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 Authority of criticism, and otiier essays 
 
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THE AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
THE AUTHORITY 
 
 OF 
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM P. TRENT 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS," "JOHN MILTON," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1899 
 
/\.\2.'\X^'I 
 
 Copyright, 1899, 
 By Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
TO 
 
 S. S. p. PATTESON, Esq. 
 
 Of tttc Richmond { Va.) Bar, 
 AS A TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 Although the papers contained in this vol- 
 ume were written from time to time and for 
 special purposes, they will, I trust, be found 
 to possess in the main a unity sufficient to 
 warrant the reader in regarding them as 
 something more than a mere collection of 
 detached essays. I am not presumptuous 
 enough to claim that in them I have outlined 
 a critical philosophy, and given certain appli- 
 cations of it; but I think I may fairly say 
 that I have endeavored to discuss some im- 
 portant critical and literary problems which 
 must be satisfactorily dealt with before an ade- 
 quate critical philosophy can be developed. 
 
 I suppose that few people will be rash 
 enough to assert that such a philosophy ex- 
 ists already, and I hope that many will agree 
 that unless it is developed in the future 
 critics are likely to continue their uncom- 
 fortable and undignified floundering in the 
 vii 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 bogs of dogmatism and impressionism. Act- 
 ing on these suppositions, I have ventured to 
 investigate as well as I could such important 
 topics — fundamental as they plainly are to 
 a critical philosophy — as The Sanction and 
 Scope of the Authority of Criticism; The 
 Nature of Literature, with particular regard 
 to its emotional basis ; The Relations of Lit- 
 erature to Morals ; and The Besifc Methods, of 
 Teaching Literature in the Schools. 
 
 To these mainly theoretical but in part 
 practical papers I have added; a few others, 
 not merely to lend variety to the volum!e, 
 but more particularly to illustrate La a 
 somewhat co-ncrete way the truth of princi- 
 ples contended for in the^ group of essays 
 just specified. For example, th^ papers o». 
 Tennyson and Musset and on the Bypgn 
 Revival willi be found to bear upon the im- 
 portant topic of the emotional basis of litera- 
 ture. They were written, however, with no 
 intention to prove a thesis, but simply as 
 critical studies. 
 
 In conclusion, I must assure my readier 
 
 that I arrogate to. myself no discoveriest, and 
 
 that I am aware that I am probably ^. far 
 
 from having an adequate critical philosophy 
 
 viii 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 as he is. All I can positively affirm is that 
 there is need of such a philosophy, and 
 that honest groping for one on the part of 
 men who have a high appreciation of the 
 critic's function is perhaps the best means 
 of attaining it. 
 
 W. P. TRENT. 
 
 The University of the South, 
 
 Sewanee, Tenn., June 7, 1899. 
 
 *»• Thanks are hereby returned to the editors of 
 The Forum, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Bookman, for 
 permission to reprint the first and sixth, the seventh, and 
 the ninth essays respectively. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 The Authority of Criticism i 
 
 Apropos of Shelley 35 
 
 Literature and Morals 97 
 
 The Nature of Literature 141 
 
 On Translating Horace 187 
 
 The Byron Revival 203 
 
 Teaching the Spirit of Literature . . 237 
 
 Mr. Howells and Romanticism . . . . 257 
 
 Tennyson and Musset once more . . . 269 
 
I 
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
I 
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF 
 CRITICISM 
 
 I 
 
 The comparatively recent visit of M. Ferdi- 
 nand Brunetiere to this country has stimu- 
 lated among us fresh interest in a question 
 that is almost as old as the hills, and as 
 varied in the forms it assumes ; to wit, What 
 is the weight of authority carried by criti- 
 cism? Is there such a thing, men are asking 
 themselves, as a science of criticism, or is all 
 criticism at bottom merely the expression of 
 an individual opinion, unsupported, or sup- 
 ported in varying degrees, by other individual 
 opinions? If it is well-nigh impossible to 
 eliminate the personal equation in strictly 
 scientific experiments, is it worth while, they 
 ask, to try to eliminate it from our studies in 
 the semi-sciences, such as ethics and history, 
 or in the arts ? In other words, is not criti- 
 cism a present, individual act; ought not the 
 critic to say " I " instead of" we " ; and is not 
 every one of us that reads a book or looks at 
 3 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 a picture as much master of his own likes and 
 dislikes as the typical Englishman is lord of 
 his own castle? 
 
 It is plain that this question is almost as 
 old as the race ; for it is fundamentally the 
 question men have been asking themselves 
 since primitive times, since the very first at- 
 tempt on the part of some bold innovator to 
 break up what the late Mr. Bagehot aptly 
 called "the cake of custom." A conscious, 
 or semi-conscious, assertion of the right of in- 
 dividual judgment is the basis of every step of 
 progress that humanity has made ; and, speak- 
 ing loosely, the history of civilization is the 
 history of the emancipation of the individual 
 will and judpnent. The authority of society 
 has not indeed been abrogated ; but it retains 
 the force of law over our actions only, and 
 principally on utilitarian grounds. " Society 
 thinks so ; therefore a thing is right " is a 
 dictum that will stand in the way of few lib- 
 eral-minded men in this year of graCe. 
 
 But, if men have been daring to tell society 
 for centuries that it is in error with regard to 
 this or that poiiil of ethics or politics, it is 
 not surprising that they should long ag-o 
 have mustered up courage to tell the small 
 Cultivated portion of society not only that it 
 is in error with regard to particular books 
 4 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 and objects of art, but that it is in error in 
 thinking that it has any special call or right 
 to pronounce judgment in such matters. 
 This is precisely what Perrault did in his 
 famous controversy with Boileau over the 
 comparative merits of the ancients and the 
 moderns. 
 
 About two centuries have elapsed since 
 Perrault finished the third part of his " Paral- 
 Ihle " ; and the controversy, with a somewhat 
 shifted base, is still raging in France, with 
 MM. Brunetiere and Lemaitre as protagon- 
 ists. It is no longer a question of Homer 
 and Virgil versus Chapelain, or even whether 
 in translation Pindar is intelligible to the wife 
 of a worthy French magistrate; but it is 
 pretty largely a question of the importance 
 of the seventeenth century, as compared with 
 the nineteenth, and of the benefit to the stu- 
 dent of classifying properly a work of art, 
 compared with the benefit to be derived from 
 treating such a work as an object of aes- 
 thetic or psychologic interest merely. In 
 other words, the chief critical problem which 
 the French mind is endeavoring to solve to- 
 day is a more complex form of the problem 
 with which it was struggling two centuries 
 ago, and contains precisely the same elements 
 tliat all great mental problems involve, viz., 
 5 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 the value or worthlessness of what the present 
 has preserved from the past, and the rights 
 of the individual, as opposed to the claims of 
 society. 
 
 Yet the controversy between the ancients 
 and the moderns was not confined to France ; 
 indeed, that country, as M. Brunetiere shows, 
 took up the question in a curiously belated . 
 fashion. And in like manner the present 
 controversy between collective and individu- 
 alistic, or, if we prefer, academic and im- 
 pressionist, criticism, is not confined to the 
 partisans of MM. Brunetiere and Lemaitre. 
 In England the late Matthew Arnold did 
 doughty battle for the cause of ordered 
 criticism ; and Professor Saintsbury has for 
 years been doing his best to wave the flag 
 of the impressionists. In America Lowell's 
 influence was, on the whole, conservative; 
 while Mr. Hamlin Garland, able and sincere 
 writer though he be, and most of the strenu- 
 ous admirers of Walt Whitman have borne 
 the standard of individualism to a quite im- 
 pregnable position — whether on the heights 
 of reason or among the fens of folly must be 
 determined later. 
 
 But, over and above the labors of individual 
 critics, there are two forces at work in all parts 
 of the Western world that continue to carry 
 6 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 on this conflict, often unconsciously. These 
 two forces are the teachers and the reporters. 
 Nearly all persons who engage in any form 
 of teaching are interested in preserving the 
 sway of authority, and may be counted on 
 the side of conservative criticism. On the 
 other hand, men whose business it is prima- 
 rily to amuse and interest, and only seconda- 
 rily to instruct, society, are not led to uphold 
 the sway of authority (save in matters of re- 
 ligion and politics about which their patrons 
 may be sensitive) simply because what holds 
 by the past is not likely to prove so interest- 
 ing as what touches the present or looks to 
 the future. 
 
 Reporters, then, — and the term practically 
 includes all writers who minister to public 
 curiosity, — may be counted, n most cases, on 
 the side of individualistic criticism. That is 
 to say, the reportorial spirit may be counted ; 
 for newspaper critics per se are usually hide- 
 bound sticklers for academic methods. As 
 the reporter, owing to the waning force of 
 traditional checks upon a mixed and rapidly 
 evolving society, plays quite a part among 
 us, and is likely to gain power rather than 
 lose it in the near future, it follows that im- 
 pressionist criticism will not lose ground 
 in America for some time to come, even if it 
 
 7 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 does not grow rampant. On the other hand, 
 as our teachers and journaHstic critics are 
 rarely possessed of broad culture, the real 
 force and value of the academic principles 
 they stand for tend to become enfeebled and 
 obscured. Hence, it is not so much a battle, 
 of the critics that we are likely to observe in 
 America, as a niiUe. 
 
 If all this be true, it would seem to be worth 
 our while to endeavor to determine where the 
 truth lies with regard to this vexed problem 
 of the authority of criticism. If M. Brune- 
 tiere is right, and ^I. Lemaitre wrong, it will 
 be well to try to check our present propulsion 
 toward impressionism. If M. Brunetiere is 
 wrong, — I use his name only because he is 
 plainly the foremost living representative of 
 academic criticism, — then we may feel easy 
 about the go-as-you-please methods of some 
 of our critics, and may give ourselves up to 
 quite a hedonistic cult of frank individualism. 
 If, however, both of these distinguished men 
 are right in part, and both are wrong in part, 
 it is obvious that it all the more behooves us 
 to seek to establish the proper limits of the 
 principles of criticism each strives to apply; 
 for the more complex our principles of 
 thought and action, the more chance there is 
 of our going dangerously astray in their 
 8 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 application. It is hardly necessary to add 
 that a presumption lies in favor of the last 
 hypothesis, not only because extremes are 
 rarely safe, but because two great critics, or 
 two numerous factions of critics, are not 
 likely to be enthusiastic supporters of oppos- 
 ing principles without having positive reasons 
 of weight to actuate and sustain them in their 
 contentions. 
 
 II 
 
 Our first question is, then, whether M. Brune- 
 tiere is right when he asks us to distrust our 
 individual judgment about a piece of litera- 
 ture, and to make a study of criticism and 
 literary history in order to discover the 
 proper value and rank of the work to be 
 judged, before we venture to form or express 
 a settled opinion concerning it. This is 
 practically what he does ask, although he 
 lays most stress on a particular demand ; to 
 wit, that we shall pay special attention to the 
 matter of genres — that is, to the different 
 forms or categories of literature. It is also 
 what Matthew Arnold asked, although he laid 
 most stress on the matter of general culture. 
 But M. Lemaitre demurs at once. He says, 
 in substance : You are leaving out of sight 
 9 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 the main object for which men write and 
 read books, viz., to receive pleasure and, 
 partly, to give it. Your abstract genres, 
 your epics and dramas, creatures of your own 
 brains, become your tyrants and doom you 
 to hopeless drudgery. It is no longer pos- 
 sible for you to take up a book and simply 
 enjoy it. I, too, could do your kind of 
 criticism if I had a mind to ; but if I did, I 
 should be turned into a solemn magistrate, 
 thinking forever of the black cap I must soon 
 put on. — Now this demurrer has plainly its 
 basis in common sense, and is a wholesome 
 corrective of the claims of the academic 
 critic when these take an extreme form. It 
 is obvious that certain minds will always 
 rebel at a hard and fast code of rules for 
 critical reading, and that most minds will rebel 
 sometimes. Not only are there books that we 
 want to read without analysis, but there are 
 times when we prefer simply to read a book 
 that at other times we should be glad to an- 
 alyze. We do not care to analyze The Pris- 
 oner of Zenda : it would scarcely pay us to 
 analyze it, although one enterprising student 
 of architecture has drawn an elaborate plan 
 of the remarkable castle. Yet we were all 
 eager to read it ; and we are most of us glad 
 now that we did read it. On the other hand, 
 lo 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 we ought at one time or another to make a 
 careful analytic study of Shakspere's Sonnets ; 
 yet there are some of us who like to have a 
 pocket edition of these divine poems with us 
 on a railway journey, when careful study is 
 plainly out of the question. 
 
 Again, we are constantly repeating to 
 young people the injunction that they should 
 begin to read classical poems and novels as 
 soon as they are able to comprehend them; 
 but we do not say at the same time that they 
 must wait until they understand the main 
 facts about the " evolution of genres " before 
 they form an opinion of the general value and 
 interest to themselves of the literature with 
 which they have been brought in contact. 
 In this case, however, we do apply a part at 
 least, of M. Brunetiere's critical philosophy; 
 for we rely chiefly on the verdicts of past 
 generations in our choice of the classics we 
 recommend to the young. Still, it remains 
 true that the most critically minded of us can- 
 not be critical always, and that large classes 
 of readers can never be critical in any true 
 sense of the word. So M. Brunetiere's prin- 
 ciples hold good for only a small body of 
 readers, and not at all times and seasons even 
 for these. It is idle, however, to think that 
 he has ever meant them to be taken strictly 
 II 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 by the majority, by what we call politely the 
 reading public ; yet there is a sense in which 
 they may be laid to heart by every one, and 
 inculcated even in a very young child. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Reduced to their lowest terms, the princi- 
 ples for which most academic critics stand 
 are, I think, three in number: (i) That due 
 weight should be given to the collective 
 wisdom of the past and the trained knowl^ 
 edge of the present ; (2) that there are more 
 or less ascertainable degrees of value in the 
 various genres of artistic production ; and 
 (3) that no art can be absolutely divorced 
 from ethics. 
 
 It follows at once from the assumption of 
 these three principles that if it can be showri 
 that a special kind of poetry, say the epic, is 
 of greater value (that is, makes a higher and 
 wider appeal to the minds and hearts of men 
 iti general) than another kind, say the elegy, 
 it is not merely a mistake of judgment to 
 prefer the latter to the former, but also, 
 where sufficient knowledge is available, — a 
 point which is covered by the first principle 
 given above, — an ethical lapse of a more or 
 12 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 less venial character. In fine, if there were 
 such a person as a purely academic critic of 
 perfect fearlessness, he would affirm that to 
 prefer Gray's Elegy to Paradise Lost is 
 not only foolish, but wrong: for this is the 
 sense in which he accepts the dictum that 
 art cannot be divorced from ethics; if being 
 quite possible for an academic critic to 
 acquiesce in the truth of the maxim " Art 
 for art's sake," provided it be interpreted 
 rationally. In other words the academic 
 critic, while he may not judge works of art 
 from a preconceived ethical point of view, and 
 demand that they serve some definite ethical 
 purpose, will, if he be consistent, assert em- 
 phatically that, as no judgment can be formed 
 without entailing some corresponding respon- 
 sibility, and as objects of art must be judged 
 before we can determine whether the emotions 
 produced by them are really wholesome or 
 harmful, it follows that art, by entailing re- 
 sponsibilities upon all who are brought into 
 contact with it, — and what experience in life 
 does not entail upon us the responsibility of 
 determining whether it be wholesome or 
 harmful? — cannot in the last analysis be 
 divorced from ethics. 
 
 If, now, it be urged that what we ought to 
 examine and pass judgment upon is not the 
 13 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 object of art that produces emotions in us, 
 but ourselves who experience these emotions, 
 the critic will reply that he has always main- 
 tained the necessity for self-examination in 
 sesthetic matters, but that, if a doubt be im- 
 plied with regard to the possibiHty of obtain- 
 ing vahd objective judgments in the domain 
 of the arts, such doubt must apply as well 
 to the ultimate validity of all other objective 
 judgments, with the result that we are landed 
 either in pure idealism or in universal scepti- 
 cism. An objection, however, that is so far- 
 reaching is practically no objection at all. 
 
 But certainly this strange doctrine, that it 
 is in some way wrong to prefer a poem, a 
 picture, or a statue of an inferior genre to 
 one of a superior genre, will not be admitted 
 by many persons without considerable pro- 
 test. Yet, if it be once granted that there 
 are higher and lower forms of art, and that it 
 is the duty of every man, not merely to act 
 on the highest level possible, but also to 
 expose his soul to the highest influences 
 possible, it follows that to prefer wilfully the 
 lower to the higher in any particular is, 
 strictly speaking, an ethical lapse. Many 
 of us are, of course, absolved from all blame 
 in this regard on account of our ignorance in 
 the premises : those of us who are not igno- 
 14 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 rant have generally tried to justify ourselves 
 by affirming that, while there may be genres, 
 there is no proof that one is higher than 
 another; that it is a mere assumption of a 
 priori criticism to say, for example, that a 
 fine ode like Gray's Progress of Poesy is 
 per se superior to the same poet's Elegj' 
 Written in a Country Churchyard, — an 
 opinion held, perhaps, both by Gray himself 
 and by Matthew Arnold. 
 
 The answer made by the academic critic 
 to this contention will naturally bring into 
 question his first principle, viz., that due 
 weight should be given to the collective 
 wisdom of the past and to the trained knowl- 
 edge of the present. The ode, he will say, 
 stands at the head of all forms of lyrical 
 poetry, because in it the subjective emotions 
 of the poet are fused to a white heat. The 
 ancients regarded the ode as the greatest of 
 lyrical forms ; and modern students of poetry 
 have as yet seen no reason to abandon this 
 view. The finest ode of Pindar ought then 
 to be superior to any elegy of Mimnermus, 
 and Gray's ode should outrank his Elegy, 
 unless in the former poem the poet has 
 fallen below the level proper to the genre 
 selected, and in the latter poem has risen to 
 an equal or greater degree, — a phenomenon 
 
 It 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 which seems to have occurred, if the two 
 pieces be regarded as wholes, and which 
 both explains and justifies the popular verdict 
 in the matter. 
 
 This answer shows us at once how inter- 
 dependent the three principles of the aca- 
 demic critic really are. If there are genres 
 of higher and lower value, then it is our duty 
 to try to put ourselves in greater sympathy 
 with the higher than with the lower ; or, in 
 other words, we cannot, if we would, divorce 
 art from ethics. But we cannot establish 
 our contention that there are superior and 
 inferior genres, unless we insist that due 
 weight be given to that collective wisdom of 
 the past which has established and differenti- 
 ated the various genres. It is the conscious, 
 or unconscious, perception of the interde- 
 pendence of these principles of academic 
 criticism that has led the impressionists, who 
 generally desire to escape from ethical re- 
 sponsibility, to attack with relentless vigor 
 that deference to the judgment of the past 
 inculcated by the first principle. They can- 
 not well attack the second part of this prin- 
 ciple, that due weight should be given to the 
 -crained knowledge of the present; for this 
 would be to undermine the authority of their 
 own privileged order of mandarins: they 
 i6 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 can, however, say much about a servile 
 dependence on an effete past. 
 
 But, if the collective wisdom of the ages 
 be of paramount importance in ethics, philo- 
 sophy, law, and all studies in which fresh 
 material for experimentation is not being 
 continually introduced, it is difficult to see 
 how its authority, within reasonable limits, 
 can be questioned with regard to criticism. 
 That genres exist even in art is a fact as well 
 determined as the existence of the various 
 mental faculties. That we do not know the 
 ultimate nature of art in the one case, or of 
 mind in the other, does not prove that we 
 have no need of the hypotheses of criticism 
 and of metaphysics. That there is a hier- 
 archy of genres is a fact as well proved as 
 that there is a hierarchy of mental powers 
 or of bodily functions.^ To cut tlie .(Eneid 
 
 1 With regard to this important matter of the hierarchy 
 of the genres one cannot do better than to follow Brune- 
 tiere in quoting Taine : " Dans le monde imaginaire, comme 
 dans le monde reel, il y a des rangs divers parce qu'il y 
 a des valeurs diverses. Le public et les connaisseurs as- 
 signent les uns et estiment les autres. Nous n'avons pas 
 fait autre chose depuis cinq ans, en parcourant les ecoles 
 de ritalie, des Pays-Bas, et de la Gr^ce. Nous avons 
 toujours, et i. chaque pas, porte des jugements. Sans le 
 savoir nous avions en main un instrument de mesure. 
 Les autres hommes sont comme nous, et en critique comme 
 ailleurs il y a des verites acquises. Chacun reconnait 
 2 17 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 out of Latin literature would be like putting 
 out a man's eye : to cut out Juvenal's Satires 
 would be like amputating a finger. " Solvi- 
 tur inquirendo." Ask even the most ram- 
 pant impressionist — except, perhaps, the 
 ultra-Whitmanite — which he would rather 
 have written, Shakspere's dramas or Burns's 
 songs, Scott's romances or Maupassant's tales, 
 Gibbon's Decline and Fall or Macaulay's 
 Essays, and the answer will nearly always 
 indicate a tacit acceptance of the theory of 
 a hierarchy of genres. "A mere instance of 
 the force of convention," the Whitmanite 
 might say, "Walt Whitman's Leaves of 
 Grass put all the genres to the blush, and 
 the academic critics, too. You will not dare 
 to mention Shakspere and Milton in the same 
 breath with him ! " An advocate of free 
 love might make just such a reply to an 
 argument in favor of monogamy. 
 
 In fact it can be easily shown that the 
 distinctions and gradations sanctioned by the 
 aujourd'hui que certains poetes, comme Dante et Shakspere, 
 certains compositeurs, comme Mozart et Beethoven, tien- 
 nent la premiere place dans leur art. On I'accorde a 
 Goethe, parmi les eciivains de notre siecle; parmi les 
 Hollandais, i Rembrandt; parmi les Venitiens, 4 Titien. 
 Trois artistes de la Renaissance italienne, Leonard de 
 Vinci, Michel-Ange, et Raphael, montent d'un consente- 
 ment unanime au-dessus de tous les autres." [L'Evolution 
 des Genres, I. {De la Critique), p. 273.] 
 18 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 great critics of the past, and upheld by 
 the arguments of the academic critics of the 
 present, are founded on just the same basis 
 as the distinctions and gradations estabHshed 
 and supported by the jurist and the scientific 
 moraUst. The critic may often deal with 
 matters of less transcendent importance than 
 his fellow-students : but his science, in the 
 last analysis, is as securely based as theirs ; 
 for all three ultimately rest on authority and 
 present judgment. He has no such sanctions 
 to rely upon as the jurist and the moralist 
 have ; hence he is often doomed to see un- 
 informed opinions prevail : ^ his domain is 
 one that can be easily entered from all sides ; 
 hence he is compelled to struggle with nu- 
 merous rivals who are continually betraying 
 the cause of the science he serves. But he 
 feels that his position is at bottom as secure 
 as that of any student of any semi-science 
 can be; and he bides his time in the hope 
 of better days. 
 
 1 "But anybody is qualified, according to everybody, 
 for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in cliymis- 
 try and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and 
 the polka. But then these are more Serious things." 
 [Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, Feb. 17, 1845.] 
 
 19 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 IV 
 
 We have now seen what, in brief, are the 
 contentions of the academic critic ; and we 
 must admit that if his claim, that criticism 
 rests for its authority on the same basis as 
 ethics and law, be established, it is expedient 
 for us, if not incumbent upon us, to give 
 criticism its due influence in the formation of 
 our literary and artistic tastes and judgments. 
 Could we once bring ourselves to do this, 
 we should find that the parallel between criti- 
 cism and its sister semi-sciences holds very 
 closely. Just as there are some ethical prin- 
 ciples acted upon by all civilized men, others 
 acted upon chiefly by certain races, others 
 only by individuals of a high type of char- 
 acter, so there are principles of criticism 
 universal, racial, and individual in their ap- 
 plication. For example, all men have prac- 
 tically agreed — at least till the present 
 generation — to regard poetry as superior, 
 on the whole, to prose; the French have 
 practically agreed that the drama which pre^ 
 serves the unities is the best for their stage ; 
 most highly cultured individuals are agreed 
 in giving a greater value to the sonnet as a 
 20 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 poetic form than would be accorded it by 
 the average reader. In the light of these 
 facts we must infer that there are some prin- 
 ciples of criticism so binding upon us that 
 we ought to endeavor not only to make an 
 individual application of them, but also to 
 inculcate them in our children ; others which, 
 as Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, or 
 what not, it will probably be to our advan- 
 tage to follow ; still others which, in all like- 
 lihood, will appeal to us more and more as 
 we advance in culture. In short, no man 
 who is seeking to develop his literary and 
 artistic taste and judgment can afford to be a 
 thoroughgoing impressionist any more than 
 he can afford to be an absolute individualist 
 in his daily life and conduct. 
 
 If there be any force in the above reason- 
 ing, it is plain that something at least of M. 
 BrunetiSre's teaching may be taken to heart 
 by us all. The duty of fitting ourselves not 
 merely to enjoy the great poetry of the 
 world, but to prefer it to all other forms of 
 aesthetic enjoyment, may be insisted upon 
 with advantage. All men will not attain to 
 such enjoyment or such preference ; but this 
 is no reason why all men should not be ad- 
 monished to make the effort to attain. No 
 man follows perfectly the law of Christ ; yet 
 
 21 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 no preacher ceases to uphold that law as an 
 ideal pattern of conduct. It is clear, then, 
 that no man or child should be allowed to 
 say complacently, as one so often hears it 
 said, "I don't care for poetry." Perhaps 
 they cannot be made to care for it ; but their 
 complacency may at least be shaken. 
 
 Again, it is just as certain that there are 
 higher and lower genres of poetry as that 
 poetry is superior, on the whole, to prose. 
 Hence it is our duty to fit ourselves to pre- 
 fer the higher genres to the lower. This, 
 again, we shall not all attain to. Some peo- 
 ple are so constituted that elegiac musings 
 and speculations, such as those that make up 
 the In Memoriam, will always attract them 
 more than the stately march of the Paradise 
 Lost, or the subtle beauty and keen interest 
 of the Divine Comedy. On the other hand, 
 one can find persons who do not care at all 
 for such admirable elegiac verse as Lamar- 
 tine's Le Lac. In either case, we may be 
 unable to correct the bias ; but we need not 
 fail to point out that it is an unfortunate one, 
 if any reliance may and should be placed 
 upon the collective wisdom of the past and 
 the trained judgment of the present. 
 
 But our teaching need not stop here. 
 There will always be persons who will care 
 
 22 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 more for the subject-matter of a book than 
 for the style in which it is written ; yet we 
 should none the less insist that it is the duty 
 of every man to fit himself to tell a good 
 style from a bad, to enjoy an excellent style, 
 and to eschew, whenever it is possible, the 
 books that are clumsily written. An insist- 
 ence upon this matter of taste in style has, 
 after many generations, placed French litera- 
 ture in its present position of supremacy : a 
 failure to insist upon it has left German. lit- 
 erature where it is to-day. If we Americans 
 and Englishmen will only cultivate our taste 
 for style, and will remember, too, that prin- 
 ciple upon which Matthew Arnold was for- 
 ever harping, that great literature needs a 
 sound subject-matter, we shall all be saved 
 from many bizarre judgments and opinions. 
 We shall not then be able to rank Whitman, 
 true and great poet though he often was, 
 among the dii majores of song, nor to imag- 
 ine that Tennyson or Wordsworth or Shelley 
 can rightly be mentioned in the same breath 
 with Milton. 
 
 Yet, although we shall do well to respect 
 the academic critic when he bids us distrust 
 our own judgments and consult the authori- 
 tative opinions of the best critics past and 
 present, it does not follow that we must all 
 23 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 endeavor to inform ourselves about the evo- 
 lution of genres, the details of literary history, 
 or any of the numerous matters that assume 
 great importance in the eyes of the profes- 
 sional critic. Few of us have the time for 
 such minute study : fewer still have any incli- 
 nation for it. One can love and get plea- 
 sure from flowers without knowing much 
 about botany; similarly, one can love and 
 get pleasure from literature without being a 
 trained critic. The botanist and the critic, 
 to be sure, ought, unless they become dry- 
 as-dusts, to have decided advantages over 
 the mere lovers of flowers and of books ; 
 but the latter are in no bad way if their 
 minds and souls have been enlightened in a 
 broad and general manner. This broad and 
 general enlightenment will begin to dawn 
 upon us the moment we are brought in con- 
 tact with great literature and art; provided 
 always that our tendency to excessive indivi- 
 dualism is checked by proper training. Such 
 being the case, we are in duty bound to range 
 ourselves by the side of those academic critics 
 who offer to furnish this training which, as 
 we have just seen, is by no means technical 
 in character. 
 
 24 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 Granting, however, that criticism has a cer- 
 tain authority over us with regard to the sub- 
 mission of our individual judgments relative 
 to such matters as the supremacy of poetry 
 to prose, of one genre to another, of form to 
 formlessness, it would seem to be true also 
 that, as we are constituted with varying tastes 
 and aptitudes, and brought up in varying 
 environments, we are more or less forced to 
 form subjective opinions and thus to become 
 impressionist critics, at least for the time be- 
 ing. If all criticism is, in its essence, subjec- 
 tive, and attains objectivity only through its 
 subsequent acceptance by minds other than 
 the critic's own, which in turn is a subjective 
 procedure, it is certain that our own judg- 
 ment or opinion with regard to any object of 
 art will be of more vital importance to us than 
 any conventional judgment or opinion can 
 possibly be. In other words, the impres- 
 sionist critic would seem to have a role as 
 important and a province as extended as the 
 academic critic has. 
 
 There can scarcely be two opinions with 
 regard to this matter. The fact that there 
 25 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 are impressionist critics who are widely read 
 and enjoyed seems of itself to prove their 
 usefulness. It is not possible to deny that, 
 by concentrating themselves upon some fav- 
 orite author, artist, book, or painting, impres- 
 sionist critics have added to the world's 
 knowledge, and, what is more, to its enjoy- 
 ment ; that they have actually forged weapons 
 for their foes, the academic critics, to use 
 against them. Who, for example, has done 
 more to make contemporary France return to 
 a proper admiration of Lamartine than that 
 prince of impressionists, M. Lemattre? Cer- 
 tainly not M. Brunetiere. But impressionists 
 are justified in existing not only by the good 
 they do, but also by the fact that there is an 
 abundant range of work for them to accom- 
 plish. There are regions in the domain of 
 literature and art over which the academic 
 critic has little or no control. No one should 
 affirm, for example, that it is the duty of the 
 academic critic to set us rules for the enjoy- 
 ment or even full comprehension of that 
 department of poetry known as " society 
 verse." He can tell us, indeed, that it should 
 not be ranked high in the scale of the genres ; 
 but, if he be wise, he will scarcely undertake 
 to tell us how much we ought to care for it, 
 or when it will most appeal to us. 
 26 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 The reason for this proper reticence on his 
 part is very simple. Society verse does not 
 necessarily appeal to the natural man ; and the 
 academic critic, in most of his reasoning, finds 
 it necessary to give his principles of criticism 
 the broadest basis possible. He tells us that 
 it is human to admire the sublime and to weep 
 at the pathetic ; but he cannot tell us with 
 any truth that it is human to smile at the 
 cleverness of a smart social set. The aca- 
 demic critic feels at home, therefore, in prais- 
 ing the Paradise Lost and the Antigone : he 
 will do well to leave to the impressionist — 
 to the man to the manner born, like the late 
 Mr. Locker-Lampson (who indeed could 
 theorize also on the subject in an admirable 
 way) — the task of initiating us into the 
 charming mysteries of society verse. The 
 moment, however, that the impressionist goes 
 too far in his advocacy of his favorite poet or 
 kind of poetry, the academic critic, with his 
 broader knowledge and wider range of 
 thought, is ready to check him. Pope, for 
 instance, is, in many respects, a poet of society 
 whom it would be easy for a certain kind of 
 impressionist to overrate, and for another 
 kind, preferring, let us say, the poetry of 
 nature, to underrate, even to the point of pro- 
 claiming that the brilliant satirist was no poet 
 27 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 at all. Both these extremes of judgment 
 would surely be corrected by a competent 
 academic critic. 
 
 But not only can the impressionist critic 
 serve us as the best possible guide in certain 
 well-defined regions of literature and art ; he 
 is also the person to help us in the explora- 
 tion of new regions. There are genres like 
 the novel, the possibilities of which we are 
 probably far from knowing thoroughly. With 
 respect to present work in these genres, it 
 may be questioned whether the training and 
 methods of the academic critic fit him for 
 doing effective service: he is at his best in 
 dealing with genres of which the capabilities 
 have been long tested. The impressionist, 
 on the other hand, unfettered by rules and 
 traditions, is likely to be sympathetic with 
 the fresh tentatives which creative genius is 
 continually making in what we may call the 
 " unclosed genres." He is the best critic for 
 the new writers and, hence, for the majority" 
 of contemporary readers, who naturally form 
 the clientage of the men who are making 
 current literature. Then, again, it is the im- 
 pressionist critic who is best qualified to 
 apply to the literatiu"e of the past those fresh 
 and novel points of view which each advanc- 
 ing generation suppHes, — a most important 
 28 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 work when it is not undertaken in a captious 
 and self-seeking spirit 
 
 Now surely, if all that has been said be 
 true, the role of the impressionist is by no 
 means a contemptible one. Not only has he 
 certain departments of art and literature prac- 
 tically under his control, but he can do his 
 share in criticising the men and works of the 
 past, and he has the lion's share of the critical 
 labors of the present. He has no reason to 
 call the academic critic by harsh names ; yet 
 he frequently does — seemingly because, 
 being bound by few rules, he forgets that he 
 is bound by any, even by those of courtesy. 
 He generally takes up a favorite and becomes 
 a partisan, after which he fancies that, in 
 order to elevate his hero, he must labor not 
 merely to subordinate, but to cast down other 
 great men. He will praise Tintoretto while be- 
 HttlingTitian ; he will laud Shelley while decry- 
 ing Byron ; and he pities the benighted soul 
 that in the bonds and fetters of custom still 
 grovels before the " crumbling idol." This is 
 but to say that, although the rdle of the impres- 
 sionist is a great one, he is often false to it. 
 Narrow and bigoted critics of an academic kind 
 there have been in abundance ; and they have 
 done much harm, but scarcely enough to equal 
 that done by the wild impressionists who are 
 29 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 forever running amuck through the storied 
 realms of art and literature. 
 
 VI 
 
 We are not so much concerned, however, 
 with the failings of our two varieties of critics 
 as we are with the very practical question, 
 how we may get safely steered through the 
 wide sea of literature when so many helms- 
 men are offering their services; and this 
 question we may perhaps answer in part 
 by summing up the points we have been 
 making. 
 
 We have seen already that, in certain 
 matters, we shall do well to rely on the 
 academic critics. We have seen that there 
 are some universal principles of criticism 
 that we should all learn to apply so far as 
 we are able, such as the superiority of 
 poetry to prose, of one genre to another, 
 of form to formlessness. A moment's con- 
 sideration will show us, furthermore, that 
 corollaries from these principles are easily 
 to be drawn and equally to be observed. 
 Thus, for example, every schoolboy, not 
 merely Macaulay's, should know that Virgil, 
 Dante, and Milton, as great epic poets, are 
 superior respectively to Horace, Petrarch, 
 30 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 and Shelley, as great lyric poets, and should 
 be ranked accordingly, and that if he does 
 not like the greater poet so much as he 
 does the inferior, it is either his own fault 
 or his own misfortune, which, unless special 
 reasons to the contrary exist, he should seek 
 to remedy as best he may. 
 
 Within the same category of poetry, how- 
 ever, no such definite assignment of rank is, 
 as a rule, possible, save when, as in the cases 
 of Homer and Shakspere, a universal con- 
 sensus of opinion obtains the force of law. 
 It is idle, for instance, to assert dogmatically 
 that Dante is a greater poet than Milton, or 
 vice versa. Yet nowhere in criticism is there 
 more tendency to dogmatic utterance than 
 in this very delicate matter of balancing the 
 respective claims of two poets of the same 
 type, whose rank is nearly even; and we 
 cannot too often remind ourselves that 
 dogma, although necessary perhaps at times, 
 is never attractive or satisfactory to the in- 
 quiring and aspiring mind. It is open to 
 us to urge everything we can in support of 
 our favorite's claims, — the wider acceptance 
 of Dante and his greater hold upon human 
 sympathies, or Milton's treatment of the 
 sublime, and his marvellous metrical mas- 
 tery, — but, when all is said, when we have 
 31 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 ranged the critics and summed up the argu- 
 ments pro and con., we must frankly admit 
 that there is still room for differences of 
 opinion in this case and in all similar cases. 
 
 On the other hand, we cannot too firmly 
 crush out such foolish recalcitrancy against 
 established opinion as was once exhibited 
 by a college student who, when asked 
 whether he thought Bacon could have 
 written Shakspere's plays, replied indig- 
 nantly, being more in love with pliiloso- 
 phy than with poetry : — " Not much ! He 
 would n't have wasted his time on such 
 wretched stuff! " That young man was not 
 joking, on the principle that a foolish ques- 
 tion required a foolish answer: he was 
 merely furnishing an unconscious example 
 of the folly of untrained impressionist 
 criticism. 
 
 Other principles of universal, national, and 
 class or individual application might be 
 named that are equally binding upon us 
 and that measure the extent of our reliance 
 upon the academic critic. On the other 
 hand, we have already seen that we should 
 rely on the impressionist for criticism rela- 
 tive to "unclosed genres" like the novel and 
 " non-universal genres " like society verse, 
 to contemporary writers and artists, and to 
 32 
 
AUTHORITY OF CRITICISM 
 
 the work of the past in all the genres when 
 it is necessary to reexamine it from fresh 
 and legitimate points of view. If we will 
 only bear these principles in mind, we shall 
 scarcely go greatly astray in choosing our 
 critics, or in determining how far to follow 
 them. 
 
 But if the critics, on their part, continue 
 to assert, as so many of them do, that the 
 average reader has no rights and that art 
 and literature can be truly appreciated only 
 by the elect, the mandarins, the public will 
 most assuredly continue to commit its own 
 peculiar absurdities, to consider Tom Jones 
 an immoral book and Ben Hur a great one ; 
 to read a thousand copies of Trilby to ten 
 of the Peau de Chagrin ; and to rejoice in 
 the flat namby-pambyism of a " native author 
 named Blank " or of a foi-eign author named 
 Double Blank. And who shall blame them 
 for their eccentricities, when the authority 
 of criticism is so slightly esteemed by nine- 
 tenths of the writers who call themselves 
 critics ? 
 
 33 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 35 
 
II 
 
 APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 It hardly seems extravagant to say that 
 there is not, in the whole range of English 
 literature, a more entrancing, a more per- 
 plexing, a more irritating subject for study 
 and reflection than the life, character, and 
 works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. If any one 
 doubt the truth of this statement, let him 
 spend a few weeks among Shelley's biograph- 
 ers and critics. If he do not read some of 
 the most cobwebby special pleading ever 
 spun, if he do not encounter some of the 
 strangest canons of criticism ever promulgated 
 this side of the " visiting moon " ; if he do 
 not find himself now hot with indignation, 
 now cold with shame, now ready to burst 
 with laughter, now ready to weep with sym- 
 pathy, at one moment in a heavenly glow for 
 the true, the beautiful, and the good, at 
 another longing to assist in sending to the 
 stake every idealist that ever hinted the essen- 
 tial commonplaceness of our everyday life; 
 37 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 if he do not, in short, end by debating with 
 himself whether he is a confirmed dyspeptic 
 or an adjudged lunatic, then he is a most 
 cool-headed and thoroughly enviable person. 
 
 But as no one who credits the above truth- 
 ful record of my own experiences will be 
 likely to enter the enchanted forest of Shel- 
 leyan criticism, and as many who have already 
 ventured within its depths may be inclined 
 to tell a different tale, I feel called upon to 
 preface this paper with a few confirmatory 
 excerpts culled from my own reading of the 
 critics> or, to coiitinue the metaphor, I will 
 exhibit a few of the thorns of that enchanted 
 forest that were found clinging to my gar- 
 ments when I succeeded in effecting my 
 escape. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle, who would certainly not have 
 owned up to lunacy, although he might have 
 confessed with some propriety to being a 
 dyspeptic, brought away from what was prob- 
 ably a cursory reading of Shelley and his 
 critics, the charaqteristically formed opinion 
 that the poet was a " windy phenomenon." 
 Mr. Browning, after a profound study of Shel^ 
 ley, wrote of him as follows in Pauline : 
 
 " And my choice fell 
 Not so much on a system as a man — 
 Qa one, whom praise of mine would not offend, 
 38 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 Who was as calm as beauty, being such 
 
 Unto mankind as thou to me, Pauline — 
 
 Believing in them and devoting all 
 
 His soul's strength to their winning back to peace ; 
 
 Who sent forth hopes and longings for their sake 
 
 Clothed in all passion's melodies, which first 
 
 Caught me and set me, as to a sweet task. 
 
 To gather every breathing of his songs : 
 
 And woven with them there were words which seemed 
 
 A key to a new world, the muttering 
 
 Of angels of something imguessed by man." 
 
 Years later, in a more mature and nobler 
 poem, perhaps the profoundest poem of the 
 century, Bordello, he wrote these glowing 
 lines : 
 
 " Stay — thou, spirit, come not near 
 Now — not this time desert thy cloudy place 
 To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face ! 
 I need not fear this audience, I make free 
 Witli them, but then this is no place for thee I 
 The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown 
 Up out of memories of Marathon, 
 Would echo like his own sword's griding screech 
 Braying a Persian shield, — the silver speech 
 Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin. 
 Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in 
 The knights to tilt, wert thou to hear ! " 
 
 Certainly there is a diffe'rence as wide as 
 
 the poles between the judgments of the great 
 
 lay-preacher and of the great poet. Which 
 
 39 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 is right, or are they both expressing half- 
 truths only? 
 
 Carlyle and Browning are not, however, 
 professional critics, and it is with the latter 
 that we are especially concerned. Mr. W. 
 M. Rossetti who was asked to write the 
 sketch of Shelley which appeared in the last 
 edition of the Encyclopczdia Britannica may 
 fairly be called one, and I subjoin a sentence 
 from his very able article : 
 
 " In his own day an alien in the world of 
 mind and invention, and in our day scarcely 
 yet a denizen of it, he [Shelley] appears 
 destined to become, in the long vista of years, 
 an informing presence in the innermost shrine 
 of human thought." 
 
 Not long after Mr. Rossetti wrote the 
 above delightfully poised sentence Mr. Mat- 
 thew Arnold concluded what was destined to 
 be with one exception his last critical utter- 
 ance with the following words : 
 
 " But let no one suppose that a want of 
 humor and a self delusion such as Shelley's 
 have no effect upon a man's poetry. The 
 man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely 
 sane, and Shelley's poetry is not entirely sane 
 either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision 
 of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing 
 nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, 
 40 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 no less than in life, he is "a beautiful and 
 ineffectual angel, beating in the void his 
 luminous wings in vain.' " 
 
 Here is a sentence for us as neatly turned 
 as Mr. Rossetti's, as positive in its expression 
 of individual opinion, and proceeding from a 
 far greater hand. But we must contrast this 
 again with Mr. Swinburne's vehement dictum 
 that Shelley is " the master singer of our 
 modern poets," and must then remember 
 that neither Wordsworth nor Keats, both of 
 whom had great tact and discernment in all 
 matters relating to their art, could appreciate 
 Shelley's poetry. 
 
 Nor is the case different with regard to 
 Shelley's life, or with regard to his character 
 and acquirements. As good and clear- 
 headed a man as Charles Kingsley thought 
 him a far less lovable character than Byron, 
 while Byron, cynic as he was, declared that 
 Shelley was the most gentle, the most 
 amiable, and least worldly-minded person 
 he ever met. As it was in his life-time, so it 
 is now and probably ever will be — a most 
 difficult matter to determine from the verdicts 
 of his critics alone whether he was a spawn 
 of Satan or a seraph of light. I have the 
 impression that I have somewhere seen him 
 styled an archangel, and I am certain that 
 41 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 not many years ago a distinguished South- 
 ern divine consigned him, in the course of a 
 sermon, to the horrors of everlasting flames, 
 in company with another picturesque subject 
 for damnation, Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
 In view of all these diverging opinions we 
 are hardly surprised to discover that critics 
 are not quite agreed as to the position to be 
 accorded Shelley as a philosopher. We find 
 one of his biographers describing him as " one 
 who lived in rarest ether on the topmost 
 heights of human thought " ; but Mr. Leslie 
 Stephen, who is an authority in such matters, 
 would hardly seem to recommend the rarity 
 of this ether when he writes : " In truth, 
 Shelley's creed means only a vague longing, 
 and must be passed through some more phil- 
 osophical brain before it can become a fit 
 topic for discussion." A vague longing, one 
 opines, can be had by a dweller in the hum' 
 blest valleys of thought. 
 
 But the biographers who track Shelley to 
 these heights of rarefied atmosphere seem 
 to succumb to the attenuating influences of 
 their environment and to take very rarefied 
 views of actions which in our grosser atmo- 
 sphere we are wont to call by very gross 
 names. Here are some samples. 
 
 It seems to be pretty well agreed, even by 
 42 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 Shelley's warmest admirers, that the poet's 
 utterances about himself and his surround- 
 ings cannot always be accepted with implicit 
 faith — in short that Shelley not infrequently, 
 whether consciously or unconsciously, did not 
 tell the truth. But mark how Professor Dow- 
 den, with the approbation of another biog- 
 rapher, Mr. Sharp, deals with this little failing* 
 Says the Dubhn professor : He " was one of 
 those men for whom the hard outline of facts 
 in their own individual history has little 
 fixity; whose footsteps are forever followed 
 and overflowed by the wave of obHvion, who 
 remember with extraordinary tenacity the 
 sentiment of times and of places, but lose 
 the framework of circumstance in which the 
 sentiment was set ; and who, in reconstructing 
 an image of the past, often unconsciously 
 supply links and lines upon the suggestion 
 of that sentiment of emotion which is for 
 them the essential reality." 
 
 Now, although I believe that in Shelley's 
 case Professor Dowden has not strayed far 
 enough to lose all sight of the truth, I submit 
 that the above sentence rarefies facts in a 
 way that should commend itself to the heart 
 of every lawyer with a guilty client to defend. 
 Such a lawyer should also take to heart the 
 judgment of Mr. Sharp with regard to his 
 43 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 hero's conduct to the unfortunate Harriet, 
 " that Shelley, intoxicated with vision of the 
 ideal life, behaved unwisely, and even wrong- 
 fully, in his conduct of certain realities." 
 
 Is it any wonder, I may be permitted to 
 ask, that an ordinary mortal like myself should 
 be glad to escape from the jungle of Shelleyan 
 criticism, or that I should feel impelled to 
 stop every one I meet, like an Ancient 
 Mariner but with a less potent eye, to point 
 my moral and adorn my tale? In pursuance 
 of this task, whether it be imposed upon me 
 by vanity or fate, it will be necessary for me 
 to pass in review biographical facts that have 
 been discussed thousands of times, and poems 
 that every one knows by heart or by critical 
 report. Yet this is the lot of all who venture 
 to write about famous authors, and I should 
 not regret it were it not for the fact that I 
 labor under the unpleasant consciousness of 
 knowing that sooner or later, I must bring up 
 in a camp defended by only one stout soldier, 
 that I must fight on under an unpopular flag, 
 that I must cut myself off from leaders to 
 whom I have always looked up with rever- 
 ence and admiration.^ Nevertheless I " can- 
 not choose " but speak even though I may not 
 
 I Especially from my friend Dr. Richard Garnett, whose 
 devotion to Shelley is so well known. 
 
 44 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 be able to compel a single wedding-guest 
 to hear me out while I say my say about 
 Shelley, the man and the poet. 
 
 U. LIFE AND CHARACTER. 
 
 As the experiences of life must furnish the 
 materials upon which both the imagination 
 and the fancy work, it is always interesting and 
 important to know at least the main facts of a 
 poet's life. This is especially true in the case 
 of Shelley, whose life and whose poetry are, 
 to use a word of which he was inordinately 
 fond, inextricably " interpenetrated." The 
 main facts of this life are fortunately beyond 
 dispute, but the judgments to be passed upon 
 these facts are unfortunately very far from 
 settled. I say the main facts, for it is surely 
 of little importance for us to know whether 
 Shelley was really attacked and fired upon 
 by a burglar at Tannyrallt, or whether he 
 was simply suffering from a fit of hallucina- 
 tion consequent upon a too copious draught 
 from his laudanum bottle, the facts of his 
 susceptibility to hallucinations and of his use 
 of laudanum being sufficiently attested in 
 numerous other instances. We have an 
 abundance of consentaneous testimony as to 
 45 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 the poet's personal idiosyncrasies, and about 
 such facts as his desertion of his first wife 
 there is unfortunately no doubt whatsoever. 
 But as these facts are familiar to most per- 
 sons who are at all interested in literature, it 
 will be sufficient here to indicate briefly what 
 seem to me to be the chief conclusions one 
 ought to draw concerning Shelley's life and 
 character. 
 
 The first point that strikes one is, I think, 
 the utter absence of all that is spiritual and 
 elevating and refined from Shelley's early 
 environment. Upon this point, Mr. Arnold 
 lays great stress in the essay that has already 
 been quoted from, and it is a most important 
 point. There probably never was a child 
 who would have responded so readily as 
 Shelley to ennobling and purifying influences, 
 there never was a child who so entirely missed 
 them. There is hardly a trace of any mater- 
 nal influence ; and his sisters were too young 
 and too much accustomed to worship their 
 eccentric but most kind and lovable brother, 
 to make any serious or sobering impression 
 upon him. His father was a typical English 
 squire of the period, who has been rather 
 harshly treated by his son's biographers. If 
 he was dull, conservative and somewhat 
 servile to the powers that be, he was only 
 46 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 what his environment made him, and was no 
 better or worse than thousands of his contem- 
 poraries were then, or than some English 
 squires doubtless are to-day. Nor are such 
 characters at all confined to England, for one 
 may meet many a Mr. Timothy Shelley in 
 this progressive and enlightened country of 
 ours. But it was a deplorable fact for 
 Shelley that he had such a father, and cer- 
 tainly Mr. Timothy Shelley thought that it 
 was a deplorable fact for him that he had 
 such a son. 
 
 Now a sensitive, high-strung boy, who 
 could not find good influences at home, was 
 hardly likely to find them at Eton or at 
 Oxford during the early part of this century. 
 Public schools and universities exercise an ad- 
 mirable influence upon normal or only slightly 
 abnormal youths, but they never did and 
 never will suit natures such as Shelley's was ; 
 and sensible parents should have recognized 
 the fact. Shellej^ picked up much curious 
 information, of course, during his school life, 
 which served him in after years, but he did 
 not learn what is the best thing that schools 
 and colleges teach, to use his common sense. 
 It is a very great mistake to think, as so many 
 do, that our school days are set apart to 
 enable us to use what may be called our 
 47 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 uncommon sense; the main duty that lies 
 before every child in his school days is to 
 learn to use his common reason on common 
 things, and it is the main duty of his teacher 
 to see that he does it. But none of Shelley's 
 teachers seems to have seen or done his duty 
 in this regard toward him, and they have in 
 consequence suffered at the hands of his 
 biographers. Only one has practically es- 
 caped censure, the venerable and kindly Dr. 
 Lind whom Shelley idolized and whom he has 
 immortalized as Zonanas in Prince Athanase, 
 and the hermit in Laon and Cythna. Now, while 
 not meaning to disparage Dr. Lind's kindness, 
 I must record my conviction that he is one of 
 the most unwholesome influences connected 
 with Shelley's early life. I long believed that 
 I was the only person in the world that held 
 this opinion, until I found that Mr. John 
 Cordy Jeaffreson maintains it with great vigor 
 in his able but unfair biography of the poet, 
 the question-begging title of which (The 
 Real Shelley) ought to warn off the unini- 
 tiated. My charge against Dr. Lind is simply 
 this, — that, having gained a strong influence 
 over his impressionable pupil, he failed, so 
 far as the records show, to use that influence 
 to any good purpose. We know, indeed, 
 that he encouraged Shelley in that fondness 
 48 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 for thin and cloudy metaphysical discussion 
 which was afterwards to lead to his expulsion 
 from Oxford, to his sins as a mystifying 
 rhetorician when he should have been writing 
 divine poetry, and finally to his being labelled 
 by practical, or rather would-be practical 
 men like Carlyle, " a windy phenomenon." 
 We know also, that he encouraged Shelley 
 to dabble in science, which was about as bad 
 as encouraging him to dabble in metaphysics. 
 If he had taught Shelley to love science with 
 the wholesome thoroughness of a sound 
 mind impressed with her wonders, he would 
 have conferred an inestimable boon upon him. 
 As it was, he gave him a fatal bias toward 
 dabbling that affected his whole after career, 
 and furnished Matthew Arnold an excuse for 
 labelling him with that terrible adjective 
 ineffectual. Dr. Lind seems to me to have 
 been the only man who had a chance to set 
 Shelley's feet upon the paths of common- 
 sense, and I believe that had he tried he 
 could have become a saving and corrective 
 influence to one of the noblest but most 
 erratic spirits that ever " lighted upon this orb 
 which " he " hardly seemed to touch." How 
 much English poetry, and so the whole world, 
 would have profited by this influence, cannot 
 be estimated. , But Dr. Lind's talent has long 
 4 49 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 since been removed from its covering napkin, 
 and it is by no means certain that I have not 
 done him grave injustice by coupling his 
 name with the undesirable notoriety that 
 attaches to the slothful servant of the parable. 
 
 I must pass over Shelley's Oxford career 
 in spite of the fascination which Hogg's 
 description thereof must always lend to it. 
 As at Eton, he found no one to guide him, 
 no one to sympathize with him save Hogg, 
 who, though commonsense and practical 
 enough in some respects, and though de- 
 voted to Shelley, was hardly the proper per- 
 son to correct his extravagances. Certainly 
 the dons who drew up their sentence of ex- 
 pulsion before they had given the youthful 
 atheist a chance to exculpate himself, simply 
 fitted in with the rest of his soul-cramping 
 environment. They were doubtless honest 
 enough, however, in their belief that Shelley 
 was fast speeding to the devil and endeavor- 
 ing to drag his sleepy University with him, 
 and the young visionary was probably more 
 contumacious than his friend Hogg has seen 
 fit to record. 
 
 One could wish one might pass over with 
 
 equal rapidity the few years that connected 
 
 Shelley with the unfortunate Harriet West- 
 
 brook, but it cannot be done. In those 
 
 50 
 
APROjPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 years was to be gathered the first bitter 
 fruit of his reckless and ill-trained youth; 
 and in those years the Muse of English 
 Poetry had to bewail the marring and almost 
 total undoing of what promised to be the 
 purest, the most beautiful spirit that had 
 ever been born to do her service. But if 
 one cannot pass over these years, one may 
 at least presuppose that every one is familiar 
 with the harrowing facts on which one has 
 to base one's judgments and one can give 
 those judgments briefly. 
 
 Shelley, as we all know, had by this time 
 broken completely with the past. He had 
 dabbled in science natural and occult, had 
 carried his metaphysical speculations to the 
 verge of absurdity, and had announced that 
 he loathed history. He had overleaped all 
 prejudices of caste and become a radical in 
 political and social matters. Being the most 
 sincere and courageous of mortals, having in 
 him the stuff of which the martyr and the 
 hero are made, loving his fellow-man with 
 all the intensity of his nature, ever aspiring 
 toward what he believed to be the true, the 
 beautiful and the good, he was not likely to 
 share the fate of most young enthusiasts of 
 twenty, to sow his wild oats and settle down 
 into a well-to-do, conservative man of family, 
 51 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 a smug and contented laudator temporis acti. 
 What Shelley believed, that he would do, and 
 hence the pitiable necessity under which his 
 friends and relatives labored of teaching him 
 what to believe. But what had Mr. Timothy 
 Shelley, what had the Oxford dons, what had 
 Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, finally what had 
 dabbling Dr. Lind to teach this genius of a 
 youth who could pierce their commonplace 
 theories of religion and politics and social 
 life as easily as an eagle can pierce the web 
 of gossamer which an adventurous spider has 
 woven over its nest? And what had the 
 times to teach him? for when a youth cannot 
 be taught by his intimates, he sometimes 
 finds in the writings of great contemporaries 
 or in the march of the world's progress les- 
 sons of the highest import to his inquiring 
 soul. 
 
 The times taught him precisely what his 
 own spirit felt naturally toward its environ- 
 ment — revolt, self-sufficiency in its best sense, 
 aspiration. The forces of the French Revolu- 
 tion had by no means spent their strength. 
 In spite of Napoleon, men were everywhere 
 dreaming of liberty and of the glories that 
 awaited the enfranchised spirit of man. The 
 world was severed from its hateful past and 
 history was now of less value than the vision- 
 52 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 ary dreams of any self-appointed prophet. 
 Kings were but creatures set by Providence 
 upon thrones for the sons of liberty to take 
 a savage pleasure in overthrowing them. 
 The giant custom was to be slain by a 
 pebble from the sling of some philosophic 
 David; religion, law, morality were to be 
 annihilated or metamorphosed, and a new 
 heaven was to look down upon a new earth. 
 Such was the Zeitgeist whose wings fanned 
 the forehead of Shelley and it was against 
 the breathings of this spirit that the wingless 
 words of Mr. Timothy Shelley and his like 
 had to contend. 
 
 But if sober wisdom was not to flow in 
 upon Shelley from his contemplation of the 
 world's mad vortex, he was in still less likeh- 
 hood of obtaining it from the lips or from 
 the pens of his contemporaries. Although 
 he was not unfamiliar with the great writers 
 of the past these could not have influenced 
 him very profoundly, simply because they 
 belonged to that past which the present 
 seemed determined to break with. We of 
 this generation can see that if he could have 
 been brought under the spell of Burke, there 
 might have been some salvation for him; 
 but Burke was at a discount among fiery 
 enthusiasts in 1812. Instead of Burke Mr. 
 53 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 Timothy Shelley recommended Paley, at the 
 mention of whom our young poet fairly 
 foamed at the mouth when he ought merely 
 to have smiled. Paley versus Shelley savors 
 somewhat of the ridiculous, as Mr. Arnold 
 intimates. 
 
 But to whom else could he apply ? Words- 
 worth, it is true, had written most of his best 
 poetry and Shelley had read it, but was not 
 Wordsworth, too, bitten by the revolutionary 
 frenzy, and did not Shelley address him a 
 very mournful sonnet when the elder poet 
 began to show signs of increasing conserva- 
 tism? Southey too he had read and liked 
 — but could Southey help him, especially 
 after they became personally acquainted? 
 Could Coleridge have helped him as he 
 afterwards claimed that he could? Were 
 Walter Scott's delightful poems likely to con- 
 tain the antidote to revolutionary views, or 
 the youthful poems of Byron? No — there 
 was not one living author in England who 
 could have done him good, but there was 
 one who did him infinite harm. 
 
 It would not profit us to consider here how 
 the thin speculations of William Godwin at- 
 tained their astonishing vogue, or to analyze 
 those speculations, interesting as the task 
 would prove. Godwin was a man of un- 
 54 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 doubted talents, as any one that has read 
 Caleb Williams or St. Leon will admit, and 
 the impossible anarchistic and free love the- 
 ories of his " Political Justice " were cer- 
 tainly presented with no little power. They 
 were just such theories as suited the vision- 
 ary, sympathetic, and revolutionary youth 
 who had outraged his father and his teachers ; 
 and when Shelley took up a theory he acted 
 on it except when he could see plainly that 
 it hurt another. Nor could Shelley take up 
 a theory without endeavoring to make prose- 
 lytes to it, and so we see his star surely and 
 by inevitable necessity drawing into its orbit 
 that milder star that was soon to be lost to 
 the sky — the star of the unfortunate woman 
 whose name is forever linked with his. 
 
 But why pursue the harrowing story? 
 Could the ill-sorted union of a revolutionary 
 young aristocrat destitute of common sense 
 and a half atheistical, half evangelical young 
 female of low extraction and romantic aspira- 
 tions have any other ending than that cold 
 grave in the Serpentine? Blame Shelley as 
 much as we will — and he deserves blame — 
 we shall still find back of the whole sad story 
 just what we shall find back of the expulsion 
 from Oxford, back of his sickening love af- 
 fairs, back of every foolish and uncanny ac- 
 55 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 tion of his life, that terrible lack of common 
 wisdom which results always, or nearly al- 
 ways, from an unpropitious environment. 
 
 But when Shelley separated himself from 
 Harriet, did he find the environment he 
 needed ? How could he with Godwin for a 
 father-in-law — Godwin ever whining and beg- 
 ging, a most grasping philosopher in spite of 
 his doctrines of equality — with poor Fanny 
 Imlay (Mary Shelley's half sister) commit- 
 ting suicide for love, it is said, of her poet 
 brother-in-law — with Jane Claremont and 
 her unhappy intrigue with Lord Byron — 
 with Byron himself plunged in dissipation 
 and sick of life? Some of these were, we 
 may suspect, worse for him than Harriet's 
 sister, that Eliza with the pock-marked face 
 and the shock of hair, who kept all the 
 money of the establishment in her own 
 pocket, whom Shelley first loved and finally 
 execrated in the following language : " I 
 sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of 
 checking the overflowings of my unbounded 
 abhorrence for this miserable wretch." 
 
 This is a little strong even when it is 
 written about a sister-in-law. Poor Shelley — 
 he was always, to use a homely metaphor, 
 jumping from the frying-pan into the fire 
 with regard to the " company he kept," es- 
 56 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 pecially the women. At first sight his new 
 acquaintances are divine, in six months they 
 are made of the commonest clay. Who will 
 ever forget that Miss Hitchener with whom 
 he began a platonic correspondence, whom 
 he persuaded to break up her school and 
 take up her residence with him and Harriet, 
 whose praises he sounded under the poetic 
 name of Portia, though she was really Eliza 
 the Second, whom finally he wound up by 
 calling the " Brown Demon " and by bribing 
 her to leave his house. Was such a man 
 sane? 
 
 But Shelley did make one great, one ines- 
 timable gain by his connection with Godwin. 
 He gained a noble and sympathetic woman 
 for his wife — a woman who was to share his 
 trials, soothe his wounded and weary spirit, 
 and finally after his death to plead success- 
 fully with a cold world for his memory. This 
 was much more than he had a right to ask, 
 and so his last years were far happier than he 
 had any right to expect. Indeed after the 
 soul-harrowing struggle which he made to 
 retain his children by his first wife, through- 
 out the whole period of his second visit to 
 Italy, Shelley's environment was in most re- 
 spects all that his better nature could have 
 desired. Byron grew to love him and so 
 57 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 avoided shocking him or exerting much, if 
 any, deleterious influence upon him ; the 
 Williamses, the Gisbornes, Medwin, Trelawny, 
 Peacock, Leigh Hunt were pleasant compan- 
 ions, and Mary Shelley was the noblest of 
 wives. But for the silly episode of Emilia 
 Viviani, these Italian days of Shelley were as 
 sunshiny and pure as Italian days should 
 ever be. He was maturing in his powers, 
 had refined the crudity of many of his earlier 
 theories, and with renewed health might have 
 looked forward to accomplishing work that 
 would have thrown in the shade his previous 
 labors in song, when by an unhappy accident, 
 or perhaps a despicable crime, he was sent to 
 meet his death in the bosom of that element 
 he had loved so well. 
 
 But we have assuredly dwelt long enough 
 on Shelley's unfavorable environment, and we 
 are, some of us, doubtless prepared to admit 
 with Mr. Arnold that Shelley was not en- 
 tirely sane. We shall hardly look upon him 
 as a spawn of Satan, but we shall wish that 
 he could have been blessed with more com- 
 mon sense. There is, however, another side 
 of Shelley's life and character which we have 
 as yet only glanced at and which we must 
 now consider at more length, although we 
 can by no means give it the attention it 
 58 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 deserves. Unless we bring this side into 
 view, we shall fail to comprehend at all how 
 Shelley has come by his many admirers, per- 
 haps I should say, his many worshippers. 
 
 As I have already stated, Shelley was 
 one of the most fascinating and lovable of 
 men. Even his bizarre and uncanny pecul- 
 iarities strengthened the charm that he ex- 
 erted on cynics like Byron, cool common- 
 sense persons Hke Hogg, dilettante natures 
 like Hunt, and pure, sweet enthusiasts like 
 Mary Godwin. But Shelley's charm did not 
 proceed from his eccentricities, or from the 
 magic of his conversation, or from the glow 
 reflected upon him from the enchanted at- 
 mosphere of fanciful thought and feeling in 
 which he moved habitually. Shelley's charm 
 came from the essential simplicity of his char- 
 acter, a statement which will appear paradoxi- 
 cal to those who have been chiefly struck by 
 the complexity of the problems connected 
 with the poet's life. They will recognize at 
 once that it is a paradox, for nothing can be 
 more clearly established than the fact that 
 Shelley's was an essentially simple nature. 
 And by simple I mean, of course, sine plica, 
 without a fold, a straightforward nature aiming 
 to put itself in harmony with the universe, not 
 a doubhng, dissimulating nature, in spite of 
 59 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 Mr. Jeaffreson's charges and of Shelley's own 
 inconsistencies of statement, never in perfect 
 harmony even with itself. Shelley's nature 
 can be summed up in one word — love. He 
 loved man in the most thoroughgoing sense 
 of that great and often misused word "phil- 
 anthropy " — he loved beauty whether in 
 woman, or flower, or wave, or sky, or in the 
 creations of art, or in the abstractions of the 
 human mind. But a simple, perfect love does 
 not dominate the world of thought alone, it 
 dominates the world of action also. Hence 
 Shelley's whole life was given up to deeds of 
 love, to obeying the promptings of the spirit 
 that swayed him. But mark how the very 
 nobility and simplicity of his nature betrayed 
 him when he sought to put it into action, 
 how it led his sun-fed and light-sustained 
 body through the thorns and briers of life. 
 Every action implies a subject and an object, 
 and for an action to be good it must be in 
 harmony with the essential nature of both 
 subject and object. Yet how is the subject 
 to know that an action which is in entire har- 
 mony with it will be in entire harmony with 
 the object toward which it is directed ? There 
 is no possible way of arriving at this knowl- 
 edge except the rough way which we call 
 gaining wisdom or common sense. Some 
 60 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 natures seem, indeed, to have an intuition of 
 the rightfulness or the wrongfulness of ac- 
 tions, and to them Wordsworth refers in his 
 noble Ode to Duty as 
 
 " Glad hearts without reproach or blot 
 Who do thy work and know it not." 
 
 But this intuition will not answer long in our 
 jarring world, and Wordsworth recognizes the 
 fact when he prays : — 
 
 " Long may the kindly impulse last ; 
 But thou, if they should totter, teach them to 
 stand fast." 
 
 The duty, however, which Wordsworth 
 prays to cannot well be separated from what 
 we also know as wisdom and, under humbler 
 circumstances, as common sense. Shelley, 
 therefore, if he was to obey the promptings 
 of the spirit that swayed him — that exquisite 
 spirit of love with which he was more com- 
 pletely " interpenetrated " than any other child 
 of man has been in these latter days — needed 
 of all men to have wisdom to guide him in 
 his actions; because being so conscious of 
 the purity of his own motives, he was the less 
 likely to pause and consider whether his ac- 
 tions would redound to the good of his fellow 
 men and women. Here, alas ! was the rock 
 6i 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 on which Shelley split — he had no com- 
 mon sense, he had little practical v/isdom, cer- 
 tainly in his earlier years, and he had an 
 uncontrollable longing to follow the impulses 
 of his nature. What wonder that he wrecked 
 his life in whirlpools, what wonder that in his 
 own beautiful, self-depicting words — 
 
 '' He fled astray 
 With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, 
 And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, 
 Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their 
 prey." 
 
 It is this inability of Shelley's to regulate 
 his actions that Mr. Arnold refers to when he 
 speaks of Shelley's lack of humor and his 
 self-delusion. Shelley was always pursuing 
 the true, the beautiful, and the good, and 
 since he had not wisdom to guide him, he 
 was continually thinking that he had found 
 those desirable qualities embodied in some 
 one person who sooner or later turned out 
 to be an idol of clay. Having imagined that 
 Emilia Viviani embodied them, he must 
 forsooth become her slave and write that 
 wonderful Epipsychidion in which he de- 
 clared that she was the sun of his life, 
 while his faithful and noble wife, Mary, was 
 the moon. He did not stop for a moment 
 62 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 to think that what he had written affected 
 two women injuriously — making one silly- 
 woman sillier, and rendering a true and de- 
 serving woman temporarily unhappy. So 
 it was with the unfortunate Harriet. Shelley 
 could not see that the theories which were 
 for the time true for him, were very bad 
 theories with which to inoculate a by no 
 means strong-minded girl of sixteen. Never- 
 theless, he proceeds to inoculate her, marries 
 her without loving her, deserts her because 
 he has found the true, the beautiful, and the 
 good embodied in Mary Godwin, and then 
 invites her to come and live with Mary and 
 himself because he has no idea that he 
 has done anything wrong. He has simply 
 followed the promptings of the spirit he 
 served, but he has followed them without 
 exercising his common sense. In other 
 words he has shown a lack of humor, a self- 
 delusion that are astounding. 
 
 But there are often times when a lack of 
 humor and a self-delusion that are astound- 
 ing do not prevent a man like Shelley from 
 moving like an angel among his fellow men. 
 Think of him visiting the huts of the poor at 
 Marlow, tending the sick, distributing money 
 and food to them, actually walking a hospital 
 that he may learn for their benefit something 
 6^ 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 of practical medicine. Think of the oph- 
 thalmia caught in his constant ministrations 
 to the sick, think of his subscriptions to 
 public charities, think of his sweet treatment 
 of the importunate Godwin, think of his 
 sympathy for every living thing, man or 
 beast, and then say if your heart does not 
 glow toward this man. Even his rash pil- 
 grimages for the emancipation of Ireland 
 cease to be ridiculous when we remember 
 the noble love of liberty that prompted 
 them, when we remember that many of the 
 reforms he proposed have been since carried 
 out by the peaceful means he advised. We 
 have, of course, to set against this ideal, 
 angelic Shelley, the silly, almost demoniac 
 Shelley raging at kings and statesmen and 
 priests with a wearisome iteration. But this 
 uncontrolled hatred of customs and institu- 
 tions that most men cherish was but another 
 manifestation of Shelley's spirit of love un- 
 controlled by wisdom. Love for mankind 
 was for him inextricably bound up with love 
 for liberty, and love for liberty with intense 
 natui es means hate for tyranny ; but Shelley 
 had not the wisdom to see that too often 
 what he called liberty was simply license. 
 Hence his ravings and hence our paradox 
 that his hatred of kings was only a manifes- 
 64 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 tation of his spirit of unbounded love. 
 But a spirit of unbounded love will have 
 worshippers to the end of time. 
 
 This subject has fascination enough, how- 
 ever, to keep us pursuing it indefinitely, and 
 we may as well pass on. It is impossible 
 to compass even the salient points of 
 Shelley's life and character in an essay : but 
 it is to be hoped that we have done enough 
 to enable us to approach his poetry in a 
 sufficiently critical but at the same time 
 friendly mood. 
 
 III. THE POEMS. 
 
 In discussing Shelley's work as a writer it 
 will be well for us to confine ourselves to 
 his original poetry. If this were a treatise 
 instead of an essay it would not be difficult 
 to devote more than one chapter to setting 
 forth his merits as a translator of poetry and 
 as a writer of distinguished and charming 
 prose. We need not yield even to Mr. 
 Arnold himself in our admiration for Shelley 
 in these two capacities, although we may 
 not share the great critic's opinion that it 
 is as a translator and a prose writer that 
 posterity will chiefly appreciate one who is 
 S 65 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 very frequently styled at present " the poets' 
 poet" 
 
 I know of nothing in the realm of poeti- 
 cal translation that approaches the delight- 
 ful and inimitable Hymn to Mercury or 
 the equally inimitable, though to me less 
 charming, scenes from the masterpieces 
 of Calderon and Goethe. Nor do I sup- 
 pose that in its way Shelley's nervous 
 prose with its individual rhythm and its 
 almost invariably sound and sane content 
 can easily find an equal. When he aban- 
 dons himself to the looser measures of 
 rhythmic prose, when his inspiration ceases 
 to master him and he masters his own 
 genius, he displays a tact, a sureness of 
 touch that almost make us forget the lack 
 of wisdom and of grasp upon reality that 
 are so painfully apparent in his life and, I 
 may add, although this is somewhat fore- 
 stalling matters, in his original poetry. But 
 no translator, no prose writer, however distin- 
 guished, can claim the place in literature that 
 is always ungrudgingly assigned to the emin- 
 ently original poet, and Shelley's wor- 
 shippers have never been willing to forgo 
 pressing his claims for the higher place. 
 Here is the true crux of Shelleyan criti- 
 cism, and it is to the question of Shelley's 
 66 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 position as an original poet that for the 
 present at least the energies of his critics 
 must be directed. 
 
 To a superficial observer the question 
 would seem, at first sight, if not to have 
 solved itself with time, to be at any rate in 
 a fair way of doing so. Shelley's star has 
 been steadily rising ever since his death. 
 In his life he found few admirers, and 
 Byron, Moore, and even many whose names 
 are now almost forgotten, eclipsed him in 
 critical as well as in popular favor. Soon, 
 however, his admirers became more numer- 
 ous and bolder. The uncanny events of his 
 life were viewed in a soberer and fairer 
 light, and his work received more impartial 
 criticism. The sun of Byron began to pale 
 before the rising sun of Tennyson as after 
 a period of revolution and stormy passions 
 the world began to sigh for the peace of 
 conservatism and the luxury of allowing 
 play to calm emotions and delicate sensi- 
 bilities. This desire for calm and the lib- 
 erty and equality which had been made an 
 influential aspiration, if not an achieved 
 possession, of the human spirit, produced 
 a type of civilization characterized by many 
 distinctively . feminine traits. Gentleness, 
 receptivity to sentiments and ideas, a rec- 
 67 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 ognition of the virtue and power that lie 
 in patient forbearance and pathetic weak- 
 ness, these and many other distinctively 
 feminine traits began to dominate the world 
 and have continued to dominate it. Natur- 
 ally the effects of this change of the world's 
 spirit were seen in literature, and Tennyson's 
 Princess may be taken as its first fairly ade- 
 quate expression. But obviously this change 
 was in favor of Shelley and to the detri- 
 ment of Byron. The poet of stormy pas- 
 sions, of intense, over-weening masculinity, 
 was out of touch with this new world ; the poet 
 who preached love to man and beast and 
 flower, who spun rainbov/-hued visions of the 
 speedy advent of a golden age of harmony 
 and peace, whose character even, when closely 
 examined, was found to be in many respects 
 that of a feminine angel — if angels may 
 be said to distribute themselves between 
 the sexes — became more and more a sub- 
 ject for veneration and love to the advanced 
 and enlightened spirits of the new ri^gime. 
 The populace took to Tennyson and Long- 
 fellow, but the critics and the ultras of all 
 shades took to Shelley, with here and there 
 an aesthete who preferred Keats, or some 
 more ambitious prober of mysteries who 
 gave his allegiance to Browning. Then 
 68 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 came the Pre-Raphaelite movement in paint- 
 ing and poetry which naturally worked in 
 favor of a hazy poet and under the influences 
 of which the best of our younger critics 
 have been reared. 
 
 So the fact appears to be that time is set- 
 tling the value of Shelley's poetry for us, 
 since if the critics cleave to him long enough, 
 they will eventually bring the people to him. 
 It is seldom that an author remains indefi- 
 nitely balanced between critical appreciation 
 and popular indifference. Landor seems to 
 hang thus suspended, but as a rule either the 
 people will bring the critics to their view of 
 the matter, as in the case of Bunyan, or the 
 critics will educate the people to a more or 
 less willing acceptance of the views of the 
 enlightened, as seems now to be the case with 
 Browning. If the critics as a class continue 
 to stand by Shelley, his cause may fairly be 
 considered as won. But although such a 
 stout phalanx as Swinburne, Dowden, Sharp, 
 the Rossettis, Saintsbury, Symonds, Wood- 
 berry, Garnett, Myers, Forman, Stopford 
 Brooke, Theodore Watts-Dunton, Andrew 
 Lang, Thomas S. Baynes, and a host of 
 others, to say nothing of the Shelley Society, 
 has stood by and is still standing by Shelley, 
 there is one voice of dissent that makes itself 
 69 
 
AfRdPO'S OF SHELLEY 
 
 hfeardi a voice potent enottgh to arrest our 
 dtteritibti and to awaken bur interest. It is 
 the \7oice of the greatest English critic of this 
 century, with the possible exfception of Gol- 
 eridge, Mr. Matthew Arnold; 
 
 Biit what is dhe man against so marfy, one 
 will asfe? Not mtich, I dnswer, for thfe pres- 
 ent, but a great deal for the future if he hap- 
 pens td have truth on his side, and if he has 
 recorded himself with sufficient fulness; for 
 the valufe of the rest of his critical Afi^ork is 
 bduhd to lend some authdrity to his most 
 e^trfeme litterance eVeri when this seems to be 
 opposed to the judgment of the wisest of his 
 contemporaries. It is the vOice which is at 
 first drOwned in the discord of dissent or cen- 
 sure that in the rtiajority of cases is heard 
 full arid clear by the generations that fOllOw. 
 Can we be sure that this will not be the ease 
 With Arnold's Utterances as to Shelley? For 
 thy part, eVfen if I had committed myself as 
 a pronounced Shelleyahj even if I had written 
 a commentary in the most approved modern 
 style on a single passage in the works of my 
 favorite, I Shoiild still deep down in my 
 hfeart feel a dread of the future when I listened 
 to the clear yet calm voice of such a dissent- 
 ing critic as Matthew Arhold; And his 
 iiiiiqueness, the fact of his standing alOne, of 
 70 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 his unflinching boldness of utterance would 
 increase the dread, for it is just such unique 
 and bold utterances that in nine cases out of 
 ten win the suffrages of posterity. At any 
 rate, being no pronounced Shelleyan I pro- 
 pose to give Mr. Arnold a more respectful 
 hearing in the following pages than he has 
 usually had at the hands of modern critics. 
 
 Before proceeding, however, to examine 
 Arnold's views it may be well for us to re- 
 member that he was not handicapped in his 
 criticism of Shelley, as Kingsley was, by his 
 own more or less intimate dependence upon 
 the established order of things. Arnold was, 
 if not as blatantly, nevertheless as completely 
 at discord with orthodox Christianity as 
 Shelley was. It is open to grave doubt 
 whether he believed in the immortality of the 
 soul, which Shelley certainly did. Arnold 
 was also a republican at heart and a believer 
 in equality, even if he did not rave against 
 kings and statesmen with conservative lean- 
 ings. He was furthermore a product with 
 Shelley, though a more ripened product, of 
 the liberal, the European movement in liter- 
 ature which received its initial impulse from 
 Goethe. He was therefore not unqualified 
 either by nature or by training to sit in judg- 
 ment upon Shelley. 
 
 71 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 It would not be possible nor would it be 
 desirable to cite here all Arnold's obiter dicta 
 respecting Shelley's poetry — he did not live 
 to write his promised essay about it — hence 
 I shall content myself with quoting three 
 passages from his writings that set forth his 
 views with sufficient fulness, reserving my 
 own discussion of Shelley's poems until we 
 have felt the full force of the most weighty 
 indictment that has been brought against 
 them. 
 
 A lucid statement of one of Arnold's chief 
 charges against Shelley as a poet occurs in the 
 essay on Maurice de Gu^rin : 
 
 " I have said that poetry interprets in two 
 ways ; it interprets by expressing with magi- 
 cal felicity the physiognomy and movement of 
 the outward world,, and it interprets by ex- 
 pressing with inspired conviction the ideas 
 and laws of the inward world of man's moral 
 and spiritual nature. In other words, poetry 
 is interpretative both by having natural magic 
 in it, and by having moral profundity. In 
 both ways it illuminates man ; it gives him a 
 satisfying sense of reality; it reconciles him 
 with himself and the universe. . . . Shak- 
 spere interprets both when he says, 
 
 " ' Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
 Flatter the mountain-tops with sovran eye ; ' 
 72 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 and when he says, 
 
 " ' There 's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 Rough-hew them how we will.' 
 
 . . . Great poets unite in themselves the faculty 
 of both kinds of interpretation, the naturalistic 
 and the moral. But it is observable that in 
 the poets who unite both kinds, the latter 
 (the moral) usually ends by making itself the 
 master. In Shakspere the two kinds seem 
 wonderfully to balance one another ; but even 
 in him the balance leans ; his expression tends 
 to become too little sensuous and simple, too 
 much intellectualized. The same thing may 
 be yet more strongly affirmed of Lucretius 
 and Wordsworth. In Shelley there is not a 
 balance of the two gifts, nor even a coexist- 
 ence of them both, but there is a passionate 
 straining after them both, and this is what 
 makes Shelley, as a man, so interesting: I 
 will not inquire how much Shelley achieves 
 as a poet, but whatever he achieves, he in 
 general fails to achieve natural magic in his 
 expression; in Mr. Palgrave's charming 
 Treasury may be seen a whole gallery of his 
 failures." 
 
 To this passage Mr. Arnold added a foot- 
 note contrasting Shelley's Lines Written in 
 the Euganean Hills with Keats's Ode to 
 73 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 Autumn as follows: "The latter piece ren- 
 ders Nature, the former tries to render her. 
 I will not deny, however, that Shelley has 
 natural magic in his rhythm ; what I deny is, 
 that he has it in his language. It always 
 seems to me that the right sphere for Shelley's 
 genius was the sphere of music, not of poetry; 
 the medium of sounds he can master, but to 
 master the more difficult medium of words, 
 he has neither intellectual force enough, nor 
 sanity enough." 
 
 Passing over other interesting but not es- 
 pecially important r-eferences to Shelley, we 
 come to the concluding paragraphs of the 
 noble essay on The Study of Poetry which 
 was prefixed to Ward's " Selections." Arnold 
 has been speaking of the wholesomeness of 
 much of Burns's poetry and suddenly he ex- 
 claims with a warning voice : " For the votary 
 misled by a personal estimate of Shelley, as 
 so many of us have been, are, and will be — of 
 that beautiful spirit building his many-colored 
 haze of words and images 
 
 ' Pinnacled dim in the intense inane ' 
 
 no contact can be wholesomer than the con- 
 tact with Burns at his archest and soundest." 
 And be proceeds to point his warning 
 by contrasting four lines from the " Prome- 
 
 74 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 theus Unbound with four lines from Tam 
 Glen. 
 
 Finally from the Essay on Byron we may 
 take our last quotation : " I caijnot think 
 that Shelley's poetry except by snatches and 
 fragments, has the value of the gpod work of 
 Wordsworth and Byron. . . . Shelley kne^y 
 quite well the difference between -the .achieve- 
 ment of such a poet as Byron and his own. 
 He praises Byron too unreservedly, but he 
 felt, and he was right in feeding, that Pyron 
 was a greater poetical power than hiipself. 
 As a man, Shelley is at a number of points im- 
 measurably Byron's superior; he is a beauti- 
 ful and enchanting spirit, whose vision, when 
 we call it up, has far more loveliness, more 
 chiirm for pur soul, than the vision of Byron. 
 But all the personal charm of Shelley cannot 
 hinder us from at last discovering in his 
 poetry the incurable want, in general, of a 
 .sound subject matter, and the incurable fa.ult, 
 in consequence, oi unsubstantiality. Those 
 who extol him as the poet of clouds, the 
 poet of sunsets, are only saying that he did 
 not, in fact, lay hold upon the poet's right 
 subject-matter ; and in honest truth, ,with all 
 his charm of soul and spirit, and with all his 
 gift of musical diction and movement, he 
 never, or hardly ever, did . . ." The rest 
 75 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 of this passage containing Mr. Arnold's 
 praise of the translations and prose works 
 need not be cited, but it may be remarked 
 that it is at the close of this essay on Byron 
 that the famous phrase which has been already 
 quoted first occurs : " Shelley, beautiful and 
 ineffectual angel, beating in the void his 
 luminous wings in vain." When some years 
 after he had occasion to repeat this phrase 
 Arnold underscored the word ineffectual. 
 
 And now I think we can form a pretty 
 plain idea of the nature of the charges that 
 his greatest critic has made against Shelley's 
 poetry. If they are not ruthless, they may 
 certainly be termed vital. If Arnold is right, 
 Shelley cannot be a great poet of the highest 
 rank. We see also that Arnold's charges 
 may be summed up very briefly. Shelley's 
 poetry does not show moral profundity though 
 it shows a straining after it ; it does not show 
 natural magic in its language although it 
 does show it in its musical rhythm ; it lacks 
 a sound subject-matter and hence is charac- 
 terized by the incurable fault of unsubstan- 
 tiality. This is the sum and substance of 
 Arnold's criticism, and the important question 
 for us now is — can this criticism be deemed 
 just? There is only one way to test it and 
 that is to read Shelley's chief poems in the 
 76 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 light or the darkness of Arnold's dicta, and 
 then sum up our fresh impressions and form 
 our judgments accordingly. It would be 
 better still if my reader were able to do 
 as I did — viz., re-read all Shelley's poems 
 several years after reading Arnold's strictures 
 and then re-read the strictures in the light of 
 the poetry. Few probably who have done this 
 will find themselves so nearly in accord with 
 the critic as I did, and fewer still will in read- 
 ing The Revolt of Islam rediscover Shel- 
 ley's lack of natural magic in his language 
 without sufficient recollection of Arnold's 
 essay to enable them to give their rediscov- 
 ery a proper name. But now let us turn to 
 the poems themselves, omitting the juvenile 
 works and beginning with Alastor. 
 
 Many critics go into ecstasies over this 
 semi-autobiographic effusion and some of us 
 when sound delighted more than sense, proba- 
 bly went wild over it ourselves. Now unfor- 
 tunately the opening lines are too plainly 
 suggestive of Wordsworth ; the famous pas- 
 sage beginning: 
 
 " His wandering step 
 Obedient to high thoughts has visited 
 The awful ruins of the days of old : 
 Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste 
 Where stood Jerusalem " 
 
 77 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 is grand, bat with the grandeur of Milton not 
 of SheEey; ihe straining after an impossible 
 ideal is patiietic but not stimulating, and the 
 whole atmosphere of the poem is unreal, as 
 unreal as the poet's geography. Alastor is 
 chiefly interesting for two reasons — it is 
 autobiographic and Shelley is an interesting 
 character and it has a fine, I may say, at 
 times a superb and origin^ rhythmical flow. 
 But a poem autobiographical of Shelley could 
 not well be sane -^ could not have a sound 
 subject-matter, could only embody a strain- 
 ing after moral profundity, which is but to 
 confirm Arnold's sure judgment. It is its 
 rhythm only that lifts it out of the mass <rf 
 immature poetry in which our literature is 
 rich, and Arnold is not backward in his praise 
 of Shelley's rhythm. Alastor may be dis- 
 missed so far as specific criticism is con- 
 cerned, with the remark that the charge so 
 often made against Byron that he only paints 
 himself, can be made fully as justly against 
 Shelley, and that Byron at least describes a 
 strong personality, Shelley a weak although 
 a pathetic one. 
 
 This judgment, which I confess sounds 
 harsh and irreverent, but is made in all sober- 
 ness, may be illustrated by a recurrence to 
 the famous if somewhat twisted dictum of 
 78 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 Milton that poetry should be simple, sensu- 
 ous, impassioned. Alastor, and indeed all 
 Shelley's other elaborate poems, fail of sim- 
 plicity because simplicity implies a sound 
 subject-matter treated by a sound mind and 
 inevitably appealing to all other sound minds. 
 Our analysis of Shelley's character, however, 
 forbade us to hope for any such simplicity 
 in his poetry, for we saw that his environ- 
 ment had failed to give him that wisdom 
 which would have directed his essentially 
 simple nature whether in its actions or in its 
 poetical self-delineations. 
 
 Alastor and Shelley's other poems are 
 sensuous in one respect — their rhythm, which 
 can be proved by any one with an ear for 
 poetic rhythm and which justifies Mr. Swin- 
 burne in saying that Shelley is " the master 
 singer of our modern poets " and Mr. Arnold 
 in speaking of Shelley's genius as being pe- 
 culiarly suited to the sphere of music. But 
 little of Shelley's poetry is sensuous in its 
 language — that is Shelley as a rule does 
 not by a single felicitous epithet, phrase, or 
 verse set a concrete object or an abstract 
 quality vividly before the mind's eye. Shel- 
 ley needs a mass of words to produce his 
 effects — hence the haziness of his descrip- 
 tions, which nevertheless have at times just 
 79 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 the beauty that haziness in the natural world 
 generally gives. Hence it comes that Shelley 
 loves to give us clouds and sunsets and im- 
 possible landscapes, hence it is that few great 
 painters have ever, to my knowledge, been 
 inspired by him, and hence it is, that compara- 
 tively few quotations from his poems are fa- 
 miliar to ordinary readers. Even a eulogist 
 like Mr. John Addington Symonds has to 
 admit this, although he does not give the 
 reason for it, when he quotes Shelley's famous 
 lines from JuHan and Maddalo, 
 
 " Most wretched men 
 Are cradled into poetry by wrong, 
 They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 
 
 Even here, it is interesting to note, Shelley 
 is nothing if not autobiographic. 
 
 But finally, to return to Milton's dictum, 
 Alastor and the rest of Shelley's poems are 
 impassioned, yet only in the lowest sense of 
 the word. Shelley's was the passion of weak- 
 ness but not the passion of strength. Here 
 is the true cause of his essential inferiority to 
 Byron; here is the reason, as Mr. Richard 
 Holt Hutton well showed, why Shelley's poe- 
 try is not sublime. There is no sublimity with- 
 out power and Shelley's power was only the 
 pseudo-power which morbid and introspec- 
 80 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 tive people can discover in weakness. We 
 do speak, it is true, of sublime patience and 
 the like, but the collocation of terms is an 
 unfortunate one except in those cases when 
 there is involved with the patience the power 
 of acting effectually if the sufferer choose. 
 In other words, it is difiScult not to agree 
 with Mr. Hutton that there can be no subhm- 
 ity without power, and it is clear that the 
 power that accompanies patience is rarely 
 the positive power of action but only the 
 negative power of restraint. But all Shelley's 
 ideals were passive — he even preached pas- 
 sive revolutions — hence his poetry is not 
 truly impassioned, it does not flow from a 
 powerful nature or affect other natures power- 
 fully — that is, it tends to excite sentiment 
 rather than to incite to action. 
 
 The above criticism of Alastor applies 
 as well to the beautiful poem known both as 
 Laon and Cythna and as The Revolt of 
 Islam. Most people tire of this poem, be- 
 cause of its impossible, misty and rather 
 wearisome plot. Even professed Shelleyans 
 share this feeling, and while pointing out the 
 beauty of a few detached passages frankly 
 admit that Shelley had no qualifications for 
 the r61e of a narrative poet. We need qualify 
 this judgment only by saying that in all 
 6 8i 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 likelihood Laon and Cythna is the most 
 continuous stream of exquisite and delicate 
 melody evfer poured upon the ears of the 
 world since Spenser left the Faerie Queene 
 unfinished. Of its kind I know nothing like 
 it in any language ^^ but its kind I must con- 
 fess is musical, not poetical. As poetry it is 
 as full of flaws as any poem of a real genius 
 ever was, as music, as a song without con-' 
 cfete meaning, it is simply wondetful. It 
 may be remarked that in the 34th stanza of the 
 nth canto of this poem we find one of the few 
 examples of a truly felicitous, a naturally 
 magical epithet used by Shelley. Such an 
 epithet is so rare that it must be quoted, with 
 the caution, however, that it perhaps con'- 
 tains a reminiscence of Dr. Donne. 
 
 " Thus Cythna taught 
 Eveii ifi the visions of her etoqueHi sleep.'* 
 
 No other adjective could well equal the 
 one which Shelley has here used ; in other 
 words it is inevitable, i. e., truly poetic. But, 
 if it is seldom that one can quote such a 
 perfect epithet from Shelley, it is not difficult 
 to quote many a stanza to prove his perfect 
 melodiousness. Here is one. 
 
 " Sh6 moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, 
 A power, that from its objects scarcely drew 
 82 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 One impulse of her being — in her lightness 
 Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, 
 Which wanders thro' the waste air's pathless blue, 
 To nourish some far desert : she did seem 
 Like the bright shade of some immoftal dream 
 Which walks, when tempest sleeps^ the wave ot life's 
 dark stream." 
 
 As poetry this is feeble because there is 
 scarcely a word that clinches the object it is 
 intended to represent or describe, but as 
 music it is little less than divine. 
 
 Passing over Rosalind and Helen with 
 the remark that it is feeble as a whole, and 
 less good in its parts than Shelley's poems are 
 wont to be, we reach the celebrated Lines 
 Written among the Euganean Hills. These 
 I hke better than Mr. Arnold did, although 
 I recognize that they are far less artistic than 
 Keats would have nlade them. I recognize 
 also Shelley's indebtedness to Milton and 
 perhaps to Dyer. But I must plead that 
 the apostrophe to Venice has a combination 
 of epic and lyric grandeur that is rarely Sur- 
 passed and that deserves a grateful remem- 
 brance. One may note, however, that both 
 in this poem and in the famous Hymn to 
 Intellectual Beauty which follows it, there 
 is that note of despairing weakness which is 
 so characteristic of Shelley. 
 83 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 Going for a moment past The Cenci, we 
 come to what is considered by many of his 
 critics to be Shelley's most important work 
 — Prometheus Unbound. The language 
 that has been applied to this lyrical drama 
 would certainly not be too weak in connec- 
 tion with The Tempest of Shakspere or the 
 Comus of Milton. Mr. Sharp speaks of 
 " The wonderful melodies, the splendid har- 
 monies, all the music and magnificence of 
 Shelley's greatest production." Mr. Rossetti 
 is still more enthusiastic when he grows 
 eloquent over " The immense scale and 
 boundless scope of the conception; the 
 marble majesty and extra-mundane passions 
 of the personages; the sublimity of ethical 
 aspiration, the radiance of ideal and poetic 
 beauty which saturates every phase of the 
 subject, and almost (as it were) wraps it from 
 sight at times, and transforms it out of sense 
 into spirit; the rolling river of great sound 
 and lyrical rapture" — and so forth. Mr. J. 
 A. Symonds went so far as to declare that 
 " a genuine liking for ' Prometheus Un- 
 bound ' may be reckoned the touchstone of 
 a man's capacity for understanding lyric 
 poetry." On the other hand it is to be 
 observed that the only passage of Shelley, so 
 far as I remember, that Matthew Arnold 
 84 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 undertook to condemn specifically came 
 from the Prometheus Unbound and that it 
 would be rash to maintain that a poet who 
 had written such lyrics as Arnold was not 
 capable qf understanding lyric poetry. 
 
 The truth seems to me to lie very far this 
 side of the unbounded praise that has just 
 been recorded. Not that there is not some 
 foundation for this praise, but that it is 
 plainly extravagant. It strikes what Arnold 
 calls somewhere the note of provinciality, the 
 note of shrill assertion that that which we 
 like is perfect and that whoever does not like 
 it is a fool. I shall not at all quarrel with 
 Mr. Sharp's " wonderful melodies " and 
 " splendid harmonies," for they surely exist 
 in the poem ; but I should like to. point out 
 that not only does the poet's love for singing 
 songs without sense often mar his work,, but 
 that his facility of utterance often tempts him 
 to strike what is clearly a false note, as 
 for example the lines quoted by Arnold, 
 beginning : 
 
 " On the brink of the night and the morning." 
 or what to my mind is an even worse 
 instance of a thin false note, the chorus of 
 spirits in the fourth act, beginning : — 
 
 We come from the mind 
 Of human kind 
 
 85 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind ; 
 
 Now 't is an ocean 
 
 Of clear emotion, 
 A heaven of serene and mighty motion. 
 
 This is not only rendered feeble as poetry 
 from its straining at concrete expression, but 
 it is also rendered thin and of false quality as 
 music because the rhythm does not harmon- 
 ize with its content. It hardly seems ex- 
 travagant to say that there are more false 
 notes struck in the Prometheus than in the 
 rest of Shelley's poems taken together. 
 
 With regard to what may be called the 
 intellectual claims put forth for this poem 
 which has been edited for schools and been 
 made the subject of essays by the dozen, I can 
 say only that, however true they may be when 
 applied to special passages, they are by no 
 means true when applied to the drama as a 
 whole. The fourth act, which is a favorite 
 with the Shelleyans, seems to have been an 
 afterthought, and is a most lame and impo- 
 tent conclusion. The characters are, except 
 for short intervals, vague, misty and devoid 
 of personality. The solution proposed for 
 the problem of human destiny, for the freeing 
 of the Promethean spirit of man is as impos- 
 sible and ineffectual as if it had been gener- 
 ated in the heated brain of a maniac. This 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 great poem is really little more than a series of 
 wonderful phantasmagoria flashed forth upon 
 the curtain of the reader's mind by a very 
 unsteady hand. When the reader voluntarily 
 shuts off the light, i. e., ceases to think or 
 judge, the effect is dazzHng ; when he allows 
 the light of reason to play upon his mind, 
 the effect is just the reverse. I admire the 
 Prometheus Unbound as the daring and 
 in parts splendid achievement of a brilliant, 
 unbalanced, but nobly poetic nature ; but I 
 cannot admit that it is worthy of language 
 which would be hyperbolical in the case of 
 any other poet than Shakspere or Milton. 
 
 But to hasten on. With Prometheus 
 there were published in 1820 at least four 
 poems that have assuredly won immortality — 
 the Ode to the West Wind, The Cloud, 
 The Sensitive Plant and To a Skylark. 
 Some would add to these the Ode to Lib- 
 erty, but I cannot, if for no other reason, on 
 account of the metrical insufficiency of its 
 stanzaic form. It is needless for me to 
 attempt to characterize poems which have 
 seized the world's heart; but I must point 
 out that to my mind Shelley is in one of 
 these and in many of his other lyrics more a 
 poet of the fancy than of the imagination — 
 of most subtle and beautiful fancy, I admit, 
 87 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 but still fajicy. The Cloud, it seems to me, 
 will prove the truth of thi.s remark. Arethusa 
 may also be cited in support of it. It is trite 
 to say, however,, that the odes To the Sky- 
 lark and The West Wind display in parts 
 superb imaginative power. The closing lines 
 of the latte? : 
 
 " O, Wind, 
 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? " 
 
 are richly imaginative; the stanza of the 
 former that runs : 
 
 " What thou art we know not ; 
 What is most like thee ? 
 Front rainbow clouds there flow not 
 Drops, so. bright to see 
 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody," 
 
 is richly fanciful. It is to be noted that in 
 nearly all these poems, there is an undertone 
 of weakness, of despair. 
 
 Passing over Swellfoot the Tyraat with 
 the remark that it is, eeisy to agree with Mr. 
 Symonds in disparaging the mass of Shelley's 
 political, satirical, and avowedly humorous 
 poetry, including The Masque of Anarchy, 
 and that uncalled for metrical fungus Peter 
 Bell, the Third, we come to the famous 
 Epipsyqhidion, which may be likened to 
 88 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 the sacred dimly-lighted shrine, in which the 
 ritualistic votary of the high-Shelley-church 
 party worships with the greatest unction, 
 leaving the profane and uninitiated herd of 
 Shelleyans to carry on their <ievotions in the 
 more spaci'oas and lofty cathedral of the 
 Prometheus Unbound, I have already re- 
 ferred to this poem as occasioned by Shel- 
 ley's sudden and soon abandoned passion 
 for Emilia Viviani, and I have pointed out 
 the painful deficiencies of the production 
 from the point of view of morals. I fully 
 agree with those critics, however, who see in 
 it a wonderful intensity, a white heat of pas" 
 sion. But I have seen intense heat in a burn- 
 ing pile of decayed leaves, and I am not 
 certain that the heat of this poem does not 
 remind me more of burning leaves than of 
 an ever burning sun. ^akspere's sonnets 
 show passion at its intensity, but their heat is 
 like the heat of a burning sun. Yet the 
 description of the isle to which the poet urges 
 his new found love to fly with him is, if un- 
 earthly, nevertheless the most wonderful 
 thing of its kind that one need ever expect 
 to read — exquisite fancy and a perfect sense 
 for melody were never so thoroughly fused 
 and ignited by emotion as in this passage. 
 As for Adonais, who would touch that 
 89 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 most melodious of elegies with a rough hand ? 
 Certainly its subject matter is sound even if 
 unsubstantiality be a characteristic of its 
 author's treatment. Certainly it has the 
 natural magic of sound to perfection, if not 
 that of language. Certainly it will live to 
 couple together forever the names of two 
 noble poets. But just as certainly it has not 
 the sure, the inevitable touch of the master 
 hand upon it, the touch that Milton's hand 
 gave to Lycidas. Hellas, too, who would 
 wish to be ruthless with, even if many pro- 
 fessed Shelleyans do speak of it with little 
 rapture? The fragments of its prologue are 
 wonderful and far sounder, far saner, far more 
 powerful, and therefore nearer to the sublime, 
 than anything in Prometheus Unbound. Of 
 course, we all know that Shelley's energy 
 gave out and that Hellas remained a frag- 
 ment — a noble fragment, however, contain- 
 ing the most satisfying of all the poet's 
 numerous choruses : the chorus that contains 
 such a stanza as this : — 
 
 " Another Hellas rears its mountains 
 From waves serener far ; 
 A new Peneus rolls his fountains 
 Against the morning star. 
 Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep 
 Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.'' 
 90 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 How much truer, how much more satisfying 
 is this than the love-making of the earth 
 and the moon in the vaunted fourth act of 
 Prometheus ? 
 
 Putting aside Julian and Maddalo, a 
 poem of the Rosalind and Helen, order, 
 only more successful, the fragmentary Prince 
 Athanase, the impossible but superb metrical 
 freak of The Witch of Atlas, and the 
 charming Letter to Maria Gisborne, which 
 shows what Shelley with his delicate fancy 
 could have done in the delightful realm of 
 society verse, we come full upon the mass of 
 fragments and short lyrics which in my judg- 
 ment represent Shelley's chief contribution to 
 literature. But before discussing these, I 
 must say a few words about that remarkable 
 drama The Cenci. 
 
 I call it remarkable because it is perhaps, 
 the most completely objective piece of work 
 ever done by a subjective poet. Shelley saw 
 plainly that he must efface himself, if he 
 would succeed as a dramatist, and he did it 
 most effectually. But something more than 
 the effacement of one's subjectivity in the 
 construction of a drama is necessary to its 
 success. Shelley did not efface himself in his 
 choice of theme, possibly no dramatist can 
 — and not being a sound, wholesome charac- 
 91 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 ter, he failed to choose a sound, wholesome 
 theme. But Ford and Webster and Massinger 
 chose unwholesome themes and succeeded. 
 This was because they were greater dramatists 
 than Shelley, because they had their genius 
 more Under control, because they knew human 
 nature better. Not a single character in 
 Shelley's play is a real human being, except 
 Beatrice, and she lacks the charm which a 
 greater artist would have given her, in order to 
 counteract the horror with which her environ- 
 ment and her actions invest her. Beatrice is 
 strong and noble, but she is hardly flesh and 
 blood, and I am not sure that Shelley does 
 not cause her to fall in our esteem, when he 
 allows her to use her power to make her un- 
 fortunate accomplice eat his words in order 
 that she may preserve the honor of her family. 
 Remembering the poet's description or repre- 
 sentation of that family, one is forced to ask 
 how any honor could be left to preserve. I 
 cannot pursue the subject, save to add that 
 in only one or two passages, especially in the 
 closing lines, do we strike a note of true 
 poetry, or even of true music. But a tragedy 
 without here and there a deep poetical note 
 is like a desert without an oasis. Imagine 
 the Duchess of Malfi stripped of its poetry ! 
 This fact alone makes the opinion of those 
 92 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 irritics idle who claim that The Cetici is the 
 greatest tragedy since Shakspere. I sup- 
 pose they mean the age of Elizabeth, for I 
 can hardly imagine a discreet person's putting 
 Shelley's work beside that of Webster or 
 Ford. But even if they mean this, they over- 
 shoot the mark, for Otway with his Venice 
 Preserved, and his Orphan has to be reck- 
 oned with, to say nothing of Dryden and 
 Byron. 
 
 But now Jet us conclude this long, this 
 much too long paper with a few words about 
 Shelley's fragments and lyrics. What can 
 English poetry show to equal them of their 
 kind? and what is their kind? I answer 
 simply — the lyric of weakness, of longing, 
 of despair. We are all weak at times, we all 
 have longings, we all despair, and so it is that 
 Shelley's " lyrical cries " take h-old upon us, 
 and fascinate us, and never leave us. Let us 
 think them over and see if we have not ana- 
 lyzed truly the secret of their fascination — 
 the Invocation to Misery, the Woodman 
 and the Nightingale, The Indian Serenade, 
 Love's Philosophy, I fear thy kisses, gen- 
 tle maiden, To the Moon, Time Long Past, 
 the Dirge for the Year, To-night, Time, 
 Music, when soft voices die. Rarely, rarely 
 cottiest thou, Mutability, A Lament, Re- 
 93 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 membrance, One word is too often pro- 
 faned, Ginevra (though this is not a lyric), 
 The Recollection, with its 
 
 " Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind 
 Than calm in waters seen," 
 
 the dirge beginning " Rough wind that moan- 
 est loud" — why, the very titles almost give 
 one the " blues," so sad they are. Yes, here I 
 think we have the secret of Shelley's power 
 over us all ; but, as I remarked before, it is 
 a misnomer to speak of power in this passive 
 sense. Shelley is like an iEolian harp — the 
 winds of his sad fate play upon him and im- 
 mortal, weird, sad, and haunting melodies 
 float away to us and enter our souls and 
 abide there. And we love the harp — and 
 some unthinkingly worship it, and who shall 
 blame them? 
 
 It is true that among these fragments and 
 poems many pieces can be found that show 
 real power — many that have not a trace of 
 weakness or sadness ; and it is instructive to 
 note that these pieces were mainly composed 
 during the happy years in Italy when Shelley's 
 powers were rapidly maturing. Had he been 
 spared, there is no telling what he might 
 not have done. I have already referred to 
 the power displayed in the Prologue to Hel- 
 las, and although I cannot praise the Tri- 
 94 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 umph of Life, as Shelleyans are wont to do, 
 I am by no means blind to the power of that. 
 The Ode to Naples is to my mind a much 
 more magnificent poem. One can hardly 
 praise it too highly. And where is the 
 beauty of joy more fully set forth than in 
 the famous bridal song beginning — 
 
 " The golden gates of sleep unbar." 
 
 But words are weak and ineffectual when we 
 deal with such fragile and delicate things; 
 all one can do is to quote them, yet I have 
 no space for that and they are too well- 
 known. I will merely quote two stanzas of 
 a not very familiar poem, as worth in my 
 opinion, on account of their true ring, all 
 the hazy paintings of sunsets and clouds that 
 Shelley ever gave us. They occur in the 
 poem addressed to Mary Wollstonecraft 
 Godwin : 
 
 " Upon my heart thy accents sweet 
 Of peace and pity fell like dew 
 On flowers half dead ; thy lips did meet 
 Mine tremblingly ; thy dark eyes threw 
 Their soft persuasion on my brain, 
 Charming away its dream of pain. 
 
 " We are not happy, sweet ! our state 
 Is strange and full of doubt and fear; 
 More need of words that ills abate — 
 
 95- 
 
APROPOS OF SHELLEY 
 
 Reserve or ciensure come bot near 
 Our sacred friendshij), lest thwe be 
 No solace left for thee or me." 
 
 Here, I venture to think, there is a wholesome 
 subject-matter, and a natural ma,gic both of 
 sound and of language. For Matthew Ar- 
 nold, though right in the main in the criti- 
 cisms he passed upon Shdley, might, one 
 would think, have somewhat modified his 
 famous formula. Shelley is by no means 
 "ineffectual," although his elaborate wOrk 
 probably is in part. He is not a poet of sov- 
 ereign and sustained endeavor like Milton 
 and Spenser, he has not the moral profundity 
 of Wordsworth, he has not the sure touth, 
 the iexquisite art of KeatS, or the passion and 
 the mastery of ByrOn, but he is the most 
 musical, the most sympathetic, the most 
 aspiring spirit that ever succeeded in sav- 
 ing itself by means of its sylph-like witigs 
 from the ever greedy and onward rolling 
 waves of the oblivious ocean. 
 
 96 
 
Ill 
 
 LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 97 
 
Ill 
 
 LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 So much use has been made in recent years 
 of the formula " Art for art's sake " that 
 it seems almost an impertinence to drag 
 it forward again for purposes of discussion. 
 Yet the relations of literature to morals form 
 a theme of such perennial and transcendent 
 interest that nearly any critic is warranted in 
 making them a basis for his lucubrations, 
 and whenever these relations are in question, 
 the convenient but often misapplied formula 
 simply has to be reckoned with, since all 
 literature that is worth considering is plainly 
 the product of a specific art. 
 
 In its most commonplace application the 
 formula means merely that art does not exist 
 primarily for purposes of preaching or teach- 
 ing—which is a contention that will displease 
 no one who has the slightest idea of what art 
 is or rather what it does. The primary object 
 of every art is to appeal pleasurably to the 
 emotions which we denominate aesthetic, that 
 is those that affect chiefly the eye and the ear 
 99 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 — and as neither preaching nor teaching has 
 such an appeal in view, except indirectly as 
 a means to an end, it follows that art cannot 
 be true to. itself if it preaches or teaches of 
 set purpose. Pure art, in other words, exists 
 only for purposes of aesthetic gratification, 
 and whenever any artistic product gives us 
 gratification of araother sort, it is either be- 
 cause the emotions of the artist were not 
 purely aesthetic or because we find it impos- 
 sible to put ourselves in a condition of recep- 
 tivity in w'kich our aesthetic sensibilities are 
 alone brought into play. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to remark that there 
 never has been in all probability a perfectly 
 pure artistic product or a man or woman 
 capable of receiving perfectly pure aesthetic 
 pleasure. Our emotions, whether we act as 
 creators or recipients of such pleasure, are too 
 mixed for such a consummation. It is neces- 
 sary to remark, however, that it by no means 
 holds that pure art Js per se nobler and of 
 greater value to the race than mixed art, 
 that is, art that appeals to mixed emotions. 
 There are other emotions besides the stri-ctly 
 aesthetic, to wit the inteHectual and moral, 
 and the latter, which we may for convenience 
 assume to include the spiritual', have long 
 seemed to most men to be the noblest 
 loo 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 emotions humanity is capable of feeling. A 
 work of art, while appealing primarily to the 
 aesthetic emotions and taking its artistic as 
 differentiated from its other characteristics 
 from the fact that it makes this appeal, may, 
 in its inevitable appeal to other emotions, so 
 pleasurably affect our highest spiritual nature 
 as to gain immensely in nobility through the 
 very fact that it is not a pure artistic product 
 but a mixed one. Examples are not want- 
 ing to illustrate the truth of this contention. 
 The Mona Lisa undoubtedly gives its beholder 
 supreme aesthetic pleasure, but it would not 
 be so great a picture as it is if it did not give 
 him also the spiritual pleasure of seeking to 
 establish relations of sympathy and amity 
 between his own soul and that which lurks 
 inscrutable in the depths of those disillusioned 
 but divinely benignant eyes. In literature 
 Poe's Ulalume gives us, perhaps, an ex- 
 ample of the ne plus ultra of purely aesthetic 
 appeal to ear and eye through its wonderful 
 rhythm and its supernatural shadowing, but 
 what sane critic would contend that Poe's 
 weird poem is nobler than the less purely 
 aesthetic Elegy Written in a Country Church- 
 yard in which Gray succeeded in stirring the 
 moral emotions of humanity to a degree 
 rarely surpassed ? 
 
 lOI 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 It is just here that we can put our finger on 
 the most dangerous use that has yet been 
 made of the formula " Art for art's sake." 
 Critics and artists by the score have assumed 
 that pure art is necessarily more to be desid- 
 erated than mixed art, and have of late tended 
 steadily not merely to stress technique in the 
 interests of what we may call art-isolation, 
 but to be suspicious of the criticism which 
 concerns itself at all with the moral and in- 
 tellectual aspects of art, and even to eschew 
 subjects that might strongly suggest such 
 criticism. Some of them go farther yet and 
 maintain that as art exists primarily for the 
 purpose of giving aesthetic pleasure, the 
 artist should not be hampered in his choice 
 of subject by any other than aesthetic con- 
 sid'eirations. As we have just seen, it is, to 
 begin with, an absurd hypothesis to suppose 
 that any subject can be chosen that will make 
 a purely aesthetic appeal; and even if this 
 were the case, it would not follow that an 
 artist would be justified in throwing to the 
 winds the advantages gained by choice of a 
 subject furnishing high moral and aesthetic 
 pleasure at one and the same time. We may 
 readily grant that in choosing his subject the 
 artist usually and rightly bases his choice 
 upon aesthetic considerations and that in a 
 1 02 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 majority of cases his selection is spontaneous 
 rather than determined upon principle, but it 
 rarely happens that after he has begun his 
 work he remains totally unconseious of the 
 moral bearings of his subjeet, and there are 
 surely some subjects that involve important 
 moral considerations the moment they sug- 
 gest themselves to the mind. The painter 
 who cliooscs to paint a repulsive woman in a 
 repulsive attitude cannot claim the rii:;ht to 
 retort " honi soit qui mal y pcnse " to his 
 censorious crities. We should make all due 
 allowance for the unconscious element in art, 
 but if we once admit that it is our dut\- — as 
 it surely is — to order all our actions upon 
 the highest plane possible to us, it follows 
 that the artist who aims for purely esthetic 
 etVects is, it" conscious, guilt\' of a moral lapse, 
 and, if unconscious, cuiltv of a grave error, 
 whenever it can be shown that his work would 
 possess hii^her \alue for the race were its 
 subjects so chosen as to appeal also to our 
 moral and intellectual emotions. We cannot 
 therefore accept that extension of the famous 
 formula which leads people to hold that the 
 moralist and the thinker are guiltx- of imper- 
 tinence when the\- ask to bo represented on 
 every j'.ir\- of artistic awards. To p'.:rsue an 
 art primarily for the purpose of preaciiin^ 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 through the medium of communication it 
 offers between soul and soul, is to degrade 
 two noble functions of human genius ; but to 
 pursue an art in total oblivion of its relations 
 with thought and morals is always to hamper 
 and often to degrade art alone, since thought 
 and morals will under all circumstances retain 
 their dignity. Positing then as the basis of 
 our reasoning the contention that the formula 
 "Art for art's sake" does not, when properly 
 interpreted, make for art-isolation, and con- 
 fining ourselves hereafter in the main to a 
 consideration of literary art proper, let us see 
 what light can be thrown upon the relations 
 borne by literature to morals by treating the 
 subject from the threefold point of view of the 
 relations to morals sustained by the writer, 
 the reader, and the written work. 
 
 II 
 
 The primary object of the literary artist is 
 to give expression to his aesthetic emotions in 
 such a way as to communicate them to others, 
 but if, as we have just seen, the literary pro- 
 duct is sure to cause other emotions as well, 
 and if most people read more or less pas- 
 sively, we must conclude that, in the majority 
 104 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 of cases at least, these other emotions were 
 consciously or unconsciously imparted to the 
 literary product by the artist.^ In some cases, 
 however, it is obvious that the intellectual 
 and moral emotions caused in us by the 
 perusal of a piece of literature are mainly 
 due to the fact that there are secret connec- 
 tions between the centres of such emotional 
 forces and the aesthetic emotions created by 
 the literary product. Over these secret con- 
 nections the writer has plainly no control, for 
 he cannot gauge the emotional capacity of 
 each several reader; he is therefore respon- 
 sible only for such intellectual and moral 
 stimulation as he experiences himself when 
 engaged in creating his literary product, and 
 this responsibility can be measured only on 
 the assumption that there is an emotional 
 standard fitting the normal man. It is a 
 commonplace of criticism that the richer a 
 writer's emotional nature is the more emo- 
 tively effective his work will be, hence it fol- 
 lows that if it be our duty to make the most 
 of our talents, it is incumbent upon every 
 literary man to develop his moral and intel- 
 lectual nature to the utmost in order to make 
 himself an ideal artist and thus a supreme 
 power for good, provided always that he pre- 
 1 See post, Essay II., p. 156, note. 
 105 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 serves his artistic poise. From this point of 
 view at least the relations of the writer, as of 
 every, other creative artist, to morals, are as 
 clear as, they are difficult to sustain in a 
 proper manner, but they, are also, as we easily 
 perceive, the same that every conscientious 
 man sustains, merely as man. 
 
 It would seem that we have arrived at the 
 conclusion that a great writer must be a very 
 good man, but fortunately or unfortunately — 
 we need not, stop to determine which — - such 
 a conclusion is not warranted either by ouj- 
 process of reasoning qr by a careful study of 
 literary history. Lord Byron, to tal?e only 
 one instance, was not an exemplary man, but. 
 even his most aggressive modern detractors 
 are hardly inept enough to deny that he was 
 a great writer, although they come as near as 
 they can to doing it. The cant which seems 
 to be an essential component, of the Anglp- 
 Saxon nature, makes many of us anxious to 
 establish the relation of cause and effect be- 
 tween personal goodness and literary great- 
 ness, but although noble names like tho^e of 
 Scott and Longfellow help us, such names as 
 those of Swift and Poe prove awk\v:ard stumr 
 bling-blocks. We have simply omitted to 
 consider the fact that goodness has little 
 meaning when used: of a. p^erspn unless it 
 1 06 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 refers to conduct, whereas emotions, which 
 are essential to artistic creation, need not 
 translate themselves into conduct, at all. It 
 may indeed be held that really noble liter- 
 ary work cannot be done by a man incapable 
 q{ noble conduct, but the noble writer need 
 not be an actually noble man. His emotions 
 may exhaust themselves in his artistic qrea- 
 tions, and his conduct may be ignoble in the 
 extreme. Then again so great is the force of 
 artistic sympathy that it might be possible 
 for a writer of objective literature to simulate 
 or actually feel for the time being noble emo- 
 tions he had observed in others but never 
 felt in his proper person, just as it was possi- 
 ble for Shakspere, re.versing the process, to 
 give us lago and Richard III. 
 
 There is a further fact that we ne;glect to 
 consider when we try to establish the conten- 
 tion that the truly great writer must be a 
 really good man. This is the; fact that the 
 intellectual qualities of literature while not 
 vastly important in determining its value can 
 by no means be overlooked. These are the 
 qualities, rather than moral and. aesthetic 
 ones, that make writers IJke Swift apd Pope 
 such great literary figures. It is needless, 
 however, to remark that intellect apd gopd 
 conduct are not causally related; 
 1,07 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 But while we are estopped from believing 
 that the literary artist must be a good man 
 in order to win genuine success, it remains 
 perfectly true to maintain that every moral 
 and spiritual advance made by a writer in his 
 conduct ought to increase the richness of his 
 emotional life and thus to make him a nobler 
 literary artist, provided always that his artistic 
 impulse is strong enough to resist the an- 
 tagonistic desire to give himself up to a life 
 of spiritual contemplation or activity. The 
 poetry of Tennyson and Browning is all the 
 greater for their spiritual experiences; but 
 that of the latter gains over that of the former 
 for the reason that Browning's nature did not 
 become so unbalanced as Tennyson's and 
 never led him to withdraw from society and 
 thus to deprive his poetry of that element of 
 adaptation to the psychical needs of strug- 
 gling humanity that does not always emerge 
 from the polished verses of his more popular 
 contemporary. It cannot be doubted that 
 Byron's work need not have lost in energy, 
 which is its most vital characteristic, and that 
 it would have been far richer, had his spiritual 
 life been led on a higher plane — on the 
 plane, for example, to which his enthusiasm 
 for the cause of Greek freedom was conduct- 
 ing him when the fatal fever cut short the 
 1 08 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 most fascinatingly brilliant career that any 
 Englishman has had, perhaps, since the days 
 of Drake and Raleigh. On the other hand 
 the Middle Ages furnish us the example of a 
 period when spiritual forces were too strong 
 to allow many men to attain the artistic poise 
 necessary to effective creative work ; and the 
 pathetic career of the Irish novelist Gerald 
 Griffin who gave up the chance of becom- 
 ing an Irish Sir Walter — in order to do the 
 silent work of a pious priest, as Mr. Aubrey 
 de Vere has touchingly reminded us in 
 his late volume of Recollections, serves to 
 indicate that from the point of view of art at 
 least a man's spiritual emotions and aspira- 
 tions may be too intense. 
 
 The artist who is lost to the world because 
 he has devoted himself to the work of priest 
 or philanthropist can cause us only a partial 
 regret which may be richly atoned for ; but 
 what are we to say of the artist who instead 
 of rising above the spiritual level consistent 
 with artistic poise falls below that required 
 of all intelligent men? There surely is a 
 spiritual level which the average man of 
 thought and action is expected to keep under 
 penalty of being censured by his fellows if he 
 fall below it ; yet we are gravely told that a 
 painter may paint and an author write regard- 
 109 
 
LITE-RATURE AJSID MORALS 
 
 less of the consequences that may flow from 
 his work, provided only that he satisfy the 
 jesthetic demands of himself and a coterie of 
 connoisseurs, A man, so we are told, may 
 write a story that is not merely unspiritual 
 but positively antagonistic to all that is 
 regarded by normal men as spiritual, without 
 rendering himself, liable to reproach provided 
 his style be exquisite, his powers of char- 
 acterization good and his narrative faculty 
 above reproach. All life is his province, and 
 as the lascivious, the base, the brutal are 
 elements of life, he, is. at liberty to mal;e such 
 use of them in his work as may please his 
 artistic self. Now surely this is a bold de- 
 mand to make — one that would not be raades 
 for any other class of mortals. We even 
 demand of the successful general in tinae of 
 war that he shall repress brutality among, hj?, 
 soldiers ; but we encourage some novelists to 
 glorify brutality and vulgarity whenever we 
 hasten to buy their books. We stand, aghast, 
 at the proposition that all life is the artist'^ 
 province because, we do not see at once 
 where a line can well be drawn, and are yet 
 certain that unless the proposition be quali- 
 fied, the highest and purest features of our, 
 civilization may be endangered by the v^r 
 garies of irresponsible men pf genius. Bytif 
 no 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 we will only view the matter calmly, we shall 
 perhaps find a way out of our dilemma with- 
 out being compelled to deny that Hfe is 
 indeed the province of the artist in general 
 and of the writer in particular. 
 
 Our loophole of escape is a very simple 
 one, so simple indeed that we continually fail 
 to find it — so simple too that we have a 
 right to blame the artist who does not make 
 it plain to us. All life is the artist's province, 
 but what gives life represented in art its 
 value to the artist and to ourselves is what we 
 may term its emotional content. The artist 
 observes some phase of life emotionally and 
 consciously or unconsciously transmits his 
 emotions to us along with a representation of 
 whatever caused them. If his emotions are 
 pure, we shall be profited, under normal cir- 
 cumstances, by being allowed to share them. 
 We have a right to demand that all emotional 
 appeals made to us shall be pure and pleas- 
 urable, and we may make this demand of the 
 writer or plastic artist just as legitimately as 
 we may of our friends and acquaintances who 
 indeed are sometimes obliged on account of 
 the exigencies of life to make demands upon 
 our sympathy that cannot be pleasurable to 
 finite beings. Furthermore it is the duty of 
 every man to obtain as pure, pleasurable, 
 III 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 even spiritual emotion as he may from his 
 daily life and experience, and this duty is 
 especially incumbent upon the artist on 
 account of his high endowment. It is his 
 duty to look upon life with pure, spiritual 
 eyes, as it were, and if he does this, his emo- 
 tions connected with any manifestation of life 
 will be pure and spiritual and will not lose 
 this character when after having been em- 
 bodied in a specific work of art they are 
 transmitted to us who are brought into subtle 
 relations with the latter. Hence we conclude 
 that the artist may indeed take all life for his 
 province but that he must also see to it that 
 he represents artistically no phase of life that 
 does not give him pure emotions which he 
 may transmit to us. But when we feel re- 
 pelled by his treatment of a special phase of 
 life, what is it but a proof that, from our point 
 of view at least, his emotions were not pure 
 and high and that he himself was consciously 
 or unconsciously below a proper spiritual 
 level when he was engaged in the inception 
 and completion of his artistic product. And 
 when a sufficient number of cultured men feel 
 thus with regard to the work of any writer, 
 painter, sculptor, or musician, who shall deny 
 that they have as much right to consider 
 such an artist as morally delinquent as they 
 
 112 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 have to judge any individual of their acquaint- 
 ance whose conduct has shown that he has 
 not maintained himself at the spiritual level 
 properly to be demanded of him? We can- 
 not indeed draw any hard and fast lines in 
 such matters, but society would be in a bad 
 way if no man could be judged save by hard 
 and fast rules, that is by positive law civil or 
 canonical. 
 
 We are thus led to conclude that just as 
 the artist as artist must not rise above such a 
 spiritual level as will be consistent with his 
 continuing to make art his life work, so he 
 should not fall below such a spiritual level as 
 will fit him to be a proper companion for true 
 and good men in all lands and in all ages. 
 Perhaps we may express these truths epi- 
 grammatically by saying that the modern 
 artist ought never to be an ascetic recluse, 
 and ought always to be a thorough gentle- 
 man. We make no greater moral demands 
 upon him than we do upon other men, save 
 in so far as his endowment makes him more 
 responsible to his own conscience and to 
 society ; but we certainly shall not, if we are 
 wise, give him more license in matters moral 
 and spiritual than we give other men. It is 
 the constant fault of those who preach art- 
 isolation that they demand license rather 
 8 113 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 than liberty for the artist; but the great 
 public has never really given in to their eon- 
 tentions, and the great public is right. 
 
 I am aware that this may sound very phil- 
 istine ; ' but I am quite ready to take the con- 
 sequences. I cannot See how the man of 
 genius can claim extraordinary privileges; I 
 see only that he labors under extraordinary 
 responsibilities and that more rather than less 
 in moral and spiritual matters should be 
 demanded of him. This phase of our dis- 
 cussion cannot, however, be regarded as 
 closed until we have considered the moral 
 responsibilities of the reader or recipient of 
 artistic pleasure; for if we may make de- 
 mands upon the artist, he may surely make 
 reciprocal demands on us. But it is only 
 when we fail in our duties toward the artist 
 that the charge of philistinism properly lies 
 at our doors, hence my nonchalance with 
 r&gard to the possibility of lodging such a 
 charge successfully against what I have just 
 been saying. It is no failure in duty toward 
 the writer or painter to insist that each shall 
 be a gentleman in his emotions; it would 
 rather be a faililre in duty toward each not 
 so to insist. 
 
 But while it is easy to scdut the imputation 
 of philistinism, it is unsafe to incur the charge 
 114 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 of obscurity, and it may therefore be well to 
 illustrate the train of thought we have been 
 pursuing. Two fruitful sources of dissension 
 between the public and the world of artists 
 and critics have been the representation of 
 the nude in plastic art and the treatment of 
 the problem of sex in fiction. There has been 
 a great amount of philistinism displayed on 
 the public side, much of it in America, as the 
 fantastic sallies of Mr. Anthony Comstock 
 and the prudish mincings of certain gentle- 
 men of Boston plainly show; but this we 
 shall discuss later. There has also been much 
 bravado displayed by the authors and critics, 
 and botJi parties to the controversy have in 
 consequence frequently lost their tempers. 
 But surely the problem is not so difficult as 
 it has generally been considered, if we view 
 it in the light of what may be called the 
 theory of the emotional basis of art. A nude 
 picture which a true artist is impelled to paint 
 because of the pure aesthetic, intellectual 
 and moral emotions that come to him when 
 he contemplates the divine beauty of the 
 human form cannot possibly cause other than 
 pure, wholesome emotions in any norrtial 
 person. When it does, the spectator who is 
 offended is simply giving play to his idio- 
 syncrasies, and in this connection it may be 
 IIS 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 proper to remark that a whole people may 
 become more or less idiosyncratic when a one- 
 sided movement, intellectual and spiritual, 
 like puritanism, dominates it for a long period 
 of time. The English-speaking peoples are 
 all more or less idiosyncratic with regard to 
 this matter of the nude in art, and whenever 
 any one among us is displeased by all or 
 nearly all representations of the nude, it is a 
 sure sign that such a person is of a nature far 
 too warped for him fairly to claim to be con- 
 sidered as forming part of the public that has 
 the right to judge an artist. 
 
 On the other hand it is indisputable that 
 there are many representations of the nude 
 which satisfy critics from the point of view of 
 technique but are felt to be repulsive by 
 persons who have no bias against the nude in 
 art. What does this mean if not that the 
 artist while revelling in true jesthetic emotions 
 during the creation of his work, was also 
 dominated more or less by emotions the 
 reverse of moral or spiritual — emotions 
 which were transferred to canvas or marble 
 and thence to the spectator with the result of 
 disturbing the latter's spiritual balance and 
 causing him disquietude in proportion to his 
 purity of soul? It is no escape from this 
 conclusion to point to the art devotees who 
 ii6 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 profess to enjoy the picture or statue free 
 from disturbing qualms. These people render 
 themselves unfit judges through the very fact 
 that in posing as judges they have tended to 
 stress one set of emotions, the purely aesthetic, 
 as those which alone are to be taken into ac- 
 count by critics of the plastic arts. Having wil- 
 fully blinded themselves to the intellectual and 
 moral aspects of art, they quite naturally go 
 into ecstasies over the most ambitious picture 
 in the new portion of the Luxembourg, and fail 
 to understand how a spectator who has stood 
 in adoration before Titian's glorious recum- 
 bent Venuses in the Tribune of the Uffizi 
 should feel uncomfortable in the presence 
 of the powerful but coarse canvas of the 
 Frenchman. This phenomenon of criticism 
 is of too frequent occurrence to be dismissed 
 with a trite " honi soit " or a commonplace 
 about the necessity for technical training, or 
 a shrug of the critical shoulders ; it does not 
 admit of being explained by the imputation 
 of Philistinism or of being passed lightly over 
 with a careless " de gustibus non est dispu- 
 tandum." It is an important phenomenon 
 that challenges attention and that is plainly 
 explicable in the light of the theory of the 
 emotional basis of all art. 
 
 The same reasoning holds with regard to 
 "7 
 
LITERATURE AJ^D MORALS 
 
 the treatment of the prdblefn of sex. The 
 novelist has a eleat right to u&e this as an 
 elettierit of his story, provided only that he 
 treat it ds a geritleiiiah should. The idea 
 that the novel must be made suitable to a 
 sfchooi-gii-l is tb'o ludicrous to warrant dis^ 
 ciissiori, but the idea that the nbVel iflu&t 
 answer the requit-etnents of pure-minded flien 
 dM wdnieh is one fhatt should be present to 
 every writer of fiction; It will fiot do for one 
 iftstarit to say that a hovelist ttiAy be &0 
 ifltef-ested iti his characters and situations that 
 Ut may dejjict them iii any way that does not 
 Violate tlie canons of artistic probability. It 
 is ihcufribefit Upon him to view life as a pufe- 
 rniiided, clean-hearted man df geriiUS. This 
 pbint of view attained, his etnotioiis will in- 
 evitably be fit for translation into an artistic 
 prbduct that will bffe:hd rib hbririal readei" 
 whose idiosyncrasies are held under control. 
 It goes without Saying that in respect of 
 idibsyricrasies we English-speaking peoples 
 arfe less forfUnate thaii the French. We eoiild 
 piroduCe a Scott, —^ but it will he many a long 
 year before we have our Balzac. On the 
 other hand it cannot be denied that the French 
 have been too lax in the control they have put 
 upon their novelists. 
 
 They have hot demanded puffe emotions 
 ti8 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 and pure work from their writers of fiction, 
 and thus have rarely obtained the latter except 
 when, as in the case of Balzac, the noble 
 character of the novelist was the safeguard of 
 his literary creations. We may leave this 
 phase of the subject with the remark that 
 Mr. Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles is 
 an excellent novel to be used as a test of the 
 truth of our contentions. This great book 
 was subjected to a hue and cry on the part of 
 squeamish readers both in this country and 
 in England, but it arrested and held the 
 attention of the judicious through the fact 
 that the novelist's emotions were strong and 
 pure whatever one may say of the strictly 
 intellectual appeal of his strenuous story, or 
 of its utilitarian value as a plea. 
 
 It now remains to make one important 
 qualification with reference to all that has 
 been said ^- a qualification that will lead us 
 easily to the next stage of our discussion, 
 the relations to morals sustained by the 
 reader. 
 
 The terms " moral " and " spiritual " as we 
 have continually applied them, must be taken 
 in their most general sense if they are to have 
 any meaning or value. To say that a writer 
 must be capable of spiritual emotions is not 
 to say that these emotions can be labelled 
 119 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 specifically as Christian, or Mohammedan, or 
 Buddhist. They will be emotions that enter 
 into the warp and woof of every religious life, 
 but they will be emotions that Marcus Aure- 
 lius and Epictetus felt just as truly and per- 
 haps as profoundly as St. Augustine and St. 
 Bernard. The reason for this is found in the 
 fact that it is of the essence of art that it 
 should aim at a universal appeal, and it is 
 enabled to make this appeal only through the 
 fact that it interprets universal life in connec- 
 tion with universal emotions — that is, with 
 emotions shared by all normal men. It 
 would be as much a profanation for the 
 artist, who is the apostle of beauty, con- 
 sciously to limit his appeal, as it would be 
 for the scientist, who is the apostle of truth, 
 or for the priest, who is the apostle of right- 
 eousness. It goes without saying that as we 
 have produced, in letters at least, only two 
 universal artists, Homer and Shakspere, artists 
 as a class have not been any more faithful to 
 their ideals than have the various peoples to 
 whom they have appealed, and that it is 
 therefore admissible to speak of pagan and 
 Christian art and to discuss the spiritual 
 qualities of the work of the respective classes 
 of artists in terms of the specific religion that 
 dominated them. It goes without saying too 
 1 20 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 that the more completely the world accepts 
 Christian teachings in one form or another the 
 more completely will the terms " moral " and 
 " spiritual " as they have been used in this 
 discussion be synonymous with the term 
 "christian" when it is applied to the emo- 
 tions. At present, however, we cannot fault 
 an artist if his morals and his spirituality have 
 reached the stage common to good men in 
 every clime and of every religious faith. We 
 may, however, find it natural to be more 
 closely drawn to those artists whose emotions 
 are "spiritual" in our own more intimate 
 sense of the term. There cannot, however, 
 be the least excuse for a sectarian interpreta- 
 tion of the term " spiritual." Christianity is 
 catholic in its aspirations and hence the 
 phrase " Christian art " is not a misnomer ; 
 but a sectarian or even a puritan art would be 
 things to smile at, could they ever exist. 
 John Milton was a great artist, not because 
 he was a puritan, but partly in spite of it. 
 It is well to note, however, that while the 
 artistic spirit is distracted by dissent, it is 
 smothered by intolerance. 
 
 121 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 III 
 
 The relations sustained to morals by the 
 reader or by the recipient of aesthetic pleasure 
 in general may be considered from the three- 
 fold point of view of his duty to the writer or 
 artist, to himself, and to his fellow men at 
 large. 
 
 It may fairly he said that very few readers 
 pay any attention to the first duty. They 
 are forever thinking of what a writer owes 
 them, but seldom of their reciprocal obliga- 
 tions. Yet it is plain that these obligations 
 exist. It is clear that as a writer's fame and 
 a large part of his happiness in this life 
 depend upon the success of his writings, it is 
 the duty of all his readers to censure him 
 only when they are very sure that they have 
 just grounds for so doing. Irresponsible, 
 uninformed censorious criticism is morally 
 wrong ; according to the phrase of Milton it 
 partakes of the nature of spiritual murder. 
 Uninformed enthusiastic praise is also in real- 
 ity unjust to the writer and is certainly unfair 
 to one's fellow men — but this may be passed 
 over as venial. Yet our duty to the writer 
 does not stop here, for we have the posi- 
 tive duty incumbent on us of endeavoring, so 
 122 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 far as may be consistent wijli our other 
 duties in life, to master the general principles 
 of criticism, of reading the current books th.^t 
 the best critics recommend to us, and of try- 
 ing so to fit ourselves aesthetically, inteUec- 
 Ibually, a,i)(J morally that any good writer caijt 
 make a friend of us when we read his books. 
 Thi§ is the gpild,en rule of reading — and it is 
 true, of course, with regard to our attiti44es 
 toward ajl the artS: — that we should try to 
 make ourselves the kind of readers we should 
 like to have if we were authors. Tbi§ does 
 not mean that we shoulcj not read for mere 
 recreation, or that the art of literature or a.ny 
 other of the arts should cease to give us 
 pleasure and should yield us only solid bene- 
 fits ; it merely means that in justice to our- 
 selves and to our fellow men wljo try to please 
 us, we ought to put ourselves into very much 
 such relations with artists as we should sus- 
 tain with our fellow men in general society. 
 It is our duty to perfect our manner? in 
 order to fit ourselves for our social functians ; 
 it is similarly our duty, although not so 
 paramount a one, to perfect our judgments 
 and tastes in order to n^eet half way the 
 artists who seek to minister to our aesthetic 
 pleasures. 
 
 There is much in what has just been said 
 123 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 that relates to the duty of the reader to him- 
 self. He owes it to himself to do all in his 
 power to put himself into a proper attitude 
 toward the art of literature, simply because it 
 is his duty to try to develop all the faculties 
 that God has given him. Unfortunately such 
 self-training is irksome to most people and 
 thus defeats its own ends; but we may be 
 sure that if we had perfectly balanced souls 
 every step made in the right direction would 
 be pleasurable in itself and would lead to joys 
 ineffable. As it is we are at least under some 
 obligation with regard to the development of 
 our critical faculties ; for literature and the 
 arts have their place in every system of 
 liberal education, and we all acknowledge 
 that it is our duty to educate ourselves as 
 well as we can. Hitherto the part played by 
 art in education of a formal character has 
 been so small that we have ignored our 
 responsibilities in the matter; and the fact 
 that the critics have insisted upon pleasure as 
 the end and purpose of art has contributed 
 to the same result. The idea that there is 
 a duty attaching to something that minis- 
 ters to our pleasures is one that few of us can 
 grasp. 
 
 Yet if an art ministers to our spiritual 
 needs — and all true art does — is it not our 
 124 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 duty to fit ourselves to appreciate it, and 
 does not appreciation widen and deepen with 
 the training and development of our critical 
 faculties? There can be only one answer to 
 these questions and this answer forces us to 
 acknowledge that the principles of criticism 
 have authority over us all. But what this 
 authority is in kind and degree is and has 
 been for ages a subject of dispute among 
 critics themselves and to investigate the prob- 
 lem in this connection would carry us far 
 beyond the limits of an essay. Besides, I 
 have already discussed the matter to the best 
 of my ability elsewhere in this volume, and it 
 must therefore suffice us here merely to in- 
 sist that in the interests of self-development 
 the reader must sooner or later submit him- 
 self to some sort of critical training and that 
 if we do not at present regard the failure to 
 do this as a moral lapse, it is because we 
 have not yet thought the matter out in all its 
 details, and because we are not yet moral 
 enough as a race in the larger particulars to 
 be able to consider seriously our deficiencies 
 in the smaller particulars. 
 
 It is obvious that the duties of the reader 
 
 toward his fellow men in general cannot be 
 
 thoroughly separated from his duties toward 
 
 the writer and toward himself. For example 
 
 I2S 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 he owes it to an awtbor whi© h^is charmed 
 him, to acjcpowledge bis debt of gratitude; 
 but be owes this equally to his fellow men. 
 One of the most 4elightful features of sympa- 
 thetic criticism is its missionary quality. We 
 cannot rest until we have expatiated to our 
 friends upon the merits of each fascinpjiing 
 boolc we read, and it is not only our privilege 
 thus to communicate our feelings but our 
 duty. Yet here as in a}l missionary work our 
 responsibilities are great and the need of sub- 
 mitting ourselves tp the authority of criticism 
 is plain. We have no right to praise unad- 
 visedly a book or picture. We think that our 
 individual opinion counts for little, and so it 
 does, but just as ia politics we have no right 
 to plead our personal insignifi<;anc.e when WP 
 vote carelessly or not at all, so in literary and 
 artistic mattery we haye no right to forget that 
 our individual opinion helps to mould oth?r 
 opinions and thus to forni the popular verdict. 
 Books become the "book of the hour" more 
 through the gossip of the club and parlor 
 than through the praise accorded them by 
 responsible critical journals. It was gossip 
 that spread the contagion of Trilby. 
 
 But, some one will exclaim, this is refining 
 and splitting hairs with 3 vengeance. Ljfe 
 would not be worth living if one had to weigh 
 126 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 one's praise of a book, a picture, even a 
 magazine article as carefully as one weighs 
 one's words when serving as a witness in an 
 important trial. If a code of artistic ethics 
 like this is to be fastened upon us, the old 
 maxim " Life is short, but art is long " would 
 run for most of us " Life is short, and art is a 
 nuisance." 
 
 If there is any justipe in this supposed ejc- 
 postulation it lies in the fact that much of 
 what has been said belongs to those " counsels 
 of perfection " that often seem to be counsels 
 of impertinence when we consider how full 
 Jife is of large moral demands that we cannot 
 satisfy with all our striving and all our prayers. 
 But surely the race would lose ground daily 
 jf preachers and teachers and critics and 
 philosophers ceased for one moment to 
 shower " counsels of perfection " upon us. 
 What would Christianity — much more any 
 .oth^r religion -^ become if it were stripped 
 of such counsels? We may, indeed, make 
 allowances for ourselves and others in all sucla 
 subtkj scarcely perceptible matters of duty, 
 but we must not the less insist that the sphere 
 of duty is all embracing, that we cannot 
 «scape from moral obligations anywhere in 
 this world of ours — not even in the Vatican 
 itself when we stand gazing at one of Raphael's 
 127 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 frescoes; for even there our admiration must 
 be mixed with gratitude. Would that all 
 duties were so pleasant ! 
 
 But if we consent to excuse the average 
 reader from being held to strict account with 
 regard to our " counsels of perfection," we 
 should make no excuse for readers who are 
 clothed with any sort of authority. Even 
 clergymen and lawyers, who are not especially 
 concerned in literature and art, should take 
 care how they pass judgment upon this book 
 and that picture, simply because they are 
 generally looked up to in every community. 
 The teacher — and especially the teacher of 
 literature — occupies a still more responsible 
 position. He forms the mind of youth, and 
 a mere careless word in praise of a book of 
 dubious morality may suffice to give a down- 
 ward thrust to some young life. His habits 
 of reading, his general attitude toward art are 
 of immense importance in every college com- 
 munity, and indirectly in the world at large. 
 It would be hard to estimate the harm that 
 has been done to the young men of this 
 country through the discovery they must 
 have been making of late that most of their 
 teachers are specialists — knowing only one 
 class of books and caring little for literature 
 and art in their widest application. It would 
 128 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 be hard also to estimate the harm done by 
 injudicious methods of presenting the most 
 fascinating subjects that have fallen to the lot 
 of man to teach. But in all these matters 
 there is hope ahead. 
 
 We may conclude this branch of our 
 discussion by remarking that there is one 
 great moral obligation resting upon the 
 reader that may be considered in general 
 without reference to our threefold division. 
 It has already been referred to. No reader 
 has a right to expect that an author or an 
 artist shall consult his individual idiosyncra- 
 sies, or even his preferences in religious, 
 social, and political matters. We can appre- 
 ciate a universal art only by cultivating 
 catholicity of spirit. If indeed our mind is 
 made up on this or that important matter, it 
 will follow naturally that the writer or artist 
 who runs counter to our convictions will 
 forfeit that portion of success which is depen- 
 dent upon his power to give us strictly intel- 
 lectual pleasure ; but if his work of art is 
 great from the point of view of aesthetics and 
 if it yields us the moral pleasure that attaches 
 to what is good in the widest sense, it is a 
 sign of mental inflexibility in us if we fail to 
 receive enjoyment. We simply have no right 
 to let our minds harden to such an extent 
 9 129 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 that they cannot play freely around any work 
 of literary or plastic art. All purely utili- 
 tarian demands made upon writers and 
 artists, demands that they shall teach thus 
 and so, that their works shall support our 
 theories ^^ are due to this mental induration 
 from which not one of us escapes. Mr, 
 Hardy's Tess has encountered many such ad' 
 jimantine minds in its short voyage. Whole 
 classes of books sometimes share this fate 
 ftiost undeservedly -^ as for example the 
 coarse but splendidly powerful novels pro* 
 duced in the last century — particularly those 
 of Fielding. Coarseness and immorality so 
 often go hand in hand that many of us cannot 
 distinguish between them, and our power of 
 isolating ourselves from our own time and 
 civilization is so feeble that our minds cannot 
 play around these books and we express the 
 lurid wish of the late Mr. Sidney Lanier, that 
 they may all be burned instanter. The fact 
 is that Fielding's Tom Jones is probably 
 the greatest English novel and that its loss 
 Would be a calamity. If, however, experience 
 has proved to us that such books are not good 
 for us, any more than they are for very yoting 
 minds, it is of course our duty to pass them 
 by. But there is no excuse for ouf blinking 
 the fact that our minds are indaralfed or for 
 130 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 our sfettirig ourselves up as ultra-pure literary 
 prohibitionists — that is as Pharisees. 
 
 IV 
 
 It is cleat that nearly everything that has 
 been hitherto said could be nlade applicable, 
 by means of a few turns of phrase, to our 
 discussion of the relatidfis between the writ- 
 ten work and morals in general. It iS clear 
 also that the subject might be treated in- 
 definitely ; I shall therefore confine myself to 
 one phase of it, td wit, the qiiestion how far 
 the moral element in literature seems to have 
 affected the race in its determination of the 
 books it is willing to rank as classics. If any 
 important facts can be obtained with regard 
 to the relations of the classics to morals, it 
 will be far easier to draw inferences with 
 regard to the relations that ought to subsist 
 between morals and general literature than it 
 would be to draw such inferences from purely 
 abstract considerations based on the nature 
 of literature or from a discussion of contem- 
 porary phases of literary art. These infer-' 
 ences will not, however, be drawn here, for 
 to draw theni would be to protract this essay 
 to a really intolerable length. 
 131 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 The first fact that strikes us in considering 
 the classics from our present point of view is 
 that if we take the absolutely supreme master- 
 pieces of the nations, they are all not merely 
 not immoral, but profoundly and positively 
 moral. The Iliad and the Odyssey, the odes 
 of Pindar and the dramas of Sophocles, the 
 ^neid, the Divine Comedy, the plays of 
 Shakspere, the Don Quixote, the greatest 
 plays of Corneille, Moliere, and Racine, the 
 Paradise Lost, Goethe's Faust, the Comfedie 
 Humaine, and the Legende des Siecles — ^all 
 these noble works of genius would be abso- 
 lutely changed and clearly weakened if we 
 could take from them their capacity to stir 
 our moral emotions. Now could this capa- 
 city have existed to such an extent in these 
 masterpieces if their authors had not felt 
 emotions similar to those we experience? It 
 is hard to believe that it could ; and it is 
 equally hard to believe that the capability to 
 feel and excite such emotions is not as neces- 
 sary to a supreme author's success as the 
 more strictly artistic capacity to feel aesthetic 
 emotions and give vent to them by means of 
 infinitely varied rhythm and euphony, and 
 command over the emotional elements of 
 language. The possession and use of the 
 grand style mark off Homer and Dante, 
 132 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 Shakspere and Milton from the mass of 
 poets, but, as Matthew Arnold was never tired 
 of telling us, a " high seriousness " marks them 
 off as well. I am not going to try to defend 
 Mr. Arnold's description of poetry as a " criti- 
 cism of life" or to take up cudgels in his 
 behalf against the many critics and readers 
 who think that he sometimes mixed disas- 
 trously his roles of critic and moralist ; but I 
 will say that I think the whole English speak- 
 ing world owes him a debt of gratitude for 
 his insistence upon the fact that all really 
 great literature is profoundly moral in tone. 
 It is scarcely necessary to remark that this 
 does not mean that the supreme authors 
 preach to us or that great literature is obtru- 
 sively moral or spiritual — outside, of course, 
 of specifically sacred and spiritual books — 
 but it does mean that all of the works belong- 
 ing to the highest range of the world's classics 
 have their underlying moral basis, just as 
 they have their intellectual basis, and their 
 aesthetic basis. 
 
 It is to be observed further that all these 
 works are not merely those that the critics 
 have agreed to rank as supreme, but they are 
 those that the public at large among the 
 respective races and nations that have given 
 them birth have accepted and treated as 
 133 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 supreme. The greatest masterpieces of Greek 
 literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were also 
 the most popular, and the same is true of 
 the works of Virgil, Dante, Shakspere and 
 Goethe. The Latin race which we are accus- 
 tomed to regard as not profoundly moral, is 
 in this respect at one with the more sober 
 Teutonic race. The inference is irresistible 
 that no writer can attain the position of a 
 world classic who is not as much an uncon- 
 scious moralist as he is a conscious or uncon- 
 scious artist. 
 
 Nor is the case altered when we come to 
 consider the great literary men who are 
 either not entitled to rank as supreme classics 
 anywhere or else rank as such only in their 
 own country. Chaucer is an example of the 
 latter class — supreme in English poetry after 
 Shakspere and Milton, he is yet not a world 
 classic. Mr. Arnold has said that this is due 
 to the fact that Chaucer has not sufiScient 
 seriousness, and largeness of view. I am 
 inclined to doubt this and to wonder whether 
 Chaucer may not in the more cosmopolitan 
 future attain the rank of a world classic, for it 
 seems to me that he is deeply moral and 
 truly serious under his playful smiles. Be 
 this as it may, Chaucer, even in tales that are 
 coarse to our present notions, is always whole- 
 134 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 some and moral and so illustrates the truth 
 of our contention. Spenser with his exquisite 
 purity, illustrates it even better, and so do 
 Gray and Burns. Wordsworth illustrates it, 
 but at the same time shows us that mere 
 seriousness unaccompanied by a continuously 
 great style will not suffice to attain true 
 popularity. Tennyson illustrates admirably 
 how a writer who combines moral seriousness 
 and artistic excellence may attain the sum- 
 mit of contemporary renown. Shelley on the 
 other hand shows us how the possession of 
 exquisite artistic gifts and the warm worship 
 of a zealous body of admirers will not make 
 any writer truly popular if his subject matter 
 be not entirely sound. Even Keats himself 
 is still suffering from the fact that Death did 
 not give him time to ripen the moral side of 
 his nature ; and Byron is naturally suffering 
 still more from the same cause. But all these 
 men are true classics because their work, 
 either in whole or in part, will stand the 
 moral test and because it can obviously stand 
 the aesthetic and intellectual tests. Byron 
 indeed has come perilously near falling from 
 the position due to his transcendent genius — 
 there are not wanting people to tell us that 
 he actually has fallen — but here again I find 
 myself by Mr. Arnold's side contending that 
 135 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 a large part of his work is sound and that his 
 energy, his sincerity, his humor, his range of 
 intellect and feelings — make hitti the great 
 literary power that the continental nations 
 still believe him to be. 
 
 I have included in the above list of writers 
 none but Englishmen and poets, but I believe 
 that the contention made can easily be estab- 
 lished with regard to secondary prose classics 
 in England and with regard to secondary 
 classics genetally in the great European liter- 
 atures. It must be remembered, of course, 
 that as the intellect plays a considerable 
 part in all literature even in poetry, certain 
 writers have attained positions as classics 
 chiefly through the intellectual side of their 
 works. These men are all secondary classics, 
 however, and the moral element is never 
 lacking from their writings, for it is almost 
 impossible to use the intellect in a way that 
 will tell materially upon future generations 
 unless it is used on the side of morals. Pope 
 and Boileau will serve to illustrate the truth 
 of this statement. 
 
 The proposition that the supreme and 
 secondary classics of the various nations are 
 on the whole distinctly moral will not, in the 
 natural order of things, escape contradiction. 
 A notorious educator has lately discovered 
 136 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 that Virgil is not a safe author for schoolboys 
 to read, and Mr. Sidney Lanier's views with 
 regard to the morality of Fielding and Smol- 
 lett have just been referred to. I can imagine 
 quite an army of worthy citizens of the type 
 of Mr. Comstock brandishing a host of books 
 at me if I were once to get in their midst and 
 they were at all widely read. Horace and 
 Rabelais and Boccaccio and Margaret of 
 Navarre would shudder to behold their works 
 used as missiles, and Shakspere would be 
 almost the only Elizabethan dramatist who 
 could look on serenely. As to the French 
 novelists, their only consolation would lie in 
 the fact that their loosely stitched volumes 
 would come to pieces so easily as to be in- 
 effective in offensive warfare. But although 
 I might be smothered in paper I should die 
 exclaiming that coarseness is not and never 
 has been synonymous with immorality and 
 that no really immoral author has ever won 
 the suffrages either of the majority of his 
 contemporaries or of posterity. 
 
 This contention has, ta be sure, been made 
 thousands of times ere this, and it will doubt- 
 less be made thousands of times hereafter j 
 but it none the less needs making everywhere 
 and always. It is the emotions of the author 
 and the reader that determine the moral 
 137 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 character of a book, and whenever the author 
 has been pure in the main, as has been the 
 case with the truly classical writers, a pure- 
 minded reader of mature years and no special 
 idiosyncrasies will find little or nothing to fault 
 in the morals of the literary work in question. 
 This is true no matter what characters and 
 situations may be found in the book — if it be- 
 long to the drama or fiction — or what ma- 
 terial in general may be used by the writer. 
 The essential point in all artistic work is the 
 treatment of the materials. Improper ma- 
 terials are those that cannot be treated with 
 pure emotions by any normal artist, hence it 
 is idle to pick out this or that incident from a 
 book and declare that it makes for or against 
 morality unless one can show conclusively 
 that the author has so treated it that normally 
 decent men have their sensibilities shocked 
 by it. This I believe it will be impossible to 
 do with regard to any truly classic book 
 except in the particular of obscenity, which 
 is not immoral per se but only by association. 
 If a reader cannot tolerate obscenity he will, 
 as we have already seen, do well to eschew 
 certain noted books, but he should not regard 
 them as necessarily immoral. Such books 
 will probably lose popularity more and more 
 as our tastes change and develop, and they 
 138 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 may in the end be practically dropped from 
 the list of the classics unless their positive 
 merits suffice to keep them really alive — but 
 this is a side issue on which enough has been 
 said. 
 
 The actually immoral book does not there- 
 fore in my opinion stand any chance of rank- 
 ing among the classics, but it is possible 
 for unmoral books to attain this rank. For 
 example Poe is one of the least positively 
 moral and spiritual authors that I have ever 
 read, but his rank as a classic is indisputable, 
 although part of his comparative lack of suc- 
 cess in certain portions of this country may 
 perhaps be traced to the absence of a moral 
 basis for his literary work. But in Poe's case 
 we have a wonderful surplus of aesthetic and 
 intellectual qualities to make up for the de- 
 ficiency in positively moral qualities. Then 
 again it must be remembered both that his 
 genius moved in spheres so remote from 
 "this dim spot which men call earth" that 
 considerations of morality scarcely seem to 
 apply to his creations, and that there is hardly 
 an author to be named who so little suggests 
 the actually immoral. Poe is an essentially 
 pure writer, yet his purity is so cold and 
 weird that we do not obtain from it the glow 
 needed to excite our moral emotions. 
 139 
 
LITERATURE AND MORALS 
 
 But it is time to bring this essay to an end, 
 and there is perhaps no better way to do this 
 than to sum up briefly the main conclusions 
 suggested by our analysis. We have practi- 
 cally been led to believe that every truly suc- 
 cessful author and artist must necessarily 
 possess the emotions of a gentleman, which 
 will ensure the modicum of spirituality re- 
 quired. We have seen further that every 
 reader should strip himself as far as possible 
 of his idiosyncrasies, should meet the author 
 half way, and should exercise due care in 
 forming and uttering his literary opinions. 
 Finally we have found reason to maintain 
 that all truly classic literature has a moral 
 basis, whence we conclude that if the classics 
 continue to exert their due influence we need 
 not fear that immoral and deleterious forms 
 of literature and art can ever really flourish in 
 our midst. ^ 
 
 1 Mr. Justin McCarthy in his delightful Reminiscences 
 (I., 60-64) has lately given us John Bright's interesting 
 theory that all bad characters shouM be omitted from 
 novels. Perhaps they will be dropped, just as obscenity 
 has been, but the consummation is a good way off. 
 
 140 
 
IV 
 THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 141 
 
IV 
 
 THE NATURE OF LITERA- 
 TURE 
 
 From time out of mind critics have en- 
 deavored without success to define litera- 
 ture. They have all been more or less able 
 to describe it ; they have all been fairly well 
 agreed as to many of its chief character- 
 istics; they have seldom failed in the long 
 run to answer satisfactorily the concrete 
 question whether a certain piece of writing 
 belongs or not to literature; and yet they 
 have never succeeded in discovering infal- 
 lible tests by which every reader can assure 
 himself of the literary or non-literary char- 
 acter of any specific composition. In fact, 
 they have not themselves succeeded in using 
 the word " literature " with appreciable con- 
 sistency. The dictionaries, which register 
 public and critical usage with regard to the 
 meanings of terms, give us a number of 
 senses in which this particular term may be 
 143 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 correctly employed. It may be equivalent 
 to " learning ; " it may mean " the use of 
 letters for the promulgation of thought or 
 knowledge ; " it may signify " recorded 
 thought or knowledge, the aggregate of 
 books and other publications, in either an 
 unlimited or a limited sense" — that is to 
 say, all books, or books in a special language, 
 or about a special subject, such as chem- 
 istry; finally, it may express " in a restricted 
 sense the class of writings in which expres- 
 sion and form in connection with ideas of 
 permanent and universal interest are char- 
 acteristic or essential features, as poetry, 
 romance, history," etc., " in contradistinction 
 to scientific works or those written expressly 
 to impart knowledge." 
 
 The above definitions are all taken from 
 the " Century Dictionary," and it will be 
 seen at once that, unless they are analyzed, 
 they will prove of little service to the 
 thoughtful student. The first two uses of 
 the term are plainly of a secondary or de- 
 rived character, and need not concern us, 
 while we perceive immediately that the 
 third is too large to be of any real value 
 to us. *' Recorded thought or knowledge " 
 is a definition that will dignify with the title 
 of literary men the Pharaohs, who carved 
 144 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 tjie^ i^anes on pyumiJ s; ffae Rooaa 
 Ea^erois, wko lecofded fiiE^ caploils on 
 ti f i H i . . fi | i llM B aBdaes; f&e Draids^ wbo coadbed 
 
 Hwlif, «^o set down }:'eaK' bjr jnear &e 
 Ibfa^rs of tbe Daaes; fii^jeder «^ ffae 
 «M i ^ !J «g dealess of die prescat time vfao 
 c ompi le catah^nes cf secondfaaad bools, 
 file C o Mgt taa mea 1^0 dsSiSmte tbdr o-inr 
 apeedies gsafis* and die sfcatisSiciai^ ex- 
 pat cr odieraise, who s^esntefld ffaepob- 
 ficaSkm «>( oor AecenmuX ceasas. AM tfaese 
 eattaKxated peisoiB^ togetber vidi loat^- 
 ■wtirrtnW), rhrmisfei , pl^'aciaas, lafye i a^ 
 dw ani i ^^ J iB, and die rest cf die aaga viao 
 ■Errs and pri^:: wiife tiie result «sf nexd^ 
 addJiBg to c-isr kmnriedge, ^^a^- be vocdijr 
 of big^ psaise, iici: caaneC be cadled fiteiaiy 
 if diat egiAet is t.> bave 2=7 ^^Ksd^rie 
 vaioe. Tbe stndjr ci fita^nie Btader sndi 
 «3ECwnstaaces woold be pcactic^^ boaaded 
 ody by ibe ^Aese of bimigrB kaowle^c. 
 Soeoe fine of demaacaSiosi must be deamn 
 if ''fiiiesatme'*ls tobe reganied asaajlbi^ 
 less diaaaa pori^ iadefioiiev aknost jafiiwlr , 
 temi. 
 
 Socb a fine of demascatson has be^ draam 
 n ibe fr?^-T-.-T?,g; of die kmslSa. dtBaaSaom given 
 above, smd :t c(»ncides «sbrioasl|r vitb diat 
 so is~ 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 adopted by De Quincey when he wrote of 
 the literature of knowledge as opposed to 
 the literature of power, as well. as with that 
 chosen by Charles Lamb when he distin- 
 guished between books that are " no books " 
 and books that are really books — which 
 live and delight their readers — the kind of 
 books Milton had in mind when he wrote 
 that it would be as wicked to kill a good 
 book as to kill a good man. Mr. John 
 Morley also gives the same idea in a slightly 
 different form when he says that " literature 
 consists of all the books — and they are not 
 so many — where moral truth and human 
 passion are touched with a certain largeness, 
 severity, and attractiveness of form." 
 
 But have we not passed from too large a 
 definition of our term to one that is too 
 small? Are not some of Mr. Huxley's 
 essays, which he intended to make and did 
 make scientific in character, regarded as 
 literature by many people, and on just 
 grounds? Again, are the ideas expressed 
 by such a poem as Poe's Ulalume fairly 
 to be described as possessing permanent and 
 universal interest, or does the poem itself 
 touch moral truth with any largejiess of form ? 
 Yet are we prepared to say that Ulalume 
 is not literature, even though it is not a 
 146 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 book, and is thus outside the precise terms 
 of Mr. Morley's definition? 
 
 The truth is that, while we are plainly on 
 the right track when we attempt to separate 
 the nobly moving and powerful books from 
 those that merely convey information in a 
 more or less perfunctory manner, we find it 
 difficult to get a definition that will suit us, 
 because we are trying to define what is really 
 the product of an art, and may therefore be, 
 so far as its subject-matter is concerned, 
 as large as life expressed in terms of the 
 medium of expression peculiar to that art 
 can ever be. Now life itself is practically 
 indefinable and infinite, and, as one can 
 recognize almost at a glance, the medium of 
 expression used by the art of literature — 
 to wit, words in certain combinations — is 
 practically infinite also. We are, therefore, 
 trying to define a product that may assume 
 as many forms almost as life — an attempt 
 v/hich is hopeless, especially when we insist 
 on laying stress upon subject-matter in 
 framing our definition. We simply cannot 
 say that literature is in essence any particu- 
 lar thing, because its subject-matter, which 
 is its essence, may be everything. But we 
 may perhaps find it possible to get a work- 
 ing description of literature that will suffice 
 147 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 for all our purposss if we will frankly say- 
 that we believe that there is such a thing as 
 an art of literature which expresses itself 
 by means of words, much as music does 
 by means of sounds, painting by means of 
 an arrangement of colors on some material, 
 etc. Then, without asking ourselves what 
 our finished literary product is in its essence, 
 let us ask ourselves what methods of em- 
 ploying words have been used by great 
 writers in the past to produce Work which 
 the world has agreed to regard as literary 
 in character. In other words, we will imitate 
 the critic of music who studies to determine 
 the artistic methods of the great composers 
 of recent times. If we can find that there 
 are certain principles of word-arrangement 
 common to all works that the world has re- 
 ceived as good literature, just as there are 
 certain principles of sound-arrangement com- 
 mon to all true music, we shall then be able 
 to say with confidence that literature is the 
 product of an art which deals with words in 
 a certain way ; and if our " certain way " 
 be not easily definable, we need not be sur- 
 prised, for all art is the expression of human 
 genius, which is itself indefinable, and many 
 things in this life can be recognized that can- 
 not be defined. 
 
 148 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 It must be admitted, of course, that, in 
 treating literature as the sum total of the pro- 
 ducts of what we have called literary art, we 
 are not improving our condition from the 
 point of view of critical theory. It is much 
 easier to describe any art than to define it, 
 but students of painting and the other fine 
 arts have usually less difficulty than students 
 of literature in describing the products of 
 their respective arts. This is mainly because 
 they begin with certain freely conceded pos- 
 tulates with regard to the nature of art in 
 general. They assume that the product of any 
 art must, to be legitimate, give pleasure of an 
 emotional kind connected with the idea of 
 beauty, although, according to some critics, 
 pleasure of an intellectual kind connected 
 with the idea of truth and of a moral kind 
 connected with the idea of right conduct, are 
 often present also, and in the greatest works 
 of art are indispensable.^ They assume, fur- 
 ther, that when the quality of usefulness is 
 connected with a work of art, it must not 
 interfere considerably with the quality of 
 beauty. Making the satisfaction of the aes- 
 
 1 Here and elsewhere I make no pretence of using psy- 
 cholo,^cal terms with scientific accuracy. I trust, however, 
 that the untechnical terms employed will make my mean- 
 ing sufficiently clear. 
 
 149 
 
tHE NAtURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 ftietic sense a sine qua nm of artistic ptoduc- 
 tioh, krt critics are thus, on the whole, able 
 tb pronounce with adequate tertainty on the 
 question whether- a giVfen product is artistic 
 or not, b'^cauSe thdy ask rather what k work 
 of art does, than what it is in its essehce. 
 li'hey ask also what the artist does, consciously 
 Or unconsciously, Jh order to make a Wdrk of 
 art produce its legitimate pl'eksufdblfc effect 
 iQpon the aesthetic sehse. Thuis, as a rule, 
 they continually avoid ttietaphysical questions 
 ■ — although these have their interest — and 
 deal with more Or less cbticretfe phasfes of 
 their subject. 
 
 L'et tls nbw Spply their 'ill^thdds to What we 
 call literary art, and see whether we shall not 
 obtain riribre tangible results than We should 
 do Were we to continue to ^endeavor to define 
 literature. We 'may, indeed, find before we 
 have finished that literature is a rather com- 
 plex art, cOhsi'sting of poetry which corre- 
 sponds With music and painting and sculpture, 
 in which the elertiterits of use and often of 
 moral knd intellectual emotion play a de- 
 cidedly inferior part tothe elefnent of aesthetic 
 emotion, and prose which holds partly by the 
 arts named above, and partly by architecture, 
 in which the element of use enters conspicu- 
 ously. The complex charactet of our art 
 150 
 
THE NATU5RE OF LITERATURE 
 
 need not, however, render our method of 
 treatment particularly difficult or in any way 
 unserviceable, nor need the fact that intellec- 
 tual and moral emotions of a pleasurable kind 
 often predominate over zesthetic emotions in 
 ^.prose and, for some minds, even in poetry, 
 hinder us from regarding literature as the 
 product of an art, since the sitte qua non of 
 all art — viz., an appeal to the aesthetic sense 
 — will be found to exist in all literature that 
 good critics have been agreed in considering 
 ■worth}' of-attention, and since the element of 
 pleasure, on the part both of creator and of 
 recipient, continually abides. 
 
 II 
 
 In pursuance of our plan of treatment let 
 us now examine the following statement, 
 which has resulted from a considerable analy- 
 sis of the problem we have just been discuss- 
 ing, and see if it will help us appreciably : 
 In order to produce literature or to practise 
 the art of literature a writer must record not 
 merely his thought or his knowledge or both, 
 but also express his sustained aesthetic, intel- 
 lectual, and moral emotions in such a way as 
 151 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 to awaken in a sustained manner similar 
 emotions in others. 
 
 We shall do well to explain by means of 
 an example. An important historical event 
 happens — a fictitious event would serve our 
 purpose just as well — and a man knowing 
 the facts about it writes them down. This 
 man, no matter who he may be, even a me- 
 diaeval monk, will probably have emotions, 
 aesthetic, intellectual, and moral, connected 
 with the event he records ; but unless he has 
 the power, conscious or unconscious, to give 
 these emotions expression in his record, what 
 he writes will not be literature in any true 
 sense. He will not write history, but annals of 
 an unliterary kind. Yet this man, though he 
 may not be capable of an original thought, 
 may, nevertheless, if he has power to fuse his 
 knowledge and accompanying emotions, 
 produce something that is truly literary in 
 character. He does not write history as yet, 
 but he does write picturesque and entertain- 
 ing annals. If now to knowledge and emo- 
 tions he adds thought, if he traces effects to 
 their causes and draws conclusions, if his 
 thought be truly original and philosophical, 
 he has done all that he can do in a literary 
 way for the actual event, he has written his- 
 tory in its highest and truest sense. If, how- 
 152 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 ever, our hypothetical writer, with his 
 abundant knowledge and his philosophical 
 powers of thought, had been either capable 
 of no emotions, an improbable supposition, 
 or destitute of the power of expressing them, 
 he would most certainly not have produced 
 a hterary work. He would, perhaps, have 
 made a contribution to the philosophy of 
 history, but not to history in the sense in 
 which the student of literature applies that 
 noble term. Furthermore, if our writer's 
 emotions, or his power of expressing them, 
 had been merely momentary or intermittent, 
 and not fairly sustained, he would have writ- 
 ten something that could not, as a whole, 
 have been called literature, in spite of the fact 
 that literary fragments might have been em- 
 bedded in it. The same thing is true when 
 several writers of varying powers join to pro- 
 duce a common work, as for example the 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which contains 
 literature, but is not itself, as a whole, litera- 
 ture at all. 
 
 Finally, our would-be historian or pictur- 
 esque annalist must possess not merely 
 adequate knowledge, with or without original 
 thought, and emotions which he can express 
 so as to relieve his tension of soul ; he must 
 possess also the power of so expressing his 
 153 
 
TKE atATURE QF LITERATTUtE 
 
 eoiotifns as to mzke otfaexs fbd Ibera. A 
 Old. so to ^csdE. c u a iagm as cs- 
 aCenodoB, vfckdi nm^ be paiti^ 
 . frfhrti r. in rhM4 t ttn, is die aifi^ievaiile 
 r«— llti fni to evexy-pifece of viili^ f&atfaas 
 ai^ «•!=»«■»= to be ooBsideied as Hs^atarSr^V 
 K ttn j iiM ^ be T^anded as the pntdmtt tff'sm 
 ait. It soHKtifiKS k^peas 1ba£ asEnpos- 
 aiid vhrid emarioos, «fedt aie mttcatr^stsd 
 fajF Aat fecok^ (rf wUdi «e shall : 
 
 ■lllfc ly KBDWB 35 mc DH^gD^Bl 
 
 tmi>.4-'lf ia a v^7 pvesMiM^rf]^ swISiii n'lil to 
 icfiece ins ama. peat-19 feefings, bat not ia a 
 «^ (sqpabfe of appcedabfy- «>w i imMB o i catiig 
 dieae IkSi^s ta oAas.^ Sock a mazi, we 
 sajr> laclcs liltajiy or, as soiae vould pet ii^ 
 s^Astic or iimgiaji we capaat^ smd as a 
 coaBeqnence bisba(A,if itsogrriveat al.£«e5 
 €iaif for special shwifitfs. Uader titese cir- 
 emnstaacES ve are imtBediafEly led fea a^ 
 (pottii^ aside the considesatiaa of diose 
 miiUxs vbo deal cUefly^ «itb th u a gb^ 3"d 
 *'—'*'"" a|Mkl BPom esteraal kauviku^ge — 
 tiaati^ phil ns o pheEcf a& Ba.iryti JL) if ttexe 
 
 »54 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 is any medium of expression by the use of 
 which a writer of ability- can alwaj's relieve 
 his own surcharged emotions, and at the same 
 time surely communicate them to oAers. 
 
 There must be such a medium of expres- 
 sion, or literature in our sense of the term 
 cannot exist; for, as we have seen, the sus- 
 tained and contagious expression of emotion 
 is what ser\es to distinguish the writings of 
 the mere knower and thinker from tJiose of 
 the Uterary man or artist proper, ^^'e cannot 
 say that the possession and use of such a 
 mediuni of expression is the sole requisite 
 of the true man of letters, for a modicum of 
 thought andj in a sense, of knowledge also, 
 or what we may term a " carrying statement" 
 is necessary to every literary work, since the 
 power of expressing emotion pure and simple 
 is assigned to the other fine arts like music 
 and painting, which cannot preseat thought 
 at all, but only suggestions to thought Yet 
 it is. perfectly true to say that mth the posses- 
 sion and use of a highly developed medium 
 for the expression and communication of his 
 emotions a writer can produce \'ital literature 
 almost Asithout thinking a tangible 1JH>u^t 
 or recording a thing worth knowiHg. Poe's 
 Ulalume is a striking proof of the Iruth of 
 this statement. But it is time to endeavor to 
 155 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 determine what our desiderated medium of 
 expression is in its essence.' 
 
 ^ It has been assumed throughout the above discussion 
 that the artist consciously or unconsciously communicates 
 his emotions to us through the medium of his art product ; 
 but this assumption will not win full assent until we exam- 
 ine what is meant by a phrase constantly used by critics 
 — to wit, " impersonal art." Perhaps some citations from 
 Mr. Bernhard Berenson will enable us to indicate the na- 
 ture of the problem. " Velasquez, who painted without 
 ever betraying an emotion," is the first; the second is 
 longer and runs as follows : " If a given situation in life, 
 a certain aspect of landscape, produces an impression upon 
 the artist, what must he do to make us feel it as he felt it ? 
 There is one thing he must not do, and that is to reproduce 
 his own feeling about it. That may or may not be interest- 
 ing, may or may not be artistic ; but one thing it certainly 
 cannot do, it cannot produce upon us the effect of the 
 original situation in life or the original aspect of the land- 
 scape ; for the feeling is not the original phenomenon itself, 
 but the phenomenon, to say the least, as refracted by the 
 personality of the artist, and this personal feeling, being 
 another thing, must needs produce another effect." (The 
 Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, pp. 70, 71.) 
 
 We may note that there is nothing here that interferes 
 with the idea that the artist experiences emotions in con- 
 nection with some external phenomenon, which emotions 
 he wishes us to realize. We note, further, that no ques- 
 tion is raised with regard to subjective art proper, such as 
 that of the lyric poet whose feeling is often the real thing 
 to be described rather than the external phenomenon that 
 has occasioned the feeling. The whole question is plainly 
 one of method. Mr. Berenson holds that the great artist 
 will strive to avoid the effects of the " personal equation," 
 much as a scientist will, and in the highest ranges of objec- 
 tive art this is true. The dramas of Shakspere, for exam- 
 156 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 III 
 
 That it consists primarily of words goes 
 without saying. Thought and knowledge, if 
 
 pie, are in the main impersonal. But while it is correct, 
 from one point of view, to affirm that Velasquez painted 
 and Shakspere wrote without betraying an emotion, it is 
 hardly correct to say that either painted or wrote without 
 more or less consciously intending to communicate to 
 others certain emotional states which the mere reproduc- 
 tion of the external phenomenon could not be relied on to 
 convey. Mere reproduction is photography, and neither 
 Velasquez nor Shakspere was a photographer. Certain 
 emotional states, such as those of exaltation, of admira- 
 tion, of contempt, must, it would seem, actually charac- 
 terize the artist while he is producing. He cannot be a 
 mere lens ; he must be inspired. But when he is inspired 
 he is out of himself, and hence is impersonal, although 
 really in a state of exaltation which he is trying to repro- 
 duce in us. He is not conscious, perhaps, of his endeavor, 
 certainly not in a personal and selfish way ; but for the 
 convenience of our analysis we may assume that what he 
 does is actually to try to make us feel something. He 
 would not paint or write if this were not his motive, yet 
 he may have this motive and be as much out of himself as 
 a thoroughly spiritual man is when he performs some act 
 of heroic self-abnegation. But the experience of sustained 
 emotions and the inspired, unselfish impulse to stir such 
 emotions in others in connection with the exciting phe- 
 nomenon seem to be the basal facts in all art creation ; and 
 if the artist really paints or writes without betraying an 
 emotion, it is because he is great enough to prevent his 
 brush or pen from expressing any single characteristically 
 personal emotion which he perceives would introduce a 
 
 157 
 
THE NATURE OF LITEE^ATURS 
 
 they are to serve any definite purpose, 
 must be presented to us in more or less con- 
 disturbing element of self, a result which experience has^ 
 told him. would ba dangerous ; or else it is because he is 
 in that condition of- creative exsiltetion which the Greeks 
 attributed to their poets and which Matthew Arnold had 
 in njind when he said that it seemgd as if Nature some- 
 tjmes took the g^n out of Wordsworth's, hand and wrote; 
 for hin), We may rest assured^ therefore, that th& theory 
 of the emotipjial. basis of all art and of thg cpmimsnic^tioi) of 
 the a,rtist's, emotions to spectator- or reader is not really af- 
 f ected by anything that can be said abpiit the nature an(l 
 value of impersonal ajt, Emotions, or at least an envotional 
 state, can be coffimupicated in an impersonal, unconsciousr 
 way in art as well as in Qojiduct. We may concluiie thjs 
 li^ngtby sjcje discussion by a brief consideration, of what 
 ought to be the! nipst ijngersopal of all art attitudeSj if we 
 may so speak : that of th^ portf ait-painter. Here the ajctigt 
 should surejy strive to reproduce the sitter in the most 
 ^ithful way on canvas ; in other words, he oughj; not to, 
 let usL suspect the, existence: of the " personal equrition," 
 But it is hard to believe that if the sitter excited a state of 
 einotional, contempt in (he. artist this, contempt; would npt 
 inevitably be coinmijnioateg through the picture to the, 
 beholder. So a great painter having a hero to paint for 
 whom he, felt admiration would, almost inevitably transmit 
 that a4wration. i^Mgnjiship, indifference, every emotippal. 
 state, seems to get itself transferred to canvas ; or else, if 
 these, moral ^motions are absent, there are Ȥthetjq emor 
 tions connected with movement and whsvt the critics call 
 " tactile values " which in the jnaiin ooctipy the aittist and. 
 are transmitted to us, Perhaps thg. best portraits, teohnir. 
 cally speakingi. are tho.^e in wjiiioh sesth^tiq emotions like 
 thesf hq,v^ doqiinatgd the artist,, bjjt it ia hard for some o£ 
 us to feel th^t in the case of the noble portraits by Raphael) 
 tp be, seen, in the great FLorentine double gallery there, was 
 
 IS? 
 
THE, NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 ncQted wholes, aijtl this is doije among all 
 civilized peoples only thrcrugh the use of 
 words, spoken or written. The emotions of 
 the man who seeks literary utterance must, 
 as we have seen, attacJi themselves to at least 
 a modicum of thought and knowledge, to a 
 carrying statement ; hence these emotions, to 
 have literary valuer must be expressed in 
 words, A series of twenty piercing cries 
 would express profound emotion, but would 
 not be in the least sense literary in character.^ 
 Our medium,, then, must consist of words 
 spoken or written. But for all practical pur- 
 poses literature must be something recorded, 
 something preserved, that can be enjoyed and 
 re-enjoyed. Before the days of writing and 
 printing literature was remembered, not 
 recorded; but nowadays we record, and 
 do not try to remember. The spoken 
 word practically perishes, therefore, and 
 need not be considered as literature in any 
 strict sense, since the phonograph has not 
 been yet put to serious use. Hence orators 
 
 not some strong mora) emotion continually affecting the 
 earnest painter as he toiled away upon his task of giving 
 life to his canvases and pleasure tempered with moral awe 
 to, us who, now behold his handiwork, 
 
 1 Such a series might be used ipj a piece of literature 
 with considerable effect. I have an impression that one is 
 to. be. found in the Philoctetes. 
 
 159 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 whose words are not reported, which is 
 naturally rare at present, are literary men who 
 do not produce literature. Our medium con- 
 sists, therefore, of recorded words, and nowa- 
 days of written or printed words couched in 
 alphabetical symbols. Literature might, of 
 course, be presented in symbols other than 
 alphabetical, but this fact does not affect our 
 analysis. These recorded or — let us say 
 hereafter — written words, as they must con- 
 vey a modicum of thought and knowledge, a 
 carrying statement, should be arranged ac- 
 cording to the laws of syntax, and, indeed, in 
 order that they may produce a uniform and 
 ascertainable impression, should be used in 
 accordance with all the normal laws of gram- 
 mar and rhetoric, so far as the latter study is 
 concerned with inteUigibility, unless, indeed, 
 we wish to produce certain legitimate effects 
 of illusion through the use of an illiterate 
 dialect. This is but to say that our words 
 should be grouped properly into phrases, 
 clauses, sentences, and paragraphs; that 
 grammar and rhetoric are sciences that un- 
 derlie literature. There is also another under- 
 lying science — viz., logic. It is plain that 
 our words grammatically and rhetorically 
 grouped, since they are to convey thought 
 and knowledge, cannot make obvious non- 
 160 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 sense. If in any way they cause the mind to 
 go through reasoning processes, they should 
 guide correctly, and not perplex or nonplus 
 the reader's intellect. On the same principle 
 our grouped words must be true to all such 
 facts of experience as are essential to the valid- 
 ity of the thought and knowledge to be con- 
 veyed. Such a group of words as " giant scrub 
 oaks " could be admitted into a literary work 
 only when some special reason, such as an 
 attempt at humor, justified the combination. 
 
 We see, then, that our written words must 
 be arranged and governed in the manner in- 
 dicated above; in other terms, our medium 
 of expression must consist of written words 
 that are not incongruous. It is at once 
 obvious that such words ought to be suffi- 
 cient to convey all the thought and knowledge 
 that we can ever have to express under normal 
 circumstances. We need only inquire, there- 
 fore, how written words that make sense can 
 be made to receive sustained emotions of a 
 pleasurable sort, and to communicate them to 
 the reader. This can be accomplished first 
 by imparting to one's words adequate rhythm 
 and euphony and harmony; secondly, by 
 using in addition words that connote things 
 and ideas, the suggestion of which will call 
 up in the reader emotions which are not 
 " i6i 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 strained, and in which the element oF pleasure 
 On the whole predominates over that of pain. 
 It follows, if what has just been stated be true, 
 that our medium of expression must consist 
 of written words specially chosen and specially 
 arranged, and that the essential problem 
 -before every would-be literary man, after he 
 has mastered the rules of grammar, of rhet- 
 oric, so far as they relate to intelligibility, 
 and of logic, and has obtained sufficient 
 thought and knowledge to serve as a ^baSfs or 
 a carrying statement for the emotioiis he 
 would impart, is concerned with the choicfe 
 'of emotive words and their -rhythmical, eu- 
 phonious, and harmonious arrangement. The 
 more valuable the thought and :know^edge :hfe 
 can contrive to convey with these emotive 
 and attractively arranged words the more 
 important in allcases his literary work will 
 -be; but he is none the less primarily con- 
 cerned with the choice and arrangement of 
 words -^ that is to say, he must, consciously 
 or unconsciously, apply all the principles of 
 rhetoric, including poetics, that do not relate 
 specifically to mere intelligibility. Now let us 
 endeavor to obtain some adequate informcttion 
 upon these important matters of the arrange- 
 ment and the choice of written words neces- 
 sary to the production of real literatuTe. 
 162 
 
The nature of literature 
 
 IV 
 
 Words in a tt-uly literary Gortipostfion are 
 arranged rhythftlically because, as psychology 
 teaches us, it is a law of our nature for our 
 emotions to express themselves rhythmically 
 and to be excited by rhythm. Rhythm, from 
 a Greek word that means " fldtving," is 
 " inovemerit-in time characterized by equality 
 of measures and by alternation of tensioil 
 (stress) and relaxation." It is represented 
 in nature by the beating of the heart, by the 
 movement of waves, by the Staying cSf leaves. 
 In speech it is represented by the succession 
 of emphatic and uriemphatic syllables, which 
 delights the ear just as the rhythmical svV^ay- 
 ing of a blade of grass delights the eye. 
 There is, of course, some sort of rhythm in 
 all speech — a fact which unites lihis noble 
 capacity of man with the universal life of 
 nature — for all life seems to be based on 
 motion, in which rhythm could invariably be 
 discovered if we only had the proper organs 
 of apprehension. But the rhythm latent in 
 conversation and in the written style — writ- 
 ten words sounded to the inner ear yield 
 rhythm — of mett who have ho great power 
 163 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 of translating their emotions into language is 
 practically unrecognizable for the most part ; 
 hence it is that conversation, unless it concern 
 some exciting topic, pleasant or unpleasant, 
 or be conducted by a master of the art, fails, as 
 a rule, to appeal profoundly to our emotions, 
 and the same is true of the majority of the 
 books that are written. When, however, the 
 emotions of an author are really excited, he 
 tends to arrange his words in such a way that 
 they either suggest a rhythm that stimulates 
 the emotions of others or else fall into an un- 
 mistakable rhythm which can be measured 
 accurately. In the former case he composes 
 what we call normally literary prose ; in the 
 latter case he composes something in meas- 
 ured rhythm, or metre, which we call usually 
 poetry. These two divisions exhaust litera- 
 ture between them.^ 
 
 1 There is no need to discuss at any length the time- 
 worn question whether there can be such a thing as poetry 
 not couched in metrical language. According to the terms 
 of our description of literature, all the essential features of 
 literary production will be found in every piece of true 
 prose and verse; the line of demarcation furnished by 
 measurement of rhythm is, therefore, essential only in the 
 determination of questions relative to degree of emotional 
 pleasure excited, not to kind. It seems to be clear, from 
 the data of general experience, that the emotional pleasure 
 resulting from the use of measured rhythm is, all other 
 things being equal, and the subject or carrying statement 
 164 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 Now it is obvious that while there is a 
 specific hne of demarcation — viz., the pos- 
 sibility of measurement of rhythm — between 
 literary prose and poetry, there is none, so 
 far as rhythm is concerned, between literary 
 prose and prose that is not literary. But 
 the absence of a line of strict demarcation 
 proves no more in this case than it does in 
 the case of the animal and vegetable king- 
 doms. There are forms of life, like spongesj 
 that seem or once seemed to belong to either 
 kingdom or to both; so there are kinds of 
 prose about which it might be impossible to 
 decide fully whether they belong to the cate- 
 gory of literary prose or not. But above 
 and below sponges we get unmistakable ani- 
 mals and plants, and so above and below the 
 dubious varieties of prose mentioned we get 
 prose that is plainly literary and the reverse 
 — the assumption being made, of course, 
 that with the majority of educated readers, 
 
 being capable of sustaining the more intense emotional 
 force resulting from the use of measured rhythm, greater 
 than that consequent upon the employment Of unmeasured 
 rhythni ; hence it is advisable to insist firmly on the fact 
 that there is a literature couched in measured rhythm 
 which we call by convention poetry, and a literature 
 couched in unnieasured rhythm which we call by convention 
 prose. The names are thus seen to be conventional, but 
 the varieties of literature that they represent are distinct 
 in one important particular. See note i, page 170. 
 
 16S 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 or else with the body of critics, the power 
 resides of speaking more or less authorita- 
 tively on such points. If now what has just 
 been said be true, it follows that literature in 
 prose must be characterized by an adequate 
 rhythm. The amount and character of this 
 rhythm need not occupy us here, although it 
 should be noted that some critics have denied 
 that rhythm is necessary to literary prose. 
 What does concern us is simply the fact that 
 rhythm, being the language of the emotions, 
 is naturally employed in literature, the chief pur- 
 pose of which is to embody these, and that, 
 therefore, our would-be writer of literature 
 must consciously or unconsciously employ 
 rhythm whether he write in prose or verse. 
 With regard to the euphonious arrange- 
 ment of words, it may be observed that this, 
 while not of such prime necessity as rhythmic 
 arrangement, is nevertheless necessary in a 
 secondary sense to all real literature, whether 
 prose or poetry. Euphony, which is Greek 
 for " having a good voice," implies a dis- 
 tinctly pleasant arrangement of sounds in 
 composition, and when we say that words 
 in true literature should be arranged euphoni- 
 ously we mean merely that care should be 
 taken not to let the combination of sounds 
 made by the words we use offend the outer 
 166 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 or the inner ear by their dissonance or fre- 
 quent repetition. The waves caused by cer- 
 tain combinations of sounds produce physical 
 effects upon the auditory nerves that are 
 translated into unpleasant emotions on the 
 part of the reader — for example, this effect 
 is produced by an undue succession of s's as 
 well as by the monotonous repetition of 
 single words, phrases, or clauses, the sound 
 or sound-combinations of which might not 
 have been unpleasant when experienced 
 singly. But unpleasant feelings or emotions 
 on the part of the reader obviously interfere 
 with the transmission to him of the pleasant 
 emotions of which the literary product is 
 intended to be the medium. Hence the 
 necessity of a euphonious arrangement of 
 words is apparent. 
 
 With regard to the necessity of a harmoni- 
 ous arrangement of words we can afford to 
 be equally brief. Harmony, strictly speak- 
 ing, refers to the adaptation of sound to 
 sense, and is not required by the ear to any- 
 thing like the same extent as rhythm and 
 euphony. Still it has at times a distinct part 
 to play in affecting the emotions of a reader, 
 and is more or less to be found in all good 
 literary work. And akin to harmony in 
 sound is what we may call a mental harmony 
 167 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 that should attach to a truly literary arrange- 
 ment of words. It cannot be doubted that 
 there is a mental pleasure that results from 
 the harmonious, or perhaps it would be best 
 to say symmetrical, arrangement of the words 
 and combinations of words that we employ 
 which is analogous to the pleasure the eye 
 obtains from the contemplation of symmetry 
 in figures. A felicitous balanced or periodic 
 sentence carries with it a charm of symmetry 
 that gives pleasure to the cultivated and 
 often to the uncultivated reader, and so en- 
 hances the emotive value of the writing in 
 which it is found. It cannot be doubted, 
 also, that the attainment of symmetry in our 
 arrangement of words often enhances their 
 euphony in a subtle manner and helps us to 
 attain that adequate rhythm which is neces- 
 sary to literary prose. Aristotle long ago 
 pointed out that the period gave a sort of 
 framework to the rhythm, helping it, prob- 
 ably, much as the blank verse period helps 
 that subtle metre, but we need not enlarge 
 on this here. It is sufficient for us to per- 
 ceive in a general way why a rhythmical, 
 euphonious, harmonious, and, we may add 
 perhaps, symmetrical arrangement of words 
 is a natural medium for the expression and 
 communication of emotions. 
 1 68 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 V 
 
 We come now to the second of our methods 
 for enabling written words to convey emo- 
 tion — to wit, the choice of such words as 
 connote an adequate number of ideas and 
 things, the suggestion of which will call up 
 in the reader emotions which are not over- 
 tense and in which the element of pleasure 
 predominates on the whole over that of pain.^ 
 It might seem at first sight as if such choice 
 of emotive words would be of itself sufficient 
 
 l It is obvious that pleasure must predominate over 
 pain in the emotive effects of a work of art, or the latter 
 would fail to accomplish the purpose for which all the 
 arts exist. Even where the object represented is in 
 itself one that, if fully realized in actual life, would cause 
 us intensely painful emotions, thoroughly artistic repre- 
 sentation will give us emotions on the whole pleasurable. 
 This truth is illustrated in tragedy where the individual 
 pity and fear of the spectator are made universalized 
 emotions through the art of the poet, and are thus purged 
 of grosser elements, with the result that the sympathetic 
 nature receives an emotional relief that is distinctly pleas- 
 ing. (See with regard to this " purging " the KdOapais of 
 Aristotle, Butcher's Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and 
 the Fine Arts, page 225.> Sometimes what would be 
 unpleasantly disgusting in actual life receives in art a 
 representation that is humorous and provokes pleasant 
 smiles, as is illustrated by a well-known picture by Rubens 
 in the Ufiizi gallery. 
 
 169 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 to e«{ ii kgs and convey emotioits, and so tD 
 «-niKJi t fi | i p fi t ip iiji t im ', Aafrl itfri jtiM C is afier all, 
 merefy- a ntaftFr - of Action. A mommf s 
 leflecfion mil eaaUe ns, however, to see that 
 tins is not so, snce thythui is in some way 
 fSBcnrial to the ntterance td emotions and, if 
 not adeqna&d^ piesent; is misfd with the 
 lesak that the oorapositioB is paxti^ di^4eas- 
 ii^ and anoe lade of ea^ioajr and faaiBMiajr 
 WDold in. almost eveiy case take amsy so 
 mwh from the fr'fifrX'lai ijf the emotive: fef^g 
 used that the reader woold cacpenence s^j- 
 safions the lereEse of j^easii^ On the other 
 hand, it fe passible iior voids ihyihwtirglly , 
 eo^ioniuiKly, and 1m tminioMbly aixangad 
 to ^ve pieasme wsthoot the presence of a 
 sigg^ len^inzai^ emotive void — a^eas- 
 crre snScieat perfa^s to assoce a. reader that 
 he is perasmg somrtfm^ diat belo^^ to 
 fitEcatmeL TbSs can be proved bjr shoi^^ 
 a person ignoiaaC: frf' Latin hov t3 read aloud 
 pn^erfy' sosoe of l^rg^'s fines. He vifl in 
 most cases feel del^^ifEd vitfa vhat he does 
 not understand, and "mill be leady to atjnwfr 
 that it oust possess 1b^ Eltuky valae^ and 
 tins quite ^ast feo^ the pleasant e^vt pso- 
 dwred, as we shall see^ iiy^ die v:^ae.' It 
 
 170 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 may be doubted, however, whether, strictly 
 speaking, any writer has ever put together a 
 considerable number of words in a really 
 rh5^mical, euphonious, and harmonious 
 manner without employing emotive terms. 
 
 But whether or not emotive words are 
 alA^'ays present in any given piece of truly 
 literary work, it is easy to see why their use 
 is more or less necessary. There are many 
 things and ideas about which we have emo- 
 tions stored up. The words that represent 
 these things and ideas act very much as the 
 electric spark that discharges a heap of 
 powder. The moment we hear them, our 
 stored-up emotions explode, as it were, and 
 we are aglow with delight. For example, in 
 the splendid lines of Keats, 
 
 Charmed magic casements opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas in faery4ands forlorn, 
 
 reason that doggerel does not carry emotion with it, and 
 when read aloud to a person ignorant of the language 
 would not be likely to affect him pleasantly unless the 
 reader threw unwarranted emotion mto his reading. We 
 may notice in this connection that doggerel does not come 
 under our description of literature, and thus is not poetry, 
 although it is coached in metre, either because it contains 
 no emotive words, as in the mnemonic jingle, "Thirty 
 daTS hath September," or because such emotive words 
 and their metrical setting as are used in it are in some 
 way incongruous or commonplace. 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 every epithet and practically all the nouns 
 will be found to call up emotions. Think 
 of what emotions, dating back to our child- 
 hood, the word " faery-lands " unlocks 1 
 Even the unusual spelling has an emotional 
 value. There is almost no limit to the emo- 
 tive power of properly chosen and arranged 
 words; indeed, a mere word itself that is 
 unfamiliar and euphonious will often pro- 
 duce emotions which former experience of 
 the vague and uncertain has stored up in us. 
 For instance, Milton's line, 
 
 Looks toward Namancos and Bayofta^s hold, 
 
 has caused special emotions of pleasure to 
 many people chiefly because they knew 
 nothing about the two small places in Spain 
 which have been identified only of recent 
 years by zealous commentators. On the 
 other hand, it should be remarked that a 
 ijiew wor<^, npt suggestiv? of the vague and 
 not specially euphonious, calls up naturally 
 little or no emotion — which is a partial ex- 
 planation of the fact that as our vocabulary 
 improves so does our literary appreciation. 
 
 But we have perhaps said enough about 
 
 tl;ie value of the use of emotive words in 
 
 literature, and it remains only to explain 
 
 our qualifying remarks about the necessity 
 
 173 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 of avoiding a strain to the reader's emotions 
 and a predominance of pain over pleasure. 
 Our qualification is dependent, of course, 
 on the fact that literature in our sense of 
 the term is one of the fine arts, and that, 
 as we have seen, one of the main objects 
 of all the fine arts is to give pleasure. 
 We are secure of pleasure, to a certain 
 extent, if the words presented to us are 
 rhythmically, euphoniously, and, harmoni- 
 ously arranged, but so great is the enjotive 
 force of words that it may happen that the 
 mysterious inner self, which underlies our 
 emotions, may be overstirred or strained by 
 the discharge of too powerful or of painful 
 emotions previously stored up, and that in 
 consequence the pleasure resulting from the 
 perception of rhythm, euphony, and har- 
 mony may be neatralized by pain caused 
 by Gverstressed or unsuitable emotions, or 
 actually drowned therein. It is just here 
 that many writers, even experienced ones, 
 are liable to go astray. They use a word 
 which to them connotes pleasure, and find 
 to their surprise that it connotes for another 
 only what is disagreeable. They use a com- 
 bination of words that leaves a sense of 
 delicate sweetness with them and with some 
 of their friends, and behold ! the general 
 173 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 public has only the sense of being cloyed 
 and of wonder at the number of minor 
 poets continually being discovered by 
 enthusiastically generous critics. 
 
 VI 
 
 But this power which we posit of using 
 emotive words that kindle emotions in the 
 reader, what is it but another way of nam- 
 ing that faculty which by some critics under 
 the influence of the Germans and of G>le- 
 ridge is held to impart the determining 
 characteristic of all truly literary products — 
 the faculty of the creative imagination? 
 The poet or prose writer who possesses 
 imagination transforms the empirical world 
 into an ideal world of images, and in the 
 process finds what we term his aesthetic emo- 
 tions pleasurably excited. His intellectual 
 and moral emotions, to use our former 
 phraseology, are also sympathetically af- 
 fected and cannot be satisfied (certainly in 
 the case of the moral ones) without some 
 efifort on his part to communicate them to 
 other people. He makes use at once of the 
 medium of expression most suitable to his 
 174 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 purpose — viz., words rhythmically, eupho- 
 niously, and harmoniously arranged, his 
 aesthetic sense directing him as to the most 
 fitting rhythm and sound-sequences that he 
 can employ. This same sense or, if we 
 prefer so to term it, his imagination teaches 
 him also what words have most power to 
 express the emotions with which he is sur- 
 charged. These emotions are the result of 
 his transformation of the actual world of 
 experience into an ideal world of images, 
 and the faculty which enabled him to form 
 mental images enables him also to find emo- 
 tive words which will call up such images 
 in the minds of all who read him, provided 
 they too are gifted with imagination, not 
 indeed necessarily creative, but at least re- 
 ceptive. Hence it is that in all highly emo- 
 tive literature, such as poetry and oratory, 
 the words used tend, either singly or in 
 combination, to be representative of con- 
 crete images, or at least to suggest such 
 images vividly — which is but to say that 
 figurative language is essential to highly 
 emotive literature. We see, therefore, that 
 our preceding analysis of the nature of the 
 medium of expression employed in the pro- 
 duction of literature might be resumed in 
 the single statement that literature consists 
 175 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 of words chosen and arranged by the 
 imaginative faculty. 
 
 There is, however, one other point to be 
 considered before we can regard our analysis 
 as fairly complete. Properly chosen and ar- 
 ranged emotive words will give us literary 
 pleasure from the moment we begin a good 
 poem or piece of prose, but an additional 
 pleasure comes to us as we progress in our 
 reading and become conscious of the sym- 
 metry of the parts of the composition and, 
 finally, of its unity as a whole. These emo- 
 tions, connected with symmetry and unity, 
 are very complex, and seem to be partly aes- 
 thetic, partly intellectual, partly moral in 
 character. The perception of symmetry, so 
 far as the quality does not affect the rhythm, 
 harmony, and euphony of the composition, 
 can hardly be aesthetic, but is rather intel- 
 lectual in character, since neither the eye nor 
 the ear, the two channels through which ex- 
 citations to aesthetic pleasure are in the main 
 received from the outer world, is affected, but 
 only the mind. The perception of unity gives 
 an unmistakable intellectual pleasure, but this 
 seems to disappear when the whole that is 
 imaged by the imaginative composition — 
 whether it be an action or a character or 
 some feature of external nature that is por- 
 176 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 trayed — is realized completely for what it is. 
 Then, according as our sense for beauty or 
 our sense for conduct is stirred, the pleasure 
 consequent upon the perception of unity — 
 that is, the intellectual emotion, merges into 
 an aesthetic or a moral emotion, or, perhaps, 
 into a mixed one, if such a thing be possible.^ 
 If the intellectual pleasure resulting from the 
 perception of unity be thus lost in the aes- 
 thetic pleasure indicated above, it follows 
 that the aesthetic emotions which, according 
 to our analysis, are unloosed by the reading 
 of a truly literary composition are supple- 
 mented by a varying quantity of similar emo- 
 tions which serve to crown our reading with 
 complete success,^ and which may, when they 
 have somewhat cooled, excite into sympa- 
 thetic action moral emotions of gratitude to 
 
 1 This merging of one emotion into another is sometimes 
 accomplished so quickly as to escape observation, but per- 
 haps takes place whenever we are brought in contact with 
 any work of art. For example, in contemplating a fine 
 flower piece we probably have an instantaneous perception 
 of the unity of the composition, with a resulting intellec- 
 tual pleasure which passes into an ajsthetic pleasure con- 
 sequent upon imaginative contact with something that 
 delights the eye, and which may become powerful once 
 more when we have gazed sufBciently. 
 
 ^ It is probably this concluding stock of emotions 
 that is chiefly revitalized when we remember books with 
 pleasure. 
 
 12 177 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 the literary artist who has charmed us and of 
 thankfulness to the Divine Power that has 
 bestowed the gift of creative imagination 
 upon our fellow man and of receptive imagi- 
 nation upon ourselves. Moral emotions of a 
 similar kind are excited also by the intellec- 
 tual emotions that come to us during our 
 perusal of a work of literature through our 
 perception of symmetry in the parts of the 
 composition. It must be remembered, how- 
 ever, that intellectual and moral emotions 
 connected with the perception of symmetry 
 and unity may be excited in us by works not 
 at all literary in character; as, for example, 
 by a process of mathematical or scientific 
 reasoning. Hence we infer that the only safe 
 test for determining whether a given product 
 is literary or not is to ascertain whether or 
 not it affects pleasurably the aesthetic sense.^ 
 
 1 We must refrain, for lack of space, from discussing 
 Schopenhauer's suggestive essay on Beauty and Interest 
 in Works of Art further than to say that if we agree with 
 him in regarding " beauty as an affair of knowledge " that 
 appeals to the knowing subject because it is always con- 
 nected with the idea, while interest, on the other hand, is 
 an affair of the will, we may nevertheless contend that the 
 idea of beauty is inseparably connected with emotions to 
 which we give the name " jesthetic," while interest is con- 
 nected with emotions either of intellectual curiosity or of 
 moral sympathy or repulsion. The value of our analysis 
 remains, therefore, unaffected by Schopenhauer's ingenl- 
 178 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 We have now practically obtained the de- 
 scription of literature that we set out to seek, 
 and we perceive that each one of its compo- 
 nent terms may be made a test to determine 
 by its presence or absence whether a given 
 product is literature or not. We have found 
 that nothing belongs to real literature unless 
 it consists of written words that constitute a 
 carrying statement which makes sense, ar- 
 ranged rhythmically, euphoniously, and har- 
 moniously, and so chosen as to connote an 
 adequate number of ideas and things the 
 suggestion of which will call up in the reader 
 sustained emotions which do not produce 
 undue tension and in which the element of 
 pleasure predominates, on the whole, over 
 that of pain. Practically every term of this 
 description should be kept in our minds, so 
 that we may consciously apply it as a test to 
 any piece of writing about the literary char- 
 acter of which we are in doubt. It now 
 behooves us to endeavor to determine what 
 consequences will naturally flow from the 
 
 ous discussion, nor is it affected by the subtle speculations 
 of Vernon Lee and C. Anstruther Thompson in their re- 
 cent articles in the Contemporary Review entitled Beauty 
 and Ugliness, articles which, whether accepted in their 
 entirety or not, make a most important contribution to 
 that theory of xsthetics which British and American critics 
 so thoroughly neglect, to the detriment of their work. 
 179 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 stand we have taken with regard to this 
 vexed question of the nature of Hterature. 
 
 VII 
 
 One or two cohsdquences have been already 
 noted; We have of course set outside the 
 pale of literature all speech that is not re- 
 corded, and we have treated similarly all the 
 records of mere knowledge or of thought or 
 of bothi We have insisted on the presence 
 of sustained aesthetic emotions in the writer) 
 which are so expressed as to appeal in a 
 Sustained and pleasurable manner to the aes- 
 thetic sense of the reader. This is but to say 
 that we have insisted that all true literature 
 must move us in a personal way, which may 
 be intellectual and moral in character, but 
 must also be aesthetic. It follows, thehj that 
 our description of literature will transsect 
 many of the received categories of prose; 
 for all true poetry, appealing as it does to 
 the assthetic emotions, is plainly literature by 
 the terms of Our analysis. For example, we 
 infer that there are biographies which are 
 mere material for the historical specialist, 
 such as those family memoirs so popular at 
 present, and biographies that belong to per- 
 i8o 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 manent literature, like Boswell's Johnson. 
 Books of travel, of history, and of criticism 
 may be similarly divided. The moment we 
 refuse to be guided by subject-matter, the 
 moment we ask primarily what a book does 
 rather than what it is, we find that the 
 number of books contained in many of the 
 categories of prose shrivels considerably. 
 
 It is, however, only the categories that do 
 not lend themselves especially to emotional 
 exploitation that so shrink. Whenever a 
 category of prose like the novel naturally 
 holds by the emotions we find that our tests 
 are really more liberal than those appUed by 
 most critics. We ask only that the composi- 
 tion to be judged shall consist of words 
 sufficiently well chosen and arranged to pro- 
 duce a sustained and pleasurable effect upon 
 the aesthetic sense, positing always, of course, 
 that the composition in question shall con- 
 form to the laws of grammar and logic, and 
 shall be so far true to nature and experience 
 as not to produce intellectual dissatisfaction 
 sufficient to neutralize the desiderated aesthetic 
 excitation.^ 
 
 1 It is just here, of course, that most writers of fiction 
 fail to satisfy the demands of readers of wide experience 
 and culture, while pleasing the masses who are without 
 high or strict standards. 
 
 i8l 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 It will be observed that we here ask only 
 for certain positive qualities of feeling and 
 style, and for not much positive thought or 
 intellectual power, pure and simple, and that 
 not a few novelists could stand our tests; 
 whereas, very few, considering the vast num- 
 ber that write, stand the tests applied by 
 most critics and historians of literature. 
 This leads us to consider a very important 
 question. Are not our tests really too easy? 
 Must we not require, besides emotion, a 
 considerable amount of positive intellectual 
 power in every writer whose work is worthy 
 to be called literary? We have already fore- 
 stalled these questions, and partly answered 
 them, by citing the case of Poe's Ulalume, 
 and we might fortify ourselves by quoting 
 much from M. Victor Hugo, whom some of 
 us regard as the greatest poet since Goethe, 
 and from Hugo's English admirer, Mr. Swin- 
 burne. None of these poets has ever pro- 
 duced anything that is not literary in a very 
 real and sometimes a very high sense; but 
 they have all been capable of writing a good 
 deal of undoubted poetry that required very 
 little exercise of the strictly intellectual 
 powers for its production. Our illustrations 
 might be greatly extended, more particularly 
 of course in the field of poetry, where pure 
 182 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 emotion can sustain itself better than in prose 
 without what we may call intellectual vitaliz- 
 ing; but we have said enough for our pur- 
 pose. We have not, however, commented 
 sufficiently on the classes of persons by 
 whom our tests should be applied, and when 
 we shall have done this, it will appear at a 
 glance that we have really obtained elastic, 
 rather than easy, methods of determining 
 what literature is in its essence. 
 
 It will be obvious enough to any one who 
 has followed our reasoning closely, that when 
 we demand that all compositions which con- 
 sist of words so chosen and arranged as to 
 excite sustained and pleasurable aesthetic 
 emotions shall be denominated literature, 
 we must either posit some typical reader 
 whose aesthetic sense will serve as a standard, 
 or be willing to admit that there are as many 
 grades of literature as there are varieties and 
 grades of the aesthetic sense in humanity. 
 Bold as the position may appear to be, we 
 are willing both to posit this and to admit 
 this. All writings that have satisfied the 
 critical requirements of past ages and the 
 value of which is substantiated by the con- 
 servative academic critics of the present day, 
 may be fairly said to satisfy the aesthetic sense 
 of a typical reader — that is, of a man whose 
 183 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 tastes are catholic and properly trained by 
 education and by private study and reflection. 
 Every critic, except the extreme impressionist 
 perhaps, practically assumes that he is such a 
 typical reader when he judges a book ; and 
 when the majority of critics, after due time 
 has been allowed for the elimination of purely 
 personal and temporary elements of criticism, 
 agree on the literary character of the work in 
 question, it may reasonably be said to satisfy 
 the assthetic sense of a typical reader. 
 
 On the other hand nothing can be plainer 
 than that there are various grades of litera- 
 ture appealing to all classes of people and 
 that the rigid critic and literary historian 
 need not be frightened at the fact. For their 
 purposes they have only to ascertain the 
 verdict of the typical reader just described, 
 and discuss or register that. This is practi- 
 cally what they do now, and they need not 
 give themselves any more concern about the 
 novels of Mr. E. P. Roe and Miss Marie 
 Corelli than they do about the yellow-backed 
 fiction sold on our railway trains or the 
 continued stories that figure in the sensational 
 journals. If, however, they are interested in 
 the more or less philosophical aspects of 
 literary study, they will find it hard to refute 
 the claim that the novels of Mr. Roe and 
 184 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 Miss Corelli are popular with certain readers 
 for practically the same reasons for which the 
 novels of Scott, Balzac, Tolstoi, and Mr. 
 Howells are popular with readers of higher 
 aesthetic development — viz., that they make 
 primarily a pleasurable appeal to the aesthetic 
 emotions. We may call the novels of the 
 latter writers literature, and of the former 
 writers stuff, if we choose ; but logically we 
 have no more right to say that the two 
 classes of fiction differ generically than we 
 have to say that the inhabitants of Murray 
 Hill are human beings and those of the 
 Bowery mere brutes. We find it necessary 
 to divide mankind into social classes, and 
 thus for purposes of criticism and education 
 we divide literature into various grades and 
 consider only the higher ones; but this 
 should not bhnd us to the unity that in both 
 cases underlies our division.^ 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that our tests are 
 elastic rather than too easy, and we shall 
 bring our discussion to a close by remarking 
 that by making free use of our elastic tests 
 we shall not only be better able to sympathize 
 with the literary tastes of people of inferior 
 
 1 See on this point Mr. Brander Matthews' valuable 
 essay On Pleasing the Taste of the Public, in his 
 Aspects of Fiction. 
 
 185 
 
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE 
 
 culture, and so be able to help them to rise in 
 the scale of taste and intelligence, but also be 
 more certain to comprehend and supply the 
 literary needs of children, whether they are 
 our own or else are confided to our guidance. 
 The teaching as well as the criticism of pure 
 literature will be greatly improved from the 
 moment teachers and critics pay more atten- 
 tion to the emotive than to the intellectual 
 qualities of literature, from the moment they 
 begin to ask what literature does rather than 
 what it is. 
 
 1 86 
 
V 
 ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 187 
 
V 
 ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 That to attempt to translate Horace is to 
 attempt the impossible is a statement that has 
 long since passed into a proverb, of which 
 no one makes greater use than the Horatian 
 translator himself. Perhaps we owe to this 
 proverbial impossibility the fact that the 
 translator of Horace is always with us. A 
 living, breathing antinomy, he writes a modest 
 preface, then, muttering to himself " nil mor- 
 talibiis ardui est" he tries to scale very heaven 
 in his folly, to rush blindly "per vetitum 
 nefas." But because he has loved much, 
 therefore shall much be forgiven him. If 
 Horace were not Horace, his translators would 
 be more successful, but surely they would 
 be fewer in number. To love Horace pas- 
 sionately and not try to translate him would 
 be to flout that principle of altruism in which 
 Mr. Kidd discovers, poetically though not 
 philosophically, the motive force of civiliza- 
 tion. " We love Horace, therefore we must 
 endeavor to set him forth in a way to make 
 others love him," is what all translators say 
 189 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 to themselves, consciously or unconsciously, 
 when they decide to publish their respective 
 renditions. And who shall blame them? 
 For where is the critic, competent to judge 
 their work, who has not himself listened to 
 the Siren's song, if but for a moment in his 
 youth, who has not a version of some Hora- 
 tian ode hid away in his portfolio, the mem- 
 ory of which will forever prevent him from 
 flinging stones at his fellow offenders ? 
 
 But, if to translate Horace be impossible, 
 it is hardly less impossible to explain fully 
 the causes of his unbounded popularity. 
 Admirers of Lucretius and Catullus tell us 
 very plainly that he is not a great poet, but 
 somehow we do not resent the charge; we 
 only read him, if possible, more diligently 
 and affectionately. We leave our critical 
 faculties in abeyance when Dante ^ introduces 
 him to us along with Homer and Ovid and 
 Lucan, and our hearts tell us that he is, in 
 the truest sense, worthy to walk with the 
 greatest of these companions. We feel sure . 
 that Virgil must have loved him as a man ; we 
 have proof that Milton loved him as a poet. 
 We deny to him " the grand manner," but 
 we attribute to him every charm. When we 
 seek to analyze this charm, we find that where 
 
 ^ Inferno, I., 89. 
 190 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 we can point out ten of its elements, such as 
 wit, humor, vivacity, sententiousness, kindli- 
 ness, and the like, there are ten others, 
 equally potent but more subtle, that escape 
 us altogether. So we turn the saying of 
 Buffon into " the charm is the man," and 
 contentedly exchange analysis for enjoyment. 
 And yet we are firmly persuaded that no 
 author is more worthy of the painstaking 
 study characteristic of modern scholarship 
 than is this same Epicurean poet, who so 
 utterly defies analysis and would be the first 
 to smile at our ponderous erudition. We feel 
 that the scholar who should devote the best 
 years of his life to studying the influence of 
 Horace upon subsequent literatures, and to 
 collecting the tributes that have been paid to 
 his genius by the great and worthy of all 
 lands and ages, would deserve our heartfelt 
 benedictions.' We conclude, in short, that 
 that most exquisite of epithets, " the well- 
 beloved," so inappropriately bestowed upon 
 the worthless and flippant French king, be- 
 longs to Horace and to Horace alone, jure 
 divino. 
 
 We are concerned here, however, rather 
 with Horace's translators than with Horace 
 
 ' See in this connection the eloquent paragraph in Sir 
 Theodore Martin's Works of Horace, vol. i., p. 182. 
 191 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 himself, for my purpose is to say a few words 
 about the methods of rendering the poet that 
 have most commended themselves of recent 
 years. So much has been written upon this 
 subject and so much remains to be written, 
 that it is hard to determine where to begin ; 
 but I fancy that the preface of the late Pro- 
 fessor Conington to his well-known transla- 
 tion of the Odes will furnish a proper point 
 of departure. Few persons, whether trans- 
 lators or readers, can object to Conington's 
 first premise that the translator ought to aim 
 at " some kind of metrical conformity to his 
 original." To reproduce an original Sapphic 
 or Alcaic in blank verse, or in the couplet of 
 Pope, is to repel at once the reader who 
 knows his Horace, and to give the reader who 
 is ignorant of Latin a totally erroneous con- 
 ception of the rhythmical method of the poet. 
 To render a compressed Latin verse by a 
 diffuse English one is, as Conington points 
 out, to do injustice to the sententiousness for 
 which Horace is justly celebrated, — although 
 it must be remarked that the translator should 
 not, in order to avoid diffuseness, be led astray 
 as Mr. Gladstone was recently by the " fatal 
 facility" of the octosyllabic couplet. To 
 translate Horace, except on occasions, into 
 anything but quatrains, is also to handicap 
 192 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 one's reader heavily from the metrical point 
 of view. It seems to me, however, that when 
 Professor Conington insisted that an English 
 measure once adopted for the Alcaic must be 
 used for every ode in which Horace employed 
 the latter stanza — a practice which Mr. Glad- 
 stone avoided — he went far toward handicap- 
 ping the translator, who, after all, has his rights. 
 That such uniforniity ought to be aimed at, 
 and will be aimed at, is doubtless true ; but 
 there is one element of the problem with 
 which Professor Conington did not suffi- 
 ciently reckon. This is rhyme, which he 
 assumes to be necessary at present to a suc- 
 cessful rendition of a Horatian ode. A uni- 
 form rhymeless stanza can probably be 
 applied to all odes in a particular measure 
 without any special loss resulting. But this 
 can hardly be the case with a rhyming stanza, 
 if the translator aim, as he should do, at a 
 fairly, though not meticulously, literal render- 
 ing of his original and not at the paraphrasing 
 which so often satisfied Mr. Gladstone. There 
 will necessarily be coincidences of sound in 
 a literal prose version of a Latin stanza that 
 will suggest a particular arrangement of 
 rhymes for a poetical version. To adopt a 
 uniform English stanza is to do away with 
 this natural advantage, which presents itself 
 13 193 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 to the translator oftener than might be sup- 
 posed. 
 
 A concrete example will suffice to make 
 my meaning clear. The third ode of the 
 First Book, the well-known Sic te diva potens 
 Cypri, is in what is called the Second Ascle- 
 piad metre; so is the delightful third ode 
 of the Ninth Book, the Donee gratus eram 
 tibi. We will assume that the translator 
 has chosen for the Sie te diva, a quatrain 
 with alternating rhymes. Following Professor 
 Conington's rule of uniformity, he must 
 employ the same stanza for the Donee gratus 
 eram, which, by the way, Conington did 
 not do for reasons he explained at length. 
 Now the sixth stanza of the latter ode runs 
 as follows : 
 
 " Quid si prisca redit Venus 
 
 Diductosque jugo cogit aeneo, 
 Si flava excutitur Chloe, 
 Rejectaeque patet janua Lydiae." 
 
 This may be translated : 
 
 " What if the former love return and join with brazen 
 yoke the parted ones, if yellow-haired Chloe be shaken 
 off, and the door stand open for rejected Lydia ? " 
 
 If my memory does not deceive me, it was 
 this stanza, and especially one word in its 
 last verse, that determined the arrangement 
 194 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 of rhymes in a version I attempted years ago, 
 Consule Planco. This verse seemed to run 
 inevitably into 
 
 " And open stand for Lydia the door." 
 
 It needed but a moment to detect in the first 
 verse of the stanza a sufficient rhyme. The 
 syllable re of reducit furnished more, not per- 
 haps the most apt of rhymes with door, but 
 still sufficient, as things go with translators, 
 and with a pardonable tautology I wrote — 
 
 " What if the former love once more 
 Return — " 
 
 Two other rhymes were found with little 
 difficulty in the di of diductos and in excutitur, 
 which suggested wide and cast aside, and the 
 whole stanza appeared, omitting strictly met- 
 rical considerations, as follows : 
 
 " What if the former love once more 
 
 Return and yoke the lovers parted wide, 
 If Chloe, yellow-haired, be cast aside, 
 And open stand for Lydia the door ? " 
 
 This stanza certainly had the merit of literal- 
 ness — it omitted only the rather unessential 
 epithet r^Vcto^ and compressed the phrase_;«_^(? 
 cogit aeneo — and I thought it had some merits 
 of rhythm and diction. So I took it as a model, 
 and, with little difficulty, translated the re- 
 195 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 mainder of the ode — with what amount of 
 total success there is no need of discussing 
 here. 
 
 This example, with many more, has con- 
 firmed me in my belief not only that uni- 
 formity of measure is not to be insisted upon 
 strictly in the case of rhyming stanzas, but 
 also that translators should search more 
 thoroughly than they seem to do, for what I 
 may call the rhyme suggestions that are im- 
 plicit in so many Horatian stanzas. I am 
 convinced that any translator who, having 
 adopted a quatrain with alternating rhymes 
 for the Sic te diva, should persist in reject- 
 ing a quatrain with internal rhymes for the 
 Donee gratus eram, simply because he was 
 bent on preserving uniformity, would be 
 hampering himself and doing an injustice to 
 his original. 
 
 Upon other points it is easier to agree with 
 Professor Conington. For a majority of the 
 odes, the iambic movement, which is natural 
 to English, is preferable. This Milton seems 
 to have seen, his disuse of rhyme in his cele- 
 brated version of the Qiiis multa gracilis 
 (i., 5) having given him an opportunity for 
 experiment in logaoedic verse, of which he 
 did not avail himself Here, too, however, I 
 must plead for a careful study of each ode by 
 196 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 the translator, for I think that there are cases 
 in which it would be almost disastrous to at- 
 tempt an iambic rendering. Such a case is 
 presented, perhaps, by the " Diffugere nives" 
 (iv., 7). The iambic renderings of Professor 
 ConJngton and Sir Theodore Martin seem to 
 me to stray far from the original movement 
 — as far as the former's : 
 
 " ' No 'scaping death ' proclaims tlie year " 
 
 does from the diction of Horace or of any 
 other poet. Both would have done better to 
 transfer as far as they could the Latin move- 
 ment to their English renderings. It is true 
 that English dactyls are dangerous things, 
 especially in translations, where the padding 
 or " packing " which is natural to them, is 
 increased by the padding natural to a trans- 
 lation from a synthetic into an analytic lan- 
 guage; but the dactylic movement of the 
 First Archilochian, in which the Diffugere 
 nives is written, is hardly to be transferred 
 into English iambics at all. It presents more 
 difficulty than the transference of the move- 
 ment of hexameters proper into our blank 
 verse. 
 
 Where the translator, however, makes up 
 his mind to attempt a close approximation 
 to the classical metre, I am of the opinion 
 197 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 that he should eschew the use of rhyme as 
 too foreign to his original. But, since the 
 use of rhyme seems, as Conington holds, to 
 be essential at present, if the English version 
 is to be acceptable as poetry, this close ap- 
 proximation can be desirable in a few special 
 cases only. It will not do to dogmatize on 
 such matters, but it may be safely said that 
 no poet has yet accustomed the English ear 
 to the use of rhymeless verse in lyrical poetry. 
 What some future master may accomplish 
 is another matter. Here and there a success- 
 ful rhymeless lyric like Collins's famous Ode 
 to Evening, or Tennyson's Alcaics on Mil- 
 ton, shows us that rhymeless stanzas may be 
 used in lyric poetry with great effect; but 
 so far the translators of Horace that have 
 eschewed rhyme have failed as a rule, like 
 the late Lord Lytton, to give us versions that 
 charm. Yet charm is what they should 
 chiefly endeavor to convey. 
 
 I am still more convinced that Professor 
 Conington is right when he insists that the 
 English should be confined " within the same 
 number of lines as the Latin." He is surely 
 right when he taxes Sir Theodore Martin, 
 who so frequently violates this rule, with an 
 exuberance that is totally at variance with 
 the severity of the classics. This exuber- 
 198 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 ance is almost certain to make its presence 
 felt if the translator abandon the strict num- 
 ber of the lines into which Horace has com- 
 pressed his thought. It results, too, from a 
 division into stanzas of over four veses. There 
 is no rule of translation that will so effectively 
 insure a successful retention of the diction of 
 the original as this of the Hne for line render- 
 ing. And that the diction and the thought 
 of the poet should be more closely followed 
 than is usually the case, admits of no manner 
 of doubt. I have already said that a close 
 scrutiny of the original will often suggest an 
 almost literal rendering of the thought and 
 diction. This literal rendering is naturally 
 more desired by the reader who is familiar 
 with Horace than by the reader who is not, 
 but it will be both pleasing and serviceable 
 to the latter, if not too slavishly obtained. 
 Metrical considerations and general smooth- 
 ness ought to weigh with every translator, 
 but they ought • not to outweigh accurate 
 rendering of diction and thought. In this 
 connection I am not at all sure that Coning- 
 ton does not go too far when he recommends 
 the Horatian translator to hold by the diction 
 of our own Augustan period. That the age 
 of Pope corresponds in many respects with 
 that of Horace is, of course, true enough, 
 199 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 and the student of eighteenth century Eng^ 
 lish poetry is almost sure to be an admirer 
 of the Roman " bard " so fashionable at the 
 time. But Horace's diction does not strike 
 us as stilted, while Pope's often does; and 
 for a modern translator to indulge in stilted 
 diction is fatal not only to the intrinsic value 
 of his work, but also to its popularity and 
 hence to its present effectiveness. There is 
 a good deal, too, about our poetry of the 
 eighteenth century that is little short of 
 commonplace; but commonplace the tranS' 
 lator of Horace can least afford to be. Horace 
 may approach dangerously near the com- 
 monplace, yet he always misses it by a dex- 
 terous and graceful turn. The translator, 
 running after, will miss this turn often enough 
 as it is ; he cannot, therefore afford to steep 
 himself in a literature that has a tendency 
 to the commonplace. 
 
 To mention the eighteenth century and 
 Horace is to bring up the thought ofHoratian 
 paraphrases, A successful paraphrase is often- 
 times better as poetry than a good poetical 
 translation, and not infrequently gives a fuller 
 idea of Horace's spirit. It is almost needless 
 to praise the work in this kind of Mr. Austin 
 Dobson and Mr. Eugene Field. But a para^ 
 phrase, however good, can never be entirely 
 200 
 
ON TRANSLATING HORACE 
 
 satisfying either to the reader that knows 
 Horace or to the reader that desires to know 
 him. Nor can a prose version be thoroughly 
 satisfactory. What is wanted is not merely 
 the drift of the poet's thought, but so far as 
 is possible what he actually sang. The para- 
 phrase may sing, and the prose version may 
 give us the thought in nearly equivalent 
 words, but neither answers our desires so 
 well as a good poetical translation does — 
 such a translation, let us say, as Professor 
 Goldwin Smith's of the Ccelo tonantem (iii., 5). 
 Yet there is surely room for these three 
 methods of rendering, and just as surely one 
 could write indefinitely on the whole fascinat- 
 ing subject did not one consult the interests 
 of Horace and of one's readers. 
 
 20 r 
 
VI 
 
 THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 203 
 
VI 
 
 THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 It is now some years since the late Prof. 
 Nichol, in his excellent Hfe of Byron, de- 
 clared that his hero was " resuming his 
 place," and that the closing quarter of the 
 century would reverse the unjust verdict 
 against him pronounced by the second and 
 third quarters. Shortly after this statement 
 was made, Matthew Arnold, as though to 
 confirm its truth, published his well-known 
 volume of selections from Byron's poetry, 
 and maintained in his preface that when 
 the year 1900 should be turned, the two 
 chief names of modern English poetry would 
 be those of Wordsworth and Byron. To 
 the latter claim, Mr. Swinburne irtimediately 
 replied, in what purported to be a critical 
 essay on the two poets just named, but was 
 really a marvellous dithyramb of inveterate 
 prejudice. 
 
 As might have been expected, Mr. Swin- 
 burne, too, had a pair of chief poets to set up 
 — to wit, Shelley and Coleridge. The con- 
 205 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 troversy thus begun received some attention 
 from the critics ; but the general pubHc was 
 more interested in reading Tennyson and 
 in forming Browning clubs. If the tide of 
 favor began setting toward Byron, its move- 
 ment was practically imperceptible; for as 
 late as 1896 Prof George Saintsbury could 
 maintain, without serious loss to his reputa- 
 tion as a critic, that Scott could not be 
 ranked below Byron on any sound theory 
 of poetical criticism, and that the latter 
 could not be read in close juxtaposition 
 with a real poet like Shelley without dis- 
 astrous results to his fame. 
 
 Twelve months later, however, Byron was 
 being more discussed, if not more read. 
 The war between Greece and Turkey natu- 
 rally induced men to ponder upon his dis- 
 interested devotion to the cause of Hellas 
 and upon the glorious close of his wayward 
 life. The newspapers took him up ; and 
 certainly those of Paris, where I happened 
 to be at the time, did not bear out the 
 opinion afterward expressed to me by an 
 eminent French critic, who was doubtless 
 in the right, that the influence of Byron had 
 somewhat waned in France. 
 
 Close upon this transient notoriety came 
 an important proof that the great poet's fame 
 206 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 was not destitute of champions in his native 
 land after the death of Matthew Arnold. 
 The first volume of a critical edition of his 
 complete works, under the editorship of 
 Mr. W. E. Henley, was issued and cordially 
 received ; and it was announced that Mr. 
 John Murray would shortly draw on his 
 stores of manuscripts, and publish an edi- 
 tion that should be practically final. Ac- 
 cordingly we now have Mr. Henley's edition 
 of the Letters from 1804 to 1813, and two 
 volumes of the Murray edition — one con- 
 taining the earlier poems, edited by Mr. 
 Ernest Hartley Coleridge, and one contain- 
 ing Letters dating from 1798 to 181 1, edited 
 by Mr. Rowland E. Prothero. Both editions 
 are to be in twelve volumes; and the pub- 
 lishers promise to complete them without 
 loss of time. 
 
 The simultaneous appearance of two such 
 rival editions would be noteworthy in the 
 case of any poet, but is particularly re- 
 markable in the case of Byron. As Mr. 
 Henley says, his own is " practically the 
 first reissue on novel and peculiar lines 
 which has been attempted for close on 
 seventy years." There have been innumer- 
 able popular editions of Byron to satisfy a 
 demand which some booksellers pronounce 
 207 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 constant, but others declare to be falling 
 off; yet, to the present year, if any one 
 wished to do critical work on the poet, he 
 had to resort mainly to the seventeen-volume 
 Murray edition of 1832. The general ex- 
 cellence of this may partly account for the 
 fact that in an age famous for textual criti- 
 cism Byron did not receive until recently 
 an honor long ago paid to Shelley and 
 Wordsworth and Keats ; but one can hardly 
 help believing that popular and critical in- 
 difference was chiefly responsible for the 
 neglect. Now, however, that in this im- 
 portant particular he is receiving his own 
 with interest, it may be well to take a nearer 
 view of the rival editions. 
 
 That of Mr, Murray is clearly the ohly one 
 entitled to call itself complete : it is equally 
 clear that he has been unfortunate in not 
 securing Mr. Henley to edit it, with Mr. 
 Prothero to edit Mr. Henley. Mr. Prothero 
 has done his work well; he prints eighty 
 more letters for the same space of time than 
 Mr. Henley; but, as he gracefully acknowl- 
 edges, he cannot handle his materials in 
 the attractive way his rival can. Mr. Hen- 
 ley's notes abound in errors, but are almost 
 as interesting as the letters he annotates, — 
 which is saying a great deal ; for Byron, 
 208 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 with his dash, directness, and force, ranks 
 near the very top of the world's great 
 letter-writers. 
 
 Mr. Henley's editorial success has a two- 
 fold source — first, his devotion to Byron, 
 whom he considers to be " the sole English 
 poet (for Sir Walter conquered in prose) 
 bred since Milton to live a master influence 
 in the world at large," and second, his in- 
 timate knowledge of the England of the 
 Regency, whose hidebound, but corrupt, 
 society could tolerate Castlereagh and Yar- 
 mouth and the Prince himself, but drove 
 Byron into exile. His knowledge and love 
 of his subject are indeed so great that one 
 would almost acknowledge him as an ideal 
 editor, in spite of his talent for unscholarly, 
 if trifling, blunders, did not one discover in 
 his work a certain lack of refinement that is 
 disturbing. For example, there was really 
 no necessity for him to denominate Pierce 
 Egan an " ass," or the quack that tortured 
 Byron's foot an " ignorant brute." But, not- 
 withstanding such blemishes and the normal 
 assertiveness of his manner, there can be 
 little doubt that Mr. Henley's will long re- 
 main a most interesting edition of Byron for 
 the general reader. 
 
 This is not to say, however, that the hand- 
 14 209 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 some Murray edition is valuable only be- 
 cause it is complete and, apparently, finaL 
 31 r. Prothero has annotated the letters most 
 carefully; and I cannot agree with those 
 critics who think that he should have cast 
 aside some of his materials. There are com- 
 paratively few of the social notes and letters 
 included that do not throw ligkt on Byron's 
 character; and nearly all are interesting. 
 The latter statement cannot be made, of 
 course, for the early poems, which Mr. Cole- 
 ridge has annotated with scholarly thorough- 
 ness. It will take tlie verve of ilr. Henley's 
 notes to make the Hours of Idleness go 
 down. I have re-read these youthful verses : 
 and the only pleasure I could get from them 
 lay in tiie feet that the various readings 
 collated by the new e^iiror seemed to show 
 diat, on the whole, when Ejron altered a 
 verse, he improved it — whence I derived 
 a vague, but perhaps vain, hope that suc- 
 ceeding volumes will enable us to think a 
 litde better of him as a technical artist than 
 most of us, v.hether Tre admire him or not, 
 are now able to do. 
 
 The eleven fresh poems printed by Mr. 
 Coleridge do not help matters out in tiie 
 least; but this need not take the relish from 
 the news that fifteen stanzas of Don Juan 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 and a feirly large fragment of the third part 
 of The Deformed Transformed are to be 
 given us in due season. It is a pity, from 
 the point of view of those who intend to use 
 this edition to re-read their Byron slowly, 
 that the pulilishers did not wait until two 
 volumes of the p"3ctry were ready. Even 
 the Jsnglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 
 though it be admitted to be the best strictly 
 literary satire between The Duncxad and 
 A Fable for Critics, cannot neutralize the 
 deadly effect of the I fours of Idleness 
 and f^ive life to this first of the six volumes 
 that are to contain Byron's poetry. I know 
 of no other poet of eminence who is so 
 handicapped by his youthful verses. Others 
 have written stuff as worthless, or even worse ; 
 but no other that I can recall has barred 
 the way to his great achievements by such 
 a mass of uniformly immature and mediocre 
 work. This has been said and thought 
 thousands of times, to be sure, since the 
 Edinburgh printed its needlessly harsh 
 critique and stung Byron's genius into life; 
 but it does not seem to have suggested, 
 either to editors or to publishers, the pro- 
 priety, in popular editions at least, of be- 
 ginning the poetical works with the English 
 liards and printing the early verses as an 
 
 2! J 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 appendix. We are constantly laboring to 
 facilitate approach to our poets, we compile 
 volumes of selections, we introduce them 
 and annotate them; yet we seldom adopt 
 this easy and useful plan of putting their 
 impedimenta in the rear. 
 
 But have these two editions stimulated a 
 real Byron revival, or can any rearrangement 
 of his works make him genuinely popular 
 once more among English readers? I can- 
 not, with the best wish to persuade myself, 
 believe that any permanent reaction in his 
 favor has as yet set in, nor am I at all confi- 
 dent that he will ever be read with the old 
 enthusiasm by all classes of people, . My 
 reasons for these opinions cannot be given 
 without some discussion of his much-mooted 
 rank as a poet ; but, as the point in question 
 is one of real critical importance, and as the 
 present is a particularly opportune time, J 
 shall not shrink from taking part in what may 
 seem at first thought to be a hopelessly in- 
 volved controversy. 
 
 Byron, as we all know, was acknowledged 
 by his contemporaries, both at home and 
 abroad, to be the master poet of his generation. 
 He has practically lost this position in the 
 eyes of English-speaking peoples, but has 
 kept it among Continental peoples. Taine 
 
 212 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 and Castelar and Elze place him at the sum- 
 mit of poetic renown, much as Goethe did 
 over seventy years ago. No Englishman, 
 however, not even Matthew Arnold, writes of 
 him so enthusiastically as Sir Walter Scott 
 could do in all sincerity. The reaction against 
 him set in shortly after his death, Carlyle 
 giving it potent voice; and to-day Words- 
 worth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and Brown- 
 ing can count their partisans by scores, where 
 Byron can count one. 
 
 Nor is it merely a question of his relative 
 rank among nineteenth-century poets. Such 
 critics as Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Saintsbury, and 
 Mr. Lionel Johnson have practically denied 
 him any standing at all as a great poet ; and 
 even his stanch admirers feel called upon to 
 qualify their praise. When Arnold extolled 
 him at the expense of Shelley, the critics, great 
 and little, took a professional pleasure in 
 charging their leader with being for once 
 thoroughly erratic. 
 
 Many reasons have been brought forward 
 to account for this change of taste and 
 opinion among Englishmen. Byron's enemies 
 say that we are more clear-sighted than our 
 grandfathers were, that we have stripped the 
 masks from his Laras and Conrads and Man- 
 freds, and exposed the tawdry pseudo-poet 
 213 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 beneath ; that we know better than to receive 
 a traveller's versified note-book as an inspired 
 poem ; that, if he has any merit at all, it is 
 merely as a satirist and a rhetorician. Less 
 rabid critics call attention to the fact, that, 
 after the strenuous Revolutionary period was 
 over, Englishmen felt the need of calmer, 
 more moral,' and more artistic poetry, and 
 that what was Tennyson's opportunity was 
 naturally Byron's extremity. In a critical, 
 neo-Alexandrian age, they say, the poet who 
 wrote just as passion and impulse dictated 
 can find no appreciative audience save among 
 the semi-cultured. On the Continent the 
 case is different, because foreigners are natur- 
 ally blind to artistic defects that are patent to 
 every Englishman, and Byron's for^e and 
 passion can produce their legitimate effects 
 unhindered, much as they did among our 
 forefathers, who were living in a transitional 
 poetic period, and were, moreover, dazzled 
 by the fiery personality of the man. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the moderate 
 views just given contain much that is true. 
 I will go further and say that they are prac- 
 tically the grounds on which I rest my belief 
 that no genuine revival of Byron will be 
 possible among us for a long time to come. 
 We are, as a rule, too sophisticated, too 
 214 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 Alexandrian in our tastes, to enjoy greatly 
 poetry that is thrown off at a white heat, save 
 perhaps, for variety, the ballads with which 
 Mr. Kipling has been favoring us. We pre- 
 fer the artistic, the carefully wrought; and, 
 even so, we do not desire that the poet's art 
 should be as strenuous as it is in Paradise 
 Lost. Until something stirs us up as a race, 
 Byron is likely to be a favorite only with 
 youths who are naturally passionate and with 
 disillusioned men who can get pleasure out 
 of wit and satire. 
 
 But reasons that apply to the mass of 
 readers do not necessarily apply to critics and 
 men of more than ordinary culture. Such 
 persons ought to be able to rid themselves, 
 to some extent, of the prejudices of their own 
 age and to fit themselves to enjoy genuine 
 poetic merit of every sort. If it be true that 
 Byron possessed a splendid personality, the 
 force, the passion, the sincerity of which have 
 been transmitted to his work, it is a sign of 
 weakness when the cultured man of to-day 
 fails to enjoy these qualities, because, for- 
 sooth, he is offended by a false note here, a 
 glaring patch of color there. There seems, 
 too, to be an inherent weakness in our critical 
 methods, if we can neglect, misunderstand, 
 or treat with contempt a writer who was 
 215 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 believed by his contemporaries to have dom- 
 inated their age, and from whom foreigners 
 have gathered literary inspiration for nearly 
 a century. In other words, while there may 
 be good reason to believe that a popular 
 reaction in Byron's favor is not to be looked 
 for shortly, is there any reason to believe that 
 a majority of our critics and men of culture 
 must continue to keep their faces turned 
 away from him, as seems to be the case at 
 present? 
 
 I am inclined to answer, No. Byron's 
 case with the critics is by no means so hope- 
 less as the comparative failure of Matthew 
 Arnold's defence of him would seem to prove. ' 
 This is, on the whole, an age in which criti- 
 cism is in the hands of impressionists and 
 scholars ; that is to say, most men who write 
 about literary matters are critics of taste or 
 critics of knowledge. Above these two 
 classes, unifying and correlating their respec- 
 tive qualities, are to be found the critics of 
 judgment, who are naturally not numerous at 
 any period. Matthew Arnold belonged to 
 this last class; and some of his judgments, 
 particularly those relating to Byron and 
 Shelley, were unintelligible to Mr. Swinburne 
 and Mr. Saintsbury, among others, simply 
 because, as critics of taste and of knowledge, 
 216 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 respectively, they were better fitted to play the 
 advocate than to judge. Now judgment has 
 always characterized the Continental critics, 
 especially the French, more than it has the 
 English ; and when we find men Hke Taine, 
 Elze, and Castelar practically agreeing in their 
 estimates of Byron, it ought to make us pause. 
 A cultivated taste means much; wide and 
 accurate knowledge means much : but the 
 impressionists and scholars have between them 
 managed to get English criticism into an 
 almost anarchical state ; and the time is prob- 
 ably not far distant when the higher claims 
 of the critics of judgment will be acknowledged 
 with relief, even at the risk of the establish- 
 ment of a dictatorial power Hke that of Dr. 
 Johnson. Such a dogmatic reign as his will 
 not, of course, be seen again; but chaos at 
 least will not be long tolerated. And when 
 anarchy ends among the critics, Byron 
 may come once more into favor, for the fol- 
 lowing reasons, which I submit not as my 
 own, — that would be presumptuous in view 
 of what I have just written, — but as gathered 
 by me from my reading of the critics, and 
 tested by a recent reperusal of the whole of 
 Byron's poetical work. 
 
 Mr. Henley calls Byron the " voice-in-chief" 
 of his generation ; and such was the opinion 
 217 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 of contemporaries like Sir Walter Scott and 
 Shelley. Hatred of established conventions, 
 political, religious, and social ; love for nature 
 in her wilder aspects ; romantic fervor in per- 
 sonal attachments; lack of reticence in the 
 expression of emotions, — in short, a fervid 
 individualism, may be said to have been the 
 leavening characteristics of the age ; and they 
 plainly received their fullest utterance in 
 Byron's poetry. He may, therefore, be called 
 legitimately the poet of an age; but we 
 should not pay him the honors due to this high 
 class of poets until we have measured him 
 with Dante or Shakspere or Milton, and 
 determined whether he is also a poet for all 
 time. His present obscuration does not 
 absolve us from this comparison; for there 
 have been times when even Dante's fame has 
 been somewhat obscured in Italy. 
 
 The immediate effects of such a compari- 
 son cannot but be disastrous to Byron. He 
 has not the high moral earnestness of Dante 
 or Milton ; he has not their intellectual scope ; 
 he has not their invariably perfect style. 
 Whether as man or poet, he is at once seen 
 to be far their inferior ; and, if we were to 
 confine our attention to his conduct or to 
 his marvellously erratic judgments about men 
 and books, it would seem to be an imperti- 
 218 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 nence to mention his name along with those 
 of such consummate masters. Yet he voiced 
 the best of his age, and possessed a person- 
 ality of transcendent force. Are we, there- 
 fore, quite sure that the comparison we are 
 instituting is unnecessary? Have we not 
 omitted to consider some essential element? 
 
 We have. The great poets, " not of an 
 age, but for all time," have all left master- 
 pieces in which their genius nas taken a long 
 and sustained flight, — masterpieces each in 
 its way unapproachable. Has Byron left any 
 such? He has, in Don Juan, and its pen- 
 dants, Beppo and The Vision of Judgment. 
 These great poems are, to be sure, vastly 
 inferior to The Divine Comedy, Othello, 
 and Paradise Lost; but Don Juan, at least, 
 is akin to them in being a work of sus- 
 tained poetic imagination, perfect of its sort, 
 unapproachable, and perennially fresh. It 
 voices its author and his age ; it is sui generis, 
 the greatest of humorous epics, couched in a 
 style that could not be changed except for 
 the worse, and unique in its combination of 
 wit, humor, and satire with a genuine and 
 rich vein of romantic and descriptive poetry. 
 It is, in my opinion, the single sustained 
 work of poetic imagination produced in nine- 
 teenth-century England that keeps a level 
 219 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 flight, the only one written in a style and 
 verse-form as absolutely appropriated by its 
 author as English blank verse is by Milton, 
 the Latin hexameter by Virgil, and the 
 Romantic Alexandrine by Victor Hugo. I 
 will go further and say that, to me at least, 
 it is the single long poem in English since 
 Paradise Lost that grows fresher with each 
 reading and chat gives me the sense of 
 being in the presence of a spirit of almost 
 boundless capacity. If this spirit does not 
 soar into the heaven of heavens, it at least 
 never falls to earth (save from the point of 
 view of morals), but preserves a strong and 
 middle flight. 
 
 What has just been claimed for Don 
 Juan is practically what many critics have 
 seen and said ; but they have not, as a rule, 
 made sufficient use of Byron's masterpiece to 
 connect him with the great world-poets on 
 the one hand, or to separate him, on the 
 other, from his EngUsh contemporaries and 
 successors. Elze, indeed, has placed him in 
 a supreme position as representing " lyrical 
 verse conceived in its widest sense as subjec- 
 tive poetry" ("die Lyrik im weitesten Sinne 
 als subjective Poesie aufgefasst ") ; but this 
 is a rather dangerous stand to take, both 
 because the great world-poets have not won 
 220 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 their position by their lyrical work, and be- 
 cause Byron's lyrical efforts, whether in a 
 technical or a broader sense, are often so 
 faulty that to proclaim him as a supreme lyr- 
 ist is practically to assert that he was a great 
 poet because he was a great personality. It 
 is safer to argue that the poets of the highest 
 class are always represented by sustained 
 masterpieces, and that Don Juan is suffi- 
 ciently such a work to warrant our placing 
 its author, who also voiced the aspirations of 
 his age and was a tremendous personality, 
 'among the world-poets, but beneath them 
 all in rank. 
 
 Applying now this " masterpiece " test to 
 the much-disputed question of Byron's rela- 
 tive position among the English poets of this 
 century, we must perhaps conclude that even 
 Matthew Arnold has not made sufficient use 
 of it. He has had a discerning eye for the 
 beauty and value of the poetical passages 
 scattered profusely through Byron's works, 
 just as he has had for the similar passages in 
 Wordsworth ; but he has seemingly failed to 
 consider architectonics, and has thus given 
 the palm to Wordsworth on the just score of 
 the superior quality of the latter's work when 
 at its best. But where is Wordsworth's in- 
 disputable sustained masterpiece? Even the 
 
 221 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 Ode on the Intimations of Immortality 
 has serious competitors, and, with all its 
 beauty and power, does not connect its 
 author with the world-poets. The Excur- 
 sion has not won its way in England yet, 
 much less on the Continent ; and he would be 
 a rash Wordsworthian who should assert that 
 it ever will. And what have Keats and Cole- 
 ridge to show in the way of masterpieces, 
 such as we are considering? What has 
 Shelley, whose Prometheus Unbound and 
 The Cenci, though in some respects won- 
 derful, are neither fully unique nor represen- 
 tative? As for the Idylls of the King and 
 The Ring and the Book, one can merely 
 say that they are still under the fire of the 
 critics, and that the former, at least, is not 
 likely to be pronounced unique or masterful, 
 except by persons who know little about 
 other heroic poetry. 
 
 According to the above reasoning, if the 
 serried hosts of the partisans of other poets 
 will allow the word to pass, it would seem 
 that Byron is connected with the world-poets 
 in three respects : he has written a sustained 
 masterpiece ; he is a representative character 
 who has been accepted by the world at large ; 
 and he possesses a tremendously powerful 
 personality. No other modern Englishman 
 
 222 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 is so connected with the world-poets; but 
 Byron himself falls below them in respect to 
 the inferior nature of his masterpiece and of 
 his own moral, intellectual and artistic quali- 
 fications. Yet there is also another, though 
 a secondary, feature of his work that binds 
 him to the masters, and distinguishes him 
 from most of his contemporaries and suc- 
 cessors — I mean the wide scope taken by 
 his versatility. A discussion of this point 
 will naturally lead us to take a rapid survey 
 of his entire poetical achievement. 
 
 Passing over the Hours of Idleness, it is 
 to be noted that as early as 1 808 Byron was 
 capable of a fine lyric. When We Two 
 Parted dates from this year, and breathes a 
 spirit of passionate sorrow hardly equalled in 
 literature ; yet the major part of the lyrics of 
 this and the next few years cannot be said to 
 be of a high order. There are some good 
 occasional verses, and Maid of Athens, I 
 Enter thy Garden of Roses, There be None 
 of Beauty's Daughters, rank very high; the 
 last-named being fully worthy of Shelley at 
 his best: but, although the general level of 
 the Hours of Idleness is surpassed, no 
 solid foundation for fame has yet been laid, 
 even if the verve of the English Bards be 
 taken into account. In 18 12 the stanzas to 
 223 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 Thyrza, beginning, " And thou art dead, as 
 young and fair," showed what Byron might 
 do in the elegy if he had a mind ; and in 1 8 1 5 
 the Hebrew Melodies, with their one su- 
 preme lyric (She Walks in Beauty), and 
 at least three admirable songs, gave any one 
 the right to expect great things of him as a 
 lyrist. A little later his domestic troubles 
 occasioned the writing of Fare Thee Well, 
 and the three poems addressed to Augusta; 
 but, after the later cantos of Childe Harold, 
 the dramas, the final tales, and Don Juan 
 began to occupy his mind, lyrical work be- 
 came a matter of minor importance. He did 
 riot eschew it, of course; for Manfred and 
 other dramatic poems required it ; and here 
 and there he wrote an excellent, though 
 hardly a perfect, song. Even in Don Juan he 
 made room for the eloquent Isles of Greece ; 
 and at Missolonghi itself he composed 
 those stanzas on his thirty-sixth birthday 
 which will be forgotten only when men cease 
 to remember the nobly pathetic death that 
 soon after befell him. 
 
 Taken in its totality, his lyric work must 
 rank far below that of Shelley and Burns, to 
 name no others ; but it requires Httle critical 
 discernment to perceive that he was capable 
 of pushing any of his rivals close, if he had 
 224 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 cared to put forth his full powers. It is idle 
 to affirm that the man who wrote some of 
 the doggerel in Heaven and Earth could 
 never have been a true lyrist. The aberra- 
 tions of men of genius, even of almost con- 
 summate artists, are not to be accounted for; 
 and there are things perilously near doggerel 
 in the mature work of poets like Shelley and 
 Tennyson. Byron's aberrations in the matter 
 of bad lyrical work are probably more dis- 
 tressing than those of any other great poet ; 
 but they are to be accounted for rather by 
 the restlessness of his temperament than by 
 his native incapacity to write a true song. 
 He was much besides a lyric poet; but in 
 gauging his versatility we must not over- 
 look his undeveloped, but genuine, gift for 
 singing, nor the absolute worth of at least a 
 score of his lyrics. 
 
 Byron's contemporary fame took firm root 
 with the publication of the first two cantos 
 of Childe Harold in 1812. It is difficult 
 now to understand how he could " awake 
 and find himself famous " for such far from 
 supreme work; but we must remember that 
 people had had time to grow somewhat 
 weary of Sir Walter's metrical romances of 
 Scotland, and that the day had not come 
 for popular appreciation of Wordsworth. 
 IS 225 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 And the first cantos of Harold, with all 
 their affectations and imperfections, have 
 many decided merits which are still visible 
 in this day of reaction against them. The 
 invocation to the second canto, and such 
 passages as that beginning, " Fair Greece, 
 sad relic of departed worth," will attract 
 readers long after Mr. Swinburne's contemp- 
 tuous depreciation of the entire poem shall 
 have been forgotten. Besides there is in 
 them a foreshadowing of the descriptive power 
 that was to make the third and fourth cantos 
 memorable. In short, although Byron needed 
 to work off his crude energies in the Eastern 
 tales, to be disgusted with the licentious 
 and frivolous society of the Regency, and to 
 be stirred to the depths by his domestic 
 troubles, before his genius could be fully 
 roused, there were abundant signs of the 
 existence of that genius from the moment 
 that Scott, with a prudent magnanimity, ab- 
 dicated the throne of verse in his favor. 
 
 The Eastern tales that followed in quick 
 succession. The Giaour, The Bride of 
 Abydos, The Corsair, and Lara natur- 
 ally increased his reputation, because they 
 were eminently readable and because they 
 seemed to be partly autobiographic. None 
 knew what the wild young peer had done in 
 226 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 the East ; therefore, every one read the tales 
 and speculated. The Byronic hero became 
 quite a social personage, — a fact which has 
 since led to not a little depreciation of this 
 portion of the poet's works. We are now 
 told that The Giaour is the only one of 
 the early tales possessing a spark of life ; and, 
 while this is an exaggeration, it is impossible 
 to deny that it was a good thing for Byron's 
 fame when, by rapid working, he exhausted 
 his Eastern vein. The Bride and The 
 Corsair, however, contain several passages 
 of imperishable beauty; and, much as the 
 mystery and gloom of Lara may be out 
 of fashi6n;-it is hardly fair to deny the power 
 and the literary "influence of that romance in 
 the couplets of Pope. And besides the 
 poetical passages, there was a vigor of nar- 
 ration that somewhat made up for the marked 
 poverty of characterization, and that pre- 
 luded the more successful later tales and the 
 supreme achievement of Don Juan. In- 
 deed, Byron must have felt that he had a 
 faculty for narration, since he wrote The 
 Island as late as 1823. 
 
 The Siege of Corinth and Parisina ap- 
 peared shortly after his marriage ; while 
 The Prisoner of Chillon and Mazeppa date 
 respectively from 1816 and 1818. His men- 
 227 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 tal and artistic growth was distinctly revealed 
 in these pieces, the third of which has be- 
 come classical. Although The Siege ends 
 badly and contains much crude work, it is 
 memorable for its descriptive strength; and 
 there are some passages and scenes in both 
 Parisina and Mazeppa that will perish 
 only with the language. Even The Island, 
 which has been declared to be a total failure 
 by so well disposed a critic as Mr. J. A. 
 Symonds, is such only in the first canto. It 
 manages to throw a kind of Chateaubriand 
 glamour over the South Sea Islands, and 
 proves that, even after its author's hand had 
 become subdued to the far from sentimental 
 materials of Don Juan, it had not entirely 
 lost its early cunning in romantic narrative. 
 We must, therefore, conclude, in despite of 
 the critics, that Byron's tales count for some- 
 thing in his life-work, and are another proof 
 of his wonderful versatility. 
 
 It is worth while to note, that, just as the 
 unfairness of his early critics stimulated Byron 
 to achieve the first stage of his fame, so the 
 clamors of society against him after his rup- 
 ture with his wife incited him to the still higher 
 achievement represented by the third and 
 fourth cantos of Childe Harold. The 
 poet has now practically become another 
 228 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 man, and has transported his readers to a 
 new world. His intellectual grasp has be- 
 come firmer and larger; his artistic powers 
 have been strengthened and chastened, though 
 not to the height of perfection ; and his emo- 
 tions and passions have been keyed to a point 
 of intensity almost unparalleled. The result is 
 a series of marvellous passages, which need only 
 structural unity to make them a great poem. 
 The Spirit of Nature has seized hold upon 
 him, not through the influence of Words- 
 worth, as some suppose, but because of native 
 propensity and enforced disgust with the 
 world of men ; and he rises to the supreme 
 heights of descriptive poetry. Some of his 
 stanzas devoted to the Alps are fairly sublime 
 with passion. He does not penetrate Nature, as 
 Wordsworth does : he appropriates her. And 
 he almost manages to move without tripping 
 over the fields of history and criticism, usu- 
 ally so foreign to him. He can characterize 
 Rousseau and Gibbon, can comprehend the 
 past of Italy and Rome, and can fairly con- 
 quer his normal ineptitude in matters of art. 
 As for the noble and exquisite land in which 
 he was to spend his exile, he almost appro- 
 priates her as he does Nature. The Italy of 
 Childe Harold, whatever artistic blemishes 
 that poem may have, has dominated the 
 229 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 world, certainly the English portion of it, in 
 a manner not equalled by the subtler work 
 of Landor or Shelley or Browning. It is this 
 Italy that reappears in Parisina, in Bep- 
 po, in The Lament of Tasso, in The 
 Prophecy of Dante, in the Ode on Venice, 
 in certain of the dramas — and lends charm 
 to them all. The Lament of Tasso has, indeed, 
 a power all its own that forestalls Browning 
 and that makes one question why it is not 
 more highly esteemed; but The Two Fos- 
 cari would be almost unreadable save for 
 the passages that describe its hero's passion 
 for Venice, loveliest of cities. 
 
 We can now see that the later narrative and 
 descriptive work not only furnishes fresh 
 proof of Bryon's astonishing versatility, but 
 would suffice, without Don Juan, to give 
 its author a very high, though not the 
 supreme position among the English poets 
 of this century. But the entire dramatic 
 section of his writings, including no less 
 than eight lyrical dramas and tragedies, 
 remains to be considered. 
 
 It is usual to dismiss most of this work with 
 positive contempt ; but I, at least, must agree 
 with Dr. Garnett in believing that Byron 
 has, " like Dryden, produced memorable 
 works by force and flexibility of genius." I 
 230 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 will go further and say, that, after having 
 just re-read them all, I should prefer to begin 
 immediately to read them over again to 
 being forced to go through once more the 
 entire dramatic work of Tennyson or Brown- 
 ing. I am well aware that Byron's blank 
 verse is often execrable, whether through his 
 carelessness or his incapacity to handle that 
 measure; I know that only that precious 
 product of open plunder, Werner, suc- 
 ceeded on the stage; I admit that Byron's 
 genius was essentially non-dramatic, that his 
 chief characters are not real persons, but 
 ideal personages ; — I admit almost anything, 
 in short, except the claim that the dramas 
 are total, or nearly total, failures. Almost 
 all carry interest; all show force and versa- 
 tility; not one is lacking in passages of 
 passion; and at least three are, with all 
 their faults, productions not to be matched 
 in the works of any of Byron's modern rivals, 
 save Shelley. These three are Manfred, 
 Cain, and Sardanapalus, which may be 
 set beside the Prometheus Unbound and 
 The Cenci. The British critics have almost 
 unanimously rendered their verdict in favor 
 of Shelley; and, from the point of view 
 of technical art, they are doubtless in 
 the right. Yet I question whether the sheer 
 231 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 vigor of Byron does not balance the art of 
 Shelley in a class of compositions in which 
 neither could attain perfection. 
 
 But, when the dramas have been added to 
 the lyrical, narrative, and descriptive work, 
 to vindicate Byron's claim to be considered 
 the most versatile poetic genius of modern 
 England, we are brought full upon the 
 masterpiece which of itself alone might suf- 
 fice to prove the truth of this claim, that 
 wonderful Don Juan, almost the only mod- 
 ern poem of which, adapting Shakspere, 
 one may affirm that " age cannot wither 
 it nor custom stale its infinite variety." 
 I shall say little more about it, save to re- 
 mark that its poetical passages have a richer 
 tone than can easily be found elsewhere in 
 Byron's own work or in that of his rivals, and 
 that its fierce denunciation and irresistible 
 ridicule' of cant and tyranny ought to make 
 it and its pendant, The Vision of Judg- 
 ment, almost, if not quite, the master poems 
 of modern democracy. Byron was a revolted 
 aristocrat, it is true; but his acquired sym- 
 pathy with democratic ideals, especially those 
 of America, became a liberalizing force that 
 can hardly be overpraised and should never 
 be forgotten. We, at least, the countrymen 
 of the Washington he extolled, should not be 
 232 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 ungrateful to his memory ; and the advocates 
 of peace among the nations should hail hirn 
 as their most effective champion. 
 
 But the reader may ask, What has become 
 of the vicious, the irreligious Byron of our 
 forefathers — the author of the blasphemous 
 Cain and the licentious Don Juan, which 
 no self-respecting man ought to read? An 
 obvious answer to this question would be 
 the statement that he never existed, save in 
 the heated imaginations of his well-meaning, 
 but unintelligent, countrymen. Such an 
 answer, however, would smack partly of dis- 
 ingenuousness. It is true that the " monster 
 of wickedness " never existed ; but it is also 
 true that Byron, by his conduct and his 
 writings, sketched the outlines of a caricature 
 which his countrymen had only to fill in. 
 The high praise I have just given him as an 
 apostle of liberty and peace is thoroughly 
 deserved ; and he died a martyr for freedom ; 
 but his life was in many important respects 
 unworthy and low ; his character was soiled 
 by traits of vulgarity and vice ; and his writ- 
 ings were often impure. Time has naturally 
 softened us toward him; and study of him 
 and his age has convinced us that there was 
 far more of good than of bad in him, that 
 much extenuation can be found for his con- 
 233 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 duct and the impurity of his writings : but, 
 while we judge the man as leniently as we 
 can, it would not be just to ourselves if we 
 were to make as much allowance for his hter- 
 ary work,' the influence of which lives on. 
 We may, indeed, easily dismiss the charge of 
 blasphemy; for the word has various mean- 
 ings at various periods and to various orders 
 of intelligence. Byron did not mean to be 
 blasphemous ; and his attitude toward Chris- 
 tianity is at most wavering, not positively 
 sceptical or defiant. To eschew his poetry 
 on this account, in an age that tolerates Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward, would be little short of 
 ridiculous in any person of even semi-culture. 
 The charge of impurity cannot be dis- 
 missed so easily, although it would hardly 
 be raised against a foreign writer. Some of 
 his earliest verse was suppressed, on account 
 of its sensual tone, by his kind friend, Mr. 
 Beecher. In the lyrical and narrative work 
 written before his marriage he kept this vein 
 under, but did not manage, and probably did 
 not wish, to hide its existence. In the better 
 portions of Childe Harold, in the dramas, 
 even in such later tales as Parisina, it would 
 require a prying purist to find anything seri- 
 ously objectionable. In Beppo and Don 
 Juan, however, he gave himself a loose rein, 
 234 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 in spite of the importunities of La Guiccioli. 
 He took delight in shocking the sense of 
 propriety of his countrymen, who had treated 
 him with injustice; but, while his heartiest 
 admirers cannot but wish that he had not 
 gone so far, they find in this very fact not 
 only an excuse for him, but a safe means of 
 rescuing the two poems from the mass of por- 
 nographic and lubricous literature. Certain 
 scenes and passages of Don Juan are not 
 deliberate efforts to corrupt : they are rather 
 the ebullitions of a coarse, but thoroughly 
 sincere, satirist, bent on shocking people he 
 despises. The wit, the verve, the humor, the 
 satire that are explicit or implicit in almost 
 every stanza save Don Juan so as by fire. 
 
 The London of the Regency naturally 
 could not take this view of the matter, and 
 sought to drown its own shame in the clamor 
 that it raised over the alleged immorality of the 
 new poem ; but choice and wholesome spirits, 
 like Sir Walter Scott, saw that Byron had 
 struck his true vein, and cheered him on. 
 As the cantos proceeded, he held himself in 
 more and more, so that much of the poem is 
 practically unamenable to censure. And now 
 that time has removed us as far from him as 
 he was from Fielding, it would seem that 
 only those who are peculiarly sensitive to the 
 235 
 
THE BYRON REVIVAL 
 
 coarse, and peculiarly insensitive to wit, need 
 be warned away from the greatest master- 
 piece of its kind in any literature. 
 
 In short, just as an age that tolerates Mrs. 
 Ward need not fear that Byron will sap its 
 faith, so an age that reads without abhor- 
 rence certain chapters in The Manxman, 
 in Jude the Obscure, and in Evelyn 
 Innes, cannot with consistency put Don 
 Juan beyond the pale. Nor should an age 
 that admires brilliant achievements of all 
 kinds long withhold its praise from that won- 
 derfully passionate, strong, and sincere soul 
 which, after uttering itself in the master poem 
 and poetry of a tremendous epoch, gave itself 
 up a willing sacrifice to the cause of human 
 freedom in the fatal marshes of Missolonghi. 
 
 236 
 
VII 
 
 TEACHING THE SPIRIT OF 
 LITERATURE 
 
 237 
 
VII 
 
 TEACHING THE SPIRIT OF 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 Readers of Balzac's Une Fille d'Eve will 
 recall his description of the depressing edu- 
 cation given by the Countess de Granville 
 to her two young daughters. That she might 
 make smooth their path to heaven and matri- 
 mony, she subjected them to a regimen that 
 had at least one fatal defect, in that it took no 
 account of their emotions. Its results may 
 be learned from the story, but few thoughtful 
 readers will refrain from asking themselves 
 whether our educational regimen is not in 
 too many cases followed by results similar 
 in kind, if not in degree. 
 
 Parents and teachers of modern America 
 have doubtless quite different ideals for their 
 children from those of the Countess de Gran- 
 ville, but they often make the mistake that 
 she did of pursuing these ideals at the cost 
 of their children's emotions ; that is to say, at 
 the cost of their real happiness. The ideals 
 239 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 of the French mother were summed up in 
 the word convenance ; the ideals of too many 
 American mothers and fathers, and, I regret 
 to add, teachers, are summed up in the word 
 " utility." Neither set of ideals takes much 
 account of those emotions which are the 
 highest part of our nature, and are most 
 impressionable in childhood ; for the world 
 of the suitable and of the useful is the world 
 of fact, and fact has to be transmuted by the 
 imagination before it can reach and act upon 
 the emotions. It follows, then, that every 
 educational regimen which appeals to the 
 mind through facts should be supplemented 
 by one which appeals to the soul through 
 ideas; that is, through facts transmuted by 
 the imagination. Hence no educational sys- 
 tem is complete that does not include instruc- 
 tion in religion and art, the two chief sources 
 of appeal to the emotions. For obvious 
 reasons we Americans have been compelled 
 to leave religion outside the ordinary school 
 and college curriculum, and this is practically 
 the case with the plastic arts. We are thus 
 reduced to rely mainly on literature and 
 music as sources of appeal to the emotions 
 of our youth, but we have hitherto made 
 insufficient use of both. 
 
 This was not the case with the best edu- 
 240 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 cated people the world has ever known, the 
 Greeks. Literature, especially poetry, and 
 music were the basis of a Greek boy's edu- 
 cation, and education in these two arts (which 
 it must be remembered were closely con- 
 nected with religion) led to the culmination 
 of all the other arts in the Athens of Pericles. 
 But the Athens of Pericles had its weakness 
 as well as its strength, and the world has 
 moved forward greatly in twenty-three hun- 
 dred years ; hence the basis of a boy's edu- 
 cation should be far broader now than it was 
 then. Yet while broadening the base and 
 shifting its centre, we should not be rash 
 enough to cast away its old material. Poetry 
 and music are still essential to any sound 
 educational system; and this being so, the 
 inquiry how they may best be taught is of 
 great interest, and, if confined to the first 
 named, leads to the main topic of this 
 paper. 
 
 I use the term "poetry" advisedly, for 
 it best represents the literature of the imagi- 
 nation, and that is what we have to deal with, 
 as we shall see at once after a little analysis. 
 What did the Greek teacher expect his 
 pupils to get from their study of Homer? 
 Probably two sets of good results ; one affect- 
 ing the mind, the other the soul. From the 
 i6 241 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 Iliad and the Odyssey the Greek boy could 
 derive much information with regard to 
 mythology, genealogy, and so-called history. 
 They served also as reading-books, and for 
 a long while took the place of formal gram- 
 mars and treatises on rhetoric. In other 
 words, they were to him a storehouse of 
 facts. But they also filled him with emotions 
 of pleasure. They charmed his ear by their 
 cadences; they charmed his inner eye by 
 their pictures; they charmed his moral na- 
 ture by the examples they offered him of sub- 
 lime beauty and bravery and patriotism. In 
 short, they were to him a storehouse of 
 ideas ; and this, in the eyes of his teacher, 
 was doubtless their chief value. But nowa- 
 days we need not use poetry as a storehouse 
 of facts, and we need to use literature for 
 this purpose only so far as a good style helps 
 in the presentation of facts, as for example 
 in the case of history. With our long list 
 of sciences, natural and linguistic and moral, 
 we are in no danger of ignoring the world 
 of facts, and are therefore free to use litera- 
 ture, especially poetry, in order to appeal to 
 the emotions of youth. Hence, in inquiring 
 how we may best teach literature, we are really 
 inquiring how we may best teach the litera- 
 ture of the imagination, — that is, poetry in 
 242 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 a wide sense ; for it would seem that litera- 
 ture ysed as a storehouse of facts might be 
 taught like any other subject in the domain 
 of fact. 
 
 But some one may ask, While all this is 
 true enough, what has it to do with the prac- 
 tical teaching of literature? I answer that it 
 has everything to do with it. If the chief 
 reason for teaching literature be the fact that 
 we shall thereby best appeal to the emotions, 
 what is one to say of the amount of time 
 given to the study of the history of literature, 
 and to those critical, philological, and histori- 
 cal annotations that fill most of our literary 
 textbooks ? The history of literature is im- 
 portant enough, but it belongs to the domain 
 of fact; it does not appeal primarily to the 
 emotions. It is well for a child to know the 
 names of great books and their authors; it 
 is just as well that he should not say that 
 Fielding wrote Tom Jones's Cabin or that 
 Telemachus was a great French preacher of 
 the seventeenth century, as I have known 
 university students to do. But if the history 
 of literature really appealed to the emotions, 
 if it vitally affected any pupil, would he make 
 such mistakes? The history of literature be- 
 longs to the domain of fact just as much as 
 geography does, and the ability on the part 
 243 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 of a child to reel off the names of authors 
 and their dates is just as useless as his ability 
 to tell the capital of Bolivia or to draw a map 
 of Afghanistan. A certain amount of infor- 
 mation about books and writers is useful, — 
 the amount given in Mr. Stopford Brooke's 
 and Professor Richardson's primers and in 
 Mr. Brander Matthews's volume on American 
 literature, — but not a bit more ; for as in- 
 tellectual training the history of literature is 
 not nearly so efficient as many another 
 study. 
 
 But if teaching the history of literature be 
 beside the mark, if we wish to reach the 
 emotions, what are we to say of criticism ? I 
 cannot see that we can say anything different. 
 That pupil of mine who called Cowper's lines 
 on the receipt of his mother's picture out of 
 Norfolk an " ode " made an absurd mistake, but 
 I am not at all sure that he would have been 
 essentially better or happier if he had not 
 made it. Critical appreciation is certainly 
 better than uncritical, but, after all, apprecia- 
 tion is the main thing, and must precede 
 criticism. Just how much critical, philologi- 
 cal, and historical elucidation is needed to 
 make a poem intelligible — for of course it 
 has to be apprehended intellectually before 
 it can produce its full emotional effect — is a 
 244 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 hard matter to decide, but I am sure that the 
 amount varies with the ages of the pupils. 
 The younger the pupils, the simpler and less 
 numerous the teacher's comments should be ; 
 for he has no right to be dealing with an ob- 
 scure poem, and he must remember that he 
 is not, or should not be, trying to teach his 
 pupils facts. I am forced to conclude, then, 
 that the common practice of putting into the 
 hands of pupils a certain number of fully an- 
 notated classics, with the understanding that 
 the unfortunate pupils are to be examined on 
 the numerous facts contained in the notes and 
 introductions, whatever may be claimed for it 
 by college associations or by the editors of 
 such books, is not the very best way of using 
 literature as an appeal to the emotions of the 
 young. Criticism, philology, and history are 
 admirable handmaids to literature, but they 
 are not literature, and they will not help us 
 much in an appeal to the emotions. To 
 make this appeal we must bring pupils 
 in contact with the body of literature, and 
 here is the crucial point of the problem be- 
 fore us. 
 
 But is not this to play into the hands of 
 men like the late Professor Freeman, who 
 opposed the establishment of a Chair of Lit- 
 erature at Oxford on the plea that we cannot 
 245 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 examine on tastes and sympathies ? If we are 
 to make a minimum use of criticism, philo- 
 logy, and history, what manner of examina- 
 tion shall we be able to set our classes in 
 literature? To this question Mr. Churton 
 Collins replied that we ought to examine on 
 Aristotle, Longinus, Quintilian, and Lessing ; 
 that is to 3ay, on criticism. A very good an- 
 swer so far as university students are con- 
 cerned. The history and theory of literary 
 composition, especially of poetry, should be 
 included in every well-organized curriculum, 
 and any competent teacher can examine on 
 them. But though these studies may chasten 
 the emotions, they do not primarily appeal 
 to or awaken them, and for the purposes of 
 the elementary teacher they are almost use- 
 less. Are such teachers, then, to be debarred 
 from making use of those departments of lit- 
 erary study that admit of being tested by ex- 
 amination? I answer, Yes, so far as their 
 main work is concerned. A small amount 
 of literary history may be required and pu- 
 pils may be examined on it, and perhaps a 
 tiny amount of criticism, but for the most 
 part school classes in literature should go 
 scot-free from examination. 
 
 This will seem a hard saying to teachers 
 enamored of school machinery, — who teach 
 246 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 by cut-and-dried methods, and regard the 
 school-day as a clock face, with the recita- 
 tion hours corresponding to the figures, and 
 themselves and their pupils to the hands. 
 But the literary spirit and the mechanical 
 spirit have long been sworn enemies, for 
 machinery has no emotions ; so, for the pur- 
 poses of this paper, we need hardly consider 
 the mechanical teacher, who had best keep 
 bis hands off literature. The born teacher, 
 the teacher with a soul, — and I am optimist 
 enough to believe that many of the men and 
 women in this country who are wearing their 
 lives away in the cause of education belong 
 to this category, — will be glad to believe 
 that there is at least one important study that 
 need not and should not be pursued mechani- 
 cally. The trouble will be not so much with 
 the pupils and teachers as with the parents 
 and statisticians, who want marks and grades, 
 and that sort of partly necessary, partly hope- 
 less thing. Now I have not the slightest idea 
 how a child can be graded or marked on his 
 emotions, yet I am sure that all teaching of 
 literature that is worthy the name takes ac- 
 count of these chiefly. If this be true, should 
 we not be brave enough to let the machinery 
 go, and confine ourselves to the one pertinent 
 and eternal question. How young souls can 
 247 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 be best brought in contact with the spirit of 
 literature ? 
 
 If I may judge from my experience with 
 college work, covering several years, and 
 from my briefer experience with school 
 work, I am forced to the conclusion that 
 sympathetic reading on the part of the 
 teacher should be the main method of pre- 
 senting literature, especially poetry, to 
 young minds. I have never got good re- 
 sults from the history of literature or from 
 criticism except in the case of matured stu- 
 dents, and I never expect to. I have exa- 
 mined hundreds of papers in the endeavor to 
 find out what facts or ideas connected with 
 literature appeal most to the young, and I 
 have found that in eight out of ten cases it 
 is the trivial or the bizarre. I remember a 
 curious instance in point. I had been using 
 Gosse's History of Eighteenth Century Lit- 
 erature, and I asked my class to give a brief 
 account of the life of Alexander Pope. Judge 
 of my astonishment when I found that three 
 fourths of a large class had, without collusion, 
 and no matter what the merits of the indivi- 
 dual paper, copied verbatim the following 
 sentence : " Pope, with features carved as if 
 in ivory, and with the great melting eyes of 
 an antelope, carried his brilliant head on a 
 248 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 deformed and sickly body." Fortunately, in 
 this case the trivial facts retained were rightly 
 applied. In another case I was gravely in- 
 formed that the poet Collins died " of a 
 silk-bag shop,'' information that completely 
 staggered me until I found that Mr. Gosse, 
 innocent of any intention to mislead, had 
 stated that Sterne died in " lodgings over 
 a silk-bag shop." I need hardly cite further 
 examples of utter and ridiculous confusion of 
 names, for such examples are familiar to all 
 teachers of experience. What I need to 
 point out is that these mistakes are due, not 
 to the stupidity of our pupils or to our own 
 bad teaching, but to the fact that the history 
 of literature is drier than mineralogy to any 
 one who is not already fairly well read. 
 Much the same thing may be said of criti- 
 cism, only the chances of making mistakes 
 are magnified through the elusive nature of 
 the subject. It is well, certainly, to give a 
 child some interesting information about 
 great authors, and to try to teach him the 
 distinctions between the broader categories 
 of literature; but after this it seems to me 
 that the primary and secondary teachers 
 should rely mainly upon sympathetic read- 
 ing. Certainly this is my experience with 
 younger students. Whenever I find their at- 
 249 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 tention flagging, I begin to read, and mak« 
 my comments as brief as possible. In this 
 way I have reached men who seemed at first 
 sight to be hopeless. My most signal suc- 
 cess was when I involuntarily set a baseball 
 pitcher to committing certain sonnets of 
 Shakspere to memory, while he was rest- 
 ing from practising new curves. I have al- 
 ways been proud of that achievement, but I 
 believe it would be a by no means unusual 
 one if teachers generally would criticise less 
 and read more. The teacher must, of course, 
 read sympathetically, or the result will be 
 far from good. He must read with sincerity 
 and enthusiasm and understanding, and with 
 critical judgment. To try Browning's Red 
 Cotton Night-Cap Country on a class of 
 freshmen would be simply silly. To abstain 
 from reading Byron to them on account of 
 Mr. Saintsbury's recent utterances on the 
 subject of his lordship's poetry would be 
 equally silly. But there is, fortunately, a 
 large amount of English and American po- 
 etry that is both noble and suitable to the 
 comprehension of young minds. Where 
 Emerson's Brahma will prove incompre- 
 hensible, his Concord Hymn will stir 
 genuinely patriotic emotions. 
 
 It will be perceived that I am throwing a 
 250 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 great deal of responsibility on the teacher ; 
 and I think this is right, for the emotions of 
 his pupils are like the strings of an instru- 
 ment which he is to touch into life. After a 
 while his intermediation will become less 
 necessary, but at first it is essential in most 
 cases. In spite of what many critics say, it 
 is a fact that with a majority of children 
 whatever literary appreciation they may have 
 lies dormant until it is awakened by some 
 skilful hand. It is better that this hand 
 should be the teacher's, if only for the reason 
 that the performance of such a servipe will 
 add a pleasure to many a life wearied with 
 the daily rounds of mechanical duty. I am 
 sure that there is no teacher, man or woman, 
 who would not be glad to have a half-hour 
 set apart in each school-day in which arith- 
 metics and grammars could be laid aside, 
 and some favorite volume of poetry brought 
 out from the desk and read with sympathy 
 and enthusiasm. If I had a private school of 
 my own, I should surely snatch the time for 
 this, even if I had to have fewer maps drawn 
 and fewer examples in partial payments 
 worked. By the power of music Amphion 
 built the walls of Thebes ; by the power of 
 poetic harmony we can try to build up the 
 characters of our pupils. " What passion can- 
 251 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 hot music raise and quell?" asked Dryden, 
 and we may ask the same question with re- 
 gard to poetry. I have so much belief in 
 the power of the " concord of sweet sounds " 
 that I am inclined to say that many pupils 
 will receive benefit from merely hearing great 
 poetry read, even though it may not convey 
 much meaning to their minds. Take, for 
 example, this magnificent passage from 
 Lycidas : 
 
 " Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 
 Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled. 
 Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 
 Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide 
 Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ; 
 Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, 
 Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old. 
 Where the great vision of the guarded mount 
 Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold ; 
 Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth. 
 And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth." 
 
 For the elucidation of these eleven lines I 
 felt compelled to give recently nearly three 
 pages of notes, over one page being con- 
 cerned with the single word "Angel." Now 
 I do not believe that the average schoolboy 
 would have any clear notion as to who this 
 Angel was, or as to what Bellerus or Naman- 
 cos meant, but I think that the noble picture 
 of the corpse of Lycidas washed by the 
 252 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 sounding seas would appeal profoundly to 
 his imagination, and that he would be the 
 better for having heard his teacher read the 
 lines. That he would be the better for nine 
 out of ten of the critical and philological an- 
 notations that editors are constrained to make 
 on the passage I see grave reason to doubt. 
 The fact is that we have let the teacher of the 
 Greek and Latin classics affect us by methods 
 of minute analysis better fitted to the study 
 of a dead than of a living language. These 
 same classical teachers have, too, not a little 
 to answer for, on account of the slight which 
 time out of mind they have put on the purely 
 literary side of their work. How many 
 teachers of Latin, when reading Virgil, stop 
 to comment on the sonorous quality of such 
 a grand verse as 
 
 " Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem," 
 
 or upon this verse of Horace's, 
 
 " Cras ingens iterabimus asquor," 
 
 which suggests comparison at once with 
 Shakspere's "multitudinous seas," or with 
 Matthew Arnold's 
 
 " The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea " ? 
 
 But the mention of Arnold reminds me 
 that the stress I am laying on sympathetic 
 253 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 reading of poetry by the teacher is merely 
 an amplification of his advice that we should 
 keep passages of great poetry in our minds, 
 to serve as touchstones (perhaps tuning-forks 
 would be a more accurate though less elegant 
 metaphor) that will enable us to detect the 
 presence or absence of truly poetic qualities 
 in the verse we read. I should add also that 
 this method of study is strictly in line with 
 the best modern ideas ; for pupils should be 
 put in touch with a subject as a whole before 
 they are set to studying its parts- 
 There are many other things that I should 
 like to say, did space permit, I should like 
 to protest against the use of great literature 
 for exercises in parsing or for etymological 
 or philological investigations ; it ought even 
 to be sparingly used for the purposes of read- 
 ing-^lasses. I should like to protest against 
 the lack of judgment shown by teachers and 
 college professors in the texts they assign for 
 study, — two books of Pope's Iliad, for exam- 
 ple, in place of his Rape of the Lock, — 
 a matter, however, in which we teachers of 
 English are so far ahead of our friends who 
 teach French and German that perhaps I 
 ought to be thankful for the progress we 
 have made. I should like finally to insist 
 upon what I believe will some day be gen- 
 254 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE 
 
 erally recognized, — the supremacy of litera- 
 ture as a study over all others that now 
 occupy the world's attention. For when 
 everything is said, it is literature, and espe- 
 cially poetry, that has the first and the un- 
 disputed right to enter the audience-chamber 
 of the human soul. Painting, sculpture, 
 music, the whole noble list of the sciences, 
 the lower but still important useful arts, may 
 and must continue to appeal and minister to 
 the spirit of man; but artistic prose and 
 poetry are the servants, — nay, are they not 
 rather the masters? — on which that spirit 
 has relied from the beginning of time, and 
 on which it will rely till time itself shall 
 end. 
 
 255 
 
VIII 
 MR. HOWELLS AND ROMANTICISM 
 
 17 257 
 
VIII 
 
 MR. HOWELLS AND ROMAN- 
 TICISM 
 
 Mr. William Dean Howells recently had 
 occasion to speak a good word for the fiction 
 that is being produced in our Southern 
 States, but he prefaced his remarks by some 
 uncomplimentary references to romantic fic- 
 tion and to the Southern novelists, like Simms, 
 Kennedy, and Esten Cooke, that wrote it. 
 His exact words were : " I know that there 
 were before the war novelists in South Caro- 
 lina, in Maryland, and in Virginia deeply 
 imbued with what our poor Spanish friends 
 call the Walter-Scottismo, not to say the 
 Fenimore^Cooperismo, of an outdated fashion 
 of the world's fiction. But I have never read 
 one of their books, and I should be able to 
 say what they were like only at second hand." 
 It was extremely proper for Mr. Howells 
 to refrain from discussing Simms, Kennedy, 
 and Cooke, since he confessedly knows 
 nothing about them, but was it proper for 
 259 
 
ROMANTICISM 
 
 him to refer to them in quite the tone he 
 used? Mr. Howells is too true a man to be 
 arrogant, but sometimes his criticism is so 
 aggressively modern that it falls little short 
 of arrogance. There is surely no need of 
 speaking of the fiction of sixty years ago as 
 one would of a worn-out coat. It may be 
 old-fashioned, but literary as well as other 
 fashions are known to revive, and the material 
 of a novel, which is human nature, does not 
 unravel or become moth-eaten as the material 
 of a coat does. Besides, no one wears an 
 old coat who is not obliged to, while thou- 
 sands of quite intelligent people still enjoy 
 and read the romances their fathers read, and 
 a whole school of writers has arisen whose 
 aim is to break away from the realistic fiction 
 Mr. Howells writes and advocates. 
 
 I am not at all disposed to blame Mr. 
 Howells for praising the fiction he likes ; all 
 I claim is that it is uncatholic in him not to 
 have a good word to say for writers who 
 endeavored to do for their day what he is 
 doing so well for his. His canon of criticism 
 seems to be that what pleases the present is 
 all a man need consider ; quite as sure, if not 
 a surer canon would be that there is some 
 good in whatever has thoroughly pleased the 
 bygone generations of men. Then, again, 
 260 
 
ROMANTICISM 
 
 if there is any truth in the theory of evolution, 
 the fiction of to-day must have been evolved 
 out of the fiction of yesterday; hence the 
 latter can hardly be foolish if the former be 
 good, and present-day writers ought at least 
 to cultivate the virtue of gratitude. 
 
 But is there any reason why a person who 
 can enjoy as I have just done Mr. Howells's 
 delightful Story of a Play should not be 
 able to read with pleasure, as I did long 
 since Simms's Eutaw, Kennedy's Horse-Shoe 
 Robinson and Cooke's Virginia Comedians? 
 Perhaps there is one rather effective reason, 
 the fact that many people have an im- 
 perfect sympathy with the past. This is 
 one of the chief reasons why such a poem 
 as Paradise Lost is so little read to-day; 
 but wpuld it not be foolish to argue 
 that great poem's worthlessness from its 
 paucity of readers ? Mr. Howells, of course, 
 does not argue at all about the worthlessness of 
 ante bellum Southern fiction, but the way in 
 which he passes it over suggests that if he 
 did argue, his argument would be based upon 
 the inapplicability of that fiction to present 
 conditions — which is tantamount to ignoring 
 the fact that it is possible to get a great deal 
 of pleasure out of any good artistic product 
 of the past if we can put ourselves in touch 
 261 
 
ROMANTICISM 
 
 with it. But that thousands of people can 
 do this is a matter of cvcry-day experience, 
 hence it would be more becoming in llx; 
 friends of realism l<j acknowledjje with 
 Horatio — for that gentleman was doubtless 
 wise enough to .igree with Hamlet — that 
 there are more things than are dreamed of 
 in their philosophy. There are s<;me good 
 things, however, in Mr. J lowelis's jjhilosophy, 
 and I shall now try to show what these are. 
 
 When Mr. Howells, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, endeavors to divert readers from 
 the older romances, he shows himself, I 
 think, to be an uncatholic critic ; but in so 
 far as his remarks affect latter-day writers, 
 they seem to me to be aitoj^ether admirable. 
 There can be no que.stion that the art of fiction 
 has developed ; there is equally n(j question 
 that those who write it to-day ought to be 
 abreast of the art they practise. The realistic 
 work of Balzac, Flaubert, Daudct, Zola, Tol- 
 stoi, Hardy and Howells has made it impossi- 
 ble for readers, not in fair sympathy with the 
 past, to tolerate much of the crude work of 
 sixty years ago. This is as it should be, and 
 if the art of fiction develop, the writers of 
 realistic fiction who are the masters to-day will 
 be left behind in their turn, except in the case 
 of such comprehensive geniuses as Balzac. 
 262 
 
RCjMANTICI.SM 
 
 r>iit if tlii't \}<: true, arf: not writers wast- 
 ing; tti'rir time, if, ia revolt against present 
 u\cl\ui(i:i, they throw themselves back upon 
 p.iit niethodn without having ]tr<t(iU:<\ from 
 the teaehings of contemporary masters? 
 '1 hey may gain reafieri, of course, and if 
 tliey have no other end in view their revolt 
 i^ justified; but if they are conscientious 
 artists, are they not making a mistake? l''or 
 example, what permanent place- in literature 
 ean the increasing swarm (jf men and women 
 who are imitating Mr. Stanley Weyman 
 oqiect to have? They have profited a little 
 ill point of style from the later masters, their 
 knowli-dge of history and archaeology is 
 C/cs'tter than that of the romancers of two 
 generation!! ago, but they surely do not in 
 most cases succeed in keeping their books 
 from being mere /ours de force. Almost 
 every day a new historical rcMTiance comes 
 to my table — now the scene is laid in the 
 Italy of the fourteenth century, now in the 
 I'rance (jf the thirteenth; now it is in Wales, 
 now in the i''aroe Islands. Nearly always 
 tii(; story is told by the chief actor, who has 
 hairbreadth escapes in plenty — in which 
 neither author nor reader ought normally 
 to take much interest, f(jr they seem to be 
 utterly faclitioiiH. I low much more good 
 263 
 
ROMANTICISM 
 
 these authors weuld be doing if they would 
 only write .as well as they could at)put the 
 life .around thepi. 
 
 The early romancers did not dp this, to be 
 sure, but they did do something their modern 
 imitators cannot do — they breathed the 
 spirit of romance, which was in the air of 
 their times, into their souls and practically 
 lived by it. The romantic thus became al- 
 most the real to them, and hence their works 
 represented them truly. But there is no 
 genuine spirit of romanticisni abroad to-day ; 
 life was never more real and strenuous and 
 earnest; hence our latter-day romancers dp 
 not give out what they breathe in. Their 
 romanticism is artificial, factitious ; it is the 
 product of a literary fad which is itself the 
 product of a premature literary revolt. Cer- 
 tainly realism when it passed into naturalism 
 went too far and a revolt was needed ; but it 
 seems a pity that the revohers should npt 
 have gone back to sound realism and made a 
 pew departure from it. Men who have lost 
 their way try to strike their path .ag^in at the 
 point of divergence ; they dp not make for a 
 deserted camp and pursue a backward trail 
 therefrom. But this is just what our recent 
 romancers have been doing, and if in any 
 way Mr. Howells's criticisms can show them 
 264 
 
ROMANTICISM 
 
 the folly of their course I trust that every 
 word he writes will be seriously pondered. 
 What I have just been saying will receix/e con- 
 siderable illustration from a cursory exanlina- 
 tion of one of the mOst delightful books of 
 Daudet — his autobiographic romance, Le 
 Petit Chose (Little What 's-His-Name). The 
 first part of this story is realistic in the 
 best sense of the term ; that is, it sticks close 
 to thfe facts of experience while treating them 
 in an idealistic way. Mere realism, hot shot 
 through with idealism, soon degenerates into 
 naturalism, and is as unpleasant as an entirely 
 unideal character is in real hfe. It was al- 
 ways impossible for Daudfet to write without 
 idealizing, but in the first part of Le Petit 
 Chose his ideal picture of his boyhood was 
 a true picture, which lost nothing by being 
 pure at the same time. 
 
 In the second part of his story, however, 
 while not ceasing to be idealistic, he did 
 cease to be realistic and became romantic in 
 a high degree. He left the facts of experi- 
 ence behind, with the result that his story 
 lost both force and charm. He failed to 
 give a picture of Bohemian Paris that would 
 at all compare with those of Balzac or even 
 with those which he himself gave later. He 
 weakened his leading character and made th6 
 265 
 
ROMANTICISM 
 
 others either pathetic or commonplace. And 
 all this resulted from the fact that when he 
 ceased to rely upon his personal experiences, 
 his feet ceased to rest upon the solid ground, 
 and he began flitting like a pretty butterfly. 
 If he had written a generation earlier, we 
 should not have felt the weakness, for his 
 story would have been all of a piece, and 
 would have represented the best he had to 
 give. Writing in 1868, however, he failed 
 to profit by the example set by Balzac, and 
 it was some time before he realized his 
 mistake. 
 
 This book of Daudet's, then, illustrates 
 admirably the fact that in an unromantic age 
 it is useless to attempt to depart from the 
 canons of true realism. These canons de- 
 manded that Daudet should keep his eye on 
 both real and ideal life, and that he should 
 not write merely a pretty and pathetic story 
 ending in a happy marriage literally forced 
 upon a ne'er-do-well by the singularly impru- 
 dent father of a much forgiving damsel. 
 Later in his life, Daudet, having learned the 
 value of true realism, regretted that he had 
 written Le Petit Chose, for he felt that he 
 could have turned his youthful experiences 
 to better account. Perhaps he was wrong in 
 this ; at least, it is certain that the first half, 
 266 
 
ROMANTICISM 
 
 in which he did not aim at romantic effects, 
 is one of the most perfect descriptions of the 
 checkered experience of a child and youth 
 that can be found in Hterature. And it has 
 these merits because it is true to facts rather 
 than to mere desires. The romancer consults 
 desires, and so builds air castles in which the 
 active men and women of to-day do not care 
 to tarry. The naturalist, forgetting the ideal, 
 is only too likely to construct sties in which 
 no clean-minded person will feel comfortable 
 for a moment. The true realist builds a solid 
 and substantial house in which the intelli- 
 gent reader delights to linger. Thus we per- 
 ceive that when Mr. Howells praises realism 
 he is doing all writers of fiction a service, al- 
 though we need not, as readers, agree with 
 his slighting remarks with regard to the 
 romances that delighted our grandfathers. 
 
 267 
 
IX 
 
 TENNYSON AND MUSSET ONCE 
 MORE 
 
 269 
 
IX 
 
 TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 ONCE MORE. 
 
 I HAD just ceased reading, a few weeks since, 
 the interesting but rather bulky volumes 
 which the present Lord Tennyson has de- 
 voted to the memory of his distinguished 
 father, when chance led me to examine in 
 succession two yellow-backed books pub- 
 lished this year in Paris (1897). They were 
 M. Paul Mari^ton's Une Histoire d' Amour 
 and the letters of George Sand to Alfred de 
 Musset and to Ste. Beuve, with an intro- 
 duction by M. S. Rocheblave. No contrast 
 could have been greater than that afforded 
 by the severe restraint of the Tennyson 
 memoir and the utter abandon of the two 
 latest contributions to the history of the most 
 famous love affair of the nineteenth century. 
 The impulse to draw a sort of Plutarchian 
 parallel was almost irresistible, and equally 
 potent was the desire to read once more 
 Taine's well-known comparison of Tennyson 
 271 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 and Musset in the last chapter of his His- 
 toire de la Littdrature Anglaise. 
 
 We all remember how Taine contrasted 
 the two poets and the respective publics for 
 which they wrote, and we recall the impres- 
 sionist note with which he closed what he 
 tried to make a rigidly scientific work — " but 
 I prefer Alfred de Musset." We can most of 
 us probably, if we were under Tennyson's in- 
 fluence when we read these words — arid who 
 of us was not in those golden days? — re- 
 member the fine scorn we felt for the French- 
 man who had the audacity to liiaintdin that 
 his country, land of broken-backed Alexan- 
 drines as it was, had produced a poet worthy 
 of being mentioned in the same breath with 
 the author of CEnone, Maud, and Elaine. 
 This fine scorn which we felt then has 
 lingered on with some people, and actu- 
 ally intrudes its6lf into the appendijc to 
 the second volume of the Tennyson meriioir, 
 where the late Professor Palgrave permitted 
 himself to speak of M. Taine as a " lively 
 critic." But to those of us who have been 
 allowed to see the error of our way through 
 our reading of Hugo, Leconte de Lisle, arid 
 Musset himself, who have learned to our sur- 
 prise that much of What our teachers had 
 told us about the insilfficiericy of the French 
 272 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 language to the expression of high poetic 
 thought and sentiment was due to mere ig- 
 norance on their p^rt, a doubt has perhap? 
 come more than once whether Taine was not 
 partly justified in his preference for Musset 
 over Tennysori — a doubt which the perusal 
 of the four volumes named above does not 
 altogether allay. For from contrasting the 
 lives of the two poets, one proceeds inevi- 
 tably tp the weighing and contrasting of 
 their works. 
 
 With regard to the memoir of Tennyson 
 little need be said. Since its appearance in 
 October last there has been no such person- 
 age as an " indolent reviewer " to be found 
 in the land. The critics seem to have gone 
 down like ninepins before it, and they are 
 still lying in a state of prostrate and hardly 
 becoming adulation. Could the Laureate 
 have foreseen their posturep, he woi|ld prob^ 
 ably have burned more letters thap he did, 
 ^nd would have bpen still more deterinined 
 to have his poem. The Gle^m, repejved as 
 the sole authorized memorial of his life. The 
 gift of prescience was not his, however, and 
 so we are left tp wonder whether the reading 
 wprld of a hundred years from now will really 
 peruse with rapture the letters pf Queen Vic- 
 toria, the reminiscences pf Mr. Tyndall and 
 i8 273 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 other famous contemporaries, the mere social 
 notes of Mr. Lowell and his peers, the ex- 
 tracts from private diaries, that make up a 
 large portion of these volumes which the 
 critics have already placed by the side of 
 Boswell's Johnson. But whatever our con- 
 clusions as to the mortality or immortality of 
 this memoir in its present bulky shape, we 
 should surely be blind if we failed to recog- 
 nize the essential nobility of the life por- 
 trayed. The man whom the English have 
 been extolling, while their French neighbors 
 have been picking his great rival to pieces, 
 was obviously a noble and conscientious 
 artist in verse, a poet fully impressed with 
 the sacred nature of his calling, a critic of 
 remarkably acute powers, a widely read and 
 observant student of nature and of men, an 
 intensely spiritual seeker after God, a loyal 
 patriot and friend — in short, an ideal char- 
 acter of a high and attractive type. 
 
 Such was the man — except perhaps in his 
 rdle of critic — that had stood out behind the 
 Poems ; such is the man that stands out be- 
 hind the Biography. But neither the poetry 
 nor the memoir proves Tennyson to have 
 been the profound seer that Mr. Gladstone 
 and other contemporaries thought him, nor 
 does either source of information disprove 
 274 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 the charge that he was morbidly sensitive, 
 and hence unable to give full expression 
 to the lyric passion that was a fundamental 
 constituent of his nature. It is in view of this 
 charge that the destruction of the letters to 
 Arthur Hallam and to Miss Sellwood before 
 she became Lady Tennyson is so much to be 
 regretted. Whatever the admirers of Maud 
 may say, the Tennyson that we know through 
 his poems after 1 842 and through the memoir 
 is rather the poet of idyll, elegy, and artificial 
 epic than the poet of lyrical passion, whether 
 of love or grief. That he was profoundly 
 passionate we have reason to believe from 
 the evidence of friends, from some of the early 
 poems — perhaps FitzGerald's well-known in- 
 ability to appreciate fully the later poems came 
 from his missing the adequate expression of 
 this passion, and not from the fact, ungener- 
 ously urged by the present Lord Tennyson, 
 that he did not see the faulted verses in 
 manuscript — and from lyric outbursts in the 
 long roll of poems that succeeded the volumes 
 of 1842. But, whatever the cause, the at- 
 mosphere about the matured poet did not 
 furnish sufficient oxygen for the flame of his 
 passion, and it flickered and burned low. 
 Yet it was diverted rather than suppressed, 
 and it kindled his other poetic powers. He 
 275 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 became the artist passionate for perfection, 
 he searched the ages for noble characters, 
 and imparted some passion to them, his spir- 
 ituality and his patriotism glowed brighter 
 with the years, even the pessimistic utterances 
 of his latter days had a certain lurid quality 
 about them, go at least it seems to some of 
 us, ?ind prizing tboiigii we do what he has 
 chosen to give «s, we miss both in the poetry 
 and in the life that lyrical expression of 
 Tennyson's innermost nature which he would 
 surely have giyen ug h«id be been a contem-? 
 ppr^ry qf Byron's or a countryman of Mus^ 
 set's. It is vain to tell us that he took the 
 mpr§ dignified epyrse, tliat he had a right to 
 keep his deepest and most sacred emotion^ 
 hidden from the ^yorld ; it is vain to quote to 
 us from Leconte de Ljsle's .fine aonnet, Les 
 Mpntreurs, which derives its interest from 
 the very quality its author denounces in 
 others. If Tennyson had not phown us that 
 his real strength pr a great part of his real 
 strength lay in the lyrical expression £>{ his 
 passion, we §hoyld be content to praise him 
 as -we do reflective poets like Wordsworth; 
 but baving givea us reason to believe that he 
 had in him the fire that burned in Sappho 
 and Catullus, in Shakspere, Byron, and Mus? 
 set, he disappoints us by rarely or never 
 276 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 breaking into flame, either in his verse or in 
 the biography which his son has constructed 
 according to his wishes. "From him that 
 hath not, even that which he hath shall be 
 taken away." Are we unreasonable in our 
 demands upon Tennyson? Ought we to be 
 contented with the noble work he has given 
 us ? Perhaps so ; yet a few of us at least, 
 after reading the memoir and going back to 
 the poems, have found ourselves asking for pre- 
 cisely what Taine demanded over thirty years 
 ago, and what he averred he found in Alfred de 
 Musset. But this leads us naturally to take 
 account of our two yellow French twelvemos, 
 which show up so pitifully in appearance be- 
 side the royal English octavos. 
 
 It would not be true to say that the Pari- 
 sian public has been for the past eighteen 
 months as busy discussing the relations of 
 Musset and George Sand as the English- 
 speaking public has been for a shorter period 
 with regard to the secluded life of the recluse 
 of Farringford — for they have a multitude 
 of things to talk about in Paris — but it is 
 certainly true that the famous love-story has 
 attracted a great deal of attention, and that 
 Sandists and Mussetists have been waging a 
 new Battle of the Books, or else floundering 
 once more in that old Slough of Scandals 
 277 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 which Bunyan forgot to describe for us. 
 M. Mari^ton's book, for example, might seem 
 to be hurled at his Sandist adversaries from 
 out the very midst of the slough, for while 
 giving a history of the whole love-affair it 
 devotes itself mainly to answering in the 
 affirmative one question important to the 
 controversy — viz.. Was George Sand un- 
 faithful to Musset during the latter's illness 
 at Venice, or was she not? An affirmative 
 answer to this unsavory question not only 
 convicts George Sand of deliberate falsifica- 
 tion, but also convicts her, author though 
 she be, of La Mare au Diable, of being far 
 looser in her actions than that Juliette of hers 
 who went back to her scoundrel lover, Leone 
 Leoni. M. Marieton having made an affirm- 
 ative answer based on various hitherto un- 
 edited documents, it is, of course, in order 
 for a Sandist like M. Rocheblave to call the 
 authenticity of the documents into question, 
 although one could wish that he had better 
 grounds for doing so than the mere fact that 
 they are contradicted by certain statements 
 of George Sand, a not uninterested party. 
 Indeed, throughout this whole controversy a 
 partisan lack of care in weighing evidence is 
 as apparent as it is in literary controversies 
 with vvhich we are more familiar — for exam- 
 278 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 pie, that which is continually being waged 
 over the Hfe of Shelley. 
 
 It would not be profitable to undertake a 
 minute analysis either of M. Mari^ton's book 
 or of George Sand's passionate letters. The 
 details of the affair may be left to those who 
 care to go to the sources; its outlines are 
 well known and may be easily recalled. We 
 all remember that by the spring of 1833 
 Madame Dudevant had broken with Jules 
 Sandeau, and was lying in the trough of the 
 sea of romanticism waiting to be washed 
 higher by its on-coming waves. With her 
 inherited passions, with her artistic instincts, 
 with her banal experience of married life, and 
 with her stimulating contact with literary 
 success and the romantic fervor of the times, 
 she had no chance to escape a psychological 
 crisis of the most acute kind. A similar fate 
 was impending over Alfred de Musset. The 
 normal debauchery of an idle, aristocratic 
 youth about town, the easy success obtained 
 with the C^nacle by his Andalusian verses, 
 could not satisfy the most passionate heart 
 in Europe now that Byron was dead. He, 
 too, must have his psychological crisis, and it 
 would be more acute than George Sand's. 
 Whether Ste. Beuve perceived all this when 
 he played the part of uncle to the modern 
 279 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 Cressida, and tried to bring the romantic pair 
 together is not clear ; but it is at least certain 
 that from the time they first met, in June, 
 1833, the more inflammable heart was set 
 aglow, and that the more indurated one 
 speedily responded. Then, while Tennyson 
 was in the flush of his grief for Arthur 
 Hallam, came the seclusion of the quai 
 Malaquais, the honeymoon — for such the 
 infatuated lovers really deemed it — at 
 Fontainebleau, so well described in the 
 Confession and in Elle et Lui, then the 
 fateful journey to Italy. 
 
 The land of lovers had known few more 
 passionately sincere for the time being than 
 these two, and it had known few fates more 
 really tragic than that which awaited them. 
 For their passions, raging outside the bounds 
 of law, moral as well as physical, had to rise 
 to the height like waves and then break. 
 Musset's broke first. His nerves were 
 strained from his recent hfe of dissipation, 
 and his colossal amoiir-propre revolted from 
 the self-centred independence of a companion 
 who could write for hours without taking 
 note of his presence. He ruptured the alli- 
 ance by harsh words, and probably by acts 
 which he lived to regret and despise. Then 
 came the illness at Venice, the appearance of 
 280 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 Dr. Pietro Pagello upon the scene, the faith- 
 lessness of George Sand, the fantastic attempt 
 of Musset to reconcile himself to a manage d 
 irois, and finally his departure for Paris a 
 worn-out wreck of body, mind, and soul. 
 Nemesis had attached herself to him, seem- 
 ing to forget George Sand left behind in un- 
 romantic relations with Pagello. But Nemesis 
 was not really forgetful. She presided over 
 the letters, passionate on both sides, though 
 with that curious maternal note on the 
 woman's part that one finds never leaving 
 her, which were sent over the Alps ; she 
 presided over the undignified return journey 
 made by George Sand with Pagello in leash ; 
 she presided over the renewals of intimacy, 
 the swift partings, the letters, the private 
 journals, the tears and wailings of the re- 
 mainder of that eventful year, 1834; and 
 finally she has presided ever since over the 
 literary exploitation of the whole frantic epi- 
 sode, over the quarrels raised by the publi- 
 cation of Elle et Lui and Lui et EUe, 
 and the contentions of the Sandists and 
 Mussetists of the present day. 
 
 I have no desire to incur her displeasure 
 
 by going too deeply into these unpleasant 
 
 matters myself, but there are at least two 
 
 points, one specific and one general, that 
 
 281 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 ought to be touched on. The first is how far 
 M. Mari^ton's anti-Sand position is tenable. 
 He has published a journal of Dr. Pagello 
 himself, an incriminating romantic fragment 
 by George Sand, entitled En Moree, by- 
 means of which, it is claimed, she made her 
 love known to the physician, and a number 
 of interesting and valuable letters of Musset 
 chosen from the correspondence still some- 
 what jealously guarded by the poet's sister. 
 In addition he gives two drafts in Paul de 
 Musset's handwriting of the alleged account 
 dictated by Alfred of the now famous " vision " 
 of the sick-room at Venice and its conse- 
 quences, which readers of Lui et EUe have 
 not forgotten. Judged impartially, these docu- 
 ments, if genuine, are the most damaging 
 testimony yet brought against George Sand's 
 character. As has been intimated, doubt is 
 thrown upon their authenticity by her friends, 
 but although M. Maridton has not given us 
 all the information that could be desired 
 about them, it is hard to see how the journal 
 of Pagello (who was living at a great old age 
 when Marieton wrote but has since died) can 
 be thrown out of court, and if that stays, 
 the fragment En Morde, George Sand's gage 
 d^ amour, stays also. Indeed, there are a pri- 
 ori reasons why it should stay, for Pagello 
 282 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 could read French fluently, but spoke it 
 poorly, while George Sand was just picking 
 up Italian. A few romantic pages in her 
 facile style would, therefore, be the most 
 natural and effectual means she could choose 
 for a confession of so delicate a nature. 
 
 As for M. Mari6ton's reliance upon the 
 truth of Paul de Musset's sick-room scene, 
 it is only in keeping with his confidence in 
 the latter's entire defence of his brother. 
 M. Mari6ton, relying, it would seem, upon 
 Madame Lardin de Musset, and ignoring the 
 general verdict with regard to Paul's charac- 
 ter, declares that the latter's novel sweats 
 truth {sue la vdritd') where we should prefer 
 to say that it perspires dulness. In this 
 frank credence in Paul de Musset he is cer- 
 tainly bold, but if the dictated memoranda 
 can be shown by examination of watermarks, 
 etc., to bear the date assigned them, Decem- 
 ber, 1852, nearly four years and a half before 
 Alfred de Musset's death, they are certainly 
 documents that cannot be lightly treated. 
 They are supported, too, by a small piece of 
 corroborative evidence that has not, perhaps, 
 been sufficiently noticed. Alfred de Musset's 
 Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle, in which 
 he chivalrously takes all the blame on him- 
 self and absolves George Sand, is frequently 
 283 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 quoted as an authority for the fidelity of its 
 description of the Fontainebleau expedition 
 — for example, by Madame Arvede Barine in 
 her interesting sketch of Musset — but is not 
 generally relied on as an authority for Paul 
 de Musset's version of the sick-room incident. 
 Yet the single tea-cup drunk out of by the 
 two lovers (George Sand and Pagello), which 
 figures in Lui et Elle, figures also in the 
 Confession. Was it one of the touches 
 that made George Sand weep when she read 
 Alfred's novel? And what have the Sandists 
 done with this incriminating tea -cup? The 
 answer comes naturally enough — they have 
 swallowed it; or else, speaking seriously, we 
 may suppose that they infer that Paul de 
 Musset borrowed the tea-cup scene from 
 Alfred, and then embellished it in his own 
 peculiarly exasperating manner. 
 
 The second point that must be touched on 
 is the question what possible value can at- 
 tach to books treating of such an unpleasant 
 episode. Nearly all the reviewers have ex- 
 patiated on the delight they experienced 
 when they found the Tennyson volumes free 
 from scandal, so that one is left to infer that 
 unless they were indulging in cant, British 
 and American critics are above all vulgar 
 curiosity, and would prefer to draw a veil 
 284 
 
TEXXYSOX AXD MUSSET 
 
 over the inner histon,' of liteiaiy men, except 
 when, as in Tennyson's case, there is practi- 
 cally nothing to hide. It is needless to say 
 that snch is not the French \-iew, and that 
 no one who has studied his Ste. Beove will 
 conrinue to throw hjs in^uence on the side of 
 British cant. We shall do well to wish that 
 our liteiaiy heroes and heroines would lead 
 clean lives, but if they wiU not, and we pro- 
 pose to be their critics, we must follow them 
 at least to the banks of the Slough of Scan- 
 dals. From this point of \-iew, then, the 
 books we are considering should have been 
 published, and should be read by all serious 
 students of Geoige Sand and of Alfred de 
 Musset That they wiU be read by many 
 who are not serious students is, of course, 
 matter tor r^ret; but so is religious hypoc- 
 ris%% and sorely no one would suggest that 
 we should do away with all religions in 
 order to put an end to the propagation of 
 Tartnffes. 
 
 But the documents contained in these 
 books have claims to be regarded as some- 
 thii^ far higher than mere evidence in a 
 famous case of scandaL The letters that 
 passed between the two lovers are among the 
 most intense ever written, and are not merely 
 precious sources of information for all 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 students of Romanticism, but also lyrical out- 
 bursts of two passionate hearts that must be 
 ranked in the future but little below the in- 
 comparable Nuits of the more poetical and 
 sorely strained of the two protagonists of 
 this drama of suffering. Here, indeed, we 
 find the best excuse for the publication of all 
 the volumes and essays that have dealt with 
 this remarkable episode. Out of them some 
 anthologist, perhaps, still unborn, will be able 
 to cull a volume of letters, poems, pages of 
 description and extracts from private journals 
 that will be a source of delight to all who 
 care for the hterature of passion, and will 
 serve to make the memory of Musset and 
 George Sand, as the former predicted, as 
 abiding as that of Abelard and Hdlolse. With 
 the lapse of years the grosser features of the 
 story will be more or less eliminated, and the 
 flame of passion, which in Musset's case at 
 least was never really extinguished, will burn 
 clearly for all time. It is, of course, impossible 
 to prove such statements as these, for the 
 charge of romantic extravagance and insin- 
 cerity may be brought against the lovers, and 
 such a charge can never be thoroughly 
 refuted. Documents relative to any great 
 passion will always be judged favorably or 
 unfavorably, according to the capacity of 
 286 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 the critic or reader to understand or experi- 
 ence passion. Shakspere's Sonnets have 
 caused some people to wonder why he 
 wrote them, and have been held by other 
 people not to refer to any specific passions at 
 all. Still one may at least cite a few burning 
 passages from these letters that will help to 
 indicate the perfervid character of the whole 
 correspondence. 
 
 Here is how Musset, on April 30th, 1834, 
 could write to the woman who had abandoned 
 him: 
 
 " O mon enfant cherie, lorsque tu m'aimais, m'as- 
 tu jamais trompd? Quel reproche ai-je jamais eu 
 h, te faire pendant sept mois que je t'ai vue, jour par 
 jour? Et quel est done le lache misdrable qui 
 appelle perfide la femme qui I'estime assez pour 
 I'avertir que son heure est venue ? Le mensonge, 
 voil^ ce que j'abhorre, ce qui me rend le plus 
 de'fiant des hommes, peut-^tre le plus malheu- 
 reux. Mais tu es aussi sincere que tu es noble et 
 orgueilleuse." 
 
 Again he writes later in the year, after 
 relations have been renewed, only to bring 
 anguish to both, and when he feels that they 
 must have one final interview and part : 
 
 " Que ce ne soit pas I'adieu de monsieur Un tel et 
 de madame Une telle. Que ce soient deux ames 
 28; 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 qui ont souffert, deux intelligences souiifrantes, deux 
 aigles blesses qui se rencontrent dans le ciel, at qui 
 echangent un cri de douleur avant de se s^parer 
 pour I'^temite." 
 
 Was not the man who could write thus 
 justified in writing later : 
 
 " La posterity r^pdtera nos noms comme ceux de 
 ces amants immortels qui n'en ont plus qu'un a eux 
 deux, comme Romdo et Juliette, comme H61oise et 
 Ab^lard." 
 
 One citation from George Sand's equally 
 moving letters must suffice. Let us take it 
 from the highly wrought epistle of June 15th, 
 1834: 
 
 " Vols combien tu te trompais quand tu te croyais 
 us6 par les plaisirs et abruti par I'expdrience ! Vois 
 que ton corps s'est renouveld et que ton ame sort de 
 sa chr}'salide. Si, dans son engourdissement, elle 
 a produit de si beaux pofemes, quels sentiments, 
 quelles id^es en sortiront maintenant qu'elle a 
 d6p\oy6 ses ailes. Aime et ^cris, c'est ta vocation, 
 men ami. Monte vers Dieu sur les rayons de ton 
 gdnie et envoie ta muse sur la terre raconter aux 
 hommes les mysteres de I'amour et de la foi." 
 
 Alfred de Musset took his "brother 
 George " at her word, and-the next two years 
 were the most fruitful of his life. But how 
 288 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 does the work produced under such circum- 
 stances, together with that of his youth and 
 of his sterile later years, compare with that 
 of his more fortunate British contemporary — 
 for to compare the lives of the two men further 
 is surely unnecessary? Putting to one side 
 the delightful comedies and contes, have we 
 any right to share Taine's preference for 
 Musset's poetry as compared with that of 
 Tennyson? Obviously not, if Tennyson's 
 admirers, like Mr. Aldrich and Dr. Van Dyke, 
 are justified in maintaining that their favorite 
 must rank next to Shakspere and Milton in 
 the hierarchy of the English poets. If the 
 Idylls of the King be a sustained and noble 
 epic rather than the " boudoir epic " Mr. 
 Frederic Harrison finds them to be ; if In 
 Memoriam be really the most profound poem 
 of the century rather than an unequal series of 
 elegiac verses appealing to an over-emotional 
 and not very thoughtful public ; if Maud fails 
 in any way to suggest a sensational novel, and 
 The Princess is a work of perfect, not hybrid 
 art, then these poems, together with the 
 ballads, the idylls of English life, the mono- 
 logues, and the wonderful songs, are clearly 
 enough to set Tennyson far above the 
 author of the Nuits, the Letter to Lamartine, 
 and the Stanzas to Malibran. If, however, 
 19 289 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 Tennyson's longer poems are to be forgotten 
 save for selected passages, and if his reputa- 
 tion is to rest on the shorter poems in his early- 
 manner and on the tradition of his artistic 
 command of rhythm and diction ; if, further- 
 more, the world that is now sated with com- 
 posite art renews its youth through some 
 stirring crisis, and once more demands passion 
 as a primary element of literature, will the 
 bard of Aldworth and Farringford hold his 
 own against the poet of the streets of Paris? 
 Perhaps he may, in spite of all that may be 
 said about the suppression of his passion and 
 about the deficiencies of his longer poems. 
 Should the world come once more to demand 
 passion, it will probably be Byron that will 
 echpse Tennyson, not Alfred de Musset, 
 whose star will nevertheless rise splendidly in 
 the poetic heavens. For, after all, Musset's 
 strictly poetical work, great as it is at its best, 
 is not, it would seem, sufficient in amount to 
 balance that of Tennyson, even if the latter 
 poet is shorn of half his present glory by 
 envious time. But leaving the question of the 
 relative position of the two poets aside, it is 
 certainly permissible for those who care for 
 the lyrical expression of intense passion to 
 maintain that they find little or nothing in 
 Tennyson that takes the place for them of 
 290 
 
TENNYSON AND MUSSET 
 
 Musset's chief poems. If they are pressed to 
 point out a passage illustrating the kind of 
 passion they demand from Tennyson, but do 
 not find, they may quote these hnes from the 
 Nuit de Mai : 
 
 " J'ai vu le temps ou ma jeunesse 
 Sur mes l^vres ^tait sans cesse 
 Prete k chanter comme un oiseau ; 
 Mais j'ai souffert un dur martyre, 
 Et le moins que j'en pourrais dire, 
 Si je I'essayais sur ma lyre, 
 La briserait comme un roseau.''' 
 
 " Here," they may say, " is the ' lyric cry ' 
 which we have missed more or less in British 
 poetry since the days of Byron," and if they 
 are pressed to describe still further the voice 
 that has moved them so profoundly, they may 
 reply, quoting the Stanzas to Malibran : 
 
 " Cast cette voix du coeur qui seule au coeur arrive. 
 Que nul autre, aprfes toi, ne nous rendra jamais." 
 
 291 
 
I 
 
 31