when her delicate stroke is mortal, we have to seek her peers — that is, in England. Although she condenses, by virtue of a contemplative habit, she is reluctantly a phrase-maker; as a rule, only when the pressure of her subject enforces it: e.g., of a gifted man marked by literary abstinence: 'He had an exquisite style from which to refrain.' Or, contrasting Greek symmetry in art with Japanese distortion, under an illustration of the human form : * Man is Greek without and Japanese within.' There are more. But evidently she does not string her jewels on the way by a recurrence to the note-book. A lapse upon later journalese, in a sentence negatively describing the east wind, after a splendid picture of the south-west, offers testimony. They come from the running pen. So little does this thoughtful writer incline to the packed phrase or the smart, that one speculates on her attitude fronting an aphorist. The imposing Professor of Wisdom would require a stout constitution to keep him from seceding into vapour beneath her quiet scrutiny. Whether the habit of journalism is likely to injure a choice individual style, is the question better asked in suspense ; it is not for asking until the signs render it nugatory. Mrs. Meynell's two paragraphs on ' The Honours of Mortality ' imply that, if she has done her best in the work for the day, she is resigned to the 172 MRS. MEYNELL'S BOOKS OF ESSAYS common fate of workers for the day, like her prized exemplar, whose 'finest distinction it was to desire no differences, no remembrance, but loss among the innumerable forgotten.' The loftier aristocratic spirit travels by this road to democracy, if proudly or humbly it matters little. Authors 'writing for posterity ' are figures for the caricaturist. Apparently we owe 'A Woman in Grey' to journalism, and the train of thought following her on her bicycle in Oxford Street seems worth handing down, however uncertain its descent. ' She had learnt to be content with her share — no more — in common security, and to be pleased with her part in common hope. . . . To this courage the woman in grey has attained with a spring,' etc. How closely the writer feels with her sisterhood and for the world of the time to come, is indicated in her thoughts upon the woman's gaining courage: '"Thou art my warrior," said Volumnia, "I holp to frame thee." Shall a man inherit his mother's trick of speaking, or her habit and attitude, and not suffer something, against his wish, from her bequest of weakness, and something, against his heart, from her bequest of folly? From the legacies of an unlessoned mind a woman's heirs-male are not cut off in the Common Law of the generations of man- kind. Brutus knew that the valour of Portia was settled upon his sons.' The writer who does honour to journalism assists at least in salutary work, for which the honours of a delicate stylist may well be surrendered. The writer casting an irradiation on cheap daily things does an act of beneficence, and can consent to pass away with them. I have not seen any roughening or flattening 173 REVIEWS of diction, or taint of limpidity; one slip only, and that can be excused as easily as effaced. Rather is it shown that service in this great school has added to fluency, and quickened the observation of the most penetrative eyes we have among us. There is less in the second book of the poise of the sentence on some costly expressive, and we have always literary English to beguile or command the reader. It will hardly be otherwise, where an exacting taste imposes the corre- spondent self-respect. The author of ' The New Lucian ' is a journalist, and of as masterly a dicacity as when he gave us those classic dialogues. Other names could be cited. The writing that is thinking may be in constant exercise to any degree without injury while the physique is cheerful ; and the writing to suit the day, and thinking upon demand, make a rallying harness for the capacities of the voluntary and able in service. One sees it to be good apprenticeship. But journalism is necessarily impressionist. An impres- sionist theatrical critic, for example, should have the * Point of Honour ' implanted in him animatingly if he is to do his duty to himself and to the public ; and if, as Mrs. Meynell says, 'the point of honour is the simple secret of the few,' his office may tempt to the doings that call on force of soul to undo them sub- sequently in a frank palinode. Few have that either ; so we behold the effects of a critic's moods, for one consequence, in the public indifference to criticism. Of the few who can recant handsomely, Mr. Archer is one ; M. Jules Lemaitre, the most competent of critics, is also one, as was shown in his amends to the Shade of Theodore de Banville the other day. He was an impressionist critic dogmatizing when he went wrong. 174 MRS. MEYNELL'S BOOKS OF ESSAYS I could wish him to read Mrs. Meynell's article on the acting of Eleonora Duse. He might dissent ; he would own that our English critic writes with knowledge of the art of acting, with sensitive perception. She examines, and gives her good reasons for pronoun- cing ; she is not ' deterministe ' or dogmatic, she is impressionist inasmuch as she is spiritually receptive. A reader of her criticism who had never seen Signora Duse on the stage, would conceive how the actress excels, though there is nothing pointed in the mention of the points. Those who have seen the great Italian are awakened by it to a better understanding of the art she illustrates and the grounds of her excellence. Great acting, great criticism: and both by reason of that quiescent, passionless, but not frigid, spiritual receptivity in study, from which issues the consummate representation, the right word upon it likewise. Through all Mrs. Meynell's writings there is an avoidance of superlatives. Rarely does she indulge in an interjection. One may gather that she would dis- relish the title bestowed by enraptured reviewers on exceptionally brilliant gifts ; and it is battered enough. The power she has, and the charm it is clothed in, shall, then, be classed as distinction — the quality Matthew Arnold anxiously scanned the flats of earth to discover. It will serve as well as the more splendidly flashing and commoner term to specify her claim upon public attention. She has this distinction : the seizure of her theme, a fine dialectic, a pliable step, the feminine of strong good sense — equal, only sweeter, — and reflectiveness, humaneness, fervency of spirit. I can fancy Matthew Arnold, lighting on such essays as 'The Point of Honour,' 'A Point in 175 REVIEWS Biography,' '-Symmetry and Incident,' and others that I have named, saying, with refreshment, 'She can write ! ' It does not seem to me too bold to imagine Carlyle listening, without the weariful gesture, to his wife's reading of the same, hearing them to the end, and giving his comment : * That woman thinks ! ' A woman who thinks and who can write, who does not disdain the school of journalism, and who brings novelty and poetic beauty, the devout but open mind, to her practice of it, bears promise that she will some day rank as one of the great Englishwomen of Letters, at present counting humbly by computation beside their glorious French sisters in the art. 176 SHORT ARTICLES 34— M 177 SHORT ARTICLES A PAUSE IN THE STRIFE » Our j:'out him if possible. Italy's wishes are entirely with him. Noale, near Treviso, July 17, 1866. From Lusia I followed General Medici's division to Motta, where I left it, not without regret, however, as better companions could not easily be found, so kind were the officers and jovial the men. They are now 243 CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE encamped around Padua, and will to-morrow march on Treviso, where the Italian Light Horse have already arrived, if I judge so from their having left Noale on the 15th. From the right I hear that the advanced posts have proceeded as far as Mira on the Brenta, twenty kilometres from Venice itself, and that the first army corps is to concentrate opposite Chioggia. This corps has marched from Ferrara straight on to Rovigo, which the forward movement of the fourth, or Cialdini's corps d'armee, had left empty of soldiers. General Pianell has still charge of it, and Major -General Cadalini, formerly at the head of the Siena brigade, replaces him in the command of his former division. General Pianell has under him the gallant Prince Amadeus, who has entirely recovered from his chest wound, and of whom the brigade of Lombardian grenadiers is as proud as ever. They could not wish for a more skilled commander, a better superior officer, and a more valiant soldier. Thus the troops who fought on the 24th June are kept in the second line, while the still fresh divisions under Cialdini march first, as fast as they can. This, however, is of no avail. The Italian outposts on the Piave have not yet crossed it, for the reason that they must keep distances with their regiments, but will do so as soon as these get nearer to the river. If it was not that this is always done in regular warfare, they could beat the country beyond the Piave for a good many miles without even seeing the shadow of an Austrian. To the simple private, who does not know of diplomatic imbroglios and of political considerations, this sudden retreat means an almost as sudden retracing of steps, because he remembers that this manoeuvre preceded both the 244 SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY attacks on Solferino and on Custozza by the Austrians. To the officer, however, it means nothing else than a fixed desire not to face the Italian army any more, and so it is to him a source of disappointment and despondency. He cannot bear to think that another battle is improbable, and may be excused if he is not in the best of humour when on this subject. This is the case not only with the officers but with the volunteers, who have left their homes and the comfort of their domestic life, not to be paraded at reviews, but to be sent against the enemy. There are hundreds of these in the regular army — in the cavalry especially, and the Aosta Lancers and the regiment of Guides are half composed of them. If you listen to them, there ought not to be the slightest doubt or hesitation as to crossing the Isongo and marching upon Vienna. May Heaven see their wishes accomplished, for, unless crushed by sheer force, Italy is quite decided to carry war into the enemy's country. The decisions of the French government are looked for here with great anxiety, and not a few men are found who predict them to be unfavourable to Italy. Still, it is hard for every one to believe that the French emperor will carry things to extremities, and increase the many difficulties Europe has already to contend with. To-day there was a rumour at the mess table that the Austrians had abandoned Legnano, one of the four fortresses of the quadrilateral. I do not put much faith in it at present, but it is not improbable, as we may expect many strange things from the Vienna government. It would have been much better for them, since Archduke Albert spoke in eulogistic terms 245 CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE of the king, of his sons, and of his soldiers, while relating the action of the 24th, to have treated with Italy direct, thus securing peace, and perhaps friend- ship, from her. But the men who have ruled so despotically for years over Italian subjects cannot reconcile themselves to the idea that Italy has at last risen to be a nation, and they even take slyly an opportunity to throw new insult into her face. You can easily see that the old spirit is still struggling for empire ; that the old contempt is still trying to make light of Italians ; and that the old Metternich ideas are still fondly clung to. Does not this deserve another lesson ? Does not this need another Sadowa to quiet down for ever? Yes; and it devolves upon Italy to do it. If so, let only Cialdini's army alone, and the day may be nigh at hand when the king may tell the country that the task has been accomplished. A talk on the present state of political affairs, and on the peculiar position of Italy, is the only subject worth notice in a letter from the camp. Everything else is at a standstill, and the movements of the fine army Cialdini now disposes of, about 150,000 men, are no longer full of interest. They may, perhaps, have some as regards an attack on Venice, because Austrian soldiers are still garrisoning it, and will be obliged to fight if they are assailed. It is hoped, if such is the case, that the beautiful queen of the Adriatic will be spared a scene of devastation, and that no new Haynau will be found to renew the deeds of Brescia and Vicenza. The king has not yet arrived, and it seems probable he will not come for some time, until indeed the day comes for Italian troops to make their triumphal entry into the city of the Doges. 246 SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY The heat continues intense, and this explains the slowness in advancing. As yet no sickness has appeared, and it must be hoped that the troops will be healthy, iis sickness tries the morale much more than half-a-dozen Custozzas. P.S. — I had finished writing when an officer came rushing into the inn where I am staying and told me that he had just heard that an Italian patrol had met an Austrian one on the road out of the village, and routed it. This may or may not be true, but it was most curious to see how delighted every one was at the idea that they had found * them ' at last. They did not care much about the result of the engagement, which, as I said, was reported to have been favourable. All that they cared about was that they were close to the enemy. One cannot despair of an army which is animated with such spirits. You would think, from the joy which brightens the face of the soldiers you meet now about, that a victory had been announced for the Italian arms. Dolo, near Venice, July 20, 1866. I returned from Noale to Padua last evening, and late in the night I received the intimation at my quarters that cannon was heard in the direction of Venice. It was then black as in Dante's hell, and raining and blowing with violence — one of those Italian storms which seem to awake all the earthly and heavenly elements of creation. There was no choice for it but to take to the saddle, and try to make for the front. No one who has not tried it can fancy what work it is to find one's way along a road on which a whole corps d^armee is marching with an enormous materiel 247 CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE of war in a pitch dark night. This, however, is what your special correspondent was obliged to do. Fortunately enough, I had scarcely proceeded as far as Ponte di Brenta when I fell in with an officer of Cialdini's staff, who was bound to the same destina- tion, namely, Dolo. As we proceeded along the road under a continuous shower of rain, our eyes now and then dazzled by the bright serpent-like flashes of the lightning, we fell in with some battalion or squadron, which advanced carefully, as it was impossible for them as well as for us to discriminate between the road and the ditches which flank it, for all the landmarks, so familiar to our guides in the daytime, were in one dead level of blackness. So it was that my companion and myself, after stumbling into ditches and out of them, after knocking our horses' heads against an ammunition car, or a party of soldiers sheltered under some big tree, found ourselves, after three hours' ride, in this village of Dolo. By this time the storm had greatly abated in its violence, and the thunder was but faintly heard now and then at such a distance as to enable us distinctly to hear the roar of the guns. Our horses could' scarcely get through the sticky black mud, into which the white sufl'ocating dust of the previous days had been turned by one night's rain. We, how- ever, made our way to the parsonage of the village, for we had already made up our minds to ascend the steeple of the church to get a view of the surrounding country and a better hearing of the guns if possible. After a few words exchanged with the sexton — a staunch Italian, as he told us he was — we went up the ladder of the church spire. Once on the wooden 248 SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY platform, we could hear more distinctly the boom of the guns, which sounded like the broadsides of a big vessel. Were they the guns of Persano's long inactive fleet attacking some of Brondolo's or Chioggia's advanced forts? Were the guns those of some Austrian man-of-war which had engaged an Italian ironclad ; or were they the Affondatore, which left the Thames only a month ago, pitching into Trieste ? To tell the truth, although we patiently waited two long hours on Dolo church spire, when both I and my companion descended we were not in a position to solve either of these problems. We, however, thought then, and still think, they were the guns of the Italian fleet which had attacked an Austrian fort. Civita Vecchia, July 22, 1866. Since the departure from this port of the old hospital ship Gr6geois about a year ago, no French ship of war had been stationed at Civita Vecchia; but on Wednesday morning the steam-sloop Catinat, 180 men, cast anchor in the harbour, and the commandant immediately on disembarking took the train for Rome and placed himself in communication with the French ambassador. I am not aware whether the Pontifical government had applied for this vessel, or whether the sending it was a spontaneous attention on the part of the French emperor, but, at any rate, its arrival has proved a source of pleasure to His Holiness, as there is no knowing what may happen in troublous times like the present, and it is always good to have a retreat insured. Yesterday it was notified in this port, as well as 249 CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE at Naples, that arrivals from Marseilles would be, until further notice, subjected to a quarantine of fifteen days in consequence of cholera having made its appearance at the latter place. A sailing vessel which arrived from Marseilles in the course of the day had to disembark the merchandise it brought for Civita Vecchia into barges off the lazaretto, where the yellow flag was hoisted over them. This vessel left Marseilles five days before the announcement of the quarantine, while the Prince Napoleon of Valery's Company, passenger and merchandise steamer, which left Marseilles only one day before its announcement, was admitted this morning to free pratique. Few travellers will come here by sea now. Marseilles, July 24, Accustomed as we have been of late in Italy to almost hourly bulletins of the progress of hostilities, it is a trying condition to be suddenly debarred of all intelligence by finding oneself on board a steamer for thirty-six hours without touching at any port, as was my case in coming here from Civita Vecchia on board the Prince Napoleon. But, although telegrams were wanting, discussions on the course of events were rife on board among the passengers who had embarked at Naples and Civita Vecchia, comprising a strong batch of French and Belgian priests return- ing from a pilgrimage to Rome, well supplied with rosaries and chaplets blessed by the Pope and facsimiles of the chains of St. Peter. Not much sympathy for the Italian cause was shown by these gentlemen or the few French and German travellers who, with three or four Neopolitans, formed the 250 SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY quarter-deck society ; and our Corsican captain took no pains to hide his contempt at the dilatory pro- ceedings of the Italian fleet at Aneona. We know that the Prussian minister, M. d'Usedom, has been recently making strenuous remonstrances at Ferrara against the slowness with which the Italian naval and military forces were proceeding, while their allies, the Prussians, were already near the gates of Vienna; and the conversation of a Prussian gentle- man on board our steamer, who was conn