; 
 
 * 
 
 wmwwwmnwmm 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 99.W68 
 
 A free lance in the field of life and le 
 
 3 1924 013 350 206 
 
n 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013350206 
 
A FEEE LANCE 
 
 IN THE FIELD OF 
 
 LIFE ANT) LETTERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON. 
 
 And without letters what is life ?— Ekabmus. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ALBERT MASON, PUBLISHER. 
 
 1874. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1874, ty 
 
 WILLIAM CLEATEE WILKINSON, 
 In tlie Office of the Lilirarian of Congress, at Wasliington. 
 
 Electrotyped by Smith & MoDottgal, 82 Beekman St., N. Y. 
 
 LiNSl, LiTPLi! & Co., Printer!, 108, 110, US and 114 Woosler Street, N. Y. 
 
My first fruitful and my most fruitful 
 teacher in the practice of English composition ; 
 and 
 
 %a mg ^ut'^n% 
 
 My earliest and my best example in 
 strict literary conscience and long literary art, 
 
 This volume is affectionately inscribed 
 by their grateful son, 
 
 The Author. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 rriHE title to this volume is not to be read in a 
 belligerent sense. The chief emphasis rests not 
 on the noun, but on the adjective. In short, it is a 
 declaration of independence, and not a declaration of 
 war. It claims its justification simply in that spirit 
 of freedom from prescription and convention, in the 
 exercise of which, as the author has pleased himself 
 with believing, the essays were written. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — The Literaet and the Ethical Quality of 
 
 George Eliot's Noybls 1 
 
 II. — Mb. Lowell's Poetry 50 
 
 III. — Mr. Lowell's " Cathedral." 90 
 
 IV. — Mb. Lowell's Prose 105 
 
 V. — ^Mr. Brtajjt's Poetry 184 
 
 VI. — ^Mb. Bryant's Iliad 318 
 
 VII. — The History of the Christian Commission as a 
 
 Part of Church History 355 
 
 VIII. — The Character and the Literary Influence of 
 
 Erasmus 303 
 
THE 
 
 LITERARY AND THE ETHICAL QUALITY 
 
 OP 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 
 
 GEOEGE ELIOT is more than a briHiant novelist. 
 She is a great writer. She is more than simply 
 a great writer. She is a prime elemental literary power. 
 In literature such, she is scarcely less in ethics. She is 
 a great ethical teacher — it may be not an original, but at 
 least a highly charged derivative, moral living force. 
 Perhaps even thus much is still too little to have said. 
 For George Eliot seems already securely to belong to 
 the very small number of those choice literary names 
 which we jealously account our greatest. There have 
 been admirable women in literary history whose chief 
 praise justly was the exquisite womanliness of their 
 genius. Mrs. Browning, when we succeed in forget- 
 ting her virile affectations, appears an illustrious ex- 
 ample. There have been other admirable historic liter- 
 ary women who were strong distinctively as men are 
 strong. Madame de Stael is, perhaps, an example. 
 There is a third class, distinguishable in conception, 
 composed of women whom we should honor, when we 
 thought of them, in instinctively forgetting to remember 
 their sex at all. Of these women we should not, on 
 the one hand say, The}^ carried the feminine quality to 
 its height ; nor yet, on the other, They transcended the 
 limitations of their sex. We should simply say. Here 
 were rare human souls, nobly endowed individuals of 
 
A FKEE LANCE. 
 
 the human race. We should at once exalt them to the 
 glorious severity of comparison at large with whatever 
 personages in literary history, male or female, might ap- 
 pear worthy to be reckoned their peers. In this third 
 class, if there be such a class, belongs George Eliot. If 
 there is no such class, then George Eliot stands alone in 
 literary history, for she certainly is such a woman. 
 
 There is, therefore, no question remaining to be raised 
 respecting George Eliot's intellectual rank. That point 
 is settled already, as well as a like point ever was settled 
 concerning any author during his lifetime. To deter- 
 mine, however, not the quantity, but the quality, not 
 the degree, but the kind, of her power in letters and in 
 morals, is a problem upon which something, perhaps, 
 may still profitably be said. Indeed, an inquiry, care- 
 fully and candidly conducted, into the quality of George 
 Eliot's influence as a novelist, ought, it seems to me, at 
 this time, alike on literary and on ethical grounds, to 
 enlist the serious attention of a wide circle of readers. 
 This inquiry may properly enough be limited to her in- 
 fluence as a novelist, for the reason that although she 
 has done noteworthy work as a poet, it is through her 
 novels chiefly, or through her poems as novels, that she 
 has hitherto wrought upon the taste and the conscience 
 of her age. 
 
 The present inquiry will seek to be strictly imper- 
 sonal — that is to say, there will be no attempt to import 
 an irrelevant interest into this paper, by any allusions, 
 open or covert, to the circumstances of George Eliot's 
 personal history. The books that she has written shall 
 be judged, as far as is possible, with no more influence 
 admitted from the character, alleged or actual, of the 
 writer, than if, instead of being a woman's productions, 
 they were the foundling progeny of Dame Nature her- 
 self. 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT's NOVELS. 3 
 
 "Adam Bede " was the first work of the author that 
 attracted wide public attention. This was published in 
 1858. Inseparably water-lined into its literary texture 
 was a certain eleinent not literary, well calculated to 
 raise among religious readers of the book two quite dif- 
 ferent opinions of its quality. One can, in fact, easily 
 imagine that its early fortune in this respect may have 
 been, in some degree, like what afterward befell "Ecce 
 Homo," when that stumbling-block to the theologians 
 was first given to the world. There must, on the one 
 hand, we should say, have been religious readers not a 
 few to welcome " Adam Bede " as they had previously 
 welcomed "The Wide, "Wide "World," as they subse- 
 quently welcomed "The Schonberg - Gotta Family." 
 Such readers would see in it gospel enough — gospel 
 pure, and sweet, and orthodox — to fit it for a place in 
 the Sunday-school library, or for circulation by the 
 evangelical propaganda. On the other hand, a different 
 class of religious readers must as naturally have thought 
 that they discovered a quite predominant litei'ary and 
 artistic interest in the author's conduct of her story, 
 which separated her, in her own individual sympathy, 
 from the exquisitely represented religious spirit of some 
 of her principal characters. These less credulous readers 
 would accordingly stand a little in doubt of their author. 
 Freely acknowledging that the sanctities of the personal 
 religious experience were always treated by her with the 
 most decorous respect — unable to deny that at times this 
 respect passed over into even the most seductively seem- 
 ing-sympathetic homage and awe — they would have their 
 misgiving nevertheless. They would seem to them- 
 selves to perceive that this writer, after all, was mainly 
 intent on what, if they could have anticipated her sub- 
 sequent diction, they might, perhaps — applying her fa- 
 vorite word — have called an " egoistic " aim of her own. 
 
A FREE LANCE. 
 
 She meant to make the " holy secrets " of the Christian 
 consciousness subserve, if not an irreverent, at least an in- 
 ferior and a personal purpose. She would weave them 
 into her design, for help to character and dialogue and 
 plot. They should minister to an artistic, more than 
 to any religious motive. Beyond this, her novel seemed 
 to contain an undisclosed, but discoverable, implication, 
 somewhat discomposing to the simply believing mind, 
 that the author, on her own part, regarded the mystery 
 of the life of God in the human soul from another than 
 the obvious evangelical point of view. To her, appar- 
 ently, this was but one clement among many of an ex- 
 ceedingly complex human psychology, in which any 
 other element whatever was divine and supernatural in 
 quite the same sense as that. 
 
 It is curious, in the light of present knowledge, to 
 glance from one to another among the chief periodicals 
 of that day, and note the various conjectures hazarded 
 by the puzzled, but admiring, reviewers as to the true 
 theological position of the then unknown author of 
 "Scenes of Clerical Life" and "Adam Bede." The 
 " "Westminster Beview " must, of course, have been in 
 her secret, but that quarterly aifected to be as ignorant 
 as its compeers, and after rehearsing opinions that as- 
 signed her to different theological parties from the Evan- 
 gelical to the Broad Church, astutely ventured, for it- 
 self, to guess that George Eliot, while no doubt sincerely 
 and deeply religious, was, probably, not the adherent of 
 any one of the recognized creeds, being rather, it be- 
 lieved, of that liberal comprehension in faith which em- 
 braced whatever was true in them all. 
 
 -One thing, however, at least was plain to every reader 
 of discernment. We had here a new writer who was 
 master, absolute master, of a style of extraordinary 
 beauty and power. Choice English, limpid phrase, 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 5 
 
 charming simplicity, marvelous answerableness to the 
 shifting mood, whether of thought or of feeling, the 
 finished and assured repose of self-conscious art — art self- 
 conscious but not self-complacent — these traits made up 
 a style fitted in a wonderful degree to be the mirror to 
 the world of a large soul, if, as could hardly fail to be 
 the case, the owner of such a style turned out to have a 
 large soul. Just what might be the inner truth of this 
 writei-'s private relation to religion was, of course, mat- 
 ter of the purest impertinence to her literary claims. 
 To the zealous religionist indeed it made a great differ- 
 ence whether one who evidently had so much power 
 was going to wield her power for religion or against it. 
 But the candid literary critic had only one possible in- 
 terest in even entertaining a question like this. It 
 might affect somewhat his estimate of her genius, if he. 
 could decide whether her aim in dealing with the prob- 
 lems of religious experience was the aim of an advocate, 
 friendly or hostile, or merely the aim of an artist in- 
 stead. This, I say, was the sole alternative that could 
 tempt the literary critic to undertake a solution of the 
 doubt. 
 
 "Adam Bede" itself contained evidence enough to 
 satisfy the justly suspicious but unprejudiced literary 
 mind what was the true state of the facts. To such a 
 mind it was sufficiently clear that the writer of " Adam 
 Bede" had had the penetration to perceive that the 
 phenomena of religious experience in human hearts pre- 
 sented a vein of material for the novelist which no nov- 
 elist had yet turned to any adequate account. Either as 
 being herself, through the conditions of her own situa- 
 tion in life, exceptionally well qualified to work this 
 vein, or, it might be, as possessing unconsciously a cer- 
 tain Shakespearean capacity of universal knowledge 
 without universal experience, George Eliot had intro- 
 
A FREE LANCE. 
 
 dueed the religious element into her novel because, 
 apart from its inherent attractions for the moral earnest- 
 ness that was natural to her, she felt the artist's instinct 
 of its adaptedness to help her produce her effects. It 
 was further clear that she had the genuine artist's con- 
 science to be judicially fair, or else, what served as well, 
 the genuine artist's tact to be effectively faithful in her 
 use of her religious material. Her reproduction of the 
 Chi-istian religious experience, as far, at least, as re- 
 spected its forms of outward expression — and farther, 
 of course, was impossible — wanted nothing of being ex- 
 quisitely true to the rarest reality. The most mystically- 
 minded evangelical Christian might find Ms finest moods 
 of devotion reflected in the prayers and the discourses 
 and the conversations of Dinah, the lovely Methodist 
 woman preacher, who is the real heroine of "Adam 
 Bede." IS^othing, not divinely inspired, in history Oi j^n 
 fiction, could well surpass the sweet, the heavenly beauty 
 of Dinah's life. But side by side with this beautiful 
 hfe, a life wholesomely and not morbidly beautiful, rep- 
 resented as believed by the liver of it to be a life drawn 
 directly from a hidden spring in the heart of Christ, yet 
 so representsd in such a way that the writer is not once 
 committed outright as either adhering or not adhering 
 herself to that transcendent belief^ — side by side with a 
 life like this, nay, in immediate contact with it day after 
 day, withoiit being affected by it, a life how different — 
 Lisbeth's — an utterly sordid, earth-bound, carnal life, 
 goes on, in the undisturbedly complacent portraiture 
 of the impartial author, who never forgets the artist in 
 the fellow-being to betray the slightest vicarious moral 
 concern that a human soul should thus prove unheedful, 
 and miss to know the day of its heavenly visitation. It 
 is not that this contrast is not true to the occurrences of 
 actual life. It is that no yearning emotion, no Pauline 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 7 
 
 travail of spirit, is elicited from the writer in witnessing 
 the tragedy that she creates. There is, perhaps, mani- 
 fest a certain tender relenting on her part — a gentle, 
 half-stoical despair that relieves itself with a laugh of 
 Democritus. What lacks is the mother-anguish of that 
 distinctively Clmstian sorrow which weeps because it 
 would have saved. In short, with respect to the for- 
 tunes of the life beyond life, not Shakespeare himself 
 could be more supremely neutral, not the Epicurean 
 Jove more serenely indifferent, as a creator administer- 
 ing for the beings of his creation. 
 
 Such is the conclusion at which the thoughtful stu- 
 dent of " Adam Bede," taking the purely critical liter- 
 ary point of view, might easily arrive. But before 
 " Adam Bede " appeared, its author had furnished to 
 the critic other means for learning her motive and 
 method. She had pubhshed in "Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine" a series of sketches afterwards collected under 
 the common descriptive title of " Scenes of Clerical 
 Life." These pieces seem now, viewed in the retro- 
 spect, to bear somewhat the character of studies for her 
 later more serious productions. With greater pro- 
 priety, perhaps, they might be regarded as short essays 
 in a kind of composition as to which it was more need- 
 ful to the writer to try the taste of the public than it 
 was to try her own powers. For the first sketch, 
 " The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," ex- 
 hibits almost as much assured and tranquil sense of 
 mastery, on the part of the author, in mere style of 
 composition and method of development, as is exhib- 
 ited in " Middlemarch." There is even more repose of 
 style in the earlier than in the later production. Hardly 
 till " Middlemarch " would George Eliot have written, 
 for example, this sentence : " Has any one ever pinched 
 into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimo- 
 
8 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 nial acquamtanceship ? " ("Middlemarch," vol. i, p. 
 26, Harper's Ed.) A shrewd question, witli pregnant 
 implication — ^but not quite comfortably expressed. The 
 ambition of high achievement seems to have been a 
 subsequent growth with George Ehot. The trophies 
 of George Eliot who had written, it was, perhaps, each 
 time, that would not let George Eliot that was writing 
 sleep. " Scenes of Clerical Life," are, in fact, so quiet 
 in tone that their quietness comes near being a man- 
 nerism. They are intensely realistic pictures of per- 
 fectly commonplace life and character. The style of 
 the composition is admirable. It is admirable enough 
 to make these sketches well worth reading for the sake 
 of the style alone. But it is so completely admirable 
 that it scarcely of itself attracts any attention at all. 
 It is only the writer practised enough to know, from 
 experience of liis own, how far off from the beginning 
 of effort the end of effort is, in the attainment of such 
 a style, that will bethink himself to notice the exquisite 
 perfection of these pieces as mere composition. 
 
 The chief merit, however, of these pieces was not the 
 finish of their style. They possessed the equally unique 
 and perhaps graver merit of being a revelation to most 
 people of the more than dramatic interest of humor 
 and of pathos lying hidden under the common and 
 every-day life that their neighbors are living around 
 them. The traits of shrewd observation and of wise 
 reflection that these "Scenes" exhibited might well, 
 even in that early phase of the author's crescent fame^ 
 embolden one of the great British quarterlies in a 
 review perhaps it was of " Adam Bede," to apply that 
 almost awful epithet of supreme literary ascription 
 "Shakespearean." The felicity of expression, too' 
 always corresponded. You read, and you smile, as you 
 read, with pure pleasure of intellectual recognition 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 9 
 
 coming again and again upon a trait of human char- 
 acter or conduct so exquisitely fitted with its happy- 
 phrase that it is like what you can imagine it might 
 be if, by some magical good fortune, you had chanced 
 upon a treasure-trove of a few original types of nature, 
 easily perfect at once, and with no trace of any work- 
 manship whatever upon them. How much character, 
 for instance, is unfolded with a stroke of the pen 
 when of a certain " thin woman with a chron o liver- 
 complaint," at a tea-party, it is quietly said : " She has 
 brought her knitting — no frivolous fancy knitting, but 
 a substantial woollen stocking; the click-click of her 
 knitting needles is the running accompaniment to all 
 her conversation ; and in her utmost enjoyment of spoil- 
 ing a friend's self satisfaction, she was never known to 
 spoil a stocking.'''' Again : " Mrs. Patten does not 
 admire this excessive click-clicking activity. Quies- 
 cence in an easy-chair, under the sense of compound 
 interest pei-petually accumulating, has long seemed an 
 ample function to her, and she does her malevolence 
 gently." ***** g^e cherishes " a quiet 
 blood-relation's hatred for her niece, Janet Gibbs, who, 
 she knows, expects a large legacy, and whom she is 
 determined to disappoint. Her money shall all go in a 
 lump to a distant relation of her husband's, and Janet 
 shall be saved the trouble of pretending to cry, by find- 
 ing that she is left with a miserable pittance." A man- 
 servant does double duty as groom and as table-waiter 
 at the house of a certain gentleman whose sister, living 
 with him, had inherited title without estate from a 
 deceased Polish count, her husband, but nevertheless 
 aspired to some style in her house-keeping : " John " is 
 represented as " removing the tea things from the 
 drawing-room, and brushing the crumbs from the table- 
 cloth with an accompanying hiss, such as he was wont 
 
10 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 to encourage himself witli in rubbing down Mr. Brid- 
 main's horse." 
 
 The members of a clerical party are described : " At 
 Mr. Ely's right hand you see a very small man with a 
 sallow and somewhat puify face, whose hair is brushed 
 straight up, evidently with the intention of giving him 
 a height somewhat less disproportionate to his sense of 
 his own importance than the measure of five feet three 
 accorded to him by an oversight of nature." The 
 Eev. Amos himself was " very full of plans which were 
 something likp his moves in chess — admirably well 
 calculated, supposing the state of the case were other- 
 wise" 
 
 One feels, of course, how inadequate an impression 
 of the fertile observation, the pregnant insight, with 
 which these pages abound, any such excerpts torn from 
 their relief in tlie context must necessarily make. A 
 volume was recently published in England (it has since 
 been re-pubhshed, with additions for " Middlemarch," 
 in this country) entitled " Wit and Wisdom of George 
 Eliot." It is a remarkable monument to the manifold 
 fecundity, and to the invulnerable vitality no less, of 
 her genius. But shreds from the woof ill represent a 
 finished and continuous fabric of the loom. It is the 
 exquisite fitness of the sentiment to the situation or to 
 the character, — say, rather, to the character in the situa- 
 tion,— that gives to George Eliot's exuberant, though 
 never too exuberant, wit and wisdom their consummate 
 value and effect. She loves to be sententious. She is 
 fonder of reflection than she is of narration. Her plot 
 is for the sake of her dialogue, her dialogue is for the 
 sake of her character, and her character is for the sake 
 of the wit and the wisdom that her many-sided genius 
 is consciously capable and therefore desirous of lavish- 
 ing on the world. This statement needs some qualifi- 
 
GEOEaE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 11 
 
 cation, for Iier dialogue now and again runs on, self- 
 moved by its delight in its own conscious felicity. But 
 it is approximately true. Her natural bent is about 
 equally dramatic and ethical. She experiences a great 
 delight in mere life-like exhibition of character. In so 
 far she is purely dramatic. But she experiences fully 
 as great a delight in subsequent interpretative comment 
 and reflection on the character that she exhibits. In 
 this she goes beyond what is dramatic and becomes 
 ethical or else psychological. The ethical seems, per- 
 haps, to engage her most deeply. 
 
 This was more certainly and more constantly true in 
 her earlier than it has been in her later work. ISTot 
 that she has ceased to betray an ethical interest in what 
 she writes. This is far enough from being the case. 
 But her ethical interest has grown somehow less practi- 
 cal and more theoretic. The pure artist used to have 
 to compete with the moralist. Lately the artist's com- 
 petition has been rather with the doctrinaire, or with 
 the speculative psychologist. George Eliot from the 
 first has been consistently and earnestly moral, or relig- 
 ious even, as those who claim her for a chief ornament 
 of their philosophical school would probably say. It 
 was not, therefore, as not earnestly moral, but only as 
 not properly and purposely Christian, in the ordinary 
 orthodox sense of that word, that "Adam Bede," a 
 little way back, was meant to be characterized. There 
 is an. eager and intent moral earnestness in the book. 
 But, notwithstanding certain ambiguous superficial ap- 
 pearances, the moral earnestness is not clearly aiid 
 narrowly Christian. The quality of the moral ear- 
 nestness that George Eliot exhibits, or, more strictly, 
 the quality of the moral influence that she islikely to 
 exert, is reserved for examination in the concluding 
 portion of this paper. 
 
12 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 The " Scenes of Clerical Life" contain the germs, or 
 at least the promise, of a considerable part of all that 
 is to be found in her maturer productions. Like these, 
 though even in a greater degree, they depend for their 
 interest on qualities in them separable, and in fact, 
 separate, from the narrative vs^hich they incidentally 
 contain. The narrative is both meagre and common- 
 place to a degree. The constructive, or rather the in- 
 ventive, faculty might seem wanting to the author. 
 Quite as probably, however, she set small value in com- 
 parison on the plot of her stories, feeling rather like a 
 painter who should resolve to achieve his results, not by 
 any masterly skill of composition, but by the endlessly 
 minute Dutch life-likeness of his picture, and then by 
 the fine interpretative light of sentiment that he would 
 contrive to throw over the whole. George Eliot through 
 all her novels has remained weakest in point of plot, 
 although she has evidently paid far more attention of 
 late to the construction of her stories. Whether this 
 relative weakness in her performance is to be refen-ed 
 to inherent defect of invention in her genius, or rather 
 to the predominating influence of the pure dramatic 
 and the pure didactic faculty in it taken together, is, 
 perhaps, open to question. The fact certainly is, that 
 plot with her is everywhere subordinate to what may 
 be termed the motive of the story, and incident is 
 always fain to wait patiently on dialogue, while dia- 
 logue itself, the evident favorite diversion of George 
 Eliot's genius, gives way full cheerfully to that which 
 is her chief serious concern, the work of austere and 
 subtle psychological analysis. 
 
 We thus recur to the element in George Eliot's novels 
 which has always, upon the whole, constituted the lead- 
 ing motive of her work. Psychological analysis is her 
 strength and her joy. She creates character, she de- 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 13 
 
 vises incident and sitviation, chiefly that she may have 
 her occasion of indulging that ahnost superhuman 
 faculty which is hers, of laying bare to its ultimate 
 microscopic secret the anatomy of the living human 
 consciousness in play. This motive in her work, is 
 what gives to it its unity as a progressive development 
 — ^it is the one germ which has steadily unfolded and 
 grown from her first published writing to her last. 
 Her novels are pre-eminently psychological novels. 
 The psychological element contributes the greatest 
 proportion of the whole bulk of her volumes. There 
 is a good deal of landscape, and there are frequent bits 
 of brilliant meteorology. These parts, by the way, are 
 done with delicious felicity of descriptive words, so that 
 as mere verbal effects they are a perpetual delight. 
 The features of a landscape, however, are seldom, if 
 ever, photographed, as with a single sudden stroke of 
 the sun, on the reader's imagination. A radiant haze 
 of words is hung between your eyes and the scene. A 
 little idealism of the right sort seems so much better 
 here than any amount of the most conscientious 
 realism. It is doubtful, perhaps, whether George Eliot 
 possesses just the necessary kind of imagination for this 
 poet's-purpose. But it might easily surprise a reader 
 of her books that had never before directed his at- 
 tention to the point, to olaserve how large a proportion 
 of the space occupied with the liveliest conversation, 
 or with the most exciting incident, is usurped by the 
 author for her own interspersed interpretation and 
 comment. The unique characteristic interest too of 
 the dialogue and the narrative is to a wonderful extent, 
 for even the cursory reader, lodged in these interrup- 
 tions from the author in her delightful character of 
 well-informed and astute individual chorus. 
 But George Eliot's novels could not be popular, as 
 
14 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 they are, if, at the same time that they are thus prevail- 
 ingly psychological, they were not also something else 
 than psychological. She is often subtle and refined, and 
 removed from obvious apprehension (in her sense — she 
 is always perfectly plain 'in her expression) to a degree 
 scarcely surpassed in the case of any professed psycholo- 
 gist or metaphysician in the world. But she has besides 
 a- broad zone of contact with the average human being 
 that makes her, notwithstanding, as popular too as she 
 is profound. Shakespeare's street conversations, for in- 
 stance, of citizens No. 1, 2, and 3, on occasion of a pop- 
 ular commotion, are not more faithful to the vulgar life 
 of the populace than are such remarks as these which 
 follow, specimen fragments of surly humor, reported 
 from individuals of the Florentine mob during the fam- 
 ine and plague in " Eomola." Eomola, in her stately 
 womanhood, is ministering to Baldassarre, found in a 
 dying condition on the street. Some starving fellows 
 watch her with envy tempered with awe : 
 
 " ' Do you keep your bread for those that can't swal- 
 low, madonna?' said a rough-looking fellow, in a red 
 night-cap, who had elbowed his way into the inmost 
 circle of spectators — a circle that was pressing rather 
 closely on Eomola. 
 
 " ' If anybody isn't hungry,' said another, ' I say, let 
 him alone. He's better off than people who've got 
 craving stomachs and no breakfast.' 
 
 " ' Yes, indeed ; if a man's a mind to die, it's a time 
 to encourage him, instead of making him come back to 
 life against his will. Dead men want no trencher.' 
 
 " ' Come, madonna,' said he of the red cap, ' the old 
 thief doesn't eat the bread, you see : you'd better try 
 us. We fast so much we're half saints already.' 
 
 " * * Eomola held out the basket of bread to the 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 15 
 
 man in the night-cap, looking at him without any re- 
 proach in her glance, as she said, 
 
 " ' Hunger is hard to bear, I know, and you have the 
 power to take this bread if you will. It was saved for 
 sick women and children. You are strong men ; but 
 if you do not choose to suffer because you are strong, 
 you have the power to take everything from the weak. 
 You can take the bread from this basket ; but I shall 
 watch by this old man ; I shall resist your taking the 
 bread from him.'' 
 
 " For a few moments there was perfect silence, while 
 Komola looked at the faces before her, and held out the 
 basket of bread. * * * The man in the night-cap looked 
 rather silly, and backed, thrusting his elbow into his 
 neighbor's ribs with an air of moral rebuke." (" Eo- 
 mola," pp. 334-5, Harper's Ed.) 
 
 It was impossible not to quote, in sequel to the re- 
 marks of the men in the crowd, so penetratively humor- 
 ous a trait of observation in character as is contained in 
 the clause distinguished above by italics. The very 
 flesh and blood of universal human nature is in that 
 exquisite stroke. 
 
 1^0 doubt at bottom it is the same faculty of mind 
 that makes one writer psychological in his method, and 
 another writer dramatic. It is in either case a faculty 
 for intuition of human natures-intuition, not observa- 
 tion alone, for the knowledge given by the faculty in 
 question is an endowment and not an acquirement. It 
 takes, to be sure, George Eliot's genius to observe as 
 George Eliot observes. But then observation, even like 
 hers, must often fail from lack of opportunity. For these 
 times of failure there is intuition, if one only possesses 
 it, not less infallible than observation itself. Such intu- 
 ition George Eliot possesses. Perhaps if we sought to 
 be entirely scientific, we should find this faculty of intu- 
 
16 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 ition to be identical in essence with that power of the 
 mind which mental philosophers have distinguished as 
 the faculty of generalization. 
 
 But, notwithstanding the substantial sameness of the 
 faculty in the two cases, how different a face of the same 
 faculty is the dramatic from the psychological. The 
 dramatic method exhibits human nature in action — tiie 
 psychological explains the grounds and motives of the 
 action. Evidently the dramatic is limited in its effects 
 by the degree of responsive faculty for observation and 
 appreciation possessed by the reader or the spectator. 
 The dramatist can exhibit to you only so much as you 
 are ' capable of perceiving. There is nothing in the 
 dramatist's art to make you percipient and Intelligent 
 beyond your natural degree. His whole prosperity lies 
 in the eye of his beholder. The psychological method, 
 on the contrary, may disclose to you far more in an action 
 than you would have been able to discover for yourself. 
 The psychological method becomes thus the proper 
 supplement of the dramatic. At the point where the 
 dramatic of necessity fails the psychological may begin. 
 This is the advantage of the novel over the drama. The 
 drama can only be dramatic. But the novel may be as 
 dramatic as the drama, and then go on to be as psycho- 
 logical as if it were not dramatic at all. 
 
 There is, of course, no implication here intended 
 that the novel is a higher kind of literature than the 
 drama. The question of precedence between the two 
 is not raised. It is simply maintained that the novel, 
 from its mixed character, as in turn dramatic, narrative, 
 or reflective, at choice, has certain manifest advantages 
 at specific points over the drama. This very mixed- 
 ness of its character is probably a mark of its technical 
 inferiority. But the novel may assuredly in conse- 
 quence become more deeply and subtly psychological 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S KOVELS. 17 
 
 than tlie drama. The drama is, of course, equally 
 with the novel, boxmd to obey the laws of a sound psy- 
 chology. In this sense of being psychological, there 
 is no difference between the two. In the case of both 
 alike, the action must proceed according to the truth 
 of human nature. But the novel, more than the 
 drama, is free to make its underlying psychology plain 
 by exposition. The drama might, to be sure, conceiv- 
 ably employ the awkward expedient of adopting and 
 adapting from the ancient Greek tragedy its chorus of 
 solemn observers to interpret for us the psychology, in 
 place of the ethics, of the action represented. In this 
 way we might have in the drama unlimited psycho- 
 logical disquisition. But the drama thus modified 
 would no longer be fit for popular representation. It 
 would have to retire from the stage to the closet. In 
 other words, it would, in just so far, have declined from 
 the pure dramatic idea, and have become little distin- 
 guishable at this particular point, save in the incident 
 of its formal construction, from the novel. 
 
 Now George Eliot within her range — and her range, 
 though, unlike Shakespeare's, it may have definite 
 determinable limits, is still very wide — George Eliot, 
 I say, within her range is every whit as dramatic as 
 Shakespeare. So natural is the dramatic method to 
 her genius that her novels are often conceived in a suc- 
 cession of scenes, instead of in the continuity of nar- 
 ration. But when, ceasing for the moment to be dra- 
 matic, she uses the privilege of the novelist to be 
 expressly psychological, her analysis of character and 
 motive becomes so subtle and searching that mere dra- 
 matic exhibition seems almost vulgar in comparison. 
 Hamlet's soliloquy is greatly admired for the depth 
 and subtlety of psychological implication which it con- 
 tains. But there is many and many a passage of clair- 
 
18 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 voyant vision and revelation in the sphere of human 
 character and motive to be found in George Eliot's 
 works that makes Hamlet's soliloquy superficial and 
 tame. George Eliot's knowledge in the deep things of 
 the human heart, in short, is hardly second to anything 
 elsewhere exhibited in the whole realm of literature. 
 There are marks enough in her writing of varied and 
 watchful observation. But the knowledge of the 
 human heart that George Eliot displays is not an 
 acquired knowledge. It was bom with her and in her. 
 It is genius. It is a gift which is Shakespearean in 
 quality — one might, perhaps, as well be frankly true to 
 himself and out with his thought — it is finer than 
 Shakespeare. In quantity it is less, but in quality it 
 is more. 
 
 Take, as an instance of the advantage in point of fine 
 psychological implication that the novel possesses over 
 the drama, the qualifying clause, '■'■with an air of 
 moral rebuke" appended to the statement of fact that 
 the fellow in the "red night-cap," falling back, on 
 Komola's words, into the crowd, made way for himself 
 by thrusting his elbows into his neighbor's ribs. Here 
 the action is nothing compared with the manner of the 
 action. But the manner of the action it is beyond the 
 province of the dramatist to give. The dramatist has 
 here to depend on histrionism to interpret his thought. 
 Another instance is supplied in a powerfully conceived 
 scene that occurs elsewhere in " Romola." Tito visits 
 the hut in which his outraged adoptive father, Baldas- 
 sarre, lies couched in his straw, awaiting the retarded 
 hour of his vengeance. Tito has decided to ease his 
 own mortgaged future by healing the immedicable 
 breach between himself and Baldassarre. He will ask 
 forgiveness for his unfilial desertion and resume the 
 son's affectionate care of his father. Baldassarre greets 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 19 
 
 his visitor by making the abortive attempt on Tito's 
 life with his dagger, but Tito persists. It is as yet 
 uncertain how Baldassarre will receive the unantici- 
 pated overture. " Presentlj"- Baldassarre began to move. 
 He threw away the broken dagger, and slowly and 
 gradually, still trembling, began to raise himself from 
 the ground. Tito put out his hand to help him, and 
 so strangely quick are men's souls that in this moment, 
 when he began to feel his atonement was accepted, Ua 
 had a darting thougJit of the irksome efforts it en- 
 tailed:' 1 (" Eomola," p. 279, Harper's Ed.) It would 
 be hard for the dramlatic method to enter so shrewdly 
 as this into the almost sub-conscious movements of the 
 human soul. An " aside " would not answer, for the 
 thought does not take shape in words even in the 
 thinker's mind. 
 
 But George Eliot is not simply a dramatist and a 
 psychologist in her novels. She is a profound and va- 
 rious thinker as well. The thought which goes to the 
 production of valuable literary work is of two sorts. 
 There is the thought which has preceded, and there is, 
 besides, the thought which immediately accompanies 
 the conception and execution of the work. The one 
 sort enriches the production through having enriched 
 the producing mind ; the other more directly enriches 
 the production itself. The one sort is immanent 
 thought, thought subsisting as condition ; the other is 
 active thought, thought working as cause. Or the 
 difference might be likened to the difference between 
 the elements contributed to existing life on the globe 
 by those geologic ages which are finished and extinct, 
 
 ' .The ■words " began to " occurring liere in each one of three con- 
 secutive sentences so short, present a trait of negligence in writing 
 which, however venial, strikes me as decidedly unusual with George 
 Eliot. 
 
20 A FKEE LAlifCE. 
 
 and the elements contributed by that age which is now 
 current and still incomplete. Of both these sorts of 
 thought George Eliot's novels are full. Her later and 
 maturer productions presuppose an amount of arduous 
 thinking on the hard and high problems of human 
 existence that is nothing short of astonishing. It 
 would not be easy to name any other writing in recent 
 literature that, bulk for bulk, registers a greater quan- 
 tity of good, fresh, deep, clear, sound, sincere, and 
 honest antecedent thought. The " In Memoriam '| is 
 pre-eminently of such a character— that work is like 
 the earth's thronged crust for the record of finished 
 elemental processes and secular energies now in repose, 
 that it enfolds. But George Eliot's novels are not 
 inferior here to the " In Memoriam." The writer of 
 these has swept as large a part of the great diapason 
 of possible human intellectual experience as has the 
 writer of that. The novels are inferior to the poem 
 only in the form of expression which they give to the 
 thought. In the form of expression they are inferior 
 only as prose must be inferior to poetry — as even the 
 most exquisite prose must still be inferior to poetry, if 
 the poetry happens to be equally exquisite in its supe- 
 rior kind. George Eliot's prose is as nearly poetic as 
 it ought to be— that is, as nearly poetic as it could be, 
 and remain completely and homogeneously prose. Pre- 
 cisely the differentia of properly poetic expression 
 George Eliot's genius seems not to have at command.' 
 
 ' I hardly escape the pain of self-reproacli in denying the su- 
 preme gift of poetry to a writer who produces siich lines as, foi 
 instance, these from " The Spanish Gipsy : " 
 
 "Nay, never falter: no great deed is done 
 By falterers who ask for certainty. 
 No good is certain, but the steadfast mind. 
 The undivided will to seek the good : 
 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 21 
 
 It is a great denial to her from nature. But perfect 
 prose is as rare, if it is not quite so precious, as perfect 
 poetry. Let George Eliot be content with her gift. It 
 is a unique and high delight, second only to that su- 
 preme delight which poetry yields, to r^ad page after 
 
 A human music from the indifferent air. 
 The greatest gift the hero leaves his race 
 Is to have been a hero. Say we fail I— 
 We feed the high tradition of the world, 
 And leave our spirits in Zincalo breasts." 
 
 That is very noble verse. SometMng of a true Miltonic spirit 
 throbs in it. " The steadfast mind, the undivided will to seek the 
 good," might almost be from the mouth of Satan himself, turned 
 moral. The whole straia is kiudred in motive with strophe IX. of 
 Mr. Lowell's magnificent " Commemoration Ode." That passage 
 and this set in contrast and comparison, furnish a fine study of the 
 diverse methods pursued respectively by writers, on the one hand 
 that are essentially prose writers, and writers on the other hand 
 that are essentially poets. George Eliot, according to her genius, 
 had a perfectly palpable concrete thought to express. She refined 
 it, she sublimated it, she did everything in short but permanently 
 change it from its proper native state as prose. She found a solid. 
 She purified it seven times, but she left it a solid. Mr. Lowell, on 
 the contrary, with his different sense, found an impalpable, impon- 
 derable ether. His labor was to seize it and to hold it. There was 
 no danger of his getting a precipitate for result. The danger was 
 rather that the volatile quality of his' object would be too much for 
 him — that he should lose his over-expansile thought altogether. 
 The process of the essential prose writer in writing verse is thus 
 in some sort the precise opposite of that of the essential poet. The 
 one seeks to etherealize — the other seeks to conlpress and contain. 
 But certain it is that what does not come to you as poetry, you can 
 never convert into poetry with all your pains. 
 
 As to the mottoes in verse to the chapters in " Middlemarch " 
 bearing quotation marks which hint no doubt that they were bor- 
 rowed from George Eliot herself, it may without disparagement be 
 said of them, dense with thought and wisdom as they often are, 
 they still contain many equivalents more of truth than of poetry. 
 
 Her recently published volume of collected pieces in verse is fuU 
 of many noble intellectual and moral qualities — of speculation, 
 of reflection, of feeling, of power— but of poetry — ? One attributes 
 an autobiographic interest to it in parts. 
 
22 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 page, nay, volume after volume, of pure and homoge- 
 neous prose, undisturbed with any fear of occasion to 
 abate one's complacency in the choiceness of the dic- 
 tion, in tlie absolute fitness of the phrase to the thought, 
 in the linked, liquid articulation of clauses, in the rich, 
 interwoven, harmonious order of the rhythm. Tijis 
 delight George Eliot bestows upon her readers beyond 
 almost any other writer now living. 
 
 Besides the wealth of suggested antecedent thought 
 with which George Eliot's novels are endowed, there is 
 evident in them the presence also of an immense amount 
 of coetaneous thinking. There is thought, the still re- 
 sult, and there is thinking, the fervid process. No 
 Avriter is less disposed to be self-indulgent than George 
 Eliot. She gives us her best all the time. Her slack 
 moods, if she has such, she keeps. She applies a prin- 
 ciple of se\'ere rejection to everything below the stand- 
 ard. She thinks a thought thoroughly out, and then 
 she spares herself no pains necessary fairly to express it. 
 Her style has, accordingly, a vitality — let us employ 
 the less usual Saxon term, the better to match the un- 
 usual fact — an intense limngness all its own. It is like 
 a living organism, " vital in every part." The syntax 
 tingles to its utmost particle with the fine vibration of 
 an omnipresent life. To take away a word would be 
 vivisection. The lacerated sentence would bleed. What 
 incalculable quantities of costly brain vibration have 
 gone into the tense and quivering pages of these books ! 
 But nothing has been lost. The force lives and is im- 
 mortal. It communicates itself in quickened thought 
 and feeling forever to the mind and heart of the race. 
 
 But behind the thought and the thinking in these 
 novels there is a vast amount, too, of the power of pas- 
 sion. The brain has not wrofight alone. The heart 
 has wrought with it. The thought, indeed, is very often 
 
GEOEGB ELIOrS NOVELS. 23 
 
 of the sort that is always first in the sensibility. Tlie 
 brain has wrought because the heart moved it to work. 
 The capacity of emotion on the part of their author, im- 
 plied in George Ehot's novels, is prodigious. The mar- 
 vel of the sensibility is as great as the marvel of the 
 intellect. Not that George Eliot seems certainly to 
 have lived in any painful sympathy with the various 
 personages of her plots. On the contrary, there is 
 nothing more remarkable in her demeanor than the 
 perfectly wholesome alacrity and ease with which she 
 turns from the most absorbing tragedy to pure comedy 
 or broad farce, or even, a more difficult transition, to 
 the neutral ground of mere humdrum commonplace 
 life. This is much the same as to say that she is not a 
 sentimentalist. Her passion is deeper than the senti- 
 ments. It bows itself against the pillars of the soul. It 
 takes hold of the bases. It is elemental. It is no mere 
 transient sympathy that relieves itself with ready tears 
 over the sorrows of her fictive world. It is a part of the 
 author's own personal experience. vTt is a real passion 
 on account of the real woes of the real world. George 
 Eliot appears to her readers " crowned with attributes 
 of woe " almost (not quite) " like glories." It is evident 
 that her life has not been " idle ore," 
 
 But iron dug from central gloom. 
 
 And heated hot with burning fears, 
 
 And dipt in baths of hissing tears. 
 And batter'd with the shocks of doom. 
 
 The prevailing pathos of her books affects one with a 
 tender personal sympathy for the author, as well as with 
 that larger impersonal sympathy which it is evident she 
 wishes and aims to inculcate, on behalf of the whole 
 pitiable world of mankind. The irony in which she in- 
 dulges is sometimes looked upon as cynicism. There 
 
24 A FEBE LANCE. 
 
 could hardly be a greater mistake. It is the sad smile 
 that plays on the face of a rueful despair. Cynicism is 
 earnestness soured by contempt. Thackeray/ who 
 wielded a humorous sarcasm superficially similar to 
 George Eliot's, was no more a cynic than is she. But 
 Thackeray was saved from cynicism by lack of earnest- 
 ness. George Eliot is saved from cynicism — more nobly 
 — by the absence of contempt. She is seldom more 
 sincerely humane, more yearningly tender, than when 
 she is irradiating the gloom in which ber philosophy 
 seems to shroud the lot of men, witb a beam, gentle, 
 and but half-gladdening even to herself, of irony, like 
 the " setting sun's pathetic light." Occasionally her 
 irony takes on the humor of an angry indignation in- 
 spired by moral earnestness that is always noble, if it is 
 not always wise. Perhaps it is possible of late to gather 
 some just apprehension of a danger threatening the 
 healthful poise of George Eliot's spirit at this point. It 
 would be wonderful if her rest in herself, unsiipported 
 by rest in the only Unshaken Stay of human souls, should 
 prove morally sufficient for her permanent intellectual 
 health and peace. Symptoms of what may in the end 
 tm-n out to be decline toward the cynical spirit are dis- 
 coverable here and there in her latest productions — ^her 
 latest production, perhaps it should be said. 
 
 Of the wide reading, the ripe culture, the various 
 knowledge, which her works betoken in their author, 
 it may be said that they would seem justly remarkable 
 if these less personal, more separable characteristics 
 were not held in such happy subordination to higher 
 
 ' George Eliot, by the way, would x)erhaps be as willing to ac- 
 knowledge a literary debt to Thackeray as to any one of her peers 
 among novelists. Her faculty of observation, and her faculty of 
 humorous expression as well, must, I should say, have been con- 
 sciously or unconsciously trained in the school of the author of 
 ' ' Vanity Fair." 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 25 
 
 qualities as hardly to make a distinct impression for 
 themselves. Only once in a while, in " Middlemarch," 
 does her learning appear a little over-forward to an- 
 nounce itself. Even in these instances the reader may 
 impute what did not belong to the writer. For ex- 
 ample : " Signs are small measurable things, but inter- 
 pretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent 
 nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, 
 belief, vast as a sky, and colored hy a diffused thimhle- 
 ful of matter in the shape of 'knowledge.''^ ("Middle- 
 march," vol. I., p. 29, Harper's Ed.) The sense here 
 is like George Eliot, fine and striking and true ; but 
 the word " sky " acted as a spell upon her memory and 
 she recalled the latest science on the subject. Her 
 imagination, however, was not quite equal to the task 
 of making the science happily and helpfully available. 
 At least so it seems to one — doubtfully. For after all 
 it is " vastness," and not " color," which the " wonder, 
 hope, belief," give to the sky, in George Eliot's concep- 
 tion. And it is the " knowledge," and not the " ideal- 
 ization," which acts as Prof Tyndall's "scattering" 
 medium to break the whiteness of the light into color. 
 But it is so much more instinctive to imagine one's 
 knowledge colored by one's wishes, than to imagine 
 one's wishes colored by one's knowledge, that the new 
 turn continues to have too much the air of effort. It 
 may justify itself to the understanding, but to the 
 imagination it is a stumbling-block. For another ex- 
 ample : " In short, woman was a problem which, since 
 Mr. Brooke's mind felt blank before it, could be hardly 
 less complicated than, the revolutions of an irregular 
 solid." When, as in " Middlemarch," not often, but 
 too often, we are obliged to feel that conscious effort 
 has taken the place of unconscious energy, we then 
 first begin to remark that the writer's power is not 
 2 
 
26 A PEEE LANCE. 
 
 quite boundless — ^the idea of limit and definition is 
 Suggested. In general, however, it has to be conceded, 
 George Eliot's accomplishments are well content to be 
 the unobtrusive if not unappai'ent conditions of her 
 power. 
 
 A fiirther trait of George Eliot's style, as salient and 
 as characteristic as any, is her humor. Humor some- 
 times, and sometimes wit, it is natural to call that viva- 
 cious play of her genius, which is the accompanying 
 grateful rehef and recreation to its more prevailing sad 
 and serious mood. The effect of this faculty for seeing 
 things on their ludicrous side is almost omnipresent in 
 her writings. It is a constant leavening element to 
 aerate and quicken what, without it, would often be 
 somewhat tedious, however wise and weighty, moral or 
 social disquisition. It lightens and brightens the long 
 pages which it is a peculiarity of her method to occupy 
 with elaborate preliminary accounts of personages in- 
 troduced, or of states of society conditioning her story. 
 But for this enlivenment her stages of preparation for 
 the tardy development of plot would be quite too 
 serious reading for most persons. 
 
 The compass of her humor is very great. Often it 
 is so fine, so exquisite, as to be absolutely elusive, 
 except to a sense not only delicate by nature, but pre- 
 pared beforehand, by knowledge of her habit, to be 
 alert and suspicious. Then, again, it is broad and sub- 
 stantial enough to appeal to the least ethereal appreci- 
 ation. To give by instances any adequate notion of its 
 abundance, its piquancy, and its variety, would be out 
 of the question. One might quote almost at random 
 whole pages, and even whole chapters. Incidentally 
 the absurdity of classical education for a boy with no 
 taste and no aptitude for it, engages her satire, at one 
 point, in " The Mill on the Floss." (We seem here to 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 2T 
 
 conjecture an influence from her patron and friend, the 
 coryphaeus of the New Education, so-called. But Her- 
 bert Spencer, for all that he knows so well the philoso- 
 phy of style as a theory, has never in his practice 
 equalled the Damascene temper and edge of the weapon 
 that is wielded by his pupil.) " I only know," George 
 Eliot remarks, "it turned out as uncomfortably for 
 Tom TuUiver as if he had been plied with cheese in 
 order to remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him 
 from digesting it." (P. 125, Harper's Ed.) The most 
 ardent classicist can afibrd to smile at this, and admit 
 besides that, for the case to which it applies, it is 
 demonstration. 
 
 Some of George Eliot's characters are of humor all 
 compact. Mrs. Poyser, in " Adam Bede," is likely to 
 enjoy an immortality of fame. She is as substantive 
 a creation as Ealstaff. Her wisdom is almost always 
 wit. Her wise saws, ' pungent with Attic salt, flow 
 from her with every collision like a stream of sparks 
 from steel held hard on a whirling emery - wheel. 
 Chapter XXXII. in "Adam Bede," entitled "Mrs. 
 Poyser has her say out," affords a good specimen of 
 her quality. It is jocund with delight in consciously 
 effective wagging of the tongue. Mrs. Poyser, by the 
 way, could hardly in her time have known anything 
 of the " brimstone match," which, nevertheless, is made 
 to supply her with an odorous and odious comparison 
 to the Squire's disadvantage. As a rule, George Eliot 
 is very careful and scholarly in her historical settings. 
 Her success with Mrs. Poyser in this interview seems 
 to have induced her to repeat the experiment in " Mid- 
 dlemarch," where a duplicate of the original scene oc- 
 curs. One would not willingly spare either of these 
 scenes, but they resemble each other enough to suggest 
 a sense of that limitation in the opulence of George 
 
28 A FEEE LAlfCE. 
 
 Eliot's genius, which, as before hinted, is the point of 
 her most noticeable inferiority to Shakespeare. So 
 "Bob" in " The Mill on the Floss" is something like 
 a study for Bratti in " Komola." Bratti, however, is a 
 vast improvement on Bob, and is, by the way, a highly 
 stimulating encounter. (And it is remarkable that we 
 are not forced to perceive much difference of facility in 
 the author for the personation of the female over the 
 male humorist.) It would be easy to mention other ex- 
 amples of virtual repetition occurring in the series of 
 these novels. Such repetition seems to imply a limita- 
 tion to the fecundity of the author's invention. But 
 this implication is not a necessary one. And the lavish 
 profusion with which she sometimes gratuitously creates 
 perfectly individualized characters (take for instances 
 her pauper audience in " Eev. Amos Barton," and her 
 Featherstone mourners in " Middlemarch "), as it were 
 for the mere wanton joy that she experiences in the ex- 
 ercise of her creative power, should, perhaps, be accept- 
 ed for proof that her repetitions of herself are accidental, 
 or nobly careless, and not symptomatic of poverty. In 
 general, too, her novels are extremely populous with 
 characters, substantially conceived and sharply discrim- 
 inated characters, quite as if the author were not at all 
 straitened in her sense of ample resources at command. 
 It is purely incidental, and by no means a trait of her 
 method, when, as in the ease of Mr. Brooke in " Mid- 
 dlemarch," she seizes some chance habit of a personage 
 to label him for the recognition of the reader. This 
 cheap trick of characterization is entirely alien from 
 the high-toned and conscientious style of George Eliot's 
 workmanship. Mr. Charles Dickens is entitled to re- 
 main undisturbed in his renown as the triumphant 
 "Cheap John" of this ticketing method in literary 
 haberdashery. Commonplaceness is a fault into which 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 29 
 
 it would be impossible for George Eliot to lapse. For, 
 however often she might present a familiar thought, she 
 would be sure to affect it with some novelty derived 
 from the vigor of her conception and the consequent 
 freshness of her mode of expressing it. And still it 
 does happen in a few instances that she uses stock ex- 
 pedients for developing her plots, and in one notable 
 instance, the trick practiced with the monkey on the 
 quack doctor, in "Eomola," she condescends to give 
 classical form to a story which it required some temer- 
 ity to take from its natural popular currency and stamp 
 with a superscription of her own. But then we should 
 quite misinterpret George Eliot if we admitted these 
 things to modify, in any appreciable degree, our esti- 
 mate of her genius. These things do not belong to the 
 sphere of effort where she expends her strength. The 
 plot and incident of her stories are the mere moulds 
 into which she casts her sentiment or her humor. She 
 sets no value on them in themselves. You might de- 
 stroy the entire framework of plot which sustains the 
 structure of her novels, and the true transcendent value 
 of her work would remain unimpaired. This is not 
 saying that greater technical skill in formal construction 
 would not enhance her claim to admiration. It cer- 
 tainly would. But, on the other hand, her deficiency 
 here is not in the nature of a deduction to be made 
 from her merit. For although she has chosen the novel 
 for her vehicle, it is not as a novelist strictly that she is 
 to be judged. The form of her work is subordinate, 
 and, as it were, accidental. It is the content of her 
 work — the character, the dialogue, the humor, the 
 pathos, the thought, contained in it — that must fix our 
 estimate of her success. 
 
 For this reason it is not much to the purpose to crit- 
 icise George Eliot's books as novels. Submitted to 
 
30 A FEEE LAKCE. 
 
 technical tests they would be found wanting at many 
 points. In short, you could easily, by a destructive 
 process of criticism, eliminate from these novels, one 
 after another, the several merits on which novels in 
 general depend for their popularity, until scarcely a 
 single ordinary element of success with readers would 
 seem to remain. But the life of thought and of feeling, 
 and the exquisite organ of speech that they use, would 
 remain, and these would still suffice, as they have suf- 
 ficed, to make George Eliot, in spite of technical faults, 
 a popular novelist. "Eomola" is perhaps, upon the 
 whole, the most satisfactory among her books, consid- 
 ered purely as a novel. It is, likewise, as highly 
 wrought as any in point of style. Compared with the 
 rest, it is inferior only to " Middlemarch " in the weight 
 and value of its thought and of its moral inculcation. 
 It has besides, beyond any other, claims to the dignity 
 of being an historical novel. But its history, although 
 admirably studied, is not wrought into any vital organic 
 relation with the story. Savonarola is a stately and 
 gracious figure in it, strikingly presented, but, except 
 in that one encounter of his with Eomola on her first 
 flight from Tito, the action might easily have dispensed 
 with him. Tito, by the way, hardly gets the poetic 
 justice done him at last that the long suspended devel- 
 opment of his doom has been leading us to expect on 
 his behalf He has his will of life as far as to the end, 
 and at the end he escapes the catastrophe that he would 
 most have dreaded, — conscious exposure to scorn, — and 
 dies a quick death. Poor Baldassarre — he gets his re- 
 venge, but the sweetness of revenge he loses. Tessa is 
 really a quite inconceivably silly and insipid case of 
 the perpetuated baby. But what do things like these 
 signify weighed against the extraordinary wealth of 
 learning, of wit, of humor, of wisdom, of passion, of 
 
GEOEGE ELIors NOVELS. 31 
 
 thouglit, of psycliological insight, of prophetic moral 
 teaching, conveyed in fuU "answerable style," that 
 " Komola " contains ? 
 
 Each successive book of George Eliot is more densely 
 thoughtful than its predecessor. It is as if the weight 
 of all that go before were a superincumbent mass 
 pressing the one that follows into still compacter form. 
 "Middlemarch" accordingly, both absolutely and in 
 proportion to its bulk, compresses more thought into its 
 limits than does any other one of her books. It is, no 
 doubt, considered as a novel, vastly over-freighted with 
 thought. Technically this is, of course, a fault. But 
 what a fault ! " Middlemarch " certainly is not easy 
 reading. It is, indeed, a wonderful triumph that it 
 should find readers at all. The beginning of it is so 
 slow as to its action, and the embarrassment in it of 
 intellectual riches is so great that it is difficult to un- 
 derstand how it should entangle the average reader in 
 interest enough to keep ,him reading. But the catas- 
 trophe, or the catastrophes — ^how they gain iu power 
 from the retarded progress with which thus they are 
 approached ! 
 
 But what has already been said must suffice for ap- 
 preciation of the literary quality of these remarkable 
 books. We come now to the more serious part of our 
 task — an attempt to appreciate the moral or ethical 
 quality of George Eliot's novels. 
 
 In the first place we must begin by maintaining, 
 without reserve and without qualification, that, as to 
 purpose on the part of the author, the moral quality 
 of these novels is not only beyond criticism, — the crit- 
 icism of censure, — but almost beyond praise. The 
 moral motive that animates George Eliot's genius 
 seems to me to be wholly pure and noble. She is 
 complained of, not without some reason, for clinging 
 
32 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 too closely to the hard, the unredeemed realities of 
 hfe in her narrative, and her deliaeation of character. 
 She is, indeed, here a realist, in the extremest sense 
 of that word — ^no, we must not say the extremest, for 
 there is a sense of the word that puts a writer con- 
 forming to it outside the pale of true artists and makes 
 him, while remaining it may be faithful to fact, still — 
 we lack a single term to express it — somehow crude, 
 gross, offensive to cultivated taste, destitute, in short, 
 of tone. George Eliot, then, let us say, is realistic in 
 the extremest sense that is strictly consistent with 
 art. A true artist she is, but she wiU not idealize. 
 We miss in her representations of human life precisely 
 the light that never was on sea or land. The light in 
 her novels is still the light that is, and that always was, 
 and that always will be. If this is praise, it is her just 
 praise. If it is derogation, so much must justly be 
 derogated. 
 
 But when we turn from considering her novels as 
 pictures of life to considering them as intimations of 
 her own moral standard, and of the didactic moral aim 
 that inspires her work, we find a very great difference. 
 The morality of these novels, if we regard the con- 
 scious intention of the author alone, is quite ideal 
 enough. The morality of them may, or may not be, 
 practically safe and wise. But, at least, it is never 
 low. The highest sentiments of devotion to conscience 
 and to truth, implied inculcations of the most magnani- 
 mous, the most costly self-sacrifice, abound. " Egoism " 
 ■ — ^this word is her substitute for the too polarized term 
 selfishness (the polarization, the same polarization, would 
 inevitably soon be transferred from the original to the 
 substitute) — " egoism " is to be sternly repressed — it is 
 to be brought to the altar of sacrifice. In the dialect 
 of a school, she preaches " altruism," in antithesis to 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 33 
 
 " egoism," that is, devotion to others, in exclusion of 
 devotion to self. 
 
 I accordingly find it impossible to understand those 
 critics who consider George Eliot's novels immoral in 
 anything like the ordinary sense of immorality. I find 
 it, also, equally impossible to sympathize with those 
 critics who have lately pronounced " Middlemarch " a 
 cold book. To me it is warm and pulsing with the 
 life-blood of a most loving human heart. The great 
 act of Dorothea in paying her visit to Rosamond to 
 counsel and comfort her, and to save Lydgate, at the 
 very moment when her own life seemed to have been 
 left to her desolate — I confess that it affects me as a 
 stroke of pathos hardly less than sublime. This is the 
 true climax of the interest of the novel. And it is 
 worth noting that the climax is a moral climax. 
 
 Tears from the deptt of some divine despair — 
 
 a despair just then smitten with hope, since such good- 
 ness lives — start at this incident to rightly reading eyes 
 like the waters from the rock springing at the touch of 
 Moses' rod. Certainly George Eliot is no maudlin 
 sentimentalist— no melodramatic emotion-monger like 
 him of " Little JSTell." But for high and pure pathos, 
 — ^pathos conceived in the key of that magnanimity 
 which, in a world like ours, fallen and in sore need of 
 redemption, is always the highest and purest pathos, — 
 I should scarcely know where to look for anything finer 
 than " Middlemarch " supplies. 
 
 This is by no means to be regarded in the light of 
 concession to George Eliot. It is hearty, ungrudged, 
 and grateful ascription. She is a writer of great and 
 generous moral aims. It is her worthy ambition to 
 breathe, if she may, into the hearts of men and women, 
 —her brothers and sisters, — an ampler breath of moral 
 
34 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 inspiration. She would fain do something toward re- 
 leasing us all from our pettiness, our selfishness, our 
 falseness, our convention. Her psalm of life lacks 
 sadly the anticipative triumph, but it has all the moral 
 elevation, of that strain in " The Two Voices : " 
 
 Waiting to strive a happy strife. 
 To war with falsehood to the knife. 
 And not to lose the good of life — 
 
 Some hidden principle to move. 
 To put together, part and prove. 
 And mete the bounds of hate and love- 
 As far as might be, to carve out 
 Free space for every human doubt, 
 That the whole mind might orb about — 
 
 To search thro' all 1 felt or saw. 
 
 The springs of life, the depths of awe. 
 
 And reach the law within the law. 
 
 Such I find to be the moral spirit of George Eliot's 
 novels. The moral tendency of them is a different 
 matter. 
 
 The moral spirit of George Eliot's novels — ^their 
 intentional influence — makes one way. It is favorable 
 to nobleness, goodness, virtue. The tendency of them, 
 their undesigned influence, makes another way. ISoi 
 wholly by any means, for happily mere integrity of 
 purpose is itself a force in morals that no falseness of 
 fundamental principle can entirely countervail; not 
 wholly, therefore, but in just so far as tendency is 
 separable from spirit in writing, the tendency is con- 
 trary to the spirit in George Eliot's novels. She 
 unconsciously hinders the nobleness that she inculcates. 
 Let me explain. 
 
 One of the leading ideas in her novels is fate — fate 
 in the twofold form of outward and inward necessity. 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 35 
 
 The universe is hard, imyielding, compelling ; charac- 
 ter is given, fixed, unchangeable. Not that character 
 is, according to her, a finished result from the first. It 
 is rather a process indeed. But it is process under 
 immutable law. Character changes, but it changes 
 according to an unchangeal)le necessity incorporate in 
 its own original constitution. It was always that in 
 germ which at any moment it has become in develop- 
 ment. In this sense, it is not too much to say, and to 
 say again, human character in George Eliot's philosophy 
 is given, fixed, unchangeable. This conception of 
 human life dominates in her writing. There are not 
 more than two or three iustances, if indeed there are 
 any, of exception to the rule that the personages of her 
 plot develop in character along a rigid line self-deter- 
 mined by their own persistent original identity. 
 Hardly thrice does it occur that one of these conquers 
 circumstances. They all alike succumb to fate — to the 
 themselmes and the not themselves, as Mr. Arnold would 
 say. 
 
 Now, that the persistency of human character is an 
 idea or a fact, verifiable enough from experience and 
 from observation to be awful, to be appalling, to be 
 everything dire indeed, short of being absolutely over- 
 whelming, I have no disposition to deny. It is one of 
 the most intimate, most constant, most controlling of 
 my own personal convictions. It may well almost 
 master any deeply self-conscious mind. This resilient, 
 this indestructible spring of personal identity' within us, 
 by virtue of which we return resistlessly to the old 
 self, that we always really remained, from whatever 
 forced escape and change we may, for a time, fancy 
 that we have achieved for ourselves forever — who of us 
 is there that has not shuddered at the consciousness of 
 it ? We live bound to a constant point by an elastic 
 
36 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 tether. We kave some freedom of range. "We may 
 stretch our bond somewhat, and cheat ourselves into 
 some sense of being at liberty. But the bond holds. 
 "We cannot break it. "We cannot impair its perpetual 
 strength. Beyond a certain limit we cannot continue 
 to stretch it. That limit reached, the bond resumes to 
 itself its delusively yielded power of resistance to our 
 efforts against it. One sudden contractile throe of its 
 terrible elasticity, and we are brought sheer back to our 
 centre. This is what thoughtful men have habitually 
 observed and experienced. It is something that is 
 still more intensely, as more intimately, dreadful than 
 what Dr. Holmes figured with his famous water-drop 
 in the heart of the crystaP to represent the human wiU 
 vainly free in its enclosure of circumstance. He was 
 seeking a symbol for the wall of external condition that 
 surrounds and imprisons us. I seek an expression for 
 the law of condition that is incorporated in us. But 
 both these ideas, the inward and the outward fate that 
 restrains or compels us, seem to have taken tyrannous 
 possession of George Eliot's mind. Destiny is hardly 
 more to the pagan Greek tragedists than it is to Chris- 
 tian George Eliot. (I use Christian now simply to note 
 a condition of time and circumstance.) And the tra- 
 gedy of the idea is greater with the Christian than it is 
 Avith the Greek. 
 
 George Eliot has borrowed from Christianity for her 
 novels, unconsciously perhaps, but beyond her power to 
 help it at any rate, elements and conditions that make 
 the struggle of the helpless human will with fate in her 
 representation tenfold harder and more forlorn than it 
 
 ' " I see myself, but yet I cannot apprehend it. It is a drop of 
 dew.shiit vp in the heart of a rock." — Auerbacli's " On the Heights." 
 (Translation, Kobel'ts Brothers' edition, p. 303.) 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 37 
 
 could by any possibility be under the undisturbed do- 
 minion of purely pagan ideas. To oppose a stoic reso- 
 lution " not to be overcome," against the impenetrable, 
 inexorable breast of fate — that was the comparatively 
 simple and easy achievement that pagan tragedy in its 
 loftiest moods could satisfy itself completely with let- 
 ting its hard-pressed gods or heroes accomplish. But 
 George Eliot, in her far different light, sees too deeply 
 and too truly what is indeed the highest ideal of moral- 
 ity for her to be content with offering such a release 
 of virtue to her characters. Her men and women must 
 be more than stoics if they are to be heroes to George 
 Eliot. They must be Christian stoics. They must do 
 more than merely endure. They must overcome. Self- 
 abnegation, self-sacrifice — ^nothing less than this Chris- 
 tian virtue— is the worthy stoicism for George Eliot. 
 But to be self-denying, self-sacrificing, like Christ, not 
 in imitation of Christ — to have the Christian spirit 
 without the Christian motive — ^well, it is still noble 
 and beautiful as a conception, but the impossibility 
 makes it so infinitely pathetic! And this to wisely 
 thoughtful minds is the true pathos of George Eliot's 
 novels. 
 
 Hope is the very element of the Christian life. It 
 is an apostolic word, " We are saved by hope." But 
 George Eliot tries to save us without hope. A gentle, 
 pitying, pitiful despair broods in her books with tear- 
 laden eyelids and tearless eyes over a world to be noble 
 — and unhappy, in. It is a " sad astrology." 
 
 I do not go behind the books themselves to find a 
 light in which to read the books. What I have said 
 lies written all over the noble and mournful pages of 
 her novels. We read and we seem all the time to 
 dwell in a world over which the crystal sky hangs like 
 a hollow hemisphere of glass, emptied of the ambient 
 
38 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 element of hope, and with walls as of a mirror admit- 
 ting no light from beyond, but only mocking us with 
 wearisome reflections of the light that is here. It is 
 like trying to breathe under an exhausted receiver. It 
 is like trying to see through the plane of a mirror. 
 We pray for air, we pray for light. We might, per- 
 haps dispense with breathing here, if indeed the world 
 has no atmosphere of hope in which we may breathe. 
 But if we are to gasp and to die we at least would 
 wish to be comforted with some glimpses " less forlorn" 
 of a life beyond life. But the sky slopes pitilessly 
 down, the horizon never lifts. " O dark, dark, dark, 
 irrecoverably dark ! " 
 
 To such a view of the moral atmosphere of George 
 Eliot's novels, some readers may object : " Why surely 
 there is a good deal of wholesome cheerfulness in these 
 books." And surely, say I, there is. But their tone is 
 sombre. The lights of humor and gayety in them are 
 foil only to the prevailing melancholy and gloom that 
 overhang them, like a beclouded sky filling the world 
 everywhere with shadow. What a sad life was poor 
 TuUiver's, and what a blank end of it came ! How 
 Maggie toiled in the toils of her fate, to have her proud 
 spirit quenched at last like the quenching of a candle ! 
 And Tom ! And Komola ! And Lydgate ! l^ay, and 
 Dorothea herself ! " lU-matched," all of them, " with 
 the meanness of opportunity" here, and hereafter — 
 nothing. One must succeed, beyond what I can, in 
 resolutely refusing to read between the lines, not to be 
 oppressed with a sense like this as he lives for a time in 
 the world of George Eliot's men and women and children. 
 
 Another of my readers may say : " Yes. George 
 Eliot's novels are sad books, but the world is a sad 
 world. Life is the tragedy George Eliot represents it. 
 She is not to be blamed, or even to be criticised, but 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 89 
 
 to be praised rather, that, seeing deeply into the truth 
 of things, as she does, she honestly shows us what she 
 finds." Well, I grant that the world is just the dark 
 world — that human life is just the sorrowful riddle — 
 that George Eliot makes them. It is the truth. The 
 malignity of circumstances is indeed slow to give way, 
 only a little, even before the singular pureness and 
 simplicity and high-heartedness of a Dorothea. If it 
 gives way at all, it is very, very little, and the chances 
 are that then it only seems to give way. Rosamond, 
 it may be, will be forced suiBciently out of her " ego- 
 ism" by the impact of Dorothea's "altruistic" noble- 
 ness — sufficiently to let Dorothea herself through the 
 straits that had been grudging her passage into the 
 farther sea of her fortunes. But Eosamond will remain 
 the same yielding persistency of opposition and defeat 
 to Lydgate as before. This is George Eliot's represen- 
 tation, and this, I acknowledge, is human life. Lydgate 
 may take the waves of adverse circumstance with as 
 good heart of controversy as he will. The world will 
 prove " too many " for him. Lydgate^s as helpless as 
 Tulliver. The same heavy hand of necessity is upon 
 them both. A dreadful imminent defeat defeats them 
 from the very beginning and throughout the whole con- 
 tinuance of the strife. They fight against a foregone 
 conclusion of their fight. It is quite as if they con- 
 tended in view of the celestial balance hung on high 
 with the beam already inclined visibly against them. 
 They go to the war and through the war with the spirit 
 of Turnus, and with Turnus's fate foreknown on their 
 part to await them. Maggie perhaps escapes this 
 despair of foreboding, but, no less, observens behold Ijer 
 led by her fate helplessly like a lamb to the altar.* If 
 
 ' One feels, by the way, like making it a grievance againet the 
 author that she did not provide some nobler occasion of extreme 
 
40 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 Lucy's sweet and wholesome nature is proof against- 
 the bitterness and sourness of condition — ^it is still, as we 
 
 see, 
 
 Not that the grounds of hope were fix'd. 
 The elements were kindlier mix'd 
 
 in her ease. That is aU. 
 
 I acknowledge, I say, that life — ^the outward spec- 
 tacle of life which we behold and part of which we are 
 — ^is really, as George Eliot represents it, like this. I 
 go further. I acknowledge that sin is just the malig- 
 nant persistent immortality that she makes it. If Tito 
 will choose his own will and pleasure, then Tito's sin 
 shall follow him like a Nemesis — hunt him through life 
 and hunt him out of life. If Bulstrode will cover up a 
 lie, will stanch a running sore to hide it from the 
 public eye, and turn it into a blind and inward ulcer to 
 vent its horrid virus upon his very vitals, then Bul- 
 strode's sin shall change the basis of his being into rot- 
 tenness. Scarcely the most extravagant theodicies of 
 those that exaggerate the self- reproducing, self- pun- 
 temptation to Maggie than that lay figure, that animated fashion- 
 plate, young Mr. Stephen Guest. Maggie deserved to escape her 
 wreck on a more heroic reef. 
 
 Again. It does not much affect either the literary or the moral 
 value of " The MiU on the Floss " — its disappointing close. But 
 that flood is too near to the melodramatic, and the actual catastrophe 
 is a curious impossibility. How should an interlocked mass of 
 wooden fragments, stretching quite across the swollen stream, have 
 been borne on by the flood faster than was the boat that carried 
 Maggie and Tom— especially when the strength of Tom's powerful 
 rowing was added to the stress of the mid-current to urge the boat 
 along? And yet the story seems to make the mass of wooden 
 fragments overtake and overwhelm the boat. It is not melodrama, 
 however, but tragedy, unrelieved and blank, when brother and 
 sister in that phantasmagoric scene find at last a 
 
 landing-place to clasp and say, 
 Farewell ! We lose ourselves in— dark I 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 41 
 
 ishing power of sin could exceed the representations of 
 George Eliot. 
 
 In all this, I repeat once more, I am entirely at one 
 with George Eliot. She sees deeply and she sees truly 
 into the great mystery and the great tragedy of liuman 
 life. More than even thus much. Her interest in 
 dealing witli the grave problems of our existence here 
 is a sincerely and nobly moral interest. And still, and 
 still, I am constrained to believe, notwithstanding all 
 this truth in thought and pureness in purpose on her 
 part, George Eliot is exerting an influence to hinder 
 more than to help her brothers and sisters in their 
 struggles against sin. There are some, no doubt, — there 
 are many indeed, — ^both men and women, who need to 
 be taugbt througb a Tito and a Bulstrode,^ what a 
 dreadful germ of development sin is. But then we are 
 all of us sinners in our degree, and if sin be what George 
 Eliot makes it, and what I believe it, then the matter of 
 present degree signifies nothing. The end is the same, 
 whatever the present degree. In all, as in one, sin 
 when it is finished bringeth forth death. We all, I say, 
 are sinners, and what concerns us chiefly is not to know 
 the consequence of this better than we now do, except 
 
 ' Bulstrode is perhaps tlie least real, the most lite an imperson- 
 ated tendency, among the characters of George Eliot's creation. 
 But if there are no Bulstrodes in actual life, there is plenty of Bul- 
 Btrode's quality distributed in various measures to members of 
 Cliristian communities almost everywhere. For my own part, 
 therefore, I find no fault with the author as guilty of any unfair- 
 ness, intentional or otherwise, toward the Cliristian name in her 
 delineation of Bulstrode. I believe I know, from experience, no less 
 than from observation, the potentialities of human nature too well. 
 There is no malignant glee manifested on the part of the novelist, 
 as if she were glutting some long-famished grudge against evan- 
 gelical Christianity. On the contrary, the severity of the fact is 
 even enhanced by the evident relenting gentleness of the narrative. 
 
42 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 as better knowledge may incite to keener desire of es- 
 cape, if escape be anywise possible ; but what concerns 
 US chiefly is to learn how the too certain and too dread- 
 ful consequence of sin may be avoided. If there be no 
 salvation for us, then it can only make us still worse 
 through despair to be taught that we are helpless — true, 
 horribly true, though it be. On the other hand, if there 
 is salvation for us, then not to hint this, to write as if 
 there were not, is to slay us with despair when we might 
 have been succored and revived with hope. But hope- 
 lessness I find to be the prevailing moral tone of George 
 Eliot's novels. She writes with truth and with power 
 for a world into which sin has entered, and death by sin. 
 But she writes too as for a world in which there is no 
 redemption from sin. Alas! George Eliot seems not 
 to have heard that once for all, some eighteen hundred 
 years or mOre ago, death was swallowed up in victory ! 
 There is nothing, however, consciously or purposely 
 hostile to Christ in all her books.^ There is nothing 
 either, in her apparent attitude toward Christ, of ofv 
 fensive patronage or of easy, self-conceited comprehen- 
 sion. George Eliot contrasts strongly here with Auer- 
 bach, between whom and her there are, at other points, 
 some traits of resemblance. Their use of psychological 
 analysis is similar, and both writers write rather for the 
 sake of the thought that they wish to express than for 
 the sake of any story that they have to tell. But Auer- 
 
 ' I do not forget that an unacknowledged translation of Strauss's 
 " Life of Jesus " is attributed with probable truth to the hand of 
 George Eliot. But that she should have chosen to engage in such 
 literary work as translating Strauss and Feuerbach ("Essence of 
 Cliristianity ") is, I prefer to trust, evidence rather of that fascina- 
 tion which she could not but feel in the Man of Calvary, than of 
 any hostility to his claims. The fact that these translations remain 
 unacknowledged confirms the more welcome presumption. 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 4:3 
 
 bach, if one does not mistake in identifying the au- 
 thor's own sentiment, is a self-satisiied dogmatist where 
 George Eliot, far more nobly, as well as far more wisely, 
 is fain to remain in doubt. Auerbach, accordingly, has 
 his plan of salvation for ns — a plan which, if it were not 
 preposterous enough to provoke a smile, would never- 
 theless be impracticable enough to dishearten us still 
 more completely than does George Eliot's mournful 
 shake of the head on the subject. Auerbach says, Save 
 yourself; George Eliot says. Save yourself, you can- 
 not. Auerbach quotes Christ, and shelves him in a 
 niche of his pantheon. George Eliot, on the contrary, 
 scarcely once mentioning his name, seems to stand as 
 in a suspense of doubt and awe toward Christ. She 
 breathes no articulate syllable in derogation from his 
 claims. I can fancy George Eliot's earnest and noble 
 spirit poised and pausing thus long in a balance of in- 
 detCTmination respecting the Man of Calvary. She 
 seems half ready to exclaim, My Lord and my God, 
 Her posture in his presence is a prolonged, still un- 
 ready, reluctant, resisting, passionate perhaps. God 
 knows, but I desire to hope that if she persists in not 
 reckoning herself among those who are openly for 
 Christ, Christ himself, in the largeness of his wisdom 
 and love, may include George Eliot among those who 
 yet are not against him. At any rate, her books all read 
 as if she took heed to her pen in this regard, lest haply 
 she should be found fighting against God. 
 
 There are points of interesting resemblance and con- 
 trast, both literary and ethical, between George Eliot 
 and Hawthorne. The style of each is exquisite. Both 
 depend for the interest of their novels on other elements 
 than narrative and plot. Both are comparatively weak 
 in invention and construction. Both are profoundly 
 and, in their several ways, painfully psychological. Is 
 
44 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 it Hawthorne, or is it George Eliot, that exposes to us 
 the motive and method of his work when we read as 
 follows in " Twice-told Tales " : " Then might I exem- 
 plify how an influence, beyond our control, lays its 
 strong hand on every deed which we do, and weaves 
 its consequences into an iron tissue of necessity." 
 Arthur Dimmesdale and Mr. Bulstrode are evident 
 moral congeners. These specifications perhaps exhaust 
 the points of mutual resemblance between the authors. 
 The points of contrast are curious and striking. Haw- 
 thorne is perhaps no more subjective than George 
 Eliot; but he is far less objective than she. George 
 Eliot, accordingly, would seem to be the more amply 
 endowed, the more evenly balanced nature of the two. 
 Hawthorne is not so learned as George Eliot, nor so 
 familiarly conversant with contemporary thouglit. 
 Hawthorne is vastly less dramatic, less versatile in dia- 
 logue, than George Eliot. Hawthorne's attitude to- 
 ward the supernatural is in most suggestive and stimu- 
 lating contrast to George Eliot's. You feel all the 
 time in reading Hawthorne that you are under the 
 spell of a wizard who possesses a strange power of 
 imposing upon your imagination with the effect of a 
 supernaturalism in which he does not believe himself. 
 You are kept constantly on the wavering border that 
 joins the world of sense with a world of superstitious 
 fancy felt to be almost equally real. The conjurer that 
 plays this trick upon your own imagination you seem 
 to be aware has himself an imagination proof by skep- 
 ticism against the reflex influence of his own woven 
 measures and waving hands. On the contrary, George 
 Eliot is a severe exorcist of superstition. Her world 
 is a world of pure naturalism. "Weii-d is a word that 
 is always on your lips to characterize Hawthorne's 
 quality. The word is never so much as once suggested 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 45 
 
 in speaking of George Eliot. A bluff breeze blows 
 her books clear of clinging mists — a broad light, 
 equally diffused, dissipates all haunting supernatural 
 shadows. At the same time, you cannot help suspect- 
 ing that toward the real supernatural, of which there 
 is none in her books, George Eliot turns a more believ- 
 ing heart than did Hawthorne toward the mock super- 
 naturalism, suggested rather than expressed, of which 
 his books are so full. 
 
 I do not remember any instance in George Eliot's 
 books of allusion to the idea of human immortality, 
 either to adopt it or to reject it, either to desire it or to 
 deprecate it. There is, so far as I recall, absolutely no 
 future for man beyond death even for a moment sug- 
 gested to the reader, except by the author's occasional 
 most suggestive silence on the subject. You may 
 peruse the whole horizon again and again throughout 
 its three hundred and sixty degrees. There is never a 
 ' point where it gives upon a prospect outside. This no 
 doubt is in accordance with a conscientious purpose on 
 the part of George Eliot. She is intellectually a posi- 
 tivist, in the sense of accepting nothing for certainly 
 true that she cannot submit to tests of experience. But 
 to use one of her own recurring passionate expressions, 
 her heart, I must believe, " gives a greajt leap," now 
 and again, of protest and rebellion against the convic- 
 tions of her head. I cannot but trust that her heart 
 , will yet conquer and lead that great intellect captive 
 to the foot of the Cross. 
 
 I detect no zeal and no cunning of proselytism ani- 
 mating her books. I doubt if she believes the bald 
 naturalism, the virtual materialism, of her reputed 
 school in philosophy ardently enough to become a con- 
 scious propagandist of its doctrines. She has too much 
 misgiving, if I should not rather say hope, that Chris- 
 
46 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 tianity may be true. She is too noble a nature. She 
 loves her kind too well. She would rather not lead 
 than run the risk of misleading. 
 
 But unintentionally she does mislead when she em- 
 phasizes the obstinate persistency of human character 
 in a way to leave the impression that there is not a 
 friendly power of help at hand stronger still than the 
 strength of native depravity. She does mislead when 
 she represents the world of natural condition around 
 us, steeled itself, as it is, against human entreaty, to be 
 also void of benignant supernatural invasion ready to 
 reinforce and to rescue the tailing better will of men 
 and women with effectual succor. She does mislead 
 when she describes the malignant capacity of develop- 
 ment which belongs to the nature of sin, as if there 
 were nowhere a corresponding capacity of arrest and 
 reversal provided, abundantly able to destroy both sin 
 and its consequences. She does mislead when she 
 nobly inculcates self-denial and self-sacrifice without 
 mention of the only motive that historically ever ena- 
 bled living men and women long to practice self-denial 
 and self-sacrifice. She does mislead when she writes as 
 if the doctrine of atonement, of vicarious suffering, of 
 "altruism," to use the term of a school, were but a 
 doctrine, a hopeless doctrine, and not also, and much 
 rather, a fact, a hope-inspiring fact. If George Eliot 
 had forborne to " handle spiritual strife " at all, it might 
 not have been incumbent on her to introduce so neces- 
 sary a condition of any fruitful solution of the problem 
 of sin as that condition which Jesus entered inseparably 
 into human history eighteen luminous Christian centu- 
 ries ago. Again I say, I make no accusation of pur- 
 posed infidelity to Jesus or to the souls that Jesus came 
 to save, on the part of this great writer. But it is the 
 truth, nevertheless, however conscieiice-clear she may 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 47 
 
 hare been in doing so, that slie has left out of her 
 scheme of human conditions the master-condition of 
 all. Christ indeed, though obscurely under an anonym, 
 is present here in almost everything, except only that 
 which is chief in his character, his power to save. His 
 life of devotion is accepted, without express acknowl- 
 edgment it is true, as the ideal of human conduct. 
 But the miracles of supernatural intervention attending 
 his life, that revealed an invisible sphere of spiritual 
 power environing us round in sympathy and alliance 
 with struggling goodness — ^there is no effect admitted 
 from these. Gethsemane with its agony. Calvary with 
 its passion, Joseph's tomb with its shrouded dead — 
 these are here in effect. But the empty tomb, the 
 resurrection, the ascension, captivity led captive, the 
 thanks be to God which giveth us the victory, through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, these are nowhere present in 
 any helpful influence in George Eliot's books. 
 
 I feel, as I have said, that George Eliot desires to be 
 morally helpfal to her fellow-creatures. Her best 
 characters she makes to be sources of exalting inspira- 
 tion to all the susceptible souls that come within their 
 reach. Goodness in her descriptions possesses a kind 
 of magnetic virtue to communicate itself. There is a 
 natural flow of the element from soul to soul. Janet 
 receives it from Mr. Tryan — Eomola receives it from 
 Savonarola ; Dorothea-^she possesses it, but hardly, in 
 her ill-matching conditions, finds to whom she may 
 impart it. George Eliot does thus teach us that good- 
 ness is not alone in the world. She sliows us how it 
 stands always in a never-broken circuit of mutual 
 electric sympathy and help. But the heavenly mag- 
 netism has, in her representations, no certain, unfailing, 
 abiding source. It is natural only. Now it is not 
 enough for us that we have help. We must have suf- 
 
48 A FKBE LANCE. 
 
 ficient help. Janet, if the representation be carefully 
 noticed, depends on Mr. Tryan. Mr. Tryan does not 
 succeed in transferring her dependence from himself to 
 a supernatural power. Janet's repentance, is really 
 human love for a human object, converted into another 
 form of its correlated existence, the form of renovated 
 character. You are subtly made to feel that it is only 
 a chance mould, that into which Mr. Tryan's own expe- 
 rience has fallen, the mould of evangelical religion. 
 Mr. Tryan's language is strictly orthodox, and it is 
 used by him with absolute sincerity. But the author 
 somehow causes you to perceive that according to her 
 own conviction the orthodox phrase in which Mr. 
 Tryan speaks is really nothing more than unconsciously 
 provincial dialect, to express an experience that is 
 pm-ely natural, and therefore perfectly capable of ex- 
 pression in the natural language of morals and philoso- 
 phy. In Savonarola George Eliot makes her nearest 
 approach to representing a character that truly receives 
 himself from an invisible supernatural source the mag- 
 netic virtue of spiritual invigoration and help which he 
 imparts to others. But Romola, having been braced 
 by his influence to her highest heroic tone of character 
 and conduct, yet finds her faith in him left to her at 
 last but the ghost of a loyalty that desired, and was 
 denied, the boon of being perfect. Precisely where the 
 natural ceases, and the supernatural would begin, 
 George Eliot halts. Oh, George Eliot, I know as well 
 as you that natural men have their limitations — their 
 moral limitations. Savonarola was weak, perhaps was 
 wicked. But was Jesus ? Had Jesus any moral lunit- 
 ations ? Was Jesus then a natural man ? Did not the 
 supernatural become historical in Jesus ? Is there not 
 a Saviour for us ? If not, we pray you cease torment- 
 ing us with the awakened consciousness of our help- 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 49' 
 
 lessness under sentence of death by sin. If there is a 
 Saviour, then at the moment of that sorest extremity 
 to which you reduce us, pray whisper, as surely you 
 might know how so well, the gospel of his name. A 
 gospel of some sort, be sure, more than all things else, 
 we need. And many of us, during eighteen hundred 
 years at least, have found our most effectual help 
 against sin in believing the gospel that sin shall not 
 have dominion over us, that we are not under law, but 
 under grace. 
 
 I set out with saying that George Eliot makes no 
 distinctive impression for herself of sex, either in her 
 intellectual or in her moral quality. This, when I con- 
 sider her, as I undertook to do, in her books alone, still 
 seems to me to be true. But as often as I permit my- 
 self to consider her likewise in her reputed relation to 
 that school in philosophy which teaches the ancient 
 doctrine of necessitj'^, under the modern name of de- 
 velopment, I tend somehow to experience an almost 
 contrary feeling. There is apparently a contrast here 
 between George Eliot and her brethren in philosophical 
 faith. Her attitude is not altogether the same as theirs 
 toward the creed which they unite in confessing. Her 
 brethren believe with the head, and, so far as appears, 
 do not doubt with the heart. George Eliot assents, 
 perhaps unquestioningly, with her head. But her 
 heart demurs and rebels. It is a woman's voice after 
 all that one hears crying that monotonous passionate 
 cry throughout George Eliot's works — a cry of helpless 
 grief, of outraged, implacable sense of wrong, against 
 this great, deaf, impassible universe. Wot that her 
 mind is therefore less. It is only that therefore her 
 heart is more. And our George Eliot is still by so 
 much greater than we found her, by how much she 
 proves after all to be a woman. 
 
MR. LOWELL'S POETRY. 
 
 IT is hard to say how much it is virtue and how 
 much felicity that runs in the blood of some fami- 
 lies, to distinguish them with an honorable fame, 
 through various branches and during successive gen- 
 erations. The Lowells, of Massachusetts, enjoy a good 
 civic, and social, and literary renown, which is coeval 
 with the date of the republic, and which constitutes 
 one of the truest, and one of the least alienable, of the 
 treasures of its history. The commonwealth of Mas- 
 sachusetts is rich in the heraldry of such illustrious 
 names ; but tlie commonwealth of Massachusetts has 
 no gentler blood than that which has descended, with- 
 out taint, from John Lowell, of the days of "Washing- 
 ton, to James Eussell Lowell, the laureate of Abraham 
 Lincoln. As long as the archives of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States continue to be consulted ; 
 as long as cotton is woven in the looms of Lowell, on 
 the banks of the Merrimac; as long as the Lowell 
 Institute, of Boston, instructs the American community 
 in religion, science, literature, and the arts, the fame 
 of the Lowells is secure. If these anchors should here- 
 after drag in the urgent drift of time, then there is 
 that in the volumes now under review, which will still 
 hold against the stress of whatever storm does not 
 overwhelm the language itself in which they are writ- 
 ten. 
 
ME. Lowell's poetey. 51 
 
 The appearance of " Under the Willows," occurring 
 after an interval of twenty years from the date of Mr. 
 Lowell's previous volumes, is too important an event 
 in the annals of American books not to be signalized 
 by a notice, of respectful dimensions, in every peri- 
 odical claiming to be, in any degree, an organ of Amer- 
 ican literature. It is not without a sense of pain 
 that we welcome this addition to the world's slowly- 
 increasing store of genuine poetry. It is too small an 
 addition to stand for the whole poetical fruitage of 
 such genius as Mr. Lowell's, during twenty such years 
 of his life. We deprecate the omen, but Mr. Ldwell's 
 prime, though vigorous yet, will hardly endure to fur- 
 nish him a like -term of productiveness again. When 
 we consider the "prosperous labor" which Tennyson's 
 thrifty genius has accomplished within the same period, 
 and consider, too, that perhaps the chief difference 
 between Lowell and Tennyson lies, not in their gifts, 
 but in their use of their gifts, — alas, we involuntarily 
 fall to forgetting what Mr. Lowell has done, in vainly 
 guessing and missing the more that he might have 
 done. Sixteen years ago, the editor of "Putnam's 
 Monthly," with a natural preference, which possibly 
 the "Fable for Critics," with its dedication, and its 
 genial notice of Harry Franco, may help one under- 
 stand, expressed to us the opinion that Lowell was a 
 greater poet than Tennyson. We are much inchned 
 ourselves to believe that Tennyson's genius excels 
 chiefly in that which, after all, constitutes the chief 
 excellence of genius — ^the faculty of work — industry. 
 We may do Mr. Lowell wrong in saying this. We 
 must not forget that poetry is the .vocation of a lifetime 
 with Tennyson. It is scarcely more than the avocation 
 of a stolen leisure, now and then, with Mr. Lowell. 
 During the greater part of twenty years past, Mr. 
 
62 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 Lowell has been tlie incumbent of a laborious pro- 
 fessorship at Harvard. More recently, he has been an 
 editor, too. And, especially abont the time of the 
 rebellion, his incisive prose invigorated many a page 
 of " The Atlantic Monthly " with articles, each one of 
 which was as a battle gained for the republic at her 
 utmost need. So, then, with nothing further said that 
 might seem to abate the grace of our greeting, we loy- 
 ally thank Mr. Lowell for his volume, small as it is. 
 It is precious, nevertheless, — oXiyov rs ^Ikov re. We 
 have been querulous like Achilles. It is but fit that we 
 should now be at least as appreciative as he. 
 
 This new volume will naturally attract the public 
 attention afresh to its two predecessors of so many 
 years ago. It will be more satisfactory, therefore, to 
 consider the three volumes together, and to review Mr. 
 Lowell's poetry as a whole. 
 
 We need not give much space to an examination of 
 that part of his poetry which belongs to the feminine 
 stage of the poet's development. Feminine, we say ; 
 and we do not mean effeminate. The earliest poem, 
 in the first collection, is no more effeminate than the 
 latest, in the last. The quality' of the strength exhib- 
 ited does not seem to be much changed from the one 
 to the other ; but the volume of the strength is bravely 
 expanded from the " Threnodia " of the author's youth, 
 to the " Commemoration Ode " of his full maturity. 
 Yirility, not perhaps in its most athletic, but certainly 
 in a fine and true meaning of the word, is present in 
 every line that has ever come from Mr. Lowell's pen. 
 A considerable number, however, of the pieces in the 
 first volume are the offspring of a genius manifestly 
 impregnated from the ascendant influence particularly 
 of Tennyson, whose star had already arisen on some 
 foreseeing minds about the time at which Mr. Lowell 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETEY. 53 
 
 was an undergraduate of Harvard. These pieces are 
 full of poetry ; they even read more smoothly than do 
 many of the later works of the same hand ; but they 
 are imitations, and not creations. The " Prometheus," 
 for example, is a monologue, in blank verse, after the 
 manner of Tennyson's " Ulysses." It is a noble poem, 
 but it quite fails of the statuesque perfection of Tenny- 
 son's matchless modern antique. The " Prometheus " 
 is Greek in color, although the tone of the (Jolor is 
 mixed with a dash of spirit that is not Greek, nor yet 
 Eastern, nor ancient, nor pagan. But this is inten- 
 tional, and it harmonizes well with the allegorizing use 
 which is made of the myth. The great lack of the 
 poem is in that which should have constituted its chief 
 praise. It lacks in severity and in density. If the 
 idea had been treated with the measure of success of 
 which it was worthy, the literature of this famous per- 
 sonage would have been illustrated with one more poem, 
 not unfit to rank with the few masterpieces, on the 
 same subject, that are destined to be immortal. " St. 
 Simeon Stylites " is suggested by the " Prometheus." 
 The old saint seems, indeed, to be a kind of grotesque 
 ecclesiastic travesty of the mythic pagan hero. It is 
 a coincidence worthy of note, that Tennyson's volumes, 
 containing the " Ulysses " and " St. Simeon Stylites," 
 were published in England the year before the compo- 
 sition of the " Prometheus," according to the date which 
 Mr. Lowell has himself modestly aifixed to his poem. 
 It would be ungracious not to be warned off from very 
 serious criticism of Mr. Lowell's brilliant experiment 
 by a Gomeat so delicate and indicative of a conscious- 
 ness so just. 
 
 It is curious, by the way, and . provocative of ex- 
 ceedingly varied and, as it were, anachronistic reflec- 
 tions, to remember that the "Prometheus" first saw 
 
54: A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 the light in the old " Democratic Review " of the ante- 
 diluvian political world. A Democratic Review of 
 now-a-days would hardly be Mr. Lowell's preference, as 
 his medium of communication with the literary public. 
 Among the other pieces dated by the poet, are vari- 
 ous exquisitely modulated echoes of Tennyson, especi- 
 ally in the Englishman's earlier and more purely sensu- 
 ous style. But there is one piece among them, echoed, 
 it seems to us, from nowhere, unless from some valley 
 of " rich foreshadowings," secluded within the musing 
 poet's own heart. It is the delicious poem, entitled 
 " My Love." The woman of this piece is so charmingly 
 idealized, in the most modern Christian, or perhaps we 
 should say civilized, spirit, and the stanzas are so inter- 
 fused with a certain quaint and liquid sweetness of dic- 
 tion and rhythm, flowing around them and between, 
 and floating them, like so many fair islands of Delos, 
 ready to be moored in the reader's memory — that only 
 with a great effort of self-denial do we refrain from 
 quoting them in full. Happy the lover who has found 
 a love like that which Mr. Lowell first guessed, we sup- 
 pose, and then put forth, not in vain, we believe, to dis- 
 cover ! 
 
 I love her with a love as still 
 
 As a broad river's peaceful might, 
 Wliich, by high tower and lowly mUl, 
 Goes wandering at its own will. 
 
 And yet doth ever flow aright. 
 
 And on its full, deep breast serene, 
 
 Like quiet isles my duties lie ; 
 It flows around them and between. 
 And makes them fresh and fair and green, 
 
 Sweet homes wherein to live and die. 
 
 Happier still — the sweet seriousness of these exquisite 
 stanzas, amounting to something that is almost more 
 
ME. Lowell's poetey. 55 
 
 than the natural piety of a poet, does not forbid the 
 suggestion — happier still, and far more securely happy, 
 the soul whose love of what is at once Human and 
 Divine exercises the wholesome and helpful influence 
 here described. 
 
 None but a nature fortunate in a singular manly sweet- 
 ness, as certainly none but a nature doomed and sealed 
 to poetry, could possibly have conceived, at twenty-one, 
 an ideal so Selene-hke of " perfect wifehood and pure 
 lowlihead." " Isabel " is like it, but lacks the warmth 
 and color which, we respectfully venture to guess, 
 something in the poet's heart, yet more ideal than his 
 fancy, imparted to the idyll of Lowell. No wonder 
 that a moral constitution so happily balanced, especially 
 if the balance of it were afterward still further eon- 
 firmed by the finding of the reality of his beautiful 
 dream — no wonder that such a moral constitution has 
 preserved Mr. Lowell from soiling his verse with even 
 a dash of that unchaste suggestion, which many recent 
 poets, not pagan by birth, however pagan by sympathy, 
 require us to forget in their character before we can 
 suffer ourselves to admire their genius. Once only, so 
 far as we remember, has a humorous-malicious conceit 
 of verisimilitude (in the " Fable for Critics ") conspired 
 with stress of rhyme to force the national half-oath of 
 Great Britain from the pen of the apparently protest- 
 ing poet. He was speaking of Theodore Parker — and 
 the word was, we confess, strictly hypo-sulphurous, 
 considering the circumstances. 
 
 The " Legend of Brittany " appeared in the same col- 
 lection with the ''Prometheus" (1844); but the date of 
 its composition is not subjoined in the present reissue, 
 as is the case with the latter poem. The "Legend 
 of Brittany," indeed, needs deprecate nothing, at the 
 hands of the critic, on the score of the author's youth. 
 
56 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 It has faults, but they are not juvenile faults. It is a 
 marvel of infinite delicacy, in treatment of a subject 
 intrinsically too disagreeable to have been worthy of 
 being treated at all. We think, likewise, that, the 
 choice supposed, the artist should have exercised greater 
 freedom in moulding the legend to poetical uses. 
 Mr. Lowell inartistically betrays his consciousness of 
 having been entangled in an unhappy theme, by two 
 or three stanzas of downright didactics, at the com- 
 mencement of the second part of his poem, wherein 
 we are taught the principles of art on which we ought 
 to relish disagreeable subjects. The intractable prosa- 
 icisms in expression, which necessarily occur here, 
 divide the career of the poet's Pegasus into two 
 separate ihghts, more effectually than any device of 
 typography could do. 
 
 The poem is what it is in plot. The reader is as 
 helpless about it as probably Mr. LoweU was when he 
 wrote it. It is to be appreciated, not as a whole, but 
 as made up of passages. It is not valuable, as the best 
 works of art are valuable — for what it is — ^but for what 
 it contains. It contains a larger amount of essential 
 mere poetry than any other poem, long or short 
 (always excepting the one perfect mood of his heart and 
 his hand, " The Vision of Sir Launfal "), that Mr. Lowell 
 has written. A larger amount, but of a merit many, 
 many degrees more humble than the lofty strain of the 
 " Commemoration Ode." The poetry of the " Legend " 
 is ethereal in quality. The soul of song soars in it as 
 if language had become, for her behoof, a buoyant 
 ether that took away all sense of weight, and with it 
 all need of wings. There is no more airy-footed ver- 
 sification, out of Shelley, in the English language. 
 Shelley himself is hardly more musical — hardly more 
 purely and merely poetical. And yet there is a hover- 
 
MR. LOWELL'S POUTET. 5Y 
 
 ing human interest in the " Legend," which has fled, 
 shuddering, out of Shelley's pages everywhere, and left 
 them blank and cold. 
 
 Mr. Lowell likens his Margaret to 
 
 A summer cloud thrilled through with rosy light. 
 
 Shelley would have had his cloud blanched to the pure 
 " white radiance of eternity." Mr. Swinburne displays 
 much the same absolute mastery of language to the 
 musical uses of verse as Shelley, and as Mr. Lowell 
 in the ' ' Legend." Shelley is the white Aurora Borealis ; 
 Swinburne, where fit to be talked about at all, the 
 Aurora Borealis, waving banners of color ; Lowell here, 
 the warm sunshine, flushed with a thousand shimmer- 
 ing hues. 
 
 We string together a few pearls from the " Legend," 
 as specimens of its riches. 
 
 Of Margaret's moral nature, Mr. Lowell says that it 
 
 was 
 
 Of white and gracious thoughts the chosen home. 
 
 Margaret used to indulge her maiden dreams in 
 woodland dells, 
 
 Aud in the nunneries of silent nooks. 
 
 How otherwise, to the happy souls that have ex- 
 plored Love's blessed abyss themselves, could the 
 " rapine sweet " of that delirious fall be more satisfac- 
 torily described than in the following line ? — 
 
 Prom mistily golden deep to deep he fell. 
 
 In the couplet given below, which felicity is more 
 consummate, the fitness of the simile itself, or the fit- 
 ness of phrase with which the simile is expressed ? And 
 what if " Locksley Hall " had wedded the Aurora Bore- 
 alis to a woman's blush before ? It was no more the 
 
58 A FEEE LAJTCE. 
 
 same likeness between them as Lowell's that Tennyson 
 saw, than is the rainbow the same which you and I simul- 
 taneously see, standing side by side together. We are 
 not sure that Lowell did not look with even a finer eye 
 than Tennyson here. Margaret's color came and went 
 
 As snow o'er whicli a blusli of northern-llglit 
 Suddenly reddens, and as soon grows white. 
 
 " A sunlit fall of rain " has flashed in verse elsewhere, 
 with an exceeding beauty of showery evanescence, as 
 much like a sudden largess of diamonds from a prince 
 of the " gorgeous East," as is the brilliant phenomenon in 
 nature. But when will it ever again illumine a stanza 
 with a liquid April sparkle of moral " sweetness and 
 light," altogether so magically tender as what follows ? 
 
 Her summer nature felt a need to bless, 
 
 And a like longing to be blest again ; 
 So, from bar sky-like spirit, gentleness 
 
 Dropt ever like a sunlit fall of rain, 
 And his beneath drank in the bright caress 
 
 As thirstily as would a parched plain, 
 That long hath watched the showers of sloping gray 
 Forever, ever, falling far away. 
 
 " Sky-like spirit " is a wedding of words which Mr. 
 Lowell repeats somewhere else in his poetry — perhaps 
 in one of his sonnets. As for the vanishing, echo-like 
 music of the last line, it is to us inexhaustible of beauty. 
 It sings itself, like one exquisite song that we remem- 
 ber of Chopin's, in which the words, when rightly 
 given, go rocking off from the hearkening sense into 
 silence more musical than sound, as a lark might soar, 
 swaying away from the sight, into the drowning blue 
 of the sky. And that one verse, too, is a perfect sound- 
 picture of the scene. You seem in it to see with your 
 ear the hoary showers far off sheet down aslant in 
 silent, visionary rain. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETEY. 59 
 
 How much nice observation, and how much pictorial 
 power, combined with what a transferred effect of lav- 
 ish self-bestowment in love, do the following lines, de- 
 scriptive of Margaret's devotion, contain : 
 
 Like golden ripples hasting to the land 
 
 To wreck their freight of sunshine on the strand. 
 
 The "fine frenzy" of love, making those intense 
 electric motions in the happy lunatic's head which be- 
 wilder him with a sense of blissful pain and scintillat- 
 ing light, is thus described : 
 
 Flooded he seemed with bright delicious pain, 
 Ab if a star had burst within his brain. 
 
 This is a couplet to form a touchstone for the indefin- 
 able poetic sense in a reader. Many intelligent readers 
 imagine that they love poetry, when it is only the 
 story, or the moral, of the poetry, that pleases them. 
 But here is poetry, about as unadulterated as you ever 
 get it in words of human speech. The grandfathers of 
 the old " ISTorth American Keview " were scandalized by 
 it. Professor Felton, we think it was, that conceived a 
 joke about it. He italicized a paraphrase of the poet's 
 figure, which made it more intelligible, and then, if we 
 remember right, invited laughter with an exclamation 
 point : "As if a homb-shell had hurst " within his brain ! 
 No doubt the learned professor was honestly unable to 
 construe the fine poetry of the somewhat daring expres- 
 sion which he criticised. He had often set Mr. Lowell 
 right on a Greek rendering, in the class-room at BLar- 
 vard, and it was with a sort of magisterial pleasantry, 
 we suppose, that he now sought to recall his old pupil 
 to safe common sense, in reviewing his poetry. But 
 the two minds were native to different elements, and 
 Professor Felton's admonition was like the hen's moth- 
 
60 A FREE LAIICE. 
 
 erly note of alarm to a duck, amongst her brood, taking 
 to the water. 
 
 But we have given space enough to this experiment 
 of the poet in legendary romance. The anonymous 
 author of the " Fable for Critics " accuses Lowell of 
 being a preaching poet. Certainly, Lowell seldom 
 works " without a conscience or an aim ; " and his 
 moral earnestness and instinctive partisanship with 
 virtue are quite apparent in the "Legend of Brit- 
 tany." But, on the whole, the didactic spirit is less ob- 
 strusive here, and the sensuous delight in mere beauty 
 is more freely indulged, than perhaps anywhere else in 
 the entire compass of the volumes. 
 
 " The Present Crisis " bears a date which is probably 
 designed by the aiithor to note an historic, rather than 
 an autobiographic epoch. The date is "December, 
 1845." This, it will be remembered, was the winter 
 in which the annexation of Texas was formally and 
 finally accomplished. Presaging minds then discerned, 
 in this measure of territorial aggrandizement, a long 
 forward reach of slavery toward continued preponder- 
 ance in the Senate of the United States. Lowell wrote 
 his poem as a kind of political pamphlet on the side of 
 anti-slavery, while the question was yet pending. It 
 bears the marks of its inspiration. It is vehement, fer- 
 vid, intense — moral didactics at white heat. The poetry 
 of it is almost magnificent — and yet Lowell, we should 
 say, was " God-conquered" in it by the inspiring divin- 
 ity of moral prophecy, rather than of song. He is 
 more a seer in it than a bard. We re-open the volume 
 to read again, and we feel half remorseful for stinting 
 our praise of the poetry, which, in truth, only falls, 
 short, as perhaps also it should, of mastering the tur- 
 bulent madness of the ascendant moral mood. The 
 metre is the ringing one of " Locksley Hall." It is not 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETEY. 61 
 
 arranged in couplets, however, but in stanzas, each 
 composed of a couplet &nd a triplet of rhymes. The 
 stanza is a powerful one, and discharges its gathering 
 momentum in a tremendous blow at the close. 
 
 What the immediate effect of the poem was, we are 
 unable to say. "VVe should suppose, however, that its 
 obscurity, or, not to say obscurity, its hiding sense, 
 must have unfitted it to be a very popular Roland- 
 stroke of alarm for freedom. The " North American 
 Keview " of the time affected not to understand its aim ; 
 but assured its author that age would gradually recon- 
 cile him to the world as it was. We have seen an as- 
 semblage of more than ordinarily astute wits fairly at 
 fault to divine the meaning of some one or two of the 
 passages. And yet Lowell certainly had a meaning in 
 each one of them that was definite to his own mind. 
 He is not in poetry what that German professor was in 
 metaphysics, to make the confession : " Probably God 
 and I knew what I meant by that when I wrote it. 
 God may know now ; but, most assuredly, I do not." 
 
 The intensity of the following passage, descriptive of 
 the diffusive disastrous effect of a successful political 
 crime, is certainly an intensity of heat rather than of 
 light : 
 
 So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, 
 
 Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, 
 
 And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with 
 
 God 
 In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod. 
 Till a corpse crawls round uuburied, delving in the nobler clod. 
 
 The imbruting influence of slavery on the slave has 
 here its ultimate expression. The mathematical limits 
 of intensity are reached, when it is said that the slave 
 becomes an unburied corpse, crawling about the ground, 
 and breaking clods that are higher in the scale of exist- 
 
62 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 ence than himself. Perhaps intensity just overleaps 
 itself a little, and lands on the edge of extravagance. 
 The finest stanza in the poem is this : 
 
 For Humanity sweeps onward : where to-day the martyr stands, 
 On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands ; 
 Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling faggots bum, 
 Wliile the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
 To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 
 
 It was quoted by Mr. Sumner in that celebrated speech 
 of his in the Senate, on " The Crime against Kansas," 
 which provoked the assault of Preston Brooks, of South 
 Carolina. If we are right in our recollection of the 
 contemporary newspaper reports of the speech, Mr. 
 Sumner appeared in them as a wise rhetorician to have 
 omitted the third line, no doubt thinking that it ob- 
 scured and obstructed the force of the whole, for the 
 purpose of impassioned recitation.^ The omission of 
 the line, however, exposed the passage to the charge of 
 a want of keeping, against which Mr. Lowell had 
 striven, by the insertion of the line, though without 
 entire success, to protect it. " Judas," as representing 
 the traitor, seems almost inevitably to suggest Jesus as 
 representing the martyr. But Jesus was not burned ; 
 and so the poet, hard bestead, introduces the cross, co- 
 ordinating it, however, with the stake, which last in- 
 strument of death was necessary to furnish the imagery 
 of the splendid concluding lines. Altogether, it is not 
 a " faultUy faultless " passage, but it is, notwithstand- 
 ing, nothing less than magnificent. 
 
 A considerable number of brief poems fill up the in- 
 terval, in the first volume, between "The Present 
 
 ' The third line of the stanza, in consistency with Mr. Sumner's 
 well-known scrupulous care in such matters, stands restored in the 
 last edition of his works. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETEY. 63 
 
 Crisis " and " The Yision of Sir Launfal," with which 
 the volume closes. These are all of them excellent, 
 but only a few of them seem to us to have that distilled 
 excellence which makes the life-time of a poem an im- 
 mortality. The first stanza of the little piece entitled 
 " She came and went," contains a drop of this costly- 
 elixir: 
 
 As a twig trembles, whicli a bird 
 
 Lights on to sing, tlien leaves unbent, 
 
 So is my memory thrilled and stirred ; — 
 I only Itnow she came and went. 
 
 " The First Snow-Fall " is an old favorite of the pub- 
 lic. It is of a mintage clearly inscribed with Mr. Low- 
 ell's personality, but stamped for universal currency. 
 
 " The Changeling " is one of several poems in the 
 collection belonging to the domestic affections — an 
 idyll of the hearth and heart. It is probably always 
 doubtful how far one succeeds in reading such pieces 
 in the dry light of literary judgment. We are apt to 
 accuse them of too much art, if their art appears at all. 
 The highest art accordingly consists in a "careless- 
 ordered" appearance of neglecting art. Tennyson's 
 lines " To J. S.'-' are an admirable specimen of art sub- 
 mitting to nature in this way. "The Changeling" is 
 extremely beautiful, though its beauty is not of a very 
 precious order. The comparison in the following 
 couplet, however, is striking; and, to the rightly sus- 
 ceptible soul, even of an aweing and silencing power. 
 It is almost sublime. The father speaks, waking in the 
 morning to see the changeling child of his fancy left in 
 the place of the little one that had gone : 
 
 And I feel as weak as a violet 
 Alone 'neath the awful sky. 
 
 " The Vision of Sir Launfal " is not the greatest poem 
 in these volumes ; but we consider it, upon the whole, 
 
61 A FEEE LAJTCE. 
 
 to be the most perfect felicity of Mr. Lowell's genius. 
 The plot of it is pleasing, if not wholly novel, but the 
 execution is beyond all praise. Sir Launfal, about to 
 set forth on the quest of the Holy Grail, has a vision ; 
 and this vision told is the theme. The poem has a 
 moral. Indeed, the moral is the poem. Bir Launfal 
 dreams of sallying Out of his castle gate in June, him- 
 self a part of June. His undinted mail gathers the 
 sunshine into a sheaf of beams, as he rides out, encoun- 
 tering at once a loathly leper, who asks an alms. Sir 
 Launfal shudders with recoil from the contrast to his 
 own youth, and health, and wealth, and beauty; but 
 flings him down a piece of gold, which the beggar refuses, 
 as not heart-meant for the heart. The knight pricks 
 on, and rides his manly prime away in fruitless search 
 of the prize. It is winter when the old man comes 
 back, to find himself dispossessed of his castle and 
 lands. He is wiser, however, and, with wisdom, has 
 won also its meekness. He shares his crust with a 
 beggar by the ice-roofed brook, and gives him drink 
 from it out of his own wooden bowl. The beggar is 
 the leper, and the leper is the Lord. The Lord teaches 
 Sir Launfal that any crust, heartsomely shared with 
 another, is His body ; and any cup from which drink is 
 given to a thirsty soul is the Holy Grail. 
 
 The tale is told with wonderful beauty. If the metre, 
 and rhythm, and wayward musical flow of the verse, 
 suggest any comparison, it is with Coleridge's rhyme of 
 " Christabel." It is hardly so much a deduction from the 
 merit of Mr. Lowell's genius for high originality, as it is 
 an addition to the merit of his genius, for that exquisite 
 elective appreciation and susceptibility of external influ- 
 ence, which, in his case, indeed, goes far to overlie his 
 native quality — it is hardly, we say, so much abatement 
 as enhancement of praise to observe that nearly every 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETEY. 65 
 
 marked piece of Ms poetical composition suggests a coim- 
 terpart earlier than himself in English literature. This 
 comes of the wide commerce which Mr, Lowell's generous 
 genius holds with whatever, anywhere, is beautiful, or 
 capable of beautiful use. The dedication of his first 
 volume to "William Page, renewed in this latest edi- 
 tion, testifies his intense sympathy with one art that is 
 sister to the art of poesy. His recurring allusions to 
 music are proof of equal love for a third sister art. 
 Such affinities of his genius are like in spirit with those 
 resemblances in his poems to originals elsewhere, of 
 which we have spoken. His early studies in the an- 
 tique classics of English verse, and -his subsequent pro- 
 fessional familiarity with literature, acquired, as we 
 may guess, in conscientious fulfilment of the duties of 
 his chair at Harvard University, rather than in obedi- 
 ence to the law 6f his own uninfluenced individual 
 choice, have alike tended to impart a quaint, exotic 
 flavor to his diction, and to embarrass the natural play 
 of genius with learning — ^learning worn " lightly like a 
 flower," indeed, but less graceful and less precious than 
 would have been the spontaneous bloom which we jeal- 
 ously feel that it has sometimes displaced. The result 
 has been, in some degree, to obscure, though in no de- 
 gree to extinguish, Mr. Lowell's originality. 
 
 Mr. Lowell's delight in music appeared in a voluptu- 
 ous description of an organ overture, pierced at last, 
 and vocalized with a thrUl of clear boy-treble from the 
 -cathedral choir, which occurs in " The Legend of Brit- 
 tany." But the flrst stanza of his " Sir Launfal " is, at 
 the same time, beautiful and brief enough to quote : 
 
 Over his keys the musing organist, 
 
 Beginning doubtfully and far away, 
 First lets his fingers wander as they list. 
 
 And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay : 
 
66 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 
 Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme. 
 
 First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 
 Along the wavering vista of his dream. 
 
 What could be more beautiful by itself as a sympar 
 thetic appreciation of the musician's mood, and what 
 more beautiful in this place as a simile prelusive to the 
 prelude with which the poet introduces his theme? 
 And yet — and yet — shall we say it ? — the beauty is of 
 a sort which produces its highest effect at the first read- 
 ing. You do not exactly take revenge upon your judg- 
 ment by any after-shame at your first ready pleasure 
 in the passage. It still remains to you what it was, 
 really beautiful and very beautiful ; but it does not keep 
 yielding you further beauty, to your demand, like a 
 fiowing breast of nourishment, fed from a secret vital 
 fountain. And notwithstanding the tokens of thought 
 and emotion everywhere abounding innumerably in Mr. 
 Lowell's verse that could belong only to genius, still we 
 are bound to admit that the quality of his work is, for 
 the most part, fugitive. "When his gracious personal 
 presence shall have finally vanished out of our world 
 of letters, and — none remaining behind him in the " im- 
 poverished land " to teU us what he could— he shall be 
 estimated only for what he did, then it will appear, we 
 think, that immortality will winnow very wastefully 
 from his work, and transmit but an exceedingly small 
 portion of the bulk that makes these volumes. For we 
 experience ever a disappointment, reluctantly aeknowl- 
 ledged even to ourselves, in repeated perusals of almost 
 any one of Mr. Lowell's poems. They never seem less 
 beautiful than they did at first, but they seldom seem 
 more beautiful. There are notable exceptions to this 
 remark, of which we shall make due mention in subse- 
 quent pages. One of these exceptions is the " Com- 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETEY. 67 
 
 memoration Ode," in the volume entitled " Under the 
 "Willows." This poem we rank as in the peerage of the 
 few — the very few — greatest odes in the English lan- 
 guage. To this high peerage we assign Wordsworth's 
 " Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," Tennyson's 
 " Ode on the Death of the Dul<:e of Wellington " — ^but 
 we shall not try to be exhaustive — only we must be 
 permitted to say that we do not assign hither Dryden's 
 much-bepraised " Alexander's Feast." 
 
 Whereiu lies the defect, on account of which we pro- 
 nounce the sentence "fugitive" on so much surpass- 
 ing beauty ? We have asked ourselves the question a 
 hundred ■ times. We think we have the answer. Mr. 
 Lowell's fancy is too prolific, and his faculty of ex- 
 pression is too facile and too versatile. He fails by 
 too abundant resources of success. If his fancy were 
 more barren, or if he found greater difficulty in giving 
 language to its teeming progeny, in either case, per- 
 haps, he might have been thrown back upon that pa- 
 tient travail of the imagination — that careful, fastidious, 
 exclusive choice, inclined to Spartan rejection, of the 
 thoughts and images which he will, upon the whole, 
 take the trouble to find words for J((hat humble wait- 
 ing for crystallizing physical, ai^mental, and moral 
 moods, to shape his sentiments into ultimate verbal 
 forms, never again to be dissolved by the satisfied mind 
 of the race — in short, with a less lavish endowment in 
 either of the two kinds that we have mentioned, Mr. 
 Lowell might have been remitted to that long labor of 
 the poet which alone can bestow upon its servant the 
 freedom of all mankind and the lease of immortality. 
 
 And after all, there is, it may be, a reason, more con- 
 trolling still than any one that is personal to Mr. 
 Lowell, for the fugacious quality of his verse. There is 
 no poet in this country that is nothing but a poet. AU 
 
68 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 our men of genius work in the harness of some useful 
 practical profession. They are college instructors, or 
 physicians, or ministers, or editors, and then they may 
 be also poets. But poetry is the by -play of a lite else- 
 where earnestly bestowed. Mr. Longfellow comes 
 nearest, among our American literary men, to being 
 exclusively a poet. But Mr. Longfellow gave twenty 
 years of his prime to the duties of an arduous col- 
 lege professorship, and we have good testimony that he 
 did not shirk those duties as in the privilege of genius 
 and of fame. The fact remains, that in the United 
 States division of labor has not yet reached the point 
 of allowing our poets to devote themselves exclusively 
 to poetry. The newness of our civilization continues 
 to exact of lis all a roundabout savoir-faire, hostile to 
 the highest perfection.of those seclusive and meditative 
 habits which alone enable the poet to secrete, in fruit- 
 ful tranquillity, the precious substance of his verse, and 
 silently and slowly crystallize it into supreme and ideal 
 forms. We remember, some years ago, meeting a solid 
 English tradesman, as he looked, driving his solid Eng- 
 lish horse, before a two-wheeled wagon, at a ringing trot 
 around and down a sloping curve of the solid English 
 road, on the Isle of "Wight, in the neighborhood of Mr. 
 Teunyson's residence. The ruddy roast-beef of the 
 man's complexion, his brown-stout corpulence, and the 
 perfect worldliness of his whole appearance, whimsi- 
 cally suggested Mr. Tennyson's poetry to us imder the 
 circumstances. We could not resist the temptation to 
 stop him, and enjoy the sensation of inquiring the way 
 to Mr. Tennyson's house of such a man. " If now you 
 could tell me his business?" responded he. Tenny- 
 son's business ! We were well-nigh dumbfounded. We 
 came near being in the ease of Mr. Joliu Smith, that 
 absent-minded man who could not recall his own name 
 
MB. LOWELL'S POETEY. 69 
 
 on challenge at the post-office window. We recovered 
 our presence of mind, however, and told our friend he 
 " made verses," we believed. " Ah, yes ; the Queen's 
 poet — Tennyson — that's the name. Yes ; he makes 
 verses — you're right — that's his business; and very 
 clever at it he is, too, they say." This was the old 
 world. It could hardly have been the new. 
 
 And yet poetry, certainly as much as any other voca- 
 tion of genius, is jealous of a divided devotion. Ilf oth- 
 ing short of the whole man, for his whole life, will 
 satisfy her extortionate claim. It will not even do, 
 generally, for the poet to indulge himself in coquetting 
 with prose. The " poet's garland and singing robes " 
 are not an investiture to be lightly donned and doffed 
 at will. To wear them most gracefully one must wear 
 them habitually. 
 
 The difference between poetry and prose is an essen- 
 tial difference. It can hardly be defined, but it may 
 be illustrated. Poetry differs from prose, in part, as 
 running differs from walking. There is motion in both 
 running and walking; but in running the motion is 
 continuous, while in walking the motion is a series of 
 advances, separated by intervals, less or more appre- 
 ciable, of rest. Poetry runs — prose walks. Again, 
 poetry differs from prose, as singing differs from talk- 
 ing. The difference between singing and talking is 
 not that singing is musical and talking not musical. 
 The difference is that singing is musical in one way, 
 and talking musical, if musical, in another. Poetry 
 sings — ^prose talks. Each has a rhythm ; but the rhythm 
 of each is its own. 
 
 But there is yet a finer distinction between poetry 
 and prose than has thus been illustrated — a finer one, 
 we mean, this side of the finest one of all, which is far 
 too fine to be expressed in any " matter-moulded forms 
 
70 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 of speech." There is a certain curiously subtle idiom 
 of expression belonging to poetry, and another equally 
 subtle idiom of expression belonging to prose. These 
 two idioms of expression are as palpably distinct from 
 each other as are the several idioms of different lan- 
 guages. They defy definition ; they elude analysis. 
 They do not depend on choice of words, and they do 
 not depend on collocation of words, although they de- 
 pend partly on both these things. A man, whose talent 
 was that of a prose writer, might make faultless verse 
 from a vocabulary chosen out of the purest poetry of the 
 language, and there should not be one poetical line in 
 his work from beginning to end. On the other hand, 
 there is hardly an intractable word in the language that 
 a true poet could not weave into his verse without harm 
 to the poetic effect. In the main, the diction of a true 
 poet and the diction of a good prose writer will be 
 identical. The order of the poet will not vary violently 
 from the order of the prose writer. Their subject may 
 be the same, and even the mode of conception, and the 
 figures of speech. All these points of coincidence be- 
 tween poetry and prose may exist ; they generally do ex- 
 ist, and notwithstanding them all, the inviolate idiom of 
 poetic expression, and the inviolate idiom of prose expres- 
 sion, remain uninterchangeably distinct. If poetry bor- 
 rows the idiom of prose for a single instant even, the 
 effect is immediately appreciable to the cultivated sense. 
 It is like the effect that would be produced by the in- 
 troduction of a few words of talking in the stately recita- 
 tive of the opera. If prose borrows tlie idiom of poetry, 
 the effect is equally appreciable. It is like the effect 
 that would be produced by the introduction of a bar 
 of singing in the course of common conversation. The 
 full broadness of this contrast would, of course, exist 
 only in extreme cases. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETET. 71 
 
 But Mr. Lowell's volumes fumisli some illustrations 
 — not many — on one side, of what we mean. When, 
 for example, Mr. Lowell says, in the " Legend," 
 
 Mordied, for such was the young Templar's name, 
 
 he speaks in the idiom of prose. It is prose when he 
 notes a transition about to be made with the phrase, 
 " Here let us pause." It is prose again when he says — 
 
 And, though the horror of it well may move 
 
 An impulse of repugnance in the heart, 
 Tet let us think, etc. 
 
 An illustration of our meaning, on the other side, is 
 supplied in the picturesque phrase, which we quoted a 
 little way back, from Milton's prose — " the poet's gar- 
 land and singing robes," This is not metrical, but it is 
 expressed in the unmistakable idiom of poetry. It is, 
 perhaps, a garnish, rather than a disfigurement of the 
 general texture of the composition in which it occurs. 
 On the other hand, citations have frequently been made 
 from Dickens of long passages written in an unbroken 
 series of iambics — ^perfectly metrical. Yet no line could 
 by any possibility happen into a production of Dickens 
 that would be other than prose. Milton's prose, how- 
 ever, is incessantly " pawing to get free " from prose 
 Umitatiohs. In general, it may, we think, be said that 
 practice in verse tends to improve one's prose style, and 
 that practice in prose tends to deprave one's faculty of 
 verse. To the former of these two generalizations there 
 are exceptions — to the latter, none, we believe. 
 
 Coleridge made as close an approach to a statement 
 of the diiference between poetry and prose as, perhaps, 
 language admits of our making. Pie said good prose 
 was proper words in proper places — poetry the best 
 words in the best places. All but the most triumphant 
 
72 A FKEE LANCE. 
 
 prose passages allow tlie change of words here and 
 there, and even the reconstruction of sentences, with- 
 out any serious injury to the whole effect. Change a 
 word, however, in any perfect line of poetry, and the 
 spell of its power is broken. How often, if you have 
 the taHsman sense of poetry in you — how often have 
 you hovered in memory over a verse that had lost its 
 charm, for a wrong word in it somewhere, and felt a 
 poet's pains almost over again till the right word came 
 back into it, like a keystone to its arch, and made its 
 strength and beauty perfect ? Such being the difference 
 between poetry and prose, what wonder that it is the 
 poetry of the world that survives with its own uneffaced 
 image and superscription immortally perfect, while 
 almost all the prose goes surely back into the bullion 
 of the general thought and knowledge of mankind? 
 It is form that embalms a production of the mind. 
 What do we care now for the question of Demosthenes's 
 title to his civic wreath ? But every age and every 
 race of men have an unflagging interest in Demos- 
 thenes's manner of vindicating his title to it. 
 
 "We hold it to be of the very first importance, in view 
 of the radical difference thus shown to exist between 
 poetry and prose as instruments of expression, that the 
 poet, who would rank among the greater gods of his 
 Olympus, should nurse his genius in the uninterrupted 
 use of its own proper and peculiar language. He must 
 lisp in numbers, and then speak in numbers, if he would 
 have the numbers come. If he addicts himself to prose 
 writing, one of two things, or both, will assuredly hap- 
 pen. Either he will affect the sensitive idiom of poetic 
 expression with some alloy of its delicate purity, or 
 else he will suffer some loss from perfect lubricity in 
 the metrical flow of his language. Most probably both 
 of these consequences will follow. Herein, we think, 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETET. 73 
 
 lies a part, at least, of Mr. Lowell's mistake, or of his 
 misfortune, as a candidate for the poet's highest apothe- 
 osis. He has written too little poetry, and he has 
 written too much prose. For his own fame, and for 
 our wealth in letters, he might better have thrown away 
 half the verse he has printed, as the mere exercises of 
 his genius trying and training its powers, and then have 
 nsed the time and the strength that he has devoted to 
 prose production in maturing the master poems which 
 would fairly have represented his poetic capacity. 
 
 We doubt if there is a single great name in English 
 literature that positively or negatively will not confirm 
 these positions. Milton, for example, is reckoned, and 
 justly, one of the chief masters of our English prose. 
 How could that great mind be otherwise than great in 
 whatever mode of utterance it might choose to speak ? 
 But then it is the significant fact both that his verse is 
 often prosaic, and that his prose often breaks its mighty 
 and numerous march with little fits of a movement 
 which may be very fine indeed, but which, nevertheless, 
 is not prose. Thus that extraordinarily nervous and 
 that magnificent declamation of his, which is like 
 Burke's, as far as the utterance of an essential poet can 
 be Hke the utterance of an essential prose writer, but 
 which is really like nothing else in the world, consti- 
 tuting a variety of literature by itself — Milton's prose, 
 we say, recalls, with its reckless and resourceful head- 
 way, his own description of the progress of the fiend, who. 
 
 O'er bog, or steep, througi strait, rough, dense, or rare, 
 With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way. 
 And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. 
 
 Of course, no sensible person will think that we are 
 undervaluing such composition. We are only describ- 
 ing it for the purpose of showing how even such a 
 4 
 
74 A FEES LANCE. 
 
 genius as Milton could not master perfectly two instru- 
 ments of expression so different as poetry and prose. 
 Dryden is another of the traditionary names of renown 
 in English letters. He might, perhaps, occur to the 
 reader as one who united the two faculties of verse and 
 of prose. He did write a noble prose, under the domi- 
 nant influence of those masters of form in every kind, 
 the French — but then he was born to be a prose 
 writer ; and, in strictness, he never was anything else, 
 although he produced quantities of vigorous verse, 
 which, in his day, was readily accepted for poetry. 
 Pope wrote elegant verse and elegant prose. The 
 faculty of numbers was so natural to him that nothing 
 could spoil it. His prose practice, never very consid- 
 erable, probably had no material effect on his facility 
 in versification. And facility in versification was well 
 nigh the only attribute of the poet that Pope possessed. 
 The same might be said of Addison, a less facile versifier, 
 and a less trim prose writer, though more vai-ious and 
 more voluminous in prose than Pope. Burke was a 
 genius of a very high order, essentially a prose writer. 
 He is, perhaps, the most extreme instance that could 
 be named of a prose writer whose temperament and 
 whose imagination continually buoy him as if above 
 the level of prose expression, yet without once making 
 you afraid that he is going to leave it. His tread is as 
 if he spurned the ground. But he never uses wings to 
 fly, and the truth is he has no wings that he could use. 
 Macaulay is another example of the essential prose 
 writer. His prose marches like a numerous host. His 
 verse is the same host marching to music, and hurried 
 into a double-quick. There is no exchanged influence 
 of idiom between the two, simply because the idiom is 
 always the same, that of prose expression — on the 
 whole, the most curiously perfect prose expression, con- 
 
MK. LOWELL'S POETEY. 75 
 
 sidered purely as expression, to be found in* our lan- 
 guage. Campbell was a true poet, and he wrote melo- 
 dious and spirited prose. Probably Campbell's prose 
 gained from his use of verse. But not without propor- 
 tionate loss to his verse. In the first place, his poetry 
 flats a note here and there, and very often in some of 
 his pieces. In the second place, his facility of poetical 
 composition was so imperfect as to give occasion to one 
 of Sidney Smith's most characteristic sallies. Camp- 
 bell's poet-pains often obliged him to take to his bed 
 after a successful stanza. Sidney Smith applied the 
 formula : Campbell and his couplet were " doing as well 
 as could be expected under the circumstances." Ten- 
 nyson is almost alone among the poets in never flatting 
 a note. Now that we think of it, we should not like 
 to undertake the job of finding a flatted note in Shel- 
 ley ; or in Keats, perhaps. And these men are exam- 
 ples of nearly exclusive addiction to poetry. Of course, 
 we do not mean that they are necessarily greatest among 
 poets. But their poetry, whatever the degree of its 
 merit, is at least unmixed poetry. Nothing occurs in 
 it that is spoken in the idiom of prose. Thus much 
 may suffice for illustration of our meaning. We are 
 examining, be it remembered, the poetical recreations 
 of a man who, probably, might have been a great 
 poet. 
 
 " The Yision of Sir Launfal " contains that happy 
 form of words which has gone into the current com- 
 monplace of poetical quotation — 
 
 And what is so rare as a day in June 1 
 Then, if ever, come perfect days. 
 
 Mr. Lowell's quality is not such as to have enriched 
 the commonplace books with many passages of similar 
 popularity. The description of the ice-roof, built by 
 
Y6 A FEEE LAlfOE. 
 
 the broQk to shield him from the winter cold is an 
 exquisite specimen of moresque architectural fancy — 
 fairily beautiful. The moral of the whole piece may 
 be taken in either one of two contrasted ways — as 
 wholesomely humane, or as polemically "humanita- 
 rian." We take it in the former. 
 
 That would be a very incomplete review of Mr. 
 Lowell's poetry which should omit to take account of 
 his witty and humorous verse. " The Biglow Papers " 
 have enjoyed the unique fortune to attract trans- 
 atlantic attention, as illustrating wbat foreign critics 
 have been pleased to consider the American variety of 
 literary drollery. They bave accordingly been read 
 and studied abroad with a sort of patronizing curiosity ,* 
 which might not unfitly be reckoned to exemplify that 
 "certain condescension in foreigners" of wbich Mr. 
 Lowell has himself treated, in a vein of badinage a 
 shade too serious and too much aggrieved perhaps, in 
 the "Atlantic Monthly." " The Biglow Papers," on tbe 
 whole, have weighted their wit with such excess of 
 pedantic learning, itself ceaselessly witty, to be sure, 
 and saturated with Attic salt, and with such excess of 
 Yankee provincialism emphasized, we think, beyond a 
 just effect by phonetic cacography, as hardly to keep 
 permanently afloat on the ever-shifting current of popu- 
 lar appreciation. The work is now, we judge, virtually 
 unknown, except by name, to the new generation of 
 readers that has arisen since it originally appeared. It 
 would not be surprising if it should, however, continue 
 to retain a certain antiquarian interest and value, as the 
 
 ' It must be doubtfully flattering to a man of Mr. Lowell's per- 
 sonal dignity and fine literary ambition to receive bis honorary 
 degree from Oxford qualified with an allusion to " The Biglow 
 Papers," alone, as entitling him to the distinction. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETRY. 77 
 
 best monument of an archaic provincial dialect, which 
 the present literary mood of enrious self-consciousness 
 concerning it, on the pd,rt of the 'New England mind, 
 proves to be already in process of passing away. Its 
 wit, consummate as it is, does not possess the quality 
 of appeal to universal human nature, irrespective of 
 local and temporary condition, which has given to the 
 " Hudibras " its singular tenacity of life. 
 
 The "Fable for Critics" at once foreclosed itself 
 from a long date of currency by including so many 
 names of authors whose chief hold on remembrance 
 consists in being thus included. Its main interest lies 
 in its continuous series of triumphs in versiiication, 
 and its perpetual Aurora Borealis play of harmless wit. 
 It is a feat rather than a work. It reads as if it might 
 have been achieved under the genial stimulation of an 
 admiring coterie of friends, with a wager laid that the 
 poet should never change a rhyming word once written. 
 Preternaturally witty as these works show Mr. Lowell 
 capable of being in verse, they yet, we believe, will 
 survive in a merely traditionary fame. The world is 
 fond of laughing ; but it likes to laugh at little cost of 
 thought, and it does not want to laugh deep enough to 
 disturb the comfortable sleeps of conscience. 
 
 We cross a wide gulf of contrast and come to a 
 series of poems in the volume recently published, 
 that entitled "Under the Willows." This name is 
 taken from the leading poem in the collection, the 
 "June Idyll " of the "Atlantic Monthly," under an alias. 
 Before passing to the contrasted series of poems to 
 which we allude, a cursory remark or two may be made 
 on the poems that intervene. " Under the Willows " 
 itself is full of insight, and instinct with beauty ; but 
 it is too rambling, and incoherent, and aimless in plan, 
 to rank as a work of art. " Pictures from Appledore " 
 
78 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 are remarkable for resourceful versification, and have, 
 probably, some claim to be admired as powerful ; but 
 they contain so many Hudibrastie rhymes, or at least 
 rhymes that are mere tours de force, and so naany 
 neologisms, and so many intense expressions, occasion- 
 ally trending toward the disagreeable, that, upon the 
 whole, we do not derive much pleasure from the series. 
 Mr. Lowell's diction is, we think, apt to be disfigured 
 by uses that either a surer taste or more painstaking 
 attention would have excluded from his poetry. It is 
 needless to give instances — they are too numerous and 
 too palpable not to strike every reader. "We have no 
 doubt Mr. LoweU himself schooled his ear to accept 
 them all, and we have no doubt Mr. Lowell's readers 
 might succeed in doing the same. It is always a ques- 
 tion how much ought to be trusted to the first instinct 
 with respect to such points, and how much is justly to 
 be deferred to the feeling that comes after familiarity 
 with a word, or a phrase, or a construction. Certain it 
 is, that the poem which ofters no point at which you 
 stick on the first reading, and assent to only after chal- 
 lenge and demur, is not apt to be of a very high order 
 of merit. The presumption is that it does not contain 
 any beauty, except that which lies upon the surface. 
 And, on the other hand, a poem which has been 
 thought out several strata down below the surface of 
 obvious suggestion must almost necessarily present sa- 
 lient points of form not immediately acceptable to the 
 cursory reader. Whether Mr. Lowell has justly hit the 
 mean here must remain a matter of individual opinion. 
 Our own opinion we have already expressed. 
 
 The series of related pieces, to which we now come, 
 have a personal interest that is a part, and a large part, 
 of their literary interest. They must be autobiographic 
 in their reference, and if this is so they must refer to 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETET. 79 
 
 the death of Mrs. Lowell. It complements the sad 
 satisfaction which these melodious cries of anguish 
 inspire to know that it was not the idealizing of the 
 husband or of the poet alone that made the lost one 
 worthy of being thus commemorated in song. Mrs. 
 Lowell was to others also, we believe, what she seemed 
 to Mr. Lowell. " The Wind-Harp " sounds a note pre- 
 lusive to the four following poems, which, together, 
 compose a tetralogy of musical sorrow, in which the 
 sorrow is almost too much and too sharp for the music. 
 " Auf Wiedersehen " is unspeakably tender with the 
 " tender grace of a day that is dead." It is reminiscent 
 of a parting scene between the two, at which, as Mr. 
 Lowell says exquisitely, they " played at pain " in that 
 sad-sweet transfigured past before they were mamed. 
 Her lialf-doubtfully repeated '■'■Auf wiedersehen,^^ on 
 that occasion, magnetic with meaning unexpressed, 
 seems afterward to have become a talisman of memory 
 between them, and it is the motive of the poem. 
 
 The second poem of the series has this occasion: 
 the husband, left lonely by the loss of his wife, revisits 
 the little gate where the heartsome German farewell 
 was first spoken memorably by her, and there recalls 
 the more recent parting 
 
 when the weak 
 And fading lips essayed to speak 
 Vainly, — " We meet again ! " 
 
 This second poem is beautifully entitled "Palinode." 
 The vivid words just quoted occur in it. It deals with 
 the forward distance, too, having prospect as well as 
 retrospect. 
 
 The third poem follows, like a shriek of anguish that 
 refuses to be sung. The very title has the hopeless 
 wail of Electra in it. It is " After the Burial." The 
 
80 A FBEE LANCE. 
 
 desolate man sits down with despair, and almost angrily 
 repels consolation : 
 
 Communion in spirit ! Forgive me. 
 
 But I, who am earthy and weak. 
 Would give all my incomes from dreamland 
 
 For a touch of her hand on my cheek. 
 
 That little shoe in the comer. 
 
 So worn and wrinkled and brown. 
 With its emptiness confutes you. 
 
 And argues your wisdom down. 
 
 " The Dead House " takes its occasion from a visit to 
 the dwelling where they had lived together. 
 
 But, I think, the house is unaltered, 
 
 I will go and beg to look 
 At the rooms that were once familiar 
 
 To my life as its bed to a brook. 
 
 Unaltered ! Alas for the sameness 
 That makes the change but more ! 
 
 'T is a dead man 1 see in the mirrors, 
 'T is his tread that chiUs the floor ! 
 
 To learn such a simple lesson. 
 Need I go to Paris and Kome, 
 
 That the many make the household. 
 But only one the home t 
 
 'T was just a womanly presence. 
 
 An influence unexprest. 
 But a rose she had worn, on my grave-sod 
 
 Were more than long life with the rest ! 
 
 " A Winter-Evening Hymn to my Fire " is a piece of 
 capricious fancy, prevailingly cheerful, as seemed to 
 befit the theme,which, nevertheless, sinks at the close into 
 this exquisitely pathetic cadence of memory and regret : 
 
MB. LOWELL'S POETET. 81 
 
 Thou sinkest, and my fancy sinks with thee : 
 For thee I took the idle shell. 
 
 And struck the unused chords again, 
 But they are gone who listened well ; 
 Some are in heaven, and all are far from me : 
 Even as I sing, it turns to pain, 
 And with vain tears my eyelids throb and swell : 
 
 Earth stops the ears I best had loved to please ; 
 Then break, ye untuned chords, or rust in peace ! 
 As if a white-haired actor should come back 
 Some midnight to the theatre void and black. 
 And there rehearse his youth's great part 
 
 'Mid thin applauses of the ghosts, 
 So seems it now : ye crowd upon my heart, 
 
 And I bow down in silence, shadowy hosts I 
 
 This poem and the " Al Fresco," in the same volume, 
 are kindred in motive and manner with some of Mr. 
 Emerson's verse, which, however, seems to ns to sur- 
 pass Mr. Lowell's experiments in " lithe perpetual " 
 elusive changefulness of fancy, and in successful ex- 
 pression. Mr. Emerson is a more natural pantheist 
 than Mr. Lowell, and makes a better Magian. 
 
 Last in the volume, if the " L'Envoi " be excepted, 
 comes the " Commemoration Ode," a poem recited on 
 occasion of the exercises held at Harvard, in honor of 
 the patriot dead who fell from among the alumni of the 
 University during the war. This poem is to be held 
 responsible for Mr. Bayard Taylor's recent " Dedication 
 Ode " for the Gettysburg National Cemetery — a not 
 infelicitous echo of the original. Mr. Lowell's " Com- 
 memoration Ode " is the most elevated in aspiration of 
 all his poems, and the attainment, if not absolutely 
 equal to the aspiration, is by no means unworthy of it. 
 The ode scarcely escapes anywhere a certain localizing 
 color, appropriate when you consider the occasion for 
 which it was written, but a little embarrassing when 
 
82 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 you are wishing to put the poem in the company of 
 the greatest works of its class. The genius of the 
 poet seems throughout to be striving in vain to expand 
 a limited subject to heroic proportions. At least, the 
 success is at no point positive success until we reach the 
 episode of allusion to Abraham Lincoln. The pro- 
 longed strophe that constitutes this episode seems, 
 indeed, the Koliinoor, to which all that precedes and 
 all that follows is magnificent setting. There are 
 almost no blemishes in the perfection of this noble 
 passage. We quote it entire : 
 
 Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 
 Whom late the Nation he had led. 
 With ashes on her head, 
 
 Wept with the passion of an angry grief : 
 Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
 To speak what in my heart will beat and burn. 
 And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. 
 
 Nature, they say, doth dote, 
 And cannot make a man 
 Save on some worn-out plan. 
 
 Repeating us by rote : 
 For him her Old World moulds aside she threw. 
 
 And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
 
 Of the unexhausted West, 
 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
 Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 
 
 How beautiful to see 
 Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed. 
 Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 
 
 One whose meek flock the people joyed to be. 
 Not lured by any cheat of birth. 
 But by his clear-grained human worth. 
 
 And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 
 They knevr that outward grace is dust ; 
 They could not choose but trust 
 
 In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill. 
 
 And supple-tempered will 
 Tlmt bent like perfect steel to spring again, and thrust. 
 
 His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETEY. 83 
 
 Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
 A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
 Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. 
 Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
 Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 
 
 Nothing of Europe here, 
 Or, then, of Europe fronting momward still, 
 Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
 Ckmld Nature's equal scheme deface ; 
 Here was a type of the true elder race, 
 And one of Plutarch's m«?i talked with usfa/x tofoM. 
 I praise him not ; it were too late ; 
 And some innative weakness there must be 
 In him who condescends to victory 
 Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait. 
 Safe in himself as in a fate. 
 So always firmly he : 
 He knew to bide his time. 
 And can his fame abide. 
 Still patient in his simple faith sabUme, 
 
 Till the wise years decide. 
 Great captains, with their guns and drums. 
 
 Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
 But at last silence comes ; 
 
 These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
 Our children shall behold his fame, 
 
 The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. 
 New birth of our new soil, the first American. 
 
 Such poetry as this makes one wish that somehow* 
 the customs of the republic could have devolved the 
 task of building a national monument in verse, to the 
 memory of Abraham Lincoln, upon a laureate poet like 
 Mr. Lowell. An entire ode, of suitable length, inspired 
 to the " higher mood " of this one strophe, would have 
 been accepted by eyery race and every generation of 
 men as a fit immortality for Lincoln's name, and as an 
 adequate expression of the transformed heroic temper 
 of the times that set him forth to the view of history. 
 As it is, this brief passage will probably survive every- 
 
84 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 tMng else that Las been written on tlie subject, and 
 form, and nobly form, the destined traditional estimate 
 of Lincoln's character. 
 
 We know of nothing else concerning Lincoln at once 
 so genial and so just, so deep in penetration and so 
 carefully happy ill expression, so compact and so com- 
 prehensive, nnless it be a little speech of Mr. Emerson's 
 to his fellow-citizens ai. Concord, on the occasion of the 
 assassination. We hope some biographer of Lincoln 
 will take the pains to rescue this precious bit of prose 
 from the oblivion that is always likely, almost certain, 
 indeed, to overwhelm such chance-dropped words. 
 
 If we descend to verbal criticism (we are half- 
 ashamed of ourselves not to be above it in the presence 
 of workmanship so splendid) we are conscious of some 
 slight disturbance of perfect satisfaction at coming upon 
 coinages hke " innative," " disvoiced " — coinages not so 
 felicitous as to be their own sufficient vindication. 
 "Brood" and "breed" are linked, by usage, with as- 
 sociations too ignoble to make them wholly agreeable 
 in apphcation to men. We can easily understand how 
 Mr. Lowell may even have meant to flout a taste, 
 judged eifeminately finical, by using these very words. 
 But it affects us as if it were a trick of language, 
 rather than the natural utterance of a genuine quasi- 
 scomful masculinity. It is to us a little flaw in the 
 finish of the work to have " in't " made conspicuous by 
 being matched for rhyme with " stint." Mr. Lowell 
 has a weakness for compounding words, and this ode 
 has not escaped. In the strophe quoted, it seems a 
 false antithesis to say of an Homeric shepherd of the 
 people that he 
 
 loved bis charge, but never loved to lead ; — 
 
 a modesty characteristic enough of Lincoln, but hardly 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETRY. 85 
 
 SO of an ideal slieplierd. Was it in tlie highest key of 
 "noble anger" to write the strophe beginning, " Who 
 now shall sneer ? " It strikes us as too much a conde- 
 scension in a strain of passion so august and transcend- 
 ent. 
 
 The strophe numbered " IX." attempted a very dif- 
 ficult achievement. The thought in it is sublime ; and 
 if the expression of the thought had been perfectly suc- 
 cessful, the passage would be as noble as ^.nything that 
 we know of in the whole range of poetry. Perhaps 
 there is a certain prolixity of expression, in the course 
 of which the thought almost gets sublimated sheer away 
 from us. What was it that embarrassed those strong 
 wings, and hindered that aspiring ilight from quite gain- 
 ing its high goal ? We believe that it was nothing but the 
 lack of that hardness of vigor which only exercise gives. 
 Original strength needs to have been trained long, by 
 arduous use, in order to bring such soaring adventures 
 fairly to their aim. The humored caprice of the close 
 of the ode, the self-checldng spirit of humility taking 
 fresh headway again and bursting forth in a peal of 
 joyful pride unrestrained, is quite like Tennyson's 
 " Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington." 
 
 !No other college in the country had the choice among 
 its alumni of so many prominent names in poetry and 
 in eloquence, to illustrate its patriotic memorial ser- 
 vices, as had the University at Cambridge. The alumni 
 of Harvard number a very large share of the chief 
 reputations in our American republic of letters. This 
 noteworthy disparity in favor of Harvard is to be ac- 
 counted for, in part, by the antiquity of its foundation, 
 and, in part, by its numerous list of graduates — but 
 not wholly. Tale is nearly as old, and the number of 
 its alumni is nearly as great. Yet the contrast between 
 th^se two colleges, in respect to their proportion of 
 
86 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 literary celebrities, is striking. "We have been at the 
 pains to run carefully over the catalogues of both from 
 the year eighteen hundred down. We should say that 
 Harvard outnumbers Yale, at least three to one, in 
 names of eminent literary men. There must be reasons 
 for this. One reason, perhaps, is found in the fact (it 
 is a fact, we believe) that Yale drew its patronage, for 
 many years, in greater proportion from the South; 
 while Harvard recruited its classes more from New 
 England, and especially from Massachusetts. Scholar- 
 ship and literature were never the leading ambition of 
 the ingenuous South ; and, besides, ITew England, and 
 by eminence Massachusetts, boys enjoyed the inesti- 
 mable advantage of a far better preparatory training. 
 
 Another reason, however, we are compelled to be- 
 lieve, must lie in the different manner in which Yale 
 and Harvard have manned their department of belles- 
 lettres instruction. Second-rate abilities and second- 
 rate culture cannot occupy the chair of rhetoric for a 
 long series of years, at a seat of high education, with- 
 out registering an appropriate effect in the intellectual 
 character and development of the students. On the 
 other hand, genius and accomplishments, like those of 
 a Tieknor, a Longfellow, a Lowell (the illustrious tri- 
 umvirate of recent succession in the chair of elegant 
 literature at Harvard), cannot preside over the literary 
 studies of a series of classes without impressing a corre- 
 sponding character upon their intellectual development. 
 It is a capital mistake for boards of college oversight to 
 suppose that they have done the best for the literary 
 education of young men, when they have provided them 
 with an instructor who is willing to go through un- 
 limited drudgery, in the way of minute rudimentary 
 criticism of their essays with the pencil or the pen. 
 Infinitely better, in our judgment, it would be for qoI- 
 
ME. LOWELL'S POETEY. 87 
 
 lege classes, if their rhetorical teacher should even, save 
 in exceptional cases, never once see the essays of their 
 pupils. This is no place for discussing a point of edu- 
 cation, and we cannot pause to vindicate our opinion. 
 We scarcely state it, indeed. We baldly suggest it. 
 Stimulus, more than criticism, is what the forming 
 literary mind requires. Vigorous growth can better be 
 trusted than the most laborious pruning-knife, to give 
 symmetry of form. Besides, only vigorous growth re- 
 sponds to the pruning-knife with desirable results. 
 The criticism that is applied should be living criticism 
 — ^by which we mean oral criticism, in which the criti- 
 cised writer himself should share as respondent, while 
 the writer's classmates, under stimulating and regulating 
 direction from the head of the department, should take 
 a principal part in it. It is in some such way that the 
 voluntary societies of a college manipulate their mem- 
 bers ; and many a student will testify that he is more 
 indebted to their influence than to the iafluence of the 
 regular instruction for the forming of his literary habits. 
 This colluctant play of mental faculties in generous 
 social exercise, is worth, for literary discipline, all the 
 dead pen-strokes that could be strewn on a manuscript 
 essay by the most industrious grammarian in the world. 
 A teacher who can do, has done, is doing literary work 
 of acknowledged value himself, provided always that it 
 be with art, and not wholly by instinct, is the man to 
 teach literary workmanship to college students. Such a 
 man will not be a drudge. And such a man need not 
 be. An ounce of stimulus here outweighs a ton of 
 drill. 
 
 But while we thus attribute a deserved preeminence 
 to Harvard University, for its share in the nurture of 
 those minds which have hitherto represented American 
 letters, a just deduction from its praise remains to be 
 
88 A FEEE LAIJCE. 
 
 made. The circle of culture which centres at Harvard 
 has done little in the way of such production as is fitted 
 both to endure itself and to produce its like again. Its 
 work has been mainly epideictie work. Its history is 
 likely to turn out more valuable as writing than as his- 
 tory. Its eloquence tends to be rhetoric rather than elo- 
 quence. Its poetry seems to be the echo of singing 
 rather than song. As for its theology, that is the 
 empty shell of negation, out of which the positive ker- 
 nel of gospel has gone. Eeverence, as a matter of re- 
 ligion, has mostly disappeared ; the decorous affectation 
 of it that remains is a matter of aesthetics. Selt-com- 
 placency is the broadest trait that characterizes this 
 school of culture. It is a very well-bred self-compla- 
 cency, and it rallies itself with admirable pleasantry. 
 But it is an evident token of shallowness. The end is 
 easy to predict. The literary sceptre wiU surely depart 
 from Boston. Puritanism gave the Boston mind a 
 great launch. But the force of that launch will not last 
 forever. New Boston will have to borrow vigor from 
 an earnestness rooted in religion deeper than aesthetics, 
 or the days of its literary dominion are numbered. 
 
 " An age too late " is, perhaps, Mr. Lowell's misfor- 
 tune. The bracing moral atmosphere that blew down 
 on an earlier generation, from the heroic heights of a 
 more religious time, would have suited better with 
 something in the man that allies him to an order of 
 greatness, toward which the current Boston aspiration 
 is no longer hospitable. Dr. Holmes is the perfectly- 
 contented child of present Boston — furnished with a 
 complete assortment of easy solutions for the problems 
 that perplex nobler minds, and quite incapable of their 
 unworldly sorrow. But when Mr. Lowell speaks in 
 the dialect of this shallow complacency, he always 
 seems, somehow, to be using a language that is not his 
 
ME. Lowell's poetey. 89 
 
 mother-tongue. He is haunted by doubts, and fears, 
 and guesses, that are not dreamed of in the popular 
 Boston philosophy. Puritanism would very likely have 
 oppressed Dr. Holmes, and quite silenced his chirrup. 
 But Puritanism might almost have made Mr. Lowell 
 a lesser Milton. It is creditable to Mr. Lowell that his 
 moral and his intellectual sympathies are in the noblest 
 sense conservative. That heady radicalism in religion 
 and in politics, which Boston calls progress, has long 
 ago, we believe, left Mr. LoweU in the rear. His pres- 
 ent aspect, if we do not mistake, is rather toward a past 
 prematurely forsaken, than toward a future plucked at 
 by rash hands before its "season due." Whatever 
 mutations impend in literary judgment, Mr. Lowell, if 
 one may venture without oifence to anticipate the crit- 
 icism of the future, will always be remembered as one 
 of the greatest and best of that school of brilliant wits 
 who contented themselves with making a transient eddy 
 in the main current of intellectual human activity, the 
 direction of which they might, perhaps, have influ- 
 enced, and the volume of which they might have con- 
 tributed, in some degree, to swell. 
 
MR. LO^A^ELL'S " CATHEDRAL. 
 
 ~VT7"E judge from the delicate deprecation which 
 V V seems to be conveyed in the dedicatory note to 
 this little volume that Mr. Lowell's publisher consti- 
 tuted a kind of Amphictyonic Council in the case. But 
 the compelling and, so, excusing decree does not appear 
 to have extended further than to the material form 
 which the work should assume. We may, therefore, 
 gently proceed to bring the poem itself to the critical 
 rack without impiety notwithstanding. 
 
 The publisher has done what a publisher could (and 
 Mr. Fields has laid his vocation under debt by enlarg- 
 ing the bounds of publishing possibility) to conciliate a 
 favorable judgment at sight. Besides the various en- 
 terprising expedients of public prepossession which he 
 has employed with admirable address in the present 
 behalf, the appearance of the volume is as dainty as 
 sumptuous paper, fair type, liberal spaces, and tasteful 
 binding can make it. The first choice of title is said 
 to have been " A Day at Chartres." The change from 
 this was made perhaps in part the better to justify the 
 eugravings prefixed of the cathedral doors and the 
 cathedral interior, which add an obvious charm of art 
 to the more recluse charm of the poetry. The engrav- 
 ings may be pronounced aj)propriate enough and beau- 
 tiful enough to justify in turn the change in the title. 
 The original title, however, "A Day at Chartres," 
 would have been a better term of comprehension for 
 the somewhat heterogeneous matter contained in the 
 
91 
 
 poem. It would be difficult to devise any title suffi- 
 ciently elastic to embrace very closely so capricious an 
 outline of subject as the poem presents. The book- 
 maker has successfully contrived, by the extraordinary 
 thickness of the paper, as well as by a lavish devotion 
 of space, to reverse the motto according to which Mr. 
 Lowell is fond of moulding his expression. If the verse 
 contained in the book merits here and there the praise 
 of being inultum in parvo, certainly the book contain- 
 ing the verse constantly merits the praise no less of 
 'bemgparmim in mulio. 
 
 "We have recently bestowed an article of full length 
 upon the claims of Mr. Lowell's poetry in general. 
 Much, therefore, of that preliminary concession to his 
 very high merits, which would otherwise be indispens- 
 able, may now be omitted at no risk of misunderstand- 
 ing on the part of our readers. If we may say so with- 
 out seeming to be brusque in the wish to be brief, we 
 cannot but consider " The Cathedral " a hasty publica- 
 tion. It is perhaps not more crude than some other of 
 his pieces, previously published, but its aim is compara- 
 tively ambitious, and the fame of the author has touched a 
 mark so high, aligned from the " Commemoration Ode," 
 that he is henceforth justly exposed to a severer judg- 
 ment in contrast with himself. The effect, therefore, 
 of precipitate printing becomes more painfully obvious. 
 Nine years might have given us a very different poem 
 from " The Cathedral " as we must now be content to 
 accept it. We cannot but regret that Mr., Lowell did 
 not resolutely allow his conception time to work itself 
 clear of the many foreign and incongruous elements in 
 it, both literary and religious, which, shut safely from 
 the light in so sound a head and so pure. a heart as his, 
 would have been sure to stimulate a wholesome fer- 
 mentation until they were finally rejected. 
 
92 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 The suspicion is almost unavoidably suggested that 
 Mr. Lowell's own captivating personal qualities are a 
 snare to his genius. He becomes easily dear to a circle 
 of brilliant and cultivated minds about him, who, fas- 
 cinated in the glamour of his evidently transcendent 
 gifts, are fain, perhaps, to bum an incense of generous 
 praise to him so profuse and so near, that he finds it 
 difficult to look steadily through the tinted and fra- 
 grant cloud immediately before him, and to see the off- 
 lying world beyond, of the distant and the future, 
 which, nevertheless, as it is needful to remember, pro- 
 nounces lastly on each deed of the poet with judicial 
 blindness to graces of personal character. We feel that 
 Mr. Lowell is capable of producing far more valuable 
 work than any that he has hitherto produced, or than any, 
 we fear, that he is likely to produce hereafter. The 
 case would be different if somehow the praise for which 
 he labors could be farther removed in place as well as 
 in time. The response of admiration close by may fol- 
 low a feat of literary workmanship too soon. It is then 
 anything but friendly to the highest accomplishments 
 of genius. No friend, and no circle of friends, however 
 illustrious in gift and in culture, can safely occupy to 
 an author the place of the great community of minds 
 unknown to him, which alone is the qualified and 
 supreme arbiter of literary claims. It is a serious, in- 
 deed an irreparable, injury to the final fame of a man 
 of genius, to have the disinterested general voice 
 drowned to his ears in the genial applause of a per- 
 sonal audience. Such appreciation, to be sure, is a 
 pleasant, and, within certain narrow limits, it may be 
 a fruitful, stimulus. But it does not often enough 
 mingle a bitter with its sweet, to be the vigorous tonic 
 wliich every masculine genius requires in order to be 
 put upon its noblest mettle. 
 
MK. LOWELL'S " OATHEDEAL." 93 
 
 Our remarks may not be justly applicable to Mr. 
 Lowell's case. We guess, and make no pretence of re- 
 vealing. But there are certain traits in this poem 
 which have irresistibly forced these reflections upon us. 
 It is not easy to conceive how a man of so much fine 
 critical capacity as Mr. Lowell has more than once ex- 
 ercised, we believe, to the severe cost of an author 
 that chanced to be of the Philistines in relation to 
 "the peculiar people" of American literature — it is 
 not easy, we say, to conceive how a taste so severe 
 against the sesthetic lapses of others should have fallen 
 into such sius of its own, except under the misleading 
 influence of soine friendly judgment, which was too 
 complaisant to be wise. We instance that whimsical 
 episode of extremely humble and obvious humor in the 
 passage about the Englishmen whom the poet met at 
 the inn in Chartres. If Mr. Lowell had had the con- 
 ception of an impersonal and numerous audience in 
 mind for his touchstone here, surely he would have 
 hesitated before risking the smile at himself, as well as 
 at his wit, which the passage was likely to provoke. 
 
 It may be to the life — but is it poetry, or is it any- 
 thing short of fatal to poetry ? — to speak of the typical 
 American of the West as one 
 
 Who, meeting Caesar's self, would slap Ms back. 
 Call him " Old Horse," and challenge to a drink.' 
 
 We submit that Hogarthisms in verse, like this, were 
 
 ' A whimsical justification of the grotesquenesses that swarm upon 
 Mr. Lowell's ' ' Cathedral " (attributed, with what truth we know 
 not, to the poet himself), is the claim that such excrescences are in 
 a fine and subtle harmony with the theme. The cathedral itself, 
 from which the poem takes its name, was thus covered over with 
 gargoyles and drolleries in shape of every sort. The poem simply 
 overflows with Mzarre conceits in the frolicsome spirit of the Gothic 
 architecture in which the cathedral was built. 
 
94 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 better relegated to " The Biglow Papers," or some other 
 such limbo of literature uncertain whethfer serious or 
 burlesque. 
 
 There is no doubt a spirit in which something like a 
 part, at least, of what follows might be said with a 
 kindly earnest sarcasm, and yet without affront to any- 
 body that did not deserv^e to be affronted ; Mr. Lowell 
 fails of this spirit. A timely thought of the wider 
 auditory at a distance that was listening to hear his 
 verse, would have tended, we think, to correct this error 
 in tone : 
 
 Doubtless his church will be no hospital 
 
 For superannuate forms and mumping shams. 
 
 No parlor where men issue policies 
 
 Of life-assurance on the Eternal Mind, 
 
 Nor his religion but an ambulance 
 
 To fetch life's wounded and malingerers in, 
 
 Scorned by the strong. 
 
 We note it as significant that, skipping backward 
 from this an interval of several pages, we come upon 
 an acknowledgment. by the poet of that idiosyncrasy of 
 his upon which we remarked in an article of some 
 months ago, namely, the " force of sympathy " in him ; 
 "or," as he modestly says, "call it lack of character 
 firm-planted," which enables him at will (sometimes 
 beyond his will ?) to " dwell enlarged in alien modes 
 of thought." It is professedly in the exercise of this 
 versatile sympathy that he has been drawing the por- 
 trait of the American variety of the human being — 
 overdrawing it, we think, in the wish to make it dis- 
 tinct. The portrait finished, the artist proceeds to 
 " reshape " it as he " will " — giving us, for result, the 
 ideal American of the future — his church, and his God. 
 We are obliged, therefore, to consider this result to be 
 moulded in part, indeed, according to Mr. Lowell's own 
 choice ; but we are fortunately at liberty to consider it 
 
ME. Lowell's "cathedeal." 95 
 
 to be moulded also in part according to his artistic 
 sense of the fitness of the case. We prefer to assume 
 that the latter influence predominated. We may thus 
 express ourselves more freely than would otherwise 
 seem compatible with the respect which we desire to 
 retain for Mr. Lowell. We are sorry that he did not 
 vindicate himself from the blame of too much personal 
 sympathy with his future American's raw religious 
 notions, by a certain reprehension in his own manner 
 of stating them. We repeat that a seasonable recollec- 
 tion of the general cultivated public that would like to 
 enjoy his poetry might have saved him from this un- 
 happy quest of a chord with a merely provincial reli- 
 gious taste. 
 
 The disagreeable words and metaphors that are 
 crowded together in the foregoing citation, have a 
 smack of the stale and the commonplace, not to say 
 even of slang, in them, whereby, if we were shut up to 
 consider them as reflecting Mr. Lowell's own mood, 
 they would, produce the effect, either of cant or of con- 
 descension to vulgar prejudice on his part, as little 
 creditable to his literary taste as to his religious spirit. 
 Mr. Lowell, speaking on the mixed behalf of his Amer- 
 ican and himself, does not explicitly say that the cur- 
 rent evangelical religion is nothing but an ambulance 
 to bring in life's wounded and malingerers, but he im- 
 plies it, and he implies it in contempt. He implies it, 
 too, almost as if he were vindicating the institution of 
 Christ from an unworthy representation of it in the 
 existing evangelieal Churches. Now, assuredly, the 
 Church of Christ, however it may be with Mr. Lowell's 
 American Church of the future, is fulfilling a legiti- 
 mate mission in trying to rescue the fallen and dis- 
 abled. Christ may be trusted to know the errand on 
 which he came. He says that his errand was to seek 
 
96 A FEBE LANCE. 
 
 and to save that which was lost. This errand he ex- 
 pressly committed in turn to his disciples. But the 
 word " malingerers " introduces ns into the presence of 
 an unfamiliar classification. The gospel of the New 
 Testament distinguishes no " malingerers." According 
 to Jesus, we are all of us the " wounded." Some of us 
 wounded, to be sure, have a strange whim of feigning 
 to be perfectly sound. But there are no really sound 
 ones, in Christ's view, that could dishonestly feign to 
 be wounded. In the scheme of " The Cathedral," on 
 the other hand, men appear set off into three different 
 classes. There are the " wounded," the " malingerers," 
 and "the strong." Mr. Lowell seems to imply that 
 the strong at present remain outside, and scorn a 
 Church composed of the recovered or recovering wound- 
 ed, busy at no nobler work than that of succoring their 
 prostrate brethren on the field. Does Mr. Lowell — 
 we can with difficulty separate his own personality 
 here — does Mr7 Lowell, then, think that a Church so 
 made up, and so employed, is a proper object of scorn ? 
 Is such a Church a proper object of scorn, even if, in 
 excess of charity, it extends its care also, in some in- 
 stances, to the hypocritical unworthy? Are "the 
 strong," who need no help themselves, and who render 
 no help to others, fitted, in virtue of this character, to 
 administer precisely the quality of scorn which the 
 nature of the case requires I And, in general, is scorn 
 of the weak a fine trait of the strong 'i We should like 
 to know what is to become of the weak when the 
 Church of the strong is fully established. Will the 
 weak be admitted ? And wiU they still be the objects 
 of scorn on the part of tlieir vigorous brethren ? The 
 Church which Mr. Lowell foreshadows will have to be 
 broad indeed if its membership is to constitute a happy 
 family upon these terms. 
 
97 
 
 But Mr. Lowell mistakes in imagining that the 
 Church thus sketched will be a new Church. It will 
 be a rehabilitation, not a replacement. It will not be 
 progress. It will be nineteen centuries of retrogres- 
 sion. The Church of the strong is not a modern 
 Church. It belongs to antiquity. More. It is pagan, 
 not Christian. The god, too, that Mr. Lowell sets up 
 for worship in it, resembles the very " brotherly " com- 
 plaisant gods of Greek or Koman polytheism far more 
 nearly than it (the neuter gender is Mr. Lowell's own, 
 not ours, for it is a '' divine tiling^'' he says) — far more 
 nearly than it resembles the Judsean Jehovah, who 
 long since maimed their brute images, and, as we 
 thought, shamed their worshippers. Our readers shall 
 Judge for themselves whether we do Mr. Lowell injus- 
 tice. Here is the rest of the sentence which we par- 
 tially quoted above : 
 
 — yet he, unconscious heir 
 To the influence sweet of Athens and of Borne, 
 And old Judaea's gift of secret fire, 
 Spite of himself shall surely learn to know 
 And worship some ideal of himself, 
 Some divine thing, large-hearted, hrotherly, 
 Not nice in trifles, a soft creditor. 
 Pleased with his world, and hating only cant. 
 
 Is Mr. Lowell's own unconscious heirship to Greece 
 and Kome incontinently betrayed ? Or has he too 
 carefully conformed his conception in obedience to the 
 " influence sweet of Athens and of Kome," and inad- 
 vertently forgotten to throw in the due equivalent of 
 "old Judaea's gift of secret tire?" His god has fallen 
 curiously into the mould of the antiques. The roister- 
 ing divinities who kept house on Olympus, admirably 
 answer to his description. Indeed, this might well have 
 been one of the identical experiments in invention by 
 5 
 
98 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 whicli Mr. Lowell convinced himself "how little in- 
 ventiveness there is in man." Observe : the Olympian 
 gods were their worshippers' " ideals " of themselves ; 
 they were certainly " things," and they were as " divine" 
 perhaps as it is fair to expect that men's ideals of deity 
 modelled on themselves should be ; pretty good fellows 
 they were, too, which must be what Mr. Lowell means 
 by "large-hearted " ; they were " brotherly" enough to 
 be admitted members on hospitable terms of any pious 
 heathen family that wouldn't object to their taking a 
 jovial brotherly freedom now and then ; they were far 
 indeed from being " nice in trifles." In representing 
 God as a creditor towards man, Mr. Lowell must of 
 course refer to debt in moral relations ; and certaiilly, 
 Zeus and the rest of them were nobly slack enough 
 here to deserve the praise of being " soft creditors." If 
 not always absolutely " pleased with their world," they 
 were not unreasonably out of humor with it. As for 
 " hating only cant," we fear the parallel fails at this 
 point ; we do not think the Olympians were as particular 
 as they might have been whether they were served with 
 earnest, or with merely mock-earnest devotion. We 
 should say that most probably the tribute which Mr. 
 Lowell puts into the hand of his American to offei', 
 would be as acceptable to them as that which is offered 
 by Mr. Swinburne himself. 
 
 But we dignify this sort of thing too much. It does 
 not merit our banter. Mr. Lowell himself would smile 
 at us for our pains. He had no serious meaning when 
 he wrote it. He could have had none. The passage 
 under immediate notice, and all the related passages 
 scattered through the poem, if we should regard them 
 as expressive of the poet's genuine feeling, would be- 
 come an impossible labyrinth. So regarded, they are 
 perplexed in thought and in implication beyond all 
 
ME. LOWELL'S " CATHEDEAL." 99 
 
 hope of any human disentanglement. In this view, we 
 would defy the most ingenious mind to get at a satis- 
 factory analysis of the religious inculcation, or religious 
 insinuation, or religious aspiration, of the poem. It 
 has no analysis. It is confusion inextricably confounded. 
 There is no evidence of real spiritual strife in it, on the 
 part of Mr. Lowell, but as a mere matter of literary 
 management the maze is manifestly a little too much 
 for the poet himself. He appears bewildered in it, and 
 lost. His vision is dazed by innumerable images re- 
 flected upon him, from every possible quarter in the 
 whole heaven of hostility to evangehcal religion, and 
 he does not, as, for reasons of the artist he should, 
 grasp, for the moment at least, some clew of positive 
 belief or of positive disbelief even, to lead him out of 
 his wilderness. If it were a case of sincere spiritual 
 perplexity, the subject of it would deserve our respect, 
 along with our compassion. We sympathize instinc- 
 tively when we hear a soul benighted wailing in the 
 voice of reverence and prayer : , 
 
 — but what am I ? 
 An infant crying in the night : 
 An infant crying for the light : 
 And with no language but a cry. 
 
 It wonderfully relieves our sympathy of its burden 
 when berating takes the place of bewailing. At least, 
 still to retain a claim upon our sympathy, the berating 
 must proceed unmistakably from the vehement passion of 
 an angry earnestness and a magnanimous scorn, such as 
 was Carlyle's, for example, when Carlyle was in his first, 
 " undegenerate days." In the absence of this justify- 
 ing spirit, its simulated language too easily degenerates 
 into an insufferable something, for which we think of 
 no respectful name. The literary error then seems to 
 
100 A FREE LAITCE. 
 
 transcend the religions. "We willingly allow Mr. Lowell's 
 American to become his scape-goat. We pronounce 
 the literary and the religions sin upon his head, and 
 speed him off to his wilderness. The scape-goat is 
 gone from our hands, and it would not perhaps have 
 been fair to discharge upon him the indignation that 
 we conceive, mingling with the predominant less com- 
 plimentary emotion, when, in the conclusion of the 
 passage, the cross of Christ is dragged down from the 
 mount of atonement by blood, and set up amid the 
 tumbling chaos of transcendentalism, pantheism, nni- 
 versalism, scepticism, and paganism which are involved 
 in Mr. Lowell's representation of the fature American's 
 theology, to stand as an empty " type of shame to 
 homage tm-ned," apparently for no other purpose than 
 that of giving the picture completeness and relief. 
 
 We illustrate and confirm the minor strictures which 
 we have to make, by a few examples. Let the follow- 
 ing citations show what injudicious freedoms in diction 
 Mr. Lowell indulges : 
 
 Cloudless of care, down-slwd to every sense. 
 
 Ere yet tlie child had loudened to the boy. 
 
 The inntiate firstlings of experience. 
 
 I was a poacher on their self-preserve, 
 Intent constructively on lese-anglicism. 
 
 (The last line is unmetrical, prosaic, and the pair, we 
 fear, is commonplace, unless its ingenious neologisms 
 save it from that extreme reproach.) 
 
 By throngs of strangers undisprkacied. 
 Keen-eyed for every chink of undisguise. 
 Spume-sliding down the baffled decuman. 
 Of men irm/rile and disiiatured dames. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S " CATHEDEAL.' 
 
 101 
 
 One fault involves another so naturally in verse, that 
 we lind it difficult to distribute our examples. We 
 accordingly give them, without classification, and 
 necessarily for the most part without connection or 
 comment. We must trust to the sense of the reader 
 to distinguish the more negative fault of mere pro- 
 saicism or commonplace among the obtrusive sins of 
 too familiar language, scolding, innuendoes, or simple 
 disagreeableness in words. 
 
 Sven as I write she tries her wonted spell. 
 
 I know not how it is with other men. 
 
 And wiled the bluebird to his whiff of song. 
 
 One morn of autumn lords it o'er the rest. 
 
 Shoved in for Tarsus and hitched back for Tyre. 
 
 A dish warmed-over at the feast of life, 
 
 And finds Twice stale, served with whatever sauce. 
 
 The flies and I its only customers. 
 
 I seem to have heard it said by learned folk 
 Who drench you with aesthetics till you feel 
 As if all beauty were a ghastly bore, 
 The faucet to let loose a wash of words. 
 
 Ovid in Pontus, puling for his Rome. 
 
 Far up the great bells waUowed in delight. 
 
 Each age must worship its own thought of Gtod. 
 
 "With subsidence continuous of the dregs. 
 
 (Pronounce the word subsidence properly, and scansion 
 is impossible.) 
 
 For, though not recreant to my fathers' faith, 
 
 Its forms to me are weariness, and most 
 
 That drony vacuum of compulsory prayer. 
 
 Still pumping phrases for the Ineflfable, 
 
 Though all the valves of memory gasp and wheeze. 
 
102 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 In this brown-fisted rough, this shirtsleeved Cid. 
 
 We, too, build Gothic contract-shams, because 
 Our deacons have discovered that it pays, 
 And pews sell better under vaulted roofs 
 Of plaster painted like an Indian squaw. 
 
 I fear not Thy withdrawal ; more I fear. 
 Seeing, to know Thee not, hoodwinked with dreams 
 Of signs and wonders, while, unnoticed, Thou, 
 Walking Thy garden still, commun'st with men. 
 Missed in the commonplace of miracle. 
 
 Contrast the discordant notes of ill-timed insinuation 
 that grate upon the spiritual sense of the reader in the 
 invocation from which the last preceding extract is 
 taken, at the close of " The Cathedral," with the fault- 
 less tone of reverence and humility and charity that 
 makes the proem to the " In Memoriam" the perfection 
 of literary art. The difference may not be a moral 
 difference between the two poets ; but if not, then the 
 difference in artistic faculty, or in artistic fidelity, is 
 truly immense. 
 
 We set off against these unfavorable quotations a 
 few of the felicities which go far toward retrieving, 
 though they cannot retrieve, the compromised fortune 
 of the poem. 
 
 The line. 
 
 lUuminate seclusion swung in air. 
 
 describes the fresh flower-bell lightly hung, as if un- 
 supported, in the buoyant atmosphere, and secluding 
 the " buccaneering bee " in a golden room, whose walls 
 flush the admitted sunshine with radiant color of their 
 own. This line had to us a sudden and singular, an 
 almost phenomenal beauty, when it first met oux eye. 
 The instantaneous springing into existence before us of 
 the thing described could hardly have had a more vivid 
 and surprising effect of delight. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S " CATHEDEAL." 103 
 
 No falcon ever felt delight of wings 
 As when, an eyas, from the stolid cliff 
 Loosing himself, he followed his high hea/rt 
 To smm on sunshine, masterless as wind; 
 
 Unconscious perverts of the Jesuit, Time. 
 
 * * the calm Olympian height 
 
 Of ancient order feels its bases yield. 
 
 As sometimes, just ere sleep seals up the sense. 
 We hear our Mother call from deeps of time. 
 And, waking, find it vision, — ^none the legs 
 The benediction bides, old skies return. 
 
 These quotations are too few to represent fairly tlie 
 better side of the poem, but our limited space forbids 
 us to add to them. 
 
 We have thought it not best to follow the general 
 example, in suffering the blemishes which disfigure this 
 poem to go unremarked. We have admired the more 
 than exemplary meekness with which the religious 
 press have received Mr. Lowell's thrusts at orthodox 
 theology. We have actually seen the most offensive of 
 these thrusts quoted in full in a well-known monthly 
 repertory of periodical literature devoted especially to 
 the interests of evangelical religion: — and that not only 
 without rebuke, but wifti extravagant editorial laudation 
 of the poem, as the highest effort of American genius. 
 A little more vigilance, or a good deal more independ- 
 ence, is loudly demanded at the hands of our journal- 
 istic custodians of literature and religion. Mr. Lowell, 
 in virtue, partly, of his merit, but in virtue, as much, 
 of his fortune, is likely to exercise no inconsij^erable 
 influence in setting the fashion of our current literary 
 period. Alike in the interest of literature, and in the 
 paramount interest of religion, it is important that 
 faithful criticism should interpose its part to render that 
 influence entirely wholesome and pure. American 
 
104 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 letters ought not to be surrendered for even a moment, 
 by default, to the nnchastised sovereignty of a school 
 of culture that should learn from Mr. Lowell, as mas- 
 ter, to commit his mistakes upon principle, in the false 
 conceit that they were thereby making their productions 
 somehow more natural, or more original, or more 
 manly, or more distinctively American. It is not 
 necessary to coin outlandish words, to use vulgarisms, 
 to be querulous, to be unmetrical, to be obscure, to 
 introduce prosaicisms, to risk commonplaces, and to 
 slant at evangelical religion, in order to be a true 
 American poet. Bryant is not guilty in any of these 
 things, and the young gods may be bom, but they have 
 not published their poetry, that are to take away 
 Bryant's crown of easy supremacy among American 
 poets. 
 
 Mr. Fields, we conclude, upon the whole, may have 
 acted as a wise publisher in making a book of " The 
 Cathedral." He, no doubt, acted also as a loyal, but 
 not, we think, as a wise friend to Mr. Lowell, in 
 thereby challenging a separate and serious criticism of 
 the poem. 
 
MR. LOWELL'S PROSE. 
 
 FOE several reasons, Mr. Lowell's prose, as well as 
 his poetry, has almost altogether missed, hitherto, 
 the homage of that sincere and serious criticism which 
 alike his real merits, in either kind of composition, and 
 the high rank to which the general consent of enlight- 
 ened opinion has advanced him, should seem to have 
 demanded. When he first began to publish, now nearly 
 one whole literary age ago, he was greeted by the 
 powers of criticism that then were Avith a certain con- 
 descension of notice, magisterial, to be sure, in tone, 
 but kindly, as exercised toward a young man person- 
 ally well known to his censors, and aifectionately re- 
 garded by them, of whom good things were justly to 
 be expected in the future, but to whom it would mean- 
 time be premature to pay the compliment of a very 
 thorough examination of his claims to permanent re- 
 gard. There followed a considerable period of nearly 
 unbroken silence on the part of Mr. Lowell, during 
 which a tradition of his genius and accomplishments 
 made fhe tour of cultivated minds^ traveling outward 
 from Boston through the slowly widening circle of the 
 fellowship of American letters. 
 
 By the time that he appeared again in print, Mr. 
 Lowell had thus an assured welcome of generous ac- 
 clamation already awaiting him from every organ of 
 
106 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 critical opinion in the country. There seemed nothing 
 in the circumstances of his fortune as an author to 
 create any diversion against him. His quality was 
 manifestly not popular enough to make him an object 
 of jealousy with his peers in authorship. He was just 
 sufficiently removed from obvious and easy comprehen- 
 sion to become a good shibboleth of culture and insight 
 among the critics of the periodical press. Something, 
 too, of that personal impression of the man, which 
 seems to be inseparable from the efl'ect produced upon 
 us by the work of the author, accompanied, to assist 
 Mr. Lowell in his easy conquest of the most formidable 
 and most influential critical appreciation that as yet had 
 a voice in the current American literature. It speedily 
 became a point of literary patriotism with us all to 
 swear a loyal and enthusiastic oath by the wit, the 
 learning, and the genius of our brilhant fellow-country- 
 man. 
 
 By a curious coincidence, too — Plucky for the recent 
 immediate spread of his fame — it happened that Mr. 
 Lowell's latest and most important publications appeared 
 at that precise juncture of our international relations 
 with Great Britain when paramount public consider- 
 ations were operating to disarm British criticism for the 
 moment of its natural and traditional suspicion respect- 
 ing American books, and even to dispose it to a lavish 
 literary hospitality toward whatever of American pro- 
 duction might seem most likely to be generally accepted 
 among us as representative of the national genius and 
 culture. Mr. Lowell was obviously the favorite of 
 American literary men. English periodicals could not 
 fail to gratify the American public by praising their 
 chosen literary representative. Accordingly English 
 organs of criticism were foimd, for instance, eagerly 
 pronouncing the " Commemoration Ode " a great poem 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PKOSE. 107 
 
 (whicL. it scarcely escaped being indeed), but without 
 so much as hinting faintly that the retorted sneer in it 
 at the Old World, and especially Great Britain, was 
 perhaps an artistic mistake, which nevertheless it may 
 easily appear even to Mr. Lowell's sympathizing coun- 
 trymen to be. It has thus resulted that the verdict 
 without discussion which American criticism had spon- 
 taneously passed upon Mr. Lowell, now stands doubly 
 established in the apparently justifying and confirming 
 accord of English opinion. By consequence, could a 
 poll of the best instructed and most controlling edito- 
 rial suffrages of the country be taken on the question 
 to-morrow, the well-nigh unanimous sentence would 
 pronounce Mr. James Russell Lowell, upon the whole, 
 beyond controversy, if not the first, then certainly the 
 second, among living American Hterary men. 
 
 We state the fact. We make no quarrel with it. 
 Our own judgment might not be different. We merely 
 point it out in explaining how it is' that Mr. Lowell has 
 failed so long of that faithful and unprepossessed criti- 
 cism of his work, to which by his unenvied though 
 enviable eminence he is justly entitled. We herewith 
 offer the initiative ' of such a criticism, with regard to 
 Mr. Lowell's prose. 
 
 The first remark to be made about Mr. Lowell's 
 prose concerns the kind in literature to which it be- 
 longs. It is not creative ; it is critical. It is that in 
 respect to other men's literary productions which this 
 
 ' Exception to this implication ought perhaps to be made in favor 
 of a tentative article published some months ago in " Lippincott's 
 Monthly," which made several good critical points unfavorable to 
 Mr. Lowell, and sustained them well, but which, whether deservedly 
 or not, incurred in certain quarters where j ealous susceptibility on 
 such a point was natural and was pardonable, the accusation of 
 personal unfriendliness to the illustrious author. 
 
108 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 article aims to be in respect to Mr. Lowell's own pro- 
 ductions in prose. It appreciates, and, except incident- 
 ally, it does not originate. We say this without intend- 
 ing comparative disparagement of that species of liter- 
 ary work to which in his prose Mr. Lowell has almost 
 exclusively devoted himself; although it is perfectly 
 obvious that criticism makes a humbler claim than 
 creation on the gratitude and reverence of the reader 
 toward the author. While, however, late literature has 
 names like M. Sainte-Beuve in France, Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold in England, and Mr. Lowell (as a prose writer) 
 in this country, to show among those who contentedly 
 accept the vocation of critic, criticism, still justly ad- 
 judged to remain subordinate in rank to creation, may 
 yet be admitted to confer degrees of greatness upon its 
 servants higher perhaps than any but the highest of 
 all. 
 
 The one thing, however, that concerns us in classify- 
 ing Mr. Lowell's prose productions as criticism, is to 
 settle the rule by which he may fairly be judged. He 
 is a critic. Fair criticism asks, Is he a good critic? Is 
 he adequately qualified, and has he made adequate use 
 of his qualifications ? 
 
 Large knowledge of literature is among -the necessary 
 qualifications of a good critic. In literature, as in 
 everything, comparison and contrast are our best, almost 
 our only means of just estimation. Critical faculty 
 goes for nothing without adequate material of informa- 
 tion upon which to have exercised itself beforehand, 
 and from which now to form its present appraisals. 
 No one can read Mr. Lowell's prose, or for that matter 
 his poetry either, without acknowledging his wide 
 familiarity with literature, both vernacular and foreign. 
 Culture, in this sense of it, flavors every page of his 
 writings. Allusion, near or remote, — often, it must be 
 
ME. LOWELL'S TEOSE. 109 
 
 admitted, remote, — lurks in almost every one of his 
 sentences. So much indeed is this the case, that it is 
 often a task to all but readers tolerably well informed 
 themselves to track his hiding sense with certainty. 
 We have been told on excellent authority that so well- 
 informed a gentleman, for instance, as the head of Har- 
 vard University presumably is, was obliged to resort 
 to Mr. LoweU himself to find out what his friend 
 meant by a word in his poem of " The Cathedral " 
 felicitously coined to convey an allusion to a usage of 
 the Latin poets that happened not to be present to the 
 learned president's mind at the moment of his reading 
 the piece. Mr. Lowell certainly does not lack discur- 
 sive acquaintance with literature to qualify him for his 
 office of critic. 
 
 A second necessary endowment of the good critic is 
 a capacity on his part of entering into the thought and 
 feeling of another, without such accompanying prepos- 
 sessions of his own as unconsciously to modify his new 
 investiture by exchange and confusion of the separate 
 individualities. This trait, the most amiable and gen- 
 erous of the critic's intellectual traits, Mr. Lowell evi- 
 dently estimates at its true high value. He betrays 
 everywhere a becoming anxiety to realize in himself so 
 necessary a condition of satisfactory critical work. The 
 success, perhaps, hardly corresponds with the anxiety. 
 Still the fluent lapse from mood to mood in sympathy 
 with his author which Mr. Lowell achieves or under- 
 goes (is it active, or is it passive ?) in his capacity of 
 critic contrasts wonderfully say with the iron rigidness 
 of Lord Macaulay's persistency in uniformly remaining 
 himself, of whomsoever he may chance to be discours- 
 ing in ostensible criticism. Lord Macaulay, however, 
 it ought in judgment of him to be remembered, seemed 
 himself not unaware of his own incapacity for dealing 
 
110 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 with any but those literary men whose work, like their 
 critic's, was all of it done with heavy crayon strokes. 
 But it is already an anachronism to mention Lord Ma- 
 caulay as a critic, incomparable stylist though he is 
 within his own chosen sphere of straightforward, dog- 
 matic, all-British expression. Mr. Lowell's " false mo- 
 tions," unconsciously false, toward renouncing himself 
 for the sake of temporarily becoming his author, are 
 everything, at least in the way of acknowledgment, 
 that could reasonably be expected of a critic. , 
 
 It is manifest, however, that there must be a check 
 set somewhere to this genial capacity on the critic's 
 part of ■ commingling consciousness with his author. 
 And accordingly, a further qualification of the ideal 
 critic is an assured and tranquil abiding on his part in 
 certain well-defined principles of literary art, and cer- 
 tain fixed standards of literary judgment, which he is 
 willing, indeed, in accordance with that sensitive sym- 
 pathy just spoken of, to hold suspended, as it were, 
 from their influence for a time, while he is adequately 
 coiriprehending his author — ^but to which he instinct- 
 ively and infallibly returns in the end for pronouncing 
 his ultimate decision. It will, we think, upon reflec- 
 tion, be conceded as very conspicuous among the mani- 
 fold qualifications which the confessed most exquisite 
 contemporary critics unite in themselves — this inex- 
 haustible capacity on their part of resilient return to 
 their unaltered and unforgotten postulates of criticism 
 after prolonged intervals of discursion, during which 
 their readers will very likely have quite lost all idea of 
 their reckoning amid the genial and companionable 
 and sympathetic delayings of their guides in the society 
 of the subjects of their criticism. How surely M. 
 Eenan, M. Sainte-Beuve, Mr. Matthew Arnold, Pi-o- 
 fessor Seeley find then* anchoring-ground again and 
 
MR. LOWELL'S PEOSE. Ill 
 
 ride at ease with buoys on every side about them after 
 the most distant and most devious cruises along-side of 
 their authors to antipodal shores. In this capital quali- 
 fication of the critic, Mr. Lowell seems to us to be com- 
 paratively wanting. He is apt to drift, when he parts 
 company with his convoy and ceases to cruise. He 
 forgets his way back to his roadstead. Or rather he 
 seems hardly to have a roadstead. The ocean is not 
 too wide for his keel, and a new hail and a fresh 
 cruise with still other company are always better to 
 him than the return. In plain language, Mr. Lowell's 
 present sympathy on a given occasion prevails too often 
 over what were else his permanent convictions. His 
 convictions, alike in literature, in ethics, and in reli- 
 gion, flow too easily. We speak purely from the point 
 of view of the literary artist. It is essential for the 
 critic himself that his convictions should stand firmly 
 enoiigh to be sighted, from time to time, at his need, 
 in order that his criticism be not capricious, but judicial 
 — at least that it be consistent with itself It is equally 
 essential, too, for the critic's readers that they should 
 be able to recognize his ultimate convictions, in order 
 on their part to apply that co-efiicient of modification 
 to his judgments without which his judgments are com- 
 paratively valueless to them. The critic's view is very 
 well, but we need to know also his point of view. 
 
 Such seem to be the indispensable parts of the good 
 critic's equipment, the moral quality of candor being 
 of course presupposed. But it adds a grace and a 
 power which we very unwillingly miss, if the critic 
 have likewise the ability and the industry, perhaps we 
 should add, the opportunity, to write his criticisms in a 
 style so good as itself to illustrate a high literary art. 
 Of Mr. Lowell's ability to do this, or at least to have 
 done it, there is scarce a period of his prose that does 
 
112 A FEEK LANCE. 
 
 not seem to imply indubitable proof. It is very mucb 
 to be regretted, both for the sake of his example and 
 for the sake of his fame, that his ability should not have 
 been better supported by his industry or by his oppor- 
 tunity. If we should admit that the published coUeo- 
 tions of Mr. Lowell's prose contain passages of such 
 writing as the future will not willingly let die, this ut- 
 most concession, in accordance with our own strong wish 
 half bribing our judgment, yielded to his more injudi- 
 cious admirers' pretensions on his behalf, would still be 
 niggardly concession compared with that which we feel 
 it was quite within his privilege to extort from the 
 most grudging among the critical adjudicators of his 
 literary claims. Almost all the elements of a masterly 
 style are present here, but " in their pregnant causes 
 mixed confusedly " rather than marshalled in the fair 
 order and decorum of a finished creation. In truth we 
 know few volumes in the world of literature that own 
 the disjecta membra of so much abortive possibility, 
 one can hardly call it endeavor, in literary art. We 
 read, and are dazzled in the splendor of such coruscant 
 light. The heaven seems ablaze with comets and 
 meteors and the matter of stars. We instinctively say, 
 What an orb were here if only there were at hand the 
 central force to gather and to globe this wasteful play 
 of brilliancy ! If Mr. Lowell had printed copious notes 
 and studies of essays, and if these notes and studies had 
 made the present volumes, then what triumphs of Eng- 
 lish composition for the instruction and delight of many 
 generations might not have been anticipated when the 
 essays themselves, in their ordered and proportioned 
 completeness and unity, should follow. Mr. Lowell 
 has been, we suspect, more generous to us than just to 
 himself. He has indeed given us notes and studies of 
 essays. Alas, that we must not look for the essays! 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 113 
 
 The opportunity or the inclination fails to him. Let 
 us not be ungraciously thankful. 
 
 The faults which we find in Mr. Lowell's style are 
 serious. They are such, too, as take hold of the thought 
 not less than of the expression of the thought, which is 
 equivalent to saying that we use the term style in its 
 largest significance. The chief fault, and the parent 
 one, is a singular lack of total comprehension and or- 
 ganic unity in his grasp and treatment of subjects. 
 We thus name a fault of which it would perhaps be un- 
 fair to complain in an author of Mr. Lowell's just 
 comparative degree in the scale of native endowment. 
 It requires a measure, not necessarily a large measure, 
 but a measure, greater or less, of real original power in 
 a writer to take the master's supreme possession of his 
 material, and produce it in a fresh creative form of his 
 own. But if this high gift has been denied to Mr. 
 Lowell, it still does seem fair to hold him responsible 
 for maintaining at least that certain decorous harmony 
 of tone in this work, from which no qualified criticism 
 will dispense even a confessedly derivative authoi-ship. 
 Grant that Mr. Lowell could not conceive a;nd create 
 a symphony of his own. With suitable self-denial and 
 patience and care, he might have avoided introducing 
 injurious original discords while re-arranging and adapt- 
 ing for his variations from the symphonies of others. 
 This fault he does not avoid, and, accordingly, want of 
 firm and harmonious tone is to be named as the lead- 
 ing vice of his style. 
 
 This vice is not a casual, it is a characteristic vice. 
 It aflfects the value of all Mr. Lowell's prose work alike 
 in matter and in manner. It clings like an inseparable 
 co-efficient almost everywhere, and it reduces the value 
 of each term that it enters to zero. It spoils his criti- 
 cism for authority, and it spoils his manner for model. 
 
114 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 Nor is it a sole, a sterile vice. Its true name rather is 
 Legion. It nourishes a numerous progeny of lesser 
 vices, such as extravagances of statement, inconsisten- 
 cies of critical judgment, undignified condescensions to 
 words and images that we hesitate to stigmatize as vul- 
 gar only because Mr. Lowell uses them — allusions 
 brought from too far and serving too little purpose, wii, 
 out of season, or even in a questionable taste, archa- 
 isms, neologisms, notes of querulousness, sentimental- 
 isms, unconscious adoptions of thought from other 
 authors, obtrusions of learning, ill-jointed construc- 
 tions, and very frequent grammatical negligences. We 
 shall not fail to furnish instances by which our readers 
 may try the justness of our strictures. But this inci- 
 dentally, or in its proper order. 
 
 The series of papers entitled " Library of Old A'u- 
 thors" ilhistrates perhaps more strikingly than any 
 other portion of these volumes the profuse literary 
 learning of their author. The papers now referred to 
 are not very lively reading for the general public. But 
 they do not lack spice, we should say, for several of the 
 editors to whom Mr. Lowell pays his attentions. It is 
 no doubt a true service to the interests of sound litera- 
 ture for a good critic, even at some expense of feeling 
 to himself, to expose now and then the impostures or 
 the hallucinations of pretentious literary incompetency. 
 Mr. Lowell's learning, at all events, appears here to 
 better advantage than it does, for instance, when thrust- 
 ing itself forward in such a note as the following, which 
 the critic subjoins to a page of his essay on Pope (" My 
 Study Windows," p. 388) : 
 
 " I bplieve it has not been noticed that among the verses in Graj^a 
 ' Sonnet on the Death of West,' which Wordsworth condemns as of 
 no value, tlie second — 
 
 And reddening Phoebus lifts Ma golden fires — 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 115 
 
 is one of Gray's happy remlmscences from a poet in some respects 
 greater than either of them : — 
 
 Jamque rubrum tremulis jubar ignibus erigere alte 
 Cum coeptat natura.— £«<;;•«*., iv. 404, 405." 
 
 The italics are Mr. Lowell's. The general reader 
 will better understand the violence and barrenness of 
 the parallel witly the meaning of the Latin before him 
 (we make our italics correspond with Mr. Lowell's :) 
 " And now when Nature hastens to itplift on high her 
 radiance ruddy with tremulous firesP That Gray's 
 line is one of his poorest is sufficiently certain, what- 
 ever Wordsworth's opinion. The " Phcsbus " and the 
 "reddening" unkindly mixed with "golden" are not 
 in Gray's own taste, but in the false taste of the period, 
 and they chiefly are what gives its individual character 
 to the pinchbeck verse. On the other hand, Lucre- 
 tius has no "Phoebus," and he does not make a "red- 
 dening" sun lift "golden" fires. The "tremulous" 
 imparts far more of their peculiar quality to the verses 
 of Lucretius than do the stock words which Mr. Lowell 
 italicizes. "We make no doubt that so practiced a han- 
 dler of books as Mr. Lowell would cheerfully undertake, 
 with the assistance of suitably indexed editions of the 
 chief poets of every human language, to find parallels 
 for Gray's line, in all of them without exception, at 
 least equally happy with the one which he has chanced 
 upon in Lucretius. The whole note, occupying nearly 
 a page of the book, displays all the chief traits which 
 Mr. Lowell himself burlesques in the Eeverend Homer 
 Wilbur, A.M. The reader who remembers " The Big- 
 low Papers " almost looks to see the initials " H. W." 
 appended to this note — the inconsequence, the irrele- 
 vance, and the pedantry in it rise so nearly to the de- 
 gree of the burlesque. We seem to have an explana- 
 tion of the fact that the commentary by Eev. Mr. Wil- 
 
116 A FEEE LAlfCE. 
 
 bur which accompanies Mr. Biglow's papers produces 
 often a depressing rather than an enlivening effect upon 
 the reader. The author of the travesty does not sepa- 
 rate himself sufficiently from his work. We cannot 
 quite make up our minds to be heartily amused with 
 Mr. Wilbur, lest in so doing we should be enjoying 
 ourselves partly at Mr. Lowell's expense. 
 
 We have, however, to remember that it has been in 
 the path of Mr. Lowell's professional pursuits as well 
 as of his personal aptitudes and tastes to read and 
 study literature as a specialty. His engagements as 
 editor of various volumes in the series of " The British 
 Poets," published by Little & Brown, were no doubt 
 further helpful to his large acquisitions in the learning 
 of literature. It may be conjectured that a large share 
 of all Mr. Lowell's essays, before their apotheosis in 
 the form of books, did double service as lectures to 
 university classes and as articles in reviews. This 
 probably accounts for the exchange of the reviewer's 
 " we " and the lecturer's " I " in the same essay — as 
 frequently in " Shakespeare Once More." Passages of 
 the lecture that were dropped in the article have been 
 restored in the essay. In the haste of editing, Mr. 
 Lowell neglected to make his personal pronouns 
 uniform. We hazard our conjecture. 
 
 In the " Library of Old Authors," poor Mr. W. C. 
 ITazlitt in particular (grandson, we beHeve, of William 
 Hazlitt, Coleridge's contemporary), one of the editors 
 of the books reviewed, has the misfortune to serve 
 Mr. Lowell as foil for the display of his merciless 
 learning, and as target for the practice of his vnt. 
 Mr. Lowell does not often make quarry of a man but 
 when he does so, he has ready talons and an eager 
 beak. We think we enjoy assisting at the spectacle 
 when a supposably well-to-do living man like Mr. W. C. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSB. 117 
 
 Hazlitt is the victim, better than when the victim is a 
 dead man on whom the public neglect had already 
 inflicted a punishment that asked no posthumous blow 
 to mate it either condignly severe or wholesomely 
 instructive. We cannot help feeling that the essay on 
 James Gates Percival was superfluous practice. 
 
 Mr. Lowell's ambition of displaying a faculty for 
 various sympathetic appreciation is everywhere illus- 
 trated. He treats, for instance, of a poet, whom he, 
 at least, would assuredly wish to consider the most 
 aritithetic in intimate quahty to himself, and seems to 
 like him so well and to find so much in him, that the 
 sworn admirers of the critic confess their astonishment 
 at the judgment which he pronounces on his subject. 
 There is in reality no occasion of astonishment. JVfr. 
 Lowell does in this case as he does in the case of every 
 author that he criticises. He submits Pope as if to the 
 tests of his own individual and independent analysis. 
 You may anticipate a wholly fresh, and perhaps in 
 some respects novel judgment of his author. But that 
 is because you are not familiar with Mr. Lowell's inva- 
 riable method. He ends, as it was certain from the 
 beginning that he would end, by re-affirming at large, 
 after his own vacillating, fashion, the well-established 
 verdict in which several ages of criticism have issued — 
 criticism justly divided between ascription and denial 
 to Pope's unique and deservedly still flourishing fame. 
 John Dryden again, in the too eager overflow of his 
 critic's sympathy with him, narrowly escapes, if he 
 escapes, the dangerous honor of being assigned a rank 
 above Milton. For in his essay on "Dryden," Mr. 
 Lowell says that by general consent, which he himself 
 passes unchallenged, Dryden stands at the head of the 
 English poets of the second class, and in " Shakespeare 
 Once More," he elaborately proves that Milton was a 
 
118 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 second-class poet. But Mr. Lowell needs only to de- 
 vote an essay to Milton in order to do Milton the 
 amplest justice. It is his way to be wholly occupied 
 with being generous in praise or in blame to the par- 
 ticular author under review. 
 
 The course of reasoning employed to demonstrate 
 that Milton is not simply inferior to Shakespeare, but 
 in an inferior class, is not new with Mr. Lowell, 
 although he " ventures " to propose it. It consists in 
 asserting as major that no first-class genius can be 
 " successfully imitated." Milton has been successfully 
 imitated. Therefore, etc. Mr. Lowell expressly says 
 that Milton » left behind him " whole regiments nni- 
 formed with all [his] external characteristics." We 
 hardly know in the first place what Mr. Lowell con- 
 siders " successful imitation," and in the second place 
 what he considers the " external characteristics " of a 
 poetry. It is certain that Milton was sufficiently 
 individual and sufficiently novel in manner to be capa- 
 ble of imitation and to attract it. But it was imitation 
 after a sort. We should say decidedly not "successful 
 imitation." Who is it that has written in Milton's 
 " tone % " For it is " tone," as Mr. Lowell truly says, 
 that distinguishes the master. But " tone " is not an 
 "external characteristic," Mr. Lowell would reply. 
 Agreed. Is then the harmony of the versification an 
 
 ' We quote here the entire sentence: "Dante, Shakespeare, 
 Goethe, left no heirs either to the form or [to the] mode of their 
 expression ; while Milton, Sterne, and Wordsworth left behind them 
 whole regiments uniformed with all their external characteristics." 
 Compare with this whimsical dictum what Coleridge says (Works, 
 vol. iv, p. 392, Am. ed.): "In this [that is, in 'style'] I think Dante 
 superior to Milton ; and his style is accordingly mon imitdhle. than 
 Milton's" — which implies in our opinion a far more rational view of 
 what constitutes a style imitable, than the critical crotchet adopted 
 by Mr. Lowell. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 119 
 
 " external " characteristic ? Mr. Lowell would assuredly 
 have to admit that it is. For our owu part, we should 
 be at a loss to guess what could be called an external 
 characteristic of a poetry, if the peculiar harmony of 
 its versification could not. Biit Collins, Mr. Lowell 
 elsewhere says, revived in his verse the harmony that 
 had been silent since Milton — ^that is, half a century or 
 more. How is it then that Milton " left behind him 
 whole regiments uniformed with all his external char- 
 acteristics ? " "We are at a stand to reconcile Mr. 
 Lowell with himself. It might be natural to suspect 
 that he meant a characteristic so wholly external as the 
 diction of the poet. But this characteristic is expressly 
 excepted by Mr. Lowell. For he is contrasting Milton 
 with Shakespeare, be it remembered, and he implicitly 
 acknowledges that Shakespeare might be imitated in 
 his vocabulary. It is Shakespeare's "tone" he says 
 that is inimitable. We ask again, who has successfully 
 imitated Milton's " tone 1 " And does not Mr. Lowell's 
 labored demonstration of the diiference of class be- 
 tween Milton and Shakespeare resolve itself at last to 
 this — that it is only in his " tone," (tone being admitted 
 the most interior and most substantive thing in style,) 
 that Shakespeare is inimitable, and that it is only in 
 his " external characteristics " at most that Milton has 
 been successfully imitated. Here is the argument ar- 
 ranged in propositions according to their logical se- 
 quence : Shakespeare is of the first class, because he 
 cannot be imitated. Milton is of the second class, be- 
 cause he can be imitated. Only Shakespeare perhaps 
 can be imitated in some of his external characteristics. 
 But Milton has been imitated in some of his external 
 characteristics. Shakespeare however is absolutely 
 inimitable in " tone," whereas Milton, for aught that 
 appears, is also inimitable in " tone." Therefore Shake- 
 
120 A FEEE LiLNCE. 
 
 speare is a first-class poet, and Milton a poet of the 
 second class — g-. e. d. But Mr. Lowell's logic has the 
 habit of smiKng in a superior way at wide gulfi between 
 premise and conclusion. 
 
 Mr. Lowell goes so far as. to say that no writer has 
 ever reminded Ixim of Shakespeare by the gait of a 
 single line. So strong a statement may be true in Mr, 
 Lowell's individual case, but why then should he not be 
 able without hesitation to pronounce absolutely his de- 
 cision, whether a given line occurring in one of Shake- 
 speare's plays be spurious or not ? Yet Mr. Lowell in 
 a note says of a passage quoted in the text : " This may 
 not be Shakespeare's." He at least should be certain. 
 Meantime Barnfield's lines stand in Shakespeare's text 
 without offending the sense of homogeneity in the most 
 of us, and the critical world wiU not have done disput- 
 ing whether " Titus Andronicus " be Shakespeare's or 
 not. But we meant merely to illustrate the extent. to 
 which Mr. Lowell's desire of sympathizing with his 
 author is likely to influence him. 
 
 In the course of the minor discussion upon which we 
 have now been remarking, we light upon a sentence 
 that happens to be on several sides illustrative both of 
 the excellences and of the defects of Mr. Lowell's style. 
 The general tenor of the text at this point involving 
 a comparative disparagement of MUton in favor of 
 Shakespeare, the critic interposes a parenthesis of con- 
 cession to the noble qualities of the Puritan poet, by 
 way at once of attesting his own capacity of adequate 
 appreciation, and of thus the more effectively setting 
 his present Magnus Apollo in advantageous relief. He 
 says : " I know that Milton's manner is very grand. It 
 is slow, it is stately, moving as in triumphal procession, 
 with music, with historic banners, with spoils from 
 every time and every region, and captive epithets, like 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 121 
 
 huge Sicainbfians, thrust their broad shoulders between 
 as and the thought whose pomp they decorate." 
 
 By how narrow a margin does such writing as this 
 miss of matching the magnificence of its subject! Cer- 
 tainly it shows, what hardly needed the showing, that 
 Mr. Lowell enters with heart into the appreciation of 
 Milton's verse, at least in its external characteristics. 
 It almost makes one doubt whether, if Mr. Lowell were 
 cited to swear by his conscience (and were able to do so 
 with certainty of being right) concerning his own indi- 
 vidual preference as between Milton and Shakespeare, 
 disenchanted of influence from current conventional 
 tastes, he would not have honestly to confess that he 
 himself enjoys Milton's poetry more than he enjoys 
 Shakespeare's. This suggestion is perhaps gratuitous, 
 and we certainly do not press it, but with it agrees well 
 the peculiar genius of Mr. Lowell's own composition, 
 which often accomplishes its choicest effects, as he says 
 Milton's poetry habitually does, by means of a charm 
 supplied from some remote association of literature or 
 of history. Mr. Lowell thus depreciates Milton, but we 
 thus praise Mr. Lowell. The difference in favor of' 
 Milton is that his art subdues his imagination, while 
 Mr. Lowell's fancy is quite too willful for his art. 
 Milton's charm accordingly is always the handmaid of 
 his purpose. But Mr. Lowell's purpose is often cheated 
 by his charm. "We happen to have an example imme- 
 diately in hand. For, with admirable fitness, the sen- 
 tence quoted above, while imitating in its own move- 
 ment the numerous march and the scenic pomp of the 
 Eoman triumphal procession to which the richly storied 
 progress of Milton's verse is finely compared, contains 
 in the word " Sicambrians " a highly effective spell to 
 the historic imagination that is quite in Milton's man- 
 ner as well as in Mr. Lowell's own. But observe. The 
 6 
 
122 A FEBE LANCE. 
 
 mention of the German tribe, aptly suggested by Mr. 
 Lowell's art, becomes suddenly too stimulating to Mr. 
 Lowell's fancy, and he finishes his sentence with an 
 offset to his praise of Milton, as unintended probably 
 at first with the writer as it certainly is unexpected to 
 the reader, but at any rate quite inartistically discord- 
 ant with its previous tenor. It is very lively, no doubt, 
 to speak of " broad shoulders " in connection with the 
 Sicambrians, but to speak of " broad shoulders " as 
 thrust between us and the thought in Milton's poetry, 
 may be just or it may not to the merit of Milton's man- 
 ner — it is in either case a violent change in the direc- 
 tion of the sentence which goes far to defeat its opening 
 promise altogether. This is clearly a case in which 
 nothing lacked to the production of a rhythmical period 
 of wholly satisfactory prose but the patience and the 
 continence of exercised art. Mr. Lowell is in fact 
 almost everything that goes to the making up of a 
 classic in literature — alas ! almost everything but that 
 which is the supreme thing after all — ^he refuses to be 
 an artist. 
 
 Thus far of the sentence considered as style. A 
 word or two now of the sentence considered as criti- 
 cism. In the first place, Milton's epithets are not 
 " captive " epithets. They are his own epithets as 
 hardly any other poet's epithets are his own. If it had 
 fallen in Mr. Lowell's way to speak thus concerning 
 Gray instead of concerning Milton, he would have hit 
 a truth in criticism, and have hit it very happily. 
 Gray's epithets are indeed exactly captive epithets. 
 They were not born into his dominion, that is to say — 
 they are his, nevertheless, but they are his as spoil of 
 war. For Gray throve as poet by a high style of 
 literary freebootery, something like that recognized 
 piracy which Thucydides says that anciently whole 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 123 
 
 nations of Greek islanders were proud to practice and 
 to avow for their legitimate means of livelihood and 
 wealth. He made honorable forays everywhere into 
 all the poetic Indies of literature, and brought troops 
 of epithets home with him, willingly led in a splendid 
 captivity of which neither captive nor captor had rea- 
 son to be ashamed. And Gray's poetry is to a wonder- 
 ful degree dependent for its charm on these captured 
 adjectives. His poetry might fairly be described, in- 
 deed, as an elaborate mosaic, inlaid and illuminated 
 with other poets' gems and precious stones in a setting 
 supplied by the artist himself, that almost always har- 
 monizes and not seldom heightens their several lustres. 
 These ornaments were culled by Gray with an exquisite- 
 ness of choice which really amounted to genius with 
 him, and they were wrought together into their miracu- 
 lous result with an endless patience of art that, in what 
 it effected, was scarce worth distinguishing from original 
 poetic inspiration. 
 
 Far otherwise is it with Milton. His epithets are 
 not captives. They are as different from captives as 
 possible. There is capture, to be sure, in the case, but 
 it happens in entirely different relations. The epithets 
 themselves are the captors. They make prisoner the 
 picture or the history to which they relate, and bind it 
 fast forever with the bond of a word — a charm of fit- 
 ness that cannot be broken. More : they captivate the 
 imagination of the reader so that he can in no wise 
 thenceforward free himself from vassalage to the magi- 
 cal word. Abana and Pharpar flow for him through 
 rich imaginative realms, always " lucid streams." It 
 is " vernal delight " that the breath of spring inspires. 
 A phrase endows us with a wealth, a phrase invests us 
 with an empire, in the land of the sun, beyond the 
 boast of Croesus, beyond the fame of Alexander — " the 
 
124 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 gorgeous East." ^^ Most musical, most tnelancholy," 
 reconciles us never on this side of the Atlantic to hear 
 the note of his nightingale outside of Milton's verse. 
 
 " Sabcean odors from the spicy shore 
 Of Araby the blest " 
 
 with what an ineffable charm of history, of travel, of 
 romance — with what a fixed embalmment of odorous 
 spice and of " soft delicious " sound it chains us up in 
 musing alabaster ! 
 
 Mr. Lowell forgot himself that moment. He could 
 not consciously have written " captive " of Milton's 
 epithets. But we have probably refuted a meaning 
 that Mr. Lowell never intended to convey. We have 
 done him the unintentional injustice of trying to under- 
 stand him too strictly. The style of the sentence, fine 
 as it is, is fine, it will be observed, after a somewhat 
 mixed and composite rhetorical order. The sentence 
 sets off in language not designed to be figurative. 
 Milton's manner is affirmed to be "slow," to be 
 " stately." There were tropes, however, implicit in 
 these descriptive words, and the delicate verbal tact in 
 Mr. Lowell's pen was sure to feel them there. A simile 
 is the result — "moving as in triumphal procession." 
 No sooner is the simile begun than metaphor seems 
 better to the writer's kindling fancy, and the sentence 
 proceeds in language proper to the triumphal procession 
 alone — "with music, with historic banners, with "spoils 
 from every time and every region " — except that the 
 word " time " here belongs on the other hand only to 
 the poetry. After this the metaphor is suddenly in- 
 verted, and the poetry alone is described, though in 
 terms mixed of metaphor and simile — "and captive 
 epithets, like huge Sicambrians, thrust their broad 
 shoulders between us and the thoiight whose pomp they 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 
 
 1^5 
 
 decorate." The word " captive" seems thus merely to 
 be an explanatory copula between the two terms of the 
 metaphor inverted. In simple candor, therefore, we 
 suppose that Mr. Lowell wrote the adjective with 
 exactly no meaning whatever for it in its application 
 here. He was merely intent on filling out his fine 
 analogy between the Eoman triumph and Milton's 
 verse with one ostensible resemblance more. Critical 
 felicity and, with that, style itself were sacrificed to 
 gratify an importunate and irresistible fancy. In truth 
 it is King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther between Mr. 
 Lowell and his fancy almost everywhere throughout 
 these volumes. The bewitching queen is always on her 
 knees, and the uxorious king is always extending his 
 sceptre. He never wearies of offering to give her the 
 half of his kingdom, and she never blushes to accept 
 the gift. The issue is inevitable — Mr. Lowell remains 
 but a nominal sovereign in his own realm. He con- 
 tinues to reign, but he ceases to govern. 
 
 It was conscientiously, and not grudgingly or cap- 
 tiously, that we added the qualifying clause, " at least 
 in his external characteristics," to our acknowledgment 
 of Mr. Lowell's apparent capacity to appreciate Milton. 
 A reservation seemed necessary. The tenor of the dis- 
 cussion in which the sentence quoted occurs, may well 
 excite a doubt whether the high point of view that 
 reduces the majestic astronomy of Milton's poetry and 
 genius to their true Copemican order has ever been 
 used by Mr. Lowell for a survey of the subject. Here, 
 at any rate, he commits the grave critical mistake of 
 forgetting to consider what is the essential, the differ- 
 entiating characteristic of the species of poetry to which 
 the "Paradise Lost" belongs. He judges epic poetry 
 by the dramatic standard, disparaging Milton's imag- 
 ination in comparison with Shakespeare's, because 
 
126 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 Milton's imagination is epic and Shakespeare's dra- 
 matic. 
 
 There is in reality no common measure of Shake- 
 speare and Milton. They are simply incommensurable 
 magnitudes — ^hopelessly incommensurable. Milton is 
 an epic poet and Shakespeare is a dramatic poet. 
 Shakespeare is unquestionably the first of dramatic 
 poets. But Milton no less unquestionably is the first 
 of epic poets. That is the end of the comparison be- 
 tween them. Anything said further becomes discrimi- 
 nation and contrast of the drama and the epos. For 
 the two are radically different, the radical difference 
 between them being this — that dramatic poetry shows 
 us history making, while epic poetry shows us history 
 made. Dramatic poetry is written in the living pres- 
 ent — the tense of progress and action. Epic poetry 
 is written in the past tense — a kind of remote and 
 absolute aorist. Dramatic poetry asks of us to let the 
 stage fill for its moment the whole field of our view. 
 We are invited to forget that we are not really inhabi- 
 tants of the world which we see represented — not 
 really contemporary with its growing events. We are 
 to be the willing children of fancy. Epic poetry puts 
 a telescope into our hands and inmates us to survey 
 what it reveals afar, without losing conscious sight 
 meantime of objects near at hand visible to the natural 
 eye. We are not desired to forget that we live in a 
 different world fi-om that which we behold — not desired 
 for even an instant to suppose ourselves present at the 
 birth, and witnesses of the growth, of the events de- 
 scribed. We are to exercise the imagination rather 
 than to indulge the fancy. 
 
 From this discrimination of dramatic and epic poetry, 
 it follows of course that what is good in the one may be 
 very bad in the other. For example, since dramatic 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 127 
 
 poetry aims to obliterate differences of date and of place 
 between tbe action and the spectator, anything that 
 tends to impair the vividness of present impression, 
 that asks aid of the imagination and cannot get all it 
 needs front the fancy, is hurtful to proper dramatic 
 effect. On the contrary, it is of the very genius of epic 
 poetry to iaterpose time and distance between the action 
 and the reader, and consequently everything that tends 
 to increase this separation, if properly managed, becomes 
 helpful in the highest degree to the proper epic effect. 
 The longer the vista, the more crowded the perspective 
 — the grander the impression of what is seen at the 
 end, if what is seen is but distinctly seen. Pre-emi- 
 nently is this true of Milton's great poem. For Milton's 
 action is put at the very beginning of time, or before it. 
 All human history has since intervened. The recollec- 
 tion of this is never for a moment to be absent from the 
 reader's mind. It communicates, therefore, the very 
 highest epic grandeur to Milton's verse, when he 
 throngs the intervening distances between us and his 
 action with the figures and events of subsequent his- 
 tory. His " pitfalls of bookish associations " might be 
 a fault, — however splendid a fault, — ^if he were a dra- 
 matic poet. They are no fault, but a consummate vir- 
 tue, in him as an epic poet. A mindful and balanced 
 criticism would have taken account of this. 
 
 We have thus bestowed what might seem a very dis- 
 proportionate amount of attention upon a single illus- 
 trative specimen of style and of criticism. But we have 
 acted with deliberate purpose, for with Mr. Lowell, as 
 with most writers, the sentence is likely to be the micro- 
 cosm of the essay. It is true at least in Mr. Lowell's 
 case that the same capricious law of chance association 
 is ready to east its spell upon his fancy, to lead his con- 
 structive faculty astray, whether in the scheme of an 
 
128 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 essay or in the mould of a sentence. A bright meta- 
 phor, a lucky allusion, a stroke of wit, is to Mr. Lowell 
 what a butterfly, a squirrel, a brook, is to the school- 
 boy. It makes him forget his errand. He plays the 
 truant. He finds plenty of wonderful and delightful 
 things. But he wanders wide of his goal. 
 
 An instance of this occurs at the opening of " Shake- 
 speare Once More." Mr. Lowell begins by doubting 
 somewhat fancifully, though not very freshly, whether 
 any language has resources enough to furnish a vehicle 
 of expression to more than one truly great poet, and 
 whether again any but a single very brief period in the 
 development of the language admits the possibility of 
 that unique phenomenon. He felicitates the race to 
 which Shakespeare belongs on their good luck in the 
 favorable condition of Shakespeare's appearance. He 
 happens in doing so to speak of " that wonderful com- 
 posite called English," and cannot help adding, wittily 
 enough, though not to his purpose, the " best result of 
 the confusion of tongues." But he allows this allusion 
 to suggest the next sentence ; " The English-speaking 
 nations should build a monument to the misguided en- 
 thusiasts of the Plain of Shinar " ! and he then con- 
 cludes the introductory paragraph with a boast on be- 
 half of our language, which, though not inapposite to 
 his general design, prevents the immediate passage from 
 producing a cumulative or even an harmonious impres- 
 sion. The extravagance, the confusion, the movement 
 without progress, the distracted syntax, the whimsieal- 
 ness, and withal the brilliancy and wit in manner, 
 united to strict commonplaceness in matter, which ap- 
 pear in this opening paragraph, make it an admirable 
 reduced model of the entire essay. For this reason it 
 will repay a little examination in detail. 
 
 " It may be doubted whether any language be rich 
 
MR. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 129 
 
 enough to maintain more tlian one truly great poet." 
 This whimsey, not first broached by Mr. Lowell, is so 
 self-evidently absurd that it does not admit of any very 
 satisfactory form of statement. The simplest form, 
 perhaps, is the best. " Possibly no language can fur- 
 nish means of expression to more than one truly great 
 poet." The diflfieulty, however, with the statement in 
 this plain form of it is, that it too sharply confutes itself. 
 Clearly if a language can afford utterance to one truly 
 great poet, it can to another, and to an indefinite num- 
 ber. A truly great poet's use of a language does not 
 impoverish the language. It enriches it rather. But 
 Mr. Lowell employs a more figurative form of state- 
 ment. He suggests a doubt " whether any language 
 be rich enough to maintain more than one truly great 
 poet." As if the language were a gentleman of 
 wealth, and kept poets as a part of his establishment. 
 The real relation exists in a sense precisely inverted. 
 It is the poet that maintains the language, and not the 
 language that maintains the poet. Every preceding 
 poet has made it easier, and not harder, for his succes- 
 sor to find adequate means of expression. 
 
 So much for the common sense of the matter, irre- 
 spective of actual history. But now for actual history 
 — ^let it be in the case of the English language. Is not 
 Milton a great poet ? Mr. Lowell himself calls him so 
 in his essay on " Pope." Or are we to make a distinc- 
 tion, and consider Milton a " great " poet, only not a 
 " truly great " poet ? But let us proceed with our sen- 
 tence and see. After a comma and a dash, Mr. Lowell 
 continues : " and whet^ier there be more than one 
 period, and that very short, * * * when such a 
 phenomenon as a great poet is possible." Here the 
 "great poet" completes its handy little orbit, and 
 revolves promptly into view again, unaccompanied by 
 
130 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 its casual satellite, the " truly "—and we give up our 
 guessing. "And that very short" is a clause without 
 any syntax but a syntax that would reverse Mr. Lowell's 
 actual meaning. 
 
 The next sentence of the paragraph is : " It may be 
 reckoned one of the rarest pieces of good-luck that ever 
 fell to the sliare of a race, that (as was true of Shake- 
 speare) its most rhythmic genius, its acutest intellect, its 
 profoundest imagination, and its healthiest understand- 
 ing should have been combined in one man, and that 
 he should have arrived at the full development of his 
 powers at the moment when the material in which he 
 was to work — that wonderful composite called Eng- 
 lish, the best result of the confusion of tongues — was in 
 its freshest perfection." 
 
 Here is characteristic syntax. It is a labyrinth in 
 wliich Mr. Lowell lost his way. It is easy to mark the 
 exact point where he dropped the clew with which he 
 had entered. It is the word " race " at the close of the 
 first clause. He began with the conception of any 
 race whatever in his mind. From the point named, he 
 continues as if lie had specified the English race. In 
 strictness, as the sentence stands, the pronoun " its " — 
 " its most rhythmic genius, its acutest intellect," etc. — 
 has no antecedent anywhere expressed, and none even 
 implied until subsequently. Its ostensible antecedent 
 is " a race." The real antecedent is a term that is not 
 in the sentence at all, aud that evidently was not in the 
 writer's mind till he wrote the possessive pronoun 
 " its ; " the real antecedent is " the English race." The 
 parenthesis, " as was true of Shakespeare," was ppob- 
 ably inserted as an afterthought, to mediate a recon- 
 cilement between the discordant constructions. But it 
 only serves to produce " confusion worse confounded." 
 " Shakespeare " should be a " race " to justify the paren- 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 131 
 
 thesis, or to make the parenthesis justifying. If Mr. 
 Lowell had said " as was true in the case of the English 
 race," instead of saying " as was true of Shakespeare," 
 he would not, to be sure, have rescued his grammar, 
 but he would have come nearer to rescuing it. It was 
 worth his while to remember so rudimentary a rule of 
 composition as that the parenthesis is not a grammatical, 
 but a rhetorical device. A sentence that will not parse 
 without a parenthesis will not parse with one. The 
 syntax as well as the main sense too of a passage is 
 quite independent of words in parenthesis. Omit the 
 words in this parenthesis, and read the sentence through. 
 The confusion becomes apparent enough. Or omit all 
 that intervenes between the beginning and the ending, 
 and couple the extreme terms of the construction 
 directly together. Thus: "It may be reckoned one 
 of the rarest pieces of good-luck that ever fell to the 
 share of a race [any race], that its best man should 
 have appeared when the English language was in its 
 freshest perfection." This is what Mr. Lowell ^ays, 
 though it is not the whole of what he says. It is just 
 to add that all this abortive strain of expression is 
 thrown away upon a thought or a course of thought 
 that was ill worth the pains when it was new. It may 
 be found, together with much besides that Mr. Lowell 
 has honored with re-statement, in a repertory of Shake- 
 spearean commonplaces no more remote than Mr. 
 Richard Grant "White's "Essay on Shakespeare's 
 Genius," in his excellent edition of Shakespeare's 
 works. Mr. Lowell may have imported into his ver- 
 sion some new degrees of vivacity. But he has also 
 imported into it as many new degrees of extravagance. 
 This is not hypercriticism. Granted, that not one in, 
 ten ordinary readers would of himself observe the de- 
 fects pointed out. Every reader of the ten would have 
 
132 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 felt the unrecognized influence of the defects. Such 
 incertitudes of expression betoken a confusion of 
 thought in the writer which infallibly begets a reflex 
 confusion of intelligence in the reader. One is bewil- 
 dered as he reads, he hardly knows why. Mr. Lowell's 
 lack of wide acceptance with the general reading public 
 is a problem that has perplexed his admirers. Mr. 
 Lowell himself seems not unwilling to bid for more 
 popular recognition in the quasi-colloquial forms of 
 metaphor and of phrase with which he frequently al- 
 loys the purity of his refined and scholarly English.^ 
 "We venture the opinion that it is far more the want of 
 firm and clear conception on his part securing for itself 
 as of necessity its own properly consistent and pellucid 
 expression — far more this, than it is any essentially 
 esoteric quality' in the substance of what he has to com- 
 
 ' " He did not mean Ids great tragedies for scarecrows, as if the 
 nailing of one hawk to the barn-door would prevent the next from 
 coming down souse into the hen-yard." ("Among My Books," p. 324.) 
 
 A verse of Dryden " is worth a ship-load of the long-drawn treacle 
 of modern self -compassion." (" Among My Books," p. 63.) 
 
 " It makes no odds, for you cannot tell one from tother." (" My 
 Study Windows," p. 359.) 
 
 " The bother with Mr. Emerson is," etc. (" My Study Windows," 
 p. 376.) 
 
 " Nothmg is harder than to worry out a date from Herr Stahr's 
 haystaclis of praise and quotation." (" Among My Books," p. 800.) 
 
 A man's ' capacity of indignation ' should exist as a " latent heat 
 in the blood, which makes itself felt in character, a steady reserve 
 for the brain, warming the ovum [why not ' egg ? '] of thought to 
 life, rather than cooking it by a too hasty enthusiasm in reacliing 
 the boiling point." (" My Study Windows," p. 62.) 
 
 Mr. Lowell, by the way, seems unusually fond of all sorts of 
 culinary metaphors and images. We had thought of culling an 
 anthology of specimens for our readers, but the result would per- 
 haps be rather curious than instructive. Mr. Emerson's influence 
 on Mr. Lowell is evident in many ways, but notably in these at- 
 tempts of his to accommodate his diction to the homely popular 
 usage. 
 
ME. LOWELL^S PEOSE. 133 
 
 municate, that keeps Mr. Lowell so steadily remote as 
 he continues to be from the general appreciation. 
 Apart, however, from his impatience of severe and 
 self-tasking labor, first in thought and then in expres- 
 sion — apart, we say, from this, the trick of allusion, 
 the indirection, the talking about and about, the com- 
 mentator's habit, to comprise all in a word, as distin- 
 guished from the independent thinker's habit, ^vhich 
 characterize Mr. Lowell's customary manner, unfit him 
 for face to face encounter with the average reader. "Ze 
 publio se porte Men" the French critic insisted as a jus- 
 tifying reason why the public should not trouble itself 
 to enter into the morbid psychology of certain writers 
 whose ill health imparted a peculiar and more ethereal 
 quality to their production. The American reading 
 public in general is full of affairs, and will stay to listen 
 to no man that has not a straightforward message to 
 deliver. 
 
 Mr. Lowell is no plagiarist. It cannot quite be 
 pleaded in his behalf, to be sure, that he takes posses- 
 sion pf his own wherever he finds it, in the exei-cise of 
 that right of eminent domain in its material which 
 belongs by universal prescription to the sovereignty of 
 paramount genius. But when he borrows, as he frankly 
 and freely does borrow, he always puts the broad arrow 
 of his own individuality upon his appropriations, and 
 they are fairly enough his own. He could reclaim 
 them afterwards by his mark. Still, notwithstanding 
 the vividness with which he re-invests familiar thoughts 
 by virtue of the vividness with which he conceives them 
 anew, the sense of his having been anticipated in them 
 seems generally present to his own mind as a kind of 
 unfriendly haunting demon. This imdefined conscious- 
 ness on his part of being a follower betrays itself to 
 the reader in two quite different ways. Occasionally 
 
134 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 Mr. Lowell will rouse himself on a sudden to the 
 audacity of challenging a first proprietorship in some 
 idea that long since passed into the common currency 
 of literature. He says " I venture," or " it seems to 
 me," to introduce a trite sentiment that at the moment 
 probably does appear to him to be his own, because he 
 has sincerely apprehended it afresh for himself. Far 
 more frequently he labors as if under the spur of a 
 feeling that he must at least supply new moulds of lan- 
 guage, together with additional lights of interpretation 
 and illustration and parallel allusion, to waiTant his 
 working so freely in material that has been furnished 
 from alien mines. His sentence consequently will often, 
 without explicitly stating its main thought at all, pro- 
 ceed on the apparent assumption that it is abeady in 
 the reader's mind as well as in the writer's, and deliver 
 itself up to running this main thought on into a strain 
 of brilliant rhetorical amplification and picturesque 
 comment. The result is a species of writing which is 
 full of piquant surprises in suggestion that are part wit 
 and part poetry, though in exceedingly variable quali- 
 ties and proportions of the two, and which is very often 
 rich in rhythmic verbal eiFects. But to adopt one of lii& 
 own culinary metaphors, it is the whipped cream rather 
 than the roast beef of literature. The Saxon literary 
 stomach asks for food, and Mr. Lowell offers it a flavor. 
 We were at needless pains in a previous paragraph 
 to vindicate the truth of common sense and of fact 
 against the adopted vagary of Mr. Lowell about the 
 necessary historic conditions of a great poet's appear- 
 ance. Mr. Lowell himself elsewhere supplies the suffi- 
 cient refutation of himself. His singular intemperance 
 of statement is continually involving him in real or in 
 apparent inconsistencies. Indeed, his want of self- 
 restraint seems often to become its own retribution. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 135 
 
 For it is very observable, that however extravagant be 
 may at one moment indulge himself in being in a 
 given direction, he is pretty certain, sooner or later, to 
 be taken possession of by the avenging whim of being 
 jnst about equally extravagant in nearly or quite the 
 contraiy direction. Thus the passage alluded to in 
 " Shakespeare Once More," fantastically questioning 
 the possibility of more than one great poet to a lan- 
 guage, and intimating that that one great poet could 
 appear only at the brief crisis of the " freshest perfec- 
 tion " of the language, finds its appropriate offset in 
 the essay on Chaucer, where Mr. Lowell says : " It is 
 truiB that no language is ever so far gone in consump- 
 tion as to be beyond the great-poet-eure. Undoubtedly 
 a man of genius can out of his own superabundant 
 vitality compel life into the most decrepit vocabulary." 
 (" My Study Windows," p. 240.) The admiring student 
 of Mr. Lowell's teeming pages will find his careful 
 comparative attention to these difterent statements re- 
 warded with the discovery of the following interesting 
 and probably unanticipated implications of critical 
 truth : 
 
 First, a language must be in its " freshest perfection " 
 to admit of the appearance of a great poet. 
 
 Secondly, a great poet may notwithstanding appear 
 when a language is at the farthest possible remove 
 from its " freshest perfection." 
 
 Thirdly, a great poet so exhausts any language, how- 
 ever rich, that it is no longer able to maintain another 
 great poet. 
 
 Fourthly, a great poet, on the other hand, is happily 
 capable alone of reviving and re-establishing any lan- 
 guage, however impoverished. 
 
 While, fifthly, and singularly enough, the infiuence 
 of a great poet recovers a moribund language so ex- 
 
136 A FBEE LAKCE. 
 
 cessively, that the language is thenceforth too vigorous 
 to endure the vitalizing virtue of another great poet. 
 
 There is said to be somewhere, if one knew how to 
 reach it, a sublime ecliptieal point of view from which 
 all the apparent contradictions and confusions in human 
 thought are restfuUy interpreted and reconciled to the 
 speculation of the transcendentalist without his effort. 
 Mr. Lowell manifestly lives in the sun, and is a natural 
 astronomer. In his system of the universe of truth, 
 everything is delightfully simple and easy. The san- 
 guine prospect of the observer encounters no difficulties 
 in any direction. A single pregnant discovery of crit- 
 ical law solves all problems and harmonizes all discords. 
 The master principle, that one thing is as true as an- 
 other in criticism, entitles, we think, its discoverer to be 
 acknowledged the Kepler of the critical sphere, as we 
 take great pleasure in proceeding still further to show. 
 
 "We are, then, to present some additional illustration 
 of that artificial enthusiasm of momentary sympathy 
 to which his sense of necessity disposes Mr. Lowell, and 
 by which he is often betrayed into broaching quite 
 irreconcilably contrary critical opinions. We attribute 
 this fault of inconsistency in him to an extravagance on 
 his part of present sympathy in some particular direc- 
 tion — and yet at times Mr. Lowell appears rather to us 
 almost, as it were, pure faculty of intelligence joined to 
 pure capacity of expression apart from any power of j udg- 
 ment, either to embarrass or to guide. We exaggerate, 
 of course, the defect, though scarcely the merit, in 
 choosing our statement. His mind is an incomparable 
 instrument of apprehension for all possible forms of 
 human thought. Nothing is so high, nothing so large, 
 nothing so deep, nothing so strange, nothing so subtle, 
 nothing ' so near, and nothing so far, but once propose 
 it to that "keen seraphic flame" of intelligence, and it 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 137 
 
 will instantly yield its ultimate secret up to the impor- 
 tunate and imperious quest. His gift of language, too, 
 is adequate to all the hard demands for expression that 
 thus arise. Given a sense, or the shade of a sense, a 
 flavor, or the suspicion of a flavor in his author, and 
 Mr. Lowell will not only seize it for you in an instant. 
 In the same instant he will improvise a form of words 
 for it that shall possess every degree of felicity except 
 that last degree, the grace not of nature but of art, 
 which, in a charming paradox, that would seem to have 
 been, though it probably was not,^ itself an illustration, 
 long ago received the name of " curious felicity " — we 
 English transfer rather than translate the happy Latin 
 phrase, ciiriosa felicitas — "careful good-luck." If, 
 therefore, our search were solely for an intellect to ap- 
 prehend, commanding language to express, every con- 
 ception that could possibly be submitted to its operation, 
 there would be little left to desire beyond the qualifi- 
 cations that meet in Mr. Lowell. In fact the mere 
 delight of understanding and of putting into speech 
 too often seems to satisfy his aspiration. There is no 
 insatiable need incorporated into his mental constitu- 
 tion to seek a ground of unity or of harmony for his 
 various impressions. It is enough for him that he has 
 the present impression, and that he is able to give it a 
 suitable language. To adjust it with another previous 
 impression is no part of his concern. Let both take 
 their chance together. There is no paramount claim. 
 Neither owns any right that can exclude the other. 
 As there was no seizin, there can be no disseizin. 
 
 ' We say ' probably was not ' — for the pbrase is attributed to 
 Petronius Arbiter (Beau Brummel to Nero), who used it in speaking 
 of Horace. Petronius was still more a dissolute man of fashion 
 than he was an accomplished man of letters — whence little likely 
 to have bestowed much curious pains upon his work. 
 
138 AFEEE LAKCE. 
 
 The second comer is as good as the first — and no bet- 
 ter. 
 
 If we compare the closing paragraph of the essay on 
 Shakespeare with a sentence or two occurring incident- 
 ally in the course of an essay on " Eousseau and the 
 Sentimentalists," we shall meet with a very good illus- 
 tration. Mr. Lowell's title, " Shakespeare Once More," 
 implies his own sense of the difficulty of attracting 
 public literary attention by saying anything new on so 
 hackneyed a theme, and the whole essay seems to 
 betray that uneasy effort to overtop predecessors in far- 
 sought hyperbole of adulation, which such a conscious- 
 ness was likely to beget in a mind not disposed to break 
 in any degree with the prevalent best-bred traditions 
 of criticism on the subject. Accordingly the entire 
 paper has too much the air of seeking its reason of 
 existence in assuming what has already anywhere been 
 said in eulogy of the lucky dramatist, and advancing 
 upon it a degree or two farther in the direction of 
 the conventional extravagance. Having therefore ex- 
 hausted the resources of his intense and brilliant rheto- 
 ric in praising the genius of Shakespeare, what had 
 the critic left for crowning his climax but to set the 
 character of Shakespeare still higher than his genius ? 
 It seems that Shakespeare is not only the greatest 
 genius, but the most admirable character, in human 
 history ! And this is the style in which the thing is 
 done : — 
 
 " But higher even than the genius we rate the char- 
 acter of this unique man, and the grand impersonality 
 of what he wrote. "What has he told us of himself? 
 In our self-exploiting nineteenth century, with its mel- 
 ancholy liver-complaint, how serene and high he seems ! 
 If he had sorrows, he has made theui the woof of ever- 
 lasting consolation to his kind; and if, as poets are 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 139 
 
 wont to whine, tlie outward world was cold to him, its 
 biting air did but trace itself in loveliest frost-work of 
 fancy on the many windows of that self-centred and 
 cheerful soul." (" Among My Books," p. 227.) 
 
 Before analyzing this paragraph to determine the 
 quality of what it contains in itself, let us set by the 
 side of it a few sentences which we find in the essay 
 entitled " Eousseau and the Sentimentalists : " — 
 
 " There is nothing so true, so sincere, so downright 
 and forthright, as genius. It is always truer than the 
 man himself is, gi'eater than he. If Shakespeare the 
 man had been as marvellous a creature as the genius 
 that wrote his plays, that genius so comprehensive in 
 its intelligence, so wise even in its play, that its clowns 
 are moralists and philosophers, so penetrative that a 
 single one of its phrases reveals to us the secret of our 
 own character, would his contemporaries have left us 
 so wholly without -record of him as they have done, 
 distinguishing him in no wise from his fellow-players ? " 
 ("Among My Books," p. 359.) 
 
 The collation of these two passages offers to the 
 pleased student of truth the following important re- 
 sults : 
 
 On the one hand, in the same individual the genius 
 is always greater than the character. 
 
 On the other hand, the character is sometimes greater 
 than the genius in the same individual. 
 
 In Shakespeare notably the genius was greater than 
 the character. 
 
 But, in turn, the character was greater than the genius 
 in Shakespeare. 
 
 If now it could also appear that perhaps, in addition 
 to being sometimes both mutually superior and mutu- 
 ally inferior to each other, genius and character were 
 likewise never either superior or inferior to each other. 
 
14:0 A FKEE LANCE. 
 
 but were, on the contrary, always exactly equal, or, 
 better still, essentially identical, the satisfaction of the 
 inquiring and ingenuous mind would be complete. 
 Nothing is to be despaired of to the reader of Mr. 
 Lowell. "We shuffle the pages and we have: "Nay, 
 may we not say that great character is as rare a thing 
 as great genius, if it be not even a nobler form of it ? " 
 {"Among My Books," p. 298.) All the stimulating- 
 antinomies necessary to constitute a many-sided, in 
 fact, a completely spherical criticism are realized here. 
 In close connection with the sentence just cited from 
 the essay on Lessing we iind this : " Since Luther, Ger- 
 many has given birth to no such intellectual athlete 
 [as Lessing] — to no son so German to the core. [The 
 anti-climax is a favorite figure of Mr. Lowell's.] 
 Greater poets she has had, but no greater writer." 
 Poets and writers are not generally understood to be 
 antithetical classes. What Mr. Lowell means by the 
 discrimination we have honestly studied to find out, 
 but in vain. Whether he means that take Lessing's 
 poetry, indiiferent as it is, and his prose together, they 
 make him a greater author than any other German 
 poet or prose writer, greater even than Goethe (postha- 
 hita Samo) ; or whether he means that Lessing, though 
 surpassed in poetry, has never been surpassed in prose 
 by any German ; or whether he means that, considering 
 Lessing the man along with Lessing the author, we 
 must rank him as Germany's greatest — whether one of 
 these three things, or some fourth thing, far wiser, that 
 we have not had the luck to hit upon at all, Mr. Lowell 
 himself would have to be invoked to decide. He ends 
 the passage by acknowledging Goethe to be " rightfully 
 preeminent," and then putting Lessing above him, both 
 in the same sentence. On the whole, Mr. Lowell in 
 this instance has chosen not to offer us Lessing's famous 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PROSE. 141 
 
 hypothetical alternative. His right hand, with the 
 truth of his meaning in it, he keeps back. But in his 
 left hand he certainly holds out to us the most liberal 
 opportunity of eternally seeking the truth. 
 
 It were an idle inquiry which one of the two some- 
 what inconsistent judgments of Shakespeare above 
 quoted is Mr. Lowell's more intimate conviction. The 
 one incidentally suggested by way of illustration in the 
 course of a discussion not directly related to Shake- 
 speare is perhaps more likely to reflect Mr. Lowell's 
 habitual thought, and it lias, beyond that, the advan- 
 tage of common sense on its side. But attentive read- 
 ing of nearly the entire body of criticism comprised in 
 these volumes Strongly tends to persuade us that both 
 the judgments of Shakespeare which we have thus 
 brought together for mutual acquaintance from quarters 
 so widely separated, were neither more nor less, in their 
 several places, than mere rhetorical expedients. They 
 were improvised for different occasions. It was but 
 natural that they should differ from each other. 
 
 It was not necessary to bring together sentences from 
 separate essays in order to illustrate Mr. Lowell's cheer- 
 ful independence of himself Within the brief com- 
 pass of the essay on Pope these various expressions 
 occur — harmonize them who can: "In Pope's next 
 poem, the 'Essay on Criticism,' the wit and poet be- 
 come apparent." (" My Study Windows," pp. 409-410.) 
 " I come now to what in itself would be enough to 
 have immortalized him as a poet, the ' Rape of the 
 Lock,' in which, indeed, he appears more purely as 
 poet than in any other of his productions." {Ih., p. 
 410.) " I think he has here touched exactly the point 
 of Pope's merit, and, in doing so, tacitly excludes him 
 from the position of poet, in the highest sense." (Ih., 
 p. 423-4.) " However great his merit in expression, I 
 
142 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 think it impossible that a true poet could have written 
 such a satire as the Dunciad." {lb-, p. 425.) " Even 
 in the 'Rape of the Lock,' the fancy is that of a wit 
 rather than of a poet." {Ih., p. 425.) " The abiding 
 presence of fancy in his best work [the ' Rape of the 
 Lock '] forbids his exclusion from the rank of poet." 
 {Ih., p. 432.) " Where Pope, as in the ' Rape of the 
 Lock,' found a subject exactly level with his genius, he 
 was able to make what, taken for all in all, is the most 
 perfect poem in the language." {Ih., p. 432.) ' These 
 citations we have given in the order in which they 
 occur in the text with the exception of the last two, 
 which we could not resist the temptation to transpose 
 for the sake of securing, as we thought, a little happier 
 climax. 
 
 But let us return to look again at the paragraph with 
 which Mr. Lowell concludes the most important, and 
 in many respects the best, of his essays. Mr. Lowell 
 says that he honors the character still more than he 
 honors the genius of Shakespeare. " Higher even than 
 the genius we rate the character of this unique man," 
 are his words. Thus far the sentence is simple and the 
 sense is easy to the understanding, however hard it 
 may be to the judgment. But after a manner of Mr. 
 Lowell's he adds an unexpected clause. The purpose 
 apparently is to make the sense easier to the judgment. 
 The principal effect, however, is to make the sense 
 harder to the imderstanding. The whole sentence is : 
 " Higher even than the genius we rate the character of 
 this unique man, and the grand impersonality of what 
 he wrote." As if suddenly conscious, with that swift, 
 
 ' " Thet is, I mean, it seems to me so, 
 But, ef the public think I'm wrong, 
 I wunt deny but wut I be so." 
 
 — " The Biglow Papers." 
 
ME, LOWELL'S PEOSE. 143 
 
 not seldom too swift, syntliesis of thought for which 
 Mr. Lowell is justly remarkable, as if thus suddenly 
 conscious of the bald absurdity involved in such an 
 avowal of preference with respect to a man of whose 
 personal history we know little, and of whose personal 
 history his wisest admirers would wish we knew less, 
 Mr. Lowell attaches a kind of rider to his principal 
 clause, in the woi'ds " and the grand impersonality of 
 what he wrote," by way of an interpretative enfeeble- 
 ment of the meaning, as willing so to reduce it within 
 rational bounds. Mr. Lowell, then, unable to ground 
 his preference of Shakespeare's character to Shake- 
 speare's genius on knowledge, groimds it on ignorance, 
 of the man. Shakespeare the man is more admirable 
 than Shakespeare the genius, because Shakespeare the 
 genius is impersonal in his work! But Shakespeare 
 was far from impei'sonal certainly in his sonnets — poems 
 full of a luscious sweetness in passages, and with hints 
 here and there of the Shakespearean insight, but of a 
 prevailing quality such that the gentle-spoken and judi- 
 cious Hallam is well warranted in his regret that they 
 ever were written. Mr. Lowell, therefore', must refer 
 to the impersonal quality of Shakespeare in his dramas. 
 But the inexorable condition of success in dramatic 
 composition is that the writer shall forego the pleasure 
 of obtruding his own personality in his work. To be 
 willing to forego this pleasure is one thing — to be able 
 to forego it is another. To be willing to forego it may 
 be manly. That perhaps is a matter of character. To 
 be able to forego it is a higher achievement. But that 
 is a matter of genius. To use a homely figure, embold- 
 ened by the plentiful example of Mr. Lowell himself, 
 we may say that the sentence has neatly, like a cat, 
 caught its tail in its mouth. For, saying that Shake- 
 speare's character is more wonderful than his genius, 
 
144 
 
 A FREE LAJSrCE. 
 
 because his genius is impersonal in its work, is only 
 saying that Shakespeare's genius is more wonderful than 
 his genius. A lame and impotent conclusion, to be sure, 
 but worthier than to have let the unqualified absurdity 
 of the first declaration stand. 
 
 The few sentences that follow the one on which we 
 have now particularly remarked at the close of the 
 essay on Shakespeare, are characterized by a peculiarity 
 of Mr. Lowell's manner which often offends in him 
 against purity and homogeneity of tone. We quote 
 again : " What has he told us of himself? In our self- 
 exploiting nineteenth century, with its melancholy liver- 
 complaint, how serene and high he seems ! If he had 
 sorrows, he has made them the woof of everlasting con- 
 solation to his kind ; and if, as poets are wont to whine, 
 the outward world was cold to him, its biting air did 
 but trace itself in loveliest frost-work of fancy on the 
 many windows of that self-centred and cheerful soul." 
 We do not think that poets are wont to "whine" that 
 the outward world was cold to Shakespeare. Nor do 
 we think that the world was cold to Shakespeare, or 
 is, or is ever likely to be, to him, or to any of his 
 kind. Shakespeare is of the world, and the world 
 always loves its own. Nor again, to take Mr. Lowell 
 now as he means, and no longer as he says, can it be 
 truly charged against " poets " that they " are wont to 
 whine " of the world as cold to them % Here and there 
 a poet " whines," no doubt, often with good reason, too, 
 of the world's coldness to his claims. But more poets, 
 against good reason, refrain from whining. " Whin- 
 ing" is not characteristic of their class.^ Whatever 
 
 ' Mr. Lowell repeatedly accuses his age of "liver-complaint." 
 In " Among My Books," p. 332, he says sentimentalism [" melodious 
 whining "] began with Housseau. In the same volume, p. 366, he 
 says it began with Petrarch — several centuries earlier. 
 
ME. Lowell's peose. 145 
 
 may be the truth as to this, it is a disagreeable, a peev- 
 ish, a morbid note interjected here to speak of the cen- 
 tury's " melancholy liver-complaint," and of the poets' 
 "whine." Such discords in tone are very frequent 
 everywhere with Mr. Lowell. They have a singularly 
 disenchanting effect on the reader. They make him 
 ask himself. Does this cracked voice, this frequent sud- 
 den falsetto, betray the critic's natural expression, and 
 is the manful heartiness and wholesomeness, are the 
 sound chest-tones, with which he generally aims to 
 speak, the artificial instrument which nature, overmas- 
 tering habit, ever and anon makes him forget to use ? 
 
 How purely false and sentimental the suggestion is 
 about Shakespeare's exposure to the neglect of the 
 world, is understood at once on recalling the fact that 
 he retired to Stratford, in his still unbroken prime, ac- 
 companied by the general good-will, to enjoy an income 
 reasonably computed to have been equivalent to ten 
 thousand dollars (present value) a year. And as to the 
 admirableness of his temper under such very tolerable 
 poet's adversity, Mr. Kichard Grant White sorrowfully 
 testifies that Shakespeare's chief latter wish seemed to 
 be to rank as a considerable landed proprietor in his 
 native shire, and that the records show his serene high- 
 ness to have been repeatedly engaged in the extremely 
 human occupation of suing delinquent debtors to re- 
 cover sums nominated in his bonds ! . 
 
 But Mr. Lowell loves to say whatever admits of being 
 said, and he has been willing to compromise his chal- 
 lenge for Shakespeare of complete impersonality in his 
 dramas, so far as to suggest the ingenious and interest- 
 ing conjecture that Prospero perhaps was consciously 
 intended to represent the dramatist himself.' There 
 
 ■ "Prospero (the very Shakespeare himself, as it were, of the 
 tempest)." Coleridge (Worlis, Am. ed., vol. iv., p. 75). 
 
146 A FKEE LANCE. 
 
 is at least a plausible illustrative fitness in the sugges- 
 tion. No character of all that miniature mankind 
 which inhabits the mierocosmic page of Shakespeare so 
 happily answers to our conception of Shakespeare him- 
 self as the gracious and gentle wizard Prospero. The 
 wisest loyalty to Shakespeare's fame will not seek to 
 enthrone him too high. Tennyson's lines seat him high 
 enough : 
 
 For there was Milton like a seraph strong. 
 Beside liim Shakespeare bland and mild. 
 
 It is much if Shakespeare be admitted to smooth his 
 placid brow in neighborhood to the severe and serene, 
 the seraphic aspect of Milton. More it were mere 
 fatuity to ask. 
 
 Mr. Lowell is perhaps at his strongest as critic when 
 he is characterizing single qualities of his author, and 
 when he is indulging in those minor appreciations of par- 
 ticular passages and phrases or charm-like words which 
 he loves to intersperse throughout his more general dis- 
 cussions. His sentiment and his fancy are exquisitely 
 susceptible to verbal spells, and he is seldom or never 
 at fault in divining just where the true secret of a 
 poetic incantation lies. He thus speaks of Milton's 
 " fulmined over Greece " as " Yirgilian " in its Latin- 
 ized phrase, and as conveying "at once the idea of 
 flash and [of] reverberation," while avoiding "that 
 of riving and shattering," He contrasts with this 
 the Shakespearean "oak-cleaving thimderbolts " and 
 "the all-dreaded thunder-stone" as differently fine in 
 equally efi^ective adherence to the native Saxon idiom. 
 " What home-bred English," he aptly asks, however, 
 " could ape the high Koman fashion of such togated 
 words as 
 
 The multitudinous sea[s] incarnadine. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 147 
 
 where the huddling epithet implies the tempest-tossed 
 soul of the speaker, and at the same time pictures the 
 wallowing waste of ocean more vividly than the fanibus 
 phrase of ^schylus does its rippling sunshine 1 " The 
 " more vividly " here is in accordance with Mr. Lowell's 
 tendency to overstatement. The " innumerable, laugh- 
 ter " of ^schylus is Attic, and " the multitudinous seas 
 incarnadine " is a kind of British Romanesque, but the 
 Greek and the English, as far as we can see, are equally 
 vivid for their several purposes. It is hard for Mr. 
 Lowell to secure harmony — ^his single felicities are in- 
 stinctive. " Milton's parsimony (so rare in him) [in 
 whom else, pray, than Milton, should ' Milton's parsi- 
 mony ' be rare ? But how again, if parsimony be rare 
 in Milton, is there properly any such quality as ' Mil- 
 ton's parsimony ' to be spoken of at all ?] makes the 
 success, of his 
 
 ' Sky lowered, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops 
 Wept at completion ' of the-mortal sin.' " 
 
 ("Among My Books," p. 185.) Here the particular ap- 
 preciation is just and fine, but the generalized depre- 
 ciation is hasty and unsustained. Can the author of 
 
 Rose like an exhalation 
 
 to describe the noiseless, swift, and buoyant spring of 
 that aerial architecture under faUen-angelic hands — of 
 
 Seems another mom 
 Eisen on mid-noon, 
 
 to describe the sudden illumination of Eaphael's de- 
 scent to Adam and Eve in Eden — of 
 Led her blushing like the morn,' 
 
 ' " Completing," Instead of " completion," is Milton's word- 
 chosen for nice reason. 
 ' With the incandescent purity of this unfaUen similitude of 
 
148 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 to describe the auroral flush of color that suffused the 
 maiden Eve as Adam for the first time took her hand 
 —of 
 
 Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, 
 
 to describe the solemn and choral alacrity with which 
 the just-created trees sprang to their station and their 
 stature, at the fiat of the Omnific Word — of 
 
 What seemed his head 
 The likeness of a kingly crown had on, 
 
 to describe the spectral brow, that -wore the spectral 
 crown, of Death — the apparition of a crown on the 
 apparition of a brow — of 
 
 Far off his coming shone, 
 
 to describe the advancing state of Filial Deity bent 
 against the rebel angels — of 
 
 Eternal wrath 
 Burnt after them to the bottomless pit, 
 
 to describe the pauseless, measureless, ruinous rout of 
 the apostate host fleeing into the abyss — can the author 
 of these and of many other such creative phrases of 
 the great imagination be wisely characterized as not 
 knowing how to be effectively frugal in words ? But 
 
 Milton's, to which it would not he unfit to apply the language of his 
 own resplendent line — ■ 
 
 Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought — 
 
 Mr. Richard Grant Wliite, with such felicity, compares the follow- 
 ing equivocal leer in Sliakespeare — 
 
 A pudency eo rosy, the sweet view on't 
 Might well have warmed old Saturn— 
 
 to the advantage of Shakespeare, of course — ^because Shakespeare's 
 verses have no " like " in them ! 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 149 
 
 Mr. Lowell, according to his wont, was exclusively oc- 
 cupied with devotion to a single author. He had no 
 use for Milton here but to make him a foil for his 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 A curious parallel might be cited that superficially 
 would prove the exact opposite of Mr. Lowell's dictum 
 as to Shakespeare's and Milton's comparative parsimony 
 with words in the production of their effects. Shake- 
 speare has : 
 
 As sweet, and musical, 
 As Ijright Apollo's lute, strung witli Ms hair. 
 
 Milton has : 
 
 As musical as is Apollo's lute. 
 
 Milton's line is from one of his youthful pieces, the 
 " Comus," and if he followed Shakespeare's in it, as is 
 unlikely, the copyist's natural temptation to justify 
 himself by drawing out his original in additions, only 
 makes the self-restraint manifested more noteworthy. 
 It would look at first sight as if Milton were here, in a 
 crucial case, proved the more frugal of the two. The 
 wanton overgrowth, if there is any in either, is cer- 
 tainly Shakespeare's rather than Milton's. But we 
 should fall into Mr. Lowell's own mistake of precip- 
 itate judgment to affirm a characteristic difference 
 between the two poets on so slight a foundation. The 
 truth rather is, that Milton was discoursing of divine 
 philosophy and an Attic taste happened here best to 
 become him. Shakespeare's different purpose permitted 
 the fanciful excesses of his verse, and with help to his 
 more composite effect. And in general the fact seems 
 to be that both Shakespeare (at least when he is pure 
 dramatist and not proper poet at all) and Milton are 
 indifferently ready to be now concentrated and now 
 
150 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 diflPase, as tlie particular occasion requires. If Shake- 
 speare wishes to flash a sudden eft'ect upon us, like a 
 gleam of lightning which reveals a whole world in an 
 instant, he makes King Lear invoke the aged elements 
 in that sublime, that most pathetic adjuration — though 
 even here the luxurious habits of Shakespeare's less 
 disciplined genius tempt him to be lavish after he 
 had shown himself capable of munificent parsimony.^ 
 If he describes Cleopatra's barge or the Field of the 
 Cloth of Gold, he does as Milton does in describing 
 Hell and in describing Paradise — he overwhelms us 
 with profusion. Mr. Lowell is primarily a poet, next 
 he is a rhetorician, pure critic is he last of all, or not at 
 all. He criticises very well as long as he remains a 
 poet. When he becomes a rhetorician, his criticism is 
 often a series of misleading freaks. 
 
 It seems strange, by the way, to note a word wrong 
 or a word out of place in poetical citations made by a 
 taste so nice as Mr. Lowell's, and, shall we add, by a 
 criticism so very exigent in its demands of exactness 
 from others. That Goldsmith's 
 
 Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, 
 
 should appear 
 
 Remote, unfriendly. 
 
 ' We are perfectly conscious that our instance from Shakespeare 
 makes rather against than for our concession to him of the quality 
 in question. The fact is, that Shakespeare's dramatic imagination 
 often enough produces its effect with few words ; but his poetic 
 imagination, call it fancy rather, had a quite irresistible tendency 
 to " native " profusion. We have tried in vain to recall a good 
 example in Shakespeare of a distinctively poetic effect, on a grand 
 scale, produced as are so many of Milton's, by a stroke of language. 
 So wholly wrong seems Mr. Lowell to us to have been in his dis- 
 crimination of Shakespeare and Milton on this point. 
 
ME. LOWELLS PEOSE. 151 
 
 ill Mr. Lowell's text (" Among My Books," p. 3Y), may be 
 attributed to negligent revision of the press, or even to 
 intentional change (though the change seems not re- 
 quired by the purpose), the better to humor a pleasantry 
 of the critic's. But Wordsworth's beamy verse. 
 
 The light that never was, on sea or land, 
 
 becomes 
 
 The Ught that never was on land or sea, 
 
 on Mr. Lowell's page (" My Study Windows," p. 388), 
 as if taken carelessly at second-hand from current mis- 
 quotation.* Did Mr. Lowell mean to offer us a 'silent 
 emendation in quoting (" Among My Books," p. 161) 
 The multitudinous sea incarnadine 
 
 for 
 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine? 
 
 Mr. Lowell very frankly furnishes us the means of 
 tracing the pedigree of that unhappy compound adjec- 
 tive of his in "The Cathedral," down-shod, when he 
 invites our admiration to Dryden's heavy-buoyant, 
 tramping-tripping 
 
 And all ye hours. 
 That danced away with down upon your feet. 
 
 He can afford to be frank, for he has certainly packed 
 Dryden's conceit in the very smallest possible compass, 
 and it is a case in which verbal parsimony is cogently 
 recommended by the slight value of the idea to be 
 expressed. A sentiment recurs several times in Mr. 
 Lowell's prosB, which he has also induced to sing 
 modestly in very neat verse — verse good enough, in 
 
 ' We notice that Mr. Whittier quoting this line makes the same 
 mistake, in his charming introduction to " John Woohnan's Journal." 
 
152 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 fact, to be let alone for ultimate on the subject, and so 
 to stand for illustration of itselt^ — 
 
 Tliougli old the thought and oft exprest, 
 'Tis his at last who says it best. 
 
 This is the theory on which Mr. Lowell appears to have 
 written his essays. Success would have been its own 
 sufficient justification. Adequate elfort would have 
 condoned a failure. To have failed without the eflPort 
 made, betrays a conception on the author's part of the 
 conditions under which a vital literature is produced 
 that falls, we think, very far below the pitch of their 
 true gravity and severity. 
 
 But we reproach ourselves. We feel that we have 
 as yet done scant justice to the prolific critical results 
 that flow from Mr. Lowell's emancipated literary meth- 
 ods. This new criticism prepares literally no end of 
 exhilarating shocks for its trustful disciples. Take a 
 fresh example : " The quahty in Lim [Shakespeare] 
 which makes him at once so thoroughly English and so 
 thoroughly cosmopolitan is that aeration of the under- 
 standing by the imagination which he has in common 
 with all the greater poets, and which is the privilege of 
 genius." ("Among My Books," p. 182.) We easily for- 
 give the inelegance of the duplicated relative construc- 
 tions here when we consider how much the critic had to 
 express, and what strength of elastic mutual repugnancy 
 among its components he was obliged to overcome in 
 order to embrace them all harmoniously within the 
 bounds of a single sentence. ISTote : — To have the un- 
 derstanding leavened with imagination is English [ ! ], 
 is thoroughly English ; it is universal, thoroughly uni- 
 versal ; next, in the wide distribution of this English 
 trait to everybody in the world, Shakespeare even, and 
 with him all the greater poets, have not been overlooked ; 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PROSE. 153 
 
 while finally, genius possesses it in a kind of monopoly. 
 What, we ask, could be more inspiriting to the youthful 
 mind than to be whirled about for a season in the vor- 
 tices of a sentence like that? What — unless it be to 
 find out after the excitement is over that Mr. Lowell has 
 contrived it all, without any real paradox in thought, by 
 mere legerdemain of style ? For Mr. Lowell's meaning 
 is apparently this: That Shakespeare's solidity of un- 
 derstanding kept him thoroughly national as an English- 
 man, while his gift of imagination, qualifying that, put 
 him in efiective sympathy with all men of every race ; 
 — that this temperament belongs to great poets gener- 
 ally, and is indeed the prerogative of genius. A very 
 sensible view, which it required some ingenuity to 
 present so as to produce the authentic lively and re- 
 freshing effect of paradox. 
 
 Again : " He [Shakespeare] was an English poet in a 
 sense that is true of no other." (" Among My Books," 
 p. 226.) "Dryden, the most English of our poets." 
 {Ih., p. 42.) 
 
 Once more : " If I may trust my own judgmeiit, it 
 [' the Roman genius '] produced but one original poet, 
 and that was Horace." (" My Study Windows," pp. 238, 
 239.) " The invocation of Venus, as the genetic force 
 of nature, by Lucretius, seems to me the one sunburst 
 of purely poetic inspiration which the Latin language 
 can show." {Ih., p. 239.) 
 
 Of Burns, Mr. Lowell says that he has been wronged 
 by that " want of true appreciation, which deals in 
 panegyric, and would put asunder those two things 
 which God has joined, — the poet and the man." 
 (" Among My Books," p. 291.) Having thus once for all 
 declared the genius and the man indissolubly married, 
 he divorces them (and it happens by a very fine felicity 
 to be in allusion to Burns again) after this fashion : 
 
154 A FEEE LAJSrCE. 
 
 " "With genius itself we never find any fault. * * * 
 We care for nothing outside the poem itself. * * * 
 Whatever he was or did, somehow or other God let 
 him be worthy to write this, and that is enough for us. 
 We forgive everything to the genius ; we are inexora- 
 ble to the man." (" Among My Books," p. 356.) 
 
 " Character, — the only soil in which real mental 
 power can root itself and find sustenance." (" Among 
 My Eooks," p. 318.) " Shakespeare, Goethe, Burns, — 
 what have their biographies to do with ns ? Genius is 
 not a question of character." (" Among My Books," 
 pp. 356, 357.) 
 
 Mr. Lowell's talent for fairness (give him room to 
 " orb about ") is, we half suspect, something more than 
 talent. It has at least one of the characteristics which 
 he himself attributes to genius. It is exceedingly 
 "forthright." And sometimes we even think it is 
 " greater than he ; " for we find it now and then snatch- 
 ing a grace of comprehensive impartiality a little 
 beyond, we are sure, the reach of the critic's conscious 
 art. The analysis and harmony of the following pas- 
 sages will supply several instances : 
 
 " [We] will venture to assert that it is only poets of 
 the second class that find successful imitators. And 
 the reason seems to us a very plain one. The genius 
 of the great poet seeks repose in the expression of 
 itself, and finds it at last in style, which is the establish- 
 ment of a perfect mutual understanding between the 
 worker and his material. The secondary intellect, on 
 the other hand, seeks for excitement in expression, and 
 stimulates itself into ifaannerism, which is the wilful 
 obtrusion of self, as style is its unconscious abnegation." 
 
 * * * "I know that Milton's manner is very grand. 
 
 * * But it is manner, nevertheless, as is proved by 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 155 
 
 the ease with which it is parodied," etc. (" Among 
 My Books," pp. 181, 184.) 
 
 " Language, I suspect, is more apt to be reformed 
 by the charm of some master of it, like Milton, than 
 by any amount of precept. The influence of second- 
 rate writers for evil is at best ephemeral, for true style, 
 the joint result of culture and natural aptitude, is 
 always in fashion, as fine manners always are, in what- 
 ever clothes." (" My Study "Windows," pp. 401, 402.) 
 
 " The dainty trick of Tennyson cloys when caught 
 by a whole generation of Versifiers, as the style [italics 
 Mr. Lowell's] of a great poet never can be." (''My 
 Study Windows," p. 211.) 
 
 The first of the foregoing citations makes broad the 
 distinction between " manner" and " style," and afiirms 
 that "manner" is the brand of second-class genius, 
 while " style " is the attribute exclusively of first-class 
 genius. It ascribes "manner" to Milton, accounting 
 thus for the fact alleged of his being imiliable, and in- 
 ferring thence his second-class rank : — 
 
 The second of the citations contrasts the ephemeral 
 influence exerted on letters for evil by the mannerisms 
 of second-rate writers, with the perennial influence 
 exerted on letters for good by the " true style " of a 
 master of language lUte Milton :^- 
 
 The third of the citations pronounces it a universal 
 law that " style" pertaining only to first-class genius, 
 IS beyond the reach of imitation. 
 
 It thus appears that 
 
 First, if Mr. Lowell has in one place roundly refused 
 to Milton the attribute of "style," that circumstance 
 in his opinion is no reason why he should not, in 
 another place, handsomely concede to Milton the attri- 
 bute of " style ; " 
 
 Secondly, if Mr. Lowell has in one place formally 
 
156 A FREE LAUCE. 
 
 demonstrated that Milton was a second-class writer, he 
 is not therefore the less ready in another place, with 
 great and unconscious liberality, to imply that he was 
 not a second-class writer ; and, 
 
 Thirdly, if Mr. Lowell has seen it necessary to 
 aflSrm iu one place that Milton's lack of " style," as 
 distinguished from "maimer," exposed him to imitation, 
 he would consider it mere critical bigotry not to ac- 
 knowledge in another place the equally important com- 
 plementary fact that Milton's possession of " style," as 
 distinguished from " manner," rendered him for ever 
 incapable of being imitated. 
 
 It may possibly be that within the compass of these 
 volumes an instance could be found where either the 
 positive or the negative pole of expressed opinion on a 
 critical point has been left unsupported by the presence 
 somewhere else in them of the just counterpoising repul- 
 sion of its diametrical opposite. But in face of criti- 
 cism so unconsciously provident as this, we should not 
 like to assert it. 
 
 One experiences several successive ' degrees,' as the 
 medical men say, of efl'ect from the influence of Mr. 
 Lowell's company when he is exercising his office of 
 critic. The iirst degree is a certain bewilderment. 
 Follows a rallying surprise and shock. Then for a 
 while one feels his spirits constantly rising. One could 
 take critical excursions forever with Mr. Lowell. There 
 is such a dehghtful sense of escape. The attraction of 
 gravitation is abolished, and we are careering away at 
 large on the wings of the wind in the boundless coun- 
 try of the unconditioned. In fact, we are going up in 
 a balloon. It is glorious. But we grow a little light- 
 headed. We remember Gambetta. Gambetta went 
 up in a balloon. One would not like to resemble 
 Gambetta. Our elation gives way. "We pray for a 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 157 
 
 return to the domain of law. We sigh like Ganymede, 
 like Europa, for the solid ground. The Pegasean gait 
 that seems proper for the poet becomes extremely dis- 
 composing at last in the critic. If the journey is to be 
 a critical one (no pun is intended, though the tempta- 
 tion is great, and Mr. Lowell's example is very conta- 
 gious) we choose the peaceful paces of the steady-going 
 palfrey that keeps to mother earth rather than the ample 
 bounds in air of a " courser of immortal strain." 
 
 What has already been given may suffice for a comr 
 pectus of Mr. Lowell's critical discrepancies. We are 
 ready now for a little further attention to the style 
 independently of the criticism. 
 
 The most characteristic and most essential happens 
 also to be the most salient quality of Mr. Lowell's 
 style. It is a wit that is as omnipresent and as tireless 
 as electricity itself. He himself says in English of 
 Carlyle what, as has elsewhere been pointed out by 
 another, had already been said in French of Michelet, 
 that he saw history by flashes of lightning. It would 
 be equally true to say of Mr. Lowell that he reads 
 literature by flaslies of wit. The eifect is quite inde- 
 scribable. A quivering, phosphorescent sheen plays 
 everywhere over the pages, and sets them in a tremu- 
 lous illumination that never permits the attention of 
 the reader to sleep. To give any adequate idea by 
 example of the pervasive influence on his prose of this 
 quality of Mr. Lowell's, we should be obliged to quote 
 the entire contents of the volumes. We are sure that 
 no other equal amount of literature could be produced 
 that would yield to a competent assay a larger net 
 result of pure wit. Generally the spirit of the wit is 
 humane and gracious. Often, even in cases where it 
 appears to be otherwise, the acerbity is so manifestly 
 assumed for the sake of the wit that we easily forgive 
 
158 A FKEE LAKCE. 
 
 the illusion of pain inflicted to the reality of the 
 pleasure conferred. But here, as in some other points, 
 Mr. Lowell sins by too much. He has humored his 
 wit till his wit has become too wayward for him. The 
 servant and the master exchange places. Mr. Lowell's 
 exaggerated sense of the ludicrous cheats him into the 
 indulgence of the extravagant and grotesque. The 
 "aerating" principle predominates in his temperament. 
 And yet when we encounter in him the levity that 
 results from vivacity unrestrained, we remain still at a 
 loss whether to blame or to excuse. On the one hand, 
 his gifts and his accomplishments, perhaps we ought 
 to add the pretensions implied in his work, incline us 
 to hold him to a strict accountability. But, on the 
 other, we doubt if his opportunities have been favor- 
 able. It is true enough that brilliant table-talk and 
 the \\'it that wins the easy applause of wondering 
 undergraduates are a material that needs to be selected 
 from with very wasteful heed before it can be wrought 
 into a durable literature. But how, suppose one is 
 worked so hard in an every-day vocation that the 
 bright improvisations which have been forced out of 
 an overtaxed mental vitality by the commonplace 
 occasions of the dinner-table and- the class-room, are 
 the best or the only response that he has it in his power 
 to make to the demand on him for books ? We do not 
 aflBrm that the genesis of Mr. Lowell's essays is such as 
 we have suggested. That would be presumptuous, for 
 we know nothing about the matter. But it is a per- 
 fectly sincere overture of extenuation on Mr. Lowell's 
 behalf to have made the suggestion. And we insist 
 that the texture of much of the composition agrees 
 well with our hypothesis. It is extemporization. The 
 sallies of wit are frequently, if they are not prevailingly, 
 of just that sort which a very ready-minded and very 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 159 
 
 full-minded man might make, stimulated in a helpful 
 atmosphere of sympathetic social appreciation on the 
 convivial occasion, or from the professor's chair. They 
 are lively, but they are too lively. The criticism like- 
 wise and the discussion have that unconsidered and 
 desultory quality which, while very misbecoming to 
 serious composition, is a fault readily excused in the 
 extemporary lecture, and is a positive charm in conver- 
 sation. The construction of the sentences is indeed 
 often very elaborate, but elaborate in such a way as 
 almost tempts one to think that all were written nnder 
 some whimsical resolution never once to change the 
 mould of expression in which the crude thought sought 
 first to be cast. 
 
 The really remarkable incoherences and inconsisten- 
 cies that characterize Mr. Lowell's prose, considered as 
 an individual body of literature, are most naturally ac- 
 counted for when we suppose that his essays grew under 
 his hands sentence on sentence and paragraph on para- 
 graph, as chance opportunity served, by a process of 
 distinct accretions separated from each other by irreg- 
 ular intervals of time, without the patience afterward be- 
 stowed to fuse all into unity in the costly welding glow 
 of one long - continued imaginative heat. Criticisms 
 produced as these have been, at difi^erent epochs in the 
 history of a living and growing mind, might naturally 
 contain some few expressions of opinion not wholly 
 congruous with one another. The just reason why Mr. 
 Lowell is liable now to critical censure on account of 
 his incongruous expressions is threefold: in the first 
 place, they often occur in one and the same essay ; in 
 the second place, they are too serious and too numer- 
 ous, as found in different essays ; and, in the third 
 place, the essays should, at all events, have been made 
 to harmonize when they were finally collected into 
 
160 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 volumes. Was the leisure lacking to Lim for such 
 editorial revision of his work ? Then it would have 
 proiited to remember that a single one of these essays 
 severely finished, — as a patience on Mr. Lowell's part 
 equal to his genius might surely have finished at least 
 one of them, — would constitute a better guaranty to 
 him of his individual fame than all of them together 
 do in their actual state. It would, too, be incalculably 
 a more useful genetic and regulative force in literature. 
 Mr. Higginson has learned from Emerson a wiser 
 lesson than Mr. Lowell. 
 
 As already suggested, we should despair of making 
 any fair iinpression of Mr. Lowell's wit by specimen 
 quotations. But here is a good stroke, sudden, light, 
 and, rarest of all qualities in Mr. Lowell's wit, momen- 
 tary as an electric spark. He is speaking of Lessing's 
 play, " ISTathan " : " As a play,it has not the interest of 
 Minna or Emilia, though the Germans, who have a 
 praiseworthy national stoicism where one of their 
 great writers is concerned, find in seeing it represented 
 a grave satisfaction, like that of subscribing to a monu- 
 ment." ("Among My Books," p. 345.) 
 
 Again, in the essay on " Witchcraft," he is describ- 
 ing the circumstances under which a man who had sold 
 himself to the Devil was taken away by the purchasing 
 party " as per contract." " The clothes and wig of the 
 involuntary aeronaut were, in the handsomest manner, 
 left upon the bed, as not included in the bill of sale." 
 (" Among My Books," p. 98.) 
 
 Once again, what could be more delicious than this ? 
 Mr. Lowell relates one of his experiences in relieving 
 mendicants : " For seven years I .helped maintain one 
 heroic man on an imaginary journey to Portland, — as 
 fine an example as I have ever known of hopeless 
 loyalty to an ideal." (" My Study Windows," p. 58.) 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PKOSE. 
 
 161 
 
 One has here, it is true, to blink the element of per- 
 sonal weakness on Mr. Lowell's own part, revealed in 
 the incident, supposed real, or the element of extrava- 
 gance and improbability in it, supposed imaginary. 
 
 We give a few specimens of the faults in wit which 
 we blame in Mr. Lowell. He is speaking of the six- 
 teenth century as prodigal in its production of great 
 men. " An attack of immortality in a family might 
 have been looked for then as scarlet-fever would be 
 now," he says. ("Among My Books," p. 163.) " Shake- 
 speare himself has left us a pregnant satire on dogmati- 
 cal and categorical aesthetics (which commonly in dis- 
 cussion soon lose their ceremonious tails and are re- 
 duced to the internecine dog and cat of their bald first 
 syllables)"! {Hid., p. 195.) "It is comparatively 
 easy for an author to get up [italics Mr. Lowell's] any 
 period with tolerable minuteness in externals, but read- 
 ers and audiences find more difficnlty in getting them 
 [whom? or what?] down, though oblivion swallows 
 scores of them at a gulp." (Ihid., p. 208.) Does the 
 . following parenthesis pleasantly let slip something be- 
 sides a pun ? Is it a true word spoken in jest ? "I 
 might suspect his thermometer (as indeed I did, for we 
 Harvard men are apt to think ill of any graduation but 
 our own)." (" My Study Windows," p. 4.) Speaking 
 of a certain literary vogue, Mr. Lowell says " the rapid 
 and almost simultaneous [simultaneous with what ?] 
 diffusion of this purely cutaneous eruption." ("My 
 Study Windows," p. 391.) " For my own part, though 
 I have been forced to Ttold my nose in picking my way 
 through these ordures of Dryden." (" Among My 
 Books," p. 49.) Speaking of the Transcendental move- 
 ment of thirty years ago, Mr. Lowell says, " No brain 
 but had its private maggot, which must have found 
 pitiably short commons sometimes." (" My Study Win- 
 
162 
 
 A FEEE LAKCE. 
 
 dows," p. 194.) We smile at the sudden witty turn in the 
 last clause, though we immediately perceive that its wit 
 is rather apparent than real, since of course ii every brain 
 had its maggot, some maggots must necessarily have 
 found short commons. The smart mot, in fact, only 
 says that some human brains are poor. "Most^ de- 
 scriptive poets seem to think that a hogshead of water 
 caught at the spout will give us a livelier notion of a 
 thunder-shower than the sullen muttering of the first 
 big drops upon the roof." ("Among My Books," p. 186.) 
 ("Was he thinking oi Byi-on's magnificent " like the first 
 of a thunder-shower " ?) '• For such purposes of mere 
 aesthetic nourishment Goethe always milked other 
 minds, — if minds those ruminators and digesters of an- 
 tiquity into asses'' milk may be called." (" Among My 
 Books," p. 188) — a half-page being devoted to an absurd 
 but witty and laughable carrying out of the fantasy, 
 until metaphor fairly becomes allegory. Mr. Lowell 
 says " the average German professor spends his life in 
 making lanterns fit to guide us through the obscurest 
 passages of all the ologies and ysics, and there are none 
 [that is, we suppose, no other'] in the world of such 
 honest workmanship. They are durable, they have 
 intensifying glasses, reflectors of the most scientific 
 make, capital sockets in which to set a light, and a 
 handsome lump of potentially illuminating tallow is 
 thrown in. But in order to see by them, the explorer 
 must make his own candle, supply his own cohesive 
 wick of common-sense, and light it himself." (" Among 
 
 ' Here again Mr. Lowell's too lavish generosity to his immediate 
 subject becomes unconsidered injustice to the subject in contrast. 
 Does not a different law properly govern the descriptive poet from 
 that which governs the dramatic? A descriptive poet's Imsinessii 
 description. Might such a poet not be permitted without blame 
 to use " water " somewhat freely in describing a thunder-storm ? 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 163 
 
 My Books," p. 293.) And on the same page, with ex- 
 quisitely unconscious irony upon himseli", Mr. Lowell 
 says, " Delightful as Jean Paul's humor is, how much 
 more so [that is, how nmch more ' delightful as it is '] 
 it would be, if he only knew when to stop ! " We 
 simply need to add, " and when not to begin," to make 
 the conditions suit Mr. Lowell's case completely. 
 
 So much surpassing beauty is marred by so much 
 infesting defect in Mr. Lowell's prose style that the 
 appreciative reader is kept constantly at his wit's end 
 whether to be more provoked at the carelessness or 
 more delighted with the genius. Here is a sentence 
 which, for its imaginative quality, might have been 
 written by Sir Thomas Browne. The expression is 
 nearly perfect. It is not statuesque. It is something 
 better. It blooms, and it breathes, and it moves like 
 tlie Apollo Belvedere : " A new world was thus opened 
 to intellectual adventure at the very time when the 
 keel of Columbus had [just] turned the first daring fur- 
 row of discovery in that unmeasured ocean which still 
 girt the known earth with a beckoning horizon of hope 
 and conjecture, which was still fed by rivers that flowed 
 down out of primeval silences, and which still washed 
 the shores of Dreamland." ("Among My Books," 
 p. 154.) Why did not Mr. LoweU take the trouble to 
 notice that no " very " time was pointed out unless he 
 said " when the keel of Columbus had 'just' " etc. ? 
 
 The following fine simile for Shakespeare's cosmo- 
 politan quality has a crystal clearness and a massy calm 
 in its expression which make it like the summit of Mont 
 Blanc itself: " Among tlie most alien races he is as 
 solidly at home as a mountain seen from diflferent sides 
 by many lands, itself superbly solitary, yet the com- 
 panion of all thoughts and domesticated in aU imagi- 
 nations." (" Among My Books," p. 184.) 
 
164 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 "What a gracious gleam of beauty — ^like a glimpse of 
 lovely June (" Tlien, if ever, come perfect days") — the 
 words we italicize in the following sentence impart to 
 a context that is otherwise so perplexedly constructed : 
 " Praise art as we will, that which the artist did not 
 mean to put into his work, but which found itself there 
 by some generous process of Nature of which he was as 
 unaware as the ihie river is of its rhyme with the Hue 
 shy, has somewhat in it that snatches us into sympathy 
 with higher things than those which come by plot and 
 observation." (" Among My Books," p. 224.) 
 
 There is a singularly delicate appreciation conveyed 
 in singularly delicate language in this about style: 
 " That exquisite something called Style, which, like the 
 grace of perfect breeding, everywhere pervasive and no- 
 where emphatic, makes itself felt by the skill with which 
 it effaces itself, and masters us at last with a sense 
 of indefinable completeness." (" Among My Books," 
 p. 175.) The adhering fault (slight, to be sure) in it is, 
 that when we come to the word " masters," we are left 
 uncertain whether that is connected by the preceding 
 " and," to the " effaces itself," or to the whole clause 
 commencing " makes itself." "Will it be too close criti- 
 cism if we ask, also. Does " everywhere pervasive " ex- 
 actly express the idea intended ? To be " everywhere 
 pervasive " is " to possess at every point the capacity of 
 pervading." But, instead of that, "to possess the 
 capacity of going to every point " is, we suppose, what 
 Mr. Lowell meant. 
 
 Here is a fine insight weU communicated to the 
 reader. He is speaking of the letters that passed be- 
 tween Lessing and his betrothed : 
 
 " They show that self-possession which can alone 
 [' alone can ' (?)] reserve to love the power of new self- 
 surrender, — of never cloying, because never whoUy pos- 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 165 
 
 sessed." (" Among My Books," p. 329.) If we fill the 
 ellipsis before " of never cloying," the grace of perfect 
 expression will seem to be wanting. Thus : " They 
 show that self-possession which alone can reserve to 
 love the power [?] of never cloying because never 
 whoUy possessed [' imparted ' (?)] " Attentive analysis 
 will recognize here that trick of almost hopeless self- 
 contortion in the coils of expression to which Mr. 
 Lowell's thought seems to us to be addicted beyond 
 that of any writer of credit and of worth that we know 
 in literature. 
 
 If the blemishes thus detected disfiguring the finish 
 of sentences that are otherwise so near to an ideal per- 
 fection, were exceptional to the general style of the 
 writer, it would be pure hypercritical paltriness to have 
 pointed them out. But we have sincerely selected the 
 very choicest specimens that we found of Mr. Lowell's 
 literary art — perhaps we should be truer to his deliber- 
 ate preference in theory as well as to our own concep- 
 tion of the fact that exists, if we said, the very choicest 
 specimen of Mr. Lowell's literary luck. The prevail- 
 ing habit of his style is more slovenly by far than these 
 specimens would indicate. 
 
 In fact the disarray of Mr. Lowell's literary manner 
 is so striking, as, in our opinion, seriously to aifect the 
 decorum of his public appearances in print. We have 
 often, since commencing these criticisms, been prompt- 
 ed to imagine how many degrees of dignity, and even 
 of grace, due attention on his part to the punctilios of 
 grammatical etiquette would have added to the impres- 
 sion which he makes on his reader. A " noble negli- 
 gence " is sometimes no doubt the trait of a noble art. 
 It was a " noble negligence " when Milton wrote his 
 "fit audience find though /ez^." One is not so sure, 
 but it was perhaps a " noble negligence " when Shake- 
 
166 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 speare wrote his " take arm.s against a sea of troubles." 
 But in the former .at least of these instances the art is 
 as conspicuous as the negligence. Mr. LoweU's care- 
 lessness impresses us diflFerently. It appears to be va. 
 great part a deliberately humored characteristic of his 
 manner. A truly " noble negligence " is not an affecta- 
 tion. But even as an artifice, Mr. Lowell's negligence 
 lacks the relief of contrast with a general carefulness to 
 make it fortunately effective, For in still greater part 
 it is, if we' mistake not, a habit of mere slackness and 
 indolence. 
 
 Gentlemen of birth and fortune in aristocratical so- 
 cieties are fond of employing an order of attendants to 
 stand in the relation of what we, in our democratical 
 inaptitude, may be excused for conceiving of as a kind 
 of personal groom to their masters. These valets take 
 pride in presenting their employers creditably to the 
 social public in the character of animated lay figures 
 that shall attest their ovra professional proficiency in 
 the fine art of dressing. Now why, pray, might not 
 the customs of literature permit authors of the higher 
 class to be similarly served in those last attentions to 
 literary toilette, which are at the same time so tedious 
 and so necessary ? There must, one would say, in the 
 natural economy of literature, be at least as many ac- 
 complished men of culture as gifted men of genius. 
 What more fit and more fruitful intellectual alliance 
 could be fancied than one which should bring the two 
 classes together in well-mated pairs ? A man of culture 
 — ad unguem. factics homo — a sort of Admirable Crich-" 
 ton — if he were also a man of sense, should esteem it a 
 privilege to fulfil the ofiice of literary valet to an agree- 
 able man of genius. The idea is of course a whimsical 
 one ; but we offer a few exemplifications of the kind of 
 work which no doubt Mr. Lowell himself would gladly 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 167 
 
 have expended upon his style if he could only have 
 done it by the hand of another. The opening sentence 
 of the essay on Thoreau is this : 
 
 " What contemporary [of vrhom ?], if he was in the 
 fighting period of his life [when?], (since Nature sets 
 limits about her conscription for spiritual fields, as the 
 state does in physical waVfare,) [shall this parenthesis 
 stand ?], will ever forget what was ^ovaQwhat vaguely 
 called the ' Transcendental Movement ' of thirty years 
 ago ? [' that intellectual movement of thirty years ago 
 which was somewhat vaguely called the ' Transcend- 
 ental Movement' (?)]" How would this do? — 
 " Who is there of us all, old enough, and not too old, , 
 to have been in the fighting period of his intellectual 
 life when it occurred, that will ever forget the 'Trans- 
 cendental Movement,' somewhat vaguely so called, of 
 thirty years ago ? " 
 
 In the very next sentence of the essay, the participle 
 " set "is without any proper construction. Grammati- 
 cally, its subject is of course the subject of the sentence, 
 viz., "impulse." "Impulse," however, "sets astir- 
 ring," is not "set astirring." The writer's evident 
 purpose was to apply his participle to " movement." 
 The sentence should therefore read as indicated in the 
 brackets to follow : " Apparently set astirring by Car- 
 lyle's essays on the ' Signs of the Times,' and on ' His- 
 tory,' the final and more immediate impulse was given 
 by [' it received its final and more immediate impulse 
 from'] 'Sartor Resartus.'" This exemplifies a very 
 frequent grammatical looseness of Mr. Lowell's. In- 
 stances might be multiplied to an indefinite number. 
 
 What shall we say of such a sentence as this ? 
 "While I believe that our language had two periods of 
 culmination in poetic beauty, — one of nature, simplicity, 
 and truth, in the ballads, which deal only with narrative 
 
168 A FREE LAUCE. 
 
 and feeling, — another of Art, (or Nature as it is ideally 
 reproduced through the imagination,) of stately ampli- 
 tude, of passionate intensity and elevation, in Spenser 
 and the greater dramatists, — and that Shakespeare made 
 use of the latter [' make use ' of a ' period ' ?] as he found 
 it [' found ' the ' period ' ?], I by no means intend to 
 say that he did not enrich it»[' enrich ' a ' period ' ?], or 
 that any inferior man could have dipped the same 
 words out of the great poet's inkstand." ("Among My 
 Books," p. 165.) Mr. Lowell's caveat is expressed with 
 unnecessary circumspection. An "inferior" man cer- 
 tainly cannot write so well as his superior. But no 
 caveat whatever of the sort was called for here. It 
 would be impossible for a reader of Mr. Lowell to sus- 
 pect that his author " intended " to intimate anything 
 derogatory to Shakespeare, or to omit anything that 
 could add to Shakespeare's praise. 
 
 Again : " So soon as [' as soon as ' (?)] a language has 
 iecome literary, so soon a^ there is a gap between the 
 speech of books and that of life, the language hecxmies, 
 so far as poetry is concerned, almost as dead as Latin, 
 and (as in writing Latin verses) a mind in itself essen- 
 tially original becomes in the use of such a medium of 
 utterance unconsciously reminiscential and reflective, 
 lunar and not solar, in expression and even in thought." 
 (" Among My Books," p. 155.) 
 
 Mr. Lowell gives us a neat statement of the " scope 
 of the higher drama " : " The scope of the higher drama 
 is to represent life, not evenj-day life, it is true, but life 
 lifted above the plane of bread-and-butter associations, 
 by nobler reaches of language, by the influence at once 
 inspiring and modulating of verse, by an intenser play 
 of passion condensing that misty mixture of feeling and 
 reflection which makes the ordinary atmosphere of ex- 
 istence into flashes of thought atid phrase whose brief, 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 169 
 
 but terrible, illumination prints the outworn landscape 
 of" every-day upon our brains, with its little motives and 
 mean results, in lines of tell-tale fire." (" Among My 
 Books," p. 222.) Portable and bandy — all in a single 
 sentence — and for luminosity, too, like a bit of phos- 
 phorus. 
 
 For illustration of the manner in which the centrif- 
 ugal prevails over the centripetal force in Mr. Lowell's 
 mental constitution, take the following. He begins by 
 alluding, as any ordinary critic might, ta the state of 
 the text of Shakespeare, but he speedily finds a tangen- 
 tial component, as no ordinary critic would, that sets 
 him off freely into space : " However this may be " — 
 that is, whether or not Shakespeare had " come at last 
 to the belief that genius and its works were as phantas- 
 magoric as the rest, and that fame was as idle as the 
 rumor of the pit" — "however this may be, his works 
 have come down to us in a condition of manifest and 
 admitted corruption in some portions, while in others 
 there is an obscurity which may be attributed either to 
 an idiosyncratic use of words and condensation of 
 phrase, to a depth of intuition for a proper coalescence 
 with which ordinary language is inadequate, to a con- 
 centration of passion in a focus that consumes the lighter 
 links which bind together the clauses of a sentence or 
 of a process of reasoning in common parlance, or to a 
 sense of music which mingles music and meaning with- 
 out essentially confounding them." (" Among My 
 Books," pp. 172, 173.) That is, Shakespeare's obscurities 
 are to be ascribed to any transcendental and impossible 
 cause, no matter what, provided only they somehow be 
 admitted to glorify him more and more ! Coleridge's 
 Shakespearean infatuation recommended itself to criti- 
 cal mercy, if not to critical respect, by the evident sense 
 of discovery and revelation which inspired it. The 
 8 
 
170 A FKEE LAHCE. 
 
 secondary affection, as exhibited in Coleridge's follow- 
 ers, it is less easy to regard^ with sufficient complais- 
 ance. 
 
 Here is an unequal yoking together of predicates, 
 worthy of some transcendental justification : " The sub- 
 mission [' submissiveness ' (?)] with which the greater 
 number surrender their natural likings for the acquired 
 taste [' to acquire the taste ' (?)] of what for the moment 
 is called the World is a highly curious phenomenon, 
 and, however destructive of originality, is the main 
 safeguard of society, and nurse of civility " ! (" My 
 Study "Windows," p. 394.) One blushes, as, under his 
 breath, he adjures himself to say, if there is any ground 
 for his suspecting that Mr. Lowell as an author may 
 have secretly resolved with himself upon the experi- 
 ment of boldly writing down whatever happens into 
 his mind at the time that he writes, and never blotting 
 afterwards (Shakespeare, they say, never did), just for 
 the sake of seeing whether one man may not turn out 
 to be at least half as good as another after all. 
 
 " TF/u'cA" to be parsed in this sentence: " The pro- 
 logues, and those pai'ts luhich internal evidence justifies 
 us in taking them to have been written after the thread 
 of plan to string them on was conceived [• conceive ' a 
 ' thread of plan ' ?] are in every way more mature," 
 etc. (" My Study Windows," p.' 232.) 
 
 " Seldom wont." If you are " wont " to do a thing, 
 you are " wont " to do it — and there is an end of the 
 matter. A habit that exists, exists. TJiat is to say, it 
 is a habit. A habit cannot be said itself to exist either 
 often or seldom, although it may, to be sure, be a 
 habit of repeating a certain action more or less fre- 
 quently. " Seldom wont " is, therefore, an irreducible 
 solecism. 
 
 " Whatever other good things Herr Stahr may have 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 171 
 
 learned from Lessing, terseness and clearness are not 
 among them." (" Among My Books," p. 304.) That is, 
 if Herr Stahr learned some good things from Lessing, 
 aside from " terseness and clearness," he did not learn 
 "terseness and clearness" aside from "terseness and 
 clearness." Probably not. 
 
 "Here, better than anywhere [' else'(?)], we may 
 cite," etc. (" Among My Books," p. 323.) 
 
 " But though we feel it to be our duty to say so much 
 of Herr Stahr's positive faults and negative short-com- 
 ings, yet we leave him in very good humor." "(" Among 
 my Books," p. 304.) "We have the same feeling of duty 
 with respect to Mr. Lowell that he himself expresses 
 with respect to Herr Stahr. We shall certainly try to 
 earn a right to the same cheerful confidence of leaving 
 him in a kindly humor toward his critic, when we have 
 done. Mutatis mutandis, and taking Mr. Lowell as 
 he means, his generous sentiment will respectfully be 
 our own. 
 
 " His mother was in no wise superior, but his father," 
 etc. (" Among My Books," p. 307.) 
 
 " A young man of more than questionable morals, 
 and who," etc. ("Among My Books," p. 308.) 
 
 Here is a " fine distraction " of pronouns : " The 
 good old pastor is remembered now only as the father 
 of a son who would have shared the benign oblivion of 
 his own theological works, if he could only have had his 
 wise way with himP (" Among My Books," p. 314.) 
 
 " The then condition." {Hid., p. 314.) 
 
 " Lifelong he was," etc. {Hid., p. 323), et alibi. 
 
 " Besides whatever other reasons Lessing may have 
 had for leaving Berlin, we fancy that his having ex- 
 hausted whatever means it had of helping his spiritual 
 growth was the chief." (" Among My Books," p. 324.) 
 There were other reasons for Lessing's leaving Berlin 
 
172 
 
 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 than his having exhausted its opportunities, but "be- 
 sides " those other reasons that was the " chief" ! 
 
 " Clever, womanly, discreet, with just enough coyness 
 of the will to be charming when it is joined with sweet- 
 ness and good sense, she was the true helpmate of such 
 a man." (" Among My Books," p. 329.) The " to be 
 charming " here belongs properly to the subject of the 
 sentence, as if it were written, "with just enough 
 coyness of the will to be thereby rendered charming, 
 when it is joined with sweetness and good sense" — 
 which sufficiently betrays the inconsequent character of 
 the syntax. If now, contrary to grammatical propriety, 
 we give the " to be charming " to the " just enough 
 coyness of the will " — as if it were written " with just 
 so much coyness of the will as is charming when it is 
 joined with sweetness and good sense," — we have more 
 defensible syntax for the clauses connected by " when," 
 but it is then left unpredicated that the woman spoken 
 of possessed the " sweetness and good sense " — nothing, 
 except a certain amount of " coyness of the will, " being 
 predicated of her. The sentence is a fine study in 
 what the grammarians call the constructio prmgnans. 
 The contorted syntax here, as in the introductory para- 
 graph of " Shakespeare Once More," results from the . 
 apparently unconscious attempt of the writer to blend 
 a general with a specific statement in one impossible 
 sentence. The same attempt, with the same result, 
 occurs in this sentence : " Lessing's life, if it is a noble 
 example, so far as it concerned himself alone, is also a 
 warning when another is to be asked to Share it." 
 (" Among My Books," p. 317.) 
 
 "This was not the last time that he was to have 
 experience of the fact that the critic's pen, the more it 
 has of truth's celestial temper, the more it is apt to 
 reverse the miracle of the archangel's spear, and to 
 
ME. LOWELE'S PEOSE. 173 
 
 bring out whatever is toadlike in the nature of him it 
 touches." (" Among My Books," p. 322.) Ithuriel, by 
 the way, according to Milton, was not an archangel, 
 but a spirit of subordinate rank. 
 
 A literary academy, such as that for which Mr. Mat- 
 thew Arnold pathetically sighs in his England, would 
 probably find the " note of provinciality " in extrava- 
 gances like the following. Mr. Lowell is speaking his 
 "Good Word for Winter:" "Charles II., who never 
 said a foolish thing, gave the English climate the high- 
 est praise when he said that it allowed you more hours 
 out of doors than any other, and I think our winter 
 may fairly make the same boast as compared with the 
 rest of the year." (" My Study Windows," p. 47.) 
 Charles II. was a witty man, they say, as monarchs go. 
 He may never have said anything else that was foolish 
 (though even in the absence of the instance before us 
 we should still have been forced to admire rather than 
 believe when told that he quite absolutely ' never ' did 
 say a foolish thing — witty men are not apt to be so self- 
 controlled), but it was surely a foolish thing that he 
 said, if he said it, of the English climate. Mr. Lowell 
 has, however, we think, fairly matched his royal 
 original in saying what he does of the American 
 winter. 
 
 What one influence (let our readers guess) wrought 
 more powerfully than all other influences combined, to 
 inspire the young heroes of our civil war? But our 
 readers will never guess. It was Mr. Emerson. Mr. 
 Lowell says : " To him more than to all other causes 
 together did the young martyrs of our civil war owe 
 the sustaining strength of thoughtful heroism that is so 
 touching in every record of their lives." (" My Study 
 Windows," p. 382.) The author of such a statement as 
 that involuntarily betrays therein how narrow and pro- 
 
17i A FREE LANCE. 
 
 vineial is the audience to which, by the instinct of 
 habit, he unconsciously appeals. Perhaps one young 
 martyr in fifty of our civil war had heard of Mr. Emer- 
 son ; one in five hundred may have read his books ; 
 one in five thousand possibly was braced by them, 
 directly or indirectly, -to " suffer and be strong." Mr. 
 Emerson's influence is no doubt sometimes intensively 
 very great. The reach of his influence, extensively, it 
 is easy to overrate. 
 
 We might fairly have added to our heads of indict- 
 ment against Mr. Lowell's style a trick of repetition, 
 the natural result of his want of the analytic faculty. In 
 almost all of these essays the reader is bewildered by 
 recurrences of the same thought, often in the same lan- 
 guage, until he despairs of his progress toward any 
 goal. He learns sooner or later that movement, and 
 not progress, is his author's aim. The essay on Emer- 
 son is one pure gyration, almost from beginning to end. 
 We shall not deny that a nice artistic fitness of treat- 
 ment to subject might be pleaded in justification of 
 Mr. Lowell here. 
 
 " Yelleity " (a favorite use), "perdurable," " aliened," 
 " dis-saturate," " oppugnancy," " deboshed " (for ' de- 
 bauched '), "speechifying," " cold-waterish," "tother," 
 " bother," " grub " (for ' food '), " souse," " bread-and- 
 butter," " liver-complaint," " avant-couriered," " link- 
 boy," " stews " (in a bad sense now rare), " huckster- 
 wench," "blabbed," "primitive-forest-cure," "otherwise- 
 mindedness," " all-out-of-doors," (a literary) " rag-and- 
 bone-pieker," " Avhat-d'ye-call-'ems," " biggest-river-and- 
 tallest-mountain " (recipe for an American poet), "to-do" 
 (for ' ado '), " touchy," " transmogrify " and " crank- 
 iness," are specimens of such words and uses as we 
 think, tend greatly to deform the aspect of Mr. Lowell's 
 pages. Moreover, his pages bristle with foreign words 
 
ME. Lowell's peose. 1Y6 
 
 and phrases that seem to cry prooul^ pi'ocxil to the 
 general reader. 
 
 We rest, as the lawyers say. In doing so, we may 
 be permitted, however, to suffer Mr. Lowell's own 
 example to justify us, as to himself, in the minuteness 
 to which we have descended in some few of our stric- 
 tures. We cite, for this purpose, several consecutive 
 criticisms which Mr. Lowell makes in his essay on 
 Pope. It will, we think, in view of these, be agreed 
 that, however microscopic at times has been our atten- 
 tion to Mr. Lowell's style, we have not dealt to him in 
 this respect a measure of complimentary fidelity beyond 
 that which he himself had been before us in dealing to 
 others. Of the comparative justness of the fidelity in 
 the two cases, we of course leave to the reader to 
 judge. Quoting the familiar opening of Pope's "Essay 
 on Man," Mr. Lowell says : " To expatiate o'er a mighty 
 maze is rather loose writing." (" My Study Windows," 
 p. 417.) Pope's lines are : 
 
 Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man ; 
 A miglity maze ! but not without a plan, 
 
 Mr. Lowell, it will thus be seen, goes to the trouble of 
 linking the preposition ' o'er ' with its remote and ap- 
 positive, instead of with its near and immediate object, 
 for the sake of finding ' loose ' syntax in Pope. But, 
 even thus, is the charge sustained ? A ' maze ' is best 
 studied from a point overlooking it. And since the 
 invitation is to ' expatiate ' figuratively over a figurative 
 ' maze,' why not suppose that the excursion is on wing 
 instead of on foot ? The writing will not then appear 
 to be very ' loose.' 
 
 Again, in immediate connection Mr. Lowell discovers 
 (of all things in the world for Mr. Lowell) a logical 
 fault in Pope's well-known passage commencing — ■ 
 Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate. 
 
176 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 The stricture is too long to quote at this late stage in 
 our criticism. We refer our readers to the volume. 
 But it well displays that curious scholastic propensity 
 in Mr. Lowell's mind to over-refinement which, being 
 served rather by a faculty of wit than by a faculty of 
 logic in its possessor, exposes him to mistakes at times 
 in his serious writing almost as painful as, on the other 
 hand, the lively turns to which it inclines him in his 
 humorous, are amusing. Mr. Lowell, if we understand 
 him, thinks it illogical for Pope to suppose that a lamb 
 endowed with human reason would be able to foresee 
 its own future any better than the same lamb is able 
 to do without human reason. Most readers, we sus- 
 pect, will decide that it is not Pope's logic that limps. 
 
 Mr. Lowell proceeds : " There is also inaccuracy as 
 well as inelegance in saying, 
 
 ' Heaven, 
 Who sees -with equal eye, as God of all, 
 A liero perish or a sparrow fall.' 
 
 To the last verse Warburton, desirous of reconciling 
 his author with Scripture, appends a note referring to 
 Matthew x. 29 : ' Are not two sparrows sold for one 
 faj'thing? and one of them shall not fall to the ground 
 without your Father.' It would not have been safe to 
 have referred [' to refer ' ?] to the thirty-first verse : 
 ' Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many 
 sparrows.' " (" My Study Windows," p. 418.) 
 
 Did anybody ever, we wonder, before Mr. Lowell, 
 seriously take ]?ope to mean by his phrase, ' with equal 
 eye,' that Divine Providence put the same value on a 
 sparrow as on a hero? It seems to us unnecessary 
 even to revert to the Latin idiom in which Pope prob- 
 ably used the word ' equal ' here, in order to under- 
 stand him as simply meaning that Providence neglects 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PROSE. 177 
 
 neither the hero nor the sparrow, but regards them 
 both with just discrimination. Precisely wliat inac- 
 curacy, or what inelegance, Mr. Lowell designed to 
 point out in italicizing the relative • Who^ is to us pro- 
 foundly mysterious. It is certainly a very frequent 
 usage of writers, perhaps especially of the deistic 
 writers with whom Pope associated, to write ' Heaven ' 
 by metonymy for ' God.' The substituted word then 
 receives the relative ' who ' as of course. If ' that ' 
 had been employed, ' that ' would replace ' who,' and 
 not 'which.' 'Who' is every way preferable. But 
 ' which,' in any case, is here inadmissible. We may be 
 stultifying ourselves, however. For we admit that we 
 cannot guess what good reason Mr. Lowell had for 
 implying a mistake in Pope's 'who' here. The ad 
 hominem argument, at least, of justification for the 
 minute attention which, in the interest of good litera- 
 ture, we have paid to Mr. Lowell's faults of style will 
 now, we presume, appear to be sufficient. 
 
 But we do injustice alike to Mr. Lowell and to our- 
 selves when we thus apply the argumentum ad Jwmi- 
 nem to a case like his. The author's own chivalrous 
 spirit, manifested everywhere throughout his work, can 
 but itself be constantly felt by the appreciative critic 
 as a friendly spur to' frank, no less than to respectful, 
 treatment of his subject. And we must claim to have 
 written besides on the prompting of a vital first prin- 
 ciple in what may be called the hygiene of literature. 
 Mr. Lowell himself has given the principle a form of 
 expression. The form of expression which he has 
 given it may be liable to criticism, but the principle 
 itself is one that cannot be gainsaid. " Without ear- 
 nest convictions," is his language, " no great or sound 
 literature is conceivable." (" Among My Books," p. 7.) 
 We believe this profoundly, and we have long been in 
 
178 A FEEE LAiTCE. 
 
 the habit, with the jealous instincts of an ardent intel- 
 lectual patriotism, of applying it to the state of our 
 own national literature. With vivid esthetic convic- 
 tions of our own, that we do not affect to dissemble, 
 we seek, by the proffer of a criticism sincerely intended 
 to be loyal alike to the general and to the individual 
 interests involved, to contribute our proportion, how- 
 ever small, toward rescuing American literature from 
 the atrophy that threatens it as a result of the growing 
 slackness of such convictions on the part of our 
 authors, and of the consequent far too easy admiration 
 exchanged among them of each other's productions. 
 
 But Eesthetic con\-ictions alone, however vivid and 
 however just, entertained by the authors that produce 
 it, are yet far off from being sufficient to continue the 
 life of a literature. In truth, the soundest aesthetic 
 convictions, we believe, possess small vigor for even 
 surviving, themselves, apart from the vivific contact 
 and virtue of supreme moral convictions. The health, 
 the bloom, the splendor of Greek letters, in their long 
 and beautiful youth, is no instance of deviation from 
 the rule. The poets, both epic and tragic, the his- 
 torians, the philosophers, the orators, of Greece — those 
 masters among them, we mean, whose works remain 
 the assthetic despair of after-coming literary artists in 
 every race and every age — were perhaps without an 
 exception exemplars, not indeed of a Christian mo- 
 rality, but still of whatever was purest and best in the 
 Greek moral and religious aspiration. Attic taste, 
 whether in art or in literature, was kept to its exquisite 
 tone, through all its undegenerate prime, by the 
 severities of Attic morals and the solemnities of Attic 
 religion. 
 
 We, of course, understand that Mr. Lowell himself 
 attributed to the moral element as much literary im- 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 179 
 
 portance as this, when he declared that earnest convic- 
 tions were an indispensable condition of a great, or even 
 of a sound, literature. There is, after all, and Mr. 
 Lowell knows it, no other such inspiration yet found, 
 to any generous human purpose under the sun, as high 
 moral conviction. Of this inspiration Mr. Lowell 
 seems to us to have been born to be the subject. His 
 earlier poetry is full to its bound, sometimes (in " The 
 Present Crisis," for example) almost to overflowing 
 its bound, with the ample breath of it. His later 
 poetry, more capacious to have received the inspiration, 
 is somehow differently inspired. xVnd his prose, while 
 containing, it must gratefully be acknowledged, little 
 obvious implication of which the moral censor can 
 justly complain, is still generally too vacant of that 
 noble afflatus of tense moral conviction which we can- 
 not help feeling was in a high degree natural to his 
 genius, and which alone was able to make the fruit of 
 his genius either great or enduring. Some sinister 
 influence wrought to render that genius no longer con- 
 tinent of the grand inspiration of which it was fitted 
 by nature to be so capacious. Perhaps he listened too 
 long to that great son of Circe, the literary sorcerer, 
 Goethe. We will not say that Goethe has prevailed 
 to change him from the godlike image in which he was 
 created. The upright, sky-fronting moral man that 
 God made Mr. Lowell has not fallen prone, confounded 
 with the grovelling herd of modern idolaters of art 
 that graze and ruminate about their smiling German 
 Comus. It is far from being so abject as this. But 
 remote approach to the degenerate shape — the sugges- 
 tion even .of malignant transformation, we note in a 
 man like Mr. Lowell with exquisite pain. It is true 
 that he mingles an honest moral revolt with his yielded 
 aesthetic adhesion. But we wish that the moral re- 
 
180 A FEEB LANCE. 
 
 volt had quite prevented the sesthetic adhesion. The 
 cordial drop of disgust hardly saves the fulsome sea of 
 adulation in a passage like the following : " Goethe's 
 poetic sense was the Minotaur to which he sacrificed 
 evei-y thing. To make a study, he would soil the 
 maiden petals of a woman's soul ; to get the delicious 
 sensation of a reflex sorrow, he would wring a heart. 
 All that saves his egoism from ieing hateful is, that, 
 with its irmnense reaches, it cheats the sense into a feel- 
 ing of something like sublimity." (" Among My 
 Books," p. 318.) So close on the instinctive moral dis- 
 dain follows the half-ashamed, over-persuaded, idola- 
 trous aesthetic submission. It seems strange that Mr. 
 Lowell should not have imputed a. vitiation to the 
 principles of taste themselves that found their root in 
 such a monstrous morality as Goethe's. And he was 
 just on the point too of writing that tonic sentiment 
 of his, " character — ^the only soil in which real mental 
 power can root itself and find sustenance." The sen- 
 timent was suggested to Mr. Lowell in spealdng of 
 Lessing. It was the original and native New England 
 element in the American critic that recognized and 
 saluted the manliness of his German author. But it 
 was the subsequent, transfused, Goethean element in 
 him that induced his strain of ill-befitting raillery at 
 the elder Lessings' pious concern over their son in his 
 youth — a concern nevertheless which plainly enough 
 indicates how that son's character, so lauded by Mr. 
 Lowell, was bom and was bred. For our own part, we 
 feel it as a kind of cruelty to be forced to read, in the 
 pages of a man who was but nobly true to his truer 
 self when he said that earnest convictions were neces- 
 sary to the greatness and the soundness of literature, 
 such a sentence as this : " In estimating Shakespeare, 
 it should never be forgotten, that, like Goethe, he was 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 181 
 
 essentially observer and artist, and incapcMe of par- 
 tisanship." ("Among My Books," p. 152.) We itali- 
 cize tlie last three words, that their true implication 
 may not escape the reader. They mean that Shake- 
 speare, in Mr. Lowell's opinion, was incapable of taking 
 sides between virtue and vice. This is not said of 
 Shakespeare as if it were a ghastly defect in his char- 
 acter. It is rather said as entirely homogeneous with 
 the unmixed and unqualified eulogy of Shakespeare, 
 which is the motive and material of the essay. On the 
 next page Mr. Lowell holds this language ; * * * 
 " the equilibrium of his judgment, essential to him as 
 an artist, but equally removed from propagandism, 
 whether as enthusiast or logician, would have unfitted 
 him for the pulpit." That is, Shakespeare's judgment 
 was so perfect that he had no ' earnest convictions ! ' 
 That is, the rights of good and the rights of evil in the 
 world are so nicely balanced that equilibrium of judg- 
 ment, when it becomes Shakespearean, can find no 
 difi'erence in favor of the one or of the other! That 
 is, it was some defect of ' judgment ' that made Jesus 
 a ' propagandist ' of virtue ! That is, Paul could never 
 have been the apostle that he was, if he had been 
 equal to Shakespeare in 'judgment!' And such 
 superhuman, with no hyperbole we may say, such 
 supradivine, 'equilibrium of judgment' in Shake- 
 speare, ' essential to him as an artist,' is no bar to Mr. 
 Lowell's rating the character above the genius of the 
 man that possessed it ! 
 
 We have not the heart to insist here upon the pro- 
 digious inconsistency between the above-quoted expres- 
 sions of Mr. Lowell and that nobler sentiment of his 
 respecting the necessity to good literature of earnest 
 convictions. We are too much occupied with indig- 
 nant literary chagrin and shame, that a man, native to 
 
182 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 everything severe and high in moral inspiration to in- 
 tellectual achievennient, should have been so enchanted 
 out of his birthright by the evil charm of the charmer. 
 We speak, in speaking thus, not on behalf of morals, 
 but on behalf of literature. It is indeed the fact that 
 inconsistencies and self-contradictions like those which 
 abound in Mr. Lowell's work are probably traceable at 
 last to some defective reverence in the author for the 
 sacred rights of truth. Still it is not to be said that 
 Mr. Lowell is immoral, or that he teaches immorality, 
 in his ^vritings. But he escapes being immoral, and 
 he escapes teaching immorality, in his writings, if the 
 paradox wiU be allowed, by the happy insincerity with 
 which he holds and applies his own adopted canons of 
 taste. By a fine revenge of the violated truth he does 
 not however thus escape vital harm to the artistic value 
 of his literary work from the infection of false principles 
 in literary art. Nor does he — we must be so far true 
 to om-selves — nor does he, we think, escape exerting 
 such an influence in favor of the Goethean principles of 
 aesthetics as is sure, however remotely, to have also its 
 sequel of moral bale to those younger writers among 
 his countrymen, who look to him as to their master. 
 Alas, alas, say we, that no literary Luther was found 
 betimes, to grapple the beautiful and climbing, yet 
 leaning, spirit of the youthful Lowell as a literary 
 Melancthon, strongly and safely to himself How 
 much might there not then have been saved to Ameri- 
 can literature — how much not to a fair, but half-defeated, 
 personal fame! In default of an original and inde- 
 pendent endowment of impelling and steadying force 
 in himself, such as a high conscious and determinate 
 moral purpose would have supplied, the friendly attrac- 
 tion of some dominant intellect and conscience near, 
 different from Emerson's, and better suited to Mr. 
 
ME. LOWELL'S PEOSE. 183 
 
 Lowell's individual needs, seems the one thing wanting 
 to have reduced the graceful eccentricities of his move- 
 ment to an orderly orbit, and to have set him per- 
 manently in a sphere of his own, exalted, if not the 
 most exalted, among the stars of the " clear upper sky." 
 Not prose, however, but verse, is Mr. Lowell's true 
 literary vernacular. He writes, as Milton wrote, witli 
 his left hand, in writing prose. But whether in prose 
 or in verse, it is still almost solely by genius and ac- 
 quirement quite apart from the long labor of art, and 
 of course, therefore, apart from the exercised strength 
 and skill of that discipline to art, which is the wages 
 of long labor alone, that he produces his final results. 
 He thus chooses his place in the Valhalla of letters 
 among the many "inheritors of unfulfilled renown." 
 It seems likely at least (but he is yet in his just mel- 
 lowing prime, and Apollo avert the omen !) that his 
 name is destined to be treasured in the history of 
 American literature chiefly as a gracious tradition of 
 personal character universally dear, of culture only 
 ■ second to the genius which it adorned, of fame con- 
 stantly greater than the achievements to which it ap- 
 pealed. 
 
MR. BRYANT'S POETRY. 
 
 IT is now,^ we believe, about the space of a generation 
 since the American public first learned to associate 
 the name of William Cullen Biyant with the " Evening 
 Post" newspaper. During this unusually protracted 
 term of editorial service, Mr. Bryant has taken frequent 
 recesses from the exhausting demands of his profession. 
 The intervals of leisure thus intercalated in a life other- 
 wise laboriously occupied he has employed variously — 
 in the main, however, dividing them between travel 
 and foreign residence. More lately a country-seat on 
 Long Island, beautiful by nature and beautiful by art, 
 has drawn him with the lure of leisure and letters. 
 
 But within the year past, the newspapers tell us, Mr. 
 Bryant has once more returned to do task-work as 
 editor. Remembering that his age, though hale and 
 vigorous still, is now advanced to " reverence and the 
 silver hair," and recalling the fact that for the last 
 decade and longer his muse has but seldom broken the 
 silence, — the very sweetness, too, of these occasional 
 utterances having to our fancy something of a certain 
 rare and costly qviality going to confirm the omen, — we 
 are forced to regard this step as an unwelcome re- 
 minder that our favorite American poet has probably 
 
 ' The author has thought it not worth while to ohliterate the 
 marks of time which will here, as occasionally elsewhere, meet the 
 observation of the reader. 
 
ME. BETANT'S POETEY. 185 
 
 accomplished his important poetical labors. It will 
 not therefore be judged prfemature if we herewith at- 
 tempt, what has thus far, and properly, remained unat- 
 tempted, something like a general and exhaustive sur- 
 vey of his genius and achievements. We shall be 
 confident, at least, that not a line of the thousands 
 which, notwithstanding what we have written, we will 
 hope yet to receive from that honored and practiced 
 hand, could modify our estimate, otherwise than to 
 heighten our praise. And thus we beg to avert the 
 ungracious omen implied in contemplating his poetical 
 career for the moment as closed. 
 
 The frequent vicissitudes of labor and recreation with 
 which the actual years of Mr. Bryant's life have been 
 diversified and relieved, are no doubt to be considered 
 as illustrative of his character. It was hardly to be ex- 
 pected that one who, in the flush of early manhood, 
 according to the common tradition of Bryant (which 
 we hope no one will be at the pains to contradict), 
 turned from the profession of law, to which he had 
 been trained, with an instinctive and noble rebellion 
 against what he felt to be its pettinesses and falsities, 
 should, even in the strenuous season of middle age, 
 have so changed that honorable softness of heart as to 
 become unalterably firm to the at least equally rude 
 contacts and collisions of a partisan editorship. We 
 should half have regretted it if he had done so. It 
 would have gone so far toward marring a favorite ideal 
 of ours (perhaps we got it from Coleridge) touching a 
 cert.ain inviolate youthfulness of. feeling waiting ever 
 on the nature of the poet, and making to him the fresh- 
 ness and beauty of the world immortal. We trust 
 never to see the fantasy suffer under any such ruthless 
 iconoclasm. Mr. Bryant, indeed, has always, as editor, 
 practiced a skill which his political antagonists have 
 
186 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 felt to be even bitter, of straining every relenting chord 
 of his nature to a mood of stern endurance. He is to- 
 day, when grasping the newspaper pen, an almost 
 savage antagonist. But then this tension is far more 
 a matter of the will than of the heart. The will i ^ 
 strong, and can produce it ; but ao is the heart tender, 
 and will relax it. This we take to be the secret of 
 Mr. Bryant's alternations between uncongenial toil and 
 studious labor. 
 
 In his last resumption of editorial duty, we make no 
 doubt it is a manly resolution which summons him 
 back once more to the wavering edge of a worldly 
 strife. It suits admirably with that conception in his 
 own grand hymn to freedom in which, boldly amend- 
 ing one of the world's immemorial ideals, he changes 
 her sex, transforming a fair smiling maiden to a bearded 
 man in panoply. We can even beheve that he obeys a 
 conscientious conviction of duty in the matter; and if 
 so, then his act is in the spmt of all noblest poetry, let 
 critics say what they will about the absurdity of a 
 moral in song. Every poem has its moral, be it only in 
 the absence of an intended moral. The author, for 
 example, of some musical stanzas, reminiscent as we 
 recall them, of a day's ramble with friends in the 
 woods, when he took pains to tell us that having 
 spread food of God's sweet bounty, they 
 
 ate it with no grace but song, 
 
 was unconsciously pointing a moral advantageous 
 neither to his piety, nor yet to his sense of the truest 
 and highest beauty. It is indeed not nnfrequently the 
 case that the poet is impressing even the most instruc- 
 tive, while the saddest too, of moral lessons, when so 
 far as his own merit of purpose goes, he works 
 
 Without a conscience or an aim. 
 
ME. BEY ANT'S POETEY. 187 
 
 But notwithstanding the reconcilement which we 
 may flatter ourselves thus to have found between two 
 apparently contrasted phases of character, it must still 
 be acknowledged that Bryant the editor and Bryant 
 the poet could hardly be more different from each other 
 if they were numerically distinct. It is like going from 
 the Cave of the Winds to the " island-valley of Avil- 
 ion," to pass from a leader in.the " Evening Post " to 
 one of Bryant's more characteristic poems. In truth, 
 the editor Bryant belongs to the world as it is ; the 
 poet Bryant to the world as it will be. The editor 
 dwells where good and evil are ceaselessly at strife ; 
 the poet where good has conquered and all is peace. 
 The editor toils amid deformity and disorder ; the poet 
 rests in order and beauty perpetual and serene. A 
 blending of the practical and the ideal tendency this, 
 in a single nature, fortunate and rare indeed, yet com- 
 mon, we are inclined to think, to the ref6rming spirits 
 of every age. They have been poets, all of them. 
 Not all had leave to write their poetry. Milton had, 
 and so had the stern old Hebrew prophets. Paul him- 
 self was not to be restrained from lifting up ever and 
 .anon throughout his epistles a sublime and exultant 
 doxology, and Luther must occasionally refresh his 
 battle-worn spirit with a hymn that pealed out like the 
 call of a trumpet. But the patient epics of the most 
 share in silence the earnest expectancy of the travailing 
 creation. When God at last shall make all things new, 
 then, in the clear and radiant forms of that final stead- 
 fast order, those of us who see it shall behold the fair 
 ideal that they knew, and the poetry that they would 
 have written. They endured while here as seeing that 
 which is invisible. When we too see it, we shall un- 
 derstand how such an endurance could be nursed by 
 such a vision. 
 
188 A FEEE LAITCE. 
 
 The professional engrossments whicli have absorbed 
 so large a share of Mr. Bryant's life, will explain in 
 part why his poetry consists almost entirely of short, 
 detached pieces. Several of these, it is true, have been 
 published under the title of "Fragments," and Mr. 
 Bryant, in a note, has given us explicit encouragement 
 to hope that the leisures of his life may have been em- 
 ployed upon some more considerable labor of verse yet 
 to appear. But he has deferred our hope so long, that 
 he win not blame us if we begin to doubt of its final 
 fdlfilment. It is certainly to be regretted that he has 
 not seen fit to construct some single poem of more im- 
 posing dimensions to become the repository of his 
 . fame ; less, however, we imagine, on our account than 
 on the poet's own. It is hardly probable that our in- 
 heritance from his genius would on the whole have 
 gained as much in richness as it might in bulk thereby. 
 But Mr. Bryant would have secured his own reputation 
 better — so long at least as the old transmitted epic 
 standard of volume continues to be applied, in pro- 
 fessedly critical as well as in the popular appreciation, 
 for the admeasurement of poetical genius. Mr. Long- 
 fellow may be supplanting Mr. Bryant in the general 
 estimation. If so, some will attribute it to Mr. Long- 
 fellow's greater warmth of coloring. But we" intend 
 to maintain that it is due to nothing else in the 
 world than the traditional veneration accorded to 
 the man who has written a poem big enough to make 
 a book. 
 
 But there is another reason for the fugitive character 
 of Mr. Bryant's poetry. We have been assured by one 
 whose opportunities of access and information entitle 
 the statement to credit, that it has always been akvir- 
 tual impossibility that Mr. Bryant should compose a 
 continuous poem of great length. The process of poet- 
 
ME. BEYANT'S POETEY. 189 
 
 ical composition, it was stated, is so exhausting to his 
 physical powers, that those persons who demand such a 
 work at his hands, unconsciously ask liim to build his 
 own sepulchre. The knowledge of this fact will not 
 be unsuggestive to the thoughtful lovers of Bryant's 
 muse. It will remind them that nearly all their au- 
 thor's pieces hare the air of recreations. Not mere 
 sportive recreations surely ; Bryant's is a spirit far too 
 grave to seek relaxation in pure levity and wantonness, 
 and his verse ever loves best to sing the "still sad 
 music of humanity;" but diversions from the daily 
 use of life, in which a high-born and beautiful genius, 
 not declining to wear a yoke during the heat of every 
 day, claims nevertheless the cool of an evening now 
 and then to solace and cheer itself with grateful relief 
 of occupation. "The Ages," Mr. Bryant's longest 
 poem, is probably to be excepted here. This was 
 originally prepared, we believe, for the anniversary of 
 a literary society connected with Harvard University. 
 It is fer enough removed above the level of its class, 
 and is even a poem of a high and remarkably uniform 
 excellence ; and yet in a certain appearance of efitbrt to 
 sustain itself, unnatural to Bryant's performances, it 
 undeniably fails of that perfectly unbidden and un- 
 bought spirit of freedom else everywhere prevalent. 
 
 Spontaneous and free we call the prevailing quality 
 of Bryant's verse. It is not so, however, in the sense 
 of a wild, heady rage, like Byron's, spurning control. 
 Quite to the contrary of this, there reigns throughout 
 it all, not indeed the quietude of a passionless nature, 
 but the breathing rest of a spirit under mastery too 
 strong to feel the disturbance of striving impulses. 
 Byron's Jlumen ingenii might be fitly described in his 
 own fine verse apostrophizing the Khine : 
 
 And thou, exulting ^and abounding river ; 
 
190 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 Bryant's flows full, deep, placid, clear, strong, equable 
 — with a movement swift sometimes, occasionally im- 
 petuous, but never giddy with a flattered sense of 
 power. Byron's want of moral self-control has just 
 about fairly represented itself in the abandon of his 
 verse. He wrote poetry in very much the same reck- 
 less way that he drank wine and loved women. No 
 one else could have written the splendid stanza com- 
 mencing " The sky is changed," with a reeling brain 
 and a staggering hand. It was perfectly in character 
 for Byron to do it. In all this Bryant is in intense 
 contrast. The graceful poise, the easy majesty of self- 
 possession, with which he invariably receives the ictus 
 of inspiration, and, conscious of no shock, transmutes 
 it silently into diffused and regulated power, we feel 
 sure doe's not excel the even control that such a man 
 must exercise over his moral nature. 
 
 We are not now paralleling Bryant with Byron. 
 It would hardly satisfy our comparative estimate of 
 the two men to rank them as " brethren in power." 
 But this we are free to say, that were they fairly 
 matched in genius, as they assuredly are not, then we 
 should not hesitate an instant to put the American 
 above the Englishman — ^the style of his greatness we 
 consider so much superior. For despite the subscrip- 
 tion of so justly eminent a critic as Euskin, we glory 
 in renouncing the popular superstition that venerates 
 as the anointed highest of bards the man who has 
 sacred frenzies, and cries of a sudden, " I feel the God." 
 For our part, we crown the poet who scorns alike to 
 suffer or to feign such violent invasion and usurpation 
 of his faculties. We experience a far intenser sympa- 
 thy with power, when the descending and confident 
 deity is met on the threshold by one stronger than he. 
 To change the figure, we like to see the poet cavalier 
 
ME. BEYAKT'S POETEY. 101 
 
 " turn and wind a fiery Pegasus " indeed, and the more 
 fiery the better, but with use of spur and curb betoken- 
 ing Jdm the master. His speed may not equal Gilpin's, 
 but he will make up in dignity. 
 
 Such a poet, in his measure, is Bryant, and such a 
 one, in his larger measure, was not Byron. Whatever 
 power it is given Bryant to summon is subject to hira. 
 The power that went with Byron somehow often seized 
 advantage and mastered him. If it will be permitted 
 us to draw an illustration from things that use has not 
 yet made either common or sacred for the service of 
 such an analogy, we might say that when we read 
 Bryant we have the feeling of the railway passenger 
 who is confident that his engineer will employ no head 
 of steam of which he has not the exact measure and full 
 command ; but that when we read Byron we have the 
 feeling of the railway passenger who holds his breath 
 with a nameless suspicion that liis engineer's brain is 
 crazed, and that he is intent upon nothing but annihi- 
 lating time and distance. Bryant's consciousness of his 
 strength, and his perfect contentment with its measure, 
 will not let him seek any increment of momentum 
 from an indulged excess of rapidity in movement. 
 Byron's force, when at its maximum, is ever a product 
 greatly augmented by a factor of purposely hastened 
 precipitancy. 
 
 We readily grant, as we keenly feel, the delicious 
 fascination of this careering velocity. Its recklessness 
 is contagious. It is one of the most intimate of intoxi- 
 cations. But it is an intoxication, and it debauches 
 the will. Its spell unnerves us, just as we know it un- 
 nerved the poet himself. We tremble with inmost 
 weakness. There is a nobler excitement. We prefer 
 to dwell with power that is sovereign of itself. It may 
 conquer us, but it shall not be by dissolving our sinews. 
 
192 A FEEE LAKOE. 
 
 N"ay, our own wills are conscious there of a strengthen- 
 ing presence. It is more than the touch of Antaeus to 
 his native earth. It is the miracle of Jacob's night of 
 wrestling with the angel. "We go stronger from that 
 place of a mighty communion. 
 
 In harmony with the quality now illustrated, Bryant 
 exercises a noble patience in employing the " last hand " 
 of the artist. This, no doubt, is the labor which ex- 
 hausts him. Robert Hall, according to his own testi- 
 mony respecting himself, was continually tormented 
 with the desire to preach better than he possibly could. 
 Mr. Bryant seems to finish his poems in view of a simi- 
 larly impossible standard. But Hall's ambition (as 
 pure of selfishness we can believe it to have been as 
 human ambition is likely soon to be) was at least worth 
 Something to the world. It spurred a splendid genius 
 to exertions that made the greatest of modern preach- 
 ers. Bryant's haunting ideal has prompted him to 
 make such approaches to absolute perfection of finish as 
 no other poet has made since Horace elaborated his odes. 
 
 In assigning to these two poets so high a relative 
 position among poetical artists, we would not, of course, 
 be understood to use the designation in its larger and 
 more honorable significance. Neither of them sketches 
 with the ample hand of a Michael Angelo. ITeither 
 goes out into chaos, like Milton, and creates worlds 
 that thenceforth seem actually to add something to the 
 substance and extent of the universe. Nothing of 
 this. Their genius is not level to such an imitation 
 of Omnipotence, as few men's has been. But so 
 does not their ambition aspire to it. They busy them- 
 selves with the minor moralities "of the muse. They 
 do not invite the use of the telescope to explore their 
 works. They are well content if the finer eye of the 
 microscope, multiplying their graces, discovers no flaws. 
 
ME. BEYAUT'B POETRY. 193 
 
 The art of verse, in this more limited and humbler 
 sense, might be defined to consist in reconciling rhyme, 
 measure, rhythm, all the externals by which, to the 
 eye and the ear, poetry is diflferenced from prose, with 
 the most authorized use of the language — in a word, in 
 reconciling prosody with etymology and syntax. Cer- 
 tain licenses are allowed to poets, by immemorial pre- 
 scription. These are pretty well ascertained, generally, 
 and are limited in number. They constitute a sort of 
 relief fund for poets in distress. Some shght shadow 
 of reproach, more or less, attends resort even to this. 
 Poets ought to make it a nice point of honor never to 
 transcend it. Novelties in poetical license are rather 
 worse than neologisms in diction. "We of course except 
 now such departures from the law of prose as are matter 
 of choice (for the sake of elegance) and not of neces- 
 sity. These belong properly to the invention of the 
 artist. They are suggestive of farther resources — like 
 superfluous pots of gold on the counters of a specie- 
 paying bank. Used with a frugal Attic taste, they 
 produce a pleasing effect. Compulsory deviations, on 
 the contrary, especially if without good precedents, 
 never fail to hint disagreeably of stringency — ^possible 
 insolvency. 
 
 Bad rhymes, for example, are little better than no 
 rhymes at all. They virtually confess that the artist 
 was beaten and had to capitulate. Our best artists are 
 sparing of them. The instances are rare in Tenny- 
 son. Yet Tennyson, marvellous artist that he is, shall 
 double the number that are found in Bryant, page for 
 
 Halting rhythm is another confession of the imper- 
 fect artist — except, indeed, where it is chosen for its 
 effect. It is an evidence of weakness unless it is an 
 evidence of power. High passion is said to be natu- 
 
19-i A FEEE LAHCE. 
 
 rally rhythmical in utterance. So it may be ; but the 
 highest passion has a rhythm of its own, and oftentimes 
 jars a loftier music out of rugged metres. Such dis- 
 cord is the sign, not of the Hmitation, but of the excess, 
 of power. Milton and Tennyson are masters in this 
 kind. Mrs. Browning has passages of so high a mood, 
 that their inharmonious music would seem to be the 
 supreme attainment of an accomplished artist, did not 
 the weU-nigh imiversal prevalence of the same difficult 
 and obstructed movement induce a doubt whether it be 
 anything more after aU than the struggle of a deficient 
 constructive faculty. Bryant is as perfectly, though 
 not so variously, musical as Tennyson. Tennyson's 
 permutations of melody are apparently endless ; Bry- 
 ant rings some exquisite changes, but they are fewer 
 and simpler, and they recur more frequently. A favor- 
 ite artifice, for example, with Bryant, always delicately 
 managed however, is to break the monotony of his 
 iambic verse by the introduction of a dactylic word 
 where a trochaic one would be regular. The apostro- 
 phe occurring in the piece entitled "Antiquity of Free- 
 dom," already alluded to; presents a fine instance : 
 
 O Fhbedom ! thou art not, as poets dream, 
 
 A fair young giri, with light and delicate limbs. 
 
 It will be noticed here how beautifully the effect of 
 aerial sculpture, which the ear apprehends in this line, 
 accomplishes the poet's descriptive purpose. 
 
 Bryant is guiltless of neologisms, which is more than 
 can be said of the great English laureate. He seldom 
 forces words out of uses which are normal and kindly 
 to them. The intervals are long at which his even 
 flight touches the ground in a prosaic expression. This 
 last does happen, however, occasionally. In the " Mon- 
 ument Mountain," a partly narrative piece of blank 
 
ME. beyant'^ poetey. 195 
 
 verse, not unlike the minor liianner of "Wordsworth, 
 Bryant tells us that the Indians are of the opinion 
 
 that God 
 Doth walk on the high places and affect 
 The earth-o'erlooking mountains — 
 
 a word — it is entirely too common, in an ambiguous 
 sense, to claim privilege as a classicism — which, we ven- 
 ture to say, so correct a taste as Mr. Bryant's would 
 scruple to use even in prose. But the demands of ver- 
 sification, especially in moods of "cold obstruction," 
 such as will clog sometimes the most fortunate genius, 
 are not to be entreated. This poem rehearses the tra- 
 dition of an Indian girl, who, smitten with love for 
 her cousin (a passion deemed unlawful by her race), 
 committed suicide by throwing herself from a precipice 
 of rock. The mountain to which the precipice be- 
 longed afterward obtained the name of Monument 
 Mountain, from its then being crowned by pious hands 
 with a memorial pile of stones. Mr. Bryant's genius, 
 we must think, is too essentially contemplative to feel 
 its freedom perfectly in narration. There is, neverthe- 
 less, one incident in the poem under remark, conceived 
 and told with a fine power of mild, penetrative pathos. 
 The effect is not certainly the highest, but it is one of 
 the very rarest in poetry. The melancholy maiden, 
 with a bosom friend, the sole sharer of her secret, has 
 climbed to the brow of the fatal precipice. The fol- 
 lowing words give the incident alluded to : 
 
 Here the friends sat them do-wn, 
 And somg, aU day, old ionga of love and death. 
 
 The line printed here in italics is not a striking line. 
 Its effect is not felt immediately. It needs to be pon- 
 dered — to be said over thoughtfully and tenderly, again 
 and again. Then, if we mistake not, it will begin to 
 
196 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 assert over the rightly-prepared mind a mystical influ- 
 ence as of a charm. Its vowel richness, its solemn eon- 
 sonant harmony, its laden spondaic movement, the ex- 
 quisitely affecting union and contrast in the last three 
 words, finally, the mournful thought of those poor chil- 
 dren of the wood soothing the lone one's " imaginative 
 woe " to the sad issue— all these conspire to produce a 
 very sweet effect— sweet, at least, to him who knows 
 how to submit himself to spells in words. Is it a merely 
 whimsical suggestion that associates this line with that 
 " most musical, most melancholy " place of the Para- 
 dise Lost, where Milton describes how the gentler- 
 spirited among the fallen angels solaced themselves 
 with commemorating in dirges their valor and their 
 
 misfortune ? 
 
 Others more mild, 
 Retreated in a silent valley, sing 
 Witli notes angelical to many a harp 
 Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall 
 By doom of battle. 
 
 The stanza in Tennyson's " Dream of Fair Women," is 
 like in spirit, but inferior far in beauty, which speaks 
 of that ever-recurring spectacle in history — 
 
 Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand 
 The downward slope to death. 
 
 We have been tempted a little aside. "We were speak- 
 ing of Mr. Bryant's freedom from the various besetting 
 peccadilloes of poets. He almost never submits to say 
 what he did not wish to, for the sake of completing a 
 verse or a stanza — a surrender which is far more com- 
 mon with the poets than might be imagined. Byron 
 abounds in instances. The exigencies that invite such 
 surrender are golden opportunities for the skilful artist. 
 They are to him what occasions of retreat are to the 
 skilful general. Fortunately managed they display his 
 
ME. EEYANT'S POETEY. 197 
 
 resources better, oftentimes, than a brilliant success. 
 In adroit bands these fruitful necessities have first and 
 last given us not a little genuine poetry. They may 
 sometimes fetter the free play of the fancy, but eftener 
 they wiU prove ministers of timely suggestion. This is 
 the reason why it is so umch easier for a mediocre man 
 to write passable rhyme than passable blank verse. It 
 is also the reason why the most flexible, the most play- 
 ful, and the airiest strains of sentiment and of fancy will 
 so often be found to be most intricately versified. It is 
 not more because such conceptions demand such expres- 
 sion, than because such expression admits such concep- 
 tions. The form gives the matter, in this case, as much 
 as the matter gives the form. It requires a Shake- 
 speare, a Milton (as in the " Comus "), a Tennyson, to 
 write playful blank verse. The unrhymed songs of 
 "The Princess" are almost solitary exceptions to the 
 universal usage of the song-wrights of our literature. 
 And after all, the emergencies in versification, on which 
 genius depends for suggestions, are of no use except 
 to genius. They are sometimes stumbling-blocks to 
 genius, when genius is impatient of art's delays. This, 
 however, rarely happens with Bryant. 
 
 Another specification may fairly be made at this 
 point. Mr. Bryant has too old-fashioned a regard for 
 the rules of grammar to consider himself at liberty to 
 transcend them lightly. Tennyson is inclined to be 
 somewhat "progressive" in this respect. It would be 
 easy to show how cavalierly he treats the grammatical 
 proprieties at times. 
 
 I^ow the scrupulous artist's conscience which Mr. 
 Bryant keeps, is by no means the mere precisian's bond- 
 age to rule. There is a noble freedom in it. It is not 
 the fond devotion that deifies and worships art as an 
 end in itself There is no idolatry in it. Bryant's art 
 
198 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 is always purest nature, not impelled, but impelling 
 itself; not restrained, but restraining itself. It is like 
 that last attainment of the good, proposed by a profound 
 theology. It is freedom, reconciled with the highest 
 necessity. Unobtrusive as such results of art, like all 
 negative excellences, must be, it is yet a separate source 
 of peculiar pleasure, in reading poetry, to feel sure 
 always that you are not going to meet with incessant 
 occasion for subtractions from the total effect, on ac- 
 count of artistic blemishes. 
 
 We incidentally alluded to Horace, some pages back', 
 as Bryant's parallel in finish of execution. There is 
 not wanting some degree of likeness between the two 
 in several respects. Horace was disqualified, by his 
 painfully slow and laborious habits of composition, for 
 the execution of a long poem. It miglit have cost him 
 his life ; but, at all events, the uniform brilliancy which 
 his exquisite polish would have imparted to the whole 
 would, perhaps, frustrate the proper effect of a long 
 poem — the idea of which, we suppose, is realized in a 
 work capable of being read and appreciated at a single 
 sitting. A poem too long for this is not really one 
 poem, but more ; for Poe's theory has its confirmation 
 in every man's reason and experience. But a poem by 
 the Horace whom we know, much exceeding in length 
 the longest of those which he has left us, would defy 
 adequate appreciation at one sitting. The trance of 
 mimic inspiration which the poet must produce in his 
 readers to qualify them for such an appreciation, like 
 all intense emotions, passes too soon. Horace seems to 
 have been aware of this, and he wisely expended his 
 power* in producing poems of just manageable dimen- 
 sions. Bryant has done the same, and probably for 
 similar reasons. 
 
 These considerations, if we are wise, we shaU suffer 
 
ME. BRYANT'S POETEY. 199 
 
 to influence our appraisal of sncli men's acliievements. 
 There are poets whose qiiality will not wait to hear the 
 judgment of a second thought. It resents a moment's 
 delay as an insult. Its appeal is to a sense like the pole 
 of a magnetic battery, which must kindle immediately 
 or remain cold. Far otherwise is it with Horace. The 
 man who should set out to read the Odes without bring- 
 ing to his task an eye adapted by nature, and refined 
 by culture, to look for curious felicities that demand 
 and repay a- delaying notice — forms of words absolutely 
 perfect, like the archetypes of nature, and composing 
 spells of power — thoughts elaborately polished and 
 clear, like cut diamonds, but hiding away, after the 
 manner of all most precious things, in cloistered re- 
 cesses of expression — he, we say, who should undertake 
 the Odes of Horace without a faculty of discernment 
 for all these, and more, must consent to abide in help- 
 less wonder that the ever-forgiven egotist's prophecy of 
 his own unfailing longevity of fame should yet be en- 
 joying so remarkable a fulfilment : 
 
 Exegi monumentum aere peremiius. 
 
 Each trait of Hoi'ace, now enumerated, is a point of 
 further resemblance between him and Bryant. 
 
 It will be observed that nothing, thus far said, implies 
 any parallel between the two as to choice of sub- 
 jects. Here, in fact, the resemblance fails — less, it may 
 be, from lack of the natural congeniality to produce it, 
 than from difference of conditioning circumstances, 
 though probably in a degree from both. Horace's 
 powers of shrewd moral observation, and his long-con- 
 tinued urban and polite associations made him emi- 
 nently a poet of men and manners. Bryant is not 
 ignorant of the world, and he bears no morbid hatred 
 to men, but he knows Nature better, and loves her 
 
200 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 more, x^or seems his passion unretumed. She im- 
 parts to him a thousand secrets kept sacred from man's 
 knowledge and speech since the morning stars sang to- 
 gether. It is wonderful, the number of mysteries she 
 will breathe in his ear, and sign to his eye, and dart 
 through his frame in electrical notices, during an hour's 
 communion with her. She can trust them safely to him. 
 No other is so patient to interpret them truly. Such 
 patience could come only from such love. 
 
 Now, of course, it would be the infirmity of charity 
 to reckon any certain poem as in the slightest degree 
 intrinsically more valuable, simply because it cost its 
 author nine years of labor and of waiting. Much less, 
 however, would we admit the vulgar interpretation of 
 that least learned of Latin commonplaces, Pdeta nasci- 
 tur, non fit. Rightly interpreted, it expresses aptly 
 enough one of the most indubitable of facts. But as it 
 is popularly understood, it would seem to import noth- 
 ing less than that the thing poetry itself comes into ex- 
 istence somehow without any one's responsible agency, 
 being, so far as concerns the poet producing it, merely 
 a sort of fine secretion of the curiously adapted brain. 
 Many accordingly proceed to gauge their value of a 
 poem, as nearly as may be, in the inverse ratio of the 
 pains known to have been expended upon it — appar- 
 ently under the impression that hard work and the 
 divine afflatus, so-called, are an impossible binomial. 
 
 Now, certainly, as between misapplied pains and 
 simple carelessness, no one could think of suspending 
 his choice for a moment. The vulgarity of art is 
 immeasurably more disgusting than the vulgarity of 
 nature — more disgusting because more intensely vul- 
 gar. Art, indeed, in the sense in which we are now 
 using it, that is, to denote the pains bestowed by the 
 artist on his work, is merely nature giving attention to 
 
ME. BRYANT'S POETEY. 201 
 
 itself. It is nature in a mood of self-consciousness. 
 Thus, to speak like a mathematician, it is limited to 
 yield a higher power of nature. A genius therefore 
 naturally constituted pure and noble, while, as a matter 
 of course, it is always liable to be debased with vul- 
 garity of various kinds, as coarseness (witness Shake- 
 speare), or artificiality (witness Corneille and the 
 French dramatists of that time generally), through the 
 outward influence of a depraved standard of taste pre- 
 vailing in a given country or period, still will only be 
 purified and ennobled by its own freely chosen processes 
 of self-culture. What made Madame D'Ai-blay exchange 
 a style that charmed mankind by its simple graces for 
 one that offended all by its elaborate mannerisms, was 
 not excess of art. It was not, in its present meaning, 
 art at all. The fact was, her genius ceased to be a law 
 unto itself, and imitated ; and imitation is not art, but 
 affectation. 
 
 We shall hardly need to say that Mr. Bryant, whether 
 more by the good fortune of his position in the literary 
 republic, or by the safeguard of a singularly chaste 
 aesthetic quality in his genius well adapted to purge off 
 all "baser fire," has quite escaped contagion from 
 without. Thoroughly artistic, his poetry is equally 
 inartificial. We will not aifirm that Bryant has made 
 the most that was possible of his genius ; but we have 
 no hesitation in saying that he has made the most that 
 was possible of his poetry. H,e might perhaps have 
 achieved more had he attempted more. But thus much 
 is certain, he has achieved whatever he has attempted. 
 His poetry is not the loftiest, but it is the most perfect 
 of poetry. Its ideal may be comparatively humble, 
 but it wants little, very little, of being completely real- 
 ized. We do not care to make account here of one or 
 two poems which Mr. Bryant has written in the hu- 
 
202 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 morous vein. His genius certainly does not laugh so 
 naturally as it weeps. But the lines " To a Musquito " 
 are not, in our opinion, so wholly unsuccessful as some 
 critics, who appear to have imagined that they could 
 pronounce safely from Mr. Bryant's acknowledged more 
 prevailing manner, would have us think. 
 
 We are aware that we have written extraordinary 
 praise. We shall not pretend to justify it by citations. 
 In fact it is such praise as can be competently passed 
 upon in review only by one who will become tolerably 
 familiar with Bryant's poetry as a whole. His poetry 
 is not beautiful and perfect in parts, as one's is whose 
 inspiration comes on him by fits. It is not faultless 
 here and there, by an occasional felicity. It is uniformly 
 finished, by the law of his genius. Yet there are, of 
 course, passages pre-eminent in excellence. We must 
 be permitted to cite a few, notwithstanding that they 
 may be already the favorites of many of our readers. 
 The following stanza is from " The Indian Girl's La- 
 ment." The maiden's lover has died, and she chants 
 her sorrow and her hope over his grave. In accordance 
 with the superstition of her race she supposes her brave 
 to have gone to the well-wooded and well-watered 
 hunting-grounds of the blest. 
 
 Where everlasting autumn lies 
 On yellow woods and sunny skies. 
 
 She imagines that memory of her has directed his em- 
 ployments in the spirit-land : 
 
 And thou, by one of those still lakes 
 
 That in a shining cluster He, 
 On which the south wind scarcely breaks 
 
 The image of the sky, 
 A bower for thee and me hast made 
 Beneath the many-colored shade. 
 
 The luxury of repose, the warm, the mellow, the frue- 
 
ME. BETANT'S POETEY. 203 
 
 tuous coloring, the pictorial light,, the sweet naturalness 
 of fancy, and the luscious melody, that are associated 
 here, make the picture magical even beyond what the 
 magic of such an original could be. 
 
 The following lines, from " The Hurricane," are de- 
 scriptive of a tropical tempest, bursting in that long, 
 rattling, interrupted crash of thunder which even our 
 climate sometimes hears : 
 
 And hark to the crashing, long and loud, 
 Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud ! 
 Tou may trace its path by the flashes that start 
 From the rapid wheels where'er they dart. 
 As the fire-bolts leap to the world below, 
 And flood the skies with a lurid glow. 
 
 What a delicious music in the delicately alliterative 
 line italicized below. It is from the " Green Kiver." 
 The poet would fain linger by that fresh meadowy 
 water-side, 
 
 Till the eating cares of earth should depart. 
 And the peace of the, scene pass into my hea/rt. 
 
 Please, reader, try that over again, aloud this time, 
 and observe with what a fine effect, as you obey the 
 sense in protracting the quantity of the word " pass," 
 the anapaestic movement is arrested there with a virtual 
 dactyl, and then sent forward in an iambus. That's 
 the scansion of it, dear reader, upon our honor. "We 
 hope you would not scan 
 
 And the peace | of the scene | pass in | to my heart. 
 
 That would be truly regular and sad. 
 
 Eunning our eye again and again, here and there and 
 everywhere, over these delectable pages, in the pauses 
 of our writing, we are conscious of a sentiment akin to 
 remorse at having seemed to intimate that we are cull- 
 ing the best passages of our poet, or even that there is 
 
204 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 any inequality of excellence observable at all. It is no 
 exaggeration to say that Mr. Bryant's delineations of 
 nature are more beautiful than nature itself — or, to 
 speak more exactly, that the effect on us wrought when 
 we read, surpasses that wrought when we obsprve. For, 
 in the first place, Mr. Bryant can show us nature pre- 
 cisely as he sees it, and few of us have an eye like his ; 
 and, in the second place, there is the superadded plea- 
 sure of the imitation. He thus does more for us than 
 his own sweet verse makes the odor-laden land breeze 
 do for the home-sick mariner on the sea, where it is 
 said that. 
 
 Listening to its murmur he shall deem 
 
 He hears the rustling leaf, and running stream. 
 
 It is such an illusion and something besides. And 
 should we also add here another element which will seem 
 almost incompatible with the perfect fidelity that we 
 have attributed to him as a limner of nature — namely, 
 that he diffuses over his pictures somehow always a 
 charm of his own tender, half-pensive subjectivity ? 
 The quivering gWmmer of sun and rill. 
 
 And darted up and down the butterfly 
 That seemed a living blossom of the air. 
 
 The hoitaemfe bee and humming bird. 
 
 They have not perished — no ! 
 Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet, 
 
 Smiles, radiant long ago, 
 And features, the great soul's apparent seat. 
 
 Addressing Freedom, supposed to confront his an- 
 cient, though " later-born," enemy — Tyranny : 
 The grave defiance of thine elder eye. 
 
 But there must be a limit to quotations, and we will 
 stop with a couple of stanzas from the little poem en- 
 titled " June." This poem rehearses a poet's reasons 
 
MK. BEYANT'd POETRY. 205 
 
 for preferring a pleasant rural resting-place for his dust 
 to any other. We remember to have been, last sum- 
 mer, one of a little company of friends who walked out 
 late in the " ail-golden afternoon " of a serenely beauti- 
 ful day, to visit such a spot in a quiet country town in 
 l^ew England. We gathered near the sacred marble, 
 and stood, silent or talking in low voices of him who 
 rested there, when, in an interval of silence, one of our 
 number, hardly interrupting it, began to recite the little 
 poem under remark. Line after line, and stanza after 
 stanza, its sweetness and appropriateness appeared so 
 exquisite that she who had given that pleasant meadow- 
 mound the most was tranced in tearful musing. As if 
 by common consent, lingering yet a thoughtful moment 
 or two, we moved slowly and silently away — but she 
 was not satisiied until the poem was secure in her pos- 
 session. But here are the promised stanzas : 
 
 I know, I know I should not see ' 
 
 The season's glorious show. 
 Nor would its brightness sliine for me. 
 
 Nor its wild music flow ; 
 But if, around laj place of sleep, 
 The friends I love should come to weep. 
 
 They might not haste to go. 
 Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom 
 Should keep them lingering by my tomb. 
 
 These to their softened hearts should bear 
 
 The thought of what has been. 
 And speak of one who cannot share 
 
 The gladness of the scene ; 
 Whose part,in all the pomp that fills 
 The circuit of the summer hills, 
 
 Is that his grave is green ; 
 And deeply would their hearts rejoice 
 To hear again his living voice. 
 
 ' Since this essay was written Mr. Bryant has amended the first line to read, 
 I know that I no more should see. 
 
206 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 The tenderness and delicacy of thought and the 
 melody of rhythm in this little piece are unsurpassed. 
 The execution not only cannot be improved, but what 
 is more, it needs no improvement. We cannot help 
 thinking, however, that Mr. Bryant stayed his hand at 
 least one stanza too soon. That Christian mourner 
 whom his verse comforted ^vould, we are confident, 
 have been doubly grateful had he gone on to speak, as 
 he could speak, of other fields, golden under another 
 light. It was surely worthy of a Christian poet to 
 open such a landscape upon the hills of immortality. 
 It could not have marred the artistic perfection of his 
 work to beautify a picture so beautiful, by transfigui- 
 ing it in unborrowed light.' 
 
 ' We venture to print the following lines by way of rudely illus- 
 trating our idea. Tlie stanza which they may possibly serve in 
 some degree to hint to the imagination of the reader, would, ac- 
 cording to our conception, immediately succeed the last of the two 
 quoted in the text, and thus conclude the piece : 
 
 Then gently o'er tlieii- hearts at last 
 
 A Boothing change should Bteal — 
 The darkness of the pensive past, 
 
 A sense like dawn ehould feel; 
 The tearful memory of their friend 
 In tranquil tearful hope should end. 
 
 The scene a scene reveal, 
 Where breeze, and song, and light, and bloom 
 Have found a land without a tomb I 
 
 We at first amused ourselves with trying how easily, by a few 
 changes, the. closing stajiza of the poem might be turned from its 
 aspect toward the past, and made to deal with "the other dis- 
 tance." It seemed more exquisitely in harmony with the avowedly 
 cheerful tone of the piece, that it should end with anticipation 
 rather than retrospect. But then it was undoubtedly a true touch 
 of nature to let a song which had bravely undertaken to rejoice 
 against great Death, have somewhere in it a cadence of " more pre- 
 vailing sadness." Still, was there not one further possibility, both 
 of naturalness and of beauty, in making it finally recover, or almost 
 recover, the key with which it started 1 We imagine that here was 
 a place where the wayward poetic fancy might safely have its will 
 quite unchecked — ^like an ^olian harp. 
 
ME. BETANT'S POETET. 207 
 
 Tears we remember intervened between the writing 
 of Tennyson's " May Queen " and the adding of the 
 " Conclusion." It would be a noteworthy and noble 
 thing if Mr. Bryant should yet put his hand to the task 
 of furnishing a like supplement to one of his purest and 
 sweetest inspirations. The appropriateness of the con- 
 ception almost forgave the temerity of the attempt and 
 the crime of the forgery, when a few years ago a gentle- 
 man in Maine published a short poem purporting to be 
 a " Sequel " to the " Thanatopsis " by the hand of Mr. 
 Bryant. It was too crudely versified for the hand that 
 has lost none of its cunning since composing the marvel- 
 lous harmony of the " Thanatopsis " at eighteen, and it 
 was otherwise disfigured by blemishes ; but as the writer 
 proceeded, by way of completing the idea of Bryant's 
 famous conclnsion, to tell how (we quote from memory 
 of seven or eight years ago), when we 
 
 Have passed our night-time in the vale of death, 
 And struck our white tents for the morning march, 
 We shall move forward to the eternal bills. 
 Our foot unwearied and our strength renewed 
 Like the strong eagle's, for the upward flight ! 
 
 really these closing lines seemed to us lighted up with 
 a transient gleam of not much inferior majesty. 
 
 We are not accusing Mr. Bryant of the fault — ^though 
 there are one or two conspicuous instances in which he 
 has made us wish to see him avoid it by a wider margin 
 —when we venture to suggest that too much poetry is 
 written now-a-days as if we had not yet unlearned 
 heathenism. Is heathenism more poetical- than Chris- 
 tianity? Is it not true that Christianity has shed over 
 all things a new consecration — "the light that never 
 Avasjon sea or land ? " "We submit that it is something 
 besides wickedness for the heirs of eighteen Christian 
 centuries to write poetry as if they were heathen. 
 
208 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 Talleyrand might pronounce it folly worse than wicked- 
 ness. It does not seem out of place, nay, it excites an 
 emotion thrilling and solemn, even to the verge of sub- 
 limity, to come upon such a paragraph as the following, 
 in the pages of KusMn (" Seven Lamps of Architec- 
 ture ") : 
 
 I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and often have 
 checked the course of what might otherwise have been importu- 
 nate persuasion, as the thought has crossed me, how soon all archi- 
 tecture may be vain, except that which is not made with hands. 
 
 This is noble, and who will assume to say that such 
 language does not become a Christian critic and author ? 
 We do not mean to put forth any over-strained notions 
 about this matter, for we entertain none. We are far 
 enough from desiring to gird either author or artist 
 about with a stringent sense of obligation to be always 
 thrusting forward a religious or moral lesson. We be- 
 lieve in poetry that would not come under the category 
 of either " Divine " or " Moral " songs. We believe in 
 art that represents other than Biblical subjects. There 
 is ultimate authority for the opinion that whatever is 
 not directly hostile to God is friendly and helpful. We 
 have just been alluding to the instance of an English- 
 man still living and in the prime of his powers, who, 
 uniting earnest piety to elegant taste, without degrad- 
 ing either, has devoted a lifetime to the single province 
 of art-criticism, so-called. A narrow judgment might 
 perhaps consider this an unworthy devotion of earnest- 
 ly Christian genius. We think otherwise. But to Mr. 
 Eusldn himself it must be a confirmation of his conscien- 
 tious choice, as unexpected as gratifying, to know that 
 a celebrated American preacher is largely indebted to 
 him for that astonishing faculty of illustration which, 
 more than any other one thing, has made his pulpit 
 
ME. BRYANT'S POETEY. 209 
 
 seem io be a power on this continent. This unantici- 
 pated utility of a labor which would ha.ve been amply 
 contented could it only transfer the myriad influences 
 of art as teacher to the side of " the true, the beautiful, 
 and the good," goes to prove the words of the poet, 
 that 
 
 liberal applications lie 
 In art as nature. 
 
 We shall learn by and by that Heavenly "Wisdom allows 
 for wide distances sometimes between causes and eifects, 
 and that the Divine purposes are accomplished with 
 much division of labor. 
 
 As the " Thanatopsis " is at once the best known, 
 and one of the finest as well as one of the earliest of 
 Mr. Bryant's productions, and as, moreover, it enjoys 
 the distinction of being the first American verse that 
 won a European recognition, we have supposed that it 
 might gratify some of our readers to see this poem in 
 the form which it wore when originally given to the 
 public in " The North American Review." When the 
 conductors of that periodical first examined the piece, 
 they affirmed that it could not be of American origin. 
 They thought it too perfect in its versification. It will 
 be noticed, however, that Mr. Bryant has re-touched it 
 since then with great success. A comparison of this 
 early text of the " Thanatopsis " (itself, no doubt, pain- 
 fully elaborated) with that which appears in his latest 
 editions will illustrate what we have said on preceding 
 pages of Mr. Bryant's admirable patience and unfailing 
 taste in finishing his work. The critics of a former 
 day, in announcing the alterations, express concern lest 
 the poet might have committed the error of so many, 
 and marred with an after-hand the first beauty of his 
 workmanship. But their apprehension was groundless. 
 It is a foregone conclusion that Mr. Bryant's artistic 
 
210 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 labor is always well bestowed. Here is tbe " Thana- 
 topsis," as it appeared in " The North American Re- 
 view" for September, 1817: 
 
 Not that from life, and all its woes 
 The hand of death shall set me free ; 
 
 Not that this head shall then repose 
 In the low vale most peacefully. 
 
 Ah, when I touch time's farthest brink, 
 
 A kinder solace must attend ; 
 It chills my very soul, to think 
 
 On that dread hour when life must end. 
 
 In vain the flatt'ring verse may breathe 
 Of ease from pain, and rest from strife, 
 
 There u a sacred dread of death 
 Inwoven with the strings of life. 
 
 This bitter cup at first was given 
 When angry justice frowned severe, 
 
 And't is th' eternal doom of heaven 
 That man must view the grave with fear. 
 
 • Yet a few days, and thee 
 
 The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
 
 In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, 
 
 Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears. 
 
 Nor in th' embrace of ocean shall exist 
 
 Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 
 
 Thy growth, to be resolv'd to earth again ; 
 
 And, lost each human trace, surrend'ring up 
 
 Thine individual being, shalt thou go 
 
 To mix forever with the elements, 
 
 To be a brother to th' insensible rock 
 
 And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
 
 Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 
 
 Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 
 
 Tet not to thy eternal resting place 
 
 Shalt thou retire alone — nor couldst thou wish 
 
 Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
 
 With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings 
 
 The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good. 
 
 Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
 
ME. BEY ANT'S POETEY. 211 
 
 All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills, 
 
 Eock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun, — the vales 
 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 
 The venerable woods — the floods that move 
 
 In majesty, — and the complaining brooks, 
 
 That wind among the meads, and make them green, 
 
 Are but the solemn decorations all. 
 
 Of the great tomb of man. — The golden sun, 
 
 The planets, all the infinite host of heaven 
 
 Are glowing on the still abodes of death. 
 
 Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
 
 The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
 
 That slumber in its bosom. — Take the wings 
 
 Of morning — and the Borean desert pierce — 
 
 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
 
 That veil Oregan, where he hears no sound 
 
 Save his own dashings — yet — the dead are there. 
 
 And millions in those solitudes, since first 
 
 The flight of years began, have laid them down 
 
 In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. — 
 
 So shalt thou rest — and what if thou shalt fall 
 
 Unnoticed by the living — and no friend 
 
 Take note of thy departure ? Thousands more 
 
 Will share thy destiny. — The tittering world 
 
 Dance to the grave. The busy brood of care 
 
 Plod on, and each one chases as before 
 
 His favourite phantom. — Yet all these shall leave 
 
 Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
 
 And make their bed with thee ! 
 
 The points of difference between the above and the 
 present state of the poem are worthy of note. In the 
 first place, the original draft does not appear to have 
 any aim. It is, in fact, remarJcahly aimless. It is 
 simply an accumulation of images and reflections about 
 death, in themselves neither very striking nor partaking 
 of any definite character, as consolatory or otherwise, 
 but expressed in singularly harmonious and even ma- 
 jestic verse. We should not blame the conductors of 
 the " Eeview " if they had declined the piece on account 
 of the defect now pointed out. It would have been 
 
212 A FEEE LAIJCE. 
 
 very foolish, however, and we are glad they did not. 
 It was evidently Mr. Bryant's first care, in the revision, 
 to give the poem a determinate direction. This he 
 does by means of sixteen new introductory lines, sub- 
 stituted for the original proem, in which also he takes 
 occasion to mend the broken verse that stood first 
 before — ^thus relinquishing a privilege which, since the 
 date of this poem, has become nearly or quite obsolete 
 even in amateur poetry. It was better, too, that an in- 
 troduction in a heterogeneous metre should disappear, 
 even at the cost of those two lines in the third stanza 
 which we have taken the liberty to italicize. The object, 
 as now conveyed in the most mellifluous of verse, is to 
 draw from Nature what solace she may have for us in 
 view of " God's ordinance of death." Will it be ungra- 
 cious to hint that Mr. Bryant, in impressing this char- 
 acter upon the poem, has not quite avoided a fault of 
 incongruity. At least it is not easy to see how the poet 
 could have found his meditations very consoling. If 
 such a strain of musing fairly represents the best that 
 Nature can do, we pity the pantheists, and all others her 
 children, who are shut up to suck at the breasts of her 
 consolations. Perhaps it does, and the Maine forger, 
 whose success might seem more encouraging, possibly 
 was interpreting Nature in a light not her own when 
 he discovered symbolisms of immortality in the resur- 
 rections of springtime. We are nowise sure that sim- 
 ple Nature is in the least degree a more sympathizing 
 mother than Mr. Bryant represents her to be. 
 
 Another improvement was the appending of a mag- 
 nificent conclusion, — completing a broken line again, — 
 in which occurs the only word in the whole piece, as it 
 now stands, which a cultivated heathen might not have 
 written, — "trusV That saves it, but it might have 
 been saved more abundantly. The attentive eye will 
 
ME. BEYAIIT'S POETRY. 213 
 
 mark the numerous minor changes throughout the 
 body of the poem. Some of these depend on reasons 
 of meaning, of taste, and of rhythm, that will elude 
 all but the nicest observation. How nobly, for exam- 
 ple, it complements the enumeration to add to " hills," 
 and " vales," and " brooks," and " rivers " that last par- 
 ticular, 
 
 and poured round all, 
 Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste. 
 
 The substitution of " rivers " for " the floods," besides 
 being in itself an improvement, and an improvement 
 as allowing the omission of the article (which both for 
 the sense and the euphony were better away), enriches 
 at once the variety and the grandeur of the rhythm. 
 It is plainly finer to say : 
 
 The venerable woods — rivers that move 
 In majesty 
 
 than 
 
 The venerable woods — the floods, etc., 
 
 and for yet a further reason, which is likely to have 
 been the suggestive one of all, namely, that it avoids 
 the jingle between " woods " and "floods." The change 
 of " glowing " to " shining " — 
 
 The golden san, 
 The planets, all the infinite host of heaven 
 Are glowing, etc., 
 
 is perhaps the best time-maxk that the comparison fur- 
 nishes. " Glowing " belongs evidently to the fervent 
 period of youth, " shining" to the cooler age of later 
 life. The younger poet sacrificed keeping, even truth- 
 fuhiess of description, to a more striking word— the 
 older was content to merge a specific in the general 
 
214 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 effect, by using the word that was simply natural and 
 appropriate. Immediately following the " Thanatopsis " 
 in the Eeview, is tlje " Inscription for the Entrance to a 
 Wood," under the title of " A Fragment." A colla- 
 tion of the two forms of this poem would be a further 
 study of great interest in Mr. Bryant's art of finishing 
 verse; but we have already transcended the limits 
 which we had prescribed to ourselves, and we forbear. 
 
 We indicate in a closing paragraph the opinion which 
 we think will in the end be generally formed of Mr. 
 Bryant's merits as a poet. Coleridge has somewhere 
 recorded his judgment that of all vocations that of the 
 poet can least afford to dispense mth undivided and 
 unintermitting attention on the part of him who aspires 
 to supreme excellence in it. K we admit the correct- 
 ness of this judgment (and on precisely such a point, 
 we should not know where to look for a higher author- 
 ity than Coleridge), it will be very nearly equivalent 
 to acknowledging that Mr. Bryant, in paying as he has 
 done only an extremely desultory suit to the Muses, has 
 chosen his rank among the goodly fellowship of the 
 minor poets of ovir language. What different fame 
 might perchance have been his, had he, like Words- 
 worth, devoted himself exclusively to poetry, it were idle 
 to conjecture. As it is, while his poetry seldom if ever 
 displays anything of that fine, that ethereal light, min- 
 gled of philosophy and the imagination, which at 
 intervals so transforms the otherwise uninspired man- 
 ner of Wordsworth, we are free to adventure the 
 assertion, that in the article of description, thought by 
 some to be the crowning excellence of the great English 
 master, Bryant easily surpasses him — though here 
 again it is to be confessed that he has perhaps nowhere 
 atteqipted description on so grand a scale as, for example, 
 that of the magnificent sunrise scene in the first book of 
 
ME. BEYANT'S POETKY. 215 
 
 " The Excursion," or the still more splendid cloudscape 
 toward the close of the second. A picture of Bryant's 
 may be idealized like a Raphael, but it will never vio- 
 late the sacred truth of nature. The sunbeam has 
 hardly more reverence for the truth in representation 
 than has Bryant, We doubt if there is a line or even 
 60 much as one word of description in his volumes that 
 might not be rigorously verified from the right aspect of 
 nature. And his poetry is " racy of the soil." His 
 scenery is not Grecian, nor Italian, nor yet English, but 
 American scenery. This characteristic belongs to his 
 perfect sincerity and truthfulness. He is a national 
 poet, simply because he is a genuine poet — just as 
 every man who truly represents human nature at large 
 will also, in its proportion, represent a nationality. But 
 he is not iij any sense the poet of a party — political, 
 social, literary, philosophical, or religious — like some 
 of his countrymen that might be mentioned. The 
 charm of his poetry therefore is purely poetical. The 
 estimation which he enjoys is due in no degree to local 
 or temporary circumstances. It cannot diminish save 
 in the necessary and natural perspective of the expan- 
 sion of literature, and of time. There is no example 
 in the language of a purer poetical diction than Bry- 
 ant's. The vocabulary that might be made from his 
 poetry would be a " well of English undefiled." And 
 the moral quality of his verse — we have no fear of pro- 
 faning a sacred phrase — it is clear as crystal. There is 
 absolutely nothing anywhere in all that he has vmtten, 
 either said or left suggestively unsaid, that would not 
 show clean and white against the cheeks of the moun- 
 tains — 
 
 Where they purely lift 
 Snows that have never wasted in a sky 
 Which hath no stain. 
 
216 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 And it is not merely innocence, that may be ignorant 
 of temptation. It is virtue, that has been exercised 
 and crowned. He is sufficiently subjective to make us 
 feel that his own nature, and the whole of it, is on the 
 side of Kight and Duty. He utters words 
 
 That make a man feel strong in speaMng truth. 
 
 Indeed we suspect that it is this severe purity which 
 some have condemned for coldness. But Bryant is not 
 cold. He does not, like Byron and Schiller, seek by 
 unnatural stimulants to exhibit an unnatural heotic 
 flush of passion. But we misread " The Death of the 
 Flowers," the " Green Kiver," " The Kivulet," " The 
 Past," and many other of his pieces, if they are not 
 suffused with a roseate glow which is far enough 
 from frigidness. His passion is taken up into the in- 
 tellect and the imagination and sublimated there, but 
 not extinguished. It is extinguished, however, to those 
 who have long received " familiar the fierce heat " of 
 Byron. Mr. Bryant's prevailing tone is undoubtedly 
 mild and contemplative. His is, pre-eminently, the 
 " harvest of a quiet eye." He wins the most from na- 
 ture when he finds her gentle and placid in her moods. 
 And it is easy with him for the lid to grow heavy with 
 tears while the eye looks out on man or nature. The 
 minor key of sadness, which belongs to all our deepest 
 emotions, and perhaps points to the great tragedy of 
 the race, runs through Bryant's poetry. But he is not 
 always either mild or sad. " The Song of the Stars," 
 the " Song of Marion's Men," " The Hurricane," and 
 some other pieces, are instinct with the authentic lyrical 
 fire. There is not a finer specimen of its kind in the 
 language than " The Hurricane." Bryant has been 
 charged with monotony in treatment. There is ground 
 for the charge, yet any-one who will read in comparison, 
 
ME. BRYANT'S POETET. 217 
 
 "The Evening Wind," "The Summer Wind," and 
 " The Hurricane," must confess that he was not monoto- 
 nous for want of a very considerable range of power. 
 " The Antiquity of Freedom " has a breadth, a vigor, 
 and a loftiness in it almost Miltonic. Mr. Bryant left 
 college, w^e believe, without completing his course, but 
 he stayed long enough to snatch those nameless graces 
 of culture which no length of stay could impart to any- 
 thing but genius. His pages accordingly, have the gar- 
 nish of occasional classicisms, not frequent, but always 
 in exquisite taste. He also practises that incommuni- 
 cable art — more than anything else perhaps a crucial 
 test of genius — by which words, single words, are im- 
 pregnated and polarized and made many-sided prisms 
 of multiform suggestion. He lias apparently never 
 wrestled with great spiritual doubts and fears. At any 
 rate his verse does not incline at all to " handle spiritual 
 strife." For this reason he will not exercise an impor- 
 tant office as teacher. This has been given to poets 
 not a few, but Mr. Bryant is not of the number. He 
 will, however, fulfil a mission as beautiful in furnishing 
 language fgr the gentler emotions and the purer expe- 
 riences of many a grateful heart. There will never 
 come a time when the good will wish that his mission 
 were ended. 
 
 10 
 
MR. BRYANT'S ILIAD. 
 
 IT is a felicity hardly to have been conjectured that 
 has crowned the Kterary career of the Nestor 
 among American poets. We say crowned it, for what- 
 ever fi'uit of genius the fortunate old age of Mr. Bry- 
 ant may hereafter produce, it would be less in the 
 nature of a marvel than of a miracle, if it should pro- 
 duce anything worthy to take precedence in men's 
 esteem of this noble translation of the Iliad of Homer, 
 safe now in happy completion. We join our loyal 
 suffrage to the well-nigh unanimous verdict which 
 assuredly awaits from the universal republic of letters, 
 to pronounce Mr. Bryant's work the neai-est approach 
 that has thus far been made to that final English 
 Homer which has been looked for in vain so long. It 
 would, no doubt, partake of the weakness of extrava- 
 gance to say that Mr. Bryant has achieved an abso- 
 lutely ideal success. We do not, however, deem our- 
 selves extravagant in maintaining that he has given us 
 a vernacular Iliad which is not only entitled to super- 
 sede for popular use all the other existing versions in 
 English, but is moreover good enough to render every 
 future attempt to do better superfluous and waste. The 
 elusive shade of the Greek has disappointed many a 
 sanguine proffer of ferriage across the river that sepa- 
 rated him from citizenship and wont among the haunts 
 of English speech. It would be rash thus early to 
 
ME. BEYANT'S ILIAD. 219 
 
 affirm that Mr. Brj'ant has fairly got him over. But 
 certainly no ferryman ever tempted him to cross with 
 promise of the freedom of so luxurious an Elysium of 
 English verse before. 
 
 There are several features of Mr. Bryant's achieve- 
 ment which conspire to make it a memorablfe incident 
 in modem literary history. In the first place, it is 
 noteworthy enough that a man of seventy, at no period 
 of his life specially addicted to Greek learning, should 
 conceive so arduous a project as the translation of the 
 Biad. ' And, by the way, it supplies an exceedingly 
 gracious illustration of the amenities which seem so 
 well to befit the fellowships of literature and of genius, 
 that Mr. Bryant should have had the genial deference, 
 in a serene old age removed from jealousy, to obey the 
 generous behest which Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Lowell, 
 in their strenuous prime superior to envy, had the 
 admirable discernment to lay upon hira to undertake 
 this work. Mr. Fields wrote to Mr. Bryant for a poet- 
 ical contribution to " The Atlantic Monthly." Mr. Bry- 
 ant's portfolio at the time was otherwise empty, but he 
 sent a fragment of Homeric translation that happened 
 to be there. The two poets, Longfellow and Lowell, 
 found it so good, that they immediately joined in 
 insisting that Mr. Bryant should become the translator 
 of Homer. In the second place, the celerity with 
 which Mr. Bryant dispatched his task deserves com- 
 memorative note. The life-long literary habit and 
 facility of Pope, and his easy conscience concerning 
 the duty of a translator,, did not enable him, in the 
 flush of his fame and in the full maturity of his powers, 
 to translate the Iliad in less than five years — the time 
 which Mr. Bryant has occupied in doing it, urged by a 
 very different sense of obligation to his original, and in 
 the late evening of a Hfe exhausted upon pursuits that 
 
220 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 must liave gone far towards dissipating a natural apti- 
 tude for quick handiwork in letters, never, we suspect, 
 too great. It almost pathetically attests the "sad 
 mechanic " industry with which he sought nepenthe in 
 his toil for that " great domestic sorrow " alluded to, 
 with nobly characteristic reserve, in his preface. But 
 the circumstance which makes his success most remark- 
 able of all is one less obvious than either of these to 
 general notice. Homer belonged to an age and a race 
 almost antipodally removed from Mr. Bryant's. This, 
 to be sure, is a, disqualification common to Mr. Bryant 
 with every contemporaiy English translator of Homer. 
 But Mr. Bryant, as an interpreter of Homer, had the 
 individual disqualification of being intensely contrasted 
 with him in the quality of his genius, and, so far as we 
 can judge, in the quality of his personal character. 
 Homer lived in a world full of Greek life, and light, 
 and laughter, and song. Everything was outward to 
 him. " Milk " was " white " and " blood " was " red," 
 and neither the meanest nor the highest flower that 
 blows ever gave him a thought that was too deep for a 
 lucky compound adjective to express. He was not 
 proud and self-conscious in the vocation of his genius. 
 He was well content to be a minstrel. He did not 
 aspire to be a poet. He had capacity for it, but no 
 ambition. He was sometimes a poet. But it was 
 always, as it were, in his own despite. He was gen- 
 erally quite satisfied to be the accepted ballad-wright 
 of petty princes — the minstrel-laureate of their savage 
 tricks and brutal brawls. Brawn and muscle, trap- 
 pings and steeds, spears and shields, tilts and tourneys, 
 were the sufficient matter of his song. To set these 
 forth in brave style, he made the sacred aspects of 
 nature and the august solemnities of religion, such as 
 religion was to him, menial and servile. He describes 
 
MB. BRYANT'S ILIAD. 221 
 
 the multitudinous march of serried waves advancing to 
 deliver their " surging charges " against a rocky coast 
 — but it is without a thought of the awful sublimity of 
 the scene. He desires only to make his picture life- 
 like. The forming battle-line of the Greeks, filing 
 forward to the war, resembles it. At another time the 
 flight and clangor of cranes answer his purpose of 
 lively narration as well, to describe the movement of 
 an army to battle. Nothing is too great and nothing 
 is too mean to be contraband of his use, if it will only 
 render the particular matter in hand a shade more real 
 to the apprehension of his volatile auditors. In short, 
 Homer lacks dignity, and consequently lacks the sense 
 which proportions the respect that is due to the gradu- 
 ated hierarchies of the universe of persons and of 
 things. How d liferent in all these respects Bryant is 
 from Homer, no one familiar with Bryant's poetry needs 
 to be told. Grave, sedate, meditative, dignified — Bry- 
 ant is a poet in the highest sense of the highest voca- 
 tion to which nature can ever anoint a man. It shows 
 a quality in him not to have been guessed from his 
 previous performance, that he should be able to stoop 
 so gracefully, as in this translation he does, from his 
 height of moral elevation above the plane of Homer. 
 "We do not think he does stoop all the way down. 
 Homer is raised unconsciously a few degrees to meet 
 him. 
 
 It would not have been incongruous if Mr. Bryant's 
 publishers had placed his own venerable portrait in a 
 frontispiece over against the traditionary face of Ho- 
 mer. The two would have made a striking pair of 
 counterparts. The imagination would have only to 
 supply the illusive effect of indefinite antiquity, in 
 order to make the American merit, as well as the 
 Ionian, the exaggerated picture of hoary eld, drawn 
 
222 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 with the spirit of filial reverence, in the younger man- 
 ner of Tennyson : — 
 
 And there the Ionian father of the rest ; 
 
 A Tnillion wrinkles carved his skin ; 
 A hundred winters snow'd upon his breast. 
 
 From cheek, and throat, and chin. 
 
 "We purpose in this paper to trace the steps by which 
 we arrived at our estimate of the comparative value of 
 Mr. Bryant's translation. Broad characte^ation and 
 summary statement are satisfactory only in the case of 
 a book that has been so long a literary classic as rightly 
 to be supposed already familiar to the general cultivated 
 reader. Then it is one of the best contentments of the 
 critical mind to be furnished with a formulated expres- 
 sion of its own inarticulate judgment upon the merits 
 of that with which it has first become comprehensively 
 acquainted. In the case of a new book, however, the 
 process of the reviewer has need to be different. He 
 has himself hardly had time, as yet, to get beyond the 
 two or three stages of crude impression that almost 
 always precede the mature critical judgment in which 
 he is willing finally to rest. Besides this, the reader 
 must depend, in considerable part, upon the opportuni- 
 ties the review itself will furnish for forming that ac- 
 quaintance with the book, upon the basis of which he 
 is asked to agree with the sentence of the reviewer. 
 We shall have, accordingly, to beg the indulgence of 
 our readers if we enter somewhat more fully into the 
 reason and illustration of our verdict than has elsewhere 
 been done in the noticing of this important contribution 
 to the wealth of American literature. It will perhaps 
 be as good an order of treatment as any, to fellow the 
 course of our own first examinations of the volumes. 
 
 We opened to the introductory lines. These have 
 always been admired as exhibiting either the best skill 
 
ME. BEYANT'S ILIAD. 223 
 
 or the best luck of the original poet. They are simple, 
 direct, clear, complete, free from superfluity — and melo- 
 dious. They would naturally, on every account, en- 
 gage the highest art of a translator to render them well. 
 We arrived independently at this obvious conclusion, 
 and then happened upon a confirmation of it in glanc- 
 ing over Cowper's correspondence during the period in 
 which he was occupied in executing his translation of 
 the Iliad. He said that the first seven lines cost him 
 more trouble, and yielded him less satisfaction, than 
 any other equal portion of the poem. To say sooth, 
 Oowper did, contrary to the thrifty proverb, put his 
 worst foot forward. It would be hard to select nine 
 less happy consecutive lines in the whole course of his 
 translation, than the nine into which he turns Homer's 
 first seven. Some critic has remarked in comparison 
 of the two that Cowper takes nine decasyllabic lines 
 to Bryant's eight, for the Greek's seven hexameters. It 
 happens indeed to be true that here Cowper is more 
 diifuse than Bryant, but Cowper's general manner, on 
 the contrary, has the advantage of greater compactness 
 than Bryant's. Thus Bryant uses seven hundred and 
 seventy-two lines to Cowper's seven hundred and fifty- 
 two for the first book — one thousand one hundred and 
 two to his one thousand and seventy-five for the second, 
 and the like proportion holds, we think, throughout. 
 Neither the one nor the other is apparently disturbed 
 with any wish not to break up the original crystalliza- 
 tions of sense and of melody which determined the met- 
 lical divisions of the Greek. Yet it was a true insight 
 that led Newman to seek a line-for-line version — a 
 quest, however, not justified in his case (perhaps hardly 
 possible to be justified in any) by the whole success of 
 his work. Worsley, selecting the Spenserian stanza for 
 his medium, necessarily gave up the idea of preserving 
 
224 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 the eifeet of rhythmical progress by verses, and aimed 
 only at reproducing the different but equally real effect 
 of rhythmical progress by passages. His success is such 
 as might surprise.one who had prejudged the event of 
 the experiment by the superficial unfitness of the Spen- 
 serian stanza for Homeric translation. Norgate trans- 
 lates line for line with great literalness and evident 
 good scholarship, but then the poetry has all been con- 
 scientiously volatilized away in the process. Bryant 
 enjoys a sense of entire freedom in moulding his rhythm 
 without regard to his original's, and in expanding epi- 
 thets, for example, into lines. This feeling of liberty 
 serves him admirably. The result is a story in verse, 
 certainly not so clear-lined, naive, vivacious, as the 
 original narrative, but fluent, continuous, onward, 
 nevertheless — satisfactory, for instance (we speak from 
 proof) to boys who like Scott and — shall we associate 
 them ? — Oliver Optic. 
 
 But we are to examine Mr. Bryant's rendering of the 
 first seven lines of the Iliad. To put the reader not 
 familiar with Greek upon a footing of some competency 
 to judge for himself precisely how far the original is 
 modified to suit the choice or the necessity of the seve- 
 ral translators whom we set into comparison with each 
 other, we have been at the trouble to throw it into a 
 metrical English form of our own, which, for mere 
 matter of fidelity and literalness, may be taken upon 
 trust as close enough to pass muster, on that score, in a 
 college class-room. A prose rendering, even if it hug- 
 ged the Greek more closely still, would not suit our 
 purpose so well, for the reason that metre, of some 
 sort, and the address of a metrical form to the eye, con- 
 stitute too essential an element of the peculiar poetic 
 effect, to be dispensed with for a moment by any one 
 who desires to enter into the essential spirit of a passage 
 
ME. BETAITT'S ILIAD. 225 
 
 of poetry. If some reader has supposed that true poetry- 
 is independent of form, let him try the experiment of 
 getting his favorite passage of the " Paradise Lost," for 
 instance, printed exactly as prose. He will hardly be 
 able even to gather its sense, to say nothing of the im- 
 possibility of feeling its beauty. Here is Homer's open- 
 ing, in a literal translation : — 
 
 The anger, goddess, sing, of Peleus' son, 
 Achilles — anger dire, that on the Greeks 
 Brought myriad woes, and many mighty souls 
 Too «oon of heroes unto Hades sent. 
 And gave themselves a ravin to the dogs 
 And to all birds of prey — howheit the will 
 Of Zeus fulfilled itself — even from the time 
 That first they two, Atrides, king of men, 
 And high Achilles, wrangling fell apart. 
 
 Mr. Bryant translates as follows : — 
 
 Goddess ! sing the wrath of Peleus' son, 
 Achilles ; sing the deadly wrath that brought 
 Woes numberless upon the Greeks, and swept 
 To Hades many a valiant soul, and gave 
 Their limbs a prey to dogs and birds of air, — . 
 For so had Jove appointed, — from the time 
 When the two chiefs, Atrides, king of men. 
 And great Achilles, parted -first as foes. 
 
 For the sake of the comparison, we subjoin Cowper's 
 rendering, and Derby's. Of Derby's version, as a whole, 
 it may be said that it does very well for a nobleman — 
 very well. It is the gold of poetry in the lead of rhet- 
 oric. The metal is not quite so precious, it is true, but 
 then the hammering is really very faithful and good. 
 We shall have no ftirther occasion to allude to Derby's 
 work. Here is Cowper, in his best attempt and his 
 poorest success. What shall we say of the critic's taste 
 who speaks well of it, and selects the sesquipedalian 
 fourth line for the finest, only objecting that it is per- 
 
226 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 haps " too suggestively Miltonic ? " "Well, we suppose 
 Milton is suggested by it, but then so he is by Philips's 
 "Splendid Shilling." 
 
 Achilles sing, O Goddess ! Peleus' son ; 
 
 His wrath pernicious, who ten thousand woes 
 
 Caused to Achaia's host, sent many a soul 
 
 Illustrious into Ades premature, 
 
 And Heroes gave (so stood the will of Jove), 
 
 To dogs and to all ravening fowls a prey, 
 
 When fierce dispute had separated once 
 
 The noble Chief Achilles from the son 
 
 Of Atreus, Agamemnon, King of men. 
 
 Derby translates thus : — 
 
 Of Peleus' son, Achilles, sing, Muse, 
 
 The vengeance, deep and deadly ; whence to Greece 
 
 Unnumbered ills arose ; which many a soul 
 
 Of mighty warriors to the viewless shades 
 
 Untimely sent ; they on the battle plain 
 
 Unburied lay, a prey to rav'ning dogs. 
 
 And carrion birds ; fulfilling thus the plan 
 
 DeviBf^d of Jove, since first in wordy war, 
 
 The mighty Agamemnon, King of men. 
 
 Confronted stood by Peleus' godlike son. 
 
 Our readers are now prepared for a little criticism in 
 detail. Homer, let it be remembered, puts the word, 
 generally, but not felicitously, translated "wrath," 
 which states the subject of his poem, in the very fore- 
 front of his argument. Yirgil imitates this order in the 
 ^neid, and so does Milton in the Paradise Lost. Mr. 
 Bryant, it will be observed, in accordance with the 
 more idiomatic English order of words, gives the invo- 
 cation itself local precedence of the subject of which 
 the goddess is invoked to sing. Homer is able, by 
 virtue of the inflection of the Greek adjective, and by 
 virtue also of the great license allowed him in the Greek 
 disposition of words, to resume, in effect, the first em- 
 
ME. BKTAJSrrS ILIAD. 227 
 
 phatic statement of his theme, by beginning his second 
 line with an epithet, " fell," in characterization of the 
 " wrath," named in the line preceding. Bryant appar- 
 ently aims at reproducing this feature of his original, 
 without violence to the English syntax, by repeating 
 the substantive " wrath," at the same time that he 
 qualifies it, in his second line, but along with it he in- 
 cidentally repeats also the imperative verb, thus again 
 emphasizing the invocation, which was of the very 
 lightest possible importance in Homer's own verses. 
 Some good scholars deny that the Greek vei'b trans- 
 lated by Bryant " swept," has in it the force of " un- 
 timeliness," which Cowper makes so prominent by his 
 adjective-adverb "premature." Mr. Bryant, therefore, 
 perhaps intentionally eliminated this force from his 
 translation. If so, he suggested the alternative force 
 of forward impetus very satisfactorily by " swept." But 
 what shall we say of his omitting the word " heroes " ? 
 Can we agree with the newspaper critic already alluded 
 to that it is almost " expletive " ? Probably it is so ; 
 but it happens too that the pleonasm is exactly that 
 which to our own feeling most of all conveys the epic 
 pathos of the argument. The Greek word is nobly 
 rich in lengthened vowel sounds, and altogether it 
 seems to us, beyond any other single expression in it, 
 charged with the chief poetic charm and dignity of the 
 entire passage. We will not disguise our regret that 
 Mr. Bryant did not choose to render it. The true 
 Homeric antithesis is between the heroes and their 
 souls, rather than between the heroes and their bodies. 
 At least, according to the text, it is not their " limbs," 
 but "themselves," that dogs and vultures rend. Not 
 to follow the original here is to obscure the material- 
 istic dualism of Homer by substituting the spiritualistic 
 dualism of a Christian philosophy. The translation 
 
228 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 gains, however, to its English form what it loses from 
 the Greek spirit. When Mr. Bryant translates " For 
 so had Jove appointed," he certainly misrepresents the 
 relation in which this parenthesis stands to the context. 
 As does not mean " for " — ^here as everywhere it is ad- 
 versative, however lightly so. It introduces a certain 
 pious recollection and reminder that notwithstanding 
 the misfortunes suffered by the Greeks, the will of Zeus 
 was all the while in process of fulfilling itself. Mr. 
 Bryant's translation stands alone in acknowledging the 
 effect of the Greek dual in " the two chiefs." 
 
 Thus much of. minute criticism of Bryant's opening. 
 It is just to say that his opening, though better than 
 those of his rivals, is by no means a specimen of Bry- 
 ant at his best. 
 
 Here is a second citation which will present Homer 
 in the transient dignity of a poet. Bryant, we think, 
 renders him nobly. But first we give our non-classical 
 readers the advantage of a strictly literal version : — 
 
 Zeus spake, and witli his dark brows gave the nod : 
 
 The ambrosial locks therewith streamed from the king's 
 
 Immortal head ; Olympus great it shook. 
 
 These two, thus having counselled, parted ; she 
 
 Leapt thereupon into th^i deep sea-brine 
 
 From bright Olympus — to his dwelling Zeus. 
 
 The gods together all rose from their seats 
 
 Before their sire, nor any durst abide 
 
 Him coming, but they all to meet him stood. 
 
 So he there sat him down upon his throne ; 
 
 Nor seeing him was Here not aware 
 
 That with Mm had deliberated plans 
 
 The daughter of the Ancient of the sea, 
 
 Thetis of silver foot. With cutting words. 
 
 Straightway the son of Kronos, Zeus, she hailed. 
 
 Bryant translates as follows : — 
 
 As thus he spake, the son of Saturn gave 
 
 The nod with his dark brows. The ambrosial curls 
 
ME. BEYANt'S ILIAD; 229 
 
 Upon the Sovereign One's immortal head 
 Were shaken, and with them the mighty mount 
 Olympus trembled. Then they parted, ahe 
 Plunging from bright Olympus to the deep. 
 And Jove returning to his palace home ; 
 Where all the gods, uprising from their thrones, 
 At sight of the Great Father, waited not 
 For his approach, but met him as he came. 
 
 And now upon his throne the Godhead took 
 His seat, but Juno knew — for she had seen — 
 That Thetis of the silver feet, and child 
 Of the gray Ancient of the Deep, had held 
 Close council with her consort. Therefore she 
 Bespake the son of Saturn harshly, thus : — 
 
 If we apply a strict verbal criticism here, we find 
 that Jove's hair does not, according to Homer in this 
 place, consist of " curls " — and that his locks are not 
 . represented as " shaken," but as " flowing " out from his 
 head. "Trembled" does not literally translate a tran- 
 sitive verb. 
 
 Plunging from bright Olympus to the deep 
 
 makes a remarkably well-sounding line, but it hardly 
 bears verbal inspection. The Greek verb does not 
 mean "plunge," but "leap." But, at any rate, the 
 notion of " plunging " does not sort well with the light 
 glancing movement proper to the goddess, and happily 
 implied in Homer's word. Even if the Greek meant 
 plunge, the plunging would not be " to," but " into," 
 the sea ; and the original preposition corresponds. The 
 truth seems to be that the aerial space intervening is 
 disregarded by the poet, and Thetis lightly leaps from 
 Olympus into the brine — the Greek word for sea here 
 is derived from its saltness — without sensible lapse of 
 time for making the descent from'the mountain through 
 the air. " Plunge " is decidedly too onomatopoetically 
 heavy to be a happily chosen word. Bryant's epithet 
 
230 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 " Great " is his own. He omits wliat seems to us a dis- 
 tinctively significant word — irAiy— translating simply 
 " waited not," instead of " durst not wait." " The 
 Godhead " again is paraphrase. This is of course ex- 
 ceedingly minute criticism. But we shall have done 
 with the microscope presently. 
 
 The first book closes with a sort of relief scene, mem- 
 orable and dear to every lover of Homer. The descrip- 
 tion of the feast of the gods in Jove's palace, with Yulcan 
 playing the office of Ganymede, comes in between the 
 gloomy terror of the pestilence and the series of battles 
 that follow, like a fiute interlude amid a thunder of 
 music detonated from an orchestra with anvils and ord- 
 nance, under Mr. Gilmore's enterprising conduct. We 
 turned to this in order to satisfy ourselves how Mr. 
 Bryant's grave manner would adapt itself to the difier- 
 ent mood of Homeric humor and gayety. The passage, 
 literally translated, reads as follows : — 
 
 He spake ; the goddess, white-armed Here, smiled ; 
 And smiling she accepted with her hand 
 The goblet from her son. But he from right 
 To left to all tlie other gods poured out 
 Sweet nectar, drawing from the mixing-bowl ; 
 And inextinguishable laughter then was roused 
 Among the blessed gods, when they beheld 
 Hephsestus brisking through the palace halls. 
 
 So all day long unto the setting sun 
 They feasted then, nor of an equal feast 
 Failed the desire in aught, not of the harp 
 Exceeding beautiful which Phoebus held, 
 Or of the Muses who with beautiful voice 
 Alternate sang responsive each to each. 
 But when the sun's resplendent light was set. 
 Desiring to lie down they-homeward went, 
 Each where for each the far-renowned lame 
 Hephaestus built a house with cunning skill. 
 The Olympian Flasher of the Lightning, Zeus, 
 Went to his couch where erst he wont to lie 
 
ME. BEYANT'S ILIAD. 231 
 
 Wien sweet sleep came on him ; ascending there 
 He slept, and Here, golden-throned, beside. 
 
 Bryailt translates : — 
 
 He spake, and Juno, the white-shouldered, smiled. 
 
 And smiling took the cup her son had brought ; ' 
 
 And next he poured to all the other gods 
 
 Sweet nectar from the jar, beginning first 
 
 With those at the right hand. As they beheld 
 
 Lame Vulcan laboring o'er the palace-floor. 
 
 An inextinguishable laughter broke 
 
 From all the blessed gods. So feasted they 
 
 All day till sunset. From that equal feast 
 
 None stood aloof, nor from the pleasant sound 
 
 Of harp, which Phoebus touched, nor from the voice 
 
 Of Muses singing sweetly in their turn. 
 
 But when the sun's all-glorious light was down. 
 Each to his sleeping-place betook himself; 
 For Vulcan, the lame god, with marvellous art, 
 Had framed for each the chamber of his rest. 
 
 And Jupiter, the Olympian Thunderer, 
 Went also to his couch, where 't was his wont. 
 When slumber overtook him, to recline. 
 And there, beside him, slept the white-armed queen 
 Juno, the mistress of the golden throne. 
 
 We are not sure that "white-shouldered" is alto- 
 gether a happy modification of the Homeric " white- 
 armed." The act and gesture of Vulcan in his unac- 
 customed part of cup-bearer are graphically brought 
 out by Homer in one highly specific Greek word, which 
 Bryant's general term "laboring" does not quite fairly 
 render. The reason for the celestial laughter is not 
 made self-evident by the translation, as it is by the 
 breathing original word. The onomatopoeia in the 
 
 ' Pope renders the first two lines thus : — 
 
 He said, and to her hands the goblet heav'd. 
 Which, with a smile, the white-armed queen receiv'd. 
 
 We judge that the necessities of rhyme, rather than Pope's sense of 
 humor in description, must be held responsible for "Imam'd" 
 
232 A FKEE LANCE. 
 
 Greek participle almost moves laugliter itself by its 
 vivid truth to the life of the scene. " O'er "and " floor " 
 disturb the reader's sense of harmony a little with an 
 unintended rhyme. Mr. Bryant makes a palpable mis- 
 take when he translates : " From that equal feast none 
 stood aloof." The meaning is that in no respect did 
 the appetite lack its fuU satisfaction. We cannot judge 
 how the description of the feast would affect one reading 
 it for the first time in Mr. Bryant's translation. For 
 ourselves, we seem to miss here the effect of softness, 
 and lightness, and beauty, and sweetness of sound that 
 the Greek verses have always had upon our sense, like 
 silver globules of melody floating out from a musical 
 bell. When Mr. Bryant translates as if Homer gave to 
 all the gods their customary quarters in the palace of 
 Jove, he misrepresents the Olympian economy. The 
 greater divinities, according to Homer, had separate 
 estabhshments of their own on the mountain. When 
 the day's feast at Jove's expense was closed with the 
 close of the day, they all, like sensible divinities, betook 
 themselves home, to taste the wholesome refection of 
 celestial sleep. The line, 
 
 And Jupiter, tlie Olympian Thunderer, 
 
 has a jingle in it of similar unaccented syllables, which 
 makes it less melodious than Mr. Bryant's ear in gen- 
 eral demands that his verses should be. Besides, he 
 makes an exchange of apposition — substituting here 
 Jove's attribute of thunder for his attribute of light- 
 ning. 
 
 We shall not have occasion to enter into the minutiae 
 of criticism so largely again. We cite once more a 
 specimen of the Homeric fun — premising that as befits 
 the occasion Homer's vocabulary and his syntax take 
 
MK. BEYANT'S ILIAD. 233 
 
 on a kind of sympathetically contemptuous carelessness 
 in describing Thersites. We translate literally : — 
 
 The rest sat down, and in the seats were quelled. 
 Thersites only still kept clamoring on, 
 Licentious-tongued ; who many a shameless phrase 
 Knew in his mind, liap-haaard, lawlessly 
 To brawl with kings — whate'er might seem to him 
 To he droll for the Greeks. The ugliest man 
 That came to Ilium ; bandy-legged he Was, 
 Lame in one foot ; and his bent shoulders twain 
 Hugged o'er his chest together, while above 
 Peaked of head was he, and thereupon 
 A thin-worn plush of flossy hair adhered. 
 
 Bryant's rendering is as follows : — 
 
 All others took their seats and kept their place ; 
 Thersites only, clamorous of tongue, 
 Kept brawling. He, with many insolent words, 
 Was wont to seek unseemly strife with kings, 
 Uttering whate'er it seemed to him might move 
 The Greeks to laughter. Of the multitude 
 Who came to Ilium, none so base as he, — 
 Squint-eyed, with one lame foot, and on his back 
 A lump, and shoulders curving toward the chest ; 
 His head was sharp, and over it the hairs 
 Were thinly scattered. 
 
 Mr. Bryant is not at his strongest in interpreting a 
 piece of Greek raillery. The perfect transition of 
 manner in Homer from grave to gay hardly gets itself 
 represented. In truth Mr. Bryant is too essentially 
 dignified and nobly self-respecting to obey the fickle 
 phases of Homer's mercurial mood with natural grace. 
 In spite of Mr. Bryant's predetermined fidelitj^ Homer 
 finds himself transferred, in all his varying inflections, 
 to pretty much one key — the self-recollecting epic — in 
 his new English form. This grave severity appears to 
 special advantage in the rendering, for instance, of 
 one of Homer's proyerbs. The weighty Anglo-Saxon 
 
234 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 monosyllables into wMcli they are turned, have often 
 a singular fitness and force. 
 
 As was to have been conjectured, Cowper does 
 better than Bryant where the Greek laughs. Here is 
 Cowper's rendering of the description of Thersites : — 
 
 Cross-eyed he was and, halting, moved on legs 
 lU-paired ; Ms gibbous shoulders o'er his breast 
 Contracted, pinched it ; to a peak his head 
 Was moulded sharp, and sprinkled thin with hair 
 Of starveling length, flimsy and soft as down. 
 
 The sad humorist, whose poorest fun is his best-known, 
 " The Diverting History of John Gilpin," is plainly to 
 be recognized in every turn of this rendering. 
 
 With this Ilogarthian humor of Homer's (which had, 
 perhaps, a serious purpose in it of representing democ- 
 racy contemptuously in the person of a demagogue), 
 we set in contrast a passage, from the sixth book, 
 tender with the sparkle of tears such as, but for this 
 passage, we should hardly have known, from coeval 
 literature, that other than Euth and the Hebrew 
 women used to weep in those old times. Andromache 
 was evidently no Spartan wife or mother. Perhaps it 
 was the hyper-Homeric human womanliness apparent 
 in these lines that attracted the attempt of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing to render them. We give her translation as a 
 matter of interesting comparison with the others. It 
 is not of such quality as to excite regret that she did 
 not oftener put her muse into the harness of Homeric 
 translation. It is fair to say that she entitles her frag- 
 ment a " paraphrase," and that the effect of the whole 
 is better than that of the detached portion which we 
 shall presently give. First we furnish once more a 
 literal version : — 
 
 So having said, resplendent Hector reached 
 To take his child. But backward he, the child. 
 
ME. BETANT'8 ILIAD. 235 
 
 Toward the fair-girdled nurse's bosom drew. 
 Crying, abashed at the dear father's looks. 
 And frightened by his mail ; he saw the crest 
 Of horse-hair from the summit of the helm 
 Terribly waving, eying it ; outright 
 Both the dear father and queen mother laughed. 
 Straight from his head resplendent Hector took 
 The helm, and placed it glittering on the ground. 
 ^iVhen lie besides had kissed his darling son 
 And tossed him in his hands, alike to Zeus 
 And to the other gods praying, he spoke : 
 
 So having said, he gave into the hands 
 
 Of the dear wife the boy ; she, tearfully 
 
 Smiling, to her sweet bosom ' took him then. 
 
 Regarding her the husband pitied her ; 
 
 Both with his hand he soothed her, and he spoke : 
 
 Mrs. Browning is violently unmetrical, almost beyond 
 parallel even in her original writings. 
 
 Thus Hector spake, and stretched his arms to his child. 
 Against the nurse's breast, with childly cry. 
 The boy clung back, and shunned his father's face. 
 And feared the glittering brass and waving hair 
 Of the high helmet, nodding horror down. 
 The father smiled, the mother could not choose 
 But smile too. Then he lifted from his brow 
 The helm, and set it on the ground to shine : 
 Then, kissed his dear child — raised him with both arms. 
 And thus invoked Zeus and the general gods : — 
 ******* 
 With which prayer, to his wife's extended arms 
 He gave the child ; and she received him straight 
 To her bosom's fragrance — smiling up her tears. 
 Hector gazed on her till his soul was moved ; 
 Then softly touched her with his hand and spake. 
 
 "Was Milton's "Her bosom smelling sweet" (P. L., vii, 319) a conscions 
 recollection of Homer ? The pnnctnation that, with a comma after " bosom," 
 refers the " smelling sweet " to " herbs " preceding, gives a tame sense hardly 
 Uiltonic. No comma appears in the fac-simile reproduction of Milton's own 
 edition. 
 
236 A FEEE LAHCE. 
 
 Mr. Bryant: — 
 
 So speaking, mighty Hector stretched his arms 
 To take the hoy ; the hoy shrank crying back 
 To his fair nurse's bosom, scared to see 
 His father helmeted in glittering brass. 
 And eying with affright the horse-hair plume 
 That grimly nodded from the lofty crest. 
 At this both parents in their fondness laughed ; 
 And hastily the mighty Hector took 
 The helmet from his brow and laid it down 
 Gleaming upon the ground, and, having kissed 
 His darling son and tossed him up in play. 
 Prayed thus to Jove and all the gods of heaven : — 
 
 So speaking, to the arms of his dear spouse 
 He gave the boy ; she on her fragrant breast 
 Received him, weeping as she smiled. The chief 
 Beheld, and, moved with tender pity, smoothed 
 Her forehead gently with his hand and said : — 
 
 Mr. Bryant does not hesitate, when it will serve his 
 verse, to exchange an epithet. Indeed he justifies the 
 practice in his preface. Here he substitutes " mighty " 
 as descriptive of Hector, for "brilliant," or "resplen- 
 dent " — an Homeric adjective which seeins to be strictly 
 physical, not at all moral, in its reference. Hector is 
 sometimes spoken of as " large," like the other heroes 
 of the Iliad. The word " mighty " vaguely implies 
 something different from great size — imports, that is to 
 say, into the expression a moral quality not present 
 in the Greek. We are disposed to admit Mr. Biy ant's 
 principle ; but the most characteristic feature of Hec- 
 tor's personal appearance is not his size — it is his sheeny 
 look. One epithet descriptive of this Mr. Bryant him- 
 self translates with inimitable felicity — " Hector of the 
 beamy helm." Hector always t.lius enters the field of 
 tournament as a phenomenon of glittering exterior. 
 Something therefore no doubt is lost to the authentic 
 
ME. BETANt's ILIAD. 237 
 
 effect by tlds particular exchange of adjectives. " The 
 lofty crest " should be " the top of the crest " or helm. 
 Mr. Bryant has the courage to translate " laughed," 
 where some translators have felt it incumbent upon them 
 to soften to " smiled." But Mr. Bryant supplies " in 
 their fondness " as a kind of justifying interpretation of 
 the parental levity under the circumstances. The fact 
 is, that Homer not only says " laughed," with perfect 
 equanimity, but strengthens the strong word by an 
 adverb — sk. This intensive, in fact, is the original 
 poet's apology for what might superficially seem an un- 
 reasonable surrender to gayety on the part of Hector 
 and Andromache at that fateful moment. The pent 
 emotion of the two loving hearts found simultaneous 
 excuse in a common occasion for letting itself out. It 
 was translated, on the way to expression, according to a 
 wont of high-wrought emotion, into an apparently con- 
 trary language. Instead of weeping, it laughed — a con- 
 summate touch of nature in Homer that so many good 
 poets ought not to have overlooked. Another trifling 
 point wherein Homer's translators departing from 
 Homer depart also from nature, is in making Hector 
 toss his boy up in his " arms " instead of his " hands." 
 The great Hector was a warrior and not a nurse. His 
 hands' were large enough and strong enough to toss his 
 infant son. It would not be manlike to have done it 
 with his arms. Bryant escapes the mistake — perhaps 
 by not rendering the word. 
 
 "We make the microscopic strictures that we do to 
 • exhibit the difficulties with which a translator of the 
 Iliad has to cope. To accomplish everything to be de- 
 sired was impossible. A choice among the desirable 
 things was necessary. Mr. Bryant chose to save his 
 English poetry, though the Greek should suffer a little, 
 and to aim at a faithful general effect, even at the ex- 
 
238 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 pense of exquisite fidelity in detail. We have no ques- 
 tion that his choice was wise. 
 
 We add one of Homer's most nobly conceived and 
 most nobly expressed similes. It occurs in the Fourth 
 Book, lines 422-426. Bryant's rendering equals it in 
 majesty — ^perhaps not quite in curious fitness as a simile. 
 Here is the Greek in a literal translation : — 
 
 As when upon a many-echoing shore. 
 Billow fast following Mllow of the sea 
 Is roused beneath the thronging western wind, 
 Upon the deep at first it towers its height, x 
 
 And next, shattered against the continent, booms 
 Mightily, and round the crags its curling crest 
 Uprears, and spouts its spray of brine afar. 
 So ranks fast following ranks of Danaans then 
 Ceaselessly on and on thronged to the war. 
 
 Mr. Bryant : — 
 
 As when the ocean-biUows, surge on surge. 
 Are pushed along to the resounding shore 
 Before the western wind, and first a wave 
 Uplifts itself, and then against the land 
 Dashes and roars, and round the headland peaks 
 Tosses on high and spouts its spray afar. 
 So moved the serried phalanxes of Greece 
 To battle, rank succeeding rank, * * * 
 
 This is full of the resonance of ocean. If we scan it in 
 careful collation with the Greek, we shall miss in the ver- 
 sion the remarkable symmetry of verbal correspondence 
 which makes the two terms of the simile in the original 
 match each other with artistic precision. 
 
 We cull a few instances from among the many, of 
 those perfect felicities of translation which inark the " 
 hand of a master. In the Fourth Book, line 396 is as 
 fortunate for its fidelity to the Greek as it is for its 
 smooth joinery of words in the English : — • 
 
 The men of yore laid level towns and towers. 
 
ME. BEYANT'S ILIAD. 239 
 
 In the Seventeenth Book, in lines 513-514, we have 
 this: — 
 
 The iron din 
 Rose through, the waste air to the brazen heaven. 
 
 "We do not know how anything could be more mag- 
 nificent than this for description of the metallic replica- 
 tion of sound between the battle-field and the sky. It 
 is strictly Homer's, too, as well as Bryant's. 
 
 The Eighteenth Book contains the famous description 
 of the shield of Achilles, on which Yulcan wrought in 
 relief so many varied devices, complete in symbolic 
 beauty, as could never have occurred but to a poet 
 living in a land of artists. We cannot speak too highly 
 of the extraordinary felicity of Bryant's version of this 
 extended passage. The constraint of translating seems 
 to be felt rather as spur than as curb to his genius. 
 The resources of Ms native tongue press themselves 
 upon him as of their own accord to supply his vocabu- 
 lary of apt and agreeable words. The permutations 
 of melody in rhythm are instinct with a life of their 
 own, and the kaleidoscope of his verse revolves self- 
 moved, exhibiting combinations of sound in an end- 
 lessly flowing series of effects invariably surprising and 
 beautiful. We should need to quote it all to show its 
 wonderful beauty ; but we content ourselves with the 
 opening lines. Observe with what a kind of exultation, 
 like the gaudium certaminis, the translator enters upon 
 the work. Fervet opus in the English verse, even as it 
 glowed in Yulcan's forge : — 
 
 And first he forged the huge and massive shield. 
 Divinely wrought in every part, — its edge 
 Clasped with a triple border, white and bright. 
 A silver belt hung from it, and its folds 
 Were five ; a crowd of figures on its disk 
 Were fashioned by the artist's passing skill, 
 
240 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 For here lie placed the earth and heaven, and here 
 The great deep and the never-resting sun 
 And the full moon, and here he set the stars 
 That shine in the round heaven, — the Pleiades, 
 The Hyades, Orion in his strength. 
 And the Bear near him, called by some the Wain, 
 That, wheeling, keeps Orion still in sight, 
 Yet bathes not in the waters of the sea. 
 
 There placed he two fair cities full of men. 
 In one were marriages and feasts ; they led 
 The brides with flaming torches from their bowers. 
 Along the streets, with many a nuptial song. 
 There the young dancers whirled, and flutes and lyres 
 Gave forth their sounds, and women at the doors 
 Stood and admired. Meanwhile a multitude 
 Was in the forum, where a strife went on, — 
 Two men contending for a fine, the price 
 Of one who had been slain. Before the crowd 
 One claimed that he had paid the fine, and one 
 Denied that aught had been received, and both 
 Called for the sentence which should end the strife. 
 The people clamored for both sides, for both 
 Had eager friends ; the heralds held the crowd 
 In check ; the ciders, upon polished stones. 
 Sat in a sacred circle. Each one took, 
 In turn, a herald's sceptre in his hand. 
 And, rising, gave his sentence. In the midst 
 Two talents lay in gold, to be the meed 
 Of him whose juster judgment should prevail. 
 
 Around the other city sat two hosts 
 In shining armor, bent to lay it waste, 
 Unless the dwellers would divide their wealth, — 
 Al l that their pleasant homes contained, — and yield 
 The assailants half. As yet the citizens 
 Had not complied, but secretly had planned 
 An ambush. Their beloved wives meanwhile. 
 And their young children, stood and watched the walls. 
 With aged men among them, while the youths 
 Marched on, with Mars and Pallas at their head, 
 Both wrought hi gold, with golden garments on. 
 Stately and large in form, and over all 
 Conspicuous, in bright armor, as became 
 The gods : the rest were of an humbler size. 
 And when they reached the spot where they should Be 
 
ME. BEYANT'S ILIAD. 241 
 
 In ambush, by a river's side, a place 
 
 For -watering herds, they sat them down, all armed 
 
 In shining brass. Apart from all the rest 
 
 They placed two sentries, on the watch to spy 
 
 The approach of sheep and hornSd kiue. Soon came 
 
 The herds in sight ; two shepherds walked with them. 
 
 Who, all unweeting of the evil nigh. 
 
 Solaced their task with music from their reeds. 
 
 The warriors saw and rushed on them, and took 
 
 And drave away large prey of beeves, and flocks 
 
 Of fair white sheep, whose keepers they had slain. 
 
 When the besiegers in their council heard ' 
 
 The sound of tumult at the watering-place. 
 
 They sprang upon their nimble-footed steeds, 
 
 And overtook the pillagers. Both bands 
 
 Arrayed their ranks and fought beside the stream, 
 
 And smote each other. There did Discord rage. 
 
 And Tumult, and the great Destroyer, Fate. 
 
 One wounded warrior she had seized alive, 
 
 And one unwounded yet, and through the field 
 
 Dragged by the foot another, dead. Her robe 
 
 Was reddened o'er the shoulders with the blood 
 
 From human veins. Like living men they ranged 
 
 The battle-field, and dragged by turns the slain. 
 
 There too he sculptured a broad fallow field 
 Of soft rich mould, thrice ploughed, and over which 
 Walked many a ploughman, guiding to and fro 
 His steers, and when on their return they reached 
 The border of the field the master came 
 To meet them, placing in the hands of each 
 A goblet of rich wine. Then turned they back 
 Along the furrows, diligent to reach 
 Their distant end. All dark behind the plough 
 The ridges lay, a marvel to the sight. 
 Like real furrows, though engraved in gold. 
 
 There, too, the artist placed a field which lay 
 Deep in ripe wheat. With sickles in their hands 
 The laborers reaped it. Here the handfuls fell 
 Upon the ground ; there binders tied them fast 
 With bands, and made them sheaves. Three binders went 
 Close to the reapers, and behind them boys. 
 Bringing the gathered handfuls in their arms. 
 Ministered to the binders. Staff" in hand, 
 The master stood among them by the side 
 11 
 
242 A FEEE LAUCE. 
 
 Of the ranged sheaves and silently rejoiced. 
 Meanwhile the servants underneath an oak 
 Prepared a feast apart ; they sacrificed 
 A fatling ox and dressed it, while the maids 
 Were kneading for the reapers the white meaL 
 
 A vineyard also on the shield he graved. 
 Beautiful, all of gold, and heavily 
 Laden with grapes. Black were the clusters all ; 
 The vines were stayed on rows of silver stakes. 
 He drew a blue trench round it, and a hedge 
 Of tin. One only path there was by which 
 The vintagers could go to gather grapes. 
 Young maids and striplings of a tender age 
 Bore the sweet fruit in baskets. Midst them all, 
 A youth froniTiis shrill hai;p drew pleasant sounds. 
 And sang with soft voice to the murmuring strings. 
 They danced around him, beating with quick feet 
 The ground, and sang and shouted joyously. 
 
 And there the artist wrought a herd of beeves. 
 High-horned, and sculptured all in gold and tin. 
 They issued lowing from their stalls to seek 
 Their pasture, by a murmuring stream, that ran 
 Eapidly through its reeds. Pour herdsmen, graved 
 In gold, were with the beeves, and nine fleet dogs 
 Followed. Two lions, seizing on a bull 
 Among the foremost cattle, dragged him off 
 Fearfully bellowing ; hounds and herdsmen rushed 
 To rescue him. The lions tore their prey. 
 And lapped the entrails and the crimson blood. 
 Vainly the shepherds pressed around and urged 
 Their dogs, that shrank from fastening with their teeth 
 Upon the lions, but stood near and bayed. 
 
 There also did illustrious Vulcan grave 
 A fair, broad pasture, in a pleasant glade. 
 Full of white sheep, and stalls, and cottages. 
 And many a shepherd's fold with sheltering roof. 
 
 And there illustrious Vulcan also wrought 
 A dance, — a maze like that which Dsedalus, 
 In the broad realm of Guossus once contrived 
 For fair-haired Ariadne. Blooming youths 
 And lovely virgins, tripping to light airs. 
 Held fast each other's wrists. The maidens wore 
 Fine linen robes ; the youths had tunics on 
 Lustrous as oil, and woven daintily. 
 
ME. BETAKT'S ILIAD. 243 
 
 The maids wore wreaths of flowers ; the young men swords 
 Of gold in silver belts. They bounded now 
 In a swift circle, — as a potter whirls 
 With both his hands a wheel to try its speed, 
 Sitting before it, — then again they crossed 
 Each other, darting to their former place. 
 A multitude around that joyous dance 
 Gathered, and were amused, while from the crowd 
 Two tumblers raised their song, and flung themselves 
 About among the band that trod the dance. 
 Last on the border of that glorious shield, 
 He graved in all its strength the ocean-stream. 
 
 We were not able to forbear, and we have given the 
 whole passage. It is no fault of Mr. Bryant's if the 
 devices for the shield present some practical difficulties 
 for artistic realization. It would take an artist at least 
 as divine as Vulcan, we should say, to manage the time 
 element in the various spirited actiops which crowd the 
 disk of this remarkable shield. But it is easy to feel 
 the energy that animates the description, whatever 
 impossibilities it involves for actual representation in 
 pictures to the eye. This lengthened citation may suf- 
 fice to illustrate the splendid qualities which certainly 
 make Mr. Bryant's translation easily superior to any 
 of its rivals. 
 
 We may seem to some to have been extravagant in 
 our praise. We assuredly shall not seem to any to 
 have been wanting in sincere appreciation. We now 
 proceed to establish our sobriety by a few necessary 
 qualifications of the high eulogy which we have pro- 
 nounced upon the work as a whole. 
 
 In the first place, then, we discover no marks in 
 these volumes of any such Greek scholarship, on the 
 part of the translator, as would make him an authority 
 to be consulted on a doubtful point of rendering. He 
 seems to us to slip, now and then, in the trained 
 scholar's nice knowledge and acquired intuition of the 
 
244 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 Greek, just as we should expect a man to slip who had 
 given his life to pursuits so remote as Mr. Bryant's 
 have been from the cultivation of exact learning. We 
 have incidentally furnished some exemplifications al- 
 ready. A few more will set our judgment in still 
 clearer light. 
 
 There are four consecutive lines (436-439) in the First 
 Uook descriptive of the debarkation of Ulysses with 
 the surrendered captive, Chryseis, which all commence 
 with the same words, sk 3i. They are thus impressed 
 with a strongly marked individuality, besides deriving 
 an extremely vivacious and graphic narrative force. 
 Mr. Newman strives . to reproduce the effect. He 
 translates : — 
 
 Then out they tossed the mooring-stones and bonnd to them the 
 
 stern ropes, 
 And out themselves did disembark upon the rough sea-margin, 
 And out they brought the hecatomb for aiTowy Apollo, 
 And out from that sea-coursing ship Chryseis last descended. 
 
 Mr. Bryant's rendering betrays no wish on his part 
 to follow his original with any curious fidelity : they 
 
 cast the anchors and secured the prow 
 With fastenings. Next,they disembarked and stood 
 Upon the beach and placed the hecatomb 
 In sight of PhcBbus, the great archer. Last, 
 diryseis left the deck, * * 
 
 Again in the Fourth Book (line 524), he renders 
 dnonveiuv " gasping for breath," which is too free for a 
 phrase that means " breathing forth the soul " — ex- 
 piring. 
 
 If we compare Cowper and Bryant, in the rendering 
 of a few lines in the Fourth Book, we shall find a con- 
 trast which shows the Englishman to have had either 
 a less sensitive care for his native idiom, or else a finer 
 
ME. BBTAlirrS ILIAD. 245 
 
 instinct for the spirit of the Greek. Oowper translates, 
 following the order and inversion of Homer's words, 
 especially in placing " shuddered " twice at the begin- 
 ning of a line : — ■ 
 
 Shudder'd King Agamemnon when he saw 
 The blood fast trickling from the wound, nor less 
 Shudder'd himself the bleeding warrior bold. 
 
 "We should never dream of any peculiar force of 
 abrupt transition and sudden announcement in the 
 original, from Bryant's entirely uninfluenced and un- 
 sympathetic rendei-ing : — 
 
 When Agamemnon, king of men, beheld 
 
 The dark blood flowing from his brother's wound. 
 
 He shuddered. Menelaus, great in war, 
 
 Pelt the like horror. 
 
 Probably, however, it is only that Bryant was more 
 concerned for the idiomatic purity of his English 
 order. 
 
 It is a nice point to decide how far exact scholarship 
 should be allowed to fetter the play of genius, or of 
 tact, in the work of translating an author like Homer. 
 In general, Mr. Bryant is literal enough : though the 
 two passages just cited are cases in which, no doubt, 
 the naturally meditative muse of the translator might 
 profitably have taken a lesson from the narrative skill 
 of his original. 
 
 "We have gleaned these instances in no carping spirit. 
 We do not set any factitious value on mere scholarship. 
 Genius has the secret of understanding genius quite 
 beyond the hope of laborious learning. Mr. Bryant 
 at least is not guilty of negligence in aught that con- 
 cerns the structure of Jiis verse. His accents and 
 quantities generally (not quite uniformly) are irreproach- 
 
246 A FEEE LAITCE. 
 
 able. He manages proper names with the skill of one 
 who has learned, or, rather, of one who never needed 
 to learn, that, rightly ordered, they add the ultimate 
 charm to the witchery of verse, while, ordered amiss, 
 they turn poetry into prose. Barely once we have 
 observed a choice in the form of a proper name in 
 which authority and elegance alike seem violated. 
 Why " Cephalonians " instead of the less commonplace- 
 seeming and better authorized " CephaUenians?"* By 
 the way, is it an error of the press, or a very unchar- 
 acteristic trip in English grammar, which occurs near 
 the line containing the word " Cephalonians ? " Mr. 
 Bryant makes Nestor say, in reminiscence of his early 
 days, 
 
 If I were then a youth, old age in turn 
 Is creeping o'er me. 
 
 "What Nestor really says is, " If I was then a youth." 
 " Were " is a quite irreducible solecism where it 
 stands. 
 
 Mr. Bryant made no secret of having, in his first 
 edition, inadvertently skipped a line, and perhaps sev- 
 eral consecutive lines, in one or two places, in the 
 course of his translation. This has not happened, as 
 it could not have happened, where the continuity of 
 the narrative was involved. One newspaper critic, an 
 amateur scholar whose nom de plume is familiar to 
 the literary readers of the periodical press, made a 
 "find" of an omission which was not an omission. 
 It is well known that the celebrated description at the 
 close of the Eighth Book, whose brilliant mistransla- 
 
 ' The form " Cephallenians " occurs elsewhere — from -which -we 
 may conclude that the form criticised is an error of the press — 
 almost the only one that has met our attention. 
 
MK. BETAJJTT'S ILIAD. 247 
 
 tion by Pope provoked that fruitful criticism from 
 "Wordsworth* and very likely in consequence the noble 
 restoration by Tennyson — it is, we say, well known that 
 this passage contains two lines which the best editor- 
 ship of the Greek text regards as an interpolation by 
 transference from another place in the Iliad. Tenny- 
 son, to be sure, translates them, and fine lines he makes 
 of them, too ; but Mr. Bryant no doubt left them out 
 intentionally and advisedly. In no case did the vir- 
 tual integrity of Mr. Bryant's first edition suflfer from 
 
 ' Essay Supplementary to the Preface, Wordswortli's Poems, 
 Ed. 1815. It may interest the reader to compare Pope's version 
 with Tennyson's and with Bryant's : — 
 
 Pope : — 
 
 The troops exnlting eat in order ronnd, 
 And beaming fires illumin'd all the ground. 
 As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, 
 O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, 
 When not a breath disturbs the deep serene. 
 And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ; 
 Aronnd her throne the vivid planets roll, 
 And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, \ 
 O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed; 
 And tip with silver every mountain's head ; 
 Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, 
 A flood of glory bursts from all the skies: 
 The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, 
 Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light. 
 So many flames before proud Iliou blaze. 
 And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays: 
 The long reflections of the distant fires 
 Gleam on the walls and tremble on the spires. 
 A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild. 
 And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field. 
 Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend. 
 Whose umber'd arms, by fits, thick flashes send. 
 Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn, 
 And ardent warriors wait the rising morn. 
 
 Tennyson : — 
 
 So Hector said, and sea-like roar'd his host ; 
 Then loosed their sweating horses from the yoke 
 And each beside his chariot bound his own ; 
 And oxen from the city, and goodly sheep 
 In haste they drove, and honey-hearted wine 
 And bread from out the houses brought, and heap'd 
 
248 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 the slight chance omissions that he made. His dismay 
 on discovering them, we venture to say, was not shared, 
 except in sympathy, by the purchasers of his volumes. 
 
 It has not, we believe, belonged to the fortunes of - 
 Mr. Bryant's career to imbue his mind deeply and con- 
 tinuously from an early age with the spirit of the liter- 
 ature of Greece. In consequence probably of this there 
 
 Their firewood, and the winds from off" the plain 
 Roird the rich vapor far into the heaven. 
 And these all night upon the bridge of war 
 Sat glorying ; many a fire before them blazed : 
 As when in heaven the stars about the moon 
 Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid. 
 And every height comes out, and jutting peak 
 And valley, and the immeasurable heavens 
 Break open to their highest, and all the stars 
 Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart : 
 So many a fire between the ships and stream 
 Of Xantlius blazed before the towers of Troy, 
 A thousand on the plain ; and close by each 
 Sat fifty in the blaze of buraing fire ; 
 And champing golden grain, the horses stood 
 Hard by their chariots, waiting for the dawn. 
 
 Bryant : — 
 
 So, high in hope, they sat the whole night throngh 
 In warlike lines, and many watch-fires blazed. 
 As when in heaven the stars look brightly forth 
 Round the clear-shining moon, while not a breeze 
 Stirs in the depths of air, and all the stars 
 Are seen, and gladness fills the shepherd's heart, 
 So many fires in sight of Ilium blazed, 
 Lit by the sons of Troy, between the ships 
 And eddying Xanthus : on the plain there shone 
 A thousand ; fifty warriors by each fire 
 Sat in its light. Their steeds beside the cars — 
 Champing their oats and their white barley— stood, 
 And waited for the golden morn to rise. 
 
 Teiinyson*s translation, aromatic as it is with Homer's quality, is 
 somewhat racy too of the translator's genius. In short, it does not 
 escape a trace of very delightful mannerism. Bryant's version 
 more successfully obliterates the translator's individuality, merging. 
 it in that of his original. Pope's paraphrase is what might have 
 been expected from a born poet of society in a case where brilliant 
 words and polished metres would not serve in place of simple truth 
 to life and nature. 
 
MK. BKYANT'S ILIAD. 249 
 
 is absent everywhere throughout his volumes that deli- 
 cate hint of Hellenic idiom in diction and syntax, -which, 
 when present in a just degree of it, so delightfully re- 
 calls the original to the stimulated taste and imagina- 
 tion of the classical reader. We know very wdll that 
 the vernacular idiom would be in danger of suffering 
 somewhat from the scholar's too fond indulgence of his 
 Greek in translation. But a degree or two more of 
 this influence frankly admitted by Mr. Bryant would, 
 we think, have imported into his work a certain antique 
 and exotic aroma that, without making his translation 
 at all less immediately intelligible to non-classical 
 readers, would have communicated to them some share 
 of that liberalizing and refining effect of classical studies 
 which lies in the habituation to think in the thought, to 
 feel with the feeling, and to speak by the speech of a 
 wholly different and long extinct race of one's kind. 
 Instead of a modern English poem, dashed in its very 
 syntax and diction with this flavor of antiquity and of 
 Greece, Mr. Bryant has given us a modem English 
 poem in unadulterated purity — foreign and ancient 
 only in that wherein it could not possibly be natural- 
 ized to us and to our times — its subject, its scene, its 
 characters, its plot, its incidents, and its machinery. 
 Many good judges will say that we have been describ- 
 ing a perfect translation. Precisely so ; and that is the 
 fault we are now finding with Mr. Bryant. His trans- 
 lation is too perfect. He has too successfully realized 
 his own ideal of his task. He might easily have been 
 more influenced by scholarship than he ought to have 
 been ; but, as the case stands, he has been influenced by 
 scholarship somewhat less than he ought to have been. 
 In decanting the "Homeric juice" from the original 
 amphora, he has not lost the body flavor of poetry in the 
 wine, like Derby, and ISTorgate ; but its peculiarly Greek 
 
250 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 bouquet he has allowed in part to escape him. What 
 genius could do he has done ; bnt he has not done quite 
 all that scholarship could do. The part of genius alone 
 is greatly preferable to the part of scholarship alone ; 
 but transcendent genius, like Mr. Bryant's, in the alli- 
 ance of scholarship equal to it, would have given ns an 
 Iliad that the English-speaking world must now learn, 
 no doubt permanently, to do •nathout. The classicism 
 ingrained with the texture of the " Paradise Lost," the 
 authentic spirit of Greece or Eome that saturates such 
 poetry as the " Ulysses," or the " Lucretius," will do 
 far more toward naturalizing the imaginative Eng- 
 lish reader in those obsolete and alien habits of mind 
 which still so strangely fascinate the taste and culture 
 of Christendom, than would a whole library of Greek 
 and Latin poetry in a translation that too completely 
 translated. 
 
 Considered simply as English composition, Mr. Bry- 
 ant's version, for noble purity and fitness of diction, is 
 beyond all praise. The English language has, in our 
 opinion, hardly ever known the hand of a firmer and 
 surer master than Mr. Bryant. We are not certain that 
 he wields all its resources, but the share of its resources 
 that he does wield, he wields with a tranquil sense of 
 command, highly re-assuring and invigorating to the 
 mind of his reader. The ease with which his lines flow 
 into each other, unobstructed by the occurrence of a 
 single forced or imnatural word, is really wonderful. It 
 is even almost too great. It half affects one with a mis- 
 giving lest this facile versification and this faultless 
 vocabulary be due to some want of distinct and vivid 
 conception on the part of the translating poet, such as, if 
 he possessed it, would be likely to surprise him, here and 
 there, into departures from his unimpeachable propriety 
 of expression. We think rather that Mr. Bryant's felicity 
 
ME. BEYAl^rS ILIAD. 251 
 
 in these respects is the genuine brand of that mastership 
 in his art which, wherever it exists, has in some degree 
 always the effect to make the inexperienced feel that he 
 too could do so easy a thing himself, if he should try. 
 
 We have implied a high estimate of Mr. Bryant's 
 blank verse. It is indeed admirable workmanship. It 
 fails very little, if it fails at all, of being worthy to con- 
 stitute in its kind a variety by itself— an honor which it 
 would share with the choice peerage of so few other 
 poets that you could count their names on the fingers 
 of one hand. We mention Shakespeare, Milton, and, 
 doubtfully, Tennyson, and leave it to our readers to 
 complete the list to their own liking. The fault by 
 which Bryant's blank verse fails, if it fails, of this su- 
 preme excellence is — monotony. We write the word 
 reluctantly ; for Bryant's monotony has a wide range 
 of inflections, some of them distinctively and exclusively 
 his own ; but he repeats these too often, and the result 
 is monotony, notwithstanding the variety. We were 
 curious enough to test by a count the value of our im- 
 pression that there was an almost manneristic recur- 
 rence of the principal harmonic pause after the seventh 
 syllable of the line. We made an average from the 
 first three hundred lines of the fourth book of his trans- 
 lation, in comparison with the first three hundred lines 
 of the fourth book of the "Paradise Lost." We found 
 that while in Bryant the pause returned to its place 
 after the seventh syllable about once in every six Hues, 
 in Milton it does not return there oftener than about once 
 in fifteen lines. We have a further suspicion, which, 
 however, we have been at no pains to justify, that Mr. 
 Bryant's line has a tendency, elsewhere than between 
 the seventh and eighth syllaljles, to divide itself on the 
 arsis instead of the thesis of the foot. This may not be 
 a blemish in his handling of his measure. We are dis- 
 
252 A I-EEE LANCE. 
 
 posed, in fact, to think that that position of the pause 
 has a certain onward and hastening effect upon the 
 movement which is favorable to the purposes of narra- 
 tion. After all, a still wider compass of variety in his 
 verse would have gone a long way toward converting 
 the rarely failing melody of it into that rich and com- 
 plex harmony which delights us like the interwoven 
 strains of an orchestra in the majestic poetry of Milton. 
 
 The fact of Mr. Bryant's following so numerous a suc- 
 cession of Homeric translators has alike its advantages 
 and its disadvantages, as concerns his own success. No 
 one, of course, would think of making a new version 
 without first examining those already in existence. He 
 would naturally thus enrich his vocabulary with addi- 
 tional words appropriate to his use, and he would also 
 materially lessen his risk of going astray, following a 
 light of his own, on a question of rendering. On the 
 other hand, a man of sensitive literary conscience would 
 incur the chance of having desirable modes of expres- 
 sion, likely enough to have suggested themselves spon- 
 taneously to his own mind, thus obtruded upon his 
 notice from without, and thereby rendered distasteful 
 for his use. If the advantages preponderate, it is de- 
 served praise to say that Mr. Bryant's i;se of them has 
 been as wise as it has been honorable. 
 
 It would have been easy to pass a ciirsory glance 
 over these comely pages, and form a superficial judg- 
 ment on the merits of Mr. Bryant's work. A hasty 
 characterization might then have been hazarded, to 
 satisfy the momentary curiosity of readers who like to 
 know the current opinion of the last new book. But, 
 from the nature of the case, no really valuable judg- 
 ment could have been thus precipitately formed. It 
 was not suflBcient even to examine carefully, in com- 
 parison with the original and with other versions, a few 
 
MH. BKYANT'S ILIAD. 253 
 
 marked passages upon which, from their celebrity 
 among scholars and people of taste, a translator would 
 be sure to bestow his best pains and skill. The critic 
 who hoped to write a sentence on which he would be 
 willing himself permanently to stand, was under ne- 
 cessity of doing more than either or than both of these 
 things. He must read and re-read, in various moods, 
 at flood-tide and at ebb-tide of enthusiasm for his 
 translator; he must read now with minute attention, 
 and now he must read with a passive receptivity for 
 the general effect of long passages, and then, at inter- 
 vals, he must collate the rival versions with a generous 
 eye and ear, and, for the time, a favorably prepossessed 
 mood, for the best impression from them all. Only so 
 could one be sure of "arriving, not to say at the final 
 verdict of the literary world, at the final verdict of his 
 own sober mind. 
 
 For ourselves, every prepossession disposing us favor- 
 ably to Mr. Bryant's work, we read it at first with the 
 grateful assent of unreserved admiration. We were 
 immediately ready to pronounce it by eminence the 
 Iliad of the English-speaking nations. Then followed 
 a more deliberate investigation of its claims ; and we 
 were obliged to confess to some abatement of our 
 delight. Occasional negligences of scholarship, as we 
 thought, an obtrusive absence, there and here, in fa- 
 vorite passages, of that indefinable Greek spirit which 
 we had perhaps ourselves unconsciously injected into 
 the original, a suggested monotony in the mould of the 
 lines — ^these defects, real or imaginary, disturbed the 
 feast of our satisfaction for a while. But subsequent 
 reading, and especially extended reading at a single 
 time (perhaps the truest test of excellence in the trans- 
 lation of a poem originally intended for rehearsal to an 
 audience), quite brought back and confirmed our ear- 
 
254 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 liest enthusiasm. "We are deliberately ready now to 
 say that, in our opinion, Mr. Bryant's Iliad has natu- 
 ralized, or will naturalize, the poem in the English 
 tongue, if the poem is capable of the naturalization. 
 
 We close these volumes with a sentiment of homage 
 for the genius that produced them which inspires a 
 serious doubt. Did translation take the place of orig- 
 inal composition ? We should exclaim, " Now for the 
 sweeter Odyssey ! " but that the questions rise. Can 
 Bryant afford it ? Can American Kterature ? 
 
THE HISTORY OP 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COMMISSION 
 
 AS A PART OF CHURCH HISTORY.i 
 
 A CANDIDATE appears for the rites of historic 
 canonization. Silently, before that grave and 
 silent council which is composed of all wise and gener- 
 ous opinions, and which holds perpetual session in 
 every quarter of the civilized world, the United States 
 Christian Commission stands to claim her place among 
 the select and not numerous sainthood of great heroic 
 devotions. 
 
 She would be secure of her palm, and she might 
 move to her seat with undivided suffrages and amid 
 universal applause. But the Christian Commission 
 will not consent to sit down, a peer, confounded in the 
 ranks of even so illustrious a peerage. The order of 
 her claims is transcendent and peculiar. She refuses 
 to be canonized a secular saint. She will not illustrate 
 the calendar of the Sociologists, or the calendar of the 
 Humanitarians. She avers that she was always bap- 
 tized unto Christ. She demands to be registered in the 
 calendar of the Catholic Church of the l^azarene. 
 
 We move to support this demand. We have exam- 
 ined the record, and we believe that the Christian 
 Commission, its name and its fame, belongs to the 
 Christian Church. It cost that Church nineteen centu- 
 
 ' Annals of the United States Christian Commission. By Rev. 
 Lemuel Moss, Home Secretary to the Commission. Philadelphia : 
 J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1868. 
 
256 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 ries of testimony, of patience, and of toil, not always 
 without blood, to render such a history possible. Her 
 travail for it has made her child too dear, for her now 
 readily to relinquish it to the possessorship of another. 
 For our part, we mean neither to let her title to it sleep^ 
 nor to let it be denied. The Christian Commission is 
 Christian in nature as well as in name. We challenge 
 for it, and we will vindicate for it, whoever is silent or 
 whoever gainsays, a place of its own, and a conspicuous 
 place, in that wide history of human redemption which, 
 to more than one great mind of our race, has compre- 
 hended and interpreted all human history. This is the 
 chief purpose of the preseint paper. 
 
 Many readers of the volume named in the note at 
 the foot of the preceding page must be reminded with 
 ourselves that the office of Old Mortality is a sadly 
 needful one in this forgetful world. If there were 
 any monuments of things foregone that could dis- 
 pense with his heed, the monument of the United 
 States Christian Commission might surely be one of 
 them. But the lichens of forgetfulness love the stones 
 of remembrance with very nearly an impartial affec- 
 tion, and the lines which commemorate goodness fill up 
 as fast as the lines which commemorate crime. 
 
 We have read these annals, and it is as if the images 
 and inscriptions which preserve an obscuring past had 
 been traced again and deepened by a loving and faith- 
 ful chisel. How the dimming legends of memory have 
 cleared and brightened, that record the wonderful stories 
 of our war for the Union, and of those gracious reliefs 
 of love in ministry and sacriiiee which commend it to 
 history ! Professor Moss has associated himself endur- 
 ingly to the fame of deeds of which he was himself a 
 part, in writing this pious and beautiful memorial vol- 
 ume. No future historian of the republic, to the end 
 
THE tr. S. OHEISTIAU COMMISSION. 267 
 
 of time, but must acknowledge his indebtedness to the 
 compiler of these annals for a garnish of story, true 
 and yet more exquisite far than the starriest fable of 
 the Grrecian or Koman heroic age. 
 
 The matter of the volume is judiciously distributed. 
 Professor Moss gives us a good preface, furnishing 
 what, to borrow a term from mechanic philosophy, 
 might be called a co-efficient of appreciation for the use 
 of the reader in judging of the author's work ; there is 
 a synopsis of the well-chosen titles of the chapters ; a 
 skilful summary, at the close, reviews and epitomizes 
 the whole with suggestive reflections and comparisons ; 
 and, following all, comes a suflBciently copious index — 
 so that the book might very well dispense with any 
 further specific notice of its contents at our hands. 
 But the interest of the subject is so absorbing, and its 
 real importance is so great, that we feel compelled to 
 disturb Professor Moss's crystallization of his materials, 
 to produce a secondary one of our own, which shall at 
 least be smaller in compass, if it is also necessarily 
 somewhat less complete in comprehension. 
 
 Something, however, deserves to be said, by the way, 
 of the publishers' part in this book. In a word, then, 
 the volume, within the limits of its pretensions, is as 
 close upon a work of art as a feat of mere manufacture 
 well can be. The paper is perfect, .the print is as fair 
 as if each separate letter had enjoyed an engraver's 
 pains upon it, the margin is just agreeably ample, the 
 plates are as admirable in workmanship as they are 
 valuable for the illustration they furnish, and, finally, 
 the binder's success was such that the book has no 
 favorite pages of its own to show you, while it mani- 
 fests also that absolute indifference as to whether it lie 
 open or shut in your hands, which we take to be the 
 height of good-breeding in a book. 
 
258 A FKEB LANCE. 
 
 After the preface comes an introductory chapter 
 entitled " A Glance Backward." This consists of an 
 inquiry after the historical germs of the great charities 
 of our civil war. The inquiry is conscientious and 
 thorough. It goes back to the remotest historical 
 times. Hebrew Scripture, Greek and Roman story, 
 are sifted with all the heed and hope of a gulch miner 
 looking for gold. Professor Moss seems to have corre- 
 sponded judiciously in quest of helps and hints. One 
 result is a letter from Professor Tayler Lewis, which is 
 inserted in the text. It is written in that blended 
 spirit of the thinker, the scholar, and the Christian, 
 which constitutes the peculiar charm of everything 
 that comes from Tayler Lewis's pen. President Ander- 
 son, of Rochester, cites for Professor Moss a remark- 
 able instance of practical beneficence in war, on the 
 part of some public-spirited merchants of Northern 
 Germany during one of the Crusades, which, as early 
 as the twelfth century, founded an order of knighthood, 
 and finally gave a royal succession to Prussia. It is 
 curious that a kingdom, which was destined to so war- 
 like a history, should have had auguries about its 
 beginning so exceptionally benign and pacific. 
 
 But, after all, this chapter is chiefly valuable for its 
 negative results. Professor Moss was gleaning in a 
 field where ill success was his best success. For the 
 Christian Commission is without historic pedigree, in 
 the ordinary sense of such an expression. Its origin 
 has really no history but the history of the Christian 
 Church. Christianity alone can explain it. There is 
 a verse in " The Acts" which records the determination 
 of some Syrian Christians to send relief to their suf- 
 fering brethren in Judsea. That one verse has more 
 seed in it, from which a Christian Commission might 
 grow, than has all the seeming precedent that could be 
 
THE U. S. CHEISTIAN COMMISSION. 259 
 
 sifted out of the whole world's literature, apart from 
 scriptural suggestion. 
 
 The first chapter of the " Annals " proper is devoted 
 to a survey of the " preliminary movements," which 
 finally led to the formal organization of the Christian 
 Commission. This is a most interesting and instructive 
 review of that period of our national history which 
 immediately preceded the war. We shall recur to this 
 topic before we have done. For, in a just appreciation 
 of the political and the religious conditions of those 
 few intense moments of the national experience, will 
 be found, we think, to lie the only true solution of that 
 problem in history — the origin of the Christian Com- 
 mission. Large place in the work of preparing the 
 popular conscience and heart for the burden soon to 
 be borne, is properly given to the Great Revival. This, 
 however, we believe, was stiU more a symptom, than a 
 discipline, of the religious life of the nation. The 
 Great Eevival was, in some sort, a lifting of the valve, 
 to ease, for one moment, a pressure which the general 
 conscience could not much longer endure. Just as 
 Germany, till lately denied political channels for the 
 natural and healthy flow of her gathering national life, 
 had long been pouring herself abroad, in vast floods, 
 without channel, of most unscholarly learning," and 
 most unphilosophical metaphysics, and most unreligious 
 theology, — so the moral earnestness of the American 
 people, foaming up in heaps against the artificial bar- 
 rier of compulsory silence, or at least of compulsory 
 non-interference, with regard to human slavery in the 
 South, was always ready to spring a little jet of relief 
 for itself, whenever opportunity ofiered. The waters 
 were continually multiplying, every wind was piling 
 them higher, the bottom was heaving uneasily beneath 
 them. •When at last, with the concussion of the guns 
 
260 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 at Fort Sumter, the dam itself gave way, it was a new 
 Magara bursting to the sea. 
 
 The various associations for the aid of the citizen 
 soldiery in the field, which sprang up all over the 
 country simultaneously with the setting out of the 
 volunteers from home, present a phenomenon not dif- 
 ferent, perhaps, from that which has been presented in 
 most of the popular wars of modem times — with this 
 exception, however, which is worthy of note, that there 
 was with us that superior fecility of voluntary organ- 
 ization to which our free institutions had, for three 
 generations, been training us. These associations cor- 
 responded with each other, and thus gradually drew 
 more and more together. At last, and soon, in 
 hands of rare earnestness and rare organizing skill, 
 they became the world-renowned United States Sani- 
 tary Commission. 
 
 Thus far there was nothing really new, except that 
 the scale of operations, proposed and begun, was gener- 
 ous beyond any precedent, and that a perfection of 
 organization was realized, such as it is too easily con- 
 ceded to be the exclusive prerogative of C^sarism to 
 furnish. A deep religious spirit worked in the concep- 
 tion, and in the administration, of this magnificent 
 charity. But it did not propose to itself, or to the 
 public, any ends except such as might, without injus- 
 tice, be called material ones. Its president was the 
 Rev. Dr. Bellows, a nobly earnest Unitarian minister, 
 who, though probably to be reckoned with the extreme 
 right wing of the widely extended array of his denom- 
 ination, had nevertheless re-stated Christian doctrine * 
 in forms that would have been far from acceptable to 
 the straitest of the orthodox, and who, we suppose, if 
 
 ' " Re-statements of Christian Doctrine," New York, 1830. 
 
THE TJ. S. CHEISTIAIT COMMISSION. 261 
 
 he were consulted, would choose the fortune and the 
 fame, for now and for ever, of a Humanitarian, rather 
 than those of an Evangelical, distinctively so called. 
 
 Such was the Sanitary Commission, and such was 
 its head. And yet the Sanitary Commission did not 
 feel ashamed of prayer, and prayer in the name of 
 Jesus. An eminent layman — whom his fellow-citizens 
 have singled out for high political honors, but whose 
 chief glory, were he himself to choose it, we are sure 
 would consist in being remembered as an Evangelical 
 Christian, speaking from knowledge acquired in familiar 
 coadjutorship with Dr. Bellows, in the administration 
 of the Sanitary Commission, at the beginning — has 
 assured us that the unction with which the Unitarian 
 chairman would pray at their meetings " for the sake 
 of Christ" was in no wise distinguishable, to the 
 hearer, from Evangelical unction. "And would Dr. 
 Bellows have said that what he was doing he was doing 
 for Christ ? " we asked. " He would," was the unhesi- 
 tating reply. So much did outward fellowship, in labor 
 that was Christ-like, avail to communicate to those who 
 shared it in company what certainly was a kindred, 
 and what appeared to be a Christ-like spirit. More 
 deeply beholding eyes_^than ours are needful here to 
 qualify for drawing a line of severe discrimination. It 
 were quite too eager an uncharity to suggest the suppo- 
 sition that Dr. Bellows's broad views of religious doctrine 
 would permit him, while his kind heart would impel 
 him, to gratify his Evangelical" brethren present, by 
 using language capable of bearing two different inter- 
 pretations — an orthodox one, dear to them, and a 
 rationalistic one, true to him. No, the explanation 
 rather is, that between those who loyally accept Christ 
 for their Lord there may exist wide differences of spec- 
 ulative opinion as to the truth concerning his person. 
 
262 A FBEE LAJJOB. 
 
 without necessarily breaking that best mutual Christian 
 communion — the communion of a common obedience 
 to him. When Dr. Bellows confessed the rightful su- 
 preme mastership of Christ, that confession alone defined 
 him a Christian in the real, if not in the technical, 
 evangelical sense. 
 
 The gentleman to whom we just now alluded subse- 
 quently transferred his name, his munificence, and his 
 personal co-operation to the Christian Commission. 
 But to this day he remains magnanimously and honor- 
 ably jealous for the good fame of the Sanitary Com- 
 mission. 
 
 This is only one instance among many of the man- 
 ner in which the furnace-heat of the hour fused the 
 walls that had seemed to partition the indivisible kin- 
 ship of all earnest souls. It is curious, too, to note 
 how men of contrasted creeds struck hands, in mutual 
 recognition of brotherhood, always on some platform 
 of the Bible. Nor was it certain to be in the grace of 
 the New Testament that they found themselves thus 
 unexpectedly together; but, almost as likely, in the 
 menace of the Old. The bale-fire of the rebellion 
 threw a new light of interpretation on that Universal 
 Book. Some who had sucked the paps of Peace until 
 their enfeebled spiritual stomachs came to reject, for 
 spurious, the too tonic scriptural inspirations of warlike 
 times, now began to find them necessary food. News- 
 paper paragraphists were not slow to dramatize what 
 was passing, in humorous narrations, true in spirit, 
 if not in fact. Said one Unitarian minister, meeting 
 another, about the time that the actual breaking-out of 
 the war was ftiHy exposing the enormous wickedness 
 of its authors : " I never before felt so much like swear- 
 ing." " Well," responded the second, " I felt as you 
 do] but I turned to the Old Testament, and picked 
 
THE V. S. OHEISTIAN COMMISSION. 263 
 
 out one of good old David's imprecatory Psalms. I 
 read it twice aloud, and since tlien I have felt much 
 better." 
 
 Probably, after all, the grim humorist himself never 
 once thought how much more nearly the wars which 
 established David's monarchy concerned the good of 
 mankind, than did even the war which saved our Ameri- 
 can Union. This we may say simply in the light of un- 
 disputed history — just as, in the same light, we might 
 say that the success of Greece against Persia preserved 
 ancient civilization to the pagan world. 
 
 Zealous Christians, of the most pronounced Evangeli- 
 cal type, were among the earliest, the warmest, and the 
 most munificent friends of the Sanitary Commission. 
 These, of course, in their degree, infused into the opera- 
 tions of the society the devout religious spirit with 
 which they labored themselves. Thus, if an agent of 
 the Sanitary Commission, too much of the Master's 
 mind to be content with meeting the merely material 
 wants of those to whom he ministered, provided himself 
 with medicine for the soul as well as with medicine for 
 the body, he was not hindered, but rather bidden God- 
 speed. 
 
 At the same time the Sanitary Commission held it- 
 self to the purposes which its name implied, aiming 
 merely to supplement the provision made by the gen- 
 eral Government for the material needs of the army. 
 ]!foble, therefore, as was the Sanitary Commission, in 
 thought and in fact, it yet left a craving of the church 
 without its full satisfaction. 
 
 The Young Men's Christian Associations of the coun- 
 try were a kind of religious militia, or rather a volun- 
 teer force of religious minute-men, attached to the regular 
 service of the church. These associations would almost 
 seem to have been made ready by Providence, and disci- 
 
264 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 plined beforehand, to play at this juncture a memorable 
 part in the drama of ecclesiastical history. They com- 
 prised often the select youth and vigor of the churches, 
 in those places where the churches are always youngest 
 and most vigorous in appetite for religious enterprise, 
 that is, in the larger towns and the cities. They only 
 languished for want of work ; and, to a man, their mem- 
 bers greeted with delight the drum-beat that summoned 
 them to the march and the fight of their unworldly war. 
 Partly, no doubt, from that love of organization which 
 so distinguishes our national character, but also, we 
 must believe, partly under heavenly guidance towards 
 an end then not yet revealed, the several associations 
 of the country had corresponded with each other, and 
 already effected a kind of confederation, which enar 
 bled them upon occasion to act as one body. An 
 occasion, such as had no precedent in the past and 
 such as will hardly have a parallel in the future, now 
 arose. 
 
 A call was accordingly issued in due form, a call des- 
 tined to be memorable, which summoned a national 
 convention of the associations to assemble in New 
 York, on Thursday, the fourteenth day of November, 
 eighteen hundred and sixty-one. This representative 
 body created a " Christian Commission," of twelve per- 
 sons, to supervise a work of evangelical beneficence, 
 proposed for the patriot armies of the republic. That 
 day commenced the annals of the United States Chris- 
 tian Commission. 
 
 A " Plan of Operations " was adopted, which, with 
 an "Address," breathing, as did many of the similar 
 documents issued by the Commission, a singular, an 
 almost apostolic, dignity and fervor, was, after the lapse 
 of an interval, submitted to the public. But, eager as 
 was the haste of the church to be at work, some months 
 
THE U. 8. CHEISTIAN COMMISSION. 265 
 
 intervened before she recognized and accepted the 
 Christian Commission, as the providentially appointed 
 instrument for her use. It seems singular now, with 
 its finished career in the retrospect, to be reminded 
 how coldly at first Christian pastors and religious jour- 
 nals demeaned themselves toward a ministry of useful- 
 ness, which they were afterward to regard with such 
 loyal affection, and to employ with such noble results. 
 It shows, at least, that there was no narrow ambition 
 among them, no factious rivalry, fostering a vainglori- 
 ous wish to divide with the Sanitary Commission the 
 honors which that organization was reaping, and which 
 it was earning. The solemn earnest of the churches 
 was too intense to show one instant's quarter to any 
 make-believe. Wood, hay, stubble, could not stand 
 the fury of that fire. The very quickest and sternest 
 voice, of all the voices which challenged the Christian 
 Commission at its setting forth, was the voice of the 
 churches themselves. They cried halt, with an almost . 
 intolerant vehemence, and demanded to know with 
 what credentials of its necessity it appeared. It was 
 for this reason that the first months of its history were 
 so bound in shallows and in miseries. But such an 
 ordeal was perhaps needful, to afford conclusive evi- 
 dence that its origin was not due to the "raw haste" 
 of an oflacious ecclesiastical zeal, eager for demonstra- 
 tion, and unchaatised by the wisdom of humility. The 
 churches were more than willing to do their work, if 
 they could, through the agencies that already existed. 
 It cost them experience to be convinced that they 
 could not. Meantime they were only too mistrustful 
 of appearing to seek separation for the sake of enjoying 
 their share of the public applause alone. Their spirit 
 was the spirit of Paul — ^that of rejoicing if only the 
 work of Christ were done. 
 12 
 
266 A FEEE LAKCE. 
 
 The story is full of a singular interest, and it is told 
 by Professor Moss not without some effect of a certain 
 grave and gentle humor — ^how the Commission barely 
 survived its infancy, almost no man even so much as 
 for once dreaming of the stature to which its sudden 
 and short maturity would grow. The vacating oificer, 
 who, six months and more after the Commission was 
 founded, inventories its " assets " for his successor, with 
 a condescension to details half whimsical, half pathetic, 
 would have been incredulous had he been told that, 
 within a year, the future incumbent of his office would 
 help administer the disbursement of an annual revenue 
 reckoned by hundreds of thousands of dollars ! 
 
 Several things concurred to bring about the decisive 
 turn which soon befell the fortune of the Christian 
 Commission. 
 
 Foremost among these was probably the unexpected 
 use which the enemies of religion began to make of the 
 -splendid success of the Sanitary Commission. These 
 rubbed their hands in glee, and exclaimed at the demon- 
 stration that was in progress of the full sufficiency of 
 materialism to satisfy every human need. Some artifi- 
 cer of phrases — a woman, we believe, the same " man- 
 minded" woman that styled Kossuth, during that 
 brilliant Hungarian comet's brief American perigee, 
 "the Christ of the world's political redemption" — 
 somebody, at any rate, furnished a convenient catch- 
 word. A noisy propagandism began for " the Gospel 
 of Sanitary Science." This schismatic cry, on the part 
 of infidels, brought thoughtful Christians to a stand — 
 which was afterward not less firmly maintained, for 
 having been at first reluctantly taken. They resolved 
 on doing Christ's work in Christ's name. They thronged 
 by thousands to the Christian Commission. 
 
 But there were other reasons why the Christian Com- 
 
THE tJ. S. CHEISTIAK COMMISSION. 267 
 
 mission began to attract increased attention. Tlie war 
 was seen to be not quite so transient a phase, as at first 
 was hoped, of the nation's experience. As the slow 
 months dragged on, the Christian households which 
 had been deprived, by enlistment, of the strong staif or 
 the beautiful rod, the thinned churches, the decimated 
 Christian Associations, became, through correspondence 
 and the occasional visits interchanged between the home 
 population, and the armies, better acquainted with the 
 appalling spiritual needs which camp-life engendered. 
 This better acquaintance inflamed the hunger of the 
 church to meet the growing emergency. And then, 
 further, the attempts of the Commission, ill-sustained 
 as they had been, were nevertheless so judiciously 
 directed, that there arose a murmur of applause from 
 the army which was not long in growing " full quire " 
 throughout the community. The idea of sending un- 
 paid volunteer " delegates," with a sphere of home in- 
 fluence clinging about them, directly to the camps and 
 the battle-fields of the soldiers, to bring back again from 
 their mission a store of incident with which to point 
 their appeals to the audiences that thronged to hear 
 from the lips of eye-witnesses all about their husbands, 
 or their fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or their 
 neighbors, in the war — this idea, we say, was an inspi- 
 ration ; — ^it was the life of the Commission. 
 
 The " Plan of Operations " did not emphasize this idea. 
 ]S"or does it seem subsequently to have been the sugges- 
 tion of any one person's prophetic sagacity. It had a 
 spontaneous generation in the heat of actual work. It 
 was the consummate result of experience; and yet it 
 was only a new application of a plan as old as the gos- 
 pel. It was a circuitous return to Christ's method of 
 evangelizing men by personal contact of living souls. 
 Thus do our most laborious results, when they prove 
 
268 A FEEE LAUCE. 
 
 to be of any wortli, chime witli the easy anticipations 
 of heavenly wisdom. 
 
 Another feature of the original scheme, very alluring 
 iu its promise, was found to be impracticable, and had 
 to be abandoned. This was the proposal to undertake 
 the delivery of packages directly to individual soldiers 
 from the hands of their friends at home. Could this 
 feat have been successfully accomplished it may yet 
 fairly be questioned whether the total result would have 
 been equally beneficent with that which attended the 
 plan actually pursued. It would, no doubt, have satis- 
 fied a beautiful sentiment in the hearts of the home 
 circle, and in the heart of the remembered absentee. 
 But it would have been a subtly selfish satisfaction after 
 all ; whereas the fact that mothers, and sisters, and 
 wives, all over the land, were compelled, with a sublime 
 impersonal benevolence almost realizing some moral- 
 ists' definition of virtue, to devote their tokens of love, 
 so far as they were entrusted to the Commission, to the 
 soldiers in general, and to greet for son, or brother, or 
 husband, whatever volunteer might chance to receive 
 their gift— this universally reciprocal consciousness dis- 
 solved the whole motherhood, and sisterhood, and wife- 
 hood of the nation into one multitudinous communion 
 of wonderful kinship in sacrifice, and sympathy, and 
 prayer. The same thing also occuiTed in the army; 
 and nothing conceivable could have tended more to 
 make one family of the entire people. In no nnapt ac- 
 commodation of the Saviour's words, every heart could 
 have said : Whosoever belongs to this wide fellow- 
 ship of love, the same is my brother, my sister, my 
 mother. 
 
 It would be mistaken disparagement of the service 
 to this nation, thus performed by the Christian Com- 
 mission, to imagine that it possessed merely a senti- 
 
THE TJ. S. CHRISTIAN COMMISSION. 269 
 
 mental value. True, its value was mainly sentimental 
 at tlie first ; but it did not exhaust itself and rest in 
 sentiment.- It went immediately on into a substantial 
 moral value. It became a swift education of the na- 
 tional character, and radical as swift, and permanent 
 as radical. For one hour's dissolving emotion, making 
 the heart wax, does more to mould it into form for- 
 ever than long years of dry attrition and indurating 
 habit. And, during that commerce of mutual kindly 
 ministration, which the Christian Commission carried 
 to and fro, in endless circuits of issue and return, 
 throughout the nation, there passed upon the general 
 heart so many rapt transfigurements of feeling, and 
 in so quick succession, that the electric thrills became 
 a continuous current of transforming power. The war 
 was one great galvanic battery, charged with an ex- 
 tremely various moral electricity to go shrewdly through 
 and through the quivering quick of the nation ; but no 
 medium conducted so many gracious vital shocks to 
 thrill it into goodness, as did the Christian Commission, 
 For proof of this, we must ask our readers to open at 
 random anywhere at those pages of the "Annals " which 
 describe the effects produced at home and in the field 
 by the labors of the Christian Commission. We do not 
 envy the heart whose quickened beat sends no tear to 
 the eye in passing under the exquisite touches of the 
 beautiful story. Said one wounded soldier that liad been 
 tenderly cared for by the Commission's men, and was told 
 that he had but five minutes to live — " Raise me to my 
 knees that I may pray for the Christian Commission." 
 The quarter-master stood watching the delegates at 
 work among the wounded, and said to them, the tears 
 rolling down his cheeks — "Is that what you do? I 
 never heard of you — what can I do ? — for you shall 
 have everything you want." These pulses of heavenly 
 
270 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 emotion travelled round the unbroken circuit of the 
 nation, and lost nothing of their dissolving and re- 
 making power on their way.^ The telluric currents of 
 electricity which, according to the conjecture of phil- 
 osophers, girdle the globe with perpetual flow, are not 
 more busy than were the streams of such intense and 
 beautiful emotion traversing the great child-like heart 
 of the nation. Can we be wrong in maintaining that 
 this people was drawn to a nobler moral height, thus 
 taught, by a most subtly persuasive tuition, to believe 
 in other good than material good ? How was it pos- 
 sible for those who had themselves seen such things, 
 and felt such things, afterward to believe, whatever else 
 might perish, that self-sacrificing love, vicarious devo- 
 tion could ever? It is something to have faith in 
 goodness and in its immortality — something not to 
 
 dream of human love and truth 
 As dying Nature's earth and lime. 
 
 No man is the same before and after he has obtained 
 this faith. Hq overcomes the world afterwards, whom 
 the world overcame before. And thus the sentiment, 
 transformed into a moral attribute, goes yet farther on 
 and is converted into a material gain. The better man 
 is a better soldier too. For what fights battles and 
 wins them, what storms forts and enters them, what 
 charges batteries and captures them, what marches 
 and does not tire, what fasts and does not faint, what 
 watches and does not sleep, what suflFers and does not 
 shrink, what dies but does not surrender — this, after 
 all, and notwithstanding the Gospel of Sanitary Science, 
 is found to be, not muscle^ and not stomach, but some- 
 thing higher than these — moral worth — will, faith, truth, 
 
 ' Page 354 of « Annals." 
 
THE TJ. S. CHEISTIAN COMMISSION. 271 
 
 love, hope, "and all that makes a man." This truth is 
 unconsciously confessed in the current term, applied to 
 characterize the effective condition of an army— morale. 
 No guess is likely to overstate the. service of the Chris- 
 tian Commission in raising the morale of the army. 
 
 It is worthy of mention by way of illustrating the 
 fidelity as well as the skill with which this vast trust 
 was administered, that the books at the home office of 
 the Commission showed where every package came 
 from, what it contained, who sent it, when it was re- 
 ceived, by whom it was delivered, to whom, when, and 
 where. This consummate administration was due, in 
 great measure, to one man, whose portrait ^ fitly forms 
 the frontispiece of the volume — Mr. George H. Stuart, 
 of Philadelphia. Mr. Stuart's personality is too broad 
 and deep a mark upon the history of the Christian Com- 
 mission, not to merit some further attention in an 
 article like this. But first a further word or two on a 
 topic suggested. 
 
 The partial account we have given of the actual 
 method adopted by the Commission, in the field, will 
 have served to show that the Plan of Operations, first 
 put forth, was treated always as a merely tentative docu- 
 ment. There was a full, fair degree of forecast exhib- 
 ited in it ; but it was not in the nature of things that 
 it should avoid mistakes, both of inclusion and of omis- 
 
 IWe do not remember ever to have seen Mr. Stuart, and our 
 impression from Ms portrait may be, unconsciously to ourselves, 
 affected by our knowledge of his character. But certainly it seems ' 
 almost an ideal picture of one bom to be the inspiring and presid- 
 ing genius of such an institution as the Christian Commission. So 
 much gentle intensity, so much radiant manly sweetness, so much 
 patience meekly glad over pain suffered and subdued, so much ex- 
 ercised self-control anointing to unsought leadership of others — 
 do not often meet in session on any face of man. We willingly ideal- 
 ize ; and we will thank no one to disenchant us. 
 
272 A'FKEE LANCE. 
 
 sion. The point worthy of attention is this — ^the utter 
 freedom from foolish persistency in a predetermined 
 line of policy which marks the whole course of the 
 Commission's executive management. There was 
 boundless perseverance, but not a particle of obstinacy.* 
 In this wise heed of Providence on the part of the 
 Christian Commission, this open ear to counsel, this ever 
 uncommitted readiness to leam by experience, this wil- 
 lingness to tack but persistence toward its end — ^in these 
 things, the course of the Christian Commission strikingly 
 resembled that new statemanship of which Abraham 
 Lincoln was, if not the originator, at least the first ex- 
 emplar, with no second yet in prospect. Such a man- 
 agement makes the history of the Christian Commission 
 an invaluable study. A fortune befell it which befalls 
 few pioneers, in any field of human achievement— to 
 show where the path was, and not where the path was 
 not. The instructions of history are mostly negative 
 instructions. They teach by warning rather than by 
 example. But so long as the true path is one, and the 
 wrong paths are numberless, it is only a partial satis- 
 faction, tending to despondency as much as to hope, to 
 know that this also, and this, is not the way. To this 
 general law the Christian Commission happily is an 
 exception. Its history is replete with fruitful prece- 
 dents recommended by success. The Christians of the 
 Old "World will study it, in the spirit of pupils who may 
 
 ' Tliis admirable self-control, this swiftness to hear, and slowness 
 to wrath, which was not weakness, and which was, we believe, 
 something yet wiser than accomplished worldly wisdom, had a fine 
 illustration in the forbearance and silence maintained by the repre- 
 sentatives of the Christian Commission during a brief period of im- 
 minent collision with the Sanitary Commission. There was infinite 
 temptation then to be quarrelsome. But the Commission strongly 
 forbore, and was not long in receiving the profit of its forbearance. 
 
THE U. S. CHRISTIAN COMMISSION. 273 
 
 wish to put their lesson into practice. They will not fail 
 to study it with profit. Such history is a greater than 
 Philosophy — it is Providence, teaching by example. 
 
 It was a good augury for the Christian Commission, 
 and a thing to be reckoned among the principal rea- 
 sons for its entrance upon a new career of prosperity, 
 when its "headquarters" were removed from New 
 York to Philadelphia, the home of Mr. Stuart. It 
 here enjoyed the advantage of ample accommodations 
 for office and store, rent free, under the hospitality of 
 its president. This was much at the first ; for it had 
 previously been a sojourner in tabernacles, with no 
 income to be relied on for the payment of the smallest 
 rent. But beyond any such advantage, calculable in 
 money, it enjoyed the advantage of a personal over- 
 sight and personal impulsion, at the same time singu- 
 larly regulative, and singularly vivifying. Yet further, 
 and, men being human — a point perhaps scarcely less 
 important — Mr. Stuart possessed, in an eminent degree, 
 the often misused, and therefore naturally often-dis- 
 paraged, art of popular impression. Himself such by 
 character and by habit, as infallibly to be in exquisite 
 chord with the tone of sentiment that would at any 
 time prevail among the better and the religious class 
 of average American minds, he was able always upon 
 occasion to sound a key which would be sure to bring 
 out a full chorus of popular assent and popular ap- 
 plause. Not ambitious, except perhaps of recognition 
 as a restlessly active Christian, he had no ends but 
 public ends to serve. Being such, and universally eon- 
 ceded to be such, it is easy to guess how, in the train 
 of those advantages which belonged to his character, he 
 would draw other advantages of an external sort, rein- 
 forcing his power with the public, and enabling him to 
 influence, as well as reflect, the popular temper. For a 
 
274 A FEEB LANCE. 
 
 man like him would be an invaluable gnomon of the state 
 of religious public opinion for the government to consult, 
 and an invaluable instrument for the government to 
 employ. The administration of President Lincoln had 
 need to study all the currents of the unknown and 
 perilous sea they were navigating ; and they were wise 
 enough to know that the religious convictions of the 
 people drew, on the whole, the very widest and deepest 
 and strongest current of them all. It was accordingly 
 always with respectful, and even with grateful, heed 
 that the administration hearkened, whenever a trust- 
 worthy representative voice spoke on behalf of the reli- 
 gious men of the nation. Such a voice by eminence 
 was George H. Stuart's. 
 
 This explains what, to persons ignorant or imob- 
 servant of the peculiar relations that subsisted at the 
 time between our government and the people, might 
 well appear inexplicable — the phenomenon of a purely 
 private citizen, the organ of a purely voluntary organ- 
 ization, enjoying a freedom of almost coniidential access 
 to the highest civil and military officials, during a crisis 
 when every moment of every hour of every day was 
 unspeakably precious to every one of them — an access 
 such as would seem proper to be accorded only to mem- 
 bers, for instance, of the National Legislature, who 
 might be supposed to represent the national will. We 
 know of nothing in history in all respects parallel. It 
 reminds one of the familiar intercourse, described by 
 Motley, between the patriotic, but often tumultuary, 
 burghers of the JSTetherlands, and their brave burgo- 
 masters, during the Spanish invasion. But that be- 
 longed to a petty municipal relationship; while this 
 was national, on a scale, too, of magnitude which dwarfs 
 the imperial sway of Philip II. in comparison. The 
 fact is, George H. Stuart, as Chairman of the Christian 
 
THE U. S. OHEISTIAN COMMISSION. .. 275 
 
 Oommission, did represent a constituency of American 
 citizens — a constituency, to use no hyperbole, more 
 numerous, more intelligent, more immovably loyal, and 
 more self-sacrificing, than any constituency represented 
 on the floor of either house of Congress. This the ad- 
 ministration knew. 
 
 Making thrifty use, within wisely modest bounds, of 
 his well-deserved opportunities, Mr. Stuart devised a 
 method of signalizing the close of the Commission's 
 first year by a series of anniversaries, in several im- 
 portant cities of the Union, xmder such auspices as 
 should at once attract the public attention and secure 
 the public confidence. Secretary Chase presided at the 
 anniversary in Washington ; and, by special vote of 
 Congress, it was held in the Hall of the House of 
 Eepresentatives. This anniversary occurred, by no 
 fortuitous coincidence probably, on a Sunday evening, 
 and the evening of Washington's birthday. Lieuten- 
 ant-General Wintield Scott presided at the anniversary 
 in New York City. 
 
 These anniversary demonstrations recurred with each 
 successive year of the Commission's history. The good 
 they did was probably not unmixed with evil. But, 
 however much they may have fed a morbid appetite in 
 some for a cheap anniversary glory, and by reaction 
 have discredited to a certain degree the motives of those 
 who worked for the Commission, Mr. Stuart at least 
 did not rest content with simply giving his cause the 
 galvanized vitality of publicity. He exerted himself to 
 gain the more substantial advantage of increased facil- 
 ities of access to the armies through, official authoriza- 
 tion. This was not quite easy at first ; and his efforts 
 had to be made with great delicacy and caution. But 
 his ultimate success was equal to his hopes. 
 
 The Christian Commission was now fairly launched. 
 
276 A FEEE LANOE. 
 
 If the cheers were faint while it hung in the ways, 
 they were hearty enough when it was really afloat. Its 
 voyage was prosperously completed without change of 
 omens. 
 
 Space need not he wasted in attempting to settle 
 points of precedence as among the various candidates 
 for the credit of being first in time, or foremost in zeal, 
 to attach themselves to the cause of the Christian -Com- 
 mission. Success in such an attempt could serve no 
 true purpose of history. It would he at once difficult 
 to achieve, and worthless when achieved. We are 
 safest too in being chary of personal ascription. The 
 work was singularly an impersonal wort. It sprang 
 from an inspiration too universal and too simultaneous 
 to have proceeded principally from any single heart, or 
 any single brain. God was its father, and the church 
 its mother. At the same time the merit of George H. 
 Stuart was so conspicuous, and, by a singular felicity, 
 so free from envy, that we make no scruple in depart- 
 ing, ia this one case, from our own rule of impersonal 
 treatment, and vwiting his name in full across the fore- 
 head of the Christian Commission. 
 
 Some years ago, the Emperor of the French intro- 
 duced into his legislature a project of law, ostensibly 
 to reward a general with money for his services in the 
 Cochin-China war. The deputies thought that the real 
 object was to commence the founding of a new order 
 of nobility, which should be attached by a relation of 
 gratitude to the Emperor's person and blood, and should 
 serve to buttress and adorn his throne. Quite unex- 
 pectedly, therefore, but quite consistently with the true 
 Frenchman's inconsistent independence, they made a 
 spirited stand against their master. They were still 
 wrangling about the bill, when he intervened, with a 
 petulant letter, and withdrew it. In the letter, con- 
 
THE U. S. CHEISTIAN COMMISSION. 277 
 
 Bciously or unconsciously borrowing a taunt from Taci- 
 tus, which, in losing something of its largeness, lost 
 nothing of its mordant bitterness, in the imperial 
 French, he told his deputies, in effect, that men usually 
 appreciated great achievements in proportion to their 
 own ability to produce them. Tacitus, with a grander, 
 because not a personal, scorn, launched his sarcasm 
 broadly against the age in which he lived, as, telling it 
 of a better age, he said : Adeo virtutes iisdem tempo- 
 ribus aptime aestimantur, quibus faoUlime gignuntur. 
 We have taken the converse of this, and found a whole- 
 some and kindly maxim in it, upon which we have 
 practised in our allusions to Mr. Stuart. A generous 
 atmosphere of appreciation must surely tend in some 
 degree to foster the production of virtue. 
 
 It would of course be quite beyond the bounds of 
 the practicable to furnish illustrations here that would 
 adequately set forth the various character of the work 
 accomplished by the Christian Commission. That work 
 may conveniently be considered under a twofold divi- 
 sion — I. Collection : II. Disbursement. The first part 
 was home work, — the second part was field work. The 
 first part included everything pertaining to the amassing 
 of resources, of whatever sort ; the second part included 
 everything pertaining to the application of those re- 
 sources to the object. 
 
 In the first place, the tributary area was divided into 
 districts, for convenience and thoroughness of farming 
 for revenue. These districts had each an auxiliary or- 
 ganization of its own, which reported to the central 
 organization at Philadelphia, but which was locally 
 independent and responsible. The districts were formed 
 with a twofold reference : first, to their own geograph- 
 ical unity within themselves, and possession of a natural 
 metropolis ; and, secondly, to their respective vicinity 
 
278 A FKEE LAJSTCE. 
 
 and relationship to corresponding portions of the field 
 of operations. Each auxiliary collected and disbursed, 
 according to its own discretion ; but there were general 
 features of method which gave a common character to 
 all, and which enables the historian to use a common 
 language respecting them. 
 
 It will be useful to mention a few of the almost 
 innumerable expedients which were adopted for the 
 collection of revenue. 
 
 In the first place, transportation of delegate and 
 store was almost absolutely free of cost to the Commis- 
 sion — the railroad and steamboat companies, with a 
 liberality not proverbial of such bodies, serving it gra- 
 tuitously. The telegraph companies were similarly 
 generous. These immunities lifted an immense burden 
 from the budget of the Commission. They constituted 
 in fact one of the most abundant, and most certain, 
 sources of its revenue. 
 
 In the second place, those who rendered personal 
 service for the Commission did so without pay. To 
 this a small number of oflBcers and clerks, who devoted 
 their whole time to it, were the only exceptions. Es- 
 timated in money, the service thus rendered was worth 
 a vast sum to the Commission. But it was worth 
 infinitely more, in its moral effect, as being rendered 
 in the spirit of love. 
 
 In the third place, public meetings were held, in 
 which effective speakers, generally recent from expe- 
 rience in the field, and known to the audiences they 
 addressed, would tell their moving stories of what the 
 soldiers needed, and how the Commission supplied 
 what they needed. If the immediate collections were 
 not large, as however they often were, the community 
 was thus kept in a softened, kindly, giving mood. 
 And, in general, it may be said that the policy of the 
 
THE U. S. CHRISTIAN COMMISSION. 2T9 
 
 Oommission, whether fairly conscious of itself or not, 
 was to take care that its fountains of supply in the 
 benevolence of the public should always be full, rather 
 than simply to draw every drop that it could, to be 
 hoarded in a cistern of its own. It thus served the 
 public that supplied it, as well as the public that it 
 supplied. The popular heart was not impoverished of 
 its generous impulses, but enriched in them instead. 
 When the day of need came, the Commission was never 
 disappointed of the means to meet it. The rock ilowed 
 again and again without sign of exhaustion, as often as 
 it was smitten. 
 
 Accordingly, in the fourth place, recourse was never 
 had to fairs, festivals, lotteries, rafflings, or other 
 such expedients for getting people to give without 
 knowing it. The Sanitary Commission resorted to 
 these means, on a scale that would have been magnifi- 
 cent, if magnificence were separable here from high 
 morality. But the Christian Commission never had 
 any share in thus smiting the very heart of benevolence 
 with sterility. It never pampered selfishness, covet- 
 ousness, thriftlessness, gambling, greed — with the sham 
 of charity baited with the hope of gain. They who do 
 this, whatever their motives, whatever their purpose, 
 whatever their success, have eaten their handful of 
 seed and defeated the harvest. They have done worse. 
 They have distUled the seed of a harvest into a draught 
 to destroy. 
 
 From whatever point of view we regard the opera- 
 tions of the Christian Commission, we shall only find 
 fresh occasion for wonder and delight at the many- 
 sidedness — ^the orbicular completeness — of its benefi- 
 cence. Its results were net results. There was almost 
 no tare and tret to diminish the profits. Indeed this 
 statement is itself but a negative half-truth. There was 
 
280 • A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 not only little loss, but there was manifold prolific gain. 
 An economy, and at the same time a certain opulent 
 fructifying virtue, at every point, attended what it did, 
 such as we are accustomed to attribute to the creative 
 energy of God. The ease with which its revenue was 
 collected resulted naturally from the self-evidencing 
 genuineness of its work. In contrast with the painful 
 way in which benevolent collections are often made, 
 the Christian Commission's plan may be described as 
 the sinking of an artesian shaft, instead of the working 
 of a force-pump. The Commission's revenue flowed, 
 as under some pressure of a force incorporated in the 
 framework of the universe, from a spring coeval with 
 the creation of the world. The tables of the Commis- 
 sion's agents standing in an- Exchange, for example, 
 would sometimes be heaped with the voluntary offerings 
 of merchants to immense value, much faster than they 
 could be counted. How many times blessed a work of 
 benevolence like this must have been — ^must continue 
 to be — for here eminently is a case in which the poet's 
 claim on behalf of Virtue will have to be conceded. 
 
 Give her tte wages of going on, and not to die — 
 
 this no human sagacity will ever discover. 
 
 The topics which we have treated have been too 
 tempting, or we have been too easily enticed. We 
 approach that part of our subject of which the intrinsic 
 narrative interest is greatest, and our shrinking space 
 forewarns us to forbear our hand. We have put it 
 fairly out of our power to represent the field work 
 of the Commission justly here. We must remit our 
 readers to the " Annals " themselves, if they desire to 
 peruse a tale of ingenious love and unstinted devotion, 
 rejoicing in romantic success such as we verily believe 
 gladdens no other bloody page of human history. We 
 
THE TJ. S. CHRISTIAN COMMISSION. 281 
 
 are not ashamed to confess that we have never yet once 
 opened to read this part of the volume without getting 
 blinded with tears. The sweet shocks that set the 
 heart to pulsing, come so suddenly, and in such un- 
 conjectured ways, that it is quite impossible not to be 
 womanly, if you are a man at all. It is touching 
 enough to see the unpaid representatives of the Com- 
 mission, on the battle-field and in the hospital, facing 
 danger and disease, with that meek, slow, long bravery 
 which is the hardest, that they may mitigate the bodily 
 sulferings of the soldiers. It is more touching still, 
 and gathers something of a true moral sublimity, when 
 you see these men and women lavishly supplied with 
 curious and costly ministries of relief, suggestiag 
 boundless resources behind them under self-imposed 
 and eager tribute. But when you learn that the appar- 
 ent work is merely incidental and ancillary to a work 
 which does not appear; that these people are doing 
 what you see purely for the sake of doing something 
 farther on, which you cannot see ; that they stanch the 
 wound, allay the pain, appease the hunger, assuage the 
 thirst, for a purpose beyond the beautiful deed ; that, 
 in fine, by every art of quick inventive love, they strive 
 to sphere the sufi'erer round, amid the horrible realities 
 of war, with the dear illusion of home again and 
 mother's-care, conjuring with whispered spells of power 
 in " household talk and phrases of the hearth," — all 
 not for duty, and not for humanity, however sensitively 
 susceptible to both of these, as certainly not for re- 
 ward; but for paramount personal loyalty to a name to 
 them above every name, — when you know, we say, 
 that, without exception, every one of all this multitude 
 of miaistrant men and women would have told you, 
 " The love of Christ constrains me,"— the efiect of pa- 
 thetic moral sublimity, to any wholesome human heart, 
 
2/82 . A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 is simply ovei-powering. It requires the last effort of 
 literary virtue to refrain from trying to set a few idyls, 
 at least, selected from the great panorama, before the 
 readers of this paper. But we have set to ourselves a 
 task which forbids the indulgence. 
 
 The question which we began by proposing — What 
 is the place of the Christian Commission in history ? — 
 ostensibly postponed thus far, has really been under 
 implicit discussion throughout the article. We intend 
 to devote some farther and more specific attention to 
 it. But first we interpose two or three reflections by 
 the way. 
 
 It is truly curious, to the thoughtful student of that 
 most prolific period of our national history — ^the years 
 of the Civil War — truly curious to observe with what 
 ingenious economy Providence devised to use every 
 resource of the country. For instance, many of the 
 men most active, and most nobly and most usefully 
 active, in the operations of the Christian Commission, 
 were such in natural disposition and in their habits of 
 life that without the peculiar vent for their enthusiasm, 
 which this great engine of practical beneficence and 
 of popular impression aflbrded, their elastic and mer- 
 curial vitality would have been lost to every purpose 
 of public advantage for the war. Solid business 
 men, and men of a quiet, unostentatious turn of mind, 
 would sometimes needlessly shrug their shoulders, when 
 this or that name, representative of the Christian Com- 
 mission, was mentioned in their presence — as if it sug- 
 gested sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, rather 
 than qualities of genuine and substantial worth. The 
 truth is, that these censors of their fellows were prob- 
 ably right— in part ; but it is certain that they were 
 also wrong — ^in still greater part. Perhaps it was the 
 weakness of some to take an undue delight in the 
 
THE U. S. CHRISTIAN COMMISSION. 283 
 
 functions of office, and in rounds of anniversary ap- 
 plause. But then, to discount a hundred per centum 
 from either the merit, or the value, of their services to 
 country and humanity, on account of such a foible, 
 would be to err in judgment, by having first erred in 
 heart. The husbandry of Providence is always wise. 
 These men knew, by an instinct deeper than reasoning, 
 that emotion is a powerful spring of human conduct, as 
 much as is conviction. It is but fair to confess, that 
 among the various multitude of those who contributed 
 to the common cause of the republic, and perhaps too 
 of Christianity, during the war, the emotionists also 
 were a tribe by no means to be despised. If a traffic 
 in human emotion may be plied, with no appeal to 
 passions less generous than pity and love, who shall 
 say that it works any harm ? But is there not a pulse 
 of something that goes deeper than mere sentiment, in 
 such an incident as this ? — we quote a foot-note from 
 p. 527 of the volume before us : — 
 
 " A writer in ' The Sunday-School Times,' for August 
 27, 1863, tells how the money was raised at Saratoga : 
 The question arose, How shall we get at these people 
 and gain a hearing ? Mr. Stuart said, ' The only time 
 when they are all together is at the dinner table. I 
 will make a speech of just one minute at the dinner.' 
 ' But, in the infinite clatter of plates, the noise of waiters 
 running to and fro, the clamor of conversation, and the 
 general melee of a thousand hungry people scrambling 
 for their dinner, you cannot get a hearing. It is im- 
 possible.' ' Let me try.' ' Agreed.' So when dinner 
 had advanced about one-third of its course, a concerted 
 noise of rapping was heard in diflerent parts of the 
 room, and instantly, over all the din, a clarion voice was 
 heard uttering these words : 'I have news from Charles- 
 
284 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 ton ! ' Had a ball from one of Gilmore's 200-poiind 
 Parrotters struck the house, the effect cotild not have 
 been more instantaneous. Every knife and fork dropped ; 
 every eye was turned to the speaker. The falling of a 
 pin could have been almost heard. With a -tender 
 solemnity of manner that showed how his whole soiil 
 was wound up in the cause, and at the same time with 
 a smile of indescribable sweetness that begged and 
 gained in advance forgiveness for the petty ruse which 
 had been practised, he said : ' I have a despatch from 
 the commanding officer at Hilton Head, saying, " For 
 Ood)s sake, send us ice for our wounded soldiers ! " 
 WiU the boarders at Saratoga respond?' 'We will! 
 we will ! WE WILL ! ' was shouted from every part of 
 the immense hall. And they did. In less than twenty- 
 four hours a purse of $3,200 was made up and the ice 
 was soon on its way from Boston." 
 
 We have already abundantly shown how much good 
 business thrift there was underlying all this tact for 
 moving appeal. 
 
 Another reflection suggested by the perusal of these 
 " Annals " is, that the Christian Commission proved to 
 be, in some degree, like that Lord whom it aimed to imi- 
 tate, a touchstone for the revelation of individual char- 
 acter. We seem to ourselves to discover even a singu- 
 lar closeness of parallel here. Of those who were 
 brought into contact with the Christian Commission, a 
 few recognized it in its true transcendent character, and 
 were irresistibly attracted to the discipleship of its 
 beautiful beneficence ; more felt a charm in it, which 
 after all they admired and lauded but did not obey ; 
 some were simply insensible that there was anything 
 among them incarnate from heaven; while here and 
 there a man would pronounce sentence upon himself, 
 
THE U. S. CHEISTIAIT COMMISSION. 285 
 
 with a rigor of justice against which he could make no 
 complaint, by assuming an attitude of unfriendliness 
 toward it. We intend no invidious tenacity of mem- 
 ory against a high-spirited and chivalrous, if also some- 
 what erratic and irascible man, when we name General 
 Sherman as an illustration of our meaning. That 
 oflScer's curt, scornful, perhaps Napoleonic message in 
 reply to the Commission's application for leave to 
 accompany his army on their famous march to the sea 
 — to the effect that gunpowder and oats were all that 
 his forces required — ^is cited in the " Annals," with a 
 certain Rhadamanthine severity of gentleness, in the 
 manner of remarking upon it, which seems to us — not to 
 deny it higher praise — altogether admirable as a speci- 
 men of rhetorical forbearance. General Sherman is 
 evidently himself awkwardly conscious of the past, 
 when, in compliance with a formal request, such as was 
 made to most of the prominent generals at the close 
 of the war, he puts on record his opinion of the Com- 
 mission's work. He manifestly wishes to accord it a 
 generous measure of unqualified praise. But his mem- 
 ory jogs his desire, and he is content to save himself 
 with a clause. 
 
 The question recurs — a question which every mind 
 accustomed to classify facts must ask — What place in 
 general history belongs to the Christian Commission ? 
 The topic is one which demands discussion. In form, 
 it: is merely a problem of the philosophy of history. 
 In essence, it is the persistent riddle of that Sphinx- 
 . Proteus, who confronts to vex a scornful but imeasy 
 age, whichever way it turns its eyes toward the gird- 
 ling horizon, with the reiterant ironical doubt — Is there 
 not something supeem-atijeal in the universe ? It may 
 startle, or it may amuse, but we raise the inquiry : 
 Was the Christian Commission a mere accessory and 
 
286 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 accident of our civil war ; or, to tlie highest and widest 
 view, was the civil war itself even a tragic scaffold ing 
 of history, on which the church of Christ should dis- 
 play a grace of goodness descended from heaven? 
 What if it shall eventually appear that the Christian 
 Commission, and not the war, continued our share, as a 
 nation, in human history? Some nineteen centuries 
 ago, an obscure young man iu Judaea predicted of cer- 
 tain transcendent and exti-emely unmaterialistic doc- 
 trines which he was inculcating, that they would grad- 
 ually found a kingdom of heaven, as he called it, 
 destined to cover the earth. It was but a few years 
 after, that the greatest of Latin historians paused one 
 haughty instant, amid the legionary march of those 
 clanging mail-clad periods, in which he described the 
 subjugation of provinces, the triumphs of generals, the 
 decrees of senates, the glory and the shame of emperors, 
 to despatch his notice of the Christian religion, in a 
 single line of Roman disdain. Tacitus represented the 
 culture of his times more brilliantly than Jesus. Taci- 
 tus has even been elected, we believe, with unanimous 
 suffrages to a kind of honorary posthumous member- 
 ship in their guild, by the modern critical school of 
 philosophical historians : while Jesus is of late dandled 
 on their knees, as a grown-up Galilsean infant, proper 
 to be admired for his pretty provincial prattle, and his 
 half-arch, half-innocent rustic little ways, but by no 
 means ever to be admitted to his majority, as a citizen 
 in the great republic of enlightened and emancipated 
 thought. And yet, in the presence of nineteen finished 
 Christian centuries, it is not presumptuous to ask: 
 Was Tacitus, or was Jesus, better master of the true 
 philosophy of history ? The polished Epicureans of a 
 sentenced age thought the Judasan had at most but 
 stirred a transient eddy on the outer edge of the great 
 
THE U. S. CHEISTIAI^ COMMISSION. 28Y 
 
 stream of Koman history. Are their modern disciples 
 surer to be right, who esteem that same meddlesome 
 Judasan's share in our civil war only the casual accom- 
 paniment of a martial stride in the mighty march of 
 Western civilization ? • 
 
 Here was a beneficence, in money and in personal 
 service, of a kind that never yet was purchased with 
 money, surpassing, in mere material volume, any great 
 voluntary act of popular devotion, continued through a 
 series of years, that has relieved the selfish monotony 
 of history, certainly since the Crusades. We make no 
 exception of the Sanitary Commission ; for that too 
 had the breath of its life from the heart of the Cruci- 
 fied. Some might indeed, assuming to speak on its 
 part, deny him ; but he cannot deny himself. The 
 very mention of the Crusades, as in any manner a par- 
 allel to the Christian Commission, instantly suggests 
 the heaven-wide contrast that distinguishes the two. 
 Fanaticism will account for the Crusades. But not the 
 most fatuous philosophy of history, we presume, would 
 claim to discover any trace of fanaticism among the 
 motives, whatever they were, that conspired to create 
 and sustain the Christian Commission. There was no 
 glut of greed, and no glut of revenge, in what the 
 Christian Commission proposed to its faithful. Or, if 
 any, then it was glut of a greed not common and not 
 natural to men — a greed for self-sacrifice ; and glut of 
 a revenge not sweet save to disciplined tastes — the 
 revenge of forgiveness and vicarious love. 
 
 What then was the motive which underlay the 
 Christian Commission ? Our answer is ready, and it is 
 short : it was a supernatural love of Christ. But, of 
 course, it would not be difficult for a new Gibbon, in a 
 'distant age, to fill a spacious chapter of candid historic 
 disquisition with a modestly tentative list of secondary 
 
288 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 motives, which, as he would insinuate, may have rein- 
 forced and supplemented the chief — sufficient in num- 
 ber and in specious appearance to convince himself, 
 and such others with him as needed no convincing, that 
 the case of the Christian Commission, indeed extraor- 
 dinary, was a case, however, merely of the extraor- 
 dinary concurrence of ordinary causes. By way of 
 presenting this negative critical side of the subject, we 
 have a mind to try our hand for a moment at the con- 
 struction of a piece of philosophical history. The first 
 step is to deprive the subject of life. No action of 
 history can be treated philosophically until life is per- 
 fectly extinct. Having carefully drawn out the life- 
 blood, you may experiment freely on your corpse. It 
 is very satisfactory to the rational mind, by the injec- 
 tion of fluids scientifically prepared in the laboratory 
 of critical thought, to produce those twistings and 
 twitches with which galvanism travesties vitality. 
 This, in short, is philosophical history. We begin : 
 
 We are now to consider the surprising and pleasing 
 phenomenon of the Christian Commission. Setting 
 aside, as extra-rational, the motive which explained 
 that phenomenon to an uncritical age, we may properly 
 inquire for some of those auxiliary natural motives, 
 alone worthy of discussion in a history written accord- 
 ing to the canons of positive science, that cooperated 
 to contribute this beautiful by-play of benevolence to 
 the horrid tragedy of the great Civil War. 
 
 I. In the first place, to begin with the most obvious, 
 and perhaps not the least considerable, of these appre- 
 ciable motives, we may safely reckon the operation of 
 the familiar law of human sympathy. The contrivers 
 of the Christian Commission wisely [the new Gibbon 
 might say "shrewdly"] made novel use of an old 
 
THE U. S. CHEISTIAN COMMISSIOKT. 289 
 
 resource, — a resource which, in fact, had always existed 
 in human nature. [By the time he writes, tables of 
 statistics may have shown the mathematical laws and 
 conditions under which this, at present, somewhat un- 
 certain and capricious force perforins its functions, — 
 possibly even at what recurrent intervals it may confi- 
 dently be expected to produce great historic phenomena 
 like the Christian Commission.] It was quite to have 
 been anticipated, that an age of the world in which 
 social science had just begun to walk abreast of physi- 
 cal science — the two learning to keep step to the same 
 high rhythm — should witness precisely such a develop- 
 ment. The physicists, for half a century, had been 
 out on the boundless steppes of space, lassoing the wild 
 powers of the world of matter, and harnessing them 
 to the car of human progress. It was but natural that 
 now the sociologists should begin to tame and use the 
 yet undisciplined powers of the world of mind. Civil- 
 ization had touched a tidemark, in the country and the 
 age, which, by every calculation of the gospel of Ma- 
 terialism, should indeed have made war itself impossi- 
 ble. In default of that, the very least that could be 
 admitted, as satisfying the logic of philosophical his- 
 tory, was that some new and beautiful amenity of war 
 should be exhibited. Had not humanity been steadily 
 moving in this direction for nineteen centuries [the 
 naming of that period might, but it would not, give 
 the historian pause] ? It was a thing of course that 
 the next step should be just this. It might have been 
 predicted — probably would have been, had social 
 science received more attention, or had Buckle's " His- 
 tory of Civilization" been commenced a generation 
 earlier than it was. 
 
 II. But, in the second place, in addition to the less 
 
290 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 regular and trustworthy motive of sympathy, there 
 was the great fact of hxomanitarianism — daughter, or 
 mother, of social science, doubtful which — a broad seal 
 across the forehead of that age. The Christian Com- 
 mission was a movement of huinanitarianism — by no 
 means unique, for it was merely one of many. Tliere 
 was a whole sisterhood of similar philanthropic agen- 
 cies, that made no sanctimonious pretensions, either, to 
 being anj'thing more than generous ministries of mate- 
 rial aid. The Sanitary Commission surpassed the 
 Christian Commission in the dimensions of its work. 
 The title " Christian " was a popular catch-word, cun- 
 ningly, or perhaps honestly, adopted to utilize the 
 influence which a Galilsean name had not yet ceased to 
 wield over the feebler and less enlightened minds of the 
 American community. Practically the Christian Com- 
 mission made the same kind of appeals as did the Sani- 
 tary Commission, and assessed its revenues upon the 
 same resources. They were both representative of the 
 progress of the age — the Sanitary Commission repre- 
 senting its van, and the Christian Commission its rear. 
 
 III. And then, in the third place, distinct from mere 
 sympathy, and distinct from the laws of scientific 
 philanthropy, the patriotism of the nation was eager 
 for every vent that could offer, and it seized upon the 
 Christian Commission as promising a practical means 
 of increasing the effectiveness of the forces under arms. 
 It was simply a new form of what had been done, in 
 some form, in every age and in every country, dxiring 
 a popular war. The non-combatant population would 
 of course exert themselves inventively at home, to help 
 their brethren in the field. That there should be a 
 contrivance for communicating directly and personally 
 with the troops in camp or on the march, was note- 
 
THE V. S. CHEISTIAN COMMISSION. 291 
 
 worthy, perhaps, but hardly surprising, in an age 
 which saw armies spinning spider-webs of telegraph 
 behind them, as fast as they moved over flood, and mo- 
 rass, and mountain — and building roads, less durable, 
 but more wonderful, than those majestic highways 
 which slowly crept, with the pace of advancing Roman 
 dominion, across the solitudes of Europe. It was a 
 select moment of the national life. It was, for this 
 nation, a crisis in that struggle which every historic 
 nation is necessitated to accept as the universal and 
 inevitable condition of continued existence. The enter- 
 prising naturalists of that day had already discovered 
 liow the ranks of animated nature were embroiled in 
 a perpetual competition, individual with individual, 
 and species with species, straining abreast of each 
 other in a breathless race for the prize of life. Thus, 
 too, the nations of the earth were contending together, 
 under the impending gaze of history, to decide which 
 of them should perish and which should survive. The 
 American people had now their choice, to conquer or 
 to disappear. They conquered, but they conquered 
 only because their patriotism — which is the romantic 
 name, that it would be unphilosophical not to indulge, 
 while it may chance still to remain, for a season, dear 
 to men — because their patriotism, the romantic meta- 
 phor for their desire of life, was equal to theit need. 
 But their patriotism would not have been equal to their 
 need if it had not gathered head enough to flow a 
 fountain wherever a shaft was sunk for supply. The 
 Christian Commission filled its urn because there was 
 water sufficient to satisfy every comer. That which 
 explained the military and the financial, explained also 
 the philanthropic, achievements of the people. Their 
 desire was equal to theii- need, and their strength was 
 equal to their desire. 
 
292 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 IV. And, finally, [the fresh and exuberant genius of 
 our future Gibbon would suggest], whatever in the 
 phenomenon of the Christian Oominission the motives 
 already adduced might fail to explain, there would yet 
 be no need of resort to the s^ipernatural motive until 
 those other copious springs of human action were ex- 
 hausted, the sentiments of personal and of national 
 pride. The managers of the Christian Commission [he 
 would say] used every artifice of holy guile, to ply 
 these noble weaknesses of men for the benefit of their 
 society's exchequer. Untold thousands of dollars must 
 thus have swollen the revenues of the Commission, 
 which were levied on the givers under virtual menace 
 of personal ignominy if they were withheld. Again, 
 no American but was sedulously instructed that his 
 dollar or his thousands, contributed to the funds of this 
 charity, helped to make his country a spectacle of won- 
 der to the world and to posterity. Few minds among 
 the multitude were steady enough to resist the pleasing - 
 intoxication of the thought that they too might share 
 in this apotheosis of tlie nation. [Our philosophical 
 historian would almost grow warm with an enthusiasm 
 not philosophical, in enlarging upon this theme. He 
 would fetch precedents from far.] Greek history and 
 Koman history went for nothing if they did not prove 
 that human nature was capable of doing and of suffer- 
 ing whatever fate could propose that was dreadful and 
 not impossible, in the desire of deathless personal fame ; 
 or, in default of that, in the devouring love of at least 
 a pathetic immortality in a country which should sur- 
 vive, by the self-sacrifice of her children — ^that is to 
 say, stating it coolly, under the influence of the two 
 sentiments of personal and of national pride. 
 
 But enough of this. No one that has not tried it 
 
THE U. S. CHEISTIAN COMMISSION. 293 
 
 can imagine liow easy it is to write amateur philosoph- 
 ical history. The whole secret lies in one thing. It is 
 a process of desiccation. You go into the living 
 flower-garden of human events. You neatly cut the 
 plants from their roots, but leave them standing, and 
 extract their juices. They are next allowed to wilt and 
 to dry. You then label them at your pleasure. Your 
 result is philosophical history. This is the amateur 
 method. To be able to blast a whole garden of flowers 
 at once, with your breath, is a higher endowment. 
 That is to p'ossess a genius for philosophical history. 
 With this, if you live long enough, or, to express it 
 scientificallj', if isothermal Hnes, mean temperatures, 
 vital averages, and principles of selection, do not cipher 
 you out of the calculus too soon, you may hope to make 
 one Sahara of all human history. For there are no 
 great deeds, no high hopes, no pure motives, no gen- 
 erous devotions, springing in any sheltered oasis of the 
 world's wide secular wilderness, that can stand the 
 sirocco breath of this materialistic incredulity, and this 
 Mephistophelian insincerity. One full expiration from 
 that heart of dust and fire, and the blight is complete. 
 An analogous achievement has been described in mem- 
 orable words : Uhi solitudinem faciunt pacem appel- 
 lant. They make a desert and name it pliilosophical 
 history. 
 
 In truth, it would be about as philosophical to lose 
 sight of the chief motive that originated and sustained 
 the Christian Commission, and occupy ourselves with 
 the secondary and parasitic motives which that drew in 
 its wake, as it would be for a military observer to over- 
 look the real army, and only take account of sutlers 
 and scavengers, and the nameless rout, which compose 
 its mercenary following. No doubt those minor 
 motives worked in the Christian Commission, and no 
 
294 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 doubt, too, if those liad been all that worked, there 
 never would have been a Christian Commission to 
 philosophize about. The severest test that an army 
 undergoes, is to be beset by large numbers of non-com- 
 batant hangers-on, a sordid and venal horde seated 
 watchfully on its haunches by the camp, or dogging 
 every movement on the march. It is proof supreme of 
 discipline and virtue, if then its organization and eflfec- 
 tiveness maintain themselves unimpaired. And so we 
 say, the fact that these lower motives swarmed upon 
 the Christian Commission like parasites, and did not 
 devour their parent after the manner of their kind — 
 this of itself is sufficient demonstration that there was 
 a deeper motive underneath the work, capable of minis- 
 tering to it the power of an endless life. 
 
 No, not thus easily is the Christian Commission to 
 be relegated to the obscurity of uniformity with com- 
 monplace history. It was an extraordinary movement, 
 and it was due to an extraordinary motive. It was the 
 birth of a travail which critical philosophy by itself will 
 strive in vain to comprehend. To comprehend it, asks, 
 besides, intelligent moral sympathy with the glad spirit 
 of sacriiice which first delivered it to the welcome of its 
 immortal renown. The history itself is the sufficient 
 defence of the history. 
 
 Livy has an intense and splendid line in his romantic 
 narrative, describing the sentiments and emotions with 
 which the brothers Horatii went into their memorable 
 fight with the brothers Curiatii, to decide the fate of 
 nascent Home. The imagination of the historian kin- 
 dles into incandescence, with a poet's pleasure and a 
 Roman's pride in the great traditions of his fore- 
 fathers, and this line darts from it like a sudden vivid 
 ray from a calcium light, cleaving a pathway to the 
 view through the thick legendary gloom. Those three 
 
THE U. S. CHEISTIAlir COMMISSION. 295 
 
 brothers move, revealed in it, staggering under the 
 weight of history which they bore into battle on 
 their shoulders, but strengthened to bear it by the 
 orbed visions of the future which rolled before their 
 eyes. Words cease to be description, and become ex- 
 hibition. You read no longer — ^you behold. 
 
 A lightning-flash of language such as this, dashed 
 down upon the great arena where our nation closed in 
 mortal combat with rebellion, better than any elaborate 
 argument would show how the Christian Commission 
 was produced. It would exhibit _the nation actuated 
 by purposes and motives of an order far beyond, the 
 power of the brilliant pagan historian, suckled in a 
 Christless creed, to attribute to those three mythic 
 champions of Rome. It would exhibit the nation 
 lifted sheer out of the ordinary plane of human feeling 
 into a sphere of sublime and holy exaltation, rapt as 
 one soul together into a religious ecstasy, nobly beside 
 itself with an inspired moral rage. The tense temper 
 of the hour was beyond description, beyond conception; 
 beyond memory, to those who shared it, it never can be. 
 
 A period of insupportable suspense and shame had 
 intervened, while the moribund administration of Mr. 
 Buchanan was dying its death. It seemed an immor- 
 tality of dying. One remembers it as he remembers an 
 evil dream. The most hopeful of us well-nigh began to 
 despair of the repubKc. We saw so much apparent 
 apathy that we feared the heroic spirit had departed. 
 The traditions of the Colonial times and of the Revolu- 
 tion seemed a spent spell. The Union and the Consti- 
 tution, the venerable fame of Washington, the memory 
 of the Fathers — these watch-words, once so electric, 
 now fell dead on the nation's ear. 
 
 The nation was perishing with dry rot. Peace had 
 got to the secret of our life. We had practised at al- 
 
296 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 chemy so long that we were turning into gold. Men 
 began to doubt whether there was any American na- 
 tion. "We were sunk in coma. We felt like a man in 
 nightmare. We saw our danger. We felt our fall. 
 We knew the abyss was bottomless ; but we could not 
 stir hand or foot. We could not even draw the blanket 
 over our heads and perish bravely, like the Indian 
 going over Niagara Falls. We stared at each other 
 stupidly, and were perishing helplessly. It was dread- 
 ful. 
 
 Men said to themselves : Perhaps the Fathers were 
 wrong. Perhaps patriotism is an impossible virtue 
 here. It may be that our territory is too large to be 
 embraced in that fond and beautiful affection which 
 we call love of country. It may be that so vast an ex- 
 panse of continent, with such diversities of climate, of 
 industry, of production, has interests too various for the 
 comprehension and care of a single government. We 
 may have overrated the elasticity and adaptedness of 
 our institutions. The statesmanship of all the world 
 may have gone wrong in agreeing to call our federal 
 constitution the masterpiece of legislative wisdom. Or 
 even it may be we have over-estimated our own capa/- 
 city for self-government. Our widely-diffused intelli- 
 gence, our high-toned morality, our respect for law, our 
 reverence for religion — these necessary qualifications 
 for the right enjoyment of freedom may have existed 
 in our fond imaginations rather than in reality. Per- 
 haps we are an age too soon. Our experiment, it may 
 be, must fail, for the benefit of another to follow. Alas, 
 how many experiments for this weary world, heart-sick 
 with deferred hope, before the dream of a free govern- 
 ment and a happy people shall be realized ? 
 
 Such was the extremity. Did this syncope mean 
 death ? The nation waited with longing to have the 
 
THE U. S. CHRISTIAN COMMISSION. 297 
 
 stupor shaken off. Our danger seemed our oppor- 
 tunity. If only we might revive with the conscious- 
 ness of it ! The best government on earth was in the 
 throe of its fate. "We were all of us suddenly in the 
 trough of the sea. "We found ourselves caught in a 
 solemn crisis of history. 
 
 Two great cycles of human progress hung and hinged 
 on us. The greatest of the world's sixty centuries in 
 the past — a greater century to come — wavered on the 
 balance of our decision. We had been living to our- 
 selves. That was past. We might now begin to live 
 for others. We might live for our fathers and for our 
 children. Our fathers beckoned toward us, out of the 
 past, with the awful port of a dead and immortal gen- 
 eration. Our children hovered on the border of the 
 future, and we heard their voices before us, like the din 
 of the near unseen sea. Our fathers asked us, Will you 
 transmit what we transmitted? Our children asked, 
 Will you break the vase, or reach it to our hands? 
 There was a universal, inarticulate desire, forbidden 
 yet to speak, longing to answer backward and forward. 
 It longed to say, Fathers, we will be true children ! — 
 Children, we will be true fathers ! It longed to answer 
 upward, O God, Amen ! 
 
 Between such a past and such a future, the present 
 was annihilated — crushed like a ship between Arctic 
 icebergs. Generous hearts thanked God for the oppor- 
 tunity of self-sacrifice. They only prayed to be raised 
 to the level of that high anointing. We were kings 
 — ^might God give us the kingly chrism ! We were 
 priests — might God pour out on our heads the oil of 
 consecration ! 
 
 The gathered stress of all human pirogress for six 
 thousand years was pressing on us. We could send it 
 on or turn it back. Christianity had created the issue 
 
298 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 that seemed now about to be fougbt. Christians could 
 not therefore but be patriots. As such, they were 
 ready with their answer to the summons of the crisis. 
 They were willing to accept it as the work, not of a 
 few, but of all — not of a year, but of an age, — for the 
 whole living generation. It would be glory enough for 
 our generation, if it should give no further account of 
 itself to posterity than to have saved this government. 
 It would be our share of history to have rescued his- 
 tory. Let go the greed of gain — this was the voice of 
 the church — let go the greed of gain, the lust of power, 
 the chase of pleasure, the race for tame ; let agriculture, 
 manufactures, commerce, — ^let literature, science, art, — 
 let thought, speech, deed, be offered, a holocaust, on 
 the altar of this sacrifice. It may be we shall not save 
 the Union. We shall, at least, have saved the govern- 
 ment. We shall put such a sanction on the Constitu- 
 tion, by deserved chastisement of rebellion, that hence- 
 forth it shall never be holiday business for a disaffected 
 State to say " Good morning," and step out of the 
 Union. This generation can afford to give its lease of 
 life and labor for that. This generation can afford to 
 shed its blood, like water, for the sake of laying a sanc- 
 tion of blood all over the sacred ark of the Constitu- 
 tion. Martyr blood may never again seal a nobler 
 testimony, or sanctify a richer treasui-e. A less offer- 
 ing may suflB.ce. But if not — one cry went up — then 
 let this whole generation rise, twenty million strong, 
 and take the awful sacrament. Lift up your hands, — 
 it said, — ye chosen, and swear ! Swear, that till it be 
 accomplished for this you live ! Swear, that life has no 
 other meaning for you, that you eat, and sleep, and 
 breathe, for no other pui-pose — till your country shall 
 have received in your prayers, your treasure, and your 
 blood, the baptism of its immortality ! 
 
THE U. S. CHEISTIAif COMMISSION. 299 
 
 Such was the spirit that slept, as powder sleeps, in 
 the bosom of the American Church. It waited only 
 for the fire's touch, and waited not long. 
 
 The night of the fourteenth of April, eighteen hun- 
 dred and sixty one, was stormy with rain. But the 
 throngs of excited men who filled the streets of our 
 towns and cities, did not know it. "Fort Sumter" 
 was the watchword that flew from lip to lip. Through 
 the dark and through the rain, " Fort Sumter " was the 
 watchword that fled shuddering on the wings of the 
 lightning from one end of the country to the other. 
 Twenty millions of men talked of Fort Sumter at the 
 self-same moment. 
 
 It was telegraphed that the Federal flag on that for- 
 tress had been struck to traitors. Probably never 
 before, since the world began, did an equal number of 
 human beings thrill with so sudden and so intense an 
 excitement. The electric spark which sped that news 
 ran through every American heart. The land was 
 ablaze. From Maine to Florida, from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific, was one broad sheet of flame that rain 
 could not extinguish. All men felt that this kind 
 would not go out but in a baptism of blood. 
 
 It was all the work of a moment. The old watch- 
 words of the Kepublie, the Union Flag, the Stars and 
 Stripes, the Star-spangled Banner — sacred emblems, 
 long profaned, of so much that was deathless — these 
 suddenly had a meaning again. The electricity came 
 back into them. The nation felt the thrill. We woke 
 from the dead, and leapt into resurrection. Thanks 
 for the trumpet that roused us, though it was even the 
 trumpet of war. 
 
 1^0 wise Christian patriot now could wish to fan the 
 flame which had begun to rage. It did not need to be 
 fanned. It wrapped the globe and kindled to the sky 
 
300 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 already. But while there was no Christian reason for 
 heightening the excitement, there was every Christian 
 reason for deepening it. Those might, who would, build 
 bonfires. Christians preferred to blow their breath on 
 the red heart of the anthracite. They wanted to see 
 the tinder-flash of patriotism fixed in the anthracite glow 
 of religion. It takes long to ignite a Pennsylvania coal- 
 mine ; but once ignited, it burns centrally and inextin- 
 guishably. Christians wanted to see an American 
 patriotism of that sort. They wanted to see it find its 
 fuel in religion, among the measures and strata of 
 eternity. 
 
 There was no Christian way of dealing with such a 
 crisis, but dealing with it calmly. Calmness was the 
 Christian watchword for that precipitate hour. iN'ot 
 the calmness of indifference, but the calmness of settled 
 resolve. Not the calmness of inaction, but the calm- 
 ness of a movement so regular and so resistless that it 
 should seem to be rest, like the circuit of our planet 
 through space. Such a calmness as Luther felt, when 
 he first saluted his mission at the Diet of Worms. It 
 is always most important to be calm at just those great 
 moments when it is most difficult to be calm. Danger 
 calmed Luther that day. His calmness saved him. 
 The calmness for this nation, therefore, was that calm- 
 ness which a man feels when he has taken his purpose. 
 Say, rather, that calmness which a Christian feels when 
 he has knelt at the Throne, and God has given him his 
 duty. 
 
 It was manifestly impossible for any but Christians 
 to drink fully into the spirit of an occasion like this. 
 It became, therefore, the solemn duty of the Church 
 to lead the generation. It was not a time for relaxing 
 the energies of the Church ; it was a time for redoubling 
 them. It was not a time for depressing the standard 
 
THE U. S. CHEISTIAN COMMISSION. 301 
 
 of Christian aspiration; it was a time for raising it. 
 The Hebrew Moses was not fitted to lead the great 
 • exodus of Israel, but by frequent interviews with Grod. 
 He had to go up into the mount to receive his strength 
 and his instructions. We, as Christians, were appointed 
 a Moses, to conduct our generation. "We, too, needed 
 to ascend above the plain of the multitude. Our spec- 
 ulation must be higher and wider. We were to impress 
 a character upon this struggle. It would go down to 
 the future, bearing our superscription. It lay in our 
 power, by the grace of God, to instruct mantind by an 
 unparalleled spectacle. We could astonish all nations 
 by showing them a war^ on our part, witJiout the de- 
 moralization of war. 
 
 The influence of Christianity was already obvious 
 enough. Notwithstanding such a surge of excitement 
 as never swept over a people before, all was, as yet, 
 restrained by order and law. Impatient the North had 
 been, but its impatience had only shown the strength 
 of its obedience. The very bed of the sea had been 
 upheaved beneath, but the swell of the waves had still 
 regarded the shore. The swelling heart of the North 
 had heard and heeded the decree of law, Hitherto shalt 
 thou come, but no further. It was the perfection of 
 civilization. Let us say boldly, and more truly, it was 
 the triumph of Christianity. 
 
 But there were not wanting omens of danger. An 
 able and influential daily newspaper even uttered threats 
 of sedition. It was,, perhaps, the outcry of patriotism, 
 untaught and unrestrained by religion. It may have 
 portended what would have occurred in a less Chris- 
 tianized nation. Wise men foresaw that such a spirit, 
 if it prevailed, would be the worst defeat of our cause. 
 Such a spirit would be the only possible defeat of our 
 cause. Our victory must be a moral victory, or 
 
302 A FREE LAlfCE. 
 
 victory itself would be defeat. On the Churcli of 
 Christ rested the responsibilitj of speaking the, calming 
 word. No other voice than hers, speaking in the name, 
 of her Lord, could pronounce effectually the mandate, 
 " Peace, be still." Oh, what a longing invaded and 
 usurped the mother-heart of the Church, to see her 
 children now walk worthy of the vocation with which 
 they were called. The glorious occasion must not pass 
 by unused. Such an opportunity of signalizing,^ on a 
 colossal national scale, the power of Christianity, does 
 not occur once in a thousand years. War, without the 
 demoralization of 'wa7\ It would justify our cause 
 more splendidly than success. It would be better to 
 fail thus, than to succeed otherwise. A defeat, so 
 suffered, would be a more signal vindication, than vic- 
 tory less worthily won. Let the IsTorth see to it. Let 
 the Church see to it. Let us see to it. Let me see 
 to it. 
 
 It was in just such a set, solemn, awful sense of 
 universal and individual responsibility, that the Chris- 
 tian Commission originated. It would be beggarly 
 failure to comprehend the truth ourselves, or craven 
 abandonment of it at the challenge of her foes, were 
 we to commute the claim of the Church by the abate- 
 ment of even one tittle from this. The Church had an 
 ear to hear the call of the great occasion. She recog- 
 nized in it the voice of her Lord. He seemed to say. 
 Take care that my cause suffer no detriment in the 
 war. She organized her obedient reply, and named it 
 The Cheistiak CoMMissioif. 
 
THE CHARACTER AND THE LITERARY INFLU- 
 ENCE OF ERASMUS. 
 
 WE do not now remember to have met with the 
 suggestion anywhere, but it has frequently oc- 
 curred to us that, of all the ancients who have become 
 historic, Cicero was best prepared to be at home in 
 modem civilization. Such was the breadth of his cul- 
 ture, and such the cosmopolitan catholicity of his ap- 
 preciation, that, to our fancy, it involves but little 
 incongruity to think of the polite and philosophic 
 Roman re-nascent, as a folly naturalized citizen of our 
 times. We do not imagine it would occasion more 
 than perhaps a slight involuntary start, to step out, 
 shortly after reading some of his epistles, and recognize 
 the writer, redivivus with the air and habit of a thor- 
 ough-bred " modern gentleman of stateliest port," quiet- 
 ly purchasing a ticket at a railway station, or dispatch- 
 ing a message by Morse's Telegraph ; and we seriously 
 insist the anachronism would not seem so very flagrant, 
 to hght upon a paragraph in the papers some morning, 
 announcing that " Hon. M. T. Cicero had already sig- 
 nified his willingness, and might therefore be expected, 
 to address his fellow-citizens, at such or such a time 
 and place, on the great questions now pending before 
 the country." 
 
 A certain similar facility of accommodation to differ- 
 
304 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 ent states of society it is natural to conceive as belong- 
 ing to the character of Erasmus. One does not, how- 
 ever, derive it from a similar origin. In the case of 
 the Koman your impression arises from that large- 
 minded power of anticipating future forms of civiliza- 
 tion, yet more nobly endowed, which you naturally 
 attribute to him, by inference from the generous though 
 eclectic sympathy he certainly did extend to all the 
 varieties with which he was acquainted. In the case 
 of the Dutchman, on the other hand, you simply feel 
 that there is no reason why this man should be unfit 
 for any order of things. His capacity of versatile adap- 
 tation does not seem to you positive, like Cicero's, but 
 negative — rather without repulsions than, like the 
 other's, instinct with attractions. You do not see in 
 him, as in Tully, any of that rare mental compass 
 which, embracing all countries and ages in its equal 
 regard, suggests at once the unity of our race and our 
 immortality, and marks out its possessor as intended 
 " not for a day, but for all time ; " nor is there any 
 breathing of the child-like curiosity and wise docility 
 proper to comprehensive genius. Tou discern barely 
 a miraculous absence of qualities having a speciiic 
 adaptation. You are quite sure he had no iU-timed 
 idiosyncrasies, that -would be prompting him to aim at 
 conforming the world to any romantic ideal standard 
 of his own. He bowed reverentially to authority. If 
 he ever did anything contumaciously, it was when he 
 believed what the Church believed. You judge that he 
 would make no difficulty wherever placed. He would 
 not wage war with existing institutions — unless indeed 
 it chanced to be the fashion ; and then if he could not 
 restrain his shafts of wit, he would at least take care to 
 let them fly, after the manner of a fire-wheel in pyrotech- 
 nics, as nearly as possible in the direction of every 
 
CHAEACTEE OF EEASMUS. 305 
 
 radius successively'in the whole circumference, so that 
 all parties might fare alike. He would keep a well- 
 behaved and gentlemanly conscience. He would have 
 constitutional objections to having constitutional objec- 
 tions to anything. Under a monarchy he would be a 
 loyal subject, in a republic a law-abiding citizen, in a ) 
 revolution an adherent of all parties and none. In 
 short, superadding to so goodly an assemblage of nega- 
 tive qualifications a nice instinct for his cue, such a 
 man would be at his ease indiflerently in any social, 
 political, or ecclesiastical order whatever. 
 
 At a very small expense of ingenuity, one could as- 
 sign him several exceedingly suitable niches in the 
 temple of history. For instance, had he been permitted 
 a spontaneous birth in patriarchal times, he would in- 
 fallibly have been Jacob ; and not Jacob himself wore 
 the kid-skins to receive the blessing of his lather with a 
 more natural grace and a more appreciative humor, 
 than Erasmus would have displayed in his place. The 
 circumspect Gamaliel, it is safe to assume, did not ex- 
 ceed the pious gravity with which Erasmus would have 
 pronounced his conservative advice to let the doctrine 
 of the Naaarene alone. There is enough of truth in 
 Coleridge's suggestion of a parallel between Erasmus 
 and Yoltaire, as to their method of attack, to render it 
 not improbable that, in the eighteenth century and in 
 France, Erasmus might have enlisted in the same ser- 
 vice with Yoltaire, wielding, with' even a better instructed . 
 skill, the glittering fence of the Frenchman's infidel rail- 
 lery. Still more naturally, perhaps, he would have found 
 his way into Sydney Smith's parish, preaching worldly 
 wisdom and a humane morality on Sunday, and alter- 
 nately cracking jokes and feeding his flock with physic 
 for the cure of their souls during the week. 
 
 Such, in outline, appears to us to have been the char- 
 
306 A FEEE TiAJSCE. 
 
 acter of the man Erasmus of Rotterdam. The charac- 
 ter of the scholar Erasmus will not be separated in dis- 
 cussion from his literary influence, which we reserve 
 for consideration toward the close of the article. We 
 proceed to verify and illustrate the views already 
 stated. 
 
 It may be proper to premise that our information re- 
 specting Erasmus is principally derived from his own 
 testimony. This testimony survives in the form of a 
 voluminous correspondence, which, after making suit- 
 able allowance for its lack of genuine epistolary neglige 
 and confidential privacies, may yet fairly be taken as 
 affording, upon the whole, a tolerably trustworthy ex- 
 ponent of the writer's character. It is to our purpose, 
 at any rate, to remark that such testimony will not be 
 liable to the accusation of designed hostility. As serv- 
 ing to show what a singular diversity of country, of 
 character, of social and civil position, and of ecclesiasti- 
 cal opinion was represented in this correspondence, we 
 may mention that it comprises letters addressed to the 
 Pope, to the Emperor, to Henry VIII. of England, to 
 Cardinal Wolsey, to Sir Thomas More, to Colet, to 
 Zwingle, to Luther, to Hutten, to Melancthon. 
 
 If the remark that Erasmus was by nature equally 
 adapted to every situation requires to be limited at all, 
 the reader of his letters will be tempted to claim the 
 exception in behalf of that particular situation in which 
 it happened to him to be actually placed. But this ex- 
 ception, we apprehend, is rather apparent than real. 
 Pie may a-ppear at times unsuited to his circumstances, 
 but it is because we unconsciously misplace him in 
 thought. The fact is, his life was cast in a period of 
 most unwonted transition and' flux. This period had 
 been preceded by a comparatively permanent posture 
 of things under the still unchallenged supremacy of 
 
CHAEACTEE OF EEASMTJS. 307 
 
 Rome. Another posture of things, less stable, it is 
 true, yet having a certain character of permanency, 
 emerged from it, commencing the era of a partially suc- 
 cessful, because partial, Protestantism. Now our liabil- 
 ity is unawares to project Erasmus upon the former, or 
 else to draw him forward upon the ground of the latter. 
 In either case he appears unsuited to his circumstances. 
 But if we are careful to view him in proper connection 
 with the universal fluctuation of the times, it will puzzle 
 us to tell how his own part could have been in any re- 
 spect more exquisitely harmonized. 
 
 We are far enough from meaning that Erasmus dis- 
 played any portion either of that instinct by which a 
 man comprehends his occasions, or of that buoyancy by 
 which he rises to their mastery. These both are exclu- 
 sive credentials of a style of greatness clearly above the 
 mark of Erasmus. Indeed no one can glance in the 
 most cursory manner over his letters, and avoid the 
 conviction that he was, to say the least, sadly unequal 
 to his opportunities, if not even absolutely ignorant of 
 them. His fortune had involved him in the movement 
 of the most stupendous revolution in human history. 
 He stood on the quaking theatre and in the immediate 
 crisis of great events. He was confessed the most emi- 
 nent man of letters in Europe ; and it was a time when 
 reputation for learning invested its possessor with a 
 credit and authority in the eyes of princes little less 
 than oracular. True, both by nature and by profession, 
 he was merely a man of letters. True, likewise, it was 
 the battles of religion and of political liberty, not those 
 of literature, that were so tumultuously fighting. But 
 all this was really little to the purpose. The fate of 
 learning was vitally intertwined with that of religion 
 and of freedom. It was impossible that their cham- 
 pionships should be altogether separated. The reviver 
 
308 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 of letters could not avoid being, to some extent, both a 
 reformer of religion and a vindicator of liberty. It 
 was in his power to be so to a very great extent. 
 
 So significantly did the occasion make its appeal to 
 Erasmus.' To his general qualifications as a scholar, 
 he superadded several almost curiously special prepara- 
 tions for rendering back a worthy response. He was 
 well versed in the Scriptures, in patristic literature, 
 and in the received theology, and had, moreover, as 
 keen a perception as any man could have of the abuses 
 in the Church. He thus enjoyed every accidental 
 advantage for becoming the leading spirit of the Eefor- 
 mation. That he did not, is only a distinguished 
 illustration of the insufficiency of adventitious circum- 
 stances to compensate for the absence of natural en- 
 dowments. It affords a striking refatation of the vul- 
 gar fallacy that the accredited hero of a • crisis is in 
 reality nothing but its creature. 
 
 There was barely one safety for Erasmus in his situ- 
 ation. Luther saw this, and naively enough volun- 
 teered to mark out the course proper for him to pursue.^ 
 The monarch of literature declined to be instructed by 
 the monk of Wittemberg. The feeling was certaioly 
 natural, but, as usual, Luther was right. If Erasmus 
 had steadily and consistently refused all share in the 
 Eeformatiou, as a business too great for him, and had 
 
 ' One recalla the vivid Demostlienean /iovm oixi ^eyei ^v^v 
 
 ' The letter in which this advice was conveyed is marked hy 
 Luther's characteristic sagacity, as also by a certain sturdy impu- 
 dence which was part of that sagacity. It presents a whimsical 
 mixture of real respect and unconcealed contempt for his illustrious 
 correspondent, and is altogether well worthy of heing studied for 
 the characters of both Luther and Erasmus. It may be seen (in a 
 Gei-man translation) at the close of Muller's " Life of Erasmus " — 
 probably also in many other places which will occur to the reader. 
 
V 
 
 CHAEACTEE OF EEASMUS. 309 
 
 exclusively devoted himself to his chosen and appro- 
 priate work of restoring letters, it was undoubtedly 
 competent for him to lay posterity under a debt of 
 gratitude, which they would delight to pay in unaffected 
 admiration and respect, instead of compounding it, as 
 they are now compelled to do ia part, with mingled 
 reproaches and regrets. Granted that this position of 
 neutrality was difficult to maintain. It was not im- 
 possible. Keuchlin scarcely violated it. But an influ- 
 ence more importunate than the pressure of the times 
 rendered it untenable^ for Erasmus. Among other mer- 
 curial traits of character strongly allying him to the 
 Gallic type of nationality, the learned Dutchman had 
 a somewhat flavorous infusion of vanity in his compo- 
 sition. He was wont to pride himself on his familiarity 
 with great men. He could number dignitaries, spirit- 
 ual and temporal, of every rank, among his friends. 
 He corresponded with the Pope, with emperors, and 
 with kings. He made his boast that he was permitted 
 to remain covered, on one occasion, in confei-ence with 
 a cardinal — a wonderful compliment (such is. his lan- 
 guage) from a man of his great dignity. It was not 
 wholly strange to him, we are assured, to receive letters 
 from abroad, bearing no other direction than to the 
 " Glory of Literature," the " Sun of Literature," or 
 some similar magniloquent sobriquet. With a highly 
 sensitive appreciation of these gratifying incidents, 
 was it fair to expect that the great Erasmus would 
 voluntarily abdicate his title to such distinguished con- 
 sideration ? But this he would virtually do by disap- 
 pointing the applications of princes for advice in times 
 of emergency. It was out of the question. They con- 
 sulted him as an oracle — silence would compromise his 
 reputation — he would adopt the expedient of returning 
 truly oracular responses. Accordingly, he was either 
 
310 A FKEE LAUCE. 
 
 profoundly ambiguous, or circuitously evasive. He 
 attempted to tamper with tlie times, when the times 
 were terribly in earnest, and refused to be tampered 
 with. He employed a "sort of holy guile" — when 
 nothing but the perpendicular truth could possibly 
 serve him. He daubed with untempered mortar — 
 when mortar the most obdurately tempered scarcely 
 withstood the solvent stress of the elements. Of course 
 his artifice failed. 
 
 Yet Erasmus was too discerning not to know that 
 the Keformation was needed, and he seems, at times, 
 to have recognized it as inevitable. The greater part 
 of the learning of that day was ranged in its favor. 
 TJnquestionably his own spontaneous sympathies all 
 moved in the same direction. There were occasionally, 
 too, not doubtful omens of success. He was naturally 
 willing to identify himself with the most enlightened 
 cause, and by no means less so if it was likely to prove 
 victorious. Still he affected great moderation. In his 
 opinion, abuses should be exscinded gradually. Cor- 
 I'uptions might better be healed without the probe. In 
 short the Reformation, which every one 'could see was 
 imperatively demanded, should be sought through a 
 course of pacific and conciliatory measures. Luther 
 said sarcastically that Erasmus was willing the Church 
 should be reformed, but would have a century intervene 
 between the successive steps. Meanwhile Erasmus 
 was continually complaining of Luther's violence. 
 Many of his doctrines, he acknowledged, could not be 
 controverted. He was pressed to write against him. 
 He said shrewdly: Nothinrj is easier than to call Lu- 
 ther a ilocTchead — nothing less easy than to prove him 
 one; at least so it seems to me. Again, to some Popish 
 agents, he said : " Luther is so profound a divine, that 
 I do not pretend even to comprehend him thoroughly ; 
 
OHARACTEE OF EEASMUS. 311 
 
 and so great a man, that I learn more from one page 
 in bis books than from all Thomas Aquinas." Else- 
 where he even admits something " apostolical " in him 
 at times. But eulogy of Luther, though be often 
 uttered it under circumstances that preclude the sus- 
 picion of dissimulation, was the exception, not the 
 rule, with Erasmus. His ordinary burden was Luther's 
 want of mildness. 
 
 One does not need to go excessive lengths in defence 
 of Luther's course, to feel a tingling of indignation at 
 this unvarying refrain. It is hardly possible not to 
 believe of such a man, that he belonged to that class 
 of persons who are generously ready to applaud among 
 the loudest what no one in his senses would think of 
 censuring, but who lifb up their hands in pious horror 
 at the vehemence of advocacy by which alone, against 
 unscrupulous falsehood and violence, the object of their 
 applause could be successfully vindicated. If ow, as for 
 the exhortations to gentleness, which Erasmus was so 
 fond of discoursing to Luther and his party, considered 
 merely in the abstract, we do not see how anything 
 could reasonably be objected to them. No doubt they 
 were eminently evangelical. They would seem to have 
 edified Hallam, with whom — calm, conservative, and 
 as impartial as a man void of enthusiasm is probably 
 capable of being — Erasmus was not less a favorite than 
 Luther a special aversion. No one would seriously 
 pretend that he could defend the truculence of Luther 
 on abstract grounds. It may not even have been 
 necessary as an expedient of policy to reassure himself, 
 to alarm the Papists, and to inspirit his followers. But 
 what, on the other hand, shall we say was the animat- 
 ing spirit of Erasmus in his godly hortatives ? Can we 
 allow it to have been the spirit of that Gospel from 
 which he professed to draw his sanctions 1 An inspired 
 
312 A FEEE LAlfCE. 
 
 teacher of that Gospel plainly declares the heavenly 
 wisdom to be first pure — then peaceable. But in the 
 face of this prescribed precedence, Erasmus did not 
 blush to avow that " such was his love of peace, truth 
 itself would be displeasing to him accompanied with 
 discord." It was furthermore particularly unfavorable 
 to his reputation for genuine Christian charity, that he 
 had no sooner committed himself iu controversy with 
 Luther, at a little later period, though in the most 
 carefully guarded manner, than, exasperated by the 
 rough handling of "his unceremonious antagonist, he 
 himself, the life-long preacher of tolerance and moder- 
 ation, not only employed the most violent invective in 
 rejoinder, but actually called on the Elector of Saxony 
 to punish Luther, or at least to rebuke and muzzle 
 him! 
 
 So anxious was Erasmus not to be found lagging in 
 the rear of his age, and, at the same time, so cautious 
 not to venture forward in advance of the Church, that 
 he at length volunteered to transmit to Pope Adrian, 
 who was an old school-fellow, the draft of a plan for 
 effecting the requisite reforms.* He suggestively per- 
 mitted to His Holiness the liberty to destroy his com- 
 
 ' There is not, so far as our investigation extends, now extant any 
 complete copy of Erasmus's letter to Adrian. In the edition of his 
 correspondence to which we have had access, it appears broken off 
 in the midst of a sentence in which Erasmus was evidently recom- 
 mending a general council. The mutilation is doubtless the result 
 of the author's own timidity. We would here say, once for all, 
 that we have not thought it worth while to encumber these pages 
 with notes of reference to authorities. We have drawn our mate- 
 rials mainly from Jortin's "Life of Erasmus," which is little more 
 than a crude digest of his letters. The well-known fidelity of Dr. 
 Jortin, together with his affectionate tenderness for Erasmus, is a 
 sufficient guaranty of his correctness in citation. We may, how- 
 ever, add that we have satisfied ourselves in many of the miore im- 
 portant instances, by recourse to original sources. 
 
OHAKACTEE OF ERASMUS. 313 
 
 munication immediately on reading it. It may be 
 imagined how softly to such a correspondent as the 
 Pope, such a man as Erasmus would touch on such a 
 matter as the reformation of the Church. He even 
 couched it under the form of suppressing Lutheranism. 
 Yet all did not prevent Adrian from being gravely 
 offended with his temerity. The incident — otherwise 
 quite insignificant, for no one will be apt to suppose 
 that there was anything either original or profound in 
 the plan — is nevertheless instructive, as indicating the 
 spirit that animated the Papal See. Under the sway 
 of such intolerance, not only was a peaceable reform 
 manifestly hopeless, but there can be little doubt that 
 ha^ the temporizing counsels of Erasmus prevailed to 
 quell the spirit of schismatic Protestantism, he would 
 himself have been one of the earliest to fall a victim to 
 pontifical rage. It became him to remember that des- 
 pots have been in all ages proverbially suspicious of 
 their friends.' 
 
 The plan which was thus at once to purify the Church 
 and to restore harmony, contemplated, we believe, an 
 oecumenical council, to be composed of the most emi- 
 nent ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the most pious and 
 learned doctors in Europe. As if councils had not 
 been proved worse than useless over and over again, 
 the farce was to be re-enacted of a horde of usurpers 
 meeting to deprive themselves of emolunients and pre- 
 rogatives, to possess themselves of which they and a 
 long line of predecessors had not stood at any possible 
 crime ! 
 
 But otherwise the plan of Erasmus was superficial 
 and inadequate — we will say inadequate because super- 
 
 "Eveeri yap Troif tovto ry rupamidi 
 
 14 
 
oli A FEEE LAl^CE. 
 
 ficial. Degeneracy and decay are naturally of sluggish, 
 growth. Their beginnings are concealed and insidious. 
 Their subsequent- advances, also, are by insensible 
 though accelerated degrees. It is always thus when 
 human institutions perish. Their recovei-y, however, 
 is by a very diflferent process. That is not begun — it 
 is not carried on — in secret. Experience demonstrates 
 that the progress of decay is never arrested without the 
 occurrence of a crisis. Decadence never passes over 
 into renewal by imperceptible gradations. The change 
 cannot take place without the shock of a violent recoil. 
 The projectile commences its return from the upper air 
 by a noiseless and motionless transition. But it was 
 not released from the grasp of the Briareus who draVs 
 all things to the centre, without a loud and vehement 
 explosion. It was an utter false philosophy that led 
 Erasmus to hope for a gradual and peaceful purification 
 of the Church. No reform begun on such principles 
 ever succeeded. "We are confident that history would 
 be ransacked in vain for the instance of any reform 
 pushed to a successful issue, on a prospectus of negative 
 or of exquisitely balanced measures. If there is any 
 one thing settled in the philosophy of reform, that one 
 thing is this: you ttiusI he hold. Action — action — 
 action does not more complete the orator, than boldness 
 — boldness — boldness furnishes the panoply of the re- 
 former. .Audacity is at once his safety and his success. 
 He must promise something that men will call difficult 
 — the more difficult the better, so it be possible, and 
 worth a struggle. It may even be necessary some- 
 times, when once a temporary relaxation of wholesome 
 jealousy has permitted the entrance of pernicious error 
 — it may be necessary to sit still for years, and wait for 
 its ripening development to furnish a justifying occa- 
 sion for radical and extreme correctives. At all events, 
 
CHAEACTEE OF EEASMUS. 315 
 
 a movement in reform, to be successful, must tend to- 
 ward an object positive and important enough, and 
 ardnous too enough, to rouse a wide and lofty enthu- 
 siasm. One of the inspired passages of Milton's prose 
 expresses it nobly : 
 
 In times of opposition, when either against new heresies arising, 
 or old corruptions to be reformed, this cool, unpassiouate mildness 
 of positive wisdom is not enough to damp and astonish the proud 
 resistance of carnal and false doctors, then (that I may have leave 
 to soar awhile as the poets use) Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, 
 arming in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot drawn with 
 two blazing meteors, fi^gured like beasts, out of a higher breed than 
 any the zodiac yields, resembling two of those four which Ezekiel 
 and St. John saw ; the one visaged like a lion, to express power, high 
 authority, and indignation ; the other of countenance like a man, to 
 cast derision and scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers: 
 with these the invincible warrior, Zeal, shaking loosely the slack 
 reins, drives over the heads of scarlet prelates, and such as are in- 
 solent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff necks under his 
 flaming wheels.' 
 
 Very different from the shuffling proposals of Eras- 
 mus was the policy by which Luther steered the Refor- 
 mation through broadside and tempest. He knew the 
 wisdom of assuming the tone and front of a dauntless, 
 and even audacious hardihood. Perhaps he exceeded 
 the demands of the emergency in this respect. He 
 would not himself deliberately justify every intemper- 
 ance of his conduct. But what was the difficulty of his 
 part ! It ill becomes any of the richly dowered heirs 
 of the Reformation to subtract one iota from the just 
 fame of its champions. It has been truly remarked, 
 that men are too rare who are willing to take a Curtian 
 leap for the weal of humanity, for us to diminish their 
 number by bestowing a stinted and niggard gratitude 
 upon them. 
 
 Much, however, as Erasmus loved praise, he loved 
 
 ' " An Apology for SmectymnuuB." 
 
316 A FEEE LAJSCE. 
 
 ease more. His vanity would have been soothed by 
 ecclesiastical preferment. It is impossible that a man 
 who ran over with complacency at a complimentary 
 reception from a cardinal, should not have been weU 
 pleased to wear a cardinal's hat. It is pretty certain 
 that the dignity, once at least in his lite, was within 
 his reach. It is equally certain that he never claimed 
 it. His modesty could not have sprung from contempt 
 for the splendors of office. It can only be ascribed to 
 dread of its cares. To be caressed by the great as a 
 man of learning and wit, cost him no anxiety beyond 
 the light one to approve himself a pliant and acceptable 
 courtier. Even this, notwithstanding his marvellous 
 facility, sufficed to afflict him with apprehensions that 
 were absolutely ludicrous. To have heen a cardinal ! — 
 but no one laughed more heartily at the idea than Eras- 
 mus himself. 
 
 It would perhaps be no stretch of charity to dignify 
 Erasmus's love of ease by a more honorable name. He 
 was certainly not indolent. His multifarious works of 
 authorship and editorship effectually defend Erasmus 
 against the accusation of idleness. His industry, in 
 fact, was remarkable, even in that age, and among a 
 people proverbial for their industry. His literary 
 achievements were the envy of all his peers in the re- 
 public of letters, and may well excite the astonishment 
 of a generation for whom it is something more than 
 diversion merely to read tomes, which he wrote, in a 
 language long deceased, with an idiomatic grace and 
 vigor that it is scarcely exaggeration to say, with 
 Stephen, would have surprised Cicero himself by the 
 discovery of unconjectured capacities of expression. 
 He was perpetually employed. The intercisiva tem- 
 pora, which form such a ruinous leakage with most 
 lives, he turned to golden account. The " Praise of 
 
CHAEACTEE OF EEASMU8. 317 
 
 Folly," which he afterward wrote at Sir Thomas Mora's 
 in nine days, was meditated and partly composed on 
 horseback. Wlienever he journeyed, his halts at inns 
 were improved to secure in writing the thoughts and 
 humors and fancies that occurred to him on the road. 
 Such a man cannot justly be charged with fondness for 
 ease. His love of ease was more truly love of leisure. 
 "Whatever drew him from the Muses was hateful to 
 him. But name it which we will, love of ease or love 
 of leisure, it was a disposition which fatally disqualified 
 him for the part of a reformer. Addiction to studious 
 quiet would unfit a man to lead in any reformation. 
 Pre-eminently in a religious reformation, whose de- 
 mands are intolerant of any considerable diversion of zeal. 
 
 Had Erasmus been far less ardently devoted to 
 literary leisure than he was, the same eager vanity 
 which, despite the absence of other qualities indispen- 
 sable to a reformer, impelled him to engage in the 
 Reformation, would with the presence of those qualities 
 have prevented his succeeding. Another inspiration 
 than vanity was required for the hero of that hour. 
 The prophet who undertook to perform the work of 
 Elijah, needed also to possess some portion of Elijah's 
 power and spirit. But in addition to these two sources 
 of weakness, he had yet another of the tribe of lighter 
 vices, which in a still higher degree disqualified him 
 for the apostleship of the Reformation. Erasmus was 
 deeply deficient in moral courage. We now mention 
 the capital fault of his character. 
 
 Strange to say, he made no scruple of openly dis- 
 playing this deplorable nakedness. And yet, do we err 
 in deeming moral courage an endowment of such con- 
 sequence, that its presence shall confer an aspect of 
 sublimity upon a character not otherwise lifted above 
 mediocrity — while nothing but mental capacities the 
 
318 A PEEE LiLNCE. 
 
 most extraordinary' can prevent its absence from im- 
 poverishing any character of every attribute of great^ 
 ness ? Bacon was great without it, it is true ; but his 
 mind was of a very different order from that of 
 Erasmus. The mind of Bacon belonged to the limited 
 number of those which men have agreed to consider 
 greatest. It was profound, comprehensive, philosophical 
 and original. It abounded in prophetic intuitions of 
 truth, and exercised itself familiarly with the amplest 
 generalizations. So rich in the rarest gifts of nature — 
 yet how would the gift of moral courage have completed 
 the equipment of this wonderful genius ! The mind 
 of Erasmus was an exquisite, an unequalled instrument 
 for a scholar,— acquisitive, facile, keen, each in a 
 remarkable degree, — but destitute alike of great pro- 
 foundness, great comprehensiveness, great philosophical 
 aptitude, and great originality. It had unusual capaci- 
 ties of discursive acquirement, and versatile use. But 
 of all those characteristics for which we reserve the 
 appellation great, it had not a single one. Wanting 
 moral courage, Erasmus wanted everything. Learned, 
 witty, amiable, charitable, affectionate, insincere, para- 
 sitic, timid, irresolute, evasive, vain — he had nothing 
 truly great about him, unless it were his comprehensive 
 littleness. » 
 
 We remarked that Erasmus did not affect to conceal 
 his lack of moral Courage. True, he would at times 
 attempt to disguise it under a show of Christian charity, 
 prudent moderation, virtuous love of concord. Oftener, 
 however, he was frank, and confessed his weakness — 
 but it was then commonly with a sarcastic humor and 
 skeptical levity, which too clearly betrayed the exceed- 
 ing shallowness of his moral nature. To Dean Pace, 
 of London, he expressed himself thus : " Even if Luther 
 had written all in a pious spirit, it was no part of my 
 
BHAEACTEE OF EEABMUS. 319 
 
 intention to peril my head for the sake of the truth. 
 Not every man has firmness enough for a martyr ; and 
 I fear that if a tumult had arisen I should have imi- 
 tated Peter." What a confession vras this ! Could a 
 really sincere and noble nature have made it — without 
 at least giving " signs of remorse and passion " for its 
 own deficiency ? But the confession was honest, how- 
 ever misbecomingly made ; and his conduct nowhere 
 rose superior to the spirit which prompted it. 
 
 It is beyond dispute that, with whatevci' aim, Eras- 
 mus had in fact contributed not a little to the success 
 of the Reformation. It was a common remark, that 
 Erasmus had laid the egg, and Luther hatched it. 
 Something of that ineffable unconsciousness with which 
 oftentimes quiet hens perform the process of incubation 
 for strange offspring that they are unable afterward to 
 recognize, must, we are bound to believe, have attended 
 in this case the deposit of the egg. Erasmus never 
 denied that he laid an egg, but insisted that it was a 
 hen's egg, and that Luther had hatched it a very differ- 
 ent bird. We must question the explanation. We 
 shall persist in thinking it far more likely that Erasmus 
 himself mistook the species of the germ, than that the 
 regular law of development suffered any interruption. 
 His theory, however, will serve us as a hint by which 
 to interpret his interference in the Reformation. 
 
 Erasmus was a wit and a satirist. In spite of his 
 loyalty to the Church, his sense of the ludicrous was 
 quite too lively not to be impressed with the gross 
 incongruities that deformed her aspect. Especially the 
 monastic institution attracted his Democritan eye. 
 Doubtless the unhappy part of his parents' history, and 
 the sad experience of his own much-abused youth, 
 helped him in no slight degree to the estimate which 
 he formed of the system. He has recorded in his 
 
320 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 serious writings his mature conviction, that let its orig- 
 inal object have been what it might, its practical work- 
 ings were fraught with evil. The only thing he learned 
 to hate with perfect hatred was the monks. Their 
 grotesque attire, theii- solemn deceits, their absurd igno- 
 rance, their squalid zeal, their vile gluttony, made them 
 most admirable subjects of satire. Ho lost no oppor- 
 tunity, seasonable or unseasonable, of turning them 
 to ridicule. In conversation, in his letters, in his 
 " Adages " amid learned philological comment, even in 
 his " Greek Testament " amid pious exegesis, he never 
 forgot the monks. But most effectually in his " Collo- 
 quies," and his " Praise of Folly," he pilloried them for 
 the inextinguishable laughter of Europe. 
 
 All unconsciously he had been aiming a blow at not 
 only the most vulnerable, but likewise the most vital 
 part of Popery. To the extraordinary servieeableness 
 of the religious orders, the Popes owed both the found- 
 ing and the upholding of their supremacy. Erasmus, to 
 be sure, was not first to bring these into popular dis- 
 credit, but no one had done it so thoroughly well 
 before. It is much to be lamented that, in so useful a 
 service, he should have been actuated rather by hatred 
 of the monks, than by love of true religion. Certain 
 it is, that his truly valuable contributions to the aid of 
 the best cause, must be credited, not to the excellence 
 of his intentions, but to the overruling providence of 
 God. Else why should he afterwards have wished to 
 recede ? 
 
 His hon mots at the expense of the Church, which it 
 was as impossible for the hearer not to repeat as it 
 was for him not to utter, usually made the tour of 
 Europe, everywhere awakening attention to the pre- 
 vailing disorders, and sowing the seeds of freer thought. 
 His critical labors on the Greek Testament^ in which 
 
CHAEACTEE OF EEASMUS. 321 
 
 he was pioneer wlien there is said to have been but 
 one copy in Germany, at the same time created new- 
 facilities, and kindled new zeal for the study of God's 
 Word — while his learned editions of the Christian 
 Fathers opened the renovating fountains of an earlier 
 and more uncormpt interpretation. It is not easy to 
 overrate the quickening influence of these two classes 
 of writing on the nascent Reformation. But that he 
 himself had no deeper design in the one, than to exer- 
 cise his wit and gratify his spleen, or in the other, than 
 to do an acceptable work of professional scholarship, is 
 proved by his subsequent conduct. Evidently he little 
 suspected what a ruin he was precipitating. " Who," 
 he writes, " could have foreseen this horrible tempest ? " 
 When the train which he had ignited with a merry 
 laugh reached the " combustible and fuelled entrails " 
 of the Papacy, and the whole world began to rock, 
 nothing could exceed his consternation. He behaved 
 like a boy who has thoughtlessly put a match to a par- 
 cel of dry leaves to enjoy a bonfire, and who runs 
 frightened away when he sees the building wrapped in 
 flames. He had amused himself by casting firebrands, 
 and the serious business of the rest of his life was to 
 convince men that he had been in sport. Unable to 
 endure the aspect of his oftspring, he " fled, and cried 
 out. Death!'' 
 
 It was entirely suitable for. such a man to conclude 
 that it was all over with Luther, when Leo fulminated 
 his famous bull against him. While the latter was 
 lighting a bonfire with the pontifical thunder in the 
 public square at Wittemberg, Erasmus wrote to Novio- 
 mao'us : " Would to -God he had followed my counsels ! 
 It would be no great matter that one man should 
 perish; but if these people [the monks] should get the 
 better, they will never rest till they have ruined litera- 
 
322 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 ture." Here speak in cnrions conjuncture at once his 
 vanity, his timidity, his want of magnanimity, his 
 hatred of the monks, and his concern for literature. 
 Tlie last sentiment is really the key to his character 
 and career. It is the one thing which gives them their 
 only consistency. Erasmus was a typical scholar. 
 Good literature was the " master light of aU his seeing." 
 Were his fame simply that of a scholar, no scholar's 
 fame would be more desirable. But the character of 
 the scholar is mainly identical with the character of his 
 works. We shall remark upon this influence pres- 
 ently. 
 
 It can affect one anxious to judge charitably of his 
 species, with no feeling but one of unmixed mortifica- 
 tion, to meet the evidences, which Erasmus has immor- 
 talized in his correspondence, of his own lack of manli- 
 ness. (Eeolampadius was the mildest of reformers. 
 He had enjoyed an unusual share of the intimacy' of 
 Erasmus. The latter had lavished upon him every 
 token of regard. But CPcolampadius, following the 
 lead of Luther, went a step beyond his more prudent 
 fiiend, and forfeited the smile of the dominant hier- 
 archy. In the prosecution of his evangelical labors, he 
 introduced the name of Erasmus in a commentary on 
 Isaiah, styling him " our great Erasmus." On occasion 
 of this, Erasmus, his cowardice for the moment over- 
 coming his vanity, found it in his heart to write his 
 old friend in the following pitiful strain of deprecation : 
 '■I consider what several gi'eat men think of you, the 
 Emperor, the Pope, Ferdinand, the King of England, 
 the Bishop of Rochester, Cardinal Wolsey, and many 
 others, whose authority it is not safe for me to despise, 
 and whose favor it is not prudent for me to throw away." 
 
 TJlrich von Hutten was a nobleman, a scholar, and a 
 wit. He shared largely in the authorship of the '■^Epis- 
 
CHAEACTEE OF EEASMUS. 323 
 
 tolcB Ohscurorum Virorum," one of tlic boldest and 
 most effective satires of the times. He has been called 
 the " Knight of the Keformation." His ruling passion 
 was for political liberty, as that of Erasmus was for 
 learning. They were about equally religious ; but 
 Hutten was as impulsive, chivalrous, and daring, as 
 Erasmus was calculating, petty, and timid. Both inci- 
 dentally coadjutors of Luther in the Reformation, each 
 made a characteristic mistake as to the method proper 
 to be pursued. Hutten took the sword ; Erasmus 
 bound himself up in compromises. Their fate is full 
 of instruction. Hutten was proscribed, forsiaken by his 
 friends, persecuted by his enemies, hunted to death — 
 but from first to last continued to be feared, and has 
 never ceased to be respected. Erasmus, courted, de- 
 spised, distrusted, was so gratifyingly successful in his 
 course of deception, that the coryphaeus of Protestant- 
 ism, with a peculiarly mordant emphasis, warned his 
 followers to beware of Erasmus, "that viper," and a 
 Catholic doctor of Constance had a portrait of him 
 hung iTp in his study, where he might spit in his face 
 as often as he pleased. Not long before his melancholy 
 end, Hutten, discovering his error too late, thus ex- 
 presses himself to Luther (we quote from memory) : 
 " Oh man of God ! Thy work is of God, and will en- 
 dure — ^mine is of man, and will perish." Erasmus calls 
 his own life an Iliad of evils. He was accused of Bixty 
 thousand heresies by Stunica to the Pope, and threat- 
 ened with libels by the Lutherans. " Thus I stand," 
 are his words, " deserving well of all, ill used by both 
 parties." 
 
 At the nadir of his fortunes, Hutten, an outlaw and 
 a fiTgitive, visited Basle, and sought an interview with 
 Erasmus. What magnanimity can we admit to have 
 remained in a man who, from a paltry and selfish fear, 
 
324 A FEEE LAITCE. 
 
 could refuse this simple proof of friendship to an 
 old correspondent and a brother scholar, under such 
 pathetic circumstances ? 
 
 It is really striking to observe by what degrees of 
 difference men separate from each other, with respect 
 to the single endowment of moral courage. A moral 
 hero and a moral poltroon cannot but be insoluble 
 enigmas to each other. They are polar opposites, pre- 
 cisely — sundered by the " whole diameter of being." 
 ITo wonder Erasmus was incapable of comprehending 
 the glorious audacity of Luther. Moral courage might 
 well enough, perhaps, be analyzed into the two ele- 
 ments of honesty and strength of will. Happy would 
 it have been for Erasmus if he had possessed a consider- 
 able share of either. That he had small strength of 
 will was not his fault ; but he might have been honest. 
 Honesty, to be sure, was not by itself sufficient to make 
 him the hero of the Reformation ; but it was sufficient to 
 m::ke him, what to himself was of infinitely greater con- 
 sequence, a good Christian. To spurn the spell of 
 ancient and venerable authority, wielding the arm of 
 earthly omnipotence, and speaking with the voice of 
 God, demanded the presence of moral courage in the 
 utmost strength and union of both its elements. Hon- 
 esty, even adorned with illustrious genius and learning, 
 could not attain unto it. It asked, also, for a great 
 free will, that dared to be its own — that hoary Preju- 
 dice could not seduce, or reverend Prescription awe, or 
 absolute Power enslave. 
 
 One brave rally in opposition — a single stand, made 
 somewhere by some one, as defiant and unffinching as 
 the attitude of Home was lofty and threatening, and 
 the Keformation was secure. 'So matter though Home 
 looked on the whole world subdued — 
 
 Praeter atrocem animum Catonia, 
 
CHAEACTEE OF EEASMtTS. 325 
 
 the unsubdued spirit of one Oato was enough to break 
 the universal charm of servile compliance. Everything 
 depended on a leader that would iiever falter. Rome 
 had conquered by ages of sublime assumption. She 
 would yield only to a courage stanch enough to set it 
 utterly at naught. Asked Melancthon, "How much 
 shall we concede to Eome?" "Nothing," was Lu- 
 ther's reply. At such magnificent defiance the Imperial 
 Lady was drunk with the wine of astonishment. One 
 instant she reeled with a sudden and insupportable 
 stupor. That instant Luther " struck, and firmly, and 
 one stroke." She recovered immediately — but already 
 the Reformation was history. 
 
 The sixteenth century trembles with the play of a 
 thousand colliding forces. The field of the Reforma- 
 tion is thus filled with so much to assail the external 
 sense of the spectator, that, without especial care, he is 
 very likely to miss the secret moral element which 
 really wrought most powerfully of all in the breasts of 
 the principal Protestant champions. In the case of 
 Luther — as the example intrinsically best for our pur- 
 pose, and the most familiarly known — while it was, no 
 doubt, nobly done to scorn the splendid prizes of the ser- 
 vice of Rome, even more nobly to brave her threats of 
 earthly vengeance, still these fall vastly short of exhaust- 
 ing either the nature or the strength of his temptation. 
 Any honest man could have done the former — indeed, 
 mere love of leisure enabled Erasmus to do it, without 
 an excessive amount of honesty ; and the latter was not 
 beyond the virtue of a stoic, or of a Noi'th American 
 Indian. Rome held a resource of intimidation unspeak- 
 ably more formidable to such as Luther. Full certainly 
 was he to learn, that he who aspired to the true and • 
 perfect mastery of that hour, must press to bis lips a 
 cup of far more exceeding bitterness. It was his part 
 
326 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 to prove that moral courage might yet try the steadi- 
 ness of its eye, by looking a still more appalling danger 
 in the face. 
 
 Dungeon, and torture, and death, however we may 
 think of them, are not the most dreadful of human evils. 
 Innumerable times they have been laughed to scorn. 
 They have no force in them to shake the constant mind. 
 They may seal the lips of a weak-willed man, or turn a 
 dishonest man's utterance into a lie, as they did Galileo's 
 — but they cannot change his opinion. The muttered 
 " But it does move though " will still attest the inacces- 
 sible mind. And holding Ms opinions with undoubting 
 confidence, a merely honest man, if he be reallij honest, 
 can easily go to martyrdom for them, as he would to 
 victory. For physical suffering, however formidable, 
 at least has a limit. This attempered frame is not im- 
 mortal, and pain is no infirmity of the desolated clay. 
 When it has killed the body, it has no more that it 
 can do. It was the divine foreknowledge of a destined 
 release in time, that nerved the endurance of the death- 
 less Prometheus. The terror is almost too oppressive 
 for sublimity, when finite patience proposes to exhaust 
 interminable woe. Yet the Catholic mother threatened 
 no less an alternative to her apostate children. With a 
 mortal hand she brandished a sword of retribution that 
 flamed along the whole limitless track of their inevitable 
 immortality. Prometheus, his purpose in him remain- 
 ing as steadfast as the pole, could not unwisely hurl a 
 haughty defiance at Jupiter, from the blasted cliff of 
 his banishment and chains — safely might he consent to 
 feel the drunk earth reel under him on the seething 
 sea, and smile with victorious serenity as he went 
 
 down to 
 
 Visit the bottom of the monstrous world — 
 
 for he knew that Fate had assigned a termination of his 
 
CHAEACTEK OF EEA8MU8. 327 
 
 toils. So Hutten, who was constituted without one 
 particle of that deep religious sense of the supernatural 
 which breathed a hush of mysterious awe over the soul of 
 Luther, and made his ear quick to hear voices across from 
 the unseen world — who possessed no capacity which 
 could have been educated to comprehend the meaning of 
 spiritual authority, and for whom, consequently, Rome 
 had no terrors but the physical — the chivalrous and 
 honest, but unsusceptible Hutten treated' the Pope with 
 contempt, as a matter of course. Unfathomably deeper 
 stirred the sea in Luther's bosom. If any one has 
 imagined that by some rare felicity of fortune, Luther 
 reached the region of " calm weather," without first 
 traversing a zone of tempest, let him turn to the ac- 
 count given by the Reformer himself, of his own in- 
 ward struggle, before he determined on burning the 
 bull of Leo. 
 
 It is when the soul feels itself alone against all men, 
 and yet is formed with a yearning susceptibility for 
 submission to authority — when it stands naked and 
 afraid in the conscious presence' of the powers of the 
 world to come, and under the sombre shadow of Eter- 
 nity — and more, when its own very honesty and 
 solicitude for the right perplex it with the fear of being 
 wrong — wrong after all, where a mistake would be 
 fatal, making the heart like water^ — it is then, if ever, 
 that you may look to see the " native hue of resolu- 
 tion " blanch, and the eye quail. Precisely such was 
 Luther's temptation, and so he gained his victoiy. It 
 is shallow to say that confidence, like that which he 
 finally won, of being right, would have sustained 
 almost any man as it sustained him. That was the 
 very hinge of the crisis in his mind. It was the heing 
 sure that he was right — unshaken, not certainly against 
 the dread of extreme torture, but against the mind- 
 
328 A FBEE LANCE. 
 
 overawing menace of spiritual authority, which, for 
 ten centuries and more, had heard no challenge, no 
 protest, nothing but the long echo of its own solitary 
 voice — aye, the high, self-centred confidence that he 
 was right — that, that was the victory. 
 
 The element which was thus the secret strength of 
 Luther's strife, seems not to have so much as touched 
 either Hutten or Erasmus. The one escaped it, as if 
 by the bluntness of his physical courage — the other, as 
 if by the subtlety of his littleness — both, it may be, by 
 their want of genuine piety. 
 
 Whether, upon the whole, Erasmus was at heart 
 really a Christian or not, is a question which, after 
 some balancing of the testimony on both sides, we 
 confess ourselves unable satisfactorily to answer. Call- 
 ing to mind our Savior's declaration, that whosoever was 
 not for him was against him, the reader perhaps will 
 feel that hesitation to decide is, in such a ease, almost 
 equivalent to an adverse decision. And we will not 
 deny it. D'Aubigne, with that beautiful charity which 
 sheds such an indescribable charm over his history of 
 the Reformation, inclines apparently to a favorable 
 opinion. But it is only by mildly insinuating that the 
 mental gloom which clouded the close of Erasmus's life, 
 was doubtless due, in part, to the loss of those spiritual 
 consolations which are commonly bestowed upon the 
 faithful and strenuous asserter _of the truth. He cer- 
 tainly was not intellectually ignorant, nor apparently 
 in intellectual doubt of salvation by grace. Better 
 statements of the doctrine of justification by faith were 
 hardly constructed by Luther himself, than may be 
 found in Erasmus. Zwingle, (Ecolampadius, and other 
 leading Protestants, acknowledged a deep indebtedness 
 to him for their first true apprehensions of the " truth 
 as it is in Jesus." There are not wanting, in his let- 
 
CHAJBACTEE OF EEA8MTJS. 329 
 
 ters and elsewhere, passages breathing so fresh and 
 sweet an evangelical spirit, that citing them here, we 
 should induce the reader to wonder how we could dape 
 call the author's piety at all in question. Take, for 
 instance, the following — and we are nowise sure that a 
 much more favorable one might not be selected : 
 
 The sum of all Christian philosophy is this: to place all our 
 hopes in God alone, who by his free grace, without any merit of our 
 own, gives us everything through Christ Jesus ; to know that we 
 are redeemed by the death of his Son ; to be dead to worldly lusts ; 
 and to walk in conformity with his doctrine and example, not only 
 injuring no man, but doing good to all; to support our trials pa- 
 tiently in the hope of a future reward ; and finally, to claim no 
 merit to ourselves on account of our virtues, but to give thanks to 
 God for all our strength and for all our works. This is what ought 
 to be instilled into man untU it becomes a second nature. 
 
 Sentiments so pious and just, we are, at first, much 
 more than willing to believe, must have been the gen- 
 uine overflowings of a well within the man, springing 
 up into everlasting life. But then, again, when we 
 find him repelling an accusation insinuated against his 
 chastity, by the plea that the scholar's vocation was too 
 busy to admit the diversions of love, and that if per- 
 chance in youth his desires might have burned beyond 
 the control of continence, age, he was thankful, had 
 finally repressed those excessive ardors ;' when we come 
 to this, in sorrowful perplexity, we are compelled to 
 ask, " Can such a man, after all, have been acquainted 
 in heart with the spiritual morality of the Sermon on 
 the Mount ? " No reference to the restraints and sanc- 
 
 ' See Bayle's Biog. Diet., Art. Erasmus, Note BE, where the fini- 
 cal Hollander's apology finds apt complement and illustration in 
 passages cited from Ovid's "De Bemedio Amoris," and kindred 
 classic inspirations.. The lively Frenchman's curious learning 
 obeys, in this instance, a rare spirit of appreciative sympathy. 
 
330 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 tions of religion — no sigh of remorse for remem- 
 bered transgressions ? Dilettanteism, in its worst 
 modern sense, is not too offensive a word to charac- 
 terize such abjectness. Imagine the burst of gospel 
 indignation with which Milton would have spurned, 
 recall that with which he did spurn, a like innuendo. 
 
 There undoubtedly are some natures so light and 
 thin, as absolutely to afford no anchorage for strong 
 convictions. From these it would be unphilosophieal 
 to require that positive and profound experience of 
 religious verities, which is necessary to accredit the 
 piety of natures more massive and solid. We incline 
 to rank Erasmus rather with the former class. And 
 yet he does not seem to have been wholly incapable of 
 sincerity. No one, we presume, ever thought of ques- 
 tioning the sincerity of his devotion to literature — any 
 more than any one ever thought of questioning the 
 sincerity of Luther's devotion to the doctrines of the 
 Reformation. The poor student, who expended his 
 pittances of money, "first for Greek books, then for 
 clothes " — the dependent scholar, whose prevailing 
 sentiment was not extravagantly expressed, when he 
 wrote to a friend, ^'•And luithout letter.'^ xohat is life ?" 
 — needs no vindication from the accusation of insincer- 
 ity. But does not such evident capacity of sincerity 
 entitle us to look for a tolerably tenacious grasp of 
 definite beliefs in religion ? The fact seems to be, that 
 his sincerity in letters was like the Catholic sincerity 
 of James II., which — as has been pointedly observed — 
 made him insincere in all but that. More than once he 
 gives utterance to regret that so promising a youth as 
 Melancthon was lost to literature. Fortunate for the 
 Church that Melancthon was already secure within the 
 powerful attraction of Luther's governing spirit ! For- 
 tunate, we will add, for Melancthon himself, though 
 
CHAKACTER OF ERASMUS. 331 
 
 his subordination, at once necessary and voluntary, did 
 prove irksome at times. 
 
 Cliristianity certainly exacts from her disciple no 
 more than his all of sincerity — ^but, on the other hand, 
 no less than that all will suffice her. Did Erasmus 
 yield his all ? We have seen vrhat was the measure of 
 his sincerity in literature — one or two citations shall 
 serve to show whether he had as much to offer upon 
 the sacrifice and service of his religious faith. To a 
 Lutheran nobleman of Bohemia he wrote in these 
 words : " If things come to extremities, and the Church 
 totters on both sides, I will fix myself upon the solid 
 rock until a calm succeeds, and it he apparent which is 
 the Church.'^ To Pirckheimerus : "I could be of the 
 opinion of the Arians and Pelagians, if the Church 
 had approved their doctrines ! . . . There is nothing 
 wherein I acquiesce more securely, than in the assured 
 judgments of the Church. Of reasonings and argu- 
 ments there is no end." To Mel^ncthon he speaks of 
 Rome as the " Popish sect " — to Romanists as the 
 " Catholic Church." To Yiglius Zuichem, in commu- 
 nication with the Reformers, he commends the prudence 
 of the dying man who was catechized by the Devil. 
 He (as Erasmus relates) in mortal fear of being caught 
 in a heresy, to the question, " What do you believe ? " 
 replies, "What the Church believes;" pushed with 
 " What does the Church believe ? " rejoined, " What I 
 believe ; " and finally, being fairly enclosed by the 
 question put once more, " And what do you believe ? " 
 closed the circle of defence by answering again, " What 
 the Church believes." 
 
 The religious faith of such a man cannot have been 
 more than passive acquiescence in the general spirit of 
 the age. The acquiescence itself was hardly complete 
 enough always to conceal some slight reserve of skepti- 
 
332 A FKEE LANCE. 
 
 cism. If, in connecting the names of Erasmus and 
 Sydney Smith at the commencement of this article, we 
 were unjust to either, no one will hesitate to pronounce 
 which suffered the injustice. 
 
 Not for lack of matter, but for lack of space, we here 
 close our discussion of the character of Erasmus. We 
 have illustrated it principally from his connection with 
 the Keformation, because it was principally that which 
 enabled him to display so fuUy the complement of his 
 peculiar qualities. We have been severe, we admit; 
 but readers have never wanted opportunity to judge 
 for themselves whether the severity were just. We 
 arraign his criminal weaknesses — not because we are by 
 any means insensible to the singularly potent fascination 
 of perennial freshness and ever-modern brilliancy that 
 guards the treasure of his fame — ^but because we be- 
 lieve it to be for the interests of virtue that illustri- 
 ous meanness should invariably be made the gazing- 
 stock of history. It is eminently proper that men who, 
 like Erasmus, from selfishness or fear, are deaf to the 
 invitation of great opportunities, should at least be 
 forced to teach by warning, a fidelity and magnanimity 
 which they refuse to teach by example. 
 
 Macaulay has exercised his unrivalled ability as a 
 literary advocate in constructing an elaborate and in- 
 genious extenuation of Machiavelli's atrocious morality, 
 by transferring in part the guilt of the individual to 
 the country and age. ISTo similar plea can be admitted 
 in mitigation of the sentence which we must all agree 
 in pronouncing on Erasmus; he stands in merciless 
 contrast with too many contemporary instances of emi- 
 nent virtue. Considerations there are, however, admis- 
 sible to be pleaded in his ease, of a different nature, but 
 not at all, we believe, less exculpatory. We only regret 
 that the encroaching dimensions of the previous discus- 
 
CHAEACTEE OF ERASMUS. 333 
 
 sion forbid our presenting them as much at length as 
 we should be glad to do. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that Erasmus deliberately 
 elected to be the man that he was. Far from it. He 
 yielded to the persuasion of circumstances which, with 
 his measure of moral strengtb, it was almost hopeless 
 to resist when he became the habitual time-server. 
 From first to last his fortune wa^ his faithful precep- 
 tress in the arts of deceit. He was not more apt to 
 learn than she industrious to teach. Born an illegiti- 
 mate child, and thus early tempted by such peculiar 
 encouragements to duplicity as must necessarily attend 
 the neglected and insulted childhood of illegitimacy ; 
 an orphan at thirteen, and the ward of guardians who 
 executed their sacred trust by exhausting the resources 
 of menace and deceit, to secure the resisting boy within 
 convent walls, that they might enjoy his patrimony ; 
 over-persuaded at length by a former school-mate to 
 enter as a canon regular, and spending several wretched 
 years where his fatal talent for dissimulation ^ was forced 
 
 ' A tradition survives connected witli this portion of Erasmus's 
 experience, so happily illustrative of the "other side" of godly 
 cloister life, and at the same time so perfectly characteristic of the 
 man himself, that it deserves at least to be commemorated in a 
 note. It seems that there stood on the convent grounds a pear- 
 tree, the fruit of which soothed the palate of the Superior, as fruit 
 of no other pear-tree could aspire to do. Erasmus, who had a wide 
 range of appreciation for delicate sapors (fish he eschewed — his 
 • stomach ' was ' Lutheran ') conj ectured that possibly this fruit might 
 develop a point of contact with his own appetite. Accordingly, in 
 spite of the Abbot's prohibition, covering himself under the morn- 
 ing twilight, for several days he knew the flavor of the favorite 
 pears. But the Abbot was jealous, and one morning the depre- 
 dator heard an ominous bustle among the brethren below. Certain 
 that the dusk and the foliage had not yet betrayed his identity, he 
 slid quietly down and scampered off, imitating the halting gait of a 
 certain lame brother. This poor monk, discovered, as was sup- 
 
334 A FREE LANCE. 
 
 to daily exercise in self-defence against sanctimonions 
 villainy ; escaping to run the career of the zealous but 
 destitute student, who purchased with his chance gifts 
 of money " first Greek books, and then clothes ; " the 
 life-long scholar, whose very existence, while perform- 
 ing his matchless services to literature, depended on his 
 success in paying court to the great — ^he passed his 
 whole life in a school, in which it was his only fault 
 that he profited too well. All these circumstances 
 were not a whit less influential for having acted on 
 their subject three hundred years ago. Doubtless they 
 moulded him as really as we see circumstances mould- 
 ing men continually now. It may indeed be true that 
 he would have held the height of virtue had he con- 
 quered his fate ; but certainly he did not explore the 
 depth of baseness in confessing its power. Compre- 
 hensively surveying his career, we may weU let our 
 wonder that with such noble occasions he accomplished 
 so little, give way to wonder that, with such hostile 
 temptations, he accomplished so much. 
 
 A master delineator of human life has condensed the 
 character and misfortune of a Roman Emperor into 
 these pregnant words; ^^ Omnium consensu eapax im- 
 perii nisi imperasseV He certainly owes a large debt 
 of pious gratitude to Providence, who, in taking his 
 farewell of life, remembers no occasion when he stood 
 in the awful presence of a responsibility that abashed 
 him with the token of its own superiority. Let one but 
 
 posed, by his limp, suffered a severe punishment before the eyes 
 of Erasmus, whose sense of justice was doubly conquered by hia 
 love of fun and love of impunity. 
 
 This tradition has been brought into doubt by some, though with- 
 out good reason, as far as we can see. It has strong internal evi- 
 dence, at least ; but if we adopt the mythical theory, the genesis of 
 the narration, we presume, is not obscure. 
 
CHAEACTEE OF EEA8MU8. 335 
 
 have fortunately fulfilled what his various positions ex- 
 pected, and he may rest in perfect security that 
 
 Aftertime, 
 And that full voice which circles round the grave, 
 
 will sing a thousand songs of yet nobler powers, that 
 waited in vain for worthy opportunities of exercise. 
 Far otherwise fares it with the man whose pathway 
 leads him into the shadow of some great responsibility, 
 which fairly overtops his utmost stature. All is thence- 
 forth the intensest reality. His dimensions are exactly 
 computed, flot in figures of rhetoric, but in figures of 
 arithmetic. Imagination no longer delights herself 
 with the fiction of magnificent possibilities, and histoiy 
 recording his successes, defines them with his failures. 
 
 A sentin}ent kindred with the Latin historian's has 
 all along, we confess, been inspired by the haunting 
 genius of Erasmus. The misfortune of Galba was his 
 also — he attempted afi'airs that proved too great for 
 him. It is easy now to imagine how his horoscope 
 might have been cast with a thousand conjunctures" 
 that would illustrate the biography of his age with a 
 very difierent Erasmus. He cannot, to be sure, main- 
 tain that the times made him what he was — ^nor even 
 that they represent him untruly ; but he may with jus- 
 tice complain that tbey represent him too faithfully. 
 They were " times that tried men's souls." No one 
 who was worth looking at could hope to escape being 
 known. It was all one " gaudy, babbling, and remorse- 
 less day," that blazoned the characters of men with 
 perfectly indiscriminate illumination. No beauty and 
 no deformity was permitted to lurk in the shade. It 
 will be apparent to every one that had Erasmus fallen 
 on more quiet days, he might have surrendered himself 
 wholly to the behoof of letters, winning the grateful 
 
336 A FKEE LANCE. 
 
 and delighted admiration of mankind — and no one, ex- 
 cept a private circle of acquaintances (with whom the 
 secret would die), have been able to guess that his char- 
 acter was compounded of so many frailties. He might 
 then even have been thought capable of being a re- 
 former. 
 
 The personal presence of Erasmus, portrayed so 
 vividly on canvas that it seems suspended from no 
 function of life but speech, still continues, we believe, 
 to share a silent part among the living, in more than 
 one of the masterpieces of Holbein. The traits of the 
 countenance seem well to agree with the Tacts of his 
 biography. A general appearance of kindliness, upheld 
 by a very patent but not at all unamiable self-com- 
 placency, overspreads the features. This is reconciled 
 with a caveat of irony and insincerity, induced upon 
 the whole cast of the countenance, but especially legible 
 in the doubtful sparkle of the eye, and the ambiguous 
 undulation of the lip. The forehead is concealed by a 
 cap, but the eyebrow is slightly lifted, as if with habit- 
 ual endurance of pain, into a curve which has regis- 
 tered itself in two lightly penciled wrinkles. A ruffling 
 of the skin, just outward from the eye-socket, perhaps 
 produced by involuntary nervous contraction in suffer- 
 ing, stands for ratification of the handwriting on the 
 brow. The eye itself, poised in an expression hesitating 
 between coyness and banter, retires half for cover, half 
 for reconnoissance, and twinkles merrily out, from un- 
 derneath lashes curling tensely backward, with a danc- 
 ing light, which, after all, did not finally prove quite 
 victorious over a resting shadow of sadness. The large 
 nose holds a language of benevolence, until its sharp- 
 ened tip suddenly apprises you of wit that might, upon 
 tempting occasion, work deceitfully like a razor. The 
 lips below meet in that wavering articular line which 
 
IITEEAEY INFLUENCE OF ERASMUS. 337 
 
 SO often indicates weakness and indecision, relieved, if 
 not redeemed, by the presence of gentle sympathies, 
 ready tact, genial appreciation, radiant good-nature— 
 in a word, of all the qualities of an excellen|/companion. 
 Their expression must have been as fickle as an April 
 sky. All this time we have not escaped the influence 
 of an indescribable serio-comic air of sanctimony, partly 
 native, partly a matter of conscious humor, which we 
 are sure this remarkable visage never wholly forgot. 
 In short, with the help of imagination, and some knowl- 
 edge of his character and biography, we can trace here 
 all that amiableness, that vanity, that versatility, that 
 fickleness, that humorousness, that insincerity, that 
 gayety, that sensitiveness, that good sense, that policy, 
 that easy Epicureanism, that apprehensive forecast, 
 that enjoyment of life, that experience of suffering, 
 which are forever inseparable from this unique person- 
 age in history — ^Erasmus of Rotterdam. 
 
 Thus much of Erasmus the man. "We turn for a 
 moment to the soholar Erasmus, with an unafiected 
 sense of relief. 
 
 If sterner words are expected by justice from the 
 historian of religion, the historian of literature ^ would 
 have been obviously wrong had he forebome to declare 
 that no other name sheds such lustre on his country and 
 age as the name of Erasmus. We join our grateful 
 assent. We are heartily glad to record, that in his 
 literary fame we detect the presence of scarce an alloy. 
 We instinctively choose henceforth to believe that in 
 the scholar, and not in the man, we have found our true 
 Erasmus. It is in this character that, with a benedic- 
 tion not less for the sake of mankind than for his own, 
 we would commend him to immortality. 
 
 ' Eallam. 
 1S 
 
338 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 "We have reserved to ourselves little room, save for 
 nlere generalities, in speaking of his literary influence ; 
 hut it may he expected that we should say something 
 of his relation to the Greek Testament. This we do 
 with a consciousness that, in the view of those whose 
 acquaintance with the subject is superficial, we may 
 seem to be qualifying rather than heightening our 
 eulogy. The truth is, the text of the New Testament 
 owes the least possible to the critical labors of Erasmus. 
 He may properly enough be called the pioneer in the 
 work — though the idea of his edition appears to have 
 originated with his publisher, Froben, who applied to 
 him for his services, instead of with himself; but he 
 had not the good fortune to forestall the improvements 
 of several hundred years, as in similar cases pioneers 
 have sometimes almost done. Indeed, he failed appar- 
 ently to conjecture what notable opportunity for the 
 display of diligent scholarship the undertaking afforded. 
 Obedient to the importunity of his calculating pub- 
 lisher, he dispatched the business — recension, para- 
 phrase, commentary, supervision of the press — aU in 
 eight months, besides forwarding an edition of Jerome 
 already in hand. He says himself, ''Fraecipitatum fuit 
 verius quam editum." His materials were exceedingly 
 defective, consisting of four incomplete MSS., with a 
 "manuscript of Theophylact, containing the Greek 
 Text and his Commentary on the Gospels, Acts and 
 Epistles." These circumstances were quite sufficient to 
 account, without dishonor to Erasmus, for the unsatisfac- 
 tory character of his first edition. But had he con- 
 ceived adequately of the importance of his enterprise, 
 he would assuredly have exerted himself, as there is no 
 evidence that he ever did, better to approve his learning 
 and fidelity in subsequent editions. Notwithstanding 
 every deduction, however, that candor requires to be 
 
LITEEAET INFLUENCE OF EEASMTTS. 339 
 
 made, tlie praise of Erasmus for his services to the New 
 Testament cannot be otherwise than very great. His 
 fifth edition — by the simple authority, as it would seem, 
 of his illustrious name, furnishing the basis of what is 
 commonly known as the Eeceived Text — has continued, 
 down to a recent date, to exercise a commanding influ- 
 ence on every succeeding re-issue of the Greek Testa- 
 ment. " The past at least is secure." Nothing can by 
 any peradventure rob Erasmus of the renown which 
 attaches to the man whose privilege it was to give the 
 first sight of the original Greek of the New Testament 
 • to the learned eyes of the sixteenth century. 
 
 His flexile genius, his varied learning, his Attic taste, 
 his refined wit, his shrewd good sense, his nice tact, his 
 unwearying industry, — above all, his liberal spirit, — 
 remarkably anticipated in themselves, by several cen- 
 turies, a state of elegant culture, which they also 
 contributed largely to realize. A recluse scholar among 
 men of the world, and a man of the world among 
 recluse scholars, he may be considered the earliest of 
 that succession of interpreters between high education 
 and the masses of the people, who have already done 
 so much toward making education popular, and the 
 people educated. To him belongs the honor of first 
 worthily inaugurating the art of critical classic editor- 
 ship. From seed thus modestly deposited, has sprung 
 the whole modern science of philology, which is bear- 
 ing such magnificent fruit before our eyes. Enough 
 has been implied in preceding pages of this article, to 
 indicate the contemporary estimation in which he was 
 held. No man was ever equally an autocrat in the 
 world of letters ; and because his autocracy was exer- 
 cised as beneficially for the world of letters, a,s the 
 Czar Peter's was for Eussia, no man can ever beeonie 
 so again. Fortunate in the moment of his advent as a 
 
34:0 A FEEE LANCE. 
 
 scholar, lie lias impressed the modem literary age, as 
 an early legislator impresses a rising state. His influ- 
 ence lives through all the influence of the Revival of 
 Learning. It will enjoy a fresh reprieve from decay in 
 every generous result which that great event has ren- 
 dered possible.