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 WORDSWORTH COLLECTION 
 
 Made by 
 CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN 
 ITHACA, N. Y. "■ 
 
RETROSPECTIVE 
 
 REVIEWS 
 
 I 
 

 
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 Uniform ■with this 
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RETROSPECTIVE 
 REV I EWS 
 
 A LITERARY LOG BY 
 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE 
 
 1 
 
 VOL. I 
 1891-1893 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN LANE : THE BODLEY HEAD 
 
 DODD MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 1896 
 
 >! 
 
f\.^P ijs-^ 
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty ^ 
 
 in 
 
TO 
 ERNEST PARKE 
 
 WHO FIRST GAVE ME THE OPPORTUNITY 
 
 OF EARNING MY BREAD IN THE PLEASANTEST 
 
 OF THE PROFESSIONS, THE FOLLOWING PAGES 
 
 ARE AFFECTIONATELY 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
PREFACE 
 
 My original intention in making the 
 following selection from my contributions 
 to critical journalism during the last five 
 years was that such selection might serve 
 as a sort of literary diary of the time, and 
 this service to some extent I believe it will 
 still do. Yet it will not fulfil that intention 
 as completely as I had hoped, for some 
 names that have been much in men's mouths 
 during the time, not a few deservedly, will be 
 missed entirely from these pages. This applies 
 particularly to certain popular novelists, whose 
 novels either did not come my way, or my 
 reviews of which were necessarily — and the 
 necessity for this makes the reviewing of 
 novels so tiresome — little more than resumes of 
 the story. Thus I am denied the pleasure of 
 decorating my headlines with such names as 
 
RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 
 
 those of Messrs. Zangwill, Arthur Morrison, 
 Anthony Hope, Frankfort Moore, Harold 
 Frederic, Morley Roberts, and Coulson Ker- 
 nahan, also those of Miss Harraden and Miss 
 Ella D'Arcy. 
 
 With this exception, however, I think my 
 book will be found representative of what I 
 venture to believe will be most enduring in 
 the literary output of the period it covers. 
 The period chances to have a certain signifi- 
 cance in that it marks a notable renaissance 
 of poetry, the rise of a new band of poets, 
 the most important since the Pre-Raphaelite 
 group; and with these new poets has sprung 
 up a new public interest in poetry. This 
 phase of the literary history of the period my 
 book may fairly claim to illustrate in some 
 fulness— though I regret to find, at the last 
 moment, that, by sheer accident, an article on 
 Mr. A. C. Benson has been omitted. This, 
 of course, matters more to me than to Mr. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Benson, but perhaps in a future edition I 
 may be able to supply the deficiency. Also, 
 owing to the fact of her not as yet having 
 published a volume, I have been unable to 
 make any reference to the poetry of Miss 
 Olive Custance, the striking promise of which 
 has been evidenced by her contributions to 
 various magazines. 
 
 Along with papers on contemporaries I 
 have included notes on such old poets as 
 Herrick and Drayton ; and although in their 
 cases their appearance under certain dates 
 may have little significance, it was necessitated 
 by the general plan of the book, and at any 
 rate it points to the fact that there was a 
 revival of interest in those poets at the time. 
 
 The article on Drayton has by some mis- 
 chance been printed among the 1894 instead of 
 among the 1893 papers. 
 
 Though my book thus has a certain raison 
 d'etre as the gossip of history, I trust that 
 
RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 
 
 some of its pages may be found to have a 
 more serious critical significance as well. In this 
 respect the value of the various papers, written 
 under such different moods and conditions, 
 will naturally be found to vary. I am aware 
 that some few of my notes on distinguished 
 writers are inadequate. The brief notes on 
 Mr. Austin Dobson and Mr. Henry James do 
 not, I need hardly say, pretend to express any 
 complete view of those delicate writers. I 
 should not have included them had I not been 
 anxious to bring in names so typical of the 
 time. Allowances of this nature I must rely 
 upon the reader to make for me. I would add 
 that I have done my best to preserve only that 
 which should have more than less a permanent 
 interest, either in subject-matter or treatment. 
 Of mere journalism I trust that there will be 
 found few traces, though I have purposely here 
 and there allowed a passing reference to re- 
 main, as a hint of the origin of the book. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Finally, I hope that my book will fulfil 
 the first obligation of any book whatso- 
 ever — that of being readable. I have found 
 other books of the kind so interesting to dip 
 about in — such a book, for example, as the 
 too little known Nathan Drake's Literary Hours 
 — that I have ventured to hope that mine may 
 give a similar pleasure to my own generation 
 However good or bad it may be, it does the 
 reader the service of introducing him to many 
 a better. 
 
 My selection has been made from articles 
 contributed to The Star, The Daily Chronicle, 
 The Illustrated London News, The Sketch, The 
 Speaker, The Realm, The Pall Mall Budget, 
 The Nineteenth Century, The Century Guild 
 Hobby Horse, and The Academy, to the editors 
 of which I render thanks for their permission 
 to reprint. I desire too to express my grati- 
 tude to my sister, Mrs. James Welch, for her 
 kindness in completing the tiresome task of 
 
PREFACE 
 
 arranging so large a mass of newspaper 
 cuttings, begun for me by my dear wife ; 
 also to Mr. Fred Turner, of Brentford Free 
 Library, for his kindness in compiling the 
 Index. 
 
 Brentford, December 6, 1895. 
 
SOME FIRST AND SECOND PRIN- 
 CIPLES OF CRITICISM 
 
 1. Criticism is the Art of Praise. 
 
 2. A critic is a man whom God created to 
 praise greater men than himself, but who, by a 
 curious blindness, has never been able to find 
 them. 
 
 3. A critic is one of those candles by which 
 we behold the sun. 
 
 4. A critic is one who makes odious com- 
 parisons, and invidious distinctions. He is a 
 writer of prey, the shark that gobbles up 
 young writers, or the wasp that stings to 
 pathetic irritation the old ones, and generally 
 he is the cur that snaps and snarls at the heels 
 of success. He is the goal-keeper of literature, 
 the guardian of its vested interests, and it is 
 
RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 
 
 his business to keep young genius as long as 
 possible from its birthright. 
 
 5. There are three schools of criticism : the 
 school that praises, the school that blames, 
 and the school that judges. The school that 
 praises is the most important. 
 
 6. Praise is more important than judgment. 
 It is only at agricultural societies that men 
 dare sit in judgment upon the rose. 
 
 7. There is Epical Criticism and Lyrical 
 Criticism. Sainte-Beuve, the Balzac of criti- 
 cism, may be taken as the type of the one, 
 Charles Lamb of the other. 
 
 8. The first thing for a critic to do — is to be 
 thankful that there is anything to criticise. 
 
 9. The greatest critic is he who can appre- 
 ciate the greatest number of beautiful things. 
 
 10. A necessary gift for the critic of poetry 
 is — the love of it. 
 
 11. Literature is the World in Words. 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 
 
 12. Literary Criticism is man's sulky com- 
 plaint that he was not invited to the creation. 
 
 13. The world is great, and strong, and 
 beautiful : so must be the words. The world is 
 little, and weak, and ugly — but so must never 
 be the words. 
 
 14. Literature is the art of writing — not the 
 art of telling stories or of creating character. 
 
 1 5. Many of the great novelists, and all the 
 lesser ones, belong rather to drama than to 
 literature : for as the novel sprang originally 
 from the drama, it still remains a drama — with 
 extended stage directions. 
 
 16. Shakespeare is the greatest English poet, 
 not because he created Hamlet and Lear, but 
 because he could write that speech about 
 Perdita's flowers, and Claudio's speech on death 
 in Measure for Measure, 
 
 17. Keats is the greatest English poet since 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 18. The perfection of prose is the essay, 
 of poetry the lyric, and the most beautiful 
 
 VOL. I. xvii b 
 
RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 
 
 book is that which contains the most beautiful 
 words. 
 
 19. Anything that is not beautiful, or that 
 cannot be made beautiful, has no place in 
 literature. 
 
 20. It is not sufficient criticism of a writer 
 that he does not suit your taste — though it will 
 be sufficient that he suits it. 
 
 21. In criticism you cannot be too positive. 
 Negative criticism dies with what it slays. 
 One critic may ' make ' a good book, but fifty 
 cannot kill it. 
 
 22. You may point out the spots on the 
 sun, or you may foul with mud the silver 
 face of the moon, but they will each go on 
 shining for all that. 
 
 23. 'Personalities' are poor missiles against 
 a Personality. 
 
 24. You may deny everything to Greatness, 
 
 and spit in his face to make it sure : but that 
 
 will not prevent his going to your funeral, 
 xviij 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 
 
 25. Life, they say, is more important than 
 literature, yet, without literature — what were 
 life? 
 
 Postscript. 
 
 1. A critic is any undergraduate of Oxford 
 or Cambridge. 
 
 2. William Watson, John Davidson, Francis 
 Thompson, and W. B. Yeats, are the great- 
 est poets since Algernon Charles Swinburne, 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, George 
 Meredith, and Coventry Patmore, long since 
 classic — a classic, by the way, being an old 
 book which continues to be read by young 
 men. 
 
 3. A gentleman is always a gentleman — 
 even when he writes anonymous criticism. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 
 
 Not Shakespeare himself had more confidence in the 
 
 Robert immortality of his verse than Robert 
 
 .-rf^T^^". Herrick. He was well content to let 'his 
 
 J. tie Muses 
 
 Library.' poetry ' be ' his pillar.' 
 
 ' Behold this living stone 
 
 I rear for me, 
 Ne'er to be thrown 
 Down, envious Time, by thee. 
 
 Pillars let some set up, 
 
 If so they please : 
 Here is my hope 
 
 And my Pyramides.' 
 
 He is constantly giving expression to this comfortable 
 attitude; not even 'The Nipples of Julia's Breast' — each 
 as ' a strawberry, half-drown'd in cream ' — or her ' tem- 
 pestuous petticoat,' are more frequent themes. ' To his 
 Book,' 'To his Muse,' are constantly recurring titles, 
 bearing witness to that more than maternal delight 
 which every devoted artist finds in his work. True, that 
 when Charles l. gave him the living of Dean Prior, in 
 Devonshire, he wrote : * Mr. Robert Herick : his farewell 
 unto Poetrie,' and bade a no less bitter ' Farewell to 
 
 Vol. I. 1 a 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1891 
 
 Sack,' probably at the same time, yet we all know when 
 the poet is sick, how the poet (like another personage) 
 a saint will be ; and Herrick loved both sack and 
 poetry too well to really forsake them. No doubt he 
 was far more glad than sorry to be ejected from his 
 living in 1648 — on the charge of disloyalty — and be once 
 more free to join his chums in merry London, for it goes 
 without saying that he was hail-fellow with all who loved 
 a song and a glass — and a petticoat. Not that Herrick 
 never wrote what we somewhat absurdly distinguish as 
 serious verse. His poem, 'To his Dying Brother, 
 Master William Herrick,' shows that he knew the tragic 
 as well as the pathetic note of life — though there was 
 probably little of tragic feeling in the comfortable 
 relationship of the two brothers. A poet always thus 
 outsoars his theme : 
 
 ' Life of my life, take not so soon thy flight, 
 But stay the time till we have bade good-night. 
 Thou hast both wind and tide with thee ; thy way 
 As soon despatch'd is by the night as day. . . . 
 There 's pain in parting, and a kind of hell, 
 When once true lovers take their last farewell.' 
 
 And in regard to pathos, is it not really that tender, 
 
 tearful quality that has made famous the best known of 
 
 Herrick's verse— the Horatian sigh for youth going and 
 
 gone, for the beauty that is so fair, and yet so soon past ? 
 
 His cry is continually ' To the Virgins, to make much of 
 
 Time,' to the daffodils to 
 
 'Stay, stay, 
 Until the hasting day 
 
 Has run 
 But to the evensong.' 
 
 2 
 
APRIL GEORGE MEREDITH 1891 
 
 The passing of the glory of the world is continually 
 filling his eyes with tears, which overflow in pearls that 
 drop within his book. There are people — surely they 
 must have lived in a monastery or a vacuum — who are 
 always puzzled that the men who do these exquisite 
 things in poetry should be sensuous, let us say sensual, 
 in their lives ; but apart from the many-sidedness of 
 man, it is surely the sensuous man alone who is capable 
 of these rich tearful moments. One must have lived to 
 have lost, and Herrick lived as generously as Solomon, 
 and his poems are a sort of Restoration Ecclesiastes, 
 with less of the whine and a kinder heart. Yet his 
 ' Noble Numbers,' or his ' Pious Pieces,' though at first 
 they strike one somewhat ludicrously as coming from 
 him, are no mere 'making it right' with the powers 
 above — they are the result of the real religious devo- 
 tion which was at the bottom of Herrick's, as of every 
 other poet's, heart. 
 
 That disease of compression, which made so much of 
 
 Browning's later work artistically worth- 
 George 
 Meredith: ^^^s, is more than ever Mr. Meredith's 
 
 'One of our rnaster in this new novel. Some men 
 
 seem to find the unknowable in The 
 
 Egoist, but, compared with much of One of our 
 
 Conquerors, it is simplicity itself. Mr. Meredith 
 
 refuses point-blank to say a plain thing in a plain way. 
 
 Indeed, he would seem to take a quite unnatural 
 
 delight in wrapping simplicity in as many fantastic 
 
 3 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1891 
 
 coverings as he can devise, just for the mere pleasure 
 of watching the bewildered reader open one after 
 another with growing irritation. Of course he does 
 not mind your being cross ; he enjoys it. You may 
 take him or leave him; all's one to him. But, un- 
 fortunately, it is not so with the reader ; he knows quite 
 well that, however unpromising the first chapters may 
 be, the loss will be his if he allows them to discourage 
 him from proceeding. 
 
 Take the opening sentence of the book for example : 
 ' A gentleman, noteworthy for a lively countenance and 
 a waistcoat to match it, crossing London Bridge at noon 
 on a gusty April day, was almost magically detached 
 from his conflict with the gale by some sly strip of 
 slipperiness, abounding in that conduit of the markets, 
 which had more or less adroitly performed the trick 
 upon preceding passengers, and now laid this one flat 
 amid the shuffle of feet, peaceful for the moment as the 
 uncomplaining who have gone to Sabrina beneath the 
 tides.' ' Oh ! this is too bad for anything,' you exclaim, 
 and then you tackle the next page, and then another, 
 groping your way through many more, quite unen- 
 lightened, and unconsciously going through the suc- 
 cessive stages of that poor sufferer sketched for us by 
 Mr. Bernard Partridge, who wrestled with George 
 Meredith, Esquire, and was ' thrown.' Having borne as 
 much as you can stand, give it up and go to the theatre. 
 Then try again to-morrow, and you will find the fog 
 clearing a little, and you begin to gain a glimmering of 
 who 's who and what is going forward. Soon you scent 
 an interesting social problem, and then at last one of 
 4 
 
APRIL GEORGE MEREDITH 1891 
 
 Mr. Meredith's wonderful women enters, and you have 
 the first moment of real happiness you have known for 
 hours. You feel comfortable after that, and, though the 
 fogs keep continually coming down on you throughout, 
 you know that there is a maid in the mist, and are 
 comforted. Besides, of course, an occasional fine pass- 
 age has lit up the gloom, and these, indeed, occur more 
 often as you proceed, Mr. Meredith keeping his best 
 wine to the last. 
 
 Now, the question arises, is it fair to tell a man's story 
 in a review.? It is Mr. Meredith's own fault that I 
 answer in the affirmative, for how can one watch the gasp- 
 ing reader, lost and battling in this Meredithian Atlantic, 
 without sending up a rocket or two to guide his course ? 
 I, therefore, venture to submit that the main features of 
 the story are as follows : Victor Radnor, one of the 
 great city princes, is in the prime of life and in the 
 zenith of his ambition. But there is a shadow across his 
 path — a certain Mrs. Burman Radnor, whom, years 
 before, when still in his salad days, he had married, for 
 her money presumably, she being quite double his age. 
 Soon after their marriage, the beautiful Nataly Dreighton 
 had entered their home as lady's companion, and left it 
 soon after as the virtual wife of Radnor, who thus forsook 
 the woman to whom by law he was bound. When the 
 novel opens, Radnor and Nataly have lived before the 
 world as man and wife long enough to have a grown-up 
 daughter, Nesta, and though Mrs. Burman has blown 
 upon them in one or two places where Radnor has striven 
 to set up a country-house, the world at large knows 
 nothing of the story. To all appearance * the pair are a 
 5 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1891 
 
 married couple such as you won't find in ten households 
 over Christendom.' 
 
 But, although Nataly was brave enough to take that 
 great step with her lover, she shrinks from the publicity 
 which her husband's ambition seems likely to bring down 
 upon their lives, by his still persisting in the plan of a 
 great country-house. With an instinct for the realities 
 rarely found in women, she would prefer some quiet 
 country nook ; for, though she has no actual fear of the 
 world, her sensitive refinement shrinks from the vulgar 
 interpretations it can only put upon love like hers. Rad- 
 nor persists, however, and * Lakelands ' is safely inaugu- 
 rated in lavish style, in spite of Mrs. Burman. Nataly 
 and Radnor differ in the same way on another matter, the 
 marriage of Nesta. Radnor, like many another rebel, 
 having become conventionalised with success, wishes the 
 taint on her birth to be covered by an aristocratic alli- 
 ance, and thus favours the suit of young Dudley Sowerby. 
 But Nataly retains her old reverence for true love, and 
 has always hoped that her daughter would marry 
 Captain Dartrey Fenellan, a handsome, manly fellow of 
 a type dear to Mr. Meredith, that type of the transition 
 period between early manhood and middle age, uniting 
 the unabated vigour of the one with the mature strength 
 and wisdom of the other — handsome, athletic, yet philo- 
 sophic. To this end she for once acts in opposition to 
 Radnor, and tells young Sowerby of Nesta's birth. 
 
 At first he is shocked, but as he really loves and is no 
 coward, in spite of his conventional training, he soon 
 recovers and again presses his suit. But while he was 
 wavering, Nesta, down in Brighton, had been making 
 
APRIL GEORGE MEREDITH 1891 
 
 the acquaintance of a certain Mrs. Marsett, ' a woman,' 
 as the phrase goes, ' with a history ' ; and had been 
 learning from her of the world and its ways. Nesta's 
 friends protested against the acquaintance, but that 
 only made her cling the closer to the poor pariah, for 
 whom her pity had grown into a real affection. The 
 inherited rebellion in her blood awoke and asserted 
 itself, and then Captain Dartrey Fenellan, being also in 
 Brighton, and being also one upon whom from child- 
 hood she had been accustomed to look as a wise elder 
 brother, she appealed to him. But her heart had been 
 undergoing rapid and half unconscious changes, of which 
 when she stood face to face with him she became con- 
 fusedly aware. He, too, suddenly found a courage and 
 a greatness in her face he had never seen there before, 
 the look of that woman whom he had given up hoping 
 for, having had bitter experience of the sex in an early 
 marriage dissolved by his wife's death some few years 
 before. Without a word of wooing each instantaneously 
 understood the other, and the reader has one more to 
 add to the many great love-scenes of the author. 
 
 Nataly's wish is to be fulfilled, but, such an inconstancy 
 is woman, she no sooner suspects it than her conventional 
 maternal fears get the better of her real nature. She 
 has heard of Nesta's intimacy with Mrs. Marsett, and at 
 once flies into a panic lest her daughter's destiny should 
 be like her own. This fear leads her to join forces with 
 Nesta's father, and Dudley Sowerby becomes for both 
 of them the necessary safeguard. He keeps firm to his 
 proposal, but Nesta will have none of him, and, while 
 the issue is pending, Radnor and Nataly are summoned 
 7 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1891 
 
 to the bedside of Mrs. Burman, who is near death and 
 wishful to make peace with them before the end. All 
 seems to be promising fair, when at a political meeting 
 news is brought to Radnor not only of Mrs. Burman's 
 death, but of his own Nataly's sudden illness. He 
 hastens to her, but it is too late. The shock unsettles 
 his reason, and we leave him in an asylum — while, after 
 many days, Dartrey and Nesta go for their happy 
 honeymoon to the Lake of Como. 
 
 This is, of course, the merest outline, but even from 
 this it will be seen that Mr. Meredith's theme is the most 
 daring he has yet attempted, and one which no living 
 English* novelist save himself could be hoped to treat 
 with the robustness it demands. That game of ' tennis 
 with the seventh commandment,' as Mr. Kipling phrases 
 it, which is the stock-in-trade of the lady novelist, has, 
 it is needless to say, nothing in common with Mr. 
 Meredith's serious study of the problem. Once more 
 he brings us face to face with nature for our standard, 
 and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. He tells a 
 vivid story of great people and great passions, and 
 though, being an artist, he does not preach, yet we are 
 not, of course, left in doubt as to his sympathies. 
 What those are we have not had to wait for One of our 
 Conquerors to be aware. In the battle of nature against 
 convention Mr. Meredith has always been foremost, and 
 in that quarter of it which concerns what he has called 
 'the duel between the sexes' he has in each of his 
 novels done memorable service. Once more his women 
 are wonderful, Nataly and Nesta are of the same flesh 
 and blood as Diana, Sandra, Renee, and Clara, the 
 
APRIL GEORGE MEREDITH 1891 
 
 same human and yet reverent creations. It is indeed 
 that power of being able to look closely and yet 
 reverently at life which lifts Mr. Meredith so high above 
 those mere realists who, as he once more reiterates here, 
 think they know the world 'from having sifted and 
 sorted a lot of our dust -bins.' 
 
 In addition to Nataly and Nesta, we have among the 
 crowd of minor characters two studies of the weaker 
 sisterhood, Mrs. Marsett and Mrs. Blathenoy, Dartrey 
 Fenellan's scene with the latter being one of the most 
 striking in the book. Of another feminine type, Mr. 
 Meredith gives us a sympathetic sketch in Priscilla, the 
 Salvation lass, and by reference to her goes to the heart 
 of the matter in this eminently sane passage : ' Look 
 at your country, se'e where it shows its vitality ; you 
 don't see elsewhere any vein in movement. Think of 
 that when the procession sets your teeth on edge. 
 They're honest foes of vice, and they move — in 
 England ! For gross maladies gross remedies? 
 
 Of the purely literary qualities of the book one need 
 say little. Readers of Mr. Meredith know what to 
 expect when he takes up his pen — an epigram on 
 every other line, an unexampled faculty for the unique 
 word, and a cunning skill in nomenclature. This last 
 has hardly been sufficiently noted by his commentators, 
 and such names as Crayes and Creckholt, Mrs. Burman, 
 Colney Durance and Dudley Sowerby, bear the un- 
 mistakable hall-mark of the deftness which coined the 
 magnificent Sir Willoughby Patterne of Patterne Hall. 
 Beyond a certain point his writing is, of course, a 
 lottery. There are sure to be some good things, more 
 9 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1891 
 
 or less accordingly as he has written in inspired or 
 uninspired moments. This may be held to apply to any 
 writer, but those who read him know that it applies 
 more to Mr. Meredith than to any other, save his great 
 poetical analogue, Browning. And impressionism of all 
 methods is that which can only be successful at the 
 inspired moment. Mr. Meredith does not always wait 
 for that, and there are many pages in his new book, 
 especially in the earlier chapters, as I have already 
 hinted, which are simply gibbering caricatures of a style 
 which in others he practises as magically as ever. What 
 that style is at its best it would need a pen like his own 
 to describe ; so keen and yet so tender, so strong and 
 yet so supple, so delicate and yet so lusty. Few men 
 of brain have blood enough for heart as well ; but by 
 this token Mr. Meredith is of the race of the giants. 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 In Philip Bourke Marston's Last Harvest, to which his 
 P. B. Marston : faithful friend Mrs. Chandler Moulton con- 
 ' A Last tributes a biographical introduction, there 
 arvest. j^ ^^ same magic of cadence, haunting 
 one in lines and verses otherwise not notable, the same 
 poignant passion, the same Shakespearean handling of 
 flowers, and there is likewise the same paucity of meta- 
 phor, and the same monotony of mood, such as we find 
 in all his poetry. 
 
 10 
 
OCT. P. B. MARSTON 1891 
 
 Marston could not suffer as he did, and his art not 
 suffer also. If a man be blind early, paucity of meta- 
 phor, for one thing, must follow ; for metaphor, the 
 essential power in poetry, is, of course, founded on 
 comparison ; it makes one thing speak for another, and 
 it therefore needs a full and varied experience of the 
 objective, outside world, of which a blind man must, 
 necessarily, be to a large extent deprived. And as it 
 restricts him in metaphor, so it must in subject and 
 mood. That Marston's earlier work remains his best 
 (his ' Christmas Vigil ' and ' The Rose and the Wind ') 
 is a proof of this. When he wrote these, he had still a 
 little sight left him, or, at any rate, his blindness had but 
 recently come upon him. And he wrote objectively 
 with a fine sweep of hand, which promised great things 
 for the future. But then came his blindness, followed 
 by crushing bereavements one upon another, and, left 
 alone in the dark, with no outer world to distract his 
 thoughts from sorrow, no subjects but his own over- 
 wrought emotions, is it to be wondered at that his poems 
 should take on the complexion of his dreary days ? 
 
 More than half of his work suffers thus, work that 
 would not have been written, even with all his suffering, 
 had he kept his eyesight ; expressions of fanciful moods 
 of sorrow, which he would not have deemed worth the 
 pains of his art, in the daylight. But, sitting in the 
 dark, listening to his own tears, he very naturally gave 
 way to them, expressing them too often in a monotonous 
 symbolism, which is another sign of his being cut off 
 from the world of metaphors. 
 
 II 
 
DEC. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1891 
 
 'On an evening in the latter part of May, a middle- 
 aged man was walking homeward from 
 Thomas 
 Hardy: Shaston to the Village of Marlott, m the 
 
 ' Tess of the adjoining vale of Blakemore or Black- 
 
 D'Urbervilles.' _, ... , . , , . 
 
 moor. The pair of legs that carried him 
 were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which 
 inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line.' 
 
 When a novel begins so, who needs to be told that 
 we are once more in Mr. Thomas Hardy's Arcady of 
 Wessex, that villages with all kinds of quaint cider- 
 sounding names lie about us, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe- 
 Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, Bubb Down, and that here 
 all roads lead to Casterbridge. The devoted student 
 of Mr. Hardy would also immediately recognise him 
 by a less pleasing token in this passage. Who else, 
 except maybe Mr. Meredith, would describe the un- 
 steadiness in the walk home of an aged tippler as 
 'a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to 
 the left of a straight line ' ? But this is only a trifling 
 example of a defect in Mr. Hardy's style which is 
 continually making one grind one's teeth, like 'sand 
 in honey.' One cannot call it euphuism, because 
 euphuism tends to ' favour and to prettiness.' 1 1 seems 
 rather to come from sudden moments of self-conscious- 
 ness in the midst of his creative flow, as also from 
 the imperfect digestion of certain modern science 
 and philosophy which is becoming painfully obtrusive 
 through the apple-cheek outline of Mr. Hardy's work. 
 For example, a little boy talks to his sister, 'rather 
 for the pleasure of utterance than for audience'; a 
 12 
 
DEC. THOMAS HARDY 1891 
 
 wooer at a certain hot moment entreats the wooed : 
 'Will you, I ask once more, show your belief in me 
 by letting me encircle you with my arm?' Another 
 lover, trying to persuade Tess that his marrying her 
 cannot hurt his family, says 'it will not affect even 
 the periphery of their lives,' and, later on, when the 
 time has come to forgive, he asks, ' How can forgive- 
 ness meet such a grotesque prestidigitation as that?' 
 And when Mr. Hardy would tell us that Tess had 
 forgotten that children must be expected from their 
 union, he says that she had been 'forgetting it might 
 result in vitalisations that would inflict upon others,' 
 etc. Mr. Hardy continually delights in those long 
 Latin and Greek words that seem to be made of 
 springs rather than vowels. Think how absolutely 
 out of colour in Arcady are such words as 'dolori- 
 fuge,' 'photosphere,' ' heliolatries,' ' arborescence,' 'con- 
 catenation,' ' noctambulist ' — where, indeed, are such 
 in colour? — and Mr. Hardy further uses that horrid 
 verb ' ecstasise.' 
 
 No doubt, these are small matters, yet the more 
 beautiful the rest of the work the more jarring such 
 defects as these. Why, one such word is as destructive 
 as an ounce of dynamite in any dream-world, more 
 especially so in Mr. Hardy's ' Sicilian vales.' Imagine 
 the effect were such expressions introduced into an idyll 
 of Theocritus, think how the flute and the pipe would 
 stop with a shriek before words of such terrible aspect. 
 They could not more potently destroy our illusion if 
 they were steam-whistles, and this they are constantly 
 doing, like the ' doctor ' in the rhyme, making us dance 
 13 
 
DEC. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1891 
 
 out of Wessex — yes, ' into France,' among other places ; 
 for study of French authors seems to be having a strong 
 influence on Mr. Hardy's work of late. Realism as a 
 theory seems in danger of possessing him at times, 
 though happily but intermittently. In that realism 
 which is not theory but a necessary artistic instinct, 
 Mr. Hardy has always been strong. 
 
 However, despite those dreadful words, and despite 
 its painful 'moral,' its noble, though somewhat obtru- 
 sive 'purpose,' Tess of the U Urbervilles is one of Mr. 
 Hardy's best novels, second only to The Return of the 
 Native. The beautiful simplicity of his style when, as 
 usual, he forgets he is writing, the permeating healthy 
 sweetness of his descriptions, the idyllic charm and yet 
 the reality of his characters, his apple-sweet women, 
 his old men, rich with character as old oaks, his love- 
 making, his fields, his sympathetic atmosphere — all 
 these, and many other of Mr. Hardy's best character- 
 istics, are to be found ' in widest commonalty spread ' 
 in Tess. 
 
 The motive of Tess is one of those simple, and 
 yet how cruelly tangled, sexual situations round which 
 'the whole creation moves,' and in which Mr. Hardy 
 delights to find the eternal meanings. Mr. Hardy has 
 heretofore been more inclined to champion man the 
 faithful against woman the coquette, but in Tess 
 he very definitely espouses the cause of woman, and 
 devotes himself to show how often in this world — all, 
 alas, because the best of us is so conventionalised — 
 when men and women break a law ' the woman pays.' 
 Of course it is a special pleading, because a novel 
 M 
 
DEC. JAMES SMETHAM 1891 
 
 might be as readily written to show how often a man 
 pays too. Indeed was not Middlemarch such a novel ? 
 It is noticeable that most of these books against men 
 are written by men, and that Middleftiarch is the 
 work of a woman. Such is the gallantry of sex, and 
 such its ironical power. 
 
 One has only to look a moment at the fine portrait 
 James °^ James Smetham, from a painting by 
 Smetham : himself, which is the frontispiece to the 
 etters. volume of his Letters, to know that we 
 are not to be introduced to a successful man. The 
 face is a beautiful one, finely featured in that distin- 
 guished mould so rare latterly that we are beginning 
 to associate it with miniature painting and the high 
 cravat. Smetham, need one say, was nearer our own 
 era than the latter, though he dates far enough 
 back to have had his livelihood as a portrait-painter 
 lost to him by the new invention of photography. 
 I used the word * successful ' entirely in regard to 
 his art, as distinct from his art-business ; as when I 
 say we feel a lack of practicality in his face, I do not 
 use the word in that vulgar commercial sense which 
 means a robustious activity and shrewdness in this 
 world's affairs — qualities which, like fire and water in 
 sententious images, are good servants but bad masters, 
 and prone to be dangerous companions for the finer 
 qualities of the soul. I mean that Smetham was 
 unpractical in his art. 
 
 15 
 
DEC. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1891 
 
 Not that he was unstudious ; on the contrary he was 
 most painful in his methodical culture of himself. His 
 sympathetic biographer, Mr. William Davies, gives us 
 an impressive account of the thoroughness with which he 
 not only planned, but carried out, a most comprehensive 
 system of culture in which, of course, as in any service- 
 able system, a specific art training was but one, though a 
 very important part. Did he not, when under the tute- 
 lage of Mr. Wilson, a distinguished architect of Lincoln, 
 spend a whole year in drawing the sculpture about the 
 cathedral.? No wonder he should exclaim, 'Ah, me! 
 great tower of Lincoln, with the white moon shining on 
 thee, how can I forget thee . . . ! ' It must have been 
 a great time, that year of cloistral work. Then he was 
 in the habit of making pictorial notes of all his ex- 
 periences, filling book after book with symbolism of his 
 thought and emotion. All this was well, it was even 
 ' practical,' but (at any rate as regards art) it was of that 
 unpractical practicality which characterised Shelley — 
 the practicality of the dreamer, of the ' crank.' 
 
 One feels a certain slowness, too, about the face. It 
 does not kindle at the eyes ; its gentle light is suffused 
 rather than gathered into a star upon the high brow ; 
 one feels the lack of that central, concentrating force 
 which one generally finds in the faces of those born for 
 the triumphant synthesis of art. The bent of Smetham's 
 mind was analytic, he was industrious to collect, but 
 slow to generalise. This I say without having seen a 
 single picture of his ; but from the impression I receive 
 of the tone of his friends' appreciation of his work, I 
 think I am not wrong. Rossetti and Mr. Ruskin were 
 16 
 
DEC. JAMES SMETHAM 1891 
 
 both admirers of his work ; the latter>as a close and 
 helpful friend of his, and one of the most interesting 
 letters describes Smetham's first visit to him in the 
 midst of his home life, while yet a bachelor living with 
 his parents. But somehow their praise seems to lack 
 gusto, or to die off in the utterance, as though they said, 
 ' Yes, beautiful, very beautiful, but . . .' I seem to miss 
 in their praise what I miss in the face. 
 
 In the Letters it is different. Letters are necessarily 
 the expressions of 'moments,' and finer moments, or 
 a more continuous succession of them, it would be 
 difficult to find, even in the classical letter-writers, than 
 in these of James Smetham. It is the paradox of such 
 natures that they should thus express themselves in the 
 very record of their frustration. Amiel was in some 
 respects a similar example. In confiding to his diary 
 his hopeless inability for expressing his high thought, he 
 expressed what is infinitely more valuable to us, himself. 
 Failure always lets us more into the secrets of success 
 than success itself, because success is a concrete product 
 which has concealed its process. And that is one of the 
 many reasons why Smetham's letters are so interesting. 
 Had he been a ' successful ' painter he would probably 
 never have written these letters, which tell us so much 
 and so finely of a man who came nearer to that com- 
 plete development of a fine spirit which is greatness, 
 than any mere possessor of a one-sided artistic gift. In 
 such a nature as Smetham's one often finds a far deeper 
 sensitiveness, a keener intensity, than in the actual 
 artist, because it is necessary that the latter should not 
 feel too much. He must keep a balance between feeling 
 VOL. I. 17 B 
 
DEC. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1891 
 
 and control. There is always a certain comparative 
 hardness about him. But such natures as Smetham's 
 feel too much, they continually run over. And yet the 
 painful yearning for expression is none the less to ' ease 
 something of that sense as if a reservoir were straining 
 at its banks in the moonlight among Yorkshire fells ' — 
 Smetham's own fine image. 
 
 His letters are full of such poetry. For instance, in a 
 wonderful rhapsody on Wuthering Heights he com- 
 pares Heathcliff and Catherine to two figures, strange 
 freaks of granite on a wild moor, which ' seem as if 
 Michael Angelo, striding in his sleep across the wild, 
 had been trying to realise a human nightmare which 
 would not let him rest in his bed.' He has a criticism 
 of ' Maud,' full of delicate perception. He says a fine 
 thing about Keats's letters, and, indeed, httle that was 
 published between 1853 and 1877 misses some suggestive 
 reference in his letters. A great part of them is taken 
 up with the record of high spiritual aspiration, as became 
 one who, in no narrow sense, was an ardent Wesleyan, 
 Though he does not escape the tendency of that sect to 
 rhapsodise, his intellectual opposite could not but be 
 moved with some of his fine prayerful utterances. 
 
 $¥ 
 
JAN. CHURTON COLLINS 1892 
 
 Mr. Churton Collins's Illustrations of Tennyson is 
 
 a book, in many ways, of stimulating 
 
 Collins: significance. It raises once more several 
 
 • Illustrations artistic questions, which, treated abstractly, 
 
 one might be willing to leave unanswered, 
 
 but which, in association with so great a literary figure 
 
 as Lord Tennyson, become exceedingly sensitive. 
 
 It compels us to think out the whole question of 
 literary decadence. It sets us inquiring what is the 
 authentic pleasure we should expect from art : how 
 far that is dependent on learning, how far on tempera- 
 ment ; and, as a corollary, suggests the same inquiry 
 in regard to artistic criticism. 
 
 If, indeed, learning must be the important qualifica- 
 tion for the answering of these questions, one might 
 well hesitate to join issue with Mr. Churton Collins : 
 for these Illustrations bear witness to an acquaint- 
 ance with books, and a memory for their contents, 
 such as that of the Magliabecchis of old time. 
 
 But, in Mr. Collins's prodigious memory for passages 
 exists for me the most significant criticism of his book. 
 It suggests the wide difference between a commentator 
 and a critic : the same difference on which Mr. Collins 
 insists, and rightly insists, as distinguishing the ' literary ' 
 from the 'original' poet in his manipulation of old 
 material. In the latter case, says Mr. Collins, what 
 is borrowed 'is not simply modified and adapted, but 
 assimilated and transformed.' Similarly, in the case 
 of commentator and critic : the learning of one remains 
 in its original form, exists as 'passages' undigested 
 19 
 
JAN. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 as nails or needles, mechanically pigeon-holed, to be 
 given out again as foot-notes ; in the other it has 
 become 'assimilated and transformed' into principles 
 of artistic enjoyment. The ideal critic would probably 
 be the man who remembered nothing, whose reading 
 had all been worked up organically or rejected as 
 waste ; whereas the ideal commentator would be the 
 man whose patient ' tick-tack ' methods were never 
 troubled by any rosy touch of feeling or vision. 
 
 Of course one is speaking of the ideal, the impos- 
 sible. Without learning, or let us say memory, we 
 should be obliged to forego the much appreciated dis- 
 covery of modern criticism, the comparative method. 
 Yet, with all proper respect to that method and to 
 those who are sufficiently accomplished to success- 
 fully practise it, it is in reality but a makeshift, and 
 comes of the inequality between our powers of percep- 
 tion and our powers of expression. 
 
 We find it impossible to express the finer shades 
 of beauty by any final characterisation : we cannot 
 say what this subtle quality is, but we can, by the 
 aid of reading and memory, say what it is like, and 
 so bring the reader some way towards what it is. 
 
 Criticism, ideally, is the perfect praise of perfect art : 
 but, failing the perfect art, it must needs be a measurer 
 of imperfection. And thus comes the impertinent 
 question of degree into art, where properly it has no 
 place. 
 
 The absolute naming of qualities, not the degree in 
 which they are present or absent, is the function of 
 criticism. 
 
 20 
 
JAN. CHURTON COLLINS 1892 
 
 Of course, Mr, Collins is neither that great ideal 
 critic, nor that little ideal commentator, but one must 
 be pardoned for feeling that his excellencies are more 
 those of the commentator than the critic. Mr. Collins's 
 reading has not been sufficiently 'assimilated and 
 transformed' into principles. His special gift would 
 seem to be, as customary, the origin of his special 
 defect. His pleasure in art would seem to be exactly 
 that we would expect in an editor. He is continually 
 laying stress on the pleasure of allusiveness in litera- 
 ture. It is for him, apparently, the greatest charm of 
 Lord Tennyson's verse ; and in his polemic on ' The 
 Study of English Literature' at the Universities, he 
 says : ' That such poems as " Lycidas " and the " Pro- 
 gress of Poesy," have been the delight of thousands, and 
 will continue to be the delight of thousands, who have 
 never opened a Greek and Latin classic, is no doubt true, 
 but it would be absurd to contend that their pleasure 
 would not be increased tenfold had they been scholars.' 
 
 Mr. Collins seems to aim at exactitude in expres- 
 sion, and when he says 'tenfold' he is not likely 
 to mean only ' twofold.' Even so, the significance 
 of his statement remains unaffected. The pleasure 
 which Mr. Collins derives from a work of art comes 
 mainly — nine-tenths, to be precise — from his ability, 
 first to distinguish therein the separate component 
 materials employed by the artist, and then to recall 
 the various vicissitudes to which, in the long course 
 of artistic usage, those materials have been subject : 
 the pleasure that comes to him from the completed 
 whole, the new form, the indestructible something 
 21 
 
JAN. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 which of these idle materials has made a living, 
 beautiful synthesis, in fact, the artist's own individual 
 spirit — this pleasure is to Mr. Collins but as one- 
 tenth. 
 
 Now, is the chief pleasure of a work of art to be 
 sought in the accidental associations of its material ? 
 
 The pleasure which comes of tracing such associa- 
 tions of phrase and word, in watching what Mr. Pater 
 calls their 'refined usage,' is, of course, a real and 
 exciting one, but it is one quite apart from the aesthetic, 
 or the spiritual, impression — is, in fact, a scientific 
 pleasure, a pleasure of the ' curiosity,' and, surely, 
 more like one than nine-tenths of the delight we 
 should expect from a work of art. 
 
 It is of the essence of a work of art that it is a 
 whole. The first pleasure in it, therefore, must come 
 from it as a whole. If it be of the essence of artistic 
 creation that the artist should conceal his process, it 
 is no less of the essence of aesthetic enjoyment that it 
 should remain concealed. 
 
 It is, of course, obvious that cultured people do receive 
 greater pleasure from Lord Tennyson's poetry than 
 uncultured — not for the reason given by Mr. Collins, but 
 for the reason that they receive the greatest pleasure 
 from any poetry whatsoever, be it primitive or deca- 
 dent. Such read Shakespeare and such read Tenny- 
 son for the joy of the same thing in each, the spiritual 
 exaltation of beauty. Mr. Collins, and many others 
 of us, talk of the 'fathers of song,' Homer, Dante, 
 Chaucer, Shakespeare, as though they were being sold 
 by thousands on the railway bookstalls. As a matter 
 22 
 
JAN. CHURTON COLLINS 1892 
 
 of fact, who reads them save the cuhured ? who reads 
 any poet save the cultured ? ' Cultured,' not ' learned,' 
 remember. To be a learned man is the 'gift of for- 
 tune,' but to be cultured 'comes by nature.' Culture 
 is mainly a matter of temperament. A man is born 
 cultured : that is, he is born with a certain sensitive, 
 fastidious constitution, which, of course, reading re- 
 fines, but which no reading can create. Culture, 
 moreover, is a state of the whole constitution, whereas 
 learning is mainly the exercise of one function, that of 
 memory. For some people learning is an unnecessary 
 accomplishment, the acquirement of it a superstitious 
 waste of energy. What matters it that one does not 
 remember, or even has never read, certain great writers ? 
 Our one concern is to possess an organisation open 
 to great and refined impressions. Great writers are 
 but means to that end, and reading but a part of 
 that process the product of which is culture. If we 
 could imagine our reading of Shakespeare having done 
 all that it can for us, what matter if we straightway 
 forget every line? He remains in us, remains in our 
 more refined senses, our more quickened spirit. This 
 is, of course, at once obvious and extreme, but the 
 obvious and extreme are both at times necessary in- 
 struments of criticism, and certainly necessary when 
 we are told that nine-tenths of the pleasure of poetry 
 are lost to all but ' the learned.' 
 
 That allusiveness should be Mr. Collins's chief plea- 
 sure from poetry is somewhat paradoxical, for such 
 pleasure is one of that very decadence with which 
 Mr. Collins seems generally to have little sympathy. 
 23 
 
JAN. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Art would seem to be interesting to him as a palim- 
 psest is interesting, and he would appear to read one 
 book for the sake of being reminded of others. 
 
 But what is decadence in literature ? It seems largely 
 to be confused with a decadence in the style of litera- 
 ture, which is not quite the same thing. Even that 
 decadence is continually misunderstood — euphuism and 
 quite proper organic refinements of style being con- 
 tinually confused with each other. Mr. Collins, and 
 many others, continually assume that the mere exercise 
 of conscious art in literature, the care for the unique 
 word, the use of various literary means to literary ends, 
 as alliteration and onomatopoeia, constitute decadence. 
 To say this is to be forced to the absurd conclusion 
 that the nearer an instrument approaches perfection, 
 the more it becomes adapted to the uses for which it 
 is designed, the less its value. The only decadence 
 in style is euphuism — and its antithesis, slang. Mr. 
 Collins writes, too, as though the old 'original' poets 
 sang like bird on bough the unpremeditated lay, with 
 nothing of conscious artistic selection ; yet we know 
 that Chaucer took as much pains over his rhymes as 
 any latter-day poetaster, and that, indeed, the French 
 schools, which in some respects he took as his models, 
 were students of style to the last degree of affectation. 
 
 But decadence in literature is more than a question 
 of style, nor is it, as some suppose, a question of theme. 
 It is in the character of the treatment that we must 
 seek it. In all great vital literature, the theme, great 
 or small, is considered in all its relations near and 
 far, and above all in relation to the sum-total of 
 24 
 
JAN. CHURTON COLLINS 1892 
 
 things, to the Infinite, as we phrase it ; in decadent 
 literature the relations, the due proportions, are ignored. 
 One might say that literary decadence consists in the 
 euphuistic expression of isolated observations. Thus 
 disease, which is the favourite theme of decadents^ does 
 not in itself make for decadence : it is only when, as 
 often, it is studied apart from its relations to health, 
 to the great vital centre of things, that it does so. Any 
 point of view, seriously taken, which ignores the com- 
 plete view, approaches decadence. 
 
 To notice only the picturesque effect of a beggar's 
 rags, like Gautier ; the colour-scheme of a tippler's 
 nose, like M. Huysmans ; to consider one's mother 
 merely prismatically, like Mr. Whistler— these are ex- 
 amples of the decadent attitude. 
 
 At the bottom, decadence is merely limited thinking, 
 often insane thinking. 
 
 When a subject is treated proportionally, though the 
 style bear marks of euphuism, there can be no ques- 
 tion of decadence. To speak of decadence, therefore, 
 in connection with such poets as Virgil and Lord 
 Tennyson, poets of noble epic aim, of high ordered 
 thought, poets who see life steadily and see it whole, 
 to say nothing of the dignity of their treatment, is 
 mere anarchy. 
 
 Let us for a moment consider the elementary charac- 
 teristics of great literature. Broadly speaking, litera- 
 ture is a symbolic verbal expression of life. It must, 
 to begin with, include all the primary conditions of life. 
 
 Now, through the whole of men's actions comes the 
 interpenetrating sense of their being done beneath an 
 25 
 
JAN. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 illimitable sky, 'under the sun.' This sense of an 
 all-including, overhanging Infinite is the invariable 
 atmosphere of great literature (as, of course, of any 
 great art) : and this atmosphere is the province of the 
 imagination. 
 
 Again, the pulse of life goes with a rhythm, which 
 only the gods and the poets catch. Thence comes 
 the characteristic of rhythm into literature, the poet 
 expressing that human rhythm according to the music 
 of his own nature. 
 
 Lastly come the various forms and other expres- 
 sions of life, having their counterpart in words. Here 
 comes in the poet's selective sense to choose the words 
 most fitting for the forms he wishes to express — 'the 
 unique word.' But the unique word is not merely the 
 word which is the same colour, shape, and size as 
 the object it must stand for, but the word which will 
 also blend with the rhythm, and heighten the imagina- 
 tive atmosphere of the whole work. Too many writers 
 consider the unique word as one fragment of a mosaic, 
 whereas it should rather be considered as a note of 
 music, animated with their rhythm, and transfigured 
 with their imagination. 
 
 Now it will be seen that the whole significance of 
 this third and final condition to literature depends 
 mainly on the other two. As the facts of life lie all 
 about awaiting the poet, so lie the words. Both have 
 been used countless times before in countless com- 
 binations. Whatever originality of effect the poet is 
 to attain will depend on the spirit he breathes through 
 these old forms. The mere fact of his using the old 
 26 
 
JAN. CHURTON COLLINS 1892 
 
 words, or up to a point the old methods, cannot detract 
 from a manifest originality of result, any more than 
 his employment of the world-old facts for which the 
 words stand can do so. Whatever an original poet 
 borrows he sets anew to the music of his own nature. 
 An original nature may borrow much, but it can never 
 owe. 
 
 Therefore, if this view of the several elements of 
 literature be a correct one, inferences against a poet's 
 originality based merely on his appropriation of the 
 words and phrases, even the ideas, of other poets are 
 vain in the face of work which gives us the sense of 
 a new individuality, a temperament meeting the old 
 things through a new experience. It is thus that the 
 cry of plagiarism is generally so absurd, for all it can 
 point to is the use once more of common property, 
 the mere bricks with which all men build, or at the 
 most bits of ornament taken from former creations. 
 The charge is never made in regard to the essentials, 
 the vital breath of poetry. 
 
 It is thus that, to my mind, Mr. Collins's implied 
 charges against Lord Tennyson for his assimilation of 
 the work of other poets, are not so much unjust as 
 merely futile— not to dwell on the fact that many of the 
 'illustrations' are obviously coincidences constrained 
 to Mr. Collins's purpose. 
 
 All, it seems to me, that one has to ask as we read 
 Lord Tennyson, or any other poet, simply is : Does 
 this poetry give me the sense of a new personality, 
 present as a new magic, of rhythm or what not, in 
 the verse? If so, one need trouble no further, and 
 27 
 
JAN. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 we can with indifference watch the commentator, 'like 
 a demon-mole,' burrowing his way in his little tunnels 
 of learning beneath the text. 
 
 It is a curious thing that that 'acute and honourable 
 
 George minority' which, all through Mr. Meredith's 
 
 Meredith: career, have been the faithful audience 
 
 'Modern Love' j , -, • j- i • ^ 
 
 —Second ^""^ zealous champions of his novels 
 Edition. should more or less have missed his 
 poems. Maybe it has come of a not unfounded 
 distrust of a proseman's verse. One is always inclined 
 to regard the latter as an amiable weakness, and to 
 say ' Let him who is a novelist be a novelist still ! ' 
 And then Mr. Meredith's admirers have been for 
 the most part thinkers. They have welcomed him 
 for his fearless, subtle criticism of life, rather than 
 as an artist. It is so that Browning is mainly wor- 
 shipped to this day, and that is why so many are found 
 to make light of his ugly artistic blemishes. They 
 have not gone to him for poetry, but thought. How- 
 ever it be. Modern Love has for the most part been 
 missed— in common with the whole of Mr. Meredith's 
 poems, even his wonderful earth poems. Songs and 
 Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, poems with more of the 
 Pandean inspiration, the rich smell, the spring water 
 chastity, the central sweetness, and the shaggy indomit- 
 able vitality of earth than any other English nature 
 poems at all. It is still more curious that while his 
 28 
 
FEB. GEORGE MEREDITH 1892 
 
 friends have missed them, they are the only part of his 
 work for which his unsympathetic critics have a good 
 word. Mr. George Moore, for example, who will have 
 nothing of the novels, speaks in his Confessions in 
 high praise of the poems. Browning, too, held the 
 same view. And there can be no doubt that the beauty 
 of Mr. Meredith's prose at its best is more distinc- 
 tively a poetical than a prose beauty. His metaphor is 
 too powerful and too constant, and his expression falls 
 too much into phrases, complete in themselves, to 
 be characteristically prose. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne, however, with the eager sympathy for 
 other men's work which has usually distinguished him, 
 admired Modern Love from the first. The Spectator 
 had quarrelled with the poem because in it Mr. Meredith 
 deals with ' a deep and painful subject on which he has 
 no conviction to express.' Mr. Swinburne was in no 
 mood to let such a criticism pass unchallenged in 1862, 
 with the Poems and Ballads already fermenting within 
 him. He at once .wrote a fiery vindication to the 
 Spectator. ' The business of verse-making,' he said, ' is 
 hardly to express convictions ; and if some poetry, not 
 without merit of its kind, has at times dealt in dogmatic 
 morality, it is all the worse and all the weaker for that.' 
 The whole letter can be read as reprinted in Mr. Lane's 
 Bibhography of Mr. Meredith's work, but the reader can 
 well imagine what passionate invective such an un- 
 warrantable interdict of theme would arouse in the 
 poet. 
 
 Mr. Meredith had been prepared for some such 
 attack upon his subject-matter, and had prefixed as 
 29 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 warning two lines from The Book of Sages— \ presume, 
 
 an unpublished Pilgrim} s Scrip : 
 
 ' This is not meat 
 For little people or for fools.' 
 
 Again, in the body of the poem he had written : 
 
 ' these things are life : 
 And Ufe, they say, is worthy of the Muse.' 
 
 Mr. Meredith has omitted the first two lines in the new 
 edition, the second after thirty years ! Does he now 
 feel that poetry is never, under any circumstances, 
 ' meat for little people or for fools,' or that the general 
 intelligence has so broadened since 1862 as to make the 
 warning unnecessary ? 
 
 The latter is certainly the case, for there seems 
 little to shock us at the present time in this tragedy of 
 an unhappy marriage. True, Mr. Meredith displays 
 the relationship in its most intimate moments ; he leaves 
 no part of the problem unstated, though, as the Spectator 
 objected, he leaves it with us still unsolved. What else 
 could he or any poet do ? Besides, surely it is a mistake 
 to regard a poem as a problem, at least in the first 
 instance. It is a bit of 'tragic life' seen with inspired 
 eyes, expressed in inspired words. Its end is not to 
 put a query, but by the sacramental use of suffering lives 
 to transfigure mortal pain to divine meanings. 
 
 Landor, in the person of Sidney, remarks that 'the 
 most plaintive ditty hath imparted a fuller joy, and of 
 longer duration, to its composer, than the conquest of 
 Persia to the Macedonian.' Its effect is precisely the 
 same on the listener, and therein is the mystery and 
 30 
 
FEB. GEORGE MEREDITH 1892 
 
 sacrament of all art. It sets us above our mortal 
 sufferings, like the gods who, we are told, ' find ' in them 
 'a music centred in a doleful song,' not because they 
 are callous, but because they know all, know the divine 
 event to which the pain is moving us. So is it with the 
 tragic treatment of suffering. Art, by revealing the 
 beauty beneath, touches it to the finer issues of faith. 
 That is what Keats meant when he wrote 'beauty is 
 truth.' Tragic beauty is the rainbow of promise glowing 
 above the mere ' tragedy.' The beauty seems to say : 
 ' All is well beneath this suffering and wreck. Else how 
 could I smile ? ' 
 
 It is this high significance which Mr. Meredith has 
 given to a pitiful modern story of small mistakes and 
 misunderstanding in Modern Love : 
 
 ' In tragic hints here see what evermore 
 Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, 
 Thundering like ramping hosts of vi^arrior horse, 
 To throv/ that faint thin line upon the shore ! ' 
 
 These tragic hints are given in fifty tableaux. We 
 may, as Mr. Swinburne did, call them sonnets, though, 
 being poems each of sixteen lines, sonnets strictly 
 speaking they are not. But we need not resume the 
 unprofitable discussion that has been waged on this 
 head. Each poem is a vivid impression helping on the 
 story, a series of poignant spiritual situatipns. At once 
 in the opening poem Mr. Meredith presses the very 
 nerve of such a tragedy, by the fearless choice of a 
 situation which, night after night, would naturally con- 
 dense the whole 'pity of it' into one fearful point of 
 pain. Through the day the two unhappy ones would 
 31 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 have distractions, but at night ! listening to each other's 
 
 breathing, in the dark as in a grave together — 
 
 ' By this he knew she wept with waking eyes : 
 That, at his hand's hght quiver by her head, 
 The strange low sobs that shook their common bed, 
 Were called into her with a sharp surprise. 
 And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes. 
 Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay 
 Stone still, and the long darkness flowed away 
 With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes 
 Her giant heart of Memory and Tears 
 Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat 
 Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet 
 Were moveless, looking through their dead black years. 
 By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall. 
 Like sculptured effigies they might be seen 
 Upon their marriage- tomb, the sword between ; 
 Each wishing for the sword that severs all." 
 
 One hears complaints of the ' obscurity ' of the poem. 
 This, however, can only apply to the story, which is a 
 little difficult of distanglement, and perhaps at one or 
 two points uncertain. It cannot apply to the expres- 
 sion, for no modern poet has written stronger meta- 
 phorical English. Indeed, the lines are often quite 
 crushing in their power, striking on the ear like the 
 twang of an iron lyre, and yet so beautiful ! Indeed, 
 they are equal in force and beauty to the strongest 
 passages in Browning, and the entire poem has a unity 
 which, in poetry, Mr. Meredith has never again attained 
 — as indeed, he has never since made quite so ambitious 
 an attempt. It would be unprofitable to tell the story 
 step by step, even if it were possible. A hint or two must 
 suffice. To begin with, the theme is no vulgar mis- 
 alliance. The two unhappy ones are by no means 
 
FEB. GEORGE MEREDITH 1892 
 
 obvious people. They are each full of subtlety and 
 refinement. Each is capable of appreciating the other's 
 position, while at the same time each grows frenzied at 
 the arbitrary chain that binds them. ' It is no vulgar 
 nature I have wived,' says the husband, and he in his 
 turn is too fine-fibred to assert his mere husband's 
 ' rights by law established ' when he comes to find that 
 his wife has sought another lover. Old tenderness 
 rather surges up in him : 
 
 ' It cannot be such harm on her cool brow 
 To put a kiss ? Yet if I meet him there ! 
 But she is mine ! Ah, no ! I know too well 
 I claim a star whose light is overcast : 
 I claim a phantom-woman in the Past. 
 The hour has struck, though I heard not the bell ! ' 
 
 It is this very super-subtlety that is the cause 
 
 of their estrangement. They had been true lovers 
 
 once : 
 
 ' Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, 
 They wandered once ; clear as the dew on flowers : 
 But they fed not on the advancing hours : 
 Their hearts held cravings for the buried day. 
 Then each applied to each that fatal knife. 
 Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole. 
 Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul 
 When hot for certainties in this our life ! ' 
 
 Apparently, divergences in nature (he was a dreamer 
 and 'plotted to be worthy of the world,' she of less 
 serious stuff) set them turning to the 'it might have 
 been ' of the past, which brought their fatal egoism into 
 play. Though they no longer loved each other, yet 
 
 ' How many a thing which we cast to the ground. 
 When others pick it up becomes a gem ! ' 
 
 VOL. I. 33 ^ 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Also the long association of old love has left its 
 tenderness behind, and when each finds that the other 
 is seeking in new loves what is lost, that tenderness is 
 fanned, so that momentarily it seems like the old love 
 come back : 
 
 ' The dread that my old love may be alive 
 Has seized my nursling new love by the throat.' 
 
 And so they drift on, the husband alternating between 
 cynicism, sensualism, and passionate tenderness. He 
 seeks distraction in France with a mistress, but her 
 kisses are dust and ashes on his lips. And here we 
 may quote one of the most powerful and terrible of all 
 the poems : 
 
 ' Am I failing ? For no longer can I cast 
 A glory round about this head of gold. 
 Glory she wears, but springing from the mould 
 Not like the consecration of the Past ! 
 Is my soul beggared ? Something more than earth 
 I cry for still : I cannot be at peace 
 In having Love upon a mortal lease. 
 I cannot take the woman at her worth ! 
 Where is the ancient wealth wherewith I clothed 
 Our human nakedness, and could endow 
 With spiritual splendour a white brow 
 That else had grinned at me the fact I loathed ? 
 A kiss is but a kiss now ! and no wave 
 Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea. 
 But, as you will ! we '11 sit contentedly. 
 And eat our pot of honey on the grave. ' 
 
 Of the wife's mind we hardly hear as much as we 
 
 would like. It only comes to us now and again through 
 
 sympathetic flashes from the husband, who tells the 
 
 story. However, once again near the end he finds her 
 
 34 
 
FEB. GEORGE MEREDITH 1892 
 
 in a wood with her lover. Instead of upbraiding he 
 merely offers her his arm : 
 
 ' I felt the pained speech coming, and declared 
 My firm belief in her, ere she could speak. 
 A ghastly morning came into her cheek, 
 While with a widening soul on me she stared.' 
 
 All her remaining love for him welled up at this, and 
 
 by the effort of that supreme moment his heart opened 
 
 too — they ' drank the pure daylight of honest speech,' 
 
 and an hour followed that seemed to promise real union 
 
 at last. 
 
 ' We saw the swallows gathering in the sky, 
 And in the osier-isle we heard their noise. 
 We had not to look back on summer joys, 
 Or forward to a summer of bright dye. 
 But in the largeness of the evening earth 
 Our spirits grew as we went side by side. 
 The hour became her husband, and my bride. 
 Love that had robbed us so, thus blessed our dearth ! 
 The pilgrims of the year waxed very loud 
 In» multitudinous chatterings, as the flood 
 Full brown came from the west, and like pale blood 
 Expanded to the upper crimson cloud. 
 Love that had robbed us of immortal things. 
 This little moment mercifully gave. 
 And still I see across the twilight wave. 
 The swan sail with her young beneath her wings.' 
 
 This was the poem on which Mr. Swinburne poured 
 out the vials of his praise, but even he could not 
 exaggerate its power and beauty. I quote it as in 
 the 1862 edition. In the new edition Mr. Meredith has 
 altered the last line but one to 'Where I have seen 
 across the twilight wave ' — one of several minor emen- 
 dations I have noticed. 
 
 35 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 The story ends with a characteristic rebound. The 
 woman's love has been so aroused that she becomes 
 quixotic. She conceives it her duty to leave her 
 husband free to live with his mistress, and goes from 
 him : 
 
 Their sense is with their senses all mixed in. 
 
 Destroyed by subtleties these women are ! 
 
 More brain, O Lord, more brain ! ' 
 
 Her husband follows and brings her back, but even 
 still she eludes him, for ' there 's a strength to help the 
 desperate weak,' and the poem ends with her suicide ; 
 
 ' Thus piteously Love closed what he begat : 
 The union of this ever-diverse pair ! ' 
 
 One thing a hobby for ' first editions ' may teach a man 
 ^fi is, not to despise a verse-book for its lowly 
 Undiscovered garb. 
 
 ^'"^^•' Some Sonnets and Poems by 'A' are a 
 
 ' Sonnets 
 
 and Poems,' case m pomt — a volume msignificant to 
 by ' A.' tjjg last degree, and who is ' A ' ? Whoever 
 he be, and he is as unknown to the writer as the babe 
 unborn, he has in the quietude of a strong self-contained 
 life arrived at a very considerable majority in regard to 
 song. I would beg the reader to read the following 
 sonnet on 'April Day in a Market Place': 
 
 ' Not of the country, where young April hath 
 A daisy-look, and smells of violets sweet ; 
 And strews her primroses about thy path ; 
 But of the thronged and busy-footed street ; 
 
 36 
 
FEB. 'A' 1892 
 
 Where the old market, 'neath the broken shade 
 
 Of church and ancient-gabled houses, stands ; 
 How bright she maketh these. In blue array, 
 
 And sprinkling glittering drops from her white hands, 
 She lives about the pave ; each meeting face 
 
 Has light and merriment by her begot ; 
 She haunts dull courts ; and in the marketplace, 
 
 'Mongst daffodils, and small forget-me-not. 
 And wallflower fresh, sings clear her maiden songs. 
 
 And loosens old dames' hearts and thoughts and tongues.' 
 
 And this of 'Woods by Moonlight': 
 
 ' How beauteous by moonlight is the wood ; 
 
 That sweet sheen falleth pure and saintly down 
 Flooding its dimples, where but now hath stood 
 
 The vaunt and witness of the winter's frown ; 
 Most eloquently doth the darkness speak 
 
 Of some unvisioned, inner-haunting ray ; 
 Most eloquently doth the spirit seek 
 
 By kindred silence, kindred word to say ; 
 There sings the nightingale— and nought else mars 
 
 The sacred, solemn beauty of the hoiir ; 
 And 'neath the outer twinkling of the stars 
 
 The daisy hides— a strange and sleeping flower ; 
 How white they look, that drowsy company. 
 
 As in the moonish dew they coldly lie ! ' 
 
 Maybe your first criticism will be — 'Shakespeare's 
 Sonnets ! ' Granted. But every poet, before he finds 
 his own characteristic voice, must first sing in the voice 
 of his master. The choice of the master is much. ' A ' 
 has set himself as apprentice to no carver of cameos, but 
 to the men of strong chisels and great marbles. Besides, 
 whatever the Shakespearean cadence of these sonnets, 
 there is an individuality behind him as well, a heart that 
 loves, a head that thinks, a soul that dreams. 'A' has 
 done all these things deeply on his own account, and he 
 37 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 sings from the fulness of a full life. You must notice a 
 singular contained calmness about these sonnets. There 
 is no shade of hurry, no touch of uncertainty. The poet 
 knows what he wants to say, and feels that he can say 
 it. He is quite at his ease — 'of his harmonies he is full 
 sure.' He might be talking ; he begins and ends so 
 naturally, and uses such simple words, yet touches them 
 to such fine issues. This is one of the sacred signs of 
 poetry. As one reads, one finds the deep reason of this 
 calm confidence. ' A ' is one of the few happy people 
 who is at peace with life. He has done his thinking, 
 and faces the universe with the quiet face of faith — a 
 faith that apparently holds in solution the whole of 
 modern doubt. He has that other sacred mark of the 
 poet, laid down by Whitman : ' in the dispute concerning 
 God and eternity he is silent.' 
 
 ' When here and there the violet's blue gleams out, 
 
 And April makes a heaven of such days, 
 And quietness is everywhere about, 
 
 And soul sometime hath neither yeas nor nays, 
 But a dear resting in the natural good. . . . 
 
 Oh, still rejoice, for Life's own witness shows. 
 Despite our sin, how dear our fate shall be ; 
 There are sweet lights about the stricken tree 
 
 Where canker bides ; or where the lightning goes ; 
 These are the truest prophecies. . . . 
 
 Although too oft his garb be coarse and scant, 
 And foul, unto the critic-gaze doth seem. 
 Within the morning sun a man doth gleam, 
 
 As though he were an angel radiant. ..." 
 
 •A,' as will have been noticed in these extracts, is 
 particularly happy in his nature pictures. There is a 
 38 
 
FEB. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1892 
 
 freshness in them I have not met for long : there is no 
 
 word for most of them but lovely. Take this vignette of 
 
 a ploughman : 
 
 ' When larks were singing in some April-top 
 Of blue amongst the clouds ; and in the glow 
 The ploughman, ploughing glad, will turn and Stop, 
 Moved up against the sky, I sought to catch 
 And set in form this living attitude 
 That breathed around.' 
 
 He is especially happy in such sweet Elizabethan 
 double words as 'April-top,' 'a daisy-look,' 'the blue- 
 and-bright of spring ' ; and he has a sonnet to daffodils, 
 which is one of the most delicious fancies in the Eliza- 
 bethan manner I remember. He is also full of those 
 fine metaphors that bespeak imagination, such as — ^ 
 
 ' The countless worlds ; they for an instant gleam 
 As gilded motes about the ray of time.' 
 
 or a description of moonrise, ' strange as when one lieth 
 slumbering near.' Who 'A' may be I have not the 
 faintest notion. One knows of one famous ' A ' — ' A ' of 
 The Strayed Reveller^ 1848. And he proved rather a 
 considerable poet. 
 
 ' There are a very few men whose greatness is so 
 
 conspicuous and classical that their writ- 
 William .... 
 
 Wordsworth : ings have obtamed a prescriptive right to 
 
 Shorter's appear century after century without the 
 
 formality or impertinence of introduction 
 
 by other hands. Homer, Virgil, Dante, or Shakespeare 
 
 39 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 are monumental. They move through the ages in a 
 long triumph, and even a preface cannot presume 
 to walk before them.' So wrote the prince of an- 
 thologists, Mr. F. T. Palgrave, by way of envoi to 
 his pretty 1865 edition of Shakespearis Sonnets. 
 Professor Dowden would have the same deference 
 shown to Wordsworth, and on the occasion of 
 Mr. John Morley's complete edition of the poems, 
 waxed very wroth because Mr. Morley's introduction 
 had presumed to walk before them. Mr. Shorter has 
 the fear of that occasion before him in making the 
 selection of the Lyrics and Sonnets of Wordsworth. 
 But let not his heart be troubled. In all humility I 
 would submit that Professor Dowden was wrong. It is 
 not safe to let Wordsworth go alone. For, if you leave 
 him in the bulk, slag and all, of a complete edition, how 
 are you to hope that he will receive justice at the hands 
 of the profane or uninitiated ? And if you represent him 
 by a selection, you are called upon to justify your 
 principle of selection. If you have a true care for 
 Wordsworth's fame, there seems no doubt but that to do 
 the great right you must do the little wrong. In the 
 case of Mr. Shorter, that wrong is certainly reduced to a 
 minimum ; for he has kept to his editorial business with 
 rigid self-denial. He had, of course, a double reason 
 for a preface, for had not Matthew Arnold been be- 
 fore him in a selection which has been acknowledged 
 on all hands as the definitive selection, or at least that 
 by which all succeeding selections must expect to be 
 tested. The Wordsworthians, of course, dispute this, 
 and Professor Knight has represented their protest in 
 40 
 
FEB. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1892 
 
 another selection. But then Professor Knight is the 
 Arch-Wordsworthian, and we would no more think of 
 taking his opinion of Wordsworth on trust than we would 
 that of the Browning Society on Browning. For it is 
 not so much the poetry that such societies and schools 
 seek in their particular master — poetry proper is not a 
 thing to be studied or enjoyed in herds — it is the 
 structural thought, the ethic of his work, that they meet 
 to discuss. Such ' society ' study is in fact but another 
 form of church work ; and the very fact of people thus 
 banding together is the surest proof of their lack of the 
 higher qualities of literary appreciation. It is, to begin 
 with, a sin against humour, a sense of which is a neces- 
 sary adjunct of all such appreciation. And it seems 
 more than a mere coincidence that the three men 
 selected for this latter-day form of apotheosis, should 
 themselves be all more or less lacking in that sense — 
 Shelley and Wordsworth signally so, and Browning 
 certainly to some degree, else he never could have 
 developed so grotesque a style, or written that sonnet in 
 regard to Edward Fitzgerald. Now, that sense of 
 humour is the quality most of all essential in an editor 
 of Wordsworth, more, even, than the sense of beauty ; 
 for nothing stands and will stand so much in the way of 
 a wide appreciation of Wordsworth's genius as his quite 
 astounding lack of humour. Probably no poet has ever 
 faced life with a solemn-owlishness so complete as 
 Wordsworth. The great seriousness in regard to life is 
 one thing, the householder's seriousness is another ,• but 
 Wordsworth combined both in an almost unrealisable 
 degree. This is the more unfortunate for his apprecia- 
 41 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 tion to-day, as the sin against humour is at present the 
 unforgivable sin. We are, of course, cultivating the 
 faculty out of all true proportion. We are in danger of 
 forgetting all nobility and reverence, and our incessant 
 sniggering is itself becoming a subject for satire. 
 
 This essential quality was, as we know, one of 
 the most exquisite possessions of Matthew Arnold, 
 together with his catholic culture and his instinct for 
 seeing things, in his own phrase, steadily, and seeing 
 them whole. It is for these reasons that, if there be one 
 English critic whose opinion one would be willing to 
 accept in place of one's own, that critic is Matthew 
 Arnold. We feel safe in his hands. He is the nearest 
 approach to authority in criticism at which we have 
 arrived. How often we sigh for his cool utterance 
 during the last year or two of one-sided ' temperamental ' 
 impressions ! How calmly would he relegate some of 
 the phenomena that trouble us into some comforting 
 generalisation ! The very fact of his having made a 
 selection of Wordsworth is proof in itself, all but 
 sufficient, of its value. Certainly, many of us would 
 prefer to take his selection ready-made than to plod 
 through the complete Wordsworth. The present selec- 
 tion reassures us in this, perhaps sijperstitious, faith ; 
 for Mr. Shorter has evidently gone about his task inde- 
 pendently, and yet his selection only difTers from that 
 of Arnold's by about eighteen poems, several of which 
 were foregone exceptions, by the fact of their being non- 
 lyrical. These non-lyrical exceptions include 'The 
 Brothers,' ' Michael,' ' Margaret,' and the ' Fragment 
 from The Recluse.' But Mr. Shorter has included 
 42 
 
FEB. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1892 
 
 * Laodameia.' Would he describe that as lyrical ? Per- 
 sonally, I would be quite content to take my Words- 
 worth as thus presented, and thus forego what has 
 always seemed to me the overpraised 'Michael.' 
 Wordsworth's attempt to apply realism to the pastoral — 
 and it is curious to think that he was in a naive fashion 
 one of the earliest exponents of realism — was a fore- 
 doomed failure. Had his sense of humour been keener 
 it might have been possible, for along with that sense 
 would have come a keener selective power than he 
 possessed. He might have remained no less simple and 
 yet have avoided the ludicrous naiveti into which he is 
 continually falling, and in which he even surpasses Blake. 
 Indeed, Wordsworth's artistic faculty was very small ; 
 more than any of our poets, he was an inspired amateur, 
 a poet Close, educated, and allowed certain intermittent 
 inspiration — but inspiration, of course, of the very 
 highest order. That that was always most spontaneous 
 in his shorter pieces, in his little ballads, in his songs 
 and pastoral vignettes, and occasionally in his sonnets, 
 was the text of Matthew Arnold's selection. In such 
 poems indeed he is beyond praise ; for such, as 
 Arnold said, are 'as inevitable as Nature herself. It 
 might seem that Nature not only gave him the matter 
 for his poem, but wrote his poem for him.' Of course, 
 that is just the secret of all good poetry whatsoever, but 
 Wordsworth was rarely content that Nature should write 
 his poems for him ; he was always taking the pen from 
 her hand and wielding it with the self-conscious air of 
 the chosen vessel. 
 
 In no poet do I remember such a constant intrusion 
 43 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 of ' the poet ' into the picture. Though on the surface 
 so little theatrical, Wordsworth was in reality intensely 
 so in his office as ' poet.' To him the Lake District was 
 a stage, on which, in season and out of season, he 
 enacted ' The Poet's Eye ' to an audience of mountains, 
 shepherds, and tourists. With all his sympathy for 
 humanity, when he thinks of those who shall come after 
 him among these mountains, it is not of the shepherds, 
 but of other spectator-poets : — 
 
 ' . . . youthful poets, who among these hills 
 Will be my second self when I am gone.' 
 
 In fact, he is 'Alastor' turned Quaker and dressed 
 respectably. But maybe I have dwelt too long upon 
 his defects, defects which, after all, merely impede the 
 approach to him, and do not essentially detract from his 
 real greatness. When he did forget himself, then, 
 indeed, we take off our hats to him, for his faults are 
 only 'human,' but his excellencies are 'divine.' High 
 as was his own estimate of his own merit, yet he builded 
 even better than he knew. According to the opening 
 lines of ' Michael,' he loved the shepherds, the humanity 
 amid his mountains, 
 
 ' Not verily 
 
 For their own sakes, but for the fields and hills, 
 
 Where was their occupation and abode.' 
 
 But that was only another of his misconceptions con- 
 cerning himself; for Lamb, in the heart of his dear 
 Cockneytown, with all his love for his kind, had 
 not really more humanity at heart than Wordsworth 
 among his mists and mountains. And that is the key- 
 note, the justifying raison d'etre of Mr. Shorter's 
 44 
 
FEB. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1892 
 
 selection, ' It is desired,' says Mr. Shorter, ' to em- 
 phasise the fact that Wordsworth is not alone the poet 
 of Nature, that he is not alone the poet of animal life, 
 but that next to the three great unapproachable masters 
 of modern European poetry — Dante, Shakespeare, and 
 Goethe — he is the poet of human life.' One feels inclined 
 to cry ' Softly, Mr. Shorter ! ' midway in this sentence : 
 but, leaving comparison out of the question, we gladly 
 cry 'Hear, hear' to Mr. Shortens main contention — 
 Wordsworth, not merely the poet of Nature, but of 
 Human Nature. 
 
 Mr. Shorter takes a practical means of emphasising 
 this by a new arrangement of the poems. Wordsworth, 
 as every one knows, evolved a classification of his own, 
 dividing his poems into ' Poems of Imagination,' ' Poems 
 of Love,' of the ' Affections,' ' Fancy,' etc. — a strange 
 medley of theme and method. But, to many, this 
 arrangement appears arbitrary, and the working of 
 Wordsworth's distinction between ' Imagination ' and 
 'Fancy' is somewhat perplexing. Arnold divided the 
 poems according to their form, ' Poems of Ballad Form,' 
 ' Narrative Poems,' ' Lyrical Poems,' * Poems akin to 
 the Antique, and Odes,' etc., which is a plan on an 
 organic basis, as the form of poetry is more or less a 
 reflection of its mood, and is, in some degree, related to 
 its subject. But this has its disadvantages in separating 
 poems sharing closer bonds of relationship. Mr. John 
 Morley applied the chronological method. Though that 
 has its interest in a complete edition, there is, as Mr. 
 Shorter observes, little to be said for it when applied to 
 a selection. 'The greater part of Wordsworth's best 
 45 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 sonnets and lyrics were written within a period of ten 
 or fifteen years, and in comparatively early life. During 
 this period of the life of Wordsworth, as of any young 
 man, there were assuredly moments of action and 
 reaction, of ebb and flow of emotion, which would make 
 any chronological classification of comparatively little 
 value.' 
 
 Mr. Shorter divides his selection into ' Poems of 
 Human Life,' ' Poems of Animal Life,' and ' Poems of 
 Nature and Nature- Worship.' I praise this mainly, if 
 not entirely, because, as we said, it emphasises Words- 
 worth's right to a position not generally allowed him as 
 a poet of humanity : that position which, of course, 
 Arnold made clear in his careful essay. Words- 
 worth's superiority over Burns, Keats, Heine — where is 
 it, he asked ? ' It is here : he deals with more of life 
 than they do ; he deals with life, as a whole, more power- 
 fully.' Merely viewed as a classification, Mr. Shorter's 
 has it drawbacks just as the others. It is not really so 
 scientific as Arnold's. You have at least a uniform, if 
 narrow, basis in his case ; the basis of form. In Mr. 
 Shorter's case, one may say, we have the basis of theme — 
 but then what poem ever keeps to one theme throughout? 
 — the dominant note even is often hard to decide upon. 
 Such a classification is apt to hinge too much on titles, 
 and it goes without saying that a poem addressed to a dog 
 or a daisy is just as likely to prove a ' Poem of Human 
 Life ' as any other. This, of course, especially applies 
 to him whose poetic profession it was to find in the 
 meanest flower those 
 
 ' Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. ' 
 46 
 
FEB. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1892 
 
 Does it not also seem a little quaint to find 'The 
 Nightingale ' and ' The Skylark ' verses under ' Poems 
 of Animal Life ': — 
 
 ' Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! 
 Bird thou never wert.' 
 
 However, something too much of classification. None 
 can quite fit all round, and really none is needed : but 
 I like Mr. Shorter's best because it implies a sound 
 criticism. It was plucky of him to make it. 
 
 Nearly all Mr. Shorter's omissions are sonnets, and to all 
 but one we may cry good riddance. For that one entitled 
 'Admonition,' and beginning 'Yes, there is holy pleasure 
 in thine eye,' I would plead, in spite of the ludicrous 
 note in which Wordsworth declares it to be ' intended 
 more particularly for the perusal of those who may have 
 happened to be enamoured of some beautiful place of 
 retreat in the country of the lakes.' I think, too, that 
 the sonnet to Mary Queen of Scots might have been 
 retained for the sake of its first hne, a line of gallantry 
 so rare in W. W. — ' Dear to the Loves and to the Graces 
 vowed.' Of course there are lines here and there we 
 would keep in the other omitted poems, but there are 
 probably a larger proportion in the poems which Mr. 
 Shorter has substituted. These, I am glad to say, 
 with two or three exceptions, are not sonnets. Of those 
 exceptions, * There is a pleasure in poetic pains ' is the 
 most noteworthy. Of the other substitutions, 'The 
 Thorn,' ' The Mad Mother,' ' Louise,' the verses on the 
 death of Lamb, and the third 1802 poem to the Daisy 
 are most important. Mr. Shorter also includes the 1805 
 47 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 poem to the same flower — rather undeservedly, I think. 
 
 But it is certainly hard to understand why Arnold 
 
 omitted the 1802 poem, and harder still to understand 
 
 his omission of the fine lines on Lamb. Probably it was 
 
 from fear of the ' historical ' bias in poetry, against which 
 
 he rightly protested. It is true, too, that Wordsworth, 
 
 in a sort of sanctified play on Lamb's name, once more 
 
 fell into his besetting sin — 
 
 ' From the most gentle creature nursed in fields, 
 Had been derived the name he bore — a name, 
 Wherever Christian altars have been raised, 
 Hallow 'd to meekness and to innocence. ..." 
 
 Didn't some one say that they could never look on 
 Wordsworth's face without wishing to offer him a 
 thistle ? 
 
 But listen how finely he ends : — 
 
 ' Still, at the centre of his being, lodged 
 A soul by resignation sanctified : 
 And if too often, self-reproach'd, he felt 
 That innocence belongs not to our kind, 
 A povtfer that never ceased to abide in him, 
 Charity, 'raid the multitude of sins 
 That she can cover, left not his exposed 
 To an unforgiving judgment from just heaven. 
 O, he was good, if e'er a good man lived ! ' 
 
 That little clan whose appreciation of poetry is alone 
 William worth having probably made Mr. William 
 Watson : Watson's acquaintance on the original ap- 
 • Poems.' pearance of ' Wordsworth's Grave ' in The 
 
 National Review, but long before that, a still earlier 
 48 
 
FEB. WILLIAM WATSON 1892 
 
 band of his admirers had prized a volume of Epigrams 
 
 hailing from Liverpool — a book one often used to come 
 
 across in the threepenny box — for a large simplicity of 
 
 thought and distinction of manner, which they could 
 
 only parallel with such masters of the quatrain as 
 
 Landor. Perhaps their acquaintance with Mr. Watson 
 
 had begun earlier still with a poem in the dreamy 
 
 Morrisian manner, The Princes Quest, which Rossetti 
 
 is said to have admired. The Epigrams, however, 
 
 were Mr. Watson's first distinctive work, and in that 
 
 fact we may find a significant criticism of Mr. Watson 
 
 as a poet. The dominant tendency of a man usually 
 
 comes out in his early work, and epigram is at once 
 
 the strength and weakness of all Mr. Watson's poetry. 
 
 His method is always, more or less, epigrammatic 
 
 rather than lyric — even in poems where you would 
 
 expect a freer treatment. 
 
 Let us take, for example, an extremely fine ode to 
 
 Autumn. I will quote the first two verses — 
 
 ' Thou burden of all songs the earth hath sung, 
 Thou retrospect in Time's reverted eyes, 
 Thou metaphor of everything that dies, 
 
 That dies ill-starred, or dies beloved and young. 
 And therefore blest and v^rise — 
 
 O be less beautiful, or be less brief 
 
 Thou tragic splendour, strange, and full of fear, 
 In vain her pageant shall the Summer rear ? 
 
 At thy mute signal, leaf by golden leaf, 
 Crumbles the gorgeous year. 
 
 Ah, ghostly as remembered mirth, the tale 
 
 Of Summer's bloom, the legend of the Spring, 
 And thou, too, fiutterest an impatient vising. 
 
 Thou presence yet more fugitive and frail, 
 Thou most unbodied thing, 
 
 VOL. I. 49 j^ 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Whose very being is thy going hence, 
 
 And passage and departure all thy theme ; 
 Whose life doth still a splendid dying seem, 
 
 And thou at height of thy magnificence 
 A figment and a dream. ' 
 
 Now it may, of course, be my fault, but distinguished 
 as this undoubtedly is, thoughtful, musical, and to a 
 degree imaginative, it fails in one great quality of 
 poetry. It does not touch us, or at least comes near 
 doing so in two lines only, and those, as always, the 
 simplest — 
 
 ' O be less beautiful, or be less brief 
 
 Thou tragic splendour, strange, and full of fear.' 
 
 These lines have been really and deeply felt. They 
 have the chill shudder of autumn in them. They are 
 unconscious. We feel in them man impressed by the 
 mystery of the seasons. But the poem as a whole 
 gives us autumn as it appeals to man the phrase- 
 maker. One can see the poet standing in front of 
 the dying woods with a kind of epigrammatic camera. 
 He has gone out with the firm intention of thinking 
 clever things, and he comes back and says them. 
 Nature does not confide her big metaphors to a man 
 in this mood. She will not be patronised, even by 
 a poet. Unless you be as the least of her children 
 she will reveal but little. Mr. Watson, I fancy, too 
 seldom forgets that he is a poet ; if he could forget 
 that oftener he might do great things— he would be 
 all the greater poet for forgetting that he was a poet 
 at all. 
 His method has the defect of his quality. What 
 SO 
 
FEB. WILLIAM WATSON 1892 
 
 he gains in precision of phrase he loses in self-con- 
 sciousness. He is apt to become mechanical, and in 
 this poem of 'Autumn' we can see the process as 
 well as the product. Two or three large fancies — 
 that have a way of looking like metaphors — some 
 carefully pondered paradoxes, somewhat on Lamb's 
 principle (as, for example, ' Antiquity ! thou wondrous 
 charm, what art thou ? That being nothing, art every- 
 thing ! '), some real feeling, some real magic of phrase, 
 though a magic often too easily analysable into an 
 artful vowelisation, founded, I should say, on a very 
 close study (I do not for a moment say imitation) 
 of the manner of the Laureate — it is so, with no wish 
 to be hypercritical, that I cannot help dissecting 
 Mr. Watson's ' Autumn.' The poem, in fact, would 
 be very much better without those very lines which 
 Mr. Watson probably values most. At the same time, 
 if it be rather a collection of phrases than a poem, 
 they are very fine phrases, and there is a cadence in 
 the poem, especially in the short last line of each 
 verse, as of 'Autumn's' own 'hollow sighs in the sere 
 wood.' There is, too, as I said, a distinguished air 
 about the poem. Mr. Watson has certainly the grand 
 style. But he must be careful lest it grow mannered 
 and tricky. He is a little inclined to mouth it after 
 the Elizabethan fashion, and he is too fond of poly- 
 syllabic words, such as ' dulcifluous,' and Tennysonian 
 collocations such as — 
 
 ' Elusive notes in wandering wafture borne 
 From undiscoverable lips that blow 
 An immaterial horn,' 
 
 SI 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 In these two last lines, we feel too much of the ' word- 
 mosaic artificer' — Mr. Watson's own phrase, and his 
 own particular aversion. Yet, oddly enough, it is his 
 own danger. But it is seldom he gives us an epithet 
 so uncharacteristic as ' immaterial ' ; on the contrary, 
 he has a very rare faculty for 'the unique word.' 
 Another rare characteristic of his is the firm basis of 
 thought which underlies his poetry. Often it is but 
 the fortunate paradox, the lucky hit, of the epigram- 
 matist : the phrase and the thought just fit each other ; 
 nothing is left outside the phrase. But often, too, 
 especially in 'Wordsworth's Grave,' Mr. Watson brings 
 us the more profound suggestive thought of the poet, 
 with deep words which, like springs on the hillside, 
 are upwellings ' from the vital fount of things.' 
 
 Mr. Watson has also touches of that imagination of 
 which he has given us the most suggestive defini- 
 tion — 
 
 ' The Seer strayed not from earth's human pale, 
 But the mysterious face of common things 
 
 He mirrored, as the moon in Rydal mere 
 Is mirrored when the breathless night hangs blue ; 
 
 Strangely remote she seems and wondrous near, 
 And by some nameless difference born anew.' 
 
 This fine simple image tells us more of the nature of 
 the imagination than many ponderous lucubrations on 
 the subject. 
 
 «¥ 
 
 52 
 
FEB. EDMUND GOSSE 1892 
 
 Mr. Gosse's volume is one of real gossip. The title 
 
 Edmund Gosse:'^^ "°* ^°°^.^^y applied, but does actually, 
 ' Gossip in as good titles will, express the spirit of 
 a ibrary. ^^ book. Any one whose collection of 
 books is no mere technical apparatus, whose culture 
 has developed by his own instinct rather than by some 
 system of artificial incubation, is sure to have gathered 
 about him, in addition to his various classics, a fourth 
 estate, the poor relations of literature, who take their 
 place upon his shelves rather by sentiment than by 
 right. 
 
 This fourth estate reflects, more surely than any of 
 the others, his individual selective taste ; for, though 
 every man must have a copy of Byron or Shelley, if 
 only for reference, there is no unwritten law prescrib- 
 ing a Gerard's Herbal^ or the Amasia of Mr. John 
 Hopkins. As the caddis-worm pleases itself entirely 
 as to whether it shall make its little case of bits of 
 reed or tiny pebble, or even glass, so in the choice 
 of this fourth estate the bookman knows no law but 
 his own whim. Mr. Dobson, doubtless, exaggerated a 
 little when he declared in regard to his own 'ragged 
 regiment ' — 
 
 ' . . . . the others I never have opened, 
 But those are the ones I read ' : 
 
 but certainly, those are the only books one ever thinks 
 of taking down for visitors. 
 
 That innocent delight, that of exhibiting one's own 
 particular bookish toys to our friends, is the raison 
 53 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 d'Hre of this volume. Practically, you enter Mr. 
 Gosse's library, and he takes down this old volume 
 and that, and tells you why he cares about it. He 
 doesn't talk for the sake of imparting information, 
 though that even he cannot help doing sometimes. 
 All he aims at is to tell you enough about his bouquin 
 to enlist your sympathy. Criticism is defined in a 
 well-known phrase as ' the adventures of a soul among 
 masterpieces.' But that the books dealt with by Mr. 
 Gosse can rarely be described as masterpieces, his 
 gossip might be described in the same words. You 
 can, if you like, consider it as so many 'studies in 
 miniature ' of so many odd volumes ; but doing so, 
 you would miss its real significance, which abides 
 rather in the book as a whole than in its parts. This 
 book is really more interesting for what it suggests 
 of the tastes of its writer than for what it tells about 
 any separate volume. It is a kind of bookman's bio- 
 graphy, as one can read it written across the shelves 
 of any well selected library. It is the one book 
 which every bookman ought to write — if he is clever 
 enough. It is the bookman's Apologia — to his wife, 
 an Apologia, alas, not always accepted; but then 
 how seldom is it so pleasantly made. For Mr. Gosse 
 has caught the true spirit of his theme, and rather chats 
 than writes. 
 
 He begins by confiding his book plate, a real touch 
 of nature. He very properly thinks it the most charm- 
 ing in existence. 
 
 ' The outward and visible mark of the citizenship of 
 the book-lover,' he says, 'is his book plate. There 
 54 
 
FEB. EDMUND GOSSE 1892 
 
 are many good bibliophiles who abide in the trenches, 
 and never proclaim their loyalty by a book plate. 
 They are with us, but not of us ; they lack the courage 
 of their opinions, they collect with timidity or care- 
 lessness, they have no heed of the morrow. Such a 
 man is liable to great temptations. He is brought 
 face to face with that enemy of his species, the 
 borrower, and dares not speak with him in the gate.' 
 
 Here is a gentle touch of that affected seriousness 
 without which a hobby is apt to grow of a very deadly 
 boredom. Then Mr. Gosse makes the tender con- 
 fidence. 
 
 'A living poet. Lord de Tabley, wrote a fascinating 
 volume on book plates, some years ago, with copious 
 illustrations. There is not, however, one specimen in 
 his book which I would exchange for mine, the work 
 and the gift of one of the most imaginative of American 
 artists, Mr. Edwin A. Abbey. It represents a very fine 
 gentleman of about 1610, walking in broad sunlight in 
 a garden, reading a little book of verses. The name 
 is coiled around him, with the motto. Gravis cantanti- 
 bus umbra.' 
 
 But Mr. Gosse makes no appeal to the unintelligent 
 bookman, the marine store dealer of literature, who 
 collects old rubbish merely because it is rare, and 
 clothes it in purple and morocco like that very un- 
 genial old person, ' bibliotaph ' is, I believe, the correct 
 word — in Burton's ' Bookhunter,' who prided himself on 
 the possession of the two existing copies of Roui upon 
 Rout: or the Rabblers Rabbled^ 'by Felix Nixon, Gent.' 
 His opportunity came, it will be remembered, when, 
 55 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 a scholar desiring a look at the book for a literary 
 purpose, he was able fiendishly to refuse. 
 
 Mr. Gosse's bookman, indeed, you will have seen, 
 is no book-lender; but still he is a very different 
 person from this famous type. His books may belong 
 to him by the frailest threads of association ; but 
 mere rarity of occurrence, as distinct from rarity of 
 quality, is not his besetting charm. Mr. Gosse speaks 
 up for the 'first edition.' (It was a profane Mr. Monk- 
 house, was it not, who sang of 'the first edition and 
 the worst?') 
 
 ' The excuses for collecting,' he says, ' are more than 
 satire is ready to admit. The first edition represents 
 the author's first thought; in it we read his words as 
 he sent them out to the world in his first heat, with 
 the type he chose, and with such peculiarities of form 
 as he selected to do most justice to his creation. We 
 often discover little individual points in a first edition, 
 which never occur again. And if it be conceded that 
 there is an advantage in reading a book in the form 
 which the author originally designed for it, then all 
 the other refinements of the collector become so many 
 acts of respect paid to this first virgin apparition, 
 touching and suitable homage of cleanness and fit 
 adornment. It is only when this homage becomes 
 mere eye-service, when a book radically unworthy of 
 such dignity is too delicately cultivated, too richly 
 bound, that a poor dilettantism comes in between the 
 reader and what he reads. 
 
 ' To the feudal splendours of Mr. Cobden Sanderson, 
 a tenpenny book in a ten pound binding, I say fici' 
 56 
 
FEB. EDMUND GOSSE 1892 
 
 Mr. Gosse recalls that legend, surely the very crown 
 of mediaeval hyberbole, concerning Mentzelius, who 
 attested to his having heard in the seclusion of his 
 library the male book-worm flap his wings and crow 
 like a cock in calling to his mate. Mr. Lang popu- 
 larised the story in The Library^ but I fancy that I 
 read it first long ago in some old paper by Mr. Gosse. 
 
 There is a simple phrase, too, in this introductory 
 chapter for which one would say grace — *A library 
 in a garden.' 'The phrase,' says Mr. Gosse, 'seems 
 to contain the whole felicity of man.' * It sounds like 
 having a castle in Spain, or a sheep walk in Arcadia.' 
 
 In turning to the books for which Mr. Gosse begs 
 the meed of a melodious moment, one likes them the 
 better for their real obscurity. That is, for the most 
 part. He does not talk of what one might call the 
 'cant' old books; such as Burton's Anatomy, over 
 which so many have sentimentalised since Lamb loved 
 it ; people who would never have discovered it for 
 themselves, and, having bought it, never read it. 
 
 He does treat of several more or less famous books, 
 such as Camden's Britannia, Gerard's Herbal, and 
 A Mirror for Magistrates ; but most of his books 
 have a merely personal or recondite appeal. One of 
 his best chats is entitled 'What Ann Lang read.' It 
 has nothing to do with a gentleman of a name so 
 similar in sound that one suspects a slyness in Mr. 
 Gosse's title. It comes of Mr. Gosse having picked 
 up two or three eighteenth-century novels, 'by the 
 Ouida of the period — the great Eliza Haywood,' which 
 novels were inscribed ' Ann Lang, her book,' Ann Lang 
 57 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 being apparently a housemaid of the period. Another 
 gossip on the anonymous History of Pompey the Little : 
 or. The Life and Adventures of a Lap-Dog, 175 1 
 (apparently an eighteenth-century 'Puck'), makes one 
 anxious to read the book for one's-self. 
 
 Aurora (the fresh natural heroine, who makes the 
 contrast to the artificiality which is the theme of satire) 
 has returned from Bath, and assures the Count that 
 she has had a pleasant season there. 
 
 ' " You amaze me," cries the Count ; " impossible, 
 madam! How can it be, ladies? I had letters from 
 Lord Monkeyman and Lady Betty Scornful assuring 
 me that, except yourselves, there were not three human 
 creatures in the place." "But surely," retorts Aurora, 
 " they must have been asleep, both of them, when they 
 wrote their letters ; for the Bath was extremely full." 
 "Full," cries the Count, interrupting her, "O madam, 
 that is very possible, and yet there might be no 
 company — that is none of us ; nobody that one knows," ' 
 
 The writer of this, Mr. Gosse tells us, was the Rev. 
 Francis Coventry, at the time of the satire, twenty-five 
 years of age, and if the whole of the book is anything 
 like this, and Mr. Gosse assures us that it is, it certainly 
 deserves a greener memory. 
 
 Another deserved plea against oblivion is the chapter 
 on Smart, whom, it will be remembered, Browning 
 celebrated in his Parleyings. Mr. Gosse has been 
 at the pains to discover some new details concerning 
 his life, and altogether his account of the some- 
 what hardly treated poet is most sympathetic and 
 welcome. 
 
 58 
 
MARCH SIR WALTER SCOTT 1892 
 
 But I must not any longer pursue my parasitical 
 course of gossip upon gossip, so will leave to Mr. Gosse 
 himself your introduction to Lady Winchelsea, just 
 hinting that Lady Winchelsea is Mr. Gosse's ' Margaret, 
 Duchess of Newcastle.' 
 
 Scott's poetry has long been out of fashion, but for 
 
 those who have mastered that useful pre- 
 
 Sir Walter , . , 
 
 Scott: cept, that all schools have their value, 
 
 His Poetry, ^^q ask from Art a various and not 
 
 merely a monotonous, restricted delight, it will always 
 
 have a real place upon their shelves, seldom, probably, 
 
 to be taken down, but there and unforgotten. 
 
 ' An eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality,' 
 
 seeks for its more habitual pasture a calmer, more 
 
 reflective song. Scott himself said that his poetry 
 
 was rather for « soldiers, sailors, and young people, of 
 
 bold, active disposition.' And, indeed, it is essentially 
 
 for young people, with the heyday still in the blood. 
 
 Bounding with animal spirits, it needs animal spirits 
 
 to enjoy it. Without them its * tirra-lirra ' crushes with 
 
 its buoyant life. 
 
 • Waken, lords and ladies gay, 
 On the mountain dawns the day, 
 All the jolly chase is here. 
 With hawk and horse and hunting spear ! 
 
 59 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Hounds are in their couples yelling, 
 Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling, 
 
 Merrily, merrily, mingle they, 
 
 Waken, lords and ladies gay.' 
 
 This breezy verse marks the dominant note of Scott's 
 poetry. It is one great reveille. So long as the fact 
 of the lark being up is an argument for our own early 
 rising, Scott's song is still for us : but a time soon 
 comes for us to learn that a merciful Providence has 
 appointed one breakfast-hour for larks and another for 
 ourselves, and that we are not really called upon to 
 leave our beds because ' the mist has left the mountain 
 grey,' or because — 
 
 ' . . . foresters have busy been 
 To track the buck in thickest green ' 
 
 at five in the morning. That forester was probably 
 a myth, and the reality was Sir Walter, sitting, fresh 
 as a daisy, at his desk, and pouring out page after 
 page of his brimming romance. That was at the- 
 other-end-of-the-century. Now we end the day where 
 good innocent Sir Walter began it, and, maybe, drink 
 to the dawn in our last absinthe. 
 
 A return to Sir Walter just now would be a most 
 salutary reaction of taste. As Whitman says of himself, 
 so one can say of Scott : He will be health to us, and 
 ' filter and fibre our blood.' It is true that he was feudal 
 and we are democratic, true that he had not in his work 
 the curiosa felicitas of phrase we demand to-day, but 
 he had instead a passion, a rhythm, of which we know 
 little, and his heart was big with that humanity which 
 60 
 
MARCH SIR WALTER SCOTT 1892 
 
 makes aristocrat and democrat as one. Scott was so 
 complete a man too. Like all the greatest men, he 
 was supremely practical. His genius was but one 
 function of his being. It was not, as with many, a 
 tumour which sucked away the best of him for its 
 sustenance. He kept it in its proper relation to 
 the rest of him. It did not prevent his being a true 
 husband, an unselfish father, an active citizen. He 
 had none of that resigned acceptance of tempera- 
 ment which for many to-day is the fatal peace of 
 science. If he saw a duty he bent his temperament 
 to it, instead of pleading 'genius.' It was in that 
 spirit he first studied law, for which his father had 
 destined him ; and no one can doubt that that early 
 discipline was largely responsible for the plodding 
 habit of his later years. Like all strong people, he 
 used his difficulties to make himself stronger. The 
 story of his battle with debt reads like another Iliad. 
 Think of his setting his teeth to face that ;^i77,ooo 
 with his own unaided pen, and in five years having 
 reduced it to ;^54,ooo ! Surely, most men would have 
 been tempted by the ;^30,ooo offered him by an 
 anonymous admirer. But Scott literally preferred 
 death to taking it. 
 
 The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion mark the 
 best period of Sir Walter's verse, and are indeed, with 
 the exception of some ballads and lyrics, his most 
 characteristic and inspired work. These poems stand 
 the test of re-reading as The Lady of the Lake cannot. 
 Their blithe songfulness, their manly rhythm, must 
 surely keep them fresh for many a year. Men can 
 61 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 hardly put them on the shelf till, having no further use 
 for it, we have quite lost the touch of the lyra heroica. 
 
 Whatever else Severn was, he is interesting to the 
 
 world mainly, if not entirely, as the devoted 
 Joseph Severn : 
 
 Life by friend of Keats. At the same time, to 
 
 William Sharp, quote Keats's own famous lines, 
 
 ' . . . . the trees 
 That whisper round a temple become soon 
 Dear as the temple's self ; ' 
 
 and some, the truest lovers of Keats, who still feel an 
 almost personal sense of gratitude to Severn, could 
 hardly have waxed impatient had Mr. Sharp made 
 ampler use of his more specially Severn material. 
 For we may well ask, whether the individuality which 
 goes to the making of great poetry is any more worthy 
 of the biographer than that which accounts for an un- 
 selfish devotion such as that given to Keats by Joseph 
 Severn. Certainly the world could more easily spare 
 such poetry than such friendship. Some are g^eat, and 
 some worship, and the worshipper is not unfrequently 
 greater than the worshipped. This, of course, does not 
 apply to Keats, for no circle of friends was ever more 
 unanimous in its regard than his. He seems to have 
 inspired them with nothing short of a passion. ' If I 
 know what it is to love, I truly love John Keats,' wrote 
 Haslam — through whom Keats and Severn first became 
 acquainted, probably in the spring of 18 16. Severn was 
 62 
 
MARCH JOSEPH SEVERN 1892 
 
 impressed from the first moment of their meeting. ' It 
 was his good fortune to encounter in youth,' he says, 
 ' one of those incidents which change or make the whole 
 course of a man's life. This was the congenial meeting 
 with a young poet near my own age, and so gifted with 
 a bright imagination and with such charming manners, 
 and with such communicativeness, that I felt raised to 
 the third heaven. Fortunately for me we soon became 
 the greatest friends, for there was much in common 
 between us, in addition to a mutual love of nature.' It 
 was really to Severn — then a poor engraver's appren- 
 tice, studying art in his leisure hours — that we owe 
 Keats's first introduction to the Elgin marbles ; and it 
 was prompted by Severn's enthusiasm over Titian's 
 ' Bacchus,' in the National Gallery, that Keats first went 
 to see it, thus gaining the inspiration for his famous 
 Bacchanal in the opening of ' Endymion.' Keats, as we 
 know, spent many an hour afterwards dreaming in front 
 of the Elgin marbles, and on one occasion we read that 
 Severn came upon him * with eyes shining so brightly, 
 and face so lit up by visionary rapture, that he stole 
 quietly away without intrusion.' The friends used to 
 share their Highgate and Hampstead walks together, 
 and Mr. Sharp has one interesting reminiscence to add 
 to the story of the composition of the 'Ode to the 
 Nightingale.' One night, when Keats was spending the 
 evening with friends at the large house, then (as well 
 as the familiar group of pine trees) known as the 
 * Spaniards,' he was missed. Joseph Severn, one of the 
 company, went to look for him, and discovered him 
 lying on the ground under the pines, and listening 
 63 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 entranced to the song of a nightingale overhead ; and 
 either that night or the following morning he wrote his 
 famous ode. Severn afterwards painted a picture in 
 exact illustration of this episode. This is a beautiful 
 reminiscence to complete the well-known story of Keats 
 sitting under an apple-tree in Brown's Hampstead 
 garden one morning, and returning indoors with the 
 great ode written on scraps of paper. Severn once 
 said of Keats that 'he was a nightingale only when 
 he sang, at other times a wild hawk,' — one among 
 many testimonies to that real manliness of Keats's 
 character which critics for a time lost sight of, but which 
 Matthew Arnold and Mr. Sidney Colvin have now once 
 for all established. The boy-poet, sticky with nectar, and 
 so effeminate as to be ' snuffed out by an article,' is now, 
 we will hope, quite a myth. Two new portraits, pub- 
 lished for the first time in this volume, are further 
 witness to this manliness of character and demeanour 
 on which all his friends were unanimous. Among 
 Severn's other services, he persuaded Keats to read 
 Milton, whom he had been disposed to neglect. The 
 result was, of course, ' Hyperion.' It was probably also 
 an unfortunate remark of Severn's that finally decided 
 Keats to leave that poem, like his favourite marbles, 
 a splendid torso. ' It might have been written by 
 Milton,' said Severn. That was just Keats's objection to 
 it. He did not want to write a poem ' that might have 
 been written by John Milton, but one that was un- 
 mistakably written by no other than John Keats.' 
 
 Thus, in what at some periods seems to have been 
 almost daily intercourse, their friendship grew, rooted 
 64 
 
MARCH JOSEPH SEVERN 1892 
 
 in perhaps the most fruitful of all sympathies, the sym- 
 pathy in art. Meanwhile Severn had been working 
 away at his painting, and to his delight and astonish- 
 ment won the gold medal of the Academy (not given 
 for some years before) for his ' Cave of Despair.' In 
 the painting of this he had shown the true pluck and 
 tenacity of the artist. Not having been able to afford 
 a model, he resorted to the grotesque alternative of 
 painting the Hmbs of his figure of Despair 'from his 
 own shivering legs, as seen in a looking-glass in the 
 chill morning or afternoon light ' ; and finally he was 
 reduced to sell his ' few treasured possessions, including 
 his watch and his books, so that he might not lack the 
 materials required.' 
 
 It was this manly spirit that kept him going through 
 his long death-bed attendance upon Keats — a devotion 
 for which he is ever canonised in the hearts of all 
 ' Love's lovers.' Mr. Sharp has little new to add to the 
 story, as most of Severn's letters have already been 
 printed by Mr. Buxton Forman. But one is glad that 
 he is able considerably to minimise Mr. Colvin's as- 
 sumption that Severn went to Italy, in the first instance, 
 as much in the interest of his art studies as for the sake 
 of Keats. It is true there was a chance of an art 
 studentship there, but that occurred to him as an after- 
 thought. The manner in which he immediately took 
 up Haslam's suggestion proves that. There had been 
 hopes that Charles Armitage Brown would be able to 
 accompany Keats, but those falling through, Haslam 
 called one night on Severn and asked him, ' Will you 
 go ? ' ' I '11 go,' was his immediate response, though to 
 
 VOL. I. 65 E 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 keep his word he had a bitter quarrel with his father, 
 who had always been so sympathetic with him in his 
 art studies. His mother, however, approved — ' my dear, 
 angel mother,' as he afifectionately calls her. A windfall 
 of ;i^25 just coming in for one of his miniature paintings, 
 which were just beginning to receive recognition, was 
 every penny he had to make his venture on ; Keats, it 
 will be remembered, through the kindness of Messrs. 
 Taylor and Hessey, being furnished with ;^ioo on 
 account of 'Endymion.' But the story is too well 
 known to lovers of poetry to need re-telling. It is more 
 to our purpose to say that Severn's after-life proved an 
 ample reward for all his unselfish devotion ; and it is 
 cheering to think that it all grew out of it. His relation- 
 ship to Keats had interested the English residents in 
 Rome, and there soon arose a demand for his paintings, 
 the then Emperor of Russia being among his patrons. 
 In course of time he married, and his social popularity 
 growing with his artistic, was appointed English consul, 
 in which capacity 'he earned the lasting gratitude of 
 many who benefited by his large-hearted and never- 
 failing benevolence.' So ran a circular which was 
 issued two years after his death, with the purpose of 
 raising funds to remove his body from a distant ceme- 
 tery to its final resting-place by the side of his friend. 
 
 But for Severn his life meant but one thing — he had 
 been 'the friend of Keats.' It is quite pathetic to 
 notice how till the end he can hardly write a letter 
 without some reference to his lost friend. ' It seems 
 to me,' runs a letter to Haslam, 'that his love and 
 gratitude have never ceased to quicken with cool dews 
 66 
 
MARCH BYRON 1892 
 
 the springs of my life. I owe almost everything to him, 
 my best friends as well as my artistic prosperity, my 
 general happiness as well as my best inspirations. . . .' 
 He goes on to say how on one occasion during his 
 illness Keats had turned to him, * with a fiery life in his 
 eyes, painfully large, and glowing out of the hollow, 
 woe-wrought face,' and said, ' Severn, I bequeath to you 
 all the joy and prosperity I never had,' and, adds Severn, 
 ' I do believe that the dear fellow has never ceased to 
 help me.' 
 
 What is one really to think of Byron ? Probably, the 
 Bvron • ^^^^ ^*^P ^^^^^.rds answering that question 
 A Present- would be to read him, for, in the truest 
 ay lew. ggj^gg^ ^.^^ yj'iih. one or two known excep- 
 tions, he never seems to have been read at all. Scott's 
 reading of him resulted in, perhaps, the most extra- 
 ordinary literary criticism ever made — ' as various in 
 composition as Shakespeare himself,' wrote Sir Walter, 
 and ' in the very grand and tremendous character of 
 Cain, Lord Byron has certainly matched Milton on his 
 own ground.' He seems to have mesmerised the most 
 intelligent of his contemporaries. But his astounding 
 vogue with the majority is more easily explained. It is 
 needless to say that the explanation is not in his poetry. 
 Such a vogue could never be made by poetry — the 
 greater the poetry the less chance it would have. We 
 read of the immense sales, and we exclaim, ' What a 
 different public from ours ! ' Perhaps it had more care 
 67 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 for poetry. But that was not the reason. Byron was 
 a notorious rake, or say, lady-killer, had a romantic 
 reputation for beauty, an overbearing personality, and 
 he belonged to a class in which those characteristics 
 had full play and advertisement. From the first, 
 therefore, he had the women on his side, and as a rule, 
 women are the makers of literary reputations. Scott's 
 vogue was far more real and much less easy to 
 account for. Now, women do often instinctively make 
 valuable discoveries, or perhaps they rather canvass 
 for them than make them. In that, at any rate, 
 they are notoriously successful — they are credited 
 with Shakespeare in the eighteenth century, and they 
 have certainly done much for Browning and Mr. 
 Meredith. But in the case of Lord Byron it was 
 certainly no subtle literary instinct that was aroused 
 in them ; it was simply the dazzled, worshipping 
 feminine. The fact is that Lord Byron's works sold 
 in such numbers because all the women in England 
 were secretly in love with him. He was a beautiful, 
 passionate, ' interesting ' outlaw from society ; in fact, 
 the beau ideal of a romantic stage-hero. He was more 
 than this at the heart of him, we know, but it was not 
 his heart, but his showy exterior, which set the Thames 
 on fire. In short, it was his personal, not his poetical, 
 qualities which made him, and even to-day he is more 
 interesting as a ' figure ' than a poet. A tradition of his 
 beauty still lingers in the feminine blood, and plenty of 
 women still exist who, without having read a word of 
 his poetry, cherish a sneaking regret that they were born 
 so many years too late ; just in the same way as a 
 68 
 
MARCH BYRON 1892 
 
 reminiscence of Lady Hamilton still haunts and teases 
 the masculine mind. Shelley, with a passion for revolt 
 to which Byron's was child's-play, with an ardour for 
 ' liberty ' which was lifelong and practical, if not showily 
 quixotic, and with the similar-dissimilar sins against 
 society, aroused no such attention. He sinned too much 
 like a doctrinaire ; Byron sinned like a ' gentleman.' 
 To compare greater men with smaller, and thinking for 
 the moment of the men as men, not poets, the original 
 difference between Byron and Shelley resembled that be- 
 tween Shakespeare and Dante. Byron and Shakespeare 
 'knew how to make the best of both worlds.' Dante 
 and Shelley were but strangers here — heaven was their 
 home. They were as much prophets as poets, Shelley, 
 perhaps, more prophet than poet, just as Byron was 
 more man of the world than poet. Though not a better 
 — certainly no worse man than Shelley — Byron was a 
 more conventionally robust one, as assuredly he is an 
 inferior poet. 
 
 Matthew Arnold, of course, held a very different 
 opinion, and while one cannot go to the other ex- 
 treme with Mr. Swinburne, it must be confessed that 
 Arnold's deliverance on Byron is a sore trial to the 
 faithful. It seems the reductio ad absurdum of his 
 definition of poetry as 'a criticism of Hfe.' Byron had 
 more of the great human subject-matter, he contended, 
 than either Shelley or Coleridge. In that respect he 
 was, in our century, second only to Wordsworth, with 
 whom it certainly seems a paradox to see him placed 
 side by side. Wordsworth and Byron, then Keats, 
 and then Coleridge and Shelley. That was Arnold's 
 69 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 famous conclusion. It brought from Mr. Swinburne 
 one of his foaming hyperboles reprinted in the some- 
 what regrettable Miscellanies— rnn&iy close pages, against 
 Arnold's forty well-leaded. The truth is just the re- 
 verse, said Mr. Swinburne, Shelley and Coleridge are 
 first, and Byron last of all, perhaps behind Crabbe. Mr. 
 Swinburne's criticism is much overloaded with all his 
 well-known stars and flames and thunders, strangely 
 bewildering after Arnold's lucid style. Moreover, it 
 loses in conviction by our remembrance of the very 
 different opinion held by the writer in 1865, when he 
 had to make a selection from Byron. His introduction 
 on that occasion is printed in the earlier volume of 
 really fine prose, the Essays and Studies — prose written 
 when Mr. Swinburne still retained some sense of 
 proportion and decency of expression. 
 
 On that earlier occasion Mr. Swinburne had written 
 of Byron's 'splendid and imperishable excellence, which 
 covers all his offences and outweighs all his defects : 
 the excellence of sincerity and strength.' Arnold quoted 
 the latter phrase as the best expression of Byron's 
 real value, and probably pushed it too far. He 
 dwelt so upon it that, as he was latterly in danger of 
 doing, the essential poetical qualities in which Byron 
 was certainly lacking seem almost to have disappeared 
 from his consideration. Byron's personality, Byron's 
 subject-matter, seem to have blinded him to Byron's 
 treatment of the same. Amid all Mr. Swinburne's 
 verbiage, he makes straight for that point. Poetry, 
 after all, is poetry, he says, and subject to certain laws. 
 Granted that the greatest poetry is based upon the 
 70 
 
MARCH BYRON 1892 
 
 broadest foundations — still the mere foundation is not 
 all ; the final test of poetry may be there, but the 
 primary test is what is built upon those foundations. 
 A great theme is all very well, but it must be treated 
 according to poetical laws before it can become poetry. 
 A smaller theme perfectly treated is better than a great 
 one imperfectly treated. Of the essence of such treat- 
 ment are, says Mr. Swinburne, 'imagination and 
 harmony ' ; and these in any distinguished degree were 
 not, he would say, among Byron's gifts. Mr. Swinburne 
 even, and with some show of reason, attacks the 
 assumption of Byron's broad humanity of theme. 
 Byron had but one subject, said Dr. John Nicol, 
 ' himself.' Still, that is not to say that his work lacks 
 in human nature, for that is oftenest found at the 
 bottom of the well of self. Walt Whitman, for instance, 
 claims to know mankind, because he knows himself. 
 
 Re-reading the famous ' Giaour,' one cannot but feel 
 that while he has gone to an almost ludicrous extreme 
 of depreciation, Mr. Swinburne goes nearer the critical 
 truth than Arnold in this matter. Of that dramatic 
 imagination which can put a scene of action visibly 
 before us, Byron was certainly, as Arnold claimed, the 
 possessor, and there are several fine examples of it in 
 ' The Giaour ' ; but of that greater imagination which 
 can suffuse a sentence or a mere word with a strange 
 sense of infinitude — such lines as — 
 
 'To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,' 
 
 one finds no trace. There are fine bursts, which are 
 
 more than rhetoric, but which are certainly not great 
 
 71 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 poetry. There is passion, but it is the fluency, not 
 the depth of passion. There is much sentimentalism, 
 which Byron would have had to work out of before he 
 began to be a great poet. As for the ' harmony,' Byron 
 himself declared it ' but a string of passages.' What 
 wonder, when one considers his method of composition ? 
 '"Lara,"' he declares, 'I wrote while undressing after 
 coming home from balls and masquerades, in the year 
 of revelry 1814. "The Bride" was written in four, 
 "The Corsair" in ten days.' Although, as Arnold says, 
 Byron could not have done his work in any other way, 
 that is not the way in which the greatest poetry is 
 written. 
 
 But, whatever one says about Byron's poetry, his 
 significance as a man is little reduced. He was a 
 striking and, in many respects, a noble figure. As one 
 of the earliest protesters against conventional politics 
 and conventional living, he has earned the gratitude of 
 Europe. On the Continent, as we know, he is appre- 
 ciated far more than here, but, as Mr. Swinburne points 
 out, such appreciation is to be received cautiously. It is 
 so hard for one nation to judge another's poetry. Had 
 Byron been able to put all that was in him into poetry, 
 he would indeed have given us great things ; but, after 
 all, that is but to say that had he been a greater poet, 
 he would have given us greater poetry. . 
 
 ^ 
 
 72 
 
MARCH JOSEPH SKIPSEY 1892 
 
 Mr. Skipsey must feel a proud and happy satisfaction 
 
 as he looks at the fine-paper edition de 
 Joseph . . 
 
 Skipsey: ^'^^^ ^^ '^is poems which Mr. Walter Scott 
 • Songs and has issued. He must smile as he thinks 
 
 of the very different conditions under 
 which his songs first found birth. Little thought, 
 indeed, had he of editions de luxe, as he scrawled them 
 painfully on fragments of paper in the dark narrow 
 ways of a coal mine. All that his book means to him, 
 all the strength, the intensity, the tenderness, of his 
 love for it, perhaps only a woman who has reared her 
 one child through years of struggling days, or some 
 fellow-poet with a like story, can be expected fully to 
 understand. But to us even such a book has a pro- 
 foundly suggestive significance. Quite apart from its 
 merits as verse, of which anon, Mr. Skipsey's book, to 
 the serious, reflective mind, is one of those symbols of 
 which happily the lives of our democracy afford no few 
 examples, a symbol of all that is aspiring and indomit- 
 able in man, and in fact in life. As Whitman says of 
 his Leaves of Grass — ' Camerado ! this is no book. 
 Who touches this touches a man.' And yet again 
 it is indeed, in Carlyle's solemn use of the word— 'a 
 book.' 
 
 It is so because it is the essence of a manly life 
 ' distilled to a mere drop.' It comes straight from the 
 central life of a man, and is not like the majority of 
 books of every kind, the product of some isolated 
 activity of the brain. Save as the symbol of a hard life 
 bravely lived to finer issues, it may not be of much value. 
 73 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 The poems are often crude, their naivetd is too naive — 
 they sometimes * lack the quality of art.' Will you per- 
 mit me just for once to say ' art ! ' There is one 
 
 interest to which art must still give precedence, and 
 that is true life. When we have both together, all the 
 better. Happily, we have examples of great artists who 
 have been great men too. 
 
 But I must not seem to depreciate Mr. Skipsey's real 
 poetical gift. His poems have often touches of very 
 high qualities, imagination for one, deep thought con- 
 tinually, with perhaps a tendency to mysticism, artistic 
 control, if not artistic elasticity, a charming fancy, and 
 an earth-music all their own. What I mean is that his 
 book, though it has thus its own poetic charm, a charm 
 that often reminds one of Blake, is one of those books 
 that are, par excellence, interesting on account of the in- 
 dividuality they express. In the present edition Mr. 
 Skipsey leaves his verses to tell their own tale, as they 
 can well do ; but to the edition before this Dr. Spence 
 Watson added a brief account of their author's hfe, 
 giving details of those essential facts plainly revealed in 
 the poems. Thus we gather that Mr. Skipsey was not 
 only a coal-miner, but had been so for forty years, in 
 the pits of Percy Main, Northumberland, that he went 
 to the mines- at seven, that he taught himself to write 
 there with a piece of chalk on the back of a little door 
 which it was his duty to open and shut for the passage 
 of wagons, and that in such arduous ways and circum- 
 stances he had acquired a culture which embraced 
 pretty well all of worth in the literature of the world. 
 Meanwhile, the lark that sings as well in prisons and 
 74 
 
MARCH JOSEPH SKIPSEY 1892 
 
 dark places as in the morning sky sang by him at his 
 work, and reversed for him the miracle of that fairy- 
 gold which always turned out to be mere coal in the 
 morning. Mr. Skipsey had learned the faculty of the 
 other alchemy, and turned his coal into nuggets : 
 
 ' In the coal-pit, or the factory, 
 
 I toil by night or day, 
 And still to the music of labour 
 
 I lilt my heart-felt lay ; 
 I lilt my heart-felt lay — 
 
 And the gloom of the deep, deep mine, 
 Or the din of the factory, dieth away, 
 
 And a golden lot is mine. ' 
 
 Well may such a man proudly sing : 
 
 ' What tho', in bleak Northumbria's mines. 
 
 His better part of life hath flown, 
 A planet's shone on him, and shines 
 
 To fortune's darlings seldom known ; 
 And while his outer lot is grim. 
 
 His soul, with light and rapture fraught, 
 Oft will a carol trill, or hymn 
 
 In deeper tones the deeper thought.' 
 
 Such a man is, indeed, independent of all we can do 
 or say ; he is truly 'the captain of his soul.' Mr. Skip- 
 sey's secret, apparently, was no mere culture of an 
 impassivity such as Marcus Aurelius trained himself 
 to practise, though all who suffer have soon to learn 
 that too, and soon to learn, like that great philosopher, 
 to make their fine reflections or fine poems on the 
 battle-field — 'among the Quadi at the Granua.' He 
 seems to have been blessed with a genuine optimism 
 of nature, and to have been able to look on his life as 
 75 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 ' Jinny ' on her dusky lover, in this vivid and in every 
 way charming little poem : 
 
 ' Duskier than the clouds that lie 
 'Tween the coal-pit and the sky, 
 Lo, how Willy whistles by 
 Right cheery from the colliree. 
 
 Duskier might the laddie be, 
 Save his coaxing coal-black e'e, 
 Nothing dark could Jinny see 
 A-coming from the colliree." 
 
 Mr. Skipsey's best poems all show this terse power 
 of picture-making. Here is one of the darker side of 
 the collier-life : 
 
 ' " Get up ! " the caller calls, "get up ! " 
 
 And in the dead of night. 
 To win the bairns their bite and sup, 
 I rise a weary wight. 
 
 My flannel dudden donn'd, thrice o'er 
 
 My birds are kiss'd, and then 
 I with a whistle shut the door, 
 
 I may not ope again. ' 
 
 The patient weary strain, the tragic uncertainty of the 
 miner's life, is surely all here. The very simplicity, 
 almost baldness, of the verse seems to have come of the 
 stern wrestle with the hard crust of the earth. 
 
 But such dark pictures are few in Mr. Skipsey's 
 songs. For the most part he looks on the bright side, 
 on the love-making of collier lads and lasses, or he forgets 
 all his surroundings and pursues his own moonbeam 
 fancies. And he can cap a conceit or turn a compliment 
 76 
 
MARCH JOSEPH SKIPSEY 1892 
 
 like a courtier. Could any be prettier than this verse 
 with a sprig of lily of the valley : 
 
 ' It is a gem, tho' small, too rare 
 
 For mortal hand to pluck, and twine 
 With any save an angel's hair ; 
 And that is why 'tis placed in thine. ' 
 
 With all this, Dr. Spence Watson tells us that ' whilst 
 
 still a working pitman he was master of his craft, and it 
 
 took an exceptionally good man to match him as a 
 
 heaver of coal. When, after many long years of patient 
 
 toil, he won his way to an official position, he gained the 
 
 respect of those above him in authority whilst retaining 
 
 the confidence and affection of the men. Simple, 
 
 straight, and upright, he has held his own wherever he 
 
 has been placed.' In this, of course, is Mr. Skipsey 
 
 most significant. He has not, like some other poets, 
 
 shirked the first duties of life at the call of the muse. 
 
 Certainly, sweet and powerful as many of his verses are, 
 
 they had hardly been worth forsaking ' weans and wife ' 
 
 for— one would like to know, indeed, what poems ever 
 
 have been worth that. Nor has Mr. Skipsey fallen a 
 
 victim to the temptations of flattered vanity such as 
 
 perhaps peculiarly beset a ' poet of the people.' Mr. 
 
 Robert Buchanan has finely portrayed such a bedazzled 
 
 poet in one of his London Poems. And yet Mr. Skipsey 
 
 has not gone unlionised. The testimonial which backed 
 
 his application for the custodianship of Shakespeare's 
 
 House included the names of most of the men illustrious 
 
 in modern literature and art, and Rossetti was especially 
 
 kind to the miner poet. Mr. Skipsey has a touching 
 
 reference to their friendship in one of the new poems 
 
 77 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 added in the present edition. While our minds have 
 just been turned to the grimmer aspect of labour in the 
 northern coalfields, it is well to have Mr, Skipsey to 
 remind us that if the miner's life is hard, it yet produces 
 brave men and sweet women, and that it too has its 
 share of sunshine and song. ' Perhaps, if we could see 
 things as they really are,' said Dr. Spence Watson, 
 'Joseph Skipsey is the best product of the north- 
 country coalfields since George Stephenson held his 
 safety-lamp in the blower at Killingworth pit.' 
 
 That tireless huntsman of Tennysonian parallels, Mr. 
 
 , _ Churton Collins, has, doubtless, already 
 Lord 
 Tennyson : noted for a new edition of his Illustrations 
 
 ' The one more coincidence in the fact that Ben 
 
 Foresters** 
 
 Jonson in his latter days also turned to 
 the story of Robin Hood. So has Lord Tennyson in 
 The Foresters. The opening of Ben Jonson's prologue 
 is singularly appropriate, with one alteration of happy 
 significance, to Lord Tennyson to-day. 
 
 ' He that hath feasted you these forty years, 
 And fitted fables for your finer ears . . . 
 
 begins Ben Jonson. Lord Tennyson, however, can say 
 sixty ! — sixty-two in fact, reckoning from the Poems, 
 chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. In one other happy particular 
 also the Jonsonian parallel does not apply. Poor 
 Jonson had at that time hissed his ' Come leave the 
 loathed stage' into the faces of an ungrateful public. 
 Lord Tennyson still sits high and honoured amongst us 
 78 
 
APRIL TENNYSON 1892 
 
 — a Merlin whom the Vivien of Time has robbed not 
 of his charm. 
 
 Ben Jonson, too, in writing The Sad Shepherd^ had 
 his eye not so much on Robin Hood and Maid Marian 
 as on ^glamour, a sorrowful swain who had lost his 
 love, and went, therefore, wandering across Sherwood, 
 mourning her in such exquisite verse as — 
 
 ' Here she was wont to go ! and here ! and here ! 
 Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow : 
 The world may find the spring by following her. ' 
 
 There is some pretty love-play between Robin Hood 
 and Maid Marian ; but they are evidently happily 
 married, with their romance behind them, settled down 
 in Sherwood as successful outlaws. Possibly the witch 
 Maulkin suggested to Lord Tennyson the inclusion of 
 ' an old woman,' reputed witch, among his dramatis 
 personcE, though the part played by her does not in the 
 most trifling degree resemble that played by Jonson's, 
 whose pastoral, half English and half classical, as was 
 his wont, we may now, so far as Robin Hood is con- 
 cerned, dismiss from our minds. 
 
 Dr. Garnett, in his preface to the recent re-issue of 
 Peacock's delightful Maid Marian, fears that there can 
 be little doubt but that Robin Hood was a myth. ' The 
 name originally belonged to a mythical forest elf,' says 
 his learned authority. An old ballad admits that there 
 was even then some difficulty about the manner of 
 Robin's birth : 
 
 ' There 's mony ane sings o' grass, o' grass, 
 
 And mony ane sings o' corn ; 
 And mony ane sings o' Robin Hood 
 Kens little whar' he was born ; ' 
 
 79 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 but it still leaves him his humanity, if it be humanity 
 illegitimate. Friar Tuck, too, must go, we are told, go 
 pack with Friar Rush. 
 
 However, 'a mythical forest elf is not much use in 
 drama, save, may-be, as an ' attendant sprite ' ; and in 
 dealing with his story Lord Tennyson not only restores 
 Robin his humanity, but also his earldom, thus following 
 the main stream of tradition which makes him Robert 
 Earl of Huntington, outlawed for shooting the king's 
 deer. The other characters in The Foresters are the 
 old familiar ones, including Sir Richard Lea, who has 
 one fair daughter, Marian, a dauntless girl in love with 
 Robin Hood. Sir Richard has as little control over her 
 as his prototype, Baron Fitzwater, has over Matilda, in 
 Peacock, Bidden to Robin's birthday in the greenwood, 
 she says she means to go : 
 
 Sir Richard : ' Not if I barred thee up in thy 
 chamber, like a bird in a cage.' 
 
 Marian : ' Then would I drop from the casement, 
 like a spider.' 
 
 Sir Richard : ' But I would hoist the drawbridge, 
 like thy master.' 
 
 Marian : ' And I would swim the moat like an otter.' 
 
 Sir Richard : ' But I would set my men-at-arms to 
 oppose thee like the Lord of the Castle.' 
 
 Marian : 'And I would break through them all like 
 the King of England.' 
 
 It is just so father and daughter play at draughts in 
 
 Peacock, though in the dropping of the spider Lord 
 
 Tennyson has, with his usual felicity, found a more 
 
 exquisite image than any of Peacock's. Of course, 
 
 80 
 
APRIL TENNYSON 1892 
 
 escape by such desperate fertility of expedient was not 
 Peacock's invention, dating back at least to the trans- 
 formations of Loki, in the Edda. 
 
 The other familiar characters also troop in as 
 under other greenwood trees, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, 
 Much, the Sheriff of Nottingham, the Abbot who holds 
 Sir Richard Lea's lands in pawn, while the figure of the 
 cunning, lascivious King John haunts the whole plot, 
 and King Richard comes in, as in Ivanhoe, to pronounce 
 the benediction. 
 
 Some critics have thought it worth while to com- 
 pare unfavourably The Foresters with Ivanhoe, But 
 that, I think, is to weigh it in the wrong scales. Full- 
 blooded romance or poignant drama were not, ap- 
 parently, Lord Tennyson's aims. Besides, the latter at 
 least was hardly possible. Where, in the blithe, merry 
 story, where men sing songs and crack jests one minute, 
 and just as merrily crack skulls the next, where is there 
 opportunity for dramatic intensity? There is hardly 
 room even for characterisation, the dramatis personce 
 have been such well-known types this many a year. 
 Peacock had the art to recognise these, and at the same 
 time his own, limitations, when he turned the story into 
 a sort of prose masque, filling it as full of songs as a 
 wood with birds, and at the same time adding a touch 
 of burlesque, lest we should be in danger of thinking his 
 characters meant anything so serious as real romance. 
 
 If Englishmen must have their comparisons, let them 
 make them with Maid Marian in this case, not with 
 Ivanhoe and As You Like it. For The Foresters, like 
 Maid Marian, is really a masquerade. The figures are 
 
 VOL. L 81 F 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 really all actors, who for a time have donned the Lincoln 
 green and ' fleet the time carelessly ' in the greenwood, 
 in a sort of dangerous picnic. It is a mistake to weigh 
 The Foresters as ' a drama.' Lord Tennyson does not 
 describe it so. It is, in fact, a pastoral, on the model of 
 an Elizabethan masque — a dainty piece of convention, 
 in which the characters are types, and the manner 
 prescribed. To morning papers asking in robustious 
 bass 'of its power as an acting drama,' we may reply, 
 Yes, it is actable, as a pastoral play is actable. It 
 will not harrow up your soul, freeze your young blood, 
 but it will give you a pleasant woodland entertainment, 
 such as a certain noble lady used to give to her friends 
 — a pleasing English landscape, with graceful figures 
 moving across it, and sweet little bird-like songs in the 
 air. 
 
 As in reading one of the Elizabethan masques one's 
 eye always seeks out first the welcome italics, so do 
 we first run through The Foresters, picking out the little 
 daisies of song. There are many of them, and one 
 at least as exquisite as any Lord Tennyson has written, 
 this invitation to sleep : 
 
 ' To sleep ! to sleep ! the long bright day is done, 
 
 And darkness rises from the fallen sun. 
 
 To sleep ! to sleep ! 
 
 Whate'er thy joys, they vanish with the day ; 
 
 Whate'er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away. 
 
 To sleep ! to sleep ! 
 
 Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past ! 
 
 Sleep, happy soul ! all life will sleep at last. 
 
 To sleep ! to sleep ! ' 
 
 This type of song, on one or two notes, of which 
 there are several examples scattered through The 
 
APRIL TENNYSON 1892 
 
 Idylls of the King, is peculiarly the property of Lord 
 Tennyson. Birdlike is for once the scientific adjective 
 to apply to it, for the recurrence of the refrain and the 
 changes on one or two simple ideas seem to suggest 
 the very manner of some birds — I will not venture to 
 say which. A call, a call, and then a warble ; a call, a 
 call, and then another warble. So, it seems to me, go 
 both the birds and Lord Tennyson's song. 
 In a song beginning, 
 
 ' There is no land like England, 
 Where'er the light of day be ; 
 There are no hearts Hke English hearts, 
 Such hearts of oak as they be,' 
 
 Lord Tennyson once more exemplifies his well-known 
 poetical thrift, for the song originally appeared so long 
 ago as the 1830 Poems, chiefly Lyrical, and was, 
 with another patriotic song, selected for especial scorn 
 by ' Christopher North.' Lord Tennyson has made no 
 changes in the body of the song, the two verses being 
 reproduced, word for word, as in 1830; but he has 
 entirely changed the chorus, which was originally in 
 two parts, and ran as follows : 
 
 Chorus — ' For the French the Pope may shrive 'em, 
 For the devil a whit we heed 'em ; 
 As for the French, God speed 'em 
 
 Unto their heart's desire. 
 And the merry devil drive 'em 
 Through the water and the fire. 
 Full Chorus—' Our glory is our freedom, 
 We lord it o'er the sea ; 
 We are the sons of freedom. 
 We are free.' 
 It is certainly impossible to plead either against 
 Crusty Christopher or oblivion for these lines, though 
 83 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 he might have employed comments a little more civil 
 
 than 'miserable indeed' or 'that is drivel.' Lord 
 
 Tennyson has now substituted a chorus more in the 
 
 spirit of the greenwood. 
 
 A plot of italics, from which one expected most, 
 
 proves somewhat disappointing. But, then, it was no 
 
 little temerarious for even Lord Tennyson to give us 
 
 another Titania, though he has before now shown 
 
 himself the modern Fletcher. Robin lies asleep in 
 
 the wood and dreams of Mab and of the fairy king. 
 
 The fairies do not appreciate the outlaws. One by 
 
 one they come to the queen with complaints — of 
 
 carriage-frogs crushed, sward and bracken laid waste, 
 
 daisies done to death — the conventional fairy imagery — 
 
 and finally suggest the removal of the court to some 
 
 more secluded spot. Titania consents, and, after 
 
 promising the dreaming Robin happiness with Marian, 
 
 she gives the order to march, in a line which at least 
 
 has all the old Tennysonian dexterity of suiting the 
 
 rhythm to the action : 
 
 ' Up with you, all of you, off with you, out of it, over the wood 
 and away ! ' 
 
 Surely this is the very grasshopper flitter of the fairies. . 
 The same dexterity is shown in the romping ring-a- 
 roses metre of the concluding song, with which the 
 outlaws hail the return of Richard : 
 
 ' Now the King is home again, and never more to roam again, 
 Now the King is home again, the king will have his own again. 
 Home again, home again, and each will have his own again. 
 All the birds in merry Sherwood sing and sing him home again.' 
 
 Of the body of the play, one must admit that it 
 
APRIL WILLIAM CALDWELL ROSCOE 1892 
 
 lacks vitality, it kindles all too rarely, and we miss 
 the gusto of the mediaeval knock -about comedy. 
 The wit combats are apt to be somewhat of sham- 
 fights, all too easily settled with Shakespearean word- 
 play. But when it does kindle, we get unmistakable 
 passages such as that in which Marian protests her 
 faithful love for Robin. The reader will find several 
 such passages to mark and hive, and one or two more 
 songs besides, such as the charming little ballad 
 of 'Master and Man.' But I fancy that the play as 
 a whole will act better than it reads, its very verbal 
 frugality being one of the rare characteristics of good 
 acting plays. Room is left for the actors, for acting, 
 not merely for elocution. Lord Tennyson, of course, 
 intended his play for the stage, and doubtless that is 
 why he has been somewhat less a Chrysostom than 
 usual. 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 A RE-ISSUE of Caldwell Roscoe's poems leaves one 
 
 with the impression that Roscoe is a poet 
 
 Caldwell best represented in an anthology. He 
 
 Roscoe: was a poet. His song was of the true 
 
 Poems. fount, but it was very slender. In single 
 
 sonnets, in many a detached passage, he gives us 
 
 satisfying delight ; but his poetry is not full enough 
 
 in body to hold one in the bulk. Its colour is too 
 
 elusive, its fragrance too volatile. It seems the poetry 
 
 of a man whose blood ran a little too thin, whose 
 
 refinement was a little too refined, whose gentleness 
 
 85 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 was a little too gentle. A voice 'low and sweet' is 
 an excellent thing in a poet as well as in woman, but 
 it can be pitched so low that it is hard to catch 
 its timbre. It was so with William Caldwell Roscoe, 
 though it is noticeable that, in his descent from literary 
 parentage, he marks a distinct advance in poetical 
 power. Indeed, the Roscoe family afford a rare instance 
 of literary power being cumulative from one generation 
 to the next. Usually, as one well knows, this is 
 by no means the case. William Roscoe, ardently 
 commemorated by Washington Irving, wrote that 
 sonnet on leaving his books which breathes so real 
 a sorrow that it will long keep his memory green. 
 In William Stanley Roscoe the voice grew stronger, 
 though to no such degree as we next hear it in the 
 sonnets of his son. 
 
 These were first collected by his son-in-law, Mr. 
 William Hutton, who prefaced them with a memoir 
 and criticism of great interest. Mr. Hutton, if I re- 
 member aright, laid special stress on Roscoe's critical 
 essays, which he at the same time also collected. 
 These, indeed, show a critical gift of the calm Amoldian 
 order, and possess a real distinction of treatment. 
 They would bear reprinting entire much better than 
 the poems, of which a small selection would do Roscoe 
 greater justice. 
 
 Miss Roscoe hesitated, she tells us, whether to print 
 the two plays of Eliduke and Violenzia entire, or to 
 represent them by selections. She has chosen the 
 former course. Perhaps it was the best, for plays, of 
 all forms of writing, are ill-represented by selection. 
 86 
 
APRIL WILLIAM CALDWELL ROSCOE 1892 
 
 At the same time Violenzia, the maturer of the two 
 dramas, would have been more than sufficient ; for 
 though in that Roscoe shows a real dramatic hold 
 of his hero, Earl Ethel, yet the drama in his hands 
 was more a Shakesperean convention than an instinc- 
 tive vehicle of expression. All through the phrasing 
 is almost painfully Shakesperean, though often forcible 
 and beautiful : 
 
 ' Look, how the heavy-foliaged elm-trees stand, 
 Like clustered pictures in the western sky ; 
 And there a fainter blue doth still betray 
 Where bright Apollo had his bedding-place. 
 High overhead the angels light their lamps, 
 And with rich gifts and precious influence 
 Walk the night-wandering winds. Look up, my Ethel, 
 When on the glances of the upturned eye 
 The plumed thoughts take travel, and ascend 
 Through the unfathomable purple mansions, 
 Threading the golden fires, and ever climbing 
 As if 'twere homewards winging — at such time 
 The native soul, distrammelled of dim earth, 
 Doth know herself immortal, and sits light 
 Upon her temporal perch.' 
 
 Roscoe's best-known sonnet is probably that be- 
 ginning : 
 
 ■ Like a musician that with flying finger 
 Startles the voice of some new instrument. ' 
 
 I will quote one less familiar, of no less beauty— an 
 
 Amiel-like sigh of frustration : 
 
 ' The bubble of the silver-springing waves, 
 Castalian music, and that flattering sound. 
 Low rustling of the loved ApoUian leaves. 
 With which my youthful hair was to be crowned, 
 Grow dimmer in my ears ; while Beauty grieves 
 Over her votary, less frequent found, 
 
 87 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 And, not untouched by storms, my life-boat heaves 
 
 Through the splashed ocean-water, outward bound. 
 
 And as the leaning mariner, his hand 
 
 Clasped on his ear, strives trembling to reclaim 
 
 Some loved lost echo from the fleeting strand, 
 
 So lean I back to the poetic land ; 
 
 And in my heart a sound, a voice, a name 
 
 Hangs, as above the lamp hangs the expiring flame.' 
 
 It is the paradox of such natures to best express them- 
 selves in the very sigh in which they mourn the 
 impossibility of expression. 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 Of all books in the world the Vita Nuova is, in Omar 
 j^ . , Khayyam's phrase, 'youth's sweet-scented 
 his Circle : manuscript.' Youth, all dream and passion, 
 Rossetti's dream as terribly fair as the almond bloom 
 
 Translations. 
 
 against a morning sky, passion ardent as 
 
 a sunrise. Indeed if we were to compare the literature 
 of the world to a wood of various trees, the Vita 
 Nuova would be the almond-tree — the almond-tree 
 of youth. In every characteristic it is the very em- 
 bodiment of youth. Not only in its passion and its 
 dream, but in the self-consciousness with which one 
 sees Dante deliberately fanning both with constant 
 care ; the artifice with which he delighted to fret little 
 golden ' chambers of imagery ' for the honey, and deh- 
 cate lachrymatories for the sorrow, of his love. The 
 intense life in words so characteristic of the poet, and 
 especially the young poet, the ecstasy, the consolation 
 of them, never found a more perfect illustration than 
 
APRIL DANTE 1892 
 
 in the Vita Nuova — the book 'which first of all he 
 made when young.' Is there any stranger paradox 
 than that to sing of sorrow should bring so great a 
 joy? Yet it is hardly cynical to say that to such a 
 nature an elegy is no small compensation for a loss. 
 By the time a poet has finished singing, his tears will 
 usually be dry. It still happens with him as in the 
 old mythology, out of the tomb of every grief springs 
 up a flower, which though he read, ' Ai ! Ai ! ' on 
 its petals is no less to him a joy for ever. As some 
 men fly to wine in sorrow, the poet flies to verse. 
 Dante is said to have sought both and other consola- 
 tions after the death of Beatrice, but he thus speaks 
 of his deliberate turning to verse : 
 
 'When mine eyes had wept for some while, until they were 
 so weary with weeping that I could no longer through them 
 give ease to my sorrow, I bethought me that a few mournful 
 words might stand me instead of tears. And therefore I pro- 
 posed to make a poem, that weeping I might speak therein of 
 her for whom so much sorrow had destroyed my spirit ; and I 
 then began "The eyes that weep."' 
 
 But before copying out his poem Dante prefixes 
 
 one of those curious elaborate analyses of its contents 
 
 which is one of the quaintest and most significant 
 
 characteristics of the Vita Nuova : 
 
 ' That this poem (he beautifully begins) may seem to remain 
 the more widowed at its close, I will divide it before writing 
 it; and this method I will observe henceforward. I say that this 
 poor little poem has three parts. The first is a prelude. In the 
 second, I speak of her. In the third, I speak pitifully to the poem.' 
 
 This is, indeed, as Polonius would say, 'the very 
 ecstasy of love,' but if, amid all its charming con- 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 vention, we miss the real pitiful sob underneath, we 
 do wrong both to Dante and to youth : 
 
 ' Who speaks thereof, and feels not the tears warm 
 Upon his face, must have become so vile 
 As to be dead to all sweet sympathies.' 
 
 These are lines from the poem which then follows, 
 addressed to girl-sympathisers of his, whom he re- 
 minds 
 
 ' How it was pleasant, ere she went afar, 
 To talk of her with you, kind damozels, 
 I talk with no one else. 
 But only with such hearts as women's are. 
 
 And I will say, — still sobbing as speech fails, — 
 That she hath gone to Heaven suddenly, 
 And hath left Love below, to mourn with me. 
 
 Beatrice is gone up into high Heaven, 
 The kingdom where the angels are at peace ; 
 And lives with them : and to her friends is dead. 
 Not by the frost of winter was she driven 
 Away, like others ; nor by summer heats ; 
 But through a perfect gentleness, instead.' 
 
 In fact, she was, as a lover should always suppose, 
 too good for this world, and God had taken her to 
 Himself. This beautiful illusion is, of course, charac- 
 teristic, like the rest, of youth. Some commentators 
 have spent much vitality in arguing that Beatrice 
 was intended by Dante as a personification of divine 
 beauty, but such can have known nothing of the 
 mystical temper of youth, which in its time has set 
 some very commonplace maidens among the stars. 
 The Vita Nuova gains in significance if we regard 
 Beatrice rather as the same kind of giggling young miss 
 90 
 
APRIL DANTE 1892 
 
 as our own first-love, now haloed beyond all recognition 
 of her relatives — and we have data for such a view in the 
 book itself. Very soon Dante had probably idolised her 
 out of all her personal character, and as he mingled 
 more and more with actuality, in the form of marriage 
 and his various political activities, she ascended higher 
 and grew brighter in his imagination, as the type of that 
 angel first-love to which we all look back, which we 
 know never really did or never can exist in this world, 
 but which, perhaps, we still go on hoping to meet, as 
 Dante his Beatrice, in Paradise. Not Beatrice Por- 
 tinari, daughter of a magnate of Florence, but that 
 mystical Beatrice, 'even she who was called Beatrice 
 by many who knew not wherefore.' Those commen- 
 tators who claim an allegorical significance for Beat- 
 rice are thus half right. It was not Beatrice Portinari 
 for whom Dante kept a lifelong troth, no earthly in- 
 dividual woman, for that he notoriously did not keep. 
 His friend Guido Cavalcanti 'rebukes' him in one of 
 his sonnets 'for his way of life after the death of 
 Beatrice ' ; Beatrice herself reproaches him for it in the 
 Purgatorio ; that, indeed, was the cause of his vision 
 of the Inferno, as she implies : 
 
 ' So low he fell, that all appliances 
 For his salvation were already short, 
 Save showing him the people of perdition.' 
 
 In the same poem he admits : 
 
 ' The things that present were 
 With their false pleasure turned aside my steps, 
 Soon as your countenance concealed itself,' 
 
 and even in the Vita Nuova itself he confesses that 
 91 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 what he would call his 'susceptibility' was such that 
 he was in danger of falling in love with one of those 
 very 'ladies who had intelligence in love,' so well had 
 she comforted him for the death of Beatrice. His 
 'eyes began,' he says, 'to be gladdened overmuch by 
 her company, through which thing many times I had 
 much unrest, and rebuked myself as a base person.' 
 Yes, Dante was true to Beatrice, as a man is true to 
 his first love ! She became to him, in the beautiful 
 phrase of a modern writer, * that angel who is the type 
 of all women.' But to imagine that Dante was true to 
 Beatrice the school-girl is surely to dehumanise him, and 
 to turn his noble idealism into a mere sentimentalism. 
 
 Rossetti's translations of the Vita Nuova, and of the 
 circle of poets before and associated with Dante, have 
 long been acknowledged as among the finest ever 
 made. Perhaps Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam is the 
 only other parallel instance of perfection, at least in 
 recent years. And Fitzgerald is a real analogue in 
 that — as Mr. W. M. Rossetti well expresses it in the 
 preface to a new edition — the translator has entered 
 so keenly into the spirit of his originals, and 'has 
 reinforced them with so manifest a poetic tone and 
 savour proper to himself, that the versions have taken 
 rank as a sort of cross between translated and original 
 work.' Rossetti's translations thus, as Mr. W. M. 
 Rossetti further says, in addition to their value as trans- 
 lation, ' serve likewise as a kind of prologue to Rossetti's 
 personality among English poets.' It is, of course, a 
 commonplace how much Dante Rossetti's poetry owed 
 in character to his being steeped in Italian influences. 
 92 
 
APRIL DANTE 1892 
 
 Besides, he had Dante in his blood, his father being 
 a well-known Dante commentator, though with the 
 misguided enthusiasm of a ' crank.' He preached one 
 of those theories so depressing to the artistically- 
 minded, viz., that Dante's work had a hidden political 
 significance ; that it was, in fact, not so much a great 
 poem as the cipher of state intrigues, just as Shake- 
 speare's plays have been proved to be ciphers of the 
 philosopher's stone, and heaven knows what else. 
 
 The Dante enthusiasm, however, came out quite 
 pure of such theory in the next generation, and cer- 
 tainly no enthusiasm for a poet was ever more fruit- 
 ful of true service to his fame than Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti's for Dante. Of course the secret of his trans- 
 lations being so good was in the fact that he was a poet 
 himself Shelley's translation of Calderon and Cole- 
 ridge's of Wallensiein are good for the same reason. 
 Translation to be successful must be literally a second 
 birth of the original through the mind of the trans- 
 lator, and poetry can only thus be born again through 
 the mind of a poet. A translator, so to say, makes 
 within himself a saturated solution of the poem to be 
 translated, and then allows it to crystallise out again 
 as near the original form as possible. He must not, 
 as Rossetti said in his admirable preface, suffer him- 
 self to be bullied by the bugbear of ' literality.' 
 
 'The life-blood of rhythmical translation is this command- 
 ment — that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one. 
 The only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language 
 must be to endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one 
 more possession of beauty. Poetry not being an exact science, 
 literality of rendering is altogether secondary to this chief law. 
 
 93 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 I say literality, — not fidelity, which is by no means the same 
 thing.' 
 
 Nothing more helpful could be written on the art 
 of translating. Rossetti followed his own precept with 
 so remarkable a success that his translations have all 
 the bloom and fragrance of originals. Very often in 
 the case of the smaller poets there can be no doubt 
 that they have gained by filtering through a richer 
 temperament. There can hardly be another volume 
 on our shelves which is such a quintessence of poet's 
 poetry as this of Dante and his Circle. Space does 
 not permit me to deal with the sixty odd poets who 
 make up or precede that circle, not even with the 
 great and gallant Guido Cavalcanti, whom Dante speaks 
 of continually in the Vita Nuova as his chief friend, 
 but I may quote this anonymous ballata, 'Of True 
 and False Singing,' as medicinable at the present 
 time : 
 
 ' A little wild bird sometimes at my ear 
 
 Sings his own verses very clear : 
 Others sing louder that I do not hear. 
 For singing loudly is not singing well ; 
 
 But ever by the song that 's soft and low 
 The master-singer's voice is plain to tell. 
 
 Few have it and yet all are masters now, 
 And each of them can trill out what he calls 
 His ballads, canzonets, and madrigals. 
 The world with masters is so covered o'er, 
 There is no room for pupils any more. ' 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 94 
 
APRIL RICHARD GARNETT 1892 
 
 A TURN for epigram and paradox evidently runs in Dr. 
 
 Garnett's family. One of the versions 
 
 Richard 
 
 Garnett: included in this Chaplet from the Greek 
 
 ' A Chaplet,' Anthology proves it to have been among 
 the gifts of the late Rev. Richard Garnett, 
 and those who possess the somewhat scarce ' Paradox 
 Club ' will know that Dr. Garnett has also transmitted a 
 portion of his inheritance to his son. The volume, of 
 which this dainty volume is substantially a reprint, has 
 for some time been a ' very desirable ' rarity. Published 
 by Messrs. Macmillan in 1869, under the title of Idylls 
 and Epigrams, chiefly from the Greek anthology, it 
 has up till now existed in an editio princeps, though 
 a majority of the translations included in Mrs. Marriott 
 Watson's selection from the Greek anthology were taken 
 from Dr. Garnett's volume. Dr. Garnett's union of 
 eighteenth-century terseness, with somewhat of modern 
 intensity, admirably adapted him for the translation 
 of those wonderful poems where passion and epigram 
 exist in so odd and yet so happy a marriage. As an 
 example of the perfection of terseness, take this tran- 
 slation of the famous anonymous hyperbole : 
 
 ' I send thee myrrh, not that thou may'st be 
 By it perfumed, but it perfumed by thee. ' 
 
 Compare it with Miss Strettell's rendering— admirable, 
 but how much less forcible : 
 
 ' I. send to thee sweet myrrh, thereby favouring it not thee, 
 Since even the perfume by thy touch yet more perfumed may be.' 
 
 95 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Ben Jonson adapted the same fancy in his ' Song to 
 Celia' : 
 
 ' I sent thee late a rosy wreath, 
 
 Not so much honouring thee 
 As giving it a hope that there 
 
 It could not withered be ; 
 But thou thereon didst only breathe 
 
 And sent'st it back to me : 
 Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, 
 
 Not of itself, but thee.' 
 
 Dr. Garnett's new title is a little misleading. The 
 word * chiefly ' is still needed in connection with ' the 
 Greek anthology,' for several of Dr. Garnett's own 
 epigrams are, as before, included. These, however, are 
 so much in the spirit of the rest — in many cases being 
 adapted from Greek originals, and are, besides, all 
 identifiable in the table of authors — that the general- 
 isation hardly matters. 
 
 The charming opening dedication and invocation, 
 which form a sort of clasp to the box of ' sweets com- 
 pacted,' are Dr. Garnett's own, and there are none 
 neater in the book : 
 
 ' Hither, dear Muse, I pray, and with thee bear 
 A madrigal for Melitfe the fair. 
 Evil with good repaying ; for 'tis she 
 Who tempts me to oblivion of thee. 
 
 The Muse invoked, whom next shall I address 
 To grant my strain both merit and success ? 
 May Phoebus melody, may Pallas sense, 
 And Bacchus geniality dispense ; 
 96 
 
APRIL RICHARD GARNETT 1892 
 
 By Graces grace, passion by Venus be 
 Bestowed, the love of nature, Pan, by thee ; 
 And last, without which all were not enough, 
 Vouchsafe, most potent ^olus, a puff. ' 
 
 Here are two or three more of Dr. Garnett's own 
 
 epigrams, the first a really beautiful pensee, and the 
 
 second reminding one of Omar Khayyam in its grim 
 
 anti-deistic irony : 
 
 ' Simplicity is best, 'tis true, 
 
 But not in every mortal's power ! 
 If thou, O maid, canst live on dew, 
 'Tis proof thou art indeed a flower.' 
 
 ' Most ancient Saturn, Deity sublime 
 Of endless and inexorable Time, 
 I tempt thee not with gifts to be my friend. 
 For nought can thee appease, or aught offend ; 
 Nor needs it any sacrifice to bring 
 To thee, who of thyself tak'st every thing.' 
 
 And this, founded on an anecdote of Tom Paine : 
 
 ' Sturdy Tom Paine, biographers relate. 
 Once with his friends engaged in warm debate. 
 Said they, "Minorities are always right ; " 
 Said he, " The truth is just the opposite." 
 Finding them stubborn, "Frankly now," asked he, 
 ' ' In this opinion do ye all agree — 
 All, every one, without exception?" When 
 They thus affirmed unanimously, ' ' Then 
 Correct," he said, "my sentiment must be, 
 For I myself am the minority." ' 
 
 Dr. Garnett is not the first who has thus associated 
 his own wit and grace with that of the poets of the 
 anthology. The Rev. Robert Bland and the ' others ' 
 engaged with him on the Collections from the Greek 
 Anthology for John Murray, in 1813, used, it may be 
 
 VOL. I. 97 G 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 remembered, to engage in illustrative wit combats of 
 their own in their somewhat copious notes, John Herman 
 Merivale being one of the four. 
 
 The sword of the Lord and of Henley ! Once the sword 
 W. E Henley • ^^^ mightier than the pen, then went forth 
 'The Song of an epigram and 'the pen' was 'mightier 
 wor . ^2c^ ^j^g sword.' Mr. Henley combines 
 both eras in a deadly weapon we may name the Sword- 
 Pen. Yet, after all, with all its lightnings there 
 remains more of the pen than the sword about what, 
 remembering Sigurd, we may call 'The wrath of 
 Henley.' The comparative harmlessness of the pen, 
 for example : the innocuousness of those hard words 
 which proverbially break no bones, for 
 
 ' . . . when the great juggler makes as to swallow, 
 It's just the sword-trick.' 
 
 And indeed there is something of a trick, something of a 
 cant, about this new gospel which so emphatically brings 
 not peace but a sword, this sword-evangel begot of 
 Jingoism by a Berserker. It is, in fact, not so much a 
 gospel as a pose — our modern substitute for a gospel. 
 If it were not so, we should hear less of it. The true 
 sons of the sword are men of few words, and those they 
 let their swords speak for them. They do not speak for 
 their swords. They use them when the time comes, and 
 then put them by as the time passes. Mr. Henley's 
 Song of the Sword \s a fine bit of dithyrambics in a sort 
 
MAY W. E. HENLEY 1892 
 
 of out-of-breath ' Beowulf metre, but it is impossible to 
 admire it without asking, why all this excitement as of 
 a new prophecy ? Does England really need any flame- 
 headed Scottish Titan to teach it courage ? Is it so 
 rotten with ease as some fire-eaters would have us 
 believe ? Has the libertatis sacra fames left us ? and is 
 the Laureate's valorous counter-jumper merely a poet's 
 phrase ? 
 
 It seems necessary to remind the apostles of this 
 'new manliness' that the true masculine is at least 
 as much a matter of brain as of brawn. Indeed, 
 they might be women, these prophets, so keen is their 
 gusto for thews and sinews. They might be animals, 
 so resolutely would they seem to prefer to speak of an 
 'honest' primitive lust rather than of 'love.' This 
 bathing in the Demiurgus cup of things is all very well, 
 but, after all, as thus preached, it is but the health-bath 
 of the emasculate, the puritanism of the neurotic ; 
 while to insist on the merely primitive is to ignore the 
 laws of life, those laws by which 
 
 ' From flesh unto spirit man grows 
 Even here on the sod under sun." 
 
 Mr. Henley apparently anticipates such criticism in a 
 satirical poem beginning : 
 
 ' As like the Woman as you can '— 
 
 (Thus the New Adam was beguiled)— 
 So shall you touch the Perfect Man '— 
 
 (God in the Garden heard and smiled). 
 Your father perished with his day : 
 
 A clot of passions fierce and blind 
 He fought, he slew, he hacked his way : 
 
 Your muscles, Child, must be of mind.' 
 
 99 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 No, it was only Mr. Henley who was in the garden, 
 and to anticipate criticism is by no means the same as 
 to answer it. Lord Tennyson's finely expressed ideal of 
 ' the marriage of true minds ' in ' The Princess,' which 
 I presume must bear the brunt of Mr. Henley's satire, 
 will none the less remain the rational ideal ; and if 
 Mr. Henley regards the Laureate as a carpet-knight, 
 what has he to say to Mr. George Meredith ? No one 
 has more vigorously preached the necessity of our being 
 ' rooted in good gross earth ' than Mr. Meredith, and 
 yet his ideal of true manhood and womanhood is pre- 
 cisely that of Lord Tennyson's. ' Get you ' — he says in 
 ' The Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt '— 
 
 ' . . . . something of our purity, 
 And we will of your strength : we ask no more. ' 
 
 And again, in ' The Tragic Comedians,' ' You meet now 
 and then men who have the woman in them without 
 being womanised ; these are the pick of men ; and the 
 choicest women are those who yield not a feather of 
 their womanliness for some amount of manlike strength.' 
 In fact, it would seem as though Mr. Henley had made 
 up his mind to head a rally of the abused male against 
 the great captain of womankind, and the situation 
 resolves itself into Henley v. Meredith. {God in the 
 Garden heard and smiled.) 
 
 It is a pity that Mr. Henley takes this so aggressively 
 masculine stand, because it considerably mars our 
 appreciation of the true manliness of his poems. One 
 is continually suspicious of the creed, and all the various 
 marks of virility seem to be pointing a moral to a weak- 
 100 
 
MAY W. E. HENLEY 1892 
 
 kneed generation. Just feel these muscles ! Listen to 
 this voice — right from the chest ! In fact, as the 
 music-hall song used to run, Mr. Henley is, before all 
 things, ' the solid man.' 
 
 However, we must endeavour to forget all this, and, 
 as Mr. Henley is a very genuine poet, that is, after all, 
 soon done. 'The Song of the Sword' (appropriately 
 dedicated to Mr. Kipling) is by no means the best thing 
 in the book. Yet, it is a fine piece of dithyrambic, in 
 the hurtling Norse rhythm, a mystical hymn elevating 
 the sword of steel into a symbol of the sword of the 
 spirit, otherwise the central creative 'will' in things, 
 'the will of God': 
 
 ' I am the Will of God : 
 I am the Sword.' 
 
 Here are one or two quotations : 
 
 The Sword 
 
 Singing— 
 
 The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword 
 
 Clanging imperious 
 
 Forth from Time's battlements 
 
 His ancient and triumphing Song. . . . 
 
 Glittering and keen 
 
 As the song of the winter stars, 
 
 Ho ! then, the sound 
 
 Of my voice, the implacable 
 
 Angel of Destiny ! — 
 
 I am the Sword. 
 
 Heroes, my children. 
 
 Follow, O follow me. 
 
 Follow, exulting 
 
 In the great light that breaks 
 
 From the sacred companionship : 
 
 lOI 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Thrust through the fatuous, 
 Thrust through the fungous brood 
 Spawned in my shadow 
 And gross with my gift ! ' 
 
 Mr. Henley, in fact, like many a one before him, 
 realises life as a fight. Strength comes but with con- 
 tinual wrestling. To quote Mr. Meredith once more, 
 ' Contention is the vital force.' Fight the good fight. 
 
 But better than Mr. Henley's continuously showing 
 fight — better because rpore needed perhaps — is his 
 hearty reiteration of his belief in life. Page after page 
 does he 
 
 ' Thunder the brave, 
 Irresistible message : — 
 . ' ' Life is worth living 
 
 Through every grain of it 
 
 From the foundations 
 
 To the last edge 
 
 Of the corner stone, death." ' 
 
 And again : 
 
 ' Life — life — let there be life ! 
 Better a thousand times the roaring hours 
 When wave and wind, 
 Like the Arch-Murderer in flight 
 From the Avenger at his heel, 
 Storm through the desolate fastnesses 
 And wild waste places of the world ! 
 
 Life — give me life until the end. 
 
 That at the very top of being. 
 
 The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, 
 
 Out of the reddest hell of the fight 
 
 I may be snatched and flung 
 
 Into the everlasting lull, 
 
 The immortal, incommunicable dream.' 
 
 What a gusto there is in all these lines ! The passion 
 102 
 
MAY W. E. HENLEY 1892 
 
 of the verse, page after page, is almost terrible. It 
 flares like some intense, splendid light, that we feel 
 must surely burn itself out at any moment. Indeed the 
 gusto of the book is almost delirious, as of one madly 
 seeking in action escape from his thoughts. The quite 
 ecstatic joy in mere living becomes almost pathetic. Mr. 
 Henley on a spring day is phosphorus in oxygen. 
 Read number four of the ' London Voluntaries,' on the 
 whole perhaps the best poem in the volume. Better 
 still, read number two, the wonderful impression of the 
 Strand in a golden October afternoon ; 
 
 ' Down through the ancient Strand 
 The Spirit of October, mild and boon 
 And sauntering, takes his way 
 This golden end of afternoon, 
 As though the corn stood yellow in all the land 
 And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon ' ; 
 
 the transfiguring sun — 
 
 ' Making a thousand harnesses to shine 
 As with new ore from some enchanted mine. 
 And every horse's coat so full of sheen 
 He looks new-tailored, and every 'bus feels clean. . . . 
 
 the high majesty of Paul's 
 Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls — 
 
 Calls to his milhons to behold and see 
 
 How goodly this his London Town can be ! 
 
 For earth and sky and air 
 
 Are golden everywhere, 
 
 And golden with a cloud so suave and fine 
 
 The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. 
 
 Trafalgar Square 
 
 (The fountains volleying golden glaze) 
 
 Gleams like an angel-market . . . 
 
 The glistening signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires'— 
 
 103 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 In fact — 
 
 ' 'Tis El Dorado — El Dorado plain, 
 The Golden City ! ' 
 
 Even still better is the weird picture of a London 
 dawn, as seen from a hansom rattling home in the 
 small hours. Mr. Henley's fine gift of picture-making 
 in two or three firm strokes, his instinct for ' the unique 
 word,' and likewise his uncanny phantasy, were never 
 better displayed than in this poem, number one of the 
 ' London Voluntaries ' : 
 
 ' Still, still the streets, between their carcanets 
 Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep : 
 But see how gable ends and parapets 
 In gradual beauty and significance 
 Emerge ! And did you hear 
 That little twitter-and-cheep, 
 Breaking inordinately loud and clear 
 On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 
 'Tis a first nest at matins ! And behold 
 A rakehell cat — how furtive and acold ! 
 A spent witch homing from some infamous dance— 
 Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade 
 Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade ! ' 
 
 Was ever anything more perfect than that cat ? Mr. 
 Henley has also a fine phantasy of ' the Wind Fiend, 
 the abominable,' the influenza-wind, whom he pictures 
 
 ' A craftsman at his bench, he settles down 
 To the grim job of throttling London Town.' 
 
 Similar ' hospital ' moods are to be found in two fine 
 bits of indigestion, numbers two and seven of the 
 Rhymes and Rhythms. In one the moon is pictured as 
 a bedraggled, tinselled courtesan, decoying victims for 
 her paramour the'Sea : 
 
 104 
 
MAY W. E. HENLEY 1892 
 
 ' She aloft 
 As in the shining streets, 
 He as in ambush at some fetid stair. ' 
 
 And- 
 
 ' Stationed out yonder in the isle, 
 The tall Policeman, 
 Flashing his bull's-eye "... 
 
 In the other the poet, tormented by thoughts of those 
 * deeds undone ' which 
 
 ' Rankle, and snarl, and hunger for their due 
 Till there seems naught so despicable as you 
 In all the grin o' the sun," 
 
 compares himself to an old shoe which ' the sea spurns 
 and the land abhors ' upon ' the beach of Time.' 
 
 There are more fine pictures and phrases than songs 
 in the volume, but here is a verse from one of the 
 noblest songs ever sung in the name of England : 
 
 ' Ever the faith endures, 
 
 England, my England : — 
 Take and break us : we are yours, 
 
 England, my own ! 
 Life is good, and joy runs high 
 Between English earth and sky : 
 Death is death ; but we shall die 
 
 To the Song on your bugles blown, 
 England — 
 To the stars on your bugles blown ! ' 
 
 i¥ 
 
 105 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Though superior persons may sneer, I mean well 
 Rudyard when I say that Mr. Kipling's Barrack- 
 Kipling : Room Ballads, the best of them, are the 
 Room ' finest things of the kind since Macaulay's 
 Ballads.' Lays. Mr. Kipling will at least take this as 
 a compliment, I fancy : and, at any rate, he has not been 
 above taking a hint here and there from Macaulay 
 in his rhythm. It is in their rhythm that his Ballads 
 are especially striking, their hearty, exhilarating march, 
 irresistible as the ' Marseillaise.' Such a ballad as 
 'Mandalay' simply takes one by storm. There is no 
 arguing with such an Orphic metre. You take up 
 your staff ,and march along, as the rats marched 
 along to the river Weser, and the little lame boy to 
 the Venusberg. 
 
 ' By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea, 
 There 's a Burma girl a-settin", and I know she thinks o' me ; 
 For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: 
 "Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to 
 Mandalay !" 
 Come you back to Mandalay, 
 Where the old Flotilla lay : 
 Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to 
 
 Mandalay ? 
 On the road to Mandalay, 
 Where the flyin' -fishes play. 
 
 An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the 
 Bay! 
 
 'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green, 
 
 An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat — jes' the same as Theebaw's 
 
 Queen, 
 An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot, 
 An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot : 
 io6 
 
MAY RUDYARD KIPLING 
 
 Bloomin' idol made o' mud — 
 
 Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd— 
 
 Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she 
 
 stud! 
 On the road to Mandalay. ..." 
 
 Apart from its intoxicating rhythm, ' Mandalay ' has 
 another of the sacred signs of fine poetry — its wonder- 
 ful use of the commonest material. Its magic is made 
 of the very refuse of language. It reminds one of the 
 magic of certain paintings, say a portrait by Mr. Sargent, 
 which close at hand looks all slaps and dashes of paint, 
 like an untidy palette; but as we move farther and 
 farther away, the vision comes out of the chaos, and 
 soon we forget all about the brush-marks in the beauty. 
 Similarly, with the best of these Barrack-Room Ballads^ 
 the poor Cockneyisms are transfigured out of recogni- 
 tion by the imagination working at white heat, and a 
 rhythm that might set rocks to dance music. And 
 could love-poetry be tenderer than the latter half of the 
 second verse quoted : 
 
 ' An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot . . . 
 
 Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where 
 she stud ! ' 
 
 Never is the miracle of art more fully brought home to 
 us than when such coarse material is thus touched to 
 finer issues. There is a piquant beauty, coming, of 
 course, of the meeting of extremes in form and material, 
 about a modelling in clay that perhaps hardly survives 
 in the marble. 
 
 But this observation suggests another. It reminds 
 us that clay is perishable, and that such literary clay 
 as the Cockney of Mr. Kipling, and the Yankee of Mr. 
 107 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Bret Harte must perish earlier than the more classical 
 forms of language, and with it the strong and moving 
 forms with which they have each impressed it. Of 
 course, ' immortality,' ' on a world with a core of fire 
 and a crust of fossils,' is but a relative term, whatever 
 language a poet may employ. But because one thou- 
 sand years are but as yesterday to Saturn, they are no 
 less a pretty considerable ' immortality ' to us, and 
 though by writing in classical forms of speech a poet 
 may give a more permanent expression to the creative 
 power of beauty that is in him, it is impossible not to 
 sigh for those essays in clay which apparently reveal a 
 power of hand no less masterly than that revealed in the 
 more durable marbles. Of course, we are told that it 
 is easier to do finely in clay than in marble, but then art 
 is not to be judged by the difficulty or the facility of its 
 production, but simply by its result. Possibly there is 
 some quality in the clay work, independent of original 
 force and beauty, that dazzles our judgment. 
 
 That Mr. Kipling's 'plain English' poems (stirring 
 as is the ' Ballad of East and West,' and the spirited 
 ' Flag of England ') do not, in imaginative power, come 
 up to those in Cockney, may or may not be indicative 
 of the truth of the above conjecture. From these must 
 be excepted ' Tomlinson ' and the fine ' Ballad of the 
 Bolivar.' Some of the lines in the latter are among the 
 most forcible Mr. Kipling has ever written : 
 
 ' Trailing like a wounded duck, working out her soul ; 
 Clanging like a smithy shop after every roll ; 
 Just a funnel and a mast lurching through the spray — 
 So we threshed the Bolivar, out across the Bay ! 
 
 108 
 
MAvr RUDYARD KIPLING 1892 
 
 Heard the seas, like drunken men, pounding at her strake ; 
 
 Watched the compass chase its tail, like a cat at play — 
 
 Just a pack o' rotten plates puttied up with tar. 
 In we came, an' time enough, 'cross Bilbao Bar. 
 Overloaded, undermanned, meant to founder, we 
 Euchred God Almighty's storm, bluffed the Eternal Sea ! ' 
 
 There is an imaginative grip in these lines, quoted at 
 random, from which we may almost expect anything. 
 
 But let us return to the"^ Barrack-Room Ballads. 
 The best of these, after ' Mandalay,' are] undoubtedly 
 those we have already known, 'Danny Deever' and 
 ' Tommy ' : 
 ' I went into a public-' ouse to get a pint o' beer, 
 The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here." 
 The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die, 
 I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I : 
 
 " O it 's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Tommy, go 
 
 away" ; 
 But it's "Thank you. Mister Atkins," when the band 
 
 begins to play, 
 The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to 
 
 play, 
 O it's "Thank you, iVlister Atkins," when the band 
 begins to play.' 
 
 And ' Fuzzy- Wuzzy ' : 
 
 ' 'E rushes at the smoke when we let drive. 
 
 An', before we know, 'e 's 'ackin' at our 'ead ; 
 'E 's all 'ot sand an' ginger when alive. 
 
 An' 'e 's generally shammin' when 'e 's dead. 
 'E 's a daisy, 'e 's a ducky, 'e 's a lamb ! 
 'E's a injia-rubber idiot on the spree, 
 'E 's the on'y thing that doesn't give a damn 
 • For a Regiment o' British Infantree ! 
 
 So 'ere 's to you, Fuzzy- Wuzzy, at your 'ome in 
 
 the Soudan ; 
 You 're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class 
 fightin' man ; 
 109 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 An' 'ere 's to you, Fuzzy- Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 
 
 'ead of 'air — 
 You big black boundin' beggar — for you broke 
 
 a British square ! ' 
 
 The Others strike one as too technical. They are, doubt- 
 less, no less typical of army life, but they need ' T. A.' — 
 Mr. Kipling's dedicatee, Mr. Thomas Atkins — to ap- 
 preciate them. Mr. Kipling has not succeeded, save in 
 odd lines and verses, in elevating them into the uni- 
 versal, as he assuredly has done in the ballads quoted. 
 One quality significant of imagination, one pauses to 
 note, his power of onomatopoeia — and I would beg leave 
 to apply the word to sight as to sound. When he has not 
 a word to express the peculiar effect he wants to get, 
 he invents one, which is simply the thing itself. For 
 
 example : 
 
 ' Elephants a-pilin' teak 
 In the sludgy, squdgy creek. ' 
 
 ' As the shape of a corpse dimmers up through deep water." 
 Of course, Mr. Kipling has already exemplified that in 
 his prose. Did he not invent that awful 'pobby' ghost, 
 that fell upon you from the trees, and ' remained.' 
 
 It remains to speak of ' Tomlinson.' Here are the 
 fine opening lines : 
 
 ' Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley 
 
 Square, 
 And a Spirit came to his bedside and giipped him by the hair — 
 A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away. 
 Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky 
 
 Way: 
 Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone 
 
 and cease. 
 And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter holds 
 
 the keys. 
 
 no 
 
MAY RUDYARD KIPLING 1892 
 
 ' ' Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high 
 The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to 
 
 die — 
 The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone ! " 
 And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed 
 
 bone.' 
 
 The imagery of every new strong poet reveals to us 
 once again how the simple analogies still lie all about, 
 as when man first began to see them. But return we 
 to Tomlinson, in whose fate Mr. Kipling vigorously 
 satirises the modern man, who never lives at all in 
 himself, but at second-hand through books and 'art' 
 Asked in heaven concerning good deeds, he can only 
 refer to what Mr. Pater would call his ' sensations and 
 ideas' : 
 
 '"This I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told 
 
 to me, 
 And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince 
 
 in Muscovy " 
 
 The good souls flocked like homing doves, and bade him clear 
 
 the path. 
 And Peter twirled the jangling keys in weariness and wrath. 
 "Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said, "and 
 
 the tale is yet to run : 
 By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer— what 
 
 ha' ye done?" ' 
 
 But with all his ' sensations,' poor Tomlinson had do7ie 
 nothing; so Peter sends him down to hell, where the 
 same trouble awaits him, for his evil had been no less 
 timorous than his good deeds. They, too, had been ' in 
 the imagination,' merely read of in books. The devil, 
 though ' all o'er-sib to Adam's breed,' is in no mind to 
 waste ' good pit-coal ' on such a weak-backed, character- 
 III 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 less creature, so he sends the soul of Tomlinson to be 
 ' winnowed,' and returning, the demons say : 
 
 ' The soul that he got from God he has bartered clean away. 
 We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a 
 
 chattering wind 
 And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find.' 
 
 So the doom of Tomlinson is to be sent back to his 
 body on the earth, that he may develop either some real 
 good deeds or some hearty sins of his own. Quotation 
 does poor justice to this fine bit of satire, in which 
 sublimities and absurdities jostle each other in so odd 
 a fashion. But it is a success in that daring allegorical 
 vein, which Mr. Kipling essays in another stinging 
 satire against the ' Art ' people, ' The Conundrum of 
 the Workshops,' of which the first verse will indicate 
 the delightful treatment : 
 
 ' When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and 
 
 gold, 
 Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick 
 
 in the mould ; 
 And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his 
 
 mighty heart. 
 Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, " It 's pretty, but is 
 
 it Art?'" 
 
 In trying the same allegorical method for a solemn 
 celebration of his dead friend Mr. Wolcott Balestier, 
 Mr. Kipling fails, and reveals the danger, and per- 
 haps the limitation, of such rough allegory. The big 
 hyperboles with which he tries to bridge space and 
 time suggest a too palpable stretching of the octave. 
 The large colloquialisms in which he presents the 
 heavenly powers utterly fail in dignity. 
 112 
 
MAY R. L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 However, if but a fourth of Mr. Kipling's volume is 
 of his best, that best is of signal fulfilment, and those 
 who have prophesied that his verse will be finer than 
 his prose, must see of the travail of their souls and 
 be satisfied. 
 
 Mr. Stevenson has three or four distinct reputations. 
 
 R.L.Stevenson: ^^^" ^^' reputation as a story-teller is 
 
 ' Across the Subdivided. For the majority his is the 
 
 Plains,' etc. Promethean fire reluming the torch of 
 Old Romance. For such he wrote Treasure Island 
 and Kidnapped. To others, a chance expenditure of 
 a shilling on a railway journey — a shilling that might 
 just as easily have been credited to Captain Hawley 
 Smart — made them and Mr. Stevenson acquainted. 
 
 In the light of later days, such readers have doubt- 
 less come to regard The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll 
 and Mr. Hyde as a prophecy of the Whitechapel 
 murders. In fact, I know that for certain members 
 of Mr. Mansfield's audience, at one of his repre- 
 sentations of Hyde, 'Jack the Ripper' was the one 
 possible explanation — in spite of some most painstaking 
 psychology on the play-bill. Then we step up to The 
 New Arabian Nights^ thus approaching the still fairer 
 fame of the Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, 
 An Inland Voyage, and Virginibus Puerisque. It is 
 curious to notice how, as the number of editions 
 diminish, 'the murmur of the loved Apollian leaves 
 
 VOL. I. 113 H 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 grows on the ear. Mr. Stevenson's final fame will be 
 that of an essayist, nearest and dearest fame of the 
 prose writer. Nearest and dearest, because the largest 
 amount of selfish pleasure enters into the writing of 
 essays, approaching, as it does, as nearly as possible to 
 writing merely for writing's sake — as the lyric-poet just 
 sings for singing's sake : the joy in the mere exercise 
 of a faculty. In the essay no architecture has to be 
 considered, with a half-heart that would fain be at the 
 floriation of niche and capital. Such is, one supposes, 
 the greater work, certainly it is bigger ; though the 
 essayist cannot but feel the essential and somewhat 
 jeering limitation of the greatest monuments of art 
 — monuments which attain their air of majestic com- 
 pletion simply by a roof which shuts out the stars. The 
 essayist is essentially a son of Shem, and his method is 
 the wayward travel of a gipsy. He builds not, but he 
 pitches his tent, lights his fire of sticks, and invites you 
 to smoke a pipe with him over their crackling. While 
 he dreamily chats, now here, now there, of his discursive 
 way of life, the sun has gone down and you begin to 
 feel the sweet influences of Pleiades. 
 
 At least, so it is with Mr. Stevenson, the Stevenson 
 we care for most. And it seems certain that it is so 
 he would be remembered of us : for this new volume 
 of essays abounds in continued allusions to the joyous 
 practice of the literary craft, plainly confiding to us that 
 the pleasure of the reader and the writer in their 
 'Stevenson' is mutual. One of the great charms of 
 Fontainebleau for Mr. Stevenson appears to have been 
 its sympathetic environment for the young student of 
 114 
 
MAY R. L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 ' style,' for that end and aim of existence was in the air, 
 not only in the ardent chatter of young artists, but in the 
 very dignity and grace of the woods themselves. Only 
 in such a place and in such company, of his fellow- 
 craftsmen, may the young artist hope to be under- 
 stood, hope to preserve his temperament unspoiled of 
 Polonius. 
 
 ' For art is, first of all and last of all, a trade. The love of 
 words and not a desire to publish new discoveries, the love of 
 form and not a novel reading of historical events, mark the 
 vocation of the writer and the painter. The arabesque, properly 
 speaking, and even in literature, is the first fancy of the artist ; he 
 first plays with his material as a child plays with a kaleidoscope ; 
 and he is already in a second stage when he begins to use his 
 pretty counters for the end of representation. In that, he must 
 pause long and toil faithfully ; that is his apprenticeship ; and it is 
 only the few who will reaUy grow beyond it, and go forward, fully 
 equipped, to do the business of real art — to give life to abstractions 
 and significance and charm to facts. In the meanwhile, let him 
 dwell much among his fellow-craftsmen. They alone can take a 
 serious interest in the childish tasks and pitiful successes of these 
 years. They alone can behold with equanimity this fingering of 
 the dumb keyboard, this polishing of empty sentences, this dull 
 and literal painting of dull and insignificant subjects. Outsiders 
 will spur him on. They will say, ' ' Why do you not write a great 
 book? paint a great picture?" If his guardian angel fail him, 
 they may even persuade him to the attempt, and, ten to one, his 
 hand is coarsened and his style falsified for life. ' 
 
 ' The business of real art— to give life to abstractions 
 and significance and charm to facts.' The latter half 
 of this simple and suggestive statement is especially 
 applicable to Mr, Stevenson's own work, particularly in 
 the case of such books as the Travels with a Donkey, 
 and An Inland Voyage. Nothing could be more 
 commonplace than the adventures which supply the 
 115 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 theme, nothing less so than Mr. Stevenson's account of 
 them. Looking ahead, sometimes, the road seems 
 straight and uninteresting enough. Nothing in sight 
 promises anything. So we are often inclined to feel 
 when, slowly but surely, some well-worn fact, which 
 we had ignored as quite unpromising, begins opening 
 out beneath the eye of Mr. Stevenson's meditative 
 imagination like a morning flower. He sees everything 
 as if it had never been looked on before. Nothing has, 
 so to say, gone cold for him. For him there is no such 
 thing as merely hard fact. Each fact is a sensitive 
 centre of infinite interests. And he makes us aware 
 of this with a simplicity so natural that we are apt to 
 forget that his record is anything more than a record 
 of actual fact, that it is, as Mr. Pater would say, 'the 
 transcript of the sense of fact rather than the fact' 
 itself. The expression which his themes thus take on 
 is not that of mystery or wizardry, as in Coleridge or 
 Miss Christina Rossetti ; it is rather, to use a phrase 
 of Mr. Stevenson's own, that of a 'solemn freshness,' 
 born, I should say, of a constant habit — a co-operation 
 between the philosophic and the poetic instincts — of 
 relating particulars to generals. 
 
 Travelling ' Across the Plains ' to San Francisco, in a 
 dreary emigrant train, Mr. Stevenson turns to look on a 
 fellow-passenger, a Chinaman, and straightway his mind 
 is applying to that ' dhirty Mongolian ' its various re- 
 agents of deduction and dream : 
 
 ' When either of us turned his thoughts to home and childhood, 
 what a strange dissimilarity must there not have been in these 
 pictures of the mind — when I beheld that old, grey, castled city, high 
 
 116 
 
MAY R. L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 throned above the Firth, with the flag of Britain flying, and the 
 red-coat sentry pacing over all ; and the man in the next car to 
 me would conjure up some junks and a pagoda and a fort of 
 porcelain, and call it, with the same affection, home. ' 
 
 Of his other fellow-travellers he makes this acute 
 observation, just a little acid with the memory of their 
 somewhat undesirable company : 
 
 ' They were mostly lumpish fellows, silent and noisy, a common 
 combination ; somewhat sad, I should say, with an extraordinary 
 poor taste in humour, and little interest in their fellow-creatures 
 beyond that of cheap and merely external curiosity. If they heard 
 a man's name and business, they seemed to think they had the 
 heart of that mystery ; but they were as eager to know that much 
 as they were indifferent to the rest. ' 
 
 This humour, always so quiet and exquisite, just 
 perceptibly brightening the eye, no more, communes 
 with itself all through that dreary journey. And well 
 is it to have so gentle and common-sense a companion. 
 There is nothing like a sense of humour to help one 
 with one's temper in times of trial. Once only does 
 Mr. Stevenson break loose — and that only in his 
 narrative. It was in North Platte, at supper one 
 evening : 
 
 ' One man asked another to pass the milk-jug. This other was 
 well dressed and of what we should call a respectable appearance ; 
 a darkish man, high spoken, eating as though he had some usage 
 of society ; but he turned upon the first speaker with extraordinary 
 vehemence of tone— 
 
 ' "There's a waiter here ! " he cried. 
 
 • " I only asked you to pass the milk," explained the first. 
 
 ' Here is the retort verbatim — 
 
 ' ' ' Pass ! Hell ! I 'm not paid for that business ; the waiter 's 
 paid for it. You should use civility at table, and, by God, I '11 
 show you how ! " 
 
 117 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 ' The other man very wisely made no answer, and the bully went 
 on with his supper as though nothing had occurred. It pleases me 
 to think that some day soon he will meet with one of his own 
 kidney ; and that perhaps both may fall.' 
 
 But, though seldom aroused thus, Mr, Stevenson 
 often kindles to the surprises of the country lying 
 along the route, expressing himself in those sudden 
 unexpected turns of phrase and analogy in which he 
 has always been so happy. Nearing Sacramento, 
 after a dreary monotony of mountains, 'Suddenly,' he 
 writes : 
 
 — 'we shot into an open ; and before we were swallowed into the 
 next length of wooden tunnel, I had one glimpse of a huge pine- 
 forested ravine upon my left, a foaming river, and a sky already 
 coloured with the fires of dawn. I am usually very calm over the 
 displays of nature ; but you will scarce believe how my heart 
 leaped at this. It was like meeting one's wife. I had come home 
 again — home from unsightly deserts to the green and habitable 
 corners of the earth. ' 
 
 // was like tneeting one's wife! The comparison 
 comes on one with just the very unexpectedness that 
 belonged to the moment described. One dreamed of 
 it as little as Mr. Stevenson of the green ravine. 
 
 Another such delicious unexpected thing occurs in 
 the Epilogue to An Inland Voyage. 
 
 ' The Arethusa,' thanks to that suspicious vagabondish 
 appearance at which Mr. Stevenson loves to poke fun, 
 has been thrown into the village lock-up at Chatillon- 
 sur-Loing, as a spy. He had left his comrade, 'The 
 Cigarette,' some few miles behind him. Such, it will be 
 remembered, was their plan of obviating those social 
 difficulties of walking-tours, of which Mr. Stevenson 
 118 
 
MAY R. L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 wrote in Virginibus Puerisque. Before incarceration, 
 he humorously warns the commissary to be sure to 
 arrest ' The Cigarette.' Consequently — and here is the 
 delicious phrase I set out to quote — ' at the town entry, 
 the gendarme culled him like a wayside flower' ! The 
 whole episode is of Mr. Stevenson's best, and a welcome 
 addition, indeed, to a book far too short. 
 
 The papers of which I have spoken are, as we have 
 seen, in the fashion of The Inland Voyage, not so 
 much essays as the inspired log of trivial voyaging. 
 They are all on the move, object succeeds object as 
 seen from a railway train. Of the essay, pure and 
 simple, where the talk pursues its wayward round 
 about a given theme, there are three or four examples 
 in the present volume worthy to rank with anything 
 in Virginibus Puerisque. Of these, 'The Lantern- 
 Bearers' and ' Pulvis et Umbra ' are the most striking. 
 
 Mr. Stevenson has never touched a home-spun theme 
 to finer issues than in 'The Lantern-Bearers.' His 
 power, referred to above, of transfiguring facts into 
 symbols, is here seen in its triumph. The strange 
 passion of small boys for a bull's-eye lantern is the 
 humble text for a large and literally illuminative dis- 
 course on that poetry more difficult than anything in 
 Browning — other people's poetry ; and on the true 
 realism, which 'always and everywhere is that of the 
 poets.' He describes how, when autumn nights began 
 to set in, half-a-dozen of the 'fellows' used to meet on 
 the links, equipped with bull's-eye lanterns fastened to 
 their waists, but carefully swathed in buttoned great- 
 coats. ' When two of these asses met, there would be 
 119 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 an anxious " Have you got your lantern ?" and a gratified 
 " Yes ! " That was the shibboleth.' Why they carried 
 them they hardly knew. True, they would now and 
 again crouch inside some hollow of the links, and, 
 revealing the blazing eye in their centres, 'delight 
 themselves with inappropriate talk.' But — 
 
 'the essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black 
 night ; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned ; not a ray escaping, 
 whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public : a 
 mere pillar of darkness in the dark ; and all the while, deep down 
 in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at 
 your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.' 
 
 Realism would describe these youngsters as little boys 
 
 ' very cold, spat upon by flurries of rain, and drearily surrounded, 
 all of which they were ; and their talk as silly and indecent, 
 which it certainly was . . , but ask themselves, and they are in 
 the heaven of a recondite pleasure, the ground of which is an 
 ill-smelling lantern.' 
 
 Thus in depicting life at large, ' To miss the joy,' that 
 is, the lantern — 'is to miss all.' 'To find out where 
 joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing,' 
 that is at once the true poetry and the true realism. 
 
 In ' Pulvis et Umbra,' Mr. Stevenson starts in one of 
 those strange fantastic moods of low spirits, when, like 
 Hamlet, we ask ourselves, ' What is this quintessence 
 of dust ? ' ; when the familiar countenance of life 
 changes to an unmeaning fantastic visage, just as 
 sometimes, in reading, a familiar English word will 
 take on a more gibberish aspect than the remotest 
 Welsh, and won't come right again. In such a mood 
 Mr. Stevenson ponders on the truth that man was 
 made of the dust of the earth. He takes it literally. 
 120 
 
MAY R. L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 He sees dust full of strange fertility, swelling up and 
 taking shape, becoming flowers and beasts and men — 
 man 'grown upon with hair- like grass,' 'fitted with 
 eyes that move and glitter in his face, a thing to set 
 children screaming.' He sees all these various lives 
 living on the murder of each other — a circumstance 
 which in his dream seems more quaint than terrible. 
 Then the aspect of this ' monstrous spectre,' man, ' the 
 disease of the agglutinated dust,' begins to wear a 
 kindly, though still more comical aspect. This mere 
 sport of winds, this fortuitous concord of atoms, actually 
 imagines that such a chance-child as he owes duties 
 to an unseen something and to his neighbour ; he has 
 a conscience, cherishes a 'duty.' Not only man, but 
 ' the whole creation, groans in mortal frailty, strives 
 with unconquerable constancy.' And, with the hearty 
 laugh that comes of the contemplation of this odd 
 spectacle, the sickly, spectral vision takes a better 
 meaning — 
 
 ' Surely not in vain 
 My substance from the common earth was ta'en. ' 
 
 The strong reminiscence of the style of Sir Thomas 
 Browne in 'Pulvis et Umbra' is appropriate to the 
 quaint vision which is its theme, and is blent with Mr. 
 Stevenson's own individual style no less successfully 
 than Lamb used to blend the same rich old colours in 
 his own wonderful writing. In these two essays, and 
 in similar essays in Virginibus Puerisque, Mr. Steven- 
 son reminds us of the old prose masters by reason 
 of another quality than their Latinism. He has the 
 same high solemnity of accent, stirring one's heart 
 121 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 by groups of simple words, wherein one seeks in vain 
 for the secret of the magic. We have no writer of 
 nobler English than Mr. Stevenson at present among 
 us. Occasionally, one admits, the art peeps out a 
 little, but it serves to remind us that we are in the 
 hands of a writer who will not willingly give us less 
 than his highest. 
 
 And then the all-pervading manliness, blowing like 
 the breath of pine-woods through all Mr. Stevenson 
 writes, the real feeling of camaraderie set up between 
 him and his reader, and the still untroubled sanity of 
 his simple philosophy of life. These are the root- 
 qualities beneath all his charm of expression. Mr. 
 Sidney Colvin, who has seen the book through the 
 press, expresses the fear, in a prefatory letter to Mr. 
 Stevenson, that the tone of the later essays (those of 
 which I have been writing) may be found 'less 
 inspiriting' than Mr. Stevenson's wont. Surely Mr. 
 Colvin is needlessly disquieted. It is true that one 
 feels in them the struggle of faith with experience, 
 but it is a struggle in which faith is no less victorious, 
 if just a little wearied, than of old. 
 
 One of the most significant of the essays is entitled 
 ' Letter to a Young Gentleman who proposes to embrace 
 the Career of Art.' It is a manly protest against that 
 literary commercialism which has recently been some- 
 what blatant. In an atmosphere, so to say, darkened 
 with the sky-signs of the Society of Authors, it is indeed 
 refreshing to find so eminent (and paying) a man of letters 
 considering his art in so untradesmanlike a spirit. It 
 reminds one of old prints of Oliver Cromwell refusing 
 
MAY R. L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 the Crown. If literature is ill-paid, says Mr. Stevenson, 
 'the wonder is that it should be paid at all. Other 
 men pay, and pay dearly, for pleasures less desirable.' 
 
 'The direct returns — the wages of the trade — are 
 small, but the indirect — the wages of the life — are incal- 
 culably great. No other business offers a man his daily 
 bread upon such joyful terms.' 
 
 Literature, like virtue, is its own reward. A view in 
 which, undoubtedly, there is a large measure of truth ; 
 for, when the writer grumbles about poor pay, he must 
 not forget that he did his work not to please the public, 
 but himself. In fact, the practice of art — like the 
 practice of prayer — is simply the indulgence of one of 
 the higher appetites. But, in a sort of fakir zeal for 
 cutting himself with knives, Mr. Stevenson goes on to 
 deduce from the pleasure in the production of literature 
 the essential unmanliness of literature as a profession. 
 
 ' To live by a pleasure is not a high calling ; it involves patron- 
 age, however veiled ; it numbers the artist, however ambitious, 
 along with dancing girls and billiard markers. The French have 
 a romantic evasion for one employment, and call its practitioners 
 the Daughters of Joy. The artist is of the same family, he is of 
 the Sons of Joy, chose his trade to please himself, gains his liveli- 
 hood by pleasing others, and has parted with something of the 
 sterner dignity of man. ' 
 
 Is not 'a romantic evasion' deUcious? In blunter 
 English the artist is a spiritual prostitute. At the first 
 blush, the position has the attractiveness of all half- 
 truths. But, really, it is perhaps hardly true at all. For 
 the essence of prostitution is not in the pleasure, but in 
 the sale; and Mr. Stevenson admits that the artist, 
 when he does his real things, that is, when he is an 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 artist, works first to please himself, sings, writes, paints, 
 because he must, and would do so were there never a 
 buyer in the world. The idea of sale is but a second 
 thought. In some cases, doubtless, it becomes a second 
 nature. But by that time the man has ceased to be an 
 artist, and is out of the question. Take such a case as 
 Montaigne's. No writing relies more for its charm on 
 its personal revelation than his, and yet we know that 
 he proposed to himself ' no other than a familiar and 
 private end.' Whether or not his vanity really had an 
 eye to publication does not matter. Certainly he did 
 not write to sell himself. In fact the artist, consciously 
 or unconsciously, is always a Narcissus, and he writes 
 books and paints pictures as so many mirrors of his 
 own darling individuality ; to give to others, but chiefly 
 to himself, the delight of ' the taste of himself.' If 
 either is of the Children of Joy, the writer or the reader, 
 it is surely the reader; his is the barren pleasure, 
 certainly not the writer's — often no little prolific. 
 Yet one can quite understand the fascination 
 which this 'Daughter of Joy' theory has for Mr. 
 Stevenson as a man of letters. It is the fascination of 
 suicide. 
 
 Let us consider a moment that question of ' a more 
 manly way of life,' for on this question of manliness a 
 good deal of cant is abroad. Whether, properly speak- 
 ing, the question of comparative degree enters into the 
 quality or not, I am not sure. Personally I feel that 
 there can be no question of ' more ' or ' most ' manly. 
 A calling is either manly or unmanly, and there we 
 leave it. It is true that thews and sinews and the open 
 124 
 
MAY R, L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 air may enter more into one than the other, but it 
 yet remains to be proven that such are the essential 
 components of manliness. One may surely, like Whit- 
 man, be ' enamoured of growing out-of-doors,' without 
 stigmatising as mannikins those who must grow within 
 doors. The business of the ' soldier and the explorer * 
 would seem to be Mr. Stevenson's ideal of a manly way 
 of life. They have, he says, 'moments of worthier 
 excitement ' even than the artist's, ' but they are pur- 
 chased by cruel hardships and periods of tedium that 
 beggar language.' What about those other hardships 
 which Carlyle declared made the history of letters more 
 sickening than the Newgate Calendar? And as for 
 those moments of worthier excitement, has the man of 
 letters no nobler excitement in the pursuit of his craft 
 than the small peddling, technical triumphs of phrase 
 on which Mr. Stevenson alone insists? What of the 
 seasons, not few, of his highest work, when quite literally 
 laborare est orare — when Mr. Stevenson wrote the 
 * Lantern-Bearers,' for example ? To make the compari- 
 son between the soldier and writer equal, you must put 
 them both either on a technical or an ideal basis. Mr. 
 Stevenson would appear to put the writer on the 
 technical and the soldier on the ideal basis, unless those 
 ' moments of worthier excitement ' refer to some parti- 
 cularly neat sabre-stroke or particularly happy shot 
 with his Martini. And I can't help thinking that the 
 worthiness of the soldier's excitement depends a good 
 deal on his conception of why he is fighting. The mere 
 passion of fighting for fighting's sake, the mere lust of 
 slaying * Fuzzy- Wuzzy,' may be more manly than the 
 125 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 splendid idealism, the enthusiasm of humanity, the brave 
 battle with adverse fates, which often has given us the 
 classics of literature, but if it be so — well, hurrah for 
 petticoats ! 
 
 Then, as to the pleasure given by the writer to the 
 reader. Does the comparison with the dancing girl and 
 the billiard marker cover the field ? Surely it but 
 applies to the skirts of it — especially, it may be thought, 
 as regards the dancing girl. But Mr. Stevenson, it will 
 be remarked, is generalising, not particularising — and 
 certainly not distinguishing. ' Pleasure ' surely means 
 anything, and nothing is gained by pretending that 
 there is any serious analogy between the pleasure of the 
 ballet and billiards, and the pleasure derived from fine 
 literature. If, too, the question of the 'barrenness' 
 of the pleasure of art, which has become a catch- 
 word since 'The Kreutzer Sonata,' be raised — is an 
 emotion necessarily barren because it does not per- 
 suade us to go right away and break the sixth and 
 seventh Commandments? "Twas the manner of 
 primitive man,' we know ; but really we have other ways 
 of utilising our emotion. And if march-music does not 
 lend valour to our arm, it may to our thought — which is 
 better. Besides, if this theory of barrenness hold, we 
 must never look at a sunset, a flower, a woman, or any 
 object which inspires in us those thoughts that do often 
 lie too deep for — blows. 
 
 Finally, there is this fundamental weakness in the 
 
 theory : it ignores the necessity of evolution. It was as 
 
 inevitable that there should be men of letters as that 
 
 there should be cavemen. Here they are in the process 
 
 126 
 
MAY JOHN KEATS 1892 
 
 of the suns, and why not make the best of them ? After 
 all, they have done a good deal for us. Manly or not, 
 they have often made us better men. 
 
 Let us clear our souls of cant — even of this cant of 
 manliness — and remember that the manliness of an 
 occupation is not in its being outdoor or indoor, or in 
 the amount of physical strength we put into it. It is 
 impossible to insist too much on the distinction between 
 what is merely male and what is manly. This, of 
 course, is platitude unashamed ; but he who combats 
 sophistry must not be afraid of platitude. Sophistry, 
 too, proves often but inverted platitude. In the pre- 
 sent instance, for example, what is more obvious than 
 that art, like every other human activity, has its pro- 
 stitutes ? There is the platitude. Mr. Stevenson simply 
 ignores the limits of its application, and says that all 
 artists are Sons and Daughters of Joy. And so we get 
 the sophism. 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 To differ with so accomplished, so classical, an antho- 
 logist as Professor F. T. Palgrave must 
 John Keats : . , . . . , , 
 
 Paigrave's seem ungrateful, as it is certainly rash. 
 
 Selections, fhe more ungrateful, as this very selec- 
 tion from Keats, in its original Golden Treasury issue, 
 has so often proved a 'companion for the fortunate 
 moments of travel or the country.' That is a quotation 
 from the little preface, delightful as is Mr. Palgrave's 
 wont. Let us quote the opening passage : — 
 
 ' Copiousness in exquisite detail, perpetual freshness of phrase, 
 127 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 characterise all the poetry of Keats, and in the work of his earlier 
 days are generally more conspicuous than unity of interest or 
 perfection of form — qualities which (as, perhaps, with Shakespeare), 
 his imaginative wealth of mind, — aurea facilitas , — prevented him 
 from acquiring until the first youth was over. Keats is hence a 
 poet especially fit to be read, as the bee tastes the flower, a little 
 at a time, and in those pleasant places which he loves and describes 
 so well : — He is a companion for the fortunate moments of travel 
 or the country : — the 
 
 latis otia fundis, 
 speluncEB vivique lacus, 
 
 are his natural landscape, the stage and the scenery in presence 
 of which he, in the fullest measure, adds happiness to happiness.' 
 
 One would seek far to find a passage of criticism so 
 terse and yet so full, so sure in its touch, so exquisite 
 in its expression. The little sheaf of notes at the end 
 of the volume is distinguished by the same qualities. 
 Professor Palgrave had, too, an interesting idea to guide 
 him in his text — the exact reproduction, so far as possible, 
 of the rare original texts. Not merely ' as a little tribute 
 of affectionate jjionour ' to the poet, but because being, 
 as we know, very fastidious, even to the mint and 
 cumin of his art, Keats 'certainly revised his three 
 little volumes (not reprinted till long after his death) 
 with great care, following certain rules of his own, as 
 every finely-gifted poet will, in'order to express and aid 
 his rhythm by his punctuation and arrangement.' 
 
 So far so good. If Professor Palgrave had restricted 
 himself to this reprint, though it had been a pity, one 
 could have had nothing to say. He would have been 
 consistent. His edition would have been complete so 
 far, and there would have been no question of a selec- 
 tion. This comes in by his inclusion of several 
 128 
 
MAY JOHN KEATS 1892 
 
 'posthuma.' 'My scheme being to reprint the poetry 
 which bore the sanction of the poet's imprimatur^ 
 continues Professor Palgrave, ' it may be asked on 
 what principle a few pieces, left in manuscript (but 
 the absence of which most readers, I think, would 
 have regretted), have been here diffidently added? 
 No rigid law can be laid down, perhaps, upon this 
 difficult problem, except that it is treason to the dead 
 to publish (unless for purposes of historical truth) 
 anything discreditable to the living man. The rule 
 which ordinarily seems to me the safest and best — to 
 insert only what is altogether, or fairly, on a level with 
 the poet's best work — I have here endeavoured to 
 follow.' Of course, that is an obvious golden rule, 
 and the question the reader rather asks is — How has 
 Professor Palgrave applied it ? Having once gone past 
 his first idea of a reprint, one inevitably expects that all 
 the best of Keats will be included in the selection. 
 But when we come to look into this, we indeed ' sigh 
 the lack of many a thing' we 'sought.' Perhaps, after 
 the opening line of ' Endymion,' there is no line of Keats 
 better known, as there is certainly none finer, than the 
 second of these two lines : 
 
 ' — bards who died content on pleasant sward, 
 Leaving great verse unto a little clan.'' 
 
 Can a man claim to know Keats who is ignorant of 
 that line ? Yet if he relied on Professor Palgrave, as 
 from that gentleman's wide and just fame as an antho- 
 logist he might conceivably do, he would certainly go 
 through life without knowing it, not to speak of his also 
 VOL. I. 129 I 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 missing the hardly less famous, and no less beautiful, 
 conclusion of the same fragment. As the whole of it 
 is contained in a dozen lines, I propose to quote it 
 entire : 
 
 ' Mother of Hermes ! and still youthful Maia ! 
 
 May I sing to thee 
 As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baias ? 
 
 Or may I woo thee 
 In earlier Sicilian ? Or thy smiles 
 Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles, 
 By bards who died content on pleasant sward, 
 Leaving great verse unto a little clan ? 
 O, give me their old vigour, and unheard 
 Save of the quiet primrose, and the span 
 
 Of heaven and few ears, 
 Rounded by thee, my song should die away 
 
 Content as theirs. 
 Rich in the simple worship of a day. ' 
 
 On what conceivable principle of selection can Professor 
 Palgrave have omitted these fine lines ? Surely where 
 any two or three pieces of Keats are gathered together, 
 there should these be in the midst of them. It cannot 
 surely be because they form but one verse of a con- 
 templated ode, a fragment. On that principle we had 
 better humour Mr. Frederic Harrison and send the 
 Elgin marbles back to Greece, because they are but 
 torsos. Besides, this 'fragment' is really complete in 
 itself — complete, anyhow, as a hand or a head surviving 
 a complete marble is complete. And talking of the 
 Elgin marbles, another poem we seek for in vain is the 
 sonnet, ' On seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time,' 
 the first five lines of which (quite apart from the historic 
 interest of the sonnet) are singularly fine, and another 
 of Keats's best known things : 
 130 
 
MAY JOHN KEATS 1892 
 
 ' My spirit is too weak — mortality 
 
 Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, 
 And each imagined pinnacle and steep 
 Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die 
 Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.* 
 
 Lines one, two, and five are surely masterly. Then, 
 again, the sonnet beginning, 'Why did I laugh to-night?' 
 though poor on the whole, is redeemed by its four 
 concluding lines — lines again among the famous : 
 
 ' Yet would I on this very midnight cease. 
 
 And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds ; 
 Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, 
 But Death intenser — Death is Life's high meed.' 
 
 Poor, nay miserable, as were the poems Keats wrote 
 on his visit to Scotland, yet ' Staffa,' with its fine fancy 
 of the great cave having become the home of Lycidas, 
 should, we think, find a place in any adequate selection 
 of the poet : 
 
 ' Not Aladdin magian 
 Ever such a work began ; . . . 
 This was architectured thus 
 By the great Oceanus ! — 
 Here his mighty waters play 
 Hollow organs all the day.' . . . 
 
 And not a word of ' The Eve of St. Mark,' that interest- 
 ing bit of pre-pre-Raphaelitism, nor of this charming 
 little fairy song : 
 
 ' Shed no tear ! oh shed no tear ! 
 The flower will bloom another year. 
 Weep no more ! oh weep no more ! 
 Young buds sleep in the root's white core. 
 
 131 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Dry your eyes ! oh dry your eyes ! 
 For I was taught in Paradise 
 To ease my breast of melodies — 
 
 Shed no tear.' 
 
 And is it possible that either Mr. Palgrave or the 
 readers of Golden Treasury editions are so prudish as 
 to object to the honest amorousness of 'The Devon 
 Maid ' ? There can be no other reason for its omission, 
 for it is one of the healthiest, heartiest little songs of 
 the kind out of Burns : 
 
 ' Where be you going, you Devon maid ? 
 
 And what have you there in the basket ? 
 
 Ye tight httle fairy, just fresh from the dairy, 
 
 Will you give me some cream if I ask it ? 
 
 I love your meads, and I love your flowers, 
 
 And I love your junkets mainly. 
 But 'hind the door I love kisses more, 
 
 O look not so disdainly. 
 
 I love your hills, and I love your dales, 
 
 And I love your flocks a-bleating — 
 But O, on the heather to lie together. 
 
 With both our hearts a-beating ! 
 
 I 'II put your basket all safe in a nook, 
 Your shawl I '11 hang up on the willow. 
 
 And we will sigh in the daisy's eye, 
 And kiss on a grass-green pillow.' 
 
 This little poem is especially valuable as perhaps being 
 the only instance in Keats of the rollicking ' Bobbie 
 Burns ' manner of gallantry. As a rule, his loves were 
 more of the yearning aesthetic order. True, he has also 
 a disreputable rhyme on 'Sharing Eve's Apple,' yet, 
 witty as that is, one cannot blame Professor Palgrave for 
 its omission. But the slight to ' the Devon Maid ' it is 
 132 
 
MAY JOHN KEATS 1892 
 
 impossible to overlook. There are one or two other 
 things one would like in a perfect selection, for old sake's 
 sake at least — that sonnet written in ' The Flower and 
 the Leaf,' and beginning, 'This pleasant tale is like a 
 little copse ' ; that other beginning, ' The day is gone, 
 and all its sweets are gone ! ' and an otherwise bad 
 sonnet on the sonnet containing the now proverbial 
 phrase, ' Misers of sound and syllable.' But these I 
 do not press. I insist but on the poems from which 
 I have quoted. And I have quoted familiar things 
 at length simply to emphasise the value of the 
 omissions ; scanning them again as thus gleaned 
 together, and not forgetting the unquoted ' Eve of St. 
 Mark,' which covers four pages — why, they make quite 
 an exquisite little sheaf. And they are, let it be 
 observed, no mere aftermath : they are of the poet's 
 best — already nimble on the lips of fame. Surely it is 
 a pity that Professor Palgrave has omitted them from 
 an edition which is otherwise so admirably done. Had 
 Keats been a voluminous poet, even one or two of the 
 omissions had been still impossible to understand ; but, 
 as he was just the reverse, the only tenable explana- 
 tion would have been in the carelessness of a binder 
 who had missed out one of the 'sixteens.' To be so 
 near perfection, and yet so oddly to miss it ! Well, the 
 one thing to do is to write in the omitted poems in 
 one's best monkish hand. Then the edition will be the 
 most perfect Keats to be had. 
 
 i¥ 
 
 133 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 You will sometimes hear it said that the author of 
 Augustine Obiter Dicta is an overrated man. I hope 
 Birrell: y^^ always beg to differ when the state- 
 Judicatse.' ment occurs. It is true that the pheno- 
 menon of a little volume of literary essays going into 
 edition after edition, arriving, indeed, at no less than 
 a 'popular' edition, seemed an uncanny thing for 
 England. Yet, after all, it was just that kind of unex- 
 pected which is continually happening amongst us. 
 Some people, at a loss to account for it, suggest that 
 there was a mistake somewhere. The public, maybe, 
 mistook the book for a volume of short stories, or a 
 handful of sermons in stones. Or, may we admit 
 that the public is not at all times such an ass as the 
 humourist would insist? True, it is continually going 
 mad over some worthless sensation, but it has its lucid 
 intervals, and in one of these it bought Obiter Dicta. 
 
 I hope Res Judicatce may also prove to have come 
 thus in the nick of time, for it is a volume of criticism 
 worth infinitely more than some precious and affected 
 volumes of the time. Its value, as in the case of Obiter 
 Dicta, is that it is ' of the centre.' It is in lineal descent 
 from Addison, for it reverses the process of modern 
 criticism, starting from its subject, rather than from its 
 author. It is refreshingly concrete. In an admirable 
 note on Sainte-Beuve, Mr. Birrell says, * Sainte-Beuve 
 was always willing to write like another man. Joubert 
 was not. And yet, strange paradox ! there will be 
 always more men able to write in the strained style of 
 Joubert than in the natural style of Sainte-Beuve. It is 
 134 
 
JUNE AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 1892 
 
 easier to be odd, intense, overwise, enigmatic, than to be 
 sensible, simple, and to see the plain truth about things.' 
 Strange, too, that the man who is content to write like 
 other men is just the one whose style will prove most 
 characteristic in the end. For 'such a power hath 
 white simplicity.' Oddly enough, it is eccentricity that 
 is always the same, that always ends its career in an 
 ignominious classification. 
 
 I don't know whether it happens to you, but I always 
 find that when a book has real stufif in it, it sets my 
 mind once more at work upon old projects of culture, or 
 other achievement, which, time after time, have burned 
 so ardently, and time after time have sunk down into 
 a waiting quiescence as of an idle blacksmith's forge. 
 We will read, let us say, Mr. Symonds' big History of 
 the Renaissance, we will really make a start on Italian, or 
 make a determined sally upon Mr. Bullen's eight-volume 
 Middleton ; or we will write a volume of literary essays, 
 which shall be as nearly as good as Res Judicatce as is 
 possible. So we always think when we read Matthew 
 Arnold, or Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, and we think it, 
 too, whenever we read a fine novel. We feel our own 
 novel leaping inside us ; but, alas ! those premonitions 
 of parturition result not even in a mouse. Such stimula- 
 tion is a sure sign that the book we have been reading 
 possesses real vitality. 
 
 Let us try and disengage Mr. Birrell's characteristics. 
 Beneath all, he has a sustaining constitution of English 
 Puritanism, not, of course, seventeenth century or 
 Spurgeon Puritanism, but Puritanism up to date. Those 
 who heard Mr. Birrell's father preach, or who only knew 
 135 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 by sight his ' natty ' distinguished figure, will understand 
 his son all the better for it. The remembrance of him 
 in the pulpit illuminates the style and tastes of the 
 author of Obiter Dicta. He reminded one, at least from 
 a distant pew, of Charles Lamb. There was a similar 
 eighteenth-century distinction about his neat, sprightly, 
 and studiously well-bred personality. It comes out in 
 especial relief in anecdotes which contrast him with the 
 burly individuality of Hugh Stowell Brown. The elder 
 Mr. Birrell had, too, a quaint, quiet humour, which his 
 son has also inherited and deepened. Perhaps this odd 
 blend of Puritanism and humour, neither obtrusive, 
 are the extremes within which are included Mr. Birrell's 
 other characteristics. He is a welcome example of 
 the truth that a man need not stop being (quietly) 
 in earnest because he is a (quiet) humourist — or vice 
 versa. Mr. Birrell's humour, albeit he has a reputa- 
 tion for it, is not ' professional ' ; like Cardinal Newman's 
 — according to Mr. Birrell's truly 'judicious' essay upon 
 the Cardinal — it 'always takes us unaware.' For in- 
 stance, speaking of the alleged futility of Cardinal New- 
 man's work, Mr. Birrell writes, earnestly and regretfully 
 enough, ' It is very puzzling and difficult, and,' he adds, 
 as though he never meant us to laugh at all, 'drives 
 some men to collect butterflies and beetles.' I know not 
 if the comparison be pleasing, but Mr. Birrell's humour 
 reminds me — that is, in the manner of it — of Max 
 O'Rell's. It seems to come as a sort of laconic after- 
 thought. It is the sedate, sly humour of the law and the 
 Church. The jest does not always come off, as in his 
 note on George Borrow, where, in regard to Borrow's 
 136 
 
JUNE AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 1892 
 
 unfairness to Scott, Mr. Birrell says that, after all, seeing 
 our need of Borrow, ' It is just possible to thank heaven 
 (feebly) that it was no worse. He might have robbed a 
 church ! ' The alternative, I am afraid, leaves one cold. 
 In regard to fairness, Mr. Birrell is singularly fair. 
 He has his bias, of course. He is a ' lover of all things 
 that are quiet and gentle and true in life and literature,' 
 in contrast to whatsoever things are noisy and sensa- 
 tional and narrowly ' modem ' ; but even in dealing 
 with the latter he would seem to try, so far as mortal 
 may, to 'look at the heart.' He is able to speak of 
 'Wesley's great missionary tours in Devon and Corn- 
 wall, and the wild remote parts of Lancashire,' as 
 lacking ' no single element of sublimity,' in the body of 
 a very sympathetic essay on Cardinal Newman. He 
 loves, too, to vindicate such old-fashioned, even ridiculed, 
 reputations as Cowper's or Richardson's ; and he has 
 one other comfortable characteristic : he does not 
 assume, in a lofty way, that the reader knows every- 
 thing. He does not blush to say that he likes his 
 poetry to have thought as well as poetry, that 
 he likes it to be 'useful' as well as beautiful, as in 
 the case of Matthew Arnold ; that the much-sneered-at 
 British appetite for sermons is no bad thing, after all ; 
 and he is in various ways a reassurance to our smarting 
 nationality. He does not deny that we are often 
 Philistine enough, but, as he is not afraid to champion 
 certain of our ' standard works,' he does not shrink from 
 defending some of our 'sterHng qualities' and tastes. 
 And while he does this with one hand, he can also 
 soundly box our ears with the other : ' No foreigner 
 ^37 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 needs to ask the nationality of the man who treads on 
 his corns, smiles at his religion, and does not want to 
 know anything about his aspirations.' Yes, Britannia's 
 heart yearns to such a one, for is he not her own well- 
 beloved son ? 
 
 Is there any writer with whom one is so continually 
 Andrew Lang: falling out and continually making it up 
 ' Grass of again as Mr. Lang ? To-day he alienates 
 arnassus. ^^ -^^ j^j^ middle-aged cynicism, to-morrow 
 he redeems it by some honest manly sympathy, and so 
 he plays at see-saw with our affections. A short time 
 ago he was poking fun at a batch of young Parnassians, 
 and now we find him, young of heart, republishing his 
 own verses — a 2s. 6d. reissue of the Grass of Parnassus, 
 uniform with the recent reissue of his essays. Nor is 
 it a mere reprint. Grass of Parnassus : First and 
 Last Rhyjftes, is the full title, and the volume, in addi- 
 tion to the original 'grass,' includes a few of the 
 translations from the rare Ballads and Lyrics of Old 
 France, as well as about thirty new pieces, some few of 
 which are collected from the magazines. Mr. Lang is 
 also boyish enough to tell us, he ' cannot resist the 
 pleasure of mentioning ' it, ' that the versions from the 
 Greek Anthology were prompted by the encouraging 
 kindness of the late Mr. James Russell Lowell.' What 
 deft and altogether charming versions they are we have 
 long known.^ In lightness of touch they are, perhaps, 
 only equalled by Mr. Lang's other translations from the 
 138 
 
JUNE ANDREW LANG 1892 
 
 old French poets. As a whole this volume is very 
 typical of Mr. Lang's poetical gift, in its varied applica- 
 tion. How oddly the moods change between golf and 
 the tcBdium vitce ; but on the whole Mr. Lang's muse is 
 a melancholy one, as 'wild with all regret' as the 
 Greek Anthology. A new introductory poem, in which 
 Mr. Lang makes believe to bid 'Vale' to his muse, 
 strikes the minor note of the volume : 
 
 ' Once the Muse was fair, 
 
 Once : when we were young, 
 Gay and debonair. 
 Or with pensive air. 
 
 So she came, she sung.' 
 
 Is it not rather, Mr. Lang continues, the poet not the 
 muse, who has grown old : 
 
 ' 'Tis not she, but we. 
 
 That are weary now ; 
 Well, howe'er it be. 
 Her we shall not see. 
 
 Broken is the bough.' 
 
 Yet life would seem to have one firm anchorage even 
 for Mr. Lang— that of an old friendship. Old books, old 
 wine, old friends, says the adage. Two of these joys, at 
 least, we know, remain faithful to Mr. Lang, He has 
 often sung of his books, here are a few of his lines to 
 an old friend, whom he addresses as ' E. M, S.' :— 
 
 ' Change, Care, nor Time, while life endure. 
 Shall spoil our ancient friendship sure, 
 The love which flows from sacred springs, 
 In " old unhappy far-off things." 
 From sympathies in grief and joy. 
 Through all the years of man and boy. 
 
 139 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Therefore, to you, the rhymes I strung 
 
 When even this " brindled " head was young 
 
 I bring, and later rhymes I bring 
 
 That flit upon as weak a wing, 
 
 But still for you, for yours, they sing ! ' 
 
 After all, Mr. Lang is more fortunate than some of 
 us. One old friend is no inconsiderable asset in this 
 bankruptcy of life. And, for all his pessimism, Mr. 
 Lang is always the brightest and most entertaining of 
 writers. Homer may nod, but his translator never. 
 
 2232 
 
 A RE-READING of Andrew Marvell had just set me 
 
 Norman Gale. ■'''^'^''^^ ^O"" ^™P^^' 'l^^^^' garden-loving 
 ' A Country men ; and here, as luck would have it, I 
 Muse.' ^^^-^ ^p ^jjg latest new book of verse, 
 and read thus : 
 
 ' Why should I fret myself to find out nought ? 
 Dispute can blight the soul's eternal corn. 
 And choke its richness with the tares of thought. 
 
 I am content to know that God is great. 
 And Lord of fish and fowl, of air and sea — 
 Some little points are misty. Let them wait. 
 
 I well can wait when upland, wood and dell 
 Are full of speckled thrushes great with song. 
 And foxgloves chime each purple velvet bell. 
 
 Our village is encircled by sweet sound 
 Of bee and bird and Hly-loving brook : 
 Hence, Unbelief, for this is holy ground ! 
 
 At early dawn I stand upon the sod 
 And let the lark rain this upon my soul — 
 The smaller in man's sight the nearer God. . . . 
 140 
 
JUNE NORMAN GALE 1892 
 
 At eventide I lean across a gate, 
 
 And, knowing life must set as does the sun, 
 
 Muse on the angels in the Happy State. 
 
 Ah, let me live among the birds and bloom 
 
 Of hazel copses and enchanted woods 
 
 Till death shall toll me to the common tomb. . . . 
 
 My song is all of birds and pleasant homes. 
 For on such themes my heart delights to dwell 
 And sing in sunshine till the shadow comes. 
 
 I sing of daisies and the coloured plot 
 Where dandelions climb the thistle's knee — 
 I take what is nor pine for what is not. 
 
 I am for finches and the rosy lass 
 
 Who leads me where the moss is thick, and where 
 
 Sweet strawberry-balls of scarlet gleam in grass. 
 
 And this I know, that when I leave my birds, 
 The lichened walls, the heartsease and the heath 
 I shall not wholly fail of kindly words. 
 
 And while I journey to the distant Day 
 That first shall dawn upon the eastern hills. 
 Perchance some thrush will sing me on my way. 
 
 The Great Republic lies towards the East, 
 
 And Daybreak comes when Christ with tender face 
 
 Welcomes the poor in spirit— who were least.' 
 
 Those who care, in addition to loving the old poetry, 
 to keep an eye on whatever young promise is stirring, 
 have been aware for some time of a shy anonymous 
 bard, who, through Mr. George E. Over, of Rugby, has 
 issued two or three very dainty volumes, in editions 
 limited to no more than eighty copies, the two volumes 
 known to us being Meadowsweet and Violets. There 
 was something very sweet and generally arresting about 
 the personality they suggested, and, a pretty sure sign, 
 141 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 bibliophiles bought copies, paying as much as two 
 guineas for one of the tiny volumes, done up in a card- 
 board box like a valentine. Well, this poet, hardly less 
 shy than Mr. Bridges, proves to be Mr. Norman R. Gale, 
 and the little volume of verse, entitled A Country Muse, 
 which he has just published, is a selection from the 
 privately-printed volumes aforesaid. It is, however, a 
 selection which is no means satisfying. One note that 
 was especially characteristic of the unnamed author of 
 Violets was a robust frankness in his love-songs, a union 
 of warmth and chasteness, which we have missed since 
 the days, lamented by one of Andrew Marvell's talking 
 horses, of ' Old Bess in the ruff.' To give an example, 
 I quote one of the unselected poems, a bit of gallantry 
 on the part of ' Strephon to Chloris ' : 
 
 ' Chloris, unbend that gathered brow ! 
 
 'Twas but a straying touch or twain 
 That followed on this slope of snow, 
 
 The azure runnel of a vein ! 
 Come, sweet, be neither saint nor shrew — 
 
 The heart behind the hand was true.' 
 
 The theme here is surely touched with a reverent, if a 
 
 daring hand. I shall venture on another, also un- 
 
 reprinted : 
 
 ' O to think, O to think as I see her stand there 
 With the rose that I plucked in her glorious hair, 
 
 In the robe that I love. 
 
 So demure and so neat, 
 I am lord of her lips and her eyes and her feet ! 
 
 O to think, O to think when the last hedge is leapt, 
 When the blood is awakened that dreamingly slept, 
 
 I shall make her heart throb 
 
 In its cradle of lace. 
 As the lord of her hair and her breast and her face ! 
 
 142 
 
JUNE GEORGE DARLEY 1892 
 
 to think, O to think when our wedding bells ring, 
 When our love 's at the summer but life 's at the spring, 
 
 I shall guard her asleep 
 As my hound guards her glove. 
 Being lord of her life and her heart and her love ! ' ^ 
 
 A new poet is always best left to speak for himself. 
 I have, therefore, let quotation take the place of 
 criticism, and when quotation and the intelligent 
 reader come together, where is the need of criticism ? 
 Being plain as a pikestaff that Mr, Gale is a poet not 
 merely of promise, but of achievement — and of achieve- 
 ment in a manner of poetry almost obsolete with us 
 at present, a manner in the best tradition of English 
 poetry at its strongest and sweetest, English love, 
 English pastures — can we make it plainer by comment ? 
 A modern writer has finely said that some flowers 
 have roots deep as oaks ; Mr. Gale's poems are such, 
 deep-rooted in the simplicity of nature ; they have the 
 fragrance, the spontaneity, and the strength of all 
 earth-born things. 
 
 Darley, like Lamb, was a divine stammerer. But, 
 George Darley: whereas Lamb's stutter was a social thing, 
 ' Sylvia.' often giving additional piquancy to his 
 talk, Darley's made him much of a social outlaw, 
 self-conscious and misanthropical. He enjoyed, how- 
 ever, the proverbial compensation of the stammerer, 
 the gift of song. A lyric gift of most delicate airiness, 
 and the fancy of a fairy ; his contemporaries recognised 
 
 1 These Poems have been reprinted since the above was written. 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 these gifts in him. Lord Tennyson even offered to 
 defray the expenses of his pubUshing, and Brown- 
 ing confessed to Barley's influence in his own early 
 work. Yet Darley has received less of his due even 
 than Beddoes and Wells, who with him and others 
 made a little constellation of poet's poets about the 
 forties, and have, for the general reader at least, been 
 eclipsed by the robuster genius of such contemporaries 
 as Lamb, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Outside Miss 
 Mitford's Recollections there has been little written of 
 Darley, and Miss Mitford was somewhat inaccurate. 
 She did, however, give one or two enticing quota- 
 tions from Nepenthe^ a poem even less known than 
 Sylvia, and, in fact, of much less value. There is a 
 touch of 'Kubla Khan' wizardry about such a verse 
 as this : 
 
 ' Over a bloomy land untrod 
 
 By heavier foot than bird or bee 
 Lays on the grassy-bosomed sod, 
 
 I passed one day in reverie : 
 High on his unpartitioned throne 
 The heaven's hot tyrant sat alone, 
 And like the fabled king of old, 
 Was turning all he touched to gold.' 
 
 Darley was an Irishman, the son of a Wicklow 
 squire. He was born in 1795, and was educated 
 at Trinity College, Dublin, where, owing mainly to 
 nervousness resulting from the impediment in his 
 speech, he was somewhat late in graduating. The 
 same infirmity robbing him of a scholarship for which 
 he was competing with every chance of success, he 
 left Dublin in disgust, turning to London to seek his 
 144 
 
JUNE GEORGE DARLEY 1892 
 
 fortune in literature. In 1822 he published his first 
 volume, The Errors of Ecsiaste, which introduced him 
 into the literary circles of the time. But his impedi- 
 ment soon began to prove a hindrance to him, and 
 he grew shy of going about. He was, however, not 
 long in getting on to the staff of some of the best 
 periodicals, including the London Magazine, where he 
 wrote under the pseudonym of 'John Lacy.' His first 
 contributions were a series of criticisms on ' Dramatists 
 of the Day,' in which he excepted only Joanna Baillie 
 and Beddoes from general condemnation. At the death 
 of the London Magazine, Darley, together with Charles 
 Lamb, Hood, and 'Barry Cornwall,' went over to the 
 then young AthencBum, where he still continued to 
 write severe dramatic criticism, and to which he con- 
 tributed some striking letters on Italian art, written 
 during a holiday in Italy. As he grew older he grew 
 still more shy of society, and a sense that he was not 
 valued at his true worth seems to have made him 
 jealous of his more famous contemporaries. Accord- 
 ing to Miss Mitford, he thought little of Wordsworth 
 and Scott, and, indeed, of any poet except Shake- 
 speare or Milton. How pathetically hungry for praise 
 and how intolerant of unfavourable criticism he was 
 his letters abundantly illustrate. In thanking Miss 
 Mitford for appreciation of Nepenthe, he writes : ' Seven 
 long years did I live on a charitable saying of Cole- 
 ridge, that he sometimes liked to take up Sylvia.^ 
 
 It is not necessary here to follow Darley through all 
 his literary undertakings. Those who care to do so are 
 referred to Mr. John H. Ingram's interesting biographical 
 
 VOL. I, 145 K 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 introduction to his dainty reprint of Sylvia. Darley 
 died in 1846, aged fifty-one. His petulant epitaph is 
 characteristic of his solitary, comfortless life : 
 
 ' Mortal, pass on ! — leave me my desolate home, 
 
 I ask of thee no sigh — I scorn thy tear ! 
 To this small spot let no intruder come. 
 The winds and rains of heaven alone shall mourn me here ! 
 
 We usually resign ourselves to the acceptance of a 
 certain measure of prose in our poetry. It is, per- 
 haps, a necessary sustaining element in the greatest, 
 but in such poetry as Barley's it is certainly out of 
 place — poetry * of imagination all compact ' ; sheer 
 fantasy and ever-bubbling song ; a revel of pure plea- 
 sure ; flowers and bees, and the sound of falling 
 water ; nothing to do but listen, nothing to understand 
 but music ; mere deliciousness of phrase and fancy. 
 Darley was steeped in the Elizabethans, and the genre 
 of Sylvia is that of The Midsummer Nighfs Dream. 
 His faery verse is, perhaps, the most charming out of 
 Shakespeare. He has, too, the Shakespearean touch 
 in his treatment of flowers. One quotation will afford 
 a double illustration. Nephon, a sort of Puck, enters 
 with his lap full of flowers : 
 
 ' Nephon : Lady and gentlemen fays, come buy ! 
 No pedlar has such a rich packet as I. 
 
 Who wants a gown 
 
 Of purple fold. 
 Embroidered down 
 The seams with gold ? 
 
 See here ! — a Tulip richly laced 
 To please a royal fairy's taste ! 
 
 146 
 
JUNE GEORGE DARLEY 1892 
 
 Who wants a cap 
 
 Of crimson grand? 
 By great good hap 
 I 've one on hand : 
 Look, sir ! — a Cock's-comb, flowering red, 
 Tis just the thing, sir, for your head ! 
 
 Who wants a frock 
 
 Of vestal hue ? 
 Or snowy smock? — 
 Fair maid, do you? 
 O me ! — a Ladysmock so white ! 
 Your bosom's self is not more bright ! 
 
 Who wants to sport 
 
 A slender limb ? 
 I 've every sort 
 Of hose for him : 
 Both scarlet, striped, and yellow ones : 
 This Woodbine makes such pantaloons ! 
 
 Who wants — (hush ! hush !) 
 
 A box of paint ? 
 'Twill give a blush. 
 Yet leave no taint : 
 This Rose with natural rouge is fill'd, 
 From its own dewy leaves distill'd. 
 
 Then lady and gentlemen fays, come buy ! 
 You never will meet such a merchant as I.' 
 
 This is but one of many songs no less perfect in 
 which Sylvia is rich. Much of Darley's most beauti- 
 ful writing is to be found in the octosyllabic proems 
 to each act and scene in which he sets his pastoral 
 stage. Here is a beautiful impression of English 
 pastoral scenery, * knee-deep in June ' : 
 
 ' Green haunts, and deep enquiring lanes. 
 Wind through the trunks their grassy trains . . • 
 Millions of blossoms, fruits and gems, 
 Bend with rich weight the massy stems ; 
 
 147 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Millions of restless dizzy things, 
 With ruby tufts, and rainbow wings, 
 Speckle the eye-refreshing shades. 
 Burn through the air, or swim the glades : 
 As if the tremulous leaves were tongues, 
 MiUions of voices, sounds, and songs. 
 Breathe from the aching trees that sigh, 
 Near sick of their own melody.' 
 
 In his description of the fiend-king's home, Darley 
 shows that his eye was not merely for the delicious. 
 There is something of sombre awe about his grim 
 picture of that ' Ruder than Cyclops' mountain home ' : 
 
 ' Lightning has scorch'd and blasted all 
 Within this dark cavernous hall ; 
 Through every cranny screams a blast 
 As it would cleave the rocks at last ; 
 Loud rapping hail spins where it strikes. 
 And rain runs off the roof in dykes ; 
 And crackhng flame, and feathery sleet, 
 Hiss in dire contest as they meet ; 
 Tempests are heard to yell around. 
 And inward thunders lift the ground.' 
 
 We get somewhat too much of Shakespearean clown- 
 ing, but that is only because it is possible to have too 
 much of a good thing. Sylvia needs the predestined 
 reader, but for such a one who happens not to have 
 come across it, as may easily have happened even to 
 a well-read man, the book will come like an unexpected 
 remnant of youth, another of those happy isles ' which 
 bards in fealty to Apollo hold.' 
 
 148 
 
JULY R. L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 Although I have kept a sharp look-out for Mr. Lloyd 
 „ , „ Osbourne, I have not found him — seldom 
 
 H. L. Steven- 
 son and Lloyd indeed suspected his presence. Once or 
 
 Osbourne: twice it has occurred to me, is this an 
 '^^'^ ^"^^ Osbourne chapter? And then would come 
 an unmistakable Stevensonian word, a word, maybe, 
 which had travelled all the way from Sir Thomas Browne, 
 to find unwonted setting in a salt narrative of the high 
 seas. Doubtless, Mr. Osbourne's share in The Wrecker 
 is subterranean, or submarine, he has worked with Mr. 
 Stevenson on the plot, and thrown in out-of-the-way 
 experience of ships and shipmen. But I fancy Mr. 
 Stevenson has done all the writing. 
 
 For curiously, as the book is a collaboration, Mr. 
 Stevenson's individual style is, perhaps, more stamped 
 upon The Wrecker than upon any other of his stories of 
 adventure. Indeed, it is in this, and the reason of it, 
 that the book is somewhat unique among Mr. Steven- 
 son's writings. He seems to have been bent on making 
 his extremes meet in one volume. The mere title, of 
 course, proclaims the Treasure Island Stevenson, the 
 boy's Stevenson, his head still on fire with the romance 
 of buried treasure, pirates, and the Spanish Main. The 
 ingenuity of the plot, together with some whimsicalities 
 of characterisation, unmistakably recall the baffling 
 mysteries and the fantasy of The New Arabian Nights ; 
 while, for many a rich page, it might seem incongru- 
 ously, we have the best Stevenson of all, the man's 
 Stevenson, him of Virginibus Puerisque. An epilogue 
 addressed to Mr. Stevenson's friend, Mr. Will H. Low, 
 149 
 
JULY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 already associated with the Stevensonian muse in the 
 Underwoods^ tells us that this choice blend has been 
 of design. 
 
 Yarning together, in one of their Samoan nights, on 
 the sale of wrecks, and the occasional romance thereof, 
 the authors saw opportunities, they tell us, of wonderful 
 ' detective ' complications of story. ' What a tangle it 
 would make,' suggested one, 'if the wrong crew were 
 aboard. But how to get the wrong crew there?' Mr. 
 Stevenson happily felt with some of us in regard to the 
 detective type of story. In such a story, he well says : 
 ' The mind of the reader, always bent to pick up clues, 
 receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an 
 airless, elaborate mechanism ; and the book remains 
 enthralling, but insignificant, like a game of chess, not 
 a work of human art.' That is just the reason, doubt- 
 less, for that feeling of humiliated self-respect with which 
 we put down a Wilkie Collins story. We have indulged 
 a weak inquisitiveness, suffered ourselves to be dragged, 
 breathless, through a maze of doubts and fears, just for 
 the sake of coming out of it — no richer, but rather 
 poorer (by nervous loss) than when we entered. We 
 have met nobody worth meeting, no sentence worth 
 remembering, and the sieve does not sooner forget the 
 water than we do the whole business. Mr. Stevenson's 
 aim in The Wrecker has been to make such excitement 
 more legitimate, to give us people with faces we can 
 remember, and writing to mark and turn to again. 
 Moreover, the mysterious plot does, as he puts it, the 
 more ' inhere in life,' by its being the history of real men 
 rather than romantic lay figures. Such stories, as a 
 150 
 
JULY R. L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 rule, are the improbable narratives of impossible people ; 
 however improbable the story of The Wrecker, its 
 authors have determined that its actors shall, at least, 
 be flesh and blood, and so the more convincing. So far 
 as I am aware, this blend of the novel of manners and 
 the pure 'adventure' romance is new. However that 
 be, it is surely successful. The oddly-assorted elements 
 mingle with quite unexpected harmony, and the book is 
 as much a whole as though it had been entirely carved 
 from a piece of old man-of-war. 
 
 Loudon Dodd is the son of a Yankee stock-broking 
 millionaire. He is put to a school which is little more 
 than a mimic stock-exchange, and of which we have 
 a charmingly whimsical description. Each boy begins 
 his education with a certain amount of the school 
 'stock,' wherewith to speculate, and the day is spent, 
 for the most part, in playing at bulling and bearing : as 
 in Wall Street fortunes are made and lost in a day, and 
 he who is Jay Gould in the morning is glad of a clerk- 
 ship in the afternoon. Dodd is bitten with that love of 
 art which is still more infatuating than Mr. Kipling's 
 • delicious East.' He persuades his father to send him 
 to Paris, to start study as a sculptor. This gives Mr. 
 Stevenson the opportunity for some charming sketches 
 of Parisian artist life, to fill out the picture of Fontaine- 
 bleau in his recent essays. We even get just one 
 enchanting glimpse of 'that extinct mammal, the 
 grisette.' But D odd's destiny was to be an amateur 
 rather than an artist. His father suddenly loses all in 
 a speculation, and dies. Dodd's allowances cease, and 
 he is left penniless, and Paris, says Mr. Stevenson, is 
 151 
 
JULY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 a bad place to starve in. However, he has one quaint 
 friend — Jim Pinkerton, an American lad of spirit, who 
 studies art with a Yankee superstition for 'culture,' 
 though without a gleam of talent, and supports himself 
 on a 'Paris letter' to a San Francisco paper. Dodd 
 has won his eternal friendship, curiously, by telling him 
 that he cannot paint 'a damn.' Pinkerton 'was not 
 therefore sad,' but sensibly leaves what he cannot do, 
 for what he can. His real passion is for the romance of 
 commercial speculation. So he returns west in search 
 of it, begging Dodd to come and share his luck. But 
 Dodd still prefers the dinner of herbs where art is, and 
 stays behind steadily to starve. However, it is of no 
 use, at last he is persuaded, and he joins Pinkerton 
 * across the sapphire sea.' Pinkerton is already flourish- 
 ing in San Francisco, keeping a dozen speculations 
 going at once, the corner stone being 'Thirteen Star 
 Golden State Brandy, Warranted Entire.' He soon 
 finds Dodd something to do, as the popular manager of 
 ' Pinkerton's Hebdomadary Picnics,' with their ' Monster 
 Olio of Attractions — Sun, Ozone, and Music ! ' On this 
 amusing sketch of Yankee sensational commerce I 
 must not dwell. Among Mr. Pinkerton's miscellaneous 
 ventures were occasional purchases of wrecks. It is in 
 this way that we come upon the story of ' The Flying 
 Scud.' She has run aground in the South Seas, and her 
 remains are to be sold by auction. Pinkerton bids, 
 expecting, as he is in the ring, to buy her for a hundred 
 or two dollars. To his surprise he finds an unknown 
 person bidding against him, and suspicion arising that 
 the bidder represents the captain, he at once jumps to 
 152 
 
JULY R. L. STEVENSON 1892 
 
 the conclusion that there must be more valuable cargo 
 aboard than is dreamed of in the manifest — smuggled 
 opium, for instance ! On this mere guess, he at last 
 buys at a ruinous figure. Then he hears that all the 
 ship's crew have left San Francisco, evidently speeding 
 to the wreck. He loses no time in chartering a 
 schooner, in which Dodd sails as his supercargo. The 
 wreck is reached, but there is no sign of its crew — and 
 next to no opium ! But a photograph is found on 
 board, purporting to represent the crew of the ' Flying 
 Scud,' with the name written over each man — and not 
 one man in the group agrees with the crew as seen in 
 San Francisco. So you see Mr. Stevenson has suc- 
 ceeded in getting ' the wrong crew aboard.' How he 
 got them there I think it is only fair both to him and 
 the reader to let you find out for yourself. 
 
 Before, however, leaving The Wrecker, I must not 
 neglect to quote one of those Virginibus Puerisque 
 passages of which I spoke, a passage in which Mr. 
 Stevenson once more speaks of the * more manly way of 
 life,' and his own passion for the South Seas : 
 
 ' In my early days,' he says, in the person of Dodd, ' I was a 
 man the most wedded to his idols of my generation. I was 
 a dweller under roofs ; the gull of that which we call civilisation ; 
 a superstitious votary of the plastic arts ; a cit, and a prop of 
 restaurants. . . . That was a home word of Pinkerton's deserving 
 to be writ in letters of gold on the portico of every school of art : 
 " What I can't see is why you should want to do nothing else." 
 The dull man is made, not by the nature, but by the degree of his 
 immersion in a single business. And all the more if that be 
 sedentary, uneventful, and ingloriously safe. More than one half 
 of him will then remain unexercised and undeveloped ; the rest will 
 be distended and deformed by over-nutrition, over-cerebration, 
 
 153 
 
JULY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 and the heat of rooms. And I have often marvelled at the impu- 
 dence of gentlemen who describe and pass judgment on the life of 
 man in almost perfect ignorance of all its necessary elements and 
 natural careers. Those who dwell in clubs and studios, may paint 
 excellent pictures or write enchanting novels. There is one thing 
 that they should not do, they should pass no judgment on man's 
 destiny, for it is a thing with which they are unacquainted. Their 
 own life is an excrescence of the moment, doomed, in the vicissi- 
 tude of history, to pass and disappear. The eternal life of man, 
 spent under sun and rain and in rude physical effort, lies upon one 
 side, scarce changed since the beginning. I would I could have 
 carried along with me to Midway Island all the wTiters and the 
 prating artists of my time. . . .' 
 
 But supposing Mr. Stevenson were to do so, would 
 
 they not simply set up their easels and writing desks 
 
 and go on painting and writing ? What does Mr. 
 
 Stevenson do in Samoa ? Apparently he writes novels. 
 
 Long may it be ere he takes up a more ' natural ' career. 
 
 One tires a little of this iteration of the simple and the 
 
 physical as the only 'natural.' It is as natural to be 
 
 a man of letters as to be a cannibal : 
 
 ' For the dear God who loveth us 
 He made and loveth all,' 
 
 including even the minor poet. 
 
 As wealth draws the poor relation from his hole, so 
 
 William fame attracts the remainder from the pub- 
 
 * The Prince's ^^^^^'''s cellar. Twelve years, maybe, it 
 
 Quest.' has waited massed upon the shelves, but 
 
 now at last is heard a sound as of the breaking-up of 
 
 an Arctic winter ; it is being taken down in big 
 
 154 
 
JULY WILLIAM WATSON 1892 
 
 bundles and baled off to another publisher's, to be 
 
 dressed up in a nice new title-page, and thus, 'with 
 
 new-spangled ore,' at last it 'flames in the forehead' 
 
 of the Athencsmn. 
 
 But all remainders are not so honest as Mr. William 
 
 Watson's remainder of The Princes Quest and other 
 
 Poems. They pretend they are new editions, and 
 
 some people believe them. In a note, however, to 
 
 this poem of Mr. Watson's, ' which first of all he made 
 
 when young,' it is confessed that, with the notable 
 
 exception of Rossetti's appreciation, it attracted but 
 
 little attention on its publication twelve years ago. 
 
 Those interested in Mr. Watson have long known, 
 
 from those famous notes to Mr. Sharp's Sonnets of 
 
 This Century, that The Princess Quest was admired 
 
 by Rossetti. Mr. Sharp refers to his possession of 
 
 Rossetti's copy of it, made interesting by 'several 
 
 markings and marginalia.' Mr. Sharp quotes a few 
 
 lines which were marked as specially excellent. It 
 
 will thus be doubly interesting to quote them here : 
 
 ' About him was a ruinous fair place, 
 Which Time, who still delighteth to abase 
 The highest, and throw down what men do build, 
 With splendid prideful barrenness had filled, 
 And dust of immemorial dreams, and breath 
 Of silence, which is next of kin to death. 
 A weedy wilderness it seemed, that was 
 In days forepast a garden, but the grass 
 Grew now where once the flowers, and hard by 
 A many-throated fountain had run dry. 
 Which erst all day a web of rainbows wove 
 Out of the body of the sun, its love. 
 And but a fiu-long's space beyond, there towered 
 In midmost of that silent realm deflowered, 
 
JULY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 A palace, builded of black marble, whence 
 The shadow of a swart magnificence 
 Falling, upon the outer space begot 
 A dream of darkness where the night was not.' 
 
 One can understand the special appeal of this passage 
 to Rossetti, being, as he was, painter as well as poet. 
 It is, for a dream, singularly concrete. It might serve, 
 recalling a favourite title of Marvell's, for ' instructions 
 to a painter.' Indeed, Mr. Watson has evidently the 
 painter's eye. One feels this quality of objectivity 
 in striking promise in this early volume. The forms, 
 especially the profiles, of everything are seen and 
 drawn with rare firmness. Colour is not so evident, 
 but that one might expect in an eye for profile. 
 A Sunset ' provides an example of this : 
 
 ' The incendiary sun 
 Dropped from the womb o' the vapour, rolled 
 'Mongst huddled towers and temples, 'twixt them set 
 Infinite ardour of candescent gold. 
 
 Encompassed minaret 
 
 And terrace and marmoreal spire 
 With conflagration : roof enfurnaced, yet 
 Unmolten — columns and cupolas flanked with fire. . .' 
 
 Fine, but a silhouette rather than a picture. You will 
 notice how even already Mr. Watson loves to fill his 
 mouth with good fat vowels — to play with beautiful 
 centipedes like 'marmoreal,' and how he loves the 
 grand Marlowe sweep of line as in 'the shadow of a 
 swart magnificence.' Unlike his later style, as at 
 first sight The Princes Quest is, it yet has those strongly 
 marked characteristics of his later work, those and 
 that objectivity just referred to. 
 156 
 
JULY WILLIAM WATSON 1892 
 
 In the (just a little grandiose) publisher's note pre- 
 fixed to the volume, we are told that Rossetti combated 
 the opinion of some reviewer that The Princis Quest 
 owed dues to Mr. William Morris. * He goes right 
 back,' says Rossetti, *to Keats, with a little modifica- 
 tion.' After all, it is no very serious matter. It is 
 taken for granted that every young poet is derivative 
 of his elders, and so that Mr. Watson show some sign^ 
 of wearing his rue with a difference, what are the odds 
 whether the creditor be Keats or Mr. William Morris. 
 Both are good men to steal from, their 'bounty is as 
 boundless as the sea.' As a matter of opinion, and 
 ignorant of what Rossetti had to say on the matter, 
 we think that the reviewer referred to, so long as he 
 made the statement with a due sense of its unimportance, 
 was right. Of course, if he talked about plagiarism 
 he was silly ; but I think there can be no doubt 
 that, differ as it may in expression when looked into, 
 the genre of The Princis Quest is that of The Earthly 
 Paradise rather than any model in Keats. Of course, 
 the whole aesthetic school is practically a rib out of 
 the side of Keats, deriving from him, with this differ- 
 ence, that it inherits his sweetness and sensuousness, 
 but little of that picture-making power which is so 
 striking a quality of Keats's best work. This quality I 
 have remarked in Mr. Watson, and, therefore, in regard 
 to the stronger parts of his poem, the little isles of 
 tightly-packed verse, he may be said to hail from Keats 
 — though even on that side I should prefer to say 
 Tennyson — but the main stream of his narrative has cer- 
 tainly a Morrisian flow. The theme, too, is just a Morris 
 157 
 
JULY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 theme ; indeed it has a certain resemblance to ' The Man 
 Who Never Laughed Again ' in The Earthly Paradise. 
 A prince in dreams is taken to a fair city, and 
 beholding a lovely queen is told that she waits for his 
 coming. Then, waking, the vision impresses him as 
 a prophecy ; and, haunted by the face, he seeks the 
 fair city through the world, cheered by intermediate 
 dream-messages. It is noticeable that in this earher 
 volume Mr. Watson shows a lyric gift hardly in evi- 
 dence since. Here are two charming verses, first 
 and last, from the lullaby with which the Prince sings 
 himself to sleep : 
 
 ' O sleep, thou hollow sea, thou soundless sea, 
 
 Dull-breaking on the shores of haunted lands, 
 Lo, I am thine : do what thou wilt to me. 
 
 So may I see in dreams her tresses fair, 
 Down-falling, as a wave of sunlight rests 
 
 On some white cloud, about her shoulders bare. 
 Nigh to the snowdrifts twain which are her breasts.' 
 
 And very beautiful is the long lyric which celebrates 
 the happy ending of the quest : the very song seems 
 to sink its head to rest : 
 
 'As flowers desire the kisses of the rain, 
 She his, and many a year desired in vain : 
 She waits no more who waited long enow. 
 Nor listeth he to wander any more 
 Who went as go the winds from sea to shore, 
 From shore to sea, who went as the winds go. 
 The winds do seek a place of rest ; the flowers 
 Look for the rain ; but in a while the showers 
 Come, and the winds lie down, their wandering o'er.' 
 
 The reader will notice that in lines five and six Mr. 
 158 
 
JULY WILLIAM WATSON 1893 
 
 Watson is playing with words, as Mr, Stevenson says 
 the young artist should, as the savage plays with his 
 coloured beads — ' fingering the dumb key-board,' Mr, 
 Stevenson admirably expresses it. There is a good 
 deal of that in the volume, and a good deal of that 
 jugglery with two or three ideas which marks the 
 epigrammatist. ' A Song of Three Singers ' is an ex- 
 ceedingly clever iristance of both : 
 
 ' Wave and wind and willow-tree 
 Speak a speech that no man knoweth ; 
 Tree that sigheth, wind that bloweth, 
 Wave that floweth to the sea : 
 Wave and wind and willow-tree.' 
 
 Can't you picture yourself at the Pavilion, and see 
 the glass balls going up and round and round from the 
 hands of the cunning juggler? The mere words, per- 
 haps, are as little significant as the glass balls, but the 
 skill ! It was so Poe used to play with words ; indeed, 
 the rhyming of this poem is very much after his fashion, 
 the feeling, too, just a little hard, the words being 
 recognised as mere counters for the exercise of skill. 
 Lord Tennyson, the poet from whom I think Mr, 
 Watson has learnt most, is also fond of thus ringing the 
 changes on one or two notes, but his notes have a 
 mellowness not felt here. 
 
 i¥ 
 
 159 
 
JULY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 It is not always easy to be just to ' bibliolatry.' Like 
 every other form of worship, it is hable 
 On Book- ^^ g^^g-g^ ^j.^j^ j^g professors. For in- 
 Collectors. 
 
 stance, you come across some busy 
 
 Philistinish person who collects your own exquisite 
 author, and you look at him and know how little such 
 a man can know of those precious, unique qualities 
 which make even the very binding sacred. You can 
 ■well understand those who have fallen under the spell 
 of his qualities, been stirred and charmed and roused to 
 answering moods by them, wishing to ' collect,' to make 
 a little tutelary deity of him, one of their Lares 
 Bibliothecce, with a shrine built of first editions ; but 
 that a man who has not only never read him, but has no 
 possible affinities with him, should, in ape-like fashion, 
 also 'collect' him — there's the respect that gives the 
 true believer, the true worship, to the scoffer. Yet how 
 common are such people : men without a spark of 
 poetry in them who collect early Elizabethans, others 
 without a gleam of humour who collect Dickens ; men 
 for whom you have always to discover the best passages 
 in their own particular authors — that is, if you are 
 allowed, for their copies may be ' unopened,' in a double 
 sense. Odd, is it not, that a man should come to prize 
 that which was made to be opened merely because 
 of its remaining shut? The more we consider the 
 bookman in his lower forms, the mere curiosity hunter, 
 and his cousin the mere commentator, the more do we 
 see the aptness of the term ' bookworm ' ; for are they 
 not the maggots which breed in the perishable parts of 
 160 
 
JULY ON BOOK-COLLECTORS 1892 
 
 great fames? They are the marine store-dealers of 
 literature, hoarding up the rags and tags, the non- 
 essentials, the littlenesses, of great people. Of the 
 greatness, that which alone matters, they have no hint. 
 They can show you a complete set of Fielding's wigs, 
 but they have no opinion on Tom Jones. They know 
 all the servant-girl gossip about Shelley and Harriet, 
 though they have never read a line of Prometheus 
 Unbound. But the true collectors are not so. They 
 too may read little, but they are men of fine antennse, 
 and know their affinities in books by some delicate 
 sensitiveness of impression, a sense for the spiritual 
 aroma of a book, which in half-an-hour will learn more 
 of the essence of an author than can be learned by 
 another man in a month, or, in fact, a lifetime. For, 
 of course, nothing is properly understood except through 
 affinity. And on this account the true collector often 
 suffers with the false : for both are seen to read but 
 little, though, as a rule, the true collector does more 
 reading in secret than he is credited with. Besides, he 
 might, if he pleased, make some such defence as this : 
 'You don't,' he might say, 'insist on the collector of 
 old china continually eating and drinking from his 
 fragile pieces, nor do you maintain that a man should 
 not keep a couple of old swords over his mantelshelf 
 unless he occasionally flesh them on his neighbours ; 
 why, then, would you restrict me to the merely ele- 
 mentary use of my books ? True books were made to 
 be read, but they were made for other, and to me daintier, 
 uses. They were made beautiful in print and page and 
 binding to delight my eye as with a picture, they were 
 VOL, L 161 L 
 
 l7 
 
JULY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 made to fondle, to carry under one's arm, to go to sleep 
 over. Like all human possessions, the older ones are 
 rich in the associations of human handling, the alluvium 
 of the stream of time : in short, beauty and sentiment, 
 and all the subsidiary characteristics which lie like 
 a fine glaze over the mere first uses of things.' In 
 these the book-collector has as much right to dwell as 
 any other connoisseur, but there is one thing he should 
 never forget, that it is all in play, though here Mr. 
 Lang reminds us that most other activities in life are 
 play too : 
 
 ' Prince, all the things that tease and please — 
 
 Fame, hope, wealth, kisses, cheers, and tears — 
 What are they but such toys as these — 
 Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs?' 
 
 We begin with foreign coins, and end in accumulating 
 coins of the realm. Where is the difference? One is 
 a boy's game, and the other is a man's ; but both are 
 games. 
 
 Mr. Lang has wittily said that 'there are literary 
 Anatole reputations in France and England which 
 ' La^Vie ss^™> like the fairies, to be unable to cross 
 Litt^raire.' running water.' M. France, modest man 
 though he be, is evidently not of these. Already he is 
 well known here as, if not the inventor, at least the 
 most distinguished exponent of the personal, the auto- 
 biographical, or the impressionist, form of criticism. It 
 was he who formulated it in the now almost proverbial 
 162 
 
AUG. ANATOLE FRANCE 1892 
 
 dictum that the good critic simply relates the adventures 
 of his soul among masterpieces. Were he quite frank, 
 continued M. France, he would at the outset announce 
 that he proposed speaking of himself — i propos of 
 Shakespeare, Racine, Pascal, or Goethe. Cest une 
 asses belle occasion. 
 
 In a charming preface to his fourth volume of La 
 Vie Litteraire, he discourses further on the same text, 
 the fallacy of the judicial, the impossibility of finality, 
 in aesthetic criticism. It is a castle in the air, he says. 
 Base it, if you will, upon ethics. Where are your 
 ethics ? We have not even a science of sociology ; 
 nay, not even a science of biology. We think we have. 
 But, according to M. France, the achievements of 
 science existed only in the brain of Auguste Comte. 
 When we have a science of biology, that is to say, in 
 some few million years, we may, perhaps, after many more 
 centuries, construct a science of sociology, and then, and 
 then only, may we begin to talk of a science of aesthetics. 
 
 Or, say you base it upon the universal opinion. 
 Certain books there are which the world has agreed 
 upon as classics. To this M. France enjoins, with 
 mournful truth : ' The books which all the world admires 
 are those which nobody examines.' Certain real ap- 
 preciators of them have started the fashion, and the 
 world, in its apish spirit of imitation, follows it. This 
 was fairly obvious. We have only to think what the 
 average Englishman's bluster about Shakespeare 
 amounts to. He takes him on trust, without examina- 
 tion, as he does his other superstitions, as his father and 
 grandfather did before him. M. France gives one or 
 163 
 
AUG. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 two amusing illustrations of the value of such universal 
 opinion. One especially goes home to us. Ossian, he 
 says, when he was believed to be a genuine ancient 
 seemed equal to Homer. Now that we know he was 
 only Macpherson, we despise him. It was the same, 
 too, with the Shakespearean forgeries of W. H. Ireland. 
 Few have the capacity for judging anything absolutely 
 on its own merits, or even with sincerity to their own 
 impressions. 
 
 To be sincere to one's own impressions. How easy 
 it seems, how hard it really is ! To make up one's mind 
 as to what one really feels, the impression itself, rather 
 than the expression of it, is the great difficulty. One 
 may sometimes have thought that these professors of 
 the moi in criticism have adopted their method in 
 mere indolence, or from the incapacity to be judicial. 
 No opinion could be more unjust, for one has only to try 
 to find out how hard, even in a brief criticism, it is to 
 keep fast hold of one's moi, ' k garder notre moi comme 
 un tresor . . . et, fut-on seulement une vaine ombre, 
 ne vendre cette ombre ni k Dieu, ni au diable, ni aux 
 femmes.' This is a quotation from M. France's charm- 
 ing paper on M. Maurice Barres, the high priest of ' La 
 religion du moi, le culte de la personne intime, la contem- 
 plation de soi-meme, le divin egotistne,' to whom M. 
 France prettily says the world is the grain of opium 
 which he smokes in his little silver pipe, the curling 
 smoke therefrom being his dreams. 
 
 But, after all, when one thinks of it, there is nothing 
 fundamentally new about this gospel of the moi in 
 criticism. It is only the formulation of it that is new. 
 164 
 
AUG. ANATOLE FRANCE 1892 
 
 Every critic who has ever written, however he might be 
 shrouded in the sinaitic anonymity of The Quarterly 
 or The Edinburgh could really only speak for himself, 
 however he might pretend to be speaking for ' the soul 
 of the wide world.' Even if he stole his opinions, or 
 trimmed them in deference to prevailing fashion, such 
 theft and such trimming would, after all, be only char- 
 acteristic of his miserable mot. And the really great 
 critics, the critics whose opinions have, oddly enough, 
 come to be in some measure impersonal, wrote as 
 much from their own personal standpoint as ever M. 
 France or M. Lemaitre — Hazlitt, and Lamb, for instance, 
 and even Matthew Arnold, for all his magisterial air. 
 What is new, I repeat, about the impressionist criticism 
 is its formulation. It is, indeed, but one more expres- 
 sion of the democratic spirit. Its battle is not so 
 much against personal authority as abstract authority — 
 such ex cathedra authority as that of The Quarterly 
 Review for example. It attacks the divine right of 
 criticism, as the same spirit has overthrown the divine 
 right of kings. 
 
 ' To thine own self be true,' by all means — supposing 
 you have a self worth being true to. Like so many such 
 purely dramatic admonitions, this of Polonius is con- 
 stantly misapplied. It was meant for Laertes, and it is 
 applied to the whole world — applied loosely to people 
 who had better be true to anybody but themselves. 
 How one is bored, especially in criticism, by people 
 being so conscientiously true to their dull, conceited 
 selves ! There is a certain safety against such in the 
 acknowledged personal criticism. They are soon found 
 165 
 
AUG. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 out. They are not sheltered under the wing of great 
 newspapers. They are personally liable for their own 
 dulness. An incompetent actor is not protected by the 
 reputation of his theatre ; why should a dull writer be 
 saved by the reputation of his paper ? Let every writer 
 stand or fall on his own signature. With that incredible 
 superstition peculiar to us, one often hears people say 
 that criticism would not come with such authority if it 
 were all signed. Well, who cares? Who wants an 
 oracular authority that refuses to reveal its credentials ? 
 Besides, as I have said, that real authority which means 
 the guidance of superior brain will really be strengthened. 
 We shall know our men and measure their authority 
 accordingly. Of course, we shall not follow them 
 blindly, but when disposed to differ with them we 
 shall think twice or thrice before doing so. It is their 
 subject, they have shown themselves so often wise 
 guides, that it will probably be worth our while to listen 
 to them. 
 
 Thus is M. France authoritative in spite of himself. 
 His catholicity is so great, he includes so much, unites 
 so many extremes, has so good a heart, and yet so cool 
 a head. Abreast of all that is most modern he has also 
 the ballast of an old-fashioned wisdom and scholarship. 
 He is a regular development, with roots in the past, no 
 mere forced fruit of the new era. He reads his Bourget 
 avidement^ but when he has finished he turns to his 
 Imitation of Christ, at the page where it opens of itself, 
 and, paradoxically enough, finds a motto for his causerie. 
 'Ah, if M. Bourget's hero, if the young poet Rene Vinci 
 had read each morning, in his room on the Rue Coetlo- 
 166 
 
AUG. ANATOLE FRANCE 1892 
 
 gon, chapter viii. of the Imitation. . . .' ! With all his 
 charm Bourget leaves a taste of dust and asJies in the 
 mouth. That is why M. France turns to his Imitation^ 
 but it is with no affected saintliness. ' We by no means 
 love only those who save us,' he says somewhere. ' On 
 the contrary, we dread being robbed of the pleasure of 
 being lost. The best of us are like Rachel, who would 
 not be comforted.' 
 
 Not the least of his charms are his constant amiability 
 and modesty. In an affectionate testimony to the worth 
 of his old friend and publisher, M. Calmann Levy, lately 
 deceased, he alludes quite touchingly to the encourage- 
 ment he had himself received from the great publisher. 
 It was he only who had conquered his idleness and 
 timidity, he says. He won't hear of his being a critic, 
 he is only a conteur de lettres. ' II y a des contes de 
 fees. S'il y a aussi des contes de lettres, e'en sont Ik 
 plutot.' Then he has so many impressions, and all so 
 sympathetic. Now it is an old historian, some great 
 respectable pillar of the Academy of whose manner 
 M. France has memories, now he is gently chaffing 
 M. Jean Moreas, whom he imagines as a king in ' le 
 pays latin,' with fifty poets at his heels, ' comme un jeune 
 Hom^re conduisant les jeunes homerides,' now it is 
 'Gyp's' last novel, now Madame Bernhardt's 'Cleopitre.' 
 There is no limit to his impressions, no book or theme 
 in which he cannot find something for his sympathy, and 
 yet, all the time, you feel that everything is seen 
 relatively, all is unconsciously classified. His tempera- 
 ment is a bounteous one, with its greater and lesser 
 needs. These he never confuses. If he does not use 
 167 
 
AUG. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 them in Matthew Arnold's judicious fashion, he keeps 
 by him great touchstones. All is more or less good, but 
 some is best. 
 
 The poetic drama, as a form, has always had a fascina- 
 
 „, „ ,, tionfor Mr. Yeats — his first book contained 
 
 IV. B. Yeats: 
 'The Countess many dramatic experiments — but one pro- 
 Kathleen.' biem in the use of it has troubled him as 
 it has others. In much so-called poetic drama the 
 poetry and drama are not one, the poetry is, in fact, 
 unessential ; it does not inhere in the conception, but 
 rather cumbers the action with unwieldy ornament. To 
 bring them both into real union, to regard the necessity 
 of brief and simple speech, which is the law of dramatic 
 action, and yet to gain that impression of intensity and 
 distinction which is the soul of poetry — there's the rub. 
 Of course, the difficulty of achieving this is lessened in 
 so far as one's theme naturally belongs to the realm of 
 fancy, and Mr. Yeats had so much in his favour to start 
 with. Yet with what fine artistic austerity he has refused 
 any indulgence from his theme. How resolutely he 
 seems bent on achieving his effects with the fewest 
 possible strokes. In this respect The Countess Kathleen 
 is a marked advance on The Wanderings of Oisin, in 
 which the poet frankly gave himself up to carousal with 
 his wondrously fecund fancy. The restraint of the drama 
 has evidently been good for Mr. Yeats's muse. All its 
 elemental qualities, its Irish glamour, its deep mysticism, 
 its dream-like imagination, its alluring beauty, are 
 168 
 
SEPT. W. B. YEATS 
 
 preserved, but they are now controlled as well. From 
 whatever point of view we consider it, one is struck 
 with the power with which Mr. Yeats has developed the 
 suggestiveness of his Irish folk-tale. 
 
 Yet it was a fine legend to start with, an eerie variant 
 of the Faust motive in an Irish peasant dress. It is 
 curious to notice how still more impressive a fine con- 
 ception is in a rough material — as the Japanese potters 
 well knew. As types become more universal, though 
 they gain in breadth of appeal, they are apt to lose 
 somewhat in the intensity of it. Mephistopheles is, 
 doubtless, more universal than the two ' goblin merchant 
 men ' who came to buy souls in Mr. Yeats's famine- 
 stricken Irish village, but he is hardly so creepy. There 
 seems, too, something more moving about the loss of a 
 peasant soul than that of a philosopher such as Faust. A 
 philosopher does not excite pity. He has his philosophy. 
 
 But let us briefly outline Mr. Yeats's drama. It opens 
 in the country inn of one Shemus Rua. The stage 
 direction prepares us for wizardry — so much perhaps he 
 has learnt from M. Maeterlinck — ' The Inn of Shemus 
 Rua ; a wood of oak, hazel and quicken trees is seen 
 through the window half hidden in vapour and twilight.' 
 Shemus is out with his cross-bow foraging for food, a 
 heavy famine being on the land and the larder empty. 
 His wife Mary and his son Teig await his coming, op- 
 pressed with twilight fears of the supernatural meaning 
 of the drought. The air seems full of portents, Teig has 
 strange things to tell : 
 
 ' How yon dog bays, 
 And how the grey hen flutters in the coop. 
 
 169 
 
SEPT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Strange things are going up and down the land 
 These famine times. By Tubber-vanach cross-roads 
 A woman met a man with ears spread out, 
 And they moved up and down like wings of bats. 
 ... By Carric-orus churchyard, 
 A herdsman met with one who had no mouth, 
 Nor ears, nor eyes — his face a wall of flesh. 
 He saw him plainly by the moonlight. ' 
 
 Mary, a devout simple woman, growing alarmed as 
 Shemus still tarries, bends before a shrine of the Virgin 
 and prays : 
 
 ' Virgin, 
 Bring Shemus home from the hateful forest ; 
 Save Shemus from the wolves — Shemus is reckless. 
 And save him from the demons of the woods 
 Deluding dim-eyed souls now newly dead, 
 And those alive who have gone crazed with famine. 
 Save him, dear Mary,' 
 
 Shemus at length returns, and throws a dead wolf 
 
 upon the floor. He adds another touch to the hushed 
 
 waiting horror of the famine : 
 
 ' I searched all day : the mice, and rats, and hedgehogs 
 Seem to be dead, and I could hardly hear 
 A wind moving in all the famished woods.' 
 
 Talking of the famine, he grows reckless. ' God and 
 God's Mother nod and sleep,' only Satan is awake. ' He 
 does not nod, nor sleep, nor droop his eyelids.' 
 
 ' I am half-mindful to go pray to him 
 To cover all this table with red gold." 
 
 Two horned owls are seen peering through the 
 
 window, and presently there is a knock at the door, the 
 
 Virgin's shrine falls from the wall, and two merchants 
 
 enter, claiming a night's lodging. They place heavy 
 
 170 
 
SEPT. W. B. YEATS 1892 
 
 bags of gold upon the table. They come buying men's 
 
 souls. Shemus and Teig, fascinated, sell their souls at 
 
 once, and go and spread the news among the peasants. 
 
 But Mary resists and curses them in two of Mr. Yeats's 
 
 finest lines : 
 
 ' You shall at last die like dry leaves, and hang 
 Nailed like dead vermin to the doors of God.' 
 
 Soon peasants are flocking in to sell. The news 
 comes to the lady of the manor, the Lady Kathleen, a 
 pious woman. She bids her steward give out money 
 to save the peasants. It is now a duel between her 
 and the demons. So long as her money lasts they are 
 thwarted, but breaking into her treasury at night, 
 they have all her gold carried away by the fairies — 
 'sheogues,' 'sowlths,' and 'tevishies,' spirits of earth 
 and water, in the distinction of which Mr. Yeats gives 
 us some of the most impressive poetry of the kind in 
 English. To call it faery poetry is too suggestive of 
 mere pretty fancy, yet we have no other word. He 
 has heightened the significance of the country side 
 faerie with the spiritual terror of conception evidently 
 caught from his theosophy. Some of his fairies are 
 simple ' good people,' and some terrible larvae, such as 
 
 the ' tevishies ' : 
 
 ' Lost souls of men, who died 
 In drunken sleep, and by each other's hands. . . . 
 
 Hither, tevishies, 
 Who mourn among the scenery of your sins . . . 
 Turning to animal and reptile forms 
 — The visages of passions. Hither sowlths ; 
 Leave marshes and the reed-encumbered pools, 
 You shapeless fires that once were souls of men. 
 And are a fading wretchedness.' 
 
 171 
 
SEPT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 The wizardry of this scene, in which, horde after 
 horde, the demons thus invoke their various powers, sets 
 one's hair on end. 
 
 Another impressive scene, with an element of Mephi- 
 stophelean humour in it, represents the merchants at 
 the inn, seated at a table covered with parchments and 
 little piles of gold. Shemus and Teig stand at the 
 door, encouraging the people to sell. As each seller 
 comes up to the table, the merchants read aloud from 
 one of the parchments. A woman steps up : 
 
 ' " What price now will you give for mine?" 
 ' ' Ay, ay, 
 Soft, handsome, and still young, — not much, I think, 
 She has a little jar of new love-letters 
 On a high shelf between the pepper pot 
 And wood-cased hour-glass. . . . 
 She hides them from her husband, who buys horses, 
 And is not much at home, you 're almost safe, 
 I give you fifty crowns." ' 
 
 One cautious man comes to offer half his soul, but in 
 souls there is no retail business. Then a poet comes — it 
 might have been Mr. Yeats himself : 
 
 ' Alone in the hushed passion of romance 
 His mind ran all on sheogues, and on tales 
 Of Finian labours and the Red-branch kings.' 
 
 He asks no price, but begs them to take his soul for 
 nought— he is weary of life. But they cannot, for he 
 loves the Countess Kathleen, and, therefore, his soul is 
 hers. Presentlyenters the Countess herself. She has come 
 to sell her soul to buy back those of her people — an offer 
 at which the demons jump, for, after all, there was but 
 small reversionary interest of good in the souls of the 
 172 
 
SEPT. W. B. YEATS 1892 
 
 others, but her soul were indeed ' a precious jewel for 
 
 Satan's crown.' Yet as ever, in fairy tales, the devil is 
 
 cheated of his due. When the Countess dies, and the 
 
 demons, in the forms of owls, wait for her soul, God, 
 
 ' who sees the motive and the deed regards not,' sends 
 
 His angels to 
 
 ' Save her from the demons, 
 Who do not know the deed can never bind.' 
 
 I must have written enough at least to stimulate the 
 reader's interest, he will have got some hint of Mr. 
 Yeats's cunning development of his symbolism, of the 
 rich concreteness of his expression — likewise his Irish 
 inability to write blank verse — but, of course, I can 
 give him little idea of the fine artistic completeness, of 
 the fantasy of the whole impression, or of the strange 
 'keening' undertone, as though it were the breath of 
 Ireland's immemorial sadness that is wafted through the 
 whole. Mr. Yeats looks for the day when Ireland shall 
 have a distinctive literature of her own. Maybe he is a 
 ray of its dawn. Anyhow, he may rest content that one 
 of his wishes will be fulfilled, and that he will 
 
 ' Accounted be 
 True brother of that company 
 Who sang to sweeten Ireland's wrongs.' 
 
 Of his shorter poems two or three are perfect, and 
 all have beauty, but most are obscured by that mysti- 
 cism over which in The Countess Kathleen he has 
 more control. 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 173 
 
OCT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 The Book Beautiful. Marius the Epicurean is pre- 
 H^a//gr/'afe>-; eminently that for many of us. Perhaps 
 ' Marius the no book since Sartor Resartus has been 
 Third Edition read with such a sense of awakening, and 
 Revised. indeed it may be said that it has, in some 
 needed measure, modified the influence of Sartor, with 
 its sublime factory gospel of work. For the imperative 
 ' Do ! ' of Carlyle it substitutes the gentle pleading ' Be ! ' 
 ' Be ye perfect ! ' The culture of the individual in a well- 
 ordered unity, body, soul, and spirit : that is its message. 
 But not a selfish culture. ' He must satisfy, with a kind 
 of sacred equity, he must be very cautious not to be 
 wanting to the claims of others, in their joys and 
 calamities.' That was one of the earliest axioms Marius 
 took with him on his progress from the primitive re- 
 ligion of his fathers, through Epicureanism, to that 
 final mood of his mind in which the careful justice of 
 such an axiom was being deepened by the warmer 
 sentiment of a Christian pity. What that mood quite 
 was we are left a little in doubt — as how else could 
 it be in regard to a complex being such as Marius? 
 His experience of life had been too various, too human- 
 ising, for him to become the bondsman of any mere 
 dogma ; though in the formulae of Christianity, the 
 earlier, unmonastic Christianity, he had, perhaps, come 
 nearest to finding the formulce which most expressed 
 his own gentle individuality — if formula must be ! 
 
 Some people will have nothing of Mr. Pater. One 
 has heard them say that he is all manner and no 
 matter. A strange doctrine, for certainly it seemed to 
 174 
 
OCT. WALTER PATER 1892 
 
 some of us, when first we read Marius with glowing 
 heart, that it was full indeed of burning matters. It 
 seemed that no ' spiritual pastor ' had so harmonised the 
 claims of body and soul, so wondrously captured for 
 us those fine elusive moods of which we are hardly 
 aware till we recognise them in another ; and that no 
 one had written more movingly of friendship, of good- 
 ness, of beauty, or of death — great matters as we 
 thought. It is true that Mr. Pater's manner is occasion- 
 ally a little too priestlike in its extreme, its maiden-like 
 fastidiousness. But even so, such fastidiousness comes 
 but of his sincerity towards his meaning. It is instruc- 
 tive to remember what he writes of Flavian : ' His 
 dilettantism, his assiduous preoccupation with what 
 might seem but the details of mere form or manner, 
 was, after all, bent upon the function of bringing to the 
 surface, sincerely, and in their integrity, certain strong 
 personal intuitions, certain visions or apprehensions of 
 things as being, with important results, in this way 
 rather than that.' To this sincerity the revisions in the 
 present edition bear almost painful witness. One had 
 looked forward to them with some eagerness, for one 
 might well feel that Mr. Pater could hardly have 
 • completely revised ' his 'golden book' without reveal- 
 ing in the process some new secrets of perfection. I 
 proposed to myself the task of collating the two versions ; 
 but that is a task for leisure, and my leisure has not 
 been equal to it, nor, I must add, my austerity. For 
 the task soon began to resemble the numbering of the 
 golden hairs on a beloved head. One kept continually 
 forgetting the collation to luxuriate in the pleasure of 
 175 
 
OCT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 mere reading. So presently I fell to lazily dipping and 
 comparing here and there, at various well-remembered 
 pages. Besides, devotion even to a master must be 
 kept within bounds, if we are not to make him and our- 
 selves ludicrous ; to register his every trivial change in 
 prosody or punctuation, after the manner of some 
 editors, * were,' as Polonius wisely said, ' nothing but to 
 waste night, day, and time.' 
 
 And so far as I have examined, the majority of 
 Mr. Pater's emendations are merely matters of prosody 
 and punctuation, though such as they are, they are 
 numberless. We are sometimes sententiously reminded 
 that, though we seem the same person as we did seven 
 years ago, there is actually not a molecule of us which 
 has not been replaced. Was it not Cowley who in- 
 geniously excused his inconstancy on this Heraclitean 
 principle, though he found it convenient to say five 
 years ? 
 
 ' My Members, then, the Father Members were, 
 From whence These take their birth, which now are here, 
 If, then, this Body love what th' other did, 
 'Twere Incest, which by Nature is forbid. ' 
 
 Such a complete minute change of texture seems to have 
 overtaken Mr. Pater's Marius since its first publication 
 in 1885 — exactly, you will remark, seven years ago. Com- 
 paring the old text with the present, one is reminded of 
 an ant-hill, the busy units of which are changing every 
 moment, but the total impression to the eye remaining 
 the same. One recalls, too, that passage in Mr. Pater's 
 exposition of the Heraclitean doctrine of the eternal 
 flux : ' It was as if, recognising perpetual motion as the 
 176 
 
OCT. WALTER PATER 1892 
 
 law of Nature, Marius identified his own way of life 
 cordially with it, throwing himself into the stream, as 
 we say : he, too, must maintain a harmony with that 
 soul of motion in things, by a constantly renewed 
 mobility of character.' Strange dilemma of the artist, 
 that while seeking perfection even his ideal of perfection 
 must be changing. 
 
 On every page one finds minute changes in punctua- 
 tion. Colons replace semi-colons, commas fall out 
 altogether, and Mr. Pater seems to have endeavoured 
 to cure himself of his fondness for the parenthetic dash. 
 With none of his disciples' contempt for the unlearned 
 reader, he has translated one or two Latin quotations 
 which had escaped translation in the other editions — 
 not obviously, as to hurt the susceptibilities of that 
 unlearned reader, but by a graceful repetition, as though 
 merely for emphasis. There is sometimes quite a 
 homely touch in Mr. Pater's writing, very winning ; and 
 one may refer here to his scrupulous care, when possible, 
 to express his thought in simple English. He never 
 uses a word foreign to the language, unless the idea is 
 foreign also. The reader will remember that in one or 
 two instances the chapter headings were simply two or 
 three lines from Pliny, the Vulgate, and in one case a 
 line from Rousseau. These Mr. Pater has now retained 
 as mottoes, but in most cases replaced them as chapter- 
 headings by EngUsh titles — not always successful. In 
 one case, at least, he would seem to have carried his 
 complacency towards the merely English reader to a 
 somewhat grotesque result ; for, surely, ' Change of Air ' 
 is an oddly undignified, unsuggestive title for the beauti- 
 
 VOL. I. 177 M 
 
OCT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 ful chapter describing Marius's sojourn at the tenaple of 
 ^sculapius among the hills. How much more fit in every 
 way was the ' Dilexi decorem domus tuae ' ; and few 
 readers who care to read Mr. Pater at all are so unlearned 
 as not now and again to appreciate the beauty, the deco- 
 rative beauty, of a sprig of Latin such as that. Chap. iv. 
 of part i. is now described as ' The Tree of Knowledge,' 
 and chapter vii. appears as ' A Pagan End ' instead of 
 the original and more impressive title of ' Pagan Death.' 
 In part ii., the journey to Rome (chap, x.) is hardly 
 distinctly suggested by 'On the Way.' In part iii., 
 there are two changes for the better, chap. xvii. is now 
 inscribed ' Beata Urbs,' instead of merely bearing the 
 quotation ' Many Prophets and Kings,' etc., and chap, xix., 
 'The Will as Vision.' In part iv. chap, xxiii., is 
 now entitled ' Divine Service,' and chap, xxvi., ' The 
 Martyrs.' In all the instances except ' Change of Air' 
 and ' On the Way ' the emendations have been im- 
 provements. Perhaps they were really too trifling to 
 record; but, after all, as the old story goes, it is the 
 trifles that make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. 
 
 It is, however, with more anxious expectancy that one 
 turns to certain passages in the text, passages which to 
 some of us, coming as that copy of Apuleius came to 
 the young Flavian, in a ' fortunate ' moment, have been 
 real watchwords of our lives, as many a line in Browning 
 or Carlyle has been. Such to me were : ' He must be 
 very cautious not to be wanting to the claims of others, 
 in their joys and calamities ' ; ' not pleasure, but fulness, 
 completeness of life generally ' ; ' to be absolutely virgin 
 towards a direct and concrete experience ' ; and lastly, 
 178 
 
OCT. WALTER PATER 1892 
 
 towards the close of the wonderful chapter on the 
 gladiatorial games : ' Yes ! what was wanting was the 
 heart that would make it impossible to witness all this ; 
 and the future would be with the forces that could 
 beget a heart like that. His favourite philosophy had 
 said, Trust the eye : strive to be right always re- 
 garding the concrete experience : Never falsify your 
 impressions. And its sanction had been at least effec- 
 tive here, in saying. It is what I may not see ! Surely, 
 evil was a real thing ; and the wise man wanting in the 
 sense of it, where not to have been, by instinctive 
 election, on the right side, was to have failed in life.' 
 
 One goes to the new edition, prepared to resent any 
 changes in such passages as these, in the same spirit in 
 which we resent 'the revised version' of any great 
 familiar thing. We feel that any essential change must 
 be impossible, and all the more resent any merely 
 vexatious change of phrase, clashing as it does with 
 our old sacred familiarity. In everyone of the passages 
 cited, Mr, Pater, in some such vexatious way, offends 
 against our cherished remembrance of his words. In 
 no instance does there seem to have been any real need 
 of alteration, and except in the case of ' his favourite 
 philosophy,' in the last passage, for 'his chosen philo- 
 sophy' there is nothing characteristic in the changes. 
 In the first sentence we have for ' not to be wanting to ' 
 ' lest he be found wanting to,' and ' not pleasure, but a 
 general completeness of life' is the new and certainly 
 closer form of the second aphorism, though one misses 
 the effect of the word 'fulness.' But the third, most 
 helpful, phrase is now rendered unquotable by its being 
 179 
 
OCT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 made to depend on the conclusion of another sentence : 
 '. . . the impressions of an experience, concrete and 
 direct, to be absolutely virgin towards such experience 
 . . .' There is certainly no gain here, but a distinct 
 loss of force. 
 
 If the examples cited may be taken as fairly repre- 
 sentative of Mr. Pater's revisions, one may feel com- 
 fortable that Marius remains much as it was, though 
 one has all the more reason to fear the possibility of 
 Mr. Pater's, so to say, being overcome by a grammatical 
 affection of the nerves, which, if encouraged, will not 
 allow either him or his readers any peace. Had changes 
 been necessary to bring his text nearer to his meaning, 
 one must have borne them ; but that sentence after 
 sentence should be pulled about to satisfy," not the 
 instinct of expression, but a morbid desire of punctua- 
 tion, is not bearable. Yet, after all, however many 
 septennial changes overtake Marius, it cannot well be 
 robbed of its high beauty, of its deep humanity. It will 
 still remain one of the most convincing expressions of 
 the inherent priesthood of man, whatever be the new 
 last word of presumptuous biologists, or its mistaken 
 application by sensualists, who, as of old, take the name 
 of Epicurus in vain, and who in spite of its central 
 doctrine, 'not pleasure, but a general completeness of 
 life,' dare to quote its authority for a life of foolish in- 
 completeness, a mere cultivation of certain detached 
 appetites. 
 
 Mr. Pater has not failed to impress his reader with 
 that danger of misapplication. Who can ever forget the 
 closing passage in ' The Renaissance ' : ' To burn always 
 180 
 
OCT. ARTHUR SYMONS 1892 
 
 with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, 
 is success in life ' ? But again : ' Only be sure it is 
 passion — that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, 
 multiplied consciousness.' Only be sure it is passion / 
 It is a haunting cry, hard to forget ; and only those who 
 have forgotten it have read Mr. Pater to their undoing. 
 
 3232 
 
 TT 
 
 'Paris, May, 1892.' Thus Mr. Symons dates his 
 Arthur dedication to a lady of his acquaintance. 
 Symons: That mere superscription means much. 
 ' Silhouettes.' vje^g^ symbolically there is in it a world 
 of pathos. There is always pathos when any one yearns 
 towards a particular class of life, or centre, as it seems, 
 of ' tone,' with a feeling that there is the ideal state, to be 
 outside of which is to be ' provincial,' borne, and other 
 dreadful things. It is the dairymaid's superstition 
 the 'gentleman,' the parvenu's of the 'upper ten,' the 
 outcast's of 'society.' What 'Budmouth' in Mr. Hardy's 
 Return of the Native was to Eustacia Vye, Paris is 
 to Mr. Symons and many young men of the same 
 school. Had Mr. Symons lived earlier he would 
 doubtless have dated his preface from Alexandria. To 
 be ' in the movement ' at all costs, in contradistinction to 
 being ' of the centre,' is the aim of these ardent young 
 men. Looking through Mr. Symons's 'contents' his 
 titles prove no less characteristic : ' Pastel,' ' Morbidezza,' 
 ' Maquillage," Nocturne,' 'The Absinthe Drinker,' 'From 
 Paul Verlaine,' But, for all that, he is much simpler 
 iSi 
 
OCT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 than he supposes, and there are in his book many 
 delicate and beautiful things. His poems, indeed, look 
 much slighter than they are. Fragile they seem, and 
 often are, but sometimes it is with the seeming fragility 
 of wrought iron. They are full of careful observation, 
 and a strenuous art which has measured its form by its 
 matter to a word. To this more self-conscious art, they 
 sometimes add the unbidden charms of passion and 
 song. In this poem of 'Emmy' we have also an un- 
 wonted touch of pity : 
 
 • Emmy's exquisite youth, and her virginal air, 
 
 Eyes and teeth in the flash of a musical smile, 
 Come to me out of the past, and I see her there 
 As I saw her once for a while. 
 
 Emmy's laughter rings in my ears, as bright, 
 Fresh, and sweet as the voice of a mountain brook ; 
 
 And still I hear her telling us tales that night 
 Out of Boccaccio's book. 
 
 There, in the midst of the villainous dancing-hal 
 
 Leaning across the table over the beer, 
 While the music maddened the whirling skirts of the ball, 
 
 As the midnight hour drew near. 
 
 There with the women, haggard, painted and old, 
 One fresh bud in a garland withered and stale. 
 
 She, with her innocent voice and her clear eyes, told 
 Tale after shameless tale. 
 
 And ever the witching smile, to her face beguiled. 
 Paused and broadened, and broke in a ripple of fun, 
 
 And the soul of a child looked out of the eyes of a child, 
 Or ever the tale was done. 
 
 O my child, who wronged you first, and began 
 First the dance of death that you dance so well ? 
 
 Soul for soul : and I think the soul of a man 
 Shall answer for yours in hell.' 
 182 
 
OCT. GEORGE MEREDITH 1892 
 
 Let us quote another impression with a fresher atmo- 
 sphere : 
 
 ' Night, and the down by the sea 
 
 And the veil of rain on the down : 
 And she came through the mist and the rain to me 
 From the safe warm lights of the town. 
 
 The rain shone in her hair, 
 
 And her face gleamed in the rain : 
 And only the night and the rain were there 
 
 As she came to me out of the rain.' 
 
 These poems have both strength and charm. Many 
 other poems prove that Mr. Symons has a genuine gift 
 of impressionism. Mr. Whistler and M. Verlaine are 
 evidently the dominant influences with him at present, 
 as Browning, and perhaps Mr. Meredith, were in his 
 first book. Silhouettes is a marked artistic advance on 
 Night and Days, but Mr. Symons's next volume will 
 be more crucial. It will be all the better if he will let 
 himself go a little more, and not keep so self-conscious 
 an eye upon his art, which by this time may safely be 
 trusted to act instinctively. 
 
 The appeal of Mr. Meredith's later poetry is, I fear, 
 
 George entirely to the faithful. Coming to a 
 
 Meredith: ^^^ volume of his poems they know 
 
 ' The Empty 
 
 Purse,' etc. exactly what to expect, exactly what not 
 
 to expect. The casual reader frets and fumes. These 
 
 are not poems. They are simply 'chaos illuminated 
 
 by flashes of lightning.' Exactly. That is all the 
 
 183 
 
OCT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 experienced Meredithian expects, and consequently he 
 reads contentedly, picking up what crumbs he may 
 from the master's table. Doubtless he often sighs for 
 the time when the poet was content with simple beauty, 
 as in Love in the Valley, and the comparatively 
 plain but majestic English of Modern Love ; but that 
 seems no reason for his rejecting whatever of strength 
 and beauty is still vouchsafed to him. Like Vivien, he 
 will not throw away his whole apple because of a few 
 pitted specks. And he, at least, well knows that he has 
 his reward. He finds it in such a passage as this, 
 which is surely a beautiful description of childhood — the 
 childhood, in this case, of the average young British 
 egoist : 
 
 ' There the young chief of the animals wore 
 A likeness to heavenly hosts, unaware 
 Of his love of himself ; with the hours that leap. 
 In the dingle away from the rutted highroad, 
 Around him the earliest throstle and merle, 
 Our human smile between milk and sleep. 
 
 Effervescent of Nature he crowed. 
 Fair was that season ; furl over furl 
 The banners of blossom ; a dancing floor 
 This earth ; very angels the clouds ; and fair 
 Thou on the tablets of forehead and breast : 
 Careless, a centre of vigilant care. 
 Thy mother kisses an infant curl. 
 The room of the toys was a boundless nest, 
 
 A kingdom the field of the games, 
 
 Till entered the craving for more, 
 
 And the worshipped small body had aims.' 
 
 There is scarcely any sign in this passage of that strange 
 
 literary disease, a sort of writer's cramp, which has 
 
 overtaken Mr. Meredith, in a strangely similar form 
 
 184 
 
OCT. GEORGE MEREDITH 1892 
 
 to that in which it also overtook Browning. It is not 
 merely a result of grammatical compression. It is the 
 more compound expression of endless metaphor. Both 
 in Browning, and Mr. Meredith, but especially in Mr. 
 Meredith, the fancy — or should we say the imagination ? 
 for the imagery has more of the organic nature of 
 imagination — has passed beyond the control of the 
 writers. It is no longer possible for them to see any- 
 thing simply as it is, but only in some fantastic image 
 of itself. Almost every word is charged with some 
 such metaphorical allusion, image treads upon image, 
 without the least regard for proportion, and grammatical 
 idiosyncrasies adding to the confusion, what wonder 
 that the casual reader faints by the way? Here is a 
 passage taken at random : 
 
 ' He cancelled the ravaging Plague, 
 With the roll of his fat off the cliff. 
 Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink, 
 Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague 
 
 And catches the not too pink, 
 Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause 
 Is the cause of community. Iterate, 
 Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite : 
 Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff : . . . ' 
 
 It is, perhaps, hardly fair to quote such a passage 
 without context, though with context it is but little 
 clearer. It is certainly not worth while to minutely 
 elucidate it, though it will be well for a moment to refer 
 back to the antecedent of the first two lines, Mr. 
 Meredith describes this poem of 'The Empty Purse' 
 as * A Sermon to our later Prodigal Son,' his central ide 
 185 
 
OCT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 being that not till the wealth with which ' grandmotherly 
 laws,' indulge our aristocratic youth 
 
 ' In the days of their hungers impure ; 
 To furnish them beak and claws, 
 And make them a banquet's lure,' 
 
 not till that wealth is spent, and they are brought face 
 to face with the bare facts of life, with ' Earth ' — Mr. 
 Meredith's constant lesson — have they any chance of 
 leading sane and useful existences : 
 
 ' Strike Earth, 
 Antaeus, young giant, whom fortune trips ! 
 And thou com'st on a saving fact, 
 To nourish thy planted worth. ' 
 
 ' And think of thy privilege : supple with youth. 
 
 To have sight of the headlong swine. 
 
 Once fouling thee, jumping the dips ! 
 
 As the coin of thy purse poured out : 
 
 An animal's hoUday past : , . . 
 Rubbing shoulder to shoulder, as only the book 
 Of the world can be read, by necessity urged. 
 For witness, what blinkers are they who look 
 From the state of the prince or the millionaire ! 
 
 They see but the fish they attract, 
 
 The hungers on them converged. . . .' 
 
 The reader will now have some inkling what meaning 
 to attach to 'the roll of his fat off the cliff.' 'The 
 Empty Purse' is briefly a sermon against Mammon — 
 full of Mr. Meredith's radiant radicalism, his belief in 
 brain, his faith in 'Earth,' in expression frequently 
 obscure, but lit up by many a vivid, even lovely line, 
 and, occasionally, passage. Looking into the future, 
 186 
 
OCT. GEORGE MEREDITH 1892 
 
 Mr. Meredith, with undaunted faith, thus beautifully 
 
 prophesies : 
 
 ' A morn beyond mornings, beyond all reach 
 Of emotional arms at the stretch to enfold : 
 A firmament passing our visible blue. 
 To those having nought to reflect it, 'tis nought ; 
 To those who are misty, 'tis mist on the beach 
 From the billow withdrawing ; to those who see 
 
 Earth, our mother, in thought, 
 
 Her spirit it is, our key.' 
 
 Of the many epigrams of thought and of beauty with 
 
 which the poem abounds, here are a few taken at 
 
 random : 
 
 ' He strutted, a cock, he bellowed, a bull. 
 He rolled him, a dog, in dirt.' 
 
 ' There are giants to slay, and they call for their Jack.' 
 
 ' . . . a nursery Past ! ' 
 
 ' May brain democratic be king of the host ! ' 
 
 ' A Conservative youth ! who the cream-bowl skimmed, 
 Desiring affairs to be left as they are." 
 
 ' Peace, 
 Our lullaby word for decay.' 
 
 ' There are those whom we push from the path with respect. 
 Bow to that elder ... 
 
 In his day he was not all wrong. 
 Unto some foundered zenith he strove, and was wrecked. 
 He scrambled to shore with a worship of shore.' 
 
 ' 'Tis known how the permanent never is writ 
 In blood of the passions.' 
 
 ' I can hear a faint crow 
 Of the cock of fresh mornings, far, far, yet distinct.' 
 
 ' Keep the young generations in hail, 
 And bequeath them no tumbled house ! ' 
 
 187 
 
OCT. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Surely, if the book contained nothing more than 
 these phrases, it were worth sifting ! And there is 
 one more of fine significance which we must not miss 
 — Mr. Meredith's symbolical test of new wisdom : 
 
 ' Is it accepted of Song ? 
 Does it sound to the mind through the ear, 
 Right sober, pure sane ? has it disciplined feet ? 
 
 Thou wilt find it a test severe ; 
 
 Unerring whatever the theme. 
 Rings it for Reason a melody clear. ..." 
 
 The more one ponders this test the more suggestive 
 it becomes — by no means is it merely fantastical, 
 though, in the deepest sense, it has a touch of mys- 
 ticism. There are several other poems in the volume 
 on which I should like to have dwelt — especially the 
 touching ode to 'Youth in Memory,' fuller of 'simple 
 beauty' than any poem in the volume, especially rich 
 in those lovely descriptions of nature in which Mr, 
 Meredith has no rival : 
 
 ' Despite our feeble hold on this green home, 
 And the vast outer strangeness void of dome.' 
 
 ' . . . the arrowy eagle of the height, 
 Becomes the little bird that hops to feed,' 
 
 are lines descriptive of age with a very moving pathos. 
 But, of course, Mr. Meredith's philosophy of age is 
 as robust as his philosophy of everything. Accept 
 the conditions, and the compensations are always 
 ready — is his constant lesson. And so to age. Be 
 content to be old, ape no mere mockery of youth, 
 live in your children, and in the thought that you 
 188 
 
NOV. TENNYSON 1892 
 
 are 'one step above the animal,' — for such is Mr. 
 Meredith's idea of the evolutionary value of living. 
 
 One opens The Death of CEnone, Akbar's Dream and 
 
 Lord Tennyson: ^^^^^ Poems not SO much with a feeling 
 
 'The Death of curiosity as of reverence. The harvest 
 
 none, j^ done and the summer is ended, and 
 the reaper is gone home. His barns are full, and 
 these are but gleanings which we shall cherish, be 
 they rich or scanty. A first glance into this last of 
 the familiar green books — or the last but one, for un- 
 published manuscripts, one hears, still remain — tells us 
 that the poet retained to the end his art of happy 
 dedication. One has always turned with peculiar ex- 
 pectation to those familiar little prefatory confidences — 
 to the reader, it seemed, as well as to the poet's friend 
 — in which he gave us the fleeting glimpses of a self 
 at other times so 'occult, withdrawn.' One thinks 
 especially of that to 'Old Fitz.' Here is the last 
 ■we shall read, entitled 'June Bracken and Heather. 
 To ': 
 
 ' There on the top of the down, 
 
 The wild heather round me and over me June's high blue, 
 When I look'd at the bracken so bright and the heather so 
 brown, 
 
 1 thought to myself I would offer this book to you, 
 This, and my love together. 
 
 To you that are seventy-seven, 
 
 With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven. 
 
 And a fancy as summer-new 
 
 As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather." 
 
 189 
 
NOV. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 *With a faith as clear as the heights of the June- 
 blue heaven ' ! How significant is it that our greatest 
 poets, as they have one by one recently taken leave 
 of us, have ' thundered the brave, irresistible message ' 
 — Browning, Whitman, and now Tennyson. By this 
 time everybody knows 'The Silent Voices' by heart, 
 especially those who heard it in the Abbey. I never 
 expect to experience' a thrill more solemn than that 
 which passed through me as the first words broke 
 from the choir : 
 
 ' When the dumb Hour, clothed in black, 
 Brings the Dreams about my bed, 
 Call me not so often back. 
 Silent Voices of the dead. 
 Toward the lowland ways behind me. 
 And the sunlight that is gone ! 
 Call me rather, silent voices, 
 Forward to the starry track 
 Glimmering up the heights beyond me 
 On, and always on ! ' 
 
 The secret of Tennyson's powerful charm often seems 
 discoverable, but the simple magic of these few solemn 
 lines eludes one completely. And it seems to me that 
 fine as is the 'Crossing the Bar,' 'The Silent Voices' 
 must be pronounced still finer. In one important par- 
 ticular, at least, it is superior. Its imagery is more 
 universal. ' Crossing the Bar ' was just a little marred 
 by conventional symbolism, but there is nothing in 
 'The Silent Voices' which does not apply alike to 
 ' pagan ' and Christian. 
 
 Still one other message of faith is to be found in 
 the last poem in the volume, — ' God and the Universe ' : 
 190 
 
NOV. AUSTIN DOBSON 1892 
 
 ' Will my tiny spark of being wholly vanish in your deeps and 
 heights ? 
 
 Must my day be dark by reason, O ye Heavens, of your bound- 
 less nights, 
 
 Rush of Suns, and roll of systems, and your fiery clash of 
 meteorites ? 
 
 "Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human 
 
 state. 
 Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone 
 
 is great, 
 Nor the myriad world, His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the 
 
 Gate.'" 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 One may regard Mr. Dobson's Eighteenth Century 
 
 Vignettes as prose studies for his Old 
 Austin Dob son : ,, „ 
 
 ' Eighteenth vvorld Idylls. Therein we gam some 
 
 Century idea of how much reading, how intimate 
 Vignettes.' . . , r ■,-,■, ^ 
 
 an acquamtance with fact, is needed before 
 
 the poem, the blossom of study, is born. Mr. Dobson 
 
 is the inspired singer of Ijiat golden age which is ever 
 
 either behind us or elusively ahead. For some it was 
 
 in Greece, for some it existed only in the * spacious 
 
 days,' for Mr. Morris it is ' East of the Sun and West 
 
 of the Moon,' for Mr. Dobson it embraces the reigns of 
 
 Queen Anne and the earlier Georges. But before Mr. 
 
 Dobson could be the singer of his dream-world, he 
 
 had to construct it. The materials lay all about, but 
 
 all unbuilt. Of these materials his charming volume 
 
 of essays gives us many a glimpse. Some of the 
 
 titles will best suggest the contents — ' Prior's " Kitty," ' 
 
 'Fielding's "Voyage to Lisbon,"' 'A Garret in Gough 
 
 191 
 
NOV. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 Square,' ' An old London Bookseller,' ' Gray's Library,' 
 'Goldsmith's Library,' 'A Day at Strawberry Hill,' 
 'Old Vauxhall Gardens.' On these and many other 
 suggestive themes Mr. Dobson gossips in his pleasant, 
 allusive, vivid, and slyly humorous style, in which many 
 a phrase quaintly recalls the polished age he loves so 
 well. What would one not give to know anything so 
 thoroughlyas Mr. Dobson knows the eighteenth century ? 
 
 Professor Minto is evidently of opinion that a good 
 
 William Bell editor should be seen and not heard. He 
 
 ^'^°^^ ' is most parsimonious of himself all through 
 
 Minto's ^ r y< J 7 • r 
 
 ' Life.' the two fine volumes of Autobtographical 
 Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott. Only now and 
 again in the still small voice of a footnote are we aware 
 of his overruling providence, and in the modest conclud- 
 ing chapter, narrating those final incidents which it is 
 given to no autobiographer to record for himself. 
 
 In reading such a book of reminiscences one is apt 
 — a little cruelly, don't you think? — to dwell most on 
 the relations of the autobiographer with men more 
 famous or notorious than himself. We welcome him 
 for his reflected light, and do not care to see if he 
 has any attractive light of his own. In the case of 
 Bell Scott we are apt to say at once, ' Rossetti, Swin- 
 burne, P.R.B.,' to look up in the index all the refer- 
 ences to such names and matters, and we are perhaps 
 almost inclined to resent any mere talk about himself 
 as impertinent. Meanwhile one can imagine the poor 
 192 
 
NOV. WILLIAM BELL SCOTT 1892 
 
 departed soul hanging over this and that reader 
 hoping for some sympathetic sign that his personality, 
 his story, has met with that recognition which in its 
 fulness life, maybe, for various reasons denied. Can 
 you not imagine the thin flame sorrowfully, and, 
 maybe, bitterly, withdrawing itself, finding the reader 
 with no care for him ? To have seen Shelley plain 
 is interesting, yet after all, it hardly serves the pur- 
 pose of a long life. To be valued only for that is 
 like being read for one's quotations. 
 
 However, one perhaps exaggerates the danger in the 
 case of Bell Scott. At any rate, he was no mere hanger- 
 on to a circle. One rejoices with him to read that it 
 was the mountain that came to Mohammed in his case. 
 In other words, it was the young, ardent Rossetti who 
 first sought him, having been attracted by certain of his 
 poems. Dated from 50 Charlotte Street, Portland Place, 
 Rossetti's first letter to him ran : 
 
 ' A few years ago I met for the first time (in a publication called 
 the Story Teller) with your two poems ' ' Rosabell " and ' ' A Dream 
 of Love." So beautiful, so original did they appear to me, that I 
 assure you I could think of little else for several days, and I 
 became possessed by quite a troublesome anxiety to know what 
 else you had written, and where it was to be found.' 
 
 The letter goes on to describe fruitless searches at the 
 British Museum, and ends in an ecstatic strain on 
 having at last discovered Scott through the publication 
 of his mystic poem, ' The Year of the World.' Soon 
 we find Rossetti sending a little batch of manuscript 
 poems entitled ' Songs of the Art- Catholic,' that signi- 
 ficant title covering no less poems than the 'Blessed 
 Damozel,' and 'My Sister's Sleep.' Thus commenced 
 VOL. I. 193 N 
 
NOV. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 a friendship which was to continue warm and fast till 
 Rossetti's death. 
 
 In reference to the poem of ' Rosabell,' mentioned in 
 Rossetti's letter, I remember seeing in Bell Scott's copy 
 of Mr. Hall Caine's Recollections of Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti, a note against the account of ' Jenny ' to this 
 effect : * Written after reading my " Rosabell." ' Scott 
 can hardly have meant more than that the theme of 
 Rossetti's poem had been hinted to him by ' Rosabell ' — 
 as it might appear was also his early picture, ' Found ' 
 (that in which a country girl is found asleep against a 
 wall in the town by her rustic lover). The only resem- 
 blance between the two poems is the general realism of 
 treatment. Scott's contains fine things, and, like all his 
 poetry, has a certain overshadowing of power, but it is 
 too long and too loosely constructed. It has not the 
 dramatic selectiveness, or the vivid closeness of phrase, 
 which characterises 'Jenny'; but, all the same, such 
 a picture as that of Rosabell at the threshold of the 
 tavern standing fascinated by the innocent 'ring-a- roses' 
 songs of a group of children : 
 
 ' She heard them to the end, she stood 
 As she were dead while still they sang ; 
 Then ran among them with a shriek 
 And cursed their innocence.' 
 
 Such a picture lives with one, as live such lines as : 
 
 ' And hearts as innocent as hers 
 As blindly shall succeed, shall take 
 Leap after leap into the dark, 
 Blaspheming soul and sense at once, 
 And every lamp on every street 
 Shall light their wet feet down to death.' 
 
 194 
 
NOV. WILLIAM BELL SCOTT 1892 
 
 Bell Scott seems to have imputed that touch of artistic 
 frustration one feels in his work to the too dominant 
 influence of Blake, a copy of whose illustrations to 
 Blair's Grave, pored over when a child, unduly stimu- 
 lated all his life that mysticism which was a somewhat 
 disproportionate element of his nature. In an interest- 
 ing chapter on the curious psychological impressions of 
 his childhood, he has a page on the immoderate cult 
 of Blake, whom, though he himself did much towards 
 his elevation, he feels has been 'by too liberal praise, 
 both as poet and painter, as much over-estimated as he 
 was formerly neglected.' 
 
 Common sense, indeed, was evidently one of Bell 
 Scott's precious qualities ; for although he entered heart 
 and soul into the vital aspirations of the pre-Raphaelites, 
 he had nothing but ridicule for some of their absurdities, 
 as, for example, when he found Mr. Madox Brown's 
 drawing class sat down to sketch, not from any instruc- 
 tive model, but to copy with minute accuracy a few 
 wood-shavings ! He gives an account of a little parley 
 with Mr. Ruskin over a similar point, when that eccentric 
 prophet was insisting that drawings should be made by 
 finishing inch by inch as one went along, all preliminary 
 general sketch being forbidden — palpable nonsense as 
 it seemed to Bell Scott, whom, as a representative of 
 the Government schools, Mr. Ruskin had somewhat 
 loftily ignored. 
 
 An incidental chapter of much interest is the account 
 
 of Thomas Dixon, the Sunderland cork-cutter, to whom 
 
 Mr. Ruskin wrote his Time and Tide. It was through 
 
 his agency also that Whitman's Leaves of Grass first 
 
 19s 
 
NOV. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 won an English audience. No story of the vicissitudes 
 of books is more curious : 
 
 'A travelling bookseller, who had been in America, and been 
 all through the war with Whitman, had brought over a number of 
 copies of the first edition, an eccentric man of repubhcan prin- 
 ciples and very hard-up. In America, the book being ignored by 
 all booksellers, who declined at first even to lay it on their counters, 
 he had got a quantity of copies and was now trying to sell them 
 at Sunderland by Dutch auction. Thomas Dixon, my constant 
 friend, a perceptive man and a public-spirited, though then only 
 a working cork-cutter, sent the book to me as a curiosity. 
 Instantly I perceived the advent of a new poet, a new Americanism, 
 and a new teacher, and I invested in several copies. The one I 
 sent to W. M. R[ossetti] was the cause of his editing the English 
 edition, which raised Whitman into a celebrity.' 
 
 Another incidental chapter of much interest is that on 
 'The Rising Generation in Poetry,' 1875, giving us a 
 characteristic glimpse of the precocity of a poet then 
 known as Mr. ' E. W. Gosse,' glimpses too of O'Shaugh- 
 nessy and Messrs. Marzials and John Payne, including 
 too an interesting account of Mr. Nettleship's symbolical 
 designs, which had evidently much impressed Scott, 
 but, of course, the amount of piquant latter-day gossip 
 in Bell Scott's volumes is endless. These scattered 
 notes can give little idea of its interest, nor any 
 fitting idea of the man whose strong and sympathetic 
 individuality made him a centre of attraction for so 
 many of the makers of modern art. 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 196 
 
NOV. THE BARD OF THE DIMBOVITZA 1892 
 
 These Roumanian folk-songs are indeed what ' Carmen 
 
 ' Th B d Sy^^^' claims for them — 'a real treasure 
 
 of the trove, a valuable addition to the literature 
 
 Dimbovitza ' : of the world.' It is as though a phial of 
 
 enes. ^^^ world's first precious elixir of poetry, 
 
 a draught of ' Aganippe well,' a little pot of the honey of 
 
 Hybla, the original earth-sweetness, has been preserved 
 
 through the ages, and is suddenly unsealed for us. 
 
 From the first page to the last one is overcome with 
 
 a fragrant sense of vivid new impressions. Nothing 
 
 could be simpler than the symbolism, yet nothing more 
 
 original than its various passionate combinations. The 
 
 themes are the old, yet ever-resonant, themes of love 
 
 and death, on which we are still playing pretty and 
 
 subtle variations, but with Httle hope of striking again 
 
 the deep, simple chords. Which of our poets could 
 
 pluck out the heart of his theme in lines of such 
 
 simplicity as these, the anguished cry of a barren 
 
 woman : 
 
 ' I am she, that hath borne no children ; 
 Yet there is no one hath cursed me, I look the same as the 
 
 others. 
 But the nests pity me even ; 
 The sun, the mother of stars, hath compassion upon me, and 
 
 saith : 
 ' ' O childless woman ! what dost thou with all the days I make 
 
 bright?" 
 Mine ear is full of the murtmir of rocking cradles. 
 "For a single cradle," saith Nature, " I would give every one of 
 
 my graves." ' 
 
 The italics are mine. Was hopeless longing ever put 
 197 
 
NOV. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 into a lovelier line than ' Mine ear is full of the murmur 
 of rocking cradles ' ? 
 
 The tragic note of this poem is mainly the note of the 
 book, a fatalistic melancholy strangely allied to a certain 
 mood of our own time, and strangely in contrast with 
 primitive characteristics taking one back to a time 
 when man had hardly differentiated himself from his 
 surroundings, when trees and mountains were still 
 sentient beings, and, indeed, active partakers in his 
 drama — another characteristic in which the later con- 
 tinental schools of drama and fiction, with their theory 
 of influential environment, are seen once more to touch 
 hands with the primitive. There is in this volume a 
 wonderful little drama entitled ' Autumn,' in which the 
 gloomy influences of the river and the forest, at a cer- 
 tain moment of tragic reverie, are personified as voices, 
 which prevailingly confirm the man's dark design, not 
 crudely, but with a suggestiveness that makes one think 
 of Maeterlinck. More benignant personifications are 
 found in such charming lines as these in a song of 
 ' the young Heiduck ' — the heroic outlaw of Roumanian 
 tradition : 
 
 ' The Heiduck bore the kiss of his beloved 
 Upon his lips — and first the wind would steal it 
 To carry it with autumn leaves away ; 
 And the wind spake : " Give me the kiss, O comrade. 
 And I will make thereof a little flower." 
 
 Then the night spake : " Give me the kiss, O comrade. 
 And I will make thereof a Httle star." 
 "Nay ! " he replied, " the kiss of my belovM 
 Hath mingled with the currents of my blood ; 
 Here on my lips it lies, and I will give it 
 To none, but keep it safe for evermore ! " ' 
 198 
 
NOV. THE BARD OF THE DIMBOVITZA 1892 
 
 And the Heiduck kept it, though he wandered 
 far, 
 
 ' Until he came upon a snow-white meadow, 
 White as though turtle-doves had rained their feathers 
 
 Thick on the sward. 
 And on that meadow the white woman met him, 
 Took from his lips the kiss of his beloved. 
 And thrust it in her girdle, like a flower. 
 Then down upon the earth the Heiduck laid him, 
 Since the white woman on the snow-white meadow 
 Took from his lips the kiss of his beloved," 
 
 The Heiduck had met the Roumanian belle dame 
 sans tnerci. 
 
 One other primitive notion is used continually through 
 the poems with dark dramatic effect, that of the dead 
 still, so to say, living in their graves, knowing and being 
 interested in all that goes on among those still living 
 in the sun, being talked to, and even talking ; a con- 
 ception brought home to us most convincingly, because 
 so simply, in Wordsworth's ' We are Seven.' The idea 
 occurs in many forms in this book : the dead woman 
 who walks abroad in the night, and, for joy of being 
 again above ground, kisses, mortally, any man she 
 meets ; the girl who steals out by moonlight to meet 
 her dead lover, and is followed by her father : 
 
 ' I followed her, one evening. 
 My child I followed down into the plain. 
 And then I saw how the moon looked on her, 
 While she held converse with a dead man there. 
 She gently stroked his head, and gave him drink, 
 And showed him all the loveliness of earth. 
 Between them stood the cross from off his grave. 
 I heard the dead man ask her : 
 ' ' What dost thou all day long upon the earth ? " 
 My child made answer : " I await the night." ' 
 
 199 
 
NOV. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 The soldier who cannot sleep peacefully in his grave 
 because he knows not how the battle went : 
 
 ' He sorrowed, that he must go down to it 
 Not knowing, and all impotent to ask, 
 Which way the fight had gone. 
 Into his grave they shut him fast, 
 And told him nought of it ; 
 And ever since he still doth ask himself 
 Which way it went — nor can he sleep in peace.' 
 
 The unforgiven woman who goes daily to the grave of 
 her husband, crying ' Hast thou forgiven me."" to whom 
 always ' Avaunt ! ' the grave makes answer. 
 
 ' But as she, weeping, turned away and went. 
 Behold, the gravestone would uplift itself, 
 And the dead man gaze forth, 
 Sending a long look after her, that woman 
 Who weeping went her way.' 
 
 Though primitive in some of their conceptions, con- 
 ceptions of themes on which man must ever remain 
 ' primitive,' the idea in every case is handled with a fine 
 sense of form, and clothed in brief, vivid, and lovely 
 expression. For us, with our non-vocal peasantry, it is 
 hard to realise that these poems not only belong to the 
 daily life of the Roumanian rustic, but that many of 
 them are improvisations of reapers and spinning-girls — 
 the theme being passed on from one to another, like a 
 ball. Many of them, it is true, are the songs of the pro- 
 fessional luteplayers, but, whether or no, they have sprung 
 originally from the hearts of the people. Imagine our 
 peasantry delighting to sing, not to speak of improvising, 
 such poetry ! The songs bear marks of their improvised 
 origin in the little refrains, repeated at beginning and 
 200 
 
NOV. NORMAN GALE 1892 
 
 end, not directly bearing upon, but usually striking the 
 keynote of, the theme, such as : 
 
 ' Look not upon the sky at eventide, 
 For that makes sorrowful the heart of man ; 
 Look rather here into my heart, and jo3rful 
 Shalt thou then always be." 
 
 The peasants, very properly, guard these songs as a 
 sacred inheritance, and are very shy of strangers over- 
 hearing them, so much so that Miss Vacaresco, a young 
 Roumanian poet, to whom in the first instance we 
 owe them, although of an old family well known to the 
 peasantry, had to lie eavesdropping in the maize to hear 
 the reapers crooning them. To hear others she had to 
 affect a passion for spinning that she might join the girls 
 at their spinning parties. 
 
 i¥ 
 
 The second series of Mr. Gale's Country Muse is even 
 Norman Gale : better than its forerunner. Perhaps the 
 '^m"""*'*^ quality of art is more definitely present 
 Second Series, in it, or is it only that the selection from 
 Mr. Gale's privately printed editions is a stronger 
 one? 
 
 Those two most characteristic love-songs, 'Strephon 
 to Chloris,' and 'O to think, O to think, as I see 
 her stand there,' the omission of which from the 
 former volume I regretted, are now reprinted. And 
 then there is another similarly daring poem, 'The 
 Shaded Pool,' lovely enough to make the fortune of 
 201 
 
NOV. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 any volume : a delicious description of country girls 
 athing, touched with most reverent, yet roguish, art. 
 ' Did ever Love, on hunting bent, 
 Come idly humming through the hay, 
 And, to his sudden joyfulness. 
 Find fairer game at close of day?' 
 
 Surely Diana herself could hardly object to such an 
 Actason as Mr. Gale ? One need scarcely say that the 
 book from end to end smells of the country as a barn of 
 hay ; and that the note of faith in life rings through it 
 sweet and clear as the call of church-bells in a May 
 morning ; while Mr. Gale's lyrical gift is so exquisitely 
 fresh that surely he must be more of a throstle than a 
 man. Somehow I think of him as that wonderful little 
 Cupid in ' Daphnis and Chloe,' whom old Philetas found 
 flitting about among the fruit trees in his garden and 
 tried in vain to capture, till the young creature, half boy, 
 half bird, at last, bubbling with laughter, spoke ' in a 
 voice sweeter than that of the nightingale, the swallow 
 or the swan.' Do the inhabitants of Rugby, I wonder, 
 go out on moonlight nights to hear Mr. Gale singing 
 among his cherry trees ? — a six-foot-three nightingale. 
 
 Mrs. Meynell's Essays, The Rhythm of Life, says 
 
 AV M n-^^' P3,tmore, are better than her poems. 
 
 Essays and Prose, not verse, is her more distinctive 
 
 Poems. ffietier. Perhaps Mr. Patmore is strictly 
 
 right. Volume for volume, the essays strike one as 
 
 having more actual achievement than the poems. But 
 
 202 
 
DEC. ALICE MEYNELL 1892 
 
 in comparing them one has to remember that the essays 
 are the recent product of Mrs. Meynell's maturity, the 
 poems the firstfruits of her girlhood. Preludes, her first 
 and practically only volume of verse (for the present 
 volume is mainly a re-issue) has long been out of print, 
 and Mr. Patmore commends Mrs. Meynell for recognis- 
 ing her limitations in verse and her implied resolution 
 to abandon its exercise. With this renunciation in mind, 
 let us read this sonnet ' To a Daisy ' : 
 
 ' Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide, 
 Like all created things, secrets from me, 
 And stand a barrier to eternity. 
 And I, how can I praise thee well and wide 
 
 From where I dwell — upon the hither side ? 
 Thou little veil for so great mystery, 
 When shall I penetrate all things and thee. 
 
 And then look back ? For this I must abide. 
 
 Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled 
 Literally between me and the world. 
 Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring. 
 
 And from a poet's side shall read his book. 
 O daisy mine, what will it be to look 
 
 From God's side even of such a simple thing ? ' 
 
 Wordsworth is supposed to have copyrighted the daisy ; 
 he did indeed, as he himself puts it, sit upon the turf 
 and tease it with whimsical similes, with a lightness 
 of fancy too rare with him ; he also moralised and 
 sentimentalised it ; but for giving us the daisy itself in 
 its morning innocence he is not to be mentioned with 
 Chaucer. Without any moralising, Chaucer conveys 
 to us the spiritual as well as the physical refreshment 
 of its simplicity. It is magically hidden somewhere 
 203 
 
DEC. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 in the simple rapture of his phrase. Mrs. Meynell's 
 relation to the flower differs from that of both these 
 poets, though her aim is allied to Wordsworth's — or 
 rather her achievement is allied to his somewhat aimless 
 aim. Evidently he was trying to interpret the daisy 
 as a symbol, his several ' shots ' at it resulted in several 
 charming but comparatively superficial reflections. 
 Mrs. Meynell, I make bold to say, has been more 
 successful ; rejecting some subsidiary suggestion, she 
 has gone to the heart of its mystery — ' Thou little veil 
 for so great mystery.' Here is the mystic's deep vision 
 of it, the same transfiguration of the unit by the 
 absolute as Tennyson's vision of the 'Flower in the 
 crannied wall,' or Rossetti's of his mistress : 
 
 ' Sometimes thou seemest not as thyself alone, 
 But as the meaning of all things that are.' 
 
 By confining the mystery within the limits of a humble, 
 tiny flower, Mrs. Meynell brings it home to us with 
 the added shock of paradox, and it suddenly flashes 
 on one that here was the inner meaning of the old 
 schoolman's question as to how many angels can 
 dance on the point of a needle. Who shall expound for 
 us the law of spiritual gravitation ? Who knows what 
 radiant force of mysterious spiritual impulsion goes to 
 the square inch of matter ? 
 
 Mr. Patmore finds Mrs. Meynell's poetical limitation 
 is that she is not 'classical.' To be 'classical,' Mr. 
 Patmore would seem to imply, is beyond the power of 
 woman. Man alone can give the stamp of eternity to 
 his art, for such I conceive to be the interpretation of 
 204 
 
DEC. ALICE MEYNELL 1892 
 
 'classical' — to say a thing once for all. That the ex- 
 pression shall be noble follows from that. If I am right 
 I cannot well understand how this sonnet on the daisy 
 fails to fulfil the conditions. There is one lack, how- 
 ever, in it which I cannot help feeling, and perhaps that 
 explains Mr. Patmore's dictum : a certain lack of magic, 
 of rhythmical life. The syllables have but little of the 
 moving cadence of song in them. The words say rather 
 than sing themselves. And that I feel is a lack in most 
 of — Mrs. Meynell's verse. It rarely flows easily from 
 the tongue, but drags as though delayed by consonants. 
 This, however, applies least to Mrs. Meynell's sonnets 
 (her best poems), where indeed it matters least ; and 
 ' classical ' or ' not classical,' I cannot think otherwise 
 than that 'Renouncement' is a deep, moving expres- 
 sion, simple, poignant, and final, of a tragedy constant 
 to the human heart. Though it is the best known of 
 Mrs. Meynell's poems, it is hardly as well known as 
 it should be. 
 
 When one says that that sonnet equals, if not 
 surpasses, the finest of the Sonnets from the Portu- 
 guese^ one perhaps receives at the same time a hint 
 why, after all, it is not classical. It is movingly 
 passionate, the words flow easily for this once, but, 
 so to speak, they are not ' crowned ' ; the poet gives 
 them no new dignities. It is the deep cry of a heart 
 rather in its natural language than in the queenly 
 speech of the muse. Their message delivered, the 
 words stand down and leave us alone with the 
 emotion. But then how much is that ! Mr. Patmore 
 would seem to praise Mrs. Meynell because she 
 205 
 
DEC. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 declined to be less than the highest ; but surely such 
 is perilous praise. Whatever her place, Mrs. Meynell 
 as a poet has written a few sonnets which true lovers 
 of poetry will carry in their hearts side by side with 
 their most ' heart-remembered ' song. Surely that was 
 worth doing. 
 
 I have left myself but little space to speak of Mrs. 
 Meynell's essays. At once, in opening them, one is 
 aware of the presence of individual style as we are 
 not in the verses — significant indeed, you say? But 
 then remember that style is not, as some foolish people 
 suppose, born ready-made with any writer. It grows 
 more slowly too in verse than prose, perhaps because 
 prose lies nearer to our natural daily talk. Mrs. Meynell's 
 prose is, as I said, recent ; her verse was, for the most 
 part, written some years ago. Had she, in the interval, 
 cultivated it as she has cultivated prose, there is 
 every reason to think that she would by this time 
 have been recognised as a poet very definitely herself. 
 Her poems are, as we have seen in the daisy sonnet, 
 marked by that rare respect for the unique word which 
 one apprehends at once to be the marked distinction 
 of her prose. I venture to think that she has observed 
 that respect too self-consciously. There is too little 
 joyous life, too much of the literary ascetic, about her 
 essays. Style is too much of a hair-shirt with Mrs. 
 Meynell. Like the young followers of Mr. Pater, she 
 always gets the right wording of her thought, but she 
 sometimes misses its rhythm. She puts too much 
 into a sentence. The words have no room to breathe. 
 The spacing of one's words is, one need hardly say, 
 206 
 
DEC. ALICE MEYNELL 1892 
 
 as important as the selection of them. Again, Mrs. 
 Meynell, cleverly turning about the French dictum, * The 
 man is style,' says — and how much one thanks her for 
 saying it — ' I read it as declaring that the whole man, 
 the very whole of him, is his style. The literature of 
 a man of letters worthy the name is rooted in all his 
 qualities, with little fibres running invisibly into the 
 smallest qualities he has. He who is not a man of 
 letters, simply is not one ; it is not too audacious a 
 paradox to affirm that doing will not avail him who 
 fails in being.' There is nothing that the writer at 
 all times needs to be taught again and again so much 
 as that. Foolish flatterers are all too ready to suffer 
 him to be anything else so that he be clever. And 
 yet there is nothing surer that there is no greatness 
 not rooted in character, no beauty save the skin-deep 
 that does not spring from love. I have quoted Mrs. 
 Meynell's remarkable statement on style to apply it 
 to herself. I regret that 'all her qualities' are not 
 sufficiently represented in her present essays. One 
 has hints occasionally of stores of tenderness and 
 sympathy which have all too little scope in her volume. 
 It is largely, I think, the fault of her subjects, which 
 are mainly of a nature to bring her into collision with 
 the Philistine, the ' decivilised,' and thus to evoke that 
 scorn of which she has indeed the poet's full dower. 
 Consequently a little superiority of tone is too constantly 
 present in her essays. She gives herself too few oppor- 
 tunities to be kind. But her scorn is splendid for all 
 that. What could be better than her definition of 
 'colonialism' as 'only provincialism very articulate,' 
 207 
 
DEC. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1892 
 
 and her retort to the colonist's airs of the noble savage 
 that it was not 'war-paint and feathers' she feared 
 from him, but that she 'suspected him of nothing 
 wilder than a second-hand dress coat.' And how one 
 cheers as in the essay on ' Penultimate Caricature ' she 
 arraigns the Douglas Jerrold and Charles Keene school 
 of humour for its monotonous insistence on the gross 
 bourgeois aspect of humanity : ' indignities of civic 
 physique, of stupid prosperity, of dress, of bearing, 
 abject domesticity, ignominies of married life, of middle- 
 age, of money-making . . . everything that is under- 
 bred and decivilised.' Such humourists, she well says, 
 can hardly escape the charge of vulgarity themselves — 
 ' real apprehension — real apprehensiveness — would not 
 have insisted upon such things, could not have lived 
 with them through almost a whole career.' Mrs. 
 Meynell finds ' the hint of tenderness ' which is always 
 found in really fine humour, lacking. At the same 
 time it must not be forgotten for Keene that where 
 Mrs. Meynell only sees ' decivilisation,' he saw humanity 
 as well. It is but a very small proportion of the world 
 that remembers its aitches. Mrs. Meynell would not 
 surely shut the gates of mercy on the rest. Shakespeare 
 didn't. 
 
 TT 
 
 208 
 
JAN. ROBERT BUCHANAN 1893 
 
 Late on a snowy Christmas Eve the poet meets a tot- 
 Roiert tering, white-haired old man, who gasps, 
 Buchanan : ' For God's sake, mortal, let me lean on 
 Wandering *^^ ' ' ^^'^ s'^^^^ every sign of being our 
 Jew." old acquaintance out of Eugene Sue, 
 However, he proves to be a diviner personage. One 
 began to wonder when by a wave of his hand he stopped 
 the snow falling. He is indeed no other than Christ 
 himself, or rather the weary phantom of himself ; and 
 he is found thus forlorn in the neighbourhood of Fleet 
 Street, because Mr. Buchanan has begotten a concep- 
 tion which is at least melodramatically striking. In a 
 vision we are taken to Mount Golgotha, and find a 
 Sinaitic presence sitting there in judgment. It is the 
 Spirit of Humanity, and around the mountain are 
 gathered all the nations of the world to see ' their Christ 
 this Jew ' judged for the second time, the charge against 
 him being that his scheme of salvation has failed, that 
 his story of a loving Heavenly Father is a beautiful lie, 
 that men once more know Death to be lord of all, and 
 the life everlasting but a fair shadow that robs them of 
 the real warm life that now is. The Spirit somewhat 
 cleverly states the case against him, telling how, finding 
 * the wild old prophecy of a Christ and king ' among his 
 Jewish fellows, he had ' blasphemously played the Christ 
 they craved for,' supporting his imposture with ' simple 
 devices of the wizard's trade,' 
 
 ' And last, presuming on his pride of place 
 Profanes the Holy Temple of the race.' 
 
 But his crowning offence was in having risen agam 
 VOL. I. 209 O 
 
JAN. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 after his crucifixion, for from that sprang his tremendous 
 
 baneful influence over mankind : 
 
 ' Where this rumour spread, 
 All other gentle gods that gladden'd Man 
 Faded and fled away ; the priests of Pan, 
 That singing by Arcadian rivers rear'd 
 Their flowery altars, wept and disappeared ; 
 And men forgot the fields and the sweet light, 
 Joy, and all wonders of the day and night, 
 All splendour of the sense, all happy things, 
 Art, and the happy Muses' ministerings." . . . 
 
 Finished his charge, the Spirit summons up from the 
 ends of the world the various witnesses against him ; 
 the joyous old gods he has displaced, the sages and men 
 of science who had been damned and murdered in his 
 name, the noble army of martyrs slain ' to appease his 
 lust for life in every land,' Mahomet who had professed 
 but to be prophet, not arrogantly the son of God ; 
 Buddha, Confucius, even Prometheus ; then come his 
 priests to make confession of their sins in his name, and 
 tribe after tribe of witnesses tramp past the hill — the 
 crowning touch to the topsy-turvydom of the thing 
 being the evidence of Judas, who, more than equal to 
 the occasion, has the audacity to aver that he had be- 
 trayed his Lord ' because he knew his promise was a 
 lie.' The book is mainly taken up with these marchings- 
 past. Meanwhile Christ stands meek as of old, offering 
 no word to his accusers. The saints then bear witness 
 in his favour, and he is asked for his defence. With his 
 answer, Mr. Buchanan's purpose, somewhat ambiguous 
 all through, becomes quite enigmatical. It really 
 amounts to a confession of failure — he is old and tired 
 and would gladly die. As he speaks, he gazes hopelessly 
 210 
 
JAN. ROBERT BUCHANAN 1893 
 
 towards heaven, as if no longer sure that God is there. 
 The poem ends with his condemnation to the doom of 
 endless, aimless wandering through time, and the curious 
 prayer, ' God help the Christ, that Christ may help us 
 all ! ' 
 
 Does Mr. Buchanan really mean that Christianity is, 
 so to say, played out ? One would not have expected it 
 from him. His poem can hardly be meant as satire, for 
 it is too serious in style. I confess I am puzzled, and, 
 in any case, dramatic as the conception is — epical in- 
 deed the theme is, this dramatising of the death of a 
 great religion — it fails to really impress me because I 
 believe that Mr. Buchanan's news is not true. The 
 influence of Christ in its purest form is stronger to-day 
 than ever ; Secularism is intellectually dead, and every- 
 where one sees indications of a great spiritual revival. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of Mr. Buchanan's theme, 
 it is the best part of the poem ; for it is impossible 
 to praise its treatment. Nearly every new poem of 
 his makes one regret more and more Mr. Buchanan's 
 connection with ' The Adelphi.' It seems to have irre- 
 parably coarsened his poetic touch, and made him 
 satisfied with paste where once he gave us something 
 like real diamonds. The verse of 'The Wandering 
 Jew ' is perfunctory, destitute of charm, and carrying no 
 conviction. There is not a line that haunts one, an ex- 
 pression that really ' bites.' The whole dramatic treat- 
 ment, too, lacks dignity. The examination on Golgotha 
 is ludicrously suggestive of the Old Bailey — ' What soul 
 art thou ? ' ' One Judas, named also Iscariot.' ' Know'st 
 thou the Accused ? ' — and, indeed, the whole machinery, 
 211 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 especially the supernatural part of it, seems to have 
 been supplied by Messrs. Gatti. The WaJtdering Jeiv 
 might be described as an Adelphi miracle-play. 
 
 The truth is, Mr. Buchanan does not keep his ideas 
 long enough in soak. To have had any success, a poem 
 of such ambitious aim as The Wandering Jew should 
 have been let grow as slowly as Paradise Lost. But, 
 indeed, busy literary men about town are not the men 
 for such poems. How can they hope to get that still, 
 deep atmosphere wherein alone great poetry is born? 
 Great poetry is not written at a man's club — though^it 
 may have been written on club paper. Mr. Buchanan 
 also has too many irons in the fire. As it is, we have at 
 least two unfinished poems of his on hand — 'The 
 Earthquake' and ' The Outcast.' Why not work on the 
 latter — a poem distinctly interesting and clever — instead 
 of ' dashing off' epics like The Wandering /ew, things 
 begotten between the acts, conceived at the club, and 
 born in a hansom ? 
 
 ' Q.'S ' many friends will rejoice in the possession of his 
 
 Quiller Couch : verses, Green Bays, Verses and Parodies. 
 
 ' Green But they must not, of course, expect to see 
 
 Bays. I Q , j^aijjng a bid at great or even serious 
 
 poetry. He expressly disavows the attempt, though in a 
 
 pathetic little confession he avows that the ambition 
 
 was once his also. But, taking up Keats one day, he 
 
 discovered that his greatest sonnet was a rechauffe of 
 
 212 
 
FEB. QUILLER COUCH 1893 
 
 'Bright Star, would I were constant as thou art.' 
 Thereupon he drowned all his poetical kittens right 
 away, and took to parody. Whether he did well to give 
 up the game for a reason which might have lost us 
 nearly every other great poet — for most poets are 
 'mocking bards' to start with — his volume hardly 
 supplies us with sufficient data to decide. But he is 
 certainly very brilliant in parody. ' I see twenty-two 
 young men from Foster's watching me, and the trousers 
 of the twenty-two young men ' is irresistible Whit- 
 manese, and 'The Song of Simple Enumeration' is 
 as neat a phrase as one could have for Whitman's 
 catalogues. And what charming irony in the lay of 
 the Oxford Fire Brigade is the concluding line, in 
 the manner of Macaulay, 'Bless all, but most the 
 lucky chance that no one shouted " Fire ! " ' ' Q.'s ' 
 whimsical weird humour flickers in its rather creepy 
 way over one or two of the poems, especially in the love 
 story of Lady Jane and her gardener, and ' The White 
 Moth.' Then there is a charming prologue and epilogue 
 in mock Old English, one a beautiful dreamy song of 
 El Dorado ; and the song of ' The Splendid Spur ' 
 should certainly find a place in Mr. Henley's Lyra 
 Heroica : 
 
 ' The scarlet hat, the laurell'd stave 
 
 Are measures, not the springs, of worth ; 
 In a wife's lap, as in a grave, 
 Man's airy notions mix with earth. 
 Seek other spur 
 Bravely to stir 
 The dust in this loud world, and tread 
 Alp-high among the whisp'ring dead. ' 
 
 213 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 It is to be hoped that the poems ' Q.' sacrificed at the 
 shrine of Keats were not so good as this really stirring 
 song. 
 
 One might imagine, from their time-honoured reputation 
 
 yi^ T> ^j.T as mistresses of allusive gossip, that women 
 Agnes Repplier : . . 
 
 ' Essays in would make charming essayists : for is it 
 Miniature.' ^^^ ^^^ charm of the best essays that they 
 dance their wayward round, unhampered by any re- 
 sponsibility save that of giving pleasure, first to the 
 writer and then to the reader ? The necessity of giving 
 pleasure to the writer is paramount, for in no form of 
 literature is it so true that both the sowing and the reap- 
 ing must be in gladness. This is, of course, true more 
 or less of all writing, but especially true of the essay. 
 The essay-writer must be pleased with himself, his 
 theme, and the world. The moment he loses his amour 
 propre, his inspiration flags. 'When in disgrace with 
 fortune and men's eyes,' the poet is often stung to write 
 his finest poems, but not so the essayist. The jug of 
 wine, the loaf of bread, the volume of old verses, a 
 garrulous fire (and, metaphorically speaking, a cheering 
 bundle from Romeike) are the necessary conditions of 
 his art. Vernon Lee, in a preface to her charming little 
 idyll of ' Ottilie,' while admirably characterising the 
 temperament of the essayist, seems to be under a curious 
 misconception of his limitation. 'The essayist,' she 
 says, 'is an amphibious creature, neither fish, flesh, 
 nor fowl ; something of the nature of a centaur. For an 
 214 
 
FEB. AGNES REPPLIER 1893 
 
 essayist possesses, inasmuch as he is an essayist, some 
 of the instincts of the superior creature called a novelist : 
 a certain half-imaginative perception of the past, a 
 certain love of character and incident and description, a 
 certain tendency to weave fancies about realities ; but 
 as the centaur has hoofs, so the essayist has peculiarities 
 v/hich exclude him from the pleasant places of fiction, 
 which render it proper that he should run along on the 
 beaten roads of history, and be tied up in the narrow 
 little stable of fact.' 
 
 Obviously, after all, Vernon Lee means something 
 different from us in using the word Essay. She rather 
 means 'study,' a useful word which releases the true 
 essayist from that obligation to fact under which Vernon 
 Lee groans. Facts to the essayist are indeed but thin 
 excuses for his covertly talking about himself Few 
 essayists have the courage to say outright, like Whitman, 
 ' Myself I sing,' or even with the French critic, ' I pro- 
 pose to talk of myself, cL propos of Shakespeare, Moli^re, 
 Hugo, etc' ; they still keep up the decency of pretending 
 that they are about to talk of the trivial subject with 
 which they label each new chapter of ' The Story of my 
 Heart.' 
 
 Miss Agnes Repplier, whose Essays in Miniature 
 have just been delighting me with their short swallow- 
 flights of criticism, is one of the few people who realise 
 the authentic charm of the essay. She is, I fancy, one 
 of the very first of women to realise it, for, despite their 
 capacity for gossiping essays, women, curiously enough, 
 have never shown a gift for writing them. Perhaps it is 
 only my ignorance, but I cannot remember any volume 
 215 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 of essays — real essays, I mean — by a woman ; no 
 volume, for instance, with the familiar sunny charm of 
 Mr. Curtis's Prue and /, not to refer to such great 
 masters as Lamb and Montaigne. Perhaps one reason 
 for this is that the essayist, though he need not be 
 learned, must have read and generally picked up a good 
 deal, his mind must be stored with a motley collection 
 of recollections and associations which, before he makes 
 magic of them, may well seem the merest rubbish. His 
 mind, in fact, is like a boy's pocket, stuffed with dis- 
 carded treasures of which his elders are not worthy — 
 string, marbles, peg-tops, strange shells, bits of coloured 
 pebble, a few old coins of no value at the numismatist's 
 — treasures strictly personal to himself, a chaos of which, 
 with glee he knows it, none can make a cosmos but 
 himself. Now women bid fair to be more learned than 
 men, but they have yet to learn the art of wearing their 
 learning lightly, as a feather in the cap, to play with it, 
 to chaff it, so to say, as Mr. Lang knows so well how to 
 do. For them it is as yet far too much of a solemnity. 
 The learned woman is still an awful Minerva, she wears 
 her reading like Amazonian armour, and it clanks and 
 rattles at every turn of her mind. It is only a long 
 familiar association with books, an association in 
 the blood one might say, that can make an essayist. 
 For not till it has been realised that in and for itself 
 learning is merely absurd, and solely valuable, so far as 
 the writer is concerned, for the artistic use to be made 
 of it, does the essayist become possible. In short, the 
 essayist's great gift, whether playing on the surface like 
 a merry flame, or operating beneath as an unseen leaven, 
 216 
 
FEB. AGNES REPPLIER . 1893 
 
 is humour. Humour, more even than religion, will save 
 us from ten thousand snares. 
 
 It follows then that the essayist should also, above all 
 men, observe Hamlet's advice to Horatio. Only at the 
 imminent peril of dulness can he ever be untrue to him- 
 self. Sincerity to his own predilections is the first law 
 of his existence. He must be ashamed of none of them. 
 It needs, therefore, you see, as much moral courage to 
 be an essayist as an early Christian. Miss Repplier 
 touches charmingly on the dangers which beset this 
 sincerity in her first essay on ' Our Friends, the Books.' 
 How few of us have the courage, she says, to be true to 
 our own taste in our reading ! ' There are people in this 
 world,' she writes, 'who always insist upon others re- 
 modelling their diet on a purely hygienic basis ; who 
 entreat us to avoid sweets or acids, or tea or coffee, or 
 whatever we chance to particularly like ; who tell us 
 pursuasively that cress and dandelions will purify our 
 blood ; that celery is an excellent febrifuge ; that shad- 
 docks should be eaten for the sake of their quinine, and 
 fish for its phosphorus ; that stewed fruit is more whole- 
 some than raw; that rice is more nutritious than 
 potatoes ; who deprive us, in a word, of that hearty 
 human happiness which should be ours when dining. . . . 
 It is in the same benevolent spirit that kind-hearted 
 critics are good enough to warn us against the books we 
 love, and to prescribe for us the books we ought to read.' 
 The moment the essayist listens to these confident 
 empirics, he is lost. Never to be ashamed of his 
 ' Duchess of Newcastle,' never to forsake Mr. Micawber; 
 that is at once ' his hope and his pyramides.' If he 
 217 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 merely reads with the rest of the world, where is his 
 significance ? Let him consider the caddis-worm, how it 
 builds its tiny cabin of whatsoever bit of reed, pebble, or 
 broken glass may take its fancy, and gives no thought 
 to his neighbour : so is the essayist always best dressed 
 in the literary clothes which the rest of the world have 
 agreed long since to cast off. 
 
 Miss Repplier, one soon finds, has this courage of her 
 predilections. J fancy her ' Duchess of Newcastle ' is 
 Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd. She reset an exquisite 
 passage from him in her former volume of Points of 
 View ; and she refers to him in a bright gossip on 
 ' The Humours of Gastronomy.' His shade does not 
 often enjoy the thrill of quotation, so let us hear him : — 
 ' There does not at this blessed moment,' he says, 
 ' breathe on the earth's surface a human being that willna 
 prefer eating and drinking to all ither pleasures o' body 
 or soul.' Is the reader prepared to deny it ? However, 
 is it not significant to see a woman, a dainty, cultured 
 woman, enjoying 'The Humours of Gastronomy'? Surely 
 the shade of Byron is troubled. But is it not good to 
 think of? It rings the knell of the bread-and-butter 
 miss, who so long, in the devoted imagination of her 
 lover, ' on honeydew hath fed, and drunk the milk of 
 Paradise.' The era of the Meredith woman, 'relishing 
 well her steak,' as Whitman puts it, is at hand. 
 
 But I fear I have made Miss Repplier too much a text 
 for my own garrulity. However, the general principles 
 of essay-writing have not been recalled in vain, as I can 
 thus the more easily point to Miss Repplier as a writer 
 who fulfils them all with easy charm. She is sincere, 
 218 
 
FEB. H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON 1893 
 
 she has her own definite likes and dislikes and is not 
 ashamed of them, she has read many books and loved 
 more, but she lets fall her apt quotations with the casual 
 grace of culture as opposed to learning ; she has a lively 
 wit, a sunny temper, and that wayward gift of beginning 
 anywhere and taking us nowhere. One of her best chats 
 is that on 'The Oppression of Notes,' in which with 
 much liveliness she girds at the fussy commentator who, 
 so to say, runs with an ambulance when you have cut 
 your finger, but on a genuine battlefield leaves you to 
 die. But Miss Repplier has prettier fancies for him. ' He 
 will,' she says, ' build you a bridge over a raindrop, put 
 ladders up a pebble, and encompass you on every side 
 with ingenious alpenstocks and climbing-irons; yet 
 when, perchance, you stumble and hold out a hand for 
 help, behold, he is never there to grasp it.' Miss 
 Repplier, has, I believe, a great reputation in America. 
 I hope they don't tease her by taking her too seriously. 
 Has any one called her little Miss Lang ? 
 
 The quest of the qualifying adjective is admittedly a 
 
 II. B. Marrioilt delight under most circumstances. But 
 
 Waison : ^^^^^ jg ^^^ ^^img for which we would seem 
 
 'Diogenes of 1 -l ; 
 
 London,' etc. to seek it quite passionately — another man s 
 success. Success must never go without its qualifying 
 adjective. Now everybody was delighted with Mr. 
 Watson's ' Naiad.' Charming ! Charming ! But soon 
 we heard the still small voice. If there is no fly in one's 
 219 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 honey to start with, somebody is sure to catch one 
 for the express purpose of supplying the deficiency. 
 The one fault with the ' Naiad,' said the fly-catcher, was 
 its archaism. It was written in the style of the eighteenth 
 century. Its world was the world of Watteau. It was 
 implied that on that stage the thing was easier to do. 
 The implication is probably true, but then what concern 
 has the reader with the ease or difficulty of execution ? 
 The result is his sole business. ' The Naiad ' is a dainty, 
 charming piece of art : what have we to do with the 
 process of its creation ? 
 
 Moreover, where else could Mr. Watson have set his 
 scene save in some fairyland, such as the eighteenth 
 century has practically become ? There was no other 
 way for him to create the illusion so necessary to his, 
 alas, delicious improbability. A young lady is bathing 
 in a river, sans bathing costume. The amorous stream 
 has run off with her clothes, which apparently she had 
 left in a soft bundle on the bank, though too near to the 
 kisses of the river god, his idea apparently being that 
 without her clothes she must willy-nilly remain in his 
 arms. And so indeed she must have done had not a 
 gallant, and, of all people, her suitor, strolled by. But 
 he, as well as the river god, immediately conceives 
 designs. They are far away from any house, and she is 
 practically at his mercy. Her love in exchange for an 
 outfit — that is the bald situation. The outfit is found on 
 the person of a buxom Audrey who also chances to come 
 by, and whom, after no little blandishment, the gallant 
 persuades to disrobe on behalf of the distressed lady. 
 Nothing could be more delicious comedy than the scene 
 220 
 
FEB. H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON 1893 
 
 between Audrey on the one side of the hedge and the 
 gallant on the other, he eloquently pleading, and she 
 blushingly surrendering one by one the dainty envelopes 
 of her charms : unless it be the next scene in which he 
 cautiously doles out one article after another, on no 
 easy terms, to the poor Naiad. It is an irresistible 
 s tuation, and it is painted with a hand that can never 
 have marred a butterfly or robbed a peach of its bloom. 
 Risque is not the word for its theme, and yet the treat- 
 ment is as innocent as Greek nudity. There is merry 
 laughter through it, but it is as we say, ' innocent fun,' 
 the legitimate laughter of one sex at the other's predica- 
 ment. The situation would, doubtless, shock many, the 
 treatment couldn't. And this is largely due to the fact 
 that Mr. Watson has put his people, as I say, in fairy- 
 land. The thing is a charming dream, a fantasy, one of 
 those beautiful things, as Mr. Wilde says, that are not 
 and that should be. But no one knows better than 
 Mr. Wilde that the moment such things happened they 
 would cease to lure. It is because we are always hoping 
 for them to happen, because we press on and on 
 breathlessly up the river, believing that in the next 
 eddy we shall find the pixie combing her wondrous hair 
 — that we go on living. 
 
 And yet, of course, Mr. Watson had not to lay his 
 scene too far away from everybody. So it would have 
 lost its piquancy. The gallant must tap his boot now 
 and again with his cane to make believe that it all 
 happened up the Thames, but the lady, despite her 
 desire to be clothed, belongs to faerie. Indeed she is 
 but a later version of the beautiful widespread legend 
 221 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 of the swan maidens. The reader will know it from his 
 William Morris. Sir Edwin Arnold recently adapted a 
 variant of it from Japan. The fortunate Antaeus has 
 but to seize the bunch of soft feathers while the owner is 
 bathing, and she is in his power. In Mr. Watson's 
 story the feathers have turned into soft linen and lace, 
 and the shepherd has become a gallant : but at the 
 same time, and that I repeat is its charm, the story 
 remains in fairyland. It might so easily have been 
 merely nude instead of naked. 
 
 That quality, I fear, distinguishes it from the two 
 stories with which Mr. Watson followed it up, and which 
 I think he did wisely in omitting from his veiy welcome 
 collection, Diogenes of London and Other Fantasies and 
 Sketches. The two stories referred to were witty and 
 undoubtedly amusing, but they just missed that saving 
 touch. It was not so much that there was a superfluity 
 of naughtiness about them, but that they gave one the 
 impression of being made, not born, of being written to 
 a demand rather than spontaneously dreamed. 
 
 Turning to his volume as a whole, one does, I fear, 
 feel that, however successful in occasional stories, his 
 eighteenth century manner is a convention that he 
 overworks. It grows monotonous, and too frequently 
 lapses into a spiritless euphuism. ' Costume pieces ' are 
 pleasant now and again, but a run of them makes one 
 yawn for Pinero and evening-dress. Diogenes of London 
 and The Sword of the Kadi especially prove that 
 Mr. Watson has a pretty gift of allegory, and the irony 
 of the latter is exceedingly fine. If anything, he 
 allegorises too easily. We frequently spy the moral 
 222 
 
FEB. H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON 1893 
 
 too soon. Then Mr. Watson indulges, as he is far too 
 good an artist to be allowed to do, in the 'feeble- 
 forcible.' If I remember aright there is a scene in the 
 Naulakha where the hero is brought into exciting 
 proximity to a monkey. Mr. Kipling impressively tells 
 us that his hero at that moment was actually aware of 
 the smell of the monkey — what delicacy of the olfactory 
 nerves ! — and I remember how a certain reviewer came 
 down with his fist — ' By heaven, but that is genius ! ' 
 Certain reviewers cannot resist a smell. It convinces 
 them at once. ' The Mark of the Beast ' was another 
 instance. However, what I want to say is, that we 
 smell the monkey just a little too often in Mr. Marriott 
 Watson's stories. He still tries to ' bogey ' us with 
 calling a corpse ' a thing ' — ' the thing in the copse ' — 
 and he expects us to curdle when he tells us that ' the 
 body sank in a heap at Derracott's feet. He watched 
 it huddle limply among the damp and yellow leaves ! ' 
 This is a quotation from the worst story in the book, 
 'The Stroke of One.' 'The House of Dishonour' is 
 another story in which Mr. Watson piles on the agony 
 for all he is worth ; but he hasn't given us another 
 ' House of Usher.' Then, too, we get an occasional 
 touch of National Observer cynicism )vhich is not Mr. 
 Watson. He is far too good-natured and chivalrous at 
 heart for such airs. Nor is Mr. Watson quite him- 
 self in the essays which make the latter part of his 
 volume. He has not been able to shake off his gods, 
 Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Henley. Though they con- 
 tain occasional fine things, these essays, as indeed one 
 or two of the stories, give one the impression of too 
 223 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 hurried composition. The sentences gasp for breath. 
 There is no rhythm, no rise and fall, in the writing — 
 save here and there as in ' The Facility of Life,' which is 
 perhaps the best. But the faults are the faults of haste, 
 I fancy, and Mr. Watson's merits are unmistakable and 
 irresistible. If you object to his eighteenth-century 
 style, don't forget that it marks a preference, an idiosyn- 
 crasy. His method is his own, whether it is improvable 
 or not. His volume is not one more collection of 
 the machine-made American conte^ so clever and so 
 characterless. It has a personality. It makes us aware 
 of a man, and a man of high spirits, who carries us 
 along with him like a generous wind, of simple open-air 
 passions, with inexhaustible relish for life, a roguish 
 blade of a fellow, who kisses his hand to every pleasure, 
 who laughs at constancy but is constant all the time, 
 most gallant and tender of wooers, the very pick of boon 
 companions — here, surely, are plenty of excellencies to 
 be going on with. 
 
 It is curious how some authors contrive to impress their 
 Walter Pater • individuality upon the externals of their 
 ' Plato and books, and by some subtle influence create 
 a harmony between type, paper, and bind- 
 ing and the spirit which they clothe. One can even 
 tell our best-loved books by their feel, and certain it is 
 that our Swinburnes, our Morrises, our Stevensons, and 
 perhaps, most of all, our Paters, have all characteristic 
 physiognomies familiar as the faces of dear friends. 
 224 
 
FEB. WALTER PATER 1893 
 
 There is no more curious witness to the power of 
 personality, for fonts of type, one would have said, are 
 unimpressionable things, not readily responsive to the 
 delicate influence of the spirit. Yet even in cases where 
 men use the same font, there will something steal into the 
 page, it may be in the ' leading,' or in the arrangement 
 of the paragraphs, in the length of sentences, the 
 preference for Latin or Saxon words, that will give each 
 of their books a distinctive complexion. Some writers 
 hold that the reader loses much by not being able to 
 read them in manuscript. M. Mallarme, for instance, 
 was at one time so careful of his ' moi ' that he had his 
 poems published in lithograph from his original manu- 
 script. We are not all so sensitive as that, but one does 
 not need to be hyper-sensitive to feel the Paterian aura 
 about all Mr. Pater's books. 
 
 That gracious union of the austere and the sensuous 
 so characteristic of Mr. Pater's writing, the temperate 
 beauty, ' the dry beauty ' beloved of Plato, and advocated 
 with such winning charm in this 'series of lectures,' 
 Plato and Platonism: a Series of Lectures, find ex- 
 pression, too, in the sweet and stately volume itself, 
 with its smooth night -blue binding, its rose-leaf 
 yellow pages, its soft and yet grave type. So dis- 
 tinguished and yet so far removed from the eccentric ! 
 To merely hold one of Mr. Pater's books in the hand 
 and turn over its pages, is a counsel in style. As the 
 Greek women during conception would look often and 
 long upon the statue of Apollo, so the dreamer of 
 beautiful books should often handle such books as these 
 of Mr. Pater. They will refine even the sense of touch. 
 
 VOL. I. 225 9 
 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 How little does he know of books who deems them only 
 to be read ! 
 
 But I dally too long in the portal. And yet, how can 
 I presume in the short space at my disposal here to 
 glibly 'review' so beautiful a gift as these new essays 
 of Mr. Pater ? It is true that by this time I have read 
 them through ; but, once reading ! What is it ? and 
 not the reading of the happy scholar, fellow of his 
 college, who in cloistered peace gives his whole heart 
 for full untroubled hours to the book of his love — but 
 the hasty, worried reading of the distracted journalist, 
 who must snatch his spiritual meals now and then as 
 best he can. I can but, like the divining rod, point 
 here and there where the gold is hid, and leave you to 
 find it for yourself. 
 
 Mr. Pater, with nice artistic sense, has not striven, like 
 most other writers, to disguise the fact that these essays 
 were first lectures, but here and there he has preserved 
 little hortatory phrases, which remind one that he is 
 addressing himself to a little band of youthful students of 
 philosophy. Doubtless he has felt that the mere know- 
 ledge of the papers having to be thus addressed to an 
 audience would, in however slight a degree, modify them 
 from the essay proper, and that to attempt to disguise 
 such modifications would be a delicate loss in sincerity 
 of appeal. Thus a favourite exhortation, frequent in 
 his other writings, is here more frequent than ever, 
 constantly reminding us of the lecture room, or rather, 
 we would say, the Academe. ' Well ! . . .' The reader 
 knows the charming cadence. ' Well ! Life was like 
 that.' There is something curiously seductive about 
 226 
 
FEB. WALTER PATER 1893 
 
 this very characteristic interjection, something that puts 
 the reader in instant rapport with the writer. It conveys 
 the very sound of his voice into the sentence. I do not 
 know any recent writer, except, perhaps, Mr. Stevenson, 
 who has this intimate accent. Another charm of Mr. 
 Pater's attitude towards his reader is his urbane" in- 
 difference to the amount of his learning. He does not 
 affect the assumption that the reader knows everything, 
 but, when he occasionally implies his possible non- 
 acquaintance with certain masters, he does it in a way 
 that seems to say that, no doubt, the reader knows many 
 other things of which he is ignorant. Thus he doesn't 
 even take it for granted that his students should know 
 Wordsworth's great ode. Literature is so vast, life so 
 short, that they may well have not come up to it yet. 
 But when they do. . . . 
 
 Verily, these are but the crumbs that fall from the 
 master's table, but they are indicative of the feast. The 
 chapter which charms me most of all is the first. It 
 deals with the Heraclitean doctrine of the eternal flux 
 in things — 
 
 ' ... all flits away 
 Light and life together,' 
 
 as the old Anglo-Saxon scop sang. Mr. Pater never 
 writes so beautifully as when on this theme. You 
 will remember the pages upon it in Marius. In this 
 first and the two subsequent chapters, he criticises 
 the usual conception of Plato as an absolute pioneer 
 of philosophy, and traces his several obligations to 
 Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Pythagoras, and Socrates. 
 227 
 
FEB. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 And in doing so it is wonderful what a sense of vista 
 his imagination is able to throw for us behind a world 
 that one rather thinks of as but just beginning. I cannot 
 make a more characteristic or more beautiful quotation 
 than a few passages from this opening chapter : 
 
 ' Plato's achievement may well seem an absolutely fresh thing in 
 the morning of the mind's history. Yet in truth the world Plato 
 had entered into was already almost weary of philosophical debate, 
 bewildered by the opposition of sects, the claims of rival schools. 
 Language and the processes of thought were already become 
 sophisticated, the very air he breathed sickly with off-cast specula- 
 tive atoms . . . Some of the results of patient earlier thinkers, 
 even then dead and gone, are of the structure of his philosophy. 
 They are everywhere in it, not as the stray carved corner of some 
 older edifice, to be found here or there amid the new, but rather 
 like minute relics of earlier organic life in the very stone he builds 
 with. ... It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in Plato, in 
 spite of his wonderful savour of literary freshness, there is nothing 
 absolutely new : or rather, as in many other very original products 
 of human genius, the seemingly new is old also, a palimpsest, a 
 tapestry of which the actual threads have served before, or like 
 the animal frame itself, every particle of which has already lived 
 and died many times over. Nothing but the life-giving principle 
 of cohesion is new ; the new perspective, the resultant complexion, 
 the expressiveness which familiar thoughts attain by novel juxta- 
 position. In other words, the form is new. But then, in the 
 creation of philosophical literature, as in all other products of art, 
 form, in the full signification of that word, is everything, and the 
 mere matter is nothing.' 
 
 Much of Mr. Pater's book is taken up with suggestive 
 exposition of what one might call Plato's aesthetic 
 apprehension of ideas — the power his sensuous instincts 
 gave him of realising for himself and his readers 
 abstract ideas as though they were visible appearances. 
 For, austerely regulated as it was, Mr. Pater reminds 
 228 
 
MARCH JOHN GRAY 1893 
 
 us that Plato's nature was a richly sensuous one, the 
 temperament of ' the lover.' ' He is a lover, a great 
 lover, somewhat after the manner of Dante.' And even 
 more suggestively does Mr. Pater show us that the 
 apparently paradoxical banishment of the arts from 
 Plato's republic was not because he condemned them, 
 but because he feared that the citizens must love them 
 too well. 
 
 ' Art, as such, as Plato knows, has no purpose but itself, its own 
 perfection. The proper art of the Perfect City is in fact the art 
 of discipline. Music [in the broad Platonic sense], all the various 
 forms of fine art, will be but the instruments of its one over- 
 mastering social or political purpose, irresistibly conforming its so 
 imitative subject units to type : they will be neither more nor less 
 than so many variations, so to speak, of the trumpet-call.' 
 
 Of Lacedaemon, the city that seemed to Plato nearest 
 to his august ideal, Mr. Pater in his eighth chapter 
 gives us a wonderful 'imaginary portrait,' one of the 
 most beautiful passages of his beautiful book. 
 
 In what does decadence consist? In a self-conscious 
 J j^ Q . arrangement of 'coloured' vowels, in a 
 ' Silver- fastidious distribution of accents, result- 
 points.' j^^ j^ ^g^ ^^^ subtler harmonies of verse 
 
 — say some. In the choice for themes of disease and 
 forbidden things generally— say others. For my part, 
 while I see that both characteristics mark the modern 
 decadent school, I do not think that either is the 
 starting-point of that school. In regard to the first, 
 229 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 are we to say that in proportion as language becomes 
 more and more the perfected instrument of expression, 
 the more it develops literary means to literary ends, 
 it is decadent? Surely such a perfection is in the 
 direction of growth, not decadence. On such a defini- 
 tion Virgil and Tennyson were decadents, and, more- 
 over, it implies that the great old poets sang like a 
 bird on bough, without a thought of style. But did 
 they ? Chaucer, so ' frank and hale,' certainly did not, 
 for one. The second definition would make decadents 
 of Rabelais and Swift. The real core of decadence 
 is to be found in its isolated interests. Its effects are 
 gained by regarding life as of but one or two dimen- 
 sions. Its recent development almost entirely confines 
 its outlook on life to the colour-sense. It puts men and 
 dead game on the same basis — of colour. As I have re- 
 marked elsewhere, M. Huysmans is taken with the effects 
 of colour on a tippler's nose, Gautier with the same effects 
 in a beggar's rags, but each ignores the humanity of both. 
 Shakespeare could jest about Falstaff's nose, but he 
 gave us the rest of him as well — how much ! Decad- 
 ence, therefore, it seems to me, comes of the decadent 
 regarding his theme in vacuo, isolated from its various 
 relations — of morality, of pity, of humour, of religion. 
 Judged from this standpoint, Mr. Gray's poems 
 are not so decadent as he would have us suppose. 
 They are luxurious to the last degree, they are subtly 
 cadenced as the song the sirens sang, they will 
 dwell over-unctuously on many forbidden themes — 
 ' many whisper things I dare not tell '—they are each 
 separately dedicated to every more or less decadent 
 230 
 
MARCH JOHN GRAY 1893 
 
 poet of Mr. Gray's acquaintance, and iht\r format, an 
 adaptation of the Aldine italic books, is of a far- 
 sought dehciousness. But in spite of his neo-Cathohc- 
 ism and his hot-house erotics, Mr. Gray cannot accom- 
 pUsh that gloating abstraction from the larger life of 
 humanity which marks the decadent. 
 
 Maybe he will accomplish it in time, but such a 
 picture as this, a picture of trawling at night, entitled 
 'Wings in the Dark,' makes one hope he will not. 
 I have not space for the whole poem : 
 
 ' Full- winged and stealthy like a bird of prey, 
 All tense the muscles of her seemly flanks ; 
 She, the coy creature that the idle day 
 Sees idly riding in the idle ranks. 
 
 Backward and forth, over the chosen ground. 
 Like a young horse, she drags the heavy trawl, 
 Tireless ; or speeds her rapturous course unbound, 
 And passing fishers through the darkness call 
 
 Deep greeting, in the jargon of the sea. 
 
 Haul upon haul, flounders and soles and dabs, 
 
 And phosphorescent animalculse, 
 
 Sand, seadrift, weeds, thousands of worthless crabs. 
 
 Low on the mud the darkling fishes grope, 
 Cautious to stir, staring with jewel eyes ; 
 Dogs of the sea, the savage congers mope, 
 Winding their sulky march Meander-wise. 
 
 Suddenly all is light and life and flight. 
 Upon the sandy bottom, agate strewn. 
 The fishers mumble, waiting till the night 
 Urge on the clouds, and cover up the moon.' 
 
 The reader will not fail to note here the simplicity of 
 
 the means and the richness of the impression ; he will 
 
 231 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 notice, too, such cunning effects as the repetition ' idle ' 
 in the first verse, and the curious predominance of the 
 letter ' r ' throughout. 
 
 Though frankly a disciple of modern French poets, 
 Mr. Gray's verses remind one more, in their quaint 
 deliciousness, of certain old English poets, of Crashaw 
 especially ; and a certain affinity to the work of Mr. 
 Bridges corroborates this. The wind of Provence also 
 blows sweetly through his verses. But to whatever 
 school he may now, or eventually, belong, he has a 
 gift of epithet, of dainty colour and subtle rhythm, 
 such as distinguish his Silverpoints from any recent 
 English poetry. He has a very great deal in common 
 with the typical decadent, his book is full of affecta- 
 tion, but it is strongly marked by genuine individuality 
 as well. Here is another fascinating verse taken at 
 random : 
 
 ' The shadows lie raauven beneath the trees, 
 And purple stains, where the finches pass, 
 Leap in the stalks of the deep, rank grass. 
 Flutter of wing, and the buzz of bees. 
 Deepen the silence, and sweeten ease. ' 
 
 And in illustration of what I have said of that hopeful 
 sign of Mr. Gray's not being quite able to isolate him- 
 self from human interests, here is one verse more : 
 
 ' In every kiss I call you mine. 
 Tell me, my dear, how pure, how brave 
 Our child will be ! What velvet eyne. 
 What bonny hair oui- child will have ! ' 
 
 Is not this absurdly domestic in a decadent? Really 
 Mr. Gray must check these natural impulses. 
 
 232 
 
MARCH J. A. SYMONDS 1893 
 
 M. Anatole France tells us in one of his charming 
 T A S ds-' contes de lettres,' as he prettily describes 
 ' In the Key of his causeries, that, having just finished an 
 ^'"^* eager perusal of one of M. Paul Bourget's 
 novels, he immediately turns to his Imitation of Christy 
 and reads 'k la page ou elle s'ouvre toute seule,' as 
 a kind of corrective, or, at any rate, contrast ; and 
 he paradoxically heads the resultant causerie with 
 the saintly phrases. Thomas k Kempis, Paul Bourget, 
 and all between ! That might be no bad definition of 
 culture, and certainly it is typical of the catholicity 
 which is M. France's great charm. Whatever his 
 subject may be, he is always able to put himself at the 
 sympathetic point of view. Just the same charm 
 characterises, in even fuller measure, the writings of 
 Mr. John Addington Symonds. There is no corner of 
 history on which the human spirit has left its impress 
 that is not eloquent to him, and to which he is without 
 some answering sympathy. His is the insatiable 
 curiosity to experience the best that has been thought 
 and done in the world, but the artist's rather than 
 the scholar's : the passionate inquisitiveness of the 
 Renaissance, when the mere acquisition of learning 
 was tinged with romance. And, consequently, what- 
 ever subject he writes upon, we feel a confidence that 
 he treats it with a full knowledge of all its relations, 
 its antecedents, and all its various conditions. Culture 
 has done its perfect work, and endowed him with its 
 greatest gift— the sense of proportion. There are some 
 233 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 for whom the sense of proportion means merely the 
 sense of the littleness of mortal concerns. 
 
 ' To learn that man 
 Is small, and not forget that man is great,' 
 
 as a recent poet (Mr. Arthur Benson) finely puts it, is 
 perhaps not given to many : what one might term a 
 sense of graduated proportion, which not only measures 
 one's particular interests against the fixed stars, but 
 also puts them in proper relation to each other. The 
 best paper in a book of many interests is one which 
 deals with this very property of culture : 
 
 ' A man of moderate ability who cannot see beyond the world of 
 beetles, beyond the painter's studio, beyond the church or chapel, 
 beyond the concert room, beyond the grammar of an extinct 
 language, or some one period of history, is apt to be intolerable. 
 Culture teaches him his modest place in the whole scheme. 
 Culture is, therefore, absolutely essential to the mental well-being 
 of persons confined by their craft or profession to a narrow range 
 of intellectual interests.' 
 
 This is well put ; and one or two of the examples strike 
 one as particularly piquant. Who does not know of 
 one or two university professors who are learned indeed 
 in their ' grammar of an extinct language ' or in ' some 
 one period of history ' ? How would they stare if we 
 were to tell them that they lacked the very primary 
 element of culture ! Yet the world will probably go 
 on confounding Middle-English with culture for no 
 little time to come. That a man can be cultured and 
 yet know no language but his own needs culture to 
 234 
 
MARCH J. A. SYMONDS 1893 
 
 understand. The superstition of learning is the longest 
 a-dying of all. 
 
 ' The world's an orange— thou hast suck'd its juice ; 
 
 But wherefore all this pomp and pride and puffing? 
 Somehow a goose is none the less a goose 
 Though moon and stars be minced to yield it stuffing.' 
 
 I must quote two or three more passages from this 
 wise essay. In answering the question, How are we 
 to achieve culture ? Mr. Symonds well says that 
 
 ' In the case of rare and specially gifted natures, there is no need to 
 ask this question. They attain culture, and more than it can give, 
 by an act of instinct. They leap to their work impulsively, dis- 
 cover it inevitably. ... In dealing with culture, then, we have to 
 regard the needs of talent rather than the necessities of genius : 
 intellectual faculties of good quality, rather than minds of an 
 exceptional, unique distinction.' 
 
 And in speaking of genius, Mr. Symonds evidently 
 does not refer to merely creative genius, but also to the 
 genius for character. Who does not know of many 
 among his friends possessed of such undemonstrative 
 genius, men and women whose names fame may never 
 consecrate or vulgarise, but who, for the circle in which 
 they move, are a radiating centre of sweet and noble 
 influence ? Culture, says Mr. Symonds again, 
 
 ' makes a man to be something ; it does not teach him to create 
 anything. It has no power to stand in the place of Nature, and 
 to endow a human being with new faculties. It prepares him to 
 exert his innate faculties in a chosen line of work, with a certain 
 spirit of freedom, with a certain breadth of understanding.' 
 
 And once more : 
 
 235 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 ' I must repeat that culture is not an end in itself. It prepares 
 a man for life, for work, for action, for the reception and emission 
 of ideas. Life itself is larger than literature, than art, than science. 
 Life does not exist for them, but they for life. This does not 
 imply that it is better to be a man of no culture than a man of 
 culture. The man of culture is obviously capable of living to more 
 purpose, of getting a larger amount out of life, than the man of 
 no culture. He can also judge more fairly in all cases of com- 
 parative criticism. Still, I am unable to perceive that the refine- 
 ments of the intellect on any line of its development involve an 
 ennobling or a strengthening of the human being. Given 
 individuals of equal calibre, as many wise men may be found 
 among the artisans and peasants as among reputed savants. 
 Household proverbs are not unfrequently a safer guide to conduct 
 than the aphorisms of professors, . . , The life of no great nation 
 lies either in humanism or in science. The arts anu literature of 
 Italy in the sixteenth century did not make her powerful or virtuous. 
 The so-called progress to which she is now sacrificing the 
 monuments of her past, a progress dominated by scientific notions, 
 has substituted ugliness and vulgarity for beauty and distinction, 
 without adding an iota to her strength or general intelligence. 
 We ought not to despise culture. The object of this article is to 
 demonstrate its value. But the nearer a man has come to possess- 
 ing it, the less will he over-estimate acquirements or accumulations 
 of knowledge, the more importance will he attach to character, 
 to personality, to energy, to independence. ' 
 
 How good it is to hear a man who is one of the 
 supreme types of culture saying these things, striking 
 a blow at that arrogant supremacy of intellect — 
 ' intellect,' too, which is frequently but the wrong label 
 for merely phonographic memory — vindicating the 
 simpler, and therefore deeper, wisdom of 'simple, 
 natural persons.' As the meek inherit the earth, so 
 do the simple inherit the mysteries. The ' foolish wise 
 man' misses them in a cloud of formulee, which are, 
 after all, but so many names for all the matters of 
 which he is ignorant. Yet it needs a learned man to 
 236 
 
MARCH J. A. SYMONDS 1893 
 
 fight this battle against learning, for with him can be 
 no suspicion of sour grapes. 
 
 The paper next in suggestiveness is a masterly review 
 of M. Zola's La Bete Humaine^ containing a theory of 
 idealism in literature which I have noticed several 
 smart people eagerly appropriating, and which is indeed 
 very ingenious and plausible. ' It is one of the 
 mauvaises plaisanteries of the epoch,' says Mr. Symonds, 
 'to call M. Zola a realist. Actually, he is an idealist 
 of the purest water.' Why? Because while all his 
 details are studied from the life, the synthesis which 
 he makes of them is incompatible with experience. 
 This certainly proves that M. Zola is not a realist 
 in the most inclusive meaning of the term ; but to 
 disprove him a realist does not necessarily prove 
 him an idealist. I will let Mr. Symonds speak for 
 himself : 
 
 ' Zola's realism consists, then, in his careful attention to details, 
 in the naturalness of his connecting motives, and his frank accept- 
 ance of all things human which present themselves to his observing 
 brain. The idealism which I have been insisting on, which 
 justifies us in calling La BHe Humaine a poem, has to be sought 
 in the method whereby these separate parcels of the plot are woven 
 together, and also in the dominating conception contained in the 
 title which gives unity to the whole work. We are not in the real 
 region of reality, but in the region of the constructive imagination 
 from the first to the last line of the novel. If that be not the 
 essence of idealism — this working of the artist's brain not in but on 
 the subject-matter of the external world and human nature — I do 
 not know what meaning to give to the term. ' 
 
 But does the mere working of the constructive imagina- 
 tion among a mass of materials, irrespective of the 
 237 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 end to which it works, constitute idealism? I am 
 aware that such is not the original meaning of the 
 word; but the sense in which men have long agreed 
 to use the verb ' idealise,' and such general sense must 
 be regarded if our vocabulary is to be of any service 
 to us, is — to make more beautiful than reality, to touch 
 to finer issues. M. Zola makes life even more ugly 
 than reality. Have we not here an antithesis rather 
 than a correspondence? It is true that both ends are 
 attained by the same selective exercise of the imagina- 
 tion. But then what different ends ! For the common 
 process by which the ends are reached it would be 
 well to have a word in common — but surely that word 
 is not idealism. For the end reached by M, Zola it 
 would be useful to have a word. One might, perhaps, 
 term it ' inverted ' idealism, but one must, at the same 
 time, describe vice as inverted virtue. The Black 
 Venus is the muse such inverted idealists serve, a 
 goddess fascinating in abnormal moods and for a few 
 people. 
 
 Beauty is doubtless in a large measure a relative 
 quality, but there are, all the same, certain axioms 
 arrived at by the general feeling of mankind, to 
 disregard which must mean endless confusion : one 
 is that the Venus of Milo is beautiful, the other 
 that the Black Venus is ugly. One does not forget 
 that eternal change is constantly transforming our 
 conceptions, and that words and the things they 
 stand for are all constantly changing together; but 
 we cannot afford to dwell on that principle too 
 minutely — else description or definition becomes im- 
 238 
 
MARCH J. A. SYMONDS 1893 
 
 possible. We have, or we seem to have, certain 
 pauses in the flux, where we can stand and say 'that 
 is' and 'that is not.' It seems so, at any rate; and 
 unless we accept the fiction, life and literature are 
 alike impossible. What we regard as beauty to-day 
 may be ugliness a hundred years hence — but what is 
 to become of us if beauty and ugliness are to be re- 
 garded as synonymous terms? We know that the 
 matrimonial sentiment is a matter of geography ; but 
 to keep a harem in England is to imperil domestic 
 unity, for all that. 
 
 In the essay which gives the title to the volume, 
 Mr. Symonds draws attention to the limitation of 
 language in regard to colour : 
 
 'It is easy,' he says, 'to talk of green, blue, yellow, red. But 
 when we seek to distinguish the tints of these hues, and to 
 accentuate the special timbre of each, we are practically left to 
 suggestions founded upon metaphor and analogy. We select 
 some object in nature — a gem, a flower, an aspect of the sky or 
 sea — which possesses the particular quality we wish to indicate. 
 We talk of grass-green, apple-green, olive-green, emerald-green, 
 sage-green, jade-green ; of sapphire, forget-me-not, turquoise, 
 gentian, ultramarine, sky-blue ; of topaz, gold, orange, citron ; 
 of rose and cherry, ruby and almandine, blood and flame. Or 
 else we use the names of substances from which the pigments are 
 compounded : as yellow-ochre, burnt-sienna, cadmium, lamp- 
 black, verdigris, vermilion, madder, cinnabar. To indicate very 
 subtle gradations, the jargon of commerce supplies us liberally 
 with terms like mauve, magenta, eau-de-Nile, peacock, merdad'oca, 
 Prussian-blue, crushed strawberry, Venetian-red, gris-de-perle, and 
 so forth to infinity. It is obvious that for purely literary purposes 
 these designations have a very unequal value. Some of them are 
 inadmissible in serious composition. The most precise often fail 
 by interpreting what is absent from the reader's mental eye through 
 what is unknown to his intelligence. Not everybody is familiar 
 
 239 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 with jade, cadmium, almandine, Nile-water. What the writer 
 wants would be a variety of broad terms to express the species 
 (tints) of each genus (hue).' 
 
 This paucity of terms, however, is not, Mr. Symonds 
 remarks, wholly against the artist. ' It forces him to 
 exercise both fancy and imagination in the effort to 
 bring some special tint before the mental vision of the 
 reader.' In fact, it provides for him, like the necessities 
 of rhyme, an artistic gymnastic. Mr. Symonds makes 
 no attempt to increase our colour vocabulary ; but, 
 accepting the conditions, he assays, in the spirit of 
 a literary gymnast, to show what may be done even 
 with so restricted means. The result is a series of 
 studies of the 'colouring' of a gondolier, whose blue 
 blouse in its environment of gloom struck Mr. Symonds 
 one evening in Venice. Here is the first study : 
 
 ' A symphony of black and blue — 
 Venice asleep, vast night, and you. 
 The skies were blurred with vapours dank : 
 The long canal stretched inky-blank, 
 With lights on heaving water shed 
 From lamps that trembled overhead. 
 Pitch-dark ! you were the one thing blue ; 
 Four tints of pure celestial hue : 
 The larkspur blouse by tones degraded 
 Through silken sash of sapphire faded. 
 The faintly floating violet tie. 
 The hose of lapis-lazuli. 
 How blue you were amid that black, 
 Lighting the wave, the ebon wrack ! 
 The ivory pallor of your face 
 Gleamed from those glowing azures back 
 Against the golden gaslight ; grapes 
 Of dusky curls your brows embrace, 
 And round you all the vast night gapes. ' 
 240 
 
MARCH J. A. SYMONDS 1893 
 
 Mr. Symonds makes several studies of Augusto in 
 various settings. Though ingenious, one cannot pro- 
 fess that they are inspiring ; perhaps they would 
 appeal more to one if Augusto were anything but a 
 man. Humanity resents his being made a mere 
 ' clothes-horse ' of. So complete an isolation of the 
 colour-sense strikes one as unnatural, though, after all, 
 it is no more unnatural than the isolation of the sense 
 of form in drawing from the life : but even so, foira 
 means more, includes more, than colour, nor have we 
 yet quite got over our feeling that there is indignity 
 towards the human creature in the life-class. Mr. 
 Symonds evidently feels this as he closes : 
 
 ' Come back, my Muse, come back to him 
 Who warmed the cold hue, bright or dim. 
 Those ivory brows, those lustrous eyes, 
 Those grape-like curls, those brief replies ; 
 These are thy themes — the man, the life — 
 Not tints in symphony at strife.' 
 
 The essay has a secondary interest as being an 
 intermezzo in prose and verse, an interest it shares with 
 ' Clifton and a Lad's Love,' an idyll of friendship : but 
 neither appear to me to indicate the possibilities of 
 the intermezzo form — the verse in each case being 
 merely set amid the prose, and not blossoming out of 
 it, by irresistible impulse, as though one talking should 
 suddenly break out into song. In passing, one may refer 
 to a curious form of prose and verse intermezzo, recently 
 given us by Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, in his translation of a 
 part of the great Arabian epic of Abu Zeyd — 'The 
 Stealing of the Mare.' In that epic, the narrator, first 
 
 VOL. I. 241 Q 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 of all, sketches out an episode, at a fair length, in prose, 
 and proceeds to re-tell the whole, with constant ampli- 
 fication, in verse ; like a painter first making his study, 
 and then painting his complete picture. 
 
 The remaining contents include essays on 'The 
 Dantesque and Platonic Ideals of Love,' which will 
 be read with curiosity by those interested in Mr. 
 Symonds's views on the same theme in his Life of 
 Michelangelo ; an especially welcome and generously 
 appreciative paper on a poet unjustly inglorious, Edward 
 Cracroft Lefroy ; ' Mediaeval Norman Songs,' dealing 
 with the Vaux de Vire ; ' Notes of a Somersetshire 
 Home,' Sutton Court, the home of the Stracheys ; and 
 three admirable papers on Elizabethan dramatic and 
 lyric poetry — 'Some Notes on Fletcher's Valentinian,' 
 ' The Lyricism of the Romantic Drama,' ' Lyrics from 
 Elizabethan Song-Books.' The second paper, insist- 
 ing on the essentially lyrical character of much of 
 the so-called dramatic writing of the Elizabethans, is 
 specially suggestive. Of 'Romeo and Juliet,' Mr. 
 Symonds says : 
 
 ' The whole play is a Chant d" Amour— on exhalation of human 
 love, in poetry assuming the dramatic mantle. All the incidents 
 of action fall away and sink into their place before the simple fact 
 that Romeo loves Juliet, and Juliet loves Romeo. This play is the 
 lyric cry converted into drama. ' 
 
 Referring to Dryden, in the same paper, Mr. Symonds 
 makes a discovery which will be of much interest to 
 students of literary origins, no less than the original 
 model of Mr. Swinburne's haunting 'Garden of Pro- 
 242 
 
MARCH HUBERT CRACKANTHORPE 1893 
 
 serpine' stanza. Mr. Symonds quotes the following 
 verse from 'The Spanish Friar' : 
 
 ' Farewell, ungrateful traitor, 
 
 Farewell, my perjured swain ! 
 Let never injured creature 
 
 Believe a man again. 
 The pleasure of possessing 
 Surpasses all expressing : 
 But 'tis too short a blessing, 
 
 And love too long a pain. ' 
 
 Mr. Symonds tells us in his preface that he has 
 endeavoured to make the present collection of essays 
 representative of the different kinds of work in which 
 he has been engaged. This makes the volume some- 
 what multifarious in character; but what a diversity 
 of interests, and all so richly assimilated ! 
 
 Though Mr. Crackanthorpe simply records certain 
 
 „ , , phases of modern life as he sees them, 
 Hubert ^ 
 Crackanthorpe: entirtly without comment, it is mevitable 
 
 ' Wreckage.' j^^ j^jg method that the mere telling includes 
 much painful, and some pleasurable, irony. Occasional 
 cynicism was hardly to be avoided, but Mr. Crackan- 
 thorpe never goes out of his way to be cynical. If his 
 method, rapid without being jerky, invites one, his dra- 
 matis personce cannot be described as inviting. The 
 prostitute, whom, I think, he has treated more fearlessly 
 than any one yet in English fiction, the drunken wife, the 
 243 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 card-sharper, of such are his human ' wreckage.' If his 
 stories have any moral, it is that dreary modern moral of 
 the irresistible force of circumstance. The poor woman 
 who has just left her drunken husband hugging a prosti- 
 tute at the public-house, will, for a little while, resist the 
 temptation that offers her starving baby a little food, but 
 in the end she will give in to the little man who tempts 
 her as she stands looking over the bridge into the river ; 
 the drunken wife has her moments of remorseful love, 
 but she will go on drinking ; the successful sharper's wife 
 may despise him in her heart, but when he comes home 
 with six hundred odd pounds she must go on ' loving ' 
 him. ' " Six hundred and thirty-four pounds ! " she re- 
 peated, half to herself. " How much is that in francs ? " 
 " Nearly sixteen thousand." " And my pearl isn't angry 
 any more ? " " Je t'aime," she murmured in reply. Their 
 lips met.' The best story in the book, that in which the 
 irony is nearer humour than cynicism, is entitled 'A 
 Dead Woman.' A country inn-keeper, Richard Rushout, 
 sorrows for a dead wife, who had been the beauty of the 
 countryside. It is joy to dwell on her memory, and he 
 sits in the bar at nights, and talks with his old farmer 
 friend Jonathan Hays. Presently he discovers that 
 Jonathan has a reason for his sympathy. His wife had 
 not been all he thought her. The world is not large 
 enough for Jonathan and he. They are to meet at a 
 cross road at midnight. Nearing the rendezvous 
 Rushout has a stroke, and is ill for some time. During 
 his illness, Jonathan inquires about him, and when he is 
 well again, instead of the old jealousy reviving, the two 
 men find themselves drawn together, because they had 
 244 
 
MARCH WILLIAM BLAKE 1893 
 
 each loved the dead woman. ' Each was conscious of 
 a craving to talk about her, to hear the other mention 
 her name. " Richard, she was a grand woman." " That 
 she was — sich splendid hair." " Nay, but 'twas her eyes 
 that were the finest." " Black— jet black." 
 
 '"D'ye mind how wild she was the day I was for 
 lettin' young Will Dykes drive the mare?" "That I 
 do." "Were ye sweet on her then?" He put the 
 question in hesitating timidity. " 'Twas the first occa- 
 sion I had a kiss from her," answered Jonathan defiantly. 
 " When was that ? " " Whilst ye were fetchin' the new 
 skin rug." ' So, calling for another glass, they continue 
 their naive converse, and if any one thinks Rush- 
 out loved his wife any the less for his complacency, 
 surely he is the cynic, and not Mr. Crackanthorpe. 
 There is a humanity about this story which promises 
 more than all the rest. They are perhaps clever past- 
 iches after little masters. 'A Dead Woman' is more 
 like Mr. Crackanthorpe's own, or at least it suggests 
 greater masters. 
 
 Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have at length completed 
 
 „,.„. r,7 z. their great task, and their vindication of 
 Wtlham Blake: ° 
 
 Edited by Ellis Blake has for some weeks been exercismg 
 and Yeats, ^j^^ minds of all Blake students, desultory 
 and laborious. Its three tremendous volumes are 
 divided between 'The System,' 'The Meaning,' and 
 ' The Books.' The first volume contains an admirably 
 written memoir, and the third, in addition to the better 
 245 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 known works of Blake, the hitherto unpublished Vala. 
 This volume contains many lithographic reproductions, 
 in which one cannot but miss the colour of the originals. 
 It were quite idle and presumptuous in any critic to 
 pronounce offhand as to the value of Messrs. Ellis and 
 Yeats's labours. Yet it does not need any very long 
 study of them to see that they have certainly reduced 
 the chaos to a considerable degree of order, and that 
 whether or not they have succeeded in elucidating the 
 whole myth, important sections of it are now com- 
 paratively clear. To this end Messrs. Ellis and Yeats 
 have had the advantage of a long study of mysticism 
 generally, and have thus been able to view Blake's 
 mysticism in relation to those other systems from which 
 it sprang. Obviously, editors with merely artistic and 
 literary standards are out of court in regard to Blake, 
 whom it suffices them to dub a 'mystic' and pass on. 
 This familiarity with mysticism makes Messrs. Ellis and 
 Yeats occasionally forget that it is an esoteric study, 
 and that its terminology is often obscure even to the 
 cultivated reader. Still, on the whole, having regard 
 to the extreme difficulty of the subject, they are very 
 successful in making themselves clear ; and the first 
 chapter of T/te Symbolic System, that on ' The Necessity 
 of Symbolism,' is a most suggestive exposition of the 
 mystic point of view. Nothing could well be more 
 illuminating or better calculated to put the non-mystic 
 reader en rapport with their unfamiliar moods of thought. 
 'The necessity of symbolism' is the materialism 
 of man. Shut up within his five senses, he refuses 
 credence to anything which they cannot comprehend, 
 246 
 
MARCH WILLIAM BLAKE 1893 
 
 and ' having denied the existence of that for which his 
 bodily life exists ' — the soul, for which properly his senses 
 are but ministers of experience — 'man begins an un- 
 ceasing preoccupation with his own bodily life, neglect- 
 ing to regard it as a symbol.' ' The mind or imagination 
 or consciousness of man may be said to have two poles, 
 the personal and impersonal, or, as Blake preferred to 
 call them, the limit of contraction and the unlimited 
 expansion. When we act from the personal we tend to 
 bind our consciousness down to a fiery centre. When, 
 on the other hand, we allow our imagination to expand 
 away from this egoistic mood, we become vehicles for 
 the universal thought and merge in the universal mood. 
 Thus a reaction of God against man and man against 
 God.' Originally the whole of nature existed but as one 
 of the thoughts of God, without conscious knowledge of 
 itself, but this consciousness gradually dawning, desire 
 of separate corporeal existence awoke within it and thus 
 came the Fall— 'the fall into division '—and the wider 
 and wider severance of nature and man from God. 
 Therein is the significance of the religious aspiration to 
 be 'made one with God,' or, as Blake expresses it, the 
 ' resurrection into Unity.' 
 
 It is the aim of mysticism to keep man awake to this 
 divine origin and significance of life, by the use of 
 impressive symbols of its operations and issues. This, 
 it will be said, is also the proper aim of poetry and all 
 the arts. It is, of course, but Messrs. Ellis and Yeats 
 suggestively explain, ' the chief difference between the 
 metaphors of poetry and the symbols of mysticism is 
 that the latter are woven together into a complete 
 247 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 system.' Illustrating this by a line in King Lear, they 
 continue, 'the "vexed sea" would not be merely a 
 detached comparison, but, with the fish it contains, 
 would be related to the land and air, the winds and 
 shadowing clouds, and all in their totality compared to 
 the mind in its totality.' A complete mystic system 
 then would be, so to say, not an epic of one people or 
 time, but an epic of the universe. As such a system 
 would include the Iliad, so mysticism includes poetry. 
 
 To all who are not slaves of their five senses this 
 must seem a reasonable enough statement of the 
 mystic's aims. To the merely artistic mind the stupen- 
 dous majesty of design, to which Michael Angelo's 
 imaginations were as the span of a child's hand, must 
 impressively appeal. 
 
 But has any mystic given us such a colossal epic of 
 the universe? Have these complicated systems really 
 impressed the imagination of man more than the noble 
 fragments of symbolism given to us by the great poets ? 
 One power all mystics more or less seem to lack is that 
 very touch of universality which is the common property 
 of great poets. They nullify their great imaginations 
 by wedding them to a narrow, sectarian, or provincial 
 terminology. This, Messrs. Ellis and Yeats admit, is 
 the drawback with Swedenborg and Boehmen. With 
 all their mighty dreams, they remain sectaries for 
 sectaries. They have no wide or permanent appeal. 
 Blake, however, his editors claim, is not hampered 
 in this way. He speaks directly to the pure poetic 
 genius in man, without any intermediate theological 
 terminology. But, though this be true in some degree, 
 248 
 
MARCH WILLIAM BLAKE 1893 
 
 surely Blake's system has none the less a more serious 
 limitation. The terms of theology have a certain, com- 
 paratively wide, currency, but the terms in which Blake 
 often wrote were absolutely of his own coinage, and had 
 merely a personal significance. For instance, Lambeth 
 happened to mean much in his personal history, and so 
 he uses it as a symbol — but to whom but himself does 
 Lambeth thus appeal? And so all through. All the 
 events and circumstances of his own temporary life are 
 made to do duty for his eternal meanings. Of course, 
 every accident of our lives may be symbolic for us, but 
 such accidents are not necessarily competent as symbols 
 for all men. Thus, it seems to me, that Blake's mystical 
 system is limited in appeal as dialect poetry is limited, 
 and for the same reason. He expressed the eternal 
 meanings too often in the dialect of his own everyday 
 history, instead of in such universal world-language as 
 the world alone can understand. To my mind it seems 
 that one of his single mystic sayings is more valuable, 
 even as mysticism, than the vast amorphous body of any 
 one of his complete myths. Such a saying as that, often 
 quoted by the editors, which declares that ' our digestion 
 also is managed by angels.' Not only our thought- 
 processes, but the very humblest offices of the body are 
 mysteries. Who can explain the transformation of food 
 into flesh? No profounder criticism on materialism 
 can be imagined. 
 
 But, some one is impatient to ask. Wasn't Blake mad 
 as well ? Personally, I think he was— in regard to re- 
 latively unimportant matters. It seems madness in him 
 to attribute the idea of his etching process to the direct 
 249 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 inspiration of his dead brother, because the discovery of 
 such processes belongs to the normal operation of the 
 human mind — though it must at the same time be ad- 
 mitted that we don't rightly know how that normal 
 operation comes about, and that, for all we know, 
 sudden ideas, ' inspirations ' as we call them, may be 
 whispered to us by ' angels.' Blake's conversations with 
 Crabb Robinson seem especially to point to derange- 
 ment, and I think the editors make a mistake in not 
 frankly admitting the possibility of a strain of mad- 
 ness in Blake, instead of trying to prove him sane on 
 every point. For suppose Blake did make odd mis- 
 takes in regard to the lesser matters of everyday life, 
 a curious unreasonable use of human facts and methods, 
 he made no mistake about those profound matters of 
 which human life is but symbolic. He was sane enough 
 on ' the great things.' Comparing great with small, he 
 was, in everyday life, like an illiterate poet, whose dream 
 is whole and sound, but who, in endeavouring to express 
 it, makes ludicrous havoc with grammar and strange be- 
 wildering use of all the conventional methods of expres- 
 sion. He strikes one as an angel, half-mortal by mis- 
 take, to whom the use of mortal language and standards 
 is bewildering. Blake will seem sane enough in heaven. 
 Therefore, why trouble to vindicate his merely mental 
 sanity ? We overrate merely mental sanity, as much as 
 we underrate spiritual sanity. A man may have the most 
 perverted ideas of right and wrong, he may be wilfully 
 sensual, and all that is morally and spiritually depraved, 
 and we say nothing about his sanity ; but if he happens 
 to get a fixed idea that there are only six days in the 
 250 
 
MARCH W. H. MALLOCK 1893 
 
 week, and obstinately holds that the moon is green 
 cheese — really quite unimportant misconceptions — we 
 shut him up and appoint administrators of his estate. If a 
 few more of us were mad after Blake's fashion, it would 
 be no bad thing for the world. And, of course, quite 
 apart from Blake's madness on mysticism, we have the 
 undisputed treasures of his lark-throated lyrics, and his 
 wonderful harmonies of line and colour. These all of 
 us can enjoy, and in these at any rate, apart from their 
 artistic appeal, Blake's mystic lesson is articulate for all 
 to hear and understand. 
 
 Mr. Mallock is scarcely a poet. For him "tis too 
 W. H. Mallock : late to be ambitious ' in that kind. Curious 
 'Verses.' is this yearning in man for 'the loved 
 Apollian leaves.' The laurel of prose never seems to 
 bring content. As middle-age glooms, the distinguished 
 proseman is eager to give it all, for one leaf of the true 
 Parnassian evergreen. The little treasured screed of 
 boyish verse is brought out from its hiding-place, and 
 the old boyish hopes raise their flutes once more. Even 
 the dusty historian, witness Mr. Lecky, must sooner or 
 later unlock his heart. But the poor song-bird has been 
 neglected too long. It may, indeed, be served up as a 
 dead nightingale, and make us a scanty meal in one 
 edition, but ' le pigeon ne chantait plus.' Mr. Mallock 
 has been too long a mocker to turn poet at the eleventh 
 hour. Perhaps he was a poet to begin with, but he 
 251 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 was a mocker at an equally early age. Even his New- 
 digate, 'The Isthmus of Suez,' in 1871, breathes the 
 spirit of despair : 
 
 ' What power or knowledge is there to unite 
 The never-mingled seas of faith and sight?' 
 
 he cries. To infuse ' modern doubt ' into a Newdigate 
 is not given to all men. When The New Republic was 
 published, the charming verse-parodies of Matthew 
 Arnold, Rossetti, and others which it contained, were so 
 like real poems, that curiosity was aroused as to whether 
 Mr. Mallock shouldn't actually leave off jesting, and 
 write poetry in earnest. Mr. Mallock answered this 
 interest by a volume of early verses — ' written between 
 my seventeenth and my twentieth year ' — disappointing, 
 derivative, neo-Pagan, neo-Catholic, things. However, 
 as Mr. Mallock was scrupulous to record the exact day 
 and hour of inspiration to his verses, they were at least 
 interesting as autobiographical revelations. One smiled 
 to find the cynic in bud writing thus at sixteen : 
 
 ' I did not offer thee up mine heart, 
 
 Nor did I ask, thou know'st, for thine. 
 I only said, " Until we part 
 
 Lend it, and I will lend thee mine." ' 
 
 But even then Mr. Mallock had a poetical past of at 
 least eight years behind him. For does he not record 
 how, at the tender age of eight, he sat on his swing and 
 composed these lines on Celia : 
 
 ' The breezes are sighing 
 About me, above me 1 
 
 Oh, I should be happy, 
 If Celia would love me ! 
 
 252 
 
MARCH W. H. MALLOCK 1893 
 
 But without Celia's love 
 The breezes may blow ; 
 
 And, for all that I care, 
 To the devil may go ! ' 
 
 Certainly it was good lisping in numbers — even if the 
 babe had read his Suckling.. 
 
 This little Mallock on the swing must have much 
 resembled the 'Child' to whom one of Mr. Mallock's 
 new poems is addressed. No one beats Mr. Mallock at 
 finding the canker, or rather the mere eggs of the 
 canker, in the fresh young bud. Even in the eyes of a 
 child he is able to discern the world-weariness : 
 
 ' O sad as death, and soft as love, 
 
 What 's this that I in you behold ? 
 
 All life seems gazing from the eyes — 
 
 The eyes of eight years old. ... 
 
 Between your eyelids swims the look 
 That says, "My faith in prayer is o'er." 
 
 Your mouth seems quivering to the lost, 
 " Kiss me that kiss once more ! " ' 
 
 For witty, cynical verse, somewhat after the manner of 
 the late Lord Lytton, Mr. Mallock has certainly a very 
 brilliant talent. We have had nothing for a long time 
 more irresistibly clever than those verses in The New 
 Republic, addressed by ' A Philosophic Lover ' to ' The 
 Wife of an old Schoolfellow.' Mr. Mallock reprints 
 them, and as they are the best in his new volume, 
 I cannot do better than recall them to the reader : 
 
 ' Let others seek for wisdom's way 
 
 In modern science, modern wit, — 
 I turn to love, for all that these. 
 These two can teach, is taught by it. 
 
 253 
 
MARCH RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 Yes, all. In that first hour we met 
 And smiled and spoke so soft and long, love, 
 
 Did wisdom dawn ; and I began 
 
 To disbelieve in right and wrong, love. 
 
 Then, as love's gospel clearer grew, 
 And I each day your doorstep trod, love, 
 
 I learned that love was all in all. 
 And rose to disbelieve in God, love. 
 
 Yes, wisdom's book ! you taught me this. 
 And ere I half had read you through, love, 
 
 I learned a deeper wisdom yet — 
 I learned to disbelieve in you, love. 
 
 So now, fair teacher, I am wise. 
 And free : 'tis truth that makes us free, love. 
 
 But you — you 're pale ! grow wise as I, 
 And learn to disbelieve in me, love. ' 
 
 There is the true Mephistopheles laugh. The two 
 poems that approach serious poetical beauty are both 
 from The New Republic — 'Pulveris Exigui Munus,' 
 the imitation of Matthew Arnold — and that 'New 
 Francesca,' sung by the wicked, witty Mrs. Sinclair, who 
 so shocked Dr. Jenkinson by her naive query as 
 to Greek love-poetry. 'They were a little obscure, 
 
 perhaps — much Greek is — or ' hesitated the doctor. 
 
 'Corrupt?' suggested Mrs. Sinclair innocently. There 
 are no new ones to match their mood, which, though it 
 feigned to be mockery, was much more nearly true 
 passion. The new things are mainly epigrams of de- 
 spair, such as this on ' Will '—bitterly, almost impiously, 
 headed, 'O living will, that shalt endure' : 
 
 ' We strive to will the right ; but what 's our will ? 
 A die whose casts we nickname good or ill, 
 254 
 
MARCH W. H. MALLOCK 1893 
 
 Loaded by fate — a tendency, a taint, 
 Which fate has dealt us. This with all her skill 
 
 Does Science prove : and this is man's complaint : 
 "Sinning, an idiot conscience stabs me still, 
 
 Which yet has no one blessing for restraint." ' 
 
 One of the cleverest things in the book is a parody of 
 Mr. Swinburne, entitled ' A Song after Moonrise' :— 
 
 ' I bowed my laurell'd head 
 Above my lyre, and said : 
 "What new song shall I sing across the strings? 
 Madden 'd for whose new sake 
 What new noise shall I make?" 
 
 And I answer'd : " Lo, I will sing of no new things ; 
 I will turn to her once more 
 I have sung so oft before — 
 Freedom— and worship her, and curse some kings. . . . 
 By the seas that link us and the lands that sever, 
 By the foes upon our weather-side and lee — 
 By all these things and all other things whatever, 
 We call and howl and squeak and shriek to thee. 
 Calling thee early and late. 
 Wild, inarticulate, 
 Calling and bawling that thou set something free." ' 
 
 Which reminds me that I am the happy possessor of 
 the rare squib, Every man his own Poet; or. The 
 Inspired Singet's Recipe Book, by a Newdigate Prize- 
 man, which Mr. Mallock published at Oxford in 1872. 
 It is a wonderful little pamphlet. The thing, of course, 
 has often been done, but never more brilliantly. I 
 am too true an admirer of Mr. Swinburne to reproduce 
 the recipe ' How to write a Patriotic Poem like Mr. 
 Swinburne,' but the recipe ' How to Make an Ordinary 
 Love Poem ' will hurt no one's susceptibilities, and is 
 perhaps the cleverest of all: 'Take two large and 
 255 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 tender human hearts, which match one another perfectly. 
 Arrange these close together, but preserve them from 
 actual contact by placing between them some cruel 
 barrier. Wound them both in several places, and 
 insert through the openings thus made, a fine stuffing of 
 wild yearnings, hopeless tenderness, and a general 
 admiration for stars. Then completely cover up one 
 heart with a sufficient quantity of chill churchyard mould, 
 which may be garnished according to taste with dank 
 waving weeds or tender violets : and promptly break 
 over it the other heart.' 
 
 Yes, the child is father to the man — if Mr. Mallock 
 ever was a child. The child in Mr. Mallock was born 
 mocking, and the man must now go on mocking till the 
 end. And yet Mr. Mallock might have been — what ? 
 
 The fate of Basse is perhaps one of the most pathetic, 
 
 William Basse.^^''^^'''''''^^^y speaking, in the history of 
 
 Edited by oblivion. Forgotten poets, or rather poets 
 
 Warwick Bond. ^g^gj^^gj.g^ by a very few, are plentiful. 
 
 The number of quite forgotten poets it is obviously 
 impossible to estimate. Evidently Basse does not belong 
 to those, else we should not be speaking of him. But 
 he is as near to them as a man may well be. A breath 
 nearer and he had tumbled over into the pitchy dark- 
 ness. His singularity is this, that whereas the nearly 
 forgotten poet was usually somewhat of a figure in his 
 own day, and had at least the pleasure of seeing his 
 name on a title-page, Basse, though occasionally referred 
 256 
 
APRIL WILLIAM BASSE 1893 
 
 to by his contemporaries, and evidently of some account 
 amongst them, was certainly not a figure, and his best 
 work, that which he had so carefully filed and polished, 
 has lain in manuscript for two hundred and forty years. 
 So had they gone on lying had it not occurred to 
 Messrs. Ellis and Elvey, who possess the manuscripts, 
 to ask Mr. Warwick Bond to edit them, and to publish 
 them in the sumptuous volume before me. It was a 
 sweet, charitable act. Poor Basse! if he could only 
 know. How would he exclaim, with Herrick (whom he 
 probably lived long enough to read), ' Like to a bride 
 come forth my book at last ! ' Of course, his publishers 
 will have sent him a copy ! 
 
 Few figures are so completely lost in shade as Basse. 
 With all Mr. Bond's learned pains, his history is still all 
 mays and mights. He was probably born about 1583, 
 probably born and schooled at Northampton, probably 
 a page to Lady Wenman, of Thame Park, and certainly 
 a retainer of the family, probably at Oxford, probably a 
 friend (as certainly a disciple) of Spenser, probably a 
 musician as well as a poet, almost certainly married, 
 burying ' Helinor ye wife of Willia Basse,' 23rd Sept., 
 1637, and probably died at Thame some time during 
 1653. 1653 was the very year he had hoped to publish 
 his long-hoarded Pastorals, hoped to burst out into 
 sudden flame, old man as he must have been. He had 
 his manuscript all carefully prepared down to the title 
 page, which it is pathetic to see facsimiled in Mr. 
 Bond's edition. 
 
 Two associations, however, have served to keep his 
 memory in the minds of lovers of books ; the reference 
 
 VOL. L 257 R 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 to him in The Complete Angler^ and his epitaph on 
 Shakespeare — especially the former. From what Walton 
 says, Basse had evidently some note as a song-writer, 
 probably as a composer of the words, not the music. 
 ' I '11 promise you,' says Piscator, in chapter v. part i., 
 ' I '11 sing a song that was lately made, at my request, 
 by Mr. William Basse, one that hath made the choice 
 songs of the " Hunter in his Career," and of " Tom of 
 Bedlam," and many others of note ; and this that I will 
 sing is in praise of Angling.' The reader will remember 
 the song beginning 'As inward love breeds outward 
 talk.' Verses four and five have most merit, the fifth 
 being especially characteristic of Basse's moralising 
 vein ; 
 
 ' And when the timorous trout I wait 
 
 To take, and he devours my bait, 
 
 How poor a thing, I sometimes find. 
 
 Will captivate a greedy mind ; 
 
 And when none bite, I praise the wise 
 Whom vain allurements ne'er surprise.' 
 
 His epitaph on Shakespeare has a verve to which he 
 rarely attains, and, as it cannot be said to be well known, 
 I will quote it : 
 
 ' Renowned Spencer, lye a thought more nye 
 To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumond lye 
 A little neerer Spenser, to make roome 
 For Shakespeare in your threefold, fowerfold Tombe. 
 To lodge all fowre in one bed make a shift 
 Untill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift 
 Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slayne. 
 For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe. 
 If your precedency in death doth barre 
 A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher. 
 Under this carved marble of thine owne, 
 Sleepe, rare Tragoedian, Shakespeare, sleepe alone 
 258 
 
APRIL WILLIAM BASSE 1893 
 
 Thy unmolested peace, unshared Cave, 
 Possesse as Lord, not Tenant, of thy Grave, 
 That unto us and others it may be 
 Honor hereafter to be layde by thee,' 
 
 These lines had evidently struck Ben Jonson, for he 
 obviously alludes to them in his verses prefixed to the 
 first folio : 
 
 ' My Shakespeare, rise ; I will not lodge thee by 
 Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye 
 A little further, to make thee a roome, ..." 
 
 incorporates indeed their striking openings for which, 
 with the majority of readers, he probably gets the credit. 
 Basse's Pastorals are based on Spenser's Shepherd^s 
 Calendar, the fashionable form of his day. They have, 
 as became a disciple of Spenser, a moral intent, being 
 confessedly '9 Eclogues in Honor of 9 Vertues' ; their 
 dramatis persona and their themes are the conventional 
 figures and themes of Elizabethan pastoral, and each 
 ends with an ' Emblem ' in the approved fashion — 
 ' Jesper's Emblem,' ' Cuddy's Emblem.' Mr. Bond 
 does not claim for them that they reach a high level of 
 poetry. They are never impassioned, seldom contain 
 any of those striking beauties ' that into glory peep,' but 
 pretty pastoral bits abound, and there is diffused through 
 the whole a genuine sense of poetry, as the sweet-brier 
 diffuses a meadow, and yet defies us to say, ' it is here,' 
 or ' it is there.' 
 
 259 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 Mr. T. E. Brown has won a well-deserved reputation 
 
 as the poet of Manx humour and pathos. 
 T. E. Brown: . ,, . 
 
 ' Old John ; "is new volume contains a small section 
 
 and other Qf studies in the same genre, entitled In 
 
 Poems.' 
 
 the Coach — a miniature Manx Canterbury- 
 Pilgrimage. The old fisherman's story is the most 
 successful, entitled 'Jus' the Shy.' He relates how a 
 fleet of them, returning home from the North Sea fish- 
 ing, were driven southward by a gale, and were obliged 
 to put into a strange bay. There was a castle at the 
 top of the bay, and to their surprise they find em- 
 blazoned over one of its doors the Legs of Man. It 
 appears that the lady of the castle had once lived in 
 Manxland, and loved its people ; and hearing of the 
 fishermen in the harbour, she sent an invitation for 
 them all to go to dine up at the castle. The men 
 accepted, but when the time came they never turned 
 up, simply because the strong rough fellows were — 
 too shy ! 
 
 ' To have dinner with her, aye ! dinner, think of that now ! 
 A hundred-and-sixty of us — what ? aw, I '11 sweer. 
 Dinner though ; so promised sure enough ; and the day come, 
 And there wasn a sowl of us went, not a sowl, by gum ! 
 No ! and the pipers blawin. 
 And the curks drawin, 
 
 And the preparations they 'd be havin, so I 'm toul", 
 And there wasn a sowl, no, not a sowl. 
 
 And what for was that ? What for? just the shy, the shy, 
 
 That 's the what for, and that 's the why. 
 
 And that 's the way with the Manx ; aw, it is though, aw, 
 
 they are, they are, 
 Mos' despard shy ..." 
 
 260 
 
APRIL T. E. BROWN 1893 
 
 Not discouraged, the great lady asks them 'to tay,' 
 with a slightly better result. Sixteen plucked up 
 courage and went, 
 
 ' But the res' ? you 're wondrin. Chut ! 
 Jus' the shy, and nothin but 
 The shy. Aw, no use o' talkin. 
 The shy it 's shawkin. 
 No raison, says you : not a bit. 
 Amazin, says you. Well, that 's all you '11 get, 
 That is the raison, and the for and the why — 
 Jus' the shy,' 
 
 Surely this is charming humour, the true humour, 
 with those kindly tears somewhere about it which 
 distinguished it from the new. 
 
 Another humorous, but less sympathetic, sketch is 
 that of the incensed husband : 
 
 ' Conjergal rights ! conjergal rights ! 
 I don't care for the jink of her and I don't care for the jaw 
 
 of her, 
 But I '11 have the law of her,' 
 
 What a finely ironical comment on the working of the 
 marriage laws ! 
 
 In the majority of the verses, however, which make 
 up his new volume, Mr. Brown makes a bid for con- 
 sideration as a poet of other themes than these Manx 
 humours. And a good bid, too, on the whole. He 
 succeeds in impressing us as a man with a strong 
 individual hold on life. He sees with no one's eyes 
 but his own, and what he sees and feels moves him 
 with a strong manly emotion, a quality which he is 
 able to get into his verse, and which atones for many 
 of its defects. Those defects he seems to owe to 
 261 
 
APRIL RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 Browning. He is often crabbed and impatient, and 
 writes verses such as this : 
 
 ' Else were our life both frivolous and final, 
 
 A mere skiomachy, 
 Not succulent of growth, not officinal 
 To what shall after be. 
 But Fortune's devilry 
 Of Harlequin with smirk theatro-columbinal.' 
 
 He has yet to reaUse the truth of form ; and, instead 
 of compressing his ideas, he often expands them in 
 long shambling anyhow metres. Thus he is rather a 
 poet of occasional fine lines and verses than of com- 
 plete poems. He is seldom so completely satisfactory 
 as in : 
 
 ' A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot ! 
 Rose plot. 
 
 Fringed pool, 
 Ferned grot — 
 
 The veriest school 
 
 Of peace ; and yet the fool 
 Contends that God is not — 
 Not God ! in gardens ! when the eve is cool ? 
 
 Nay, but I have a sign ; 
 
 'Tis very sure God walks in mine.' 
 
 Such verse as this has roots, and for such authentic 
 throb of humanity as beats in Mr. Brown's poems, 
 such sturdy faith in life, for the fresh air and sun- 
 shine all about his book, and the gleaming beauty 
 that occasionally flashes through his obscurities, we 
 cannot be too thankful. It is merely gratitude, there- 
 fore, to insist that more care for form would make 
 Mr. Brown considerably more effective as a poet. He 
 should not quote Greek in English verse. Certainly 
 262 
 
MAY LORD DE TABLEY 1893 
 
 one has more chance with Greek than with Sir EdWin 
 Arnold's Hindustani, but it is no less bad as art. He 
 needs, too, to guard against an allusiveness that leaves 
 too much to the reader. Though the title-poem Old 
 John contains a few fine lines and verses, it is too 
 much of a personal colloquy between Mr. Brown and 
 his old Covenanter servant, and it is only near the 
 end that the eavesdropping reader begins at all to 
 realise the 'Dear, brave, old Scotchman.' And what 
 meaning does the title 'Lime Street' convey to any- 
 one who does not know Liverpool. Greek, big 'out- 
 of-colour' words, diffuseness, obscurity — let Mr. Brown 
 avoid these and he will write us many more poems 
 as good as one on 'Poets and Poets' — of which 
 I quote the opening verse : 
 
 ' He fishes in the night of deep sea pools 
 
 For him the nets hang long and low, 
 Cork-buoyed and strong ; the silver-gleaming schools 
 
 Come with the ebb and flow 
 Of universal tides, and all the channels glow.' 
 
 If Mr. Brown was thinking of himself, he was not far 
 wrong. 
 
 Wordsworth's ' violet by a mossy stone, half hidden 
 
 from the eye,' is, perhaps, not the most 
 
 Taile ^ ■ ^PP^opriate quotation one could find for 
 
 ' Poems, the more recent modern poet. Diffidence 
 
 Dramatic and ^^^ unpracticality are no longer typical 
 
 of the poetic temperament, and future 
 
 humour founded upon those supposed characteristics 
 
 263 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 will be mere anachronism. A well-known publisher 
 tells me that the keenest business men of his acquaint- 
 ance are his poets. Evidently the struggle for exist- 
 ence has at last developed in the poet those qualities 
 of which he was most in need, and modesty and absence 
 of mind will no more handicap him in the race of life. 
 At a time, therefore, when poets are not so much born 
 as boomed, it is a matter of curious interest to encounter 
 a poet who for the last twenty-five years has indulged 
 
 that 
 
 ' . , . delight in singing, though none hear 
 Beside the singer,' 
 
 content, like the Greek sculptor, to leave his work to 
 the all-seeing eyes of the gods. 
 
 Not that Lord de Tabley has quite fulfilled Thomas 
 Ashe's pathetic description of himself as ' the singer 
 no man listens to.' It is, perhaps, mainly his own 
 fault that he has not taken the place in modern letters 
 to which his work entitles him, and which twenty years 
 ago the critics were well disposed to offer him. After 
 seven years of fruitful poetic effort he suddenly ceased 
 singing, or sang under his breath ; and thus there are 
 those who know him well as an authority on the com- 
 paratively frivolous subject of book plates, who know 
 nothing of Philoctetes and other studies from the 
 antique, which place him second only to Mr. Swin- 
 burne as a follower of the Greek tragic poets. 
 
 Let us indulge ourselves in a date or two. In 1863 
 
 Lord de Tabley made simultaneously his debut as 
 
 numismatist and poet. His essays ' On Greek Federal 
 
 Coinage' and *0n some Coins of Lycia under the 
 
 264 
 
MAY LORD DE TABLEY 1893 
 
 Rhodian Domination and of the Lycian League' may 
 be found by the curious in the Transactions of the 
 Numismatic Society for that year. Our present con- 
 cern is with the Httle volume of poems, the title of 
 which anticipated Mr. Ruskin's better known work, 
 ' Praeterita, by William Lancaster.' The first verse of 
 a young man is usually more retrospective than that 
 of his elders. We know that ' Pope was sexagenary 
 at sixteen,' and how those innocent dreaming lads the 
 ' Two Brothers ' wrote of ' Memory ! dear Enchanter ! ' 
 in their Lincolnshire garden. But in so naming his 
 poems, 'William Lancaster' did not merely follow the 
 law 'that nearly all young poets should write old,' but 
 thus indeed divulged at once one of the permanent 
 characteristics of his muse. The melancholy of the 
 Greek poets had already entered into his soul, and 
 that sad wind which blows out of the past into the 
 present was to make an undertone in all his verses. 
 Praeterita also bore more open witness to the bent 
 of its writer's mind in the short blank verse studies 
 Minos, Semele, and Philoctetes. It is significant of 
 the maturing laborious artist that Lord de Tabley made 
 no use of the latter in his later drama. A study of 
 Saul indicated too the writer's interest in the dramatic 
 possibilities of Hebrew history, which was afterwards 
 to express itself in his tremendous figures of Nimrod 
 and Jael. Though the dramatic element of Lord de 
 Tabley's talent was thus foreshadowed, the main 
 achievement of this first book was lyrical. The in- 
 fluence of Tennyson was observable here and there, 
 perhaps most in the deliberate exactness of the charm- 
 265 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 ing nature sketches, and but little in the cadence of 
 the verse. That was marked by a sweetness more 
 austere than Tennyson's, a winter rather than a summer 
 sweetness, the sweetness of ' winter's sometime smiles.' 
 A particularly happy use of stanzas with unrhymed tails 
 was characteristic of the lyrics : 
 
 ' Light of love and cold of brain, 
 
 Shall I trust thy tears, 
 Linking hand on hand again ? 
 In untutored years, 
 Ah, but this was sweet." 
 
 and again : 
 
 ' Kiss and touch my hand, and part : 
 Sighs are farewell of the heart. 
 Dream a moment in thy joy. 
 Wake a world of years. ' 
 
 And over and above particular qualities there was 
 a strongly marked general firmness of style. There 
 was nothing glib or merely facile about the verse. The 
 words, so to say, were not carried off their feet by the 
 rhythm, but moved to it with a sure tread. The poet 
 was evidently a scholar as well as thinker, dreamer, and 
 lover. This sureness of touch was evident in all the 
 operations of his talent. He clearly possessed, or was 
 far on the way towards possessing, a firm hold of his 
 faculties. There was no timidity in his writing, no 
 uncertainty in his vision, or obscurity in his thought. 
 He knew exactly what he had to say and how he wished 
 to say it. This is, perhaps, the cardinal virtue of Lord 
 de Tabley's poetry. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on Praeterita, because of 
 its illustrating potentially, and to some extent actually, 
 266 
 
MAY LORD DE TAB LEY 1893 
 
 its writer's principal characteristics. It will suffice, 
 with one exception, just to name the volumes which 
 have succeeded it: Eclogues and Monodramas, 1864; 
 Studies in Verse, 1865 ; Philoctetes, 1866 ; Orestes, 1867 ; 
 Rehearsals, 1870 ; Searching the Net, 1873 '■> The Soldier 
 of Fortune, 1876. In addition to these poems and 
 dramas Lord de Tabley had written two novels : A Screw 
 Loose, 1868 ; Ropes of Sand, 1869 ; the latter a title 
 which one notices, as a coincidence, has been recently 
 employed by Mr. Francillon. In 1880 he also pub- 
 lished his well-known Guide to the Study of Book Plates. 
 All these books were published either under the 
 pseudonym of 'William Lancaster,' or 'William P. 
 Lancaster, M.A.,' or as 'by the Hon. John Leicester 
 Warren.' The beautiful, admirably representative, 
 volume of selections, with some new poems, just issued, 
 completes Lord de Tabley's bibliography. 
 
 With this volume before us it is only necessary to 
 turn back for a few moments to Philoctetes, which 
 remains Lord de Tabley's most ambitious achievement. 
 
 However one may regard the imitation of the Greek 
 drama, one cannot but feel a certain admiration for the 
 artistic heroism which prompts a modern poet to make 
 so trfemendous an essay. To fail in great endeavours or 
 to succeed in lesser ones, which is the better .? For my 
 part I am with Phaethon. It is something, after all, to 
 have tried to drive the chariot of Phoebus. The skill of 
 the decorator is charming, but the courage of the 
 architect is noble — and ever rarer. And to compete 
 against Sophocles ! Surely it is an essay worth failing 
 in. To compare Lord de Tabley's Philoctetes with that 
 267 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 of Sophocles might not be all unprofitable, had one the 
 necessary space ; for it is surprising with what inventive 
 force the modern poet strikes out a new grouping of 
 the old figures, and, indeed, an appreciably original 
 characterisation of his hero, making him somewhat less 
 of a whiner and touching him with something of the 
 impersonal sublimity of a Prometheus. It is more 
 proportionate to compare it with the classical work of 
 Mr. Swinburne and Matthew Arnold. Set against 
 Merope, there can be little question of its superior 
 vitality. It lives all through, as Merope scarcely 
 breathes. Comparing it with Atalanta as poetry, one 
 feels at once Mr. Swinburne's marked pre-eminence ; 
 but as drama I am inclined to think that the advantage 
 is with Lord de Tabley. There are noble choruses in 
 Philoctetes, but it would be idle to claim for them the 
 pomp and magic of those in Atalanta. On the other 
 hand, Philoctetes, as drama, has, I think, more of the 
 statuesque severity of the antique than Atalanta. 
 
 I wish I might pause here to make an extract from it, 
 the narrative of the death of Heracles as related by 
 Philoctetes, an episode which Lord de Tabley reprinted 
 separately in one of his later volumes, but which I am 
 disappointed to find that he has omitted from his' new 
 selections. A more strenuous piece of naked narrative, 
 tense and clean as a racer's muscles, one could hardly 
 find in any modern poet. The reader may seek it 
 either in its place in Philoctetes or extracted in the 
 volume Rehearsals. 
 
 I will here quote instead a portion of the 'Zeus' 
 chorus from Orestes — a drama which, I think, surpasses 
 268 
 
MAY LORD DE TABLEY 1893 
 
 Philoctetes as poetry, though it falls much beneath it as 
 drama — which I am glad to find in the new volume : 
 
 ' Let us go up and look him in the face — 
 We are but as he made us ; the disgrace 
 Of this, our imperfection, is his own — 
 And unabashed in that fierce glare and blaze 
 Front him and say, 
 " We come not to atone. 
 To cringe and moan : 
 God, vindicate thy way. 
 Erase the staining sorrow we have known. 
 Thou, whom ill things obey ; 
 And give our clay 
 
 Some master bliss imperial as thine own : 
 Or wipe us quite away. 
 Far from the ray of thine eternal throne. 
 Dream not we love this sorrow of our breath, 
 Hope not we wince or palpitate at death ; 
 Slay us, for thine is nature and thy slave : 
 Draw down her clouds to be our sacrifice, 
 And heap unmeasured mountain for our grave, 
 With peaks of fire and ice. 
 Flicker one cord of lightning, north to south. 
 And mix in awful glories wood and cloud ; 
 We shall have rest, and find 
 Illimitable darkness for our shroud ; 
 We shall have peace, then, surely, when thy mouth 
 Breathes us away into the darkness bUnd, 
 Then only kind."' 
 
 Here is the true iron in the voice, the genuine bass 
 which cannot be imitated, and comes naturally or not at 
 all. Strength without strain is, then, the characteristic 
 of Lord de Tabley's poetry which arrests us first. He 
 has authority. He is an architect. Along with his 
 strength we soon find the sweetness and fecundity of 
 strength. He is austere, not from poverty of nature, 
 but from control of his wealth. He can, when he 
 269 
 
MAY RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 chooses, delight us with efHorescence, charm us with 
 variety of curious ornament, and pour out his fancies 
 like a prodigal. He is strikingly rich in invention — a 
 rare gift nowadays. As a contrast to the stern beauty 
 of the passage just quoted, let the reader find that 
 voluptuous, wizard description of Circe's chamber, sur- 
 charged with colour and perfume, and stiff like a 
 tapestry with briUiant pre-Raphaelitism of detail. If 
 not precisely pre-Raphaelitism, a striking exactness of 
 detail and rare firmness of realisation are characteristic 
 of all Lord de Tabley's work. It is especially noticeable 
 in the charming nature pictures to which I have 
 referred, and in these verses from his most important 
 new poem, a finely sustained ' Hymn to Astarte ' : 
 
 ' What foreland fledged with myrrh. 
 
 Vocal with m3Tiad bees, 
 What pine-sequestered spur, 
 What lone declivities, 
 Will draw thee to descend, 
 Creation's cradle-friend ? 
 
 The sun feeds at thy smiles, 
 
 The wan moon glows thereby. 
 The daedal ocean isles 
 Terraced in rosemary, 
 
 The brushwood in the bed 
 Of the dry torrent head, 
 
 The rolling river brink 
 
 With plumy sedges grey, 
 The ford where foxes drink, 
 The creek where otters play — 
 Yearn upwards — all of them — 
 To grasp thy raiment's hem.' 
 
 Lord de Tabley has evidently been no less minute an 
 270 
 
JUNE BEN JONSON 1893 
 
 observer of nature than Lord Tennyson or Mr. George 
 Meredith. 
 
 In his dramatic studies the same absolute vision 
 impresses us. His imaginative hold upon his theme in 
 such a poem as * Jael,' for example, is almost grim. We 
 seem to be looking right into the tragic eyes of the 
 strong melancholy woman. We seem to see as clearly 
 as in a picture that one drop of pallid blood steal ' out 
 of his forehead underneath the nail.' 
 
 Quotation, short of complete poems, would convey 
 but an imperfect idea of Lord de Tabley's finest work 
 — the beauty and tragic strength of 'Phaethon,' the 
 moonlike glamour of ' Daphne,' the stern passion of 
 ' Nimrod,' the rich earthiness of the ' Ode to Pan.' It 
 would be like bringing an inch of marble as a sample of 
 the beauty of some Greek statue. 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 The vengeance of his enemies would seem to have 
 Ben Jonson ■ Pursued Ben Jonson even beyond the 
 Dr. Grosart's grave. There is, perhaps, no other in- 
 • Selections.' ^^^^^^ jj^ literature of so great a poet so 
 shabbily treated by posterity. It is true that Every Man 
 in His Humour held the stage till well into the present 
 century (being revived by Dickens in 1845), but, of 
 course, the stage is no real test of poetical fame, and 
 the fact that Jonson is so little read is of more signifi- 
 cance. The legend would still seem to hold that his 
 271 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 works are a mass of classical adaptations and allusions, 
 stiff in movement, devoid of natural magic ; that his 
 characters are mere types of 'humours,' lacking the 
 warm blood of humanity ; that his lyrics are merely 
 stiff-jointed elaborations of art, ingenuities of mechanism 
 such as those hollow earthenware birds which warble 
 when filled with water, rather than the real birds of the 
 wood. 
 
 Of course, there is a certain measure of truth in these 
 objections, though it is equally undeniable that in no 
 few of Jonson's lyrics did he snatch a grace beyond the 
 reach of art, and that his figures often live with the true 
 inspiration of humanity. Besides, of the vast fertility of 
 invention shown in the plots alone of so large a body of 
 plays, of the inexhaustibility of fancy displayed in his 
 masques, of the almost Balzacian observation of the 
 manners of the time — we hear nothing of all these and 
 other qualities which make those nine volumes of 
 Gififord's edition one of the richest mines in the whole of 
 our literature. It has, indeed, been a mine which has 
 done no little to enrich the treasure of other poets. 
 Milton surely owed much to Ben Jonson, and Herrick 
 might be said to be a rib taken out of his side. He 
 certainly represents the lyrical side of Ben Jonson's gift 
 carried to more unfailing perfection ; he might be almost 
 accurately regarded as the reincarnation of Ben Jonson's 
 lyrical faculty. Whatever learning Herrick had was 
 mainly derived from Jonson, and his serious themes 
 were Jonson's frivolities, his ' underwoods ' as he would 
 call them. It is perhaps not very generally known 
 how much one of Herrick's most exquisite and famous 
 273 
 
JUNE BEN JONSON 1893 
 
 lyrics owes to Jonson ; that ' Nightpiece to Julia,' be- 
 ginning 
 
 ' Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee, 
 The shooting stars attend thee ; 
 
 And the elves also, 
 
 Whose little eyes glow, 
 Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.' 
 
 In a masque entitled 'The Gipsies Metamorphosed,' 
 Ben Jonson has the following : 
 
 ' The faery beam upon you. 
 The stars to glisten on you ; 
 
 A moon of light, 
 
 In the noon of night. 
 Till the fire-drake hath o'er-gone you ! 
 The wheel of fortune guide you. 
 The boy with the bow beside you ; 
 
 Run aye in the way, 
 
 Till the bird of day, 
 And the luckier lot betide you.' 
 
 One of the first charms of Herrick's poem is the 
 delightful metre, and that we see is not to his credit but 
 to Ben Jonson's. In actual beauty of fancy Jonson's is 
 little inferior to Herrick's, the first four lines at least are 
 equal to Herrick's, and it is really only in that allusion 
 to the * fire-drake,' one of those characteristic clumsi- 
 nesses of a learning not always assimilated by his genius, 
 that his touch is at fault. 
 
 To the frequent nobility of Jonson's blank verse, this 
 fine panegyric of poetry from the original version of 
 Every Man in His Humour will bear witness : 
 
 ' Indeed if you will look on poesy 
 As she appears to many, poor and lame. 
 Patched up in remnants and old worn-out rags. 
 Half-starved for want of her peculiar food, 
 
 VOL. I. 273 S 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 Sacred invention ; then I must confirm 
 
 Both your conceit and censure of her merit ; 
 
 But view her in her glorious ornaments, 
 
 Attired in the majesty of art, 
 
 Set high in spirit with the precious taste 
 
 Of sweet philosophy ; and which is most, 
 
 Crowned with the rich tradition of a soul, 
 
 That hates to have her dignity profaned 
 
 With any relish of an earthly thought, 
 
 O, then, how proud a presence doth she bear ! ' 
 
 As we read such lines as these we realise that Jonson 
 did not receive that epithet ' rare ' for nothing. ' O Rare 
 Ben Jonson ! ' — the reader will remember is his only 
 epitaph in the Abbey. How he came by it is a pretty 
 story. ' His friends,' said Gifford, ' designed to raise a 
 noble monument to his memory, by subscription, and 
 till this was ready nothing more was required than to 
 cover his ashes decently with the stone which had been 
 removed. While this was doing, Aubrey tells us, Sir 
 John Young, of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, whom he 
 familiarly calls Jack Young, chanced to pass through 
 the Abbey, and, not enduring that the remains of so 
 great a man should lie at all without a memorial, gave 
 one of the workmen eighteenpence to cut the words in 
 question. The subscription was fully successful ; but 
 the troubles which were hourly becoming more serious 
 and which long after broke out into open rebellion, pre- 
 vented the execution of the monument, and the money 
 was returned to the subscribers.' 
 
 Thus that charming impromptu of a country gentleman 
 remained his only epitaph, and indeed for those who love 
 him no man's fame sounds more sweetly in four words 
 than Jonson's in that simple — ' O Rare Ben Jonson ! ' 
 274 
 
JUNE RUDYARD KIPLING 1893 
 
 There was, of course, another monument to his fame 
 in a volume of elegies composed by thirty or forty of his 
 poet friends, that Jonsonus Virbius which should be one 
 of the best answers to his detractors, one of the most 
 generous tributes to a dead poet ever made. We have 
 in our own day seen such another tribute in Le Tombeau 
 de Theophile Gautier, in which Mr. Swinburne mourned 
 in several languages. Among the many fine panegyrics 
 in the Jonsonus Virbius these lines of Cleveland, one of 
 Jonson's most promising and best loved 'sons,' may 
 themselves be said to be famous : 
 
 ' The Muses' fairest light in no dark time ; 
 The wonder of a learned age ; the line 
 Which none can pass ; the most proportion'd wit, 
 To nature, the best judge of what was fit ; 
 The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen 
 The voice most echo'd by consenting men ; 
 The soul which answer' d best to all well said 
 By others, and which most requital made.' 
 
 There could be no finer answer to those who carp at 
 Jonson's indebtedness, or that of any other great poet, 
 to other writers, than those last two lines. 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 Doubtless, I am far from being the only one of Mr. 
 
 Kipling's readers who, with every new 
 Rudyard . , . . , 
 
 Kipling: collection of his Stones, makes first for 
 
 • Many the little chapter-heads of vivid, tantalis- 
 
 nven ions j^^ verse. They are not infrequently 
 
 better than the stories they preface, and, doubtless, if 
 
 Mr. Kipling were called upon, like Rousseau, to face 
 
 27s 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 the judgment-seat with one of his books in his hand, 
 he would be well advised to choose the Barrack-room 
 Ballads. In Many Inventions he treats us to two 
 whole poems by way of prologue and epilogue — a hint 
 he perhaps first learned from Mr. Buchanan. The first 
 is one of those almost religious celebrations of the art 
 of the story-teller which are apt to ring a little melo- 
 dramatic, though in the case of ' Soldiers Three ' there 
 was a piquancy in the apparent contrast between the 
 artist's material, his 'clay figures,' as he termed them, 
 and his exalted religious way of regarding them. Mr. 
 Kipling thus drawing back from his clay statuettes, 
 with all the solemnity of the Creator resting on the 
 seventh day, was a lesson in artistic seriousness. His 
 prologue to Many Inventions^ a kind of prayer to the 
 spirit of True Romance^ is hardly so convincing. The 
 poem belongs to the same order of cheap mystical 
 verse as that memorable prologue to The Barrack-room 
 Ballads^ originally written, the reader may remember, 
 as a satire on the injunction against the Rabelais pic- 
 tures, and afterwards lovingly adapted to the memory 
 of Mr. Kipling's dear friend, Mr. Balestier. For 
 Romance to be addressed in capitals like the Deity 
 is at least confusing. 
 
 More to one's taste is the vigorous sea-ballad with 
 which Mr. Kipling concludes his volume. It is far too 
 technical. Whole verses are thus incomprehensible; 
 but one 'puts up' with that for the catching rhythm 
 and some of those almost brutally forcible imaginative 
 phrases, which were perhaps more conspicuous in ' The 
 Ballad of the Bolivar ' than in any other of Mr. Kipling's 
 276 
 
JUNE RUDYARD KIPLING 1893 
 
 poems. The first verse illustrates both the faults and 
 the charm of Mr. Kipling's method : 
 
 ' Heh ! Walk her round. Heave, ah, heave her short again ! 
 Over, snatch her over, there, and hold her on the pawl. 
 Loose all sail, and brace your yards aback and full — 
 Ready jib to pay her off and heave short all ! 
 Well, ah, fare you well ; we can stay no more with you, my 
 
 love — 
 Down, set down your liquor and your girl from off your 
 knee; 
 For the wind has come to say : 
 ' ' You must take me while you may. 
 If you'd go to Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks at 
 sea ! " 
 
 Here is another fine version of the chorus : 
 
 'Well, ah, fare you well, for the Channel wind's took hold 
 
 of us. 
 Choking down our voices as we snatch the gaskets free. 
 
 And it 's blowing up for night. 
 
 And she 's dropping Light on Light, 
 And she's snorting under bonnets for a breath of open sea.' 
 
 And I am afraid I cannot resist quoting the whole of 
 the last verse : 
 
 ' Wheel, full and by ; but she '11 smell her road alone to-night. 
 Sick she is and harbour-sick — O sick to clear the land ! 
 Roll down to Brest with the old Red Ensign over us — 
 Carry on and thrash her out with all she '11 stand ! 
 Well, ah, fare you well, and it 's Ushant gives the door to us, 
 Whirling like a windmill on the dirty sand to lea : 
 Till the last, last flicker goes 
 From the tumbling water-rows. 
 And we 're off to Mother Carey 
 (Walk her down to Mother Carey !) 
 
 Oh, we 're bound for Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks 
 at sea ! ' 
 
 277. 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 It would seem that Mr. Kipling has it in his power 
 to be laureate of Jack Tar as well as ' T. A.' Natur- 
 ally all strong vivid life appeals to him. It is to be 
 hoped he will some day give us a volume of 'Fo'c's'le 
 Ballads.' It is curious that among all the talk con- 
 cerning the laureateship a little while ago, Mr. Kipling 
 was so seldom mentioned. Yet he has struck the most 
 manfully national note of any recent poet. Though 
 many have essayed to be Tyrtaeus, their eye was so 
 manifestly on the wreath that they failed to convince 
 us of their sincerity. There is more of the true fire 
 of patriotism in one line of Mr. Kipling than in all 
 their frigid complimentary odes to the British Lion. 
 
 But I am saying nothing of the stories. Most, if 
 not all, of them are already known to the readers of 
 the magazines. ' Badalia Herodsfoot ' meets us again ; 
 also that unhappy ' Brugglesmith,' the kind of thing a 
 clever young man writes when he thinks he has the 
 public under his thumb — a dangerous plan. ' The 
 Finest Story in the World' — a description which un- 
 fortunately does not apply to Mr. Kipling's story — 
 turns up once more. There is, too, a story, or rather, 
 an allegory, entitled 'The Children of the Zodiac,' an 
 exercise in that cheap mysticism above referred to, in 
 genre somewhat between Miss Olive Schreiner's Dreams 
 and a 'fantasia' by a new humourist — though not 
 unreHeved by touches of imagination, whenever Mr. 
 Kipling approaches the concrete. 'Judson and the 
 Empire' is an attempt at extravaganza which hardly 
 comes off. The best story in the book, to my thinking, is 
 ' The Disturber of Traffic' Mr. Kipling would seem to 
 278 
 
JUNE RUDYARD KIPLING 1893 
 
 think well of it himself, as he opens his book with it. 
 It is the story of a lighthouse man on a lonely station 
 in the Southern seas, who gradually goes mad with 
 having nothing to look at day by day but the wavy 
 lines of the sea in front of him, no one to speak to 
 but an amphibious creature, half man and half seal, 
 * an Orang-Lant, what they call a sea gipsy,' with skin 
 in little flakes and cracks all over from living so much 
 in the salt water, and ' webby-foot ' hands — not ' a com- 
 panionable man, like you and me might have been 
 to Dowse,' adds the narrator. Oppressed with the 
 eternal wavy lines of the sea, Dowse gets it into his 
 poor head that it is the ships passing through the 
 strait that makes the water so 'streaky.' So he sets 
 to work on a brilliant idea to stop the inconvenience, 
 throwing a line of wreck-buoys across the neck of the 
 strait. This, for a time, frightens the troublesome ships 
 away, but presently comes a man-of-war on survey, not 
 to be frightened. ' You leave me alone and I '11 leave 
 you alone,' cries Dowse to the boat's crew, come ashore 
 to make inquiries. ' Go round by the Ombay Passage, 
 and don't cut up my water. You 're making it streaky.' 
 He is persuaded to go off and see the captain. On 
 the way he addresses the sailors as 'white mice with 
 chains about their necks,' and speaks to the captain 
 in nursery rhymes. Going forward, he catches a reflec- 
 tion of himself in the binnacle brasses, 'and he saw 
 that he was standing there and talking mother-naked 
 in front of all them sailors, and he ran into the fo'c's'le 
 howling most grievous.' This climax is very skil- 
 fully introduced, coming, as it does with a similar shock 
 279 
 
JUNE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS 1893 
 
 upon the reader as upon poor Dowse himself. 'The 
 Story of the Beast,' in its uncanny power, reminds one 
 of ' The Mark of the Beast.' It is hardly less creepy, 
 but less disagreeable. There are two or three fine Mul- 
 vaney and Ortheris stories, 'My Lord the Elephant,' 
 * His Private Honour,' and ' Love o' Women,' each of 
 which is worthy of the prestige of those heroes. ' Love 
 o' Women' is marked by Mr. Kipling's rare touches 
 of tenderness. One must not forget to mention ' A Con- 
 ference of the Powers,' that dialogue in which the point 
 of view of the despised dainty-handed civilian — in the 
 person of a supposed distinguished novelist — is skilfully 
 contrasted with that of the man of battle — represented 
 by three young soldiers just back from active service 
 in Burma. ' You ! Have you shot a man ? ' asks the 
 half-affrighted novelist of one of the beardless boys, 
 'and have you, too?' 'Think so,' said Nevin sweetly. 
 Before the night is out the crestfallen novelist begins 
 to suspect that his own trade, as Michael Angelo said 
 of oil-painting, is only fit for women and boys. That 
 is apparently Mr. Kipling's own point of view, though, 
 with the inconsistency of all chanters of the sword, he 
 still sticks to the pen — and he always manages to make 
 his readers feel like that novelist, that we peaceable 
 stay-at-homes are poor milk-and-water creatures, and 
 that there is nothing in the world worth doing save 
 slicing and ' potting ' your fellow-creatures. His blood- 
 thirstiness is an affectation which still clings to him, 
 and his memory for technicalities, to which he owes 
 much of his force, is in danger of overgrowing his art. 
 But, all deductions made, the new volume is quite 
 280 
 
JUNE HENRY JAMES 1893 
 
 worthy of its famous forerunners. The tremendous 
 
 verve, the grasp and fertility of Mr. Kipling's gift, is 
 as wonderful as ever. 
 
 There could hardly be a greater shock of contrast 
 
 Henry James :^'^^'^ t° P^^^ ^^O"^ M^- Kipling tO Mr. 
 • The Private Henry James. It is like passing from 
 
 Life ' 
 
 a swarming world of tropical sunshine 
 
 into some dim-lighted Hades, peopled with low-voiced 
 aristocratic shades. It takes us some time to realise 
 that we are still dealing with flesh and blood. And 
 I confess that Mr. James's dramatis personcB grow 
 too shadowy for me, their drama too imperceptibly 
 refined, and the real pleasure I find in Mr. James's 
 more recent books is that of the style — when it also 
 is not too pedantically wire-drawn. Some of the char- 
 acterisations in The Private Life and other stories are 
 very happy. A lady in perpetual mourning had been 
 described as ' the queen of night,' and Mr. James adds, 
 'the term was descriptive if you understood that the 
 night was cloudy.' She was also 'rather submissively 
 sad. She was like a woman with a painless malady. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 281 
 
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
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