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 LAST AND FIRST 
 
John Addington Symonds 
 
 LAST AND FIRST 
 
 BEING TWO ESSAYS: 
 THE NEW SPIRIT and 
 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 
 
 NICHOLAS L. BROWN 
 
 NEW YORK MCMXIX 
 
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 Copyright 1919 
 
 BY 
 
 NiCHOi,AS I^. Brown 
 
 'COPYRIGHT '■^ff^Ktr 
 
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 MAY -5 iSIS 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The two essays in this volume represent^ 
 respectively J the first and the last most impor- 
 tant contributions to literary criticism by John 
 Addington Symonds, They are now published 
 for the first time. 
 
 The essay on Arthur Hugh Clough ap- 
 peared in the Fortnightly Review for Decem- 
 ber, 1868, four years before Symonds's first 
 book. The Study of Dante, wa^ published. 
 Symonds relates in Ms autobiography that he 
 first heard of Clough from Professor Jowett. 
 The famous scholar was so shocked by the news 
 of dough's death that he could not hear 
 Symonds's essay that evening. Jowett added 
 — ''He {Clough) was the only man of genius, 
 whom I knew to be a man of genius, that I 
 
have seen among the younger set at Balliol" 
 This was in 1861. 
 
 Symonds was attracted to Clough by the 
 poet's scepticism and sympathized with his 
 views. The essay reveals the liberal side of 
 Symonds' s mind more clearly than many of his 
 later works do. In 1869 Symonds helped the 
 poet's widow to edit and arrange the prose re- 
 mains of her husband, and she made a most 
 grateful acknowledgment to Symonds in the 
 Introduction for his part, Symonds never re* 
 printed his essay on the poet, who is as famous 
 for being the subject of Matthew Arnold's 
 great elegy Thyrsis, as for his own great 
 poems. For intellectual vigor, and purity of 
 style, and as a penetrating critical study, the 
 essay ranks high. 
 
 The address on The New Spirit was pub- 
 lished in the Fortnightly Review for March, 
 1893, a month before Symonds died. It repre- 
 sents his final impression of the Renaissance. 
 He shows the similarity of the modern spirit in 
 art and science to the spirit that prevailed in 
 the 16th century. The last of his seven volumes 
 
 B 
 
on the Renaissance had appeared in 1886. The 
 great Humanist Movement was the theme of 
 his prize essay at Oxford, And now towards 
 the close of his life, he summed up his more 
 mature views on a subject which had occupied 
 him so many years. The esSay now appears in 
 its entirety, 
 
 Symonds was, with Pater and Arnold, one 
 of the great Victorian creative critics. He was 
 probably superior intellectually to Matthew 
 Arnold, more reliable in his literary judg- 
 ments and as a stylist he was more charming. 
 He suffered from a spirit of Self-depreciation; 
 it was only too prevalent throughout his auto- 
 biography, and people took him at his own esti- 
 mation. Even so fine a critic as Arthur Symons 
 has left an unworthy and unjust estimate of 
 him. 
 
 Symonds will live in English literature. 
 His studies of the Greek Poets, of the Renais- 
 sance, his monographs on Dante, Boccaccio, 
 Whitman, his critical essays and travels, are 
 among the finest things in our language. Hii 
 poems also, which are so little known, are of 
 
great merit. And hig autobiography and let- 
 ters, edited by Mr. Horatio F. Brown, form 
 one of the most poignant and artistic docu- 
 ments in any literature, 
 
 — Albeet Mordell. 
 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 10 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAOK 
 
 Thb New Spirit 15 
 
 Arthur Hugh Ctoucn 65 
 
THE NEW SPIRIT. 
 
 ,(an analysis of the emancipation of the 
 intellect in the fourteenth, fif- 
 teenth and sixteenth centuries ) 
 
THE NEW SPIRIT. 
 
 It was my honourable duty to read an English 
 essay on "The Renaissance," in the theatre at 
 Oxford, on the 17th of June, 1863. At that 
 time confused and erroneous views were com- 
 mon as to the meaning of the term Renais- 
 sance, and as to the importance of the histori- 
 cal period which it denotes. Even so able a 
 thinker as G. W. F. Hegel, in his Philosophy 
 of History, passed from the Middle Ages to 
 the German Reformation with three pages of 
 transition, in which he superficially alluded to 
 the revival of learning, the efflorescence of the 
 fine arts, and the discovery of America. 
 Hegel, apparently, had not grasped the revo- 
 lutionary character of humanism; its reaction 
 against mediaeval methods of thinking; its 
 
 15 
 
preparation of modern scientific criticism. 
 But what revealed a deeper want of insight 
 into the subject, was his failure to perceive 
 that the Reformation owed its force as an in- 
 tellectual movement — apart from mere revolt 
 against ecclesiastical corruption — to the New 
 Spirit of independence which had been lib- 
 erated in Italy by the Renaissance. 
 
 During the last thirty years rapid advance 
 has been made toward a true knowledge of the 
 Renaissance. A group of eminent writers in 
 France, Germany, England, and Italy, have 
 devoted their best energies to investigating its 
 origins in the Middle Ages, explaining the 
 conditions of its development, and analysing 
 its specific character. Yet I feel that we are 
 still very far from being able to give a plaus- 
 ible theory of the causes which produced this 
 reawakening of the human mind, or to define 
 with absolute precision what was its vital 
 essence. 
 
 What I wrote in my early youth returns 
 
 to my memory now; and I do not seem able, 
 
 after thirty years of searching, to yield a bet- 
 
 16 
 
ter account of the setiology of the Renaissance 
 than I did then. Then I introduced my treat- 
 ment of the subject with remarks upon the 
 abysmal deeps of national personality, and the 
 inscrutability of laws which govern human de- 
 velopment, adding: ^ "These remarks, if gen- 
 erally true, may be applied with special signifi- 
 cance to the age of the Renaissance — that 
 mighty period of dissolution and reconstruc- 
 tion, of the reabsorption of old material, and 
 of the development of new principles, of dis- 
 coveries and inventions mutually strengthen- 
 ing one another, and tending to diffuse and 
 render permanent the power of man. If we 
 ask, what was the Renaissance? the lovers of 
 art will answer that it was the change pro- 
 duced on painting, architecture, and sculpture, 
 by the study of newly recovered antiques ; nor 
 will they agree about the value of this change ; 
 for some deplore it as the decadence of true 
 inspiration, others hail it as the dawning of a 
 brief but glorious day. The scholar means by 
 
 (1) The Renaissance. Oxford, Henry Hammans, 
 1863, p. a 
 
 17 
 
the Renaissance that discovery of ancient 
 manuscripts and that progress in philology 
 which led to a correct knowledge of classical 
 literature, to new systems of philosophy, to a 
 fresh taste in poetry, to a deeper insight into 
 language, and, finally, to the great Lutheran 
 schism and the emancipation of modern 
 thought. The jurist understands by the term 
 a dissolution of old systems of law based upon 
 the False Decretals, the acquisition of a true 
 text of the Corpus Juris, and generally the 
 opening of a new era for jurisprudence. Ask 
 the historian of political Europe what marked 
 the age of the Renaissance, and he will talk of 
 the abolition of feudalism, of French interfer- 
 ence in Italian affairs, of the tendency to cen- 
 tralisation, of the growth of great monarchies, 
 and of diplomacy, which was the instrument 
 by which kings established their supremacy, 
 and wrought out their schemes of self-ag- 
 grandisement. Besides, we hear of the dis- 
 covery of America, and of the exploration of 
 the East; the true system of the world is ex- 
 plained by Copernicus; Vesalius teaches us 
 
 18 
 
how man is made ; printing, engraving, paper, 
 the compass, gun-powder, all start suddenly 
 into being to aid the dissolution of what is rot- 
 ten and must perish, to strengthen and per- 
 petuate the new and useful and life-giving. 
 Yet, if we rightly consider the question, we 
 shall find that neither one of these answers, nor 
 yet indeed all of them together, can adequately 
 explain the multiplicity and apparent incon- 
 gruity of those phenomena which made the 
 interval between 1450 and 1550 the most mar- 
 vellous period that the world has ever known. 
 In the word Renaissance, or palingenesis, in 
 the idea of Europe arousing herself from the 
 torpor of trance and incubation which weighed 
 upon her for ten centuries, we detect a spiritual 
 regeneration, a natural crisis, not to be ex- 
 plained by this or that phenomenon of its de- 
 velopment, but to be accepted as a gigantic 
 movement for which at length the time was 
 come, which had been anticipated by the 
 throes of centuries, which was aided and ex- 
 tended by external incidents, and which still 
 continues to live and move and expand within 
 
 19 
 
us, by virtue of its own power, and of the mar- 
 vellous mechanical inventions that preserve to 
 us inviolably each onward step in its progress 
 towards maturity." 
 
 It may be impossible to analyse the causes 
 which produced this re-awakening of intellect- 
 ual energy. But it is not beyond the scope of 
 criticism to sketch out its essential character, 
 and to describe the main conditions imder 
 which it was effected. In the first place, we 
 must bear steadily in mind the fact that the 
 Renaissance was, above all things, a spiritual 
 process, a reacquisition of mental lucidity and 
 moral independence after centuries of purblind 
 somnambulism. For this reason, I have 
 elected to define the genius of Renaissance as 
 the New Spirit; and I propose to consider, as 
 broadly and generally as possible, what were 
 the leading characteristics of this New Spirit. 
 
 Antecedent circumstances, affecting the 
 whole of Europe in varying degrees, rendered 
 the emergence of spiritual liberty possible. 
 These were the absorption of the Teutonic bar- 
 barians into a common political system, at the 
 
 20 
 
head of which stood the Holy Roman Church 
 and the Holy Roman Empire ; the assimilation 
 of one religious creed by all parts and parcels 
 of the European community; the definition of 
 those integers as separate nationalities, with 
 languages of their own, and similar monarch- 
 ical institutions; the possession by them all of 
 one learned language in the Latin tongue; 
 finally, the gradual relaxation of the mediaeval 
 dualism of Church and Empire, and the high 
 degree of autonomy and social comfort at- 
 tained by the Italians. The reason why Italy 
 took the lead in the Renaissance may be found 
 not only in her favourable geographical and 
 economical conditions, but also in her un- 
 broken connection with the antique past, her 
 intolerance of feudalism, and her essentially 
 mundane temperament. The power of the 
 Empire had been sapped by its localization in 
 Germany, by the rivalries of monarchies and 
 republics claiming independence, and by the 
 fierce war waged against the House of Hohen- 
 stauifen through successive papacies. The au- 
 thority of the Church had been weakened by 
 
 21 
 
her Avignonian exile, by the councils of Con- 
 stance and Basle, by Wycliffe and the Lollards 
 in England, by the Hussites in Bohemia, by 
 the heretics of Provence, the Paterines of 
 Italy. 
 
 The Occidental nations, in the last years of 
 the Middle Ages, had thus attained a point at 
 which, without being conscious of a coming 
 change, they were ready to enter upon a new 
 epoch of civilization. We might compare them 
 to a liquid mass of molten metal at the moment 
 when it is about to settle down and solidify. 
 When that happens, it is not the whole mass 
 which suddenly becomes stationary, but the 
 curdling process begins in what may be called 
 the most propitious quarter. Here a crust or a 
 cake forms, and this acts like a nucleus for the 
 surrounding fluid substance. Something of the 
 same sort occurs in all processes of crystalliza- 
 tion or gelation. These analogies are clearly 
 defective; for what took place at the begin- 
 ning of the Renaissance ought properly to be 
 compared to organic rather than to solidifying 
 change. We could perhaps discover a better 
 
 22 
 
metaphor in embryology, appealing to that 
 speck in the ovum out of which the complex 
 vital structure has to be evolved. However, 
 let that pass. In the phenomenon with which 
 we are now occupied, the propitious quarter, 
 the nucleus of the ovum, was Italy. The 
 reasons for this priority of the Italians have 
 been already assigned. They never broke with 
 the Roman past. They absorbed the Ostro- 
 goths and Lombards. They resisted feudal- 
 ism. They kept their language close to Latin. 
 Their cities bore antique names, and abounded 
 in monuments of the classical past. They 
 created the Roman Church, and at the same 
 time they were the least imposed on by its 
 spiritual pretensions. Farther than all the 
 sister-nations, they had advanced upon the path 
 of material and social prosperity. They held 
 the trade of the world in their grasp. They 
 lived in diplomatical and commercial relations 
 with the East, which was only known to Eng- 
 lishmen and Franks and Germans as the land 
 of hated unbelievers. They owned no allegi- 
 ance to kings, and were loosely bound together 
 
 28 
 
in a mesh of independent, mutually repellent 
 and attractive city-states. It devolved upon 
 them therefore to revive the positive and plastic 
 genius of the antique world, and by combining 
 this with what remained alive of medisevalism, 
 to give form and substance to that hybrid 
 which I have called the New Spirit. 
 
 These considerations help us to understand 
 the importance of the Emperor Frederick II. 
 in the history of the Renaissance; the hatred 
 with which he inspired orthodox Christians ; his 
 precocious prefigurement of the coming epoch. 
 I must repeat that the Renaissance was essen- 
 tially intellectual — an outburst of mental and 
 moral independence. The first and leading 
 note of it is the reassertion of the individual in 
 his rights to think and feel, to shape his con- 
 duct according to the dictates of his reason. 
 The resurgence of personality in the realm of 
 thought lies at the root of the whole matter. In 
 the sphere of action, personality played freely 
 enough throughout the Middle Ages. But 
 men were agreed then to accept a certain sys- 
 tem of thought, elaborated mainly by Church- 
 
 24 
 
men. Dominant conceptions prevailed. We 
 have the spectacle of whole nations in move- 
 ment towards the Holy Land, governed by a 
 romantic idea. We have the no less instructive 
 spectacle of Henry of England doing penance 
 at the shrine of Becket, of Henry of Germany 
 kneeling in the snow at Canossa. But now 
 comes Frederick II., the most mundane and 
 humane of rulers, so far as we can judge him 
 through the mists of prejudice and calumny; 
 also the most sceptical, most positive, perhaps 
 most cynical of thinkers. He undertakes a 
 Crusade, and brings it to a not inglorious con- 
 clusion by a treaty with the Sultan. He stocks 
 his castles of Apuha with Saracen troops, and 
 colonizes waste lands with infidels. His court 
 is the rallying-point for free-thinkers, artists, 
 men of letters, selected without regard for 
 creed or nationality. He is an incarnation of 
 the first effective force of the Renaissance — 
 personahty in the sphere of thought, self-con- 
 scious of its aims, self-governed in its conduct. 
 During this shifting of the scenes from 
 mediaeval to modern modes of thinking, in this 
 
 25 
 
gestation of the New Spirit and creation of 
 the hybrid which shall fuse past and future to 
 form our present, it is impossible to distinguish 
 objects very clearly. The protagonists of the 
 movement often seem to contradict themselves. 
 Frederick II. issues edicts against the Cathari 
 and Paterini, probably because he regarded 
 them as social anarchists, possibly because he 
 strove in his diplomacy to humor the Church. 
 Out of the midst of positive and practical Italy 
 arise the last great flaming stars of Christian 
 faith, St. Francis and St. Dominic. The 
 Church is still so vital that she comprehends the 
 utility of incorporating the Umbrian visionary 
 and the Spanish tyrant over souls into her sys- 
 tem. Still, whether we regard Frederick II., 
 or Francis and Dominic, the fact of sharply 
 defined individuality emerges into prominence. 
 Dante, whose master-work, the Divine 
 Comedy, is rightly held to be the everlasting 
 monument of mediasvalism on the eve of disso- 
 lution, illustrates the same fact. He remained 
 within the sphere of mediaeval ideas in his reli- 
 gious creed, his philosophy, his political ideals. 
 
 26 
 
But he displayed his personal independence, 
 the freedom of his intellect, not merely in the 
 critical judgments he passed upon the lowest 
 and the most exalted of his predecessors and 
 contemporaries, not merely in the vivid picture 
 he left of Italy seething in internecine civic 
 struggles, but also, and far more effectively, in 
 the quality of his great epic. Whatever else 
 the Divine Comedy may be, it is the record of 
 the man who made it, the intense and fiery self - 
 delineation of a haughty spirit. Previous 
 literature of the mediaeval epoch had given 
 birth to nothing of the sort. At one bound art 
 leapt from the region of dim generalities or 
 genial arras-work, into that of incisive defini- 
 tions and glyptic purity of outline. The New 
 Spirit, in its first phase of personality, self- 
 conscious and self-assertive, shone forth 
 through Dante's poem, albeit the atmosphere 
 he breathed, the material he handled, were still 
 mediaeval. 
 
 The second phase in this genesis of the New 
 Spirit may be described as Curiosity, Person- 
 ality had shaken itself to some extent free. In 
 
 27 
 
what are called the heresies of the mediaeval 
 epoch, it showed a will to investigate principles, 
 to interrogate Church doctrine, to reconstitute 
 the scheme of society upon some fresh basis. 
 Personality began to vindicate the rights of the 
 natural man, queried the condemnation of the 
 flesh and senses, lusted after the world in 
 thought as well as deed. In men like Wychff e 
 and Huss it disputed the sole right of clerical 
 tradition to settle interpretations of Scripture. 
 In Joachim of Flora it anticipated a revelation 
 superior to that of Christ and his Apostles. In 
 the Goliardi and the lyrists of Provence, it gave 
 the agreeable form of literary art to appetites 
 and sentiments. In the school of the Averr- 
 hoists it undermined those postulates and 
 axioms upon which the huge edifice of scholas- 
 ticism, triumphant in Thomas of Aquino, had 
 been raised. In the court of Frederick II. it 
 exhibited a temper akin to that of Gallio. Pre- 
 pared by these processes of incipient scepti- 
 cism, which were still carried on within the ring- 
 fence of mediaeval habits of thought, semi- 
 emancipated personality now turned with eager 
 
 28 
 
inquisitive eyes to the vast neglected store of 
 human experience funded in antique literature. 
 Here stretched a whole untraveled empire of 
 the intellect. The men of the Middle Ages, 
 though it lay open to them, had wilfully 
 refused to explore that realm; or, when they 
 crossed its borders, they arrived with preju- 
 dices and preoccupations which obscured their 
 mental vision. The pioneers of the New Spirit, 
 exhilarated by the novelty of their experience, 
 surveyed fertile and abundant regions, beyond 
 the jurisdiction, untainted by the trail, of 
 ecclesiastical authority. Into this paradise of 
 mind and imagination they leapt like boys, for 
 the pure pleasure of the excursion, without any 
 settled intention of rebelling against Mother 
 Church. Their keenly awakened personality 
 made them desire to know what man had been 
 under diverse intellectual and moral conditions, 
 when no thoughts oppressed him of damnation 
 and eternity. Seeking thus, they arrived at a 
 superior self-knowledge, and became aw are of 
 their own liberty. To their ineffable satisfac- 
 
 29 
 
tion they entered into the possession of a nobler 
 and serener earth. 
 
 "Largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit 
 Purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt." 
 
 That Elysium of the classic past was crowded 
 with gods and heroes, with orators and poets 
 and historians. Its monuments of art and liter- 
 ature were supereminent in beauty and in pas- 
 sion; throbbing with lyric life, pulsing with 
 music, resonant with song, resplendent ^vith 
 imagined light and colour. Its records un- 
 rolled majestic pageants of rising and falling 
 empires, of glorious actions and heroic lives. 
 In this congenial atmosphere their own resus- 
 citated senses seemed to thrive. Their frost- 
 bound perceptions thavv^ed, their cramped limbs 
 began to move with new delight in living. The 
 natural man, no longer cowed by the conviction 
 of his sinfulness, stood up and faced the heav- 
 ens. The carnal appetites were dignified by 
 contact with ideal loveliness and tragic destiny. 
 This, I imagine, was the attitude of mind 
 which resulted in Humanism, We are wont to 
 talk about the "Revival of Learning." But 
 
 %0 
 
let us not forget the sense of inebriation, the 
 revel and the riot, which attended that irrup- 
 tion of mediseval scholars into the Elysium of 
 the past. Let us realise the intense joy with 
 which they discovered that this Elysium was no 
 dream, but concrete fact, was in sober earnest 
 the truth of what men had been, might again 
 be, ought to be, were made to be. In their first 
 exultation, they dubbed their acquisitions by 
 the significant title of ''Humaniora" or the 
 things which properly belong to man, as dis- 
 tinguished from things with which the Church 
 and scholasticism defrauded and perplexed his 
 reason. 
 
 Petrarch is the hero of this stage. He com- 
 bined a personality no less defined and even 
 more self-conscious than Dante's, with the 
 curiosity of the New Spirit. His book of 
 poems upon Laura is the subtle analysis of a 
 highly sensitive soul. His affection for the 
 author of the Confessions proves him to have 
 been already possessed with the ache and 
 yearning of the modern temperament — '*la 
 maladie de la pensee — I'amour de Fimpossible 
 
 81 
 
— rautopsie psychologique de Tame." This 
 was one aspect of Petrarch's genius. The 
 other was a manful belief in scholarship, a per- 
 ception that classic literature would furnish the 
 means of spiritual rehabilitation. He was the 
 first to understand that the dignity of man as a 
 rational being must be re-established, not by 
 combating theology, but by leaving it alone, 
 and by assimilating the wisdom of the ancients. 
 Petrarch approached the classics with the tact 
 and sensibility which had been lacking to medi- 
 aeval students. Virgil, and Ovid, and Cicero 
 were for him no magicians, no heretics, and no 
 mystagogues, but men of like nature with him- 
 self, superior indeed in culture, yet such as he 
 could comprehend, make friends with, learn 
 from. Petrarch bridged the chasm of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, even as Milton's Satan, when he 
 made that traversable roadway across chaos. 
 After him scholars freely passed into Elysium 
 and returned into the world of common day. 
 History was seen to be continuous, and the 
 unity of the human race was demonstrated. 
 Humanism, when once started by Petrarch, 
 
 82 
 
rapidly pursued its course of accumulation and 
 assimilation. The tale of the Revival in its 
 several stages — collection of manuscripts, in- 
 terpretation of texts, study of style, resuscita- 
 tion of Greek learning, printing, translation, 
 and so forth— has been so often told that there 
 is no need to retrace it. I must pause, how- 
 ever, to contemplate the mental and moral atti- 
 tude of the humanists more closely. 
 
 "We go," said Cyriac of Ancona, "to awake 
 the dead." It was in that frame of mind that 
 Petrarch's immediate successors entered the 
 classical Elysium by the bridge which he had 
 built. But the dead whom they found there 
 were at once seen to be the really living. These 
 scholars then came back with the firm convic- 
 tion that contemporary people of importance 
 — hair-splitting dialecticians, superstitious 
 quacks, relic-mongers, jugglers with holy ves- 
 sels, salesmen of absolutions — were the dead or 
 dying. Defunct and obsolete for them were 
 Fathers of the Church, doctors seraphic and 
 angelic, doctors of laws, saints of silly miracles, 
 childish worshippers at shrines, sleek, cunning 
 
 83 
 
Levites in the tabernacle. Alive and luminous 
 with ever-during glory rose the poets and 
 philosophers, the orators and statesmen, the 
 artists and law-givers, of the ancient world. 
 These worthies and heroes had either lived be- 
 fore Christ or had ignored the shining of his 
 light. Therefore Dante, although he described 
 them as — 
 
 "Genti con occhi tardi e gravi 
 Di grande autorita ne* lor sembianti" — 
 
 placed them, without the smallest sense of the 
 injustice and absurdity of their damnation, 
 upon the first circle of Hell, within earshot of 
 the wailings and the shriekings which eternally 
 rise from its torture-chambers. The humanists 
 having adopted these same noble personages as 
 their sole guides in the lore of living, as the 
 only teachers of true wisdom, could not main- 
 tain the orthodox attitude of reprobation. Yet 
 scholarship was too engrossed with its own 
 labour of discovery to open a crusade against 
 Church practices or dogmas. Why waste valu- 
 able time in squabbles with ignorant authority 
 when that wonderful region, the dreamland of 
 
 34 
 
a reality more real, a truth more true than daily 
 life, awaited exploration? In this way pagan- 
 ism filtered tacitly but surely, like an elixir of 
 fresh mountain air, or like a miasma from foul 
 marshes — according to the point of view one 
 takes of the matter — into the intellectual con- 
 stitution of humanism. The significance of 
 this will appear at a later point of our inquiry. 
 At present it is enough to remark that the curi- 
 osity of the New Spirit early generated 
 Rationalism, 
 
 We cannot connect the rapid growth of the 
 fine arts in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies immediately with the Revival of Learn- 
 ing. But we can show that the arts, like learn- 
 ing, derived energy from the curiosity of self- 
 conscious personalities, aroused to vivid inter- 
 est in the world around them. As Petrarch 
 revealed a new insight into literature, so Giotto 
 and Nicolo Pisano displayed a sense of natural 
 beauty, a feeling for form and composition, a 
 power over dramatic action and emotional ex- 
 pression, which had been unknown in the Mid- 
 dle Ages. The painters and the sculptors of 
 
 35 
 
the early Renaissance looked on the world 
 around them with eyes from which the scales 
 of centuries had fallen. They soon began to 
 particularize, each individual forming his man- 
 ner, selecting what pleased or touched him 
 most in nature, aiming solely at the best and 
 truest interpretation. This led to profound 
 study of details, careful anatomy and drawing 
 of the human nude, elaborate experiments in 
 perspective, subtle attempts to render atmo- 
 sphere, exquisite sympathy with plant-struc- 
 ture, birds, beasts, flowers, and shells. At first 
 the artists served the Church. Giotto and his 
 school covered the cathedrals of Italy with 
 Bible histories, legends of the saints, allegories 
 relating to ecclesiastical dogma. But when 
 the Revival of Learning filled men's minds 
 with classical mythology and story, the artists 
 turned their attention with fresh delight and 
 with no less scrupulous sympathy to the Greek 
 Pantheon and the deeds of Roman worthies. 
 Art was indifferent to the spiritual nature of 
 the subject, impartial in the bestowal of her 
 skill and pains. After this fashion sculpture 
 
 36 
 
and painting assisted Humanism, by exhibit- 
 ing through plastic form and colour the unity 
 of the spirit of man under both Christian and 
 pagan aspects. St. Sebastian might have been 
 a Christian martyr, and Antinous the deified 
 mignon of a pagan emperor ; but art only saw 
 their common qualities of beauty, convenient 
 opportunities for depicting naked young men 
 in the prime of life. A dead Christ and a liv- 
 ing Hercules had equal merit if the torso was 
 well modelled. Female charm shone forth in 
 St. Lucy and the Magdalene as agreeably as in 
 Aphrodite and the Graces. Moreover, in addi- 
 tion to this reduction of both pagan and 
 Christian subject-matter to a common assthet- 
 ical denominator, the Rne arts contributed what 
 may be called Naturalism to the characteris- 
 tics of the New Spirit. Naturalism was the 
 product of artistic curiosity, as Rationalism 
 had been the product of the humanistic curios- 
 ity. 
 
 This is a point of some importance. 
 Sculptors and painters worked in complete 
 independence. So long as they did not outrage 
 
 37 
 
religious feeling and moral decency too 
 brutally, they were free to follow their own 
 predilections. Like Signorelli, they might 
 cover the arabesques of Heaven and Hell with 
 male and female nudities displayed in gro- 
 tesque and fantastic postures. Like Filarete, 
 they might mould the Rape of Ganymede upon 
 the bronze gates of St. Peter's. Their duty 
 was to succeed in beautiful presentation and 
 expression. In order to arrive at this result 
 they laboured v> ith enthusiasm at the technique 
 of their crafts, they studied natural objects 
 minutely, and made themselves familiar with 
 every form of fact. Naturalism, as liberated 
 by artistic practice, proved later on of great 
 service to the physical sciences. It stimulated 
 habits of close observation, bred a craving after 
 exact knowledge, freed the mind from preju- 
 dices regarding the uncleanliness or repulsive- 
 ness of anything which could be found in 
 nature. Some of the earliest mathematicians, 
 anatomists, physiologists, in Italy were artists. 
 In Leo Battista Alberti, in Leonardo da Vinci, 
 in Michelangelo Buonarotti, we have men who 
 
 38 
 
combined the subtlest sensibility to carnal 
 beauty, the most thorough command of form 
 and colour, with profound practical science 
 and with those prophetical indagations which 
 contain the germs of luminous discovery. 
 [Naturalism, again, is the direct opposite of 
 mysticism. Insofar as mediseval Christianity 
 was mystical, the figurative and naturalistic 
 representation of its dogmas inflicted serious 
 injury upon the fabric of the creed. The 
 Creator did not gain in dignity by being repre- 
 sented as an old man v/ith a hoary beard. The 
 Trinity v/as reduced to the same level as the 
 Pope, when it appeared as a robed pontiff with 
 a triple crown; it became ridiculous under the 
 aspect of an old man, a white dove, and a cruci- 
 fix. Moreover, people soon perceived that 
 Pagan mythology was not only more enticing 
 and attractive, but also more adapted to plastic 
 presentation, than the mythology of the 
 Christian faith. Gods and heroes, nymphs and 
 Graces, suited the sensuousness of arts which 
 aimed at corporeal loveliness, far better than 
 emaciated saints, disgusting martyrdoms, 
 
 39 
 
crucifixions, and infernal torments. Silent and 
 unperceived, art, by its naturalism, sapped 
 orthodoxy much in the same way as scholar- 
 ship, by its rationalism, was serving the same 
 purpose. 
 
 Naturalism did not confine its influence to 
 the arts of form and colour. It very early 
 invaded literature, especially fiction, poetry, 
 and narrative. Boccaccio, like his master, 
 Petrarch, was both a humanist and a poet of 
 marked individuality. In his former capacity 
 he gave a start to the study of Greek, and did 
 yeoman's service by making miscellaneous 
 compilations and collections from the classics. 
 In poetry he ranks as the first and one of the 
 greatest of modern naturalists. This is evi- 
 dent, not only in the Decameron^ but also in the 
 versified romances which he composed so flu- 
 ently. Boccaccio bequeathed to Italy a pecu- 
 liar type of literature, in close relation to the 
 plastic arts, which, after passing through the 
 hands of Sannazaro, Pulci, De Medici, Poli- 
 ziano, Boiardo, Bandello, reached its climax in 
 Ariosto. The enormous influence exercised by 
 
 40 
 
this great writer over posterity was not due to 
 the commanding grandeur of his genius, but 
 to the fact that naturalism formed an essential 
 ingredient of the New Spirit. Boccaccio, as 
 novelist, remained unrivalled; but, as poet, he 
 fell below the level of Poliziano and Boiardo. 
 It was his merit to have imported crude, un- 
 abashed, and jocund naturalism into the sphere 
 of monumental literature. 
 
 The New Spirit advanced under retarding 
 influences of Catholicity and mediasval dul- 
 ness. These drawbacks, however, were not so 
 formidable as might appear. Neither scholar- 
 ship nor art assumed a position of direct antag- 
 onism to Christianity; and though they were 
 creating an intellectual atmosphere in which 
 orthodoxy could not hope to survive and thrive, 
 their first aspect seemed both innocent and 
 agreeable. The Church had become secular 
 and mundane, indifferent to her real essence 
 and vocation, merged in diplomacies and com- 
 promises. Unaware of any special danger, 
 her most enhghtened sons, men dedicated to 
 study by the fact of their profession, felt the 
 
 41 
 
gust of the new intellectual life abroad in 
 Europe. Her chiefs, the popes and cardinals, 
 regarded scholarship as an adornment of their 
 social culture, and art as a convenient hand- 
 maid of their faith. The one was welcomed in 
 the palace and the council chamber, the other 
 in the cathedral and the oratory. Humanism, 
 in particular, proved at the outset a substantial 
 ally against astrologers, Averrhoists, wrangl- 
 ing scholastics, sordid monks, and all the 
 fanatical free-lances who are obnoxious to 
 privileged establishments. The fabric of the 
 Church appeared so solid, humanism so en- 
 lightened, art so pious, that Catholicity felt 
 justified in swimming with the tide. She 
 thought, and not unreasonably thought, that 
 she might acclimatise the New Spirit and 
 secure it for her service, as she had annexed the 
 fervent charity of Francis, the persecuting 
 zeal of Dominic. Owing to the easy-going 
 temper of the Roman Curia, and to the indif- 
 ference of scholarship for theological disputes, 
 the New Spirit obtained a century of quiet 
 working at the very centre of European life. 
 
 42 
 
When the Great Schism came to an end, 
 and the Popes returned to reign in Rome, the 
 triumph of humanism was secured. The first 
 pontiff of this new regime, Nicholas V., was a 
 distinguished scholar, derived in a direct Ime 
 from Petrarch. The next pontiff of impor- 
 tance, Pius II., was a versatile diplomatist and 
 man of letters, somewhat akin to Leo Battista 
 Alberti in temperament, sensitive at all points 
 to the charms of nature and of art, enamoured 
 with the delicacies and ingenuities of human- 
 istic rhetoric. These men gave tone to the 
 Papacy, when Rome once more became a 
 capital, and when the Holy See entered into 
 political relations on .a common footing with 
 the despots and repubhcs of Italy. 
 
 The whole peninsula at this period (1447- 
 1464) had been saturated with humanism. 
 Scholars educated in the lecture-rooms of 
 Filelfo and Guarino held office as chancellors, 
 secretaries, envoys, orators on state occasions, 
 protonotaries, court-chamberlains. The new 
 learning was the passport for young men of 
 ability into all places of secular and ecclesi- 
 
 43 
 
astical importance. No one regarded their 
 morality, theii' orthodoxy, their private opin- 
 ions or their personal conduct. It was sufficient 
 if they commanded the main things needful at 
 the moment: the tongue of the fluent rhetori- 
 cian, the pen of the ready writer, the memory 
 of the student stocked with antique erudition. 
 We marvel at the rapidity with which this 
 modern type of culture supplanted mediaeval- 
 ism. But the rapidity w^hich moves our wonder 
 is the proof of healthy and organic growth. 
 One eminent family at Florence contributed in 
 no small measure to the triumph of the New 
 Spirit. The Medici, through four generations, 
 beginning with Cosimo Pater Patriae, passing 
 through Lorenzo the Magnificent and Leo X., 
 culminating in Clement VII., sustained the 
 cause of humanism and of art. Nor did they 
 stand alone. The lords of Milan and Rimini, 
 the kings of Naples, the dukes of Ferrara and 
 Urbino, all the minor potentates in every city- 
 state, vied wdth one another in conforming to 
 this novel type of civility. Italians of all 
 regions and all political diversities found them- 
 
 M 
 
selves confederated by common sympathy with 
 the New Spirit. 
 
 Meanwhile, Christianity continued to be 
 the official religion of the nation. But the tem- 
 per of the new civility was pagan. Sensuous 
 in art, sceptical in study, it rejected asceticism 
 and derided dogma. "Let us enjoy the Papacy 
 now that we have got it," said one Pope. "If 
 we believe nothing ourselves, there is no reason 
 why we should interfere with believers," said 
 another. "How much hath that lie of Christ 
 profited the world," is a third of these Papal 
 utterances. And those who acted more than 
 they spoke — Popes like Sixtus IV. and Alex- 
 ander VI. — presented a glaring spectacle of 
 Antichrist enthroned upon St. Peter's chair. 
 If such were the shepherds, judge what were 
 the flocks! 
 
 The paganism of the Italian Renaissance, 
 of which so much has been said, and justly, was 
 a very real thing. Humanism and art, by 
 returning to Greek and Roman ideals of 
 thought and conduct, and by emphasising the 
 sensuous elements of life, created a fine aesthetic 
 
 45 
 
atmosphere, in which the emancipated person- 
 ality of the modern men moved freely, feeling 
 at liberty to sport with natural inclinations. 
 Vices and passions had been frequent enough, 
 and forcible enough, in the mediasval period; 
 but then they were recognized as sins and con- 
 tradictions of the dominant ideal. Now they 
 assumed forms of elegance and beauty, claim- 
 ing condonation on the score of polite culture. 
 The scepticism inherent in men who criticised 
 Christianity from the standpoint of antique 
 manners, terminated in a not repulsive cynic- 
 ism. Society strove to be epicurean, but did 
 not quite succeed, for the barbarian and the 
 ascetic had not been eradicated. 
 
 The paganism of the Renaissance might be 
 described as moral and religious indifference, 
 an attitude of not ungenial toleration towards 
 believers and unbelievers, saints and sinners. 
 In like manner the rationalism of the Renais- 
 sance was intellectual indiiterence, interest in 
 thoughts without regard for the sources whence 
 they came or the particular shade of opinion 
 they denoted. The naturalism of the Renais- 
 
 46 
 
sance was sensuous indifference, an attitude of 
 sympathetic observation toward everything in 
 nature, without false shame or loathing, an 
 openness of sensibihty to all impressions. These 
 three factors were needed for the formation of 
 the modern analytical spirit, which is impartial 
 in judgment, unprejudiced for or against reli- 
 gious and ethical codes, reckless as to the 
 results of its method, indifferent as to the 
 moral or sesthetical qualities of the thing to be 
 examined. To this point, then, had the union 
 of personality with cm'iosit}^ or mental appe- 
 tite brought the Italians in the golden age, as 
 it is absurdly called, of Leo X. 
 
 The Revival of Learning was accom- 
 plished. That is to say, the Greek and Latin 
 authors which we now possess, had, with a very 
 few exceptions, been printed, commented and 
 translated. During the course of this process, 
 a new organ was added to the modern mind, 
 which had been completely lacking in the Mid- 
 dle Ages. The elucidation of ancient authors, 
 the settlement of texts, and the comparison of 
 manuscripts, produced Criticism, Generated 
 
 47 
 
in the pagan milieu of the earher Renaissance, 
 criticism naturally attacked the superstitions 
 and the vices of the clergy. But in Italy this 
 was done with good humour by humanists like 
 Poggio and novelists like Bandello. They did 
 not mean mischief, and aimed at no revolution 
 in the Church. The situation became more 
 delicate when Christian dogma, ecclesiastical 
 tradition, the principles of private and public 
 ethics, the Bibhcal cosmology, the philosophy 
 of Aquinas, were subjected in turn to destruct- 
 ive analysis. It was at the Court of Naples, 
 during the warfare carried on between the 
 House of Aragon and the Holy See, that 
 humanism first showed its teeth in earnest. 
 Lorenzo Valla attacked the temporahties of 
 Rome by his treatise on "The erroneously be- 
 lieved and falsely fabricated Donation of Con- 
 stantine.'* The same critic declared the epistle 
 of Christ to Abgarus a forgery, sneered at the 
 bad Latin of the Vulgate, and denied the 
 authenticity of the Apostles' creed. Machia- 
 veUi, working in another region, openly pro- 
 claimed that the monastic virtues of humility 
 
 48 
 
and obedience sapped virility and character. 
 He proved the Papacy to have been the source 
 of moral and political weakness to Italy. He 
 studied history from a coldly analytical and 
 positive point of view, treating mankind as a 
 political community, governed by ability and 
 might, without reference to a provident Deity. 
 Copernicus, in the field of astronomy, 
 dethroned Ptolemy, and made the sun the cen- 
 tre of our system. Pomponazzo called the 
 immortality of the soul in question. Telesio 
 pronounced that interrogation of Nature is 
 the only basis for a ^ound philosophy. On all 
 sides, therefore, criticism initiated a revolt 
 against authority. That independent and self- 
 conscious personality, which formed the vital 
 principle of the Renaissance movement, had 
 arrived at asserting the right of private judg- 
 ment. Fortified by curiosity, rationalism, 
 naturalism, the critical reason now rejected 
 everything which could not be proved by posi- 
 tive methods of analysis. In other words, 
 Modern Science had been born. 
 
 Down to the end of Leo X.'s reign, this 
 
 49 
 
advance of criticism caused little uneasiness. 
 Society, including the Church, was imbued 
 with humanistic scepticism and aesthetic sensu- 
 ousness. The gay and glittering life of the 
 Renaissance dazzled the eyes of all men. What 
 if professors in dark corners blurted out un- 
 comfortable truths? The weighty bearings 
 of their utterances were not perceived. 
 Scandals raised by Valla's heresy and Pom- 
 ponazzo's materialism disappeared before the 
 dubious assertion that, while they speculated 
 as philosophers, they believed as Christians. 
 This convenient sophistry cloaked a multitude 
 of sins. The Copernican hypothesis was 
 laughed at as an incredible theory started by a 
 visionary barbarian from the shores of the 
 Baltic. Telesio passed for a harmless natural 
 philosopher, a kind of botanist or conchologist. 
 No one noticed the significance of the discovery 
 of America, the exploration of the globe, the 
 proof of the Antipodes. It sufficed in Lateran 
 Councils to confirm the views of the mediaeval 
 Church upon disputed topics. This was the 
 sop which a sceptical Pope threw to ecclesias- 
 
 50 
 
tics alarmed by the steady spread of neological 
 opinions. 
 
 It is well to pause here for a moment and 
 review the position which the New Spirit had 
 secured in Italy. In literature, art and specu- 
 lation, it enjoyed an almost untrammelled in- 
 tellectual liberty. But the temper of the race 
 did not favour searching theological discus- 
 sions, and the time was not quite ripe for an 
 outburst of revolutionary metaphysic. The 
 humanists were too indifferent and easy-going 
 — ^lapped in their Elysium of antiquity. They 
 aimed at culture more than the discovery of 
 truth. Their paganism wore a self-indulgent 
 and immoral aspect. They sneered at 
 Christianity. In their cynicism they did not 
 care for religion, and were well contented to 
 leave a Church alone, which so conveniently 
 fostered their tastes and condoned their vices. 
 Moreover, we must not forget that we are trac- 
 ing the history of a hybrid. The blending of 
 present with past, of pagan with Christian, of 
 ancient with modern, produced an inevitable 
 confusion in men's minds. Thought could not 
 
 51 
 
run quite clear from the sediment of decaying 
 mysticism, dogmatism, authority. It hardly 
 knew the nature of its own audacity imtil the 
 apparition of Giordano Bruno. Art was ham- 
 pered and indecisive between Olympus and 
 Calvary, literature clogged by mediaeval 
 reminiscences and scholastic pedantry. The 
 New Spirit, although so vigorous, still re- 
 mained a perplexed and seeking force — per- 
 plexed by opposing currents of influence, cum- 
 bered by erudition, seeking adjustments, grop- 
 ing after exits. The like is true of society and 
 individuals. We have only to study the 
 biographies of typical personages, a Michel- 
 angelo, a Cellini, a Roderigo Borgia, in order 
 to perceive that the same contradictions existed 
 in life as in the genius of the age. What makes 
 the Renaissance so fascinating and so difBcult 
 to handle is the fact of its hybridism. 
 
 But now the tide began to take a serious 
 turn. Himianism had been transplanted be- 
 yond the Alps. Criticism armed the scholars 
 of Germany with artillery far more efficient 
 than those light guns of the Italian sceptics. 
 
 52 
 
The Germans believed in Christianity, and 
 clung to their religion. Horrified by the 
 paganism of the South, indignant at the 
 cynical hypocrisy of infidel Popes and pre- 
 lates, irritated beyond measure by the sale of 
 indulgences for the building of a pompous 
 temple, the people stirred in revolt against 
 Rome. Their leading humanists applied the 
 method of critical analysis to the Bible, not 
 with the intention of sneering Christianity 
 away, but of discovering what was the true 
 essence of creed which had been overgrown — 
 like Glaucus in the myth of Plato — ^by weeds 
 and barnacles at the bottom of that dead sea 
 of ecclesiastical corruption. The Reformation 
 attacked the authority of popes and councils; 
 disputed the traditional dogmas of orthodoxy; 
 proclaimed the fullest liberty of private judg- 
 ment; denounced monasticism and the celi- 
 bacy of the clergy as immoral and unscriptural ; 
 and, what was worse, menaced the very fabric 
 of the Cathohc Church, its temporalities, its 
 hierarchy, its supremacy over souls. 
 
 The Reformation must be regarded as the 
 
 53 
 
product of that intellectual emancipation which 
 started with the curiosity of Petrarch and per- 
 formed the stages I have already described in 
 Italy. Only this new force now animated a 
 race which had no natural bias for the fine arts 
 and letters, which disliked pagan licence, and 
 was not ready to abandon Christian doctrine. 
 Sceptical and revolutionary at its outset, the 
 German Reformation speedily revealed the in- 
 herent conservatism of its promoters. Luther, 
 Zwingli, Calvin, differ as they might in minor 
 details, agreed in preserving the main features 
 of the Christian faith intact. For the author- 
 ity of the Church they substituted the author- 
 ity of the Bible. Less logical than the Italians, 
 they were not conscious of the weakness of their 
 own position. They did not sm-mise that their 
 critical method must lead inevitably to Vol- 
 taire, Renan, and the science of comparative 
 theology. Luther would have been indignant 
 had he been told that he was playing the part of 
 pioneer to coming Comtes and Huxleys. Yet 
 this was the fact, and the Church in Italy per- 
 ceived it. Luterano became equivalent to 
 
 infidel. 
 
 54 
 
The Church girded herself up for a conflict 
 to the death in defence of her religious creeds, 
 her system of discipline, her political interests, 
 her temporal power. The clash of Catholicism 
 and Reformation destroyed the tranquil 
 medium in which the New Spirit had been 
 thriving and advancing toward maturity. Posi- 
 tive, scientific, analytical, the Genius of intel- 
 lectual independence and open-mindedness 
 met with rancorous hostility in both camps. 
 The Reformers of Wittenberg and Zurich and 
 Geneva were at bottom no less opposed to free 
 thought than were the Catholic reactionaries of 
 Spain. Calvin burned Servetus fifty years 
 before the Roman Inquisition burned Bruno. 
 So far as Italy was concerned, the Tridentine 
 Council extinguished, or, to put the case more 
 exactly, drove underground the New Spirit. 
 In Germany the Thirty Years' War annihi- 
 lated civilisation. 
 
 It would be sentimental to deplore the 
 waste of time, of energy, of human life, which 
 this conflict between Reform and Catholic re- 
 action involved for Europe. Considering the 
 
 55 
 
different moral and intellectual temperaments 
 of North and South, the different stages of 
 culture attained by Germany and Italy, the 
 struggle was inevitable. Nor did the New 
 Spirit lose in the end by the retardation of its 
 development. Had it retained the complexion 
 it assumed in Italy during the Renaissance, 
 we should have been ethically poorer and voli- 
 tionally weaker. Imagine a seventeenth- 
 century Prussia ruled in tastes and opinions by 
 humanists like Filelfo and poets like the 
 author of Hermaphroditus! Paganism, barely 
 tolerable in Naples, must have been repulsive 
 when communicated to the coarse and 
 eminently inartistic Borussian temperament. 
 Time, moreover, was needed to leaven the 
 heterogeneous masses of the Occidental nations 
 with a common culture. This has been done 
 by scholarship, and the steady, if slow, advance 
 of scientific thought. The destinies of science 
 were, from the first, secure. And are we not 
 aware that Virtus ^uh ponder e crescit? 
 
 At the commencement of the Catholic re- 
 action some of the calmest and wisest spirits, 
 
 56 
 
who had imbibed the new philosophy of 
 thought, but who were incapable of siding with 
 the Reformers— who had, in fact, gauged the 
 inherent finality and vulgarity of Protestant 
 Dissent in any shape — ^became what I have 
 elsewhere called religious Whigs. The atti- 
 tude of men like Contarini, More, Erasmus, 
 Sarpi, has great interest for the psychologist; 
 and a fascinating book remains to be written 
 upon this group of thinkers. They dreamed 
 that the New Spirit might purge itself of 
 Paganism, that Catholicism might cast off its 
 superstitions and corruptions, that Reform 
 might prove accommodating upon such com- 
 parative trifles as the nature of the eucharist 
 and salvation by faith. They imagined an 
 ideal Europe, in which rehgion and science 
 should coexist, where men should be rational 
 in thought and pious in conduct. But the very 
 conditions of the case rendered this solution of 
 the difficulty impossible. 
 
 That the New Spirit would prove ultimately 
 intransigeant, and irreconcilable to Christian 
 theology, was clearly demonstrated by its last 
 
 57 
 
and noblest representative in Italy. Bruno's 
 life was cut short at the comparatively early 
 age of forty-four, yet he left behind him 
 voluminous writings, from which an adequate 
 idea may be formed of his philosophy. As a 
 personality, endowed with singular courage 
 and remarkable independence, Bruno towers 
 eminent among the powerful characters of that 
 age so rich in individualities. The two cur- 
 rents of Renaissance curiosity, which had pro- 
 duced criticism and naturalism, met and 
 blended in his intellect. As a thinker, his chief 
 merit was to have perceived the true bearings 
 of the Copernican discovery. He saw that the 
 substitution of a heliocentric for the former 
 geocentric theory of our system destroyed at 
 one blow large portions of the Christian myth- 
 ology. But more than this. Copernicus had 
 failed to draw the logical conclusions of his own 
 hypothesis. For him, as for the elder physic- 
 ists, there remained a sphere of fixed stars 
 enclosing the world perceived by our senses 
 within walls of crystal. Bruno asserted the 
 existence of numberless worlds in space illim- 
 
 58 
 
itable. Bolder than his teacher, and nearer to 
 the truth, he passed far beyond the flaming 
 ramparts of the universe, denied that there 
 were any walls, and proclaimed the infinity of 
 space. Space, he thought, is filled with ether, 
 in which an infinite number of solar systems 
 resembling our own, composed of similar mate- 
 rials, and inhabited by countless living crea- 
 tures, move with freedom. Not a single atom 
 in this stupendous complex can be lost or un- 
 accounted for. There is no such thing as birth 
 or death, as generation or dissolution, but only 
 a continual passage of the infinite and homo- 
 geneous substance through successive phases 
 of finite differentiated existence. This general 
 conception of the universe, which coincides with 
 that accepted at the present time by men of 
 science, led Bruno to speculations involving a 
 theory of evolutionary development, and to 
 what would now be called the conservation of 
 energy. Rejecting as untenable the dualism 
 of mind and matter, he argued, from the pres- 
 ence of the intellect in man, and from the uni- 
 versality of form in all phenomena, that the 
 
 59 
 
essence of the whole can best be grasped by our 
 imagination under the analogy of life and 
 spirit. 
 
 This brief summary of Bruno's system 
 makes it evident to what a large extent he anti- 
 cipated not only the philosophies of Descartes, 
 Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hegel, but also the most 
 recent conclusions of natural science. In his 
 treatment of theology and ethics, he was no less 
 original and prophetic. He solved the prob- 
 lem of evil by defining it to be a relative con- 
 dition of imperfect development, not evil in 
 itself, but evil to our partial vision. He denied 
 that any Paradise or Golden Age preceded 
 human history. In his opinion, the fall of 
 man from a primal state of innocence and hap- 
 piness is an absurdity in itself, contradicting 
 all we know about the laws of growth. In 
 morals he inclined toward determinism. Pass- 
 ing to theology in the strict sense of that term, 
 he sketched in outline the comparative study 
 of religions. It is obvious that he regarded no 
 one creed as final, no sacred book as exclus- 
 ively inspired, no single race as chosen, no 
 
 60 i , 
 
teacher or founder of a faith as specially divine, 
 no Church as privileged with salvation. 
 
 To this point had the New Spirit advanced 
 when outraged Catholicism, very naturally, 
 logically, and consistently with the instinct of 
 self-preservation, burned Bruno in 1600. 
 
 The synthesis of criticism and naturalism, 
 which took this form with Bruno, a form usu- 
 ally described as idealism, though Bruno's own 
 aim was to arrive at a probable conception of 
 the imiverse as it actually exists, assumed a 
 different aspect in another group of Italian 
 thinkers, Pomponazzo, Telesio, Gahleo, with 
 the physicists, anatomists, and physiologists of 
 Padua. Their line led up to Bacon, to induct- 
 ive and experimental science. 
 
 It was my business in the present essay to 
 analyse the main characteristics of the New 
 Spirit in the Italian Renaissance. The his- 
 tory of Rationalism, or Naturalism, or Posi- 
 tive Philosophy during the last three centuries, 
 and the sustained conflict of the New Spirit 
 with dogmatic theology, is a subject too vast 
 to be undertaken here. What the issue of that 
 
 61 
 
conflict in the future will be is, I think, already 
 certain. The struggle may continue, perhaps, 
 for centuries, until the New Spirit shall have 
 thoroughly imbued the modern mind, and 
 Christianity be gradually purged of all that is 
 decayed or obsolescent in its creed, retaining 
 only that ethic which we owe to it, and which, 
 though capable of being raised to higher stages, 
 will remain the indestructible possession of the 
 race. 
 
 62 
 
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 
 
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 
 
 It is not our purpose to dwell upon the 
 biography of Mr. Clough, but rather to exam- 
 ine his works, and to show in what their real 
 and vital excellence consists. Yet in order to 
 understand these works, and to explain away 
 some misconceptions which have arisen as to 
 the alleged "wasted genius," "baffled intellect," 
 "unfulfilled purpose," and "disappointed life" 
 of Mr. Clough, which many of his critics bitter- 
 ly deplore, we may preface our review of his 
 poems by a short notice of this biography. His 
 life, which w^as in no sense of the word an event- 
 ful one, falls naturally into three periods. The 
 first embraces his childhood in America; his 
 education at Rugby, under Dr. Arnold,' by con- 
 tact with whose character his own singularly 
 conscientious tone of mind was strengthened to 
 an almost morbid degree; and his Oxford 
 
 65 
 
career. Clough entered upon his life at Ox- 
 ford during the great Tractarian movement; 
 and at an early period of his course he fell 
 under the influence of Ward, the celebrated 
 convert to Romanism. The struggles of this 
 time seem to have entirely shaken his mind 
 upon the most fundamental points of religious 
 belief, and to have caused in him a painful and 
 perturbed state of feeling, from which he was 
 long in recovering. The immediate result of 
 this disturbance appears to have been that he 
 failed to take a first-class in the final examina- 
 tions, gi-eatly to the surprise and disappoint- 
 ment of his friends, and especially of Dr. 
 Arnold, who expected the highest things from 
 him. Gradually, however, he wore off this de- 
 pression, and decided upon following up his 
 career at Oxford. In pursuance of this resolve, 
 he sought and obtained a fellowship at Oriel, 
 and threw himself with energy into the educa- 
 tional work of his college for some years. But 
 doubts as to the honesty of his remaining in this 
 position seem to have survived from his old 
 state of feeling, and to have grown upon him, 
 
 66 
 
until the negative conclusions to which he was 
 forced made him feel obliged to resign his 
 tutorship at Oriel in 1848, and his fellowship 
 soon after in the same year. The magnitude 
 of this sacrifice to principle can only be under- 
 stood by those who are most intimately 
 acquainted with his private history, and who 
 know to what pecuniary difficulties he was ex- 
 posed by the failure of his hitherto certain in- 
 come. It is enough to state that for the rest of 
 his life the making of some money became a 
 paramount necessity ; and, as he was not a man 
 who could mingle literary pursuits with busi- 
 ness, or poetise in the intervals of harassing 
 duties, his artistic productiveness was limited 
 by the barest conditions of daily life. In 1849 
 the second period of his life began : it embraces 
 his Italian journeys, during which he com- 
 posed "Amours de Voyage" and "Dipsychus;" 
 his Principalship of University Hall; and his 
 residence in America. In 1853 he took work in 
 the Educational Department of the Privy 
 Council Office, and in the following year he 
 was married. This introduces the third and last 
 
 67 
 
period of his life. He worked regularly at his 
 official duties, and also took an active interest 
 and part for several years in the labours of his 
 relative, Miss Florence Nightingale. Constant 
 strain of work broke down his health, and he 
 was obliged to travel in the spring and sum 
 m'er of 1861. In the course of this journey he 
 caught a fever which ended his life at Florence 
 at the age of forty-two. 
 
 Such is the briefest outline of Clough's life. 
 Its chief value is to bring out the essential point 
 that the "Bothie," "Amours de Voyage," 
 ''Dipsychus," and "Mari Magno" — the four 
 principal monuments of his poetical genius — 
 were all of them composed in the course of two 
 short periods of holiday and relaxation: the 
 first three during the quiet time which inter- 
 vened between the first and second period we 
 have marked, after he had broken with Oxford 
 and when he had not yet engaged in other 
 work; the last, immediately before his death 
 and during his last journey. The poems 
 themselves bear traces of the scenes and times 
 that gave them birth. The "Bothie" is a rec- 
 
 68 
 
ord of Highland reading parties ; "Amours de 
 Voyage" is full of Roman associations; "Dip- 
 syehus" carries us to Venice; "Mari Magno" 
 combines the influences of a voyage across the 
 Atlantic with several touches caught from 
 Pyrenean, Swiss, and Greek scenery. In so 
 true a sense were Clough's poems the product 
 of his life, and so clearly were the powers of his 
 genius limited, not by their own feebleness or 
 by the wasting action of a morbid intellect, but 
 by the lack of time and opportunity for fuller 
 and more studied compositions. Indeed, we 
 believe that none but those who judge Clough's 
 life and writings by the lowest standard will 
 maintain that his work was insufficient. On the 
 contrary, if we regard the quality rather than 
 the quantity of literary production, our feeling 
 will be surprise at the mere amount of his 
 poetry, especially if we reflect upon the nature 
 of the topics which he handled, the conscien- 
 tious scrupulosity of his nature, both as a poet 
 and as a man, and the various distractions of 
 his life. Clough had nothing of the self-con- 
 scious artist or of theordmarylitterateur about 
 
 69 
 
him. His poems are not flashes on the surface, 
 occasional ]3ieces, or set compositions upon 
 given themes; but the very pith and marrow 
 of a deeply-thinking, deeply-feeling soul — ^the 
 most heartfelt utterances of one who sought to 
 speak out what was in him in the fewest and the 
 simplest words. His horror of artificial lan- 
 guage was often carried to excess. His hatred 
 of affectation betrayed him into baldness. But 
 one thing we uislj be sure to find in him — sin- 
 cerity and sense. 
 
 Those, again, who can divest themselves of 
 social and religious prejudices, and who are 
 strong enough to breathe the fine, rare atmos- 
 phere of thought in which he moved, will 
 acknowledge that it was not he who was irre- 
 ligious, but that this reproach might rather be 
 cast on those of us who blind our eyes, and 
 palter with our conscience, and endeavor to im- 
 pose our intellectual forms and fancies upon 
 God. Clough happened to live during a period 
 of transition in the history of human thought, 
 when it was impossible for a thinking man to 
 avoid problems by their very nature irresoluble 
 
 70 
 
in one lifetime. Loving truth for its own sake, 
 he laid himself open with singular purity and 
 candour of mind to all the onward moving 
 forces in the world around him. He did not try- 
 to make things other than he found them. He 
 refused to tamper with his conscience for the 
 sake of repose in the Romish, or of distinction 
 in the English Church ; nor yet w as he inclined 
 to buy freedom at the price of irreligion. Some 
 natures are capable of these courses. Truth is 
 not all-important to them; they acquiesce in 
 traditional methods of holiness, and in the re- 
 spectabilities of time-hallowed creeds. But 
 Clough was by no means one of this sort. Man- 
 fully and boldly he admitted all the difficulties 
 that occurred to his mind, faced them, scru- 
 tinized them, and maintained in spite of them 
 an invincible confidence in the moral supremacy 
 of good, and in the relation of his own soul to 
 God. He had the strength to cast off much that 
 was dear and honoured in his earliest beliefs, 
 and to fling himself upon a sea of anxious ques- 
 tioning. 
 
 71 
 
Determined to be free and independent, he 
 resigned the valuable post he held as tutor and 
 fellow of Oriel. And in all these things he 
 triumphed : for no one gained a purer or keener 
 insight into the essence, as distinguished from 
 the forms, of religion and morality; no one 
 grasped abstract truths more firmly; no one 
 possessed a fuller humanity, or higher facul- 
 ties of helping and sympathising with his fel- 
 low-men. It was the reality of his religion, its 
 perfect simplicity, its comprehensiveness and 
 spirituality, which made it unintelligible to 
 men of duller intellects and less sensitively 
 scrupulous consciences. They required some- 
 thing more definite than he could give them, 
 something more rough and ready, more fitted 
 for immediate use. They did not care if part of 
 the truth were sacrificed so long as they had 
 solid dogmas to repose upon, and comfortable 
 hopes to cling to. But Clough dreaded every- 
 thing like "adding up too soon" and incomplete 
 conclusions. The insight which most men are 
 impatient to exercise at the outset of life, he 
 hoped might possibly be granted to him at its 
 
 72 
 
end, or, if not then, in after stages of existence. 
 The chief value of Clough's religious 
 poetry appears to consist in this — that he sym- 
 pathised at a very early period with the move- 
 ment that is unquestionably going on towards 
 the simplification and purification of belief, 
 and that he gave an artistic expression to the 
 thoughts of earnest seekers and questioners in 
 the field of faith. In doing so he did not inno- 
 vate, or ruthlessly destroy, or sentimentally be- 
 wail the past. He simply tried to reduce belief 
 to its original and spiritual purity — to lead 
 men back to the God that is within them, wit- 
 nessed by their consciences and by the history 
 of the human race. The primal religious in- 
 stincts of mankind are apt in the course of cen- 
 turies to gather round them metaphysical 
 husks, which are partly protective of the germs 
 within, and partly restrictive of their true vi- 
 taUty. Times arrive at which these outward 
 shells are felt to have become too hard and 
 narrow. They must then be broken through 
 in order to free the kernels that lie within 
 them. The most clear-sighted men at such 
 
 73 
 
periods try to discriminate between what is 
 essential and what is unimportant in religion; 
 but the majority cling always to the human 
 and material rubbish with which it is clogged, 
 as if it were the very living and life-giving 
 divine truth. We might use Plato's simile, and 
 compare the present condition of the Christian 
 faith, as contrasted with the teaching of its 
 gi'eat Founder, to the Glaucus of the deep, 
 who rises overgrown with weeds and shells 
 from the ocean, where he has been hidden. To 
 pull away these weeds, and to restore the god- 
 like form to its own likeness, is the desire of 
 all thoughtful men whose minds have been 
 directed to religious questions, and who have 
 not bound themselves to support the existing 
 order of things, or undertaken for their own 
 interests to solidify the prejudices of the mass. 
 Christ himself, by his answers to the questions 
 of the Jews, taught us the principle of return- 
 ing to simplicity in religious beliefs. He also, 
 by his example, justified us in assuming that 
 the Gos^jel is not stationary, but progressive; 
 that we may come to know more of God than 
 
 74 
 
we knew centuries ago; and that the human 
 race, by extending its intelligence, extends its 
 spiritual insight. It is from this point of view 
 that Clough approaches topics of religious 
 beHef and Biblical inquiry. 
 
 "My own feeling," he says, "certainly does not go 
 along with Coleridge, in attributing any special virtue to 
 the facts of the Gospel history. They have happened, and 
 have produced what we know, have transformed the civili- 
 sation of Greece and Rome and the barbarism of Gaul and 
 Germany into Christendom. But I cannot feel sure that 
 a man may not have all that is important in Christianity, 
 even if he does not so much as know that Jesus of Naz- 
 areth existed. And I do not think that doubts respecting 
 the facts related in the Gospels need give us much trouble. 
 Believing that in one way or other the thing is of God, 
 we shall in the end perhaps know in what way, and how 
 far it was so. Trust in God's justice and love, and belief 
 in his commands as written in our conscience, stand un- 
 shaken, though Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or even 
 St. Paul, were to fall." 
 
 Again he says, with the same confidence in 
 spiritual truth which is the essence of belief 
 in God: — 
 
 "It is far nobler to teach people to do what is good, 
 because it is good simply, than for the sake of any future 
 reward. It is, I dare say, difficult to keep up an equal 
 
 75 
 
religious feeling at present, but it is not impossible, and 
 is necessary. Besides, if we die and come to nothing, it 
 does not therefore follow that life and goodness will cease 
 to be in earth and heaven." 
 
 This thought is further expressed in a frag- 
 ment of verse: — 
 
 "It fortifies my soul to know 
 That, though I perish. Truth is so: 
 That, howsoe'er I stray and range, 
 Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change. 
 I steadier step when I recall 
 That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall." 
 
 The power and dignity of this repose on 
 what is great and good, this total unselfishness 
 and confidence in the Unseen, belong to the 
 highest sphere of religious faith. But it is not 
 the religion of the emotions so much as of the 
 intellect ; and therefore it cannot be \\ddely un- 
 derstood and accepted. When the hearer is bid- 
 den to discard his hopes of personal reward, 
 and to embrace some exalted conception of the 
 divine character more remote than that of old 
 Anthropomorphism — when he is informed that 
 neither at Jerusalem nor on this mountain 
 must he worship, and that his God is in reality 
 
 76 
 
a Spirit — he begins to murmur that there is 
 nothing left for him to live by, no solid and 
 substantial ground to stand upon, no sufficient 
 inducements to virtuous action. And the 
 preacher of so abstract and refined a faith is 
 stigmatised as sceptical, if no worse name be 
 given him. Thus Spinoza, who by the most in- 
 telligent men of this century has been repre- 
 sented as a God-absorbed, if not a "God-in- 
 toxicated" man, was called an Atheist for pro- 
 fessing a theology, the essence of which might 
 be summed up in the one proposition, that he 
 loved God too much to want love back from 
 Him again. And to ordinary minds he was 
 Atheistical ; for in their sense of the word God 
 he had no God. He had refined and abstracted 
 the idea until it vanished from the sphere of 
 their intelligence. 
 
 One great quality of Clough's mind in re- 
 gard to religion was its wholly undogmatic 
 character. He regarded all problems with im- 
 partiahty and calnmess. One of his MS S. con- 
 sists of a series of arguments in which he dis- 
 cusses the great question of belief. Nothing 
 
 77 
 
could better illustrate his perfect openness of 
 mind than this process of reasoning. It begins 
 by stating the impossibility that scholars should 
 not perceive "the entire uncertainty of history 
 in general, and of the origin of Christianity in 
 particular." In this position he coincides with 
 all the fairest and profoundest thinkers of the 
 century. Niebuhr, Grote, Sir Cornewall Lewis, 
 Strauss, Baur, Renan, have all in their own 
 departments shown the doubtfulness of early 
 history, and have endeavored with more or less 
 success to sift the truth from a mass of error. 
 The historian of Christianity has greater dif- 
 ficulties to contend with than the historians of 
 Rome or Greece; for he has no corroborative 
 evidence of what is narrated in the sacred 
 books, and all his endeavours to bring the truth 
 to light meet with furious antagonism from 
 minds wedded to the old system. But, contin- 
 ues Clough, it is equally impossible for a man 
 who has lived and acted among men not to per- 
 ceive the value of what is called Christianity. 
 The more he is convinced of this, the less in- 
 clined will he be ''to base it on those foundations 
 
 78 
 
which, as a scholar, he feels to be unstable. 
 MSS. are doubtful, records may be unau- 
 thentic, criticism is feeble, historical facts must 
 be left uncertain." This then is the antithesis 
 with which we have to deal: on the one hand, 
 the history of the origin of Christianity in- 
 volves the greatest amount of uncertainty; on 
 the other hand, Christianity, as a real and vital 
 principle, is indispensable to the world. Mean- 
 while, our own personal experience is small and 
 limited; our own powers are narrow, and not 
 to be relied on. "A sane and humble-minded 
 man" (concludes Clough), who is disinclined 
 to adopt the watchword of a party or to set up 
 new views, has no alternative "but to throw 
 himself upon the great Religious Tradition." 
 One step is gained ; but here another difficulty 
 presents itself to the thinker. "I see not," he 
 continues, "how any upright and strict dealer 
 with himself, how any man, not merely a slave 
 to spiritual appetites, affections, and wants — 
 any man of intellectual as well as moral hon- 
 esty (and without the former the latter is but 
 a vain thing) can dare to affirm that the nar- 
 
 79 
 
rative of the four Gospels is an essential in- 
 tegral part of that tradition." The words 
 which we have italicised are peculiarly charac- 
 teristic of Mr. Clough. He was sensitively, al- 
 most Quixotically, afraid of accepting even a 
 respectable and harmless creed for the sake of 
 merely being comfortable. He saw that in an 
 age of doubt it was a sort of self-indulgence 
 to cling to the old formulas of faith, and that, 
 in one sense, honest questioning was less scep- 
 tical than conscious acquiescence. Pursuing 
 this vein of reflection, he condemns the weak- 
 ness of ignoring scientific or historic doubts 
 "for the sake of the moral guidance and spirit- 
 ual comfort" implied in submissive belief, or of 
 "taking refuge in Romish infallibility." At the 
 same time, he is eager to deny that there is 
 anything great or noble or very needful in 
 showing up the inconsistencies of the New 
 Testament : "it is no new gospel to tell us that 
 the old one is of doubtful authenticity." But 
 cannot a simple-minded man steer between the 
 opposite dangers of bragging Scepticism and 
 Iconoclasm on the one hand, and, on the other, 
 
 80 
 
of self-indulgent mysticism? "I believe that I 
 may, without any such perversion of my rea- 
 son, without any such mortal sin against my 
 own soul, which is identical with reason, and 
 against the Supreme Giver of that soul and 
 reason, still abide by the real Religious Tra- 
 dition." But "where," he asks, "since neither 
 in rationalism nor in Rome is our refuge, where 
 then shall we seek for the Religious Tradi- 
 tion?" The answer to this question is the 
 answer which all good men and all sincere 
 thinkers are becoming more and more ready to 
 accept ; it is the answer made by the Church in 
 earlier days ; the answer still implied in an old 
 picture which represents Aristotle and Plato 
 among the Apostles of Pentecost: — "Every- 
 where. But above all," he adds, "in our own 
 work, in life, in action, in submission so far as 
 action goes, in service, in experience, in pa- 
 tience, and in confidence." Then follows a 
 very significant sentence which reveals to us 
 the seriousness of Clough's mind upon this 
 subject, his sense of its deep mystery, his per- 
 suasion that all a man's life is too little in the 
 
 81 
 
search for God. "I would scarcely have any 
 man dare to say that he has found it till that 
 moment when death removes his power of tell- 
 ing it." The answer, however, requires to be 
 expanded. We must look for the Religious 
 Tradition everywhere, and not expect to find 
 it in Protestantism only, or in the Roman 
 Church, or in Unitarianism. Take the good 
 from each and all. "Whether Christ died for 
 us upon the cross I cannot tell; yet I am pre- 
 pared to find some spiritual truth in the doc- 
 trine of the Atonement. Purgatory is not in 
 the Bible; I do not therefore think it incred- 
 ible." Again, we must seek it among clergy- 
 men, religious people, "among all who have 
 really tried to order their lives by a high stan- 
 dard." Johnson, Hume, and Butler, each in 
 his own way, contributes something to the 
 total. Search the Scriptures, but also search 
 the Laws of Menou and the Vedas, the Persian 
 sacred books and Hafiz, Confucius, the Ko- 
 ran, Greek and Roman literature. Homer, 
 Socrates, Plato, Lucretius, Virgil, Tacitus, 
 can tell us something. This comprehensive- 
 
 82 
 
ness and liberality of soul correspond with the 
 true spirit of Christianity, of Christianity 
 which is universal and divine because it is truly 
 human; of Christianity which speaks aUke to 
 Jew and Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond and 
 free, which needs no better evidence than that 
 which is afforded by its parallels in India, 
 China, Persia, Greece — the soul of man in 
 every clime and age. Nor will this compre- 
 hensive creed render us less appreciative of 
 Christianity itself. We may travel far and 
 wide, yet not become disqualified for returning 
 "to what assuredly, prima facie, does ap- 
 pear to be — not indeed the religion of the ma- 
 jority of mankind^ — but the religion of the 
 best, so far as we can judge in past history, 
 and (despite of professed infidelity) of the 
 most enlightened in our own time." To cease 
 to be Christians, to separate ourselves from the 
 peculiar form of Christianity adopted by our 
 forefathers, would be unnatural, if not impos- 
 sible; for special religions seem to be adapted 
 to special races. Yet we may remember that 
 there are many more Buddhists than Chris- 
 
 83 
 
tians in the world, and not imagine that on us 
 alone God's sun has shone. Finally, "it is 
 much more the apparent dispensation of things 
 that we should gradually widen than that we 
 should narrow and individualize our creeds. 
 Why are we daily coming more and more into 
 communication with each other, if it be not 
 that we learn each other's knowledge, and 
 combine all into one? I feel more inclined to 
 put faith in the current of the river of things 
 than because it runs one way to think I must 
 therefore pull hard against it to go the other." 
 But it is time to pass from these reflections 
 on the nature of Religion to the poems in 
 which Clough has embodied the fervent spirit 
 of his creed. Qui lahorat, oral — is the title of 
 a few stanzas in which the poet questions 
 whether it be not profane to give even the most 
 abstract form to God, and concludes that work 
 is the truest expression of earnest prayer. A 
 similar train of thought is carried out in loftier 
 language in another called "The New Sinai." 
 After tracing the gradual development of the 
 monotheistic idea, and adverting to the cloud 
 
 84 
 
and darkness which in modern times have, 
 through the influence of science on the one 
 hand and superstition on the other, seemed to 
 gather round the throne of God, he eloquently 
 and emphatically expresses his content to trust 
 and wait for the hour of God's own revelation. 
 This is the essence of his religion — to believe 
 in the Unseen, and bravely to embrace a faith 
 without sight, instead of forging an image, 
 and falling down to worship it. A third poem, 
 of a strictly devout character, even more sol- 
 emn in expression, more full of weighty and 
 condensed thought, develops the same idea: its 
 first stanza may be quoted as an index to the 
 whole : — 
 
 "0 Thou, whose image in the shrine 
 Of human spirits dwells divine; 
 Which from that precinct once conveyed 
 To be to outer day displayed, 
 Doth vanish, part, and leave behind 
 Mere blank and void of empty mind, 
 Which wilful fancy seeks ill vain 
 With casual shapes to fill again." 
 
 It is very difficult for those who did not 
 know Clough personally to gather from such 
 
 85 
 
notices as we can give, how deep and fervent — 
 how absolute and unshaken — were his relig- 
 ious convictions. But the witnesses of his life 
 are unanimous in assuring us that the princi- 
 ples expressed in the poems we have quoted 
 were the fixed and unvarying rules of his own 
 conduct, the supporting and strengthening 
 springs of his action in the world. Contrasted 
 with these devotional poems are some of a 
 more analytical character, which, however, 
 tend to the same conclusion, that God, falsely 
 figured by the world to itself in various fanci- 
 ful or obsolete shapes, or else denied with in- 
 solence and scorn, is yet supreme and spiritual, 
 felt by those who have preserved an honest and 
 untainted soul, and dreaded with blind terror 
 even by those who pretend to disbelieve in him. 
 Of these, two songs in "Dipsychus," "I 
 dreamed a dream," and its companion, "There 
 is no God the wicked saith" (published in the 
 volume of collected poems), may be cited as 
 specimens. An ironical tone runs through 
 them, and is strangely blended with bitterness, 
 gravity, and a kind of tender regret. They 
 
 86 
 
ought not to be separated ; for nothing is more 
 true of dough's mind than that it worked by 
 thesis and antithesis, not reaching a clear syn- 
 thesis, but pushing its convictions, as it were, 
 to the verge of a conclusion. The poems, for 
 instance, which begin, ''Old things need not 
 be therefore true," "What we, when face to 
 face we see," and "Say not, the struggle 
 nought availeth," are in their tone almost 
 timid and retrogressive when compared with 
 "Easter Day"; and yet we feel that none of 
 them contain the dernier mot, Clough could 
 take the world's or the devil's point of view 
 with wonderful force and vigor. This is clear 
 throughout "Dipsychus"; but it also appears 
 in a published poem, entitled, "The Latest 
 Decalogue." To imagine that when he did so 
 he was expressing his own view would be to 
 mistake the artist's nature altogether. Yet 
 some people are so dull as to do this. They 
 are shocked at any one venturing to state a 
 base or wicked opinion, even though his object 
 be to call attention to the contrary, and by 
 revealing ugliness, to lead the eye in silence to 
 the contemplation of beauty. 
 
In Clough's works there are many stum- 
 bling-blocks for such readers — none greater 
 than *'Easter Day," a poem about which it is 
 hard to speak, whether we regard its depth of 
 meaning or its high literary excellence. Of the 
 general scope of this poem it is impossible to 
 give a better account than that which is pre- 
 fixed to it in the volume of "Letters and Re- 
 mains." There it is styled "a semi-dramatic 
 expression of the contrast he (Clough) felt 
 between the complete practical irreligion and 
 wickedness of the life he saw going on, and 
 the outward forms and ceremonies of religion 
 displaying themselves at every turn. How 
 can we believe, it seems to say, that "Christ is 
 risen" in such a world as this? How, if it was 
 so, could such sin and such misery continue 
 until now? Yet if we must give up this faith, 
 what sadness and what bitterness of disap- 
 pointment remain for all believers who thus 
 lose all that is most dear to them! And he 
 abandons himself to this feeling of grief and 
 hopelessness, only still vaguely clinging to the 
 belief that in earth itself there may be, if no- 
 
 68 
 
where else, a new refuge and a new answer to 
 this sad riddle. The mood of mind which he 
 depicts in such terrible colours is not to be re- 
 garded as his own habitual belief. The poem 
 is in no sense a statement of facts or opinions, 
 but a strong expression of feeling — above all, 
 the feeling of the greatness of the evil which 
 is in the world." More, however, remains to 
 be said. For though *'Easter Day" "is not to 
 be regarded as his own habitual belief," we 
 cannot but consider it to be the expression of 
 a mind steeped in the disintegrating solvents 
 of nineteenth-century criticism. The author 
 has clearly absorbed everything that German 
 commentators have to say upon the subject of 
 the resurrection — nay, more, has, at least at 
 one time of his life, most keenly felt the co- 
 gency of their destructive arguments, and in a 
 mood of bitterness provoked by human degra- 
 dation has given the form of fiery language to 
 the shapeless and uncertain doubts which 
 crowd the minds of a beliefless generation. 
 "Easter Day" is unique in the history of lit- 
 erature. It is a poem fully worthy of that 
 
 89 
 
name, in which a train of close and difficult 
 reasoning is expressed in concise words — such 
 words as might have been used by a commen- 
 tator on the Gospels, yet so subtly manipu- 
 lated by the poet, with such a rhythm, such 
 compactness, such vitahty of emotion, as to 
 attain the dignity of art by mere simplicity 
 and power. 
 
 For the sake of those who may not have 
 this poem in their hands, we subjoin some ex- 
 tracts. But it must be remembered that quo- 
 tation in this case is akin to mutilation, and 
 that the poem itself is liable to be misunder- 
 stood in its incomplete form: — 
 
 "Through the great sinful streets of Naples as I past, 
 Wiih fiercer heat than flamed above my head 
 My heart was hot within me; till at last 
 
 My brain was lightened when my tongue had said — 
 Christ is not risen! 
 Christ is not risen, no — 
 He lies and moulders low; 
 Christ is not risen! 
 * * * ♦ * 
 
 "What if the women, ere the dawn was grey, 
 Saw one or more great angels, as they say 
 (Angels, or Him himself) ? Yet neither there, nor then, 
 Nor afterwards, nor elsewhere, nor at all, 
 
Hath He appeared to Peter or the Ten; 
 
 Nor, save in thunderous terror, to blind Saul; 
 
 Save in an after Gospel and late Creed, 
 
 He is not risen, indeed — 
 Christ is not risen! 
 
 ***** 
 
 "Is He not risen, and shall we not rise? 
 
 Oh, we unwise! 
 What did we dream, what wake we to discover? 
 Ye hills, fall on us, and ye mountains, cover! 
 
 In darkness and great gloom 
 Come ere we thought it is our day of doom; 
 From the cursed world, which is one tomb, 
 
 Christ is not risen! 
 
 "Eat, drink, and play, and think that this is bliss: 
 There is no heaven but this; 
 
 There Is no hell, 
 Save earth, which serves the purpose doubly well, 
 
 Seeing it visits still 
 With equallest apportionments of ill 
 Both good and bad alike, and brings to one same dust 
 
 The unjust and the just 
 
 With Christ, who is not risen. 
 
 "Eat, drink, and die, for we are souls bereaved: 
 Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope 
 We are most hopeless, who had once most hope, 
 And most beliefless, that had most believed. 
 Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; 
 As of the unjust, also of the just — 
 Yea, of that Just One too! 
 It is the one sad Gospel that is true — 
 Christ is not risen! 
 
 91 
 
"Weep not beside the tomb, 
 Ye women, unto whom 
 He was great solace while ye tended Him; 
 Ye who with napkin o'er the head 
 
 And folds of linen round each wounded limb 
 
 Laid out the Sacred Dead; 
 And thou that bar'st Him in thy wondering womb; 
 Yea, Daughters of Jerusalem, depart, 
 Bind up as best ye may your own sad bleeding heart: 
 Go to your homes, your living children tend, 
 
 Your earthly spouses love; 
 
 Set your affections not on things above, 
 Which moth and rust corrupt, which quickliest come to 
 
 end: 
 Or pray, if pray ye must, and pray, if pray ye can, 
 For death; since dead is He whom he deemed more than 
 man, 
 
 Who is not risen: no, — 
 
 But lies and moulders low, — 
 Who is not risen! 
 
 'And, oh, good men of ages yet to be, 
 Who shall believe because ye did not see — 
 
 Oh, be ye warned, be wise! 
 
 No more with pleading eyes. 
 
 And sobs of strong desire, 
 
 Unto the empty vacant void aspire. 
 Seeking another and impossible birth 
 That is not of your own, and only mother earth. 
 But if there is no other life for you, 
 Sit down and be content, since this must even do: 
 
 He is not risen!" 
 
 92 
 
It must not be thought that religious prob- 
 lems are the only ones which occupied the 
 mdnd of Mr. Clough. On the contrary, what- 
 ever is important in the life of man attracted 
 his eager thought, and received from him the 
 same minute and scrupulous consideration. 
 His large humanity was one of his most promi- 
 nent qualities; nor was there anything of real 
 or of serious significance, however painful, in 
 the world from which he shrank. Two princi- 
 pal topics beside that of religion seem to have 
 been always present to his mind. One of these 
 was the question of love, the other of action, 
 or of work in life. We shall now proceed to 
 consider his poetical treatment of both of 
 these points, which, together with religion, 
 form the most important subjects that a poet 
 can approach. 
 
 Passing from Clough's religious poems to 
 those in which he has dealt in detail with the 
 problems of human life and love, w^e may 
 make the preliminary remark that here, as in 
 his more abstract compositions, he is manly 
 and clairvoyant — unflinching — affecting noth- 
 
 98 
 
ing, and avoiding nothing which he sees to be 
 true and weighty in the facts presented to his 
 notice. Though minutely analytical — as, for 
 instance, in "Dipsychus" and some parts of 
 "Amours de Voyage" — ^he is never morbidly 
 so. We feel his personality as we do that of 
 all true and sincere poets; and perhaps these 
 poems are a better record of that personality 
 than any memoirs which could possibly be 
 written. But there is nothing self-conscious 
 or unhealthily introspective in this revelation of 
 himself. What strikes us in these poems of 
 the second class is their perfect sincerity and 
 truth to life. They are like pictures painted 
 from natural objects in the fair light of day- 
 no Fuseli or Blake translations from a world 
 of spirits and of murky gloom. Nor is this 
 impression altered where the remote and un- 
 common nature of his subject obliges him to 
 have recourse to psychological anatomy. We 
 find no "supreme moments," no passionate 
 and fiery experiences in which life is lost as in 
 a furnace glow, either in his philosophy or his 
 art. He yields, indeed, its full part to pas- 
 
 94 
 
sion, but a far larger part to law — the law of 
 conscience and humanity. The pathos that he 
 stirs is of no maudlin or sentimental kind, but 
 is purely natural and sincere — gushing, as in 
 the last story of Mari Magno, from the flinty 
 rock of fact and dire necessity. In this re- 
 spect he is a kind of better Crabbe; more full 
 of natural tenderness and fine distinctions, if 
 less sternly powerful and less deeply tragic. 
 
 But if Clough has nothing in common with 
 poets of the De Musset type, he is equally far 
 removed from the trivial domesticities of the 
 JAngel in the House." Clough was not, in- 
 (deed, a misogynist or indifferent to marriage. 
 On the contrary, a great number of his poems 
 prove that the problems of married love and 
 life were among those which most deeply occu- 
 pied his mind. But he did not shut his eyes 
 and dream that the Enghshman's paradise of 
 a clean hearth and a kind wife is the only ob- 
 ject of existence, or, that if it were, it would 
 be easy to obtain entrance into it. The patient 
 insight, refusing to be deceived by any illu- 
 sion, however sweet, in its unwavering cour- 
 
 95 
 
age, which we have traced in his treatment of 
 religion, appears no less in his treatment of 
 love. He is able to see men and women as 
 they are, very imperfect in their affections, 
 often too weak even to love without an arriere 
 pensee, letting priceless opportmiity slip by, 
 and killing the flower of one part of their na- 
 tm-e by the drought and drjmess of the other 
 part. 
 
 In attempting to illustrate these general 
 remarks by an analysis of Clough's poems, we 
 might begin with a notice of the tales called 
 "Mari Magno," the last of his works, and 
 therefore in some ways the ripest product of 
 his mind. But these tales are already in 
 extenso before the public, and are so hkely to 
 be the most popular portion of his works, that 
 we may perhaps content ourselves with refer- 
 ence to them. The first two are very specu- 
 lative. Their moral seems to be that love is 
 fellow-service, and that the a peu pres of hu- 
 man relations must be accepted cheerfully. 
 To follow the absolute, and to expect to real- 
 ize an ideal, is vain. Let life school us to love 
 
 90 
 
as men, with the whole force, indeed, of our 
 natures, but with no fantastic yearnings after 
 impossibilities. If we fail to learn these les- 
 sons, and refuse the natural good of human 
 life, we shall be disciplined with disappoint- 
 ment. The thought of these two poems is so 
 subtle — so delicately shadowed forth and il- 
 luminated with cross lights — that in order to 
 present a faithful picture of them, it would be 
 necessary to transcribe the tales themselves. 
 The rest are more simple. They have less of 
 speculation and more of incident and human 
 ^^ pathos. Indeed, the story called "Christian," 
 v(Jor the Lawyer's Second Tale, is one of the 
 most dramatic poems of its kind in the Enghsh 
 language. When we remember that this story 
 was actually completed during Clough's last 
 hours, while paralysis was rapidly invading 
 the very stronghold of life, it forms the most 
 convincing proof of the genuine and irresist- 
 ible force of his poetic genius. 
 
 "Amours de Voyage" is, perhaps, the most 
 highly finished, various, and artistically com- 
 plete of all his works. It consists of a series of 
 
 97 
 
letters supposed to be written from Rome by 
 an £ii^isiimaii called Claude, and t^o sisters 
 of a family of Trevellyns wbose acquaintance 
 &ere. It was composed by Clongh 
 in 1848, darmg the short life of Maz- 
 RepubKc and tte French siege. The 
 inckfeits of iiiis stirring time are so 
 into the narrative part of the poem as 
 in a striking manner with the Ham- 
 kt-&e M ici rriann oi the bi»o's character. *7I 
 domtmk ie ttmi, wkime de ramomr^ is one of 
 Ae Bottoes on thte title-p«ge: and tiie last two 
 coo^ikts of the '^Envoy" well desmbe the pe- 
 contrast wkiefa mns ttvoa^ the whole 
 
 r, 1 1211 liittiitg whtMit BBBsy jeus finat brain 
 fanin of 
 
 boco. t» 
 
 de Voyage ' has fkree 
 jMJijitL : &e criticism ci BoBie frooi a travel- 
 ler^s poiDt of view, j a icil f M ig mmnr reigioss 
 aad o&etieal icAecboos; |M)i&irs and tihe 
 
events of the siege: and the love-story of an 
 over-refined and irresolute spirit. The two 
 former topics are graduallv merged in the last. 
 Indeed, they serve chiefly to enliven the poem, 
 and to illustrate the character of the sceptical 
 hero and his ladyhke inamorata. Clough has 
 managed with great dehcacy to introduce the 
 theme of love, at first quite incidentally, into 
 Claude's letters, and to let it grow by degrees 
 until it swallows up the others, and forms the 
 whole subject of the poem. But it must not be 
 imagined that the love-story is the only im- 
 portant part of ''Amours de Voyage." On 
 the contrary, there is a singular richness in the 
 woof and texture of this poem, a variety which 
 we miss in compositions like ''Werther," or 
 "Maud," The descriptions of character are 
 humorous and racy. Very delicate satire, for 
 instance, adds an interest to Miss Georgina's 
 letters: and the whole Trevellyn family is hit 
 off with dramatic nicety. Claude himself ap- 
 pears before us as a many-sided man, and we 
 get a good notion of his personality long be- 
 fore his love-drama begins. 
 
 99 
 
Claude is a young English gentleman, well 
 born and well connected, but naturally shy and 
 rather satirical. His education has rendered 
 him fastidious; and he is by temperament in- 
 clined to dream and meditate and question 
 rather than to act. We soon find that he has 
 the trick of introspection, and of nineteenth- 
 century yearning after the impossible. It is 
 curious that in his delineation of this state of 
 mind Clough should remind us of Alfred de 
 Musset — his antipodes in moral tone and men- 
 tal calibre. Yet it is so. Both poets describe 
 the maladie du decle — the nondescript ca- 
 chexy, in which aspiration mingles with disen- 
 chantment, satire and scepticism with a child- 
 like desire for the tranquility of reverence and 
 belief — in which self-analysis has been pushed 
 to the verge of monomania, and all springs of 
 action are clogged and impeded by the cob- 
 webs of speculation. But while De Musset 
 presents us with a French picture of this con- 
 dition, very feeble, sickly, and disagreeable, 
 Clough is true to the national vigour of the 
 English character. We cannot mistake the 
 
 100 
 
irony with which he treats Claude, or fall into 
 the error of identifying him with the poet. 
 
 Claude's first letters are devoted to the im- 
 pressions produced on his mind by Rome. 
 "Rubbishy" is the best word he can find to ex- 
 press the Eternal City : indeed, it resembles its 
 own Monte Testaceo, a ''mass of broken and 
 castaway wine-pots." In the midst of such 
 grumblings a hint is dropped of a family called 
 Trevellyn, who, a letter further on, are thus 
 cleverly described: — 
 
 'Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, nat wholly 
 
 Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table-d'hote and 
 restaurant 
 
 Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth 
 even: 
 
 Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth! 
 
 Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, 
 well connected; 
 
 Doubtless somewhere, in some neighbourhood have, and 
 are careful to keep, some 
 
 Threadbare genteel relations, who in their turn are en- 
 chanted 
 
 Grandly among country-people to introduce at assemblies 
 
 To the unpennied cadets our cousins with excellent for- 
 tunes. 
 
 Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!" 
 
 101 
 
Meantime Claude begins to make way with 
 these Trevellyns. He owns it is pleasant to be 
 with them. His aristocratic refinement and 
 fastidious tastes are even shocked at finding 
 that he delights in "pleasing inferior people." 
 But, after all, it is only a matter of accident 
 and travelling sociability, of — 
 
 "Juxtaposition, in short; and what is juxtaposition?" 
 
 This supplies him with much food for very 
 Cloughian contemplation. Meantime, a few 
 scraps from the Miss Trevellyns to their 
 friends introduce us to these young ladies, and 
 let us know that Mary thinks Mr. Claude "a 
 superior man," but "terribly selfish"; and so 
 the first canto ends. The second opens with 
 Italian politics. Claude sympathises with the 
 patriots more than he chooses to admit, or 
 than his habits of disdainful self-analysis per- 
 mit him to be aware of. Once or twice he 
 flashes into real enthusiasm ; but he never gives 
 himself a free rein. In the midst of details 
 about the siege, and of wonderings whether he 
 would be prepared in the event of danger "to 
 
 102 
 
lay down his life for the British female," he 
 exclaims: "I am in love, meantime, you 
 think?" and after, for the space of ten lines, 
 articulating the charms of Mary's feminine 
 good taste and sense, decides that he "is not 
 exactly." Then follows letter after letter 
 about love. Claude is clearly getting into the 
 thick of it — summoning to his aid all his heavy 
 casuistical battalions and squadrons of light 
 sophistry. The real misery of a state of mind 
 like Claude's is, that it produces a confusion 
 in the moral instincts; the higher, as well as 
 the lower parts of the nature, become objects 
 of dread and suspicion. Claude fears sophis- 
 tication in every virtue, and is nervously 
 alarmed by his OAvn impulses. It may easily 
 be conceived that he puzzles the Trevellyns not 
 a little. Georgina thinks Mr. Claude "really 
 is too shilly-shally," and induces her own fiance 
 to sound him with regard to his intentions as 
 to her sister Mary. The third canto opens with 
 a series of similar reflections, for Claude is now 
 in the very centre of indifference, having cast 
 off the No, and not yet reached the Yes of 
 loving. 
 
 103 
 
Then he takes up a question which he had 
 suggested at an earlier period. "What is Jux- 
 taposition?-' We travel in a railway- train, 
 and, to pass the time, talk with the girl we find 
 next to us. This is a true allegory of most 
 marriages. Yet we prate at the same time 
 about "eternal ties and marriages made in 
 heaven." But if we really believed in this pre- 
 tence — if the bridegroom really thought he 
 was linked for ever to the bride — if he did not 
 foresee the release of bm^ial while he signed 
 the bond of matrimony — how do you think he 
 would then accept his situation? Claude's 
 friend seems to hint that Juxtaposition may 
 be great, but that Affinity is greater. "Ah!" 
 says Claude, "there are many affinities of dif- 
 ferent degrees and forces: — 
 
 "But none, let me tell you, 
 Save by the law of the land and the ruinous force of 
 
 the will, ah. 
 None, I fear me, at last quite sure to be final and 
 
 perfect." 
 
 Yet, he sighs, it is pleasant to be deluded, and 
 the love-makings of the earth are very beauti- 
 ful:— 
 
 104 
 
"Could we eliminate only 
 This vile hungering impulse, this demon within us of 
 
 craving, 
 Life were beatitude, living a perfect divine satisfac- 
 tion." V 
 
 But soon another word, more abrupt than 
 Affinity, more cogent than Juxtaposition, 
 breaks the serene sphere of his dubitations like 
 a bombshell. It is Obligation. His intentions 
 a;re asked. Mary, indeed, has herself never 
 held him bound in any way; and this is one of 
 her charms in his eyes. Every morning he 
 may meet her afresh, and find no old debts to 
 pay. But just as Claude is on the eve of 
 starting for Florence with the Trevellyns and 
 their Vernon friends, one of the latter hints 
 that he ought to declare himself one way or the 
 other. Thereupon Claude breaks loose, and 
 excuses himself from the party: — 
 
 "How could I go? Great heavens! to conduct a per- 
 mitted flirtation 
 Under those vulgar eyes, the observed of such 
 observers." 
 
 This brings us to the fourth canto, when 
 Claude, having let his opportunity slip, and 
 
 105 
 
missed, as he expresses it, the tide in his love 
 affairs, feels an irresistible desire to be again, 
 at any cost, with Mary Trevellyn. He leaves 
 Rome; but they have left Florence, — for 
 Milan, it appears. Then follows a weary chase 
 after them, through Bellagio, over the Splu- 
 gen, the Stelvio; back again to Como, Flor- 
 ence, Pisa, and Rome. Every place is 
 searched; every friend applied to. But by a 
 natural accident of travelling, when once 
 missed, they cannot be caught up again. The 
 whole of this fifth canto is occupied with hur- 
 ryings to and fro, blank researches, and vain 
 self-reproaches. There is something piteous 
 and pathetic in its feverishness. Mary Trevel- 
 lyn, in the meantime, is at Lucerne, waiting, 
 not without anxiety, for Claude, and ready, it 
 is clear, to make him happy. Indeed, we feel 
 that it is very stupid on the part of Claude to 
 give her up after so short a pursuit. He is 
 meant, however, to be a poor creature, dis- 
 tracted by his own waywardness of specula- 
 tion, and confused in his impulses. "Amours 
 de Voyage" concludes with a series of those 
 
 106 
 
dubiations, halts, and turning-points of 
 thought, in which Clough delighted as an ar- 
 tist, and which serve, with admirable irony and 
 humour, to pourtray the feebleness of Claude. 
 We have entered so fully into the analysis 
 of this poem that there is little need for com- 
 ment. Yet we cannot refrain from calling at- 
 tention to its subtle discussion of a subject 
 which to most menisso simple. Clough shows us 
 in the character of Claude the effect of a specu- 
 lative intellect acting upon the instincts and af- 
 fections. We can scarcely wonder that Clough 
 is not more generally read and admired, be- 
 cause the problems with which he is occupied 
 are rare and remote. There are but few char- 
 acters like Claude in the world. Indeed, it 
 might be wondered, whether it is worth while 
 commemorating those perplexed and sceptical 
 conditions of the consciousness in verse. Ought 
 a poet not rather to lead the world, and to 
 show the ultimate truth, than to represent the 
 waverings of a discontented spirit ill at ease? 
 Clough's vindication, however, lies in this: 
 first, that it is the poet's function to hold up a 
 
mirror to his age, as well as to lead it; and 
 secondly, that we still admire Hamlet and 
 Faust. Claude belongs to the same race as 
 these princes of metaphysical perplexity. 
 However exceptional, his scepticism is natural 
 to himself, and to the temper of his century. 
 In painting him, Clough reproduced the ex- 
 perience which he obtained from commerce 
 with the world, and drew a picture of his 
 times. 
 
 Omitting all notice of the "Bothie," the 
 best known of Clough's works, we may now 
 proceed to discuss "Dipsychus," a dramatic 
 composition which has not yet been given to 
 the public. This fact, besides the intrinsic im- 
 portance of the poem, which contains in the 
 most condensed form, all Clough's speculations 
 about life and action, must be our excuse for 
 the length of the extracts we propose to make, 
 and for the minuteness of our analysis. Hith- 
 erto we have seen him occupied with the prob- 
 lems of Religion and Love. Having shown 
 us the corrosive action of the human intellect 
 in both of these fields he comes forward to dis- 
 
 108 
 
play the further operation of this sceptical 
 aqua fortis upon the philsophy of Life itself in 
 Dipsychus. The hero of this poem is not, like 
 Hamlet, indisposed to fulfil a single and diffi- 
 cult duty; or, like Faust, exhausted with the 
 world of thought; or, like Claude, unnerved 
 for decision and unable to obey his instincts. 
 His difficulties are deeper, and more general. 
 He passes in review the whole casuistry of 
 Life, and Duty, and Action, involving re- 
 ligion, love, and morality, in his speculation. 
 The theme of the poem is therefore, in some 
 sense, the metaphysic or supreme abstraction 
 of Human Doubt. 
 
 It was written at a period of the poet's life 
 when he was thinking and feeling deeply about 
 the choice of work. Oxford had been given 
 up. University Hall, in London, had not 
 proved very satisfactory. Clough felt the need 
 of action, without confidence in any special 
 sort of action. Subtle analysis and high 
 aspirations seemed to unfit him for the coarser 
 work of the world. Mere pleasure or the lux- 
 ury of living or domestic felicity could not sat- 
 
 109 
 
isfy the whole of such a nature. He asked 
 himself, What is to be done? What is the 
 value of any work that a man can do? How 
 shall we preserve the soul's virginity upon the 
 crowded highways of the world? Is it worth 
 while to sacrifice beautiful illusions for doubt- 
 ful truths of fact? Is it right to exchange the 
 poet's golden sunset skies for the world's pal- 
 pable coin — itself the root of all evil as well 
 as of all comfort? 
 
 These meditations are cast in the mould of 
 a dialogue between a man's soul and a spirit. 
 But the title "Dipsychus" seems to intimate 
 that the spirit is but a mode of the soul which 
 externalises itself. Or, to speak more clearly, 
 this spirit is not the true man, but it is that 
 second self which usage with the world and the 
 unnumbered centuries of human tradition have 
 imposed upon the soul. Clough calls him 
 Mephistopheles and Belial. He is made to 
 name himself Cosmarchon or Cosmocrator: — 
 
 "This worldly fiend that follows you about, 
 This compound of convention and impiety, 
 This mongrel of uncleanness and propriety." 
 
 110 
 
He is in truth the spirit of this world, the spirit 
 of fact and reality, as opposed to aspirations 
 and ideals, the spirit of those conditions under 
 which men have to labour in their commerce 
 with the world ; the spirit of those lower neces- 
 sities which environ action. Reflection, it was 
 long ago said by the philosophers, belongs to 
 God and to godlike men. But action is proper 
 to mankind and to the mass of human beings. 
 By cleaving to action we renounce our heav- 
 enly birthright of contemplation. Yet if we 
 confine ourselves to reflection and aspiration, 
 we separate ourselves from the life of men. No 
 one has yet solved the problem of acting with- 
 out contracting some stain of earth. 
 
 The form of Dipsychus and the character 
 of the Spirit remind us of Faust, and prove 
 that Clough was to a certain extent influenced 
 by Goethe's great work. But the problems 
 agitated by Clough are of a more subtle and 
 spiritual nature than those which Goethe 
 raised. They are worked out with less atten- 
 tion to artistic finish and dramatic eflPect than 
 the speculations which underly the play of 
 
 111 
 
"Faust." In their narrow compass they strike 
 many students as being more forcible in 
 thought and more full of feeling than the medi- 
 tative scenes of Goethe's drama. Clough was 
 content to be wholly undramatic and monoton- 
 ous. Instead of presenting us with numerous 
 highly-coloured pictures, he dissected a por- 
 tion of the troubled brain of one man with 
 marvellous skill and delicacy. Thus the two 
 works are essentially different in their scope 
 and aim ; and the resemblance between them is 
 superficial. Besides, the Spirit in "Dipsy- 
 chus" has not much in common with the 
 Mephistopheles of Goethe. We find in 
 "Dipsychus" no tempter beyond the casuist 
 that everyone carries in his bosom ; no contract 
 but that which everyone makes when he leaves 
 the Thebaid of his contemplation for the serv- 
 ice and the pay of the great world ; no greater 
 duality of existence than that which every self- 
 conscious man of the century contains within 
 his own nature. The dialogues of Dipsychus 
 and the Spirit are the communings of a heart 
 given to self-examination. Their strife is a 
 
 112 
 
modern version of the old battle carried on 
 betv, een the S;:irit and the flesh, or rather be- 
 tween St. Paul's Pneumatic and Psychic, 
 spiritual and natural, man. But the strife is 
 even, and no Zeus holds the balance. The com- 
 batants are twins, inseparable in this life. The 
 one that is the stronger, though confessedly 
 the viler, rules the other, because he conformed 
 to the existing conditions under which the in- 
 dividual is forced to live and act. The fate of 
 the forlorn, indignant, and defrauded soul is 
 hidden from us at the end. Dipsychus seeks 
 to act as a man, and not to keep aloof from 
 human passions and the pains of life; but in 
 doing so he falls, and is entangled in the snares 
 of the w orld. It is hard to say how Clough in- 
 tended his dram.a to conclude. The second 
 part of "Dipsychus," as we have it, is incom- 
 plete. But so far as one can judge from this 
 fragment, one is surprised at the common- 
 place and rather vulgar denouement which the 
 poet seems to have designed. It contrasts so 
 strangely with the elevated and subtle tone of 
 the first part, and forms so distinct a bathos 
 
 113 
 
or anti-climax, that we are disposed to aban- 
 don any attempt at its interpretation, believ- 
 ing that in its present mutilated state it cannot 
 be fairly criticised, and to confine our atten- 
 tion to the first part. This part consists of a 
 series of short scenes, which fall naturally into 
 two chief groups. In the first of these groups 
 Dipsychus and the Spirit discuss several ques- 
 tions of theology and social ethics, setting forth 
 in broad and well-defined contrast the double 
 point of view which may be taken by a scrupu- 
 lous and an easy conscience; the discord be- 
 tween the spirit of the Gospel and the spirit of 
 the world ; and the divergence between a crav- 
 ing after spiritual things and an acquiescence 
 in the order of carnal and conventional rou- 
 tine. The second group is devoted exclusively 
 to the casuistry of action. 
 
 **Dipsychus" opens at Venice, with a remi- 
 niscence of "Easter Day." Though the scene 
 is changed, and months have passed, the old 
 refrain of "Christ is not risen," keeps running 
 in the poet's head. The Resurrection, in any 
 real and modern sense of the word, is just as 
 
 114 
 
inconceivable at Venice as at Naples. The 
 spirit of Christianity is just as absent from the 
 Rialto as from the Toledo. While Dipsychus 
 is repeating the opening lines of "Easter 
 Day," the Spirit intervenes and begins to criti- 
 cise it: — 
 
 "Dear, how odd! 
 Hell tell us next there is no God. 
 I thought 'twas in the Bible plain, 
 On the third day He rose again." 
 
 The Spirit accepts all that the world has 
 agreed to believe — all the ouoUyovixha and 
 stereotyped conventions of his Church and 
 State. Theology and metaphysics, indeed, are 
 not his trade. But he recommends general re- 
 ligious observances as a matter of prudential 
 policy, and occupies a pew on Sundays in 
 obedience to the third commandment of his own 
 amended Decalogue : — 
 
 "Oh, 
 
 You'll go to church, of course, you know; 
 Or, at the least, will take a pew 
 To send your wives and servants to. 
 Trust me, I make a point of that; 
 No infidelity ,--that's flat." 
 
 115 
 
On the present occasion at Venice, however, 
 he prefers to enjoy the sun, and watch the 
 humours of the crowd on the Piazza. Dipsy- 
 chus converses with him, sullenly enough, and 
 they carry on their dialogue through a visit to 
 the Public Gardens, where the higher musings 
 of the man are constantly broken with ever so 
 slight a revelation of the spirit's carnal nature. 
 Dipsychus is disgusted, and exclaims : — 
 
 "0 moon and stars, forgive! and thou, clear heaven, 
 Look pureness back into me. Oh, great God! 
 Why, why, in wisdom and in grace^s name, 
 And in the name of saints and saintly thoughts, 
 Of mothers, and of sisters, and chaste wives. 
 And angel woman-faces we have seen. 
 And angel woman-spirits we have guessed. 
 And innocent sweet children, and pure love, 
 V/hy did I ever one brief moment's space 
 But parley with this filthy Belial? 
 Was it the fear 
 
 Of being behind the world, which is the wicked?" 
 
 But when he has regained his hotel, the Spirit 
 begins once more to reason with him on the 
 duties of society, and the necessities of acquies- 
 cence in the ways of the world. Social con- 
 ventions are discussed; Dipsychus fretting 
 against formal lies and diplomacy of manners 
 
 116 
 
and outward show, the Spirit proving how wise 
 it is to leaven our sincerity with tact, our purity 
 with savoir fcdre, the dove with the serpent, 
 piety with pohsh. His final argument on all 
 these points is that, — 
 
 "What we all love is good touched up with evil: 
 Religion's self must have a spice of devil." 
 
 Or again: — 
 
 "Life little loves; 'tis true, this peevish piety; 
 E'en they with whom it thinks to be securest — 
 Your most religious, delicatest, purest — 
 Discern and show, as pious people can. 
 Their feeling that you are not quite a man." 
 
 The same argument is reasoned on a differ- 
 ent thesis, after Dipsychus has been insulted 
 by a Croat, and the Spirit is urging him to 
 seek satisfaction. Here, as before, Dipsychus 
 wants to adhere to the pure precepts of the 
 Gospel. The Spirit shows how unfit they are 
 for actual life, and sums up with a crushing 
 satire on his comrade's peaceful mood. 
 
 In the next scene we are on our way to the 
 Lido, and the question, "Is there no God?" is 
 being reasoned by the two spirits — Dipsychus 
 taking the mournful and regretful side, ex- 
 
 117 
 
pressing the sadness of a soul that longs to 
 believe in a God and hears it knelled that there 
 is none, while the Spirit makes the best of 
 things, and shows that we can get on very well 
 without one. The little song, "There is no 
 God, the wicked saith," occurs in this scene. 
 In the second Act — if we may use this word 
 to express the group of unconnected scenes 
 which follow — we are brought to consider the 
 great problem of the choice of work. Here we 
 may admire that subtlety of modern thought, 
 which seeks no longer with the ancient philoso- 
 phers a Criterion of Happiness or Knowledge, 
 or with the theologians a Criterion of Faith, 
 but which, having, as it were, abandoned hap- 
 piness, knowledge, and faith, as hopeless and 
 irresoluble questions, to their fate, is no less 
 puzzled to discover the Criterion of Life itself 
 — of Action — of a man's place in the world of 
 men. This part opens with a further discus- 
 sion of the thoughts suggested by * 'Easter 
 Day," in which the Spirit takes occasion to 
 develop his religious opinions, and thus im- 
 presses their practical result upon Dipsy- 
 
 chus : — 
 
 118 
 
"Take larger views (and quit your Germana) 
 From the Analogy and Sermons; 
 I fancied, you must doubtless know, — 
 Butler had proved, an age ago, 
 That in religious, as profane things, 
 'Twas useless trying to explain things; 
 Men's business -wits, the only sane things. 
 These and compliance are the main things. 
 God, Revelation, and the rest of it, 
 Bad at the best, we make the best of it. 
 Like a good subject and wise man. 
 Believe whatever things you can. 
 Take your religion as 'twas found you, 
 And say no more of it, confound you!" 
 
 Then, while afloat in his gondola, Dipsychus 
 begins to wish that all life were after this 
 wise : — 
 
 "How light we move, how softly! Ah, 
 Were life but as the gondola! 
 So live, nor need to call to mind 
 Our slaving brother here behind!" 
 
 The contemplative indisposition for action 
 in Dipsychus is mocked and baffled by the per- 
 plexing and tormenting riddles which the in- 
 equalities of the world offer to his mind. Life 
 might be beautiful, and enjoyable, and easy, 
 he thinks, were it not for a craving within us 
 after the unseen, and could we divest ourselves 
 
 119 
 
of all sympathy for our toiling, suffering fel- 
 low-creatures. In this mood, riches and lux- 
 urious pleasures seem to him "mere insolence 
 and wantonness." But the Spirit, as may be 
 imagined, shares none of these difficulties. He 
 sings "How pleasant it is to have money, 
 heigho!" and sums up his Welt-philosophie 
 in two common-place stanzas: — 
 
 "The world is very odd, we see, 
 We do not comprehend it; 
 But in one fact we all agree, 
 God won't, and we can't mend it. 
 
 "Being common sense, it can't be sin 
 
 To take it as I find it; 
 The pleasure to take pleasure in; 
 The pain, try not to mind it." 
 
 To these verses Dipsychus replies with the 
 exquisite lines, "O let me love my love unto 
 myself, alone," which have been printed in the 
 volume of Clough's published poems. 
 
 In the next scene Dipsychus resolves to 
 commune more seriously with the Spirit, and 
 to question him. The design is scarcely formed 
 before the Spirit is at his elbow, and Dipsy- 
 chus, after some hesitation, asks: — 
 
 120 
 
"Should I form, a thing to be supposed, 
 A wish to bargain for your merchandise, 
 Say what were your demands? — what were your terms? — 
 What should I do? What should I cease to do? 
 What incense on what altars must I bum? 
 And what abandon? What unlearn or learn? 
 Religion goes, I take it." 
 
 By no means, replies the Spirit. We have here 
 no blood-signed contract, no tragic price of 
 soul's damnation for the pomps and pleasures 
 of the flesh. All you have to do is to follow the 
 world's ways — take orders, if you like, but 
 keep within the serviceable limits of routine 
 religion, and do not indulge in vague emo- 
 tions. If that does not suit you, choose the 
 law. Marry, too, by all means; and — 
 
 "Trust one who knows you, 
 You'll make an admirable Sposo." 
 
 This is the result of the incarnation. Dipsy- 
 chus, with his high-flown aspirations and shy 
 sensitiveness, is cast upon a sea of doubt. He 
 seeks action, and has to choose between two 
 common-place professions. The Spirit of the 
 world tempts him with no magnificent pleas- 
 ures, with no promises of power. Sneering at 
 
 411 . . .4 
 
him, he offers in exchange for his soul's vir- 
 ginity the merest humdrum of diurnal life in 
 a marriage without illusions and a business 
 without enthusiasms. Dipsychus is fairly 
 staggered : — 
 
 "I had hoped 
 Midst weakness, indolence, frivolity, 
 Irresolution, still had hoped; and this 
 Seems sacrificing hope." 
 
 Would it not be better, he asks, to wait — to 
 
 let inferior opportunities shp by, and to seize 
 
 the supreme chance of heroic action when it 
 
 comes? But what if, when it comes, we should 
 
 prove incapable of seizing it or using it by 
 
 want of action? Is it not safer to engage in 
 
 the great battle as a conmion soldier, and work 
 
 up to the captaincy? — 
 
 "High deeds 
 Haunt not the fringy edges of the fight, 
 But the pell-mell of men." 
 
 Yet again there is danger in this course. We 
 may reasonably fear — 
 
 "In the deft trick 
 Of prentice handling to forget great art, 
 To base mechanical adroitness yield 
 The Inspiration and the Hope a Slave!" 
 
 12Q 
 
Ah, but suppose I relinquish action alto- 
 gether? Even that is unsafe : — 
 
 "Contamination taints the idler first." 
 
 I will away with hesitation, at last he cries, 
 
 and obey my instinct — if only, alas! I had an 
 
 instinct ! — 
 
 "No, no: 
 
 The life of instinct has, it seems, gone by, 
 And will not be forced back. And to live now, 
 I must sluice out myself into canals, 
 And lose all force in ducts. The modem Hotspur 
 Shrills not his trumpet of *To Horse, To Horse!' 
 But consults columns in a Railway Guide." 
 
 But even thus to act, humbly and by routine, 
 might be sufficient for the yearnings of the 
 soul, if only we could believe that the work 
 done were worth doing, and that we were inte- 
 gral and indispensable parts of the life of the 
 great world: — 
 
 "If indeed it work. 
 And is not a mere treadmill! which it may be, 
 Who can confirm it is not? We ask action, 
 And dream of arms and conflict; and string up 
 All self-devotion's muscles; and are set 
 To fold up papers. To what end?— we know not. 
 Other folks do so; it is always done; 
 And it perhaps is right." 
 
 m 
 
After all, if really bidden to bathe in this com- 
 mon-place Jordan of unapparent efficacy, let 
 us bathe. "I submit." As an echo to this 
 word the Spirit is heard from within singing: — 
 
 "Submit, submit! 
 'Tis common sense and human wit 
 Can claim no higher name than it." 
 
 Still, though on the verge of action, Dipsy- 
 chus wavers. Is he now, so swiftly and irre- 
 vocably, "to lose in action, passion, talk, the 
 soul?" To abandon, for the uncertain good of 
 work in the world, those moments of illumina- 
 tion which have come upon him hitherto at 
 intervals, and seemed to solve the riddle? — 
 
 "0 happy hours! 
 
 compensation ample for long days 
 
 Of what impatient tongues call wretchedness!" 
 "No, no! 
 
 1 am contented, and will not complain. 
 To the old paths, my soul! O, be it so! 
 I bear the work-day burden of dull life 
 Above these footsore flags of a weary world, 
 Heaven knows how long it has not been; at once, 
 Lo! I am in the Spirit on the Lord's day 
 
 With John in Patmos. Is it not enough, 
 Ono day in seven? and if this should go, 
 
If this pure solace should desert my mind, 
 What were all else? I dare not risk this loss. 
 To the old paths, my soul!" 
 
 Overhearing this soliloquy, the Spirit 
 gibes : — 
 
 "Oh, yes. 
 To moon about religion; to inhume 
 Your ripened age in solitary walks. 
 For self -discussion; to debate in letters 
 Vext points with earnest friends; past other men 
 To cherish natural instincts, yet to fear them 
 And less than any use them .... 
 
 to pervert 
 
 Ancient real facts to modem unreal dreams. 
 And build up baseless fabrics of romance 
 And heroism upon heroic sand; 
 To bum forsooth, for action, yet despise 
 Its merest accidence and alphabet." 
 * * * ♦ ♦ 
 
 "Once in a fortnight say, by lucky chance. 
 Of happier-tempered coffee, gain (great Heaven!) 
 A pious rapture." 
 
 We regret that our space admits of only 
 these broken extracts from a speech which is 
 full of the most searching satire on a scholar's 
 solitary life — of irony terrible in its remorse- 
 less truth — of worldly wisdom crushing down 
 in proud superiority of strength the dreamy 
 
 1215 
 
aspirations of a timid soul. Dipsychus, stung 
 and quickened by a sense of his own impotence 
 and by the ruthless logic of the carping voice, 
 cries with a return of discontented determina- 
 tion : — 
 
 "Must it be, then? So quick upon my thought 
 To follow the fulfilment and the deed? 
 I counted not on this. I counted ever 
 To hold and turn it over in my hands 
 Much longer." 
 
 Yet he cannot now escape the law which his 
 own speculations have imposed on him. It is 
 in vain that the thirst for action leaves him for 
 a moment, and he cries : — 
 
 "What need for action yet? I am happy now; 
 I feel no lack. What cause is there for haste? 
 Am I not happy? Is not that enough?" 
 
 bidding the Spirit depart. The Spirit will not 
 go, but turns upon him with a new menace : — 
 
 "What! you know not that I too can be serious, 
 Can speak big words, and use the tone imperious, 
 Can speak, not honiedly, of love and beauty, 
 But sternly of a something much like Duty." 
 
 The casuistry of action becomes very serious 
 when the voice of the world imposes upon the 
 
 126 
 
soul one of its own laws, and goads it on by 
 an appeal to its own higher impulses. Dipsy- 
 chus is daunted and shaken: — 
 
 "It must be, then. I feel it in my soul; 
 The iron enters, sundering flesh and bone, 
 And sharper than the two-edged sword of God. 
 I come into deep waters. Help, oh help! 
 The floods run over me. 
 
 Therefore, farewell! — a long and last farewell, 
 Ye pious sweet simplicities of life, 
 Good books, good friends, and holy moods, and all 
 That lent rough life sweet Sunday-seeming rests, 
 Making earth heaven-like. Welcome, wicked world! 
 The hardening heart, the calculating brain. 
 Narrowing its doors to thought, the lying lips, 
 The calm-dissembling eyes, the greedy flesh. 
 The world, the devil, — ^welcome, welcome, welcome!" 
 
 In the midst of this mental anguish and 
 moral conflict, the Spirit of the world sneers 
 at him. What are you dreading to give up? 
 What is the work you have set yourself? Is 
 it literature — novels, reviews, poems, perhaps 
 a little philosophising — vague scepticism, 
 dilettante dreamings about life? Or else you'll 
 try teaching and tutoring of youth, not so as to 
 absorb your whole time, but always keeping 
 leisure for your meditations and illuminations : 
 
 127 
 
"Heartily you will not take to anything; 
 Whatever happen, don't I see you still 
 Living no life at all? Even as now 
 An o'ergrown baby, sucking at the dugs 
 Of instinct, dry long since. Come, come! you are old 
 
 enough 
 For spoon-meat, surely. 
 
 Will you go on thus 
 Until death end you? If indeed it does: 
 For what it does, none knows. Yet as for you, 
 You'll hardly have the courage to die outright; 
 You'll somehow halve even it. Methinks I see you. 
 Through everlasting limboes of void time, 
 Twirling and twiddling ineffectively, 
 And indeterminately swaying for ever.'* 
 
 In this way, with continual sarcasms and 
 much home truth, seasoned with a reiteration 
 of the philosophy of submission, the Spirit 
 drives Dipsychus on to engage in the world's 
 work. Having bowed and given up the con- 
 test, Dipsychus still abjures his counsellor: — 
 
 "Not for thy service, thou imperious fiend. 
 Not to do thy work or the like of thine; 
 Not to please thee, base and fallen spirit! 
 But one Most High, Most True, whom, without Thee, 
 It seems I cannot." 
 
 He still sets the law of life and the law of the 
 Gospel at variance: 
 
 128 
 
"Do we owe fathers nothing — mothers nought? 
 Is filial duty folly? Yet He says, 
 'He that loves father, mother, more than Me;' 
 Yea, and *the man his parents shall desert,* 
 The ordinance says, 'and cleave unto his wife.' 
 man, behold thy wife!' the hard, naked world; 
 Adam, accept thy Eve!" 
 
 With many protestations, and reservations, 
 and antinomian arguments, Dipsychus at 
 length accepts the yoke of the prince of this 
 world, not without having his eyes open to 
 what he is about, but seeing no other course. 
 And the Spirit says: — 
 
 "0, goodness! won't you find it pleasant 
 To own the positive and present; 
 To see yourself like people round, 
 And feel your feet upon the ground!" 
 
 After this long analysis of Dipsychus, we 
 have only to call attention to the skill with 
 which Clough has sustained his two characters. 
 In the course of their protracted dialogue, 
 they never change, except in so far as an al- 
 teration of will and purpose is wrought in the 
 weaker spirit by the stronger and more persis- 
 tent tempter. The force of unscrupulous and 
 narrow power, firmly planted upon the solid 
 
 129 
 
facts of common life, is displayed with won- 
 derful vigor by the poet, in his Mephistopheles, 
 who, at the same time, has never failed to make 
 the most of the hmnours and satirical side of 
 his character. There is nothing tragic in this 
 Mephistopheles, just as there is nothing tragic 
 (melodramatically speaking) in the final con- 
 cession of Dipsychus. But beneath the ironi- 
 cal sneers of the one, and the helpless struggles 
 of the other, lurks the deep and subtle tragedy 
 of human life and action — of free souls caged, 
 and lofty aspirations curbed — a vulgar and 
 diurnal tragedy over which no tears are shed 
 in theatres, but which, we might imagine, stirs 
 the sorrow of the angels day by day as they 
 look down upon our world. 
 
 This same most piteous chord is touched 
 even more deeply and with a keener sense of 
 hopelessness in the poem called "The Ques- 
 tioning Spirit" — one of the most perfect 
 among Clough's earlier compositions, written, 
 perhaps, at the darkest and most troubled 
 period of his life, on the theme of what may be 
 described as the Criterion of Dut5\ As an- 
 
 ISO 
 
other appendix or gloss upon the philosophy of 
 Dipsychus, we may mention the lines begin- 
 ning, "Duty — that's to say complying," the 
 concentrated verjuice of the satire of which is 
 very characteristic of one of Clough's moods. 
 An answer or antidote to these more gloomy 
 views of common life is found in the elegiac 
 lines beginning, "Hope evermore and believe, 
 O man!" which contain this cheerful stoicism: 
 
 "Not for the gain of the gold; for the getting, the hoard- 
 ing, the having; 
 But for the joy of the deed; but for the Duty to do." 
 
 It remains to consider Clough's artistic 
 qualities more in detail than we have hitherto 
 done. But neither is it easy to do this, nor 
 have we left ourselves much space for doing it 
 in. In the course of our notice, however, we 
 have been at pains to select passages for quota- 
 tion which might illustrate his style, as well as 
 supply the matter necessary for explaining his 
 subject. There is a certain dryness, hardness, 
 and severity — a want of colour, tone, and rich- 
 ness — in most of what Clough has written. In 
 daily life he was a man of few words, and diffi- 
 
 1«1 
 
cult utterance; nor does he seem ever to have 
 gained real facility of poetical expression. His 
 last poems, the "Mari Magno Tales," have in- 
 deed more fluency; but here the copia verb- 
 orum tends to a somewhat prosaic prolixity, 
 instead of adding warmth and splendour to his 
 style. Those readers who have accustomed 
 their ears to the sublime harmonies of Milton, 
 or to the exquisite lyrical music of Shelley, or 
 to the more artificially melodious rhythms of 
 Mr. Swinburne, or to Tennyson's elegant and 
 complex cadences, will complain that Clough 
 is harsh and unadorned. He rough-hews in- 
 deed (as it has been said) like a Cyclops; but 
 he cannot finish like a Canova. Occasionally 
 he attains to perfect style and form per saltuvi, 
 by a sudden flash of native energy and fire. 
 He pours forth torrid thought and feeling like 
 a lava yet into the adamantine mould of stately 
 and severe expression. "Easter Day" is a speci- 
 men of this success. The poem owes nothing 
 to its rhythm, or its rhymes, or the beauty of 
 its imagery, or the music of its language. It 
 is plain and natural, and without allurements 
 
 182 
 
of any sort. But the emotion is so intense, 
 and so thoroughly expressed — the thought is 
 so vigorous and vital in every line — that the 
 grandest poetry is wrought out of the com- 
 monest materials, apparently without effort, 
 and by the mere intensity of the poet's will. 
 "Easter Day" is a bronze poem. It is the most 
 perfect illustration in English literature of the 
 artistic canons which Wordsworth preached, 
 and upon which his own practice brought con- 
 tempt. "Qui laborat orat" and many more of 
 the minor religious poems are likewise cast of 
 red-hot feeling, in a stern and simple mould. 
 
 But, such being the style by which alone 
 Clough attains to excellence, it follows that 
 when he is not perfectly simple and clear he 
 has no excuse: when he is prolix he becomes 
 prosy. There is no gorgeousness of language, 
 pomp of sound, or playfulness of fancy to 
 cover the faults of ill-constructed or feebly- 
 designed poems, and to yield ample matter for 
 quotation when the subject fails to interest. 
 
 Passing to matters of mere detail, we may 
 observe that Clough apparently rhymed with 
 
some difficulty, and that he was too fond of 
 a jingHng refrain carried through a poem of 
 many stanzas, as in the lyrics of "Dipsychus." 
 It was only when he felt with intensity, and 
 when the expression of his feeling welled up 
 spontaneously within his heart and overflowed, 
 that his poems were perfect; and then we 
 imagine that few writers had the power of 
 more exactly and touchingly saying what they 
 wished. 
 
 Connected, apparently, with this inade- 
 quacy of utterance in any of the more complex 
 and rhymed forms of verse, was his predilec- 
 tion for hexameters. The English hexameter 
 has always been confessed to be a somewhat 
 rough and jolting metre, when compared with 
 heroic or blank verse or the Spenserian stanza. 
 Yet it served Clough's purpose. In those 
 loose, yet rhythmical lines he was able to ex- 
 press with the exact fidelity required by his 
 artistic conscience all essential realities of fact, 
 all deHcate shades of feeling — to turn from 
 sentiment to satire, from the incidents of travel 
 to aesthetical or religious meditations, from 
 
 U4i 
 
landscape pictures to philosophy or argument 
 or analysis. A good judge of poetry has lately 
 pronounced it as his opinion that Clough never 
 intended his hexameters for metre, but for ca- 
 denced prose. But it is impossible that Clough 
 could have meant these hexameters for an es- 
 say in prose, since they are utterly unlike any 
 sort or kind of prose writing, and are extremely 
 suggestive, to say the least, of Horace's 
 epistles and of Goethe. No artist of taste 
 would make experiments in one species of writ- 
 ing by importing into it the peculiar rhythm 
 of another species. If a man chooses to cast 
 his thought into the world-old form of the 
 hexameter, he is not asking us to compare him 
 with the "Rehgio Medici," the "Areopagitica," 
 the "Opium Eater," and "Modern Painters," 
 but with the "Iliad," the "De Rerum Natura," 
 "Hermann and Dorothea," and "Evangeline." 
 Judged by these latter standards, Mr. Clough 
 takes a high place for the subtlety, variety, 
 and racy flavour of originality which he has 
 imparted to this ancient vehicle of thought. 
 His hexameters are sui generis j unlike those of 
 
any other writer in any language, and better, 
 we venture to assert, in spite of Mr. Arnold, 
 than those of any other English author. If he 
 sets prosody at defiance, and makes such 
 dactyls as "pace slowly," he yet produces 
 periods of majestic and sonorous music like 
 those which might be quoted from the earlier 
 parts of "Amours de Voyage." But, leaving 
 these questions of style and form, we may pass 
 to other poetical quahties of Mr. Clough. In 
 his painting from nature, and in his descrip- 
 tions of character, we trace the marvellous sin- 
 cerity and accuracy of his mind. The "Bothie" 
 is full of the most delightful pictures of high- 
 land scenery, the fidelity of which can only be 
 tested by a minute comparison of Clough's 
 words with the actual places they refer to. 
 "Amours de Voyage," in the same way, yields 
 many most highly finished and exquisitely 
 faithful pictures of Rome. Everything 
 Clough wrote he drew from personal experi- 
 ence as far as the locahty and mise en scene 
 are concerned. And this accounts for the strict 
 truthfulness to nature which we find in his chief 
 
 poems. 
 
 136 
 
As for his power of analysing and sustain- 
 ing character, for his irony and humour, and 
 pathos, we have ab-eady said and quoted 
 enough to show that he possesses these higher 
 faculties of genius in no small degree. What 
 is particularly important in the present age of 
 literature, he is powerful without being osten- 
 tatious, passionate and intense without ex- 
 travagance, profound without obscurity, per- 
 fectly simple in form and solid in matter. He 
 is a poet who will bear being frequently read; 
 and who, each time we read him, astonishes us 
 with some fresh beauty, or some new reach of 
 thought. 
 
 IWi 
 
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