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Cornell University Library 
 PR 33.S55 
 Analytics of literature, a manual J°' J*] e 
 
 3 1924 013 352 053 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013352053 
 
HHltlltam Hfotgfjt OTjitneg 
 
 AND 
 
 2Rjomaa l&agnegfotti 3Loutusburg 
 
 IN MEMORY OF GUIDANCE AND INSPIRATION 
 THROUGH MANY STUDENT YEARS 
 
Analytics of Literature 
 
 A MANUAL 
 
 FOR THE OBJECTIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH 
 PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 BY 
 
 L. A. SHERMAN 
 Professor of English Literature in the University of Nebraska 
 
 BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY 
 
 1893 
 
Copyright, 1893, 
 By L. A. SHERMAN. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 
 
 PRESSWORK BY GlNN & COMPANY, BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The manner in which I was led to develop and use in teaching 
 English Literature the method outlined in the following pages is 
 too long a story to tell here. For a long time I had been con- 
 vinced that an objective plan was best, but failed in attempts to 
 devise one until some six years ago. Finding then a substantial 
 principle on which a system of analysis might be based, I ven- 
 tured several experiments with it upon classes in the advanced 
 study of prose authors. The results were extraordinary. Students 
 not only learned much more of the subject proper than I had 
 ever expected or required in former years, but in a few weeks 
 radically altered their own styles. Those accustomed to write in 
 a lumbering awkward fashion began to express themselves in 
 strong, clear phrases, and with a large preponderance of simple 
 sentences. After the analysis contained essentially in the prose 
 chapters of this volume had been worked out, the poetic side of 
 literature was taken up. Would the objective method answer as 
 well here ?- With considerable confidence of its success I began 
 experimenting as before. The results were even more surprising. 
 Students apparently without taste for reading, or capacity to dis- 
 cern common literary excellencies, were enabled to appreciate and 
 enjoy poetry as well as the best. Bright scholars were also in their 
 way benefited not less than the undiscerning. Things vague were 
 made definite. Grounds of judgment before indeterminate or 
 hidden were made plain. Criticism was rendered confident ; and 
 no little enthusiasm was aroused. On account of unqualified sue- 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 cess with the mode, and not only in my own teaching but of others 
 who have tried it in ways different from mine, the resolution was 
 formed to prepare this manual, — primarily for personal use, and 
 also for others who may wish to try the plan. 1 
 
 With a little theorizing, the results just described were seen to be 
 in no way either singular or remarkable. They were simply what 
 they should be, and just such as had been and were being achieved 
 abundantly elsewhere. Twenty years ago the college study of 
 Physics and Chemistry consisted of recitations in assigned pages 
 from a text-book, just as in Greek Grammar and Metaphysics. At 
 times the students were called together to witness experiments 
 carried on by the professor, while the class remained on the other 
 side of the laboratory table. Of course this instruction, if of some 
 value to the best scholars, who could by imagination supplement 
 and deepen the impressions derived, was of no use to slower 
 minds, — we can all see why. It assumed that it was possible to 
 make the laboratory experiences of the "instructor answer for the 
 laboratory experiences of the student. Little by little this assump- 
 tion has been given up. Not only Physics and Chemistry and 
 Botany, but also Zoology and Geology, and, following their lead, 
 History and Economics and Psychology, have gone over from 
 theoretical and dogmatic to experimental modes of teaching. The 
 results have more than justified the change. Plodding, ungifted 
 students, by taking pains, and by being led through all the con- 
 secutive processes, have been enabled to acquire the scientific 
 consciousness like their betters, and, indeed, to become practically 
 just as good analysts and electricians and assayers as their in- 
 structors themselves. It is no longer a question of gifts o/ genius, 
 except in theoretical lines and in dealing with unsolved problems. 
 Science has, in its method of substituting experiments and expe- 
 riences for second-hand knowledge, found a means of bridging 
 the chasm between exceptionally endowed and mediocre minds. 
 
 i Those interested to know more concerning the genesis of the method will find 
 the main facts told in the University Studies of the University of Nebraska issue 
 for July, 1892. 
 
PREFACE. vil 
 
 For reasons identical with the above, various other subjects as 
 History, Mathematics, and Economics have come to be taught in 
 the same way as the sciences. The scientific method has in each 
 case been found to be the best, simply because it is nature's way, 
 and the parent's way, and the way men learn their trades and crafts 
 and callings in practical life. The professors of Chemistry and 
 Physics and Geology, considering the closeness of their contact 
 with the industrial world, have been slow in recognizing and appro- 
 priating its advantages. The earliest scientists were as scholastic 
 and professional as college fellows. Hence it has happened that 
 subjects farthest removed from the common touch have lingered 
 longest in purely academic methods. There can be little question 
 that literature remains at the end of the list, though there have 
 been material advances. In a general way it has long been recog- 
 nized, even by those not specialists in the subject, that there is 
 little profit in requiring students to memorize observations from 
 text-books about literature, or biographies of authors, or circum- 
 stances under which masterpieces have been composed. Clearly 
 they must go to literature itself; they must get their acquaintance 
 with books and authors and circumstances as nearly as possible at 
 first hand. They are therefore sent into the library to find out 
 things for themselves, — as they should be. But, among students 
 set thus to study literature in its pure forms, only those quick to per- 
 ceive principles and merits intuitively have thus far consciously or 
 unconsciously gotten much from the subject. The slower of per- 
 ception are not helped to find the implied processes. Especially has 
 this been true of poetry. There has been little success in teaching 
 this except to such as have already felt its power, and, so far as my 
 observation goes, little attempt to teach it otherwise than intellect- 
 ually. In average college classes, hardly more than fifty per cent 
 of the students have any taste for poetry beyond a burlesque ^neid 
 or the Hans Breitmann Ballads. All their training has been essen- 
 tially intellectual. The theory of higher education assumes that 
 there is no direct means of reaching the sensibilities, but that 
 through addressing the understanding directly they may be aroused 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 to some exercise indirectly. Hence, of all young men in the world 
 of equal privileges and knowledge the academic undergraduate, 
 except for causes outside of the curriculum, is most elementary in 
 his emotional culture. Every day of his residence at the university 
 contributes to the disproportion between the intellectual and the 
 emotional powers of his mind. But polite literature is in the last 
 analysis emotional ; and all its charms and message must be spir- 
 itually discerned. 
 
 The first requisite, therefore, in teaching literature, would seem 
 to be some certain means of reaching and engaging the sensibilities 
 more directly. So far as their exercise is called for in teaching 
 science the method in general use assures it. By it each student 
 acquires not only systematic knowledge concerning the aspects and 
 nature of the phenomena considered, — which is of the understand- 
 ing, but also experimental knowledge of each quality and process, 
 — which is of the feelings and becomes a part of himself. All this 
 is of course trite enough to teachers well-versed in the theories of 
 their work. I take it the most of us, who have been trying to 
 interest young men and women in the masterpieces of our litera- 
 ture, know well enough wherein our methods fail. It is no wonder 
 that the most eminent teachers in this department throughout the 
 country are by no means agreed as to how better results may be 
 secured. New suggestions and expedients are put forth constantly 
 by enthusiastic and progressive instructors, all no doubt of value, 
 but wanting that major principle which they might supplement or 
 assist. The method generally in use in our best colleges is a com- 
 bination of the philologic and the scientific, the one adapted from 
 the study of the classics, the other borrowed from the laboratories. 
 Both are excellent as far as they go, but neither reaches further 
 than the intellect. It is well and necessary to study into the 
 forms and language an author uses, but only as the means to an 
 end, and not an end it is to be taken for granted the student must 
 or will compass of himself. I have never found pupils capable 
 of doing anything of the sort, and do not believe that such 
 exist. As to the influence and worth of a given author, students 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 are set to find what has been thought and written concerning him, 
 just as concerning questions of fact in a German seminar of His- 
 tory. There is not the slightest question that such work and much 
 of it has its use in the study of literature, but not as the means of 
 finding out the quality and power of a Browning or an Emerson. 
 That is not a question of fact to be made out through other men's 
 observations and judgments, as of historical happenings ages ago. 
 It is a matter of personal discernment, and all the data are present 
 in the pages of the author himself. What the critics say about 
 proportions and kinds of excellence is like what the professor of 
 Chemistry used to say when he talked to his classes from over the 
 experimenting table. The students must be called in to get their 
 own experiences of each degree and quality in some way for them- 
 selves. No other man's impressions may take the place of ours. 
 We may weigh, compare, and accept or reject, but must first have 
 impressions or judgments of our own, or we shall be dealing with 
 unknown quantities. The paramount business in the teaching of 
 literature is to enable the student to have first impressions, to 
 develop in him the power of independent observation and judg- 
 ment ; to show him how to discern and interpret every manner of 
 excellence and beauty for himself. 
 
 With the scientific method, as most of us have used it, there is 
 apparently another defect. In our literary laboratory there is no 
 talk about elements. Organic compounds are taken for granted 
 and treated as ultimate phenomena, without much recognition that 
 there may be ' inorganic ' or less complicated forms of the same 
 kind, as well as constant ultimate elements whose presence in new 
 proportions and new combinations make up all differences ob- 
 served. It is as if there had once been, or should be, an effort 
 to teach Chemistry without recognition of the unlike molecular 
 Constitution, we will say, of spring water and coal tar. In other 
 words, Chaucer and Shakespeare are considered simply as Chaucer 
 and Shakespeare, with no reference to the fact that there must 
 be in both common constituents and factors which, in differ- 
 ent frequency and degrees of potency, make up the very diverse 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 effects of their respective poetry. The same must be true also of 
 our prosaists. The differences between the style of Newman and 
 De Quincey can be analyzed out through inventorying all points of 
 sentence structure, as also each element or item in the character 
 of their respective terms, phrases, and figures. 
 
 The aim of the present manual is simply to remedy, so far as 
 may be, the seeming defects in the teaching of literature just 
 considered. It is in no sense a substitute for the various text- 
 books on the subject now in use. Its purpose, more particularly, 
 is not only to render somewhat of the higher interpretation of 
 literature possible to such as have little normal bent towards 
 letters, but likewise to enable the better gifted to understand 
 more definitely and confidently their own processes. It essays 
 to make criticism begin on less vague and more exact foundations. 
 There is no desire or expectation to render the art of criticism a 
 popular accomplishment, but to recognize and distinguish its 
 objective from its subjective aspects. The first judgments of an 
 expert critic depend on observation, often unconscious, of certain 
 outer and material characteristics. The commonest student can 
 be taught to do thus much through proper comprehension of first 
 principles. He may never tread the higher walks of subjective 
 criticism, — though he may do even that, — but he will at least 
 appreciate the work of those who render this rare service, and 
 his culture will be vastly enriched and broadened withal. This is 
 not a volume, moreover, to be merely read. Each topic and 
 point must be diligently and thoroughly worked out to a personal 
 solution. The discussion in each chapter is in the nature of a 
 condensed lecture preparatory to experiment and verification in 
 the given analysis, and should be carefully expanded and if need 
 be further elucidated by the teacher. It seemed unnecessary to 
 swell the contents of the volume by treating the various topics 
 more diffusely. The text-pages of the volume proper are adapted 
 alike to students of higher or lower grade, and the discussion so 
 far as left incomplete is continued in Notes provided in an appen- 
 dix. To aid teachers not acquainted with laboratory methods, 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 hints and suggestions how to set the student at work for himself 
 are appended to many chapters. The usual manual study of 
 literature alone is presupposed; and classes that have not yet 
 undertaken so much as this, if of the ninth or any higher grade, 
 may very profitably be given, in a more or less simplified form, 
 the earlier prose as well as poetic chapters. Indeed, there is no 
 lack of evidence that the first school work in literature should be 
 solely of this objective kind. 
 
 In the study of literature perhaps more than in most subjects 
 besides the teacher must first get the sympathies, the feelings of 
 his class aroused. The students will then do anything he may 
 require, and much more that is not asked for. If a minute study 
 of references is to be exacted, or the English of some author to be 
 looked into, the pupils can be held to enthusiastic work after they 
 have felt his power, but not before. There must in no case be 
 omission or abbreviation of steps. Though some scholars may 
 learn the knack of analysis by merely observing others, it will be 
 best, as is insisted on in all experimental subjects, that they do each 
 process formally. Thework laid out in the last of the book may 
 seem too tedious to beginners with the mode, and the ' Sugges- 
 tions to the Teacher' have been prepared rather to meet the 
 wants of those that will wish to compass the book in a general 
 way than for such as may prefer to go through a few topics ex- 
 haustively. Chapters VI., VIII., X., and XIII. might alone fur- 
 nish a year's work. The book is intended, if used in a connected 
 survey of the subject with classes of college rank, to furnish three 
 exercises per week through two semesters. That in itself seems 
 much, but is no more than is given to laboratory practice in 
 elementary Chemistry or Physics, and that but introductory to 
 two or four semesters of undergraduate study in these subjects. 
 The use of curves in the exhibition of results is strongly recom- 
 mended. With average classes the teacher will find them of 
 great advantage not only in making a passing difficulty easier, 
 but also in developing in the student a quick sense of forms and 
 qualities, or what one might call the literary consciousness. It 
 
xil PREFACE. 
 
 will be found convenient to have a blackboard painted into 
 squares, after the fashion of profile paper, that the several curves 
 for a given passage may be exhibited together. 
 
 It is a common notion that the average boy or girl of the earlier 
 high-school grades can have little understanding or appreciation 
 of the phrases and turns of poetry. This so far as figures are con- 
 cerned is doubtless true, but it is by no means true of poetic ex- 
 pressions proper. Pupils of those years have not yet learned to 
 carry the sense quickly of the common-prose they read aloud in 
 school exercises. The fault is not with the imaging faculty as such, 
 which is never more active in later life than now, but with the 
 power to use it at another's instance. In other words, phantasy 
 is at first chiefly spontaneous, and they have not yet learned well 
 how to use it determinatively. In the first exercises of this vol- 
 ume the teacher will find that young pupils will begin distinguish- 
 ing poetic from prose words by mere intellectual inference. In 
 their use of books they are accustomed to deal chiefly with logical 
 terms, and readily detect such as are not of that sort. A few 
 days' practice will enable them to test directly by the emotional 
 intension of words ; and through exercising this species of discern- 
 ment they will grow rapidly in taste and power to respond to 
 poetic quality. The secret of the process, so far as there is any 
 secret, is in thus using the element of consciousness. Any impres- 
 sion communicated to the sensibilities will be very vague and in- 
 effective until brought definitely to the notice of the mind. In 
 general, the method, if tried intelligently and fairly, will discover to 
 those who suppose they have no taste for the best literature that 
 they have such taste ; and it will make those who have never found 
 anything in poetry both feel and know something of its power. 
 
 At various times in the development and first use of the present 
 method it seemed to me beset with manifold objections, some of 
 which will no doubt offer serious trouble to many to whom the 
 idea is new. Will not the mind, through such analyses, become 
 too conscious of ' associational words,' or 'tropes,' or 'effects,' or 
 other elements, for best enjoyment of poetry as a whole ? Here 
 
PREFACE. X1I1 
 
 would seem to be an objection indeed, and I must confess I 
 expected some such results with matter-of-fact minds. But quite 
 to the cqntrary I have seen no instance in which literal logical 
 intellects have not been spiritually quickened like the rest. I di/1 
 not remember I had known eminent chemists who, one might 
 naturally suppose, were as conscious of the chemical constitution 
 of things as Bunsen himself, yet never appeared to b e interfered 
 with in appropriating toothsome morsels by any thought of the 
 intricate carbon compounds they were swallowing. There are 
 always theoretic objections, like the New England farmers' opposi- 
 tion to the introduction of locomotives, that are practically of not 
 the slightest moment. There is a very natural antipathy to treat- 
 ing aesthetics by scientific methods. Yet there is in the nature qf 
 things no reason why we may not as well analyze the tissues of 
 human speech and thought as the tissues of the human bqdy. 
 Within a generation science has been broadened by the use of 
 imagination, and there is no good reason why aesthetics in turn 
 should not have the material aid of facts and statistics. Both are 
 equally modes of search for truth, but truth is always first found 
 in applied and concrete forms. Not that one man's figures can 
 be weighed against another's, for one word in the one may be 
 equal to a volume of the other ; not that one man's force can be 
 expressed in terms of another man's force. It makes little differ- 
 ence what proportion of elements is found in any author, so far 
 as other authors are concerned. It is the experience of the find- 
 ing that makes the student expert in judgment. No poem can 
 in any sense be equal to another poem, for everything of worth in 
 art is wholly unique. But that is no reason why we may not study 
 out stroke by stroke, in somewhat of a scientific spirit, the pur- 
 pose and meaning of great paintings, as has been done for ages. 
 Even the sources of power in music are beginning to be inquired 
 into through like analytic means. I have noticed with pleasure 
 essentially the same course of interpretation in a series of papers 
 on 'Impressions of Beethoven's Sonatas,' by Frederick Horace 
 Clark, in Vol. I. of Music. 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 Perhaps some excuse will be expected for introducing the chap- 
 ters on Shakespeare and Browning. Of course there are those 
 who do not believe that any minds worth considering ever meet 
 with difficulty in comprehending or interpreting the art of Shake- 
 speare. On the contrary, I must beg to believe that there are 
 nowhere either teachers or students not alike in need, from every 
 quarter, of all the helps they can command. The subject is so 
 complex and vast that there is small hope of knowing Shakespeare 
 even a little save by the co-operation of all who can contribute 
 even single hints. As to the other point, I have known hundreds 
 of students who could never have understood anything of Shake- 
 speare's art without prolonged and systematic help, who yet, 
 interpreting him with help, have taken into their minds new influ- 
 ence and inspiration. Some of these through the occasion of 
 Shakespeare's types have derived new ideals, and in accordance 
 with them changed their lives and character. I do not believe 
 the business of teaching Shakespeare's art unworthy of any teacher, 
 or the time it may require, in college classes or out of them, ill- 
 spent. The paramount evils of the day in cultured circles are 
 intellectualism and sentimentality. I do not see how they are to 
 be reached and corrected save by the study of literature ; and in 
 literature I do not think there is other such speedy or effective 
 means of cure as a complete and thorough study of the great 
 plays of Shakespeare. The chapter on Browning was added, not 
 to take the place of handbooks introductory to his poetry, but to 
 supplement these, as I believed, in needful ways. 
 
 The lack of a consistent and quotable system of aesthetics has 
 forced me from time to time to lay down principles of my own. 
 These I find I have been led little by little and unconsciously to 
 expand or enlarge, until at the end of the volume I find myself 
 committed much further to my own theories than I should have 
 been willing at first to contemplate. For this there seems now 
 no remedy. If the doctrine advanced prove unacceptable, its 
 positions can be rejected without integral disuse of any chapter or 
 paragraph. In keeping with the new movement in philosophy I 
 
PREFACE. xv 
 
 have treated imagination as a mode of mental action, not as a gift 
 or faculty. It has, of course, been necessary to devise or appropri- 
 ate various terms, some of which may require a word of explana- 
 tion. As is well known, the new psychology has discarded the use 
 of ' mind ' and ' soul ' as designations of the conscious principle. 
 Needing a name for this that should be free from the suggestions 
 of faculties or attainments that attach to the former of those terms, 
 and wishing to avoid the experiential associations belonging to the 
 latter, also finding it impracticable to use the • consciousness ' of the 
 new psychologists in their sense of the word, I was forced to take 
 up with the neutral, colorless ' ego.' ' Experimental,' as in ' exper- 
 imental religion,' pace the scientists, is resuscitated. ' Spiritual ' 
 also has been taken, in the absence of a more available designa- 
 tion, to indicate the general exercise of refined feeling. I have in 
 particular avoided giving definitions, except provisionally until they 
 shall have been lodged potentially in the student's consciousness. 
 Considerable summarizing and other repetition has been permitted, 
 chiefly to ensure consideration of principal conclusions from sev- 
 eral points of view. So far as. able I have not hesitated to intro- 
 duce from art and other outside subjects any illustrations that 
 seemed likely to be helpful to junior learners, and particularly 
 such as may study the book without a teacher. Literature is not 
 the thing immature thinkers are apt to regard it ; and I have felt 
 bound to lay special stress everywhere upon its practical aspects, 
 and treat the question of its influence and moral uses with some 
 fulness. As to the inconstant character of the Notes, the purpose 
 is generally either to extend a discussion, or to give references, 
 or to stimulate the student to further thought and reading. 
 
 The work is based throughout upon abundant statistics and 
 other data, soon to be published, concerning the development of 
 form in prose and poetry, both in English and out of it. Several 
 monographs upon investigations in this line are finished or in prog- 
 ress. Two ~of these, by former pupils, — The Decrease of Predi- 
 cation and of Sentence Weight, by Mr. G. W. Gerwig, and The 
 Progress in Figures from Piers Plowman to Spenser, by Mr. H. C. 
 
xvi PREFACE. 
 
 Peterson, — have been depended upon in the preparation of sev- 
 eral chapters. The latter gentleman has further assisted by com- 
 piling, from exercises used in his own teaching, the questions on 
 the art of Macbeth, which succeed the Notes. That the book 
 will prove a complete treatment of the topics considered, I do not 
 in the least expect. Any attempt of the kind even in a field like 
 this, only partly new, must be supplemented and amended by 
 many scores of hands. If it serve merely as the basis or beginning 
 of a system of objective study for English Literature, the author 
 will feel amply repaid for the labor and perplexities undergone in 
 putting it together. 
 
 I am under obligation to many friends for assistance and encour- 
 agement in various ways. Among these I am peculiarly indebted 
 for suggestions in the proofs or otherwise, to Professor Cook of 
 Yale University, and Professor Corson of Cornell, and to Professor 
 Wolfe and Professor McMillan of my own college. 
 
 L. A. S. 
 
 Lincoln, Neb., December 29, 1892. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Literature and its Divisions 1-5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Prose and the Poetic Style Distinguished . . .6-11 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Suggestive Words 12-14 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Force in Poetry 15-20 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Tone Quality 21-30 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The Associations of Words 3 l ~4° 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Meters, the Order of the Sentence, and Rhyme . . . 41-51 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Poetic Phrases 5 2_ S9 
 
 xvii 
 
xviii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Figures 6 °-7° 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Figures — Continued 71-86 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The Theme 87-105 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The Classification of Poetry 106-120 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Art, and Principles of Art 121-143 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 The Art of Shakespeare 144-173 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 The Art of Shakespeare — Continued 174-189 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Art of Browning 190-209 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 The Province of Literary Art 210-239 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 The Moral Uses of Art and Poetry 240-21:5 
 
CONTENTS. xix 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PAGES 
 
 The Literary Sentence Length in English Prose . . 256-262 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 The Decrease of Predication 263-268 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Co-ordination of Clauses 269-272 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Subordination of Clauses 273-275 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 Suppression of Clauses 276-280 
 
 \ 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Units of Thought and of Expression of Thought . . 281-293 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 The Weight of Styles 294-303 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 The New Articulation of Clauses 304-312 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 Prose Force 313-325 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 All Men's and Every Man's Best Style 326-331 
 
xx CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Style, and Varieties of Style 332-34 1 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 The Prose Use of the Imagination , 34 2_ 353 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 The Inter-Relations of Prose and Poetry .... 354-366 
 
 Notes 367-440 
 
 Questions on the Art of Shakespeare's Macbeth . . 441-454 
 Index 455-468 
 
ANALYTICS OF LITERATURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LITERATURE AND ITS DEPARTMENTS. 
 
 In a certain sense the chief object of the whole study here 
 undertaken is to find out what literature is. There is enough of 
 mystery attaching to the subject, even with those who should 
 "know it best, to warrant an attempt at analyzing its elements, so 
 far as possible, from the very bottom. But before the task is 
 undertaken there should be some general notion of the scope 
 and the limitations of literature, and of the ends it serves. We 
 should in the main be clear, both as to what it is in nature, and 
 what it accomplishes for society. 
 
 Stopford Brooke's observations at the opening of his Primer of 
 English Literature have helped so much first thinking upon the 
 subject that it may be well to begin with them here. " By litera- 
 ture," he says in substance, "we mean the written thoughts and 
 feelings of intelligent men and women arranged in a way which 
 will give pleasure to the reader. As to its form, it has two large 
 divisions, one of which is called prose literature, and the other 
 poetical literature. But we must not think that everything that 
 is called prose is literature. We cannot say, for instance, that a 
 ship's log, or a catalogue, or the daily journal of a traveller is to 
 be called literature simply because it is written in prose. Writ- 
 ing is not literature unless it gives to the reader a pleasure which 
 arises, not only from the things said, but from the way in which 
 
2 LITERATURE AND ITS DEPARTMENTS. 
 
 they are said, and that pleasure is only given when the words are 
 carefully, or curiously, or beautifully put together in sentences. 
 To do this in a special way is to have what we call style. As 
 much art must be used in building sentences up out of words as 
 in building houses, if we wish the prose we write to be worthy 
 of the name of literature. Again, in looking at a large building, 
 we see not only the way in which it is built, but also the character 
 and mind of the builder. So also in a prose book which is fit to 
 belong to literature we ought to feel that there is a distinct mind 
 and character who is speaking to us through the style, that is, 
 through the way in which the words are put together. Prose, 
 then, is not literature unless it have style and character, and be 
 written with curious care. Of poetical literature we may say the 
 same thing. Poetry must be tried by rules more severe than 
 those by which we judge prose, and unless it satisfies these rules 
 it does not take rank as literature. There must be more care 
 taken, more beauty, more musical movement in the arrangement 
 of the words than in prose; and the way in which the thoughts 
 and feelings of the poet are put together into words will always 
 be, in true poetry, wholly different from the way in which they 
 would be put together by a prose writer." 
 
 Now all these things are true, but fall far short of being the 
 whole truth. Of course Mr. Brooke is not to be understood 
 as implying in these general observations that nothing more 
 than curious care in composition, or the quality of giving pleas- 
 ure to the reader, is necessary to make a given page, or chap- 
 ter, or volume literature. Rather is literature the sum of the 
 thoughts and the feelings or experiences of the race that have 
 been recognized as valuable beyond the moment of their first 
 utterance, and hence been treasured up for further use. Any- 
 thing deemed worth thinking again, or experiencing again, and 
 preserved, no matter how, with such intention or expectation, is 
 literature. It is not essential at all that it be written in books or 
 stored on the shelves of libraries; for the hymns of the Rig Veda, 
 the histories of Moses, and the poems of Homer were preserved 
 
LITERATURE AND ITS DEPARTMENTS. 3 
 
 for many generations in nothing more enduring than the human 
 memory. The very essence of literature is thus seen to be com- 
 mon service to mankind. No man can perpetuate the thoughts 
 of his mind, or the select and rare experiences of his soul simply 
 because they are good or beautiful. The fact that his thought 
 or sentiment lives after him proves not that it is true, or that he 
 believed it immortal, but simply that it has been of service to 
 other minds, and has been preserved that the service may con- 
 tinue. We must then take care not to suppose that literature is ■ 
 only a something that gives pleasure to the reader, and that skill 
 or nicety of expression is alone sufficient to produce it. The ship's 
 log, or a catalogue, or the daily journal of a traveler does not 
 become literature merely by being written out with "curious 
 care," or by being made to reveal the distinct mind and charac- 
 ter of the author, for his may be no personality that one cares to 
 come in contact with. On the other hand, even a ship's log or 
 a catalogue may become literature, if it prove capable of being 
 something to those who read it. 
 
 If this be what literature is in its objective, essential nature, 
 what then is it potentially? What can it accomplish? What 
 does it do ? 
 
 It will be necessary first to consider the nature of institutions 
 in general. An institution may be defined not inexactly as an 
 organized method of obeying a common impulse, or of supplying 
 a common need. The common impulse to amass property and 
 maintain it against purloiners would of itself, without other con- 
 current tendencies, in due time produce the administration of 
 justice. The possession of a principle of conscience in common 
 makes even the members of a tribe of savages combine and co- 
 operate in instituting some rude form of sacrifice and worship. 
 The impulse which in general prompts every civilized parent to 
 the resolution that, at whatever cost, each child shall begin in 
 life where its father and mother left off, has given rise to savings 
 banks and universities. So throughout the whole list of com- 
 mon impulses and recognized needs, and institutional devices cor- 
 
4 LITERATURE AND ITS DEPARTMENTS. 
 
 responding. But there is in special a common impulse to hold 
 fast that which is good and helpful; and this, before the invention 
 of letters, prompted men to commit to memory the ennobling and 
 inspiring strains of early poetry, and later to write out slowly 
 and painfully the facts and happenings of early history. Such 
 was the beginning of literature in both poetry and prose. 
 
 But there are other impulses that, newly evolved from time to 
 time, have joined forces to the same effect. Among such none 
 is more remarkable than that which prompts to the transmission 
 and spread of new ideas and sentiments. Strange is it there is no 
 discovery of new truth, no choice and ennobling experience of 
 the soul but prompts the possessor to impart and transmit it to 
 others. It is noteworthy that there is no corresponding genuine, 
 persistent impulse to transmit or perpetuate the bad. It is 
 indeed seldom that men are willing to be estimated or remem- 
 bered at their worst. Nature, moreover, tends to suppress and 
 eliminate whatever is deleterious after the third or fourth gen- 
 eration at the longest. 
 
 There is, again, the social impulse which sends men forth to 
 seek communion not only with their superiors, but upon occa- 
 sion their inferiors as well. Even the Aristotles and Bacons who 
 read the open secrets in the outer world for themselves, and by 
 their prescience need no aid from books, must yet turn aside 
 and commune with the authors they have antiquated and dis- 
 placed. This necessity not only that the small shall sit at the 
 feet of the great, but that even the great shall hold intellectual 
 communion with the small, has almost as in obedience to an 
 automatic law made literature indispensable in a higher or a 
 lower form to every mind. 
 
 What, then, is literature in its potentiality? It is the most 
 powerful instrument known or devised by society for transmitting, 
 as its best inheritance to each new generation, the treasured, 
 choicest thought and feeling of the ages before. Without its aid 
 civilization would go about in a circle with no advance; with its 
 assistance no time is wasted in learning over again old knowl- 
 
LITERATURE AND ITS DEPARTMENTS. 5 
 
 edge, in rediscovering old truths, or in relearning by experience. 
 It supplies ready-made and well-tried criteria of taste and con- 
 duct. It exhibits the ideals after which the last generation has 
 striven. If it is borne in mind that the ideal of one age tends to 
 pass into the actual of that next following, it will be clear that 
 largely by the aid of literature each new generation is enabled to 
 begin as a foundation with that with which, as its best complete 
 structure, the preceding generation finished. 
 
 As to the divisions of literature, it should now be clear that 
 the general classification into prose and poetry according to form 
 is a delusion and a snare. For, if anything prosaic was ever 
 written, much of the so-called poetry of the English classical 
 period is such, even to the last word; while, on the other hand, 
 if anything poe'tical was ever written, much, one may say, of 
 Jeremy Taylor, of Hawthorne, of Butcher and Lang's or Pro- 
 fessor Palmer's translation of Homer, or Professor Norton's of 
 Dante, unquestionably is such. It is only necessary or possible 
 here to recognize two great divisions: all literature of fact or 
 judgment should be entered as thought-compositions or prose, 
 and all literature proceeding from or addressed to the emotions 
 as sentiment-compositions or poetry. In other words, that 
 which informs, coming from the intellect and going to the intel- 
 lect, is prose; that which moves, coming from the heart and 
 going to the heart, is poetry. De Quincey has well named the 
 two departments respectively, the Literature of Knowledge and 
 the Literature of Power. Of these departments, poetry is the 
 first to be evolved in every civilization, and will be first treated 
 here. 
 
PROSE AND POETIC STYLE DISTINGUISHED. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PROSE AND THE POETIC STYLE DISTINGUISHED. 
 
 The style best adapted to prose is that which conveys most 
 directly and effectively. 
 
 Any person prompted to communicate a fact or thought natu- 
 rally seeks the most definite and exact expression. The mind 
 also of the hearer or reader, on the slightest hint that the speaker 
 or writer has a prose-purpose, takes the statement literally and 
 seriously, and proceeds to realize it. 1 The most important ele- 
 ment in this conveying form of expression is predication. 2 
 
 But the style best adapted to poetry is that which suggests most 
 vividly and abundantly. 
 
 The poet perhaps oftener shuns than seeks literal and precise 
 expression. He is not so much concerned to set forth the 
 definite time and space relations of things as to test and treat 
 them experientially. Moreover, at the first hint that the pur- 
 pose is poetic, the reader draws upon his own choicest expe- 
 riences touching that which is presented to his mind, and 
 proceeds to idealize it. 3 The simplest elements in the suggestive 
 mode of expression are epithet and exclamation. 
 
 Note the contrast between the declarative and the suggestive 
 
 iThat is, if a fact, by reconstruction of the situation through phantasy, using the 
 language as a strict letter of directions; if a thought, by trying to derive the same 
 judgment or conclusion independently, from such data as the reader may chance 
 to have in his own mind. 
 
 2 There is, of course, no predication in the speaker's thought. It serves on utter- 
 ance chiefly to signalize and attest his conviction that he has discerned the truth. 
 
 8 That is, by the aid, not now of phantasy, but imagination. In other words, the 
 reader, understanding that he is released from the obligation of literalness, gives 
 himself up to all the satisfaction or delight that his fancy can make the passage 
 yield. 
 
PROSE AND POETIC STYLE DISTINGUISHED. 7 
 
 quality in the following sentences. Try also whether those of 
 the one form may be converted into really equivalent sentences 
 of the other : — 
 
 Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. — The duke struggled, 
 rose from the block, and looked reproachfully at the executioner. — Comfort 
 is strength. — Everywhere around you are evidences of the existence and 
 movement of a mysterious power which you can neither see, nor touch, nor 
 define. — The people now dragged us above forty yards on the sand: it was 
 the first and last time I was ever on a cayman's back. — The impression pro- 
 duced upon my mind, when I first visited this beautiful glen, will never be 
 obliterated. 
 
 " How beautiful this night ! " 
 
 " But the people, — but the cries, 
 The crowding round, and proffering the prize ! " 
 
 " But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
 Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, 
 And the imperial votaress passed on 
 In maiden meditation, fancy-free." 
 
 " But quick 
 To the main wonder, now. A vault, see; thick 
 Black shade about the ceiling, though fine slits 
 Across the buttress suffer light by fits 
 Upon a marvel in the midst. Nay, stoop — 
 A dullish gray-streaked cumbrous font, a group 
 Round it, — each side of it, where'er one sees, — 
 Upholds it; shrinking Caryatides 
 Of just-tinged marble like Eve's lilied flesh 
 Beneath her maker's finger when the fresh 
 First pulse of life shot brightening the snow." 
 
 Moreover, the difference between the declarative and the ex- 
 clamatory sentence is here illustrated. In the former, the reader 
 is asked to comprehend and contemplate a fact or principle as 
 simply actual; in the latter, assuming the fact, he is asked to test 
 or evaluate its significance in his emotions. If the exclamatory 
 sentences just quoted were to take the declarative form, they 
 would become inadequate, since they would express experiential 
 
8 PROSE AND POETIC STYLE DISTINGUISHED. 
 
 propositions intellectually. "This night is very beautiful" is 
 valueless as a fact, and fails to reach the feelings because it does 
 not provoke estimation of degree. In like manner the prose quo- 
 tations — except the last, which is in part emotional — would 
 become void if made exclamatory, since, dealing with facts and 
 judgments, they cannot be experientially realized. 
 
 It is now recognized as essential to a good prose style that the 
 writer make his sentences pointed and strong, and that he prune 
 away all superfluous adjectives. In poetry, the tendency to the 
 contrary is no less positive and clear. We shall find that the best 
 poets not only multiply adjuncts, and subordinate the verb to 
 these, 1 but frequently, even in the strongest passages, suppress 
 predication altogether. In addition to the examples of such 
 omission as occur above, we may cite the following : — 
 
 " Here Homer, with the broad suspense 
 Of thunderous brows, and lips intense 
 Of garrulous god-innocence. 
 
 " There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb 
 The crowns o' the world. Oh eyes sublime, 
 With tears and laughter for all time ! " 
 
 Mrs. Browning : A Vision of Poets. 
 
 " And one, a foreground black with stones and slags, 
 Beyond, a line of heights, and higher 
 All barr'd with long white cloud the scornful crags, 
 And highest, snow and fire. 
 
 " And one, an English home, — gray twilight pour'd 
 On dewy pastures, dewy trees, 
 Softer than sleep, — all things in order stor'd, 
 A haunt of ancient Peace. 
 
 " Nor these alone, but every landscape fair, 
 As fit for every mood of mind, 
 Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern, was there, 
 Not less than truth design'd." 
 
 Tennyson : The Palace of Art. 
 
 tExcept when the verb contains a metaphor, or is otherwise vital to the sentence. 
 
PROSE AND POETIC STYLE DISTINGUISHED. 9 1 
 
 But the suppression of predication is not confined to single 
 lines or stanzas of poetry. Sometimes it plays an important part 
 in the effect of a whole poem, as these remarkable examples 
 show : — 
 
 " Pure moonlight in thy garden, sweet, to-night — 
 Pure moonlight in thy garden, and the breath 
 Of fragrant roses ! O my heart's delight, 
 
 Wed thou with Love, but I will wed with Death. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 " Dawn in thy garden, with the faintest sound — 
 Uncertain, tremulous, awaking birds ! 
 Dawn in thy garden, and from meadows round, 
 The sudden lowing of expectant herds. 
 
 * * * * 
 " Wind in thy garden to-night, my love, 
 
 Wind in thy garden and rain; 
 A sound of storm in the shaken grove, 
 And cries as of spirits in pain ! 
 
 * * * # 
 
 " Snow in thy garden, falling thick and fast, 
 
 Snow in thy garden, where the grass shall be ! 
 What dreams to-night? Thy dreaming nights are past. 
 Thou hast no glad or grievous memory. 
 
 * * * # 
 
 " Night in thy garden, white with snow and sleet — 
 Night rushing on with wind and storm toward day ! 
 Alas, thy garden holdeth nothing sweet, 
 Nor sweet can come again, and thou away." 
 
 Philip Bourke Marston : Thy Garden. 
 
 " Then I reach, I must believe, 
 Not her soul in vain, 
 For to me again 
 It reaches, and past retrieve 
 Is wound in the toils I weave; 
 
 " And must follow as I require, 
 As befits a thrall, 
 Bringing flesh and all, 
 Essence and earth-attire, 
 To the source of the tractile fire : 
 
10 PROSE AND POETIC STYLE DISTINGUISHED. 
 
 " Till the house called hers, not mine, 
 
 With a growing weight 
 
 Seems to suffocate 
 If she break not its leaden line 
 And escape from its close confine. 
 
 " Out of doors into the night ! 
 
 On to the maze 
 
 Of the wild wood-ways, 
 Not turning to left nor right 
 From the pathway, blind with sight — 
 
 " Making through rain and wind 
 
 O'er the broken shrubs, 
 
 'Twixt the stems and stubs, 
 With a still, composed, strong mind, 
 Nor a care for the world behind — 
 
 " Swifter and still more swift, 
 As the crowding peace 
 Doth to joy increase 
 In the wide blind eyes uplift 
 Through the darkness and the drift ! " 
 
 Robert Browning: Mesmerism. 
 
 What would be the effect of introducing predication into these 
 stanzas is evident : they would be turned into prose, or would 
 become at best prose-poetry merely. Prose-poetry is produced 
 not only by putting intellectual propositions into emotional terms 
 and forms, but also by putting things which must be emotionally 
 or spiritually discerned into terms and forms which appeal to the 
 intellect alone. These famous lines of Denham furnish a good 
 illustration of the latter fault : — 
 
 " O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream 
 My great example, as it is my theme ! 
 Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, 
 Strong without rage, without o'erflowing, full." 
 
 Here the sentence form is exclamatory, as it should be ; but the 
 author, instead of setting the imagination at work by saying 
 
PROSE AND POETIC STYLE DISTINGUISHED. 11 
 
 simply Thames-like, addresses the phantasy, and gives prose 
 details. In other words, Denham attempts to convey his senti- 
 ment, and thus pretty effectually hinders it from going further 
 than the intellect of his reader. 1 This is the principal source of 
 weakness among the classical poets -of the seventeenth and eigh- 
 teenth centuries. 
 
 1 Of course, the meagreness of the sentiment itself has something to do with the 
 effect. How jejune and poor it is will be revealed if what was really in the mind be 
 expressed pointedly, as a Tennyson or a Browning would have phrased it — it either 
 of these poets could have said so little — somewhat perhaps as thus : — 
 
 Would that my thought Thames-like might flow 
 Out to the world, its sea! 
 
12 SUGGESTIVE WORDS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SUGGESTIVE WORDS. 
 
 In the preceding chapter were provisionally noted certain 
 points of difference between prose and poetry. Let us now, 
 beginning with the poetical side of our literature, attempt a more 
 serious analysis and examination. 
 
 Poetic delight comes by way of the idealizing faculty, which we 
 call imagination proper. But the imagination in itself does not 
 enjoy beauty, or crave beauty to enjoy, or demand that the par- 
 tially beautiful be amended so as to become such wholly. That 
 which longs for beauty and ideals of beauty is the conscious 
 principle, the ego, or soul of man. This indeterminate ego, this 
 spirit or soul of man, when at its best of development and when 
 not preoccupied or hindered, seeks beauty everywhere for beauty's 
 sake, detects noble analogies allying the lower with the higher, 
 and interprets a spiritual meaning out of material things. That 
 which we call imagination is really a collective designation of 
 the activities or the operations by or in which such efforts of the 
 ' ego ' are accomplished. 
 
 The exercise of imagination is dependent upon many and 
 various causes, — or rather conditions; for the cause in every 
 instance is wholly in the subjectivity of the soul itself. Thus a 
 dazzling color or a delicate combination of shades, the noise of 
 a brook or the harmony of a chorus, each afford the soul an 
 occasion or warrant for entering into its idealizing activity. So 
 likewise with the words of our common English vocabulary. A 
 large number of those used most constantly have become so 
 trite and familiar as apparently to give no hint or challenge to 
 the emotional consciousness. If we open the dictionary at ran- 
 dom and chance upon the word glad, for instance, we shall prob- 
 
SUGGESTIVE WORDS. 13 
 
 ably find that we have only a prosaic, annalistic appreciation of 
 its meaning. Very different is it with gladden, and glade, next 
 in the column. Certain select experiences at some time had 
 with these words come back to us and shape a definition far 
 more significant than the dictionary-maker could possibly have 
 put together. So of sad and sadden, tall and lofty, low and lowly, 
 and the rest. Throughout the vocabulary of the language, scien- 
 tific, technical terms and all, those words which we know exper- 
 imentally will by association always force upon us some emotional 
 element of meaning, while those new or old that stand for no 
 experience and are incapable of awakening the imagination are 
 intellectually or etymologically discerned, and that is all. 
 
 Different minds are of course differently constituted in respect 
 to sympathies and susceptibilities, and besides from unlike asso- 
 ciations and circumstances incur unlike experiences. Yet there 
 is a species of precision in the use of experimental words by 
 poets, and a community of interpretation and understanding 
 on the part of those that read them such as, perhaps, to warrant 
 the assertion that poetry is less difficult to comprehend than 
 prose. Each mind is always the court of last resort as to what 
 is poetry to it, yet disagreement as to the potency of a suggestive 
 word will not be met with more frequently than difference of 
 opinion as to the proper intension of a prosaic term. But in 
 many cases the student Will at the outset need some assistance 
 in determining what his experience of suggestive terms really is. 
 
 As to the range of suggestion, not only adjectives denoting rare 
 and lofty qualities will have poetic potency, but of course the 
 adverbs derived from such. Moreover, nouns and verbs often 
 contribute strong effect when used in some transferred or meta- 
 phorical significance. Even words of neutral content and quality 
 may by neat and dexterous composition acquire poetic strength 
 and value. So to a certain extent of archaic words and forms, 
 as sometimes third persons singular in -eth of the 'solemn style.' 
 
 Designate the suggestive words — for the present without in- 
 quiry into the kind or manner of suggestion — in the following 
 
14 SUGGESTIVE WORDS. 
 
 passages, and compute their number. Only the effect of words 
 should be considered, including compounds, not of phrases, or 
 clauses taken as a whole. Time should be given to considera- 
 tion of all questions that may arise, through any uncertainty. 
 This exercise fully mastered at the present point will leave few 
 perplexities to be encountered in the studies later on. 
 
 "So much describes the stuffy little room — 
 Vulgar, flat, smooth respectability. 
 Not so the burst of landscape surging in, 
 Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair 
 Is, plain enough, the younger personage, 
 Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft 
 The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall 
 Shutter and shutter, shows you England's best. 
 He leans out into a living glory-bath 
 Of air and light, where seems to float and move 
 The wooded, watered country, hill and dale 
 And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist, 
 A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift 
 O' the sun-touched dew." 
 
 Robert Browning : The Inn Album, 42-55. 
 
 " But the majestic river floated on, 
 Out of the mist and hum of that low land, 
 Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, 
 Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian waste, 
 Under the solitary moon; — he flow'd 
 Right for the polar star, past Orgunje, 
 Brimming, and bright, and large; then sands begin 
 To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, 
 And split his currents ; that for many a league 
 The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along 
 Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles — 
 Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had 
 In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere, 
 A foiled circuitous wanderer — till at last 
 The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide 
 His luminous home of waters opens, bright 
 And tranquil, from whose flow the new-bathed stars 
 Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea." 
 
 Matthew Arnold : Sohrab and Rustum, 875-892. 
 
FORCE. 15 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FORCE. 
 
 Somewhat of the effect produced on the imagination through 
 suggestion should now be clear. Let us pass next to Force. 
 
 Force is not energy expended merely in the oral utterance of 
 sentiment. It is an integral part, whenever and wherever pres- 
 ent, of the emotion itself, and is at once apprehended through 
 its effect on the thought or language by the discerning reader. 
 So organic is its essence that no poet can affect it without quick 
 detection. Moreover, it cannot be supplied, if not found inhe- 
 rent in the author's message, through any contribution of energy 
 from without. Let us compare the following passages : — 
 
 " Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds 
 Exhilarate the spirit and restore 
 The tone of languid Nature. Mighty winds, 
 That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood 
 Of ancient growth, make music not unlike 
 The dash of ocean on his winding shore, 
 And lull the spirit while they fill the mind; 
 Unnumbered branches waving in the blast, 
 And all their leaves fast fluttering all at once. 
 Nor less composure waits upon the roar 
 Of distant floods, or on the softer voice 
 Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip 
 Through the cleft rock, and, chimbing as they fall 
 Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length 
 Tn matted grass, that with a livelier green 
 Betrays the secret of their silent course." 
 
 — Cowper: The Task, Bk. I. 181-196. 
 
 « 
 
 "I? What I answered? As I live, 
 I never fancied such a thing 
 As answer possible to give. 
 
16 FORCE. 
 
 What says the body when they spring 
 Some monstrous torture-engine's whole 
 Strength on it? No more says the soul. 
 
 "Till out strode Gismond; then I knew 
 That I was saved. I never met 
 
 His face before, but, at first view, 
 I felt quite sure that God had set 
 
 Himself to Satan; who would spend 
 
 A minute's mistrust on the end? 
 
 " He strode to Gauthier, in his throat 
 Gave him the lie, then struck his mouth 
 
 With one back-handed blow that wrote 
 In blood men's verdict there. North, South, 
 
 East, West I looked. The lie was dead, 
 
 And damned, and truth stood up instead." 
 
 Robert Browning : Count Gismond. 
 
 In the first of these passages it would be manifestly absurd to 
 try to introduce force by strong reading; the effect would be 
 sheer burlesque. In the second it is as obviously impossible to 
 avoid reading strongly, if one reads at all. The reason is not 
 far to seek. In the former extract the sense as well as the spirit 
 requires that only a few of the words receive emphasis in read- 
 ing; in the latter, many. The words thus made eminent to the 
 ear are the only certain signs of the author's fervor, and the 
 only measure of its intensity. If we examine a dozen examples 
 of ordinary unimpassioned prose, we shall find a pretty constant 
 per cent of emphasis, which here for the most part serves merely 
 to give the subject and predicate and perhaps one or two ad- 
 juncts of each due prominence in the sentence. This is nothing 
 but Grammatical Emphasis, and will be found essentially stereo- 
 typed and constant in different sentences of like construction. 
 In ' Five of the men were held for trial ' there is grammatical 
 stress on the first, fourth, sixth, and eighth of the eight words, as 
 also correspondingly in ' None of the goods were sent on ap- 
 proval, ' ' Some of the votes were cast by proxy, ' and all like 
 sentences. The same will of course be true of all sentences, 
 
FORCE. 17 
 
 whether less weighty or more involved, that are made up respec- 
 tively of the same parts of speech, and take no extra emphasis 
 for any reason. Also when some single idea is to be brought 
 into especial prominence, as in Hamlet's 
 
 " the play's the thing 
 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King," 
 
 or two ideas are contrasted, as in the first line from Cowper 
 above, the distinction is made by stress upon prominent or con- 
 trasted words. This is Emphasis of the Thought. But force is 
 something different from either of these. It is the Emphasis of 
 Sympathy, and amounts, or may amount, to nothing less than 
 unction. It generally allies itself with and corroborates both the 
 grammatical stress and the thought emphasis, and often pervades 
 besides not only minor modifiers, but even particles, — some- 
 times, as in the last stanza from Browning, seeming to exalt and 
 energize every word. Hence the force of a given passage or 
 author may»be approximately represented by the ratio of emphatic 
 words to the whole number of words employed. 
 
 The former of the two examples will be found to contain little 
 emphasis except of the first two kinds, and is therefore essen- 
 tially devoid of force. The stress-words average a little less than 
 three to the line, making the ratio of emphasized words to the 
 sum of all perhaps exactly 40: 120, or in any interpretation 
 practically not above 1:3. But the stanzas from Count Gismond 
 show very different results. The poem abounds in force through- 
 out, and these stanzas contain the climax, the first registering 
 the ratio of about 23 : 38, the second, 24 : 41, but the third rising 
 at least to 3o:44. 1 
 
 1 For an example of still greater instensity — quoted hereafter in the prose treat- 
 ment of this topic — compare the following from Carlyle. The words by which the 
 force is manifested are in italics : — 
 
 In this God's world, with its wild whirling eddies and mad foam oceans, where men and 
 nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, 
 dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his 
 heart. It is what the wise, in all times, were wise because they denied, and knew for 
 ever not to be. I tell thee again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I 
 find here below: the just thing, the true thing. 
 
18 FORCE. 
 
 It therefore seems evident that force will not be indicated if 
 the general ratio of emphasis in a given passage or composition 
 does not rise higher than 1:3. In the Count Gismond the sum 
 of emphasized words to the whole number is as 449 : 865, or not 
 far from 1:2. In the prose passage from Carlyle there is 
 more than seventy per cent of emphasis, but the force-ratio of the 
 present paragraph and the next is 25 : 45, or only fifty-five per 
 cent. To offset the seventy per cent from the lines quoted, the 
 greater part of the paragraphs must therefore fall below the ratio 
 of 1:2. After such outbursts, reaction will naturally be marked 
 and speedy. 
 
 But the student must not suppose, when he has learned some- 
 thing concerning the modes of force, that he has explained or 
 comprehended force itself. The cause is not the manner, the 
 how must not be mistaken for the why. Force in poetry is the 
 enthusiasm of the ' ego ' called forth by some near approximation 
 to one of its ideals, as on perception or contemplation of some 
 moral or spiritual excellence. It is the most intimate* and une- 
 quivocal manifestation of the personality, and transcends all ex- 
 hibitions of it beside in its effect on other minds. When a writer 
 manifests emotion because some act or quality closely approaches 
 his utmost conception of excellence in that direction, the en- 
 thusiasm of the reader will be aroused from sympathy, even before 
 the occasion is fully interpreted to him. He will at the same 
 time try to account for the author's exaltation of feeling by 
 idealizing what has beefl and what is yet to be told as fully as he 
 may. The effect of force will therefore vary according to our 
 sympathy with the author, as well as our attitude towards that 
 which inspires him. When the occasion of his utterance is not 
 extraordinary, when his words argue no profound emotion and in 
 suggestiveness reach scarcely higher than our phantasy, we ex- 
 perience a minimum of force. But we are sensible of it at its 
 maximum when the occasion is the agony of an Ugolino, the 
 trials and triumphs of a Sordello, or the passing of a Lear. Now 
 the soul not merely experiences through imagination the inspira- 
 
FORCE. 19 
 
 tion of the poet's theme, but to the full interpreting and appro- 
 priating his enthusiasm is lifted out and above its usual world 
 into relations with the infinite, and becomes therewith trans- 
 figured. Such exaltation in the author, as also the accompany- 
 ing experience in the reader, is a form of the emotion called 
 Sublimity. 1 
 
 But some poets, sensible only of beauty in a merely receptive 
 and passive way, and not adequately realizing what great themes 
 mean, are devoid of force, or affect it merely. Others there are 
 who experience it genuinely, yet cannot by any means impart it, 
 while the few truly great spiritual seers and guides, without taking 
 thought or seeming aware of what they do, flash it forth in thun- 
 derbolts. Yet even in such manifestations force has its own 
 laws, and is in no sense subject to those who wield it. No more 
 force may be employed than is interpreted from nature. The 
 writer cannot provide or supply it where he does not derive it 
 from his theme, more than can the reader who does not find it in 
 what is written. As in music, too much force, even were it at 
 command, would defeat itself. Hence the composers of sympho- 
 nies as well as the makers of great poems are led, though uncon- 
 sciously, in accordance with art as well as truth or nature, to 
 combine light and heavy passages, and to use force in relief and 
 contrast. The spiritual has always its ebbs and flows, its periods 
 of assurance and of doubt, and there is no piece of interpreta- 
 tion that has not its gaps and blanks, its glares and shades of 
 illumination. 
 
 For first illustration of the interchange and harmony of light 
 and heavy passages there is nothing simpler that the Count Gis- 
 mond already quoted from. The range of force, as well as the 
 
 1 But sublimity and the sublime are terms applied also and more frequently to 
 that which is the occasion of the feeling. Thus the romantic heroism of Count 
 Gismond and the self-vindication of justice which respectively in Browning and 
 Carlyle raise the force-ratio to a climax above, may be said to ' border upon, or to 
 reach, the sublime ' — meaning they fairly evoke that emotion in the reader. For 
 other forms and occasions of sublimity, see Chapter XI. 
 
20 
 
 FORCE. 
 
 ratio of force-terms to the whole number of words in each 
 stanza, may be indicated in one view by the aid of curves, as 
 thus : — 
 
 Ho. of 
 
 utania. Stanzas. 
 
 in iy T vr 
 
 Word-curve 40 
 
 Force-curve 20 
 10 
 
 IX x j.r xn xiir xtt XT XTJ *ynxTTirxrx Tx 
 
 Note how the two opening lines give a foretaste of the strength, 
 and how the author's energy, and correspondingly the ratio of 
 emphasis, rises and sustains itself after the seventh stanza. As 
 an example of force quite different Tennyson's Godiva or Ode 
 on the Death of the Duke of Wellington may be taken. More- 
 over, it will be nowise difficult to distinguish honest, organic 
 energy from rant and bombast, any discovery of which should 
 at once stop the analysis. There is no estimating a fraud or 
 falsehood as genuine, when once found out. The reader, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, must identify his author's emphasis, or 
 will miss the meaning, and will often, in ordinary prose, to solve 
 a doubt, reflectively and experimentally re-read. If a sentence 
 is rightly put together, there will in no case be danger of over- 
 interpretation. In each and every analysis here the sense and 
 spirit should be as patiently studied as the musician studies a 
 composition — stanza by stanza, line by line. There will then, 
 unless the writer is himself at fault, 1 be little doubt at least as to 
 what words were intended to sustain his force, whatever other 
 questions proper for the elocutionist, as tone, inflection, modu- 
 lation, may remain. 
 
 1 See Chapter VII., p. 48. 
 
TONE QUALITY. 21 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TONE QUALITY. 
 
 It has been shown already how the mind finds an experimental 
 meaning in certain words over and above that which is recognized 
 in the definitions of the dictionary. In like manner, the mind i 
 often gets an experience out of the phonetic elements of which | ' 
 words are made, independently of what the words as such may : 
 signify. The phonetic qualities from which such further expe- 
 rience is derived are called Tone Colors. 
 
 The cause, as in the former case, is in the subjectivity of the 
 soul itself, which, ever alert and eager for delight, strives to 
 interpret and turn to account the utmost possible of what is 
 apprehended by the senses. Indeed, the activity of the ' ego ' 
 in taking cognizance of the tone quality of syllables is nowise 
 different in kind from its ordinary activity in interpreting the 
 significance of spoken words. When we say man, house, tree, 
 nothing proceeds from the lips except waves of sound, but the 
 mind of the listener rises from the vocal suggestions of each to 
 an idea, and does this even unconsciously. But the effect of tone 
 colors is less positive and speedy, being experimental only. Out 
 of all possible sounds made by the organs of speech, some are 
 instinctively and invariably used in giving utterance to painful 
 while others to agreeable emotions. There is one particular set : 
 of sounds employed in groans, another in murmurs of pleasure or 
 applause. It is clear that by the use of syllables or sounds from , 
 the one set or from the other, the mind of the reader may be 
 affected through suggestion of the respective emotion, and the 
 author's meaning as contained in his words greatly strengthened 
 and intensified. In other words, the mind through association, 
 
22 TONE QUALITY. 
 
 in addition to the meaning carried by the sentence, takes cogni- 
 zance of the experiences it has elsewhere had with the same 
 sounds, accepting and allowing them as a part of the author's 
 message. Of course these revived experiences must be akin 
 to the sentiment the author is trying to arouse, and in great 
 poems always are. The highest art makes no mistakes; and 
 nothing is more remarkable than the skill with which the great 
 masters assist their purpose by use of the various qualities and 
 effects of tone. Many of such effects belong to elocution and 
 cannot be made apparent save by the most careful rendering. 
 Only those tone qualities which are obvious in unprofessional 
 and even unoral reading are to be considered here. 
 
 We may begin with this observation. When the spirit of a 
 poem or a passage is buoyant or lively, the language will not 
 abound in heavy vowels or hard combinations of consonants; 
 also when the sentiment is full of energy or momentum, the light 
 vowels and the liquid consonants will be few or wanting. Com- 
 pare these examples in illustration : — 
 
 " We would call aloud in the dreamy dells, 
 Call to each other, and whoop and cry 
 
 All night, merrily, merrily; 
 They would pelt me with starry spangles and shells, 
 Laughing and clapping their hands between, 
 
 All night, merrily, merrily : 
 But I would throw to them back in mine 
 Turkis and agate and almondine : 
 Then leaping out upon them unseen 
 I would kiss them often under the sea, 
 And kiss them again till they kissed me 
 
 Laughingly, laughingly. 
 Oh ! what a happy life were mine 
 Under the hollow-hung ocean green ! " 
 
 Tennyson : The Merman. 
 
 " The pair of goodly palaces are burned, 
 The gardens ravaged, and our Guelfs laugh, drunk 
 A week with joy. The next, their laughter sunk 
 
TONE QUALITY. 23 
 
 f t ' 
 
 In sobs of blood, for they found, some strange way, 
 Old Salinguerra back again — I say, 
 Old Salinguerra in the town once more 
 . Uprooting, overturning, flame before, 
 Blood fetlock-high beneath him. Azzo fled; 
 Who 'scaped the carnage followed; then the dead 
 Were pushed aside from Salinguerra's throne, 
 He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone, 
 Till Az£0, stunned awhile, revived, would pounce 
 Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce, 
 On the gorged bird." 
 
 Browning: Sordello, Bk. I. 
 
 It is clear that, if the first passage were written and rhymed 
 with the vowels which prevail in the second, and were stripped 
 of its liquids, a good share of the poetry would disappear. In 
 like manner, the second example would be unequal to its burdens 
 of force and meaning, if the light sounds of the former were 
 substituted for those we find. The principles underlying these 
 important differences belong, as will be seen, both to physics and 
 psychology. 
 
 Friction, slow and griding motion imply obstacles or resistance, 
 but oily and noiseless movements, the contrary. The dash and 
 roar of a mountain stream and the murmur of a brook slipping 
 through a meadow make very different impressions upon the mind 
 of the observer. Clenched hands, set or grating teeth, involun- 
 tary rigor of the muscles, tell their own story even to the slowest 
 imagination, as also the agile and graceful leap or lively gesture. 
 The like is true also of vocal sounds. The natural opposite of 
 groans and cries, which are both the symptoms and, as it were, 
 the vents or escapes of pain, is laughter. Phonetically speaking, 
 groans are nothing but the effect of forcing breath through the 
 vocal chords when in a condition of extreme constriction, and 
 laughter is the effect of passing it through abundantly while the 
 throat is completely relaxed and widened. The sound most 
 naturally produced while the throat is constricted is o, but when 
 released entirely from tension is a. Hence groans and laughter, 
 
24 TONE QUALITY. 
 
 so far as vocal, are produced by the repetition or prolongation of 
 these respective sounds. But the mind on recognizing, no matter 
 where or how, those syllables which suggest and echo continually 
 the symptoms and utterances of pain, is affected subjectively by 
 ihe experience of pain itself, or so tends strongly. Similarly 
 when it hears the rippling syllables and tones of merriment ring 
 out in the tra la las of barcarolles and ballads, or notes the same 
 elements of sound under other circumstances, the mind tends 
 subjectively to share the experience of joy, just as bystanders are 
 inclined to join in a laugh before knowing wholly its occasion. 
 
 But there are many effects between the extremes of groans and 
 laughter that may be echoed into speech. The same principles 
 are discernible everywhere, and in fact prevail throughout the 
 whole range of animate notes and cries. All vocal rubs and stops 
 imply muscular contraction and those conditions of the nerves or 
 mind which produce it involuntarily or otherwise. Bated whispers 
 indicate fright, or dread of arousing an adversary; hisses, fear 
 with purpose to repel. When there is less fear and more anger, 
 the voice becomes audible in growls, which are composed mainly 
 of constricted o, u, au, ou, with the rasping sounds of hard g 
 and r. If anger gives place to consternation or horror, the in- 
 stincts of expression change the voice to a peculiarly hollow and 
 unemittent quality which has been called pectoral. In all these 
 qualities the most marked characteristic is obstruction; and 
 obstruction always indicates the presence of some? burden upon 
 the feelings. What this is, and whence, the mind of the reader 
 makes haste to interpret from the particular symptoms of sound, 
 inferring from the lesser obstruction of course the lesser burden. 
 But the absence of all stiffness and constriction in the vocal pas- 
 sages argues complete release from heaviness or pain. Hence joy, 
 delight, and exaltation of spirits reside potentially in the wholly 
 unobstructed vowel a, or (as this is almost extinct in English) 
 the vowels next it in the scale of openness, a, a, and z, espe- 
 cially if reinforced by /. This last serves not only as an excellent 
 copula to the opener vowels, but as a lubricant in any situation, 
 
TONE QUALITY. 25 
 
 and thus contrasts strongly with the fricatives and especially with 
 the guttura^ or hard g. By suggestion of rise in pitch these clear 
 vowels will indicate, beyond exhilaration and elasticity of spirits, 
 varying degrees of excitement; 1 while by proper combination 
 with the heavier sounds they may be made to shade into the tones 
 of sadness and pain. In like manner the harsh tones may be 
 expanded into more generous colorings, as by relaxing the ten- 
 sion and adding intonation hisses may be changed to sighs. 
 
 In contrast of tense and relaxed effects compare first the fol- 
 lowing examples. It will assist if the number of sounds sug- 
 gestive of distress or pain in the one, but of exultation and 
 merriment in the other, be definitely computed, and the ratio 
 respectively to the whole number of sounds in each case indi- 
 cated. It will be noted that grating r may be used to re-enforce 
 guttural effects, but that this letter lightly enunciated allies itself 
 with the opposite tones. Similarly d, t, th, f, and s in the first 
 example, under the evident tension, assist the gutturals. 
 
 " Oh how dark your villa was, 
 Windows fast and obdurate ! 
 How the garden grudged me grass 
 
 Where I stood — the iron gate 
 Ground its teeth to let me pass ! " 
 
 Browning : A Serenade at the Villa. 
 
 " Hear the sledges with the bells, — 
 Silver bells ! 
 What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! 
 How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 
 
 In the icy air of night, 
 While the stars that oversprinkle 
 All the heavens seem to twinkle 
 With a crystalline delight ! " 
 
 Poe: The Bells. 
 
 lOn the principle that a. mind energized will energize its utterance. This it 
 must do by increasing the tension of the vocal chords, thus multiplying the sound- 
 waves. But' to do this is to raise the pitch. 
 
26 TONE QUALITY. 
 
 The strained and hard guttural quality is produced by a suc- 
 cession of fricative resonances in the throat. There is no free 
 emission of breath, but all sounds are as it were compressed 
 within before heard without. Hence all other consonants or con- 
 sonant combinations that can be uttered explosively may be 
 used with conspicuous effect even if the strict gutturals are want- 
 ing. On the other hand, the pure quality is due for the most 
 part to a round, free utterance; and all sounds that can be made 
 to ring out melodiously like notes in singing will be effective in 
 their degree. Compare further the following passages : — 
 
 " But see, his eyeballs . 
 Staring full ghastly like a strangled man : 
 His hair upreared, his nostrils stretched with struggling; 
 His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped 
 And tugged for life, and was by strength subdued. 
 His well-proportioned beard made rough and rugged, 
 Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodged." 
 
 Shakespeare: II King Henry VI, III. ii. 
 
 " His every sense had grown 
 Etherial for pleasure; 'bove his head 
 Flew a delight half-graspable; his tread 
 Was Hesperean; to his capable ears 
 Silence was music from the holy spheres; 
 A dewy luxury was in his eyes ; 
 The little flowers felt his pleasant sighs 
 And stirred them faintly." 
 
 Keats : Endymion, Bk. II. 
 
 "Nor is it in me to unhate my hates, — 
 I use up my last strength to strike once more 
 Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face, 
 To trample under foot the whine and wile 
 Of that Violante, — and I grow one gorge 
 To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale 
 Poison my hasty hunger took for food." 
 
 Browning : The Ring and the Bebk, Guido. 
 
TONE QUALITY. 27 
 
 " I listened to the music broad and deep — 
 
 I heard the tenor in an ecstasy 
 
 Touch the sweet, distant goal, I heard the cry 
 Of prayer and passion, and I heard the sweep 
 Of mighty wings, that in their waving keep 
 
 The music that the spheres make endlessly; 
 
 Then my cheeks shivered, tears made blind each eye 
 As flame to flame I felt the quick blood leap, 
 And, through the tides and moonlit winds of sound, 
 
 To me love's passionate voice grew audible. 
 Again I felt your heart to my heart bound, 
 
 Then silence on the viols and voices fell ; 
 
 But, like the still, small voice within a shell, 
 I heard Love thrilling through the void profound." 
 
 Philip Bourke Marston : Love and Music. 
 
 The best illustration of the universality as well as potency of 
 tone colors may be found outside and below the human scale. 
 No wonder the owl and raven are birds of evil bodement. 
 Scarcely higher belong the hawk and bittern; but much better 
 tones are reached in the magpie and the jay. Finally, at the 
 summit of the scale we come to the clear and pure notes of the 
 lark and the canary. These clear and pure joy-tones appear 
 variously shaded and sombered, chiefly through pectoral color- 
 ings, in a series of effects which range from the notes of the 
 nightingale to the moans of the mourning dove. Nature abounds 
 in plaintive tones and cries, matching them, as it would seem, to 
 prevailing human moods; and the principal element in all such 
 effects, from the chirp of the cricket and peep of the treefrog, 
 is pectoral. But sounds contributed from the lower genera of 
 animal life, it might be said, are in some sense supererogatory, 
 since hardly any feeling natural to the ' ego ' but may be induced 
 by appropriate suggestions afforded in the notes of birds alone. 
 
 The pectoral quality, therefore, very naturally abounds in litera- 
 ture. It takes its name from the fact that such tones, owing to 
 the suspension of diaphragmatic breathing, seem to be suppressed 
 and muffled within the chest rather than articulated from it. 
 
28 TONE QUALITY. 
 
 When most natural, they are very like the tones of a consump- 
 tive in the last stages of his disease, and indicate pre-eminently 
 the prostration which comes from the emotions of horror or 
 despair. But when, without real change of quality, through the 
 exercise of some abnormal energy these tones are actually forced 
 forth, the effect is, as it were, to project the horror felt by the 
 speaker upon the hearer. The two effects are easily distin- 
 guished, and surpass in potency all other tone colorings whatso- 
 ever. The following passages furnish good illustrations of each. 
 All tones that readily lend themselves to a hollow, muffled utter- 
 ance, — especially a, d, o, oi, u, u, u, also the fricative and the 
 stop consonants, with m and w, — may be employed. 
 
 " Oh, I have passed a miserable night, 
 So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams, 
 That, as I am a Christian faithful man, 
 I would not spend another such a night, 
 Though 'twere to buy a wjprld of happy days, 
 So full of dismal terror was the time." 
 
 Shakespeare : Richard III., I. iv. 
 
 " Sirs, my first true word, all truth and no lie, 
 Is — save me notwithstanding ! Life is all ! 
 I was just stark mad, — let the madman live 
 Pressed by as many chains as you please pile ! 
 Don't open ! Hold me from them ! I am yours, 
 I am the Granduke's — no, I am the Pope's ! 
 Abate, — Cardinal, — Christ, — Maria, — God, . . . 
 Pompilia, will you let them murder me? " 
 
 Browning : The Ring and the Book, Guido. 
 
 But perhaps the best illustration of both effects is found in the 
 words of the ghost to Hamlet (I. v. 2-91). When the ghost be- 
 gins to speak, from horror of quick return to torment his voice 
 is almost inaudible; but when later (13-22) with an energy born 
 of the pit he attempts to convey to Hamlet some sense of the 
 agony of his lot, even his hollow tones become pervaded with a 
 
TONE QUALITY. 29 
 
 force nowhere else surpassed in Shakespeare. 1 Of all masters of 
 pectoral effects in both kinds Shakespeare stands easily at the 
 head. Nothing could be more artistic or more tremendous than 
 the suggestions of felt and projected horror in Macbeth, as in 
 II. ii. 31-43, iii. 61-78 ; III. iv. 69-73, or at 93, 100, 122, 
 and indeed, after the first act, throughout the play. Excellent 
 tone colors of every sort have been produced by conscious and 
 deliberate imitation, but such effects as these must come always 
 by inspiration. 
 
 In the examples thus far it is the associations of the sound 
 elements and not usually of the words themselves that affect imag- 
 ination. Often, indeed, it is nothing more than the general 
 quality, as guttural, orotund, or plaintive, and not specific sylla- 
 bles or tones, that carries potency. No one that has ever heard 
 a person attempt to speak while struggling for breath is likely to 
 so forget that experience as not to be affected, consciously or 
 unconsciously, by genuine pectoral tojies of whatsoever kind. 
 But specific elements of sound are and may be used imitatively 
 to produce specific effects, as in this well-known passage from 
 Milton : — 
 
 " He would have spoke 
 But hiss for hiss return'd with forked tongue 
 To forked tongue; for now were all transform'd 
 Alike, to serpents all, as accessories 
 To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din 
 Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now 
 With complicated monsters, head and tail — 
 Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbsena dire, 
 Cerastes horn'd, Hydrus, and Ellops drear, 
 
 And Dipsas." 
 
 Paradise Lost, X. 517-526. 
 
 Here are as many species of hisses as of snakes to cause them. 
 Compare Shakespeare's imitation of the bubbling in the witches' 
 caldron : — 
 
 1 Let the ratio of force, at least in 11. 15-20, be definitely computed. 
 
30 TONE QUALITY. 
 
 " For a charm of powerful trouble 
 Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. 
 Double, double toil and trouble, 
 Fire burn and cauldron bubble." 
 
 Macbeth, IV. i. 18-21. 
 
 and Spenser's of flowing water: — 
 
 " And more to lulle him in his slumber soft, 
 A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe, 
 And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft, 
 Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne 
 Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swowne." 
 
 Faerie Queene, Bk. I. xli. 
 
 But such attempts as the last often cross the line between 
 association and combination. Tone colors should make the 
 reader's mind remember, not construct, for the latter he must do 
 to the full with the major meaning. So far as onomatopoetic 
 imitation essays to produce new experiences it is to be depre- 
 cated, since here the limit is quickly reached between organic 
 and inorganic colorings. The sense should never serve the 
 sound; poetry must not be cultivated or regarded as merely the 
 algebra of tone. 
 
THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 31 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 
 
 In the last chapter was shown how the vocal elements of words 
 may by association reach and engage the imagination. It will 
 be in order next to find out what effects may be produced, through 
 association, by the words or the meanings of the words them- 
 selves. 
 
 Much has been written about the un-Saxon portion of our 
 English vocabulary, and not a little also against it. No doubt it 
 is to some extent a misfortune that our book-words are derived 
 so largely from" other than Anglo-Saxon sources, since the unedu- 
 cated can never confidently manage the ap-s and hypos, the 
 -ures, -ments, -ics, -isms, with our forty other prefixes and eighty 
 suffixes not in the mother tongue, without learning them from 
 books. 1 The uneducated Italian is far less at fault with his Dante 
 than the uneducated Englishman with his Milton, since Dante's 
 book-words are yet Latin ^like the rest, and seem native and 
 natural enough when their meanings are known. But to the 
 Englishman not yet waywise with books and ignorant of Latin, 
 reading Paradise Lost is much like translating it from another 
 language. Though he may have no especial difficulty in finding 
 out what the words mean, they still in themselves from prefix to 
 termination will seem intractable and strange. So far from im- 
 mediately appropriating them to use when once he has noted their 
 intension, he is very likely to find them slip from his memory 
 
 1 The native Anglo-Saxon prefixes and suffixes amount to something less than 
 half these respective numbers. For lists — not quite complete — of both Saxon 
 and foreign, see Earle . Philology of the English Tongue, p. 290 ff. 
 
32 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 
 
 altogether. So, also, though to a less degree in the lay reading 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 But though the unlettered Italian finds the book-words of Dante 
 not strange or unnative to his ear, they yet may prove as hard to 
 memorize and put to use as Milton's to the Englishman. What 
 makes words easy to remember is not the simpleness of their 
 meaning, nor their similarity to other words well known, but a 
 certain something about them which has struck the fancy, or 
 some experience of or with that for which they stand. Nor is 
 the crabbedness and alien aspect of our Miltonic book-words due 
 wholly to their many syllables, or to their Romance or Latin 
 origin, for our unread Englishman is surely acquainted with three 
 or four hundred words from the same sources, many of them 
 trisyllabic, which he learned in his mother tongue. The trouble 
 is, he did not learn those from Milton in the same way, — by meet- 
 ing with the thing before the name. What makes words seem 
 familiar and tractable is not their logical intension, but their 
 associations. By these we mean the experiences had with or 
 derived from that for which they stand, which experiences the 
 presence of the words, consciously or unconsciously, revives 
 in us. 
 
 It is with the experimental as distinguished from the logical 
 intension of words that poetry has to do. The one is distinct 
 from the other and is acquired much earlier. The process begins 
 at the point in the child's life when attributes and qualities are 
 first discerned, but only attributes and qualities of an active 
 kind. "Will this or that thing hurt, will it give delight?" — 
 these are the tests by which the child-mind divides and identifies 
 its chaotic and mysterious surroundings. All objects are to it 
 alive and potent to charm or harm. Inert or passive qualities 
 are undistinguished or undiscerned until the logical powers 
 develop. Demons peer out from every darkling corner. A new 
 face, if not absolutely attractive, is not forbidding merely, it 
 strikes terror. We are all too apt and willing to disregard what 
 we call the foolish awe with which the child creeps away with 
 
THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 33 
 
 bated breath from something which its fancy has clothed in 
 monstrous character. Yet in later years the child grown man 
 will perhaps never view that same object without a pricking in 
 the pulses. What wonder we are moved when the poet hits upon 
 some random word which sets in vibration all our past? 
 
 Little by little the inanimate world is set off from or grows 
 upon the animate, and life becomes less momentous. Yet even 
 at the mother's knee the process of learning the emotional inten- 
 sion of things goes on; for it is still the time of impressions, not 
 of thoughts. Hence all child-minds are full of poetry, of course 
 varying with the degree of sensitiveness and susceptibility. Not 
 until the reflective stage is reached does the child begin to learn 
 names before things, and things before their qualities are ex- 
 perienced, chiefly by books. Yet poetic minds do not disuse 
 the faculty of sounding the experiential depths of words, even at 
 maturity. A Shakespeare or a Keats will ever be quick to dis- 
 cern the experimental along with the logical, and grow in suscep- 
 tibility as in knowledge. Moreover, minds so endowed will even 
 read the experiential out of the logical. But in others the de- 
 velopment and exercise of reason will dwarf and perhaps sup- 
 plant the faculty of experimental recognition. 
 
 It is impossible to get back to the beginnings of poetical in- 
 tension; they lie beyond the pale of memory. But most of us can 
 recall illustrations of the restless and aggressive activity of the 
 ' ego ' at the age of three or four and under, when there was 
 already a goodly fund of associations. Some abstract term let 
 drop by the preacher, or heard from books, sets the fancy all agog. 
 The mind seems bound not to receive it conceptually, but must 
 know it experimentally. Hence some vivid or sensational image 
 is assigned to the word as its proper meaning, even if an impos- 
 sible and crazy analogy has to be manufactured out of whole 
 cloth to justify it. 1 Meanings thus constructed often perversely 
 
 1 1 vividly recall an example in connection with the theological term grace. The 
 object assigned to this at first hearing was a shovelful of gray wood-ashes such as I 
 had seen my mother remove from the grate. The word did not "cease to call up 
 this image insistently until long past boyhood. 
 
34 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 
 
 cling to certain words long after the mind has learned to separate 
 the operations of phantasy and imagination, sometimes last 
 through life. Moreover, permitting fancy to play about words 
 experientially is a diversion which, unless the imagination is 
 habitually denied its proper exercise, is never given up. A 
 word which we do not like — that is, which calls up unpleasant 
 associations — will never succeed as the sign of a pleasant thing. 
 Names proposed for towns or streets on account of some recog- 
 nized objective attribute are often rejected by the experimental 
 sense of the people at large. We detect ourselves continually 
 inferring and constructing character out of names. We are 
 sometimes prejudiced in advance against or in favor of persons 
 we do not yet know, according as they bear favorite names or 
 the contrary. Such names we find are favorite not because they 
 etymologically signify excellent qualities, but because they stand 
 for something that in a manner gives us or has given us pleasure. 
 So, also, of the common experiential words, as glade and glad- 
 den before cited. The difference between glade and woods lies 
 chiefly in the fact that the one changes our mood, or on 
 mention stirs in us somewhat of the experience at some time 
 had in being or imagining one's being in such a place, while the 
 other represents a concept merely. So in sad and sadden, glad 
 and gladden, the dissyllabic words make us partake through a 
 sort of sympathy in the implied emotions, while the others do 
 . not. 1 We therefore call such words experimental because they 
 \ excite, or enable us to identify, a peculiar experience of the 
 I soul. But the names we apply to different emotions are con- 
 \ ceptual designations, and except for cause are not responded 
 j to by the emotions themselves, but call up the ideas only. 
 
 The doctrine of Association of Ideas as ordinarily set forth does 
 not, therefore, tell the whole truth concerning the daily life of 
 
 1 Yet the power never goes out even from these words. Our first experiences of 
 what they mean are never lost, but often come back and possess us strongly upon 
 occasion, though we may not know what it is that affects us. Much of the power 
 of poetry comes from such occult associations. 
 
THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 35 
 
 the ' ego.' Not only is there incessant cognitive activity through 
 presentative or representative forms, but emotional as well. Just 
 as incessantly and inevitably must the ' ego ' respond to every sort 
 of stimulation pleasurable or the contrary, derived from the active 
 qualities in objects contemplated by it in perception, — or rather 
 both activities are united. In listening to the recital of even 
 inconsequential happenings, as the mind interprets the words 
 logically, it at the same time responds to the emotional influences 
 with which they are charged, and in like manner when the media 
 are the eye and a printed page. When the body is in repose and 
 the march of ideas becomes wholly subjective, the states of the 
 ego are still as chameleon-like as when the body is awake. 
 Whether it wakes or sleeps the avenues of influence are ever open. 
 Not only the inarticulate sounds in nature but every object 
 discerned, whether a face or patch of sky or stretch of landscape, 
 enter potentially the soul. Poetry is an institutional device 
 through which the outside sources of influence may be repro- 
 duced and continued at will in the closet or by the fireside. 
 
 As to sources of our English vocabulary, it evidently matters 
 little whence words are derived if fully naturalized. A word from 
 Sanskrit or Chinese is just as potent as any other, and will not 
 seem strange to the ear if it stands for something in the common 
 experiences of men. Revived and restored Anglo-Saxon terms 
 will be yet foreign if they do not bring back their associations 
 with them, while importations like creator, saviour, virtue, honor, 
 gentle, for like reason are as good or better than if Saxon. It is 
 said often that the Romance and Latin portion of our vocabulary 
 consists of the thought-terms, and the Anglo-Saxon of the emo- 
 tional. This is apparently not so largely true as has been sup- 
 posed. Out of the 800 Romance words found in Chaucer that 
 are still in use not much less than half are known and heard in 
 every native household in the land. It would hence seem that 
 from one-fourth to one-sixth of the words in the folk-speech are 
 un-Saxon. In respect to number of syllables, above 600 of the 
 800 words just mentioned are dissyllabic, or over. But the 
 
36 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 
 
 great majority of best associational words in the language are 
 monosyllabic; and Shakespeare, as Professor Corson has pointed 
 out, resorts to these by instinct in pathetic passages. 1 
 
 To illustrate the effects of association in poetry there is nothing 
 better than the two passages in Macbeth to the meaning of which 
 Mr. Lowell has given us the clue : 2 — 
 
 " The raven himself is hoarse 
 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
 Under my battlements. Come, you spirits 
 That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, 
 And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full 
 Of direst cruelty ! Make thick my blood; 
 Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 
 That no compunctious visitings of nature 
 Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 
 The effect and it ! Come to my woman's breasts, 
 And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, 
 Wherever in your sightless substances 
 You wait on nature's mischief ! Come, thick night, 
 And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 
 That my keen knife see nor^he wound it makes, 
 Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, 
 To cry ' Hold, hold ! ' " 
 
 I- v. 35-5'- 
 
 Shakespeare has here in hand the difficult task of making Lady 
 Macbeth — who is not unwomanly or ungentle — equal in our 
 sight to forcing on her husband the murder of King Duncan. To 
 do this he shows us how intolerable to her seems the burden she is 
 trying to assume. He makes her cry out for strength, pray that she 
 may be emptied of her woman's tenderness and filled with ferocity 
 instead, that her blood may thicken, and that all approach to 
 pity be stopped effectually. Withal she is made to shroud her- 
 
 1 See Professor Corson's paper, "Latin and Anglo-Saxon Elements," in Intro- 
 duction to Shakespeare, pp. 99-111. 
 
 2 Prose Works, vol. 3, pp. 44, 45. 
 
THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 37 
 
 self with appalling associations of cruelty from without, that we 
 may the less think it characteristic within. Moreover, these 
 associations are arranged in the order of a climax. Raven, 
 hoarse, croaks, fatal, battlements, are given us at the outset. 
 Even the first of these is potential enough — as the crow of corpses 
 — in any mention without being declared to be on this occasion 
 hoarse even for him. Hers is not a house of entertainment, a 
 home; she recognizes it as the place for violence and carnage. 
 Even "woman's breasts," from the wish their milk may be as 
 gall, are made to join the list of words that tell. Night with its 
 own thick darkness is in her wish to be palled in the densest 
 smoke of hell, that she may not look upon the wound her keen 
 knife will make, nor a just Heaven peep spyingly through the 
 blanket of the dark, to cry "Hold, hold!" in consternation. 
 
 This is not the place to debate the character of Lady Macbeth, 
 whether she was by nature, as some have held, a monster, or a 
 true gentlewoman beside herself from ambition for her husband. 
 At any rate, here are something more than thirty terms and phrases 
 of darkest and direst association, and some of the merely epi- 
 thetic, as murdering ministers — not the ministering spirits of 
 salvation, but those that lie in wait against the soul, prompting 
 to murder and all like mischief — hardly less effective than those 
 more directly used. Let us now compare the other passage : — 
 
 "Duncan. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses. 
 
 •' Banquo. This guest of summer, 
 
 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, 
 By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath 
 Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, 
 Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
 Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : 
 Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, 
 The air is delicate." 
 
 I. vi. i-io. 
 
38 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 
 
 In this scene Duncan in measureless content and confiding 
 wholly in his kinsman enters beneath those same battlements. 
 But he is not moved to call them by that name. To him the 
 very air is redolent of peace and safety. That we may breathe 
 the same outward atmosphere and realize the terrible contradic- 
 tion between the seeming security and the actual danger, as also 
 feel more deeply Duncan's helplessness and innocence, Shake- 
 speare again makes use of association. It is not now the raven 
 that is mentioned, but the martlet that only summer may enter- 
 tain, and that only builds in spots where there are no noises 
 affrighting, and where it divines can be no danger. Thus we 
 find, in the nine lines, above twenty terms and expressions of 
 sweet and sacred associations, with no word or hint of opposite 
 suggestion anywhere among them. 
 
 The extent to which associations are employed in poetry is 
 greater than the reader is generally aware. Sometimes they pro- 
 duce the major part of the effect, as in the witches' lines which 
 declare the contents of the caldron, at the opening of Act IV. 
 in the same play. Here, unquestionably, it is Shakespeare's pur- 
 pose to dampen the enthusiasm of the audience for its hero, and 
 the bare meaning of the words or of the sentences, as such, is of 
 small importance. No such array of disgusting and revolting 
 associations was perhaps ever elsewhere heaped together. In 
 Juliet's soliloquy, just before she swallows the sleeping potion, the 
 associations, though now but secondary, serve both to deepen the 
 general effect, and assist the plausibility: But to show how gen- 
 eral is Shakespeare's use of this instrument of power, it is not 
 necessary to select the superior passages, for examples abound in 
 every play. Hamlet scarcely opens his mouth without swaying 
 our sympathies according to the experiential tenor of his terms. 
 To go outside of Shakespeare, in the quotation from the Inn 
 Album used in Chapter III., the effect of the words is to contrast 
 the clean, sweet, free outer world with the thick, carbonated at- 
 mosphere of the gamblers' room. A more excellent example is 
 
THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 39 
 
 the passage on the same page from Sohrab and Rustum, or the 
 following paragraph, which next precedes it in that poem : — 
 
 " And night came down over the solemn waste, 
 And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair, 
 And darken'd all; and a cold fog, with night, 
 Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose, 
 As of a great assembly loosed, and fires 
 Began to twinkle through the fog; for now 
 Both armies moved to camp, and took their meal; 
 The Persians took it on the open sands 
 Southward, the Tartars by the river marge; 
 And Rustum and his son were left alone." 
 
 Here the contrast later to be realized emotionally is first intel- 
 lectually summarized in the two opening lines. In the presence 
 of the solemn desert and the mighty Oxus, whence creep fog and 
 night that envelop all, we share again in the routine concerns of 
 men, while we forget not Rustum sitting with his dead. It is by the 
 associations in hum, great assembly loosed, twinkling fires , that life 
 is brought in to contrast with death so strongly. There is contri- 
 bution to the general effect even in meal over and above what 
 had been made, say, from the use of food. And then, to anchor 
 the whole, comes the final paragraph earlier cited. It is a poem 
 of error and weakness and calamity, which irk and ruffle the 
 reader's spirit. But these are thrown into their true perspective 
 by the associations of untransientness and strength and rest, of the 
 Infinite and Complete elicited through new mention of the Oxus, 
 and by reference to the 'new-bathed stars,' and the Aral Sea. 
 
 But poetry, unfortunately, is not always made up so abundantly 
 of associational words. As the student will have been advised, 
 it is rare that these amount to as many as one-third, or even 
 one-quarter, of the whole number in the sentence. However, it 
 is not the number of associations, but the potency, that tells. 
 The effect of one may float a whole passage, or even a whole 
 poem. In Ossian's "I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they 
 
40 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF WORDS. 
 
 were desolate. The fox looked out of the windows," the last 
 sentence — by making the fox, with his almost inspired shyness 
 and avoidance of man, look out of windows where once human 
 faces peered — offers more to the imagination than volumes of 
 detailed description, and amounts, indeed, to a poem in itself. 
 Yet all the effect comes from bringing together" the associations 
 in fox, and windows. Moreover, we must not assume there is 
 no power except in terms that carry their emotional value upon 
 their face. Just what potency some of the seemingly trite and 
 commonplace words of the mother tongue conceal we cannot 
 know until some cunning hand lays hold upon them, as in 
 "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts." On 
 the other hand, nothing can be more fatal to poetry than the 
 prominent use of a word that has never acquired an experi- 
 ential meaning. 1 ' Profundity calleth unto profundity ' is logi- 
 cally correct, but would be poetically suicidal. 
 
 1 This is the inevitable source of defect in poetical translations. It seldom hap- 
 pens that words of equivalent logical intension can be found that will have the 
 same experiential value in the two languages. It is perhaps quite as impossible 
 for one mind to know two languages experimentally, — at least, 1 have not succeeded 
 in finding such. 
 
METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 41 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 METERS, THE ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, 
 AND RHYME. 
 
 No one pretends of course that,, objectively speaking, there 
 can be any power in Form. The difference between the most pol- 
 ished and harmonious verse and the most elementary artistic 
 delight is little less than infinite, since the one is only inanimate 
 and material, while the other is interpretative, and involves the 
 postulation of ideals. But the soul of man is conditioned by its 
 environment, and if acquainted with nothing nobler, may get 
 pleasure and inspiration, as with the Indian, from even a feather 
 or a shell. 
 
 So we find that poetic form is merely stimulative, and that its 
 effects come only by the subjective selection of the ' ego, ' wherein 
 something pleasing in the material sphere is taken as the earnest 
 of another thing vastly different and nobler in the intellectual or 
 the spiritual. One of the most elemental of the stimulants of 
 form is rhythm. It is not in itself poetic, yet it stirs the emo- 
 tional activity of even the crudest mind. Smoothness and har- 
 mony do not enter the mind of the reader as mere smoothness 
 and harmony, but are taken up in the form or with the effect of 
 spiritual exaltation, or made stepping-stones to a loftier mood. 
 In like manner rhyme, if rightly used, starts the feelings at once 
 in the direction of idealizing whatever is couched in it. 
 
 But each race from different endowments and varying environ- 
 ment develops peculiar susceptibilities, and hence requires a 
 special set of excitants as the proper form of its national verse. 
 The ancient Greeks were especially sensitive to exactness of pro- 
 portion and definiteness of form, and so rigid and monotonous 
 
42 METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 
 
 a thing as quantity was made the basis of poetic structure. 1 In 
 the north of Europe at the beginning of history we find the Teu- 
 tonic nations in the process of evolving a system of poetic form 
 in which rhythm, dependent on force-emphasis, and the repeti- 
 tion and then the echo of some particular consonant or vowel, in 
 emphasized words, were the instruments of effect. Thus in the 
 following lines from Csedmon's description of the flight of the 
 Israelites from Egypt, the italicized syllables are emphatic, and 
 the repeated n or s in the first half of the line is echoed in the 
 second hemistich : — . 
 
 " Nearv/e ge«(r#don on noriS-wegss, 
 JViston him be su'Ss.n A'gelwara land." 2 
 
 There are four emphatic words in each double line, and all 
 unessential words are suppressed when possible, as shown in the 
 translation below. The number of syllables in the line is incon- 
 stant, varying in Anglo-Saxon from seven to fourteen, each hemi- 
 stich, as it would seem, being sung originally in recitative to a 
 new chord upon the harp. 
 
 But the Romans followed the Greeks and made a quantitative 
 rhythm the basis of their system. The opening line of the 
 s£neid, for example, was thus read : — 
 
 Arma vi|rumque ca|no Tro|jae qui | primus ab | oris 
 
 p • \ o * p I a \ \ P P I 
 
 Each line of the poem consequently occupied in theory exactly 
 the same time in rendering as any other. Hence there was little 
 variety except what might be produced by exchanging spondees 
 for dactyls, or vice versa, in the first five feet of the line. Each 
 
 1 It is probable that Greek poetry derives its quantitative rhythm from an early 
 custom of singing while marching or dancing to music. The wholly stereotyped 
 and artificial ictus seems best explicable on such a supposition. But the theory is 
 not altogether acceptable, and awaits further proof. 
 
 2 Narrowly [they] n6w on n6rthways hasted, 
 S&w to their southward Siinfolk's lands. 
 
 Exodus, 68, 69. 
 
METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 43 
 
 of the divisions, or ' bars, ' in any sort of verse was called a 
 metron, ' measurer, ' and like a foot-rule served to indicate how 
 many times the whole line used this fundamental unit. Hence tri- 
 meter, tetrameter, hexameter, etc., are equivalent to 'three-foot,' 
 ' four-foot, ' ' six-foot ' verse or line. But more important than 
 all, at least in effect upon modern poetry, was the special stroke 
 or stress of the voice upon some certain syllable of every metron, 
 called ictus. No matter what the form of the sentence, or the 
 place where the emphasis of the thought or of force should fall, 
 the designated syllable must have its stress, — even if a mere suffix 
 or ending of declension. Clearly the foot was to be helped to 
 beat the time, however the ear and the mind might be hindered 
 with respect to the author's meaning. The Teutons, on the 
 contrary, seem not to have been addicted to dancing, but took 
 their delight more seriously. Life to them was something more 
 than a dream of beauty. Hence the meaning, the message in 
 their poetry, even if told in curt and ungraceful forms, was 
 enough for them. They could never have devised or adopted 
 an artificial systerri of metronomic rhythm, and would surely 
 have avoided all attempts at verse based on word-accents as 
 such. So they made emphasis the foundation of their poetry. 
 All unimportant words, as articles and particles; were dispensed 
 with, and the adjunct was made one with its noun by compo- 
 sition seemingly where possible. The sentence thus condensed 
 might be made up almost entirely of emphatic parts of speech, 
 and not seldom lines occur in which there are but the four force- 
 words required by the measure. It was not found difficult to 
 distribute the natural emphasis of the sentiment so as to produce 
 more than mere prose harmony to the ear. Needing some guide 
 to the identification of corresponding hemistichs, as also some 
 stimulus to fancy, the old Teutons devised, or adopted, allit- 
 eration. 1 
 
 1 It is then no marvel that force has always been a special characteristic of Teu- 
 tonic poetry. Many portions, at least of the Be6wulf, outrival (he strongest pas- 
 sages of Carlyle. The third canto of that poem — selected at random and appar- 
 ently not stronger than the average — shows seventy-five per cent of emphasis. 
 
4'4 METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 
 
 But in the fulness of time the Northern and the Southern lit- 
 eratures touched each other. The Greek and Latin masterpieces 
 represented principles of universal beauty in respect to form, and 
 spoke with an authority that had never yet been questioned; the 
 literature of the North was full of sincerity and momentum. The 
 best and fittest in each united and survived. The Teuton was 
 content to give up alliteration for foot-meter if he might retain 
 emphasis as the real basis of his poetry. The new Greeks and 
 Italians gave up the false and enfeebling ictus of quantity and 
 made the accent of the words and of the sense supply its place. 
 Thus to poetry was restored the naturalness and force of prose. 
 In Italy the fusion was most complete and perfect. Dante wrote 
 the first great poem of the new age in classic meter, yet with the 
 old Northern force-stress upon the fourth, the eighth and the 
 tenth, or the sixth and the tenth syllable of every line. 1 Thus 
 
 1 There is generally emphasis also on other words than those in which these 
 
 syllables occur. Sometimes the slress occurs on the seventh instead of the sixth 
 
 syllable, sometimes on the ninth instead of the eighth, as in the sixth and fourth 
 
 respectively of the following lines from Canto XIII. of the Inferno. The figures 
 
 indicate the place of emphasis, and the marks of long quantity the metric accents. 
 
 6 10 
 
 Non e|ra ancor | di la | Nesso ar|riva|to, 
 i — i i — i 
 
 Quando noi | ci mettem|mo per | un bos|co 
 
 6 10 
 
 Che da | nessun | sentie|ro era | segna|to. 
 
 i — i 
 
 i ■> 
 
 Non fron|di verjdi, ma | di co|lor fos]co; 
 
 i 8 10 
 
 Non ra^mi schiet|ti, ma [ nodo[si e invol|ti; 
 
 _ 4 7 10 
 
 Non po|mi v' e|ran, ma stec|chi con to|sco. 
 
 6 _ 10 
 
 Non han | si as|pri ster pi, ne | si foljti 
 
 6_ io_ 
 
 Quelle fiie|re selvag[ge, che in | odio han|no, 
 
 i i i i 
 
 6 10 
 
 Tra Ceci|na e Corne[to, i luolghi collti. 
 i — i i i 
 
 Quivi I le brut|te Arpie lor ni do fan|no, 
 
METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 45 
 
 the Divina Commedia rivaled the classic epics in harmony and 
 statuesque perfection of form, and fell no whit behind the poetry 
 of the North in fierce and gloomy energy. 
 
 England was not to be so fortunate. First the conditions out 
 of which the national literature was to grow were very different. 
 No Virgil had lived to fill the land with traditions of elegant cul- 
 ture; there was not even as yet a language capable of bearing 
 the thoughts of a great soul ; nor was there a Dante who could 
 make his lines say what he would despite the exactions of rhyme 
 and meter. The Poema Morale and the Ormulum show hardly 
 even promise of a genuine, forceful poetry. The first Middle- 
 English poem of merit is the Owl and the Nightingale.-- This, 
 though wanting serious purpose, is vigorous and natural, and 
 owes its success throughout to the use of emphasis as the basis of 
 rhythm. Coming to Chaucer, we find at first little change for 
 the better. His early poetry scans far better than it reads. 
 Proof abounds upon every page that he is bent rather upon mak- 
 ing out his scheme of feet than delivering himself of his thought 
 in a normal way. In the Parlament of Foules it is not easy 
 to determine at sight where the emphasis belongs. There is dull, 
 monotonic dispersion of stress, which comes from the meter and 
 not the sense, and there are forced accents, ■ — ■ not less than 
 three in the first stanza, and two of these upon rhyme words. 1 In 
 the Deth of Blanche and the other early poems the same effect 
 of perfunctory metric stress is noted. But in the Prologue 2 we 
 
 Che cacci&r | delle Stro[fade i | Troia|ni, 
 i i 
 
 Con tri[sto annun|zio di [ futu|ro dan|no. 
 
 i i 
 
 1 " The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, 
 Thassay so sharp, so hard the conquerynge, 
 
 The dredful joye alwey that flit so yerne, 
 Al this mene I be love, that my felynge 
 Astonyeth with his wondyrful werkynge 
 
 So sore iwis that whan I on him thynke, 
 Nat wot I wel wher that I flete or synke." 
 
 2 The first paragraph of this is quoted on p. 6o. 
 
46 METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 
 
 come upon another sort of poetry. The author is now evidently 
 speaking to a purpose far outside and beyond his measures : the 
 reader feels at once the supporting points as he reads the lines. 
 There are three or at most four emphatic words to the line that 
 the voice easily finds. The other words seem to drop of them- 
 selves into a natural subordination, and the metrical stress they 
 carry seems to support but not to rival the main emphasis. 
 Clearly Chaucer has learned Dante's secret — perhaps from him. 
 All the poetry of his latest period is of this quality. 
 
 This, then, is the lesson that English literature was to learn — 
 all correct poetry must, like Dante's, read itself; that is, must be 
 so pui. together that the emphasis will designate and assert itself 
 just as in prose or in oral utterance. Thus the reader will be 
 released from the necessity of inferring it from the sense at 
 large, and may give himself almost wholly to modulation, tone 
 colorings, and other finer points and effects of interpretation. 
 To be sure, none but great poets make poetry of such sort, but 
 this is what distinguishes great poets from poetasters. Contrast 
 the following passages, one from a much decried poet of Addi- 
 son's and Pope's generation, the other from Shakespeare: — 
 
 " You say the hills, which high in air arise, 
 Harbour in clouds, and mingle with the skies, 
 That earth's dishonour and encumbering load, 
 Of many spacious regions man defraud; 
 For beasts and birds of prey a desolate abode. 
 But can the objector no convenience find 
 In mountains, hills, and rocks, which gird and bind 
 The mighty frame, that else would be disjoined? 
 Do not those heaps the raging tide restrain, 
 And for the dome afford the marble vein? 
 Do not the rivers from the mountains flow, 
 And bring down riches to the vale below? 
 See how the torrent rolls the golden sand 
 From the high ridges to the flatter land ! 
 The lofty lines abound with endless store 
 Of mineral treasure and metallic ore.'" 
 
 Sir Richard Blackmore: The Creation. 
 
METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 47 
 
 "The quality of mercy is not strain'd; 
 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; 
 It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes : 
 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest : it becomes 
 The throned monarch better than his crown; 
 His sceptre shews the force of temporal power, 
 The attribute to awe and majesty, 
 Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings. 
 But mercy is above the sceptred sway; 
 It is enthroned in the hearts of kings; 
 It is an attribute to God himself; 
 And earthly power doth then shew likest God's, 
 When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
 Though justice be thy plea, consider this — 
 That, in the course of justice, none of us 
 Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy; 
 And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
 The deeds of mercy." 
 
 Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 184-202. 
 
 Both extracts are abstract and argumentative, yet note the differ- 
 ence. The style of the one seems to assist the meaning, to be 
 even a part of it, but of the other, to resist and obstruct it. So 
 much is clear; and the explanation is no mystery. There is no 
 such thing as a poetic sentence-structure as apart or distinct 
 from the prosaic. Sentiment must be uttered, just as facts and 
 judgments, in normal, living idioms of speech. The subject 
 must come before the verb, and the object follow it. To put the 
 object before the verb, as in the first quotation, is a Latinism, 
 and wholly at variance with spoken English. To transpose any 
 important member of the sentence without prose warrant not only 
 transcends the rights but defeats the ends of poetry. There are 
 associations of structure, as well as of words, in the mother 
 tongue; and the poet must do no violence to the one, if he 
 cares for the best effect of the other. The beauty and hence 
 the power of the second passage are dependent upon the fact 
 that idiomatically, structurally, and accentually it is as natural 
 
48 METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 
 
 and normal as prose itself. Not that it is in form prose merely; it 
 is that and very much besides. Prose, indeed, as well as poetry, 
 may be stilted and unnatural. The standard is the unstudied, 
 spontaneous manner of the mother speech. There are idiomatic 
 places for emphasis in each oral sentence where the listener's 
 mind awaits it in advance, and even his ear misses or supplies it 
 if the speaker blunder with his stress. Shakespeare at his best 
 makes his sentences as perfect in this respect as the simplest 
 colloquial utterances, though he is poetically inditing high 
 thoughts with all the grace and majesty of a god. But the author 
 of the former passage has much ado to hold up the mere weight 
 of his metric and rhyming panoply. 
 
 The basis of poetical form is organic, oral emphasis, such as 
 abounds in Beowulf and the Ballads. With this as secondary 
 and dependent everywhere the subordinate verse-accents must 
 consist and be allied. To write poetry is not, then, to put words 
 correctly into meter, but to put worthy sentiment metrically, and 
 with the proper aid from lofty as well as familiar associations, 
 into a natural and effective rhythm of emphasis. It is the vice 
 of our literature that so many poets have been content to do 
 all these things except the last, without which even Shakespeare 
 would cease to be supreme. It is not too much to say that the 
 eminent emphasis of a certain number of words in each line is 
 as much a law of English poetry as the formal rule of Italian 
 heroic verse already cited. It is not enough that all important 
 words in the line have metric stress alike, so as to admit any 
 emphasis that the reader may infer or opine the theme demands. 
 The pivotal words must with their own organic self-assertion 
 stand out to anticipate and take on their proper emphasis before 
 they are reached in course. This eminent emphasis of the sen- 
 timent or of the sense will, unless the force is extreme, coincide 
 with and generally not fall outside the accents of the feet, and in 
 heroic verse will use from two to five of these per line. More- 
 over, the line must not plunge or halt, but with its principal 
 emphasis and subordinate metrical stress must read so easily and 
 
METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 49 
 
 naturally that the reader will be in no unwelcome wise reminded 
 he is reading poetry. 
 
 The last observation gives the clue to a comprehensive princi- 
 ple. The 'ego ' in the activity of appropriating poetic delight must 
 be kept as far as possible from every occasion of employing itself in 
 conscious intellectual perception or judgment. But little direct 
 stimulus is required, as has been shown, to exalt the fancy when 
 it is understood that conditions have been prepared to this end, 
 that the author's purpose is poetic. On the other hand, but little 
 friction or gaucherie is enough to bring the consciousness of the 
 ' ego ' willingly or unwillingly back to the sphere of phantasy. It 
 is very willing to subscribe spiritually to the poet's fictions and 
 devices, and will often take the will for the deed most charitably; 
 but the odd and strange must be kept from sight. There must 
 be no omission or displacement of words to cause a jolt or sus- 
 pension, or in any other way challenge notice, or the spell will 
 be rudely broken. The lines must not labor, or take on extra 
 feet. 1 The metrical accents must not be forced, but should al- 
 ways arise from, or be allied with, the natural accents of the words 
 and phrases, and more than all should consist with grammatical 
 precedence; that is, the modifier must not take the accent from 
 the word modified, except for cause. Next, as has been shown at 
 length, the essential rhythm of the sentence must proceed as in 
 prose from emphasis, which must be organic and coincide with 
 the accents of the words and meter. Finally, there must be no 
 rhythm of sentences, or of lines, as by the end-stopped man- 
 nerism, or other form of anticipation or expectancy, to allure 
 attention. 
 
 The process of evolving poetic discernment in these various 
 details of form has of course been slow. There are grades and 
 degrees of excellence not only in different poets, but in the 
 same poet at different points of his development. This has 
 already been illustrated in the case of Chaucer. Closer exami- 
 
 1 As in the fifth line of the passage from Blackmore. 
 
SO METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE, RHYME. 
 
 nation will reveal that even in the poetry of his maturity he some- 
 times transposes — as in the first couplet of the Prologue — or 
 forces an accent. Spenser will be found to have done little more 
 on the whole than restore Chaucer's standard. Shakespeare is 
 the first great master, yet even he went on in an amazing round 
 of development until he anticipated essentially the blank-verse 
 technique of the present day. The passage used above from the 
 Merchant of Venice is by no means in his best vein, being end- 
 stopped and somewhat declamatory. Milton added sublimity 
 to facility and force. Wordsworth made Shakespeare's rhythmic 
 manner universal. 
 
 The origin of rhyme is involved in as much obscurity as of 
 foot-meter. As in effect implied early in this chapter, it is out- 
 wardly or objectively altogether impotent and foolish. It pleases 
 the ear, and the pleasure is appropriated spiritually by the 'ego.' 
 But to secure' the highest effect rhymes must be so chosen and 
 employed as to escape intellectual apprehension. Here also 
 anything that arrests or draws away the ' ego ' from its idealizing 
 processes is reactive and perhaps will prove calamitous. In order 
 to escape its purely perceptive or critical cognizance all rhymes 
 must be unstrained and perfect, and should be made with expe- 
 riential words. There is no shorter road to burlesque than the 
 use of rhyming terms having only a logical intension. Much of 
 the effect in Hudibras is produced by this simple means, and 
 much unconscious travesty has been since turned out by better- 
 intentioned poetasters in the same way. Similarly, the making 
 of double rhymes by use of two words is likely to challenge at- 
 tention, and introduces an element of friction. 1 
 
 With respect to the choice and use of words as such the same 
 principle of evading the critical cognizance of the ' ego ' holds 
 in force. Everything that is at variance with its best prose 
 habits, as contractions and elisions, should be scrupulously 
 
 iBut it should be noted that sometimes this effect appears to be intentional, as 
 ir certain of Browning's poems written in a vexed mood, notably Old Pictures in 
 Florence. 
 
METERS, ORDER OF THE SENTENCE,*RHYME. 51 
 
 avoided. Respecting ellipses, the reader should never be delayed 
 that he may see a word on the printed page that is already yet 
 more vividly before his mind, — as at times the verb. On the 
 other hand, he should not be perplexed by the omission from 
 the page of ideas or terms not yet apprehended. Obviousness 
 and obscurity are equally mischievous in poetry. The ' ego ' 
 here acts with its best intuition; and the successful poet will be 
 found to aim neither above nor below the general range of that 
 activity. 
 
 The sources of power in poetry, therefore, as contained in 
 form, are both negative and positive. As positive they stimulate 
 and enable idealization, as negative they prevent the interrup- 
 tion of that activity. Among the former should not be omitted 
 the natural selection of the scheme of rhymes and meter as echo- 
 ing or re-enforcing the sentiment or spirit of the poem as a 
 whole. 
 
52 • POETIC PHRASES. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 POETIC PHRASES. 
 
 What experimental quality may through association reside in 
 single, isolated words, has to some extent been shown. An at- 
 tempt will next be made to analyze the poetical effects of phrases. 
 
 It is evident that suggestive words, when compounded or com- 
 bined in phrases, should retain the potency they had as singles, 
 and sometimes, but perhaps not often, enhance it by the union. 
 But what shall be said of words, in themselves prosaic and 
 common enough, which rise to poetic potency when phrased, as 
 in this from Keats ? 
 
 " There is a sleepy dusk, an odorous shade 
 From some approaching wonder, and behold 
 Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold 
 Snuff at its faint extreme, and seem to tire, 
 Dying to embers from their native fire." 
 
 Endymion, Bk. IV. 
 
 ' Steed,' and ' winged,' are of course not prose words, but all the 
 others are even commonplace ; yet the passage is not inferior 
 to many built up of choicest associational terms. Are, then, the 
 words in themselves as impotent poetically as they seem? 
 
 Not all the poetic delights of the mind are enabled or occa- 
 sioned by the influence of words alone. Many are complex and not 
 derivable from single ideas or things. A common attribute joined 
 to a common object in a new relation does not necessarily yield 
 a product as tame as either, but may amount to a revelation of 
 beauty. ' A sleepy — i.e. sleep-causing — dusk,' ' some approaching 
 
POETIC PHRASES. 53 
 
 wonder,' are fair examples. One at first suspects it is the use of 
 the abstract for the concrete that furnishes the pretext on which 
 imagination acts. That this is not all or much of the truth is 
 seen if the description is recast in the prose way. Nor is it in the 
 spirit, or art-purpose of the passage merely. Another example — 
 this also not from the most exalted sort of poetry — will be 
 clearer on this point : — 
 
 " That very time I saw, but thou couldst not, 
 Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
 Cupid all armed : a certain aim he took 
 At a fair vestal throned by the west, 
 And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
 As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. 
 But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
 Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, 
 And the imperial votaress passed on 
 In maiden meditation, fancy free." 
 
 Oberon to Puck, M.S.D., II. i. 152-161. 
 
 Here the last four lines furnish the illustrative phrases. Chaste, 
 beams, watery, moon, imperial, votaress, maiden, and meditation 
 are, as before, words which, prosaic as singles, form combinations 
 stimulative of the mental activity called imagination. Fiery is not 
 included since, signifying not ' resembling ' but ' causing ' fire, 
 it is in this case poetic. It is evident at once that the poetry here 
 is not merely in the phrases, that the beauty revealed comes from 
 beyond the language. Moreover, it is not in the spirit of the 
 passage as a whole, nor in the author's purpose, which was merely 
 to indite a passing compliment to Elizabeth. It lies in the body- 
 ing forth of an ideal, — not true literally, as prose would have 
 made only too apparent, but true spiritually. The mind of 
 the reader is as intellectually aware as was Shakespeare's that 
 Elizabeth was not insensible to the attractions of handsome court- 
 iers, and was not above encouraging native as well as foreign 
 aspirants to her hand ; it nevertheless believes in the existence 
 of the vestal ideal, and that this ideal is right and true. The ' ego ' 
 
54 POETIC PHRASES. 
 
 perforce would fain have all ideals realized. Hence Shake- 
 speare's compliment consists in representing the ideal as in this 
 case actual ; and thus it is that we are charmed by the contem- 
 plation, so long as we can make the illusion last. 
 
 Shakespeare's use of phrases here is therefore analogous to his 
 employment of suggestive words in the passages quoted from 
 Macbeth in Chapter VI. In those he uses familiar and ready- 
 made associations each by itself; here he blends associations 
 less potent for the sake of their combined effects. 'Chaste,' 
 'beams,' 'watery,' 'moon,' 'imperial,' 'votaress,' 'maiden,' 'medi- 
 tation,' open each to an independent vista of recollections, and 
 are made by pairing to refine and idealize each other. ' Maiden 
 meditation ' is meditation proper for or characteristic of the 
 maiden mind ; an ' imperial votaress ' is one who, though an 
 absolute ruler, is yet under a vow as fully as if withdrawn from 
 the world ; and so on. The effect of all is to assist removal from 
 the actual world to an ethereal, super-sensuous plane. There is 
 nothing of the human, of the earth earthy, left in sight. We are 
 somehow above in space, with Oberon and the moon. 
 
 It is further characteristic of suggestive phrases that they involve 
 a new activity. In the suggestive passages from Macbeth the 
 mental operation was reminiscent merely ; here it is constructive. 
 Only thus creatively was it possible for Shakespeare to produce 
 the effect last noted, for aerial experiences in the actual could not 
 be drawn upon. Similarly in the lines from Keats first cited and 
 throughout the description of which they form a part, the fancy 
 is kept upon the stretch creating from old materials fresh combi- 
 nations that give pleasure, not because of the associations wrapped 
 up in the parts as singles, but because the experiences from the 
 wholes as such are new. So in these later lines from the same 
 book of the Endymion — 
 
 " Ah Zephirus ! art here, and Flora, too? 
 Ye tender bibbers of the rain and dew, 
 Young playmates of the rose and daffodil " — 
 
 the 'ego' is peculiarly grateful for the notion that Zephirus and 
 
POETIC PHRASES. 55 
 
 Flora are in a sense, indeed, rain and dew-bibbers, and playmates 
 of the daffodil and rose. But this sort of suggestion leads the 
 mind to think as well as to remember, challenges it to test experi- 
 mentally the objects named in their new relation. Thus is it that 
 the phrase serves prevailingly as an instrument for the revelation 
 of fresh analogies and new poetic truth. 
 
 It may be well to distinguish here the different kinds of phrases 
 that may occur in poetry. First are, of course, the ordinary prose 
 phrases made up of noun and limiting or qualifying adjective, like 
 'pleasant dreams,' 'secret purpose,' 'first disobedience'; likewise 
 prepositional adjuncts used in logical strictness, as ' loss of Eden,' 
 ' pride of kings,' etc. Next come epithetical phrases, or such as 
 add to the noun an adjective more or less superogatory or im- 
 plied already, like ' fickle freaks,' ' shady grove,' ' shapeless ruin,' 
 and the like. After these are properly ranked combinations in 
 which the noun or its adjunct is used in some transferred or 
 figurative sense, as ' rivals of my watch,' ' dews of blood,' ' skirts 
 of Norway,' ' solid roar,' ' patient stars,' and all such. Next belong 
 phrases of which one or both principal elements, considered inde- 
 pendently, are poetic words, like ' winged steeds,' ' dusk de- 
 mesnes.' Finally, we reach the poetic phrase pre-eminently, in 
 which, as in Shakespeare's ' russet mantle,' ' little month,' ' maiden 
 meditation,' neither noun nor adjective is used in an unliteral 
 significance. Of these classes only the last three are of prime 
 importance, — save that epithetic phrases sometimes greatly avail 
 when the adjunct commands potent associations. 1 
 
 The history of phrase development is a very important chapter 
 in the evolution of poetic power. Phrases are almost unknown in 
 Chaucer and his successors, who use the adjective essentially in 
 prosaic ways. In Wyatt and Sackville, in addition to such epi- 
 
 1 There is an old instinct of English speech which permits the placing of an 
 adjective after its noun in poetic diction, as in expressions like 'ashes cold,' 'pre- 
 lude soft,' ' stride colossal.' The effect is generally, through associations of form, 
 to give dignity to the line or sentence, sometimes to exalt the phrase so composed 
 to poetic potency. Whenever this occurs, the instances should be entered under 
 a sub-group b of the respective class. 
 
56 POETIC PHRASES. 
 
 thetic cases as ' thoughtful care,' ' tender ruth,' ' dumb dead corse,' 
 we find some genuine examples like ' night's misty mantle,' ' with- 
 ered fist,' ' vapoured eyes,' etc. In Spenser the phrase instinct 
 is more pronounced, but still somewhat blind and vague. He 
 seems to approve such expressions as ' infernal feend,' ' blustering 
 storms,' 'watrie wette,' 'shady grove,' ' swete harmony,' equally 
 with ' afflicted stile,' ' wasteful spite,' ' gentle jollities,' ' cruel sky.' 
 Shakespeare is the first poet in our literature to eschew mere epi- 
 thets and use the phrase discriminatingly to the uttermost of strong 
 effect, — as indeed no poet since has wielded it with superior 
 energy and skill. Yet he often falls short of the simple beauty 
 just noted in the lines from the part of Oberon. He will also be 
 found to employ comparatively few phrases of the last or most 
 poetic kind above described. In the first act of Hamlet, ' bird of 
 dawning,' ' russet mantle,' ' little month,' and ' wicked speed,' are 
 the only good examples of such phrases, and there are perhaps 
 twenty admissible instances in all ; while of phrases of the third 
 kind — involving some indirect or transferred meaning — there 
 are two hundred and over. Shakespeare has clearly not yet 
 evolved the skill to lay hold of the materials just under his hand, 
 but reaches out after indirect etymologic or other effects from be- 
 yond the mother tongue. ' Rivals of my watch,' ' sensible avouch,' 
 ' strange eruption,' ' impress of shipwrights,' ' extravagant and 
 erring spirit,' ' dejected havior of the visage,' may stand for the 
 long list of examples. Milton belongs to Shakespeare's school, 
 and in his best lyric style almost outrivals his master in unlabored 
 and simple phrasing. But the promise of the L 'Allegro and the 
 Lycidas was not yet to be fulfilled. In the Metaphysical and Clas- 
 sical periods which follow, and even past the Lyrical Ballads, the 
 skill if not the will seems wholly wanting. The new age had begun 
 in spirit, we are wont to say, with Coleridge, but had not yet pos- 
 sessed the form. Hitherto this had been treated, so to speak, only 
 in light and shade. Keats and Shelley, by using the increment 
 of color — and this through the effect of phrases — now make poetry 
 an art indeed. In these masters phrases outnumber all other 
 
POETIC PHRASES. 57 
 
 poetic elements, and are also no longer perfunctory or tautolog- 
 ical, but prevailingly of the last or most potent kind. In the 
 Alastor the ratio of phrases to the sum of all poetic elements 
 is as 8 : 15, nearly, while of fifth-class and fourth-class to third-class 
 phrases, as 35 : 9. In the first act of Hamlet, as will be remem- 
 bered, the latter ratio was as 1:10. 
 
 Shakespeare, as was shown in the last chapter, found the secret 
 of perfect form so far as that consisted in emphasis and meter. 
 Were the young twin poets his equals in this respect, they had been 
 great names indeed in English and universal literature. Though 
 they did much towards rediscovering his lost secret, they yet stand 
 on their one attainment and contribution. While men read Shake- 
 speare in these days of accepted canons for the sake of the mat- 
 ter, in spite of unevenness and frequent nods or lapses in the 
 manner, they read Shelley and Keats chiefly for the manner with- 
 out greatly caring for the matter. Indeed, if form and purpose are 
 to be regarded, both the Endymion and the Alastor come far short 
 of being great poems. There are, moreover, relatively as many 
 slips and offences against taste, at least in the former, as in any 
 work of Shakespeare's. Yet is there such beauty everywhere in 
 spite of all as makes Shakespeare in comparison, except here and 
 there for a few lines, seem statuesque and distant, marble-grained 
 and cold, — or should we say that his severity finds its analogue 
 rather in the technique of steel-engravers? But English poetry 
 at its best since the Alastor has had all the richness and glow of 
 painting. 
 
 It is of course admitted that some poets of reputation do not 
 much use either suggestive words or poetic phrases, and perhaps 
 the taste of some readers would fain reject them altogether. But 
 associational terms and poetic phrases are not only extant in the 
 minor poets of the day, but also abound almost equally in greater 
 masters as unlike in theory and form as Robert Browning and 
 Matthew Arnold. Moreover, there is as little denying their potency 
 in. the economy of literature as their presence, though tastes may 
 well differ as to how frequently they should be used. They have 
 
58 POETIC PHRASES. 
 
 had thus far their history, and will complete their destiny in spite 
 of the avowed approval or hostility of the critics. Any given 
 poetic composition may for a time or sometimes run in bald, 
 straightforward prose terms and phrases, but the day is past when 
 a great poem can be cast throughout in these alone. To establish 
 this it will be sufficient merely to compare Mrs. Hemans, " L. E. L.," 
 and Mary Howitt with Mrs. Browning, and Montgomery, or even 
 Byron, with Tennyson. 
 
 To enable clear comprehension of the differences between prose, 
 epithetic, indirect, fourth-class and fifth-class phrases, compare the 
 following passages, and note the instances in each class. Any 
 phrase that stops the prose progress of the reader for a poetic 
 reason, should be admitted and its place determined. 
 
 " Lo ! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, 
 Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor; 
 From thence a length of burning sand appears, 
 Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears; 
 Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, 
 Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye : 
 There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, 
 And to the ragged infant threaten war; 
 There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil; 
 There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil; 
 Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf, 
 The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; 
 O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, 
 And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade ; 
 With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound, 
 And a sad splendour vainly shines around." 
 
 Crabbe : The Village, Bk. I. 
 
 " For that our kingdom's earth should not be soil'd 
 With that dear blood which it hath fostered; 
 And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect 
 Of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbors' swords; 
 And for we think the eagle-winged pride 
 Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts, 
 With rival-hating envy, set on you 
 
POETIC PHRASES. 59 
 
 To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle 
 Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep; 
 Which so rous'd up with boisterous untun'd drums, 
 With harsh-resounding trumpets' dreadful bray, 
 And grating shock of wrathful iron arms, 
 Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace, 
 And make us wade even in our kindred's blood ; — • 
 Therefore, we banish you our .territories." 
 
 Shakespeare : Richard II, I. iii. 
 
 " Shepherd, stay ! 
 There is a land behind the western cloud, 
 A low deep meadow land of ceaseless spring 
 And everlasting twilight : olives there 
 Shed a perpetual shade of softened lustre 
 Like woven light on the green grass below; 
 Where foam-white asphodels, tall milky blossoms, 
 Shimmer with interchange of hyacinth, 
 Blood-red anemone, and faint narcissus, 
 And the blue violet strays in sweet tangles, 
 Seen and unseen, by pool and running brook, 
 Lulling the sense with fragrance; while a song 
 Rocks in the odorous height of spreading pine 
 And spiry cypress and aerial palm. 
 There Hymenseus dwells with me, what/ time 
 We rest from roaming the star-spangled sky. 
 There all good lovers, after toilsome life, 
 Lie raimented with everlasting youth." 
 John Addington Symonds: Hesperus and Hymenmus, 1 17-134. 
 
60 FIGURES. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FIGURES. 
 
 Chaucer, it has been said, does not make poetry by means of 
 suggestive words and phrases. But Chaucer is a great poet never- 
 theless. He must therefore have reached his effects in some way 
 by means of the sentence as a whole. Let us next try to find out 
 how. 
 
 Chaucer is admittedly nowhere more poetic or admirable every 
 way than in the opening paragraph of the Prologue to the Canter- 
 bury Tales : — 
 
 " Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote 
 The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote, 
 And bathed every veyne in swich licour 
 Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 
 Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 
 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 
 The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne 
 Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, 
 And smale fowles maken melodye 
 That slepen al the night with open eye — 
 So priketh hem Nature in hir corages — 
 Thanne longen folk to gon on pilgrimages — 
 And palmers for to seken straunge strondes — 
 To feme halwes, couthe in sondry londes; 
 And specially, from every shires ende 
 Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende, 
 The holy blisful martir for to seke, 
 That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke." 
 
 In these lines there is some ground for supposing that devout, 
 corage, and martir were experiential to the writer's mind. Of 
 
FIGURES. 61 
 
 poetic phrasing no good instance occurs, unless we admit shoures 
 sote, as doubtless we should not, since it is attached to the triple 
 metaphor of ' piercing the drought of March to the root,' and 
 designates the means. But in the first line we find Apritte per- 
 sonified, as Marche, Zephirus, sonne, Ram, and Nature later. 
 The other figurative expressions are far more numerous — ' April 
 piercing the drought' (vaguely conceived as a tree or plant) 'of 
 March to the root with the sweetness of his showers ' ; ' bathing 
 every vein in that moisture from the virtue of which the blossom 
 is begotten' ; 'Zephirus inspiring the tender shoots in every wood 
 and heath ' ; ' the young sun running his half-course in the 
 Ram ' ; and ' nature pricking the birds in their hearts to make 
 melody.' Hence, in addition to the implication that the ' long- 
 ing of folk to go on pilgrimages' is only another effect of the 
 same kind with the rest, also apart from all felicities of form and 
 not a little of that "high seriousness" and dignity that must 
 underlie all poetic power, we have the effect of no less than 
 twenty figurative terms and expressions in the eighteen lines of 
 the paragraph. To the figures mainly, therefore, the passage no 
 doubt owes its perennial charm. 
 
 But what are figures? How does personification, how do 
 metaphors make poetry ? What charm can there be in the indi- 
 rection of saying, ' April pierces a drought to the root ' ? 
 
 Let us begin with metaphors and similes. What is the difference 
 between them? Which is the more effective? These and like 
 questions, with which we are all more or less familiar, may be satis- 
 factorily answered after an analysis similar to that which has been 
 employed before. Somewhat of the characteristic subjectivity of the 
 ego, particularly in the activity called imagination, has been shown 
 in previous chapters. This subjectivity greatly varies with different 
 minds and even with the same mind in different states of energy, and 
 when different subjects are under consideration. This subjectivity 
 does not consist merely in presenting objects pictorially before the 
 mind ; it goes much further, and especially in the direction of reveal- 
 ing, and maintaining, subtle and unsuspected analogies. By this 
 
62 FIGURES. 
 
 discovery of characteristics possessed in common the mind pro- 
 ceeds, often in an arbitrary or fantastic fashion, to construct new 
 species, — even new genera, for the moment, or until the flash of 
 fancy has passed from sight. For example, in " Thou hast brought 
 a vine out of Egypt ; thou hast cast out the heathen and planted 
 it," the transcendent energy of the mind's cognition recognizes 
 the analogy between the work of Jehovah in bringing the Israelites 
 out of Egypt and settling them in Palestine and the husbandman's 
 transplanting of vines, so makes Jehovah for the moment stand in 
 the genus or class of vine-dressers. But this does not describe 
 the whole process. In the case of those whose imagination is slow 
 and mal-adroit, the metaphor will be incompletely realized ; there 
 will at least be no apprehension of God as a vineyard-tender. But 
 the more vigorous and nimble intellect will realize the figure in a 
 flash of fancy by thinking or seeing the personal Jehovah, symbol- 
 ically, for the moment in the form of a real gardener, or, in other 
 words, will identify the image formed in the mind with that declared 
 or called for by the metaphor, and thus get the whole effect 
 intended by the speaker or writer. For it is evident here that the 
 writer saw mentally this same identity, and said or wrote the meta- 
 phor because he experienced it thus vividly in his mind. This 
 exaltation of resemblance, through the creative energy of imagina- 
 tion, to identity, is especially agreeable to the ego. No other dis- 
 connected operation of imagination gives so much delight. 
 
 Herein also may be discerned the difference between the meta- 
 phor and the simile. When the resemblance is not so marked as 
 to warrant the assignment of the two objects to a new class by using 
 it as the basis of classification, no such attempt will be made by the 
 well-balanced mind ; the resemblance will be predicated merely. 
 " He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water " gives 
 notice specifically that the righteous man and the tree are not at 
 all to be thought of as included in the same class, but merely as 
 having a certain incidental characteristic in common. With the 
 quiet spirit of the first psalm the figure chosen by the writer is in 
 perfect keeping. A more erratic or excited mind might by subjec- 
 
FIGURES. 63 
 
 tive enthusiasm have so magnified the common quality as to con- 
 ceive the prosperous man during a flash of fancy as really a peren- 
 nially green tree. But the imagination of most readers could not 
 have gone with him in this, so that the figure would have amounted 
 to little or nothing more than the simile we find. 1 
 
 We may deduce easily from the foregoing certain important 
 observations. The highly imaginative mind will in general deal 
 too much in metaphors. The poet will write too florid prose ; a 
 Tegner will become almost fantastic. 2 On the other hand, the 
 prosaic, matter-of-fact mind will often fail to call things by some 
 metaphorical class-name that will speak volumes of detailed de- 
 scription. " O ye generation of vipers " condenses an encyclopedia 
 of characteristics into a single word, and all because in the image 
 which that word calls up in the mind we see Pharisees and vipers 
 identified in a common class. Likewise "wolf in sheep's clothing" 
 bestowed upon one who has abused confidence is vastly different 
 from the same preceded by 'like.' In the former case the ex- 
 cited mind of the speaker sees that which is named in the meta- 
 phor, and by a transcendentally subjective act unites with it the 
 personality and character of the traitor addressed. In the latter 
 
 i Note how the writer, no doubt unconsciously, intensifies the effect by using a 
 complemental metaphor in the next clause : " his leaf also shall not wither." 
 Contrariwise, a metaphor is often assisted through the mind of the reader by a 
 succeeding simile. 
 
 2 Esaias Tegner, the most celebrated of Swedish poets, and scarcely rivalled in 
 any literature for vividness of fancy. His principal poem, FrithioJ^s Saga, begins 
 with this metaphor : — 
 
 " There grew in Hilding's manor fair 
 
 Two plants beneath his fostering care. 
 The North before saw never blended 
 Such beauty sweet and promise splendid. 
 
 " The one burst oaklike forth a tree, 
 And like a lance its stock to see ; 
 Its crown that in the breezes trembled, 
 In arch a warrior's helm resembled. 
 
 " The other nourished as a rose," etc. 
 But the two plants are Frithiof and Ingeborg, hero and heroine of the story ! 
 
64 FIGURES. 
 
 case his mind contemplates two ideas, as separate, in an act of 
 comparison. Moreover, a reader of vivid imagination will catch 
 the spirit of a figure which a halting writer has improperly intro- 
 duced as a simile, and will realize it as a metaphor in spite of the 
 printed words. 
 
 It is evident there can be and should be no principle of choice 
 between similes and metaphors but this : Write as you think. If 
 the writer sees the two objects compared as really identified through 
 some common characteristic, let him so pronounce them, — even 
 if Christ shall call Peter ' Satan,' or Paul, the high priest, 'a whited 
 wall.' Let him write what is in the mind, or write not at all. Obe- 
 dience to this law of truth will prevent the abuse of figures ex- 
 cept in case of minds too agile and vivid in perception of analogies. 
 Very little of what is called fine writing is • due to honest tran- 
 scription of what is seen in fancy, but the embellishments are 
 filled in afterwards without organic relation to the theme. Such 
 use of figures betrays generally its occasion. So also when the 
 complex is taken to illustrate the simple. Men do not call vipers 
 ' a generation of Pharisees ' in response to any genuine thinking 
 whatsoever. 
 
 Similar to metaphor, but simpler and cruder, are the Allegory 
 and the Parable. The allegory is a consistent history, capable 
 equally of a literal or a spiritual interpretation. The parable is a 
 less extended instance, taken from or squaring with the material 
 side of life, and designed to carry the mind to some spiritual con- 
 clusion. In'both of these figures resemblance is made the pretext, 
 as in metaphor, of establishing a passing identity. Allegory and 
 the parable, as well as the fable, belong to an elementary stage of 
 spiritual history. What might be cast in the form of either, well- 
 appointed minds may, at least in the present literary stage, be ex- 
 pected to take for granted. 
 
 Personification appears at first to be a figure entirely unlike those 
 first described. The principle at bottom seems to be merely ego- 
 istic. The child manifests it by insisting on treating its pet dog or 
 canary as endowed with human faculties, or by giving its rocking 
 
FIGURES. 65 
 
 horse or doll at least the attributes of life. It will often invest 
 inanimate things with moral responsibility, and whip's the stool over 
 which it has stumbled as culpable for its fall. In maturer years, 
 when the fancy has been chastened and sobered, the habit is by 
 no means abandoned, but rather confirmed. Whenever the en- 
 thusiasm of the mind is called forth towards some inanimate 
 object, the natural impulse is to raise it to a higher genus, to endow 
 it with personality, and thus make it the proper object of a higher 
 sympathy. The railroad engineer speaks usually of his engine 
 as ' she,' simply because he finds it natural to consider its almost 
 human efficiency and trustworthiness as wholly conscious. To his 
 fancy it behaves ' well,' or ' ill,' is ' contrary,' or ' obliging ' ; though 
 he knows as well as the profoundest philosopher that the machine 
 can do or be nothing of the kind. This subjectivity is exercised 
 also towards men and women. Persons to whom we are partial 
 are the ' best people in the world ' : we ignore their faults, we 
 exalt their virtues. Our chosen friends are to us of supreme worth, 
 of even more than human excellence. Our children are always to 
 us good, and interesting, and full of promise. Our home, our 
 street, our city are to us the best. In general through this sub- 
 jectivity, we see less in better things that are not ours than in our 
 own. Moreover, if we become alienated from friends, if we 
 change abode, or street, or city, we transfer our partiality to other 
 objects, and in time put an estimate on what we have abandoned 
 that more nearly squares with outside or general opinion. On the 
 other hand, towards persons or things disliked or hostile the en- 
 thusiasm of the ego is manifested, not in raising to a higher plane 
 by subjectively emphasizing best characteristics, but the contrary. 
 People of worth and culture with whom we do not chance to be 
 associated in some close way, are likely to be regarded with indif- 
 ference : so that in all the world there is perhaps no person or 
 thing that does not stand nearer our sympathy or further away 
 from it, than to the general mind is wholly reasonable and just. 
 
 But the essence of this egoism is not mere selfishness as we 
 commonly understand that word. What causes the ego to become 
 
66 FIGURES. 
 
 attached to the objects which make up its environment is not the 
 consciousness that they are its own, but the fact that it is having 
 or has had experimental knowledge of them. What the soul has 
 had experience of becomes a part of its life, or of itself. Herein 
 lies the secret of perfect memory ; herein lies the difference be- 
 tween the old education and the new. Not iteration, but expe- 
 rience of things is the key to memory and true knowledge. An 
 " enlightened selfishness '' is therefore incident to the isolation of 
 the ego", which is, as it were, an independent pivot or focus of the 
 universe. Hence the ego craves its own that it may multiply the 
 occasions of delight. It seeks joy everywhere, is under a constant 
 spell of expectancy as of one that has lost his way, and imagines 
 each phenomenon an earnest of that of which it is in search. So 
 when it finds an object in which it is sure of delight, it is fain to 
 enhance its satisfaction by adding to it an increment from its sub- 
 jective self. For the sake of joy in the relationship, it chooses 
 friends by recognizing some certain quality or qualities and ignoring 
 others. In personification there is the same process ; things from 
 a lower genus are exalted into the same relation with the ego as 
 another ego might sustain. But this personal relation is not phys- 
 ical. It is only by the supremest subjectivity that a personified 
 quality can be brought before the physical eye in painted or 
 sculptured forms. To most of us, Faith, Hope, and Charity are 
 probably not a trio of new graces, but three names capitalized by 
 the printer. This may be due to slowness of fancy, but oftener 
 perhaps to a livelier spiritual apprehension. For it should now be 
 clear that personification is after all only a process of the same 
 kind as allegory, parable, or metaphor, inasmuch as in each and 
 all of these an outer resemblance is accepted as evidence of inner 
 identity, or that, though the objects associated differ outwardly, 
 they mean the same spiritually. In other words, the ego finds in 
 the lower a type of the higher, from charity or some other human 
 characteristic limns out the complete superior being which would 
 be appropriate or proportioned to the single quality. 1 Or it sees 
 
 1 So in the Dawn, Justice, Liberty, Chastity, Piety, etc., the ego constructs the 
 entire goddess or angel personality of which it has recognized the type. By the 
 
FIGURES. 67 
 
 also in the higher a type of the lower ; as in Jehovah, of the vine- 
 dresser, or in Christ, of the good shepherd. 
 
 We may therefore pronounce each of the figures now considered 
 a species of idealization. We commonly think at least of meta- 
 phor as a help to intellectual understanding merely, but this is 
 clearly a mistake. The basis of all the figures mentioned is analogy. 
 But analogy is not always an intellectual relation, is never properly 
 such at all. When we speak of youth as the morning of life, we 
 thereby in no wise elucidate youth as an intellectual or logical con- 
 cept, but simply go beyond the literal and physical sphere, and 
 note that life may, in a spiritual sense, be said to have its morn- 
 ing. Analogy is properly a spiritual proportion, or rather an iden- 
 tity of spiritual ratios. 1 
 
 But the ego does not love merely what it has experienced, it 
 loves its experiences themselves ; not only its environment, but its 
 work as well. The author enjoys his own poem perhaps more 
 highly than another by a better hand. The reader enjoys a com- 
 position in which he is allowed to assist the author, rather than one 
 which does not take for granted his powers of penetration. Hence 
 his mind delights in condensed expressions, since it can more 
 quickly reach the meaning. A ' brave assault ' is more pleasing 
 than an ' assault by brave men,' for the mind apprehends at once 
 the real nature of the thought, and wins an experience besides. 
 An author who affords no such opportunity is ' dry,' which is the 
 ego's favorite name for compositions that do not recognize its 
 highest activity. Moreover, one of the most familiar of mental 
 phenomena is abbreviation of symbols. In spoken language there 
 is a constant tendency to shorten words and lighten the utterance 
 of heavy syllables. In writing and printing, symbols and abbre- 
 viations are universal. These of course save energy and time, but 
 
 same process were produced the superior and inferior deities of the Greeks, and in 
 general the other gods and goddesses of the heathen world. 
 
 1 The fault called mixed metaphor is due to a confusion of types, and proceeds 
 from an imperfect, or merely intellectual, discernment of like qualities or relations. 
 When resemblance is spiritually apprehended, there is small place in thought for a 
 rival experience at the same time. 
 
68 FIGURES. 
 
 they do yet more. The ego will not be bored. After an idea 
 becomes familiar, the mind tries to avoid contemplating it in full, 
 and if possible cuts short the representation. If the object to be 
 pictured is a house, the process of imaging is stopped when the 
 most salient or characteristic part has been constructed, as the roof. 
 So also of a ship, the mental picture is reduced to the representation 
 of the sail. But this is not all. The ego is at the same time alert 
 in the activity which produces metaphor, and constantly recognizes 
 the spiritual identity of the whole and the part, the cause and the 
 effect, the container and the thing contained. It sees in gray hairs 
 the type of ' old age.' Summer being the soul of the year, ' ten 
 summers ' will mean the same to it as ' ten years.' Hence when 
 there is an identity of values, the notion that is less complex and 
 burdensome will be the favorite. Hence 'bar' and 'pulpit' and 
 ' press ' have become established even in common thinking, and 
 in the language of common life. 1 
 
 Other mental habits and tendencies kindred with the foregoing 
 might be here considered. Nicknames suggest the abrogation of 
 formality, the closest and most familiar approach of mind to mind. 
 Diminutives argue a caressing fondness, and a subjective effort to 
 invest with qualities that will justify or invite it. On the other 
 hand, a change from familiar to formal appellatives indicates rising 
 differences. The only remaining figure connected with these states 
 of the ego is the much-abused apostrophe. When the mind resorts 
 to this in moments of rare spiritual clearness, it is very effective ; 
 but unless the mind spiritually sees the object addressed as pres- 
 ent before it, common sense generally dissuades from calling on 
 what cannot hear and cannot answer. Common sense indeed is 
 the code of the ego, and is a function of the feelings rather than 
 the reason. 
 
 The student should now be prepared to distinguish clearly the 
 
 1 This is the course of nature in the history of words. Metaphors of rarest excel- 
 lence often lose their first significance, and cease in time to be more than intellec- 
 tual. As Carlyle has so excellently pointed out, our common vocabulary abounds 
 in terms once highly figurative. 
 
FIGURES. 69 
 
 different kinds of suggestive words considered together in Chap- 
 ter III., — a thing obviously impracticable before. A suggestive 
 word is properly an experimental word, or one that through asso- 
 ciation has direct, intrinsic power with the emotions. But a word 
 that gives pleasure because used for what it is not, is a " trope," 
 and should be considered by itself. It may involve a metaphor, 
 or a personification ; it may stand — like brave in the example 
 above — as an abbreviation for a whole phrase, or in some other 
 way as a part for the whole ; contrariwise, as a whole it may be 
 mentioned merely to designate some part. Each example should 
 be restored to its direct and literal form, and patiently studied 
 until the specific source of the effect upon the imagination is de- 
 termined. So in phrases of the third class, the particular kind of 
 figure should be made out in the same way by changing to the 
 literal or prose manner of expression, and even further expansion 
 if necessary. Both word and phrase figures should be carefully 
 distinguished from clause figures, or those in which the transaction 
 or quality is fully predicated. To insure quick discernment of 
 these and other differences, it will be well if the student parse the 
 poetical elements in a few paragraphs. The suggestive words, 
 phrases of each class, and figures of whatever sort, should, each 
 in its place, be determined and declared. To facilitate such an 
 exercise the following examples, mainly of the three forms respec- 
 tively, may be used. 
 
 " Ye holy towers that shade the wave-worn steep, 
 
 Long may ye rear your aged brows sublime, 
 
 Though hurrying silent by, relentless time 
 Assail you, and the wintry whirlwind sweep. 
 For, far from blazing grandeur's crowded halls, 
 
 Here Charity has fixed her chosen seat; 
 
 Oft listening tearful when the wild winds beat 
 With hollow bodings round your ancient walls; 
 And Pity, at the dark and stormy hour 
 
 Of midnight, when the moon is hid on high, 
 Keeps her lone watch upon the topmost tower, 
 
 And turns her ear to each expiring cry. 
 
70 FIGURES. 
 
 Blest if her aid some fainting wretch might save, 
 And snatch him cold and speechless from the grave." 
 
 William Lisle Bowles: Bamborough Castle. 
 
 " Once a fair city, courted then by kings, 
 Mistress of nations, thronged by palaces, 
 Raising her head o'er destiny, her face 
 Glowing with pleasure and with palms refreshed, 
 Now pointed at by Wisdom or by Wealth, 
 Bereft of beauty, bare of ornaments, 
 Stood in the wilderness of woe, Masar." 
 
 Walter Savage Landor : Gebir, Bk. v. 
 
 " I felt the wind soft from the land of souls; 
 The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight, 
 One straining past another along the shore, 
 The way of grand dull Odyssean ghosts 
 Athirst to drink the cool blue wine of seas 
 And stare on voyagers. Peak pushing peak 
 They stood : I watched beyond that Tyrian belt 
 Of intense sea betwixt them and the ship, 
 Down all their sides the misty olive-woods 
 Dissolving in the weak congenial moon, 
 And still disclosing some brown convent-tower 
 That seems as if it grew from some brown rock, 
 Or many a little lighted village, dropt 
 Like a fallen star, upon so high a point, 
 You wonder what can keep it in its place 
 From sliding headlong with the waterfalls 
 Which powder all the myrtle and orange groves 
 With sprays of silver. Thus my Italy 
 Was stealing on us." 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Aurora Leigh, Bk. vii. 
 
FIGURES. 71 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 FIGURES — Continued. 
 
 It has been shown that Allegory, Metaphor, and Simile are fig- 
 ures really alike in kind, and differing merely in the degree of 
 spiritual identity established or recognized. Hence they some- 
 ' times run into each other, as in this verse before quoted from the 
 Psalms : " Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt : thou hast cast 
 out the heathen, and planted it." Here the author plainly starts 
 out with allegory, but by using heathen in the second clause, turns 
 the whole to metaphor. He seems to have shrunk from develop- 
 ing the idea of a vine independently, to be interpreted by the 
 reader later on, but purposely introduces heathen — instead of 
 wild, or native, vine — for the sake of appropriating at once the 
 benefit of the analogy. He finds himself able to develop the two 
 ideas together in his own mind, and assumes — though all uncon- 
 sciously — the ability of his hearers to do the same. Similarly, 
 the opening of Psalm xxiii. is cast in running metaphor. 
 
 The reason of the change here from allegory to metaphor is the 
 same as that which explains ' brave attack ' above : the mind 
 abbreviates, condenses, thus attaining superior vividness and en- 
 ergy. Also with reference to the hearer, it is enabled, by reducing 
 the bulk and weight of the figure, and wielding it with firmer 
 grasp, to produce a more immediate and intense effect. For the 
 instrument of speech grows, or should grow, more prehensible and 
 efficient as the mind expands. Hence the reason why young 
 readers are so slow to take in the higher effects of poetry : they 
 are not accustomed to the terse and intense manner of our best 
 poets. To appreciate Keats and Tennyson, or even Byron, 
 requires an awakening of the spiritual sense, or a taste for analo- 
 
72 FIGURES. 
 
 gies, and expert readiness in developing and appropriating them 
 that, in the main, can only come by culture. Therefore to young 
 minds just beginning to use analogy, allegory is very welcome ; 
 but as these grow more and more accustomed to the spiritual view 
 the parallels grow shorter and shorter, until, in practical thinking, 
 they are reduced to points, and made, as we say mathematically, 
 to coincide. A single phrase, or perhaps a word, is made to do 
 duty, with telling effect, for a whole metaphoric clause, or orig- 
 inal allegoric paragraph. 
 
 This process is nowise exclusively poetical, but is illustrated in 
 all departments of intellectual expansion. The tendency every- 
 where is to reduce reflective processes to instinctive. The boy 
 that begins with adding digits whose sum is less than ten, may 
 end as a bank clerk who casts four columns of figures at once. 
 The unit of comprehension to him is now in the thousands' col- 
 umn. So in poetry at first the unit is each significant circum- 
 stance included in the analogy, as — to take once more the same 
 example — 'bringing the vine out of Egypt,' 'casting out "the 
 heathen,' and ' planting it.' But when the mind has learned how 
 to go along the beaten paths of analogy without a guide, it is 
 enough to say 'vine from Egypt,' or 'Jewish vine.' So, in the 
 lines quoted from Denham in Chapter II., the unit is each point 
 of resemblance indicated, or ' called off ' — we almost might say 
 — to phantasy. But to the trained imagination, as was shown, 
 ' Thames-like ' is potential of all high effect. The unit is here 
 the whole analogy. 
 
 On examining into the nature of the other figures, we find like 
 concentration and intensification everywhere. In Synecdoche, we 
 are told, ' a part is put for the whole, a species for the genus, a 
 definite number for an indefinite, and vice versa.' It has been 
 made clear already that ' British sails ' is abbreviated and ener- 
 gized in thought from ' British ships,' because the mind sees 
 pictorially as at a distance merely the sails, and will not permit 
 phantasy to construct more of the image. To show the whole 
 would not add definiteness, but would divert energy, in the same 
 
FIGURES. 73 
 
 manner as, in mathematical thinking, to attach to an algebraic 
 symbol its known value would clog the mind. In " Ten thousand 
 were on his right hand," the definite number is used for the sake 
 of making the indefinite number apprehensible. It would be 
 manifestly impossible to use in such case an indefinite number for 
 a definite ; it is on account of the very impossibility of represent- 
 ing the large indefinite number satisfactorily in thought that the 
 large definite number is taken as its substitute. Hence the vice 
 versa part of the definition, in so far as it may imply option or 
 equivalence, is misleading. The larger will not be taken as the 
 proxy of the smaller unless the smaller cannot furnish a good one 
 of its own, — that is, unless it lacks a salient and sufficient char- 
 acteristic to serve as its symbol. Whenever good examples of the 
 ' vice versa ' kind occur, as of the whole for a part in " He was 
 gray, but not from age," a sufficient reason for the mind's so choos- 
 ing will not be hard to find. Here it is the fact that it is easier — 
 from the familiarity of the image — to think the whole man gray- 
 haired, than abstractly the gray hair alone. Even if ' his hair ' 
 had been used instead of " he," it would not have kept us from 
 imaging more or less vividly the face and form. Gray hair is here 
 of no significance save as the effect of experiences undergone by 
 the subject of the story. Hence the personality, the whole man, 
 is brought into the figure, because it cannot be excluded from the 
 thought. 
 
 In the various forms of the figure called Metonymy the same 
 effort to save both time and energy may be traced. The mind 
 always, unless for reason, goes along the course of least resistance. 
 The constant use of the cause for the effect is in general due to 
 the fact that the former is concentrated and single, while the latter 
 may be multiform and various. ' Shakespeare ' is the prevailing 
 designation for the collective writings of our greatest poet, not 
 merely for the reason it is easier to pass through the mind a sym- 
 bolic or other image of the man than of the volumes in which his 
 works appear, but chiefly because the soul, the pervading genius of 
 the poet, is a favorite and vital element in the thought. ' Moses 
 
74 FIGURES. 
 
 and the Prophets,' from the effect of their character and mission 
 in ourselves, is more speedily and completely intelligible as a 
 designation of the Hebrew canon than any objective symbol 
 derived from the writings themselves could be. Only when thus 
 spiritually applied can a cause be used for a material effect. When 
 the container is used for the thing contained, as a 'glass — for 
 glassful — of water,' the explanation is simpler ; since the mind can 
 easily think the glass, which retains its shape, but not the water, 
 except as taking shape from its receptacle. Thus much on the 
 ' vice versa ' side of this figure. On the other hand, when an effect 
 is put for the cause, the abstract for the concrete, the material for 
 the product, or sign for thing signified, the gain to thought in 
 speed and vividness is evident. Yet we seldom realize what 
 tremendous concentration and energy are possible through the 
 mind's thus postulating the spiritual equivalence or identity of 
 parts and wholes. Perhaps it is only when, aided by the physical 
 eye, we discern an empire that girds the globe in the paltry ounces 
 of the British crown, or, on alien seas or soil, all that home and 
 country mean in the national flag, that we in some measure com- 
 prehend this miracle of the mind. 
 
 The general tendency is, therefore, clearly in the direction of 
 condensation and vividness in the simpler figures. Further spe- 
 cific evidence of a systematic advance in command of figures and 
 effect in using them as the mind develops, is abundant every- 
 where. It has been shown how allegory may be cut down to 
 running me'taphor. How it may be abbreviated still further by 
 union of two or more of the simple figures, as apostrophe and 
 single metaphor, is illustrated in these lines from Keble : — 
 
 " Sun of my soul, thou Saviour Sear, 
 It is not night if thou be near." 
 
 There can be no question that this is an allegoric thought. The 
 analogy is set forth in the first line, and the application of that 
 which is true of the one object to the other, in the second. But 
 it would have been more natural, or more in accordance with the 
 
FIGURES. 75 
 
 expectation of_experienced readers, if the analogue could have 
 been designated and the application made in a single sentence, in 
 some such way as this : — 
 
 Thou art, O Christ, the banisher of my night. 
 
 That is the proper form of the metaphoric thought, such as 
 abounds in Chaucer and would doubtless have been used in the 
 present case except for the rhyme. The unit here is the whole 
 analogy, but in a clause presentation. 
 
 But, in reality, "Sun of my soul," if the reader is prepared to 
 take hold of the analogy, contains all that the second line declares, 
 and will suggest it to the mind. Thus is it that phrases, at the 
 proper point in the evolution, begin to appear in poetry by con- 
 densation of clauses. Bernardo, in the thirteenth line of Hamlet, 
 might have been made to say ' If you do meet Horatio and Mar- 
 cellus, who are to be my rivals in the watch to-night, bid them 
 make haste.' This would, of course, have enabled the reader, 
 though with a sterner liberty, to recognize the guardsmen in their 
 excited watch for the reappearance of the ghost as rivals indeed, 
 but the phrase-form ' rivals of my watch ' is more effective. " The 
 predicate conditions the imagination." To the accustomed mind 
 it is sufficient to name, but not necessary to prescribe, the par- 
 allel. The same is true throughout all phrases proper of the third 
 class. The unit is a whole analogy, but in phrase presentation. 
 
 It will now be clear how phrases of the fifth kind, or poetic 
 phrases proper, acquire their power. They owe it to the fact they 
 each disclose some new spiritual type, that is, one not resident by 
 figure in either of the terms as singles, and not communicable 
 except through mention of a binary characteristic. 'An empress,' 
 yet ' vestal votaress,' designate a type involving two idealistic, but 
 literal, notions, and unrevealable by any single term. The 
 thought, indeed, to the spiritually inexpert is complex enough to 
 have been set forth in a complete allegory, while to the prepared 
 imagination 'imperial votaress' carries all the effect of one. In 
 
76 FIGURES 
 
 like manner, ' maiden meditation,' as presenting potentially to the 
 imagination the type of a maiden so at one with her estate as to 
 meditate in the law thereof, with monastic fast and vigil, both day 
 and night, reduces a yet larger allegoric thought to the same pro- 
 portions. Of course, it would seem that only a few allegories could 
 be so treated. But the art of the greatest poets is full of sur- 
 prises. There is no calculating beforehand what shall be or shall 
 not be possible to mind. The hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt 
 were doubtless no easier of interpretation in that day than our 
 stenographic symbols now. 
 
 At the distance of half-a-step between phrases and single terms 
 stand poetic compounds. These show upon their face the fact 
 they have been reduced from full phrase forms. " Glory-bath " 
 stands evidently for 'bath of glory ' ; "steel-bright" for 'bright as 
 steel ' ; " a-sparkle " for 'in a sparkling,' etc. ' Diamond-drift ' — 
 though not so written by Mr. Browning in the passage on page 14 
 — since it means ' drift of diamonds,' should be added to the list, 
 making the sixth instance in thirteen lines. If we examine again 
 the passage it will be evident why the author used these com- 
 pounds instead of the full phrases, for the most careless rendering 
 shows that words, and not phrases or clauses, are the basis of 
 effect. The impulse is strong upon him to spend only a single 
 word upon a single analogy or type ; and it even seems he would 
 have reduced also the compounds to singles were he not stopped 
 by the natural limitations of language encountered in the process. 
 Tennyson was more fortunate, or more masterful, in the following 
 from The Princess : — 
 
 1 So saying, from the court we paced, and gain'd 
 The terrace ranged along the Northern front, 
 And leaning there on those balusters, high 
 Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale 
 That blown about the foliage underneath, 
 And sated with the innumerable rose, 
 Beat balm upon our eyelids. Hither came 
 Cyril, and yawning, 'O hard task,' he cried: 
 
FIGURES. 77 
 
 ' No fighting shadows here ! I forced a way 
 
 Thro' solid opposition crabb'd and gnarl'd. 
 
 Better to clear prim* forests, heave and thump 
 
 A league of street in summer solstice down, 
 
 Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman. 
 
 I knock'd and, bidden, entered; found her there 
 
 At point to move, and settled in her eyes 
 
 The green malignant light of coming storm. 
 
 Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oil'd, 
 
 As man's could be; yet maiden-meek I pray'd 
 
 Concealment : she demanded who we were, 
 
 And why we came. I fabled nothing fair, 
 
 But, your example pilot, told her all. 
 
 Up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye. 
 
 But when I dwelt upon your old affiance, 
 
 She answered sharply that I talked astray. 
 
 I urged the fierce inscription on the gate, 
 
 And our three lives. True — we had limed ourselves, 
 
 With open eyes, and we must take the chance. 
 
 But such extremes, I told her, well might harm 
 
 The woman's cause. "Not more than now," she said, 
 
 " So puddled as it is with favoritism." ' " 
 
 The condensation in many of these lines is marvelous. Through- 
 out, analogy is the unit, but in word presentation. We do not 
 here have sentences like 'April pierces a drought to the root with 
 the sweetness of his showers,' in which not only the subject and 
 the predicate, but also the object and the adverbial modifier, are 
 unliteral, and all in the line of a single thought. On the contrary, 
 either the subject, or the predicate, or a modifier of the one or of 
 the other, often sustains an independent analogy, while the rest 
 of the sentence may either remain unliteral, or similarly show else- 
 where some further center or centers of thought radii. Even the 
 adverb astray, in line seventh from the end, carries a whole alle- 
 gory in itself. 
 
 It was pointed out in Chapter VIII. that Shakespeare was the 
 first to use the phrase as a special instrument of power. He uses 
 preferably and prevailingly the clause, but seems at times quite 
 ready to shift his unit and make phrases the basis of his style. 
 
78 FIGURES. 
 
 It was, however, Keats and Shelley that introduced the phrase 
 manner as a norm. These poets also use a large number of word- 
 analogies, yet keep well to phrases — just as Shakespeare before 
 them stood by the clause. But in the succeeding generation we 
 find Mrs. Browning, and her husband, and Tennyson, taking the 
 next step forward together. Shakespeare had also given foretaste 
 of the days when words should speak with the power of clauses, 
 but the impulse with him was fitful, and seldom yields more than a 
 brace of word analogies in a single paragraph or page. Yet there 
 is nothing in literature more dynamic than some of his condensa- 
 tions like 'cream and mantle,' 'vice,' 'trifled,' 'jaded,' 'godded.' 
 Tennyson and Browning can count scores of such to his singles, 
 but few so wonderful. However, as in his phrases, we detect the 
 presence of something inorganic and compelled, that is like the 
 lightning from the clouds, not the glare of a constant sun. It is 
 not the interrupted shock, but the sustained momentum, that car- 
 ries most effect. The condensed figures, the analogies focused 
 into single terms, and these massed like so many commonest 
 words in sentence structure, produce an array of force that is the 
 marvel of modern literature. Twenty years after Shelley in phrase- 
 forms wrote 
 
 " There was a Poet whose untimely tomb 
 No human hands with pious reverence reared, 
 But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds 
 Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid 
 Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness," 
 
 and seventeen after Keats in the same vein had said 
 " A thing of beauty is a joy forever," 
 
 Robert Browning, while making those poets his ideal and striving 
 to compose lines like theirs, was actually crowding word-analogies 
 together after this fashion : — 
 
 " The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, 
 And the earth changes like a human face; 
 
FIGURES. 79 
 
 The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
 
 Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright 
 
 In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, 
 
 Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask — 
 
 God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged 
 
 With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, 
 
 When, in the solitary waste, strange groups 
 
 Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like, 
 
 Staring together with their eyes on flame — 
 
 God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
 
 Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod : 
 
 But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
 
 Over its breast to waken it; rare verdure 
 
 Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
 
 The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, 
 
 Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; 
 
 The grass grows bright, the boughs are swollen with blooms 
 
 Like chrysalids impatient for the air, 
 
 The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run 
 
 Along the furrows, ants make their ado ; 
 
 Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark 
 
 Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 
 
 Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls 
 
 Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
 
 Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek 
 
 Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews 
 
 His ancient rapture. Thus he dwells in all." 
 
 Browning hoped he might follow in the footsteps of that master 
 whom he worshipfully called Sun-treader, at least afar off. The 
 years have shown that it is not Shelley, but himself, that treads 
 the sun. The message of the Alastor and the Endymion was 
 Beauty, but of the Paracelsus, Power. 
 
 The course of concentration in figures is, therefore, without 
 leap or break. Allegory Or parable was first, and succeeded by 
 running metaphor ; next, clause metaphors, which were reduced 
 to phrases, and phrases finally to compound or single terms. But 
 poetry at large will not follow these changes systematically or 
 chronologically. Since individuals are constantly passing through 
 
80 FIGURES. 
 
 the same stages of development as the general mind, it is evident 
 that literature must be adapted neither to the highest nor the 
 lowest grades of culture, but the average. The conversation of 
 mature thinkers, unless technical, is generally intelligible to the 
 child of ten or twelve. Or, to resume our figure, the elementary- 
 digits are not abrogated through familiarity with such higher units 
 as thousands and millions. The bank clerk upon occasion adds 
 again in single columns, as in school-boy days. In a manner 
 somewhat similar the allegory yet lives by a sort of sufferance, 
 though the mode is recognized as pedantic and overwrought, 
 except for edification of the nursery or burlesque grade. Some- 
 times, also, readers consent, in default of better entertainment, 
 that things be said which go without saying, and may, for the 
 moment, derive a degree of satisfaction from Dante's or Spenser's 
 threefold parallels. Those even who most delight in the con- 
 densed and fervid manner, will at times be better served by 
 poems that less tax the .energy of the mind. Men in these days 
 of limited express trains and electric cars yet ride in carriages or 
 go on foot, and some indeed there are who maintain these last 
 should be the maximum methods of locomotion. So there are 
 readers who, though they have reached the requisite point in 
 culture, are not in sympathy with such poets as Tennyson and 
 Browning, and dislike the titanic and lightning energy of their 
 haste. They prefer under all circumstances to move more slowly, 
 and study, so to speak, the topography of the region in details. 
 For such moods and temperaments there is bulk-literature in 
 plenty, while not a page even of the tersest and strongest poetry 
 but will yield, like the passage above quoted from Tennyson, a 
 good proportion of lines keyed down to their proper pitch of 
 energy. 
 
 Analogy, therefore, serves more than a single purpose in poetry. 
 It is used pre-eminently to set forth a material fact or truth 
 spiritually, making the reader feel before he thinks, as in 
 
 " Up went the hushed amaze of hand and eye," 
 
FIGURES. 81 
 
 in the passage from The Princess. It is used to accompany and 
 interpret a material fact or truth in a spiritual repetition, as " How 
 often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gath- 
 ereth her chickens under her wings." Finally, it may be employed 
 to furnish a poetic parallel or embellishment, as in examples cited 
 later. So for the final difference between figures we are brought 
 back to our first observation of varying degrees of energy in the 
 mind. 1 When the perception is so intense as to recognize a new 
 spiritual genus and postulate true spiritual identity, the resulting 
 figure will be of the condensed sort that we have been consider- 
 ing. The characteristic to be noted is, the material and the spir- 
 itual are combined, and the spiritual is used to express both. If 
 the imagination recognizes, not identity, but resemblance merely, 
 the material is set forth and expatiated upon so as to include the 
 spiritual, sometimes in the same sentence, sometimes in an almost 
 allegorical succession of appended clauses. The characteristic is, 
 the material and the spiritual are separated, and the one is inter- 
 preted through direct comparison with the other. We thus find, 
 in the last analysis, grounds for distinguishing two kinds of figures, 
 those that are conceived with sufficient energy to set forth a main 
 circumstance and its innermost meaning at the same time, and 
 those that accompany or follow the statement of a main circum- 
 stance, in order to set forth, re-enforce, or amplify some meaning 
 spiritually involved therein. The figures of the one class we may 
 call concentrative, of the other, expansive. 
 
 We naturally turn to Homer or Milton for first illustration of 
 expansive figures. The following, from the Iliad, is an excellent 
 example : — 
 
 " Nor waited Paris in his lofty halls, 
 But when he had put on his glorious arms, 
 Glittering with brass, he traversed with quick steps 
 The city; and as when some courser, fed 
 
 With barley in the cell, and wont to bathe , 
 
 In some smooth-flowing river, having snapped 
 
 1 See p. 62, last paragraph. 
 
82 FIGURES. 
 
 His halter, gaily scampers o'er the plain, 
 
 And in the pride of beauty bears aloft 
 
 His head, and gives his tossing mane to stream 
 
 Upon his shoulders, while his flying feet 
 
 Bear him to where the mares are wont to graze, — 
 
 So came the son of Priam, Paris, down, 
 
 From lofty Pergamos in glittering arms." 
 
 Bk. vi. 641-653 (Bryant's translation). 
 
 Instances like this are frequent in which the poet, having affirmed 
 his incident or thought, goes back and approaches it again by the 
 spiritual pathway. Sometimes the parallels are too far separated 
 to be kept in mind together, as in this paragraph from Sohrab and 
 Rustum : — 
 
 " As when some hunter in the spring hath found 
 A breeding eagle sitting on her nest, 
 Upon the craggy isle of a hill-lake, 
 And pierced her with an arrow as she rose, 
 And follow'd her to find her where she fell 
 Far off; — anon her mate comes winging back 
 From hunting, and a great way off descries 
 His huddling young left sole; at that he checks 
 His pinion, and with short uneasy sweeps 
 Circles above his eyry, with loud screams 
 Chiding his mate back to her nest; but she 
 Lies dying, with the arrow in her side, 
 In some far stony gorge out of his ken, 
 A heap of fluttering feathers — never more 
 Shall the lake glass her, flying over it; 
 Never the black and dripping precipices 
 Echo her stormy scream as she sails by — 
 As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his loss, 
 So Rustum knew not his own loss, but stood 
 Over his dying son, and knew him not." 
 
 Here the illustration is in the nature of an episode. But instances 
 like this are exceptions rather than the rule. An impulse, even in 
 early poetry, can be traced that prompts interpretation, so far as 
 possible, from within or about the fact or thought itself, thus 
 
FIGURES. 83 
 
 making the illustration shorter and simpler than the thing illus- 
 trated. One of the first steps in this direction is to omit from the 
 simile its predicate and let mere mention of the analogue indicate 
 to imagination the act or attribute required. 1 Examples of this 
 occur in Homer and Virgil, though generally with some after-pred- 
 ication, as — 
 
 " The assembly wavered to and fro 
 Like the long billows of the Icarian Sea, 
 Roused by the East wind and the South, that rush 
 Forth from the cloudy seat of Father Jove." 2 
 
 In due course the predicate is made to affirm the attribute tropi- 
 cally of the main subject : — 
 
 " Go, bind thou up yond dangling apricocks, 
 Which, like unruly children, make their sire 
 Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight ; 
 Give some supportance to the bending twigs. 
 Go thou, and, like an executioner 
 Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays, 
 That look too lofty in our commonwealth : 
 All must be even in our government." 
 
 Shakespeake, Richard II., III. iv. 
 Finally, as in 
 
 " The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, 
 Burn'd on the water," 
 
 we see the phrase simile used merely to enable and introduce a 
 condensed analogy, which expresses the actual arid the spiritual, 
 fused as it were together, by use of the spiritual term. Thus it 
 is that poetry has risen from the expansive to the concentrative 
 pitch of energy. Homer, to be sure, also presents the material 
 
 1 See Chapter II., and Notes. 
 
 2 Iliad, Bk. ii. 179-182 (Bryant). The predication stands with 'roused' in the 
 original : — 
 
 Kivi\8"t) 8' dyop)} <p^} Kvfiara [ia.Kpa dak&ffffyjs, 
 
 ttovtov 'Inaptoio, t4 ftir r Efyxfc re NoVos re 
 
 lipop iirat^ai irarphs Aiis in ve(pe\Auv. 
 
 LI. 144-146. 
 
84 FIGURES. 
 
 by way of the spiritual through word-analogies, yet, we must ad- 
 mit, so seldom that his instances are to be regarded but as pre- 
 figurative of the coming type. Dante and Milton stand far hither- 
 ward from the poetry of mere parallels, though such they know. 
 Shakespeare, as we saw in phrases, is far on the way to the mod- 
 ern manner. He nowhere, it may be said, employs a simile in 
 Homer's way. He uses his figure to reach his effect, and, that 
 attained, never stops to double-track or parallel the route by 
 which he came. Indeed, in energy of imagination he is not sur- 
 passed, almost certainly is not rivalled, by Tennyson, or Brown- 
 ing, or any of their fellows in English or out of it. It is merely 
 the mode, not yet intelligibly evolved in Shakespeare's time and 
 unavailable to free use, that in these days has given them their 
 advantage. 
 
 The impulse to make things so far as possible interpret them- 
 selves, — to yield up some circumstance, or give off some attri- 
 bute that shall serve as clue to their spiritual significance, is traced 
 in the various forms of epithet. This is the explanation of Sack- 
 ville's ' dumb dead corse,' Spenser's ' watrie wette,' and Homer's 
 still more pleonastic and bald expressions. The mind, assuming 
 a spiritual meaning in some notion, essays reflectively or medita- 
 tively to elicit it by sample, and, at times, when imaginative energy 
 was low, seems, at least subjectively, to have succeeded. But at- 
 tempts at finding the spiritual meaning by expanding the logical 
 often lead to tautology and even worse consequences. 
 
 When the imagination of the poet is fully aroused, he runs 
 small risk of tautology or expatiation; he will for the average 
 reader, perhaps/oftener say too little than too much. Nature is 
 full of analogues and spiritual duplicates, which may or may not 
 be discerned by the given poet without exaltation, but cannot by 
 him be flashed upon another mind without great energy. If he 
 have not the power to reveal the analogy by a single stroke, he 
 must continue the effort and repeat the stroke until the revelation 
 is accomplished. The requisite force must be exerted in some 
 form, if the effect is to be reached. But the imagination of the 
 
FIGURES. 85 
 
 reading world grows generation by generation more intense and 
 eager, and no poet will be called, in these days, great, whose 
 strokes are very numerous or light. Greatness consists in mak- 
 ing the many strokes in one. The day has passed when canvass- 
 ing or inventorying types, with hardly more than that degree of 
 mental energy which we call phantasy, can produce on well-ap- 
 pointed minds the effect of poetry. These lines from Thomson's 
 Autumn were accounted every way poetical a century ago : — 
 
 " Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self, 
 Recluse among the woods; if city dames 
 Will deign their faith : and thus she went, compelled 
 By strong Necessity, with as serene 
 And pleased a look as Patience e'en put on, 
 To glean Palemon's fields." 
 
 The first clause here would still be admitted as poetic, since it 
 appeals to fancy, i.e. sets the imagination at once in search of types 
 with which to idealize what is told. But ' compelled ' is tautolo- 
 gized to ' compelled by necessity ' — ' strong necessity,' indeed ; 
 while ' Patience ' is gratuitously ' expanded ' with ' serene ' and 
 'pleased.' Yet it might have been worse. Pope, as is well 
 known, amended the passage thus : — 
 
 " Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self, 
 Recluse amid the close-embowering woods. 
 As in the hollow breast of Apennine, 
 Beneath the shelter of encircling hills, 
 A Myrtle rises, far from human eye, 
 And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild; 
 So flourish'd blooming, and unseen by all, 
 The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled 
 By strong Necessity's supreme command, 
 With smiling Patience in her looks, she went 
 To glean Palemon's fields." 
 
 That is, ' recluse among the woods ' is expanded to ' recluse 
 among the dose-embowering woods, as in the hollow breast, far 
 from human eyes, breathing fragrance o'er the wild, so flourished 
 
86 FIGURES. 
 
 blooming \_sie\ and unseen by all.' Thomson's ' compelled by 
 strong Necessity ' is stretched to the unaccountable length of ' com- 
 pelled by strong Necessity's supreme command,' — which, to say 
 the least, is beneath tautology. 
 
 Epithet is, therefore, the result of the mind's realizing to itself 
 implied elements or qualities by specific mention; tautology, of 
 expatiation or expansion until some part of the meaning is un- 
 wittingly repeated. When the reader is unaware of the repetition, 
 epithet and even tautology may have for him all the eifect of 
 poetry, since he recognizes the author's purpose as poetic, and 
 will subjectively maintain a corresponding frame in his own mind. 
 Perhaps, indeed, these will furnish occasion for all the imaginative 
 activity he is yet capable of enjoying. Many of ourselves can 
 doubtless testify that we experienced our first poetic delight over 
 paragraphs involving scarcely more imagina^fg epeijgv than those 
 just cited from Pope and Thomson. A century henceysome of 
 the fine passages we now with maturer taste admire, m/ay seem to 
 our successors equally insipid and uninspired, — thpitfgh it is hard 
 to see how the standard can further alter relativgtyso much. The 
 two tendencies of expansion and concentration — old as Homer 
 and the Beowulf — and the races to which they respectively be- ■ 
 long, run counter to each other : the one tends to raise the unit 
 of conception, the other to lower it ; one to force its own passages 
 to expression, the other to follow along the beaten pathways. A 
 Tennyson, except when his analogy is unfamiliar or intractable, 
 writes in the concentrative manner ; an Arnold, from the contrary 
 impulse to simplify and leave all clear, writes in the expansive 
 vein, yet flashes out thus sometimes like Shakespeare — 
 
 " as, at dawn, 
 The shepherd from his mountain-lodge descries 
 A far, bright city, smitten by the sun, 
 Through many rolling clouds — so Rustum saw 
 His youth." 
 
 Upon the one manner and on the other respectively rest, as their 
 ultimate foundations, two great schools of poetry. 
 
THE THEME. 87 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE THEME. 
 
 On further examination of Chaucer's Prologue we do not find 
 the poetic promise of the first paragraph fulfilled in the composi- 
 tion as a whole. In the 840 remaining lines there are not as many 
 figures as in the first eighteen, and poetic words and phrases are 
 as generally wanting. Yet the Prologue as a whole is exceedingly 
 pleasing, and has always been considered a masterpiece. That 
 it is poetry has not been questioned. But if wanting in words, 
 phrases, and figures, wherein does the poetry consist? 
 
 It must not be supposed that the business of a poet is chiefly 
 the invention or condensation of analogies to grace his verse. 
 Literature is not a craft merely, it is a mission. It is never his 
 facility in figures that makes a poet. There can be nothing be- 
 yond an incidental potency in poetry made up only of figurative, 
 or of associational terms and phrases. These are but the ' limbs 
 and outward flourishes,' not in the last analysis beautiful except 
 as endowed and enabled by something from beyond. Beauty is 
 not objective, but remains unrecognized until spiritually inter- 
 preted or discerned, and there is an ultimate, inherent beauty 
 which transcends and controls the incidental beauty of mere 
 form. We must then go further than clauses, or phrases, or sugges- 
 tive words, if we wish to account for the higher effects of poetry : 
 they come from the larger, enabling spiritual truth which lies 
 back of the poet himself. That which we call spiritual truth is 
 the final and supreme truth, or that which concerns itself not 
 with what things are, but with what they mean. It is not enough 
 
88 THE THEME. 
 
 to know and say that John Howard was an Englishman, who died 
 in Russia a hundred years ago. We must be aware of his char- 
 acter, and of what his life signifies to the world, or we might as 
 well be ignorant even of the name. A flag of truce, as a fact, 
 may be a very simple thing, yet may mean weal or woe to half the 
 globe. Similarly in art and literature, spiritual truth is the ulti- 
 mate meaning to which the mind, sooner or later, attains, for- 
 getting the course or means of ascent thither. Take, for illustra- 
 tion, the Count Gismond used in Chapter IV. Here the author 
 conceals himself behind the personality of the speaker, and makes 
 no manifestation of himself save through her words and feelings. 
 It reads at first like the stock juvenile romance whose end can 
 be guessed from the beginning, and we hardly consent to be 
 detained by it at all. But we soon catch the spirit, and are drawn 
 to read again and yet again. Then the meaning, the ideals of 
 truth which inspired Browning to write the poem, begin con- 
 sciously to possess our minds. The power of innocence to pro- 
 claim itself from the astonished face of an orphan whom envy 
 plots to crush, is the first thing that kindles our enthusiasm. 
 Count Gismond, who reads the innocence, divines the wickedness 
 of Gauthier and the cousins, and comes forward as our proxy to 
 defend the helpless, engages our sympathies yet more deeply. 
 Then we note the like power in the heroine to read in turn a noble 
 heart in Gismond's face, and her simple, but sublime faith, — 
 
 " I never met 
 His face before, but at first view 
 
 I felt quite sure that God had set 
 Himself to Satan; who would spend 
 A minute's mistrust on the end ! " 
 
 No wonder that this unconscious confidence which could look 
 North, South, East, West, for her accusers, and watch her de- 
 liverer with unperturbed and even joyous gaze in his impatient 
 preparation for the trial, changed his feeling from chivalrous pity 
 to reverence and love. And last of all we are made to feel the 
 
THE THEME. 89 
 
 power of truth in vanquishing conscious calumny and malice. 
 Gauthier had been Gismond's peer, if he had had his quarrel just ; 
 but now his conscience and even the foolish women whom he 
 serves despair of his success. The victory, indeed, was won 
 already in the magnificent defiance with which the poem comes 
 to its climax. Had Gismond doubted, had she who gave him 
 inspiration wavered, even the combat might have been uncertain. 
 Thus the poem presents to us lofty types of goodness, faith, and 
 daring, for comparison with the ideals of these qualities postulated 
 by our own minds. The transfiguring power of a holy, conscious 
 — or rather unthinking, unconscious integrity, is the motive of the 
 whole. This might have been treated sculpturally by represent- 
 ing the heroine at the moment of her unrealizing dismay, as Gis- 
 mond with the ' clear great brow ' and ' black full eye of scorn ' 
 strode forth to rescue. It might also have been embodied in a 
 painting that should show the group the instant after Gismond's 
 blow, while Gauthier stands appalled as at the voice of judgment, 
 and the heroine looks abroad to know whether the lie dares yet 
 to breathe. The object lesson, as we have it in the poem, is only 
 made more objective by being cast in circumstances which call 
 up romantic and vivid associations. Figures are but few; and 
 the whole is couched in the simplest language which even a child 
 may read. 
 
 It is then the spiritual truth in his subject-matter that has 
 made Chaucer an immortal name. This is not difficult to under- 
 stand. As is well known, Chaucer was the first portrayer of 
 character in modern literature. Before him it had not seemed 
 possible to register so much as the grosser differences between 
 man and man. Chaucer found it no hardship to set down 
 even minor characteristics which his eye detected. To his 
 contemporaries the observation and interpretation of character 
 from books was a novelty, a sensation. The ability to read men 
 thus well face to face was doubtless no common accomplishment. 
 Hence Chaucer, who in a measure interprets for his reader, 
 helped his generation into a larger place. But all that he did, 
 
90 THE THEME. 
 
 barring his manner of doing it, is done outside of verse to-day in 
 novels. The more complex and refined sentiment of our Tenny- 
 sons and Longfellows, if the language could have contained it, 
 would have been meaningless in Chaucer's time. 
 
 Next to itself and its own experiences the ego prizes sympathy 
 with other minds. It wishes to see the universe through other 
 eyes. It wishes to sound the philosophies of other men, to watch 
 the evolution of their motives, and compare experiences with 
 them. This really means that the ego covets to know other 
 minds experientially, as it knows itself. It is the same process as 
 has been studied already in the figures ; we are constantly reading 
 types in things and grafting complete things upon types, only we 
 are doing it as Chaucer's readers and contemporaries could not. 
 To find types of character in faces, forms, and speech, is to us 
 little better than prosaic to-day, but in Chaucer's age amounted 
 to poetry, — as indeed by the charms of his style and spirit it 
 yet continues. But we require that this be done upon a higher 
 plane, and in rarer, less-frequented walks of spiritual observation. 
 It indeed is seldom that a poet of reputation nowadays delin- 
 eates a character for its own sake. He will use it as a means to 
 some end, will in general show what it enables to its possessor or 
 to others. Thus in the poem just considered, no direct character- 
 ization of Count Gismond or the speaker is attempted, but all 
 hints of such kind let drop by the author go at once to account 
 for that which comes to or is done by the one or other. 
 
 The age into which Chaucer was born in England was most 
 unfavorable to the career of a great poet. There was as yet no 
 accepted idiom, and the springs of lofty feeling had been befouled. 
 Men still believed, through the inner insistence of the ego, in moral 
 and spiritual ideals of an abstract kind, but were chary in accept- 
 ing concrete examples. In these days we take virtue and worth for 
 granted, and only on evidence and with reluctance withdraw our 
 faith. In Chaucer's time it seemed necessary to do the oppo- 
 site. No other English genius was ever so handicapped on every 
 side. Chaucer saw as clearly as the historian of to-day that there 
 
THE THEME. 91 
 
 was no hope for English society as it then existed ; it needed the 
 cleansing of pestilence and sword. But he refused to voice the 
 common looking-for of fiery indignation ; he left that to Langland. 
 The long-bowman and common sense had exploded chivalry, but 
 England was not deep enough in culture to appreciate a Cer- 
 vantes. There were heroes to celebrate ; but what to the people 
 was the Black Prince more than John of Gaunt, what the pious 
 pretensions of " Loller " Wicklif more than any monk's? If he 
 was to be neither a Juvenal nor a Jeremiah, there was but a single 
 course still open. Hence Chaucer will be of the people for weal 
 or woe, will make the most* of life such as he finds it, will reflect its 
 sunshine but refuse to brood upon its darkness. He essays first to 
 interpret old lives, to popularize old learning, so far as he deems 
 these will edify, to the public of his days. Then after he had 
 learned the joy of it, he fell to interpreting the common men and 
 women to themselves, showing types of character in deeds, and 
 types of action potentially in character. This correlation of the 
 eternal verities was new and striking, and the revealment gave as 
 much delight as the age craved or could appropriate in literature. 
 Thus Chaucer became the first great poet of modern English. 
 
 But by Spenser's times the Reformation had brought back to 
 England a clear and bracing moral atmosphere, and the Renais- 
 sance had brought models and standards of beauty. Chaucer's 
 age had been essentially devoid of ideals; Spenser's was wild 
 with them. Chaucer tends to' reconcile us to their absence. 
 Spenser introduces us to a world whence the actual has been 
 excluded. He recognizes nowhere the limitations of the actual. 
 The world had suddenly awaked as from a heavy sleep, and was 
 not yet certain what was dream and what was real. A new hemi- 
 sphere, a veritable Eldorado, was alluring to exploration and con- 
 quest. A new era in science and industry was beginning. Man 
 was free to go where he would in thought and theory. The print- 
 ing-press was making books for every man who could use them. 
 In morals and religion old things had passed away ; there were 
 new heavens and a new earth to every pious soul. Life was 
 
92 THE THEME. 
 
 beautiful and full of hope, and men fitfully, madly, — like children 
 overwhelmed with gifts, clutched at its promises. The very air 
 was full of heroism and romance. Abroad the battle was yet on 
 between the Dragon and the Red-cross Knight of Truth, and 
 England, though beyond the reach of Armadas, often felt her 
 pulses quicken with anxiety. The age craved a voice to lead its 
 paean of deliverance and hope. Spenser was too shamefaced and 
 sensitive for such a service ; but he could lend himself to the 
 clamor for pure types of holiness and majesty, strength and 
 beauty, so makes his Faerie Queene shine with every religious, 
 moral, national, domestic, and personal ideal. 
 
 But Spenser was but the voice crying to prepare the way for a 
 greater than himself. His ideals, though genuine and noble, were 
 really adapted from a former age and could not satisfy the times. 
 Men were looking at life too seriously to be much edified concern- 
 ing it by a poet of allegories, and elves, and chivalry. They de- 
 manded a new prophet, a fresh dispensation of spiritual truth. 
 They wished to study character, not by the lay figures of knights 
 and dragons, but in living men. They had awakened to the fact 
 that the men who had gone to the stake to save conscience were 
 not victims, but heroes ; that not the form without, but the tran- 
 scendent experiences within, make the archangel or the fiend. 
 They would sound the lowest depths of their own being, they 
 would experimentally know the sublime secrets of the soul. The 
 mysteries of life, of duty, and of destiny, had been oracularly 
 pronounced upon in the middle age and earlier, by great doctors 
 and masters of theology. But the day of individual authority was 
 passed ; the great ecumenical councils had been dissolved forever. 
 Human intelligence had attained its majority ; the thousand new 
 questions of pure and applied ethics, of influence of mind on mind, 
 of redemption or degradation of character, were now and hence- 
 forth to be settled — at first grossly and mistakenly, yet in a few 
 generations with essential soundness — by the world at large. 
 Thus England .needs not precept and theory, but object lessons 
 in morals, public instances, authoritative experiments in destiny- 
 
THE THEME. 93 
 
 making. So when the lay playwright made his studies in free-will 
 and necessity and the self-punishment of crime, in the vindica- 
 tion of justice even through the misconception, blunders, and re- 
 sistance of its chosen instrument, in the irremediableness of race- 
 differences, and in woman as the heart and hope and inspiration 
 of mankind, the people were edified better and more profoundly 
 than they knew, and testified to the service by enriching their 
 instructor while other playwrights starved. The age had been 
 brought to its senses by Calvin's doctrine of the decrees. Men 
 trembled for their souls, but from sinner to saint chafed in their 
 heart of hearts, each to his own degree, at what seemed the arbi- 
 trary and tyrannical restraints of right and duty. Yet while the 
 decalogue might appear almost a piece of divine impertinence, 
 there was, nevertheless, a rudimentary moral sense of an every-day, 
 practical sort that was trying to be alert, to discern and know 
 the truth. Through this sense Shakespeare caused men to awake 
 little by little to the consciousness that the moral law was not at 
 all a code of perverse denials, but a system of danger signals to 
 keep mankind from dashing to pieces upon the rocks. More 
 than all, his generation craved to find the human in supreme 
 ideals, to realize them as not above the aspiration and reach of com- 
 mon souls, and this service also the great diviner rendered. But 
 it was not Shakespeare that thus made English literature immor- 
 tal; it was the spiritual truth revealed everywhere — it was the 
 types in Othello and Hamlet, Cordelia, and Hermione, and Imo- 
 gen, that will keep it memorable forever. Set forth even by lame 
 and faltering fingers, these yet would have moved the world. 
 Thus with Shakespeare was the Theme evolved into its full sig- 
 nificance and potency in English literature. 
 
 The ego cares properly only for the soul, — the final value and 
 significance, of things. As boys, we delight in feats of strength 
 and daring, because our notion of supreme excellence is to be 
 strong and to do exploits. Achilles and Hector are heroes to us, 
 not because they are Achilles and Hector, but because each 
 stands as the embodiment of a type we find potentially in our 
 
94 THE THEME. 
 
 minds, which type we cannot help making the norm and standard 
 in all comparisons of worth. Anything that makes concrete and 
 tangible, that realizes or actualizes this idea, gives us supreme 
 pleasure. Any and every hero, every manifestation of heroic 
 quality, will stir our enthusiasm according to the degree in which 
 it materializes or translates to actuality the inherent potential type. 
 But as we grow older, we begin to be conscious that there are 
 heroes outside the sphere of violent exploits. We find our notion 
 of greatness has shifted from the physical to the intellectual plane. 
 It is no longer Cceur de Lion, but rather Napoleon, that embodies 
 our conception of true greatness. Our enthusiasm is aroused far 
 more by brilliant strategy, feats of ingenuity and skill, than by the 
 old triumphs of brute force. Finally, our enthusiasm shifts to the 
 moral sphere. We experience our chief delight in Dante and 
 Shakespeare, because we here find the realization of our maturest 
 notions, our ultimate ideas of excellence. The varying, progressive 
 types to which the mind thus refers all apprehended excellencies, 
 are called Ideals. 
 
 It is an inherent necessity in the ego, when it recognizes any 
 single element from one of its ideals, that it make haste to fill out 
 and apprehend in thought, or rather in the emotions, the whole 
 which the recognition of the part postulates or presupposes. When 
 we see an action involving self-denial, our emotions are aroused to 
 delight, not from the act itself, or the degree of self-denial actu- 
 ally implied, but because the mind, taking occasion of the act, 
 rises to an experience of that quality as an ideal, — generally, in- 
 deed, takes the further step of exalting the whole character and 
 personality of the agent to a level with the ideal quality. This 
 process is called Idealization. 
 
 As was early pointed out, the various processes of idealization 
 have been collectively designated, like the respective manifesta- 
 tions of the outer, cosmic forces in 'sound,' 'heat,' 'light,' etc., 
 by an abstract name, imagination. As the palpable difference 
 between the activities summed up by this word and the merely 
 
THE THEME. 95 
 
 intellectual or contemplative states of the ego consists in the con- 
 scious co-operation of the emotions in the former, we naturally 
 measure the degree of imaginative energy or intensity by the 
 amount of excitation in the feelings. Whenever the mind, on rep- 
 resenting an idea to itself in thought, is aware that the emotions 
 are enlisted by the presence of the idea, the ' representative ' 
 mode is imagination. A suggestive word, or the revelation of a 
 new analogy, is sufficient to produce a momentary exaltation of 
 this kind. But such eifects are merely incidental and contributive 
 to the main current of emotion flowing from the theme. When 
 the types realized or embodied in treating this touch rather the 
 passive sentiments, or those which seek their fullest relief in tears, 
 we call such theme, as well as its effect, ' tender ' or ' pathetic' 
 When the involved ideals arouse the active sentiments, or those 
 that produce the manifestations of Force and of the Will, we call 
 both the experience and its occasion ' strong,' or ' powerful,' or 
 ' overpowering.' Any object like the pyramids which, as planned 
 and achieved by man, involves the recognition of a type too vast 
 for adequate spiritual comprehension, is said to be ' grand,' and 
 produces the emotion of Grandeur. There is yet an experience 
 beyond. In presence, for instance, of the ocean, the mind cannot 
 help recognizing in it a type not of the Vast but of the Infinite. 
 It is a familiar notion, as a geographical phenomenon has been 
 well understood from childhood. There is no logical reason what- 
 ever that the sight of it should have such effect upon the imagina- 
 tion. But the ego must go beyond the outer manifestation and 
 take cognizance of the type. Though it knows well enough that 
 the ocean is only some hundreds of miles in breadth, and has 
 seen, perhaps, the further shore, it insists on subjectively realizing 
 what an ocean or something like an ocean would be that had no 
 bounds indeed. It thus, through taking what it sees as an ear- 
 nest of that which transcends sight, attains an experience of the 
 Infinite. Since the mind can be carried to nothing loftier than an 
 experience of this kind, both the occasion and the emotion are 
 
96 THE THEME. 
 
 called Sublime. 1 Thus according to the experiences of the ego as 
 produced and enabled by the given types are the various effects 
 of poetry classified and named. 
 
 The theme or the truth revealed by it is therefore the para- 
 mount source of poetic power. All other elements are at best 
 mere helps or supports, like the escort of honor in a king's prog- 
 ress, but never principals in any degree or sense. Not a little of 
 the first effect upon us of a Dante or a Shakespeare is due to a 
 natural awe of genius or of the spiritual truth which it reveals. 
 Though the mind may not comprehend what excellence there is 
 in a passage like either of the above from Arnold (pp. 14 and 39), 
 it yet feels the presence of something lofty and majestic. 2 This is 
 not literary sanctimony, or anything else in the author merely, but 
 in so far as it is personal is the effect of an inference concerning 
 the degree in which he feels the conviction or persuasion of his 
 message. The ego is as it were sexed to the higher, final truth, 
 and cannot but choose it and cleave to it, leaving all excellencies 
 besides. It believes in this higher truth instinctively, and is quick 
 to assume the proper attitude in its presence. The author is 
 only its apostle or its agent, the seer and interpreter of that which 
 lies beyond him, and which he may himself but dimly apprehend. 
 Hence while we are interpreting and realizing after him the types 
 belonging to the theme we are also interpreting, chiefly by watch- 
 ing whether and how far he feels towards his theme as he should 
 feel, the types manifested in himself. If we find him exalted to 
 true enthusiasm over his ideals, we construe this immediately as 
 indicative of a great and noble nature, and so idealize the man 
 along with, or even in advance of, that which he is developing 
 from his theme. But if we detect signs that his words are cant 
 
 1 The name is also somewhat loosely used of other exalted experiences, as of 
 Force, when the emotion begins to be a burden, and the ego to be conscious that 
 the limit of endurance is not far off. The imagination cannot long be held to the 
 pitch of sublimity. Like ' heat,' it is not a normal mode, and will end in reaction 
 and perhaps depression. 
 
 2 This is what Mr. Arnold has called ' High Seriousness,' as a prime requisite 
 of poetry. See his first paper in Essays on Criticism, Second Series. 
 
THE THEME. 97 
 
 and his enthusiasm feigned, on the strength of the types implied 
 we degrade the author as much as from their opposite we might 
 have exalted him. Even genuine enthusiasm in a poet, if paraded 
 in his protestations, will go for nothing under our brand of ' bom- 
 bast' or 'turgidlty.' But if an author who is inspired by poetic 
 truth can do no more than utter it in baldest prose, the product 
 will yet be poetry, and will move men. Conviction of spiritual 
 truth is the warrant and the seal of the poet's mission. Let it be 
 realized once for all that the poet is only a means, never the 
 cause, and at his best and uttermost can but give the truth a 
 worthy setting. 
 
 As we have seen, the ideals of the individual change for the 
 better from youth to maturity by an inherent principle of moral 
 growth ; and the same is true of the world at large from genera- 
 tion to generation. But when new ideals are apprehended and 
 accepted under abnormal excitement and fail to become a part of 
 the every-day consciousness of the ego, they will soon lose their 
 power. Any undue exaltation of the spirits must be paid for out 
 of the elasticity of the future, and at the cost of apathy and per- 
 haps depression. The great Elizabethan era ended in such reac- 
 tion. Shakespeare had scarcely passed away when men were 
 discovering his types had lost their luster, and were even begin- 
 ning to doubt the genuineness of the experiences late had with 
 them. Also the two strains in British blood, the one ascetic and 
 Northern, prompting as in the earlier age, to a lofty, relentless 
 strife and a Valhall won by victory, the other epicurean and 
 Southern, the true genius of merry England, which prompts to ap- 
 propriate all life offers or can mean, soon broke out in war against 
 each other. The one held the mastery under Long Parliament 
 and the Protectorate, the other prevailed from the Restoration 
 till the flight of James. Pure literature in the main was left in 
 the hands of a Waller, a Herrick, a Lovelace, and their brother 
 worldlings, while the ideals of Elizabethan days sank out of sight. 
 Of those whom Shakespeare should still have caused to find the 
 type of an Hermione within, and held entranced as were shown 
 
98 THE THEME. 
 
 the inner experiences and consciousness of a woman whose faith 
 in right and truth defied circumstance and time ; of those who 
 should still have cared to know how a Cordelia could be true even 
 at the cost of seeming false, or how even a Cleopatra could con- 
 quer her lifelong selfishness and die heroically, the one party had 
 ceased to countenance such things as sinful, the other to feel or 
 greatly care. 
 
 Now follows the generation of the Conventionalizers and Con- 
 ventionalists. From Dryden to Pope and past, the work of uni- 
 forming, unifying the national literature — so necessary to the es- 
 tablishment of standards and authority — goes on. But the types 
 of power are wanting still. Efforts are put forth to respiritualize 
 poetry, to effect a reformation from within, though vainly. There 
 is no hope except in revolution. The people are so famished 
 they ravenously devour the crude ballads of Percy, the flimsy 
 imitations of Chatterton, and even the husks of Ossian. There is 
 again a religious purification of the springs of feeling, — this must 
 come first as before. Then signs of an awakening tenderness and 
 sympathy may be noted. Men remark that philanthropy is 
 abroad. High and low alike begin to call the rights and grounds 
 of privilege in question, and recanvass the first principles of soci- 
 ety. Man, with or without the livery of his rank, is vindicated as 
 man. Also abroad the prescriptions of privilege are called in 
 question, and a lieutenant of artillery mounts to the sacred throne 
 of the Bourbons. It is the triumph of genius over rank, of will 
 over the accidents of birth and station. It is a new era of hope 
 for every soul, and England is on fire again. The old ideals of 
 achievement and worth are once more supreme. 
 
 The inherent types of the mind belong either to Man or Nature. 
 In the days of Chaucer there was but little power in nature that 
 could be re-exerted by way of literature. Chaucer feels the flame, 
 but is awkward as a bashful lover when he tries to tell his passion ; 
 he can only murmur of the daisy and the May morning. He felt 
 all the charms of his beloved, but could tell her but a tithe of the 
 joy she kindled. Spenser is more successful, though he interprets 
 
THE THEME, 99 
 
 nature much at second hand, through the classic masters. Shake- 
 speare first is genuine and perfect, — yet only incidentally, or 
 while something waits upon the stage ; for he is pre-eminently the 
 poet of the human. Milton in L Allegro and Lycidas was nature's 
 catechumen, yet even he unconfidently, and for the nonce, until 
 he should take orders in — as he thought — a higher priesthood. 
 Next comes the century of periwigs and powder, of nature unmade 
 and amended. Then in Coleridge and Keats and Burns begins a 
 new age of sympathy, not alone of man with man, but with every- 
 thing that God has made. Indeed at first in Shelley and Words- 
 worth the inspiration amounts well-nigh to a pantheistic craze, 
 almost a degradation of man and an exaltation of his environment, 
 to be but parts of a common whole. Thus while man with his 
 sublime possibilities and worth stands once more before the spir- 
 itual eye of England, he appears this time upon the background 
 of a glorified, transfigured nature. Millions of types and analogies 
 unguessed before, which had been waiting as open secrets since 
 the creation of the world, seemed now to force themselves upon 
 the poet's sight. The power to find the mood in nature, to com- 
 mune with her in a universal, all-embracing sympathy, and to teach 
 men so, had been at last fully aroused in him. 
 
 But on attempting to trace the character and effects of the new 
 ideals in man, we encounter greatly changed conditions. When 
 Gray and Goldsmith wrote, England was a reading public of some 
 thousands, but in the days of Scott and Byron had increased a 
 hundred fold. All this increment came up from below, hence 
 tended not to raise the standard of taste, but lower it. The eleva- 
 tion of the masses, as has been shown, had come in obedience to 
 an inspiration that seemed to permeate and fill the very air. The 
 sentiment that a man was at least a man, and that all men were 
 brothers, had suddenly taken possession of human consciousness 
 as an axiomatic and final truth. It was not from man nor through 
 man that the revelation came : it was the voice of God directly to 
 the age. The advancement of the people, moreover, had been 
 enabled and prepared for beforehand by the invention of steam 
 
100 THE THEME. 
 
 and the rise of manufactures. It was only through the wholesale 
 multiplication of services that the third estate could maintain the 
 social advance conceded it by its betters. Thus money began to 
 find its way into hands little accustomed to its feel, and books 
 soon followed. Even the sons of miners, and sailors, and artisans, 
 though in turn but miners, and sailors, and operatives themselves, 
 turned readers, and the cost of literature was cheapened corre- 
 spondingly. Hence arose throughout the realm an almost fabulous 
 demand for books, which even as far north as Edinburgh kept the 
 presses of Ballantyne and Co. toiling night and day. 
 
 Thus was it that the national imagination demanded types and 
 ideals adapted to the newly adjusted social average. Thus was 
 it that the new public of millions instead of thousands was waiting 
 for the advent of its Waverley and Childe Harold. There were, 
 moreover, other reasons why Edinburgh should become a second 
 literary capital of the nation. There had been a genuine revival 
 of sentiment, and the public pulse was beating wildly. There was 
 again all the Elizabethan buoyancy, all the expectation of fresh 
 profit from existence which had fired the British breast two centu- 
 ries before. But in England proper the new Shakespeare was not 
 yet come, there were no poets capable of satisfying the demand 
 for a new literature of feeling. But Scotland had always been full 
 of sentiment, and thither the Southrons now turned for emotional 
 inspiration. The Ballads of the Border had, indeed, a generation 
 before drawn all eyes that way. Thus it was that Burns and Scott, 
 who were but minstrels of a later day, could win storms of ap- 
 plause such as England had never known. In a revival of emo- 
 tion like that which now prevailed, men and women grow young 
 again, and are for a time content with very elementary sentiment. 
 Hence we find giants like Scott and Wilson devoting their best 
 and maturest strength to the production of a literature that would 
 to-day be thought beneath their years. Even conservative, cul- 
 tured readers of the old sort were drawn out after Ivanhoe, Mar- 
 mion, and The Lights and Shadows, perhaps further than they 
 knew. Campbell, who spoke Scottish feeling in classic rhymes, 
 
THE THEME. 101 
 
 was an accepted poet of this class, as was Lockhart afterwards 
 its novelist and censor. The critics, meanwhile, chafing and 
 fuming at the unaccountable perversion of taste, were aghast that 
 Wordsworth must still soberly obtrude his Peter Bell and Goody 
 Blake sentiment upon grown-up folk, and Byron persist in out- 
 raging all the poetic proprieties. By general consent, after the 
 storm had cleared, the old Johnsonian criticism was left aground. 
 The Scottish ' school,' not only in Edinburgh, but also in London, 
 was now supreme. 
 
 Thus was Scotland supplying the long-lacking element of emo- 
 tion, thus were being laid deep down, and as we may hope perma- 
 nently, the foundations of a literature of power. Moreover, thus 
 it chanced that the poets of the new types and ideals in man 
 escaped immediate attention. New emotions had been evolved 
 which the popular heart could not yet feel. Many of those ready 
 for the new experiences were scandalized and blinded by the 
 faults and failings of those who offered them. To such Words- 
 worth appeared only a poet of the commonplace ; Shelley shocked 
 by his iconoclastic impatience of all wrong ; Keats seemed but a 
 wild, untutored bacchanal. Before the sense of the times had 
 awakened to their mission, Browning had gone yet other steps 
 ahead, which hardly the succeeding generation might overtake. 
 Here at last was the second Shakespeare, but with no audience 
 yet prepared. The Teutonic nature is heavy, and hard to rouse, 
 but once stirred moves with great momentum. The energization 
 of Anglo-Saxon inertia with Celtic fire was essentially complete. 
 The spiritual sympathies of the English-speaking world had been 
 awakened, but its spiritual lore was still hardly beyond the range 
 of the first Shakespeare. Since Byron the tide had set toward 
 fiction, and English poetry was left with only the simple, element- 
 ary lessons of life to teach. But what at first seemed a misfortune 
 now began to bear fruit a hundred fold. Even the novel by in- 
 herent development had been little by little drawing the popular 
 mind into the contemplation of great spiritual truths, so that after, 
 Henry Esmond and Middlemarch, men craved to look into pro- 
 
102 THE THEME. 
 
 founder depths. Thus forty years after Browning seemed to him- 
 self and the world to have been forgotten, he is rediscovered as 
 one of the world's great seers, hailed as the prophet of a new era, 
 and vindicated as the chief poet of the century. No man longer 
 calls in question his greatness or his mission. As fast as men and 
 women attain the capacity to interpret his concentrative figures 
 and appreciate his types, they are drawn to him. Until eye and 
 ear have been prepared, Raphael and Mozart mean less than their 
 inferiors. Each mind must overtake in its own development the 
 progress of the race at large, or it will declare the best thought 
 and sentiment of its times meaningless — though it thereby but 
 publish its own inchoate and arrested culture. Not so very long 
 ago it was popular to decry the symphonies of Beethoven, but 
 little by little the presumption has become general, even among 
 those unversed in music, that the fault is not with Beethoven, but 
 with the undiscerning hearer. Similarly, within the last five years 
 the once frequent girds at Browning have disappeared from public 
 print. What with clubs, societies, and college study, what with 
 the ever-increasing output of primers, handbooks, and commen- 
 taries, the persuasion is abroad that this poet evinces the loftiest 
 ideals yet revealed in our literature, as well as fulfills its long 
 delayed and often repeated prophecy of power. 
 
 Thus long and tortuous is the course by which the English- 
 speaking public was prepared for the latest change in its spiritual 
 standards. We have taken time here for this hasty sketch that 
 it might at least be clear there is nothing arbitrary or fortuitous 
 in the process, but all is organic and controlled by law. The 
 general .mind finds itself generation by generation possessed of 
 potential ideas of excellence more and more exalted, which the 
 poet of the day translates into concrete, realizable forms. To 
 mark how great the advance from Shakespeare, let us compare his 
 Othello with Browning's Luria. In the Elizabethan age the maxi- 
 mum notion was Doing and ability to Do, and especially power 
 over men by presence and word and will. There are no grander 
 situations in all Shakespeare than that in which Othello cows the 
 
THE THEME. 103 
 
 Italian mob come to arrest him and thirsting for the traditional 
 street-duel, by a gesture and a word ; or that later where the same 
 heroic figure, unconscious of his powers and without eloquence 
 or art, makes the august senate forget its excitement over the 
 threatened attack on Cyprus, and even its blue-blood prejudices. 
 It is not clear that Browning was dissatisfied with this type of 
 greatness in action, yet he was drawn to make a study, in many 
 respects similar to Shakespeare's, that should amend it. His Luria 
 overawes no nobleman's posse, fascinates no senate, cashiers 
 no subaltern ; he does nothing whatever in our sight. Betrayed, 
 baited, outraged, and sorely tempted to punish Florence by the 
 strong arm, he withholds his hand, and by the silent force of char- 
 acter brings at last all his suspecting, contriving enemies to his 
 feet. From contemplation of this new type of greatness we rise to 
 the consciousness that Being is greater than Doing, that the 
 character of God transcends his force, and, indeed, must poten- 
 tially include it. That which overmastered the Italian mob was 
 but Othello's compelling presence and superb unconcern; what 
 captivated the senators was his unsparing, unshrinking, transparent 
 honesty. Yet these are no insignificant manifestations, for they 
 postulate a will of iron. They do not involve much force directly, 
 but they tell unequivocally of the whirlwind, the earthquake, and 
 the fire. But the influence of a Luria is as the still small voice 
 before which Elijah veils his face. 
 
 Shakespeare seems not unadvised concerning the effect of 
 character in pure forms, especially with his women, yet he makes 
 us feel the power even of Virgilia and Imogen pre-eminently 
 through what they do. His public was not ready for finer studies, 
 and indeed can scarcely have comprehended the best of his mean- 
 ing in those types of greatness in action. Even in the religious 
 world men understood little of the character of God, though they 
 trembled at his power. To-day fear as an ethical motive is of 
 small effect ; appreciation of the divine nature persuades men in 
 its stead. The maximum idea is Being, and power to Be, or 
 to Become. Hence character, the stages in its development, and 
 
104 THE THEME. 
 
 the influences emanating from it, are now the paramount themes 
 of poetry. So eager is the interest in personality that living names 
 are unequal to the demand for subjects. Men dead long ago, and 
 insignificant in their lives except by deeds, play once more a part 
 in human affairs through effect of the character some poet has 
 reconstructed. The mystery of a Paracelsus is revealed, the fail- 
 ure of a del Sarto is explained, King Arthur realizes the notion of 
 modern gentry ; and so on to yet higher themes. Sordello shows 
 how a soul may grow from selfishness to altruism, in spite of 
 environment, through the effect of types inherent within. JTie 
 Return of the Druses illustrates the necessity, at some time in the 
 history of the race, that the divine be realized to the physical eye. 
 Caliban on Setebos is the study of a consciousness below the 
 human ; A Death in the Desert discovers to us the range and mode 
 of the soul's upward growth. Thus it is that character, whether 
 high or low, complex or simple, furnishes the themes in the great 
 poems of the day. To dissect the types, to recognize the ideals 
 which go to make up a personality, has a never-ending fascination. 
 It was the identification of certain such types in the heroine, 
 supreme also in ourselves, that edified us in the poem considered 
 near the beginning of this chapter, though we may not have been 
 aware how it gave us inspiration. But even Count Gismond 
 seemed not to know it was the substantiation of his own ideals 
 that drew him to her feet. 
 
 We have called Browning a second Shakespeare because he has 
 devoted himself prevailingly, like his master, to new types of men 
 and women. We have another great poet who perhaps equally 
 with him fulfills the long-delayed promise of power in English 
 poetry. But Tennyson is not, like Browning, drawn to deep 
 studies of human nature in the concrete and actual. He has 
 composed much poetry for the masses, on which too largely his 
 reputation rests. He has, besides, upon abstract and recondite 
 truths, composed poems which are more unread than Browning's, 
 and are yet even more profound. It is upon these, and pre-emi- 
 nently the In Memoriam, that his future fame will rest. Even the 
 
THE THEME. 105 
 
 Idyls, often accounted popular, are far beyond the appreciation of 
 most readers. It may be said of his themes in general that they 
 require of the imagination in a large way the same kind of prepa- 
 ration as in a small is called for by the condensed analogies he 
 uses. To one well versed in spiritual lore, and able to dispense 
 with concrete instances, Tennyson is an open book. Other minds 
 must wait until they have grown up to his level. 
 
 The student's first, and perhaps principal, task is, therefore, to 
 determine the significance and importance of the theme. He 
 must identify the inherent ideals to which the poem appeals and 
 analyze the method and expedients of the author's plan. In every 
 instance it will be seen that the power of poetry is in direct pro- 
 portion to the degree of rareness or refinement in the types 
 involved. He will note that the paramount types must be 
 contained, not incidentally in the illustrations, but in the theme 
 itself. Moreover, as in sculpture or painting, he will observe the 
 meaning must not be extracted in the form of an application or a 
 moral, but left an open secret as in nature. The business of a 
 poet as of an artist, is to put the meaning in the reader's way, not 
 declare it to him. The Count Gismond, though a popular poem 
 merely, has a lesson which must be made out precisely as one 
 interprets and estimates character and conduct among men every 
 day. To have set this forth by an " argument," or a foot-note, or 
 in the concluding stanza would — according to all right principles 
 of art — but have spoiled the whole. 
 
106 THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 
 
 Poetry is, then, the activity of the soul in large that we have 
 seen employed in small in metaphor and personification. It con- 
 sists in the superior delight of the ego derived from contemplating 
 its environment as typical, not actual, from taking cognizance of 
 the spiritual rather than the material aspects of the universe. As 
 we have seen, the ego is not content with the literal, exterior 
 meanings of things, but is always trying to abstract from them a 
 certain something they cannot objectively supply. It does not 
 long to read rare books, see noble landscapes or famous pictures, 
 merely for the sake of the reading or the seeing, but postulates 
 and expects a substantial satisfaction lying beyond these acts, which 
 serve but as the means. It is in tireless search for that which will 
 gratify its essential, final self, and in nature can never be content 
 until the ultimate experiences it craves are reached. Though we 
 may be long in making the discovery, or perhaps never make it 
 consciously at all, it is yet true that these ultimate experiences 
 come only through the higher spiritual activity of the soul. De-» 
 nied or deprived of these, it suffers apathy or ennui. Until fully 
 advised how to read things spiritually it goes aimless and maimed 
 about the world. We do not learn to read our environment spirit- 
 ually with ease or quickly ; it is the hardest and last of all accom- 
 plishments. But the instinct that spurs us on to acquire it is 
 insistent and unremitting, sometimes even blindly drives us into 
 mistakes and failure. When first the ego becomes aware that the 
 exterior world cannot supply the good it craves, it grows- discon- 
 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 107 
 
 tented, and would declare a general revolt against the actual, were 
 it not for the exactions of the physical life. This discontent at the 
 limitations of its material surroundings often lasts beyond the 
 bounds of childhood. It is evinced in the unpractical, castle- 
 building tendencies of many minds, particularly among those that 
 have been relieved from the burdens of bread-winning. But such 
 lives are at once seen to be abnormal. The ego would not be 
 benefited by the abolishment of phantasy ; the spiritual life is not 
 promoted by the use of imagination alone. It is by the sweat of 
 his brow that man must eat also his spiritual bread. In other 
 words, the soul best knows higher excellencies by contrast. The 
 moral nature must be braced and energized through obstacles and 
 exertion, if spiritual delight is to be intense and healthy. The en- 
 vironment must not be succumbed to, or ignored, but conquered, 
 and that, too, not only in the physical and the intellectual sphere, 
 but also in the one yet higher. 
 
 The stages in the discipline and inurement of the soul are the 
 same as those recognized in the last chapter, with reference to the 
 progression of inherent types. The babe, little by little, acquires 
 strength to lift its head, then its body, and finally to walk abroad, 
 in spite of the outer, cosmic forces that would pluck it prostrate. 
 This is the physical stage, and lasts until the bodily powers have 
 reached their maximum. The child, grown almost to manhood, 
 feels himself, by virtue of his hardened sinews and bounding 
 pulses, the autocrat of his little world. In the meantime he has 
 entered also the second stage — for there are no hard and fast 
 lines in nature, but all ages and eras overlap. Very early he found 
 out how to save himself from bumps and trips and pitfalls, and 
 now is rapidly acquiring the knack of guarding life and limb 
 under more unusual circumstances or in exigency, and will soon 
 learn care of health and person, proper forms of approach to men 
 and things, and the other modes of civilized society." More- 
 over, while thus becoming master of his environment intellectually 
 and even strategically, he finds his eyes beginning to open, also, to 
 the inner meanings of things. He finds his notions as to the true 
 
108 THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 
 
 grounds of worth and greatness have shifted. He appreciates the 
 difference between a Napoleon and a Lincoln, takes in hand 
 seriously and consciously the rounding out and amending of his 
 own character, and begins to aspire after and receive the respect 
 of men. His chief delights are now of the highest plane. In 
 childhood his soul was virtually in the senses ; he was maddened 
 by pain, his delights were of the palate, and his types were physi- 
 cal. In his youth the ego had shifted its centre of activity to the 
 intellect, his ideals became essentially intellectual. He saw no 
 limitations of knowledge, no bar to the achievements of mind. 
 Now he realizes that learning has its limitations indeed, can never 
 be in itself an end, but must always serve as the means to some- 
 thing higher. He begins to appreciate the power of art and 
 poetry, and see somewhat of difference between the poetic and 
 the prosaic side of literature. He should now begin to under- 
 stand why poetry, through contributing to and shaping the senti- 
 ments of men, is called the literature of power, will perhaps need 
 not to be told that sentiment controls society, and that it is eleva- 
 tion of sentiment that advances civilization. His first poetry was 
 sensational and crude — perhaps, outside of Homer and parts of 
 the /Eneid, only humorous and burlesque. In his intellectual 
 period he may have enjoyed poetry of a high order, but it may be 
 questioned whether his enjoyment was not of an essentially subjec- 
 tive sort. Minds in this stage are apt to believe much in poetry, 
 — chiefly on authority, and expect much of it, but it is largely 
 what they bring to the lines and pages by anticipation that they 
 seem to find in them. Spiritual values will perforce be but intel- 
 lectually discerned ; and poems that, like Goldsmith's Traveller 
 and Deserted Village, furnish their own running interpretation, will 
 seem most substantial and satisfactory. But in the third period of 
 the soul's development, it will be found to have parted with much 
 of its blind, presumptuous subjectivity, and in matters of interpre- 
 tation to have become receptive, almost passive. It does not now 
 manufacture the sentiment it expects to feel, according to the ex- 
 ample of some mind it has known or read about, but waits until 
 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 109 
 
 the experience is borne in upon it from the theme. The inherent 
 types have been growing towards character, and are perhaps 
 refined already to the degree of Luria or In Memoriam, or soon 
 will be. At any rate, when final meanings of things have come to 
 abound and be paramount in consciousness, the ego has reached 
 the goal of its felicity. For the spiritual life consists in the pre- 
 ponderance and facility of spiritual experiences, in each of which 
 the soul attains a normal and ultimate gratification or delight. 1 By 
 learning thus to rise above the lower planes, and appropriate or 
 turn the material universe to his spiritual account, man at last con- 
 quers his environment in the final way, and achieves that for which 
 the long and trying years of discipline have been preparing. 
 
 The course of discipline in the individual is a repetition of the 
 development, in epitome, of the race or nation. The race at 
 large must have conquered its environment in the several stages, or 
 the individual will not be likely to attain his best of culture. First is 
 the physical period, in which forests are felled and dikes builded, 
 and the soil tamed to the service of man. While this lasts, the 
 occupations of society are principally manual ; there will be but 
 few men and women in the commonwealth who are not muscle- 
 workers. In due time come capital, and commerce, and manufac- 
 tures, and the majority are now brain-workers. But brain-work 
 multiplies ideas and knowledge ; ideas and knowledge enable sen- 
 timent ; sentiment inaugurates reforms, sends out colonies and 
 missions, emancipates slaves and serfs, institutes arbitration, 
 builds hospitals, asylums, colleges, libraries, and galleries of art. 
 Literature carries the best thought and sentiment of the day to the 
 farthest corner of the land, so that the son of the eastern forests 
 or western prairies, who sees year out and in only the few stereo- 
 typed, unshifting faces of his native village, — if he have the 
 types within, may know the world like a cosmopolitan. There is 
 indeed much to allure him to a higher point of culture ; the very 
 
 1 It will be noted here, of course, that the soul's delectation is not quantitatively 
 but only qualitatively complete; otherwise there could be no further aspiration, 
 and no advance. 
 
110 THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 
 
 air about him is full of inspiration. For under such conditions, 
 provided there are no inorganic, foreign elements to disturb the 
 process, the national average will soon have risen from the intel- 
 lectual to the next higher grade, and each individual mind, accord- 
 ing to its quality, will feel the impulse to realize within itself the 
 general advance. 
 
 Literature in the largest sense is the body of ideas and senti- 
 ments that the spiritual sense of the times has selectively ordained 
 shall be preserved. Thus' we have avast congeries of composi- 
 tions of many races and ages — some produced in the first stage 
 of spiritual history, some in the second, and the third — that we 
 call Universal Literature. There are still produced in this final 
 day of ours poetry and fiction that should in strictness belong 
 to the very earliest period of race-development, because there 
 are yet sections of society that demand literature of this grade. 
 Likewise, the most eminent poets of a nation have also their in- 
 tellectual, as well indeed as physical, stages, the products of which 
 in maturer years they are often unable to disown, or exclude from 
 collections of their works. Hence by a sort of unconcerted, almost 
 unconscious assent, it has become customary to speak of poetry, 
 according to inherent quality, as of three grades, perhaps oftenest 
 under the respective designations of sensational, intellectual, and 
 true. 
 
 The history of poetry, therefore, on the subjective side, is nothing 
 more than the history of the development in man of the ability to 
 identify and interpret types. The universe and its spiritual truths 
 have not changed, but the ego and its relation to them. The evi- 
 dence seems at first to point to a period in the beginnings of human 
 history when the nature or existence of spiritual truth was not ap- 
 prehended at all. But fetich and idol worship even in its crudest 
 forms indicates rather the contrary, — an exaggerated and per- 
 verted activity of the idealizing faculty. To be sure, inorganic 
 objects of the lowest grades are taken as types of gods and de- 
 mons, but the fault is clearly not in the instincts but the culture, 
 the enlightenment, of the ego. When the mind of the Australian 
 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. Ill 
 
 savage is better advised concerning what art can do in creating 
 beautiful forms, he will begin to carve his fetich. So onward in 
 the development of his mind, until he will no longer see deity in 
 a single figure or image, but in the universe at large in a truly 
 spiritual way, or with Herbert Spencer will apprehend the pres- 
 ence of the First Cause in even the experience of lifting a book 
 from the table. 1 The poems which compose the Rig Veda show 
 a stage nearly midway between the lowest and the highest de- 
 grees of development. There is a vivid and intense realization of 
 the forces which pervade the universe, and a lively apprehension 
 of the higher type revealed in each. But every separate effect 
 is ascribed to a separate personified cause. There is as yet no 
 capacity to read the open fact of a co-ordination of forces, to 
 apprehend the existence of "Nature " as a logical summary of ex- 
 ternal causation. So likewise it is only within a generation or two 
 that we ourselves, children of the latest day, and heir of the 
 spiritual lore of the ages, have evolved power to conceive and 
 postulate, not theologically but cosmically, the solidarity of both 
 material and spiritual forces. 2 
 
 We may not, therefore, assume a stage in the spiritual develop- 
 ment of man when he was without instinct or capacity to find 
 the higher in the lower. Yet was this instinct at first so blind 
 and grovelling as in reality to fall short of any and all recognition 
 of true types, amounting, in fact, to little more than sheer automa- 
 tism. So we may premise a stage in which to the ego the spiritual 
 universe was in effect a blank. Accordingly, the several stages of 
 mental evolution by which, in the manner we have seen, the 
 various elements of power come into operation, might approx- 
 imately be thus distinguished : — 
 
 1 First Principles, p. 189. The reader will need no further hint in making the 
 observation that superstition is merely the effect of interpreting types on wrong 
 assumptions of spiritual identity. Also that Science, properly so called, since it 
 concerns itself with types, their history, and 1 their interrelations, is in reality a search 
 for spiritual truth. 
 
 2 See p. 103. 
 
112 THE CLASSIFICATION OF. POETRY. 
 
 r. Spiritual Truth in the Universe as inherent in and apprehensible by 
 Types, but beyond the capacity of man to recognize and identify. 
 
 2. Such Spiritual Truth discerned by Seers, but darkly, and uncom- 
 municated to other minds. 
 
 3. The same Spiritual Truth discerned more clearly, by a greater number 
 of poetic minds, and to some degree communicated, though without figures 
 or adornment, in common prose. 
 
 4. Spiritual Truth, discerned by yet greater numbers of Seers and Poets, 
 and to such extent correspondingly by lay minds as to enable spiritual com- 
 munication with them through Allegory, Parable, and like figures. As yet 
 no meters, but all cast in a species of lofty, impassioned prose. 
 
 5. Spiritual Truth further familiarized to Seer and people, so that he 
 may intelligibly communicate to them his thoughts in running metaphor. 
 Rude metric and rhythmic forms appear. 
 
 6. Spiritual Truth apprehended yet more independently by the lay mind, 
 and in such degree as to enable single metaphors to carry each the effect 
 of a complete Allegory or Running Metaphor. Complete metrical systems 
 now evolved. 
 
 7. Spiritual Truth yet more generally discerned, and taken for granted 
 in the reader, hence communicated to him prevailingly in the abbreviated 
 form of phrases, with the accessories of Association, Tone Coloring, and 
 Force. 
 
 8. Such common familiarity with spiritual experiences and notions as to 
 enable stenographic communication between Poet and reader, on the basis 
 of words for sentences or clauses. Whole trains of association, as well as 
 complete analogies, condensed to single terms. 
 
 Poetry, objectively considered, is, therefore, a very incongruous 
 collection of literary remains and products from all the above 
 periods except the first and second. It includes the "poetry of 
 our times as well as the productions and fragments of productions 
 dating from long before the use of letters. Each preserved poem 
 or fragment of a poem is a survival out of many that have perished, 
 because they all, having served their immediate purpose, had in 
 them also somewhat that the generation next succeeding was not 
 willing to part with. In each era the common mind reaches the 
 level of the seer intelligence of some preceding age, often of that 
 immediately before. Even when a composition is essentially anti- 
 quated and devoid of influence, it may have antiquarian or ethnic 
 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 113 
 
 interest to certain leading minds, and at their instance be re- 
 tained in the body of universal literature. This is true eminently 
 of the Northern Sagas, the Kalevala, the Vedas, and many of 
 " The Sacred Books of the East." It would, therefore, be most 
 natural to classify poetic compositions according to the stage or 
 period to which they severally belong. But the fact of a progres- 
 sive development — no doubt one day to be used as the basis of 
 a scientific classification — is hardly an available principle in the 
 present state of literary knowledge. The student, however, should 
 not omit to consider the chief objective features of important 
 poetic compositions, and note the range of development repre- 
 sented. 
 
 From generation to generation, as human capacity to read the 
 universe by types expands, the ability to communicate the truths 
 perceived to other minds increases. The average man or woman 
 learns ultimate truth in two ways, — through the experience or 
 example of others, and by direct experience in himself. The 
 more generously endowed read it at first hand from nature. 
 Minds of the latter sort find themselves affected in consciousness 
 by an impression or conviction of truth to them before unknown. 
 It may be truth already familiar to other men, but if recognized 
 independently, stamps the mind discerning it as original. There 
 are, moreover, degrees in originality. To belong to the type of 
 original minds in such signal degree as to perceive and reveal, not 
 what will edify one's self, but be useful or necessary to society at 
 large, is to be a Copernicus, a Bacon, a Shakespeare, or a Beet- 
 hoven, — in short, to be a genius. 
 
 To be original, therefore, is to be open to the unwritten mean- 
 ings of the world without, to see the possible in the actual, to see 
 the reasons and consequences of facts along with the facts them- 
 selves. These are in reality the same activities of the ego that we 
 have traced in poetry, save that in the former the mental mode is 
 phantasy, and the end not spiritual delight. The processes of an 
 Edison and a Shakespeare are, therefore, not dissimilar. Each is 
 persuaded of a certain ulterior law through detection of it in type. 
 
114 THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 
 
 The one by ingenuity demonstrates his truth to the senses in the 
 form of a phonograph or motor, the other by art to the spiritual 
 perceptions in the guise of a Hamlet or Macbeth. Both indeed 
 in strictness employ art, the one in a material way for a material 
 end, the other in a manner largely transcending time and space 
 relations for inner edification and delight. 
 
 Genius and art, like poetry itself, are relative. The Gorboduc 
 and the Ralph Royster Doyster, Lyly's Campaspe and Marlowe's 
 Tamburlaine evince in respective degree both genius and art. A 
 poet gifted beyond the appreciation of his age cannot be a genius 
 beyond the recognition of that age, but may rank beneath the 
 poetaster until some succeeding generation restore him to his 
 place. Hence there were genius and art sufficient to their day in 
 each of the stages above indicated. But art properly begins in 
 the third of the stages, when the mind of the seer grappled with 
 the task of expressing, in a language grossly material, a spiritual 
 conception. All intellectual and higher notions have received 
 names properly signifying nothing but physical attributes or things. 
 There is no ultimate root denoting a purely spiritual entity or 
 action. It is not necessary to count the spiritual terms of the 
 dictionary to estimate even the incidental work of seer minds in a 
 given literature. Here, indeed, is need that we recognize the 
 concurrence of the rest of society who have adopted all these 
 tropes and metaphors, and put them in their dictionaries. The 
 successful battle is not won solely by the strategy and foresight of 
 the leaders, but is due not less to the momentum of the rank and 
 file who accept and put to the test the prevision of their chiefs. 
 The original idea of a single mind may become the instinct of a 
 race. Co-operation between lay and leading intelligence is the 
 secret of all progress. As to the larger, ultra-incidental achieve- 
 ments of original intellects, in the industrial world ideas and types 
 are secured to and associated with the mind achieving them by 
 patent, and all advance of one innovator over another is thus 
 plainly registered . Somewhat similarly it should be practicable to 
 make divisions of poetry according to the rise and advance of 
 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 115 
 
 types. But this again, until as in architecture we shall note the 
 genesis and growth of theme-ideas, will scarcely furnish an ade- 
 quate basis of classification. 
 
 There seems, therefore, no principle of classification more 
 available, at least provisionally, than the one we have seen to have 
 been practically, almost consciously, selected by the spiritual sense 
 of the reading world. It was pointed out that the acceptable 
 poetry of the first stage in the development of the individual as 
 of the race is sensational, having its sphere almost in the very 
 nerves, and reaching its fullest effect in the physical act of laugh- 
 ter. There is much poetry of this kind, from the minstrel ballad 
 and broad travesty to the better class of humorous or burlesque 
 poems that find their way permanently into books. There is little 
 need to instance general examples, as this sort — at its best en- 
 tirely agreeable, and even edifying in its way — is easily distin- 
 guished. But there is a certain species of this class of poetry that 
 deserves attention. We have seen how an era of emotional and 
 literary ardor is followed by one of barrenness and depression. 
 There comes a time after the Shakespeares and Tassos when 
 minds of a baser sort attempt to make art take the place of genius, 
 when mannerisms will be put forward in the place of message. 
 Marini did this in seventeenth century Italian literature with such 
 success as to fasten his name upon poetry of such sort presumably 
 for all time. Marinistic poetry is not written for the sake of seri- 
 ously considering or truly interpreting the meaning in the subject. 
 It consists of surprising and sensational things said incidentally, or 
 along of, instead of in development of, the theme, and owes its 
 success to the reader's mistaking the extraneous emotion for the 
 expected effect from the subject itself. Examples are only too 
 frequent in our literature from Donne and the other " Metaphysi- 
 cal " poets down even to our own day. Perhaps the most flagrant 
 instance of Marinistic extravagance to be found in our standard 
 literature occurs in The Given Heart of Cowley's Mistress. Here 
 instead of attempting to give expression to somewhat of the refined 
 sentiment intimated by the title — after the manner of a poem to 
 
116 THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 
 
 be mentioned later — the author at once dismisses his theme, and 
 in stanzas third and fourth proceeds to astound his reader with 
 these conceits : — 
 
 " Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come 
 Into the self-same room. 
 'Twill tear and blow up all within, 
 Like a grenado shot into a magazine. 
 
 "Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts, 
 Of both our broken hearts : 
 Shall out of both one new one make, 
 From hers, th' alloy, from mine the metal take." 
 
 Anything in verse that is not spiritually true, or that is not said 
 because spiritual truth is discerned and inspires utterance, is, of 
 course, not true poetry. If an author, failing to read his theme 
 aright, or going aside from it altogether, fall to heaping together 
 far-fetched and anomalous figures or allusions, the composition is 
 Marinistic. If he go yet beyond, and, instead of commending 
 his professed subject, proceed to disinvest it of the dignity and 
 importance it in common acceptance had before, it is satire or 
 burlesque — in general a still lower form of sensational poetry. 
 If, on the other hand, he apply himself genuinely to his theme, 
 but succeed only in discerning and uttering things emotional in an 
 intellectual way, the product belongs to the next higher plane of 
 poetry. When the intellectual element predominates, when ob- 
 jects are contemplated logically or literally to a greater degree than 
 typically, the effect cannot, as a matter of course, get far enough 
 beyond the intellect to affect the feelings strongly. A poem of 
 this kind is the Cooper's Hill, of which an extract has been charac- 
 terized already. A similar example and one almost equally praised 
 by old-time critics occurs, as the student will remember, in Addi- 
 son's Campaign : — 
 
 " But O, my muse, what numbers wilt thou find 
 To sing the furious troops in battle joined ! 
 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 117 
 
 Methinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound, 
 
 The victor's shouts and dying groans confound, 
 
 The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies, 
 
 And all the thunder of the battle rise. 
 
 'Twas then great Marlbro's mighty soul was proved, 
 
 That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, 
 
 Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, 
 
 Examined all the dreadful scenes of war; 
 
 In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, 
 
 To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, 
 
 Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, 
 
 And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. 
 
 So when an angel, by divine command, 
 
 With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, 
 
 Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed, 
 
 Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; 
 
 And, pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform, 
 
 Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm." 
 
 There is evidently tremendous meaning here, but the reader finds 
 himself in some way baffled in the attempt to derive a satisfying 
 experience from the passage. The imagination asks only for the 
 spiritual identity, will ds its work without assistance if this be 
 given, but cannot accept in lieu of it a literal description of that 
 in which it is to realize a loftier type. Moreover, it will never do 
 to let the imagination of the reader run ahead of the author. If 
 the reader have an inkling of the analogy at the outset, he will 
 long have ceased to feel the effect of the comparison before the 
 application is reached. As we have seen, both the literal and the 
 spiritual should be brought before the mind together, if possible by 
 the use of the latter only. 
 
 Genuine poetry, or the poetry of Pure Sentiment, remains to 
 be characterized. Here the theme finds its way through the intel- 
 lect to the emotions in such wise that the reader scarcely notes 
 the words, or lines, or ' form,' or the notions employed as such at 
 all. The author's enthusiasm, as evinced by the force, helps the 
 effect. As the most convenient example we may name the Count 
 Gismond already studied. Far superior to this in tone and form 
 
118 THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 
 
 is the Evelyn Hope, or Childe Roland of the same author. But 
 perhaps no better example of pure sentiment can be chosen for 
 first study than Browning's One Word More. Though a love- 
 poem and nothing else, there is preserved throughout the most 
 perfect dignity, — there is no sign of willingness to parade what 
 is sacredly personal for effect's sake, and there is no syllable of 
 sentimentality. Sentiment is the true of our emotions, as senti- 
 mentality — that pestilent vice of third-rate poems and novels — 
 is the false. Sentiment is a collective name for all those forms of 
 emotion that are native to normal minds, and corresponds to 
 truth and fact in the sphere of prose. Sentimentality is the emo- 
 tionally fictitious, and stands collectively for those experiences 
 which are represented by unprincipled or unskilled authors as or- 
 ganic and actual, but are on the contrary at best abnormal, and 
 perhaps impossible. Conscientious and truly inspired poets and 
 novelists, like Browning and George Eliot, are no more to be sus- 
 pected of introducing experiences not demonstrably belonging to 
 human nature, than historians of admitting facts not yet established 
 beyond question. The utter absence of stock Marinistic breath- 
 ings and voicings of ' homage ' and ' devotion ' is the first of 
 many surprises in One Word More. It is the loftiest and truest 
 love-poem in the language. 
 
 It has been pointed out that each complete poet will betray a 
 sensational, or Marinistic, as well as an intellectual stage in his 
 own development. Milton furnishes a good example. As a col- 
 lege youth he wrote a mock epitaph, consisting mainly of " cranks " 
 and Marinistic jests, on the death of poor Hobson — not knowing 
 what he did. In the hymn On the Morning of Chrisfs Nativity 
 he had passed to the next stage, but not beyond ; for even a secu- 
 lar, or historical, realization of what the event he celebrated had 
 meant to the world should have warmed the lines. But in the 
 L' Allegro he has awakened to the joy of nature and is trying to 
 voice it forth. Not to multiply illustrations, Shakespeare's Venus 
 and Lucrece betray their stage, as also the puns and conceits of 
 certain early plays ; Cowper's Verses on Finding the Heel of a Shoe 
 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 119 
 
 is a surprising example of intellectualism ; Browning's Pauline is 
 riotously full of sensuous emotion, while the Sordello is packed 
 with metaphysic disquisition. Moreover, portions of truly in- 
 spired poems will often, when considered apart from their connec- 
 tion, seem to fall to the intellectual grade or lower. It is only by 
 keeping our attention centered upon the theme that we shall avoid 
 judging wholes by parts, and subordinating the paramount to the 
 incidental. 
 
 Concerning further classification of poetic compositions, it will 
 be sufficient here to note and characterize two or three inferior 
 divisions. Didactic poetry is plainly a variety of the class that has 
 been characterized as Intellectual. The Pastoral is a species of 
 artificial poetry, in which profounder aspects of nature or society 
 are described or contemplated under the simpler conditions of 
 shepherd life, and often through the medium of shepherd minds. 
 As before explained, the charm consists in the use of the spiritual 
 to express the literal. The real subject and circumstances are 
 kept out of view : the shepherds are lay figures, and the surround- 
 ings merely furnish naive and refreshing associations. When men 
 have advanced far enough beyond the stage of Arcadian simplicity 
 to appreciate its amenities, forgetting its serious side, there is a 
 pleasure in figuring their present life and surroundings as rustic 
 and primitive. As already intimated, pastoral poetry is in effect a 
 form of allegory ; * and success in it is seen to be doubly difficult, 
 both from the risk of inconsistencies, as well as from the counter 
 danger of keeping too close to nature. It will not do to make 
 one's shepherd talk either like an Aristotle, or indeed like the 
 peasant he really is. 
 
 Burlesque and humorous poetry remain to be considered. Here 
 the range is limited, and, as we have seen, the effect aimed at, 
 sensational. The purpose is not to elevate and refine the mood, 
 but, on proper occasion and for sufficient reason, to reveal the 
 ludicrous types that may be detected even in the most serious 
 
 1 See the quotation from Lord Kames, in note to the first paragraph of Chapter 
 X., below. 
 
120 THE, CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY. 
 
 things. The effect is mainly produced, not by showing that the 
 lower has ennobling relations with the higher, but contrariwise, by 
 revealing some degrading affinity which connects the higher with 
 something lower. Grotesque and surprising analogies, bathos, and 
 anticlimax are brought in to assist. Satire is another species of 
 inverted poetry, but its purpose is, or should be, to correct and 
 reform through revelation of lower spiritual affiliations. But Anglo- 
 Saxon satire, as Pope's, has too often amounted to nothing better 
 than vulgar abuse, sometimes to little less than literary assault and 
 battery. 1 
 
 1 The student should compare if possible, for the sake of the standard and for a 
 clear notion of what satire may effect, the spirit and style of Parini's Day. Any 
 good encyclopedia will sufficiently describe the work. 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 121 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 It has been shown that to be a genius is to find one's self 
 capable of perceiving ulterior truths of far-reaching consequence, 
 without passing through all the intermediate stages of approach 
 and preparation. Some children are able to read on learning the 
 alphabet, without going through the steps of syllabication. Zerah 
 Colburn comprehended abstruse processes of higher mathematics 
 without learning the simpler. Mozart understood the complex 
 and involved counterpoint of a musical score without mastering 
 technical harmony. The mental activity in all such cases is of 
 the same kind as that which comprehends a ' brave attack ' as an 
 ' attack by brave men ' ; the subjective energy is great enough to 
 reach the end from the beginning without division into stages, to 
 comprehend the whole without taking cognizance of separate 
 parts'. But what enables the ego to recognize the end thus 
 reached as an end, to know the ulterior truth as an ulterior truth ? 
 The precocious child is precocious not merely from thinking the 
 thoughts and saying the phrases of his elders, but from realizing 
 that these, for them, are normal modes. The child that reads on 
 learning its letters, appears to appreciate beforehand what reading 
 means, and this seems in some way to reveal a short-cut approach 
 to the advantages of the art. So a Zerah Colburn solves trigono- 
 metric problems, not like an automaton, but with the seriousness 
 and enthusiasm of a professional mathematician. 
 
 The only adequate explanation of the mystery involves the 
 assumption of especial prenatal endowments in the ego. Con- 
 
122 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 sciousness must begin with certain powers and aptitudes that other 
 intellects have to acquire, already developed and provided ; the 
 mind finds itself in some especial point or points already master 
 of its environment. Hence, we may distinguish genius as the ego 
 in such condition of preadaptation to certain particulars of envi- 
 ronment as enables it to take these for granted, and thus unhandi- 
 capped, advance to extraordinary discoveries of ultimate, useful 
 truths. When the endowments of genius so recognize time and 
 space relations as to discern, in the form of activity called phan- 
 tasy, types of the materially possible in the materially actual, and 
 nothing more, we call it inventive. But when the endowments of 
 genius do not admit or recognize such limitations, but apprehend, 
 in the activity called imagination, types of the spiritual in the 
 material, we call it creative. But in this sense ' genius ' is more 
 frequently employed without any qualifying word. 
 
 The processes by which genius translates its inner perceptions 
 into outer revelations, or makes over its discoveries and experi- 
 ences to other minds, have been called Arts or Art. The latter is 
 the term appropriated to products of the imagination. As we 
 have seen, art is wholly relative, and its degree determined by the 
 genius which employs it, and by the attainments of the age or 
 audience addressed. Art is dependent upon two conditions : 
 delight in the artist over some discovery of inner truth, and an 
 impulse to share that delight with other minds. 
 
 The ego, on perception of inspiring truth, has been moved in 
 literature to communicate that truth in two principal ways. In 
 the first of these there is an impulse to set forth the whole as a 
 whole, literally, often effusively, part by part, and, so far as may 
 be, with accompanying circumstances. Ip the second, there is 
 the contrary impulse to set forth only such parts as contain types 
 spiritually potential of the whole, and to suppress mere circum- 
 stantials and accessories altogether. The former is Homer's way, 
 and in the main is characteristic, with one exception, of all the 
 Aryan literatures. The Gothic mind, which furnishes this excep- 
 tion, seems pervaded by some absolute principle of repression and 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 123 
 
 self-restraint. Homer and the other non-Gothic poets abound in 
 free, if not garrulous, expatiation. They aim simply to restore a 
 given incident or situation, even to its time and space relations. 
 When there is emotion, the impulse is frankly to utter it, or avow 
 it, or at least manifest it directly. The Gothic genius, on the 
 contrary, strives everywhere to select and suppress, to concentrate 
 and intensify, and gives evidence of feeling only indirectly, by 
 signs of a struggle to overcome it. It is characteristic of the race 
 at large to maintain self-possession in spite of overmastering emo- 
 tion ; it is held unseemly to give way to it, or to be overcome, at 
 least outwardly, thereby. Under the burden of supreme sorrow, the 
 Kelt will yield himself to various naive demonstrations, while the 
 Anglo-Saxon bears his agony in silence. The grief in each mind 
 is doubtless equal, and the effect upon the sympathizing bystander 
 not less in case of the one than of the other. Hence, we may 
 admit that either principle of art, in its respective race, is equally 
 effective with the other. The effusive Keltic temperament de- 
 mands a more immediate and positive response to an exciting 
 occasion, while the Saxon mind more slowly, and perhaps in the 
 end not less deeply moved, will resist and keep to its dignity until 
 its inertia is overcome. It is therefore clearly impossible to try a 
 composition adapted to the Keltic mind and one answering to 
 the feelings of the Saxon by the same standard. Each race must 
 have its own canons of taste. The Anglo-Saxon demands that his 
 poet maintain a fixed reserve, continue impassive under all cir- 
 cumstances of emotion, and keep his personality out of sight. 
 Since the theme is greater than its servant, no poet must presume 
 to speak for it, or in its stead, or make himself an example of its 
 power. But these have been from the first fundamental principles 
 of Gothic literature. 
 
 This second of the two modes of art, clearly to be called 
 Gothic, is seen first in Cagdmon and the Beowulf. It would, 
 indeed, be hard to find a more genuine illustration than 'The 
 Passing of Scyld,' in the opening fit of the latter poem : — 
 
124 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 Then fared Scyld forth at the fated hour, 
 
 Courageous to come to comfort of God. 
 
 They bore that brave to the beach of the sea, 
 
 Sorrowing soldiers as himself had bid, 
 
 While wielded with words that warder of Scyldings, 
 
 While long the land-prince beloved held sway. 
 
 Ready at harbor rose the ringed-stem, 
 
 Shining and shapely astheling ship. 
 
 Then alone they laid their dear lord, 
 
 Bracelet-giver on the boat's bosom, 
 
 Much-famed by the mast. There were many of jewels, 
 
 Fairest treasures fetched from afar : 
 
 I never knew another keel fitted 
 
 With such woven war-weeds and weapons of slaughter, 
 
 With bills and byrnies ; there lay on his bosom 
 
 Riches unreckoned, bound to roam with him, 
 
 Drift on domains remote of the deep. 
 
 Truly they trapped him with treasures not less, 
 
 Prince of the people with precious stores, 
 
 Than those who at first had sent him asunder, 
 
 Yet but a babe on the billows alone. 
 
 They bound above him a golden banner, 
 
 High overhead, let the waves hold him, 
 
 Consigned to the surges : sad were their spirits, 
 
 Mourning their minds. Men are not able 
 
 To say for sooth fate's requisition, 
 
 Heroes under heavens, who had that lading. 
 
 The attempt here is not to communicate a fact, or information 
 about a fact, — which the minstrel or poet seems almost to take 
 for granted, but to assist and assure appreciation of that fact. 
 There is matter enough in this first division of the poem, if 
 descanted upon", and gossiped over and told throughout for its 
 own sake merely, to fill up the 3200 lines of the whole : the 
 impulse is unmistakably to excise and exclude everything that the 
 hearer or reader cannot be made to feel. The first nineteen lines 
 of the fit summarize the significant happenings of Scyld's king- 
 ship, — how he cast out his treacherous thanes and began his 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 125 
 
 career anew — how he lived to see compensation, and increased 
 until each of the surrounding tribes was forced to own him lord 
 and pay tribute — how God gave him a son to comfort the people, 
 who had been long in distress for lack of a capable leader. 
 Even this much is told in the main only to introduce the manner 
 of his ' passing,' or rather of his burial after death. When a babe 
 he had been laid wailing and helpless on the deck of a ship, 
 with jewels and treasure in heaps beside him, and sent adrift 
 alone on the ocean ; and the ship had wandered to the shores of 
 the tribe which in his young manhood had made him king. Scyld 
 never despised or forgot his feeble beginnings, but long before 
 the end, while he was yet in vigor, ordained that he should go 
 out as he came in, — that he should be laid alone on his resplen- 
 dent vessel, his costly coats of mail and swords, his ornaments and 
 treasures beside him, and his choicest jewels upon his breast. 
 This was his funeral. A golden banner was raised high over his 
 head and the ship pushed out, to drift on and on to his last rest- 
 ing-place — which his dear tribes-men should never know. What 
 race besides ever so buried a king, or after told the story so 
 sublimely ? 
 
 But the chief example is the Divine Comedy. Though the 
 first finished product of Gothic poetry, it remains the best, a 
 monument and marvel of greatest effect produced by fewest and 
 smallest means. Written when it was written, without models or 
 traditions of trimness and symmetry, it is the standing wonder of 
 literature in respect to form. It is the only modern poem until 
 Shakespeare that is not too long. The vastness of the theme 
 considered, perhaps no poet had ever such temptation or warrant 
 to expatiate ; for many single episodes might have been enlarged 
 to volumes. But the iron restraint nowhere relaxes ; it holds 
 within set limits, no matter how awful or transporting the scenes, 
 not only the great divisions, but likewise each specific canto to the 
 last line of the whole. The same instinctive dread of expatiation, 
 when not overmastered and controlled by the literary traditions 
 of the South, is as conspicuous in the later Scandinavian and 
 
126 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 Teutonic poetry as in the sagas. In England, after the Con- 
 quest, the native stream of poesy was diverted through the mon- 
 asteries and universities, and the original channel lost and for- 
 gotten. Yet the old springs of popular inspiration still ran. 
 While the poetry of books was waxing conventional and worse, 
 Chevy Chase, Sir Patrick Spens, The Nut Brown Maid, and many 
 another ringing ballad kept the spirit and manner of the old saga 
 minstrelsy alive, and refreshed the people. In the fulness of time 
 the poetic stream diverted by learning found its way back to the 
 old banks; Chatterton and Percy, Coleridge and Wordsworth 
 effectually balladized the standard poetry of books. Thus had 
 the Northern genius triumphed over the Southern restrictions of 
 form. Mr. Freeman has taught us to go back to tribal times, if 
 we would know the history of our institutions ; and poetry is no 
 exception. From Tennyson's Locksley Hall down to such com- 
 positions as the Tramp, Tramp, and John Brown's Body of our 
 Civil War, we identify but varying forms of Gothic minstrelsy. 
 Though rhyme has displaced alliteration, though the number of 
 syllables per line has become for the most part constant and a 
 stereotyped metric stress is submitted to, yet, as we have seen, 
 oral emphasis is still the real basis of rhythm, while — unequivo- 
 cal and paramount characteristics — little is said where might be 
 much, but that little with all the wondrous effect, upon the feel- 
 ings, of a whole. 1 
 
 How the race-instinct manifested itself in the ballad period 
 while England was appropriating the benefits of the Renaissance 
 
 1 The above titles have been chosen as especially, but not exceptionally, illus- 
 trative of the features named. Cf. these lines from the Locksley Hall: — 
 
 " O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more! 
 O the dreary, dreary moorland ! O the barren, barren shore ! 
 
 " Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, 
 Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue! " 
 
 That these verses are so planned and put together as not only to tell their story 
 but likewise ensure appreciation of what they mean, goes without saying. We 
 have only to note that the meaning is interpreted to us and imparted all in one. 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 127 
 
 and fixing its standards of form, it may be well in brief to notice. 
 That the common people should have kept on composing minstrel 
 poetry after minstrelsy had ceased, must have been due to natural, 
 innate emotion that demanded vent. Clearly, nothing else could 
 have given them inspiration ; there is no making poetry, at least 
 among the unlettered, merely because poetry has been made. To 
 take one of the crudest compositions of this class, that the art 
 and spirit may be more evident, we select Babylon, or the Bonny 
 Banks o' Fordie : — 
 
 " There were three ladies lived in a bower, 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 And they went out to pu' a flower, 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " They hadna pu'ed a rose but ane, 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 When up started to them a banisht man, 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " He's ta'en the first sister by the hand, 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 He's turned her round and made her stand, 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " ' It's whether will ye be a rank robber's wife,' 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 ' Or will ye dee by my wee penknife? ' 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " ' Before I'll be called a rank robber's wife,' 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 ' I'll rather dee by your wee penknife,' 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " Then out he's ta'en his wee penknife, 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 And he's parted her and her sweet life, 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
128 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 " He's ta'en the second ane by the hand, 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 He's turned her round and made her stand , 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 ' It's whether will ye be a rank robber's wife,' 
 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 ' Or will ye dee by my wee penknife ? ' 
 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " ' Before I'll be called a rank robber's wife,' 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 ' I'll rather dee by your wee penknife,' 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " Then out he's ta'en his wee penknife, 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 And he's parted her and her sweet life, 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " He's ta'en the youngest ane by the hand, 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 And he's turned her round and made her stand, 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " ' It's whether will ye be a rank robber's wife,' 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 ' Or will ye dee by my wee penknife ? ' 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " ' It's I'll not be called a rank robber's wife,' 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 ' Nor will I dee by your wee penknife,' 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " ' For I hae a brother in green wood tree,' 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 ' An' gin ye kill me it's he'll kill thee,' 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " ' Come tell to me what's thy brother's name,' 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 129 
 
 ' My brother's name it is Baby Lon ! ' 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " ' O sisters, sisters, what hae I done ? ' 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 ' O hae I done this ill to thee ? ' 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " ' O since I've done this evil deed,' 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 ' Good sail never be seen o' me,' 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie. 
 
 " And he's ta'en out his wee penknife, 
 Hey how bonnie ! 
 And twined himsel o' his ain sweet life, 
 On the bonnie banks o' Fordie." 
 
 Here are all the features of a modern prose romance. The 
 identity of the ' rank robber ' is concealed until the mind of the 
 reader has had time to invest the characters with experiential inter- 
 est ; and the device introduced for delay is not padded description 
 of personal looks, antecedent circumstances, or even of the ' bon- 
 nie banks,' or other immediate surroundings, as in the effusive 
 manner, but an unmeaning refrain that does not occupy even the 
 intelligence of the reader. 1 The style is lacking somewhat in 
 
 1 There seems little reason to doubt that the refrain in ballads of this kind is 
 Keltic, and appropriated as in the present case by Gothic bards, not to spin out 
 the narrative, but to avoid introduction of details. For an example of the effusive 
 manner, compare The Ryme of Sir Thopas, which Chaucer introduces as a take- 
 off and gets himself silenced for repeating. It is unfortunate that the minstrel 
 literature of England and Scotland should have received the name " ballads," as 
 if similar to or identical with the lyric poetry of the romance literatures, from 
 which they are admitted to be distinct. While it is perhaps impossible to sep- 
 arate definitely Gothic from Keltic elements, it seems clear in the main that it 
 was the Scandinavian minstrel that set the fashion and gave them their distinctive 
 tone and spirit. It is, at any rate, not difficult to distinguish the style and manner 
 of Burns and Scott from the same in Helen, of Kircotmel, Glasgerion, or even 
 Campbell's Hohenlinden, which is in all respects a Gothic ballad. Shakespeare 
 was at one with the ballad-makers in spirit, and seems (Cf. Winter's Tale, V. ii. 
 par. s), by no means vainly, to have coveted their power. 
 
130 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 dignity and force — in so far echoing the lighter and more 
 voluble metrical romances of the South; but there can be no 
 mistaking the serious spirit beneath the form, or the selective, 
 suppressive manner of presentation. It is not too much to say 
 that to these characteristics not less than to the theme itself, the 
 poem owes its power. Cast in the spirit and manner of The Con- 
 fessio Amantis, it could but have proved insufferable to every 
 well-appointed reader. 
 
 The first element in the Gothic mode of art is, therefore, ' to 
 know what to leave in the inkstand ' ; it is the ability to produce 
 most effects by fewest means. We have already seen exemplifi- 
 cation of it in a more elementary form, — namely, in the ' con- 
 centrative figures ' of Chapter X. The other important element 
 of the Gothic mode is the power to make the little include poten- 
 tially the much. This is its supreme source of strength ; it is this 
 which has given to both Dante and Shakespeare the best part of 
 their fame. It does not consist in producing impressions or 
 experiences by direct comparison or deduction, but contrariwise, 
 inductively, or through inference. To state the principle formally, 
 — An effect is set forth in such wise as to challenge the fancy to 
 account for it, then out of the sufficient cause, duly conceived and 
 estimated, to interpret such particular effect as the reader, in the 
 given circumstances, is most vitally concerned to know. There 
 is no better example than the passage from Dante, which Ruskin 
 has made familiar to all readers of his Modern Painters : 1 — 
 
 On my right shoulder did the sun now smite me, 
 Which, raying forth, already changed the aspect 
 Of all the west from azure into white, 
 So that I with my shadow made the flame 
 Appear more red. — Purgatorio, xxvi. 4-8. 
 
 iVol. II., p. 163, American edition. The original lines, which Ruskin quotes, 
 are these : — 
 
 " Fcriami '1 Sole in su 1' omero dcstro, 
 Che gia, raggiando, tutto 1' occidente 
 Mutava in bianco aspetto di cilestro: 
 Ed io facea con l'ombra pift rovente 
 Parer la namma." 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 131 
 
 Here is no expatiation, no attempt at direct description, either of 
 which would have caused the author to fail utterly of his purpose. 
 No mind less endowed than Dante's with artistic sensibility could 
 have hit upon such an expedient, which even the reader, unless 
 quick to draw inferences from effects of color, will at first but ill 
 appreciate. Ruskin thus remarks upon its efficacy. " This is a 
 slight touch ; he has not gone to ^Etna or Pelorus for fuel ; but 
 we shall not soon recover from it, — he has taken our breath away 
 and leaves us gasping. No smoke or cinders there. Pure, white, 
 hurtling, formless flame ; very fire-crystal, we cannot make spires 
 nor waves of it, nor divide it, nor walk on it ; there is no question 
 about singeing soles of feet. It is lambent annihilation." 
 
 Now as to the art of the passage. The mind of the reader is at 
 once engaged by the phenomenon of a flame seemingly reddened 
 by a shadow cast upon it from the sun, and proceeds to imagine 
 the degree of heat necessary to account for it ; then from this as 
 a cause, makes haste to interpret and realize to itself the espe- 
 cial effect intended by the author, — namely, how must Dante 
 have felt in this temperature of some thousands of degrees Fahren- 
 heit? From the incidental, inferior effect given by the author the 
 reader is led to infer, through supplying the cause of both, the 
 essential, superior effect demanded by the treatment of the theme. 
 The mental process here evidently involves a forward as well as 
 a backward step, which, together with the relative effect of the 
 three notions upon the feelings, might be represented graphically 
 in some such way as this : — 
 
 Really, however, these steps are rather implied than actual ; for 
 
132 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 the effect set forth by the author is, through imagination, potential 
 of its cause, which again through imagination is potential of the 
 effect designed. The mind does not seem to recognize the rela- 
 tion of cause and effect consciously or completely. The process 
 is logical, but not ratiocinative. It is not the ego as reason, but 
 as emotion, that is now in exercise. The inferences are not cat- 
 egorical but empiric, and can be stated only in interrogative or 
 exclamatory propositions. Formally expressed, the course of 
 thought is this : ' Shadows cast upon a light background should 
 be dark; but Dante speaks of one that was red: how intense, 
 therefore, must have been the heat which caused it ? When 
 we make dark, cool shadows, the experience of heat may be 
 inordinately hard to bear : what, then, must have been Dante's 
 sensations in casting a red one, — or, under the same circum- 
 stances, would have been my own ? ' For a second illustration, 
 which shall be of a higher sort and involve symptoms of character, 
 we turn to the opening scenes of Shakespeare's Macbeth. The 
 author here makes to us such an exhibition of King Duncan's in- 
 capacity and of Macbeth's fitness as to make us desire to see the 
 crown transferred from the one to the other, and without much 
 concern as to the means or manner of the transfer. When the 
 witches declared their prophecy we saw Macbeth ' start and seem 
 to fear,' and we at once apprehended he might have scruples about 
 abetting or even consenting to his promotion. But his starting 
 and seeming to fear were really due to a very different feeling, as 
 we are to find out later. The author wishes us here and now to 
 expect as well as desire Macbeth's advancement ; hence in the 
 little he lets his hero say in the third scene Shakespeare several 
 times makes him prevaricate on small or no occasion, and finally, 
 on his coming to himself from his fit of abstraction, causes him, 
 without the least symptom of conscience, to cry out to his waiting 
 companions : — 
 
 " Give me your favor '. My dull brain was wrought 
 With things forgotten." 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 133 
 
 That is enough. The last falsehood, so immediate and uncon- 
 sidered, has done its work. We are fully persuaded that Macbeth 
 will not be kept back from making himself Duncan's successor by 
 principle. In other words, from the ' effect given,' or Macbeth's 
 indirections of speech, we have divined the character from which 
 they emanate, and read quickly in this character the potential 
 truth that he can and must do the deed which we await. 1 
 
 We may test the diagram by a still finer and more intricate 
 example from Browning's Luria : — 
 
 " Secretary. Here I sit, your scribe, 
 And in and out goes Luria, days and nights; 
 This Puccio conies; the Moor his other friend, 
 Husain; they talk — all that's feigned easily; 
 He speaks (I would not listen if I could), 
 , Reads, orders, counsels : — but he rests sometimes, — 
 I see him stand and eat, sleep stretched an hour 
 On the lyux-skins, yonder; hold his bared black arms 
 Into the sun from the tent-opening; laugh 
 When his horse drops the forage from his teeth 
 And neighs to hear him hum his Moorish songs. 
 That man believes in Florence as the saint 
 Tied to tlie wheel believes in Cod." 2 
 
 The question over which Braccio and the Secretary are in de- 
 bate is, Will Luria abuse his victory and seize Florence? They 
 have watched him in season and out of season from their respec- 
 tive points of view, assuming on general principles that he must 
 be as unscrupulous and self-seeking as themselves. But the Sec- 
 retary has had peculiar opportunities for espionage : he has seen 
 Luria not only when on duty as chief officer and under observa- 
 tion, but likewise at times when the latter could have had no 
 suspicion he was being studied. The naive and ingenuous doings 
 enumerated and described by the Secretary are really intended 
 
 1 But perhaps the simplest as well as most familiar illustration is " Giotto's O," 
 in which he intended the Pope to read his fitness for the work proposed. 
 
 2 Act I., 11. 97-109. The italics in the lines quoted are not in the original. 
 
134 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 for ourselves, and are the effects put forth by the author through 
 him for our imagination to seize on and interpret. He is next 
 used also as a kind of proxy or mentor, for Browning helps us in 
 the inferences we are to draw by having the Secretary tell us how 
 he has shaped his own. Along with or after him we see there is 
 no accounting for such child-like, unconscious action in a chieftain 
 who might make himself master of all Italy, except as typical of a 
 grand and noble nature, a transparent, Othello-like integrity. From 
 this as his spiritual whole of character we pass immediately, not to 
 the conclusion, but the conviction, that Luria can no more raise 
 his hand against Florence which he reveres, than the saint against 
 his God. It is necessary for the author's purpose that we be put 
 at once in possession of the truth concerning Luria's worth to 
 which Puccio, Domizia, and Braccio so slowly but so sublimely 
 come ; and thus by a single stroke Browning gives him to our 
 conception. It is principally by strokes wholly similar that 
 Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Oehlenschlager, Tegnei, 
 Victor Hugo, Tennyson, Browning, and all other Gothic poets 
 have put forth their power. 
 
 In complete contrast with the Gothic mode, in both its elements, 
 stands the school of literature or art called Classical. We have 
 seen how in the fundamental form of figures, Arnold and Pope 
 and Thomson are inclined to repeat or expand the literal until it 
 shall include the spiritual, but poets of the other manner to con- 
 dense the spiritual and the literal into one. The principles of 
 each school are the same in higher lines. As of Gothic stock we 
 prefer Dante's or Shakespeare's or Goethe's way, except when in 
 certain frames of fancy we wish not to be transported through 
 new scenes at lightning speed, but to stroll and roam on foot 
 through old. Homer, it is true, sometimes uses an effect as the 
 means of setting forth its cause, as in the famous talk of the Tro- 
 jan nobles concerning Helen's beauty, but even here he uses the 
 known as means of illustrating and better realizing the known, not 
 of reaching the unknown. His themes are current and well 
 understood beforehand, but he outdoes expectation in rehandling. 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 135 
 
 _He is no prophet of new truth, — the classicist seldom is. He 
 enables us to realize how it would feel to have and hold the bow 
 of Pandarus, the shield of Achilles, by giving us each of the infe- 
 rior antecedent experiences which make up or enable that final 
 one. 1 He makes the less reach to and produce in sum the greater. 
 But Dante makes the greater potentially include and supply the 
 less. 
 
 There is further and more complete contrariety between the 
 classic and the Gothic spirit. The classic impulse is to do all in 
 the name and for the sake of the literary body politic. The whole 
 community of culture is its spiritual unit. Hence its idiom is a 
 public language, like that of statutes and proclamations. Thus it 
 has made the language of books more select and lofty than the 
 language of the camp and fireside. But the Teutonic mind has 
 never taken kindly to this idea, and when not befogged or baffled, 
 has tended towards making the language of books and the lan- 
 guage of men alike. No Gothic genius from Dante or Langland, 
 to Browning and Carlyle, has ever used other than the people's 
 language, and his own personal dialect of that language. 2 Not 
 embodiment of all men's excellencies, but assertion of its individ- 
 ual ideals is the object of Gothic aspiration. Personality is its 
 sacred thing, the unit of its spiritual society. 
 
 It is important to trace the steps by which the earlier- aspects 
 of the classic and the Gothic movement have evolved their pres- 
 ent forms and standards. The first influence of Classicism tended 
 to draw men within the library and away from nature. Chaucer's 
 earlier poems evince this first effect of books. Gower is the 
 whole of which Chaucer saved himself from becoming more than 
 a part. To minds of this sort a book is a book without much ref- 
 erence to its message or difference from other books. Later 
 comes a stage in which the spiritual truth and beauty of the old- 
 
 1 This is of course the ' natural method 'par excellence. But some things even 
 the most plodding of mature minds may learn in a more abbreviated way. 
 
 2 So far as possible the student should here compare the Gothic authors of other 
 literatures, as Victor Hugo, Goethe, Oehlenschlager and Tegner. 
 
136 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 world poetry are reached. Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Milton 
 belong here. The fault of these and their fellows lies mainly in 
 the fact that they but dimly see the beauty in the outer world, 
 whence the Greek and Roman masters at first hand derived it for 
 their works. They draw their figures and illustrations preferably 
 from classic sources, — much as the child will pore over crude, 
 ill cut or colored pictures in some dark corner, rather than go out 
 to their originals in green woods or sunlit fields. Then we come 
 to the colder and more technical severity of the % Dryden and Pope 
 school, which suppressed Marinism — as well as other modes of 
 emotion — for the time being. Finally, we reach the Romantic 
 outburst near the beginning of our century. This was in reality a 
 Gothic restoration, and for a time the hostility against Classicism 
 was unreasoning and extreme. The cry everywhere was ' Down 
 with the studied and polished. Give us meaning and sentiment, 
 no matter what if strong, in spontaneous and natural forms.' For 
 fifty years the struggle to find an equilibrium went on between 
 the warring forces, and no less names than Carlyle and Browning 
 came to be regarded, in prose and poetry respectively, as the 
 exponents of literature made on impulse, without the censorship 
 of taste. But early in the present generation it began to be clear 
 to well-appointed minds that Classicism is an inherent principle 
 in art as well as nature. Ever since the Revival of Learning it 
 had sought themes that, in the main, only men of books cared 
 for. It was now felt that literature should treat such subjects as 
 high and low alike might read. Moreover, minds of classical 
 tastes and training began to see that some poets of their school 
 had actually essayed to make poetry out of a maximum of form 
 and a minimum of sense with no sentiment at all. Thus was it 
 recognized on every hand that, in poetry, sentiment must be para- 
 mount. Meanwhile, the poets and novelists of the Romantic 
 school had come to feel that truth and probability must be as 
 much respected in art as outside of it ; also, that in the matter of 
 presentation, they should at least achieve such form as, if their 
 work were to be done over, would be good enough to use again. 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 137 
 
 Thus was each of the warring factions compelled to admit the 
 essential principles of the other. Though the designation ' classi- 
 cal ' is popularly supposed to apply to compositions in which form 
 occupies the author's attention to the essential neglect of the matter 
 and its message, and ' romantic ' in like manner to stand for mat- 
 ter and message put forth substantially without reference to the 
 proprieties of presentation, there is in fact little or no literature 
 reputably turned out in these days that either term will approxi- 
 mately characterize alone. Good prose and poetry include and 
 must include both principles in some certain proportion or degree. 
 With respect to style, the romantic mind, as will be shown in a 
 later chapter, seeks preferably its own terms and turns of speech, 
 and by instinct avoids — like Shakespeare, the highroads and 
 beaten paths of diction ; the classicist, on the contrary, declines 
 to hazard an expression not definitely sanctioned by authority. 
 As to matter, the classicist in spite of his universalized and general 
 form is exclusive and narrow in range of subjects, while roman- 
 tic writers, individual in manner, are democratic and universal in 
 choice of themes. Finally, all great Gothic poems of whatsoever 
 age or kind, as the Divina Commedia, Shakespeare's Lear, or 
 Browning's Luria, are both romantic in spirit, and also carry their 
 own authority — or make their own classicism, in respect to form. 1 
 The earliest manifestation of Gothicism as a governing principle 
 in modern English was the idealism of the Elizabethan drama. 
 This consisted not in the exaltation of human achievements — 
 like the Greek, but of experiences. The same spirit manifested 
 itself again, as was shown in Chapter XI., near the close of the 
 last century. But the new idealism or romanticism had evolved 
 new features. What had been little more than individual in the 
 age of Elizabeth now became personal. The Teutonic mind must 
 perforce recognize, not the State or the Church, but the indi- 
 vidual, the soul of man, as the unit of society ; and what has so 
 slowly but so surely vindicated the rights of the individual in the 
 political and social sphere must as inevitably respect them and 
 
 i Cf. Chapter XVIII., p. 248. 
 
138 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 give them prominence in the representations of art. 1 The essence 
 of individuality is character, — not the sum of passive, but of 
 active qualities and habits, the aggregate of influence. Cceur de 
 Lion, the Black Prince, Napoleon are not to us demigods like 
 Achilles and ^Eneas, they are intensely human ; they do not 
 evoke vulgar wonder merely, they inspire. Thus individuality 
 potentially includes personality ; and the recognition of person- 
 ality involves potentially the recognition of environment. Hence^ 
 when the evolution is complete, it becomes possible to read per- 
 sonality out of environment, as well as to apply environment 
 corroboratingly to personality. Thus within the last few years a 
 new phase or school of art has brought itself to notice and 
 established itself under the name of Realism. Herein is no 
 undue exaltation, as at first supposed, of the small at the expense 
 of the great, rather more complete exaltation of the great through 
 the medium of the small. On the prose side the same process 
 of development, during almost the same period, has been going 
 on. Science — which is prose Realism — by enhancing the sig- 
 nificance of each item of man's environment has but enlarged 
 his cosmic and spiritual supremacy, since it finds nothing but 
 him and his in the types varied or repeated everywhere. 2 So 
 Realism in art is potent because it makes even circumstances 
 reflect the personality that has shed itself about them. The old 
 Romanticism of the Christabel and Frankenstein sort in a few 
 years gave place to a literature of relevancy and probability of 
 incident, which was succeeded by the poem or novel of character- 
 ization according to the life. To these Realism has added those 
 integral and congruous details which must be seen whenever a 
 master hand holds the mirror up to nature. Upon occasion we 
 
 i Cf. Browning's Old Pictures in Florence, in which the contrast between 
 Greek art, — which sought to realize a synthetic type of beauty, and the first 
 Christian-Gothic art, — which was analytic, and strove but to reach and express 
 the soul, is brought out with great force and clearness. 
 
 2 It is more than probable it will one day be shown that the Novum Organon 
 and the Inductive Method were the natural outcome of Teutonic separative or 
 analytic tendencies of thought, as the Deductive, of Greek synthetical. 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 139 
 
 still are willing to make an excursion into the world of romance, 
 as of allegory, but always in the manner of an episode, and must 
 be brief. We have learned to take our chief and sustained 
 delights in the world in which we daily live. 
 
 In the earliest activity of the Christian-Gothic mind, — namely, 
 the cathedral-building of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, — the 
 mode called Realism appears, as later in art and letters. Of 
 these there were no duplicates, as essentially of Greek temples ; 
 each minster was individual, and seemed in some way at one with, 
 almost an outgrowth from, its particular surroundings ; and upon 
 its portals or elsewhere was often carved somewhat of the flora 
 of the immediate vicinity. The realistic impulse can thus be 
 traced continuously, by way of the Early Italian, the Early Ger- 
 man, and the Dutch school, as well as various other phases of art 
 and sculpture, to Runeberg and Browning, and the novelists that 
 more popularly represent the movement in our day. But Realism 
 does not signify merely truth in externals and details; it is a 
 name by which we have restored true bounds to heroism. True 
 heroism, we have come to feel, consists in sturdy conquest of self 
 and of circumstances in the dull, hard routine of every-day exist- 
 ence hardly less than in having supreme experiences, in ruling 
 one's spirit as much as in taking a city. ' No man is a hero to his 
 valet ' runs the adage. This in reality sums up many generations 
 of observation to the effect that men, world-famed for powers of 
 some extraordinary sort, often prove unequal to petty trials and 
 annoyances that smaller minds can conquer. To exhibit the infe- 
 rior exigencies in which common men and women attain to hero- 
 ism, in such wise as to enable other men and women to do the 
 same, is art of no unworthy kind. The King Richard or Napoleon 
 who appears enshrouded with a halo in books of romance never- 
 theless eats, sleeps, shaves, yawns — in short, is human at every 
 pore. To describe the functional life of such a man or of any 
 other is not Realism, but Naturalism, Physiologism rather. Yet 
 to show the man in so far as the soul and the moral nature shine 
 through the humbler things of life may be Realism at its best 
 
140 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 and noblest. The taste of many critics would seem to crave 
 stronger themes and more sturdy treatment. But if a reader get 
 inspiration from a poem like The Cotter's Saturday Night, who 
 will attempt to argue him out of his profit ? 
 
 It is, therefore, of the essence of Realism to admit to art-treat- 
 ment all themes which may yield delight and inspiration. The 
 sole restriction is that all things great or small out of or by way 
 of which such experiences are derived, be presented in the veri- 
 table forms and relations in which those experiences are met with 
 in the actual. A Napoleon is not to be exhibited so far off as to 
 be out of true perspective, but as virtually in presence where the 
 tones of voice, the expressions of the face and gesture, may serve 
 as ' effects ' to fancy. Romanticism uses only transcendent or 
 exceptional ' effects ' which supreme moments yield ; but these, 
 being stereotyped and few, soon become familiar to the imagina- 
 tion, and lose their force. The power of Realism lies in the fact 
 that it brings into use the unwonted and simpler 'effects ' or types 
 wherein may reside potentially not less than in greater, the grand 
 and heroic whole of character. It selects and expresses what we 
 are to feel, and makes it do duty also for what we are to know. 
 Moreover, men do not, so far as we can at present see, always act 
 in the same circumstances in the same way. Realism forbids that 
 the novelist or poet venture a priori to ordain how in a given set 
 of circumstances destiny will shape itself, — he must give veritable 
 instances only. Realism, therefore, in the larger sense, stands for 
 the inviolability and integrity of spiritual truth in all its relations 
 and details. 
 
 The rise of Realism does not mean that the native Gothic mind 
 has lost its aspiration; rather that it has begun to turn all its 
 environment to spiritual account. Great themes no longer mo- 
 nopolize art treatment ; men are seeing types and ideals in even 
 smallest things. Scott's Lay or Marmion or Byron's Childe 
 Harold move and have moved the world not more than Burns' 
 Mountain Daisy, Mouse's Nest, and Auld Mare Maggie. There 
 is a strange tendency in nature to recur to an old type or mode 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 141 
 
 after a certain interval of expansion. Fashions in dress repeat 
 themselves with fuller expression of their idea and meaning. 
 The primitive Aryan speech was monosyllabic, and now Saxon 
 English has returned to the same condition. English poetry 
 began in the Beowulf with word-effects, and has now come around 
 to the same point of the circle from the other side, retaining all 
 the elements of power meantime evolved. So poetry in general, 
 beginning with fetichism, which in a brutal and shortsighted way 
 found the type of the greatest in the most paltry, has returned 
 to see, by exercise of a sympathy almost divine, the lofty in the 
 humble. Realism consists in looking at things, — so far as this 
 may be, in God's way rather than in man's way. It does not sig- 
 nify the apotheosis of the mean and paltry, rather the elimination 
 of invidious and arbitrary distinctions. The old instinct was to 
 remake, idealize, and dignify all subjects of art treatment. We 
 now feel that no subject can be invested with any dignity except 
 its own. Realism does not ignore or overlook what were once 
 called great subjects, but would fain do justice to the smallest 
 claims of beauty, and utilize all the commoner spiritual forces. 
 It often chooses humble themes, but always because they are 
 worthy, and will give pleasure. Art treatment is impossible if the 
 end and the effect be not unqualified delight. 1 
 
 The idea that spiritual truth may be discerned in the little things 
 of the universe, in the lilies as well as the glories of a Solomon's 
 court, is by no means new. We may trace it in literature from 
 Homer down. Dante knows it. Shakespeare cannot escape from 
 it, and through abhorring plebeian breaths cannot deny art treat- 
 ment to the Nurse, Dame Quickly, Falstaff, or even Caliban. 
 Two centuries earlier Chaucer had comprehended the same prin- 
 ciple, perhaps more clearly, especially as recognizing the sacred- 
 
 1 Of couse Idealism and Romanticism are related as 'genus and species. 
 Romanticism deals with the heroic in man, but with man out of perspective with 
 his limitations and environment. In like manner Realism when — as is the ten- 
 dency at present — it exaggerates environment, descends to Naturalism. Idealism 
 and Realism are, therefore, in effect complemental principles of art. 
 
142 ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 
 
 ness and dignity of even the humblest personality, as also the 
 integrity of its environment. Burns' artistic charity was even 
 broader, as his Address to the Deil proves. He also, assisted by 
 Wordsworth, greatly extended the limits of art in the treatment of 
 external nature. Finally, Runeberg and Browning, as has been 
 said, each with definite and conscious purpose, continue the 
 movement to our own day. With each it is heroic to be human, 
 — the more human, the more heroic. Faults are but necessary 
 modes of personality, from which art may evoke as much delight 
 as the old heroic and amended themes once yielded. The effect 
 is not to reconcile us to our weaknesses and shortcomings so much 
 as to check subjective and futile strivings after self-idealization 
 and ennoblement. 
 
 Chaucer, though living at a stage when neither the Gothic 
 nor the classic movement was well on foot, was in the main in 
 alliance with the former. As we have noted, he has nothing 
 of the firm self-restraint of Dante. But he adopts the idiom of 
 the people, and recognizes the rights and worth of the individual 
 rather than of the body politic of culture. He loved everything 
 in outside nature, but could not command the skill to bring into 
 his pages what he enjoyed, so perfunctorily makes the daisy and 
 May morning do duty for the varied whole. He displays art of 
 the true Gothic order in the Boke of the Duchesse, as also in 
 slyly getting himself silenced for the Rhyme of Sir Thopas. But 
 he is at his best — and herein is excelled by no later name, 
 in adapting his old, ready-made poems to proper mouths in 
 the Canterbury Tales. Even Dante could not have surpassed 
 the skill displayed by Chaucer in making each tale, as called for, 
 the natural result of the psychologic conditions produced by 
 those preceding. The refined and pathetic stories react upon the 
 combined coarseness of the company, which seeks antidotes for 
 the unwelcome emotions in ribald jests or raillery. But at last 
 there is reaction even from these, so that the author is able under 
 natural conditions to introduce even a preachment from the 
 ' Loller ' Persoun who had been refused an earlier hearing. 
 
ART, AND PRINCIPLES OF ART. 143 
 
 Milton is a sublime Gothic genius in most respects, though 
 tethered to the heavy learning of his century. In his larger 
 aspects he is no classic poet, in his smaller, as in form and per- 
 spective, he falls far short of Dante's standard. He was as full of 
 Gothic inspiration as the twelfth-century cathedral architects, and 
 in his great poem strove like them to imprison grandeur. He 
 chose to be vague that he might be vast, — to surround his celes- 
 tial battlements with fog that the mind of his reader might infer 
 still loftier proportions. As for the forms of art employed by 
 Shakespeare and Browning, the magnitude of the theme will 
 require special treatment in chapters following. 
 
144 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 It will, it is hoped, have been made clear from the positions 
 taken in the preceding chapter that Classicism in both its pre- 
 Christian and modern forms is to a great degree objective. 
 Greek art addressed the eye, strove to idealize lines and forms, 
 but as lines and forms, not as types of a higher beauty. Gothic 
 art, on the other hand, strove ever to point towards some higher 
 truth. Its shapes and faces were not delineated for the sake of 
 glorifying physical beauty, but as types of soul. Its cathedral 
 did not invite as to a spiritual resting-place, but to houses not 
 made with hands. Its organ was not perfected merely to please 
 the ear, but to awe and exalt the soul. So in every monument 
 of Gothic genius, from the first Madonnas to the great Messiah of 
 Handel, the aim was not to absorb the mind in contemplation of 
 present beauty, but to bespeak consideration of something beyond 
 of which this was but the symbol. 
 
 As we approach and attempt to account for the writings of 
 Shakespeare, we find the same essential principle even in the 
 beginnings of the modern drama. The Mysteries and Miracle 
 Plays are but another manifestation of the spiritual awe and aspi- 
 ration of the Gothic mind. Indeed, those first dramas proclaim 
 by their very designation that the incidents of which they are 
 composed were introduced for the sake of conveying some deeper 
 meaning. It may here be urged that the inspiration of the earliest 
 dramas, as also of mediaeval art and architecture, was wholly 
 Christian, and that the claim for any significance beyond this in 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 145 
 
 the term ' Gothic ' is a mere assumption. But even if it should 
 one day be proved that the Northern Balder is but a borrowed 
 Christ — as seems now far from likely — the fact of the myth 
 taking so deep root in the North would still have to be accounted 
 for. No other race in a like stage of its history is known to have 
 adopted a Christian notion at second hand, none but a nation 
 whose daily life was but an unending struggle for Valhall could 
 have been prepared to appropriate so spiritual a conception. 
 Also why have the " seven churches," as well as the other cities 
 and peoples of western Asia, failed so signally in their attempt to 
 rise above the plane of carnal types, if temperament and charac- 
 ter are without significance in the problem of destiny? History 
 seems to show that in the Goth's self-conquering energy and 
 devotion to noble ideals lay the hopes and the possibilities of a 
 spiritual civilization. 
 
 It has been shown already that Gothic romanticism was a very 
 different thing from the romance of the Greek and the Latin 
 epos. The incidents of the Beowulf and other sagas are unmis- 
 takably introduced and handled, not for the sake of glorifying 
 some god-descended hero, but of revealing the man who is char- 
 actered thereby. Thus we detect the type of the complete 
 Elizabethan drama. In the plays of the period before Shake- 
 speare, from the Gorboduc to the History of Doctor Faustus, one 
 can trace the constant and perhaps unconscious struggle to rise 
 above incident to definite delineation of character. Incident, 
 characterization, and character-consequences may be said to des- 
 ignate the three principal stages of development in the English 
 drama. Before the advent of Shakespeare, Marlowe had fairly 
 reached the second of the stages. Shakespeare began back of 
 that development^ as the Comedy of Errors, mainly a play of 
 incident, shows ; but he quickly rose to characterization. There 
 must always be incident, of course, to bring out facts of character ; 
 and some of the succeeding works, as notably Richard III., 
 seem to have been written almost on purpose to exhibit phenom- 
 enal and striking traits. But Shakespeare soon came to feel that 
 
146 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the impulse within him meant more than that. He quickly found 
 the art of connecting the events to be brought to pass with the 
 character of the protagonist or other prominent figure, through 
 the relation of cause and effect. He did not content himself with 
 showing the motive of a given action, but made such exhibition 
 of characteristics as would indicate the motive potentially to 
 imagination, in precisely the manner explained and illustrated, 
 by help of the diagram, in the preceding chapter. 
 
 To study the art of Shakespeare, it is best to begin with 
 Macbeth, since in that play he accomplishes great results most 
 quickly. The whole, as Grant White has said, seems to have 
 been ' struck out at a single heat.' The scenes are short and the 
 paragraphs concise and pointed, so there can in general be no 
 mistaking the art-purpose. The success of the entire play de- 
 pends on the immediate sympathy of the audience with Macbeth 
 when accosted by the witches. The author is sure, of course, 
 beforehand of aid in the natural fondness of all minds for roman- 
 tic turns of fortune ; but this, however potent sometimes in plays 
 of incident, is relatively of little moment in a profound study of 
 character-consequences -like the one in hand. Nothing less than 
 the revealment of Macbeth's relations to the unseen world will 
 adequately arouse our interest. For weal or woe the higher 
 powers have their eyes upon him, and promise his advancement. 
 But by merely telling these things as determinate and absolute 
 facts Shakespeare could have been sure of the sympathy of not a 
 single reader. In dealing with the ego as intellect or reason an 
 author must, of course, make all things definite and clear. He 
 must cut them off so far as possible from all outside relations. 
 He must make potential premises categorical. The implied con- 
 clusion must be fully and formally declared. But in dealing with 
 the feelings, or with the ego as imagination, the poet or artist 
 turns abstract effects into concrete causes for the mind to discern 
 experientially. The definite predicated conclusion must go back 
 into the vague potential premise. So here Shakespeare first 
 surrounds his hero with such indications of superhuman power as 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 147 
 
 will make us both hope and fear for his welfare and security. 
 Knowing what he does not know, we are bound, almost in anxi- 
 ety, to watch his steps, and note how destiny shall unfold itself. 
 
 The first ' effect ' is, therefore, the storm and general commo- 
 tion of the elements with which the play begins. We see it is 
 the witches who have raised the storm, and in it read potentially 
 the power of their masters for good or ill. In order to connect 
 their presence with the real object of their interest, they are 
 made to imply ominously that they are here with the same com- 
 mission which will bring them together again after the battle, — 
 namely, to meet Macbeth! With this second ' effect,' and the 
 ' potential cause ' with which it experientially fills our minds, the 
 first scene closes. 
 
 Who this Macbeth is, and why the superhuman powers concern 
 themselves with him, are now revealed. He is the general who, 
 almost by his own valor, is to-day winning victory for Scotland. 
 But Shakespeare does not first attempt to show us what Macbeth 
 is, but what the present king and his eldest son are not. This is 
 an age when heroism or at least intrepidity is the foundation of a 
 throne. But Duncan is not in the battle, — nor yet in sight of it, 
 but has remained close in camp, whence apparently he forecasts 
 to flee if the day shall go against his generals. Also here is Mal- 
 colm, who, after a taste of the fray and barely saved from cap- 
 ture, has run back to his father. These ' effects ' or symptoms 
 of character settle with us, even in passing, all question of the 
 martial fitness of Duncan and his line to rule. As for Macbeth, 
 dramatic perspective does not permit representation on the stage 
 of the prowess he exhibits. Even were it possible to introduce 
 the battle, the sight of a veritable Macbeth driving in the enemy 
 alone would scarcely arouse the imagination so effectually as the 
 means here used. Shakespeare clearly means to keep him out of 
 sight until we shall see the witches confront him with their 
 prophecy. He will accordingly be prefigured to us through 
 some manifestation, which fancy may interpret. 1 But the author 
 
 1 That is, by revelation of some single feature, the author secures — according 
 to page 94, second paragraph — our realization of the complete type. 
 
148 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 puts the ' effect ' one remove further into vagueness, as well as 
 potency, by making it come, not from Macbeth, but a wounded 
 sergeant. Here is a man faint from loss of blood who yet forgets 
 his danger and his pain in garrulous praises of his general. We 
 at once infer such enthusiasm as alone can account for the 
 phenomenon. What a general Macbeth must be who, fighting 
 the enemy hand to hand like any common soldier, has so aroused 
 the sergeant's wonder — what an experience, could we ourselves 
 but see him ! 1 As to further instances of art, the bleed- 
 ing wounds are £>ut potentially for the battle, we read in the 
 Dame-Quickly manner of the sergeant's narrative his quality, as 
 in Ross's concise report a disciplined and cultured mind. We 
 note, moreover, that Ross avoids all mention of Macbeth; the 
 King likewise seemed unwilling to hear only his kinsman's 
 praises — 
 
 " Dismayed not this 
 Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo ? " 
 
 We thus anticipate the truth, fully confirmed later on, that Mac- 
 beth is ambitious, and looked upon as a rising man who has not 
 fought to-day for nothing. Finally, we were persuaded already 
 while the sergeant spoke, of Macbeth's victory, which Ross's 
 report confirms. The scene ends with the victor proclaimed heir 
 to the estate and name of Cawdor. 
 
 Thus much, then, has been accomplished in the first seventy- 
 five lines of text. Hardly anywhere else in Shakespeare shall we 
 find such condensation, and nowhere in dramatic literature out- 
 side. It is interesting also to note how little effect is produced 
 by ' direct ' means, or in any other way than inferentially through 
 the imagination. Association, as was pointed out in Chapter VI., 
 is sometimes used as the means to some important end, but in 
 
 1 We may note further that, intentionally or otherwise, Shakespeare has subor- 
 dinated Duncan to Malcolm who essays the battle, Malcolm to the sergeant who 
 saves him from capture, and the sergeant to Macbeth whose fierceness makes him 
 forget he is himself a valiant soldier. This marked gradation has no little effect 
 upon our willingness to see Macbeth a candidate for Duncan's crown. 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 149 
 
 the main, as is true also of Tone Colorings, with only incidental 
 efficacy. To enable a somewhat complete analysis of the ' indi- 
 rect ' or ' inferential ' art of the play, and especially of the manner 
 in which Shakespeare sways and controls our sympathies, a run- 
 ning but condensed summary of the principal points will from here 
 on be given. The reader should at each step inquire What has 
 the author accomplished, and how has he accomplished it? What 
 are the ' effects given,' and the ' experiential effects intended ' ? 
 
 Scene III. 
 
 This scene exhibits the witches returned from their sieve and 
 broomstick expeditions, and again met as they had promised in 
 thunder, lightning, and in rain on the blasted heath. The 
 ' effects ' indicative of their power in the first scene were exhib- 
 ited wholly in outside nature; now they come from the sphere of 
 the human. But nothing is enacted before us. The witches are 
 made simply to tell what they have been doing since the first 
 scene, and even that story is left half told. One has been causing 
 swine to sicken. Another has been insulted by the wife of a 
 sailor, whom all three, since his life is beyond their reach, arrange 
 to torment. But a pilot, met by the first witch as he was sailing 
 homeward, was not so fortunate ; and his thumb is exhibited as a 
 trophy. That surely is enough. Imagination can ask no more ; 
 and Macbeth's drum is made to interrupt further exchange of the 
 afternoon's experiences. 1 
 
 After such hints and indications of supernatural power it is 
 not difficult for the audience to believe dramatically in at least 
 the foreknowledge of the witches. They seem in this case to 
 
 1 It is, of course, as impossible here as in the scene preceding to represent 
 upon the stage, in the time allotted, what the witches can do or have been doing, 
 and it is wholly as unnecessary. The pilot's thumb is yet more effective, as a 
 dramatic substitute, than the blood from the sergeant's wounds. Even if the body 
 of the drowned pilot, or the storm that split his ship, could have been shown, 
 neither nor both together could have meant so much to the imagination as this 
 ' trophy,' which 1he audience with the physical eye cannot discern. 
 
150 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 mean no mischief. They simply predict that Macbeth, who has 
 redeemed a kingdom, shall not fail of a crown. But the thought 
 is not new to him. He ' starts and seems to fear.' What does he 
 fear? Clearly the conscious guilt of the crime implied. Mac- 
 beth is a grim, relentless warrior, but his conscience is tender as 
 a child's. He is so familiar with the thought of seizing Duncan's 
 crown that he does not question the truth of the prediction, but 
 merely shrinks from paying what he fully realizes it will cost to 
 his own peace. 
 
 How Macbeth's ambitious thoughts have prepared him for the 
 prophecy is excellently indicated in relief by the " unpossessed- 
 ness " of Banquo's mind. This man treats the appearing of the 
 witches as any other phenomenon, on its merits simply. He 
 cross-examines them on their one-sided greeting, disconcerting 
 them for the moment not a little. But though they presently 
 predict for him almost equal eminence, he is not at all sure when 
 they are gone that the experience was real. Macbeth has no 
 doubts, can think of nothing else. When Ross and Angus arrive, 
 Macbeth is more concerned with the unsubstantial ' greatest which 
 is behind ' than with his very material and present investiture in 
 the robes of Cawdor. This immediate fulfillment of the second 
 prophecy intensifies his expectation. He tries to ally himself 
 with his predicted destiny. But the nearer approach of fortune 
 has brought a more vivid realization of what painful inner experi- 
 ences must come with it. Thus there is reaction, and he leaves 
 the stage halting between the impulse to do everything and to do 
 nothing. 
 
 Thus by ' effects ' Shakespeare makes known to us what thoughts 
 are passing in Macbeth's mind, and from these as ' effects ' in 
 turn implies what he is in character. There are strange contra- 
 dictions in his nature, of which we shall know later, but they are 
 sufficiently indicated to us in passing through the quick inter- 
 change of his thoughts and feelings. He ends his soliloquy with 
 the provisional resolve to let fate do its work alone, — which we 
 commend in the abstract; for we have already been bewitched 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 1S1 
 
 into full sympathy with Macbeth's ambition. 1 We are aware he 
 has twice pretended not to understand what he understood all too 
 well, has called the ruined Cawdor a ' prosperous gentleman,' and 
 now tells a falsehood concerning the cause of his abstraction. It 
 is not without satisfaction, dramatically speaking, that we note 
 these symptoms, and are in them, as pointed out in the last 
 chapter, persuaded Macbeth will not in the end deny himself the 
 crown. So far as he is held back from his crime, it is not by con- 
 science, but another and far less worthy motive, to be made known 
 to us at the opening of Scene VII. 
 
 Scene IV. 
 
 The sympathies of the audience are now so far with Macbeth 
 that Shakespeare does not hesitate to bring him and King Duncan 
 together in their new relation. It yet involves no little risk, for 
 the King proves wholly devoid of envy, and generous even to a 
 fault. It would certainly have been disastrous to have shown him 
 in his true character earlier in the play. But Shakespeare hazards 
 the full exhibit of Duncan's virtues, though he is presented only 
 as a victim, well knowing that the audience will not revolt and 
 must, therefore, be all the more committed to Macbeth's course. 
 Indeed his frank and child-like sincerity is shown in relief by 
 Macbeth's confused and lame responses, which admit everything 
 and deprecate nothing — in marked contrast with Banquo's cour- 
 tier phrase, and Lady Macbeth's greetings below. Has Duncan 
 perhaps marked the growing importance of Macbeth? does he 
 suspect his aspirations ? At any rate he sets the question of the 
 succession at rest in this presence by naming Malcolm as his suc- 
 cessor. Macbeth has plainly cherished some vague expectation 
 that his signal services to Scotland might divert the crown in 
 
 1 Through the ' effect ' of Macbeth's fabulous valor the audience has conceived 
 such greatness as it would fain see in action with its own eyes and by direct expe- 
 rience. But Shakespeare denies us this satisfaction. We are led on and on in 
 the expectation of some royal feat, until, his ruin accomplished, we leave our 
 hero to his fate. 
 
152 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 some way to himself. At the King's word he rouses. If he is to 
 succeed Duncan he must act. He immediately takes his leave 
 under color of needing to apprise his wife of the King's coming. 
 The scene, its brevity considered, is scarcely less remarkable 
 than the preceding. The secret of its success lies in making 
 Macbeth the principal figure, and the King subordinate. Duncan 
 is better, but Macbeth fitter. 
 
 Scene V. 
 
 It is now made clear why Macbeth rode in advance of the 
 King. After the coming of Ross and Angus and before meeting 
 Duncan at Forres, he wrote of the witches' predictions to his 
 wife, as the letter itself says, ' That she may lay it to heart.' This 
 she proceeds to do here, and now, — this she has long since been 
 doing. Here, then, is Macbeth's strength, hence is to come his 
 support in the step he feels must somehow be taken. Macbeth 
 craves the crown as much as she, but has scruples which in the 
 face of what royalty will mean are lost to her. She is not un- 
 tender, but she has imagination. Moreover, she understands little 
 of what crime costs ; and her ambition for her husband is su- 
 preme. 
 
 Chief among the ' effects ' of the scene is Lady Macbeth's 
 superb and daring resolution. She is fairly crazed at the oppor- 
 tunity now presented. We read in this, of course, how supremely 
 she has set her heart on her husband's displacing Duncan, and 
 that, though not knowing what she does, she will ensure it. 1 She 
 is made to serve the audience as a sort of proxy, voicing and 
 obeying its will, and thus slips without protest, almost without 
 
 1 The reader will now observe that even the associations — spoken of in Chap- 
 ter VI. — in the words Lady Macbeth uses, are an 'effect' indicating how her 
 long-cherished purpose has possessed her soul, and herein we may read as the 
 'final effect' how terrible will be her suffering. In like manner our imagination 
 here anticipates for Macbeth no little of what Act V. makes actual. The scene 
 should be scanned industriously throughout in every line and word, that no ' effect' 
 be overlooked. Few passages in literature are so packed with meaning. 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 153 
 
 notice, into the unsexed role so necessary to the plot. In the 
 presence of such overmastering energy Macbeth husbands his own 
 activity. What need for him of resolution ? He has put himself 
 into his wife's hands. The letter, and his presence here, mean 
 nothing else ; and she will, if need be, carry him bodily to the 
 throne. If he can but muster strength to clear his brow of tell- 
 tale looks, all else will be provided for. 
 
 Scene VI. 
 
 The audience is now permitted to see Duncan draw near and 
 enter the deadly castle. Happy at the return of peace to Scot- 
 land, and proud of all that appertains to her deliverer, the King 
 finds only pleasure in the approach to Macbeth's hom§. Banquo's 
 younger eye detects upon it everywhere the pendent nests of the 
 temple-haunting martlet. The very air is redolent of security and 
 peace. 
 
 The reader should from this point systematically take cog- 
 nizance of all instances and forms of contrast. Shakespeare has 
 already employed it in this play in exhibiting Duncan's unmartial 
 as against Macbeth's heroic mind ; similarly, through Banquo's 
 " unpossessedness," in suggesting how Macbeth, — were he not 
 already a usurper in his heart, should have received the witch's 
 salutations ; and also in Scene IV. The effect is in each case due 
 to bringing together hints and ' effects ' indicative of unlike or 
 contrary types and ' potential causes,' which are answered to by 
 antagonistic emotions. The principle is analogous to Contrast, 
 and Light and Shade, in painting. The present scene derives its 
 power from bringing together, amid the described surroundings 
 and the experiences they evoke, King Duncan and Lady Mac- 
 beth, his evil genius, while her words are still ringing in our ears, 
 and their associations fresh and vivid in our minds. Her hus- 
 band, we note, does not appear. This is a mere negative ' effect,' 
 but how magnificently it tells us that Macbeth dare not assay the 
 task of counterfeiting welcome ! From this potential cause we 
 
154 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 at once feel the implied ' conclusion ' that Duncan, were he in the 
 least suspicious, in spite of all should read the conspiracy from 
 his kinsman's face. 1 The King is even more gracious and amia- 
 ble, if less kingly, than before. It is another daring experiment, 
 which a less cunning hand than Shakespeare's could never have 
 accomplished. But it succeeds, and with all the profounder 
 effect. To cause the lamb to lick the sacrificer's fingers may 
 make the audience revolt against the knife, but, if that can be 
 prevented, will but intensify the tragedy. 
 
 Scene VII. 
 
 The banquet has been some time in progress, and Macbeth has 
 sat by his kinsman's side. The sense of Duncan's meekness and 
 worth so grows upon him that he feels he cannot even acquiesce 
 in his wife's determination : he must prevent the murder. At any 
 rate he will come to an understanding with himself, and that 
 straightway. Reaction from the first excitement caused by the 
 witches has set in. He remembers " Whoso sheddeth man's 
 blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Were there no risk of 
 after-vengeance during his natural life, he would do the deed 
 immediately ; but he dreads the reckoning with Scotland. 2 Lady 
 Macbeth, divining his irresolution, comes forth to seek him and 
 overcome it. She first attacks his inconsistency, and unmasks the 
 cowardice of faltering at the execution of what the heart has 
 willed. She knows nothing of man's heroic courage. She is a 
 woman, and has felt a mother's tenderness ; but for her part she 
 would dash out the brains of her unweaned child sooner than 
 recoil like him from a sacred promise. 3 When she has thus 
 
 1 Compare the opening of Act II., below. 
 
 2 Note the type of character indicated. If Macbeth were without fear of pun- 
 ishment, at least in his body in this life, the present tragedy, as we know it, could 
 not have been written. The fourth scene of Act III., and the fifth of V., would 
 have been impossible with a Macbeth wholly wanting in sensibility. 
 
 8 Note the tremendous potency of the ' effect ' in the words here uttered. Lady 
 Macbeth's babe has been buried out of her sight, yet she can say this ! Then 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 155 
 
 cowed his scruples, she overcomes his fears. There is no men- 
 tion of the great emoluments of kingship which a less dynamic 
 hand would here have made Lady Macbeth employ ; both she 
 and her husband take these well and thoroughly for granted. 
 The battle is fought on a higher plane where these are out of 
 sight. It is the supreme energy of a woman's will, entranced by 
 an ideal, inflamed by vicarious and self-denying zeal for another's 
 good, that conquers Macbeth's selfish caution and distrust. 
 
 The work of the first act is finished : Macbeth assumes the 
 deed. Lady Macbeth having been used to bring her husband to 
 a resolution, falls back from the part she at first marked out to 
 play, and resumes the more womanly role of an abettor and 
 adviser. It is the triumph of the play that the part suffers, with 
 this rough handling, no greater detriment in the sympathies of the 
 audience. 
 
 Act II. — Scene I. 
 
 The banquet is over and the guests dispersed. Banquo has 
 divined out of the faces of Macbeth and his wife what they intend, 
 yet will not warn the King. Like Macbeth, he fears physical 
 rather than moral accountability. If he be heard to mutter of 
 the murder in his sleep, it will fasten the crime, or, at least par- 
 ticipancy in it, upon himself. As he passes to his apartment 
 across the court he comes upon Macbeth making the rounds to be 
 sure that all is quiet, and before he is aware expresses surprise at 
 the meeting. To alleviate the hint of meddling and influence 
 Macbeth, if possible, against the deed, he gives now — instead 
 of waiting till the morning — the diamond sent by the King to 
 his " most kind hostess." He tests also whether Macbeth will 
 speak of the work in hand, and is rewarded by a pretty open bid 
 
 how inordinate her ambition, how terrible her resolution ! Shakespeare is here 
 grappling with the supreme difficulty of the play. We must feel utterly and un- 
 equivocally that Macbeth is forced into the crime in spite of all his scruples and 
 dread of vengeance. He but makes Lady Macbeth to have been a mother, and 
 — now childless, in spite of maternal yearning for the lost, to say such things, 
 and the work is done. 
 
156 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 for his support. This he handles very gingerly, as if in full 
 loyalty to the King, whom, nevertheless, he now leaves to his 
 fate. 
 
 From the first the author has been preparing Macbeth and 
 Lady Macbeth for tragic suffering. They are not assassins, they 
 are not accustomed to the consciousness of crime, and they 
 are not in themselves equal to the burdens of remorse they are 
 preparing to assume. Macbeth, indeed, is only held to the task 
 by the frenzied determination of his wife. But this is not enough ; 
 he may falter and fail in spite of all. Hence the air-drawn dag- 
 ger is an artistic necessity as reinforcing his alien resolution, as 
 ' marshalling him ' the way he assays to go. 1 It gives occasion, 
 moreover, for the doubtful debate and delay through which the 
 audience is committed, yet more unequivocally, to Macbeth and 
 his deed. 
 
 Scene II. 
 
 It is clearly an artistic necessity that Lady Macbeth in turn 
 shall not be equal to her part without the emboldenment of wine. 
 If she had been made brutal enough not to require this, the 
 sleep-walking scene in the last act could not here have been pre- 
 pared for j whereas, it is for that scene more than anything else 
 that the play was written. In the first access of resolution she 
 had imagined, if Macbeth would but mask the agitation and 
 anxiety from his face, that she could do the rest. But she has 
 stood by the couch of the sleeping King and found the limits of 
 her strength. Macbeth has gone to the King's chamber, but has 
 not dared to shut the door ; so that the audience can listen for 
 the stroke. While they await it, his conscience interposes its last 
 protest, and Macbeth, on some slightest hint of noise, thinking, 
 hoping, he may rouse some one from sleep and prevent the deed, 
 
 1 But this only because the author, for reasons of his own, is in this play hurry- 
 ing to the conclusion by the shortest way. In plays like Hamlet and Corhlanus, 
 in which he gives his characters complete treatment, no such time-saving devices 
 occur. 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 157 
 
 cries out, "Who's there?" But fate is pitiless. No one awakes, 
 and he must go back to his murder. Lady Macbeth's " Hark ! " 
 marks the moment when the dagger falls. 
 
 The deed is accomplished, and the inevitable reaction sets in. 
 Macbeth is so unnerved, so perplexed and horrified, that Lady Mac- 
 beth is forced again to arouse herself and save the day. As she 
 goes to replace the daggers a loud knock is heard at the gate of 
 the castle. Here is the first great climax of the play — Macbeth 
 trembling, alone, shut up in the castle- with his crime, and the 
 world knocking without upon the gate ! 
 
 Shakespeare always provides the proper descent or transition 
 from tragic situations such as this. He supplies it here partly by 
 arousing anxiety lest Macbeth fail to put on his dressing-gown 
 and otherwise avert suspicion, and partly through the repeated 
 knocking and the delay in opening the gate in answer. The first 
 knock startles us, fills us with consternation over Macbeth's plight ; 
 but at the persistent repetition we prepare to go outside the gate 
 and come in with the world. 
 
 Scene III. 
 
 Here, again, the author permits a daring stroke. The delay in 
 opening the gate, so opportune to the culprits but necessitating 
 such long and vain knocking, must be accounted for. Hence the 
 maudlin, fumbling porter and the incidental deepening of the trag- 
 edy by contrast. While the King was dying in his chamber it is 
 shown the porter was carousing with his fellows, and now, since 
 the second cock, he has been dreaming that he is keeper, not of 
 the entrance to Macbeth's castle, but of the gate of hell. This 
 episode has been exclaimed against as out of keeping. Duncan 
 lies dead within : why defeat the proprieties ? Sticklers for con- 
 gruity of such sort apparently would say that the child found 
 beside its dead mother in a telescoped railway car ought to be 
 dead also, or out of respect to the situation, should, at least, wail 
 and sob. But how, if, understanding nothing of what has hap- 
 
158 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 pened, it laugh and crow, and play with its dead mother's face ? 
 Would that defeat the tragedy ? x 
 
 Macbeth has washed his hands, removed his clothes, put on his 
 dressing-gown, and just as Macduff and Lennox — who, perhaps, 
 from lack of room have lodged without — ask if he is stirring, 
 starts forth to greet them. He conducts his friends to the door of 
 the King's apartment, but omits to knock or lead the way within. 
 This is a sad blunder, but it is only the beginning. Lady Macbeth 
 plays her part from the first much better. Macduff comes back 
 crying 'horror, horror,' Macbeth and Lennox go within, the 
 castle-bell rings, and Lady Macbeth comes forth with excellently 
 feigned indignation. So far there is no suspicion. But Macbeth 
 comes back, awkwardly accuses himself of murdering the grooms, 
 which he is betrayed into an attempt to excuse. Nothing but 
 Lady Macbeth's swoon can help the frightful situation. Even the 
 rhetoric of it is an unanswerable indictment. Was the swoon 
 real ? Macbeth clearly does not believe in it, and that, it would 
 seem, ought to be final. He cannot suspect that she who has been 
 his support from beginning to end of the transaction, whom he 
 has just now seen with the King's blood upon her fingers, is 
 after all unable to endure an allusion to the King's wounds. 
 This device of the author in either case serves to remove Lady 
 Macbeth, who is no longer in place here, and helps hurry the 
 scene, a cardinal thing in this play, on to its close. The effect of 
 the whole is summed up to the audience in the lines interchanged 
 by Malcolm and Donalbain, who take to flight without saying 
 adieu to their kinsfolk entertainers. 
 
 Scene IV. 
 
 Here the author effects a more complete return to the common, 
 every-day world by fitting, with the aid of the ' old resident ' to 
 
 1 As the events of the play are reduced almost to outline, it is evident the 
 author designed the porter episode in part as atmosphere. It also, in a much 
 needed degree, contributes to the lapse of time, and helps distance the tragedy just 
 enacted. 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 159 
 
 make comparisons, weird accompaniments to the tragedy of the 
 night. What men are willing to say of the affair at the present 
 stage, with some hint of what they think, is registered for contrast 
 later. Last of all, it is made plain there is to be no opposition ; 
 Macbeth will get his crown. 
 
 Act III. — Scene I. 
 
 The blind desire to see Macbeth king, through which the 
 author's art has made each spectator in effect dramatically a parti- 
 ceps, criminis, is now rewarded. But we are kept from realizing 
 that Macbeth wears the same crown that we have seen on the 
 brow of Duncan, and we are not permitted to see it except this 
 once, — while he gives audience to low assassins. Indeed, all sug- 
 gestions of true kingly function both here and hereafter are rigidly 
 excluded. 
 
 The fortunes of the hero in Shakespeare are generally pre- 
 figured near the middle of the third act. The real tragedy is to 
 be developed in the consciences of Duncan's murderers ; Mac- 
 beth's sufferings are to be shown so great that he will uncon- 
 sciously betray himself, and thus cause his guilt to be proclaimed 
 throughout Scotland from the housetops. The further means here 
 employed, as also the occasion, are to be derived from the death 
 of Banquo. 
 
 For the first thing, that the audience may not resist the plot, 
 Banquo, who has hitherto been used as Macbeth's foil, is intro- 
 duced again and made to give evidence against himself. His 
 mind is no longer unpossessed ; he is coquetting with ambitious 
 thoughts. His movements also are mysterious. Is he in league 
 with Macbeth's enemies? He gives evasive answers to the ques- 
 tions concerning his long ride, and is clearly willing to leave his 
 King suspicious. This last especially does much towards justify- 
 ing the soliloquy which follows. The audience are already averse 
 to seeing Macbeth meddled with ; and now his bold challenge, 
 bidding ' fate come into the list and champion him to the utter- 
 
160 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ance,' helps it finally over the hard place. Banquo must be sacri- 
 ficed. 
 
 Macbeth having taken the first step in crime, like one who has 
 quenched his thirst with a. draught of sea-water, cannot be held 
 back from the second. The long parley in which he tries to show 
 his professional assassins motives for the deed, and his assumption 
 that their resolution will be slow as was his for the taking off of 
 Duncan, betray the memories in his breast. Moreover, continued 
 discussion of the murder also intensifies expectation, and tends to 
 deepen the effect when the deed is reached. 
 
 Scene II. 
 
 This scene deepens tragic expectation by showing other aspects 
 of the intended murder. Lady Macbeth testifies to her own 
 feeling of unhappiness and insecurity, implying that greater con- 
 sciousness of safety will bring the joy they miss — also Macbeth's 
 delusion. To his wife, who pleads for brighter and more jovial 
 looks at least to-night, Macbeth reveals that a " deed of dreadful 
 note "is in preparation. What it is she must not know, for her 
 conscience evidently can carry no greater burdens. Though she 
 has been his tempter he does not reproach her ; though she has 
 just found fault with the rugged looks which she has brought 
 upon his brow, he is none the less anxious to save her from the 
 new guilt he prepares to bear. He is no longer at war with him- 
 self or her ; he takes his crimes and their consequence for granted. 
 The scene ends with a paragraph which for bloodthirsty frenzy 
 stands in strange contrast with the lines uttered when with falter- 
 ing steps he followed the air-drawn dagger to his first taste of 
 crime. 
 
 Scene III. 
 
 Duncan was murdered off the stage, but it is not his ghost that 
 is to glare upon Macbeth. It is necessary that Macbeth should set 
 upon his old friend before our very faces if we are at all to realize 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 161 
 
 what Banquo's ghost means to his murderer. Macbeth is in the 
 lists against fate itself: will he leave his thrusts to be dealt by 
 other hands ? That the ' Third Murderer ' is Macbeth cannot be 
 doubted. No ear less attent than his could have first detected 
 the sound of hoofs, no eye less piercing indentified the victim, no 
 hate less fierce perceived when Banquo was dispatched but 
 Fleance fled. 1 
 
 Scene IV. 
 
 The audience, it may be safely assumed, is now prepared for 
 the ghost of Banquo. There will be no titter running through 
 the aisles, as when unskilled hands assay such situations. Shake- 
 speare never fails of his purposes. Yet to make assurance doubly 
 sure, or perhaps rather to deepen the effect by contrast, he shows 
 Banquo's blood upon the face of the murderer, who looks in at 
 the banquet door. 
 
 It is a dismal feast. The guests have been long delayed, osten- 
 sibly for Banquo, but really while search is going on for Fleance. 
 At last they sit, no cover being laid for Banquo. Macbeth with 
 new hypocrisy must needs refer chidingly to the absence. His 
 punishment is immediate : Banquo's ghost sits in his place. There 
 is no doubt or question what it is ; Macbeth does not pretend it 
 is a stranger. 2 Quailing under the leer it gives him, he strives to 
 put the crime upon his guests. "Which of you have done this? 
 Thou canst not say / did it. Never shake thy gory locks at me!" 
 Lady Macbeth attempting to explain only makes matters worse. 
 " My lord is often thus — and hath been from his youth!" So 
 intense is Macbeth's agony that he talks openly of his dreadful 
 secret, even after the ghost has vanished : — 
 
 1 For eight other points of evidence, some important, see Notes and Queries for 
 Sept. ii and Nov. 13, 1869, — quoted by Furness, Variorum Macbeth, p. 160. 
 
 2 It is essential that the audience identify this as the ghost of Banquo. Hence, 
 in the enactment of the scene, the presence of the ghost should not be left to the 
 imagination. Poetic justice assists the clumsiness of the situation. 
 
162 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " If thou canst nod, speak too. 
 If charnel-houses and our graves must send 
 Those that we bury back, our monuments 
 Shall be the maws of kites. 
 
 "... the time has been 
 That when the brains were out the man would die, 
 And there an end ; but now they rise again, 
 With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns, 
 And push us from our stools. This is more strange 
 Than such a murther is." 
 
 The guests do not yet know of Banquo's death, and naturally take 
 this as an admission of what has been generally suspected — his 
 assassination of King Duncan. Insensible to the lesson, Macbeth 
 persists in alluding again to Banquo, even daring to wish him 
 present and to propose his health. 1 But the toast is never drunk : 
 the ghost instantly returns. It does not now shake its gory locks, 
 or nod its head in mockery, but holds yet fiercer and more terri- 
 ble torment in its looks and mien. The climax is now reached. 
 Though the ghost goes quickly, perhaps content and pitying, 
 Macbeth's mind remains as numbed and crazed as while the 
 ghost first stayed. He cannot recover himself, cannot again be 
 rallied to his guests, but assays rather to rally them to himself. 
 He is about to tell Ross as the merest matter of course what 
 shape he saw, when Lady Macbeth cries out to him not to speak, 
 and precipitates the company out of doors, lest he utter the very 
 name " Duncan," as they expect. 2 
 
 From this climax to the end the descent is simple and speedy. 
 The first is a negative ' effect ' : Lady Macbeth does not chide, 
 but collapses in dejection. Macbeth interprets to himself the 
 
 1 Of course the use of hypocrisy — here almost unnatural and strained — as 
 an ' effect,' is intended to make us wish to see Macbeth put down, or rather to 
 begin the change in our feelings towards him. See opening of Act IV. 
 
 2 The gist of the art-meaning to the imagination is ' What must have been 
 Macbeth's suffering when it makes him forget his secret is a secret — a thing we 
 cannot believe possible for a murderer ! ' 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 163 
 
 meaning of the apparition : " It will have blood " — his own blood 
 must pay the forfeit. This gives the audience, which still keeps 
 in sympathy with Macbeth, a new sensation. It hopes that he 
 will defeat his fears, hence learns with approval that he is taking 
 all precautions, and will consult the witches, — ' now even by 
 worst means will know the worst.' He will smite down all 
 approach of justice. Two other thoughts are also forced be- 
 tween us and the tragic scene just finished. Macbeth cannot 
 sleep : the voice he seemed to hear in Duncan's chamber fore- 
 told truly. Again, though he entered the path of crime anticipat- 
 ing what it would cost, he now can see no reason for his suffer- 
 ings save that those sufferings are new. ' He is yet but young in 
 deed ' ! 
 
 Scene VI. 
 
 It is marvelous that Shakespeare can keep from sight so com- 
 pletely that Macbeth is after all a king. In other plays the divin- 
 ity that doth hedge a king shines out, — even in Hamlet far more 
 than here. In this play ' Lennox ' and the ' other Lords ' are 
 almost the peers, certainly never the vassals of Macbeth. In the 
 feast with his nobles he wears no crown, and everywhere later 
 when his woes are multiplying about him we are prevented from 
 realizing that he has anything to show for what he suffers. In 
 this scene is next revealed how public sentiment in Scotland has 
 changed since the fourth scene of Act II., and how it is changing 
 since the feast and the disappearance of Banquo. It is made 
 clear there must soon be open rebellion ; and already Macduff 
 has gone to England to invoke aid against the tyrant. 
 
 Act IV. — Scene I. 
 
 The audience must submit to the degradation of its favorite, 
 that it may be prepared for and allow the punishment soon to 
 come. In a full and complete treatment this might occupy many 
 
164 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 scenes ; in the present epitomized play it is dispatched almost in 
 one. The chief device employed is the witches' caldron, which 
 affords the weird, supernatural element necessary to conceal the 
 moral effect intended. Thus the audience is absorbed in what it 
 sees and hears, and is greatly surprised to find when the scene is 
 over that it has parted with its enthusiasm for Macbeth. 
 
 At the opening of the play the presence of the witches inspires 
 awe, by the aid of which Shakespeare exalts Macbeth. Here 
 they appear in a role that excites contempt, for which Macbeth 
 is made responsible. 1 Though King of Scotland, and therefore 
 bound to stamp out witchcraft, he has sought their haunt openly, 
 and they have done what they have done in preparation to 
 receive him. He gives them assurance of impunity for what- 
 soever mischief, consents to deal directly with their masters, the 
 powers of darkness, countenances all the enormities in the caldron 
 and out of it, so he may have his will. Thus beginning with what 
 is revolting to the senses, the effect rises to deep moral disgust, by 
 means of which Macbeth is degraded in our esteem as much as he 
 was exalted at the beginning. 2 
 
 As has been said, this is the chief device. His superstition in 
 accepting the word of the witches as auguring success — in- the 
 face of what the audience can see is ominous of overthrow — is 
 further shown incidentally in this scene. To give dignity to the 
 play as well as bestow a proper compliment upon his sovereign, 
 Shakespeare inserts the " shew of eight kings, the last with a glass 
 in his hand." The whole is managed with great tact and deli- 
 cacy. To have the audience see James with twofold ball and 
 threefold scepter in the line of Banquo's princes would have 
 
 1 The process here is still the same : we interpret ' types,' just as when we 
 see a man go with unwashed face, or consort with the vile. " A man is known 
 by the company he keeps " or permits, — through the ideals he thus evinces. See 
 p. 94. 
 
 2 Concerning the process by which inferences and deductions are made through 
 imagination, it should be noted that sometimes an author uses only the first step, 
 that is, gives the * effect ' that he may lead our minds back to its cause, but without 
 intending any specific final deduction therefrom. 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 165 
 
 seemed enough perhaps to other dramatists. Shakespeare makes 
 none but Macbeth see the King or his successors, and thus avoids 
 predicting how many generations the Stuart line will last. There 
 are to be, as Macbeth says, " some " kings of this name, — a very 
 conservative and elastic prophecy, and well justified by the politi- 
 cal events which followed. Macbeth's visit to the witches is so 
 shameless and open that even messengers on state affairs come 
 here to bring him news of Macduff's flight. This circumstance 
 enables the author to make Macbeth here avow his purpose to 
 butcher Macduff s wife and babes, that the audience may have no 
 chance later to suppose it done without his sanction. 
 
 Scene II. 
 
 The audience can now endure without a shock an example of 
 Macbeth's cruelty, which is next used to complete the work begun 
 at the opening of the act. The scene is brief and so transparent 
 in art as scarcely to need analysis. Lady Macduff and her boy 
 are introduced in such wise as to elicit our warmest sympathy and 
 admiration, the child by his unobtrusive precocity, the mother by 
 her generous and well-rounded personality. The mother though 
 grieved and indignant will not weep, and the lad from this knows 
 no ill has befallen his father ' for all her saying.' Then the inef- 
 fectual warning and the boy's defense of his father, — two effects 
 which lead up to the climax. The scene being merely accessory, 
 there is no descent. 
 
 Scene III. 
 
 In this scene it comes to light why Malcolm was not given a 
 stronger character at the opening of the play : he is to be, morally 
 corrected and improved, as we may say, a second edition of Mac- 
 beth. To introduce a heavier or equally heroic character to suc- 
 ceed Macbeth would have marred the harmony. Malcolm not 
 being Macbeth's equal, is kept from coming into rivalry with him 
 
166 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 except on points where now he is out of favor; and Macduff 
 will supply, dramatically, Malcolm's defects. It is the longest 
 scene in the play. Malcolm cannot be sketched into the neces- 
 sary prominence by bold strokes, but calls for a lighter treatment. 
 He tries the trick of young men who cannot read faces — Duncan 
 also could not — bears false witness against himself, and only in 
 Macduff's revolt finds his confidence. But this fills almost as 
 many lines as the terrible banquet-scene, or even the third of Act 
 I. in which Macbeth first sees the witches and makes such com- 
 plete revealment of what is in him. Then is very deftly intro- 
 duced the historical compliment to James. Since England gen- 
 erally believed in the King's power to cure the evil, it is hard to 
 see how Shakespeare, now he has taken his audience to King 
 Edward's court, could avoid, if merely to enrich and give dignity 
 to the play, referring to the beginnings of the practice. From 
 this point the action mends. Macbeth is ripe for overthrow, and 
 this the audience must feel. Macduff will be the protagonist of 
 the closing scenes, and the enabling motive must dramatically be 
 made plain. It is now disclosed that Shakespeare had a double 
 purpose in the last scene ; besides disparaging Macbeth by a 
 spectacle of gratuitous cruelty he is providing the occasion as also 
 the instrument of punishment. Macduff hears the grim news and 
 from a patriotic becomes a personal avenger. Malcolm sym- 
 pathizes with his liegeman's grief, but cannot help betraying his 
 youthful anxiety to save for Scotland all of Macduff s rage. The 
 scene cToses with a crescendo to the old intensity, in which all the 
 blare and clang and spiteful drum-strokes of former strongest 
 passages are heard again. 
 
 Act V. — Scene I. 
 
 As has been observed, this is not so much a tragedy of crime 
 as of inability to endure the inner consciousness of crime. The 
 tragedy does not in this play, as in Hamlet, Othello, and King 
 Lear, culminate in the death of the title character, but in the fury 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 167 
 
 of despair which precedes it. Macbeth's death is not regretted 
 as Lear's, or Hamlet's ; it is a relief. It is not his punishment — 
 he has died ten thousand deaths already ; it puts an end rather to 
 the punishment he has been enduring. Day by day his sensibili- 
 ties have been deadened, day by day his remorse has by added 
 crimes been deepened. How insensible he has become to all 
 that once made his joy is shown on the occasion of Lady Mac- 
 beth's death. The circumstances of this are developed and set 
 forth with direct reference to showing its effect upon her 
 husband. 
 
 In a large sense, indeed, Lady Macbeth is but an accessory in 
 this play. She is used first as the instrument by which Macbeth 
 is goaded to his guilt. She is enabled to do that not because she 
 is totally depraved or brutal, but for his sake. She helps him to 
 his feet after the murder of Duncan, and is used to deepen his 
 humiliation and misery in the scene before his nobles. Shake- 
 speare keeps her from responsibility for the succeeding crimes that 
 she may not, like her husband, forfeit the sympathy of the audi- 
 ence. Thus she is saved for this scene with its terrible pathos 
 and sublime suffering. But it is not remorse for personal guilt 
 alone that is eating out her life. She feels herself partaker in all 
 that Macbeth has done to advance and strengthen himself, for has 
 she not wished and willed that he should be crowned ' the nearest 
 way ' ? She finds also the blood of Banquo and of Lady Macduff 
 upon her hands. Yet the husband for whom she suffers, whose 
 mainstay and support she was, will express, when her life goes 
 out, only impatience that she should die on the eve of his trial. 
 These, however, are but a few of the ' effects.' for which severally 
 the audience and the reader are left to infer for themselves a suffi- 
 cient cause. 
 
 It should then at least be clear that this scene is cast as we find 
 it for the purpose of deepening the final tragedy. There are 
 many other ways in which Shakespeare might have finished the 
 part of Lady Macbeth in the play. If he were here working 
 towards the end as leisurely as in Hamlet, Lady Macbeth would 
 
168 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 no doubt appear more than once, and in dialogue scenes. But 
 the whole history of her experiences from Banquo's death to the 
 end is given in these broken, incoherent lines, to whoever can 
 interpret. It is the most significant scene in Shakespeare. As a 
 study in the higher effects of art it has no superior, perhaps no 
 equal, in Gothic literature. 
 
 Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth from the first, largely because 
 of the doubtful prophecy concerning Banquo, have lived in dread 
 of "judgment here," — of punishment in their bodies at the 
 hands of Scotsmen. Prospect of punishment is the great quick- 
 ener of remorse. Hence "since his majesty went into the field" 
 Lady Macbeth's mind has been unhinged. She is rapidly break- 
 ing down, and Macbeth calls a doctor to Dunsinane. What is 
 the cause, what are the symptoms, of her distemper? Neither 
 Macbeth nor Lady Macbeth can talk with him upon this theme. 
 He must make the diagnosis for himself. But the physician 
 knows, all Scotland knows, what they believe is still a secret. It 
 is, to us, even painful, to hear his pointed questions, and the 
 gentlewoman's unabashed replies. But it is a case in which un- 
 professional curiosity, even to setting down her words " to satisfy 
 remembrance," may be pardoned. Lady Macbeth appears with 
 a taper. How came she by this ? Did she light it in her sleep ? 
 No, it stood by her ; for she has light by her continually. She 
 dares not be in the dark I And now she begins to rub her hands. 
 Her gentlewoman hesitates not to say that this means she is trying 
 to wash her hands, and that sometimes she continues in it for a 
 quarter of an hour ! After this portentous introduction what ter- 
 rible significance in .the words "Yet here's a spot" ! Her mind 
 flits to and fro over the most disconnected circumstances — the 
 strokes of the bell that sent Macbeth to Duncan, her anticipation 
 and dread of the flames of hell, her husband's trembling after the 
 murder, the sight of the dead king when she went to put back 
 the daggers; but throughout all the constant sense of blood, 
 and the constant washing. Then comes thought of later crimes 
 and more blood to remove, then the memory of the terrible 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 169 
 
 knocking at the gate, and finally the climax in her awful sighs of 
 despair. 
 
 The internal purpose of the scene is twofold, — to show the 
 depth of Lady Macbeth's remorse ; and to show its hopelessness. 
 The incessant washing of the hands is used as means of the one, 
 the lingering presence of blood no longer detected by the eye 
 but forever sensible to smell, as indicative of the other. It was 
 observed under Scene II. of the second act that Shakespeare was 
 fitting to Lady Macbeth a character that would make this scene 
 possible. Here we may note especially that, were she of heavier 
 and less sensitive mould, this particular incident — the crowning 
 stroke of art in the play — could in no wise have been con- 
 structed. 
 
 The descent to the close of the scene is rapid, yet artistically 
 adequate. The doctor and the gentlewoman comment upon what 
 they have witnessed, while Lady Macbeth in silence gives way to 
 her dejection. There is effect produced sometimes by furnishing 
 the audience a character to serve as its proxy, and speak its mind. 
 Banquo is thus used in lines 120-126 of the third scene in Act I. 
 But Shakespeare also resorts not seldom to the contrary device 
 and introduces a prompter who, by failing in appreciation, serves 
 to aggravate a situation. The tragedy is thus deepened here. 
 Neither the physician nor the gentlewoman realizes like the audi- 
 ence what is going on in Lady Macbeth's breast, or feels due sym- 
 pathy. Both regard her suffering as remarkable, but not as it 
 really is, phenomenal. Shakespeare next very skillfully prepares 
 Lady Macbeth for exit. The despair which for a moment pros- 
 trated her is lost among crazed memories of her husband's dejec- 
 tion, — it now seems he that needs arousing. Thus at a most 
 telling juncture her supreme love for him is shown, her old 
 anxiety, that makes her forget her own worse plight. With two 
 further paragraphs, incoherent and betraying like the others the 
 superior burden of that first murder, Lady Macbeth passes from 
 sight. To mend the informality of the diction and give the scene 
 at least a stately close, blank verse is resumed in the final lines. 
 
170 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Scene II. 
 
 But Macbeth is not dying of remorse ; he is going on, duped 
 and hardened, to his punishment. Shakespeare has kept him 
 from sight since the last prophecy of the witches, and even here 
 postpones his appearance, that the imagination may work further 
 in preparation. The requisite hints are here given in the talk of 
 the nobles who are preparing to desert to Malcolm. To them 
 Macbeth's real motive for shutting himself up in Dunsinane is 
 beyond reasonable conjecture. All the more despicable to us 
 who know appears his faith in the witches' promise. The scene 
 connects itself with the last of the act preceding, and pushes the 
 drama one step nearer its conclusion. 
 
 Scene III. 
 
 Macbeth now appears in person to confirm the gloomy forecast 
 of the last scene. He is at bay : he must believe the witches. 
 He is captious, arbitrary, violent, as he once was not. He hopes, 
 yet is in despair ; for if he win, 
 
 ' honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 He must not look to have; but in their stead, 
 Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath, 
 Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.' 
 
 News comes of the English invasion, and the stampede of his 
 thanes. Wildly he demands his armor, though the battle is not 
 yet on. Only now when his madness is at its height does he 
 inquire of the doctor how does his patient. Thus the strange 
 affliction — " thick-coming fancies that keep her from her rest " 
 — comes now to be talked of for the first time. Macbeth bids 
 the doctor cure her of that, for he himself also waits ' some sweet 
 oblivious antidote that can cleanse the bosom of that perilous 
 stuff which weighs upon the heart.' The doctor with the firmness 
 of an executioner declares that such a patient must minister to 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 171 
 
 himself. Macbeth for the third time demands his armor, and bids 
 his man dispatch, only a moment later, to order him to pull off 
 what has been buckled on. Macbeth has become of late so 
 crazed and erratic that his body-servants hesitate and wait for him 
 to forget, repeat, or reverse his biddings. Thus is this scene 
 clearly the artistic counterpart to the first of the present act. 
 
 Scene IV. 
 
 This scene begins with the last words with which Malcolm and 
 the nobles, who have just joined him from Macbeth's army, greet 
 each other. It likewise shows how the prophecy of the witches, 
 concerning which the audience will have had no little curiosity, — 
 through a fanciful device of Malcolm's, is to be literally fulfilled. 
 There is inserted also another hint of Malcolm's youthful, untried 
 enthusiasm, — and yet another in Macduff s courteous admonition 
 not to count on easy victory. 
 
 Scene V. 
 
 Macbeth is ready for the siege. He will lie in his defenses and 
 risk no open combat. But in the midst of his professions of read- 
 iness there is heard the cry of women. He knows all too well 
 what has happened. He cannot go within, yet marvels he is not 
 more disturbed. Once such a cry would have chilled his senses. 
 The messenger — who also knew, whom he did not send — re- 
 turns, but speaks no word until questioned. Macbeth feels no 
 grief; the greater emotions have swallowed up all the less. The 
 happiness of his innocent years has so vanished out of mind that 
 the death of her who made so much of it comes merely as a fact. 
 But as a companion of his misery she will be missed. Life seems 
 already yet more a delusion and a mockery. 
 
 Another message to a very different effect — Birnam wood is 
 moving towards Dunsinane ! Even the impossible come to pass ! 
 Macbeth's maddened brain can wait no longer. The alarum-bell 
 
172 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 is struck, and — though all the advantage of his intrenched posi- 
 tion will be thrown away — a sortie ordered. Macbeth will push 
 the case with fate, and even in open field end his doubt to-day. 
 
 Scene VI. 
 
 Here the assaulting army is shown in its counter preparations. 
 The opposing scenes now alternate in a symmetry, considering 
 their shortness, no doubt somewhat too bald ; but the author is 
 hurrying the plot to its conclusion as rapidly as it will bear. This 
 scene very properly breaks the continuity of Macbeth's opera- 
 tions, gives pause, and enables the audience to realize the fulfil- 
 ment of the strange prophecy. . 
 
 Scene VII. 
 
 The battle is m progress, and Macbeth is discovered steadying 
 himself with the last promise of the witches. He feels that fate 
 has him like a bear tied to the stake, but no man of woman born 
 shall harm his life. Young Siward meets him and is slain. The 
 audience had almost consented that young Siward should slay his 
 slayer. Thus the interest is enhanced, and especially when Mac- 
 duff enters seeking Macbeth. There is then to be single combat 
 between the champions, and poetic justice meted out. In the 
 meantime the castle, after a mere show of resistance, surrenders 
 to Malcolm. 
 
 Scene VIII. 
 
 Macbeth has met Macduff and learned at last that the fiendish 
 sisters have paltered with him to his ruin. His courage fails him. 
 But if he refuse to fight he will be borne a pinioned prisoner to 
 the boy Malcolm and soon furnish a public spectacle upon the 
 scaffold. That "judgment here " which he has from the first so 
 dreaded he will at any cost escape. In a fury of despair he aban- 
 dons himself to the conflict which he only too deeply feels will be 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 173 
 
 his execution ; and the energy of Macduff's strokes sweeps him 
 from sight. Malcolm, Old Siward, and Ross fill up the interval 
 until Macduff reappears with Macbeth's head. The play here 
 ends with the general salutation, "Hail, King of Scotland ! " ' 
 
 Such in outline is the scheme of points compassed and ' effects ' 
 employed by Shakespeare in this play. Much of the details, 
 though in part suggested in the analyses from time to time, has of 
 necessity been excluded. Any adequate analysis of the art, owing 
 to the conciseness of the style, would many times exceed the 
 bulk of the original. In order to assist an exhaustive study of 
 the play as a whole, a series of questions covering many of the 
 larger as well as the minuter points of meaning has been pre- 
 pared and will be found in the appendix. 
 
 The play should be gone over line by line, and the significance 
 of every paragraph, both in itself and in relation to the dramatic 
 meaning of the whole, studied out. The language ought first to 
 be examined with care, that the exact force of all terms and 
 expressions may be fully grasped. But there should be no anato- 
 mizing, philologic or other, of the text, for purposes of general 
 language study, — at least until the greater meanings of the play 
 are mastered. The teacher must, indeed, in all respects consider 
 himself responsible for the future of his students with Shakespeare. 
 
 1 In addition to other grounds, both of form and spirit, for rejecting the last 
 paragraph, the reference to the Queen's death seems in itself sufficient. Neither 
 of the culprits has at any time dared think seriously of self-destruction. Both 
 might have resorted to that to escape public punishment, but from no other motive. 
 Shakespeare surely has done his utmost in the proper places to guard the audi- 
 ence from all expectation or suspicion of suicide. Of all the relative nonsense and 
 inanity in the interpolation I fancy " fiendlike " would have irked him most, could 
 be have known. 
 
174 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE —Continued. 
 
 The meaning of the assertion, early made in the last chapter, 
 that Shakespeare does not write plays of incident, should now be 
 clear. In the drama of Macbeth there is nothing unexpected or 
 mysterious ; barring the part of the witches, nothing happens 
 except in direct consequence of motive, and of motive enabled 
 by certain cardinal elements of character. This will be further 
 illustrated from the opening situations in Hamlet and Othello. 
 
 The play of Hamlet is the opposite of Macbeth in cast and 
 form, for here Shakespeare takes his time. His art aims often at 
 manifold and compound effects, so that the task of analysis be- 
 comes somewhat intricate and complex. It is evident at the out- 
 set that the success of the whole play depends upon the effect of 
 Hamlet's conference with the ghost, as in Macbeth all depends 
 on the impression produced by the prophecy of the witches. If 
 the audience should be disposed to take either situation lightly, all 
 would be lost. So in Hamlet Shakespeare begins to prepare for 
 the ghost's revelations even in the first scene. As the curtain 
 rises, Bernardo is discovered cautiously approaching the sentinel 
 he is to relieve, apparently not sure but that it is the ghost itself 
 of which his mind is full. In order to resolve his doubts he calls 
 out, "Who's there?" When each is identified to the other, it is 
 revealed that Francisco is under as much tension as his fellow ; 
 there is a shiver running through his words not due to the cold. 
 In agreeable contrast to their fright Horatio and Marcellus now 
 appear. Horatio is a * scholar,' — a man above peasant supersti- 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 175 
 
 tion. His rotund, displacing presence seems to correct the situa- 
 tion, and the audience mends its mood accordingly. Bernardo 
 cannot help giving some expression to his comfort at having such 
 companions thus early, and tells them somewhat formally that 
 they are " welcome." This makes Marcellus think something has 
 happened already, and so asks if " this thing " has appeared 
 again. 1 The answer is " No," but there is enough effect produced 
 in Marcellus's mind to cause him to dwell upon the theme and 
 betray his expectation. To this expectancy Horatio objects 
 "Tush, tush, 'twill not appear," yet compromises the case, since 
 there is no better way to pass the time, by half assenting, half 
 proposing to hear again the story on the very ground where the 
 visitation is alleged to have occurred. But Bernardo is interrupted 
 even at the beginning ; for Shakespeare uses the lofty exordium 
 with which the speaker strives to preface his story fittingly, as 
 the last touch of preparation for the appearance of the ghost. 
 
 Thus the scene opens with an atmosphere black and heavy with 
 foreboding. I^ot less than twenty-five ' effects ' and symptoms 
 have prepared us for the advent of something appalling, which 
 Marcellus's exordium breaks off just before naming, so that the 
 sight of the ghost is the first unequivocal indication of what 
 has happened or is to happen. Horatio alone has given evi- 
 dence of unconcern, but now even he is harrowed with fear 
 and wonder. The kingly shape lingers, gets itself challenged, but 
 goes forth dissatisfied, offended. The effect of the apparition 
 is not yet dramatically complete : Shakespeare will deepen it by 
 repetition. But a mere duplication of the scene will not intensify, 
 will rather weaken the impression made already. Moreover, it is 
 evident that even Shakespeare cannot make the objective aspect 
 
 1 Thus, of course, is Marcellus deftly drawn away from Horatio's side and 
 shown to belong with the unskeptical Francisco and Bernardo, or, we may say, 
 is made to take Francisco's place. The challenge to fancy in " has this thing ap- 
 peared'' together with the assumption in " again," as also the effect in " to-night;" 
 — i.e. 'already' — should not be overlooked. After the ghost appears, even 
 Horatio's skepticism succumbs. For this use of negative ' effects," which force the 
 mind to reverse first inferences or assumptions, see the last pages of this chapter. 
 
176 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 of the ghost more terrible. Hence he will change the conditions 
 under which it shall appear ; the audience must itself subjectively 
 supply the larger experience required. All the various circum- 
 stances which led up to the ghost's first entry were immediate 
 and local, and from no higher intellectual level than that to which 
 Francisco and the under-officers Bernardo and Marcellus belong. 
 Now the acuter perceptions and better knowledge of the scholar 
 are put to use. Horatio identifies the ghost even to its armor ; 
 discloses the ominous fact that Denmark is on the eve of war ; 
 and then with a single sentence sweeps before the mind some 
 of the most tremendous like-portents of history. Each of these 
 alters the reader's attitude ; all three thus arranged in an ascend- 
 ing scale bring on a most potent train of associations. The audi- 
 ence now prepared, the ghost re-enters. The climax is very simple. 
 Horatio challenges it with greater decision and persistence, a cock 
 is heard crowing drowsily in the distance, the ghost starts, Horatio 
 and Marcellus try to hinder its escape until it declares its mission, 
 but it confuses and evades them, and disappears. 
 
 From this highest pitch of interest Shakespeare quickly brings 
 us back to the common level. Were the curtain to go down at 
 just this point, it is evident that the audience would not much 
 heed what might follow in the next scene, so full would they be 
 of the ghost. The way to alleviate a tragical emotion is to dis- 
 place or distance it by one of a lighter kind. Shakespeare ac- 
 cordingly ends the scene with three pleasurable experiences, two 
 drawn from the circumstance of the cockcrow, the third from the 
 image of the dawn walking over the dew of the high eastern hill. 
 
 The scene ends with an implied promise that the ghost, whose 
 presence has been so portentous without speech, will again appear 
 and add the declaration of his mission. All that has taken place 
 thus far is, therefore, merely an earnest of what shall be. The 
 chief purpose of the entire act is to make the revelation of the 
 ghost plausible and effective. The audience must justify Hamlet 
 in accepting it as true, and take his consequent action as a matter 
 cf course. But, as has been said, this is not a play like Macbeth, 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 177 
 
 in which there is but a single motive. The business of the ghost 
 must wait until other lines of the plot are open. 
 
 In the second scene the author shows the situation at court and 
 sketches the King, the Queen, and Hamlet in a group. It is a 
 task of no slight intricacy to exhibit three characters so dissimilar 
 and striking, and at the same time their interrelations, with such 
 strength and clearness. We are, therefore, not surprised to find 
 that Shakespeare uses almost every sort of ' effect ' and symptom 
 in the process. Not only can the nature of the King be read 
 potentially in his sophomoric and inverted sentences, but also his 
 state of mind in facing the court now for the first time since his 
 scandalous marriage. 1 Likewise in the same paragraph, amend- 
 ing and correcting our first impressions, the practical and manly 
 side of his character is exhibited. How he feels towards the 
 young man, his nephew, who in blackest mourning is standing 
 apart, refusing to look either on his uncle or his mother, is indi- 
 cated next. No wonder the King has put off, even till this eve of 
 war, calling the court together, when it means facing publicly such 
 a monitor of his shame. For Hamlet since the moment of return 
 from Wittenberg has evidently ceased not to testify to his rever- 
 ence for his father's memory and his contempt for a successor 
 who could take his brother's wife. Naturally, then, passing Ham- 
 let, the King addresses himself sedulously to Laertes, magnifying 
 and spinning out the topic between them almost to the length of 
 ' the business and time of meeting ' of his speech at opening. 
 Then, finally, his words to Hamlet. How magnificently his bog- 
 gling, unadvised, involuntary patronizing, though meant to cover, 
 betrays the inner fear and mortification, and withal suicide of self- 
 respect ! That Hamlet has sarcasm in his heart is indicated by 
 his ' aside ' ; that he dare utter it with his lips and in the hearing 
 of all Denmark is shown by his first open sentence. Did Shake- 
 
 1 The negative ' effect ' of the King's naively admitting (11. 18-20) to his nobles 
 that a neighboring power, now that the crown has passed from the elder Hamlet to 
 his brother, presumes to work its pleasure, should not be overlooked in the general 
 summary of art-points in the scene. 
 
178 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 speare intend his ' sun ' to be taken in a double sense ? Let us 
 bear in mind the author is not here playing with phrases, but 
 massing some of the most telling symptoms of character to be 
 found in literature. It is the fair presumption, if an utterance 
 may here be taken as an ' effect,' that it is an ' effect.' That the 
 King feels it as a quip is plain from his precipitate silence, and 
 the fact that the Queen is obliged, reluctantly, to come forward in 
 the awkward pause and save the day. That she is not more at 
 ease than her husband is signified not only in the unfortunate 
 matter but also in the manner of her speech. When, refusing to 
 notice the sarcasm in Hamlet's "common," she forces him further 
 in self-justification to say, " I have that within which passeth 
 show," she is silenced also. Thus Shakespeare makes Hamlet 
 heroic at the outset by his fearless and uncompromising loyalty to 
 his father, and by his wholly unconcealed exasperation at the state 
 of things about him. 
 
 After Hamlet has given the King the snub direct in the matter 
 of his stay, and the King has pretended to be grateful even to the 
 point of holding carnival, the court breaks up and Hamlet lingers 
 alone to give vent to his vexation. Thus the first of Hamlet's 
 self-revelations is given in direct connection with the circum- 
 stances which inspire it. Last of all come Horatio and Marcel- 
 lus with their story of the ghost, thus completing the connection 
 between the events of the first scene and the antecedent circum- 
 stances of the play. Hamlet is further exalted in the dialogue 
 which follows, by being made conspicuously superior to Horatio 
 in royal dignity and cleverness. 1 
 
 It is not at all the purpose here to attempt, from the various 
 hints and symptoms, the synthesis of Hamlet's character, but to 
 hasten to the completion of what is begun in the first scene. Be- 
 fore Shakespeare resumes the business of the ghost he feels it 
 necessary to prepare for the train of circumstances which at length 
 
 1 Note that by way of Hamlet's cross-questionings are indicated not only the 
 acuteness and strength of his intelligence, but likewise plausible grounds for his 
 resolution to join in the watch for the night following. 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 179 
 
 ends the tragedy. In consequence of character Polonius is to 
 lose his life, Ophelia to forfeit Hamlet's love, and Laertes to 
 become the tool of the King. It is essential that the Polonius 
 family be introduced to the audience at this point, and the dis- 
 cerning eye may almost read in the coarse, unfeeling directness of 
 Laertes' counsel, the unindignant sufferance of his sister, and the 
 senseless detainment of Polonius, — in connection with his aim- 
 less, meddling curiosity 1 in later lines, the outcome of each career. 
 Ophelia doubtless does not understand how far both her critics 
 are influenced by the fact that Hamlet is getting himself into 
 trouble with the King, perhaps divines nothing of her brother's 
 chronic envy. Why should she submit? This is what the scene 
 reveals. Hamlet will construe her avoidance of him as part of 
 the general conspiracy ; and when he at last goes to her closet to 
 read out the mystery he will find in her face the consciousness of 
 her father's warning, and of her compliance with it against him. 
 All this he mistakes as evidence that she is in league with his 
 enemies, and so will cast her off. 
 
 The play of Hamlet in gross analysis may be said to consist of 
 but three divisions, — the revelation to Hamlet, Hamlet's disclosure 
 to the King that his secret is known, and, through the King's 
 efforts to be rid of his discoverer, the culmination. The first act 
 is devoted to, and completes, the part of the ghost's revelation. 
 
 The preparation for the coming of the ghostly messenger at the 
 beginning of Scene IV. is yet more highly dramatic than that at 
 the opening of the play. The expectation of the audience is 
 baffled, and therefore deepened, by the inconsequential talk of 
 Hamlet and Horatio, who yet withal betray their inner perturba- 
 tion. The red glare of the King's carousal shines from the castle 
 windows, and as the clock tells twelve, trumpets blare out and 
 ordinance is shot off as signal that the King's pledge has not been 
 slighted, — has ' triumphed ' in the drunken throng. It is with 
 
 1 Polonius of course betrays by his " Marry, well bethought," that he has not 
 had on his mind that Ophelia is in any danger, and later (II. ii. 107) shows he has 
 wholly forgotten the commands here given. 
 
180 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 this contrast, it is on this awful background of uproar and revelry, 
 bought by crime, that the ghost of the murdered King from hell 
 is now finally to appear. But not thus and now ; for the effect, if 
 the audience can be betrayed out of its over-expectation, may yet 
 be deepened by surprise. Just this, as the last stroke, Shakespeare 
 attempts to compass. As the ghost yet tarries, Hamlet begins to 
 philosophize, engages and puzzles our intelligence by the driest 
 paragraph in the play, when, behold, the ghost is present. 
 
 But Shakespeare deepens the effect still more. With frantic 
 gaze and impassioned pleading tones Hamlet challenges the ghost 
 to declare itself. It speaks not, moves not, and Hamlet impor- 
 tunes on until he exhausts speech and ceases. Then the figure 
 mysteriously, majestically beckons, — nothing more. Hamlet de- 
 clares that, as it will not speak, he will follow it. His comrades, 
 who at the former visitation crossed it, struck at it with the par- 
 tisan, stand now aghast at the mere thought. They argue, they 
 expostulate, and the ghost in turn beckons again. Hamlet bids it 
 lead the way, whereat his friends seize him. Flinging them off as 
 they had been children, he cries to the ghost to go forward, and 
 follows it from sight. 
 
 Thus the scene ends in nothing but continued and intensified 
 expectancy. It would have been a fatal mistake to make the 
 ghost speak here. The solemnity of the revelation would have 
 been injured not a little, the dramatic efficacy hopelessly marred. 
 Too often in rendering the part, even with Shakespeare's accumu- 
 lation of preparations, the effect of the ghost's words is miserably 
 spoiled by some defect of voice or mien. As has been pointed 
 out in earlier pages, it is absolutely necessary to remove all types 
 and suggestions of the lower if the imagination is to attain an 
 experience of the higher. Here by all hints and helps that can 
 appeal to the eye Shakespeare has put before the mind a shape 
 from the world of spirits. He has plied the fancy with all pos- 
 sible subjective associations that can aid in lifting the image out 
 of mortal range. But the actor who plays the ghost must speak ; 
 and there is nothing so human as the human voice. Hence is 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 181 
 
 there now the utmost danger lest the supernatural, the eternal 
 vanish at the first sound. The quality of tone and degree of force 
 the ghost must use have been already indicated in the chapter on 
 Tone Colors. Let the ghost speak in orotund, or heavy tones, or 
 otherwise in a single syllable suggest the full and fleshly vigor of 
 a human presence, — immediately the spell is dissolved, here is 
 no longer a ghost from hell, but a sorry makeshift, an absurd stage 
 figure. The imagination will then, following the new types sug- 
 gested, construct an idealized experience of the opposite or ludi- 
 crous kind, and all the effect of the revelation will be spoiled 
 beforehand. Shakespeare perfectly divined these laws of the 
 fancy, and by no means supererogates or magnifies his task at 
 this crucial point. Therefore his ghost is first permitted only to 
 appear, but not to speak, or manifest its will save in majestic 
 beckonings. Acts and movements more ordinary or less mysteri- 
 ous would tend to disillusion. Then, outside the need of making 
 the revelation to Hamlet alone, were the ghost to speak before 
 the group together, the transaction would be too general, too 
 familiar. In following Hamlet as he goes forth from sight in the 
 ghost's leading, the imagination does not await what is to happen, 
 but proceeds at once to inaugurate in advance the conference 
 given in the next scene. This is Shakespeare's final safeguard 
 against the effect of the human tones he now at last must intro- 
 duce. 
 
 The arrangement of effects here in an ascending scale is evi- 
 dent enough. It should, moreover, not escape attention that 
 Shakespeare incidentally exalts Hamlet by making him so easily 
 thrust Horatio and Marcellus from his path. After showing Ham- 
 let's superb moral daring it does no harm to make him also a hero 
 of the strong arm. 
 
 Shakespeare's manner of managing the interview in Scene V. is 
 very simple. First and chiefly, he occupies the mind to the utter- 
 most with the objective facts and circumstances narrated. The 
 ghost begins pointedly and even abruptly, and crams his first sen- 
 tences with details too terse and incessant to be well realized in 
 
182 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 passing. Also before the narrative begins, the author draws away 
 our thoughts by hints of the awful mysteries of eternity which may 
 not be blazoned to ears of flesh and blood ; indeed the whole par- 
 agraph (11. 9-23), with its progressive impressment of the imagi- 
 nation and the force it soon evinces, constitutes a sort of crescendo 
 on the height of which the revelation is carried forward. 1 It is 
 clear Shakespeare intuitively avoids everything that might savor of 
 mortal thought and speech, and dramatically the success is com- 
 plete. A little study of the dialogue point by point will bring to 
 light many other essential helps to the general purpose of the scene. 
 The ghost's exit marks the highest point of interest in this 
 gross division of the play. The descent from a climax so long 
 preparing must not be rapid, and Shakespeare assists delay by 
 showing the effect on Hamlet's mind. He is less embittered than 
 in his former soliloquy, though now he knows what he then scarcely 
 dared suspect. He seems as it were to parry the revelation with 
 his intellect ; his sensibilities are deadened. Perhaps it is because 
 he feels himself no longer free to insult and worry the King 
 at will, but must be the grim, unswerving instrument of punish- 
 ment. Certain it is that when the ghost vanishes from sight his 
 feelings of reverence go with it. He is only intellectually dis- 
 turbed by the voice beneath. This clearly serves as an intimation 
 of his undiligent concern later for the ghost's revenge. Yet he is 
 undoubtedly still in high excitement. He catches at the sugges- 
 tion of the falconer's call for the first mystification of his friends 
 as only a man half-beside himself could do, and as Hamlet him- 
 self would have done at no point earlier in the play. In the 
 descent from the climax in Scene I. there was no need of action. 
 Here Shakespeare employs it in Hamlet's setting the entry in his 
 tables, in the cries and responses, the coming in of Horatio and 
 Marcellus, 2 and, finally, Hamlet's repeated attempts to swear his 
 
 1 See p. 28. 
 
 2 Compare the knocking on the gate after the murder in Macbeth, and Emilia's 
 repeated efforts to gain access to Desdemona's chamber, while Othello delays to 
 open after he has strangled her. In each case the repetition and postponement 
 enable the audience to collect itself and prepare for the outside view — or, indeed, 
 to join the world which now crowds in. 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 183 
 
 friends to secrecy upon his sword. But his first purpose to con- 
 ceal everything is later altered. After Ophelia fails him he reveals 
 the ghost's secret to Horatio. 
 
 It is, then, evident that the art of Hamlet, thus incompletely 
 sketched in the first act, is very different from that employed in 
 Macbeth. The same principles are used in both, but the former is 
 executed with so much greater breadth and freedom as almost to 
 seem the work of another hand. Both plays excellently illustrate 
 what Shakespeare can do through positive inferences from positive 
 ' effects ' of character and action. But the imagination can be 
 dealt with far more effectually by the use of negative inferences 
 from negative ' effects ' of being and doing. The mind seems 
 often, in general, to prefer starting from a notion negatively to 
 positing its opposite affirmatively. This is seen in the figure called 
 Litotes, and in the lack of positive terms for such ideas as ' infinite,' 
 ' impossible,' ' unconditioned,' ' immense,' etc. ' She was not 
 ungracious ' is much more available to imagination than ' she was 
 gracious ' ; ' I am not unaware ' means much more than ' I am 
 aware.' 1 Shakespeare's sublimest feats are accomplished through 
 negative devices of a kind quite similar. Far superior to Hamlet, 
 in which but few of these occur,- — indeed outranking all other 
 plays of Shakespeare if not all other masterpieces of Gothic art 
 whatsoever, stands the Othello. The opening act of that play will 
 also be examined here. 
 
 The problem at the outset is, how to make Othello a hero 
 to the audience. It cannot be done effectively either through 
 direct exhibit of deeds, as with Macbeth, nor of symptoms, 
 as with Hamlet. The author is handicapped by the antecedent 
 conditions : Othello is a Moor, and has made an unwarranted 
 marriage above his race and station. There is, then, but one 
 thing to be done. The author, taking the negative method, will 
 use our assumptions and expectations as the means of showing 
 what Othello is not, will employ to characterize him the things he 
 does not do and is incapable of doing. Shakespeare does not, 
 
 l For further observations concerning this mode, see p. 236. 
 
184 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 therefore, attempt to forestall or palliate the prejudice that will 
 naturally be felt on mention of his race and elopement ; on the 
 contrary he seems to open the play with the deliberate purpose of 
 making it as strong as possible. We look for a man of inferior 
 parts and barbarian ostentation, and Iago's first tirade against 
 Othello confirms the expectation. Then it would seem from 
 Iago's next paragraph that he is making Othello his dupe. Shake- 
 speare having indicated something of the moral side of the man, 
 turns next, as with Hamlet, to the physical. We have of course 
 already pictured him as of dark complexion. Through having 
 Roderigo call him " thick-lips " and Iago later " coal-black ram " it 
 is intimated that Othello is nothing better than a coarse, repulsive 
 negro. To finish all, Brabantio, who first scorns Roderigo — hav- 
 ing forbidden even his haunting about the doors, on more fully 
 realizing what has happened, is made to admit to him frankly 
 " Would you had had her," — that is, consents to any husband of 
 her own race, even a fool, rather than this Moor. Then with the 
 word they sally forth to get weapons and raise a posse that they 
 may apprehend Othello as a common culprit. 
 
 But though Shakespeare, for the moment, intends thus even to 
 deepen our natural prejudice against the bridegroom, he takes 
 good care to keep us from sympathizing with Brabantio. That 
 would spoil all. There could be no remedying such a mistake. 
 To be against Othello and yet not on Brabantro's side is a distinc- 
 tion with an extraordinary difference. Shakespeare as usual finds 
 means with which to effect his purpose under his hand. He has 
 but to make Brabantio (i) appear at the window without his 
 gown; (2) antagonize Iago and Roderigo, with whom we have 
 become acquainted and in whom interested; and (3) accuse 
 Othello of using 'arts inhibited.' This revolting charge does 
 Othello no harm but reacts powerfully upon the man who, with no 
 other grounds than pride, can make it. Indeed, no reputable 
 father of an eloping daughter perhaps ever had so little sympathy. 
 To fix the time, as well as somewhat relieve the suddenness with 
 which in the dramatic compass he must adapt himself to circum- 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 185 
 
 stances, Brabantio is shown to have been asleep, and is made to 
 recollect a dream not unlike his present misfortune. 1 
 
 Thus much is the main business of the first scene. An impor- 
 tant purpose is, however, executed alongside of the former, — 
 the characterization of the two men with whose dialogue the play 
 opens, and the disclosure of their relations. Roderigo on learn- 
 ing of the elopement has sought Iago out to obtain satisfaction. 
 He takes it much unkindly that Iago, who, as he believes, has been 
 diligently wooing Desdemona in his name, should know and yet 
 conceal that he has had a rival, — that she has sustained such 
 relations with Othello as make marriage possible. Iago casts up 
 volumes of dust and talks against time, expecting so to confuse 
 Roderigo's scanty wits that he will forget his grievance, but all the 
 while, for greater certainty of flanking the attack, is leading their 
 desultory walk towards the palace of Desdemona's father. Hav- 
 ing gotten Roderigo into employment with Brabantio and incident- 
 ally done Othello all the mischief in his present power, he 
 hastens to his general. He is next discovered trying to assure 
 Othello that nothing but conscience has prevented his ' yerking ' 
 Brabantio under the ribs, although he had approached that gentle- 
 man not more nearly than his balcony or upper palace window ! 
 
 The second scene at once corrects the prejudice produced 
 and permitted by Shakespeare at the opening against Othello. 
 The basis of effect in the negative method is the well-known 
 principle, that on finding ourselves mistaken and dismissing 
 prejudice, we are quite likely to go to an extreme in the 
 opposite direction. The mere sight of Othello's face and pres- 
 ence disproves most that has been said or thought against him. 
 When he speaks we instantly note the signs of a free con- 
 science and a perfect self-respect. Moreover, he comes from the 
 i 
 
 1 Shakespeare also uses the negative method here in sketching Roderigo's pe- 
 culiar intellectual proportions. Nothing is harder than to characterize a. willing 
 distinctively by direct effects. Shakespeare first exhibits to us his weakest side, 
 making us think him wholly devoid of sense, then by his long deliverance (11. 121- 
 141) to Brabanlio raises him to his proper place. 
 
186 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 best blood of his race. We expected to find him plebeian and 
 unrefined ; but from the select and weighty book-words of his- 
 first sentences we argue rare strength and loftiness of mind. We 
 took for granted he was an adventurer, but find he is not at all 
 elated at marrying a patrician's daughter. On the contrary, we 
 believe his word that were it not for his love of the gentle Desde- 
 mona he would not have given up ' his unhoused free condition ' 
 for the sea's worth. To Iago's suggestion that he get in out of 
 sight he answers, " Not I, / must be found ! " ' All this is excel- 
 lent, and prepares well for the approach of Brabantio and his 
 band of servants. Did we imagine he would resist? Quite to 
 the contrary, he fails to see anything to resist. He treats their 
 advance upon him and attempt to arrest him, not with contempt, 
 rather as a joke ; yet, refusing to use his advantage after he has 
 won it, consents to be considered under honorable arrest. 
 
 The third scene brings us into the presence of the august Sign- 
 iory of Venice during the exciting session of which we have 
 been told. It at first seems unnecessary to enact so many details, 
 or so prolong the receipt and discussion of dispatches, but Shake- 
 speare is preparing a background for later events. When we have 
 fully comprehended the situation and caught its spirit, Brabantio 
 and his rout with Othello — whom they still appear to believe they 
 bring against his will — are introduced. 
 
 Othello's commanding figure, though evidently not in the lead, 
 first attracts the Duke's attention, no doubt to the exceeding dis- 
 gust of Brabantio, who yet accepts his apology. The effect of 
 bringing a private grievance before this senate, and especially at 
 such a time, is of course to the detriment of Brabantio and his 
 cause. But that is not Shakespeare's chief purpose, as quickly will 
 appear. Brabantio is insensible to everything but his wrong, and 
 proceeds to indict Othello in yet more offensive terms than were 
 used before. The Duke and senators look grave with sympathy, 
 and Othello is asked what he can answer to the charge. 
 
 1 Iago seems here used in part to voice a lingering suspicion of our own, that 
 Othello will in nature shrink from the interview, which suspicion is to go speedily 
 the way of all the rest. 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 187 
 
 It is not too much to say that Othello has already captured the 
 sympathy of the audience. Their prejudices have been corrected, 
 they have seen somewhat of his character, and felt, moreover, the 
 power of his presence and his words. They therefore expect 
 much of him as he now prepares to speak. Shakespeare's plan 
 is to make him go beyond expectation, or rather, in the few 
 preliminary lines he utters now, to raise final expectation to the 
 highest pitch. He is perfectly unperturbed in the presence of 
 the polished Venetians, speaks with royal dignity and yet with 
 modesty. Brabantio is so presumptuous of his guilt, so insistent 
 that such a daughter could by no possible lawful means have been 
 drawn to the bosom of such a lover, that Othello with almost 
 military alacrity perceives no proof furnished by himself will be 
 convincing, that Desdemona alone can satisfy her father. She has 
 till now been kept from sight. The interest therefore rises to the 
 highest pitch when it is determined that Othello's bride and the 
 daughter of Brabantio shall also appear and declare in this pres- 
 ence whether or not her choice was free. Before she has entered 
 Othello has already more than vindicated his right to her affec- 
 tions, as also made clear that she could not but become in turn 
 enamoured of the Moor. Shakespeare's plan in bringing Othello 
 thus before the senate is clear enough, for does not his elo- 
 quence cause the senators to forget not only the business of 
 state and the dangers threatening Cyprus, but even the present 
 wrath of one of their own number — all the more formidable 
 because here not as a private gentleman but semi-officially as 
 a magistrate? The Duke is the common proxy of the senate 
 as of the audience, when he says, " I think this tale would 
 win my daughter too." Only Brabantio is not convinced. His 
 obstinate demand still to hear his daughter's confirmation gives 
 by contrast a last touch of favor to the fortunes of the lovers, 
 as well as exhausts the patience of the audience with him and his 
 cause. 
 
 As for Othello's speech, no formal analysis will be attempted 
 here. Each student should read it diligently until he finds out 
 
188 THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 for himself the elements of its marvelous power. It should be 
 noted that the principal results come, as before, by way of the 
 things which Othello under the most trying circumstances does 
 not do, thereby making every sort of havoc even of the extraor- 
 dinary expectations the audience has been led to entertain. As 
 he begins to speak, not with affected modesty but sincere indiffer- 
 ence, of his ' disastrous chances,' ' moving accidents,' and ' hair- 
 breadth scapes,' the imagination is aroused to the task of trying 
 to compass the greatness of a soul that manifests such types of 
 strength. Then, as for the truth of the narration, even in those 
 matters where a man would be tempted somewhat to shield him- 
 self or the lady, Othello, senseless to the need, does neither. 1 
 Nor does the effect come from the conviction that he is telling all 
 true, — but rather, all the truth. It does no harm to know that 
 Desdemona gave him the hint : her station justified, demanded 
 this. It does Othello no harm that being first loved by Desde- 
 mona he should yield to the charms, not so much personal, as of 
 the superior race and civilization which she represents to him. 
 There is after all less of romance than of realism here ; there is 
 nothing transcendentally lofty or exceptional in this history of their 
 loves. The romance lies earlier and beyond in character and 
 contrasted antecedent circumstances. 
 
 But one thing remains, the audience must hear Desdemona 
 speak, and know if the wife's womanliness is the fit counterpart 
 of the husband's manliness. She is seen by her face and bearing 
 to be at least worthy of her romantic happiness. But can she 
 justify her " downright violence and storm of fortunes " to her 
 father? Will she not shamefacedly quail under his gaze? She 
 can scarcely, we think, do other than creditably in this great trial. 
 But we are mistaken, just as with Othello ; she also by the same 
 
 i Few men have the courage of their weaknesses, or are great enough to face 
 the consequences of their faults. With all our enlightenment we had not supposed 
 Othello would admit he had availed himself of any advantage. Yet he confesses 
 to ' taking a pliant hour ' so naively and fearlessly that we are readily persuaded we 
 have never seen such manliness and honesty exemplified before. 
 
THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE. 189 
 
 method is made wonderfully to surpass expectation, and gives a 
 good martial answer to her father's challenge. There is but one 
 ground upon which she may safely stand, but one argument that 
 her father will respect, and these Shakespeare makes her choose. 
 This paragraph, it is to be borne in mind, is not the climax of the 
 scene, but the first step of descent from it. Similarly Desdemona 
 is made later to address the Duke to the effect that, as at least a 
 moth of war} she may go to the front and witness, in the actual, 
 some of those feats of valor which have won her love. 
 
 The drama of Othello is founded upon race-differences, which 
 obscure the hero and heroine from each other, or rather the 
 heroine from the hero ; hence at last the calamity to both. These 
 differences in general Shakespeare keeps from sight until the ob- 
 stacles in their path are cleared, save in the incident of fago's 
 counselling his general to " go within," in which Othello plainly 
 sees no symptom of indirection. Othello is poor at reading char- 
 acter, and incapable of suspicion, and Shakespeare permits thus 
 in advance a single hint of the truth. But in closing the scene 
 after the exaltation of his hero Shakespeare gives us a few sen- 
 tences of warning. Othello, though noble, is not refined as Italy 
 counts refinement. On summering and wintering in his society 
 Desdemona will discover all too clearly that her husband, in un- 
 guarded moments, is more likely to adjure housewives to make 
 a skillet of his helm than to use figures of speech more native 
 to her ears. No Venetian could have given utterance to such a 
 paragraph. 2 
 
 1 That is, in modern economic terms, being only a ' consumer,' she prefers to 
 be a ' war-moth ' and live at her husband's cost with him in the field, rather than a 
 moth of peace in Venice. 
 
 2 Time for the further consideration of the art in this play, or other plays of 
 Shakespeare, cannot be given here. By familiarity with the methods and forms 
 already indicated the reader should be able to carry forward the analysis for him- 
 self. It may be pointed out that in Coriolamus Shakespeare seems to use about . 
 equally both the method of Hamlet and of Othello. The art of that play may, 
 therefore, be very profitably studied next. 
 
190 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 It is evident that the general culture of the age has now reached 
 approximately the plane of Shakespeare. There can be no ques- 
 tion that character is the chief object of attention in literature, 
 that character-consequences furnish the themes of its art-treat- 
 ment. But it is no longer necessary to develop character or 
 character-consequences upon a stage. Men and women of this 
 day do not need object-lessons in human nature. They have 
 inherited or acquired the art of reading it in books, and even 
 from books devoid of illustrations. As a means of promulgating 
 new spiritual truth the stage is clearly an anachronism. Its place 
 has long since been supplied by the novel, and by certain forms 
 of dramatic poetry. 
 
 In the development of the novel — already almost a rival in 
 Shakespeare's times — we trace the same stages as in the drama. 
 There is little besides incident until DeFoe and Fielding, and not 
 much of character-consequences until Scott. Jane Austen, Thack- 
 eray, and George Eliot show large advances in the art of putting 
 action potentially into character, of merging motives in conscious- 
 ness. Hawthorne and later artists have succeeded marvelously in 
 still further multiplying potential experiences of character through 
 ' effects.' As in poetry, the effect evolved has been minuter 
 differentiation of personality and more integral representation of 
 its environment. 1 What was once represented to the eye by 
 
 i It is not within the scope of this volume to consider the novel either his- 
 torically or otherwise. But it should here at least be noted that its phenomenal 
 
THE ART OF BROWNING. 191 
 
 mimetic action and made real to the ear by human tones is now 
 left to the imagination. There is no need of condensation, or 
 hurrying of the plot ; the dialogue may run on to any length, the 
 descriptions may be made complete. But the dramatic poem, 
 while it curtails description, enables a more integral and lofty 
 expression of individuality. Blank-verse is a far more effective 
 absorbent of the meaning in the mind than prose. If there are 
 to be interlocutors, who shall severally open themselves directly to 
 the reader, the dramatic amcebseum, as Browning's Paracelsus 
 and Swinburne's Bothwell, will afford the most complete expres- 
 sion. 
 
 But the fuller evolution of art has rendered also dramatic 
 dialogue unnecessary. Under certain conditions it is possible for 
 a single person in monologue to reveal more concerning himself 
 as well as concerning some other person than if both were to 
 appear and speak for themselves. It is not always that character- 
 truths can best be told through self-revelation by the person 
 exemplifying them. In many cases also the presence of another 
 personality would condition, to fancy, the conception of both. 
 This is evident, not only in Tithonus or A Psalm of Life, but 
 even in such exceptional monologues as Andrea del Sarto, The 
 Epistle of Karshish, and Bishop Blougram's Apology. 
 
 The type of the new species of dramatic composition may be 
 traced as far back as the soliloquy of Shakespeare's stage. Cer- 
 tain modifications of it have been used by various poets, and with 
 no little effect, but, until the present literary generation, by none 
 as the substitute for a complete drama. Browning is the dis- 
 coverer and master of its new possibilities. Hence the fact that 
 
 currency is due to a growing demand — dating from the age of Pope and Addison, 
 when the power had died out of poetry and the drama — for an available literature 
 of sentiment, or of sympathy with man and nature. Owing to peculiar conditions 
 — some of them inherent in the prescriptive forms of verse — poetry proper has 
 never recovered its hold upon the English-speaking public as the literature of 
 feeling. But what the poetry of set forms may continue to lose the novel seems 
 sure to gain. There is no sign that the growth of knowledge is crowding out the 
 literature of power. The increasing output of novels year by year is a standing 
 refutation of all theories and prophecies to such effect. 
 
192 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 he uses the dramatic monologue most constantly, and even with 
 the most diverse and intractable themes. 
 
 The Italian in England will afford a good , example for first 
 examination. Browning's purpose here is to bring his countrymen 
 into sympathy with Italy in her struggle against Austria. 1 How 
 shall this be done? He might write a history of the Austrian 
 occupation, and thus cite abundant instances of oppression and 
 cruelty, leaving the reader to kindle at the story for himself. But 
 that would amount to little more than giving information. It 
 would apprise the intellect, not move the sympathies. Men's 
 hearts do not always go out toward what they know is worthy; 
 the soul must have experience of the worth. Some choice spirit 
 or spirits, whom we shall idealize, must be brought forward to 
 represent the whole body of patriots. Hence — the more easily 
 to engage imagination at the outset — Browning selects the man 
 who shall speak from the higher class : — 
 
 " That second time they hunted me 
 From hill to plain, from shore to sea, 
 And Austria, hounding far and wide 
 Her blood-hounds through the country-side, 
 Breathed hot and instant on my trace, — 
 I made six days a hiding place 
 Of that dry green old aqueduct 
 Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked 
 The fire-flies from the roof above, 
 Bright creeping through the moss they love : 
 — How long it seems since Charles was lost ! 
 Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed 
 The country in my very sight; 
 And when that peril ceased at night, 
 The sky broke out in red dismay 
 With signal fires; well, there I lay 
 Close covered o'er in my recess, 
 Up to the neck in ferns and cress, 
 Thinking on Metternich our friend, 
 And Charles's miserable end, 
 
 1 The poem was first printed in 1845. 
 
THE ART OF BROWNING. 193 
 
 And much beside, two days; the third, 
 Hunger o'ercame me when I heard 
 The peasants from the village go 
 To work among the maize." 
 
 It is easy to see how the author captures sympathy, even before 
 the reader is aware, by appealing to some of his liveliest sensibili- 
 ties. The pursuit by the hounding soldiers, the hiding in the 
 green old aqueduct with all its Roman memories and boyish 
 associations, and the faintness after two days of hunger, — these 
 things so mass interest about the speaker that, as he continues, we 
 quickly enter into his experiences as they were our own. 
 
 " You know, 
 With us in Lombardy, they bring 
 Provisions packed on mules, a string 
 With little bells that cheer their task, 
 And casks, and boughs on every cask 
 To keep the sun's heat from the wine; 
 These I let pass in jingling line, 
 And, close on them, dear noisy crew, 
 The peasants from the village, too; 
 For at the very rear would troop 
 Their wives and sisters in a group 
 To help, I knew. When these had passed, 
 I threw my glove to strike the last, 
 Taking the chance : she did not start, 
 Much less cry out, but stooped apart, 
 One instant rapidly glanced round, 
 And saw me beckon from the ground : 
 A wild bush grows and hides my crypt; 
 She picked my glove up while she stripped 
 A branch off, then rejoined the rest 
 With that; my glove lay in her breast. 
 Then I draw breath; they disappeared: 
 It was for Italy I feared." 
 
 But the speaker after all is only secondary ; the main figure is 
 the peasant girl. To set forth the sublime fervor of the Italian 
 
194 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 love of country — which in those days could make even little 
 children go singing about the streets 
 
 " O bella liberta, O bella — " 1 
 
 is no easy task ; but this is clearly the author's purpose. That race 
 and nation must have a most lofty and sacred cause when patriot- 
 ism can so unite the noble and the peasant as to make both of 
 one mind and soul. 2 
 
 " An hour, and she returned alone 
 Exactly where my glove was thrown. 
 Meanwhile came many thoughts : on me 
 Rested the hopes of Italy. 
 I had devised a certain tale 
 Which, when 'twas told her, could not fail 
 Persuade a peasant of its truth ; 
 I meant to call a freak of youth 
 This hiding, and give hopes of pay, 
 And no temptation to betray. 
 But when I saw that woman's face, 
 Its calm simplicity of grace, 
 Our Italy's own attitude 
 In which she walked thus far, and stood, 
 Planting each naked foot so firm, 
 To crush the snake and spare the worm — 
 At first sight of her eyes, I said, 
 ' I am that man upon whose head 
 They fix the price, because I hate 
 The Austrians over us : the State 
 Will give you gold — oh, gold so much ! — 
 If you betray me to their clutch, 
 And be your death, for aught I know, 
 If once they find you saved their foe. 
 Now, you must bring me food and drink, 
 And also paper, pen and ink, 
 
 1 Compare Mrs. Browning's Casa Guidi Windows, first stanza. 
 
 2 This is of course the 'experiential effect intended' of the whole poem. The 
 student should here and throughout, as in the two preceding chapters, determine 
 the means and the steps of each art-process. 
 
THE ART OF BROWNING. 195 
 
 And carry safe what I shall write 
 
 To Padua, which you'll reach at night 
 
 Before the duomo shuts; go in, 
 
 And wait till Tenebrse begin; 
 
 Walk to the third confessional, 
 
 Between the pillar and the wall, 
 
 And kneeling whisper, Whence comes peace ? 
 
 Say it a second time, then cease; 
 
 And if the voice inside returns, 
 
 From Christ and Freedom ; what concerns 
 
 The cause of Peace? — for answer, slip 
 
 My letter where you placed your lip; 
 
 Then come back happy we have done 
 
 Our mother service — I, the son, 
 
 As you the daughter of our land ! ' " 
 
 The dramatic monologue owes its success to its method of 
 dealing with the imagination. It does not err in giving too much 
 help like the stage, which exhibits character wholly objectively by 
 proxy, or like the novel, which compiles details and appeals mainly 
 to phantasy. It gives the type, and leaves imagination to do its 
 work alone. Those who are not yet trained or skilled to expand 
 and complete type-outlines will prefer, like Shakespeare's public in 
 the sixteenth century, and like the common world of novel-readers 
 to-day, a ready-made picture. Those who see the eyes and hair 
 and complexion of their friends and kinsfolk with the eye of 
 the mind do not need colored photographs. In the highest art the 
 imagination must be aroused and stimulated, yet left free. The 
 ego cannot well idealize in the face of definite description; its 
 activity is reduced to realization. Here it finds in such hints as 
 "that woman's face," "its calm simplicity of grace," "our Italy's 
 own attitude," "at first sight of her eyes, / said " — the types of 
 all that is divine in woman. All else that the speaker is made 
 to say from beginning to end of the poem reveals less and arouses 
 our enthusiasm less concerning his own character than this imme- 
 diate and confident apprehension of her integrity. Later on the 
 fancy is set at work also through suggestion of the characteristic 
 methods of the Carbonari. 
 
196 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 Another hint of the peasant woman's strength of character — 
 she can keep a secret, for the good of Italy, even from her lover, 
 — and the narrative proceeds : — 
 
 " Three mornings more, she took her stand 
 In the same place, with the same eyes : 
 I was no surer of sunrise 
 Than of her coming. We conferred 
 Of her own prospects, and I heard 
 She had a lover — stout and tall, 
 She said — then let her eyelids fall, 
 ' He could do much ' — as if some doubt 
 Entered her heart, — then, passing out, 
 ' She could not speak for others, who 
 Had other thoughts ; herself she knew : ' 
 And so she brought me drink and food. 
 After four days, the scouts pursued 
 Another path ; at last arrived 
 To help my Paduan friends contrived 
 To furnish me : she brought the news. 
 For the first time I could not choose 
 But kiss her hand, and lay my own 
 Upon her head — ' This faith was shown 
 To Italy, our mother ; she 
 Uses my hand and blesses thee.' 
 She followed down to the sea-shore ; 
 I left and never saw her more." 
 
 The cause of Italian freedom languishes. Ill-advised and spite- 
 ful measures have reacted upon the patriots and broken their 
 ranks, but exasperated Austria. The speaker is still an exile in 
 England, yet his heart is in the cause. He still hopes, still is 
 actively directing resistance. But he is growing old and weary. 
 Italy seems settling to its rest in Metternich's clutches. He has 
 there perhaps no friends whom he would care to see again — save 
 her who saved him in his hour of trial. 
 
 " How very long since I have thought 
 Concerning — much less wished for — aught 
 
THE ART OF BROWNING. 197 
 
 Beside the good of Italy, 
 
 For which I live and mean to die ! 
 
 I never was in love ; and since 
 
 Charles proved false, what shall now convince 
 
 My inmost heart I have a friend? 
 
 However, if I pleased to spend 
 
 Real wishes on myself — say, three — 
 
 I know at least what one should be. 
 
 I would grasp Metternich until 
 
 I felt his red wet throat distil 
 
 In blood through these two hands. And next, 
 
 — Nor much for that am I perplexed — 
 
 Charles, perjured traitor, for his part, 
 
 Should die slow of a broken heart 
 
 Under his new employers. Last 
 
 — Ah, there, what should I wish? For fast 
 Do I grow old and out of strength. 
 
 If I resolved to seek at length 
 My father's house again, how scared 
 They all would look, and unprepared ! 
 My brothers live in Austria's pay 
 
 — Disowned me long ago, men say; 
 And all my early mates who used 
 To praise me so — perhaps induced 
 More than one early step of mine — 
 Are turning wise : while some opine 
 
 ' Freedom grows license,' some suspect 
 ' Haste breeds delay,' and recollect 
 They always said, such premature 
 Beginnings never could endure ! 
 So, with a sullen ' All's for best,' 
 The land seems settling to its rest. 
 I think then, I should wish to stand 
 This evening in that dear, lost land, 
 Over the sea a thousand miles, 
 And know if yet that woman smiles 
 With the calm smile; some little farm 
 She lives in there, no doubt : what harm 
 If I sat on the door-side bench, 
 And, while her spindle made a trench 
 Fantastically in the dust, 
 Inquired of all her fortunes — just 
 
198 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 Her children's ages and their names, 
 And what may be the husband's aims 
 For each of them. I'd talk this out, 
 And sit there, for an hour about, 
 Then kiss her hand once more, and lay 
 Mine on her head, and go my way. 
 
 " So much for idle wishing — how 
 It steals the time ! To business now.'' 
 
 The poem as a whole is therefore not hard to analyze. Two 
 persons are made to stand for Italy and her cause, one a man 
 from the highest, the other a woman from the lowest social plane. 
 The former is naturally made to pronounce the monologue, but is 
 subordinated — much in Shakespeare's way — to the female char- 
 acter, who is idealized. But the all-potent character and person- 
 ality of this woman, — really but one of many, and figuring here 
 rather than another only because she walked last of the troop — 
 is in turn subordinated to ' Italy,' which as a principle is stronger 
 with her than gold or love. Through the influence exerted by 
 this peasant woman upon the speaker, we are made to feel the 
 sentiment which controls her and her compatriots, and so become 
 ourselves partisans of the Italian cause. The poem well illustrates 
 the difference between the ' literature of knowledge ' and the 
 ' literature of power.' A few lines properly addressed to the 
 sympathies may exert more influence than a whole library of fact 
 and argument. 
 
 There is, however, a single point on which the art of the fore- 
 going poem is not adequately concealed. The monologue is 
 addressed to no certain auditor or audience, and seems obtruded 
 somewhat unceremoniously upon the reader. The companion 
 poem, The Englishman in Italy, takes the necessary step in 
 advance from the old soliloquy, and may be profitably studied 
 next. It is quickly seen that the author proposes here to make 
 the events and scenes of every-day life in Italy the subject of 
 art-treatment, and to put the untraveled in possession of the 
 poetic experiences one may derive from actual sojourn there. 
 
THE ART OF BROWNING. 199 
 
 The monologue will necessarily be descriptive, and descend to 
 'such details as would at once repel the general reader if addressed 
 to him seriously and directly. Hence the device of pretending 
 it merely playful talk to a child. Fortu is the little peasant girl 
 in whose home the speaker is domiciled. 
 
 The author chooses the plain of Sorrento as one of the most 
 characteristic spots in Italy, combining the common, the historic, 
 and the sublime for the scene of the poem. He makes the 
 speaker tell over to Fortu, while the Scirocco rages, his impres- 
 sions of the surroundings, familiar to her but new to him, which 
 he is ' garlanding for memory.' Very deftly he is made to pass 
 from his talk of the pomegranates ' chapping and splitting in 
 halves on the tree,' the quails and the snails, the grape-harvest, 
 and her bare-legged brother in the wine vat, dancing 
 
 " Till breathless he grins, 
 Dead-beaten in effort on effort 
 To keep the grapes under," — 
 
 matters very properly represented as within a Fortu's comprehen- 
 sion — to experiences far above it, connected with the last night's 
 ride to the top of Calvano, where 
 
 " God's own profound 
 Was above me, and round me the mountains, 
 
 And under, the sea, 
 And within me my heart to bear witness 
 
 What was and shall be. 
 Oh, heaven and the terrible crystal ! 
 
 No rampart excludes 
 Your eye from the life to be lived 
 
 In the blue solitudes. 
 Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement ! 
 
 Still moving with you; 
 For, ever some new head and breast of them 
 
 Thrusts into view 
 To observe the intruder; you see it 
 
 If quickly you turn 
 And, before they escape you, surprise them." 
 
200 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 Then, to cover the classical reference to Ulysses and the sirens : — 
 
 " Fortu, shall we sail there together 
 And see from the sides 
 Quite new rocks show their faces, new haunts 
 
 Where the siren abides? 
 ****** 
 " Then, stand there and hear 
 The birds' quiet singing, that tells us 
 
 What life is, so clear? 
 — The secret they sang to Ulysses 
 
 When, ages ago, 
 He heard and he knew this life's secret 
 I hear and I know." 
 
 But there are other things beyond nature and historic or rather 
 mythologic associations which will impress an Englishman in Italy. 
 By way of the gypsy tinker the author approaches the religious 
 festivals and customs of the country. When these have been 
 described, Fortu is made to hang back from the proposed visit to 
 ' the fine things got in order at church for the show of the Sacra- 
 ment,' thus permitting the diminuendo — 
 
 " At all events, come — to the garden 
 
 As far as the wall; 
 See me tap with a hoe on the plaster 
 
 Till out there shall fall 
 A scorpion with wide angry nippers ! " 
 
 Finally, to cover again the real purpose of the piece as well as the 
 fiimsiness of its plan, and forestall perhaps the English objection 
 that it is a poem without a moral, or much meaning of any kind — 
 
 " — ' Such trifles ! ' you say? 
 Fortu, in my England at home, 
 
 Men meet gravely to-day 
 And debate, if [whether] abolishing Corn-laws 
 
 Be rightenus and wise 
 — If [whether] 'twere proper, [that their] Scirocco should vanish 
 
 In black from the skies ! " 
 
THE ART OF BROWNING. 201 
 
 The postulation of Fortu as a lay-figure to which the monologue 
 may be addressed, is not above criticism. Clearly no sufficient 
 motive is made apparent in or by the fiction after all. A more artis- 
 tic form of the monologue is illustrated in the poem called Mesmer- 
 ism. This is a study of the experiences of the hypnotizer and of 
 the hypnotized, and dates from the days when mesmerism was little 
 understood, and often regarded as positively diabolic. Browning 
 attempts to divine the psychology of the act as also of being the 
 unconscious victim. He makes the speaker, who has believed in 
 the efficacy of the art, put his theory to the test. The person 
 upon whom he tries the powers of his will is the woman whom he 
 loves, — perhaps without return ; but this is only incidental to the 
 plan, and added to intensify interest. The speaker intrusts to a 
 friend the secret of his trial and its astonishing outcome. He 
 feels his strength concentrate and imprint itself upon her soul. 
 
 " Till the house 1 called hers, not mine, 
 With a growing weight 
 Seems to suffocate 
 If she break not its leaden line 
 And escape from its close confine." 
 
 Out of doors she is drawn in obedience to the summoning force, 
 through the darkness of the forest and the storm, ' not turning to 
 left nor right from the pathway, blind with sight,' until she at 
 last stands in the upper chamber physically identified with the 
 shadowy image the speaker has seen before him. The poem 
 opens with a number of uncanny stanzas which serve as an 
 atmosphere. To neutralize the scruples and misgivings of the 
 reader concerning the transaction the speaker is made to realize 
 his risk and pray that he may not squander, or use too much, 
 guilt in the exercise of the strange power — 
 
 " Since require Thou wilt 
 At my hand its price one day ! 
 What the price is, who can say?" 
 
 1 The body. 
 
202 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 A still higher form of the monologue is illustrated in My Last 
 Duchess. This is a study, in the person of a Duke, of Italian 
 character at its best of intellectual, but at its worst of spiritual, 
 culture. The Duchess, though seemingly the principal figure, 
 and giving name to the poem, is merely a secondary or rather an 
 accessory character. The Duke is much her senior, and, as is 
 apparent from the title, has before been married. The Duchess, 
 though by no means a girl in years, — for the speaker implies she 
 is no longer of an age to be ' lessoned,' — is yet of a nature so frank 
 and free, so generous and self-forgetful, that she opens like the 
 flower to any sunshine. She has married, in the opinion of this 
 Duke, above herself, and owes him a certain appreciation of the 
 dignity to which she has been lifted. He would have her less 
 lavish of her smiles, less ready to be pleased by others, — would 
 indeed cut off all joys not derived or derivable from himself. As 
 time goes on the Duke fancies "this grows," — that she is find- 
 ing more of her gladness outside than ever, plainly because he is 
 conscious she must see less and less to please her in himself. 
 Therefore he " gives commands," and she stops smiling even 
 upon him ; that is, by some means not to be inquired into, all 
 smiles cease simultaneously. To secure an eligible successor the 
 Duke is negotiating for the daughter of a Count, whose represent- 
 ative is here and now within the palace. The Duke for his part 
 has two conditions that will be insisted upon, — there must 
 be ample dowry, and the new Duchess must not vex him like 
 her predecessor. His expectations on the first point have been 
 already broadly hinted. That there may be no misunderstanding 
 upon the second, the Duke invites his visitor up-stairs, ostensibly 
 to show the last Duchess's portrait, but in reality to communicate, 
 by way of careless, rambling comment, his Machiavelian warning 
 to the candidate for his hand. 
 
 Here, then, is no make-shift occasion, but good prose reason for 
 addressing the monologue to some one in the second person. 
 
 " That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, 
 Looking as if she were alive. I call 
 
THE ART OF BROWNING. 203 
 
 That piece a wonder, now : Fra PandolPs hands 
 Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 
 Will't please you sit and look at her ? I said 
 ' Fra Pandolf ' by design, for never read 
 Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 
 The depth and passion of its earnest glance, 
 But to myself they turned (since none puts by 
 The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 
 And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, 
 How such a glance came there; so, not the first 
 Are you to turn and ask thus." 
 
 "The painter," as Professor Alexander observes, "had been 
 successful in catching the characteristic expression of the young 
 Duchess, — the bright soul, with unconscious and unsuppressed 
 revelation of its inner depths, looks out on the world in earnest 
 interest. So full of self-revelation and feeling was the expression 
 that a stranger might suspect some tender relation between sitter 
 and painter ; the husband, therefore, names the artist, whose well- 
 known character would preclude any such suspicion, and goes on 
 further to account for the expression." 1 
 
 " Sir, 'twas not 
 Her husband's presence only, called that spot 
 Of joy into the Duchess' cheek : perhaps 
 Fra Pandolf chanced to say ' Her mantle laps 
 Over my lady's wrist too much,' or ' Paint 
 Must never hope to reproduce the faint 
 Half-flush that dies along her throat : ' such stuff 
 Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 
 For calling up that spot of joy. She had 
 A heart — how shall I say? — too soon made glad, 
 Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er 
 She looked on, and her looks went everywhere." 
 
 Observe how quickly the imagination, starting from hints of 
 physical beauty, seizes the type of character. The idealization 
 goes on through the six following lines, chiefly through occasions 
 and ' effects ' as suggesting causes, and through exhibition of the 
 
 1 Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning, pp. 10, n. 
 
204 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 disposition of the Duke in contrast. Here it becomes clear that 
 it has been the author's purpose from the first to use the idealized 
 character of the Duchess against the Duke, and thus give us an 
 effective experience of his character. Our sympathies are touched 
 by her only to be outraged at every point by him. He considers 
 those who did homage to his wife " officious " ; he would not 
 " stoop " even to save her life. Manifestly ' there is more of 
 this ' : he must have been far more exclusive than he admits. He 
 was so proud of his Duchess's beauty, and so intolerant of any- 
 thing like vulgar admiration of it, that he would fain have kept her 
 not only from smiling but even from being seen save as he should 
 deem the occasion or the person worthy. He was crossed so 
 much in this while she lived that he is perversely resolved to have 
 his way after her death at least with her portrait, which he keeps 
 veiled and allows no one to see except in his presence. 
 
 " Sir, 'twas all one ! My favor at her breast, 
 The dropping of the daylight in the West, 
 The bough of cherries some officious fool 
 Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 
 She rode with round the terrace — all and each 
 Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 
 Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good ! but thanked 
 Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked 
 My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old-name 
 With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame 
 This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 
 In speech — • (which I have not) — to make your will 
 Quite clear to such a one, and say, ' Just this 
 Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, 
 Or there exceed the mark ' — and if she let 
 Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 
 Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, 
 — E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose 
 Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, 
 Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without 
 Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; 
 Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands 
 As if alive." 
 
THE ART OF' BROWNING. 205 
 
 Browning, moreover, has succeeded in intimating some of the 
 remarks of the Duke's visitor. At the end of the first quotation 
 he seems to have worked in some such compliment as this : ' She 
 must have had you in her eyes while she sat to the painter ' ; and 
 the Duke admits that he was by. Near the end of the passage 
 cited last the visitor appears gallantly to have urged : ' But you 
 were robbed of nothing ; she still smiled most on you I ' The 
 answer is characteristically arrogant and curt. ' Oh sir, she 
 smiled no doubt whenever I so much as passed; ,but who passed 
 without much the same smile? ' Then at the words ' I gave com- 
 mands; then all smiles stopped together,' the purport of this 
 visit to the picture flashes out, and the Count's agent starts, — 
 perhaps half rises even, before he is aware. The Duke, satisfied 
 that he has properly impressed his visitor, and with ostensible 
 deference to the latter's involuntary stir, proposes return to the 
 company below ; 1 but before they are fairly on the way once more 
 intimates what will be insisted on in the matter of the dowry. 
 
 " Will't please you rise ? We'll meet 
 The company below, then. I repeat, 
 The Count your master's known munificence 
 Is ample warrant that no just pretence 
 Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; 
 Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed 
 At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go 
 Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, 
 Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 
 Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in brpnze for me ! " 
 
 How much a dowry commensurate with the honor he thinks to 
 confer has to do with the Duke's proposal is evident enough in 
 the present mention. As they reach the staircase, " the stranger, 
 who is of course the Duke's social inferior, will not go first, and 
 the considerate manners which are often linked with a hollow 
 heart, are indicated by the Duke's ' Nay, we'll go together down, 
 
 1 Compare the Duke's " Will't please you sit and look at her ? " — on seeing 
 he has interested his companion— in the fifth line from the opening. 
 
206 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 sir.' " ' As they turn to descend, a statue in the court comes into 
 view, and the Duke, in strong contrast with his downright and 
 absolute " I gave commands," for effect upon this representative 
 of a house beneath his own though richer, inconsequentially calls 
 attention to another proof of his pretensions as a man of taste. 
 
 The wonderful condensation of this poem will escape no one ; 
 it is a five-act tragedy in fifty lines. We thus see that art as well 
 as language has its expansive and its concentrative phases. Per- 
 haps in no other poem yet written in any literature has the imagi- 
 nation been set its proper task so skillfully. The Duchess though 
 unheard is characterized better than the Duke who speaks. Even 
 the Count's agent is adequately individualized, and by shrinking 
 from the thought of " commands " for the new Duchess, con- 
 tributes a helpful contrast. It should mislead no one that so 
 lovely a creation as the Duchess is brought forward merely as an 
 accessory ; for the end is not to exhibit an individual character, 
 but to help the reader to understand a type. The Duchess stands 
 but for herself; the Duke represents a civilization and a class. 
 That we may know him experimentally, the author out of many 
 possible means chooses that we see how much he understands 
 and appreciates, and how he is disposed towards a most rare and 
 heaven-born nature, having first taken care to engage imagination 
 and through it the sympathies with each element of her character. 
 
 Another poem of similar purpose and remarkable power is The 
 Bishop Orders his To?nb. In this the author proposes in general 
 to show the type of mind produced under the influences of the 
 Renaissance, and in special to exhibit the awful barrenness and 
 desolation of a soul whose culture is arrested just at the spiritual 
 stage. Or we may say it is a study in spirituality by the negative 
 process, through showing what the lack of it under conditions and 
 circumstances which should insure it, really signifies. With respect 
 to the address of the monologue, the poem takes rank with 
 Browning's best, and is perhaps superior to all others. There is 
 something more than art in the device by which the Bishop is 
 
 1 Alexander, p. 14. 
 
. THE ART OF BROWNING. 207 
 
 made to call his sons about him for his blessing, — Anselm the 
 beloved always refusing to come nearer than the foot of his couch 
 of state. Among other monologues similarly remarkable for cast 
 and presentation, though of most diverse excellence as poems, 
 The Laboratory and A Death in the Desert may be instanced. 
 
 The poems now considered should afford ample illustration of 
 the manner in which Browning's lyrics must be studied. There 
 is of course the possibility of over-interpretation here, as in criti- 
 cism of art-products from other fields, but patient study and com- 
 mon sense will generally find out the truth. No one with any 
 pretensions to knowledge of art doubts that a great picture must 
 be studied point by point until the meaning reveals itself. So 
 the poems of a master must be read and reread until the mind 
 can pass beyond the words and interpret the associations and 
 identify the mood which pervades them. A single reading 
 should be held no more than the first visit of inspection to a 
 famous painting. It will not justify indolence to pronounce works 
 of art unintelligible or obscure, for spiritual truth that is obvious 
 and does not enlist the imagination can have no power. Different 
 poems will present varying degrees of difficulty, just as different 
 paintings by the same master. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower 
 Came is an example of the harder sort, and will require almost 
 perfect familiarity. In the fullness of time the mood out of which 
 the poem grew, and which it was intended to induce, will 
 come upon the reader. He will then understand experimentally 
 that the poem is universal, that every aspiring soul will at some 
 time find itself within that ominous tract which holds the Dark 
 Tower. When from hopes deferred the heart has lost faith in its 
 inspiring purpose, when that which it has pursued as an ideal 
 begins to seem rather an object of disgust, the Dark Tower has 
 been reached. Columbus on that eventful night after the 
 mutiny, under promise to his crew to sail back to Spain if land 
 were not discovered by the morrow, must have doubted whether 
 he were not after all the most misguided and abject of men. 
 After so many years spent in pursuit of a single aim, with all the 
 
208 THE ART OF BROWNING. 
 
 issue staked upon the chances of a single night, — unless of a 
 faith greater than human, he must surely have discerned, instead 
 of a lordly castle, ' a round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, 
 and without a counterpart in the whole world ! ' There is no 
 thought of retreat, only the expectation of immortal failure. But 
 when the challenge is once dauntlessly given, the Dark Tower 
 proves no garrison of foes, but becomes at once transfigured with 
 the glory of welcome and reward. So not merely in the supreme 
 trials of history, which come only to great minds and to these 
 only once in a lifetime, but in the common experiences of com- 
 mon men who, from causes often merely physiological, see their 
 ideals for the time being strangely refracted and distorted. 
 
 Any systematic attempt to analyze the means by which Brown- 
 ing produces on the reader the effects just characterized lies 
 beyond the purpose of this work. The poem is not an allegory, 
 nor is it constructed — as at first might seem — upon the classical 
 plan. Instead of a mere accumulation of dismal and horrid 
 images from which the mind is left to infer certain other dismal 
 and horrid circumstances of like kind, a particular set of simple, 
 elementary experiences is set forth, in the types of which the 
 ego identifies certain complex and transcendental experiences of 
 its own. Manifestly the only way to universalize the higher 
 experiences of the soul is to find some general expression or for- 
 mula, as in the Calculus and Algebra, cast in elementary symbols. 
 As an example of a poem in a lighter vein, requiring perhaps 
 equal appreciation of type differences but less study of details, 
 Up at a Villa, Down in the City may be taken. The speaker 
 here is a ' person of quality,' and is made to say such things as 
 quickly reveal that he is spiritually color-blind, and hence put for- 
 ward as a type. He detests those things in the country which 
 most men love, and admires those things in the city which right- 
 and high-minded men' ignore. To him the wild tulip blows out 
 its great red bell like a thin clear bubble of blood only for the 
 children to pick and sell, and the whine of the bees is tiresome. 
 But in the city the houses are stone-faced, white as a curd, and in 
 
THE ART OF BROWNING. 209 
 
 four straight lines, not a single front awry ; and to mitigate the 
 heat a big fountain spouts and splashes in the square ! 
 
 The last poem in no unworthy manner proves Browning's 
 mastery of the indirect method used by Shakespeare, — though to 
 very different purpose, in Othello. It illustrates, moreover, how 
 variously and completely dramatic is Browning's genius, and with 
 what skill he treats the most refractory and slender themes. Such, 
 finally, are the steps and methods by which imagination has, in 
 present times, secured to itself its intenser literary delights. Brown- 
 ing has but gone on in Shakespeare's path until his monologues are 
 to Shakespeare's complete plays as the word-analogies of both to the 
 fully developed allegory. With a maximum of experiences and 
 preparation the imagination prefers a minimum of accessories and 
 text. What Browning has done in the drama proper will be in 
 some measure indicated in the following chapter. 
 
210 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 Thus far we have considered poetry essentially from the side of 
 the reader, and of the product achieved. We should now be in 
 some measure prepared to contemplate it from the author's point 
 of view, to see with him the end to be reached from the beginning, 
 and note what effects or symptoms are available for his purpose, 
 and the grounds on which his choice proceeds. 
 
 It has long been accepted as a truism that the poet is born, not 
 made. What it is to be born a poet, or in what respects he must 
 be a genius, has been here and there implied to some extent already 
 under various heads. Particularly, in Chapter VII. was shown in 
 effect how the products of the verse-maker and the poet differ in 
 regard to form. The one we saw puts lines together in such a 
 way that a special metric stress, sometimes with rhyme, occurs at 
 prescribed and expected intervals. The poet does the same, but 
 no matter how profound or sublime his theme keeps both rhyme 
 and meter subservient to his purpose, and at his best prevents either 
 from interfering with organic and standard modes of speech. On 
 the contrary, the poetaster at his best cannot conceal the fact 
 that his rhyming and versifying are to him an end rather than a 
 means, for the matter is everywhere subordinate to the manner, 
 the sense to form. In Chapter IV. was shown that the poet makes 
 his enthusiasm flash out from the very lines, so that ordinary com- 
 prehension must discern, while the verse-maker either feels no 
 inspiration, or if he feel, cannot impart. In Chapter XI. was 
 pointed out whence the poet's exaltation comes. He must be so 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 211 
 
 endowed as to see beyond the material aspects of his environment, 
 and not only intuitively apprehend the final meanings of things, 
 but likewise appreciate or experience them at their worth. The 
 facts of the universe as facts are but truths half told, which the 
 poet finds himself commissioned to tell in full. He se^s, for exam- 
 ple, in the mediaeval legend of a Count Gismond, not vulgar belief 
 in ordeal by combat, but a sublime principle ; and by it is kindled 
 to enthusiasm which, in spite of the limitations of written speech, 
 he makes ring out as with the impassioned tones of his natural 
 voice. 
 
 The poet is, then, gifted iii two ways : he discerns the essential 
 meanings of things, and he has the technical ability to make others 
 see with his eyes and feel with his feelings. But his source of 
 power lies wholly in the truth which inspires him. Without that 
 he would lack the momentum even to overcome the obstacles of 
 meter and rhyme ; with it, like Dante and Shakespeare, he may 
 move all minds through all generations. Somewhat loosely the 
 word poet is often used as a generic term and applied to all minds 
 that discern essential meanings in whatsoever way. More strictly, 
 the man who, as Carlyle or Emerson, reads the open secrets of 
 nature or society only with reference to what is true, is called a 
 seer. That is to say, the seer discerns spiritual truth simply as 
 truth, without especial reference to its sesthetic aspects. But the 
 ultimate truths of the universe are not only true, but beautiful, 
 and produce delight. The genius that discerns spiritual truth in 
 such wise as to be filled with the sense of its beauty, whether 
 in forms, proportion, and colors in nature, or in heroic and sublime 
 qualities of soul, is a poetic mind. If he bring any of these before 
 the physical eye by brush or chisel, he is an artist or sculptor ; but 
 if he translate them into language, he is specifically a poet. The 
 seer mind, however, is not unaware of beauty in the last signifi- 
 cance of things. There is an exaltation in the contemplation and 
 experience of spiritual truth as truth that is superior to all other 
 delights of the soul in kind, and second to none in degree save 
 the poet's, who discerns the beautiful more completely than the 
 
212 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 true. It is rare, such are the limitations of our common human- 
 ity, that the same mind is endowed to take equal cognizance of 
 both ultimate truth and beauty. Modern literature knows but 
 three geniuses of such transcendent kind, — Dante, Shakespeare, 
 and Goethe. 
 
 It has been already pointed out in Chapter XII. that there are 
 three stages in human development, whether of the individual or 
 the race. Those that have full privileges of culture are quite 
 likely to mount to the highest plane, though many fail of actual 
 attainment to that preponderance of spiritual experiences which 
 constitutes the Spiritual Life. The masses of mankind very 
 evidently are not yet endowed or enabled to reach this stage. 
 Many remain in the physical, — that is, cannot rise above a 
 preponderance of sensual experiences, and gird at delights above. 
 But in this land and generation, where industrial employments are 
 so largely expert and special, and where woman is so generally 
 emancipated from outdoor and other manual drudgery, a major- 
 ity of the population, at least of native stock, should belong to 
 the middle plane. When the acts and experiences of men par- 
 take more of the intellectual than the physical, therewith begins 
 the operation of taste. The awakening of taste is really the 
 awakening of the sense 'of ultimate, spiritual beauty; and the 
 activity of this sense marks in so far a passage of the boundary 
 dividing the middle from the final stage. There is, as we shall 
 remember, no hard and fast line between ; crossing it at one point 
 should ensure crossing it at many. It is the theory of all educa- 
 tion that by teaching a few things in the schools, pupils will be 
 able to learn many things for themselves outside. The State does 
 not provide instruction without charge to school-children merely 
 that they may know Arithmetic, and Geography, and Grammar, 
 and other branches which they will want to use in after life. 
 It believes that empowering them to see a few things with aid will 
 cause them to see afterwards without it other things which will 
 bring spiritual experiences and make character. Good citizenship 
 is the justification and the end of public education. But good cit- 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 213 
 
 izenship depends, not on common or special knowledge, but con- 
 trolling sentiments that are right and noble. 
 
 In the same manner that the schoolmaster puts public- school 
 children in the way of discerning and appreciating final truths 
 which will make them good citizens, poets put men and women 
 in the way of spiritual experiences which arouse and strengthen 
 the loftiest sentiments of their nature. The public educator 
 broadens the horizon of knowledge, and now and then identifies 
 to his pupils a spiritual object. The seer or poet deals with things 
 spiritual more directly. Both pedagogue and seer are parts of a 
 great institutional system by which occasions are brought to causes, 
 and the soul of man is helped and prompted to develop in its last 
 capacity. Few minds can look abroad and discriminate the 
 select from the common, the inspiring from the base, but seers 
 and poets impart to the world this secret. When their service is 
 complete, the sufficient mind is seer and poet unto itself, discern- 
 ing the beautiful and the true wherever met independently, with 
 small further need of monitor or guide. 
 
 The work of the poet, therefore, presupposes some degree of 
 taste already developed. Taste is ' a name for the inherent 
 capacity of the soul to perceive and experience ultimate beauty, 
 and is in consequence allied closely with the ability to discern and 
 appreciate final truth. The varying progressive types, called 
 Ideals, to which every mind refers all apprehended excellencies, 
 are made up in the last analysis of these two elements alone. 
 Hence there can be no work of art dependent on beauty only, 
 nor any revelation of final truth wholly devoid of beauty. It is an 
 antecedent, primal necessity that all minds assume both ultimate 
 truth and ultimate beauty to be real qualities, which must be 
 somewhere, and should be everywhere, supreme. Moreover, each 
 given mind is conscious of the obligation to actualize and ex- 
 emplify both. This fact not only invests the seer or poet with 
 ethical responsibility, but likewise with ethical authority ; for he 
 is looked upon as one who has realized high possibilities, and as 
 essentially a prince among his fellows. The paramount need of 
 
214 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 society is not only that the rising generation be kept from becom- 
 ing bad citizens, but that all men be elevated and come to their 
 best everywhere. The first duty of the State, though but a 
 negative and defensive obligation, is self-preservation : hence its 
 reformatory and free-school systems. Its next business is self- 
 improvement, or industrial, intellectual, and moral progress. But 
 this positive and edificatory concern the State perforce leaves 
 largely to public sentiment and individual aspiration. Manifestly, 
 no one who discerns ultimate truth and beauty is without respon- 
 sibility for his fellows. Private munificence which founds libraries, 
 art-galleries, and schools of art or of music sustains well its part 
 of the universal burden. So, great preachers and teachers like 
 Spurgeon and Arnold, along with Emerson and Browning and 
 other specific, professional representatives of the seer and poet 
 class, carry upon their shoulders much of the general obligation. 
 But all men cannot be furnished with occasions that will set in 
 exercise controlling sentiments by the effort of such few, for these 
 do not perceive all the spiritual truth and beauty yet appre- 
 hensible to man. The uttermost that all men collectively discern 
 must be called into requisition if society is to have its sum of 
 spiritual, upbuilding influence. There is no limit to the truth that 
 mankind shall know. The universe of fact is fast merging into 
 the universe of ultimate truth and beauty ; and the universe of 
 fact is broadening every day. The difficulty is not to find men 
 that see truth and experience beauty, but minds that seeing and 
 experiencing at first hand can make other minds see and experi- 
 ence at second hand. A man may be the Bacon or Emerson of 
 his times, yet if he feel no inspiration, or lack the art to make his 
 perceptions known, he will be profitless beyond his personal circle. 
 Probably thousands see and experience spiritually for themselves 
 to one who makes his spiritual sights and experiences over to 
 other minds. There is surely no enlightened spirit but has some 
 one glimpse of truth, some single sentiment of beauty that is its 
 alone. The time should come and perhaps will come when each 
 shall be enabled through culture to become the servant of all, and 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 215 
 
 contribute, whether much or little, his own spiritual illumination 
 and delight to the universal sum of truth and inspiration. 
 
 Art, therefore, rather than genius is the need of literature in 
 these times. There are great stores of spiritual strength and 
 knowledge which, if made available, would do much towards ele- 
 vating mankind to the spiritual life in a single century. While the 
 impulse to communicate comes yearly to hundreds and thousands 
 who have really nothing new to say, there may well be more than 
 a single Bacon or Shakespeare in each generation who, knowing 
 fresh secrets, lack the skill and inspiration to make them known 
 to the world. Nothing is so invaluable to man, so essential to 
 human progress, as new truth. The failure to discover a new 
 mine is relatively an unimportant loss, since it could but have 
 yielded the same gold or iron or quicksilver as are known already. 
 But the permanent burial of an ultimate sentiment or principle in 
 a brain that never spoke its thought or feeling may be an irrepar- 
 able calamity. Even what we consider a small discovery of new 
 truth may transform society and change the living of every one of 
 us. The end of culture is not only to bring all men to the spirit- 
 ual life, but to enable and embolden each to impart his unique 
 contribution of spiritual inspiration to the rest. But though the 
 ability to impart one's own spiritual illumination is essential to 
 literary service, let us be clear that it does not make literature a 
 profession. Because a Matthew or a Mark writes ' a successful ' gos- 
 pel, neither will presume to continue making gospels for the rest 
 of his natural life. Each having said his say is content thereafter to 
 be silent. Two hundred years ago it seemed settled for all time 
 that a man even with a message should be silent, unless he had 
 the knack of delivering it in a certain fashion. Bunyan in Bed- 
 ford jail refused to think so, and out of his dismal leisure wrote a 
 book that now outweighs in literary art and worth all the volumes 
 of his generation. Literature is simply the medium though which 
 we communicate what we feel and know, and is not valuable be- 
 yond what it causes to be felt or known. It is a form of speech 
 which can be echoed and perpetuated at will, and if taken down 
 
216 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 on wax by the phonograph would be literature not less than if 
 made by the pen. Art is the means by which all men and women 
 should be enabled to communicate accurately and effectually 
 whatever of their thought or feeling may be valuable to other 
 minds. 
 
 The uttermost that can be done for man in civilized society is 
 to make him discern and experience ultimate truth and beauty. 
 Some final truths are so salient and palpable as to be clear 
 essentially of themselves without the aid of art. Sometimes the 
 literal statement of a fact carries sufficiently its lesson ; there is no 
 need of condensing or multiplying details, or of adjusting the 
 background. Other truths are so recondite or complex that they 
 can scarcely be set forth at all except in circumstances or relations 
 greatly altered from the actual. Art sometimes, moreover, in 
 addition to setting forth subtle or far-reaching truths, must under- 
 take to make them acceptable, that is, must interpret and bring 
 to light the spiritual beauty always indissolubly connected with 
 spiritual truth. The province of art is to condense nature and 
 epitomize human experiences, thus enabling the unskilled to dis- 
 cern the spiritual as far apart as possible from the material. The 
 significant facts and circumstances must be grouped, and their 
 meaning as far as possible set out to view, but all unessentials 
 kept from sight. The sculptor, for example, eliminates the tints 
 and warmth of flesh, the light and energy of the eye, so that only 
 the associations of what lies beyond the physical are called up to 
 our thought. The artist will paint a fruit piece successfully by 
 producing upon us vivid impressions of form and color such as we 
 have experienced in the actual, relying merely on our associations 
 of gustatory enjoyment to make his work effective. In like man- 
 ner the work of the poet is in the main but to set forth some fact 
 or group of facts lying near the sympathies which will produce a 
 lively emotion, and Dy the inspiration of the emotion through 
 association amplify and complete the facts. The manner of this 
 process has been sufficiently illustrated already in Chapter XIII. 
 from Beowulf and Locksky Hall. 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 217 
 
 As an example of poetry of the first sort, containing only pal- 
 pable truths, hence expressed with only a minimum of art, we 
 may instance Crabbe. It is indeed a question whether Crabbe's 
 selective and presentative processes, according to present stand- 
 ards, involve art at all ; that is, whether his incidents, seen and 
 known in actual, would not be as clear to ordinary readers of this 
 generation as interpreted in his own narration. Compare the fol- 
 lowing lines on Arabella, near the opening of Tale IX. : 
 
 "This reasoning Maid, above her sex's dread, 
 Had dared to read, and dared to say she read; 
 Not the last novel, not the new-born play; 
 Not the mere trash and scandal of the day; 
 But (though her young companions felt the shock) 
 She studied Berkeley, Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke : 
 Her mind within the maze of history dwelt, 
 And of the moral Muse the beauty felt; 
 The merits of the Roman page she knew, 
 And could converse with More and Montague : 
 Thus she became the wonder of the town, 
 From that she reaped, to that she gave renown, 
 And strangers coming, all were taught t' admire 
 The learned lady, and the lofty spire." 
 
 Art does not consist in mannerisms, which often defeat the most 
 skillfully planned procedures. What kind of a temper and dis- 
 position Crabbe here wishes to make known is indicated to us 
 rather in spite than in consequence of the means employed. 
 Instead of selecting some single element or effect of character 
 which will enable us to discern experientially the whole, and from 
 thus knowing the soul lead us on to learn the mind so far as 
 requisite, Crabbe gives certain facts about the intelligence of his 
 heroine, while leaving the personality indeterminate. He tells us 
 her attainments were the talk of the town. That of course might 
 be true if ' Arabella ' were but a ridiculous blue-stocking ; and in 
 spite of all his efforts to engage our imagination we should incline 
 to that conclusion, but for the charitable assumption that the Tale 
 
218 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 could not have been written of such a person. Crabbe's nearest 
 approach to art here is doubtless in coupling Arabella and the 
 town steeple as objects that strangers were persuaded equally to 
 admire. Though this is not unlike Homer's making the gray- 
 haired Trojans discourse of Helen's beauty, it will scarcely be 
 accounted a success. Even a figure of speech must at least be 
 spiritually true, while this is but grossly and awkwardly Marinistic. 
 The whole paragraph by its very clumsiness and failure reminds 
 us of Shakespeare's method with Lady Macbeth and Desdemona, 
 — or indeed any of his women : he makes us first feel, then know. 
 He does not depend upon our charity to get his characters duly 
 launched. There is somewhat of spiritual repugnance — often 
 of sarcastic antipathy, in our Adamic nature, to advertised and 
 prospectused idealization, and this the poet must subjugate in 
 advance. By arousing sympathy Shakespeare forestalls all preju- 
 dice and levity. Only thus can the ludicrous types that lurk 
 behind the shadow of an ideal be laid. There is no other way to 
 sketch character with power. 
 
 For an example of the next higher sort of poetry, which shall 
 contain art indeed to the extent of epitomizing nature and inden- 
 tifying instances to the spiritually inexpert, we turn to our own 
 Bryant. Here is a poet who, born in an age and people that as 
 yet scarce dared to think of Providence as concerned for aught 
 save the elect, found the world full of evidence to the contrary. 
 How shall he set forth the new universal law ? He may state this 
 as a Bacon or an Emerson would declare it, to be apprehended 
 as a truth, leaving the feelings to concern themselves in their own 
 way with the consequences of the truth ; or he can exhibit what 
 is to be felt and let that do duty for the rest. The latter is the 
 poet's way, which Bryant of course, without debate or resolution, 
 will have found himself employing. The first step is to select 
 from the myriad of facts in nature some representative illustration 
 of his truth that may serve as an ' effect given ' to the feelings of 
 the reader. It must evidently be simple, and universal, and 
 familiar to the experiences of all. Hence, possibly on realistic 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 219 
 
 grounds and from actual observation, Bryant chooses the flight 
 of a bird in its spring migration as the basis and occasion of the 
 poem. The scientific mind would perhaps discern little else in 
 the incident than might thus be told — ' Anser ferus, or Bernicla 
 Canadensis : gray, with black head, neck, tail and feet ; white 
 cheek-patches and tail coverts ; gregarius ; migrans ; ' and may in 
 such literal items overlook for the moment the ultimate truth and 
 beauty beyond. Bryant, whose mind is intent upon these only, 
 to avoid associations antagonistic to his purpose, devises the 
 euphemistic title To a Waterfowl. Next, what shall be the time 
 and space relations? For the first step in the execution of the 
 poet's plan is to fix these so far as requisite. Bryant makes them 
 easily apparent by a dramatic opening : — 
 
 " Whither midst falling dew, 
 While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
 Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
 
 Thy solitary way ? " 
 
 But the author while clearly indicating the time when and the 
 place where to phantasy, may also engage imagination. It is 
 well to idealize the subject of a poem if possible at the outset, 
 and this Bryant has accomplished almost perhaps before he is 
 aware, through the reflection of his own exalted mood — by use of 
 question, and by idealizing the surroundings named. The princi- 
 pal expedient is association, which begins its work with even the 
 first word. The sympathy which is at once stirred by such a 
 presentation, and greatly assisted by ' solitary,' the author makes 
 haste to deepen by this negative stroke : — 
 
 " Vainly the fowler's eye 
 Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
 As, darkly limned upon the crimson sky, 
 
 Thy figure floats along." 
 
 The author now feels it is time to approach the significant part of 
 the whole, — namely the ' instinct ' or inspiration which is guiding 
 
220 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 the straggler, left behind by his sturdier companions, to the final 
 rendezvous. Expressed in the style already adopted, the facts he 
 will need to touch upon are these : ' Thou art going, thou knowest 
 not why, to join thy companions, thou knowest not whither. They 
 have reached, perhaps already, their specific summer haunts, which 
 thou, in obedience to impulses not of thyself though thine, wilt 
 quickly find. All day, swerving neither to left nor right, though 
 many expanses of water and signs of food have from time to time 
 allured, thou hast held to thy summons, and now, though the natu- 
 ral resting-time approaches, art still pressing towards the goal.' 
 There are many ways in which these items and many more, through 
 the use of associational and figurative terms, may be detailed poeti- 
 cally. Bryant more or less unconsciously feels it is better to express 
 all potentially in little, keeping the subject, Burns-like, close to the 
 sympathies of the reader, than literally in full after Denham's fashion. 
 He begins, accordingly, with the destination. He indicates, by a 
 deft question, that this is to be 
 
 " the plashy brink 
 Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
 Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
 On the chafed ocean-side " — 
 
 that is, in either the fresh or the salt marshlands of the far north ; 
 thus identifying, so far as consists with his poetic purpose, the 
 genus and species left undetermined by the title. Coming then to 
 the point proper, the poet sees no better course than to affirm, as 
 to himself, the secret or the ' final truth ' of the inspiration that 
 keeps the lone wanderer securely upon the track over which his 
 fellows have preceded : — 
 
 " There is a Power whose care 
 Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — 
 The desert and illimitable air — 
 
 Lone wandering, but not lost." 
 
 This is not a logical proposition to be argumentatively proved, 
 and the thought — or, rather, sentiment, — had best been cast in a 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 221 
 
 form not so directly addressed to the understanding. Yet such 
 is the lofty dignity of the language and the inspiration of the figures 
 that the mind of .the reader is perforce quickened instantly to 
 spiritual discernment. The passage as a whole, in consequence, 
 is not unworthy of a greater poet. Two stanzas of experiential 
 illustration, bringing to consciousness all that is essential from the 
 facts implied, now follow, and the author is ready for the conclusion. 
 This he makes consist of a skillful dramatic transition — 
 
 , "Thou'rt gone; the abyss of heaven 
 
 Hath swallowed up thy form;" 
 
 and, after the manner of stanza four, an application : — 
 
 " yet, on my heart 
 Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
 And shall not soon depart. 
 
 " He who, from zone to zone, 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 
 Will lead my steps aright." 
 
 That is, instead of making the whole poem an ' effect ' to imagina- 
 tion, and leaving the conclusion potential and unconditioned in 
 consciousness, the author ends by asserting openly and categori- 
 cally the lesson he intends it to convey. 
 
 The paramount rule in all art is, Attract and engage the feelings by 
 the first phase or stroke — that the mind, thus held to the theme 
 and playing about it intellectually, may realize implied details and 
 appropriate all further occasions of experiential interest. 1 Bryant 
 has made the present poem almost a masterpiece in this respect. 
 The second grand principle of art forbids the artist to reveal, or 
 attempt to reveal, spiritual truth except in its own speech and terms. 
 
 !The reader will hardly need reminding that this is nothing more than Milton's 
 rule of " simple, sensuous, passionate," applied at the very opening of a poem. 
 The first phase or stroke must be simple, must appeal strongly by association to the 
 senses, and must engage the feelings. 
 
222 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 Canvas must declare what has been put upon canvas, marble what 
 has been cut in marble. To tell the meaning of a sonata, or of a 
 poem, except in aid of those who are not yet quick in spiritual dis- 
 cernment, is an offense against nature. Browning has exemplified 
 this truth superbly in One Word More} As was implied at the 
 beginning, To a Waterfowl is a somewhat elementary object-les- 
 son in spiritual interpretation; and the author has made it a 
 poem with a moral. He, however, escapes an unartistic close by 
 giving the meaning under cover of his own reflections, — not as 
 formulating it for others. Why is a ' moral ' inartistic ? Because 
 it assumes the inability of one's fellows to discern even prepared 
 truth without a guide, or to appropriate it without a mentor. But 
 the fault of exhortation, which Bryant does not escape at the close 
 of his Thanatopsis, is wholly wanting here. 
 
 Moreover, the poem just considered affords a good illustration 
 of the attitudes of mind which produce the mode in poetry called 
 dramatic. The term properly signifies doing over again in the 
 presence of the reader, so far as possible, what has happened in 
 the experiences of the author. The device in the present case is 
 in effect a union of apostrophe and monologue. The subject is 
 addressed as if actually before the eye of the poet in the act of 
 flight. After the speaker makes it to have disappeared he con- 
 tinues in the attitude and mood of one who has just watched it 
 pass from sight. Similar are the opening of the Faerie Queene 
 and all like situations in which the details of an action are repre- 
 sented as actually taking place or the words of a speaker given as 
 in veritable utterance. Chaucer, for example, in the Prologue to 
 the Canterbury Tales, is narrative, but becomes dramatic when he 
 makes his Knight begin to speak. 
 
 One of the most difficult things to manage in authorship is the 
 approach of a poet to his audience. In the drama proper this 
 
 1 Browning in this poem attempts what Dante and Raphael attempted, and justi- 
 fies the effort, but with consummate art at the close — in the true way — confesses 
 to failure. The song he would have sung he can sing but in his brain. Neither 
 his emotion, nor the object which calls it forth, can be expressed except by itself. 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 223 
 
 difficulty is reduced to a convenient minimum ; the audience is in 
 effect ignored. The things enacted are set forth as happening 
 without eyes challenged to see or ears prepared to hear. When 
 we pass from the drama to more direct forms of poetry as the epic, 
 we not seldom find authors putting themselves to the disadvantage 
 of accounting or apologizing for their presence as uncommissioned 
 secular priests or self-constituted spiritual advisers. The classic 
 way was to put the responsibility at once upon the Muses ; and 
 this mannerism had not disappeared even in the days of Crabbe. 
 The ballad-makers and their imitators, on the contrary, broke Out 
 without preface into the boldest strains without thought of critic or 
 audience. Confident of their message and mastery, they disdained 
 ceremony ; and the methods of poetry from Coleridge to Tenny- 
 son have generally in consequence avoided introductions. More- 
 over, the plan of beginning with detailed narration, or description, 
 as in Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, and Eliza Cook's Melaia is 
 vaguely though not uncertainly felt to be too heavy, — really 
 because it conditions the imagination and prevents quick access 
 to the sympathies. Hence, by a sort of unconscious selection, 
 the most usual manner of poetic beginnings involves immediate 
 use of some time or space-circumstance, either in full dramatic 
 style, as in the poem of Bryant's just considered, or less definitely, 
 like the opening of Evangeline, Godiva, or Sohrab and Rustum. 
 Doubtless it is the more effective expedient to bring the reader to 
 the very ground like Tennyson in Godiva and Locksley Hall. 
 Longfellow in Evangeline makes as if he had his audience with him 
 in the primitive forests of Acadia, with very good effect. Thus in 
 general the dramatic method puts the reader most nearly in the 
 place of those whose experiences are the theme, and hence, 
 consciously or unconsciously, is most frequently selected by poets 
 who would produce most effects by fewest means. 
 
 The next higher, or highest form of art involves, in addition to 
 the presentation and interpretation of final truth and beauty, the 
 full persuasion and control of the sympathies in accordance with 
 such truth and beauty. We will illustrate by certain points from 
 Browning's Colombe's Birthday. 
 
224 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 The characters and happenings in this drama are imaginary. 
 The plot was devised by the author as means of illustrating the 
 truth that it is sometimes necessary to revolt against conventionali- 
 ties and environment and go back to first principles. The play may 
 be regarded as a companion study to Shakespeare's Othello, — in 
 which the revolt against environment was a mistake. 1 Here 
 Colombe, who is a second Desdemona, is loved and worshiped by 
 Valence, not because she first loved him but because of the ideal 
 worth which he spiritually discerns in her. To no other eyes save 
 his will she ever stand revealed so fully, in no other soul inspire such 
 noble emotion, from none other will be such homage proffered. 
 Here is a chivalrous and lordly nature, though wanting the world's 
 stamp, and here, on the other hand, in Berthold are the patent of 
 Philip and the Pope and prospect of an empire, but no knowledge 
 that life must be greatest and noblest in itself. Colombe can accept 
 nobility without a title, or a title without nobility. There is but 
 one choice, and the business of the play is to secure our approba- 
 tion. In some respects it is an old and well-worn theme. But 
 Browning has no intention of making a blooming, Apollo-like hero 
 outrival a repulsive villain. Valence is half-old with cares and 
 sorrow, Berthold is correct and honest, Colombe is a girl-woman 
 who has not yet learned the world. It will be evidently no easy 
 task to make an edifying play from types like these. 
 
 Every work of art must be self-introductory as well as self-explan- 
 atory. As there may be, at least here, no prologue or chorus to tell 
 the antecedent circumstances, such actors must be brought on as 
 will in natural interchange of speech reveal what we need to know. 
 This might be variously managed. Colombe might introduce the 
 whole, and in conversation with her maid be caused to speak of 
 the events of a year ago, and the maid then used to give her mis- 
 
 1 Othello and Desdemona were too far separated in race-traditions and sympa- 
 thies ever to be intelligible to each other, — as the awful chamber-dialogue before 
 the strangling makes clear. Had no Iago crossed their path, Othello would never 
 have read or divined the real nature of Desdemona. If he had comprehended one 
 tittle of her real worth, no Iago could have disturbed his peace. 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 225 
 
 tress and ourselves the hint of what is coming. But there are 
 many better ways. The imagination needs to be prepared for the 
 Duchess, and the Duchess to enlist our sympathies. Browning 
 having gone far enough to determine that the scenes enacted shall 
 take place upon Colombe's birthday, and this give name to the 
 play, begins by showing certain courtiers awaiting admission to pay 
 their duty to the Duchess. .One of these is reading the last lines 
 of a missive from the claimant, soon to be here in person. The 
 first words uttered make the past and much of the present clear : — 
 
 " Guibert. That this should be her birthday; and the day 
 We all invested her, twelve months ago, 
 As the late Duke's true heiress and our liege; 
 
 And that this also must become the day . . . [i.e. of her abdication] 
 Oh, miserable lady ! 
 
 ist Courtier. Ay, indeed? 
 
 zd Courtier. Well, Guibert? 
 
 3d Courtier. But your news, my friend, your news ! 
 
 The sooner, friend, one learns Prince Berthold's pleasure, 
 The better for us all : how writes the Prince? 
 Give me ! I'll read it for the common good. 
 
 Guibert. In time, sir, — but till time comes, pardon me ! 
 Our old Duke just disclosed his child's retreat, 
 Declared her true succession to his rule, 
 And died : this birthday was the day, last year, 
 We convoyed her from Castle Ravestein — 
 That sleeps out trustfully its extreme age 
 On the Meuse' quiet bank, where she lived queen 
 Over the water-buds, — to Juliers' court 
 With joy and bustle. Here again we stand; 
 Sir Gaucelme's buckle 's constant to his cap : 
 To-day 's much such another sunny day ! " 
 
 First impressions or ' effects ' are generally used by the mind to 
 their uttermost conclusions; and Browning wishes us to dislike 
 at once these courtiers — who stand for 'environment,' or the 
 world and its conventionalities — most cordially. So he turns 
 their first utterances and doings in this scene against them. He 
 will not make them odious collectively — that might react against 
 
226 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 their mistress — but singly, and will thus individualize each so far 
 as necessary. Guibert then well begins by piquing and refusing 
 to satisfy the curiosity of his fellows, insults Gaucelme by allusion 
 to his last year's cap, and ends with flinging the Prince's letter upon 
 the floor. The author sees next he may recommend the Duchess 
 to our fancy through them ; for though having only the most snap- 
 pish and spiteful feelings towards each other they would yet spare 
 her. Maufroy, the youngest, who may be assumed most under 
 the influence of his mistress, declares he could not, for all there 
 was to win, 
 
 " tell her on this happy day of days, 
 That, save the nosegay in her hand, perhaps, 
 There 's nothing left to call her own." 
 
 Also Sir Clugnet, the old man, world-wise and prudent, though he 
 first inquires ' what kind of a corner may be Ravestein,' answers 
 Guibert rebukingly to the same effect : — 
 
 " What man do you suppose me ? Keep your paper ! ' 
 And, let me say, it shows no handsome spirit 
 To dally with misfortune : keep your place ! " 
 
 All this supplies the needed ' effect ' which has been already appro- 
 priated by imagination. The process is the same as hitherto : 
 ' If these, being evil, evince only kindliness and consideration 
 towards their mistress, evidently none other than herself can have 
 inspired in them sentiments so foreign to their nature ; she must 
 be signally good and noble.' 2 
 
 1 Note the excellent sub-' effect ' in Guibert's refusing to hold the paper, while 
 he offers it with his ' indifferent honorable place,' until there is some expression 
 from the rest ; thus forcing any who under the conditions would succeed him to 
 pick it up. 
 
 2 That she is also signally beautiful is adequately hinted in what Guibert says 
 
 later: — 
 
 " Call tlie Prince our Duke ! 
 Then she 's no Duchess, she 's no anything 
 More than a young maid with the bluest eyes : 
 And now, sirs, we '11 not break this young maid's heart 
 Cooly as Gaucelme could and would!" 
 The reader will note or will have noted that this Gaucelme — quite evidently the 
 clearest head and coldest heart of the company — is used as a sort of moral counter- 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 227 
 
 The next step will naturally be to introduce Valence to the audi- 
 ence. Can the courtiers be used to his advantage ? Evidently ; 
 and Browning, reversing Shakespeare's order — who never relies 
 first on the physical — makes him appear in their despite by knock- 
 ing over the halberdiers that guard the entrance. The author does 
 not intend, at present, to do more than exalt this personage ; hence, 
 in preparation, has made Adolf but hint of the man's earnestness 
 and persistence. Will it answer to have him come thus before 
 these courtiers unknown ? No : ' hence he is made to recognize 
 Guibert, to whom he breaks out in an impassioned plea for Cleves. 
 Will this Guibert endure such an harangue meekly to the end ? 
 Evidently he could not in nature : it would be ludicrous to pretend 
 it. So Browning makes Guibert to have been helped in saving his 
 estate by this same Valence, — and to vent his spleen vicariously 
 at being accosted upon Clugnet. Here the scene in effect is 
 finished. The author skillfully and speedily prepares for the next 
 by effecting through Gaucelme and Guibert, — who think their 
 lady can hardly notice this messenger, much less reward him, that 
 Valence present Prince Berthold's manifesto and thus gain audience 
 with the Duchess as one of them. 
 
 The author, then, in the first division of his poem has succeeded 
 in arousing our feelings against the courtiers, as they deserve ; 
 and, by showing him in comparison a man above thoughts of 
 self and ready to lend himself to an ideal, has exalted Valence. 
 How next shall he idealize the Duchess ? For he must now bring 
 her face to face with these courtiers and ourselves who wait. 
 
 One of the most significant and telling traits in women who have 
 charms and can exact homage is unconsciousness of such charms. 
 Browning can see no better characteristic with which to begin his 
 task here, especially if he may couple with it the desire to compass 
 joy for others. Yet were it not well to indicate first that Colombe 
 
 poise to the character who here speaks. Gaucelme proposes, and Guibert, with 
 some transfer of responsibility to his tempter, executes. Moreover, the reader should 
 observe how deftly, in the last two lines, the impressions Browning has given us of 
 Colombe are sympathetically utilized. 
 
228 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 is gifted with women's subtlest, most unerring intuition? So he 
 makes her diviqe the cause of her maid's delay, and some little of 
 the shadow about to fall upon her fortunes. - 
 
 " The Duchess. Announce that I am ready for the court ! 
 
 Sabyne. T is scarcely audience-hour, I think ; your Grace 
 May best consult your own relief, no doubt, 
 And shun the crowd : but few can have arrived. 1 
 
 The Duchess. Let those not yet arrived, then, keep away ! 
 'T was me, this day last year at Ravestein, 
 You hurried. It has been full time, beside, 
 This half-hour. Do you hesitate ? 
 
 Sabyne. Forgive me ! 
 
 The Duchess. Stay, Sabyne ; let me hasten to make sure 
 Of one true thanker : here with you begins 
 My audience, claim you first its privilege ! 
 It is my birth's event they celebrate : 
 You need not wish me more such happy days, 
 But — ask some favor ! Have you none to ask ? 
 Has Adolf none, then? This was far from least 
 Of much I waited for impatiently, 
 Assure yourself ! It seemed so natural 
 Your gift, beside this bunch of river-bells, 
 Should be the power and leave of doing good 
 To you, and greater pleasure to myself. 
 You ask my leave to-day to marry Adolf? 
 The rest is my concern. 
 
 Sabyne. Your Grace is ever 
 
 Our lady of dear Ravestein, — but, for Adolf . . . 
 
 The Duchess. ' But '? You have not, sure, changed in your regard 
 And purpose towards him ? 
 
 Sabyne. We change? 
 
 The Duchess. Well then? Well? 
 
 Sabyne. How could we two be happy, and, most like, 
 Leave Juliers, when — when . . . but 't is audience-time ! 
 
 The Duchess. ' When, if you left me, I were left indeed ! ' 
 Would you subjoin that? — Bid the court approach ! 
 — Why should we play thus with each other, Sabyne? 
 
 1 Note the contradiction in this last line. It is evidently the instant apprehension 
 of this ' effect ' that calls forth the following emphatic rejoinder. Thus does indirec- 
 tion often unwittingly betray itself. 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 229 
 
 Do I not know, if courtiers prove remiss, 
 If friends detain me, and get blame for it, 
 There is a cause? Of last year's fervid throng 
 Scarce one half comes now.'' 
 
 The courtiers are admitted — twelve, as counted for our benefit 
 by Maufroy earlier, besides Valence in his torn, bespattered cloak 
 — and the Duchess is reassured. As, waiving formality, she passes 
 about conversing with each group, the author makes Valence in 
 soliloquy reveal that his enthusiasm for Cleves owes its inspiration 
 to the graciousness and beauty of this same Duchess : — 
 
 " 'T is she — the vision this day last year brought, 
 When, for a golden moment at our Cleves, 
 She tarried in her progress hither. Cleves 
 Chose me to speak its welcome, and I spoke 
 
 — Not that she could have noted the recluse 
 
 — Ungainly, old before his time — who gazed. 
 Well, Heaven's gifts are not wasted, and that gaze 
 Kept, and shall keep me to the end, her own ! 
 She was above it — but so would not sink 
 
 My gaze to earth ! The People caught it, hers — 
 Thenceforward, mine ; but thus entirely mine, 
 Who shall affirm, had she not raised my soul 
 Ere she retired and left me — them ? She turns — 
 There 's all her wondrous face at once ! The ground 
 Reels and . . . [suddenly occupying himself 'with his paper ,] 
 These wrongs of theirs I have to plead ! " 
 
 How shall Valence begin his plea? It will not do that Guibert 
 present him formally, nor that he present himself. Now it becomes 
 clear that Browning has made the Duchess leave her position and 
 mingle among the groups that she may approach Valence in course. 
 As she does so, the author has but to make Guibert call her atten- 
 tion to the stranger and, naming his city, bid him advance : — 
 
 " The Duchess. And you, sir, are from Cleves ? How fresh in mind, 
 The hour or two I passed at queenly Cleves ! 
 
230 THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 
 
 She entertained me bravely, but the best 
 Of her good pageant seemed its standers-by 
 With unsuppressive joy on every face ! 
 What says my ancient, famous, happy Cleves? " 
 
 Guibert thought to use Valence but as a hand which should extend, 
 without speech, Prince Berthold's missive, and cut off all audience 
 for Cleves with the Duchess after. But the plan, through her 
 gracious question, woefully miscarries. Here is an opportunity for 
 telling, decisive dramatic strokes, which Browning is not slow 
 to seize. He has but to let the allegation of ' wrongs ' stir the 
 Duchess to a demand for the document recounting them; to 
 make Valence, about presenting the paper, bethink himself of his 
 ' debt,' and give her the Prince's demand instead, and Guibert, 
 seeing Valence already in favor, cry " Stay ! for the present.'' 
 The Duchess, understanding nothing, takes the paper and reads 
 — not the wrongs of Cleves, but the claims of Berthold. 
 
 There are many ways in which the situation might have been 
 used to idealize Colombe ; Browning follows naturally along the 
 course prepared. Here are no hysterics, no tears, no perturba- 
 tion — ' effects ' whose conclusions would have severally belied the 
 truth ; here is nothing but the sublime triumph over adversity of 
 a soul that has long since triumphed over itself : — 
 
 " Prince Berthold, who art Juliers' Duke it seems — 
 The King's choice, and the Emperor's, and the Pope's — 
 Be mine, too ! Take this People ! Tell not me 
 Of rescripts, precedents, authorities, 
 — But take them, from a heart that yearns to give ! 
 Find out their love, — I could not; find their fear, — 
 I would not; find their like, — I never shall, 
 Among the flowers ! [ Taking off her coronet 
 
 Colombe of Ravestein 
 Thanks God she is no longer Duchess here ! " 
 
 This is superb, though it suggests only types potentially revealed 
 before. May there not be further idealization ? Browning divines 
 
THE PROVINCE OF LITERARY ART. 231 
 
 ' effects ' that may yet be used, resources of character of which the 
 Duchess herself is unaware. How shall these be reached and 
 roused ? 
 
 Valence stands by quivering with wrath, as the real Valence 
 must certainly have done, at having been thus used against the 
 Duchess. May he not strike to earth the man who has through 
 him insulted her? 1 As the courtiers hold back Guibert, springing 
 to the challenge, that he may not disgrace himself by recognizing 
 ' the clothier's spokesman ' and a ' churl,' the Duchess is kindled 
 to surprising irony. Reading in her gibes his mistress's complete 
 sympathy with Valence, Guibert is drawn to his knees with the 
 customary cant of readiness to die for her, and on making clear 
 certain points until now unappreciated receives a sort of paren- 
 thetic pardon. For the Duchess is really preoccupied with the 
 remark — let drop, perhaps, not without intention — that this is 
 only ' a nameless, mere provincial advocate.' Yet ' this nameless 
 advocate whom she has never seen, much less obliged,' at the risk 
 of his life defends her dignity, and proposes yet to punish, for a 
 constructive insult to herself already pardoned, one of her people. 
 Here is loyalty ; here is devotion — something indeed worth being 
 Duchess for, worth at any cost staying Duchess to keep. There 
 is evidently a climax within easy reach. Browning has but to 
 make her cry out, — meaning she knows not what, bringing she 
 realizes not what consequences, in an access of enthusiasm — 
 
 " How many are at Cleves of such a mind? 
 Or stay, sir — lest I seem too covetous — 
 Are you my subject ? Such as you describe, 
 Am I to you, though to no other man? 
 
 1 By the device of making Valence ask if he may strike, the author avoids a vul- 
 gar castigation-scene, yet derives for his hero all the credit of such rudimentary 
 justice. (Cf. p. 103.) In other words, he carries our sympathy to the extent of 
 the blow — very much in keeping with a play of first principles — at the same time 
 spares it as a fact. Moreover, we should not overlook the human nature as well as 
 art by which the chastisement of Guibert is selected as the means or ' occasion ' of 
 arousing the Duchess's enthusiasm. No homage is so irresistible to a Colombe as, 
 through man's best of physical strength and daring, this of protection. 
 
242 THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 
 
 the physical portion of our service is at a maximum, the intellectual 
 at the minimum, and the wages are, in consequence, of the lowest. 
 Yet is it incorrect to say that the physical element alone, or the 
 physical and the intellectual element together, determine the 
 amount of wages ; for we shall find there is a moral, or as it is 
 best to say, a spiritual, element even in the labor of the trench- 
 digger. If he should lean upon his shovel every minute the over- 
 seer's eye is turned, he would hardly find employment a single 
 day. Honesty of purpose to do that for which he is hired, perse- 
 verance, and steadiness of application minute by minute and hour 
 by hour are no less than sentiments and belong to character. But 
 they lie so completely at the foundation as to be taken for granted 
 in the lower kinds of service, hence are seldom recognized by an 
 element in the wages, though these would be reduced to a very 
 uncertain and shifting quantity without them. But digging trenches 
 means eating one's bread by the sweat of one's brow. As there is 
 less curse upon that labor which is less onerous, we aspire, we 
 endeavor to reduce the physical and enlarge the directive or intel- 
 lectual factor. We thus become carters, it may be, or artisans, and 
 so upward, until we have reduced the muscular effort perhaps to 
 the moving of a pen. If it be an expert accountant who wields 
 the pen, the emolument will of course be large, though the service 
 still continues intellectual, and so also if the wield er be an Edison, 
 an Ericsson, or a Captain Eads. But suppose the paper over 
 which the pen is moving be some manuscript of Tennyson. There 
 
 compensation such service will secure. Thus in the lowest forms of labor, in which 
 the brain is hardly more than directive to the muscles, the intellectual portion is 
 reduced to a mere point at the extremity of the line, and the compensation be- 
 comes indeterminate. In like manner, when the intellectual part of a service 
 grows to the top of the diagonal, and the physical, reduced perhaps to an oral 
 sentence or even a gesture of direction, in turn diminishes to a point at the ex- 
 tremity of the upper line, the compensation is of the largest. For, mathemati- 
 cally speaking, the part of the line cut off at the right by the diagonal is the 
 intellectual factor of the service, by which the base is to be multiplied. 
 
 The third dimension, as will be later shown, serves to illustrate how the spiritual 
 factor enters into a man's relations with society, and fixes his worth and 
 station. 
 
THE MORAL USES OP ART AND POETRY. 243 
 
 the intellectual element of the service becomes subordinate along 
 with the physical, as we pay him twenty guineas a page, perhaps a 
 guinea, two guineas, a line, or even a guinea a word. Why this 
 discrimination against the head book-keeper? Because the service 
 of a Tennyson or a Shakespeare does not remain upon the pages 
 of a ledger, but enters into our consciousness and becomes an 
 expanded part of our own selves. It is hardly worth while to 
 inquire whether Paganini is or is not overpaid for his bowings and 
 shiftings, or Patti for her trills, or Bierstadt for his brush-strokes. 
 Muscular movements in each case there most positively and pal- 
 pably are, but they can scarcely be graded under the head of labor. 
 It also helps little to declare that such are non-productive services. 
 The Chicago fire was one of the most unproductive events in the 
 history of this country, yet has proved a means of most unexam- 
 pled prosperity. There can be no adequate understanding of 
 what ' productive ' means so long as we ignore or belittle the 
 moral element. Whatever evokes latent possibilities or exalts best 
 energies, whether through delectation or calamity, is a benefaction. 
 Whoever inspires men to come to their best, or brings them under 
 the control of more ennobling ideals, is the greatest of benefactors. 
 Thus we are brought to the difference between the honest purposes 
 and the application of the trench-digger and the seership of a 
 Tennyson. The one is a matter of trust and conscientiousness, in 
 some degree common to all men, the other is a thing of inspira- 
 tion. But both conscientiousness and inspiration are alike in being 
 neither physical nor intellectual manifestations, but spiritual. The 
 one is the factor of solidity which conditions and determines worth 
 in the individual, the other tends to enlarge the factor and raise 
 the average of character in society at large. 1 
 
 1 The reference, in factor of solidity, is of course to the diagram already consid- 
 ered at the bottom of p. 241. 
 
 Man begins his career seriously in the world when he performs his earliest ser- 
 vice. As a child he but played at merchandizing, or carpentry, or being doctor, or 
 such other callings as he fancied he might engage in as a man. Now, having met 
 with an actual demand for his labor, which he will in honor endeavor to supply, he 
 constructs his square, and proceeds to make it of three dimensions by adding pro- 
 
244 THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 
 
 But character implies enlightenment and to some extent inde- 
 pendent ability to read the open spiritual secrets of man and 
 nature. In other words, a man's place and station are fixed by 
 the degree of his better development, by his maximum of spirit- 
 uality. In our Gothic civilization there has never been in reality 
 any other division into classes than upon this principle of spiritual 
 excellence. The old nobility in a gross and elemental way prefig- 
 ured it ; the idea of modern gentry postulates it very definitely. 
 Even in Anglo-Saxon times estates and thaneship were held no 
 substitute for worth, but unequivocally presupposed in the hlaford 
 and his lady the essential qualities of nobility. In early Scandina- 
 via the only grounds of distinction were valor and minstrelsy ; and 
 titles are yet conferred, as on a Wellington or Nelson, a Macaulay 
 or a Tennyson, for that Viking energy which has nerved and led 
 men to victory and the saving of a state, or a Brage-literature that 
 can edify and inspire for successive generations. But there is no 
 patent of nobility save the reverence with which, by common con- 
 sent, a Washington, an Emerson, a Shakespeare, and all others who 
 reach the highest plane, are recognized and exalted. 1 
 
 Very absurd then is it to maintain there should be no castes, that 
 all men without preparation or probation have a right to the same 
 distinctions and prerogatives as the few. Man-made castes are one 
 thing; but what of those which God has made? May they be 
 abolished speedily ? For some there are who would seem to insist 
 
 visionally at least one unit of volume. If he prove a man of constitutionally sterling 
 and solid traits, and rises in consequence to successive positions of trust, the emol- 
 ument of his service will increase proportionally, so long as the moral element con- 
 tinues objective. But if the sum of moral quality becomes energic and rises to 
 inspiration, the spiritual factor will rapidly increase and perhaps subordinate the 
 intellectual and the physical elements together. Here, indeed, our diagram fails 
 us ; for with a Lincoln or Grant or Skobeleff or Shakespeare, who lead men beyond 
 themselves and change the current of destiny both of individuals and of states, the 
 third dimension is no longer the side of a cube, but becoming indeterminate may 
 approach infinity. 
 
 1 See pp. 102 and 94. Those who exhibit a high degree of spiritual quality in 
 merely objective forms are signally respected and beloved by the community at large. 
 Thus even here the processes of idealization begin. 
 
THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 24S 
 
 that the trench- digger should work no more hours than Tennyson, 
 and that both should have equal remuneration. Here we come 
 down to the root of the matter. Why, indeed, should the one toil 
 ten hours to the day year in and out on low diet and hard wages, 
 while the other works but when he pleases on a princely income ? 
 Political economy aside, where is the justice ? 
 
 Herein is a great mystery. How does it happen that we must 
 all substantially give up pur lives to labor? Why not instead have 
 leisure ? For man just as easily might have been so adapted to 
 his environment, or his natural environment so adapted to man, as 
 to, give him perfect command of his time. Taking human nature 
 as we find it, the answer is, clearly, because he would not have 
 been good for anything without it. We think we should devote 
 our time to self-improvement, but if we had absolute leisure we 
 should not improve at all ; for the more complex and exacting the 
 necessity to work becomes, all the more do we do outside for self- 
 improvement and the betterment of others. If there were no 
 daily labor, there would be no momentum towards anything. The 
 necessity to toil in order to secure food and clothes and shelter 
 destroys native inertia and creates momentum. When after many 
 generations this momentum can safely be counted upon as con- 
 stant, that which produces it may be withdrawn, — that is, labor 
 becomes more and more intellectual, and may end in leisure. Thus 
 only is the opportunity for full self-improvement gained ; for lei- 
 sure properly means option as to what we shall do, never choice 
 not to do at all. It is that condition of our fortunes which en- 
 ables us to send another to perform what we do not care to do 
 ourselves, and implies freedom to do that to which we are most 
 anxious to give ourselves. When leisure has meant nothing but 
 time-killing for a couple of generations, the old inertia is restored 
 and work is needed — and generally comes, in order to release 
 again from the restored inertia. Hence the obvious fact that each 
 race or nation at any given time possesses in general all the wealth 
 or leisure it deserves. It is only by the hard discipline of labor 
 that we become fit to do without it. For the law of survival in 
 
246 THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 
 
 human society is something more than a convenient name ; it is an 
 awful fact. Its operation in the physical stage cuts off all those 
 who are unequal to the hard conditions of existence : we may say, it 
 guards first the approach to the physical life. But when society has 
 reached the stage of comfortable dwellings, well-cooked food, and 
 somewhat of medical skill, when the plan of exchange of services 
 has been evolved by each man taking some one thing to do for his 
 neighbors as well as for himself and letting his neighbors severally 
 according to their bent do the other things for him, — then the 
 operation of the law is shifted to the next higher plane. It is now 
 set to guard the approach to the intellectual life. The physically 
 weakest may now, on account of great mental strength, become the 
 fittest to survive, and the destroying angel passes their door-posts by. 
 But those who have derived the lighter type of constitution adapted 
 to brain work, but prove unequal to a place in the sphere of intellec- 
 tual employment, must go down again to the physical whether 
 they can endure existence there or no, and are thus either cut off, 
 or becoming hardened in constitution prepare to try once more 
 through their descendants to secure foothold in the plane above. 
 There is no greater marvel in the working of this social law than 
 the readiness with which means are provided for the rise from the 
 physical to the intellectual plane when a race is ready. Even the 
 dank and treacherous shores of the North Sea may become a Hol- 
 land, even the bleak and barren wilderness of the Pilgrims and 
 Puritans may become New England. There is no limit to the 
 resources and expedients of nature for multiplying those wants and 
 services which create wealth when a people can be trusted with it. 
 On the other hand, there is also no limit to the devices of nature 
 for excluding the unfitted from the plane of leisure. Even self- 
 interest has a moral use. The selfishness of capitalists and 
 employers keeps down the unworthy. The man who would spend 
 ten dollars a day upon coarse pleasures if he could get it, in gen- 
 eral will get but ten dollars a week. But suppose that he who has 
 worked off the curse of toil spends his allotment of leisure still in 
 the physical sphere. It is an anomaly, an anachronism, which 
 
THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 247 
 
 nature abhors. All such are soon cut off as cumberers of the 
 ground — nay, are caused even to become their own executioners. 
 . To the brain-worker dissipation is more dangerous and deadly 
 than the plague. The man for whom nature has made a place in the 
 sphere of intellect and refinement, but whose home is in the senses, 
 whose ideal of perfect felicity is dice and pipes and beer over an 
 alehouse table, is by these very facts an outcast from his station. 
 There are more reasons than one why the wealth-acquiring stage 
 is not reached in any civilization until the people are substantially 
 above the physical plane. In cases where it comes too soon, the 
 possession of leisure is the means of destroying that leisure. When 
 a millionaire leaves his estate to unworthy sons, it is soon squan- 
 dered, and they must go to work again as common bread-winners. 
 But their sons will perhaps acquire wealth again in turn, and 
 will so endow their children that they can be effectively taught 
 the uses and value of leisure, so that there shall be no more going 
 backward. Nature punishes abuse of the power to command 
 other people's services as inexorably as she punishes sensuality, 
 though with a lighter penalty. 
 
 All this of course at first seems pitiless, and prodigal of human 
 souls. But there is compensation. While society, almost like an 
 animal organism, is continually eliminating whatever disturbs or 
 irritates or poisons from its blood and tissues, each generation 
 comes upon the stage with some inherent advantage over the pre- 
 ceding. Other things being equal, there is higher organic quality 
 in the offspring than in the parent. Whatever is eminent in one 
 generation, as speed in the horse, will be represented under 
 proper conditions with greater eminence in the next. In the 
 normal course of heredity, the son shows some certain advance 
 over his parents in sharpness of intellect and fineness of suscep- 
 tibility. Moreover, the common ideals, the common objects and 
 ends of aspiration, are daily changing for the better. When time 
 is ripe, some especial new enlightenment possesses the con- 
 sciousness of each given generation. Certain minds, for example, 
 find themselves aware of the iniquity of the slave-trade, and in 
 
248 THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 
 
 obedience to a common impulse the evil is crushed out. A 
 generation later other minds awake to the conviction that property 
 in slaves is wrong, and a sentiment springs up which removes the 
 blot from the face of society. The operation of this principle, 
 which, popularly speaking, we call the Law of Progress, can be 
 traced everywhere in organic and inorganic nature, and governs 
 each phase of development and change. As privileges increase, 
 as temptations to abuse wealth, and influence, and leisure multiply, 
 counteracting influences enlarge themselves in superior propor- 
 tion. It is a law in many respects inscrutable, and can only be 
 accounted for, — to borrow well worn terms, as an especial mani- 
 festation of the First Cause. But its effect is evident enough. It 
 merely adds another to the multitude of parallel forces whose 
 resultant makes toward the universal end. For it should now be 
 no anticipation to say that all the normal forces of society, — 
 indeed all the energy of the First Cause himself, so far as we can 
 know it, is in operation to lift the race to the spiritual plane. 
 Religion, and education, and art, and music, and literature are 
 allied in operation to this universal end. Even the ordinary 
 procedures of industry belong to the scheme, as will be later 
 shown. 
 
 Here then we have the offset, the counterbalance, to the 
 pitiless law of survival, which in some cases seems to deny the 
 poorly endowed and unfortunate a fair chance in life. The new 
 principle is as inclusive as the former is exclusive. It is clear 
 that the purpose of this law is not merely the greatest good to the 
 greatest number, but all good to every soul just so far as he 
 shall be capable and willing to receive it. Moreover, it is a uni- 
 versal law, and holds good in every department of intellectual 
 and spiritual expansion. In its operation there are always three 
 principal steps or stages, — Revelation, the Elevation of a Chosen 
 People, and the Calling of the Gentiles to the same rank as the 
 chosen ; or, to be more specific, the genius of the age proceeds 
 first through the highest forms of art to reveal, then in an ex- 
 clusive ex-cathedra science to organize and conserve, but finally 
 
THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 1W 
 
 to popularize. We may trace an illustration from the history of 
 modern letters and learning, since with these we are all doubtless 
 most familiar. We go back, of course, to Homer and Hesiod, 
 ^Eschylus and Pindar, the earliest models in literature, and Thales 
 and Plato and Aristotle, the first seers or revealers of philosophic 
 truth. It was truly with reference to the modern world an 
 age of beginnings. To understand and appreciate these minds 
 in their day required almost a kindred genius. Then at length, 
 when there were no more Platos and Aristotles or Sapphos and 
 Pindars, men set about the scientific study of what these had 
 done. But only the choicest spirits might aspire to appropriate 
 their work and be their interpreters to a wondering world. Hence 
 we find in due time a self-constituted aristocracy of intellect and 
 culture, and we know its period of supremacy in Athens, Rome, 
 Alexandria, and Constantinople. 
 
 But when the scepter passed from these capitals of culture, the 
 illumination of the first great minds was not extinguished. Though 
 buried in a dead or disused language, it still shone upon the 
 world, and it was not yet necessary that new revealers should 
 appear. Scholastic learning sprang up ; astrology, alchemy, and 
 magic carried old dogmas and assumptions to logical and practical 
 conclusions. One thing was most potently within the conscious- 
 ness of the age, — that nothing but exceptional endowment or 
 privilege could warrant admission to the guild of learning. When 
 the. Renaissance appeared, the splendor and perfection of the 
 classic past were exhibited that the world might realize the 
 necessity and worth of lofty standards. But all was Pharisaic 
 exclusion and cant and pedantry. The Renaissance set copies 
 for her school-boys, and modern literature was cramped or 
 wrenched into its procrustean forms. In education it was thought 
 rather an extraordinary accomplishment to know Greek. Not 
 every scholar who tried could acquire it. The teacher, more- 
 over, always assumed in his students the intuitive ability to dis- 
 cern and grasp for themselves all underlying principles. If they 
 could not do this, the teacher gave up the case. To be a scholar 
 
250 THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 
 
 was to be one of the chosen. It was therefore no part of his task 
 to develop the intuitive powers. His time was too valuable, his 
 position too lofty to begin farther back than a ready-made 
 aptitude on his pupils' part. Hence in the old learning the 
 favored few, who were found able at once to appreciate and 
 appropriate or imitate the great models, were brought into all 
 possible prominence, while the slow-witted and the dullards were 
 left alone in their discouragement. 
 
 But the period of the chosen people in learning and education 
 has happily passed away. The Renaissance did its work thor- 
 oughly ; and though it spoiled some generations of scholars and 
 authors before its effect was reached, it has yet been of incalcula- 
 ble benefit to every mind. It would have taken centuries for the 
 Gothic north to evolve its own correct and perfect models of lit- 
 erary form and style, which were thus borrowed ready-made. 
 Then it would have taken centuries more to prepare the people 
 for the common ideal of a free and universal education. Thus it 
 has immeasurably hastened the calling of the Gentiles, the eleva- 
 tion of the masses toward the intellectual and the higher life. In 
 education, the teacher is no longer a Gamaliel, selecting his 
 pupils and proselytes by arbitrary preference ; he has become 
 all things to all men. He has changed the assumptions and 
 postulates which underlie his work. He now assumes he does 
 have time to consider the individual needs and endowments of 
 his learners. He busies himself in so arranging the practical tasks 
 he sets that even the most backward will discover and generalize 
 for himself the involved and underlying principles. As a result, 
 there is often found in the end little practical difference between 
 the precocious and the plodding student. Little by little he brings 
 the one as well as the other to the lofty plane where once the 
 Aristotles and the Dantes stood alone. But perhaps in music we 
 may see the fullest exhibition of development under the law last 
 named, and all comprised within the limits of little more than a 
 single century. First, the group of masters from John Sebastian 
 Bach to Beethoven ; then the period of organization and systema- 
 
THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 251 
 
 tization, or of reducing the new music from an art to a science ; 
 then the present stage of popular appropriation, when talents 
 below the average are equal to the execution and interpretation of 
 the most difficult compositions, — when, indeed, a man without 
 extraordinary musical gifts has become Richard Wagner. To 
 think the thoughts of a master after him who can interpret life 
 and nature to the ear is an accomplishment worth surely all it 
 costs. Much is said against the education in music of the unmu- 
 sical ; not a little also against the instruction in drawing and paint- 
 ing of those whose sense of form and color is not acute. But 
 those who know what has been done for such, not only technically, 
 but also spiritually, are silenced. It is clearly the voice of the 
 times that all slumbering senses of spiritual beauty be awakened. 
 When the blind can be made to see by surgery, we raise a purse 
 to secure the surgical aid, in the name of a common humanity. 
 No one, of course, insists that all should be trained with reference 
 to becoming skillful performers or artists. It is not the purpose 
 of the public schools to raise up Miltons or Macaulays, but to 
 enable all to hold communion with such great minds if they will. 
 Hence we feel it is little short of an imperative duty, for the sake 
 of the general good, to enable every soul, according to its ca- 
 pacity, to find the inspiration there may be in any and every 
 thing that possesses spiritual quality. 
 
 Hence among the forces which operate directly to the universal 
 end, in what we may call a secular way, are art and literature. 1 
 Art has a province of the broadest, assumes a task no less than 
 
 i We make a distinction here between secular and religious spirituality, not 
 because such difference exists in fact, but for convenience merely, since of the 
 latter it is not our purpose or province to treat. God is not religious, but exists in 
 a condition of consciousness which transcends religion. True culture consists in 
 making man godlike, not in making him merely or exclusively devout. Until man 
 can be led to apprehend the Divine in other things beside those which pertain to his 
 soul's salvation, his spiritual life must be what is called religious exclusively. But 
 there is no means by which a man may be physical in his touch and appropriation 
 of the world, and religious merely in things beyond. If he has not been lifted out 
 of the lower circles, he will be unable to read the open secrets of the higher life 
 without an interpreter, and his spiritual equilibrium will be unstable. 
 
252 THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 
 
 interpreting the real and final meaning of all manifestations of hue 
 and form in matter, whether lovely or unlovely. Whether there 
 be really a universe of matter, or, as chemists and physicists are 
 beginning to believe, only a vast aggregation of force centers, 
 makes no difference. Indeed, upon the latter hypothesis, art 
 would be interpretable more easily. To prepare the modern age 
 for its attainments in the interpretative powers of art has been as 
 long a process as the evolution of modern letters. The works of 
 Raphael, like the works of Homer, do not to-day seem to us so 
 great as we expect ; they were the message to a past age, and not 
 to us. We would not have the works of either repeated or mul- 
 tiplied to-day by living hands were this possible. The paintings 
 and frescoes of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and their fellows were 
 the opening miracles of the coming kingdom of art. Nothing less 
 could strike the sense of their times. The art of the present, 
 which teaches by its humble unheroic themes, which has come 
 down from crucifixions and last judgments to slumberous meadows, 
 with only kine and cowslips in the foreground, is as the still 
 small voice after the whirlwind and the tempest and the fire. 
 The greater and more moving spectacles opened the eyes and soul 
 of their peculiar generation, when began the operation of the law 
 which we know, though it has taken five centuries to reach our 
 times. Then the kingdom of art came with observation. Now the 
 kingdom of art is within ourselves. The common artistic sense is 
 now aware, not only that every phenomenon of form, but also of 
 sound, every slightest change in the world of matter, echoes across 
 the chasm which separates flesh from spirit. No slumbering sense 
 or capacity of the soul but may be awakened through some cer- 
 tain experience or analogy. The passing cloud, the patter of the 
 rain, the patient sunshine, are all eloquent to the sentient soul, 
 though there be no speech or language, though their voice is not 
 heard. ' Poetry and art shall fail, the sentiments of the soul shall 
 cease,' certain narrow, blinded scientists have said, ' because 
 knowledge shall be all in all.' Is it not, on the contrary, clear 
 that new material knowledge will but broaden the experiences of 
 
THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 253 
 
 the soul and multiply the avenues which approach it ? No item 
 of new knowledge but has such transcendent promise. To the 
 keen spiritual eye of an Emerson, even the stakes of his Concord 
 fences tell truths old before the foundation of the world. 
 
 While art tends thus to make outside nature spiritually signifi- 
 cant to us, it is the office of literature to bring all men to each 
 other, and make common each serviceable sentiment and thought. 
 As we saw in the last chapter, it is institutionally adapted to give 
 every man access to his fellows with whatever single item or ele- 
 ment of truth may have been revealed to him alone. Moreover, in 
 bringing all men thus together, literature will register and exhibit 
 marked differences in types and personality. There is nothing 
 which influences us so immediately and powerfully as character. 
 A new characteristic may bring into operation a new ideal. 1 Even 
 familiar traits in a new proportion may have all the effect of the 
 rarest personality. Thus through literature — according to the 
 realistic mode now being evolved in poetry and novels — the effect 
 of common qualities, as the manliness and integrity of the trench- 
 digger, may be utilized. All our ideals come from concrete forms. 
 An abstract quality in itself may 'be very unattractive, or even 
 incomprehensible, but seen in the actual may enchant all eyes. 
 The types of womanhood in Shakespeare have changed the lives 
 of many who had never found it possible before to believe in the 
 truth and dignity of human nature. 
 
 But literature not only brings other men's thoughts and experi- 
 ences to us ; it takes us out of ourselves into the thoughts and 
 experiences of other men. As was indicated in Chapter IX., sel- 
 fishness is incident to the isolation and individuality of the ego, 
 and cannot be eliminated from human nature. But it may be re- 
 deemed and ennobled when confined thus to its higher, spiritual 
 aspects. To this end the transactions and engagements of every- 
 day life contribute. Every dollar earned by the trench-digger helps 
 put a dollar in the pocket of his employer, and helps save a dollar 
 to the whole community which needs his services. Let each wage- 
 
 1 See p. 94, par. a. 
 
254 THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 
 
 earner spend less than he earns and save the daily difference. It 
 may win leisure, if he deserve to have it, in his own lifetime, — 
 should certainly secure it for the next generation. So each 
 man in achieving leisure helps achieve it for his fellows; and 
 leisure knocks, or should knock, on the door to the spiritual life. 
 Again, the technical and systematized processes of business and of 
 commerce, the indirect and generalized methods of recovering 
 the value of services rendered, tend to minimize selfishness and 
 enlarge the heart. Once each man shot his own venison, caught 
 his own fish, cultivated his own grains, and at each turn of the 
 hand selfishness was fostered. As he carried home the game 
 upon his shoulders and felt its fat proportions, his anticipations 
 were concerned but with the senses. All the time he was forced 
 to contemplate some imminent good to his single self. But 
 merely by the exchange of services society has thrust back self at 
 least one remove from conscious sight. It may provoke a smile to 
 say that the pleading of our lawyers, the attendance of our physi- 
 cians, and the enterprise of our merchants are altruistic, yet, rela- 
 tively, is this in effect the truth. It is far easier for a man to give 
 gold from his pocket than an .ox from his stall ; it is far easier to 
 give a check upon one's banker than gold from one's purse. It is 
 indeed scarcely possible longer even for the miser to gloat over his 
 heaps of gold ; it must be rather the balance on his bank-book. But 
 even his double-eagles on deposit are a blessing to others whether 
 he will or no. Then there are the many and various services which 
 put selfishness much farther than one remove away from the con- 
 sciousness of those that do them. When a man gives his labor or 
 his substance for no advantage to himself save the betterment of 
 others, living in their experiences as they were his own, then is 
 the higher life manifestly vigorous within. " He who findeth his 
 life shall lose it" was once a most intractable dogma. I think 
 we of to-day well understand how, even in a secular sense, he that 
 shall lose his life in the material sphere shall more than find it in 
 the spiritual. 
 But literature and art are the most potent instruments of spirit- 
 
THE MORAL USES OF ART AND POETRY. 255 
 
 ual progress ; and the time has come for their utmost of service. 
 We have reached, as a nation, by no choice of ourselves, power- 
 less to help or hinder, the wealth-producing stage. In half a cen- 
 tury we shall be the richest people in history. How shall we use 
 our wealth, what shall we do with our leisure ? The nation that 
 cannot rise to the spiritual life when its leisure is achieved, is 
 doomed. We are coming inevitably, irredeemably, irrevocably, 
 to the final test. Shall we rise to the stage next higher? Retreat 
 is cut off; advance we must or perish. Once Athens and Rome 
 and Venice stood on the same intellectual and fatal plane, but they 
 are gone. They proved their unfitness, and are rotting out their 
 punishment. Shall the same gangrene seize us ? There are many 
 signs that our people are in most hopeful soundness, but we have 
 many alien elements to sweeten and purify. Every native and 
 organic energy must be exercised, if we are to save the whole 
 body. The State must clearly find a way to open to all the influ- 
 ences of the highest and most helpful culture. 
 
256 LITERARY SENTENCE-LENGTH IN ENGLISH PROSE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE LITERARY SENTENCE-LENGTH IN ENGLISH 
 PROSE. 
 
 Having finished our inquiry into the principles and stages of 
 development in the poetry of English Literature, and given some 
 thought to the influence exerted through it, we turn next to the 
 prose. Here the elements are fewer, and the intricacies much 
 less perplexing ; so that we may proceed more simply. Any one 
 acquainted with the Elizabethan or ante- Elizabethan prose-writers 
 is well aware that their sentences are prevailingly either crabbed 
 or heavy, and that it is often necessary to re-read, sometimes to 
 ponder, before a probable meaning reveals itself. Ordinary mod- 
 ern prose, on the other hand, is clear, and almost as effective to 
 the understanding as oral speech. Let us commence our analysis 
 by ascertaining what principles have been at work to produce the 
 change. 
 
 We must now begin a new sort of investigation. We have hith- 
 erto considered literature principally with respect to meaning and 
 spirit; we must now for several chapters study exclusively the 
 form. We will first compare the style of a few passages from the 
 earlier and from modern prose-writers. The following is a par- 
 agraph from Fabyan's Chronicle : — 
 
 In this season the legat vpon his partye, and the kynge of Romayns vpon 
 ye other partie, for allyaunce that was atwene hym and ye erle of Glouceter, 
 laboured so to the kynge that a reformacon of peas was spoken of; durynge 
 whiche treaty, the souldyourrs lyinge in Southwerke made many robboryes in 
 Southerey and other places, and rowed ouer to Westmynster, and spoyled there 
 the kynges palays, and deuoured his wyne, and breke the glasse of the wyn- 
 
LITERARY SENTENCE-LENGTH IN ENGLISH PROSE. 257 
 
 dowes, and all other necessaryes to that palayes they disttoyed and wasted; and 
 somtymes came in lykewyse into London; and robbed there also. Of the 
 whiche there was taken iiii. that bare ye conysaunce of the erle of Derby, the 
 whiche the erle caused theyr handes and legges to be bounden, .and than put 
 into a sacke, and so cast into the Thamys. — Vol. II. , Ellis' Edition, p. 363. 
 
 With these two paragraphs Spenser begins his View of the Present 
 State of Ireland : — 
 
 Ettdoxus. But yf that countrey of Ireland, whence you lately came, be soe 
 goodly and commodious a soyle, as ye report, I wonder that noe course is 
 taken for the tourning thereof to good uses, and reducing of that savadge 
 nation to better government and civility e. 
 
 Irenceus. Marry, soe there have beene divers good plottes devised, and 
 wise counsells cast alleready about reformation of that realme; but they say, it 
 is the fatall desteny of that land, that noe purposes, whatsoever are meant for 
 her good, will prosper or take good effect, which, whether it proceede from 
 the very Genius of the soyle, or influence of the starres, or that Allmighty God 
 hath not yet appoynted the time of her reformation, or that he reserveth her 
 in this unquiett state still for some secrett scourdge, which shall by her come 
 unto England, it is hard to be knowen, but yet much to be feared. 
 
 As a sample of Hooker's style we may quote the following : — 
 
 What the Scripture purposeth, the same in all points it doth perform. How- 
 beit, that here we swerve not in judgment, one thing especially we must ob- 
 serve, namely, that the absolute perfection of Scripture is seen by relation unto 
 that end whereto it tendeth. And even hereby it cometh to pass, that first 
 such as imagine the general and main drift of the body of sacred Scripture not 
 to be so large as it is, nor that God did thereby intend to deliver, as in truth 
 he doth, a full instruction in all things unto salvation necessary the knowledge 
 whereof man by nature could not otherwise in this life attain unto; they are 
 by this very mean induced either still to look for new revelations from heaven, 
 or else dangerously to add to the Word of God uncertain tradition, that so the 
 doctrine of man's salvation may be complete; which doctrine we constantly 
 hold in all respects, without any such thing added to be so complete, that we 
 utterly refuse as much as once to acquaint ourselves with anything further. 
 
 — Bk. II. Chap. viii. 
 
 In the first and the second extract there is no sentence but 
 would be out of place in book-English of the present day. But 
 Hooker's first period, barring the solemn-style verbs, is wholly in 
 
258 LITERARY SENTENCE-LENGTH IN ENGLISH PROSE. 
 
 accord with modern standards, and may be used as the basis of 
 comparison with the following passages. We quote first from 
 Macaulay's Essay on History : — 
 
 It may be laid down as a general rule, though subject to considerable quali- 
 fications and exceptions, that history begins in novel and ends in essay. Of 
 the romantic historians Herodotus is the earliest and the best. His animation, 
 his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, 
 and the pure sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators. 
 He reminds us of a delightful child. There is a grace beyond the reach of 
 affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in 
 his nonsense, an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no writer who 
 makes such interest for himself and his book in the heart of the reader. 
 
 The next example will be from Channing's Self- Culture : — 
 
 I know how hard it is to some men, especially to those who spend much 
 time in manual labor, to fix attention on books. Let them strive to overcome 
 the difficulty, by choosing subjects of deep interest, or by reading in company 
 with those whom they love. Nothing can supply the place of books. They 
 are cheering or soothing companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth 
 of both continents would not compensate for the good they impart. Let every 
 man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access for 
 himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacri- 
 ficed to this. 
 
 And, finally, this from Emerson's Address before the Senior Class 
 in Divinity College : — 
 
 My friends, in these two errors, I think, I find the causes of a decaying 
 church and a wasting unbelief. And what greater calamity can fall Upon a 
 nation than the loss of worship ? Then all things go to decay. Genius leaves 
 the temple to haunt the senate or the market. Literature becomes frivolous. 
 Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, 
 and age is without honor. Society lives to trifles, and when men die we do 
 not mention them. 
 
 But more conspicuous if possible than the absence of normal 
 sentences in the first set of examples is the great difference in 
 number of words per period between the two groups of authors 
 contrasted. Fabyan we find has put no less than 141 words in his 
 
LITERARY SENTENCE-LENGTH IN ENGLISH PROSE. 259 
 
 two sentences, Spenser 152 in the same number, and Hooker 1 79 in 
 three; while Macaulay uses but 119 words in six periods, Chan- 
 ning 108 in seven, and Emerson 88 in eight. The averages in 
 these are of course surprising, and we wonder whether they are at 
 all characteristic of the respective authors. Presumably a consid- 
 erable number of sentences must be taken as a basis. We try 
 twenty-five, then fifty, then a hundred, and finally in five hundred 
 periods seem to find the fact of a rhythmic law. For the averages 
 of words per sentence, by consecutive hundreds, in the six authors 
 respectively are these : — 
 
 Fabyan. 
 
 
 Spe 
 
 NSER. 
 
 
 First hundred 
 
 periods 
 
 68.28 
 
 First hundred 
 
 periods 
 
 49.78 
 
 Second " 
 
 K 
 
 66.68 
 
 Second " 
 
 tt 
 
 50.24 
 
 Third « 
 
 << 
 
 .56.12 
 
 Third " 
 
 tt 
 
 53-67 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 it 
 
 65-77 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 it 
 
 47.56 
 
 Fifth 
 
 " 
 
 58.26 
 
 Fifth 
 
 a 
 
 47.88 
 
 Average, 
 
 
 63.02 
 
 Average, 
 
 
 49.82 
 
 Hooker. 
 
 
 Macaulay. 
 
 
 First hundred 
 
 periods 
 
 43-98 
 
 First hundred 
 
 periods 
 
 2323 
 
 Second " 
 
 it 
 
 40.90 
 
 Second " 
 
 tt 
 
 21.26 
 
 Third " 
 
 " 
 
 37-12 
 
 Third " 
 
 tt 
 
 25-95 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 tt 
 
 41.63 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 " 
 
 22.20 
 
 Fifth 
 
 " 
 
 43-4° 
 
 Fifth 
 
 (i 
 
 19-65 
 
 Average, 
 
 
 41.40 
 
 Average, 
 
 
 22.45 
 
 Channing. 
 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 
 First hundred 
 
 periods 
 
 25.15 
 
 First hundred 
 
 periods 
 
 18.06 
 
 Second " 
 
 it 
 
 25-5 1 
 
 Second " 
 
 " 
 
 20.15 
 
 Third " 
 
 tt 
 
 25-38 
 
 Third " 
 
 tt 
 
 21.01 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 n 
 
 26.80 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 tt 
 
 24.18 
 
 Fifth 
 
 " 
 
 25.84 
 
 Fifth 
 
 " 
 
 19-52 
 
 Average, 
 
 25-73 
 
 Average, 
 
 20.58 
 
 Here is evidently a principle of some importance, and, if uni- 
 versal, not difficult to establish. Among authors that might be 
 
260 LITERARY SENTENCE-LENGTH IN ENGLISH PROSE. 
 
 used to test it there is none better than De Quincey, whose spon- 
 taneous and voluble manner is the furthest possible removed from 
 anything stereotyped and mechanical. Finding his provisional 
 average in the first five hundred periods to be approximately thirty- 
 three words per sentence, we try if he sustains it in the remainder of 
 the work. The hundred-averages vary considerably, as expected, 
 yet are kept under control by some kind of centripetal force, as 
 this summary will show : — 
 
 First hundred 
 
 Second 
 
 Third 
 
 Fourth 
 
 Fifth 
 
 Sixth 
 
 Seventh 
 
 Eighth 
 
 Ninth 
 
 Tenth 
 
 Eleventh 
 
 29.74 
 38.62 
 29.82 
 31.22 
 34-21 
 29.09 
 
 3°-39 
 32.93 
 33-92 
 32.88 
 
 34-09 
 
 Twelfth hundred 
 
 34-42 
 
 Thirteenth " 
 
 29.57 
 
 Fourteenth " 
 
 38.58 
 
 Fifteenth " 
 
 35-32 
 
 Sixteenth " 
 
 40.29 
 
 Seventeenth " 
 
 39-29 
 
 Eighteenth " 
 
 38.12 
 
 Nineteenth " 
 
 31.24 
 
 Twentieth " 
 
 30.76 
 
 Twenty-first 
 
 33-57 
 
 Twenty-sec'd " 
 
 32.09 
 
 The aggregate of maximum frequency, as we observe, is approxi- 
 mately 33 ; and the average of the whole, 2225 periods, we find is 
 
 33-25- 
 
 This is certainly satisfactory so far as it goes, and we turn to 
 another experiment. Granting there is such a thing as uncon- 
 scious sentence-rhythm, is it constant in different works of the same 
 author, especially when written in different styles and at widely 
 distant intervals ? Nothing to the contrary appearing in De Quin- 
 cey, we go back to Channing. The average of his Self- Culture — 
 749 periods, and written in 1838 — is 25.28, and this is sustained 
 both by other late compositions as well as his earliest extant papers 
 and sermons. We try now Macaulay, Emerson, Newman, Carlyle, 
 and various authors, both in English and out of it, with results the 
 same ; and the true significance of the principle begins to dawn 
 upon us. It is in itself clearly of little value except as hinting how 
 literature has developed, and how the course of evolution in it may 
 
LITERARY SENTENCE-LENGTH IN ENGLISH PROSE. 261 
 
 be tracked. It shows, what we partly knew before, that the indi- 
 vidual mind is the unit of literary progress, and that progress must 
 be studied in the units before it can be comprehended in the mass. 
 But before proceeding on the assumption that each writer is 
 throughout consistent in the elements of stylistic quality, were 
 it not well to make a completer demonstration in some author 
 of not too formidable proportions? For this purpose we select 
 Macaulay. His average in the Essays is 23.+ , and we try by it 
 his History of England. We find some variation in the aggregates 
 by hundreds, but the averages by larger divisions are constant, 
 and simply repeat what was obtained before. 1 
 
 If, then, each author writes thus in substantial accordance with 
 an individual and unwavering sentence-ideal, it will be a valuable 
 first investigation to ascertain something concerning the range of 
 sentence-length in English prose from Chaucer down. Does 
 Fabyan write the longest sentences? Who writes the shortest? 
 For there are reputable authors, as the student will quickly learn, 
 that reveal averages considerably less than Emerson's. Each 
 student should compute some available production of his own, 
 
 1 The results of the computation are summarized in the following columns. 
 Each entry is the average number of words in a thousand consecutive sentences, 
 and in the place of footings are the averages by ten thousands : — 
 
 26.09 23.00 22.21 20.54 
 
 24.21 
 
 25-33 
 
 25.06 
 
 25.01 
 
 24.20 
 
 21.76 
 
 22.33 
 
 24.97 
 
 23-51 
 
 21-59 
 
 24.81 
 
 22.92 
 
 24.99 
 
 24.10 
 
 24.05 
 
 23.71 
 
 22.13 
 
 19.62 
 
 21.81 
 
 23.26 
 
 22.36 
 
 21.11 
 
 23-39 
 
 22.81 
 
 20.85 
 
 25-58 
 
 22.39 
 
 23.91 
 
 21.08 
 
 25.86 
 
 23.17 
 
 24.92 
 
 23.81 
 
 23.81 
 
 24.03 
 
 25.28 
 
 23.33 23.18 23.32 23.73 
 
 The whole number of periods in the History of England is 41579, and the aggre- 
 gate of words in the remaining 1579 sentences, 38696. The complete sentence- 
 average for the five volumes is therefore 23.43 words. 
 
262 LITERARY SENTENCE-LENGTH IN ENGLISH PROSE. 
 
 and find out the approximate tendency of his style. Let him test 
 whether English writers incline more to crisp, incisive sentences, 
 or the American; also what is the prevailing sentence-character 
 in the best book-English, and what in the more popular style of 
 newspapers and magazines. Let him note especially whether the 
 tendency is in the direction of further pointedness and brevity, 
 and, if possible, find a reason. 
 
THE DECREASE OF PREDICATION. 263 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE DECREASE OF PREDICATION. 
 
 It is not necessary that we should carry the investigation sug- 
 gested at the end of the last chapter very far to be convinced that 
 through sentence-shortening great changes have been wrought in 
 the prose of English Literature. It should be evident, moreover, 
 that this shortening is in no sense a cause ; it is rather an effect, 
 or incidental to an effect, of some cause or causes yet to be 
 determined. Short sentences are not necessarily easy to read 
 because they are short, nor are long sentences always heavy or 
 obscure merely because they are long. Let us compare the fol- 
 lowing passages : — 
 
 And then we began to reckon amongst ourselves how many we were that 
 were set on shore, and we found the number to be an hundred and fourteen, 
 whereof two were drowned in the sea and eight were slain at the first encoun- 
 ter, so that there remained an hundred and four, of which five-and-twenty 
 went westward with us, and two-and-fifty -to the north with Hooper and 
 Ingram; and, as Ingram since has often told me, there were not past three of 
 their company slain, and there were but six-and-twenty of them that came 
 again to us, so that of the company that went northward there is' yet lacking, 
 and not certainly heard of, the number of three-and-twenty men. And verily 
 I do think that there are of them yet alive and married in the said country, at 
 Cibola, as hereafter I purpose (God willing) to discourse of more particu- 
 larly, with the reasons and causes that make me so to think of them that 
 were lacking, which were with David Ingram, Twide, Browne, and sundry 
 others, whose names we could not remember. — Hakluyt : Miles Phillips' 
 Discourse. 
 
 When Jane Austen went on Sundays to the fashionable Laura Chapel a 
 few years later, she may have seen all these people at their devotions in that 
 home of aristocratic piety, and near them the famous Mrs. Piozzi, short and 
 
264 THE DECREASE OF PREDICATION. 
 
 stout, with a patch of rouge on each cheek, or the Duchess of York, with 
 brown hair falling about her face, but, let us hope, without the retinue of dogs 
 of assorted sizes which usually attended her everywhere else. Almost any 
 day she might have seen in the thoroughfares of Bath or in the Pump Room 
 many of the famous men of her time on the occasion of her first visit, — 
 Melmoth, the noted scholar, William Hoare, the Royal Academician, the 
 brilliant Sheridan, the yet unappreciated Herschels, William and Caroline, 
 and the host of their contemporaries in literature, science, and art, who were 
 familiar figures in Bath in 1791. — Oscar Fay Adams: The Story of Jane 
 Austen's Life. 
 
 Predication, we remember, conditions the imagination, and in 
 prose imposes on the imaging faculty the obligation of realizing 
 with exactness the facts or relations affirmed., That style which 
 leaves most to fancy in respect to the manner in which facts or 
 relations may be apprehended, will be in so far the easiest to read. 
 Of the above passages the first from Hakluyt we shall find con- 
 tains no less than twenty-one distinct predications ; while the 
 second, from the recent work of Mr. Adams, and of nearly the 
 same length, but six. Let us compare again : — 
 
 Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things 
 still; for age will not be defied. Beware of sudden change in any great point 
 of diet, and if necessity enforce it, fit the rest to it. For it is a secret both in 
 nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one. Examine 
 thy customs of diet, sleep, exercise, apparel, and the like; and try, in any- 
 thing thou shalt judge hurtful, to discontinue it by little and little ; but so, as 
 if thou dost find any inconvenience by the change, thou come back to it 
 again : for it is hard to distinguish that which is generally held good and 
 wholesome, from that which is good particularly, and fit for thine own body. 
 — Bacon : Of Regiment of Health. 
 
 Whence came this prodigy of power? What blood of England or Italy 
 flowed in his veins? Neither he nor his seem to have known. He is our 
 King Melchisedec, without father or mother, everything hid but his divine 
 descent. We must claim for an American one whose patriotism would have 
 made him equally ready with Franklin to argue in a foreign court, or with 
 Farragut to lash himself to the mast in the harbor of New Orleans. He hated 
 secession as Satan; and, while at home with foreigners of every nation, was 
 proud of his native land as the crown of the globe. He was a case of 
 
THE DECREASE OF PREDICATION. 
 
 265 
 
 Nature's bounty in her most royal mood, and, himself a true sovereign, the 
 head of every board at which he sat. — C. A. Bartol : Father Taylor, in 
 Radical Problems. 
 
 In the first of these quotations there are sixteen predications in 
 four sentences, and no less than eight of the sixteen in the last 
 period. But in the extract from Bartol, essentially of the same 
 length as the preceding, there are eight sentences and eleven 
 predications. Three of these sentences only have more than a 
 single verb. 
 
 Here, then, is the hint of a reason for the decrease of the nu- 
 merical sentence-length in English prose. Some principle of 
 sentence-simplification is evidently at work, and its effect has been 
 both to increase the number of simple sentences, and to reduce 
 predication very materially in such as remain complex or com- 
 pound. We turn at once to earlier authors and make compar- 
 ison with the modern. The following are representative results, 
 computed on the basis of 500 periods : — 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 
 Hall. 
 
 
 (Meliiceus.) 
 
 Av. 
 Predi- 
 cations. 
 
 Per ct. 
 
 Simp. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 ( Chronicle.) 
 
 Av. 
 Predi- 
 cations. 
 
 Per ct. 
 Simp. 
 Sents. 
 
 First 100 periods, 6.16 
 Second 100 periods, 5.25 
 Third " " 4-68 
 Fourth " " 4-66 
 Rem'ng 80 " 5.50 
 
 4 
 6 
 6 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 First 100 periods, 4.09 
 Second 100 periods, 3.70 
 Third " " 4.70 
 Fourth " " 3.91 
 Fifth " " 5.01 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 11 
 
 8 
 
 5 
 
 Average 480 periods, 5.24 
 
 4 
 
 Average 500 periods, 4.28 
 
 7 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 
 Sidney. 
 
 
 ( View ofS. of Ireland.) 
 First 100 periods, 4.83 
 Second 100 periods, 4.67 
 Third " " 4-86 
 Fourth " " 4-SS 
 Fifth " " 449 
 
 12 
 
 '3 
 11 
 
 10 
 7 
 
 (Defense of Poesie.) 
 First 100 periods, 3.74 
 Second 100 periods, 4.35 
 Third " " 4.58 
 Fourth " " 3.43 
 Rem'ng 73 " 3.79 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 6 
 
 '3 
 
 10 
 
 Average 500 periods, 4.68 1 1 
 
 Average 473 periods, 3.98 10 
 
266 
 
 THE DECREASE OF PREDICATION. 
 
 Hooker. 
 
 {Ecclesiastical Polity?) 
 
 Av. Per ct. 
 
 Predi- Simp, 
 
 cations. Sents. 
 
 First ioo periods, 4.36 13 
 
 Second 100 periods, 4.1 1 II 
 
 Third " " 4.41 8 
 
 Fourth " " 4.03 10 
 
 Fifth " " 3.58 7 
 
 Average 500 periods, 4.12 12 
 
 Bacon. 
 
 (Essays.} 
 
 Av. Per ct. 
 
 Predi- Simp, 
 
 cations. Sents. 
 
 First 100 periods, 3.15 21 
 
 Second 100 periods, 2.91 21 
 
 Third " " 3.02 16 
 
 Fourth " " 3.27 22 
 
 Fifth " " - 3.26 15 
 
 Average 500 periods, 3.12 19 
 
 Barrow. 
 (Sermons on Evil Speaking.") 
 
 First 100 periods, 3.93 12 
 
 Second 100 periods, 3.62 13 
 
 Third " " 3.56 14 
 
 Fourth " " 3.72 18 
 
 Fifth " " 3.84 16 
 
 Average 500 periods, 3.73 15 
 
 BUNYAN. 
 (Holy War.) 
 
 First 100 periods, 3.61 12 
 
 Second 100 periods, 3.69 1 
 
 Third " " 3.89 12 
 
 Fourth " " 4.10 7 
 
 Fifth " " 4.25 11 
 
 Average 500 periods, 3.94 10 
 
 Addison. 
 
 (Spectator.) 
 
 First 100 periods, 3.86 jp 
 
 Second 100 periods, 3.95 5 
 
 Third " " 3.76 11 
 
 Fourth " " 3.49 16 
 
 Fifth " " 3.30 16 
 
 BOLINGBROKE. 
 (Study of History.) 
 
 First 100 periods, 3.32 14 
 
 Second 100 periods, 4.01 12 
 
 Third " " 3.82 9 
 
 Fourth " " 3.75 15 
 
 Fifth " " 3.71 16 
 
 Average 500 periods, 3.67 12 
 
 Average 500 periods, 3.72 13 
 
 Shaftesbury. 
 (Freedom of Wit and Humor?) 
 
 First 100 periods, 2.46 29 
 
 Second 100 periods, 2.53 25 
 
 Third " " 2.94 26 
 
 Fourth " " 2.58 27 
 
 Fifth " " 2.48 30 
 
 Average 500 periods, 2.60 27 
 
 De Quincey. 
 ( Opium-Eater?) 
 
 First 100 periods, 3.61 10 
 
 Second 100 periods, 3.70 19 
 
 Third " " 3.38 15 
 
 Fourth " " 4.31 7 
 
 Fifth " " 3.45 21 
 
 Average 500 periods, 3.69 14 
 
THE DECREASE OF PREDICATION. 
 
 267 
 
 Macaulay. 
 
 {Essay on History.') 
 
 Av. Per ct. 
 Predi- Simp, 
 cations. Sents. 
 
 First ioo periods, 2.06 40 
 
 Second 100 periods, 2.23 40 
 
 Third " " 2.38 33 
 
 Fourth " " 2.20 35 
 
 Fifth " " 1.88 46 
 
 Average 500 periods, 2.15 39 
 
 Channing. 
 
 {Self- Culture.) 
 
 Av. Per ct. 
 
 Predi- Simp, 
 
 cations. Sents. 
 
 First 100 periods, 2.59 28 
 Second 100 periods, 2.60 30 
 Third " " 2.55 26 
 
 Fourth " " 2.54 37 
 
 Fifth " " 2.55 35 
 
 Average 500 periods, 2.56 31 
 
 Newman. 
 {Apologia.) 
 
 First 100 periods, 3.44 13 
 
 Second 100 periods, 2.94 15 
 
 Third " " 3.01 20 
 
 Fourth " " 2.64 21 
 
 Fifth " " 2.80 13 
 
 Emerson. 
 {History ; Friendship.) 
 
 First 100 periods, 2.45 37 
 
 Second 100 periods, 2.19 35 
 
 Third •• " 2.36 40 
 
 First " " 2.17 37 
 
 Second " " 2.13 36 
 
 Average 500 periods, 2.96 16 
 
 Average 500 periods, 2.26 37 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 {Lessing.) 
 
 First 100 periods, 2.84 21 
 
 Second 100 periods, 2.29 30 
 
 Third " " 2.54 14 
 
 Fourth " " 2.54 22 
 
 Fifth " " 2.40 29 
 
 Grant. 
 {Memoirs.) 
 
 First 100 periods, 2.30 36 
 
 Secondioo periods, 2.40 33 
 
 Third " " 2.30 35 
 
 Fourth " " 2.44 25 
 
 Fifth " " 2.38 28 
 
 Average 500 periods, 2.52 23 
 
 Average 500 periods, 2.36 31 
 
 Everett. 
 {Poetry, Comedy, and Duty.) 
 
 First 100 periods, 2.94 22 
 
 Second 100 periods, 2.21 39 
 
 Third " " 2.07 40 
 
 Fourth " " 2.41 28 
 
 Fifth " " 2.31 33 
 
 Average 500 periods, 2.39 32 
 
 Bartol. 
 {Radical Problems : Genius, etc.) 
 
 First 100 periods, 2.04 54 
 
 Second 100 periods, 1.97 43 
 
 Third " " 2.08 38 
 
 Fourth " " 2.02 42 
 
 Rem'ing62 " 1.89 48 
 
 Average 462 periods, 2.00 45 
 
268 THE DECREASE OF PREDICATION. 
 
 The above authors, it is believed, furnish sufficient illustration 
 of the course and degree of sentential simplification down to the 
 present generation. The student will extend the exhibit at pleas- 
 ure. Other writers might be instanced who, on account of special 
 modes of punctuation, register higher per cent of predication than 
 is here given, and Ossian, which is not prose, will show a lower. 
 But it is better to reserve inorganic aspects for later study. The 
 student on investigation will easily prove to himself that the com- 
 mon average in the best writers of the day is practically little over 
 two per sentence, and the per cent of simple sentences not much 
 less than thirty-three and one-third. He will, moreover, discover 
 that the principle which has hitherto led English writers to curb 
 their hand and reduce their styles is still at work. It will not be 
 difficult to find reputable literature, at least of the highest maga- 
 zine grade, registering as low as 1.60 predications per period, and 
 as high as sixty per cent of simple sentences. The average of 
 Channing or Macaulay or Bartol would fall as low, were it not for 
 the long sentences which they somewhat frequently allow. The 
 reasons for this, as well as why Ascham and Bacon wrote so far 
 ahead of their times, and some others of later date so far behind, 
 will appear in a later chapter. 
 
CO-ORDINATION OF CLAUSES. 269 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 CO-ORDINATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 If we observe the speech of intelligent children just able to 
 talk in connected narration, we shall find almost every item 
 affirmed by itself on the same basis as every other. There is no 
 articulation or subordination of statements. All verbs essentially 
 are principal, and connected by ' ands.' There is no real divis- 
 ion into sentences. The stop in each case is determined by no 
 sentence-sense, and hardly amounts to more than a pause for 
 breath. 
 
 It has been pointed out that there is a close parallelism between 
 the development of the child-mind in the individual and the mind 
 of the race. Each man in the earlier part of his isolated life is 
 occupied to a greater or less extent in doing what the race to 
 which he belongs has done in the development of its civilization. 
 He is in a sense the epitome of his age and its attainments. 
 While now inquiring into the nature and history of normal sen- 
 tences we bethink ourselves of this fact, and wonder whether the 
 earliest prose authors wrote in such inarticulate wise as children 
 speak. The first volume available for examination is Sir John 
 Mandeville's Voyages and Travels. Here in the opening sentence 
 of the Prologue we count seven ' and '-clauses in thirty-five predi- 
 cations. In the first chapter there are fifty-eight finite verbs and 
 verb phrases, of which twenty-five are preceded by ' ands ' ; also 
 of these, twelve introduce their quasi-sentences. Of the forty- 
 seven sentences in the second chapter, thirty-three are introduced 
 by and. Chapter VII. begins with the following paragraph : — 
 
270 CO-ORDINATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 After for to speke of Jerusalem, the Holy Cytee, yee schulle undirstonde, 
 that it stont fulle faire betwene Hilles : and there ben no Ryveres ne Welles ; 
 but Watre cometh be Condyte from Ebron. And yee schulle undirstonde, that 
 Jerusalem of olde tyme, unto the tyme of Melchisedeche, was cleped Jebus; 
 and aftre it was clept Salem, unto the tyme of Kyng David, that putte theise 2 
 Names to gidere, and cleped it Jebusalem; and aftre that Kyng Salomon 
 cleped it Jerosolomye: and aftre that, Men cleped it Jerusalem; and so it is 
 cleped yit. And aboute Jerusalem is the Kyngdom of Surrye : and there besyde 
 is the Lond of Palestyne : and besyde it is Ascolone : and besyde that is the 
 Lond of Maritaine. 
 
 This is not the maximum of co-ordination, though something 
 very near it. Whenever each new period is introduced by and, or 
 or, or but, and every clause essentially after the first in each sen- 
 tence is joined to the preceding by one of such connectives, there 
 will be evidently as many co-ordinate conjunctions as predicates. 
 Such form is found consistently in early remains, as the Anglo- 
 Saxon Chronicle. The following is a specimen from one of the 
 latest entries, under date of A.D. 1137 : — 
 
 In all this wicked time kept Abbot Martin his abbacy xx. winters and a 
 half-year and viii. days with much exertion and provided for the monks and 
 the guests all that was necessary for them, and maintained much charity in 
 the house, and nevertheless wrought upon the church and assigned thereto 
 lands and revenues and endowed it bountifully, and had it roofed, and brought 
 them into the new minster on St. Peter's day with much honor, — that was 
 Anno ab Incarnatione Domini MCXL., a combustione loci xxiii. And he 
 went to Rome, and was there well received by Pope Eugenius and there ob- 
 tained privileges, — one of all the lands of the abbacy, and another of the 
 lands that belong to the sacristan's office, and if he might live longer he meant 
 to do the same concerning the office of treasurer. And he made acquisition 
 in lands that rich men held by force : of Willelm Malduit who held Rocking- 
 ham castle he won Cotingham' and Easton, and of Hugo of Waltervile he won 
 Irlingborough and Stanwick and LX. sol. of Oldwinkle per year. And he 
 made many monks and planted vineyards and executed many works and ren- 
 dered the town better than it was before, and was a good monk and a good 
 man, and for that reason God and good men loved him. 
 
 There is evidently no organic reason why the interior periods 
 should have been placed by the editors just where we find them. 
 
CO-ORDINATION OF CLAUSES. 271 
 
 There might just as well have been less, or more. Practically, 
 however, we need no more extreme specimen of this manner as a 
 basis of comparison than the example from Hakluyt's Voyages in 
 the preceding chapter. In the paragraph from which that extract 
 was taken there are one hundred and eighteen predications in 
 twenty-one periods, connected within and without by forty-two 
 co-ordinate conjunctions. Of subordinating connectives there are 
 but twenty-six. Whenever, therefore, in a given composition the 
 co-ordinate conjunctions amount to as many as one-third of all 
 the predicates, and considerably outnumber the subordinating 
 connectives, we may regard the clause-structure as co-ordinate. 
 Clauses introduced by relative pronouns may, for the present, be 
 disregarded. Of course if the number of ' ands ' and other co- 
 ordinatives exceeds or approximately equals half the number of 
 predications, the co-ordinate character of the style will by that 
 fact be sufficiently established. 
 
 Here, then, in the grouping together, without correlation, of 
 distinct clauses representing concomitant or successive facts, we 
 recognize the first step in sentence evolution. The first stage will 
 accordingly be determined by the preponderance or prevalence of | 
 clause co-ordination. But the student must not suppose that the 
 writers of English prose will rank in sentential structure where 
 they fall chronologically. Each author indeed, as in poetry, goes 
 through his preliminary stages in some fashion, but may stop far 
 short of the highest development. The primal instinct of group- 
 ing predicates without respect to their relations can evidently be 
 traced in the fondness of various writers for initial conjunctions 
 not at all required by the sense. Even as careful a writer as 
 Ascham begins sixty-one out of the three hundred and twenty-nine 
 paragraphs of his Schoolmaster with ands, as well as numerous 
 single sentences, — averaging more than twenty to the hundred 
 throughout its 1093 periods, — without apparent reason. Though 
 Ascham should be well beyond the co-ordinate stage, he exhibits 
 only twenty-five normal sentences to the hundred, while forty-five 
 of the remainder on an average are inorganic on account of a 
 
272 CO-ORDINATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 loose, unarticulated structure. Often, until past Bunyan, and even 
 Goldsmith, the absence of a reasonable punctuation will afflict the 
 student. But he will soon discover that this is but incident to an 
 incompletely evolved sentence-sense, whether in author, editor, 
 or printer. Formless and unmanageable sentences cannot be 
 redeemed by punctuation points, but, like the fossils of some 
 order of extinct monsters, must stand as monuments of their era. 
 The reader, finally, will note that this elementary mode of sen- 
 tence-structure is by no means obsolete in literature or necessarily 
 always crude and ineffective. The sublimity of certain parts of 
 the Old Testament, pre-eminently the opening verses of Genesis, 
 i is largely due to the simple, balanced succession of the clauses. 
 Homer's delightful garrulousness is not wholly of the matter, but 
 much in the childlike manner, of his periods. The Mabinogion 
 and William Morris' Story of the Glittering Plain owe at least half 
 their charm to the quaint, oldtime associations of their co-ordi- 
 nate style. 
 
SUBORDINATION OF CLAUSES. 273 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 SUBORDINATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 After children of the age considered in the last chapter have 
 had four or five years of observation and practice in the ways of 
 speech, they will begin to differentiate their statements according 
 to the importance of the facts narrated or described. They talked 
 at first in a strain fully as naive as this : ' We went to the Park, 
 and it was night, and the moon was up, and we were afraid.' 
 They will now say instead : ' We went to the Park when it was 
 night ; and, though the moon was up, we were afraid.' The 
 mind here discerns in a logical way that the significant facts are, 
 going to the Park when deserted in the night-time, and the 
 experience thus occasioned to the speaker. 
 
 Apparently the first contact of the child-mind with its environ- 
 ment produces isolated impressions which, when responded to in 
 speech, occasion ejaculatory utterances only. Later, when one's 
 environment has impressed itself upon consciousness as a con- 
 geries of related elements, the mind essays in a Dame Quickly 
 fashion to reproduce and realize to itself, after something like a 
 natural order, the facts perceived. But with better developed 
 powers of comparison, and through the example of mature speak- 
 ers, it begins to discriminate between direct and indirect occa- 
 sions, or first and second circumstances, and will endeavor to 
 reproduce such distinctions in its speech. 
 
 Of course the earliest writers of English prose were not minds 
 of the childish order. They were among the first men of their 
 times, and spoke in sentences relatively as idiomatic and logical 
 
274 SUBORDINATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 as we do now. But, a fact to be fully considered later, there is a 
 strange tendency in the first compositions of prose to go back to 
 naive and rudimental forms. In fact, very few of us in these days 
 write as idiomatically and naturally as we speak. Our first school 
 essays were far behind our attainments and facility in oral speech 
 of the same stage. Men of polished business address and fertile 
 in all forms and expedients of good fellowship in presence, cast • 
 their correspondence stiffly year after year in the stock-inherited 
 phrases of their inferiors, in default of better invention. Among 
 the thousands of brilliant conversers only some scores of men and 
 women throughout the country discourse as charmingly with the 
 pen as with the voice. Hence is it small wonder that the earliest 
 prose monuments of English were so far beneath the culture of the 
 times. Chaucer and Spenser wrote verse as good in structural 
 clearness as the moderns, 1 while their prose is practically un- 
 readable. 
 
 We may accordingly expect that subordinating conjunctions 
 will abound in prose of the stage next after that considered in the 
 last chapter. Children doubtless first apprehend the relation of 
 cause and effect most clearly, for their «arly speech fairly bristles 
 with becauses. But cultivated men and women use — at least in 
 oral speech — few illative conjunctions, comparatively few indeed 
 of any kind. Hence it is interesting to find that Spenser's View 
 in 500 periods shows 400 illative out of 550 subordinate conjunc- 
 tions ; while Bartol on the other hand, in the same number of 
 sentences, only five from 90, or including co-ordinatives, from a 
 total of 160. But in Spenser the co-ordinating conjunctions con- 
 necting sentences or clauses average one per period. Hooker 
 \is more ratiocinative, of course, than either of these writers, and 
 
 1 Chaucer indeed better; see p. 291. Spenser's poetic sentences are nearly 
 twice as heavy as Chaucer's, yet always organic and natural. The average of 
 predication in the first 500 periods of the Canterbury Tales is 2.93, and of simple 
 sentences, 23.6 (cf. results from the Tale of Melibtzus, p. 265) . The predication 
 average in the first 500 periods of the Fcerie Queene is 4.93; per cent of simple 
 sentences, 6. 
 
SUBORDINATION OF CLAUSES. 275 
 
 his illatives considerably exceed theirs, though he falls behind in 
 the general average. For the time and space relations we turn 
 naturally to a work like White's Selbourne, in which the temporal 
 conjunctions amount to twice the illative. 
 
 It is therefore a simple process to discover a subordinating 
 style. We have but to examine the conjunction list of the given 
 author. If the inferior conjunctions connecting clauses — that is, 
 finite verbs fully expressed — preponderate, there can be no ques- 
 tion how to characterize his mode. Applying the test, we shall be 
 at once surprised what differences will be revealed even among 
 the most polished authors of the present generation, some of 
 whom have clearly lingered in the subordinating stage. On the 
 other hand, we shall find writers like Emerson and Holmes 
 and Bartol, who, though they may have relatively more subordi- 
 nating than co-ordinating conjunctions, have yet . passed all con- 
 junctive stages. Such styles, however, we must leave aside for 
 later consideration. 
 
276 SUPPRESSION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 SUPPRESSION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 The next step after co-ordination in the linguistic development 
 of the child-mind is, therefore, unconsciously to discriminate be- 
 tween notions. It no longer says naively, ' I went home, and I 
 saw my papa, and I saw my mamma, and I was very glad to see 
 my papa,' etc., but, ' When ' or ' after I went home, I did thus 
 and thus.' In other words, the mind of the child separates the 
 modifying from the modified ideas, and so holds the latter up to 
 greater eminence. The principle everywhere is economy and 
 intensification of energy. The instrument of speech is becoming 
 more prehensile and effective. When the modifying and modified 
 clauses are presented in mass, all on the same basis, the mind of 
 the listener must not only receive and interpret these as literal 
 declarations of fact, but also infer which are principal and which 
 subordinate. This makes the business of hearing much more dif- 
 ficult than is fair to the hearer. It is the concern of the speaker 
 to grade his notions before he sets them forth. This is done 
 instinctively very early in the evolution of a child's powers of con- 
 versation. It is done much more slowly and self-consciously in 
 the evolution of a child's ability to write or of a nation's ; but the 
 process is the same. 
 
 Subordination as a principle of speech manifests itself in various 
 forms and stages. The next step in its operation with conjunc- 
 tions reveals a new phase of the process, to which we can hardly 
 give a better name than Suppression of Predication. There are 
 no leaps or breaks anywhere in the continuity of change. The 
 
SUPPRESSWN OF CLAUSES. 277 
 
 child and the race alike join their first clauses with ands and buts 
 really because they are not aware of better means. Later addi- 
 tions to this list of conjunctions can be devised or appreciated 
 only when they are needed. So we see the fors and the where- 
 fores, the whens and the thoughs, slowly coming into use as the i 
 mind point by point discriminates to itself and to its listener the 
 
 (relation of cause and effect, of concession, of condition, and of 
 time and space ; till it finally takes the step of using some or many 
 of these conjunctions without predicate at all. If we note the 
 conversation of men dexterous with language, or the style of 
 writers not too formal and self-conscious, we shall observe many 
 expressions like ' when a boy,' or ' if in London,' or ' because of 
 the failure,' etc. Each of these stands for what would have been 
 expressed in the stage just before by complete clauses ; as, ' when I 
 was a boy,' ' if I am or shall be in London,' * because A or B 
 failed,' and in a stage yet earlier by propositions joined by co- 
 ordinate connectives. We have doubtless already noticed the 
 absence of verbs after conjunctions in Hooker and Spenser and 
 even Hakluyt, and this sends us at once back to those authors to 
 trace the growth of the mode. Mandeville, we find, as we might 
 have guessed, consistently writes out secondary and subordinate 
 clauses in full, as thus : — 
 
 That Cytee of Alizandre is wel 30 Furlonges in lengthe : but it is but 10 
 on largenesse. And it is a full noble Cytee and a fayr. 
 
 And wytethe wel, that the Notemuge berethe the Maces. For righte as 
 the Note of the Haselle hathe an Husk withouten, that the Note is closed in, 
 til it be ripe, and aftre fallethe out; righte so it is of the Notemuge and of 
 the Maces. 
 
 Or put a Drope of Bawme in clere Watre, in a Cuppe of Sylver or in a clere 
 Bacyn, and stere it wel with the clere Watre ; and if that the Bawme be fyn 
 and of his owne kynde, the Watre schalle nevere trouble : And if the Bawme 
 be sophisticate, that is to sayne countrefeted, the Watre schalle become anon 
 trouble : And also if the Bawme be fyn, it schalle falle to the botme of the 
 Vesselle, as thoughe it. were Quyksylver : For the fyn Bawme is more hevy 
 twyes, than is the Bawme that is sophisticate and countrefeted. 
 
278 SUPPRESSION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 Of course we are not to infer that Mandeville talked like that. 
 He simply did not feel warranted in writing with less formal- 
 ity. Hakluyt, whom we examine next, shows in a few instances 
 like the following how the practice of implying predicates 
 begins : — 
 
 The next morning we departed from thence with our two Spaniards and 
 Indian guard as [has been] aforesaid. 
 
 Here we were met by a great number of Spaniards on horseback, which 
 came from Mexico to see us, both gentlemen and men of occupations, and 
 they came as people [come] to see a wonder. 
 
 We were also oftentimes greatly annoyed with a kind of fly, which, in the 
 Indian tongue, is called tequani; and the Spaniards call them muskitos. . . . 
 You shall hardly see them, they be so small . . . and if you kill them while 
 they are sucking they are so venomous that the place will swell extremely, 
 even as one [swells] that is stung with a wasp or bee. 
 
 No other conjunction than 'as' is observed with ellipsis of the 
 predicate, except ' notwithstanding,' in one instance : — 
 
 . . . but our General, notwithstanding finding himself to have now very 
 near the number of 500 negroes, thought it best without longer abode to 
 depart with them. 
 
 Omissions of the verb in repeated forms — as " the water whereof 
 is somewhat brackish in taste, but [is] very good" — are of course 
 too elementary to be noticed. On the other hand, cases of the 
 predicate fully expressed with ' as ' occur, and even in conjunc- 
 tion with ellipses : — 
 
 In which three months the soldiers of Tripolis killed the said king; and 
 then the king's son, according to the custom there, went to Constantinople, 
 . . . and took with him our said purser Richard Burges, and James Smith, 
 and also the other two Englishmen which he the king's son had enforced to 
 become Turks as is aforesaid. 
 
 The next morning we departed from thence on our journey towards 
 Mexico, and so travelled till we came within two leagues of it, where there was 
 built by the Spaniards a very fair church, called Our Lady Church, in which 
 there is an image of Our Lady, of silver and gilt, being as high and large as 
 
SUPPRESSION OF CLAUSES. 279 
 
 a tall woman, in which church, and before this image, there are as many 
 lamps of silver as there be days in the year, which upon high days are all 
 lighted. 
 
 It is then from beginnings as insignificant and feeble as this that 
 the present system of clause-evasion in literary English has been 
 built up. Perhaps few of us realize how complete and wonderful 
 it is. Let us compare a few specimens from a modern point of 
 the development. We quote from De Quincey : — 
 
 To intercept the evil whilst, yet in elementary stages of formation, was the 
 true policy; whereas I in my blindness sought only for some mitigation to the 
 evil when already formed, and past all reach of interception. 
 
 Perilous is that crisis for the young. In its effect perfectly the same as 
 the ignoble witchcraft of the poor African Obeah, this sublimer witchcraft of 
 grief will, if^left to follow its own natural course, terminate in the same catas- 
 trophe of death. 
 
 Now, to any man who is acquainted with commercial life, but, above all. 
 with such life in England, it will readily occur that in an ,opulent English fam- 
 ily of that class, — opulent, though not rich in a mercantile estimate, — the 
 domestic economy is likely to be upon a scale of liberality altogether unknown 
 amongst the corresponding orders in foreign nations. Whether as to the 
 establishment of servants, or as to the provision made for the comfort of all 
 its members, such a household not uncommonly eclipses the scale of living 
 even amongst the poorer classes of our nobility, though the most splendid in 
 Europe - — a fact which, since the period of my infancy, I have had many per- 
 sonal opportunities for verifying both in England and in Ireland. 
 
 These examples, as will be noted, are in the main of the same 
 sort as those observed in Hakluyt. The condensation consists not 
 so much in omitting, as — by aid of proper conjunctions — in im- 
 plying, predication. This suppression of verbs through making 
 conjunctions do duty for whole clauses is, therefore, analogous to 
 the abbreviation of complete parallels in poetry. The mind in 
 each case learns how to do its work with less assistance and 
 greater concentration. It essays to withdraw from prominence 
 whatever is not of first importance, so that what is eminent in the 
 consciousness of the speaker may become at once eminent in the 
 
280 SUPPRESSION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 consciousness of the hearer. Except in the most studied and 
 formal discourse, men incline always to disburdened and con- 
 tracted phrases, not only to save effort, but the better to keep 
 pace with the thought within. They do not,, save from some 
 abnormal motive, prefer a labored to a simple style, or write a 
 longer for a shorter sentence. Fine writing is distasteful even to 
 the literary elect of this busy generation ; and elegance, so far as 
 not consistent with both clearness and energy, must give place to 
 either. The suppression of clauses and economy of predication, 
 we cannot doubt, are further manifestations of the same instinct 
 which, as we have seen, has relieved the English sentence of half 
 its weight since Shakespeare's times, and is now interposing its 
 veto against a higher average than two predicates per sentence. 
 
 Yet more remarkable condensation than is above illustrated, we 
 shall soon see, has been brought about through the use of verbal 
 nouns and participial or appositional devices. For the present we 
 must confine ourselves to further inquiry into the history of con- 
 junctional clause-suppression. Let the student trace the mode 
 from Chaucer down ; search out extended examples in De Quin- 
 cey ; and find, if possible, some superior among living names. 
 
UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 281 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION OF THOUGHT. 
 
 We have seen how, in poetry, as the mind expands, analogies 
 become significant in more and more highly condensed presenta- 
 tions, until comprehensible without the development of parallels, 
 virtually upon mention. Likewise in prose-thinking, through pro- 
 gressive enlargement of the understanding, and reduction of sym- 
 bols, the mind is enabled to carry on processes of greater and 
 greater complexity and weight. The unit of comprehension may 
 be thus enlarged to indeterminate limits. 
 
 Herein, of course, we read a principal difference between the 
 philosophic and the ordinary mind. There can be no question 
 that Newton and Locke and Humboldt reach their conclusions by 
 longer strides, and dip from the springs of thought in vessels of 
 larger measure, than the majority of their fellows. But this fact 
 alone will not account for the heaviness of a style like Hooker's. 
 Bacon was a contemporary thinker surely not less profound, 
 though the Essays can be read by anybody. Emerson was as 
 philosophical as Sir William Hamilton, but the plain people of his 
 parishes understood him. The French metaphysicians are as 
 easy to read as the historians and many of the novelists of that lit- 
 erature. However large the unit of their discernment, they grade 
 the unit of presentation to the capacity of the reader, like a 
 mother talking to her child. Indeed the philosophers, from Soc- 
 rates down, in ordinary discourse, have used simple language. 
 They do not put each large division of their meaning into a single 
 period, but often make many sentences of a single thought. May 
 
282 UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 
 
 not, then, the difficulty in reading certain styles be due to some 
 perversion in the unit of presentation ? 
 
 The course of development in the child-mind again furnishes 
 us a guiding hint. It begins with the cognition of single objects, 
 as dog, or horse, or engine, which it considers a triumph of intelli- 
 gence to point out to its superiors, and brokenly to name. In the 
 next stage it perceives attitudes, or acts, some of which, like ' dog 
 jumps,' ' horse snorts,' ' engine puffs,' as its uttermost of thought 
 and speech, it will affirm to others. Thus, as its discernment of 
 facts and their relations grows more and more complete, its sen- 
 ' / tences become more weighty and complex, until at maturity its 
 speech, answering to the fulness of its comprehension, will be 
 phrased after the flexible, articulate fashion of its kinsfolk and 
 associates. And it will probably not be easy to discover wherein 
 the forms of conversation employed by this new member of soci- 
 ety differ from those in use about him. He will doubtless have 
 certain expressions of his own ; but unless he is ' queer,' or defi- 
 cient in intelligence or culture, his peculiarities will probably 
 escape ordinary notice. The sentences he exchanges with his 
 fellows we shall note are seldom involved, sometimes curt, often 
 at least significant for point and brevity. If he receive a literary 
 education, we shall find his conversation but little altered. He 
 will speak in sentences not much heavier or more complex. His 
 vocabulary will be larger, but the idioms and forms, unless his 
 head is turned absurdly, will remain, not those of books, but of 
 living men. On the whole, he will probably speak with greater 
 simplicity and clearness than before, yet with little to distinguish 
 him from other right users of the same language, whether in his 
 own community or throughout the English-speaking world. 
 
 Very different, however, is it when this man essays speech with 
 the pen. As a schoolboy, and indeed at maturity, bis written 
 deliverances will be in the main unrecognizable by any character- 
 istic of his oral style. If he achieve high culture, we shall find his 
 literary sentences, though growing perhaps year by year less 
 stilted and formal, still every way more involved and heavy than 
 
UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 283 
 
 his spoken. If he should commit to memory the letters he writes, 
 and, instead of mailing, communicate their contents in person, he 
 would be held from his manner of speech to have lost his mind. 
 Yet his written English is neither better nor worse than most 
 men's, nor more unlike their ordinary conversation than their own. 
 But if he chance to be a man of affairs, and long accustomed not 
 to write but to dictate his correspondence, we shall find at last 
 substantial identity between the spoken and the written periods. 
 The letters dictated will perhaps be recognized as his by those 
 acquainted with his real manner. They will echo certain personal 
 turns of phrase, but shun every sort of formalism, as well as all 
 manner of approach or semblance to fine writing. They will not 
 be colloquial, nor what is called conversational strictly, but easy, 
 natural, and strong. They may sometimes exhibit a regrettably 
 ambitious or bookish word, but such strange remainders or 
 reminders of the self-conscious ' epistolary ' manner will seem all 
 the more remarkable from their isolation. Moreover, if we compare 
 the dictated manuscripts or correspondence of a large number of 
 persons, we shall find no great general dissimilarity, but produc- 
 tions of liberally educated or of minds of ordinary culture will 
 have as little of difference and as much in common as the men 
 themselves in their oral use of the mother-tongue. 
 
 In view of facts like these, there is little need of demonstrating 
 formally that we all essentially write in a different language from 
 what we speak. Most of us are probably conscious this is the 
 truth ; perhaps some have at times regretted that we cannot speak 
 more nearly as we write. Whether this or the converse of it is the 
 proper feeling, we shall perhaps be better persuaded later. At any 
 rate, we have now a principle on which we can proceed with our 
 comparison of styles. We are already well advised that the stand- 
 ard prose authors of the present generation do not resemble each 
 other in their writings as their speech. Their sentences are cast 
 in different proportions of complexity and heaviness, exhibit vary- 
 ing degrees of idiomatic ease and cleverness, as well as of intelli- 
 gibility and point and force when read aloud. In similar wise, 
 
284 
 
 UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 
 
 Hooker differs greatly from Bacon, and De Quincey from Channing 
 or Macaulay. The one seems to think aloud, to set forth his prem- 
 ises and conclusions essentially in the shape in which they pass 
 before his mind in first cognition ; the other manifestly re-thinks 
 and re-shapes his thought to suit the convenience of his reader, — 
 almost exactly as if speaking to him face to face. In other 
 words, Hooker and De Quincey cast their discourse prevailingly 
 in the sentence-proportions of their thought ; Macaulay and Chan- 
 ning reduce the unit to the oral scale. Macaulay, as we know, 
 wrote at least his History with the deliberate and conscious pur- 
 pose of being immediately intelligible to the humblest reader. 
 
 What, then, is the language of Hooker but the language of the 
 closet and of books ? What is the style of Bacon, or Macaulay, or 
 Emerson, but in large degree the style of the ordinary intercourse 
 of men? A single act may or may not signify with respect to 
 character, but the sum of a man's deeds for a day or a week must 
 unequivocally declare his ideals and other springs of action.. 
 Hence it is suggested that we find the sentences of maximum 
 frequency for each of the styles in question. These for the first 
 book of Hooker are twenty-three and twenty-eight words, but of 
 Macaulay's History essay, fourteen, — as the accompanying curves 
 respectively will show. The lower figures indicate the number of 
 words in sentences ; those at the side, of occurrences. 
 
UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 285 
 
 \ y - 
 
 & 
 
 M: 
 
 it 
 
 5;i 
 
 V- 
 
 s 
 
 Furthermore, out of the 722 periods of Macaulay's Essay on His- 
 tory, 457 fall under the numerical average of twenty-three words 
 per sentence. Of the remainder, there are 105 of more than 
 thirty-five words each, 42 of more than fifty, 9 of over seventy- 
 five, and 1 containing more than a hundred words. Of the 
 725 periods in the first book of the Polity, there are 442 under 
 the sentence-average, 119 have more than sixty, 76 more than 
 seventy-five, 37 more than one hundred, 8 more than one hundred 
 and fifty, and two — of 210 and 268 respectively — more than 
 two hundred words. Macaulay's commonest sentence-lengths of 
 eleven, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen words are demonstrably very 
 close to the usual oral mode ; but certainly neither Hooker nor 
 any man of his times — except, perhaps, pedants and the euphu- 
 ists — ever used thirty-seven, or twenty-eight, or even twenty- 
 three, words in their spoken sentences of chief frequency. 
 
 The difference between the modes of oral and of written speech 
 is apparently not difficult to explain. All men, from the complete 
 individuality of their minds, use severally a distinct dialect of their 
 mother-speech, though to detect personal differences of pronunci- 
 ation, and intension of terms, requires minute observation. The 
 centrifugal effects which come from individuality are offset in oral 
 
286 UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION 
 
 speech by the desire to be immediately and completely intelligible, 
 and to avoid all appearance of eccentricity. While the speaker 
 looks without, and concerns himself with the impression made 
 upon his hearer, the writer is shut up in his closet with his thought. 
 Isolated from the compelling and inspiring presence of listeners, 
 he may yield himself to various habits and tendencies peculiar to 
 himself, of none of which, perhaps, he is aware at all : in short, he 
 humors himself, and not his reader. Furthermore, he may take 
 his time, — must, indeed, in the very nature of things, take more 
 or less of it. For it is the defect of our civilization that we have 
 not learned how to execute the chirographic part of writing much 
 faster than the men of two thousand years ago, though the age 
 abounds in miracles of time-saving. Thus it requires two minds 
 to put down in legible shape with the speed of speech the thoughts 
 of one. The mind can be trained to do its best with agility, but, 
 /permitted to brood over its task, is easily betrayed into introspec- 
 "' tion, self-consciousness, and finical revision. For the writer of 
 these days has very likely imbibed the notion that there is some- 
 thing more to be done than to express his meaning plainly, com- 
 pletely, and strongly, and that this romantic something he is in a 
 fair way by some vague stroke of fortune to achieve. Then what 
 is written may be permanent, but spoken words are winged, and 
 pass quickly away forever. So the writer is not so much con- 
 cerned how to avoid seeming eccentric, as to appear distinguished. 
 When literature is looked upon as a perverse and mysterious 
 accomplishment, the man who fancies he detects some sign or 
 promise of it in himself will become demoralized. He will con- 
 sent to venture, on the chance of elegance, certain foolish and 
 probably very feeble mannerisms. He will avoid so far as pos- 
 sible the associations and forms of living speech. He is anxious 
 that his meaning should seem large, — would scarcely expostulate 
 if it were taken at more than he intended, — so very easily swells 
 his periods even past the unit of their sense, and thus, perhaps, 
 doubly beyond what in less formal discourse he would think of 
 using. 
 
UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 287 
 
 Moreover, in the times of Hooker there were reasons even 
 stronger for the use of long sentences, or of the unit of thought as 
 the unit of presentation, than now obtain. He wrote for educated 
 readers, not for the people. It was the heyday of the new learn- 
 ing in England. Men of culture thought little of English, deemed 
 it an ephemeral language, and cast their works as far as practi- 
 cable in Latin. There was no necessity to be instantly and com- 
 pletely intelligible. Though there were intellectual giants in those 
 days, it is not clear that Hooker was easy reading even to the little 
 public that he addressed. Though it is much more convenient to 
 put integral thoughts in single sentences, such form manifestly 
 handicaps every reader to whom the thoughts are new. What I 
 may have in my mind cannot be transferred bodily to another's. 
 I can only use a series of signs from which the reader reconstructs 
 the fabric I have builded in my brain. But before he can put 
 together a thought identical with my own, I must evidently take 
 mine to pieces, and signify to him each part, and how it must go 
 into place. Thus, while the attainment of the meaning to be 
 expressed is a synthetic process, the first step in the act of expres- 
 sion is clearly analytic. Here are, then, two impulses, one of which 
 should prompt the author to reduce his meaning to simple sen- 
 tences ; the other will influence him to keep his periods open until 
 the last clause or element of the respective thoughts has been 
 expressed. Thus we are prepared to consider another phase in 
 the styles of the authors we are trying to compare. For, while 
 Hooker shows relatively few periods immediately intelligible on 
 oral reading, Macaulay has a considerable number that address 
 the eye to much better purpose than the ear. Some of his sen- 
 tences almost rival Hooker's longest, while Hooker, as we know, 
 writes some as simple as Macaulay's. Yet in spite of the fact 
 that something like three-fifths of Macaulay's periods are under 
 twenty words, the long sentences found in every hundred so coun- ; 
 terbalance them that his sentence-average of twenty-three is a 
 constant equilibrium. The following scheme of the first hundred 
 periods of the Essay on History will illustrate : — 
 
288 UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 
 
 >g gag 
 
 *T ? s f s 8 tJI 
 
 2 * l» 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -h-p 
 
 
 :::::::::::::::::|:::::::::::=f5 
 
 =p IJua 
 
 oo 
 
 g_ ::::::::::__ = : = £ 
 
 oo _== ==fc= ======= ».■ 
 
 oo- s_= = -j— i-j = = = = = = ■--..- 
 
 si 
 
 II ~ ~ ~ Z _> 
 
 
 :|:::3ii=^::lfe:::::::: 
 
 o 
 
 ~-X 
 
 li::::::::::::::?: ~^_ = ^T~P 
 
 - a =p 2 ■ e> 
 
 :" r-e io 
 
 
 x. :-;: 
 
 ::::::;:::=«::: 
 
 
 
 :::::::::::$ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 5=:;;:::;:::::: 
 
 
 
 rrri' iLff 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 
 
 "-= J JsS 
 
 
 :::_ :±_ ":::==■ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 g 
 
 
 in 
 
 
 
 
 -.:: :::-J::^ 
 
 
 TTTTTTmfW Mi f 
 
 i; 
 
 (O tc S iS 
 
 __i *'--- M -_i 
 
 ■■« ^* rf c5 M gj S 
 
 EtuflLLlLLlAI 
 
UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 289 
 
 Here, then, are two forces working counter to each other, — 
 what but the same of which we know? The one is unmistakably 
 centripetal, tending to reduce the sentence to oral proportions ; 
 the other centrifugal, answering to the long book-periods of every 
 literature. The evidence seems to indicate the operation of some 
 kind of sentence-sense, some conception or ideal of form, which, 
 if it could have its will, would reduce all sentences to procrustean 
 regularity. It is evidently this sentence-sense which chooses the 
 oral structure, permits the few long sentences we have just noted, 
 but excludes the scores of such observed in Hooker. The same 
 principle seems also adequate to explain the strange persistence 
 of sentence-averages under unlike conditions. In some chapters, 
 for instance, of the History — which is more uneven than the 
 Essays, being written with less ' curious care ' — long sentences V 
 abound. But in spite of the greater centrifugal force the style 
 keeps to its orbit. Again, after the dialogue passages, of which 
 there are many in different portions of the work, by a sort of 
 reaction full-rounded literary periods follow closely, restoring the 
 average thus temporarily reduced. 1 The same is true, though gen- 
 erally in a degree less marked, of all modern styles. The manner • 
 in which the sentence-sense combats the synthetic impulse is also 
 apparent in the fact that when Macaulay, or Channing, Newman, 
 Ruskin, Emerson, and the rest, consent to a long period it is apt 
 to be very long indeed. There are very few sentences of strictly 
 average proportions. It would seem, therefore, that it is only when 
 
 1 Compare these averages of consecutive hundreds from near the middle of the 
 History. Ordinarily five hundred, or even three hundred, periods will reveal the 
 rhythm. 
 
 23-74 
 
 23.87 
 
 21.02 
 
 19.20 
 
 21-55 
 
 19.46 
 
 26.08 
 
 21.11 
 
 19.78 
 
 26.78 
 
 2S-36 
 
 24.44 
 
 21.64 
 
 22.13 
 
 22.82 
 
 28.60 
 
 21.14 
 
 22.52 
 
 22.12 
 
 19-33 
 
 23-S2 
 
 26.9s 
 
 17-93 
 
 22.78 
 
 22.61 
 
 24.00 
 
 24.88 
 
 23.90 
 
 23.29 
 
 21.20 
 
 22.54 
 
 21.00 
 
 27-13 
 
 24.70 
 
 19.66 
 
 21.05 
 
 =3-97 
 
 27.48 
 
 22.87 
 
 25.68 
 
 28.04 
 
 26.06 
 
 23.25 22.70 23.14 25.11 22.42 22.50 
 
290 UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 
 
 a thought is so peculiarly complex or integral as to offer no ready 
 division or easy rendition by instalments, that the mind attempts 
 to grapple with it as a whole. 
 
 The literary sentence-sense seems to mean, ' Put in a single 
 sentence only what the mind of the reader, or of the writer, re- 
 thinking his meaning as his reader's proxy, will easily present to 
 itself in a single view. When a thought is reached which refuses 
 natural analysis, construct each clause on the. same plan.' As we 
 have seen, before the articulation of meaning all predications were 
 in the nature of independent periods. Hence the clause has 
 always been the natural unit of presentation. But the synthetic 
 principle amounts to an impulse to develop the whole meaning 
 potentially in the mind within the limits of a single sentence. 
 Thus Chaucer, at the opening of the Prologue, wishing to express 
 the idea that it was the return of spring that sent palmers and 
 pilgrims forth upon their journeyings, brings all the different facts 
 leading up or accessory to the final proposition into one period 
 .(quoted on p. 60) of eighteen lines. So Spenser in the opening 
 stanzas of the Faerie Queene does not set forth single facts con- 
 cerning the Red Cross Knight or Una in single periods, but would 
 fain give not only plight but pedigree in one sentence of introduc- 
 tion. This, in accordance with what has been said above, is 
 clearly because the whole character as well as history are at once 
 potentially before the poet's mind pressing to be told ; and, we 
 may add, because there is yet no sentence-sense requiring him to 
 modulate his strains to the maximum convenience of his reader. 
 Compare stanza v. : — 
 
 So pure and innocent, as that same lambe, 
 She was in life and every vertuous lore; 
 
 And by descent of Royall lynage came 
 Of ancient Kinges and Queenes, that had of yore 
 Their scepters stretcht from East to Westerne shore, 
 
 And all the world in their subjection held; 
 Till that infernal feend with foule uprore 
 
 Forwasted all their land, and them expeld; 
 Whom to avenge she had this Knight from far compeld. 
 
UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 291 
 
 On the other hand, the dwarf has in Spenser's thought no tra- 
 ditions and no character save laziness, and is accordingly cut off 
 with two predications, — the lightest sentence so far in the 
 poem : — 
 
 Behind her farre away a Dwarfe did lag, 
 
 That lasie seemd, in being ever last, 
 Or wearied with bearing of her bag 
 
 Of needments at his backe. 
 
 But a poet writing in the style of Macaulay would have kept the 
 integrity of the narrative equally unimpaired, yet presented Una 
 and the Red Cross Knight in periods of the same kind. The unit 
 of Macaulay's presentation is the proposition, answering to the 
 single fact or judgment in the mind. In Spenser's synthetic style 
 the unit is the integral meaning to be expressed, or what in prose 
 like Macaulay's might constitute a paragraph. 1 
 
 Thus we may account for the confusion between the paragraph 
 and period in our early authors. Even so painstaking a writer 
 as Ascham, admits in The Schoolmaster 148 false paragraphs out 
 of 329 total, and in at least 55 cases wrongly treats the period and 
 the paragraph as one. Of course, the blame may not be Ascham's ; 
 but must, in any case, be charged to a rudimentary or unawakened 
 sentence-sense. It will now doubtless be clear that we have been 
 doing nothing but tracing the development of this sentence-sense 
 since we began study in the prose. We have found a heavy book- 
 sentence which came in with learning and the universities, and a 
 light conversational manner which has appeared in conjunction 
 with the Romantic or people's era in poetry. Moreover, there is 
 practically no disputing as to which is better. Each of us uses 
 both, probably cannot write a single letter without encountering 
 
 1 Chaucer's poetic sentence-style, in spite of occasional long periods like the 
 first of the Prologue, is not synthetic, but almost the counterpart of what Macaulay 
 has reached in prose. His real average of words per sentence is under twenty- 
 three, of predications perhaps two and a half, and per cent of simple sentences 
 hardly less than thirty. (See Chapter XXXI.) Hence we see he has the book and 
 the oral manner in almost modern proportion. His prose, on the contrary, as 
 already shown, is wholly unoral and rudimentary. 
 
292 UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 
 
 ideas that do not seem to admit of analysis but must be set forth 
 as wholes. The ideal style will have the colloquial unit of pre- 
 sentation, like the French, but a select diction, not stiff and not 
 familiar, free from the associations both of pedants and of the 
 vulgar. 
 
 With this clew in hand, it will not be difficult to go back and 
 trace the growth of the popular style of modern prose. We find 
 it in Mandeville in an almost childish strain, in Sir John Fortescue, 
 and in Ascham. Yet each of these was in some strange way 
 bewildered and overmastered by the consciousness of his task. 
 Under the influence of the New Learning the English sentence 
 was accommodated to the professional men of books, and grew, if 
 not longer, certainly more ponderous and impracticable. As the 
 units of thought increased, the units of expression increased also. 
 Yet there were exceptions. Bacon, from the peculiarly analytical 
 tendencies of his mind, shows a sentence-sense remarkable for 
 his times, and by it anticipates the present century. The sen- 
 tence-sense in literature is nothing but the sentence-sense of the 
 common speech of men, and Bacon was great enough to divine 
 the fact and write as he spoke. In the era of the town, when 
 convictions died, and the small-talk of the gaming table fixed the 
 pitch of thought, the sentence began to approach oral lightness 
 and often simplicity. Yet though clauses became apprehensible, 
 there was still no idea or instinct of an organic sentence. Dryden, 
 famed as the first reputable prosaist, is almost as formless as 
 Spenser. 1 Even Bunyan — unless the punctuation in his works 
 
 1 Cf. the following from his Essay on Dramatic Poesy : " And that all this is 
 practicable, I can produce for examples many of our English plays : as The Maids 
 Tragedy, The Alchemist, The Silent Woman : I was going to have named The 
 Fox, but the unity of design seems not exactly observed in it ; for there appear two 
 actions in the play; the first naturally ending with the fourth act; the second forced 
 from it in the fifth : which yet is the less to be condemned in him, because the dis- 
 guise of Volpone, though it suited not with his character as a crafty or covetous 
 person, agreed well enough with that of a voluptuary ; and by it the poet gained 
 the end at which he aimed, the punishment of vice, and the reward of virtue, both 
 which that disguise produced." — Prose Works, Malone's edition, vol. I., part ii., 
 p. 89. 
 
UNITS OF THOUGHT, AND OF EXPRESSION. 293 
 
 is the printer's and not his own — fails of the highest excellence 
 through wrong sentence proportions. Thus it was left for the 
 same influences that rescued poetry from professionalism to redeem 
 also the prose side of our literature. From the Lyrical Ballads to 
 the present moment the language of books and the language of / 
 men have been growing rapidly alike. 
 
294 THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 
 
 Styles, as has been shown, are heavy in proportion to the 
 number of clauses or predications they exhibit, as well as the num- 
 ber of words in their sentence-averages. It is evident, however, 
 on a moment's reflection, that two authors showing the same 
 length of sentence and the same number of finite verbs may be 
 very unlike in weight : the one may bring before the mind twice 
 or many more than twice as many notions as the other. It will 
 then be necessary, after ascertaining the number of predications 
 and simple sentences, to weigh the styles in some manner. This 
 might be done by making an inventory of the respective ideas or 
 notions introduced to thought. It may also be determined nega- 
 tively by enumerating the number of relations or attributes left 
 unaffirmed, — or, to use the language of grammars, ' assumed,' 
 instead of 'predicated.' For present purposes, which are pro- 
 visional merely, it will be sufficient to illustrate the latter method. 
 
 The simplest examples consist merely in the ellipsis of certain 
 forms of the verb ' to be,' and implied subjects, with retention of 
 conjunctions to mark the relation. Thus in the first sentence 
 quoted on p. 277 from De Quincey a copulative 'was' is twice 
 evaded. Chaucer, Spenser, and doubtless Dryden, would have 
 cast it thus in completed predicates : — 
 
 To intercept the evil whilst it was yet in elementary stages of formation, 
 was the true policy; whereas I in my blindness sought only for some mitiga- 
 tion to the evil when it was already formed, and past all reach of inter- 
 ception. 
 
THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 295 
 
 The mind of the well-appointed reader will derive all the sense- 
 effect of the latter expanded presentation through the implied 
 predicatives of the former, and will seem to itself to do it with 
 less exertion. To the man inexpert with books De Quincey's 
 sentence will be heavier as first quoted than in the form here 
 given. The explanation lies in the fact that the energy of the 
 soul cannot be measured in objective terms. Whatever it is dis- 
 posed or can be stimulated to do in spontaneous, unconditioned 
 activity, is easier than lighter matters essayed in conditioned ways 
 through the operation of determinative energy or of ' the will.' 
 Hence we must judge lightness so far as possible not by the objec- 
 tive proportions or weight of an idea, but by the subjective energy 
 that the mind is through it incited to employ. When through 
 familiarity with the symbols ' as ' or ' when ' or 'if the mind at 
 once attains the effect of the same in fully expanded clauses, yet 
 is forced to lag through formal predications, its activity changes 
 from spontaneous to determinative. The less intuitive or more 
 obvious and formal the matter, the more determinative will be 
 the act of reading. A proper employment of the sentence-sense 
 in the author will have reduced complex notions to easily appre- 
 hensible elements or ' units,' and so subordinated or suppressed 
 inferior predicates as to quicken and energize interpretation to 
 the uttermost. But though the mind speeds faster and is incited 
 to keener energy by the omission of such predicatives as it may 
 subjectively supply, it is wholly evident that its action will be most 
 intuitive and speedy, and its energy keenest, when both expressed 
 and implied predicates are reduced to a minimum frequency per 
 period. The speech of the speaker, the language of the writer, 
 must flit from thought to thought according to the laws of asso- 
 ciation in his own mind, and in such organic sequence that the 
 phantasy or imagination of the reader may pursue with no un- 
 equal speed. To make sentences that assist and accelerate such 
 pursuit is of the highest art ; but when so made they are found 
 closely to correspond to the thought in the author's mind, and 
 by their light unencumbered structure fairly to allure interpreta- 
 tion even with unprepossessed and indifferent readers. 
 
296 THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 
 
 But there are manifestly other ways by which the English sen- 
 tence-sense has withdrawn from prominence all unimportant no- 
 tions. Compare this further example from De Quincey : — 
 
 With a government capable of frauds like these, and a people (at least in 
 the mandarin class) trained through centuries to a conformity of temper with 
 their government! we shall find, in the event of any more extended intercourse 
 with China, the greatest difficulty in maintaining the first equations of rank 
 and privilege; 
 
 A hundred years before De Quincey the sentence-sense of prose 
 English would have been content with this conglomerate of 
 clauses: — 'With a government which, as has been shown, is 
 capable of frauds like these, and a people — at least so far as the 
 mandarin class may be considered to represent them — that has 
 been brought through centuries of training to conform their senti- 
 ments to the temper of their government, we shall find it a matter 
 of the greatest difficulty, if it chance that we extend our inter- 
 course with China, to maintain the first equations of rank and 
 privilege.' 
 
 The second step after the use of ' as,' ' when,' ' if,' ' though,' 
 ' unless,' and the like, with a noun, or adjective, or participle of 
 the verb omitted in an appositional construction, was apparently 
 to omit the conjunctional sign of the original relation. This, with 
 the omission of the copula, covers essentially all instances of 
 clause-saving in the present extract from De Quincey. It is, 
 nevertheless, a powerful mode, and calls for no little culture in 
 the reader. To comprehend a style which condenses clauses to 
 phrases requires as much literary preparation as (p. 71) to read 
 Keats. To estimate how much a style has been lightened by 
 substituting nominatives absolute and appositive constructions for 
 predicates, we have but to use all the relations affirmed or implied, 
 taken together, as a basis or divisor, and the number of suppressed 
 predicates as a dividend. We find accordingly in the passage 
 quoted seventy-five per cent of clauses saved. Or we may illus- 
 trate with this simpler example from Geikie's Life and Words 
 of Christ : — 
 
THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 
 
 297 
 
 Thus the Kor&n, written in Arabia, is essentially an Eastern book, in great 
 measure unintelligible and uninteresting to nations living in countries in any 
 great degree different, in climate and modes of life, from Arabia itself. 
 
 Here are three omissions of the copula which, counted with " liv- 
 ing " — for ' that live ' — and the single expressed predicate, make 
 5 as the basis or divisor, while the dividend, or verbs avoided, is 
 4. The per cent of clauses saved is therefore 80. For extended 
 passages of course the average will be greatly lowered. The fol- 
 lowing exhibit of per cents from Chaucer down will show the prog- 
 ress of the mode. We compute on the basis of 500 periods, or 
 over, as before : — 
 
 Mandeville . 
 
 .003 
 
 Addison 
 
 3-°9 
 
 Bacon . . 
 
 2.87 
 
 Chaucer . . 
 
 .44 
 
 Bolingbroke 
 
 3-72 
 
 Emerson 
 
 3.01 
 
 Latimer . 
 
 2.78 
 
 Shaftesbury 
 
 4.02 
 
 C. C. Everett 
 
 3-31 
 
 Lyly . . 
 
 3.16 
 
 Dryden . . 
 
 4.88 
 
 Newman 
 
 4.50 
 
 Ascham . . 
 
 4-3' 
 
 Bunyan . . 
 
 5-96 
 
 Macaulay . 
 
 5-i7 
 
 Spenser . . 
 
 6.74 
 
 Goldsmith . 
 
 6-35 
 
 Lowell . . 
 
 5.29 
 
 ^Hooker 
 
 7-77 
 
 Johnson . . 
 
 • 7-°9 
 
 Channing . 
 
 6.62 
 
 Sidney . . 
 
 9.27 
 
 De Quincey 
 
 7.25 
 
 Grant . . 
 
 8-93 
 
 The list seems to justify division thus into three groups. The 
 first exhibits the beginnings and growth of clause-saving as far 
 as the prose of Milton, Jeremy Taylor, and like stylists of unwieldy 
 yet intelligible structure, represented here by Sir Philip Sidney. 1 As 
 
 1 With these authors, considering their generation, the highest expression of 
 formlessness in English prose is reached. Milton writes in periods as elephantine 
 as Fabyan's, and seems on first comparison to have the instinct of sentence form 
 even less developed. Taylor, if the periods which close his sentences are at all to 
 be insisted on, goes even beyond the units of thought-presentation. With him 
 semicolons mark the real divisions of meaning. Yet it will not do to make his 
 semicolons periods, for he often, like Milton, reveals that he does not know his 
 thought is finished. When an author is not ready to close a period, though his 
 meaning is compleled, his manner — much as the oral sentence sometimes finished, 
 before the speaker is aware, with a wrong inflection — will betray him. A sentence 
 is an organic thing, shaped and determined by the thought which prompts it, and 
 there should be no more question as to where it begins or ends than what is its 
 grammatical subject or predicate. It is a lack of sharpness in the sentence- 
 
298 THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 
 
 the sentence breaks in half and becomes practicable with Dryden 
 and his followers, the aggregate of clause-saving is reduced with 
 it, but rises as the structure becomes more organic and predica- 
 tion decreases. Finally, as the form shifts from synthetic to ana- 
 lytic, and simple sentences multiply, the average drops again, only 
 to rise, on better interior articulation, as before. 
 
 Very remarkable are the results from Chaucer, which cover all 
 his prose. In the last 286 periods of the Persouris Tale, as well 
 as in the fifth hundred from the beginning, not an instance of 
 clause-saving by participles or appositives occurs. De Quincey 
 shows the highest average for the second period, and for apparent 
 reason. He represents the highest development of the synthetic 
 manner, and is the dividing name between the eighteenth century 
 stylists and the modern. It is especially interesting to study the 
 means he can command to reduce the weight of his sentences, 
 yet preserve their synthetic character. As we have seen, Bacon 
 writes by anticipation in the analytic manner, and belongs in con- 
 sequence in the latest column. Macaulay and Channing, from 
 permitting still so many involved or synthetic periods, show per 
 cents much higher than Emerson, who is almost colloquial in 
 structural simplicity. As for consistency and range in clause-sav- 
 ing averages, the following from 5000 periods of Macaulay's 
 Essays will illustrate : — 
 
 History, 722 periods . . . 4.40 Addison, 1331 periods . . 4.61 
 
 Madame D'Arblay, 918 periods, 4.74 Atterbury, 240 " . . 5.05 
 
 sense, — almost developed in his generation, that keeps Bunyan back from his true 
 place in the scheme of development. This fact, as well as many other points in 
 line with the above, becomes clear on a little inquiry into the use of the semicolon 
 in eighteenth century and earlier prosaists. 
 
 Of course there are those who will take issue with me here, and insist that Mil- 
 ton, Jeremy Taylor, and even Hooker, are ideal stylists. While admiring these 
 authors in a manner as much as anybody, I see not how more can be claimed for 
 them, in respect to form, than I have done, except by denying there has ever been 
 such a thing as development in the art of writing. The prose of Chaucer differs 
 from Milton's only in degree, but not in kind. 
 
THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 299 
 
 Goldsmith, 263 periods . . 3.83 Milton, 895 periods . . . 4.21 
 
 Bunyan, 245 " ... 3.79 Machiavelli, 693 periods . . 7.42 1 
 
 But no just estimate can be made of the decrease in the heavi- 
 ness of styles without taking note of further devices. The instinct 
 to reduce clauses to phrases manifests itself most directly by the 
 change of conjunctional meanings to prepositional, or the substitu- 
 tion of other prepositions therefor. Clauses like ' since I returned,' 
 ' because I suspected,' ' unless I approve ' are cut down to ' since 
 return,' 'because of my suspicion,' 'without my approval.' More- 
 over, clauses may not only be reduced to phrases, but also vari- 
 ously condensed to single terms. The prepared mind is fond of 
 contemplating actions without recognition of the actors. It finds 
 a palpable gain in thinking ' coercion ' rather than ' men coercing.' 
 It saves energy by reducing agency to a mere status or relation. 
 It needs but points, not superficies of meaning. It was made 
 clear in Chapter X. that the poet condenses the literal and the 
 spiritual by making the latter stand for both. In Chapter XVII. 
 was shown how the highest art makes feeling also potential of 
 what is to be known. In like manner, though not for emotional 
 ends, prose art takes the spiritual for the literal. Through famili- 
 arity with his subject-matter, the author, unless in an expatiatory 
 mood, sets up points, both to himself and to his reader, potentially 
 
 1 The Machiavelli Essay shows more remarkable results than any other compo- 
 sition of Macaulay yet examined. The per cent of simple sentences rises to 47.5, 
 and of predications correspondingly falls to 1.88. Its nearest rival is the Milton; 
 simple sentences 38, predication average, 2.07. To encounter higher averages of 
 clause-saving we have but to turn to the poetry, of which a representative exhibit is 
 here added : — 
 
 Thomson 
 
 . 20.92 
 
 Chatterton . 
 
 . 12.67 
 
 
 
 Wordsworth 
 
 . 20.27 
 
 Spenser . . 
 
 . 11.65 
 
 Donne . . . 
 
 4.81 
 
 Coleridge . 
 
 . 18.24 
 
 Milton 
 
 . 10.30 
 
 Arnold . . . 
 
 4-53 
 
 Hood . 
 
 . 13.68 
 
 Browning . 
 
 • 8.38 
 
 Shakespeare . 
 
 3-97 
 
 Keats . . . 
 
 • 13-21 
 
 Dry den . . 
 
 8.04 
 
 Chaucer . . . 
 
 2-54 
 
 Further evidence of Chaucer's and Spenser's oral manner would seem unneces- 
 sary, though stronger proof abounds. For this, as well as the difference in general 
 between the above and the former results from prose, see Chapter XXXI. 
 
300 THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 
 
 equivalent to the whole expanse of meaning. As was earlier 
 observed, he can by no means convey his thoughts. The reader 
 must think them after him through signs ; and that style which 
 uses fewest and most nearly approaches the speed of common 
 thinking is most business-like and best suited to this age. We no 
 longer read for the sake of reading, or write for the sake of writing. 
 We bring before the mind in a single view what the co-ordinator 
 must spread over a succession of clauses. Men once might have 
 written ' The garrison proposed a truce, and the enemy refused it, 
 and the garrison was dismayed,' but ' Refusal of the proposed 
 truce dismayed the garrison,' is the style, if not of polite letters, 
 at least of busy minds. 
 
 The array of instances is endless. In addition to the very 
 abundant employment of native verbals, we have perhaps more 
 examples in formal English of the Latin -ion, -men/, and -ure 
 derivatives. Further, the use of infinitive nouns with a subjective 
 or objective genitive — Shakespeare's favorite expedient of con- 
 densation — or phrase with of, for verbs with subject or object, 
 greatly assists the vigor and speed of style. Any modern with 
 book-traditions will show examples. Compare this random pas- 
 sage from Geikie : — 
 
 At his first appearance, though still ■- young man, without the sanction of 
 success, or the weight of position, or the countenance of the schools, Jesus 
 bears himself, with calm unconsciousness of effort, as altogether superior to 
 his visitor. A born Jew, he speaks as the Lawgiver of a new theocracy which 
 he has come to found, in place of that of Moses, whom they almost wor- 
 shipped. He lays down conditions of unbending strictness as indispensable 
 to an entrance into the new community thus to be established, though he has 
 nothing to offer but privation and self-denial as the earthly result of joining 
 it. He moves at his ease amidst subjects the most august and mysterious : 
 demands the personal homage of those who would enter his kingdom, and 
 promises eternal life as the reward of sincere acceptance of his claims. Repu- 
 diating the aids to which others might have looked, seeking no support from 
 the powerful, or from the crowd, to facilitate his design; he speaks of himself, 
 even now, when obscure and alone, as a King, and shows a serene composure 
 in extending his royalty over even the souls of men. — Vol. I., p. 508, Ameri- 
 can edition. 
 
THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 301 
 
 Though this is bookish in sentential length and structure and 
 by no means English in other respects of the best sort, it is 
 remarkable for speed, and if not for lightness, at least for the 
 quality of being thoroughly unladen. Only the essence, the spirit 
 of the meaning, we may say, is left aboard. The first sentence, 
 realized over in detail as one should stop to ponder, would show 
 no less weight than this : ' When he first appears, he is still a 
 young man, for whom no success has won sanction, to whom no 
 position lends weight, no schools give countenance, Jesus bears 
 himself, calmly unconscious that he is putting forth any effort, as 
 altogether superior to the man who has come to visit him.' Of 
 course the passage might have been cast, with the effect of greater 
 precipitance but with less detail, in sentences of the oral sort. 
 Compare the following from Bartol : — 
 
 The third mark of genius is communication. In Taylor this was perfect. 
 " Her very foot speaks," says Shakespeare. But in most persons not a tithe 
 of the frame bears witness. His marvellous suppleness of fibre and organ 
 made his whole body a tongue. He was as ingrained an actor as Garrick or 
 Kean. He did not believe in preaching from notes; and, making » speech 
 at a meeting of his brethren, he took off a clergyman confined to his manu- 
 script, looking from his page to his hearers, gazing one way and gesticulating 
 another, to the convulsive laughter of the victims he scored. I remember his 
 impersonating a dervish in his spinning raptures, so that to see that Oriental 
 character one had no need to travel. There was in his word a primitive 
 force none could withstand. — Radical Problems, p. 328. 
 
 The analytic manner communicates as we have seen by points, 
 but has nothing to do with making the points large or small, 
 frequent or widely separated. It is the business of the reader to 
 fill them out to a superficies of sense. A style may be rapid, though 
 it microscopically take cognizance of every item in the meaning 
 that the reader might supply, but it will not be strong. Herein we 
 see the essential difference between the condensed book-style and 
 the condensed oral. The one, like Geikie's, gains speed by leav- 
 ing meaning to be implied within the sentence, the other outside 
 of it. The longer periods of the former in one way or another 
 
302 THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 
 
 prescribe all that the mind shall cognize, the simpler units of the 
 other enable more suppression of the sense between. How it is 
 that the momentum of an author can carry the mind through the 
 effect of what is omitted we cannot consider here. But it is cer- 
 tain that Bartol in the last extract seems in some way to keep in 
 communication with us after a sentence is closed, and in the pause 
 between empowers our fancy to assist in the characterization he is 
 carrying on. Though there are not many verbal nouns or subject- 
 possessives in Bartol's passage, yet in the first hundred periods of 
 the paper, among which our extract falls, there is not less than 
 10.91 per cent of clauses saved. 
 
 So then the Suppression of Predication is something more than 
 the dropping of predicates, or the substitution of a possessive for 
 the subject or the. object of a verb. It is doing what the stenog- 
 rapher does when he makes a single stroke mean a whole thought. 
 A sentence may represent either the intuitive view that the mind 
 has of some fact or truth, or a reflective and determinative repro- 
 duction of the same fact or truth considered in detail. In oral 
 speech the sentence is more likely to be born of the former, in 
 written diction an empiric, adjusted representation of the latter. 
 The instinctive, spontaneous utterance of intuitive cognition is by 
 exclamation, that is by simply naming the object or relation men- 
 tally discerned. There is no predication connected with intuitive 
 acts of the intellectual faculty ; it is only when the thinker pro- 
 ceeds to turn the perception over in his mind, — that is, to realize 
 it to himself as a thought, by the aid of language, — that predica- 
 tions come naturally to his lips. Casting one's meaning in formal 
 sentences, affirming, as to another what one has perceived or 
 felt, is in some sense supererogatory, like talking aloud to one'.s 
 self, will involve some degree of over-expression, or repetition of 
 obvious meaning. Some things or parts of things that are self- 
 evident will be affirmed on the same basis of importance as the 
 rest. The prevailing fault of the synthetic style is therefore the 
 affirmation of the obvious. Moreover, the reader prefers and 
 expects intuitive ideas and sentences, that is, products of intuition 
 
THE WEIGHT OF STYLES. 303 
 
 which he may intuitively re-discern — just such as he would hear 
 from the brilliant talker. But the tendency in reflective composi- 
 tion to revise and refine away and even repeal first impressions 
 gives rise to many sentences that consciously or unconsciously irk 
 and repel. Intuitive thought is intermittent, and connects itself 
 by electric leaps, by a certain spiritual contact which needs no 
 formal links. Hence the ideal style will have a maximum number 
 of intuitive sentences ; and that style is lightest that comes near- 
 est to the first impressions of the mind. 1 
 
 1 Analytic or intuitive styles differ according to the leap or omission of thought 
 between. It is the length of the leap rather than the shortness of the periods that 
 makes an author seem laconic. No one is conscious of Bartol's staccato quality 
 in passages where his thought is most sustained. Channing, when he writes sen- 
 tences as short, but with lesser gaps of meaning, seems as smooth as Newman. 
 
304 
 
 THE NEW ARTICULATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE NEW ARTICULATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 On further examining any author, as Bartol, Holmes, or Munger, 
 
 of simplest oral manner, we are struck by the general absence of 
 
 v conjunctions, and are drawn to make comparison with other styles. 
 
 i We accordingly collect data under the heads of initial and interior 
 
 / connectives, — and, to increase the significance of the figures, of 
 
 subordinate "conjunctions. The following are the results for 500 
 
 periods : — 
 
 
 Newman. 
 
 D. G. Mitchell. 
 
 Pater. 
 
 
 • • 131 
 
 hi 
 
 78 
 
 Interior 
 
 . . 1566 
 
 1407 
 
 1191 
 
 Total . . 
 
 • ■ 1697 
 
 1518 
 
 1269 
 
 Subordinate 
 
 . . 884 
 
 335 
 
 424 
 
 
 Arnold. 
 
 HOWELLS. 
 
 HlGGINSON. 
 
 Initial . . 
 
 '37 
 
 28 
 
 I IO 
 
 Interior . . . 
 
 1117 
 
 IO76 
 
 869 
 
 Total . . 
 
 • ■ 1254 
 
 1 104 
 
 979 
 
 Subordinate 
 
 . . 601 
 
 318 
 
 263 
 
 
 Irving. 
 
 Gladstone. 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 
 
 125 
 
 59 
 
 Interior . . . 
 
 915 
 
 823 
 
 861 
 
 Total . . 
 
 • • 959 
 
 948 
 
 920 
 
 Subordinate 
 
 . . 264 
 
 33' 
 
 196 
 
THE NEW ARTICULATION OF CLAUSES. 305 
 
 Emerson. Theodore Parker. Bartol. 
 
 Initial 30 55 91 
 
 Interior . . . 821 736 684 
 
 Total .... 851 791 775 
 
 Subordinate . .109 101 140 
 
 Hawthorne. T. T. Munger. O. W. Holmes. 
 
 Initial 66 41 5 
 
 Interior 647 614 342 
 
 Total ... 713 655 347 
 
 Subordinate . . . 157 245 270 
 
 Here again are significant differences, and, in the light of the 
 development already traced, not difficult to explain. An exami- 
 nation of the authors designated by low totals makes clear thaU 
 they indicate the relation between clauses and sentences in somelj 
 way without the use of conjunctions. They seem to be under 
 some sort of restraint to articulate their periods by interior 
 appointments rather than outward signs. They suppress the for 
 or because that earlier authors use so willingly, and signify the 
 causal relation by making the clause sustaining it simply precede 
 or follow its effect. Parallel or level notions are given consecu- 
 tively as they come to thought, without connectives. As there 
 are no conjunctions in the mind — that is, no pictorial or sym- 
 bolic representations of them as ideas — the style that most nearly 
 follows thought will omit them when possible, or where formal 
 merely. The omission of causal conjunctions is characteristic of V 
 all oral literature. Instances like the following are frequent in 
 Homer : — 
 
 Yet even thus will I give her back, if that is better : 
 I would rather see my people whole than perishing. 1 
 
 1 dXXA nal <Js iBt\ia 86fj.ei>cu ird\ui, el t6 y Aftetpov • 
 jSotiAo/i' iy&i \abt> awv efxtif-vai 7} airoKiaOai. 
 
 Iliad, I., iz6, 117. 
 
306 THE NEW ARTICULATWN OF CLAUSES. 
 
 Stranger, to thy cost dost thou shoot at men : 
 Never again shalt thou enter such a contest : 
 Now is swift death assured thee. 1 
 
 Compare also this from Caedmon : — 
 
 Pale lingered 
 Over the archers the sheer flames, 
 Shields were gleaming, shadows vanishing. 
 Profound night-glooms could not nearly 
 Hide the lurking places: heaven's candle was burning 7 2 
 
 We saw in the last chapter that the most effective prose styles 
 by a kind of momentum carry the meaning forward over gaps 
 between the thoughts expressed. As in poetry, parts are used 
 with the effect of wholes ; the prepared intelligence cognizes a 
 maximum of meaning from a minimum of text. The vital element 
 in the art of prose writing is to minimize the expressed or material 
 part of the meaning, yet carry the reader through the effect of 
 all. From the above exhibit it may be fairly questioned whether 
 Newman and Pater and Arnold do not use the subordinating 
 mode, as it is evident Emerson and Parker do not. Again, 
 Munger and Holmes are clearly not subordinators, although the 
 subordinate connectives to the sum of all are as 3 : 8 and 4 : 5 
 respectively, for evidently principal conjunctions have been gen- 
 erally omitted. In common oral parlance men drop conjunctions 
 
 1 £««, Kaxtas avhpwv Tofdfecu • oOk£t &46\<av 
 iWai> itTida-eis • vvv toi aus aliris 6\e6pos. 
 
 Odyssey, XXII., 27, 28. 
 
 2 From the description of the Pillar of Fire, Exodus, 111-115. See also 11. 135- 
 137, and 164-169. Among even better samples from the Bedwulf compare the fol- 
 lowing (11. 516-518) : — 
 
 Git on waeteres sent 
 Seofon niht swuncon. HS -p£ set sunde oferflat: 
 
 kafde mare mcegen. 
 
 Ye two a sennight strove 
 On the domains of the deep. He overcame thee in swimming, — 
 
 Had greater strength / 
 
THE NEW ARTICULATION OF CLAUSES. 307 
 
 in short sentences, and gain by the omission. For like significant 
 and pointed phrasing compare the following from Munger's On 
 the Threshold: — 
 
 Young men should govern themselves strictly in this thing. Don't play in 
 the cars; gamblers do, gentlemen as a rule do not. Never play in public 
 places; it is the just mark of a loafer. Refuse to devote whole evenings to 
 whist; life is too short and books are too near. Rate the whole matter low, 
 and have such uses for your time and faculties that you can say to all, I have 
 other matters to attend to. 
 
 This is, of course, informal if not familiar, and need not be 
 insisted on as the model style. But the standard English of the 
 future is sure to be as close as this to the spoken norm. Why 
 should men be stiff and self-conscious in written speech while they 
 are at such pains to avoid all suggestion of such quality in the 
 oral ? The written sentence is demonstrably growing shorter year 
 by year, while the spoken does not palpably alter. This means, 
 not that the literary sentence will continue to grow shorter and 
 shorter as long as the language lasts, but on reaching approxi- 
 mately the oral form and structure will there remain. Men used 
 to wear, on high days and all public occasions, stately suits of 
 broadcloth of which they were unavoidably very conscious and in 
 which pitiably uncomfortable. We have come now, so to speak, 
 to wearing holiday clothes in our every-day writing and corre- 
 spondence, and to making our Sunday suits as sensible and com- 
 fortable as our common. In other words, the language of books 
 is fast becoming as idiomatic and unconstrained as the language 
 of men, while the language of men is growing daily richer in 
 vocabulary and more refined in associations. 1 The .ideal style 
 would then approximately combine the characteristics of an 
 
 1 There can be little question that spoken English receives from year to year a 
 large accession of Latin terms, inasmuch as each generation of children meets with 
 a considerable increase of book-words, over the preceding, in the mother tongue. 
 As we saw in Chapter VI. no words will seem far-fetched or forced or call up 
 literary associations that have been learned experientially and orally, and not 
 from books. 
 
308 THE NEW ARTICULATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 Arnold and a Channing. Nothing can surpass the easy, almost 
 colloquial manner of Arnold, yet he is a man of book rather than 
 oral traditions of diction, and, as his figures show above, is too 
 formal in structure and correlation of sentences. Channing, on 
 the other hand, is, at his best, of almost faultless form, although his 
 synthetic sentences are too classical in spirit and smack too much 
 of the pastor's study. The style of Macaulay somewhat similarly 
 impresses us as too little spontaneous, too much considered. His' 
 habits of deliberate_and prolix revision could not but ensure this 
 quality. His analytic sentences, though crisp and incisive, seem 
 often hardly better than oracular or declamatory. Macaulay the 
 conversationalist is by no means Macaulay the essayist and his- 
 torian. If he could have trained himself like Spurgeon or Beecher 
 to oral swiftness and sureness of phrase, he would have been 
 doubtless the best prosaist of the century. No author that in any 
 wise keeps the reader from thought of living words and tones, but 
 makes him see only a moving pen, and breathe the air of a clois- 
 tral chamber, can in these days be held as without a rival. 
 
 Articulate periods are then more dependent on interior correla- 
 tion than upon formal conjunctions. We have seen how the causal 
 relation is signified by mere juxtaposition of clauses. To some 
 extent ternporal relations are similarly indicated, — ' I went to his 
 house ; he refused to admit me,' instead of ' when I had gone 
 to his house,' etc. Concessive clauses may be also lightened by 
 suppressing connectives. 'Though I nursed him faithfully, yet 
 he never so much as thanked me ' may drop ' though ' and ' yet.' 
 Conditions are indicated without an ' if,' as in German, by putting 
 the subject after the verb : ' How he would have been pained, 
 could he hiave known.' In each instance the mind apprehends 
 the relation between the facts affirmed without being told what 
 to do or how to do it. Of course to the inattentive and unsympa- 
 thetic reader the conjunction in each case might seem a help. 
 But, as we have learned, it is not what a writer succeeds in express- 
 ing objectively and absolutely that makes his strength. It is rather 
 what he can incite the reader to think and experience and know 
 
THE NEW ARTICULATION OF CLAUSES. 309 
 
 along with himself, in some sense independently and yet in co- 
 operation, while withheld from him. The greatest writers, as the 
 most brilliant conversers, leave out most between periods, yet are 
 best understood. The omission of conjunctions when due to the 
 swiftness and strength of thought is no obstacle, rather an inspira- 
 tion. Everything that sheds the odor of formality tends to repel. 
 When a man is the same to the world that he is to himself, the 
 influence of his personality will be strongest. Hence whatever 
 helps bring his reader into the oral presence of an author adds to 
 his power. 1 
 
 Along with the reduction of conjunctional clauses we note like- v 
 wise the infrequent use of relatives in oral styles. The true place 
 of relative clauses in the new articulation comes thus to light. In 
 the synthetic manner we have doubtless in late investigations been 
 perplexed over the apparently numerous cases in which they take 
 the place of principal statements. It will now be clear that they 
 are used to aid in the synthetic structure, as well as in obedience 
 
 1 The asyndeton structure in English, as in the classic languages, is much assisted 
 by absolute and appositional constructions after the manner already considered 
 in preceding chapters. But the use of the present participle and of perfect active 
 participle phrases for temporal, conditional and concessive clauses is for the most 
 part inorganic and unoral. Moreover, the asyndeton mode does not consist in 
 omitting merely the conjunctions that would be used in more expanded and formal 
 styles. It is inspired, as has already been more than once implied, by great activ- 
 ity and energy of the mental forces. Out of the whole meaning in the mind the 
 author indites such selected clauses as will showlheir own structural relations and 
 include to the understanding what has been left unsaid. The following first para- 
 graph of a letter will furnish one of the simplest of illustrations : — 
 
 I send herewith the paper for the . . . promised long ago. I have tried to make it 
 the barest scientific record of experiments, with what success you will yourself determine. 
 I hope there will be no difficulty in getting it accepted. I have had at least great difficulty 
 in putting it together. This is the sixth attempt. 
 
 The last sentence not only gives an explanation of the preceding but tells poten- 
 tially very much besides. To have introduced it by a ' for ' or a ' since ' would have 
 spoiled the whole. It enables the imagination to comprehend the labor undergone 
 far better than an eighteenth century epistle describing it in detail. Tennyson's and 
 Browning's transitions in poetry are similarly cogent, like those of the Anglo-Saxon 
 and Northern poets, to whose school they belong. 
 
310 THE NEW ARTICULATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 to the instinct of subordination. For example, in the last period 
 in the quotation from Hooker, on page 25 7, the affirmation intro- 
 duced by ' which ' is principal in importance and might have filled 
 a separate period, but is, on the contrary, through the use of the 
 relative as a link of synthesis, and adjectively, in place of a demon- 
 strative pronoun, made subordinate. For a more striking illustra- 
 tion of both uses, compare the following from Raleigh's History 
 (Book II., Chap. VI.) : — 
 
 The Bridg finished, and the Army brought near to the Sea-side, Xerxes 
 took a view of all his Troops, assembled in the Plains of Abidus, being carried 
 up, and seated on a place over-topping the Land round about it, and the Sea 
 adjoining: and after he had gloried in his own happiness, to behold and com- 
 mand so many Nations, and so powerful an Army and Fleet, he suddenly (not- 
 withstanding) burst into tears, moved with this contemplation, That in one 
 hundred years there should not any one survive of that marvellous multitude : 
 the cause of which sudden change of passion when he uttered to Artabanus 
 his Uncle, Artabanus spake to the King to this effect : That which is more 
 lamentable than the dissolution of this great Troop within that number of 
 years by the King remembered, is, That the life itself which we enjoy is yet 
 more miserable than the end thereof: for in those few clays given us in the 
 world, there is no man among all these, or elsewhere, that ever found himself 
 so accompanied with happiness, but that he oftentimes pleased himself better 
 with the desire and ..hope of death, than of living; the incident calamities, 
 diseases, and sorrows whereto mankind is subject, being so many and inevitable, 
 that the shortest life doth oftentimes appear unto us over -long; to avoid all 
 which, there is neither refuge nor rest, but in desired death alone. 
 
 In the most radical forms of the oral manner, in which the 
 average of predications is under two per period, it is evident that 
 the average of relative clauses cannot be so much as one, — in 
 Bartol, for instance, .26. In the oral discourse of our most idio- 
 matic and clever conversationists it is still less. As the literary 
 or written sentence is continually shortening in obedience to the 
 impulse, ' Write as you speak,' we can form some notion of the 
 place relative clauses will one day fill. Very few writers longer 
 use it merely as the substitute for co-ordinate clauses or distinct 
 periods, though it is still the instrument of subordination in many 
 
THE NEW ARTICULATION OF CLAUSES. 311 
 
 book-styles. Its principal office is to identify objects (' restrictive'), 
 and to set forth incidental attributes or time and space relations 
 when too important to be left unpredicated, but not vital enough 
 to be affirmed in periods of their own. Thus in the first two lines 
 of Bryant's poem considered in Chapter XVII., the first circum- 
 stance, " midst falling dew," is left merely suggested or ' assumed ' ; 
 but the next " While glow the heavens with the last steps of day," 
 as of greater prominence is set forth under predication, or on the 
 authority of the speaker. 1 The first phrase in the line following, 
 being again only accessory, falls back to the ' assumed ' form. 
 When object of the verb in its clause the relative is often omitted, 
 as in object clauses the conjunction ' that.' Finally, the oral mode 
 with relatives is to set forth sharply and strongly one or two main 
 circumstances that shall provisionally suggest the rest. In general, 
 the analytic manner makes up for the slowness consequent upon 
 using smaller units of presentation by its pregnant omissions ; and 
 the secret of the * momentum ' which carries the reader's mind 
 through what is left unsaid is mainly, of course, association. 
 
 The reader must not suppose that the use of the oral manner 
 in written discourse includes the use also of oral matter. The 
 occasions of writing may be brought more fully under the control 
 of common sense, but should not be popularized or lowered by the 
 author's style. Some oral writers go so far as to introduce collo- 
 quial contractions and elisions into their most serious and consid- 
 ered compositions. This when done to avoid the appearance of 
 professionalism is commendable in spirit, but must be deprecated 
 on account of the associations brought in from the market and the 
 street corner. Standard prose English has little in common with 
 the voluble English of newspaper styles — which spreads a modi- 
 cum of meaning over a maximum of space — and is destined to have 
 still less. There is an analytic manner that tends through padding 
 to become synthetic. The literature of this busy age must be as 
 
 1 See page 219. The more quaint and naive co-ordinative manner would run : 
 ' The dews are falling, and the heavens are glowing with the last steps of day, and 
 I descry thee afar in their rosy depths. Whither art thou pursuing thus thy solitary 
 way?" 
 
312 THE NEW ARTICULATION OF CLAUSES. 
 
 condensed and energized as its thought. So far as this may be 
 we are trying to make words do the work of sentences, — as we 
 have seen is Browning's and Tennyson's mode in poetry. We 
 reduce ' if one were to speak with strictness ' to ' strictly speaking ' ; 
 and we shall cut down ' strictly speaking,' to ' strictly,' if we can 
 get our generation to accept the symbol ; so with ' clearly,' ' mani- 
 festly,' and the rest. Literary English, in short, will follow the 
 forms of the standard spoken English from which it comes. No 
 man should talk worse than he writes, no man writes better than 
 he should talk. The element of unerring, instant selection, — 
 when it is lacking, is the only difference. 
 
 Why, then, do we call the oral construction of clauses the New 
 Articulation, if it is as old as Csedmon, or the Beowulf, or the 
 folk-speech of the race ? Because we have been so unaccustomed 
 to the clearest and simplest forms of speech in books of prose that 
 the mode seems novel. But our greatest masters of poetry have 
 not ceased from the oral manner ; and from this fact more than 
 any other, Chaucer and Shakespeare remain inimitable. On the 
 other hand, the prosaists from not daring to use common forms, 
 but going after strange gods, have cost the race a thousand years 
 of wandering in the wilderness. We have gone far enough in our 
 era of transition and return to the oldest or ' Gothic ' forms at least 
 to understand our history. We are not to write always in terse 
 and intense forms. The intermediate modes are normal both to 
 those who have as yet not passed beyond them, and upon occasion 
 to all of us. 1 The oral sentence is clearest because it is the prod- 
 uct of millions of daily efforts to be clear and strong. It repre- 
 sents the work of the race for thousands of years in perfecting an 
 effective instrument of expression. But frequently according to 
 the governing mood, it is necessary to go back to the childlike 
 co-ordinative manner. Indeed, the ideal style is either co-ordina- 
 tive, subordinative, suppressive, asyndeton, — and at times even, 
 for a little, perhaps synthetic, according to selective acts of the 
 mind that are indeterminate, or at least not yet determined. 
 
 1 Cf. pp. 80 and 134. 
 
FORCE. 313 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 FORCE. 
 
 Thus far we have concerned ourselves only with Clearness as 
 an element of style, or with those forms of the sentence which 
 progressively enable or ensure it. We shall now, passing from the 
 form to the spirit, consider the quality of Force. 
 
 As we have marked the efforts of the mind to reduce the instru- 
 ment of speech to the lithest and most prehensible form, we may 
 have been reminded of certain stages in the evolution of some 
 weapon of defence, — as the loaded cane : first the rough club, 
 broken off by the wind from some tree in the forest, picked up in 
 the moment of danger, but dropped again when the dreaded 
 enemy disappears ; then the dandy's walking-stick, carved, pol- 
 ished, betasselled, valueless for strength or weight ; finally the rod 
 of steel, spring-tempered and covered with leathern disks, adapted 
 equally to complete the toilet of a gentleman or to brain an 
 assailant, — if such need shall be. The new articulate or asynde- 
 ton sentence in English prose is a like instrument of defence or 
 attack. It will impart an infinite deal of energy, but the energy 
 must come from without and beyond itself. We have seen how 
 in certain authors there is a kind of momentum which carries the 
 mind of the reader through the effect of things not said. This is 
 not the quality merely of suggestiveness. A suggestive style 
 makes us see, opens up diverging vistas of meaning to the under- 
 standing or to fancy. Force makes us feel. The momentum in 
 and between sentences is wholly subjective, and not resident in 
 the words as singles. Styles showing this momentum will be 
 
314 FORCE. 
 
 found full of Force, that is, will abound in words carrying what 
 was called in Chapter IV. the emphasis of sympathy. It is only 
 through the arrangement of the force-words, or their relations to 
 each other and the rest of the sentence, that the enthusiasm of an 
 author is made apparent to us. He must embody the usual 
 sentence-associations in his style, or his energy cannot be inferred 
 or apprehended by the reader. 
 
 Thus while Clearness is in the main an objective quality, it is in 
 its highest development dependent upon Force. Likewise Force 
 for the most part is conditioned by the objective forms of sentence 
 structure. Clearness is a quality resulting from the impulse to put 
 forth thought as nearly in the shape it -has taken in the speakers' 
 mind as possible. Force in oral speech is the sum of impressions 
 concerning an author's enthusiasm or conviction or concern pro- 
 duced through expression or mien or gesture, and the pitch, 
 inflections, and modulation of his voice. Force in written dis- 
 course consists in so many of these signs as the author can make 
 us discern subjectively from the printed page. We appreciate and 
 appropriate it in precisely the same manner as the effect of metric 
 or sentence rhythm is apprehended in the unoral reading of poetry. 
 From the way the given composition impresses us in printed lines, 
 we infer how it would" sound if spoken, — just as the musician 
 " reads " music. If we are in the audience of a speaker whose 
 tones we cannot distinguish, or of one using a language we do 
 not understand, we infer the degree of fervor from the expres- 
 sion of his face and the energy of his movements. If we can 
 hear but are cut off from sight, we interpret the manner of his 
 tones to the same effect, and supply in the eye of the mind the . 
 expressions of face, the gestures and bodily movements which 
 accompany his words. But if we are excluded also from the tones 
 and may only read the words which the stenographer reproduces, 
 how do we find out his force? Evidently by a process of the same 
 kind : through association we hear the words he utters, so to 
 speak, in the ear of the mind. We have been many times in cir- 
 cumstances where we have seen men use speech in a similar way, 
 
FORCE. 315 
 
 and have thus become familiar with the impassioned mode. We 
 are especially quick to infer energy when emphasized terms come 
 thick together, for we know consciously or unconsciously that 
 excited speakers often utter whole clauses with stress on every 
 word. With the imagination a part is potential of the whole. The 
 object that has been the occasion with us of a past experience will, 
 if re-encountered, bring back that experience to our consciousness. 
 This is the kind of association considered in Chapter VI., and may 
 be called by the old name, — Association of Ideas. In examples 
 of impassioned and hurried diction — such as were considered 
 in the last chapter — in which the mind leaps over from unlike 
 statement to unlike statement without hint of the relation between, 
 we recognize another species of the same activity. When we 
 come upon sentences like " He is risen. He is not here," the 
 relation of the second affirmation to the first is clear from the 
 mind's habit of hearing and uttering thoughts in precisely the 
 same relations. We may style the species thus illustrated the Asso- 
 ciation of Thoughts. We observe, finally, that Force is detected 
 and apprehended through certain salient features in the arrange- 
 ment of words and grouping of stress which serve as schemes or 
 formulae to the mind's cognition. We, therefore, name this mode 
 the Associations of Sentence Rhythm, or Associations of Sentence 
 Structure. 
 
 This brings us to the consideration of the laws of stress in oral 
 English, and of the mental principles and habits on which they 
 rest. We are all aware that in common discourse we distinguish 
 the noun from its word or phrase adjunct, and the verb from its 
 adverb, by a slight increase of stress. This serves to guide the 
 mind of the listener to the main points in the speaker's thought. 
 Of these points, of course, the principal are always the subject and 
 chief predicate word in every clause. Compare the following in 
 illustration : — 
 
 High Olympus bows his head. — Women are born atmospheric 
 reformers. — The railroad car is the place where your danger is 
 greatest. — Air and water are, of course, the principal substances 
 on which we feed. 
 
316 FORCE. 
 
 The copula as such does not receive the predicative stress. So 
 likewise of other verbs that are in the main but substitutes for the 
 copula, as in these examples : — 
 
 Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not possible while the individual 
 remains isolated. 
 
 Whereas if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow 
 Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow. 
 
 It has been already pointed out in Chapter IV. that this sort of 
 stress is merely grammatical, since it serves chiefly to mark the 
 eminence of the primary parts of speech or of the sentence over 
 the secondary or subordinate. Hence it is thrown also upon the 
 first element in compound nouns, and the separable suffix of cer- 
 tain verbs : — 
 
 A wood-fire cheers the room. — In disgust I burned-up the manuscript. 
 — The valuables were turned-over to the police. — Lay-aside your cloak 
 and hat. — Goods at half-price to close-out. 
 
 A considerable list of compound verbs like the last might be com- 
 piled, as also of such as contrariwise keep the stress upon the 
 verb-word, — like 'send-for,' 'aim-at,' 'come-by,' etc. There 
 are likewise compounds, as 'go-away-from,' 'come-in-for,' 'send- 
 out-for,' 'sit-down-under,' 'find-out-about,' in which two adver- 
 bial suffixes are united, one of them drawing off the stress from 
 the verb. In like manner it will be noted that, while the gram- 
 matical stress falls generally upon the object of a transitive verb 
 as well as on the verb itself, it is often found upon the object 
 only. As examples of such single stress the following are among 
 the most familiar: 'give heed,' 'take note,' 'send answer,' 
 'offer aid,' 'find reason,' 'strain a point,' 'force an issue,' 
 'have an impression'; but the list may be extended indef- 
 initely. Similarly also the stress seems almost to desert the verb 
 for the leading adverb in sentences or clauses like ' I see clearly 
 the difference,' ' I sought the truth diligently.' Finally, the stress 
 seems to rest by preference on the last word of a sentence, as 
 
FORCE. 317 
 
 indifferently in these examples on ' truth ' or ' diligently,' ' differ- 
 ence ' or ' clearly,' according as the noun or the adverb is put last 
 of all. 
 
 The cases last considered really introduce us to another species 
 and mode of stress, which may be styled Emphasis of the Thought. 
 The reason that 'offer aid,' and 'strain a. point,' emphasize the ob- 
 ject but not the verb is in the fact that, being figurative expres- 
 sions, the last element is of chief significance. No one would think 
 of denying stress to the verb in ' / made a boat,' ' I took the medi- 
 cine} or of admitting it in ' / made money,' ' / took advice.' In 
 the last examples the mind notes the ideas of ' making ' and ' tak- 
 ing ' but lightly, and puts stress upon their objects from contrast 
 with literal transactions. When we wish to designate to our 
 hearer some one thing rather than another, or to show that one 
 idea is the right one and another the wrong, we point, so to speak, 
 at the right one with the voice, we utter the word which is its 
 symbol with greater energy. This new sort of emphasis is in gen- 
 eral stronger than what we have called Grammatical Stress, hence 
 will augment it when coinciding with it. On the other hand, 
 Thought-Emphasis will subordinate principal words distinguished 
 by Grammatical Stress, even to their modifiers, — as in these sen- 
 tences : — 
 
 Woman requires more air, or at least purer air, than man. 
 She is the first to faint in a crowd; she takes to her fan in dis- 
 tress before a man begins to be uncomfortable. 
 
 Here 'woman ' receives more than a grammatical stress because, 
 in addition to being subject of the verb, it is in specific contrast 
 with the last word of the sentence. ' More ' and ' purer,' from 
 taking thought-emphases, are made stronger to the ear than the 
 nouns they limit, and ' distress ' is superior to ' takes ' because in 
 contrast with ' uncomfortable.' ' She ' is in the first instance in 
 implied, in the second in actual, contrast with the subject of the 
 last clause. 
 
 It follows that all facts or principles that in any point or rela- 
 
318 FORCE. 
 
 tion run counter to the general assumption will be signalized in 
 such point or relation by Emphasis of Thought. All truths or 
 conclusions which the ego would intellectually insist upon to itself 
 or others will be kept distinct from other truths and conclusions 
 by the same oral means. Thus what we have called Grammatical 
 Stress, as affording to the ear in a given period a first clue to the 
 sense, is quickly covered by the various swells and falls of thought 
 emphasis differentiated into a strange but perfect harmony. The 
 subject of the first clause will not challenge the ear in just the 
 same manner as the second, no predicative will be equally emi- 
 nent with another, and each sentence will have its own array and 
 pitch of stress. All masters of oral English, whether on the plat- 
 form or in the drawing-room, abound in unique and various illus- 
 tration, as also those artists of style who can make their pages 
 speak as with the natural voice. To choose a single example, we 
 shall perhaps hit upon nothing better than this admired passage 
 from Arnold's Culture and Anarchy : — 
 
 Religion says "The Kingdom of God is within you"; and 
 culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an in- 
 ternal condition, in the growth and predominance of our 
 humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality. It places 
 it in the ever-increasin.g efficacy and in the general harmo- 
 nious expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling which 
 make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human 
 nature. As I have said on a former occasion: "It is in making 
 endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of its pow- 
 ers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit 
 of the human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, cul- 
 ture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true value of 
 culture." Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a 
 becoming, is the character of perfection as culture con- 
 ceives it; and here, too, it coincides with religion. 
 
 The final reason of grammatical as of thought stress is not far 
 to seek. The speaker does not signalize the subject and predi- 
 cate of his clause merely because he would have his hearer note 
 them eminently, but because he has already sensed these objects 
 
FORCE. 319 
 
 with greater vividness pictoriaUy in thought, and would have his 
 hearer do the same. For example, in 'Planing makes the board 
 smooth] the mind of the speaker sees more or less completely 
 a picture of some hand or person moving a plane, and of the 
 smoothed surface of a board as the result. Hence in announcing 
 what he has thus seen mentally to another, he instinctively 
 increases stress on the names of things most prominently dis- 
 cerned. So in 'A wood-die cheered the room] that which stands 
 out most clearly to the eye of the mind is not the fire but the 
 wood burning in it. In precisely the same way thought- stress 
 corresponds to a major experience had in thought with what the 
 emphasized word stands for. 'Planed boards are smooth ' is ap- 
 prehended not only through some pictorial representation of 
 planed boards, but also with a sort of potential or felt comparison 
 with unplaned. Similarly the perception of smoothness is accom- 
 panied by a subjective or incomplete apprehension of the unplaned 
 condition as a basis. In other words, on discerning in thought 
 planed boards, the mind accompanies it with a realization of what 
 they would be in the unplaned state, or discerning smoothness, 
 remembers the quality of roughness also, and answering to the 
 double activity, utters the words concerned with double energy 
 or higher pitch. The explanation of stress upon the preposition 
 rather than the verb in compounds is the same. In ' I burned-»/ 
 the manuscript,' the one thing sensed by^the mind is the com- 
 pleteness of the destruction. In ' the books are on the shelf,' the 
 speaker sees mentally the relation, the real contact ; while in ' the 
 cloak of the general] since it is not what the general is really 
 wearing but only what he has the right to wear, the relation is 
 apprehended much less distinctly, perhaps with most minds not 
 pictoriaUy at all. Hence ' on ' in the first example receives stress, 
 'of in the second does not. 
 
 We see thus more plainly that the difference between Gram- 
 matical Stress and Thought Emphasis is one not of kind but of 
 degree. Moreover, it will be easy to convince ourselves that this 
 difference of degree is not greater than between the strongest and 
 
320 FORCE. 
 
 the slightest stress of the thought-kind. In examples of com- 
 pounds like 'wood-fire,' 'half-hour,' 'state-college,' the stress 
 is from implied contrast with fires supplied with coal or coke, with 
 a whole hour as the usual unit of time, and with private or corpo- 
 rate institutions of learning. It might indeed be urged that these 
 cases should be entered under Thought Emphasis. But what 
 should then be done with 'well-fed,' 'far-sighted,' 'oft-re- 
 peated,' and like compounds that imply no more contrast than 
 any noun over its adjunct or the verb over its adverb? Now 
 Force stands, objectively speaking, in much the same relation to 
 Thought Emphasis as Thought Emphasis to Grammatical Stress. 
 It is outwardly manifested by much the same increase of energy 
 as distinguishes the one of these from the other. Cases may 
 occur in which Emphasis of the Thought will fulfil the outward 
 conditions of Force itself. In pronouncing some long phrase, 
 like ' on account of this outbreak through the criminal neglect of 
 the quasi-quarantine commissioners,' the speaker, through miscal- 
 culating the eventual stress, will perhaps expend relatively too 
 much upon the earlier words. To indicate the true prominence 
 of the last ideas will require a progressive increase of emphasis 
 that will seem Force when the end is reached. The hearer if 
 denied sight of the speaker, that is, if restricted merely to the 
 indications of sound, will judge the words to have been spoken 
 with an animus, and be misled ; but if he can see the eyes or 
 expression of the speaker, sets himself right at the first glance. 
 Force in this case could only come from impatience or indigna- 
 tion, which if felt by the speaker would be evident by more imme- 
 diate signs in the face and bearing. ' Force ' is simply a manifes- 
 tation of aroused energy in the ego, and may come from any 
 emotion, as delight, pain, indignation, contempt, wrath, ecstacy, 
 and the rest. The secret of its power in literature lies in the fact 
 that the ego has the profoundest sympathy with all strong emotion. 
 Whenever it sees the feelings of another aroused, whether from 
 mere physical suffering or from an experience of the sublime, it 
 enters in greater or less degree into a like frame or condition of 
 
FORCE. 321 
 
 emotion. Moreover, every phase or sign of strong emotion it 
 comprehends as an ' effect,' precisely as we have seen in Chapter 
 XIII. is the law in Art. Art is emotional, and is dependent upon 
 the same powers and principles of imagination as are in exercise 
 in the commonest experiences of daily life. In other words, pas- 
 sion or emotion of whatsoever kind, whether enacted or actual, if 
 true, appeals to the imagination ; and all signs of it are instantly 
 interpreted in both directions, — back to the cause, and, so far as 
 fancy can penetrate, forward to the last consequence. 
 
 The imagination does not interpret or regard all signs of a given 
 passion ; it will take the one in which it recognizes the fullest 
 meaning, and let the rest alone. On this fact rests the efficacy of 
 Art ; the artist need present — if he select rightly — but an atom 
 for his whole of truth. If we could have seen Carlyle, for instance, 
 in his almost agonizing realization of certain truths he wrote while 
 he wrote them, we should not care for his lines to read his spirit. 
 But we have never seen the man in presence, and are restricted to 
 the mere signs he has left upon the printed page ; yet will imagi- 
 nation to the uttermost find out his frenzy. We note a swift 
 and unexpected recurrence of stress, which we are sensible is 
 neither grammatical nor logical. Imagination is on the alert for 
 the new and strange, and reads in these thick and ponderous 
 strokes an ' effect ' of passion. If we have never read this author, 
 or learned anything of his power, we may know both in a single 
 sentence. Can any mature mind fail to discern, not only the 
 Force but the personality, in such a passage as this from " The 
 Sphynx," in Past and Present? 
 
 In this God's-world, with its wild-whirling eddies and mad foam-oceans, 
 where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust 
 thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It 
 is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise in all time were wise 
 because they denied, and knew forever not to be. I tell thee again, there is 
 nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below : the just thing; 
 the true thing. 
 
322 FORCE. 
 
 We note, again, that the ultimate reasons of Force lie in the 
 experiences of the mind itself. We have seen that Grammatical 
 Stress and Thought Emphasis are inspired by greater vividness of 
 apprehension or realization in the mind of the speaker, and tend 
 to produce or enable like vividness of perception in the hearer. 
 In other words, Emphasis and Stress come from the understand- 
 ing and are addressed to the understanding. In much the same 
 way Force proceeds from the emotions and is addressed to the 
 emotions. The man who is incensed is tempted to make a ' per- 
 sonal ' remark — one, that is, which will incense another. He 
 may not yield to the impulse, but the potential force in his emo- 
 tion is likely through the usual signs of passion to be discerned, 
 and, being interpreted, to be in some degree responded to. So 
 also of any other strong feeling, whether by a physical or a moral 
 occasion. If the emotion discerned be pain, and manifested 
 through groans or screams, the hearer will partake subjectively in 
 the suffering and pity the sufferer. If the emotion be moral enthu- 
 siasm of some sort, we share in the feeling and admire — that is, 
 in some degree idealize — the person who has thus responded to 
 a noble occasion. But if it become apparent that the emotion in 
 either case is feigned, — either because the occasion is ungenuine, 
 or is ungenuinely responded to, — the sympathy stops and influ- 
 ence ceases. Force, let it be remembered, is a manifestation of 
 strong emotion, whether in the Niebelungen Ring, the Laocoon, or 
 the Inferno. In a literary sense it is, of course, confined to what 
 can be expressed through words and sentence forms. 
 
 We thus come, finally, to a consideration of the question, What 
 signs does the ego find on the printed page equivalent, through 
 imagination, to the oral marks of spoken energy? The answer, of 
 course, is simple. From childhood it has been familiar with the 
 various modes of emotion. It is perfectly, though unconsciously, 
 aware of the utterance natural to employ under the various forms 
 of excitation, and can read the all of each in its smallest part. 
 In a moment of astonishment at not being understood, it will 
 echo the surprising word or words, slowly, with a slide, and 
 
FORCE. 323 
 
 balanced emphasis, as in the following from a line already 
 familiar : — 
 
 1 ? Wh at I answered? 
 
 Thus from the associations of tone-stress we infer the speak- 
 er's feeling, — and from this as an ' effect ' comprehend the 
 speaker's character. If we do not hear the words pronounced, 
 and so miss the slide and poised emphasis, we shall catch the 
 sense and spirit no less quickly. Even the listener would be 
 struck first of all by the ' /,' — evidently put in amazement for 
 ' Do you mean me ? Do you suppose / could answer ? ' In other 
 words, the hearer, in oral presence, will interpret the line first and 
 chiefly from the associations of sentence structure, — just as we our- 
 selves thus interpreted it, — probably without knowing, — on page 
 15. 1 Similarly in Carlyle's passage, the hyphen which proclaims 
 the stress on ' God's,' in the first compound, gives the potential 
 hint as to the spirit of the whole. Thought emphasis is addressed 
 to the understanding, but force must be spiritually discerned. 
 When once the imagination has apprehended the presence of 
 force, it idealizes both the emotion causing it, and the man (page 
 96) as capable of the emotion, or of being wrought upon by his 
 theme. Moreover, when force is discerned, and the imagination 
 of the reader fully engaged, the interpretation becomes and con- 
 tinues spiritual rather than intellectual. The ego will refuse to 
 recognize any such thing as thought emphasis, but will interpret 
 all marks of stress as emotional. As in appropriating the effects 
 of rhythm (page 49), it will resist and disown all signs and hints 
 addressed to the intelligence merely, as impertinent and out of 
 harmony. Hence, objectively speaking, to produce force as to 
 produce rhythm, it is only necessary for an author having the inspi- 
 ration to write in idiomatic English that one may comprehend 
 beginning at any line. It is not the nice and sustained arrange- 
 
 1 We doubtless noted, while studying the Count Gismond in Chapter IV., that 
 this line is said as a rejoinder to an unhappy and perhaps perfunctory inquiry of 
 ' Adela.' Compare the implied interrogatories of the Duke's visitor in My Last 
 Duchess, page 205. 
 
324 FORCE. 
 
 ment of stress that counts after the reading is begun. Force once 
 discerned, the given passage will ' read itself.' 
 
 It is then no wonder that Shakespeare is full of force : no man 
 has ever written more perfectly or completely in the forms of 
 living speech. It is also no marvel that so many prose writers of 
 his time are almost wholly devoid of it. If we attempt to read 
 aloud a page of Raleigh or Lyly or Hooker, we find it not only 
 difficult to understand what our lips are saying, but still harder to 
 indicate to a listener the grammatical and the thought emphasis, 
 — to say nothing of stronger stress. Force is, of course, impossi- 
 ble when there is no separation of the sense into organic compre- 
 hensible portions. Poetry in the Elizabethan days was strong 
 because of the many who could writer like Shakespeare in simple 
 oral rhythm ; but the array of force in prose included only Bacon 
 and the Authorized Version of the Bible. Bacon's practicable 
 sentences came, as we know, partly from the analytic tendencies 
 of his mind, in part from the common sense that seems to have 
 exposed to him, among other follies of the times, the cult of book 
 or euphuistic English. The short sentences of the Bible repre- 
 sent, of course, the strong, sharp periods of the original, — the 
 work in most cases of men who were speakers rather than writers 
 of their respective tongues. No wonder, with such a model, prose 
 English gathered to itself such strength in the next half-century. 
 There is even yet no more perfect force than pervades the Psalms, 
 the Prophets, the Gospels, the letters of Paul, — in short, the 
 greater part of both the prose and poetic books. 
 
 The secret of Force is the same as the secret of Clearness, — 
 Write as you speak. No wonder beginners in composition fail to 
 divine it, when young England in all her sixteenth-century strength 
 could not avoid becoming sophomoric. Professional book-styles 
 cannot compass force. We have but to compare Bunyan, or John 
 Wilson, or Dr. John Brown, — not to say Carlyle, — with Shaftes- 
 bury, or Chesterfield, or even Macaulay, 1 or Phillips' style with 
 
 1 Compare Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome with Civil Disabilities of the yews, 
 or any other of his strongest Essays. It will then be clear how labored and 
 unspontaneous in comparison is his best prose manner. 
 
FORCE. 325 
 
 Everett's, to be convinced. Grant White has well said concern- 
 ing the first sentence of Christian's fight with Apollyon, as described 
 in Pilgrim's Progress, " A man cannot be taught to write like that." * 
 He may, indeed, .learn, but will learn, if he do learn, only by learn- 
 ing to feel strongly, — to have convictions, as well as clear, right 
 thoughts. 
 
 1 Words and Their Uses, p. 65. 
 
326 ALL MEN'S AND EVERY MAN'S BEST STYLE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 ALL MEN'S AND EVERY MAN'S BEST STYLE. 
 
 When men in writing have regard especially to the form in 
 which their readers would have them couch their phrase, a new 
 factor, not hitherto considered, enters into the product of their 
 pens. We have seen that the prose of any early writer, as 
 Chaucer, Sir Thomas More, or Hooker, is cast in sentences con- 
 venient chiefly to the author, because of an instinct to follow 
 closely the character and proportions of his thought. We have 
 observed that the modern or analytic sentence-structure, which 
 gradually grew out of the synthetic, and became current soon 
 after the beginning of the ' people's era,' is a product of the same 
 impulse coupled with the purpose to be immediately and com- 
 pletely intelligible. We have now to note that the model style is 
 the resultant of three forces, — these of wishing to communicate 
 in the very forms of thought, and to be clear, and the desire to 
 please or suit the reader further in a special way through the 
 manner of presentation. 
 
 It is evident that a universally best style of whatsoever sort is a 
 generalized ideal. It represents certain principles on which a 
 whole race or all the races of a civilization, through long experi- 
 ment and conviction, have become agreed. The forms and usages 
 of good society are one set of conclusions of such sort, and make 
 up the universally best style of common intercourse. The best 
 part of mankind has long since been persuaded as to what is 
 the most appropriate and becoming garb for either sex ; and it is 
 these common generalized notions concerning dress which form 
 
ALL -MEN'S AND EVERY MAN'S BEST STYLE. 327 
 
 the basis of what is called fashion throughout the world. What is 
 termed usage in language affords a nearer illustration. We all 
 learn to speak in certain gross particulars of grammar, idioms, and 
 vocabulary, like other people, but upon that common foundation 
 build freely our own sentence combinations. There is a similar 
 fundamental or primary style on which we build, or should build, 
 our individual manner of speech and composition. 
 
 The paramount characteristic of such a literary manner is its 
 plain substantiality. If a person addressing an audience were to 
 use high-sounding language but in reality utter little sense, all 
 would alike remark the absence of a vital element, — perhaps to 
 the point of considering the speaker's presence an impertinence. 
 When man speaks singly with man he takes care to say what is 
 worth hearing; much more if he speak to many. In books, 
 where the speaking is made perpetual, an empty manner is the 
 more intolerable. The universally best style is not a thing of 
 form merely, but must regard the expectations of the reader as to 
 the spirit and occasion of what is written. It is not addressed to 
 the learned, but to all minds. Avoiding book-words, it will use 
 only the standard terms and expressions of common life. It is 
 organic, eschewing strange or strained turns of phrase like ' New 
 York's militia,' ' the castle's overthrow,' ' the life which we exist.' 
 It will not run in long and involved sentences that cannot be 
 readily understood. Correct in all respects, it will not be stiff; 
 familiar, but safely beyond all associations of vulgarity. It will 
 reflect what is best generally in the deliberate second-thought oral 
 speech of the English race. It is that style, in short, which we 
 have seen has been re-evolved in our prose literature. It is the 
 style which the teacher of composition in our schools and of 
 rhetoric in our colleges is trying to bring his students to acquire. 
 It is what all men, in school and out of it, accept as standard and 
 would fain achieve. It is not the best that any exceptional stylist 
 may in the judgment of his narrow circle reach, but is the best 
 attainable for him in the appreciation of all. We may, therefore, 
 call it All Men's and Every Man's Best Style. 
 
328 ALL MEN'S AND EVERY MAN'S BEST STYLE. 
 
 It is evident that no idea of such a style can be at once evolved, 
 — more than of a national costume or a mode of building. The 
 American Indian constructs his tepee or wigwam after a certain 
 stereotyped fashion, not because he has proved it the best, but be- 
 cause little by little, through scores of generations, his forefathers 
 devised it as the most practicable form of shelter. In the days 
 of Sidney, and Raleigh, and Hooker, there was no approved 
 best style. No one of the Elizabethan prosaists wrote like any 
 other : no one was a fit model for the rest or for the times. From 
 the days of Chaucer until that era each man who essayed to write 
 prose English had written in his own way, standing far aside 
 from his fellows in almost every point of manner. These authors 
 to-day show the same generic differences that one sees in a pile of 
 essays written by students of the ninth grade. Though- they speak 
 their mother tongue essentially alike, they write it with as great 
 differences as learners of foreign birth. The distance at which 
 each author stands from his fellows in all respects of style is the 
 most significant fact in our early literature, and may well give 
 name to the period. We may call the stage of development from 
 Mandeville to Bacon, or the middle of Edward Third's reign till 
 James, the Isolating Period of English prose. 
 
 But the process of conventionalization had begun. An acquaint- 
 ance with the polished prose of Livy and Plato, gained at the uni- 
 versities, had brought to the consciousness of educated English- 
 men how crude and unsettled was the written idiom. Many of the 
 native words had low associations, which the rising taste would 
 not tolerate in books. All cultured men felt there was one right 
 best way, among many wrong inferior ways, of speech and diction. 
 As we have learned in preceding chapters, no such thing as sen- 
 tence-simplification was yet possible. To write as they spoke 
 would have seemed preposterous ; they strove rather to speak as 
 they wrote. Thus the effort to refine the English book-vocabulary 
 reached even the common speech of the gentry and the learned. 
 The taste for letters that had come with the Renaissance — no 
 doubt in part its cause as well as its effect — was quickening 
 
ALL MEN'S AND EVERY MAN'S BEST STYLE. 329 
 
 the literary sense of Italy, and France, and even Spain. But 
 before the H6tel de Rambouillet had begun its work in France, 
 Euphuism had passed its prime in England. It was on the one 
 side an absurd affectation — here and there echoed and mildly 
 satirized by Shakespeare, as in Osric's talk with Hamlet, 1 in the 
 last scene of that play, and in the eighth paragraph of the Win- 
 ter's Tale; on the other, an honest effort to give such dignity 
 to the language as the times demanded. What, indeed, should 
 be the standard ? England was more fortunate than France, — 
 which had already, but only, its Malherbe. No one man's taste 
 or judgment can determine for a people what shall be its univer- 
 sally best style ; if it come as an immediate and formal product, 
 it must be the work of a congress of culture. Hence King James's 
 plan of producing a version of the Scriptures that should in every 
 verse embody the best idioms and terms and phrasing that fifty 
 minds could agree upon, was not fortunate merely, it was an inspi- 
 ration. Thus All Men's and Every Man's Best Style as an ob- 
 jective fact and thing of influence in English literature, dates from 
 1610. 
 
 To overestimate the influence of the King James's version upon 
 modern English would not be easy. No other literature ever had 
 such a book, no other people ever achieved in the compass of a 
 single exemplar so complete a realization of its notions concerning 
 stylistic worth. Here is a work no phrase of which, barring cer- 
 tain defects in reaching the meaning of the original, and occa- 
 sional forms lost to present English sense, has ever challenged 
 emendation. The universally best style is not only the best possi- 
 ble style that any given writer, as determined by the verdict of all 
 readers, can attain. It is not, of necessity, a neutral thing, but 
 may introduce felicities and even elegant turns in so far as these 
 
 1 It scarcely need be pointed out that Hamlet's talk for three paragraphs after 
 Osric's euphuistic deliverance concerning Laertes (V. ii. 105-110) is bald travesty. 
 
 It should be borne in mind that affectation has likewise its better aspects, since 
 it argues a convalescent self-respect. It testifies to a consciousness of defects, and 
 a desire to keep their existence a secret from the world. It happily but seldom 
 lasts, in literature or out of it, through a second generation. 
 
330 ALL MEN'S AND EVERY MAN'S BEST STYLE. 
 
 are absolute and make all readers wish they had been their own. 
 Any expression so ideal that all minds recognize it as what them- 
 selves would have chosen above all others, belongs to All Men's 
 and Every Man's Style. A significant feature of this style is the 
 readiness with which utterances cast in it cling to the memory. 
 This is true not only of phrases of Scripture, but in the main also 
 of ' saws ' and maxims that once heard are never forgotten, — 
 and that not so much for the truth or wisdom in the matter, as the 
 cleverness of the manner. They have survived and are all men's 
 best, because all men adopt them and make as if they were origi- 
 nated by themselves. Outside the Bible we have only broken 
 passages of such literature, as here and there parts of Jeremy 
 Taylor and Bunyan — who owe their excellences principally to 
 the influence of the great model. Correspondingly in poetry we 
 name most confidently the opening of Chaucer's Prologue, certain 
 passages of Milton's L? Allegro and Penseroso, and of Shakespeare. 
 We thus establish a conventionalizing period in English litera- 
 ture lasting from James I. to Anne, or from the printing of the 
 King James Bible until The Tatler. There was now an estab- 
 lished All Men's Best Style. Addison, Steele, Swift, Arbuthnot, 
 Pope, Budgell, contribute for that publication or its successor 
 in so nearly the same strain that only expert critics can distin- 
 guish the unmarked or unsigned papers. From now until the 
 end of the century we may recognize a true conventional epoch. 
 But in gross division it is well to consider the whole period from 
 King James to Coleridge as the conventional stage, or Era of 
 Conventionalization. Then with the new century and its tremen- 
 dous issues men begin to arise above convention and assert their 
 individuality. They will write in the main like Steele, but the 
 personality appears beyond. The universally best style becomes 
 yet more universal. The review, the magazine, with the daily 
 and weekly press, instruct an army of writers and correspondents 
 into its secrets, and bring all the world into familiarity with its 
 character. The schools and colleges likewise have made it the 
 shibboleth of culture. It has come to be, in short, little more 
 
ALL MEN'S AND EVERY MAN'S BEST STYLE. 331 
 
 than an accomplishment, much like the ability to read three cen- 
 turies ago, — almost something to take for granted. The real 
 power and character of literature have risen to a height far be- 
 yond. It has fallen to our lot to live in the Age of Individual- 
 ization in literary history. 
 
 The Universally Best Style is the language of the understanding 
 and reason, or of men in common life. The Style of Individual- 
 ization is the language not only of men but of the man, not of the 
 understanding but of imagination, the moral nature, or, as we 
 say, the soul. The English race is no longer satisfied with a style 
 that does not reveal character, that does not reflect this highest 
 part of man. The All Men's and Every Man's Best Style as a 
 foundation is of little worth if nothing be built upon it. We shall 
 recognize that this foundation stands for the principle considered 
 in Chapter XIII. under the name of Classicism. The Individual 
 Style which is formed upon it is of the essence of what in the 
 same chapter is called Gothicism. Thus we come to another 
 phase of that grandest of Teutonic facts, the emancipation and 
 exaltation of the individual. Nothing in the history of our race 
 is more remarkable than this latter-day vindication and triumph 
 of first race-principles. Grant and George and Lowell and Emer- 
 son and Holmes and Hawthorne wrote at first like all school-boys, 
 in a colorless, neutral way, until they acquired the general manner. 
 Then, when their manhood came, each asserted it in his own way. 
 England has restored Gothic supremacy in the field of poetry. It 
 has fallen to the lot of America to do the same in prose. 
 
332 STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 
 
 It will, no doubt, be clear that in the principles brought to light 
 in the preceding chapter, we have ultimate grounds on which to 
 make a classification of the vast body of prose in the world's lit- 
 erature. We have seen that the fundamental differences of style 
 are generic, very like such as may be noted in any department 
 of zoological history. The horse has a distinct physical type, 
 illustrated by every individual of the class. • There is in form 
 and structure, — or what in a large sense we may call Style, — 
 much more that is common to all than is differential with each. 
 Moreover, in each young foal it is hard to detect anything dis- 
 tinctive. The figure is yet so ungainly and unsinewed that any 
 save the expert breeder's eye will hardly identify the given indi- 
 vidual in a group except by markings or color. But as growth 
 advances, the generic or universal style of the horse seems to give 
 place to the individualistic. The neck arches, the breast swells 
 and broadens, the varied outlines and proportions of form develop. 
 Points in spirit and disposition become apparent, and items like 
 these, to the eye that can ignore or take general characteristics for 
 granted, identify and distinguish the individual with the greatest 
 distinctness and precision. 
 
 We see thus illustrated some of the unconsidered uses to which 
 the word ' style ' is put. No wonder there is so little comprehen- 
 sion of its meaning as a literary term, and so much perplexity as 
 to what it is to ' acquire a style.' A little reflection will make 
 clear that we employ the word in a generic and a specific sense 
 
STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 333 
 
 and with reference to form as well as spirit. To illustrate, — 
 beginning with the last-named application, by the same example, 
 — we say concerning one horse of finest nerve that we like its 
 style better than another's, as exhibited, of course, in action. In 
 a different case, when height, build, trimness, are under consid- 
 eration, we like or do not like the style of this or that, — purely in 
 respect to form. Then, as to larger or generic differences, one 
 might speak, popularly, of the style of the elephant and of the 
 gazelle, of the lion or the giraffe. As to a specific or individual 
 application of the word, we may illustrate best by changing the 
 example. The rose-fancier who cultivates in his conservatory all 
 the leading species, distinguishes each, of course, by recognized 
 differences of color or structure. But he very possibly admires 
 most a particular variety, of which he has a dozen or twenty speci- 
 mens. Of all the flowers he cultivates these are his favorites. He 
 is attached to them in a sort of personal way, and comes to know 
 the peculiar form -and hue and habits of each so intimately as to 
 take the common for granted, and see only the individual. It 
 would not be strange if, responding to the perception of such 
 differences, he found himself calling each rose by a name of its 
 own — as for like reasons we name our pets. Now the respec- 
 tive shades in the hue of stem, or leaf, or flower, the curves of the 
 stock, the height and pose of the buds or blossoms, constitute in 
 each case the style of the individual plant, — are its specific mode 
 of being the rose it is. There are no duplicates in nature. Even 
 the ultimate atoms may be unlike ; and it is according to our 
 nature to recognize the solitariness of all things that we can know. 
 But we do it in our own way, one looking along one line of differ- 
 ences, another another. To the connoisseur in roses, sensible 
 chiefly to color, the lusher hue of the stem, the warmer or fainter 
 tint in the petals will mean more than all the rest. To another 
 alive rather to form, the upright sturdiness of one plant or the 
 droop of another will make up its style to him, to the exclusion of 
 all other distinctive points. All apprehension of individuality, 
 indeed, is only relative. The rose-lover who calls his plants pet 
 
334 STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 
 
 names would have found stronger grounds and been made to 
 think of quite different designations, if he had used a microscope. 
 On the other hand, the South-Sea savage, if set down suddenly in 
 our streets, would find it well-nigh impossible to distinguish one 
 man or woman from another in the passing throng. Give him ten 
 years among us, and he will begin to distinguish individuals. 
 
 In much the same way the child or youth, on first attempting to 
 read Hawthorne or De Quincey, will fail to discover individuality 
 and get no pleasure, but instead be bored. He needs the school- 
 master's assimilating and moulding hand. He must be made to 
 drop his isolated mode in writing as he has long since dropped it 
 in oral speech ; he must be trained to the fundamental, universal 
 manner. He must learn to appreciate some masterpiece in that 
 same manner, like the Bible or Pilgrim's Progress, — as he is very 
 like to do. In no long time we shall find him enjoying Swift 
 and Goldsmith and Addison, as well as De Foe, and advancing 
 from those conventional styles toward De Quincey and Macaulay 
 and the later individualists. If he can follow the course of devel- 
 opment discerningly, and sympathize with each phase of change, 
 he will soon overtake even the newest literature, and take his chief 
 delight in Hamerton, or Howells, or Henry James. Style to him 
 will be at first a generic thing, distinguishing what he can read 
 from what he cannot, or what is ' dry ' from what is entertaining. 
 Eventually it becomes individual and stands for the distinctive 
 delight derived from the personality of a Ruskin, or Arnold, or 
 Holmes, or Emerson. The connoisseur in roses, beginning, per- 
 haps, with the gross preference of some one variety over all others, 
 will end, as we have seen, in getting delight no longer from purely 
 common characteristics, but only from what is peculiar to each 
 specimen alone. So style in literature — analogous to the sheen 
 on the coat of a horse, or the gloss or smoothness or tint of 
 green in leaf or stalk, or the vegetableness of hue in a rose blos- 
 som — is some last touch of grace or beauty by which each author 
 is individualized. It will be, perhaps, in any given case, neither 
 the sole nor the chief excellence, but the one recognized by the 
 
STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 335 
 
 reader's imagination. As was pointed out in the late chapter on 
 Force, the mind selects what it would idealize. In style, as in 
 other things, it is very likely to choose the little rather than the 
 great, yet in the little experiences substantially the pleasure of 
 the whole. 
 
 Style, then, in a proper sense, is any one element or manifesta- 
 tion by which the mind potentially interprets and idealizes indi- 
 viduality. 1 One of the most telling of such manifestations, as we 
 have seen, is Force. In a composition, as of Carlyle's, showing 
 that element, with no matter what accompaniment of peevishness 
 and intolerance, we enter through imagination into a spiritual 
 companionship with the author which real acquaintance might not 
 have rivalled. Other such elements and manifestations as deter- 
 mining severally our impressions of style are endless. With" one 
 author it is the unrelaxing seriousness and reserve that prompt the 
 reader's idealization. In another it is his chaste and perfect deli- 
 cacy in the associations of words admitted ; or his confident and 
 sure precision ; or dread of the sensational and irrelevant ; and in 
 another the perfect fearlessness, or grace, or facility, or strength. 
 In the style of one writer we note nothing but his inability to say 
 things in an expected way ; in another, we are conscious only of his 
 concern lest he utter them in other than the approved fashion. 
 We enter the author accordingly in our list of acquaintances, 
 admitting him to influence in the degree, agreeably to our- inter- 
 pretation, of his worth. 
 
 It is evident that we may classify prose literature either accord- 
 ing to the mood and purpose of the author, or the character and 
 quality, in each case, of the product achieved. Upon either basis 
 the first step will be to ascertain at what remove the author or his 
 work stands from the All Men's and Every Man's Best Style. 
 
 1 It will be noted here that Individuality — which the mind readily exalts (pp. 
 64, 65) to Personality — is one of the absolute types that the Teutonic race, in com- 
 mon with every other race at the proper point in its development, finds inherent 
 within. Compare p. 94. Hence the part it plays not only in art and letters, but 
 even in commercial life. Personal signatures, because wholly unique and repre- 
 sentative, are negotiable, and bind the whole man to the last responsibility. 
 
336 STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 
 
 Some men make it a point to keep close to the accepted norm, 
 others to go aside from it as far as possible. The one class is 
 composed of professional or lay purists, who wait for a word to 
 be entered in the dictionary before venturing to use it, at least 
 in writing; the other is continually stretching and straining the 
 meaning of approved and standard terms, though, perhaps, only 
 in a small way, and on the safe side of positive objection. These 
 two classes furnish a nucleus of names, respectively, for two great 
 divisions of all prose authors. The one, including all who adhere 
 to the universally best style and are content to be merged in it, we 
 may call Classical. The other, composed of minds too original 
 and self-assertive to accept authority, might be styled Romantic, 
 or Individual. 
 
 Minds inclining most, either as authors or readers, to the forms 
 of literature called Classical in Chapter XIII., will generally, in pref- 
 erence and taste for terms, be classical also. On the other hand, 
 minds inclining most to romanticism in matter will be romantic in 
 manner ; that is, will dislike to say the same phrase twice, or be 
 held at all to the obligation of precision. Of course, both modes 
 are right, and both equally far from being the one right way. Not 
 only is it true that under ordinary circumstances we must use 
 words as other men use and have used them, but equally true 
 that under extraordinary circumstances we must put upon them 
 an office or a burden they have never borne before. When we 
 attempt to express our deepest meaning, we find that words used 
 upon lighter occasion share in the stronger significance of the 
 whole thought uttered. Every interjection which carries forth a 
 cry of agony comes from pain never quite the same 'before, and 
 is, in reality, a new word to the world. Those who wish or need 
 only to repeat former petitions may well enough go to the prayer- 
 book ; but all who cry out for help in a moment of new distress 
 use prayers of their own which were never heard before, and no 
 word of which ever meant quite the same as now. 1 
 
 1 Of course, every man's vocabulary is unlike another's even with respect to the 
 logical intension of separate terms. We have seen in Chapter VI. how it differs 
 
STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 337 
 
 All men, no matter of what pursuit or station, are in some sense 
 either classicists or romanticists. They are intolerant of change, 
 and consent readily to authority, or welcome innovation in an 
 enthusiastic or radical way, and care nothing for prescription. 
 The apprentice who can learn to do anything that any one else 
 does, or make whatever has been made, in his shop or factory, 
 is a good example of the one class. He assumes that the world 
 is going to remain substantially as it is, and accepts it as good 
 enough without expansion or amendment. But there are in every 
 machine-shop and manufactory apprentices of a very different 
 sort, who, on learning the theory and methods of their craft, see 
 at once where labor may be saved, or how less material may be 
 used, or more power be made available for the purpose intended. 
 The counsellor who knows all the decisions, and can at once advise 
 a client in a case repeating past conditions, is an example of the 
 one cast of talent. The judge, who, with great clearness, points 
 out the application of the law to a new instance not contemplated 
 by the statutes has a mind of the other order. The same is true 
 not only among the leaders in thought and action, but in society 
 at large. In one aspect of things there seems nothing but ad- 
 vancement, development everywhere. In every department of 
 industry we note changes almost every day. In agriculture and 
 the arts, in trade, the professions, education, old methods are 
 giving place to new. Factory and farm machinery in use to-day 
 will next year or the next after give place to forms yet more 
 complicated but more efficient. On the other hand, when we turn 
 our eyes backward we are impressed with the slow and ungeneral 
 nature of our progress. Some fields are yet mowed and reaped 
 by hand, some shops are still worked without the simplest of 
 modern appliances, many homes lack yet the sewing-machine. 
 Thus we see it is the labor of half of society to introduce and 
 
 in associations, or the experiences had with that which each word stands for. Now, 
 finally, it differs in the experiential occasions for employing it. In other words, 
 each man's instrument of expression differs greatly in all respects from other men's, 
 but the uses to which he must put it differ yet more. 
 
338 STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 
 
 make general the ideas and practices long since left behind by 
 progressive minds. Change requires inertia, progress demands 
 conservatism. Otherwise there could be no proving of the new, 
 no holding fast the old until its better come. 
 
 In poetry among the moderns we might set up as opposing 
 examples of classic and romantic diction, Wordsworth and Brown- 
 ing. Wordsworth never used any term or expression not of good 
 and regular standing in the speech of his day. On the other 
 hand, Browning often fails of easy intelligibility because of the 
 impulse not to say things as they have been said before, or in 
 other people's ways. To go back further, of course, Shakespeare 
 is the supreme autocrat of his own will with language. Corre- 
 spondingly Pope is the chief among purists and precisians in our 
 poetry. Among prosaists we may first set Addison over against 
 Bunyan. Addison, perhaps, came nearest being merged in the 
 Universally Best Style, — or, one might say, to falling into the 
 sun ; Bunyan's orbit surely is the broadest among all the planets 
 of his era. But his centrifugalness of diction does not consist in 
 material departures from the sentence norms. His periods are 
 too long, — probably, as has been elsewhere observed, 1 through 
 no fault of his, but otherwise differ not greatly from those of 
 the Bible, which was his only model. His individuality is mani- 
 fested chiefly through novel expressions so superb and striking, 
 like 'spill thy soul,' in the sentence of Apollyon, quoted (p. 325) 
 above. Here we find the type of the modern romantic manner, 
 which without fear or restraint will speak its mjnd by all the re- 
 sources and power of speech. We easily identify the mode 
 from Coleridge and Wilson down. The Scotch School helped 
 romanticism of manner, since most who wrote in it were inspired 
 by romanticism of matter. It was the ballad method extended to 
 
 1 Page 288. The ' conventionalizing ' punctuation of the 17th and 18th cen- 
 turies is responsible for the abuse of the semicolon, — not yet corrected fully, which 
 disfigures Bunyan's style. The sentence-sense not yet developed, printers seem to 
 have conceived punctuation as merely an affair of mechanical proportions. Com- 
 pare the sentence from Dryden, quoted on p. 286. 
 
STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 339 
 
 prose. What has been called New England Transcendentalism is 
 but another manifestation of the same race-spirit. 
 
 But we may begin analysis nearer our own times. There are, of 
 course, two extremes in literary tendency, the stiff and conscious- 
 conventional, — represented we will say by Bancroft, and the lax 
 and sensational as evinced by the dialect-humorists and in slang. 
 The latter is the Marinism of English prose, the former is classi- 
 cism pure and simple. Among living writers there is no other such 
 eminent example of the correct manner as Walter Pater. Per- 
 haps no piece of writing in our literature comes quite so near the 
 ideal of classicism as the first paper in his volume named Appre- 
 ciations. It is of the essence of Marinism to attempt sensational 
 effects by form. The most celebrated example is the Biglow 
 Papers. People in their day were led by the language to read 
 the matter, and with results of influence that perhaps could not 
 otherwise have been achieved. With authors having no loftier 
 purpose than to amuse and thereby put money in their purse, 
 Marinism is the only claim to literary notice. Lowell had other 
 resources. His essays and other serious prose productions incline 
 in some respects to classicism, but are so full of feeling as to carry 
 them across to the romantic category. When a man gives way to 
 the impulse to be personal and particular, and to speak his mind, 
 his emotion will find its own avenues to expression. Lowell, know- 
 ing grammar and rhetoric, and recognizing all obligation thereto, 
 lets his conviction do its work in its own way, and so writes in the 
 true romantic manner. The mere humorist or slang-inventor, since 
 wanting moral purpose, writes far below it. So also must any 
 author whose inspiration does not in the main absorb anxiety for 
 neat turns of phrase. A noble emotion will always find the worthy 
 word without lucubrating search. Classicism begins with great 
 models that were shaped in the heat of passion. 
 
 It is well known that the judges who apply old laws to new 
 instances are producing perhaps as many fresh enactments as the 
 law-makers. Somewhat similarly it is the romanticists of diction 
 that are rivaling all other contributors of new meanings to our 
 
340 STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 
 
 dictionaries. They are continually making old words bear new 
 burdens, they are incessantly attaching new elements of intension 
 to well-tried terms. Moreover, while trying experiments upon old 
 words, to make their intension different, they are also, for variety's 
 sake or other reasons of their own, treating words with recognized 
 shades of difference as synonymous. The successful experimenter 
 must one way keep well within the bounds of purity and propriety, 
 though in another (compare Holmes's ' atmospheric reformers,' 
 p. 315) he go surprisingly beyond ; and he must win acquiescence 
 in advance. Some of these expressions will remain a marvel for 
 their brilliancy and daring; others, like "good form," meeting a 
 felt want, will be adopted into daily speech. Of the romantic 
 manner in its latest phases, James and Howells are eminent repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 A style will then be classical when the author is concerned 
 rather to meet the expectations and suit the general taste of his 
 public than to speak his mind. People who are concerned about 
 the impressions they make, try to Speak and move in such ways as 
 observers will approve and perhaps admire. A style will be 
 romantic when the speaker or writer does not subdue himself to 
 the lower pitch of his audience, but aims to raise them to his own 
 enthusiasm. It will be marked specifically by the frequent words 
 that stand out in some personal wise from the All Men's Best 
 Style forming the basis of his mode. If he descend to dialect 
 writing or to slang, he will expect to be ephemeral, and he will 
 have his reward : but it will not be influence, and his work will 
 not be literature. Extremes lie generally within the bounds of 
 truth ; hence truth in essence is likely to be found at some equili- 
 brating point between. So far as criticism can forecast or con- 
 trol, the master of style should evince the union of both tenden- 
 cies. He should be classical almost to chaste severity, yet obey 
 an inspiration that insures expression for its whole of meaning. 
 Classicism is thus exalted to something like individuality, while 
 passion is generalized to the universal heart. Yet, practically, 
 some Titan, some Byronic or Jean-Paul nature, is liable at any 
 
STYLE, AND VARIETIES OF STYLE. 341 
 
 moment to overthrow all prescription and declare a new literary 
 dispensation. It is not classicism, in the last analysis, but roman- 
 ticism, that makes authority. 
 
 The classification of prose literature, with reference to the pur- 
 pose for which it is produced, need not detain us long. The most 
 ■flsual prose is, of course, what is called narration or description, 
 constituting the bulk of the daily and weekly newspapers, as well 
 as of the literature known as fiction. Here facts are told in such 
 wise as to produce in the mind of the reader as nearly as possible 
 the same impressions as the original experiences of them. There 
 is little use of the imagination, and — except in fiction — little 
 effort to arouse it. The mental mode is phantasy, and aims only 
 at bringing before the mind what has been actual. When the 
 author's purpose is to discuss the causes or effects of certain facts 
 somewhat exhaustively, he will produce an essay or monograph, 
 and write in what is called the Essay Style. History is both 
 philosophic and annalistic, hence is written in a style formed by 
 the union of the narrative or descriptive and the essay manner. 
 
 The oratorical style remains to be considered. The oration, 
 like poetry, is emotional. It does not aim merely to kindle the 
 imagination and produce the 'higher experiences of delight, but to 
 occasion motives and enable some determinative state of the ego. 
 We have already noted (p. 235) how nearly the exalted states of 
 imagination are related to what is called Will. The orator aims 
 to arouse such enthusiasm as will carry determinative effects with 
 it. Since oratory is pre-eminently oral, it has followed that the 
 oratorical style has differed materially from the book or essay 
 style, — which, as was shown in Chapter XXIV., is generally cast 
 in thought-units. The oratorical style uses the lower every-day 
 units of presentation, and in form is of the simplest. 
 
342 THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 It was pointed out in Chapter II. that a main distinction be- 
 tween prose and poetry lies in the behavior of the ego or con- 
 scious principle under the given excitation. If the occasion of its 
 activity be some appeal to the understanding or the reason, the 
 effect is subject-matter for prose and not for poetry. If we ap- 
 prehend in the occasion any considerable element of obligation 
 to truth in material aspects, or to time and space relations, we 
 realize ; if not, we idealize. In other words, where the mind 
 encounters or recognizes any element of duty, it consents to ser- 
 vice. When it is stopped by no consciousness of duty, it seeks 
 delight. 
 
 The inner mind or soul of man lives two lives, — that in which 
 it does its work, and that in which it experiences its natural or 
 chosen delights. The artisan, the lawyer, the merchant, have their 
 place of business, their hours when they see and serve the public. 
 When these are over we see them return to the other sphere, 
 which we call the Home, where the really enjoyable part of life is 
 lived. If it chance that the lawyer, the doctor, or the merchant 
 have no family, yet his bachelor quarters are the real home and 
 centre of his life. Here he is surrounded with objects adapted 
 or selected to his taste, here he reads his favorite books, here 
 entertains his friends, here in a large and various sense enjoys 
 the comforts that his lot affords. There is an instinct which makes 
 us enjoy what goes to make up our home, irrespective of what or 
 where it is, simply because it is a home. Even the beasts of the 
 
THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 343 
 
 field and of the forest have their dens and lairs which they love 
 as consecrated ground. They go forth to prowl and ravage, and 
 wrest from nature by dint of strength or cunning their daily meat, 
 then hie back to the joys of security and quiet. The soul or ego 
 even of savage beasts, so far as these have any, must have its own 
 home-life, and its own place to live it in. 
 
 But the home-life of the ego or soul of man is a large affair, 
 and by no means bounded by what it may experience within four 
 square walls. All that it can appropriate to itself of ultimate 
 beauty, all that it is persuaded can be made' to yield genuine 
 delight, it claims as its own. So of its two lives it is ever trying 
 to reduce the one to a minimum, and to expand the other to a 
 maximum. The man of business who, in the day of small things, 
 was his own bookkeeper, as a matter of course puts that work off 
 upon a hireling just as soon as his profits will allow. In other 
 words, he cuts down his hours of service and adds to his hours of 
 comfort. To be sure, some men become so accustomed to work 
 that they work for work's sake, are sorry to leave their counting- 
 room or office when the day is done, but gravitate back thither 
 evenings and Sundays, and all like times when other men are glad 
 to stay away. But that is abnormal, and indicates some derange- 
 ment or perversion of the natural mind. Of course, there are 
 vocations, as the artist's, in which the work-a-day life of the ego 
 is merged and blended with that of its delights. Such would be 
 the ideal existence if there must be work at all. But the ego 
 would fain eliminate such obligation altogether. To consent or 
 submit to it, is not a native but an acquired characteristic of the 
 mind. Proof of this we carry in our very consciousness. As chil- 
 dren our natures demanded constant, uninterrupted joy. It was 
 a slow, unwilling task to divide the life of diversion and sport, 
 and give part of our energies to work. We have lately noted 
 that, to the end there may be development or progress, there must 
 be inertia to overcome ; and, to overcome inertia, we must con- 
 quer our environment physically, intellectually, and spiritually. If 
 we had gone on from childhood doing nothing but trying to find 
 
344 THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 diversion, life would long since have ceased to furnish us even 
 requisite amusements. Both the lives of the ego must be lived, 
 each as the complement to the other. Too much relaxation 
 and pleasure-seeking breed spiritual sluggishness and ennui. 
 There is but one class of human beings equally deserving of pity 
 with those who have become jaded and aimless and dispirited, 
 because overprivileged, — and that is the class who have no privi- 
 leges at all. 
 
 Life, then, has for us both its poetic and its prose side. The 
 ruling principle of the prose-life which we lead is Duty, the princi- 
 ple of the poetic is Delight. The ego, when it is at work, in 
 service, is under constraint and grave ; when it feels permitted to 
 give itself up to delight it tries to make the most of its occasion, 
 would turn every opportunity to account. We feel under all cir- 
 cumstances that joy is our birthright, and that work, hard, insist- 
 ent, honest work is meritorious, and should bring some superior 
 compensation in rest and joy. It is instinctive with us to assume 
 that life means something good and substantial in enjoyment, that, 
 though we submit to service, it is not the end of being. Even 
 in earliest childhood we were inclined to resent the sensations of 
 pain as a perversion of our rights. Thus is Delight not only as 
 one of the inborn types, all hints and elements of which prompt 
 to idealization, but is a generic name for all the types or ideals 
 themselves, from which come our experiences of joy. Thus is 
 the inner spiritual life of the ego demonstrably its native primal 
 mode, while the outer or material is but disciplinary and inci- 
 dental. If the Monistic Philosophy shall prove that even outer, 
 material things are but spiritual phenomena, though of a pro- 
 visional accessory kind, on what grounds can we doubt that the 
 spiritual life is also the ultimate mode of consciousness? 
 
 Admitting, at any rate, that both the poetic and the prosaic 
 modes are normal and necessary forms of the mind's activity, let 
 us proceed to distinguish the one from the other in literary wise. 
 That we do this practically and unconsciously in even the simplest 
 mental processes needs but a moment's thought to prove. A man 
 
THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 345 
 
 rises to speak before us, — we will say, Stanley, — come to tell 
 what he saw and did in Darkest Africa. We find ourselves ac- 
 cordingly taking every statement from the first literally and seri- 
 ously, and trying to realize it through the language he uses as a 
 letter of directions ; but suppose, without giving us notice of his 
 intention, he stops his narration and begins quoting some poetical 
 passage related in matter to his theme. We at first take this like 
 the rest and try to realize the language literally, until we note the 
 meter or the rhyme. Immediately we check and correct ourselves. 
 We stop trying to represent in thought just how the objects men- 
 tioned looked or seemed, but instead cognize them as elements 
 or signs of types through which we may experience or have expe- 
 rienced spiritual delight. We take these shreds and fragments of 
 spiritual experiences as potentially spiritual wholes, or through 
 them — in other words — idealize. We no longer care for mate- 
 rial truth. The speaker has himself released us from the duty of 
 realizing exact physical relations, hence we with him seek delight. 
 We have passed from the world of fact and obligation to the world 
 of ideals. Though it is but for the moment, though in the next 
 breath he will go on with his prose narration, we are yet glad he 
 authorized the relief, perhaps wish that it were longer. But if the 
 same poetic sentences had been spoken by another — heard, for 
 instance, at the identical moment from without the room, we 
 should have disregarded their purport, and controlled our atten- 
 tion to the prose words of our own speaker. We should cognize 
 the rival sentences intellectually, no doubt along with the next 
 utterances of our lecturer, but wholly deny them the idealizing 
 effect that they, in the other instance, would have had with us. 
 
 The two activities of the mind thus illustrated are distinguished 
 as Phantasy and Imagination. When the ego restricts itself to the 
 imaging of facts, refusing to look beyond into their quality or their 
 final meanings, the operation is Phantasy. If we bring back to 
 mind a face, merely as composed of certain features, and not as 
 beautiful or repulsive, or think of a grand cathedral as of such 
 and such proportions, but not as the embodiment of an idea, we 
 
346 THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 exercise only phantasy. But the complete unrestricted activity of 
 the ego adds to intellectual perception or judgment the discern- 
 ment also of spiritual quality, and permits the exercise of the re- 
 sulting or accompanying emotion. When we construct in fancy 
 not only the physical features of a face, but also make the spiritual 
 type appear, so that the character, the soul, is most vividly cog- 
 nized, the process or activity is imagination. In the former mode 
 we keep our minds more or less completely from recognition of 
 moral excellence or beauty, and its consequent effect upon the 
 feelings, because bound to give strict heed to material proportions 
 or relations. In the latter we disregard all exterior or material 
 considerations except in so far as they enable or contribute to 
 delight. All our delights come from or through the types by 
 idealization. Imagination is the generic name of the common 
 emotional element in each of its processes. 1 
 
 The term imagination is often used loosely to designate the 
 process of representing in thought what is not present or apparent 
 to the physical eye. The true relations of phantasy and imagina- 
 tion may be easily illustrated by comparing the procedures of the 
 historian and the novelist. The task of each, we will suppose, 
 is to exhibit the life of an earlier generation, as in a Reign of 
 Queen Anne, pr a Henry Esmond. The historian will examine 
 the records of court and parliament, read the books of the time, 
 with private letters and journals. He will study the dress, the 
 cuisine, the etiquette, the social habits of that day. When the 
 known of fact and truth, in parts and fragments, has been ex- 
 hausted, he will begin to piece out from them the wholes which 
 they potentially represent, much as the paleontologist completes 
 the skeleton of which he has found dislocated and sequestered 
 portions. But he will take great pains not to ascribe parts to 
 wholes to which they never literally belonged. His first busi- 
 ness is to be, not spiritually but materially, true. His mind is 
 
 1 Even the physical appetencies in their way are ' types,' and include, in greater 
 or less proportion, a spiritual element. 
 
THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 347 
 
 continually rising to states of imagination as he detects in some 
 fact or circumstance the suggestion of a type that may have been 
 present actually in the life. But he will keep all such fancies, 
 however delectable, out of his pages. Like the paleontologist, 
 tempted to see an advanced, anticipated characteristic or function 
 in the fossil remains before him, he refuses to consider what he 
 cannot demonstrate objectively. The novelist, on the other hand, 
 will sacrifice no such opportunity. He is writing to the sensibili- 
 ties, not the intelligence, of his readers ; and they expect him to 
 exhibit personages which they can get into sympathy with, such 
 acts or qualities as will enable idealization and bring delight. If 
 the author be of such imaginative enthusiasm as would fain over- 
 ride all material limitations, he will shape his novel chiefly of 
 romantic happenings. If he be, like Thackeray, realistic, he will 
 find pleasure for himself and for his public in more ordinary cir- 
 cumstances and experiences, entirely such as may well enough 
 have been actual in the times considered. In any case it is the 
 author's own ideals of truth or excellence that will hold sway, and 
 the more realistic the less impracticable and distorted. Even 
 those of us who are not novelists do continually, in our own minds, 
 the same things that Thackeray has done in Henry Esmond. Or, 
 to consider an especial illustration, if one should attempt to figure 
 to one's thought of what sort must have been the New England 
 Puritan Sabbath of the seventeenth century, he will begin, like the 
 historian, by representing certain fundamental and necessary facts, 
 but afterwards add in detail other facts or objects or characteris- 
 tics entirely of his own choosing. He will put before his con- 
 sciousness, perhaps, some village he has seen that was actually 
 existent in that day, altering the picture to square with ancient 
 types and conditions, then add the sky and sunshine, the hills, and 
 trees, and faces which he loves to see. If he admires the stern 
 Puritan devotion to principle, he will represent certain of their 
 ascetic acts or practices, and idealize from them. Or, if he be 
 of those who can see nothing grand or noble in the New England 
 character, through representing the same things, he will derive 
 
348 THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 for himself an agreeable experience of the opposite kind. 1 In 
 any case, it is clear where phantasy ends and imagination begins. 
 What we put in as essential for truth's sake is of the phantasy, 
 what for our pleasure, of imagination. 
 
 There is thus evidently a principle by which the ego in con- 
 trolling its states is enabled to determine precedence of types. 
 That principle is the supremacy of truth over beauty, and of duty 
 over delight. We saw in Chapter XVII. that ideals in the last 
 analysis are made up of the two elements of ultimate truth and 
 ultimate beauty. There is no such thing as absolute truth or 
 beauty in this material world, as we know it. The ego will not 
 have it so, but insists on taking any sign of the existence of either 
 as a proof and earnest of its presence in unconditioned forms. 
 Here is a fact which explains, so far as explanation is possible, 
 the operation of the mind alike in figures, idealization, and art 
 (pp. 67, 94, and 130). The ego in imagination sees the consistent 
 whole which each part argues and postulates. Men, for example, 
 are not perfect as they should be, else would each element of the 
 faultless character be an earnest of the whole indeed. But imagi- 
 nation insists on assuming so and acting upon the assumption, so 
 that a single good deed is at once referred to a perfect motive 
 as its cause, and then the whole character or soul of which this 
 should be a part is conceived and contemplated with delight. 
 Imagination thus, or the ego in its undiverted, unconstrained ac- 
 tivity, subjectively cognizes ultimate truth and ultimate beauty as 
 one. 
 
 It was further observed in Chapter XVII. that there is no such 
 thing as ultimate beauty apart from truth, and that final truth can 
 never be wholly devoid of beauty. But the mind is constituted 
 with such limitations that it cannot discern ultimate truth and 
 
 1 The essential fact to be realized is, that which is presented to the mind in such 
 case is what the mind wants to see. This may be, as in the work of the artist, what 
 it delights to behold, or is stirred to opposite tragic feelings in contemplating. But 
 it will be what exalts the emotions. Were there not the one or the other effect, it 
 would not involve imagination. 
 
THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 349 
 
 beauty in the full significance of each together; it must often 
 cognize the two elements separately. Idealization could not well 
 go on in this imperfect world if the whole of truth were apparent 
 in each phase or circumstance of beauty. Thus there is oppor- 
 tunity for the seer to give himself to aspects of truth, while the 
 poet supplements by interpreting aspects of beauty. The ego in 
 seership seeks the elimination of mysteries, and the cognition of 
 objects in definite relations. The imagination projects objects 
 out of definite into indeterminate situations, and would fain ex- 
 change comprehended relations for mystery. Even the mathemat- 
 ical or the scientific consciousness can easily suspend in thought 
 the operation or obligation of actual laws, and conceive the inau- 
 guration of new forms of force. It is wholly natural for the ego 
 upon occasion freakishly to swing loose from the exactions of fact 
 and of fixed relations. When some pretender offers to break a 
 drouth and produce abundant rainfall, on notice and for hire, do 
 we find it so very difficult for the moment to conceive the trans- 
 action actual ? The ego, in other words, insists in spite of itself 
 upon the possibility of the impossible, assumes that some occult 
 principle may have been or might be reached potential of such 
 effect. It seems intuitively aware that the scope and range of 
 spiritual force is infinite, and that the limitations of its daily world 
 are only apparent, not absolute or actual. Hence the familiar 
 paradox that a thing may be both false yet true. A Desdemona 
 may tell spiritual truths to an Othello, who, expecting literalness, 
 will pronounce them arrant falsehoods. This is, of course, the 
 philosophy of what is called fiction. The facts and the relations 
 may be unactual, while the essential truths may be of the eternal 
 verities. Ultimate truth discerned with reference to its laws and 
 limitations produces Science ; spiritual beauty apprehended in 
 pure forms inspires to utterance in Poetry. 
 
 It is demonstrably impossible to engage in any new or untrite 
 intellectual procedure without some participancy in it of the feel- 
 ings. There must indeed be feeling always, in its degree, no mat- 
 ter how prosaic or insignificant the transaction, and whether new 
 
350 THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 or old. The modes and varieties of emotion are well-nigh end- 
 less, and often shade over into each other in almost imperceptible 
 ways. We have already noted, as far back as Chapter VI., that 
 there is Association of Moods as well as Association of Ideas, 
 though the latter is dependent upon the former. To assure our- 
 selves of the swift and incessant changes of feeling, we have but 
 to watch the expression of any person known to be emotional 
 while he talks or listens in ordinary conversation. Man differs 
 signally from the lower orders in possessing such control of the 
 muscles of the face as enables him to reveal the state of his feel- 
 ings without use of the voice. Civilized society would scarcely 
 indeed be possible if he were without the power to laugh or frown, 
 or were not enough developed emotionally to require it. There 
 is, moreover, always some certain degree of emotion permissible 
 in every prose transaction of whatsoever kind. Sometimes it must 
 not change or color the action in the slightest, — as of the sur- 
 geon's sympathy in a delicate operation. If he realize what he is 
 doing, he will be unnerved. Sometimes, and most frequently, it 
 is desirable that the action be colored and perhaps embellished 
 through effect of the emotion. The business man may have a 
 handsomely appointed counting-room, and even hang valuable 
 pictures upon its walls. But these should not be of the old mas- 
 ters, or otherwise savor of what we call pure art. That would be 
 what is termed ' bad taste,' which phrase assumes that there is 
 some right proportion in which business or duty may be mingled 
 with delight, and insists upon that proportion. When that propor- 
 tion is found, we declare that it is an exhibition of ' good taste,' or 
 that the thing is done handsomely, or gracefully, or daintily. But 
 when an act or process involves imagination not incidentally but 
 essentially, or in such wise that the element of emotion controls 
 instead of being controlled, we have a set of terms much stronger ; 
 we say that the affair is ' perfect,' or that the feat has been ' splen- 
 didly,' or ' brilliantly,' or ' superbly ' achieved. 
 
 The ego sternly controls the degree of imagination in all modes 
 of intelligence or judgment, so that emotion may not be para- 
 
THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 351 
 
 mount over reason. The craftsman must not carve or enchase his 
 product until spoiled for use. The building must not sacrifice its 
 purpose to beauty. The clerk fond of rhyming must do his lines 
 at home, and not in his employer's day-book, while he should 
 engross. Furthermore, this control of the ego over its states not 
 only suppresses strong emotion for cause in prose circumstances, 
 but grades the lesser element of feeling according to seemliness, 
 — this also one of the inherent types of the mind. The man who 
 in narrating some little incident should essay to be pathetic would 
 be ridiculous. The pathos of nature is always in order; the 
 pathos of man waits upon the sense of the assembly. No matter 
 how moving the spectacle to be described, if the circumstances or 
 temper of the listeners are too prosaic to warrant the speaker's 
 giving way to sentiment, he must tell his story as an affair of 
 fact, and let the condition of imagination come to his hearers' 
 minds, if it will, of its own motion. When by common consent 
 the outer conditions are adjusted to the imaginative pitch, the 
 voice of emotion may be heard. It is not in order to pronounce 
 a panegyric in a factory or a cornfield, — or indeed preach a ser- 
 mon or recite a poem, unless the audience invite. Misjudgment 
 as to the degree of imagination to be indulged in the prose-pres- 
 ence of our fellows is an irretrievable calamity. It not only fails 
 of awakening sympathy, but provokes derision ; whereby influence 
 is forfeited forever. 
 
 In literature taste manifests itself not only negatively, by ex- 
 cluding what would be inappropriate to the theme or the occa- 
 sion, but also positively, in seeking out and incorporating proper 
 refinements and adornings. The first and simplest of its mani- 
 festations, just as in the control of personality in social presence, 
 is what has been called Dignity, or Tone. Here, indeed, we ap- 
 proach close to individuality; so that when this has its chief 
 expression in tone or dignity, the latter quality becomes synony- 
 mous with style, as considered in the last chapter. Clearly dig- 
 nity or tone are negative manifestations, since they prevent the 
 use of terms too low or too familiar in their associations. As for 
 
352 THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 positive or contributive manifestations of taste, these are spoken 
 of for the most part generically under the name of Elegance. 
 Even in so prosaic an affair as saying ' good morrow ' to a neigh- 
 bor, taste, both negative and positive, may be exhibited. The 
 reporter's item in the newspaper descriptive of some local hap- 
 pening should be concise, and business-like, and true, and very 
 properly might, — indeed, in all likelihood one day will, — be char- 
 acterized both by dignity and elegance. But histories, and 
 essays, and lectures, and sermons, should employ imagination in 
 the form and to the degree called elegance without fail. It is 
 a source of power which no reader of Fiske, or Hawthorne, or 
 Lowell, no hearer of Curtis, or Phillips Brooks, needs to have 
 identified. It consists in such selection and employment of ex- 
 periential, figurative, and associational words or phrases as will 
 keep emotion at its proper pitch throughout. 
 
 But for writers essaying Elegance there are numerous pitfalls, 
 which only wary minds escape. When the temptation to intro- 
 duce the element of fancy in undue proportion is yielded to, the 
 result is what is called ' fine writing.' Or, we may say, it is the 
 consequence of attempting to work off products of the imagina- 
 tion as proper prose matter, of taking advantage of a prose occa- 
 sion to say what might perhaps, under proper circumstances, have 
 risen to the dignity of poetry. Practically the fault is committed 
 much less frequently in the use of poetic matter than of the poetic 
 manner. Here, also, the common sense of every writer effectu- 
 ally prevents the use of solemn style verb-forms in -est and -eth, 
 together with terms strictly poetic, like morn, ope, oft, — except 
 playfully, or to the extent of a phrase or two. The evil is con- 
 fined for the most part to figures calling for more than a prose- 
 exercise of the imagination. The proper use of a figure in prose 
 is not to draw the feelings into play by showing the spiritual, 
 truer, or superior in excellence to the literal, but by making the 
 literal plainer in its literal relations. Hence figures that cause 
 emotion to stand between the mind and its thought, defeat their 
 purpose and introduce an element of weakness. A diction that 
 
THE PROSE USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 353 
 
 interferes with the prose progress of the reader by use of poetic 
 figures is called ' florid,' or ' flowery.' Yet metaphors and other 
 figures once highly experiential may, through loss of emotional 
 potency, by long use have become prosaic merely. A correct 
 spiritual discernment within, reinforced by much acquaintance 
 with best literary instances without, can alone determine whether 
 a given word appeals to imagination too strongly for prose em- 
 ployment. 
 
354 INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 It was pointed out in Chapter XVII. that there are two funda- 
 mental principles in the universe which the mind of each of us 
 is Jxrand to recognize and regard, — which principles are ultimate 
 truth and ultimate beauty. Both these are but imperfectly 
 apprehensible to the natural mind, but in so far as recognized 
 produce the attitudes or modes of consciousness called respec- 
 tively Duty and Delight. In the last chapter it was also indicated 
 that the sum of all activities in society, whether in aesthetic, sci- 
 entific, or industrial lines, are governed or inspired by motives 
 belonging, in the last analysis, to the one category or the other. 
 There is no piece of literature, properly so called, that is not the 
 outcome of a purpose either to disseminate truth or impart enjoy- 
 ment. The mind that has discerned truth in a Bacon's way will 
 for truth's sake formulate it, and cast it in a shape available for 
 present and after time. The seer that discerns ultimate truth 
 in less conditioned forms, after the manner of an Emerson, is 
 prompted to give to the world even his lesser illumination. So a 
 Shakespeare or a Browning, who feels the exaltation of beauty, 
 is moved to share it with his fellows, and receive the reward, 
 or temporary opprobium, of being its exponent or apostle. All 
 literature is, therefore, in an important sense sentiment-literature, 
 and is in itself a record of what men have felt. 
 
 But while Duty is deliberative and exhibited through some form 
 of determination, Delight is spontaneous and eager. The litera- 
 ture of the imagination will be more sprightly and free than prose 
 
INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 355 
 
 proper. We may look for dissimilarities in the form of prose and 
 of poetry beyond mere rhyme and metre. We saw in Chapter 
 II. that poetry abounds in exclamatory expressions, in which a 
 single word does the work of a whole prose clause. In Chap- 
 ter X. it was made clear that the tendency in imagination is to 
 reduce analogies, and even allegories to single terms. Facts like 
 these cannot but affect the sentence proportions of poetic styles. 
 It was pointed out on page 291, we shall remember, that Chaucer's 
 prose periods differ greatly from his poetic. The average num- 
 ber of words in each period of the Melibeus is 48.99 ; but of 
 the Prologue, 285 sentences by Skeat's punctuation, 23.49 words 
 per sentence. Most of the periods in the Prologue are of the 
 simplest oral kind, like ours in modern prose ; and Skeat is un- 
 deniably right in taking out the semicolons by which Tyrwhitt, 
 after the fashion of his century, tried to reduce so many of them 
 to inorganic component clauses. Applying the same principles of 
 punctuation to the Knightes Tale and Legend of Goode Women, 
 as also to the Dethe of Blanche and the Parlament of Foules, we 
 find the above average sustained in each with the final result of 
 23.35. The difference, moreover, in predications and simple sen- 
 tences is not less marked, as the following exhibit by hundreds 
 will show : — 
 
 Prologue, Knightes Tale. 
 
 Melibeus. 
 
 
 
 
 Predi- 
 
 Simp. 
 
 
 Predi- 
 
 Simp. 
 
 
 cations. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 
 cations. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 First 100 periods, 
 
 2.49 
 
 32 
 
 First 100 periods, 
 
 6.16 
 
 4 
 
 Second 100 periods, 
 
 2.44 
 
 31 
 
 Second 100 periods, 
 
 5-25 
 
 6 
 
 Third 
 
 3-°5 
 
 19 
 
 Third " 
 
 4.68 
 
 6 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 3-5 6 
 
 22 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 4.66 
 
 2 
 
 Fifth 
 
 3.12 
 
 14 
 
 Rem'ing 80 " 
 
 5-5° 
 
 2 
 
 Average 500 periods, 
 
 2-93 
 
 24 
 
 Average 480 periods, 
 
 5-25 
 
 4 
 
 Spenser has also differences of the same sort, — though the 
 punctuation apparently disguises the organic sentence proportions 
 in both exhibits : — 
 
356 
 
 INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 Faerie Queene. 
 
 View of the S. of Ireland. 
 
 First ioo periods, 
 Second loo periods, 
 Third " " 
 Fourth " " 
 Fifth " 
 
 Average 500 periods, 4.93 6 
 
 Predi- 
 cations. 
 
 4.40 
 4.81 
 5-92 
 4-59 
 4.91 
 
 Simp. 
 Sents. 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 6 
 
 9 
 
 5 
 
 Sixth 100 periods, 
 Seventh 100 periods, 
 Eighth " 
 Ninth 
 Tenth " 
 
 Predi- 
 cations. 
 
 5.07 
 
 5-73 
 
 6.47 
 
 5-99 
 7.00 
 
 Simp. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 IO 
 
 5 
 4 
 7 
 2 
 
 Average 1069 periods, 5.44 8 
 
 Furthermore Dryden, it will be interesting to note, writes lighter 
 sentences in poetry than in prose, with almost as large per cent of 
 simple sentences as Chaucer. 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. ; 
 Hind and Panther. 
 
 Dramatic Poesy. 
 
 
 
 Predi- 
 
 Simp. 
 
 
 Predi- 
 
 Simp. 
 
 
 cations. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 
 cations. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 First 100 periods, 
 
 3-75 
 
 12 
 
 First 100 periods, 
 
 6.I4 
 
 4 
 
 Second 100 periods, 
 
 3.10 
 
 22 
 
 Second 100 periods, 
 
 S.86 
 
 1 
 
 Third " " 
 
 2.81 
 
 26 
 
 Third " " 
 
 4-73 
 
 8 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 3-03 
 
 >s 
 
 Fourth " " 
 
 378 
 
 8 
 
 Fifth 
 
 3-45 
 
 13 
 
 Fifth " " 
 
 4.04 
 
 9 
 
 Average 500 periods, 3.23 18 
 
 Average 521 periods, 4.91 
 
 As the prose sentence descends to organic oral proportions it 
 will naturally approach more and more nearly, and perhaps fully 
 reach, the poetic limit. It has in fact crossed this and become yet 
 shorter. No poet save Chaucer has written in averages so low as 
 those found in Macaulay's prose, 1 and since Shakespeare sentential 
 
 1 " Ossian " excepted. Moreover, in Chaucer's sentence length and predication 
 average as just exhibited may we not read the chief reason he has remained 
 inimitable through so many generations ? No poetic writer, save Shakespeare 
 (cf. p. 358), even distantly approaches him in naive simplicity and brevity of 
 sentence form. How could poets writing in numerical and predicational averages 
 twice as great resemble him ? Here we have the criterion that promises to settle 
 definitively the question of Chaucer's authorship of the doubtful poems. The 
 Flower and the Leaf and Chaucer's Dream, for instance, show numerical sentence 
 averages of not less than 47.47 and 48.94 words respectively. The requisite data 
 from the Romamtt of the Rose are now in hand but await verification. 
 
INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 357 
 
 development in poetry has been going the other way. It seems 
 hardly to be questioned that a terse prose style will be exchanged 
 for a somewhat diffuse poetic, when a prosaist essays to write 
 seriously in verse. Suggestive evidence to this effect is found in 
 Shelley and Macaulay. Unfortunately neither these nor other 
 reputable authors have written sufficiently in both prose and verse 
 for a final test. An examination of such poetry from prose hands 
 as is available gives rise to a strong presumption that the prose 
 manner under all circumstances is distinct from the poetic. For 
 instance, Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Essays exhibit these 
 differences : l — 
 
 Sohrab and Rustum ; Balder Dead. Milton ; Wordsworth ; Byron. 
 
 
 Predi- 
 
 Simp. 
 
 
 Predi- 
 
 Simp. 
 
 
 cations. 
 
 Seats. 
 
 
 cations. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 First ioo periods, 
 
 4-3° 
 
 IS 
 
 First 100 periods, 
 
 2-73 
 
 24 
 
 Second ioo periods, 
 
 4.61 
 
 16 
 
 Second 100 periods, 
 
 2-54 
 
 22 
 
 First 
 
 3.81 
 
 is 
 
 Third 
 
 2-93 
 
 IS 
 
 Second " " 
 
 3-57 
 
 is 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 2.82 
 
 18 
 
 Third " 
 
 396 
 
 8 
 
 Fifth " " 
 
 2.82 
 
 20 
 
 Average 500 periods, 4.05 14 Average 500 periods, 2.77 20 
 
 We may compare also, as a poet of more popular accomplish- 
 ments, Holland : — 
 
 Kathrina ; Bitter Sweet. 
 
 Plain Talks. 
 
 
 
 Predi- 
 
 Simp. 
 
 
 Predi- 
 
 Simp. 
 
 
 cations. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 
 cations. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 First 100 periods, 
 
 3'42 
 
 is 
 
 First 100 periods, 
 
 2.99 
 
 2 S 
 
 Second 100 periods, 
 
 3-34 
 
 17 
 
 Second 100 periods, 
 
 3-51 
 
 13 
 
 Third " 
 
 3-56 
 
 is 
 
 Third " 
 
 3-23 
 
 23 
 
 First " " 
 
 3-64 
 
 24 
 
 Fourth " 
 
 2.64 
 
 24 
 
 Second " 
 
 3.60 
 
 19 
 
 Fifth 
 
 2.78 
 
 19 
 
 Average 500 periods, 3.51 18 Average 500 periods, 3.03 21 
 
 1 With these results compare (p. 267) the exhibit from Lowell's prose. The 
 average of predications in the Cathedral and other long-lined poems, — not 
 burlesque, is at least 4.30 ; of simple sentences, 13. 
 
358 
 
 INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 To illustrate how closely great poets adhere to their sentence 
 norms, even at widely removed periods of composition, we may 
 instance further averages from Shakespeare and Browning : 1 — 
 
 Love's Labors Lost 
 
 
 Predi- 
 
 Simp. 
 
 Clauses 
 
 
 cations. 
 
 Sents. 
 
 Saved. 
 
 First ioo periods 
 
 • 2.97 
 
 21 
 
 6.1 1 
 
 Second 1 00 periods 
 
 2-54 
 
 32 
 
 4.90 
 
 Third " " 
 
 . 2.65 
 
 29 
 
 1.48 
 
 Fourth " " 
 
 • 2.75 
 
 25 
 
 3.5° 
 
 Fifth " " 
 
 . 3.02 
 
 24 
 
 4-43 
 
 Average 500 periods . 
 
 • 2.79 
 
 26 
 
 4.08 
 
 Tempest. 
 
 
 
 First 100 periods 
 
 . 2.46 
 
 3° 
 
 8.20 
 
 Second 100 periods . 
 
 . 2.84 
 
 31 
 
 3-4° 
 
 Third " " 
 
 • 2.93 
 
 27 
 
 3-3° 
 
 Fourth " " 
 
 • 2.53 
 
 34 
 
 .78 
 
 Fifth 
 
 • 3-21 
 
 20 
 
 3-63 
 
 Average 500 periods '. 
 i 
 
 • 2.79 
 
 'ordello. 
 
 28 
 
 3-86 
 
 First ioo periods 
 
 ■ 349 
 
 19 
 
 16.50 
 
 Second 100 periods 
 
 • 3-7' 
 
 3° 
 
 12.50 
 
 Third 
 
 • 3-°5 
 
 27 
 
 8.95 
 
 Fourth " " 
 
 • 4-38 
 
 27 
 
 8-94 
 
 Fifth 
 
 • 3-47 
 
 22 
 
 10.79 
 
 Average 500 periods 
 
 . 3- 6z 
 
 25 
 
 11.54 
 
 Ring and 1 
 
 he Book (Guido). 
 
 
 First 100 periods 
 
 • 3-49 
 
 29 
 
 5-93 
 
 Second 100 periods 
 
 • 3.58 
 
 29 
 
 2.71 
 
 Third " 
 
 • 3-77 
 
 '7 
 
 4-56 
 
 Fourth " " 
 
 • 3-43 
 
 32 
 
 6.79 
 
 Fifth 
 
 • 3-12 
 
 23 
 
 5-17 
 
 Average 500 periods . 
 
 • 3-48 
 
 26 
 
 S-o3 
 
 1 Averages obtained from the prose of these authors are as follows. Shake- 
 speare: predications, 2.76; simple sentences, 31; per cent clauses saved, 4.46. 
 Browning: predications, 3.19; simple sentences, 23; per cent clauses saved, n. 
 
 It is interesting to note that the abnormal condensation of the Sordello manifests 
 itself only in the third column of the above results from Browning's poetry. 
 
INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 359 
 
 There are material differences between the earliest and the 
 modern poetic manner which in a measure explain the remarkable 
 exhibit from Chaucer above. It was indicated at the opening of 
 Chapter II. that poets of the present day incline rather to epithets 
 than verbs in the effort to indicate experiential quality. This was 
 not the case in Chaucer's times. The poetical unit of thought 
 with him is yet the mediaeval allegory ; and sometimes he makes 
 this unit of thought the unit of presentation, — as at the opening 
 of the Prologue} But oftener his unit of expression is the allegory 
 in clause presentation. This is the explanation of many passages 
 that now seem to us so strained, — like 
 
 The bloode was fled for pure drede 
 Doun to hys herte, to make hym warme. 
 
 Cultivated readers of this day apprehend potentially in fancy all 
 that Chaucer predicates as if literal transactions, or calls by per- 
 sonifying names. As we saw in Chapter X., our poets have found 
 out how to make a single element of an allegory, or single word, 
 like " astray," from an allegorical sentence, carry the effect of the 
 whole. We saw also that midway between word and clause analo- 
 gies come fifth-class phrases, which Chaucer scarcely knows. The 
 fifth-class phrase consists of two points in which the imagination 
 sees two parallels as if produced indefinitely ; or rather discerns, 
 looking along the line of one of these potential parallels, the act 
 or quality belonging to the other. Naturally Chaucer, who always 
 projects his parallels, has little use for them shut up in two phrase- 
 terms, or ' points.' 
 
 When with Shelley and Keats and Landor the day of phrases 
 is fully come, the periodic oral structure now so nearly reached 
 
 1 In the age before Chaucer the allegory was both the unit of thought and of 
 presentation. Chaucer uses this unit of thought as the unit of presentation in the 
 Dethe of Blanche and Parlament of Foules, but exhibits, more especially in his 
 latest poems, some unconscious dissatisfaction with a unit so unwieldy. Hence 
 apparently his attempt to condense his allegoric thought to clause-presentation in 
 the first eleven lines of the Prologue, and other more successful examples in the 
 Knightes Tale. 
 
360 INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 in prose gives way. The loose epithetic or appositional construc- 
 tion found in Anglo-Saxon poets, and so frequent in Spenser, again 
 appears. Thus good and sufficient reasons why Chaucer comes 
 more nearly the modern norm of prose structure than any other 
 poet of reputation suggest themselves. He is full of poetic 
 feeling, discerned allegorically, and must give expression to it in 
 categoric wise, like the prosaist, in clause presentation. He fairly 
 may be said to talk his poetry, so anxious is he to avoid seeming 
 oracular or professional. Thus, though he cannot be simple and 
 oral in his prose, he cannot help being for the most part periodic 
 in his poetry. It is the instinct in speech that the mind, after 
 delivery of a judgment, rest for an infinitesimal point of time, and 
 the space between sentences on the printed page permits that 
 pause. It is like the blacksmith's setting his hammer upon the 
 anvil every few seconds. It is a very slight respite, but it is 
 enough. The sentence point is an organic thing, and marks the 
 fact that the writer's mind has let go its hold for this infinitesimal 
 space. The child that reads over periods, and stops for breath 
 without regard to sense a word or two beyond, has not yet learned 
 to rest, since, indeed, it has not yet learned to work, its mind. 
 If the modern book, written to economize time and energy in the 
 new-articulated style, were printed with semicolons for periods, 
 all readers would quickly tire, though they might not quite 
 know the reason. Realizing facts by determinative control of the 
 imaging powers is wearisome ; and other things equal, the oftener 
 the periods the oftener the relief. But when the imaging powers 
 are not controlled by prose obligation, they go on unfatigued 
 much longer. In states of imagination the mind sees one spec- 
 tacle, in panoramic fashion, give place to another without very 
 definite division. In prose, the course of phantasy is stopped and 
 started by the " Will," and even in whimsical exercise is more or 
 less under the determinative control of the ego. On the contrary, 
 in sleep the phantasy is left to unrestricted action, and on suffi- 
 cient occasion from without or from within may rise to imagina- 
 
INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 361 
 
 tion. 1 Poetry like Chaucer's has all the course of phantasy and 
 imagination mapped out; Shelley's is more dreamy, each mood 
 growing, as in dreams, out of the preceding. While Chaucer 
 sometimes makes a sentence with eleven predications, he will 
 offset the effect by many periods containing each but a single 
 verb. Shelley, on the other hand, writes phrases for twenty lines, 
 and but seldom closes a period with a single predicate. We are 
 therefore not surprised to find the later poet writing periods much 
 longer, numerically, than the earlier, and averaging fifty per cent 
 higher in predications. 
 
 It is, then, evident that the simple-sentence sense which appears 
 fairly developed in Chaucer's poetry, and is evinced about as 
 prominently in Shelley's prose, is not much at work in the poetry 
 of the phrase school. Shakespeare we find is in sentence propor- 
 tions, as in all other points, inimitable. He uses Chaucer's clause 
 presentation as well as Shelley's phrase forms, and at will wields 
 also, by anticipation, the tremendous word analogies of our day, 
 yet without varying his structure. He is the only universal master 
 of style, — seemingly because he never found the pen a greater 
 obstacle to perfect expression than the voice. As we have seen, 
 the period-stop, a respite in prose, if freely used in poetry of 
 Shelley's sort, would break the trains of association too rudely. 
 But Shakespeare so girds the loins of his mind as to need the 
 same serious virile manner both in prose and verse, and in Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream as well as Hamlet The language of the 
 emotions is simple and cast in the living forms of speech. Why 
 then should not poetic diction show more of the simple-sentence 
 structure? After phrases give place to the tremendous concen- 
 tration of the word analogy, the sentence should grow back 
 
 1 Proof that the states of phantasy in sleep may rise to imagination seems pres- 
 ent in the fact — established by the recent experiments of Professor Mosso — that 
 the temperature of the brain perceptibly rises through the occasion of noises made 
 near enough to a sleeper to be noticed, but not so loud as to awaken. The heat is 
 manifestly not the result of hearing, but of interpreting, the sounds. 
 
362 INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 towards its proportions in the Beowulf ^ as it apparently is doing. 
 A consistent repointing, according to modern principles, should 
 reduce the predication average in Browning, who is an eighteenth 
 century punctuator, at least a third. 
 
 The differences between prose and verse in sentence forms are 
 therefore not easily apparent or of immediate concern. The vital 
 distinction was long thought to consist in metre and rhyme, or the 
 absence of the one or both. It was pointed out in Chapter VII. 
 that the real basis of rhythm is the relation or distribution of the 
 marks of thought emphasis or of force. The more cultivated the 
 ear and the mind the less necessity of metronomic rhythm ; and 
 perfect prose may be more harmonious than mechanical poetry. 
 The untutored negro seems incapable of religious emotion save 
 through the occasion of certain swift recurrent sounds. The child 
 in the nursery likes only the rhymes and jingles of sharp, quick 
 rhythm. Little by little the mind, discovering the sublime har- 
 mony of dashing waves, or the swell and lull of storms, cares less 
 and less for stereotyped and clock-tick regularity. It is a sign of 
 the times that Homer and Dante are admittedly best translatable 
 into rhythmic prose. The imagination demands ceaseless variety 
 and tires soonest of repetition. The rhythm of art approaches 
 nearest the rhythm of nature when least calculated and inflexible. 
 
 Moreover, while prose has outwardly been growing more and 
 more like poetry in oral organic manner, and poetry like prose in 
 free and varied harmony, each has been approaching the other 
 also in interior aspects and character. The authors of our earliest 
 prose English, to wit, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, had much ado 
 to put down the mere fact of a battle or the sacking of some 
 town ; they could by no means achieve accompanying hints to the 
 reader of the anguish and heartache and misery that their annal- 
 istic facts implied. Even in the generation before Shakespeare 
 
 1 In the first episode of that poem, according to Skeat's principles of punctua- 
 tion, there are 518 periods and 1039 verbs. The second and the third division, from 
 the inferior manner and quality of the ' effects ' employed, are demonstrably of 
 different authorship. 
 
INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 363 
 
 there was yet no emotional prose. It is not until we reach the 
 beginnings of novel-making in the Arcadia and Euphues that we 
 come upon anything like what we may call a sympathetic prose. 
 This after the rise of the 'Scotch School' becomes a power in 
 the world of books, and reaches its acme of effect perhaps in 
 Hawthorne. The rise of the novel marks the beginning of what 
 we may call interpretative prose writing, — that is, such prose in 
 narrative or essay forms as gives not only facts or judgments, but 
 communicates to the reader at least the pitch of emotion properly 
 attendant upon the theme. Here begins a new epoch in the his- 
 tory of influence, the communication of sentiment along with fact, 
 so that even in science the savant will fail not to give his reader 
 along with ultimate truth the clue in each case to somewhat of 
 ultimate beauty as well. A hundred and fifty years ago even 
 poetry was composed of conceits, not feeling. To-day even prose 
 is made up in good degree of sentiment along with thought, with 
 few or no conceits at all. Conceits are properly the product of 
 what in rhetoric is called invention. The age is too busy to 
 regard what through ' invention ' might be said professionally on 
 a given theme, is concerned only with what must be said and 
 known, and is not above admitting to its sympathy everything 
 worth sympathizing with. Even the morning newspaper often 
 addresses the sentiments rather than the understanding, not only 
 in the editorial columns where it is partisan, and in the topics 
 pages where it is interpretative, but even in the telegraphic 
 paragraphs. We need but recall the Associated Press dispatches 
 concerning the death of Mrs. Harrison, or the cablegram de- 
 scriptive of the last moments of Tennyson, for illustration. 
 
 While prose has been becoming the vehicle of emotion to a 
 degree in excess of some poetry of earlier times, poetry has appro- 
 priated in the mode called Realism not a little of what was long 
 considered the domain of prose. Realism takes the world as men 
 find it, and even in annalistic details brings to light the ultimate 
 truth or beauty. Thus the essential differences between prose 
 and poetry lie clearly beyond the form, within the spirit, and can 
 
364 INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 scarcely be categorically declared. When the ego may give itself 
 wholly to delight, its literary diversion will be poetry. When it 
 must deal with facts in the prose way, there may be incidental 
 pleasure so far as consistent with the given obligation. It was 
 made clear in the last chapter that all literature of the present 
 time includes just as much of imagination as the theme or the 
 occasion will allow. Poetry is becoming an open book to all 
 readers for the same reason that prose is becoming interpretative 
 and emotional, — namely, because the facts of life and of the 
 universe are beginning to take on their spiritual significance. 
 Perhaps discipline has in us its perfect work when we restore the 
 unity of ultimate truth and beauty by finding a cardinal delight 
 in duty. There is no difference between the world of prose and 
 of poetry save in the attitude and cognition of the sentient soul. 
 
 It is often said that this is an age marked by the dearth of 
 poetry. To be sure, the century has produced only two poets of 
 the highest class, but the rediscovery and appropriation of Shake- 
 speare are equivalent to the addition of a third. It would seem 
 this were enough. The truth is that while there is less new poetry 
 abroad in books, there is vastly more old or common poetry 
 potentially within. We still have need of great poets, who shall 
 keep in advance of spiritual expansion, and reveal what after 
 generations are to appropriate and realize ; but there is no place 
 for professional imitators and copyers of earlier or later masters. 
 There are no duplicates in nature, nor in art of the highest kind. 
 We should look for no new poets until the spiritual culture of 
 the times has overtaken those we have already. The poets of 
 the past are still doing their work, directly or indirectly, with the 
 masses of men. The reader who enjoys Scott but not Shake- 
 speare, is father of the man who will read not only Shakespeare 
 but Tennyson. The poetic joys of our ancestors could be induced 
 only by fierce metaphors, violent personifications, or the marvels 
 of man and nature. But exceptional experiences wait upon excep- 
 tional conditions or occasions. The poetic delights of the Aryan 
 chief or tenth-century viking were but sporadic and adventitious. 
 
INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 365 
 
 We through our finer sensibilities may enjoy poetry every hour. 
 Moreover, the power to derive a poetic experience out of each 
 normal aspect of our environment has been developed in us 
 through the poetry or the effects of poetry in minds that have 
 influenced us ; for ideals come to us through books, not men. So, 
 instead of saying this is an age marked by the decay of sentiment 
 or poetry, let us call it the day of its triumph and enthronement. 
 There are few poets, perhaps, that we specifically admire; but 
 this may be because we are more fond of poetry than of poets. 
 It is the era of common minds and culture, of average men 
 and women ; and though these may not possess select libraries of 
 verse, they are quicker in sympathetic perception of the beautiful 
 than many technical lovers of poetry alone. They should be 
 drawn, and in the next generation will be drawn, to know the 
 fuller inspiration of the loftiest minds. But they have a better 
 experimental knowledge of poetry than their betters in culture of 
 a century ago. A century hence, statisticians tell us, the speakers 
 of English will number not less than a billion souls. It is surely 
 no accident that the greatest inspirer by forms of art that ever 
 lived, and the two most dynamic poets that ever wrote, cast their 
 works in the English tongue. 
 
 We have reached the end of our attempt to analyze the ele- 
 ments and the sources of power in English prose and poetry. We 
 end as we began, with the observation that only those books capa- 
 ble of being something to those who read them belong to literature. 
 The use of literature is not knowledge, or diversion, but influence. 
 Men resist such influences as they find unwelcome, or are not in 
 sympathy with by inward preparation. But what men are pre- 
 pared to receive, whether by grace or culture, they accept most 
 gladly. The man who cannot read is cut off from the world of 
 influence except so far his daily environment can furnish it ap- 
 proach. The end of reading is not to provide a cosmopolitan 
 accomplishment, but to bring the universe to each man's door. 
 Men do not exist in order that they may know Dante or Shake- 
 
366 INTER-RELATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 speare or Goethe ; but Dante and Shakespeare and Goethe have 
 lived and written that men might know them, and through them 
 all secular spiritual things. The world's literature at best is but 
 an ephemeral and paltering attempt to declare the truths of man 
 and nature, or interpret universal beauty, and was not called into 
 being for its own sake. A law library does not exist for itself at 
 all, or that men may master its contents, but in them learn how to 
 read as open secrets the rights and obligations of mankind in the 
 world without. Poets do not fulfil their mission in raising all men 
 to the accomplishment of knowing and admiring their work. 
 Only a small part of possible spiritual delight is revealed or 
 evinced in them. They are only models by whom all may learn 
 how to be their own interpreters, and see the open secrets at first 
 hand for themselves. Men cannot learn ultimate truths as indi- 
 viduals, without co-operation, but only through literature, which 
 focuses all minds on each. Every man his own seer and poet is 
 the end of culture and the consummation of society. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Page 5, par. 2, 1. 16. See De Quincey's Letters to a Young Man, No. III. 
 For a more complete discussion of the departments of literature, see the 
 last two chapters of this volume. 
 
 P. 5, par. 2, 1. 18. For a convenient reference, if the student need, let 
 him compare Macaulay, in Essay on Milton, after the introductory paragraphs,. 
 But as to the decline of poetry there affirmed, he should bear in mind that 
 the same conditions are discussed, later in this work, with a quite different 
 conclusion. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Page 6,1. 1 . But, strictly, nothing is or can be conveyed from one mind to 
 another. The speaker merely uses signs which the hearer interprets; and 
 the writer, visual representatives of such spoken signs. 
 
 P. 6, 1. 6. The intention to produce in the hearer's mind precisely the same 
 fact or judgment had in the mind of the speaker is a prose-purpose. This 
 requires, on the part of the speaker, definite and advised selection of signs to 
 designate accurately the things, as also the states or relations, in which they are 
 described or contemplated. It requires on the part of the reader, not only 
 the operation of conceiving pictorially or symbolically the objects named in 
 their specific plights or relations, but also the effort of restricting or correcting 
 the products represented according to the organic unity recognized in the 
 meaning as a whole. This may be illustrated in the ordinary use of the deaf- 
 mute alphabet. No two persons make the signs exactly alike, or with any 
 thing like absolute precision; but the observer, intent upon getting the com- 
 munication, refuses to regard individual peculiarities, and sifts out of recog- 
 nition everything but what he knows is part of the intended meaning. This 
 intended meaning he identifies in part from what he understands already, partly 
 from what he infers should be its organic or logical complement, or exactly as 
 he would make out the sense of a passage in Greek or any other foreign 
 tongue. The operation of the mind in conceiving or representing objects 
 
 367 
 
368 NOTES. 
 
 under such restrictions as are imposed by the author's language or his inferred 
 intention is called Phantasy, or " the imaging faculty." 
 
 P. 6, par. 4, 1. 4. That the mind has two distinct attitudes towards a speaker 
 or writer, according as he has a. prose or a poetic purpose, is shown by its 
 change from the one to the other as the speaker's purpose changes. If while 
 we are listening to a lecture or similar prose deliverance, and intent only 
 upon reproducing his meaning accurately and completely, the speaker without 
 notice proceeds to quote half-a-dozen lines of verse, we shall continue inter- 
 preting by phantasy as before. But when, after a line or two, we recognize 
 from the rhyme or some other feature of form that what we hear is no longer 
 prose, our minds instantly throw off the restraint of literalness. The lines 
 may be only prosaic after all; but we recognize the speaker's purpose to be 
 poetical, and change our attitude accordingly. But the mental mode called 
 Phantasy, when released from the obligation of time and space relations, or of 
 literalness for the sake of idealizing something, becomes Imagination. There 
 is, moreover, another attitude of the mind assumed towards a speaker whose 
 purpose is persuasive, hortatory, or imperative. This attitude involves some 
 degree of the mental activity called " Will," and may range from mere expec- 
 tancy or unconsenting curiosity to a genuine animus against the speaker or his 
 theme. Answering, therefore, to the three purposes which may actuate a 
 writer, and to the corresponding attitudes in the reader, three departments of 
 literature may be recognized. The literature of the Intellect, or prose proper, 
 proceeds from those who are leaders in thought or knowledge, whose knowl- 
 edge or wisdom the world at large wants to use. The literature of the Emo- 
 tions, or poetry, proceeds from those who are our leaders in select and refined 
 experiences. The literature of the Will proceeds from those who use their 
 personality to effect a change in the principles or acts of men. 
 
 P. 7, par. 2, 1. 2. In general, the intellect addresses the intellect, the emo- 
 tions, the emotions, and the will, the will. Declarative sentences, speaking 
 generally, are the language of the intellect and reason ; exclamatory, of the 
 emotions; and imperative, of the will. The interrogative sentence is substi- 
 tuted for either of the preceding when the speaker for any reason wishes to 
 consult his hearer. When the superior knowledge or rival judgment of the 
 hearer is inquired of, the use is intellectual. ' Questions of appeal ' are ad- 
 dressed to the emotions. When the purpose is to bring to a resolution, as in 
 alternatives like ' Do you consent, or do you refuse,' — or, indeed, in either 
 inquiry alone, it is the language of the will. The presence of the indicative 
 predicate accordingly argues the calm and deliberate operation of judgment, as 
 also the seriousness and sincerity of the speaker. The omission of it amounts 
 to notice that deliberation has been overcome by emotion, that reason gives 
 way for the moment to the feelings. ' There is a. fire,' ' murder is being com- 
 
NOTES. 369 
 
 mitted,' are propositions intended and adapted for abstract consideration by 
 the intellect or reason. But in ' Fire ! ' ' Murder ! ' the intention is to pre- 
 vent or waive deliberation, and produce immediate effect upon the feelings. 
 Hence, in general, the suppression of the predicate is interpreted by the 
 reader as indicating a purpose on the part of the author to deal with the 
 emotions more directly. 
 
 P. 8, par. 2, 1. 6. The mention, without predication, of an object that has 
 refined associations, prompts the fancy to revive the best experiences had from 
 or with that object. The presence of predications, obtruding annalistic facts, 
 or judgments, interferes with idealization, and tends to reduce imagination to 
 the mere imaging process. The predicate always conditions the imagination. 
 Thus mention of ' The Lark ' leaves the mind free to use any of its past expe- 
 riences at pleasure. But 'The Lark leaves its nest, and mounts aloft' forces 
 the mind to revive its delight along the indicated line of action only. More- 
 over, the chief value of epithets consists in the fact that they strike chance 
 chords of association, some one of which alone may render a whole poem 
 potent to the reader. The prose adjective is used to identify or describe an 
 . object for fact's sake; the poetic to bring experiential qualities before the 
 mind. Hence the use of the latter in prose tends to interfere with the literal 
 processes of phantasy. (Cf. pp. 39 and 352.) 
 
 P. 1 1 . It is to be noted that, even if the reader has never been in England, 
 he will yet at once, in recognition of the author's poetic purpose, on hearing 
 the challenge to fancy in Thames-like, summon his own best experiences of 
 river scenery, and idealize out of them what will be a Thames to him. It may, 
 indeed, be questioned whether, if his fancy is normally alert, he have not the 
 advantage of one who has seen that river at its best, except the latter have had 
 some specific delight therefrom. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The student should now search out, in 
 the accepted poets of the century, two or three good examples of suppressed 
 predication, each passage showing consecutive omission of verbs, if possible. 
 The extracts, with definite citation, should be written upon the blackboard for 
 comparison by the whole class. Each student should then go to the board, 
 and supply the omitted predicates in his selections. The teacher may now, 
 by having each set of original and rewritten extracts read and compared in 
 turn, secure a judgment from each pupil as to what passages still appear to be 
 poetical, and what pass over unmistakably to prose. He may then inquire 
 similarly as to what passages among the latter owe their poetic effect to form. 
 To increase the interest, he may take a. more formal expression of opinion, 
 summing up and correcting at the close. Such students as are slow at appro- 
 priating the effect of the first exercise should be given further individual tasks 
 in the same line as the examples on page 7. 
 
370 NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Page 12, par. 2. Similarly ' phantasy ' is a generic term, covering the various 
 processes of imaging to order. The cardinal difference between imagination 
 and phantasy, as before indicated, is in the aim and attitude of the ego. When 
 an artist reproduces the principal features of a landscape in a literal sketch, 
 the mental mode is phantasy; when he begins to paint out from this, recog- 
 nizing and making salient the elements of delight, a finished picture, the 
 process involves imagination. But if, unbending from the strain, he should 
 draw, idly combining incongruous or exaggerated elements for whimsical or 
 burlesque effect, a " cartoon " sketch, the process would again be phantasy, 
 and the product, ' fantastical.' All three are seen to be operations of the same 
 kind, but differing in the frame of the ego, i.e. in the degree of mental soberness 
 or intensity. Moreover, phantasy is readily and easily subject to summons, 
 while the exercise of imagination is dependent upon a number of physical and 
 psychical conditions which often cannot be induced, or sometimes, indeed, 
 prevented, by the conscious will. 
 
 Imagination, therefore, like wind, heat, light, electricity, etc., — each of 
 which is popularly conceived and talked of as a specific thing, — is the name 
 of a certain mode and degree of energy. Wind, for example, is air in motion; 
 but there must be some apprehensible degree of motion, or the word cannot 
 be used. The sources may be as various as the rotation of the earth or the 
 rise and fall of a lady's fan. In like manner, imagination may be enabled by 
 large or little happenings. Whenever the ego begins, though never so slightly, 
 to idealize, the mode has become imagination. Perhaps ' heat ' furnishes the 
 best of all the parallels, since in this also the lower forms of the mind's repre- 
 sentative energy are illustrated. Heat is properly a name for the relative 
 intensity of molecular motion. When the molecular activity in any substance 
 is above the temperature of the normal body, we call it ' warmth,' if below, 
 ' cold.' But there is heat, absolutely speaking, in any case, since molecular 
 motion, in some degree, is a necessary mode of matter. Similarly, when the 
 ego is conscious of enthusiasm in an act of idealization, there is said to be 
 ' warmth of fancy '; but when a theme fails to arouse the expected emotional 
 interest, or exalt the mood, we call the product ' cold.' But whether ' warm ' 
 or ' cold,' whether in the degree of ' imagination ' or ' phantasy,' there is 
 always representative energy in the mind. The production of images is never 
 suspended, even for a moment; but incessantly, in sleep or in waking, so long 
 as there is consciousness and life, the march of thought goes on. This law of 
 the mind is called Association of Ideas. See, if necessary, either Porter, 
 McCosh, James, or Encyclopaedia Britannica, upon this topic. 
 
NOTES. 371 
 
 For convenience, imagination is often spoken of as a 'faculty,' and will 
 perhaps be found so referred to in this work. But the practice of thinking 
 and speaking of imagination as a capacity, and not a state or mode of the 
 conscious principle, is most unfortunate. Nothing tends more to deepen and 
 perpetuate the mystery of literature than regarding the mind as dependent 
 upon specific faculties, like a workman upon his tools, to achieve its ends. 
 The ego in the various manifestations of ' intellect,' ' feelings,' and ' will ' is 
 one, and acts through all in a character or with characteristics which come 
 far short of being recognized in the name of any generalized activity. Further 
 characteristics of imagination are noticed in chaps. IV., XI., and XXX. 
 
 P. 13, 1. 2. ' Glade,' ' grove,' ' woods ' show progressive decrease in sugges- 
 tive quality. A suggestive word may be either out and out poetical, as ope, 
 oft, morn, eve, etc., or have also more or less prose currency. Hence we may 
 recognize three grades of suggestion, — poetic, semi-poetic, common. Some- 
 times a ' common ' word acquires suggestive quality on account of an unusual 
 relation to some other word, as in burst, shrieking, in the third and the sixth 
 of the lines from the Inn Album, below. 
 
 P. 13, par. 2, 1. 1 1 . A practical understanding of ' intension ' — or ' conno- 
 tation ' — and ' extension ' should be sought from the encyclopaedia or some 
 good manual of Logic, if the student has not pursued that study. Logical 
 intension, it will be seen, includes those qualities which phantasy brings before 
 the mind in the form of a concept. What there is over and above this in 
 such words as gladden represents the action of imagination. ' Residence ' and 
 ' home ' have essentially the same intellectual intension; but the latter includes 
 qualities which cannot, except with difficulty, be represented in thought, but 
 must be emotionally appreciated or discerned. Hence the difference between 
 phantasy and imagination, which we have been considering, really lies in the 
 fact that in the latter the feelings are in conscious exercise, but in the former 
 remain unaroused. The qualities in words which involve the sympathies or 
 ' feelings,' and thus raise the mind's representative activity to the degree known 
 as imagination, may, for convenience, be styled their emotional or poetical 
 intension. The reason why the emotional content of words is perhaps more 
 unerringly apprehended than their logical will be considered in Note to p. 33, 
 par. 2, 1. 12, in chap. VI. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The class may now confirm itself in the 
 distinction between prosaic and suggestive words by making comparisons 
 between poems made up prevailingly of the one and of the other sort. Let 
 each member be first directed to report the passage showing greatest number 
 of suggestive words that he can find, with their ratio to the whole number. 
 Of course Shakespeare, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, 
 
372 NOTES. 
 
 Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, Arnold, and the Rossettis will be quoted most 
 constantly. Let the various ratios, with definite citation, be placed upon the 
 blackboard for comparison with the authors later to be examined, as well as 
 with each other. When any student or the class at large is in doubt concern- 
 ing the suggestive quality of any word, the teacher should help draw off the 
 conceptual significance from the emotional residuum, if there is one. Let 
 each student also copy upon the board the two or three best lines of his pas- 
 sage, and proceed to write over each suggestive word a logical but unpoetical 
 equivalent, keeping to the number of syllables and accent in the former. This 
 will effectually illustrate how easily the element of imagination in parts of 
 sentences may be lost. Then, in another exercise, results should be exhibited 
 from Denham, Dryden, Pope, Johnson, and other poets conspicuous for the 
 absence of suggestive terms. The ratios should be put upon the board with 
 those obtained before, and also the best lines — or the worst — from each 
 selection. The residue of the hour may well be spent in general suggestions 
 as to how the bald, prosaic plainness here and there might, by suggestive 
 equivalents, have been relieved and brightened. Finally, the time of at least 
 one other exercise and preparation should be given to the question, when the 
 suggestive manner really began in English poetry; and a provisional exami- 
 nation from Chaucer through Milton will bring significant facts to light. 
 Above all, the teacher must not ignore or underestimate the element of time. 
 If his class have not already achieved a good degree of discernment in literary 
 matters, he must be patient, and multiply tasks accordingly. He will, indeed, 
 do well if he require the student in all cases to distinguish the three grades of 
 suggestive words in at least the two extracts given, according to the note on 
 p. 13, 1. z, above. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Page 15, par. 2, 1. 2. The student needs to realize at the outset that, in con- 
 sidering the quality and effect of force, the question is not whether the poet's 
 emphasis is in good taste, but what it is. What the poet feels, and intends 
 shall be felt by others, must be accepted as a fact. His delicacy and judgment 
 in this are proper subjects for criticism, but not while his meaning is being 
 determined. In art generally, it is well to consider what the artist might or 
 should have made of his subject, but not until it is definitely settled what he 
 actually has accomplished. 
 
 P. 15, par. 2, 1. 5. Not a few poets, consciously or unconsciously, attempt 
 to produce more effect from the theme upon the reader than they feel them- 
 selves. One of the commonest effects is turgidity. This consists mainly in 
 distension of sense and affectation of emphasis. Less sense but more osten- 
 tation, with greater obtrusiveness of force, constitute ' fustian ' or bombast. 
 
NOTES. 373 
 
 When the false emphasis becomes vociferous and extreme, rant is produced. 
 The principal quality in the following passages respectively, if not turgidity, 
 bombast, and rant, will be recognized as something very near it : — 
 
 " The North-east spends his rage ; and now, shut up 
 Within his iron caves, the effusive South 
 Warms the wide Air, and o'er the void of Heaven 
 Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent. 
 At first a dusky Wreath they seem to rise, 
 Scarce staining ether ; but by fast degrees, 
 In heaps on heaps, the doubling Vapor sails 
 Along the loaded sky, and, mingling deep, 
 Sits on the horizon round a settled gloom : 
 Not such as wintry Storms on Mortals shed, 
 Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind, 
 And full of every hope and every joy, 
 The wish of Nature. . . . Hush'd in short suspense, 
 The plumy People streak their wings with oil, 
 To throw the lucid moisture trickling off"; 
 And wait the approaching sign to strike, at once, 
 Into the general choir. Even Mountains, Vales, 
 And Forests seem, impatient, to demand 
 The promised sweetness. Man superior walks 
 Amid the glad Creation, musing praise, 
 And looking lively gratitude. At last, 
 The Clouds consign their treasures to the fields, 
 And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool 
 Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow, 
 In large effusion, o'er the freshen'd world." 
 
 Thomson: The Seasons, Spring. 
 
 " Night, sable goddess ! from her ebon throne, 
 In rayless majesty, now stretches forth 
 Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world. 
 Silence, how dead! and darkness how profound! 
 Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds; 
 Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse 
 Of life stood still, and nature made a pause; 
 An awful pause ! prophetic of her end. 
 And let her prophecy be soon fulfill'd: 
 Fate! drop the curtain; I can lose no more. 
 
 Silence and darkness ! solemn sisters ! twins 
 From ancient night, who nurse the tender thought 
 To reason, and on reason build resolve — 
 That column of true majesty in man — 
 Assist me: I will thank you in the grave; 
 The grave your kingdom: there this frame shall fall 
 A victim sacred to your dreary shrine. 
 But what are ye? " 
 
 Young: Night Thoughts, Night I. 
 
374 NOTES. 
 
 " O highest lamp of ever-living Jove, 
 Accursed day, infected with Tny griefs, 
 Hide now thy stained face in endless night, 
 And shut the windows of the lightsome heavens! 
 Let ugly Darkness with her rusty coach, 
 Engirt with tempests, wrapt in pitchy clouds, 
 Smother the earth with never-fading mists, 
 And let her horses from their nostrils breathe 
 Rebellious winds and dreadful thunder-claps, 
 That in this terror Tamburlaine may live, 
 And my pin'd soul, resolv'd in liquid air, 
 May still excruciate his tormented thoughts ! 
 Then let the stony dart of senseless cold 
 Pierce through the centre of my wither'd heart, 
 And make a passage for my loathed life ! " 
 
 Marlowe: /. Tamburlaine, V. ii. 
 
 P. 16, par. I. 1. 4. The student should also carefully distinguish force from 
 heaviness. When a composition that should engage the imagination or the 
 spontaneous energy of the mind requires to be read by determinative effort, 
 we call it 'heavy.' (Cf. p. 295.) When without such effort of the will it 
 arouses energetic emotion in the reader, we acknowledge the presence of 
 force. Heaviness is not due to overmuch natural emphasis, but too little. 
 The first extract above from Cowper is ' heavier ' than the one from Brown- 
 ing, as also the passage from Blackmore on p. 46, than the extract follow- 
 ing it from Shakespeare. See the discussion in connection with the last 
 two quotations, and the Notes. 
 
 P. 17, par. 1,11.9-16. The emphasis of thought, ignoring structural emphasis, 
 may fall upon the most unimportant word grammatically of the whole sentence, 
 as in ' This is from the subject,' ' Whiston's is the translation.' Sometimes 
 thought-emphasis will elevate a whole clause to significant prominence, as 
 Shakespeare's hint as to the occasion of Lady Macbeth's somnambulism, " Since 
 his majesty went into the field" (V. i. 3). Finally, as all stress is relative, 
 the emphasis of force may disregard, upon occasion, both the structural and 
 the thought-emphasis. Moreover, in force-emphasis different words may 
 receive different degrees of the supreme stress, as but and again in the last 
 sentence but one from Carlyle. For further treatment of all these points, 
 see prose chapter on Force. 
 
 P. 18, par 2, 1. 5. Force is, therefore, a manifestation of the ego in high 
 and sustained energy of the same kind as is aroused for the moment by single 
 suggestive words. See chapters XL and XXX. 
 
 P. 19, 11. 2, 3. Supreme suffering does not in every case take hold of us, 
 but only such as is sympathetically, not intellectually, discerned. We read 
 daily of catastrophes by sea and land perhaps with only intellectual interest 
 
NOTES. 375 
 
 or attention, except we find the name of some friend or acquaintance in the 
 list of victims. Hence the plan of the poet is always to make us first feel 
 towards a Lear or a Sordello as if he were our own, and then to introduce 
 his experiences to imagination. 
 
 P. 19, par. 2. 1. 6. Some readers dislike what they consider the overfervor 
 of authors like Browning and Carlyle. They think these writers parade too 
 much their own feelings, and really feel much less than they pretend. Of 
 course this is largely a matter of taste, as of sympathy with the author and 
 his purpose, but it is largely also a matter of discernment. There is no way 
 of imparting to those who cannot distinguish force from rant or bombast the 
 ability to perceive it. The unedified should not too heedlessly declare their 
 unbelief in the sincerity of men like those just named, even if sometimes their 
 fervor seems unduly demonstrative. Moreover, it is observed that, on closer 
 approach to such minds, dislike and prejudice generally give way. The 
 student should herein take warning not to judge an emotion intellectually. 
 Let him also remember that there are supreme experiences in human life, 
 that none of us can escape his share, and that it is of the essence of art to 
 make us swift of sympathy with our fellows in them. While as Anglo-Saxons 
 we dislike on principle to see strong feeling too consciously exhibited, we 
 none the less recognize the sacredness of deep emotion. 
 
 P. 20. To facilitate thorough study of the Count Gismond as a whole, the 
 poem is here repeated, and a diagram analysis of the force, line by line 
 throughout, subjoined : — 
 
 COUNT GISMOND. 
 1. iv. 
 
 Christ God who savest man, save most They, too, so beauteous ! Each a queen 
 Of men Count Gismond who saved me ! By virtue of her brow and breast ; 
 
 Count Gauthier, when he chose his post, Not needing to be crowned, I mean, 
 Chose time and place and company As I do. E'en when I was dressed, 
 
 To suit it; when he struck at length Had either of them spoke, instead 
 
 My honor, 't was with all his strength. Of glancing sideways with still head! 
 
 And doubtlessly ere he could draw But no: they let me laugh, and sing 
 All points to one, he must have schemed ! My birthday song quite through, adjust 
 
 That miserable morning saw The last rose in my garland, fling 
 Few half so happy as I seemed, A last look on the mirror, trust 
 
 While being dressed in queen's array My arms to each an arm of theirs, 
 
 To give our tourney prize away. And so descend the castle-stairs — 
 
 I thought they loved me, did me grace And come out on the morning-troop 
 To please themselves; 't was all their deed; Of merry friends who kissed my cheek, 
 
 God makes, or fair or foul, our face; And called me queen, and made me stoop 
 If showing mine so called to bleed Under the canopy— (a streak 
 
 My cousins' hearts, they should have dropped That pierced it, of the outside sun, 
 
 A word, and straight the play had stopped. Powdered with gold its gloom's soft dun) - 
 
376 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 And they could let me take my state 
 And foolish throne amid applause 
 
 Of all come there to celebrate 
 My queen's-day — Oh I think the cause 
 
 Of much was, they forgot no crowd 
 
 Makes up for parents in their shroud! 
 
 However that be, all eyes were bent 
 
 Upon me, when my cousins cast 
 Theirs down; 't was time I should present 
 
 The victor's crown, but . . . there, 't will last 
 No long time ... the old mist again 
 Blinds me as then it did. How vain ! 
 
 See! Gismond's at the gate, in talk 
 With his two boys : I can proceed. 
 
 Well, at that moment, who should stalk 
 Forth boldly — to my face, indeed — 
 
 But Gauthier, and he thundered, " Stay! '* 
 
 And all stayed. " Bring no crowns, I say! 
 
 " Bring torches! Wind the penance-sheet 
 About her! Let her shun the chaste, 
 
 Or lay herself before their feet! 
 Shall she whose body I embraced 
 
 A night long, queen it in the day? 
 
 For honor's sake no crowns, I say! " 
 
 I? What I answered? As I live, 
 I never fancied such a thing 
 
 As answer possible to give. 
 
 What says the body when they spring 
 
 Some monstrous torture-engine's whole 
 
 Strength on it? No more says the soul. 
 
 Till out strode Gismond; then I knew 
 That I was saved. I never met 
 
 His face before, but, at first view, 
 I felt quite sure that God had set 
 
 Himself to Satan; who would spend 
 
 A minute's mistrust on the end? 
 
 He strode to Gauthier, in his throat 
 Gave him the lie, then struck his mouth 
 
 With one back-handed blow that wrote 
 
 In blood men's verdict there. North, South, 
 
 East, West, I looked. The He was dead, 
 
 And damned, and truth stood up instead. 
 
 This glads me most, that I enjoyed 
 The heart of the joy, with my content 
 
 In watching Gismond unalloyed 
 
 By any doubt of the event: 
 God took that on him — I was bid 
 Watch Gismond for my part: I did. 
 
 Did I not watch him while he let 
 His armorer just brace his greaves, 
 
 Rivet his nauberk, on the fret 
 The while! His foot . . . my memory leaves 
 
 No least stamp out, nor how anon 
 
 He pulled his ringing gauntlets on. 
 
 And e'en before the trumpet's sound 
 Was finished, prone lay the false knight. 
 
 Prone as his lie, upon the ground: 
 Gismond flew at him, used no sleight 
 
 O' the sword, but open-breasted drove, 
 
 Cleaving till out the truth he clove. 
 
 Which done, he dragged him to my feet 
 And said, " Here die, but end thy breath 
 
 In full confession, lest thou fleet 
 From my first^ to God's second death ! 
 
 Say, hast thou lied?" And, " I have lied 
 
 To God and her," he said, and died. 
 
 Then Gismond, kneeling to me, asked 
 — What safe my heart holds, though no word 
 
 Could I repeat now, if I tasked 
 My powers forever, to a third 
 
 Dear even as you are. Pass the rest 
 
 Until I sank upon his breast. 
 
 Over my head his arm he flung 
 
 Against the world; and scarce I felt 
 
 His sword (that dripped by me and swung) 
 A little shifted in its belt: 
 
 For he began to say the while 
 
 How South our home lay many a mile. 
 
 So 'mid the shouting multitude 
 
 We two walked forth to never more 
 
 Return. My cousins have pursued 
 Their life, untroubled as before 
 
 I vexed them. Gauthier's dwelling-place 
 
 God lighten! May his soul find grace! 
 
 Our elder boy has got the clear 
 
 Great brow ; though when his brother's black 
 Full eye shows scorn, it . . . Gismond here? 
 
 And have you brought my tercel back? 
 I just was telling Adela 
 How many birds it struck since May. 
 
NOTES. 
 
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 3 
 
 4 
 
 b 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 & 
 
 a 
 
 l 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 s 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 It will be noted that when both lines drop or rise together, the author 
 shifts from Saxon to Latin words, or vice versa. The force of the poem 
 will best be shown, finally, by reducing the two broken lines here given to 
 a single curve. Note what an ideal scheme of force it is. It could scarcely 
 have been improved if the author had drafted it for his poem in advance. 
 Yet Browning was almost certainly unaware, in this respect, of what he 
 did. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — In case of immature students, it may 
 be necessary to adapt work from the prose-treatment of this topic. If the 
 class can begin at once, without such study, it will be well, on giving out the 
 present chapter for preparation, to dictate half-a-dozen common sentences — 
 care being taken to exclude thought-emphasis — for the students to copy and 
 talce away. The pupil should be directed to determine and mark the place of 
 every grammatical emphasis, and devise half-a-dozen like sentences of his 
 own, to match in place of emphasis each of those given. When the class 
 
378 NOTES. 
 
 has been quizzed upon the chapter, and questions have been answered, — so 
 far as possible by the class itself, — let each student write upon the board the 
 sentences he has prepared, for criticism and revision by the rest. When the 
 class is sent away to make its first independent study of force in some simple 
 poem — like Browning's The Patriot or Last Ride Together — dictate to be 
 first studied, as before, half-a-dozen sentences, showing various emphases of 
 thought. If the class is large, it will be well to assign, besides general study 
 of the whole, particular stanzas to particular members for more concentrated 
 study. 
 
 When the class again assembles, call for a diagram of each stanza, to be 
 put side by side upon the board, and set the other students having the same 
 at amending and revising, but indicating all differing interpretations under the 
 force-marks for the several lines. Then go over the stanzas with the whole 
 class, making each student declare, so far as advised and confident, what the 
 force of each expression is to him, and take a census of opinions. This will 
 furnish a good object-lesson in the method by which questions of this kind can 
 alone be settled, — by the general spiritual sense of the world at large. Point 
 out to the class that in this way only has the meaning of the Bible, of Shake- 
 speare, as of every masterpiece in art and music, been established; and that, 
 when a once-accepted interpretation is amended, the change is made because 
 the common spiritual sense can no longer reconcile itself to such a .view. So 
 much will consume the time of one exercise; and if the last idea is fully 
 grasped, it will be enough. The student, with some sense of his place and 
 share in the great ecumenical council of thought and culture, will go back to 
 the poem with a more earnest spirit and larger mind; and on the second day 
 of trial it shall go hard if the teacher do not find an essentially unanimous 
 understanding of the poem. 
 
 The teacher, even if wholly inexpert in the experimental method, will hardly 
 need further suggestions on this topic ; the needs of the class will furnish them. 
 It will be well, before taking up another poem more intricate than The Patriot, 
 to begin serious study of the Count Gismond with the diagram, three or four 
 stanzas at a time. The interpretation there given should be carefully consid- 
 ered, and, if departed from at any point by the united sense of class and 
 teacher, should be traced to the overmuch or the insufficient sympathy that 
 seems to have produced it. Let the class particularly consider the thirteenth 
 stanza, in which the present writer is inconsistent with himself, having — from 
 doubt whether the student will, at first, enter fully into the spirit of the passage 
 — made the force point 30 in the stanza diagram, but, in better agreement 
 with his own feeling, raised it, in the second, to 32. When the analysis of a 
 poem is complete, each member of the class should work the word-line and 
 the force-line into a single curve, determined at each point by dividing by 
 
NOTES. 379 
 
 whole number of words the number emphasized. Each tangible process of 
 this kind helps make a very subtle quality more determinate to the average 
 mind. To ensure full mastery, the study of this topic should be continued 
 after the main work of the class has been advanced to chapter V. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Page 24, 1. 9. Here, as before, is evinced the same eager, restless energy 
 of the mind. From signs of merriment the imagination passes to that expe- 
 rience in advance, or rather takes the sign of its presence in others as a 
 sufficient occasion to produce it subjectively in itself. In like manner, the 
 sounds of grief produce a sympathetic sorrow in the mind, in advance of knowl- 
 edge concerning it. In each of these cases the ego, from recognizing the 
 sounds through their origin, is conscious of what it does. But in tone colors 
 proper, though the imagination may be almost equally aroused, the mind, 
 unless trained to observation, is in general only vaguely aware of such activity, 
 or of what calls it forth. 
 
 P. 24, par. 2, 1. 22. For the relation between openness and obstruction in 
 vowel as in consonant utterance, see Whitney's Life and Growth of Language, 
 chap. IV., and especially p. 62. For illustrations of the position of the vocal 
 organs, and changes in tension of the vocal chords, perhaps Max Miiller's 
 Lectures on the Science of Language, Second Series, Lecture III., will be most 
 available; or, cf. Browne and Behnke's Voice, Song, and Speech (a manual 
 for singers and speakers, pub. G. P. Putnam's Sons). 
 
 P. 25, Note. If that monumental work is available, the student may well 
 consult Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone (translated by Ellis, pub. Longmans, 
 Green & Co.), p. 11 ff. 
 
 P. 25, 1. 8. Cf. for several evident effects of this kind, Othello's speech to 
 the senate (I. iii.), and notably 11. 158-161. 
 
 P. 26. In the first example the tones do not much suggest the speaker's 
 feelings, but are corroborative, almost imitative, of that which is described. In 
 the second we catch the spirit at a glance, and before aware begin to read in 
 pure tones. The same in still greater degree is true of the last quotation; 
 while in the third, the hate and spite are so extreme that we can almost hear 
 the hisses in which Guido speaks. 
 
 P. 28, par. 2, 1. 2. It seems- to be taken for granted now-a-days that any- 
 body can enact the part of the ghost in Hamlet. There is no evidence that 
 Shakespeare thought so. Assuredly, to produce the effect he seems to have 
 intended, there is room for as much study and preparation as many actors give 
 themselves before attempting the title-character in that play. 
 
380 NOTES. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The object of this chapter, as of the two 
 preceding, is to bring to conscious, reflective understanding what is appre- 
 hended intuitively and unconsciously by the critical genius, and to a greater 
 or less extent by all of us. How the critic takes account of tone quality we 
 may illustrate from an experience often had, — for we are all geniuses by gift 
 or acquired facility in some certain thing or things. Looking for a title in an 
 index, glancing rapidly down the columns, we are suddenly conscious it is 
 there, though we do not see it, have not yet found it. We then more delib- 
 erately go over the names in that column or part of the column till we locate 
 the name we wish. The explanation is, the mind did see, or take cognizance 
 of the title, but in a perception so incomplete, or wanting in time-and-space 
 definiteness, as to be of none effect. We wish in this chapter to appreciate 
 reflectively one of the first things the critic catches at a glance as he reads' a 
 poem. It would, in fact, do him sometimes no harm, in the matter of tone 
 colors as well as of other elements of poetic power, to know more consciously 
 what he does, and why he does it. 
 
 The effect of the study in this chapter should enable each student to rec- 
 ognize the general spirit of a poem and the quality of tone in which it should 
 be rendered, without reading any of it aloud. More specific associations of 
 tone should suggest themselves in more careful unoral reading. The teacher 
 will hardly need definite hints how, with a given class, to reach these ends. 
 It will be necessary, in case of some students, to begin at the bottom and 
 compute the tones of one kind and of another before they can be made to 
 realize the range. With all, work of this kind on some one point or other 
 will be necessary. I know a teacher who accomplished good results with 
 quite young pupils, by requiring them to underscore all tone letters or sylla- 
 bles in the poems studied. With some classes it will be possible to begin at 
 once with differences between organic and imitative tone effects, and work 
 thence into the specific qualities of the former without very minute analysis. 
 The teacher will do best to follow, as teachers will, the course his own mind 
 took in working out the subject. Let him test occasionally the progress of 
 his class, by having all open, for instance, almost anywhere in Shakespeare's 
 Coriolanus, and after a moment's glance up and down a page, shut the book, 
 and write their impressions of the tone colors. Though it is not quickness 
 cf perception which is sought, an occasional exercise of this kind will tend to 
 keep the work from being too deliberate and mechanical. Finally, the teacher 
 should give some time to the question when tone colorings become an integral 
 part of the effect in English poetry. 
 
NOTES. 381 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Page 31, par. 2, 1. 7. Mother tongue, i.e. the language we learn from parents 
 and associates in childhood, apart from books, and at first pre-eminently from 
 the mother. The phrase is employed in this significance throughout the 
 volume. 
 
 P- 33» P ar - 2 , 1- I2 - We may here consider a further difference between 
 phantasy and imagination : phantasy preferably shows us a generalized, abbre- 
 viated 'concept,' but imagination, a complete individual image. The more 
 familiar objects become or the more frequently they are used in common think- 
 ing, the less often they will engage the imagination. Hence the philosopher, 
 thoroughly confirmed in the habit of generalization, will use only concepts in 
 his thinking. But, in general, the most prosaic of men think certain objects, 
 not by concepts, but reconstructed or ' remembered ' images of individuals. 
 So perhaps 'father,' 'mother,' 'brother,' 'sister,' 'hearthstone,' 'fireside' are 
 apprehended in imagination instead of phantasy with all of us. In case of 
 the poet, the same is perhaps true of most words. He thinks, not by con- 
 cepts, but fully imaged individuals, each being taken as the representative 
 of a class. Mention of the word ' chimney,' for example, calls up a picture of 
 the object of that name he saw first or most frequently as a boy, or the one 
 on his present home. It would seem that we all do this prevailingly in child- 
 hood, when we are near the first touch of things; and from investigation, I 
 am led to believe the habit by no means uncommon with mature minds. We 
 may begin early to generalize, yet do not much use the products of generaliza- 
 tion until considerably later. 
 
 P- 33> P ar - 2, 1. 15. In illustration it is only necessary to recall the words 
 of Mr. Darwin concerning his lost enjoyment of poetry and fiction. 
 
 P. 34, 1. 24. A poetic word is one that by natural selection has been set 
 aside for use when the emotions are in ascendency; that is, by association 
 certain words come to have a strong emotional element of meaning, and are 
 thus eschewed when the emotion they arouse is incongruous or not wanted. 
 The man who uses them in a manner not in harmony with the preoccupation 
 of the hearer's mind provokes ridicule. Many of these words were, not long 
 since, prosaic, or even common, like kine, hearth, troth. When the emotional 
 intension of a word has been fairly recognized, it will often materially increase 
 in poetic potency. Thus it has chanced that many forms and expressions in 
 the Bible or Prayer Book, once even trite, are acquiring great power with the 
 emotions. " Dust to dust " and " Till death do part," from their solemn asso- 
 ciations, have gotten far beyond the ordinary phrases of poetry. There seems 
 little question it is this associational quality that Wordsworth somewhat vaguely 
 had in mind as essential in words proper for poetic use. 
 
382 NOTES. 
 
 With reference to the poetic quality of words as such we may recognize 
 four general clauses. There are of course many notions that never acquire 
 any noteworthy emotional intension, as clod, brick, pasteboard, pencil; and 
 the names of all such, as prose-words merely, we assign to the first class. Of 
 words that do acquire an emotional intension there are evidently two classes, 
 the one made up of the names of things and qualities that have occasioned 
 experiences directly through the sense-perceptions, as burn, clang, harsh, 
 thrill, which will constitute the second class ; the other, including the 
 names of objects experiential by association only, as griffin, fasces, joust, 
 knight — or, to those who have not seen them, castle, armor, spear, etc. — will 
 make up the third class. A further class is necessary to include words expe- 
 riential because used in some transferred or ' figurative ' significance. We may 
 also set up a sub-class b to class iii., to distinguish words like ope, oft, morn, 
 associational only by form, from those which, composing sub-class a, are 
 associational from inner meaning. 
 
 P. 35, par. 2, 1. 3. It is, for example, well established that ' candy ' comes 
 from the Sanskrit khand, ' break,' through the Arabic. Some, apparently, of 
 those who inveigh against the " un-Saxon '' part of our vocabulary have failed 
 to observe that no inconsiderable number of the commonest words in their 
 mother tongue — also many of these monosyllabic — are not even European; 
 that tea and probably silk, for instance, are Chinese ; camel, alphabet, jack, sack 
 are from the Hebrew; sofa, syrup, mask, cotton, cipher, from Arabic; shawl, 
 peach, sash, lilac, turkey, chess are Persian ; barge, gypsy, and paper, perhaps 
 Egyptian; and that the wholly illiterate use dubious, iota, system, relation, 
 purple, purpose, latitude, omnibus, ' botheration,' ' confab,' etc., as well as the 
 etymologists. It is the words which stand for things their eyes have not seen, 
 or hands handled, that most perplex those ignorant of books. 
 
 P- 37> !■ 5- Cf. Caedmon's 
 
 " hraefen g61 
 dfiawigfethere ofer driht-neum, 
 won wselccasega. " 
 
 Exodus, 162-164. 
 
 P. 38, par. 2. The student may be glad of a further hint or two in the 
 superior passages. Note how in Hamlet's first soliloquy our feelings are 
 turned against the queen and Claudius by the associations called up. On the 
 other hand, observe how, by the associations of the language used in the queen's 
 account of it, we are prevented from feeling the death of Ophelia. Yet, a 
 little earlier, keeping Hamlet from our sight and mind, Shakespeare melts us 
 with pity for the same Ophelia — until he has adequately justified Leontes in 
 his revenge — largely through associations in the words she insanely utters. 
 Observe how Leontes, in scene ii. of Winter's Tale, secures from us some 
 
NOTES. ■ 383 
 
 helpful justification by applying ' paddling palms ' to what was here an inno- 
 cent, and in Shakespeare's day a permitted, freedom. Find similar points in 
 the same situation, not omitting the effect of Mamillius's ' smutched nose,' used 
 most ingeniously, for the moment, against his mother. Study also the associa- 
 tions in the curses of King Lear, and note how Othello is assisted in our 
 sympathy by the terms he uses. But the array is endless. 
 
 P. 39, par. I, ad fin. If the student reads Italian, let him contrast the 
 effects of association in the Inferno and the Purgatorio, or Paradiso, of Dante. 
 Of course, only native readers can know the experiential intension of Italian 
 words. Yet those having but a dictionary acquaintance with the language 
 will find the difference very marked. In like manner let the reader attempt a 
 contrast of the Eclogues or the Georgics with the Aineid, or, in general, of the 
 Iliad with the Odyssey. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that, after we become expert readers, many excel- 
 lent associations are derived at second hand from books. Few of us appre- 
 ciate " temple-haunting " or " battlements " from actual sight of a temple or a 
 castle. Yet what well-appointed mind can fail of the poetry in a passage like 
 this from Tennyson's Passing of Arthur ? 
 
 " So all day long the noise of battle roll'd 
 Among the mountains by the wintry sea; 
 Until King Arthur's table, man by man, 
 Had fall'n in Lyonnesse about their lord, 
 King Arthur: then, befause his wound was deep, 
 The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, 
 And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, 
 A broken chancel with a broken cross, 
 That stood on a dark strait of barren land." 
 
 Here the mind pieces out, bit by bit, from what it has gathered up in legends 
 and pictures since early childhood, substantially the interpretative experiences 
 it needs. If the described event has, in integral parts, actually passed before 
 the eye, it will be more vividly apprehended, though inferior in intrinsic 
 interest, as this second passage from the Idyls will show : — 
 
 " But nothing in the sounding hall I saw, 
 No bench nor table, painting on the wall, 
 Or shield of knight; only the rounded moon 
 Thro' the tall oriel on the rolling sea." 
 
 P. 40, 1. 12. Of course the potency in ' deep ' is due to various experiences 
 of fright had in escapes from falling, or exposures on shipboard or in un- 
 protected places, — long since specifically lost from memory. Book-words 
 cannot command associations like these, registered in our very nerves. 
 
384 NOTES. 
 
 P. 40, 11. 13, 14. The effect is still worse when objects that have well- 
 marked and consecrated associations are brought in contact with others wholly 
 incongruous. Cf. the following from George Eliot's Agatha : — 
 
 " One long summer's day 
 An angel entered at the rose-hung gate, 
 With skirts pale blue, a brow to quench the pearl, 
 Hair soft and blonde as infant's, plenteous 
 As hers who made the wavy lengths once speak 
 The grateful worship of a rescued soul." 
 
 The Endymion of Keats abounds in faults of this sort, chiefly through mingling 
 the human and superhuman too carelessly. Much of the effect in comic or 
 burlesque poetry is produced, not dissimilarly to the above, by bringing into 
 conjunction the lofty and the common. There is no mark of a great poet so 
 unequivocal as instinctive respect for the unities of association. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The object of this chapter is primarily 
 to differentiate the 'suggestive words' of chap. III. into those experiential 
 directly through the senses and conscious memory, and those experiential by 
 association. Chapter IX. is necessary to complete the treatment; and if the 
 class comes to the work with some knowledge of the figures, the full analysis 
 outlined in note to p. 34, 1. 24, may be carried out. In case of mature students 
 the last-named chapter may be read "here in advance. But experience will 
 probably show that it is better to leave, with any grade of pupils, all unliteral 
 words, on recognition, out of account until the governing principle is reached 
 in course. The first work should then be the careful analysis of some short 
 poem, as Tennyson's Dying Swan, or some passage like the ' Hymn to Pan ' 
 from the Endymion. Let the per cent of words experiential directly and 
 experiential through association be exhibited by curves, as in Force. If time 
 permit, at least three exercises should be devoted to simplest analysis of the 
 above kind. Then the teacher, selecting further poems, should so change the 
 exercise as to enable the student to identify so far as possible the associations 
 that unconsciously affect him, or turn the current of his emotion into strange 
 and unexpected channels. Many of these in other departments we have 
 learned to trace. For example, an orchestra in the rendition of a symphony 
 starts a choral strain. Immediately we are back in fancy to the church of 
 our childhood, where the only instruments accompanying the choir were bass- 
 viol and violins. Though it is night and winter and the concert-hall ill- 
 lighted, it seems a summer afternoon and a room full of sunlight, — all, as we 
 realize, because certain tones of the orchestra bring back not only the choir, 
 but the sunshine and the summer in the midst of which the music was first 
 
NOTES. 385 
 
 heard. In a strange city we suddenly begin to feel ourselves at home, either 
 because we have seen some building of the same material or proportions as 
 one familiar to us at home, or because we have observed a face or two strik- 
 ingly resembling those of folk we know. All this we easily think out and 
 understand in principle: the part of an experience revived tends to bring 
 back that experience as a whole. Knowing how such experiences arise greatly 
 increases their effect in us. The more the mind can be drawn into a given 
 emotion, the more absorbing that emotion will become. Understanding how 
 the imagination has been aroused tends to introduce another occasion of 
 that activity; and it will be remembered that imagination needs only occa- 
 sions, not causes. Hence the great profit if the student can be helped to 
 revive the experiences that make association. This may be done by eliciting 
 from each member of the class the scenes or objects or recollections the asso- 
 ciational words bring back. It will be found that also many of the common 
 prose words are attached to some exceptional experience. Discuss and com- 
 pare differences of individual impressions and effects. 
 
 There is no end of work that may be done in literature along lines suggested 
 in this chapter. After some time has been spent on the second point above, 
 the class should consider the use and effect of associations in other than 
 purely incidental forms. Let it determine what those in the earlier lines of 
 Locksley Hall have to do with the poem as a whole. Set the students to study 
 out what manner of man Othello is or Hamlet from the associations of the 
 language in the first long paragraph uttered by each in the respective plays. 
 Finally, whether the time is longer or shorter, there should be at least two 
 exercises devoted to investigation of unadvised and mixed associations in infe- 
 rior poets. The question also of the rise of art in the use of associational 
 terms, if of necessity postponed, should be by no means forgotten. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Page 42, Note I. See White's Schmidt's Rhythmic and Metric, pp. 19,20, 
 80-82. The latest important word on the other side of the question known to 
 me at this writing is Kawczynski's Essai comparatif sur Vorigine et I'histoire 
 des rhythmes, the main positions of which are cited by a reviewer in The Amer- 
 ican Journal of Philology, vol. XL, pp. 358-371. 
 
 P. 44, Note. The marks of long quantity in Dante's lines designate metric 
 stress when conjoined with the grammatical or thought stress of a clause. The 
 numbered syllables show the organic rhythmic stress allied with both. The 
 following is an approximate rendering of the passage in the same rhythm : — 
 
386 NOTES. 
 
 6 10 
 
 Nessus | had reached | not yet | that oth|er side, | 
 
 6 10 
 
 When we I had bent | our steps | within | a wood 
 
 6 . 10 
 
 That by | no sin|gle path | was marked | at all. | 
 
 4 . 8 10 
 
 Not leaves | of green, | but of | a. dusk|y col|or; 
 
 4 _ „ 8 „ 10 
 
 Not branches smooth, | but intertwined | and knot|ty; 
 
 4 _. 8 . 10 
 
 , Not ap|ple trees | were there, | but thorns | with pois|on. 
 
 6 10 
 
 No for|ests thick | as these | nor yet I so tan|gled 
 Have those | fierce sav|age beasts | that hold | in hate | 
 
 6 10 
 
 Tilled lands | between | Ceci|na and | Corne|to. 
 
 6 10 
 
 Here have | the fil|thy Har|pies made | their nests, | 
 
 o 10 
 
 Who drove | forth from | the Stroph|ades | the Tro|jans 
 
 4 _ 8 10 
 
 With sad | prediction of | approaching dam|age. 
 
 Note the interchange in the original of the 4. 8. 10 and the 6. 10 scheme of 
 rhythm and its effect upon the ear. The harmony of the lines is perfect even 
 to one knowing nothing more than the sounds of Dante's vowels. It is little 
 wonder that Gabriel Harvey's system of meters did not prevail when England 
 had already such form as this. No scheme that disregards organic emphasis 
 can succeed with a Teutonic people. All Northern blank verse agrees with 
 Dante's structure. 
 
 Evolution is often absurdly regarded from the objective standpoint only. 
 It would be of a piece with some scientific thinking to say that, since rhyme 
 is only complete alliteration, it has been evolved from the forms of it found in 
 Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse poetry. The fact is, evolution goes on until the 
 type in the mind is realized. The Northern alliteration was only * partial 
 satisfaction of this type or ideal of harmony, as likewise the Southern stereo- 
 typed recurrence of stress had in itself proved to be nothing better. Mean- 
 while the type, growing constantly more lofty and exacting, perhaps prompts 
 to yet more refined and complete approximation. Among noteworthy efforts 
 to realize a more perfect rhythm are to be reckoned the new measures of 
 Runeberg and Malmstrom. How types change will be illustrated in the course 
 of chapter XI. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 387 
 
 P. 45, par. 2, 1. 22. The student will note that the Prologue embodies 
 Dante's rhythm. The metric scheme for the first eleven lines is as follows : — 
 
 (I) 
 
 — 
 
 w 
 
 w 
 
 4 
 
 w 
 
 w 
 
 (2) 
 
 \j 
 
 — 
 
 w 
 
 - 
 
 w 
 
 6 
 
 (3) 
 
 \j 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 _ 
 
 w 
 
 6 
 
 (4) 
 
 w 
 
 — 
 
 w 
 
 _ 
 
 w 
 
 6 
 
 (5) 
 
 w 
 
 
 w 
 
 w 
 
 s 
 
 w 
 
 (6) 
 
 \j 
 
 
 w 
 
 4 
 
 w 
 
 — 
 
 (7) 
 
 v 
 
 
 w 
 
 4 
 
 w 
 
 w 
 
 (8) 
 
 — 
 
 w 
 
 V. 
 
 4 
 
 v_/ 
 
 
 
 (9) 
 
 w 
 
 _ 
 
 w 
 
 - 
 
 w 
 
 6 
 
 (10) 
 
 w 
 
 _ 
 
 w 
 
 _ 
 
 w 
 
 6 
 
 (») 
 
 \s 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 w 
 
 w 
 
 6 
 
 ! *-* 
 
 8 
 
 w 
 
 IO | 
 
 1 v-< 
 
 w 
 
 w 
 
 10 | 
 
 1 w 
 
 w 
 
 w 
 
 IO | 
 
 1 ^ 
 
 — 
 
 w 
 
 10 | 
 
 1 w 
 
 8 
 
 w 
 
 IO | 
 
 1 ^ 
 
 8 
 
 w 
 
 IO | 
 
 1 ^ 
 
 8 
 
 w 
 
 IO | 
 
 1 ^ 
 
 8 
 
 w 
 
 IO | 
 
 1 w 
 
 — 
 
 w 
 
 IO | 
 
 1 w 
 
 — 
 
 w 
 
 10 | 
 
 1 w 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 IO | 
 
 It will be found, on careful rereading, that the lines from the Parlament 
 of Foules follow the same scheme in a rudimentary way. Of course in Chau- 
 cer's latest work there are apparently, even by the best texts, some forced 
 accents, yet in the main the rhythm is not subjective, but organic and obvious. 
 P. 47, 11. from Shakespeare. The sentence-rhythm here is clearly the same 
 fundamentally as Dante's above or Milton's in Paradise Lost, or as in any 
 other save mechanical blank verse. But beside the fundamental 4. 8. 10 or 
 6. 10 emphases there is in Dante other subsidiary or supplemental stress ; and 
 the present passage is rich similarly in completed harmony. The following is 
 a full scheme for the first nine lines : — 
 
 (I) 
 
 2 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 (2) 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 
 10 
 
 (3) 
 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 (4) 
 
 2 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 (5) 
 
 2 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 (6) 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 (7) 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 
 10 
 
 (8) 
 
 2 
 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 
 10 
 
 (9) 
 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 
 10 
 
388 NOTES. 
 
 As was indicated in chap. V., it is not the purpose in this volume to con- 
 sider elements that address only the ear except so far as apprehensible in 
 unoral reading. But we may note here the effect of raising the pitch on the 
 ninth syllable in the first and the third line, as indicated by the italicized 
 figures. Among all poets who ever wrote Shakespeare is most wonderful 
 next to Dante in the skill by which he forces upon the reader's consciousness 
 just the emphasis intended. In his most prosaic passages he refuses to fall 
 below the rhythmic level of the most lofty. Compare with the above quota- 
 tion Hamlet's lines to Horatio, III. ii. 70-82. Finally, we should note that 
 the fixed scheme above illustrated is wholly analogous to the regular four- and 
 eight-bar divisions of the melody or motif in musical compositions. 
 
 P. 50, 1. 5. For an accessible summary of the results of investigation in 
 Shakespeare's form, and the evidence respecting his development, see intro- 
 duction to the 'Leopold Shakespeare.' 
 
 P. 50, 11. 10, II. This seems much to say, yet it is manifest that since 
 Wordsworth poets of almost any grade in respect to matter seem able to 
 command the knack of blank verse in its best run-on forms. 
 
 P. 50, par. 2, 1. 12. Compare 
 
 " Here grouped in superb frigidity 
 
 The blasts of the North repose, 
 Proud spirits of stern intrepidity, 
 
 Whose wings with clangors unclose. 
 In their saturnine eyes crepuscular 
 
 Cold hatreds bitterly glow ; 
 In the girth of their dark arms muscular 
 
 Lie shipwreck ruin and woe ! " 
 
 Let the student in this connection consider how far the rhymes in Hood's 
 Bridge of Sighs are a source of power or weakness. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — It is assumed that all students attempt- 
 ing this chapter will have mastered the general principles of prosody, and 
 can identify the ordinary measures at sight. If the class is ignorant of metric 
 feet and caesura and the difference between end-stopped and run-on quality, 
 the work must begin back with the elementary units and the construction of 
 the simplest measures. Approaching the subject proper of this chapter the 
 teacher should, first illustrating the main principles as usual by examples and 
 explanations of his own, assign the pages of the book and set the class for its 
 first work the identification of the fundamental or sentence-rhythm in easy 
 passages from Milton or Shakespeare. When this can be done infallibly, more 
 erratic and unskilled examples may be assigned ; particularly cases of depart- 
 ure from the 4. 6. 8 to a 5. 7. 9 rhythm or some part of it, as in the fourth 
 
NOTES. 389 
 
 and sixth of Dante's lines. Let the students investigate the condition of the 
 rhythm % in authors that read well but scan ill, and vice versa. Let the funda- 
 mental rhythm be determined for the trochaic measure of Hiawatha, and also 
 in dactylic and anapaestic lines. Of course it would be absurd to attempt to 
 do more with this vast subject than simply make the student in some degree 
 aware of his experiences from the form of poetry. It were well, however, if he 
 can be set to investigate the rhythm of the Bedwulf and succeeding monu- 
 ments, if he can read Anglo-Saxon and early English to Piers Plowman, as he 
 ought. Then exercises should be set upon points later in the chapter. Let 
 perfect specimens be sought upon each point, and then the effect of elisions, 
 rhymes made by repeating the same word, as well as of other blemishes, be 
 tried. It will be observed that the result of introducing elements that seem 
 incongruous is the same as is produced by the presence of a prose book-word 
 in the rhyme, since in both the subordinate, or merely intellectual, activity 
 becomes principal. Finally, it will be interesting to go back to Surrey and 
 Lyly and other first writers in blank verse, and watch the growth in regularity 
 of rhythmic stress. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Page 53, 1. 26. Note how Shakespeare here escapes every sort of respon- 
 sibility by putting all into the mouth of Oberon, and making even him qualify 
 his assertion by " might." 
 
 P. 55, par. 2, 1. 19. Epithetic phrases have considerable poetic potency 
 with young readers, but on learning the use of the imagination they quickly 
 eschew such weak excitants. See p. 86. 
 
 P. 56, 11. 3-1 1. In Spenser the instinct is to reach imagination by imported 
 terms, especially archaic and provincial. Shakespeare sometimes seems to 
 use Latin rather than Saxon words from the pedant's sense of their piquancy. 
 The literary taste of the times was not yet exacting; a quirk or pun satisfied 
 where these are as onions and garlic to moderns. The hot, spicy style of 
 ' ominous horse,' ' tyrannous and damned light,' and alcoholic metaphors like 
 ' roasted in wrath and fire,' ' o'ersized with coagulate gore,' pleased the gen- 
 eral palate. Shakespeare in his maturer years was far enough away from such 
 figures to use them in a manner not unlike Chaucer, in effective satire. But 
 with him Latinisms and Gallicisms to a great degree satisfied the instinct that 
 prompted to what have now become fifth-class phrases. Even the genius of 
 Shakespeare could not quite learn how to use elements of speech nearer to 
 his hand, such as Tennyson in our own day relies upon. Milton with 
 ampler foreign resources discriminates much more clearly between what 
 was organic or idiomatic English and what was not. Shakespeare would not 
 
390 NOTES. 
 
 be trite or common, but to avoid such quality ran not seldom into the fault of 
 abnormal and strained phrasing. 
 
 P. 56, 1. 17. All phrases like 'violent property,' 'royal hope,' 'weak sup- 
 posal,' ' eternal blazon,' in which the adjective is equivalent to a noun of the 
 same meaning governed by 'of or 'from,' are of course to be entered in the 
 third class. 
 
 P. 56, 1. 34. This is clearly ' the Tyrian dye — fished up first by Keats, by 
 dealing in which after-poets have grown rich ' — of Browning's Popularity. 
 
 P- 57? !• 5- I' was at fi rst suspected that Shelley's dramatic pieces would 
 yield results less remarkable, but The Cenci sustains the proportion of phrases 
 found in the Alastor. Phrases of the first or prose class are much more 
 numerous than in Alastor, but the ratio of fourth class and fifth class phrases 
 to all is approximately 13 : 20. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The work in phrases will be simple and 
 will present few difficulties, except in connection with the fifth class. It 
 .will probably be best, even with maturest students, to reserve serious study of 
 this division until the next two chapters have been gone over. The work 
 may be so conducted as to include complete mastery of the first four classes 
 and not omit recognition of phrases of the fifth kind. The student may learn 
 to identify any phrase by inquiring if it is of class i., or if not, of class ii., and 
 so on until its place is found. Any phrase not disposed of through the first 
 four classes may be passed as of the fifth, on noting the verifying fact that both 
 its elements are literal words. The instructor will of course see that com- 
 pound phrases are entered according to their elements in the simple classes, 
 as for example in the fourth line of p. 59, ' trumpet's bray ' in class iii., ' dread- 
 ful bray' in class i., and 'harsh-resounding trumpets' in class iv. Every 
 element through which the sensibilities receive an impression must be recog- 
 nized in the analysis. It will be quickly discovered that class i. will require 
 further division into sub-class a, to include all phrases like ' left hand,' ' eight 
 years,' ' west wind,' ' idle thought,' etc., that — except from extraordinary asso- 
 ciations — are hopelessly prosaic, and sub-class b for the residue, which upon 
 occasion can carry emotion. Of the latter, 'dreadful bray,' ' morning star,' 
 " S 13 )' g rass >' ' chapel bell,' are good examples. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Page 60, par. 2, 11. 4-1 1. The question will very likely be asked, Is not 
 this mixed metaphor? The answer is, No, because the whole is allegory, — 
 or rather a succession of clause allegories. The reasons will be given in full 
 later on (p. 393), but had best not be considered here. 
 
 P. 62, 1. 4. Ps. lxxx. 8. 
 
NOTES. 391 
 
 P. 63, par. 2, 1. 10. In other words, the mind blends Pharisees and vipers 
 after a fashion not dissimilar to composite photography. The image of the 
 figurative object, we may say, seems superimposed upon the literal, rather than 
 vice versa. 
 
 P. 63, Note 2. Tegner's fancy does not incline usually to figures quite so 
 strained. The first two lines here of course are allegory. See p. 393. Com- 
 pare this from the opening of his Song to the Sun : — 
 
 I will sing thee new lays, 
 O thou Sun ever bright! 
 In cerulean night 
 
 Round thy throne of high state 
 
 The worlds placed by thee wait 
 As thy vassals, each sphere 
 In thy sight bending near; 
 
 But in light are thy ways. 
 
 A still fairer example is his Elden, ' To Fire.' 
 
 P. 64, par. 2, 1. 12. But sometimes a thought already clear may be re-illus- 
 trated with considerable effect by an expanded analogy (see p. 84). Compare 
 Horace, Carminum, IV. xiv. 25-34, for a good example. 
 
 P. 67, par. 2, 11. 10, 11. Some best illustrations occur in Browning's 
 Sordetto. Compare the following from near the close of Book II. : — 
 
 Heart and brain 
 Swelled ; he expanded to himself again, 
 As some thin seedling spice-tree starved and frail, 
 Pushing between cat's head and ibis' tail 
 Crusted into the porphyry pavement smooth, 
 — Suffered remain just as it sprung, to soothe 
 * The Soldan's pining daughter, never yet 
 Well in her chilly green-glazed minaret, — 
 When rooted up, the sunny day she died, 
 And Hung into the common court beside 
 Its parent tree. Come home, Sordello ! 
 
 Here the Soldan's daughter : the seedling spice-tree : : minstrelsy : Sordello. 
 Likewise, seedling spice-tree : common court and parent tree : : Sordello : Goito. 
 Cf. also 11. 11-18 of Book III. The student will generally find his difficulties 
 with analogy clear if he will take the trouble to cast thus in formal terms. 
 (See p. 400.) 
 
 P. 67, par. 3, 1. 8. It will be found convenient to revive the designation 
 'trope,' for adjectives applied thus, like 'brave,' to nouns to which they are 
 not literally or logically applicable, and the word will be used in that sense 
 in later notes. 
 
 P. 68, Note. The extent to which figures have been indispensable in Ian- 
 
392 NOTES. 
 
 guage is seen in the fact that there are no roots signifying other than physical 
 acts or qualities. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — Let it be remembered that the object 
 of these analyses is not at all to afford mental discipline or to discover what 
 ingenious distinctions may be insisted on in language. In so far as any exer- 
 cise shall prove intellectual rather than emotional, it is to be deprecated. If 
 it does not bring the given element to bear more palpably and strongly upon 
 the sensibilities, it is a waste of time. There are other ways of sharpening 
 the wits and acquiring grammatical facility with which this study should in no 
 degree or sense come into competition. The object is solely to bring to con- 
 sciousness what goes on in the mind when we read poetry, and to enlarge or 
 deepen the various experiences. The simplest way to determine the presence 
 of a figure is to make literal inquiries, — as thus with Chaucer's lines above : 
 Can April pierce ? Evidently not; hence figure number one. But admitting 
 that April might pierce some material thing, can it pierce a drought? Thus 
 we find figure number two. Yet, admitting that April might pierce even a 
 drought, can it pierce one to the root? Since not, we have figure the third. 
 But if April were to pierce a drought to the root, could this be done if the 
 instrument used were showers ? Thus figure the fourth is revealed. If showers 
 might be conceived as the instrument of such an action, could there be such 
 an instrument as sweet showers? Thus we demonstrate that sweet is a trope, 
 making the fifth figure ; and so on to the end of the passage. After the 
 student is able to work confidently by himself, he should be set to make a 
 complete analysis of some short poetic composition, as Coleridge's Hymn in 
 the Valley of Chamouni. Let him summarize his results and place them upon 
 the blackboard for comparison. Let the proportion of prose terms to poetic 
 be indicated, also the per cent of purely experiential words, of associational, as 
 of word figures, with each class of phrases and all clause figures. Finally, let 
 further discussion concerning the interrelations of the figures, as of Apostrophe 
 to Personification, or of Hyperbole to Synecdoche, be encouraged. In the 
 latter case of course the conceivable whole is put for the actual part. The 
 consideration of Irony is reserved for chap. XV. 
 
 It will, moreover, be quickly apparent that there are classes of clauses just 
 as of words and phrases. There are experiential facts as well as associations 
 of fact, besides facts declared by way of personification and metaphor. All 
 exclamatory sentences or clauses, like ' How beautiful this night,' are either 
 experiential directly, when the hearer shares the experiences of the speaker 
 from being present with him, or associational, when the reader constructs from 
 like experiences had at first hand a second-hand realization of what the given 
 experience must have been. We may thus recognize ' direct experiential ' and 
 
NOTES. 393 
 
 'associational' clauses, which will include many declarative sentences and 
 some interrogative. As examples of associational clauses in declarative or 
 interrogative form, cf. 'it was a clear bright day'; 'immediately the cock 
 crew'; 'who hath believed our report?' 'what help was there left me?' 
 Simple declarations of fact corresponding to first-class phrases will include 
 also a sub-class b, to distinguish sentences capable of carrying emotion. When 
 the content of a sentence is intrinsically poetical beyond the effect of specific 
 elements, it should be entered as a poetic clause. But if the poetic quality 
 in the thought is more than incidental and comes from the theme, it must 
 be recognized under the classifications of chap. XI. Literal transactions 
 described or narrated by figures should be called metaphoric clauses, or clauses 
 of simile or personification, to distinguish from these several figures in phrase 
 form, or, in the case of personification and metaphor, from word-forms. Alle- 
 gorical sentences, and such as correspond to fifth-class phrases, should be left 
 for treatment in the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Page 71, 1. 2. Lord Kames (Elements of Criticism, p. 369) well distin- 
 guishes the first two figures in the following definitions : " A metaphor is an 
 act of the imagination, figuring one thing to be another. An allegory requires 
 no such operation, nor is one thing figured to be another : it consists in choos- 
 ing a subject having properties or circumstances resembling those of the prin- 
 cipal subject; and the former is described in such a manner as to represent 
 the latter; the subject thus represented is kept out of view; we are left to 
 discover it by reflection." Yet this critic, disregarding his own distinction, 
 takes the passage (Ps. lxxx. 8-1 1), from which the two clauses in the text are 
 quoted, as an example of allegory, and thus remarks : " A finer or more cor- 
 rect allegory is not to be found than the following, in which a vineyard is 
 made to represent God's own people, the Jews." Though the Jewish people 
 is not literally mentioned, it is yet not kept out of view or discovered by reflec- 
 tion, but identified immediately and positively through use of " heathen." The 
 allegorical transaction cannot be consistently conceived with persons in place 
 of the uprooted native vine. Furthermore, in the perfect allegory there is no 
 direct or literal identification of the chief actor in his true personality. If the 
 "thou" were in this case indeterminate from the context, it would be in keep- 
 ing; but as unequivocally addressed in preceding verses to Jehovah, is incon- 
 sistent with the figure in question. To be» clearer on this point, we may 
 compare the opening stanzas of the Faerie Queene. If Spenser had written 
 Elizabeth instead of Gloriana in 1. 20, the true form would have been departed 
 from. The perfect allegory here consists in representing the efforts of certain 
 
394 NOTES. 
 
 personages in behalf of the Reformed Faith under other names and in other 
 actions than the real. If the actual things done by Elizabeth had been here 
 described or declared, but as accomplished by ' Gloriana,' the poem would not 
 have been an allegory. When the actor only, or the action only, and not both 
 together, is figured as something else, the result is metaphor. Thus, while 
 ' Jack Frost paints the windows ' is allegory, either ' the frost traces figures ' or 
 ' Jack Frost whitens the pane ' are metaphors. If there are successive clauses 
 to the same effect, the combined product is what has been already styled running 
 metaphor.' 
 
 P. 72, 1. 3. The Faerie Queene or Pilgrim's Progress, for example, to the 
 youthful reader gives most delight as a consistent story; it is apprehended 
 along the literal parallel more fully than upon the spiritual. But as the mind 
 grows more accustomed to the spiritual view, the delight from literal reading 
 becomes subordinate to that derived by interpretation. Moreover, a little of 
 the allegory becomes potential of the whole. To the youth, on first reading, 
 Faerie Queene is the name of a poem made up of romantic adventure. But 
 at thirty or forty these words will perhaps have become to him only a fifth- 
 class phrase, yet will mean as much, and indeed more, than if he thought of 
 the contents of the volume in detail. The two parallels — the knightly adven- 
 tures or exploits and the literal happenings of Elizabethan days — have been 
 gradually shortened in his consciousness to the two points ' Faerie ' and 
 ' Queene,' and indeed coincide, are fused in his fancy into one. There is in 
 fact no difference between fifth-class phrases like this and ' Pharisees ' and 
 •vipers' conceived, after the manner explained in the last chapter, as spirit- 
 ually identical, save that in the former the mental activity is on a larger 
 scale.' And it is not only with fifth-class phrases which like ' Faerie Queene ' 
 have afforded full original experiences that the mature imagination attains its 
 concentrated delights : it is by its training enabled to interpret new instances 
 at sight. It will have of course been noted that in case Faerie above is real- 
 ized (cf. Chaucer's ' Femenye,') as the domain of fairies, and- not ' fairy ' in 
 antique spelling as popularly understood, the expression will descend in expe- 
 rience from a fifth-class to a fourth-class phrase. 
 
 P. 73, par. 2, 1. 9. It will be interesting for the reader to ascertain in what 
 form he thinks the works of the great poet. He will perhaps remember that 
 the picture in his mind was first the big quarto volume he used to see in child- 
 hood. After he came to read and know the plays it was perhaps the Chandos 
 portrait. Now, through long and great familiarity, it may have become merely 
 an image of ' Shakespeare,' the panted name. 
 
 P. 75, 1. 2. That is, if rhyme and meter had permitted. A poet like Tenny- 
 son would no doubt have crowded the couplet into a single line, or less. 
 
 There are three classes of allegories, — the sustained allegory, running 
 
NOTES. 395 
 
 through a whole volume or poem, or at least two consecutive periods ; the 
 sentence allegory, taking up one complete period ; and the clause allegory, 
 preceded or followed in the same sentence by other, either literal or figurative, 
 clauses. The whole analogy may also be given in a clause presentation when 
 a single metaphor or single simile is expressed by predication. If the analogy 
 requires more than one clause, we distinguish it as running metaphor. When 
 the simile is extended through several predications, we may style it sustained 
 simile. See p. 400. 
 
 As to Chaucer's analogies, the Dethe of Blanche shows the following sum- 
 mary: allegories, 32; running metaphors, 27; clause metaphors, 46; similes, 
 8; comparisons, 12; fourth-class phrases, 4; third-class, 38; second-class, 21; 
 fifth-class, o; compound terms, 2; experiential words, 9; associational, 17. 
 When we remember that Chaucer grew to full poetic manhood and died 
 before the Miracle Plays gave place to the Moralities, and that the latter 
 approximately overtake merely the imaginative development registered in 
 Piers Plowman, we can more easily realize how far Chaucer was in advance 
 of his century. In Langland allegory greatly preponderates. 
 
 P. 77, prose 1. 1. Similar concentration of means for addressing the imagi- 
 nation is found of course in music. First we enjoy perhaps but the melody, 
 then the melody supported by a bass. Next, we think melody barren without 
 the alto third and the tenor fifth. As yet there is no appreciation of har- 
 mony proper. But in time the unit shifts fully from the melody to chords. 
 
 P. 79, pr. 11. 1-5. See Pauline, last paragraph. The chief characteristic of 
 Teutonic poetry is neither form nor art, but force. It is evident how concen- 
 tration contributes to power through increasing the proportion of emphatic 
 words. Another effect of condensation is swiftness. By the use of abbreviated 
 symbols for full analogies a poet may attain marvellous swiftness. (Cf. Swin- 
 burne's remarks on Browning's obscurity in his introduction to Works of 
 George Chapman, conveniently quoted in Rolfe's and Hersey's Select Poems 
 of Robert Browning, p. 28.) The course of evolution in literatures kindred 
 with our own has been similar, tending to concentration of analogies and 
 intensification of energy. As will be later shown, Teutonic and Northern 
 poetry is reverting to the character of the Beowulf and saga forms. Beowulf 
 is wanting in similes, because the minstrel mind was too energized to see mere 
 resemblance. It saw complete spiritual identity (p. 62) or nothing. Figures 
 of the metaphoric kind are surprisingly frequent, — sometimes thirty to the 
 hundred lines, — and many of them equal to Tennyson's or Browning's best. 
 But incidental or unpredicated similes are not wanting. Cf. 'likest a bird' 
 (i.e. swan, of Beowulf s ship), 1. 218. 
 
 P. 84, par. 2, 1. 4. Epithet and even tautology may have the effect of 
 poetry, especially when assisted by the reader's altitude. (See chap. II., and 
 
396 NOTES. 
 
 Notes.) Creat poets put great thoughts into figures, not for embellishment, 
 but to bring them before the mind in concentrated shape. To call night a 
 'goddess,' or a night-cap 'the innocent accomplice of falsehood,' is of the 
 mediaeval spirit that would fain hear simplest facts told in allegory. 
 
 P. 85, 1. 3. Perhaps it is not too much to say that obviousness is as great 
 a fault as obscurity. The poet should leave the reader room to be a poet too, 
 not do the work of his imagination for him. 
 
 P. 85, pr. 1. 14. To realize somewhat of the expatiation in which Pope 
 abounds, the student has but to turn some characteristic passage into prose. 
 
 P. 86, par. 2, 1. 10. Doubtless some of our enjoyment proceeded from the 
 frequent use of the abstract for the concrete in poets of this class. As the 
 young mind first learns to generalize and appreciate abstract terms, it will 
 find satisfaction in the conceits of eighteenth century poetry. Let the student 
 examine Johnson's London, and note the expatiation, and absence of concrete 
 ideas. 
 
 P. 86, last line. Two great schools of poetry. And, for that matter, of prose 
 also. Cf. p. 312. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The work in this chapter may as well 
 begin with compound terms. Let the class, if capable of appreciating Tenny- 
 son, take some part of The Princess, and collecting the compound nouns, 
 extend each to the phrase, and then to the clause form to which it is equivalent. 
 For instance, concerning ' furrow-cloven falls,' in 1. 192 of vii. of that poem it 
 will be said that this stands for the phrase ' falls cloven in or by furrows.' In 
 the clause form the thought will be ' falls that have been plowed — cloven — 
 into furrows.' The next step is back to the full allegory that has been poten- 
 tially in imagination from the first ; for furrows imply a plow or, at least, 
 a plower. Thus the whole idea if charted out to fancy would be ' falls that 
 frost has cloven into furrows.' As we have seen, an allegory may fill a whole 
 volume, like Pilgrim's Progress, or a series of sentences, or may be confined 
 to one period, or even clause. The only difference between an allegoric 
 clause and a clause metaphor is the fact that in the latter there is a literal 
 element that draws the mind away from allegoric thinking. For example, 
 in 1. 178 of the same part of The Princess, above referred to, we read ' What 
 pleasure lives in height and cold ? ' As we come to the ideas successively on 
 first reading, we recognize ' pleasure ' as an abstraction, represent it in thought 
 symbolically, and coming next to ' live ' appropriate it as a figure equivalent 
 to 'is.' Thus the sentence passes through our mind as a metaphor. But 
 if the line had been printed ' What Pleasure lives,' etc., we should have at once 
 cognized ' pleasure ' as a personification, and applied ' lives ' literally. Thus 
 the sentence would have given us the experience of an allegory, though con- 
 
NOTES. 397 
 
 • 
 fined to one transaction. If the Twenty-third Psalm had run ' The Lord is 
 a shepherd. He maketh his sheep to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth 
 them beside the still waters,' it would have produced in the last two sentences 
 a sustained allegory. But the use of ' my ' and ' me ' interferes with the 
 imaging of a consistent allegorical transaction. If the reader does not persist 
 in introducing himself in the usual literal way, but can figure himself under 
 some new form consistent with 'shepherd' and 'leads,' the first two verses 
 are to him allegory still; if not, they are running metaphor. Likewise in 
 VII. 177 again of the Princess, — ' Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain 
 height,' — though a poetic word, we take ' maid ' literally, that is, see in our 
 mind's eye some person in actual identity. Put ' nymph ' for ' maid,' and the 
 line will be allegory to every reader. 
 
 The only question in any kind of difficulty should be, What does the mind 
 cognize? In 11. 294-305 of the Dethe of Blanche we read as follows: 
 
 I was waked 
 With smale foules a grete hepe 
 That had affrayed me out of my slepe 
 Though noyse and swettenesse of her songe. 
 And al me mette they sate amonge 
 Upon my chambre roofe wythoute 
 Upon the tyles overal aboute, 
 And songe, everych in hys wise 
 The moste solempne servise 
 By noote that ever man I trowe 
 Had herde; for somme of hem songe lowe, 
 Somme high, and al of oon acorde. 
 
 Is not this allegory? The answer depends solely on what we see as we 
 read the lines. Do we apprehend the transaction through the representation 
 of a choir, or of birds on the tiles? Clearly the latter; for Chaucer was so 
 explicit in the first lines that we pictured to ourselves birds very distinctly; 
 and though the language after suggests singers ' by note ' in a cathedral, the 
 image first conceived remains. Hence the passage is not allegory, but running 
 metaphor. The opening lines of the Prologue, on the contrary, are not cast 
 in metaphor, but are allegorical. But they are inconsistent, since there are 
 three distinct agents, 'Aprille,' 'Zephirus,' and 'yonge sonne'; hence there 
 are three distinct allegoric thoughts. On the other hand, in 11. 764-8 of the 
 Dethe of Blanche — 
 
 Dredeles I have ever yitte 
 
 Be tributarye and give rente 
 
 To Love, hooly yiith goode entente, 
 
 And throgh plesaunce become his thralle 
 
 With good wille, body, hert, and alle — 
 
398 NOTES. 
 
 • 
 we find only a succession of metaphoric clauses. If, forgetting the real 
 meaning, we conceive the speaker as in ultimate identity the knight he has 
 been declared, the subject of the clauses is literal to us, and no allegory is 
 possible. If, interpreting the poem as the allegory it really is, we are con- 
 scious the while that John of Gaunt is the real person whose grief is described, 
 the clauses are still metaphoric merely. But if the thought had run, ' I have 
 been ever a thrall that has done service with good will, body, heart, and all 
 to Love,' the result after the first clause would have been an incidental alle- 
 gory, or an allegory within an allegory, since our mind would have seen the 
 knight, — or John of Gaunt, for the moment in a new character; that is, in 
 the guise and person of a thrall indeed. 
 
 It will thus be clear why there can be no fifth-class phrase if either of the 
 words is unliteral, for each phrase of this class is a potential allegory. If one 
 of the words is poetic, the imagination will be occupied too much with its 
 experiential quality to use it beyond itself. If one of the words is figurative 
 it will not serve as a point to be ' produced,' parallel with the other, to allegory. 
 But ' angel offices ' will make the mind cognize figures of the genus named by 
 the first word performing ministrations, — a complete allegory, though its 
 effect is appropriated in a single flash of fancy. It will perhaps be early noted 
 that the fifth and the first class are most nearly related. This is well illus- 
 trated by an experience met with over the phrase {Princess, II. 373) ' trash, 
 but with a kernel in it.' On asking a student to what class this belonged the 
 answer was, ' the first,' which, before I had time to inquire the reason of the 
 judgment, was changed to 'fifth class.' As I then elicited, the phrase had 
 been cognized first objectively as trash and kernel; but, immediately, as the 
 mind saw the housewife and broom which the heap of litter and the poor 
 solitary kernel implied, the spiritual meaning was fused with the literal. In 
 other words the two ideas taking position as points developed into parallels, 
 which were then made to coincide. If the illustration had been less ' homely,' 
 and lain a little nearer imagination, the process would have been reversed; 
 the sweeping and the lecturing would have been condensed in fancy to two 
 points, and these spiritually cognized as one. 
 
 After the class can carry compound terms past phrases to clauses, the chief 
 difficulty of this chapter will have been conquered. Such as in the clause 
 form produce only metaphor should, if this can be done conveniently, be 
 extended to allegory by expressing the subject, if that be literal, through per- 
 sonification or similar disguise of identity, or if the predicate is literal, by 
 making it metaphoric. A metaphoric clause may be turned to allegory by 
 ridding the subject, in thought, of every mark of its actual identity. When an 
 action has been figured under the form of some other action, and by an agent 
 in other than his proper person, the mind has had the effect of allegory, 
 whether in one sentence or a whole Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
NOTES. 399 
 
 Analogy in word-presentation, if the preceding is thoroughly understood, 
 will not be difficult to distinguish. Metaphor consists in seeing one thing 
 spiritually identical with another thing. Here the concentration has become 
 as complete as possible, but has only united two objects in one character, not 
 two distinctive series of transactions, or two various lives in one. To do this 
 in full would produce allegory par excellence, for though we may indicate 
 character in an allegorical way, the instrument is evidently heavier than the 
 case requires. Now to reduce an allegory of transaction to a phrase or still 
 more curt presentation requires the greatest power as well as skill. It would 
 seem that but few clause metaphors can be reduced to word analogies; for 
 in these the mind must see but one thing, not two things distinct literally, and 
 united spiritually. Any metaphor in which the agent can be suppressed in 
 thought and only the action cognized will afford an example, as Chaucer's " it 
 snewed in his house of mete and drinke " (Prol. 345).. There are essentially 
 three degrees of energy in poetical cognition. Imagination is exercised in 
 the lowest of these degrees in simile, when only resemblance (p. 62) is recog- 
 nized. It rises to the second degree in the spiritual mode called metaphor, 
 when resemblance is raised to identity. In simile the mind perceives two 
 objects as separate in an act of comparison; in metaphor it perceives two 
 objects, each with equal vividness, spiritually identified. In the highest 
 degree of energy which the mind is capable of employing the literal is more 
 or less completely merged in the figurative. The composite mental photo- 
 graph, formed by projecting the spiritual upon the actual, gives place to an 
 intense new image of the former, that fills completely the mental field of view. 
 This is most apparent in such states of imagination as force vent for them- 
 selves in noun-interjections like Traitor ! Thief! Fox ! Viper ! If a man 
 have true occasion to use, for example, the last-named epithet, he will see in 
 his mind's eye nothing but a viper vast enough to fill it, and indeed utters the 
 name without accompanying word because it is the sole thing of which he is 
 conscious. The identity of the person to whom the word is applied seems, in 
 the speaker's transcendent subjectivity, dissolved and lost in the spiritual 
 identity of the object named. To say Thou viper ! means, or should mean, 
 the presence in consciousness of both objects (after the manner of p. 62), but 
 in the strongest form of metaphor known to the mind. To use the predicate 
 ' thou art,' etc., indicates far less excitement, with some participation of the 
 judgment. There are word analogies otherwise produced ; in less impas- 
 sioned and more intellectual states of imagination occasioned by a conviction 
 of beauty rather than of truth (cf. chaps. XVII. and XXX.) there may be 
 the same merging of the literal in the spiritual. So thoroughly is the ego 
 aroused by the surprising felicity of certain phrases — like (p. 83) Shake- 
 speare's ' burned on the water,' — it scarcely conceives pictorially the literal 
 
400 NOTES. 
 
 fact or relation, but seems to cognize it in some less conscious way. Only one 
 of the parallels is produced or followed, though potentially with the effect of 
 both. Even the modifier of a predicate, as was illustrated by astray, may fill 
 the mind with an experience of this kind (p. 77). 
 
 No doubt the best illustrations of the mind's action in this mode are to be 
 found in noun-interjections like Traitor ! Thief! Fox ! etc., which should be 
 successively reduced in vividness through metaphor and simile to allegory. To 
 expand these epithets into the metaphors 'Thou traitor,' and 'Thou art a 
 traitor! ' etc. will, as we have seen, vastly reduce the intensity of imagination; 
 and this perhaps chiefly through dividing the mind's attention between the 
 literal and the spiritual. Allegory is to metaphor in about the same relation 
 of strength as the formal syllogism to common thinking, — except in curt 
 proverbs like ' a rolling stone gathers no moss,' which are cognized without 
 determinative energy. In weaker examples there is no test by which word 
 analogies can be distinguished from mere metaphors save the experience in 
 the mind. Whenever an expression like any of the superb analogies in the 
 extract from Paracelsus or the Princess produces such experience of the 
 spiritual as to absorb the literal, and this experience is occasioned by a single 
 word, the fact of the mind's superior energy is proved and a word analogy 
 identified. A proper classification of all figures in the second and the third 
 degree of imaginative energy would be the following : — 
 
 Imaginative Processes in Imaginative Processes in 
 
 which Spiritual Identity is Discerned. which Spiritual Likeness is Discerned. 
 
 Sustained Allegory Sustained Simile 
 
 Period Allegory Period Simile 
 
 Clause Allegory Clause Simile 
 
 Running Metaphor Comparison 
 
 Clause Metaphor Spiritual Proportion 
 
 Personification Phrase Simile 
 
 Metonymy Trope 
 
 Synecdoche 
 
 Hyperbole 
 
 ' Periodic allegory ' and ' Periodic simile ' differ from ' sustained allegory ' 
 and ' sustained simile ' on account of the interference or co-operation of the 
 author's sentence-sense. Compare examples pp. 81-83. Clause simile is con- 
 fined to a single item of resemblance, and generally introduced by like as, as 
 if, or as when. ' Comparison ' is an effort to realize resemblance in degree ; 
 as, ' it is as cold as is usual at this season.' ' Spiritual Proportion ' seems an 
 
NOTES. 401 
 
 appropriate name for resemblances too intricate or subtle to be expressed, save 
 in the most formal way. See Note to p. 67, par. 2, 11. 10, 1 1 for a proper 
 instance; though cases as elemental as Chaucer's 
 
 Me thoght the felawshyppe as naked 
 
 Withouten hir that saugh I ones 
 
 As a corowne without stones (Blanche, 978-80) 
 
 should be included under this head. ' Phrase simile ' is illustrated especially 
 in the Bedwulf examples, ' likest a bird,' 'likest flame,' and all such. 'Trope,' 
 in the sense in which the word is used in this work, is clearly a word-simile. 
 To declare some person to be a fox, or swine, is to use metaphor; to say fox- 
 like or swine-like is to use terms indicating imaginative energy of the third 
 degree; and the tropes 'foxy,' 'swinish,' are every way equivalent to these 
 respectively. Contrariwise, adjectives like 'strong' applied to 'hope,' or 'keen' 
 to ' intelligence,' indicate respectively qualities like strength in man or keen- 
 ness in points or edges; and both may be thought under the form ' strong- 
 like ' or ' keen-like.' 
 
 The chapter involves no end of topics and points for study, since with chap. 
 XIII. it includes in essence the whole of literary development. All who 
 would teach the subject of figures with success must study them each for him- 
 self, not only in modern authors, but historically from Piers Plowman, and 
 even Bedwulf, down to present times. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Page 87, 11. 3-5. Prose comparisons, of course, excepted. Let the student 
 collate the figures in the Prologue under the various heads, and note if any 
 word-analogies (besides ' snewed,' p. 399) occur. 
 
 P. 8g, 11. 12-16. Cf. Lessing's Laocoon, sects, xv., xvi. 
 
 P. gi, par. 2. The spirit which inspired these times is well shown in 
 Kingsley's Westward Ho. For a more profound as well as subtler study of the 
 inner influences that had already been two generations at work, see Brown- 
 ing's Paracelsus. The effect of the War of the Rebellion in our own day was 
 an expansion and energization of thought not dissimilar. 
 
 P. 92, par. 2. With this and following paragraphs having to do with the 
 progress of sentiment in English literature, compare Professor Corson's paper 
 on the ' Spiritual Ebb and Flow,' in Introduction to the Study of Browning's 
 Poetry, pp. 3-31. 
 
 P. 92, par. 2, 1. 16. After the printing-press must come lay reading of the 
 Scriptures; thus every reader became a theologian. The effect was bad at 
 first. Sects have since multiplied; but the general result has been to advance 
 the development and spread of truth more rapidly. 
 
402 NOTES. 
 
 P. 94, par. 2. The function of religion here is to refine and correct ideals. 
 Regeneration is a reformation or renewal of inherent types. All ideals in their 
 degree postulate the Infinite; that is, Unconditioned Truth or Beauty. See 
 chapter XVII. 
 
 P. 96, Note 2. The ' high seriousness ' of course comes from the types 
 found in the theme, and is the effect of these upon the author. 
 
 P. 98, par. 2. The student is no doubt familiar with the idea that English 
 history is but the history of the emancipation and rise of the ' people,' — the 
 ' third estate.' The reign of Edward III. shows us palpable beginnings of 
 popular rights, of the people's religion, of the people's language as a national 
 idiom, and of the people's literature, which now prevails. The whole course 
 of evolution in both our prose and poetry was first away from the norm of 
 oral speech, then back to it. See pp. 312, 361. 
 
 P. 98, par. 2, 11. 5-7. Gray, Collins, Thomson, may be said to represent 
 the movement to reform poetry from within. 
 
 P. 100, par. 2, 1. 6. The two romantic revolutions of English literary his- 
 tory should be carefully compared. Both were enabled by a religious purifica- 
 tion of ideals, by a bracing moral atmosphere, each established a supremacy 
 of the spiritual. 
 
 P. 101, 1. 4. Wordsworth's fault was what one might call lack of perspec- 
 tive in looking at his themes. He was filled with emotion over the smallest 
 of poetic things, as well as the largest, and in this his own generation could 
 not go with him. In the age before even poetry was not emotional; in ours 
 even prose involves as much exercise of imagination as the theme permits. 
 See chapter XXX. Wordsworth belongs to the end rather than the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth century. Like Browning, Tennyson, Shakespeare, he 
 was an anticipation. 
 
 P. 101, par. 2, 1. I. For a good illustration of Scottish feeling as a literary 
 element, we may name Lockhart's Life of Scott. No such book had ever been 
 written by an Englishman. That Keltic influence has been more pronounced 
 and general than is commonly realized, we may be easily convinced on noting 
 the authors after 1750, wholly or in part of Irish or Scotch extraction. The 
 list will include Byron, as well as Scott and Burns. The Keltic element in 
 the new England did not produce the new Shakespeare, but prepared for him 
 an audience. It is only of Teutonic stock that a Dante or a Browning can be 
 born. Cf. in this connection Arnold's Celtic Literature, pp. 78, 79. 
 
 P. 102, par. 2, 1. 9. No genius that has left record of itself has ever equalled 
 Shakespeare in art (see chaps. XIV., XV.), or surpassed him in knowledge of 
 human nature, or in complete and easy mastery over the resources of expres- 
 sion. But in the matter of ideals or types there has been no inconsiderable 
 advance in the last three centuries. The heart of man has been enlarged, 
 
NOTES. 403 
 
 finer tastes and capabilities of emotion have been evolved. It is quite evident 
 that Shakespeare was far in advance of his times in these respects, but in 
 these, and these only, is perhaps now rivalled by some first minds of our own 
 day. 
 
 P. 103, 1. 13. Of course Luria 'failed,' as the world counts failure. But 
 according to the economy of the universe, to make Florence realize in the 
 midst of her dismal and sordid distrust that one true man had lived and 
 served her loyally, and so cause her to repair her deranged ideals, was worth 
 the life of a Luria. 
 
 P. 104, 1. 6. Dr. Berdoe has shown {Browning's Message to his Time) 
 that Browning accurately divined the mystery of Paracelsus long before his 
 career was studied out by the savants. See pp. 102, 103 of the above-named 
 volume. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The class will quite likely have had 
 not a little acquaintance with the general subject of the Theme. It will, how- 
 ever, do no harm to begin at the beginning. Let simplest poems be given out 
 for full analysis in writing, each member if the class is small reading his judg- 
 ment before the rest. Or, if the students have had systematic study of 
 Browning and Tennyson, they may begin with the lyrics of the former, after 
 the manner suggested by the interpretation of Count Gismond at the begin- 
 ning of this chapter. After a pretty thorough consideration of the best of 
 Browning's and Tennyson's lyrics the class may advance to the dramas of 
 both these authors. It will be found that the interpretation of the theme 
 in lesser poets is more difficult in general than of the greater, if the reader is 
 able to comprehend the latter at all. With students not yet well acquainted 
 with the principles of literary development, the historical parts of the chapter 
 may be for the time passed over. Indeed, practically there will be few 
 classes with which it will be best to follow the book in course. The princi- 
 pal object of this topic is to bring the student to realize, in an especial way, 
 that the theme in poetry is always paramount, and in truly inspired poems, 
 whether relatively as small as Count Gismond or great as Luria, can be 
 reduced to a single thought. If especial preparation for this chapter is neces- 
 sary, the various editions of selected poems from Tennyson, and the ' intro- 
 ductions ' or ' hand-books ' for the study of Browning will furnish all needed 
 aid. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Page 107, par. 2, 1. 5. Conquering one's environment physically means 
 overcoming gravity, weight of the atmosphere, and perhaps of the ether. We 
 are overmastered by these forces in sickness. In death the victory of the 
 cosmic over the bodily forces becomes complete. 
 
404 NOTES. 
 
 P. no, par. 3, 1. i. 'Poetry,' 'poetical,' have both an active and a passive 
 significance. In the latter they indicate states of imagination, or products 
 of such states; in the former, occasions of those states. 
 
 P. in, 1. 1 8. Of course the idea has long been familiar theologically, but 
 unrealizable to thought. The doctrine lately recognized that even the small 
 amount of matter once supposed necessary as the ' substance ' of the molecule 
 is a gratuitous assumption, — that atoms are but units of force or force-centres, 
 rules out everything from the universe but a personal will, or, as we saw on 
 p. 103, a personal character. This theory of complete solidarity of the so- 
 called material as well as intellectual and spiritual forces has been given the 
 very appropriate name of Monism. 
 
 P. 112, 1. 8. See pp. 211, 213, in chapter XVII. Compare also Nettle- 
 ship's Browning : Essays and Thoughts, p. 373 ff. ; and Browning's Bordello, 
 Bk. III. par. 6 from end. 
 
 P. 113, 1. 3. How much spirituality had our Aryan ancestors attained prior 
 to the great migrations? The following stanzas from a celebrated hymn (I. 25) 
 of the Rig Veda will in some measure answer the question. Varuna (pipams) 
 is the all-enveloping firmament, noblest of the Indie deities. 
 
 Considering that we violate thy precepts, 
 
 O Varuna, from day to day, as subjects, 
 Subject us not unto the deadly weapon 
 
 Of him who hateth us and would destroy us. 
 
 Let us unloose thy mind and heart to pity 
 
 By these our songs of worship and devotion, 
 As doth, O Varuna, the chariot-driver 
 
 Unloose his steed from chariot and harness. 
 
 The god who knows the region of the heavens 
 Where fly the birds ; who knows the ocean's pathways ; 
 
 Who knows the months, the twelve, and all their fruitage; 
 Who knows what one is born unto the others ; 
 
 Who knows the winds, the mighty, the majestic ; 
 
 Who knows their goings and who ride upon them: 
 This Varuna hath fixed his throne with wisdom, 
 
 And rules thereon in absolute dominion. 
 
 In state with golden mantle on he sitteth, 
 
 The spies have also set themselves about him. 
 Away my meditations go, and fondly hasten, 
 
 Like kine to pasture, seeking the far-seeing. 
 
 This of course is not intrinsically literature to us, but it serves to show what 
 were the best thoughts and sentiments of our Indie kindred fifteen hundred 
 years, or earlier, before Christ. A work of such a character, containing the 
 
NOTES. 405 
 
 oldest preserved poetry of our race, undoubtedly deserves the place in universal 
 literature accorded to it. 
 
 P. 114, par. 2, 1. 24. There is in literature at least some effort to recog- 
 nize proprietorship in ideas of an isolated kind, and in poetic figures. 
 
 P. 115, par. 2, 1. 21. Marinism as a mode is wrong really because it sets at 
 nought the law of spiritual equivalences. 
 
 P. 116, par. 1. The stanzas here quoted are the third and fourth of the 
 poem. The following are the first, second, and fifth, respectively : — 
 
 I wonder what those lovers mean, who say 
 They hsive given their hearts away. 
 Some good kind lover tell me how; 
 For mine is hut a torment to me now. 
 
 If so it he one place both hearts contain, 
 
 For what do they complain ? 
 
 What courtesy can Love do more 
 
 Than to join hearts that parted were before? 
 
 For of her heart he from the flames will find 
 
 But little left behind. 
 
 Mine only will remain entire; 
 
 No dross was there to perish in the fire. 
 
 P. 116, par. 2, 1. 5. When the Marinistic spirit manifests itself only or 
 chiefly in petty overstrained analogies and exaggerations, the result is ' slang.' 
 
 P. 116, par. I. With reference to the potency of intellectual poetry 
 through the reader's attitude and expectation, see note to p. 6, par. 4, and 
 p. 86. 
 
 P. 119, 1. 2. Of course Sordello was purposely crowded with meaning to 
 escape another such verdict of ' thinness ' as had been pronounced upon 
 Paracelsus. (See Miss Wilson's Primer on Browning, p. 8.) But the point 
 is, if Browning had wholly passed his intellectual stage, he could scarcely 
 have constructed a poem, in its essence so genuinely romantic, on the plan 
 of a philosophical monograph. It might have been concise and pithy, and 
 yet have been throughout a poem. 
 
 P. 119, par. 2, 1. 3. 'Didactic,' as applied to poetry, contains upon its 
 face a mischievous assumption; as if literature must preach in order to teach, 
 as if Shakespeare's Macbeth or Othello, because there is no declared moral, 
 were defective in point of instruction. 
 
 P. 119, par. 2, 1. 5. Artificial poetry. Pastoral poems in which there is 
 no substantial sense, and all the raison d'etre is in the form, are surely arti- 
 ficial. When there is important meaning, as in ' July ' of Spenser's Shefheard's 
 Calender, the spiritual effect is more or less conditioned by the form. In the 
 purer type of pastorals, as in the love-idyls of Theocritus and Tasso's Aminta, 
 
406 NOTES. 
 
 the fiction of naivete is carried too far for best effect with the imagination. 
 We admire the product, not for its truth, but the artistic skill that has 
 executed it. 
 
 P. 120, Note. Or see Howell's Modern Italian Poets, pp. 25-50. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — Students may begin the work of 
 distinguishing the three classes of poetry by searching at random through 
 anthologies and other such collections. Certain poems will at once declare 
 themselves as of one or the other kind. In the first exercise the teacher may 
 require of every student two good and undoubted examples of each sort. 
 These, or characteristic extracts, he should have read before the class, and 
 a statement made, or, if need be, a defence, of the grounds for each decision. 
 All the preparation for the exercise, as in previous chapters, should be made 
 in writing, that the instructor may examine the work of each student by itself 
 in full. After discussions and explanations, the class will be ready at the 
 second or third exercise to decide the character of assigned poems of every 
 description. In selecting these it should be borne in mind that most classes 
 will do best if put first at work on eighteenth century poets. When sure and 
 confident of judgment in the intellectual sort, let the students be given poetry 
 of the Marinistic grade. As soon as its nature is comprehended, they should 
 be set at search for this kind through all library as well as periodical literature 
 of the lighter sort. They should also be required to make comparisons, as 
 between Goldsmith's Traveller, or Deserted Village, and Johnson's Vanity 
 of Human Wishes, to determine how far either is intellectual merely, and how 
 far real sentiment. If the students are already readers of good poetry, it will 
 not be difficult to handle this topic from either end ; if they do not yet appre- 
 ciate poems beyond the grade of Lucille, the next step will be hard to take. 
 It will be best to study One Word More, or the lyrics from the Princess, or 
 the first paragraphs of ' Pompilia ' in Ring and the Book, as a basis of compar- 
 ison. If the previous chapter has been well treated, not much time will be 
 needed here. If the class is wholly immature, this topic must be passed for 
 the time being. But if the chapter is studied at all, it should under no circum- 
 stances be passed until each member of the class understands what true poetry 
 is, and can distinguish genuine from false sentiment, whether in verse or 
 novels. There should be serious study of other points suggested in the 
 chapter, so far as possible, as of pastoral poetry, and satire, and burlesque. 
 Let the class be set to determine the true character of some poet who writes 
 in both the serious and the humorous vein. Let it be inquired why Hood's pathos 
 is not more effective, and why with such wit and play of fancy his poetry 
 is not to-day more considered. 
 
NOTES. 407 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Page 123, 1. 13. The two principles are well illustrated in oratory. By 
 the one method the speaker exerts himself to the uttermost to give direct 
 and complete expression to the emotion belonging to the theme ; by the other 
 he makes no effort to do justice to it, but seems to use all his force in resisting 
 its effect upon himself. The latter is in general the more effective — at least 
 to Anglo-Saxons, apparently through appealing to the imagination more 
 directly. The latter seems to concern itself too fully with the senses. See 
 pp. 130, 131, below. In further illustration we might compare the symphonies 
 of Berlioz with Beethoven's. 
 
 P. 124. This translation, with some amendments, is from the work of 
 Miss Louise Pound and Miss Minnie H. De Pue during sophomore study 
 of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Nebraska. In this institution a little 
 time is given before leaving the subject to rendering parts of the Beiwidf'vaXa 
 Saxon rhythm, and finally in alliterative lines, such as the above. 
 
 P. 124, prose 1. 9. The Northern idea of rank was based on superior 
 bravery and daring; and any man who demonstrated his superiority in these 
 respects might be raised, as Scyld seems to have been, to the kingship of his 
 tribe. For peculiar facts concerning the death and burial of Scandinavian 
 chieftains, see explanations and notes to Canto II. of the author's translation 
 of Frithiofs Saga. For a complete version of the first fit of the Beiwulf, with 
 observations on several points of interest, see Earle's Deeds of Bedwulf; or, for 
 a good rendering merely, Garnett's or Hall's translation. 
 
 P. 125, par. 2, 1. 6. With respect to perfection of form Petrarch is of 
 course the first name in modern letters. The student should clearly under- 
 stand that Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante laid the foundations, and produced 
 the models, of the literature that now prevails. Boccaccio first dared to break 
 away from allegorical and bookish forms, and put forth literary matter on its 
 merits simply. Dante had already produced poetry more remarkable for force 
 than anything since written until the present century. Petrarch, who spent 
 months upon a single sonnet, taught the world the worth and effect of form. 
 
 P. 125, par. 2, 1. n. The student will probably not need to be told that 
 the three parts of the poem in question contain thirty-four, thirty-three, and 
 thirty-three cantos respectively, and that each canto, no matter how tre- 
 mendous the incidents narrated, is condensed into essentially the same compass. 
 
 P. 126, 1. 3. In other words, poets wrote not because they had strong 
 feelings that must have vent, but merely because they had read poetry in 
 books, and could make poems or books similar. The great poets of a litera- 
 ture, like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, have always 
 been men who make poetry unlike what they find in books. 
 
408 NOTES. 
 
 P. 126, Note. The one comprehensive principle of Gothic art is, that 
 which is to be felt must do duty also for that which is to be known. 
 
 P. 129, 1. 13. Twined, ' bereft.' For the history of this ballad see Child's 
 monumental work, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Vol. t, p. 170. 
 The text here is essentially Motherwell's version. 
 
 P. 129, Note. So far as I am aware justice is nowhere done in histories 
 of England to the Scandinavian element and the influence it has exerted in 
 making the English nation. When we think of the large number of Danish 
 invaders forced to take up their abode in the island among the natives before 
 the eleventh century, and the large immigration that is known to have taken 
 place during the reigns of Sweyn and Canute, it is less difficult to understand 
 the maritime supremacy of England in later times. Chaucer's Shipman, 
 ' whose beard has been shaken in many a tempest ' (Prologue, 388-410), is of 
 no Anglo-Saxon type, but a fourteenth-century viking. Moreover, the North- 
 ern imagination is more active and powerful than the Teutonic, as the Sagas 
 testify. It is quite clear that we should not have had chivalry as history 
 knows it if Scandinavian blood had never coursed in the slower pulses of 
 Southern tribes. Just how much English literature owes to Northern min- 
 strelsy, and how far the Border Ballads are Keltic, are vexed questions, but will 
 undoubtedly be worked out when investigation shall have been sufficiently 
 turned that way. 
 
 P. 130, par. 2, 11. 12-15. The best illustrations maybe drawn from art. 
 In a portrait the lines of the face are * effects given,' which produce by imagi- 
 nation conceptions of character as the sufficient cause of each. So the pose, 
 the look, in sculptured forms. 
 
 P. 131, 1. 7. Cf. Paradise Lost, I. 228-238. Wherein is Milton's method 
 different? 
 
 P. 131, par. 2, 11. 6-8. Of course Dante's ultimate purpose, as essentially 
 in every canto here, is to make us imagine, in some measure, the plight of the 
 souls in the several circles. He begins by showing simply how the spirits 
 were attracted to him; but before he gets thus far he fills us potentially with 
 the idea of the heat and the sensations it must have caused to him. The final 
 effect is of course a step beyond — how must the spirits have felt ! This is 
 attended to formally in XXVII. 49-51, where Dante says on entering the 
 flame, 
 
 Come fui dentro, in un bogliente vetro 
 Gittato mi sareijjer rinfrescarml ; 
 Tanto er' ivi 1' incendio senza metro. 
 
 When I had entered, into boiling glass 
 I would have cast myself to cool my heat; 
 So greatly was that burning beyond measure. 
 
NOTES. 409 
 
 Of course the flame described was not really red, — unless the light from 
 the sun was more intense. The apparent redness was only the mind's infer- 
 ence, just as on bright days sometimes, in contrast with the electric flashes 
 under motor street-cars, common sunlight will seem ruddy. Dante knew 
 nothing of such intensity of light as is to-day produced in various ways, but 
 marvellously divined some of the phenomena now so familiar to us. 
 
 P. 131, par. 2. The relative importance of the three notions, logically, 
 would require that the circles marked ' common cause ' and ' experiential effect 
 intended ' should exchange places and names. That the examples here do 
 not involve intellectual inference merely will be apparent after a few compari- 
 sons, for instance Bedwulf, 11. 59-63 (Garnett's translation) : — 
 
 To him were four children, reckoned in order, 
 Born into the world, to the prince of the people, 
 Heorogar and Hrothgar and Halga the good. 
 I heard that Elan was wife of Ongentheow, 
 The warlike Scylfing's bed-companion. 
 
 Here the purpose of the last two lines is evidently not to cause us to know 
 whom Elan married so much as to let us know there was such a person, — 
 that Healfdene had one daughter as well as four sons; and the reader's mind 
 does not let go the meaning until it has made an inference to that effect. With 
 this compare the example at bottom of p. 126. See also Professor Huxley's 
 paper, Zadig's Method Applied to Science, Nineteenth Century, VII. 929. The 
 undeclared attentions of the wooer serve as ' effects given ' to the imagination 
 of his inamorata, who reads in them an abiding preference, as well as the hap- 
 piness of betrothal and marriage. Likewise ' faith,' in the best sense, — to 
 vulgar minds nothing but blind credulity, is in reality discernment of this 
 same spiritual sort. 
 
 Practically, in literature as well as art, there may be several ' effects given,' 
 each of which shall consecutively and progressively cause imagination to 
 apprehend the ' common cause.' A good example of the simplest sort is found 
 in the Danish Ballad Elvehoi, ' Hill of the Elves.' The principal stanzas illus- 
 trative of the present point are these : — 
 
 I was a youth who rode wooing one day 
 
 Through rosy valleys at will. 
 I rode till weary I laid forlorn 
 
 My head on the fairies' hill. 
 
 I laid my head on the hill of the elves, 
 
 My eyes were as lead to see. 
 There came three fairies trooping forthwith, 
 
 And fain would they speak with me. 
 
 One struck up a song at the word; 
 So sweetly did she begin, 
 
410 NOTES. 
 
 The rushing streams in their rocky beds, 
 They paused and were still therein. 
 
 The rushing streams in their rocky beds, 
 
 They paused and were still therein, 
 And the little wee fish in the salt-sea flood, 
 
 He rested upon his fin. 
 
 The little wee fish in the salt-sea flood, 
 
 He rested upon his fin, 
 And the many wild deer that roamed the wood, 
 
 They forgot all their springs to spring. 
 
 And the many wild deer that roamed the wood, 
 
 They forgot all their springs to spring, 
 And the little wee birds in the tree-tops sat, 
 
 And essayed not their songs to sing. 
 
 Here is a very simple problem, — how to hint to imagination the charm of 
 a fairy's singing; and here is the true solution. A simple ' effect given ' will 
 not answer the purpose; the imagination must be kept to the thought until 
 sufficiently aroused. Hence the successive ' effects,' and the repetitions. This 
 is also the method in musical compositions of the highest class, and in paint- 
 ing. Moreover, an ' intended experiential effect ' — as conspicuously happens 
 later in this ballad may serve as the ' effect given ' of another process, and 
 another * experiential effect intended.' 
 
 P. 132, 1. 7. Empiric. Thus it is clear why ' experimental ' is well applied 
 to the operation of imagination in such cases. The mind can only try to com- 
 prehend experiential truths. But it cannot utter so much as it experiences, 
 directly. "The highest cannot be spoken." But the imagination can be 
 communicated with to the uttermost of a poet's meaning through indirect 
 means, or ' effects.' 
 
 P. 133, Note 1. See Ency. Brit.; Vasari, I. 93-122; or Quilt'er's Giotto, 
 p. 32. The last-named work thus relates the incident referred to : " Boniface 
 VIII. was desirous of adding to the decorations of St. Peter's, and sent one of 
 his courtiers from Treviso to Tuscany to ascertain what kind of man Giotto 
 might be, and what were his works. On his way the messenger received 
 designs from various artists in Siena, and then came to Giotto, told him of 
 his mission, and no doubt showed him the elaborate designs which he had 
 received from the Sienese artists. Whereupon Giotto drew with one sweep 
 of his arm a circle in red ink, of perfect accuracy, and gave it to the messen- 
 ger, refusing to send any other design; 'whereby,' says Vasari, 'the Pope and 
 such of his courtiers as were well versed in the subject perceived how far 
 Giotto surpassed all the other painters of his time.' " 
 
 P. 134, par. 2, 1. 12. Iliad III. 121-244. Note the length of the dialogue. 
 A full exhibit of Gothic instances — or rather of nearest approximation to the 
 
NOTES. 411 
 
 Gothic manner of art — in the classic poets is being prepared. No other 
 example so genuine as the one just referred to has yet been found. Such 
 instances as 77. I. 7, 49, and 52 are not properly ' effects ' at all, rather items 
 of ' sympathetic ' or ' interpretative ' description. (See p. 363.) Homer is 
 first and chief among poets who say high things by the direct method. But 
 he does not speak the highest, — perhaps is greatest in that he does not try. 
 In this connection cf. Carlyle, Lects. on the Hist, of Lit., p. 77. How Gothic 
 aspiration has manifested itself in learning, in contrast with the spirit of Alex- 
 andrian and Byzantine scholarship, is excellently illustrated by Browning in 
 Grammarian 's Funeral. 
 
 P. 135, 1. 6. The principle in Gothic art is the same as we have seen under- 
 lying all figures, — the law of spiritual equivalences. Hence the small may be 
 taken to indicate the great. See p. 348, par. 2. 
 
 P. 138, 11. 8-1 1. The history of the change from Romanticism to Realism, 
 though much has been written about the ' nature school,' the advance to prob- 
 ability, the ' Life school,' etc., is yet but imperfectly comprehended. Of course, 
 the only complete data for the study are found in novels. The types do not 
 chronologically succeed each other, but often prevail together. Realism has 
 its beginnings as far back as Chaucer, who indeed outrivals some exponents of 
 the movement that stand high to-day. 
 
 P. 141, 1. 20. Realism does not consist, as by some supposed, in choice 
 and treatment of ugly and forbidding themes. It finds the good and true in 
 humble and unexpected quarters. Perhaps there is no better example than 
 Tolstoi's Cossacks. It is not denied that the Frenchman may get satisfaction 
 and even delight from the novels of Zola, but the Anglo-Saxon cannot. Natu- 
 ralism cannot be a mode of art, because it cannot inspire. It may influence, 
 but not like painting, rather as photography. 
 
 Under Gothicism, apparently, until further characteristics are developed, 
 must be included products of the Russian school in literature, art, and music. 
 
 P. 141, par. 2, 1. 4. Shakespeare seems not to wish to cast destiny, but 
 only to interpret it, — to separate and identify its threads. It has been said 
 that Shakespeare makes but few plots, and in so far is wanting in originality. 
 Is it not because he was too great a realist? Given the web of a destiny 
 already woven, he is glad to unravel it. But he is not rashly willing to attempt 
 weaving one. 
 
 P. 142, par. 2, 11. 1-3. Moreover, a distinctively Gothic spirit, in spite of 
 the lightness of the theme, pervades the Parlamenl of Foules. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — Work in this chapter will depend, in a 
 greater degree than even hitherto, on the maturity and attainments of the 
 student. If thoroughly prepared to study the chapter as a whole, he may be 
 set at any topic included in it, at the choice or pleasure of the instructor. In 
 
412 NOTES. 
 
 the main, it will probably be found best to follow the points as given, com- 
 mencing with the direct expatiatory manner of the Mabinogion or Ossian, as 
 contrasted with the indirect and suppressive mode of the Bedwulf and the 
 Sagas. When the topic of ' effects ' is reached, let the students, so far as pos- 
 sible, have rein. Show the class by one or two examples from actual observa- 
 tion that there is nothing in the process at all peculiar, — that it is the method 
 of business as well as poetry. A merchant, for example, advertises for an office- 
 boy. Twenty-five applicants answer the call. The merchant watches the 
 movements and demeanor of each, and finally makes a selection. He has 
 observed various ' effects ' : in one, neatness of dress; in another, well-bred 
 civility; in another, scrupulous care of hands or hair; in another, signs of the 
 cigarette habit or reckless companions. In each of these ' effects ' he reads 
 the ' common cause,' and from that interprets the ' experiential effect,' or the 
 serviceableness and efficiency of the candidate. After the principle has been 
 made clear, send out the class to find two examples, one, the best obtainable, 
 from books; another, — if possible within the range of personal knowledge, 
 from practical life. By all means prevent the student from associating these 
 principles with some certain page or chapter of a book : make him so clear in 
 his first experiences with them that they will become a part of himself, that 
 he will refer them to his own consciousness as the last authority. As to the 
 Ballads, the ' schools,' the history of architecture and art, so much time and 
 attention should be given as is consistent with the maturity of the class. 
 Let further exercises be set, in which the student shall find such and such 
 illustrations where he can. If there is a gallery of paintings accessible to the 
 class, have each member interpret, in writing, the ' common cause ' or char- 
 acter from the expression or pose or mien of some significant portrait or 
 statue, and determine the impressions he has as to what such a person under 
 given circumstances would do or say. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Page 145, 1. 2. As to the almost Christian conception of this divinity, see 
 Anderson's Norse Mythology, or Ency. Brit. Concerning the question whether 
 this myth is a product of the Northern mind or only a far-off reflection from 
 the Christ of the Southern or Eastern Church, it is hardly possible to refer to 
 anything in English, v. The subject has been long under investigation by Scan- 
 dinavian scholars, who will doubtless one day find out the truth. The latest 
 contribution known to me at present writing is Sophus Bugge's Studier over 
 de nordiske Cude- og Jettesagns Oprindelse : Christiania, 1889. 
 
 P. 145, 1. 8. The notion that our modern civilization is a compound of 
 merely ' Hellenism ' and ' Hebraism ' has been scarcely challenged since 
 Arnold's Culture and Anarchy appeared; and one sees it repeated in various 
 
NOTES. 413 
 
 forms. It is not true that the Jews were a race of high ideals outside the 
 religious sphere. Monogamy, chivalry, and ' honor ' are in no sense of Hebrew, 
 or even of Grecian, inspiration. 
 
 P. 146, par. 2, 1. 23. The imagination perforce turns simple facts into mys- 
 teries. By appealing to this preference for fancies over fact, not only Shake- 
 speare and like artists accomplish their ends, but also unprincipled men in 
 practical life. The vender of nostrums has but to produce testimonials of 
 marvelous cures, and half the public believe, though admitting that real evi- 
 dence is wanting. The chief success of magic in its day was the readiness of 
 people to believe subjectively in what was objectively impossible. It is only 
 through experience that the ego learns to be skeptical. It is no fault in the 
 imagination that it so readily kindles at a hint of the mysterious. It is endowed 
 and adapted for higher verities alone, and is not content in any case that the 
 spiritual element should be unapparent. See p. 349. 
 
 P. 147, par. 2, 1. 14. Compare Shakespeare's treatment of Coriolanus in 
 the fourth scene of that play. Here Macbeth's strength and daring are rela- 
 tive and incidental. In the former play it is the main purpose of the author 
 to exhibit Coriolanus as in these characteristics without a rival. To have made 
 Macbeth a Coriolanus would have rendered him too insensible to remorse and 
 fear of vengeance. It would have been easy for Shakespeare to give us a 
 stronger Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, but such could not have met the con- 
 ditions he later wants. They could not have suffered enough to. make the 
 tragedy he intended. 
 
 P. 148, par. 2, 1. 5. This is of course what is often called ' reading between 
 the lines.' Nothing that belongs veritably to art is interpretable otherwise than 
 from ' effects,' through implied causes, to conclusions. 
 
 P. 151, par. 2, 1. 7. The student will be assisted in understanding Dun- 
 can's character by reading Holinshed, as quoted by Furness ( Var. Macbeth, 
 p. 355 ff.), or the introduction in Clarke and Wright's, or Rolfe's, edition of 
 the play. 
 
 P. 154, par. 2. Shakespeare's greatness is demonstrated not more com- 
 pletely by the things he does than by the things he leaves undone. To have 
 had Leontes and Hermione exchange a syllable at the close of the Winter's 
 Tale would have spoiled the play. To have shown the banquet here, or to 
 have allowed the audience to see Duncan again after he entered the castle- 
 gate, would have weakened the after-effect immeasurably. But what drama- 
 tist, save Shakespeare, would have left these things undone? 
 
 P. 157, par. 3, 1. 7. Compare the repeated calls of Horatio and Marcellus 
 to Hamlet (I. v.) ; of Emilia to Othello (V. ii.) ; also the last paragraph but 
 one in Sohrab and Rustum. Let the student find similar expedients in like 
 situations. 
 
414 NOTES. 
 
 p. 159, par. 2, 1. 4. It is by no means certain that Shakespeare intended 
 that we should see the crown of Scotland on Macbeth's head at all. 
 
 P. 169, par. 3, 1. 8. This peculiar means of arousing imagination or the 
 feelings is an example of the ' negative method,' for which see Chapters XV. 
 and XVII. 
 
 P. 173, par. 3, 11. 5-8. It is well and proper to study Elizabethan English 
 for the sake of better understanding Shakespeare, hardly to study Shakespeare 
 merely or mainly for the purpose of knowing Elizabethan English. Aside 
 from the preposterousness of making the sublimest of all works of genius 
 merely the occasion of language study, the subject is apt to be repellant, and 
 the student in consequence leaves Shakespeare as Shakespeare ever after 
 severely alone. On the other hand, I have observed that when a student has 
 come to feel the power of Shakespeare he will consent to any drudgery the 
 better to know his meaning. 
 
 P. 173, Note. Shakespeare, it will be remembered, has caused the Doctor 
 in our hearing to give the order (V. i. 75) "Still {i.e. constantly] keep eyes 
 upon her." If she had " by self and violent hands taken off her life," the fact 
 would not have been surmised merely, but certainly known. If her death had 
 been made to occur at night, it might appear that she had outwitted her 
 keepers; but it is clear that it takes place in the day time. It is hence evi- 
 dent that the last paragraph of the play is inconsistent with what has gone 
 before, and. must have been added by a different hand. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — Let it be remembered that this is not a 
 chapter, more than the preceding, to be simply read, — and under no circum- 
 stances should it be recited, — but is given to form the basis for full study of 
 all the ' effects ' employed. If it is not possible to study the play as a whole, 
 select certain integral parts, as scenes iii., iv., and v. of Act I., ii. and iii. of 
 II., iv. of III., and i. of V. Choose some special ' effect ' and see that every 
 student comprehends it fully. If the class is strong enough, it may be well to 
 select 11. 28-51 — already considered (pp. 36, 37) for their associations — of 
 I. v. The principal ' effect ' here is of course Lady Macbeth's excitement over 
 realizing how great is the burden she proposes to assume. If she can thus 
 realize the awfulness of the deed beforehand, yet will do it, there must be a 
 sufficient cause impelling her, — to wit, ambition, In this, indulged at such 
 cost of pain before the crime is actually committed, we read what will be the 
 real experience after it. The whole of the coming tragedy is contained poten- 
 tially in this scene, and this situation in the scene. When the student has 
 comprehended so much, he can understand anything in the play. If the play 
 cannot be taken entire, the analysis of separate parts may be assigned topi- 
 cally. If the work is essayed from the beginning, it may be well with young 
 
NOTES. 415 
 
 learners to postpone the first two scenes and make the opening exercise start 
 with iii. 38. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Page 174, par. 2, 1. 17. The student will of course have noted that Fran- 
 cisco is a common soldier, but Bernardo and Marcellus, who are to stand on 
 guard responsibly during the later hours of the night, are ' officers.' Thus 
 Shakespeare justifies the presence of men who shall be worthy companions of 
 Horatio, and also of Hamlet later. 
 
 P. 175, 1. 14. The loftiness of tone with which Marcellus begins his story 
 is a culminating ' effect.' We say to ourselves, ' what has this man seen to 
 make him feel thus? ' And just as we have begun to imagine something por- 
 tentous enough to explain it as the ' cause,' the ghost appears to intensify even 
 this impression. There is nothing in Shakespeare more inimitable than the 
 skill here shown. 
 
 P. 175, par. 2, 1. 13. In case of Banquo's ghost, that first comes in leering 
 and shaking its gory locks, it is possible to make the objective aspect more 
 terrible, as is done (p. 162) on its return. But here the ghost of the elder 
 Hamlet is clothed in such majesty that no like change is possible. The deep- 
 ened effect must therefore come subjectively through preparation of the 
 audience. 
 
 P. 177, par. 2, 1. 13. The reader should study with care the various ' effects ' 
 used by the author in getting Hamlet before our minds. We note him first 
 standing silently with his eyes upon the floor. The court is in gaudy dress, 
 befitting the recent nuptials of the king and his mother, but he dares appear 
 notwithstanding in inky garments. When time comes that he speak, his first 
 words publish his fearless intolerance and contempt. And so on to the culmi- 
 nation in the paragraph of effectual rejoinder to his mother. 
 
 P. 179, 1. 9. Ophelia obeys her father because of his assertion that her 
 fair fame is in jeopardy. People, he has said, are remarking her conduct. 
 That is enough, though the statement is mainly false, and Ophelia knows it 
 utterly unjust. This scene is put together largely to enable Polonius to refer 
 to Mrs. Grundy and give his order. That Ophelia should not vindicate her 
 rights in any proper way, but wholly avoid Hamlet's sight, as she now does, 
 is an ' effect ' which fixes her place with us at the outset. 
 
 P. 179, par. 3, 1. 6. It is doubtless clear that these are further preparations 
 of like sort with those remarked before the return of the ghost in scene i. It 
 will not do to make the third appearance of the ghost merely a repetition of 
 the second. The imagination of the audience must be aroused to see in this 
 visitation what it has not known before. There is evidently little that can be 
 used but contrast; but how much the author finds of that ! So far as I know, 
 
416 NOTES. 
 
 it is not customary, in rendering this scene, to attempt producing the sound of 
 ordnance; but that is a mistake. The most telling of all the effects should 
 not thus be singled out for omission. 
 
 P. 180, 1. 2. Ghost from hell, or rather from purgatory, as 11. 11-13 make 
 clear. Shakespeare apparently permits some vagueness here, that the imagi- 
 nation of his Protestant audiences may unreflectively make the most and worst 
 of his hints. Cf. 11. 3 and 93 of this scene. In the last reference Hamlet, it 
 will be noted, is reluctant to "couple hell" with the rest of his apostrophe, 
 because of his father's supposed sojourn there. 
 
 P. 183, 1. 3. After the ghost appears and Hamlet acts insanely, the king 
 suspects. 
 
 P. 183, par. 2, 1. 9. A positive 'effect' causes us to infer experientially a 
 positive cause. A negative ' effect ' causes us to infer there is no such cause 
 as we supposed existed. Lady Macbeth declares to her husband that if he 
 will but ' look up clear,' she will do all else. Here is a positive ' effect,' in 
 which we read such tigress-like ferocity that we are persuaded she can and 
 will do the deed alone. But after we believe and expect, she proves — even 
 with the help of drink — unequal to the murder. Through this negative ' effect ' 
 we conceive instead of fiendish cruelty the tenderest sensibilities, and are thus 
 prepared for the sleep-walking scene in the last act. As has been pointed out, 
 p. 185, when we find ourselves deceived in our assumptions, we amend them 
 by taking their contrary. The imagination insists on seeing the whole of that 
 which to our chagrin we have proved true in part. We expect good news 
 because we think there can be no miscarriage of our schemes; but when the 
 first ill rumor comes, we declare there will be no success at all. If we believe 
 evil reports concerning some stranger that turn out to be false, we shall prob- 
 ably later think of him more highly than we are warranted. 
 
 One of the commonest uses of the negative method with imagination is seen 
 in Irony. In proper forms of this figure that which ought to be true is set 
 forth in face of its evident contrary. 
 
 P. 183, par. 3, 1. 7. The reader should here consider whether it would 
 have been possible to make Othello a hero by the positive method. When he 
 has thought this out he will understand that all like characters, to reach the 
 sympathies, must be handled in the same way, — that Hiawatha, for instance, 
 if constructed on the negative plan, might have succeeded. 
 
 P. 186, 1. 3. Of course the secret of the effect is in the associations, as also 
 in Hamlet's first considerable utterance (I. ii. 76-86). Compare later the 
 Duke's paragraph with Othello's (iii. 221-239), noting the inorganic, pedantic 
 phrases of the former. Observe that both of Othello's deliverances are clearly 
 ' effects,' in which we read a magnificent self-respect. Note in comparison 
 how the like characteristic paragraphs of Coriolanus, through the associations 
 of the language, evince a vitiated self-respect. 
 
NOTES. 417 
 
 P. 187, 1. 32. Btabantio now disappears from sight, soon to die from 
 bereavement and chagrin. Shakespeare is no doubt hard upon the man who 
 is the victim of relentless fate. He has no fault but pride, a permissible fail- 
 ing under the circumstances; but Shakespeare keeps him essentially as far 
 from our sympathies, and for like reason, as Polonius himself. 
 
 P. 188, 1. 17. Not so much personal, etc. Othello's words, "I loved her 
 that she did pity them," are an ' effect given,' in which we read the kind and 
 degree of his affection, and also, as the 'experiential effect intended,' the 
 wreck of his felicity. He was flattered by the preference of such a woman; 
 but love her for truest spiritual reasons, he did not and could not. He never 
 understood the real difference between Desdemona and other women of half 
 her worth; hence, when she is accused to him. of grossness, finds no evidence 
 within of its absurd impossibility. Thus the author persuades us potentially 
 in advance that no such Moorish husband will be happy with a Venetian Des- 
 demona. The real Othello may not meet with an Iago who will traduce his 
 wife in the first week of married life, but he will encounter misunderstandings 
 enough to make the union null. The play, as a whole, is not to be interpreted 
 as a mere study of race-differences, rather of a spiritual misalliance. 
 
 P. 188, Note. Is it creditable that such a man as Othello ever existed? In 
 so far as he is idealized beyond what we may believe actual, he is a romantic 
 character. If we decide there is nothing in him beyond what may be or may 
 have been evinced in a single person, it is a realistic creation. Let the reader 
 consider how far the play, in its different characters and situations, is cast 
 according to the one or the other mode of art. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The object of this chapter has been 
 in effect made clear already. It affords means for the study of more complex 
 'effects' of the positive kind, as also of beginning the analysis of the 'effects' 
 called negative. If the instructor can take his class no further in the respec- 
 tive plays than through Act I., he will, if the work can be done thoroughly, 
 enable his students to interpret the rest of each, as well as other plays of 
 Shakespeare and like masterpieces of literature, without further aid. If 
 time forbid the study of both plays, at least take up the negative effects in 
 Othello. 
 
 Note there is scarcely any use of the positive method in this play. We first 
 infer from Iago's and Roderigo's talk that Othello is a man of no brains and 
 no character; on this theory we account for his elopement. But at first sight 
 of Othello we see the inferred cause does not exist, and begin amending our 
 assumptions, which we keep on doing to the very end. At the beginning of 
 scene iii. Shakespeare gives us a lively experience of the dignity and impor- 
 tance of the Venetian Signiory, so that we think Othello will be abashed on 
 
418 NOTES. 
 
 attempting to excuse his marriage. Again, we anticipate from Desdemona a 
 very shamefaced and lame defence of the step she has taken. And so on to 
 the end. We do not expect Roderigo will, at close of IV. ii., so boldly assert 
 his rights. We find ourselves mistaken in assuming that Emilia is too sordid 
 to appreciate Desdemona, for she offers up herself a sacrifice to the truth and 
 goodness of her mistress. We are even wrong in believing Desdemona dead 
 after Othello's hands have been at her throat, for she revives and is heard to 
 speak again. We think Othello disarmed, and begin to wonder what the 
 Venetian Senate will adjudge a fitting punishment, when he ends the tragedy 
 with his life. It was not necessary that the play should be built up thus 
 throughout of negative effects. After Othello is made our hero, the play 
 might have proceeded on the positive plan, but Shakespeare is not minded 
 to shift his method. 
 
 It is doubtless unnecessary to give further suggestions concerning study of 
 this chapter. Let each student write out all the impressions he finds come to 
 him, and identify each in its separate ' effect.' No one student will by any 
 means find all : but by combining all of each with the teacher's supplements, 
 the work should be essentially complete. Aim to possess the student with 
 such command of the modes and confidence in interpretation as will keep 
 him at work in Shakespeare after class-work has ceased. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 PAGE 191, par. 2, 1. 9. Tithonus and Psalm of Life will be recognized as 
 names of poems by Tennyson and Longfellow respectively. The monologues 
 whose titles follow, of course are Browning's. 
 
 P. 191, par. 3, 1. 2. The stage soliloquy is, of course, a clumsy and absurd 
 expedient, in that it assumes that men do or might sensibly talk thus to them- 
 selves just as to others. 
 
 P- !93i P ar - 2 - The peasant girl understood at once from the circumstance 
 of the glove that there was a patriot in distress. None but a nobleman would 
 have a glove to throw, or occasion to attract by it the notice of a peasant 
 woman except for help against the common enemy. 
 
 P. 195, par. 2, 1. 2. As is pointed out in Chaps. X. and XXVI., the 
 conscious principle is all the time learning to work with lighter tools, and thus 
 devises means to stir the imagination as much by the talk of one character 
 with implication of answers by others, as by the whole cast in formal acting. 
 There is, however, still room for finished and complete stage impersonation, 
 which shall bring out subtle hints of meaning and reveal ' effects ' or types 
 not generally revealable to the closest reader. 
 
 P. 195, last line. The society of the Carbonari had disappeared in Italy 
 
NOTES. 419 
 
 before the present poem was published, but Browning has undoubtedly that 
 organization in mind. 
 
 P. 197, 11. 9-15. Of course the poem could scarcely be complete without 
 some hint of the heat in the Southern blood. 
 
 P. 201, 1. 21. Uncanny stanzas. The student will note that weird circum- 
 stances serve as ' effects ' to imagination, or as indicative of occult forces in 
 operation. Cf. pp. 146, 349. 
 
 P. 204, poet. 1. 6. Note as the chief ' effect ' of character that the Duchess 
 is not above the least of her serving-folk in spirit, but recognizes true worth 
 everywhere. Cf. like traits in Flight of the Duchess, and Colombe's Birthday. 
 Browning shows little variation of type in his best female characters. 
 
 P. 204, poet. 1. 1 6. What ' effect ' in the implication she would not " let 
 herself be lessoned so "? ( 
 
 P. 204, poet. 1. 21. The revulsion of feeling in the messenger at this last 
 hint is splendid. He has already, with true Italian tact, found out by his 
 inquiries that the Duke is jealous and exacting, — but the thought of possible 
 ' commands ' for his young mistress ! Yet the marriage will take place just 
 the same. 
 
 P. 20s, poet. 11. 1, 2. Of course it must come out somewhere why the 
 Duke has led this visitor up stairs, or the poem will be inartistic. It is a 
 first principle of art that everything that happens shall be accounted for 
 from within. Likewise the reason of the Duke's obtrusive courtesy (" Will't 
 please you sit and look at her?".), which ensures proper detention till the 
 story can be told, and at the end a deft return to the earlier subject is not 
 omitted. 
 
 P. 206, par. 3, 1. 4. See Ruskin's remarks upon the poem, Modern Paint- 
 ers, vol. iv. p. 359 ff. Am. ed. 
 
 P. 206, par. 3, 1. 6. The poem abounds in ' effects ' of the negative kind. 
 Note (1. 19) the terrible business-like " God curse the same !■" 
 
 P. 207, 1. 3. For another example of the same method in monologue, cf. 
 Andrea del Sarto. The necessity of good incentives and a noble inspiration 
 was never shown more powerfully. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — This chapter is intended not only as an 
 aid to the interpretation of Browning's lyrics in general, but especially of his 
 concentrated ' effects.' Each of the poems here discussed should be taken up, 
 and, just as in the exercises suggested for the last chapter, exhaustively inven- 
 toried for hints and impressions. If it is necessary to begin even lower down, 
 the teacher may start with Home Thoughts from Abroad, requiring first that 
 each student give, in writing, the ' theme ' or purpose of the poem. Let him 
 have enough discussion on this point to bring out all there is to be said about 
 
420 NOTES. 
 
 the poem as a whole. When it is clearly understood that Browning meant to 
 put his reader in subjective possession of the experiences one would have in 
 England in April, and to suggest his own unlike surroundings, set the task 
 of ascertaining how the subjective experiences are induced. Follow this plan 
 with The Boy and the Angel, or The Patriot, and thus approach the more 
 intricate poems. The many handbooks and introductions to Browning's poetry 
 will supply what to different students or instructors may be lacking. As a 
 good poem for the final study of ' effects ' with mature scholars, Caliban upon 
 Setebos may be attempted. As with the preceding chapter and the two fol- 
 lowing, the work here may be postponed or omitted with junior learners. 
 With all classes fitted to pursue it, the teacher should require that each 
 student sketch out a plausible expansion of one or more of the monologues to 
 the regulation five-act form. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Page 210, par. 2, 1. 13. Dante once declared that neither rhyme nor 
 metre had ever forced him to say aught in a manner different from what he 
 would. Shakespeare, no doubt, might have made the same boast; but what 
 poet else in the world's literature ? Poets of the second class have been often 
 known to put up with bad form rather than impair their meaning, being 
 unable to compass both. But poetasters are generally content to put up with 
 bad meaning rather than forego available rhymes and striking phrases. 
 
 P. 2ii, par. 2, 1. 12. A seer is, of course, in strictness, a prophet; but the 
 term has come to be applied to any one who can discern the open secrets of 
 man and nature, and in general the ultimate meanings of things intuitively. 
 It is, indeed, not clear but that, in the inspired sense of the word, the prophet 
 reads the future in the present. 
 
 P. 212, 1. 3. Truth effectually apprehended produces righteousness; 
 beauty, love. But these two are one, though the mind, on account of its lim- 
 itations, must conceive them separately. The Good is a term by which we 
 recognize what is of benefit to man. What does not conduce to the edifica- 
 tion or profit of the individual or the race cannot be called by this name. 
 Some flowers and animals are beautiful, but not good. In the last analysis, 
 the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, and their contraries, indicate only 
 modes of the mind's cognition. See p. 348. 
 
 P. 212, 1. 4. But neither poets nor seers are by any means so narrow as 
 they seem. Keats has said, 'Truth is Beauty, Beauty Truth.' Even Carlyle, 
 rugged and harsh in his John-Knox nature, could have been a poet, as his 
 Heroes and Hero Worship, Burns Essay, and French Revolution prove. In 
 no poem ever written was there more use of what is to be felt for what is to 
 
NOTES. 421 
 
 be known than in the last-named work. As history it is, of course, a fail- 
 ure; but that is true of other attempts than his, and oftener because there is 
 too little feeling than too much. The man who writes only generalizations, 
 without giving first the facts, writes history to as little purpose as Carlyle. If 
 we are first to know the facts before we read our history, Carlyle's volumes 
 are as good as Green's, and, as interpretative literature, far better. See 
 
 P- 3°3- 
 
 P. 212, 1. 5. Many will insist that Browning should be added to this trio, 
 and I am not sure but that the claim is just. It is not his defects of form, 
 but undoubted inferiority to Goethe, and all three, in intuitive apprehension 
 of scientific truth, that would raise a doubt. In the Sordello he outlines the 
 main principles of development with great clearness many years before Spen- 
 cer's or Darwin's theories were put forth. Yet his genius is essentially poetic, 
 — that is, imaginative, emotional. 
 
 P. 212, par. 2, 1. 16. Taste implies some exercise of the imagination, but 
 not the highest ; hence is not generally applied to its activity in the sphere of 
 poetry and art. See Chap. XXX. 
 
 P. 215, par 2, 1. 23. Of course it is not intimated that the man who has 
 written one book shall not write another if he have true occasion, or a thou- 
 sand, if he honestly believe they will each serve some need. But the author 
 who has ' made a hit ' with one book should not try if the public will endure 
 another, unless sure he has another message. Otherwise it is like to prove a 
 wasteful method of oblivion. If he care for fame alone, let him be consid- 
 erate of his public. Manzoni's single novel will always be read with wonder, 
 while some of Scott's twenty-nine are already considered ' children's stories.' 
 The ethics of authorship is no less merciless and exacting than even the ethics 
 of behavior. 
 
 P. 216, 1. 4. There are few men of normal endowments and proper cul- 
 ture but have matter for a chapter, or page, or at least a line, too invaluable to 
 be spared, that will never be given to the world except by them. The assump- 
 tion that a few men are to do the thinking and make the books and articles 
 for the rest of the race is very foolish. The time no doubt will come when 
 the common mind with a single new idea will be able to contribute it to 
 society, and when professional authors will find it hard to publish, merely 
 upon their reputation, books of no intrinsic worth. 
 
 P. 216, par 2, 1. 1. Civilization, our Christian-Teutonic civilization, is 
 a strange mosaic, into which Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Gothic, Celtic, and 
 numerous other elements have entered. In coming time doubtless all races 
 will touch each other, and appropriate as well as impart all best knowledge 
 and inspiration. Cf. p. 365. 
 
 P. 218, 1. 16. It is, of course, these types that take-offs and travesties are 
 
422 NOTES. 
 
 based upon. It may be noted that of all men who ever wrote in ' high 
 seriousness,' Shakespeare has been travestied least. 
 
 P. 219, P ar - 2 - The author might have hinted much beside, — as the 
 height at which this bird flies for reasons of security, and the distance to 
 which it migrates in the northern solitudes that it may be unmolested in its 
 summer haunts by animals or man. Bryant has indeed suggested both these 
 things to such as are expert in ornithology. To have brought them to the 
 attention of other readers would have spoiled the proportion. 
 
 P. 222, par. 2, 1. 14. In other words, direct quotation, under whatsoever 
 circumstances, is of the essence of dramaticism. 
 
 P. 227, 1. 3. But the author has already hinted to our fancy that this is no 
 bullying suitor, but a man of ideals, in Gaucelm's " I'd noticed he had a 
 brow," and Adolf's preceding and following paragraphs. 
 
 P. 227, par. 2, 1. 5. Compare Shakespeare's method with Hermione, 
 Imogen, — indeed, with every other of his women. There is no effort to 
 idealize, only selection of the manner and the moment of presentation. 
 Browning's ' strokes ' are not concealed as strokes. Shakespeare understood 
 women even more perfectly, if possible, than men, and portrays them with a 
 larger sympathy. 
 
 P. 234, 1. 9. To be convinced that Shakespeare perfectly understood the 
 difference between the Rome of the older days and of Caesar's, one has but 
 to study Coriolanus in connection with Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
 P. 235, par. 3, 1. 8. Cf. p. 253, par. 2, ad fin. 
 
 P. 237, 1. 12. Nothing would, perhaps, so condition Caesar's greatness to 
 the fancy as making him at this point hold his hand to his ear to catch 
 Antony's words. Shakespeare has not ventured such an expedient here, 
 but takes the next safe substitute. The devices used thus far to Caesar's dis- 
 advantage are no doubt, literally speaking, exaggerations, but spiritually true 
 nevertheless. Shakespeare merely withholds from us for the time being the 
 contrary types of strength and greatness which we know are in the man, and 
 indeed are permitted to see in turn, after we have consented to his death, 
 near the end of the second act. 
 
 P. 237, par. 2. One of the worst of the few inconsistencies permitted any- 
 where by Shakespeare occurs in the representations of Casca. Here he 
 drawls, and seems both scant and slow of wit. In the next scene he has 
 lost his bluntness, and speaks in such wise that his account of the storm can 
 be used as a sublime premonition of the events to follow. 
 
 P. 237, par. 3, 1. 8. It might appear, on unconsidered reading, that the 
 author here introduces a cause too great for the effect secured. It is evident 
 that Portia is one of the strongest and noblest of Shakespeare's women, yet 
 appears only twice, and exerts only an infinitesimal part of the influence 
 
NOTES. 423 
 
 native to her personality. On closer study it becomes clear that the author 
 keeps her from further presence in the play to avoid making her the real 
 centre of interest. How important was to him the task in hand is seen from 
 the fact he introduces and uses even a Portia to secure our sympathies for 
 Brutus and the cause he represents. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The highest literary culture must include 
 consideration of the questions, how is literature made; what materials are 
 proper to choose; how should they be handled; and this not at all for the 
 purpose of training students for authorship, but of enabling them to realize 
 more fully and effectively the power of letters. As has been implied already, 
 a knowledge of art does not consist in the power to produce through intuitive 
 inspiration, but reflectively and discriminatingly to comprehend and appreciate. 
 The man who gets most from music, outside the joy of creation, is not the 
 composer, nor even the performer, but the understanding listener. The power 
 to interpret art of any sort is not to be taken merely as an accomplishment, 
 but as the means of reading influence at first hand in the outside world. 
 
 As to methods of putting this chapter into effect, advice is no doubt unnec- 
 essary. The topic calls but for a co-ordination of what has been learned in 
 preceding chapters. Students may be set first at search for a list of poems or 
 dramas illustrating the lowest form of art ; namely, such as serve up for the 
 reader only palpable spiritual truths. When different examples and degrees 
 have been adequately discussed, poems of the next grade may be called for, 
 and should include, so far as may be, the examples used for study under espe- 
 cial heads preceding. Let the openings of prominent poems be compared, 
 and relative excellence through obedience to the principle referred to on 
 p. 221. Finally, according to time at disposal and capacity of the class, 
 examples of the highest form of art should be sought out, and some one or 
 more studied with especial care. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Page 240, 1. 6. But the child's first notions of its environment are wholly 
 spiritual. It credulously and even superstitiously clothes every object it has 
 not yet comprehended with mysterious, perhaps with dangerous, powers. At 
 length, better advised, it corrects its subjectivity, but with the effect, as always 
 by the indirect method of imagination, of recognizing nothing phenomenal 
 anywhere. Then the true education begins, discovering little by little the 
 ultimate truths of man and nature. 
 
 P. 242, 1. 16. We begin life and knowledge in the physical sphere, where 
 we learn the inviolability and inexorableness of material laws. If certain con- 
 
424 NOTES. 
 
 ditions are not met, death ensues. In answering the exactions of physical 
 existence, discipline begins. 
 
 P. 244, 1. 19. It is not merely education that ensures reverence, but that 
 which education is presumed to enable, — power to read the 'open secrets.' 
 The man who can do that, even if Carlylean in disposition, is at the head of 
 things. It is an ideal, not of knowing what others know, but do not know, 
 that admits men to this standard. In the last analysis it is only the power of 
 recognizing ultimate beauty or ultimate truth. 
 
 P. 246, 1. 4. The curse of labor is in the fact it drags the soul down to the 
 muscles, harnesses it, as it were, to a pick or shovel. Yet there is compensa- 
 tion in the compound increase of earnings saved. Physical labor is the foun- 
 dation of wealth ; and by thrift before marriage the well-advised young man 
 may save what in middle life will raise him from an employe to an employer, 
 and give him leisure in later years. The hope of mankind is not in the 
 abolition of labor as such; for unless society were ready for leisure it would 
 prove a universal bane, as the police-record of our holidays in itself makes 
 clear. Idleness has long been known to be a most fertile source of crime. 
 The abolition of household cares by a co-operative system would reduce 
 domestic expenditures one-half, but family discipline would be undermined. 
 Yet the race is gradually being adapted to conditions in which there is less 
 need of grinding physical labor to keep under the violent and sensual. 
 
 P. 249, 1. 10. Science changes intuitive knowledge of the single mind to 
 the reflective knowledge of all. Great ideas or works of art produce classi- 
 cism. In other words, classicism is the mode between successive revelations. 
 Romanticism is a collective name for such revelations. Realism extends the 
 bounds of the select and inspiring by closer estimation of common things. 
 
 P. 249, par. 2, 1. 1 3. ' Renaissance ' is used here and later as a name for 
 the general effect on the Northern mind of full contact with classic culture. 
 This sense of the word is recognized in the Century Dictionary. 
 
 P. 250, par. 2, 1. 24. Illustrations of how the discoveries of the few tend ■ 
 to become the commonplaces of the many abound in the industrial or profes- 
 sional not less than the sesthetic side of life. Hardly » generation ago den- 
 tists were in general self-made, having first studied in the office of some 
 successful practitioner, and then perfected their skill by their own ingenuity 
 and observation. Now all points and processes are taught in schools and dis- 
 cussed in journals. 
 
 P. 252, 1. 3. This is hardly a fair statement. Scientific thought already 
 recognizes that there can be but a single principle in the entire cosmos, and 
 is at present perplexed only concerning its relations with inertia, or what 
 inertia must be in nature, to consist with that one element. This single or 
 ' monistic ' principle we may call Energy, or Will, or (p. 103) Character. See 
 p. 344; also p. 337. 
 
NOTES. 425 
 
 P. 253, par. 2, 1. 2. I do not mean to say that literature is such a serious 
 matter to everybody. There are some men who take nothing seriously; but 
 even such owe most of what they are in their sensibilities to books. They may 
 not themselves read poetry, but they are the sons of fathers or of mothers that 
 have read poets, or at least been influenced by them. Men whose emotional 
 nature is undeveloped will of course eschew poetry; but it does not follow that 
 all who avoid poetry are wanting in sensibility. There are those who have in 
 a sense outgrown the poetry of books, even if they have never read it, but find 
 sufficient occasion for the full exercise of aesthetic feeling in the outside world 
 incidentally every day. (Cf. p. 365.) Let us remember that books are not an 
 end, but a means; that they are to be used, and that their chief use is to 
 make their use unnecessary. 
 
 P. 253, par. 2, 1. 15. ' Morals ' are the generalized ideals of an age or race, 
 or so many of the types (p. 94) found in each mind as are common to all. 
 ' Ideals ' represent such types as are left over and above what is included in 
 ' morals.' ' Character ' is the sum of a man's habits, or so much of his ideals 
 as he can approximately actualize in his living, but generally has reference to 
 such part of them as are called ' morals.' What he" is further, with respect to 
 ideals proper, is generally spoken of under the name of ' personality.' ' Indi- 
 viduality ' is a term which, in strictness, designates a man's points of differ- 
 ences from other men. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Page 25g. Exhibit of averages. The part of Fabyan counted begins at the 
 second paragraph of p. 363, vol. II., Ellis' ed. Hooker's hundreds commence 
 with the first sentence of the Polity. The average of the first book, 725 
 periods, is 42. Self-Culture was the paper of Channing's computed, 749 
 periods : average of all 25.28. Spenser's figures are for the first 500 periods 
 of the View. Macaulay's Essay on History, here used from the beginning, 
 contains 722 periods : average 23.03. The exhibit from Emerson includes 
 the Divinity College Address and a part of the American Scholar. The aver- 
 age of both, 733 periods, is 20.70. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — A good method for this chapter, if the 
 whole of the prose part of the book can be gone over, is to set the students 
 first the task of ascertaining their individual sentence-averages. Ask them to 
 count with care three hundred sentences from their most recent themes or 
 essays. When the class meets, have the individual averages by hundreds put 
 upon the blackboard, with the final average, and compared. For the second 
 exercise, assign each student some early writer of considerable sentence- 
 proportions, from whom to select and count a passage of three hundred 
 
426 NOTES. 
 
 sentences. The results from these should be reported in the several hundreds 
 and compared as before. In the third exercise, select modern authors of 
 short-period styles, requiring five hundred sentences of each student. If the 
 work in this part of the book must be hurried, the class may be passed to 
 the next chapter. Otherwise such further investigation of points suggested 
 on pp. 261, 262, may be added as, in a given case, may seem most profitable. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Page 265, par. 3, 1. 8. We take 500 periods as the basis of comparison in 
 this chapter and following topics, not because it will in all cases furnish the 
 true average, but one near enough for practical purposes. For example, com- 
 pare with the exhibit from Macaulay below the following, from over 5000 
 periods of the Essays: average of predications, 2.17; of simple sentences, 36. 
 
 The results in predications and per cent of simple sentences here given, 
 as also in clause-saving in chap. XXV., are from the investigations of Mr. 
 Gerwig. (See Preface.) The figures in the main have not been verified, but 
 it is believed will be found correct, having been computed with especial care. 
 The student will note that as the averages of predication descend, the per 
 cent of simple sentences rises. Let him observe whether there seems any 
 sustained proportion between the numerical and the predication average in 
 different authors. 
 
 P. 268, 1. 3. With the work of examining the course of sentential change 
 in English in this and following chapters, belongs also inquiry into the history 
 of development in other languages. The tendency in Latin to use the ablative 
 absolute and save indicative assertions by throwing other men's statements 
 into infinitive and subjunctive constructions, and the necessity in Greek of 
 expressing antecedent actions by aorist participles, are products of the same 
 instinct to reduce predication. Homer averages about three predications per 
 period; Virgil, a little over. Cicero's De Senectute shows predications 3.22; per 
 cent simple sentences, 21 ; Herodotus, predications 2.63; simple sentences, 30. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — Each student should be set the task of 
 determining the average of predications and per cent of simple sentences, on 
 the basis of 500 periods, for some author of an earlier century, also for one of 
 the standard moderns. After this, which will take the time of two exercises, 
 it will be well to have him compute his own predicational average and per 
 cent of simple sentences. All results should be written upon the blackboard 
 for comparison and discussion. For further investigation, the class may work 
 at some prominent author, co-operatively, to determine his exact averages, or 
 attempt comparison with styles outside of English. 
 
NOTES. 427 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Page 269, 1. 1. The first step, we may say, in sentence development is 
 ejaculation or exclamation, in which there is one verb or force-word per idea. 
 Children begin to talk by using the names of the objects they desire, or the 
 actions they wish performed, as interjections. 
 
 P. 271, 1. 9. If in a given passage there are two hundred finite verbs, it is 
 evident there might be as many as one hundred and ninety-nine co-ordinate 
 conjunctions connecting them. Practically, however, it is seldom that the 
 average of these will be greater than one-third the whole number of predi- 
 cations. 
 
 P. 271, par. 2, 1. 14. Ascham has also twenty-four paragraphs beginning 
 with buts, and six with yets. 
 
 P. 272, 1. 6. There is, of course, no objection to tinkering the punctuation 
 of any text, when our object is to make the given author more practicable; 
 but the pointing in such case will be our own, not his. When we make a 
 writer to have ended a sentence where according to our sentence-sense he 
 should have closed it, but where we know he did not mean to have it stop, 
 the punctuation is inorganic and untrue. 
 
 P. 272, 1. 10. It would seem that in states of imagination which we call 
 sublimity, the mind reverts to the simplest, most child-like modes of expression. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — For the first work under this head, let 
 the best examples of the mode within reach be sought out, and degree of co- 
 ordination determined. If the members of the class know Greek, they may be 
 sent first to the Odyssey for their maximum illustrations. After each has had 
 an experience of his own as to how far co-ordination is used in literature, he 
 may be set some specific task in determining its prevalency and decline in our 
 early writers. The survival of the instinct, as seen in initial ands and buts in 
 modern writers, should be likewise considered. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Page 274, 1. 7. And, we might add, of college training. Perhaps it is not 
 seldom one sees, as I have seen, consecutive letters from reputable graduates 
 
 begun with the stereotyped " Your esteemed favor of the is received, 
 
 and contents noted." But the stenographer and type-writer are fast obliter- 
 ating the differences between oral and written English in the commercial 
 sphere. See p. 283. 
 
 P. 274, 1. 15. That Chaucer and Spenser talked like other people of their 
 respective generations there can be no doubt. Chaucer's ' prologues ' to the 
 
428 NOTES. 
 
 various Tales and Lydgate's London Lickpenny, with other like specimens, 
 show what the speech of men in the fifteenth century was like. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The work in this chapter is simple, 
 rather than scanty. The method of subordination should be traced from 
 Mandeville or earlier to present times. The best examples of authors writing 
 in this style from different centuries should be sought out and compared. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Page 276, 1. 17. Perhaps most children use good subordinated and logi- 
 cal language at ten years. At fifteen such as are quick to imitate the idioms 
 of their elders, or incline to books, will have learned the method of sup- 
 pression. 
 
 P. 277, 1. 20. Sir John Mandeville's Voyages and Travels in the form in 
 which we know it doubtless follows the sentence proportions of the Latin 
 original, — if there was an original, • — but lacks the participial and absolute 
 constructions it would have in a close translation. How excellently it serves 
 in illustrating the beginnings of clause-saving, through use of appositive 
 phrases, is seen by a glance at the exhibit on p. 297. 
 
 The student may compare Morley's edition in the Cassell National Library, 
 as the only easily accessible form of the above work. Unfortunately the edi- 
 tor has incorporated various changes beyond modernization of the spelling, 
 in some cases omitting verbs in true suppressive fashion. All the conjunctions 
 without predication in his edition occur with verbs in the original. 
 
 P. 278. The passages here quoted from Hakluyt, for convenience of the 
 student, are given as in Morley's edition (Cassell's Nat. Lib. vol. i. No. 24), 
 except certain errors are corrected. Tlie sentences respectively will be found 
 on pp. 150, 153, 142, 122, 59, and 152 of that volume. In the passage on 
 p. 263 Morley (p. 141) has set off several lines from the beginning of the 
 original in a sentence by itself. 
 
 P. 280, 1. 9. Compare the condensation of figures developed in Chap. X. 
 It is especially interesting to trace, in this connection, the change of conjunc- 
 tions to prepositions, and the operation of the suppressive instinct by such a 
 process as the extension of because to because of. Unless, the dictionaries 
 tell us, is always a conjunction, and except, a preposition ; and we apprehend 
 clearly the difference in examples like ' she was destitute of accomplishments, 
 except music,' and ' she had acquired no accomplishments, unless [she had 
 acquired] music' Just so long as the mind is conscious that unless carries 
 with it the effect of the verb preceding it will remain conjunctive. But as 
 soon as through familiarity the minds of speaker and hearers stop being 
 
NOTES. 429 
 
 aware that unless in such case is the sign of clause contraction, it will have 
 become a preposition. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher.— To do good work in this chapter the 
 class should have access at least to Mandeville, Chaucer, Fabyan or Hall, 
 Latimer, Ascham, and Lyly, among old writers. The instances of verb-omis- 
 sion with all subordinate conjunctions in each of these authors should be 
 noted. Then a similar group from among modern stylists should be studied. 
 When the mode is fully comprehended, one or two authors of both the older 
 and the later age should be examined exhaustively by co-operation, to deter- 
 mine consistency of usage. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Page 281, par. 2, 1. 10. It turns out, naturally enough, 'since all things 
 come by France,' that the French is the first of modern literatures to abandon 
 a specific book-style, and adopt oral-sentence proportions and structure. Lit- 
 erary prescription in France has had to do rather with terms than larger ele- 
 ments of meaning, though in England, where there has been no Academy to 
 settle questions of propriety, the contrary has been true. , At any rate French 
 is the most easily intelligible of all idioms, because it is the most analytic. 
 All complex or abstruse conceptions must be divided and simplified before 
 they can be expressed in that language. 
 
 P. 283, 1. 12. If the reader has never observed the facts here considered, 
 let him compare the dictated letters with the deliberate autographic missives 
 of some friend or acquaintance. 
 
 P. 285, 1. 12. It is, of course, not easy to find what is the sentence of 
 maximum frequency in oral speech. Different minds will, of course, exhibit 
 personal degrees of curtness or prolixity. A little observation will, however, 
 convince us that in general such sentences will not range much below ten 
 words nor much, if at all, above that number. 
 
 P. 289, 1. 4. Examples of book-periods put into the mouths of common 
 speakers will aid in making the distinction clear. Compare the dialogue sen- 
 tences in the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, or Cooper's Pilot. , 
 
 P. 292, par. 2, Bacon. See pp. 297, 298. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The task is now to ascertain what 
 authors among moderns still incline to synthetic writing, what among earlier 
 stylists helped bring in the analytic manner. Diagrams should be prepared 
 including in distinct curves the several features, — as sentence-length, predi- 
 cation-average, per cent simple sentences, and of clauses saved, — already 
 determined in prominent authors, and the analytic or synthetic quality now to 
 
430 NOTES. 
 
 be added. In each case the number of sentences below the numerical aver- 
 age, as well as those above, should be counted up. The analysis should not 
 close until some comparison of newspaper or magazine English with standard 
 book-styles has been made. Among the latter some member or members of 
 the class should be set at search for the shortest sentence of maximum fre- 
 quency extant. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Page 295, 1. 6. The native perceptions of the mind are intuitive. When 
 it cannot immediately handle its matter, its activity becomes reflective, and is 
 held to its task by determinative energy. When by a reflective process the 
 mind has once attained its cognition, it thinks or knows the product intui- 
 tively ever after. Hence, deliberation supplements intuition, and makes up 
 for the mind's limitations, but is not resorted to except when intuition fails. 
 
 P. 297, 11. 1-3. Vol. I. p. 17, Am. ed. 
 
 P. 297, Note, 1. 3. Cf. the opening lines of Book II. in the Paradise Lost. 
 Here Milton has clearly no suspicion of his opportunity to make one of the 
 finest periods in the poem by placing full stop at ' sat,' or, if the emphasis is 
 on the following phrase, at least at ' eminence.' 
 
 There is no denying that Milton's prose is powerful; but the power is in 
 spite of, and not in consequence of, his sentence proportions. A giant may 
 brain a bear with a beam or a hogshead, but how much more effectively with 
 a respectable club. Cf. p. 313. 
 
 P. 298, par. 2, 1. 3. The following are the results by hundreds: 1st, .20; 
 2nd, .18; 3rd, 1.73; 4th, .55; 6th, .24; all other averages, O. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — This chapter is continuative of the 
 work already done in chap. XXIII. The authors there examined may be 
 taken further in hand, to ascertain how the use of verbal nouns and other 
 expedients increase the per cents already found. Then the question of the 
 group to which each belongs should be taken up, and further investigation of 
 authors representing each stage engaged in. Numerous points besides those 
 named, both here as well as in later chapters, will challenge attention. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Page 305, par. 2, 1. 15. No reader will need to be reminded that the 
 Iliad and Odyssey and the Bedwulf, no matter how changed in many respects, 
 are oral and not written products. Very different are the j&neid, and the 
 Elene, not to say the Antigone, or Paradise Lost. 
 
 P. 307, par. 2, 1. 7. The oral sentence is growing gradually shorter through 
 
NOTES. 431 
 
 the general effort to economize effort in utterance. One of the most recent 
 clippings is the change of often to offen, in the standard pronunciation. See 
 Whitney's Language and the Study of Language, pp. 69, 70. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — Here, surely, is no lack of points for in- 
 vestigation. To make sure that the students understand the principle, it may 
 be well to require for the first exercise a large number of examples like those 
 given at the beginning of this chapter; and at the same time they may go 
 back to Homer, in the same parts read for co-ordination, to note omissions of 
 illative conjunctions. They should then trace the history of the oral manner 
 of joining clauses. Mandeville has something of it. Chaucer has much in 
 poetry. Has he any in prose? Has Spenser, or Hooker, or Bacon? After 
 this inquiry has been pushed sufficiently, let the students co-operatively ex- 
 amine into the frequency of active participles in English' after Latin and Greek 
 idioms, and determine in what author they are used in an organic way. There 
 should be a similar inquiry into the use of the relative pronoun' in various 
 authors and periods from the Bedwulf down, and some use made. of the 
 evidence in determining or defining normal usage. The students should be 
 set also to compute all conjunctive words in some early and some latest 
 standard writer, and if possible in a dozen other authors of reputation, that 
 differences such as suggested by the exhibit at the beginning may be cleared 
 up. Here are already topics enough for a single chapter, probably more 
 than can be used in any general survey of the whole field. Yet at this point 
 room should be found for an examination of informal styles, and some notion 
 formed as to whether condensation and clause suppression have gone too far, 
 or may go too far, for the best effectiveness of speech. Let examples of 
 paragraph writing — like this following, from a daily newspaper — be collected, 
 and faults pointed out : — 
 
 " Mrs. Teal Bouton was saved at her home near Casnovia by prompt medical treatment 
 to offset effects of some aconite she took with suicide in view. Farmer's wife." 
 
 Is there or is there not too great condensation in such a style? Is it too 
 difficult for instant comprehension? What would be the best cast of this 
 meaning for newspaper readers? What changes would be necessary to raise 
 it to the standard of literary English ? 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Page 313, par. 2, 1. 3. The evolution of the bicycle furnishes a better 
 illustration. Anybody that has seen or tried to ride the ' velocipede ' of 
 twenty years or more ago will find the analogy complete. After the structure 
 
432 NOTES, 
 
 is perfected and the uttermost of lightness secured, the vehicle is ready to 
 sustain and utilize all the force that any user can command. 
 
 P. 315, 1. 17. The way in which the part of a whole is logically potential 
 of that whole is illustrated by the fact, peculiar to everybody, that in the effort 
 to recall a name, if we can but think of the surname, or an initial letter, or 
 even the post address we may have seen with it, the whole will come back. 
 So of quotations. 
 
 P. 317, par. 2, 11. 6, 7. In ' I took advice,' the mind sees ' took ' only sym- 
 bolically; in ' I took the medicine,' it sees the action pictorially and literally. 
 In general, the voice slips over the names of what the mind does not see 
 vividly, passes the stress along. Organic emphasis is differentiated on different 
 words according to the intensity with which they are mentally discerned. 
 Poetry, other than the most impassioned, follows the same rules. Cf. 1. 2 of 
 the translation on p. 3B6, in which, because ' bent ' is not conceived literally, 
 the stress goes over to ' wood.' Thus it is the line is made to conform to the 
 6.10 instead of the 4.8.10 scheme. 
 
 P. 322, 1. 22. Sympathy stops. Except with emotion enacted upon the 
 stage, wherein imagination discerns the inner verity and ignores the outwardly 
 fictitious. 
 
 P. 322, 1. 24. Niebelungen King. Or more specifically, Sigfrid, the 
 second division of that work. 
 
 P. 323, 1. 3. Irony, sarcasm, doubt, anxiety, are discerned in the same 
 manner through the associations of tone and structure. 
 
 P. 323, Note. Cf. p. 169, par. 3, 11. 7-9. 
 
 P. 324, par. 3, 1. 2. Cf. Macaulay's observations, often quoted in part, 
 on the style of Johnson. " His conversation appears to have been quite equal 
 to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner. When he 
 talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expressions. 
 As soon as he took his pen in hand to write for the public, his style became 
 systematically vicious. J All his works are written in a learned language, in a 
 language which nobody hears from his mother or his nurse ; in a. language 
 in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love; in a lan- 
 guage in which nobody ever thinks. It is clear that Johnson himself did not 
 think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came first to 
 his tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for 
 publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters 
 from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the 
 Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is amusing to compare 
 the two versions. ' When we were taken up-stairs,' says he in one of his 
 letters, ' a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie.' 
 This incident is recorded in the Journey as follows : ' Out of one of the beds 
 
NOTES. 433 
 
 on which we were to repose started up, at our entrance, » man black as a 
 Cyclops from the forge.' Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. 'The Re- 
 hearsal,' he said, very unjustly, 'has not wit enough to keep it sweet; ' then, 
 after a pause, 'it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction." — 
 Essay on Boswell's Life of "Johnson. 
 
 325, I. 4. Not every one who feels strongly can make his force stand out 
 from his lines. On the other hand, the strongest thoughts seem to find 
 expression through a momentum of their own. False force, moreover, though 
 correctly rendered so far as sentence-associations are concerned, betrays itself 
 through unsoundness or shallowness in the matter. True emphasis or force 
 in prose needs no italics. The considerable use of them betrays the fact that 
 the author finds his lines do not read as he means them, — that the emphasis 
 refuses to attach itself to the right words. But if he is not strong enough or 
 genuine enough to put in organic emphasis, italics will not save him. It may 
 be noted, finally, that the more eclectic and scanty punctuation of these days 
 seems due to the oral shaping of sentences, so that they ' read themselves.' 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The present chapter is of course properly 
 supplemental to the preceding. The same authors as were there discovered 
 to have assisted in bringing into prevalence the present mode of writing 
 should be carefully compared, and per cents computed. Then each of the 
 important points developed in the chapter should be experimentally verified. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Page 328, par. 2, 1. 13. Renaissance. See Note to p. 249, par. 2, 1. 13. 
 
 P. 329, 11. 1, 2. For the Cultismos of Spain see Ticknor's History of Span- 
 ish Literature, vol. II., pp. 519-533. For the influence of the Hotel de 
 Rambouillet see Morley's First Sketch of English Literature, pp. 630-632. The 
 previous development of French literature is succinctly sketched in Darme- 
 steter and Hatzfeld's Le Seizieme Siecle, pp. 96 and 200 ff. Compare also 
 chaps. XXVII., XXVIII., of Demogeot's Histoire de la Litterature Francaise. 
 
 P. 329, 1. 10. If the student is not aware that the French Academy has 
 been the source of authority in French letters since 1636, he should study the 
 history of that institution. 
 
 Authority, as we have seen (p. 248), is the natural effect of revelation, or 
 of recognizing genius and its work. Until Protestantism, the means of deter- 
 mining and dispensing it was through Chosen Peoples' councils. The French 
 Academy is a survival of the mediaeval mode. In England, literary authority 
 is vested in the preponderance of usage and opinion, in the consensus of cult- 
 ure wherever found. (See Suggestions to the Teacher for chap. IV.) In 
 
434 NOTES. 
 
 France it has been the custom for centuries to recognize Paris as the head 
 and source of authority in all matters. Though the French has had the aid 
 of no single model, like English, it has yet developed under its peculiarly 
 favorable conditions a universally best prose style not inferior to any, and 
 perhaps superior to all others. 
 
 P- 3Z9i P ar - 2 . 1- 7- The Revised Version, as all know, has proved unsuc- 
 cessful, and only for the reason that the English-speaking world will not 
 exchange the phrases of which it has become so fond for mere accuracy of 
 translation. Aphorisms and proverbs do not keep current because tbey are 
 all men's wisdom, so much as because they are couched in all men's and every 
 man's best manner. Classicism at its best makes men quote. The style of the 
 King James Bible is in the main oral, so far as sentence proportions and 
 clause articulation are concerned. It is also the generalized style of school- 
 masters and of books. 
 
 P. 330, par. 2, 1. 4. The student should bear in mind that Addison and 
 Steele are by no means the most eminent among eighteenth- century prosaists. 
 As compared with Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury, they are popular rather than 
 polished writers. 
 
 P. 331, par. 2,11. 20, 2i. France is still classical in poetry; Germany to 
 a great degree in prose. Italy in the main has been Gothic since Dante's 
 time. 
 
 /_. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The student -should be first led to 
 realize that the Universally Best Style, negatively speaVong, is free from bar- 
 barisms and solecisms, and avoids all erratic" and yjfdi-ganic expressions, and 
 positively includes so much of best phrasing, essentially, as is common to all 
 cultivated writers. The whole list of our prosaists, from Bacon down, should 
 be examined, to determine who properly constitute the class distinguished by 
 no other characteristic so prominent as ability to write in this mode, who fall 
 short of it, and who have elegance or other excellencies beyond. It would be 
 well, if the members of the class consent to the test, to have the school com- 
 positions of some sub-year brought in and mutually inspected and judged 
 upon these points. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Page 333, 1. 18. So of blooded stock, entered and published in the Herd- 
 books. Each animal is named and registered, and though generally undistin- 
 guishable from others to the common eye, is definitely individualized to the 
 breeder or owner. 
 
 P- 335> P ar - 2 - I' ' s therefore clear that we cannot in any proper sense 
 
NOTES. 435 
 
 ' acquire ' a style. We can only rid ourselves of what is uncharacteristic and 
 ungenuine. To have a style is nothing but invariably and under all circum- 
 stances to be one's self. Hence, while we cannot acquire, we may develop, 
 individuality. To try to do more is either to go backward toward being 
 merged in the universally best style or to imitate another. It is not given to 
 many men to be mirrors of fashion, whether in dress or letters. This is not 
 the age of Beau Brummels or Shaftesburys. It is not the worst fate in the 
 world to fail of immortality through the manner of one's writing. If we can 
 but have the matter, the manner, with proper training, will come along with 
 it of itself. If we cannot command the matter, what profiteth the manner? 
 If we cannot be Dantes, there is little use in trying to write with Dante's 
 power. If one have not Addison's ideas, he will scarce come upon Addison's 
 method of expressing them, even with days and nights of search. There is no 
 such good destiny as to be and become one's self to the uttermost; there is 
 no such good ambition as to aspire, not to repeat other men's achievements, 
 but to make one's own career. A fundamental mark of greatness is an 
 absence of the instinct or desire to imitate great men. 
 
 P. 336, 11. 1 1— 13. Form, within certain limits, is necessarily classical. 
 To have comfort or enjoyment the mind must feel to a certain extent that it 
 is in habituated circumstances, or that what is done is done decently and in 
 order. Anomalies or liberties of form are due either to weakness and unskill, 
 or to romantic impulses. Cf. Schiller, Victor Hugo, and Browning, for illus- 
 trations of the last-named sort. 
 
 P- 339> 11- '> 2 - New England Transcendentalism, which means much 
 more than the name has been taken to imply, was a revolt against authority, 
 both ethical and social as well as literary, in the name of a "higher law." 
 True Romanticism is always such revolt against outgrown Classicism, or 
 'authority.' See p. 341, 1. 2. 
 
 The earliest of the Transcendentalists, in the true sense, was Benjamin 
 Franklin, — the first American great enough to take the Universally Best 
 Style for granted, and write in accordance with it, but not be conditioned by 
 it. The man who, in the face of standard literary tradition, could write such 
 English as we find in his autobiography might be expected to take the court 
 of Versailles by storm with his good-natured unassuming self-sufficiency. 
 
 P. 340, 1. 6. Why are certain songs and tunes at once popular, while 
 others fall flat? The public sense determines, but on what grounds? 
 
 P. 340, 1. 8. What is the meaning of the phrase ' atmospheric reformers ' ? 
 Suggest an equivalent literary expression for the first word. Find other 
 phrases similar in the same writer. 
 
 P. 341 , 1. 2. Last analysis. Or in first instances, as Dante's poetry, which 
 laid the foundation of Italian and modern, as Chaucer's of English, literature. 
 
436 NOTES. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — Here the class should take up the 
 specific study of leading styles. Assign some characteristic passage, say, of 
 De Quincey, requiring of each student, in writing, a full statement of all ele- 
 ments or ' manifestations ' that constitute the style to him. Let the various 
 elements be written, under the respective names, upon the blackboard, and 
 compared, and such as are common to all collected in a group. After two or 
 three exercises it will be found that the reports will be essentially identical. 
 When the student can thus readily detect the true elements of style and 
 has acquired some confidence in judging, let him begin the distinction of 
 romantic and classical prosaists. Here, if there is any vagueness, set him at 
 work inventorying the classical and romantic elements in Hamerton, or 
 Ruskin, or Howells. Then literature of various sorts should be classed under 
 proper departments, following p. 341 . Finally, some investigation of the dif- 
 ferences between the essay and the oration should he entered on. Let the 
 emotional and other elements of an oration of Phillips and the same in an 
 essay of Macaulay be statistically compared, along with consideration of 
 sentence weight and articulation of clause structure. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Page 342, par. 2, 1. 6. Home. The instinct to have a place peculiarly 
 one's own in which to enjoy one's comforts is a ' type.' The types are im- 
 planted. We find them in consciousness, and can improve, but never quite 
 eliminate or debase them. 
 
 P. 343, par. 2, 11. 25-28. Lately noted ; see p. 337. Conquer environ- 
 ment ; see pp. 107, 108, and 245-247. 
 
 P- 344> P ar - 2 t !• '9- The Monistic hypothesis, as has been earlier pointed 
 out, is already accepted, but awaits a practicable theory of Inertia. It is 
 doubtful if there can be any such mode or condition as in the purely spiritual 
 sphere. Consciousness, as we know it, can neither be stopped nor started. 
 At least there could be no environment for the ego without inertia. It brings 
 the material in a measure under the control of the spiritual or of will. 
 
 P. 345, 11. 2-15. This contrast has already been given in a preliminary 
 way in the first paragraphs of Chapter II. , and accompanying Notes. 
 
 P. 348, 11. 1-4. Hence poetry has the utmost of truth consistent with 
 beauty, and prose of beauty consistent with truth. Imaginative activity with- 
 out recognition of the actual is hardly more than castle-building. 
 
 P. 349, 1. 13. It is hardly necessary to call attention to the popular belief 
 of the Greeks in dryads and river gods, or of our own ancestors in fairies and 
 were-wolves and magic. Science, with all its revelation of occult principles, 
 has not yet banished the fear of ghosts and witchcraft from vulgar minds. 
 
NOTES. 437 
 
 With the whole habit of looking at nature changed, we must yet daily hold 
 ourselves back determinatively from giving credence to most preposterous 
 facts and theories. 
 
 P. 350. The student may well note incidentally that ' seemliness ' or ' pro- 
 priety ' is the type on which the very existence of society depends. It is the 
 first step of ascent from the plane of animalism. Moreover, he should not 
 be confused in his apprehension of ' taste ' from its occasional use in the 
 sphere of art. We say a young performer plays with taste, meaning he is able 
 to add to the mechanical a considerable emotional element. When he has 
 mastered his instrument no one thinks of using that word. Finally, when the 
 type of propriety or taste is used in the negative mode, the mind proceeds 
 to idealize not upward (p. 94) by constructing a perfect spiritual whole, but 
 downward (p. izo) in an inverted idealization. The upward idealization ends 
 at the sublime; the downward in the physical paroxysm of relief called 
 laughter. 
 
 P. 352, 1. 2. Elegance may be either spontaneous or studied, natural or 
 elaborated, according to the gifts or culture of the writer. 
 
 P. 352, 1. 7. The day may not be far distant when the public will demand, 
 and be willing to pay for, ■* literary newspaper. The first volume of the 
 Atlantic Monthly, in the papers upon issues of the day, illustrates with what 
 effect elegance may be used in common circumstances. But the country was 
 ready for no such periodical in 1857. 
 
 P. 352, 1. 12. The associations of book language and structure, in their 
 degree, may contribute to elegance, but in oratory far less than in the essay 
 style. But the elegance of Webster, who was of the school of the Federalist, 
 of Junius, and eighteenth-century British orators, is not so effective as that 
 of Phillips, the model orator of this generation. 
 
 P. 352, par. 2, 11. 2-8. Euphuism is plainly but a species of fine writing. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — We have already considered the ele- 
 ments of poetry as isolated each from each. It will be well now to examine 
 some poem with reference to what parts are addressed only to phantasy, and 
 what to imagination. This should be followed by like analysis of at least one 
 chapter in a standard novel. Then a careful study of the differences between 
 prose and poetic figures should be undertaken. E.g. 'The debate was wound 
 up,' — why is this not poetic? 'Such is the scheme of effects aimed at and 
 secured by Shakespeare's art,' — would this be admissible in prose? Is it a 
 good figure for poetic use ? May personification be used in prose ? After suf- 
 ficient search and comparison of poetic figures in prose and prosaic figures in 
 poetry, the class may advance to Taste. Compositions illustrating every phase, 
 good and bad, should be passed upon by the whole class individually in writ- 
 
438 NOTES. 
 
 ing. Finally, the subject of true elegance and false elegance (fine writing) 
 should be carefully studied. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Page 355, 1. 10. The numerical sentence-average of the Melibeus was 
 computed several years ago, with some amendment of punctuation, from the 
 text of the Riverside edition. The exhibit from the Knightes Tale and Meli- 
 beus below was prepared by Mr. Gerwig, as he informs me, from the text 
 (punctuation unaltered) in Blackwood's Universal Library. If the number 
 of the sentences and number of words were identical in both texts, the numer- 
 ical average of Melibeus according to the pointing of the latter would be 
 34.70, or, for both prose tales, 36.11. On the other hand, admitting the 
 punctuation of the former, we find that the average of predications in the 
 Melibeus would be 7.41, instead of 5.25. The numerical average 23.35 f rom 
 the poetry was computed in the Riverside text, with the pointing altered to 
 square with Skeat's recent edition of the Prologue. It will be difficult to do • 
 anything ultimate in the study of Chaucer's form until a consistent punctuation 
 has been agreed upon and introduced throughout. A strictly modern point- 
 ing would reduce his poetic sentence-length to less than twenty words per 
 sentence, and predication average to about two and a half. 
 
 P- 356, par. 2, 1. 4. The question is often forced upon us, Why do poets 
 keep so far asunder, while prosaists are individualized within much narrower 
 limits? The answer seems to be that prosaists, following more or less closely 
 the oral norm, approach the public by a common path, but poets by way of 
 imagination, which is distinct for each. There is no universally best style in 
 poetry, as in prose, because the element of imagination is not conditioned to 
 ' taste.' See p. 351. 
 
 P. 358, Note. Shakespeare apparently wrote as he spoke, both in prose 
 and verse ; and in this, as in other things, stands alone. 
 
 The Life of Strafford, attributed to Browning, does not square with the 
 figures here quoted from Browning's prose, but yields a predication average 
 much lower. 
 
 P- 359j !■ 7' The following is an exhibit of the figures from the Parlafnent 
 of Foules, itself a consistent allegory : incidental-sustained allegories, 4; peri- 
 odic allegories, 4; clause allegories, 15; running metaphors, 9 ; clause meta- 
 phors, 46; similes, 5; comparisons, I; second, third, fourth, and fifth class 
 phrases, respectively, 78, 32, 11, o. These results, as also those from the Dethe 
 of Blanche (p. 395), are from the analysis and summary of figures in Chaucer 
 by Mr. Peterson (see Preface.) The sum of allegorical predicates in the latter 
 poem is 123, of metaphoric, 145; in the Par lament correspondingly 488, and 
 73. Why the Parlament of Foules shows less development than the Dethe of 
 
NOTES. 439 
 
 Blanche, — considered to have been composed much earlier, — is a question 
 likely to be settled. It is evident that metaphor is nearer to the literal fact 
 than allegory, at the same time not less grateful to the mind, since it both 
 requires and enables greater energy of imagination. 
 
 P. 360, 11. 16, 17. More specifically, the blacksmith rests the weight of his 
 hammer on the anvil, that he may relax, for the instant, the muscles of his arm. 
 In like way the reader must release attention from his author's thought. What 
 of the meaning his mind may hold or dwell upon, in the stop between periods, 
 will not tax but (p. 295) stimulate mental energy. Attention is either spon- 
 taneous or determinative, directive. From the former the mind seeks no 
 release, from the latter it must have respite. 
 
 P. 361, 1. 3. We have already noted that Chaucer insists on doing the 
 work of imagination for his reader; cf. K. T., 11. 1118-1122. Make note of 
 similar examples. 
 
 A fundamental difference between Chaucer's and modern poetry is his use 
 of the adjective and noun, which is essentially prosaic. In prose we identify 
 and describe for fact's sake; in poetry, having identified and described suffi- 
 ciently for the facts or thought, we join epithets and appositives to bring expe- 
 riences to the mind. Likewise prose phrases serve to define or limit or identify 
 a given object. Poetic phrases, the object having been sufficiently identified 
 or defined to phantasy, serve to indicate experiential qualities. Chaucer sel- 
 dom uses the phrase in the latter way; Shelley, seldom in the former. 
 
 P. 362, par. 2, 11. 13-18. The tendency is to return to Anglo-Saxon forms 
 of rhythm, and even — as Walt Whitman illustrates — to go beyond. 
 
 P- 3 6 3> P ar - 2 > 1- 4- This means simply that the ego tends to enter states 
 of imagination on less occasion, to enjoy environment with less formality, just 
 as it finds it. Carlyle has said {Lectures on Literature, p. 50), "It is not 
 until a nation is ready to decline that its literature makes itself remarkable." 
 This is undoubtedly true when such nation is passing the point where its spirit- 
 ual life should begin, but has not begun. Strong poets will appear — seem- 
 ingly as a last organic effort against the disease within — just at the point 
 where a race that has risen to the intellectual plane commits itself to resen- 
 sualization. (See p. 255.) But a nation without new Pindars or Virgils may 
 owe that temporary dearth to its normal and growing spiritual-mindedness, 
 such as (p. 365) on the whole, in spite of much regrettable sordidness and 
 shallow thinking, we believe is true of our own country. 
 
 Romanticism is, in the last analysis, associational, but Realism directly ex- 
 periential. All men are romantic in youth when the paramount experiences of 
 life are yet to reach, but become realistic in later years after those experiences 
 are passed. A literature is not great in direct proportion to the amount of 
 imagination involved, but of truth embodied. Schiller's Don Carlos is not 
 
440 NOTES. 
 
 inferior to Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea because the one is romantic and 
 the other realistic. According to the common notion of ' imagination,' or Ma- 
 caulay's idea of poetry (p. 367), the Don Carlos is much superior. Imagina- 
 tion is not Pythian fury, or any other form of ' mental unsoundness,' but is the 
 soul itself in the act or attitude of appropriating final truth. 
 
 Suggestions to the Teacher. — The student should be given such work 
 as will enable him to realize the main points of difference between clause and 
 sentence forms in prose and poetry, and the nature and use of phrases as well 
 as of adjectives and appositives in each. There should be search for such 
 forms of rhythmic prose as, in point of form, may fairly be classed on the 
 other side of the poetic line, — with incidental inquiry how far ' good taste ' 
 is evinced or departed from. A complete analysis of all the elements in a 
 given prose passage or composition may now be made, and should include 
 consideration, side by side, of the experiential, — or poetic, and the logical 
 terms, phrases, and clauses. A most important subject for investigation, if 
 the sources are available, is the origin and growth of sympathetic and inter- 
 pretative prose. Here is, of course, work that can only be done with thor- 
 oughness by seminary students; yet co-operatively a class of ten may in two 
 weeks' study get an edifying notion of one of the greatest facts of literary 
 history. There should be added in each case all possible comparison of like 
 development in other literatures, as exhibited, for example, in Thucydides and 
 Tacitus, and moderns like Tolstoi and Taine and De Amicis. 
 
QUESTIONS ON THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE'S 
 MACBETH. 
 
 [The following questions are intended to be suggestive rather than final, and 
 include, except in the first four scenes, only ' effects ' not considered in the text. 
 The references to lines, both here and in the body of the volume, follow the 
 numberings of the Cambridge Shakespeare.'] 
 
 ACT I. 
 
 Scene I. — What power has raised this storm ? Could the witches 
 of themselves have raised it ? 
 
 2. Should you like to hear these witches proposing to meet you on 
 the heath ? 
 
 3. What, then, may the unknown personage they mention expect 
 as a result of the meeting? 
 
 4. How does this talk make you feel toward this unknown person ? 
 
 Scene II. — 5. In the eleventh century what was especially ex- 
 pected of a king in times of war? 
 
 6. By what expedient does Shakespeare let us know that a battle is 
 in progress ? 
 
 7. Why is not Duncan at least in sight of the battle? 
 
 8. What difficulty did Malcolm get into in the battle, and how did 
 he get out of it? 
 
 9. For what sole reason is the sergeant not now in the battle? 
 
 10. In consequence of these facts, which of the three characters 
 stands lowest in your esteem ? Which second ? Which third ? 
 
 1 1 . How do you explain the excited, disconnected character of the 
 sergeant's discourse? May it be due to excess of enthusiasm for his 
 hero? 
 
 441 
 
442 QUESTIONS ON THE ART 
 
 12. What unknown individual stands higher in your regard than 
 even the sergeant ? 
 
 13. Is this the same personage that we saw was of such importance 
 to the supernatural world ? 
 
 14. How do these considerations dispose you toward Macbeth? 
 
 15. Where is Macbeth, and why does he not appear? 
 
 16. How does this circumstance of Macbeth's absence affect your 
 feelings towards him? 
 
 1 7. What is the rank of Ross ? 
 
 18. Is he overcome with enthusiasm like the sergeant, or does he 
 seem cold and formal ? 
 
 19. Does the king, in line 33, seem to have similar feelings ? 
 
 20. What is the effect of this coldness on the part of the Scotch 
 nobility, coupled with enthusiasm on the part of the sergeant, upon 
 your feelings regarding Macbeth ? 
 
 Scene III. — 21. Do we recognize these witches? As determined 
 to influence whom? 
 
 22. How did the first witch come by the pilot's thumb? 
 
 23. What is tHfe least and what the most horrible mischief they have 
 been doing? 
 
 24. Is there, then, any climax in the arrangement of the details in 
 this scene ? 
 
 25. If they can singly do such things as we see and hear, why should 
 all three have taken pains to come together now ? Is it probably on 
 less or greater concerns than have occupied them this afternoon ? 
 
 26. Against whom is all this awful power to be directed? 
 
 27. Now that Macbeth is at last to appear, what sort of man do you 
 wish to see, — a self-satisfied general merely, or a man of aspirations 
 and insight? 
 
 28. Do his first words disappoint you? 
 
 29. Are your impressions at all affected on noting the contrast with 
 what Banquo says? 
 
 30. Why does Macbeth " start and seem to fear " ? 
 
 31. Are you displeased that he should be bold enough to be ambi- 
 tious ? 
 
 32. Macbeth wants to know more (1. 70) . Do you? If so, why do you ? 
 
 33. Are you at all impressed at the sudden fulfilment of the prophecy 
 that Macbeth was to be thane of Cawdor? 
 
OF SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH. 443 
 
 34. Do you understand that the " instruments of darkness " are in 
 the habit of interfering after this fashion with the fortunes of any and 
 every Scotch nobleman? 
 
 35. If the one prophecy can come true, are you at all curious to see 
 if the other will ? 
 
 36. Line 127. Which do you desire to see win in the argument — 
 Macbeth or his conscience ? 
 
 37. Would you like to see Macbeth king? 
 
 Scene IV. — 38. Do King Duncan's remarks betray a vigorous and 
 energetic character, with ordinary or extraordinary penetration ? 
 
 39. Is Malcolm's account of Cawdor's death indicative of unusual 
 heroism or energy on the part of either himself or Cawdor? 
 
 40. Is Macbeth's bearing at all in contrast with the general effect of 
 pious effeminacy that we get from Duncan and his surroundings ? 
 
 41. Are you pleased with Macbeth now? 
 
 42 . Do you find yourself choosing between him and Duncan ? Which 
 would you prefer to" see king ? 
 
 43. Does not the expectation that Duncan will be murdered prevent 
 your desiring to see Macbeth king ? 
 
 44. If not, point out the sum of ' effects ' by which Shakespeare has 
 achieved this astonishing result ? 
 
 Scene V. — 1 . From Macbeth's first words, what has his mind been 
 occupied with during the ride from Forres ? 
 
 2. Does he tell his wife his plan of murder, or only hint it? Why? 
 
 3. Does she honestly fail to see the hint, or does she merely attempt 
 to shift the burden of first mentioning this horror to her husband's 
 shoulders ? 
 
 4. How does he evade this responsibility? 
 
 5. Which of them finally leaves evasion and first comes to the 
 point ? 
 
 6. Why should Macbeth be so unresponsive to his wife's enthu- 
 siasm? Is it from a desire to lay it all on her? 
 
 Scene VI. — 1 . Is Duncan a kind, good old innocent man, or in any 
 of these particulars the reverse? 
 
 2. Yet are we willing that Duncan should be murdered in order that 
 our hero may get the crown ? 
 
444 QUESTIONS ON THE ART 
 
 3. Would it be as tragic if we were made willing that only a com- 
 mon villain should be murdered? 
 
 4. Why, then, the first part of this scene ? 
 
 5. Was there any danger that such a characterization might have 
 been overdone, and our sympathies thus shifted from Macbeth to Dun- 
 can, to the spoiling of the play ? 
 
 6. Would this happen if we should see Macbeth, suave and smiling, 
 come out before the castle to receive the king? 
 
 7. Why, then, is Lady Macbeth made to appear? Why, also, is 
 Macbeth made timorous and vacillating in the preceding scene ? 
 
 Scene VII. — 1 . In a domestic scene under circumstances similar to 
 these, does the woman usually begin her upbraidings with a remark 
 like Lady Macbeth's in line 39? 
 
 2. Would she perhaps next make the imputation of line 43? 
 
 3. Would the husband, upon having his manliness called in ques- 
 tion, probably answer as Macbeth does in lines 45 to 47 ? 
 
 4. How much does Macbeth yield in line 59? 
 
 5. But what does Lady Macbeth assume when she next begins to 
 lay her plans with so much detail ? 
 
 ACT II. 
 
 Scene I. — 1. Knowing what he knows, what would be the honor- 
 able course for Banquo to pursue with regard to Duncan ? 
 
 2. Does he pursue it ? 
 
 3. Why, then, is he unable to sleep? 
 
 4. Is Macbeth's answer to his challenge an answer proper in castles 
 in times of peace, or in intrenched camps in times of war? 
 
 5 . What must be Macbeth's attitude toward the rest of the world to 
 prompt such an answer? 
 
 6. And what do you infer is Banquo's attitude from the ' effect ' in 
 lines 9 and 10? 
 
 7. If Banquo knows what is to happen, why does he throw out the 
 feeler in lines 19 to 21 ? 
 
 8. Is Banquo's answer to Macbeth's bid sincere? 
 
 9. Does Macbeth in line 29 understand that it is not meant to be 
 sincere ? 
 
 10. Does Banquo in line 30 know that Macbeth thus understands it? 
 
OF SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH. 445 
 
 1 1 . What does the past tense of the verbs in lines 42 and 43 indi- 
 cate? 
 
 12. Has Macbeth ever been allowed to make up his own mind about 
 this project, or has fate made it up for him? (See I., iii., 115 ; I., iv., 
 39, etc.) 
 
 13. How much has our sense of Macbeth's powerlessness against 
 the witches had to do with keeping our sympathies with him ? 
 
 14. Now, at the very moment of the murder, did Shakespeare think 
 it necessary to deepen that sense of his helplessness ? 
 
 15. Does this device of the air-drawn dagger do it? 
 
 Scene II. — 1. In line 16, Lady Macbeth asks, "Did not you 
 speak?" Are her husband's inquiries as to the time at all minute? 
 
 2. Does she specify with like minuteness? 
 
 3. What condition of mind does the weariness in " Ay " indicate? 
 
 4. Does her answer in line 19 argue any change? 
 
 5. What suggests her remark in line 21 ? 
 
 6. What suggests her remark in line 25 ? 
 
 7. What suggests her remark in line 30? 
 
 8. Has she energy enough left to think independently, or can she 
 only echo her husband's words ? 
 
 9. How long does this condition last? Where does she begin to 
 recover? 
 
 10. At what point has she recovered complete control over herself? 
 
 1 1 . Why should she have felt under any obligation to come to the 
 rescue at this point? Does she feel at all responsible for the situation? 
 
 Scenes III. and IV. — 1. Which is most difficult — to kill a king, 
 or to play the innocent afterwards in the eyes of the world? 
 
 2. What task, then, confronts Macbeth and his wife now? 
 
 3. Does Macduff unconsciously seem to think Macbeth's entrance 
 is at all sudden ? 
 
 4. In lines 64 to 67, does Macduff say definitely, "The king is 
 murdered " ? 
 
 5. Is regicide a thing people are ready and willing to believe? 
 
 6. But what does Macbeth in line 67 assume Macduff meant? 
 
 7. Does Lennox make that assumption? 
 
 8. Why should the one make such an assumption and not the 
 other? 
 
446 QUESTIONS ON THE ART 
 
 9. How would a woman awakened out of a deep sleep while it is 
 yet night, by the ringing of an alarm-bell and cries of 'murder,' be 
 likely to act? 
 
 10. Does Lady Macbeth, then, assume the right manner? 
 
 11. Who has addressed Lady Macbeth, that she should speak in 
 line 86? 
 
 12. Does Banquo have a point in " anywhere " ? 
 
 13. How much more does she have to say after his innuendo? 
 
 14. Has Macduff observed anything strange about Macbeth's actions 
 or words before line 105? 
 
 15. Why has he not turned on Macbeth before? 
 
 16. Does his sudden question strike home? 
 
 17. Who saves the day this time ? 
 
 18. How would a nobleman on general principles treat a maudlin 
 porter who by his negligence had kept him out in the storm ? 
 
 19. Does Macduff do so ? 
 
 20. Is Macduff later equally cool, collected, and circumspect in his 
 words and manner? Do you wish him to be? 
 
 2i. How many of the noblemen are bold enough to "speak home" 
 to Macbeth ? 
 
 22. In scene iv. should Macduff's words in line 21 be pronounced 
 with the ordinary intonation? How about line 23, also? 
 
 23. How many of the Scotch noblemen do you take it are going to 
 be absent from the crowning? 
 
 24. Has Macduff a point in saying " things well done " instead of 
 " good things done " in line 37 of scene iv. ? 
 
 25. How do you like Macduff? Point out the 'effects' by which 
 you are brought to your opinion of him. 
 
 26. Is Macduff later on to play a part of any special prominence ? 
 
 27. Why, then, should Shakespeare have characterized him so fully 
 here — why, indeed, at all ? 
 
 28. Are there any indications in scene iii. that Banquo understands 
 the situation? 
 
 ACT III. 
 
 Scene I. — 1. Has Macbeth met his nobles formally, as king, before? 
 
 2. In such a violent change of administration, can' he be sure of the 
 fidelity of his nobles ? Why? 
 
 3. Then what has this banquet been prepared for? 
 
OF SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH. 447 
 
 4. What does he expect to determine by this banquet, and on what 
 principle ? 
 
 5. Is there anything in Banquo's dress or equipment that prompts 
 Macbeth's question in line 18? 
 
 Scene II. — 1 . Is it probable that Lady Macbeth understands the 
 object of the banquet as well as her husband ? 
 
 2. Why should she then be so anxious concerning Banquo's where- 
 abouts ? 
 
 3. If the servant had replied, ' Nay, Madam, he remains here to- 
 night,' would she probably have asked*for the king? 
 
 4. Would she have made the lament following? 
 
 5. Would she have hinted, as here in line 38? 
 
 6. What, then, was her object in asking for the king? 
 
 7. Have Macbeth and his wife come to the same determination 
 concerning Banquo independently? 
 
 8. Do you now see any reason for her silence in the first part of 
 scene i. ? 
 
 Scene III. — 1 . At the very moment of the murder of Banquo is the 
 scene illumined? 
 
 2. Do you, then, see Banquo's dead and bleeding body? 
 
 3. Do you, then, think this scene might have been made more 
 effective? How? 
 
 4. What makes a situation intense either in life or in a play — the 
 definitely known or the imaginative unknown ? 
 
 5. Which generally gives your imagination most scope — definite 
 particulars or hints only? Why? 
 
 6. Which, then, would have been most effective — to see Banquo's 
 dead body with certain definite wounds, or to see splashes of his blood 
 all over the murderers' face and clothes ? Which would be by way of 
 the ' effect ' ? 
 
 7. Which method does Shakespeare employ? 
 
 8. That this method may be successful, will it do to permit any 
 doubt as to the identity of the blood we see? (Sc. iv.) 
 
 9. How is this contingency provided for? 
 
 io. Has the same art-expedient been used before in this play? 
 11. Scene iv., line 80. Would hired assassins be likely thus to 
 mutilate their victim for spite ? 
 
448 QUESTIONS ON THE ART 
 
 12. Was it these blows that caused Banquo's death? 
 
 1 3 . Which murderer do you think inflicted these unnecessary gashes ? 
 
 Scene IV. — i. At the opening of Act III., did you feel any degree 
 of satisfaction that Macbeth had at last come into the estate marked out 
 for him ? 
 
 2. Did you anticipate for Macbeth any trouble beyond possibly some 
 difficulty in getting himself established firmly as king? 
 
 3. Then how did Lady Macbeth's incidental revelation in scene ii., 
 lines 8 and 9, affect you? 
 
 4. Is Lady Macbeth, according to lines 4 to 7 of scene ii., enjoying 
 her queenship ? 
 
 5. What in scene i. corresponds to this lament of scene ii. ? 
 
 6. Do you know at once what it is that causes Macbeth thus to 
 " keep alone " ? 
 
 7. How soon and from whose lips do you learn? Is this another 
 surprise ? 
 
 8. From line 18, scene ii., what prediction is being fulfilled? 
 
 9. Do you now see why Macbeth should be uncertain in scene i., 
 line 73, when he last spoke with the murderers ? Is this a cause of 
 surprise? 
 
 10. What particular things (scene ii.) does Macbeth say he fears? 
 
 11. To what extent do you think his wholesale suspicions justified? 
 Was Banquo, for instance, plotting at the opening of scene i. ? 
 
 12. Which has changed — the attitude of the world toward Macbeth, 
 or Macbeth's attitude toward the world? 
 
 13. What does Lady Macbeth know, that she should exhort her 
 husband (ii. 28) to be bright and jovial to-night? Is this another 
 revelation ? 
 
 14. Would Macbeth's terror at the ghost's appearance be so intense 
 if his mind had not been to a degree weakened by previous sleepless- 
 ness and suffering? 
 
 15. Point out the preliminaries to this scene. 
 
 16. Are these preliminaries direct representations or ' effects ' ? 
 
 17. What part of this ghost has Shakespeare intended we shall 
 see — the uncovered breast, for instance ? 
 
 18. And how is this to appear? 
 
 19. Why, then, should Shakespeare have made Macbeth inflict the 
 twenty gashes on the head? 
 
OF SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH. 449 
 
 20. What does Ross expect to get as answer to his question in line 
 116? 
 
 21. Why then did Lady Macbeth hurry everybody out? 
 
 22. Does Macbeth show signs in lines 130 to 140 of retreat in his 
 course of blood ? 
 
 23. Banquo is gone; whom does Macbeth succeed in finding for his 
 next victim? 
 
 24. What convenient excuse does he presently hit upon? Does he 
 really in his heart believe that it is sufficient? 
 
 25. Are you pleased at the prospect that this man especially is to 
 suffer next ? 
 
 26. Were you decidedly opposed to the projected taking off of 
 Banquo at the opening of this act ? 
 
 27. If you have experienced any difference of feeling in these two 
 cases, where and when was the change effected? 
 
 Scene VI. — 1. Are Lennox's remarks noteworthy for any quality? 
 
 2. At the end of Act II. was any one similarly bold? 
 
 3. Who has shown himself more bold, Lennox or Macduff? 
 
 4. Yet what did Macduff feel obliged to do on account of that bold- 
 ness? 
 
 5. Does Lennox feel at all concerned about the consequences of 
 his bold speech ? 
 
 6. What does this indicate in regard to a change of public senti- 
 ment in Scotland ? 
 
 7. Just what has caused that change? 
 
 8. Is there any similar change in your own feelings? 
 
 9. Does Shakespeare anywhere indicate like changes of sentiment 
 before the audience has experienced the same change? 
 
 10. What effect, pleasing or other, is produced by seeing a repre- 
 sentation of what we wish to see represented? 
 
 ACT IV. 
 
 Scene I. — 1 . Do these apparitions deal with the present, the past, 
 or the future ? 
 
 2. Do, then, the apparitions themselves represent, the present, the 
 past, or the future ? 
 
 3. Is the first apparition a living head? Is it attached to any body? 
 
450 QUESTIONS ON THE ART 
 
 4. Is such an object in the nature of things ominous or auspicious? 
 
 5. What future event does this apparition represent? 
 
 6. Why, then, should the witch cut Macbeth's questions off so 
 short? 
 
 7. What physiological marvel does the second apparition deal with 
 in its words ? 
 
 8. Why, then, should the apparition be a child, and why especially 
 bloody? 
 
 9. Whom does this apparition represent? 
 
 10. Who is the only immature "issue of a king," destined to wear 
 "the round and top of sovereignty," that we have seen in this play? 
 
 11. Is this individual really a child? 
 
 12. Is the representation of the future King of Scotland as a child 
 with a crown on its head very complimentary ? 
 
 13. Do you think Shakespeare intended satire here? 
 
 14. What is Macbeth's determination after the second apparition has 
 spoken ? 
 
 1 5 . But what does Lennox soon after inform him ? 
 
 16. If his purpose is anticipated, why does he not let it go, — why 
 proceed against the wife and children? 
 
 17. Do you think his purpose was what he tries to make himself 
 believe, — allowable protection against Macduff? 
 
 18. If he is actuated by something else, what is that something? 
 
 Scene II. — 1. What has Ross evidently just told Lady Macduff? 
 
 2. Is her husband's flight comprehensible to her? 
 
 3. What does Ross hint is her knowledge of the situation in Scot- 
 land? 
 
 4. How far is Macduff's castle from the court? 
 
 5. Does Lady Macduff think there is any danger ? Does she under- 
 stand how there could be any danger? 
 
 6. Does this indicate blindness to whatever causes of fear there 
 may be, or absence of any real cause of fear? 
 
 7. Do you think Macbeth estimates the disposition among his 
 nobles to rebellion at its true strength ? 
 
 8. Do these considerations support any point raised in the last 
 scene ? 
 
 9. How does it come that this messenger should be acquainted 
 with Lady Macduff's "state of honor," and be himself unknown to her? 
 
OF SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH. 451 
 
 10. Why should he not know, or at least say he knew, that danger 
 approached? Is there anything peculiar about his use of the word 
 doubt ? 
 
 1 1 . Why does he use first person in line 69 and not change to third 
 person in line 70? What subject does he have in his mind for "to 
 do"? 
 
 12. Why, finally, should he precede the murderers only by a few 
 seconds ? 
 
 13. Does this support the point above and in the preceding scene? 
 
 Scene III. — 1. In lines 11 to 17, what does Malcolm think may be 
 Macduff's purpose ? 
 
 2. What very good grounds does he give later on for his suspi- 
 cions ? 
 
 3. What reason does he give for having such suspicions? 
 
 4. Do you, then, take it Macduff is the first arrival from Scot- 
 land? 
 
 5. Then why in line 160 should Malcolm almost instinctively recog- 
 nize that Ross is a Scotchman, while Macduff does not ? 
 
 6. Do you think Malcolm honestly wishes to have only men of 
 integrity and patriotism about him ? 
 
 7. If Macduff should believe Malcolm's description of himself, and 
 still wish him to be king, what sort of a mind would that indicate ? 
 
 8. But if Macduff should refuse to have anything to do with him, 
 what sort of mind would that indicate ? 
 
 9. What, then, is Malcolm's object in libelling himself? Does he 
 attain it ? 
 
 10. Do you find in Malcolm any of the characteristics of his father? 
 
 11. In the doctor-episode how many references do you find to 
 divine things? 
 
 12. What class of persons alone have 'divine rights' like these? 
 
 13. But what class of persons does Malcolm belong to? 
 
 14. To what historical personage does this episode refer? 
 
 15. Is Malcolm like him in disposition and character? 
 
 16. Yet what was he ? Why cannot Malcolm be? 
 
 17. Can you tolerate Malcolm as prospective king? 
 
 18. Do you think that Shakespeare's sole purpose here was to com- 
 pliment James ? 
 
 19. In line 207, what causes Malcolm's exclamation? 
 
452 QUESTIONS ON THE ART 
 
 ACT V. 
 
 Scene I. — I. Which suffered most at the banquet in Act III., 
 Macbeth or his wife ? (Compare scene iii.) 
 
 2. Which suffers most now? 
 
 3. How large an interval of time is to be supposed between that 
 time and this ? 
 
 4. What psychological change has taken place in each in this in- 
 terval ? 
 
 5. Has the murder, then, affected them in the same way? 
 
 6. Is this true pathologically, or is it merely a dramatic expedient? 
 
 Scene III. — 1 . How long in stage time is it since you last saw 
 Macbeth ? 
 
 2. Are you struck with any change in him as shown by the lan- 
 guage he uses? 
 
 3. Is this especially surprising to you? 
 
 4. Should you have been surprised if you had seen Macbeth at 
 intervals, and watched the coming on of this change ? 
 
 5. Then why has Shakespeare kept him away so long? 
 
 6. But is there any hint to our imagination in the preceding s"cene 
 that keeps Macbeth alive in our minds ? 
 
 7. Is there any hint in the first part of the first scene? 
 
 8. How many such hints do you find in the last scene of Act IV. ? 
 
 9. How, then, has Shakespeare prevented our forgetting him entirely 
 during this interval ? 
 
 10. Does Macbeth's reception of the servant's message indicate belief 
 in the witches ? 
 
 11. If he believes in the witches, why should he need to "hang 
 those that talk of fear " ? 
 
 12. Do you think he believes the witches, after all? 
 
 13. Then why in his opening paragraph should he express such con- 
 fidence in them? Why also at intervals throughout the scene? 
 
 14. Can you now explain why he should be so desperate and vacil- 
 lating — in regard to his armor, for instance? 
 
 Scene IV. — 1. Whom do we recognize here that we have just 
 had come before us in a preceding scene? 
 2. Where were they then going? 
 
OF SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH. 453 
 
 3. Where are they now ? 
 
 4. What, then, is the purpose of this scene? 
 
 Scene V. — 1. Does any one tell Seyton to go and see what the 
 cry means ? 
 
 2. Does he come back excitedly? Why not? 
 
 3. Is any interval to be supposed between scenes iii. and v. ? 
 
 4. How long, then, between his being summoned in scene iii. and 
 his voluntary going out in scene v. ? 
 
 5. Where do you suppose he was when (iii. 19) Macbeth called 
 him? 
 
 6. Why should he not have come when first called? May he have 
 been waiting for anything to happen? 
 
 7. If Macbeth in scene iii. had supposed he was at a distance, 
 would he have been called three times ? 
 
 8. In view of the points raised in the last questions under scene 
 iii., can you explain why Macbeth should treat the messenger in this 
 scene so roughly ? 
 
 Scene VII. — 1. What has the audience just seen fulfilled? 
 2.. What remains to be fulfilled? 
 
 3. Do we yet know who is to be the fated man not born of woman? 
 
 4. When young Siward comes in, do we wonder if he is the one ? 
 
 5. What is the effect of finding he is not the one? 
 
 6. What was Shakespeare's purpose in introducing this episode? 
 
 Scene VIII. — 1 . Who do we find is that mysterious man ' not born 
 of woman ' ? 
 
 2. How has the author prepared us, on Macduff's side, for this 
 combat ? 
 
 3. Do we consent that Macduff win? For what reasons? 
 
 4. Would you have been pleased to see young Siward win ? Why ? 
 
 5. Could we have been made enthusiastic for Macbeth at the open- 
 ing of the play if we had not supposed he would be a king of the valor- 
 ous, romantic sort ? 
 
 6. Has that expectation been fulfilled ? 
 
 7. Are we now satisfied to see the throne occupied by a mere Dun- 
 can, or son of Duncan? 
 
 8. Why? 
 
454 QUESTIONS ON THE ART OF MACBETH. 
 
 9. Should we have been content to witness Macbeth 's death? 
 
 10. Did we consent to see Banquo and Siward slain? 
 
 n. Does the fact we were at one time enthusiastic over Macbeth 
 have anything to do with our willingness or unwillingness to see him 
 fall? 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Absence of simple-sentence sense in 
 poetry of the phrase school, 361. 
 
 Abuse of figures, 396. 
 
 Adams, Oscar Fay, The Story of Jane 
 Austen's Life, 264. 
 
 Addison and Bunyan, style, 338. 
 
 Addison, average of predications in, 266. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved, 297. 
 Address before the Senior Class in Divin- 
 ity College, Emerson, 258. 
 
 Adherence of Browning to his sentence 
 norms at widely removed periods, 
 
 358. 
 
 — of Shakespeare to his sentence 
 norms at widely removed periods, 
 3S8. 
 
 Advance since Shakespeare in ideals and 
 
 types, 102, 402. 
 Allegories, classes of, 394. 
 Allegory of The Faerie Queene, the, 393. 
 
 — relation of, to metaphor, 396. 
 
 — the, 64. 
 
 — within allegory, 398. 
 Alliteration, 42. 
 
 — and quantity, 386. 
 
 Analogies, summary of, in Chaucer's 
 
 Deth of Blanche, 395. 
 Analogy as the basis of figures, 67. 
 
 — expanded ; use of, in illustration, 
 
 391- 
 
 — in clause presentation, 75. 
 
 — in phrase presentation, 75. 
 
 — purposes served by, in poetry, 80. 
 
 — recasting of, 391. 
 Analytic manner, the, 301. 
 
 ' And ' -clauses in Mandeville's Voyages 
 and Travels, 269. 
 
 ' Ands ' in Ascham's Schoolmaster, 271. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, co-ordinate con- 
 junctions in, 270. 
 
 — sources of English, 31. 
 Apostrophe, 68. 
 
 Approach of a poet to his audience, the, 
 223. 
 
 — of oral and written styles to each 
 other, 307. 
 
 — of prose and poetry to each other 
 in interior aspects, 362. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, conjunctions in, 304. 
 
 — differences in the average of predi- 
 cations in prose and poetry, 357. 
 
 — Sohrab and Rustum, 14, 39. 
 Art, 122. 
 
 — and literature as forces, 251. 
 
 — contrariety between classical and 
 Gothic modes of, 135. 
 
 — elements in the classical mode of, 
 
 134- 
 
 — elements in the Gothic mode of, 
 130. 
 
 — evolution of forms and standards 
 in, 135- 
 
 — Gothic, 123. 
 
 — literary, the province of, 216. 
 
 — of Browning in The Italian in Eng- 
 land, 192. 
 
 — in The Englishman in Italy, 198. 
 
 — of Colombe's Birthday, 223. 
 
 — of Julias Ccesar, 234. 
 
 — of My Last Duchess, 202. 
 
 455 
 
456 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Art of Shakespeare in Macbeth, 146. 
 
 — of Shakespeare, the, 144. 
 
 — of The Bishop orders his Tomb, 206, 
 
 — principles of, 131. 
 
 — the paramount rule of, 221. 
 
 — the province of, 216. 
 
 Ascham, percentage of clauses saved in, 
 
 297. 
 A Serenade at the Villa, Browning, 25. 
 Associational potency of Faerie Queene, 
 
 394- 
 Associations, bad effects from incongru- 
 ity of, 384. 
 
 — of ideas, the, 34. 
 
 — of structure, the, 47. 
 
 — of Words, The, 31. 
 Aurora Leigh, Mrs. Browning, 70. 
 Average of predications in Addison, 266. 
 
 — in Bacon, 266. 
 
 — in Barrow, 266. 
 
 — in Bartol, 267. 
 
 — in Bolingbroke, 266. 
 
 — in Bunyan, 266. 
 
 — in Channing, 267. 
 
 — in Chaucer, 265. 
 
 — in Chaucer and Spenser, 274. 
 
 — in De Quincey, 266. 
 
 — in Emerson, 267. 
 
 — in Everett, 267. 
 
 — in Grant, 267. 
 
 — in Hall, 265. 
 
 — in Herodotus and Homer, 425. 
 
 — in Hooker, 266. 
 
 — in Lowell, 267. 
 
 — in Macaulay, 267. 
 
 — in Shaftesbury, 266. 
 
 — in Sidney, 265. 
 
 — in Spenser, 265. 
 
 — in Vergil and Cicero, 425. 
 Averages from Browning's prose, 358. 
 
 — from Shakespeare's prose, 358. 
 
 — of clause-saving in the Pcrsouris 
 Tale, 430. 
 
 A Vision of Poets, Mrs. Browning, 8. 
 
 Babylon, or the Bonnie Banks o' 
 
 Fordie, 127. 
 Bacon, average of predications in, 266. 
 
 — Of Regiment of Health, 264. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 
 Bad effects from incongruity of associa- 
 tions, 384. 
 
 Balder discussion, latest contribution to, 
 412. 
 
 Ballad period in England, 126. 
 
 Bamborougk Carf/«,WilIiam Lisle Bowles, 
 70. 
 
 Barrow, average of predications in, 266. 
 
 Bartol, C. A., average of predications in, 
 267. 
 
 — conjunctions, 305. 
 
 — Father Taylor in Radical Problems, 
 265. 
 
 — Radical Problems, 301. 
 
 Basis for classification of prose literature, 
 
 335- 
 
 Beginning of conventionalization in Eng- 
 lish prose, 328. 
 
 Bebwulf, Canto I., 123. 
 
 — predications in, 362. 
 Blackmore, Sir Richard, The Creation, 
 
 46. 
 Blending of images in the mind, 391. 
 Bolingbroke, average of predications in, 
 
 266. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 Bombast and turgidity, 372. 
 
 Bowles, William Lisle, Bamborougk Cas- 
 tle, 70. 
 
 Brabantio, lack of sympathy for in 
 Othello, 184. 
 
 Brooke, Stopford, Primer of English 
 Literature, 1. 
 
 Browning, adherence to sentence norms 
 at widely removed periods, 358. 
 
 — and Carlyle, overfervor of, 375. 
 
 — A Serenade in the Villa, 25. 
 
 — art of, shown in The Italian in Eng- 
 land, 192. 
 
 — Childe Roland to the Dark Tower 
 came, interpretation of, 207. 
 
 — Colombe's Birthday, the art of, 223. 
 
 — Count Gismond, 16. 
 
 — Count Gismond, meaning of, 88. 
 
 — Elizabeth Barrett, Aurora Leigh, 70. 
 
 — 'Mesmerism, 10. 
 
 — Mesmerism, the art of, 201. 
 
 — Mrs., A Vision of Poets, 8. 
 
 — My Last Duchess, art of, 202. 
 
 — Sordello, 23. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 457 
 
 Browning, The Bishop orders his Tomb, 
 purpose of, 206. 
 
 — The Englishman in Italy, art analy- 
 sis of, 198. 
 
 — the greatness of, 102. 
 
 — The Inn Album, 14. 
 
 — The Italian in England, art analy- 
 sis of, 192. 
 
 — The Ring and the Book, 26, 28. 
 
 — Up at a Villa, down in the City, in- 
 terpretation of, 208. 
 
 Browning's anticipation of the savants, 
 
 4°3- 
 
 — Life of Strafford, 438. 
 
 — "Luria compared with Othello, 102. 
 
 — prose, average from, 358. 
 
 Bryant, To a Waterfowl, analysis of, 218. 
 Bunyan and Addison, style, 338. 
 Bunyan, average of predications in, 266. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved, 297. 
 Burlesque, 119. 
 
 GiEDMON, 42. 
 
 Carlyle and Browning, overfervor of, 375. 
 
 Change of conjunctional meanings to 
 
 prepositional, 299. 
 Channing, average of predications in, 
 
 267. 
 
 — numerical sentence length in, 259. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 
 — Self-Culture, 258. 
 Character defined, 425. 
 Characteristics of the Universally Best 
 
 Style, 327. 
 
 Chaucer and Spenser, average of predi- 
 cations in, 274, 
 
 Chaucer, average of predications in, 265. 
 
 — condition of England in the age of, 
 90. 
 
 — Deth of Blanche, 45. 
 
 — differences in the average of predi- 
 cations, of prose and poetry, 355. 
 
 — Par lament of Foules, 45. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 
 — poetic phrases in, 53. 
 
 — Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 
 45. 60. 
 
 — reason for approach to modern 
 norm of prose structure, 360. 
 
 — Romance words in, 35. 
 
 Chaucer's poetical unit of thought and 
 of expression, 359. 
 
 — poetic sentence style, 291. 
 
 — Prologue, metric scheme of, 387. 
 
 — prose and poetic periods, dissimi- 
 larities between, 355. 
 
 Chief characteristic of Teutonic poetry, 
 
 the, 395. 
 Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came, 
 
 interpretation of, 207. 
 Children, speech of, 269. 
 Choice between simile and metaphor, 64. 
 Classes of allegories, 394. 
 Classical art, elements of, 134. 
 Classicism and romanticism in poetry, 
 
 338. 
 
 — in modern writers, 339. 
 
 — in society, 337, 
 
 — in style, 336. 
 Classification of figures, 400. 
 
 — of Poetry, 106. 
 
 — of poetry, principle of, 115. 
 Clause co-ordination, 271. 
 
 — presentation of analogy, 75. 
 
 — saving, consistency in examples of, 
 298. 
 
 — saving in poetry, 299. 
 Clauses, co-ordination of, 269. 
 
 — saved, percentage of, in Addison, 
 297. 
 
 n Ascham, 297, 
 n Bacon, 297. 
 n Bolingbroke, 297. 
 n Bunyan, 297. 
 n Channing, 297. 
 n Chaucer, 297. 
 n De Quincey, 297. 
 n Dryden, 297. 
 n Emerson, 297. 
 n C. C. Everett, 297. 
 n Goldsmith, 297. 
 n Grant, 297. 
 n Hooker, 297. 
 n Johnson, 297. 
 n Latimer, 297. 
 n Lowell, 297. 
 n Lyly, 297. 
 n Macaulay, 297. 
 n Mandeville, 297. 
 n Newman, 297. 
 
458 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Clauses saved, percentage of, in Shaftes- 
 bury, 297. 
 
 — in Sidney, 297. 
 
 — in Spenser, 297. 
 
 — subordination of, 273. 
 
 — suppression of, 276. 
 Clearness and Force, 314. 
 Colombe's Birthday, the art of, 223. 
 Communication of spiritual truth, modes 
 
 of, 122. 
 Comparison, 400. 
 
 — between Browning's Luria and the 
 Othello, 102. 
 
 Compounds, poetic, 76. 
 Concentration in figures, course of, 79. 
 
 — in music, 395. 
 Condensation in figures, 74. 
 Condition of England in the days of 
 
 Chaucer, 90. 
 Confusion between period and para- 
 graph, 291. 
 
 — meanings changed to prepositional, 
 299. 
 
 Conjunctional sign of original relation, 
 
 omission of, 296. 
 Conjunctions, Arnold's aggregate, 304. 
 
 — Bartol's aggregate, 305. 
 
 — Emerson's aggregate, 305. 
 
 — Gladstone's aggregate, 304. 
 
 — Hawthorne's aggregate, 305. 
 
 — Higginson's aggregate, 304. 
 
 — O. W. Holmes' aggregate, 305. 
 
 — Howell's aggregate, 304. 
 
 — Irving's aggregate, 304. 
 
 — Lowell's aggregate, 304. 
 
 — D. G. Mitchell's aggregate, 304. 
 
 — T. T. Munger's aggregate, 305. 
 
 — Newman's aggregate, 304. 
 
 — Theodore Parker's aggregate, 305. 
 
 — Pater's aggregate, 304. 
 
 — co-ordinate in Anglo-Saxon Chron- 
 icle, 270. 
 
 — illative and temporal in White's 
 Selboume, 275. 
 
 — illative in Hooker, 275. 
 
 — illative in Spenser, 274. * 
 
 — initial, 304. 
 
 — suppression of, 305. 
 Consistency in clause-saving, example 
 
 of, 298. 
 
 Control of imagination in modes of in- 
 telligence or judgment, 350. 
 
 Conventionalizers, generation of, 98. 
 
 Conventionalizing period in English 
 literature, 330. 
 
 Co-ordinate conjunctions in Anglo- 
 Saxon Chronicle, 270. 
 
 — structure of sentences, occasional 
 effectiveness of, 272. 
 
 Co-ordination of Clauses, 269. 
 Coriolanus as an example of Shake- 
 speare's power over an audience, 
 
 233- 
 Corson, Introduction to Shakespeare, 36. 
 Counterbalance to the law of survival, 
 
 248. 
 Count Gismond, diagram whole number 
 
 of words and force words in, 377. 
 
 — quotation of, 375. 
 
 — force of, 16. 
 
 — meaning of, 88. 
 
 Course of concentration in figures, 79. 
 
 — of rjhantasy in Chaucer's and Shel- 
 ley's poetry, 361. 
 
 Cowper, The Task, 15. 
 Crabbe, The Village, 58. 
 Culture, end of, 241. 
 
 Curve of Macaulay's sentence average, 
 288. 
 
 — of sentence length of maximum fre- 
 quency in Hooker, 284. 
 
 — of sentence length of maximum fre- 
 quency in Macaulay, 285. 
 
 Danish ballad, stanzas from, 409. 
 Dante, 44. 
 
 — poetical emphasis in, 46. 
 
 — Purgatorio, 130. 
 
 Dante's verse structure, illustrations of, 
 
 385- 
 Dearth of poetry, 364. 
 Declarative sentence, 7. 
 Decrease of predication, 263. 
 Definition of a prose purpose, 367. 
 ■ — of force, 374. 
 
 — of ideals, 94. 
 
 — of ' trope,' 400. 
 
 Degree of imaginative energy, 95. 
 Degrees of energy in poetical cognition, 
 399- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 459 
 
 Departments of literature answering to 
 ' intellect,' ' feelings,' and ' will," 368. 
 
 De Quincey, average of predications in, 
 266. 
 
 — divisions of literature, 5. 
 
 — numerical sentence length in, 260. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 
 — sentence rhythm in, 260. 
 
 — suppression of clauses in, 279. 
 Deth of Blanche, 45. 
 
 — summary of analogies in, 395. 
 Development of the novel, 190. 
 Diagram of force words in Count Gis- 
 
 mond, 20, 377. 
 Diction, ' florid,' 353. 
 
 — romanticists of, 340. 
 Didactic poetry, 119. 
 
 Difference between Chaucer's prose 
 periods and poetic, 355. 
 — between positive and negative ef- 
 fects, 415. 
 
 — between seer and poet, 211. 
 
 — between simile and metaphor, 62. 
 
 — between written and oral styles 
 explanation of 285. 
 
 — in the average of predications in 
 Chaucer's prose and poetry, 355. 
 
 — in Arnold's, 357. 
 
 — in Dryden's, 356. 
 
 — in Holland's, 357. 
 
 — in Lowell's, 357. 
 
 — in Spenser's, 356. 
 Differentiation of statements, 273. 
 Diminutives and nicknames, 68. 
 Dissimilarities in form between prose 
 
 and poetry beyond rhyme and metre, 
 
 355- 
 Distinction between metaphor and alle- 
 gory, Kames", 393. 
 
 — between poetic and prosaic modes 
 of mind, 344. 
 
 — of style, growth of power to appre- 
 ciate, 334. 
 
 Don Carlos, Schiller's, 439. 
 
 Drama, stages of development in the 
 
 English, 145. 
 Dramatic monologue illustrated in My 
 
 Last Duchess, 202. 
 
 — illustrated in Browning's Mesmer- 
 
 Dramatic monologue, success of, 195. 
 
 — the, 190. 
 
 — the development of, 191. 
 
 — poetry, proper signification of, 222. 
 Dryden, differences in average of predi- 
 cations of prose and poetry, 356. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 Duty and delight, 344. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker, 257. 
 Effect of the War of the Rebellion, 401. 
 Effectiveness, occasional, of co-ordinate 
 
 structure of sentences, 272. 
 ' Effects ' in Colombe's Birthday, 225. 
 
 — in Julius Cmsar, 234. 
 
 — in the first act of Hamlet, 175. 
 Elegance, 352. 
 
 Elizabethan and modern prose writers, 
 256. 
 
 — writers, force in, 324. 
 Emancipation of the 'people,' 402. 
 Emerson, Address before the Senior Class 
 
 in Divinity College, 258. 
 
 — average of predications in, 267. 
 
 — conjunctions, 305. 
 
 — numerical sentence length in, 259. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 Emphasis, grammatical, 16. 
 
 — of sympathy, 17. 
 
 — of thought on unimportant words, 
 
 374- 
 
 — of thought, 17, 317. 
 Employment of poetic phrases, 77. 
 End of culture, the, 241. 
 Endymion, Keats', 26, 52. 
 
 Energy in poetical cognition, degrees of, 
 
 399- 
 English ideals in the age of Spenser, 91. 
 
 — literature, conventionalizing period 
 in, 330. 
 
 — Keltic influence in, 402. 
 
 — post-Shakespearian period of, 97. 
 
 — vocabulary, the un-Saxon portion 
 of, 31. 
 
 Enjoyment from the use of the abstract 
 
 for the concrete, 396. 
 Epithet, 86. 
 
 Epithetic phrases, potency of, 389. 
 Essay on History, Macaulay, 258. 
 Essential requisite of allegory, the, 397. 
 
460 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Everett, C. C, average of predications 
 in, 267. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 Exclamatory sentence, the, 7. 
 Expansive figures, illustrations of, 81. 
 Expatiation, 84. 
 
 Explanation of difference between oral 
 
 and written styles, 285. 
 Evolution, mental, stages of, 112. 
 
 — of forms in the modes of art, 135. 
 
 Fabyan's Chronicle, 256. 
 
 Fabyan, numerical sentence length in, 
 
 2S9- 
 Faerie Queene, Spenser, 30. 
 Faerie Queene, The, allegory of, 393. 
 Father Taylor in Radical Problems, C. A. 
 
 Bartol, 265. 
 Figures, 60. 
 
 — abuse of, 396. 
 
 — analogy as basis of, 67. 
 
 — classification of, 400. 
 
 — condensation in, 74. 
 
 — course of concentration in, 79. 
 
 — expansive, illustrations of, 81. 
 
 — indispensableness of, 391. 
 Fine writing, 352. 
 
 1 Florid ' diction, 353. 
 
 Folk-speech, proportion of un-Saxon 
 
 words in, 35. 
 Force and heaviness, 374. 
 
 — and oral English, 324. 
 
 — defined, 374. 
 
 — explanation of, 320. 
 
 — general discussion of, 313. 
 
 — inference of, through association, 
 
 314- 
 
 — inferred by association of tone- 
 stress, 322. 
 
 — in poetry, 15. 
 
 — in the Elizabethan writers, 324. 
 
 — occasions of, 18. 
 
 — relation of, to thought-emphasis, 320. 
 
 — representation by curves, 20, 377. 
 ■ — ultimate reason of, 322. 
 
 Form, effect of, 41. 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 435. 
 Function of religion, the, 402. 
 Fusion of Northern and Southern liter- 
 atures, 44. 
 
 Gebir, W. S. Landor, 70. 
 Geikie, Life and Words of Christ, 296, 
 Generation of conventionalizers, 98. 
 Genius, 121. 
 
 — relativity of, 114. 
 Ghost in Hamlet, the, 179. 
 Gladstone, conjunctions in, 304. 
 Goldsmith, percentage of clauses saved 
 
 in, 297. 
 Good, the, 420. 
 Gothic art, 123. 
 
 — comprehensive principle of, 408. 
 
 — elements of, 130. 
 
 Gothicism, earliest manifestation of, in 
 
 modern English, 137. 
 Gothic minstrelsy, forms of, 126. 
 
 — poets, 134. 
 
 Grades of suggestiveness, 371. 
 
 Grammatical emphasis, 16. 
 
 Grant, average of predications in, 267. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 Greatness of Browning, 104. 
 
 — of Tennyson, 104. 
 
 Growth of popular style in modern prose, 
 292. 
 
 — of power to appreciate distinctions 
 of style, 334. 
 
 Hakluyt, Miles Phillips' Discourse, 263. 
 
 — suppression of clauses in, 278. 
 Hall, average of predications in, 265. 
 Hamlet and Macbeth, 174. 
 Hamlet and Othello, 183. 
 
 Hamlet, ' effects ' in the first act of, 173. 
 
 — poetic phrases in, 56. 
 
 — Act I., scene v., 181. 
 
 — the climax in Act I., 182. 
 
 — the court scene in the first act of, 
 177. 
 
 — the dramatic preparation for the 
 ghost in, 179. 
 
 — the ghost in, 175. 
 
 — the gross analysis of, 179. 
 
 — the platform scene in, 174, 
 
 — the Polonius family, 179. 
 Hawthorne, conjunctions in, 305. 
 Heaviness and force, 374. 
 Hellenism and Hebraism in modern 
 
 civilization, 412. 
 Hermann and Dorothea, Goethe's, 440. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 461 
 
 Hesperus and Hymencsus, John Adding- 
 ton Symonds, 59. 
 
 Higginson, conjunctions in, 304. 
 
 Higher effects of poetry, 87. 
 
 History of England, Macaulay, numeri- 
 cal sentence length in, 261. 
 
 Holland, differences in the average of 
 predications in prose and poetry, 337. 
 
 Holmes, O. W., conjunctions in, 305. 
 
 Homer and Herodotus, average of pred- 
 ications in, 425. 
 
 Hooker, average of predications in, 266. 
 
 — curve of sentence length of maxi- 
 mum frequency, 284. 
 
 — Ecclesiastical Polity, 259* 
 
 — illative conjunctions in,.27S- 
 
 — numerical sentence length in, 259. 
 
 — percentage of clauses Saved in, 297. 
 Hooker's style, influence of the new 
 
 learning on, 287. 
 Howells, conjunctions in, 304. 
 Hudibras, burlesque in, 50. 
 Human development, stages of, 212. 
 Humorous poetry, 119. 
 
 IAGO AND RODERIGO, l8S. 
 
 Ictus, 43. 
 
 Idealization, the process of, 94. 
 
 — when occasioned, 342. 
 Ideals, 213. 
 
 — advance in, since Shakespeare, 402. 
 
 — defined, 94. 
 
 — English, in the age of Spenser, 91. 
 Ideal style, the, 307. 
 
 Illative conjunctions, proportion of, in 
 View of the Present State of Ireland, 
 274. 
 
 Illustrations of expansive figures, 81. 
 
 — of Dante's verse structure, 385. 
 
 — of phrase simile, 400. 
 
 — of Shakespeare's verse structure, 
 
 387- - 
 Imagination, the, 12, 370, 440. 
 
 — and phantasy, 346, 370. 
 
 — control of, in modes of intelligence, 
 or judgment, 350. 
 
 — method of, 413. 
 Imaginative energy, degree of, 95. 
 Incongruity of associations, bad effects 
 
 from, 384. 
 
 Increase in spiritual expertness, 240. 
 Indispensableness of figures, 391, 
 Individualization, style of, 331. 
 Inference of force from tone-stress, 322. 
 
 — through association, 314. 
 Infinite, the postulation of the, 402. 
 Influence of the new learning on 
 
 Hooker's style, 287. 
 
 Inherent types, dealing with man and 
 nature, 98. 
 
 Initial conjunctions, 304. 
 
 Intellectual and sympathetic discern- 
 ment, 374. 
 
 Intellectual poetry, 116. 
 
 — procedures, participation of feelings 
 
 in, 349- 
 Intension, logical, and of the feelings, 371. 
 Interpretation of Childe Roland to the 
 
 Dark Tower came, Browning, 207. 
 
 — of Up at a Villa, down in the City, 
 Browning, 208. 
 
 Inter-relations of classicism and ro- 
 manticism, 340, 
 Introduction to Shakespeare, Corson, 36. 
 Irving, conjunctions in, 304. - 
 
 Isolating Period of English prose, 328. 
 
 JOHNSON, percentage of clauses saved 
 
 in, 297- 
 Julius Csesar, art of, 234. 
 Juxtaposition, to signify relation, 308. 
 
 Kames' distinction between metaphor 
 
 and allegory, 393. 
 Keats, Endymion, 26, 52. 
 
 — poetic phrases in, 56. 
 
 Keltic influence in English literature, 402. 
 King Henry VI. (II.), Shakespeare, 26. 
 King James' version of the Scriptures, 
 3 2 9- 
 
 LABOR, spiritual element in, 242. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, Getir, 70. 
 
 Latest contribution to the Balder discus- 
 sion, 412. 
 
 Latimer, percentage of clauses saved in, 
 297. 
 
 Latin -ion, -ment, we derivatives, 300. 
 
 Latinisms and Gallicisms of Shakespeare, 
 389. 
 
462 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Law of progress, 248. 
 
 — of survival, counterbalance to, 248. 
 
 — in society, 246. 
 
 Laws of stress in oral English, 315. 
 Leisure, abuse of, 247. 
 
 — use of, 245. 
 
 Life of Strafford, Browning's, 438. 
 Linguistic development of the child mind, 
 269, 273, 276, 282. 
 
 — principle of, 276. 
 
 Literary Art, the Province of, 210. 
 
 — progress, unit of, 261. 
 
 — sentence length in English prose, 
 256. 
 
 Literature and art as forces, 251. 
 
 — departments of, 368. 
 
 — the office of, 253. 
 
 — the use of, 365. 
 Locksley Hall, 126. 
 Logical intension, 371. 
 
 Love and Music, Philip Bourke Marston, 
 
 =7- 
 Love's Labor's Lost, averages from, 338. 
 Lowell, average of predications in, 267. 
 
 — - conjunctions in, 304. 
 
 — differences in the average of predi- 
 cations in prose and poetry, 357. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297, 
 Luria and Florence, 403. 
 
 Luria, Browning, 133. 
 
 Luria and Othello compared, 102. 
 
 Lyly, percentage of clauses saved, 297. 
 
 Macaulay, average of predications in, 
 267. 
 
 — curve of sentence length of maxi- 
 mum frequency, 285. 
 
 — Essay on History, 258. 
 
 — numerical sentence length in, 259, 
 261. 
 
 — observations on the style of John- 
 son, 432. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 Macaulay's sentence average, curve of, 
 
 288. 
 Macbeth, Act II, 155. 
 
 — Act III, 159. 
 
 — Act IV, 163. 
 
 — Act V, 166. 
 
 — and Hamlet, 174. 
 
 Macbeth, art of Shakespeare in, 146. 
 
 — Shakespeare, 30, 36. 
 Mandeville, percentage of clauses saved 
 
 in, 297. 
 Mandeville's Travels, suppression of 
 
 clauses in, 277. 
 Marinistic poetry, 115. 
 Marlowe, Tamburlaine, 374. 
 Marston, Philip Bourke, Thy Garden, 9. 
 Meaning of Count Gismond, 88. 
 
 — sentence sense, 290. 
 
 Melibeus, numerical sentence average of, 
 
 438. 
 Mental evolution, stages of, 112. 
 Merchant of Venice, 47. \ 
 Mesmerism, Browning, 10. / 
 
 — the art of, 201. 
 
 Metaphor and allegory, Kames' distinc- 
 tion between. 393. 
 
 — and simile, difference between, 62. 
 Meters, 41. 
 
 — kinds of, 43. \ 
 Method of imagination, 413. 
 Metonomy, 73. 
 Metric scheme of Chaucer's \ Prologue, 
 
 387. 
 Miles Phillips' Discourse, Hakluyt, 263. 
 Milton, poetic phrases in, 56. 
 
 — the stages in the development of, 
 118. 
 
 — words of Latin origin in, 32. 
 Miracle Plays, 144. 
 
 Mitchell, D. G, conjunctions in, 304. 
 Modern civilization, Hellenism and He- 
 braism in, 412. 
 Modes of Art, evolution of, 135. 
 
 — of communicating spiritual truth, 
 122. 
 
 — of mind, poetic and prosaic, distinc- 
 tion between, 344. 
 
 Momentum in style, 313. 
 Monistic philosophy, 436. 
 Monologue, dramatic, illustrated in 
 Browning's Mesmerism, 201. 
 
 — in My Last Duchess, Browning, 202. 
 
 — the development of, 191. 
 
 — the dramatic, 190. 
 Moral elements in labor, 242. 
 Morals, defined, 425. 
 Mozart, 121. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 463 
 
 Munger, T. T., conjunctions in, 305. 
 Music, concentration in, 395. 
 My Last Duchcsse, Browning, art of, 202. 
 Mysteries, the, 144. 
 
 NATURALISM, 139. 
 
 Negative effects in Shakespeare, 183. 
 
 Newman, average of predications in, 267. 
 
 — conjunctions in, 304. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved, 297. 
 Nicknames and diminutives, 68. 
 Night Thoughts, Young, 373. 
 Novel, the, 101, 190. 
 
 Numerical sentence average of Melibeus, 
 438. 
 
 Oberon to Puck, M.S.D., 53. 
 Obscurity and obviousness, 396. 
 Of Regimetit of Health, Bacon, 264. 
 Office of literature, the, 253. 
 Omission of conjunctional sign of original 
 relation, 296. 
 
 — of predicatives, 295. 
 Onomatopoetic imitation, 30. 
 Oral and written styles, 282. 
 
 — explanation of difference between, 
 28s. 
 
 Oral manner, appropriate to literary 
 
 matter, 311. 
 Oral style and force, 324. 
 Organic cause of sentence point, 360. 
 Ormulum, 45. 
 Othello, and Browning's Luria compared, 
 
 102. 
 
 — and Hamlet, 183. 
 
 — Desdemona before the Signiory of 
 Venice, 187. 
 
 — Roderigo and Iago, characteriza- 
 tion of, 185. 
 
 — lack of sympathy for Brabantio in, 
 184. 
 
 — race-differences in, 189. 
 
 — purpose of the second scene in, 
 185. 
 
 — the ' effects ' of the third scene, 186. 
 
 — the ' negative effects ' in, 183. 
 
 — the problem of Shakespeare at the 
 outset of, 183. 
 
 — the speech before the Signiory of 
 Venice, 187. 
 
 Overfervor of Browning and Carlyle, 
 
 375- 
 Owl and the Nightingale, 45. 
 
 Parable, The, 64. 
 
 Paradise Lost, 29. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, conjunctions in, 305. 
 
 Parlament ofFoules, Chaucer, 45. 
 
 — summary of figures in, 438. 
 Paramount source of poetic power, 96. 
 
 — themes of poetry, at the present day, 
 104. 
 
 Participation of the feelings in intellectual 
 procedures, 349. 
 
 Pastoral poetry, 119. 
 
 Pater, conjunctions in, 304. 
 
 Percentage of simple sentences in chief 
 English writers, 266, 267. 
 
 Period and paragraph, confusion be- 
 tween, 291. 
 
 Personification, 64. 
 
 Persouris Tale, averages of clause-saving 
 in, 430. 
 
 Phantasy, 368. 
 
 Phantasy and imagination, 346. 
 
 Phantasy and imagination, 370. 
 
 Phantasy, course of, in Chaucer's and 
 Shelley's poetry, 361. 
 
 Philosophy, the Monistic, 436. 
 
 Phrase presentation of analogy, 75. 
 
 Phrase simile, illustrations of, 401. 
 
 Phrases, epithetic, 55. 
 
 — Poetic, 52. 
 
 — poetic, history of the development 
 
 of, 55- 
 
 — poetic, in Shelley's dramatic pieces, 
 
 39°- 
 Poema Morale, 45. 
 Poet and seer, difference between, 
 
 211. 
 Poe, The Bells, 25. 
 Potency of epithetic phrases, 389. 
 Poetical cognition, degrees of energy in, 
 
 399- 
 
 Poetical form, basis of, 48. 
 
 Poetical intension, beginnings of, 33. 
 
 Poetical translations, 40. 
 
 Poetic and prosaic modes of mind, dis- 
 tinction between, 344. 
 
 Poetic compounds, 76. 
 
464 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Poetic Phrases, 52. 
 
 — constructive energy of the mind in, 
 
 54- 
 
 — employment of, 77. 
 
 — kinds of, 55. 
 
 — in Chaucer, 55. 
 
 — in Hamlet, 56. 
 
 — in Keats, 56. 
 
 — in Milton, 56. 
 
 — in Shakespeare, 53. 
 
 — in Shelley, 57. 
 
 — in Spenser, 56. 
 
 — in Wyatt and Sackville, 55- 
 
 — proper, power of, 75. 
 
 Poetic power, paramount source of, 96. 
 Poetic sentence-style of Chaucer, 291. 
 Poetry, classicism and romanticism in, 
 
 338. 
 
 — Classification of, 106. 
 
 — didactic, 119. 
 
 — dramatic, proper signification of, 
 222. 
 
 — encroachments on the domain of 
 prose, 363. 
 
 — higher effects of, 87. 
 
 — history of, no. 
 
 — humorous, 119. 
 
 — inferior divisions of, 119. 
 
 — intellectual, 116. 
 
 — Marinistic, 115. 
 
 — of pure sentiment, 117. 
 
 — paramount themes of, at the present 
 day, 104. 
 
 — pastoral, 119. 
 
 — power in form of, 51. 
 
 — principle of classification, 115. 
 
 — reformation of, from within, 402. 
 
 — the dearth of, 364. 
 
 — three grades of, no. 
 Poets, Gothic, 134. 
 
 Pope, how to realize his expatiation, 396. 
 Positive and negative ' effects, 1 difference 
 
 between, 416. 
 Post-Shakesperian period in English 
 
 literature, 97. 
 Postulation of the infinite, the, 402. 
 Power of poetic phrases proper, 75. 
 Precedence of types, 348. 
 Predication, Decrease of, 263. 
 
 — Suppression of, 302. 
 
 Predication, use and omission of, 369. 
 Predicatives, omission of, 295. 
 Prepositional meanings substituted for 
 
 conjunctional, 299. 
 Primer ofEng. Lit., Stopford Brooke, t. 
 Principles of art, 122. 
 
 — of linguistic development, 276. 
 
 — of poetic classification, 115. 
 Process of idealization, 94. 
 Progressive types, 93. 
 Progress, law of, 248. 
 
 Prologue and Knightes Tale, Chaucer, 
 
 sentence-length of, 355. 
 Prologue to Canterbury Tales, Chaucer, 
 
 45- 
 
 — metric scheme of, 387. 
 
 — opening of, 60. 
 
 Prose and poetic purpose, 368. 
 
 Prose and poetry, approach of, to each 
 
 other in interior aspects, 362. 
 Arnold, difference in the average of 
 
 predications in, 357. 
 
 — Chaucer, differences in the average 
 of predications in, 355. 
 
 — dissimilarities in form between, be- 
 yond metre and rhyme, 355. 
 
 — Dryden, difference of average of 
 predications in, 356. 
 
 — Holland, differences in the average 
 of predications in, 357. 
 
 — Lowell, differences in the average 
 of predications in, 357. 
 
 — Spenser, differences in average of 
 predications in, 356. 
 
 Prose, English, beginnings of convention- 
 alization in, 328. 
 
 Prose, English, the Literary Sentence- 
 length in, 256. 
 
 Prose, English, isolating period in, 328. 
 
 Prose literature, basis for classification 
 
 of, 335- 
 Prose-poetry, 10. 
 Prose-purpose, defined, 367. 
 Prose writers, ante-Elizabethan and 
 
 modern, 256. 
 Province of Literary Art, the, 210. 
 Purgatorio, Dante, 130. 
 Purposes served by analogy in poetry, 
 
 80. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 465 
 
 Quantity, 42. 
 Quantity and alliteration, 386. 
 Quality of tones used by the ghost in 
 Hamlet, 181. 
 
 Radical Problems, Bartol, 265, 301. 
 Reaction of sentence sense on allegory 
 
 and simile, 400. 
 Realism, 138, 363, 439. 
 
 — history of, 139, 411. 
 Realization, when occasioned, 342. 
 Recasting of analogy, 391. 
 Reformation of poetry from within, 
 
 402. 
 Relation of Allegory to metaphor, 396. 
 Relations signified by juxtaposition; 
 
 308. 
 Relatives, suppression of, in oral style, 
 
 3°9- 
 Relativity of genius, 114. 
 Relatives, suppression of, in written style, 
 
 310. 
 Religion, the function of, 402. 
 Remuneration for service, disproportion 
 
 of, 241. 
 Renaissance, the, 249, 424. 
 Reversion of Teutonic poetry to the 
 
 Beowulf forms, 395. 
 Revised Version, 434. 
 Rhyme, 41. 
 
 — origin and effect of, 50. 
 
 Rhythm, dependent on force emphasis, 
 42. 
 
 — subjective effects of, 41. 
 Richard H., Shakespeare, 59. 
 Richard III., Shakespeare, 28. 
 Rig Veda, verses from, 404. 
 Rise of the Scottish ' School,' 100. 
 Roderigo and Iago in Othello, 184. 
 Romanticism, 136. 
 
 Romanticism and Classicism in modern 
 writers, 339. 
 
 — in poetry, 338. 
 
 — in society, 337. 
 
 — in style, 336. 
 
 — inter-relations of, 340. 
 Romanticists of diction, 340. 
 Romantic revolutions in English literary 
 
 history, similarities of, 402. 
 Running metaphor, 71. 
 
 Schoolmaster, Ascham, ' ands ' in, 271. 
 Scotch school, the, 338. 
 
 — rise of, 100. 
 
 Seer and poet, difference between, 211. 
 Self-culture, Channing, 258. 
 Sentence-length in Channing, 259. 
 
 — in De Quincey, 260. 
 
 — in Emerson, 259. 
 
 — in Fabyan, 259. 
 
 — in Hooker, 259. 
 
 — in Macaulay, 259. 
 
 — in Macaulay's History of England, 
 261. 
 
 — in Spenser, 259. 
 
 — Literary, in English Prose, 256. 
 
 — of maximum frequency in Hooker, 
 284. 
 
 — in Macaulay, 285. 
 
 — of the Prologue and Knightes Tale, 
 
 3SS- 
 
 — of The Tale of Meliieus, 355. 
 Sentence-development, periods in, 297. 
 Sentence-norms, Browning's adherence 
 
 to, at widely removed periods, 358. 
 
 — Shakespeare's adherence to, at 
 widely removed periods, 358. 
 
 Sentence-point, organic cause of, 360. 
 Sentence-rhythm in De Quincey, 260, 
 
 — unconscious, 260. 
 Sentence-style, poetic, of Chaucer, 291. 
 Sentences, declarative and exclamatory, 
 
 difference between, 7. 
 Sentence-sense, 289. 
 
 — meaning of, 290. 
 
 — reaction of, on allegory and simile, 
 400. 
 
 Sentence-simplification, 265. 
 Sentence, the order of, 47. 
 Shaftesbury, average of predications in, 
 266. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved, 297. 
 Shakespeare, adherence to sentence- 
 norms at widely removed periods, 
 358. 
 
 — advance since, 102. 
 
 — art of, in Macbeth, 146. 
 
 — Latinisms and Gallicisms of, 389. 
 
 — Macbeth, 30, 36. 
 
 — Richard II., 59, 83. 
 
 — Richard, HI., 28. 
 
466 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shakespeare, control oi sympathies 
 shown in Coriolanus, 233. 
 
 — //. King Henry VI., 26. 
 
 — verse-structure illustration of, 387. 
 Shakespeare's prose, averages from, 358. 
 
 — use of ' negative effects,' 183. 
 
 — use of poetic phrases, 53, 56. 
 Shakespeare, the Art of, 144. 
 Shelley, poetic phrases in, 57. 
 Shelley's dramatic pieces, poetic phrases 
 
 in, 390. 
 Sidney, average of predications in, 265. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved in, 297. 
 Similarities of the romantic revolutions 
 
 in English literary history, 402. 
 Simile and metaphor, choice between, 
 64. 
 
 — difference between, 61. 
 Simple-sentence sense, absence of, in 
 
 poetry of the phrase school, 361. 
 Simple sentences, increase of, 265. 
 
 — percentage of, in chief English 
 writers, 266, 267. 
 
 Sohrab and Ritstum, Arnold, 14, 39. 
 Sordello, averages from, 358. 
 
 — Browning, 23. 
 Speech of children, 269. 
 
 Spenser and Chaucer, average of predi- 
 cations in, 274. 
 
 — archaic and imported terms in, 389. 
 
 — as a forerunner of Shakespeare, 92. 
 
 — average of predications in, 265. 
 
 — difference in average of predica- 
 tions of, in prose and poetry, 356. 
 
 — English ideals in the age of, 91. 
 
 — Faerie Queene, 30. 
 
 — illative conjunctions in, 274. 
 
 — numerical sentence length in, 239. 
 
 — percentage of clauses saved, 297. 
 
 — poetic phrases in, 56. 
 
 — View of the Present State of Ireland, 
 257- 
 
 Spiritual element in labor, 242. 
 Spirituality, station fixed by degree of, 
 
 244. 
 ' Spiritual proportion,' 400. 
 Spiritual truth, 87. 
 
 — modes of communicating, 122. 
 Stages of human development, 212. 
 Statements, differentiation of, 273. 
 
 Stress, grammatical, 316. 
 
 — grammatical and thought, reason 
 of, 318. 
 
 — in oral English, laws of, 315. 
 
 — on compound nouns and verbs, 316. 
 Structure, associations of, 47. 
 
 Style, All Men's and Every Man's Best, 
 326. 
 
 — approach of oral and written to each 
 other, 307. 
 
 — a set of generalized notions, 326. 
 
 — as shown by animals, 332. 
 
 — as shown by plants, 333. 
 
 — Bunyan's and Addison's, 338. 
 
 — classicism and romanticism in, 336. 
 
 — universally best, characteristics of, 
 
 327- 
 
 — the Prose and the Poetic Distin- 
 guished, 6. 
 
 — defined, 335. 
 
 — not ' acquired,' 435. 
 
 — of individualization, 331. 
 
 — of Johnson, Macaulay's observa- 
 tions on, 432, 
 
 — popular, growth of, 292. 
 
 — monumentum in, 313. 
 
 — the ideal, 307. 
 
 — universally best, examples of, 329. 
 Subjective and objective genitive with 
 
 infinitive, 300. 
 Subordination of Clauses, 273. 
 Suggestion, grades of, 371. 
 
 — range of, 13. 
 Suggestive Words, 12. 
 
 Summary of analogies in Chaucer's 
 Dethe of Blanche, 395. 
 
 — of figures in the Parlament of 
 Foules, 438. 
 
 Suppression of Clauses, 276. 
 
 — in De Quincey, 279. 
 
 — in Hakluyt, 278. 
 
 — in Mandeville, 277. 
 
 — of conjunctions, 305. 
 
 — of predication, 302. 
 
 — of relatives in oral style, 309. 
 
 — in written style, 310. 
 Survival, law of, 24s. 
 
 — counter-balance to law of, 248. 
 Symonds, John Addington, Hesperus 
 
 and Hymencsus, 59. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 467 
 
 Sympathetic and intellectual discern- 
 ment, 374. 
 
 TALE OF MELIBEUS, The, sentence 
 
 length of, 353. 
 Tamburlaine, Marlowe, 374, 
 Taste, 213. 
 Tautology, 84. 
 Tegne>, 63, 391. 
 Tendency toward reversion in prose, 
 
 274. 
 Tennyson, greatness of, 104. 
 
 — The Merman, 22. 
 
 — Tke Palace of Art, 8. 
 
 — The Princess, 76. 
 
 Teutonic poetry, reversion to Be6wulf 
 forms, 395. 
 
 — the chief characteristic of, 395. 
 The Bells, Poe, 25. 
 
 The Creation, Sir Richard Blackmore, 
 
 46. 
 The Princess, Tennyson, 76. 
 The Divine Comedy, 125. 
 The Bishop Orders his Tomb, Browning, 
 
 206. 
 The Englishman in Italy, Browning, art 
 
 analysis of, 198. 
 The Inn Album, Browning, 14. 
 The Italian in England, Browning, the 
 
 art of, 192. 
 The Merman, Tennyson, 22. 
 Theme, the, 87. 
 
 — the significance of, 105. 
 The Palace of Art, Tennyson, 8. 
 The Passing of Scyld, 124. 
 
 The Ring and the Book, Browning, 26, 
 
 — averages from, 358. 
 The Seasons, Thomson, 373. 
 
 The Story of Jane Austen's Life, Oscar 
 
 Fay Adams, 264. 
 The Task, Cowper, 15. 
 Tempest, averages from, 358. 
 The Village, Crabbe, 58. 
 Thomson, The Seasons, 373. 
 Thought-emphasis, 317. 
 
 — on unimportant words, 374. 
 
 Thy Garden, Philip Bourke Marston, 9. 
 
 Time and space relations, 223. 
 
 To a Waterfowl, Bryant, analysis of, 218. 
 
 ' Tone,' 351. 
 
 — colors, below the human scale, 27. 
 Tone Quality, 21. 
 
 — hard combinations of consonants, 
 22. 
 
 — in words of the ghost in Hamlet, 
 28. 
 
 — pectoral, 27. 
 
 — cause of, 21. 
 
 — tones of merriment, 24. 
 
 — unobstructed vowels, 24. 
 Transcendentalism, 339. 
 
 — New England, 433. 
 Trope, defined, 401. 
 Turgidity and bombast, 372. 
 
 Types of mind, as concerning themselves 
 
 with man and nature, 98. 
 Types, precedence of, 348. 
 Types, progressive, 93. 
 
 Ultimate truth and beauty, 348. 
 Unconscious sentence-rhythm, 260. 
 Unit of literary progress, 261. 
 Unit of thought and of expression 
 
 Chaucer's, 339. 
 Units of presentation of thought graded 
 
 to the capacity of the reader, 283. 
 Universally best style, characteristics of, 
 
 327- 
 
 — the examples of, 329. 
 
 Up at a Villa, Down in the City, Brown- 
 ing, interpretation of, 208. 
 
 Use and omission of predications, 369. 
 
 Use of expanded analogy, 391. 
 
 Use of literature, the, 365. 
 
 Use of the abstract for the concrete, en- 
 joyment from, 396. 
 
 Verse Structure, illustrations of 
 Shakespeare's, 387. 
 
 — Dante's, 385. 
 
 — Chaucer's, 387. 
 
 View of the Present State of Ireland, 
 
 Spenser, 257. 
 Virgil and Cicero, average of predica- 
 tions in, 425. 
 
 Voyages and Travels, Mandeville, ' and '- 
 clauses in, 269. 
 
468 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 War of the Rebellion, the effect 
 
 of, 401. 
 White, illative conjunctions in, 275. 
 Whitman, Walt, 439. 
 Words, associational extent of, in poetry, 
 
 39- 
 
 — in extract from Macbeth, 36, 37. 
 
 — in extract from Sohrab and Rustum, 
 
 39- 
 Words, Associations of, 31. 
 
 — experimental, 34. 
 
 — experiential intension of, 32. 
 
 — foreign, in Milton, 32. 
 
 — foreign, potency of, 35. 
 
 — monosyllabic proportion of, in asso- 
 ciations, 36. 
 
 Words, proportion of un-Saxon in folk- 
 speech, 35. 
 — Romance, in Chaucer, 35. 
 
 Wordsworth, fault and position in time, 
 402. 
 
 Written and oral speech, explanation of 
 difference between, 285. 
 
 Written style and oral style, 282. 
 
 Wyatt and Sackville, poetic phrases in, 
 55- 
 
 Young, Night Thoughts, 373. 
 Zerah Colburn, 121. 
 
HIGHEK ENGLISH. 
 
 Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature. 
 
 Designed mainly to show characteristics of style. By William Mxnto, 
 M.A., Professor of Logic and English Literature in the University of 
 Aberdeen, Scotland. 12mo. Cloth. 560 pages. Mailing price, $1.66; 
 for introduction, $1.50. 
 
 rPHE main design is to assist in directing students in English 
 composition to the merits and defects of the principal writers 
 of prose, enabling them, in some degree at least, to acquire the one 
 and avoid the other. The Introduction analyzes style: elements 
 of style, qualities of style, kinds of composition. Part First gives 
 exhaustive analyses of De Quincey, Macaulay, and Carlyle. These 
 serve as a key to all the other authors treated. Part Second takes 
 up the prose authors in historical order, from the fourteenth cen- 
 tury up to the early part of the nineteenth. 
 
 Hiram Corson, Prof. English Lit- 
 erature, Cornell University ; With- 
 out going outside of this book, an ear- 
 nest student could get a knowledge 
 of English prose styles, based on the 
 soundest principles of criticism, such 
 as he could not get in any twenty 
 volumes which I know of. 
 
 Katherine Lee Bates, Prof, of 
 English, Wellesley College: It is of 
 sterling value. 
 
 John M. Ellis, Prof, of English 
 Literature, Oberlin College : I am 
 using it for reference with great in- 
 
 terest. The criticisms and comments 
 on authors are admirable — the best, 
 on the whole, that I have met with 
 in any text-book. 
 
 J. Scott Clark, Prof, of Rhetoric, 
 Syracuse University : We have now 
 given Minto's English Prose a good 
 trial, and I am so much pleased that 
 I want some more of the same. 
 
 A. W. Long, Wofford College, Spar- 
 tanburg, S.C.: I have used Minto's 
 English Poets and English Prose the 
 past year, and am greatly pleased 
 with the results. 
 
 Minto's Characteristics of the English Poets, 
 
 from Chaucer to Shirley. 
 
 By William Mxnto, M.A., Professor of Logic and English Literature 
 in the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. 12mo. Cloth. xi + 382 pages. 
 Mailing price, $1.65; for introduction, $1.50. 
 
 rPHE chief objects of the author are: (1) To bring into clear 
 
 light the characteristics of the several poets ; and (2) to trace 
 
 how far each was influenced by his literary predecessors and his 
 
 contemporaries. 
 
HIGHER ENGLISH. 9 
 
 Selections in English Prose from Elizabeth to 
 
 Victoria. 1580-1880. 
 
 By James M. Gaknett, Professor of the English Language and Liter- 
 ature in the University of Virginia. 12mo. Cloth, ix + 701 pages. 
 By mail, $1.65 ; for introduction, $1.50. 
 
 rpHE selections are accompanied by such explanatory notes as 
 have been deemed necessary, and will average some twenty 
 pages each. The object is to provide students with the texts 
 themselves of the most prominent writers of English prose for 
 the past three hundred years in selections of sufficient length to 
 be characteristic of the author, and, when possible, they are com- 
 plete works or sections of works. 
 
 F. B. Gummere, Prof, of English, 
 Haverford College: I like the plan, 
 the selections, and the making of the 
 book. 
 
 H. N. Ogden, West Virginia Uni- 
 versity : The hook fulfils my expec- 
 tations in every respect, and will 
 become an indispensable help in the 
 work of our senior English class. 
 
 Sidney's Defense of Poesy. 
 
 Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Albert S. Cook, Professor 
 of English in Yale University. 12mo. Cloth, xlv + 103 pages. By 
 mail, 90 cents ; for introduction, 80 cents. 
 
 ASa classic text-book of literary aesthetics, Sidney's Defense has 
 enduring interest and value. Something of the character of 
 Sidney as a man, of the grandeur of his theme, of the signifi- 
 cance of poetry, of sound methods of profiting by poetry and of 
 judging it, — ought to be disclosed by study of the book. In 
 the notes everything is considered with reference to the learner, 
 as far as possible ; and the point of view is not exclusively that 
 of the grammarian, the antiquary, the rhetorician, or the ex- 
 plorer of Elizabethan literature, but has been chosen to include 
 something of all these, and more. 
 
 William Minto, Prof, of Litera- 
 ture, University of Aberdeen: It 
 seems to me to be a very thorough 
 
 and instructive piece of work. The 
 interests of the student are consulted 
 in every sentence of the Introduction 
 and Notes, and the paper of ques- 
 tions is admirable as a guide to the 
 thorough study of the substance of 
 the essay. 
 
 Homer T. Fuller, Pres. Worcester 
 Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, 
 Mass. : I think every lover of the 
 best specimens of good thought and 
 
 good writing in our mother tongue 
 must confess his obligations to both 
 editor and publishers of such a 
 volume as this. First, for the breadth 
 and accuracy of the notes; second, 
 for the historical research and good 
 critical judgment displayed in the 
 introduction; third, for the good 
 taste and clearness of the type and 
 print ; and fourth, for the timeliness 
 of the appearance of a volume which 
 just at present calls attention to some 
 of the essentials of poetry. 
 
10 
 
 HIGHER ENGLISH. 
 
 Shelley's Defense of Poetry. 
 
 Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Albert S. Cook, Professor of 
 English in Yale University. 12mo. Cloth, xxvi + 86 pages. Price by 
 mail, 60 cents ; for introduction, 50 cents. 
 
 OHELLEY'S Defense may be regarded as a companion-piece to 
 that of Sidney. In their diction, however, the one is of the 
 sixteenth century and the other of the nineteenth. For this reason 
 a comparison of the two is of interest to the student of historical 
 English style. But, apart from this, the intrinsic merits of Shelley's 
 essay must ever recommend it to the lover of poetry and of beauti- 
 ful English. The truth which he perceives and expounds is one 
 which peculiarly needs enforcement at the present day, and it is 
 nowhere presented in a more concise or attractive form. 
 
 John F. Genung, Prof, of Rhetoric, 
 Amherst College: By his excellent 
 editions of these three works, Profes- 
 sor Cook is doing invaluable service 
 for the study of poetry. The works 
 themselves, written by men who were 
 masters alike of poetry and prose, 
 are standard as literature; and in 
 
 the introductions and notes, which 
 evince in every part the thorough and 
 sympathetic scholar, as also in the 
 beautiful form given to the books by 
 printer and binder, the student has 
 .-11 the help to the reading of them 
 that he can desire. 
 
 Cardinal Newman's Essay on Poetry, 
 
 With reference to Aristotle's Poetics. Edited, with Introduction and 
 Notes, by Albert S. Cook, Professor of English in Yale University. 
 8vo. Limp cloth, x + 36 pages. Mailing price, 35 cents ; for introduc- 
 tion, 30 cents. 
 
 rPHE study of what is essential and what accidental in poetry is 
 more and more engaging the attention of thoughtful men, 
 particularly those occupied with educational work. Newman's 
 Essay expresses the view of one who was a man of both action 
 and theory. Besides this, the Essay is a notable example of the 
 literary work of one who has been considered the greatest master 
 of style in this generation. The illustrative apparatus provided by 
 the editor includes practical hints on the study of Greek drama in 
 English, an index, an analysis, and a few suggestive notes. 
 
 Hiram Corson, Prof, of English, 
 Cornell University. In its editorial 
 character it's an elegant piece of 
 work. . . • The introduction is a 
 
 multum in parvo bit of writing ; and 
 the notes show the rechercht scholar- 
 ship of the editor. 
 
HIGHER ENGLISH. 11 
 
 The Art of Poetry : 
 
 The Poetical Treatises of Horace, Vida, and Boileau, with the trans- 
 lations by Howes, Pitt, and Soame. 
 
 Edited by Albert S Cook, Professor of the English Language and 
 Literature in Yale University. 12mo. Cloth. 214 pages. Mailing 
 price, $1.25; for introduction, $1.12. 
 
 T^HIS volume is intended to meet the wants of three classes of 
 teachers and students, those of Latin, French, and English or 
 comparative literature. To the first class it will furnish the best 
 Latin metrical criticisms, ancient and modern, on poetry ; to the 
 second, a classic which every highly educated Frenchman is sup- 
 posed to know by heart ; and to the third, an authoritative state- 
 ment, by poets themselves, of the canons recognized in the 
 Augustan ages of Latin, Italian, and French literature, and, to a 
 very considerable extent, in the so-called Augustan period of 
 English literature, the reign of Queen Anne. Those who read 
 Latin and French will here find the originals, while those who 
 read only English are provided with standard translations. A 
 full index, containing lists of the Homeric and Virgilian passages 
 illustrated and a topical analysis of the threefold work enhance 
 its value for the class-room and the private student. 
 
 Bliss Perry, Prof, of English, 
 Williams College : The fullness and 
 accuracy of the references in the 
 notes is a testimony to his patience 
 
 as well as his scholarship. ... I 
 wish to express my admiration of 
 such faithful and competent editing. 
 
 Addison's Criticisms on Paradise Lost 
 
 Edited by Albert S. Cook, Professor of the English Language and Lit- 
 erature in Yale University. 12mo. Cloth. xxvi + 200 pages. Mailing 
 price, $1.10; for introduction, $1.00. 
 
 rpHE text of this edition is based upon the literal reproductions 
 
 of Arber and Morley, and, allowing for the modernization of 
 
 spelling and punctuation, is believed to be more correct than any 
 
 published in this century. The index is unusually full, and will 
 
 enable Addison's comments on any particular passage of Paradise 
 
 Lost, as well as on those of the ancient epics with which it is 
 
 compared, to be found with the least possible trouble. 
 
 V. D. Scudder, Inst, in English\be welcome as an addition to our 
 Literature, Wellesley College : It store of text-books, 
 seems to me admirably edited and to | 
 
12 HIGHER ENGLISH. 
 
 'What is Poetry ?' 
 
 Leigh Hunt's An Answer to the Question including Remarks on 
 Versification. 
 
 Edited by Albebt S. Cook, Professor of the English Language and 
 Literature in Yale University. 12mo. Cloth. 000 pages. Mailing 
 price, 000 cents ; for introduction, 000 cents. 
 
 (~)NE of the most delightful short papers on the subject of 
 poetry is this of Leigh Hunt. Its definitions, its quotations, 
 and especially its charm and spirit make it peculiarly valuable 
 for school and college use as an introduction to a course in poetry 
 or criticism. In this edition the quotations are conformed to the 
 best texts, which cannot always be said of the ordinary issues. 
 Tbe notes are few and brief, and have, for convenience, been 
 relegated to the foot of the page ; in many cases they are merely 
 devoted to locating the quotations employed in the text, an aid 
 for which both teacher and student will be thankful. The index, 
 as in other books by the same editor, is a feature of the new 
 edition. 
 
 Analytics of English Prose and Poetry. 
 
 By L. A. Sherman, Professor of English Literature in the University 
 of Nebraska. 12mo. Cloth. 000 pages. Mailing price, 000 cents; 
 for introduction, 000 cents. 
 
 rpHIS book was written to embody a new system of teaching 
 literature that has been tried with great success. The chief 
 features of the system are the recognition of elements, and insuring 
 an experience of each, on the part of the learner, according to the 
 laboratory plan. The principal stages in the evolution of form 
 in literature are made especial subjects of study. 
 
 It aims to make criticism begin on less vague and more exact 
 foundations. The discussion in each chapter is in the nature of a 
 condensed lecture before laboratory experiment and verification in 
 the topic treated. The text-pages of the volume proper are adapted 
 alike to students of higher or lower grade, and the treatment, so 
 far as left incomplete, is continued in notes provided in an appen- 
 dix. To aid teachers not acquainted with laboratory methods, 
 hints and suggestions how to set the student at work for himself 
 are added to many chapters. 
 
HIGHER ENGLISH. 
 
 13 
 
 Ben Jonson's Timber: or Discoveries ; 
 
 Made upon Men and Matter, as they hare Flowed out of his Daily 
 Reading, or had their Reflux to his Peculiar Notions of the Times. 
 
 Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Felix E. Schilling, Professor 
 in the University of Pennsylvania. 12mo. Cloth, xxxviii + 166 pages. 
 Mailing price, 90 cents ; for introduction, 80 cents. 
 
 T^HIS is the first attempt to edit a long-neglected English classic, 
 which needs only to be better known to take its place among 
 the best examples of the height of Elizabethan prose. The text 
 — the restoration of which entitles the book to a place in every 
 library — is based on a careful collation of the folio of 1641 with 
 subsequent editions ; with such modernization in spelling and 
 punctuation as a conservative judgment has deemed imperative. 
 The introduction and a copious body of notes have been framed 
 with a view to the intelligent understanding of an author whose 
 wide learning and wealth of allusion make him the fittest exponent 
 of the scholarship as well as the literary style and feeling of his age. 
 
 Edward Dowden, Prof, of English, 
 Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland : It 
 is a matter for rejoicing that so valu- 
 able and interesting a piece of liter- 
 
 ature as this prose work of Jonson, 
 should be made easily accessible and 
 should have all the advantages of 
 scholarly editing. 
 
 A Primer of English Verse. 
 
 By Hiram Corson, Professor of English Literature in Cornell Univer- 
 sity. 12mo. Cloth. iv + 232 pages. By mail, $1.10; for introduction, 
 $1.00. 
 
 fPHE leading purpose of this volume is to introduce the student 
 to the aesthetic and organic character of English Verse — to 
 cultivate his susceptibility to verse as an inseparable part of poetic 
 expression. To this end, the various effects provided for by the 
 poet, either consciously or unconsciously on his part, are given for 
 the student to practice upon, until those effects come out distinctly 
 to his feelings. 
 
 The University Magazine, New ous metres, giving examples of usage 
 
 York : Prof. Corson has given us from various poets. The book will 
 
 a most interesting and thorough be of great use to both the critical 
 
 treatise on the characteristics and student and to those who recognize 
 
 uses of English metres. He dis- that poetry, like music, is constructed 
 
 cusses the force and effects of vari- on scientific and precise principles. 
 
14 HIGHER ENGLISH. 
 
 Five Short Courses of Reading in English Litera- 
 
 ture. 
 
 With Biographical and Critical References. By C. T. Winchester, 
 Professor of English Literature in Wesleyan University. Sq. 16mo. 
 Cloth, v + 99 pages. Mailing price, 45 cents ; for introduction, 40 cents. 
 
 HHHIS little book lays out five short courses of reading from the 
 
 most prominent writers in pure literature of the last three 
 
 centuries, beginning with Marlowe and ending with Tennyson. 
 
 The book contains also information as to the best editions lor 
 
 student use, with extended and well chosen lists of critical and 
 
 biographical authorities. 
 
 Le Baron R. Briggs, Professor of I much pleased with it. It cannot help 
 English, Harvard University : I am I being useful. 
 
 Synopsis of English and American Literature. 
 
 By G. J. Smith, Instructor of English, Washington (D.C.) High School. 
 8vo. Cloth. 126 pages. By mail, 90 cents ; for introduction, 80 cents. 
 
 (~)NE finds here in every case the author's full name, the dates 
 of birth and death, the class of writers to which he belongs, 
 the chronological place of that class in the development of litera- 
 ture, his most important works, his most distinguished contem- 
 poraries, the leading events of the time, and, in most cases a few 
 clear words of explanation or criticism. 
 
 W. B. Chamberlain, Prof, of 
 Rhetoric, Oberlin College : Its clear- 
 ness, compactness, and readiness for 
 reference must make it one of the 
 most useful tools for either teacher 
 or student. It gives a vast amount 
 
 of most valuable information in the 
 most economical manner possible. A 
 very valuable feature is its correla- 
 tion of literary with political and 
 general historical events. I regard 
 it as a decided success. 
 
 Shakespeare's Tragedy of Hamlet. 
 
 For the use of Colleges, High Schools, Academies and Clubs. By Car- 
 roll Lewis Maxcy, A.B., Associate Principal and Instructor in Eng- 
 lish, Troy (N.Y.) Academy. Square 16mo. Cloth. 200 pages. Mail- 
 ing price, 50 cents ; for introduction, 45 cents. 
 
 A VERY few notes have been added to explain passages which 
 would otherwise be unintelligible. The most famous quota- 
 tions are grouped at the end of each act. 
 
 The Philosophy of American Literature. 
 
 By Gbeenough White, A.M. 12mo. Flexible cloth, iv + 66 pages. 
 By mail, 35 cents ; for introduction, 30 cents. . 
 
HIGHER ENGLISH. 
 
 15 
 
 The Best Elizabethan Plays. 
 
 Edited with an Introduction by William R. Thayer. 12mo. Cloth. 
 611 pages. By mail, $1.40; for introduction, $1.25. 
 
 fTIHE selection comprises The Jew of Malta, by Marlowe; The 
 Alchemist, by Ben Jonson; Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletcher; 
 The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Fletcher and Shakespeare ; and The 
 Duchess of Malfi, by Webster. It thus affords not only the best 
 specimen of the dramatic work of each of the five Elizabethan 
 poets who rank next to Shakespeare, but also a general view of the 
 development of English drama from its rise in Marlowe to its last 
 strong expression in Webster. The necessary introduction to the 
 reading of each play is concisely given in the Preface. Great care 
 has been used in expurgating the text. 
 
 Felix E. Sohelling, Professor of 
 English, University of Pennsyl- 
 vania: This has proved invaluable 
 to me in my Seminar. All profes- 
 sors of English literature must wel- 
 come such intelligent and scholarly 
 editions of our enduring classics. 
 
 Charles F. Richardson, Prof, of 
 English, Dartmouth College: The 
 book is an excellent one, intelligently 
 edited, equipped with brief and sen- 
 sible notes, and introduced by a 
 preface of real critical insight. Alto- 
 gether, it is well fitted for college use. 
 
 A Method of English Composition. 
 
 By T. Whiting Bancroft, late Professor of Rhetoric and English Lit- 
 erature in Brown University. 12mo. Cloth. 101 pages. Mailing 
 price, 55 cents ; for introduction, 50 cents. 
 
 Notes on English Literature. 
 
 By Fred Parker Emery, Instructor in English in the Massachusetts 
 Institute of Technology, Boston. 12mo. Cloth. 152 pages. By mail, 
 $1.10; for introduction, $1.00. 
 
 rPHIS book is a departure from the ordinary mode of teaching 
 English Literature. It follows the critical, comparative, and 
 philosophical method of the best universities, and combines the 
 advantages of the tabulated synopsis of authors and books with 
 those of the critical literary history. History, politics, society, and 
 religion are studied with the proper perspective in relation to liter- 
 ature, and are made to show why literature is necessarily charac- 
 teristic of the age that produced it. 
 
 with it in the value of the references 
 by which history and literature are 
 kept so closely linked together. 
 
 Leroy Stephens, Pres. Western 
 Pennsylvania Classical and Scien- 
 tific Institute, Mt. Pleasant, Pa.: 
 Nothing that I have seen compares