CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Prof. Morris Bishop 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 129.S7M18 1921 
 
 Shelley & Calderon and other essays on E 
 
 3 1924 013 348 077 
 
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 PRINTED IN U^. A. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this bool< is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 3348077 
 
SHELLEY y 
 CALDERON 
 
TWO BOOKS ABOUT SPAIN 
 
 A PICTURE OF MODERN SPAIN 
 
 Studies of Men and Music 
 
 By J. B. Trend 
 
 THE SOUL OF SPAIN 
 
 By Harelock Elli* 
 
SHELLEY & 
 GALDERON 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS ON 
 
 ENGLISH AND SPANISH 
 
 POETRY BY SALVADOR 
 
 DE MADARIAGA 
 
 I 
 
 NEW YORK : E. P. BUTTON 
 &> COMPANY PUBLISHERS 
 
SI MiB 
 
 Printed in Great Sritain. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface p. ix 
 
 Shelley and Calderon p. 3 
 
 English Sidelights on Spanish 
 
 * 
 
 Literature p. jo 
 
 Spanish Popular Poetry p. 84 
 
 The Case of Wordsworth p. 126 
 
TO MY 
 WIFE 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The four essays which form this volume are offered as a 
 small contribution to the movement noticeable at present 
 in this country in favour of a better knowledge of Spain 
 and the Spanish-speaking peoples, the outward mani- 
 festation of which is the growing popularity of the 
 Spanish language. There is little doubt that the driving 
 force of such a movement is not of a cultural, but of a 
 utilitarian, order. For the second time in history, the 
 riches of South America fascinate the European, only 
 this time the Conquistador stays at home and it is the 
 enterprising Briton who stirs and dreams of Eldorado. 
 The words of the Spanish language are thus the caravels 
 which will take British trade across the seas and bring 
 back — ^like the galleons of old — a less bulky though no 
 less substantial cargo in the form of dividends. We need 
 not complain. Commerce was ever the forerunner of 
 culture, and the country which owes her first glimmers 
 of civilisation to the Phoenicians and the Greeks is not 
 likely to quarrel with the Britons. The merchant may 
 build his ship for commerce, yet he cannot resist her 
 charm, and falls in love with her. So the Briton may 
 still fall in love with the Castilian language, though he 
 learn it for purposes of trade. 
 
X SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 From such hopes this book derives its inspiration. 
 That poetry should have been chosen as the ground for 
 this work of international goodwill may be due primarily 
 to the author's own proclivities, but also to the influence 
 of an essay on Poetry and National Character, by 
 Prof. W. Macneile Dixon. ^ Poetry is a subject which 
 lends itself perhaps better than any other to such a pur- 
 pose. It is, like science and religion, a manifestation of 
 the spirit common to all races, and it has over science 
 the advantage that it demands the presence of our whole 
 being, mind, soul and even body ; and over religion that 
 it includes within its sphere this as well as the next world. 
 Poetry, moreover, is one of the human activities best 
 tuned to the Spanish and to the English character, a 
 fact which explains that both England and Spain should 
 have excelled in it. Lastly, poetry is an entirely un- 
 profitable occupation. It takes but little space. It re- 
 quires but little time. It needs but little capital, and 
 produces no dividends. It can be quietly discussed 
 without attracting an undue amount of attention. 
 
 The essays which follow connect English with Spanish 
 poetry and character in four different ways. In the first 
 essay, Shelley and Calder6n, the direct influence of 
 one of Spain's greatest dramatists over one of England's 
 greatest lyric poets is discussed, and an effort is made 
 towards investigating the true nature of this literary 
 
 1 Poetry and National Character. The Leslie Stephen Lecture 
 delivered at Cambridge on 13 May, 1915, by W. Macneile Dixon, Cam- 
 bridge, at the University Press, 191 5. 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 bond between the two nations by an analysis of the 
 genius of each of the two poets concerned as revealed in 
 their works and life. In the second, English Sidelights 
 ON Spanish Literature, a series of parallel studies of 
 English and Spanish poets is used as a convenient canvas 
 for the setting of a certain number of facts and opinions 
 likely to stimulate the study of Spanish poetry in England. 
 For, though we all like novelty, absolute strangeness has 
 little- attraction for us, differences being but spices which 
 render more appetising the substance of our common 
 human nature. The third essay, Spanish Popular 
 Poetry, is a study of what is perhaps the most typically 
 Spanish creation in the whole field of literature, and an 
 attempt at estimating the value and interpreting the 
 meaning of Spanish popular songs in terms of English 
 culture. The fourth and last essay — and perhaps the 
 unwisest enterprise in the book — aims at showing the 
 Spanish mind at work on a subject so typically English 
 as the poetry of Wordsworth. When giving, his — ^perhaps 
 unfavourable — ^verdict on this last endeavour, the Eng- 
 lish reader should, however, take into account that in 
 this case the " Spanish mind " happens to be working 
 through one of its humblest impersonations. 
 
 It will be easily understood that, in the course of his 
 work, the author could not abstain from expressing 
 opinions on subjects such as English poetry, rhythm, 
 language and character, about which he cannot claim to 
 speak with confidence, stiU less with authority. For the 
 
xii SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 sake of clearness, the style has been kept free from any 
 wrappings of literary modesty, diflBdence, humility and 
 such other moral ornaments with which writers hope to 
 conciliate the good graces of the critic, but which retard 
 and irritate the reader. The reader cares not for the 
 author but for the subject, and he likes to reach the 
 almond of truth within the style without having to undo 
 several layers of tinfoil. But if what the author has to 
 say is said simply and directly, he, nevertheless, is for- 
 tunate in the possession of as much modesty as modesty 
 itself will allow him to boast of, and there is not one line 
 in this volume which is not written with the sense of the 
 disproportion between his powers and the difficulties of 
 his task. Nor is the writer impressed by the argument 
 that his errors of judgment may be injurious to the 
 cause of truth, f&r, even if his insignificance were not 
 a sufficient answer to the charge, it still remains that 
 truth in matters of poetical criticism is not a scientific 
 and logical, but an aesthetic and intuitive fact. Hence, 
 while errors in scientific method always result in loss of 
 time, errors in artistic criticism cannot but help^ulti- 
 mately — ^to the gradual delineation of truth. For truth 
 in criticism is like a black and white drawing, in which 
 the black shadows are no less instrumental than the bright 
 spots of light in bringing out shape and relief. Let the 
 author then be allowed to contribute, if only with 
 shadows of error, to the shaping of the face of truth. 
 
 S. DE M. 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
To F. M. S., my Sister in Shelley 
 
Shelley seems to have, become acquainted with Calderon 
 during the summer of 1 819, while he was engaged in the 
 composition of " The Cenci." Shelley says in his preface 
 to his tragedy, referring to Beatrice's description of the 
 chasm appointed for her father's murder : " An idea 
 in this speech was suggested by a most sublime passage in 
 'El Purgatorio de San Patricio'^ of Calderon, the only 
 plagiarism which I have intentionally committed in 
 the whole piece." ^ Mary, Shelley, in her own notes to 
 " The Cenci," adds : " He was making a study of 
 Calderdn at the time, reading his best tragedies with an 
 accomplished lady living near us. . . . He admired 
 Calderon, both for his poetry and his dramatic genius ; 
 ..." * From that moment right up to the day of Shelley's 
 death, almost exactly three years later, Calderon and 
 his works occupied a prominent place in the thoughts 
 and writings of the English poet. The " accomplished 
 lady " of Mary Shelley's note was Mrs. Gisborne, whom 
 Shelley met in Livorno in May, 1818. Though Shelley 
 felt an early friendship for this lady, who was an old friend 
 of Godvnn, his studies in Spanish do not seem to have 
 
 1 See >fote I. 
 
 2 *'The Poetical Works of Percy B-ysshe Shelley : with his Tragedies 
 and Lyrical Dramas, to which are added his Essays and Fragments, etc' 
 Edited by his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ward, Lock & Co., 
 1889. (Hereafter referred to as M. W. S.). P. 130, 
 
 S M, W. S., p. 159. 
 
4 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 begun then.'- It is not until after the summer of 1819 
 that references to Calderon and the Spanish drama 
 become frequent in his correspondence and prose writ- 
 ings. He describes his Spanish studies in a letter to 
 Peacock, dated Livorno, August 22nd, 1819 : " . . . . 
 and at half past five, pay a visit to Mrs. Gisborne who 
 reads Spanish with me until seven." Towards the end of 
 this letter Shelley returns to the subject : " I have been 
 reading Calderon in Spanish. A kind of Shakespeare 
 is this Calderon, and I have some thoughts, if I find that 
 i cannot do anything better, of translating some of his 
 plays." While he was engaged in the study of his new 
 discovery with Mrs. Gisborne, yet another admirer of 
 Spain came to strengthen his enthusiasm. " Charles 
 Clairmont," he writes to Peacock, September, 1819, "is 
 now with us on his way to Vienna, and I make him read 
 Spanish all day long. It is a most powerful and expressive 
 language, and I have already learnt sufiicient to read 
 with great ease their poet Calder6n. I have read about 
 twelve of his plays." With his usual spiritual acquisitive- 
 ness, Shelley seems to have made Calderon part of his 
 own life. He coins the word Calderonise, ^ and describes 
 his steamboat in true Calderonian style, " our monstruo 
 de fuego y agua." ^ 
 
 ^ A month later, writing from Lucca to the Gisbornes, he says : "We 
 read a good deal here and we read little in Livorno," and there is nothing 
 to suggest Spanish studies in his correspondence until a year later. That 
 Shelley should read Calderon and plagiarise him after two months' study 
 of the language need not surprise anyone. Spanish is an easy enough 
 language for an English scholar, but, besides, '* Shelley," says Hogg, " had 
 always at his command a short and royal road to knowledge." (Quoted by 
 Dowden, ' Life of Shelley,' p. 208.) 
 
 ' Letter to the Gisbornes, Florence, November 6th, 1819. M. W. S., 
 
 ?■ 135- 
 
 ? I^etter to Henry j^evele^, Florence, October, 1819. M. W. S., p. 135, 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 5 
 
 Writing to the Gisbornes in November, 1819, he 
 strikes an admirable image which gives the best and most 
 accurate impression of Calderon's unequal art : 
 
 " I have been lately voyaging in a sea without my pilot, 
 and, although my sail has often been torn, my boat become 
 leaky, and the log lost, I have yet sailed in a kind of way from 
 island to island ; some of craggy and mountainous magnifi- 
 cence, some clothed with moss and flowers,^ and radiant with 
 fountains, some barren deserts. / have been reading Calderon 
 without you." 
 
 The whole letter is devoted to the subject, and it ends 
 with a quotation from " La Cisma de Ingalaterra," of 
 which he says, " Is there anything in Petrarch finer than 
 the second stanza ? "' In the same month he writes to 
 Leigh Hunt : 
 
 " With respect to translation, even I will not be seduced by 
 it ; although the Greek plays, and some of the ideal dramas 
 of Calder6n (with which I have lately, and with inexpressible 
 wonder and delight, become acquainted), are perpetually tempt- 
 ing me to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the grey 
 veil of my own words."* 
 
 Shelley's enthusiasm could die out as suddenly as it 
 flared up. His admiration for Calderon, however, did 
 not cool down with time and familiarity. One year 
 after his first outburst of " wonder and delight " he 
 sends to John Gisborne another of his beautifully ex- 
 pressive appreciations of Calderon's art : " I am bathing 
 myself in the light and odour of the flowery and starry 
 
 ^ See footnote, p. i6. 
 
 ' See the teit of this letter in Note II, p. 36. 
 M. W. S., p. 139. 
 
6 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 Autos. I have read them all more than once." In a 
 post-scriptum he adds : " I have a new Calderon coining 
 from Paris." And in November, 1820, he writes to 
 Peacock : " I have been reading nothing but Greek and 
 Spanish. Plato and Calderon have been my gods." 
 When, early in 1821, Trelawny saw him for the first 
 time at the WiUiamses, Shelley entered the room holding 
 in his hand a copy of " El Magico Prodigioso." The 
 passage in Trelawny's " Recollections " is well known : 
 
 " Mrs. Williams . . . asked Shelley what book he had in his 
 hand. His face brightened, and he answered briskly : ' Cal- 
 der6n's " M%ico Prodigioso." I am translating some passages 
 in it.' ' Oh, read it to us.' Shoved off from the shore of com- 
 monplace incidents ... he instantly became oblivious of any- 
 thing but the book in his hand. The masterly manner in which 
 he analysed the genius of the author, his lucid interpretations 
 of the story, and the ease with which he translated into our 
 language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the 
 Spanish poet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two 
 languages." 
 
 In September of the same year he writes to Horace 
 Smith, complaining that the Gisbornes, despite their 
 promises, had not sent him some books whick he had 
 asked them to purchase for him in Paris. He asks Horace 
 Smith to do him the favour to buy them. At the head 
 of the list, which includes " Kant " in French and 
 " Faust " in German, comes " a complete edition of the 
 works of CalderSn," underlined by Shelley's own hand. 
 Calderon is one of the names mentioned every time he 
 writes down the great poets and minds of the world in 
 his " Defence of Poetry." He has an interesting passage 
 on Calderon and Goethe in a letter to Mr. Gisborne in 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 7 
 
 April, 1822, and on June 29th, a week before his death, 
 he writes in a letter from Lerici : " I still inhabit this 
 divine bay, reading Spanish dramas, and sailing and 
 listening to the most enchanting music." ^ 
 
 Shelley's admiration for the great Spanish classic was, 
 then, no passing whim, nor is it possible to explain it by 
 an insufficient knowledge of the Spanish language on 
 his part — ^undoubtedly a frequent cause of international 
 literary admiration — ^for, as we have seen, Shelley ad- 
 mired Caldfiron with discernment, and could detect in 
 his work " barren deserts " among " islands clothed 
 with moss and flowers," and others of " craggy and 
 mountainous magnificence." A genius is like an instru- 
 ment of spiritual music, and when he awakens admira- 
 tion in another genius it is as if the notes which he 
 strikes stirred to vibration sympathetic strings in the 
 spirit of his admirer. We may therefore expect to find 
 in Shelley's lyre some strings in tune with that of Cal- 
 deron. Their existence, besides supplying the explana- 
 tion for Shelley's " wonder and delight " in Calderon, 
 would perhaps help to illustrate the genius of both the 
 English and the Spanish poets. 
 
 II 
 
 Calderon was a dramatic poet. His literary work out- 
 side the theatre is negligible when compared with his 
 three hundred and twenty plays. These plays may be 
 roughly classed into four groups : comedies ; dramas of 
 honour and intrigue ; philosophical and theological 
 tragedies ; and autos, or religious mysteries. The two 
 1 M. w. s., p. 163. 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 first groups did not in all probability interest Shelley. 
 They are perhaps the weakest part of Calderon's produc- 
 tion, and add little to his value as a universal genius. '^ 
 His greatest contribution to the dramatic poetry of the 
 world is in his philosophical tragedies. It is these which 
 Shelley meant when he spoke of " Calderon's ideal [that 
 is, philosophical or metaphysical] dramas," and of which 
 he obviously thought when he wrote : 
 
 " Some of them certainly deserve to be ranked among the 
 grandest and most perfect productions of the human mind. 
 He excels all modern dramatists with the exception of Shake- 
 speare, whom he resembles, however, in the depth of thought 
 and subtlety of imagination of his writings, and in the one rare 
 power of interweaving delicate and powerful comic traits with 
 the most tragic situations, without diminishing their interest. 
 I rank him far above Beaumont and Fletcher."* 
 
 This comparison with Shakespeare* which recurs fre- 
 quently under Shelley's pen is at the same time illuminat- 
 ing and misleading. Calderon is very similar to Shake- 
 speare in the philosophical mood with which he unfolds 
 the panorama of events before his audience, keeping, as 
 it were, a running commentary on the current of facts ; 
 also in that his characters are created from such a depth 
 of inspiration that they usually convey a symboHcal 
 message as well as a dramatic emotion ; and in his eagle- 
 like lyrical flights far and beyond the precise limits of 
 the dramatic stage. The power of " interweaving " 
 
 ' "El Alcalde de Zalamea," however, one of his best plays, belongi 
 rather to the second than to the third group. 
 
 ' Letter to Pciacock, September 21st, 1819. 
 
 ' Cf. " Wie viel trcffliche Deutsche sind nicht an ihm zugrunde gegan- 
 gen, an ihm und Calderon." Goethe on Shakespeare ('Kckermann 
 GcsprSche mit Goethe.') 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 9 
 
 comedy and tragedy is, as Shelley remarked, another 
 feature common to Shakespeare and Calderon, but, 
 while in Shakespeare comedy is really " interwoven " 
 into the drama with the ease and grace of nature itself, 
 it is in Calderon controlled by an almost scientific hand 
 and ascribed to a definite function of the art of com- 
 position, that of contrast. In Calderon comic follows 
 tragic as shadow the body, a manifestation of that 
 dualism of Spanish art, which found its most celebrated 
 examples in Velazquez, the painter of princes and idiots, 
 and in Cervantes' immortal npvel of the Knight and 
 the Knave. This difference between Shakespearean ease 
 and Calderonian control is not limited to the use of 
 comedy, but, on the contrary, stands as an outward sign 
 of the fundamental opposition between the genius of 
 Shakespeare and that of Calderon. Shakespeare was 
 free, and moved in the world with all the ease of a 
 superhuman spirit, seeing all, accepting all, understand- 
 ing all, with sympathy, equanimity and impartiality. 
 His mind was as neutral to men's ways and thoughts as 
 water to colours. He was a pantheist, and his view of 
 the world was essentially assthetic. His philosophy was 
 poetry. Calderon lived in and for his Catholic faith. 
 His ideas were strictly orthodox and his mind dogmatic. 
 Almost all his plays are what the French caU nowadays 
 " des pieces a these," and the thesis is clearly defined at 
 the beginning, often restated during the incidents of the 
 play, and carefuUy brought to the foreground at the end 
 to triumph and receive the crown of Eternal Truth. 
 His art is not a reflection of nature. His mind is shaped 
 according to a preconceived pattern to which things and 
 people must adjust themselves. And this difference in 
 
10 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 spirit naturally extends to form. The style of Shake- 
 speare is free and spontaneous ; it is like the very body 
 of thought, born with it. The style of Calderon is not 
 so much the body as the dress of thought. It often 
 follows a deliberate design, somewhat rigid and sym- 
 metrical, in which images and metaphors are set in parallel 
 order like the arguments of a barrister or the formations 
 of an army in order of battle. Thus, the same idea will be 
 illustrated by three or four successive images, developed 
 in stanzas of equal pattern ; then all these images will 
 be gathered together in one final stanza, which rounds 
 up the argument and brings in 'the conclusion. The 
 typical instance of this method of composition is the 
 well-known scene in " La Vida es Sueno," in which 
 Segismundo complains to Heaven for having been de- 
 prived of his liberty, and successively compares his lot 
 to that of the bird, free to fly in the sky, the fish that 
 swims at liberty in the waters, the brook which roams 
 at leisure through the meadows, and the wild beast en- 
 joying an unfettered life in the forest, then in a final 
 stanza concludes asking : " Why was I deprived of a 
 blessing which was not denied to the fish, the bird, the 
 animal and the brook ?^ The decoration of Calderon's 
 style is not less carefully studied than its pattern. Here, 
 again, the style is like a dress for thought, heavy with 
 gorgeous ornaments lavished with a truly oriental splen- 
 dour. Yet, though his rhetoric appeals but little to our 
 more sober imagination, there is character and strength 
 in this style and a vivid glow which, indescribable and 
 untranslatable as it is, has been admirably felt and ren- 
 dered by Shelley in one short sentence : " I am bathing 
 
 1 See Note III, p. 38. 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON ii 
 
 myself in the light and odour of the flowery and starry 
 Autos." 
 
 But the profoundest difference between Shakespeare 
 and Calderon is in the scope of their art, or, if you prefer, 
 in their attitude towards life. Shakespeare is essentially 
 a pagan poet. He lives in this world, loves this world, 
 and makes this world the very centre of his art. He 
 explores in all its depth and width the vast and intricate 
 realm of human nature, but his man is the man of flesh 
 and bones who dwells on our earth, the complete being — 
 body and soul inseparably united — ^which we all are ; 
 his characters are kings, fools, adventurers, rogues, lovers, 
 maids and wives pleasant or unpleasant, people who move 
 in the world in the manner in which we expect them to 
 move according to their respective natures. He is king, 
 but of a kingdom within the horizon of our earthly life, 
 and if he now and then borrows a character from that 
 which lies beyond, it is as a mere prolongation of an 
 earthly character, like the Ghost in " Hamlet " who 
 comes back to this world in order to settle with his heirs 
 the matter of his enforced departure from it. " The 
 Tempest " itself is but a pagan interpretation of the 
 nature of man. Ariel is the spirit of life — of this present 
 life. His business is as earthly as his pleasure, and who 
 sang the pleasures of earthly life more exquisitely than 
 Ariel ? As for Caliban, the symbol of natural primitive 
 forces, he is not a spirit at all, but earth itself, brute, 
 blind, violent earth, a meek but not loyal slave of life. 
 And the tone in Shakespeare is that of the refined, 
 slightly melancholical resignation of the later pagan, 
 whose keen pleasure in life is tempered yet made more 
 poignant by the sense of the fleeing of time. There is in 
 
12 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 Shakespeare's elegant detachment a shade of renuncia- 
 tion which suggests that his soul has sought peace in the 
 sacrifice of the desire for Eternity. 
 
 Calderon is a Christian poet — ^nay a Catholic poet. 
 He would give the orthodox answer to Argensola's ques- 
 tion : " Is the world the centre of our souls ? " In his 
 most famous play he pronounces this life to be a dream 
 and death a real awakening, and thus, by a violent stroke 
 of his poetical will, the position of Shakespeare is re- 
 versed and the stage removed to — 
 
 The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn 
 No traveller returns. 
 
 For Calderon, of course, that country is not undiscovered, 
 since it stands revealed by the Word of God. He moves 
 in it with as great an ease as, and with greater authority 
 than, Shakespeare does in this our solid world. His 
 characters are predetermined by orthodoxy and predes- 
 tined to witness to the truth of the Catholic doctrine. 
 Even those among them which are not supernatural 
 belong to this world as little as possible, and seem to own 
 their life in the same provisional manner in which the 
 faithful are asked to possess their worldly goods. But 
 he often mixes in his plays, with characters of Time, 
 characters of Eternity, which easily explains his frequent 
 anachronisms, both of fact and of psychology. From 
 Eternity he is wont to borrow the villain of many of his 
 plots, as indeed was to be expected, since no earthly 
 character can vie in downright villainy with the Spirit 
 of Evil himself. The devil in Calderon is a most efficient, 
 ingenious and active villain, and one feels that he would 
 easily win every time he is about, but for his abject fear 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 13 
 
 of such things as Holy Water or the mention of the Holy 
 Ghost. This' use of spiritual characters, good and bad, 
 reaches its highest development in the Autos, which are 
 little more than allegorical representations of Catholic 
 truths. The characters in the Autos are mostly abstract 
 ideas and categories personified : Thought, Liberality, 
 Charity, Death, Time, Avarice. No greater praise can 
 be bestowed upon an artist than that he succeeded in 
 animating allegory with real life. Calderon deserves this 
 high tribute, for his Autos, in spite of their allegorical 
 character, are intensely dramatic. It is perhaps in the 
 Autos that his most luminous flashes of genius are to be 
 found, and the finest examples of that " depth of thought 
 and subtlety of imagination " which Shelley observed and 
 so aptly described. Though inferior to Shakespeare as 
 an artist and a psychologist, he is perhaps bolder as a 
 creator and — ^when not childish in his orthodoxy — a 
 philosopher of greater depth. True, he was more favour- 
 ably placed, for, while Shakespeare dwelt in Time, Cal- 
 deron dwelt in Eternity — a subject of far ampler scope 
 for a creative genius. But in order to venture out of 
 this world without losing himself in chaos, an artist must 
 have wings of faith. Calderon's faith was as robust as 
 his artistic ambition required. He believes, knows, 
 asserts. No unanswered doubt ever troubles his mind; 
 no unsatisfied desire ever tortures his heart, 
 
 HI 
 
 How can there be any spiritual connection between 
 such a man and Shelley ? The dogmatic, catholic priest, 
 setting upon the stage his theological principles in a 
 
14 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 system of inflexible logic which binds even his style and 
 metaphors into a rigid architecture, and the young and 
 romantic revolutionist, the accurser of kings and priests, 
 the poet, so impatient of all material fetters, so sensitive 
 to wayward rhythms that he chose to sing of birds and 
 winds and clouds, the lightest and swiftest wing-bearers 
 in nature ? The somewhat morose depth of seventeenth- 
 century Spain, what had it in common with the brilliant 
 and agitated shallowness of nineteenth-century Europe ? 
 How could the definer of faith appeal to the apostle of 
 liberty ? 
 
 Yet, when comparing Shelley's work with that of the 
 Spanish master, one is struck by a certain similarity of 
 atmosphere. There is in Shelley's poetry a certain in- 
 ternal stiSness, an almost mechanical rigidity, which is 
 at first the more disconcerting as it lies hidden under an 
 admirably fluid external rhythm. The poet knows all 
 the secrets of his art. His ear and his sensibility have 
 been educated by familiarity with the best English and 
 Italian classics. In poetical gifts he is second to no one 
 since Shakespeare and Milton, and he has, over the two 
 masters, the advantage of two centuries of development 
 towards variety and freedom. We cannot therefore 
 expect to find in him the same hardness of style which 
 we observe in Calderon. But when due allowance is 
 made for these contingent differences, we are inclined 
 to follow up this internal rigidity of his poetry as a possible 
 guide to the attraction which Shelley felt for Calderon's 
 poetry and genius. 
 
 We notice then that this impression of stiffness, very 
 vague in Shelley's lyrics, a little more definite in such 
 philosophical poems as " Queen M^b " or " Prpmethevig 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 15 
 
 Unbound," becomes quite pronounced in the grotesque 
 or satirical works, such as " Peter Bell the Third " and 
 " Swellfoot the Tyrant." There are passages in " Swell- 
 foot the Tyrant " which produce an impression as un- 
 pleasant as some of the systematic attempts at comic 
 symmetry in Calderon. We are here at one of the points 
 where Calderon and Shelley meet. Shelley does not 
 understand comedy. He is not unlike Calderon in his 
 incapacity for blending comedy with tragedy ; he is, in 
 fact, worse, for Calderon could, if not blend them, at 
 least mix them and contrast them in one play. But in 
 Shelley, drama and comedy are strictly separated, and 
 while there is not one ripple of mirth in that sombre 
 tra^dy "The Cenci," his sense of humour is so poor 
 and his taste so uncertain that he sets out to write two 
 poems systematically burlesque from beginning to end 
 with all the patience and earnestness of a social reformer. 
 What his art reveals, his biography confirms. Shelley 
 was as dogmatic in his revolutionary creed as Calderon 
 in his religious dogma. It is possible to surmise — though 
 not to assert — ^that longer years and experience might 
 have softened the hardness of his convictions. But the 
 Shelley who lived and wrote could undoubtedly give 
 points to Calderon as to system and attachment to 
 dogma. Loosely draped as she is, and softly as she moves 
 with all the graces of modern art, his muse speaks in sure 
 tones and with her doctoral finger up. We need not 
 wonder, then, if Shelley, felt attracted towards Calderon, 
 whose own muse could speak with an unfaltering voice, 
 as one who heard strains of a higher mood. The attrac- 
 tion was probably the greater for the fact that Calderon 
 wa§ sure while Shelley was only cocksur§, 
 
i6 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 In this connection it is perhaps worth while noticing 
 that Calderon's influence seems to have contributed 
 towards rendering Shelley's style a little more architec- 
 tural than his natural bent would have warranted. I 
 venture to suggest that the composition of the " Ode to 
 the West Wind " is the most brilliant example of Cal- 
 deron's action over Shelley. Shelley wrote this poem 
 when in the height of his fever of admiration for the 
 Spanish genius whom he had recently discovered, late in 
 the autumn of 1819. The plan of the four first stanzas 
 is typically Calderonian : the fir«t stanza might be called 
 " The Leaf " ; the second " The Cloud " ; the third 
 " The Wave " ; the fourth sums up : 
 
 dh., lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
 
 Under the skilful and subtler development of Shelley the 
 familiar style of Calderon's symmetric architecture is 
 apparent, and the ease with which Shelley, perhaps un- 
 consciously, appropriated a form of composition peculiar 
 to Calderon is a very suggestive sidelight on the true 
 nature of the spiritual relationship between th© two 
 poets. ^ 
 
 We saw Shelley " plagiarising " a passage in " El 
 Purgatorio de San Patricio," and the fact that he should 
 have chosen a Calderonian model for " a description of 
 the chasm appointed for the murder of Cenci " is also 
 very suggestive. Shelley's taste for weird scenery was 
 
 ^ There 19 another link between this poem and Calderon : the seventh 
 line of the third stanza was obviously in Shelley's mind when he wrote to 
 the Gisbornes the letter quoted on p. 5. The ode and the letter were 
 probably written in the same month (November, 1819) : 
 
 **A11 overgrown with azure moss ** Clothed with moss and 
 
 and flowers." — Odei flowers." — Lttler, 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 17 
 
 not unlike that of Calderon. Both seem instinctively to 
 require for their characters and actions a setting of the 
 wildest and most fantastic aspects of nature. Rocks, 
 crags and precipices are their favourite element, and their 
 muses, awkward and shy in the city, where Shakespeare 
 and Lope have so many friends, recover their freedom 
 of movement and their vigour of thought when left to 
 roam in the boundless fields of fantasy. Both Shelley 
 and Calderon are giants of imagination ; so was Shake- 
 speare. But while iii_ Shakespeare imagination seems to 
 disperse, and gather in its light all the many-coloured 
 qualities and shades of nature, in Shelley and Calder6n 
 it tends to soar away from the earth and to keep im- 
 maculate a dazzling whiteness of intellectual light. 
 Perhaps this taste for the fantastic is, after all, but 
 another manifestation of that mental stiffness, that almost 
 mechanical rigidity which frames and somewhat binds 
 the work of both Shelley and Calderon. For there are 
 too many sharp corners in the city, too many winding 
 curves in^the country lanes, and it is only in heaven, 
 where dreams can soar unfettered by reason, and in the 
 skies, where clouds can fly unhindered by the highest 
 steeple of man, that dogmatic minds find space for their 
 unwieldy movements. 
 
 IV 
 
 Yet it is possible to exaggerate Shelley's tendency to 
 recoil from the world of man, and stiU more to mis- 
 understand it. Certainly no more frequent reproach is 
 to be found under the pen of Shelley's critics than his 
 so-called lack of human interest. Mary Shelley, his wife 
 and spiritual sister, who did not perhaps understand him 
 c 
 
1 8 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 so deeply as is generally assumed, was the first to raise an 
 objection against what she called " his tastes wildly 
 fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human 
 interest and passion to revel in the fantastic ideas that his 
 imagination suggested." ^ Mary Shelley it was who en- 
 couraged him to apply his genius to dramatic subjects 
 on the ground that they give greater scope for the study 
 and expression of human character. The same criticism 
 is involved in Horace Smith's letter to Shelley (Septem- 
 ber 4th, 1820) : " I got from Oilier last week a copy of 
 the ' Prometheus Unbound,' which is certainly a most 
 original, grand, and occasionally sublime work, evincing, 
 in my opinion, a higher order of talent than any of your 
 previous productions ; and yet, contrary to your own 
 estimation, I must say I prefer the Cenci because it con- 
 tains a deep and sustained human interest, of which we 
 feel a want in the other. Prometheus himself certainly 
 touches us nearly ; but we see very little of him after his 
 liberation ; and though I have no doubt it will be more 
 admired than anything you have written, I question 
 whether it will be so much read as the Cenci." Peacock, 
 faithful Peacock, echoes the same opinion : " What was, 
 in my opinion, deficient in his poetry was . . . the want 
 of reality in the characters with which he peopled his 
 splendid scenes. . . ." ^ This strain continues all through 
 the century and reaches perhaps its most authoritative 
 expression in the famous indictment of Matthew Arnold. 
 
 ' Theie words were written as a comment on "The Witch of Atlas,'' 
 which was the occasion for Shelley's poem " To Mary, on her objecting to 
 the following poem on the score of its containing no human interest." 
 M. W. S. "Note on the Poems of tSzo," p. 278. 
 
 » Peacock, 'Memoirs of Shelley." Edited by H. B. B. Brett-Smith, 
 p. 7'- 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON - 19 
 
 For Matthew Arnold, consciously or unconsciously, 
 wrote as the spokesman of his country, the incarnation of 
 the British mind. And as his moral and intellectual 
 qualities and dominant tendencies undoubtedly entitled 
 him to do so, his judgment on Shelley is an ideal docu- 
 ment for the illustration of the contrast between the 
 genius of Britain and that of her meteoric son. Being a 
 typical Briton, Matthew Arnold is inchned to set up a 
 moral standard above all other rules of thought or action. 
 His attitude towards some of the more unpleasant 
 episodes of Shelley's inexperienced youth is that of a 
 British gentleman poking with the end of his stick into 
 a rubbisl^-heap in search of some lost object. Yet, 
 though this aspect of Shelley's life certainly left a bias 
 in Matthew Arnold's usually impartial mind, it would 
 be unfair to take a narrow view of his ideas on morality. 
 His essay on Shelley is perhaps best understood with 
 reference to his essay on Wordsworth. Speaking of 
 Wordsworth's poetry, which he, of course, admired, he 
 says : "... the noble and profound application of 
 ideas to life is the most essential part of poetic greatness."^ 
 And he further explains his point by quoting Words- 
 worth's line — 
 
 On man, on nature and on human life, 
 
 as the subjects to which the ideas of the poet must be 
 applied. 
 
 Thus, the essence of poetry for Matthew Arnold is 
 not in ideas as such, but in ideas applied to life, or, as he 
 himself explains, to the question of how to live. This is 
 
 ' Matthew Arnold, 'Essap in Criticism.' Second series, Macmillan, 
 r888, p. HO. 
 
20 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 the kernel of the matter, and a thoroughly British kernel 
 too. It is — ^if I may use in a high and noble sense a word 
 which is often most sadly debased — British utilitarianism 
 in its purest light. For I believe to be a typical feature 
 of British character (and I beg to be forgiven if I am 
 mistaken) that the Briton takes for granted the things 
 of before and after in order to concentrate on this world, 
 and therefore devotes all his energies to life, its duties 
 and pleasures and its organised progress. Who says life 
 says action; who says society says concerted action — 
 that is, policy. And Britons have discovered the best 
 rule of thumb for concerted action, namely, that honesty 
 is the best policy. Hence their predominant interest in 
 morality. 
 
 Matthew Arnold was, then, a true interpreter of British 
 character when he gave to his criticism of poetry a solid 
 foundation of moral utilitarianism. Things must not 
 be done without a purpose. Why sing for a song's sake ? 
 Why cry to relieve a heavy heart ? Feelings must be 
 husbanded by self-control and offered in a useful form 
 to the community as a spiritual motive power for the 
 social machine. . Wordsworth, who did not err on the 
 side of modesty, wrote on his own poems : 
 
 " They will co-operate with the benign tendencies in human 
 nature and society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in 
 making men wiser, better and happier." 
 
 Note the word efficacious. This quotation ends 
 Matthew Arnold's essay on Wordsworth, and its con- 
 trast with the conclusion of his essay on Shelley could 
 not be more illuminating : 
 
 " The Shelley of actual life," says Matthew Arnold, " is a 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 21 
 
 vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, 
 effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is ' a 
 beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous 
 wings in vain.' " 
 
 It is Matthewf Arnold who underlines the words " and 
 ineffectual." He was a trained moral engineer of this 
 social machine which he did so much to improve, and his 
 sentence on Shelley might be transposed in terms of 
 social mechanics : " What ! Such a powerful pair of 
 wings beating in the void for nothing, instead of helping 
 to work the mill of morality ! , What a shocking waste of 
 moral horse power ! " 
 
 V 
 
 But was Shelley so lacking in human sympathy I 
 Numerous are the incidents in his biography which prove 
 his keen interest in the problems of collective life. He 
 was an eminently political mind, and of the best British 
 type, for he knew how to provide the ways and means 
 for the achievement of his aims, and did not limit his 
 political activities to pious wishes or brilliant theories. 
 In Dublin he put at the service of the cause of the eman- 
 cipation of Ireland his money and his own person with 
 youthful generosity. He took a close and sustained 
 interest in the afEair of the Embankment at Tremadoc. 
 He started a subscription in aid of the widows and orphans 
 of the rioters executed at York in 181 3, and while en- 
 gaged in it yet another one to help the brothers Hunt, 
 who had been fined ^£1000 for libel against the Prince 
 Regent. He wrote a pamphlet, " A Proposal for putting 
 Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom," and 
 otlered a contribution of £100 towards the expenses 
 
22 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 which his proposal would entail if adopted. He had 
 definite ideas on suffrage and on taxation, and we have 
 an amusing story from Hunt on his concern for the 
 National Debt. As for his charity, all who knew him 
 witness to the generosity of his heart, and, what is still 
 more significant, to the efficiency and foresight which 
 he displayed in his help.^ 
 
 But it is not only in his life and politics that Shelley 
 proved his truly British wealth of social spirit. The strong 
 passion for justice which moved him to action inspired 
 also his thoughts. His philosophy was little more than 
 human interest sublimated into a system. All through 
 Shelley's works his preoccupation of furthering the good 
 of humanity according to his own lights is genuine and 
 ardent. " Queen Mab " itself, which he repudiated in 
 later years, though valueless in its philosophy is unim- 
 peachable in its intention. And of the later poems, 
 particularly "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Triumph 
 of Life," there is not one of which it may be said that it 
 is not inspired by a truly genuine human interest. But, 
 as if his greater poems were not conclusive enough on 
 this point, Shelley left a most lucid account of his views 
 in his admirable essay on " The Defence of Poetry,'^ a 
 work in which the claims of poetry as a guiding light for 
 the human race are understood in a spirit of such high 
 and noble quality that it often anticipates by a whole 
 century the present spiritual reaction against the eco- 
 nomic materialism of the industrial age. 
 
 Yet, Shelley was pronounced to be ineffectual and lack- 
 ing in human interest, and to this day that impression 
 prevails. It is perhaps possible, without twisting the 
 
 > See Dowden, 'Life of Shelley,' p. 359. 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 23 
 
 argument into a paradox, to trace this misunderstanding 
 of Shelley's poetry precisely to the passion for mankind 
 which possessed his heart. His mind was not free to 
 flutter here and there over the garden of human nature : 
 he had far too stern an idea of his duties as a poet. 
 " Poets," he says, " are the unacknowledged legislators 
 of the world." His great poems are inspired by a definite 
 conception of the world and of human destiny, and are 
 written with the express intention of diffusing his senti- 
 ments and opinions among mankind. Though he says 
 in his " Defence of Poetry," " Didactic poetry is my 
 abhorrence "^ he is a didactic poet as much as, or perhaps 
 more than, Wordsworth ever was. His characters are 
 not so much human beings as symbols, or personified 
 ideas. He had a truth to serve, a theory to illustrate, a 
 creed to preach ; and in this, again, he was the brother 
 spirit of Calderon, whose Autos, which he so ardently- 
 admired, were also dramatised arguments, though argu- 
 ments for a cause which Shelley hated with all his heart. 
 The point was duly noted by Shelley himself : 
 
 " Calder6n, in his religious Autos, has attempted to fulfil 
 some of the high, conditions of dramatic representation neglected 
 by Shakespeare ; such as the establishing a relation between 
 the drama and religion, and the accommedating them to music 
 and dancing ; but he omits the observation of conditions still 
 more important, and more is lost than gained by the substitu- 
 tion of the rigidly defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a 
 distorted superstition for the living impersonations of the truth 
 of human passion."^ 
 
 ' Cf, this cemark on Milton's 'Paradise Lost' in the 'Defence of 
 Poetry.' "And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose it the most 
 decisive proof of the supremacy qf Milton's genius." 
 
 ' 'Defence of Poetry." M. W. S. Second Part, p. 6. 
 
24 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 Far from being deficient in human interest, it is 
 precisely because Shelley was too deeply obsessed with 
 man that he could not write on men. His poetry did not 
 dwell on human character, but only because it was over- 
 whelmed by human destiny.'^ And that is perhaps why 
 Shelley felt in Calderon a fellow mind, for both con- 
 sidered the human race as a whole rather than piece- 
 meal, or in the multiplicity of its actions, and saw man, 
 not on the moving screen of time, but against the im- 
 movable background of eternity. But within this analogy 
 an all-important difference should be discerned. For 
 Calderon destiny alone mattered, because he knew what 
 that destiny was. Shelley, on the contrary, despite his 
 external assurance, was in the dark, and his preoccupation 
 was born of doubt and anxiety. He was too ardent in 
 his humaaitarian emotions to recline upon " the soft 
 cushion " of doubt and smile and watch the world, yet 
 he had in his English composition too high a proportion 
 of healthy paganism to give up this world altogether and 
 seek the key of the next for its own sake. Thus, unable 
 to find serenity in resignation like Shakespeare, or peace 
 in faith like Calderon, Shelley spent his short years 
 hovering over the future city of his dreamt when hope 
 sustained the wings of his imagination, or, when hope 
 failed him, wailing over his own misery and the world's 
 wrong. 
 
 ^ The point is put with more acuteness than sympathy by Mary Shelley : 
 ". . , even when employed in subjects whose interests depended on chtracter 
 and incident, he [Shelley] would start off in another direction and leave the 
 delineations of human passion ... for fantastic creations of his fancy, or 
 the expression of those opinions and sentiments with regard to human 
 nature and its destiny, a desire to diffuse which was the master passion of 
 his soul." Notes to "The Cenci," M. W. S., p. i6o. See Note IV, 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 25 
 
 VI 
 
 For this contrast between the assurance and assertive 
 aggressiveness of the great philosophic poems and the 
 dejection and despondency which weigh down most of 
 his lyrics is, I believe, one of the most instructive facts 
 in Shelley's poetry, the more so if it be remembered that 
 the former were the conscious productions of a mind 
 possessed of a determined theory while the latter were 
 songs in which the poet poured his — 
 
 full heart 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 
 
 It suggests a cleavage between the conscious and the 
 unconscious Shelley, between the philosopher and the 
 poet. Shelley saw life as he thought it through Godwin's 
 spectacles, but he felt it as it is in his own sensitive heart. 
 The basis of Shelley's political philosophy is explained 
 by Mary Shelley in her note to " Prometheus Unbound ": 
 
 " The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of the destiny 
 of the human species was that evil is not inherent in the system 
 of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. . . . 
 Shelley believed that mankind had only to wiU that there should 
 be no evil and there would be none. . . . That man could be 
 so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature 
 and from the greater part of the creation was the cardinal point 
 of his system." 
 
 This theory rests implicitly on the assumption that the 
 light of intellectual knowledge has but to shine on a man 
 for his soul to be purified of evil. It overlooks the possi- 
 bility that development in one direction may coincide 
 with, or even result in, regression in another direction. 
 
z6 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 In its naive belief in the pre-eminence of intellect it 
 makes knowledge the mother of virtue, defines vice as 
 an error, and would fain imagine that sanctity can be 
 taught in Government schools. It follows that even 
 within our present imperfect age a man must be morally- 
 good in proportion to his intellectual lights, and that the 
 higher his achievements as a man of science, a po6t or a 
 philosopher, the nearer he will be to that ideal type 
 which we all like to imagine as the citizen of Utopia. 
 
 Shelley believed all this, and saw it denied by life in 
 the case of three men whom he knew well — Godwin, 
 Lord Byron and himself.^ Here were three minds, a 
 political philosopher and two poets, iigh above the level 
 of common uninstructed men. Ought they not to be 
 walking among mankind like luminaries of truth and 
 happiness ? Yet reality was hard. Godwin's sordid 
 hypocrisy and the untimely death of Fanny Godwin, 
 Lord Byron's degradation and the death of little AUegra 
 in circumstances so dishonouring for her illustrious father, 
 his own searchings of heart on Harriet's suicide — Shelley 
 was too sensitive, too fond of the absolute, not to be 
 impressed by these three shadows of sorrow cast by the 
 three sons of light. For Harriet, though banished 
 from his mind, was ever living in the innermost recesses 
 of his soul. How could it be otherwise ? We know that 
 Harriet's suicide impressed him very deeply ; " for a 
 time " — says Leigh Hunt — ^that event " tore his being 
 
 ^ To this list might be added Soutbey, perhaps the earliest disappoint- 
 ment which Shdlley suffered, and Wordsworth, of whom he said : " What 
 a beastly and pitiful wretch, that Wordsworth — That such a man should be 
 tuck a poet** This last sentence (italics mine) is typical of Shelley's 
 philosophy. The quotation is from a letter to Peacock, July 25 th, 1818, 
 ' Memoirs,' p. 131. 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 27 
 
 to pieces."^ It was the symbol of the conflict between 
 life and his doctrine. Shelley might explain away his 
 crime to others and even to himself ; but the causes of 
 it reftiained, and his secret wound reopened every time 
 that life brought back similar circumstances. At every 
 step of his wayward nature Shelley found his heart, 
 which he wanted free, attached to life by threads of his 
 own making. How often, seeing the cloud which his 
 warm friendship for Claire Clairmont or his infatuation 
 for Emilia Viviani gathered in Mary's eyes, how often 
 would he feel Harriet's ghost rise in his' heart and ask : 
 " Are you the freer for my sacrifice ? " Thus little by 
 little life undermined his faith, ^ and while he still sang 
 his dreams of future bliss on earth in his greater poems, 
 he gave vent to his despair in his short lyrics, free from 
 the control of his dogmatic intellect. Curiously enough, 
 there seems to be a direct link between Shelley's lyrical 
 despondency and the intimate drama which he had to 
 live through when his duty to Harriet and his love for 
 Mary fought for the possession of his soul. Peacock^ has 
 recorded that at that time Shelley thought of putting 
 an end to his life, and that he heard him say : " I am 
 always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles : 
 
 Man's happiest lot is not to be, 
 And when we tread life's thorny steep 
 Most blest are they who earliest free 
 Descend to Death's eternal sleep." 
 
 ' Dowden, 'Life,' p. 353, 
 
 ^ Cf, " When I hear such things, my patience and my philosophy are put 
 to a severe proof." (Shelley to his wife, Ravenna, August 7th, 1821, 
 referring to the incident called the "Scandal of Naples" (italics mine], 
 
 ' ' Memoirs,' p. 48, 
 
28 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 It is illuminating to find the image set in the second 
 line coming to light again in the " Ode to the West 
 Wind," after a long subconscious stay in the poet's 
 soul : ^ 
 
 I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 
 
 It was this conflict between life and his doctrines 
 which made him recoil from the world of action. In 
 anticipation of the great Spanish play which he was to 
 read the year after, he writes in 1818 : 
 
 Lift not the painted veil which those who live 
 Call Ufe ; 
 
 and adds : 
 
 I knew one who had lifted it. He sought, 
 For his lost heart was tender, things to love. 
 But found them not, alas ! nor was there aught 
 The world contains, the which he could approve. 
 Through the unheeding many he did move 
 A splendour among shadovire, a bright blot 
 Upon this gloomy scene, a spirit that strove 
 For triith, and like the Preacher found it not. 
 
 This tendency to convert his experience into a universal 
 problem brought him to Calderon. He felt drawn to 
 the Spanish priest by his deep religious spirit, for Shelley 
 was deeply religious, in the same sense that a blasphemy 
 is an act of faith. Shelley was in search of truth — ^not of 
 those fugitive glimmers of truth which shine here and 
 there in human nature and delight the detached eye of 
 the pagan observer, but of the whole truth, a compre- 
 hensive and final scheme of the world. This and nothing 
 
 1 See Note V. 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 29 
 
 less could satisfy his architectural mind. And while 
 endeavouring to build within himself the fabric of the 
 world, Shelley -struck against the eternal obstacle — evil. 
 His soul yearned for Eternity, but just as no one would 
 love the sea were it not the mirror of the blue skies, so no 
 one would yearn for Eternity did it not contain and reflect 
 the Heaven of Perfection. And how could man be 
 eternal when the best among men were made of metal 
 so impure ? There is a significant passage in Mary 
 Shelley's notes to the poems of 1820.^ " Shelley shrunk 
 instinctively from portraying human passion, with its 
 mixture of good and evil. . . ." That is, he had found 
 out that puzzling fact of human nature that qualities 
 and defects are like the roses and thorns of the same 
 root-tendency ; he had felt, despite his theories, the 
 depth and permanence of evil ; he had, in short, dis- 
 covered the immortality of the Devil. ^ 
 
 vn 
 
 Shelley's interest in the Devil dates, it is true, from his 
 early childhood. It inspired his favourite games with his 
 sisters, and Prof. Dowden relates that one day he set a 
 fagot-stack on fire, and gave as his reason that he wanted 
 to have "a little hell of his own." This natural tendency, 
 further illustrated by the fascination which from his 
 
 » M. W. S., p. 279. 
 
 ^ That this problem occupied him deeply is shown by the fact that he 
 once thought.of writing a lyrical drama on the Book of Job, as Mary Shelley 
 has recorded in her notes to " Prometheus Unbound " (M. W. S., p. 125). 
 The Book of Job is perhaps the grandest attempt at explaining away evil 
 from a God-planned world. It is safe to surmise that Shelley would not 
 have followed the orthodox version. 
 
30 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 earliest days chemistry, magic and electricity had upon 
 him, may no doubt be e?:plained at least in part by his 
 innate taste for the weird and phantasmagorial, yet it 
 prepared his sensibility for the understanding of the 
 symbols usually connected with the myth of evil, pride 
 and human rebellion against Fate. 
 
 Being himself possessed of a considerable dose of 
 Satanic pride^ he is most sympathetic to the fallen angel, 
 and in his masterful comments on " Paradise Lost " he 
 asserts that " it is a mistake to suppose that he (Milton's 
 Satan) could ever have been intended for the popular 
 personification of evil," and that " Milton has so far 
 violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be 
 a violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral 
 virtue of his God over his Devil." ^ The same spirit of 
 revolt against the " tyrant of the world " pervades his 
 " Prometheus Unbound." In his preface to the poem 
 he explains why he altered the ending of the fable as 
 given in ^schylus : "... in truth," he says, " I 
 was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of recon- 
 ciling the champion with the oppressor of mankind." 
 The champion was Prometheus, whom he himself com- 
 pares to Satan. The oppressor was Jupiter. 
 
 This was his way of avenging his own spiritual misery 
 on the sphinx-like spirit which caused it, for his natural 
 bent was Promethean. But that he was sensitive to the 
 more normal view of the myth of Satan is shown in his 
 enthusiastic admiration for " El Magico Prodigioso."* 
 
 ' An early offshoot of which was his refusal to fag when in school. 
 2 'Defence of Poetry,' M. W. S., p. lo. 
 
 ' Not that the Devil in 'El Magico Prodigioso' is free from that 
 Satanic spirit which Milton has immortalised. Far from it. Calderoo 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 31 
 
 This drama is a Catholic precursor o£ " Faust," in which 
 the maiden, Justina, is saved by her stout faith in the 
 power of her own free will under the protection of the 
 Christian God. The Devil, who had promised her to 
 Cipriano in exchange for the young student's soul, 
 unable to fulfil his engagement, sends him instead a 
 spirit in the shape and attire of Justina, but when 
 Cipriano lifts the veil which covers the coveted figure, 
 he finds a skeleton, and hears a voice which says : " Such, 
 Cipriano, are all the glories of this world." 1 
 
 In a letter to John Gisborne,^ Shelley compares the 
 Spanish and the German masterpieces : 
 
 " Have you read Calder6n's ' Magico Prodigioso ' ? I find 
 a striking similarity between ' Faust ' and this drama, and if 
 I were to acknowledge Coleridge's distinction, should say 
 Goethe was the greatest philosopher and Calder6n the greatest 
 poet.^ Cyprian evidently furnished the germ of ' Faust,' as 
 ' Faust ' may furnish the g£rni of other poems ; although it is 
 as different from it in structure and plan as the acorn from the 
 oak. I have — imagine my presumption — translated several 
 scenes from both, as the basis of a paper for our journal.* I 
 am well content with those from Calder6n, which in fact gave 
 me very httle trouble. . . ." ' 
 
 saw this powerfully poetic element in Satanic psychology, and rendered it 
 in a fine passage (Jornada II, scene with Cipriano), which Shelley, of 
 course, translated. And it is interesting to note how Shelley still empha- 
 sises the Devil's proud defiance in his translation. See Note VII. 
 
 1 See Note VI. ' April loth, 1821, Pisa. 
 
 ^ This may mean no more than that Shelley's own philosophy was 
 nearer that of Goethe than that of Calderon. Yet it would have pleased 
 Goethe, who said to Eckermann : " Calderon ist dasjenige Genie, was 
 zugleich den grbssten Verstand hatte.'' 
 
 * A Journal which Lord Byron, Shelley and Leigh Hunt were at that 
 time planning, ' See Note VII, 
 
32 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 It deserves to be noticed that both in " Faust " and in 
 " El Magico Prodigioso " Shelley selected for translation 
 the scenes where the Devil is on the stage. This fact 
 sets the seal to his poetic temperament. Francis Thomp- 
 son has observed that Shelley belongs to the metaphysical 
 school, and Mary Godwin records that he at first hesitated 
 whether he would devote himself to poetry or to meta- 
 physics.^ Poetry, metaphysics and theology are the three 
 avenues of the mind towards the problem of the world 
 in its entirety — that is, as Shelley and Calder6n ap- 
 proached it. Calderon lived in times when theology 
 sustained the mind and heart of men engaged in this 
 superhuman task. Shelley had to be satisfied with meta- 
 physics. While Calderon believed in his theology as in 
 the light of day, it was doubt which kindled that wistful 
 fire that shines in the eyes of Shelley's muse. Both 
 spoke in assertive tones, but while Calderon's tone is 
 unfaltering, like that of the Master who knows, Shelley's 
 voice betrays his anxiety to escape from doubt into self- 
 assertion, and quivers with the fear of darkness. And it 
 may be that, at bottom, what he most admired in the 
 Spanish poet was his possession of a key — ^though, as he 
 said, distorted — ^yet a key to the riddle of the universe. 
 
 VIII 
 
 It is a tantalising thought for a Spanish lover of Shelley 
 that he once contemplated settling in Spain. In the 
 very month in which he became acquainted with Cal- 
 deron's work, June, 1819, he wrote to Peacock : " The 
 doctors tell me I must spend the winter in Africa or 
 
 ' Notes to the " Revolt of Islam," M. W. S., p. 96. 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 33 
 
 Spain. I shall of course prefer the latter, if I choose 
 either." We may forgive him the last words of the 
 sentence, for indifference is the most we are accustomed 
 to expect from Englishmen who have never been in 
 Spain, and_ we know how easily English indifference, 
 under the sun of Spain, flames up into English enthusiasm. 
 Had Shelley carried out his plan I firmly believe his 
 genius would have attained the almost . superhuman 
 height and depth of which he left us but a promise. 
 Mary Shelley says of him : " As a poet his intellect and 
 compositions were powerfully influenced by exterior 
 circumstances, and especially by his place of abode." 
 Spain, and particularly the central tableland of Castile, 
 is a most admirable environment for men of deep spiritual 
 life, and we have a striking example of her power to stamp 
 her seal on foreign minds in the art of El Greco. The 
 temptation to indulge in this perhaps idle dream of asso- 
 ciating Shelley and El Greco and the spirit of Spain is 
 too strong, especially after reading Shelley's remarks on 
 Michael Angelo's Day of Judgment. Listen : 
 
 " On one side of this figure are the elect ; on the other the 
 host of heaven ; they ought to have been what the Christians 
 call glorified bodies, floating onward and radiant with that ever- 
 lasting light (I speak in the spirit of their faith) which had con- 
 sumed their mortal veil. They are in fact very ordinary people."^ 
 
 " Floating onward and radiant with everlasting light ! " 
 There never was a happier description of El Greco's 
 religious pictures than these prophetic^ words, so steeped 
 
 ^ Letter to Peacock, * Memoirs,' p. 174. 
 
 ^ Prophetic, becauae El Greco was not born to universal Art until he 
 was re-discovered by Seiior Cossio in relatively recent times. Pacheco 
 records that once £1 Greco, in conversation with him, said of Michael 
 Angelothat "he was a good fellow but he could not paint." (Quoted by 
 Cossio 'El Greco,' p. 345.) 
 
 O 
 
34 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 in the spirit of the mistical painter whom they seem to 
 have divined across time and space, ^ Higher than in 
 sensuous Naples or even in the exquisite and intellectual 
 Florence, Shelley's genius w^ould have risen in Toledo, 
 Avila, Salamanca, any of those Castilian tow^ns which 
 seem dead but are deep in their quietness, like wells. 
 In Italy his romantic tendency towards the gratification 
 of desire was stimulated by the loveliness and womanli- 
 ness of Nature itself ; but in the austere grandeur of the 
 Castilian tableland, in its immense horizon, its vast 
 solitude, its calm, which seems to stretch beyond the 
 bounds of space and time, Shelley would have found an 
 atmosphere more in harmony with his metaphysical soul. 
 Though the more graceful and pagan side of his nature 
 might have suffered, he would have gained in depth and 
 strength, and his genius, less solicited by the lighter and 
 more fanciful muses, might have conceived the " Para- 
 dise Lost " of the nineteenth century — the poem of the 
 Spirit who strove for Truth and found it not. 
 
 ' Shelley's famous epithets on Calder6n, "the flowery and starry Autos'' 
 apply even rndre accurately to the Art of El Greco. No more exquisite 
 description could be given of such pictures as 'El Entierro del Conde de 
 Orgaz. ' 
 
Note I 
 
 As will be seen, Shelley followed his Spanish model very 
 closely. It occurs in Jornada II, Scene 19, of " El Purgatorio 
 de San Patricio." The last line of Calder6n has been literally 
 translated by Shelley. 
 
 I No ves ese penasco, que parece 
 Que se estd sustentando con trabajo, 
 Y con el ansia misma que padece, 
 m tantos siglos que se viene abajo ? 
 Pues mordaza es que sella y enmudece 
 .El aliento a una boca que debajo 
 Abierta estS, por donde con pereza 
 El monte melane61ico bosteza. 
 
 Here is Shelley's rendering in " The Cenci," Act III, Scene i : 
 
 Two miles on this side of the fort, the road 
 Crosses a deep ravine ; 'tis rough and narrow. 
 And winds with short turns down the precipice ; 
 And in its depth there is a mighty rock, 
 Which has, from unimaginable years, 
 Sustained itself with terror and with toil 
 Over a gulf, and with the agony 
 With which it clings seems slowly coming down ; 
 Even as a wretched soul hour after hour 
 Clings to the mass of life ; yet, clinging, leans ; 
 And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss 
 In which it fears to fall : beneath this crag 
 Huge as despair, as if in weariness. 
 The melancholy mountain yawns. . , 
 
 35 
 
36 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 Note II 
 
 Florence, 
 
 Nov. i6, 1819. 
 " Madonna, 
 
 " I have been lately voyaging in a sea without my pilot, 
 and although my sail has often been torn, my boat become 
 leaky, and the log lost, I have yet sailed in a kind of way from 
 island to island ; some of craggy and mountainous magnifi- 
 cence, some clothed with moss and flowers, aiid radiant vidth 
 fountains, some barren deserts. I have been reading Calderon 
 without you. I have read the ' Cisma de Ingalaterra,' the 
 ' Cabellos de Absolom ' and three or four others. These pieces, 
 inferior to those we read, at least to the ' Principe Constanta,' 
 in the splendour of partidular passages, are perhaps superior in 
 their satisfying completeness. The ' Cabellos de Absolom ' is 
 full of the deepest and tenderest touches of nature. Nothing 
 can be more pathetically conceived than the character of old 
 David, and the tender and impartial love, overcoming all 
 insults and all crimes, with which he regards his conflicting and 
 disobedient sons. The incest scene of Amnon and Tamar is 
 perfectly tremendous. Well may Calder6n say in the person 
 of the former — 
 
 Si sangre sin fuego hiere,'^ 
 Que fara sangre con fuego i 
 
 Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical cir- 
 cumstance. It may be the excess of love or hate. It may be 
 the defiance of everything for the sake of another, which 
 clothes itself in the glory of the highest heroism ; or it may be 
 that cynical rage which, confounding the good and the bad in 
 existing opinions, breaks through them for the purpose of riot- 
 ing in selfishness and antipathy. Calder6n, follovnng the 
 Jewish historians, has represented Amnon's action in the basest 
 
 1 Mary Shelley gives Mere (wounds), The text is, of course, hierve (boils^. 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 37 
 
 point of view — ^he is a prejudiced savage, acting vyhat he abhors 
 and abhorring that vyhich is the unwiUing party to his crime. 
 
 " Adieu, Madonna, 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " P. B. S." 
 I transcribe you a passage from the " Cisma de Ingalaterra," 
 spoken by " Carlos, Embaxador de Francia, enamorado de Ana 
 Bolena." Is there anything in Petrarch finer than the second 
 stanza ? ^ 
 
 Porque apenas el sol se coronaba 
 De nueva luz en la estacion primera 
 Quando yo en sus umbrales adoraba 
 Segundo sol en abreviada esfera ; 
 La noche apenas tremula baxaba, 
 A solos mis deseos lisorijera, 
 Quando un jardin, republica de flores, 
 Era tercero fiel de mis amores. 
 
 Alii, el silencio de la noche fria, 
 
 El jazmin que en las redes se enlazava, 
 
 El cristal de la fuente que corria. 
 
 El arroyo que a solas murmurava. 
 
 El viento que en las hojas se movia, 
 
 El Aura que en las flores respirava ; 
 
 Todo era amor ; qu^ mucho, si en tal calma, 
 
 Aves, fuentes y flores tienen alma ! 
 
 No has visto providente y officiosa. 
 Mover el ayre iluminada aveja, 
 Que hasta beber la purpura a la rosa 
 Ya se acerca cobarde, y ya se alexa ? 
 No has visto enamorada mariposa, 
 
 ' The spelling of Shelley as given hy Mary Shelley has been respected. 
 
38 
 
 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 Dar cercos a la luz, hasta que dexa, 
 En monumento facil abrasadas 
 Las alas de color tornasoladas ? 
 
 Assi mi amor, cobarde muchos dias, 
 Tornos Lizo a la rosa y a la llama ; 
 Temor che ha sido entre cenizas frias, 
 Tantas vezes llorado de quien ama ; 
 Pero el amor, que vence con porfias, 
 Y la ocasion, que con disculpas llama, 
 Me animaron, y aveja y mariposa 
 Quem^ las alas, y Uegu^ a la rosa. 
 
 Note III 
 
 Here is the text of this famous scene, together with a trans- 
 lation by Archbishop Trench, which unfortunately misses out 
 the last or " summing up " stanza. 
 
 i Ay mfsero de mf j j ay infelice ! 
 
 Apurar, cielos, pretendo, 
 
 Ya que me tratais asf. 
 
 Que delito cometf 
 Contra vosotros naciendo : 
 Aunque si nacf, ya entiendo. 
 
 Que delito he cometido : 
 Bastante causa ha tenido 
 Vuestra justicia y rigor, 
 Pues el delito mayor 
 Del hombre es haber nacido. 
 S61o quisiera saber, 
 
 Ah ! miserable me, ah, woe, 
 
 woe, woe ! 
 Heavens, why make ye me to 
 
 mourn. 
 More than all men else for- 
 lorn ? 
 If my birth has been my sin. 
 Yet what sinned I more herein 
 Than others, who were also 
 born ? 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 39 
 
 Para apurar mis desvelos, 
 (Dejando a una parte, cielos, 
 El delito de nacer) 
 I Que mis os pude ofender, 
 Para castigarme mis ? 
 I No nacieron los demis ? 
 Pues si los demas nacieron, 
 I Que privilegios tuvieron. 
 Que yo no goce jamds ? 
 Nace el ave, y con las galas 
 
 Que le dan belleza suma, 
 Apenas es flor de pluma, 
 O ramillete con alas, 
 Cuando las etereas salas 
 Corta con velocidad, 
 Negindose a la piedad 
 Del nido que deja en calma ; 
 
 Y teniendo yo mas alma. 
 Tango menos libertad. 
 Nace el bruto y con la piel, 
 
 Que dibujan manchas bellas, 
 
 Apenas signo es de estrellas, 
 (Gracias al docto pincel) 
 
 Cuando atrevido y cruel 
 La humana necesidad 
 Le ensena a tener crueldad, 
 Monstruo de su laberinto ^ 
 
 Y yo con mejor instinto 
 Tengo menos libertad. 
 Nace el pez, que no respira, 
 Aborto de ovas y lamas, 
 
 Born the bird was, yet with 
 
 gay 
 
 Gala vesture, beauty's dower. 
 Scarcely 'tis a winged flower, 
 Or a richly-plumaged spray. 
 Ere the aerial halls of day 
 It divideth rapidly. 
 And no more will debtor be 
 To the nest it hastes to quit ; 
 But with more of soul than it, 
 I am grudged its liberty. 
 And the beast was born, whose 
 
 skin 
 Scarce thpse beauteous spots 
 
 and bars 
 Like to constellated stars 
 Doth from its great Painter 
 
 win. 
 Ere the instinct doth begin 
 Of its fierceness and its pride. 
 And its lair on every side 
 It has measured far and nigh ; 
 While with better instinct I 
 Am its liberty denied. 
 Born the mute fish was also, 
 Child of ooze and ocean weed ; 
 
40 
 
 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 Y apenas, bajel de escamas, 
 Sobre las ondas se mira, 
 Cuando a todas partes gira, 
 Midiendo la inmensidad 
 De tanta capacidad 
 Como le da el centre frfo ; 
 
 Y yo con mas albedrio 
 
 Tengo menos libertad. 
 Nace el arroyo, culebra 
 
 Que entre flores se desata, 
 
 Y apenas, sierpe de plata, 
 Entre las flores se quiebra, 
 
 Cuando miisico celebra 
 De las flores la piedad, 
 Que le da la majestad 
 El campo abierto a su huida ; 
 
 Y teniendo yo mas vida, 
 Tengo menos libertad. 
 En llegando a esta pasi6n, 
 Un volcAn, un Etna hecho, 
 Quisiera arrancar del pecho 
 Pedazos del coraz6n : 
 
 i Que ley, justicia o raz6n 
 Negar a los hombres sabe 
 Privilegio tan suave, 
 Excepcion tan principal, 
 Que Dios le ha dado a un 
 
 cristal, 
 A un pez, a un bruto y a un 
 
 ave ? 
 
 Scarce a finny bark of speed 
 To the surface brought, and lo! 
 In vast circuits to and fro 
 Measures it on every side 
 All the vyaste of ocean wide. 
 Its illimitable home ; 
 While with greater will to 
 
 roam 
 I that freedom am denied. 
 Born the streamlet was, a 
 
 snake 
 Which unwinds the flowers 
 
 among. 
 Silver serpent that not long 
 May to them sweet music 
 
 make 
 Ere it quits the flow'ry brake 
 Onward hastening to the sea 
 With majestic course and free. 
 Which the open plains supply ; 
 While with more life gifted, I 
 Am denied its liberty. 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 41 
 
 Shelley translated from " El M^gico Prodigioso " a passage 
 written in this kind of pattern. Called forth by the Devil, 
 the spirits of Love are tempting Justina. Here is the Spanish 
 text and Shelley's translation, which, as will be noticed, does 
 not strictly conform to the symmetry of the original. 
 
 Voz cant. The First Voice. 
 
 No hay sugeto en que no There is no form in which the 
 imprima fire 
 
 El fuego de amor su llama ; 
 
 Pues vive m4s donde ama 
 
 El hombre, que donde anima. 
 
 Amor solamente estima 
 
 Cuanto tener vida sabe, 
 
 El tronco, la flor y el ave : 
 
 Luego es la gloria mayor 
 Desta vida . . . 
 TODOS : Amor, amor. 
 
 JUSTINA. 
 Pesada imaginaci6n, 
 
 Al parecer lisonjera, 
 
 I Cuando te he dado ocasion, 
 Para que desta manera 
 Aflijas mi corazon ? 
 
 Of love its traces has im- 
 pressed not ; 
 
 Man lives far more in love's 
 desire 
 
 Than by life's breath soon 
 possessed not. 
 
 If all that lives must love or 
 die. 
 
 All shapes on earth, or sea, or 
 sky 
 
 With one consent to Heaven 
 cry 
 
 That the glory far above 
 
 All else in life is — : 
 
 ALL : Love, O, Love ! 
 
 JUSTINA. 
 
 Thou, melancholy thought 
 
 which art 
 So fluttering and so sweet, to 
 
 thee 
 When did I give the liberty 
 Thus to afflict my heart f 
 What is the cause of this new 
 
 power 
 
42 
 
 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 I Cudl es la causa, en rigor, 
 
 Deste fuego, deste ardor, 
 
 Que en mi por instantes 
 
 crece ? 
 I Que dolor el que padece 
 
 Mi sentido f 
 
 TODOS : Amor, amor. 
 
 JUSTINA. 
 Aquel ruiseiior amante 
 
 Es quien respuesta me da, 
 Enamorando constante 
 A su consorte, que estS 
 Un ramo mas adelante. 
 
 Calk ruisenor ; no aquf 
 
 Imagmar me hagas ya, 
 Por las que j as que te of, 
 
 C6mo un hombre sentird. 
 Si siente un pijaro asf. 
 Mas 0.6 ; una vid fue lasciva. 
 Que buscando fugitiva 
 
 Va el tronco donde se enlace, 
 Siendo el verdor con que 
 
 abrace, 
 El peso con que derriba. 
 
 Which doth my fevered being 
 
 move, 
 Momently raging more and 
 
 more ? 
 What subtle pain is kindled 
 
 now 
 Which from my heart doth 
 
 overflovy 
 Into my senses ? — 
 ALL : Love, O Love ! 
 
 JUSTINA. 
 'Tis that enamoured nightin- 
 gale 
 Who gives me the reply. 
 He ever tells the same soft tale 
 Of passion and of constancy 
 To his mate, who, rapt and 
 
 fond. 
 Listening sits, a bough beyond. 
 Be silent. Nightingale ! No 
 
 more 
 Make me think, in hearing thee 
 Thus tenderly thy love de- 
 plore. 
 If a bird can feel his so. 
 What a man would feel for me. 
 And, voluptuous vine, O thou 
 Who seekest most when least 
 
 pursuing, 
 To the trunk thou interlacest, 
 Art the verdure which em- 
 
 bracest, 
 And the weight which is its 
 ruin, 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 43 
 
 No asf con verdes abrazos 
 
 No more, with green embraces, 
 
 vine, 
 
 Me hagas pensar en .quien Make me think on what thou 
 
 amas, lovest, 
 
 Vid ; que dudare en tus lazos, For whilst thou thus thy 
 
 boughs entwine 
 
 Si asi abrazan unas ramas, 
 
 Como enraman unos brazos. 
 
 Y si no es la vid, ser5 
 
 Aquel girasol, que est4 
 
 Viendo cara a cara al sol, 
 
 Tras cuyo hermoso arrebol 
 Siempre moviendose va. 
 No sigas, n6, tus enojos. 
 
 I fear lest thou should'st teach 
 me, sophist. 
 
 How arms might be entangled 
 too. 
 
 Light-enchanted sunflower, 
 thou 
 
 Who gazest ever true and ten- 
 der 
 
 On the sun's revolving splen- 
 dour, 
 
 Follow not his faithless glance 
 
 With thy faded countenance. 
 
 Nor teach my beating heart 
 to fear, 
 Flor, con marchitos despo|os j If leaves can mourn without 
 
 a tear, 
 
 Que pensaran mis congojas. 
 Si asi lloran unas hojas, 
 Como lloran unos ojos. 
 Cesa, amante ruisenor, 
 
 Deslinete, vid frondosa, 
 
 Pirate, insconstante flor, 
 
 decid, iqae venenosa 
 
 Fuerza usAis ? 
 TODOS ; Amor, amor. 
 
 How eyes must weep. . . . 
 
 . . . O, Nightingale, 
 
 Cease from thy enamoured 
 
 tale- 
 Leafy vine, unwreath thy 
 
 bower, 
 Restless sunflower, cease to 
 
 move, 
 Or tell me all, what poisonous 
 
 power 
 Ye use against me — 
 ALL : Love ! love ! love ! 
 
44 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 Note IV 
 
 This opposition between character and destiny is somewhat 
 parallel to that between individualistic tendencies and social 
 tendencies in man. Character is the side of human nature 
 which most interests society ; destiny, the individual. Thus 
 the reproach addressed to Shelley by practically all his British 
 critics might be considered as one more sign of the eminently 
 social or moral type of mind prevalent in the Anglo-Saxon race 
 in modern times. We have seen Mary Shelley showing her 
 peculiarly British tendencies in this connection, and urging her 
 husband to devote his powers to the delineation of human 
 character — that is, to dramatic poetry. But nothing could be 
 more typical of Shelley's strong individualism than his adven- 
 ture as a playwright. Of " The Cenci " Peacock said : 
 
 " He only once descended into the arena of reality, and 
 that was in the tragedy of ' The Cenci.' This is unquestion- 
 ably a work of great dramatic power, but it is unquestion- 
 ably not a work for the modern English stage." 
 
 Why f Because its subject is not of a moral or social type. 
 It is certainly character, but of a nature which makes it extremely 
 anti-social. " The Cenci " deals with a case of incest. It is a 
 subject that fascinated Shelley. In his letter, already quoted 
 in Note II, to Mrs, Gisborne, he comments on " Los CabeUos 
 de Absolom " — another incest play — ^in the follovying words : 
 
 " The incest scene of ' Amnon and Tamar ' is perfectly 
 tremendous. . . . Incest is, like many other incorrect things, 
 a very poetical circumstance. It may be the excess of love 
 or hate. It may be the defiance of everything for the sake 
 of another, which clothes itself in the glory of the highest 
 heroism ; or it may be that cynical rage which, confounding 
 the good and the bad in existing opinions, breaks through 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 45 
 
 them for the purpose of rioting in selfishness and anti- 
 pathy." 
 
 That is the claim of the individualistic artist, who seeks to 
 recreate in his art whatever lives in the soul of man. Society 
 is not his concern, but man and his destiny. And for the 
 problem of destiny, the soul of a great criminal is at least as 
 good a path of approach as that of a shepherd. For the 
 opposite view we may turn to Archbishop Trench : 
 
 " Painful I have called the play (' El Alcalde de Zalamea '), 
 in that, like Southey's ' Roderick the Goth,' it turns on a 
 crime so revolting as utterly to disqualify it from constituting 
 the turning point in a work of art — even as I must consider 
 Shelley's ' Cenci,' which adds a second moral horror to the 
 first, to have, and in a far higher degree, the same disqualifi- 
 cation." — ' Calder6n,' by Archbishop Trench, 1880.1 
 
 Note V 
 
 " Nor peace within, nor calm around " sang the poet in his 
 stanzas written in dejection near Naples. That the thought 
 of Harriet, suppressed by conscious effort, poisoned the very 
 roots of the poet's soul and contributed to steep with melan- 
 choly his more spontaneous lyrics can hardly be doubted. A 
 page from Peacock witnesses to the jdolent effort which Shelley 
 applied to the suppression of this episode of his life : 
 
 " I was walking with him [Shelley] one evening in Bisham 
 Wood, and we had been talking, in the usual way, of our 
 ordinary subjects, when he suddenly fell into a gloomy 
 reverie. I tried to rouse him out of it, and made some 
 
 ' Cf, Men^ndez y Pelayo : " . . . obra brutal y de extraordinaria 
 crudeza, a-fin mayor que la que en si tiene el argumento, que de suyo es 
 antidramitico e inmundo." (' Calder6n y 8U Teatro,' Madrid, 1881, 
 Pp. 12-13). 
 
 I 
 
46 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 remarks which I thought might make him laugh at his own ab- 
 straction. Suddenly he said to me, still with the same gloomy 
 expression, 'There is one thing to which I have decidedly 
 made up my mind. I will take a great glass of ale every 
 night.' I said, laughingly, ' A very good resolution as the 
 result of a melancholy musing.' ' Yes,' he said, ' but you do 
 not know why I take it. I shall do it to deaden my feelings : 
 for I see that those who drink ale have none.' The next 
 day he said to me : ' You must have thought me very un- 
 reasonable yesterday evening ? ' I said, ' I did, certainly.' 
 ' Then,' he said, ' I would tell you what I would not tell 
 anyone else. I was thinking of Harriet.' I told him, ' I had 
 no idea of such a thing ; it was so long since he had named 
 her. . . .'" 
 
 Note VI 
 
 This scene of " El Mdgico Prodigioso " may well have been 
 the " incident " which suggested his dream as related in 
 " Shelley Memorials " (quoted by Peacock, p. 79) : 
 
 " One night, loud cries were heard issuing from the saloon. 
 The Williamses rushed out of their room in alarm ; Mrs. 
 Shelley also endeavoured to reach the spot, but fainted at 
 the door, Entering the saloon the Williamses found Shelley 
 staring > horribly into the air, and evidently in a trance. 
 They waked him, and he related that a figure wrapped in a 
 mantle came to his bedside and beckoned him. He must 
 tlien have risen in his sleep, for he followed the imaginary 
 figure into the saloon, when it lifted the hood of its mantle, 
 ejaculated ' Siete sodisfatto .' ' and vanished. The dream is 
 said to have been suggested by an incident occurring in a 
 drama attributed to Calder6n." 
 
 Note VH 
 
 Shelley's translation is indeed a striking proof of his insight 
 into Cajderijn's art and style. Expression is not always crystal- 
 
SHELLEY AND CALDERON 47 
 
 like in Calder6n. He sometimes strains his thought to suit his 
 images and twists his sentences in order to cage them within 
 the narrow walls of his versification. But Shelley's ingenuity 
 in disentangling the sense overcomes all obstacles. At times 
 the younger poet improves the melody of the original, though, 
 perhaps, at the expense of the image. Thus : 
 
 . . . When the sun seeks its grave among the billows. 
 Which, among dim gray clouds on the horizon 
 Dance like white plumes upon a hearse . . . 
 
 is a poor if more musical rendering of — 
 
 Cuando el sol cayendo Vaya 
 A sepultarse en las ondas 
 Que entre oscuras nubes pardas 
 Al gran cadaver de oro 
 Son monumentos de plata. 
 
 Shelley's softer melody sometimes affects the thought itself, 
 which, from a set assertion, expands into a mood under the 
 translator's romantic inspiration. Calder6n had said — 
 
 . . . Que no hay firme bien debajo 
 De los cercos de la luna, 
 
 and Shelley sings — 
 
 ... for nothing 
 Beneath the circle of the moon but flows 
 And changes, and can never know repose. 
 
 But in Shelley's hands the original generally loses in strength 
 what it gains in grace and atmosphere. When Justina triumphs 
 over the Devil who has tempted her, the vanquished fiend con- 
 fesses his failure in two lines of admirable energy : 
 
 Venciste, mujer, venciste. 
 Con no dejarte veneer, 
 
48 SHELLEY AND CALDERON 
 
 The hammer-like effect of this phrase is well-nigh untranslat- 
 able. Shelley's attempt is very poor : 
 
 Woman, thou hast subdued me, 
 Only by not owning thyself subdued. 
 
 An exception to this rule, but a brilliant exception, is the 
 passage in which the Devil addresses Cipriano in Jornada II. 
 Here Shelley was in his favourite element. Calderon had 
 brought out the satanic pride of the conquered angel, but 
 Shelley emphasises it most powerfully, even beyond Calderon's 
 own expression. Here is a typical example of Shelley's treat- 
 ment of the subject : 
 
 Si fueron temeridades 
 
 No me vi en ellas tan solo 
 
 Que de sus mismos vasallos 
 
 No tuviese muchos- votos, 
 becomes — 
 
 Nor was I alone, 
 Nor am I now, nor shall I be alone ; 
 And there was hope, and there may still be hope. 
 For many suffrages among his vassals 
 Hailed me their lord and king, and many still 
 Are mine, and many more perchance shall be. 
 
ENGLISH SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH 
 LITERATURE 
 
 1 
 
I 
 
 Several years ago — ^and I should not like to be pressed 
 as to the exact number — an old cook in Glasgow was 
 suddenly informed by the young lady of the house that 
 she— the young lady — was going to marry a Spaniard. 
 " Are ye no feared ? " asked the cook. The question was 
 not in the least unnatural. I remember myself that once 
 when I was staying in a little town in one of the southern- 
 most counties of Scotland, there came a company of 
 players, the best actors in the world either for light or 
 for heavy opera, for dramatical-comical, comical-senti- 
 mental, sentimental-dramatical-comical, music-hall un- 
 musical or variety invariable. They produced a play, 
 the name of which I have, to my shame, forgotten ; a 
 masterpiece of that difficult art, the melodrama. The 
 action took place at sea on board ship, and the most thrill- 
 ing scene thereof in the Captain's own cabin. This 
 cabin was remarkable for its simple yet forcible furniture, 
 which consisted of two pictures hanging on the blank 
 wall on either side of the only door, and representing 
 the two most terrifying ruffians ever brushed by a tenth- 
 rate Goya : two types fascinating indeed for their very 
 superlativity — ^if I may coin the word — eyes the most 
 ferocious, hair the most luxuriant and rebellious, beard 
 and moustache the blackest and thickest and supply of 
 arms and ammunition the most formidable and imposing 
 ever witnessed or imagined. The knot of the play was a 
 
 50 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 51 
 
 mutiny on board, which the gallant captain negotiated 
 in an admirable scene. He called all the rebellious crew 
 to his cabin, produced a rusty pistol and thundered 
 forth : " Surrender, or I will blow the ship to pieces ! " 
 Then, pointing to the two ruffians on the wall, he added 
 in a flesh-creeping voice : " I have Spanish blood in my 
 veins. There are my ancestors ! " The crew filed out 
 like a flock of lambs, and a thrill ran through the audience. 
 An old nation like Spain could not but return such 
 civility. In a book published in Seville in 1529^ there is 
 a lengthy and detailed account of a trial before the King 
 of Scotland between 
 
 " a lady named Brasayda, one of the wisest in the world for her 
 knowledge and her sprightliness and other qualities appertain- 
 ing to gracefulness, who, for her great deserts, had been through 
 many a love battle and many a case worthy of record ; and a 
 gentleman from the kingdom of Spain, whose name was T^or- 
 rellas, a man distinguished for his knowledge of women and 
 very bold in love matters and very witty, as is shown in his 
 works." 
 
 Brasayda and Torrellas presented before the King of 
 Scotland the case for and against women. It was one of 
 the many episodes of the old dispute concerning the 
 fairness of the fair sex in which Chaucer took part, 
 though with little conviction, on the side of women. 
 According to the Spanish book, which is not, I confess, 
 very reliable, it was Torrellas, that is the accuser of 
 women, who won the case. But the women of Scotland, 
 headed by their queen, took a prompt and terrible 
 
 ' " Tractada de Griiel y Mirahella, ampueuc por Juan de Flora a lu 
 amiga," Sevilla, Cromberger, 1519. Quoted by Marcelino Men^ndez y 
 Pelayo, ' Historia de la Poesia Casteliana en la £dad Media,' II, p. z6§. 
 
52 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 revenge, the description of which I must leave to the 
 Spanish chronicler : 
 
 " And he was then stripped of his clothes, and they covered 
 his mouth so that he could not complain, and he was firmly 
 tied to a post, "all naked, and there each woman brought a 
 new invention to torture him, and there were some who with 
 burning tongs and other with nails and teeth, furiously tore 
 him to pieces. . . ." 
 
 The narrative may be left there since what follows is 
 still worse. But this fragment amply shows that Spain 
 could if necessary build images of Scotland as picturesque 
 as the images which Scotland could build of Spain. 
 
 Nor was England less favourably treated by Spanish 
 imagination. Writing in 1482, Mos6n Diego de Valera, 
 knight, diplomat, political intriguer and historian in his 
 way, devotes a chapter of his " Coronica de Espaiia y 
 Coronica Abreviada " to the description of the Kingdom 
 of England which he calls " a very big island placed in 
 the ocean sea out of the roundness of the world."^ In 
 this chapter which, like the rest of the book, is addressed 
 to Queen Isabel the Catholic, Mos^n Diego inserts the 
 following passage : 
 
 " Towards the East, by the seaside, it is asserted by many, 
 there are trees whose leaves, if falling on the sea, become fishes, 
 and those that fall on land become birds of the size of sea-gulls. 
 And in order to ascertain the truth I asked the Lord Cardinal 
 of England, your uncle, brother of the Serenfsima Queen 
 Dona CataUna your grandmother ; who assured me that it 
 was so." 
 
 ' " Isla mujr grSde situada en el mar oceano : fuera de toda la redS- 
 deia del mundo," perhaps a reminiscence from Vergil : 
 £t penitus toto divipos orbe Britannos, 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 53 
 
 One can see the smile of the princely Cardinal float 
 between the lines of this passage. Yet, measured by the 
 standards of that age, in which men's capacity for 
 believing was not hindered by so much concrete know- 
 ledge as in ours, Mos6n Diego's story is not more wildly 
 fantastic than many a tale about Spain printed in 
 relatively modern English books. 
 
 There seems then to be ample scope for the activities 
 of bodies such as the Spanish Society of Scotland and 
 the Anglo-Spanish Society. Though much has been 
 written and said about British insularity, there is little 
 doubt that the British people have in the very com- 
 plexity of their national composition an excellent basis 
 for the sound knowledge and understanding of European 
 peoples. Few nations in Europe can trace within their 
 boundaries Norwegian and Iberian, French and Teutonic 
 strains of blood. Britain can. As far as Spain is con- 
 cerned her stock is well represented in the western side 
 of the island by that element of the population which 
 used to be named Keltic and is nowadays considered as 
 predominantly Iberian. We shall be wise not to lay too 
 much stress on these racial connections between peoples 
 living and developing in such distant and different 
 geographical and historical environments, but the un- 
 prejudiced observer cannot help being struck by the 
 similarity of type, movements, rhythm and even customs 
 between certain populations of Western Britain and the 
 peoples that inhabit the Northern regions of Spain. 
 
 The point has its interest because, whether racial con- 
 siderations are to guide us or not, we find in English and 
 Spanish literature and history a curious parallelism, not 
 exactly a coincidence, but a parallelism, which suggests 
 
54 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 common tendencies in the national character of both 
 peoples. There is a Spanish as well as an English insu- 
 larity. Our land is known as the Peninsula because it 
 touches the main land along the French border. But 
 who doubts that the Pyrenees were and perhaps still are 
 a barrier to European influences as effective as, nay, more 
 effective than, the Channel f Spain is the Island pi the 
 South-West. Neither the Reformation nor even the 
 Renaissance succeeded in effecting a landing on her in- 
 accessible shores. The most glorious chapter of her 
 history, and perhaps of all history, was not writ over 
 European lands, but across the Atlantic seas. Like 
 England, Spain, placed at the westernmost end of 
 Europe, turns her back to the Continent and looks towards 
 her own imagfe in the New World. Like England, Spain 
 succeeded in keeping a strong character of her own 
 through centuries of European life and development. 
 Like England, Spain is in Europe, but not of Europe. 
 
 II 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that two peoples so 
 symmetrically placed by nature, as it were in the north- 
 western and in the south-western suburbs of European 
 culture, should evince a certain similarity in their literary 
 development. And that this similarity exists no one will 
 doubt who has cast a glance at both the Spanish and the 
 English literatures. It appears from the beginning in 
 the dominant character of their epic national poetry. 
 Though Beowulf is much older than Mio Cid, a compari- 
 son is quite justified between them if only because these 
 two poems constitute the starting-points in the present 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE JJ 
 
 chronology o£ English and Spanish literary works. Now, 
 nothing is more striking than the coincidence between 
 English opinion on Beowulf and Spanish opinion on Mio 
 Cid. Thus, Prof. Macneile Dixon says of the first : 
 
 " Our pre-Norman literature, like Beowulf, harsh and un- 
 tutored though it be, is firmly rooted in experience. How 
 clearly it sees life for what it is and how fearlessly meets it ! 
 It faces the world with a philosophy unborrowed from books 
 and yet perfectly suited to that world. Compare Beowulf 
 with Homer, and you may safely ckjiaa. Homer's superiority in 
 beauty and poetic quality, not so safiyily his superiority in mas- 
 culine vigour and truth."^ 
 
 And Prof. W. P. Ker on the same theme : 
 
 " The impression left by Beowulf ... is that of a noble 
 manner of life, of courtesy and freedom, with the dignity of 
 tragedy attending it."^ 
 
 Now listen to Men6ndez Pelayo speaking of the " Song 
 of Mio Cid " : 
 
 " The lands which our heroes tread are not an unknown and 
 fantastic region, sown over with prodigies and monsters ; they 
 are the same moors and the same hills which we tread and 
 inhabit. This poetry does not dazzle the imagination, but 
 gets hold of it by a certain barbaric majesty due to sheer sim- 
 plicity and evidence ; to sheer lack of art. . . . But there is 
 [in it] another kind of art, more sublime, which does not know 
 itself, and merging into the divine unconsciousness of natural 
 forces gives us the full vision of reality."' 
 
 ' 'Poetry and National Character,' by Professor W. Macneile Dixon, 
 p. 30. 
 
 ' 'English Literature, Medieval,' by Professor W. P. Ker, p. 30. 
 
 ' ' Historia de la Poesia Castellana,' por Marcelino Men^ndez y Pelayo 
 Vol. I, p, 128. 
 
S6 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 Reality. The word is as much at home in England as 
 in Spain. In current English these two words, Realism 
 and Spain, do not seem willingly to mix in one sentence. 
 The word Spain evokes romance, chivalry, gorgeous 
 pageantry, high deeds, pennants and standards, lances 
 and swords moving in the golden hue of a legendary 
 atmosphere j a glory and a beauty luminous and unreal 
 like those illusions which the English Mguage significantly 
 calls " castles in Spain." But this golden light hovering 
 upon her English name does not irradiate from Spain. 
 It falls on her from the eyes of dreaming Englishmen. 
 It is the glow of remembrance that beautifies and not so 
 much idjCalises as unrealises the past. 
 
 Spain for all that is very real and very realistic. Were 
 we to chDose between English and Spanish epics, in this 
 respect, Mio Cid would certainly be more at home in 
 this world than Beowulf. Beowulf is a somewhat vague 
 hero who goes slaying imaginary monsters, and his poet 
 had to fetch him out of the memory of the race, for a 
 new spell of activity on paper. But there is not one single 
 monster in Mio Cid, and supernatural influences are 
 limited to an unimportant and perfectly natural appari- 
 tion of Gabriel to the sleeping hero — an episode to which 
 neither the hero nor his followers nor even his chronicler 
 seem to grant the slightest importance. Moreover, the 
 hero and the poet are separated by the least possible 
 stretch of time and space, so that in Mio Cid Spanish 
 literature gives its first and striking proof of its ability 
 to make poetry out of the here and now. The geography 
 of the poem has been identified by Senor Men6ndez Pidal 
 step by step. The most accurately described episodes 
 take place in the region round Medinaceli, where the poet 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 57 
 
 was probably born. The poem was written about forty 
 years after the death of Rodrigo Diaz whom it immor- 
 talised. The incidents told are all possible, plausible, in 
 fact, historical. Yet there is poetry in them, a kind of 
 epic poetry comparable to the greatest written in Europe 
 since the days of Homer. 
 
 This capacity for turning an almost immediate reality 
 into poetry is due in the first place to the ethical detach- 
 ment of the poet ; in the second place to his dramatic 
 genius. His Cid would not be an ever-living hero had the 
 poet limited his size to the possibly narrow dimensions 
 of his own mind. Humble and unprejudiced, guided 
 only by his unfailing aesthetic instinct, the poet set down 
 his hero as he really was : not a slayer of monsters nor a 
 model of knights, perfect to the point of abstraction, but 
 a man, a soldier, a leader of men, an adventurer with all 
 the dust and blood of his earth and his battles on him, 
 a cautious captain, ready to bargain off a dangerous 
 enemy, a shrewd negotiator, and withal, a father, a hus- 
 band and a genial friend. And we know when he smiled 
 and when he shed tears, and when he crossed himself — 
 and we know also where he camped and where he fed his 
 horses ; and when and why he was generous towards the 
 king who had exiled him, and when and why he obtained 
 a loan from two Jews of Burgos, leaving behind as security 
 two heavy coffers full of sand. In short, a Don Quixote 
 and a Sancho roUed into one, less the touch of madness in 
 the master, and the touch of simplicity in the squire. 
 
 He was a real poet who knew how to respect his model 
 so. But he was a great poet who so forcibly rendered 
 characters and scenes. In this ancient monument of 
 Spanish literature the dramatic genius of Spain is already 
 
S8 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 at work. Too often, and particularly in connection with 
 Spain, the word dramatic is interpreted as if it meant 
 theatrical. Corneille himself was not wholly innocent of 
 this misinterpretation. But the theatrical is to the 
 dramatic whit cant is to truth. Dramatic genius aims 
 at the poetical rendering of actions ; theatrical talent is 
 purely concerned with effect. A certain amount of 
 theatrical talent generally goes to the making of great 
 dramatists, as the menial side of their activity ; just as 
 in every sculptor there is a stone-cutter who works for 
 the poet of plastic form. Nor is it possible to draw a 
 sharp line between the lofty and the menial activity in 
 artists since both spring from the same root tendency 
 and their difference lies solely in the intention which 
 directs their movements and colours their results. It 
 will be found of course that in all good drama theatrical 
 ability is kept in its place as the handmaid of dramatic 
 inspiration. In the " Song of Mio Cid," it may even be 
 said that there is not the slightest trace of it. The 
 author is obviously so much impressed with the subject 
 that he states the facts simply, in their order, without 
 condescending to disturb the tranquillity of his narrative 
 with tricks, preparations, or attempts at surprising, sus- 
 pending or horrifying his readers. He is sure that the 
 story, plainly told, will impress his readers and hearers 
 as deeply as the facts impressed him. 
 
 Yet, despite its even development, the " Song of Mio 
 Cid " is written with such dramatic power that in its lines 
 we seem already to hear the language of Lope, Tirso and 
 Calder6n. There is, no doubt, an inherent dramatic 
 quality in the Spanish language itself, as there is a philo- 
 sophic quality in the German and a mathematical quality 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 59 
 
 in the French, The French word defines the idea ; the 
 German word expands it ; the Spanish word presents it. 
 While the German word is fat and roomy like a book, 
 and the French word is thin and clear like a geometric 
 line, the Spanish word is foursquare, like a thing, bare 
 and standing before our eyes. This is no mere philo- 
 logical distinction, but a difference which reminds us 
 that words are but medals of sound stamped by the spirit. 
 German, French, Spanish words bear the particular im- 
 press of the spirit of Germany, France, Spain. Thus 
 Spanish words are forcible and dramatic because the 
 language gives back in energy of expression all the spring 
 and eagerness with which the Spanish mind falls upon 
 reality, like an eagle on its prey. 
 
 The author of the " Song of Mio Cid " knew how to 
 make use of this virtue of our language. Words, lines, 
 passages, full of dramatic force are too frequent for 
 quotation. His dramatic imagination is so vivid that he 
 often places himself among the spectators and feels the 
 impression of the scene and breaks into an exclamation 
 of wonder, terror or delight. 
 
 Dios, que alegre fo el abbat don Sancho. 243 
 
 Lord, how glad was the abbot don Sancho. 
 
 And the details instinctively chosen to render each 
 scene are precisely those which would impress a personal 
 witness of the event and would leave behind the deepest 
 trace. Thus, the arrival of the hero at the monastery 
 of San Pero where his wife D* Ximena has taken 
 refuge : 
 
 Hurriedly sing the cocks and the dawn wants to break, 
 When the good canpeador arrived at San Pero. 
 
6o SIDELIGHTS ON iSPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 The Abbot Don Sancho, a Christian of the Creator 
 Was praying matins at the turn of dawn 
 And Dofia Ximena, with five ladies of rank 
 Was praying to St. Peter and the Creator : 
 " Thou who guidest us all, help My Cid Canpeador." 
 There was a knock at the door and they heard the message. 
 Lord, how glad was the Abbot Don Sancho ! 
 With lights and candles they all jumped into the courtyard ; 
 With so much joy they receive the one who was born in a good 
 hour.i 
 
 How admirably described the contrast between the 
 peace and silence of the monastery in prayers and the 
 excitement and turmoil raised by the arrival of the hero. 
 How homely the detail of the lights and candles, how 
 true and humble that word corral, which sets the scene 
 on our everyday earth, not in the unreal atmosphere of 
 books and marvels ; and how deeply epic in its innocence 
 and unselfconsciousness that appeal to Fate implied in 
 the last line : he who was horn in a good hour. For 
 though supernatural influences are almost wholly lacking 
 in Mio Cid, the poet is too sincere a realist not to give 
 to Fate at least that part which men give it in their 
 thoughts and prejudices. When describing the first 
 
 ' Aprieasa cantan los gallos e quieren crebar albores, 235 
 
 Cuando lleg6 a San Pero el buen CanpeaHor ; 
 £1 abbat don Sancho, criitiano del Criador 
 Rezaba loa matines a vuelta de Io> albores, 
 Y estaba doiia Ximena con pinco dueflas de pro, 
 Rogando a San Pero e al Criador. 
 "Tu que a todos guiaa, val a myo Qid el Canpeador." 
 Llamaron a la puerta, e lopieron el mandado ; 
 Dios, que alegre fo el abbat don Sancho. 
 Con lumbrei e con candelas al corral dieron aalto. 
 Con tan grant gozo reciben al que en buen ora naaco, 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 6i 
 
 march of the little band into exile, signs and omens begin 
 to be noted : 
 
 As they went out of Bivar, they had the crow on their right, 
 As they went into Burgos they had it on their left.^ 
 
 and the reiteration of the " good hour " theme, per- 
 sistently and deliberately used though With remarkable 
 variety of form, succeeds in crowning the hero with a 
 kind of aureole without in the least departing from the 
 world of tangible reality. 
 
 My Cid Roy Diaz, he who girt his sword in a good hour. 
 
 Lo, Canpeador, in a good hour thou wert born ! 
 
 He came towards the tent of him who was born in a good hour.^ 
 
 This blending of reality with Fate, so skilful in its self- 
 ignorance, is perhaps the crowning feature which makes 
 Mio Cid the worthy epic of the race and one of the 
 greatest epic poems of post-classical times. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Realism, freedom from ethical prejudice, and dramatic 
 genius are the three main qualities which assert them- 
 selves in Spanish epics. They are also the dominant 
 features of the most arresting personality in Spanish 
 medieval literature : Juan Ruiz, probably the most un- 
 
 ' A la exida de Bivar ovieron la corneja dieitra 
 e entrando en BurgoB ovicronLa siniestra. 
 
 " Myo C^id Roy Diaz el que en buon ora finxo espadi. 58 
 
 Ya, Canpeador, en buen ora fostea najido I 71 
 
 Vino pora la tienda del que en buen ora naseo, 20Z 
 
62 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 worthy archpriest of Hita, yet the only one who achieved 
 immortahty. Ticknor, Menendez y Pelayo and Prof. 
 Fitzmaurice Kelly have compared him to Chaucer. A 
 thoroughly worked-out parallel might prove an exercise 
 of more than merely academic interest, not only on ac- 
 count of the curiou? likeness, but more especially for the 
 suggestive differences existing between the somewhat 
 elusive Londoner and the genial and perhaps no less 
 elusive Spanish priest. 
 
 The first connection between them is the fact that 
 they occupy a similar position in their respective litera- 
 tures, each of them the chief poet of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury — ^Juan Ruiz in its first, Chaucer in its second half — 
 each of them closing the epic and narrative age and 
 heralding from afar the period of literary splendour 
 which for England as for Spain sets in towards the end 
 of the sixteenth century. But apart from this historical 
 coincidence, Juan Ruiz and Chaucer have many a common 
 feature. Both possess the power of setting the mind in 
 a smiling mood, for both were good-humoured, large- 
 hearted, rich in that understanding which is born of true 
 fraternity. Both, like true great poets, created worlds 
 of their own, and, since they were creators it goes without 
 saying that they were free from bitterness, for no life 
 ever came out of a bitter heart. Hence the delicious 
 taste of their irony, which in the English as in the Spanish 
 master was of that subtle quality, more connected with 
 the heart than with the brain, graphically called in English 
 " laughing in one's sleeve." A fleeting, silent laughter 
 it is, which does not cause the slightest quiver in the 
 rhythm of the poem : witness this delightful line in 
 which Juan Ruiz describes Don Jimio (Sir Monkey) the 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 63 
 
 mayor and magistrate of Bugia, who hears the case 
 between the Wolf and the Fox : 
 
 He waa subtle and wise, he never sat for nothing.* 
 
 This line Chaucer might have written. But simi- 
 larly, the priest who wrote the praise of small women 
 because, as he says, 
 
 Of evil, take the least, so says the wise man. 
 Therefore, of women, the smallest is the best,^ 
 
 would have concurred with Chaucer in this dictum put 
 in the loquacious mouth of the Wife of Bath : 
 
 For trusteth wel, it is an impossible 
 That any clerk wol speke good of wyves. 
 
 This is no misogyny — a horrid word for a horrid thing 
 — but good-humoured and ironical exaggeration. There 
 is a passage in Juan Ruiz's " Book of Love," — for the only 
 book which this laughing satirist has left us bears that 
 name, and with less irony than one might think — ^in 
 which his mischievous spirit reaches the line of cynicism. 
 It is a passage frequently quoted, and it occurs in the 
 prose prologue placed immediately after the prayer to 
 Jesus Christ with which the book opens. 
 
 " Chosing and loving with good intention salvation and love 
 of paradise for my soul, I wrote this small text in memory of 
 virtue ; and I composed this new book in which are written 
 down several manners and crafts and deceitful subtleties of 
 foolish worldly love, which some folk -mil follow in order to 
 sin. The which reading and hearing, men or women of good 
 
 ^ Era 80til e sabio, nunca seia de balde 
 ' Del mal tomar lo menos, dicelo el sabidor, 
 For ende de las mujeres la mejor es la menor. 
 
64 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 understanding and mindful of their salvation, will decide and 
 act, and will be able to say with the Psalmist : Viam veritatis, 
 etc. 
 
 " Also, those of little understanding will not go astray ; for 
 they, reading and bearing in mind the evil they do or mean 
 to do, and the hardened sinners, their evil arts and the 
 public knowledge of their numerous deceitful ways wherewith 
 they sin and deceive women, will consult their memory and 
 will not lightly hold their good name ; for he is very cruel who 
 contemns his own fame ; the law says it. And they will prefer 
 the love of themselves to the love of sin ; for sensible charity 
 begins with our own selves ; so say the Decretals. And they 
 will reject and abhor the evil manners and crafts of worldly 
 love which causes souls to fall and to deserve the wrath of 
 God, impoverishing life and bringing about iU fame and dis- 
 honour and many evils to the body. Notwithstanding, as it is 
 human to sin, were there people desirous of following the ways 
 of foolish love (which I do not advise them to do) they would 
 find here several manners of doing it. And thus, this my book, 
 to all men and women, to the wise and to the unwise, to those 
 who understand virtue and choose salvation and behave well in 
 love of God ; also to those who run after worldly love, in 
 the road that each will tread, will be able to say : Intellectum 
 tifci dabo, etc."i 
 
 ^ Escogiendo e amando con buena voluntad salvaci6n e gloria del paralso 
 para mi dnima, Hz eata chica escritura en memoria de bien ; e compuse este 
 nuevo libro, en que son escritas algunas maneras e maestrias e sotilezas 
 enganosas del loco amor del mundo, que usan algun'os para pecar. Las 
 cuales, ley^ndolas e oyfendolas home o mujer de buen entendimiento que le 
 quiera salvar, descogerci, e obrar lo ha ; e podrd decir con el Salmista ; 
 I^iam veritatis, etc. 
 
 Otrosi, los de poco entendimierito non se perderin ; ca leyendo e coi- 
 dando el mal que facen o tienen en la voluntad de facer, e los porfiosos de 
 sus malas maestrias, e descobrimiento publicado de sus muchas engaiiosas 
 maneras que usan para pecar e engafiar las mujeres, acordar&n la memoria e 
 non despreciarSn su fama ; ca mucho es cruel quien su fama menosprecia ; 
 el Derecho lo dice. £ querrin mas amar a s! mesmos que al pecado ; que 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 65 
 
 It was in this very mood that Chaucer wrote the 
 concluding lines in his MiUer's Prologue, Of the Miller's 
 tale he says : 
 
 Methinketh that I shal reherce it here. 3170 
 
 And ther-fore every gentil wight I preye, 
 
 For goddes love, demeth nat that I seye 
 
 Of evel entente, but that I moot reherce 
 
 Hir tales aUe, be they bettre or werse. 
 
 Or elles falsen som of my matere. 
 
 And therfore, who-so Ust it nat y-here, 
 
 Turne over the leef, and chese another tale ; 
 
 For he shal finde y-nowe, grete and smale. 
 
 Of storial thing that toucheth gentUlesse, 
 
 And eek moralitee and holinesse ; 
 
 Blameth nat me if -that ye chese amis. 
 
 The Miller is a cherl, ye knowe wel this ; 
 
 So was the Reve, and othere many mo. 
 
 And harlotrye they tolden bothe two. 
 
 Avyseth yow and putte me out of blame ; 
 
 And eek men shal nat make ernest of game. 
 
 This last line is echoed in Juan Ruiz's warning to his 
 reader : 
 
 Do not misunderstand the story of the Daughter of Endrino. 
 I told it in order to teach you, not because it happened to me.^- 
 
 la ordenada caridad, de si mesmo comienza : el Decreto lo dice. E deae- 
 charin e aborreceraa las maneras e maestrias malas del loco amor, que face 
 perder las almas e caer en saiia de Dios, apocando la vida e dando mala 
 fama e deshonra, e muchos daiios a los cuerpos, Empero porque es 
 humand cosa el pecar, si alguaos (lo que non los consejo) quisierea usar 
 del loco amor, aqui fallar^n algunas maneras para ello, E ans! este mi 
 libro, a todo home o mujer, al cuerdo e al non cuerdo, al que entendiere el 
 bien e escogiere salvaci6n, e obrare bien amando a Dios ; otrosf al que 
 quisiere el amor loco, en la carrera que andudiere, puede cada una bien 
 decir : Intillectum tiki dahti, etc. 
 
 ^ Entiende bien mi hestoria de la fija del Endrino, 
 Dijela por te dar ensiempro, non porque a mi vino, 
 
 F 
 
66 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 It is the sop that the poets give to their moral con- 
 science. That tribute paid to the supremacy of virtue 
 over vice, both Chaucer and Juan Ruiz feel free to follow 
 the 'changing ways of men and women, the changing 
 human ways which wind through the abstract' lines of 
 vice and virtue like rivers through meridians and parallels. 
 And here again we find that unprejudiced, that innocent 
 impartiality in observation which is an indispensable 
 condition of universal and permanent art. Chaucer puts 
 it with admirable lucidity and sincerity in the passage 
 just quoted. " I moot," he says, " reherce Hir tales alle — 
 
 be they bettre or werse, 
 Or elles falsen som of my matere." 
 
 Here speaks the conscience of the artist holding its 
 own against the conscience of the moralist. The word 
 " FALSEN," and that possessive " My matere," are truly 
 illuminating as to ^he depth of Chaucer's artistic vocation. 
 Juan Ruiz's vocation was not less deep. 
 
 I, Juan Ruiz, the abovesaid Archpriest: of Hita, 
 But whose heart cannot leave off writing poetry. . . ?■ 
 
 It is this esthetic impartiality, born of the depth and 
 sincerity of their poetic vocation, which is the secret of 
 their dramatic power. Of aU the glorious chain of 
 poets which England gave to the world, Chaucer is 
 perhaps, after Shakespeare, the one endowed with the 
 greatest dramatic genius. There is a close sympathy 
 between Chaucer and Shakespeare, suggested in part by 
 the range of their respective worlds, their choice of 
 
 ^ Yo, Joan Ruiz, el sobredicho Arciprestc de Hita 
 Pero que mi coraz6n de trovar non se quita , , , 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 67 
 
 subjects and the free yet accurate style of their character 
 drawing. A similar relationship can be established 
 between Juan Ruiz and the great Spanish dramatists of 
 the Golden Century, particularly those who, like Lope 
 de Vega and Tirso de Molina, excelled in the interpre- 
 tation of life as they saw it under their own eyes. Juan 
 Ruiz is, like them, a born dramatist. Despite his diffuse- 
 ness, he knows the secret of that direct plunge into action 
 which is typical of Spanish romances no less than of 
 Spanish comedias, and, nowadays, of popular songs. He 
 often breaks the tale into a dialogue, dropping all the 
 narrative padding and leaving the characters alone to 
 speak the story out of their own mouths. And, in true 
 national fashion, he is wont to refer to the creatures of 
 his own fancy as if they stood there in front of him : 
 
 Oh Lord, how beautiful comes Dona Endrina through the 
 
 square ! 
 What a figure, what a grace, what a tall neck like a heron's ! 
 What hair, what a mouth, what a complexion, what a graceful 
 
 gait ! 
 With arrows of love she wounds whenever she lifts her eyes \^ 
 
 Notice th6 rhythm of these lines, no less descriptive 
 than the words, no less suggestive of the graceful gait of 
 the young woman approaching. For we must recognise 
 yet another poetic virtue which links Chaucer and Juan 
 Ruiz and generally: Spanish with English poetry in their 
 equal ability to render movements of nature not so much 
 by the elementary method of describing them to the 
 
 ' (Ay I jDios, e cu4a fermosa viene Doiia Endrina por la plaza ! 
 i Qu£ talle, qui donaire, qu£ alto cuello de garza I 
 ; Qfii cabellos, qui boquilla, qui colof, qui buena andanz^ ) 
 Con saetas 4f smor fier^ cuando los sus ojos s\t^, 
 
68 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 intellect as by the subtle use of that eminently poetic 
 faculty which we might call rhythmical intuition. It is 
 a faculty in which the lyrical and the dramatic tenden- 
 cies meet, and the fact that it should be prominent in 
 Juan Ruiz and in Chaucer is a fit reminder that both the 
 English and the Spanish poets had a lyric string to their 
 lutes. Nor is it less significant that in Juan Ruiz's as in 
 Chaucer's lyrical poetry the Virgin Mary should occupy 
 such a pre-eminent place. In the " Book of Good Love " 
 there are no less than nine poems in praise of the Virgin. 
 But, though there is grace in these lyrical attempts and 
 a certain naivete which, to us, at any rate, tastes as 
 sweet as sincerity itself, it may be said of Juan Ruiz's 
 lyrical poetry exactly what Professor Legouis says of 
 Chaucer's : 
 
 " It is in truth but a tiny stream of lyrie which skirts the 
 large fields of his narrative production, and it is not by any 
 means the most characteristic nor, curiously enough, the most 
 personal part of his work."^ 
 
 These are coincidences deeper and more numerous 
 than it is usual to find between great poets of different 
 lands. But a comparative study of Chaucer and Juan 
 Ruiz reveals differences, both personal and literary, 
 which are no less striking and suggestive. While endors- 
 ing the parallel, put forward by Ticknor, Professor Fitz- 
 maurice Kelly qualifies it by adding : " though the 
 Spaniard lacks the dignity of the Englishman." The 
 observation is of course true, and the more remarkable 
 for the fact that dignity is a quality which is usually 
 
 ' Emrle Legouis. 'Geoffrey Chaucer,' TranjUtpd by L. Lailavoix, 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 69 
 
 ascribed to Spaniards with an almost automatic security. 
 It would seem ungracious to enter a protest against an 
 obviously well-meant preconception. Yet dignity is not 
 one of those qualities which necessarily go to the making 
 of literary genius. For it implies a sense of measure, of 
 moderation, of submission to moral-social laws, of self- 
 restraint ; and genius, more often than not, breaks 
 through these half social, half individual fetters, impelled 
 by stronger and more elementary impulses. Thus there 
 are great literary names below dignity — ^for instance, 
 Rabelais ; and there are some above dignity — ^for in^ 
 stance, Pascal and Dostoievsky. It was owing to their 
 curiously similar sense for " standing by " while the game 
 was being played that Cervantes and Shakespeare 
 managed to develop the full scope of their genius without 
 moving out of the plane of dignity. But Spanish litera- 
 ture is often out of this middle plane : either soaring 
 above it with St. Teresa, or else exploring beneath it 
 with the picaresque novel and Quevedo. Juan Ruiz un- 
 doubtedly belongs to this second group. Though we 
 need not believe that he experienced all the- adventures 
 which he relates in his book, the mere fact that he should 
 have lent himself his own name and person as an anima 
 vilis for his cynical stories would condemn him on that 
 account. We are far, with him, from that decorous 
 London burgess, no doubt fond of merry-making, yet 
 respectable, a civil servant of his time, a regular worker 
 who studiously read and wrote in his silent room after 
 having settled " his reckonings." Chaucer says that his 
 " abstinence is lyte." But the word abstinence betrays 
 his moderation. With Juan Ruiz, abstinence was far out 
 of sight. 
 
70 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 The difference in social status and manners between 
 Chaucer and Juan Ruiz could hardly be more instructing, 
 Chaucer is a courtier, a past master in that difficult art 
 of pleasing the powerful ; if not a nobleman, a man 
 used to the manners of noblemen, hy them respected 
 and protected, and in fact, a part of noble life. Juan 
 Ruiz is a priest of that disorderly type which his time 
 tolerated ; his favourite company are the people, and 
 particularly that part of the Spanish population which 
 it is so difficult to imagine nowadays and in which Jews 
 and Moors and Christians mixed in an amiable fraternity 
 of mirth and pleasure. He seems to have considered 
 himself as the poet of that variegated set of Jewish and 
 Moorish dancers, blind beggars, night-adventuring 
 students, vagabonds who go from door to door and old 
 procuresses, of which he obviously was a distinguished 
 member.^ Juan Ruiz is in fact a bohemian. He has all 
 the recklessness of that picturesque race, and therein lies 
 perhaps the gravest cause of his inferiority to Chaucer. 
 For it is with genius as with all other kinds of wealth that 
 it requires a good administration in order to give a good 
 yield. Chaucer administered his genius with as much 
 accuracy as his tedious official duties of Comptroller of the 
 Wool Customs (probably with more). Juan Ruiz squan- 
 dered it, with truly bohemian unconcern for anything 
 
 ' Dcgpues fice muchaB cantigas de danza e troteras 1513 
 
 Para judlas e moral e para entendederas ; 
 Para en instrumentos de comunales maneras : 
 £1 cantar que non sabes 6ila a cantadcras. 
 Cantares fiz algunos de los que dicen I09 ciegos 
 £ para etcolares que andan nocherniegos, 
 £ para muchoa otrot por puertas andariegos 
 Cazurros e de bulras, non cabrian en diez priegos. 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 71 
 
 but the fruits of the hour. Yet it would be unfair to 
 leave this feature of his character at its purely negative 
 estimate. That there was in Juan Ruiz the noble reck- 
 lessness of the loftiest type of Spaniard, no one can doubt 
 after reading the lines in which he forbids anyone to sell 
 or let on hire copies of his book of " Good Love " : 
 
 Since it is of Good Love, lend it willingly. 
 
 Do not belie its name, nor give it grudgingly. 
 
 Do not give it for money, whether for sale or for hire, 
 
 For there is no will nor grace nor good love that bought can be.^ 
 
 Chaucer was too sedate, too quiet a bourgeois to think 
 in terms of such generous recklessness. He was, on the 
 other hand, more refined and, as Professor Legouis has 
 admirably shown, with a refinement traceable to the 
 French side of his nature, even in his purely English work, 
 Juan Ruiz knew French and read the French poets. Of 
 that there is no doubt. But while Chaucer finds in his 
 English composition enough Norman elements to as- 
 similate the French spirit of poetry almost as a matter 
 of course, Juan Ruiz already evinces that peculiar refrac- 
 toriness of the Spanish race towards the acceptance of 
 any French influence deeper than mere moulds, forms 
 and stock scenes or sentences. France gives to Chaucer 
 not merely a great subject and many a minor tale, but 
 a style, a manner, an attitude, elegance of mind and 
 clearness of diction. From Chaucer onwards, English 
 poetry will never again be wholly un-French. To Juan 
 Ruiz, France gives nothing but the raw matter of some 
 
 ^ Pues es de buen amor, emp restadlo de grado. 
 Non desmintades su nombre, nin dedes refertado. 
 Non le dedes por dineros vendido nin alquilado, 
 Ca non ha grado nin gracias nin buen amor complado. 
 
^^ SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 risky fabliaux. He made of them a thing absolutely his 
 own. Thus we find Juan Ruiz to be the first great 
 example— unless the " Song of Mio Cid " be considered, 
 as well it may, an earlier one — of the tenacity of Spanish 
 genius in its resistance to French influence. A successful 
 influence of France over Spain is only possible in periods 
 of national depression. The greater the Spaniard, the 
 lesser the action of the French mind over him. The 
 statement of this fact is a mere recognition of the differ- 
 ence between the spirit of France and the spirit of Spain. 
 The one goes through the other like a ray of light through 
 a flame — and leaves no trace. In its positive side, this 
 Spanish tenacity guarantees the subsistence of the national 
 genius, more careless and primitive, less conscious of its 
 powers, than its formidable and beautiful neighbour. 
 In its negative side it detracts from the universal value 
 of the genius of Spain. For it may be safely said that, 
 in Europe, at least, the universal value of a culture is 
 in a sense proportional to the amount of French essence 
 which it contains. 
 
 The English genius,. however, more complex than the 
 Spanish, can be more easily attuned to the influence of 
 France. More conscious, it can also undergo its action 
 without fear of complete absorption. That is why in 
 England a period of French influence need not be, as it 
 is generally in Spain, blighting for the garden of national 
 culture. A French word is never a real alien in a page of 
 English, and it was still less so in Chaucer's time. Thus 
 Chaucer, refined by France, a careful and persevering 
 bourgeois, is the superior of Juan Ruiz the bohemian 
 both in quantity and in quality of work. His work has 
 over that of Juan Ruiz that inestimable quality which 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 73 
 
 Alfred de Vigny described in an immortal line. It is an 
 oeuvre 
 
 " Empreinte du parfum des douces solitudes." 
 
 There is not' enough solitude in Juan Ruiz's work. 
 When he sits down to write his head is still humming 
 with the noise of voices, " instrumentos e todas juglerias." 
 Hence the shade of difference between his dramatic 
 genius and that of his English brother poet. Chaucer's 
 dramatic genius is more thoughtful ; Juan Ruiz's more 
 active. Chaucer is one degree further removed from the 
 actual turmoil of life than Juan Ruiz. Chaucer is almost 
 a painter. Juan Ruiz almost an actor. The most striking 
 example of this difference is perhaps to be found in their 
 allegorical work. Chaucer's allegories are pictures. Juan 
 Ruiz already shows in his that genius for dramatising 
 abstractions which is going to culininate three centuries 
 later in the Autos of Calderon. 
 
 IV 
 
 From Chaucer and Juan Ruiz to Shakespeare and Lope 
 the transition would be easy were it possible to resist the 
 temptation to connect the names of Sir Philip Sidney 
 and Garcilaso de la Vega. Both were noblemen, soldiers, 
 poets of exquisite refinement, singers of unhappy love ; 
 both died in the prime of age, Sir Philip at thirty-two, 
 Garcilaso at thirty-three, both from wounds received in 
 battle, Sir Philip in 1586, Garcilaso exactly fifty years 
 earlier. Garcilaso is one of the greatest lyrical poets of 
 Spain, and as a poet he is certainly superior to Sir Philip 
 Sidney. He is endowed with a gift relatively rare in 
 Spanish letters, a certain tenderness, almost feminine, 
 
74 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 which gives emotion to his poetry and contributes also 
 — along with his technical skill — to the fluidity of his 
 form. Though a reformer and the adapter of Italian 
 hendecasyllabics to Spanish requirements, he writes a 
 smooth liquid verse admirably suited for his peaceable, 
 pastoral scenery, his delicate atmosphere and his melan- 
 choly but not desperate tone — ^precisely that tone in 
 which Sir Philip Sidney complained, without despairing, 
 of his unhappy love. His poetry is deliciously fresh, 
 murmuring and rumorous with the waters of brooks and 
 rivers and lakes as no other Spanish poetry is, a fact no 
 doubt related to his stay as a prisoner in the Grosse 
 Schiit Island on the Danube. His music is as fine as any 
 written before or since in Spain, a music in fact of a more 
 subdued and subtle character than the Spanish language 
 usu^ally yields. He is essentially, not merely in his mind 
 but in his subjects, an aristocratic poet, such as would 
 naturally take his place in the English Parnassus, until 
 quite recently the most exclusive literary club in the 
 world. In the name of an unenlightened nationalism he 
 has been accused of lack of " hispanism " because of his 
 infatuation for the then new Italian forms which his 
 brilliant example did so much to establish in Spain, The 
 accusation is on the face of it absurd. Yet there is a 
 sound though misdirected instinct that considers him as 
 somewhat un-Spanish. He represents a type of poet 
 which is not wholly in harmony with the genius of the 
 race : a refined poet, a sure artist, an exquisite musician. 
 In Spanish letters he is a great name — but a name apart. 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 75 
 
 We come back to the main stream of both English and 
 Spanish literatures when we contemplate this most 
 striking of literary parallels : the simultaneous growth, 
 splendour and decadence of the Elizabethan and the 
 Spanish Golden Century Theatres. England and Spain 
 are the only two modern nations that can claim to have 
 created a truly original theatre — a theatre come to life 
 by the union of reality and national genius without the 
 intervention of any classical model, prejudice or tradi- 
 tion. This fact in itself should suffice to'justify the com- 
 parative study of English and Spanish literature as an 
 indispensable complement to the knowledge of each one 
 of them. But how much more imperative such a compara- 
 tive study will appear when it is realised that those two 
 sole original dramatic creations of modern Europe strongly 
 resemble each other, despite the, fact that — at least in so 
 far as Shakespeare and the Spanish masters are concerned 
 — ^they developed in complete ignorance of one another 
 like two plants of the same seed born in distant lands. 
 Such similarity ought to have imposed long ago the study 
 of Spanish in England and the study of English in Spain 
 as an indispensable element of national culture. For 
 surely there is some deep and as yet almost unexplored 
 relationship between the two peoples who from the 
 extreme north-we^t and the extreme south-west of the 
 Continent could bring to European culture two offerings 
 so original and so strikingly alike. 
 
 The likeness is not limited to that robust and almost 
 barbaric spontaneity with which the English and the 
 Spanish theatres push forth their uncouth vigorous 
 
^e SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 shapes into the polite world ruled by the three unities. 
 It extends to the appetite for action which fills the 
 English as well as the Spanish stage with the movement 
 of living bodies, men and women, and not merely literary 
 exercises. No messengers coming to relate the storm, 
 the battle, the duel, but the duel, the battle and the 
 storm actually taking place on the stage. And faithfully 
 following the wayward ways of nature, clown and hero 
 mingle on the stage, weaving before the audience the 
 ever-mixed cloth of life. Form, in its turn, claims the 
 freedom of rhythm which events themselves impose. In 
 contrast with the French Alexandrine couplet, dragging 
 along the pseudo-classical tragedy at the regular pace of 
 its two yoked oxen, the Spanish and the Enghsh dramatists 
 allow themselves the greatest variety of metre. In the 
 Spanish theatre, the romance, that is the sixteen-syllable 
 line assbnanced on the same vowels for long stretches of 
 verse, is the basis of versification. It plays in the music 
 of the Spanish theatre a role not unlike that of the bag- 
 pipe drone in Scotch national airs. Nor can its discon- 
 tinuance when other types are employed be raised against 
 this comparison, for its regular beat seems to prolong 
 itself in an undertone through the passages of more 
 lyrical variety. For more menial uses of speech, like 
 letters, announcements and short messages, the Spanish, 
 like the English, theatre falls back into prose. This bold 
 alternance of prose and verse and changeable metre, as 
 also the frequent use of songs and music, creates an 
 atmosphere of vivacity, variety and movement in strong 
 contrast with the somewhat cold decorum of the French 
 tragedy. 
 Though the founder of the Spanish theatre, and by 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 77 
 
 far its greatest figure, Lope de Vega had to wait until 
 quite recently before posterity accorded him the fame 
 which he deservedly enjoyed in his lifetime. Calder6n, 
 better known, preceded him into European renown. This 
 fact explains why Calderon, believed to be the " central 
 figure " of the Spanish theatre,^ should have been selected 
 as the prototype with whom to compare Shakespeare. 
 But in actual fact, the real Spanish equivalent to Shake- 
 speare is Lope de Vega. Not only were they both the 
 founders of their national theatres, but they were both 
 of that spontaneous type of genius which most reminds 
 us of the simplicity, fatality and almost awe-inspiring 
 power of natural forces. Of nature, indeed, Shakespeare 
 and Lope have the fecundity and the reckless extrava- 
 gance and a calm disregard for mere polish, refinement 
 and perfection. When they, as they often do, give us a 
 rendering of apt and felicitous accuracy, we feel that we 
 owe it, not to any painstaking effort of conscientious 
 artistry but to that intuition which their genius gains in 
 the all-pervading sympathy of their outlook. And like 
 all ffcrtile sources of creation, they both inspire in us a 
 mysterious feeling of affection and gratitude, such as we 
 feel for the sea or the earth or the life-giving sun. 
 
 Yet the parallel between Lope and Shakespeare cannot 
 be carried much further without having to note down 
 differences which curiously resemble the differences 
 between Chaucer and Juan Ruiz. Lope's marvellous 
 fecundity implied a facility of imagination, construction 
 and execution as favourable to the quantity as harmful 
 to the quality of his work. In the circumstances in which 
 be wrote, his standard of quality is indeed incredibly 
 
 I Archjjishop Trench, 
 
78 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 high. His adventurous Hf e did not leave him time enough 
 to deepen and mature his philosophy of life, and of him, 
 no less than of Juan Ruiz, it may be said that, compared 
 to his English brother-spirit, he is inferior in that he failed 
 to cultivate his mind in solitude. Little as we know of 
 Shakespeare's life, he could hardly have grown some of 
 the more complex flowers of his poetry without leisure 
 and tranquillity. Thus it is that Shakespeare deepens 
 into thought and erects a theatre of emotions in the very 
 chambers of the human soul, while Lope spreads out into 
 action and builds a theatre of situations in the open space 
 of tangible reality. 
 
 VI 
 
 It is not because they were exactly contemporaries, 
 nor in order to complete in an almost childish design the 
 parallel between Lope and Shakespeare, that a similar 
 comparison is here sketched between Milton and Cal- 
 deron. There is a good basis for it in the somewhat 
 equivalent position which they occupy with regard to 
 the literature of their respective countries, in the wake 
 of a great age, both, in the words of the French poet. 
 
 Arrives trop tard dans un monde trop vieux. 
 
 This circumstance links them to each other as the heirs 
 of a literary wealth which gives them a class and there- 
 fore makes them self-conscious. Gone, that spontaneity 
 of Shakespeare and Lope de Vega, that recklessness, that 
 free flow of inspiration. Milton and Calderon are con- 
 scious and conscientious. They know the art of laying 
 put plans, and though rich in genuine inspiration, they 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 79 
 
 seldom allow their muse to dance to any tune but that 
 which suits their own designs. 
 
 It is true that Milton is not, strictly speaking, a drama- 
 tist, while Calderon was predominantly a playwright. 
 Yet it is impossible to read " Samson Agonistes " without 
 coming to the conclusion that Milton would have been 
 a worthy rival of Shakespeare had he lived fifty years 
 earlier. Given his moral environment, Milton did as 
 much dramatic work as could be expected from him, so 
 that, when analysed, his genius will be found to contain, 
 though perhaps in different proportions, the same -literary 
 essences as that of Calderon : the dramatical, the 
 lyrical and the didactical. 
 
 For Calderon is perhaps the most lyrical of Spanish 
 dramatists, and his poetry has, like Milton's, the string 
 of bronze as well as the silver string. Led by his lyrical 
 tendency, he not infrequently sacrifices the dramatic to 
 the musical effect, and holds up the action so that the 
 dialogue may acquire the symmetry of an Italian opera 
 duet or terceto. The iteration of set sentences as a kind 
 of leitmotiv which Tirso de Molina had so gracefully 
 and discreetly used to the enhancement of the dramatic 
 interest, as for instance in " El Burlador de Sevilla," 
 develops, in Calderon, into a complicated exercise of com- 
 position almost intolerably mechanical and certainly un- 
 dramatic. For though Calderon had Milton's conscious 
 artistry, he was not protected in its use by Milton's 
 unfailing taste, and in his regard for form he often 
 lets his thought lose its way in the maze of elaborate 
 labyrinths of style. 
 
 This failing, however, is only too natural in a poet who 
 had to write much and to please a difficult public, spoilt 
 
8o SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 by several decades of overflowing dramatic production. 
 In spite of it, Calderon's lyrical flights suggest Milton's 
 own manner, and the resemblance is further strengthened 
 by their common taste for religious and biblical subjects, 
 which they both treat with a stern austerity in deep con-, 
 trast with the smiling worldliness of Lope de Vega and 
 Shakespeare. But here the specific difference between 
 them is rather the substance than the form of their work. 
 Milton is the Protestant Poet, Calderon the Catholic Poet 
 par excellence. Milton is primarily concerned with char- 
 acter and conduct, while Calderon lays main stress on 
 faith and divine grace. This aspect of Calderon's mind 
 makes him the type of transition from the popular and 
 realistic poets like Lope and Juan Ruiz to the mystic and 
 spiritual poets such as St. Teresa. Realism and mysticism 
 are the two poles of the Spanish mind ; a realism which 
 has something mystic in the intensity of its contempla- 
 tion and a mysticism which is in love with reality as only 
 those who see God in all things can be. Velazquez and 
 El Greco represent these two tendencies in Spanish 
 painting. Calderon stands midway between the two, or 
 rather reaches both ends, following Velazquez in the 
 clear realism of The Mayor of Zalamea and painting his 
 Life's a Dream with the violent colours and tortured lines 
 of El Greco. 1 
 
 VII 
 
 Leaving aside the crowd of lesser lights, this review of 
 some of the greatest creators in Spanish literature, seen 
 in contrast with their nearest English equivalents, shows 
 
 • See p, 33. 
 
SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 8i 
 
 how consistently the Spanish national genius develops 
 when left to grow under favourable historical conditions. 
 An eager realism is the key-faculty of the race, the cause 
 both of the main quality and of the main defect of its 
 literature. For, under the action of this kind of appetite 
 for reality, the poet can grow flowers of poetry out of 
 the very soil he treads and the very air he breathes ; but, 
 meanwhile, the man in him, animated by the same ap- 
 petite, will tend to spread his life-activities into the world 
 of action and his work will therefore lack that cream of 
 thought which accumulates in tranquil solitude. This 
 realistic element is the vivifying element in Spanish 
 dramatic genius, a literary faculty which Spain possesses 
 to a degree equalled only — ^not by England — but by the 
 solitary genius of Shakespeare. It also explains the ethical 
 detachment of the Spanish artist which is at bottom a 
 manifestation of his undivided love of reality. In the 
 name of this love no man-made law or prejudice is allowed 
 to check the free flow of life animated by beauty. 
 Beauty is grace of earthly inspiration, that is, the spiritual 
 radiance with which reaHty appears to the esthetic mind. 
 But there is a kind of realist, eager more even than the 
 artist, to whom reality appears clothed in radiance of 
 divine grace : this higher realist is the mystic. 
 
 Thus, Spanish realists and Spanish mystics are impelled 
 by the same tendency, though in different forms. In the 
 same eager, direct manner in which the one falls on 
 tangible life the other is lifted towards spiritual life and 
 union with God. The greatest and most typically 
 Spanish of our mystics, St. Teresa, writes a marvellous 
 style of her own, which rushes from her heart right into 
 the light of day, impatiently bursting the cumbersome 
 
 Q 
 
82 SIDELIGHTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 meshes of grammar, order and even logical sense. 
 Dramatic f This style is more than dramatic ; it is alive 
 and panting ; it is life itself. The anonymous poet who 
 wrote Mio Cid, Juan Ruiz, Lope de Vega, in spite of 
 their directness, sobriety and realistic truth, sound 
 artificial and insincere by the side of its transcendent 
 realism. With her we are as high as the genius of Spain 
 will ever carry us. It is a height beyond art and poetry, 
 in that reality which, like light itself, we cannot see. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Most of the aongs quoted in this work can be found either in SeSor 
 Rodriguez Marin's book or in Selior Alonso Cortes' article as mentioned 
 below, and though I had heard many of their coplas before I read them in 
 their works, I could hardly have attempted this essay had I not had at my 
 disposal the invaluable store which they put together with so much 
 patience and industry. The Asturian song quoted, p, 1 1 1, is, I believe, 
 unpublished. 
 Cantos Fofulades de Castilla, recogidos par Narciso Alonso Cortes. 
 
 Revue Hispanlque. Oct, and Dec, I9I4> 
 Cantos Pophlares EbpaSolis, by Francisco Rodriguez Marin, 5 Vols, 
 
 i88z. 
 Cancioniro Popular, Colecci6n escogida de coplas y seguidillas recogidas 
 
 y ordenadas por D. Emilio Lafuente y Alclntara. Madrid. Bailly- 
 
 Bailliere, z Vols, 1866, 
 PoksIas Populares colegidas por D, TomSs Segarra, espafiol nativo, pro- 
 
 fesor de su lengua materna en el Real Instituto el Maximilianum 
 
 y lector de la Universidad de Munique (Baviera), Leipzig, F, A, 
 
 Brockhaus, i Vol, 1862, 
 CuENTos r PoesIas Populares Andaluces coleccionados por Fernin 
 
 Caballero, i Vol, Sevilla. 1859. 
 Colecci6h se las Mejores Coplas de seguidillas, tiranas y polos que 
 
 se han compuesto para cantar a la guitarra, por D, Pxeciso. Madrid, 
 
 Ibarra, 1805. z Vols. 
 
 NOTE ON TRANSLATION 
 
 Translating poetry is a difficult task in the most favourable circum- 
 stances. Translating popular poetry, and into a language, though fairly 
 familiar, foreign to the translator, is an almost impossible achievement. The 
 examples given must be taken as mere afproximariom rather than faithful 
 renderings of the original songs. The rule has been to translate above all 
 the mood, then the rhythm and the metrical arrangements, if possible. 
 When the form of the copla had to be changed, and that has been often the 
 case on account of the shorter average length of English words as compared 
 with Spanish words, the song was recast in translation into a metre 
 roughly corresponding to a different popular measure requiring a lesser 
 number of syllables. Thus, often, cuartetat are translated into uguidillat. 
 But even this at times failed. 
 
 Several of the coplas quoted have been spelt, in a roughly phonetic 
 fashion, according to the popular pronunciation prevalent in the South of 
 Spam. The adoption of a regular spelling would have in some cases de- 
 stroyed the metre and in all cases deprived the copla of its popular flavour, 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 85 
 
 The pronunciation thus recorded is practically that of the Andalusian 
 dialect. The main changes from the Castilian are the following : — 
 
 1. Elision of e, 
 
 {a) When final before initial vowel sound. 
 
 Afit for Me he (p. 113). 
 (J>) Initial, as in en. 
 
 esth'n for estd en (p. 99). 
 
 2. Fall of r. 
 
 (13) Final, as in 
 
 fS fotjlor (p. 119). 
 vi for ver (p. lOi). 
 
 (b) Intermediate, as in 
 
 ace'a for acera (p. 92). 
 
 3. Fall of / final, as in 
 
 arha' for irbol (p. 1 1 6). 
 
 4. Fall of J final, as in 
 
 metia for metidas (p. i zo). 
 
 5. Fall of B final, particularly when followed by en. 
 
 pique' n ioT piquen en (p. 120). 
 
 6. Fall of d. 
 
 {a) In endings ado, ido, ida, 
 
 buscao for buscado (p. 123). 
 ^ vestio for vestido (p. 104.). 
 
 metla for metidas (p. 120). 
 (i) In the preposition de, generally accompanied with elision of 
 the remaining e and therefore complete disappearance of the word, 
 I'ace'a 'enfrettte for ia aeera de enjrente (p. 92). 
 
 (c) In donde (initial d) with the elision of after a strong vowel. 
 
 eiti'nde for esti donde (p. 99). 
 
 (d) In weak positions between two strong vowels, 
 
 t{o for todo (p. 113), 
 
 naita for nadita (p, 10 1}, 
 
 t6itas for toditas (p, 120). 
 In this last case the hiatus resulting from the fall of the d is, 
 according to a well-known rule of Spanish phonetics, transformed into a 
 diphthong by the shifting of the tonic accent to i from i. Notice that this 
 does not take place in the case of nalta, probably because the diphthong is 
 much more energetic than the hiatus, and the mood of the respective coplas 
 is energetic in one case, plaintive in the other. It is an interesting case of 
 psychological influence over phonetics, 
 
 7. / becomes r, or for o/ (p, 1 19), 
 
 ^ II y, barquiyo ioi barquille [f, lOi), 
 fs ,, J, rota for roxa (p. 104). 
 hue „ gile, gllesos for huesii (p. 104), 
 A „ j, jasta iot haita {f, \o/^). 
 S. Several words take a peculiar form, 
 niide for nadie (p. 123). 
 asitt for asi (p. 119). 
 arretiri for retiri (p. 1 19), 
 
When we approach a work of foreign literature our 
 expectation is twofold. A new beauty is going to be 
 revealed to our artistic sense ; a new truth is going to 
 add its light to the truth we know. We are promised the 
 enjoyment of an artistic pleasure, but we are also led to 
 the discovery of human ways, new to us, yet deeply 
 connected with our own ways by similarity, contrast, or, 
 more suggestively still, by delicate shades of difference. 
 Thus, works of foreign literature may be considered 
 under two different aspects ; as pure aesthetic ends, or 
 works of art ; and as means, roads of approach to the 
 character of the nation which created them. 
 
 It is, indeed, in relation to national character that the 
 study of foreign literature is most illuminating, and, if 
 there are such things as foreign literatures, it is less to 
 the multiplicity of languages than to the multiplicity of 
 national characters that we owe them — ^witness the 
 differences between American and English, Swiss and 
 German, Spanish and Spanish-American literatures. A 
 national character may be defined as a set of tendencies 
 determined by the relative strength of the tendencies 
 which compose it. All tendencies are in all men, and that 
 is the basis of human unity and solidarity. It cannot be 
 said that one people is intelligent and another one is not ; 
 that one lacks imagination and another one moral sense. 
 AU peoples possess all the elementary essences of human 
 
 86 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 87 
 
 nature ; but all peoples do not possess them in equal 
 proportions. Hence national character. For a difference 
 in quality is but a synthesis of quantitative differences. 
 
 In each country, a certain group of tendencies pre- 
 dominates, which gives the key to the character of the 
 nation. Thus, what is specific in France is the pre- 
 dominance of the intellect over all the other faculties. 
 Logic, measure, order, clearness, are the French qualities 
 par excellence. The nature of Spain is strongest both 
 below and above the intellectual level : in instinct and 
 in vision, in passion and in mysticism, England's healthy 
 and robust vitality is the main feature of her character 
 and civilisation. It accounts for the strength of her 
 bodily tendencies, mainly observable in the individual, 
 and for the vigour and effectiveness of her social morality, 
 rooted in the depths of her tribal instinct. 
 
 These differences in character reveal themselves in the 
 social atmosphere. The intellect is man's bourgeois 
 faculty : careful, orderly, hard-working, methodical, 
 pitilessly accurate, tinged with a touch of Voltairian 
 flippancy, revolutionary in theory, but conservative in 
 practice. Thus, France, the country of the intellect, is 
 also a bourgeois country. The tone of its society is middle 
 class. Its virtues, its vices, its prejudices, its ideas, politics, 
 economics and the arts are all grounded on a bourgeois 
 conception of life. Its theatre, for instance, depicts the 
 habits, preaches the ideas and analyses the passions of 
 its bourgeoisie ; and every Frenchman, whether a noble- 
 man, a commoner, a peasant, or a proletarian, is in his 
 heart a bourgeois, weighted with sound common sense and 
 led by sharp intellect. 
 
 The English ideal is aristocratic. The aristocrat is the 
 
88 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 highest type of individual which any social organisation 
 can evolve — ^the human being whose life is richest in those 
 physical values so much prized by every Englishman — 
 cleanliness, light, and air, comfort, leisure, free space on 
 earth, privacy, elegance. He is, moreover, the prototype 
 of the moral-social qualities of the race : a model of 
 character, a standard of self-control, an ideal of reserve, 
 a mirror of gentlemanliness, the very definition of excltir- 
 siveness. The aristocracy still lives in England, not only 
 because it has always been more active and more socially 
 useful than in other countries, but also because it has 
 and always had the respect, affection and even admira- 
 tion of the people.^ And, though the landed and his- 
 torical aristocracy may die out, the Enghsh people will 
 not live without a class in whom to satisfy their national 
 craving for social hero-worship. As the result of the 
 spread of public education, we are already seeing the 
 growth of a new aristocracy based on " culture " and 
 mainly formed of actors, playwrights, and novelists. 
 The English theatre — ^particularly in its more popular 
 and genuine form, the music-hall — amoves in the aristo- 
 cratic milieu, or adopts its ways and mimics its life. Its 
 women wear low necks and long trains ; its men display 
 front shirts and tail coats. The gallery may think this 
 or that about the " idle classes," but when they pay for 
 
 ' I recently had an opportunity to observe how deep and genuine still 
 is the love of English people for their aristocracy. I happened to be in a 
 suburban train when several fellow-passengers began to comment on the 
 death of Lord Brassey, announced in that morning's papers. Someone 
 remarked that he left no heirs, and that, therefore, the title would lapse. 
 " What a pity I " said another passenger. There was not the slightest 
 trace of irony in his voice and manner, and the remark met with general 
 assent. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 89 
 
 their ticket they want to see ladies and gentlemen moving 
 about on polished floors. 
 
 In deep contrast with the English stage, the Spanish 
 stage — ^particularly in its most genuine form, the gineto 
 chico — ^is predominantly popular. Its heroes and heroines 
 are workmen, peasants, the gardener's daughter, the 
 cobbler's wife, the schoolmaster's boy. A zarzuela,^ 
 much admired by Saint-Saens, has for its heroine a 
 domestic servant. The Spanish people, far from shaping 
 its life on a middle class or aristocratic model, goes its 
 own way with all the independence of taste and conduct 
 to be expected from a class that feels within itself its 
 own ideal. And it can even be observed that the middle 
 and upper classes, instead of being imitated by the people, 
 not infrequently follow the people in its ways of living, 
 thinking, talking, and even in the matter of dress. This 
 is particularly so when some artistic effect is in view, as 
 in the verbenas or the ferias of Andalucia. The reason 
 is that the people are the most representative class of the 
 Spanish race, a fact that might be anticipated since the 
 Spanish specific qualities are more particularly related to 
 the instincts and the spirit, and are, therefore, essentially 
 popular. 
 
 II 
 
 It follows that a study of Spanish popular poetry is 
 an excellent way of approach to the knowledge of the 
 Spanish nature, and on this utilitarian ground would 
 amply justify itself. But, truly Spanish in its generosity, 
 our popular poetry will not be content with utility. 
 Useful to the student of human nature, it reveals itself 
 
 ' A kind of small opera. 
 
90 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 as eminently pleasant to the lover of beauty. The in- 
 numerable songs or coplas stored in the living archives 
 of the people's memory form in the aggregate a lyrical- 
 poem of such scope, life and beauty as to secure for the 
 Spanish people a place among the great poets of the 
 world. Whether we understand the word " poet " in 
 its restricted sense, meaning by it a craftsman who 
 makes poems as a painter pictures or a jeweller jewels ; 
 or whether, more widely and perhaps more vaguely, we 
 define the poet as a philosopher who contemplates life 
 in an sesthetic attitude, the Spanish people is a great 
 poet. Its poetry is not a mere play of fancy, nor a self- 
 imposed task of culture, nor again a showy mental gar- 
 ment fit for Sunday wear, but a living stream which runs 
 along the road of life and keeps company to the traveller 
 with its murmur and light. The Spaniard sings. The 
 mere saying of verse, he considers as an affectation — as, 
 no doubt, it is for all who do not hear the song that is in 
 every true poem. His songs or coplas have a light body 
 — ^two, three or four lines — that the wings of music may 
 easily lift them. And the popular song takes its flight 
 at every moment and in every place of life — ^work and 
 rest, field and town, pleasure party or religious processioB. 
 For since every moment of Spanish life yields its own 
 lyrical blossom, religious ceremonies — ^in Spain, events 
 of public and popular life — could not remain barren. 
 The SAETA — the name itself, saeta, arrow, is a poem — ^is 
 a popular song which any soul in the crowd can sing while 
 the procession is passing through the streets. From the 
 crowd in the street, from the dark recess of a yawning 
 window in a private house, or, may be, from behind the 
 bars of the prison, a voice will suddenly rise j the holy 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 91 
 
 image is then turned towards the voice, in a listening 
 attitude, and the saeta shoots across the intense silence, 
 like an arrow of poetry. It is difficult to imagine any- 
 thing more poetical than this custom, or a more striking 
 proof of the fact that poetry in Spain is an essential 
 element of everyday life. Yet the saeta is not the most 
 typical form of Spanish religious poetry. Its subject is 
 generally of a purely lyrical nature, and its tone is plain- 
 tive. It is a lament which an unhappy soul addresses to 
 its favourite saint or advocation of Christ or the Virgin, 
 asking for help and comfort, and is nearly always inspired 
 by some direct personal grief. More typical of Spanish 
 religious poetry is the plain copla when, flying as it does 
 over the whole field of life, it happens to alight on a 
 religious subject. The religious copla is a scene, fresh, 
 simple, naive, full of light and movement, which by virtue 
 of the artistic genius of the race brings back to the world 
 of meadows, rivers and forests the sacred mythology 
 which books and theologians exiled to heaven. Thus — 
 
 Maria lava pafiales 
 
 Y los tiende en el romero, 
 
 Y los pajaritos cantan 
 
 Y el agua se va riendo. 
 
 Mary is washing baby's linen 
 And spreading it on the lavender. 
 And the little birds are singing 
 And the water runs a-laughing.* 
 
 This is Spanish. It brings back to Earth and to the 
 present the vague and the past. It does not seek the 
 
 ' See note on spelling and translation, pp. 84, 85. 
 
92 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 religious emotion direct, but gives the facts plainly and 
 humbly, and by sheer divination puts again the Holy 
 Family in its real environment, as the family of the 
 carpenter round the corner ; it presents the Virgin Mary 
 at one of the humblest moments of a mother's life, 
 washing the clothes of her infant in the water that " se 
 va riendo " ; and yet, by sheer humility before the facts, 
 a religious emotion is attained, as by the mere contem- 
 plation of a quiet and uneventful afternoon. A divine 
 odour of sanctity floats in the clear air of this pure song. 
 Its realism is so intense that it becomes almost mystic, 
 as if those plain, virginal words were the original and 
 secret names of things and actions. And when we reach 
 the last, admirable line, we iind it quite natural that the 
 water should run away laughing, with a laughter which is 
 more than the mere murmur of the stream, and is en- 
 livened and deepened by the joy of things that feel the 
 breath of eternal love. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We recognise the first and most important poetical 
 quality of the race in this clear gaze of the popular muse, 
 falling over fields and woods, towns and villages, and 
 human nature, with the sharpness and intensity of the 
 Spanish sun and moonlight. It is the clear pictorial gaze 
 of Velazq«ez. The popular copla becomes a poem by 
 merely expressing things seen in street and field and village 
 square, so true it is that a thing well seen is a work of 
 art — 
 
 Tu te vas por I'ace'a 'enfrente, 
 
 Aborreciendo la vida 
 
 Y apeteciendo la muerte. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 93 
 
 Sale de la alcoba, 
 
 Coloradita como una amapola. 
 
 El andar de la madre 
 Lleva la hija ; 
 Por pisar menudito 
 Va tarde a misa. 
 
 You seek the other side of the street, 
 
 Hating life 
 
 And hungry of death. 
 
 She comes out of the bedroom 
 Like a poppy, blushing red. 
 
 'Tis the gait of the mother, 
 The daughter's gait. 
 She walks with steps so little 
 At church she's late. 
 
 These are the scenes of everyday life,, keenly observed 
 and accurately rendered. The coplas quoted are fair 
 examples of the direct, concrete, immediate character of 
 Spanish popular poetry. 
 
 For in its popular lyrics no less than in its epics or in 
 its theatre, classical or contemporary, the Spanish people 
 give striking proofs of their capacity for making poetry 
 out of the very life that surrounds them. Usually men 
 write poetry under the inspiration of one or other of the 
 two grey muses, Memory and Nostalgia. But neither the 
 mist of distance nor the mist of time are necessary in 
 order to make reality poetical in the eyes of the Spanish 
 people. They love reality so intensely that it yields to 
 them without resistance like a young and vigorous bride 
 ip whose veiy vigour and youth lies the weakness that 
 
94 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 delivers her' into the arms of her lover. Many coplas are 
 little more than simple acts of union between external 
 reality and the mind of the people, small poems of purely 
 aesthetical emotion such as one would feel letting one's 
 hand rest on a shoulder modelled by Michael Angelo or 
 one's eyes on a face painted by Ribera, 
 
 Cuando va andando 
 
 Rosas y lirios va derramando. 
 
 A la entradita del pueblo 
 Me alabaron tu hermosura. 
 Ojos negros, cara blanca, 
 Delgadita de cintura. 
 
 Ayer tarde la vi yo. 
 i Ay, galin, si tii la vieras ! 
 Asomada a la ventana, 
 Regando las azucenas. 
 
 Un jardfn Ueno de nieve 
 Parece tu bianco rostro, 
 Con tres flores sin cubrir 
 Que son tu boca y tus ojos. 
 
 When she goes walking 
 
 Roses and lilies she goes pouring. 
 
 I heard the praise of your beauty 
 At the village gates, 
 Your black eyes and your white face 
 And your slender waist. 
 
 I did see her yesterday. 
 Oh, my friend, if you had seen her ! 
 At her window she was standing. 
 Watering her lilies. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 95 
 
 Your white face is like a garden 
 Which under snow lies, 
 And in it three flowers uncovered 
 Your mouth and your eyes. 
 
 This pictorial aspect of Spanish popular poetry may be 
 particularly observed in the cantar de ronda. The 
 RONDA is a singing party. A small band of young men of 
 the village start in the still of night, well provided with 
 guitars, and walk through the village, stopping to sing 
 under the windows of their present, past or future 
 sweethearts, and generally succeeding in rousing them 
 out of their sleep and making them come to the window 
 to hear the music. There is a copla, which can be 
 heard in Castilian villages, to the effect that — 
 
 La noche clara y serena A night clear and serene 
 
 Es buena para rondar. Is best for a singing party. 
 
 Para los enamorados But for lovers is much better 
 
 Es mejor la oscuridad. A night well covered by darkness. 
 
 And whatever we may think of the mischievous ending 
 of this song, the cantar de ronda plainly shows that it 
 was born under the clear light of the moon which cuts 
 out the black squares of the windows on the white walls 
 and brings out in sharp relief the rows and grooves of 
 the tiled roofs. The strong impress of the moonlit roofs 
 on the imagination of the popular rondadores appears in 
 such coplas as the following : 
 
 Las tejas de tu tejado, 
 Las flores de tu jardfn, 
 La hermosura de tu cara 
 Tienen que ser para m£. 
 
96 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 Las tejas de tu tejado 
 Me quieren bajar i abrir. 
 Baja t&, rosa temprana, 
 Nacida en el mes de Abril. 
 
 The tiles of your roof, 
 The flowers of your garden, 
 The beauty of your face 
 Must belong to me. 
 
 The tiles of your roof are wanting 
 To open the door for me. 
 Come down yourself, early rose 
 In the month of April born. 
 
 These little poems are seen with all the intensity of a 
 painter-poet. But intensity of vision is of no avail with- 
 out intensity of expression. And it is here that we have 
 to note the admirable energy and conciseness of the 
 Spanish language, both an effect and a condition of the 
 dramatic genius of the race. Within the minute limits 
 of its stage of two, three, or four lines, every one of these 
 songs is a miniature play. The dramatic condensation 
 of some of the coplas is a source of wonder even for the 
 initiated. All the dramatic instinct of the comedia and 
 of the romance can be found, if anything still more con- 
 centrated, in' these popular poems, worthy songs of the 
 people of Mio Cid and Lope de Vega. 
 
 Here is a drama of sudden love, in three lines, the in- 
 tensity of which rests almost wholly on the extraordinary 
 strength which the word madre has in the Spanish 
 language — 
 
 Mira tii si es cosa grande. 
 
 La conocf el otro dfa, 
 
 La quiero mds que a mi madre. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 97 
 
 lliink what a strange thing that is. 
 I knew her but the other day. 
 I love her more than my mother. 
 
 Here is a novel in four lines : 
 
 Me quisiste, me olvidaste, 
 For la ambici6n del dinero. 
 Con las lagrimas regabas 
 Los trajes de terciopelo. 
 
 You loved me once ; you forgot me, 
 For the love of wealth. 
 With your tears you have watered 
 Many a velvet dress. 
 
 Here is a graceful epigram : 
 
 Dices que no la quieres You say you do not love her, 
 
 Ni vas a verla. Nor go to see her ; 
 
 Pero la veredita Yet no grass ever grows 
 
 No crfa yerba. Over her path. 
 
 Here is excellent comedy : 
 
 A tu madre se lo dije ; I have told your mother ; 
 
 A tu padre no me atrevo. Your father, I dare not. 
 
 En sabiendolo tu madre As your mother knows it, 
 
 Tu padre lo sabrS luego. Your father will soon know. 
 
 And lastly, a scene of dramatic crisis, vibrating with 
 emotion and concentrated into four lines : 
 
 Anda, dunelo andando, Come, say it while walking, 
 
 Dfinelo andando. Say it while walking, 
 
 Que si tu llevas miedo For if you're full of fear 
 
 Yo voy temblando. I am all trembling. 
 
98 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 IV 
 
 The first circumstance that makes possible this striking 
 condensation of dramatic interest is the strong structure 
 of the copla. The three main types of coplas are the 
 cuARTETA, the soLEA and the seguidilla.^ 
 
 The cuarteta is an octosyllabic quatrain, rhymed or, 
 more frequently, assonanced, abcb. It may be metrically 
 considered as the four first lines of a romance. It is solid 
 and square like a stage, with its four corners clearly 
 marked. It is undoubtedly the form most favourable 
 for the dramatic song. The cuarteta is by far the most 
 generally used form of copla and the only one which 
 can be found in every part of Spain. The sole4 or solitude 
 (another name which is in itself a poem) is^ an octo- 
 syllabic tercet assonanced (or, more rarely, rhymed) aba. 
 
 Me comparo con el cuervo. 
 Todos visten de alegrfa : 
 Yo visto de luto negro. 
 
 I see myself as a crow. 
 
 All are wearing clothes of gladness : 
 
 Clothed in black mourning I go. 
 
 It is almost exclusively sung in the South. The Spanish 
 ear is so used to the square rhythm of the cuarteta that 
 the three-line rhythm produces an impression of unful- 
 filment rich in lyrical effect. There is a variety of solea, 
 the soLEARiYA or little solitude, in which the first line is 
 reduced to three syllables. The alegrIa, or " mirth " is 
 
 ' An excellent study of tliesc and other forms of coplas will be found 
 in an essay by D, Francisco Rodriguez Marin : 'La Copla, Bosijuejo de un 
 Estiidio Folk-16rico.^ 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 99 
 
 also a beautiful lyrical copla, composed of only two 
 lines, the first of five (or six), the second of ten (or eleven) 
 syllables. It is also a Southern form. The only form 
 which can almost compete with the cuarteta in the range 
 of its sway is the steguidilla, a graceful copla composed of 
 two unrhymed heptasyllabics (first and third) and two 
 assonanced (or rhymed) pentasyllables (second and fourth) . 
 
 Del polvo de la tierra Of the dust of the earth 
 
 Saco yo coplas. Can I make songs. 
 
 No bien se acaba una One is scarcely over, 
 
 Ya tengo otra. A new one comes. 
 
 It moves with a dancing rhythm and lends itself par- 
 ticularly well to the light-hearted and to the satirical 
 veins, abundant in Spanish popular lyrics. The seguidilla 
 is sometimes, though not always, followed by a refrain or 
 ESTRiBiLLO, which is another seguidilla, less its first line. 
 
 A la Cruz de la Encina To the Cross of the Oak 
 
 No vayas, primo. Don't go, my cousin, 
 
 Porque ya la paloma For in her nest the dove 
 
 No esta'n el nfo. You'll find no longer. 
 
 Primo, no vayas. Cousin, don't go, 
 
 Porque ya, la paloma For in her nest the dove 
 
 No esta'nde estaba. You'll find no more. 
 
 There is a variety of this copla, called seguidilla 
 GiTANA (gypsy). The following beautiful example may 
 stand with advantage in lieu of a tedious description : 
 
 La ovejita es blanca, The ewe lamb is white. 
 
 El prafto es verde. And the meadow, green, 
 
 Y el pastorcito — madre. And the little shepherd — oh 
 
 que la guarda mother, who guards her 
 
 Pe peniya muere. Is dying with grief, 
 
loo SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 This variety represents, as will be easily observed by 
 the example quoted, the return of the rhythm of mirth 
 and satire to the lyrical, plaintive tone which predomi- 
 nates in the South. For, despite their minute dimen- 
 sions, the poetical forms of our popular lyrics are definite, 
 complete and full of variety : instruments well built 
 and tuned for all the moods of the popular muse. 
 
 A second and an even more important cause of the 
 dramatic concentration of the copla is the admirable 
 energy of the Castilian language, that " stateliest of the 
 daughters of the Latin, not clipped and cut short like 
 the hungry French, which devours so many of its syllables, 
 not emasculated like the Italian, nor eviscerated like the 
 Portuguese."^ The Spanish people possess a deep in- 
 stinct of the intrinsic value of words, and, contrary to 
 what is the rule among the middle classes and even among 
 certain half-" cultured " popular classes, such as workers 
 in urban districts, they are sententious and measured in 
 their speech. For words are symbols of spiritual or in- 
 tellectual values just as money is a symbol of material 
 wealth, and the more meaning we put into words the 
 fewer words need we give away in token for the same 
 weight of meaning. It is enough to hear and see a Spanish 
 peasant speak such words as " un hombre," " un querer," 
 " una madre," in order to realise that he speaks in earnest 
 and with all the weight of a philosophy and all the im- 
 pulse of a manly will behind his words. There is a story 
 of an Andalucian " Capataz " (a foreman of farm 
 labourers) who met his landowner in the early hours of 
 the morning. It was in a season of severe drought and 
 4 little rain had fallen during the night. The landowner 
 
 »' CaWerfiHi' by Archbishop Trepch. 2nd ed, j886, P, 57, 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY loi 
 
 aslced : " Has it rained, Manuel ? " And the capataz 
 answered : " As for raining, raining, it did rain. But 
 raining, raining, what you call RAINING, it has not 
 rained." 
 
 The tale is an excellent example of that dramatic 
 instinct for language, which feels the living and concrete 
 meaning of the word as different from the dead abstrac- 
 tion pinned in the dictionary like a dead butterfly in a 
 collection. And this capacity for filling up words with 
 an over-meaning of sense and intention, this special 
 power of symbolisation, is the faculty which best explains 
 the dramatic and lyrical intensity of the copla. 
 
 For the copla, though dramatic in its exposition, is 
 generally lyrical in its spirit and effect. When the scene 
 is over, an emotion lingers in the air and, far from 
 vanishing, becomes deeper and deeper as the mind 
 penetrates into the intimate significance, the lyrical 
 soul of the song. Listen to this simple song, which 
 evokes an innocent, an almost childish seascape, painted 
 on the shores of the Mediterranean : 
 
 Ay, no hay nafta que ve, Lo, there is nothing to see, 
 
 Porque un barquiyo que For the little boat there was 
 
 habia 
 
 Tendi6 la vela y se fue. Spread its sails and went away. 
 
 The song will fly, and the sound of the voice will die 
 out. But you will be left musing, feeling the trail of 
 emotion left behind by the little boat that went away. 
 You will remember, not without regret, many a moment 
 of your life when things and people that " were there," 
 " spread their sails and went away," and you were left 
 alone, and looked about you with dim eyes and thinking 
 
102 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 that " there was nothing to see." For this copla, which 
 seems so simple and childish, is impregnated with the 
 essence of all departures and all farewells. 
 
 V 
 
 The capacity for concentrating in a few words the 
 quintessence of many moments and moods is an emi- 
 nently poetical virtue ; it implies creative power, for to 
 create, in art, is to put spirit into the matter of the art, 
 in this case, words. But it supposes also that quality of 
 the soul which we call delicacy, a veil that covers the 
 bareness of our feelings, hides away their crudeness and 
 gives them charm and esthetic value. The Spanish 
 people, even in their outbursts of most plebeian passion, 
 possess to an eminent degree this precious quality. 
 Witness the following typical coplas : 
 
 Ay, madre, que me lo han roto. 
 El cantarillo en la fuente. 
 Yo no siento el cantarillo 
 Sino que dirii la gente. 
 
 Ay de mf, que me han quitado 
 Una rosa siendo mfa. 
 La veo en manos de otro, 
 Marchita y descolorida. 
 
 Viendo que no me querfas 
 A un arroyuelo baje. 
 Of cantar a un jilguero. 
 A escucharle me pare. 
 
 Yo no digo que mi barca 
 Sea la mejor del puerto. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 103 
 
 Lo que sf digo es que tiene 
 Los mejores movimientos. 
 
 Oh, mother, they have broken 
 My pitcher at the fountain. 
 I do not mind the pitcher, 
 I mind what they will say. 
 
 Woe is me, for I am robbed 
 Of a rose that was my own. 
 I see it in other hands 
 Withered and its colour gone. 
 
 Seeing that you do not love me 
 I went towards a rivulet. 
 I heard a linnet singing there. 
 I stayed to hear it. 
 
 I do not say that my boat 
 Is the best in all the bay. 
 But that she is the most graceful 
 In her movements, I do say. 
 
 AU tjiese coplas are symbols of facts and situations 
 which remain veiled though not entirely concealed in 
 the song ; and it should be noted that this facility for 
 expressing ideas by means of symbols, or parables, im- 
 plies a rich poetical imagination not merely in the anony- 
 mous author who first sang the copla " out of his own 
 head," but also in his ever-growing audience and in 
 the people who adopt it and preserve it in the living 
 archives of their verbal tradition. There exists, then, 
 in the ranks of the Spanish people what amounts to a 
 spontaneous poetical culture which, self-ignorant though 
 
104 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 it is, is nevertheless a great national asset, both as a 
 creative and as a critical force. 
 
 This delicacy in the creation and the perception of 
 poetical symbols does not exclude strength. Far from 
 it, Spanish popular poetry often reveals a primitive 
 vigour and an almost barbaric virginity in the emotions 
 expressed. Its psychology is based on love, man-and- 
 woman love, and, in a lower but perhaps intenser key, 
 the love for the mother, an emotion deeply and gravely 
 felt by the Spanish popular muse. Curiously enough, 
 and perhaps unexpectedly for those who entertain but 
 superficial or second-hand ideas about the Spanish people, 
 the love copla is not particularly nor even predominantly 
 sensuous. True, it can express desire with its usual pith 
 and intensity : 
 
 Amantito, amantito, Sweet lover, oh sweet lover, 
 
 Amante, amante, When thee I sight, 
 
 Las pestanas me estorban Even my own eyelashes 
 
 Para mirarte. Are in my light. 
 
 Arrfaiate a mi querer. Come close to my love 
 
 Como las salamanquesas As lizards do to the wall. 
 Se arriman a la pared. 
 
 Cuando paso por tu vera 
 
 Y me rosa tu vestlo 
 
 Jasta Ids giiesos me tiemblan. 
 
 When I pass close by your side 
 The very touch of your dress 
 Makes my bones shake in my body. 
 
 But even in these cpplas intensity of feeling is attained 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 105 
 
 through a sobriety of expression which is in itself chaste, 
 and which would be sufficient to reveal the existence of 
 deep spiritual feelings, elevating and sanctifying carnal 
 love. Deeply loving, the Spanish people are chaste of 
 body and spirit. Their idea of love partakes of that 
 almost religious austerity which is one of the typical 
 features of the race, and sets it in a class apart not only 
 in the so-called Latin, but in the European world. Thus 
 numberless coplas of love turn on this idea that love is 
 a thing of the soul : 
 
 Aunque deje de mirarte, 
 i Que importa ver o no ver ? 
 Los gustos que son del alma 
 Tambien un ciego los ve. 
 
 i Para que vas preguntando 
 C6mo se quiere de veras ? 
 Si el querer esta en el alma 
 Y tii has nacido sin ella. 
 
 Though I may look at you no more, 
 What matters, see or not see I 
 Pleasures that are of the soul 
 Even a blind man can see. 
 
 Why do you go about asking 
 How to love with a love true ? 
 Love is a thing of the soul, 
 A soul never was in you. 
 
 In this last copla the idea is expressed with great clear- 
 ness. Love is a thing of the soul. This line is worthy of 
 standing by the most famous cuarteta in perhaps the most 
 
io6 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 famous play of Calderon, his admirable "Alcalde de 
 Zalamea " : 
 
 Al Rey la hacienda y la vida 
 
 Se ha de dar ; pero el honor 
 
 Es patrimonio del alma, 
 
 Y el alma s61o es de Dios. 
 
 To the King, our wealth and life 
 We shall give, if give we must. 
 But honour is the soul's patrimony, 
 And the soul belongs to God. 
 
 The central idea of this manly assertion of the rights 
 of the individual reappears as a frequent motive in many 
 a copla of love : 
 
 Me mandastes a decir 
 Que era tuya el alma mfa, 
 
 Y yo te mande a decir 
 
 Que era de Dios, tuya y mfa. 
 
 El coraz6n te dare, 
 Tambien te dare la vida, 
 
 Y el alma no te la doy 
 Porque esa prenda no es mfa. 
 
 Te quiero mas que a mi vida 
 
 Y mas que a mi coraz6n, 
 
 Y mas que al alma no digo 
 Porque se la debo a Dios. 
 
 Thou sent'st me a message 
 That my soul was thine. 
 And I answered thee 
 'Twas God's, thine and mine. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 107 
 
 I shall give you all my heart, 
 I shall give you all my life, 
 But my soul I shall not give you 
 For that treasure is not mine. 
 
 I love you more than my life, 
 I love you more than my heart. 
 I don't say more than my soul 
 For my soul I owe to God. 
 
 With this light in our mind we shall be able to pene- 
 trate into the exquisite obscurity of the following song, 
 which may be heard in the high valleys of the Asturian 
 Pyrenees : 
 
 Una nina bonita A pretty maid 
 
 Se asom6 a su balc6n. Leaned over her window. 
 
 Ella me pidi6 el ahaa, She asked for my soul, 
 
 Yo la df el coraz6n, I gave her my heart, 
 
 EUa me pidi6 el alma^ She asked for my soul, 
 
 Y yo la dije adi6s. And I said farewell. 
 
 All these examples are, I hope, amply suiEcient to 
 show that " love is a thing of the soul " for the Spanish 
 people. And that is why that curious word " querer," 
 which our people always use instead of both " amar," to 
 love, and " amor," love, has in their speech and poetry 
 so much strength, or as they would say with another 
 admirable word, so much " virtud." But doubts might 
 be entertained as to the sincerity of a feeling precisely 
 because it is so clearly and definitely expressed. In 
 matters of feeling, an indirect and incidental suggestion 
 is often more convincing than a plain and simple state- 
 ment. Spanish popular poetry abounds in such eloquent 
 
io8 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 sidelights, which leave no room for doubt as to the depth, 
 earnestness and spiritual character of love as understood 
 by the Spanish people : 
 
 Quiereme poco a poco 
 No te apresures, 
 Que lo que yo deseo 
 Es que me dure. 
 
 Tu querer y mi querer 
 Son como el agua del rio 
 Que atrds no pueden volver. 
 
 Tengo una cosa en mi pecho 
 Que a nadie se la dire. 
 Mortificare mi cuerpo 
 Por dark gusto al querer. 
 
 El querer es cuesta arriba, 
 El olvidar, cuesta abajo. 
 Cuesta arriba he de subir 
 Aunque me cueste trabajo. 
 
 Love me little by little, 
 Be not in haste 
 For I would have a love 
 That long may last. 
 
 They are, your love and my love, 
 Like the water of the river, 
 Backwards they never can flow. 
 
 I feel something in my breast 
 Which I shall never reveal. 
 I shall mortify my body 
 In order to please my love. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 109 
 
 Loving is up hill, 
 Down hill is forgetting. 
 Up hiU I shall go, 
 Though it be hard work. 
 
 These coplas, and many more, could not have been 
 created but under the inspiration of an idea of love as 
 far removed from the splendid, but somewhat bestial, 
 sensuality of Asia as from the bloodless abstractions of 
 medieval romance. But along with depth of feeling 
 Spanish coplas reveal a surprising degree of subtlety and 
 penetration. Songs can be found on nearly every possible 
 situation of mind or soul, from the simplest to the most 
 complex, from the primitive to the most refined, covering 
 an almost Shakespearean range- of character and psy- 
 chology. Here is a miniature Romeo and Juliet : 
 
 Como dos irboles somos 
 Que la suerte nos separa, 
 Con un camino por medio, 
 Pero se juntan las ramas. 
 
 Like two trees we are 
 By fate separated. 
 The road is between 
 But the boughs are mated. 
 
 Here is a miniature Hamlet : 
 
 El puente voy a pasar, The bridge I must cross over. 
 
 No se si lo pasare. I wonder whether I'll cross it. 
 
 Palabrita tengo dada, I have given my word, 
 
 No se si la cumplire. I wonder whether I'll hold it. 
 
 The following are remarkable, but by no means ex- 
 
no SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 ceptional, instances of complexity of thought and 
 situation : " 
 
 No se que pena es mas honda, 
 
 ^j la pena que se canta 
 I la pena que se llora. 
 
 I 
 
 Amante mfo del alma, 
 Donde ha habido siempre habrA. 
 Tus ojos quieren mirarme, 
 Dejalos con libertad. 
 
 No siento en el mundo mis 
 Que tener tan mal sonido, 
 Siendo de tan buen metal. 
 
 I know not which is more deep, 
 Whether the grief that we sing 
 Or else the grief we weep. 
 
 Lover, lover of my soul, 
 Where there was, there'll always be. 
 Your eyes want to look at mine, 
 Let them look in Uberty. 
 
 This thought I cannot endure 
 That ^y ring should be so bad 
 When my metal is so pure. 
 
 As for subtlety, the Spanish copla can sustain the com- 
 parison with the poems of those modern masters who 
 have, as it were, specialised in it. Maeterlinck is not 
 more elusively symbolical than the anonymous author of 
 the Asturian copla already quoted : 
 
 Una nina bonita , . , 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY iii 
 
 Poetical moods that seem created among tired, refined 
 civilisations, can be found now and then in coplas such 
 as the following : 
 
 Como se gasta una piedra As the water of the stream 
 
 En agua de una corriente Wears the stone day by day 
 
 Asf se me estd gastando So by loving you so much 
 
 EI coraz6n de quererte. I wear my heart away. 
 
 Cuando quise, no quisiste. You did not want, when I wanted. 
 
 Ahora que quieres, no Now I don't want, when you do, 
 
 quiero. 
 
 Gozards del amor triste You will enjoy a sad love 
 
 Como yo goze primero.^ Just as I did before you. 
 
 Dante G. Rossetti might have envied the delicacy of 
 touch in the treatment, and of inspiration in the theme, 
 of this beautiful Asturian song, so poetically wrapped in 
 the folds of its symbols : 
 
 Tengo de subir, subirj 
 Tengo de subir al puerto, 
 Aunque me cubra la nieve. 
 " Si la nieve resbala, 
 
 ^ I have my doubts as to the popular origin of this copla. It is too 
 well finished, rhymed throughout ababy instead of assonanced abcbj in the 
 real popular fashion. Yet, I need npt say that I fully endorse Sefior Ro- 
 driguez Marin's criterion on this matter. A copla is as "popular" when 
 adopted by the people as when created by them, and if and when the learned 
 poet strikes the papular note, to the point of succeeding in getting his copla 
 adopted by the people, he must be considered as one of the people. Nor is 
 it to be fancied that the people consider any learned song as worthy of the 
 honour of popular adoption. The curious reader will find t^o interesting 
 examples of " adoption " in Senor Rodriguez Marin's above-mentioned 
 essay, in both of which the coplas written by middle-class poets under- 
 went an anonymous transformation which greatly improved them both in 
 common sense and in literary value. 
 
112 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 i Que har4 la rosa f 
 Ya se va marchitando 
 La mas hermosa. 
 j Ay mi amor ! 
 Si la nieve resbala, 
 I Que hare yo f 
 
 Tango de subir al piierto, 
 Aunque me cubra la nieve, 
 Allf est4 la que yo <juiero. 
 Si la nieve resbala, 
 i Que hard el sendero f 
 Ya se va marchitando 
 La que yo quiero. 
 i Ay mi amor ! 
 Si la nieve resbala, 
 i Que hare yO ? 
 
 I must climb, must climb the hill, 
 
 I must climb up to the pass. 
 
 Though the snow may cover me. 
 
 If the snow should slide. 
 
 What will the rose do ? 
 
 The most beautiful one 
 
 Is beginning to wither. 
 
 Oh, my love ! 
 
 If the snow should slide 
 
 What shall I do ? 
 
 I must climb up the pass 
 Though the snow may cover me, 
 For there is she whom I love. 
 If the snow should slide 
 What will the path do i 
 She whom I love 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 113 
 
 Is beginning to wither. 
 Oh, my love ! 
 If the snow should slide 
 What shall I do ? 
 
 It is impossible to imagine any poetry more exquisitely 
 suggestive than this popular poetry grown wild among 
 the snow of the Asturian mountains, so closely akin to, 
 though wholly ignorant of, the art of MaeterUnck, 
 Rossetti and the symbolist school. And it may even be 
 of interest to remark that this curious variety of Spanish 
 popular lyricism is particularly to be found in regions 
 where earth and sky are grey, and the whole nature seems 
 to brood with Northern lightlessness. In its most typical 
 form, however, Spanish popular poetry is more primitive 
 and more profound, more direct and more penetrating, 
 and in its interpretation of nature and life, more virile 
 than the refined yet somewhat effeminate poetry of 
 modern symbolism. Its wealth of images is a byword and 
 -extends to all kinds of objects, alive or lifeless; astronomy: 
 
 Las estrellitas del cielo 
 Las cuento y no estdn cabales. 
 Faltan la tuya y la mfa 
 Que son las mis principales. 
 
 I count the stars of heaven, 
 Their number does not square. 
 Your star and mine are missing 
 And they are the most fair. 
 
 industry ; 
 
 Como los railitos del tren 
 
 Son tu carino y el mfo, 
 
 Porque van el uno juntito del otro, 
 
 T60 seguio, too segufo. 
 
114 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 Like the rails of a railway 
 
 Are your love and my love, 
 
 For they go together, each close to the other, 
 
 All the way, all the way. 
 
 and even domestic utensils, for the Spanish popular muse 
 is a busy housewife who sings while at work and is on 
 excellent terms with things familiar and useful : 
 
 Tus ojos son dos tinteros. Your eyes two ink-wells seem, 
 
 Tu nariz, pluma delgada. Your nose, a pen well cut. 
 
 Tus dientes, letra menuda. Your teeth are minute writing, 
 
 Tu pecho, carta cerrada. Your breast, a letter shut. 
 
 Notice how this copla, which begins with a somewhat 
 futile comparison, is redeemed by the grace of the image 
 in the third line, and by the really poetical thought of 
 the last. 
 
 VI 
 
 That facility for expressing itself in images which is 
 readily recognised in Spanish poetry is not due to mere 
 wanton and unguided imagination. Were they void of 
 a real and positive value as symbols of those invisible 
 links of natural sympathy which go from thing to thing 
 under the surfaceof appearances, metaphors would be 
 vain exercises of fancy and would lack that subtle power 
 they have for setting us in a brooding mood. No one 
 can find a just metaphor who is not possessed of a syn- 
 thetic sense of reality ; that is why metaphors rarely 
 visit men who are not poets — ^who seek them — or philoso- 
 phers — ^who run shy of them, unless they cover their faces 
 with ashes and call themselves ideas. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 115 
 
 The wealth of metaphors and images which shines in 
 the coplas is, therefore, a sure sign that the Spanish 
 people feel nature as poets, in its entirety. For them 
 " all is one and the same " : the stars, the earth, the sea, 
 animals, society and man are different forms of one 
 essence, which flows and transfigures itself under har- 
 monious laws. Possessed of this transcendent feeling of 
 unity, the deeper for being unconscious, the Spanish 
 anonymous and collective poet naturally reaches that 
 divine incoherence which is only attained by the greatest 
 of the poets of culture — ^an apparent incoherence, but 
 in truth the freedom of movement of those who feel 
 themselves guided by the spirit of things. It is this 
 supreme poetic gift which allows the poet to soar above 
 the hedges of logic, and to look at nature with the width 
 and loftiness of view which we like to fancy that birds 
 enjoy. There is many a soaring copla in the ever-growing 
 and living book of Spanish popular poetry : 
 
 Sarga la luna y alumbre Let the moon rise and illumine 
 Ei campo y los olivares. The fields and the olive-groves. 
 Este querer que yo tango This love that rises in me 
 De los reanos me sale. Springs from the depths of my 
 
 body. 
 
 But there is another aspect of this incoherence which 
 deserves to be noticed, namely the suggestion of the in- 
 finite complexity of things^ only reducible to a unity 
 in flashes of poetical vision. Hence that striking device 
 of the independent refrain which usually follows the 
 copla in most forms of Spanish popular music — ^"soleares," 
 " alegrias," and even the universal and primitive jota. 
 It is a copla in itself, wholly independent and irrelevant 
 
ii6 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 in its substance from the main one, yet by its very irrele- 
 vance rich in artistic effect, even when it does not add 
 a deep philosophic sense to the mood of the main current 
 of song, as is the case with the following delightful 
 refrain, often heard in Andalucia : 
 
 A mf se me da muy poco 
 Que un piijaro en la alamea 
 Se pasee de un arbo' a otro. 
 
 It matters little to me 
 
 That a bird among the poplars 
 
 Should flutter from tree to tree. 
 
 One thinks of Shakespeare and his admirable use of 
 apparently irrelevant songs (Ophelia's songs, for instance) 
 as lyrical commentary to his drama; but it is not only 
 in this that Shakespeare and the Spanish popular poets 
 can be compared ; it is also in their curious way of 
 bridging over the gulf between man and nature with 
 bold bridges of poetry : 
 
 Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 
 Thou art not so unkind 
 As man's ingratitude. . . , 
 
 Fuentecilla cristalina. Crystal-like spring, 
 
 Arroyuelo caudaloso, Deep-flowing brook, 
 
 Para dos que bien se quieren For loving couples 
 
 Caminos largos son cortos. Long roads are short. 
 
 A los irboles altos High trees are moved 
 
 Los mueve el viento. By wanton winds. 
 
 Y a los enamorados. Lovers are moved 
 
 El pensamiento, By thoughts and dreams, 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 117 
 
 El querer que me tenfas The love you once had for me 
 En una fuente qued6. By a spring you left one day. 
 
 Vino un fuerte remolino, A strong gust of wind blew sud- 
 denly, 
 Rama y tronco se llev6. Branch and stem it took away. 
 
 En el pozo mas hondo In the deepest well 
 
 De mi coraz6n, Of my heart I threw 
 
 Sembre una pasionera, Seed of passion-flower, 
 
 Cogf una pasi6n. And a passion grew. 
 
 But perhaps these examples will have brought to the 
 reader's mind the poems of that great English genius 
 whose poetry, more than any other, resembles in spirit 
 and form the poetry of the Spanish people. In his pure 
 and innocent individualism, in his courageous and lofty 
 amorality, in his disinterestedness and utter lack of mean- 
 ness, in that virility of his idea of love, so free and so 
 chaste, and lastly in his almost mystic feehng of reality, 
 William Blake is the poet whose spirit is in closest sym- 
 pathy with the spirit of Spain and her people. He sang 
 of innocence and experience, and his poetry is thus rich 
 in songs and in proverbs. The same words apply literally 
 to the poetry of the Spanish people, whose stock of love- 
 songs is no less wonderful than their stock of proverbs, 
 though less universally known through lack of a pedlar 
 of genius, like Sancho, to spread them over the earth. 
 Blake's world is the same as that of the Spanish coplas, 
 midway between the human soul and nature : 
 
 A flower was offered me, 
 
 Such a flower as May never bore. 
 But I said : " I've a pretty rose-tree," 
 
 And I passed the sweet flower o'er. 
 
ii8 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 Then I went to my pretty rose-tree, 
 To tend her by day and by night ; 
 
 But my rose turned away with jealousy 
 And her thorns were my only delight. 
 
 This is exactly the tone of the Spanish copla, and this is 
 its symbolism which sees in natural objects the most 
 complex states of mind, and speaks of trees and flowers 
 as if they were human beings : 
 
 Arbolito, te secaste, Little tree, you withered, 
 
 Teniendo la fuente al pie. Having the spring at your feet. 
 
 En el tronco la firmeza, Fortitude, in your stem, having, 
 
 Y en la ramita, el querer. And in your little branch, love. 
 
 That Blakeian exquisite delicacy in the choice of 
 symbols which veil, yet reveal, the mysteries of thought, 
 can be admired in Spanish coplas as well as in Blake's 
 poems. Thus it is easy to find three coplas to match 
 each of the three delightful stanzas of the following poem: 
 
 Never Seek to tell thy love, 
 
 Love that never told can be ; 
 For the gentle wind doth move 
 
 Silently, invisibly. 
 
 I told my love, I told my love, 
 
 I told her aU my heart. 
 Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears. 
 
 Ah ! she did depart ! 
 
 Soon after she was gone from me, 
 
 A traveller came by, 
 Silently, invisibly : 
 
 He took her with a sigh. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 119 
 
 The thought expressed in the first stanza appears in this 
 copla : 
 
 Que te quiero, bien lo That I love you, you know well. 
 
 Pero no lo comunico But nor you nor anybody 
 
 Ni contigo ni con nadie. I shall ever tell. 
 
 The admirable dramatic concentration of the second 
 stanza can be compared with that of a copla which has 
 already been quoted : 
 
 Anda, dfmelo andando, Come, say it while walking, 
 
 Dunelo andando. Say it while walking. 
 
 Que si tli llevas ihiedo For if you're fuU of fear 
 
 Yo voy temblando. I am all trembling. 
 
 And as for the ending, so deeply felt and so lightly ex- 
 pressed, here is a copla which need not fear a comparison 
 either in simplicity or in the ingenuous art of its com- 
 positioHj and is perhaps richer than Blake's own stanza 
 in freshness, colour and exquisite scent : 
 
 Ar pie del armendro I was at the foot of the almond- 
 
 estuve tree 
 
 Y no le cogf la flo. And did not take its blossom. 
 
 Asfn que m'arretir6 As soon as I went away 
 
 Otro lleg6 y la cogi6. A stranger came and took it. 
 
 The following lines might be thought to be by Blake : 
 
 Rose, if 1 did not "take thee 
 'Twas because I did not choose. 
 I slept under the rose-tree. 
 I had for my bed a rose. 
 
120 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 They are a literal translation o£ a Spanish popular song : 
 
 Rosa, si no te cogf 
 Fue porque no tuve gana. 
 Al pie del rosal dormf. 
 La rosa tuve por cama. 
 
 There is a tenderness worthy of Blake's " Songs of 
 Innocence " in this song : 
 
 Manzanita colorada Ruddy little apple 
 
 Que en el suelo te cogi, Whom I picked up, 
 
 Si no est^s enamorada, If thou art not in love 
 
 Enamorate de mi. Fall in love with me. 
 
 There is a wealth and an extravagance of imagination 
 worthy of the Blake of the " Auguries of Innocence " in 
 the gipsy curse set in this other copla : 
 
 Toitas las arafias negras May all the black spiders 
 
 Que estdn meitfa 'n sus nidos Hidden in their nests 
 
 Me pique 'n er coras6n Sting me in the heart 
 
 Si mi querer es fingfo. If my love is feigned. 
 
 And there is a philosophy of love worthy of the poet 
 who wrote " The Clod and the Pebble " in this little 
 poem of melancholy wisdom : 
 
 Tu querer es como el pozo 
 Que cuesta sacarle el agua. 
 Y el mlo es como la fueate, 
 Que ella sola se derrama. 
 
 Your love is a well, whose water 
 Must be with effort drawn up. 
 And mine is a spring, whose water 
 Of itself comes out. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 121 
 
 VII 
 
 Further quotation is unnecessary in order to establish 
 the close relationship between Blake's poetry and the 
 poetry of the Spanish people, and therefore the depth 
 and originahty of the philosophy which inspires the 
 copla. It is a philosophy wise in its acceptance of things 
 as they are, penetrating in its interpretation of the facts 
 of nature and their intimate connections ; which turns 
 to nature in search of the eternal answers to the eternal 
 questions and clasps with a brooch of poetry the cycle 
 that goes from liian to things and from things to man : 
 
 Del rosal sale la rosa. 
 De la maceta, el clavel. 
 Un padre crfa a una hija 
 Y no sabe para quien. 
 
 From the rose bush comes the rose. 
 From the flow'r-pot, the pink-bloom. 
 A father brings up a daughter 
 And he does not know for whom. 
 
 It is a philosophy that feels life in all its forms with that 
 human intensity which vibrates in the tortured lines of 
 Blake. 
 
 Cuando una mata se muere 
 
 Al tronco Uega el doler. 
 
 Las rafces lloran sangre, 
 
 De luto viste la flor. 
 
 When a plant dies 
 The pain reaches the stem, 
 The roots weep tears of blood, 
 The flower puts on mourning. 
 
122 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 It is a philosophy which, like that of Blake, is indifferent, 
 with the detachment of contemplative souls, to the 
 changes of worldly fortune — unstable, futile, and devoid 
 of all permanent sense. This indifference is often ex- 
 pressed in coplas as light and airy as fortune itself ; wit- 
 ness that refrain already quoted : 
 
 It matters little to me 
 
 That a bird among the poplars 
 
 Should flutter from tree to tree . . . 
 
 A sublime indifference towards worldly things which 
 borders on fatalism. There is no lack of fatalistic coplas, 
 some almost Asiatic in their passivity : 
 
 Las estrellas corren, corren . . . 
 Yd no tengo de correr. 
 Donde me pilla la noche 
 Allf tengo 'amanecer. 
 
 The stars run and run, 
 I need not run as they do. 
 Where night overtakes me 
 There I will see the dawn. 
 
 ■Others in which fatalism inspires faith and courage when 
 the aim is high enough, and no aim is higher than true 
 
 Cuando se quiere de veras 
 No se mira al qa€ 6iikn. 
 Quien tiene fe en el camino 
 No vuelve la vista atrSs. 
 
 The true lover is not daunted 
 By his neighbour's idle talk. 
 He who has faith in his road 
 Backwards never casts his eyes. 
 
SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 123 
 
 Yet fatalism is, perhaps, less essential an element of our 
 people's character than it is generally supposed. True, 
 it is there, and can be felt in the curious attitude of the 
 Spaniard towards life, acutely seen, accepted, but neither 
 approved nor disapproved, neither enjoyed nor suffered. 
 But in this attitude, fatalism is more like a hue or a 
 fleeting scent than like a constituent element. Let him 
 who would doubt it bear in mind how frequently appears 
 in Spanish literature, in the classics no less than in popular 
 songs, the theme of " Hombria," manliness, the over- 
 powering " Yo," iniposing his will over things, men, 
 and even destiny : 
 
 Lo que intento, logro. 
 Yo no me quejo 'e mi estrella. 
 Que yo no h.e intentado cosa 
 ' Que ilo me saiga con alia. 
 
 What I try, I conquer. 
 Of my star I don't complain. 
 I never aimed at a thing 
 Which I did not gain. 
 
 A restrained but forceful assertion of victoryr Here is, 
 in contrast, the stoic acceptance of defeat, not less manly 
 in its refusal of pity : 
 
 Niide me tenga dol6, 
 
 Que yo per mis propias manos 
 
 M'he bnscao mi perdisidn 
 
 Let no one pity me, 
 
 I, myself, with my own hands 
 
 Was the cause of my undoing. 
 
124 SPANISH POPULAR POETRY 
 
 And with stoicism it is well to close this sketch of 
 Spanish character as revealed by the songs of the Spanish 
 people. The senses look outward and see reality in the 
 world. The heart looks inwards and sees reality in the 
 soul. World and the soul are linked by poetry in a 
 fraternity of exile. But the manly spirit rises up against 
 adversity and fate, accepts life as it is, does not complain, 
 does not ask for pity. Thus went the thoughts of Seneca, 
 the Spanish Roman. Thus still run the thoughts of the 
 Spanish people, the people-poet, which knows how to 
 make of song its deepest philosophy : 
 
 El que qxdera cantar bien 
 Cante cuando tenga pena, 
 Que la misma pena le hace 
 Cantar bien aunque no sepa. 
 
 He who would care to sing well 
 Let him sing when grieved at heart, 
 I Though he know nothing of singing 
 Grief will take the place of art. 
 
THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 In the preface to his edition of Wordsworth's poems 
 (1879), Matthew Arnold made three observations which 
 still hold good to-day, viz. : 
 
 1. That Wordsworth was not recognised abroad as 
 what, in Matthew Arnold's opinion, he was, the greatest 
 English poet since Shakespeare and Milton and the 
 greatest in Europe after Moli^re and Goethe. 
 
 2. That there were Wordsworthians. This, I may add, 
 is a curious fact, and worthy of attention, though 
 Matthew Arnold refers to it incidentally and as a matter 
 of course. Why should there be Wordsworthians and 
 not Shakespeareans, Miltonians or SheUeyans ? And 
 moreover, why should Wordsworthians be so sensitive f 
 
 3. That Wordsworthians, even when ready to admit 
 that the poet dozed now and then, read everything he 
 wrote : 
 
 "But I am a Wordsworthian myscli I can read with 
 pleasure and edification Peter Bell, and the whole series of 
 Ecclesiastical Sonnets, and the address to Mr. Wilkinson's 
 Spade, and even the Thanksgiving Ode ; — everything of Words- 
 worth, I think, except Fandraconr and Jnlia." 
 
 Any attempt at interpreting Wordsworth must provide 
 a plausible explanation of these three persistent facts. 
 
 " If," wrote Matthew Arnold, " Wordsworth's place 
 among the poets who have appeared in tlie last two or 
 three centuries is after Shakespeare, Moliere, Milton, 
 Goethe, indeed, but before all the rest, then in time 
 Wordsworth will have his due. We shall recognise him 
 
 126 
 
THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 127 
 
 in his place, as we recognise Shakespeare and Milton; and 
 not only we ourselves shall. recognise him, but he will be 
 recognised by Europe also." 
 
 Up to the present day, however, this prophecy has not 
 come true. Nor is it possible to argue, with Matthew 
 Arnold, that Europe was slow also in recognising Shake- 
 speare and Milton, for present-day Europe has achieved 
 a unity of culture unknown in Matthew Arnold's time, 
 let alone in that of the " Biographie Universelle," which 
 he quotes as an example of foreign inability to under- 
 stand Shakespeare. Nowadays the relatively small com- 
 munity of men of letters who study and speak for Europe 
 cannot be said to be hindered by any provincialism of 
 taste in their estimate of an English poet. English is 
 one of the three or four great languages of the world. 
 It is not the veil of ignorance which stands between the 
 world and Wordsworth's glory. If then Europe has not 
 yet " recognised " Wordsworth, it is perhaps not too 
 rash to assume that she never will. We are then con- 
 fronted with a question of fact. In England, a con- 
 siderable body of literary opinion, following Matthew 
 Arnold, holds Wordsworth a glorious third after Shake- 
 speare and Milton. In Europe, Wordsworth is hardly 
 known to the reading many and is not considered as a 
 universal poet by the discerning few. A consistent in- 
 terpretation of his work and character may perhaps pro- 
 vide an explanation of this discrepancy as well as of the 
 two other facts observed by Matthew Arnold and which 
 form with it the Case of Wordsworth. 
 
 Universal fame goes to the powerful. Power is the 
 magnet which draws admiration towards such dissimilar 
 
128 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 figujes as iEschylus, Hern^n Cort6s and Newton. But 
 power may reside in the will, and govern men and things, 
 and then its road to glory is through action ; or it may 
 reside in the spirit, and then its road to glory is one of 
 the three avenues which lead to the Absolute — ^the True, 
 the Good, the Beautiful. 
 
 It is too readily assumed that the True, the Good and 
 the Beautiful are one and the same thing. They are. 
 We want them to be. We passionately want them to be, 
 and that is why we keep proving it through ages of 
 philosophy. But even ij they are, even though they are, 
 one and the same thing, it is only in the Infinite, parallel 
 ideas that meet in the lap of God as verticals meet in the 
 centre of the earth. And, even as geometrically parallel 
 lines, they never meet for practical purposes. 
 
 It is the mark of our limitation that we cannot achieve 
 within ourselves the ideal synthesis of the three essences 
 of the spirit, and that all our attempts are doomed to 
 result in confusion, error and ugliness. Yet the three 
 essences are present in all of us, though in varying 
 degrees, and in most of us one of them predominates, to 
 the prejudice, be it noted, not to the advantage, of the 
 other two. Thus our character will be influenced by a 
 predominant sense of beauty, or of truth, or of virtue, 
 and, -whatever philosophy may say, instinct and experi- 
 ence show that each of these three types possesses pro- 
 nounced features not merely different from, but even in 
 opposition to, those of the other two. With some ex- 
 ceptionally gifted children of nature the influence of 
 one of the three essences of the spirit is so strong that 
 their being is overbalanced. They are the predestined, 
 the Princes of the Spirit, Poets, Philosophers, Saints. 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 
 
 oh ! many are the poets that are sown 
 
 By nature ; men endowed with highest gifts. 
 
 The vision and the faculty divine, 
 
 Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse. 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 A POET is a worshipper of Beauty. There is no true 
 worship without faith. A poet is. therefore a^man who 
 has put his faith in Beauty. Beauty is the star that guides 
 his steps and he needs no other Hght. Other things 
 equal, the purer his devotion to Beauty, the greater the 
 poet. It is only by strict fidelity to one of the three 
 stars of the spirit that genius can achieve entire freedom 
 over time and space, incident and circumstance, and 
 make his kingdom as wide as the world and as lasting as 
 life. Just as our eyes transform into light all sensations, 
 so a poet transforrns into beauty all experience. He is 
 in the midst of nature like a sonorous echo, 
 
 Mon ame aux mille voix que le Dieu que j'adore 
 Mit au centre de tout comme un echo sonore, 
 
 an echo open to all voices, vibrating to all sounds. He is 
 content to sing, and he leaves to nature the task of har- 
 monising his songs with the movements of the stars and 
 the actions of men. 
 
 This does not mean that the poet is not to have a 
 synthetic intuition of the world. Such an intuition is, 
 on the contrary, the very ground in which the poetic 
 K 129 
 
I30 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 faculty takes root. It may indeed be noticed that in 
 current speech the word Poet often means little else than 
 a person possessing that vision which can embrace the 
 world as a whole. Wordsworth used the word in that 
 sense when he said : 
 
 Oh ! many are the poets that are sown 
 
 By nature ; men endowed with highest gifts, 
 
 The vision and the faculty divine, 
 
 Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse.^ 
 
 And provided the last line is properly interpreted, this 
 passage is a not inadequate description of Wordsworth 
 himself. 
 
 In this first and somewhat vague sense, Wordsworth 
 is indeed one of the great poets of the world. His mind 
 and soul, even his senses, seem to be steeped in the feeling 
 of the unity of things. He means nothing else when he 
 says ; 
 
 To every natural form, rock, fruits, or flower, 
 Even the loose stones that cover the highway, 
 I gave a moral life ; 
 
 which is merely another formula for what he expresses 
 much better two lines below : 
 
 and all 
 That I beheld respired with inward meaning.^ 
 
 It is in this that he was greatest. He was endowed with 
 " the vision and the faculty divine " of seeing the inward 
 relations between natural things, v^hether human, animal 
 or inanimate, and therefore, of looking at the meanest 
 flower that blows with an eye and a mind that had in 
 them the image of the whole world. His thought was 
 
 I "Excursion." 2 "Prelude;, jrd book, 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 131 
 
 high and vast. He is a star of the first magnitude in the 
 English literary firmament. For the greatness of a writer 
 must be measured by the breadth and spaciousness of 
 his sphere of work. The two master qualities of literary 
 greatness are imagination and power. Imagination is the 
 light that enlarges our world. Power sustains our wings 
 and allows us to carry achievement as far as vision has 
 carried desire. Power and imagination are as it were the 
 body and the soul of greatness. Wordsworth was rich in 
 both, and his work is a great work. It has spaciousness. 
 It has elevation. Here and there it has depth. And it 
 is full of life, not merely of the amorphous substance of 
 life, but of the infinite number of creatures, stars and 
 flowers and stones, mountains and valleys, seas and 
 rivers and a multitude of human beings. It is indeed a 
 work so spacious and peopled that one might think it a 
 world, like that of Shakespeare or Lope de Vega. Yet, 
 it is not a world, but a picture. And why ? Because all 
 these creatures are looking the same way, like cattle at 
 sunset. 
 
 ) . . . 
 
 It is here, in my opinion, that Wordsworth's claim to 
 
 count as a great poet fails. For a great poet in the real 
 and complete sense of the word is not merely a writer 
 endowed with the vision and the faculty divine, but a 
 creator capable of growing from this soil of intuition 
 flowers of art, creations living a life of their own and 
 therefore reflecting in their variety the divine variety of 
 nature. That Wordsworth might have been such a 
 creator there is not the slightest doubt. The man who 
 cpuld write the " Lucy " sequence and sonnets like 
 
132 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 " Mutability " or " Surprised by Joy . . ." was born to 
 be a poet. Yet, he failed to live up to his gifts, and left 
 but a few genuine poems lost in an imposing work of an 
 essentially unpoetical character. 
 
 The usual accusation against Wordsworth is that he 
 endeavoured to write poetry on " trivial " or " low " 
 incidents, and, despite his own and many more brilliant 
 defences of his doctrine and practice, this opinion still 
 survives. It is of course untenable. The sun will turn 
 into a diamond the humblest pebble on the road. Poetry 
 will turn to beauty the " lowest " and most " trivial " 
 fact. Neither this dispute on the subject, nor the 
 " poetic diction " dispute on the language, of poetry, are, 
 I venture to think, in the least helpful towards the eluci- 
 dation of the case of Wordsworth. Language and sub- 
 ject are after all but accidents in poetry. The essence of 
 poetry is the mood, and it is only by an examination of 
 the mood in which Wordsworth wrote that we can hope 
 to arrive at an understanding of his work. 
 
 It must, however, be pointed out that Wordsworth's 
 opinions on the subjects fit for poetry were not so far 
 from those of his opponents as might be thought. When 
 attacked by parodists and such-like literary insects on 
 account of his simplicity of diction, he quoted Dr. 
 Johnson's stanza : 
 
 I put my hat upon my head 
 And walked into the Strand, 
 And there I met another man 
 Whose hat was in his hand. 
 
 And, comparing it with a stanza from " The Babes in the 
 Wpod," which he gives a§ " admirable," he concludes ; 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 133 
 
 " Whence arises this difference ? Not from the metre, not 
 from the language, not from the order of the words ; but the 
 matter expressed in Dr. Johnson's stanza is contemptible."^ 
 
 Now, there is a Spanish popular song, quite a little poem, 
 which differs very little in its matter from Dr. Johnson's 
 lines : 
 
 Por la calle abajito 
 
 Va quien yo quiero. 
 No le veo la cara 
 
 Por el sombrero.^ 
 
 Whence arises this difference f may we ask again. Merely 
 from the mood. Dr. Johnson wrote his quatrain in the 
 mood of a very poor parodist. The unknown girl who 
 first sang the little song was in love, and saw her lover 
 pass in the street, and tried this way and that to see his 
 face and gave it up because his hat was in her light. It 
 may be argued that there is here a considerable difference 
 in matter, but it is only inasmuch as it is a difference in 
 mood that it affects the poetical value of the poems com- 
 pared. 
 
 I have quoted this Spanish song as an example because 
 Spanish popular poetry succeeds — ^without attempting — 
 in achieving what Wordsworth attempted without suc- 
 cess. Spanish popular poetry answers all the requirements 
 of Wordsworth's theory. It is cast in the simplest 
 
 ' Preface to the second edition of 'Lyrical Ballads' (1800). Cf, several 
 lines above in the same Preface : "... I may have written upon un- 
 worthy subjects." 
 
 ' Literally : Down the street goes my lover ; 
 
 I cannot see his face under his hat. 
 
134 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 possible diction, being expressed for, hy and in the 
 language of the people ; it dwells on everyday events 
 and describes everyday scenes in simple and even homely 
 images ; and, beyond the usual religious beliefs which 
 can hardly be ,called supernatural, it never appeals to the 
 weird, the fantastic, the unknown or the fabulous. Yet, 
 though coincident in theory, it contrasts in practice with 
 Wordsworth's own work, and particularly with his Lyrical 
 Ballads, in its sobriety, its severe yet effective concision 
 of detail, its absence of pleading, its extreme variety of 
 tone and feeling and that exquisite sensation of complete- 
 ness, both of form and substance, which it produces, and 
 which is only comparable to the harmony of a perfect 
 musical chord. 
 
 Here again the difference is one of mood. There is a 
 certain similarity of attitude between Wordsworth and 
 the Spanish anonymous popular poets : a quiet, long 
 gaze at nature seems to be the starting-point in either 
 case. But the Englishman loses in poetical inspiration 
 by all the wealth of his ever-active and purposeful in- 
 tellect. Humble and simple, the Spaniards leave their 
 intellect at rest, or, better, limit its activities to the 
 menial function which it must always fulfil in the house 
 of the poet, while they look and listen to the ebb and 
 flow between nature and their soul. The Englishman, 
 roseau pensant, cannot prevent his thought froni deflect- 
 ing the flow into pregrooved channels. The flow, thus 
 deflected, cools down, and inspiration dies. 
 
 It was Matthew Arnold who said that " in Words- 
 worth's case, the accident, for so it may almost be called, 
 of inspiration, is of peculiar importance." The fact is 
 that the mood in which Wordsworth wrote made inspira- 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 135 
 
 tion a very unlikely accident indeed. No poet ever wrote 
 under so close a watch of his conscious self. His intellect 
 never loosened its grip over his creative soul. All through 
 his work we can see the cold glare of his eye contemplating 
 the agitation below as the eye of a general his regiments 
 in battle. A word of explanation is perhaps needed here 
 since Wordsworth has usually been represented precisely 
 as the champion of instinct against intellect in poetry. 
 The origin of this, to my mind, mistaken opinion is that, 
 mainly as a reaction against his own Godwinian adven- 
 ture, Wordsworth in his prose and verse often preached 
 the superiority of intuition and natural promptings over 
 mere reason. But when studying a poet we are not 
 concerned with his views so much as with his works. It 
 is not his theory but his practice that matters. One of 
 Wordsworth's most brilliant commentators gives the 
 following poem as an illustration of his anti-intellec- 
 tualism : 
 
 Books ! 'tis a dull and endless strife : 
 Come, hear the woodland linnet, 
 How sweet his music ! on my life. 
 There's more of wisdom in it. 
 
 And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings ! 
 He, too, is no mean preacher : 
 Come forth into the light of things. 
 Let nature be your teacher. 
 
 She has a world of ready wealtn. 
 Our minds and hearts to bless — 
 Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health. 
 Truth breathed by cheerfulness. 
 
136 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can. 
 
 Sweet is the lore which nature brings ; 
 Our meddling intellect 
 Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things :— 
 We murder to dissect. 
 
 This poem, excellent as a profession of Wordsworth's 
 anti-intellectual faith, is still better as an illustration of 
 his intellectualist practice. It is written in the brain. It 
 is full of teaching and preaching. It is not nature, but 
 nature through the " meddling " intellect. So were in 
 a greater or lesser degree, but always predominantly, all 
 but a handful of the poems which Wordsworth wrote. 
 That is why, rather than a great poet, he is an impressive 
 quarry of poetical ore which remains hard and cold for 
 lack of the fire of inspiration.^ 
 
 ' There is a page in Wordsworth'i ' Observations to the Second Edition 
 of the Lyrical Ballads' which is truly illuminating as to his ideas on 
 poetry. It is his famous definition of the poet : — 
 
 '* He is a man speaking to men ; a man, it is true, endued with more 
 lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater know- 
 ledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to 
 be common among mankind ; a man pleased with his own passions and 
 volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life 
 that is in him ; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as 
 manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to 
 create them where he does not find them. To these qualities he has added 
 a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if 
 they were present ; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which 
 are indeed far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet 
 (especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and 
 delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by real events 
 than any thing which, from the motions of their own minds merely, other 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 137 
 
 An important consequence is that Wordsworth's 
 poetry usually lacks that unity of form which only in- 
 spiration can give. His poems are not born one, but put 
 together. His form, therefore, is " patchy," firm and 
 set modellings emerging here and there from a shapeless 
 mass, as if the matter had been cast in broken or incom- 
 plete moulds. Thus, in one of his best poems he can 
 write such lines as : 
 
 This child I to myself will take 
 
 and, after a line of deplorable and inharmonious padding, 
 set one of his finest gems : 
 
 Nor shall she fail to see 
 
 Even in the motions of the storm 
 
 Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 
 
 By silent sympathy. 
 
 His craftsmanship has been condemned even by 
 Wordsworthians. But he can be a good craftsman when 
 inspired. There is something here worse than a failure 
 
 men are accustomed to feel in themselves ; whence, and from practice, he 
 has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks 
 and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own 
 choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without im- 
 mediate external excitement." 
 
 There is not too much " power in expressing what he thinks and feels " 
 in this remarkable passage, which is perhaps a better definition of Words- 
 worth than of **the Poet." And not the least remarkable feature of it is 
 the complete absence of the one element without which " the Poet " is not 
 a poet, namely, inspiration. Another similar page occurs in the Preface to 
 the Poems, published by Wordsworth in 1815, In this Preface the author 
 enumerates **the powers requisite for the production of poetry," which in 
 his view are : Observation and Description ; Sensibility ; Reflection ; 
 Imagination and Fancy ; Invention and Judgment. * ' Sensibility to the har- 
 mony of numbers" and "the power of producing it" are relegated to 
 a footnote as "invariably attendants upon the faculties above specified." 
 Inspiration is not mentioned, not even incidentally. 
 
138 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 in craftsmanship. The poet, after all, gives form to his 
 works in no other wise than does the blacksmith. He 
 hammers on and, when a shape is faulty, he softens the 
 matter at the fire of his inspiration and hammers on again. 
 Craftsmanship is of no avail if the fire of inspiration 
 is out.^ 
 
 It seldom burns for long in Wordsworth. The sense 
 of exhilaration which it creates — ^not merely in the spirit, 
 but in the very body of the poet — ^manifests itself in 
 rhythm. Wordsworth is the poorest in rhythm of all 
 great English poets. Indeed, that is not saying enough, 
 for English poetry is exceptionally rich in rhythm. It 
 is doubtful whether Wordsworth had even a clear idea 
 of what rhythm is. Whenever he theorises on poetry, 
 he refers only to rhyme and metre. Now, metre is to 
 rhythm what the seven notes of the piano are to music, 
 or the five lines of the score to the notes printed on them. 
 Wordsworth does not seem to have understood the 
 difference between the " score " of metrical arrangements, 
 conventional though based on natural laws, and the 
 spontaneous song of rhythm playing on it. This is a 
 hard saying and one which cannot be advanced without 
 difiidence. Yet, it is not easy to interpret otherwise the 
 lack of rhythm, or worse stiU, of correspondence between 
 rhythm and matter, in his writings, and the direct evi- 
 
 ^ Readers of Dorothy Wordsworth*3 Journals are familiar with the 
 frequent compassionate notes of the devoted sister on "poor William" 
 who has "tired himself out with composition." He evidently applied all 
 his strength of will, which was great and unremitting, to the terrible task 
 of hammering cold iron into shape. V/c owe to Miss Wordsworth a delight- 
 fully naVve little revelation which sheds much light on Wordsworth's 
 habits of composition : — 
 
 " William tired himself with seeking an epithet for the cuckoo " 
 (Friday, 14th May, 1S02). 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 139 
 
 dence on the subject which he left in his prose works. 
 It will be remembered that in his famous criticism of 
 Gray's sonnet,^ referring to the lines : 
 
 I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear 
 And weep the more because I weep in vain, 
 he says : 
 
 " It will easily be perceived that the only part of this sonnet 
 which is of any value is the lines printed in italics ; it is 
 equally obvious that, except in the rhyme, and in the use of 
 the single word ' fruitless ' for fruitlessly, which is so far a 
 defect, the language of these Unes does in no respect differ 
 from that of prose." 
 
 This example goes far to show that Wordsworth was 
 deaf to rhythm and saw nothing in poetry but metre and 
 rhyme, and that " harmony in numbers " which derives 
 from the mere flow of language between the banks of 
 metre. But, if there were any doubt as to what he meant 
 by this word metre, so often under his pen, metre, as he 
 says, " regulated by strict laws," he has left numerous 
 passages, any one of which should suffice to prove that 
 he did not realise the existence in poetry of a spontaneous 
 and substantial element of music above the adventitious 
 and instrumental element of metrical arrangements. 
 Thus, he has an ingenious theory of the soothing effect 
 of the " continual and regular impulses of pleasurable 
 surprise from the metrical arrangement " which he gives 
 as proof of the utility of metre to make more bearable 
 " the most pathetic scenes " of Shakespeare. He thinks 
 of metre as of a merely adventitious element which the 
 writer can if he so desires " superadd " (the very word is 
 a final argument). He says as much in as clear a language 
 
 ' "Observations to the Second Edition of the Lyrical Ballads.'' 
 
140 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 as we can desire. " Metre is but adventitious to compo- 
 sition." Or, " Now, supposing for a moment that what- 
 ever is interesting in these objects may be as vividly de- 
 scribed in prose, why am I to be condemned if to such 
 description I have endeavoured to superadd the charm 
 which by the consent of all nations is acknowledged to 
 exist in metrical language ? " And again : " To this 
 language [that of the earliest poets] it is probable that 
 metre of some sort or other was early superadded." 
 
 He thought apparently that the word singing applied 
 to poets was a metaphor and does not seem to have sus- 
 pected its accurate and literal meaning as truly and as 
 soberly descriptive of poetry as of music. ^ He has been 
 
 ^ Wordsworth treats this subject in his 1815 Preface. His statements 
 as to the relations between music and poetry are : (a) That "Epic Poets, 
 in order that their mode of composition ma/ accord with the elevation of 
 their subject, represent themselves as singing from the inspiration of the 
 Muse , . . but this is a fiction, in modern times, of slight value : the 
 'Iliad' or the 'Paradise Lost' would gain little in our estimation by being 
 chanted. The other poets who belong to this class [the Narrative] are 
 commonly content to tell their tale j so that of the whole it may be 
 affirmed that they neither require nor reject the accompaniment of music." 
 (4) " The Lyrical [form of poetry], containing the Hymn, the Ode, the Elegy, 
 the Song and the Ballad ; in all of which, for the production of their full 
 effect, an accompaniment of music is indispensable." (c) That "Poems, 
 however humble in their kind, if they be good in that kind, cannot read 
 themselves ; the law of long syllable and short must not be so inflexible — 
 the letter of metre must~hot be so impassive to the spirit of versifica- 
 tion — as to deprive the reader of all voluntary power to modulate, in sub- 
 ordination to the sense, the music of the poem. . . . But, though the 
 accompaniment of a musical instrument be frequently dispensed with, the 
 true Poet does not therefore abandon his privilege distinct from that of the 
 mere Prpseman — 
 
 ' He murmurs near the running brooks 
 A music sweeter than their own.' " 
 
 It is only in {c) that Wordsworth seems to come near to the under- 
 standing of the rhythm that dances on the stage of metre, but he obviously 
 clings to his idea that music is an afterthought in poetical creation instead 
 of the very substance of it. 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 141 
 
 compared with Milton, and undoubtedly Wordsworth's 
 voice has a sound not unlike that of Milton's voice. 
 Dorothy Wordsworth has left us as good an explanation 
 of this as we could wish. " William wrote two sonnets on 
 Buonaparte, after I had read Milton's sonnets to him."^ 
 Wordsworth, however, speaks (when he does not talk), 
 admonishes, advises, warns, tells, muses, but he never 
 sings : while no poet, even in England, was better de- 
 scribed than the immortal master of "Paradise Lost," 
 " Lycidas," and the Sonnets, in the words of Verlaine's 
 " Art Poetique." 
 
 De la musique avant toute chose. 
 
 With him we are far from that poor, mechanical concep- 
 tion of metre which Wordsworth never surpassed in theory 
 and seldom in practice. We have to go to the masters 
 of music, to Bach himself, in order to find a fit com- 
 parison to that perfect opening of his great elegy : 
 
 Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more 
 Ye myrtles brown. . . . 
 
 It cannot be counted against Wordsworth that he never 
 sang in such great yet exquisite tones, but the reproach is 
 legitimate that he lived all his life face to face with nature 
 without ever trying to sing it. He describes or relates 
 by a series of external touches of detail which grip the 
 mind at too many points to let it vibrate ; for the mind 
 is like a crystal bowl that rings only when lightly, touched. 
 He has written songs, that is, words for tunes already 
 existing. He could also write good echoes of Milton, to 
 
 ^ Friday, May 2ist, 1802. C/i "I have been . . . repeating some of 
 his Bonnets to him, listening to his own repeating, reading some of Milton's 
 gnd the '^llegto' and ' Penseroso.' " D, W. J., December z+thj 1892, 
 
142 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 whose voice he often listened with his usual application 
 and industry and with a lofty spirit not unlike the master's 
 own. The elevation of his thought and the sustained 
 power of his delivery achieve in his longer works a 
 " harmony in numbers " truly eloquent. But his only 
 original and personal rhythm is that of the walker. 
 Matthew Arnold gives as an example of his " charac- 
 teristic form of expression " the following line from 
 " Michael " : 
 
 And never lifted up a single stone. 
 
 This line is characteristic not merely for its somewhat 
 bare though noble simplicity, but also for its rhythm. 
 It is the walking pace, the pace of the Wanderer. There 
 is in Wordsworth too much composure, too much respec- 
 tability, he is too much like a British gentleman in his 
 Sunday clothes to admit of any other gait than the 
 sober, steady, sure-footed walking. It is the dominant 
 rhythm of his mind, that mind of his which wiU not 
 spare the reader one single step in reasoning, description 
 or narrative. It regulates the progress of aU his verse, 
 and it is never more triumphant than in the rare cases 
 when he tries to venture into more agitated or fanciful 
 movements. A case in point is his " Skylark." He 
 begins on a forced note, false and too buoyant : 
 
 Up with me ! up with me into the clouds ! 
 
 It is the false elation of an elderly clergyman trying to 
 be playful with the schoolboys. We hear him falling* 
 heavily on the grass in the second line : 
 
 for thy son|, lark, is strong, 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 143 
 
 Yet he tries again, and for thirteen lines does his best to 
 shout himself into the clouds with no better success ; 
 then, his buoyancy exhausted, he falls back into the 
 talking mood and resigns himself to walking again : 
 
 I, with my fate contented, will plod on. 
 
 The contrast with a really poetical treatment of the 
 same subject may be measured by merely comparing 
 Wordsworth's first line with the first line of Shelley's 
 " Skylark." 
 
 Up with me ! up with me into the clouds ! 
 
 fails to express what it says. Shelley, without saying any- 
 thing about it, succeeds in expressing that skyward yearn- 
 ing which the contemplation of the skylark awakes 
 in the poet's soul. He says anything, no matter what, 
 but in words so thin, unearthly, weightless, that they 
 instantly fly to heaven like an arrow of light : 
 
 Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! 
 
 How natural and spontaneous, yet how much more 
 effective than Wordsworth's forced and willed lyricism ! 
 To my mind, a similar objection, namely, that it is written 
 in a mood of forced and self-conscious exaltation, may 
 be raised against the famous ode. It is, properly speaking, 
 a dissertation on immortality based on recollections of 
 early childhood, to which metre has been " superadded." 
 When we turn from the first line of any other great 
 English ode. 
 
 Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness . . . 
 
 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being . . , 
 
 Reason of mists and mellow fruitfulness . , , 
 
144 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 when we turn from these first lines which might just as 
 well be called " first bars " of great English odes, to the 
 first line of Wordsworth's own ode : 
 
 There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream . . . 
 
 we are struck by the difference between the song and the 
 tale. This beginning is but a statement of fact, clothed 
 though it is in rhetorical array. As we proceed, our im- 
 pression grows that the poet is outside his poem. He is 
 not at the same time the subject and the object of his 
 song. He is not sung through, played by, the muses. He 
 is using his poem for a purpose. His images are in 
 reality but illustrations of a theory. He has something 
 to explain. How could he sing ? True, he says : 
 
 My heart is at your festival. 
 My head hath its coronal. 
 The fullness of your bliss I feel, I feel it all, 
 
 but he wears his coronal at home, and it is through the 
 window of his study that he sees 
 
 the young lamb's bound 
 As to the tabor's sound, 
 
 and it is at his desk that he writes that cold, flat line : 
 
 In years that bring the philosophic mind, 
 
 the most abrupt fall that ever broke the back of an ode. 
 An ode is a poem, and a poem is a flow of feeling with an 
 undercurrent of thought, while in this rhymed essay 
 thoughts and moods are not blended, but the line of 
 thought, settled beforehand, determines the sequence of 
 the moods in order to suit the argument. This excess 
 gf intellectual cpijtrpl was to a considerable ej^tent the 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 145 
 
 cause of the poverty and rigidity of Wordsworth's 
 rhythm. 
 
 Hence, in spite of his marvellous gifts, his failure as a 
 poet of nature. He was a good observer and knew and 
 loved nature as it has never been known or loved before 
 or since. He was therefore able to reproduce this or 
 that movement, this or that murmur, this or that sound,^ 
 but he could not symfhonise his impressions and merge 
 them into the harmony of one eternal instant. He could 
 not express a moment of nature with that admirable 
 fidelity of emotional interpretation, that perfect fitness 
 of tune and tone, music and mood, which Collins 
 achieved once in his Ode to Elvening. He never attained 
 the unsought-for art of rendering the moods of nature 
 by rhythms of the poet's own singing. This power which 
 allows poetry to interpret nature with the most exquisite, 
 yet spontaneous accuracy, is a free gift of the muses. 
 The poet finds it in his song without having striven for 
 it. It is the reward of his unreserved devotion to Beauty, 
 of his absolute self-surrender to inspiration. When 
 Wordsworth writes : 
 
 Sweetest melodies 
 Are those that are by distance made more sweet 
 
 he is speaking, though in " metre," and conveying to 
 the reader a piece of information. (In actual fact, as 
 will be seen by a perusal of the poem, " Personal Talk," 
 he is arguing) But whep Keats writes : 
 
 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
 Are sweeter. . . . 
 
 ' Thus the "tinkled like iron" of his often quoted skating scene. 
 L 
 
146 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 he is singing. And he sings so well that his muse rewards 
 him with a most marvellous find o£ rhythmical intuition. 
 For in this phrase,, in the interlacing of heard and un- 
 heard with sweet and sweeter and the placing of these 
 words at the points of main stress, in the prolongation of 
 the line over the beginning of the following line, a pro- 
 longation " harmonised " by that of sweet into sweeter, 
 and in I know not what subtle rhythmical sympathy 
 which pervades it all, there is a most haunting suggestion 
 of the " leaf fringed " decoration which festoons round 
 the Grecian urn. The impression is heightened by the 
 proximity of the festooning sentence to the series of 
 questions which end the previous stanza. This series is 
 an admirable rhythmical rendering of the motif of gods 
 and maidens loth dancing round the vase. No more 
 faithful rendering of the dancing figures could be 
 dreamt than that succession of loose, yet connected in- 
 terrogating sentences, bounding one after the other in 
 " mad pursuit " : 
 
 What men or gods are these ? What maidens loth ? 
 What mad pursuit f What struggle to escape ? 
 What pipes and timbrels ? What wild extasy ? 
 
 There is the scene. It is not described. It is not inter- 
 preted. It is there, dancing before our eyes. 
 
 Scores of similar cases of rhythmical intuition might 
 be gleaned here and there in the rich fields of English 
 poetry. This phrase : 
 
 . . . Pourest thy full heart 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art 
 
 is not a description of the skylark singing, but the bird's 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 147 
 
 own song, rhythmically guessed by the poet. When 
 Shakespeare sings : 
 
 That time of year thou may'st in me behold 
 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold . . . 
 
 the broken rhythm of his second line — or none, or few . . . 
 — ^suggests the leaf here and the leaf there that remain 
 hanging in late autumn, witness of the foliage lost. And 
 in that Ode to the West Wind, every line of which might 
 be quoted here for its rhythmical significance, how truly 
 felt and rendered the flight of leaf "after leaf after leaf 
 in this succession of epithets : 
 
 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
 
 suddenly gathered together by the wind in one heap as 
 the whole weight of the next sentence is gathered and 
 heaped in its first syllable : 
 
 Pestilence-stricken multitudes ! , . . 
 
 We shall look in vain for such gleams of intuition in 
 Wordsworth, and the reason is that in Wordsworth 
 nature is not rendered but commented upon, talked 
 about, told, and at best represented. He is generally 
 held to be the poet of nature far excellence, and if by 
 this is meant the poet who most frequently and willingly 
 and predominantly dwelt on nature, the claim holds 
 good. But though he covered more ground and covered 
 it more conscientiously and minutely than any other 
 English poet, he is as a poet of nature inferior to Shake- 
 speare and Milton, Blake and Shelley, unless we are to 
 judge by quantity and not by quality. He is inferior a? 
 
148 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 a poet of nature because he is inferior as a poet. He can 
 describe a landscape and the feelings which it arouses in 
 his soul — or rather, aroused, for he generally speaks of the 
 past — ^with most felicitous phrase. One thing he cannot 
 do is to recreate it. And this, after all, the power of 
 creation, is the only standard by which claims to poetic 
 eminence can be judged. Considerable stress is laid on 
 the accuracy of his knowledge of nature down to its 
 minutest details. His poems, and Dorothy Wordsworth's 
 diaries, amply show how acute were their powers of ob- 
 servation, for in this stage of his work, Dorothy must be 
 considered a regular collaborator of her brother. It is 
 doubtful, however, whether this kind of observation is 
 a faculty that can be unreservedly praised in a poet. At 
 any rate, it is not a merit in itself any more than a detailed 
 knowledge of the human body down to the arcana of 
 skin physiology is a merit in a sculptor. His eye is as 
 scientifically accurate as the lens of an optical apparatus, 
 a fact which certainly contributes to that photographic 
 impression which his treatment of landscape conveys. 
 He can give a most lovely literary description, or as it is 
 said to-day, " pen-picture," of nature's face, but he is 
 seldom if ever able to thrust a dart of intuition at 
 nature's heart — such lightnings of poetry as : 
 
 Tiger, tiger, burning bright 
 In the forests of the night. 
 
 He had a penetrating, almost a mystic, feeling for 
 nature, which gives quality to everything he wrote and 
 makes it worth reading. But a feeling is not a poem. It 
 is not even poetry. The following lines from the First 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 149 
 
 Book of the " Excursion " have been given as an example 
 of his natural mysticism : 
 
 The clouds were touched, 
 And in their silent faces did be read 
 Unutterable love. Sound needed none, 
 Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank 
 The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form, 
 All melted into him ; they swallowed up 
 His animal being ; in them did he live. 
 And by them did he live ; they were his life. 
 In such access of mind, in such high hour 
 Of visitation from the living God, 
 Thought was nqt ; in enjoyment it expired. 
 
 An excellent statement, an excellent explanation of a 
 state of mysticism in the presence of a natural spectacle. 
 But the mysticism spoken of, referred to, restated, is not 
 there. In this . passage, sober, painstaking, accurate, 
 there is no particular feeling of enjoyment, and thought, 
 far from " expiring," is omnipresent. 
 
 This contrast between the manner and the matter is 
 typical of Wordsworth. His method is indirect. Not 
 nature, but about nature, not poetic feeling, but about 
 poetic feeling. His literature is poetry " once removed," 
 a reflection of poetry on the brain. NopCvhere do we get 
 the first spontaneous promptings of his really poetic soul. 
 All he gives us is an account of them, sifted by his ever- 
 active intellect. Curiously enough this, the most auto- 
 biographical of writers, is the writer who gives least of 
 himself. The conscious Wordsworth is far too often in 
 his poetry. The subconscious Wordsworth is hardly ever 
 in it. Is there one single poem in which he sang un- 
 guardedly, unless it be the Lucy sequence, the most 
 
ISO THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 mysterious and impressive of them all ? It was not un- 
 advisedly that he chose for his favourite methods the 
 descriptive, the narrative and the autobiographical. 
 They are the literary activities which best allow of an 
 external, that is, an intellectual, treatment. No other 
 treatment was normally possible to a writer who chose to 
 remain at a sufficient distance from nature to be able to 
 use it for his own ends and purposes. 
 
 But what are these ends and purposes f We have seen 
 that the way to approach the study of Wordsworth's 
 poetry is through an examination pf the poet's mood 
 while engaged in composition. We have observed that 
 this mood is too intellectual and cold, and therefore 
 results in irregularity and " patchiness " of form and 
 poverty and inaccuracy of rhythm. But we still have to 
 account for the strange fact that, though obviously born 
 with the vision and sensibility of a great poet, Words- 
 worth allowed his emotion to cool down and his intellect 
 to " meddle " where it could not but freeze the warm 
 embrace of the muses. The answer to this question is 
 perhaps to be found in the arcana of temperament and 
 race. But for our present purpose it is sufficient to show 
 that Wordsworth rarely wrote in a wholly disinterested 
 poetical mood. If all through his work we see the cold 
 glare of his eye contemplating the agitation below as the 
 eye of a general his regiments in battle, it is because, like 
 a general, Wordsworth is intent on victory. His aim is 
 beyond the poetital movements of his soul. He wants 
 to study this ; he is after proving that ; he would illus- 
 trate this feeling ; he would draw that lesson. For this 
 
WORDSWORTH AND BEAUTY 151 
 
 reason, not merely his Lyrical Ballads but all save a handful 
 of his poems, fail as poems. They are not constructions, 
 but scaffoldings. Their meaning is beyond them, their 
 soul is out of them. They are like ill-balanced pieces of 
 sculpture ; they do not stand by themselves, and lean as 
 it were on wooden props. 
 
 For a poem is a unit of beauty. It is a crystal of 
 emotion, a creation having that beauty in unity and that 
 unity in beauty which only inspiration can impart. 
 Such unity is no mere condition or quality, the presence 
 of which in a poem may be praised, the absence merely 
 deplored. It is the very essence of the poem. It is the 
 poem itself. No doubt it may vary in kind, according to 
 author, mood or subject. Thus " Lycidas," though some- 
 what vacillating in composition, yet achieves a wonderful 
 unity as a symphonic piece, thanks to the consistency in 
 the development of the musical theme, which is defined 
 in the opening sentence with as much clearness as is the 
 theme of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in its first 
 two bars. Thus Spenser's " Prothalamion," though a 
 mere " piece de circonstance," is beautiful because one 
 in its style and in the river-like harmony of its flow, so 
 skilfuUy marked by the recurring refrain : 
 
 Against the bridal day, which is not long ; 
 Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. 
 
 Thus Hamlet, not so much a tragedy as a dramatic poem, 
 loose and uncentred as it seems, finds its unity in the 
 subtle sympathy between the movement of the play and 
 that of the Prince's soul where light and clouds come and 
 go as in April skies. Thus the " Ode to the West Wind," 
 as free as the impetuous element which it sings, is yet 
 
IS2 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 one of the most architectural poems in the English lan- 
 guage, a perfect union of inspiration and form. 
 
 But, except for a few of his less guarded utterances — 
 in which he shows how great a poet he might have been 
 — ^Wordsworth never succeeds in casting his thoughts 
 into one beautiful mould. The unity of each of his 
 works, as well as the unity of his work as a whole, is not 
 asthetic, but philosophical and moral. 
 
 If, then, Wordsworth was rarely loved by the muses, 
 the reason is that he was not sufficiently devoted to them. 
 As a worshipper of Beauty he was neither whole-hearted 
 nor trustful enough. He sought to harness Pegasus to 
 the chariot of thought, not only because he was afraid 
 of the winged horse's " fancy," but because a cart is a 
 cart and one can always drive it on useful errands. At 
 bottom, he is too utilitarian, too much in a hurry. He 
 wants results, immediate results, from his cult to the 
 muses. And the muses, like all God-like beings, demand 
 disinterested hearts, and only to trustful and disinterested 
 hearts do they grant the gift of creation. 
 
WORDSWORTH AND TRUTH 
 
 " His [Wordsworth's] hold over many thoughtful and, generally, mature 
 minds is due to his having avowedly and, often also, practically, made 
 truth his primary object, beauty being only second." 
 
 Professor Legouis, 
 "Wordsworth." 
 The Cambridge History of 
 English Literature. 
 
 That beauty was not Wordsworth's primary concern 
 we are all agreed. But it is not so sure that it was truth 
 which occupied the first place in his heart. 
 
 There is undoubtedly a sense in which Wordsworth 
 is, or seems to be, in the words of de Quincey " a truth- 
 speaker of the severest literality." Whenever he deals 
 with external, material facts, he is meticulously accurate. 
 No poet seems to take more care not to mislead the reader 
 about the " facts of the case." His footnotes are abun- 
 dant, painstaking, full of solicitude. The sense of a line 
 is explained, the origin of a legend is recorded, the date 
 of an event is supplied, the allusion to a natural phe- 
 nomenon is made clear. All the paraphernalia of 
 " reality " wherewith his poems are built is disclosed. 
 The poet seems to fear lest his readers think he is 
 inventing or exaggerating. No ! His feet are solid on 
 the ground, and he shows the footprints on the road. 
 
 This accumulation of detail seems at first to be con- 
 nected with that solicitude for accuracy of statement 
 so prevalent in England ; and no doubt, to a certain 
 extent, it is so. We should not, however, forget that 
 Wordsworth, for all his material accuracy, took consider- 
 
 \ 
 
1 54 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 able liberties with the facts when " staging " his poems. 
 We are in a position to judge this feature of his work by 
 comparing some of his poems with the raw material of 
 which they are made, as preserved for us in the Journals of 
 Dorothy Wordsworth. We would mention, for instance, 
 " The Daffodils," " Resolution and Independence " 
 and "Alice Fell." No one would dream of denying the 
 poet the right to present his matter as best he chose. 
 Yet it may be noticed that, since the alterations which 
 Wordsworth made in his subject-matter were of the same 
 order as, and even of a more important order than, the 
 facts which he supplied in abundance, his profuseness of 
 detail cannot be due to mere regard for accuracy of state- 
 ment and fidelity to events. 
 
 It really is the direct outcome of his intellectual treat- 
 ment. The intellect can only proceed by analysis. The 
 synthetic manner is the privilege of poets, and only 
 under inspiration can it be successfully attempted. 
 Wordsworth cannot create. He delineates. He accu- 
 mulates details in the hope that their sum arithmetic may 
 produce the whole. He is the precursor of the present- 
 day scientific and naturalistic literature, which claims to 
 be accurate but is really dead. 
 
 But, it might be argued, his treatment of detail 
 matters little. What matters is the substance of his 
 poems. All we can ask of his sense of truth is that he 
 should faithfully set in them the stone of experience 
 picked up on his road. 
 
 It is doubtful, however, whether under this heading 
 Wordsworth's sense of truth can be easily vindicated. 
 Coleridge was the first to notice what he calls Words- 
 
WORDSWORTH AND TRUTH 155 
 
 worth's " mental bombast," which he defines as " a dis- 
 proportion of thought to the circumstance and occasion." 
 He gives three examples, namely, the lines : 
 
 They flash upon that inward tys 
 Which is the bliss of solitude 
 
 in "The Daffodils," the over-indignant apostrophe in 
 " Gypsies " and the well-known lines to the Child in 
 the ode : 
 
 Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep 
 Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, 
 That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, 
 Haunted for ever by the eternal mind. 
 Mighty prophet ! Seer blest ! — 
 On whom those truths do rest 
 Which we are toiling all our lives to find. 
 In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ; 
 Thou, over whom thy Immortality 
 Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, 
 A presence which is not to be put by ! 
 
 And though Coleridge declares that he knows no other 
 cases, many more could be found. We have referred to 
 the first line of the " Skylark." In a sense the whole ode on 
 Immortality is conceived in a mood of mental bombast. 
 The last stanza of "The Anecdote for Fathers" : 
 
 O dearest,, dearest boy ! my heart 
 For better lore would seldom yearn, 
 Could I but teach the hundredth part 
 Of what from thee I learn, 
 
 is an obvious case of overstrained feeling which the trivial 
 anecdote hardly justifies. 
 
 Curiously enough Coleridge, who so aptly defines this 
 typical defect of Wordsworth's poetry, does not furnish 
 
iS6 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 any explanation of it. Yet such an explanation suggests 
 itself at once. In these cases, Wordsworth is " working 
 himself up " into a passion or an emotion which he does 
 not actually feeU He is putting to a hard use that 
 " ability of conjuring up in himself passions which are 
 indeed far from being the same as those produced by 
 real events " of which he speaks in his definition of the 
 poet. But it is only nature that gives the true note. 
 Wordsworth is often overstrained because, though 
 sincere, he is not, in the poetic sense of the word, true. 
 It is at this point that the Annette episode must be 
 mentioned. Wordsworth, the most autobiographical of 
 poets, never refers to that subject in his works. The 
 facts of the case, recently unearthed, prove that he 
 behaved all through this adventure and its consequences, 
 exactly as might be expected from a man of so pure a 
 soul and so lofty a mind. But when we have absolved 
 him as U gentleman, we are at liberty to condemn him 
 as a poet. " The Prelude " was avowedly a poem destined 
 to trace the growth of his own mind through experience 
 and to narrate " his travels, hopes, aspirations, dis- 
 appointments and distresses, his inward conflicts and 
 perplexities." Is it conceivable, in the name of poetic 
 truth, that an episode so essential in the formation of 
 the poet's mind as his first conflict with sex should be 
 omitted from such a poem f The point need hardly be 
 developed. In so far as this all-important episode is 
 absent from the Prelude, the Prelude is poetically false, 
 and its author, as a truth-seeker, stands condenjned. 
 
 Though not always true to his experience, however, 
 Wordsworth may be true to his thought. 
 
WORDSWORTH AND TRUTH 157 
 
 Of the three divinities of our everlasting Olylhpus, 
 Beauty reveals herself spontaneously to pure worshippers ; 
 Virtue, far from our hands, is yet always in sight, and the 
 eyes of our soul are all we need to go towards her. Truth 
 only stands occult behind infinite veils, and we must 
 grope towards her secret abode, like blind men, up hill, 
 through sheer effort. Truth requires vigour in her 
 worshippers, and an unswerving concentration of en- 
 deavour. But she requires also, as does Beauty — ^perhaps 
 in an even more exacting way — undivided allegiance, 
 and above all, a fearless heart. For when all the veils 
 are lifted, for all we know. Truth may be terrible. 
 
 It is doubtful whether Wordsworth was vigorous 
 enough, courageous enough, single-hearted enough, to 
 count as one of the great truth-seekers of the world. He 
 is mentally much less vigorous and steady than is 
 generally assumed. It is well known that he passed 
 from one extreme to the other in his literary opinions on 
 poetic diction, as a comparison between his earliest works 
 and his Lyrical Ballads will show ; and that, moreover, he 
 never applied his literary doctrines in an intelligible and 
 consistent manner. It is also known that his critical 
 faculty was mediocre,^ and that he was anything but 
 lucid in the exposition of his poetical principles — ^witness 
 
 ^ eft * Reminiscences,* November, 1843. 
 
 " Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, infinitely lower than 
 the inventive ; and he said to-day that if the quality of time consutned in 
 writing critiques on the works of others were given to original composition, 
 of whatever kind it might be, it would be much better employed ; it would 
 make a man find out sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely less 
 mischief. A false or malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds 
 of others ; a stupid invention, either in prose or verse, is quite harmless.'* 
 
 The last sentence is highly instructive. It seems to give ground for the 
 opinion that Wordsworth did not " hold the critical faculty infinitely lower 
 than the inventive " from any sense of their intrinsic relative values, but 
 perhaps, though unconsciously, from a feeling of his own inability as a critic. 
 
iS8 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 his laborious definition of the Poet.^ His political and 
 philosophical opinions underwent similar changes, and, 
 though studious and hard-working, he does not seem ever 
 to have arrived at a consistent system of thought, nor, 
 what is more to the point, to have sought one. His en- 
 deavour was to find peace and happiness, not to understand. 
 His thoughts are often penetrating, but his thought is 
 confused. Out of his poetry it is difiicult to draw any 
 clear conclusion ; the most it can yield is a vague im- 
 pression of lofty, yet not very self-sure, optimism. Of 
 his philosophy, as of his poetry, it may be said that it is 
 a mist or an all-pervading atmosphere rather than a 
 well-constructed scheme of definite units of beauty or 
 truth, poems or ideas. On the question which is the 
 bedrock of all philosophy, his solution is Holy Writ, Yet 
 some of his less-guarded utterances express all the stoical 
 gloom of a grim pantheism : 
 
 No motion has she now, no force ; 
 
 She neither hears nor sees ; 
 Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course, 
 
 With rocks, and stones, and trees. • 
 
 His faith seems to be as cold and intellectual as his 
 poetry, and unable really to illumine his inmost self. 
 There is no truly religious poem in the whole mass of his 
 work, though the whole of it is as it were interwoven 
 with philosophical deism. A poet possessed of a faith so 
 sure as he would have us (and himself) believe, would for 
 ever live above the sombre melancholy of his effusion 
 upon the Death of James Hogg : 
 
 How fast has brother followed brother 
 From sunshine to the sunless land. . . . 
 
 ' Quoted in note, p. 136. 
 
WORDSWORTH AND TRUTH 159 
 
 His assertions of faith, we feel, are self-protective. His 
 business, as Matthew Arnold says, is how to live, and the 
 why live, the whence and whither dt life, must be kept off 
 the mind as wolves off the cottage. Hence nature, the 
 moral law, our common humanity, and even intimations 
 from our early childhood, all available material in fact, 
 is piled up in front of the door. 
 As he himself let out with disarming naivete : 
 
 My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought. 
 
 We prefer to be guided by this unguarded confession 
 rather than follow the ingenious but elaborate readings 
 of his life which would represent him as tortured day 
 and night by the problems of good and evil, of man and 
 destiny. That Wordsworth was a sincere lover of man 
 no one can doubt. That his heart suffered and bled for 
 human evils, his works, his nature, and the evidence of 
 his contemporaries preclude us from believing. Of this 
 more hereafter. But this much may be said at once, that 
 his " suffering " was a purely intellectual mood which he 
 admirably described and illustrated, endowed as he was 
 in such eminent degree with the gift of psychological 
 interpretation. 
 
 Had he felt more deeply, he would have been unable 
 to write with accents of such evident sincerity : 
 
 Far from the world I walk, and from all care. 
 
 This was his main purpose, and this he set out to achieve. 
 There is no doubt that his efforts were crowned with 
 success. Considering the troublous times in which he 
 lived — troublous for body and soul — ^his achievement 
 implies a considerable talent for self-defence, not devoid 
 
i6o THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 now and then of courage and determination. His mental 
 life bears a striking resemblance to his material life. Just 
 as he managed to protect his material peace against the 
 troubles of the age by secluding himself in the most 
 pleasing recesses of nature, so he succeeded in protecting 
 his spiritual peace hy living wrapped " in pleasant 
 thought." Crags and precipices no doubt there were, 
 in his mental as in his material retreat ; but they only 
 added to the pleasures of the wanderer, who in his ram- 
 blings through thought or field knew how to border the 
 abyss without danger. It would perhaps be unfair to 
 say that Wordsworth withdrew from the world and from 
 all care deliberately and consciously, much as a passage in 
 the "Excursion" might tempt us to do so.^ But then, our 
 unconscious abstentions mould our life as much as our 
 conscious activities, just as the hollows no less than. the 
 volumes of the body mould its form. There are 
 here and there in Wordsworth lines which show how 
 close was his watch over his peace and happiness : 
 
 A day it was when I could bear 
 
 Some fond regrets to entertain ; 
 
 With so much happiness to spare 
 
 I could not feel a pain.^ 
 
 ^ Acknowledgments of gratitude sincere 
 Accompanied these musings ; fervent thanks 
 For my own peaceful lot and happy choice : 
 A choice that from the passions of the world 
 Withdrew, and fixed me in a still retreat, 
 Sheltered, but not to social duties lost ; 
 Secluded, but not buried ; and with song 
 Cheering my days, and with industrious thought. 
 With ever-welcome company of books, 
 By virtuous friendship's soul-sustaining aid. 
 And with the blessings of domestic love, 
 ^ Anecdote for Fathers. 
 
WORDSWORTH AND TRUTH i6i 
 
 Here is the secret of his forced optimism. Whenever he 
 feels that truth is going to disturb his life of pleasant 
 thought he unconsciously alters the course of his poem. 
 He has that love of life, clean, simple, almost animal in 
 its innocence, which distinguishes the British race. It 
 is a healthy instinct v?hich derives sufficient comfort for 
 the riddles of life from the self-assertive strength of life 
 itself, and which, when thoughts become importune, 
 suppresses them with a flow of sensations by a mere act 
 of the body. 
 
 I well remember that those very plumes, 
 
 Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, 
 
 By mist and silent rain-drops silvered o'er, 
 
 As once I passed, did to my heart convey 
 
 So still an image of tranquillity, 
 
 So calm and still, and looked so beautiful 
 
 Amid the uneasy thoughts which filled my mind, 
 
 That what we feel of sorrow and despair 
 
 From ruin and from change, and all the grief 
 
 The passing shows of being leave behind. 
 
 Appeared an idle dream that could not live 
 
 Where meditation was. I turned away. 
 
 And walked along my road in happiness.^ 
 
 Yet all is not physical in this protective instinct, so 
 typically strong in the British race, so weak for example 
 in the Russian. Just as all plants, though living, are not 
 food for the body, so all truths, though living, are not 
 food for the mind. Healthy races, like healthy indi- 
 viduals, have an instinct for the selection of nutritious, 
 or rather for the rejection of poisonous truths, truths 
 which overburden the soul with sorrow and take away 
 
 1 " Excursion.'' Book I. 
 M 
 
1 62 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 from it the taste for life. Such instinct Wordsworth 
 possessed in an eminent degree, and therein, no less than 
 in his respectability, he was representative of the British 
 race, and particularly of the British gentleman. It is 
 indeed a quahty in a man ; it is a defect in a truth- 
 seeker. 
 
 Most of Wordsworth's poems, particularly those in 
 which the purpose is more manifest, suffer from this 
 unconscious limitation of his outlooL A typical example 
 is the poem generally known to-day as " The Leech- 
 Gatherer," but perhaps more accurately described under 
 its old title, " Resolution and Independence." Here is a 
 comfortable country gentleman, " a traveller upon the 
 moor," who, for sheer excess of joy, is suddenly seized 
 by a fit of depression. He comes upon a poor old man. 
 
 The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs, 
 
 so old and life-beaten that 
 
 His body was bent double, feet and head 
 Coming together in life's pilgrimage. 
 
 The gentleman inquires : 
 
 What occupation do you there pursue ? 
 He is a leech-gatherer. That is his occupation. 
 
 Employment hazardous and wearisome. 
 
 A striking contrast. All fortune's smiles on one side. 
 All fate's burdens on the other. Our poet might have 
 been impressed with the view of life which the old man 
 would have contemplated had he known all the facts ; 
 or he might have risen above the two sides and reflected 
 
WORDSWORTH AND TRUTH 163 
 
 on the futility of it all, and exclaimed with La Bruyere : 
 " On a honte d'etre heureux en face de certaines mis^res." 
 But no. Our poet has his own world to put in order, his 
 own house to build, his own axe to grind. He has not a 
 single thought for the old man as he really is, and there- 
 fore not one single feeling for him. He immediately 
 starts thinking about himself with such self-centred dis- 
 traction that, as he says : 
 
 The old man still stood talking by my side ; 
 
 But now his voice to me was like a stream 
 
 Scarce heard ; nor word from word could I divide, 
 
 and, giving him nothing, not even the courtesy of listen- 
 ing, he takes from him comfort for his fit of depres- 
 sion — ^his depression which was a mere surfeit of joy : 
 
 and when he ended, 
 I could have laughed myself to scorn to find 
 In that decrepit man so firm a mind. 
 " God ! " said I, " be my help and stay secure. 
 I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor ! " 
 
 It is impossible to carry the self-protective instinct 
 further. Who could successfully attack such a citadel 
 of pleasant thought ? For there was only one possible 
 way of extracting an optimistic impression from the 
 incident, and that was to concentrate on the " resolution 
 and independence " of the old man, and to suppress all 
 the painful thoughts and feelings which would have 
 grieved a more fraternal and less guarded heart at the 
 light of such pathetic adversity. 
 
 It should be noticed, moreover, that in this poem 
 Wordsworth deliberately distorts reality in order to 
 adjust it to his preconceived plan. We know through 
 
1 64 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal that the meeting with 
 the old man took place on the road to Grasmere, not 
 " on the lonely moor." As Professor Raleigh says, 
 " Wordsworth shifts the scene in order to show the old 
 man at his work, and to set him among elemental powers 
 akin to his majestic and indomitable spirit." In doing so, 
 the poet was within his rights. He was in fact showing 
 great dramatic skill. But the eminent critic adds : 
 " For the rest, the record is true enough," and here it 
 is, I am afraid, impossible to agree with him. Far from 
 being " true enough," the poem differs from the facts in 
 one essential respect, namely, that the " resolution and 
 independence " of which Wordsworth made the substance 
 of his poem only existed in his imagination. The leech- 
 gatherer of the poem says that leeches have become 
 scarce, 
 
 Yet still I persevere and find them where I may. 
 
 But let us turn to Dorothy Wordsworth who had no poem 
 to write and no lesson to teach : 
 
 " His trade was to gather leeches, but now leeches were 
 scarce, and he had not strength for it. He lived by begging, 
 and was making his way to Carlisle, where he should buy a few 
 godly books to sell." ^ 
 
 Begging is not independence, and " not having strength 
 for it " is not resolution. It will be seen therefore that 
 Wordsworth " made up " not merely the scenery but the 
 very substance of his poem. No one would find fault 
 with this, were he engaged in a purely xsthetie task. 
 But that is not the case. " Resolution and Independence " 
 was written in order to justify optimism by means of 
 
 J Dorothy Wordsworth's Joi)rnal, October 3rd 1800, 
 
WORDSWORTH AND TRUTH 165 
 
 feelings supposed to be taken from nature. Fidelity to 
 nature is, and must be, on his own theory, the first con- 
 dition of Wordsworth's work. In this case the image 
 supplied by nature was so -refracted by Wordsworth's 
 brain as to appear upside down. The result is a false 
 poem, a poem which, though professing to be born out 
 of an emotion actually felt, is wholly invented — a typical 
 example of that cerebral poetry in which Wordsworth 
 habitually indulged, written in such a mood that the 
 heart does not inspire the brain, but the brain forces 
 and drives the heart to feeling. And that is why the 
 " Leech-Gatherer," despite some passages of lofty elo- 
 quence, cannot be counted as a work of art. It is an 
 anecdote, deliberate, prejudiced and overstrained. 
 
 There are, however, cases where Wordsworth is stiU 
 further from truth. " The Idiot Boy," for instance, is a 
 poem of which it is difficult to speak in terms of modera- 
 tion. In this work the poet aimed at " tracing the 
 maternal passion through many of its more subtle wind- 
 ings." The mere choice of such a subject for the illus- 
 tration of such a theory reveals an utter lack of delicacy 
 which the treatment fully confirms. Wordsworth de- 
 voted a considerable part of his letter to John Wilson to 
 the task of defending himself against those readers who ob- 
 jected to " The Idiot Boy " on the ground that " nothing 
 is a fit subject for poetry which does not please." His 
 defence may have been convincing to Mr. John Wilson, 
 but it seems wholly irrelevant, since it is based on the 
 assumption that the objections to this poem are only 
 
i66 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 grounded on (a) the word " idiot " and its associations ; 
 (b) the " loathing and disgust " which many people feel 
 at the sight of an idiot. But the real human objection 
 to such a subject and to its use for such a " demonstra- 
 tion " is far deeper than Wordsworth seems to have 
 realised. The existence of half-witted people is one of 
 the most painful facts for a mind sensitive and fraternal, 
 one of those subjects in which our common humanity 
 feels so hurt, so insulted and trampled upon, that it 
 awakes in us, indeed, 
 
 The pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel. 
 
 Wordsworth comfortably speaks of " that sublime ex- 
 pression of scripture that thair [the idiots'] life is hidden 
 with God," and hugs the fact that " Among the Alps, 
 where they are numerous, they are considered, I believe, 
 as a blessing to the family to which they belong."^ This 
 is self-protection with a vengeance. It is the measure of 
 Wordsworth's capacity for imposing his optimism on the 
 most recalcitrant aspects of nature that he can turn this 
 subject into a debonair story and comment on it as 
 follows : " I wrote the poem with exceeding delight and 
 pleasure, and whenever I read it I read it with pleasure."^ 
 His " tracing the maternal passion through many of its 
 more subtle windings " is so successful as to depict a 
 mother referring to her own half-witted child as " My 
 idiot boy " : 
 
 Oh dear, dear pony, my sweet joy ! 
 
 Oh carry back my idiot boy ! 
 
 This is pathetic, but not as Wordsworth meant it. And 
 
 • Later to Mr. Wilson. 
 
WORDSWORTH AND TRUTH 167 
 
 the end, that atrocious end, with its misplaced jocosity 
 and its shameless exhibition of one o£ man's deepest and 
 most inexplicable miseries, is the most painful blot that 
 ever disfigured the work of a poet. 
 
 False to nature, " The Idiot Boy " is false to poetry. It 
 is written by a mind which goes to nature disposed to 
 find what it carries within its own self. It is predeter- 
 mined, a foregone promise of fact for a foregone conclu- 
 sion. 
 
 V 
 
 A similar observation applies in a greater or lesser 
 degree to practically all Wordsworth's poetry. As a 
 work of thought, no less than as a work of art, it is marred 
 by the fact that the ■purfose of Wordsworth " is too much 
 with us." His mental " milieu " is not passive to the 
 light of nature, but on the contrary refracts it and 
 therefore gives to things and people seen through his 
 brain a shape all his own. An overpowering nature, he 
 forces upon the objects which he absorbs the- texture of 
 his own mind. Hence, his powers of observation far 
 exceed his achievements as a truth-seeker just as his 
 powers of intuition exceed his achievements as a poet. 
 In his philosophic, as in his poetic, capacity the effect 
 can be perceived of that ever-vigilant consciousness 
 directed to other ends, diverging, distracting, which all 
 through his work bars spontaneity, nips the budding 
 flower of inspiration and deviates thought on its way to 
 truth. 
 
 As studies of truth his poems are no more satisfactory 
 than as impressions of beauty. And for the same reason, 
 that their centre of gravity is beyond them, outside of 
 
1 68 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 beauty and outside of truth. For Wordsworth as a truth- 
 seeker is hindered, not merely by the disproportion 
 between his intellectual vigour and the magnitude and 
 scope of his subject, not merely by his self-protective 
 instinct against certain distasteful truths, but also by his 
 moral^ preoccupation. The truth-worshipper in him is 
 no more single-hearted than the worshipper of beauty. 
 Truth like beauty.is in his hands a mere instrument for 
 the achievement of a moral purpose. Hence, being both 
 of an absolute essence, they evade his grasp. 
 
 ' We take this word in a wide sense, not merely as "moralising" nor 
 even as " ethical," but as " purposeful " and " useful " in the loftiest mean- 
 ing of these adjectives. 
 
WORDSWORTH AND VIRTUE 
 
 " I wish either to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing.'' 
 
 William Wordswobth. 
 
 Wordsworth's primary deity was neither Truth nor 
 Beauty. It was Virtue. Now, if the Prince of Beauty 
 is the Poet, and the Prince of Truth is the Philosopher, 
 the Prince of Virtue is the Saint. No one, not even 
 Wordsworthians, claim this high title for William 
 Wordsworth. But there is a word, a beautiful word, 
 which belongs to the kingdom of Virtue and which fits 
 him admirably. Wordsworth was a Master. 
 
 A Master is something more and something less than 
 a Sage. A Sage gives forth wisdom as the tree does apples, 
 with calm passivity, knowing that whether they be plucked 
 and eaten or fall to earth and rot, nothing is lost. A Master 
 is less impassive and more impatient. Wisdom does not 
 well up in him like sap from the roots of the tree, but is 
 distilled in his mind by toil of heart and brain. Thus, 
 wisdom is less personal than natural in the Sage ; less 
 natural than personal in the Master. Hence the Master's 
 generous desire to share it with his feUow beings, for we 
 are only eager to give what we feel to be truly our own. 
 
 Wordsworth was filled with this generous desire to 
 benefit men with the wisdom distilled by Tiis mind. 
 He had a true vocation for teaching. When he says : " I 
 wish either to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing," 
 he is neither trying to smuggle his poetic wares under 
 cover of utility, nor indulging in vain metaphor, but 
 tersely expressing a literal truth. A volume might be 
 
 169 
 
I70 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 collected of similar declarations in verse and prose all 
 through his writings. But, had he not written one line 
 on his intentions, his work would be a sufficient witness, 
 an imposing witness of the earnestness with which he 
 understood his didactic task. 
 
 He was eminently fitted for it both by his qualities 
 and by his defects. He possessed that synthetic view of 
 life which allowed him to see all in one and one in all, 
 that spiritual essence which is to the trinity True-Good- 
 Beautiful what the Godhead is to the Holy Trinity. It 
 is this spiritual essence which pervades all his work and 
 gives it a pre-poetical value, previous to and independent 
 of all form and inspiration. In the loftiness and vastness 
 of his synthetic intuition of things he is second to none 
 among English poets, and ranks with Shakespeare and 
 Shelley, above Milton, a giant prisoner in the beliefs of 
 his age. It is his greatness as a seer which gives nobility 
 and " harmony in numbers " to his longer and more 
 ambitious works, and which, in " The Prelude " and " The 
 Excursion," stands him in good stead when inspiration fails. 
 He is a figure great enough to wear the drapery of eloquence. 
 
 Thus gifted with the vision and the faculty divine, 
 Wordsworth saw nature with active eyes. It is, I believe, 
 to this spiritual gift, and not to his theories on diction 
 and style, that he owes the distinction of having cleared 
 English poetry from the excesses of " poetic diction." 
 There is after all not much difference between diction 
 and substance in poetry, and the word itself with its 
 literal meaning of " saying " stands at the confluence of 
 the matter and the manner of what is said. If Words- 
 
WORDSWORTH AND VIRTUE 171 
 
 worth succeeded in rendering English, poetic style 
 simpler than it had been it is mostly due to the fact that 
 he had something to say. Yet it is perhaps possible to 
 exaggerate his influence in this respect. Shelley and 
 Keats were his juniors and read him, but it is not evident 
 that they owe to him their own clearness and directness 
 of diction. The sun of the French Revolution rose for 
 all. The ebb of the rationalistic age set in for all. And 
 both Shelley and Keats were superior to Wordsworth in 
 literary craftsmanship.^ The fact remains, however, that, 
 chronologically at least, priority must go to Wordsworth. 
 He represents in the history of English cultuire the dis- 
 covery of nature, an event similar to the discovery of 
 America in the history of action, resulting in the enlarge- 
 ment of the domain of the spirit to include a new conti- 
 nent of life. 
 
 In this historical function, Wordsworth, the master, 
 is in my view much greater than Wordsworth the poet. 
 As a poet his treatment of nature is too photographic, 
 too realistic, too detailed. His knowledge of the facts 
 of nature is too scientific and his presentation of them 
 too matter-of-fact, too disconnected. Hence his in- 
 fluence upon English poetry may not have been all for 
 the good. His accuracy in detailed statement and de- 
 scription acted as a powerful stimulant on the innate 
 tendency of the race towards concreteness, which is in 
 itself unpoetical, for it leaves no freedom of movement 
 to the imagination, it disperses the attention over the 
 surface of details and prevents the emotion from crystal- 
 
 ^ This was as much as recognised by Wordsworth himself when he 
 said ! " Shelley is one of the best artists of us all. I mean in workman- 
 ship of style." Opinions expressed in conversation with his nephew and 
 biographer, 1827, 
 
1/2 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 lising into form. His successors felt that they had to 
 compete with a powerful specialist. Poets became too 
 self-conscious to speak of " a bird upon a tree " and had 
 to say " a thrush in the sycamore " even when, as is 
 often the case, the vaguer expression was the more 
 accurate rendering of the impression actually received. 
 On the whole, Wordsworth seems to have deprived 
 English poets of their old innocent and unsophisticated 
 attitude towards nature, innocent even when extrava- 
 gantly complicated. And, paradoxical as it may seem, 
 by emphasising detail Wordsworth has indirectly fostered 
 a new era of " poetic diction " ; for the over-ornamented 
 style of the English poetry of yesterday was in a 
 measure the outcome of an effort to find on the surface 
 of nature the poetical wealth which can only be gained 
 by exploring its depths. 
 
 Victor Hugo is credited with being the first French 
 poet who noticed that the light of the moon is blue. 
 Wordsworth gives Cowper a bad mark for having said 
 
 And even the boding owl 
 That hails the rising moon has charms for me. 
 
 After Wordsworth, no such heresy is possible. His work 
 is so self-observed, so accurate, so conscientious, that 
 after him poetry becomes encumbered with subtle un- 
 written laws, analogous to the laws of good breeding and 
 society, which are supposed to be known as a matter of 
 course. Poetry becomes self-conscious and nature be- 
 comes incorporated into culture, hence into society. 
 Every well-educated person feels bound to experience 
 strong and original sensations in the presence of nature. 
 
WORDSWORTH AND VIRTUE 173 
 
 and the audience to whom poets address themselves is 
 fastidious and sophisticated. 
 
 As a master, however, Wordsworth is one of the most 
 imposing writers of nature known to the world of letters. 
 ■ A constant, faithful, persevering worshipper, he made of 
 earth, sea and sky, a glorious shrine, and of every plant 
 animal and stone, a hallowed creature. This faith he 
 expanded and taught in a work which for earnestness, 
 elevation and that greatness which results from mere 
 mass, has few parallels. Though he failed to sing nature, 
 he explained it in words as felicitous, as noble and eloquent 
 as were possible only to such a man in such surroundings. 
 Had he been more of a poet he would have had a lesser 
 influence — ^at least a less direct influence — as a preacher 
 of nature on a people whose turn of mind is more con- 
 crete than symbolical, and whose imagination builds 
 on sensations and actions rather than on feelings and 
 thoughts. As it was, he wrote his Poem of Nature 
 keeping as close to the original as he possibly could, and 
 dwelling in a simple, eloquent, dignified yet not de- 
 clamatory style on all the joys which body, heart and mind 
 can reap from an intimate knowledge of meadows, hiUs, 
 forests and skies. This treatment, vaguely poetical 
 throughout, yet never or hardly ever really poetical, 
 explains why Wordsworth should have been so successful 
 in his great task, the wholesale conversion of his country 
 to the religion of nature. 
 
 But in dwelling too often on Wordsworth as " the 
 poet of nature " there is a risk of underestimating the 
 fact that he was predominantly a student of man. There 
 i§ indeed much to be said for the view that, had he not 
 
174 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 lived under the almost continuous influence of his sister, 
 his philosophical and psychological tendency might have 
 absorbed most of his powrer, leaving but little to devote 
 to nature, its scenes and moods. At any rate it must be 
 noticed that the centre of gravity of his thoughts is not 
 in nature but in man, and that at bottom it is his interest 
 in man that is the basis of his interest in nature. To my 
 mind Wordsworth is at his best when exploring the re- 
 cesses of his own soul, the part of creation with which he 
 was most familiar. He has an exceptional gift for 
 rendering that sensation of inner spaciousness which the 
 word soul evokes : 
 
 . . . when thy mind 
 Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 
 Thy memory be as a dwelling-place 
 For all sweet sounds and harmonies. . . .^ 
 
 But it is not necessary to go to his verse for instances of 
 that feeling of mental space : 
 
 " There is also a meditative, as well as a human, pathos ; an 
 enthusiastic, as well as an ordinary, sorrow ; a sadness that has 
 its seat in the depths of reason, to which the mind cannot sink 
 gently of itself — but tq which it must descend by treading the 
 steps of thought.^ 
 
 This is marvellously said because marvellously felt and 
 true. It is an example which illustrates the two Words- 
 worthian qualities, at first sight so contradictory, namely, 
 the loftiness and comprehensiveness of his outlook and 
 his acuteness in the perception of detail. There is little 
 that he did not observe in the workings of the human 
 
 ' Lines near Tintern Abbey. 
 
 ' Kssay supplementary to the Preface tp the Poems (1815), 
 
WORDSWORTH AND VIRTUE 175 
 
 creature, little that he did not note down in his accurate 
 and telling manner. And from his mode of life he de- 
 rived an original mode of treating mental subjects, a 
 kind of pictorial arranging of them which might be 
 described as mental landscape painting. We must 
 observe, however, that in his mental landscape painting, 
 Wordsworth evinces the same external, photographic 
 manner which we have noticed in his treatment of nature. 
 It is in a way the style known in the language of the studio 
 as Academic, or, as the French graphically put it, fompier. 
 Wordsworth's shortcomings as psychologist are best 
 explained by a comparison with Shakespeare. That the 
 comparison is not crushing is a true measure of. Words- 
 worth's greatness. The difference between them may 
 be summed up in one word — creation. Shakespeare 
 creates, and Wordsworth describes. Shakespeare lives 
 in turn in each of his characters. Wordsworth forces his 
 characters to take the form and movements which suit 
 Jiis particular theme or thesis. In the work of Shake- 
 speare, his own psychology is absent, at least it can only 
 be guessed by inference. In that of Wordsworth there 
 is hardly any psychology but that of Wordsworth. 
 Shakespeare gives life to his characters, sons and daughters 
 of his spirit, and emancipates them, so that they live a 
 life of their own in the world of posterity. Wordsworth 
 wanders through nature and the mind with his tablets 
 ready, and in his wanderings gathers and labels a most 
 imposing collection of flowers, stones and insects of 
 psychology. His characters do not live. They stay 
 where they are placed. They are illustrations in a book. 
 There is of course between Shakespeare and Wordsworth 
 3 djiference in power, Shakespeare could create and 
 
176 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 Wordsworth could not. But there is also a difference in 
 attitude. Wordsworth would teach and Shakespeare 
 would not. 
 
 Wordsworth and Shakespeare are thus the two poles 
 of English poetry, the ethical and the aesthetical. All 
 the other great names in English poetry partake in varying 
 proportions of the nature of both Shakespeare and 
 Wordsworth. This is conspicuously the case with Milton, 
 and still more with Shelley. Shelley contains the greatest 
 possible measure of Shakespeare and the greatest possible 
 measure of Wordsworth that can be found in any English 
 poet. True this double strain does not strike the eye in 
 any outward likeness. Keats, not Shelley, is generally 
 considered as the heir of Shakespeare. But though 
 Keats has the voice, he has not the spirit of Shakespeare. 
 Shelley, since Shakespeare, is the first to love nature not 
 merely with his depth of passion, but also with that in- 
 tensity of action only to be found where masculine 
 vigour is wed to feminine sensibility. It is in this inner 
 sense, not in any external likeness of line or manner, that 
 Shelley is Shakespearean. And it is equally in an inner 
 and spiritual sense that he is Wordsworthian, not in his 
 doctrines, but in his strong didactic, purposeful bent of 
 mind. Fortunately for poetry, Shelley's subconscious 
 strength favoured the Shakespearean rather than the 
 Wordsworthian strain in his nature ; but the traces of 
 the struggle remain in all his poefns and add to their 
 inherent beauty that sense of unsatisfied 'yearning which 
 only complex natures have fathomed in all its melancholy 
 depth. 
 
 Wordsworth himself, in asking us to consider him as 
 
WORDSWORTH AND VIRTUE 177 
 
 teacher or as nothing, led us to expect that the defects 
 of his psychology would be those attached — ^theoretically 
 at least — ^to the teaching profession. And to begin with, 
 he sees the world of men from a platform. Despite 
 many professions of humility, the frequency of which is 
 in itself significant, Wordsworth was deeply imbued with 
 the sense of his own superiority. It pervades all his 
 work, verse and prose ; it appears in his private life, in 
 his manners, in his language, and even in his features. 
 It forms the very basis of his criticism. It explains his 
 quiet, passive resistance to unpopularity and his never 
 abated self-confidence. It is indeed the very substance 
 of his claim to be considered as a teacher or as nothing. 
 When he now and then puts himself in the position of 
 the humble student in the fifth form of Nature, as in the 
 " Anecdote for Fathers," in " The Leech-Gatherer " or 
 in " The Ode," he is merely indulging in what he would 
 describe as " an artifice of composition." In his own 
 eyes he is the great Poet who " ought to travel before 
 men occasionally as well as at their sides. "^ He is, fn fine, 
 the teacher and therefore he looks down on other men as the 
 school-master does on his schoolboys — with the purest and 
 most devoted feelings, with a genuine and ardent desire to 
 improve their minds and souls, but obviously from above. 
 
 This attitude of mind leads him into treating his 
 characters as subjects for experiment. A typical example 
 is the " Anecdote for Fathers," but, though clearer in this 
 instance, the tendency is everywhere in his work. He 
 does not grant his characters that respect which the 
 grown-up gives the grown-up. He does not treat them 
 on an equal footing. He looks through them, beyond 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. Wilson, ^ 
 
 N 
 
1 78 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 them, or over their heads. He does not tell them where 
 he is going. In his hands every human being becomes an 
 object, an utensil. In the end a feeling grows that the 
 writer's sympathy for man is more abstract and intellec- 
 tual than actual and felt, and that his wonderful sensi- 
 tiveness to mental movements is connected rather with 
 acuity of perception than with genuine emotion and 
 penetrating sympathy. He seems to arrive at fraternity 
 as a logical conclusion of his meditations on man and 
 nature, but fraternity does not well up from his heart. 
 
 He is singularly lacking in sense of humour, and as 
 sense of humour is the only check to the pedantic ten- 
 dency innate in didactic minds, it follows that Words- 
 worth often lays himself open to the charge of pedantry. 
 It is, I believe, to his pedantry, his conscientious pedantry, 
 and not to any professional meanness, that his ungenerous 
 criticism of " The Ancient Mariner " must be attributed. 
 For no man ever was less capable of deliberately causing 
 pain to his enemies, let alone his most intimate friend. 
 
 All men do not seem able to be themselves in the same 
 degree. Wordsworth was himself very much indeed. He 
 was almost quite himself. It is not therefore surprising 
 "that he should have given so much of his vitality to his de- 
 fects and weaknesses since he had enough to spare from 
 thatwhichhebestowedon his wonderful gifts and qualities. 
 Hence, a rich personality, a splendid overgrowth of spirit. 
 
 It often happens that seeing in a forest a tree of ex- 
 ceptional dimensions and form we fancy it to be formed 
 of two trees grown together. Thus Wordsworth has been 
 sometimes explained as a double writer. Wordsworth 
 the good and Wordsworth the bad — and the usual advice 
 
WORDSWORTH AND VIRTUE 179 
 
 to neophytes is to wade through his worthless shallow 
 waters and enjoy a bracing spiritual swim in his gorgeous 
 depths. Wordsworthians, however, as Matthew Arnold 
 reminds us, read everything the master wrote ; and if 
 to think that Wordsworth is one and indivisible is to be 
 a Wordsworthian, I humbly beg to be received into the 
 brotherhood. Inequality is possible in spontaneous 
 artists, careless in execution because quick to be impressed 
 and eager to put their emotion into form and pass on. 
 Such a type is Lope de Vega, with whom, on the ground 
 of their inequality, Professor Fitzmaurice Kelly compares 
 Wordsworth. But Wordsworth, as we know, is not a 
 spontaneous, still less a careless writer. He is a con- 
 scientious builder, working according to a consistent 
 plan and knowing exactly what he is aiming at. 
 There is no inequality in his work as he understood it. 
 
 His case becomes clear once the right interpretation 
 is given to his literary genius. He is usually considered 
 a poet, and as such, of course, he is unequal ; he lacks 
 unity, beauty, strength. But let him be restored to his 
 proper place. Let him be seen as a Master with a rich 
 substratum of poetical intuition and his work will recover 
 all the unity, excelleilce and strength with which it was 
 conceived. Then, and then only, shall we see, rising before 
 our eyes in all its majesty, the " body of the Gothic 
 church " with all the " minor pieces," " little cells, 
 oratories and sepulchral recesses ordinarily included in 
 those edifices." These minor pieces, which failed as 
 " poems " and as " experiments,"^ find their balance as 
 
 ' " The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experi- 
 ments " (advertisement to the " Lyrical Ballads. " 1 798). Here the word 
 is used in a restricted sense, i.e. experiments in simple diction, but it may 
 be extended to its usual scientific meaning in view of what Wordsworth 
 often wrote on the matter- 
 
i8o THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 " short essays,"^ lessons, steps and exercises towards the 
 improvement of men and the refining and elevating of 
 their souls. Inspiration shines — ^an " accident " — here 
 and there. Truth shows here and-there her austere face. 
 But the sole unity of the vast work is in its stern, lofty, 
 never flinching fwpose. It is this word which comes 
 most naturally under Wordsworth's pen. It is the im- 
 . pulse that was ever awake in his soul. It is the strength 
 that kept going the steady step of the Wanderer. 
 
 He wrote in verse. Yes. But he was explicit enough 
 as to the place he granted to " metre " in his " composi- 
 tion." It was an adventitious and superadded element. 
 It was an afterthought. A happy afterthought, it must 
 be recognised, for, though mere verse owes little to him, 
 he owes much to mere verse. Wordsworth was sin- 
 gularly poor in the gift of form. He is great and formless 
 like the sea. Had he not written in verse, his work would 
 probably have spread as do waters at the mercy of gravity. 
 As it is Wordsworth found ready-made forms in the 
 English language which saved his message from perishing, 
 drowned in a verbal flood. That is why he is at his best 
 when most closely held by the mould of verse which he 
 has chosen. Even his blank verse, though leaving him at 
 liberty to flow, at least banks him like a river. In his 
 ballads the difficulties of English versification, and 
 especially of rhyming, are a brake, not always effec- 
 tive enough, on his profuseness. But where he is 
 best is 
 
 Within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground.~ 
 
 He did no more than pay a debt of gratitude when he 
 wrote the praise of the sonnet, for, in a literary sense, 
 
 ^ ^ordaworth uses th? word in his *' Observatioijs." 
 
WORDSWORTH AND VIRTUE i8i 
 
 there is no doubt that he described his own soul when he 
 spoke of 
 
 . . . some souls (for such there needs must be) 
 Who have felt the weight of too much liberty. 
 
 From this point of view, verse must be considered as 
 an important element of Wordsworth's work. But that 
 he wrote in verse is not in itself sufficient to establish 
 that he wrote in a poetical mood. As long as he taught 
 he was indifferent to what he felt. We can watch him 
 pass with his usual calm step from the inspired to the 
 uninspired mood by comparing the two sonnets which 
 he wrote on the spinning-wheel. The first of them is a 
 real poem, full of the music of the wheel : 
 
 Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend 
 Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute ; 
 And care—a comforter that best could suit 
 Her froward mood, and softUest reprehend ; 
 
 And love — a charmer's voice, that used to lend. 
 More efficaciously than aught that flows 
 From harp or lute, kind influence to compose 
 The throbbing pulse, — else troubled without end ; 
 
 Even joy could tell, joy craving truce and rest 
 From her own overflow, what power sedate 
 On those revolving motions did await 
 
 Assiduously, to soothe her aching breast — 
 And — to a point of just relief — abate 
 The mantUng triumphs of a day too blest. 
 
 These pauses after grief and care and love, followed by 
 long sentences, are exquisite renderings of the momentum 
 of the revolving wheel ; " assiduously " is a triumph of 
 insight into the psychological effect of the reiterating 
 movements of the wheel with its constant returning ; 
 
1 82 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 and the delicate thoughts expressed, rather than re- 
 corded, seem to be spun out as the sonnet turns on quietly 
 on its own axle. But for Wordsworth, the following 
 prosaic and prosy sermon had exactly the same value : 
 
 Excuse is needless when with love sincere 
 
 Of occupation, not by fashion led, 
 
 Thou turn'st the wheel that slept with dust o'erspread ; 
 
 My nerves from no such murmur shrink — though near, 
 
 Soft as the dorhawk's to a distant ear, 
 When twilight shades bedim the mountain's head. 
 She who was feigned to spin our vital thread 
 Might smile, O lady ! on a task once dear 
 
 To household virtues. Venerable art, 
 
 Torn from the poor ! Yet will kind Heaven protect 
 
 Its ovra, not left without a guiding chart, 
 
 If rulers, trusting wdth undue respect 
 To proiid discoveries of the intellect. 
 Sanction the pillage of man's ancient heart. 
 
 Because, when contemplating the initial fact of ex- 
 perience which soaked into his poetical intuition and 
 moved him to work, the overpowering impulse which 
 determined the shape and direction of the poem was his 
 purpose. Strong and self-controlled as he was, he could 
 not alter the architecture of his spirit, and in his spirit 
 the triangle True-Good-Beautiful was placed with its 
 Good point up. The Good was his strongest tendency, 
 and he had to obey it. He was above all an ethical nature, 
 and every other tendency in him was curbed to the service 
 of his ethical impulse. His work cannot be understood 
 unless it is considered mainly as an act. Poor in beauty, 
 hesitating in truth, it is a masterpiece of purpose and 
 intention. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 I MAY perhaps be permitted to say that in this, his pre- 
 dominant devotion to Virtue, Wordsworth is the proto- 
 type of the British race and civilisation. In him, as in 
 the average Briton, the moral comes first, and the poetical 
 and the scientific take what remains. And starting from 
 this main feature, a portrait could be drawn which, by 
 delineating Wordsworth's character, would almost exactly 
 fit any other gentleman of his nation. For this tendency 
 towards Virtue — ^that is towards good in action, under- 
 stood as covering all the range of the human spirit, from 
 its highest to its lowest, from the heroic to the narrowly 
 utilitarian — ^is the key to the understanding of British 
 character. 
 
 In Wordsworth we can see it at work. It reaches but 
 once the heroic pitch, when in the ardour of youth he 
 thinks of saving France from anarchy by offering himself 
 as a leader to the French — and the lack of judgment that 
 his idea revealed takes nothing from its heroism. It is 
 still on a noble and elevated plane when it inspires his 
 courageous Tract against the Convention of Cintra. 
 But it finds its middle and steadiest position in the exer- 
 cise of moral action as applied to the social conditions 
 reigning at the time and which are as it were the raw 
 matter of conduct. Wordsworth takes good care to 
 record the point when referring to his seclusion : 
 
 In a still retreat 
 Sheltered, but not to social duties lost. 
 
 183 
 
1 84 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 This social-moral, we might sa7 political, attitude is ever 
 present in his work, from its highest flights of political 
 eloquence to its humblest tasks of parish-pump life, such 
 as are fulfilled nowadays hy the public-spirited citizens 
 who write letters to the papers. The following sonnet, 
 for instance, is nothing else than a letter to " The Times " 
 in " metre " : 
 
 On the Projected Kendal and Winder- 
 mere Railway 
 
 Is thete HO nook of English ground secure 
 
 From rash assault ? Schemes of retirement sown 
 
 In youth, and 'mid the busy world kept pure 
 
 As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown, 
 
 Must perish ; how can they this bhght endure I 
 
 And must he too the ruthless change bemoan 
 
 Who scorns a false utilitarian lure 
 
 'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown ? 
 
 Baffl'; the threat, bright scene, from Orrest head 
 
 Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance : 
 
 Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance 
 
 Of nature ; and, if human hearts be dead, 
 
 Speak, passing winds ; ye torrents, vyith your strong 
 
 And constant voice, protest against the wrong. 
 
 Wordsworth is therefore one of the creators of modern 
 public opinion, that real government of Great Britain. 
 But public opinion does not limit its sway to strictly 
 political issues. It forms a powerful body of unwritten 
 laws which govern life much more directly and contin- 
 ually than Acts of Parliament. Wordsworth is one of the 
 " unacknowledged legislators " of this book of unwritten 
 laws which extend to all matters of opinion, taste and 
 culture, and in him we can find the main features of the 
 
CONCLUSION 185 
 
 nineteenth-century Englishman. We have just seen his 
 letter to " The Times." Here is his page of Baedeker. 
 
 The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci, 
 
 IN THE Refectory of the Convent of 
 
 Maria Della Grazia, Milan 
 
 Though searching damps and many an envious flaw 
 
 Have marred this work, the calm ethereal grace, 
 
 The love deep-seated in the Saviour's face. 
 
 The mercy, goodness, have not failed to awe 
 
 The elements : as they do melt and thaw 
 
 The heart of the beholder — ^and erase 
 
 (At least for one rapt moment) every trace 
 
 Of disobedience to the primal law. 
 
 The annunciation of the dreadful truth 
 
 Made to the twelve, survives : lip, forehead, cheek. 
 
 And hand reposing on the board in ruth 
 
 Of what it utters, while the unguilty seek 
 
 Unquestionable meanings, still bespeak 
 
 A labour worthy of eternal youth ! 
 
 It is from this social-moral tendency, so deep in him, 
 that Wordsworth's literary utilitarianism derives, that is, 
 his desire to apply his ideas and emotions to some useful 
 purpose. To work, think or feel " in the air " is contrary 
 to Wordsworth's nature as it is to that of every English- 
 man. He feels, as do his countrymen, the necessity of 
 incarnating his thought, and thus his social-moral ten- 
 dency merges into the bodily or material tendency, also 
 typical of his race. Wordsworth is an excellent example 
 of that materialism — ^not of thought, but of instinct — 
 which leads the Briton towards preferring to all other 
 activities manifestation in the tangible world. Physically, 
 
1 86 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 it shows itself in his splendid animal vitality which in- 
 spires so many telling lines in his poetry — ^particularly in 
 " The Prelude " — ^as to make quotation unnecessary, and 
 in the cleanliness and innocence of his sense of pleasure 
 — for the body is innocent and cannot sin. Mentally, it 
 appears in what Coleridge called his " matter-of-f act- 
 ness," a certain inability to rise into the realm of the 
 spirit and to part company with " flesh and blood " ;^ 
 a certain pedestrian turn of mind which is somewhat 
 connected with that other British characteristic, empiri- 
 cism. It is also from the social-moral stem that his very 
 British power of self-control derives, since self-control 
 presupposes action, an aim, a purpose. And this, the 
 British virtue par excellence, is the bane of Wordsworth's 
 poetry, for, though neither all nor perhaps the best 
 poetry is written when overflowing with Dionysian 
 spirits, it is doubtful whether a mind that never was 
 possessed by Dionysos can rise to poetry at all. The 
 British gentleman and the poet are ever in conflict 
 within Wordsworth's soul. Generally, the British 
 gentleman wins. 
 
 We reach then a plausible explanation for the three 
 facts noticed by Matthew Arnold. That Wordsworthians 
 are right in reading everything Wordsworth wrote is, we 
 have seen, another way of saying that there is Only one 
 Wordsworth. All that he wrote, even " Vaudracour and 
 Julia," which Matthew Arnold did not read, is worth 
 reading, since all, when rightly understood, finds its 
 
 ' "I have wished to keep the reader in the company of flesh and blood, 
 persuaded that by so doing I shall interest him." Preface to "Lyrical 
 Ballads." 
 
CONCLUSION 187 
 
 place in a work of great and impressive literary unity. 
 This fact becomes evident as soon as the centre of gravity 
 of Wordswrorth's work is seen to be where it ought always 
 to have been, not in Poetry, but in Teaching. Then the 
 whole perspective becomes clear and the fact that 
 some of his essays in metre are more distinctly poetical 
 than others is restored to the insignificance which it had 
 in the eyes of their author and of his followers. 
 
 The same fact explains why Wordsworth is not a 
 universal poet, since essentially he is not a poet. His 
 eyes are fixed on Virtue, and of Beauty he sees nothing 
 but the light that falls on Virtue's face. His literature, 
 admirable though it is, does not reach that pitch of in- 
 tensity which moves the stranger. It is a literature 
 essentially national in its tone, temper and general trend, 
 a " criticism of life," sober, positive and well-meaning. 
 It lacks the fire of passion and the glow of beauty and the 
 splendour of form. It occupies a zone equidistant from 
 poetry and philosophy. Though in verse, it is essentially 
 prosaic not only in its key and in its self-consciousness 
 but in the intellectual mood of the treatment, which 
 allows and even requires the use of methods of style 
 peculiar to the essayist — ^the underlining of certain 
 words, quotations, literary allusions — forbidden to the 
 poet not by any academic laws but by the very nature 
 of inspiration. It is a genre which admirably fits the 
 national taste for a literature in which no particular 
 essence predominates, which is thoughtful though not 
 philosophical, well written though not poetical, edifying"- 
 though not avowedly moral, mixed and vague like life, 
 
 ' Matthew Arnold "can read.with pleasure and edification" all Words- 
 worth. 
 
1 88 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 healthy, serious and above all useful. The difference 
 between the national and the foreign estimate of Words- 
 worth is due precisely to the fact that everything he says 
 is said in exactly that key which fits the British mental 
 ear and thus is heard with the greatest possible mental 
 resonance, while the same fact which multiplies his voice 
 in his own country deadens it abroad. The national 
 character of his genius explains the existence of Words- 
 worthians. Other great poets can go abroad unguarded. 
 They risk nothing, or, if they do, it is a universal, not a 
 national value. Wordsworth, however, represents a 
 national asset, and Wordsworthians are his bodyguard. 
 Hence their sensitiveness, since their worship is 
 blended with that most sensitive of passions, national 
 feeling. 
 
 Space and time are so closely knit together that it 
 would be surprising if Wordsworth were to spread into 
 posterity more surely than he does in universality. He 
 has been considered in these pages as a representative 
 of the British Gentleman, and it is not unadvisedly that 
 the term British, and not English, has been applied to 
 him. For in the British Gentleman the permanent 
 features of his race are of course modified by transient 
 shades, manners of being which belong to his age and 
 will disappear with it. Wordsworth is much more 
 deeply connected with the British Gentleman than was 
 any other great English poet with the transient type of 
 his race that happened to be his coeval. Chaucer does 
 not resemble the Anglo-Norman Knight, Shakespeare 
 the Elizabethan courtier, Milton the Puritan, as closely 
 
CONCLUSION 189 
 
 as Wordsworth the British Gentleman whom he incar- 
 nates, and even precedes and contributes to evolve. 
 The British Gentleman is the result of an historical 
 development which absorbs all these previous types and 
 many more types of Anglo-Saxon manhood — from the 
 City Merchant, already powerful in Chaucer's times, 
 to the rough country squire whom Fielding represented 
 with a gusto not altogether devoid of an almost fraternal 
 sympathy. The romance of the Chaucerian Knight, the 
 elegance of the Elizabethan courtier, the enterprise 
 of the City Merchant, the robust vitality of the 
 country squire, softened and polished by the growing 
 influence of the English lady, fond of books and flowers 
 and tea, all these elements survive in the complex per- 
 sonality of the British Gentleman and live together 
 within him, not always in harmony, but nearly always in 
 correct companionship. 
 
 Like all living beings, the British Gentleman must die. 
 He will die to survive in a still more complex type which 
 is being evolved under our eyes. Who does not see the 
 far-reaching changes brought about in British manhood 
 by the economic evolution of the twentieth century, by 
 the closer relationship between Great Britain and the 
 Anglo-Saxon nations overseas, by the growing intimacy 
 with France which set in after the Fashoda incident had 
 closed the period of political misunderstandings, and last 
 but not least by the European War ? When the new 
 type of Englishman asserts itself and its tastes, it is safe 
 to predict that of all the great names of English literature 
 those will suffer most which will have most intimately 
 and adequately represented the type that passed, 
 and of them, Wgrdsworth is perhaps the first, His 
 
190 THE CASE OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 glory belongs to Great Britain and to the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 It is not the smaller for that. Duration and expansion 
 are after all but gross conceptions, linked with man's 
 two mental infirmities, space and time. Depth and power 
 are great if only for one second, if only in one spot of 
 space. Wordsworth's greatness is precisely in that which 
 limits his appeal : in the fact that he represents his 
 country and his age in a manner worthy of his country 
 and of his age. That he is neither universal nor perma- 
 nent detracts nothing from his symbolical value. Indeed, 
 it adds perhaps to it. Are not Wordsworthians secretly 
 pleased and flattered in their insularity when they think 
 of Wordsworth as surrounded by seas of incompre- 
 hension f 
 
INDEX 
 
 A flower was offered me, 117 
 
 iEschylus, 30, 128 
 
 Africa, 32 
 
 Alcalde de Zalamea, El, 8, 45, 
 
 106. See also Mayor of 
 
 Zalamea, The 
 Alegrla, 98, 115 
 Alice Pell, 154 
 AUegra, 26 
 Allegro, V, 141 
 Alonso Cortes, Don Narciso, 
 
 84 
 Alps, 166 
 America, 54, 171 
 Amnon, 36, 44 
 Ana Bolena, 37 
 Ancient Mariner, The, 178 
 Andalucia, 89 
 Anecdote for Fathers, 155, 160, 
 
 177 
 Anglo-Spanish Society, 53 
 Annette, 156 
 
 Argensola, Bartolome Leo- 
 nardo de, 12 
 Ariel, 11 
 Arnold, Matthew — 
 
 On Shelley, i8-3i 
 
 On Wordsworth, 21, 126, 
 127, 134, 142, 159, 179, 
 186-7 
 Art Poitique, Paul Verlaine, 
 
 141 
 Auguries of Innocence, 120 
 Autos, of Calder6n, 6, 11, 12, 
 
 13. 23. 34. 73 
 Autumn, To, by John Keats, 
 
 143 
 AvUa, 34 
 
 Babes in the Wood, The, 132 
 
 Bach, J. S., 141 
 
 Baedeker, 185 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, 8 
 
 Beethoven, L. van, 151 
 
 Beowulf, 54-6 
 
 Biographic Universelle, 127 
 
 Bivar, 61 
 
 Blake, William, 117-22, 147 
 
 Book of Love, Juan Ruiz, 63, 71 
 
 Boohs I 'tis a dull and endless 
 
 strife, 135 
 Brasayda, 51 
 Brassey, Lord, 88 
 Britain, 53, 184, 189, 190. See 
 
 also England 
 British Gentleman, 19, 142, 
 
 162, 186, 188, 189. ' 
 British'Race, 161, 183-90 
 Bruydre, Jean de La, 163 
 Buonaparte, Napoleon, 141 
 Burgos, 57, 61 
 Burlador de Sevilla, El, 79 
 Byron, Lord, 26, 3; 
 
 Caballero, Fernan, 84 
 Cabellos deAbsolom, Los, 36, 44 
 Calder6n, Pedro : 
 
 In "Shelley and Calder6n" — 
 Character and destiny, 24, 
 
 44 
 
 Comic in, 9, f S 
 
 Compared with Shake- 
 speare, 8-13 
 
 Compared with Shelley, 
 13-17, 24 
 
 Division of his plays, 7, 8 
 
 Dogmatism, 15 
 
192 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Calder6n, Pedro, (cont.): — 
 In "Shelley and Calder6n" 
 (oont.) — 
 Imagination, 17 
 Influence over Shelley, 3, 
 
 7,28 
 Influence on Ode to West 
 
 Wind, 16 
 Rigidity, 14, 17 
 Shelley on C, 3, 5, 6, 8, 
 
 10, 31, 36 
 Shelley's acquaintance 
 
 with C, 3, 4 
 Shelley's translations of 
 C, 4, 31. 35-6, 41, 46, 
 47. 48 
 In other Essays, 58, 73, yy, 
 78, 80, 106 
 Calderdn, by Archbishop 
 
 Trench, 45, yj, 100 
 Caliban, n 
 Cambridge History of English 
 
 Literature, 153 
 Cancionero Popular, by Don 
 
 Emilio Lafuente, 84 
 Cantos Populares de Castilla, 
 by Don Narciso Alonso 
 Cortfo, 84 
 Cantos Populares EspaHoles, by 
 Don Francisco Rodriguez 
 Marin, 84 
 Carlisle, 164 
 Carlos, Embaxador de Francia, 
 
 37 
 Castile, 33, 34, 84 
 Catalina, The Queen Dona, 52 
 Cenci, The, 3, 15, 16, 18, 24, 35, 
 
 44-5 
 Cervantes, Miguel de, 9, 69 
 Channel, The, 54 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey — 
 
 Anglo-Norman Knight and, 
 188 
 
 Artistic Conscience, 66 
 
 City Merchant and, 1 89 
 
 Dignity, 68, 69 
 
 Dramatic genius, 66, 6y 
 
 French Influence, 71-3 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey (oont.) — 
 
 Juan Ruiz and, 62-73, 77 
 
 Irony, 62-4 
 
 Lyrical strain, 68 
 
 Moral Conscience, 66 
 
 Recklessness, 71 
 
 Social Status, 70 
 
 Solitude, 73 
 
 Vocation, 66 
 
 Women and, 51, 63 
 Christ, 63, 91 
 Cid, 57, 60, 61. See also Mio 
 
 Cid 
 Cipriano, 3 1 , 48 
 Cisma de Ingalaterra, La, 5, 36, 
 
 37.38 
 Clairmont, Charles, 4 
 Clairmont, Claire, 27 
 Clod and the Pebble, The, 120 
 Coleccidn de las Mejores Coplas, 
 
 by Don Preciso, 84 
 Coleridge, S. T., 154, 155, 186 
 Collins, William, 145 
 Comedia, 67, 96 
 Convention of Cintra, Tract on 
 
 the, 183 
 Copla, La, by Don Francisco 
 
 Rodriguez Marin, 98, 1 1 1 
 Corneille, Pierre, 58 
 Cordnica de Espa-Ha y Cordnica 
 
 Abreviada, by Mos6n Diego 
 
 de Valera, 52 
 Cortes, Don Narciso Alonso, 84 
 Cortes, Herndn, 128 
 Cossio, Don Manuel B., 33 
 Cowper, William, 172 
 Cuarteta, 98, 99 
 Cuentos y Poesias Populares, by 
 
 Fernan Caballero, 84 
 
 Daffodils, The, 154-5 
 
 Danube, 74 
 
 David, 36 
 
 Day of Judgment, Michael 
 
 Angelo, 33 
 Decretals, 64 
 Defence of Poetry, A, 6, 22, 23, 
 
 30 
 
INDEX 
 
 193 
 
 Devil, The— 
 
 Immortality of, 29 
 
 In Calder6n's Plays, 12 
 
 In El Mdgico Prodigioso, 30, 
 
 31.47.48 
 In Paradise Lost, 30 
 Shelley's interest in, 29 
 Shelley's translations on, 32, 
 
 41.47 
 Diaz, Rodiigo, 57. See also 
 
 Cid and Mio Cid 
 Dionysos, 186 
 
 Dixon, Prof. W. Macneile, x, 55 
 Dostoievsky, Feodcff, 69 
 Dowden, Prof. Dowden's Life 
 
 of Shelley, 4, 22, 27, 29 
 Dublin, 21 
 
 Ecclesiastical Sonnets, 126 
 Eckermann, J. P., 8, 31 
 Eldorado, ix 
 Endrina, Doiia, 67 
 England, x, 52, 54, 56, 62, 75, 
 
 81, 87, 88, 153. See also 
 
 Britain 
 English Literature, Medieval, 
 
 byProi W. P. Ker, 55 
 Entierro del Conde de Organ, El 
 
 Greco, 34 
 Essay Supplementary to the 
 
 Preface to the Poems, 1815, 
 
 by William Wordsworth, 174 
 Estribillo, 99 
 Europe, 14, 53, 54, 57, 72, 126, 
 
 127 
 Excuse is needless when with 
 
 love sincere, 182 
 Excursion, The, 130, 149, 160, 
 
 161, 170 
 
 Fashoda, 189 
 
 Faust, by Goethe, 6, 31, 32 
 
 Eerias, 89 
 
 Fernan Caballero, 84 
 
 Fifth Symphony, Beethoven, 
 
 Fletcher, Beaumont and, 8 
 Florence, 34 
 
 O 
 
 Flores, Juan de, 5 1 
 
 France, 59, 71, 72, 87, 183, 189 
 
 Gabriel, 56 
 
 Garcilaso de la Vega, 73, 74 
 
 Genero Chico, 89 
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer, by Prof. E. 
 
 Legouis, 68 
 Germany, 59 
 Gesprdche mit Goethe, J. P. 
 
 Eckermann, 8, 31 
 Gisborne, Mr. and Mrs., 3-6, 
 
 16,31.36,44 
 
 Glasgow, 50 
 
 Godwin, Fanny, 26 
 
 Godwin, William, 3, 25, 26, 135 
 
 Goethe, J. W. von, 6, 8, 31, 126 
 
 Goya, Francisco, 50 
 
 Grasmere, 164 
 
 Gray, Thomas, 139 
 
 Greco, El, 33 34, 80 
 
 Grief, thou hast lost an ever- 
 ready friend, 181 
 
 Gypsies, iS5 
 
 Hamlet, 11, 109, 151 
 Hernan Cortes, 128 
 Historia de la Poesia Castellana 
 
 en la Edad Media, by Don 
 
 Marcelino Men6ndez y 
 
 Pdayo, SI. 55 
 Hita, Archpriest of. See Ruiz, 
 
 Juan 
 Holy Family, 92 
 Hogg, James, 4, 158 
 Homer, 55, 57 
 Hugo, Victor, 172 
 Hunt, Leigh, 5, 21, 22, 26^ 31 
 
 Idiot Boy, The, 165-7 
 
 Iliad, 140 
 
 75 there no nook of English 
 
 ground secure, 184 
 Isabel the Catholic, 52 
 Italy, 34 
 
 Jimio, Don, 62, 63 
 Job, Book of, 29 
 
194 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 132, 133 
 Jota, IIS 
 
 Journals of Dorothy Words- 
 worth, 138, 141, 148, 154, 164 
 Ji*piier, 30 
 Justina, 31, 41, 42, 47 
 
 Kant, Immanuel, 6 
 Keats, John, 145, 171, 176 
 Kelly, Prof. Fitzmaurice, 62, 
 
 68, 179 
 Ker, Prof. W. P., 55 
 
 La Braydre, Jean de, 163 
 Lafuente, Don Emilio, 84 
 Leech-Gatherer, The, 154. 162, 
 
 163, 164, 165, 177 
 Legouis, Prof. EmUe, 68, 71, 
 
 153 
 Lerici, 7 
 Life of Shelley, by Prof. 
 
 Dowden, 4, 22, 27, 29 
 Life's u Dream, 80. See also 
 
 Vida es sueiU), La 
 Lift not the painted veil which 
 
 those who live, 28 
 Livomo, 3, 4 
 Lope de Vega, 17, 58, 67, 73, 
 
 77, 78, 80, 82, 96, 131, 179 
 Lucy sequence, 131, 149 
 Lycidas, 141, iji 
 Lyrical Ballads, 151, 157, 179 
 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, no, 113 
 Mdgico Prodigioso, El — 
 Devil in, 30 
 
 Incident suggested by, 46 
 Shelley's admiration for, 31, 
 
 32 
 Shelley s reading of, 6 
 Shelley's translations of, 41 
 
 Marin, Don Francisco Rodri- 
 guez, 84, 98, III 
 
 Mary, The Virgin, 68,-91, 92 
 
 Mayor of Zalamea, The, 80. 
 See also Alcalde de Zalamea, 
 El 
 
 Medinaceli, 56 
 
 Men^ndez Pidal, Don Ram6n, 
 
 Men6ndez y Pelayo, Don 
 Marcelino, 45, 51, 55, 62 
 
 Michael, 142 
 
 Michael Angelo, 33, 94 
 
 Miller's Prologue, The, 65 
 
 Milton, John, 14. 23, 30, 78-80, 
 126, 127, 141, 147, 170, 176, 
 188 
 
 Mio Cid, 54-61. 72, 82, 96 
 
 MoliSre, 126 
 
 Molina, Tirso de, J 8, 67, 79 
 
 Mutability, 132 
 
 Naples, 27, 34 
 
 Never seek to tell thy love, 118 
 
 Newton, 128 
 
 Ode, Intimations of Immor- 
 tality, 143, iss, 177 
 Ode on a Grecian Urn, 143, 
 
 145, 146 
 Ode to Evening, 145 
 Ode to the West Wind— 
 
 Influence of Calder6n on, 16 
 
 Rhythm in, 147 
 
 Shelley's intimate drama 
 and, 28 
 
 Unity of, 151 
 
 Wordsworth's Ode and, 143 
 Oilier, 18 
 Oljnnpus, 1 57 
 Ophelia, 116 
 Organ, Entierro del Conde, £1 
 
 Greco, 34 
 
 Pacheco, 33 
 
 Paradise Lost, 23, 30, 34, 140, 
 
 141 
 Paris, 6 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, 69 
 Peacock, Shelley's letters to, 4, 
 
 6, 8, 26, 32, 33 
 Peacock, T. L., 18, 27, 44-46 
 Pegasus, 152 
 Penseroso, II, 141 
 Personal Talk, 145 
 
INDEX 
 
 195 
 
 Peter Bell, 126 
 
 Peter Bell the Third, 15 
 
 Petrarch, 5, 37 
 
 Ksa, 31 
 
 Plato, 6 
 
 Poesias Populares, by Don 
 
 Tomas Segarra, 84 
 Poetry and National Character, 
 
 by Prol. W. Macneile Dixon, 
 
 X, 55 
 
 Poetry, Spanish Popular, xi, 
 84-124, 133, 134 
 
 Preciso, Don, 84 
 
 Preface to the Poems Published 
 in 1 81 5, by William Words- 
 worth, 140, 156 
 
 Preface to the Second Edition of 
 " Lyrical Ballads," by W. 
 Wordsworth, 133, 136, 139, 
 186 
 
 Prelude, The, 130, 156, 170, 
 186 
 
 Prometheus, 30 
 
 Prometheus Unbound — 
 Human interest in, 18, 22 
 Mary Shelley's notes on, 25, 
 
 29 
 Rigidity, 14 
 Satanism, 30 
 
 Proposal for Putting Reform to 
 the Vote throughout the King- 
 dom, by P. B. Shelley, 21 
 
 Prothalamion, by Edmund 
 Spenser, 151 
 
 Purgatorio de San Patricio, El, 
 3, 16, 35 
 
 P3rrenees, 54, 117 
 
 Queen Mab, 14, 22 
 Quevedo, Francisco de, 69 
 Quincey, Thomas de, 153 
 Quixote, Don, 57 
 
 Rabelais, Francois, 69 
 Raleigh, Prof. Sir Walter, 164 
 Ravenna, 27 
 
 Resolution and Independence, 
 154, 162-S, 177 
 
 Reveley, Henry, 4 
 
 Revolt of Islam, The, 32 
 
 Revolution, The French, 171 
 
 Ribera, 94 
 
 Roderick the Goth, by Robert 
 Southey, 45 
 
 Rodriguez Marin, Don Fran- 
 cisco, 84, 98, III 
 
 Romance, 67, 96, 98 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, 109 
 
 Ronda, Cantar de, 95 
 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, iii, 
 
 113 
 Ruiz, Juan — 
 
 Artistic conscience, 66 
 Chaucer and, 62-73, 77 
 Cjaiicism, 63 
 Dignity, 68, 69 
 Dramatic genius, 66, 67, 73 
 French influence, 71-3 
 Irony, 62-4 
 Lyrical strain, 68 
 Moral conscience, 66 
 Realism, 61, 80, 82 
 Recklessness, 71 
 Social status, 70 
 Solitude, 73, 78 
 Vocation, 66 
 Women and, 63 
 
 Saeta, 90 - 
 Saint-Saens, 89 
 Saint Teresa, 69, 80, 81 
 Salamanca, 34 
 Samson Agonistes, 79 
 Sancho, Abbot Don, 59, 60 
 Sancho Panza, 57, 117 
 Satan. See Devil, The 
 Scotland, 50-3 
 Segarra, Don Tomas, 84 
 Segismundo, 10 
 Seguidilla, 98, 99 
 — Gitana, 99 
 Seneca, 124 
 Shakespeare — 
 
 Calder6n and, 4, 8-13, 24 
 
 Dignity in, 69 
 
 Rhythm in, 147 
 
196 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Shakespeare (cont.) — 
 Shelley and, 24, 176 
 Spanish popular poetry and, 
 
 116 
 Vega, Lope de, and, 73, 77, 
 
 78, 80, 131 
 Wordsworth and, 175, 176 
 Other references, 14, 17, 66, 
 73.75. 79.80,81, 126,127, 
 131. 139. 170. 188 
 Shelley, Harriet, 26, 27, 45, 46 
 SheUey, Mary, 3, 5, 7, 17, 18, 
 23. 24. 25, 27, 29, 32, 33, 37, 
 44.46 
 SheUey, P. B. : 
 
 In "Shelley and Calder6n" — 
 Acquaintance with C, 3, 4 
 Character and destiny in, 
 
 24.44 
 Cleavage between philo- 
 sopher and poet, 25 
 Comic in, 15 
 Despondency, 25 
 Didactic tendency, 23 
 Dogmatism, 15, 17 
 Faith, 24, 32 
 Harriet and, 26, 45 
 Human interest, 17-25 
 Humour, Lack of, i S 
 Imagination, 17 
 IndividuaJism, 44 
 Influence of Calder6n on, 
 
 3. 7. 16, 28 
 Mdgico Prodigioso, El, 
 
 and, 6, 31, 32 
 Opinions on — 
 
 Calder6u, 4-6, 8-10, 23, 
 31. 36, 37 
 
 His " plagiarism," 3 
 
 Incest, 45 
 
 Goethe, 6, 31 
 
 Michael Angelo, 33 
 
 Wordsworth, 26 
 Paxallel with Calder6n, 
 
 13-17, 24 
 Philosophy, 25, 29 
 Plagiarism, of C, 3, 4, 16, 
 
 35 
 
 Shelley, P. B. (cont.) : 
 
 In "Shelley and Calderon" 
 (cont.) — 
 ReUgious spirit, 28 
 Rigidity, 14, 17 
 Satanic spirit, 30, 31, 48 
 Social spirit, 22 
 Translations from C|, 5 , 3 1 , 
 37. 41. 46-8 
 In other Essays, 142, 147, 
 170, 171, 176 
 Shelley's Poems and Essays and 
 Letters from Abroad, Edited 
 by Mary Shelley, 3, 4, 5, 7, 
 18, 23-5, 29, 30, 32, 33, 37 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 73, 74 
 Skylark, To a, by Shelley, 143, 
 146 ; by Wordsworth, 142, 
 
 155 
 Smith, Horace, 6, 18 
 Solea, 98, 115 
 Soleariya, 98 
 Songs of Innocence, 120 
 Sophocles, 27 
 South America, ix 
 Southey, Robert, 26, 45 
 Spain, ix, x, 32-4, 51-4, 56- 
 
 9, 62. 72-5, 81, 84, 87, 90. 
 
 91,98 
 Spanish Society of Scotland, 53 
 Spenser, Edmund, 151 
 St. Teresa, 69, 80, 81 
 Stanzas Written in Dejection 
 
 near Naples, 45 
 Surprised by Joy — impatient as 
 
 the Wind, 132 
 Swellfoot the Tyrant, 1 5 
 
 Tamar, 36, 44 
 Tempest, The, 1 1 
 Thanksgiving Ode, 1 26 
 Theatre, The Enghsh, 75, 88 
 — The Spanish, 75, 89 
 Thompson, Francis, 32 
 Though searching damps and 
 
 many an envious flaw, 185 
 Ticknor, George, 62, 68 
 Times, The, 184, 185 
 
INDEX 
 
 197 
 
 Tintem Abbey, Lines Written 
 
 near, 174 
 Tirso de Molina, 58, 67, 79 
 Toledo, 34 
 Torrellas, ;i 
 Tractado de Grisel y Mirabella, 
 
 Trelawny, 6 
 
 Tremadoc, 21 
 
 Trench, Archbishop, 38, 45, 77, 
 
 100 
 Triumph of Life, The, 22 
 
 Valera, Mos6n Diego de, 52, 
 
 53 
 VaudracouY and Julia, 126, 
 
 186 
 Vega, Garcilaso de la, 73, 74 
 Vega, Lope de, 17, 58, 67, 73, 
 
 77, 78, 80, 82, 96, 131, 179 
 Veldzquez, 9, 80, 92 
 Verbenas, 89 
 Vergil, 52 
 Verlaine, Paul, 141 
 Victor Hugo, 172 
 Vida es simRo, La, 10, 28. See 
 
 also Life's a Dream 
 Vigny, Alfred de, 73 
 Viviani, Emilia, 27 
 
 Wife of Bath's Prologue, The, 63 
 Wilkinson's Spade, Address to 
 
 Mr., 126 
 Williams, Mr. and Mrs., 6, 46 
 Wilson, Mr. John, 165, 166, 
 
 177 
 Witch of Atlas, The, 18 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 138, 
 
 141, 148, 154, 164 
 Wordsworth, William : 
 
 In "The Case of Words- 
 worth " — 
 Accuracy, 153, 154, 171 
 Beauty, W. and, 129-52, 
 
 182, 186, 187 
 British Gentleman and, 
 
 143, 161, 186, 188, 189 
 British Race and, 183-90 
 
 Wordsworth, WilUam {cont.) ; 
 In "The Case of Words- 
 worth" (fiont.) — 
 
 Conclusion, 183 
 
 Craftsmanship, 137, 138, 
 171 
 
 Creator, W. as, 131, 154 
 
 Critical faculty, 157 
 
 Didactic tendency, 1 50-2, 
 167, 169-82 
 
 Form, 137, 150, 180 
 
 Fraternity, 159, 178 
 
 Humour, 178 
 
 Inequality, 179 
 
 Inspiration, 134, 136-8, 
 I4S, 18O, 181 
 
 Intellectual Control, 135, 
 136, 144, 149, 150, 167 
 
 Man, W.'s interest in, 1 59, 
 
 173. 178 
 Mental bcimbast, 155 
 Metre, 138-45, 150, 18O, 
 
 187 
 Mood, 132-4, 143, 150, 
 
 165, i8i 
 Mysticism, 148, 149 
 Nature, W. as poet of, 145, 
 
 147. 148, 171-3 
 Optimism, 161 
 Pedantry, 178 
 Philosophy, 158 
 Poetic diction, 132, 170, 
 
 172 
 Poetic unity, 151, 152 
 Rhythm and metre, 138- 
 
 45, 150, 180, 187 
 Self-control, i86 
 Self -protection, 159-64, 
 
 166 
 Sense of humour, 178 
 Shakespeare and, 175 
 Social - moral tendency, 
 
 184-6 
 Spanish popular poetry 
 
 •and, 133, 134 
 Superiority, 177 
 Synthetic intuition, 1 30, 
 
 170, 179 
 
198 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Wordsworth, WiUiam (cont.) : 
 In "The Case of Words- 
 worth" (cont.) — 
 Triviality, 132 
 Truth, W. and, 153-68, 
 
 182 
 Universal Opinion on, 126, 
 
 127 
 Virtue, W. and, 169-82, 
 187 
 In other Essays, xi, 19, 20, 
 23,26 
 
 Wordsworthians, 126, 137, 179, 
 
 186, 188, 190 
 Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
 
 The Poetical, Edited by Mary 
 
 SheUey, 3-5. 7, 18, 23-5, 29, 
 
 30, 32. 33. 37 
 
 Ximena, Dona, 59, 60 
 York, 21 
 Zarzuela, 89 
 
Printed in Great Britain at 
 
 The Mayflower Press^ Plj/tftemtk* 
 
 William Brendon & Son, Ltd.