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Literary And 
 Biographical Essays 
 
 A VOLUME OF PAPERS 
 BY THE WAY 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES WILLIAM JEARSON 
 
 AUTHOB OF 
 
 "THE CAEPENTEB PROPHET" 
 
 "THE SEAECH AFTER TRUTH" 
 
 "ATHEEEPOLD COED" 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
 1908 
 
^ ^snag-o 
 
 Copyright, 1908 
 SHERMAN. FRENCH &• COMPANY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Poetry ..,.,.,..... 1 
 
 Early American Poetry 13 
 
 The Art of Poetry ,., . 47 
 
 The English Language 79 
 
 Alexander Pope 93 
 
 Macaulay 123 
 
 Tennyson ,.,... 131 
 
 Robert Browning 151 
 
 RUSKIN ., 171 
 
 James Martineau 177 
 
 longeellow 195 
 
 Washington , . . . . 225 
 
 Lincoln i ,., ... ..... 245 
 
POETRY 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026942072 
 
POETRY 
 
 Poetry is one of the fine arts, and its ultimate basis 
 is that quality in the soul of man which will not let 
 him rest in the useful and the material, but leads him 
 on to seek also the beautiful and the spiritual. To 
 illustrate by analogy in the simplest way, men are not 
 content to cultivate only potatoes and cabbages, but 
 they also want lilies and roses, and not content with 
 clothing which is merely a protection, but insistent that 
 it shall also be an adornment. They are not satisfied 
 with houses which afford warmth and shelter merely, 
 but they want also beauty and refinement. 
 
 In like manner in the communication of their 
 thoughts, it is not enough to express them with clear- 
 ness and precision ; there must be added to these beauty 
 and sympathy. Poetry then rests upon the same basis 
 as Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, and Music, and 
 even more than any, of these noble arts reflects the gen- 
 eral character of the race that produces it. As the 
 race rises, its poetry rises also. Every increase in 
 knowledge, every refinement in manners, every growth 
 of justice, of kindness, of human sympathy, every new 
 perception of spiritual truth is speedily represented in 
 the poetry of the nation. 
 
 The names given to the poet are significant, and the 
 fact that in every nation they are the same is also fuU 
 of meaning. What are these names? The poet is the 
 seer, who pierces some of the veils of sense and of 
 futurity; he is the singer, who gives melody and 
 beauty to the language; he is the prophet, who must 
 speak because of the burden upon his heart. In old 
 I-l 1 
 
2 POETRY 
 
 English he is called " the maker " and that indeed is 
 the meaning of the word " poet," because he creates, 
 and makes what is most valuable and permanent in the 
 world, not clothing, or houses, or machinery but faith 
 and hope and charity. 
 
 It is for this reason that one of the noblest of 
 modem poets has said 
 
 " Blessings be with them and eternal praise 
 Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares. 
 The poets who on earth have made us heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays." 
 
 Now if this be true that the poet according to the 
 degree in which he deserves the name sees into the 
 nature of the world in which he lives, that he is able 
 to interpret this world to others, and is able to produce 
 nobler thoughts and feelings, his function is surely a 
 most exalted and precious one, deserving the respect 
 and admiration which all past ages have given to it; 
 and it is not altogether a healthy symptom that there 
 should be any appearance of neglect or indifference 
 regarding poetry in our day. People are indeed justly 
 intolerant of spurious poetry, as they are of spurious 
 religion, and for the same reason, that the higher and 
 more important a subject is, the less men like to see it 
 travestied and degraded. Any sensible man prefers 
 plain, clear prose to mechanical or affected verse, and 
 would rather read language in a simple and natural 
 order than language twisted, dislocated, juggled with, 
 as it is in some stuff called poetry. 
 
 Cowper says : 
 
 " If sentiment be sacrificed to sound, 
 And truth cut short to make a period round, 
 I judge a man of sense can scarce do worse 
 Than caper in the morris dance of verse." 
 
POETRY 3 
 
 But if sentiment is not sacrificed to sound, if the 
 soul is full of a passion for truth and beauty to which 
 prose can give no adequate expression, then the world 
 concurs in the benediction just quoted from Words- 
 worth. 
 
 " I had rather be a kitten and cry ' mew ' than one 
 of these metric ballad mongers," said Shakespeare; 
 and yet he did not stop writing poetry, but only tried 
 to substitute good for bad, and the world thanks him 
 for Lear and Hamlet as the result. 
 
 And we all of us, even the most busy and the most 
 prosaic, value our poetry more than our prose. In- 
 deed, we are most of us poetically richer than we are 
 aware of and would be surprised if we were to take an 
 accurate stock of our poetic wealth. Most of what 
 any of us can quote is poetry, the poetry of the Bible, 
 the poetry of the hymn book, of sentiment, of heroism, 
 of humor, the poetry learned in childhood, or that 
 which we have gone to for relief and inspiration amid 
 the cares and sorrows of life. It is wonderful how 
 much poetry the average man or woman has in con- 
 scious, or more frequently in unconscious, memory. A 
 hymn is sung in church or social meeting. You had 
 never committed it to memory and did not know that 
 you knew it, but you join in the singing, and as you 
 proceed each line suggests its successor, and you dis- 
 cover that it had been appropriated by your mind 
 without any conscious effort on your part. 
 
 Our age is pre-eminently a scientific and a com- 
 mercial age. Our colossal enterprises are the con- 
 struction of railways, steamships, telegraphs, complex 
 and wonderful machinery of every sort. It is the age 
 of poHtical equality, of representative government, of 
 clear reasoning and skillful organization. And all 
 
4 POETRY 
 
 these are very wonderful and admirable. But I think 
 we shall not give up the spiritual side of Hfe for these 
 material and external triumphs. I do not believe that 
 we are drifting into utilitarianism, but that our re- 
 ligion and our poetry, wiU continue to grow and 
 thrive, and, as in the past, absorb all outward elements 
 and render them tributary to piety and song. 
 
 In fact, although our century is so remarkable for 
 its scientific discoveries and its mechanical achieve- 
 ments, it is not the less an earnestly religious and 
 spiritual age. The poetry of an epoch is always the 
 best index of its spirit, and our modern poetry is on 
 the whole remarkably pure and devout. It reflects the 
 increased purity and deeper sympathy of our times. In 
 the great representative modem writers, of both prose 
 and poetry, there is a delicacy of thought and lan- 
 guage far beyond that of the last or any preceding 
 century in English literature. What a contrast do 
 Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot make to 
 Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne in these re- 
 spects? What a change in these particulars is seen 
 when we compare Longfellow, Whittier, Wordsworth 
 and Tennyson, with Pope, Bums and Byron ! 
 
 Nor is the modem poetry merely more moral, it is 
 also more spiritual. Milton's great epic was written 
 to " justify the ways of God to men," and nobly from 
 the point of view of his time did he accomplish his 
 great aim. Yet Paradise Lost with all its artistic and 
 moral excellencies, with its matchless variety and power 
 of verse, with its sublimity of imagination, its awful 
 warnings against sin, its noble lessons of duty, and its 
 glorious praises of justice and loyalty, is yet lacking 
 in one element, that of tenderness. God is the Creator 
 and Judge rather than the Father and Friend of man- 
 
POETRY 6 
 
 Paradise Lost reflects the stern Puritan theology of its 
 author's time. It was an age of creed-makers, and the 
 intellect had unduly and injuriously triumphed over 
 the intuitions and affections of men. 
 
 The next great theodicy in our literature is Pope's 
 Essay on Man. This too was written to " vindicate 
 the ways of God to man." As to Pope's sincerity and 
 success there have been marked differences of opinion. 
 His Essay has been distrusted as an attempt to sub- 
 stitute reason for revelation, and its opinions arrayed 
 in their most brilliant rhetorical beauty have been com- 
 pared to venomous serpents lurking beneath the fresh 
 and fair flowers. On the other hand those who think 
 it the natural and necessary ally of religion have prized 
 it highly as a treatise on natural religion. Pope was 
 the favorite poet of the greatest of metaphysicians, 
 Kant, and the eminent Scotch professor of Moral Phi- 
 losophy asserts that the Essay on Man is " the noblest 
 specimen of philosophical poetry which our language 
 affords ; and with the exception of a very few passages, 
 contains a valuable summary of all that human reason 
 has been able hitherto to advance in justification of 
 the moral government of God." The point in which 
 these opinions agree is the one I wish to emphasize, 
 namely: that the Essay is a philosophical argument 
 and not an emotional appeal. In this respect it is 
 quite unlike the nineteenth century poetry. Words- 
 worth, Tennyson, Browning and Longfellow appeal 
 much less to the reason than to the spiritual intuitions. 
 They do not antagonize or ignore reason, they simply 
 do not make it their criterion of truth. They enter 
 more deeply into sympathy with the central truth of 
 Christianity, that we are saved by faith and hope and 
 love. They do not strive against reason, they simply, 
 
6 POETRY 
 
 seek to re-enforce it by other faculties and to go be- 
 yond it into religion, which, without aid, it is powerless 
 to explore. 
 
 Modern English poetry is thus a sublimer " Vision 
 of Christ " the Elder Brother, the Teacher of the law 
 of love, the spiritual leader and ideal of man, than 
 the English poetry of any preceding epoch. It has 
 none of the jangling and bitterness which disfigures so 
 much of the earlier religious poetry and even appears 
 in Paradise Lost. No modem poet would class to- 
 gether " embryos and idiots, eremites and friars, white, 
 black and gray," and send them all together to the 
 limbo of things " abortive and unkindly mixed." 
 Whittier better expresses the modern feeling that with 
 all diversities of method and opinion, with all varieties 
 of vesture and symbol, there is a great underlying unity 
 of aspiration and purpose throughout Christendom as 
 he sings, 
 
 " O Lord and Master of us all ! 
 Whate'er our name or sign. 
 We own thy sway, we hear thy call. 
 We test our lives by thine." 
 
 The Son of Man is the central figure of modern 
 poetry. Milton's first vision of him is in the Ode 
 on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. The central 
 thought of the poem is that his birth is the death of 
 Paganism, that his light drives away heathen darkness, 
 and his truth heathen error. Now that he has ap- 
 peared 
 
 " The oracles are dumb. 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 
 Euns through the arched roof in words deceiv- 
 ing; 
 
POETRY 7, 
 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 Can do no more divine, 
 
 [With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leav- 
 ing." 
 
 The poets ignore time and secondary causes. They 
 see into the purposes of God with whom " one day is 
 as a thousand years," and represent that as done sud- 
 denly and by one act which is really accomplished 
 slowly and by many subsidiary agencies. So Mrs. 
 Browning similarly represents Christ's triumph but 
 places his victory over Paganism not as taking place 
 at his Nativity but in that dreadful moment when 
 amid his last agony he said " It is finished." In her 
 poem The Dead Pan she says : 
 
 " 'Twas the hour when One in Zion 
 Hung for love's sake on a cross — 
 When his brow was chill with dying. 
 And his soul was faint with loss; 
 When his priestly blood dropped downward. 
 And his kingly eyes looked throneward — 
 Then, Pan was dead." 
 
 The supreme expression in our century of the strug- 
 gle between faith and doubt in the soul of man is 
 Tennyson's In Memoriam. The alternations of hope 
 and despair in their intensity are like the spiritual 
 wresthngs of Paul and Luther, of Banyan and Wes- 
 ley. The heart rebels against a materialistic science. 
 " We are not cunning casts in clay." The soul's intui- 
 tions affirm that we are sons of God. 
 
 " If e'er when faith had fallen asleep 
 I heard a voice. Believe no more, 
 A warmth within the heart would melt 
 
8 POETRY 
 
 A freezing reason's colder part. 
 And like a man in wrath, the heart 
 Rose up and answer'd, I have felt." 
 
 Tennyson teaches that " love is Creation's final 
 lavr." He sees that there is 
 
 " One God, one law, one element. 
 And one far-off divine event. 
 To which the whole creation moves;" 
 
 and in the meantime while the work is yet incomplete 
 his trust is in that 
 
 " Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face. 
 By faith and faith alone, embrace. 
 Believing where we cannot prove." 
 
 This too is the burden of Browning's Saul: 
 
 " Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this 
 
 man 
 And dare doubt He alone will not do it who yet alone 
 
 can? " 
 
 The poets are not less emphatic in teaching the 
 duty of love to man. Lowell makes Jesus say that he 
 is the truest disciple and best remembers his Lord's 
 last command who most loves and helps his neighbor: 
 
 " The holy supper is kept, indeed. 
 In what so we share with another's need; 
 Not what we give but what we share. 
 For the gift without the giver is bare; 
 Who gives himself vrith his alms feeds three; 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 
 
 We have spoken of faith and love. There is another 
 member of the great trinity of Christian graces — ■ 
 Hope. The poets trust that 
 
POETRY 9 
 
 " Good . 
 Will be the final goal of ill. 
 That what God made best can't end worst 
 Nor what he blessed once prove accurst." 
 
 Even upon the dark shadow of Sin they seek to 
 cast some light. The conclusion of Longfellow's 
 Golden Legend, his great poem of mediaeval Christian- 
 ity, is in these striking lines as he sees the personifica- 
 tion of all evil baffled in his designs: 
 
 " It is Lucifer, 
 The Son of mystery; 
 And since God suffers him to be. 
 He, too, is God's minister. 
 And labors for some good 
 By us not understood ! " 
 
 It is the purpose of the greater poets to point men 
 to higher destinies, to teach them to live pure and 
 noble lives here, and to look forward with faith and 
 hope to a greater glory hereafter, when they shall be 
 satisfied with the divine likeness. 
 
 The lark that makes his lowly nest upon the ground, 
 and yet sings as he rises heavenward, " as though 
 he had learned music and motion of an angel " is a 
 fit emblem of a Christian poet, for he is a 
 
 " Type of the wise, who soar but never roam. 
 True to the kindred points of heaven and home." 
 
 Poetry is " the vision and the faculty divine." It 
 not only points out the celestial city, but it cheers and 
 beautifies the pathway to it. To the Psalmist the 
 heavens declared the Creator's glory. To the modern 
 poet " the seasons as they change are but the varied 
 God." To the eye of the seer the world is symbolical, 
 and he who will consider not the lilies only but " the 
 
10 POETRY 
 
 grass which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the 
 oven " will find it full of beauty ; for as the gifted 
 English singer who is so nobly carrying forward the 
 best traditions of our literature says : 
 
 " The poet gathers fruit from every tree. 
 Yea, grapes from thorns and figs from thistles, he. 
 Plucked by his hand the meanest weed that grows. 
 Towers to the hly, reddens to the rose." 
 
 Poetry as it is the first and noblest may also be the 
 last of the fine arts. When our present tongues have 
 ceased and our present knowledge has vanished, when 
 painting, sculpture, and architecture shall seem but as 
 the games of children, men in the likeness of angels 
 as they walk by the river of the water of life and 
 stand amid the splendors of the city of pearl and gold, 
 will still treasure poetry ; for will they not sing the 
 song of Moses and of the Lamb. 
 
 " Thus they in heaven above the starry spheres 
 Their happy hours in joy and hymning spend." 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY. 
 
 At the beginning of the 19th century, Sydney Smith 
 sneeringly asked, " Who reads an American book? " 
 and writers less ignorant and less prejudiced than he 
 are often astonished at the slow growth of our national 
 literature. America had been settled by the English 
 two hundred years before any American wrote either 
 a great novel or a great poem and this is certainly 
 surprising when we consider that the English colonies 
 in America were estabhshed when the mother country 
 was at the very height of its literary glory. 
 
 The Virginia colony brought to the New World all 
 the splendid ideals and aspirations of the age of Sidney 
 and Raleigh, a time when men had " a great flame of 
 desire to attempt some notable thing." Virginia was 
 settled by cavaliers, and Shakespeare gives us the spirit 
 of the cavalier when he makes Percy of Northumber- 
 land say : " If it be a sin to court honor, I am the most 
 offending man alive." 
 
 An even stronger inspiration brought men to New 
 England. 
 
 " The breaking waves dashed high 
 
 On a stern and rock-bound coast. 
 And the woods against the stormy sky 
 
 Their giant branches tossed. 
 And the heavy night himg dark 
 
 The hills and waters o'er, 
 When a band of exiles moor'd their bark 
 
 On the wild New England shore. 
 
 Amidst the storm they sang 
 
 And the stars heard and the sea; 
 13 
 
14 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 
 
 To the anthem of the free. 
 What sought they thus afar? 
 
 Bright jewels of the mine? 
 The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? 
 
 They sought a faith's pure shrine." 
 
 The first English settlers came to this country when 
 " all the English Muses were in their prime." The 
 cavalier immigrants were of the stock that had pro- 
 duced Shakespeare ; the Puritans were of the sect from 
 which Milton arose. They brought to the New World 
 everything that was good and great in the civilization 
 of the old. In the ten years from 1630 to 1640, fleet 
 after fleet of ships brought the wealthiest of the Puri- 
 tans with the choicest breeds of horses and cattle and 
 all the elements of material prosperity. And every 
 fleet also brought with it a great company of learned 
 and pious clergymen, each carrying with him as his 
 chief treasure a choice selection of Hebrew, Greek, 
 Latin and English books. Among the first settlers of 
 New England there were more college graduates in 
 proportion to population than in any part of Old Eng- 
 land, and these good men were above all things solicitous 
 to maintain and encourage learning. They required 
 that in every town of fifty householders there should 
 be a common school, and in every town of a hundred 
 householders a grammar school with a teacher compe- 
 tent to fit youths for the University. The great 
 Winthrop colony arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, and 
 only six years later founded Harvard College, or as 
 Professor Moses C. Tyler picturesquely expressed it, 
 " while the tree stumps were as yet scarcely weather- 
 browned in their earliest harvest fields and before the 
 nightly howl of the wolf had ceased in the outskirts of 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 16 
 
 their villages, they had made arrangements by which 
 their young men could study Aristotle and Thucydides, 
 Horace and Tacitus and the Hebrew Bible." 
 
 That great literature was not produced in this coun- 
 try for the first two hundred years of its history was 
 not for lack of learning, nor yet for lack of appre- 
 ciation and effort. I quote again from Professor 
 Tyler's great History of American Literature : " A 
 happy surprise awaits those who come to the study of 
 the early literature of New England with the expecta- 
 tion of finding it altogether arid in sentiment, or void of 
 the spirit and aroma of poetry. It is an extraordi- 
 nary fact about the grave and substantial men of New 
 England, especially during our earliest literary age, 
 that they all had a lurking propensity to write what 
 they sincerely believed to be poetry — Lady Mary Mon- 
 tague said that in England, in her time, verse making 
 had become as common as taking snuff: in New Eng- 
 land, in the age before that, it had become much more 
 common — since there were some who did not take snuff. 
 It is impressive to note as we inspect our first period 
 that neither advanced age, nor high office, nor mental 
 unfitness, nor previous condition of respectability, was 
 sufficient to protect any one from the poetic vice. 
 However, as respects the poetry which was perpe- 
 trated by our ancestors, it must be mentioned that a 
 benignant Providence has its own methods of protect- 
 ing the human family from intolerable misfortune; 
 and that most of this poetry has perished. Enough, 
 however, has survived to furnish us with materials 
 for everlasting gratitude, by enabling us in a measure 
 to realize the nature and extent of the calamity which 
 the divine intervention has spared us." 
 
 This opinion of Professor Tyler shall be my excuse 
 
16 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 for passing over a great number of minor writers and 
 coming at once to Mistress Anne Bradstreet, a writer 
 who in her own day enjoyed extraordinary popularity 
 and to whom even modem critics award generous praise. 
 Anne Dudley was the daughter of Thomas Dudley, 
 former steward of the Earl of Lincoln, who came to 
 this country in the year 1630. Thomas Dudley was 
 a very able and active man of affairs, and four years 
 after his arrival succeeded Winthrop as Governor of 
 the Massachusetts colony. A long rhyming epitaph 
 written in accordance with the fashion of the time, con- 
 tains these hues : 
 
 " In books a prodigal, they say, 
 A living cyclopaedia; 
 Of histories of church and priest 
 A full compendium at least, 
 A table talker rich in sense. 
 And witty without wit's pretense." 
 
 Dudley wrote as well as read, and continued the 
 practice of occasional versifying to the end of his long 
 life. The following vigorous and pious lines, sum- 
 ming up his life and expressing his belief and hope, 
 were found in his pocket after his death : 
 
 " Eleven times seven (years) lived have I, 
 And now God calls, I willing die: 
 My shuttle's shot, my race is run. 
 My sun is set, my deed is done; 
 My span is measured, tale is told. 
 My flower is faded and grown old: 
 * * « 
 
 Farewell, dear wife, children and friends. 
 Hate heresy, make blessed ends ; 
 Bear poverty, live with good men. 
 So shall we meet with joy again." 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 17 
 
 Obviously, the daughter of such a father was pre- 
 destined to piety and poetry. 
 
 At the age of sixteen Anne Dudley was married to 
 Simon Bradstreet, nine years her senior, a graduate 
 of Emanuel College, Cambridge, a grave, even tem- 
 pered, tender-hearted man, who feared God and feared 
 no one else. Mr. Tyler says : " The coming away 
 from Old England to New England was for many of 
 these wealthy emigrants a sad sacrifice of taste and 
 personal preference, and for none of them, probably, 
 was it more so than for this girl-wife, Anne Bradstreet, 
 who, with a scholar's thirst for knowledge and a poet's 
 sensitiveness to the elegant, would have delighted in 
 the antique richness and mellow beauty of English life, 
 as much as she recoiled from the savage surroundings, 
 the scant privileges, the crude, realistic and shaggy 
 forms of society in America." It was, indeed, a 
 change for her to leave the stately castle of Sempring- 
 ham, of which her father had been steward, to occupy 
 a log cabin in the wilderness. In an autobiographic 
 sketch, she writes : " When I was married and came 
 into this country, I found a new world and new man- 
 ners, at which my heart rose. But after I was con- 
 vinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it." She 
 had eight children, or to use her own poetic figure : 
 
 " I had eight birds hatched in the nest ; 
 Four cocks there were and hens the rest; 
 I nurst them up with pain and care. 
 For cost nor labor did I spare. 
 Till at the last they felt their wing. 
 Mounted the trees and learned to sing." 
 
 Obviously Anne Bradstreet's life was a very busy 
 one ; but so strong was her native bent for study and 
 1—2 
 
18 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 poetry that she found time amid all her household cares 
 to write very, voluminously. Her learned husband had 
 brought a library of fifty choice books with him, among 
 them the History of the World which Sir Walter 
 Raleigh wrote while a prisoner in the Tower of London. 
 It was still the fashion to write Chronicles in verse and 
 Anne Bradstreet had abundant precedent for her bold 
 enterprise of turning Raleigh's volume into rhyme. 
 She called her poem The Four Monarchies. It is writ- 
 ten in heroic couplets and the versification is crude and 
 hasty. The following specimen gives an account of 
 the victory of Alexander the Great over the Persian 
 King, Darius. 
 
 " So on he goes Darius for to meet 
 Who came with thousand thousands at his feet ; 
 
 * * * 
 
 For this wise King had brought to see the sport 
 Along with him the ladies of the court. 
 
 * * * 
 
 A thousand mules and camels ready wait 
 Loaden with gold, with jewels and with plate. 
 But when both armies met he might behold 
 That valor was more worth than pearls or gold. 
 
 Two hundred thousand men that day were slain. 
 And forty thousand prisoners also ta'en." 
 
 Professor Tyler comments upon the poem as fol- 
 lows : " Heavy as the poem seems to us, to the first 
 generation of her readers, doubtless it seemed the most 
 precious issue of her genius. It commended itself to 
 the sturdy and careful minds of her Puritan constitu- 
 ency as useful poetry. They could read it without 
 twinges of self-reproach ; it was not trivial or antic or 
 amusing — it was not poetic fiction but solid fact." 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 19 
 
 Her solid Pegasus always keeping safely upon all 
 fours, Mistress Bradstreet also wrote upon the Four 
 Elements, Fire, Water, Earth and Air, upon the four 
 temperaments or Constitutions of Man, the choleric, the 
 sanguine, the nervous, and the lymphatic, upon the 
 four Ages, Childhood, Youth, Manhood and Old Age, 
 and upon the four Seasons of the Year. 
 
 When her hymns and shorter miscellaneous pieces 
 were added to the five long poems above mentioned, the 
 result was a royal octavo volume of four hundred 
 pages. This was published in London in 1650, with the 
 title of : The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America ; 
 or Several Poems compiled with great Variety of Wit 
 and Learning — by a Gentlewoman in those parts. 
 
 A publisher's praise is under the suspicion of self- 
 interest, but no such abatement attaches to the eulogy 
 of the great Cotton Mather who in his Magnalia says, 
 '' America justly admires the learned women of the other 
 hemisphere, but she now prays that into such cata- 
 logues of authoresses, there may be room now given 
 unto the daughter of our Governor Dudley and consort 
 of our Governor Bradstreet, whose poems divers times 
 printed have afforded a grateful entertainment unto 
 the ingenious and a monument for her memory beyond 
 the stateliest marbles." 
 
 In America there was a universal chorus of praise. 
 Even that surly old cynic and woman hater Nathaniel 
 Ward (who said of a woman of fashion: " I look at 
 her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a 
 quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing ") was 
 rapt in admiration of Anne Bradstreet and in some 
 prefatory lines to the book makes Apollo swear 
 
 " By Chaucer's boots and Homer's furs, 
 Let men look to't, lest women wear the spurs." 
 
20 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 A second edition of the Tenth Muse was published in 
 1678, six years after the author's death. It contains 
 her last and best poems, among them the famous 
 " Contemplations." Her home was at Andover, Mass., 
 on the noble Merrimac river, and from it one autumn 
 evening she drew an inspiration worthy of Chaucer or 
 Burns or Tennyson or any of the poets who have 
 found " tongues in trees and books in the running 
 brooks." In a stately measure borrowed from Phineas 
 Fletcher she writes: 
 
 " Some time now past in the autumnal tide. 
 
 When Rhoebus wanted but one hour to bed. 
 The trees all richly clad yet void of pride, 
 Were gilded o'er by his rich golden head. 
 Their leaves and fruits seemed painted but were true; 
 Rapt were my senses at the delectable view. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Then on a stately oak I cast mine eye. 
 
 Whose ruffling top the clouds seemed to aspire; 
 How long since thou wast in thine infancy? 
 
 * « * 
 
 Hath hundred winters past since thou wast born? 
 Or thousands since thou brok'st thy shell of horn? 
 If so, all these as naught eternity doth scorn. 
 
 * » * 
 
 Under the cooling shadow of an elm 
 
 Close sat I by the goodly River's side 
 Where gliding streams the rocks did overwhelm; 
 
 A lonely place with pleasures dignified. 
 I once that loved the shady woods so well. 
 Now thought the rivers did the trees excel, 
 And if the sun would ever shine there would I dwell. 
 While musing thus with contemplation fed. 
 
 And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain. 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 21 
 
 The sweet-tongued Philomel perch'd o'er my head 
 
 And chanted forth a most melodious strain, 
 Which rapt me so with wonder and delight, 
 I judged my hearing better than my sight. 
 And wished me wings with her a while to take my 
 flight." 
 
 Anne Bradstreet added the grace of modesty to 
 merit and in a prologue to her volume she says to her 
 poetic contemporaries : 
 
 " Ye high flown quills that soar the skies. 
 
 And ever with your prey still catch your praise; 
 If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes. 
 
 Give thyme and parsley wreaths; I ask no bays. 
 This mean and unrefined ore of mine 
 Will make your glistening gold but more to shine." 
 
 Anne Bradstreet was a genuine poet, and to the best 
 of her ability under difficult conditions beat out the 
 music that was in her; she is likely to be remembered 
 and honored more and more as the centuries pass, as 
 the first in the long line of American singers. Her 
 works were reprinted in 1758 and again in 1867. But 
 beside the editions of her works securely protected in 
 many libraries against fire, neglect or decay, she has 
 left still another evidence of her poetic and moral vigor 
 in the character of her descendants, and to the student 
 of heredity it is interesting and instructive to find that 
 from Anne Bradstreet's line have sprung Channing 
 and Dana and Wendell Phillips and Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes. 
 
 Anne Bradstreet represents the more beautiful, gen- 
 tle, and tender side of Puritanism. Michael Wiggles- 
 worth, her contemporary, represents its darker, more 
 forbidding and terrible aspects. Michael Wiggles- 
 worth was born in England in 1631 and was brought 
 
&2 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 to this country by his father as a child of seven. He 
 graduated at Harvard, and for a time served there as 
 tutor; and in 1656 became pastor of the church at 
 Maiden, which he served for almost fifty years until 
 his death in 1704). Mr. Tyler says : " Wigglesworth 
 was the exphcit and unshrinking rhymer of the Five 
 Points of Calvinism ; a poet who so perfectly uttered 
 in verse the religious faith and emotion of Puritan 
 New England that for more than a hundred years, his 
 writings had universal diffusion there, and a popular 
 influence only inferior to that of the Bible and the 
 shorter Catechism. No one holding a different the- 
 ology from that held by Wigglesworth can do him jus- 
 tice as a poet without exercising the utmost intellectual 
 catholicity. There was in him the genius of a true 
 poet; his imagination had an epic strength; it was 
 courageous, piercing, creative, yet in his intense pur- 
 suit of what he believed to be the good and true, he 
 forgot the very existence of the beautiful; finally, not 
 having served his poetic apprenticeship under any of 
 the sane and mighty masters of English song, he was 
 incapable of giving utterance to his genius, except in 
 a dialect unworthy of it. His verse is quite lacking in 
 art, its ordinary form being a crude, swinging ballad- 
 measure with a shrill reverberating clatter, that would 
 instantly catch and please the popular ear, at that time 
 deaf to daintier and more subtle effects in poetry." 
 
 The masterpiece of Wigglesworth's genius is a lurid 
 and awful poem which bears the name of " The Day of 
 Doom; or, a Poetical Description of the Great and 
 Last Judgment." In composing it the poet seeks in- 
 spiration only from Christ. He says : 
 
 " O dearest, dread, most glorious King, 
 I'll of thy justest judgment sing: 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 23 
 
 Do thou my head and heart inspire 
 To sing aright as I desire. 
 Thee, thee alone I'll invocate. 
 For I do much abominate 
 To call the Muses to mine aid: 
 Which is the unchristian use and trade 
 Of some that Christians would be thought. 
 And yet they worship worse than naught. 
 Oh, what a deal of blasphemy 
 And heathenish impiety. 
 In Christian poets may be found. 
 Where heathen gods with praise are crowned! 
 They make Jehovah to stand by. 
 Till Juno, Venus, Mercury, 
 With frowning Mars and thundering Jove, 
 Rule earth below and heaven above ; 
 But I have learned to pray to none 
 Save only God in Christ alone. 
 * * * 
 
 Guide me, that I thy name may praise 
 And teach the sons of men thy ways." 
 
 In the gospel it says : " As the days of Noah were, 
 so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For 
 as in the days that were before the flood they were 
 eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage 
 until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and 
 knew not until the flood came and took them all away ; 
 so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." Ac- 
 cordingly, Michael Wigglesworth begins his Day of 
 Doom with a picture of a heedless and sensual world. 
 
 " Still was the night, serene and bright. 
 
 When all men sleeping lay; 
 Calm was the season and carnal reason 
 
 Thought so 'twould last for aye. 
 (But) at midnight forth breaks a light 
 
 Which turns the night to day. 
 
24. EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 And speedily a hideous cry- 
 Doth all the world dismay. 
 
 (Men) rush from beds with giddy heads 
 And to their windows run. 
 
 Viewing this light which shines more bright 
 Than doth the noonday sun. 
 * * * 
 
 Before Christ's face the heavens give place. 
 
 And skies are rent asunder. 
 With mighty voice and hideous noise 
 
 More terrible than thunder." 
 
 After this the trumpet is sounded, at which the 
 dead rise from their graves, the living are changed 
 and all are brought before the great tribunal. The 
 sheep are parted from the goats. The saints are 
 placed upon their thrones to join with Christ in judg- 
 ing the world. All classes of wicked men are in turn 
 condemned until at last according to the stern Calvin- 
 istic theology, now happily discarded, " reprobate in- 
 fants " are reached, or as the poet says : 
 
 " Then to the bar they all drew near 
 
 Who died in infancy, 
 And never had or good or bad 
 
 Effected personally; 
 But from the womb unto the tomb 
 
 Were straightway carried. 
 Or at the least ere they transgressed 
 
 Who thus began to plead." 
 
 These poor babies plead that it is unjust to condemn 
 them for Adam's sin, but are promptly told that Adam 
 was their representative and that if he stood they 
 would have been glad to profit by his obedience and so 
 are justly punished for his fall. There is, however, a 
 touch of grotesque pity in their sentence, for the 
 Judge says to them: 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 25 
 
 " You sinners are and such a share 
 As sinners may expect; 
 Such you shall have^ for I do save 
 None but mine own elect. 
 
 Yet to compare your sin with theirs 
 
 Who lived a longer time, 
 I do confess yours is much less. 
 
 Though every sin's a crime. 
 
 A crime it is: therefore in bliss 
 You may not hope to dwell ; 
 But unto you I shall allow 
 The easiest room in hell." 
 
 Then all the wicked are sentenced and hurried away 
 to everlasting destruction. Christ says to them: 
 
 " Ye sinful wights and cursed sprites 
 That work iniquity. 
 Depart together from me forever 
 To endless misery. 
 
 Then might you hear them rend and tear 
 
 The air with their outcries ; 
 The hideous noise of their sad voice 
 
 Ascendeth to the skies. 
 
 They hasten to the pit of woe. 
 
 Guarded by angels stout. 
 Who to fulfill Christ's holy will 
 
 Attend this wicked rout. 
 
 With iron bands they bind their hands 
 
 And cursed feet together 
 And cast them all, both great and small. 
 
 Into that lake forever. 
 
26 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 Die fain they would, if die they could. 
 
 But death will not be had, 
 God's direful wrath their bodies hath 
 
 Forever immortal made. 
 
 They live to lie in misery 
 
 And bear eternal woe; 
 And live they must while God is just 
 
 That he may plague them so." 
 
 Mr. Tyler's concluding comment is this : " This 
 great poem which with entire unconsciousness attrib- 
 utes to the Divine Being a character the most execra- 
 ble and loathsome to be met with, perhaps, in any liter- 
 ature, Christian or pagan, had for a hundred years a 
 popularity far exceeding any other work in prose or 
 verse produced in America before the Revolution." 
 It went through many editions in book form and was 
 sold from house to house as a popular ballad; and its 
 pages were assigned to little children to be learned by 
 heart, along with the catechism. Cotton Mather pre- 
 dicted that it would be read in New England until the 
 day of doom itself should arrive. 
 
 We turn with relief from Michael Wigglesworth to 
 Roger Williams. Williams, born in Wales in 1606, 
 and educated at Oxford, came to New England in 1631 
 and four years later was driven into exile for advocat- 
 ing full religious liberty in a community in which tol- 
 eration was thought to be atheistic and impious. He 
 made his way in the dead of winter to what is now 
 Rhode Island and founded the city of Providence. He 
 was more kindly treated by the Indians than by the 
 whites and writes of his experience thus : 
 
 " If Nature's sons both wild and tame, 
 Humane and courteous be, 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 27 
 
 How ill becomes it sons of God 
 To want humanity." 
 
 God's providence is rich to his. 
 
 Let none distrustful be; 
 In wilderness in great distress 
 
 These ravens have fed me. 
 * * * 
 
 Lost many a time, I've had no guide. 
 
 No house but a hoUow tree! 
 In stormy winter nights no fire. 
 
 No food, no company. 
 
 In God I've found a house, a bed, 
 
 A table, company: 
 No cup so bitter, but's made sweet. 
 
 When God shall sweetning be." 
 
 Puritanism lost power after the terrible witchcraft 
 mania in 1692, and with the decline in religious en- 
 thusiasm poetry declined also, for an epoch of ma- 
 terialism is always unfavorable to literary creation. 
 Of this period Whittier writes: 
 
 " Earth, which seemed to the fathers meant 
 But as a pilgrim's wayside tent. 
 Solid and steadfast seems to be 
 And Time has forgotten Eternity ! " 
 
 Our next group of poets belongs to the period of the 
 American Revolution and the source of their inspira- 
 tion was not so much religion as patriotism. 
 
 Judge Trumbull, born in 1750, was the son of a 
 Congregational minister. He was a delicate and very 
 precocious child, able at two years of age to repeat aU 
 the verses in the New England Primer and when only 
 
28 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 seven passing the examination for admission to Yale 
 College. He subsequently became a tutor at Yale, 
 then studied law in the office of John Adams, the future 
 President, and was for many years Judge of the Su- 
 preme Court of Connecticut. He died, full of years 
 and honors, political, legal and literary, in 1831. His 
 literary masterpiece is a mock-heroic poem called Mc- 
 Fingal. Books, like men, have pedigrees, and the 
 pedigree of this book is curious. In 1605 Cervantes 
 published his immortal Don Quixote, the object of which 
 was to burlesque the extravagant romances of chivalry. 
 In imitation of this great satire, Samuel Butler wrote 
 his witty poem Hudibras, a mock epic in which he ridi- 
 cules the efforts of a Puritan magistrate to cut down 
 a Maypole and put a stop to festivities he thought sin- 
 ful. Butler tells us of Sir Hudibras: 
 
 " A knight he was whose very sight would 
 Entitle him mirror of Knighthood. 
 We also grant he had much wit. 
 Though very shy in using it. 
 As being loath to wear it out. 
 And therefore bore it not about 
 Except on holidays or so 
 As men their best apparel do. 
 He could distinguish and divide 
 A hair 'twixt south and southwest side. 
 For rhetoric, he could not ope 
 His mouth but out there flew a trope. 
 And if he happened to break off 
 I' the middle of his speech or cough. 
 He had hard words to tell you why 
 Aiid show what rules he did it by; 
 Else when with greatest art he spoke 
 You'd think he talked like other folk. 
 'Tis known that he could speak in Greek 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 29 
 
 As naturally as pigs squeak 
 
 And Latin was no more difficile 
 
 Than for a blackbird 'tis to whistle. 
 
 For his religion it was fit 
 
 To match his learning and his wit, 
 
 'Twas Presbyterian, true blue. 
 
 For he was of that stubborn crew 
 
 Of errant saints whom- all men grant 
 
 To be the true church militant, 
 
 Such as do build their faith upon 
 
 The holy text of pike and gun. 
 
 Decide all controversies by infallible artillery. 
 
 And prove their doctrines orthodox 
 
 By apostolic blows and knocks." 
 
 Trumbull took this book as his model, and as Hudi- 
 bras the Puritan Knight tried to cut down a Maypole, 
 so McFingal, a stubborn Tory magistrate, tries to cut 
 down a Liberty pole which in the early, days of the 
 American Revolution the Whig patriots had erected. 
 The poem has all the flippancy and much of the wit 
 of the original. It begins with this extraordinary in- 
 vocation of the Muses : 
 
 " Ye nine great daughters of Jupiter, 
 Born of one mother at a litter. 
 Virgins who ne'er submit to wifedom 
 But sing and fiddle aU your lifetime. 
 Assist." 
 
 The poem begins with daybreak and still using the 
 language of Greek mythology the poet describes the 
 sunrise as follows : 
 
 " Now from his hammock in the skies, 
 Phoebus jumped up and rubbed his eyes, 
 Clapp'd on his daylight round his ears. 
 Saddled his horse and fixed his spurs. 
 
iEAilLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 Night turned her back; and so in turn he 
 Mounted and set forth on his journey. 
 * * * 
 
 (When) warm with ministerial ire 
 Fierce sallied forth our loyal Squire, 
 And on his sturdy steps attends 
 His desperate clan of Tory friends. 
 When sudden met his wrathful eye 
 A pole ascending through the sky. 
 Which numerous throngs of Whiggish race 
 Were raising in the market place. 
 
 Our Squire, yet all undismayed 
 Call'd forth the Constable to aid. 
 And bade him read in nearest station 
 The Riot Act and Proclamation. 
 He swift advancing to the ring 
 Began " Our Sovereign Lord the King." 
 When thousand clamorous tongues he hears. 
 And clubs and stones assail his ears, 
 * * # 
 
 At once with resolution fatal 
 
 Both Whigs and Tories rushed to battle 
 
 And now perhaps with glory crowned 
 
 Our Squire had felled the pole to ground. 
 
 Had not some power, a Whig at heart. 
 
 Descended down and took their part; 
 
 (Whether 'twere Pallas, Mars or Iris 
 
 'Twere scarce worth while to make inquiries.) " 
 
 The Tories are vanquished in the fight and the Con- 
 stable begs for and obtains mercy. He says: 
 
 " Good gentlemen and friends of kin. 
 For heaven's sake hear, if not for mine ! 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 31 
 
 I here renounce the Pope, the Turks, 
 The King, the Devil, and all their works; 
 * * * 
 
 I'll never join in Eritish rage. 
 
 Nor help Lord North nor General Gage; 
 
 Nor lift my gun in future fights. 
 
 Nor take away your charter rights. 
 
 « * * 
 
 Not so our Squire submits to ride. 
 But stood heroic as a mule. 
 You'll find it all in vain, quoth he. 
 To play your rebel tricks on me. 
 The will gains strength from treatment horrid. 
 As hides grow harder when they're curried; 
 » « » 
 
 And can you think my faith will alter 
 By tarring, whipping, or the halter? 
 I'll stand the worst; for recompense 
 I trust King George and Providence. 
 
 Few moments with deliberation 
 They held a solemn consultation. 
 When soon in judgment all agree. 
 And clerk proclaims the dread decree: 
 That Squire McFingal having grown 
 The vUest Tory in the town. 
 And now in full examination 
 Convicted by his own confession. 
 Finding no tokens of repentance. 
 This court proceeds to render sentence: 
 That first the Mob a slipknot single 
 Tie round the neck of said McFingal, 
 And in due form do tar him next 
 And feather as the law directs. 
 » * * 
 
32 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 Forthwith the crowd proceed to deck 
 With halter'd noose McFingal's neck. 
 
 Then lifting high the ponderous jar 
 Pour'd o'er his head the smoking tar. 
 With less profusion once was spread 
 Oil on the Jewish monarch's head, 
 That down his beard and vestments ran 
 And cover'd all his outward man. 
 « » * 
 
 So from the high-raised urn the torrents 
 Spread from his side their various currents: 
 His flowing wig, as next the brim, 
 First met and drank the sable stream; 
 Adorn his visage stern and grave 
 RoU'd and adhered the viscid wave; 
 
 * » * 
 
 From nose and chin's remotest end 
 The tarry icicles descend; 
 With arms depending as he stood. 
 Each cuff capacious holds the flood; 
 Till all o'erspread with colors gay 
 He glittered to the western ray. 
 
 * * * 
 
 And now the feather-bag display'd 
 
 Is waved in triumph o'er his head. 
 
 And clouds him o'er with feathers missive. 
 
 And down, upon the tar, adhesive. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Not Milton's six wing'd angel gathers 
 Such superfluity of feathers. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Then on the fatal cart in state 
 They raised our grand Duumvirate. 
 In front the martial music comes 
 Of horns and fiddles, fifes and drums, 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 33 
 
 And at fit periods every throat 
 Combined in universal shout; 
 And hail'd great Liberty in chorus. 
 Or bawl'd " confusion to the Tories." 
 Thus having borne them round the town. 
 Last at the pole they sat them down. 
 And to the tavern take their way 
 To end in mirth the festal day." 
 
 It is not surprising to learn that this lively satire 
 went rapidly through thirty editions, that its influence 
 on public opinion was very great, or that its brilliant 
 young author was subsequently honored and rewarded 
 with a judgeship. Trumbull is altogether a notable 
 man and his other works are well worth examination, 
 particularly a poem on " The Progress of Dulness," 
 in which he denounces exclusive attention to Latin and 
 Greek and Mathematics, and is the pioneer advocate of 
 the extended study of English literature. 
 
 One of Trumbull's intimate friends at College was 
 Timothy Dwight, who afterward became President 
 Dwight of Yale and a man so famous as a preacher 
 that his admirers said that he was " second only to 
 Saint Paul." 
 
 Trumbull had aspired only to imitate Butler and 
 write a mock heroic poem. Dwight dared to make 
 Milton his model and to attempt to write a genuine 
 epic. It would have been well if he had had not only 
 Milton's ambition but also Milton's prudence, for to 
 write a truly great epic poem is the most difficult of 
 literary achievements and only at long intervals 
 through the ages does a poet succeed in this supreme 
 task. Homer, Virgil, Dante and Milton are the short 
 list of those who have met both popular and critical 
 approval in this endeavor, 
 
34) EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 Milton deliberated many years before making his 
 final choice of a theme and his commonplace book, still 
 preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 gives a list of sixty-one Biblical and thirty-eight secu- 
 lar subjects which he had considered. From childhood 
 it had been his purpose to write something that " the 
 world would not willingly let die," but he declared that 
 such a poem was " not to be obtained by the invocation 
 of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by de- 
 vout prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich 
 with all utterance and knowledge; and to this (prayer) 
 must be added industrious and select reading, steady 
 observation, and insight into all seemly and generous 
 arts and affairs." 
 
 Accordingly Milton waited tiU he was fifty years 
 old till he had had large experience of life, tiU he had 
 read and reread the masterpieces of Hebrew, Greek and 
 Latin literature, as well as the best works in English 
 and other modern tongues, and until much practice 
 had given him perfect command of all the resources of 
 the vocabulary, all the figures of rhetoric and aU the 
 wonderful and complex harmonies of versification. 
 
 But youth is audacious and Timothy Dwight, in the 
 ardor of his patriotism, aspired to write for his coun- 
 try a poem that should rival Paradise Lost. We see the 
 spirit that urged him on in his poem Columbia, which 
 he wrote at West Point, while he was serving as a 
 chaplain in the patriot army. He writes : 
 
 " As down a lone valley, with cedars o'erspread, 
 From war's dread confusion, I pensively strayed, — 
 The gloom from the face of fair heaven retired; 
 The winds ceased to murmur, the thunders expired; 
 Perfumes as of Eden, flowed sweetly along. 
 And a voice as of angels, enchantingly sung: 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 35 
 
 ■ Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 
 The queen of the world and the child of the skies.' " 
 
 D wight chose for his subject the Conquest of 
 Canaan. It will be remembered by the reader of Para- 
 dise Lost that Adam, after his fall, became penitent 
 and God, to comfort him in his desolation and sorrow, 
 revealed to him the coming of Christ and the glories 
 of his Kingdom. 
 
 Dwight adopts the same poetic machinery and in- 
 jects into his account of the Conquest of Canaan a 
 history of America, as it was revealed to Joshua by an 
 angel. The poem was republished in England and 
 was honored with a long review from the pen of Wil- 
 liam Cowper, the most famous poet then living. Cow- 
 per says among much else: 
 
 " In his fictions he discovers much warmth of con- 
 ception, and his numbers are very harmonious. 
 A strain of fine enthusiasm runs through the whole 
 book; and we will venture to afBrm that no man who 
 has a soul impressible by a bright display of the 
 grandest subjects that revelation furnishes, will read 
 it without emotion. The composition, however, is not 
 without a fault ; and as we have candidly praised, we 
 will censure with fidelity. We found our attention to 
 the wars of Joshua not pleasantly interrupted by a 
 tribute paid to the memory of a Mr. Wooster, slain on 
 Ridgefield Hills in America; of a Mr. Warren, who 
 fell in battle at Charlestown, and of a Mr. Mercer, 
 who shared a similar fate at Princeton. He would 
 plead, perhaps, his patriotism for his apology ; but it 
 is best to admit nothing that needs one." 
 
 Such is the forbearing judgment and gentle con- 
 demnation of a kindly brother poet upon this ambi- 
 tious attempt. 
 
36 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 Timothy Dwight is still remembered as a man of 
 marvelous power as a preacher and as one of the great- 
 est college presidents. He is remembered, too, as a 
 poet, by his song in praise of Columbia and still more 
 by his hymn, 
 
 " I love thy Kingdom, Lord," 
 
 which is engraved on a tablet of brass and hangs upon 
 the college walls at Yale, and has been welcomed into 
 the hymn books of almost every denomination of the 
 Christian church ; but alas ! his labored epic is forgot- 
 ten, or is but glanced at for a moment as a premature 
 attempt to accomplish a task which needs the highest 
 powers and the most favorable conditions. 
 
 A most deliberate, a wiser and a far more successful 
 attempt to write an epic was made by a third member 
 of this group of friends, Joel Barlow. Barlow is best 
 known nowadays by a serio-comic poem on Hasty, 
 Pudding, under which unpromising title he has writ- 
 ten a delightful idyl of farm life a century ago and 
 given a pleasing picture of his own boyhood. He 
 says: 
 
 " I sing the sweet I know, the charms I feel. 
 My morning incense and my evening meal. 
 The sweets of Hasty Pudding. Come, dear bowl. 
 Glide o'er my palate and inspire my soul. 
 * * * 
 
 There are who strive to stamp with disrepute 
 The luscious food because it feeds the brute. 
 With sovereign scorn I treat the vulgar jest. 
 Nor fear to share thy bounties with the beast; 
 (Nor) can the genius of the noisy swine. 
 Though nursed on pudding, claim a kin to mine. 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 37 
 
 My father loved thee through his length of days ! 
 For thee his fields were shaded o'er with maize ; 
 From thee what health, what vigor, he possess'd. 
 Ten sturdy freemen from his loins attest; 
 Thy constellation ruled my natal morn. 
 And all my bones were made of Indian corn. 
 
 Slow springs the blade while check'd by chiUing rains 
 Ere yet the sun the seat of Cancer gains ; 
 But when his fiercest fires emblaze the land. 
 Then start the juices, then the roots expand; 
 Then, like a colunm of Corinthian mould. 
 The stalk struts upward and the leaves unfold; 
 The busy branches all the ridges fill. 
 Entwine their arms and kiss from hill to hiU." 
 
 Barlow, like the typical American farmer boy, had 
 an ambition for scholarship and politics. He went to 
 Yale, where Dwight was his tutor and Noah Webster 
 his classmate, and began his public career as a poet by 
 delivering in 1778 instead of a Commencement oration 
 a poem on the Prospect of Peace. Peace, however, did 
 not come immediately, and Barlow soon after gradu- 
 ation became a chaplain in the army, in which posi- 
 tion he won the favor of both officers and soldiers, re- 
 ceiving marked courtesies from Washington himself. 
 On the conclusion of peace, he studied law and later 
 went to Europe as the agent of a land company. In 
 England he joined a Constitutional Society whose ob- 
 ject was to make Great Britain a republic. By this 
 organization he was sent to France to deliver an ad- 
 dress to the French Convention, then the supreme gov- 
 erning body. That famous assembly conferred on 
 him the honor of French citizenship, a distinction 
 which it had at that time bestowed upon only two other 
 Americans, Washington and Hamilton, and moreover, 
 
38 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 appointed him a member of a deputation to establish 
 republican government in the territory of Savoy. 
 
 Barlow made a large fortune by speculation and 
 was living in great splendor in Paris when he was ap- 
 pointed United States minister to France, and in this 
 capacity went to meet Napoleon in Russia and died 
 there of fatigue and exposure in December, 1812. 
 
 But all this clerical, commercial, political and diplo- 
 matic activity was but a sort of scaffold. Through- 
 out life, Barlow's supreme ambition was to write a 
 great patriotic poem. He began work upon it in his 
 early days as an army chaplain and after twenty-five 
 years of labor, published, in 1807, what he fondly 
 hoped would be an immortal epic, The Columbiad. 
 
 Castelar, the great Spanish orator, said of the dis- 
 coverer of the western hemisphere : " Columbus discov- 
 ered America by faith: if the continent had not ex- 
 isted God would have made it rise from the waters to 
 answer to such faith as his. The life of Columbus is 
 a shameful illustration of the ingratitude of kings and 
 statesmen, for the greatest of all navigators was dis- 
 graced and superseded as governor of the territory 
 he had discovered, and actually sent back to Spain in 
 fetters of iron." The life of Columbus was one of 
 high endeavor and world-enriching achievement, all 
 basely rewarded by poverty, imprisonment, pain and 
 shame. Certainly, the career of this man of genius, of 
 faith and of sorrow is one of the most fitting of all 
 themes for an epic or dramatic poem. 
 
 The poem opens with a description of the prison of 
 Columbus at Valladolid. Columbus, old and sick, lifts 
 his clanking chains and in the darkness tells to his dun- 
 geon walls the story of his wrongs and his despair. 
 Suddenly, as he speaks, a splendor fills the dark room, 
 and 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 39 
 
 ' Robed in the radiance, moved a form serene. 
 Of human structure, but of heavenly mien; 
 Near to the prisoner's couch he takes his stand. 
 And waves in sign of peace his holy hand. 
 Tall rose his stature ; youth's endearing grace 
 Adorned his limbs and brighten'd in his face; 
 Loose o'er his locks the star of evening hung. 
 And sounds melodious moved his cheerful tongue." 
 
 This splendid visitor is Hesper, the guardian genius 
 of the twin-continents which Columbus had made 
 known to Europe, Asia, and Africa. To Columbus in 
 his despair, Hesper brings as consolation a vision of 
 the future glories and greatness of the new world, and 
 of the inestimable blessings it is to confer upon the 
 whole human race. He reveals to him the conquest 
 of Mexico and Peru, the progress of the French and 
 English settlements, the defeat of the French, the war 
 of the Revolution and the adoption of the Federal 
 Constitution. So far Barlow, under the guise of pre- 
 diction, had been narrating history ; but the necessities 
 of his epic compelled him actually to lift the veil of 
 futurity, and he does so with considerable success. 
 
 The railway was yet undreamed of in Barlow's day, 
 but there was already much talk about opening the 
 west to commerce by means of canals. Barlow's pro- 
 phetic foresight took a still wider range and he pre- 
 dicted that canals would be dug both at Suez and Pan- 
 ama. He says: 
 
 " From the red banks of blest Arabia's tide. 
 Through the dread isthmus waves unwonted glide." 
 
 The Suez canal was opened in 1869, sixty-two years 
 after the publication of Barlow's prophecy, and it now 
 looks as though we were near the time when his pre- 
 diction will be fulfilled that : 
 
40 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 " Where Darien hills o'erlook the gulfy tide. 
 By human art the ridgy banks divide ; 
 Ascending sails the opening pass pursue. 
 And waft the sparkling treasures of Peru." 
 
 All genuine poetry is inspired by the love of truth 
 and right. 
 
 Every poet according to the measure of his inspira- 
 tion inculcates what is true, beautiful and good, and 
 condemns what is false and ugly and evil. Accord- 
 ingly, we should expect to find in the Columbiad a vig- 
 orous denunciation of African slavery. The appeal 
 for justice to the negro introduces another Titanic 
 figure into the poem, Atlas, the guardian of Africa, 
 of whom it is said: 
 
 " High o'er his coast he rears his frowning form, 
 O'erlooks and calms his sky-borne fields of storm. 
 Flings oiF the clouds that round his shoulders hung. 
 And breaks from clogs of ice his trembling tongue." 
 
 After such a description of the speaker, consistency 
 requires a great utterance. It is as follows : 
 
 " Great Hesper, say what sordid ceaseless hate 
 Impels thee thus to mar my elder state 
 
 * * * 
 
 (Why do) thy sons, a strange ungenerous race. 
 Enslave my tribes and each fair world disgrace. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Enslave my tribes ! what have mankind in ban. 
 Then read, expound, enforce the rights of man? 
 
 If still they dare debase 
 And hold enthrall'd the millions of my race, — 
 A vengeance (soon) shall shake the world's deep frame 
 That heaven abhors and hell might shrink to name. 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 41 
 
 Fire waits the fissure that my wave shall find 
 To force the foldings of the rocky rind. 
 Crash your curst continent and wheel on high 
 The vast avulsion vaulting thro' the sky. 
 Two oceans dashed in one shall climb and roar 
 And seek ia vain the exterminated shore." * 
 
 Samuel Johnson voices the general sentiment of the 
 poets when he says that: 
 
 " Reason frowns on war's unequal game 
 Where wasted nations raise a single name." 
 
 This common aversion of the poets to the injustice 
 and cruelty of war was deepened in Barlow's case by his 
 personal experiences as a soldier in the American Revo- 
 lution and still more by the awful sufferings and unpar- 
 alleled loss of life of Napoleon's army in Russia. On 
 June 25, 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with an army 
 of 500,000 men. On October 19, of the same year, he 
 commenced his retreat from the burning city of Mos- 
 cow. But he had delayed too long and the Russian 
 winter had already begun. Day after day, his hun- 
 gry, tattered soldiers staggered through the blinding 
 snow, and night after night they left a ring of frozen 
 corpses beside their extinguished camp fires. Barlow 
 was a witness to some of the horrors of this retreat, and 
 as he heard the hoarse ravens croak above the dead, he 
 wrote an impassioned poem telling them that they need 
 not f oUow Napoleon to Russia, for that he would pro- 
 vide them in any part of Europe. 
 
 " You fear he left behind no wars to feed 
 His feathered cannibals and nurse the breed. 
 Fear not, my screamers, call your greedy train. 
 Sweep over Europe, hurry back to Spain. 
 * * ♦ 
 
 * Slightly altered in the abridgment. 
 
43 EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 Fear nothing! hatch (in haste) your ravenous brood, 
 Teach them to cry to Bonaparte for food. 
 
 * * * 
 
 While on his slaughtered troops your tribes are fed. 
 
 You cleanse his camp and carry off his dead. 
 
 Imperial scavengers; but now, you know. 
 
 Your work is vain amid these hills of snow. 
 
 His tentless troops are marbled through with frost. 
 
 And changed to crystal when the breath is lost. 
 
 * * * 
 
 They cannot taint the air, the world infest. 
 Nor can you tear one fibre from their breast. 
 No ! from their visual sockets as they lie 
 With beak and claws you cannot pluck an eye — 
 The frozen orb preserving still its form. 
 Defies your talons as it braves the storm. 
 But stands and stares to God as if to know 
 In what cursed hands he leaves his world below. 
 » » * 
 
 Go back and winter in the wilds of Spain; 
 Feast there awhile and in the next campaign 
 Eej oin your master, for you'll find him then. 
 With his new millions of the race of men, 
 Cloth'd in his thunders, all his flags unfurl'd, 
 Eaging and storming o'er a prostrate world! 
 War after war, his hungry soul requires; 
 State after state shall sink beneath his fires. 
 Yet other Spains in victim smoke shall rise. 
 And other Moscows suffocate the skies. 
 Each land lie reeking with its people slain. 
 And not a stream run bloodless to the main. 
 Till men resume their souls and dare to shed 
 Earth's total vengeance on the monster's head ! " 
 
 Barlow dictated this tremendous imprecation and 
 appeal from a sick bed. They were in fact his dying 
 words and he had hardly penned them before he him- 
 
EARLY AMERICAN POETRY 43 
 
 self was added to the innumerable company of Na- 
 poleon's victims. He died December 22d, 1812, in a 
 humble hostelry in the little village of Zamawicka, 
 Poland. 
 
 Barlow did not succeed in writing a great epic, but 
 he wrote a good deal of vigorous didatic verse; Pro- 
 fessor Tyler, a competent and cautious judge, says of 
 The Columbiad : " This huge political and philosoph- 
 ical essay in verse may be accepted by us as an 
 involuntary expression, for that period, of the Ameri- 
 can national consciousness and even of the American 
 national character, as sincere and unflinching as were, 
 in their diflFerent ways, the renowned state paper of 
 Jefferson, the constitution of 1789, and Washington's 
 farewell address." 
 
 Barlow's literary honors are not small; but far 
 above them is his personal worth, and he deserves to 
 be loved not only as a pure and ardent American pa- 
 triot, but as one who loved and strove to help his fel- 
 low men of every nationality and race! 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 The subject of this lecture is the art of poetry. On 
 such a complex and difficult theme, there is great dan- 
 ger of running into pedantry and tedious detail, or on 
 the other hand of avoiding these evils by an uninstruc- 
 tive superficiality. I would rather be helpful than 
 entertaining, and must ask your indulgence if I pre- 
 sent to you here only a few plain and somewhat 
 elementary facts in regard to the technique of poetry. 
 
 When Edgar Allan Poe gave a course of lectures on 
 the art of poetry, James Russell Lowell said of them: 
 
 " He talks like a book of iamb and pentameters 
 In a way to make people of common sense damn 
 metres/' 
 
 Yet in spite of Lowell's ungracious disparagement of 
 such discussions, it remains true that knowledge of the 
 technique of poetry, adds to a reader's enjoyment of it 
 in the same way that a knowledge of the technique of 
 music adds immeasurably to the pleasure of listening 
 to a symphony or sonata. 
 
 We call painting, sculpture, architecture, music and 
 poetry fine arts. Architecture, sculpture and painting 
 have an advantage over poetry in that they appeal di- 
 rectly to the eye, which is the noblest of our senses, or 
 to use John Bunyan's phrase, we may say that knowl- 
 edge that enters at eye-gate is better than that which 
 enters at ear-gate. A picture impresses a fact upon 
 us with a power beyond that of the clearest and strong- 
 est words. But the disadvantage of the picture as 
 compared with the poem is that the picture is confined 
 
 47 
 
48 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 to a single aspect of the subject, and though a succes- 
 sion of pictures may represent a succession of events, 
 still they cannot do so with anything like the fullness 
 of detail of a good narrative. No succession of pic- 
 tures could ever be a substitute for the Iliad or Para- 
 dise Lost. 
 
 Music has an advantage over poetry in that the im- 
 mediate impression produced by it is usually much 
 stronger. No poem of war stirs the blood like the 
 sound of a trumpet, no mirthful song makes the nerves 
 tingle like the tones of a violin. 
 
 Yet music alone is vague and inarticulate. It 
 speaks strongly to the emotions but very feebly to 
 the intellect. We receive the greatest enjoyment and 
 the largest benefit when perfect music is joined to noble 
 words. The choral song lifts us to heights of rap- 
 ture and devotion beyond the power of spoken words. 
 
 Yet all things considered, poetry is the chief of the 
 fine arts. It is the most comprehensive, the most en- 
 during and the most universal. No painting contains 
 much or lasts long, or can be seen by many people. 
 Its colors fade, its canvas cracks and crumbles, and 
 even during its short life of two or three centuries, it 
 is confined to one place at a time. The statue or the 
 building last a little longer, but they too are made of 
 perishable materials and they are even more narrowly 
 than the picture confined to one spot. But the poem 
 has a virtual eternity and universality. 
 
 Poetry is the most permanent of the fine arts. 
 While all the painting and all the music of antiquity 
 has perished, while the statues are broken fragments 
 and the temples are crumbling ruins, the best poetry 
 of the ancient world is perennially, young. The 
 psalms, the parables and the beatitudes, losing little by, 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 49 
 
 translation, are becoming the inspiration and delight 
 of all nations, and it is hardly a figure of speech to 
 say that they will eventually pass from earth to heaven 
 and that there one of the enjoyments of the blessed 
 will be to sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. 
 
 Poetry is the earliest form of hterature. Before 
 the art of writing was invented and during the long 
 ages when all writings were carved upon the rock or 
 impressed upon tablets of clay, poetry was the great 
 medium of preserving and transmitting the history 
 and wisdom of the past generations. It is very much 
 easier to remember verse than prose, as is evident from 
 the fact that we all remember far more of it. People 
 seldom remember the phraseology of ordinary news- 
 paper writing, but retain only the general idea. In- 
 deed few people, when they have read a novel, can 
 quote accurately a single sentence from it. But we 
 all instinctively and without effort remember a great 
 deal of the poetry we read and can easily recall the 
 words of hymns and songs that we never attempted to 
 commit to memory. 
 
 The purpose which poetry once universally served in 
 recording fact and experience is suggested by the part 
 which it still plays in preserving popular wisdom and 
 philosophy. There are people whose meteorological 
 science is nearly all summed up in the couplet, 
 
 " Eed in the morning, the shepherd's warning, 
 Eed at night, the shepherd's delight." 
 
 There are people who are never quite sure of the num- 
 ber of days in any month until they have repeated: 
 
 "Thirty days hath September, 
 
 April, June and November; 
 
 All the rest have thirty-one, 
 1-^ 
 
50 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 Excepting February alone: 
 
 Which hath but twenty-eight in fine 
 
 Till Leap Year gives it twenty-nine." 
 
 Even in this progressive epoch when invention has 
 conquered darkness and made night cheerful, there is 
 wisdom in the old adage, 
 
 " Early to bed and early to rise 
 Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise," 
 
 and there would be need of fewer physicians if every- 
 body acted upon the rude wisdom of the doggerel 
 
 verse, 
 
 " Joy and temperance and repose 
 Slam the door on the doctor's nose." 
 
 Cooks and kitchen maids who find it hard to re- 
 member tables of weights and measures seldom forget 
 the convenient rhyming equivalent expressed in the 
 phrase, 
 
 " A pint is a pound the world around." 
 
 Few sermons contain so much portable and prac- 
 tical wisdom as the old quatrain which Sir Matthew 
 Hale, the Puritan judge, used to quote: 
 
 " A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content. 
 And health for the toils of the morrow. 
 But a Sabbath profaned, whate'er may be gained. 
 Is a certain forerunner of sorrow." 
 
 I have assumed so far that everybody knows what 
 poetry is, yet it may be well to attempt to define it. 
 The cautious dictionary tells us that poetry is met- 
 rical composition, a union of metre and sense. 
 
 If, as in the following lines, there is metre without 
 sense, the result is not poetry. 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 61 
 
 " Where is Cupid's crimson motion ? 
 Billowy ecstasy of woe? 
 Bear me straight, meandering ocean. 
 Where the stagnant torrents flow." 
 
 That is a mere nonsense verse, a burlesque upon those 
 who are so in love with form and sound that they 
 sacrifice sense to it, the kind of versifiers of whom 
 Pope wrote: 
 
 " In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire. 
 Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire." 
 
 Nor do words and ideas essentially commonplace 
 and prosaic become poetry by the use of regular ac- 
 cents and appropriate rhymes. In what was meant 
 for a hymn, I once read a stanza which ran thus : 
 
 " We thank thee for our industries. 
 Our factories and mines. 
 For labor and for capital. 
 For business in all lines." 
 
 The sentiment is pious, yet the stanza is utterly pro- 
 saic. 
 
 How diff'erent the definite enumeration of factories 
 and mines and labor and capital from the bold and 
 beautiful language of the Bible in which a fertile 
 country filled with cattle feeding on the grass and bees 
 ranging among the flowers, is spoken of as " a land 
 flowing with milk and honey." In Sir Philip Sidney's 
 impassioned Defense of Poetry, one of the earliest 
 English treatises upon the subject, the brilliant scholar 
 and soldier, the friend and patron of Spenser and 
 Shakespeare, uses the following stately and eloquent 
 language : 
 
 " It is not riming and versing that maketh a poet, 
 
52 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 no more than a long gowne maketh an advocate, who 
 though he pleaded in armor should be an advocate and 
 no souldier. But it is that fayning notable images of 
 vertues, vices, or what els, with that delightful teach- 
 ing, which must be the right describing to know a 
 poet by." 
 
 Shakespeare tells us that: 
 
 ' "As imagination bodies forth 
 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name." 
 
 The language of science is abstract, that of poetry 
 is concrete and picturesque. The man of science 
 speaks of height and magnitude and velocity ; the poet, 
 of cloud-capped towers, of broad oceans and of swiftly 
 flying birds. This difference suggests the statement 
 of Milton, who declares that poetry is simple, sensuous 
 and passionate. 
 
 Gray, the author of the Elegy in a Country 
 Churchyard, said that the language of poetry must 
 be " pure, perspicuous and musical." 
 
 But these definitions are suggestive rather than 
 complete. Imagination, passion and music are not 
 the whole of poetry. Great poetry must have solidity 
 and substance of thought. Aristotle declared that 
 poetry was a higher form of truth than history, and 
 Matthew Arnold's famous definition is : " Poetry is a 
 criticism of life." Coleridge said : " Good sense is 
 the body, imagination the soul and fancy the drapery 
 of poetry." Leigh Hunt, in a still more elaborate and 
 careful definition, says : " Poetry is the utterance of a 
 passion for truth, beauty and power, illustrating and 
 embodying its conceptions by imagination and fancy. 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 63 
 
 and modulating its language on the principle of va- 
 riety in uniformity." 
 
 Passing from these definitions of poetry, let us con- 
 sider its special themes. Poetry ignores the trivial and 
 is concerned with the high and permanent hopes and 
 fears and duties and enjoyments of the soul. Words- 
 worth utters this benediction upon the poets: 
 
 " Blessings be with them and eternal praise 
 Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares. 
 The poets, who on earth have made us heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays." 
 
 Still more beautiful and comprehensive is Long- 
 fellow's description of the poet. He says: 
 
 " All the many sounds of Nature 
 Borrowed sweetness from his singing; 
 All the hearts of men were softened 
 By the pathos of his music; 
 For he sang of peace and freedom. 
 Sang of beauty, love and longing; 
 Sang of death and life undying 
 In the Islands of the Blessed, 
 In the kingdom of Ponemah, 
 In the land of the Hereafter." 
 
 An ancient proverb says that " the poet is born, not 
 made ;" yet although the poetic faculty is a divine in- 
 spiration, it can be cultivated and increased, and the 
 greatest genius needs also to be an artist. In Ben 
 J(j/!{nson's famous eulogy on Shakespeare, after a 
 high tribute to Shakespeare's natural endowments, 
 Jonson declares : 
 
 " Yet must I not give Nature all ; thy art, 
 My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. 
 
54. THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 He who casts to write a living line must 
 
 sweat. 
 And strike the second heat 
 Upon the Muse's anvil, . . . 
 Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn. 
 For a good poet's made as well as born." 
 
 In antiquity, there were indeed Greek poets who 
 professed to utter verses on any given theme without 
 previous preparation, and in our day races with a 
 lively imagination, such as the Arabians, Italians, and 
 negroes, still display the talent of spontaneous versi- 
 fying, and it is occasionally found even among men 
 of the less emotional and imaginative nations. Theo- 
 dore Hook, an English dramatic poet who lived in 
 the early part of the last century, was a famous im- 
 provisor. It is related that on one occasion he and an 
 actor named Terry, as they were going home from the 
 theatre, passed a large and brilliantly lighted house 
 from which the lively sound of dance music was com- 
 ing. It was evident that some family of wealth and 
 distinction was giving a ball, and Hook was unable to 
 resist the attraction. He said to Terry, " We are in 
 evening dress, let's go in, they'll think we've been in- 
 vited, and if not, no matter." So in they went, were 
 politely received, made themselves very agreeable, 
 danced and sang and ate and drank and told stories 
 till all the company were wondering who they could 
 be, when suddenly Hook sat down to the piano and to 
 his own accompaniment sang this farewell and ex- 
 planatory stanza: 
 
 " I'm very well pleased with your fare. 
 Your cellar's as good as your cook; 
 My friend's Mr. Terry, the player. 
 And I'm Mr. Theodore Hook." 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 55 
 
 Three quarters of a century ago, just before the 
 rise of Longfellow to public favor, the gay and grace- 
 ful N. P. Willis was the most popular and admired 
 American poet. His pious father had called him Na- 
 thaniel, but the solemn Scripture name was too heavy 
 for the brilHant trifler to bear, and he was familiarly 
 designated as Nat. Willis. He was a great ladies' 
 man, and on one occasion at a dinner party was paying 
 his very best compliments to a handsome young woman 
 who was receiving them with evident enjoyment, when 
 her aunt and chaperon noticed the actions of the pair 
 and wrote to her niece a note of censure and rebuke 
 in the words, " Don't flirt so outrageously with Nat 
 Willis." Willis read the note and noticing that the 
 aunt was herself enjoying the society of a certain Mr. 
 Campbell, he begged the young lady to allow him to 
 write an answer in her name, which he did in these 
 words : 
 
 " Dear Aunt, don't attempt my young feelings to trammel, 
 Nor strain at a Nat, whilst you swallow a Campbell." 
 
 Brilliant and amusing trifles have sometimes been 
 produced on the spur of the moment, and many very 
 great poems have been written with marvelous rapidity. 
 Tam O'Shanter, the very masterpiece of the genius of 
 Robert Burns, was written in a single day. Long- 
 fellow wrote the most touching and beautiful of his 
 ballads. The Wreck of the Hesperus, in the hours be- 
 tween midnight and three in the morning. He says: 
 " It hardly cost me an eff^ort. It did not come into 
 my mind by lines, but by stanzas." The Vision of 
 Sir Launf al, the most imaginative and at the same time 
 the most profound and noble of Lowell's poems, was 
 written in four days. 
 
56 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 The larger part of the matchless modern pastoral, 
 the Hermann and Dorothea of Goethe, was written in 
 a week. But in all these cases there had been long 
 periods of unconscious accumulation of material and 
 unconscious preparation of mind and heart. As in a 
 blast furnace the ores are slowly melted and fused and 
 then at last the molten metal pours forth in sudden 
 flow, so ideas ferment in the mind and feelings glow 
 in the heart, until by and by they manifest themselves 
 with a force and suddenness that seem almost super- 
 natural. 
 
 But efforts of this kind can never be long sus- 
 tained. All literary biography shows that the high- 
 est efforts of genius are intermittent and that any 
 great increase in the quantity of a man's writing is 
 gained at the expense of its quality. Oliver Gold- 
 smith considered ten lines of good poetry a good day's 
 work, and certainly few poets who have polished their 
 verses with the same scrupulous care as the author of 
 the Deserted Village, have much exceeded this rate of 
 speed. Pope, indeed, tells us that in translating 
 Homer's Iliad he often wrote fifty lines a day, but 
 when we observe the dates at which he began and ended 
 his great task, we find that averaging his less produc- 
 tive and non-productive days with his most successful 
 ones, his average rate of composition did not much 
 exceed the ten hues Goldsmith declared sufficient. Mil- 
 ton, in the full maturity of his knowledge and skill, 
 spent seven years in writing Paradise Lost, a poem 
 of less than 12,000 lines, so that, if we exclude Sun- 
 days and holidays from consideration and allow only 
 300 days to a year, his average was less than six lines 
 A day. 
 
 These well substantiated biographical facts show 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 57 
 
 how carefully poets generally subject their first inspi- 
 ration to the revision of their later critical judgment. 
 The poet chooses his words and arranges them for the 
 best effect with as much care as the painter draws his 
 outlines, and colors and shades his pictures. Byron 
 was one of the gifted and spontaneous poets. His 
 mind was stored with knowledge, his passions were 
 strong and his imagination was fertile ; yet his letters 
 and the manuscripts of his poetry show how carefully 
 he studied composition as an art. Scarcely any other 
 man has revealed himself so fully and frankly to the 
 world, and it is curious and amusing to read the con- 
 fession of this divine genius that on a pinch, he did 
 not disdain, like the veriest tyro and poetaster, to turn 
 over a dictionary of rhymes to enable him the more 
 easily to complete a troublesome stanza. When he 
 had just published Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and 
 was at the zenith of his poetic fame, with saucy and 
 amusing self-deprecation he wrote : 
 
 " I am but a nameless sort of person, 
 A broken dandy lately on my travels. 
 
 And so I take to hook my rambling verse on 
 The first that Walker's Lexicon unravels; 
 
 And if I can't find that I take a worse one. 
 Not caring as I should for critics' cavils; 
 
 I've half a mind to tumble down to prose, 
 
 But verse is more in fashion, so here goes." 
 
 All poetry from the highest to the lowest Is an art 
 as well as an inspiration. Let us then briefly con- 
 sider some of the elements and forms of this art. 
 
 Hebrew poetry depended very largely upon what is 
 called parallelism, the repetition of the same thought 
 in consecutive sentences of similar length and struc- 
 ture. This style of poetry runs through the Bible 
 
68 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 from Genesis to Revelation. For instance in Genesis 
 we read, 
 
 " And Lamech said unto his wives: 
 Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; 
 Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech ; 
 For I have slain a man to my wounding 
 And a young man to my hurt. 
 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold. 
 Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold." 
 
 But the most perfect examples of parallelism in 
 thought and form in Hebrew poetry are in the Psalms. 
 I will read a few illustrative verses from the second 
 psalm : 
 
 " Why do the heathen rage, 
 And the people imagine a vain thing ? 
 The Kings of the earth set themselves. 
 And the rulers take counsel together 
 Against the Lord 
 And against his anointed, saying 
 Let us break their bands asunder 
 And cast away their cords from us. 
 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. 
 The Lord shall have them in derision." 
 
 Parallelism is found occasionally in almost all the 
 English poets, and Longfellow made it the especial 
 characteristic of Hiawatha which opens thus: 
 
 " Should you ask me whence these stories. 
 Whence these legends and traditions. 
 With the odors of the forest. 
 With the dew and damp of meadows. 
 With the curling smoke of wigwams. 
 With the rushing of great rivers. 
 With their frequent repetitions. 
 
THE ART OF POETRY SS 
 
 And their wild reverberations 
 As of thunder in the mountains, 
 I repeat them as I heard them 
 From the lips of Nawahdaha 
 The musician, the sweet singer." 
 
 Edgar Allen Poe also made much use of parallelism 
 and repetition in producing his strange and haunting 
 melodies. The first stanza of Ulalune is as follows: 
 
 " The skies they were ashen and sober. 
 The leaves they were crisped and sere. 
 
 The leaves they were withering and sere; 
 It was night in the lonesome October 
 Of my most immemorial year; 
 It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 
 In the misty mid region of Weir: 
 It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 
 In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 
 
 The classic poetry of the Greeks does not depend 
 upon parallelism, nor does it make much use of rhyme. 
 Rhymes are occasionally found, but so rarely, that they 
 seem accidental. The poetry of the Greeks was based 
 on musical time, or as it is commonly called, quantity. 
 The hexameter is the most famous of Greek measures. 
 The six feet consist of one dactyl and five spondees, of 
 two dactyls and four spondees, of three dactyls and 
 three spondees, of four dactyls and two spondees, or of 
 five dactyls and one spondee. A dactyl contains three 
 syllables and a spondee only two, so that a line of one 
 dactyl and five spondees contains only thirteen sylla- 
 bles, whereas a line of five dactyls and one spondee 
 contains seventeen syllables. Yet these lines are per- 
 fect metrical equivalents. 
 
 English poetry is not based primarily upon quan- 
 tity, but upon accent; yet the Greek principle may 
 
60 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 often be recognized in some degree in English verse. 
 In Browning's beautiful poem, The Boy and the 
 Angel, most of the lines contain seven or eight sylla- 
 bles, but occasionally there are lines of six syllables, 
 and these short lines require just as much time for 
 their proper pronunciation as the longer ones. The 
 poem begins: 
 
 Morning, evening, noon and night, 
 " Praise God ! " sang Theocrite. 
 There to his poor trade he turned. 
 Whereby the daily meal was earned. 
 Hard he labored, long and well ; 
 O'er his work the boy's curls fell. 
 But ever at each period. 
 He stopped and sang, " Praise God." 
 
 It is obvious from the structure of the verse that the 
 poet intended that the two emphatic syllables " Praise 
 God " should take as much time as four ordinary syl- 
 lables. 
 
 Let me give an example of the same principle, dif- 
 ferently applied, from Tennyson. The Poem of The 
 Princess is an elaborate and stately argument for 
 woman's dignity and full equality with man. The 
 extract that I shall read is part of a lecture by the 
 Lady Psyche. Says the poet: 
 
 " She took 
 A bird's-eye view of all the ungracious past; 
 Glanced at the legendary Amazon 
 As emblematic of a nobler age; 
 
 Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines 
 
 Of empire, and the woman's state in each. 
 
 How far from just; till warming with her theme, 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 61 
 
 She fulmined out her scorn of law salique 
 And little-footed China^ touched on Mahomet 
 With much contempt, and came to chivalry." 
 
 The poem consists of lines of ten syllables each, 
 yet the line " And little-footed China, touched on 
 Mahomet " contains twelve syllables and in order that 
 these twelve may be spoken in the same length of time 
 as the usual ten, they must be uttered very rapidly. 
 The poet's purpose is to make this rapidity of utter- 
 ance a means of slurring over the name of Mohamet, 
 and thus emphasizing the lady's aversion and con- 
 tempt for the polygamous prophet. 
 
 English poetry depends upon rhythm and rhyme, 
 upon measured movement and recurring sound. Like 
 every other art of man, the art of poetry is taught 
 by Nature and based on certain elemental facts. 
 There is a regularity in the inspiration and expiration 
 of the breath and in the ebb and flow of the blood. 
 We see the same rhythm on a grander scale in the tides 
 of the ocean, in the succession of day and night, in 
 the alternation of summer and winter. As Emerson 
 says: 
 
 " Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes. 
 Of things with things, of times with times, 
 ; Primal chimes of sun and shade. 
 
 Of sound and echo, man and maid. 
 The land reflected in the flood. 
 Body with shadow still pursued. 
 For Nature beats in perfect tune. 
 And rounds with rhyme her every rune. 
 Whether she work on land or sea. 
 Or hide underground her alchemy. 
 Thou canst not wave thy staff in air. 
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake. 
 
62 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 But it carves the bow of beauty there. 
 And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake." 
 
 It seems to us obvious that the proper place for a 
 rhyme is at the end of the verse; but there are two 
 ways of looking at every question, and our earliest 
 English ancestors did not think as we do, but pre- 
 ferred to place their rhymes at the beginning of verses 
 and feet, and omit them at the end. In other words the 
 earliest English poetry was what we call alliterative. 
 Each line of poetry contained three or sometimes four 
 accented syllables beginning with the same or a very 
 similar letter. Beowulf, the earliest English poem, 
 belonging in its original form to the fourth or fifth 
 century, describes a ship as " Floating thing, foam- 
 bowed and fowl-like." It speaks of the " nipping 
 night and northern wind." But we can get the effect 
 of early English poetry better by, taking an example 
 from the fourteenth century in which the words will 
 be more readily understood. Langland opens his vi- 
 sion of Piers the Plowman with the words : 
 
 " I was a-weary forwandered and went to rest 
 Under a broad bank by a burnside; 
 There as I lay and leaned and looked on the waters 
 
 I slumbered in a sleeping, it sounded so merry." 
 t 
 
 Rhyme came in with the Norman Conquest of Eng- 
 land in the eleventh century, but only slowly sup- 
 planted the old alliterative verse. Many poets resisted 
 the new fashion of rhyming and continued to write 
 alliterative poems in the same patriotic spirit as they 
 maintained other national customs. Other poets tried 
 to combine the new Norman rhymes with the old 
 Anglo-Saxon alliteration and produced stanzas of this 
 sort: 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 63 
 
 " In summer when the shaws are sheen 
 And leaves are large and long. 
 It is full merry in fair forest 
 To hear the fowles song." 
 
 Alliteration is still a very valuable adjunct to rhyme 
 in English poetry, and it is not beyond the truth to 
 say that every good English poem owes part of its 
 melody to this principle. A few examples will make 
 this plain. Coleridge in the Ancient Mariner says: 
 
 " The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew. 
 The furrow followed free. 
 We were the first, that ever burst 
 Into that silent sea." 
 
 Byron writes in Childe Harold: 
 
 " Pride bend thine eye from heaven to thine estate ; 
 See how the mighty shrink into a song; 
 Can volume, pillar, pile preserve thee great, 
 Or must thou trust tradition's simple tongue. 
 When flattery sleeps with thee and history does thee 
 wrong? " 
 
 Tennyson in The Princess speaks of the Woman's 
 College : 
 
 " With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans 
 And sweet girl graduates with their golden hair." 
 
 And Browning, in whose works consummate examples 
 of every rhetorical excellence may be found in pro- 
 fusion, gives us this choice specimen of alliterative 
 skill: 
 
 " All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of 
 
 one bee. 
 All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one 
 
 gem, 
 
64 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 In the core of one pearl all the shade and shine of the 
 sea. 
 
 And to give but one more example, Kipling, voicing 
 the weariness and lassitude of an Englishman amid 
 the debilitating splendors of tropical India and his 
 longing for the sterner landscape and climate of the 
 north, says : 
 
 " The rose has lost its fragrance 
 And the koil's note is strange, 
 I am sick of endless sunshine 
 And the blossom-burdened bough. 
 Give me back the leafless woodlands 
 Where the winds of springtime range. 
 Give me back one day in England 
 For it's spring in England now." 
 
 Rhymes are single or double, or as they are figuratively 
 called masculine or feminine ; for the single or mascu- 
 line rhyme gives a stronger, and the double or feminine 
 rhyme a softer and more graceful, effect. The spirit 
 of Sir Walter Scott's poetry is expressed in the stanza : 
 
 " Sound, sound the trumpet, fill the fife. 
 To all the sensual world proclaim 
 One crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth an age without a name." 
 
 Scott's masculine rhymes are repeated at short in- 
 tervals and fall on the ear like repeated strokes of 
 sword or hammer. Of the Knights of Branksome, 
 Scott says: 
 
 " They quitted not their harness bright. 
 Neither by day nor yet by night: 
 They lay down to rest 
 With corslet laced, 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 65 
 
 Pillowed on buckler cold and hard; 
 
 They carved at the meal 
 
 With gloves of steel. 
 And they drank the red wine through the helmet 
 barred." 
 
 And when Marmion sees the splendid Scottish army 
 in battle array, he does not wonder that the Scotch 
 King refuses offers of peace, but says: 
 
 " For by Saint George, were that host mine 
 Not power infernal or divine 
 Should once to peace my heart incline, 
 Till I had dimmed their armor's shine 
 In battle's glorious fray." 
 
 In contrast with this ringing verse in masculine 
 rhymes we find that tender and gentle thoughts are ex- 
 pressed in softer forms of verse. So the poet sings in 
 feminine rhymes, 
 
 " Beyond the sowing and the reaping 
 I shall be soon, 
 Beyond the smiling and the weeping 
 I shall be soon." 
 
 Triple rhymes are also often used in pathetic pas- 
 sages as in Hood's Bridge of Sighs, in which he says 
 of the poor girl suicide: 
 
 " One more unfortunate. 
 Weary of breath, 
 Eashly importunate. 
 Gone to her death! 
 
 Take her up tenderly. 
 
 Lift her with care. 
 Fashioned so slenderly. 
 
 Young and so fair! 
 1—5 
 
66 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 Loop up her tresses 
 
 Escaped from the comb, — 
 
 Her fair auburn tresses, — 
 
 Whilst wonderment guesses 
 Where was her home? 
 
 Alas! for the rarity 
 Of Christian charity 
 
 Under the sun! 
 O, it was pitiful! 
 Near a whole city-ful 
 
 Home she had none." 
 
 But triple rhymes also readily lend themselves to 
 comic or satiric effects. Byron was fond of using 
 triple rhyme as a lash to the whip of his scorn. Of 
 all forms of ignorance he most despised that which 
 disguises itself in a pedantic affectation of knowl- 
 edge, and so we find such couplets as this : 
 
 " He loved his child and would have felt the loss of her, 
 But knew the cause no more than a philosopher." 
 
 Lowell also frequently uses triple rhymes in satire. 
 In that caricature of Bryant's poetry which the author 
 of Thanatopsis never forgave, Lowell says: 
 
 " There is Bryant as quiet, as cool, and as dignified. 
 As a smooth, silent iceberg that never is ignified, — " 
 Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose he has 'em, 
 But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm." 
 
 Some dainty and artistic versifiers delight to place 
 their rhymes at long intervals and thus secure a deli- 
 cate, elusive, and subtle grace that is felt but often not 
 traced to its source. 
 
 The mechanical use or rhyme is always attended with 
 
THE AKT OF POETRY 67 
 
 the danger of warping the sense. Samuel Butler said 
 in Hudibras that 
 
 " Bhymes the rudders are of verses 
 By which like ships they steer their courses," 
 
 and as for his own doggerel lines, he frankly admitted 
 
 " That one for sense and one for rhyme 
 I think sufficient at a time." 
 
 On the other hand, Cowper, who had a high sense of 
 the dignity and value of the art of poetry, said : 
 
 " If sentiment is sacrificed to sound 
 And truth cut short to make a period round, 
 I judge a man of sense can scarce do worse 
 Than caper in the morris dance of verse." 
 
 Milton in his earlier poems used rhyme but avoided 
 monotony by arranging them sometimes in couplets, 
 sometimes alternately and sometimes at still longer 
 intervals. In Lycidas the rhymes are very irregular 
 and some lines have no corresponding ones. This ir- 
 regularity of measure is well suited to an elegy; for 
 the moans and sobs of grief, which an elegy represents, 
 are always fitful and uncontrolled. 
 
 For Paradise Lost, Milton rejected rhyme alto- 
 gether, and in his preface gives his reason in the brief 
 and dictatorial statement that " Rhyme is no neces- 
 sary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, 
 in longer works especially, but the invention of a 
 barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame 
 metre — Rhyme to all judicious ears is trivial and of 
 no true musical delight; which consists only in apt 
 numbers, fit quantity of syllables and the sense vari- 
 ously drawn out from one verse into another; not in 
 
68 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 jingling sounds of like endings, a fault avoided by 
 the learned ancients." 
 
 The music of blank verse depends largely upon the 
 judicious distribution of pauses, on which point Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson in his famous life of Milton declares 
 that " the variety, of pauses so much boasted by the 
 lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an Eng- 
 lish poet to the periods of a declaimer ; and there are 
 only a few skillful and happy readers of Milton who 
 enable their audience to perceive where the lines begin 
 or end." " Blank verse," said an ungenerous critic, 
 " seems to be verse only to the eye." 
 
 Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but unrhymed 
 English poetry will not often please. Yet whatever 
 may be the advantages of rhyme, I cannot prevail on 
 myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I 
 cannot wish his work to be other than it is, yet, like 
 other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated. 
 " He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may 
 write blank verse, but those that hope only to please 
 must condescend to rhyme." 
 
 As usual, however, the poet is in the main right and 
 the critic on the whole wrong, and following Milton's 
 precedent most of the greater narrative poems in Eng- 
 lish have been unrhymed. I may mention as illustra- 
 tion Young's Night Thoughts, Cowper's Task, Words- 
 worth's Excursion, Tennyson's Idylls of the King, 
 Browning's The Ring and the Book and Longfellow's 
 Hiawatha and Evangeline. 
 
 How long ought the lines of a poem to be? There 
 are occasionally lines of one or two or three or four or 
 five or six syllables, but these are exceptions and there 
 are no English poems of importance in which the ma- 
 jority of lines contain fewer than seven or eight sylla- 
 bles, 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 69 
 
 The octosyllabic line is peculiarly well adapted to 
 rapid and vigorous narrative and is used by Scott in 
 the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and The Lady 
 of the Lake. But it is obvious that so short a line 
 gives Httle opportunity for ornament and embellish- 
 ment. Accordingly the didactic and philosophic poets 
 have commonly preferred lines of ten or twelve sylla- 
 bles. Lines of eight syllables consist only of the most 
 essential words and the style though vigorous seems 
 bald, but lines of ten or twelve syllables permit the 
 freer introduction of qualifying adjectives and ad- 
 verbs and thus permit more accurate and graceful 
 statement, yet with an inevitable tendency toward the 
 use of unnecessary expletive, or as it is bluntly called, 
 padding. I may illustrate by the first couplet in Pope's 
 translation of Homer, which is as follows : 
 
 " Achilles' wrath to Greece the direful spring 
 Of woes unnumbered, heavenly Goddess, sing." 
 
 Now, says the objector to diffuseness and the ad- 
 vocate of the short emphatic style, what would be lost 
 if we strike out a useless adjective from each of those 
 lines and read them thus: 
 
 " Achilles' wrath to Greece the spring 
 Of woes unnumbered, Goddess, sing." 
 
 In defense of this summary abridgment the critic as- 
 serts that it is certainly unnecessary to say that the 
 spring of unnumbered woes is direful, or that a god- 
 dess is heavenly for that is implied in the word god- 
 dess. This method of criticism seems to me, however, 
 to be too heroic, and if applied to Paradise Lost 
 
 " Would tear all beauties from the book 
 Like slashing Bentley with his desperate hook," 
 
70 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 If poems were to be deprived of all their ornamental 
 parts and left as naked propositions like mathematical 
 formula or logical syllogisms, we should have a result 
 like that of the poet who was told by an exacting edi- 
 tor to boil his poem down till it contained no super- 
 fluous words. The poem was entitled The Ballad of 
 the Merchant. When revised in accordance with the 
 strict requirements of the censor, all that remained of 
 it was the two words, " Trust, bust." Another illus- 
 tration of the same sort of condensed epic may be 
 given in the few warning words: 
 
 " Boy, gun. 
 Big fun. 
 Gun bust. 
 Boy dust." 
 
 Dr. Guest in his great work on English Rhythms 
 demonstrates that the elements of English poetry are 
 so numerous that if they were all used in all their 
 possible combinations the result would be several mil- 
 lion different metres. There are in actual use several 
 hundred such forms so that it is not surprising to find 
 that almost every great poet has a distinctive, or at 
 least a favorite, measure. Chaucer's favorite stanza 
 contained seven lines, arranged in three groups of 
 rhymes, consisting respectively of the first and third, 
 the second, fourth and fifth, and the sixth and seventh. 
 It makes a very pleasant and graceful movement, as 
 may be noticed by the following example: 
 
 " For thilke ground that bears the weedes wick 
 Bears eke the wholesome herbes and full oft 
 Next to the foule nettle rough and thick 
 The lily waxeth white and smooth and soft. 
 And next the valley is the hill aloft, 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 71 
 
 And next the darke night is the glad morrow. 
 And also joy is next the fine of sorrow." 
 
 Spenser's stanza in The Faerie Queene contains nine 
 lines, arranged in three groups of rhymes, consisting 
 respectively of the first and third, the second, fourth, 
 fifth and seventh, and the sixth, eighth and ninth 
 lines. In other words it consists of two quatrains with 
 alternate rhymes and connected with each other by 
 the fact that the first rhyme of the second quatrain is 
 the same as that of the last line of the first one. An- 
 other peculiarity, of the Spenserian stanza is that the 
 last line is two syllables longer than the others. The 
 measure has been much imitated by later poets and this 
 example from Byron will show its stateliness and 
 power : 
 
 " There is a pleasurein the pathless woods. 
 There is a rapture on the lonely shore. 
 There is society where none intrudes 
 By the deep sea and music in its roar; 
 I love not man the less but Nature more 
 For these our interviews in which I steal 
 From all I may be or have been before. 
 To mingle with the universe and feel 
 What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal." 
 
 Byron's own distinctive measure is the ottava rima, 
 borrowed from the Italian. The first, third and fifth 
 lines, the second, fourth and sixth, and the seventh and 
 eighth rhyme in groups, and the measure is so lively 
 that it is said to dance a jig and end in a breakdown. 
 To illustrate, I will give the stanza in which Byron tells 
 of the diff'erence between the English and the Italian 
 language : 
 
72 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 " I like the language, that soft bastard Latin 
 That melts like kisses from a female mouth. 
 And sounds as if it should be writ on satin 
 With syllables that breathe of the sweet south. 
 And gentle liquids, gliding all so pat in. 
 That not a single accent seems uncouth. 
 Like our harsh, northern, grunting guttural, 
 That we're obliged to hiss and spit and sputter all." 
 
 From Byron to Burns the transition is easy. Every- 
 body who quotes at all quotes, 
 
 " O wad some power the gifte gie us 
 To see oursels as ithers see us ! 
 It wad frae monie a blunder free us 
 
 An' foolish notion: 
 What airs in dress and gait wad lea'e us. 
 
 An' e'en devotion ! " 
 
 This famous stanza is in fact an old troubadour 
 measure which passed from France to England and 
 from England to Scotland, and had been used by 
 Ramsay and Ferguson and many other poets before 
 Burns used it with such effect in the broad humor of 
 The Address to the Deil, in the tender pathos of the 
 Lines to a Mouse and in the terrible satire of Holy 
 Willie's Prayer, that all other associations with the 
 stanza were almost obliterated and the measure came 
 to be looked upon as his. 
 
 Tennyson's distinctive stanza is a curious quatrain 
 in which, instead of following the usual practice of 
 making two couplets or rhyming the lines alternately, 
 the poet joins the middle lines in a couplet and makes 
 the first line rhyme with the fourth. For illustration 
 I will quote one of the stanzas in which the poet speaks 
 passionately of the friend for whom he wrote the most 
 elaborate of all elegies, In Memoriam. He says: 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 73 
 
 " In these ears, till hearing dies, 
 One set, slow bell will seem to toll, 
 The passing of the sweetest soul 
 That ever looked with human eyes." 
 
 I have detained you long and must speak of but 
 one more form of the English stanza, and that the 
 longest and most elaborate of all, the sonnet. The 
 sonnet consists of fourteen lines, or two quatrains and 
 two tercets, with an intricate rhyme scheme. It has 
 often been looked upon as a mere ingenious trifle, and 
 when Samuel Johnson was asked by a lady what he 
 thought of Milton's sonnets, he replied somewhat as 
 follows : " Madam, Milton was a genius who could 
 carve a colossus out of a mountain, but could not carve 
 heads upon cherry stones." Johnson said, moreover, 
 that Milton's sonnets did not deserve any particular 
 criticism; for of the best it could only be said that 
 they were not bad. 
 
 Johnson was to the eighteenth century a Sir Oracle 
 and when he had spoken no dog dared to bark. In 
 consequence of this harsh judgment the sonnet fell 
 into disuse and disrepute, till Wordsworth restored it 
 to public esteem by making it the medium of much of 
 his own best poetry. He wrote hundreds of good son- 
 nets of which one of the best is a plea for this form 
 of verse, in which he gives a condensed history of its 
 use. He says : 
 
 "Scorn not the sonnet; critic you have frowned 
 Mindless of its just honors; with this key 
 Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody 
 Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; 
 A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; 
 With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief; 
 The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf 
 
74 THE ART OF POETRY 
 
 Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned 
 His visionary brow ; a glowworm lamp 
 It cheered mild Spenser called from fairy land 
 To struggle through dark ways ; and when a damp 
 Fell round the path of Milton^ in his hand 
 The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew 
 Soul-animating strains — alas ! too few." 
 
 The sonnet seems to me most perfect when each 
 quatrain and each tercet is distinct and ended by a 
 period, and yet the four parts are strictly connected 
 in thought. I know of no more perfect example than 
 the sonnet written by Longfellow in memory of his 
 wife, who, it will be remembered, was burned to death, 
 her light summer dress having caught fire as she was 
 sealing up some packages of her children's hair. As 
 the organist in grief flies to his instrument for con- 
 solation, so the poet to whom the habit of writing in 
 verse has become a second nature, resorts to his favor- 
 ite measures. As Tennyson says: 
 
 " For the unquiet heart and brain 
 A use in measured numbers lies. 
 The sad, mechanic exercise 
 Like dull narcotics numbing pain." 
 
 In such a manner Longfellow gave this touching 
 expression in his life-long grief : 
 
 " In the long, sleepless watches of the night, 
 A gentle face, — the face of one long dead — 
 Looks at me from the wall, where round its head 
 
 The night lamp casts a halo of pale light. 
 
 Here in this room she died; and soul more white 
 Never through martyrdom of fire was led 
 To its repose; nor may in books be read 
 
 The legend of a life more benedight. 
 
THE ART OF POETRY 75 
 
 There is a mountain in the distant west 
 
 That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines 
 
 Displays a cross of snow upon its side. 
 Such is the cross I wear upon my breast 
 
 These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes 
 
 The seasons, changeless since the day she died." 
 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 It is not so very long since it was a common opinion 
 among scholars that Hebrew was the original lan- 
 guage of man and that all other languages were de- 
 rived from it. Cotton Mather, who subsequently be- 
 came the most distinguished American clergyman and 
 author of the seventeenth century, had been taught 
 this theory in college and wrote a thesis to maintain 
 that every " jot and tittle," every " jodh and horn " 
 of the Hebrew language was taught to man directly 
 by God himself. 
 
 The views of language that now prevail are very 
 .different. It is believed that God gave man a brain 
 and a tongue and let him work out first a spoken and 
 later a written language. As a result of the efforts 
 of the different races of men to express and preserve 
 their thoughts there are now about 1000 different lan- 
 guages and dialects. 
 
 The alphabet is the most wonderful and the most 
 useful of all human inventions. The typewriter and 
 the printing press, the telegraph and the telephone, 
 wonderful and useful as they are, are much less essen- 
 tial to our welfare than the ordinary old-fashioned 
 method of writing by hand. When you think of the 
 power and mystery of writing, it is no wonder that in 
 ignorant ages it was thought supernatural, men who 
 could read and write were accused of witchcraft, and 
 one of the meanings of the word " grammar " was 
 " magic." I remember reading a story of a mission- 
 ary to one of the South Sea islands who wrote on a 
 chip a message to his wife asking her to send him a 
 
 79 
 
80 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 hammer and a saw and some tools which he had for- 
 gotten. He gave the chip to a native and said " Take 
 this to my house and bring me what my wife gives 
 you." The man objected and said Mrs. So-and-So 
 will laugh at me for bringing her a chip. The mis- 
 sionary assured him that she would not but would un- 
 derstand what was wanted, and so rather sheepishly 
 the man did as he was told. The result was surpris- 
 ing. The lady at once handed him the tools desired 
 but the man paid no attention to them. Instead, he 
 seized the chip again and ran to the village shouting 
 at the top of his voice, " These people are magicians, 
 they can make chips talk, they can make chips talk." 
 English is the richest, most powerful and most con- 
 venient of the modern languages. It has the charac- 
 teristics of the race that formed it, and the English 
 language is widening its influence as rapidly and as 
 steadily as the English-speaking race. 
 
 A proverb says " The style is the man." In the 
 same way, we may say, the language shows the char- 
 acter of the people who make it and use it. If they 
 are a strong, energetic people, they create a strong 
 language. If they are an inventive people, they in- 
 vent many words. If they are a practical people, they 
 make their language plain and practical. If they are 
 an inartistic people, they neglect consistency and sym- 
 metry. The English language reflects perfectly the 
 character and history of the English race. It is 
 strong, copious, practical, aggressive, but irregular 
 and inconsistent. 
 
 Its origin is prehistoric, but its earliest written 
 memorials show these characteristics : 
 
 1. A small and harsh vocabulary. 
 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 81 
 
 2. A cumbrous system of inflections. 
 
 3. An involved syntax. 
 
 Words were largely distinguished by their form as 
 well as by their position and use. All verbs ended in 
 an and were not easily mistaken for nouns. For in- 
 stance, the verb thunder was thunrian, the noun thun- 
 der, thunor. 
 
 Nouns had five cases, adjectives had different forms 
 for the masculine, feminine, neuter and plural, and 
 verbs had a complicated conjugation. English is a 
 sister language to German, and if it had been allowed 
 to grow undisturbed would still have been very similar 
 to German both in vocabulary and syntax. 
 
 But the English language was not allowed to de- 
 velop in its own way. A people who spoke French 
 conquered England, and that conquest altered the 
 English language in three marked respects. 
 
 1. It brought in a prodigious number of French 
 words. 
 
 2. It swept away most of the inflections and con- 
 jugations, so that nouns have now only two case- 
 forms, a nominative and possessive, adjectives are not 
 declined at all, and the changes in the form of the verb 
 are very few. 
 
 3. The cumbrous laws of arrangement were aban- 
 doned. Laws of inversion and transposition like those 
 which still perplex the German tongue were given up 
 and writers felt at liberty to arrange the words in 
 whatever order seemed to them most forcible and 
 pleasing. 
 
 It took three hundred years for the old English to 
 blend with French and form the modern English lan- 
 guage. The Norman Conquest began in 1066 and it 
 was not till 1363 that English superseded French in 
 1—6 
 
82 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 the courts of law. By that time French and old Eng- 
 lish had been completely fused and in the new lan- 
 guage thus formed Chaucer, the father of EngHsh 
 poetry, and Wycliffe, the father of English prose, 
 began the creation of a great and splendid literature. 
 
 Since their day English has gone on adding to its 
 vocabulary just as fast as the race has added to its 
 possessions and its knowledge. 
 
 If people have few possessions and few ideas they 
 have few words, and as they acquire many possessions 
 and many ideas they acquire many words, so that the 
 dictionary of a nation is a complete index of its wealth 
 and knowledge. 
 
 Every new invention requires a name. The words 
 telegraph and telephone are new words because the 
 things they represent are new. One of the present 
 senses of the word " safety " came a few years ago 
 when small wheels were substituted for the old-fash- 
 ioned high bicycles. The verb " tramp " is old, but 
 the noun " tramp " is new for we had no homeless vaga- 
 bonds till a short time ago. A still later development 
 of the word occurs when a steamer which does not run 
 statedly between two ports is spoken of as a tramp 
 steamer, or still more briefly as a " tramp." 
 
 Now the people who speak the English language 
 are scattered through very many countries and are en- 
 gaged in very many different occupations, and as a 
 consequence the English vocabulary has grown to be 
 very large. There are only 6,000 words in the Eng- 
 lish Bible of 1611, but there are 100,000 in a modem 
 English dictionary. 
 
 The English language has I think three points of 
 extraordinary excellence and one great defect. 
 
 Its first great excellence is its extraordinarily rich 
 ^nd varied vocabulary. 
 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 83 
 
 The good results of the blending of the Saxon and 
 the Latin in English can hardly be overestimated. 
 Spanish is a musical and stately language, but it is 
 not rich in synonyms. A Spaniard has but one word 
 for length, longitude. If he measures the earth he 
 speaks of its longitude, if he measures ribbon or tape 
 he still talks about longitude, if he shoots a bear and 
 measures the beast from muzzle to tail it is that he 
 may ascertain its longitude. The Spaniard has a rope 
 which he throws over the head of a horse or cow and 
 thus catches the animal. It is a lasso. But in Span- 
 ish human society is united by lassoes. Even the 
 affection of husband and wife, of father and son, of 
 brother and sister are only the lassoes of the family. 
 The Spaniard has at command only words derived 
 from the Latin. 
 
 The German language has acquired a good many 
 words from the Latin and Greek but not nearly so 
 many as EngHsh and they are not nearly so freely 
 used. The Latin and Greek words found in German 
 are mostly learned and technical terms. If a German 
 wished to translate the word kingly, he must say 
 Koniglich, but we may say with equal propriety and 
 force, kingly or royal. In English we may say 
 brotherly love, or fraternal affection, but in German 
 there is no equivalent except for the first expression. 
 In English we may say hearty or cordial but in Ger- 
 man there is no precise synonym for " herzlich." In 
 English we may say stiff-necked or obstinate. There 
 is in German no precise equivalent for the latter word. 
 In English you can say with equal appropriateness, 
 masticate or chew. In German there is only " kauen." 
 
 English is the most flexible tongue in the world. 
 It may give great variety to its expressions. You 
 
84< THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 may have in English a hearty welcome or a cordial re- 
 ception, a loving wife or an amiable consort, a 
 wretched man or a miserable individual, an old sailor, 
 or an ancient mariner, a heavenly home or a celestial 
 mansion. You may say an aperture at the apex or 
 a hole at the top. You may retire to rest or ycu may 
 go to bed. You may say that a man is fat and lazy 
 or you may soften your statement and assert that he 
 is portly and disposed to meditation. You may say 
 of a book that it has not wit enough to keep it sweet 
 or translate it as Dr. Johnson did into " It has not 
 vitality sufficient to preserve it from putrefaction." 
 
 Rudyard Kipling tells of an Indian official who was 
 so important a man that he never walked or rode about 
 but always made tours of observation, was never paid 
 for his work but received certain pecuniary emolu- 
 ments, and his daughters did not fall in love and get 
 married but contracted matrimonial alliances. 
 
 English is so rich a language that you may find 
 beautiful specimens of poetry and eloquence made up 
 almost entirely from either one of its two chief ele- 
 ments. Here is one from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress. " The pilgrim they laid in a large upper cham- 
 ber whose window opened toward the sun-rising. 
 The name of the chamber was Peace, and there he 
 slept till break of day and then he awoke and sang." 
 Here is a musical stanza from Coleridge's Ancient 
 Mariner. 
 
 " It ceased but still the sails made on 
 A pleasant noise till noon, 
 A noise like that of a hidden brook 
 In the leafy month of June." 
 
 In contrast with the above passages representing 
 the Saxon vocabulary, here is one from Dr. Johnson 
 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 85 
 
 in which all the stately and significant words are from 
 the Latin. He calls lona " that illustrious isle whence 
 savage clans and roving barbarians received the bene- 
 fits of knowledge and the blessings of religion." 
 
 It is easy to find eloquent passages almost wholly 
 made up of Saxon words, it is easy to find eloquent 
 passages made up almost wholly of Latin words ; but 
 the most powerful and splendid passages of all are 
 those in which both Saxon and Latin are judiciously 
 blended. Take as an illustration a passage in which 
 Milton describes how Satan is cast out of heaven. 
 
 " Him the Almighty Power 
 Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky; 
 With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
 To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
 In adamantine chains and penal fire. 
 Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms." 
 
 Let me illustrate in another way the wealth and free- 
 dom of the English language. Greek is universally 
 regarded as the most polished language of antiquity. 
 It has twenty-four letters, but because of the love of 
 the Greeks for symmetry and euphony all words must 
 end in a vowel or in the letters n, r, or s. There are 
 thus only ten letters out of the twenty-four in which 
 a word may end; but in the English any one of the 
 twenty-six letters of the alphabet may be the last. 
 The Greek language was like a Greek temple, polished 
 and symmetrical, but restrained. The English lan- 
 guage has the breath and variety of a landscape. Its 
 words are not chiselled into columns, but they have 
 the free growth and varied forms of trees. 
 
 The chief reason why English words may end in 
 any letter is that they have so few inflections. But 
 the loss of the monotonous inflections gives more than 
 
86 ,THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 variety of ending. It gives brevity. An English 
 word derived from the Latin or Greek is nearly al- 
 ways at least one syllable shorter than the original. 
 The Latin multitudo drops one of its four syllables 
 and becomes multitude. A Latin word of three sylla- 
 bles like pictura becomes in English the word of two 
 syllables, picture. A Latin word of two syllables Hke 
 fructus, in English becomes fruit, and has but one. 
 
 We see the same difference in a less marked degree 
 in comparing English and German words. German 
 has blume, English has bloom; German says eiche, 
 English says oak; German says schule, English says 
 school. 
 
 This brevity is an immense practical advantage in 
 speaking and writing. Voltaire said, " The English 
 gain two hours a day by clipping their words; while 
 that is an exaggeration, it is true that the conciseness 
 of English makes it the pre-eminent commercial and 
 telegraphic language of the world." 
 
 Leaving the consideration of the vocabulary, take 
 up the second of the three excellences of English, 
 the simplicity of its grammar. What a convenience 
 it is to have only one form for the adjective instead 
 of four, a different one for the masculine, feminine, 
 neuter and plural. What an advantage to have no 
 arbitrary genders. 
 
 Lastly, what an advantage the freedom of English 
 syntax is. There are no rigid and complex laws of 
 inversion and transposition such as impede and per- 
 plex a German poet or author. 
 
 The vocabulary, the inflections, the syntax of Eng- 
 lish are alike admirable. Nevertheless the language has 
 one very serious defect. English spelling is shame- 
 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 87 
 
 fully, clumsy and inconsistent. The same sound may 
 be spelled in many ways, and the same letters may 
 represent many different sounds. 
 
 There is urgent need of a two-fold reform in our 
 spelling. First, Any letter or combination of let- 
 ters should always represent the same sound, and 
 second, superfluous letters should be dropped. To 
 illustrate, the sound f should always be represented 
 by the letter f and not sometimes by ph. But, 
 says the objector, the word philosopher is from the 
 Greek and the ph corresponds to the Greek <j}. Yes, 
 but frenzy is from the Greek also and in earlier Eng- 
 lish was spelled phrenzy. In the old geographies gulf 
 is spelled gulph. We have made these changes ca- 
 priciously, but the Spaniards have made them consist- 
 ently and spell not only frenzy and gulf with an f but 
 also philosopher (filosofo) and philologist (filologo). 
 
 We ought to do the same. We should drop super- 
 fluous letters. A wit was once asked to make a speech 
 at a spelling reform convention. " I'll make it now," 
 said he. " Drop me from the programme." For the 
 same reason that we should spell program, program 
 rather than programme, we should prefer tho to 
 though, shal to shall, hav to have, helth to health, 
 hed to head. Some people prefer head because they 
 suppose it to be the historic spelling. That argument 
 proves too much, for if early usage is to decide the 
 spelling, it should be not head, but heafod. We have 
 dropped the unnecessary letters out of many thousand 
 words and the language is all the better for the 
 change. Dog was once dogge and ship shippe. Dolt 
 was spelled dowlte, and ugly oughly. 
 
 But our spelling needs much further simplification, 
 and to make it as perfect as possible is a duty we owe to 
 
88 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 the future generations who are to learn to speak and 
 read Enghsh. It is not an exaggeration to say that 
 in the education of English and American children a 
 year's time is lost in mastering or trying to master the 
 needless intricacies of our spelling. 
 
 But there is another reason for urging spelling re- 
 form at this time, and that is the fact that English 
 is spreading very rapidly and that many uncivilized 
 and semi-civilized nations will soon substitute it for 
 their own tongues. 
 
 It is bad enough when the streets of a little village 
 are crooked and irregular, but it is far worse when 
 those of a great city are allowed to remain so. So it 
 was bad enough to have such spelling as we have when 
 Englishmen and their descendents were the only ones 
 concerned; but English is rapidly becoming the lan- 
 guage of many alien races in many different parts of 
 the world, and it is a duty we owe to them to make the 
 acquisition of English as easy as possible. 
 
 Trade follows the flag, and what is far more im- 
 portant the language of conquer ers and rulers foUows 
 their government. 
 
 After the conquests of Alexander the Great, there 
 were several centuries during which Greek was the 
 dominant language of civilization and it spread widely 
 in Europe, Asia, and Africa. When Greece fell, 
 Rome built up a great empire and Latin became the 
 language of France and Spain as well as Italy. Latin 
 was for more than 1,000 years the common language 
 of learned men in all parts of Europe. 
 
 But the power of Latin and the languages derived 
 from it is declining. 
 
 Five hundred years ago there were probably three 
 men who spoke French to one who spoke English. 
 
ITHE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 89 
 
 Now three men speak English for every one who 
 speaks French. 
 
 English is spoken to-day by 130,000,000 people. 
 It is the ruling tongue in Great Britain, the United 
 States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. 
 It is spoken, and well spoken, by 5,000,000 educated 
 Hindoos. It is the language of the schools and law 
 courts, of government and trade, in India. The news- 
 papers are nearly all English and the 151 native dia- 
 lects are rapidly disappearing. 
 
 English is spoken by the people who are building 
 up a great empire for civilization in long benighted 
 Africa. At Khartoum, in the heart of the dark conti- 
 nent, there will soon be an English college. Civiliza- 
 tion follows the British arms very quickly. As Kip- 
 ling says of the English in his poem on the battle of 
 Omdurman and Kitchener's college: 
 
 " They terribly carpet the earth with dead and before 
 their cannons cool 
 They walk unarmed by twos and threes and send the 
 living to school." 
 
 In the same way it will not be long before English 
 will be dominant in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philip- 
 pines. 
 
 The English language is now dominant in two of the 
 six continents and is very widely used in each of the 
 others. It is pre-eminently the language of commerce, 
 of popular education, and of popular literature, and 
 as they spread English will spread also. 
 
 In fact, it is not improbable that the spread of Eng- 
 lish will be as much wider than the former spread of 
 Greek and Latin, as modern intercommunication is 
 more rapid than ancient methods of intercourse be- 
 tween nations, and that the use of English may spread 
 
90 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 over the world as a universal convenience just as the 
 steam-engine, the steamship and the telegraph will 
 soon be used in every, country. 
 
 All the civilized nations already have some written 
 symbols and elements of language in common. 
 Throughout Christendom all nations divide and com- 
 pute time in the same manner, so that the dial plate of 
 a watch can be read as intelligently in one country as 
 another. All nations now use the Arabic numerals, 
 so that an arithmetic calculation made in the United 
 States can be as well read in Germany, Italy, or France 
 as in an English-speaking country. All civilized 
 countries use the same musical notation, so that a mu- 
 sical score can be read by the musicians of every part 
 of the globe. There is a great and growing vocab- 
 ulary of the technical terms of chemistry and physics, 
 of geology and biology and other sciences, which is 
 understood by specialists of every nationality. 
 
 The new means of travel and communication have 
 brought aU nations very close together. They have 
 many interests in common, but the curse of Babel is 
 upon them. They cannot agree upon a course of ac- 
 tion or understand each other's motives and wishes. 
 In order to promote the welfare of mankind by mak- 
 ing all existing knowledge and all new inventions the 
 common property of all men, the world needs that 
 some language should be taught in every schoolroom 
 on the globe. 
 
 Finely Tennyson sings: 
 
 " Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single 
 tongue, ', 
 
 I have seen her far away, for is not earth as yet so 
 young." 
 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 91 
 
 But Volapuk is an idle dream. A common lan- 
 guage cannot be suddenly manufactured. It must 
 grow as Greek grew, and as Latin grew, and as Eng- 
 lish has grown, gradually perfectly itself by inventing 
 an expression for every material object, for every men- 
 tal conception, for every moral aspiration. 
 
 A language rises and falls with the race that speaks 
 it. A language is a looking-glass and gives a perfect 
 reflection of the nation that uses it. The language of 
 a nation is a thermometer and shows the temperature 
 of the mental and moral atmosphere as perfectly as 
 the mercury in a tube shows the state of the weather. 
 
 The English language is the best in the world be- 
 cause it has drawn more fully and deeply from all 
 sources than any, other language. Greek is only 
 Greek, and Latin is only Latin, but Enghsh is a mix- 
 ture of Greek, Latin, and Saxon, and in a smaller de- 
 gree of fifty other tongues. 
 
 English has the strength of the languages of north- 
 ern, united with the riches and graces of the languages 
 of southern, Europe. It unites the muscles of Her- 
 cules and the beauty of Apollo. It is the pre-eminent 
 language of literature. Shakespeare is the great mod- 
 em world poet, and Shakespeare's genius is related to 
 and dependent upon the English language. The 
 words of Guizot, the philosophic French historian, 
 are strictly true, " No English, no Shakespeare." 
 
 But English is pre-eminent not only in the drama, 
 but in every department of poetry and prose. There 
 is no modem epic comparable to Paradise Lost. No 
 other country can show an array of novelists com- 
 parable to Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, George EHot, 
 and Nathaniel Hawthorne, or a group of essayists like 
 Macaulay, De Quincey, Buskin and Carlyle. 
 
92 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 It is the cosmopolitan character of the language 
 that has given it this extraordinary vitality, this 
 double pre-eminence both as a means of buying and 
 selKng merchandise and as a means of exchanging the 
 costlier treasures of thought. A tree grows large if 
 its rocks strike deep and spread wide in a fertile soil, 
 and if it has abundant room to spread its branches to 
 the sky. 
 
 Greek and Latin drew their nourishment from the 
 soil of little countries round the little Mediterranean 
 Sea. Modem English is not a product of little Eng- 
 land. It absorbed a large part of the culture of 
 Greece, Italy, and Judaea, and for the last three cen- 
 turies it has been enriched by commerce with the 
 whole globe. The Mediterranean Sea became a 
 Roman lake, but the broad Atlantic and the still 
 broader Pacific are rapidly becoming the lakes of the 
 nations that speak the English tongue, and it is this 
 world-assimilating power of the Saxon race that makes 
 us think that the English language will some day be 
 the universal language of man. 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 A name never to be pronounced by me without rev- 
 erence. Doubtless the world has many, great heroes. 
 I am not going to bring him into comparison with 
 the few highest and most immortal names. He is not 
 one of the saints or prophets or deliverers of nations. 
 Yet Pope, too, was a hero and a conqueror, and there 
 is something pathetic and stimulating in the history 
 of his life. The odds seemed so tremendously against 
 him. He made so gallant a fight. He conquered so 
 completely. 
 
 Weak, sickly, deformed, superficially educated, he 
 seemed very unlikely to be able to sustain himself at all 
 amid the stem competitions of life. Those who saw 
 him in his childhood doubtless thought that so frail 
 and sensitive a boy would die prematurely, or if he 
 continued to live would glide quietly and ineffectively 
 to his grave. That he, the poor pale-faced, little crip- 
 ple, with his crutch, his headaches, should become one 
 of the foremost men of his own day, and leave a high 
 and permanent literary reputation, was antecedently 
 very improbable. It did not seem hkely that his fee- 
 ble frame could bear the exhausting labor of composi- 
 tion on a large scale. Artists have often represented 
 the supremacy of mind over brute force. Spenser 
 has given us the beautiful picture of the virtuous and 
 distressed Una and of the lion which forgot his fury, 
 at the sight of her, became her guard, and ever by her 
 looks conceived her intent. Milton tells us of the 
 
 " Dread bow of the huntress Dian, 
 Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness 
 And spotted mountain pard." 
 
 95 
 
96 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 To these pictures of woman's grace and virtue con- 
 quering savage beasts, I should like to add the repre- 
 sentation of a pale, slender youth triumphing over 
 the monsters. Disease and Pain, as David triumphed 
 over the huge Philistine who had defied Israel. Heroic 
 little Alexander, worthy of comparison with the great 
 Alexander, for did he not conquer all the kingdoms of 
 letters ? 
 
 Few writers achieve fame by their first production, 
 win repeated successes in different fields and never meet 
 with any reverse of fortune or even relative failure. 
 Campbell succeeded with the " Pleasures of Hope," 
 as Pope succeeded with the " Essay on Criticism " ; 
 but Campbell not only never surpassed his first work, 
 he never even equalled it. After numerous brilliant 
 successes Byron had to see with mortification the fail- 
 ure of the dramas. Even Tennyson, with all his genius 
 and patience, has now and then met with but dubious 
 success and satisfied neither critics nor plain readers. 
 But of the small number of writers who never mis- 
 calculate their powers or misjudge their subjects Pope 
 is one. Nor was that because he was contented with 
 small and easy tasks. On the contrary he repeatedly 
 performed difficult feats, and in one case undertook 
 and heroically accomplished a truly Herculean labor. 
 I allude of course to the translation of the Iliad and 
 Odyssey. 
 
 Pope was remarkably precocious. The Epistle to 
 Arbuthnot, that interesting autobiographical poem, 
 tells the story of two lives in these pathetic words : 
 
 " Why did I write ! What sin to me unknown, 
 Dipped me in ink, my parents or my own? 
 As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
 I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came. 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 97 
 
 I left no calling for this idle trade^ 
 
 No duty broke, no father disobeyed. 
 
 The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, 
 
 To help me through this long disease, my life." 
 
 He " lisp'd in numbers." At sixteen he had written 
 a series of wonderfully finished and spirited pastoral 
 poems in imitation of Theocritus. As mock antiques 
 they are perfect, but the production of mock antiques 
 is not in itself a very important end. There is an ab- 
 surdity in calling English rustics Damon and Stre- 
 phon, in calling upon Phoebus for inspiration, in wor- 
 shipping Jupiter and sacrificing milk-white bulls in 
 the forests of Thames. Pope himself in later life 
 condemned these florid and artificial productions, in 
 which as he briefly says " Pure description held the 
 place of sense." 
 
 Windsor Forest is both better and worse than the 
 Pastorals. It is better in that there is much descrip- 
 tion of actual scenes and much real history and gen- 
 uine feehng. It is worse considered as a work of art 
 in that the naturalness and truth are incongruously 
 blended with the old mythological conventions, so that 
 the poem is neither Greek nor English, but a curious 
 hybrid, in which Pan, Ceres, Flora and Pomona are 
 side by side with Henry and Edward, with Denham 
 and Cowley, and Surrey, and the presiding goddess is 
 sometimes Diana and sometimes Queen Anne. 
 
 As in the case of the Pastorals the execution of 
 Windsor Forest was brilliant, but the faults of the 
 design made the success of the work as a whole incom- 
 plete. 
 
 No work of this sort marks the Essay on Criticism. 
 At the age of twenty-three years Pope gave us in this 
 work a body of .practical precepts on reading and 
 1—7 
 
98 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 writing, which immeasurably surpass all others in our 
 tongue. We may wonder at his omission of the great- 
 est names in English literature, and at his mistaken 
 prediction about the decay of the language. We 
 may take exception to his extreme laudation of the 
 classical school and adherence to the dramatic unities ; 
 but in spite of errors and limitations, the work as a 
 whole is so wise and pithy and quotable as not only to 
 have eclipsed all its many predecessors, but to have 
 discouraged rivalry, and maintained this special field 
 of criticism alone to the present day; for Byron's 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, and Lowell's 
 Fable for Critics while rivaling Pope in the brilliance 
 of their attacks upon the folly and ignorance of 
 critics, do not rival him at all in the value of his posi- 
 tive precepts on writing and on passing judgment 
 upon writers. 
 
 The Essay on Criticism is a masterpiece. From 
 beginning to end it is learned and acute, and brilliant 
 with point and epigram. It is moreover what so many 
 pointed and epigrammatic productions are not, imme- 
 diately intelligible anl uninterruptedly interesting. 
 To appreciate fully Pope's skill in this production it 
 is necessary to read the other most famous productions 
 on the same theme. Pope's poem is far superior to 
 that of Vida, fully equal to that epistle to PoUio on 
 which the fame of Horace as a critic rests, and to the 
 masterpiece of Boileau which was the English poet's 
 immediate model. It is in fact almost a perfect poem 
 of its kind, and is surpassed only by poems of an alto- 
 gether different sort. Praise of it is sometimes qual- 
 ified by saying that it is a marvelous production con- 
 sidered as the work of a youth of twenty-one. It 
 does not seem to me to need leniency on that score. 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 99 
 
 Pope's mind had already reached maturity, and the 
 merits and defects of the poem are those which are 
 characteristic of his works to the end, and were in- 
 herent in the man. The merits are sense, clearness, 
 finish. The limitations are shallowness, tameness, 
 onesidedness. Scarcely anything is his own but the 
 polished form. The poem illustrates his own idea of 
 composition : 
 
 " True art is nature to advantage dressed, 
 What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed." 
 
 The ideas in general are borrowed and conventional. 
 Where they are not so they are, sometimes at least, 
 erroneous and even ridiculous, but nevertheless more 
 interesting than the correcter judgments borrowed 
 from preceding critics or echoed from public opinion. 
 To praise Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, and Longinus is 
 what we should expect every young scholar to do. To 
 praise Dryden, Walsh, and Roscommon, and say 
 nothing about Shakespeare, Spenser or Milton, is not 
 what we should expect a young and enthusiastic Eng- 
 lish poet to do. Yet though as literary criticisms the 
 judgments are so ridiculously out of proportion, they 
 really add much to the value, or at any rate to the 
 interest, of the poem by infusing a little personal feel- 
 ing into it. The compliments are exquisitely turned 
 and the expressions of gratitude are creditable alike 
 to the head and the heart of the writer. Would that 
 Pope could have developed more fully the genial side 
 of his nature and have suppressed that irritable and 
 often senseless jealousy which appears slightly even 
 in this production. Pope is not a great personality. 
 He is not a thinker. He does not speak with author- 
 ity. He has no original ideas. He borrows and files, 
 
100 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 but does not create. He does not gather material 
 from all sources like Shakespeare or Milton, and fuse 
 them into a new mass by deeper insight and stronger 
 emotion. He does not like these great artists trans- 
 form his materials and put a new soul into them. He 
 does not show us the active intellect and loving, suf- 
 fering heart. He does not set before us men and 
 women throbbing with life. He is an industrious 
 lapidary who picks up rough stones and sets and pol- 
 ishes them. As such praise him, for in that not unim- 
 portant field of art he is unequaled. But how he 
 shrinks when you bring him into comparison with the 
 real interpreters of the human heart. It would be 
 manifestly unreasonable to compare a poem on the 
 principles of criticism, a poem so technical and limited 
 by its subject, with any drama or epic; but a com- 
 parison of Pope's Essay with Byron's English Bards 
 and Scotch Reviewers, or with the same writer's Hints 
 from Horace, or with Lowell's Fable for Critics, shows 
 very clearly the fundamental differences between the 
 classical and the romantic schools of poetry. In Pope 
 the ideas though true and judicious are tame and com- 
 monplace. The poem is cold and almost impersonal. 
 Its merit is that of artistic expression. To some in- 
 deed the self-restraint and self -suppression of the au- 
 thor will seem an additional merit. They will say that 
 this is a case in which the artist should present his 
 subject and keep himself out of view. Others will say 
 that the reason that Pope gives so few of his own 
 thoughts or emotions is that he had little originality, 
 few ideas and feeble emotions. It is probable that it 
 is not artistic suppression of himself in the interest of 
 his theme that causes him to say so little about him- 
 self, but that when he had expressed his admiration 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 101 
 
 of ancient literature and his gratitude to his models 
 and friends he had nothing else really original to 
 say. 
 
 On the other hand when Byron sits down to write, 
 his own brain is so fertile and his passions are so strong 
 that all previous laws of art are disregarded and a new 
 type is created. The diminutive and commonplace 
 plan develops into something far more powerful though 
 far less artistic. It is not the artist polishing his gems 
 but the furious Titan wielding his club. 
 
 Similarly Lowell's personality was far too strong 
 for him to write a merely imitative work. Pope could 
 adapt Horace and Boileau, but when I,owell wrote a 
 Fable for Critics it was unlike anything the world had 
 ever seen before. Instead of being a skillful echo it 
 is a series of independent judgments upon his con- 
 temporaries. It is full of the author's own ideas and 
 feelings expressed in the most unique and astonishing 
 figures. 
 
 The Essay on Man has a pre-eminence like that of 
 the Criticism. It is the one successful didactic poem 
 upon the subject of the divine government of the 
 world. It says substantially all there is to be said 
 upon the subject and says it more compactly and 
 forcibly than any one else has succeeded in doing. 
 Every scholar reads it and many of its phrases are 
 current arguments and household words. Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson and some others have disparaged and sus- 
 pected it; but to paraphrase his own words the objec- 
 tions " of single cavaliers can very little weaken the 
 general evidence " afforded by public esteem. 
 
 The professed purpose of the Essay is to vindicate 
 the ways of God to man. Its theme is thus seen to 
 be as old as religion and philosophy ; for all religions 
 
102 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 and all philosophies are attempted explanations of 
 God's government of the world. The Bible from 
 Genesis to Revelations is a vindication of God and a 
 promise to man. The aim of poetry, like that of re- 
 ligion and philosophy, is to hft man above the ma- 
 terial world and into the realm of faith and hope and 
 love. Poetry therefore has also frequently made the 
 effort to vindicate the justice of God. The book of 
 God is such an effort. Paradise Lost was written with 
 that intent. In Memoriam is the supreme effort in 
 the nineteenth century to reconcile the sufferings of 
 man with the wisdom and goodness of God. 
 
 When we begin to compare Pope's Essay with the 
 preceding and succeeding poems on the same theme, the 
 first thing that impresses the reader is the dry, argu- 
 mentative formal tone of the composition. In Para- 
 dise Lost there is an interesting story, there are human 
 and angelic beings with whose fortunes we can sym- 
 pathize, there is all that imagination and emotion can 
 do to give epic grandeur and sublimity to the argu- 
 ment. 
 
 In Memoriam lacks plot, but human sympathy 
 is sustained by gathering the argument about the un- 
 timely death of a single noble and gifted man. The 
 Essay on Man is destitute of these aids and presents 
 itself as a mere didactic treatise in verse. It is thus 
 seen to belong to that peculiar epoch in our literature 
 when reason for a time usurped control over both 
 imagination and feeling. In the preceding century, 
 under the impulse of Puritanism, there had been so 
 much religious mysticism, such extravagant theological 
 speculation, such an extraordinary development of the 
 supernatural, such ponderous systems built upon 
 revelation, that a great reaction had at last been 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 103 
 
 brought about and men had turned away from the 
 unaided power of human reason. The spirit of con- 
 troversy had not ceased but had gradually changed 
 its form. In the Puritan epoch the Bible had been 
 gradually accepted as a divine revelation and man had 
 argued about its doctrines. Romanist, High Church- 
 man, and Puritan contended furiously, but ineffect- 
 ually. They could not convince each other, but they 
 did very nearly convince the great passive body of 
 neutral thinkers that they were all alike wrong. When 
 at last the theologians of different parties desisted, by 
 reason of exhaustion, and began to estimate the gains 
 and losses of the protracted war of books, pamphlets 
 and sermons, they were astonished to find that the 
 theological bone of contention had almost vanished and 
 that they had created a nation of sceptics and ration- 
 alists. 
 
 Of course the rationalists had not possession of 
 the field for any length of time. The religious in- 
 stincts of men are innate and indestructible; under 
 Whitefield and Wesley and a multitude of others within 
 and without the established church, religion soon re- 
 asserted its supremacy ; but it is important to remem- 
 ber that the Essay on Man is the expression of the 
 opinions of men in this brief interregnum of religious 
 faith, that it is the chief literary work between the age 
 of Puritanism and the age of Methodism, and of the 
 evangelical churches; or, to recur again to an earlier 
 illustration, that it represents thought midway between 
 Paradise Lost and In Memoriam. 
 
 Pope nowhere in the Essay, appeals to the Bible 
 as a divine revelation, or draws any argument from 
 anything contained in it. He has nothing to say 
 about the person or work of Christ, and thus by im- 
 
104. ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 plicatron denies the doctrines of the special inspiration 
 of the scriptures, of the fall of man and of the atone- 
 ment. It is this ignoring of Christianity, this asser- 
 tion of the sufficiency of reason without revelation that 
 led to many of the contemporary and later attacks 
 upon the poem as irreligious. 
 
 Although Pope has been regarded as an enemy by 
 many orthodox theologians he has also been unaccept- 
 able as a champion by many rationalistic philosophers. 
 When in 1754 the Academy of Berlin proposed as a 
 thesis for a prize essay " An examination of Pope's 
 system," Lessing published a pamphlet to prove that 
 Pope's essay contained no system, but was a mere 
 patch-work. De Quincey says that " the poem is the 
 realization of anarchy," and that the numerous ellipses 
 in the thought may be filled up in such diiFerent ways 
 as to make the bias of the poem religious or sceptical. 
 As illustrations of inconsistency we are pointed to the 
 passage beginning: 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous whole. 
 Whose body nature is, and God the soul," 
 
 which is said to be an expression of pure pantheism, 
 and then told to compare the passage with the lines: 
 
 " The worker from the work distinct was known. 
 And simple reason never sought but one." 
 
 I will only say that such statements do not seem to 
 me absolute contradictions, but simply, different sides 
 of the same truth. Body and soul in man are parts of 
 one whole, and yet we believe that the soul is distinct 
 from the body. Another alleged inconsistency is 
 Pope's treatment of the subject of animal food. In 
 one passage he deplores flesh eating as a crime and a 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 105 
 
 source of misery. He depicts a state of innocence and 
 happiness in which 
 
 " Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade. 
 The same his table and the same his bed; 
 No murder cloth'd him and no murder fed. 
 Ah ! how unlike the man of times to come ! 
 Of half that live the butcher and the tomb. 
 * * * 
 
 But just disease to luxury succeeds 
 And every death its own avenger breeds; 
 The fury-passions from that blood began. 
 And turned on man a fiercer savage, man." 
 
 The critic then tells us that less than 100 lines fur- 
 ther on in the poem Pope in describing the progress 
 of civilization represents man's increasing skill in hunt- 
 ing and fishing as a part of his advance: Some wise 
 patriarch of the tribe taught these arts. 
 
 " He from the wond'ring furrow call'd the food. 
 Taught to command the fire, control the flood. 
 Draw forth the monsters of the abyss profound. 
 Or fetch th' aeriel eagle to the ground." 
 
 Of course there is a superficial inconsistency here, 
 which the author of the poem saw as clearly as any- 
 body else; but he credited his readers with more com- 
 mon sense than some of them possess. The inconsist- 
 ency can be urged just as well against the book of 
 Genesis, and against every poem and history of creation 
 which represents the first period of man's existence as 
 a golden age of innocence and ignorance when man 
 lived in a garden and tilled the ground, and then rep- 
 resents him as sinning and then under new conditions 
 acquiring arts unnecessary before and in spite of wars 
 
106 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 and cruelties gradually developing in intellect and vir- 
 tue. 
 
 Of course I do not believe that Pope's reasoning 
 and illustrations are always free from error. Nothing 
 of the kind. Pope like the rest of men was fallible. 
 But the point I wish to make is this, that the kind of 
 objections that have been referred to can be made and 
 have been made against every creed, every system of 
 philosophy and every book, including the Bible itself. 
 These philosophers, logicians and theologians who dis- 
 parage Pope's argument should remember that they 
 live in glass houses. Is the Westminster confession 
 unassailable.'' Can any one frame a definition of the 
 doctrine of the trinity or of the atonement that will sat- 
 isfy all orthodox Christians, to say nothing of unbe- 
 lievers. Are the metaphysicians agreed among them- 
 selves? Is there no room for Browning's sneer? — 
 when he makes Cleon say: 
 
 " I have written three books on the soul 
 Proving absurd all written hitherto 
 And putting us to ignorance again." 
 
 If not to make an argument that satisfies everybody 
 and sets all controversy at rest is to fail, then of course 
 Pope failed in this poem ; but if that be failure, every 
 other writer whatever has failed also. 
 
 I protest against any extreme disparagement of 
 Pope on the ground that there are flaws in his reason- 
 ing. The important question is not what are his de- 
 fects but what are his merits. It is well to remember 
 that Pope was the favorite poet of the greatest of 
 modern metaphysicians, Immanuel Kant, and was 
 habitually quoted by him in his philosophical lectures. 
 The very eminent Scotch professor Dugald Stewart in 
 
ALEXANDER POPE lOT 
 
 lectures delivered to his classes in the University of 
 Edinburg has said that the Essay on Man is " the 
 noblest specimen of philosophical poetry which our lan- 
 guage affords: and with the exception of a very few 
 passages, contains a valuable summary of all that hu- 
 man reason has been able hitherto to advance in justifi- 
 cation of the moral government of God." The judg- 
 ment of Dr. Samuel Johnson is unfavorable to the Es- 
 say, and his novel of Rasselas is an elaborate reply to 
 the system of optimism which Pope expounds, which 
 Johnson believed hostile to revelation and good morals. 
 Yet Johnson himself says of the natural judgment of 
 plain readers unsophisticated by the criticism of profes- 
 sional heresy-hunters and fault-finders : " So little was 
 any evil tendency discovered that, as innocence is unsus- 
 picious, many read it for a manual of piety." Plain 
 people I venture to think wiU continue so to do for many 
 generations. Commentators may worry themselves 
 over the alleged inconsistency between Saint Paul and 
 Saint James ; for Paul says that we are saved by faith, 
 and James that faith without works is dead ; but plain 
 people do not usually perceive or care for such alleged 
 discrepancies. They see all truth cannot be presented 
 at a time, and that the effort to quahfy every state- 
 ment so as to make it absolutely true would make it 
 worthless. The Bible says, " Children, obey your 
 parents." Does it mean, " Obey your parents if they 
 command you to lie and steal.'*" No; it lays down 
 broad general principles, and leaves to man's judg- 
 ment the task of modifying them by other general 
 principles. Every proverb is only a half truth. Add 
 the other half to it and it would cease to be epigram- 
 matic, quotable — would fall flat. Take for example 
 the lines : " Early to bed and early to rise, makes a 
 
108 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 man healthy, wealthy and wise." WiU a man who 
 gets up early and goes to bed early grow wealthy and 
 wise if he spends his days ijj idleness and vice? No, 
 it would be better for the health and wealth of some 
 persons if they would frequently stay in bed all day ; 
 but then such exceptions and qualifications as might 
 be made to the proverb would be too heavy for its 
 wings of verse and would keep it from flying abroad 
 on a mission of usefulness. 
 
 I suppose every one dissents from statements in 
 every book he reads. Natural endowments, processes 
 of education, and the experiences of different persons 
 are so various that no two educated minds can ever be 
 expected to agree exactly in all their opinions. The 
 Essay on Man as a whole gives me pleasure, and, what 
 is far more, strength and comfort ; but from my angle 
 of vision there are some faults of illustration, of tone 
 and of omission. I do not like Pope's disparagement 
 of Bacon and Cromwell. It seems to me that in regard 
 to Bacon, as in some other passages. Pope has sacri- 
 ficed truth to epigram and that he did not fairly weigh 
 the laborious and unselfish labors of the philanthropic 
 man of science against some admitted weaknesses of 
 character. Bacon was not a saint or hero ; but he was, 
 I think, far from being a bad man, and almost in- 
 finitely far from being the " meanest of mankind." 
 Pope's error as to Cromwell was more excusable. He 
 was a Catholic and a natural partisan of the house of 
 Stuart. He wrote too before the investigations of 
 Carlyle and others had cleared Cromwell's memory from 
 royalist aspersions. Pope sometimes, I think, pushes 
 his argument too far. When he is illustrating the 
 important truth that there are compensations in life 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 109 
 
 and that the diffusion of happiness is general he seems 
 to me extreme and ahnost flippant in the lines : 
 
 " See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing. 
 The sot a hero, lunatic a king." 
 
 Similarly, I do not like the expression, " Beads and 
 prayer books are the toys of age." But in spite of a 
 few jarring phrases or false illustrations the main 
 propositions of the poem seem to me true and noble. 
 The three fundamental ideas of the poem are I think 
 represented by these passages : First, as to the govern- 
 ment of God the poet says : 
 
 " Submit in this or any other sphere. 
 Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear; 
 Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r 
 Or in the natal or the mortal hour." 
 
 This is less poetical and beautiful than Whittier's: 
 
 " I know not where his islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond his love and care." 
 
 But it affects me in the same way. I believe it and 
 am helped by it and like to repeat it. This is what 
 Pope teaches about God. What has he to say about 
 man and the source of his happiness.? On this point 
 I will quote but one couplet, that wonderful couplet 
 which Ruskin so much admired and has eulogized as 
 the most perfect expression of sympathy in Enghsh lit- 
 erature : 
 
 " Never elated, while one man's oppress'd ; 
 Never dejected, while another's blest." 
 
no ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 It expresses the true spirit of philanthropy. There 
 is no private happiness. How can any one's joy be 
 perfect while any of his fellows are suffering, and how 
 can he be without some large measure of satisfaction 
 if he sees his fellow men happy? It is like Paul's 
 glorious self-abnegation when he says, " I could wish 
 myself accursed from Christ for the sake of my breth- 
 ren according to the flesh." 
 
 There are greater religious poems in our literature 
 than the Essay on Man. Paradise Lost before it and 
 In Memoriam after it exalt the imagination and stir 
 the affections more profoundly. But if there are tides 
 in spiritual things as in material ones, if there was a 
 fuller and deeper flow of faith and hope in the 17th 
 century than in the 18th, and if the great tide of 
 affection and belief is again rising in the age in which 
 we live, let us not undervalue the feebler manifestation 
 that has come to us from the time of the intervening 
 ebb — tide of spirituality and sentiment. Let us avoid 
 narrow antipathies and unjust depreciations. The 
 Essay on Man is not a mere piece of tinsel and artificial 
 rhetoric. Marred here and there as it is by affectation 
 and extravagance, it is nevertheless a great monument 
 of careful, earnest thought and deep, generous emo- 
 tion. In the words of De Quincey, borrowed from 
 Shakespeare, words which De Quincey however applies 
 more broadly to Pope's character, the essay is not 
 " dust a little gilt, but fine gold a little dusted " ; and 
 I for one attach little importance to the petty deprecia- 
 tion of critics who have not themselves given us a 
 memorable sentiment or a noble line. 
 
 " Let such teach others who themselves excel. 
 And censure freely who have written well." 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 111 
 
 Among Pope's virtues, a high place must be given 
 to his pecuniary disinterestedness. The proverbial 
 love of money has blemished many a fair fame and led 
 many an otherwise noble man into subserviency and 
 meanness. Pope was a practical man of the world 
 and knew the great value of money, yet he was one of 
 the very few men who refused an offered pension and 
 preferred a manly independence. 
 
 There are, however, two serious abatements to the 
 pleasure with which I read Pope's works and contem- 
 plate his character. One is his indelicacy and the other 
 his bad temper. In regard to these offenses it has 
 been urged in excuse that the age in which Pope wrote 
 was coarse and abusive and that he was no worse than 
 most contemporary, authors. The defense seems to me 
 true, but insufficient. Pope was delicacy itself as com- 
 pared with Swift; but Swift was bad and mad, and 
 his example should screen nobody. The truth is, Pope, 
 like most men, was a beast-god. But in the case of 
 most men the god subdues or at any rate silences the 
 beast. But there are a few men who cannot, or at any 
 rate do not, resist the impulse to write aU they think. 
 The " fierce light which beats upon a throne " exposing 
 all the weaknesses and vices of kings, is nothing to 
 that fierce light which beats upon the character of a 
 Pope or a Byron who is irresistibly impelled not merely 
 to act out his real life, but to record it in language 
 so vivid, forcible and epigrammatic that it cannot be 
 forgotten. The vices and vulgarities of common men 
 sink out of sight, the vices and vulgarities of men of 
 genius are preserved by the splendors and virtues with 
 which they are inseparably associated. 
 
 " In amber we observe the forms of hairs, or straws, 
 or dirt, or grubs, or worms." All that can be said 
 
112 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 in defense of Pope's indecency is that he was not excep- 
 tionally bad, but was exceptionally gifted. But the 
 full weight of his oifense remains. There were good 
 and pure as well as bad and impure men in his age, 
 and he should have been among the former. He was 
 a poet and it is the special function of a poet to give 
 men " nobler lives and nobler cares." 
 
 The Dunciad is an unpleasant book. Much of 
 its censure is just; but it is nevertheless disagreeable 
 to see mean and foolish men pursued so implacably and 
 to see so much genius for expression wasted on trifling 
 persons and themes. I think Pope gives us a true 
 account of its origin when he says : 
 
 " Out with it, Dunciad ! let the secret pass. 
 That secret to each fool, that he's an ass: 
 The truth once told (and wherefore should we lie) 
 The Queen of Midas slept, and so may I." 
 
 We learn from Pope's biography that he often called 
 for paper and ink several times in a night lest he 
 should lose a thought that had occurred to him. When 
 it was once safely recorded his mind was relieved and 
 he was able to go to sleep. I suppose that when Pope ■ 
 went to bed smarting with indignation at some of the 
 cruel lampoons and stupid or malicious mis judgments 
 of his poems, in spite of himself his mind kept re- 
 curring to them. It was second nature for him to 
 put his thoughts into verse, and so without eff^ort and 
 almost without design a great part of the poem was 
 written. At that point the test of character came. A 
 better man would have suppressed the baser parts and 
 generalized and ennobled the remainder. Pope did do 
 so to some extent. The poem has its exquisite, its 
 useful and noble passages ; but it is nevertheless un- 
 worthy of the pen of him who wrote: 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 113 
 
 " Good nature and good sense must ever join; 
 To err is human^ to forgive divine ! " 
 
 and wrote still finer lines : 
 
 " Teach me to feel an other's woe. 
 To hide the fault I see; 
 That mercy I to others show. 
 That mercy show to me." 
 
 I wish that there were not so much alloy mixed 
 with Pope's gold; but in books as in nature the wise 
 will accept with thankfulness the good he finds and lay 
 aside the bad with as little ado as possible. 'Tis of 
 no use to complain of the bones in a shad, if you can't 
 get a shad without them. Much as I deprecate the 
 rash and needless mutilation of a great author, I never- 
 theless think that an expurgated edition of Pope from 
 which some youthful licenses and some later spleen 
 should be left out, would be a boon to the academic 
 public and an act of justice to Pope himself; for a 
 worthy man ought to be protected by his friends even 
 from his own follies and sins. 
 
 To return to the pleasanter task of speaking of 
 Pope's virtues. His poems are full of humane, lib- 
 eral and noble sentiments on every subject. To begin 
 with he was an advocate of liberty. Browning in his 
 poem A Lost Leader, speaking of the great cham- 
 pions of freedom says : 
 
 " Shakespeare was with us, Milton was of us, 
 Burns, Shelley, were with us, they watch from their 
 graves." He might have included Pope in the list, for 
 Pope uses the keen weapon of his satire repeatedly 
 against " the enormous faith of many made for one " 
 and against " the right divine of kings to govern 
 wrong." 
 
114. ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 At a time when dissenters from the established re- 
 ligion were still subject to many disabilities and the 
 principle of religious liberty was not generally recog- 
 nized, Pope took the enlightened and Christian ground 
 that religions were to be judged by their fruits, that 
 conduct and not opinion was the test of character. 
 His familiar words are: 
 
 " For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight. 
 His can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 In summing up his moral system he tells us that, " Vir- 
 tue alone is happiness below " and that men are " Hap- 
 pier as kinder in whate'er degree," and that " Height 
 of bHss " is " but height of charity." 
 
 His warmest praises are given to the Man of Ross, 
 the practical philanthropist, and his solution of the 
 problem of poverty is the simple Christian one of the 
 just and kindly use of money as God's stewards : 
 
 " To Worth or Want be bounty given 
 And emulate the care of Heav'n.' 
 Wealth in the gross is death, but life diffus'd. 
 As poison heals in just proportion us'd." 
 
 The noblest passage amid the many beauties of 
 Coleridge's poems is: 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small. 
 For the dear God who loveth us 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 Pope has the same spirit; as he walked in Windsor 
 Forest he had no sympathy with the coarse and cruel 
 pleasures of the sportsman. His sympathies were all 
 with the innocent victims, and he laments: 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 116 
 
 " Oft as in airy rings they skim the heath. 
 The clamorous lapwings feel the leaden death : 
 Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare. 
 They fall, and leave their little lives in air." 
 
 Pope was a faithful friend. He was a generous 
 benefactor, and a devoted son. There are to me no 
 more exquisitely tender and beautiful lines in our lit- 
 erature than those in which the poet speaks of his aged 
 mother : 
 
 " Me let the tender office long engage. 
 To rock the cradle of reposing age. 
 With lenient arts extend a mother's breath. 
 Make languor smile and smooth the bed of death. 
 Explore the thoughts, explain the asking eye. 
 And keep a while one parent from the sky." 
 
 If this had been a mere wish or dream, it would have 
 been praiseworthy. If it had been the expression of 
 the penitential regret of one whose actual conduct had 
 been thoughtless or undutiful, it would have revealed 
 a kind and amiable nature. The mere desire to do 
 good is in a high degree meritorious, for our desires 
 are wholly our own, whereas our actual conduct is 
 largely dependent on the will of others, or because of 
 our weakness falls far short of our intentions. But 
 Poe's care of his mother was no pious wish or beau- 
 tiful dream, or brief and fitful manifestation of his 
 affection, but a patient, life-long devotion. He was 
 a bachelor and an only child, and the natural tender- 
 ness of his disposition was concentrated upon one per- 
 son; he remains in our history one of the very few 
 men who have had both opportunity and inclination 
 fully to discharge the debt due to a self-sacrificing 
 parent. Most men and women imperfectly realize the 
 
116 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 labors and sufferings of their parents in their behalf, 
 until they are called upon to undergo similar labors 
 and sufferings in behalf of their own children. Life 
 is thus a beautiful and continual system of ever-perpet- 
 uated benevolence, in which hearts kindled to gratitude 
 by the affection of one generation repay that affection 
 by care for the succeeding race. But now and then 
 we find a son who gives to his father or his mother gift 
 for gift, patience for patience, vigil for vigil, solici- 
 tude for solicitude, and such a son was Alexander 
 Pope. 
 
 Pope's virtues were inspired, as all real virtue is 
 inspired, by his religion, and it is wonderful that he 
 had so much real piety of heart and life with so little 
 support from external conditions or hereditary faith. 
 It was his misfortune to be brought up a Roman 
 Catholic in a Philosophic age. He had outgrown the 
 religious opinions in which he had been trained and 
 every thoughtful person knows the danger there is 
 that, when the early supports and associations of moral 
 obligation are thus destroyed, the moral sense itself 
 will perish with them. When religion has not a body 
 and a home in most cases it soon ceases to have a soul 
 and an existence. But though when Pope reached 
 maturity his reading and thinking compelled him to 
 regard as false and worthless much that he had been 
 taught to believe was supremely true and sacred, yet 
 he did not on that account fall, as so many have done, 
 into either infidelity or vice, but retained an unimpaired 
 faith in the moral government of God and in the moral 
 obligations of man. He teaches, I think, the central 
 truth of religion when he says: 
 
 " Submit — in this or any other sphere 
 Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear. 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 117 
 
 Safe in the hands of one disposing Powetj 
 Or in the natal or the mortal hour." 
 
 This faith was, I think, the anchor to his soul which 
 kept him from destruction amid the storms and treach- 
 erous currents of the sea of hfe. 
 
 His other safeguard was a noble ambition. The 
 great purpose and passion of his life was to be a great 
 poet and to elevate the literature of his country. No 
 man ever had more of the artistic conscience. He 
 spared no pains to make his work as perfect as it could 
 be made. And he succeeded. His poems are practi- 
 cally indestructible. No one can take any of his poems 
 as materials from which to construct a similar but 
 nobler product. His works are not, like those of many 
 an author, a quarry to which a greater genius may 
 go for half hewn stones, but they are a palace of art 
 in which every stone is polished and set firmly in posi- 
 tion. A good many men have soared higher, or 
 plunged deeper, or ranged more broadly. Many have 
 sung more sweetly or roared more loudly or reasoned 
 more subtly. Our hterature has had a great many 
 irregular, dazzling, ephemeral geniuses, and it may well 
 be that in a century or two some authors who have a 
 great present reputation will foUow Marlowe, and Cow- 
 ley and Chatterton and other stormy or extravagant 
 writers into early oblivion. I doubt the permanence 
 of most of the works of Shelley and Swinburne, also 
 most of Wordsworth and of Browning. All these great 
 writers will survive in a few choice poems and extracts ; 
 but their works as a whole are loosely constructed and 
 wayward. All cloud splendors soon change into com- 
 mon and disagreeable mists. If Pope's success is not 
 of the highest, it is of the most solid kind. He won 
 
118 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 it by intense, persistent, well-directed labor in both 
 composition and revision. 
 
 " The mob of gentlemen who write with ease " will 
 never be his rivals. It is sometimes foolishly said that 
 for a poet Pope is governed too much by his reason 
 and too little by his imagination and notions. It can- 
 not be. The man who is not always governed by his 
 reason is a mad man. Reason must always be the 
 mainspring of both imagination and emotion and a 
 writer who discards reason wiU soon find that the rea- 
 sonable part of mankind will discard him. Pope, I 
 think, benefited our poetry incalculably both in form 
 and substance. It is true that the works of his prede- 
 cessors, Shakespeare and Milton, are far more worthy 
 of imitation, but they are far less imitable. Pope's 
 great excellences of thought and expression seemed to 
 the public to be more attainable, and since his time 
 English poetry has never tolerated the absurdity in 
 thought and crudeness in expression that were previ- 
 ously common. He was a great national educator and 
 raised the taste of both readers and writers to a higher 
 level. Goldsmith, Gray, Tennyson and others have 
 since supplemented his work, but not reversed or super- 
 seded it. When Wordsworth thought he had done so, 
 he was mistaken. It is true that Pope's favorite, al- 
 most his exclusive measure, the heroic couplet, no longer 
 dominates English poetry as, through his influence, it 
 did for nearly a century. But his careful rhymes, his 
 propriety of diction, his ease, his vivacity, his melody, 
 are still practically our standard. Since Pope's day 
 no matter how interesting a poet's thought or how 
 strong his emotions, he is not acceptable unless he 
 shows care and finish in his style. Burns and Byron, 
 the most powerful and spontaneous of the later poets, 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 119 
 
 labored on the details of their technique as they would 
 not have done, if the example of Pope and his school 
 had not been before them. Even Wordsworth, though 
 in theory he opposed Pope, was in practice not a little 
 indebted to his example. 
 
 Like most, if not all, very great authors, Pope was 
 a man of one work. He gave his life to literature 
 with undivided enthusiasm, and literature wiU continue 
 to hold him in grateful and honorable remembrance. 
 Zeal for literature inspired his own labors, and zeal 
 for literature prompted much of his severe criticism 
 on those who trifled with it or degraded it. 
 
MACAULAY 
 
MACAULAY 
 
 Macaulay's ancestors on his father's side for several 
 generations had been Presbyterian ministers. His 
 father and mother were EvangeHcals of the strictest 
 sort and by them and by their set his early fondness for 
 light literature and for the theatre, and the freedom of 
 his religious opinions, were looked upon with disfavor 
 and alarm. As an indication of the way in which the 
 Evangelical party in England looked upon him I may 
 recall the fact that Wm. Morley Panshon, the most 
 eminent of English Methodist orators, in his lecture 
 on Macaulay expressly calls him a prodigal son. This 
 must be regarded as a mere expression of regret that 
 Macaulay did not profess and advocate evangelical 
 opinions, and not in any sense as reflecting upon his 
 moral character. There was never any question as to 
 his honesty, truthfulness, temperance, and general pro- 
 priety of hfe. Nor did he ever oppose the religious 
 views of his father's circle. The nearest approach to 
 such opposition was an occasional expression of impa- 
 tience at bigotry, and narrowmindednes. As is well 
 known, the great English religious and philanthropic 
 meetings are held in Exeter HaU, London, and 
 Macaulay once scandalized and angered the evangelical 
 party by characterizing their oratory as " the bray of 
 Exeter Hall." 
 
 He dropped a good deal of his father's austere re- 
 ligion, but the effects of his early training are seen in 
 the purity of his writings and in the general upright- 
 ness and philanthropy of his Hfe. Macaulay was a 
 very earnest and sincere champion of hberty. He 
 
 123 
 
IM MACAULAY 
 
 strenuously advocated Catholic Emancipation, and the 
 great Reform Bill, and he wrote a brilliant, fascinat- 
 ing, and wonderful history of the great revolution by 
 which England definitely became a constitutional mon- 
 archy. A still nobler service to the cause of liberty 
 and one that, in my judgment, ranks Macaulay among 
 the very great benefactors of mankind, was his prepara- 
 tion of a code of laws for India by which every Hindoo 
 was granted all those securities for life, liberty and 
 property that are the boast of the Anglo-Saxon race 
 in England and in this country. To Macaulay must 
 also be ascribed most of the credit for the teaching of 
 English as the language in which instruction is given 
 in the government schools in India. Before his time 
 the policy had been to develop the native languages 
 and translate European books into them ; but Macaulay 
 showed conclusively that Western science and Hindoo 
 mythology would not blend, and that before any ef- 
 fective scientific teaching could be done, the Hindoo 
 fables must be discredited and dropped. 
 
 Three things especially strike me in regard to 
 Macaulay, his amazing knowledge, his practical sense, 
 and his unparalleled gifts of illustration and exposi- 
 tion. These qualities made him an overpowering 
 talker, writer and Parliamentary debater. He had 
 more knowledge than other men, he could recall and 
 arrange his knowledge with greater readiness, he could 
 express it with greater clearness, brevity and emphasis. 
 His life was thus one long and practically unbroken 
 series of worldly successes. He was the very highest 
 type of the practical statesmen and man of the world, 
 and yet there are good and wise people not a few who 
 assign to him a comparatively humble place as a writer 
 because they think there is so little of essential truth. 
 
MACAULAY 125 
 
 and of spiritual insight in his writings. One wit when 
 asked to give a list of works of fiction placed Macau- 
 lay's History at the head. Another writer has called it 
 a ' huge Whig pamphlet.' In truth Macaulay investi- 
 gated his facts with tireless patience and sought to 
 write with entire impartiality; but his natural sym- 
 pathies were narrow and many things were hidden 
 from him. He admired common sense and practical 
 worldly success. Addison was his ideal; a spiritual 
 genius like Bunyan seemed to him little short of crazy. 
 He had so little ideality that every man who gave his 
 life to remote and spiritual ends seemed to him a 
 dreamer and a visionary. Even in politics he rarely 
 appeals to first principles. He disliked tyranny and 
 advocated constitutional government ; but he had no 
 faith in the stability of any democracy, and believed 
 that popular government in this country would prove 
 impracticable. He detested the radicals of England 
 and opposed the Chartist movement, though all the 
 Chartist demands were practical as our experience 
 proves. His life showed something of the same nar- 
 rowness of sympathy and understanding. He would 
 not subscribe to any fund for the benefit of destitute 
 or needy authors. Why, he said, should we encourage 
 authors to write inferior and unreadable books ? Good 
 authors do not need help, for their books sell, and bad 
 authors ought not to have it, for the sooner they 
 cease to be authors the better. Such is Macaulay's 
 argument ; but how shallow a thing it is. It is no- 
 torious that superficial and amusing books produce the 
 largest immediate returns, and that there is hardly an 
 instance in which a book of great and permanent value 
 to the world ever yielded any great amount of money 
 to the writer. Thousands of men have gotten rich by 
 
126 MACAULAY 
 
 writing news, or politics, or novels, or light plays, 
 but who ever got rich bj writing psalms, or gospels, or 
 true philosophies, or genuine poetry, or real science? 
 No man can serve God and Mammon. ,The books 
 which greatly serve God and help men are not those 
 that bring much money to their authors. They that 
 preach the gospel are able to Hve by the gospel, but 
 not to grow rich by it; and so those among writers 
 who are God's true prophets are in some way fed, or 
 else their work could not be done, but they are not com- 
 monly rewarded by riches or worldly honors, but by 
 deeper and more enduring inner satisfactions. 
 
 Macaulay was a very entertaining and very useful 
 writer, but not a very great one. He wrote for the 
 average intelligence. He took popular subjects and 
 treated them in a popular manner. Unlike De Quincey, 
 he never tries to clear up obscure questions or unravel 
 difficulties. He evaded intricate discussions and phil- 
 osophic depths. He wants to be at all times enter- 
 taining and brilliant. He is so, but frequently at the 
 expense of truth. There is so much of antithesis, 
 paradox, and exaggeration that one is never quite sure 
 that any statement is really true. Macaulay knew 
 and admitted his habit of exaggeration, and his defense 
 has much force in it. He says in effect that men's 
 perceptions and feelings are dull, and that you need 
 to exaggerate in order to produce a true effect, as a 
 statue on a high pedestal must be of heroic size in 
 order to seem life-like. It is easy to answer by similes 
 and to say with Sir Philip Sidney that one should 
 not put pepper and spice in every dish. Or, objecting 
 to over ornamentation as much as to over stimulation, 
 say that it is enough to waar jewels in the ears without 
 also putting them in the nose and lips. But to drop 
 
MACAULAY 127 
 
 figures and speak plainly, I think that no one ought 
 to neglect Macaulay but no one ought to depend mainly, 
 upon him for information. On the whole I like the 
 essay on Milton as well as any of his writings. It 
 was his first great essay and was written in early man- 
 hood when sentiment and enthusiasm are strongest. 
 Under the fascination of a great character and a great 
 genius Macaulay for a moment almost becomes a hero 
 worshipper. He says " we imagine to ourselves the 
 breathless silence in which we should listen to his slight- 
 est word, the passionate veneration with which we 
 should kneel to kiss his hand, the eagerness with which 
 we should contest with his daughters, or with his 
 Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer 
 to him or of taking down the immortal accents which 
 flowed from his lips." But Macaulay has not the 
 self-abandonment of a truly great man any more than 
 the weakness of a truly little one. He checks himself 
 and returns to his habitual prudence and reserve with 
 the comment that " these are perhaps foolish feelings." 
 Perhaps; but I cannot resist the thought that if 
 Macaulay had oftener yielded to such feelings he would 
 have been a greater and a better man. Of the Puritan 
 he says that " the tone of their minds was often injured 
 by straining after things too high for mortal reach." 
 Is it not possible that the tone of Macaulay's mind 
 would have been improved by striving a little more 
 earnestly for those spiritual ideals which he thinks un- 
 attainable.'' But to me the crowning instance of his 
 lack of spirituality and faith and insight is his view 
 of the function and nature of poetry. To him poetry 
 is mere illusion and the poet a man of unsound mind. 
 It flourishes best, he says, when language is in its rudest 
 state and in the darkest age. This implies that a,s 
 
128 MACAULAY 
 
 civilization advances it will gradually disappear, like 
 any other popular superstition or delusion. This 
 seems to me a radical error, contradicting the great 
 general consciousness of man. In every nation the 
 poet has been regarded as a seer and a prophet. He 
 sees the spiritual truths hidden from others, and he 
 utters them with authority as the especial mouthpiece 
 of God. Religion and poetry stand or fall together. 
 Both appeal to the intuitions as against the senses. 
 Both uphold the unseen, both in a word rest upon faith, 
 and the degree of one's faith in spiritual things, the 
 degree in which one is raised above the material and 
 sensual is the real measure of greatness of mind and 
 heart. 
 
 Macaulay said of the Puritans : " As a body they 
 had done their utmost to decry and ruin literature; 
 and literature was even with them as, in the long run, 
 it always is with its enemies." May we not paraphrase 
 these sentences and apply them to Macaulay himself 
 and say that he has done his utmost to decry and dis- 
 parage poetry and that his low estimate of the great- 
 est and most enduring of the fine arts will forever 
 stamp him, in spite of all his stores of learning and 
 all his brilliancy of rhetoric, as a man of narrow views 
 and second-rate powers. 
 
TENNYSON 
 
TENNYSON. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson's long life was marked by many 
 unusual distinctions. At thirty-three he was hailed by 
 all his countrymen as a great representative poet, and, 
 on the death of the aged Wordsworth, the govern- 
 ment ratified the popular decision by making him the 
 official laureate of the nation. For fully fifty years 
 he maintained an absolute and wonderful pre-eminence 
 among English poets. Almost every year there was 
 a new poem from his pen and almost every new poem 
 added to his great reputation and amazed men by the 
 extent and variety of his intellectual resources. 
 
 A seat in the House of Lords is the recognized Eng- 
 lish reward for supreme achievement, usually reserved 
 for conquering generals, great statesmen or venerated' 
 judges ; but to honor Tennyson precedent was broken, 
 and for the first time a poet was made a peer. 
 
 A still more unprecedented thing in literary history 
 is that Tennyson made a large fortune by his poetry. 
 Scott and Dickens had done so by writing prose fiction ; 
 but never before in the world's history has any man 
 received as much money in return for purely poetic 
 creations. No poor penny-a-liner, he ! Publishers com- 
 peted for the honor of issuing new poems, and his 
 lucky rhymes were literally " scrip and share " to 
 him. A century ago the simple-hearted Goldsmith 
 thought that his publisher was too generous and was 
 doing himself an injustice when the man of business 
 paid the poet half-a-crown a line for the Deserted Vil- 
 lage ; but Tennyson has sometimes received fifty times 
 the amount that Goldsmith thought so large. 
 
 131 
 
132 TENNYSON 
 
 Some of Tennyson's poems have been cabled across 
 the sea. Many of them have been translated into all 
 the languages of Europe. There were in 1892 twen- 
 ty-five partial translations of his works in German, 
 four in Dutch, five in Danish, two in Swedish, six in 
 French, two in Spanish, and four in Italian, and since 
 his death many additional translations have been made. 
 
 There is also a great and growing body of exposi- 
 tion and comment, an array of Tennyson biographies, 
 hand-books, and concordances. Everything indicates 
 that he has secured a permanent place among the 
 world's great authors. 
 
 Perhaps in attempting to give a brief analysis of 
 Tennyson's poetry it is most natural to begin with a 
 reference to its external form. Edgar Allan Poe, him- 
 self a consummate master of the technique of poetry, 
 declared that Tennyson was the greatest artist that 
 ever lived. Tennyson called himself the " heir of all 
 the ages," and in no respect was this so true as in 
 reference to the art of poetry. He was in a general 
 sense, as we all are, heir to the science, the philosophy, 
 the religion, the political liberty the world has grad- 
 ually acquired; but he was heir to its poetic riches by 
 the most personal and intense appropriation. 
 
 " Genius," says Carlyle, very truly, " is an infinite 
 capacity for taking trouble," and Tennyson has been 
 patient and persistent beyond all other English poets. 
 Dante boasted that rhyme had never made him say 
 what he did not mean, or barred the utterance of what 
 he did desire to say. This has too rarely been the 
 case. Butler saucily declared in reference to his own 
 doggerel verses, 
 
 " One for sense and one for rhyme 
 I think sufficient at a time," 
 
TENNYSON 133 
 
 Even Byron, the Napoleon among poets, declared 
 ruefully 
 
 " At times 
 Monarchs are less imperative than rhymes." 
 
 Browning often coins or misspells words, or borrows 
 from foreign languages, to make the task of versifica- 
 tion easier; but Tennyson, with exhaustive knowledge 
 and aU but infinite patience and skill, labors until his 
 thought is fully expressed, while at the same time the 
 beauties of language and the laws of harmony are 
 perfectly illustrated. 
 
 That Tennyson is a master of the English language 
 and of the laws of versification is universally admitted 
 and needs no further illustration. That he is a great 
 musician we all know. The question is. What has he 
 done with his music.'' Has he put it to a noble use.? 
 Wordsworth says of the poets : 
 
 " Blessings be with them and eternal praise 
 Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares, 
 The poets who on earth have made us heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays." 
 
 Has Tennyson fulfilled this mission of the poet.'' Has 
 he taught and inspired men thus.'' Emphatically he 
 has been a minister of " pure delight." He has been 
 a wonderful revealer of the beauty of sea and sky and 
 landscape. Natural history in most of the early Eng- 
 lish poets was largely bookish and conventional. 
 Spenser, for instance, often constructs purely 
 imaginary landscapes, grouping together in one grove 
 trees belonging to different soils and climates and 
 never found in conjunction in Nature. But Tennyson 
 does not do so, but to use Wordsworth's phrase writes 
 " with his eye on the object," and all the mild and 
 
134. TENNYSON 
 
 varied beauties of England's rivers and meadows, woods 
 and hills, and all the types of her architecture, from 
 the humblest cottage to the stateliest castle or cathedral, 
 are reproduced in Tennyson's pages. 
 
 Yet although there is much description in Tennyson, 
 he is not primarily a descriptive poet, and never allows 
 description to overpower the poet's more important and 
 appropriate work of narration. 
 
 In Tennyson Nature is always an adjunct to man, 
 and his descriptions are never either tiresome or use- 
 less. They are not, as in many poets and novelists, 
 pretty little bits of ornamentation thrown in here and 
 there to give variety ; they grow out of the circum- 
 stance of his characters in the story, and are as neces- 
 sary to them as the solid earth and the blue sky are 
 to actual men and women. In a word Tennyson is 
 a truthful writer. His work is conscientous through 
 and through. He has no sympathy or affiliation with 
 Poe or Swinburne or any " wild poet who works with- 
 out a conscience or an aim." 
 
 It was very natural that one in whom truth was 
 ingrained even in regard to the most trifling external 
 appearances of Nature, should have been eager to learn 
 the truth concerning all her deeper processes, to under- 
 stand the secrets of her mighty laboratory and know 
 the ultimate purpose of the great and majestic system 
 of which we are a part. Tennyson has availed himself 
 of every modern help for the better understanding of 
 Nature, and has found in Science material for poetry. 
 He has been a close and careful student of Botany, 
 Geology, Astronomy, and has had and will have a very 
 great influence in making the teachings of these sci- 
 ences the common beliefs of men. In In Memorian he 
 speaks thus; 
 
TENNYSON 135 
 
 " Are God and Nature then at strife. 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
 So careful of the type she seems 
 So careless of the single life. 
 
 So careful of the type? But no. 
 From scarped cliff and quarried stone. 
 She cries ' a thousand types are gone, 
 I care for nothing, aU shall go.' " 
 
 Technical works on Geology are read by few schol- 
 ars, but In Memoriam has been read by almost every 
 educated man of our generation. Such a passage as 
 the one just quoted condenses the testimony of the 
 rocks and makes it musical and easily remembered, and 
 it is only when truth is associated with beauty, and emo- 
 tion that it finds full access to the heart. 
 
 Even in so small a matter as the description of a sun- 
 set Tennyson sometimes prefers the precision of scien- 
 tific to the inaccuracy of popular speech, — as, for in- 
 stance, when he speaks of night, as, 
 
 " The gloom 
 That follows on the turning of the world." 
 
 The most influential and noteworthy book of the 
 19th century is Darwin's Origin of Species by Natural 
 Selection, published in 1859. Though Tennyson was 
 then fifty years old his mind was stiU open and his later 
 poetry is full of references to Darwin's great general- 
 ization. He tells us to 
 
 " Move upward, working out the beast. 
 And let the ape and tiger die." 
 
 So thorough indeed was Tennyson's acceptance of 
 Darwin's theories that he may be called the distinctive 
 
136 TENNYSON 
 
 poet of Evolution; yet his scientific opinions did not 
 disturb but strengthened his faith in the wisdom and 
 goodness of God. 
 
 Tennyson was the son of a clergyman and had a 
 devotedly pious mother, and had often hstened as he 
 tells us 
 
 " to vows 
 For me outpour'd in holiest prayer." 
 
 His works are saturated with Biblical allusions, as 
 many as three hundred having been enumerated by one 
 commentator. He indignantly repudiates atheism and 
 materialism. 
 
 "We are not cunning casts in clay: 
 Let Science prove we are, and then 
 What matters Science unto men. 
 At least to me ? I would not stay." 
 
 He recognizes everywhere personal responsibihty and 
 teaches emphatically the duty and benefits of prayer. 
 " Pray for my soul," says the dying Arthur, 
 
 " More things are wrought by prayer 
 Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 
 Rise like a fountain for me night and day; 
 For what are men better than sheep or goats 
 That nourish a blind life within the brain. 
 If, knowing God, they left not hands of prayer 
 Both for themselves and those who call them friend? " 
 
 And again in Enoch Arden, that true and touch- 
 ing story of a brave, God-fearing man, he says of 
 Enoch in his lonely isle : 
 
 " Had not his poor heart 
 Spoken with That which, being everywhere. 
 Lets none who speak with Him seem all alone. 
 Surely the man had died of solitude," 
 
TENNYSON 137 
 
 One might almost say that it was Tennyson's special 
 aim and mission to be the mediator between the views 
 of the parsonage in which he was educated and the 
 world of philosophy and science in which he became so 
 ardent an inquirer. He has certainly done much to 
 break down the narrowness and dogmatism of the creed- 
 makers, and he evidently thinks that some formulas 
 still need revision, for he says, 
 
 " There lives more faith in honest doubt 
 Believe me than in half the creeds." 
 
 And yet while he welcomes all the developments of truth 
 and teaches men to remodel their old opinions in the 
 light of new knowledge, he is not a destructive critic 
 or iconoclastic agitator. His attitude is expressed by 
 the words: 
 
 " Let knowledge grow from more to more. 
 But more of reverence in us dwell; 
 That mind and soul according well. 
 May make one music as before. 
 But vaster." 
 
 His final legacy to the world, the volume published three 
 weeks after his departure from it, contains a noble 
 poem called Akbar's Dream. Akbar was an enlight- 
 ened Hindoo sovereign who made great efforts to pro- 
 mote harmony among his Brahmin, his Mohammedan 
 and his Christian subjects; of him Tennyson says: 
 
 " I dream'd 
 That stone by stone I rear'd a sacred fane, 
 A temple neither Pagod, Mosque nor Church, 
 But loftier, simpler, always open-door'd 
 To every breath from heaven; and Truth and Peace 
 And Love and Justice came and dwelt therein." 
 
138 TENNYSON 
 
 We are in danger in this age of laying entirely too 
 much stress upon education and forgetting that what 
 is desirable is not so much to draw out the power that 
 is already in a man as to increase that power by a 
 reverent reception of knowledge from without us. We 
 hurry and bustle and cram and formulate and recite, 
 and sometimes quite forget to wait and listen for the 
 voices of God and Nature. Wordsworth said: 
 
 " Think you amid the mighty sum 
 Of things forever speaking. 
 That nothing of itself will come. 
 But we must still be seeking. 
 The eye, it cannot choose but see; 
 We cannot bid the ear be still. 
 Our bodies feel where'er they be. 
 Against or with our will. 
 
 Nor less I deem that there are Powers 
 Which of themselves our minds impress; 
 That we can feed this mind of ours 
 In a wise passiveness." 
 
 " What hast thou that thou hast not received? " said 
 Paul. Emerson's whole philosophy is that a man is 
 great according as he permits the Divine Oversoul to 
 flow into him and direct him. It is even written upon 
 his tombstone, 
 
 " The passive master lent his hand 
 To the vast soul that o'er him planned." 
 
 In every age it has been believed that the supreme 
 teachers of men did not derive their knowledge from 
 the slow and feeble processes of reason, but by divine 
 inspiration and direct vision of truth. Tennyson was 
 a mystic of this sort. God was to Tennyson " closer 
 
TENNYSON 139 
 
 than breathing and nearer than hands and feet." He 
 had visions of the night and of the day. He is really 
 speaking of himself, as we learn from his letters, when 
 he says of King Arthur's visions; 
 
 " Many a time they come 
 Until this earth he walks on seems not earth. 
 This light that strikes his eyeballs is not hght. 
 But vision — Yea, his very hand and foot 
 Are vision. 
 
 In moments when he feels he cannot die. 
 And knows himself no vision. 
 Nor the high God a vision." 
 
 Tennyson has rebuked alike the extremists who re- 
 sist all progress in thought, and the extremists who 
 would banish prayer, banish faith, banish soul, banish 
 God from the world and take " a dial for their deity." 
 Many books have been written during the last thirty 
 years with the express object of reconciling Science 
 and Rehgion. Many of them have doubtless been of 
 great value, but I venture to express the opinion that 
 Tennyson in this field of thought is the most repre- 
 sentative man of his century, and that he has done 
 more than any other to blend the old and the new 
 things of the spirit and to bring his own and future 
 generations safely through a dangerous crisis in the 
 moral and religious life of the English-speaking world. 
 
 It has often been the case that religious teachers 
 have been so much concerned with the future Hfe that 
 they have cared Httle for the present one. They have 
 desired so much to prepare men for the celestial city 
 that they have not cared much for their earthly con- 
 dition or progress. But Tennyson believed in a 
 Kingdom of God upon earth. God is creating a 
 great race and working out a great destiny, for it 
 
140 TENNYSON 
 
 here. Sometimes this thought is emblematically ex- 
 pressed, as in the description of the decorations of the 
 great hall Merhn, made for Arthur in which were four 
 great zones of sculpture: 
 
 " And in the lowest beasts were slaying men 
 And in the second men were playing beasts. 
 And in the third were warriors, perfect men, 
 And in the fourth were men with growing wings." 
 
 In the later Locksley Hall, he has this vision of the 
 future : 
 
 " All diseases quench'd by Science, no man halt or deaf or 
 
 blind. 
 Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body larger mind, 
 Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion 
 
 kiU'd, 
 Every grim ravine, a garden, every blazing desert till'd. 
 Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles. 
 Universal ocean softly washing all her warless isles. 
 Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single 
 
 tongue, 
 I have seen her far away — for is not Earth as yet so 
 
 young?" 
 
 And in a vision like one of the apostle Paul's in grand- 
 eur, Tennyson sees that God presides over all changes 
 and overrules everything to one great end: 
 
 " That God who ever lives and loves. 
 One God, one law, one element. 
 And one far-off divine event 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 It is surely a matter for great joy and gratitude 
 that the pre-eminent English poet of the 19th century 
 should have strengthened men's faith and hope: and it 
 is not less a reason for congratulation that he is a 
 
TENNYSON 141 
 
 most wholesome moral teacher. Tennyson has no vil- 
 lainous heroes and never exalts lawless love. The 
 whole substance of his teaching on the relations of the 
 sexes is contained in the vows that Arthur required 
 of those who became Knights of the Table Round. 
 They swore: 
 
 " To reverence their conscience as their King, 
 To lead sweet lives in purest chastity. 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her. 
 And worship her by years of noble deeds 
 Until they won her; for indeed I knew 
 Of no more subtle master under heaven 
 Than is the maiden passion for a maid. 
 Not only to keep down the base in man. 
 But teach high thoughts and amiable words 
 And courtliness and the desire of fame. 
 And love of truth, and all that makes a man." 
 
 There is nothing sensual and there is nothing patron- 
 izing about Tennyson's treatment of women. 
 " Women is not undeveloped man but diverse." 
 Either sex alone is half itself, and in true marriage 
 lies " nor equal nor unequal." True woman sets her- 
 self to true man " like perfect music unto noble words." 
 Tennyson's own mother was his model woman, and 
 made the whole sex seem dear and noble to him. He 
 says of her that she was one 
 
 " Not learned save in gracious household ways. 
 Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants. 
 No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
 In angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
 Interpreter between the Gods and men, 
 Who look'd all native to her place, and yet 
 On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere 
 Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 
 
142 TENNYSON 
 
 Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved 
 And girdled her with music. Happy he 
 With such a mother ! Faith in womankind 
 Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
 Comes easy to him." 
 
 " Indeed," said Tennyson, " she was the beautifulest 
 thing that God Almighty ever made." The poet was 
 equally blest and happy in his wife, 
 
 " With whom for forty years his life in golden sequence 
 ran, 
 She with all the charm of woman, he with all the 
 breadth of man." 
 
 She " strong in will and rich in wisdom " was content 
 to devote herself to her husband and children, and to 
 let all the perfume and beauty of her life reach the 
 world only indirectly through them ; yet surely these 
 women, like the mother of Jesus and the mother of 
 Wesley, will forever be honored by the world they 
 have incalculably blest. 
 
 Tennyson was not less sensitive to physical than 
 to moral beauty. What a company of fair women 
 there is in his pages, " lily maids " and " imperially- 
 moulded " queens, women 
 
 " Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well. 
 Fairer than Euth among the fields of corn. 
 Fair as the Angel that said ' Hail ! ' " 
 
 Tennyson's relations with his own sex were as ideal 
 and noble as with the other. He was a good son and 
 a brother and a perfect friend. In Memoriam is not 
 only the great religious poem of the century, but the 
 noblest tribute to friendship that our language or any 
 language possesses. 
 
TENNYSON 143 
 
 It remains to speak of Tennyson very briefly as a 
 political thinker and social reformer. In regard to 
 government, Tennsyson is thoroughly, perhaps it may 
 be said narrowly, English. In early Hfe, indeed, like 
 many other poets he had a warm sympathy with 
 forcible revolution, and while travelling in Spain with 
 Hallam he risked his liberty and Hfe by carrying let- 
 ters and money to aid the Spanish rebels in their re- 
 volt. This, however, was a very brief episode. Ten- 
 nyson was a poet and idealist, not fitted by tempera- 
 ment for the rough practical work of the soldier or 
 the conspirator. His Kingdom was essentially one 
 of ideas and not of force. In later life he distrusted 
 and disliked violent methods, and stigmatized the 
 French Revolution as a " red fool fury." He did 
 not like the French way of changing rapidly from 
 extreme to extreme, from monarchy to republic, and 
 from republic to empire in quick succession. In con- 
 tra distinction to the fitful efforts and frequent re- 
 lapses of the French, he loved to think of the steady 
 resistless progress of English liberty. England was 
 to him 
 
 " A land of settled government, 
 A land of just and old renown, 
 Where Freedom slowly broadens down 
 From precedent to precedent." 
 
 Yet if Tennyson ceased to be a revolutionist, he 
 remained a very ardent friend and helper of liberty. 
 'His pen was far mightier than his sword could have 
 been, or to substitute the less familiar language of 
 Channing, " his books have had a greater effect than 
 artillery or legislation." And this leads me naturally 
 to say that Tennyson has carried the strength and 
 
144 TENNYSON 
 
 earnestness of his life into the discharge of his duties 
 as poet laureate. 
 
 The laureateship is an ofBce that has not always 
 been highly esteemed. After it had been held by 
 mediocre versifiers like Tate, Rowe, Gibber, Pye, it is 
 not surprising that Sir Walter Scott declined it in 
 dextrous phrases which thinly veiled his contempt. 
 There is a salary of 200 pounds a year and the addi- 
 tional perquisite of a cask of wine attached to the 
 laureateship. Before Tennyson restored its dignity 
 some wit pretty fairly expressed the public estimate 
 of the office in the doggerel verses : 
 
 " Who would not be a laureate bold 
 With his butt of sherry to make him merry 
 And nothing to do but pocket his gold ! " 
 
 But Tennyson proved the wits wrong. He did 
 something and did not pocket the gold. For the last 
 forty years of his life he distributed the fuU amount 
 of his official salary to his less successful brothers of 
 the pen, or to their orphan and necessitous children. 
 And of his official writing as laureate, it is enough to 
 say that it is none of it perfunctory and empty, com- 
 pliment, but all instinct with noble poetry and patri- 
 otism. A nation can well aflFord to have a laureate 
 poet, if she can get one who can write such poems as 
 The Charge of the Light Brigade or the Ode on the 
 Death of the Duke of Wellington, or in his official 
 dedication of his work to his sovereign wiU give her 
 such admonitions as these: 
 
 " May children of our children say 
 She wrought her people lasting good^ 
 
TENNYSON 145 
 
 And statesmen at her council met 
 Who knew the seasons when to take 
 Occasion by the hand and make 
 The bounds of freedom wider yet." 
 
 The book In Darkest England and the Way Out 
 is an appalling exhibition of the evils that fester be- 
 neath the brilliant surface of modern civihzation. 
 Tennyson's Locksley Hall Sixty Years After has con- 
 densed the great book of General Booth into a few 
 terrible couplets. The poet sternly asks: 
 
 " Is it well that while we range with science^ glorying 
 in the Time, 
 City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city 
 slime ? " 
 
 Tennyson has no ideahstic and revolutionary reme- 
 dies, but frequently exhorts the rich to be mindful of 
 their duty to the poor. His ideal squire was one who 
 
 " Strove to help his homelier brother men, 
 Served the poor and built the cottage, rais'd the 
 school and drained the fen." 
 
 But the limits of a lecture forbid me to follow his 
 work in further detail. Let me conclude with a few 
 general worc^ap^ 
 
 Tennyson has manifested every quality of a great 
 poet. God had tempered him very happily. He had 
 more than feminine sensibiHty, more than masculine 
 strength.' His faculties were in perfect equipoise. 
 The creative impulse and the critical judgment were 
 in right proportion, and insured a success that neither 
 alone could have given. Where the impulse to create 
 is strong and that to criticise is weak, the result is 
 necessarily a product at once too large and too crude, 
 I— 10 
 
146 TENNYSON 
 
 and the poet's fate is that of a Blackmore or a Southey. 
 Where the critical faculty is abnormally developed, it 
 quenches enthusiasm and makes the mind shrink from 
 a great task, for the labor is seen to be inevitable and 
 the result doubtful. But in Tennyson courage and 
 judgment were alike remarkable. He never checked 
 his inspiration, but never failed to guide it; thus he 
 has given us the whole possible result of his great nat- 
 ural endowments. Cowardice did not deter him from 
 attempting, or indolence from perfecting, any work 
 which his imagination held before him as a possi- 
 bility. And so in the domain of art he has left us 
 one of the few ideal lives, a life in which the maximum 
 of human power is closely approached. Engineers 
 calculate the power of their furnaces, and are able to 
 tell very nearly what work their great engines will 
 perform. But the percentage of loss in that most 
 skillfully made of all machines, man himself, is sadly 
 in excess of what he permits in an instrument which 
 his own hands have fashioned. Not so in Tennyson's 
 case. We feel that he was one of the instruments of 
 the Master Workman that did substantially the work 
 for which it was designed. He was a great hu- 
 man harp, and every chord in him responded to the 
 hand of God. Not a sense, not a faculty was un- 
 developed or unused. Not a source of knowledge or 
 inspiration was neglected. He was conversant ahke 
 with Nature, with men and with books. He observed 
 everything, he pondered everything, and at last when 
 he had sufficiently fused his acquisitions in his mind, as 
 in some great crucible, he gave them forth again to 
 the world in a new and wonderful combination. 
 
 No one can take the measure of Tennyson by read- 
 ing a few of his poems. His greatness is as much in 
 
TENNYSON 147 
 
 the mass as in the perfection of his work; when both 
 are considered, he stands before us as one of the great- 
 est figures in modern hterature. How strong and far- 
 reaching his influence has ah"eady been! He is not 
 the poet of a coterie, but of all men who speak the 
 Enghsh tongue. He is part of the education of every 
 scholar, and some of his words of faith and hope have 
 been uttered in almost every pulpit where Enghsh is 
 spoken, and have been a new gospel to a perplexed 
 generation. 
 
 Truly a great orb set in our sky but its light arose 
 on some other sphere. This was Tennyson's own 
 faith, and he expressed it in a noble figure borrowed 
 from the sea which he so passionately loved. 
 
 " Sunset and evening star. 
 And one clear call for me! 
 And may there be no moaning of the bar 
 When I put out to sea! 
 
 Twilight and evening bell 
 
 And after that the dark! 
 
 And may there be no sadness of farewell 
 
 When I embark. 
 
 For though from out our bourne of Time and 
 
 Place 
 The flood may bear me far, 
 I hope to see my pilot face to face 
 When I have crossed the bar." 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Of late years everybody has heard a good deal 
 about Robert Browning. In 1881 the very unusual 
 compliment was paid him of establishing in London 
 a society bearing his name and devoted exclusively to 
 the study of his works. The honor was the greater 
 because of the number and eminence of the founders 
 of the society. Since then Browning societies have 
 been established in every continent, and for a while 
 it seemed as though they were soon to be found in 
 every village. 
 
 I remember seeing a cartoon in Puck sometime since, 
 representing a ship at anchor off the coast of Africa 
 and two traders on the shore in conversation with the 
 native chiefs. One of the chiefs speaks as follows: 
 "What have you in your ship? We don't want any 
 of your beads and looking-glasses, we've got past all 
 that kind of thing. If you have any tennis rackets 
 bring them ashore and let us look at them, and be 
 quick about it for our Browning club meets at 3 
 o'clock." 
 
 Browning has not only got into clubs (and into the 
 comic papers), but he has taken his place on the 
 shelves of every public or college library that aspires 
 to any sort of completeness. Not only are his own 
 numerous volumes on the shelves but beside them are 
 the ever-increasing multitude of Browning biogra- 
 phies. Browning handbooks, introductions to Brown- 
 ing, and Browning encyclopaedias. 
 
 Browning has certainly at last succeeded in arrest- 
 ing public attention, though he was unremunerated 
 
 151 
 
153 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 and neglected for a longer period than any other au- 
 thor in our history who has written anything like as 
 much or as well. Pauline was published when he was 
 twenty years old ; Paracelsus when he was twenty-three ; 
 Sordello at twenty-eight; the remarkable collection of 
 dramas, romances, and lyrics known collectively as 
 Bells and Pomegranates before the author was thirty- 
 four; and yet for the last six months of the year 
 1860, when the author was forty-eight, not a copy 
 of his works was sold, and at no time previous had 
 the sale been large. 
 
 It is natural to ask the questions, why this long 
 neglect of his works and why a final recognition of 
 their value. I suppose the common answer to the 
 first question would be, " The works were neglected be- 
 cause they are hard to understand. They are full of 
 queer words, odd rhymes, elliptical constructions, gram- 
 matical inversions, and the most abrupt and unex- 
 pected transitions in thought." The apologist for the 
 public would perhaps further say : " The works too 
 are unlike any other poetry. They have not the 
 beauty, the melody, the intensity of feeling we ex- 
 pect in poetry. They are too exclusively argumenta- 
 tive and metaphysical." 
 
 I acknowledge the force and reasonableness of many 
 of these assertions. Indeed on other occasions I have 
 made them myself with an emphasis that has made 
 Browning devotees regard me as very narrow and 
 prejudiced. It will be my pleasanter task now to try 
 to exhibit some of the elements of value in Browning 
 rather than his faults. 
 
 Who can fail to sympathize with Douglas Jerrold 
 when, slowly convalesceing from a serious illness, he 
 found among some new books sent him by a friend, a 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 153 
 
 copy of Sordello. Thomas Powell, writing in 1849 
 has chronicled the episode. " A few lines," he says, 
 " put Jerrold in a state of alarm." Sentence after sen- 
 tence brought no consecutive thought to his brain. 
 At last the idea occurred to him that his mental facul- 
 ties had been wrecked. The perspiration roUed from 
 his forehead, and smiting his head he sank back on 
 the sofa, crying, " God, I am an idiot ! " A little 
 later, adds Powell, when Jerrold's wife and sister en- 
 tered, he thrust Sordello into their hands, demand- 
 ing what they thought of it. He watched them in- 
 tently while they read. When at last Mrs. Jerrold 
 remarked, " I don't understand what this man means, 
 it is gibberish," her delighted husband gave a sigh of 
 relief and exclaimed, " Thank God, I am not an 
 idiot ! " Many friends of Browning will remember 
 his recounting this incident almost in these very words, 
 and his enjoyment therein: though he would never 
 admit justification for such puzzlement. 
 
 But more illustrious personages than Douglas Jer- 
 rold were puzzled by the poem. Lord Tennyson man- 
 fully tackled it, but he is reported to have admitted in 
 bitterness of spirit : " There were only two lines in it 
 that I understood, and they were both lies ; they were 
 the opening and closing lines, ' Who will may hear 
 Sordello's story told,' and ' Who would has heard 
 Bordello's story told ! ' " Carlyle was equally candid : 
 " My wife," he writes, " has read through Sordello 
 without being able to make out whether Sordello 
 was a man, or a city, or a book." In an article on 
 this poem, in a French magazine, M. Barot quotes a 
 passage where the poet says, " God gave man two fac- 
 ulties " — and adds, " I wish while he was about it 
 (pendant pu'il etait en train) God had supplied an- 
 
154 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 other, namely, the power of understanding Mr. 
 Browning." 
 
 It is told of Gilead P. Beck, that after reading 
 Fifine at the Fair frightful symptoms set in, till in 
 despair he took up Red Cotton Nightcap Country, 
 and fell for hours into a dull comatose misery. " His 
 eyes were bloodshot, his hair was pushed in disorder 
 about his head, his cheeks were flushed, his hands were 
 trembling, the nerves in his face were twitching, — 
 then he rose, and solemnly cursed Robert Browning. 
 And then he took all his volumes, and disposing them 
 carefully in the fireplace, set light to them. ' I wish,' 
 he said, ' that I could put the poet there too,' " 
 
 One other anecdote of the kind was often, with evi- 
 dent humorous appreciation, recounted by the poet. 
 On his introduction to the Chinese Ambassador, as a 
 " brother-poet," he asked that dignitary what kind 
 of poetic expression he particularly affected. The 
 great man deliberated, and then replied that his poetry 
 might be defined as " enigmatic." Browning at once 
 admitted the fraternal kinship. Yet there are not a 
 few people who feel a great debt of gratitude to 
 Robert Browning. He has filled life with new inter- 
 est and brightened the future with new hope for them. 
 There are some intelligent people who read and ad- 
 mire him more than any other 19th century author. 
 
 Tennyson treats much of civilization and the col- 
 lective life of men, but Browning fixes his attention 
 chiefly on the individual heart and conscience. There 
 is to him little except the development of the single soul. 
 He teaches men and women to live out their own lives 
 in entire disregard of rank or fashion or worldly gain 
 or public opinion. In a word he says in many ways, 
 Lose your lives in order to save them. Above all things, 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 155 
 
 no other consideration but spiritual affinity and affec- 
 tion should ever unite people in marriage, and where 
 spiritual affinity and affection exist the man and 
 woman should not allow anything to keep them apart. 
 
 This is the meaning of the remarkable poem called 
 The FKght of the Duchess. The story in brief is 
 this: A young duke possessed of immense estates 
 and the loftiest pride of rank has married a cheerful 
 active young girl who finds the stiff etiquette of the 
 castle unendurable and so runs away, with a tribe of 
 gypsies, abandoning loveless wealth and station for a 
 life of poverty and hardship made glad by human 
 sympathy. She is filled with new life and hope, told 
 that " love is the only good in the world," and assured 
 that in the gypsy camp she shall find love to her 
 heart's content, and so, according to Browning, the 
 lady's elopement was wise and right. 
 
 I wiU illustrate by another example. Youth and 
 Art. A penniless young sculptor lives in an attic 
 on one side of the street. A penniless young girl who 
 is studying singing lives in an attic on the other. 
 They are attracted to each other, but each is anxious 
 to get on in the world, and so, as they think of each 
 other's poverty, they suppress any manifestation of 
 regard for prudential reasons. They separate and 
 each gains wealth and social position, but each fails 
 to gain true distinction as an artist or true happiness 
 as a human being. They admit their mistake in the 
 words : 
 
 " Each life's unfulfilled you see ; 
 It hangs still, patchy and scrappy; 
 We have not sighed deep, laughed free. 
 Starved, feasted, despaired, — been happy." 
 
156 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 But now perhaps one asks about Browning him- 
 self? Did this daring prophet practice what he 
 preached? Was he such a lover as he pictures, one 
 whom no obstacle can daunt, whom no consideration of 
 prudence can turn aside? Let me briefly narrate the 
 story of his marriage and the reader can judge. 
 
 A series of Browning's early poems was called 
 Bells and Pomegranates, a beautiful and poetic title 
 which the poet himself explains as meaning " a mix- 
 ture of music with discoursing, sound with sense, 
 poetry with thought." The recollection is necessary 
 to understand the meaning of the compliment to 
 Browning which appeared in Elizabeth Barrett's 
 poem, Lady Geraldine's Courtship. In it, after 
 praising Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl and 
 Tennyson's enchanted reverie, she speaks of Brown- 
 ing's Pomegranates, " which if cut deep down the 
 middle, 
 
 " Show a heart within blood-tinctured. 
 Of a veined humanity." 
 
 Browning admired the poem and was doubtless 
 gratified by the personal compliment. He begged an 
 introduction, but Miss Barrett was a confirmed inva- 
 lid and admitted no one to her sickroom. When a girl 
 of fourteen she overbalanced herself in the effort to 
 place a saddle on the back of her pony. She fell 
 backward and seriously injured her spine. Some years 
 later she broke a blood vessel and was ordered to a 
 milder climate. Accordingly, accompanied by her 
 brother and some friends, she resided for a time at 
 Torquay on the south coast of England. There she 
 suffered a great shock in seeing her brother and two 
 of his friends drowned through some accident to their 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 157 
 
 sailboats The tragedy nearly killed her. As soon 
 as she recovered sufficiently to be moved, she returned 
 to her home in London and there lived in the strictest 
 seclusion, regarded by herself and her family as a 
 hopeless invalid. Her mind was active. She read 
 miscellaneously, she wrote prose and poetry ; but she 
 was confined to a darkened room and divided her time 
 between her bed and her couch. It was to this woman 
 that Robert Browning impulsively offered his hand 
 and heart. The offer was persistently repeated until 
 persistence at last won an almost reluctant assent. 
 Miss Barrett was too high-minded to take advantage 
 of her suitor's chivalry and recklessness. Browning 
 was at this time thirty-four years old, strong, hand- 
 some, intellectually gifted, and seemed ready to enter 
 upon a career of conquest, and Miss Barrett felt her- 
 self weak and helplesss, unfit to be a true wife, a co- 
 worker, a burden sharer. 
 
 To her sense of his devotion we owe the most beauti- 
 ful and pathetic series of love poems ever addressed by 
 a woman to a man. Her modesty leads her to entitle 
 the forty-four poems in which she expresses her emo- 
 tions Sonnets from the Portuguese, but they have no 
 original except in her own heart and brain. In the 
 third sonnet she writes: 
 
 " Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart ! 
 Unlike our uses and our destinies. 
 Our ministering two angels look surprise 
 On one another, as they strike athwart 
 Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art 
 A guest for queens to social pageantries. 
 With gages from a hundred brighter eyes 
 Than tears even can make mine, to ply thy part 
 Of chief musician. What hast thou to do 
 
ISa HOBERT BROWNING 
 
 With looking from the lattice-lights at me, 
 
 A poor, tired, wandering singer ? — singing through 
 
 The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree? 
 
 The chrism is on thine head, on mine, the dew, — 
 
 And Death must dig the level where these agree." 
 
 The eighth runs thus : 
 
 " What can I give thee back, O liberal 
 And princely giver, who hast brought the gold 
 And purple of thine heart, unstained, imtold. 
 And laid them on the outside of the wall 
 For such as I to take or leave withal. 
 In unexpected largesse? Am I cold. 
 Ungrateful, that for these most manifold 
 High gifts I render nothing back at all? 
 Not so ; not cold, — but very poor instead ! 
 Ask God who knows, for frequent tears have run 
 The colours from my life, and left so dead 
 And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done 
 To give the same as pillow to thy head. 
 Go farther! Let it serve to trample on." 
 
 The figure in the fifth sonnet is still stronger, still 
 more pathetic in its expression of the disparity be- 
 tween her and her suitor. 
 
 " I lift my heavy heart up solemnly. 
 As once Electra her sepulchral urn. 
 And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn 
 The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see 
 What a great heap of grief lay hid in me. 
 And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn 
 Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn 
 Could tread them out to darkness utterly. 
 It might be well perhaps. But if instead 
 Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow 
 The grey dust up, those laurels on thine head. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 159 
 
 O my beloved, will not shield thee so 
 
 That none of aU the fires shall scorch and shred 
 
 The hair beneath. Stand farther off then ! Go." 
 
 All know the happy sequel. Marriage awoke Miss 
 Barrett to new life and vigor. The kiss of her hus- 
 band was like the kiss of the prince in the fairy tale 
 that broke the speU of evil and gave back the sleeping 
 beauty to life and happiness. In a letter to a friend 
 shortly after marriage Mrs. Browning writes, " He 
 drew me back to life and hope again when I had done 
 with both. — Temper, spirit, manner — there is not a 
 flaw anywhere. I shut my eyes sometimes and fancy it 
 aU a dream of my guardian angel." " I am not im- 
 proved but transformed." — Two years later a letter 
 of Mrs. Browning's contains these words : " My hus- 
 band was laid up for nearly a month with fever. 
 Quite unhappy I have been over those burning hands 
 and languid eyes — the only unhappiness I ever had 
 from him." And speaking of another occasion on 
 which she had carelessly caused the loss of a sum of 
 money she says : " Any other man, a little lower than 
 the angels, would have stamped and sworn a little for 
 the mere relief of the thing — but as to his being 
 angry with me for any cause except not eating enough 
 dinner, the sun would turn the wrong way first." It 
 is, moreover, recorded that during the fifteen years 
 of his married life Robert Browning, except on one 
 occasion, always dined at home. 
 
 Browning was one of the best husbands that ever 
 lived. In this poem called By the Fireside he 
 speaks of the proposal by which he won his wife as 
 the really great and important event of his life. He 
 says: 
 
il60 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 " I am named and known by that moment's feat: 
 There took my station and degree; 
 So grew my own small life complete. 
 As Nature obtained her best of me, — 
 One born to love you, sweet ! " 
 
 Browning wanted his wife to be his guide, philoso- 
 pher and friend not only in this life but in the world 
 to come. He says: 
 
 " When earth breaks up and heaven expands. 
 How will the change strike me and you 
 In the house not made with hands? 
 O, I must feel your brain prompt mine. 
 Your heart anticipate my heart. 
 You must be just before in fine. 
 See and make me see, for your part. 
 New depths in the divine ! " 
 
 The poem One Word More has a peculiar auto- 
 biographical interest. He is dedicating a volume of 
 love poems to his wife and he does so by saying: 
 
 " No artist lives and loves who longs not 
 Once and only once and for one only 
 To find his love a language 
 Fit and fair and simple and sufficient. 
 Once and only once and for one only. 
 So to be the man and leave the artist." 
 
 I quote but one more love poem, and I select it not 
 more for the intensity of its feeling than for the sin- 
 gular felicity of its language and the peculiar alliter- 
 ative melody of its versification, " Summum Bonum " : 
 
 " All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag 
 of one bee : 
 All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of 
 one gem; 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 161 
 
 In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine 
 
 of the sea: 
 Breath and bloom^ shade and shine, wonder, wealth, 
 
 and — 
 How far above them — 
 Truth that's brighter than gem. 
 Trust that's purer than pearl, — 
 Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe — all were 
 
 for me 
 In the kiss of one girl." 
 
 Robert Browning has scores of other poems in which 
 he illustrates and enforces the same general theory that 
 spiritual affection should triumph over worldliness and 
 cowardice. 
 
 But instead of examining any more love poems, let 
 us turn to another field of thought. There are few 
 finer short poems than The Lost Leader. The lost 
 leader had been induced to abandon his championship 
 of the People's cause and accept an ofiice and a pen- 
 sion from the government. In contrast with The Lost 
 Leader take one of Browning's types of fidelity. A 
 Grammarian's Funeral tells of a man who lived at 
 the time of the revival of learning in Europe after the 
 long darkness of the Middle Ages. He sees that the 
 first thing for a teacher of the people to do is to re- 
 cover the lost treasure of ancient wisdom and so he 
 gives his whole life to the preliminary drudgery of 
 making a Greek grammar. Friends urged him to 
 work for some immediate result. They said: 
 
 " Time escapes ; 
 Live now or never ! " 
 He said, 
 
 " What's time ! Leave now for dogs and apes ! 
 
 Man has Forever." 
 I— 11 
 
162 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 So he worked on till his eyes grew dim and his frame 
 weak with rage and infirmity. Consumption attacked 
 him. " Death's throttling hands " were at his throat ; 
 yet 
 
 '' While he could stammer 
 
 Ground he at grammar. 
 
 Properly based on 
 
 When dead from the waist down." 
 
 and though he died before his grammar was com- 
 pleted, yet Browning thinks his life was a great suc- 
 cess. 
 
 " Was it not great? Did he not throw on God, 
 (He loves the burden) 
 God's task to make the heavenly period 
 Perfect the earthen? " 
 
 The Patriot is another expression of the same 
 thought, that men must live not for things seen and 
 temporal but for things unseen and eternal. The 
 poem tells how the mob put to death one who a year 
 before had been its idol. The poet's conception is 
 that the man has remained the same high-minded pa- 
 triot as before, but the fickle multitude has changed. 
 
 But no mistake could be greater than to suppose 
 that Browning's temper and teaching are ascetic. His 
 view of the present world is very cheerful. One of 
 his heroines sings: 
 
 " The year's at the spring; 
 And day's at the morn; 
 Morning's at seven; 
 The hillside's dew-pearled; 
 The lark's on the wing; 
 The snail's on the thorn; 
 God's in his heaven — 
 All's right with the world ! " 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 163 
 
 Browning thinks that the goodness of God and 
 the value of life are revealed to all men who do their 
 duty and walk by the light that God gives them. 
 Fra Lippo Lippi is a monk who has a genius for 
 painting. The prior and the monks all want him to 
 paint conventional figures of saints and angels, to in- 
 cite people to devotion by showing the joys of heaven 
 and the horrors of hell; but the artist has no interest 
 in their ideals. He is fascinated by the real world 
 about him. He says: 
 
 " This world's no blot for us, 
 Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good; 
 To find its meaning is my meat and drink." 
 
 The world is beautiful and 
 
 " If you get simple beauty and naught else 
 You get about the best thing God invents." 
 
 To take another illustration from a kindred art: Abt 
 Vogler is a musician who as he sits at his organ one day 
 and extemporizes beautiful harmonies regrets that they, 
 die so soon and are so completely lost. Suddenly he has 
 an intuition that his music has gone up to God and is 
 by him preserved, and that so it shall be with every- 
 thing good and beautiful, and that only sin and sor- 
 row and failure are lost, but that all virtue and aspira- 
 tion and faithful endeavor are chords in the great 
 harmony of the universe and parts of its perfect and 
 eternal music. God is the great Master of harmony 
 and reveals his plan to the heart of every true co- 
 worker, however humble, so the comforted musician 
 sings : 
 
 " Sorrow is hard to bear and doubt is slow to clear, 
 Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and 
 woe; 
 
164 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the 
 
 ear; 
 The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians 
 
 know." 
 
 Browning's poems upon religion are numerous and 
 offer an exceedingly fascinating field of study ; but 
 there is no opportunity to discuss them here. I will 
 only say in general that Browning teaches that men 
 should live very earnest lives, trying very hard to do 
 the appointed task ; yet he is continually enforcing the 
 lesson that we ought to aim at something beyond our 
 power of accomplishment. 
 
 " A man's reach should exceed his grasp. 
 Or what's a heaven for ? " 
 
 And even in earthly concerns it is only by attempting 
 a greater work than we can accomplish that we do all 
 that we can. Every man falls short of his mark, but 
 the higher the mark, the higher the achievement. 
 Browning illustrates his idea by a fine figure bor- 
 rowed from the story of the tower of Babel whose top 
 was by its builders intended to reach to heaven. Of 
 course they failed in so ambitious an attempt; but 
 nevertheless the result of their endeavors was the erec- 
 tion of the city of Babylon, the earliest great city and 
 the wonder of the most ancient world. The poet's 
 words are: 
 
 " All great works spring from the ruins of greater 
 proj ects ; 
 Men block out Babels to build Babylons." 
 
 Yet Browning is very hopeful even for those who 
 seem to fail the most completely and sadly in life. He 
 has a poem with the tit]e,iApparent Failure. He muses 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 165 
 
 on the life of three suicides whose bodies he saw in 
 the morgue in Paris. Disappointed ambitions and law- 
 less lusts have blasted their lives, and the unhappy 
 men have violently ended their earthly existence. Yet 
 to Browning their failure is not absolute and perma- 
 nent, but only temporary and apparent, for he ends 
 by saying : 
 
 " It's wiser being good than bad; 
 It's safer being meek than fierce: 
 It's fitter being sane than mad. 
 My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth every stretched; 
 That, after Last, returns the First, 
 Though a wide compass round be fetched; 
 That what began best, can't end worst. 
 Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst." 
 
 In a poem entitled At the ' Mermaid,' Browning 
 represents Shakespeare as the speaker. He cares 
 nothing for fame as a poet, but expresses his view of 
 life in these words: 
 
 " I find earth not grey but rosy. 
 Heaven not grim but fair of hue. 
 Do I stoop? I pluck a posy. 
 Do I stand and stare? All's blue. 
 
 Chief and King and Lord's anointed, 
 I ? — who never once have wished 
 Death before the day appointed. 
 Lived and liked, not poohed and pished! 
 
 Have you found your life distasteful? 
 My life did, and does, smack sweet. 
 Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? 
 Mine I saved and hold complete. 
 
166 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Do your joys with age diminish? 
 When mine fail me, I'll complain. 
 Must in death your daylight finish? 
 My sun sets to rise again." 
 
 It was said of Oliver Cromwell that " he was a strong 
 man amid the dark perils of war, and that hope shone 
 in him like a pillar of fire, when it had gone out in 
 other men." So Browning from the cradle to the 
 grave was full of hope and energy. His last recorded 
 words are, " How gratifying ! " and his best biography 
 is his own line, 
 
 " I am full of an intensest life." 
 
 Next to Shakespeare he is the most many-sided of 
 our poets, yet quite unlike Shakespeare in that he is 
 not truly dramatic. Shakespeare writes almost imper- 
 sonally. You cannot say of Lear, or Macbeth, or 
 Othello, or even of Hamlet, that Shakespeare is speak- 
 ing his own sentiments through the mouth of another. 
 Shakespeare's characters are radically unlike one 
 another. Browning's are not. No matter what the 
 character or what the situation, you see familiar fea- 
 tures and hear a familiar accent. Every character 
 seems like Browning in a new mask. The world is 
 ransacked for subjects; but Browning always goes 
 with you to point out what you are to see. Yet if 
 he does not show true dramatic power, he at any rate 
 manifests the most extraordinary range of knowledge 
 and of sympathy. 
 
 He never wrote merely to amuse men. He did not 
 condescend to write books that should be a mere sub- 
 stitute for a cigar, or a game of cards, or a bit of 
 fancy work, as a means of passing a leisure hour. 
 He meant seriously to teach men great truths. He 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 167 
 
 aspired to be a seer and a prophet. These are his 
 words : 
 
 " I declare our Poet him 
 Whose insight makes all others dim." 
 
 If he has measurably succeeded in this aim, if he has 
 really reaffirmed the great old truths and revealed 
 some new ones, it is well not to be too much troubled 
 about the imperfections in the form of the communi- 
 cation. We must exercise the same charity toward the 
 poet as toward the preacher about whom Browning has 
 this to say: 
 
 " It were to be wished the flaws were fewer 
 
 * * * 
 
 In the earthen vessel, holding treasure : 
 
 But the main thing is. Does it hold good measure.^ " 
 
RUSKIN 
 
RUSKIN 
 
 Ruskin lived a life of extraordinary purity, self- 
 sacrifice and industry. He inherited a large fortune, 
 of which he gave away much the larger part in 
 establishing museums, art-galleries, libraries, in build- 
 ing dwelling houses for the poor, and in aiding young 
 men and women to get an education. 
 
 In addition to these exalted moral qualities he pos- 
 sessed artistic gifts of a very high order, a vivid sense 
 of beauty in form and color, intense human sympa- 
 thies, and marvelous powers of expression. His 
 books, more than forty in number, are all highly po- 
 etic in conception, though only one of them has the 
 metrical form that technically constitutes it poetry. 
 But so poetical is his prose, so instinct with poetry are 
 his thoughts and feelings, that in spite of the small 
 amount and inferior quality of his technical versifica- 
 tion, he was Gladstone's reputed choice for the office 
 of poet laureate as Tennyson's successor. Tennyson 
 described the poet as dowered with " the hate of hate, 
 the love of love, the scorn of scorn," and certainly in 
 intensity, of feeling Ruskin ranks with Burns and 
 Byron and accords with Tennyson's ideal. 
 
 William Watson makes the most prominent of the 
 poet's characteristics the love of beauty and the per- 
 ception of it in common things. Says Watson: 
 
 " The poet gathers fruit from every tree, 
 Yea, grapes from thorns and figs from thistles he, 
 Plucked by his hand the meanest flower that blows 
 Towers to the lily, reddens to the rose." 
 
 171 
 
172 RUSKIN 
 
 To this ideal Ruskin also accords. He has seen, de- 
 scribed and analyzed the beauties of rocks, flowers, 
 trees, and clouds as no one else has ever done, but in 
 spite of his great poetic endowments Ruskin has 
 shrunk from the restraints of verse and preferred prose 
 as the vehicle of his thought and passion. 
 
 As an art critic his influence has been very great. 
 His views have been substantially accepted and nu- 
 merous disciples are everywhere popularizing them. As 
 an economist he has had to deal with questions of much 
 greater inherent difficulty and there is as yet little 
 visible and definite result from his labors. It is one 
 thing to teach people to recognize true perspective 
 and graceful curves, and quite another to teach them 
 to be unselfish and high-minded. He wants to change 
 the manufactures, trades and governments of the 
 world so as to abolish ignorance, poverty, vice and 
 wretchedness and enable all men and women to have 
 the necessaries and the most important luxuries of life, 
 and to be cultured, virtuous and happy. I think his 
 ideal is a true and noble one, and moreover entirely 
 practicable; we are working toward it, if not rapidly, 
 at least steadily. The point at which I find myself 
 compelled to diflFer from Mr. Ruskin is that he looks 
 with distrust and aversion upon machinery. He would 
 destroy railways because they spoil the scenery, and 
 shut up factories and revert to hand-labor because 
 hand-labor is more varied and healthful. I think to 
 check the progress of labor-saving inventions is both 
 impossible and undesirable, and that what we ought 
 to do is not to abolish these new instruments of power 
 but to learn to use them more wisely, so as to diminish 
 their incidental evils and develop further their great 
 possibilities of service. Let us have more machinery 
 
RUSKIN 173 
 
 so that the world may be delivered from incessant and 
 slavish toil and have leisure for the culture of mind 
 and heart. 
 
 Ruskin has greatly influenced the spirit of society. 
 He has stimulated men to live more earnest, industri- 
 ous, pure, and self-sacrificing lives; but he has not 
 materially altered the industrial system. 
 
 He advocates co-operation instead of competition 
 and seems to wish to establish socialism by the power 
 of the government, although experience shows that 
 enforced sociahsm is a kind of slavery. Voluntary 
 socialism is the only kind worthy of the name, and 
 the real problem of the philanthropist is to educate 
 and ennoble the individual members of society, and 
 then society as a whole will easily rise to a higher 
 plane of living. 
 
 Then again Ruskin is querulous and despondent. 
 He does not show us visions of progress and inspire 
 us with hope, but nullifies human achievement in the 
 past and sees little to approve in the present. He 
 would have been much more influential if he had 
 scolded less and encouraged more, if he had glorified 
 human heroism and accomplishment more and la- 
 mented less over the work that yet remains undone. 
 
 Erroneous theories and a despondent temper are, I 
 think, the chief reasons for the comparative ineff'ective- 
 ness of Ruskin's economic teachings. But another and 
 by no means an unimportant additional reason is the 
 rhetorical form in which he has presented his opinions. 
 Though his language is more rich, beautiful, rhyth- 
 mic and impassioned than that of any other writer on 
 economics, or any other writer whatever except De 
 Quincey, it embodies very little precise and scientific 
 teaching. He does not examine all sides of the sub- 
 
174 RUSKIN 
 
 ject. He does not state fairly the views of oppo- 
 nents. He does not answer objections, or show how his 
 theories might be carried into effect. He exaggerates, 
 he is inconsistent, he is diffuse. Very many single 
 passages in his economic writings may be read with 
 the greatest admiration and pleasure ; but these feelings 
 seldom extend, at least in my case, to the whole pro- 
 duction. In Sesame and Lilies and the lectures of 
 that class I have a feeling of unsoundness, of dispro- 
 portion, of garrulity. The writer does not seem to 
 be master of his subject and of himself. I read him 
 feverishly and distrustfully and not with the unalloyed 
 pleasure and absolute confidence with which I read a 
 work of Bacon, or Milton, or Tennyson, or George 
 Eliot, feeling always in case of these latter the ma- 
 turity and consistency of the opinions, the propriety 
 of their sequence, and the calm majesty of their ex- 
 pression. 
 
 But whatever may be Buskin's defects in knowledge, 
 in power of thought and temper, the purity and lofti- 
 ness of his soul, the splendor of his imagination, the 
 fervor of his emotions, and the profuse and striking 
 beauties of his rhetoric make him one of the most re- 
 markable and most lovable of the many great men 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 As a tree strikes its roots deep into the soil and its 
 leaves draw their sustenance from hidden roots, so the 
 character of a man is largely determined by his fam- 
 ily history. It will therefore help us to understand 
 James Martineau, if we glance for a moment at the 
 country from which his ancestors came and consider 
 the reasons for their emigration. 
 
 Louis the Fourteenth, the so-called " grand mon- 
 arch," the despot who, by his executive abilities and the 
 unparalleled magnificence of his court, had reduced 
 France to such absolute subjection that he could say 
 without hearing a protest, " I am the state," in the 
 year 1684 contracted a momentous marriage with the 
 former governess of his children, Madame de Main- 
 tenon. This lady was a most devoted Catholic and at 
 the suggestion of her father confessor urged the all- 
 powerful King to take measures for the conversion of 
 his Protestant subjects to the orthodox faith. " It is 
 the curse of Kings," said Shakespeare, " to be sur- 
 rounded by slaves who take their humors for a war- 
 rant to break into the sacred house of life." It was 
 the King's wish that the Protestants should be con- 
 verted to Catholicism. The method of accomplishing 
 this missionary enterprise was left to his officers. 
 Zealous bishops and fanatical priests attended by com- 
 panies of dragoons descended upon every Protestant 
 community, and by di-eadful threats and barbarous 
 acts of violence converted the timid and helpless at the 
 rate of three or four hundred a day. At length the 
 
 King was told that his commands had been obeyed, 
 1—12 177 
 
178 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 that all the Protestants had been converted, that there 
 were no heretics left in all his Majesty's dominions. 
 The King then revoked the edict of religious tolera- 
 tion which had been in force for nearly a hundred 
 years, and required all the inhabitants of France to 
 accept the Catholic faith and attend the services of 
 the Catholic church. Rather than do so, hundreds of 
 thousands of Protestants, sacrificing their property 
 and risking their liberty, fled in haste to other lands. 
 The flight of the Huguenots from France is one of the 
 most heroic episodes in Christian history, and worthy. 
 of comparison with the constancy of the early martyrs 
 or the steadfastness of those pilgrims who laid the 
 foundations of the free churches of America. 
 
 Among those who escaped was a young surgeon 
 named Gaston Martineau. He married a country- 
 woman, also a religious refugee, and they settled in 
 the city of Norwich, England. Of this line, in the 
 fourth generation, James Martineau was born, on 
 April 21, 1805. 
 
 His father, Thomas Martineau, was a cloth manu- 
 facturer whose chief market was the Spanish penin- 
 sula ; but in 1823 a tariff treaty with France diverted 
 the trade to that country and Thomas Martineau's 
 business was ruined. He was compelled to call his 
 creditors together and lay his affairs before them. On 
 his liabilities of £100,000 they found that he could 
 pay, about three-fourths and a settlement on this basis 
 would have secured a legal release from all further ob- 
 ligation. But this was not in accordance with the 
 moral standards of Thomas Martineau. He asked 
 for time and promised to pay the large remainder in 
 full. He struggled with this heavy burden for the 
 rest of his life and at his death left the obligation to 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 179 
 
 his family, and in the end, after patient endeavor and 
 severe sacrifice, the whole amount of this debt of honor 
 was paid. 
 
 James Martineau attended the Grammar School at 
 Norwich from his sixth to his fourteenth year and 
 was then for two years in a school at Bristol. He 
 then, at sixteen years of age, began the study of en- 
 gineering and for a time worked at the lathe and in 
 the model room. But the scholastic spirit and the re- 
 ligious impulse in him were too strong to be resisted. 
 After a year of mechanics, he felt that he was called 
 to preach the gospel, and entered upon the necessary 
 work of preparation. 
 
 At that date no one could study at Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge without signing the thirty-nine articles of the 
 Church of England; so James Martineau went to 
 Manchester College, a small and struggling school es- 
 tablished by dissenters. The course of study required 
 five years for its completion, the first three of which 
 were devoted to general studies and the last two to 
 theology; but Hebrew was taken during the whole 
 five years. Martineau had but ten class-mates in his 
 earlier studies and only three in Divinity ; thus he had 
 the priceless advantage of the most intimate fellow- 
 ship with his instructors. 
 
 There were but two of them, but they were both 
 thorough scholars and men of high and inspiring char- 
 acter. Of one of them Dr. Martineau in later years 
 spoke as follows : " Well do I remember the respect- 
 ful wonder with which we saw, as our course advanced, 
 vein after vein of various learning modestly opened 
 out, • . . and the impatience with which, out of 
 very homage to his wisdom, we almost resented his 
 impartial love of truth in giving us the most careful 
 
180 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 epitome of other opinions with scarce the suggestion of 
 his own . . . Whatever might be the particular 
 conclusions he favored, he never justified a prejudice; 
 he never misdirected our admiration ; he never hurt an 
 innocent feeling or overbore a serious judgment; and 
 he set up within us a standard of Christian scholar- 
 ship to which it must ever exalt us to aspire." Presi- 
 dent Garfield, in famous words, said that to sit on a 
 log with Mark Hopkins would be to attend a uni- 
 versity. Mr. Martineau at the school at Bristol under 
 Lant Carpenter and at Manchester College under 
 Kenrick and Wellbeloved, had had the intimacy of 
 three men of the type the President praised. 
 
 Martineau graduated at twenty-two and then taught 
 for a year in Bristol in the school of his former in- 
 structor. He then accepted a call to an assistant pas- 
 torate in a long established church in Dublin, which, 
 though still bearing the Presbyterian name, was Uni- 
 tarian in its theology. The congregation was intelli- 
 gent, wealthy and numerous, and beside sustaining its 
 services of worship, the church supported an alms- 
 house for widows, a school for boys and another for 
 girls. Mr. A. W. Jackson, the able biographer to 
 whom I am indebted for most of my knowledge of 
 Martineau's life, says the young minister won both the 
 admiration and the affection of his congregation. 
 " The freshness of youth was upon his features ; the 
 maturity of wisdom was on his lips ; the light of genius 
 was in his eye." 
 
 " A long and prosperous ministry here we should 
 naturally forecast for him. A difficulty, however, was 
 in his path, which, alas ! to most had been quite the op- 
 posite of a difficulty. The venerable pastor died, and 
 Mr. Martineau came by natural succession to his place. 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 181 
 
 To his surprise he found that the change brought an 
 addition of £100 to his salary. To this of itself we 
 may presume he would not have objected; but the 
 source whence it came raised scruples which tore him 
 from his charge and gave a new direction to his ca- 
 reer. The £100 he thus succeeded to was his share of 
 the Regium Donum." According to his sensitive con- 
 science to receive this royal bounty would make him 
 a servant of the government, a supporter of its policy, 
 and approver of its injustice. The money was raised 
 by general taxation. It was extorted from Quakers, 
 Catholics and Free Thinkers. It was in Martineau's 
 own words, " an exaction upon reluctant consciences." 
 He held that an alliance with the State was inimical 
 " to the credit and influence of Christianity." It was 
 his conviction that more unbelievers had been made by, 
 " establishments than by all the speculations which 
 friends of establishments deem so dangerous." 
 
 Martineau, like his father, had a stubborn and un- 
 accommodating conscience. He not only would not 
 take the money, he would not continue as pastor of 
 the church unless the church gave it up. He said, 
 " I see difficulty in its abandonment ; but in keeping it, 
 I see wrong." 
 
 " Abstract right usually fares hard In its first en- 
 counter with a wrong defended by custom and advan- 
 tage." Martineau had a strong hold on the people. 
 Many acceded to his view and rallied to his support, 
 yet after an earnest controversy, his party was de- 
 feated by one vote. 
 
 Poverty is the modern form of martyrdom. The 
 young minister had a wife and child. He had bought 
 a house and had a burden of debt. But he could not 
 compromise and did not hesitate. He resigned his lu- 
 crative position to face an uncertain future. 
 
182 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 His predecessor was an honorable man, yet he had 
 felt no scruple about receiving the royal bounty. 
 Hundreds of honorable men in every generation accept 
 similar bounties from their respective governments, and 
 why should not Martineau have done so? He was the 
 descendant of Huguenot exiles and a man worthy of 
 his sires. They had sacrificed fortune and abandoned 
 their native land, had gone to a harsher climate and 
 there among a strange people had shrunk back as it 
 were into childhood and begun in maturity to learn the 
 elements of an alien tongue, all that they might keep 
 a good conscience. Was it for him, the descendant of 
 such ancestors, to be false to their principles and to 
 share in any manner or degree in the tyranny against 
 which they had protested.'' Martineau in Ireland was 
 fighting the battle of the Roman Catholics. Their 
 worst disabilities had, it is true, very recently been re- 
 moved by the great Emancipation Act of 1829; but 
 Martineau protested against the discriminations that 
 remained and against the principle of taxing men to 
 any extent and in any manner to support a religious 
 worship in which they took no part and which they 
 regarded as heretical and injurious. 
 
 It is a fine example of returning good for evil, of 
 making the persecutors flush for shame at their meth- 
 ods, to find this man, whose ancestors had suffered in 
 dragonades instigated by Catholic bishops and blessed 
 by the Pope, refusing to accept a penny of the money 
 collected by a tax to which Catholics were unwilling 
 contributors. 
 
 Martineau resigned without any assurance or pros- 
 pect of another position ; but his four years of earnest 
 ministry in Dublin had made him favorably known to 
 a wide circle, and in a very short time he was called to 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 183 
 
 a pastorate in Liverpool, in which he remained for 
 twenty-five years. 
 
 Mr. Jackson gives the following description of Mar- 
 tineau as a preacher : " A tall, spare figure robed in 
 the scholar's gown, and wearing the dignities of his 
 oflSce as a natural grace; a thin face, suggestive of 
 the cloister and traced with deep lines of thought; a 
 voice not loud but musical and reaching; an enuncia- 
 tion leisurely but not slow and perfectly distinct. 
 . . . The hymn is read in tones that reveal a soul 
 that vibrates to its melody. There is reverent read- 
 ing of the Scriptures, reading not obtrusive as to its 
 emphasis, but which reveals their meaning and con- 
 veys their power. The prayer is quiet, tender, ap- 
 pealing, a strain of rapture and love and longing. 
 And now, the sermon; from the beginning it is plain 
 that it is to serious thought that you are invited. 
 The preacher has taken the philosopher into service; 
 the scholar's stores are brought into requisition ; 
 rhetoric contributes its strength and grace. In his 
 manner there is calmness ; gestures are few, speech is 
 quiet. It is, however, a calmness at the surface com- 
 bined with fervor at the depths. Here is a soul 
 swayed by a holy passion; and these thoughts so se- 
 verely stated are a prophet's burden. . . . Sanc- 
 tities are made plain ; moral depths are explored ; mys- 
 tic heights are gained." 
 
 In Moncure D. Conway's instructive and fascinat- 
 ing Autobiography there is this comparison between 
 Emerson and Martineau at a later time when Marti- 
 neau was preaching in London. " The last sermon I 
 heard in America was from Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 . . . Familiar as I was with his lyceum lectures, 
 they could not with all their charm prepare me for this 
 
184. JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 inspiration, this fountain of spiritual power, this 
 pathos. . . . Great as Emerson was in litera- 
 ture, his hereditary and natural place was in the pul- 
 pit. . . . With Emerson's wonderful sermon still 
 ringing in my ears, I went to hear James Martineau. 
 . In the gloomy little chapel I waited until the 
 man should appear whose ' Endeavors after the Chris- 
 tian Life ' had brought me help in my early solitude. 
 When Martineau presently ascended the pulpit, I was 
 impressed by his noble figure, but when his face shone 
 upon us through the gloom, when his gracious and 
 clear voice was heard, I said. This is an Emerson not 
 banished from his pulpit, but held fast as a Unitarian 
 leader. . . . This minister was meeting the spirit- 
 ual need and hunger of the best men and women. In 
 his audience of three or four hundred none had come 
 except by inward attraction." 
 
 Our blessings often come to us from remote and for- 
 gotten sources. The cool streams that fertilize the 
 plains and give drink to the thirsty inhabitants of 
 cities descend from distant and inaccessible mountains. 
 In like manner the thoughts of high and solitary 
 thinkers are brought by intermediaries and gradual 
 processes to multitudes who never trace them to their 
 source. James Martineau preached to small audiences 
 and his books are not in the ordinary sense popular; 
 yet indirectly he has influenced millions of men and 
 women. He has had scores of disciples and interpre- 
 ters who have taken the bread of life from his hands 
 and have distributed it in fragments to the hungry 
 multitude. I was told several years ago by an in- 
 fluential Methodist preacher that he had read every 
 sermon of Martineau that had been printed, and that 
 he constantly derived ideas and inspiration from him. 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 185 
 
 Martineau's influence is felt in every theological semi- 
 nary and in every educated pulpit. It is even more 
 pervasive. It is felt in almost every hamlet in the 
 English-speaking world. It goes to every frontier of 
 civilization. It finds its way to the mines and the lum- 
 ber camps, it sails with the mariner to the most distant 
 seas.. For among Martineau's many learned and cul- 
 tured auditors there was one man of supreme genius. 
 An open-eyed, warm-hearted, all-seeing, all-feeling, 
 all-remembering, all-recording novelist was his attentive 
 hearer, Charles Dickens, the most widely-read of all au- 
 thors, the tenderest of humanitarians, the most effective 
 of reformers, who transformed into unfading pictures 
 and immortal narratives many of the great preacher's 
 ideals of life and duty. 
 
 But Martineau's great energies were not exhausted 
 by his pulpit labors. Wliile still continuing to 
 preach, he was, at the age of thirty-five, appointed to 
 the chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Man- 
 chester College, and entered with enthusiasm into this 
 supremely important and difiicult field of labor. He 
 began his career as a teacher of philosophy with large 
 plans and high hopes, and his remarkable vitality and 
 steadfastness of purpose sustained him in his profound 
 researches through forty-five laborious years. It was 
 not till he was a white-haired patriarch of fourscore 
 that he resigned the chair of Philosophy in which he 
 had instructed and inspired many successive classes of 
 students, among them such disciples as R. A. Arm- 
 strong, J. Estlin Carpenter and Philip H. Wicksteed, 
 the later pillars of English Unitarianism. 
 
 During all these years his pen had been busy ; the 
 results of his researches had appeared in various philo- 
 sophical and scientific journals; from time to time lead- 
 
186 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 ing universities had awarded him academic honors in 
 recognition of his eminent services. Of these it is 
 pleasant to recall that Harvard, with its degree of 
 Doctor of Laws in 1872, was the first. Martineau was 
 sixty-seven years old when he received his first aca- 
 demic degree, and it was from a foreign country. It 
 is hardly possible that during all these years he had 
 been unobserved by the academic senates of his native 
 land. It is more probable that honors were withheld 
 because he was a dissenter from the established church 
 and prevailing theology. But when America and 
 Holland had set the example. Great Britain, perhaps 
 with something of shame, also made her tardy acknowl- 
 edgments. Edinburgh made him a Doctor of Divin- 
 ity ; Oxford a Doctor of Civil Law ; Dublin a Doctor 
 of Literature. 
 
 When after fifty-seven years of strenuous intellec- 
 tual labor, during more than forty of which he had 
 been simultaneously preacher and professor, Martineau 
 laid down his oflicial responsibilities, it might well have 
 been supposed that after such prolonged exertion, he 
 would be content to spend his declining years in the 
 enjoyment of his modest fortune and well-earned lei- 
 sure. But such was not his intention. Speaking to 
 a group of his former students at an Alumni dinner, 
 at which he was the guest of honor, he said : " I have 
 not yet done with the world or lost one jot of my in- 
 terest in its persons and aff'airs. Nor do I wish to 
 turn the remainder of my days into a siesta or holiday. 
 . . . Welcome the disability of age when come it 
 must; but do not invite it by a lazy will." 
 
 Martineau had in fact retired in order that he might 
 present the substance of his lectures in compact and 
 systematic volumes. The first of these, bearing the 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 187 
 
 title of "Types of Ethical Theory" was published 
 in 1885, and the second, entitled " The Study of Re- 
 ligion," was issued in 1888. These massive and 
 stately volumes greatly enhanced Martineau's high 
 reputation, and again the world naturally supposed 
 that this wonderful old man's work was at last ended. 
 But no ; he still had unexpressed convictions and a 
 burden upon his soul to give them voice and to justify 
 them at the bar of scholarship and reason. Martineau 
 was eighty-five years old when his last great book, 
 " The Seat of Authority," was published. Martineau 
 affirms that the seat of authority for every man is not 
 the church or the Bible, but his own enlightened rea- 
 son and quickened conscience. This book more than 
 any other of his works has aroused controversy. By 
 some it is looked upon as the crown and consummation 
 of all Martineau's achievements. By others it is re- 
 garded as a dreadful mistake by which he has injured 
 religion and forfeited his place among the leaders of 
 Christian thought and examples of Christian faith 
 and virtue. Some of his warm and life-long friends 
 were alienated. For example, his former pupil, R. H. 
 Hutton, the gifted essayist and critic, who thought his 
 " Study of Religion " an almost perfect book, de- 
 claimed with passionate vehemence against " The Seat 
 of Authority " as " singularly keen, and singularly, 
 unreasonably skeptical." 
 
 Alfred Tennyson, also Martineau's devoted ad- 
 mirer, who held substantially the same theological 
 opinions, believed that it was a mistake and almost a 
 crime to express them with such directness and em- 
 phasis as Martineau had employed in this, the most 
 popular of his works. Tennyson had long before 
 written " In Memoriam " to warn men against dis- 
 
188 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 turbing the simple faith of the uneducated. In solemn 
 and beautiful words the great poet cautions the critic 
 against any presentation of views that would per- 
 plex and pain good women in their devotions. He 
 says to the revolutionizing theologian: 
 
 " O thou that after toil and storm 
 
 Mayst seem to have reached a purer air. 
 Whose faith has centre everywhere, 
 
 Nor cares to fix itself to form, 
 
 Leave thou thy sister when she prays. 
 Her early heaven, her happy views; 
 Nor thou with shadow's hint confuse 
 
 A life that leads melodious days. 
 
 Her faith through form is pure as thine. 
 Her hands are quicker unto good: 
 Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 
 
 To which she links a truth divine ! " 
 
 Such is Tennyson's poetic plea for leaving the pop- 
 ular conception of the deity of Jesus undisturbed; 
 and this was the attitude that he himself maintained 
 to the end of his life. He regretted that Martineau 
 had departed from it. Let us, however, hear Mar- 
 tineau in his own behalf. Writing to an old pupil 
 about the " Seat of Authority " at the time of its 
 publication, he said : " The insensible changes of 
 thought induced by experience and reflection had so 
 accumulated during a long life that the growing total 
 of my erroneous teachings in the past became a bur- 
 den on my conscience and I have felt it a duty, ere I 
 leave those to whom my words are spoken, to correct 
 whatever might mislead, and render a report as true 
 as I can make it at the latest date." 
 
 Is it or is it not right to suppress what you be- 
 lieve to be true ? Tennyson thought it was — Mar- 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 189 
 
 tineau thought it was not. Perhaps, the explanation 
 of their difference of opinion is to be found in the 
 fact that one was a poet and the other a philosopher. 
 Tennyson thought in figures of speech. He needed 
 symbols and found satisfaction in them. They were 
 to him more profound and precious than abstract 
 statements. Martineau was a philosopher. He felt 
 that rehgion could not rest on literature or history, 
 but must prove its reality in the nature of the soul, 
 in the intuitive and universal faculties of man. These 
 are his words : " Faith in our own faculties, is at 
 the very basis of all knowledge and belief. . . . 
 Each one of our own natural powers is to be implicitly 
 trusted within its own sphere, and not beyond it; the 
 senses, as reporters of the outward world; the under- 
 standing in the ascertainment of laws and the inter- 
 pretation of nature; the reason and conscience, in the 
 ordering of life, the discernment of God and the fol- 
 lowing of religion. Whoever tries to shake their 
 authority, as the ultimate appeal in their several con- 
 cerns, though he may think himself a saint, is in fact 
 an infidel. Whoever pretends that anything can be 
 above them — be it a book or a church — is secretly 
 cutting up all beliefs by the roots. . . . Turn the 
 matter as we may, it wiU appear that the fullest, most 
 unqualified admission of a moral and rational nature 
 in man whose decisions no external power can over- 
 rule, and which constitutes God's ever open court for 
 trying the claims of Scripture and prophecy, no less 
 than of philosophy, is the prime requisite of all de- 
 vout faith; without which, duty loses its sacredness, 
 revelation its significance and God himself his au- 
 thority." 
 
 In the " Seat of Authority " Martineau gives co- 
 
190 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 gent reasons for his belief that the fourth gospel was 
 not written by the apostle John and is not historic 
 but poetic ; he shows also that there is a very large 
 legendary element in the first three evangelical records. 
 He says : " From the person of Jesus everything 
 official attached to him by evangelists or divines has 
 fallen away. When they put false robes upon him, 
 they were leading him to death. The pomp of royal 
 lineage and fulfilled prediction, the prerogative of 
 King, of priest, of judge, the advent with the reti- 
 nue of angels on the clouds of heaven, are but de- 
 forming investitures. . . . Jesus is simply the 
 divine flower of humanity, blossoming after ages of 
 spiritual growth." Was God in Christ? Yes, says 
 Martineau, but God is also in humanity. " The in- 
 carnation, thus extended from the person of Christ 
 to the nature of man, may fitly be called the central 
 mystery of revealed religion." 
 
 In regard to the moral law Martineau, in a strain 
 of lofty eloquence, speaks thus : " The rule of right, 
 the symmetries of character, the requirements of per- 
 fection, are no provincialisms of this planet: they are 
 known among the stars: they reign beyond Orion and 
 the Southern Cross: they are wherever the Universal 
 Spirit is; and no subject mind, though it fly on one 
 track for ever, can escape beyond their bounds." 
 
 " Martineau was a mystic but his mysticism was bal- 
 anced by his reason and held in check by his con- 
 science. . . . Not to lose his faculties, but to 
 have God shining through them, was his great desire." 
 He said : " I pretend not to draw the untraceable 
 line that separates the being of God from ours — 
 God's inspiration is perennial; and he never ceases to 
 work within us, if we consent to will and to do his 
 
JAMES MARTINEAU 191 
 
 good pleasure. He befriends our moral efforts; en- 
 courages us to maintain our resolute fidelity and 
 truth; accepts our co-operation with his designs 
 against all evil — Finding a Holy of Holies within 
 us, we need not curiously ask whether its secret voices 
 are of ourselves or the Father." 
 
 And so to the last the great philosopher listens hke 
 a little child to the voice of God in the soul. 
 
 The service which Martineau rendered by his up- 
 right, laborious, heroic life and especially by his final 
 and supreme work, " The Seat of Authority," can 
 hardly be overestimated. A young or an unlearned 
 person who, trusting the intuitions of his soul, revolts 
 against an unreasonable and cruel theology, is likely 
 to be told that he is presumptuous in meddling with 
 questions beyond his scholarship and too high for his 
 understanding. Against the slings arid arrows of 
 orthodox denunciation the unlearned may take refuge 
 beneath the broad and well-tempered shield of Mar- 
 tineau. The last century produced no happier com- 
 bination of the great qualities desirable in a the- 
 ologian than Martineau possessed, a strong, clear 
 intellect, a wide, deep scholarship, a careful logical 
 training, a judicial temper, a devout and reverent 
 heart; yet this man was radical to the core. 
 
 Martineau the philosopher has done much by his 
 writings. Martineau the man has done more by his 
 life. It is inspiring to find a theologian eighty-five 
 years old whose mind is not dim, whose natural force 
 is not abated, who writes at that patriarchal age with 
 all the clearness and vigor of a man in his prime. 
 Even beyond this age we can follow him with ad- 
 miration. At ninety-two years of age he wrote that he 
 had not desired old age, but God had given it to him, 
 
193 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 
 and he had found it something to be thankful for, 
 something " deepening instead of impairing the su- 
 preme interest and significance of life." 
 
 But the longest life terminates at last. At ninety- 
 five the great preacher, teacher and author passed to 
 his heavenly reward. " Death," said he, " is God's 
 method of colonizing; the transition from this mother 
 country of our race to the fairer and newer world of 
 our emigration. The grave can bury no affections, 
 but only the mortal and familiar shape of their ob- 
 ject. We may regard it not with passionate hate, 
 but with quiet reverence. It is a divine message from 
 above, not an invasion from the abyss beneath. It is 
 a rainbow gleam that descends through tears, without 
 which we should not know the various beauties that 
 are woven into the pure light of life." 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes humorously advises those 
 who wish to succeed in life to be very careful in the 
 choice of their ancestors. Continuing for a moment 
 this audacious fancy, we may say that Longfellow 
 was most judicious in choosing his line of descent. 
 His great-grandfather was a blacksmith, and put iron 
 into the blood and tenacity into the purpose of his 
 descendants. His grandfather struggled hard to get 
 an education, became a school teacher and instilled 
 ambition and love of learning into his children. The 
 poet's father was a lawyer who taught his son to be 
 neat and exact in all his habits, to work systematically, 
 to reason logically and to express his thoughts with 
 clearness and propriety. 
 
 Longfellow's pedigree on his father's side had been 
 rising in intelligence and refinement for three genera- 
 tions yet without losing strength and ambition. On 
 his mother's side the poet was equally fortunate in 
 the union of gentleness with power. Altogether the 
 first thing that is to be said of him is that he was 
 what the Greeks called Euphues, a well-bom man. 
 
 Longfellow had a singularly receptive nature. His 
 mind was one of those rich soils in which every expe- 
 rience of life was seed for thought and sooner or later 
 produced some rich fruit. 
 
 His admiration for his sturdy great-grandfather 
 is manifested not only in the noble poem The Village 
 Blacksmith, but also in the description of Basil in 
 Evangeline, and in The Building of the Ship, and in 
 
 195 
 
196 LONGFELLOW 
 
 the manner in which Longfellow everywhere speaks 
 of the value and dignity of manual labor. 
 
 The poet's father was named Stephen. His par- 
 ents named him after the first Christian martyr to 
 indicate their desire that he might grow up to be an 
 earnest and aggressive Christian, and their prayer 
 and faith were not in vain. Stephen Longfellow was 
 a college classmate and life-long friend of William 
 E. Channing, and one of the founders, and the first 
 vice-president, of the American Unitarian Associa- 
 tion. His son Samuel became an eminent Unitarian 
 minister who displayed in his sermons the same graces 
 of style and purity and elevation of thought that 
 characterized the poetry of his more famous brother. 
 Samuel Longfellow was himself a poet, also his 
 brother's biographer, and tells us that Henry Long- 
 fellow, both at church and at home, was nurtured in 
 the doctrine and spirit of Unitarianism. These facts 
 enable us to understand the moral purity and deep 
 religious feeling which everywhere pervade Longfel- 
 low's writings. 
 
 Longfellow was a precocious boy who " lisped in 
 numbers." At thirteen he published his first verses 
 in local newspapers, at fourteen he entered college, 
 at eighteen he graduated with honor, and was at once 
 elected to the professorship of modern languages in 
 Bowdoin on condition that he should prepare himself 
 for his duties by graduate study in Europe. He ac- 
 cepted the offer with enthusiasm and spent three years 
 in France, Italy, Spain and Germany. Returning to 
 the United States, he entered at the early age of 
 twenty-two upon his duties as professor. The lan- 
 guages and literatures of continental Europe had not 
 previously been taught in Bowdoin, and Longfellow 
 
LONGFELLOW 197 
 
 had to write his own grammars, select his own authors 
 and edit his own text-books, all of which work he did 
 with great industry and excellent judgment. 
 
 On the resignation of George Ticknor, Longfellow 
 was invited to the professorship of Modern Lan- 
 guages in Harvard University. He accepted, and 
 began his duties there in 1836. The demands of his 
 chair were not burdensome to him. He had several 
 assistants by whom the elements of the languages were 
 taught and the drudgery of correcting exercises and 
 reading examination papers was done, while Long- 
 fellow gave only a general superintendence and de- 
 livered stated courses of lectures. Under these favor- 
 able conditions much of Longfellow's best literary 
 work was done during the eighteen years of his Har- 
 vard professorship. 
 
 In 1839, at the age of 32, he published his first 
 volume of poetry, under the title. Voices of the 
 Night. Longfellow was young, healthy, and in the 
 high tide of professional prosperity ; hence the gloomy 
 title and the serious contents of this volume may 
 seem surprising. Yet the heart knoweth its own bit- 
 terness and to a sensitive nature there are innumerable 
 occasions of sympathetic as well as personal sorrow 
 in this world of probation and mystery. It must be 
 remembered too that Longfellow thus early sufi'ered 
 the most painful of all bereavements in the death of 
 his young wife. The Prelude to this volume is the 
 key to Longfellow's poetry. He is not a romancer, 
 not primarily an artist; he is a brother man, a sym- 
 pathizing friend, a moral helper and teacher. The 
 source of life inspiration is not the fairy land of the 
 imagination, but human life with its actual joys and 
 sorrows. The poet tells us of a vision he had in the 
 
198 LONGFELLOW 
 
 forest and of his dedication to serious poetry in these 
 words: 
 
 " The green trees whispered low and mild ; 
 
 It was a sound of joy! 
 They were my playmates when a child, 
 And rocked me in their arms so wild! 
 Still they looked at me and smiled. 
 
 As if I were a boy. 
 
 Visions of childhood ! Stay, Oh stay ! 
 
 Ye were so sweet and wild! 
 And distant voices seemed to say. 
 It cannot be ! They pass away ! 
 Other themes demand thy lay; 
 
 Thou art no more a child! 
 
 Look then into thine heart and write! 
 
 Yes, into life's deep stream! 
 All forms of sorrow and delight. 
 All solemn Voices of the Night, 
 That can soothe thee or affright, — 
 
 Be these henceforth thy theme." 
 
 There were but seventeen poems in this first volume 
 and most of them became at once and have ever since 
 remained popular favorites. Especially is this true 
 of the famous Psalm of Life, which however has not 
 found equal favor with professors of literature and 
 those who judge poetry primarily by assthetic stand- 
 ards. Professor Newcomer, of Leland Stanford Uni- 
 versity, says of it : " Critics will continue to condemn 
 the Psalm of Life for its preaching tone, its incoherent 
 structure, its commonplace ideas, its trite phrases, 
 hazy figures, and borrowed ornaments. But without 
 shutting our eyes to these defects and without main- 
 taining that the poem is of any high order of great- 
 
LONGFELLOW 199 
 
 ness, it is still possible to enjoy, it and to understand 
 why it has made such a wide and deep impression. 
 It is sound at heart. So simple and melodious as to 
 sing itself into the memory, it breathes at the same 
 time an ardent courage and a cheerful faith . . . 
 It seems as useless to test it like a more ambitious poem, 
 by the ordinary canons of criticism as it would be to 
 test thus a religious hymn that has fixed itself in the 
 affections of a whole people. We can pardon Long- 
 fellow's fondness for exclamation points and pretty 
 figures of speech when we contemplate the large re- 
 sult. Nor if, after we have learned to like such 
 things as ' footprints on the sands of time,' we find 
 that our poetic education is not complete until Ten- 
 nyson and Shakespeare and Dante have taught us to 
 dislike them again, should we turn with ingratitude 
 from our first teacher who made the second lesson pos- 
 sible." 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe was the earliest and one of the 
 most bitter of Longfellow's detractors; the reason for 
 this attitude is that the two men represent exactly 
 opposite moral and artistic ideals. Contrasts are al- 
 ways instructive. The low ground enables us to per- 
 ceive the mountain. The darkness of night makes 
 the light of day seem doubly glorious, the cold of 
 winter makes us appreciate more the genial warmth 
 of summer, every form of beauty receives an added 
 charm by a background of deformity, and every 
 moral virtue is set in relief by the presence of moral 
 defects. A brief comparison between Poe and Long- 
 fellow will perhaps help us to a better understanding 
 of both these great poets. I make it because it has 
 become a sort of fashion or fad among certain critics 
 to exalt Poe and depreciate Longfellow. These men 
 
200 LONGFELLOW 
 
 are so captivated by Poe's music that they forget that 
 he had no message, but happily there are old-fashioned 
 people who still think that the primary purpose of 
 poetry is to teach the supreme truths and to aspire 
 men to the noblest actions. It is well in view of the 
 present tendency to eulogize Poe extravagantly and to 
 speak patronizingly of Longfellow to remember the 
 judgment expressed by Lowell in A Fable for Critics. 
 He says: 
 
 " There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Eudge, 
 Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, 
 Who has written some things quite the best of their 
 
 kind. 
 But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the 
 
 mind." 
 
 Poe had an exquisite gift of versification. His mel- 
 odies charm the ear. But they do not elevate or 
 strengthen the heart. In his most famous poem, Poe 
 voices his melodious despair thus: 
 
 " And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is 
 
 sitting 
 On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber 
 
 door; 
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is 
 
 dreaming. 
 And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow 
 
 on the floor; 
 And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on 
 
 the floor 
 
 Shall be lifted nevermore ! " 
 
LONGFELLOW 201 
 
 Again Poe writes: 
 
 " Alas, alas, for me 
 
 The light of life is o'er; 
 No more, no more, no more, 
 Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree 
 Or the stricken eagle soar." 
 
 Poe despairs of himself and in consequence of all 
 other men. Poe has no psalm of life but instead he 
 has a dreadful dirge of death. He has a poem called 
 The Conqueror Worm in which he writes thus of the 
 drama of human destiny: 
 
 " That motley drama — Oh, be sure 
 
 It shall not be forgot ! 
 With its phantom chased forevermore 
 
 By a crowd that seize it not. 
 Through a circle that ever returneth in 
 
 To the self -same spot. 
 And much of Madness and more of Sin 
 
 And Horror the soul of the plot. 
 
 But see amid the mimic rout 
 
 A crawling shape intrude: 
 A blood-red thing that writhes from out 
 
 The scenic solitude! 
 It writhes — it writhes ! with mortal pangs 
 
 The mimes become its food. 
 And seraphs sob at vermin fangs 
 
 In human gore imbued. 
 
 Out — out are the lights — out all ! 
 
 And over each quivering form 
 The curtain a funeral pall 
 
 Comes down with the rush of a storm. 
 While the angels all pallid and wan 
 
 Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
 That the play is the tragedy, Man, 
 And its hero, the Conqueror Worm." 
 
202 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Here we have every technical merit that Longfel- 
 low's Psalm of Life is said to lack. There are no 
 commonplace ideas, no trite phrases, no undeveloped 
 or mixed figures. There is a body of beauty ; but it 
 is without a soul of faith and hope and joy. In 
 contrast with this wail of despair let us look at Long- 
 fellow's gospel of hope. 
 
 " Tell me not in mournful numbers, 
 Life is but an empty dream ! 
 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
 And things are not what they seem. 
 
 Life is real! Life is earnest! 
 
 And the grave is not its goal; 
 Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
 
 Was not spoken of the soul. 
 
 Not enjoyment and not sorrow 
 
 Is our destined end or way; 
 But to act that each to-morrow 
 
 Find us farther than to-day. 
 
 In the world's broad field of battle. 
 
 In the bivouac of life, 
 Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 
 
 Be a hero in the strife! 
 
 Lives of great men all remind us 
 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 And departing, leave behind us 
 
 Footprints on the sands of time; 
 
 Footprints that perhaps another. 
 
 Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 
 A forlorn and shipwrecked brother. 
 
 Seeing shall take heart again. 
 
LONGFELLOW 203 
 
 Let us then be up and doing, 
 
 With a heart for any fate; 
 Still achieving, still pursuing. 
 
 Learn to labor and to wait." 
 
 This is but a simple exhortation in plain and homely 
 words. But if the casket be of lead it contains in it 
 a pearl of great price and deserves to be prized far 
 above any empty box however beautiful. Longfellow 
 said of this poem, " I kept it some time in manuscript, 
 unwilling to show it to anyone, it being a voice from 
 my inmost heart at a time when I was rallying from 
 depression." 
 
 Poe wrote a derogatory article entitled, Longfellow 
 and Other Plagiarists, in which he allowed prejudice 
 and jealousy to blind his naturally fine judgment. 
 Longfellow was hurt, but as usual with him made no 
 public reply. Authors differ very much in their atti- 
 tude toward critics. Pope was extremely sensitive 
 and listened eagerly to every judgment upon his work, 
 and gives his advice to an author in the words: 
 
 " Trust not yourself; but your defects to know. 
 Make use of every friend and every foe." 
 
 Wordsworth, on the other hand, trusted his own in- 
 spiration implicitly, regarded all hostile criticism as 
 due to ignorance or folly and treated it with lofty 
 contempt. He said of his critics, " My ears are stone 
 deaf to their idle buzz, and my flesh is insensible as 
 iron to their petty stings." 
 
 Longfellow was sensitive but not irritable, was 
 strong but not stubborn, and silently profited by the 
 attacks of his critics. When the shell of the oyster is 
 bored through by its enemy it repairs the injury by 
 a precious secretion, and in like manner, to use Emer- 
 
204 LONGFELLOW 
 
 son's fine figure, when Longfellow was wounded by 
 criticism " he mended his shell with pearl." Without 
 weakening the moral content of his verse he contin- 
 ually added to its artistic excellence, and at last be- 
 came a consummate master who produced in great 
 quantity the only kind of poetry of any real value, 
 that in which true and noble thought is expressed in 
 clear and beautiful language. 
 
 None of the faults of incoherence of thought, mix- 
 ture of figure, or triteness of phrase complained of in 
 The Psalm of Life are chargeable against The 
 Bridge, in which Longfellow seven years later with 
 equal frankness expresses his personal feelings and 
 religious faith. The poem shows not only that Long- 
 fellow had improved as an artist, but that he had 
 grown stronger in soul and had a richer and deeper 
 philosophy of life. 
 
 " I stood on the bridge at midnight, 
 As the clocks were striking the hour. 
 And the moon rose o'er the city, 
 Behind the dark church tower. 
 
 I saw her bright reflection 
 
 In the waters under me. 
 Like a golden goblet falling 
 
 And sinking into the sea. 
 
 Among the long black rafters 
 
 The wavering shadows lay, 
 And the current that came from the ocean 
 
 Seemed to lift and bear them away. 
 
 And like those waters rushing 
 
 Among the wooden piers, 
 A flood of thoughts came o'er me 
 
 That filled my eyes with tears. 
 
LONGFELLOW 205 
 
 How often, oh, how often, 
 
 I had wished that the ebbing tide 
 Would bear me away on its bosom 
 
 O'er the ocean wild and wide ! 
 
 For my heart was hot and restless. 
 
 And my life was full of care. 
 And the burden laid upon me 
 
 Seemed greater than I could bear. 
 
 But now it has fallen from me. 
 
 It is buried in the sea; 
 And only the sorrow of others 
 
 Throws its shadow over me. 
 
 Yet whenever I cross the river 
 
 On its bridge with wooden piers. 
 Like the odor of brine from the ocean 
 
 Comes the thought of other years. 
 
 And I think how many thousands 
 
 Of care-encumbered men. 
 Each bearing his burden of sorrow. 
 
 Have crossed the bridge since then- 
 
 I see the long procession 
 
 Still passing to and fro. 
 The young heart hot and restless. 
 
 And the old subdued and slow! 
 
 And forever and forever. 
 
 As long as the river flows. 
 As long as the heart has passions. 
 
 As long as life has woes; 
 
 The moon and its broken reflection 
 
 And its shadows shall appear. 
 As the symbol of love in heaven. 
 
 And its wavering image here." 
 
206 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Longfellow wrote poetry because he was a bom 
 poet, and it was as natural for him as for a bird to 
 sing and to soar. Longfellow saw the beauty of 
 every-day life and the heroism of common people. 
 He is an illustration of the poet's power as that power 
 is described by William Watson, who says : 
 
 " The poet gathers fruit from every tree, 
 Yea^ grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles he; 
 Plucked by his hand the meanest weed that grows 
 Towers to the lily, reddens to the rose." 
 
 Longfellow is the best historian of America, the 
 one who, as in an enchanted mirror, pictures not only 
 the outward panorama of events, but reveals also the 
 soul of goodness and beauty they contain. Hiawatha 
 weaves into consecutive narrative the legends of the 
 aborigines. The courtship of Miles Standish is the 
 idyl of Puritanism. Evangeline is the epic of 
 the colonial period. Paul Revere's Ride gives us the 
 spirit of the Revolution. Elizabeth is a delightful 
 interpretation of Quaker life in Pennsylvania. The 
 Poems on Slavery give faithful and pathetic pictures 
 of the sorrows and wrongs of the negroes and of the 
 religious faith that sustained these humble children 
 of God in their days of bondage. The poet says : 
 
 " Loud he sang the psalms of David ! 
 He a negro and enslaved. 
 Sang of Israel's victory, 
 Sang of Zion bright and free. 
 
 In that hour when night is calmest. 
 Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist, 
 In a voice so sweet and clear 
 That I could not choose but hear. 
 
LONGFELLOW 207 
 
 And the voice of his devotion 
 Filled my soul with strange emotion; 
 For its tones by turns were glad 
 Sweetly solemn, wildly sad." 
 
 And twenty years before public sentiment permitted 
 Lincoln to issue his proclamation emancipating the 
 negro, Longfellow had penned this warning: 
 
 " There is a poor blind Samson in this land, 
 
 Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel, 
 Who may in some grim revel, raise his hand 
 
 And shake the pillars of this commonweal. 
 Till the vast temple of our liberties 
 A shapeless mass of wreck and ruin lies." 
 
 The hopes and fears of men during the time of the 
 anti-slavery agitation find beautiful and noble expres- 
 sion in The Building of the Ship, ending with the 
 patriotic prayer that Lincoln used to repeat with 
 tears in his eyes: 
 
 " Sail on, O Ship of State ! 
 Sail on, O Union, strong and great! 
 Humanity with all its fears. 
 With all the hopes of future years. 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 
 We know what Master laid thy keel, 
 What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel. 
 Who made each mast and sail and rope. 
 What anvils rang, what hammers beat. 
 In what a forge and what a heat 
 Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 
 Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 
 'Tis but the flapping of the sail. 
 And not a rent made by the gale ! 
 Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! 
 
208 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. 
 Our faith triumphant o'er our fears. 
 Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! " 
 
 Longfellow wrote from boyhood to old age with 
 unflagging energy, and more than five hundred poems 
 attest the fertility of his mind and exhibit the varied 
 graces of his style. He says: 
 
 " I shot an arrow into the air, 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
 For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
 Could not follow it in its flight. 
 
 I breathed a song into the air. 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
 For who has sight so keen and strong, 
 That it can follow the flight of song? 
 
 Long, long afterward, in an oak 
 I found the arrow, still unbroke; 
 And the song from beginning to end, 
 I found again in the heart of a friend." 
 
 Very many of Longfellow's poems are loved by 
 children and treasured in the hearts of men and 
 women ; but two poems stand apart from the others 
 as his supreme achievement, the most loved and ad- 
 mired of all his writing, Evangeline and Hiawatha. 
 I can take space only to comment upon the first of 
 these. I need not detail the familiar story of the ex- 
 pulsion of the French settlers from Nova Scotia and 
 the separation of Evangeline from her intended hus- 
 band Gabriel on the day after their betrothal, and 
 how the pledged husband and wife sought each other 
 in vain for many years, and at last met in a Philadel- 
 
LONGFELLOW 209 
 
 phia hospital where Gabriel, a dying man, was at- 
 tended by Evangehne, as a sister of mercy. A few 
 of the opening lines will serve to call to mind the 
 measure of the poem and the setting of the story. 
 
 " This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and 
 the hemlocks, 
 
 Bearded with moss and in garments green, indistinct 
 in the twilight, 
 
 Stands like Druids of eld, with voices sad and pro- 
 phetic. 
 
 Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their 
 bosoms. 
 
 Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neigh- 
 boring ocean 
 
 Speaks and in accents disconsolate answers the wail 
 of the forest. 
 
 This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts 
 
 that beneath it 
 Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the 
 
 voice of the huntsman? 
 Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian 
 
 farmers, — 
 Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the 
 
 woodlands. 
 Darkened by shadows of earth but reflecting the image 
 
 of heaven ? 
 
 Waste are those pleasant farms and the farmers for- 
 ever departed! 
 
 Scattered like dust and leaves when the mighty blasts 
 of October 
 
 Seize them and whirl them aloft and sprinkle them far 
 o'er the ocean. 
 
 Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village 
 
 of Grand-Pre! 
 1—14 
 
210 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Ye who believe in affection that hopes and endures and 
 
 is patient, 
 Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's 
 
 devotion. 
 List to the mournful tradition, still sung by the pines 
 
 of the forest ; 
 List to the Tale of Love in Acadia, home of the happy." 
 
 The tale of mutual and warm affection, constant 
 amid all changes, is the most pleasing type of the love 
 story. The old folk-lore tales of handsome princes 
 and Cinderellas usually end with " So they were mar- 
 ried and lived happily ever after," and the lower types 
 of the novel commonly dispose of their lovers in much 
 the same manner. But the poets show a deeper in- 
 sight, and in accordance with the facts of life exhibit 
 greater varieties of character and fortune. The 
 greatest poet of all has made an unhappy lover say: 
 
 " Ay me ! for aught that I could ever read. 
 Could ever hear by tale or history. 
 The course of true love never did run smooth; 
 But either it was different in blood 
 Or else it stood upon the choice of friends. 
 Or if there was a sympathy in choice. 
 War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it. 
 Making it momentary as a sound. 
 Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; 
 Brief as the lightning in the collied night 
 That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth. 
 And ere a man hath power to say ' Behold ! ' 
 The jaws of darkness do devour it up; 
 So quick bright things come to confusion." 
 
 Adversity furnishes a nobler background for vir- 
 tue than prosperity can, for, as Bacon says, the virtue 
 of prosperity is temperance and that of adversity is 
 
LONGFELLOW 211 
 
 fortitude. One of the purposes of poetry is to pu- 
 rify and elevate the mind, and this can often be done 
 best by showing us the eifect of great suffering upon 
 a noble nature. Such is the purpose and such the 
 effect of Evangeline. After a happy girlhood she 
 was tried by a life-long sorrow. 
 
 " Fair was slie and young, when in hope began the long 
 journey; 
 Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it 
 ended." 
 
 Yet though she and her lover were disappointed in 
 their earthly hopes, her soul — and his too we may 
 infer — were purified and chastened into the highest 
 beauty of which nature is capable. It adds to the 
 beauty and pathos of the story that she should be 
 represented more fully than Gabriel in the mutual 
 search. If he had been indifferent, it would have 
 saddened us to see so much devotion bestowed upon 
 one unworthy of it. If his jealous search had been 
 followed in detail, substantially the same feelings and 
 incidents must have been related twice, and the result 
 would have been a divided and diminished interest in 
 each character. We get only glimpses of him, but 
 every glimpse is pleasant. He had left home because 
 he was " weary with waiting, unhappy and restless," 
 and when Evangeline tells her sorrows to the good 
 mission priest, he says: 
 
 " Gabriel 
 Told me this same sad tale, then arose and continued 
 his journey." 
 
 The interest and the nobility of the story are height- 
 ened because the love that fills the heart of the heroine 
 
212 LONGFELLOW 
 
 and sustains her in her long toils is a pure and spir- 
 itual and not an earthly and passionate affection. 
 Its stay and support are found in pious duty — she 
 was a betrothed woman — as well as in natural in- 
 clination. Evangeline was not driven to religion by 
 sorrow. Her nature was essentially pure and spir- 
 itual and at the very outset of the poem we are told 
 that, while she was always fair to behold, 
 
 " A celestial brightness, a more ethereal beauty 
 Shone on her face and encircled her form, when after 
 
 confession, 
 Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction 
 upon her." 
 
 It is in accordance with her deeply religious spirit 
 that her most trusted counsellor should be her father 
 confessor. Others advised her to forget Gabriel and 
 accept another suitor; but Evangeline answered se- 
 renely and sadly, " I cannot." 
 
 " Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand and 
 not elsewhere — 
 
 For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and il- 
 lumines the pathway. 
 
 Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in 
 darkness — " 
 
 Thereupon the priest, her friend and father confessor, 
 said with a smile, " O daughter ! thy God thus speak- 
 eth within thee ! " and then he bids the others 
 
 " Talk not of wasted affection, — affection never was 
 wasted ; 
 
 If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, return- 
 ing 
 
 Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full 
 of refreshioent." 
 
LONGFELLOW 213 
 
 To impress it more fully upon us that religion was 
 the source of her strength, Longfellow brings in a 
 second priest, a counterpart of Father Felician in 
 pious zeal and human sympathy. This good mis- 
 sionary to the Indians says to her : " Have faith and 
 thy prayer will be answered ! " When she reluctantly 
 abandons the fruitless search for her lover, and de- 
 votes heself to works of charity, she desires to make 
 them more efficacious by. uniting with them the con- 
 solation of faith. It was as a Sister of Mercy that 
 she ministered to the sick and the poor, and according 
 to the poet's beautiful figure — 
 
 " So was her love diffused, but, like to some odorous 
 
 spices, 
 Suffered no waste nor loss, though filling the air with 
 
 aroma; 
 Other hope had she none, nor wish in life, but to follow. 
 Meekly, with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her 
 
 Saviour." 
 
 The metre of Evangeline, an imitation of the 
 Greek hexameter, is rare in English poetry, and to 
 have made it popular must be considered a very nota- 
 ble artistic achievement. Longfellow avails himself 
 of all the sixteen variations which the classic hex- 
 ameter verse admits, and so delicate is his sense of 
 melody and time that whether a line contains a pre- 
 ponderance of dactyls or spondees, the ear is alike 
 satisfied. The first line of the poem contains five, the 
 second line four and the third line only two dactyls ; 
 yet owing to the greater emphasis on certain syllables 
 in the shorter lines, the total volume of sound is equal 
 and the time equivalent is perfect. Judged by the 
 rules of English prosody, I do not think there is a 
 
214 LONGFELLOW 
 
 really defective line in the whole poem. I thought at 
 first that the verse 
 
 " Thence he will follow the Indian trails to the Ozark 
 mountains " 
 
 was indefensibly bad, but I found that the accent in 
 " Ozark " should be placed on the second syllable and 
 then the difficulty is measurably removed and the line 
 may perhaps stand upon its merits or at worst may 
 avail itself of the legitimate apology that proper names 
 are often tractable to metrical rules. Yet as was to 
 have been expected his experiment was condemned by 
 some and only faintly praised by others. Poe was 
 among those who disapproved; but Longfellow made 
 no public reply. A trifling circumstance shows, how- 
 ever, that Longfellow could not immediately dismiss 
 Poe's unjust attack from his thoughts. Longfellow, 
 like many other poets, had a habit of making illus- 
 trative verses. Coleridge had defined the diff'erence 
 between the hexameter and the pentameter by the 
 simile of a fountain. He says: 
 
 " In the hexameter rises the fountains silver column, 
 In the pentameter aye falling in melody back." 
 
 Longfellow, making a parody of this, says: 
 
 " In the hexameter sings serenely a Harvard professor, 
 In the pentameter him damns the censorious Poe." 
 
 The Earl of Derby also was an adverse critic, and main- 
 tained that the Greek hexameter could not be properly 
 represented in English, and the most suitable measure 
 for an English epic was the iambic pentameter. The 
 earl had translated the Iliad of Homer into English 
 and had used the measure he championed, and this 
 fact enabled Longfellow to make a very neat and 
 effective reply. He selected as an illustration the 
 
LONGFELLOW 215 
 
 concluding line of the account of the burial of Hec- 
 tor, which in Derby's version is as follows: 
 
 " Such were the rites to glorious Hector paid." 
 
 Now, said Longfellow in substance, commenting on 
 this, Is it not strange that a man after whom the 
 greatest horse race in the world is named, in describ- 
 ing the funeral of a man who in Homer is especially 
 spoken of as a horseman, should omit the distinctive 
 Homeric adjective horsetamer. If, instead of using 
 the iambic pentameter, he had used the dactylic hex- 
 ameter with its greater range, he could have trans- 
 lated Homer exactly, and said: 
 
 " Such were the funeral rites of Hector^ the tamer of 
 horses." 
 
 The general public cared nothing for the contro- 
 versy of critics and scholars about the possibility of 
 reproducing Greek hexameter in English. To the 
 common ear the verse of Evangeline is sonorous and 
 sweet and exactly suited to the pathetic story it relates. 
 
 Nor should one in commenting upon the elements 
 which produce the beautiful harmonies of the poem 
 fail to remark upon the ever present but never obtru- 
 sive alliteration. Uusally there is but a single repe- 
 tition of an initial letter, but occasionally as in the 
 following lines we find a double alliteration: 
 
 " Round and red as the harvest moon through the mists 
 of the marshes " 
 
 or in 
 
 " Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sun- 
 shine," 
 
 or again 
 
 " Fires that blast and blight and winds that are weary 
 with travel." 
 
216 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Longfellow in Evangeline displays a power of 
 adapting sound to sense not inferior to that of Poe 
 himself. The most dramatic episode in the story is 
 that in which the lovers pass each other without know- 
 ing it in the broad Mississippi. 
 
 " Faint was the air with the odorous breath of magnolia 
 blossoms. 
 
 And with the heat of noon; and numberless sylvan is- 
 lands 
 
 Fragrant and thickly embowered with blossoming 
 hedges of roses, 
 
 Near to whose shores they glided along invited to 
 slumber. 
 
 Soon by the fairest of these their weary oars were sus- 
 pended. 
 
 Safely their boat was moored; and scattered about on 
 the greensward. 
 
 Tired with their midnight toil, the weary travelers 
 slumbered." 
 
 But while Evangeline and her party are thus sleeping, 
 
 " Nearer and ever nearer, among the numberless islands, 
 
 Darted a light, swift boat, that sped away o'er the 
 water, 
 
 Urged on its course by the sinewy arms of hunters and 
 trappers. 
 
 Northward its prow was turned to the land of the bison 
 and beaver. 
 
 At the helm sat a youth with countenance thoughtful 
 and careworn. 
 
 Gabriel was it who weary with waiting, unhappy and 
 restless, 
 
 Sought in the western wilds oblivion of self and of sor- 
 row. 
 
 Swiftly they glided close under the lee of the island. 
 
LONGFELLOW 217 
 
 But by the opposite bank and behind a screen of pal- 
 mettos. 
 
 So that they saw not the boat where it lay concealed in 
 the willows; 
 
 All undisturbed by the dash of their oars, and unseen 
 were the sleepers." 
 
 How perfectly deep sleep is expressed in the very 
 sound of the words in the line : 
 
 " Tired with their midnight toil the weary travelers slum- 
 bered," 
 
 and how perfectly the tragic swiftness with which 
 Gabriel's boat passed is echoed by the short and hur- 
 ried syllables : 
 
 " Darted a light, swift boat, that sped away o'er the 
 
 water." 
 I 
 
 To recur to more general considerations. The deep 
 pathos of this tale of sorrow is singularly heightened 
 by its strong contrasts; the contrast between the 
 " homes of peace and contentment " of the simple 
 Acadian farmer and the ruined village of the poor 
 exiles : 
 
 " Scattered like dust and leaves when the mighty blasts of 
 October 
 Seize them and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far 
 o'er the ocean." 
 
 Even more pathetic is the contrast between the happy 
 betrothal of the youthful lovers and the sad and mo- 
 mentary re-union of the long separated pair. 
 
 So far as I can see, the poet has availed himself of 
 all the elements of interest that naturally belong to 
 the subject except one. There was an opportunity 
 
218 LONGFELLOW 
 
 to give a picture of the life of a military camp and to 
 contrast the innocence of the Acadian peasants with 
 the brutal vices of soldiers. But such a theme though 
 dramatically tempting was uncongenial to Longfel- 
 low. He turned from the darker moral aspects of life 
 and loved to exhibit only whatever is " pure, elevated, 
 lovely and of good report." 
 
 There are some readers to whom the sad ending to 
 the story is a discomfort and a stumbling block. 
 They would like it better if the meeting of the lovers 
 had taken place earlier and if a happy married life 
 had been the sequel and compensation of their patient 
 constancy and many sorrows. The same objection 
 has been made to the ending of Shakespeare's tragedy 
 of King Lear. Nahum Tata " rectified the catas- 
 trophe so as to have Lear and Cordelia come off tri- 
 umphant, thus rewarding their virtue with worldly 
 success." Hudson, from whom these words are 
 quoted, justly calls the change an " execrable piece 
 of profanation." Such a change takes from the play 
 the perspective of eternity. It narrows our thoughts 
 to an earthly horizon and implicitly denies man's im- 
 mortality and God's future rewards and punishments. 
 Earthly life is too short for the whole of man's de- 
 velopment and destiny to appear in it. If Longfel- 
 low had spoken at length of the rewards of heaven, 
 he would have broken the unity of the poem by intro- 
 ducing a new subject, and would moreover have been 
 presumptuous, for we have only faith and not knowl- 
 edge. What Browning has done in the intellectual 
 field, Longfellow has done in the moral one. He has 
 left it to God to perfect in the other world a life in- 
 complete in this. The usual happy ending of a love 
 story would, in the special circumstances and char- 
 
LONGFELLOW 219 
 
 acter of this heroine, seem cheap and conventional 
 and take away the tragic power of the poem. 
 
 No man, however gifted or fortunate, succeeds 
 equally well in all his undertakings. Longfellow's 
 songs and ballads and tales in verse, his epics of In- 
 dian and colonial life were all perfect of their kind 
 and received with marked popular favor. But the 
 poet had a still higher ambition. He recognized the 
 life of Christ as the supreme event in human history 
 and aspired to set it forth in a poem he hoped would 
 be his masterpiece. He wrote in his diary on Nov. 
 19, 1849, " I long to try a loftier strain, the sub- 
 limer song whose broken melodies have for so many 
 years breathed through my soul in the better hours 
 of hfe and which I trust will erelong unite themselves 
 into a symphony not all unworthy the sublime theme." 
 He called the poem Christus and divided the subject 
 into three parts^ The first treats of the life of Christ 
 himself; the second part, otherwise called the Golden 
 Legend, is a tale of mediaeval piety ; the third division 
 bears the name of the New England Tragedies and 
 describes the Salem witchcraft mania. 
 
 The second division of the poem is much the best. 
 It is, indeed, a wonderful panorama of the life of the 
 Middle Ages and shows in swift succession the castle, 
 the farm, the village church, the great cathedral, the 
 monastery and the school. We see the monk at his 
 prayers, or busy in the scriptorium making illumi- 
 nated copies of precious manuscripts. We see pil- 
 grims traveling in eager throngs to sacred shrines 
 and hear scholars discussing subtle questions of meta- 
 physics, and listen to a quaint play based on the Bible, 
 the only kind of drama which the church then per- 
 mitted. It is a work of genius, and it has been truly 
 
220 LONGFELLOW 
 
 said that " Longfellow in his Golden Legend has en- 
 tered more closely into the temper of the monk, for 
 good and evil, than ever yet theological writer or his- 
 torian, though they have given their life's labor to 
 the analysis." The other parts of the poem are less 
 successful, the portraiture of Protestantism being es- 
 pecially inadequate and incomplete. 
 
 It is one of the marks of a sound tree that It bears 
 fruit in age, and of a sound mind that it continues 
 active to the end of life. One of the best poems on 
 old age is Longfellow's Morituri Salutamus, which 
 was written by request to celebrate the fiftieth anni- 
 versary of the graduation of his class in college. It 
 is a short but interesting tale whose object is to show 
 that: 
 
 " Old age is opportunity no less 
 Than youth itself though in another dress." 
 
 Longfellow well illustrated his own theory, for he 
 continued to write almost up to the close of his life. 
 His last poem. The Bells of San Bias, was completed 
 on March 15, and after a brief illness the poet's death 
 occurred on the 24th of the same month. He was 
 buried in the beautiful cemetery of Mount Auburn 
 beneath the gently falling snow. His grave is sur- 
 mounted by a beautiful monument on which arranged 
 in a St. Andrew's cross are the Latin words Lux, Dux, 
 words which are equivalent to, I have followed the 
 light, and which we may accept as the principle of 
 Longfellow's life. He was the first American in 
 whose honor a memorial was placed in Westminster 
 Abbey, the home of England's greatest dead; but his 
 noblest and most enduring monument is that which 
 he himself so patiently constructed, tKat great volume 
 
LONGFELLOW 2^1 
 
 of pure and elevating poetry, unalloyed by any moral 
 defect, poetry which is the earliest to be understood 
 and loved by children, the delight of maidens and 
 lovers, worthy the study of artists and scholars, the 
 solace of the aged and the comfort of the bereaved; 
 poetry which is taught in every American schoolhouse 
 and treasured in every cultured home, which has in- 
 creased the knowledge, broadened the sympathies and 
 refined the taste of the whole nation, and constitutes 
 our most distinctive and important contribution to the 
 literature of the world. 
 
WASHINGTON 
 
WASHINGTON 
 
 No other name now is, it is not likely that any other 
 name ever will be, so prominently and so deeply 
 marked upon this country. Washington was the first 
 President of the United States, and was twice unani- 
 mously elected to that supreme office. The capital of 
 the nation is called after him ; one of the great western 
 states bears his name, and more than half the states 
 of the Union have Washington counties. His mon- 
 ument at the seat of the Federal authority is the most 
 conspicuous object in the landscape and is, I beheve, 
 the highest building of any kind on the American 
 continent. He occupies the most prominent place in 
 all histories of the United States, and the sermons, 
 orations and biographies commemorating his achieve- 
 ments and holding up his character for imitation, are 
 so numerous as to make a literature in themselves. 
 His Farewell Address is looked upon with almost the 
 same veneration as The Declaration of Independence 
 and the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 All men of all political parties and of all religious 
 opinions and of all sections of the country. North and 
 South, East and West, differing in almost everything 
 else, agree in regarding Washington as a man of no- 
 blest character who rendered his country extraor- 
 dinary and essential service. A hundred years after 
 his death there is still no dissent from the great 
 eulogy : " First in war, first in peace, and first in the 
 hearts of his countrymen." What Moses was to Is- 
 rael, what Charlemagne was to Germany, what Alfred 
 the Great was to England, that Washington was tp 
 
 ^25 
 
226 WASHINGTON 
 
 the young republic of the West. Childless according 
 to the flesh, he has a vast spiritual posterity; for so 
 colossal was his personality, so benevolent his char- 
 acter, so great his wisdom, so inestimable the benefits 
 he conferred, so mightily did he guide, counsel and 
 help the infant republic, that the whole nation seemed 
 almost like his household and estate, and he, perhaps 
 more than any other man that ever lived, may be 
 justly called " The father of his country." 
 
 The limits of this paper forbid any reference to his 
 ancestry or to many interesting circumstances in con- 
 nection with his early life ; but it may be remarked 
 for the encouragement of those whose opportunities 
 of study are limited that Washington's school educa- 
 tion was confined almost entirely to reading, writing, 
 arithmetic, and surveying. He knew no foreign lan- 
 guages, and except for a short visit to the British 
 West Indies, he never left his native land. His knowl- 
 edge of literature, science, and history was narrow 
 and elementary ; but he was endowed by God with a 
 body of extraordinary vigor and a mind of massive 
 power and he had the inestimable advantage of being 
 trained to morality and religion by a wise and vir- 
 tuous mother. 
 
 The mother of Washington, who was left a widow 
 when George was only eleven years old, used every 
 day to gather her children about her and read to them 
 from some solid and instructive book, her chief favor- 
 ite next to the Bible being " The Contemplations of 
 Sir Matthew Hale," the wise and upright Puritan 
 Judge of whose sayings I remember only this one, 
 which, I suppose, was repeated again and again to 
 Washington and contributed with other influences to 
 form the life-long respect for religion and religious 
 
WASHINGTON 227 
 
 services Washington always exhibited. The words of 
 Hale to which I refer are : 
 
 " A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content 
 And health for the toils of the morrow ; 
 But a Sabbath profaned, whate'er may be gained. 
 Is a certain forerunner of sorrow." 
 
 The Scripture says " The fear of the Lord is the be- 
 ginning of wisdom," and I doubt if any really great 
 character was ever developed in any age or in any 
 country without a sense of responsibility to God and 
 the habit of prayer to Him for guidance and strength. 
 Lord Bacon, in one of those wonderful essays which 
 are such a repository of wisdom, uses this language: 
 " They that deny a God destroy man's nobility ; for 
 certainly man is of Kin to the beasts by his body, and 
 if he be not of Kin to God by his spirit, he is a base 
 and ignoble creature. Atheism destroys magnanimity 
 and the raising of human nature ; for take an example 
 of a dog and mark what a generosity and courage he 
 will put on when he finds himself maintained by a 
 man, who to him is instead of a God or superior be- 
 ing; which courage is manifestly such as that crea- 
 ture, without that confidence of a better nature than 
 his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth 
 and assureth himself upon Divine protection and 
 favor, gathereth a- force and faith, which human na- 
 ture in itself could not obtain." 
 
 Certainly an examination of Washington's diary 
 and his private correspondence as well as his public 
 utterances and his messages to Congress and other 
 state papers, will show that a deep but unobtrusive 
 piety was the foundation of the scrupulous integrity, 
 of the strict truthfulness, of the unyielding fortitude 
 
228 WASHINGTON 
 
 and the sublime patience of that extraordinary man. 
 It may certainly be said of him that during those 
 long campaigns when with an unpaid, half-starved 
 and half-clothed army, amid the cabals of envious 
 rivals and the murmurs of an impatient people who 
 did not know the difficulties he dare not make public, 
 lest the enemy, knowing his weakness, should take ad- 
 vantage of it,; — it may certainly be said of Wash- 
 ington as truly as of any man that ever lived, " He 
 endured as seeing Him who is invisible." 
 
 Washington's religion was unobtrusive but it was 
 steadfast and life-long. In the beginning of the 
 French and Indian War, Washington, then only 
 twenty-two years old, but already placed in command 
 of an important expedition, had public prayers in his 
 camp. Irving says : " It certainly was not one of the 
 least striking pictures presented in this wild campaign 
 — the youthful commander, presiding with calm se- 
 riousness, over a motley assemblage of half -equipped 
 soldiery, leathern clad hunters and painted savages, 
 and uniting them all in solemn devotion by his own 
 example and demeanor." 
 
 It was the same during all his later campaigns. 
 When after the eight weary years of the Revolution- 
 ary War, hostilities were at last suspended, Washing- 
 ton in announcing the fact to his army, gave this 
 general order : " The chaplains with the several bri- 
 gades will render thanks to Almighty God for all his 
 mercies, particularly for his overruling the wrath of 
 man to his own glory, and causing the rage of war 
 to cease among the nations." 
 
 When he resigned to Congress his commission as 
 commander-in-chief he said : " I consider it an indis- 
 pensable duty to close this last solemn act of my offi- 
 
WASHINGTON S29 
 
 cial life, by commending the interests of our dearest 
 country to Almighty God; and those who have the 
 superintendence of them to his holy keeping." And 
 when he got back to his beloved home at Mount Ver- 
 non, from which he had been so long absent, he wrote 
 to his faithful friend General Knox, " I feel now 
 as I conceive a weary traveler must do, who after 
 treading many a weary step with a heavy burden 
 on his shoulders . . . looks back from his 
 housetop and traces, with an eager eye, the meanders 
 by which he escaped the quicksands and mires which 
 lay, in his way; and into which none but the all- 
 powerful Guide and Dispenser of human events could 
 have prevented his falling." Washington was an Epis- 
 copalian. He was a vestryman in two parishes ; the 
 church in one of them was rebuilt on a plan of his 
 own and in a great measure at his expense; at one 
 or other of these churches, although the nearest was 
 seven miles from Mount Vernon, he attended every 
 Sunday when the weather and the roads permitted. 
 Yet Washington though devout and earnest was 
 broadminded and tolerant. He was a friend of Jef- 
 ferson, and Jefferson, as is well-known, was a religious 
 liberal. In 1822 Jefferson wrote to Channing, " I 
 rejoice that in this country the genuine doctrine of 
 only one God is reviving; and I trust there is not a 
 young man now Hving who will not die a Unitarian." 
 Washington's judgment was cooler and his temper 
 less aggressive than Jefferson's; but that he was to 
 some extent in accord with him is apparent from one 
 of his letters to Jefferson in which he says : " I am not 
 less ardent in my wish that you may succeed in your 
 toleration in religious matters." 
 
 Washington's religion was of a very practical 
 
230 WASHINGTON 
 
 type. A rough but sensible proverb says, " God 
 helps those who help themselves," and Washington, 
 though he constantly sought God's guidance and 
 help, always exerted his own powers to the utmost. 
 Some of the traits of his character which seem to me 
 to be prominent and to account in large degree for 
 his extraordinary influence over others and the won- 
 derful success of his undertakings, are honesty, truth- 
 fulness, order, industry, economy, moderation, and 
 self-control. An epigrammatic poet declares, " Or- 
 der is Heaven's first law." It would almost seem to 
 have been the first law of George Washington. He 
 became the private surveyor of Lord Fairfax when he 
 was only sixteen, and shortly afterward was appointed 
 a public surveyor by the Colony of Virginia. Many 
 of his surveys were made in the wilderness under great 
 difficulties, but subsequent demarkations made under 
 more favorable conditions have only served to confirm 
 their accuracy. Washington's surveys are still the 
 basis of titles to much landed property. 
 
 Many persons who have abundance of time and 
 whose expenditures are small and simple, either keep 
 no accounts and cannot tell what has become of their 
 money, or if they attempt to keep a record of their 
 expenses do it so loosely and irregularly that their 
 footings never balance. But Washington in all his 
 marches and encampments, amid all the dangers and 
 confusions of war, amid the incessant and exhausting 
 labors and burdensome responsibilities of a com- 
 mander-in-chief, kept in his own handwriting an ac- 
 curate account of all the money disbursed by him. 
 
 Closely allied to the virtue of order is that of econ- 
 omy. Washington was always frugal. He began to 
 save money from his first salary and before he wq,§ 
 
WASHINGTON 231 
 
 of age had accumulated a considerable sum. These 
 virtues of order and economy enabled him to exhibit 
 his disinterestedness. He did not sell but gave his 
 services to his country. For all his long, toilsome and 
 hazardous service in the Revolutionary War, he re- 
 fused all compensation and received from Congress 
 only a return of the money he had actually expended 
 from his private fortune. Our wonder at Washing- 
 ton's order and exactness becomes the greater when 
 we contrast it with the confusion into which other 
 great men have allowed the pressure of public business 
 to throw their private affairs. William Pitt, prime 
 minister of Great Britain, was Washington's contem- 
 porary. Like Washington he was a man of great 
 abihty and of lofty patriotism ; but though his in- 
 come was large he died overwhelmed with debt. A 
 biographer justly remarks, " High as his character 
 stands, it would have stood even higher had he united 
 the virtue of frugality to that of disinterestedness." 
 I beheve that contempt for this homely virtue of fru- 
 gality was one of the many causes that contributed 
 to the ignominious downfall of the great Napoleon, 
 who was also Washington's contemporary. Napoleon's 
 genius seemed in some respects far to outshine the 
 solid and unpretending wisdom of Washington ; but 
 the weakness and baseness of Napoleon's character, ex- 
 hibited both in small things and in great, made his 
 eventual overthrow inevitable. It is not more certain 
 that a leaning and lightly built wall will be blown 
 down by a high wind, than that a vain, unprincipled 
 and ambitious man will be overthrown by the storms 
 of his own passion and by the just resentment of those 
 he has wronged. Napoleon " waded through slaughter 
 to a throne," but he was hurled from it for his tyranny 
 
233 WASHINGTON 
 
 and spent his last years as a prisoner on a narrow 
 and lonely island so remote as scarcely to seem part 
 of that world from which his crimes and follies exiled 
 him. 
 
 Everybody is at times tempted in some peculiarly in- 
 sidious and fascinating way, and the manner in which 
 he deals with these fair and specious appeals to self- 
 love is the greatest test of character. Jesus refused 
 to buy the kingdoms of this world and the glory of 
 them by doing wrong or conniving at it. The evil 
 suggestions that came to his mind never ripened into 
 evil deeds, for they did not find a congenial soil and 
 fostering warmth. Outward temptations met no in- 
 ward response, and so died for lack of nourishment. 
 Au apostle tells us that God will not suffer those who 
 seek his aid to be tempted above what they are able 
 to bear. Sir Walter Scott in speaking of the power 
 of evil spirits to deceive men and lure them on to de- 
 struction, very truly says : 
 
 " Seldom have such spirits power 
 To harm save in the evil hour 
 When guilt we meditate within 
 Or harbor unrepented sin." 
 
 In one of the most impressive of his tragedies, Shake- 
 speare has shown how the ambition to be King over- 
 powered the scruples of Macbeth and led him on step 
 by step till he became a traitor and a murderer. When 
 the weird sisters meet Macbeth upon the heath and 
 say to him, " All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King 
 hereafter ! " and then turn from him, Macbeth betrays 
 his inward readiness for temptation by uttering the 
 words, " Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more," 
 and then as they vanish into air, he says regretfully, 
 
WASHINGTON 233 
 
 " Would they had stayed ! " This was not the spirit in 
 which Washington met temptation. Let us recall some 
 historic facts. Irving in his Hfe of Washington tells 
 us that in 1782 " great discontents prevailed in the 
 army both among officers and men. . . . There 
 was scarce money sufficient to feed the troops from day 
 to day; indeed there were days when they were abso- 
 lutely in want of provisions. The pay of the officers, 
 too, was greatly in arrears ; — and fears began to be 
 expressed that in the event of peace, they would all be 
 disbanded with their claims unliquidated and them- 
 selves cast upon the community penniless, and unfitted, 
 by long mihtary habitudes, for the gainful pursuits 
 of peace. At this juncture Washington received an 
 extraordinary letter from Colonel Lewis Nicola, a vet- 
 eran officer, who had been in habits of intimacy with 
 him. In this letter Nicola attributed all the ills ex- 
 perienced and anticipated by the army and the public 
 at large, to the existing form of government. He con- 
 demned a republican form as incompatible with na- 
 tional prosperity, and advised a mixed government, 
 like that of England; which he had no doubt, on its 
 benefits being properly pointed out, would be readily 
 adopted. ' In that case,' he adds, ' it will, I believe, 
 be uncontroverted, that the same abilities which have 
 led us through difficulties apparently insurmountable 
 by human power, to victory and glory ; those qualities 
 that have merited and obtained the universal esteem 
 and veneration of an army, would be most likely to con- 
 duct and direct us in the smoother paths of peace. 
 Some people have so connected the idea of tyranny 
 and monarchy, as to find it very difficult to separate 
 them. It may, therefore, be requisite to give the head 
 of such a constitution as I propose, some title appar- 
 
234. WASHINGTON 
 
 ently more moderate ; but if all other things were once 
 adjusted, I believe strong arguments might be pro- 
 duced for admitting the title of King, which, I con- 
 ceive, would be attended with some material advan- 
 tage.' " 
 
 Washington was possessed at this time with almost 
 unlimited power over the army, and had he been selfish 
 and unprincipled, his ambition might have been in- 
 flamed and his hopes aroused by this letter. Now that 
 a century has passed we may think that for Washing- 
 ton to have established a monarchy was impossible; 
 but we must remember that he could not forecast the 
 future and be sure that the then discordant colonies 
 would unite first into a confederation and subsequently, 
 into a nation. History, which is man's chief guide in 
 reference to laws and governments, gave no precedent 
 for such a republic as ours. The ancient and mediaeval 
 republics were all small; in most cases, their existence 
 had been brief and turbulent. In course of time nearly 
 all of them had fallen into excess and anarchy, and 
 the evils of unbridled license had at last led to a mili- 
 tary despotism and imperial sovereignty. In contrast 
 with these factious and insecure republics, men placed 
 the ordered liberty and long continued stability of 
 the British monarchy. Alexander Hamilton and very 
 many able men honestly believed that, owing to the 
 ignorance and shortsightedness of the masses and the 
 difficulty of securing their assent to necessary laws, a 
 pure democracy could not long endure. Washington 
 himself had fears of this kind. In one of the still 
 existing drafts of his Farewell Address to his Fellow 
 Citizens these words occur : " Owing to you as I do a 
 frank and free disclosure of my heart, I shall not 
 conceal from you the belief I entertain that your gov- 
 
WASHINGTON 235 
 
 emment as at present constituted is far more likely 
 to prove too feeble than too powerful." (Irving's 
 Life, Vol. 5, p. 341.). 
 
 Until 1776 the people of the American colonies had 
 lived under a monarchy and whatever grievances they 
 had had, there had never been such depreciation of 
 the currency, such jealousy among the colonies, such 
 disorganization of the government, such poverty and 
 distress as had existed during the first years of inde- 
 pendence and democracy. When therefore in 1782 
 Nicola's letter was received by Washington, had he 
 not been a man of the strongest good sense, of the 
 truest patriotism and the firmest moral principle, he 
 might have paltered with temptation as did Macbeth 
 until sophistries had clouded his intellect and ambitious 
 desires had set his heart on fire. 
 
 Irving says that Washington saw that Nicola was 
 but the organ of a military faction, disposed to make 
 the army the basis of an energetic government, and to 
 place him at the head. The suggestion might have 
 tempted a man of meaner ambition ; from him it drew 
 the following indignant letter : " With surprise and 
 astonishment, I have read the sentiments you have sub- 
 mitted to my perusal. Be assured, Sir, no occurrence 
 in the course of the war has given me more painful 
 sensations, than your information of there being such 
 ideas existing in the army. ... I am much at a 
 loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have 
 given encouragement to an address which to me seems 
 big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my 
 country. . . , Let me conjure you, if you have 
 any regard for your country, for yourself, or pos- 
 terity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from 
 your mind, and never communicate, as from yourself 
 or any one else, a sentiment of the like nature." 
 
236 WASHINGTON 
 
 If the world ever again possesses a dramatist equal 
 to Shakespeare in genius, I wish that he might make 
 a companion drama to Macbeth and as Shakespeare 
 has shown how godless ambition led Macbeth {o infamy 
 and ruin, so the dramatist that is to be may show how 
 godlike wisdom and virtue led Washington to peace and 
 everlasting honor. 
 
 Washington was distinguished even among brave 
 men for his purely physical courage ; but his great 
 glory is his moral self-control. As the scripture says, 
 " Greater is he that ruleth his own spirit than he that 
 taketh a city." 
 
 We all remember some of the incidents in his military 
 life. We know that at Braddock's defeat two horses 
 were shot under him and that four bullets passed 
 through his clothing and that his coolness and judg- 
 ment saved the remnant of Braddock's army from de- 
 struction. We recall his skill and valor at Trenton in 
 the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, when as 
 the song says : 
 
 " Hearts were fainting through the land 
 And patriot blood ran cold. 
 The stricken army scarce retained 
 
 Three thousand men all told, 
 While the British arms gleamed everywhere 
 From Hudson to the Delaware. 
 
 Cold and stormy came the night; 
 
 The great chief roused his men. 
 Now up, brave comrades, up and fight 
 
 For freedom once again ; 
 The lion sleepeth in his lair 
 On the left bank of the Delaware. 
 
 By the darkling river's side. 
 Beneath the wintry sky, 
 
WASHINGTON 237 
 
 From that weak band forlorn and few 
 
 There rose the patriot cry, 
 O, land of freedom, ne'er despair. 
 We'll die or cross the Delaware ! 
 
 How the strong oars dash the ice 
 
 Amid the tempest's roar. 
 And how the trumpet voice of Knox 
 
 Still cheers them to the shore ! 
 Thus in the freezing midnight air 
 Those brave hearts crossed the Delaware. 
 
 In the morning gray and dim 
 
 The shout of battle rose. 
 The chief led back his valiant men 
 
 With a thousand captive foes. 
 While Trenton shook with the cannon's blare 
 That told the news o'er the Delaware." 
 
 Frederick the Great, himself one of the most skillful 
 and resolute of commanders, said that Washington's 
 campaign in New Jersey is unsurpassed in military 
 annals. But " Peace hath her victories no less than 
 war." How many a man who has borne well the dan- 
 gers and hardships of war is corrupted by the inactivity 
 and luxury of peace ! Washington was as careful, as 
 wise, as industrious, as methodical and as just when 
 at the close of the war he retired to live at Mount 
 Vernon as he had been before. 
 
 How many a man who bears adversity well is ruined 
 by prosperity ! When the Federal government was 
 formed, the unanimous voice of the country called 
 Washington to the presidency. Everywhere he went 
 the bells rang, the cannon boomed, the flags waved in 
 his honor. Everywhere the people welcomed him with 
 eulogistic addresses, with songs, and with processions. 
 
238 WASHINGTON 
 
 At Trenton, says his biographer, a triumphal arch 
 had been erected. It was entwined with laurels and 
 bore the inscription, " The defender of the mothers 
 will be the protector of the daughters." A number of 
 young girls, dressed in white and crowned with gar- 
 lands, strewed flowers before him, singing an ode ex- 
 pressive of their love and gratitude. There is abun- 
 dant evidence that beneath his exterior calm Washing- 
 ton was a man of great sensibility, and the confidence 
 and good will of the people were very dear to him. It 
 seems to me to be one of the very highest proofs of 
 his nobility of character that in his administration as 
 President he was always willing upon occasion to 
 jeopardize and temporarily forfeit his popularity 
 rather than do what he thought wrong or injurious. 
 Many a father indulges his children to their lasting 
 injury because he cannot resist their importunities. 
 Many a ruler sacrifices his country to his personal am- 
 bition or interest. It is one of the commonest devices 
 of monarchs to distract attention from needed domestic 
 reforms by engaging in foreign conquests which will 
 occupy the energies and enlist the patriotism of the 
 people and thus make the task of government easier. 
 Washington was not a man of this careless or un- 
 scrupulous type. He had no children of his own, but 
 he took the utmost pains to secure the highest welfare 
 of the stepson and the stepdaughter for whose educa- 
 tion, by his marriage with their mother, he became in 
 part responsible. And he ruled the country as he 
 ruled his own household, seeking its real welfare, with- 
 out regard to consequences to himself. France had 
 been the ally of this country during the Revolutionary 
 War. When during Washington's second administra- 
 tion war broke out between France and Great Britain, 
 
WASHINGTON 239 
 
 there was a tremendous, and as it seemed, an irresistible 
 agitation in the United States in favor of an alliance 
 with France. It was urged that the Repubhc of the 
 New World ought to help the newly proclaimed, the 
 soUtarj and struggling republic of the Old World, 
 that we were bound to assist France in gratitude for 
 her assistance to us, and that it was our duty as Amer- 
 ican freemen to assist in overthrowing despotism in 
 Europe. All this was very specious ; but Washington 
 believed that the interests of this country and the in- 
 terests of the world required peace, and he refused to 
 widen the area and to intensify the bitterness of the 
 struggle. He knew too well the miseries of war, and 
 maintained a strict neutrality and confined his efforts 
 to protecting the interests of his country even though 
 by so doing he subjected himself to constant reviling 
 and insult by those who charged him with being a 
 British sympathizer and at heart a monarchist. At 
 this time he wrote to Thomas Jefferson, " I did not 
 believe until lately that it was within the bounds of 
 probability, hardly, within those of possibility, that 
 while I was using my utmost exertions ... to 
 preserve this country from the horrors of a desolating 
 war, I should be accused of being the enemy of one 
 nation, and subject to the influence of another; and to 
 prove it, that every act of my administration would 
 be tortured, and the grossest and most insidious mis- 
 representations of them be made, by giving one side 
 only of a subject, and that too in such exaggerated 
 terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, to a no- 
 torious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket." 
 In bitterness of soul under these unjust attacks, Wash- 
 ington, we are told by Jefferson, once cried out in a 
 cabinet meeting, " I bad rather be in my grave than 
 
240 WASHINGTON 
 
 in my present situation." Yet much as he desired 
 popularity, much as he suffered from misjudgment and 
 misrepresentation, neither love nor fear ever made him 
 swerve from the path of duty. 
 
 The self-control of Washington was not Instinctive 
 and easy, as is sometimes supposed. On the contrary 
 his passions were very strong, and his natural temper 
 impetuous and domineering; he attained self-mastery 
 only because though his passions were strong, his wiU, 
 his reason, and his conscience were stronger stiU. He 
 literally ruled his own spirit. 
 
 Washington's immediate and specific services to his 
 country in peace and war were very great. Independ- 
 ence would doubtless have been attained sooner or later, 
 if he had taken no part in the war. God had deter- 
 mined that in the configuration of the globe. It was 
 impossible, in the nature of the case, that this great 
 continent should be permanently dependent upon a lit- 
 tle island aci*oss the sea. But that our independence 
 was obtained when it was and as it was, was due in 
 very great degree to the extraordinary combination of 
 great qualities in the commander-in-chief of the Amer- 
 ican armies, to his almost unparalleled faith, courage, 
 wisdom, patience, industry and fortitude. 
 
 Washington guided and assisted the continental con- 
 gress and the first national congresses in their delib- 
 erations, and his spirit is still one of the strongest and 
 most salutary forces in the government of this country. 
 Washington has in spirit sat beside every subsequent 
 occupant of the presidential chair and has been a power- 
 ful influence to give dignity to his demeanor, delibera- 
 tion to his counsels, wisdom to his utterances and 
 virtue to his conduct. Mediocre men in the presidential 
 ofiSce have been uplifted, bad men restrained, and good 
 
WASHINGTON 241 
 
 men have been stimulated to effort and encouraged and 
 strengthened in their virtues, by the recollection of 
 the dignity, the self-control, the patience, the wisdom, 
 the pecuniary disinterestedness and the lofty, unwaver- 
 ing patriotism of the great Pirst President. It was 
 the example of Washington more than any other influ- 
 ence that stimulated the exertions and moulded the 
 character of Abraham Lincoln, our other supreme ex- 
 ample of virtue and genius in the presidential chair. 
 
 Washington was a man and must be judged by hu- 
 man standards. Undoubtedly there were defects and 
 faults in his character ; but to me they seem like the 
 scars made by frost and snow and storm upon the side 
 of a mountain, quite invisible in any proper perspective, 
 being lost in the bulk and majesty of the whole. 
 
 In conclusion we may well say with Lord Brougham, 
 " It will be the duty of the historian and the sage of 
 all nations to let no occasion pass of commemorating 
 this illustrious man, and until time shall be no more, a 
 test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom 
 and virtue, will be derived from the veneration paid 
 to the immortal name of Washington." 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 One of the chief duties of a man is to love and serve 
 the country which gave him birth and protects and 
 benefits him, and one of the most appropriate and 
 effective ways of inculcating patriotism is to study 
 carefully the lives of our greatest and best men, with 
 the causes that contributed to their success. 
 
 It is now forty years since Abraham Lincoln ceased 
 to be a bodily presence. His career has gone into 
 historical perspective. His life has been scrutinized 
 with the utmost care. A great literature of history, 
 biography, poetry and fiction has gathered about his 
 name. Instead of passing into the oblivion which is 
 necessarily the lot of ordinary men, or suffering the 
 eclipse of fame which befalls all those whose greatness 
 is superficial and, so to speak, accidental, his renown 
 has steadily increased, so that by general and almost 
 unanimous consent, he is now considered second only 
 to Washington as an example of greatness of character 
 and greatness of achievement, of sublime patriotism, 
 of profound and intuitive wisdom, of steadfast virtue 
 and of strong and deep religious faith. 
 
 The career of Abraham Lincoln is sometimes 
 thoughtlessly looked upon as an exception to all rules ; 
 but nature allows no violation of the law of cause and 
 effect, and there is none in the case of the great eman- 
 cipator. A tree always has roots corresponding to its 
 height, and when a tree attains a great height we must 
 look for the deep and wide-spreading roots which nour- 
 ished it. The first significant thing that I notice about 
 Abraham Lincoln is that he was descended from Quaker 
 
 245 
 
246 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ancestors who had settled in Pennsylvania and later 
 moved to Virginia. This heredity in itself is almost 
 a guarantee of gentleness and patience, of piety and 
 courage. The adherents of a small, despised and 
 persecuted sect are always people of unusual independ- 
 ence and force of character; the early Quakers were 
 distinguished for these qualities and also for their in- 
 telligence and spirituality. George Fox, their founder, 
 was born in 1624 and began to preach in 1648 in the 
 troubled times of the Civil War in England. His 
 two great doctrines are love and spirituality. He was 
 a peace-maker. He taught that a Christian must not 
 fight, but must bear injustice patiently and overcome 
 evil by good. He taught that God spoke directly 
 through the reason and the conscience to every human 
 soul, and that man needed no priest to teach God's 
 will or to offer sacrifices and supphcation in his behalf, 
 and that the Scriptures themselves, much as they were 
 to be reverenced and devoutly as they were to be stud- 
 ied, were nevertheless secondary to the direct com- 
 munications of God to the soul. These doctrines may 
 be caricatured and abused, but they are nevertheless 
 true and are at the very foundation of spiritual liberty 
 and spiritual progress. They are the doctrines of all 
 the great prophets. They are the essence of the 
 preaching of Jesus, who taught that the word of God 
 should never be made of none effect by tradition, and 
 that no ceremony or sacrament should ever be consid- 
 ered a substitute for a right state of heart and life. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln came of a devout and heroic an- 
 cestry. He was called Abraham after his grandfather, 
 and because, as his father said, there had always been 
 an Abraham in the Lincoln family. This choice of a 
 name, the name of the father of the faithful, of the 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 24.7 
 
 " friend of God," of the man who at the call of duty 
 left home and kindred, testifies to the piety and cour- 
 age of the obscure ancestor who first used it, whose 
 son so revered his memory that he in turn gave it to 
 his son as a dedication to a life of faith and heroism. 
 His ancestors belonged to the plain middle class, not 
 to that of serfs or day laborers. His grandfather 
 Abraham, a friend of Daniel Boone, was persuaded 
 by the great hunter to emigrate from Virginia to the 
 rich and beautiful valley of the Ohio. He established 
 himself in 1781 or 1782 in Kentucky, and there bought 
 three tracts of land, one of four hundred acres, one 
 of eight hundred, and one of five hundred. Though 
 land in Kentucky at that time was cheap, yet the pur- 
 chase of so large an amount shows that the emigrant 
 was a man of means and of ambition. If the grand- 
 father was well-to-do we naturally ask how it is that 
 the grandson who grew to fame and power was born 
 less than thirty years after in a log cabin and in ex- 
 treme poverty. The causes are partly personal and 
 partly social. One who goes into a new country from 
 which Indians have but recently been driven away, 
 on which from time to time they make raids for plunder 
 and revenge, has a very insecure tenure of life. As 
 Grandfather Abraham was plowing in a little clearing 
 he was shot by a revengeful Indian who stole unper- 
 ceived to the edge of the dense surrounding forest. 
 The dead man left behind him five children, two girls 
 and three boys, of whom Thomas, the youngest, was 
 only six years old. The early settlers in Virginia had 
 brought from England a law of primogeniture, the 
 object of which was to keep landed estates intact and 
 to maintain a territorial aristocracy. This law had 
 passed from Virginia to Kentucky, and thus by, the 
 
248 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 operation of a landed system, harsh and unnatural at 
 the best, and ludicrously inapplicable to a primitive 
 and democratic community, poor little Thomas was 
 left not merely an orphan but utterly destitute of 
 property. He grew up as a day laborer in the back- 
 woods. He never was able to go to a school, even the 
 humblest, and never even learned to read. But he was 
 skillful with the ax and with the rifle; as a primitive 
 carpenter and a hunter he made a rude but comfortable 
 living, and at twenty-eight years of age wooed and 
 won Nancy Hanks, who, though like himself brought 
 up in the backwoods and accustomed to hardships, yet 
 possessed an innate refinement and had acquired some 
 precious elements of education. 
 
 Of these parents in the third year of their married 
 life Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin con- 
 taining but a single room, possessing but one door and 
 one window, without glass, and with no floor, except 
 the earth beaten hard; and in cabins but little better 
 than this he lived till he was twenty-one years old. His 
 clothing consisted of deerskin trousers, coonskin cap 
 and home-spun shirt and coat. His feet were bare in 
 summer and covered in winter with moccasins or un- 
 polished cow-hide boots ; not till he was a grown man 
 did he enjoy the luxury of a pair of stockings. The 
 schoolhouse in which he learned a little reading and 
 writing and arithmetic from teachers who themselves 
 knew only these elementary subjects, was a log cabin. 
 Even this humble school he was able to attend only a 
 few weeks at a time when work was slack; the whole 
 period of his school attendance was scarcely so much as 
 twelve months. 
 
 But this only shows us that we need to revise our 
 common ideas, as to what is essential to a good educa- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 249 
 
 tion. Abraham Lincoln was taught in early childhood 
 by his intelligent and devoted mother; from her he 
 learned not only to read books, but what is more 
 important, to understand them and love them. He never 
 became a learned man, but he was in the true sense of 
 the word an educated one. His circumstances allowed 
 him to read little; his temperament and his mother's 
 example made him think much. I do not by any 
 means wish to disparage our colleges and universities. 
 They offer great opportunities and are on the whole 
 the best, and for some professions the only, way to 
 success. Yet some who attend them receive little bene- 
 fit and would have attained a much better discipline on 
 the farm, in the workshop, in the office or in the store. 
 College discipline is often lax and debilitating, and the 
 superabundance of theory and small amount of prac- 
 tice produce indolence and mental dyspepsia. College- 
 bred men in many instances are burdened and crushed 
 by the weight of their learning. Their originality is 
 stifled by their knowledge of innumerable -precedents, 
 and their courage broken by their sense of the complex- 
 ity of things and the difficulties of making radical 
 changes. Colleges are better adapted to produce schol- 
 ars and prepare men for the ordinary routine of life 
 than to develop commanding geniuses who will them- 
 selves create new epochs in literature, in science, in 
 government, in religion. There is some truth in the 
 words of the epigrammatist who says that " Colleges 
 poKsh pebbles and dim diamonds." The greatest gen- 
 iuses have not been bred in the close atmosphere and 
 amid the narrow pedantries of the college, but in the 
 great school of human experience and in direct contact 
 with the realities of nature. In the carpenter shop, in 
 the market place and on the farm greater men have been 
 
250 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 bred than in any university. Jesus and Shakespeare 
 and Abraham Lincoln rebuke the pride of the profes- 
 sional scholar. How paltry and inefficient the gym- 
 nasium and the dumb-bell are in comparison with the 
 ax and the plow as a means of physical development, 
 and how paltry and inefficient as a means of intel- 
 lectual and moral development are all academic theoriz- 
 ing and historical study compared with the wrestle 
 with great current problems and the burdens of actual 
 administration ! 
 
 Abraham Lincoln did not reach his great eminence 
 and achieve his great success by any miracle. He did 
 not succeed in spite of his poverty and hardship and 
 limited education, but because of them. He grew 
 strong by constant contact with the strength-giving, 
 vitalizing earth. The air is the very source of life 
 and all day long in the field and forest and all night 
 long in the rude cabin through whose open door and 
 window and wide chimney and loosely fitted logs the 
 winds blew, the boy filled his lungs with the pure and 
 life-giving breath of heaven. Strenuous daily toil with 
 the ax and the plow gave him a keen appetite which he 
 was able to satisfy with abundance of wholesome food ; 
 and in these healthful conditions, what wonder is it 
 that he grew to lofty stature and to mighty strength 
 of body, and that upon this firm physical basis he 
 developed a singularly clear intellect and a patient and 
 steadfast will! 
 
 Nor must we forget that though his books were few 
 in number, they were very choice in quality. He be- 
 gan to read the Bible in early childhood; this para- 
 mount volume, the noblest literature of all the ages, 
 purified his heart, enlarged his mind, and by its clear 
 and simple yet beautiful and sublime language afforded 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 251 
 
 the best possible model of English style. So deeply 
 were the mind and heart of Lincoln impressed by his 
 early familiarity with the Bible, that to the end of his 
 life he wrote and spoke on great occasions with the 
 solemnity and sublimity of a Hebrew prophet. He 
 knew the best, almost all that is worth knowing, of 
 Hebrew literature ; but his acquaintance with the other 
 great literatures of antiquity was very slight. Yet 
 the backwoods boy had some insight into the wisdom of 
 the Greeks ; he read and pondered over and committed 
 to memory the fables of vEsop, which, as they enforce 
 lessons of prudence and worldly policy, are admirably 
 adapted to supplement the subliraer spiritual teachings 
 of the Bible. 
 
 Moreover, he early became acquainted with Shake- 
 speare. In the mighty mirror of his dramas he saw 
 the world reflected and learned both the outer course 
 of events and the inner workings of the heart. He 
 read also the Pilgrim's Progress, the wonderful al- 
 legory of the Christian life, the sublime prose poem 
 of spiritual adventure. Lastly, even in boyhood, Lin- 
 coln became familiar with the life of Washington and 
 with the history of the United States. 
 
 What an education he had! Few books, but all of 
 them the best, and all of them read with closest atten- 
 tion by an eager mind and with deepest sympathy by 
 a loving heart. How much better such an education 
 is than cramming a jaded, reluctant, satiated mind 
 with innumerable second rate, third rate, fifth rate and 
 tenth rate books ! Abraham Lincoln was by native en- 
 dowment, by the immediate grace of God, a King of 
 men; he walked with royal dignity, wearing a few 
 massive ornaments made of sohd gold, not trivialized 
 by a multitude of the cheap and tawdry trinkets of a 
 frivolous scholarship. 
 
25£ ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Yet with all his mighty strength of body and his 
 clear, logical intellect, Abraham Lincoln had a singu- 
 larly tender heart. He could not bear to see any living 
 creature suffer needless and remediable pain. Though 
 a backwoodsman, he was a poor hunter and never shot 
 any animal except for necessary food. Many anec- 
 dotes are told of his tenderness to bird and beast. 
 When he had become a busy lawyer, and was riding 
 the circuit, he fell behind his companions in the j ourney 
 to replace in their nest some little birds that had fallen 
 to the ground. He once waded through an ice-cold 
 stream to carry a little whining dog over. He once 
 dismounted from his horse and soiled his hands and his 
 clothes with mud to release a pig that had been caught 
 in a rail fence. He interposed his own body between 
 a poor Indian and a lot of angry men who were 
 threatening to shoot him. 
 
 Like all men of extremely sensitive and tender heart, 
 Lincoln was at times subject to deep melancholy. He 
 gave way to passionate grief when Anne Rutledge, his 
 first love, died, and throwing himself in despair upon 
 her grave, he lay there all night despite the falling 
 rain. He subsequently wrote to his friend Speed : " I 
 would be more than willing to die, but I have an irre- 
 pressible desire to live until I can be assured that the 
 world is a little better for my having lived in it." 
 
 All the public life of Abraham Lincoln must be 
 interpreted by these personal characteristics. Prom 
 early childhood he was looked on by his neighbors as 
 honest and truthful and pure and kind, as studious and 
 thoughtful, as a convincing speaker and natural leader 
 of men. 
 
 At eighteen years of age he began to write occasional 
 articles for the newspapers, at twenty-one he left the 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 253 
 
 farm for the village store, at twenty-three he was made 
 captain of a militia company and in the Black Hawk 
 war gained a little knowledge of military life. Subse- 
 quently, in imitation of Washington, he studied and 
 practised land surveying. At twenty-five he was 
 elected a member of the legislature of Illinois, in which 
 he served with ability four consecutive terms. At 
 thirty-eight he was a representative in the lower house 
 of the Congress of the United States. 
 
 From boyhood it had been his ambition to become 
 a lawyer, and from the time of his admission to the 
 bar he had practised his profession in the intervals of 
 the sessions of the legislature. After ten years of po- 
 litical hfe, he grew tired of it and devoted himself for 
 the next six years exclusively and assiduously to prac- 
 tise at the bar, until the aggressions of the Southern 
 slaveholders aroused his conscience, appealed to his 
 sympathies, and stirred his patriotic indignation. In 
 1850 the Fugitive Slave law, by which northern courts 
 and officers were compelled to returned escaped slaves 
 to their masters, was enacted; in 1854 the Missouri 
 Compromise by which slavery was restricted to the 
 southern states was repealed and the Kansas-Nebraska 
 biU making slavery optional in those states was passed ; 
 as a climax in 1857 in the Dred Scott case the Supreme 
 Court of the United States decided that residence in 
 a free state did not confer freedom upon a negro and 
 thus slavery was in effect made national. 
 
 In his boyhood and early manhood Abraham Lincoln 
 had made two trading voyages down the Mississippi 
 to New Orleans, and on his second visit to the Southern 
 city had seen men and women offered for sale in the 
 open market like horses or cattle. The repugnance 
 hfe then and there conceived for the slave system never 
 
254. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 left him ; and at the outset of his career he declared in 
 characteristically picturesque and eloquent words that 
 he would speak for freedom against slavery until every- 
 where in all this broad land, the sun shall shine, the 
 rain shall fall and the wind shall blow upon no man 
 who goes forth to unrequited toil. 
 
 Lincoln never judged moral questions in the light of 
 temporary expediency, but tested them by the eternal 
 principles of righteousness. He summed up his views 
 on slavery by saying: " If slavery is not wrong, noth- 
 ing is wrong." 
 
 The most able and eloquent of the northern defend- 
 ers of slavery was Stephen A. Douglas. When in 
 1858 Douglas was a candidate for re-election to the 
 senate of the United States, Lincoln challenged him 
 to a series of public debates. Never before had there 
 been so equal and so exciting a political duel. " The 
 farmers left their harvest fields, mechanics closed their 
 shops, merchants locked their stores. At the first meet- 
 ing 20,000 eager listeners were present." It was in 
 this debate that Lincoln used the oft-quoted words: 
 " A house divided against itself cannot stand. I be- 
 lieve this government cannot endure permanently half 
 slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be 
 dissolved, — I do not expect the house to fall, — but 
 I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will 
 become all one thing or all the other." Lincoln utterly 
 vanquished Douglas in debate and became the acknowl- 
 edged leader of the new Republican party. A year 
 later when the whole country was agitated by the 
 tragic outcome of John Brown's raid at Harper's 
 Ferry, Mr. Lincoln was called to speak at a great 
 meeting in New York city. He was introduced by 
 William Cullen Bryant, who thirty years before had 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 255 
 
 predicted his greatness. He made a speech so clear 
 in its logic and so noble in its spirit that it completely 
 captivated the vast audience. When Lincoln concluded 
 with the words, " Let us have faith that right makes 
 might, and in that faith, let us to the end dare to do 
 our duty as we understand it," many of the most 
 notable leaders of public opinion of the east were con- 
 vinced that the prairies of Illinois had produced the 
 fitting leader for the approaching crisis, and were not 
 chagrined or even astonished when a few months later 
 at Chicago Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the 
 presidency amid tremendous enthusiasm. 
 
 Yet even in the North there were many who did not 
 approve of his nomination. Mr. Lincoln had never 
 declared himself an Abolitionist. On the contrary he 
 had said to the slaveholders of the South, " I acknowl- 
 edge your rights and my obligations under the Consti- 
 tution in regard to your slaves. I confess that I hate 
 to see the poor creatures hunted down and caught and 
 carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil, but 
 I keep quiet. You ought to appreciate how much the 
 great body of the people of the North crucify their 
 feelings in order to maintain their loyalty to the Con- 
 stitution and the Union. I do oppose the extension 
 of slavery because my judgment and feelings so prompt 
 me, and I am under no obligations to the contrary. As 
 a nation we began by declaring ' all men are created 
 equal ' ; we now practically read it ' all men are created 
 equal except negroes.' When it comes to making 
 wholesale exceptions I should prefer emigrating to 
 some country where they make no pretense of loving 
 liberty, where despotism can be taken pure without the 
 base alloy of hypocrisy." 
 
 This position was not satisfactory to the extremists 
 
256 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of either party. Wendell Phillips, to his lasting dis- 
 grace, asked sneeringly, " Who is this huckster in 
 politics? Who is this slave hound of Illinois? " 
 
 When the blindness and the anger of the Abolition- 
 ists of the North were so extreme, it is easy to imagine 
 that there would be an equal blindness and misconcep- 
 tion of an opposite kind in the South. In vain Lincohi 
 tried to conciliate and win back the states which had 
 seceded when his election was announced. In his in- 
 augural address he said : " In your hands, my dissatis- 
 fied feUow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momen- 
 tous issue of civil war. The government will not as- 
 sail you. You can have no conflict without being 
 yourselves the aggressors. — We are not enemies but 
 friends." Lincoln continued the United States mail 
 service in the South and hoped that if he were patient 
 and allowed time for misunderstandings to be cleared 
 away and passions to cool, the seceded states would 
 return to their allegiance. But it was not to be. Fort 
 Sumter was fired on and the war was begun a month 
 after the inauguration. 
 
 Reluctantly Lincoln called on Congress to give him 
 men and money with which to put down the rebellion. 
 Both were freely voted and the people approved what 
 Congress had done. The South was better prepared 
 for war and won victories which caused great fear and 
 discouragement in the North. The loss of life was 
 great. The burden of taxation grew heavy. The 
 currency steadily depreciated. The number of those 
 who were willing to let the South go in order to restore 
 peace steadily increased. They declared that only the 
 worst of tyrants would attempt to force eight milUons 
 of people to submit to his government. The Presi- 
 dent's labor and responsibility was almost beyond hu- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 257 
 
 man power to bear. His raven hair turned gray, the 
 lines of care upon his sad face deepened, his strong 
 form bent as under the weight of years, he became 
 indeed " a man of sorrows." 
 
 Yet good men, in their ignorance and impatience, 
 added to his heavy burdens by their denunciations of 
 his cautious policy and by their clamors for the imme- 
 diate emancipation of the slaves. It was Lincoln's 
 sagacious policy to conciliate the strong border states 
 lest they too should join the Confederacy and so in- 
 crease the resources of the South as to make northern 
 victory hopeless. But his cautious wisdom was mis- 
 understood, and he was subject to constant and bitter 
 attacks which for a long time he thought it best to 
 bear in silence. At length, however, he was compelled 
 to answer and he did so in a letter to Horace Greeley, 
 who in his editorials in the New York Tribune had 
 been one of the President's most vehement critics. 
 Mr. Lincoln wrote: "My paramount object is to save 
 the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. 
 If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, 
 I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the 
 slaves, I would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing 
 some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. 
 What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do 
 because I believe it helps to save this Union ; and what 
 I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would 
 help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I 
 believe I am doing hurt to the cause; and I shall do 
 more whenever I believe doing more will help the cause. 
 I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, 
 and I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear 
 to be true views. I have here stated my purpose ac- 
 cording to my views of official duty, and I intend no 
 
258 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that 
 all men everywhere could be free." 
 
 No man ever surpassed and few men have equalled 
 Mr. Lincoln in the power of clear and convincing state- 
 ment, and it is not surprising that amid all detraction 
 he retained the confidence of the mass of the people. 
 
 When the Union armies began to gain great vic- 
 tories, when the loyalty of the border states was as- 
 sured, Mr. Lincoln felt that the time for which he had 
 waited had come and he issued his famous proclamation 
 emancipating the slaves of owners then in rebellion 
 against the United States; then the nation which had 
 begun the war to save the Union was willing to continue 
 it in the interest of justice and humanity. 
 
 To govern a country so large and so populous as 
 ours by manhood suffrage requires much intelligence 
 and virtue in the people ; if at any time we are afraid 
 that the people are too ignorant, too thoughtless and 
 too selfish to be trusted in great emergencies, let us turn 
 for encouragement to the record of the second election 
 of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The sufferings of the war had been great, its burdens 
 were still very heavy, the end was not yet in sight, yet 
 Lincoln received 212 electoral votes and his opponent 
 only 21. 
 
 His second inaugural deeply moved the heart and 
 conscience of the nation. He said : " Fondly do we 
 hope, reverently do we pray that this mighty scourge 
 of war may speedily pass away ; yet, if God wills that 
 it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 
 two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be 
 sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash 
 shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, still it 
 must be said, as was said three thousand years ago, the 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 259 
 
 judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto- 
 gether. With mahce toward none, with charity for all, 
 with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the 
 right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind 
 up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have 
 borne the battle, to do all which may achieve and cher- 
 ish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with 
 all nations." 
 
 These sublime and pathetic words are his last coun- 
 sel. They had hardly fallen from his lips, they had 
 not yet reached the remoter parts of the country, when 
 the strangest tragedy in our history occurred. So 
 dreadful are the possibilities of error, that Abraham 
 Lincoln, the very incarnation of wisdom, of justice and 
 of kindness, was slain as a tyrant. 
 
 Only one martyrdom in all history is likely to be 
 fixed more indelibly in the memory of our race. The 
 gentle, patient, heroic man at the hour of his highest 
 greatness was brought to the grave to which all the 
 paths of glory alike lead. 
 
 In his case it was literally according to the lines of a 
 solemn poem he was fond of quoting : 
 
 The wink of an eye, the draught of a breath 
 From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, 
 From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud; 
 O why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? " 
 
 Abraham Lincoln had in pre-eminent degree the 
 great primal virtues of justice and mercy, of patience 
 and gentleness, of love and charity, of wisdom and 
 steadfastness of purpose. 
 
 Abridging and adapting the words of Edwin Mark- 
 ham, we may say of him, he had 
 
260 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 " The rectitude and patience of the rocks. 
 The justice of the rain that falls on all. 
 The pity of the snow that hides all scars. 
 The equity of light that shines for all. 
 He built the rail-pile as he built the state, 
 The conscience in him testing every stroke. 
 To make his deed the measure of a man." 
 
 His place is among the greatest men of all ages and 
 nations. His fame is higher than that of any self- 
 aggrandizing and ambitious conqueror, greater even 
 than of a heroic defender of personal rights. It is 
 thai purest and noblest of all forms of fame, that of 
 the benefactor of a nation and race. 
 
 It is well that the birth of such a man is observed as 
 a public holiday, for the life of Abraham Lincoln is 
 among the very greatest of our national memories and 
 inspirations. " A man's life consisteth not in the 
 abundance of the things that he possesseth " and even 
 so a nation's life does not consist primarily in wheat 
 and cotton and coal and wood, but in a healthy, an 
 intelligent, a just and generous and happy population. 
 
 In many respects we reckon ourselves, and I think 
 with justice, the foremost nation of the earth, yet we 
 have not by any means conquered all the evils we are 
 able to conquer or attained all the good we are able 
 to attain. But in the future, as in the past, as occa- 
 sion shall require, God will raise up leaders to inspire 
 and direct his children, and as these leaders look back 
 for their own guidance and inspiration to the great 
 men of former generations, among the purest and wis- 
 est and noblest of their examples will be the faithful, 
 patient, wise, God-fearing, God-trusting man from the 
 prairies of Illinois, Abrahann Lincoln, 
 +• 
 
I 
 
 ^