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DEPOSITED BY THE

UNONIAN AND BROTHERS LIBRARY

334
FEB 1 1 1918

ESSAYS

VOL. II.

ESSAYS djeologfral anir Utterarg

By RICHARD HOLT HUTTON, M.A. (London)

VOL. II.
LITERARY ESSAYS

SECOND EDITION— REVISED AND ENLARGED

LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1880.

M^5*
&>>(>

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
.(LITERARY ESSAYS.)

I.
Goethe and his Influence

PAGE I

II.
Wordsworth and his Genius ... . . 80
III.
Shelley's Poetical Mysticism ..... 118
IV.
Mr. Browning  153
V.
The Poetry of the Old Testament . . . .201
VI.
Arthur Hugh Clough  238

vi CONTENTS. VII.
PAGE
The Poetry of Matthew Arnold . . • ¦ 258
VIII.
Tennyson  • 3°3
IX.
Nathaniel Hawthorne . . ... 370

LITERARY ESSAYS.

I.
GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.

S~* OETHE tells us in his Autobiography, that while
^-* his mind was wandering about in search of a reli
gious system, and thus passing over the intermediate areas
between the various regions of theological belief, he met
with a certain phenomenon which seemed to him to belong
to none of them, and which he used to call therefore dczmonic
influence. "It was not divine, for it seemed unintel-
lectual ; nor human, for it was no result of understanding ;
nor diabolic, for it was of beneficent tendency ; nor angelic,
for you could often notice in it a certain mischievousness.
It resembled chance, inasmuch as it demonstrated nothing;
but was like providence, inasmuch as it showed symptoms
of continuity. Everything which fetters human agency
seemed to yield before it ; it seemed to dispose arbitrarily
of the necessary elements of our existence." It is not
always, says this great observer of life, " the first and best,
either in moral nature or in abilities," who possess this
magnetic influence, and it is but rarely " that they recom-
* " The Life and Works of Goethe : with Sketches of his Age and
Contemporaries, from published and unpublished sources." By G. H.
Lewes. 2 vols. Nutt, 1855.
" Freundschaftliche Briefe von Goethe und seiner Frau an Nicolaus
Meyer, aus den Jahren 1800-1831." Leipzig, Hartung, 1856. ("Friendly
Letters from Goethe and his Wife to Nicolas Meyer, between the years
1800 and 1831." Leipzig, 1856.)
VOL. II. B

2 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
mend themselves by goodness of heart; but a gigantic
force goes out of them, and they exercise an incredible
power over all creatures, nay, even over the elements
themselves ; and who can say how far this influence may
reach? All moral forces united are powerless against
them. The masses are fascinated by them. They are
only to be conquered by the universe itself," when they
enter into conflict with it. Of course Goethe was thinking
mainly of Napoleon, and men like him, as he afterwards
told Eckermann, when he wrote this passage. Such men
put forth, he says, a power, "if not exactly opposite to,
yet at least crossing, that of the general moral order of the
world ; so that the one might be regarded as the woof, the
other as the warp." He adds, that his life-long friend and
patron, the Duke of Weimar, had this magnetic influence
to such a degree that nobody could resist him, and no work
of art ever failed in the poet's hands which the duke had
suggested or approved. "He would have been enviable
indeed if he could have possessed himself of my ideas and
higher strivings ; for when the daemon forsook him, and
only the human was left, he knew not how to set to work,
and was much troubled at it. In Byron this element was
probably very active, giving him such powers of fascina
tion, especially with women." Eckermann, with his usual
delightfully child-like simplicity, anxiously asks, " Has
not Mephistopheles traits of. this nature ? " " No," replies
Goethe, "Mephistopheles is too negative a being. The
daemonic manifests itself in positive active power among
artists. It is found often in musicians, more rarely among
painters. In Paganini it shows itself to a high degree, and
it is by means of it that he produces such great effects."
Of himself he says, " it does not lie in my nature, but I am
subject to its influence ; " by which Goethe probably meant
modestly to disclaim having any personal fascination of
this kind over other men, but to indicate, what we know

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 3
from other conversations he really held to be true, that
apparently arbitrary and quite inexplicable impulses had
often exercised the most decisive and frequently fortunate
influence on his own career. But it is quite clear that
Goethe did possess in no common degree this capacity for,
in a certain sense, fascinating men by his presence, as well
as by his writings. If Byron had more of it as a man,
Goethe succeeded in imparting far more of it to his works,
and neither his life nor works can be properly judged with
out reference to its influence. It is something quite dis
tinct from mere beauty, power, or general merit, either of
personal character or of literary creation. It is a power
which goes out from the individual man, and which can
imprint itself only on such writings as carry with them the
stamp of individual character ; and not always even on
those, if, as for example in the case of Byron's earlier
works, the play of character is a good deal merged in
some exaggerated mood of sentiment. It is not intensity :
numbers of writers have surpassed Goethe in the intensity
both of literary and personal characteristics. Schiller was
a man of far keener and intenser, though narrower nature,
and yet he could not help going into utter captivity to the
calm and somewhat limply-constituted mind of his Weimar
friend. It is not even in itself independence or strength of
will ; for though Goethe had this in a remarkable degree,
many others, as probably Schiller, possessed it in as high
a degree, who were quite destitute of his fascinating talent.
If it be expressible in one phrase at all (which it is not), it
might be called presence of mind in combination with a
keen knowledge of men ; — I mean that absolute and com
plete adequacy to every emergency which gave Napoleon
his sangfroid at the very turning-point of his great battles,
and which in the literary world has secured for Johnson his
Boswell, and for Goethe his Eckermann. Johnson, indeed,
was immeasurably Goethe's inferior in the range of his
B 2

4 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
experience, and, what is of more importance, in his know
ledge of man; but he was perhaps his superior in mere
presence of mind, and hence was greater in conversation,
but less in fascination. The Duke of Wellington had
nearly as much presence of mind as Napoleon himself; but
he had immeasurably less of the other element of fascina
tion—instinctive knowledge of men, and knowledge how
to use them.
Goethe is almost unrivalled in the literary world in the
degree in which he combines these qualities. Shakespeare
may have had them equally, but his dramas are too im
personal to tell us clearly what kind of individual influence
he put forth. I should conjecture that his sympathy with
men was too vivid to have enabled him to keep, as was the
case with Goethe, a part of himself as a permanent reserve-
force outside the actual field of action, and ready to turn the
flank of any new emergency. Shakespeare can scarcely
have been so uniformly able to detach himself, if he would,
from the sympathies and passions of the moment as Goethe
certainly was ; for Goethe, like the little three-eyed girl
(Dreiduglein) in the German tale, had always an extra
organ besides the eyes he slept and wept with, to take
note of his own sleep and his own tears, and an extra
will, subject to the command of the third eye, ready to
rescue the ordinary will from the intricacies of human
emotion. Shakespeare's knowledge of life was, I should
think, less drawn from constant vigilance and presence of
mind in the passing moment (to which I imagine him to
have abandoned himself far more completely than Goethe),
and more derived from the power of memory and imagina
tion to reproduce past impressions. However this may
be, Shakespeare has himself sketched less perhaps this
cool presence of mind itself, than the effect which it
produces on other men, in his picture of Octavius Caesar.
Caesar's cool self-possessed eye for every emergency, and

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. s
for the right use of human instruments, and its paralysing
effect on Antony's more attaching and passionate cha
racter, is a striking example of what Goethe would have
called the " daemonic " element in human affairs— the ele
ment that fascinates men by at once standing out clear and
quite independent of their support, and yet indicating the
power to read them off, and detect for them their own needs
and uses. There is always in this kind of magnetic power
something repulsive at first ; but if the repulsion be. over
come, the attraction becomes stronger than ever ; there is
a resistance while the mind of the disciple is striving to
keep its independence and conscious of the spell,— an
intense devotion after he has once relinquished it, and con
sented to be a satellite. So the soothsayer tells Antony,—
" Thy demon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
Where Caesar's is not ; but near him, thy angel
Becomes a fear, as being overpowered ; therefore
Make space enough between you."
And Goethe, who had, as he says, himself experienced
the force of this blind fascination in the Duke of Weimar's
influence over him, as well as wielded it in no slight
degree, tells Eckermann (himself a captive), " The higher
a man stands, the more he is liable to this daemonic in
fluence ; and he must take constant care that his guiding
will be not diverted by it from the straight way. . . . This
is just the difficult point, — for our better nature stoutly to
sustain itself, and yield to the daemonic no more than is
reasonable." In Goethe himself this fascinating power existed as
strongly as it is well possible to conceive in a man whose
whole intellectual nature was of the sympathetic and con
templative, rather than of the practical cast, — who had no
occasion to " use " men except as literary material, — and
who, while he stood out independent of them, and could at

6 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
will shake off from his feet the dust of long association,
yet felt with them as one who understood their nature and
had entered into their experience. Goethe's sympathetic
and genial insight into man would have been a pure
embarrassment to a practical cold-tempered tool-seeker
like Napoleon, who never deciphered men through sym
pathy, but always by an instinctive tact for detecting
masterly and workmanlike instruments. And vice versa,
the imperturbable self-possession and Napoleonic sang
froid of judgment that underlay in Goethe all storms of
superficial emotion, was no little embarrassment to him in
many of his literary moods. It prevented him, we think,
from ever becoming a great dramatist. He could never
lose himself sufficiently in his creations : yet it was em
phatically this which gave that peculiar and undefinable
fascination to those minutely-accurate observations on life
with which all his later prose works and his conversations
,are so thickly studded. You can clearly see that men of
strong nature did not submit to Goethe's magnetic influence
without a struggle. Schiller, at first intensely repelled
from him, was only gradually subdued, though thoroughly
and strangely magnetised into idolatry by personal con
verse. Herder's keen and caustic nature vibrated to the
end between the intense repulsion he felt for Goethe's
completely zmmoral genius, — the poet's impartial sympathy
for good and evil alike, — and the irresistible attraction
which his personal influence exerted. Only those could
thoroughly cling to Goethe from the first who were not
conscious of having any strong intellectual independence
to maintain. Women, who love nothing so much as a
completely independent self-sustained nature, especially
if joined with thorough insight into themselves, were
fascinated at once. Wieland, who had no intellectual
ground to fight for, surrendered without terms. But no
man of eminent ability and a different school of thought

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 7
seemed to approach him without some sense that, if
exposed constantly to his immediate influence, he had to
choose between fascination and aversion. Hence his very
few intimate male friends : scarcely any man, at all able to
enter into his mind and share his deeper interests, was
likely to be found who could go so completely into captivity
to his modes of thought ; and, tolerant as he was, the cen
trifugal force of his mind threw off, to a certain respectful
distance, all that the attractive force was not able to appro
priate as part of itself.
There has been a very similar effect produced by his
writings on those even who did not know the man. Novalis
fluttered round them, repeatedly expressing his aversion,
like a moth round a candle. They invariably repel, at first,
English readers with English views of life and duty. As
the characteristic atmosphere of the man distils into your
life, you find the magnetic force coming strongly over
you ; — you are as a man mesmerised ; — you feel his calm
independence of so much on which you helplessly lean,
combined with his thorough insight into that desire of
yours to lean, drawing you irresistibly towards the invi
sible intellectual centre at which such independent strength
and such genial breadth of thought was possible. And yet
you feel that you would be in many and various ways
lowered in your own eyes if you could think completely as
he thought and act as he acted. It becomes a difficult pro
blem, in the presence of so much genius, and beneath so
fascinating an eye, " for our better nature stoutly to sustain
itself and yield to the daemonic no more than is reasonable."
Let me attempt to contribute to the solution of this
difficulty by some account and criticism of Goethe's life
and genius in connection with that personal character
which so subtly penetrates all he has written. Carlyle
mistook completely when he said that Goethe, like Shake
speare, leaves little trace of himself in his creations. To a

8 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
careful eye this is not even true of Shakespeare, though
Shakespeare leaves no immediate stamp of himself, and
critical inference alone can discern him in his works ; but
far less is it true of Goethe. A rarified self no doubt it
is— a highly distilled gaseous essence; but everywhere,
penetrating all he writes, there is the ethereal atmosphere
which travelled about with Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
Mr. Lewes's volumes give us a very able and interesting
biography, — a book, indeed, of permanent value ; the inci
dents illustrating character, though not quite exhausting
his materials, are disposed with skill, and the artistic
criticism, while thoroughly appreciating Goethe's trans
cendent poetical genius, is independent, sensible, and
English. From his moral criticism of Goethe, and some
times, though not so frequently, from the poetical, I very
widely dissent, and hope to give the grounds of my
dissent. Something more too might have been done in
the way of defining his individual position both as a poet
and as a man. But it is impossible to deny Mr. Lewes
high merit for the candour of his biography. Where
Goethe has been most censured, he gives all the facts
without reserve; and he does not go into any helpless
captivity to the poet and artist. He gives his readers the
elements for forming their own moral judgments, and he
has shaken off from his feet the ponderous rubbish of the
German scholiasts. Herr Diintzer and his colleagues are
skilfully used in Mr. Lewes's book ; but they are also skil
fully ignored. Mr. Lewes has not submitted himself to
Carlyle's somewhat undiscriminating, strained, and lashed-
up furor of adoration for every word that the German sage
let drop. There is, by the way, nothing more remarkably
illustrative of Goethe's " daemonic " influence than Carlyle's
worship of him. Except in his permanent unfailing self-
possession, Goethe lacked almost all the personal qualities
which usually fascinate that great writer's eye. And ac-

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 9
cordingly there runs through Carlyle's essays on Goethe a
tone of arduous admiration, — a helpless desire to fix on some
characteristic which he could infinitely admire, — betraying
that he was in subjection to the " eyes behind the book,"
not to the thing which is said in it. There was nothing of
the rugged thrusting power of Johnson, of the imperious
practical faith of Cromwell, of the picturesque passion of
Danton, of the kingly fanaticism of Mahomet ; nothing, in
short, of the intensity of nature which Carlyle always needs^
behind the sagacity he worships. Mr. Lewes reports a
rather affected piece of Carlylese, delivered by the Latter-
day oracle in Piccadilly upon one of the injurious attacks
that had been directed against Goethe. Carlyle stopped
suddenly, and with his peculiar look and emphasis said,
" Yes, it is the wild cry of amazement on the part of all
spooneys that the Titan was not a spooney too ! Here is a
godlike intellect, and yet you see he is not an idiot ! not in
the least a spooney ! " This was hardly true of Goethe ;
and we strongly suspect that Mr. Carlyle was resisting a
secret feeling that there was a limpness and want of con
centration in Goethe's whole nature intellectual and moral,
from the results of which his imperturbable presence of
mind and great genius barely saved him ; that he did in
consequence go sometimes beyond the brink of spooney-
ishness in early days, and across the verge of very unreal
" high art " in later life. These are just the defects to
which Mr. Carlyle is most sensitive. It is true Goethe
never was in danger of permanently sinking into either
abyss ; for his head was always cool, and his third eye, at
least, always vigilant. But it may perhaps account for the
unusual failure of our great essayist in delineating Goethe,
that the poet's wonderful writings were less the real object
of his admiration than the strange fascination of the cha-
racter behind. In my very brief sketch of the poet's life, I
shall, so far as possible, select my illustrations from

io GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
passages or incidents passed over in Mr. Lewes's volumes,
wherever they seem to be equally characteristic.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, born at noon on the 28th
August, 1749, in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, seems to have
inherited his genial, sensitive, sensuous, and joyous tem
perament from his mother ; and from his father, the pride,
self-dependence, and magnificent formality, the nervous
orderliness, perseverance, and the microscopic minuteness
of eye, by which, at least after the first rush of youth was
gone by, he was always distinguished. His mother was
but eighteen when he was born. She was a lively girl,
full of German sentiment, with warm impulses, by no
means much troubled with a conscience, exceedingly
afraid of her husband, who was near twenty years her
senior, and seemingly both willing and skilful in the
invention of occasional white lies adapted to screen her
children from his minute, fidgetty, and rather austere
superintendence. She "spoiled" her children on prin
ciple, and made no pretence of conducting a systematic
training which she abhorred. She said of herself in after-
years, that she could " educate no child, was quite unfit
for it, gave them every wish so long as they laughed and
were good, and whipped them if they cried or made wry
faces, without ever looking for any reason why they
laughed or cried."* Her belief in Providence was warm
with German sentiment, and not a little tinged with super
stition. She rejoiced greatly when her son published the
" Confessions of a Beautiful Soul," which she loved as a
memorial of a lost pietistic friend. Her religion was one
of emotion rather than of moral reverence. She was
generous and extravagant, and, after her husband's death,
seems to have spent capital as well as income. She was
passionately fond of the theatre ; a taste which she trans
mitted to her son. Her hearty simplicity of nature made
* Letter to her granddaughter— Duntzer's " Frauenbilder," p. 544.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. n
her universally loved. Her servants loved and stayed
with her to the last. She seems to have had at least as
much humour as her son, which, for Germans, was not
inconsiderable, and not much more sense of awe. She
gave the most detailed orders for her own funeral, and
even specified the kind of wine and the size of the
cracknels with which the mourners were to be regaled;
ordering the servants not to put too few raisins into the
cakes, as she never could endure that in her life, and it
would certainly chafe her in her grave. Having been
invited to go to a party on the day on which she died, she
sent for answer that " Madame Goethe could not come, as
she was engaged just then in dying."* Yet her sensitive
ness was so great, that she always made it a condition
with her servants that they should never repeat to her
painful news that they had picked up accidentally, as she
wished to hear nothing sad without absolute necessity.
And during her son's dangerous illness at Weimar, in
1 805, no one ventured to speak to her of it till it was past,
though she affirmed that she had been conscious all the
time of his danger without the heart to mention it.
This latter peculiarity Goethe inherited. Courageous
to the utmost degree in danger, he could never bear to
encounter mental pain which he could anyhow escape.
He invented soft paraphrases to avoid speaking of the
death of those he had loved, and indeed of all death.
Writing to Zelter of his own son's death, he says, "the
staying-away (Aeussenbleiben) of my son has weighed
dreadfully upon me in many ways." And his feeling was
so well-known, that his old friend and mistress, the
Frau von Stein, who died before him, directed that her
funeral should not pass his door, lest it should impress
him too painfully. No one dared to tell him of Schiller's
death ; and so it was also at the death of his wife's sister,
* Duntzer's " Frauenbilder," p. 583.

12 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
and in other cases. Indeed, his constant unwillingness
manfully to face the secret of his own anguish, was a
principal source of a shade of unreality in a generally very
real character. He habitually evaded the task of fathom
ing the meaning and the depth of suffering. He avoided
all contact with keen pain. He could not bear, although
in the neighbourhood, to visit his brother-in-law at a time
when his sister's child was dying. It was not weakness,
— it was his principle of action ; and the effect remains in
his works. He writes like a man who had not only
experienced but explored every reality of human life
except that of anguish and remorse. The iron that enters
into the soul had found him too ; but instead of fronting
it as he fronted all other realities of life, and pondering its
teaching to the last letter, he drew back from it with what
speed he might. This experience even his Faust wants.
Remorse, grief, agony, Goethe gently waived ; and, by
averting his thoughts, softened them gradually without
mastering their lesson. Hence his passion never reaches
the deepest deep of human life. It can glow and melt,
but is never a consuming fire. His Werther, Tasso,
Ottilie, and Clarchen suffer keenly, but never meet the
knife-edge. There is nothing in his poems like the
courageous reality of suffering which vibrates through
some of Shelley's lyrics and his " Cenci." The fascination
of pain he can paint, but not the conquest of the will over
its deeper aspect of terror. The temperament he inherited
from his mother. But to him was granted a conspicuously
potent will, which should have enabled him to sound
¦this depth also.
From his father it is far more difficult to say what
qualities of mind Goethe inherited. The old man had
always worried his family; and it became fashionable
among the poet's friends, who were enthusiastic about his
mother, to ignore or depreciate the old counsellor, and

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 13
they seem to have regarded it as a " mercy " when " Pro
vidence removed him." There are, however, one or two
incidents in the Autobiography which convey an impres
sion that his affection for his children was as real and
deep as even that of his wife. He was a formal man,
with strong ideas of strait-laced education, passionately
orderly (he thought a good book nothing without a good
binding), and never so much excited as by a necessary
deviation from the " pre-established harmony " of house
hold rules. He could not submit to the inevitable. He
was the kind of man who is so attached to his rules, that
if he cannot shatter the obstacles of circumstance, he
thinks it next best to let the obstacles of circumstance
shatter him. He had none of his son's calm presence of
mind. But whatever perseverance of temper Goethe had,
he probably gained from his father. The latter could not
bear to do anything superficially. He was as thorough
(griindlich, as the Germans say) in preparing Wolfgang for,
the coronation of the emperor by an exhaustive investiga
tion into the authorities for every ceremony to be observed,
as in teaching him the civil law. Einleitung, Quellen, &c,
were all raked carefully up ; for was not the coronation a
part of the " Entwickelung der Geschichte " ? He had the
formal notions about everything, considered rhyme the
essence of poetry, and believed that pictures, like wine,
improved in value by mere keeping. He taught his chil
dren himself, and completely alienated his daughter by
his dry and exacting manner. But he was at least in
earnest with his task. He began to learn both English
and drawing at the same time with his children, that his
own participation in their efforts might spur them on.
He copied all his children's drawing-copies "with an
English lead-pencil upon the finest Dutch paper ; and not
only observed the greatest clearness of outline, but most
accurately imitated the hatching of the copies with a light

14 GQETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
hand. He drew the whole collection, number by number,
while we children jumped from one head to another just
as we pleased." This is very characteristic of his son's
genius in later years, at least in the microscopic detail.
After the first [outburst of the poet's youthful passion, the
lad took a sudden fancy for rude fragmentary drawings
from nature, on all sorts of odd gray scraps of paper.
And of this time he tells us, " the pedagogism of my father,
on this point too, was greatly to be admired. He kindly
asked for my attempts, and drew lines round every imper
fect sketch  The irregular leaves he cut straight,
and thus made the beginning of a collection in which he
wished at some future time to rejoice in the progress of
his son." There seems to me real tenderness here. He
was a proud man, who had drawn back into himself, at the
first repulse, from civic politics ; and was hardly reconciled
to his son's adhesion to the Weimar Court, because he
dreaded lest some ducal caprice should bring mortification
to his family pride.
The poet was born, as he himself records, with that
sedate kind of humour in which alone he excelled, with
a "propitious horoscope." There was clear anticipation
in it of the special worship of young ladies, and of a
general sceptre over earth and air. "The sun stood in the
sign of the Virgin, and was culminating for the day."
Jupiter and Venus were friendly; (little Pallas, undis
covered for another half century, must surely have lent a
helping ray) ; Mercury was not adverse ; Mars and Saturn
indifferent ; " the moon alone, just full, exerted the power
of her opposition, all the more as she had reached her
planetary hour; she therefore resisted my birth, which
could not be accomplished till this hour was passed."
Frankfort was a busy old-fashioned town, with old walls
and new walls, full of lingering traditions and grey cus
toms still surviving, which served as an antique poetic

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. iS
frame for its changing pictures of motley German life.
Goethe used to recall his childish exploring expeditions
about the old walls, moats, towers, and posterns, with
vivid delight. Directly behind his father's house was a
large area of gardens, to which the family had no access,
stretching away to the walls of the city. The boy used
often to gaze on this forbidden Eden in evening hours
from a room in the second story called the garden-room.
Even after the lapse of sixty years, the many-coloured
picture of these gardens, — the solitary figures of careful
neighbours stooping to tend their flowers, the groups of
skittle-players, and the bands of merry children, — all
blended together in the warm sunset — the floating sounds
of many voices, of the rolling balls, and the dropping
ninepins — would again beset his imagination, bringing
with them many a "tale of visionary hours."
Mr. Lewes remarks that the child's character frequently
presents far more distinctly the ground-plan of the matured
man's than the youth's, since the proportions of the whole
are often completely disguised by the temporary caprices
of newly- expanded passions and newly-gained freedom.
This is, at all events, extremely true of Goethe, and is gene
rally true of all casts of character where the permanent
influence of a manly conscience does not start forth into
life along with the new powers and new freedom it is to
control. The sense of responsibility and moral freedom,
once awakened, does not again subside, and where search
ing moral convictions have once taken hold on the charac
ter, the subsidence of youthful impetuousness does not give
back again the characteristic features of childhood ; but in
Goethe this element was always faint, and the difference
between the child's mind and the man's was only a differ
ence in maturity of powers ; when the spring-tide of youth
fell back, his inward life was as it had been, only that all
was stronger and riper. He was a reflective, old-fashioned,

1 6 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
•calmly-imaginative child, always fascinated by a mystery,
but never, properly speaking, awed by it. It kindled his
imagination ; it never subdued him. He was full of
wonder, and quite without veneration. In the "altar to
the Lord " which the child secretly built on a music-stand
of his father's at seven years of age, and on which he' burnt
incense in the shape of a pastil, until he found that he was
in danger of injuring his altar, he was innocently playing
with a subject which to almost any other child would have
been too sacred for imaginative amusement. He was
evidently charmed with the picturesqueness of the patri
archal sacrifices, and thought with delight of the blue
smoke rising up to heaven beneath the first beam of the
rising sun : of the religious feeling, the desire to give up any
thing of his own out of love to God, he had not of course
any idea ; — that in a child of seven no one would expect.
But what is characteristic, is the absence of any restraining
awe, in thus mingling the thought of God with his play, at
an age when he had already begun to think whether it was
just in God to send earthquakes and storms. Religion
was already to him what it ever continued to be, — not the
communion with holiness, but at most a graceful develop
ment of human life, a fountain of cool mystery playing grate
fully over the parched earth. Mr. Lewes has translated a
delightful illustration of Goethe's relation to his mother,
from Bettina von Arnim's account. That bold young lady's
authority is generally more than questionable ; here, how
ever, there is the strongest evidence of internal truth : —
" This genial, indulgent mother employed her faculty for story-telling
to his and her own delight. ' Air, fire, earth, and water, I represented
under the forms of princesses ; and to all natural phenomena I gave a
meaning, in which I almost believed more fervently than my little hearers.
As we thought of paths which led from star to star, and that we should
one day inhabit the stars, and thought of the great spirits we should meet
there, I was as eager for the hours of story-telling as the children them
selves ; I was quite curious about the future course of my own improvisa
tion, and any invitation which interrupted these evenings was disagreeable.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. _7
There I sat, and there Wolfgang held me with his large black eyes ; and
when the fate of one of his favourites was not according to his fancy, I
saw the angry veins swell on his temples, I saw him repress his tears.
He often burst in with, " But, mother, the princess won't marry the nasty
tailor, even if he does kill the giant." And when I made a pause for the
night, promising to continue it on the morrow, I was certain that he
would in the meanwhile think it out for himself, and so he often stimulated
my imagination. When I turned the story according to his plan, and
told him that he had found out the dhwuement, then was he all fire and
flame, and one could see his little heart beating underneath his dress !
His grandmother, who made a great pet of him, was the confidant of all
his ideas as to how the story would turn out ; and as she repeated these
to me, and I turned the story according to these hints, there was a little
diplomatic secrecy between us, which we never disclosed. I had the
pleasure of continuing my story to the delight and astonishment of my
hearers, and Wolfgang saw with glowing eyes the fulfilment of his own
conceptions, and listened with enthusiastic applause.' "
His self-command and self-importance showed them
selves early. He once waited resolutely for many minutes
till school-time was "up," though his schoolfellows were
lashing his legs with switches till they bled, before he
would defend himself by a single movement ; and then he
fell upon them with immense success. Like all petted
children, he did not like school ; his pride was hurt by the
unrespecting self-assertion of the republic around him.
His most intimate friends were usually women and
younger men. He never could endure to be laughed at.
Herder's rather silly pun on his name (Gothe), made in
college days, —
"Thou, the descendant of gods, or of Goths, or of gutters,"* —
was perhaps a little annoying ; but it clearly rankled in
his mind ; and he mentions it bitterly forty years later,
after Herder's death, in the course of a very kindly
criticism, as an instance of the sarcasm which rendered
Herder often unamiable ; characteristically suggesting
this most admirable rationale of true politeness in such
matters : " The proper name of a man is not like a cloak,
* In German " Koth," literally " mud."
VOL. II. C

1 8 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
which only hangs about him, and at which one may at any
rate be allowed to pull and twitch, but it is a close-fitting
garment, which has grown over and over him, like his
skin, and which one cannot scrape and flay without
injuring him himself." As a small boy he is said to have
walked in an old-fashioned way, in order to distinguish
himself from his schoolfellows, and to have told his mother,
"I begin with this. Later on in life I shall distinguish my
self in far other ways." One cannot help thinking a little
judicious whipping and nonchalance at home might at this
period have been of some service to him. Yet the " ora
cular " so entered into his nature, that one could ill spare
it now from his essence ; it lends a certain antique gran
deur to the light leaves of poetry that are twined round it.
His minute self-observation early showed itself. The
following recollection in his Autobiography is extremely
characteristic : —
" We boys held a Sunday assembly, where each of us was to produce
original verses, and here I was struck by something strange, which long
caused me uneasiness. My poems, whatever they might be, always
seemed to me the best. But I soon remarked that my competitors, who
brought forth very lame affairs, were in the same condition, and thought
no less of themselves. Nay, what appeared yet more suspicious, a good
lad (though in such matters altogether unskilful), whom I liked in other
respects, but who had his rhymes made by his tutor, not only regarded
these as the best, but was thoroughly persuaded they were his own, as he
always maintained in our confidential intercourse. Now, as this illusion
and error was obvious to me, the question one day forced itself upon me,
whether I myself might not be in the same state— whether those poems
were not really better than mine, and whether I might not justly appear
to those boys as mad as they to me ? This disturbed me much and long ;
for it was altogether impossible for me to find any external criterion of
the truth ; I even ceased from producing, until at length I was quieted by
my own light temperament, and the feeling of my own powers."
He could itot see then that what really distinguished him
above his schoolfellows was not near so much, probably,
the excellence of his verses, as the power of detecting and
applying to his own case the general law of self-deception.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. ,9
Goethe was, as he intimates in " Wilhelm Meister," in a
passage well known to be in fact autobiographical, a very
inquisitive child, and as unscrupulous as spoiled children
are in gratifying his inquisitiveness. His childish fondness
for the " store-room " is rather universal and human than
individual and personal. " More than any other of the
young ones I was in the habit of looking out attentively to
see if I could notice any cupboard left open, or key stand
ing in its lock." There are few minuter bits of life in his
writings than his description of the predatory excursion
into the store-room one Sunday morning, when the key
had not been withdrawn. "I marked this oversight," he
says. He pilfered, however, with less than his usual self-
possession ; the cook made a " stir in the kitchen," and
even Goethe was .flurried. But he seems to have had none
of the ordinary childish shame and self-reproach connected
with the adventure; — his favourite puppets were always
dearer to him because of the " French-plum " fragrance
which they had acquired in the scene of theft.
His delight in the theatre was the same through life.
He liked the little, mystery. He liked still better to have
the key to the mystery. He was as quick as any child at
a pantomime to find out " the man in the bear ; " but it did
not destroy his pleasure, especially if he was able to be
"the man in the bear" himself; and besides, his heart was
always in his eyes. But what mainly fascinated him in the
theatre, I think, was its condensation a.nd concentration
of life into one cojasecutive piece. His imagination was
wandering, digressive, microscopic, - incoherent ; he had
the greatest difficulty in grasping in one vision a consecu
tive whole. He saw vivid points in succession, and. saw
the continuity and growth ; but his sight was like the
passing of a microscope over a surface, — it laid bare the
transition, but did not:;give a connected vision. He saw
too intensely and too far at each pointto be able- to sweep
c 2

20 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
his eye quickly over the whole. The theatre helped to
remedy this defect, and he was grateful to it ; but for that
very reason he never could write successfully for the theatre.
The boy's passion for the theatre had one very bad effect.
During the French occupation of Frankfort he (then a lad
of ten to twelve years old) had a free admission to the
French theatre, which he used daily, accompanied by no
older friend. His mother unwisely obtained the reluctant
permission of his father that he should go ; and his con
sequent quick progress in French reconciled his father to
the habit. The lad had constant access behind the scenes
and in the green-room along with his young French com
panions. And here I have little doubt the natural delicacy
of his mind was first rubbed off. Probably he was constitu
tionally deficient in that element of mind which shame and
reverence have in common (aiStos, as the Greeks called it) ;
and during the French occupation of Frankfort, at a most
susceptible age, he was subjected to influences that would
be likely to have endangered the most delicate of natures.
He was too young, his friends imagined, for danger ; but
certainly he was not at all too young for that kind of
morbid curiosity about evil which is often more tainting
than evil itself. Even in the late-written autobiographical
recollections of his youth this is distinctly visible.
At the age of fourteen he was a great tale-composer ;
and one of these tales, " The New Paris," full of the genius
of his later years, he has preserved in his Autobiography.
It is a most characteristic story, brimming over with the
self-importance of the boy, and full also of the fanciful
grace, the mysterious simplicity, and the simple mysteri-
ousness of his older compositions. It is far the most
graceful of his short tales; and must, I think, have
received some touches from his maturer hand. For my
own part, I greatly prefer it to the second part of " Faust."
But the childlike delight in puzzling his readers is the

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 21
same. The scene of the fairy-tale, which is autobio
graphic, is laid in gardens discovered by him beyond the
old wall of the city. The tale ends with the following
charming mystery : —
" The porter did not speak another word ; but before he let me pass
the entrance, he stopped me, and showed me some objects on the wall
over the way, while at the same time he pointed backwards to the door.
I understood him ; he wished to imprint the objects on my mind, that I
might the more certainly find the door which had unexpectedly closed
behind me. I now took good notice of what was opposite to me. Above
a high wall rose boughs of extremely old nut-trees, which partly covered
the cornice at the top. The branches reached down to a stone tablet,
the ornamental border of which I could perfectly recognise, though I
could not read the inscription. It rested on the corbel of a niche, in
which a finely-wrought fountain poured water from cup to cup into a great
basin, that formed, as it were, a little pond, and disappeared in the earth.
Fountain, inscription, nut-trees, all stood directly one above another ;
I would paint it as I saw it.
" Now, it may well be conceived how I passed this evening and many
following days, and how often I repeated to myself this story, which even
I could hardly believe. As soon as it was in any degree possible, I went
again to the Bad Wall to refresh my remembrance at least of these sigfcs,
and to look at the precious door. But, to my great amazement, I found
all changed. Nut-trees, indeed, overtopped the wall, but they did not
stand immediately in contact. A tablet also was inserted in the wall,
but far to the right of the trees, without ornament, and with a legible
inscription. A niche with a fountain there was far to the left, but with no
resemblance whatever to that which I had seen : so that I almost believed
that the second adventure was, like the first, a dream ; for of the door
there is not the slightest trace. The only thing that consoles me is the
observation, that these three objects seem always to change their places.
For in repeated visits to the spot, I think I have noticed that the nut-
trees have moved somewhat nearer together, and that the tablet and the
fountain seem likewise to approach each other. Probably, when all is
brought together again, the door, too, will once more be visible ; and I
will do my best to take up the thread of the adventure. Whether I shall be
able to tell you what further happens, or whether it will be expressly for
bidden me, I cannot say.
" This tale, of the truth of which my playfellows vehemently strove to
convince themselves, was received with great applause. Each of them
visited alone the place described, without confiding it to me or the others,
and discovered the nut-trees, the tablet, and the spring, though always at
a distance from each other, as they at last confessed to me, because it is
not easy to conceal a secret at that early age. But here the contest first
arose. One asserted that the objects did not stir from the spot, and

22 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
always maintained the same distance : a second averred that they did
move, and that too away from each other : a third agreed with the latter
as to the first point of their moving, though it seemed to him that the
nut-tree, tablet, and fountain rather drew near together : while a fourth
had something still more wonderful to announce, which was, that the nut-
trees were in the middle, but that the tablet and the fountain were on
sides opposite to those which I had stated. With respect to the traces
of the little door they also varied. And thus they furnished me an early
instance of the contradictory views men can hold and maintain in regard to
matters quite simple and easily cleared up. As I obstinately refused the
continuation of my tale, a repetition of the first part was often desired.
I was on my guard, however, not to change the circumstances much, and
by the uniformity of the narrative I converted the fable into truth in the
minds of my hearers."
How vividly this reminds one of his mysterious conduct
to Eckermann with regard to some portions of the second
part of "Faust." In that dark composition Faust asks
Mephistopheles to show him Helena ; and Mephistopheles
tells him it can only be managed by application " to god
desses who live sublime in loneliness, but not in space,
still less in time— of whom to speak is embarrassment " —
"the mothers;" "a glowing tripod"* is to assure him
that he has attained the deepest point of all, and by its
shining he is to see the mothers. But there is no way
there, as there can be no way into the " untrodden and
untreadable," where he is to be surrounded by "loneli
ness." On hearing the "mothers" mentioned, Faust
starts back shuddering; and when asked why, only
replies, — " Die Mutter ! Mutter ! 's klingt so wunderlich."
("The mothers ! mothers ! it has the strangest ring.")
Poor Eckermann had been set to read this remarkable
scene, and was, naturally, a good deal puzzled. But he
shall tell his own story.
* The passage is, it seems to me, a satire upon the Hegelian practice
of deducing everything out of " the pure nothing," by what may be called
the tripartite cork-screw philosophy, which does everything in logical
triplets, but winds itself a little higher at each repetition.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 23
" This afternoon Goethe did me the great pleasure of reading those
scenes in which Faust visits the mothers. The novelty and unexpected
ness of this subject, with his manner of reading the scene, struck me so
forcibly, that I felt myself translated into the situation of Faust, shuddering
at the communication from Mephistopheles. Although I had heard' and
felt the whole, yet so much remained an enigma to me, that I felt myself
compelled to ask Goethe for some explanation. But he, in his usual
manner, wrapped himself up in mystery, looking on me with wide open
eyes, and repeating the words, —
' Die Mutter ! Mutter ! 's klingt so wunderlich.
" ' I can betray to you no more, except that I found in Plutarch that in
ancient Greece the mothers were spoken of as divinities. This is all for
which I am indebted to tradition ; the rest is my own invention. Take
the manuscript home with you, study it carefully, and see to what conclu
sion you come.' "
The good childlike Eckermann conscientiously tasked
himself to find the riddle out quite as anxiously as
Goethe's boy-audience did about the door in the old wall ;
perhaps it was even less worth while. He elaborated a
most complex and difficult "view " on the subject of these
mothers ; but Goethe let nothing further transpire. Indeed
it might fairly wait at least till the nut-trees, the fountain,
and the tablet in the old Frankfort wall had drawn toge
ther again.
There is one other slight incident of his boyhood so
characteristic of the man that it is worth mentioning.
The calm, unabashed, self-fortified boy appears in it the
very image of the man. Coming out of the theatre, he
remarked ponderingly to a companion, with reference to
one of the young actors, " How handsomely the boy was
dressed, and how well he looked ! Who knows in how
tattered a jacket he may sleep to-night ! " The mother of
the lad, happening to be beside him in the crowd, took
great umbrage, and read Goethe a long lecture. " As I
could neither excuse myself nor escape from her, I was
really embarrassed ; and when she paused for a moment,
said, without thinking, ' Well, why do you make such a

24 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
noise about it? — to-day red, to-morrow dead.'* These
words seemed to strike the woman dumb. She stared at
me, and moved away from me as soon as it was in any
degree possible." This was not meant to give pain; it
was only that Goethe habitually cut short what annoyed
him, without caring much how. He had the nerve and
the presence of mind, and of other consequences he
thought little. There is a like tale, referring to later
years, of a fanatical admirer bursting into the bedroom of
an inn where Goethe was undressing, and throwing him
self ecstatically at his feet, pouring forth at the same time
a set speech of adoration. Goethe blew out the candle
and jumped into bed. This was truly a great inspira
tion ; f but the power of calmly warding off anything that
did not suit him was exercised quite without reference to
the moral elements of the case. Goethe had at every
period of his life a thoroughly kindly nature ; but one, as
it seems to me, quite unvisited by any profound affection.
The conpeption of really living for another probably never
occurred to him. His attachments to women were nume
rous and violent, never selfcdevoting. For his mother and
sister he clearly felt warmly, but certainly he was neither
a devoted brother nor a fond son. After his transition to
Weimar, he visited his mother only at very long intervals,
and never seems to have hastened to her side in any time
of special trouble, though he always rejoiced to see her
and wished to have her with him. In the last eleven
years of her old age he never once visited Frankfort, his
summer holiday always taking him in another direction —
to Karlsbad or Marienbad. And his letters were too few
to keep her well informed even of his more important
* " Heute roth, morgen todt " — a German proverb.
t I do not know the authority for this anecdote of Goethe. Mr.
Emerson used to narrate it, not without keen sympathy for the oppressed
lion.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 25
movements. He was, in short, a kind and hearty, rather
than a deeply-attached brother and son. If he never gave
himself up to an affection, he never demanded or even
expected it from another. Never was there a less jealous
or exacting man. He seldom interfered with his own
calm process of self-culture for the sake of another. He
never expected another to do it for him. And if this
remark properly belongs to a later period of his life, yet
the genial but pliant and self-considering nature of his
relation to others is distinctly visible in his childhood.
He was already beginning to accommodate himself to all
inevitabilities, and to ward off, wherever possible, all that
was foreign to his nature. The extent of his boyish
studies was not less wide than that of his boyish expe
rience of life. To Latin, Greek, Italian, German, English,
and Hebrew, together with drawing, music, geography,
and Roman law, he had given much time, and apparently
made considerable progress in them before he went to
college at sixteen. He scattered his studies, and had
" alternate fits " of Hebrew and drawing, &c. ; but his
retentive memory did not easily lose what it had once
laid hold of.
In 1764 Goethe, began that habit of falling in love, of
which he never broke himself for the next sixty years.
Mr. Lewes makes light of his love for Gretchen, and the
scholiasts seem never to have traced her history. But
boyish as his passion was, the separation clearly caused
him no less intense a suffering, and a more inconsolable
despair, than any subsequent adoration. His mind had
not yet got the strength to carry him through. His
nature was still the dependent nature of a home-bred boy.
He had as yet no intellectual passions, no penetrating
consciousness of creative power. It is probable that this
kind, sisterly Gretchen, was still living in his imagination
when he immortalised her name in " Faust."

26 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
The night of Joseph II.'s coronation, when he forgot his
secret door-key, by means of which, through his mother's
connivance, he used to enter long after his father had sup
posed him to be in bed, was the last of his childhood.
With his separation from Gretchen there came upon him
the moody humours, the dark sentimental infinitudes,
the confusion of energies, the thankless melancholies and
boisterous caprices peculiar to that period of life when
young men are most agreeable to themselves and most
objectionable to mankind. The passion for Gretchen had
involved him with a set not quite harmless. And the
stiff dignity of his father was sadly wounded by having his
son's name mixed innocently up in cases of swindling, and
even forgery. Goethe was subjected to the companion
ship of an accommodating tutor ; and a year later, in the
autumn of 1765, went forth to see the world as a student
of the University of Leipzig.
Most poets' youth is turbid, and apt to be egotistical.
Goethe's is not an exception. He seems to have had
generally, when in good health, buoyant spirits. But the
spiritual abysses are of course unfathomable. Mr. Lewes
has given some very interesting letters concerning Goethe
at this time from his college friends. At Leipzig Goethe
got a good deal of knowledge without much diligence, and
also fell into dissipation. The only pure influence over him
that he felt powerfully was that of Gellert, the professor
of belles-lettres, and one lady friend, the wife of a law pro
fessor. The latter died during his studentship. Gellert's
mild influence became painful and a reproach to him, and
he began to avoid it. Perhaps it was not very wisely
exerted. Gellert used, says Goethe, "to hold his head
down, and ask us with his weeping, winning voice, whether
we went regularly to church, who was our confessor, and
whether we attended the holy communion. If we passed
this examination but ill, we were dismissed with lamenta-

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 27
tions, we were more annoyed than edified ; and yet we
could not help loving the man heartily." Goethe's law-
lectures were rather jokes. He naturally^ preferred draw
ing caricatures of the official persons Jin their official
costume, to taking notes. Fritters (very good ones), hot
from the fire, came into competition with one of these
classes, and were considered the more attractive. , Goethe
fell deeply in love again at Leipzig; but he quarrelled
with the young lady, and he seems to say that the despair
he felt at her loss was the impulse which plunged him
into dissipation.
This affection was the origin of the little pastoral piece,
"The Lover's Humours," which certainly gives promise
of Goethe's future power. Besides containing some fine
lines, and one fair living character in profile, it shows
that rich fertility of ordinary feeling which must flow freely
in order to temper the mind to the higher creative mood.
A poet who, like Gray, for instance, has no flow of level
feeling, loses the predisposing influences from which the
deeper, truer insight can alone come. When the poet has
reached, as it were, the ordinary level of genial human
emotion, then, and not sooner, do his special characteristics
begin to work with effect. If he is not in the first place
luxuriant in common feeling, he loses much of the advan
tage of his higher faculties. Goethe, like all great poets,
was most luxuriant in common thought and feeling ; and
when once fairly afloat in that, his genius began to work.
The " Fellow-Sinners," which he also wrote at this same
time, has equal ease, but not equal warmth, with the piece
just mentioned, and consequently very little trace of his
characteristic power. From Leipzig Goethe went home
ill, after three years' residence, in 1768. His father was
irritated by his delicate health, and still more by anything
like hypochondriacal conversation. His mother and sister
paid him, as is usual in such cases, something like divine

28 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
honours. They were moped, and delighted to have an
invalid to worship. He looked into alchemy, and began
to think of Faust.
In the spring of 1770 he went to the University of Stras-
burg, where he fell in with Herder, who first introduced
him to "The Vicar of Wakefield," the loose awkward
machinery of which Goethe (who never had any power of
constructing a plot) afterwards partly borrowed in his
novel of "Wilhelm Meister." The exquisite humour, and
childlike simplicity of taste in that book, are Goldsmith's
own. But in the style of representing nature and life
Goethe is not at all unlike Goldsmith. Like him, he does
not impartially paint, but rather vaguely indicates the
principal influences of the scene before him. He sketches
no outlined picture, at least of men — but gives one or two
figures, hovering too close to the eye to be caught com
pletely in any one glance, and which are presented, there
fore, in minute yet very significant successive details, to
the closest conceivable scrutiny ; and for the, rest, he indi
cates only the most important inlets of accessory influence
in a few words of loose and spacious suggestion. As Gold
smith delineates Dr. Primrose and his wife by such minute
successive touches, that not till you fall back from the
story can you see them as a whole, and represents the
daughters only by the general streams of influence they
diffuse, the rosy and violet light their characters respec
tively reflect, in the vaguer distance, adding, too, those
influences of external nature which most beset the senses,
but no clear landscape, — so also Goethe painted in his
three novels, " Werther," "Meister," and finally, though
with more distinctive outline, and less attempt at indica
ting a whole character or a whole landscape by isolated
samples, in the " Elective Affinities." We do not wonder
that he told Eckermann, in later years, that he found in
Sir Walter Scott the suggestion of a wholly new school of

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 29
art. That writer's strong, masterly, often hard outlines,
present the most vivid possible contrast to the faint fringes
of that luminous nimbus which usually involves his own
most carefully finished figures.
While at Strasburg, Goethe made the acquaintance of
the family which seemed to him the counterpart of Dr.
Primrose's, and in which he appeared first in the character
of Mr. Burchell ; exchanging it, however, not for Sir
William Thornhill's, but for his own. Pastor Brion had a
little parsonage at Drusenheim, sixteen miles north of
Strasburg, into which Goethe was introduced, in the dis
guise of a poor and dilapidated theological student, by a
fellow-student. The latter was attached (or becoming so)
to the eldest and most lively daughter, whom Goethe
identified as the Olivia of Goldsmith's tale. The second
daughter, Frederika, who took benign pity on the shabby
theologian, and captivated his fancy by her simplicity and
grace, reminded him of Sophia ; but she little knew that
instead of giving rise to a novel, she was starting a new
epoch in German criticism, and spinning the first thread
of a very ponderous "Frederike litteratur," in which an
erudition as yet unborn would discuss, with prodigious
learning and subtlety, after collation of MS. letters, per
sonal examination of the place, and cross-questioning of
aged survivors, the precise point where Goethe had
crossed the Sesenheim road, the position of Frederika's
own arbour, the date of the first kisses she bestowed, and
many other matters of equal weight. To have spurred on
heavy-armed German commentators (of the class who dis
cuss a lost iota in fragments of Greek plays) into a cum
brous canter of exegetical sympathy with a little affair of
the heart, must have been about as far removed from
Frederika's presentiments, as this apparatus criticus is
from the light air of the life it " expounds." Imagine an
Anthon's " edition of Tennyson's ' Miller's Daughter,' with

30 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
critical notes," and you have a faint picture of the "Frede-
rike litteratur."* Goethe acted his part skilfully, and pro
mised to " supply " occasionally for the pastor on week
day occasions. But, disgusted with his shabby appear
ance, he fled the next day, only to change one disguise for
another. He came back as the innkeeper's boy, with a
"christening-cake" and an Alsatian patois; and when
this disguise was penetrated, he took his own character,
and began seriously to fall in love. The visit was often
repeated, and Frederika's heart completely gained.
Goethe now became uneasy. The presence of Frederika
pained him, though he " knew of nothing more pleasant
than to think of her while absent." He had to free him
self from this influence, which threatened to introduce
something foreign to his natural development. He was
leaving Strasburg, and once more he visited the " golden
children " at Sesenheim, where he found a grey desolate
mist settling down over the little parsonage, instead of the
fresh buoyant air of days gone by. " I reached her
(Frederika) my hand from my horse ; the tears stood in
her eyes, and I felt very uneasy." He felt more than
uneasy. These words copy only the blanched picture that
remained in the old man's memory. Frederika fell ill ;
and Goethe, on his return to Frankfort living in bitter
suspense as to the effect on her peace, and yet knowing
that he could not comfort her without transforming him
self, and exchanging a quiet sentiment for real self-devo
tion of spirit, became restless and miserable.
That his final decision was wrong is far from clear. The
thought of devoting himself to her gave him no joy, but
* There is a profoundly learned controversy, for example, as to whether
one of Goethe's letters to a friend at this time was or was not written on
the piece of blue paper in which some comfits, &c, had been sent to him
from Strasburg. The question turns, to a considerable extent, on whether
he gave the paper-bag with the comfits to the young ladies, or only the
comfits out of it. It is' discussed" with laborious good faith.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 31
seemed to weigh him down. Yet it seems that the reason
lay, not in the absence of anything which any other
attachment ever gave, but in the reluctance which was now
beginning to creep upon him to devote himself and his
inward life to anything outside of himself. The idea of
self-development, self-idealisation, as the only scope of his
conscious life, was beginning to fascinate him, and to
gnaw at the roots of his nature. If he could by one gene
rous act of self-forgetfulness have devoted himself to
secure Frederika's happiness, there seems some proba
bility that he would have secured a far happier and clearer
life for himself also. It was, perhaps, less the want of
love, — for he never seems to have felt more love, — which
prevented this, than the want of strength to cast away the
miserable dream of keeping the course of his inward
development free from all foreign interference. It was
much later than this — when the self-idealising vein had
become more prominent — that he wrote to Lavater : " The
desire to raise the pyramid of my existence — the base of
which is already laid — as high as possible in the air
absorbs every other desire, and scarcely ever quits me ; "*
but the poison was already working in him. Goethe
never became a selfish man in the coarse sense of the
term. He always cultivated benignant unselfish sym
pathies as the most graceful elements in this same fancy-
pyramid of his existence. He was generous by nature,
and would give up, from kindly feeling, anything that
was not of the essence of himself. But it soon became his
habit to cultivate disinterested affection only as a subordi
nate element, needful to the harmony of a universally
experienced nature. To have loved the goodness of either
God or man more devotedly than he loved its reflex image
in his own character, would have done him more good
* Lewes's " Life of Goethe," vol. ii. chap. i.

32 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
than all the sickly pottering with the " pyramid of his
existence " with which he was so much occupied.
It would be absurd to say all this about Goethe's youth
ful conduct to Frederika, were it not the type of what was
always happening in his after-life when he knew by expe
rience that he very much preferred to be passively ham
pered by a wounded heart, to being actively hampered by
an affectionate wife. The essence of these tedious tortures
was almost always the same. He wished for love " with
limited liability ; " he did not wish to devote himself to
any one except himself. This limited liability did not so
well meet the views of the young ladies * themselves, who
were sometimes, to his infinite embarrassment, willing
even to " go to America " with him, or anywhere else.
This was meeting him a great deal more than half-way.
He could not, of course, avail himself of the sacrifice.
Goethe returned to Frankfort, bringing with him a little
harper-lad whom he had picked up at Mannhein, and with
thoughtless kindness promised to befriend. His mother,
at first much perplexed, found the boy lodging and employ
ment out of the house. "Gotz von Berlicfiingen " was
now in Goethe's mind, and, spurred on by his sister's
incredulity as to his literary perseverance, he completed it
in its first form in six weeks. To me it seems far the most
noble as well as the most powerful of Goethe's dramas. I
agree with Mr. Lewes, that in its first shape there are
many fine elements which are lost in the later and revised
* A distinct classification of Goethe's loves has not yet been added by
the critics to the " chronology of the original " of his writings. It would
be a material help to head the different years with the name or names of
the ascendant star, and some indication of its apparent brightness. There
were about eight A i's, "heiss und leidenschaftlich geliebte," &'c. ; five
at least, JE i's, with whom he stood " im innigsten Verhaltniss der Liebe ¦ "
and, finally, a great number of "holde Wesen," some of them already
obscured by shadows of time, who were recipients of a more transient
adoration.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 33
edition. No doubt something is cut away that needed
cutting away, and more appearance of unity is given by
the condensation of Adelheid's episode. But this is the
part on which Goethe's imagination had really worked
with finest effect, and the gain to unity is a loss to poetry.
It is the only great production of Goethe's in which a
really noble, self-forgetful man stands out in the fore
ground to give us a moral standard by which to measure
the meaner characters. It is the only great production in
which awful shadows of remorse haunt the selfish and the
guilty. One reads in it that Goethe's mind had as yet by
no means finally embraced the calm self-culture view of
life — the view which looked upon women's devotion,
human life, indeed the whole universe itself, mainly as
artistic material to be assimilated by the individual consti
tution, and at as little cost to the digestive system as that
constitution would allow. Fascinating as " Egmont " is,
Egmont himself is the later Goethe, the conscious master-
builder condescending to accept from woman, and man,
and God, materials for his " pyramid of existence." Gotz
is a very different figure ; and among all Goethe's mas
culine creations he stands alone, — the only one who did
not use the world, but served it. The play (in its early
form) will be thought gross ; but it has little of that taint
ing impurity which turns a microscope full upon the subtler
workings of physical passion, to the great disfigurement of
some of his later works. In another respect Gotz is excep
tional. It is curious that Adelheid in " Gotz von Berlich-
ingen " is the only feminine character of the proud passion
ate class that Goethe ever drew; and that Maria, much
more like his other characters in type, is about the faintest
and poorest of them. With all his unmistakable wealth
and inimitable grace in producing women's characters,
each as distinct from the other as Adelheid is from Maria,
they are all, Adelheid only excepted, of the dependent,
VOL. 11. d

34 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
tender, worshipping class. Mr. Thackeray's Beatrice, in
" Esmond," is less completely exceptional in his writings
than Adelheid is in Goethe's. Thackeray and Goethe are
alike in this, as in some other respects — both of them have
drawn women as living as Shakespeare's. And all three,
by one consent, are disposed to make their powerful
queen-like women bad. No doubt this is according to
nature; but Sir Walter Scott must have seen the excep
tions, for his finest female characters (Rebecca, Flora, Die
Vernon, &c.) are certainly of the queenly class. Goethe's
predilections are explained by the fact that he painted, for
the most part, the women who worshipped him, and it may
be that he punished Adelheid for not being one of them
by robing her in passion and in crime. She is the only
woman in his works of whom we find no autobiographical
trace. In 1772 Goethe went to Wetzlar, ostensibly to watch
chancery suits ; and there culled some poignant expe
riences for his next work, "Werther." This he did not
write, however, till 1774. The remarkable contrast, both
in substance and form, between "Gotz" and "Werther" 
written within three years of each other — gives, however,
some insight into Goethe's dramatic power and want of
power. I find it asserted on all hands — Mr. Lewes vehe
mently concurring— that a poet must be a greater artist
for entirely ignoring all moral partialities, and, as they
say, picturing life as it is, not as it ought to be. There is
a sense in which it is true (for instance, it is a valuable
ciiticism on Edgeworthian art) : but the sense in which it
is put forward as a defence of the utter want of moral per
spective in most of Goethe's productions is certainly not
that sense. Compare, for instance, "Gotz von Berlichin-
gen" with "Werther," "Wilhelm Meister," the "Elective
Affinities," "Egmont," and even "Faust." In the first
there is as much moral evil as any appetite, however eager

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 35
for " things as they are," could wish ; but it is thrown into
its right relative place by the appearance in the fore
ground of two noble and . simple characters — Gotz and
Elizabeth — by which all the others are naturally measured.
Shadows are shadows, and light is light. In " Werther "
the moral evil introduced is far less — is, indeed, of a quiet,
subtle, sentimental kind — the mere heart-eating rust and
destructiveness of unmeasured self-indulgence; but there
is nothing noble to contrast with it — nothing but the cold.
external phantom Albert, and the floating image of
Charlotte reflected in such a mist of Wertherism that it
has no distinctness at all. What is the mere artistic effect
on the reader's mind ? Almost universally this, that the
picture, powerful as it is, misses its effect from the absence
of any fine moral contrasts by which to measure it. It is
like the picture of a mist seen from inside. Nothing adds
more to the beauty of a landscape than vapours rising
round a mountain's brow; but then you must stand out of
the fog, and see the dark bold ridges round which the
vapours climb. In " Werther " are painted wreath upon
wreath of emotion, of blinding doubts and shapeless
passions ; no speck of firm land anywhere. This will
probably be conceded of " Werther ; " but the moral part
of the criticism applies equally to Goethe's other works.
We believe the extraordinary want of outline in his
characters to be greatly due to this entire absence of any
attempt at moral proportion in all his later works.
Werther is made, in one letter, to say most characteristic
ally, " I scarce know how to express myself, — my power
of representing things is so weak, — everything swims and
wavers so before my mind, that I can catch no outline ; but
I fancy somehow that, if I had clay or wax, I could succeed
in modelling. If it lasts longer, I shall get some clay, and
begin kneading, even though it be only cakes after all."
Werther's mind is so dissolved, that he can only feel and
2 D

36 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
grope his way in the dark, as it were, to grace of form.
This weakness is partly the expression of an artistic
difficulty Goethe really felt in grasping in one glance
any extensive outline of thought, — a difficulty due to the
microscopic nature of his insight, which only travelled
very slowly over a large surface of life : he often modelled
his groups figure by figure; the outline of the whole grew
up as he felt his way to it. But a part reason of this was,
that he had no moral graduation in his groups, — no
natural admirations which gave a unity to the whole and
determined the line of the shadows. Outline is a result of
comparison, — moral outline of moral comparison. You
cannot compare without an implied standard. The heroes
in "Werther," " Wilhelm Meister," "Tasso," "Faust,"
are such cloudy, shadowy pictures, because they are es
sentially sketches of moral weakness without any relief
in characters of corresponding power. Albert, Jarno,
Antonio, are not foils to them — they have not the force
which the others want, but are simply deficient in the
moral qualities which make the former characters pro
blems of some interest. Certainly, the former are soft,
the latter hard. But the second set do not give strength
as opposed to weakness, but rigidity as opposed to weak
ness.* What is wanted all along is some dim picture in
the minds of Werther, Meister, Tasso, and Faust of what
* Goethe well knew, in physical nature, that soft things should not
be contrasted with hard but with firm. He had (I am not speaking
ironically) an exquisitely fine sympathy with vegetable life. Consider
this picture of a fruit-basket in "Alexis and Dora" (I quote the graceful
version given among the " English Hexameter Translations " published by
Mr. Murray in 1847) : —
" Silently thou arrayest the fruit in the comeliest order,
Laying the heavier gold-ball of the orange beneath ;
Next the soft-pulpt figs, that the slightest pressure disfigures ;
Lastly, the myrtle at top roofing the whole with its green."
If, instead of the orange, Dora had laid a cocoa-nut under the figs, she
would never have made such an impression on the yielding heart of Alexis.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 37
they would be, — what it is which would lift them out
of the imbecility of their purposeless career. This is the
element never supplied. We are presented with a set of
contradictions instead of contrasts. Only in Gotz is there
any picture of strength without hardness ; only in Weis-
lingen is there a picture of fatal irresolution that has a real
vision of the career by which he might have been saved.
The moral outline which Goethe's youthful remorse put
into this picture has raised it, considered merely as a work
of art, in many respects high above its fellows: So far
from the truth is it that the poet must have no moral
predilections at heart, that if he has none such his pic
ture becomes feeble, watery, wavering. Impartiality in
delineation, not impartiality in conception, is what is
needed. Shakespeare frequently gives no foil to the
character whose weakness he is delineating ; but he
always gives it some clear vision of the nobleness and the
strength above it. Hamlet knows what he could do, and
dare not. Lady Macbeth knows what she should do, and
will not. Antony knows what he would do, and cannot.
But Faust has no glimmering of salvation ; Werther has
no gleam of what he might be ; Wilhelm is a milksop pure
and simple ; and Tasso's character is then, and then only,
a fine picture if it be granted that he is supposed insane.
It seems to me that no more remarkable breakdown of the
theory of the " moral indifference " of art can be suggested
than Goethe's writings. His poetry is perfect until it rises
to the dramatic region, where moral actions are involved,
and a moral faith therefore needed, and then it becomes
blank, shadowy, feeble. "Wilhelm Meister" would not
have been "a menagerie of tame animals," as Niebuhr
called it with great truth, if Goethe had not lost the (never
strong) moral predilections of younger days, but had
purified his eye and heart for their insight into human
weakness by reverent study of nobler strength.

38 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
Another criticism which has a real connection with that
just made is suggested by the comparison of " Werther "
and " Gotz." Mr. Lewes truly says, that Goethe never
gives enough importance to the action, the progress of
events. He does not develop the characters essentially
through the action, but on occasion of the action. You do
not feel that Gotz has come in from that last scene ; it is
too much a series of pictures, like Hogarth's pictorial
biographies ; the art is much greater, no doubt, if you take
them in succession; but the breath of the past has not
passed into the present scene, each is almost intelligible
in separation. A very great part of the skill in " Wer
ther " consists in the gradual rise of the excitement, — the
stages of passion ; — still it is a series of pictures ; there is
nothing to oblige you to look back to the past and forward
to the future. It might begin almost anywhere, and stop
almost anywhere, and be intelligible still as a delineation
of character. This is so also in " Egmont." It is less so
in " Gotz von Berlichingen," though it is too much so
there, than in any other work. The past action is much
more worked into the essence of the following scenes than
is the case of " Egmont," " Meister," " Iphigenia,"
"Tasso," or "Faust." And the obvious reason is, that
the actors have moral characters, and so the sense of what
they had done or not done hangs upon them throughout ;
they do not turn up as complete in relation to each dis
tinct scene as if they had had no previous life : they have
a sense of the past, a presentiment of the future. The
presence of an implicit moral estimate of the characters
does not only help art by adding outline ; for moral re
sponsibility forges many a strong link between the past,
present, and future, which is otherwise wanting. Is it not,
indeed, the strongest of all links between the past and the
future in actual life ? Werther's uneasiness grows organ
ically ; but it grows as a tree puts out its branches,

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 39
without memory or reference to its past stages. Egmont
does not grow at all. Faust does not grow. Tasso under
goes changes ; but only those of a sensitive-plant, drawing
in with every touch, expanding at every sunbeam. All
Goethe's feminine creations grow ; but usually it is the
growth of affection only. The only portions of a coherent
drama that Goethe ever wrote are the Gretchen elements
in " Faust." That is the highest drama in every sense,
and one of the most essential elements in it is a deep and
true remorse.
After his return from Wetzlar, and publication of
"Gotz" and "Werther," Goethe became a famous man.
The effect of this fame upon himself was certainly very
great. Not only are the letters to Kestner clearly written
under great excitement after the publication, but other
correspondences which he then began are far more dizzy
than " Werther " itself. His letters to the Countess von
Stolberg are mostly mystical emotional quavers. This
young lady he never saw. They struck up an inarticulate '
attachment on the strength of " Werther." Goethe rushed
into a correspondence with her of this description : " My
dear one, — I will call you by no name ; — for what are the
names — friend, sister, lover, bride, wife, of even a word
that expresses a union of all these names — compared with
the very feeling itself to which — I can write no more;
your letter has come upon me at a strange moment —
Adieu — (written at) the very first moment." * And some of
these remarkable letters are more incoherent still. So
greatly did Goethe err in afterwards representing " Wer
ther" as setting his mind free from the fever of senti-
mentalism, that not till after its publication did he fully
succumb to it.
Introduced by his celebrity as a writer to many eminent
men, Goethe began to see and to study a far wider and
* Quoted by Duntzer in his " Frauenbilder aus Goethe's Leben," p. 271.

40 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
more various field of social life than he ever attempted to
delineate. It might be matter of surprise, that in so freely-
moving a plot as that of " Wilhelm Meister" Goethe should
not have anticipated the easy sketches of character which
Dickens and Thackeray have made' so popular, and thus
effectively used his large experience of social life ; for he
never willingly let a grain of real experience go unused.
The reason obviously is, that he had so little of the humour
which makes sketches of superficial life and manners living
and agreeable. His remarks on common men and manners
and on uncommon men and manners are always subtle,
often amusing; but you need to have his personal com
ments to give his descriptions of these trivial matters any
interest ; he has not the art of making his characters speak
so as to explain their own folly ; he cannot give just that
touch of caricature by which Dickens effected this; he
cannot introduce that background of fine irony by which
Thackeray turned men into critics of themselves. He
understood every-day German life as well as either Dickens
or Thackeray understood every-day English life. Nothing
could be much more skilful than his accounts, for instance,
of the prophetic Lavater (whom Mr. Lewes most unchari
tably and untruly terms a " born hypocrite," quite in con- '
tradiction to Goethe's latest and maturest estimate), and of
Basedow, the educational reformer, — the one a man of real
power, spoiled by being a lady's preacher and by the need
ful devices for keeping up popularity which this involved ;
— the other a coarse, self-indulgent, unscrupulous, and
exceedingly dirty philanthropist, who characteristically
enough had the greatest horror of baptism.* The only
* Schlosser, in his " History of the Eighteenth Century," tells us that
Basedow had a long dispute with his wife and the clergyman, in which
both of them used all possible arguments and entreaties to induce him to
give up the notion of having his daughter baptised " Praenumerantia
Elementaria Philanthropia," partly, I suppose, in ridicule of the ceremony,
and partly as a puff of his Philanthropic Academy at Dessau.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 41
element wanting in Goethe's descriptions is, not a per
ception of that in them which is to us ridiculous, but a
thorough perception and enjoyment of the ridiculous part.
He can see a full-blown absurdity, but not the delicate
transition by which real life passes into unreality. His
" Plundersweilern Fair," and other things of that descrip
tion written at this time, and his subsequent comic works
(such at least as I know), of which Mr. Lewes thinks the
"Triumph of Susceptibility" a fair specimen, are mere
farces, — laughable on the stage, perhaps, but tiresome to
read. "Bombastes Furioso" gives a good idea of this
kind of production, but seems to me more amusing. It is
strange that so great a poet had not a quicker eye for the
boundary-line between reality and unreality, between
things and words ; he was never quite out of danger of
mistaking sham pathos for true ; he had never the eye of
a great humorist for the subtle distinction between the
ring of hollow and of solid metal in others, not always
even in himself. A thin vein of genuine trash may be
traced both in his compositions and his personal life, — a
kind of inanity to which indeed all men are subject, but
which a man with real humour would immediately have
detected in himself and suppressed on the spot. I may
take as instances the execrable sentimental device of
giving an artificial appearance of life to Mignon's corpse,
in the last part of "Wilhelm Meister" (against which
Schiller meekly but hesitatingly protested), — or, in actual
life, the ponderous sentimentality that induced Goethe, at
the mature age of thirty-three, being seized with a taste
for inscriptions, actually to engrave on a big stone in his
garden at Weimar some lines beginning, " Here the lover
has mused in silence on his beloved ; " nor does it appear
that he ever suffered from nausea on beholding it. This
sort of unreality was in the atmosphere, no doubt; but
Goethe was proof against so much malaria that was also

42 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
in the atmosphere, that it is worthy of notice— especially
in connection with the little artistic use he made of his
wide experience of contemporary manners — that he was
not able to keep himself completely free from this. His
observations on society, which were very acute and rich
and various, he threw into the form of epigrammatic
maxims, and stowed them away in every gap and corner
—suitable or unsuitable— of his many works. He used
them but very little— owing, I think, to the unfitness for
successful manners-painting I have just indicated— in the
really concrete delineation of the times he lived in and the
society he had himself observed.
Soon after Goethe's literary fame was established, in the
Christmas of the year 1774, he was introduced to Anna
Elizabeth Schonemann, whose mother, the widow of a rich
Frankfort banker, was one of the very few who at that
time ever thought of assembling fashionable society in
their houses so often as every evening in the season. To
this young lady, so familiar in Goethe's writings as Liii,
the poet now transferred his affections. His father and
mother had been anxious that he should marry a quiet girl
in their own circle, to whom he had been thrice assigned
by a marriage-lottery in the picnics of the previous year —
Anna Sibylla Munch — but he regarded this parental view
as one in which it was impossible to concur, although in
the meantime he was quite ready to be affectionate. To
Liii, on the other hand, he was really warmly attached,
and for a time betrothed ; but neither his father's pride
nor his own found it easy to bear the reluctance felt
towards the engagement by Lili's friends, who knew that
Goethe had neither that amount of money nor of prestige
to offer, for which, as it is said, not only the family, but
the bank itself, had a craving. Poetry was no object.
Goethe wrote many of his most exquisite lyrics under
the inspiration of this attachment, sending them simulta-

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 43
neously to the young lady and to the newspaper.* It is
curious to note how all Goethe's finest lyrics cluster round
his attachments. Few things else seem ever to waken in
him the same tones of unconscious airy melody. His
other poetry, often exquisitely fine, has the polish of
high art upon it, — but his lyrics seem to escape as uncon
sciously from the essence of the earth and air as the scent
from a violet, or the music from a bird. Some of Goethe's
finest lyrics sprang up at Leipzig under the genial influ
ence of Kathchen Schonkopf ; others, but scarcely of equal
loveliness, owe their origin to Frederika ; the third, and
as yet the richest group, belong to Liii ; but curiously
enough, the richest cluster, I think, of all, — that which
most resembles a lapful of fresh wildflowers, — was written
in 1803, when Goethe was fifty-four years old, and is due,
we imagine (from what Mr. Lewes tells us concerning the
origin of the " Elective Affinities "), as well as the sonnets
written two or three years later, to Minna Herzlieb, the
ward of the Jena bookseller. The engaged or married
ladies he adored appear to have had a more prosaic
influence upon him.
But to return to Liii. After a good deal of torture, due
to the elder representatives of both families, a worthy
Fraulein Delf, much given to mediation, procured a tacit
consent of the parents on both sides, and Goethe was
engaged to Liii. This seems to have on the whole made
him unhappy. His sister, who was married and at a
distance, took a strong view against the match, and wrote
letters about it ; the old Rath, she thought, would never
so accommodate himself to the arrangement as to make
Liii happy ; Goethe would be obliged still to live with his
* The lovely song, " Warum ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich," was, as
Dunster has ascertained, composed in March, 1775, and sent to Jacobi
for insertion in the "Iris" at the same time. So of other songs. Of
course names were not given ; but the entire absence of any reserve in
the sentimental life of that period is very curious.

44 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
father and mother, as the custom was, and a young lady
of family and wealth would put the former out. In short,
his sister was sure that for Lih's sake, he ought to break
off the engagement, intimating, in fact, as Goethe implies,
that she found her own husband but dull company, and
that Goethe could never make up to Liii for the splendour
she would resign. So, after some agonies, he suddenly
departed for Switzerland with the two Counts von Stol-
berg, on a probationary absence, only hinting to Liii that
he was going, for he could not bear to take leave. It
appears to have been his intention, if he could have per
suaded himself to endure the pain, to break off the engage
ment by going on into Italy ; if not, as proved to be the
case, to return and see what fate should give. It is not
easy to imagine, from the style of Goethe's narrative, that
all this effort was made for Lili's sake. He admits that
she never hazarded a doubt of her own happiness, and
was willing to follow him even to America ; a solution
which distressed her lover extremely. " My father's good
house, but a few hundred yards from her own, was at all
events a more tolerable condition to take up with than
distant uncertain possibilities beyond the sea." They
were actually engaged at this time ; and it does not seem
very generous in Goethe to have left Liii without explana
tion to fight his battles for him with her reluctant friends,
in order to try experiments on his own fortitude.
This flight into Switzerland, while pursued by Lili's
image, gave rise to one or two of his loveliest lyrics. As
the heavy white masses of the distant Alps rose up in
the early dawn, at the foot of the broad lake of Zurich,
bordered by its gently sloping cornfield banks, he composed
the lovely little poem of which I have attempted to produce
an English version. Goethe was at the time debating in
his mind his future relation to Liii. I must premise, with
Mr. Lewes, that Goethe is untranslatable. Some dim

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 45
vision of the beauty of the poem may, however, glimmer
through the following semi-transparent medium . —
I draw new milk of life, fresh blood,
From the free universe, —
Ah, Nature, it is all too good
Upon thy breast, sweet nurse !
Waves rock our boat in equal time
With the clear-plashing oar.
And cloudy Alps with head sublime
Confront us from the shore.
Eyes, have ye forgot your yearning ?
Golden dreams, are ye returning !
Gold as ye are, O, stay above !
Here too is life — here too is love.
Hosts of stars are blinking
In the lake's crystal cup,
Flowing mists are drinking
The tow'ring distance up.
Morning winds are skimming
Round the deep-shadowed bay,
In its clear mirror swimming
The ripening harvests play.
On the summit of the St. Gothard Goethe felt that his
German home and love behind him were sweeter than
all the wide warm loveliness into which the bright Ticino
rushed eagerly before his eyes ; and he returned, with
hesitation in his heart, to Frankfort. Liii, naturally hurt
at his unexplained absence, was soon as affectionate as
ever, and the poet as happy ; but it did not last long. The
hurt pride at feeling himself rather tolerated than wel
comed by her friends, and the dread of domestic fetters,
returned. Gradually he broke the chain, and strove to
flirt with other young ladies ; but he was miserable. In
this state he began " Egmont."
An invitation to visit the young Duke of Weimar was
now very welcome to him. His father opposed his going,
thinking it would place him in a dependent position.
Moreover, the Weimar friend in whose company he had
been invited to make the journey never appeared, and his

46 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
father treated the mistake as an intentional slight. But
Goethe's portmanteau was ready packed, his mind set
upon change. His father proposed to give him money
for an Italian journey. Goethe consented to go by Heidel
berg and the Tyrol to Italy, if in Heidelberg he found
no trace of the missing Weimar escort. There lived
Fraulein Delf, the mediating lady who had in vain secured
the consent of the reluctant parents to his engagement
with Liii. Her head was now busy with mediating a
substitute scheme. She hoped to marry him to a lady
at the Mannheim Court, and connect him permanently
with it after his return from Italy. A courier came from
Frankfort in the middle of the night to announce the
arrival of the Weimar friend and to recall Goethe imme
diately. Fraulein Delf gave vehement counsel, urging
him to decline, and go on into Italy. Goethe was in favour
of Weimar, and ordered the postchaise. Long he dis
puted by candlelight with this lady, while an impatient
postillion fidgeted about. At length Goethe tore himself
away, apostrophising his astonished friend in the words of
Egmont : " Child, child no more. Lashed as by invisible
spirits, the sun-steeds of time whirl on the light car of our
destiny ; and for us it only remains in calm self-possession
to hold fast the reins, and here to the right, there to the
left, — here from a rock, there from a precipice, — to direct
the wheels. Whither we are going who can tell ? Scarcely
can we remember whence we came." The " sun-steeds
of time," with the aid of the visible postillion, took him
safely to Weimar. Goethe, reluctant to talk of Provi
dence, intimates, however, that this epoch in his life was
providential, and that the " daemonic " element to which
a man ought to concede "no more than is fitting" was
represented by his father, his own impatience, and good
Fraulein Delf, — all eager to shatter his Weimar prospects.
I am not at all sure that the reverse was not true— that

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 47
the young Duke of Weimar may not have been the
" daemonic" element at this crisis, while the elderly lady
may have spoken the voice of higher warning, — if not in
her match-making views, at least so far as she resisted
the attraction to Weimar. Goethe had now reached the
maturity of his powers, and henceforth we shall find his
character more distinctly written in his works than in the
monotonous incidents of his external life.
There is no part of Mr. Lewes's book which is more
interesting and picturesque than the delineation of the
Weimar localities and the new life the poet led. He has
himself visited the place, and surveyed everything with
a quick and thoughtful eye. The garden-house on the
banks of the Ilm — the larger house to which Goethe
removed in the town — the open-air theatricals at Etters-
burg — and the life of the Court — are all gracefully and
vividly sketched. Far from convincing me, however, that
the new life had no injurious effect on Goethe's mind, even
Mr. Lewes's apologetic narrative strengthens a strong
impression in the other direction. That it made Goethe
into a " servile courtier," no one with the faintest insight
into the man could for a moment dream. Karl August,
the young Duke of Weimar, was a lad of nineteen years-
eight years younger than the poet ; and though possessed
of a strong will and a certain personal fascination, Goethe
was far too conscious of his own superiority of mind to
become a courtier, had even his temperament allowed it.
But it did not. He was a very proud man, and one, more
over, whose life-long principle it was to resist every
encroachment of external influence on his own individu
ality of character. He never endured interference with
himself; but he frequently interfered with remonstrances
in order to tranquillise the mad humours of his young
master. When Goethe said of himself in his old age, that
he had always been conscious of an innate aristocracy

48 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
which made him feel perfectly on a level with princes, and
this too in its fullest measure before as well as since
receiving the diploma which ennobled him, he spoke no
more than the truth. He could endure any criticism ; but
he could not endure any assumption of a right to influence
and direct him. When the old poet Klopstock wrote to
remonstrate with him, during his first year at Weimar, for
the wild life he was encouraging at Court, Goethe wrote
back a polite reply as brief and haughty in its reserve as
he could well have returned to a college companion. And
it is as clear as day that the majestic mannerism of his
later years was the stiffness of princeliness itself, not the
petrified ceremony of a prince's satellite. But, nevertheless,
it seems clear enough that some of the worst tendencies of
his mind were fostered by his Weimar life. The man who
replied to his dearest friends, Charlotte Kestner and her
husband, when they expostulated on the public exposure
of private relations, " Ye of little faith ! Could you feel
the thousandth part of what " Werther " is to a thousand
hearts, you would not reckon the sacrifice you have made
towards it," — who surprised Fraulein Delf with the
assurance that " the sun-steeds of time were whirling on
the light car of his destiny," — was not the man to be
improved by living in a narrow circle of admirers where
none of the humiliating and busy indifference of the great
world could ever draw his keen eye away from himself to
those many high qualities of practical minds in which he
himself was relatively deficient. It was good, even intel
lectually, for Goethe to have objects above himself; yet
he left a social world in which he must often have felt
himself an insignificant learner, for a literary world in
which all the talent was of the same kind as his own, but
far beneath it.
Again, what was far worse than this, the Weimar atmo
sphere was stagnant with moral evil. Laborious indolence

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.

49

and pleasure-seeking were the great occupations of the
greater part of the Court. The women had no employ
ment at once so fashionable and interesting as intrigues.
"There is not one of them," says Schiller, "who has not
had a liaison ; " and women's influence was the only influ
ence which completely reached Goethe. " The first years
at Weimar were perplexed with love affairs," as he told
Eckerman ; and what love affairs ! One of them at least
with a married woman, whose children were growing up
around her to learn that the family bond had no sacred-
ness in their mother's heart, and that fidelity and purity
were far less noble than passion in the eyes of the great
poet of their nation. We know well that this was the sin
of the century, and may not be in any large measure attri
buted to the personal laxity of any one man's conscience.
But all the more is it to be lamented that Goethe left a
social atmosphere where domestic virtue was held com
paratively sacred, for one where it was almost a thing
unknown. There was indefinitely more difference between
Frankfort morals and Weimar morals than between the
social virtue of a wholesome busy city like Manchester
and that of an idle watering-place cursed with barracks.
Weimar was a place, like all idle places, eager for self-
conscious stimulants of enjoyment. And it acted upon
Goethe accordingly. He became more devoted to that
cultus of his own character, which would not, perhaps,
have been his worst occupation in a Court where there was
very little so much worth attending to, if unfortunately
it had not been the very worst thing possible for that
character that he should thus affectionately nurse it. He
never became, indeed, at all deeply infected either with the
vulgar selfishness or with the frivolity of Court life. It did
not act upon him in this way. He had not been a year at
Weimar before he felt its genuine hollowness, and busied
himself as much as in him lay with the regular discharge
VOL. II. E

50 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
of official duty, and the busy earnestness of artistic crea
tion. Always generous by nature, always deeply touched
with the sight of suffering, it is pleasant, but not sur
prising, to 'find him giving away a sixth part of his income
in charity, and still less surprising to find him doing it in
secret, so that his left hand knew not what his right hand
did. There never was a man less influenced by the love
of approbation : he never through his whole life seems
even to have felt the passion strongly agitating him,
except perhaps in the flush of the first months of his
" Werther "-fame. His pride alone would have raised
him above it, even if he had not had so strong a feeling of
contempt for the public judgment that he was scarcely
shaken by disapprobation, and scarcely confirmed by
approbation. He had a thorough contempt for ostenta
tion. When he was giving a poor man two hundred
dollars a year, no one knew of it ; and moreover he con
tinued to give it, in spite of rather graceless and ungrate
ful acceptance of his charity. He pointed out calmly to
his pensioner the unfitness of such conduct, and gave on.
The way in which Weimar affected him so unfavourably
was not by the contagion of selfishness, but rather by
giving him such an inferior world with which to compare
himself — by the easy victory it permitted him in active
goodness on the one hand, and by the contagion of
impurity on the other. Goethe had no active religious
conviction, and of all men most needed to look up to his
companions : he was in almost every direction, at this
time, obliged to look down. " The mind," he said, " is
driven back all the more into itself, the more one accom
modates oneself to other men's modes of life, instead of
seeking to adapt them to one's own : it is like the relation
of the musician to his instrument" — a remarkable indi
cation that these "other men's" life was on a platform
below rather than above the speaker. Goethe felt that his

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 5>
companions were in a sense his " instruments," from
whom he could bring forth fine music, — which was, how
ever, his own music after all, not theirs. But he would
not have felt so amongst men and women who, even in
mere practical power and domestic virtue and devoted-
ness, called forth his reverence as standing higher than
himself. The thing that jars upon the mind throughout Goethe's
life, in his letters, his books — everything he said and did
— is the absence of anything like devotion to any being,
human or divine, morally above himself. God he re
garded as inscrutable, and as best left to reveal Himself.
The future life was not yet. From all men he with
drew himself in a sort of kindly isolation — sympathising
with them, aiding them, helping them against themselves,
understanding them, but never making any of them the
object of his life. The object of his life, so far as any
man can consciously and permanently have one, was the
completion of that ground-plan of character presented to
the world in Johann Wolfgang Goethe. To perfect this
he denied himself much both of enjoyment and real happi
ness ; to keep this ground-plan intact, or to build upon
it, he was always ready to sacrifice either himself or any
body else. To this he sacrificed Frederika's love, Lili's
love, and his own love for them — the friendship of any
who attempted to interfere with his own modes of self-
development ; to this he would at any time have sacrificed,
had he supposed it needful, the favour of the duke and his
position at Court ; to this, in fact, his life was one long
offering. There was nothing Goethe would not have given
up for others, except any iota of what he considered to
be his own individuality. To tend that was his idolatry.
And that this self-worship grew rapidly upon him at
Weimar, no one can doubt. Only compare the tone of
"Wilhelm Meister" with that of "Gotz von Berlich-
2 E

S2 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
ingen." Compare even his letters to the Frau von Stein-
with his letters to the Kestners. There is a real sense o
humility and remorse gleaming out at times in the latter :
with all his susceptibility to other persons' sufferings,
there is nothing but at most a sense of error, regret at
past mistakes, generally merged in satisfaction at his own
steady progress towards " clearness and self-rule," per
vading the former. Compare the picture of the cold,
self-absorbed, remorseless Lothario, held up as it is to
admiration as a kind of ideal, with the ideal of Goethe's
earlier days. Compare even Wilhelm Meister himself,
who is meant, we are told, to be a progressive character,
with Werther, who is meant to be a deteriorating cha
racter. With all his hysterics, there is far more trace of
humility and sense of the wrong he is doing, and even
effort to undo it, in the latter than in the former. Mr.
Lewes discovers a " healthy " moral in Wilhelm Meister —
that he is raised from " mere impulse to the subordination
of reason, from dreaming self-indulgence to practical duty,
from self-culture to sympathy." This is a mere dream of
Mr. Lewes's. Wilhelm seems to me to become, so far as
he changes at all, more selfish as he goes on. He begins
with a real deep affection, and ends with the most cold
and insipid of " preferences," which he is far from sure is
a preference. He begins with resisting, and yet finally
yields to, mere physical passion. He begins with an
enthusiasm for at least one art, and ends with an enthu
siasm for none. He begins with a passionate love of
fidelity, and ends with worshipping Lothario, whose only
distinction is calm superiority to such ideas. In short, he
begins a kind-hearted enthusiastic milksop, and ends a
kind-hearted milksop, with rather more experience and
more judgment, but without any enthusiasm and with far
laxer morality. If this be Goethe's notion of progress, it
gives but a painful idea of Goethe. The only element in

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 53
which Wilhelm is made to grow better is knowledge and
coolness ; in everything else he degrades. You can see
that even " Werther," much more " Gotz," was written
with a much distincter feeling of right and wrong, of the
contrast between real strength and real weakness, between
domestic purity and guilt, than " Wilhelm Meister."
And in purity of thought the change is more remark
able still. Goethe was not infected with the common
place selfishness and frivolity of Court life — he was only
driven in upon himself. He was infected with its impurity.
His former writings had been coarse ; but they were not
coarser than the day, not so coarse as Shakespeare, not
near so coarse as Fielding. " Gotter, Helden und Wie-
land " and " Gotz " are delicate to many parts of " Tom
Jones." But while most of his later writings are perhaps
less coarse than his earlier, they are indefinitely more
tainting. The fragment of the " Letters from Switzer
land," at first intended to be pieced on to the beginning
of "Werther," several portions of " Wilhelm Meister," not
a few minor poems, and parts of the " Elective Affinities,"
emulate Rousseau in their prurience. The " plague of
microscopes" with which, as Emerson says, Goethe was
pursued, follows about everywhere that aweless mind.
Schiller (quoted by Mr. Lewes) says, that " whatever
is permitted to innocent nature is permitted also " to the
artist ; but Goethe gazes away every shrinking reserve
of " innocent nature " with bold curious eye. This he
seems to have learned in Weimar society. Goethe was
in his own life higher, I believe, than he was in his
works — fuller in sympathy and generous self-denials for
others' sake than he ever makes his heroes to be. But
his works betray the moral standard by which he con
sciously moulded himself, — the absolute prominence in
his mind of the aim of self-cultivation — the infinite value
he attached to zmmoral self-mastery as an end and as in

54 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
itself far higher than any duty for the sake of which he
might master himself— the great deficiency of fidelity of
nature, and of the purity with which fidelity is usually
associated, and the general absence of moral reverence.
They also reflect the geniality, the large charity, the
intellectual wisdom, the complete independence of praise
or blame, and the thorough truthfulness of mind which
marked him throughout life. Goethe never deceived him
self about himself.
During the ten years of Weimar life, before his Italian
journey, Goethe's external life had but few recorded
events. He was ennobled in 1782. He carried on a cor
respondence of billets with the Frau von Stein, which are
extremely tiresome reading, and were never meant for
publication. Mr. Lewes is very desirous to prove that all
the trifling was on the lady's side, and that whenever she
drew back from Goethe's advances, it was only in the
spirit of a flirt. It is not a charitable view. In the com
plete absence of her letters, we know nothing about the
matter. It does not seem at all impossible that visitings
of remorse and delicacy, and real doubt of the disinter
ested devotedness of a man who considered so little her
other domestic and social relations, may have led, in the
earlier years of this connection, to the vibrations of feeling
which are reflected in Goethe's replies. There is no need
to judge the matter at all. It is almost the only case in
which Mr. Lewes paints another in dark colours, without
justification, for his hero's sake.
During these years Goethe wrote "Iphigenia" and a
part of " Tasso " in their earliest shape ; and worked hard
at " Egmont," besides the composition of the finest part of
" Wilhelm Meister." Nothing is more striking than the
infinite distance between Goethe's success in imagining
women and men. The feminine characters in Goethe's
works are as living, we dare almost say more living than

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 55
Shakespeare's, though there is much less variety and
range in his conceptions of them. His men are often
creditable sketches; sometimes faint, sometimes entirely
shadowy; they are never so lifelike that we cannot
imagine them more so. But his women are like most of
his lyrical poems — perfect. " My idea of women is not
one drawn from external realities," said Goethe to Ecker
mann, "but it is inborn in me, or else sprang up God
knows how. My delineations of women are therefore all
successful. They are all better than are to be met with in
actual life." " The more incommensurable and incompre
hensible for the understanding a poetic production is, so
much the better," he said on another occasion ; and
judged by this standard also, almost all his women (the
dull Theresa and Natalia in the later part of " Wilhelm
Meister " alone excepted) are better than almost any of
his men. His men are conceptions badly outlined ; his
women spring up unconsciously out of his nature, exactly
like his smaller poems. Mariana, Philina, and Mignon in
" Wilhelm Meister," Clarchen in " Egmont," Gretchen in
" Faust," and Ottilie in the " Elective Affinities," are cha
racters any one of which would immortalise a poet. We
think the reason of this lies deep in the nature of Goethe's
genius. There is a tiresome dispute whether he is more objective
or subjective. He is really as much one as the other ; for
you find in all his poems at once a vague indefinite self,
reflecting a defined and clearly outlined influence which
impresses that self. His own mind is the sheet of water
which reflects the image, and you see only that it stretches
vaguely away far beyond and beneath the image it is
reflecting ; but what catches the eye is the clear outline of
the reflected object in the water. His imagination was
passive, not active ; it did not, like Shakespeare's, by its
own inherent energy mould itself into living shapes, and

56 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
pass into new forms of existence. It always waited to be
acted on, to be determined, to receive an influence ; and
then, while under the spell or pressure of that influence,
it pictured with perfect fidelity the impressing power.
Goethe was so far dramatic that he was never absorbed in
depicting the mere result on himself, but rather reflected
back with faithful minuteness the influence which pro
duced these results. Where (as in "Werther," and
perhaps " Tasso ") he was mainly occupied in painting the
internal effect produced, he was far vaguer and less suc
cessful than where he lent his imagination to reflect truly
the external influence which had thus deeply affected it.
But still it was a passive imagination — i.e. one which
acted under the spell of external influences, and generally
sensuous influences — not one which went voluntarily forth
to throw itself into new forms and moulds. Hence,
though far the best [part of his poems is that in which
external objects and social impulses are rendered again,
you always find the vague mental reflecting surface by
which they are thus given back ; you always have both
the deep dim Goetheish mirror and the fine outlined
object which skims over it. The two never coalesce, as is
the case in Shakespeare. If you have a Gretchen living
before your eyes, you must have with her, as the condition
of her existence, the shadowy Faust whom she impresses.
The point of sight of the picture requires the presence of
Faust; not because she is delineated through the effect
produced on Faust's nature, but because you really only
see that portion of her nature which was turned to Faust,
and no other side. It may be noticed that, perfect as
Goethe's women are, they are never very finely drawn in
their mutual influence on each other ; it is only in the pre
sence of the lover who is for the time Goethe's repre
sentative that they are so strikingly painted. Even their
lovely songs only express the same aspect of their cha-

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 57
racter. Indeed it is of the essence of Goethe's feminine
characters to express themselves in song. Each of them
is a distinct fountain of song. But the current of all these
songs sets straight towards the poet himself, who is
always in love with these creations of his own genius. As
an instance, take the lovely little song of Clarchen in
" Egmont," of which I attempt an English version for my
non-German readers : —
Freudvoll] Cheerful
Und leidvoll, And tearful,
Gedankenvoll sein ; With quick busy brain ;
Langen Swayed hither
Und bangen And thither
In schwebender Pein ; In fluttering pain ;
Himmelhoch jauchzend, Cast down unto death —
Zum Tode betriibt : Soaring gaily above ;
Gliicklich allein Oh, happy alone
Ist die Seele, die liebt. Is the heart that can love.
If Goethe paints two women alone in each other's com
pany, the scene either fails, or they are both talking away
towards some imaginary masculine centre ; and instead of
being a telling dialogue, it falls into two monologues.
Hence Goethe seldom attempts this at all. The scene
between the two Leonoras is the worst in " Tasso," and
those between Ottilie and Charlotte the worst in the
"Elective Affinities;" that between Clarchen and her
mother in " Egmont " is really only a soliloquy of Clar-
chen's ; that between Elizabeth and Maria in " Gotz "
paints no mutual influence of the women on each other —
they are simply placed in juxtaposition.
And Goethe's imaginative power is not only passive, —
not only waits to be influenced, — but it is generally a sen
suous influence that most easily and deeply impresses it.
Hence, he not merely paints special women, but he can
always give the very essence of a feminine atmosphere to
characters not at all individually well marked. He is so

58 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
sensitive to the general social influence diffused by women,
that he makes you feel a feminine power at work almost
without copying the distinguishing peculiarities of any
particular person; he can make a woman a very living
woman without being what is called a character at all.
This is what few can do. Mignon and Philina and Adel
heid and Ottilie are women and something more — they are
characters, and we should know them when we met them
among a thousand. But all human beings are not thus
marked characters ; and when they are not, most authors
in attempting to picture them become merely faint and
vague. They depend on special peculiarities for the life
of their pictures. Not so Goethe. Gretchen is little more
than a simple peasant-girl. She has not a single striking
characteristic; yet she is his finest creation. Clarchen
and Mariana are a little more distinctively moulded, but
very slightly ; and yet they too live more in us than most
of our own acquaintances. The little play " Die Geschwis-
ter (The Brother and Sister) has a delightful heroine,
who is nothing at all more than an ordinary affectionate
girl ; yet she has more life than would fill out a hundred
" characteristic sketches " of modern novelists. It is
Goethe's extreme sensitiveness to all feminine influence
that gave him this power. Men exercised in general no
such influence over him, hence his imagination is never
impressed by them; he has to string up his powers of
observation to draw them by sheer effort, and he seldom
succeeds conspicuously even in delineating himself,
Werther is scarcely so much a delineation of himself as
of a series of emotions by which he had been agitated.
Goethe needed to have some fascinating power taking
hold of his imagination in order to call out its full
strength. Nature could do it; women could do it; but
he could not without such external help fascinate the eye
of his own imagination. He could picture the influences

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE, 59
which touched him most ; but never, as a whole, the nature
which they thus stirred. You do indeed get some notion
of his men, who are all more or less quarried out of his
own nature ; but it is not by means of any unique
influence which accompanies them everywhere, but only
by a sort of secondary inference from the successive states
of emotion in which we are accustomed to see them.
Tasso, Werther, &c, are never personally known to us ;
we have gathered up a very good notion of them, but the
mark of organic unity which distinguishes living influence
from the fullest description has not been set upon them.
Edward, in the " Elective Affinities " is perhaps the most
skilful portrait amongst Goethe's male figures. But
Goethe could not outline any character — did not even
know the outlines of his own. Where he succeeded, it
was not by outline, like Scott, but by a single key-note,
usually a feminine undertone running through everything
they say. When that is wanting, the character may be
true, but does not hang together; it is a loosely-knit
affair. That Goethe should be called by Mr. Lewes "more
Greek than German " struck me with astonishment. But
in the special criticisms on his works Mr. Lewes virtually
retracts altogether this general verdict. Greek poetry is
never the product of this passive imagination, that waits
for a distict impression and then reflects back the impress
ing power. And moreover its subjects are as different
from Goethe's as its intellectual process. It does not
occupy itself with character so much as events. The cha
racters are there more for the sake of the circumstance
than the circumstance for the characters. And so too
with the gods themselves. There is no anxiety to display
their personal characters; they are not explained as in
later times ; their caprices or their kindness is only a part
of the machinery for enlisting human interest. But

60 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
Goethe makes a study of his Greek gods and demigods,
and takes his idea entirely from the most god-like element
he could feel in his own character— his cool self-depend
ence, and his power of shaking himself free at will from
the acute impressions of pain or pleasure. There was
nothing Greek at all about the character of Goethe's
intellect. What Mr. Lewes had in his mind was the
heathen element (not specially Greek) in his character.
The entire superseding of personal trust by self-reliance,
the absence of all trace of humility, the calm superior
glance which he cast into the mystery around but never
into the holiness above him, gave often a heathen colour
ing to his works; but his cast of intellect is strikingly,
distinctively German, far more so than Schiller's. For
one whose mind yielded freely to any sensitive impression,
he had a wonderful power of shaking off voluntarily all
adhering emotions, and raising his head high above the
mists they stirred. This power of assuming at will a cruel
moral indifference to that which he did not choose to have
agitating him, is the feeling he has so finely embodied in
the picture of the gods contained in the song of the Fates
in " Iphigenia," — far the finest thing in a poem rich in
small beauties, but without any successful delineation of
human character. This last has been so well translated
by an American writer,* and represents so truly a cha
racteristic phase of Goethe's mind, that I will give it as
a pendant to Mr. Lewes's translation from the "Pro
metheus." " Within my ear there rings that ancient song, —
Forgotten was it and forgotten gladly, —
Song of the Parcae, which they shuddering sang
When from his golden seat fell Tantalus.

* Mr. N. L. Frothingham. " Metrical Pieces, translated and original."
Boston : Crosby and Nichols, 1855. A word or two is altered.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 61
They suffered in his wrongs ; their bosom boiled
Within them, and their song was terrible.
To me and to my sister in our youth
The nurse would sing it, and I marked it well.
' The gods be your terror,
Ye children of men ;
They hold the dominion
In hands everlasting,
All free to exert it
As listeth their will.
Let him fear them doubly
Whome'er they've exalted !
On crags and on cloud-piles
The seats are made ready
Around the gold tables*
Dissension arises :
Then tumble the feasters
Reviled and dishonoured
To gulfs of deep midnight ;
And look ever vainly
In fetters of darkness
For judgment that's just.
But they remained seated
At feasts never failing
Around the gold tables.
They stride at a footstep
From mountain to mountain ;
Through jaws of abysses
Steams towards them the breathing
Of suffocate Titans.
Like offerings of incense
A light-rising vapour.
They turn, the proud masters,
From whole generations
The eye of their blessing ;
Nor will in the children
The once well beloved
Still eloquent features
Of ancestor see.'
So sang the dark sisters.
The old exile heareth
That terrible music
In caverns of darkness,
Remembereth his children
And shaketh his head."

62 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
The metre, like the thought, has a heathen cast. It speaks
of cold elevation above all human prayers.
In the autumn of 1786 Goethe "stole away" from Carls
bad, having received secret permission from the duke for
a lengthened journey in Italy, which had long been the
dream of his life. Mr. Lewes has made no use of the
many marvellous and most characteristic touches which
Goethe's journal-letters of this tour contain. He speaks
of them as of little interest. To me they seem the most
fascinating and delightful of the prose works of Goethe.
They not only illustrate his character, as it showed itself in
the quiet isolated study of beauty, but they explain more
than any other of his works the common ground in his
mind where science and poetry met. I must give two very
characteristic glimpses into his character which the inci
dents of this journey furnish. On his way to Venice he
turned aside to visit the Lago di Garda, and took his way
down the lake in a boat. A strong south wind obliged
them to put into Malsesina, on the east side of the lake,
a little spot in the Venetian territory close to the (then)
boundary between the Venetian and Austrian States.
Goethe went up to sketch the old dismantled castle. He
was absolutely alone and unknown — had not even intro
ductions to any authorities in Venice. The stranger was
observed, and soon many of the villagers had assembled
round him with signs of displeasure. One man seized
his drawing, and tore it up. Others fetched the podesta.
Goethe found that he was taken for an Austrian spy sent
to make drawings of the strong points on the boundary.
The podesta's clerk was threatening, the podesta himself
was a captive to his clerk. Goethe was near being sent
as a prisoner to Verona to account for his conduct. In
stead of feeling nervous and embarrassed, however, he
was enjoying the scene, and undertaking to instruct the
Italian peasants in the pleasures and pursuits of an artist.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 63
" I stood on my steps, leaning with my back against the
door, and surveyed the constantly increasing crowd. The
curious dull glances, the good-natured expression in most
faces, and all that usually characterises a mob, gave me
the most agreeable impression." He assured them all,
in his best Italian, that he drew for beauty and not from
political designs. He explained that they could not
possibly see so much beauty in the old castle, which they
had known all their lives, as he did. The morning sun
threw tower, walls, and rocks into the most picturesque
light, and he began to describe the picture to them with
a painter's enthusiasm. These picturesque objects being,
however, in the rear of his audience, who did not wish
to turn quite away from him, " they twisted round their
heads like the birds which they call ' wrynecks,' in order
to see with their eyes what I was thus glorifying to their
ears." This ridiculous scene vividly reminded Goethe
of the "chorus of birds" in the play of Aristophanes,
and, with intense amusement, he would not let them off
without a detailed dissertation on every element of beauty
in the picture, particularly dwelling on the ivy which hung
about the walls. His presence of mind extricated him
from the scrape.
A still more characteristic incident occurs on his voyage
from Sicily back to Naples. The ship should have passed
the straits between the Island of Capri and the mainland.
Evening came on; Vesuvius glowed brightly; sheet-
lightning was in the air ; it was a dead calm ; the captain
had missed the course ; a very slow but decided under
current was drifting them straight on the rocks of Capri ;
the herdsmen were visible on the rocks, shouting that
the ship would strand ; on deck was a crowd of Italian
peasants— men, women, and children ; handkerchiefs were
held up to try and find a breath of air by which they
might be saved ; the women screamed reproaches on the

64 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
captain, and all was shrieking and confusion. " I," says
Goethe, "to whom anarchy had ever been more hateful
than death itself, found it impossible to be longer silent.
I stood up, and represented to them that their cries and
shrieks were stunning the ears and brains of those from
whom alone help could be expected. As for you, I said,
retire into yourselves, and then put up your most fervent
prayers to the Mother of God, with whom it alone rests,
whether she will intercede with her Son to do for you
what He once did for the apostles, when, on the stormy
lake of Tiberias, the waves were already washing into the
ship while the Lord slept; and yet, when the helpless
disciples awakened Him, He immediately commanded the
winds to be still, as He can now command the breeze to
blow, if it be His holy will." These words had the best
effect. The women fell on their knees, left off abusing the
captain, and fell to prayer. They were so near the rocks,
that the men seized hold of beams to stave the ship off,
directly they should be able to reach them. "My sea
sickness, which returned in spite of all this, compelled me
to go down to the cabin. I threw myself half-stunned on
my mattress, and yet with a certain pleasant sensation,
which seemed to emanate from the sea of Tiberias ; for
the picture in Merian's illustrated Bible hovered quite
clearly before my eyes. And thus the force of all sen
suous-moral impressions is always strongest when men
are quite thrown back into themselves." Goethe lay here
"half-asleep," with death impending, till his companion
came down to inform him that a light breeze had just
sprung up to save them. There is no incident more cha
racteristic of the calm self-possessed artist in Goethe's
whole life, — the " musician adapting himself to his instru
ment ; " playing thus skilfully on strings which were defi
cient in his own mind, in order to bring out tones of
feeling for which there were ulterior reasons ; then lying

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 65
down to dream so vividly of what he really held to be but
a picturesque legend, that all the awe of death was held
at a distance by the vivid light of that " inward eye which
is the bliss of solitude." This one scene brings out the
secret at once of the man's vast personal influence, and
of the poet's yielding wax-like imagination, more vividly
than any incident of his life.
In was in his Italian journey that his poetic powers
culminated, and that science and art met in his mind.
You see the meeting-point in his descriptions of what he
saw. He fits his mind so close to the objects he studies,
that he not only takes off a perfect impression of their
present condition, but becomes conscious of their secrets
of tendency, and has often a glimpse back into what they
have been. Goethe discovered, as is well known, that all
the parts of a plant — stalk, leaf, stamen, petal, fruit — are
but various modifications of the same essential germ, best
exhibited in the leaf. It was a most characteristic dis
covery. But to understand the mental process by which
it was made — to prove that it was not, in him, due to a
mere scientific tendency — just look at this glance of his
into the essence of a quite different thing, — the amphi
theatre, written at Verona: "It ought not to be seen
empty, but quite full of men ; for, properly speaking, such
an amphitheatre is made in order to give the people the
imposing spectacle of themselves, to amuse the people
with themselves. If anything worth looking at happens
on a flat space, the hindmost seek in every possible way to
get on higher ground than the foremost ; they get on to
benches, roll up casks, bring up carriages, and plank them
over, cover any hill in the neighbourhood, and thus a
crater forms itself. If the spectacle is often repeated, such
a crater is artificially constructed," &c. Now this illus
trates the way in which Goethe became so great in
criticism, so great in science, so great in description, and
VOL. 11. F

66 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
so great in the more conscious and less inspired part of
his poetry. He moulded himself with such flexible mind
to everything he studied, that he caught not only the
existing present, but the state which had just preceded,
the state which would follow; he caught the thread as it
untwined, he caught not the " being" only (das Seyn), but
the " becoming " (das Werden). He had no gift for ex
perimental science. He could not even believe in laws of
nature that did not make themselves felt on the living
surface of things. He rejected "refractional" theories of
light with scorn, because the coincidence that certain geo
metrical and arithmetical properties attach to the laws of
colour (and it really is nothing more than a coincidence)
did not explain in any way the living colours as they
shine upon the eye. What is it to the living perception
that the length of the wave of the red ray is greater than
that of the violet ray; does length explain anything
about colour ? It is only a sort of inward thread of order
running through the phenomena, which is quite inde
pendent of the essence of the phenomena as they affect the
living organs of man. Goethe had no faculty at all for
this experimental detection of aids to knowledge, which
are not in any way aids to living insight. He thought it
a kind of mathematical back-stair to optics, which it was
mean to desire; you ought to look the phenomenon
livingly in the face, and explore its symptoms as you do
the physiology of a plant or an animal. He used the
microscope to detect what is really going on ; but he
despised an hypothesis which left the physiology of colour
just where it was.
Indeed, his science and his poetry and his descriptions
alike were of the microscopic order; not that they had
the confinement of the microscope, for his eye ranged
freely ; but I mean, that he rather pierced nature and life
sX many points in succession, letting in gleams of an in-

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 67
definite vista everywhere, than combined all he conceived
and saw in one co-existing whole. Look at his finest
poems and descriptions. It is the intensely vivid gleam
thrown on single spots, not the aspect of the whole, that
makes you seem to see with your own eyes what he
describes. Thus, in one of his finest poems, " Hermann
and Dorothea," every touch of description will illustrate
what I mean. And the sense of breadth and freedom per
vading it is given in the same way by transient glances
sidewards and forwards, which open out little vistas of life
in many directions, without completing them in any : —
" Und die Hengste rannten nach Hause, begierig des Stalles
Aber die Wolke des Staubes quoll unter den machtigen Hufen.
Lange noch stand der Jungling und sah den Staub sich erheben,
Sah den Staub sich zerstreu'n ; so stand er ohne Gedanken." *
What a vivid impression (it is only one or two strokes for a
picture, not properly a picture) is here given, by means of
pursuing a little side-path of insight into the feelings of
horses, and then fixing the eye intensely just on that
dreamy cloud of dust in the distance which would most
catch the eye of a man in a reverie ! It is always by
casting these isolated piercing glances in two or three
directions that Goethe produces his vivid impressions.
When Hermann and Dorothea, for instance, are walking
by moonlight to the village, there is no attempt to paint
the scene ; but each object, as it comes in view, is made
to flash on the eye of the reader. Thus : —
" ' How sweet is the glorious moonshine, as clear it is as the daylight ;
I can surely see in the town the houses and courtyards quite plainly,
In that gable a casement,— I fancy I count every pane there.'
Then they rose, and went downwards through the cornfield together,,

* And the horses started off home, pricking their ears for the stable,
But a cloud of dust grew under the rushing hoofs of their gallop.
Long the youth stood still, and watched the dust whirling upwards,,
Watched the dust settle down, — thus stood he vacant in spirit.

F 2

68 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
Dividing the thick-standing corn, and enjoying the splendour above
them ;
And thus they had reached the vineyard, and passed from the light
into shadow."
When Goethe returned from Italy in 1788, his genius
had reached its highest maturity. "Faust" (his greatest
work) was virtually written, though afterwards modified,
and not published for eighteen years. "Iphigenia" and
" Egmont " had received their last touches, and " Tasso "
was all but finished. The really fine part of " Wilhelm
Meister " was in existence ; all that he added afterwards
was a dreary superinduced element of "high art," a
painful " Hall of the Past,"— except indeed the religious
episode, which is a study from memory, a reproduction of
the religious " experience " of a gentle mystic whom both
he and his mother had dearly loved. "Hermann und
Dorothea " is the only great poem of any length which
he wrote afterwards, in 1796, and it is far the most
perfect though not the richest of them all.
During his Italian residence he had only fallen in love
once. He returned reluctantly to the north, like a child
from a Christmas visit, feeling that everything at home
was old and slow, and that he, coming from the sweet
south, was bringing " gold for brass, what was worth a
hundred oxen for what was worth ten." Even the Frau
von Stein was tedious; the Italian lady had displaced
her. In this mood he fell in with Christiane Vulpius,
a girl of no culture and considerably lower rank than him
self, who, after being for seventeen years his mistress,
became in 1 806 his wife. There can be no doubt that he
was passionately in love at first, and that his passion
ripened afterwards into a real and deeper affection, which
had sufficient strength, when he found his heart attracted
to another, to enable him to resist the danger and remain
faithful to the mother of his child, in spite of the serious

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 69
estranging influences arising from her intemperance.
Goethe's connection with Christiane, if judged by the lax
morality of his age, — by which alone we can fairly judge
him, when we have once admitted, as we must do, that he
was in no way morally purer than his age — that, indeed,
in his estimate of these matters he had become less pure
since his residence in Weimar, — was surely not the worst
of his life. It is in its origin that it is most offensive.
That he should either allow himself to encourage passion
without love, and feel no horror, no self-abasement, but
rather immortalise it by using it as literary capital for
" elegies ; " or, on the other hand, if he did feel real love
for this poor girl, that he could endure to write about her
to friends in the tone of his letters to the Frau von Stein,
— is one of those facts concerning Goethe which makes
one feel that a wider gulf divided his nature from purity
and fidelity than any merely passionate sins could create.
During the first months of his liaism he writes, in answer
to the Frau von Stein's remonstrances, "And what is
this relation ? Who is beggared by it ? Who lays any
claim to the feelings I give to the poor creature ? Who to
the hours I pass with her ? " And again : " I will say
nothing in excuse ; but I beg thee to help me, so that the
relation which is so objectionable to thee may not become
yet worse, but remain as it is. Give me thy confidence
again; look at the thing in a natural light; allow me to
speak to thee quietly and reasonably about it, and I may
hope that all will be once more right between us." That
a man should write in this tone about a woman he really
loved, and keep her in so humiliating a position in which
he knew that she was a mark for the contempt of his
friends, is hardly credible. And yet, if he did not really
love her, that he should have felt no self-reproach and
disgust at his own conduct, while he calmly worked it up
into poetry, is still more revolting and still more in-

70 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
credible. The truth seems to be that he did really love
her, and yet was insensible to the dishonour to himself
and to her implied in writing or thinking of his relation
to her in this way, and permitting his friends' neglect.
Mr. Lewes says that Christiane declared later she had her
self resisted the marriage. Possibly she may have wished
to excuse Goethe ; possibly it really was so ; but the
decision lay with him, and no false theories can relieve
him from the charge of permitting a permanent dishonour
to rest upon the woman who was to him in the place of a
wife. He took her to live with him immediately on the
birth of his son, and never again forsook her. But I can
hardly doubt that one great exciting cause for those habits
of intemperance of her's which caused him so much misery
was the consciousness of her miserable position in society,
— slighted as she was by the very friends whom Goethe
most honoured and loved, Goethe permitting the slight.
Schiller never seems to have sent her one greeting in his
letters, nor even alluded to her existence ; while Goethe's
messages to Schiller's wife are constant and courteous.
Contrasts of this kind should surely have stung him to the
quick, if he really honoured and loved her as a wife.
Since Mr. Lewes's book was first published, letters have
appeared from Goethe and his wife to Dr. Nicolaus Meyer
of Bremen, a medical student in Jena in 1798, who resided
in Goethe's house in the winter 1 799-1800. The corre
spondence adds little to what we knew; but the letters
from Christiane Vulpius (who in 1806 became Christiane
Goethe) confirm Mr. Lewes's conception of her as' an
uncultivated but not vulgar person ; and one or two show
great depth of feeling. The editor intimates that they
were poorly spelt and worse written ; but in those days
many ladies of rank had little knowledge of this kind.
The letters— both Goethe's and his wife's— are mostly
about herrings, butter, and port wine. Goethe's letters

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. ?I
are seldom very good. He saved up his best things for
type.^ One does not expect literary merit from Christiane
Vulpius. But her letters are simple, housewifely, and
friendly. It seems she had a genius for jams, which had
in part gained her Meyer's esteem. Parts of one or two
letters, written in 1805, during a dangerous illness of
Goethe's, give a glimpse of the thread of pain in her life.
She tells Meyer that Goethe has " now for three months
back never had an hour of health, and frequently periods
when one fancies he must die. Think only of me — who
have not, excepting yourself and him, a single friend in
the world ; and you, dear friend, by reason of the distance,
are as good as lost .... Here there is no friend to whom
I could tell all that lies on my heart. I might have many;
but I cannot again form such a friendship with any one,
and shall be forced to tread my path alone." Seldom,
indeed, in these letters, does she express feeling of this
kind, which gives it more meaning when it is expressed.
She says again, " I live a life of pure anxiety." Then she
writes a better account, adding, that though better, she
fears " it is but patchwork. O God, when I think a time
may come when I may stand absolutely alone, many a
cheerful hour is made wretched."* The sentence in which
* I have before alluded to the fact, that Goethe's passion for Minna
Herzlieb gave rise to his novel of the " Elective Affinities," and is depicted
in the love of Edward for Ottilie. It seems, now, not improbable that
Meyer's friendship for Christiane Vulpius, at least suggested the relation
•of the Captain to Charlotte in the same novel. Meyer must have been
at least six or seven years younger than Christiane, as he was born in
1775. But it seems from these letters that the friendship between them
had been strong, and not without sentiment. Christiane keeps Meyer's
picture in her room, and speaks of the constant pleasure and comfort that
she derived from looking at it. It was after, and immediately after,
Meyer's own marriage in 1806, that Goethe determined to take this step,
and announced it to him in the curious form given in the text. There is no
allusion at all to her marriage in any of Christiane's letters to Meyer.
She speaks of his own marriage thus :— " I have been especially pleased
to hear that you have at last resolved to enter the state of holy matrimony,

72 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
Goethe announces to Meyer, in 1806, his own marriage, is
characteristic. He speaks of the French occupation . of
Weimar, and the misery it caused, and adds : " In order
to cheer these sad days with a festivity, I and my little
home-friend (Hausfreundin) yesterday resolved to enter
with full formality into the state of holy matrimony, with
which notification, I entreat you to send us a good supply
of butter and other provisions that will bear carriage." .
Early in the new century, Goethe's growing attachment
to Minna Herzlieb seems to have given rise to one of the
richest groups of minor poems that he ever wrote ; and of
one of these so beautiful a translation has come into my
hands, * that I venture to hope it will at least convey
some feeling of the charm of Goethe's little ballads : —
THE HILL CASTLE.
Aloft stands a castle hoary
On yonder craggy height,
Where of old each gate and doorway
Was guarded by horse and knight.
The doors and the gates lie in ashes,
And silence broods over all ;
I clamber about unchallenged
On the ancient mouldering wall.
Close here lay a cellar, of yore
Well filled with the costliest wine ;
With the bottle and pitcher no more
Steps the maiden merrily in.
No more in the hall the beaker
She sets for the welcome guest ;
No more for the holy altar
She fills the flask of the priest.

in which I heartily wish you happiness, and believe that you will also be
convinced of these my sentiments." Meyer and his wife visited Weimar
on their wedding journey : a great chasm in the correspondence occurs
immediately afterwards.
?Translated by the Hon. J. C. Richmond, lately the," Native Minister"
of New Zealand.

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 73
To the thirsty squire in the courtyard
No more the flagon she gives ;
No more for the fleeting favour
Their fleeting thanks she receives.
For burnt are the ceilings and floors,
Into ashes long long ago passed ;
And corridor, chapel, and stairs,
Are splinters and rubbish and dust.
Yet when on a merry morning
From these crags I saw with delight,
With lute and with wine, my darling
Ascending the'stony height, —
Seemed a gay entertainment to burst
From the dulness of still decay,
And it went as, in times long passed,
On a joyous and festive day.
It seemed the most stately rooms
Were prepared for some guest of worth ;
It seemed from those hearty old times
A loving pair had stepped forth ;
And as if stood the holy father
Within his chapel hard by,
And asked, " Will ye have one another ? "
And we smilingly answered " Ay."
And when our hearts' deep emotion
In music broke forth aloud,
Rang out the mellow-voiced echo
In answer — instead of the crowd.
And when, at the coming of even,
In silence all was entranced,
And the sun from the glowing heaven
On the craggy summit glanced,
The squire and the maiden, like nobles,
Shine out in that golden blaze ;
Again the goblet she proffers,
And again his thanks he pays.
Goethe seems ultimately to have battled firmly with, and
finally subdued, the affection which thus renewed the fresh
ness of his poetry with a second spring of even greater
beauty than the first ; but the whole story, as he has
embodied it in the " Elective Affinities," is a thoroughly

74 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
repulsive one, and no mind but one so destitute as
Goethe's of natural remorse from the most humiliating
class of sins, could have given such experience publicity
in a work of art. The book betrays, in spite of its power,
some of the diffuseness of age ; a very great part of it is
devoted to describing the laying down of a new gravel-
walk and the making of a summer-house.
In 1816 his wife died; and Goethe's burst of grief was
terrible. We are told * that he utterly lost his presence
of mind, kneeled down beside her death-bed, and seizing
her hands, cried out "Thou wilt not forsake me ! No, no ;
thou durst not forsake me." The verse he wrote on the
day of her death has more true affection than all his
poems of passion together.
The last sixteen years of Goethe's life were passed in
tranquil labour at the completion of his unfinished works.
Now and then he wrote a lovely little poem. In 181 8,
when he was in his 70th year, came one of those little
flashes of song, — giving birth to a poem like those which,
he tells us, he would in his youth often get up to scribble
off in the middle of the night, or write down on the first
scrap of paper he found, not even venturing to set the
paper straight, lest the little mechanical act should put to
flight the flow of the inspiration. Its beauty is quite as
strange as that of the poems of his youth. Goethe always
loved the song, and said it was of the very essence of
himself. Here is a faint version of it, which I insert less
as a poem than as a light on the old man's character : —
AT DEAD OF NIGHT.
At dead of night I went, reluctant going —
A wee wee boy, across the churchyard-way,
To father's house, the pastor's ; heaven was glowing
With star on star— oh, sweetly twinkled they
At dead of night.
* Preface to Meyer's " Correspondence."

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 75
Then in broad life, when new impellings drove me
To seek" my love — impellings which she sent —
The stars and Northern-lights in strife above me —
I, going, coming, drank in sweet content
At dead of night.
Till the bright moon at last in her high season,
So pure so clear, me in my darkness found ;
And with her, willing, thoughtful, vivid Reason
Her light about my past and future wound
At dead of night.
He fell in love once or twice more; and in 1823 was
said to be near marrying again. The result, as usual,
was not marriage, but an elegy — of beauty not greatly
inferior to that which the poems of earlier days can show,
and which, as his youngest and dearest poem, he copied
out in Roman letters on fine vellum, and tied with a silk
band into a red morocco cover, in which glory Eckermann
saw it. Mr. Lewes, in deference to physiology, unpleas
antly and untruly calls the story of an old man's life a
" necrology." As a man Goethe was never so complete as
in his old age.
The only great addition to his fame which the last
twenty years of Goethe's life produced was the conversa
tions with Eckermann — a book which gives to the English
reader a far clearer conception of his personal influence
than any other of his works. He never runs an opponent
through, like Dr. Johnson : indeed, he does not willingly
talk with an opponent at all. He rather flows round his
disciple like an atmosphere, leaks into you at every pore,
and envelopes you in such a calm wide mist of wisdom,
that you can only say what he means you to say so long
as you breathe that atmosphere. There is no possibility
of a contest. There is no point to contest. He credits you
with a truth whenever you open your mouth (lasst das
gelten, as the Germans say) ; only he circumvents it with
a whole mass of modifying thought ; so that it would be

76 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
easier to bring the air itself to a point than to bring the
question you are discussing to an issue. In his old age he
recurred again frequently to his religious belief, and some
of his most fascinating conversations have relation to it.
Goethe had a taste for religion, and a shrewd guess at the
next world ; but his mind seems to have been quite devoid
of personal trust. He was perhaps the wisest man totally
without moral humility and personal faith whom the world
has ever seen. He took the pantheistic view of God along
with the personal view of man.* He knew that man was a
free and responsible being, but he could not attribute
human attributes of any kind to God ; he thought the
Infinite would be best honoured by merely denying finite
characteristics, and leaving Him unapproached : —
" Feeling is all in all ;
Name but an earthly smoke,
Darkening the glow of heaven."
And not only "name" but definite thought concerning
God he equally rejected. "No one," he says, "now
doubts the existence of God any more than his own ; " but
" what do we know of the idea of the divine, and what
shall our narrow conceptions say of the Highest Being ? "
And so of immortality also ; he believed in it by a sort of
extension of his insight into nature, but he put it aside
as not bearing in any way on this life. " I do not doubt
of our future existence, for nature cannot afford to throw
away any living principle (ivTeXfcia). But we are not all
in the same manner immortal ; and in order to manifest
ourselves as a powerful living principle in the future we
must be one." Immortality was no present aid to him ; he
thought we should wait to rest on it till we had gained it.
"To the able man this world is not dumb; why should
he ramble off into eternity ? what he really knows can be
* See, for instance, the fine little poem, "Das Gottliche."

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 77
apprehended." And he was annoyed with anything that
he thought a fuss about the matter.
Speaking of a poem by Tiedge relating to this subject,
he says : —
"Wherever you went, there lay ' Urania ' on the table. ' Urania ' and
immortality were the topics of every conversation. I could in no wise
dispense with the happiness of believing in our future existence, and,
indeed, could say, with Lorenzo de Medici, that those are dead for this
life even, who have no hope for another. But such incomprehensible
subjects lie too far off, and only disturb our thoughts if made the theme
of daily meditation. Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his
happiness in silence, without giving himself airs thereupon. The occasion
of ' Urania ' led me to observe that piety has its pretensions to aristocracy
no less than noble blood. I met stupid women, who plumed themselves
on believing, with Tiedge, in immortality, and I was forced to bear much
catechising on this point. They were vexed by my saying I should be
well pleased to be ushered into a future state after the close of this, only
I hoped I should there meet none of those who had believed in it here.
For, how should I be tormented ! The pious would throng around me,
and say, 'Were we not right ? Did we not foresee it ? Has not it happened
just as we said ? ' And so there would be ennui without end.
" All this fuss about such points is for people of rank, and especially
women, who have nothing to do. But an able man, who has something
to do here, and must toil and strive day by day to accomplish it, leaves the
future world till it comes, and contents himself with being active and
useful in this. Thoughts about immortality are also good for those who
have small success here below, and I would wager that better fortune
would have brought our good Tiedge better thoughts."
In only one sentence do we catch a glimpse of a time
when Goethe had looked to God for a Father's help, and,
at least for a moment, conceived the spiritual world not
as the mere unknown space beyond life, but as the inspir
ing love which shines everywhere into it. " We may lean
for awhile," he says once, in speaking of his youth
"on our brothers and friends, be amused by acquaint
ances, rendered happy by those we love; but in the end
man is always driven back upon himself, and it seems as if
the Divinity had so placed Himself in relation to man as not
a Iways to respond to. his reverence, trust, and love ; at least not
in the terrible moment of need." There had, then, been a

78 GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE.
time when the easy familiarity with which the young man
scrutinised the universe had been exchanged for the
humble glance of a heart-stricken child; and he had
shrunk away from that time (as he did from every hour
of life when pain would have probed to the very bottom
the secrets of his nature), to take refuge in the exercise
of a faculty which would have been far stronger and purer
had it never helped him to evade those awful pauses in
existence when alone the depths of our personal life lie
bare before the inward eye, and we start to see both
" whither we are going, and whence we came." Goethe
deliberately turned his back upon those inroads which sin
and death make into our natural habits and routine.
From the pleading griefs, from the challenging guilt, from
the warning shadows of his own past life, he turned
resolutely away, like his own Faust, to the alleviating
occupations of the present. Inch by inch he contested the
inroads of age upon his existence, striving to banish the
images of new graves from his thoughts long before his
nature had ceased to quiver with the shock of parting ;
never seemingly for a moment led by grief to take
conscious refuge in the love of God and his hopes of an
hereafter. And so, with his eyes still clinging to the life he left, on
the 22nd March, 1832, he passed away himself, while draw
ing with his finger pictures in the air and murmuring a last
cry for " more light." During the years which have inter
vened, the influence of his writings in England has steadily
increased. He has been held up as the wisest man of
modern days, and by some half-worshipped as a demigod.
And, in truth, his was a light and spacious mind. I grant
that he was the wisest man of modern days who ever
lacked the wisdom of a child; the deepest who never
knew what it was to kneel in the dust with bowed head
and broken heart. And he was a demigod, if a demigod

GOETHE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 79
be a being at once more and less than ordinary men,
having a power which few attain, and owing it, in part, to
a deficiency in qualities in which few are so deficient ; a
being who puts forth a stronger fascination over the earth
because expending none of his strength in yearnings
towards heaven. In this sense Goethe was a demigod : —
" He took the suffering human race ;
He read each wound, each weakness clear ;
He struck his finger on the place,
And said, ' Thou ailest here, and here. ' "
He knew all symptoms of disease, a few alleviations, no
remedies. The earth was eloquent to him, but the skies
were silent. Next to Luther he was the greatest of the
Germans ; next — but what a gulf between ! " Adequate
to himself," was written on that broad calm forehead ; and
therefore men thronged eagerly about him to learn the
incommunicable secret. It was not told, and will not be
told. For man it is a weary way to God, but a wearier far
to any demigod.

II.
WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.

THE commonplace modern criticism on Wordsworth
is that he is too transcendental. On the other
hand the criticism with which he was first assailed, which
Coleridge indignantly repelled, and which is reflected in
the admirable parody published among the "Rejected
Addresses," was that he was ridiculously simple, that he
made an unintelligible fuss about common feelings and
common things. The reconciliation of these opposite
criticisms is not difficult. He drew uncommon delights
from very common things. His circle of interests was, for
a poet, singularly narrow. He was a hardy Cumbrian
mountaineer, with the temperament of a thoroughly frugal
peasant, and a unique personal gift of discovering the
deepest secondary springs of joy in what ordinary men
' either took as matter of course, or found uninteresting, or
even full of pain. The same sort of power which scientific
men have of studiously fixing their minds on natural
phenomena, till they make these phenomena yield lessons
and laws of which no understanding, destitute of this
capacity for detaching itself entirely from the common
place train of intellectual associations, would have dreamt,
Wordsworth had in relation to objects of the imagination.
He could detach his mind from the commonplace series
of impressions which are generated by commonplace

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS: 81
objects or events, resist and often reverse the current of
emotion to which ordinary minds are liable, and tri
umphantly justify the strain of rapture with which he
celebrated what excites either no feeling, or weary feeling,
or painful feeling, in the mass of unreflecting men. Two
distinct peculiarities, and rare peculiarities of character,
chiefly assisted him in this — his keen spiritual courage,
and his stern spiritual frugality. Though his poetry reads
so transcendental, and is so meditative, there never was
a poet who was so little of a dreamer as Wordsworth.
There is volition and self-government in every line of
his poetry, and his best thoughts come from the steady
resistance he opposes to the ebb and flow of ordinary
desires and regrets. He contests the ground inch by inch
with all despondent and indolent humours, and often,
too, with movements of inconsiderate and wasteful joy —
turning defeat into victory, and victory into defeat. He
transmutes sorrows into food for lonely rapture, as he
dwells upon the evidence they bear of the depth and
fortitude of human nature; he transmutes the periodic
joy of social conventions into melancholy as he recalls
how " the wiser mind "
" Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind."
No poet ever contrived by dint of " plain living and high
thinking " to get nearer to the reality of such life as he
understood, and to dispel more thoroughly the illusions of
superficial impression.
To this same result again the rare spiritual frugality of
Wordsworth greatly contributed. Poets, as a rule, lust
for emotion ; some of the most unique poets — like Shelley
and Byron in their very different ways — pant for an
unbroken succession of ardent feelings. Wordsworth,
as I shall try to show, was almost a miser in his reluc-
VOL. II. G

%z WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
tance to trench upon the spiritual capital at his disposal.
He hoarded his joys, and lived upon the interest which
they paid in the form of hope and expectation. This is
One of the most original parts of his poetic character. It
was only the windfalls, as one may say, of his imagination,
the accidents on which he had never counted beforehand,
the delight of which he dared thoroughly to exhaust. He
paused almost in awe at the threshold of any promised
enjoyment, as if it were a spendthrift policy to exchange
the hope for the reality. A delight once over, he multi
plied it a thousand-fold through the vision of " that inward
eye which is the bliss of solitude." Spiritual thrift was at
the very root of his soul, and this was one of his most
remarkable distinctions among a race who in ¦ spiritual
things are too often prodigals and spendthrifts. In these
two characteristics lies sufficient explanation of the oppo
site views as to his simplicity as a poet. No poet ever
drew from simpler sources than Wordsworth, but none ever
made so much out of so little. He stemmed the common
place currents of emotion, and often succeeded in so
reversing them, that men were puzzled when they saw
weakness transformed into power and sorrow into rapture.
He used up successfully the waifs and strays of his imagi
native life, reaped so much from opportunity, hope, and
memory, that men were as puzzled at the simplicity of his
delights as they are when they watch the occasions of a
child's laughter.
Thus there is no poet who gives to his theme so perfectly
new a birth as Wordsworth. He does not discern and
revivify the natural life which is in it ; he creates a new
thing altogether, namely the life of thought which it has
the power to generate in his own brooding imagination.
I have already said that he uses human sorrow, for example,
as an influence to stir up his own meditative spirit, till it
loses its own nature and becomes

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 83
" Sorrow that is not sorrow, but delight ;
And miserable love, that is not pain
To hear of, for the glory that redounds
Therefrom to human kind and what we are." *
And it is this strange transmuting power, which his medi
tative spirit exercises over all earthly and human themes,
that gives to Wordsworth's poems the intense air of solitude
which everywhere pervades them. He is the most solitary
of poets. Of him, with far more point than of Milton, may
it be said, in Wordsworth's own words, that "his soul
was like a star, and dwelt apart." Of all English poems,
his works are the most completely outside the sphere of
Shakespeare's universal genius. In solitude only could
they have originated, and in solitude only can they be
perfectly enjoyed. It is impossible not to feel the loneli
ness of a mind which never surrenders itself to the
natural and obvious currents of thought or feeling in the
theme taken, but changes their direction by cool side
winds from his own spiritual nature. Natural rays of
feeling are refracted the moment they enter Wordsworth's
imagination. It is not the theme acting on the man that
you see, but the man acting on the theme. He himself
consciously brings to it the spiritual forces which deter
mine the lines of meditation ; he evades, or, as I have
insisted, even resists the inherent tendencies of emotion
belonging to his subject ; catches it up into his high
spiritual imagination, and makes it yield a totally different
fruit of contemplation to any which it seemed naturally
likely to bear. It is in this that he differs so completely
in manner from other self-conscious poets — Goethe, for
instance, who in like manner always left the shadow of
himself on the field of his vision. But with Goethe it is a
shadow of self in quite a different sense. Goethe watches
himself drifting along the tide of feeling, and keeps an eye
* " Prelude, " book xiii. p. 345.
G 2

84 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. ¦
open outside his heart. But though he overhears himself,
he does not interfere with himself; he listens breathlessly,
and notes it down. Wordsworth, on the other hand,
refuses to listen to this natural self at all. He knows
another world of pure and buoyant meditation ; and he
knows that all which is transplanted into it bears there a
new and nobler fruit. With fixed visionary purpose, he
snatches away his subject from the influence of the lower
currents it is beginning to obey, and compels it to breathe
its life into that silent sky of conscious freedom and im
mortal hope in which his own spirit lives. Wordsworth
has himself explained this fixed purpose of his imagina
tion to stay the drift of common thoughts and common
trains of feeling, and lift them up into the light of a
higher meditative mood, in a passage of a remarkable
letter to "The Friend." It illustrates so curiously the
deeper methods of his genius, that I must quote it : —
" A familiar incident may render plain the manner in which a process
of intellectual improvement, the reverse of that which nature pursues,
is by reason introduced. There never perhaps existed a school-boy who,
having, when he retired to rest, carelessly blown out his candle, and
having chanced to notice, as he lay upon his bed in the ensuing darkness,
the sullen light which had survived the extinguished flame, did not, at
some time or other, watch that light as if his mind were bound to it by a
spell. It fades and revives — gathers to a point — seems as if it would go
out in a moment — again recovers its strength, nay becomes brighter than
oefore : it continues to shine with an endurance, which in its apparent
weakness is a mystery — it protracts its existence so long, clinging to
the power which supports it, that the observer, who had lain down in
his bed so easy-minded, becomes sad and melancholy : his sym
pathies are touched — it is to him an intimation and an image of departing
life ; the thought comes nearer to him — it is the life of a venerated parent,
of a beloved brother or sister, or of an aged domestic ; who are gone to
ithe grave, or whose destiny it soon may be thus to linger, thus to hang
upon the last point of mortal existence, thus finally to depart and be seen
no more. This is nature teaching seriously and sweetly through the
affections ; melting the heart, and, through that instinct of tenderness,
developing the understanding. In this instance the object of solicitude
is the bodily life of another. Let us accompany this same boy to that
period between youth and manhood, when a solicitude may be awakened

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 85
for the moral life of himself. Are there any powers by which, beginning
with a sense of inward decay, that affects not, however, the natural life,
he could call to mind the same image, and hang over it with an equal
interest as a visible type of his own perishing spirit ? O, surely, if the
being of the individual be under his own care ; if it be his first care ; if
duty begin from the point of accountableness to our conscience, and,
through that, to God and human nature ; if without .such primary sense of
duty, all secondary care of teacher, of friend or parent, must be baseless
and fruitless ; if, lastly, the motions of the soul transcend in worth those
of the animal functions, nay give to them their sole value, — then truly
are there such powers : and the image of the dying taper may be recalled
and contemplated, though with no sadness in the nerves, no disposition
to tears, no unconquerable sighs, yet with a melancholy in the soul, a
sinking inward into ourselves from thought to thought, a steady remon
strance, and a high resolve. Let, then, the youth go back, as occasion
will permit, to nature and to solitude, thus admonished by reason, and
relying upon this newly-acquired support. A world of fresh sensations
will gradually open upon him as his mind puts off its infirmities, and as,
instead of being propelled restlessly towards others in admiration, or too
hasty love, he makes it his prime business to understand himself. New
sensations, I affirm, will be opened out — pure, and sanctioned by that
reason which is their original author ; and precious feelings of dis
interested, that is, self-disregarding joy and love may be regenerated and
restored : and, in this sense, he may be said to measure back the track
of life he has trod."
One feels that the poet must live alone in order thus
consciously to bathe all that he touches with a new atmo
sphere not its own. We are most alone when we most
distinctly feel the boundary-line between ourselves and
the world beyond us. In acts of free-will the sense of
human solitude is always at its height ; for in them we
distinguish ourselves from all things else. And in the
world of imagination this spiritual freedom is especially
remarkable. There one has always heard that freedom is
not, that genius is undisputed master of the will. Words
worth's poetry is the living refutation of this assertion.
He is so solitary, because his spirit consciously directs
his imagination, and imposes on it from within influences
stronger than any it receives from without.
" The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed ; "

86 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
but
"impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude." *
Reverie is not, in this sense, solitary, and Wordsworth
is not the poet of reverie. In reverie the mind wholly
loses the boundaries of its own life, and wanders away
unconsciously to the world's end. Wordsworth's musings
are never reveries. He neither loses himself nor the
centre of his thought. He carries his own spiritual world
with him, draws the thing or thought or feeling on which
he intends to write from its common orbit, fixes it, like
a new star, in his own higher firmament, and there con
templates it beneath the gleaming lights and mysterious
shadows of its new sphere. It is in this respect that he
differs so widely in habit of thought from Coleridge, who
was also a muser in his way. All his thoughts in any
one poem flow as surely from a distinct centre as the
fragrance from a flower. With Coleridge they flit away
down every new avenue of vague suggestion, till we are
lost in the inextricable labyrinth of tangled associations.
The same spiritual freedom which set Wordsworth's ima
gination in motion, also controlled and fixed it on a single
focus. And this he himself noted in contrasting his own
early mental life with his friend's abstract and vagrant
habits of fancy : — " I had forms distinct
To steady me ; each airy thought revolved
Round a substantial centre, which at once
Incited it to motion and controlled.
I did not pine like one in cities bred,
As was thy melancholy lot, dear friend,
Great spirit as thou art, in endless dreams
Of sickliness, disjoining, joining, things
Without the light of knowledge." +

* " A Poet's Epitaph," vol. v. of " Wordsworth's Poems," p. 24. (The
seven-volume edition.)
t " Prelude," book viii. p. 224.

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 87
That this hardy spiritual freedom, acting through the
imagination, and drawing the object of the poet's con
templation voluntarily and purposely into his own world
of thought, is the most distinguishing characteristic of
Wordsworth's poetry, may be best verified by comparing
him with any other of our great poets. Most other poets
create their poetry, and even their meditative poetry, in
the act of throwing themselves tnto the life of the scene
or train of thought or feeling they are contemplating :
Wordsworth deliberately withdraws his imagination from
the heart of his picture to contemplate it in its spiritual
relations. Thus, for instance, Tennyson and Wordsworth
start from the same mood, the one in the song " Tears,
idle tears," the other in the poem called " The Fountain."
Tennyson's exquisite poem is well known : —
" Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean ;
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld ;
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge ;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange, as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds'
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others ; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more."
Now turn to Wordsworth's treatment of the same
theme : —

88 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
J " My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred ; *
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay ;
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.
The blackbird amid leafy trees,
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife ; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free.
But we are pressed by heavy laws ;
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy because
We have been glad of yore."
Tennyson continues in the same strain of emotion with
which he begins, picturing the profound unspeakable
sadness with which we survey the irrecoverable past;
Wordsworth no sooner touches the same theme than
he checks the current of emotion, and, to use his own
words, " instead of being restlessly propelled " by it, he
makes it the object of contemplation, and, "with no un
conquerable sighs, yet with a melancholy in the soul,
sinks inward into himself, from thought to thought, to
a steady remonstrance and a high resolve." And thus
meditating, he wrings from the temporary sadness fresh
conviction that the ebbing away, both in spirit and in
appearance, of the brightest past, sad as it must ever
be, is not so sad a thing as the weak yearning which, in
departing, it often leaves stranded on the soul, to cling
to the appearance when the spirit is irrecoverably lost.
There is no other great poet who thus redeems new

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 89
ground for spiritual meditation from beneath the very
sweep of the tides of the most engrossing affections, and
quietly maintains it in possession of the musing intellect.
There is no other but Wordsworth who has led us " to
those sweet counsels between head and heart" which flash
upon the absorbing emotions of the moment the steady
light of a calm infinite world. None but Wordsworth has
ever so completely transmuted by an imaginative spirit,
unsatisfied yearnings into eternal truth. No other poet
ever brought out as he has done
" The soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering ; "
or so tenderly preserved the
" wall-flower scents
From out the crumbling ruins of fallen pride ; "
or taught us how,
" By pain of heart, now checked, and now impelled,
The intellectual power through words and things
Went sounding on a dim and perilous way."
He has himself described this self-determination of his
genius to " preserve and enlarge the freedom in himself*
in lines so beautiful, that, though I have already lingered
long on this point, I cannot forbear quoting them : —
" Within the soul a faculty abides
That, with interpositions which would hide
And darken, so can deal that they become'
Contingencies of pomp, and. serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even,
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns like an unconsuming fire of light
In the green trees ; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene. Like power abides
In man's celestial spirit ; virtue thus

•go WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire
From the encumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment, — nay, from guilt ;
And sometimes, so relenting justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of despair."*
•Of other poets, Tennyson at least may seem in some of his
more thoughtful poems (the "In Memoriam" and "The
Two Voices") to have approached Wordsworth's domain
in employing the spiritual imagination to illuminate the
moods of human emotion. In reality, however, even these
poems are quite distinct in kind. They are more like
glittering sparks flying upwards from the flames of self-
consuming aspirations than the quiet, steadfast, and
spiritual lights of Wordsworth's insight.
^ But it is by no means principally in treating these
deeper themes that Wordsworth brings the most of this
conscious, voluntary, imaginative force to beai; upon his
subjects. All his most characteristic poems bear vivid
traces of the same mental process. In his poems on
subjects of natural beauty it is perhaps even more remark
able than in his treatment of mental subjects where this
contemplative withdrawal from the immediate tyranny of
a present emotion, in order to gain a higher point of view,
seems more natural. But in all his most characteristic
poems on nature there is just the same method : first a
subjection of the mind to the scene or object of feeling
studied; then a withdrawing into his deeper self to
•exhaust its meaning. Thus, in the fine poems on Yarrow,
the point of departure is the craving of the mind to see an
object long ago painted in the imagination ; but instead
of yielding to the current of that feeling, the poet checks
himself, and asks whether the imaginative anticipation
may not in itself be a richer wealth than any reality which
could take its place :—
* " Excursion," book iv. p. 152.

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 91
" Let beeves and homebred kine partake
The sweets of Burn-mill meadow,
The swan on still St. Mary's Lake
Float double swan and shadow !
We will not see them, will not go
To-day, nor yet to-morrow :
Enough if in our hearts we know
There's such a place as Yarrow.
Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown !
It must, or we shall rue it ;
We have a vision of our own, —
Ah, why should we undo it ?
The treasured dreams of time long past,
We'll keep them, winsome Marrow ;
For when we're there, although 'tis fair,
'Twill be another Yarrow."
And in the same way, in the poem on " Yarrow visited,"
after brooding over its beauties, he puts them at a
distance from him, to distinguish the influence of the
"waking dream," "the image that hath perished," in
helping him to see the reality : " I see, but not by sight
alone, loved Yarrow, have I won thee." And then finally,
in revisiting the same spot in old age, we have first the
picture of the present ; and, as the memory of the past,
with its regrets, naturally follows, again the poet shakes
himself free from this regret — the natural mood of the
natural man, so to speak — in recognising the beauties of
happier years, to win the higher spiritual insight that
" the visions of the past
Sustain the heart in feeling
Life as she is — our changeful life,
With friends and kindred dealing."
And he ends this most perfect triad of spiritual imagina
tions with the characteristic verse —
" Flow on for ever, Yarrow stream, ' "'
Fulfil thy pensive duty,
Well pleased that future bards should chant
For simple hearts thy beauty ;

92 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
To dream-light dear while yet unseen,
Dear to the common sunshine,
And dearer still, as now I feel,
To memory's shadowy moonshine."
As more striking illustrations of the same poetic method—.
more striking simply because the subjects are apparently
so purely descriptive that there would seem to be less
room for this "sinking inward into himself from thought
to thought"— I may recall those daffodils transfigured
before the "inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude;"
the cuckoo, which, though " babbling only to the vale of
sunshine and of flowers," he spiritualises into a "wan
dering voice," that " tellest unto me a tale of visionary
hours ; " the mountain echo, which sends her " unsolicited
reply" to the same babbling wanderer; the nut-laden.
hazel-branches, whose luxuriant feast first threw him into
" that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay tribute to
ease," and which then so " patiently gave up their quiet
being," that, haunted by remorse, he is compelled to
exclaim, " with gentle hand touch, for there is a spirit in
the woods ; " the daisy, that recalls him from " stately
passions " to " the homely sympathy that heeds the
common life our nature breeds ; " and the mists, which
" magnify and spread the glories of the sun's bright
head." But there is no finer instance of Wordsworth's
self-withdrawing mood in gazing at external things than
that of the lines on the Boy of Windermere who mocked
the owls. For real lovers of Wordsworth, these lines have
effected more in helping them adequately to imagine the
full depth of the human imagination, and to feel the
inexhaustible wealth of Nature's symbols, than any
magnificence of storm, or shipwreck, or Alpine solitude : —
" There was a boy : ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander ! many a time
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 93
Rising or setting, would he stand alone
Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake ;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm, and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
That they might answer him ; and they would shout
Across the watery vale and shout again,
Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,
And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled ; concourse wild
Of mirth and jocund din : and when it chanced
That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,
Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind,
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake."

No other poet but Wordsworth that the world ever pro
duced could have written this ; you feel in reading it that
the lines " a gentle shock of mild surprise has carried far
into his heart the voice of mountain torrents," had for him
an exactness as well as a fulness of meaning; — for he
shows a curious power of carefully discriminating the
degrees of depth in his poetic imaginations : some lie near
the surface ; others lie deeper, but still within the sphere
of less meditative minds ; others spring from a depth far
beyond the reach of any human soundings.
Again, the beauty of Wordsworth's little ballads is
never properly understood by those who do not enter
into the contemplative tone in which they are written.
There is none of them that can be approached in a
mood of sympathetic emotion without failing to produce
its full effect. " Lucy Gray," for example, is a continual
disappointment to those who look for an expression
of the piteousness and desolation of the lost child's

94 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
fate.* Wordsworth did not feel it thus ; he was contem
plating a pure and lonely death as the natural completion
of a pure and lonely life. He calls it not " Desolation,"
but "Solitude." He strikes the key-note of the poem in
speaking of her in the first verse as " the solitary child,"
and then " No mate, no comrade Lucy knew ;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door."
Wordsworth's purpose evidently was to paint a perfectly
lovely solitary flower snapped, for its very purity, in it's
earliest bud, that it might remain an image of solitary
beauty for ever. He intended to dissolve away all pain
and pity in the loveliness of the picture. It was not the
lot of Lucy Gray, but the spiritualised meaning "of that lot
as it lived in his imagination, that he desired to paint.
Again, in the exquisite ballad " We are seven," few dis
cern how every touch throughout the whole is intended to
heighten the contrast between the natural health and joy
of life in the living child and the supernatural secret of
death. It is not a mere tale of one little cottage girl, who
could not conceive the full meaning of death : it is the
poet's contemplative contrast between the rosy beauty and
buoyant joyousness of children's life and the " incommu
nicable" sleep, which is the subject of the poem. The
perfect art with which this is effected is seldom adequately
observed. He introduces the living child with a glimpse
of the inward brightness that childish health and beauty
breathe -around them : —
" She had a rustic woodland air,
And she was wildly clad ;
Her hair was fair, and very fair :
Her beauty made me glad."

* Such as Mr. Kingsley, for instance, has so finely given in his ballad
on the girl lost on the sands of Dee.

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 95.
And when he has drawn the picture of her eating her
supper by the little graves of her brother and sister, that
she may " sit and sing to them," he heightens the contrast.
yet more, — " The first that died was little Jane :
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain,
And then she went away.
So in the churchyard she was laid ;
And when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."
Simple as this language is, it is not dramatic, it is not the
language in which a child would have spoken. It is the
language of a poet musing on the contrast between the-
little silent graves, changing with every season, freshening
with the spring, wetted^ by the rain, and whitened by the
winter's snow, like any other specks of common earth,.
and the buoyant child's unshaken fancy that they contain
her sister and her brother still. So full is she of life
herself, that though she can " run and slide," the whitened
mounds still seem to her to hide a life as vivid as her own.
The voluntary element that I have noticed in Words
worth's genius — the preference for checking obvious and.
natural currents of thought or feeling in order to
brood over them meditatively and bring out a result of a
higher order — leads to many of his imperfections as well as
beauties. He had, as I have noticed, an eminently frugal
mind. He liked of all things to make the most of the
smaller subject before he gave himself up to the greater.
The sober, sparing, free-will with which he gathers up the
crumbs, and feeds his genius on them before he will break

96 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
in on any whole loaf, is eminently characteristic of him.
Emotion does not hurry him into poetry nor into anything
else. He " slackens his thoughts by choice," * when they
grow eager ; he defers his feast of nuts that he may first
enjoy expectation to the full ; he will wear out the luxury
of his imaginations of Yarrow before he tries the reality ;
he is more willing by far to wait for the due seasons of
poetry than the husbandman for the due seasons of
fruit :— " His mind was keen,
Intense, and frugal ; apt for all affairs,
And watchful more than ordinary men."f
The poem on the strawberry-blossom is right from the
heart of his own nature : —
" That is work of waste and ruin :
Do as Charles and I are doing.
Strawberry-blossoms one and all,
We must spare them — here are many
Look at it, the flower is small —
Small and low, but fair as any ;
Do not touch it — summers two
I am older, Anne, than you.
*****
Hither, soon as spring has fled,
You and Charles and I will walk ;
Lurking berries ripe and red
Then will hang on every stalk,
Each within its leafy bower ;
And for that promise spare the flower."
And so Wordsworth himself would always have saved up
his strawberry-blossoms of poetry till the " lurking berries
ripe and red " lay in them, had he had the quick eye to
distinguish surely between the unripe beauty and the ripe.
But this he had not. As he himself tells us, hfe found it
almost impossible to distinguish "a timorous capacity
from prudence," "from circumspection, infinite delay."
He had not that swiftness and fusion of nature which
* " Prelude," book i. f Michael.

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 97
helps a man to distinguish at once the fruit of his lower
from that of his higher moods. He gathered in
" the harvest of a quiet eye,
That broods and sleeps on its own heart,"
with undiscriminating frugality, gathering in often both
tares and wheat. It was that same voluntary character of
his imaginative life, which enabled him to give so new an
aspect' to his themes, which also rendered him unable to
distinguish with any delicacy between the various moods
in which he wrote. A poet who is the mere instrument,
as it were, of his own impulses of genius, knows when the
influence is upon him ; but a poet whose visionary mood
is always half-voluntary, and a result of a gradual with
drawing of the mind into its deeper self, cannot well have
the same quick vision for the boundary between common
place and living imagination which belongs to natures of
rriore spontaneous genius. Wordsworth seems to kindle
his own poetic flame like a blind man kindling his own
fire ; and often, as it were, he goes through the process of
lighting it without observing that the fuel is damp and
has not caught the spark ; and thus, though he has left us
many a beacon of pure and everlasting glory flaming from
the hills, he has left us also many a monumental pile of
fuel from which the poetic fire has early died away.
It is clear that Wordsworth as a poet did, as he tells us
himself, "feel the weight of too much liberty." In his
finest poem he declares —
" Me this unchartered freedom tires,
I feel the weight of chance desires."
And no doubt he had even too complete a mastery over ,
himself. He could not distinguish the arbitrary in his
poetry from the conscious conquests of insight. And
being, as we have seen, most frugal, — feeling, as he did,
to the very last day of his poetic life, that it was the
VOL. 11. H

98 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
greatest of impieties to " tax high Heaven with prodi
gality," * he made not only the most of these " chance
desires " or suggestions, but often more than the most,
using them as the pedestals to thoughts in reality far too
broad for them. It is the great defect of Wordsworth's
poems, that where he has to deal with circumstance at
all, he either gives it in all its baldness, or makes his
meditations overhang it, like the projecting stories of old-
fashioned houses, in which the basement is more costly
than the air, and therefore is husbanded more carefully.
To him the basement of circumstance was very costly,
and the superinduced contemplation as abundant as the
former was costly. Coleridge has criticised this tendency
in Wordsworth to spread out a dome of thought over very
insufficient supports of fact, in accusing him of " thoughts
and images too great for their subject." It is mistaken
criticism, I think, to assert this, as Coleridge does, of
any of his poems on Nature. The daisy and the daffodils
breathed a buoyant joy and love into Wordsworth's simple
nature which Coleridge could but half understand. The
thoughts were not too great for the real influences they
are capable of exerting. But to his poems on incident,
Coleridge's charge is often perfectly applicable. The
following criticism, for instance, contains a fair illustra
tion of this tendency to erect a meditative dome over an
inadequate pedestal. I quote from Coleridge's "Bio-
graphia Literaria :" —
"The poet having gone out for a day's tour of pleasure, meets early in
the morning with a knot of gipsies, who had pitched their blanket-tents
and straw-beds, together with their children and asses, in some field by
the roadside. At the close of the day, on his return, our tourist found
them in the same place. ' Twelve hours,' says he,

* See the beautiful verses, "The unremitting voice of nightly streams,"
to which the date 1846 is attached.

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 99
' Twelve hours, twelve bounteous hours are gone, while I
Have been a traveller under open sky,
Much witnessing of change and cheer ;
Yet as I left I find them here.'
Whereat the poet, without seeming to reflect that the poor tawny wan
derers might probably have been tramping for weeks together through
road and lane, over moor and mountain, and consequently must have been
right glad to rest themselves, their children, and cattle for one whole day ;
and overlooking the obvious truth, that such repose might be quite as
necessary for them as a walk of the same continuance was pleasing or
healthful for the more fortunate poet, — expresses his indignation in a
series of lines, the diction and imagery of which would have been rather
above than below the mark had they been applied to the immense empire
of China, improgressive for thirty centuries : —
' The weary sun betook himself to rest :—
Then issued Vesper from the fulgent west,
Outshining like a visible god,
The glorious path in which he trod.
And now ascending after one dark hour,
And one night's diminution of her power,
Behold the mighty Moon ! This way
She looks, as if at them ; but they
Regard not her : — O, better wrong and strife,
Better vain deeds or evil, than such life !
The silent heavens have goings on ;
The stars have tasks ; — but these have none.' "
There is no structural power in Wordsworth's mind.
When he has to deal with things, influences, living
unities, he is usually opulent and at ease ; for the natural
emanations which flowers and mountains and children
and simple rustic natures breathe around them are homo
geneous in themselves, and only ask a poet who will open
his whole spirit to them with steady contemplative eye,
and draw in their atmosphere. But when much incident
enters into poetry, the poet also needs high combining
power ; he needs the art of rapidly changing his mental
attitude, and yet keeping the same tone and mood
throughout; and to this the voluntary, frugal, contem
plative character of Wordsworth's intellectual nature is
quite unequal. Wherever there is extended surface in his
subject, there there is want of unity in the poem— inade-
H 2

ioo WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
quacy to blend a variety of elements into a single picture.
There is no whole landscape in all Wordsworth's exquisite
studies of nature. There is no variety of moral influ
ences in all his many beautiful contemplations of character.
There is no distinct centre of interest in any but his very
simplest narratives. Indeed, he can deal with facts suc
cessfully only when they are simple enough to embody but
a single idea : as in the case of Peter Bell and the Idiot
Boy. If they have any character of accident about them,
this reappears in his poems in all the accidental, discon
tinuous, and straggling form of its original existence.
Almost any one of Wordsworth's fact-poems will imme
diately occur to the mind in illustration of this — " Simon
Lee," "Alice Fell," the story of the traveller lost on
Helvellyn, and many others. They are anecdotes, with
passages often of surpassing beauty, but still untrans-
muted anecdotes, — here a bit of fact — there a gleam of
natural loveliness — then a layer more of fact, and so forth.
He neither throws himself into the narrative, so as to
give you the active spirit of life inside it, as Scott did ;
nor does he give solely the contemplative view of it, as
in his simplest ballads he can do with so much beauty;
but he sprinkles a little macadam of stony fact along the
fair upland path of his imagination. Thus, in the early
editions of " The Thorn," he anxiously recorded the size
of the infant's grave : —
" I've measured it from side to side,
'Tis three feet long and two feet wide"
—suggesting, of course, that the poet was an undertaker
calculating accurately the measure of the coffin.
Yet these spots of prosiness are eminently character
istic of Wordsworth. He had vividly acute senses, and
delighted in the mere physical use of them ; they both
relieved him from the strain of contemplation, and sug-

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 101
gested new food for contemplation. " I speak," he says
in "The Prelude," " in recollection of a time
When the bodily eye — in every stage of life
The most despotic of our senses — gained
Such strength in me, as often held my mind
In absolute dominion 
I roam'd from hill to hill, from rock to rock,
Still craving combination of new forms ;
New pleasure ; wider empire for the sight,
Proud of her own endowments ; and rejoiced
To lay the inner faculties asleep."
The truth of this statement is obvious to any one who
reads his earliest poems ; and these vivid senses continued
to the last to work quite in separation from the poetic
spirit within him ; so that no poet gives us so strong a
feeling of the contrast between the inward and the out
ward as Wordsworth ; he dives into himself between his
respirations, that he may exclude for a little while the
tyfanny of the senses, and so not waste his life in the mere
animal pleasure of breathing. A geometrician would say,
that while most other poetry moves on the plane of life,
Wordsworth's is poetry of double curvature, and winds
in and out continually beneath and above it. One of
Wordsworth's biographers states, that the sense of hearing
was the finest sense Wordsworth had, and gave rise to the
finest poetry of Nature he ever wrote. The latter state
ment is, I think, true ; but the inference from it, that the
ear was the finest of Wordsworth's senses, is probably an
error. There is no indication that he had any fine faculty
for music; and I think the reasoning by which it was
inferred that he had, is probably almost an inversion of
the truth. It is because the ear cannot and does not fill
and distract the contemplative mind so much as the eye, —
because sound appeals directly to the interpreting spirit,
and has so little substantive significance of its own, — that
Wordsworth's poetry on sounds has, perhaps, less dis-

102 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
continuity, more fusion, than his poetry on sight. Vision
absorbed him, and would not allow his " inward eye " to
see until sight was exchanged for memory ; and even then
his poems on visible things have two distinct portions—
the descriptive portion, or the strophe dedicated to the
eye, and the meditative antistrophe, which belongs to the
mind. But when he listened, the sound only served to
keep his mind fixed on a single centre, while it allowed
him full scope for free meditation. It was not easy for
him to macadamise his poetry with little abrupt matter-
of-fact sounds. There is no poem like that "To the
Cuckoo" — of all his poems Wordsworth's own darling.
Whether " through water, earth, and air, the soul of
happy sound was spread," or the " far-distant hills into
the tumult sent an alien sound of melancholy not un
noticed," there was in Sound ever expression enough to
stir the depths of Wordsworth's watchful heart without
enslaving his senses.
But it is by no means due only to the imperfect unity
between Wordsworth's spirit and senses, and his disposi
tion to save up all he saw for his poetry just as he saw it,
that these little disfiguring specks of incongruous material
so often annoy us ; the same thing occurs almost as often
in his meditative poems. There was a rigidity in his
mind, the offspring probably of the intense meditation
he was wont to concentrate on single centres of thought.
Hazlitt has thus finely described the general expression
of his personal appearance : —
" The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge's cottage.
I think I see him now. He answered, in some degree to his friend's
description of him, but was more gaunt and Don-Quixote like. He was
quaintly dressed (according to the costume of that unconstrained period)
in a brown fustian-jacket and striped pantaloons. There was something
of a roll, a lounge, in his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell. There was
a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in his eye (as
if he saw something in objects more than the outward appearance), an

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 103
intense high narrow forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong
purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to laughter about the
mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the
rest of his face. Chantrey's bust wants the marking traits ; but he was
teased into making it regular and heavy. Haydon's head of him,
introduced into the Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, is the most like
his drooping weight of thought and expression. He sat down, and talked
very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear gushing accents in his
voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the northern
btcrr, like the crust on wine."
Clearly in Wordsworth, as well as in Peter Bell, there
were many of " The unshaped half-human thoughts
Which solitary nature feeds
'Mid summer storms or winter's ice."
One half applies to him that fine verse —
" There was a hardness in his cheek,
There was a hardness in his eye,
As though the man had fixed his face
In many a solitary place
Against the wind and open sky."
Indeed, he expressly tells us that this tendency to hard
ness was the leaning of his mind ; but that he had been
led to more delicate and sensitive thoughts by his sister's
influence — " She gave me eyes, she gave me ears,
And humble cares, and delicate fears ;
A heart the fountain of sweet tears,
And love, and thought, and joy."
The natural rigidity of his mind was great, and hence,
probably, his great deficiency in humour, which cannot
exist without a certain flexibility of both feeling and
thought, allowing of rapid transitions from one point of
view to another. It was not only that he had " fixed his
face in many a solitary place, against the wind and open
sky," but in the intellectual spaces it was the same.

104 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
Against the infinite solitudes of the eternal world he had
intently fixed his spirit, till it too had something of the
* rigid attitude of the mystic, and was crossed at times by
the dark spots which constant gazing at a great bright
ness will always produce. He paid for the frequency of
" that blessed mood
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened — that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood,
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul ;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things "—
— he paid for the frequency of this mood by a want of
ease and delicacy in the lesserTnovements of his intel
lectual nature, which rendered him often unable to bring
the minutiae even of his finest poems into harmony with
their spirit. Thus he often mistook the commonplace
observations of his superficial understanding for the
deeper thoughts of his heart ; he had no living feeling
that told him when he was dividing things with the blunt
edge of common sense, and when he was wielding that
fine sword of the imagination by which to the discerning
eye the poet divides asunder soul and spirit as surely
as that greater sword divides for judgment. He would
fall and rise in the same poem from clear vision to
the obscure gropings of common sense— from obscure
gropings to clear vision— and not feel the incongruity.
No one can help shrinking at the sudden discord, when,
in the lovely poem, " She was a phantom of delight," we
read —

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 105
" And now I see with eyes serene
The very pulse of the machine,
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death."
It is a jar to the mind, like coming down three steps
without notice, to stumble over this " machine " in the
midst of such a poem ; you think of an automaton at
once, or of Madame Tussaud's breathing figure. There
are numbers of gritty little poems completely written in
this machine -mood ; but the trial is severe when such a
crag starts up to bruise you in the midst of perfect love
liness. We should not grumble if that "worthy short
lived youth" commemorated in one of his sonnets, had
been thus spoken of as a superseded mechanism ; but
that " a dancing shape, an image gay," should be asso
ciated with any notion of the kind, suggests a meaning
for the exquisite line " to haunt, to startle, and waylay,"
the farthest possible, we should imagine, from the mind
of the poet in writing it.
Many of these small discords which interrupt the har
mony of Wordsworth's poetry are due to the egotism
by which a man of moods so solitary and of genius so
decisive was almost necessarily haunted. The smallest
memoranda of his own mind or life he will often pre
serve in his poetry, with a kind of blind faith that they
have a universal meaning. Thus, in one of his sonnets,
he tells us elaborately how he gazed one day at the sea,
and saw many ships, and his mind gradually began to
take a particular interest in one of them, and how this one
sailed northwards. One of his most thoughtful admirers
suggested that this sonnet was perhaps trivial ; but Words
worth confuted her in a long letter, in which he proved
that the sonnet was a poetic illustration of a universal law
of mind, by virtue of which man must either find or make
a unity in all that he contemplates; and if there be no

106 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
determining reason, then the " liberty of indifference," as
the metaphysicians call it, will come into play, and he
will select a unit of thought arbitrarily, as the poet here
chose for special interest a special ship, of which he truly
observes, that she " was naught to me, nor I to her."
" I must say," says Wordsworth of this gently remonstrant
admirer, " that even she has something yet to receive from
me. I say this with confidence, from her thinking that I
have fallen below myself in the sonnet beginning, ' With
ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh.' " It might be
replied, perhaps, that the same reasoning would prove him
to be justified in using poetry to illustrate the simple con
version of propositions, or in writing a touching sonnet
on the " Illicit process of the Major." The best and even
the most poetical defence we can make for such caprices
is, that they are venial egotisms ; for it is certainly more
poetic to exhibit life— even egotistic life — in any fashion,
than to illustrate merely formal laws. I should not have
alluded to this at all, but that Hazlitt has set up a theory,
founded in some measure, perhaps, on these little personal
egotisms, to prove that Wordsworth's poetic power is born
of egotism, and is part and parcel of his complete want of
universality. " Mr. Wordsworth is the last man to ' look abroad into universality,' if
that alone constituted genius : he looks at home into himself, and is
' content with riches fineless.' He would in the other case be ' poor as
winter,' if he had nothing but general capacity to trust to. He is the
greatest, that is, the most original poet of the present day, only because he
is the greatest egotist. He is ' self-involved, not dark.' He sits in the
centre of his own being, and there 'enjoys bright day.' He does not
waste a thought on others. Whatever does not relate exclusively and
wholly to himself, is foreign to his views. He contemplates a whole-
length figure of himself, he looks along the unbroken line of his personal
identity. He thrusts aside all other objects, all other interests, with scorn
and impatience, that he may repose on his own being ; that he may dig
out the treasures of thought contained in it ; that he may unfold the
precious stores of a mind for ever brooding over itself. His genius is the
effect of his individual character. He stamps that character— that deep

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 107
individual interest — on whatever he meets. The object is nothing but as
it furnishes food for internal meditation, for old associations. If there had
been no other being in the universe, Mr. Wordsworth's poetry would have
been just what it is  With a mind averse from outward objects, but
ever intent upon its own workings, he hangs a weight of thought and
feeling upon every trifling circumstance connected with his past history.
The note of the cuckoo sounds in his ear like the voice of other years ;
the daisy spreads its leaves in the rays of boyish delight that stream from
his thoughtful eyes ; the rainbow lifts its proud arch in heaven but to
mark his progress from infancy to manhood ; an old thorn is buried,
bowed down under the mass of associations he has wound about it ; and
to him, as he himself beautifully says,
' The meanest flow'r that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.' "
Hazlitt's malicious genius delighted in this kind of
thorny praise. His criticisms are generally full of in
sight ; and fall short of the truth mainly from the
deep scepticism which always leaves him perfectly con
tented with his own paradox. He has no conviction that
apparent paradox is not real. He is quite willing to
believe that mere egotism can be the root of genius or of
anything else that is noble, and is not driven back to his
facts by any aversion to so startling a conclusion. He
tells us further on, that Wordsworth's " strength, as it
often happens, arises from excess of weakness." This is
but the sceptic's bitter version of the truth, that " weak
ness constantly arises from excess of strength ; " a form
of the proposition not only more true in itself, but far
more applicable to Wordsworth's poetry. Rare gifts of
mind almost always tend to some overbalance of habit,
or thought, or feeling — to some narrowness, pride, or
humour, that is in itself a weakness. But no weakness
ever of itself tends to an opposite strength, even though,
as Wordsworth so finely observes in a passage I have
already quoted, the free and voluntary wisdom of man
may transmute it into an occasion for developing the
highest strength; but this is through the supernatural

108 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
life, not through any natural gravitation of weakness
towards its opposite. Strong affections may tend to
feebleness of purpose, but not feebleness of purpose to
strong affections. Great contemplative power will tend
to self-occupation, but self-occupation does not tend to
contemplative power. Hazlitt saw that the egotism and
the genius in Wordsworth were closely related, and with
half-malicious pleasure hastily assumed that the worse
quality had the deeper root. When he says that Words
worth's poetry is mainly derived from " looking at home
into himself," he says what I have all along endeavoured
to establish ; but when he means by this the contradictory
of " looking abroad into universality," he is certainly
and wilfully wrong. There are two selfs in every man —
the private and the universal ; — the source of personal
crotchets, and the humanity that is our bond with our
fellow-men, and gives us our influence over them. Half
Wordsworth's weakness springs from the egotistical self,
as he himself implies when he says,
" Or is it that when human souls a journey long have had,
And are returned into themselves, they cannot but be sad ?"*
But all his power springs from the universal self. Nor
is it in the least true that Wordsworth's finest poems, as
Hazlitt implies, are cocoons of arbitrary personal asso
ciations, spun around local and accidental, centres. The
worst element in Wordsworth is the arbitrary and occa
sional element. Freedom, indeed, enters into his very
finest poems,— but thoughtful, not arbitrary freedom : he
draws us out of the natural currents of thought and
emotion : but if it be from " chance desires," if it be to
have us " all to himself," and give us an egotistic lecture
in his own little study, — he is as far as possible from his
true poetic mood. * " Star-gazers" (Poetical Works, vol. ii.).

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS: 109
It is in order to put us into communication with a part
of his nature which has a feebler counterpart in ourselves,
— to give us the joy of feeling latent intellectual powers
quickened into conscious energy, — that, in his finer poems,
he gently intrudes upon us his own higher imaginative
life. It is an egotism, no doubt, when he ends a fine poem
with the verse — " Matthew is in his grave ; yet now
Methinks I see him stand,
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand."
But it is not an egotism to tell us, as he does in " The
Prelude"— " O, when I have hung
Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock,
But ill-sustained, and almost (so it seemed *)
Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag, — O, at that time,
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ear ! the sky seemed not a sky
Of earth, and with what motion moved the clouds ! "
The difference lies in this, that in the former case the
statement is a bare individual experience — which adds
nothing to the living expression of the poem — the bough
of " wilding " being entirely an " accidental grace " —
while the whole verse breaks the unity of the subject by
its abrupt transition to a different period and point of
view ; whereas the latter, though also a personal memory,
paints to the very life that fresh wonder which the excite
ment of a little physical danger will spread for any watch
ing eye over the whole face of heaven and earth. There
is no egotism or caprice in delineating personal experience
* Unless, indeed, this pedantic accuracy as to insignificant fact (not
unusual in Wordsworth) be an egotism.

no WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
that helps to widen or renew the whole experience of
others. Wordsworth was much excited on one occasion
at being told he had written a poem on " a daisy." " No,"
he said, "it was on the daisy— a very different thing."
There was a difference, and it was a difference character
istic of his best poetry. His finest mood never descends
to local or personal accidents alien to the experience or
imagination of his readers. Coleridge truly says in one of
his lectures, that Shakespeare never copied a character
from a mere individual — never painted a unique character
at all; each of his characters might represent a whole
class ; and so too, in his very different world, all Words
worth's higher poems have a certain breadth of life and
influence, without any of the abstractness which, in inferior
poets, accompanies breadth.
In what, then, may one say, in answer to Hazlitt's
criticism, that Wordsworth's universality consists, if high
universal intelligence is to be found in his poems ? Not
in any power of elaborating what is usually understood
by universal Truth : indeed, for so contemplative a poet,
there is singularly little of the comprehensive grasp of
Reason in his mind. Still less in any remarkable power
of expressing universal emotions, though Hazlitt does
regard him as essentially lyrical. His especial poetic
faculty lies, I think, in contemplatively seizing the cha
racteristic individual influences which all living things,
from the very smallest of earth or air, up to man and the
Spirit of God, radiate around them to every mind that
will surrender itself to their expressive power. It is not
true that Wordsworth's genius lay mainly in the region
of mere Nature ;— rather say it lay in detecting Nature's
influences just at the point where they were stealing un
observed into the very essence of the human soul. Nor is
this all. His characteristic power lay no less in discover
ing divine influences, as they fall like dew upon the spirit.

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS, m
One may say that Wordsworth's poetry is fed on sym
pathy less, and on influences from natures differing in kind
from his own more, than any other poetry in the world ;
and that he delineates these influences just as they are
entering into the very substance of humanity. Strike out
the human element from his Nature poems, and they lose
all their meaning : he did not paint Nature, like Tenny
son ; he arrested and interpreted its spiritual expressions
He regarded other men chiefly as natural influences acting
on himself ; but he never was inclined to identify Nature
with either Man or God ; for freedom, immortality, and a
spiritual God were of the very essence of his own medita
tive world. He is not specifically the poet of Nature, nor
the poet of Man, nor the poet of Truth, nor the poet of
Religion ; he is the poet of all separate living emanations
from Nature, or from Man or God. Contemplative as he
is, his mind was too concentrated and intense for general
Truth. He fixed his imagination and his life too entirely
and intensely on single centres of influence. He could not
pass from the one to the other, and grasp many at once,
so as -to discern their mutual relations, in the discrimina
tion of which Truth consists. He kept to single influ
ences : solitary contemplative communion with all forms
of life which did not disturb the contemplative freedom of
his spirit, was his strength. His genius was universal,
but was not comprehensive ; it did not hold many things,
but it held much. You see this especially in his larger
poems : he is like one of his own " bees that murmur by
the hour in foxglove-bells." He cannot move gradually
through a train of thought or a consecutive narrative. He
flies from bell to bell, and sucks all the honey deliberately
out of each. Hence he was so fond of the sonnet, because
it was just suited to embody one thought ; yet it seldom
exhausted for him one subject, and there is often an injury
to his genius in the transition from sonnet to sonnet when

112

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.

he wrote a series on one theme. His " plain imagination
and severe," as he himself called it, isolated whatever it
dealt with, brought it into immediate contact with his own
spirit, and so drew from it slowly and patiently every drop
of sweet or sad or stern influence that it had the power to
give off. But it is with him consciously influence, and
influence only. He never humanises the spirits of natural
objects, as Shelley did. He puts no fairy into the flower-
no dryad into the tree, — no nymph into the river ; — he is
too much of a realist for that, and he has far too intense a
consciousness of the simple magnificence of moral free
dom. Indeed he has too strict a human centre of con
templation for that to be possible. He regards Nature
as a tributary to Man, sending him influences and emana
tions which pass into the very essence of his life, but never
constitute that life. These influences are not like in kind
to humanity. To liken them to higher beings is but to
find "loose types of things through all degrees;" and
when he addresses the river thus —
" O glide, fair stream, for ever glide,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing,"
there is not even a momentary attempt to forget the
visible water, and bestow a human " soul " upon the
river ; — he only gathers up the spiritual influences which
emanate from it into a living centre, just as he elsewhere
spreads abroad the " soul of happy sound " through earth
and air. He has the deepest conviction that different
objects and scenes do radiate specific influences of their
own, not dependent merely on the mood of the contem
plative observer : —
" Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS 113
But these radiated influences are never human till they
touch the human soul, and are transmuted by that touch.
Rich and almost infinite streams of power and beauty
Nature does pour into Man; but first when they reach
that free and solitary spirit which draws down other and
higher influences to meet them from God, do they fulfil
their simple destiny. If any one chooses to deny that
there is an absolute reality in the expressions of Nature
to human minds, — that they are something as unalterable
as the meaning of a smile or a frown, — he may and must
say with Hazlitt that Wordsworth "never looks abroad
into universality," but overwhelms natural objects with
the weight of his own arbitrary associations. If the
dancing daffodils are no real image of simple joy ; if the
" power of hills " be a vague and misleading metaphor ;
if the " welcome snowdrop " —
" That child of winter, prompting thoughts that climb
From desolation towards the genial prime " —
can tell no true tale of immortality to the simple-hearted
when sinking beneath the snows of age; if it be a mere
confusion of ideas for a poet to believe
" That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song ;
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams;"
if there be nothing ghostly in the yew-tree, no " witchery "
in the sky, and no eternal voices in the sea ; if, in a word,
" the invisible things of Him from the creation " are not
"clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made," — then indeed was Wordsworth " vain in his imagi
nation," and " his foolish heart was darkened."
But Wordsworth did not doubt about these things ; he
VOL. 11. I

ri4 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
knew them; and he knew too well the kind of human
character they served to make or mar. His own nature
was of this primitive humanity : —
" Long have I loved what I behold —
The night that calms, the day that cheers ;
The common growth of mother earth
Suffices me — her tears her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears."
He knew how these simple influences could not be re
ceived into the heart without receiving also
" a spirit strong,
That gives to all the selfsame bent
Where life is wise and innocent ;"
he knew that no heart which "watches and receives"
what quiet Nature gives can have any of the preoccupy
ing restlessness which evil brings ; he knew that he
" Who affronts the eye of solitude, shall learn
That her mild nature can be terrible."
And thus we have a set of characters of simple grain, all
of them fed by the life of Nature, but all religious, spiritual,
and free,— !in Michael, the Leech-gatherer, and the Wan
derer in " The Excursion ; " while we have Peter Bell,
and, in part, the Solitary, on the other hand, whose per
sonal strength had been spent in "affronting the eye of
solitude." The result of almost all Wordsworth's universal experi
ence of the influences of Nature acting alone on man is
, gathered up into his three poems, "Lucy," "Ruth," and
" The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle " (the last,
perhaps, the most perfect effort of his genius) : the first
containing his conception of the plastic influences of
Nature in moulding us into beauty ; the second, of her
exciting spells for awakening the passions; the last, of

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 115
her tranquillising influences on thought. If we take with
these the poem on the lonely Leech-gatherer, in which he
contrasts the instinctive joy and life of Nature with the
burden of human free-will ; the great " Ode on Immor
tality," in which he brings natural life into contrast with
the supernatural, speaking of " those high instincts before
which our mortal nature doth tremble like a guilty thing
surprised ; " and finally, the lines in which he draws
together Nature, free-will, and God into one of the sub-
limest poems of our language, the " Ode to Duty," — we
have in essence nearly all the truth that Wordsworth
anxiously gleaned from a life of severe meditation, though
a very slight epitome indeed of the innumerable living
influences from which that truth was learned. If any one
doubts the real affinity between the expressions written on
the face of Nature and those human expressions which so
early interpret themselves to even infants that to account
for them except as a natural language seems impossible,
the exquisite poem on "Lucy" ought to convert him.
The contrast it illustrates between Wordsworth's faith in
real emanations from all living or unliving "mute in
sensate" things, and the humanised "spirits" of life in
the Greek mythological poetry, is very striking. Influ
ences come from all these living objects, but personified
influences never: —
" Three years she grew in sun and shower ;
Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown.
This child I to myself will take,
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.
Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse ; and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain. I 2

n6 WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS.
She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs ;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her ; for her the willows bend :
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motion of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her ; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round ;
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height —
Her virgin bosom swell :
These thoughts to Lucy I will give,
When she and I together live
Here in this happy dell.'
Thus Nature spake — the work was done.
How soon my Lucy's race was run !
She died ; and left to me
This heath, this calm and quiet scene,
This memory of what hath been
And never more will be."
Of the poetry of Wordsworth, it cannot, perhaps, ever
be said, as Wordsworth truly said of Burns, that " deep
in the general heart of man his power survives ; " for his
is the poetry of solitude, and the " general heart of man "
cannot bear to be alone. But there are some solitudes that
cannot be evaded : —
" Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills
The generations are prepared ; the pangs,
The internal pangs, are ready — the dread strife
Of poor humanity's afflicted will," —

WORDSWORTH AND HIS GENIUS. 117
— and then we leave the greatest poets of the great world,
and look to one who was ever glad to gaze into the deepest
depths of his own heart, of Nature, and of God. "The
pangs, the internal pangs," were not ready for him.
"Bright, solemn, and serene," perhaps he alone, of all. the
great men of that day, had seen the light of the counte
nance of God shining clear into the face of Duty : —
" Stern Lawgiver ! Yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace ;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face.
Flowers laugh.before thee in their beds :
And fragrance in thy footing treads.
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ;
And the most ancient Heavens through thee are fresh and strong."
And therefore in his poems there will ever be a spring of
something even fresher than poetic life — a pure, deep well
of solitary joy.

III.
SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.*

SHELLEY was a poetical mystic, but a poetical mystic
of a very unique kind. Usually the word denotes a
tendency to bore deep into the world of divine Infinitude,
a disposition to prostrate the mind before the Eternal Will,
and to bring the mysteries of faith close to the simplest
acts of daily life. This is not only the common tendency
of the religious mystics, but it was the characteristic of
some of Shelley's own contemporaries : in philosophy, of
Coleridge ; in poetry, of Wordsworth. In this sense, how
ever, mysticism is usually the characteristic of a mature,
not of a youthful, mind ; and Shelley's poetical mysticism
is, — in the quick throb of its pulses, in the flush and glow
of its hectic beauty, in the thrill of its exquisite anguish,
and equally exquisite delirium of imagined bliss, — essen
tially and to the last the mysticism of intellectual youth.
His poetry is the poetry of desire. He is ever the homo
desideriorum ; — always thirsty, always yearning ; never
pouring forth the strains of a thankful satisfaction, but
*" Memorials of Shelley." By Lady Shelley. Moxon, 1859.
" Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron." By E. J.
Trelawny. Moxon, 1858.
" The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley." By Thomas Jefferson Hogg.
Vols. I. and II. Moxon, 1858.

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 119
either the cravings of an expectant rapture, or the agony
of a severed nerve. This is the great distinction which
separates him from the other poetical mystics of his day.
Wordsworth, for instance, is always exulting in the ful
ness of nature ; Shelley always chasing its falling stars.
Wordsworth gratefully pierces the homely crust of earth
to find the rich fountains of life in the Eternal Mind ;
Shelley follows with wistful eye the fleeting stream of
beauty as it for ever escapes him into the illimitable void.
Hence Shelley's great admiration for Goethe's " Faust,"
as a poem expressive of illimitable desires. He says, in
one of his letters to Mr. Gisborne, that " it deepens the
gloom, and augments the rapidity of ideas ; " " and yet,"
he adds, " the pleasure of sympathising with emotions
known only to few, although they derive their sole charm
from despair, and the scorn of the narrow good we can
attain in our present state, seems more than to ease the
pain which belongs to them. Perhaps all discontent with
the less (to use a Platonic sophism) supposes the sense of a
just claim to the greater, and that we admirers of ' Faust '
are on the right road to Paradise. Such a supposition is
not more absurd, and is certainly less demoniacal, than
that of Wordsworth, where he says, — 'This earth,
Which is the world of all of us, and where
We find our happiness, or not at all.'
As if, after sixty years' suffering here, we were to be
roasted alive for sixty million more in Hell, or charitably
annihilated by a coup-de-grace of the bungler who brought
us into existence at first." This passage, written not in
Shelley's boyish days, but within a few months of his
death, when he was thirty years of age, brings out with
striking force, in its utter blindness to Wordsworth's mean
ing, how impossible it was for the eager-souled poet of

120 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
unsatisfied desire — the poet of perpetual flux and reflux,
the Heraclitus of the poetic world— to enter into the
mind of the poet of intellectual rest and "lonely rapture."
Of course Wordsworth had no such theological meaning
as Shelley indicates. He merely intended to affirm, that
if the springs of infinite joy are not to some extent dis
coverable in man here, as he was sure that they were, they
can scarcely be inherent in human nature at all, and there
fore not in the world to come. But it was so impossible
for Shelley to conceive any fulness of joy in the present
world, that he supposed Wordsworth to be launching a
thunderbolt against the school of the Unsatisfied, — the
school who sang with himself, — " Nor was there aught
The world contains the which he could approve," —
when Wordsworth was in fact only testifying to the spiritual
opulence of this homely earth. The same extraordinary
contrast comes out in two of the most beautiful poems which
our language contains, — Shelley's " Skylark " and Words
worth's "Skylark." Shelley's "Skylark" is a symbol
of illimitable thirst drinking in illimitable sweetness, —
an image of that rapture which no man can ever reach,
because it soars so far from earth, because it is ever
rising with unflagging wing, ever exhausting old delights.
Shelley will not recognise its earthly form or abode at all ;
it is not a bird *whose nest is on the ground ; it is a
winged desire, always rising, aspiring, singing, " like an
unbodied joy, whose race is just begun : " —
" Hail to thee, blithe spirit, —
Bird thou never wert, —
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 121
Higher still, and higher,
From the earth thou springest ;
Like a cloud of fire
The blue deep thou wingest ;
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy, whose race is just begun." *
Yet even this symbol of a thirst ever new, and ever slaked
from sweeter fountains, throws him into utter dejection
before this most marvellous of English lyrics closes : —
" We look before and after,
And pine for what is not ;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught ; —
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever could come near."
How strong is the contrast with Wordsworth's " Sky
lark ! " Shelley's is far the more wonderful poem, for the
quick pulses of his panting measure seem to give us the
very beats of those quivering wings, while Wordsworth's
stately lines are obviously the expression of the thoughts
of a meditative watcher. But while Shelley has ignored
the earth and the real bird altogether in his ideal flight,
the firm grasp of Wordsworth's thought gives the green
* Mr. Rossetti, in his edition, adopts Professor Craik's amendment of
"embodied" for "unbodied joy." It seems to me a most unauthentic
change. Shelley was intending to suggest that the skylark represented in
its fire and music the upward flight of a joy that had just got rid of the
fetters of a body.

122 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
earth her due share in the " ethereal minstrel's " rapture,
and bids us observe, that it is not the distance from
earth, but the nearness to it, which inspires the celestial
joy :— " To the last point of vision and beyond
Soar, daring warbler ; thy love-prompted strain,
'Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond,
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain.
Else might'st thou seem — proud privilege — to sing
All independent of the leafy spring."
It was Wordsworth's lifelong faith that fidelity to the
" kindred points of heaven and home " made both earth
the more joyous, and heaven the more sublime. Shelley's
was a different creed, the creed of longing and of loss,
which sought to spring from earth and to create its own
heaven, — in which it is not easy to succeed.
Shelley, then, was essentially the poet of intellectual
desire, not of mere emotion. The thrill of some fugitive
feeling, which he is either vainly pursuing, or which has
just slipped through his faint intellectual grasp, gives the
key-note to every one of his finest poems. His wonderful
description of the Hours in the " Prometheus Unbound,"—
one of the few passages in which Shelley has found a great
subject for a painter, at least for one capable of entering
into him,— is a description in fact of the two poetic atti
tudes of his own mind : —
" The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night
I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds,
Which trample the dim winds ; in each there stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
Some look behind as fiends pursued them there
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars ;
Others with burning eyes lean forth, and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet's flashing hair : they all
Sweep onward."

SHELLErS POETICAL MYSTICISM. 123
As it seems to me, Shelley himself, in one of his moods
of wild-eyed breathless inspiration, — " l'lnglese malinco-
lico," as the poor people called him at Florence, — lean
ing passionately forward into the future or backwards to
the past, should be the impersonation of these spirit-
charioteers of time. Eager, visionary, flashing forms,,-
" drinking the wind of their own speed," they are wonder
ful impersonations of his most characteristic poetic moods.
If we look at any of the lyrics on which he has set the full
stamp of his genius, we find that it images one of these
two attitudes of intellect, — the keen exquisite sense of want,
gazing wildly forward or wildly backward, but vainly striv
ing to close on something which eludes its grasp : —
" The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow,"
that is the true burden of every song. Sometimes the gaze
is fixed on the future, and sometimes on the past ; some
times it is, " Swiftly walk o'er the western wave,
Spirit of Night !
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone daylight
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear, —
Swift be thy flight ! "
and sometimes, "When the lamp is shattered,
The light in the dust lies dead ;
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed ;
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not ;
When the lips have spoken.
Loved accents are soon forgot ; "

124 SHELLEY 'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
but whether forward or backward gazing, the attitude of
unsatisfied desire is always the same, distinguishing
Shelley from the many great contemporaries who, like
Goethe himself, for instance, — except in "Faust," where
he had set himself to delineate the pangs of an insatia
ble heart and intellect,— sing out of the wealth of happy
possession even more melodiously than out of the gnawing
ardour of desire. And even between the animating spirit'
of "Faust" and the poetical moods of Shelley's poetry
there is one very marked distinction. Faust's passion is
a hunger for experience, — human experience in the largest
and most universal sense ; but the thirst which breathes
through Shelley is a continual thirst for those rare mo
ments of tingling veins and flushing soul, those instants
when the whole frame of nature and human life seems a
transparency for sweet emotion, which are but one element
in Faust's pursuit. What the passages in " Faust " were
which fascinated Shelley most intensely he himself may
tell us. Speaking of some fine German etchings of
" Faust," he says : " I never perfectly understood the
Hartz Mountain scene until I saw the etching ; and then
Margaret in the summer-house with Faust! The artist
makes one envy his happiness that he can sketch such
things with calmness, which I only dared look upon once,
and which made my brain swim round only to touch the
leaf on the opposite side of which I knew that it was
figured." This is of the very essence of Shelley. He is
the poet, not of human yearning in general, but of the
yearning for that youthful ecstasy which bounds like fresh
life through every nerve. He cannot be satisfied without
a thrill of his whole soul. He knows nothing of serene
joy. He thinks the whole universe should be ever thrilling
in every fibre with mysterious tenderness. The nature of
this thirst cannot be better described than in his own
musical words : —

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 125
" With a spirit . . . trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have
everywhere sought, and have found only repulse and disappointment.
Thou demandest, What is love ? If we reason, we would be understood :
if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born
anew within another's : if we feel, we would that another's nerves should
vibrate to our own, — that the beams of her eyes should kindle at once,
and mix and melt into our own, — that lips of motionless ice should not
reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best food. This is
love ; — this is the bond and the sanction which connects not only the two
sexes, but everything that exists.
" We are born into the world, and there is something within us which,
from the instant we live and move, thirsts after its likeness. This pro
pensity develops itself with the development of our nature — to this eagerly
refers all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble or correspond
with it. The discovery of its antitype — the meeting with an under
standing capable of clearly estimating the deductions of our own — an
imagination which can enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate
peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret —
with a frame whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite lyres strung to
the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibration of
our own — and of a combination of all of these in such proportion as the
type within demands, — this is the invisible and unattainable point to
which love tends ; and to attain which it urges forth the powers of man
to arrest the faintest shadow of that without which there is no rest or
respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence, in solitude, or in that
deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they
sympathise not with us, we love the flowers, and the grass, and the waters,
and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring — in the blue air,
there is found a secret correspondence with dur heart that awakens the
spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and brings tears of mysterious
tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the
voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says, that if he were in
a desert, he would love some cypress. So soon as this want, or power, is
dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives
is the mere wreck of what he was."
It is this constant longing to have ever sweet pulsations
of feeling coursing through a transparent organism of
life and nature which constitutes the "lyrical cry," as
Mr. Arnold has so admirably termed the distinguishing
note of lyrical poetry, in Shelley's poems. Sometimes,
after a long strain on the nerves of intellectual desire, the
cry rises almost to a shriek, as, for instance, in the closing
lines of " Epipsychidion : " —

126 SHELLEY S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
" Woe is me !
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of love's rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire ;
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! "
And his most characteristic poem, " Alastor," is a mere
picture of a mind pierced with sweet susceptibilities, rush
ing in mad pursuit of some empty vision of the night, that
has set those susceptibilities throbbing with liquid fire,
"Quserebam quid amarem, amans amare," is the motto
that he takes for it from St. Augustine. Other lyrical
poets write of what they feel, but Shelley almost uniformly
of what he wants to feel. The source of his idealism and
mysticism lies in this constant protest against the mani
fold dross of an opaque existence, through the thick film of
which he could not discern — nay, could not well imagine
that he discerned— any sweet fountains of warm life.
And Shelley's idealism betrays its genuineness in the
sorrowful wail, the even hoarsely discordant note, which
frequently rings through it. A true idealist necessarily
becomes restless as he leaves the earth and finds that he
is getting into a drearier and colder atmosphere. There
is a kind of faith or quietism, the very opposite of proper
idealism, which is sometimes confounded with it because
it is always finding, like Platonism, that earth is full of
the thoughts of God. Shelley thought himself a Platonist,
but with the least possible insight into Plato's true faith.
In that constant yearning which he felt for a tingling
thrill of new intellectual life, there was at times, as there
is in all profound love of excitement, a jarring nerve, a
thread of discord, which even reflected itself in his general
demeanour, as all craving for excitement is apt to do.
Hazlitt, keenest of observers, describes him as having the
general physique of a fanatic. He had " a fire in his eye,
a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 127
in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic.
He is sanguine-complexioned and shrill-voiced." Mr.
Hogg, too, tells us that the voice, which in poets at least
is apt to denote some quality profoundly rooted in the
character,* was "of the most cruel intension; it was
perpetual and without any remission, — it excoriated the
ears." And Shelley was quite aware of this hectic fever
in his own nature. In one of his latest letters he writes
to Mr. Gisborne : " As to real flesh and blood, you know
that I do not deal in these articles ; and you might as well
go to a ginshop for a leg of mutton as expect anything
human or earthly from me." There were many of his
contemporaries whose poetry had infinitely more in it of
mere stimulant than Shelley's ; for the excitement he
craved was of a highly distilled intellectual kind, a stimu
lant for the finest sensibilities — never for the mere senses.
What he loves to feel is a new quiver through his
soul, — a quiver of delicious flame, if it may be, but a
shiver of horror, if it may not. The high treble key of
Shelley's poetry is sometimes a cry of yearning ; but
sometimes also a cry of ghastly dread at a spectre raised
by himself. His early poems especially are full of
"wormy" horrors; and the loathsomeness of the inci
dent on which the plot of the " Cenci " turns, evidently
* Compare Hazlitt's description of Coleridge and Wordsworth's voices,
both of them most expressive of their poetic character. " When I got
there," Hazlitt says, " the organ was playing the Hundredth Psalm ; and
when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text : 'And he
went up into the mountain to pray, himself alone.' As he gave out this
text, his voice rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes ; and when he
came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and
distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had
echoed from the cbottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might
have floated in solemn silence through the universe." Wordsworth, says
the same close observer, "sat down and talked very naturally and freely,
with a mixture of clear gushing accents in his voice, a deep guttural
intonation, and a strong tincture of the Northern burr, like the crust on
wine."— From " My First Acquaintance with the Poets I'

iz8 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
had a dreadful fascination for him. Mr. Hogg tells a
playful little story of Shelley's vegetarian days, which
reflects this side of his nature : —
" He broke a quantity, often, indeed, a surprising quantity, of bread
into a large basin, and poured boiling water upon it. When the bread
had been steeped awhile and had swelled sufficiently, he poured off the
water, squeezing it out of the bread, which he chopped up with a spoon ;
he then sprinkled pounded loaf-sugar over it, and grated nutmeg upon it,
and devoured the mass with a prodigious relish. He was standing one
day in the middle of the room, basin in hand, feeding himself voraciously,
gorging himself with pap. ' Why, Bysshe,' I said, ' you lap it up as
greedily as the Valkyrias in Scandinavian story lap up the blood of the
slain ! ' 'Aye ! ' he shouted out with grim delight ; ' I lap up the blood of
the slain ! ' The idea captivated him ; he was continually repeating the
words ; and he often took panada, I suspect, merely to indulge this wild
fancy, and say, ' I am going to lap up the blood of the slain ! to sup up
the gore of murdered kings ! ' "
The story might, no doubt, be told of almost any one;
yet the fascination of this not very striking joke for
Shelley's mind is partly explained by the character of
much of his poetry, which not unfrequently and purposely
dips into curdling subjects, simply for the sake of the
chill to the blood, the vibration to the nerves. When he
said to Nature in " Alastor," " I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps records of the trophies won from thee '
he probably scarcely exaggerated the reality. At least,
one of his letters to Mr. Hogg begins with an excuse for
a bad handwriting on the ground of cold, because "I
have been pacing a churchyard all night." And there is
not one of his longer poems in which he does not alter
nate the breathless upward flight of his own skylark with
occasional plunges into a weird world of morbid horrors.
He has deccribed to us, in his hymn to Intellectual
Beauty, how intimately connected in his mind was the

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 129
first thrill of his adoration for the universal Beauty with
these moods of startled and fascinated dread :—
"While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed :
I was not heard, I saw them not ;
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of buds and blossoming,
Sudden thy shadow fell on me ;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy !
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine ; have I not kept the vow ?
With beating heart and streaming eyes even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave : they have, in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight,
Outwatched with me the envious night :
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou would'st free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,
Would'st give whate'er these words cannot express."
" Awful Loveliness " Shelley calls this object of his adora
tion ; and there is, I suppose, no doubt that he ascribed
significance to the term, but certainly not the significance
which most men assign to it ; he did not mean to refer
to that bending of the humiliated spirit before a free
Power from whom it craves much, from whom it can
compel nothing, that expresses to most of us the essence
of " awe." The loveliness which he called " awful " was
one which he hoped to uncover and take by storm, the
awe only whetting the force of his desire ; — not a generous
power, but a half-veiled source of anticipated rapture.
Profound awelessness, indeed, characterises all Shelley's
poetry, on subjects both of human and of divine mystery.
VOL. II. K

1 30 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
No doubt the habit of tearing the veil rudely from all
subjects over which the reverence of nature or custom
had cast them was peculiar to the revolutionary era in
which Shelley was born, and it cannot have been counter
acted by either the companion of his youth or the com
panion of his maturity. His college friend and biographer,
Mr. Hogg, seems, by his own account, to have acted the
part of a very conceited Mephistopheles to Shelley's
"Faust," mocking his enthusiasm and encouraging all
his wildest irreverence. Such an influence as is shown
by the following story cannot but have tended to render
Shelley even less inclined to bow before the object of
others' worship than he was by nature : —
" Shelley took me one Sunday to dine with his father, by invitation, at
Miller's hotel, over Westminster Bridge. We breakfasted early, and
sallied forth, taking as usual a long walk. He told me that his father
would behave strangely, and that I must be prepared for him ; and he
described his ordinary behaviour on such occasions. I thought the
portrait was exaggerated, and I told him so ; but he assured me that it
was not.
" Shelley had generally one volume at least in his pocket whenever he
went out to walk. He produced a little book, and read various passages
from it aloud. It was an unfavourable and unfair criticism on the Old
Testament — some work of Voltaire's, if I mistake not, which he had
lately picked up on a stall. He found it amusing, and read many
pages aloud to me, laughing heartily at the excessive and extravagant
ridicule of the Jewish nation, their theocracy, laws, and peculiar usages.
" We arrived at the appointed hour of five at the hotel, but dinner had
been postponed until six. Mr. Graham, whom I had seen before, was
there. Mr. Timothy Shelley received me kindly ; but he presently began
to talk in an odd unconnected manner ; scolding, crying, swearing, and
then weeping again ; no doubt he went on strangely. ' What do you
think of my father ?' Shelley whispered to me.
" I had my head filled with the book which I had heard read aloud all
the morning, and I whispered, in answer, ' Oh, he is not your father. It
is the God of the Jews ; the Jehovah you have been reading about ! '
Shelley was sitting at the moment, as he often used to sit, quite on, the
edge of his chair. Not only did he laugh aloud, with a wild demoniacal
burst of laughter, but he slipped from his seat and fell on his back at full
length on the floor.
"'What is the matter, Bysshe? Are you ill? Are you dead? Are
you mad ? Why do you laugh ? ' "

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 131
It was not likely that a man who was thus early helped
to throw away in one cast the reverence of nature for an
earthly and a heavenly father, could have ever permitted
the mere shrinking of instinct to deter him from entering
in imagination into the arcana of any subject where the
stream of desire led him; and the only wonder is that in
later life he should, in comparison at least with Byron,
have shown a spirit of something like reverence and self-
restraint. Shelley's awelessness of nature — " curiosity," as Hazlitt
calls it — is only the result of the limitless longing with
which he seeks to tear the veil from almost any secret,
human or divine ; and yet not in the spirit of a thirst for
new truth, so much as a thirst for a new effervescence
between knowledge and feeling. This characteristic in
Shelley is an exceedingly different thing from that species
of scoffing wit in which Byron attained such pre-eminence,
and which consists in dashing cold water, as it were, in
the face of a mysterious or sacred Power, without ever
caring to penetrate the secret of the mystery. Shelley's
intellect was far subtler than Byron's, and betrayed no
fascination for mere acts of intellectual impertinence.
Byron was a grown-up schoolboy, with a keen pleasure
in playing practical jokes on solemn Powers in which he
half believed. Shelley crept up to them with an irresist
ible longing to peep under the veil, and feel a new thrill
vibrate through his own nature. Still, as I said, his
temptation was not to scoffing, but to a morbid subtlety
of imagination on unhealthy subjects ; and the irreverence
cherished in the external relations of life by the unhappy
peculiarities of a coarse and obstinate father, and the petty
sarcastic egotism of his most intimate friend, cannot but
have had an influence in dissolving the spell of that inward
awe which arrests the curious imagination on the verge of
subjects which it is not good for us to dwell upon.
K 2

1 32 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
And, quite apart from the influences of his early culture,
I must admit that Shelley's mind resembled that of the
Greeks in not being clothed with that instinctive " mutual
awe" which Plato makes, in his Protagoras, the natural
protection of all human society. There is a mental cha
racteristic, setting a bound to what we may call spiritual
familiarities, which the Jews, the Romans, and the English
have in common, and in which Greeks and Frenchmen
always seem to be comparatively deficient, which Voltaire
and Rousseau had almost eradicated from the minds of
their pupils, and which is not very easy to define, but
which we all recognise as existing at once both in the spirit
of worship, and in the repelling shame which acts like a
molecular force to limit the mutual approaches of human
beings, and to guard the precincts of certain subjects from
the invasion even of imagination, — to which we give this
name of awe. It is flagrantly violated in the anecdote we
have quoted from Mr. Hogg. It is best illustrated, perhaps,
by the spirit which breathes in the old Hebrew tradition
of Jacob's dream, or that vision of Moses which taught
him to "put off the shoes from his feet." When Jacob
rises from the sleep in which he had seen the ladder con
necting earth and heaven, he says, " How dreadful is this
place ! Behold the Lord was in this place, and I knew it
not. This is no other than the house of God. This is the
gate of heaven." Here is the spirit of awe, which sees a
shadow of mystery cast from above even on the colour of
a dream. It is a spirit which may pass into slavish super
stition, but which still gives us the true attitude both for
worship, and for adequately appreciating the inward
elements of human character. The opposite to it is the
spirit which is incited by the very presence of a veil
to pierce it, by a shadow of power to brave it, by a secret
recoil of nature to overcome it, by an indefinable reserve
to defy it. Shelley seems to have been a shy man ; but,

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 133
like many shy men, he seems almost to have revelled in
breaking, in imagination, through all the boundary-walls
of nature, and following the wave of desire into the pene
tralia of life, both human and divine. " Superstition " was
his one great foe. " Thou taintest all thou look'st upon,"
he said, and forthwith strove to banish the attitude of
reverence from his spirit in dealing with religious sub
jects. This was his usual style : —
" Grey Power was seated
Safely on her ancestral throne ;
And Faith, the Python undefeated,
Even to its blood-stained step dragged on
Her foul and wounded train, and men
Were trampled on and deceived again."
And so on ad natiseam. The same spirit of almost morbid
fascination for anything positively nefas, penetrated into
the human subjects treated by his imagination. In his
delineations of love, he is always urging on passion to
the impossible leap over the boundaries of personality
itself : — " The fountains of our deepest life shall be
Confused in passion's golden purity,"
he sings ; and he can scarcely bear to admit any vestige
of personal distinction at all, — beating as it were almost
frantically at the barrier between mind and mind : —
" We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames : oh, wherefore two ?
One passion in twin hearts which grows and grew,
Till, like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured ; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable :
In one another's substance finding food,
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued,
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away ;
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one Immortality,
And one annihilation."

134 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
I do not quote this as an instance of the violation of
natural reserves, of which I think Shelley is often guilty,
but to show the force of the impulse which led his imagi
nation to violate such reserves, when once he had ceased
to respect them. That eager mind, rushing breathlessly
along the track of imaginative desire, would have needed
much to convince it that any precincts were inviolable.
Thus far it would seem that Shelley's genius was almost
the opposite of mystical, — that instead of halting on the
edge of the spiritual world, and bending before its mighty
mysteries, he dissipates, — to his own satisfaction at least,
—a host of illusions, by pursuing with frantic eagerness
one or two hasty trains of ardent personal impression,
which he does not hesitate to spur into a region of thought
far beyond their legitimate bounds. This is the spirit of
an enthusiast, no doubt, but certainly not of a mystic.
When he told Mr. Hogg that there could be "no entire
regeneration of mankind till laughter was put down," he
spoke in the spirit not of the mystical, but of the most
doctrinaire enthusiasm, — of a man who had what seemed
to him the most definite notions, and did not love to hear
their foundation shaken by irony. And Shelley's mysti
cism does certainly arise much more from a refusal to
recognise some very large regions of life and nature, —
from the exceedingly limited sphere of his wonderful
imagination, and the complete abandon with which he
trusts its guidance in the reconstruction of the spiritual
universe, than from any conscious recognition of a great
world of unexplored mystery. This a little examination
will, I think, suffice to prove.
Shelley never shows his full power in dealing separately
with intellectual or moral or physical beauty. His appro
priate sphere was what I may call swift sensibility, the
intersecting line between the sensuous and the intellectual
or moral. Mere sensation is too literal for him, mere feel-

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 135
ing too blind and dumb, mere thought too cold; but in
the line where sensation and feeling are just passing into
thought, where the stream of desire receives a new poign
ancy from the chill current of subtle discrimination with
which his mind penetrated it, his great power lay. No
thing can illustrate it better than an exquisitely beautiful
poem which Mr. Garnett first gave to the world : —
" She left me at the silent time
When the moon had ceased to climb
The azure path of Heaven's steep,
And, like an albatross asleep,
Balanced on her wings of light,
Hovered in the purple night,
Ere she sought her ocean nest
In the chambers of the West.
She left me, and I stayed alone,
Thinking over every tone
Which, though now silent to the ear,
The enchanted heart could hear,
Like notes which die when bom, but still
Haunt the echoes of the hill ;
And feeling ever — O too much !
The soft vibration of her touch,
As if her gentle hand, even now,
Lightly trembled on my brow ;
And thus, although she absent were,
Memory gave me all of her
That even Fancy dares to claim.
Her presence had made weak and tame
All passions, and I lived alone
In the time which is our own ;
The past and future were forgot,
As they had been, and would be not.
But soon, the guardian angel gone,
The dsmon reassumed his throne
In my faint heart. I dared not speak
My thoughts ; but thus disturbed and weak,
I sat and watched the vessels glide
Over the ocean bright and wide,
Like spirit-winged chariots sent
O'er some serenest element,
For ministrations strange and far ;
As if to some Elysian star

136 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
Sailed for drink to medicine
Such sweet and bitter pain as mine.
And the wind that winged their flight
From the land came fresh and light,
And the scent of sleeping flowers,
And the coolness of the hours
Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day,
Was scattered over the twinkling bay.
And the fisher, with his lamp,
And spear, about the low rocks' damp
Crept, and struck the fish which came
To worship the delusive flame;
Too happy they, whose pleasure sought
Extinguishes all sense and thought
Of the regret that pleasure leaves,
Destroying life alone, not peace ! "
But this is more tranquil than is usual with Shelley in
poems of equal beauty. The feeling of want which sighs
through it is less bitter, the effervescence between the
sense of beauty and the longing for it is less vivid ; there
is more of still reflectiveness, of patient thought, than is
quite characteristic of him. Generally, in the more per
fect minor poems, you almost see the angel troubling the
water, — the very thrill of intellectualised impulse, — the
fixed air of thought bubbling up through the intermittent'
springs of hot desire. Mr. Trelawny has given us a very
graphic account of this : —
" The day I found Shelley in the pine-forest, he was writing verses on a
guitar. I picked up a fragment, but could only make out the first two
lines : — 'Ariel, to Miranda take
This slave of music'
It was a frightful scrawl ; words smeared out with his finger, and one
upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most
' admired disorder ; ' it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh
overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks ; such a dashed-
off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifestation of genius.
On my observing this to him, he answered, ' When my brain gets heated
with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images and words faster than
I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled down, out of the rude
sketch, as you justly call it, I shall attempt a drawing.' "

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 137
This gives one key to Shelley's mysticism. Shelley's
mind was heated through at a much lower comparative
temperature, if I may be allowed the image, than almost
any other English poet's. I would not say, as Mr.
Emerson has said of some minor poet, that the suscepti
bility of his imagination illustrated the proverb " little pot
soon hot ; " for Shelley stands in the very front rank of
English poets. But still there was something of tenuity
in the essence of his genius, which is clearly connected
with this liability to rapid excitation. I would rather say,
that his genius resembles the water taken to a mountain-
top, and which, under that attenuated atmospheric
pressure, boils with far less heat — or in his case what
seems to general observers far less heat — than other men's.
Under the influence of a sentiment which would at most
warm the surface of other poets' minds into a genial glow,
Shelley's bubbles up from its very depths, in a sort of pale
passion, and seethes with imprisoned thought. This alone
produces a mystifying effect on ordinary minds. To feel
that Shelley breathes an exceedingly rarified atmosphere
of abstract sentiment, and yet see this rarified air intoxi
cating his imagination till his pulses bound as if under
the spell of an ardent passion, is like hearing a flow of hot
thought from the lips of a spectre, or seeing the bloodless
ichor coursing furiously through its veins. There is some
thing necessarily mystifying in this. The sentiment is
half abstract ; yet the ardour is unparalleled even in the
most eager pursuits of human passion ; and the crowd of
impressions and images which rush in so thickly, merely
to amplify an apparently thin, if not unreal, sentiment,
are dizzying to any reader at the first onset.
If we examine wherein consists the abstract and ideal
air which colours Shelley's most ardent poetic passion, we
shall find it partly due to the ideal susceptibilities of his
mind, but in some measure also to the habit he had of

138 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
writing down trains of secondary feeling, of which the
living explanation was contained in his own memory, and
nowhere else. " Epipsychidion," for instance, to ordinary
readers the most mystical of all his poems, was probably
to him one of the most, simply expressive ; but then it
paints the impressions made upon him by persons and
events entirely beneath the horizon of the poem. The
practical centre or focus of his meaning lies concealed in
his own heart, while all that he pictures for us is the
secondary effect exerted upon himself, without the causes
which produced it. We are in the position of the
prisoners in Plato's myth, who see the flickering shadows
on the wall of the cave, but never the real objects which
cast those shadows. In the poem I have mentioned,
" Epipsychidion," Shelley intends to describe apparently
the three abstract types of feminine influence of which he
had the most vivid experience ; but he can scarcely be
said to give us even so much as three shadows : rather
he gives us three distinct aromas ; and yet, notwithstand
ing this, the fire with which the verse seems to pant is
more ardent than in most poems of direct passion. Here
is the first feminine influence he is subjected to, the dele
terious enchantress : —
" One whose voice was venomed melody
Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers ;
The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers ;
Her touch was as electric poison ; flame
Out of her looks into my vitals came ;
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew
Into the core of my green heart, and lay
Upon its leaves ; until, as hair grown grey
O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime
With ruins of unseasonable time."
It would be impossible to describe the poisonous sub-.
tlety of beautiful falsehood with more intensity; this

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 139
enchantress diffuses an atmosphere of killing excitement,
which enters and blights at every pore. But still the poet
fails to make the reader understand the intensity of his
horror, because he does not present even a phantom to the
mind, does not give even a glimpse of the cause, — only of
the effect. One can scarcely imagine that the glow of the
poet's own feeling is purely ideal in ©rigin ; but if it related
to any painful personal experience, nothing is told us to
betray this. It has, therefore, all the mystical effect of a
phantom passion, the object of it, if not purely ideal,
being beyond our view. And the same is true of the other
personifications in this remarkable poem.
But assuredly no such clue of personal experience runs
through some of the most passionate of Shelley's poems.
" Alastor," for instance, embodies a purely ideal passion,
and yet one so ardent, that it draws the hero, who is an
imaginative copy of Shelley, across the Balkan, over the
steppes of Southern Russia, into a little leaky boat on the
Black Sea, where, using his cloak for a sail, he drives for
two days, with his hair very naturally turning grey all the
time ; and having sailed up one of the rivers that flow
down from the Caucasus, he dies in a spot of apparently
impossible geography, in wild pursuit of an image pre
sented to him in a dream, the fascination of which centres
in a pair of visionary eyes : — " When his regard
Was raised by intense pensiveness, two eyes,
Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,
And seemed, with their serene and azure smiles,
To beckon him."
No theory of the eyes can dispel the apparent incommen
surability between the cause and the effect. Had Lord
Jeffrey reviewed the poem, he would assuredly have
passed a very short and rude judgment on the eyes, and
perhaps on the poet too. And yet this is certainly one of

140 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
Shelley's most characteristic and most beautiful poems.
It is a ghostly kind of passion that is described, but
the ghostly passion throbs as high as ever did that of
man. The truth seems to be, that Shelley's mind was not
powerfully excited either by the merely spiritual or by the
merely physical world, either by the supernatural or by
the natural, but by an ideal zone peculiar to himself, where
the uninteresting part, as he thought it, of reality was
purged away, and the solemn mystery of unseen power was
not yet reached. His imagination does not seem to have
been strong enough to weld together the invisible and
visible, the spiritual causes and the earthly phenomena,
into a single imaginative whole. "Lift not the painted
veil," he said, "which those who live call life," even
" though unreal shapes be pictured there." He had tried
to lift it, and it only made him lose his hold of life, with
out gaining any hold of unseen realities. And this sug
gests, the true sphere of his genius. He recoiled from'
the world of living reality ; he had not penetrated to the
world of unseen strength ; his imagination remained sus
pended between the two, wielding a wonderful power over
ideal essences, but neither giving them a strong hold on
life nor reaching their root in God. His intellect, subtle
as it was, had no vigorous grasp in it ; if I may use a
somewhat pedantic expression, it had no integrating
power. It was swift, and infinite in fertility; but the
only string by which he ever bound his thoughts firmly
together was continuity of desire. There was but the
faintest measure of binding strength in his thought, the
faintest possible volition in it. Hence he had no enjoy
ment at all in reality as such. There never was a poet
who had less sympathy with the pre-Raphaelite school
of art. Poets, and artists, and thinkers, and politicians,
and theologians, who hunger after reality, hold, we sup-

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 141
pose, that the actual combination of qualities and sub
stances and personal influences, as God has made them,
contains something much better worth knowing and
imagining accurately, than any recast they could effect of
their own. They believe in the infinite significance of
actual ties. And those who feel this, as all realists do
usually feel it, must cherish a certain spirit of faithful
tenacity at the bottom of their minds, a respect for the
mere fact of existence, a wish to see good reason before
they separate things joined together by nature and,
perhaps, they will think, by divine law ; a disposition to
cling to the details of experience, as having at least a
presumptive sacredness ; nay, they feel even a higher love
for such beauty as is presented to them in the real uni
verse, than for any which is got by the dissolving and
recomposing power of their own eclectic idealism.
Shelley shows no trace of this feeling. He is idealist
to the heart's core. The root of much of the sort of
feeling I have described is fidelity of temperament, and
Shelley had but very little of this ; he did not instinctively
cling to things or persons as he had seen and known them,
simply because he had so seen and known them. Again,
a good deal more of the same feeling is due to a spiritual
preference for that goodness which has penetrated us and
conquered our resistance, as compared with the natural
beauty which has shone upon us, but has exerted no such
moulding power. Shelley had no such preference. He
held that all beauty should sink into our being directly as
the dew sinks into the thirsty soil ; and his aspiration was
to refine away the coarse material of earth until the
magic worked without hindrance. His adoration is all
for the ease and richness and warmth of overflowing,
passionate, lavish beauty. Asia, in his " Prometheus
Unbound," is his true goddess, and he paints her
thus : —

i42 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
" Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them ;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire ; then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light ! thy lips are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them,
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them ;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.
Fair are others ; none beholds thee,
But thy voice sounds low and tender.
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendour ;
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever !
Lamp of earth ! where'er thou movest,
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing."
Nothing could express better the ideal of melting beauty ;
the beauty which, like a rich odour, makes us "faint,"
according to Shelley's own favourite expression.
Further again, as I have already said, Shelley's intellect
and imagination were not of a sort to master a complex
whole. There was no grip in them. Infinitely subtle they
were ; and if they had had more volition, they might
perhaps have been less subtle ; but of volition they were
almost destitute. His imagination was of one dimension
only, — a point of moving fire generating myriads of beau
tiful shapes, but never illuminating anything beyond the
single series of connected positions which the spark
traversed between the moment of kindling and the
moment of extinction. Hence the far greater perfection
of his shorter lyrics, and the superiority of the " Cenci,"

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 143
which is constituted by one single thrill of preternatural
horror, to any other of his longer poems. He never holds
up either a subject or a character steadily before his mind
to examine it in all its parts ; even the " Cenci " is a
passion, not a drama, — the silver gleam of a winter torrent
down a terrific precipice, leaving a shudder behind, and
no more.
Thus Shelley's intellectual, moral, and emotional nature
alike made him a pure idealist. There was no moulding,
no subduing, no conquering element in the Beauty he
worshipped. It conquered by passive fascination alone,
not by any inherent dominating force. There was no
inherent strength in his conception of beauty. He ab
stracted it from the world, instead of impressing or im
posing it on the world. His intellect had no grappling-
irons wherewith to cling to the existing order of things
till he had exhausted its possibilities ; his conscience
showed the finest feminine qualities of disinterested
ness and even fortitude, but recoiled abruptly from all
aggressive exploits against the coarse jumbled evils of
the world; his affections were not dumb conservative
things, which fastened on the forms consecrated by time
and usage, but swift gleams of chameleon-like rapture.
His creed on this head he has versified for us, though he
was perhaps higher than his creed. The passage throws
a considerable light on his whole cast of intellect : —
" I never was attached to that great sect
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion ; though it is the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which these poor slaves with weary footsteps tread
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.

H4 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
True love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away ;
Love is like understanding, that grows bright
Gazing on many truths ; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination ! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human fantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sunlike arrow
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
One object and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity."
This is the natural creed of an inconstant imagination.
Rapid change, strung together only by the continuity of
a flash of feeling, being thus the law of Shelley's imagina
tion, all his longer poems, except the " Cenci," are very
defective in unity. Even " Adonais " is only a shimmer
of beautiful, regret, full of arbitrary though harmonious
and delicate fancies ; and the " Witch of Atlas " gauges
for us the spontaneous tendencies of Shelley's volatile and
inconstant imagination when it happened to be entirely
free from the spell of any strong desire, and shows us how
loose was the texture of his genius when not dominated
by such feelings. No other poet could make us take the
slightest interest in the subject. The witch is the imper
sonation of Shelley's own fancy-free imagination, and is
said to be the spirit of love, but exhibits it only in the
shape of that pale gentleness of disposition which Shelley
so often confounded with love. She, like the poet himself,
has storehouses of all essences of beauty, " sounds of air,"
" folded in cells of crystal silence : " —
" Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never die ; yet, ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
And the regret they leave remains alone."
And then, too, she has essences of dreams, " swift, sweet,
and quaint," " each in his thin sheath like a chrysalis ; ",

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. ,4S
and "odours in a kind of aviary" which are commissioned
" to stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds ; " and
even "liquors clear and sweet," — an assortment of agreeable
healing influences, the quintessence of a celestial apothe
cary's shop without any of the unpleasant terrestrial
alloys,— in fact, all the beauties which Shelley had dis
tilled in thought out of this miscellaneous world; — and
wonderful atoms of detailed beauty they are, most exqui
sitely combining thoughts with perceptions, but wanting
as a whole just in the very thing in which Shelley's imagi
nation was wanting, — connecting purpose or poetical com
prehensiveness. The Witch does not sleep at night, but
lies in trance, "with open eyes, closed feet, and folded
palm," in the fountain, watching the constellations reel
and dance over her; or, in winter, in a well of crimson
fire, watching the flakes of snow melt as they touch it.
She moulds a sexless companion out of snow and fire
" tempered by love," and with it voyages about, " circling
the image of a shooting star," and otherwise investigating
all the subtle dreams of Shelley's fancy. But her most
characteristic occupation is the one Shelley assigns her
in human affairs : here she would defeat all the crooked
purposes of priests and hypocrites, but without changing
the heart of deceit ; she would gratify lovers' passions,
and save them from the results ; in short, she would re
move all the natural obstructions to the sweeter desires of
human life, defeat the unnatural vices, and smooth the way
to a placid adjustment of wants and pleasures. This is an
exact reflection of the spontaneous reverie of Shelley's
imagination when not illuminated by some glowing flash
of feeling. It busied itself with fusing together mental
and sensuous impressions into symbols of rare beauty ;
in shaking them up in the kaleidoscope of his delicate
fancy; or in using them more thoughtfully to construct
a .world from which all wrong and violence should be
VOL. H. L

1 46 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
eliminated ;— a thin world of distilled loveliness and
spontaneous instinct, but containing nothing that could
be called the strength of divine love, — a world in
which evil should be foiled or evaporated rather than
conquered. This interlunar sphere, in which Shelley places the
activity of his Witch of Atlas, is the region with which
his own imagination was most familiar, — the sphere of
ideal beauty lying midway between Divine Power and
human life. His mysticism arises quite as much from his
refusal to acknowledge the world beyond, as from his
reluctance to meddle with the coarse details on this side
of his chosen sphere. His Witch of Atlas puts forth
nothing which can be called constraining power at all, — -
she only removes friction; and it was a characteristic of
Shelley's mind that he could scarcely conceive either
Power or Government, properly so called, except as pure
evil and tyranny. This alone gives much of the apparent
mysticism both to his political and his religious poems.
It is obvious, I suppose, that politics involve a faith in
government, religion a faith in the divine Will. Shelley
had no such faith. He believed rather in the abolition
of government than in government ; in the divinity of
love, perhaps, but love of the thinnest naturalistic type,
certainly not in the love of infinite power. Hence there
are no poems that seem more hazy to our own age than
his political and religious dreams. In both he is striving
to delineate something to which beneficent power is
essential, and he does it by omitting the very idea. He
paints a mere shadow of Influence, a white symbol of
Acquiesence, thinner and less real than the Witch of
Atlas herself, and puts the reins of this headstrong uni
verse into its hands. In his political poems, indeed,
Shelley scarcely takes the trouble to sketch even a shadow
of government, while he carefully erases all the distinctive

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 147
features which give force and reality to the meaning of
the word : —
"The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains,
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself, just, gentle, wise."
All that is wanted to his imagination is the rejection
of the tyrannical yoke, not the imposition of a just one.
Man would be greater if "sceptreless, free, equal, un
classed, tribeless, and nationless," than under the laws
which are the growth of history, and which recognise the
actual distinctions between nation and nation. From
the sceptre on the one hand, from the vulgar details of
national prejudice and peculiarities on the other, his ideal
mind alike recoiled. When Shelley was writing his poem
of " Hellas," Trelawny insisted on taking him to see
actual Greeks on board the ships at Leghorn, that he might
better know what he was writing of. They found the
Greek crews " squatting about the decks in small knots,
shrieking, gesticulating, smoking, eating, and gambling,
like savages." " 'Does this realise your idea of Hellenism,
Shelley ? ' I said. ' No ; but it does of Hell,' he replied."
The skipper was opposed to the Greek revolution because
it " interrupted trade." " Come away," said Shelley ;
"there is not a drop of the old Hellenic blood here.
These are not the men to rekindle the ancient Greek fire ;
their souls are extinguished by traffic and superstition.
Come away ; I had rather not have any more of my hopes
and illusions mocked by sad realities." This is a striking
picture of the recoil of Shelley's mind from the actual
men concerning whose political state he dreamed and
poetised. And of course he neglected to notice not only the vices
and faults which render some government necessary by
L 2

148 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
way of remedy, but also many virtues and capacities for
life in common, which render all such government valu
able as a concentration of the energies of a united race.
Abstract man might live, perhaps " sceptreless, tribeless,
and nationless ; " but with the actual qualities shared by
the tribe and the nation the value of the sceptre begins.
One can easily understand, therefore, the feeling which
Shelley is said to have expressed to Mr. Hogg: "With
how unconquerable an aversion do I shrink from political
articles in newspapers and reviews ! I have heard people
talk politics by the hour, and how I hated it and them !
I went with my father several times to the House of
Commons, and what creatures did I see there! what
faces ! what an expression of countenance ! what wretched
beings ! " Here he raised his voice to a painful pitch with
fervid dislike. " Good God ! what men did we meet about
the House, in the lobbies and passages ; and my father
was so civil to all of them — to animals that I regarded
with unmitigated disgust ! " Of course he did : here he
found the stringy fibre of real politics, — power in its coarse
form, wielding vulgar motives and machinery — the gristle
of government. Shelley had no belief in such govern
ment. He wanted to see man " tribeless and nationless,"
following gentle instincts without any friction or any yoke.
But if Shelley's political view of men is confusing, because
it ignores the governing power and the need of govern
ment in man, his religious view of the world is still more
so, from a corresponding hiatus in his spiritual creed.
It is curious that both in politics and in religion he has
a tendency to give us feminine softness as the sovereign
power, where he will allow us any. In the "Revolt of
Islam," Laone, if any one, fills the vacuum left by the
throne,— certainly Laone more than Labn, who is him
self feminine enough. In the "Prometheus Unbound,"
while Prometheus brings about the catastrophe by patient

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 149
endurance, Asia, as I have said, is the only positive repre
sentation of the "ruling" spirit of love; and Asia is a
rich overpowering perfume rather than a power. Demo-
gorgon, the genius of Eternity, who, in appearance at
least, dethrones the tyrant Jupiter when the fated hour
comes, is a form of Zero. He sits waiting for his task
in the gloom, and never appears to do anything again
after it is performed. The whole catastrophe is signifi
cantly enough brought about by passive virtues ; and
Demogorgon is therefore fitly enough the pure Nothing,
the "reine Nichts," or at best, let us say, Kant's pure
idea of a priori Time seated in a priori Space, who over
throws the tyrant at last simply because the tyrant's day
is done. " Panthea " describes him thus,*and his career is
even more negative than he himself is described to be : —
" I see a mighty Darkness
Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun,
Ungazed upon and shapeless ; neither limb,
Nor form, nor outline ; yet we feel it is
A living Spirit."
The reader does not feel it at all, and certainly Shelley as
a poet did not feel it, — nothing can be more imbecile than
Demogorgon's function in the poem. Prometheus repre
sents only created beings ; and his virtues are summed
up in lines which tell how anxiously Shelley wished to
inculcate that the highest virtues of the creature are purely
passive : — "To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite,
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night,
To defy power which seems omnipotent,
To love and bear, to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ;
Neither to change, nor flatter, nor repent, —
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free ;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory."

150 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
In this fine poem Shelley in reality puts no personal
power over Jupiter. Tyranny he represents as personal
will; but the power that dethrones tyranny is a breath,
a shadow, nothing. In short, Will falls from the throne
of the Universe by its own weight, and there is nothing
to take its place. To Shelley all will is obstructive ; the
only being he can really worship is the rich radiant spirit
of feminine loveliness, through whom alone even Pro
metheus can find his rest ; and even for her he feels not
worship, but " the desire of the moth for the star."
The characteristics, then, of Shelley's poetical mysticism
seem to me to be the spirit of unsatisfied desire which
kindles it, the intellectualised character of that desire,
impregnated as it is everywhere with the fixed air of
subtle thought, and yet never dominated or controlled
by that thought, — a consequent awelessness of instinct,
which rushes on its way with a craving whetted by the
desultory stirrings of a hungry intellect into the curiosity
of passion, — an eclectic idealism which recoils from every
thing unattractive, — a love of beauty, which excludes the
attribute of strength, and includes only passive virtues, —
all culminating in the substitution of either Time or Zero
in the place of the power of God. I do not think that
Shelley's genius, trained as it was, could have taken any
other path of development. He received in his earliest
days the severest shock of repulsion from the world as it
was. His whole genius led him to the elaboration of ideal
beauties. There was something of his own " Sensitive
Plant" in his mind, which made him start away from
repulsive qualities, and rendered him incapable of recon
ciling contradictions, or holding together with a strong
hand the various elements of a complex problem. Into
one side of human perfection he had a far higher insight
than most men of his day, — the passive nobility of beau
tiful instinct and endurance. But the very idealising

SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM. 15 r
tendency which repelled him from human politics, repelled
him also from all human creeds, and the very first objec
tion he took to them was to their demand of deference
for a spiritual King. From all arbitrary authority he
recoiled, and never apparently conceived the possibility of
authority properly so called, and yet not arbitrary. Hence,
to save his faith in human nature, he was almost compelled
to seat a shadow on the throne of the Universe. The only
marvel is, that his imagination still kept a throne of the
Universe at all, even for a shadow. His ideal world was
one "where music and moonlight and feeling are one,"
and in such a world apparently no throne or sceptre would
be needed. The result of his idealism, as of all such
idealism, was, that he nowhere found any true rest for his
spirit, since he never came upon any free and immutable
will on which to lean. The sense of weakness, of a long
ing to lean somewhere, without recognising any strength
on which to lean, runs through his whole poems ; —
" Yet now despair itself is mild
Even as the winds and waters are ;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,"
is a burden that reappears habitually in his poetry.
There is but one passage in all Shelley's exquisite poetry
which rises into pure sublimity, — because power is of
the essence of sublimity, and Shelley had no true sense
of power. But one does, and that is, characteristically
enough, the passage in which he puts into Beatrice Cenci's
heart the sudden doubt lest the spiritual world be without
God after all : —
" Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts ! If there should be (
No God, no Heaven, no Earth, in the void world, — j
The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world ! "

152 SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.
A sublimer line was scarcely ever written. It casts
just a gleam on the infinite horror of an empty eternity,
and then drops the veil again, leaving the infinitude of
weakness and emptiness intensified into a sublimity.
Yet here is the true root of Shelley's restlessness — the
suspicion that when desire fails, the object of the heart's
desire may fail with it, — that " the One " who " remains "
is a thinner, fainter, less living thing than the "many"
which " change and pass," — that there is nothing sub
stantial at the heart of the universe, — no Will behind the
fleeting beauty, no strength of self-sacrifice behind the
melting love. Shelley was no Atheist. His Pantheism
was sincere, and at times no doubt a kind of faith to
him ; but belief in a universal essence gave no solidity
to the order of the world, no firm law to the flux and
reflux of human desire, had no power to accept the com
mand, " Be still, and know that I am God." Behind this
" form and flush of the universal beauty " there always
lay a dreadful phantom of possible emptiness. He felt
of Pantheistic hopes as he felt of the pictured falsehoods
on the surface of the individual mind, that they might
be all illusory scenic effects. " Lift not the painted veil
which those who live call life." What if we were to find
even behind the fresco of universal loveliness nothing
but a " wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world" ?

IV.
MR. BROWNING.

MR. BROWNING, though commanding a wider in
tellectual sweep of view than almost any artist
of our day, is (hardly a poet of European, even if of
national celebrity, but rather the favourite of an intel
lectual sect ; I and this, not from any sectarian tendency
in his poetry, — nothing could be more catholic, — but
from the almost complete absence of that atmosphere of
fascination about his verse, that melody of mind and
speech, which is the main attraction of poetry to ordinary
men, and but for which mere imaginative power, how
ever great, would scarcely arrest their attention at all.
Coleridge once denned poetry — very badly I conceive —
as "that species of composition which is opposed to
works of science, by proposing for its immediate object
pleasure, not truth ; and from all other species (having
this object in common with it) it is discriminated by
proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is
compatible with a distinct gratification from each com
ponent part." Now Coleridge certainly did not intend
to exclude Mr. Browning's works by anticipation from
all claim to the title of poems ; if he had lived to read
Mr. Browning, Coleridge's profound, rich, and catholic
* " The Poetical Works of Robert Browning." 3 vols. Third edition.
Chapman and Hall.
" The Ring and the Book." 4 vols. Smith and Elder, 1869.

154 MR. BROWNING.
imagination would scarcely have failed to appreciate
fully the power and insight of the younger poet; but
no definition of a poem could have been contrived more
ingeniously calculated to exclude Mr. Browning's works
from that class of composition. I Most of Mr. Browning's
poems might be described precisely "as proposing for
their immediate object truth, not pleasure, and as aiming
at such a satisfaction from the whole as is by no means
compatible with any very distinct gratification from each
component part." ) In other words, Mr. Browning's poems,
though, when clearly apprehended, they seldom fail to
give that higher kind of imaginative satisfaction which
is one of the most enviable intellectual states, give a very
moderate amount of immediate sensitive pleasure. \ There
is little of the thrill through the brain, of the vibrating
melodious \ sweetness, of the tranquillising harmony, of
the atmosphere of loveliness, which one usually associates
with the highest powers of poetical expression.\ And
then, as to the relation of the whole to the part, which is
Coleridge's second test of a poem, Mr. Browning's poems
are not so organised that the parts give you any high
gratification till you catch a view of his whole.
Coleridge says, that " the reader should be carried for
ward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of
curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the solution,
but by the pleasurable activity of the mind, excited by
the attractions of the journey itself. Like the motion of
a serpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of in
tellectual power, or like the path of sound through the
air, at every step he (the poet) pauses and half recedes,
and from the retrogressive movement collects the force
which again carries him onward." Nothing could be
farther from describing the movement of Mr. Browning's
poems. Instead of fascinating you with his harmony of
movement, and gradually insinuating the drift and spirit

MR. BROWNING. 155
of the poem into your imagination, Mr. Browning rushes
upon you with a sort of intellectual douche, half stuns
you with the abruptness of the shock, repeats the
application in a multitude of swift various jets from
unexpected points of the compass, and leaves you at
last giddy and wondering where you are, but with a
vague sense that, were you but properly prepared before
hand, you would discern a real unity and power in
this intellectual water-spout, though its first descent
only drenched and bewildered your imagination. Take
the following short poem for example, one of really
marvellous force, indeed of true genius, but which I pur
posely decline to' present with any further introduction
than Mr. Browning has himself accorded; in order to
illustrate this characteristic of his, that the whole must
be fairly grasped before any of the "component parts"
are intelligible, — the component parts, indeed, being little
more than diminutive wholes, too diminutive in scale to
be clearly legible until you have seen the whole, whence
you go back to the component parts again with a key to
their meaning that at last gradually deciphers them : —
SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER.
" Gr-r-r — there go, my heart's abhorrence !
Water your damned flower-pots, do !
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you !
What ? your myrtle-bush wants trimming ?
Oh, that rose has prior claims —
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming ?
Hell dry you up with its flames !
At the meal we sit together :
Salve tibi / I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year :
Not a plenteous cork-crop : scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt :
What's the Latin name for 'parsley ' f
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout ?

156 MR. BROWNING.
Whew ! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf !
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself.
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps —
Marked with L. for our initial !
(He-he ! There his lily snaps !)
Saint, forsooth ! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank,
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's ?
(That is, if he'd let it show ! )
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I, the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp —
In three sips the Arian frustrate ;
While he drains his at one gulp !
Oh, those melons ! If he's able
We're to have a feast so nice !
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers ? None double ;
Not one fruit-sort can you spy ?
Strange ! — And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly ?
There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails :
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of Heaven as sure as can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to Hell, a Manichee ?
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On grey paper with blunt type !
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe :

MR. BROWNING. 157
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't ?
Or, there's Satan ! — one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of ! Hy, Zy, Hine . . .
'St, there's Vespers ! Plena gratid,
Ave, Virgo ! Gr-r-r — you swine ! "
When we have caught the idea that Mr. Browning is
painting the jealous disgust and tricky spite felt by a
passionate, sensual, self-indulging, superstitious monk
for the pale, blameless, vegetating, contented sort of
saint who takes kindly to gardening, and "talks crops"
at the monastery table, we see how living and strongly
conceived the picture is : but the wording, though vigorous,
and one verse at least (that concerning Sanchicha) highly
picturesque, is neither melodious nor even very lucid
for its purpose; and the parts, as I said, are diminished
images of the whole, and hence enigmatic till the whole
has been two or three times read. Yet the average
of the versification, and the verbal efficiency generally,
in this little poem, are in power a good deal above
those of most of the pieces called "lyrical," chiefly
because it is lyrical only in name, and does not attempt
to be in form much more than it really is in essence,
a semi-dramatic fragment.
\ Mr. Browning's deficiency in the power of sensuous
expression, and in the art of giving an independent
interest and attractiveness to the component parts of his
poems, as distinguished from the whole, is of course most
strikingly seen in the deficiencies of his metre and
rhyme, which are the natural gauge of poetic expressive
ness and harmony of poetic structure, j A metre that

1 58 MR. BROWNING.
does not fit the movement of the thought gives the pain
ful sense of a man rattling in a case of armour quite
too large for him; and rhyme that is only rhyme, and
that does not bring with the regular beat of the rhythm
something of new power to the sense, annoys with a sense
of something artificial, ingenuity at best, interfering with
the imaginative effect instead of heightening it. f Mr.
Browning is never happy in his lyrical metres, and his
rhymes have the careless wilful air of being cast off at
random by one whom the half-whimsical effect of rhyme
stimulates and entertains. His versification is almost
always best where it is nearest to prose, where, as in the
dramas, the metre is blank verse without rhymej\ For
example, where else is there in Mr. Browning, for what
comes near to lyric fire, anything like that apostrophe
which ends the prologue to " The Ring and the Book," the
first couplet of which has more of the true ring of inspira
tion than anything else in the whole range of his poems ;
though in the closing lines he repasses into that over-
compressed thought which makes him at times so ob
scure ? —
" O lyric Love ! half-angel and half-bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire, —
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face, —
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart —
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory — to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die, —
This is the same voice : can thy soul know change ?
Hail, then, and hearken from the realms of help !
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
Except with bent head and beseeching hand-
That still, despite the distance and the dark,
. What was, again may be ; some interchange
Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,

MR. BROWNING. ,59
Some benediction anciently thy smile : —
Never conclude, but raising hand and head
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their utmost up and on, — so blessing back
In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall ! "
This is blank verse, and fine blank verse. Elsewhere
there is but little elasticity in the rhythm, and rarely
indeed, when Mr. Browning tries rhyme, does he use it to
effect its legitimate function, — the delicate and definitive
clasping of thought to thought. Except in "The Lost
Leader," " Bringing the Good News from Ghent to Aix,"
and one or two other ballads of the same kind, which have
a stately gallop in their movement that corresponds well
to the movement of the thought, there is hardly a metre or
a rhyme in the poems that strikes you by its felicity, and
but few, except some of the blank metres, that do not
painfully drag or jar. And this deficiency in the verse is
only the reflection of the deficiencies of the style generally,
wherever, at least, it attempts to be lyrical.
Mr. Browning has himself suggested, not perhaps with
any conception of the full scope of his remark, the reason
why many of his so-called lyrics are unsatisfactory in
form ; and if we follow the clue his suggestion gives, we
shall probably find that it accounts for much both of his
great power and great uncouthness. He says, in a note to
the first of the " Lyrics," " Such poetry as the majority in
this volume might also come properly enough, I suppose,
under the head of ' Dramatic Pieces ; ' being, though
often Lyric in expression, always Dramatic in principle,
and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons,
not mine." Except that I should prefer to call Mr.
Browning) semi-dramatic rather! than dramatic — as there is
always a [Browningite style\ in the voices he gives to his

1 60 MR. BROWNING.
various studies, — and that I take exception to the asserted
lyrical expression, that is certainly true. These pieces
make an effort to take the lyric shape ; but having another
essence, they show, by the rasping and the friction of the
style, that they have somehow got embodied in an unsuit
able poetic form. The truth is, I think, that Mr. Browning
combines in his own person the half of a great dramatist
with a large capacity for pure intellectual thought, but has
little of that liability to flashes of emotion tingeing his
whole creative power which generates true lyric poetry.
His mind seldom or never seems to fall under the
dominion of a single sentiment or passion, without which
poetry cannot properly be lyric. He can throw himself
dramatically into such a mood, but that has an altogether
different effect. A semi-dramatic picture and interpreta
tion of emotion he can always give ; but then this has not
the true lyrical spontaneity, ease, singleness of effect ; for
almost always (usually even in soliloquies) it has direct
relation to the minds and actions of others.
Mr. Browning is a dramatic thinker, — generally think
ing within the imaginative fetters of monologue, even
when not throwing his thoughts into that external form ;
writing with a view to a resisting medium of thought or
feeling foreign to that which he is expressing at the
moment. You feel that he invariably contemplates some
other phase of character, against which his thought has to
justify itself, or into the heart of which it has to force an
entrance. He is a great imaginative Apologist, rather
than either a lyric or dramatic poet. A genuine lyric is
not written under the sense of external limits, and with
direct reference to the presence of some other form of
thought or character. Lyrical poetry is "a law unto
itself," defined by its own nature, but without defined end
or purpose, falling into shapes due only to the inward
harmony of the mind in which it originates, and essentially

MR. BROWNING. 161
free from the control of any immediate foreign influence.
A lyric is complete in itself, and should justify itself by
the perfect individual organisation of its versification.
Why, then, it may well be asked, does a mind which
delights so much in these interpretations of character,
ever feel tempted to adopt the lyric form ? The answer I
believe to be because Mr. Browning is only half a
dramatist — an intellectual apologist for the dramatic part
of life rather than a dramatist — his dramatic powers being
controlled entirely by speculative interests, and never
hurrying on his imagination deep into the play of those
practical forces which constitute the life of a great drama.
He does not enter into character as a prelude to the
excitement of a conflict, but at most only describes the
conflict to illustrate the character. He conceives men in
their relation to each other, and in mental collision with
each other ; but, after all, he does not care which way the
battle goes, except so far as that is involved in his inter
pretation. There is no narrative force in him at all. He
hardly enters into the story, and even in his dramas —
even in "The Ring and the Book" — evades a plot as far
as he possibly can. He has the keenest of all eyes for
every qualifying circumstance which alters the point of
view of each age and each individual, — but he is never
quite dramatic, for we never lose sight of the critical eye
of the poet himself, who discriminates all these different
shades of thought, and tosses them off with a hardness of
outline, and sometimes an intellectual touch of caricature,
or a sharp sarcasm, that could not really have proceeded
from the inside of the situation he is painting for us, that
could only proceed from one outside it like himself,
but who is looking (very keenly) into it. \ He paints
with wonderful swiftness and brilliancy, but also with a
certain wilful carelessness and singularity, \ with some
what like the qualities shown in old David Cox's fine
VOL. II. M

1 62 MR. BROWNING.
water-colour sketches,-(-and with a singular contempt for
sweetness and finish of style. In fertility of intellectual
interests there is no poetry anywhere like Mr. Browning's ;
in the brilliancy of his descriptions of character he has no
rival; but for beauty of form he seems to me to have
almost a contempt. [
The consequence is, that he is constantly tempted to
throw his dramatic conceptions into a form which rids
him altogether of the necessity for a plot. And in order
to disguise more effectually the fragmentary character of
these pieces torn from their dramatic connection, they are
frequently forced into an artificial mould of lyrical shape.
Yet, as they are really apologetic monologues addressed
to a visionary but half-indicated auditor, the lyrical metres
and rhymes are often the most awkward of artificial
accompaniments, which, instead of setting them to a soft
melody, give them the easy, familiar, often jaunty recita
tive, which expresses a lively external criticism. A very
short extract will show what I mean : I take it from a
poem of fine conception, called "The Grammarian's
Funeral ; " the aim of which is to bring out the strong
implicit faith in an eternal career which there must be in
any man who devotes this life wholly to the preliminary
toil of mastering the rudiments of language : —

" Was it not great ? Did not he throw on God
(He loves the burthen)
God's task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthen ?
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
Just what it all meant ?
He would not discount life, as fools do here,
Paid by instalment !
He ventured neck-or-nothing — heaven's success
Found, or earth's failure :
' Wilt thou trust death, or not ? ' He answered, ' Yes !
Hence with life's pale lure ! '

MR. BROWNING. 163
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
Ground he at grammar ;
Still, through' the rattle, parts of speech were rife :
While he could stammer
He settled oris business — let it be !
Properly based ovv —
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic Se
Dead from the waist down."
Now this is a very spirited defence of a grammarian's life ;
and if the substance of it had fallen naturally into a gram
marian's own mouth, instead of being forced out of shape
into a kind of hoarse triumphal recitative — chant I cannot
call it — over his grave, it might have made a fine dramatic
fragment. But as it is, this is in form not meant to be
dramatic, but a sort of rhapsody of critical praise. While
the thought throughout suggests simply an imaginative
effort in the poet's mind to explain and defend the narrow
range of a grammarian's studies, the form of the expres
sion tries to pour out a flood of lyrical enthusiasm over
him which the writer hardly feels though he thinks it, and
the striving after which, therefore, comes out in the quick
awkward rattle of the jingling metre.
Nothing is easier than to multiply instances of the same
kind of blunder in Mr. Browning's so-called lyrics. As
a rule, wherever we have a peculiarly jarring metre and
jingling rhymes, there Mr. Browning is attempting to dis
guise sharp sympathetic criticisms on character in the
flowing forms of lyrical melody, — to disguise a speech in a
song, to hide the tight garment of apologetic monologue,
by throwing over it the easy undress of spontaneous
feeling, — in short, to give the effect of "wandering at its
own sweet will " to a stream of thought which is strongly
and pointedly directed, through a sort of intellectual hose,
on a specific object. Here, for instance, is a young lady
complaining of her lover for ceasing to care for her,
because she had allowed him to see her love for him too
M 2

1 64 MR. BROWNING.
plainly. She gives expression to a very clever criticism
and complaint, but there is no music in her pain ; and the
attempt to put it into a lyrical form results in a funny
compromise between the beat of wings and a firm step,
which is rhetorical without being passionate, and critical
without being calm : —
" Never any more
While I live,
Need I hope to see his face
As before.
Once his love grown chill,
Mine may strive —
Bitterly we re-embrace,
Single still.
Was it something said,
Something done,
Vexed him ? was it touch of hand,
Turn of head ?
Strange ! that very way
Love begun :
I as little understand
Love's decay.
When I sewed or drew,
I recall-
How he looked as if I sung,
— Sweetly too.
If I spoke a word,
First of all
Up his cheek the colour sprung,
Then he heard.
Sitting by my side,
At my feet,
So he breathed the air I breathed,
Satisfied !
I, too, at love's brim
Touched the sweet :
I would die if death bequeathed
Sweet to him.
' Speak, I love thee best ! '
He exclaimed.
' Let thy love my own foretell,'
I confessed :

MR. BROWNING. 165
' Clasp my heart on thine
Now unblamed,
Since upon thy soul as well
Hangeth mine ! '
Was it wrong to own,
Being truth ?
Why should all the giving prove
His alone ?
I had wealth and ease,
Beauty, youth —
Since my lover gave me love,
I gave these," &c.

This marked genius of Mr. Browning for interpreting (in
his own language however) character in position — that is,
in its most characteristic attitude towards the rest of the
world — is probably the secret not only of his lyrical
failures, but of his generally defective powers of poetical
expression ; for it implies an intellectual basis for his
dramatic power, and suggests that Mr. Browning is rather
a highly-intellectual interpreter of action, throwing himself
into a new part, and feeling its characteristic points, as a
good rider just feels his horse's mouth with the bit, — or,
to use a better image, perhaps, throwing out all his
nervous perception into the defining outline and moral
profile of his part, as a blind man will finger the contour
of a face that is dear to him, to secure his image of the
characteristic lines, — rather than that he works, like
Shakespeare or Goethe, by intense sympathy from within,
leaving the final outline to crystallise as it may, according
to the internal law and nature of the life thus germinating
in his imagination.
And no doubt the basis of Mr. Browning's whole genius
is keenly intellectual, — not meditatively intellectual, but,
on the contrary, observingly, definingly, speculatively
intellectual, — of which we may see one great proof in the
usually far superior character of his masculine to his femi-

1 66 MR. BROWNING.
nine sketches, of his "men" to his "women," though I
must except here the saint of " The Ring and the Book."
Educated men's characters are naturally in position, and
most vigorous masculine characters of any kind have a
defined bearing on the rest of the world, a characteristic
attitude, a personal latitude and longitude on the map of
human affairs, which an intellectual eye can seize and
mark out at once. But it is not so Usually with women's
characters. They are best expressed not by attitude and
outline, but by essence and indefinite tone. As an odour
expresses and characterises a flower even better than
its shape and colour, as the note of a bird is in some
sense a more personal expression of it than its form and
feathers, so there is something of vital essence in a great
poet's delineations of women which is far more expressive
than any outline or colour. When Shakespeare makes
Cleopatra say, over the body of Antony,
"And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon,"
he somehow contrives to embody in a sentence the con
centrated essence of the imperious and voluptuous queen.
When Goethe makes Klarchen, in "Egmont," sing,
" Freudvoll und leidvoll,
Gedankenvoll sein,
Langen und bangen,
In schwebender Pein,
Himmeloch jauchzend,
Zum Tode betriibt,
Gliicklich allein
Ist die Seele, die liebt,"
he has given you the whole character in an aroma of
brief but surpassing sweetness. There is no trace of this
power in Mr. Browning. He throws his feminine cha
racters into as strongly-defined attitudes as his masculine,

MR. BROWNING. 167
and the consequence is, that they are seldom nearly so
effective ; and also that, half-conscious of this intellectual-
ising mould of his mind, he attempts them very much less
often. He has drawn women, indeed, of a certain gran
deur of outline, — as, for instance, the guilty Ottima, in
" Pippa Passes," who stimulates her lover to the murder
of her husband, and then asks him to crown her his queen,
his "spirit's arbitress, magnificent in sin; " but the picture
is painfully inflamed, and though it impresses one as true,
it is because, under such exceptional circumstances, the
pronounced attitude which Mr. Browning loves to draw
is to be found even more sharply defined in the passionate
woman, fearful that the guilt may alienate love, than in
the most masculine of men. And no one can mistake the
peculiar abrupt Browningite style in which Ottima, like
all Mr. Browning's characters, phrases her monologue : —

Otti. " Well, then, I love you better now than ever,
And best (look at me while I speak to you) —
Best for the crime ; nor do I grieve, in truth,
This mask, this simulated ignorance,
This affectation of simplicity,
Falls off our crime ; this naked crime of ours
May not, now, be looked over : look it down, then !
Great ? let it be great ; but the joys it brought,
Pay they or no its price ? Come : they or it !
Speak not ! The Past, would you give up the Past
Such as it is, pleasure and crime together ?
Give up that noon I owned my love for you ?
The garden's silence ! even the single bee
Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopt ;
And where he hid you only could surmise
By some campanula's chalice set a-swing :
Who stammered — ' Yes, I love you ' ? "
It is essentially an intellectual picture ; a passionate atti
tude, with its swollen veins and starting muscles, deli
neated crisply by an abruptly intellectual mind. And of
the only other feminine pictures that strike me at all,

1 68 MR. BROWNING.
" Pompilia " excepted, of whom I must speak separately,
— those, namely, in the fine piece called " In a Balcony,"—
it may be equally said that though they are not, perhaps,
overdrawn, they are drawn on the stretch, and not in the
tone in which women most naturally express themselves.
Even "Pompilia" is intellectualised and over-sharply
defined in the monologue in which her critic makes her
speak. Mr. Browning's power is always most naturally
expended in drawing masculine characters in sharply
defined relations to the rest of the world.
And, again, this defective, because too intellectual, basis
of Mr. Browning's powers of expression betrays itself
clearly in his choice of language. / In that strange freak
of creative self-will, " Sordello," which probably no man
or woman except the author ever yet understood,!— I do
not at all doubt that he understands his own drift clearly
enough,— Ithere are one or two flashes of intelligible
thought which give one some insight into Mr. Browning's
own troubles. \ Sordello is an ambitious poet of the
ancient Troubadour type and times, divided with himself
whether he should try to influence the world directly or
only through his song. And it is the psychological
history of this conflict which Mr. Browning apparently
wishes to describe. One of Sordello's first difficulties,
during his poetic period, in getting at mankind, is
language. He is oppressed apparently (like our Lake
poets of the end of the last century) by the unreal cha
racter of the poetic phraseology, and he leaves off imagin
ing for a season, to see if he can make something more
effective of the medium through which his imaginations
must be presented to the world : —
" He left imagining, to try the stuff
That held the imaged thing, and — let it writhe
Never so fiercely — scarce allowed a tithe
To reach the light,— his Language."

MR. BROWNING. 169
Certainly Sordello was quite right in supposing that this
was the great obstacle to his fame, if we have any measure
of his powers of expression in this poem ; for a more com
pletely opaque medium than the wording either of his own
thoughts or of the author's thoughts about him, Talleyrand
himself would have failed to invent. However, it is some
thing that he so keenly felt the obscurity, while the
attempt to remedy it, and the reason of the failure, are
instructive : — '* How he sought
The cause, conceived a cure, and slow re-wrought
That Language, — welding words into the crude
Mass from the new speech round him, till a rude'
Armour was hammered out, iri time to be
Approved beyond the Roman panoply
Melted to make it,— boots not. This obtained
With some ado, no obstacle remained
To using it ; accordingly he took
An action with its actors, quite forsook
Himself to live in each, returned anon
With the result — a creature, and, by one
And one, proceeded leisurely to equip
Its limbs in harness of his workmanship.
'Accomplished ! Listen, Mantuans ! ' Fond essay !
Piece after piece that armour broke away,
Because perceptions whole, like that he sought
To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought
As language : thought may take perception's place,
But hardly co-exist in any case,
Being its mere presentment — of the whole
By parts, the simultaneous and the sole
By the successive and the many."
| Whether this expresses Sordello's process of poetical con
struction or not, I strongly suspect that it expresses Mr-
Browning's. To cast his language, like bronze armour, in
moulds of its own ; to conceive and imagine in a separate
intellectual world far removed from this verbal armour of
the imagination, and then bring " the result, a creature,"
to have the armour of language " leisurely " fitted on to it ;
and finally to find that armour break away,'

170 MR. BROWNING.
" Because perceptions whole, like that he sought
To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought
As language" —
seems to me a very graphic, though not very poetical — in
one small respect only erroneous — account of Mr. Brown
ing's own struggles with the difficulties of poetic expres
sion.) I say, in one respect erroneous, because it is only to
intellects like Mr. Browning's that language is " so pure
a work of thought;" and to them only because they see
mainly the intellectual side of language, and look at its
defined meanings so much more than its often far more
vital undefined associations. Instead of language being
too pure a work of thought to clothe Mr. Browning's per
ceptions adequately, it would be nearer the truth to say
that his perceptions are too much overruled and concen
trated by thought to admit- of the most poetical use of
language. This may seem obscure ; but I can explain what I mean
about Mr. Browning's style, and I think justify it, in a few
words. Every one must have noticed ¦ that the style
introduced by Mr. Carlyle is far from poetical, and yet in
the highest degree picturesque, while also open to the
charge of being not a little obscure. It is a style the
essence of which consists in driving your perceptions into
the service of your intellect, and talking a sort of hiero
glyphic, every picturesque symbol in which expresses a
thought. Thus, to open Mr. Carlyle at random : " To
such length can transcendental moonshine, cast by some
morbidly radiating Coleridge into the chaos of a ferment
ing life, act magically there, and produce divulsions and
convulsions and diseased developments. So dark and
abstruse, without lamp or authentic finger-post, is the
course of pious genius towards the eternal kingdoms
grown." Here we have the rather ordinary thought that
the ' high philosophy of a genius like Coleridge's is able

MR. BROWNING. 171
to cast a charm over minds in difficulty and doubt, and
persuade them this way and that, when they have no
really safe guide to look to,' — illuminated, like the old
missals, by a little series of images, in which vision is
made the instrument for sharply emphasizing thought.
Here is a style crowded with stress, and making the same
kind of fatiguing impression on the mind which a hand
writing sloped the wrong way makes on the eye, — an
impression of strain and effort. It is therefore apt to be
obscure, and certain not to be poetical, for one and the
same reason, — namely, that over-emphasis is both ex
hausting and unnatural ; and while an exhausted attention
is necessarily enveloped by a mist of obscurity, emphasis
too crowded for nature misses the undertones and the
neutral tints which are absolutely essential to the harmony
of poetry.
Now, of course, I do not mean to say that Mr. Brown
ing's style is the illuminated style of Mr. Carlyle. He
is too near a poet for such disproportion of the pictur
esque, such fatiguing gold-and-crimson. But it is true
that his style also is fatiguing and destitute of lower tints
and under-tones, and that when he is pictorial, as he very
often is, he crowds and emphasizes the striking points, so
as to miss the harmony of poetry. It gives one the im
pression of a vigilant intellect noting all the principal
features of the scene acutely, and concentrating his per
ceptive faculties so completely in the gaze of attention as
to miss those numberless undergrowths of half-dreamy
observation which constitute, perhaps, the chief charm
of poetic insight. Mr. Browning's style is too keen, too
restless, too startling, — his soul is too much in his eyes,
his mind too devoid of that lazy receptiveness which fills
in and softens and warms the effect of the whole, — for a
true poetic style. Compare, for instance, his purely
descriptive talent, which is highly picturesque, but not

1?2 MR. BROWNING.
poetical, with Tennyson. Thus Mr. Browning describes a
lunar rainbow : —
" For lo, what think you ? suddenly
The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky
Received at once the full fruition
Of the moon's consummate apparition.
The black cloud-barricade was riven,
Ruined beneath her feet, and driven
Deep in the West ; while, bare and breathless,
North and South and East lay ready
For a glorious Thing, that, dauntless, deathless,
Sprang across them, and stood steady.
'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,
From heaven to heaven extending, perfect
As the mother-moon's self, full in face.
It rose, distinctly at the base
With its seven proper colours chorded,
Which still, in the rising, were compressed,
Until at last they coalesced,
And supreme the spectral creature lorded
In a triumph of whitest white, —
Above which intervened the night.
But above night too, like only the next,
The second of a wondrous sequence,
Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,
Till the heaven of heavens were circumflext,
Another rainbow rose, a mightier,
Fainter, flushier, and flightier,
Rapture dying along its verge !
Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,
WHOSE, from the straining topmost dark,
On to the keystone of that arc ? "
This is powerful, keen-eyed, piercing, — too much of all
these for the harmony- of poetry. The style is to the
poetic style like the secondary rainbow to the primary,
" fainter, flushier, and flightier : " " fainter," because the
colours are washed on with a thin hasty hand ; " flushier,"
because they come and go with a certain flush of atten
tive perception that subsides back into pure thought ; and
" flightier," from the abrupt breathless air of the whole
metre. The sense of rest which a still lunar rainbow

MR. BROWNING.

173

after a storm should produce on the heart is entirely
absent. Tennyson also is one of the greatest of poetic
painters ; but how much of the still undergrowth of per
ception, or rather reception, which does not, nay cannot,
come if you watch for it, which steals into the brooding
mind when the attention is relaxed and the mind's eye
half shut, is there in every fragment of his descriptions !
Take a fragment from " In Memoriam," for instance :
" Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, not as one that weeps
I come once more ; the city sleeps
I smell the meadow in the street.
I hear a chirp of birds ; I see
Betwixt the black fronts long withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early morn,
And think of early days and thee."
TThat is poetry in which the brooding, silent, receptive
mind drinks in much that the restless eye and ear could
never catch ; that absorbs the silence as well as the sound,
the middle tints as well as the flashes of light and colour.
And the want of this power in Mr. Browning seems to me
to show that for him language is not in reality "too pure
a work of thought " to contain his perceptions, but that his
perceptions are too pure a work of thought, too full of
vigilant intellectual activity, to give him the full command
of the associative charms and latent riches of language.
f< I
i His imagination is impatient ; it never broods.
And hence, too, all the obscurity of style there is in
Mr. Browning; and in some of his works it is predomi
nant. It is mere abruptness and hurry, the rapid sketchy
accumulation of a host of notes from his mental notebook
tumbling one upon the other in a bewildering crowd. In
the dramas, where Mr. Browning's genius better corre
sponds to the form of his thought, and in the confessedly
semi-dramatic fragments called " Men and Women," and

174 MR. BROWNING.
in the monologues of "The Ring and the Book," where
there is no effort to be lyrical, nothing can be more lucid
and simple than his style, so soon as you have once found
your true latitude and caught the spirit of the situation;
The only really unintelligible poem is "Sordello," and
that not because there is any great mysticism, as far as I
can see, in the substance of what the poet wishes to say,
but because it) is elliptical, laconic, crowded with hints,
and pronouns which may belong to half a dozen distinct
nouns ; because it is a mere tangle of thought. It reads
like a corrupt edition of an old poem, in which the very
language has got into hopeless confusion.] Mr. Browning
has attempted to guide the guesses of his readers by a
running head-line to the pages, directing their attention
to his real drift : but, after all, this can do but little, and I
suspect that, if it be true, as his dedication appears to
indicate, that there is really one other mortal who to his
own satisfaction has understood him, it would be found on
cross-examination of that one, that (like Hegel's sole
philosophical confidant) even he has ^wunderstood him.
\ To illustrate the crowded notebook style, take this,
which I give without context, because I only care to call
attention to the marvellous grammatical difficulty of this
helter-skelter of words trooping on each other's heels :\-
" If thus with warrant to rescind
The ignominous exile of mankind —
Whose proper service, ascertained intact,
As yet (to be by him themselves made act,
Not watch Sordello. acting each of them)
Was to secure — if the true diadem
Seemed imminent while our Sordello drank
The wisdom of that golden Palma,— thank
Verona's Lady in her Citadel
Founded by Gaulish Brennus, legends tell :
And truly when she left him, the sun reared
A head like the first clamberer's that peered
A-top the Capitol, his face on flame
With triumph, triumphing till Manlius came."

MR. BROWNING. 175
Now, whoever can construe this, I confess myself alto
gether unable to do so. What, for instance, the paren
thetic " to be by him themselves made act,
Not watch Sordello acting each of them,"
means, I have not the most distant notion. Mr. Browning
might as well have said, " to be by him her himself her
self themselves made act," &c, for any vestige of meaning
I attach to this curious mob of pronouns and verbs. It is
exactly like the short notes of a speech intended to be
interpreted afterwards by one who had heard and under
stood it himself. The style is faulty from no mysticism,
but sheer impatience. And this is the case in large por
tions even of other poems.
But I have devoted enough, perhaps more than enough,
space to the discussion of Mr. Browning's poetic defi
ciencies. They mark distinctly the limits of his imagi
native power, which is nevertheless very high. In range
of thought he certainly far surpasses all his poetic con
temporaries, and in vividness of conception he is second
to none but Mr. Tennyson, though certainly his inferior.
To a considerable extent he has lost merited popularity
by belonging neither to this country nor to this time.
Saturated with foreign, and especially with Italian,
culture, possessed by the human genius though keenly
alive to the errors of Roman Catholicism, and occupying
himself both with forms of character and with modes of
thought that seem more native to the Middle Ages than to
modern England, — Mr. Browning's poems have naturally
failed to take as yet their true level in English litera
ture. I Still, the place they do take is undoubtedly a very
high one, and is likely to rise the more thoroughly he is
studied. .
I have said that Mr. Browning's chief power lies in the
intellectual side of drama, — the semi-dramatic delineation

176 MR. BROWNING.
of characters, especially of masculine characters, in their
most characteristic relation to the world, but that his
interest in the dramatic " situation " is purely intellectual,
and fails therefore to impart any vigorous movement or
practical excitement to the plot. I must add, that there
is one cardinal interest which so greatly overpowers all
others in Mr. Browning's creations, that it forms more or
less the staple interest of all his best poems, and not
only explains his wonderful artistic grasp of the genius
of the Catholic Church, but gives an additional reason
why the living centre of his imaginative power is gene
rally in a man's mind, and but seldom in a woman's heart.
Mr. Browning has the keenest sympathy with the
passion for knowledge, at least for the knowledge of
living minds, of man, and God ; and has, too, an intuitive
sense of how easily human knowledge and worldly
wisdom take the place of spiritual knowledge and divine
wisdom, and how subtly they mingle in all the more
artful and politic forms of character. It is evident how
much a long residence in the country of Machiavelli and
Cavour, and a close study of the ecclesiastical wisdom,
craft, and subtlety produced by the system of the con
fessional, must intensify his interest in this border land
between the supernatural and the worldly wisdom. I
had noted this long before the publication of " The Ring
and the Book," the crowning work of Mr. Browning's
genius, to which, however, this remark especially applies.
The command of motives which is given by a constant
study of the secrets of the heart, either for saintly and
mystical or for worldly and selfish reasons, is necessarily of
the same order of practical importance ; and none knows
better than Mr. Browning how strangely they interweave.
By far the greatest intellectual fascination of his poems
consists in his marvellous mastery of the infinitely various
compounds between the religious and the worldly wisdom,

MR. BROWNING.

177

and the deep awe that both alike, in their higher degrees,
whether pure or blended, inspire in the simpler minds
over which they cast their influence. Every one of the
greater poems includes in some shape — very seldom in
deed involving a repetition, for Mr. Browning's power of
dramatic variation of this theme is endless — a study of
some striking conflict or some still more striking combi
nation between the craft of the visible world and the craft
of the invisible, and of the many threads of connection
between the two.
Mr. Browning's early poem, " Paracelsus," which bears
all the marks of youth, is nothing but a study of the
craving for a knowledge of the absolute principle of life in
the mind of a mediaeval aspirant who might have hoped
eventually to attain such knowledge. The poem is one of
the least successful, because it wants the local colour pecu
liar to the life of the Middle Ages, and the intimate know
ledge of the ambitious heart and intellect which the later
poems abundantly show. Paracelsus aspires at first only
to absolute knowledge ; when, after long wanderings, his
heart is beginning to fail him, he meets a true poet, who
in like manner has aspired passionately to love, and has
failed even more bitterly than Paracelsus in attaining the
fulfilment of his desire. From him Paracelsus learns that
true life consists in seeking to blend love for man with
knowledge (however incomplete) of the laws of man's life ;
and accordingly begins to devote himself to teaching (at
Basle) what little he knows. Then comes the temptation
to affect more knowledge than he has, in order to gain a
fit audience for what he has, and the consequent dabbling
in pretended magic. The only powerful part of the poem
consists in the delineation of the strange mixture of self-
scorn and self-belief, — the compunction for affecting false
powers, and the lingering faith in a transcendental method
of mastering the secret of life, — the conviction that God
VOL. II. N

178 MR. BROWNING.
disapproves his pious frauds to gain influence with the
world, and that He approves the effort to teach and serve
the world, which seems to necessitate them. This struggle,
no doubt, is finely delineated. The bitter hope that even
iii cheating the world for its good Paracelsus is doing
better than in mere solitary study without any attempt to
serve it; at all events, that thus, if not doing "most
good," he is yet effecting " least harm ; " the almost
cynical remonstrance with God for not showing him his
way clearer, — are all powerfully drawn : —
" You little fancy what rude shocks apprise us
We sin : God's intimations rather fail
In clearness than in energy : 'twere well
Did they but indicate the course to take,
Like that to be forsaken."
That is a very fine expression of the half-angry, half-
mournful disappointment of a proud and shadowy mind;
and all this portion of " Paracelsus," where Paracelsus is
openly and furiously at war with himself for the false
assumption of secret lore by which he renders his teach
ing popular, and with God for not either giving him
knowledge enough to do without falsehood, or else at least
relieving him from the heavy obligation to teach others
with the imperfect knowledge he has, is striking; Button
the whole, " Paracelsus " appears to me vague and unim
pressive in execution, though not perhaps in the design^
Mr. Browning's favourite, and perhaps highest, exercise
of art, however, is shown in the various delineations of the
worldly force of ecclesiastical dignities struggling with,
or flavouring, the Catholic faith. Of this he has given
us many and very remarkable pictures, ranging from the
childish, full-fed, superstitious, sensual-creeded "bishop,
who orders his tomb at St. Praxed's church,'" to the
diabolic rat-like craft of Count Guido— the high-eccle
siastical layman of "The Ring and the Book"— or the

MR. BROWNING.

i~79

passionate contrast drawn by Canon Caponsacchi in the
same great work, between the life of the fashionable
preacher and the heart of the true saint. And these are
but three out of many studies of the same genus, though
different species. I scarcely know whether the St.
Praxed's bishop's flushed physical appetite for the splendid
Roman Catholic rites, or the keen laughing twinkle that
glitters in the eyes of aged Legates and Nuncios, whom
Mr. Browning depicts in their dealings with captious
children of the Church, is the more powerfully painted.
No painting can be more striking than the pleading of
the dying bishop with his own natural sons to fulfil
their pledge to him in giving him a tomb of jasper hand
somer than that of his rival Gandolf, who died before
him, with an inscription of purer Latinity : —
"Nay, boys, ye love me — all of jasper, then !
'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve
My bath must needs be left behind, alas !
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world —
And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs ?
— That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line —
Tully, my masters ? Ulpian serves his need !
And then how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke ! "
The piece is full of passionate superstition, voluptuous
and intellectually dramatic; but the shades of thought
in it are, perhaps, less delicate and difficult to draw than
in some other of Mr. Browning's ecclesiastical sketches.
Perhaps the most striking contrast to it, showing, in its
way, equal art and insight, is the wonderful picture of
N 2

180 MR. BROWNING.
the Gottingen Professor and his Christmas Eve dis
course, on the mythical character of Christianity, in
"Christmas Eve and Easter Day." There you have
the thin intellectual ghost, or hardly distinguishable
shadow, of Christian faith, in the place of the high-fed
body of superstition we have just seen ; and each is
painted with such strict intellectual truth, that one scarcely
knows whether one is most fascinated by the picture
of the faith which steams with the " burnt offerings of
rams and the fat of fed beasts," or of the faded and
pallid rationalism that seems just disappearing into the
inane, — " That sallow, virgin-minded, studious
Martyr to mild enthusiasm,
As he uttered a kind of cough preludious,
That woke my sympathetic spasm
(Beside some spitting that made me sorry),
And stood surveying his auditory
With a wan pure look well nigh celestial, —
Those blue eyes had survived so much."
No theological student in a German university can miss
the type; and the lines which follow might certainly
have been painted from personal experience : —
" He pushed back higher his spectacles,
Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,
And giving his head of hair — a hake
Of undressed tow for colour and quality —
One rapid and impatient shake,
* * * *
The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,
Broke into his Christmas Eve's discourse."
This discourse, no less than the portrait, is a striking
pendant to the delirious address of the bishop of St.
Praxed to his sons, as it explains,
" How the ineptitude of the time,
And the penman's prejudice, expanding
Fact into fable, fit for the clime,
Had by slow and sure degrees translated it

MR. BROWNING. _;8i
Into this myth, this Individuum, —
Which, when reason had strained and abated it
Of foreign matter, gave for residuum
A Man ! — a right true man, however,
Whose work was worthy a man's endeavour."
And Mr. Browning's subtle and striking criticism on his
Gottingen Professor's mythological lecture, though ap
parently needless for the portrait, really adds its most
effective touch, when he concludes it by saying to his
lecturer : —
" Go on, you shall no more move my gravity
Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,
I find it in my heart to embarrass them
By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,
And they really carry what they say carries them."
The whole picture of the exhausted intellectual receiver
in the professors's mind, of his constant effort to remove
husks till the grain was gone, and of his cough, which,
" Like a drouthty piston,
Tried to dislodge the husk, that grew to him," —
is completed by this hint, that if you could get at the
centre of his mind, his weary and wan and joyless air
would be explained by the constant spiritual labour of
actually carrying " what he says carries him."
A poem quite as impressive from its strange mixture
of physical and voluptuous passions (richly set in an
artistic nature), with an implicit faith in all the legends
of the Church, is the sketch of the Florentine monk
and artist, Fra Lippo Lippi. His promise to himself of
how he will atone for his irregularities of life, and paint
the fashion of his pardon, is one of the most powerful
conceptions in all Mr. Browning's poems : —
" I shall paint
God in the midst, Madonna and her babe,
Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood,

1 82 MR. BROWNING.
Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet
As puff on puff of grated orris-root,
When ladies crowd to church at midsummer.
And then in the front, of course a saint or two —
Saint John, because he saves the Florentines ;
Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white
The convent's friends and gives them a long day."
Into this saintly crowd, secured at their devotions, the
artist is to introduce himself in his old serge gown,
coming " as one by a dark stair into a great light,"
" mazed, motionless, and moonstruck," and looking
anxiously for escape : —
" Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing
Forward, puts out a soft palm — ' Not so fast ! '
— Addresses the celestial presence, ' nay —
He made you and devised you, after all,
Though he's none of you ! Could Saint John there, draw —
His camel-hair make up a painting-brush ?
We come to brothor Lippo for all that,
Isteperfecit opus ! ' So, all smile—
I shuffle sideways with my blushing face
Under the cover of a hundred wings
Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay
And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,
Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops
The hothead husband ! "
This, of course, though a wholly different picture, is
closely akin to the St. Praxed bishop in intellectual
conception; showing the same strong mixture of eager
fleshly naturalism beneath the robe of superstitious awe ;
but it is the infinitely varied transformations under which
Mr. Browning can present the same elements, which prove
how great an intellectual interpreter of human nature he is.
The intermediate place between the bishop of St.
Praxed and the Gottingen Professor, but embodying
also some of the shrewd political instinct which Mr.
Browning so subtly and thoroughly penetrates, is
" Bishop Blougram," who gives us a rather too extended

MR. BROWNING. 183
apology for continuing to hold his place in the Catholic
hierarchy, though admitting that a large part of its
creed is either doubtful or false to him. Nothing can
exceed the tortuous sophistry of this admirable special
pleading ; but for the subject of a work of art it is a
bad one, presenting too few points of living interest, and
lying wholly in the leaden-coloured region where moral
fallacies have their roots. It ought to interest deeply
clergymen in a false position; but few else will re
cognise the marvellous minuteness and fidelity of this
Denner-like painting of every wrinkle on the ecclesias
tical conscience, and every pucker in its understanding.
Of course it is all translated as usual by Mr. Browning
into his own dialect.
The most wonderful picture of the ecclesiastical
politician and diplomatist is certainly the pontifical
legate Ogniben, in "A Soul's Tragedy," who trots into
a papal town to suppress a popular revolution, alone on
muleback, humming " Cur fremuere gentes ?" and saying,
as he laughs gently to himself, "I have known three-
and-twenty leaders of revolts." The acute knowledge of
human motives, and still acuter manipulation of them,
which this not unkindly old man shows ; the courage
and the real spiritual power over man which the con
fessional has given him, at the expense of course of
uprightness ; the Socratic address with which he draws
out the selfish ambition in the new leader of revolt, and
lures him with it into renouncing the popular cause, and
finally disposes of him in words curiously mingling a
genuine kind of piety, not unascetic, with ecclesiastical
craft, concluding with, "I have known four-a.n&-twenty
leaders of revolts," — constitutes one of the most subtle
and striking pictures of modern imagination. The pity is
that all the subsidiary characters — even Chiappino, the
leader of revolt, himself, who is not ill-conceived — are as

i84 MR. BROWNING.
usual so far inferior to this figure, that, even without
regard to the Browningite dialect, in which all alike
speak, the drama is a poor one, though the intellectual
conception is inimitable.
Nor is it only the intersecting line between worldly and
spiritual wisdom that Mr. Browning traces so finely. The
jealous hatred of the bishop of St. Praxed for his rival
Gandolf, and the first extract I made for another purpose
from his poems, called "The Soliloquy of the Spanish
Cloister," both show how finely he can conceive the union
of earthly passions with monastic and ritual ideas. The
same power is shown, with much more of poetic form
and expression, in the short piece called "A Heretic's
Tragedy," though here the picture is of the blending of
inquisitorial cruelty with the passionate bigotry of faith.
The triumphant joy of vindicating the Infinite Justice in
those who apply the torture to the recusant heretic, the
pitiless gaiety which the natural cruelty of savage natures
engrafts thereon, directly the belief that the suffering is
deserved absolves them from the duty of sympathy, the
fine shading-off of the consciousness of wreaking a divine
retribution, into common human brutality,. — mark a work
of rare skill.
But the most characteristic of all Mr. Browning's eccle^-
siastical poems is that powerful picture of Roman society
and casuistry, in the days of Innocent XII., which he has
given us in his latest and in many respects his finest
poem, "The Ring and the Book." The story itself is
easily told. Mr. Browning found on a bookstall in
Florence, — the description of the scene of the discovery is
one of the most graphic passages of the poem,— amidst
much rubbish, an old book, part print, part MS., purport
ing to be the actual pleadings in a Roman murder case of
the year 1698, in which one Count Guido Franceschini, of
Arezzo, with four cut-throats in his pay, murdered his wife,

MR. BROWNING. 185
a girl of seventeen years who had a fortnight ago borne
him an heir, and with her the old couple who had brought
her up, and who had at first given themselves out as
her parents. The Count and his four accomplices were
arrested before the death of the wife (Pompilia), who
survived her wounds four days. Count Guido pleaded,
first, that the murder was a justifiable vindication of his
honour, since his wife had fled from his house to Rome
with a certain handsome priest, Canon Caponsacchi, and
had been incited to this crime by the old couple who had
brought her up, and who had passed themselves off on
her husband as her parents. To this the prosecuting
counsel rejoined that Guido, by his horrible cruelty and
treachery, had deliberately set a trap for her, intending to
drive her from his home in this Canon's company, in order
that he himself might get a divorce and still keep her pro
perty, — that the girl was pure of all guilt, and that the
letters produced as hers to Caponsacchi had been delir-
berately forged by the husband, she herself being unable
either to read or write ; — on which the -judgment of the
tribunal was death to Guido and his accomplices. There
upon, however, there was an appeal to the Pope in person,
as Count Guido, though a layman, had taken some steps
towards holy orders, and was to a certain slight extent
entitled to the special privileges of the priesthood ; where
upon the good old Pope, Innocent XII., then eighty-six
years of age, and near his end, reviewed the case himself,
at the instance, amongst others, of the Emperor's envoy,
who took the side of Count Guido. After reviewing the
case, the Pope ordered the execution to take place im
mediately, in the most public spot in Rome.
Such is the mere skeleton of the story. Mr. Browning
-makes it, after his fashion, the occasion for a rich and
"shrewd semi-dramatic picture of all the various influences
at work in the Roman society of the day ; of the provincial

1 86 MR. BROWNING.
society in the country towns of the Pope's dominions ; of
the poor nobility, the hangers-on of the Church, who
danced attendance on the Cardinals, hoping for profitable
sinecures; of the professional Roman lawyers, deep in
ecclesiastical precedents and Ciceronian eloquence and in
the verses of Horace and Ovid, who pleaded in the case ;
of the eloquent and brilliant worldly Churchman of the
time, part priest, part fashionable poet ; and finally, of the
populace of Rome itself. Mr. Browning gives us the view
taken of this great case from all sides. He gives the view
favourable to Count Guido, taken by one-half of Rome,
and the view favourable to his victim, taken by the
other half of Rome. He gives us the critical Cardinal's
view of the pending trial as developed in refined Roman
drawing-rooms; the criminal's own defence; the dying
wife's statement of her own case ; the speech of the hand
some young Canon who took her away from Count Guido's
cruelty at Arezzo ; the lawyers' pleadings on either side ;
finally, the working of the old Pope's mind on the day
when he gives the final judgment : then Count Guido's
last confession ; and last, the poet's own final presentation
of the pure gold of the tragedy, set free from all the alloys
of accidental one-sided criticism.
I can remember nothing which has at once so much
force and fire, and also so much of the subtlety of intel
lectual drama, — intellectual rendering, that is, by Mr.
Browning himself, of his own study of the characters of
others,— in any other of his writings, as many parts of this
great poem,— especially those painting Count Guido,
Canon Caponsacchi, the betrayed Pompilia, and the broad-
Church Pope Innocent XII. Even the finest passion in
" Pippa Passes " is not so rich and eloquent as the defence
poured out by Caponsacchi of the murdered Pompilia, nor
is the " Soliloquy in the Spanish cloister " so expressive of
the spite of venomous cunning, as Count Guido Frances-

MR. BROWNING. 187
chini's defence of himself, and malignant insinuations
against his wife and her parents and Caponsacchi. Of
course, there is an obvious defect in dramatic keeping, in
putting into the mouth of a man just fresh from the
torture, so astute, elaborate, and ecclesiastical a disserta
tion on the evidence which had been produced ; to which
it may be added that, except as to passion and force, the
style (i.e. in construction and illustration) of Count Guido
Franceschini is scarcely to be distinguished from that of
the Canon Caponsacchi. But this is always so with Mr.
Browning. He only aims at giving a complete reflexion
of his various characters in his own forms of thought, and
as he only aims at this, the mere circumstance of putting
a subtle speech of 2,000 lines into the mouth of a man fresh
from the torture is no falsification of the artistic intention,
— which is, to give the drift of his defence, supposed to be
confided to Mr. Browning, in any form that his poetic
confidant may deem most effective.
What is there in modern imaginations finer than the
contrast between the shifty ecclesiastical intrigue, the rat
like voracity and cunning, the craft formed and trained
in the attempt to squeeze promotion out of bishops and
cardinals, in a word, the half-tricky, half-subtle Phari
saism of the Tuscan Count, who had been familiar with
the Roman Courts all his life and knew the worst side at
least of every judge before him, and the passionate despair
of the ardent young priest who, summoned back to Rome
to hear that Pompilia was dying by the dagger of her
husband, throws all reserve to the winds, pours out his
own loathing of his early life of fashionable frivolity,
describes the awakening of a divine nature in him through
the influence of Pompilia's saintly sweetness and purity,
and tells in burning words the story of Guido's loathsome
attempt to force his wife into infidelity, of her flight to
Rome under his own protection, and of the words which

188 MR. BROWNING.
fell from her from time to time during the journey, stamped
as they are for him on the face of the different landscapes
and different skies which his eye happened to take in as
they were uttered ? Mr. Browning's picture of this pas
sionate human love stirring in the heart of a fashionable,
frivolous, and dissipated, but still noble unspoiled nature,
and awakening it at one and the same time to the holiness
of the priest's desecrated faith and calling, and to the
unearthly beauty of her whom he could not but half love
with earthly rapture and half adore with a worship very
like the true Catholic cultus of the Madonna, is to me the
finest effort of Mr. Browning's genius. But it would
scarcely produce the effect it does upon one, did it not so
immediately succeed the exposition of the venomous and
cunning sleight-of-mind with which Count Guido tries to
persuade his judges that wounded honour and burning
shame have instigated all his own coldly and craftily
calculated actions towards his wife and her parents, and
have left him with a good and quiet conscience even after
the triple murder. As we follow the intellectual writhings
of Count Guido's ingenious special pleadings, which skil
fully evade the most critical tests of his guilt, and make
it their aim, instead, to put the judges off the scent and
convince them beyond refutation of his wife's shame,
trusting that, if he can manage that, the palliation of his
own guilt must follow as a natural consequence, we almost
lose the meaning of the words " truth " and " falsehood,"
-and seem to sink lower and lower into an abyss of
sophistry and simulated passion, with only a glimmer here
and there of genuine Satanic spite to remind us of where
we are.
Pompilia is a figure at once of the most original and
simplest school of art. It has something of the loveliness
of Raffaelle's Madonna della Seggia about it, but with
more both of the child and of the saint. I doubt if Mr.

MR. BROWNING. ^9
Browning's fame will be perpetuated by any of his intel
lectual studies so long. Her husband, a murderer, calls
her the " pale poison my hasty hunger took for food," and
speaks of her as like one of the favourite figures of Fra
Angelico, — " Who traces you some timid chalky ghost,
That turns the church into a charnel. Ay,
Just such a pencil might depict my wife."
But that, of course, is the libel of the malignant and
greedy man, who can value nothing without a spice of
wickedness in it, nothing that is not willing and even
anxious to take a taint in his foul service. But the Pope
understands her thoroughly. He makes it her special
praise that having been " obedient to the end," " dutiful
to the foolish parents first," " submissive next to the bad
husband," she could, nevertheless, —
" Rise from law to law,
The old to the new, promoted at one cry
O' the trump of God to the new service, not
To longer bear, but henceforth fight,— be found
Sublime in new impatience with the foe :
Endure man and obey God ; plant firm foot
On neck of man, tread man into the hell
Meet for him, and obey God all the more."
There is alacrity, even valour, at the bottom of Pompilia,
in. spite of what her husband calls the "timid chalky
ghost " in her : she can seize his sword and point it at his
breast when his cruelty and malignity pass all bounds ;
and even he feels this. Mr. Browning, in what is perhaps
the only purely dramatic passage in his whole great poem,
makes Guido, when at last the procession enters his cell
to lead him away to execution, call out in his last agony
of terror : —

f" Abate — Cardinal, — Christ, — Maria, God. .
Pompilia ! will you let them murder me ? "

1 9o MR. BROWNING.
—Pompilia standing at the very climax of his thought of
everything Godlike, in spite of the fury of his hate.j To
her, dead, he appeals as to a power almost beyond God's,
to save him. And yet, with this high valour at the bottom
of her, no more simple " womanchild," as the old Pope
finely calls her, was ever painted than Pompilia, — simple
alike in her religious maternal love for the boy to whom
she gave birth just a fortnight before her own murder, and
in the confession of the pure depth and intensity of her
devotion to the young priest who saved her from her
husband, and for whose purity of soul she fights as for her
own. The Pope speaks of her as of a wayside flower
that " Breaks all into blaze,
Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire
To incorporate the whole great sun it loves,
From the inch-height whence it looks and longs."
And then observe how finely the religious passion of the
mother's heart is expressed : —
" I never realized God's birth before —
How he grew likest God in being born.
This time I felt like Mary, had my babe
Lying a little on my breast like hers."
And this, again, for the spiritual perfection of maternal
love, is scarcely equalled in our language : —
" Even for my babe, my boy, there's safety thence —
From the sudden death of me, I mean : we poor
Weak souls, how we endeavour to be strong !
I was already using up my life, —
This portion, now, should do him such a good,
This other go to keep off such an ill !
The great life ; see, a breath and it is gone !
So is detached, so left all by itself
The little life, the fact which means so much.
Shall not God stoop the kindlier to His work,
His marvel of creation foot would crush,
Now that the hand He trusted to receive
And hold it, lets the treasure fall perforce ?

MR. BROWNING. 191
The better ; He shall have in orphanage
His own way all the clearlier : if my babe
Outlive the hour — and he has lived two weeks —
It is through God who knows I am not by.
Who is it makes the soft gold hair turn black,
And sets the tongue, might lie so long at rest,
Trying to talk ? Let us leave God alone !
Why should I doubt He will explain in time
What I feel now, but fail to find the words ? "
Taken as a whole, the figure of Pompilia seems to me a
masterpiece of delicate power. Passionate tenderness
with equally passionate purity, submissiveness to calamity
with strenuousness against evil, the trustfulness of a child
with the suffering of a martyr, childishness of intellect
with the visionary insight of a saint, all tinged with the
ineffably soft colouring of an Italian heaven, breathe in
every touch and stroke of this fine picture.
The old Pope affords a subject much easier, I should
suppose, for Mr. Browning to draw. It is a very subtle
study. There is in it all the mark of venerable age,
except any failure of intellectual power. The flashes of
intellectual and spiritual light are of the thin, bright,
auroral kind. Take, for instance, the passage in which
the gallant old man deliberates whether he shall or shall
not dare condemn the aristocratic murderer to his rightful
fate : — " As I know,
I speak,—what should I know, then, and how speak
Were there a wild mistake of eye or brain
In the recorded governance above ?
If my own breath, only, blew coal alight,
I, called celestial and the morning star ?
I who in this world act resolvedly,
Dispose of men, the body and the soul,
As they acknowledge or gainsay this light
I show them, — shall I too lack courage ? — leave
I, too, the post of me, like those I blame ?
Refuse, with kindred inconsistency,
Grapple with danger whereby souls grow strong ?
I am near the end ; but still not at the end ;

19Z MR. BROWNING.
All till the very end is trial in life :
At this stage is the trial of my soul,
Danger to face, or danger to refuse ?
Shall I dare try the doubt now, or not dare ?"
Still more striking is the old Pope's interpretation of the
sense in which the "weak things of this world" shall
" confound the mighty." Here we have one of the finest
illustrations of the restless intellectual working of Mr.
Browning's imagination in a purely spiritual region. It is
the apparent weakness, he says, in the true faith, which
appeals to the help and brings forth the love of man, till
man finds at last that it was in its weakness that its
strength consisted, in its imploring appeal to the heart
that the marvellous power lay, which could not have lain
hid in the fiat of almighty strength : —
" What but the weakness in a faith supplies
The incentive to humanity, no strength
Absolute, irresistible, comports ?
How can man love but what he yearns to help ?
And that which men think weakness within strength,
But angels know for strength and stronger yet —
What were it else but the first things made new,
But repetition of the miracle,
The divine instance of self sacrifice
That never ends and aye begins for man ?"
Of a piece with this suggestion is the fine presage that the
power of Christ can only be restored through an approach
ing age of doubt, which shall shake the towers of the
Church till they tremble, and dissipate the formal and con
ventional monotony of orthodoxy, 
"Till man stand out again, pale, resolute,
Prepared to die,— that is, alive at last.
As we broke up that old faith of the world,
Have we, next age, to break up this the new-
Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report—
. Whence need to bravely disbelieve report
Through increased faith in thing reports belie ?"

MR. BROWNING. ig3
The picture of the courageous old man's slight hesitation
in the discharge of his terrible duty, — of the deep ques
tions as to the truths whereon he and his office rest, which
that hesitation stirs, — of the plumbing of the most difficult
problems of philosophy and faith, as his mind travels
round the intellectual horizon of his lonely eminence,— -of
the gratitude with which he fixes his glance on Pompilia's
spiritual loveliness as the one blossom "vouchsafed un
worthy me, ten years a gardener of the untoward ground;"
— of the anxious and doubtful admiration with which he
notes Caponsacchi's impulsive nobleness, — and of the half
anxiety and half trust with which he observes the signs of
moral decomposition — omens for those who are to come
after him, — all is drawn so as to leave an indelible impres
sion on the imagination./ There is nothing in all Mr.
Browning's works that will bear deliberate comparison
with the four great figures of Guido, Pompilia, Capon
sacchi, and Innocent. /
Perhaps, however, the most characteristic, though not
the greatest, of Mr. Browning's many poems on this class
of semi-spiritual, semi-intellectual subjects is the "Epistle
containing the strange Medical Experience of Karshish,
the Arab Physician ; " which is an attempt to bring such
medical science, or rather empirical skill, as might have
existed in the time of Christ into direct contact with the
" case " of the risen Lazarus, whom the Arab physician
encounters in Bethany at the time when the siege of Jeru
salem by Titus has just begun. Karshish, questioning
himself and his friends as to the asserted resurrection,
reports his opinion on it to his master in a letter vibrating
helplessly between a guess that it was really a cure of un
usually prolonged epilepsy which had left mania behind,
and a proudly-resisted inclination to believe that there
was something divine in the matter, as Lazarus himself
asserted. The artist's skill, however, is shown, as usual,
VOL. il. O

194 MR. BROWNING.
in delineating the influence of the two opposite sorts of
thirst for knowledge in this dignified Arabian leech,— the
pride of human science and craft, which makes him eager
to penetrate the secret of a new and remarkable cure, and
the yearning for divine knowledge, which thrills him with
a humiliating sense of awe and hope at the very words he
affects to despise from the ignorant peasant. The letter
begins with stealthy Oriental subtlety — of course Brown-
ingite in form — far from his mark (for he is evidently
bewildered and ashamed at the impression made upon
him by the story of Lazarus), explaining, after compli
ments, a few new recipes ; describing his temporary abode
at Bethany, which lies, he says, from Jerusalem,
" scarce the distance thence
A man with plague-sores at the third degree
Runs till he drops down dead : "
chronicling his new pathological experiences — "a viscid
choler is observable in tertians," " scalp disease confounds
me, crossing so with leprosy," and so forth ; until at length
he comes, with many apologies, on his " case of mania
subinduced by epilepsy : " —
" The man, — it is one Lazarus a Jew,
Sanguine, proportioned*, fifty years of age,
The body's habit wholly laudable,
As much indeed beyond the common health
As he were made and put aside to show."
And then gradually the physician allows it to be seen
how much thought he has spent on his diagnosis of the
mania, how its very simplicity subdues and bewilders his
wisdom. The effect, he says, on the mind of the patient
is as if some new and vast world had been opened out to
him, making this world worthless, which Lazarus is yet
forbidden to leave. The patient has no measure of the
true proportions of things; the armaments assembled

MR. BROWNING. ,9S
round Jerusalem are trivial to him, while he is lost in
wonder that others do not see the value of the most trivial
facts with his " opened eyes." " Wonder and doubt come
wrongly into play, preposterously at cross purposes."
Unbroken in cheerfulness if his child be ill or dying, a
word or gesture on its part that he disapproves will startle
him into an agony of fear. In short, the patient clings to
"a narrow and dark thread of life, which runs across an
orb of glory " into which he may not enter, though it gives
its law to his spirit. His notions of right and wrong,
instead of being adapted to the narrow conditions of this
thread of life and its continuance, are always taking into
account a whole universe of invisible and apparently
imaginary facts : —
" So is the man perplext with impulses
Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,
Proclaiming what is Right and Wrong across
And not along, this black thread through the blaze —
' It should be ' balked by ' here it cannot be.'
And oft the man's soul springs into his face,
As if he saw again and heard again
His sage that bade him rise, and he did rise ! "
In this antique and patient enumeration of the mental
symptoms of the patient, the most startling and impressive
is reserved, with a sort of scientific shame, to the last, and
only then oozes out involuntarily with the half apology,
that, " in writing to a leech, 'tis well to keep back nothing
of a case." " This man so cured regards the curer then
As — God forgive me — who but God himself,
Creator and Sustainer of the world,
That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile !
— 'Sayeth that such an One was born and lived,
Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,
Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,
And yet was .... what I said nor choose repeat,
And must have so avouched himself in fact,
In hearing of this very Lazarus,
O 2

196 MR. BROWNING.
Who saith— but why all this of what he saith ?
Why write of trivial matters, things of price
Calling at every moment for remark ?
I noticed on the margin of a pool
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort
Aboundeth very nitrous. It is strange."
But the subject fascinates him, in spite of his scientific
scorn for it. He goes back to relate the mode of his
encounter with Lazarus ; and finally there is wrung as it
were from him, reluctant as he is to mention the mere
ravings of a madman which have no pathological bearing
on the case : —
" The very God ! Think, Abib ; dost thou think ?
So the All-great were the All-loving too —
So, through the thunder comes a human voice,
Saying, ' O heart I made, a heart beats here !
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in Myself.
Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of Mine ;
But love I gave thee, with Myself to love,
And thou must love Me who have died for thee ! '
The madman saith He said so : it is strange ! "
Certainly no more original conception has been worked
ut in our time than this,4-brief as the poem is, — and
very powerfully is it sustained, the dignity and satisfied
wisdom of the physician giving way at times beneath the
glory of the poor Syrian's dream and the strange consis
tency and simplicity of his demeanour, — but returning
again with full elastic force wherever he can regain his
complete assurance of the impossibility of the story, and
the wholly unprofessional character of the explanation.
It is only here and there that Mr. Browning has drawn
worldly skill or wisdom, thus half-worshipping, with
dazzled eyes, a simplicity above it. Generally in his
poetry, as in the world, the prevalent type of sagacity
freely makes use of an established faith, but is not willing
to recognise it so far as it is new and disturbing. But

MR. BROWNING. 197
this Oriental physician, who has evidently given up his
life to study all diseases and remedies with open eyes,
is one of the exceptions. When a light shines upon him,
if he cannot gaze at it, it is his nature not to ignore
it. Mr. Browning finds a deeper humility in science,
with all its pride, than in the shifty talent of worldly
knowledge. To sum up in conclusion my conception of Mr. Brown
ing's genius. He is not a great dramatist, but a great
intellectual interpreter of the approaches to action. His
most striking characteristic is the vigour of his intellectual
and spiritual imagination, and of his carnal imagination
(if I may be permitted a technical Scripture phrase to
express the imagination of all the passions and percep
tions), and the almost complete absence of the inter
mediate psychical or sentimental imagination, which is
with most poets the principal spring of all their poetry,
and perhaps the only spring of lyrical poetry. | I do not
know a poem of Mr. Browning's which can be said to
express a mood, \as Shelley expresses so vividly moods of
passionate yearning, Wordsworth of meditative rapture,
Tennyson of infinite regret. (Mr. Browning has no moodsA
His mind seems to leap at once from its centre to its
surface without passing through the middle states which
lie between the spirit and the senses. Hence we may see
from another side why Mr. Browning's women are so im
perfect, for their truest life is usually in this middle region,
which seems totally absent from his poems. The nearest
approach to a sentiment which he has drawn is, on the one
side a passion, which he has drawn repeatedly and power
fully, — on the other a spiritual affection, " the devotion the
heart -lifts above and the heavens reject not," such as he
has so finely painted in " Caponsacchi" and " Pompilia,"
in "Agnes," and in that love of David for Jonathan, which
comes flowing in in great waves, like a spring-tide, till it

198 MR. BROWNING.
pours on into his love for God. This Mr. Browning has
drawn as scarcely any other man could draw it. But these
are essentially different from what is properly denoted by
sentiment, which is apt to lean upon the occasional, lives
on memory and association, tinges everything around it
with a secondary glow of its own, and has neither the
immediate carnal origin of a passion, nor that absolute
independence both of circumstance and instinct, which
characterises what I have called a spiritual affection. It
is, as I have said, in sentiment that the tempering moods
are rooted which give rise to so much of our highest
poetry, and which touch with a sort of illuminating magic
so much which would otherwise have no intrinsic charm.
Gray's "Elegy," for instance, is popular solely for the
tender melancholy that hangs around it, and almost con
stitutes it an incarnation of evening regret. Now, of those
sentiments which tune the imagination Mr. Browning's
poems seem destitute, and the consequence is that he is apt
to plunge us from cold spiritual or intellectual power into
the fever of passion, and back again from this fever into
the cold.
But I suspect that his interpreting intellect has gained
through this hiatus in his imagination. Sentiment, because
it is lyrical, because it tempts the mind into dwelling on
its own moods, is a great hindrance to that strategic
activity of the intellect which enables it to pass easily
from one intellectual and moral centre to another. Mr.
Browning is not a great dramatist, for in style he always
remains himself, but he is a great intellectual interpreter
of human character, — in other words,(a great intellectual
and spiritual ventriloquist ;| and nothing should, one would
think, more interfere with the ease of spiritual ventrilo
quism than those clinging personal sentiments, which
never leave the creative mind really free and solitary. For
it must require a habit not merely of physical, but, if I

MR. BROWNING. i99
may so speak, of spiritual solitude, to migrate rapidly
in this way from your own actual centre in the world of
intellect and feeling to a totally different centre, where you
not only try to speak an alien language, but to think
unaccustomed thought and feel unaccustomed passions;
and yet to do this, as Mr. Browning does, without really
losing for a moment his own centre of critical life. Mr.
Browning says very finely in one of his dramaSj —
" When is man strong, until he feels alone ?
It was some lonely strength at first, be sure,
Created organs such as those you seek
By which to give its varied purpose shape, —
And, naming the selected ministrants,
Took sword and shiekTand sceptre — each a man !"
This seems to me to describe Mr. Browning's own work
very powerfully. His intellectual and spiritual strength
has apparently been much braced in this cold solitude.
No poet of modern days gives us more distinctly the
sense of an imagination which acts proprio motu than
Mr. Browning. He is always masculine and vigorous.
Original modern poetry is apt to be enervating, producing
the effect of intellectual luxury; or if, like Wordsworth's,
it is as cool and bright as morning dew, it carries us away
from the world to mountain solitudes and transcendental
dreams. Mr. Browning's — while it strings our intellect
to the utmost, as all really intellectual poetry must, and
has none of the luxuriance of fancy and wealth of senti
ment which relaxes the fibre of the mind — keeps us still
in a living world, — not generally the modern world, very
seldom indeed the world of modern England, but still in
contact with keen, quick, vigorous life, that, as well as
engaging the imagination, really enlarges the range of
one's intellectual and social, sometimes almost of one's
political, experience. Mr. Browning cannot, indeed, paint
action; but of the |intellectual approaches to action he

200 MR. BROWNING.
is a great master. I And in spite of more grating deficiencies
in the medium of expression than any eminent English
poet perhaps ever laboured under, his poems will slowly
win for him, — and win most for him amongst those whose
admiration is best worth having, — a great, a growing, and
an enduring fame. (

V.
THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

MANY attempts have been from time to time made
to give to the devotional poems of the Old Testa
ment the rhythmical harmony of modern verse. But
hardly with even the very best of these attempts, hardly
with Milton's fine versions of some of the Psalms them
selves, has there been much success ; and in general
readers of these versions fret at the unaccustomed mono
tony and the ever-recurring chimes, something as they
would if the sea should begin to murmur sonatas, or the
wind to whistle tunes. Nor is it simply that any change of
form, impressed by a foreign cast of mind on poetry that
has sunk deep into the heart of ages, is distressing and
bewildering. Unless I am making the mistake with which
modern philosophy so often reproaches modern thought, —
of confounding the " second nature " of constant associa
tion with the original nature of inherent constitution, —
there is something in most of the Hebrew poetry which is
essentially inconsistent with the framework of defined
metre or rhyme. No doubt there are Hebrew lyrics which,
had rhyme and fixed measure been then a recognised form
of poetical expression, would have been naturally and
effectively thrown into that form. Such one may recognise
in David's lament over Saul and Jonathan ; and again, in

202 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
those many Psalms which approach more in cast and
conception to the religious poetry of our own day, — that
is, to an artistic presentation of the devotional feelings
of man,— than to the sublimer type of the more character
istic Hebrew poetry, which seems generally to be busied
with a direct delineation of God. But in most of the grander
Psalms, and even more in the wonderful poetry of Isaiah
and the minor prophets, there is something that defies the
laws of regular metre or rhyme, — something that breaks
through and rises up above them, when they are artificially
imposed. Not that I am of the number of those who regard these
natural forms of poetry as arbitrary and ornamental re
strictions, observed only in order to enhance the beauty of
the essential thought; rather, to the true poet, are they
fresh powers, new media of expression, enabling him to
tell much which otherwise must have remained for ever
untold. Metrical beauty is the inborn music, as it were,
which beats a natural accompaniment to the creative toil
of the imagination, and vindicates the essential unity of
the life which runs through it. As the conception of the
poet gradually gets itself translated into the language of
mankind, the rhythm and harmony of the whole afford a
real test of the depth and power of the creative genius, as
distinguished from a faculty of mere mechanical con
struction. But though this is true of poetic efforts in
general, it does not apply to the greater works of the
Hebrew poets. Marvellous as is the imaginative power
which they display, yet, for the most part, they are not, in
the strict sense, works of imagination, — works, that is, of
which the purpose, unity, and proportions are seized
beforehand by the overseeing imagination, and worked
out by it into their full development. On the contrary,
they seem expressly to renounce all claim to imaginative
unity, properly so called,— nay, to insist passionately on

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 203
the fragmentary and isolated character of the glimpses
which they gain into the Eternal secret,— to testify that the
riddle of God's Providence is hidden from them, though
the spirit of His life is revealed. And while this is the
case, while the greatest imaginative beauties of the Hebrew
poets have no living imaginative centre or unity of their
own, but are used as scattered symbols of spiritual truths
which pierce the natural and visible universe at isolated
points, rather than harmonize and explain it, it seems
almost a mockery to round them off with a rhythm and a
rhyme which are the appropriate dress of finished creations.
They are greater than other poems from the very same
cause which renders them less complete. The plan of the
universe was too great a plan to grasp, though here and
there it was given to the Hebrew poets to shed upon it a
brilliant light. And the fragmentary character of their
insight is fitly mirrored in the broken music of our prose
versions. When, indeed, the mind of the poet dwelt directly and
exclusively on the spiritual perfection of God, the harmony
of his theme ensured a certain imaginative unity in his
work. But when, as was more common, it was his effort
to afford some glimpse into the mystery of Providence, it
was his very aim to maintain that what was visible to the
imagination had no independent unity or significance in
itself ; and then he appealed for the solution of the human
drama to the undeclared counsels of God, and affirmed His
faith in a heavenly music, inaudible as yet, lurking under
the apparent discords of human destiny, but confessed his
inability to explain what that music was. And in all such
direct appeals from the visible to the invisible, — in all such
confessions that the principle of harmony was still undis
covered, that the truth was shrouded in mystery, — the
perfect rhythm, which seems to mark the natural march of
a visible order and harmony, is far less suitable than the

404 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
less measured speech in which all that is incipient or
fragmentary in human life finds its natural medium of
expression. Even Milton, with true poetic insight, as I
think, into this principle, confined his versified renderings
of the Psalms to those more strictly devotional outpourings
in which the human heart is expressed, rather than those
in which the " burden of the mystery " of Divine govern
ment is half relieved and half magnified. Is there not
something obviously and painfully incongruous, for in
stance, in any versification of such verses as these, which
are deeply impressed with the characteristic genius of
Hebrew poetry ? —
" Whither shall I go then from thy spirit, or whither shall I go then
from thy presence ? If I climb up into heaven, thou art there : if I go
down to hell, thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning,
and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall thy
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, peradventure
the darkness shall cover me, then shall my night be turned to day. Yea,
the darkness is no darkness with thee : but the night is clear as the day :
the darkness and the light to thee are both alike."
To me, the broken harmony of the metre, the absence of
rhyme, — in other words, the absence of any affectation of
satisfied or adequate imaginative power, — is absolutely
essential to portray the insupportable burden of the
mystery weighing on the mind of the poet. And it is not
so much the deficiency in the art of the following lines,
as the attempt at art at all, — the 'mere effort to run the
thoughts of the Psalmist into smooth verse, — which repels
me. I quote from a poetical version, made by Mf. Edgar
Browning, from the English Prayer-Book of the Book of
Psalms :—
"Where from thy spirit shall I go ? where from thy presence hide ?
Climb I to heaven, thou'rt there ; or go to hell, thou'rt by my side.
If morning's wings I take, and dwell beside the farthest sea,
E'en there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand succour me.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 205
If peradventure I should say, The darkness shall surround me,
Then shall my night be turned to day, and utterly confound me.
No darkness darkness is with thee : as clear as day is night ;
For unto thee alike appear the darkness and the light."
I wonder the mere attempt to rhyme such thoughts as
these did not at once convince any one who made the
attempt, that there is no discord like that which fastens
outward symbols of artistic unity on those heavings of
elemental thought which are expressly confessed as utterly
beyond the control of the thinker. To rhyme the
thunders of Sinai would seem a scarcely less appropriate
task; or, to make what is perhaps a fairer comparison,
how would it be possible to translate Jacob's awe-struck
exclamation, on awaking from the dream in which he had
seen the ladder with angels ascending and descending
between heaven and earth, — " How dreadful is this place J
this is none other than the house of God, this is the gate
of heaven ! " — into any more finished metrical form that
would equally well express the inadequacy of the imagina
tion to grasp the thoughts on which it brooded ? Yet this
one sentence might be taken as a perfect condensation of
the attitude in which the imagination of the Hebrew poet
was left when most deeply stirred by the breath of Divine
inspiration. But I have no intention of dwelling on the merits
of the attempt to reduce to metre and rhyme our
English translations of the Hebrew poets. The often
repeated effort to exhibit some of them in a form adapted
to certain exigencies of the popular taste, may afford
sufficient excuse for these comments on their intrinsic
genius and literary character. It is a strange thing that,
among all the various criticisms of modern times, there
should have been so little effort to appreciate the special
relation of the Hebrew poetry to the poetry of other
nations and other ages. However true it may be that by

206 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
far the highest value of the writings of the Hebrew poets
is not literary, but spiritual and moral, — that they are
generally read, and generally rightly read, for purposes
from which any literary estimate of their qualities and
worth is far removed, — still, to the student of national
literatures, no phenomena can be either more remarkable
or more instructive than those of a literature produced in
a moral climate so widely separated from that of all other
nations as the Hebrew. The more profoundly we accept
the spiritual inspiration of the Hebrew poets, — only reject
ing, of course, the absurd doctrine of absolute verbal
dictation by the Divine Spirit, through the mechanical
instrumentality of certain chosen men, which obviously
degrades them from poets into amanuenses at once, — the
more remarkable these phenomena must be ; for the more
completely new will the conditions be under which the
human imagination acts, and the more instructive will be
the contrast between literatures which, like the Greek or
the Teutonic, seem the indigenous development of human
conditions of imagination, acting without any conscious
ness at least of supernatural constraint, and that which
is educed, from first to last, out of the creative germs of a
Divine inspiration. What are the distinctive features of
such a literature ? What are the characteristics which it
has in common with all other literatures ?
Perhaps we shall get the distinctest conception of the
characteristic aspects of the Hebrew imagination, if we
look first at what may be called its least unique, its least
individual efforts, — those exquisite pastoral and national
traditions in which the imagination certainly cannot be
said to have been properly creative at all, but only forma
tive and selective; evincing its special characteristics
rather by the details on which it fixes and the prominence
it gives to special features in the tradition, than by any
productive power of its own. In such pastoral traditions

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 207
as the book of Genesis records, or in the later but equally
simple and lovely story of the book of Ruth, there is more
of that common beauty and simplicity which belongs to
the early records of all great nations, — more which in its
rural pictures and quiet naturalism reminds us at times of
the Odyssey or the Scandinavian poems, — more of that
" freshness of the early world " which belongs to the child
hood of humanity itself, and therefore contains fewer
characteristically Hebrew features, — than in any other
part of the Bible literature.
Few can read the account of Abraham's servant waiting
beside his kneeling camels at the well outside the city of
Nahor till the hour of sunset, when the women came out
to draw ; of his first meeting with Rebekah, her kindly
help in drawing for him and his camels, and her joyful
return into the city with the news of the discovered rela
tionship to his master, and the gold bracelets and earrings
with which he had loaded her, — without being in some
measure reminded of the beautiful narrative, in the
Odyssey, of the Princess Nausikaa and her maidens going
out for the day to wash the clothes of the household in the
little river of the island, and disturbing, by their lamenta
tions over the loss of their ball, the sleeping Ulysses. In
both cases alike, a higher agency is made the thread of
the story. The servant of Abraham is seeking a wife for
his young master from among his own people, and God
has "sent his angel before him," to choose for Isaac a
wife more suitable than Canaan could have produced.
Nausikaa, again, is represented as acting under the
impulse of Athene, whose care for Ulysses prepares for
him this fortunate meeting with the princess. In both
cases, therefore, the naturalness of the life delineated is in
a certain way bound up with the national religion, — or, as
we must call it in the case of Greece, mythology ; and the
contrast between them is a fair illustration of the contrast

zo8 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
between the national imagination of the two races. A
light fancy plays round all the delineations of the one ; a
serious satisfaction in thus tracing out the ways of the
ancestral Providence animates and condenses every de
scription in the other. It is not that the actors are at
all less human, less strictly natural ; the golden bracelets
are at least as much prized by Rebekah 'and her friends
as are the " delicate garments " which haunt Nausikaa's
dreams, and which it is her greatest delight to wash. But
the one tale is largely embellished, if hot entirely- created,
by a graceful fancy ; the other is a cherished link in the
national life. The one is full of simile and by-play, and the
author evidently set as much store by the discursive illus?-
trations as by the story itself, — which, indeed, we cannot but
feel is little more than a framework invented for the sake
of the pictures it contains; the other runs directly and
eagerly on to its conclusion. The crowd of Phaeacian
maidens striving gaily with each other while stamping out
the clothes in the water-troughs, and afterwards dancing
and singing and throwing the ball on the banks of the
stream, are not more widely different, as a picture, from
the grave Rebekah with the pitcher on her shoulder
coming from the city to draw, than is the treatment of
the theme in the Greek poem from that in the Hebrew
narrative. " She went, but followed by her virgin train, -
At the delightful rivulet arrived,
Where those perennial cisterns were prepared,
With purest crystal of the fountain fed
Profuse, sufficient for the deepest stains :
Loosing the mules, they drove them forth to browse
On the sweet herb beside the dimpled flood.
The carriage next light'ning, they bore in hand
The garments down to the unsullied wave,
And thrust them heap'd into the pools, their task
Despatching brisk, and with an emulous haste.
When they had all purified, and no spot
Could now be seen or blemish more, they spread

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 209
The raiment orderly along the beach
Where dashing* tides had cleansed the pebbles most,
And laving, next, and smoothing o'er with oil
Their limbs, all seated on the river's bank,
They took repast, leaving the garments stretched
In noon-day fervour of the sun to dry.
Their hunger satisfied, at once arose
The mistress and her train, and putting off
Their head attire, played wanton with the ball,
The princess singing to her maids the while.
Such as shaft-armed Diana roams the hills,
Taygetus sky-capt or Erymanth,
The wild-boar chasing, or fleet-footed hind,
All joy ; the rural nymphs, daughters of Jove,
Sport with her, and Latona's heart exults :
She high her graceful head above the rest,
And features lifts divine, though all be fair,
With ease distinguishable from them all :
So all her train she, virgin pure, surpassed.
*******
The princess then, casting the ball toward
A maiden of her train, erroneous threw,
And plunged it deep into the dimpling stream.
All shrieked ; Ulysses at the sound awoke,
And sitting, meditated thus the cause :
Ah me ! what mortal race inhabit here ?
Rude are they, contumacious, and unjust ?
Or hospitable and who fear the Gods ? " &c*
Compare with this the interview between Abraham's
steward and Rebekah.
"And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink
a little water of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, my lord : and she
hasted, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink.
And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw for thy
camels also, until they have done drinking. And the man wondering
at her held his peace, to wit whether the Lord had made his journey
prosperous or not. And it came to pass, as the camels had done
drinking, that the man took a golden earring of half a shekel weight,
and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold. And said,
Whose daughter art thou ? tell me, I pray thee, is there room in thy
father's house for us to lodge in? And she said to him, I am the daughter
of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor. She said

* Cowper's translation of the Odyssey.
VOL, H. • P

210 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
moreover unto him, We have both straw and provender enough, and
room to lodge in. And the man bowed down his head and worshipped
the Lord. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of my master
Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and truth :
I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master's brethren.
And the damsel ran, and told them of her mother's house these things.
And Rebekah had a brother, whose name was Laban : and Laban ran
unto the man unto the well. And it came to pass, when he saw the
earring and bracelets upon his sister's hands, and when he heard the
words of Rebekah his sister, saying, Thus spake the man unto me, that
he came unto the man ; and, behold, he stood by the camels at the well.
And he said, Come in, thou blessed of the Lord ; wherefore standest thou
without ? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels."
Now, of course, one does not expect in what professes to
be true narrative anything like the same play of fancy, the
same plentiful growth of subsidiary life, as we may well
look for in the confessedly legendary poems of Greece.
But the remarkable point, as regards the Hebrew
imagination, is this, — that, being so powerful and vivid
as we know it to have been, it nevertheless clings so
closely to past reality, to ancestral traditions, and never
seems to have exercised itself in creating or developing,
from existing germs, imaginative traditions such as
abound in the Greek and Teutonic literature. With
numberless rude fragments of heroic story ready to its
purpose, such as we find scattered through the Book of
Judges, for example, there seems to have been no tendency
in the Hebrew imagination to give that life, and form, and
development to them, which the popular imagination of an
imaginative people is generally so ready to impart. There
is no literature with so many abandoned fragments of
story as the Hebrew. Where the . true history lives, it
lives with marvellous vividness in the people's imagina
tion; to that the national mind evidently clings with
intense tenacity ; but where the history becomes discon
tinuous, where there is only the "shadow of a great name,"
the imaginative power does not seem to step into its place.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. _n
It is not with the Hebrew people a productive, but, as
regards human story, only a representative power ; it does
not multiply, but only preserves, the hints of the past ; it
is, in its human sphere at all events, not a discursive and
prolific capacity, but merely a faculty of glowing and
tenacious vision or retrospect.
Perhaps, natural as it is, it may be a mistake warranted
"by a very partial experience, to connect as we do great
imaginative power with fertility and luxuriance of con
ception. Any national or any individual mind that can
summon imaginary, and even real, past scenes and actions
so vividly before it as to live, as it were, in their presence
and under their influence, must be said to live, in the
highest sense, an imaginative life. There is in such a
mind a faculty of spiritual vision which rivals the power
of the senses. But there need not be necessarily any
fertility of imagination, any power of reproducing in new
and varied shapes the impressions gathered from the
invisible forms of life on which it feeds. " If," said Cole
ridge, in distinguishing between fancy and imagination,
"the check of the reason and senses were withdrawn,
fancy would become delirium, and imagination mania."
The Hebrew imagination was of this latter type. It was
the pervading presence of one or two great — sometimes
perverted — spiritual impressions, or convictions, which
gave unity to Hebrew traditions, and the characteristic
intensity to their thought and language. The haunting
power of two great convictions, National Unity and Super
natural Guidance, supplies at once the main connecting
threads of Jewish tradition. But an imagination thus
haunted could not well be fertile or original in its dealings
with human story; for national pride is conservative, not
inventive; and the mind which feeds eagerly on the
evidences of an actual Providence will not care to live in
a world of its own creation. P 2

212 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
These two great convictions, of national unity and
supernatural guidance, are, then, I believe, the two
principal centres of Jewish imagination, which at once
precluded its being creative like the Greek, and also
governed the selection and arrangement of even its
simplest and most strictly human traditions. All of them
have one thread connecting them with the growth and
glory of the national life, and another parallel thread
illustrating the wonderful Providence of supernatural
government. For example, there is no tradition in the
Hebrew literature which is at first sight less closely inter
woven with either of these threads, more purely composed
of universal human elements, than the story of Ruth.
Hartley Coleridge, in verses commenting on the mysteri
ous " tale of bloodshed " which constitutes the history of
Israel, has called this story an oasis of human beauty in
" the wild and waste of Bible truth." Yet the cause of its
preservation and consecration among the chronicles of the
nation is scarcely the loveliness of the rural picture of the
young gleaner in the harvest-fields of Bethlehem followed
by the kindly eye of the rich farmer bidding his young
men drop ears on purpose for her from the sheaves ; nor
even the mere devotedness of heart which made Ruth
" cleave " to Naomi. It is, on the one side, the exultation
in the providential reward which was allotted to an alien
woman of Moab for her abandonment of her country and
gods in order to embrace the faith, and identify herself
with the fortunes, of Israel ; on the other side, the fact, that
David, the great king of Israel, was descended so directly
from her, — which made this beautiful narrative so precious
to the Jews. And Naomi said, " Behold, thy sister-in-law
is gone back unto her people, and unto her gods : return thou
after thy sister-in-law. And Ruth said, Entreat me not to
leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for
whither thou goest, I will go ; and where thou lodgest, I will

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 213
lodge : thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
God." And again, " Boaz answered and said unto her, It
hath fully been shown me all that thou hast done unto thy
mother-in-law since the death of thine husband : and how
thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of
thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou
knewest not heretofore. The Lord recompense thy work,
and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel,
under whose wings thou art come to trust." And there
the narrative ends, and as it were justifies itself by tracing
the descent of David from the marriage of Boaz and Ruth.
In fact, incidentally beautiful and tender as many of the
early traditions of Israel are, the imagination of the Jews
dwelt chiefly, if not entirely, on the illustrations they
contain of the two great spiritual realities on which their
hearts were fixed, — the divine unity of their nation, and
the supernatural Providence which watched over its
children individually and its collective destinies. In
saying this, of course, I do not pretend that this accounts
for the imaginative beauty and power with which these
traditions are told ; I merely indicate the kindling convic
tions which stirred the thoughts of the writers who first
embodied them in their present shape. The visionary eye
and ear must, of course, have been theirs, or no intensity
of spiritual convictions could have enabled them by a few
simple touches to delineate scenes that must live as long
as the human race. But this visionary faculty would be
entirely quiescent were not some kindling faith or concep
tion to excite its activity. The vividness of the outward
picture must depend on the manner of the painter ; and if
"the eyes of them that see" are not to "be dim, and the
ears of them that hear " are to " hearken," the visions and
sounds which pass before them must be connected and
engraved upon the seer by some inward trust or love. The
spiritual roots, so to say, of the Hebrew traditionary

2i4' THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
poems are the faith in the glorious destiny of the nation,
and the overseeing Providence of God as the power which
had wrought out that destiny and should further work it
out to its conclusion.
But if it is easy to trace the main streams of popular
tradition to those two closely allied and indeed ultimately
identical sources, — the pride of national unity and great
ness, and the delight in tracing the movements of that
guiding hand which had shaped the discipline of the
nation in shaping the lot of its fathers and its kings, — it is
yet easier to trace the same overruling thoughts in those
" occasional " poems, as one may call them, which are
still preserved among its records. Of course, where the
occasions are directly political, as in the case of the
lament of David over the death of Saul and Jonathan, or
the vindictive paean of Deborah over the fate of Sisera, we
should fully expect to find these thoughts most conspicu
ous ; and yet, in both cases, very few readers are at all
aware how entirely these thoughts give their whole unity
and colouring to the poems. In the one case, the beauty
of the personal lament which David pours forth for Jona
than, and in the other, the intensity of the personal
exultation with which Deborah depicts the murder of
Sisera, — have distracted our thoughts from the real imagi
native roots of the poems. Certainly, the true spirit of
David's lamentation is not caught, if the expression of
love for his friend with which it closes is regarded as the
essential thought of the poem. Strong as that feeling is,
it is clearly subordinated to a grander and a stronger
feeling, and one which ruled more completely in the future
king of Israel's heart than any individual affection. The
defeat and death of Saul had been announced to him by
an Amalekite, who expected the injured and exiled chief
to receive it as good news, and even to reward him for
the part he had taken as an accessory to the slaughter

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 215
of the defeated king. Saul, says the messenger, in his
despondency at his overthrow, had implored him, as he
passed by, to put an end to his life ; and he had complied.
The horror that David feels for this profane spilling of the
blood of the anointed king of Israel, which he thinks must
drop a curse on the very mountains of Gilboa, where it
happened,— his dread lest even the Philistines should hear
and rejoice at that which the messenger had cruelly sup
posed might be welcome tidings to himself, — is the key
note of the lament.
"And David said unto him, How wast thou not afraid to stretch
forth thine hand to destroy the Lord's anointed? Thy blood be upon
thy head ; for thy mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain
the Lord's anointed. And David lamented with this lamentation over
Saul, and over Jonathan his son. The beauty of Israel is slain upon
thy high places : how are the mighty fallen ! Tell it not in Gath, publish
it not in the streets of Askelon ; lest the daughters of the Philistines
rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumised triumph. Ye mountains
¦of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you, nor fields of
offerings : for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield
of Saul, as though not anointed with oil. From the blood of the slain,
from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the
sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul and Jonathan were lovely and
pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided. They
were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. Ye daughters of
Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights ;
who put on ornaments of gold on your apparel. How are the mighty
fallen in the midst of the battle ! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thy high
places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan : very pleasant
hast thou been unto me : thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love
of women. How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war
perished ! "
Personal grief is only an episode in the lament, though
constituting its greatest beauty; the representative cha
racter of the king and his son as the chiefs of Israel,
appointed by God, is the prominent thought; and the
ignominy of the shield cast away before the enemy con
stitutes the burden of the song.
Again, in the greatest war-song of any age or nation, —

2i 6 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
the exultation of Deborah over Sisera's complete defeat,
and subsequent assassination by the hand of Jael, the wife
of Heber the Kenite,— no doubt personal revenge might
seem to blaze high above Deborah's faith in her nation
and her God, as the kindling or exciting spiritual principle
which brings the scene in such marvellous vividness before
her eyes. But though this feeling may add perhaps some
of the fire to the latter part of the poem, it is clear that her
faith in the national unity, and God, as the source of the
national unity, was the great, binding thought of the
whole. The song dwells, first, with the most intense
bitterness on the decay of patriotism in the tribes that did
not combine against the common foe : " For the divisions
of Reuben," she says, " there were great searchings of
heart. Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear
the bleatings of the flocks ? For the divisions of Reuben
there were great searchings of heart. Gilead abode
beyond Jordan, and why did Dan remain in ships ? Asher
continued on the seashore, and abode in his breaches;"
with which she contrasts the nobler conduct of Zabulon
and Naphtali, who "jeoparded their lives unto the death
in the high places of the field." Their kings came and
fought, she says, and " took no gain of money ; " and all
powers of heaven and earth were on their side. "They
fought from heaven ; the stars in their courses fought
against Sisera ; the river of Kishon swept them away, that
ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast
trodden down strength." And the transition by which she
passes to her fierce exultation over Sisera's terrible fate
shows distinctly what was the main thought in her mind.
"There was peace," we are told, between the king of
Hazor, whose forces Sisera commanded, and Heber the
Kenite ; the latter was only distantly akin to the people of
Israel ; the help of his tribe was not expected ; and yet,
though the aid of many true Israelites was wanting, from

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 217
his house came the blow, treacherous though it was, which
rid the nation of the dreaded and hated enemy.
" Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord ; curse ye bitterly the
inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the
help of the Lord against the mighty. Blessed above women shall Jael
the wife of Heber the Kenite be ; blessed shall she be above women in
the tent. He asked for water, and she gave him milk : she brought forth
butter in a lordly dish ; she put her hand to the nail, and her right hand
to the workmen's hammer ; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she
smote off his head when she had pierced and stricken through his
temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down : at her feet he
bowed, he fell ; where he bowed, there he fell down dead. The mother of
Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his
chariot so long in coming ? Why tarry the wheels of his chariots ? Her
wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself, Have they
not sped ? have they not divided the prey ; to every man a damsel or
two ; to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needle
work, of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks
of them that take the spoil ? So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord : but
let them that love thee be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might."
The exultation with which the poet dwells on the
treachery of the act, on the helpless prostration of the
great captain's corpse before a mere woman's knees ; the
terrible minuteness with which she gloats over the raised
expectations of the mother of the murdered soldier; the
picture of the "wise ladies" in attendance suggesting
triumphant reasons for the delay, and of the anxious
eagerness with which she even suggested these reasons to
herself, — no doubt indicate fierce personal as well as fierce
patriotic triumph. But the whole tenor of this grand
poem and the conclusion, " So let all thy enemies perish,
O Lord : but let them that love thee be as the sun when
he goeth forth in his might," at all events prove that the
personal hatred was so closely bound up with the repre
sentative feelings of the writer as a judge of Israel, and
with her trust in the Lord of Hosts, that the latter lent a
kind of halo to the unscrupulous ferocity of the former.
The two historical songs I have noticed celebrate excit-

2i 8 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
ing political events. But nothing is more striking than
the tendency of all lyrical poetry, among the Hebrews, to
connect itself with the same haunting conceptions of the
national unity and the national Providence. The great
number of beautiful poems which directly or indirectly are
connected with the Babylonian captivity are all of this
class. Instead of containing, as might be expected, a
mere pathetic record of individual privations and sorrows,
they all of them seem to speak in the name of the nation ;
and to address God, not as the healer of individual afflic
tion, but as holding in His hand the destiny of the nation,
whose common suffering or common joy was inseparable
from that of the individual heart. Such is the beautiful
psalm written "by the waters of Babylon," which ends
with curses on the oppressors almost as fierce as those of
Deborah's song. Such, too, is the still more beautiful
poem in which the restoration of Israel to their own land
is solemnised, and the captivity treated as a source of
spiritual blessing, rather than a curse. Even the heathens,
it tells us, confessed that the Lord had " done great things
for them," and so it was ; for, as the winter torrent returns
again to its dry bed when the parching summer is past, —
as the seed sown in grief returns in joy in the yellow
sheaves of harvest, — so, by one of those rapid and unreal
changes of fate which make even the waking ask if they
dream, the Israelites found themselves returning to their
land ; once more a nation, and once again assured of the
unchangeable purposes of their God.
" When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion : then were we
like unto them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter :
and our tongue with joy. Then said they among the heathen, the Lord
hath done great things for them. Yea, the Lord hath done great things
for us already : whereof we rejoice. Turn our captivity, O Lord : as the
rivers in the south. They that sow in tears : shall reap in joy. He that
now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall
doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him."

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 219
It is, then, I believe, a matter of fact that the imagina
tion of the Hebrew poets is never thoroughly stirred by
mere individual emotion. Nothing is more striking than
the tendency of their individual and solitary moods of
thought to widen, as the fire kindles, into meditations on
the national history and the mysteries of its supernatural
providence. Often the turn is so sudden and abrupt, that
to our modern ears, in which history and poetry sound
incompatible terms, the transition seems harsh and
grotesque. The poet who is sinking under the burden of
disease and sorrow, and is pouring forth what seems a
weight of strictly private trouble into the ear of God, has
no sooner confessed that it is "his own infirmity," and not
the neglect of the Most High, which makes his weariness
seem so intolerable, than he plunges into the " wonders of
old," and ends his hymn with what to modern ears sounds
like a strange anti-climax : " Thy way is in the sea, and
thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not
known. Thou leddest thy people like sheep, by the hands of
Moses and Aaron." Of lyrics proper, no doubt, there are
many in the Book of Psalms ; but usually the clear vision
of God summons up by a kind of necessity the image of
the nation, and the story of the nation's fates.
Sometimes one understands better the characteristic
moving power of a great literature by contrasting it with
that of a different people or age, than by contemplating it
as it is in itself. It would be untrue to say that the
Hebrew literature is wholly devoid of any feeling of art ;
for it must be confessed, that when a great faith has to be
expressed, or a great problem stated, there is that power
ful instinct for comparison and contrast which is almost
inseparable from a vivid and, so to say, haunted imagina
tion. Art is, after all, only a second nature ; and want of
artistic power is not felt until the first glow of poetic fire
begins to fade. But certainly there is in the Hebrew

220 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
literature about as little conscious art as in any literature
in the world. Let us look at it, for instance, in its pic
torial aspect. Considering the graphic power with which
it abounds, how utterly destitute is it of artistic painting,—
of colouring or drawing, that is put in for the sake of the
picture itself, rather than for any purpose which the picture
is to answer ! I may best illustrate what I mean by a
contrast between one of the poetical fragments of Jewish
history, and the modern rendering of it by Sir Walter
Scott. The kindling or germinal thought which induced
that great artist to versify the fragment to which I allude
was the sense of mere external picturesqueness ; while the
purpose which was stirring in the heart of the Hebrew
writer was the desire I have so often spoken of to record
the glory of the national life, and the might of the out
stretched arm of Jehovah, which made it what it was.
Writing of the guidance of the people of Israel through
the desert, the author of the Book of Exodus says : " And
the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to
lead them the way ; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give
them light ; to go by day and night. He took not away
the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by
night, from before the people" (xiii. 21, 22),— which Sir
Walter Scott renders into this well-known verse : —
" When Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out of the land of bondage came,
Her fathers' God before her moved,
An awful Guide, in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands,
The cloudy pillar glided slow ;
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column's glow."
The occupation of mind betrayed with the picture of the
desert scenery ; the external effects of the pillar of cloud
and of fire ; the astonishment with which the solemn pro-

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 221
cession would be regarded by the Arabian tribes ; the
relief of the dark object amid the noonday desert-glare ;
the bright patch of sand moving through the midnight ; —
are all given in a manner utterly foreign to that of the
Hebrew poet. The modern artist is delighting in the
scenic effect ; the ancient chronicler was wholly occupied
with the overshadowing power of God.
The poet, as we understand him in modern days, is
perhaps only too exclusively a student of beauty; and
much that he delineates he delineates without any further
reason than that it has shaped itself vividly in his imagi
nation, and seems to demand from him an expression in
words. There is not a vestige of such poetry in the Old
Testament, unless, indeed, one may except Solomon's
Song. I have traced already the thread of significance
which has given a place in the Bible to those traditions
which modern readers so often value chiefly for the
pictures of Rebekah " by the palm-shaded well," or Ruth
gleaning among the yellow corn. But when we study
what we may call the casual pictures in the Bible, — the
wealth of poetic material strewn among its pages, which is
used only by the Hebrew poets in incidental illustration
and allusion — this complete absence of the artistic value for
beauty and sublimity as such becomes extremely striking.
Modern poets are never tired of dwelling directly on the
beauty of nature. The " sunshine," they tell us, " is a
glorious birth." They never weary " of splendour in the
grass, of glory in the flower." And the Hebrew poet per
ceived these things too, but how did he use them ? " The
God of Israel," sings David, " said, the Rock of Israel
spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling
in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the
morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without
clouds ; — as the tender grass springing out of the earth in
the clear shining after rain." We should not know that

222 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Isaiah had ever lingered on the beach of Palestine, watch
ing the Mediterranean as it cast up seaweed and the soil
of many a neighbouring island under the lash of the west
wind, but for the passing image : "The wicked are like the
troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up
mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the
wicked." We should never guess that he had watched
the. Tyrian sailors trying to shake out canvas under a light
wind, with a crippled ship to manage, but for the meta
phorical denunciation against the enemies of the Lord:
" Thy tacklings are loosed ; they could not well strengthen
their mast; they could not spread their sail." How
totally different from the spirit of the modern poet ! —
" As some grave Tyrian trader from the sea
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow
Lifting the cool-haired creepers stealthily,
The fringes of a southward-facing brow,
Among the JEgtzxi isles ;
And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,
Freighted with amber grapes and Chian wine,
Green bursting figs and tunnies steeped in brine,
And knew the intruders on his ancient home, —
The young lighthearted master of the waves ; —
And snatched his rudder, and shook out more sail,
And day and night held on indignantly
O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale," * &c.
In every line here the poet lingers with satisfied eye on
some fresh beauty ; while, however grand the scene before
the mind of the Hebrew poet, it is to the meaning behind
it that he is hurrying on. Thus the Psalmist had certainly
gazed with awe on the grandeur of the sudden " white
squalls " of the Mediterranean ; and yet, but for the
passing allusion to God's power, — " He commandeth and
raiseth the stormy wind which lifteth up the waves thereof;
they mount up to the heavens ; they go down to the
* Poems by Matthew Arnold.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 22-$
depths ; their soul is melted because of trouble ; they reel
to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at
their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their
trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He
maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are
still. Then are they glad because they be quiet. So he
bringeth them to the desired haven," — he would never
have embodied what he had seen in a poem. Any modern
poet would have delighted to dwell upon the scene : the
pale line of foam scudding nearer and nearer before the
blast ; the blue sea suddenly turning black beneath the
cloud, and then lashed into whiteness by the squall ; the
cries of the sailors; the quivering of the ship as the
tempest strikes her; — in short, he would have made a
picture of it, and then, touching on the despair of the
passengers, would gradually have led up to the pity and
power of God. But to the Hebrew poet the thing is not
interesting in itself, as a picture, at all ; it is a passing
symbol of Almighty goodness and discipline; he uses it
only to express his intense sense of the omnipresence of
providential power.
So, too, with the common imagery of modern Christian
poetry — mountains, fields, trees. That the Hebrew poets
felt the stateliness of the cedar, knew, too, when "the
power of hills " was on them, were alive to the grateful
shelter of the " leafy spring," no one who reads their
pages can doubt. "The trees of the Lord are full of
sap, the cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted."
"He watereth the hills from his chambers, the earth
is satisfied with the fruit of his works." "In the Lord
put I my trust, how say ye to my soul, flee as a bird
to. your mountain? For lo, the wicked bend their bow,"
&c. And yet we never find a single express delinea
tion of the plains of Hebron, or the snows of Lebanon,
of sunset in the Mediterranean as the prophets must

224 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
have seen it go down from Mount Carmel, of the valley
of the Jordan, or of the desolate solitudes of the Dead
Sea, in all their writings. These things are alluded to,
but only and purely to express their higher thoughts of
God— as a kind of pictorial language of trust, prophecy, or
prayer, never from the sense of their individual beauty.
" He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains." " Fire
and hail, snow and vapour, stormy winds," are mentioned ;
but only " as fulfilling His word." These things are not
beautiful for their own sakes, but glorious only as the
instruments of His will. " Hear ye mountains," says the
prophet Micah, "the Lord's controversy, and ye strong
foundations of the earth ; " and even there, alone with the
hills and the sky, he pours forth no wonder at the glory of
nature, but, while uttering indignation at the sins of men,
uses nature only allusively, as the instrument to shadow
forth his thought. So also, to the shepherd Amos, the
mountain winds and the midnight star are no study in
themselves, but a fleeting glimpse of the Eternal power :
" Lo, He that formed the mountains and createth the wind
and declareth to man what is His thought, that maketh the
morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of
the earth — the Lord, the God of Hosts, is His name." " Ye
who turn judgments to wormwood, and leave off righteous
ness in the earth ; seek Him that maketh the seven stars
and Orion, and turneth the shadow of Death into the
morning, and maketh the day dark unto night; that
calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out
upon the earth. The Lord of hosts is His name." It is
not easy to conceive a sublimer characteristic of the
Hebrew poetry than this, that it treats all creation as a
mere shadow ; and finds the essence of its beauty, as well
as the sustaining power of its life, in the spiritual world.
And it is this total absence from the Hebrew literature
of any trace of human Art, — its complete want of appre-

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 225
ciation for the subordinate perfections of inferior natures
and groups of life, each "after its kind,"— its constant
effort to refer all things to the divine will and thought as
the true centre and root of all things,— its indisposition to
enter with any depth or breadth of interest into the inner
life of any inferior nature, except so far as that inner life
points some visible divine end, — in a word, its preference
for studying the universal beauty of life only in God's will,
instead of studying God's will in the universal beauty, —
which makes the Hebrew poetry so distinct in kind from
the larger portion of the poetry of other literatures. It
resolves the visible world into a hieroglyphic of the
spiritual world ; and even regards all these regions of
naturalistic life rather impatiently, as a veil, where they
do not seem to aid directly in the work of revelation.
Purpose, significance, beauty, natural harmony in the
visible creation, if they do not bear directly on the moral
and spiritual relations with God, are consigned indiscrimi
nately to the general realm of His mysterious acts of
power; and are valued only as illustrating the scale,
grandeur, and infinite multiplicity of His energies. " The
young lions roar after their prey, they seek their meat from
God. The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together
and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth to his
work and to his labour till the evening. O Lord, how
manifold are thy works ! in wisdom hast thou made them
all : the earth is full of thy riches. . . . These all wait
upon thee, that thou mayest give them their meat in due
season ; that thou givest them they gather. Thou openest
thine hand, they are filled with good ; thou hidest thy face,
they are troubled ; thou takest away their breath, they die
and return to their dust." How different this from the
imaginative care with which Homer, for instance, dwells
on the characteristic nature and individual habits of the
lion —
VOL. 11. Q

226 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
" So forth he went, as goes the lion forth,'
Whom winds have vexed, and rains ; fire fills his eyes,
And whether herds of flocks or woodland deer
He finds, he rends them, and adust for blood,
Abstains not even from the guarded fold " *
What is not seen to be essential to the moral and
spiritual beauty and constitution of the universe, enters
into the Hebrew poet's thought only as illustrating the
unsearchable riches of God ; and has no intrinsic interest
and no fascination for the imagination apart from this
view of it.
Now this, I need hardly say, puts a great gulf between
the Hebrew and ordinary literatures. Man is usually
interested in all varieties of human and finite beauty or
life, without special or exclusive reference at all events to
their divine purpose. He may recognise the necessary
degradation which all natural beauty undergoes when the
divine light no longer shines upon it ; but still, usually the
first poetic instinct is indicated by a capacity for entering
into the heart of natural life, — it may be the mental and
moral varieties of human nature, or it may be the simple
life of the flower or the stream, and for rising, if he should
so rise, through this vividness of sympathy with Nature to-
the spiritual meanings or symbols it may suggest. He
sees the daffodils fluttering and dancing in the breeze
beside the lake, and says —
" The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee ;
A poet could not but be gay .
In such a jocund company ; "
and it is not till he has, as it were, reached the very
essence of the natural loveliness before him, that he
dilates on the unsuspected stores of joy they have brought
to " that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude." But
* Odyssey, vi. 130, Cowper's translation.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 227
this is quite alien to the habit of the old Hebrew poet ; he
saw the divine light shining 071 the world of nature and
man, but scarcely shining through the world of nature and
man, except in the direction of man's moral and spiritual
life. He took no pleasure in rising through the purely
natural to the supernatural ; he looked with awe on God's
works, because he knew, and entered into, and- worshipped
God's spirit ; but he did not care to explore the non-
spiritual aspects of the wisdom of God, through a life of
patient and quiet sympathy with the natural beauties of
His works.
Hence the modes of thought most natural to a modern
poet, — such modes of thought as gave Shakespeare his
genial insight into the varieties of human passion and
action, or Wordsworth and Tennyson their insight into
those spiritual aspects of Nature which only study and
meditative sympathy disclose, — were, in general, quite
foreign to the poets of Israel. As the Jewish thinkers had
little share in forwarding that growth of science and the
arts which were due, in Greece, to a minute intellectual
study of the laws of physical creation, — so Jewish poets
had little share in forwarding that growth of epic and
dramatic literature, which also arose in Greece, and was
due to the growing insight into the ways of man, and the
affinities between man and the natural world around him.
So far, indeed, as the spiritual nature of man was con
cerned, the Hebrew poetry contains a delineation full of
sympathetic insight. All the highest resources of the
poet are exhausted in describing the thirst for God of
which the soul of man is conscious. The "hart panting
after the water-brooks," — the " dry and thirsty land where
no water is," — the tempest-driven bird seeking refuge from
the storm, — do but serve to remind one of the many tender
and characteristic poems of this class in which the Hebrew
literature abounds.
Q2

228 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
But go beyond the spiritual nature of man, and the
sympathy of the Hebrew poets is dried up at once. Even
into the varieties of moral temperament no insight is
shown. The line is drawn between the wicked and the
good ; and in all the contemplative poetry of the Bible,
no interest is betrayed in the inward varieties of impulse,
motive, and affection, which distinguish the innumerable
kinds of human excellence or frailty from each other.
Pride and humility, insincerity and uprightness, avarice
and generosity, are condemned and praised, without one
trace of meditative or instinctive intelligence of the consti
tutional frailties and gifts which vary so infinitely the
degrees of guilt or virtue attaching to them in different
men and different circumstances ; the absolute divine
standard is clearly displayed, the relative human con
ditions are left entirely out of view. The poet who can
delineate with so inspired a pen the divine "beauty of
holiness," has little or no interest in the wonderfully
varied forms of human conflict through which that beauty
must be pursued. His central sympathy is with the
•divine life of God, — his compassion is equal and impartial
for all the shortcomings of human unworthiness ; kinds he
does not distinguish ; it is not into the individual heart
that he has taught himself to enter ; the natural history of
human character it is not for him to write, for his is the
greater task of delineating for us the character which " is
the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."
One of the finest, and perhaps the earliest, of all the
poems in the Hebrew literature, — that in which the divine
origin of Creation is revealed to man under an imagina
tive form of erroneous physical history, often foolishly
regarded as invalidating the spiritual authority of the
whole, — not only gives us the true key to the problem of
the universe, but points out, at the same time, the charac
teristic aspects under which alone the Jewish poets and

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 229
prophets were likely to regard the life of nature and
humanity. The purpose and order of the lower universe,
we are told, is man ; to the use of man all the lower forms
of life are made subject ; but man, again, finds all his
meaning and life in God; and all nature, therefore, —
human nature included, — is to look for its significance to
the word of God. From Him all our life receives its order
and its meaning; it is the orderly succession of his
Creative work which is to be held as the ground of the
like orderly succession in our tasks and duties ; it was
because there was in His mind a spring of eternal rest, as
well as of creative energy, that we are enjoined to respect
the law of rest as well as the law of labour. In God is to
be found the explanation of man's being ; in man's being
the explanation of every descending stage of creation. I
have paraphrased, in very awkward language, the sublime
words to which I refer ; but this was necessary in order
to draw attention to the point I wish to illustrate. The
stately succession of created things springing into being
beneath the living breath of God ; the evenings, which see
each fresh work accomplished, the mornings, which see
the next begun ; the orderly separation of earth and sky,
of sea and land ; the growth of grass and trees ; the first
circles of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens ; the
new-born seasons ; the creation of living creatures ; the
birth of man in God's image ; the gift of the supremacy
into his hands ; and the divine sentence upon each new
" kind " as it arises, and finally upon the whole, that it is
good, — are all so familiar to us, that we are apt to over
look the characteristic thought contained that each lower
nature refers upward to the next above it, and the highest
created nature to God : the light to the heavens ; the
heavens to the sun, moon, and stars ; these to the earth ;
the earth to the vegetable world ; this, again, to the animal
world above it ; this to man, who rules over it, and man to

230 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
God. At what link can you stop in such a chain ? What
nature can you study, without seeking the key to it in that
next superior ? And if so, how shall it be possible to stop
at the natural at all, or imagine that we can study fitly any
order that is not supernatural and eternal ? Earthly and.
human beauty can only be relative, after all, and do not
deserve a moment's attention, unless they symbolise a
beauty that is absolute, perfect, and self-sustained.
This revelation of the natural law of subordination of
things and creatures is actually and not merely poetically
true; and yet it naturally leads, of course, to an effort
which could only be partially successful — to study the
secrets of the universe in God, in whose image man is
made, and to suppose everything absolutely hidden from
us on which this direct communion with God throws no
light. So far as spiritual life is concerned, this is the true
order of study. God reveals His spirit to us directly ; and
without it nothing spiritual is intelligible at all. And the
method of the Hebrew poetry, therefore, presents thus far
not only the divine truth, but the only true approach to
the spiritual secrets of human life. But on other sides of
our life this is not so. Though spiritual truth is known
first through the knowledge of God, and though, without
knowing Him, all other truth is misseen and miscon
strued, — yet, this key once gained, the range of its com
prehension is indefinitely extended by studying God in
nature and humanity, instead of contemplating nature and
humanity only in God. And as the life of the universe
was regarded by the prophets of Israel only on this latter
side, there was necessarily a large field which their imagi
nation never visited and represented. The various works
of creation were pronounced separately good, " each after
its kind ; " but what those " kinds " were in themselves, it
was left to Gentile nations and other ages to study and
describe. To the writer in the Book of Genesis, the life of

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 231
each kind was merged in that of the kind above it ; all the
lower world in man, and man in God. And the national
poets uniformly pursued this line of thought : all that was
purely human, and all which was below the" human type,
was used only as symbolic of something higher, if not
wholly passed by as existing exclusively for the sake of
that which was above it.
And hence all the poetry of the Old Testament is true
and divine at the expense of variousness of insight and
breadth of sympathy. It is what one might call a helio
centric, as distinguished from a geocentric, representation
of life. The former gives the true and absolute standard ;
but for that very reason cannot enter into the natural
history of human errors and human individuality. If you
would study the life of earth, you must leave your central
position in the sun. The strange habits and ways of man
cannot be mastered by communion only with the spirit of
God, though they cannot be understood at all without it.
But the prophets, who were also the poets of Israel, were
sent to announce and reveal the Light, not to study the
winding avenues by which alone it could penetrate the
human heart.
Hence one does not see in the Hebrew poets' strains the
uplifted eye of the suppliant, half so vividly as the searching
glance of the Eternal. Fascinated by the supernatural gaze
of the Almighty, the prophet often so identifies himself with
God that he forgets his own person, and speaks in the very
name of Jehovah. The Psalmists, for example, are always
vacillating between the first person and the third, when they
deliver the purposes of God. As they warm with their
spiritual inspiration, they lose themselves in the person of
Him who inspires them, and then are again recalled to
themselves. And the prophets habitually fall into the
same changing mode of address. " Behold," says Isaiah,
" I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling."

232 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
"I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the
earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father ;
for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." The prophet,
as he writes, is no longer the child of Israel,— the holder
himself of a cup of trembling,— a wayworn son of earth :
he sees the high places of the earth far beneath his feet ;
he sees the cup of trembling held to the lips of others— he
himself is sweeping the universe with the infinite gaze of
God. This sublime characteristic of the Hebrew prophets, that
they seem almost to forget their human centre of life in
their effort to delineate divine truth, is strikingly illustrated
in the frequent surrender of their private lives and affec
tions, for the purpose of sculpturing, in a living symbol, on
the mind of the nation, the lesson that no mere words
could have taught. How far can any human being now,
even distantly, comprehend the state of mind in which
Ezekiel must have lived when he acted thus under the
divine inspiration ?
"Also the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man,
behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke : yet
neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down.
Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine
head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy
lips, and eat not the bread of men. So I spake unto the people in the
morning : and at even my wife died ; and I did in the morning as I was
commanded. And the people said unto me, Wilt thou not tell us what
these things are to us that thou doest so ? Then I answered them, The
word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Speak unto the house of Israel,
Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the
excellency of your strength, the desire of your eyes, and that which your
soul pitieth ; and your sons and your daughters whom ye have left shall
fall by the sword. And ye shall do as I have done : ye shall not cover
your lips, nor eat the bread of men. And your tires shall be upon your
heads, and your shoes upon your feet : ye shall not mourn nor weep ; but
ye shall pine away for your iniquities, and mourn one toward another.
Thus Ezekiel is unto you a sign : according to all that he hath done shall
ye do : and when this cometh, ye shall know that I am the Lord God
Also, thou son of man, shall it not be in the day when I take from them

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 233-
their strength, the joy of their glory, the desire of their eyes, and that
whereupon they set their minds, their sons and their daughters, That he
that escapeth in that day shall come unto thee, to cause thee to hear it
with thine ears ? In that day shall thy mouth be opened to him which is
escaped, and thou shalt speak and be no more dumb : and thou shalt
be a sign unto them ; and they shall know that I am the Lord."

There is one great poem in the Hebrew Scriptures so-
remarkable and exceptional in every respect, that to pass
over it without special comment would be to disregard
wilfully one of the principal phenomena from which every
adequate appreciation of the characteristics of the Old-
Testament poetry should be derived — the drama of Job.
I have reserved my notice of it to the last, because it
seems to me that the highest critical authorities must be
right in thinking that it is nearly the latest, as well as the
only formally artistic, product of the poetic genius of the
Jews. This, at least, is in intention, as well as in fact, a.
literary effort, — an attempt to present, and perhaps more
or less to solve, in a dramatic form some of the highest
problems of man's spiritual life. It is the only important
book in the Old Testament which is not closely inter
woven with the real history and life of the nation, — which
stands apart as a conscious effort of imagination.
No doubt, the Book of Job marks in many ways the
culmination of the national genius, and the transition
from the exclusively divine centre of the Hebrew poetic
thought to the wider range of insight into Nature and
Man, from the natural as well as the supernatural side,
which was to succeed it. The very treatment of a divine
theme under the human conditions of an imaginary
drama would alone appear to indicate this. The conflict
with the narrowly Jewish conceptions of Providence
which it contains would also indicate it. The contem
plative delight which the wonders of Nature and the
mysteries of animal life arouse in the writer's mind, and

234 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
the naturalistic minuteness with which they are painted,
as well as the delineation of the inward perplexities of
the spiritual life, all point to an origin in an age when
that more genial appreciation of Nature and Man which
we perceive in the later prophecies bearing the name of
Isaiah had been carried even further. Moreover, as
regards man himself, the whole argument turns on the
subtle distinction between that part of his nature which,
finite and shortsighted though he is, yet gives him a
right to claim a real affinity with God, and that part
which, finite and limited as it is, necessarily obscures his
power of judgment. This is not a point which could well
have been discussed in an early period of the Jewish
literature. There is an evident effort throughout the drama to
distinguish the "creature" in Job from that "spirit" in
him which gives him a right to plead with God. The
drama is usually understood as a mere exposure of the
false view which makes calamity a certain index of the
wrath of God and therefore of guilt. This, no doubt, it is ;
but it is also much more. It is a discussion of the mystery
of God's relation to man and to the lower universe. There
is an effort, I believe, in the poem to show that man is
related to God in two ways, — as a spiritual being, and as
a creature. As a spiritual being, he may justify himself
and speak what God himself cannot override, and will
certainly affirm : as a creature, he is in complete ignorance
of the lot it may be right for the ruler of the universe
to assign him; since He only can judge who sees the
universe as a whole, who moves the very springs of its life.
Man cannot and ought not to accuse Providence of in
justice in any external lot He may send, unless he could
undertake to wield the whole scheme of Providence in His
place ; then, and then only, might he " disannul " God's
judgment, and condemn Him in order "to establish his

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 235
own righteousness." The ignorant creature is wrong in
criticising the acts of the Creator ; but the spirit of the
man is right in asserting the absolute character of his
highest spiritual convictions against any array of external
argument. Job is sustained in his assertion that though
his body should be destroyed, yet a living Redeemer
should vindicate his inward purity; he is sustained in
reiterating, " God forbid that I should justify you till I
die : I will not remove mine integrity from me ; my
righteousness will I hold fast and will not'let it go ;" he
is sustained in holding fast by the judgment of his spirit
on his own actions, for that is a judgment with full know
ledge : but he is condemned for judging God's outward
conduct to him by any standard whatever ; since in doing
so he judges by " words without knowledge," seeing that
the knowledge requisite for such judgment would be the
omniscience of the Creator himself. The argument is
illustrated with the fullest delineation of the mystery of
Nature, the broadest contrast between the narrow circle of
spiritual knowledge and independence really reserved to
man, and to man alone, and the utter incompetence of
man to wield a single attribute of Providence either over
his own world or that of the lower creation. How minute
and full of naturalistic observation and artistic admiration
is the ' treatment of the order of Nature, the following
passage will adequately show : —
" Gavest thou wings and feathers to the ostrich ? which leaveth her
eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust ; and forgetteth that the
foot of man may crush them, or that the wild-beast may break them.
She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers :
her labour is in vain without fear ; because God hath deprived her of
wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding. What time she
lifteth herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider. Hast thou
given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper ? the glory of his nostrils is
terrible. He paweth in the valley and rejoiceth in his strength : he goeth
on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted ;

236 THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him
the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with
fierceness and rage; neither believeth he that it is the sound of the
trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha ! and he smelleth the
battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting."
This deeper insight into the natural constitution and
beauty of the universe, and complete disavowal of all
power on the part of man to form any judgment upon
it, is especially remarkable as compared with the bold
justification of the spiritual participation of human nature
in one of the attributes of God. It proves that the Hebrew
poet had already distinguished between the direct know
ledge of God's Spirit which spiritual communion gives,
and the indirect knowledge of His mysterious ways which
can only be gained by a study of those ways. It shows
that he had mastered the conviction, that to neglect the
study of the natural mysteries of the universe leads to an
arrogant and illicit intrusion of moral and spiritual as
sumptions into a different world, — in a word, to the false
inferences of Job's friends as to his guilt, and his own
equally false inference as to the injustice of God.
Here, then, we have the Hebrew imagination in a state
of transition. It is still occupied, almost entirely, with
the divine side of creation, — the holiness and omnipotence
of God, and the feebleness of man, ; but already a sincere
admiration for natural life, and power, and beauty, begins
to be seen ; and humanity asserts its own share in the life
of the divine righteousness in clearer tones than in any of
the older prophets. In short, that unique type of poetry
which is expressed and symbolised in the tradition of
Jacob's dream is beginning to disappear. In all the cha
racteristic poetry of Israel man seems to lie enveloped in
the darkness of earth ; yet with a stream of supernatural
radiance cast upon him from that opening in the heavens
above, through which forms of light ascend and descend.

THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 237
For the rest, the heaven is dark with the clouds which veil
Omnipotence, and the earth has no proper radiance of its
own ; while the grandeur of the effect is heightened by the
Rembrandt-like contrast of light and shadow. In the later
prophecies of Isaiah, — generally attributed by modern
critics to a later prophet, — and the great poem of Job,
this startling narrowness and intensity of effect is visibly
on the decline. The clouds of Omnipotence begin to
break ; the intrinsic beauty of Nature begins to be more
closely associated with the spiritual lights of heaven, and
humanity especially to have a distinct standing point and
radiance of its own. From this time the marvellously
unique poetry of Israel ceases, and ceases never to be
revived. But the supernaturalism which it discerned so
vividly as brooding over the early world does not cease
with it. It has transmuted for ever the pure naturalism of
Greek poetry. And now no modern poet can ever become
really great, who does not feel and reproduce in his
writings the characteristic difference between that mild
inner light which " lightens every man that cometh into
the world," which grows with our growth and strengthens
with our strength, and that which, descending suddenly
from God upon the startled conscience, makes us exclaim :
" How dreadful is this place ! this is none other but the
house of God ; this is the gate of heaven."

VI.
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.*

THESE two volumes, as they now stand, contain as
adequate a picture of the singular but large, simple,
and tender nature of the Oxford poet as is attainable, and
it is one which no one can study without much profit, and
perhaps also some loss ; without feeling the high exalta
tion of true poetry and the keen pleasure caused by the
subtlety of true scholarship, at every turn ; nor also
without feeling now and again those "blank misgivings
of a creature moving about in worlds not realised," which
are scattered so liberally among these buoyant ardours,
disappointed longings, and moods of speculative suspense,
and which characterize these singular letters of reticent
tenderness and rough self-satire.
Every one who knew Clough even slightly, received the
strongest impression of the unusual breadth and massive-
ness of his mind. Singularly simple and genial, he was
unfortunately cast upon a self-questioning age, which led
him to worry himself with constantly testing the veracity
of his own emotions. He has delineated in four lines the
impression which his habitual reluctance to converse on
the deeper themes of life made upon those of his friends
* " The Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a
Selection from his Letters, and a Memoir." Edited by his Wife. 2 vols.
With a portrait. Macmillan.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 239
who were attracted by his frank simplicity. In one of his
shorter poems he writes —
" I Said my heart is all too soft ;
He who would climb and soar aloft
Must needs keep ever at his side
The tonic of a wholesome pride."
This expresses the man in a very remarkable manner-.
He had a kind of proud simplicity about him, singularly
attractive, and often singularly disappointing to those who
longed to know him well. He had a fear, which many
would think morbid, of leaning much on the approbation
of the world ; and there is one characteristic passage in
his poems, in which he intimates that men who lean on
the good opinion of others might even be benefited by a
crime which would rob them of that evil stimulant : —
" Why so is good no longer good, but crime
Our truest best advantage ; since it lifts us
Out of the stifling gas of men's opinion
Into the vital atmosphere of Truth,
Where He again is visible, though in anger."
So eager was his craving for reality and perfect sincerity,
so morbid his dislike even for the unreal conventional
forms of life, that a mind quite unique in simplicity and
truthfulness represents itself in his poems as
" Seeking in vain, in all my store,
One feeling based on truth."
Indeed, he wanted to reach some guarantee for simplicity
deeper than simplicity itself. I remember his principal
criticism on America, after returning from his residence
in Massachusetts, was that the New Englanders were
much simpler than the English, and that this was the
great charm of New England society. His own habits

240 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
were of the same kind, — sometimes almost austere in
their simplicity. Luxury he disliked, and at times his
friends thought him even ascetic.
This almost morbid craving for a firm base on the abso
lute realities of life was very wearying to a mind so self-
conscious as Clough's, and tended to paralyse the expres
sion of a certainly great genius. As a rule, his lyrical
poems fall short of complete success in delineating the
mood which they are really meant to delineate, owing to
this chronic state of introspective criticism on himself in
which he is apt to write, and which, characteristic as it is,
necessarily diminishes the linearity and directness of the
feeling expressed, refracting it, as it were, through media
of very variable density. As he himself, — no doubt in this
stanza delineating himself, — says of one of his heroes in
" the Clergyman's first tale : " —
i " With all his eager motions still there went
J A self-correcting and ascetic bent,
That from the obvious good still led astray,
And set him travelling on the longest way."
And in the same poem there are descriptive touches which
very skilfully portray the nature of those dispersive influ
ences, as I may call them, in his character, which, while
they may injure his lyrical, add a great wealth of criticism
to his speculative and disquisitional poems : —
" Beside the wishing-gate, which so they name
'Mid Northern hills, to me this fancy came ;
A wish I formed, my wish I thus expressed :
' Would 1 could wish my wishes all to rest,
And know to wish the wish that were the best!
Oh, for some winnowing wind to th' empty air
This chaff of easy sympathies to bear
Far off, and leave me of myself aware ! ' "
That is clearly self-portraiture, and it describes an element
in Clough's nature which, no doubt, contributed greatly

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 241
to diminish the number of his few but exquisite lyrical
poems, and sometimes to confine even those to the delinea
tion of feelings of a certain vagueness of drift. Yet there
was, besides this most subtle and almost over-perfect
intellectual culture in Clough, much of a boyish, half-
formed nature in him, even to the last ; and this, when
fully roused, contributed a great deal of the animation,
and, when least roused, contributed not a little of the
embarrassed, shy, half-articulate tone to some of the most
critical passages of his finest poems. He describes this
side of boyish feeling admirably in one of his " In Mari
Magno " tales : —
" How ill our boyhood understands
Incipient manhood's strong demands !
Boys have such trouble of their own
As none, they fancy, e'er have known,
Such as to speak of, or to tell
They hold were unendurable :
Religious, social, of all kinds,
That tear and agitate their minds.
A thousand thoughts within me stirred
Of which I could not speak a word ;
Strange efforts after something new
Which I was wretched not to do ;
Passions, ambitions, lay and lurked,
Wants, counter-wants, obscurely worked
Without their names, and unexplained."
And even in his latest and most finished poems you see
the traces of this half-developed element of Clough's
massive and rich but to some extent inert imagination ;
and you see, too, how powerfully it operated to discontent
him with his own productions, to make him underrate
vastly their real worth. Rapidly as his genius ripened
at an age when, with most men, the first flush of it
would have passed over, there was something of conscious
inertia, not unlike -immaturity, in it to the last, which gives
a tone of proud hesitation, a slowness of hand, to the
VOL. II. R

242 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
literary style of his finest poems. He calls himself, in his
" Long Vacation Pastoral," " the grave man, nicknamed
Adam," and there is really something of the flavour of
primeval earth, of its unready vigour and crude laborious-
ness, about his literary nature. Even when he succeeds
best, the reader seems to see him "wipe his honourable
brows bedewed with toil." And yet he is impatient with
himself for not succeeding better, and despises his own
work. The " Long Vacation Pastoral " belongs to a class of
poems that is scarcely naturalised in England — the class
of which Goethe's " Hermann and Dorothea " is, perhaps,
the most perfect specimen, though in vigour and breadth
of imagination, Clough's pastoral is certainly not inferior.
Goethe's influence over the school of poetry of which
Matthew Arnold and Clough have been the most consider
able English disciples, is very powerfully marked. There
is the same longing after the old Homeric simplicity, —
less successful perhaps in a cultivated Englishman than
in the more childlike German, — the same love of homely
naturalness of manner, of the wholesome flavour of earth,
an even deeper desire to tame or exorcise all romance
that is alien to common sense, and the same intellectual
disposition to give common sense the casting vote,
wherever there seems to be a conflict between it and
the thirst of their own natures for something deeper.
Moreover, in Clough's poem there is the same under
lying theme which haunted Goethe so constantly, —
the wish to analyse the true secret of womanly fascina
tion; and, finally, the key-note of the answer given
in the "Long Vacation Pastoral" is also the key-note
of the "Hermann and Dorothea," that the highest
charms of women consist in a certain union between
homely usefulness and classical beauty, in the graceful
cutting of bread-and-butter, like Werther's " Charlotte,"

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 243
or graceful "potato-uprooting," like Philip's heroine in
Clough's Pastoral. As one of his "reading" party ex
presses it —
" All cathedrals are Christian, all Christians are cathedrals :
Such is the Catholic doctrine ; 'tis ours with a slight variation.
Every woman is or ought to be a cathedral,
Built on the ancient plan — a cathedral pure and perfect,
Built by that only law, that Use be suggester of Beauty;
Nothing concealed that is done, but all things done to adornment ;
Meanest utilities seized as occasions to grace and embellish."
But if the school of art and the predominant thought which
marks Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea" and Clough's
poem are the same, — if they both alike seek and find their
ideal of women in " the freshness of the early world," in
some well-born or well-taught maiden,
" Milking the kine in the field ; like Rachel watering cattle,
Rachel, when at the well the predestined beheld and kissed her ;
Or with pail upon head, like Dora beloved of Alexis,
Comely, with well-poised pail over neck arching soft to the shoulders,
Comely in gracefullest act, one arm uplifted to stay it,
Home from the river or pump moving stately and calm to the laundry ;"
— yet all the imaginative form and framework of Clough's
poem are entirely his own, — entirely original, and marked
strongly with the stamp of its Oxford origin.
The almost Homeric vigour with which all the charac
teristics of the reading party are dashed off, the genial
humour with which their personal peculiarities are coloured-
in, the buoyant life of the discussions which arise among
them, the strength with which the Highland scenery is
conceived and rendered in a few brilliant touches, the
tenderness and simplicity with which now and then the
deeper pathos of life is allowed to be seen in glimpses
through the intellectual play of the poem, are all Clough's
own. He is far more terse, far less prolix than the great
German poet in his style of painting homely nature. There
R 2

244 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
is none of that relaxed fibre which makes scoffers say that
Goethe is a little spooney on his Charlotte's bread-and-
butter, and his Dorothea's proficiency as a waggoner.
Clough's poem is masculine throughout, though the senti
ment is, perhaps, not entirely healthy, and the humour
certainly is of a kind of which Goethe had little trace.
Here, for example, is Airlie, the high dresser of the
party : —
"Airlie descended the last, effulgent as god of Olympus ;
Blue, half-doubtfully blue, was the coat that had white silk facings ;
Waistcoat blue, coral buttoned, the white tie finely adjusted,
Coral moreover the studs on a shirt as of crochet of women :
When the fourwheel for ten minutes already had stood at the gateway,
He, like a god, came leaving his ample Olympian chamber."
And here is a Highland dance, in which Airlie again
figures, described with all the humour and force of a
modern Homer : —
"  Him rivalling, Hobbes, briefest kilted of heroes,
Enters, O stoutest, O rashest of creatures, mere fool of a Saxon,
Skill-less of philibeg, skill-less of reel too, the whirl and the twirl o't :
Him see I frisking and whisking, and ever at swifter gyration
Under brief curtain revealing broad acres — not of broad cloth.
Him see I there and the Piper — the Piper what vision beholds not ?
Him and his Honour with Arthur, with Janet our Piper, and is it,
Is it, O marvel of marvels ! he too in the maze of the mazy,
Skipping and tripping, though stately, though languid, with head on one
shoulder,
Airlie, with sight of the waistcoat the golden-haired Katie consoling ?
Katie, who simple and comely, and smiling and blushing as ever,
What though she wear on that neck a blue kerchief, remembered as
Philip's,
Seems in her maidenly freedom to need small consolement of waistcoats ! "
Or take the description of Sir Hector's speech at the clans
men's dinner, which is rich in Homeric metaphor, as well
as modern humour : —
" Bid me not, grammar defying, repeat from grammar defiers
Long constructions strange, and plusquam-Thucydidean,

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 245
Tell how, as sudden torrent in time of speat in the mountain
Hurries six ways at once, and takes at last to the roughest,
Or as the practised rider at Astley's or Franconi's,
Skilfully, boldly bestrides many steeds at once in the gallop.
Crossing from this to that, with one leg here, one yonder,
So, less skilful, but equally bold and wild as the torrent,
All through sentences six at a time, unsuspecting of syntax,
Hurried the lively good will and garrulous tale of Sir Hector."
Not, however, by such passages as these can be measured
the depth and fulness of Clough's poetic nature. I have
said that, in his dread of the romantic school, and his
longing for that antique type of nobility in which the
simpler and more homely tasks are associated with clas
sical grace and dignity, he had borrowed much from
Goethe. But his mind had been also deeply influenced by
the very different poetry of Wordsworth in its strong love
for a frugal, hardy, and simple industry as the highest
school of human character. And perhaps, too, in spite of
his steady preference of Aristotle to Plato, of common
sense to what he thought idealism, of what is common
to what is high, the deep and sometimes transcendental
musings of Wordsworth's meditative mind had a charm
for him of which he was almost ashamed. At all events,
there is a gleam of transcendental depth and subtlety here
and again in this poem, shyly — almost apologetically —
put forth, and scarcely put forth but to be withdrawn.
The lines in which Elspie confesses her love for Philip,
the radiant poet, are couched in a very different key from
that of Goethe's naturalistic school, — a different, and I
think a higher, key : —
"And she was silent some time, and blushed all over, and answered
Quietly, after her fashion, still knitting, ' Maybe I think of it,
Though I don't know that I did ; ' and she paused again. ' But it may be ;
Yes, I don't know, Mr. Philip, but only it feels to me strangely
Like to the high new bridge they used to build at, below there,
Over the burn and glen on the road. You won't understand me.
But I keep saying in my mind — this long time, slowly with trouble,

246 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
I have been building myself up, up, and toilfully raising,
Just like as if the bridge were to do it itself without masons,
Painfully getting myself upraised one stone on another,
All one side, I mean ; and now I see on the other
Just such another fabric uprising, better and stronger,
Close to me, coming to join me. And then I sometimes fancy, —
Sometimes I find myself dreaming at night about arches and bridges, —
Sometimes I dream of a great invisible hand coming down and
Dropping the great key-stone in the middle ; there in my dreaming
There I felt the great keystone coming in, and through it
Feel the other part, — all the other stones of the archway,
Joined into mine, with a strange happy sense of completeness. But,
dear me,
This is confusion and nonsense. I mix all the things I can think of,
And you won't understand, Mr. Philip.' "
This is a definite addition to the great doctrine of the
poem, that women, like flowers, must be " rooted in earth "
to be either beautiful or useful — a definite addition and a
noble addition. Here we have something of Wordsworth's
conception of the poet : —
" The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed,
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude."
There are " impulses of deeper birth " struggling with the
naturalism of Clough's chosen school of thought. Still, the
great sea, and the wide omnipresent sunlight, are his
favourite symbols of what is divine, — what is broad, bright,
and simple, rather than what is lofty, mysterious, and dim.
Clough always seems to have needed external stimulus,
something of excitement in the atmosphere, for his best
poetic success. Thus, the siege of Rome during his resi
dence there in 1849 was the stimulus which gave rise
to his very original and striking poem, "Amours de
Voyage,"— a poem brimful of the breath of his Oxford
culture, of Dr. Newman's metaphysics, of classical tradi
tion, of the political enthusiasm of the time, and of his

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 247
own large, speculative humour, subtle hesitancy of brain,
and rich pictorial sense. Yet so ill-satisfied was he with
this striking poem, that he kept it nine years in MS., and
published it apologetically at last only in an American
magazine, the Atlantic Monthly. He himself says that
what he doubted about in it was not its truth of con
ception, but its vigour of execution. Yet no execution
could have been more perfect of the picture — a picture
of inchoacy, I admit — which he intended to draw. Mr.
Emerson has in some cases shown himself a fine critic;
but he never made a more egregious blunder than when
he found fault with Clough for not making this poem end
more satisfactorily. The whole meaning and drift of it
would have been spoiled if it had so ended. His idea was
to draw a mind so reluctant to enter on action, shrinking
so morbidly from the effects of the " ruinous force of the
will," that even when most desirous of action it would find
a hundred trivial intellectual excuses for shrinking back in
spite of that desire. His own explanation of the poem is
contained in the final verse : —
" So go forth to the world, to the good report and the evil !
Go, little book ! thy tale, is it not evil and good ?
Go, and if strangers revile, pass quietly by without answer.
Go, and if curious friends ask of thy rearing and age,
Say, ' I am flitting about many years from brain unto brain of
Feeble and restless youths born to inglorious days :
But,' so finish the word, ' I was writ in a Roman chamber,
When from Janiculan heights thundered the cannon of France.' "
And it is this brain of what the author chooses to call
" feeble and restless youths born to inglorious days " that
the poem is meant to delineate throughout, — its specu
lative discontent, its passion for the abstract, its dread of
being committed to a course, its none the less eager
craving for action and for the life that can only be
reached through action, its driftings and reactions ; —

248 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
and all this is artistically contrasted with the great.
Roman stage on which so many great dramas had been
enacted in years gone by, and whereon one great revo
lutionary drama was going forward that very moment.
To my mind, the poem would lose half its character and
meaning if the hero's incipiency of passion had been
developed into anything but incipiency, if it had not
faded away, just as it is represented as doing, with the
first difficulties, into a restless but still half-relieved
passiveness. The irony of the poem, with its background
of Mazzinian and Garibaldian achievement, would have
been utterly spoiled by any other conclusion. How
perfect a picture of the paralysis caused by too subtly
speculative a nature is there in such lines as these, for
example, in which the hero declares his intention to abide
by the indications of the first adverse throw of fortune : —
" Great is Fate, and is best. I believe in Providence partly.
What is ordained is right, and all that happens is ordered.
Ah, no, that isn't it ! But yet I retain my conclusion.
I will go where I am led, and will not dictate to the chances."
"Amours de Voyage" would indeed have been spoiled, if
it had ended " prettily," like any other novel.
The oftener I return to Clough's unfinished but striking
poems, the more I am struck by something in their fresh
natural handling, and a certain lustre of sunlight on their
surface, which suggests to me a modern and intellec
tualised Chaucer ; and I think the same homely breadth
and simplicity were strongly marked in his countenance.
Of course, the whole essence of such genius is changed by
the intellectual conditions of Clough's age, and the still
higher intellectual conditions of his personal career. But
the characteristic is only the more strongly marked for such
striking and fundamental variations ; and had he lived to
fill more completely with his individual genius, and to

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 24.9
complete, the beautiful fragments of tales which are
entitled " In Mari Magno," every one would have noticed
not merely an external resemblance in structure and
scheme, but a very close analogy in genius between the
" Canterbury Tales " by the father of English poetry, and
the series by this later representative of our academic
school. His Chaucer-like love of the natural simplicities
of life was probably Clough's strongest creative impulse ;
his mode of describing is in the same style of bold,
direct, affectionate feeling for the earth and the true
children of the earth; and the homely though polished
pathos of his stories have again and again filled me with
like haunting associations, even when the analogy was so
much disguised by the different intellectual accent of our
times that its secret was not easy to catch. In the
following piece, there is certainly no manner of difficulty
in tracing the resemblance. But though the similarity of
mere style may aris.e from Clough's own familiarity with
the poet, and with the tales whose plan he was adopting,
the portrait is certainly studied from an ecclesiastical type
quite foreign to Chaucer's age : —
" The vicar was of bulk and thews,
Six feet he stood within his shoes,
And every inch of all a man ;
Ecclesiast, on the ancient plan,
Unforced by any party rule
His native character to school ;
In ancient learning not unread,
But had few doctrines in his head ;
Dissenters truly he abhorred ;
They never had his gracious word.
He ne'er was bitter, or unkind,
But positively spoke his mind ;
Their piety he could not bear, —
A sneaking snivelling set they were.
Their tricks and meanness fired his blood ;
Up for his Church he stoutly stood.
No worldly aim had he in life
To set him with himself at strife.

250 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
A spade, a spade he freely named,
And of his joke was not ashamed ;
Made it, and laughed at it, be sure,
With young and old, with rich and poor.
His sermons frequently he took
Out of some standard reverend book ;
They seemed a little strange indeed,
But were not likely to mislead.
Others he gave that were his own, —
The difference could be quickly known.
Though sorry not to have a boy,
His daughters were his perfect joy ;
He plagued them, oft drew tears from each,
Was bold and hasty in his speech,
All through the house you heard him call,
He had his vocatives for all ;
Patty Patina, Pat became,
Lydia took Languish with her name ;
Philippa was the Gentle Queen,
And Phcebe Madame Prosperine ;
The pseudonyms for Mary Gwen
Varied with every week again ;
But Emily, of all the set,
Emilia called, was most the pet."
It is not the mere forms here, it is the simple, direct
manner of painting which brings back a flavour of
Chaucer to the memory as we read the more intellectual
poet of modern days. Look, again, at Clough's feeling
for women's beauty ; the mingled breadth and tenderness
of his drawing, his keen sense of the healthy simplicity of
true womanliness, his constant preference for the true
woman rather than the true lady, his evident bias for that
which has its root in the homely earth, though it attains a
beauty which earth alone could not give ; it is Chaucer
become conscious of the difference between his own inner
mind and the taste of our modern intellectual day.
Chaucer describes his ideas of feminine loveliness in the
person of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, thus : —
" I sawgh hir daunce so comeley,
Carole and synge so swetely,

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 251
Laughe and pleye so womanly,
And loke so debonairly ;
So goodely speke, and so friendly ;
That, certes, I trow that evermore
Nas [was not] seyne so blysful a tresore.
For every heer on hir hede,
Sothe to seyne, hyt nas not rede,
Ne nouther yelowe, ne browne, hyt nas,
Me thought most lyke golde hyt was.
And whiche eyen [eyes] my lady hadde !
Debonaire, goode, glade, and sadde [grave],
Symple, of goode mochel, nought to wide.
Therto hir looke was not asyde,
Ne overtwert, but besette to wele,
It drew and took everydele,
Alle that on hir gonne beholde."
And now let me take an extract from one of Clough's tales
to compare with this picture of Chaucer's : —
" A highland inn amongst the western hills,
A single parlour, single bed, that fills
With fisher or with tourist as may be ;
A waiting maid as fair as you can see,
With hazel eyes and frequent blushing face,
And ample brow, and with a rustic grace
In all her easy ample motions seen,
Large of her age, which haply is nineteen ;
Christian her name, in full a pleasant name,
Christian and Christie scarcely seem the same.
A college fellow who has sent away
The pupils he has taught for many a day,
And comes for fishing and for solitude,
Perhaps a little pensive in his mood,
An aspiration and a thought have failed,
Where he had hoped, another has prevailed,
But to the joys of hill and stream alive,
And in his boyhood yet at twenty-five.
A merry dance that made young people meet,
And set. them moving both with hands and feet :
A dance in which he danced and nearer knew
The soft brown eyes, and found them tender too.
A dance that lit in two young hearts the fire,
The low soft flame of loving sweet desire,
And made him feel that he could feel again ;
The preface this what follows to explain."

2Sz ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
Of course the parallel must not be pushed too far, for even
Chaucer, if possessed of all the new culture, and striving
to harmonize it with his large, simple, healthy, human
tastes, would become quite a new man. And no doubt
Clough's poetry is in nature and essence intellectual.
Still there is no poet of our generation whose intel
lectuality gives less of the effect of a thinning and refining
away of life to a shadow, than Clough.
Such subtlety as there is in Clough is of a broad,
sweeping, comprehensive kind ; not the fine instinct with
which Tennyson, for instance, follows out one by one a
hundred shadowy paths of imaginative reasoning, but the
wide subtlety which hovers hither and thither over one or
two of the greater chasms that separate thought from
action. The ground quakes under Clough's feet at points
where generally it would be supposed firm ; and where ordi
nary men's imaginative doubts begin, his scarcely reach.
The effect on his poetry is to exercise his imagination in
depicting not so much universal feelings as the craving of
the cultivated mind for permission to surrender itself to
them. In some of his most characteristic verses he asks : —
" What we, when face to face we see
The Father of our souls, shall be,
John tells us, does not yet appear ;
Ah ! did he tell what we are here !
A mind for thoughts to pass into,
A heart for loves to travel through,
Five senses to detect things near,
Is this the whole that we are here ?
Rules baffle instincts — instincts rules,
Wise men are bad — and good are fools ;
Facts evil — wishes vain appear,
We cannot go, why are we here ?
O may we for assurance' sake,
Some arbitrary judgment take,
And wilfully pronounce it clear
For this or that 'tis we are here ?

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 253
Or is it right, and will it do,
To pace the sad confusion through,
And say : ' It doth not yet appear,
What we shall be, what we are here'?
Ah ! yet when all is thought and said,
The heart still overrules the head ;
Still what we hope we must believe,
And what is given us, receive ;
Must still believe ; for still we hope
That in a world of larger scope,
What here is faithfully begun
Will be completed, not undone.
My child, we still must think, when we
That ampler life together see,
Some true result will yet appear
Of what we are, together, here."
This, like almost all Clough's poems of this class, presents
the effect of a homely, simple, human beauty, half under
mined by fundamental doubts, — doubts suggested, indeed,
only to be partially abandoned, but also to be partially
maintained, as a preservative against the blind eager
confidence of presumptuous faith. The massive and genial
sympathy which Clough feels with the universal instincts
| of human nature, alike religious and social, is the first
marked feature that strikes us in all his poems : then the
sifting process begins of tracing them to their roots,
showing how much wider is the trust placed in them in
the practical conduct of modern life, than it is possible to
justify intellectually ; and then when he has pared these
instincts down to their minimum of meaning, and we have
been shown how impossible our whole life would be if
they were given no greater validity than that, they are
permitted, though with hesitation and a doubtful or rather
hypothetical confidence, to take back something of their
natural authority, now that it is fairly shown to be liable
to all kinds of presumptuous error.
No doubt, this sort of large, half-genial suspense of

254 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
judgment, that looks upon natural instincts with a sort of
loving doubt, and yields with cautious hand a carefully
stinted authority to human yearnings in order not wholly
to lose a share in the moving forces of life, is not likely to
be widely popular. With Clough this suspense of human
judgment was unfortunately not supplemented by any
confident belief in a divine answer to those vague yearn
ings, and consequently his tone is almost always at once
sweet and sad. It is saturated with the deep but musical
melancholy of such thoughts as the following, whose
pathos shows how much more profoundly and deeply
Clough thirsted for truth than many of even the most con
fident of those of us who believe that there is a living
water at which to slake our thirst : —
" To spend uncounted years of pain,
Again, again, and yet again,
In working out in heart and brain
The problem of our being here ;
To gather facts from far and near,
Upon the mind to hold them clear,
And, knowing more may yet appear,
Unto one's latest breath to fear
The premature result to draw —
Is this the object, end, and law,
And purpose of our being here ?"
Yet even in poetry of this kind, which abounds in the
volume, there is something of the same large, hesitating
melancholy that we should expect, if once a mind of
homely Chaucer-like wisdom fell under a cloud of modern
doubt. Instead of applying itself, like the ordinary scep
ticism, to particular riddles, it would touch the whole
substance of life, not unkindly, with Clough's questioning
finger; treat the fundamental instincts which guide us
into our human relations with the same half-confidence;
try to separate, even in dealing with "love," the real
affinity of nature from the "juxtaposition" of habit, and

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 255
show the problem to be indeterminate with the same
quaint humour. And in things divine it would state the
problem as fairly, and substitute a sigh of pathethic hope
for the solution, with the same sad fidelity. It may be
something of a fancy, but it is at all events a fancy that
touches the border of truth, if I recognise even in the type
of Clough's genial scepticism something not entirely
unlike the scepticism which might pervade the mind of a
Chaucer, watching, with the old homely shrewdness as well
as the rich modern culture, the swaying tides of oun
theological debate, and clinging too closely itself to thei
human forms of beauty and goodness, to come with any
clear personal conviction out of the strife.
However, Clough's great literary powers never manifested
themselves even to his most intimate friends by any out
ward sign at all commensurate with the profound belief
they had in his genius. But if his powers did not, there
was much in his character that did produce its full effect
upon all who knew him. He steadily refrained from
looking, even in time of severe trial, to his own interest,
when what seemed to him higher interests were at issue.
He never flinched from the worldly loss which his deepest
convictions brought on him. Even when clouds were
thick over his own head, and the ground beneath his feet
seemed crumbling away, he could still bear witness to an
eternal light behind the cloud, and tell others that there is
solid ground to be reached in the end by the feet of all
who will wait to be strong : —
" Say not, the struggle nought availeth, •
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been, they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars,
It may be, in yon smoke concealed
Your comrades chased e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

256 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light :
In front the sun climbs slow — how slowly !
But westward, look, the land is bright."

I do not think that any competent judge who really
studies Clough's Remains will doubt for a moment that he
was one of the most original men of our age, and perhaps
its most intellectual and buoyant, though very far, of
course, from its richest or most musical and exquisite, poet.
There is a very peculiar and unique attraction about what
I may call the physical and almost animal buoyancy of
these subtly intellectual rhythms and verses, when once
the mass of the poet's mind — by no means easy to get into
motion — is fairly under weigh. Mr. Matthew Arnold and
Clough both represent the stream of the modern Oxford
intellectual tradition in their poems, but how different is
their genius. With all his intellectual precision, there is
something of the boyishness, of the simplicity, of the
vascular Saxon breadth of Chaucer's poetry in Clough;
while Mr. Arnold's poetical ancestor is certainly no earlier
than Wordsworth. There are both flesh and spirit, as well
as emotion and speculation, in Clough ; while, in Mr.
Arnold, soul and sentiment guide the emotion and the
speculation. There is tenderness in both; but Clough's
is the tenderness of earthly sympathy, and Mr. Arnold's
the lyrical cry of Virgilian compassion. Both fill half
their poems with the most subtle intellectual meditations ;
but Clough leaves the problems he touches, all but where
they were, not half settled, reproaching himself for moon
ing over them so long ; while Mr. Arnold finds some sort
of a delicate solution, or no-solution, for all of them, and

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 257
sorts them with the finest nicety. Finally, when they both
reach their highest poetical point, Mr. Arnold is found
painting lucidly in a region of pure and exquisite senti
ment, Clough singing a sort of paean of buoyant and
exultant strength : —
" But, O, blithe breeze, and O, great seas,
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last !
One port, methought, alike they sought,
One purpose hold where'er they fare.
O, bounding breeze, O, rushing seas,
At last, at last, unite them there ! "

VOL. II.

VII.
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.

TTAZLITT, writing of one of Wordsworth's latest and
-*-*- more classical poems, "Laodamia," describes it as
having "the sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the
beauty, and the languor of death : calm contemplation and
majestic pains." There also, we have, in one of Hazlitt's
terse and sententious criticisms, the aroma of the finest
poems of Wordsworth's greatest poetical disciple — one,
too, who is the disciple of Wordsworth, emphatically in
his later rather than in his earlier phase; Wordsworth
schooled into a grace and majesty not wholly meditative,
but in part, at least, critical ; Wordsworth the conscious
artist as well as poet ; not Wordsworth the rugged rhap-
sodist of spiritual simplicity and natural joy. "The
sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty, and the
languor of death, — calm contemplation and majestic pains,"
— all these may be found in the most characteristic and
most touching of Mr. Arnold's poems ; in the melancholy
with which the sick King of Bokhara broods over the fate
of the wretch whom his pity and power could not save
from the expiation he himself courted; in the gloomy
resentment of Mycerinus against the unjust gods who cut
short his effort to reign justly over his people ; in the
despair of Empedocles on Etna, at his failure to solve the
riddle of the painful earth — his weariness of "the devour-

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 259
ing flame of thought," the naked, eternally restless mind
whose thirst he could not slake ; in those dejected lines
written by a death-bed, in which Mr. Arnold contrasts the
hopes of youth with what he deems the highest gain of
manhood, " calm ; " in the noble sonnet which commemo
rates Sophocles as one whom " business could not make
dull nor passion wild ; " in the fine " Memorial Verses,"
wherein he praises Wordsworth for assuaging that dim
trouble of humanity which Goethe could only dissect and
describe ; in the melodious sadness of the personal retro
spects in " Resignation," " A Southern Night," and " Self-
Dependence ; " in the large concessions to Heine's satiric
genius, made in the verses composed at his tomb at Mont-
martre; in the consciously hopeless cravings of "-The
Scholar Gipsy " and " Thyrsis " after a reconciliation
between the intellect of man and the magic of Nature ;
and, most characteristically of all, in the willing half-
sympathy given by Mr. Arnold to those ascetics of the
Grande Chartreuse, whom his intellect condemns, and in
the even deeper enthusiasm with which he addresses, in
the midst of melancholy Alpine solitudes, that modern
refugee from a sick world, the author of "Obermann,"
delineates the intellectual weakness and dejection of the
age, and feebly though poetically shadows forth his own
hopeless hope of a remedy. In all these poems alike, and
many others which I have not space to enumerate — in
all, indeed, in which Mr. Arnold's genius really gains a
voice — there is " the sweetness, gravity, strength, beauty,
and the languor of death," blended in the spirit of a calm
contemplativeness which takes all the edge off anguish
and makes the poet's pains "majestic;" for Mr. Arnold's
poems are one long variation on a single theme, the
divorce between the soul and the intellect, and the depth
of spiritual regret and yearning which that divorce pro
duces. Yet there is a didactic keenness with the languor,
S 2

2&o.. THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
an eagerness of purpose with the despondency, which give
half the individual flavour to his lyrics. A note of con
fidence lends authority to his scepticism ; the tone of his
sadness is self-contained, sure, anii^venjnrpjirious, instead
of showing the ordinary rel^xatioruofjoss ; and the reader
of his poetry is apt to rise from it with the same curious
questioning in his mind which Mr. Arnold has put into the
mouth of Nature, in the verses called "Morality," — a
questioning after the origin of " that severe, that earnest
air," which breathes through poetry of all but hopeless
yearning and all but unmixed regret.
No doubt one kind of answer to this question is, that Mr.
Arnold has inherited from the great teacher of Rugby and
historian of the Punic War the lofty didactic impulse which
marks all his prose and poetry alike, although the sub
stance of the lessons he is so eager to give has sadly
dwindled in the descent from father to son. But that is
but one sort of answer, explaining rather the source
of the peculiar strain in his temperament which has
impressed a certain nervous depth and moral "dis
tinction" upon poetry of which the drift is uniformly a
realistic melancholy, than the source from which he has
fed the flame of his genius, and justified the calm egotism
of its literary rescripts. Intellectually, Mr. Arnold's
descent, as he himself is always foremost to acknowledge,
is to be derived in almost equal degree from Goethe the
,critic and artist, and from Wordsworth the poet ; both of
them, observe, marked by the same character of clear,
(self-contained, thoughtful, heroic egotism. I say Goethe
the critic and artist— for I recognise but little, in Goethe's
deepest and most perfect vein of poetry, of that conscious
self-culture and that lucidity of enthusiastic self-study,
which lend the charm to his conversations, his novels, and
his criticisms. And Mr. Arnold, even in his capacity of
poet — I am not about to touch his essays, except so far

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD, 2bi
as they throw a light on his poetry — is always aiming at
self-culture ; and singing, not songs of involuntary melody,
but of carefully-attuned aspiration or regret. From both
Goethe and Wordsworth, again, he has learned to treat
his own individuality with a certain exaltation of touch,
an air of Olympian dignity and grace, which lends the
fascination of " the grand style " to lyrics so sad that they
might otherwise trail upon the earth too slack and limp a
growth. Mr. Arnold has always impressed on his poems
that air of aristocratic selectness and conscious exclusive-
ness which Goethe, even after being the popular poet of
Germany, claimed for his own writings. Eckermann tells
how, going to dine with Goethe one day in 1828, and find
ing him dressed in " the black frock-coat and star in which
I (Eckermann) always liked best to see him," the stately
old man took him aside into the window, apart from the
rest of the dinner company, only to make the following
confidence : —
" ' Dear child,' he said, ' I will confide something to you, which will at once
give you a lift over many puzzles, and which may be an assistance to you
throughout your whole life. { My writings cannot become popular ; anyone
who thinks they can, and strives to make them so, is in error. They are
not written for the masses, but only for individual men who themselves
desire and seek something analogous, and who are pursuing similar lines
of thought.'"
One can well imagine Mr. Arnold, some twenty years
hence, dressed with similar care, and wearing the order
conferred upon him the other day by the King of Italy for
his services to the Duke, of Genoa, making a precisely
similar confidence to some "young lion of the Daily
Telegraph " engaged in the study of his writings, and dis
turbed at finding that his poems secure so much less recog
nition from the people than those of Tennyson or Morris.
And he would be far more in the right than Goethe, for
Goethe's songs are popular in their very essence; it is

262 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
only those of his writings where his cool reflective spirit
has found expression, like "Tasso," or "Iphigenia," or
" Wilhelm Meister," or "Faust," to which his ingenuous
confidence to Eckermann can properly apply. But a
similar confession would apply to all Mr. Arnold's poems,
for they draw their life entirely from the proud self-conscious
zone of modern experience, and have scarcely given forth
one single note of popular grief or joy. It would apply,
too, for a different reason, to almost all Wordsworth's
poems, not because Wordsworth belonged to the aristo
cratic school of modern culture — quite the reverse; but
because he steeped himself in the rapture of a meditative
solitude which puts him at a distance from all mankind,
and makes him loom large, as it were, out of the magnify
ing folds of one of his own mountain mists.
But Mr. Arnold, in borrowing from Goethe the artist and
critic, and from Wordsworth the poet, something of what
I have called their style of clear heroic egotism, has not
borrowed from either of them the characteristic motive
and individuality which in them justifies that style. Had
he done so he could not be the original poet he is. He is
neither the poet of mere self-culture, nor the solitary
interpreter of Nature, but something between the two ; a
careful student and graphic, as well as delicate, expositor
of the spiritual pangs and restlessness of this age on the
one hand, and of the refreshments and anodynes to be
derived from Nature on the other. And he is more or less
conscious, moreover, in spite of some youthful theories of
the true function of poetry which he has had to disregard,
that it is in the elaborate delineation of his own poetic
individuality that these distresses and these consolations
receive their reconciliation and their best chance of being
practically combined. He feels that his poetic personality
has a certain grandeur and meaning in it ; that while he
has something of Goethe's calm critical eye for human life

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 263
and its confusions, he has also something of the meditative
thirst and meditative pleasures of Wordsworth; and ¦ that
the combination of these two poetic qualifications gives
him a distinctive power of his own. " Non me tua turbida
terrent dicta," he said once in his majestic way to his
critics, "Dii me terrent et Jupiter hostis." There is no
better key to his true poetical aims than this passage from
the very characteristic poem, addressed in November,
1 849, to the author of " Obermann : " —
"Yet of the spirits who have reign'd
In this our troubled day,
I know but two, who have attain'd,
Save thee, to see their way.
By England's lakes, in grey old age,
His quiet home one keeps ;
And one, the strong, much-toiling sage
In German Weimar sleeps.
But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken
From half of human fate ;
And Goethe's course few sons of men
May think to emulate.
For he pursued a lonely road,
His eyes on Nature's plan ;
Neither made man too much a God,
Nor God too much a man.
Strong was he, with a spirit free
From mists, and sane, and clear ;
Clearer, how much ! than ours — yet we
Have a worse course to steer.
******
But we brought forth and reartt in hours
Of change, alarm, surprise,
What shelter to grow ripe is ours ?
What leisure to grow wise ?
******
Too fast we live, too much are tried,
Too harass'd, to attain
Wordsworth's sweet calm, or Goethe's wide
And luminous view to gain."

264 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Nevertheless, that is precisely the combination which
Mr. Arnold has tried to attain for himself, and which he
aims at illustrating, through himself, for others. He tries
to combine a spirit " free from mists, and sane, and clear,"
with Wordsworth's " sweet calm " and pleasure in the fresh
ness of Nature. And if he has in any degree succeeded, he
knows that the success will best be realised, as those great
masters' greater successes were realised, in a delineation
of his own poetic individuality. Accordingly, it is really
self-delineation of a kind like to theirs, though self-deli
neation of aims and aspirations about midway between
theirs, which gives the charm to his poems. In all his
poetical successes, it is easy to distinguish two distinct
strands : first, the clear recognition (with Goethe) of our
spiritual unrest, and the manful effort to control it ; next,
the clear recognition (with Wordsworth) of the balm to be
found in sincere communion with Nature. To the treat
ment of both these elements indeed he has given a certain
freshness and individuality of his own.
I will first indicate generally his treatment of the
former point. His characteristic effort on this side has
been to introduce into a delineation, at once consistent
and various in its aspects, of the intellectual difficulties,
hesitations, and distresses of cultivated minds in the nine
teenth century, a vein of imperious serenity — what he him
self calls " sanity " of treatment — which may stimulate the
mind to bear the pain of constantly disappointed hope.
Yet, oddly enough, his early theory of poetry would have
restrained him from giving us such a picture of moral and
intellectual sufferings at all ; and he for a time suppressed a
poem, " Empedocles on Etna," which had already gained a
certain reputation, and which, beneath a thin disguise of
antiquity, discussed half the religious difficulties of modern
days, simply because he declared it poetically faulty to
choose a situation in which " everything is to be endured,

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 265
nothing to be done." It was a condemnation of every
successful poem he has written, emphatically so of the
long expositions of our modern spiritual paralysis and
fever in the two poems to the author of " Obermann," of
the lines at Heine's grave, of the stanzas at the Grande
Chartreuse ; indeed, we may say, of all his poems except
the classic play "Merope," which probably Mr. Arnold
himself now regards as a failure, since he does not include
it in his collected poems.
" Empedocles on Etna," according to Mr. Arnold in his
preface to the edition of 1853, was poetically faulty because
it was a picture of " a continuous state of mental distress,
unrelieved by incident or hope," which is quite true, and
not less true of almost all his other poems. But when he
added that it was also unrelieved by " resistance," he was
unjust to himself. What alone renders all the delineation of
spiritual bewilderment which pervades this poem endur
able, is that there is a steady current of resistance, a
uniform " sanity " of self-control in the treatment of the
painful symptoms so subtly described. Empedocles, in the
course of his meditations on suicide on the slopes of Etna,
no doubt dwells much on the feeble and false religious
philosophy of the time, the credulous self-flatteries of
human sophistry, and the sharp antagonism between clear
self-knowledge and the superstitions of the age ; but he
also makes a vigorous appeal to the manliness, fortitude,
and sobriety of spirit with which all the disappointments
and failures of humanity ought to be met, asserts that it is
the part of a man of true wisdom to curb immoderate
desires, to bow to the might of forces he cannot control, •
and, while nursing no " extravagant hope," to yield to no
despair. And when, after thus completely justifying his
own " sanity of soul," he confesses himself unable to act as
he approves, and leaps into the fiery crater, the reader
feels that the blunder of the poet has not been in colouring

266 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
the suffering too highly— for it Is not highly coloured—
but in selecting for the sufferer a man of too low a courage,
and in making his acts a foil to his thoughts. So far from
there being no resistance, no breakwater opposed to the
flowing tides of mental suffering, Empedocles creates the
sole interest of the poem by his manly swimming against
that stream of despondency to which later he suddenly
abandons himself without sufficient cause assigned. It is
like the parable of the man who said " I go not," and then
went, without giving any glimpse of the reason for his
change of mind— a parable which, without any attempt to
fill in the missing link, would certainly not be a sufficient
subject for a poem. It seems to me striking enough that
the very charm of Mr. Arnold's method in dealing with
this hectic fever of the modern intellect, — for Empedocles,
if a true ancient, is certainly a still truer modern in his
argument, — is due to his own inconsistency; is due, that is,
to the fact that when his subject required him to paint and
justify the last stages of moral despondency, and when his
intellectual view was sceptical enough to be in sympathy
with his subject, he could not help expending his chief
strength in cutting away the moral ground from under his
hero's feet, by insisting that the well-spring of despair
was, after all, not in the hostility of Nature or of human
circumstances, but in the licence of immoderate desires
and of insatiable self-will. And it is so throughout his
poems. He cannot paint the restlessness of the soul —
though he paints it vividly and well — without painting
also the attitude of resistance to it, without giving the
impression of a head held high above it, a nature that
fixes the limits beyond which the corrosion of distrust and
doubt shall not go, a deep speculative melancholy kept at
bay, not by faith, but by a kind of imperious temperance
of nature. This is the refrain of almost all his poems.
He yields much to this melancholy — intellectually, we

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 267
should say, almost everything — but morally, he bids it
keep its distance, and forbids it to engulph him.
It is this singular equipoise between the doubts that
devour him, and the intrepid sobriety that excites him to
resistance, which gives the peculiar tone to Mr. Arnold's
poems. He has not the impulse or abandon of nature for a
pure lyric melancholy, such as Shelley could pour forth
in words that almost make the heart weep, as, for in
stance, in the "Lines Written in Dejection in Naples."
Again, Mr. Arnold has nothing of the proud faith that
conquers melancholy, and that gives to the poems of
Wordsworth their tone of rapture. Yet he hits a wonder
ful middle note between the two. The " lyrical cry," as he
himself has finely designated the voice in which the true
poetic exaltation of feeling expresses itself, is to be found
in a multitude of places in his poems ; but in him it
neither utters the dejection of the wounded spirit, nor the
joy of the victorious spirit, but rather the calm of a stead
fast equanimity in conflict with an unconquerable, and yet
also unconquering destiny — a firm mind, without either
deep shadows of despair or high lights of faith, only the
lucid dusk of an intellectual twilight. Perhaps there is no
more characteristic specimen of the exact note of Mr.
Arnold's "lyrical cry" than the close of the fine poem
called " Resignation : " —
" Enough, we live ! — and if a life,
With large results so little rife,
Though bearable, seem hardly worth
This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth ;
Yet, Fausta ! the mute turf we tread.
The solemn hills around us spread,
This stream which falls incessantly,
The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely sky,
If I might lend their life a voice,
Seem to bear rather than rejoice.
And even could the intemperate prayer
Man iterates, while these forbear,

268 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
For movement, for an ampler sphere,
Pierce Fate's impenetrable ear,
Not milder is the general lot
Because our spirits have forgot,
In action's dizzying eddy whiri'd,
The something that infects the world."

Such is the general nature of the human strand in Mr.
Arnold's poetry, the restless spiritual melancholy which
he pictures, resists, and condemns. But there is another
permanent strand in it, that due partly to his love for
Wordsworth, and partly to his love for Nature, of whom
Wordsworth was the greatest of modern priests. Mr.
Arnold finds in the beauty and sublimity of natural scenes
the best assuagement of intellectual unrest and moral
perplexities. Nature is his balm for every woe. He does
not find in her, as Wordsworth did, the key to any of
life's mysteries, or the source of hope, but only the best
kifrd of distraction, which, while it does not relax but
rather elevates the tone of the spirit, and even furnishes
it with a certain number of symbols for its thought and
emotion, also lightens the burden of the mystery by
its cooling and refreshing influence. The "languor of
death," of which Hazlitt speaks, as characterising " Lao-
damia," and of which I have said that it is also charac
teristic of Mr. Arnold's poetry, drives him to Nature for
relief; and though it generally haunts him even under
Nature's sweetest spell, yet you can see that he finds the
relief, that the languor is less, and the pulse stronger while
he dwells on Nature's life. And it is this sense of pure
refreshment in Nature, this ease of mind she partially
brings him, this calm amid feverish strife, this dew after
hot thought, that determines the style of his studies of
Nature. His poetry of this kind is the sweetest, the most
tranquillising, the most quieting of its sort to be found
in English literature. In Wordsworth, Nature is the

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 269
occasion, but his own mind always the object, of thought,
whether, amidst the "host of golden daffodils," he exercises
" that inward eye that is the bliss of solitude," or finds in
the teaching of a daisy the true medicine for discontent.
You cannot plunge yourself in the poetry of Wordsworth
without being mentally braced and refreshed ; but then it
takes an effort to enter into a world so unique, " so solemn
and serene," and so far removed from that of ordinary life.
Throw off the yoke of the world sufficiently to steep your
self in Wordsworth, and no doubt the refreshment is more
complete and the flow of new strength more full than
you can expect from the verse of Mr. Arnold; for Mr.
Arnold's poetry of Nature is not like Wordsworth's, a
newly-created meditative universe, distilled by the poet's
mind out of Nature ; it is a delicate transcript of Nature,
painted in the clear, dewy water-colours of tranquil
memory. What he says of his own debt to Wordsworth
would, if it did not imply a more vivifying and animating
influence than Mr. Arnold's poetry ever really exerts, be
more nearly applicable to most men's debt to him : —
" He laid us as we lay at birth,
On the cool flowery lap of earth ;
Smiles broke from us, and we had ease.
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit fields again ;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth retum'd ; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead —
Spirits dried up and closely furl'd —
The freshness of the early world."
Now that does not strike me as by any means an accurate
description of the influence of Wordsworth's poetry on
the mind. Wordsworth does not restore us to the ease
and freshness of our youth, he rather baptizes us in his
own strong and unique spirit. He has a spell of his own,
no doubt a cooling and refreshing one, but also a powerful

270 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
and transforming one. It is due to the strong, keen,
meditative simplicity of a mind that is as full of rapture as
it is full of insight. It is Wordsworth himself far more
than the lark he watched, whose "canopy of glorious
light " snatches us out of ourselves, and from whom we
learn to be true " to the kindred points of heaven and
home." It is Wordsworth himself far more than the cuckoo
to which he listened " till he did beget that golden time
again," who tells us the old enchanting tale " of visionary
hours." The strength and freshness which Wordsworth
gives us is not the strength and freshness of childhood
or youth, but the strength and freshness of a poet on
whom " the power of hills " had rested till he lived in a
purer world than ours. When Wordsworth says of the
solitary reaper, —
" Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain.
Oh listen ! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound ! "
— the charm is far less in the song, of which he gives so
thrilling a conception, than in those grateful " impulses of
deeper birth " springing out of his own heart, of which
he tells us a still more thrilling story. Wordsworth is the
last poet of whom I should say that he makes us chil
dren again. He gives us a new youth, not the old— a
youth of deeper serenity, and of a far more truly spiritual
joy. But, for that very reason, it takes an effort to plunge
into him ; the change from the busy and crowded levels of
human life to his poetry is too great and sudden to be
easily taken; it requires a regeneration of our senses as
well as a change of scene. But with Mr. Arnold it is
different. He does not create for us a new world out of
the suggestions and influences of Nature, he only makes
us feel keenly the beauty and delicacy of the spectacle
which Nature, as she is in her gentler and more subdued

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 271
moods, presents to us, and her strange power of resting
and refreshing the mind wearied by small human respon
sibilities. His eye is always on the object itself, not on
the spiritual lesson it discloses. And he paints in the
most restful way. He never concentrates, like Tennyson,
so that the imagination is at some pain to follow all the
touches crowded into little space ; he never disembodies,
like Shelley, till it becomes an effort to apprehend
essences so rare ; it is seldom that he paints, like Byron,
with a brush dipped as deeply in the glowing passions of
his own heart as in the colours of the external world.
He paints Nature, like the author of "The Elegy in a
Country Churchyard," with the cool liquid, rather weary
tone of one who comes to the scenery to take a heart
from it, instead of giving the heart to it ; but he does it
with infinitely more of the modern tenderness and insight
for Nature than Gray possessed, and with far more flowing
and continuous descriptive power — far less of that polished
mosaic-work manner which makes Gray's verses read as
if he had forgotten most of the preceding links before
completing and enamelling the next link in the chain.
In Mr. Arnold's studies of Nature you see the quiet
external scene with exquisite lucidity, but you see also,
instead of a mirror of laborious and almost painful elabo
ration, as you do in Gray, a tranquillised spirit, which
reflects like a clear lake the features of the scene. Take,
for example, this picture of a wet and stormy English
spring and a soft deep English summer, from the lovely
poem "Thyrsis," written in commemoration of Mr. Arnold's
early friend, Arthur Hugh Clough : —
" So, some tempestuous morn in early June,
When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er,
Before the roses and the longest day —
When garden walks and all the grassy floor
With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May

272 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
And chestnut flowers are strewn —
So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees
Come, with the volleying rain and tossing breeze :
The bloom is gone and with the bloom go I !
Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go ?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet- William with his homely cottage-smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow ;
Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening-star."
It would be impossible to give with greater ease as well
as delicacy a true picture of these scenes, and with it the
subtler flavour of a real rest of spirit in them. The
"volleying" rain, the "tossing" breeze, the "vext"
garden-trees, and the grass strewn with shed May and
chestnut blossoms, call up the very life of a squally spring
day in England, as do the "high Midsummer pomps,"
the " roses that down the alleys shine afar," the " open,
jasmine-muffled lattices," the " groups under the dreaming
garden-trees," and the white moon and star, the very life
of an English midsummer night ; and yet the whole has
a tinge of careful tenderness and peace that tells you of
the refreshment of these images to the writer. The " vext
garden trees" could have been spoken of as "vext" only
by one who had a true delight in their air of tranquillity,
just as they could have been described as " dreaming " in
the midsummer moonlight only by one who had the
deepest feeling for this visionary beauty of contrast between
the white light streaming over them, and the black shade
beneath. Again, " roses that down the alleys shine afar,"
is a line sufficiently betraying how deeply the fair pro
spective of an English garden is engraved on the poet's

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 273
imagination, while the reproaches lavished on the " too
quick despairer " for the hasty neglect of so rich a feast
of beauty, strikes the key-note to the feeling of the whole.
Nor is this passage in any sense a peculiar instance of
Mr. Arnold's flowing, lucid, and tender mode of painting
Nature. In all his descriptive passages — and they are
many and beautiful — it is the same. He is never buoyant
and bright indeed, but the scene is always drawn with a
gentle ease and grace, suggesting that it springs up in
the poet's imagination with as rapid and natural a growth
as the strokes which delineate it before your eyes, for he
makes no heavy draft upon your imaginative power to
follow him ; you seem to be sharing with him the very
vision which he paints ; and as to moral effect, the impres
sions that these pictures make is something between
wistful enjoyment, quiet yearning, and regretful peace;
it is always one of rest, but always of a rest that is not
fully satisfying — the rest of which the poet himself says,
" Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well." And it
is characteristic of Mr. Arnold, that in closing his longer
poems, even when they are poems of narrative, he is very
fond of ending with a passage of purely naturalistic
description which shadows forth something more than it
actually paints, and yet leaves the field of suggestion
absolutely to the reader's own fancy. Thus, after paint
ing the fatal conflict between Sohrab and Rustum, in
which the famous old warrior Rustum gives the death-
wound to his own son, in ignorance that he is his son,
Mr. Arnold, after giving us the tender farewell of Sohrab
to his father when the discovery is made, concludes with
this, most beautiful passage, in which the accomplished
geographer turns the half-scientific, half-poetical pleasure
which he always betrays in defining a geographical
course, to the purpose of providing a poetical anodyrie
VOL. II. T

274 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
for the pain which the tragic ending has, or ought to have,
given : — " But the majestic river floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
Into the frosty starlight, and there moved,
Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmiam waste,
Under the solitary moon ; — he flow'd
Right for the polar star, past Orgunje,
Brimming and bright, and large ; then sands begin
To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
And split his currents ; that for many a league
The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles—
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain cradle in Pamere,
A foil'd circuitous wanderer — till at last
The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens, bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea."
Of course the intention may have been to make the flow
of the Oxus, " out of the mist and hum of that low land,
into the frosty starlight," and through the " beds of sand
and matted rushy isles," which make him a " foiled, cir
cuitous wanderer," till at last, his " luminous home of
waters opens, bright and tranquil," a sort of parable of the
unhappy Rustum's great career and the peace of his
passing away; but nothing of this is so much as hinted,
and we should rather say that, though the course of a
great river may be selected rathei; than any other scene of
natural beauty, for the vague analogy it presents to the
chequered life of a great leader, the intention of the poet
is simply to refresh his own mind after the spectacle of
misspent heroism and clouded destiny, with the image of
one of Nature's greater works in which there seems to be
the same kind of vicissitude, the same loss of pristine force
and grandeur, and yet a recovery of all and more than all
the majestic volume and triumphant strength of the earlier
period at the' end. Mr. Arnold always seems to feel that

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 275
the proper anodyne for the pain of lacerated hearts, is the
contemplation of the healing and the peace which are to
be found inherent in the vital energies of Nature ; but his
view never seems to be to use these natural analogies as a
vague augury of happier fortunes for his characters than it
suits his purpose as a poet to paint, but rather simply to
recall that there is a great restorative power in the life of
Nature to which we ought to turn for relief, whenever the
spectacle of disease and disorder and distress becomes
overpowering. It is in this sense, we suppose, that Mr.
Arnold ends the poem on that feeling of hopeless conflict
with his age which led Empedocles to plunge into the
crater of Etna, by the following exquisite picture of the
classical haunt of the Greek Muses : —
" Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame ;
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.
Not here, O Apollo !
Are haunts meet for thee,
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea.
Where the moon-silvered inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice !
On the sward at the cliff-top
Lie strewn the white flocks,
On the cliff-side the pigeons
Roost deep in the rocks.
In the moonlight the shepherds,
Soft lulled by the rills,
Lie wrapt in their blankets,
Asleep on the hills.
— What forms are these coming
So white through the gloom ?
What garments out-glistening
The gold-flowered broom ?
T 2

276 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
What sweet-breathing presence
Out-perfumes the thyme ?
What voices enrapture
The night's balmy prime ?
'Tis Apollo comes leading
His choir, the Nine.
— The leader is fairest,
But all are divine.
They are lost in the hollows ;
They stream up again !
What seeks on this mountain
The glorified train ? —
They bathe on this mountain,
In the spring by their road ;
Then on to Olympus,
Their endless abode !
— Whose praise do they mention ?
Of what is it told ?—
What will be for ever ;
What was from of old.
First hymn they the Father
Of all things ; — and then,
The rest of immortals,
The action of men.
The day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm ;
The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm."
A more perfect intellectual anodyne for the pain of a
sick mind, doubting if its own true life could be harmo
nized with the life of the great universe, it would be difficult
to conceive ; it solves no problem, it lifts no veil, but it
sings of perfect beauty, human effort, and celestial rest, as
if they could really be harmonized in the same bright
vision, and so hushes for a moment the tumultuous pulses
of the heart. And this is Mr. Arnold's habitual use of
Nature. He loves to steep his poems in the colours of the
great mountain landscapes, or the cool mountain pastures,
or the star-lit summer sea ; but it is as a febrifuge from

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 277
restlessness and doubt, a draught in which he can find not
joy but relief, not peace but a sad serenity. Let us give
one final instance in the poem called "A Summer's
Night," where, after depicting the exhausting duties
assigned by the world to the world's labourers, and the
disastrous wreck which falls upon those who break away
from the world's fetters, he concludes in a strain somewhat
more explicit than usual, by affirming that in the great
world of Nature there is something, which, though it
cannot indeed satisfy the heart, still can teach us fortitude,
and instil into the soul a few drops of stoic grandeur : —
"Is there no life, but these alone ?
Madman or slave, must man be one ?
Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain !
Clearness divine !
Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm, and though so great,
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate !
Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil,
And, though so task'd, keep free from dust and soil ;
I will not say that your mild deeps retain
A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain
Who have long'd deeply once, and long'd in vain ;
But I will rather say that you remain
A world above man's head to let him see
How boundless might his soul's horizons be,
How vast, yet of what clear transparency !
How it were good to live there, and breathe free !
How fair a lot to fill
Is left to each man still ! "
I have now sketched slightly the two main strands in
Mr. Arnold's poetry, and am in a position to consider
better his specific power of poetic expression and the
degree of success and failure shown in the more striking
of his poems. His power of poetic expression is founded
on a delicate simplicity of taste — such a simplicity
as we might fairly expect from the student of Goethe
and Wordsworth; from one, moreover, who shows the

278 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
finest insight into Greek poetry, and who has a highly
cultivated appreciation both for the specific aroma of
words and for the poetical atmosphere of thought. Sim
plicity is the characteristic fruit of all these studies and
tastes, and perhaps Mr. Arnold's bitterest reproach
against this modern world of " change, alarm, surprise,"
is the medley of unblest emotions, and turbid, obscure
feelings which it thrusts upon us, leaving us hardly a single
moment of real lucidity to " possess our souls " before we
die. Hence his own poetic style is remarkable for its
scholarlike delicacy and genuine simplicity of touch (we
' doubt if one awkward or turgid word is to be found in his
poems) ; and if his ear for rhythm is not equal to his
insight into the expressive power of words, it is only in the
poems of recitative that this fault is observable. He has
not caught from his fine studies of Homer the exquisite
music of the Homeric wave of rhythm ; but he has caught
his clearness of atmosphere, what he himself has so finely
termed "the pure lines of an Ionian horizon, the liquid
clearness of an Ionian sky."
So much as I have yet said of Mr. Arnold's power
of expression has relation only to form — to all which
is implied in delicacy of discernment of the force of
language, and preference for simplicity of subject in
what he treats. But the special direction in which Mr.
Arnold's power of poetic expression is chiefly shown is,
as what I have said of the burden of his lyrical poems
will of course imply, that of sedate and half-intellectual
emotions, especially those which turn towards Nature
with tender and melancholy yearning. Now it is this
purity and simplicity of taste which give to Mr.
Arnold's style an open-air freshness, affording a delight
ful variety to that element of sedate majesty which I
have noted in him. Take, for instance, the beautiful song
already quoted, in which Callicles describes the haunt of

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 279
the Muses, and notice how limpid and fresh is the English
as well as the thought, and yet how sedate and stately the
general effect. I will recall only the two lovely verses : —
" What forms are these coming
So white through the gloom ?
What garments out-glistening
The gold-flowered broom ?
What sweet-breathing presence
Out-perfumes the thyme ?
What voices enrapture
The night's balmy prime ? "
Observe here the exquisitely classical English idiom
" out-glistening " and " out-perfume," which conveys with
so much simplicity, precision, and grace the rivalry
between the charms of the Muses and of Nature, and the
surpassingness of the former. Again, the use of the word
" enrapture," for the joy which the divine voices diffuse
through the moon-lit air, is a stroke of genius in itself, so
happily does it convey the identification of the singer with
the scene, and with so much simple stateliness of effect.
Or take this lovely picture of Thames scenery near Oxford
in "The Scholar Gipsy," — a picture that is the perfect
embodiment of " sweetness and light :" —
" For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground !
Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe,
Returning home on summer nights, have met
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punt's rope chops round ;
-- AncTleaning backward in a pensive dream,
< And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers
Pluck'd in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers,
And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream ! "
It would be impossible to express the tenderness of
feeling which scenery long loved and studied excites in
the heart — not by its mere beauty, but by its associa-

28o THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
tions also — with more perfect simplicity, and yet not
without grandeur of movement and dignity of feeling.
The latter effect is gained partly by the cadence of the
verse, which in this poem is always perfectly musical
and sedate, and partly by the character of the expres
sion, for instance, by a tinge of gentle condescension (as
in the expression "the stripling Thames"), and the
careful benignity of the whole detail. The simplicity
is gained partly by the perfectly poetical and yet tech
nical naturalness of the line, " As the punt's rope chops
round," which is poetical, because it brings the peculiar
motion so vividly before you; partly by the happy ten
derness of the line, "Fostering in thy lap a heap of
flowers," to convey the conscious pleasure of both tend
ing and touching them; but mostly by the perfectly
easy flow of the language, and the still lucidity of the
verse. But Mr. Arnold hardly exercises the full magic
of his characteristic power of poetical expression until
he is in the mood in which some sad, though calm,
emotion is the predominant thread of his thought, and
natural beauty only the auxiliary to it ; till he is in the
mood in which, if his heart flies to his eyes, it is only to
find some illustration for the enigmas pent up within it,
some new image for the incommunicability of human joy
and grief, for the pain that results from the division of
the soul against itself, for the restlessness which yearns
inconsistently for sympathy and for solitude, and rebounds
like a shuttlecock from the one desire to the other. No
line, for instance, in the whole range of English poetry is
fuller of depth of expression than that which closes one of
the poems to Marguerite, the poem which begins with
the sad cry — " Yes ! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless, watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone!'

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.

281

— where Mr. Arnold ends his melancholy reverie by
confessing that it was God's will which decreed this
strange isolation, " And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb' d, salt, estranging sea"
That last line is inexhaustible in beauty and force.
Without any false emphasis or prolix dwelling on the
matter, it shadows out to you the plunging deep-sea
lead and the eerie cry of "no soundings," recalls that
saltness of the sea which takes from water every refreshing
association, every quality that helps to slake thirst or
supply sap, and then concentrates all these dividing
attributes, which strike a sort of lonely terror into the
soul, into the one word " estranging." It is a line full of
intensity, simplicity, and grandeur — a line to possess and
haunt the imagination. And the same exceptional force
of expression comes out not unfrequently under the
shadow of similar emotions.
Nothing, for instance, can have more force of its
peculiar kind than the description of the blended delight
in Nature and disappointment in Man felt by the
French recluse, the author of " Obermann," who fled from
the world he disdained to brood over its maladies in
French woods and Swiss huts —
" In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,
Or chalets near the Alpine snow."
There is a mixed simplicity and exaltation of feeling
in the following lines, which few English poets have
surpassed : — " I turn thy leaves ! I feel thy breath
Once more upon me roll ;
That air of languor, cold, and death,
Which brooded o'er thy soul.

28z THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
A fever in these pages burns
Beneath the calm they feign ;
A wounded human spirit turns,
Here, on its bed of pain.
Yes, though the virgin mountain air
Fresh through these pages blows,
Though to these leaves the glaciers spare
The soul of their mute snows ;
Though here a mountain-murmur swells
Of many a dark-bough'd pine,
Though, as you read, you hear the bells
Of the high-pasturing kine —
Yet, through the hum of torrent lone,
And brooding mountain-bee,
There sobs I know not what ground tone
Of human agony ! "
Nor is the opening of this poem at all more character
istic of the special power of its author than its close. There
is indeed something, more almost of peroration than of the
last swell of a lyric emotion, in the poet's adieu to the
hero of his reverie : —
" Farewell ! Under the sky we part,
In this stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will ! O broken heart,
A last, a last farewell ! "
And that leads me to remark how very near poetry of
this order — the predominant emotion of which, however
sad, is always sedate and stately in its movement — often
approaches to the nobler rhetoric, — of which, indeed, gran
deur of total effect, with simplicity of elementary structure,
are the main conditions. The object of the verse I have just
quoted seems to be almost as nearly one of persuasion, i.e.
oratorical, as one of expression, i.e. poetical. It reads
more like an indirect but conscious effort to subdue the
reader's mind into a mood of compassionate admiration for
the author of " Obermann," than a mere utterance of the
poet's own feeling; — it is more eloquent than pathetic.

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 283
And where, as often happens in other poems — in the very
fine continuation of this same poem, for instance — Mr.
Arnold's thread of sentiment is much more directly didactic
than it is here (and this is especially the case in his pieces
of unrhymed recitative, where the leading idea is usually a
train of thought rather than feeling, and very frequently a
train of very directly hortative or argumentative thought),
the rhetorical often predominates greatly over the poetical
vein, and seems to court direct comparison rather with the
effusions of the improvisatore than with those of the singer.
In such pieces the verse fails — when it does fail — as the
inspiration of the improvisatore fails, more from a subsi
dence of the initial impulse, than from artistic exhaustion
of the theme, or inadequate command of language to work
out fully the conception of the imagination. Take, for
instance, among the rhymed pieces, the eloquent indict
ment brought against Death, as if it involved a sort of
breach of faith with the instinctive youthful hope for some
fulness of earthly rapture, in the piece called "Youth and
Calm." No one can read it without noticing the regularly
mounting steps of an impassioned speech, rather than the
imperceptibly graduated concentration of feeling natural
to a lyrical poem : —
" But ah, though peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
Though nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
Yet is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth ?
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said ?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes ?
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbour in the tomb ?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one

284 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath —
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death !
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep ;
It hears a voice within it tell :
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well!
'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But 'tis not what our youth desires."*
Only here, what should be the peroration is an anticlimax.
The best illustrations, however, of the rhetorical cast of a
good deal of Mr. Arnold's poetry are to be found in the
recitatives which find so much favour in his sight, but in
which the perfect simplicity and lucidity of structure of
his rhymed poems are sometimes — not always — remark
ably deficient. The music of rhymed verse always seems
to bind him down to the simpler ranges of human expe
rience. He does not resemble Shelley, who, like his own
skylark, seems to sing most sweetly as he rises into the
rarified air of abstract essences. On the contrary, Mr.
Arnold is always awakened to homelier feelings by the
melody of verse, and is never so lucid and concrete as
when he has to meet the exigencies of a complex stanza
such as he uses in " The Scholar-Gipsy," and " Thyrsis."
The little speech which I have just quoted on the con
trast between the youthful hopes of earthly bliss and the
sad calm of early death is rhetorical in structure, but it
is the pathetic rhetoric of a troubled heart, descanting on
the experience of almost every home. When, however,
Mr. Arnold chooses the unrhymed dactylic or anapaestic
metres for his oratory, though he is often extremely
eloquent, and sometimes even rich in pictorial effect, he is
apt to be cold and grandiose, and now and then even to be
* I have taken this poem in its earliest form— in " Poems by A." Mr.
Arnold's modifications of old poems seem to me to be seldom changes
for the better.

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 285
obscure — a sin of which he is rarely indeed guilty. The
contrast may be best seen, though it would be impossible
in any small space to illustrate it adequately, in the com
parison between the second poem addressed to the author
of " Obermann " (" Obermann Once More," vol. ii. p. 239),
and the poem which follows it, and closes the volumes,
called "The Future." They are on kindred subjects, the
first tracing the signs of the immediate future of modern
religion; the second, the relation generally of the ten
dencies of the Future to those of the Past. The Pantheistic
vein of thought and sentiment pervades both poems alike,
— and it is one which, as I need hardly say, runs counter to
my own deepest convictions, — but there is a vast difference
between the two as poems. The former is full of human
yearning and pathos, of definite picture, and clear imagery ;
the latter is a dim vapour of eloquent dissertation, in
which, indeed, there are vaguely seen some of the bright
tints of the rainbow, but there is no warmth and no clear
ness ; it is grandiose without grandeur, nebulous without
mystery. Within moderate limits I do not know that I can
give a finer specimen at once of the frequently high oratory
of these choric outbursts of Mr. Arnold's didactic genius,
and also of the frequent tendency in them to overpass the
impulse which gave them birth, than in the deservedly
celebrated lines at Heine's grave, in which Mr. Arnold
passes from criticism of the bitter German poet into a
grand image for this Philistine nation of ours — its blind
ness and its strength ; but unfortunately does not stop
there, falling into bathos as he proceeds : —
" I chide thee not, that thy sharp
Upbraidings often assail'd
England, my country ; for we,
Troublous and sad, for her sons,
Long since, deep in our hearts,
Echo the blame of her foes.
We, too, sigh that she flags !
We, too, say that she now,

286 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Scarce comprehending the voice
Of her greatest, golden-mouth'd sons
Of a former age any more,
Stupidly travels her round
Of mechanic business, and lets
Slow die out of her life
Glory, and genius, and joy !
So thou arraign'st her, her foe.
So we arraign her, her sons.
Yes, we arraign her ! but she,
The weary Titan ! with deaf
Ears, and labour-dimm'd eyes,
Regarding neither to right
Nor left, goes passively by,
Staggering on to her goal ;
Bearing on shoulders immense,
Atlantean, the load,
Well-nigh not to be borne,
Of the too vast orb of her fate.
But was it thou — I think
Surely it was — that bard
Unnamed, who, Goethe said,
Had every other gift, but wanted love;
Love, without which the tongue
Even of angels sounds amiss ?
Charm is the glory which makes
Song of the poet divine ;
Love is the fountain of charm !
How without charm wilt thou draw,
Poet ! the world to thy way ?
Not by the lightnings of wit !
Not by the thunder of scorn !
These to the world, too, are given ;
Wit it possesses, and scorn —
Charm is the poet's alone. —
Hollow and dull are the great,
And artists envious, and the mob profane.
We know all this, we know !
Cam'st thou from heaven, O child
Of light ! but this to declare ?
Alas ! to help us forget
Such barren knowledge awhile,
God gave the poet his song."

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 287
It would be hard to find a higher piece of pure pictorial
oratory than that description of England ; — as regards
style, Mr. Bright, if he held with Mr. Arnold, which of
course he does not, might almost have delivered it in one
of his greater speeches ; — and hard, too, to find a bathos
deeper than the flat, harsh, somewhat stilted prose, not
even rhythmical, though it is printed in metre, which
immediately follows, especially the lines which Mr. Arnold
italicizes in the last two stanzas. The same may be said
of almost all his recitative pieces. They contain fragments
of high oratory, but they are coldly intellectual, and tend
to a grandiosity from which the fall to flat prose is not
difficult. . And it is, indeed, Mr. Arnold's chief defect as a poet and
artist that the themes which interest him most are seldom
living and organic wholes, but are rather trains of thought
sufficiently fascinating to the imagination and to the feel
ings, but without definite form and organization ; in fact,
subjects which necessarily lend themselves more easily to
the irregular rhythmic improvisations to which we have
just referred, than to more perfect forms of verse. Even
when he adopts these more perfect forms, it is rather for
the sake of the pathos of elegiac moods than for the com
pleteness they give to the framework of an artistic whole.
Of all his so-called narrative-poems, most of which are,
indeed, usually reflective rather than narrative, " The Sick
King in Bokhara" is the only one that strikes me as
reaching anything like the higher levels of Mr. Arnold's
force. "Sohrab and Rustum," polished and elegant as
it is, is tame beyond anything that the story can account
for. The long Homeric similes are often extremely
beautiful, the subject itself is genuinely tragic, the style
is classical ; there is nothing to account for its tameness
except the tameness itself. It is evident that the author
felt no throbs of heart as he brought the gallant son into

288 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
the fatal conflict with the gallant father. He looked on
it with the polished interest of an Oxford scholar in an
episode of Oriental tradition, but without the slightest
touch of that animated sympathy and vivid suspense
which Scott would have thrown into such a theme. It is
not till we get to the beautiful description of the north
ward course of the Oxus, when Rustum is left with the
corpse of his son lying beside him on the plain, enveloped
in midnight and despair, that we feel the true charm of
the poet, and then the story is over. "Balder Dead"
has to my ears even less interest than " Sohrab and
Rustum." " Tristram and Iseult " is a great advance on
either, and is unquestionably a very fine fragment ; but it
has little title to the name of a narrative-poem at all.
Mr. Arnold borrows the Arthurian legend only to give a
beautiful picture of the shipwreck of unhappy passions in
a double form, in the feverish and restless delirium of the
dying knight, and in the hollow disappointed youth of
Iseult of Brittany after she has survived her husband
and her grander rival. Iseult of Ireland is hardly painted,
except in face and form; she only kneels beside her
lover's death-bed to die with him, and lend her outward
image to the poet's picture. But it would be difficult to
speak too highly of the exquisite and lucid painting of the
scene of Tristram's death in the Breton castle, beneath
those " ghostlike tapestries " on which are figured the
green huntsman, with his bugle and hounds, so dear
to the sylvan knight in lifetime, with the Irish queen
kneeling, also dead, at his bedside, both of them —
" Cold, cold as those who lived and loved
A thousand years ago ; "
or of Iseult of Brittany, of the white hands, in the
subsequent part, living, after her husband's and rival's
deaths, the joyless life of one who had sought, but found

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 289
not, the happiness of love, and who survives in the happi
ness of her children as in a kind of moonlit dream : —

"Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will —
Is it this thought that makes her mien so still,
Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though sweet,
So sunk, so rarely lifted save to meet
Her children's ? She moves slow ; her voice alone
Hath yet an infantine and silver tone,
But even that comes languidly ; in truth,
She seems one dying in a mask of youth."
No picture could be sweeter or fairer. Mr. Arnold has
a special gift for the delineation of these moods of passion
less pain — of still moonlit craving that is never hot and
never satisfied. But the beauty of the poem certainly does
not lie in the strength of its narrative, but in its exquisite
delineation of the feelings of death-chilled passion and of
joyless calm. " The Forsaken Merman " — a very delicate
little poem of its kind — is again hardly in any sense a
narrative-poem. It is a pretty fanciful song full of picture,
of which the living pulse is the innocent childish heart-
longing of a bewildered, instinctive, unmasterful love
conscious of the existence of a rivalry in the claims of
religious feelings into which it cannot enter, and yet full
of painful yearning. This is always the type of feeling
which Mr. Arnold paints most finely.
But far higher are the pretensions of "The Sick King
in Bokhara." Slight as the subject is, the poem is full
of life, and paints not merely a new phase of that
painful calm or placid suffering in which Mr. Arnold so
much excels, but the richness and stateliness, and also
the prostration and fatalism, of Oriental life ; and it is
especially happy in portraying vividly the concrete
simplicities of Eastern imagery when expressing desire
and regret. The grave, business-like local colour of the
opening is in itself full of promise : —
VOL. 11. u

290 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Hussein. —
"O most just Vizier, send away
The cloth-merchants, and let them be,
Them and their dues, this day ! the King
Is ill at ease, and calls for thee."
The Vizier. — " O merchants, tarry yet a day
, Here in Bokhara ! but at noon
To-morrow, come, and ye shall pay
Each fortieth web of cloth to me,
As the law is, and go your way."
And then the story of the poor man who, in the intensity
of his thirst, during the long drought, had secreted a
pitcher of water for his own use, and when he found it
drained had cursed those who drained it, his own mother
amongst them, and who in his remorse called upon the
King to give judgment upon him that he might be stoned
and expiate his sin as the law demanded, and the delinea
tion of the King's extreme reluctance, are given with the
most genuine force and simplicity. The King's great
desire to spare the man, and the orders given for that
purpose, of which it is pithily said,
" As the King said, so was it done,"
the man's indignation at this hesitation to judge and
punish him, the King's loth, consent at last, and the
fanatical joy of the victim, are painted with something
like the grand simplicity of the Hebrew Scriptures : —
" Now the King charged us secretly :
' Stoned must he be, the law stands so.
Yet, if he seeks to fly, give way !
Hinder him not, but let him go.'
So saying, the King took a stone,
And cast it softly ;— but the man,
With a great joy upon his face,
Kneel'd down, and cried not, neither ran."

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 291
And, perhaps, the most dramatic thing in the whole range
of Mr. Arnold's poems, is the scornful reproof adminis
tered by the old Vizier, when he has heard the story, to
the King's weakness and softness of heart : —
The Vizier. — " O King, in this I praise thee not !
Now must I call thy grief not wise.
Is he thy friend, or of thy blood,
To find such favour in thine eyes ?
Nay, were he thine own mother's son,
Still thou art king, and the law stands.
It were not meet the balance swerved,
The sword were broken in thy hands.
But being nothing, as he is,
Why for no cause make sad thy face ? —
Lo, I am old ! three kings, ere thee,
Have I seen reigning in this place.
But who, through all this length of time,
Could bear the burden of his years,
If he for strangers pain'd his heart
Not less than those who merit tears ?
Fathers we must have, wife and child,
And grievous is the grief for these ;
This pain alone which must be borne,
Makes the head white, and bows the knees.
But other loads than this his own
One man is not well made to bear.
Besides, to each are his own friends,
To mourn with him and show him care.
Look, this is but one single place,
Though it be great ; all the earth round,
If a man bear to have it so,
Things which might vex him shall be found.
Upon the Russian frontier, where
The watchers of two armies stand
Near one another, many a man,
Seeking a prey unto his hand,
U 2

292 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Hath snatch'd a little fair-hair'd slave ;
They snatch also, towards Merve,
The Shiah dogs, who pasture sheep,
And up from thence to Orgunje.
And these all, labouring for a lord,
Eat not the fruit of their own hands ;
Which is the heaviest of all plagues,
To that man's mind, who understands.
The kaffirs also (whom God curse !)
Vex one another, night and day ;
There are the lepers, and all sick ;
There are the poor, who faint alway.
All these have sorrow, and keep still,
Whilst other men make cheer, and sing.
Wilt thou have pity on all these ?
No, nor on this dead dog, O King ! "
Mr. Arnold has never achieved anything so truly
dramatic as this poem. The reasoning, never in the
abstract, but always by examples, which runs through it,
the profound abasement of mind before the demands of
the admitted conditions of social existence, the utter ac
quiescence of the sage old minister's intellect in the order
of things as he knows it, the wonder and distress of the
young King that his own urgent desire is of so little
account when he would alleviate the lot of one human
being whom he pities, and the kicking of his nature
against the pricks of the iron circle which limits his royal
power, are all painted with a brightness and care which
would almost argue a special Oriental culture, though I
do not suppose that Mr. Arnold has had any specially
great opportunities in that direction. Of the poems which
are called narrative, this is in my opinion the only one,
rightly so called, that is perfectly successful. And perhaps
its perfect success is due to the curious correspondence
between the elements of the story and the peculiar tenden
cies I have already noticed in Mr. Arnold's genius. The
stately egotism of manner, which has here full swing and

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 293
a great field, the dignified remorse which breeds so reso
lute a spirit of expiation in the sinner's mind, the sedate
dignities of the King's helplessness, the contemptuous
criticism of the Grand Vizier on the unreasonable excess
of his master's sympathy with one who had no natural
claims on him, and the extreme simplicity of the whole
action, all seem to fit the subject specially for Mr. Arnold's
treatment. At all events, as to the brilliant clearness and
rich colouring of the completed whole, there can be no
two opinions. It seems to me nearly the only case in
which Mr. Arnold has chosen a subject distinct and perfect
in its parts, and complete as a whole — a subject of which
you cannot say that he brought it to a conclusion chiefly
because it must end somewhere, and had exhausted his
own interest in it. This piece is the one exception to the
rule that Mr. Arnold's best poems are not artistic wholes,
which come to a necessary and natural end because their
structure is organically perfect, but rather fragments of
imaginative reverie, which begin where the poet begins to
meditate, and end when he has done.
It must not be supposed, however, that I regard the
art of those of Mr. Arnold's poems which are expressly
elegiac and lyrical as generally poor. On the contrary,
as it is of the essence of pieces of this kind to reflect
absolutely the mood of the poet, to begin where he
begins and end where he ends, the only artistic demand
which can possibly be applicable to the structure of such
pieces, is that it shall show you the growth and subsi
dence of a vein of thought and emotion, and make no
abrupt demands on the sympathy of the reader. This, at
all events in almost all his rhymed pieces of a lyrical and
elegiac nature, Mr. Arnold effects with the greatest deli
cacy and modulation of feeling ; in the others he is not
unfrequently stranded on bare prose, and compelled to
leap back with a very jerky movement into the tide of his

29+ THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
emotion. But from his highest moods of reverie he sub
sides, by the help of some beautiful picture of scenery in
harmony with the emotions he is delineating, as in the
lovely Alpine sketches of his " Obermann," or with some
graceful episode of illustration, like the beautiful com
parison between the wandering Scholar Gipsy's dread of
the contagion of our hesitating half-love of Nature, which
hugs the shore of artificial civilisation, and the old Tyrian
skipper's wrath against the Greek coaster, who troubled
his realm by timid competition, and yet never dared to
launch out into the shoreless ocean. No art can be more
perfect than that with which Mr. Arnold closes the finer
of his lyrical and elegiac poems — poems, however, of which
it is the very essence to reflect his own reveries, not to
paint any continuous whole.
When I come to ask what Mr. Arnold's poetry has
done for this generation, the answer must be that no one
" has expressed more powerfully and poetically its spiritual
weaknesses, its craving for a passion that it cannot feel,
its admiration for a self-mastery that it cannot achieve,
its desire for a creed that it fails to accept, its sympathy
with a faith that it will not share, its aspiration for a
peace that it does not know. But Mr. Arnold does all
this from the intellectual side, — sincerely and delicately,
but from the surface, and never from the centre. It is the
same with his criticisms. They are fine, they are keen, they
are often true, but they are always too much limited to the
thin superficial layer of the moral nature of their subjects,
and seem to take little comparative interest in the deeper
individuality beneath. Read his essay on Heine, and you
will see the critic engrossed with the relation of Heine to the
political and social ideas of his day, and passing over with
comparative indifference the true soul of Heine, the fountain
both of his poetry and his cynicism. Read his fine lectures
on translating Homer, and observe how exclusively the

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 295
critic's mind is occupied with the form, as distinguished
from the substance, of the Homeric poetry. Even when
he concerns himself with the greatest modern poets, with
Shakespeare (as in the preface to the earlier edition of his
poems), or with Goethe in reiterated poetical criticisms,
or when he, again and again in his poems, treats of
Wordsworth, it is always the style and superficial doctrine
of their poetry, not the individual character and unique
genius, which occupy him. He will tell you whether a
poet is " sane and clear," or stormy and fervent ; whether
he is " rapid " and " noble," or loquacious and quaint ;
whether a thinker penetrates the husks of conventional
thought which mislead the crowd ; whether there is sweet
ness as well as lucidity in his aims ; whether a descriptive
writer has " distinction " of style, or is admirable only for
his vivacity ; but he rarely goes to the individual heart of
any of the subjects of his criticism ; — he finds their style
and class, but not their personality in that class ; he ranks
his men, but does not portray them ; hardly even seems
to find much, interest in the individual roots of their
character. And so, too, with his main poetical theme, —
the spiritual weakness and languor and self-disdain of
the age. He paints these characteristics in language
which makes his poems a sort of natural voice for the
experience of his contemporaries, a voice without which
their intellectual life would be even more obscure and
confused than it is ; but still with a certain intellectual
superficiality of touch which suggests the sympathetic
observer rather than the wakeful sufferer, and which leaves
an unfathomed depth beneath the layer of perturbed
consciousness with which he deals — that is, beneath that
plane wherein the spheres of the intellect and the soul
intersect, of which he has so carefully studied the cur
rents and the tides. The sign of this limitation, of this
exclusion, of this externality of touch, is the tinge of

2 96 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
conscious intellectual majesty rearing its head above the
storm with the " Quos ego " of Virgil's god, that never
forsakes these poems of Mr. Arnold's even when their
" lyrical cry " is most pathetic. It is this which identifies
him witli_the_s_ceptics, which renders his poems, pathetic
as they often are, no adequate expression of the passionate
craving of the soul for faith. There is always a tincture
of pride in his confessed inability to believe — a self-
congratulation that he is too clear-eyed to yield to the
temptations of the heart. He asks with compassionate
imperiousness for demonstration rather than conviction;
conviction he will not take without demonstration. The
true humility of the yearning for faith is far from Mr.
Arnold's conception. The Poet Laureate's picture of
himself, as " Falling with my weight of cares
Upon the world's great altar stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,"
is a very great contrast indeed to Mr. Arnold's grand air
of tearful Virgilian regret as he gazes on the pale ascetic
faces of the Carthusian monks, and delivers himself
thus : — " Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
Their faith, my tears, the world deride ;
I come to shed them at their side."
His vision of Christ and Christianity even, is wholly
taken from the same standing-point of genuine but con
descending sympathy. He can see how much greater the
Christian Church was than the Roman world it subdued ;
but to him it is greater not through the truth of its belief,
but through that vast capacity of belief which enabled it
to accept what was not true, — in short, to feign a truth

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 297
higher than the naked facts. No passage in Mr. Arnold's
poems is, perhaps, so grand as the one which delineates
this contrast, with its majestic though false and desolate
assumption that it was the mighty dreaming power of the
East, the power to create the objects of its own belief,
which conquered the hard organization of the West ; and
as no passage is so characteristic of Mr. Arnold's whole
relation to the thought of his day, with it, though it is
somewhat long, I will close my too voluminous extracts
from his stately and fascinating poems : —
" Wellnigh two thousand years have brought
Their load, and gone away,
Since last on earth there lived and wrought
A world like ours to-day.
Like ours it lookd in outward air !
But of that inward prize,
Soul, that we take more count and care,
Ah ! there our future lies.*
Like ours it look'd in outward air ! —
Its head was clear and true,
Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare,
No pause its action knew ;
Stout was its arm, each thew and bone
Seem'd puissant and alive —
But, ah ! its heart, its heart was stone,
And so it could not thrive.
On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell ;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay ;
He drove abroad, in furious guise,
Along the Appian way ;

5 fM<jz«.
* This flat and unfortunate verse, as it seems to me, has been inserted
by Mr. Arnold in his second edition to make his doctrine of the religion
of the future seem more hopeful. It is a prosaic doctrinal graft on which
I cannot compliment him.

298 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crown'd his hair with flowers —
No easier nor no quicker pass'd
The impracticable hours.
The brooding East with awe beheld
Her impious younger world.
The Roman tempest swell'd and swell'd,
And on her head was hurl'd.
The East bow'd low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain ;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again.
So well she mused, a morning broke
Across her spirit grey.
A conquering, new-born joy awoke,
And fill'd her life with day.
' Poor world,' she cried, ' so deep accurst !
That runn'st from pole to pole
To seek a draught to slake thy thirst —
Go, seek it in thy soul ! '
She heard it, the victorious West,
In crown and sword array'd !
She felt the void which mined her breast,
She shiver'd and obey'd.
She veil'd her eagles, snapp'd her sword,
And laid her sceptre down ;
Her stately purple she abhorrM,
And her imperial crown ;
She broke her flutes, she stopp'd her sports,
Her artists could not please ;
She tore her books, she shut her courts,
She fled her palaces.
Lust of the eye and pride of life,
She left it all behind—
And hurried, torn with inward strife,
The wilderness to find.
Tears wash'd the trouble from her face !
She changed into a child !
'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood— a place
Of ruin— but she smiled !

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 299
Oh, had I lived in that great day,
How had its glory new
Fill'd earth and heaven, and caught away
My ravish'd spirit too !
No cloister-floor of humid stone
Had been too cold for me ;
For me no Eastern desert lone
Had been too far to flee.
No thoughts that to the world belong
Had stood against the wave
Of love which set so deep and strong
From Christ's then open grave.
No lonely life had pass'd too slow
When I could hourly see
That wan, nail'd Form, with head droop'd low,
Upon the bitter tree ;
Could see the Mother with the Child
Whose tender winning arts
Have to his little arms beguiled
So many wounded hearts !
And centuries came, and ran their course,
And unspent all that time
Still, still went forth that Child's dear force,
And still was at its prime.
Ay, ages long endured his span
Of life, 'tis true received,
That gracious Child, that thorn-crown'd Man !
He lived while we believed.
While we believed, on earth he went,
And open stood his grave ;
Men call'd from chamber, church, and tent,
And Christ was by to save.
Now he is dead ! Far hence he lies
In the lorn Syrian town,
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down.
In vain men still, with hoping new,
Regard his death-place dumb,
And say the stone is not yet to,
And wait for words to come.

300 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Ah, from that silent sacred land,
Of sun, and arid stone,
And crumbling wall, and sultry sand,
Comes now one word alone !
From David's lips this word did roll,
'Tis true and living yet ;
No 7nan can save his brother's soul,
Nor pay his brother's debt.
Alone, self-poised, henceforward man
Must labour ! must resign
His all too human creeds, and scan
Simply the way divine."
It would have been impossible to paint more grandly
the hard pageantry of Roman civilisation, or more ima
ginatively the apparently magic victory of the brooding
mystic over the armed conqueror. But when Mr. Arnold
paints the "patient deep disdain " of the East for physical
might as the power by which it won its miraculous victory,
he is inverting strangely the testimony of history, indeed
he is reading his own lofty intellectualism back into the
past. The East has always been accused of bowing with
even too deep a prostration of soul before the omnipotent
fiat of the Almighty. It was the Eastern delight in that
semi-fatalism which gave Mahommed his strange spell
over the Eastern imagination ; nay, it was the same fas
cinated submission to the finger of sheer Power which is
occasionally so intensely expressed even in the Hebrew
prophets as to read to Christian ears as if God were above,
righteousness, and as if responsibility could be merged
in obedience. If there were any disdain in the Eastern
feeling towards the armies of Rome, it was not disdain for
the Roman power, but for the Roman weakness — that
inaccessibility of the West to whispers of the soul which
seemed to the Eastern mystic the oracles of a power far
greater than the Roman, and of one before which the
Roman would be broken in pieces. In other words, what
the East disdained in Rome was its want of listening

THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. 301
power, not its want of dreaming power, of which the
Oriental world always knew too well the relaxing and
enervating influence. It was too much dreaming which had
brought it into subjection to Rome, and further dreaming
would only make that subjection more abject. Had
Christ, or rather His ideal image, "received," as Mr.
Arnold here says, from the enthusiastic reverie of the East,
the gift of a spiritual ascendancy which there , was no real
divine Christ to exercise, the peculiar strength of the East
must have been precisely identical with its peculiar weak
ness — namely, its faculty for believing that to be due to
a living Power, outside the mind, which was in truth only
the unreal image of the mind itself. The power which
could break to pieces hosts of legions was not in the
dreamer, but in Him who awakened the dreamer and
dispelled the dream. And it was not " disdain," but
"humility," by which the East learned to thrill to the
authority of this imperious whisper of the soul — this
"foolishness" of faith.
And for us, too, it is not disdain, but humility, which
must help us to recover the loss which Mr. Arnold so
pathetically bewails, but which his poetry implicitly ex
presses also a deep reluctance to supply. The old para
dox is as true to-day as it was when St. Paul proclaimed
that the weak things of the world should confound the
mighty, and the things which were not should bring to
nought the things which were. Perhaps I may para
phrase the same truth, in relation to Mr. Arnold's many
beautiful expressions of the impotence of the intellect to
believe, by saying that he never reaches down to the
sources of faith, simply because that final act of humility
and trust in which faith arises is always individual, and
•^therefore to him an act of foolishness. Faith is not
susceptible of intellectual generalization, being indeed a
living act of the individual soul, which must surrender
itself captive to Christ in a spiritual plane far deeper

3o2 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD.
than that where the dialogue with Doubt, which Mr.
Arnold so leisurely dramatizes, takes place. Like his own
favourite Alpine peak, like
" Jaman ! delicately tall
Above his sun-warm'd firs,"
Mr. Arnold's poetry towers above the warmth of the faiths
it analyzes and rejects, and gains thereby its air of mingled
pride and sadness. He seems, indeed, to take a chilling
pride in his assertion that Christ is not risen ; that
, " On his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down ; " '
an assertion which sends a quiver through the heart that
has discovered for itself how weak is the life from which
the trust in Christ is absent.
However, his poetry is no more the worse, as poetry, for its
erroneous spiritual assumptions, than drama is the worse,
as drama, for delineating men as they seem to each other
to be, and not as they really are to the eye of God. And
as the poet of the soul's melancholy hauteur and plaintive
benignity, as the exponent of pity for the great excess of
her wants beyond her gifts and graces, as the singer at
once of the spirit's hunger, of the insufficiency of the food
which the intellect provides for her cravings, and yet also
of her fastidious rejection of more heavenly nutriment, Mr.
Arnold will be read and remembered by every generation
in which faith continues to be daunted by reason, and
reason to seek, not without pangs of inexplicable com
punction, to call in question the transcendental certainties
of faith ; in a word, he will be read and remembered, as
I said in my opening sentence, as the poet who, more
than any other of his day, has embodied in his verse " the
sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty, and the
languor of death."

VIII.
TENNYSON.

MR. TENNYSON was an artist even before he was a.
poet ; in other words, the eye for beauty, grace,
and harmony of effect was even more emphatically one of
his original gifts than the voice for poetical utterance itself.
This probably it is which makes his very earliest pieces
appear so full of effort, and sometimes even so full of affec
tation. They were elaborate attempts to embody what he
saw, before the natural voice of the poet had come to him.
Coleridge remarks, in his " Table Talk," that Mr. Tennyson
had begun to write poetry before he knew what metre was.
The remark applied, of course, only to his very earliest
publication ; and of that it was, I think, true, odd as it now
reads in relation to one of the greatest masters of metre,
both simple and sonorous, that the English language has
ever known. It is interesting as showing how laborious
and full of effort his early verse sounded to one of the finest
judges of English verse, and so confirming the suspicion
that Mr. Tennyson's vision of beauty had ripened earlier
than his poetic faculty for shaping that vision into words.
I think it is possible to trace not only a pre-poetic period
in his art — the period of the Orianas, Owls, Mermans, &c,
— a period in which the poem on " Recollections of the
Arabian Nights" seems to me the only one of real interest,

304 Tennyson.
and that is a poem expressive of the luxurious sense of a
gorgeous inward picture-gallery — but to date the period
at which the soul was " infused" into his poetry, and the
brilliant external pictures became the dwelling-places of
germinating poetic thoughts creating their own music.
The Roman Catholics have, I believe, a doctrine that at a
certain stage in the growth of the embryo body the soul is
¦" infused" into it, and from that stage it shapes and moulds
all the structures of the body with a view to their subser
viency to a moral and spiritual growth. Apply that
analogy to Mr. Tennyson's poems, and the period before
1832 is the period before Mr. Tennyson's pictures had a
soul in them, and consequently before they had a music of
their own. He himself has told us very finely in one of his
newest poems, when describing the building of Arthur's
great capital, — which, like Ilium, was rumoured to have
been built to a divine music, — how the highest works of
the human spirit are created : —
" For an ye heard a music, like enow
They are building still, seeing the city is built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built for ever."
There was no such music in Mr. Tennyson's early verses,
but he himself has all but told us when the period^n which
his productiveness was due more to the " lust of the eye"
than to any true poetic gift, ceased. Curiously enough,
the first poem where there is any trace of those musings on
the legends of the Round Table to which he has directed
so much of his maturest genius, is also a confession -that
the poet was sick of the magic mirror of fancy and its
picture-shadows, and was turning away from them to the
poetry of human life. "The Lady of Shalott," the first
poem of those published in the autumn of 1832 — the same
sad year which laid the foundation of Mr. Tennyson's most

TENNYSON. 305
perfect, if not his greatest poem, " In Memoriam"— has for
its real subject the emptiness of the life of fancy, however
rich and brilliant, the utter satiety which compels any true
imaginative nature to break through the spell which
entrances it in an unreal world or visionary joys. The
Lady of Shalott — a variation on Elaine — gazing in her
magic mirror, sees a faithful picture of all that passes by
her solitary isle, and copies it in the web she weaves : —
" There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott."
The curse, of course, is that she shall be involved in
mortal passions, and suffer the fate of mortals, if she looks
away from the shadow to the reality. Nevertheless, the
time comes when she braves the curse : —
" But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights,
And music, went to Camelot :
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed :
' I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott."
And probably it was the vision of a " funeral," at least as
much as that other vision which made the fairy Lady of
Shalott more than half sick of shadows, that first led the
author of this beautiful little poem into his true poetic.
work. But even after the embryo period is past, even when
VOL. II. X

306 TENNYSON.
Mr. Tennyson's poems are uniformly moulded by an " in
fused" soul, one not unfrequently notices the excess of the
faculty of vision over the governing conception, which
moulds the vision, so that I think he is almost always most
successful when his poem begins in a thought or a feeling
rather than from a picture or a narrative, for then the
thought or feeling dominates and controls his otherwise
too lavish fancy. "Ulysses" and "Tithonus" are far
superior to " CEnone," exquisite as the pictorial workman
ship of " CEnone" is ; " The Palace of Art" is finer than
" The Dream of Fair Women ;" "The Death of Lucretius,"
painful as the subject is, than " Enoch Arden" or " Aylmer's
Field ;" and, for the same reason, " In Memoriam" is
perhaps an even more perfect whole than the poem of
greatest scope, and in some respects the noblest of his
imaginative efforts, the great Arthurian epic which he
has only just completed. Whenever Mr. Tennyson's
pictorial fancy has had it in any degree in its power to
run away with the guiding and controlling mind, the
richness of the workmanship has to some extent over
grown the spiritual principle of his poems.
I suppose it is in some respects this lavish strength of
what may be called the bodily element in poetry, as
distinguished from the spiritual life and germ of it, which
has given Mr. Tennyson at once his delight in great
variety and richness of materials, and his profound reve
rence for the principle of spiritual order which can alone
impress unity and purpose on the tropical luxuriance of
natural gifts. It is obvious, for instance, that even in rela
tion to natural scenery, what his poetical faculty delights
in most are rich, luxuriant landscapes in which either
Nature or man has accumulated a lavish variety of effects.
There is nothing of Wordsworth's passion for the bare,
wild scenery of the rugged North in his poems. For one
picture of wild and barren grandeur like the first of the two

TENNYSON.

3°7

following in " The Palace of Art," there are at least fifty
variations on the last, in his various poems : —
" And one, a foreground black with stones and slags,
Beyond, a line of heights, and higher
All barfd with long white cloud the scornful crags,
And highest, snow and fire.
And one, an English home — gray twilight pour'd
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep — all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient Peace."
It is in the scenery of the mill, the garden, the chase,
the down, the rich pastures, the harvest-field, the palace
pleasure-grounds, the Lord of Burleigh's fair domains, the
luxuriant sylvan beauty bearing testimony to the careful
hand of man, " the summer crisp with shining woods," that
Mr. Tennyson most delights. If he strays to rarer scenes
it is almost always in search of richer and more luxuriant
loveliness, like the tropical splendours of " Enoch Arden"
and the enervating skies which cheated the Lotus-Eaters
of their longing for home. There is always complexity in
the beauty which fascinates Mr. Tennyson most.
And with the love of complexity comes, as a matter of
course, in a born artist the love of the ordering faculty
which can give unity and harmony to complexity of detail.
Measure and order are for Mr. Tennyson of the very
essence of beauty.) His strong fascination for the Arthu
rian legends results no doubt from the mixture, in the
moral materials of the age of chivalry, of exuberant stateli
ness and rich polish with the imperious need for spiritual
order to control the dangerous elements of the period. His
Arthurian epic is a great attempt to depict the infusion of
a soul into a chaos of stately passions. Even in relation
to modern politics you always see the same bias, a love of
rich constitutional traditions welded together and ruled by
wise forethought and temperate judgment. He cannot
x 2

3o8 TENNYSON.
endure either spasmodic violence on the one hand, or bald
simplicity on the other. What he loves is a land
" Where Freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent."
In " In Memoriam " he goes out of his way to condemn
French political anarchy —
" The schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt " —
and to throw scorn on the " red fool-fury of the Seine."
Still more curious is the parenthetic question, interpolated
almost angrily, in the opening of an exquisite love poem,
*l Love and Duty : "— " O shall the braggart shout
For some blind glimpse of freedom, work itself
Through madness, hated by the wise, to law,
System, and empire ? "
— as if he grudged revolutionary energy even its occasional
success. Never was any cry more absurd than the cry
made against " Maud " for the sympathy it was supposed
to show with hysterical passion. What it was meant to be,
and what it was, though inadequately, — the failure being
due, not to sympathy with hysterics, but to the zeal with
which Mr. Tennyson strove to caricature hysterics, — was an
exposure of hysterics. ' The love of measure and order is
as visible in Mr. Tennyson's pictures of character as in
every other aspect of his poetry. His " St. Simeon
Stylites " is his hostile picture of the fanatic, just as his
¦" Ulysses " is his friendly picture of the insatiable craving
for new experience, enterprise, and adventure, when under
the control of a luminous reason and a self-controlled will.
And this love of measure and order in complexity shows
itself even more remarkably in Mr. Tennyson's leaning to

TENNYSON. 309
the domestic, modern type of women. All his favourite
women are women of a certain fixed class in social life,
usually not the lowest ; sometimes homely, like Alice the
miller's daughter, and Rose the gardener's daughter, or
Dora, or the wife of the Lord of Burleigh ; sometimes
women of the Drawing-room or the Palace, like Maud,
Lady Flora in " The Day-dream," or the Princess in the
poem about woman, or Lynette, and Enid, and Elaine, and
Guinevere in " The Idylls of the King ; " but always
women of the quiet and domestic type (except indeed the
heroine of " The Sisters "), women whom you might meet
every day in a modern home, women of the garden-flower
kind rather than of the wild-flower kind. He has set
even his exquisite poem on " The Sleeping Beauty " in a
drawing-room framework, i.e. made the "Lady Flora" to
whom it is related " take her broidery frame and add a
crimson to the quaint macaw." In the beautiful little
idyll called " The Miller's Daughter," Mr. Tennyson even
injures the rustic effect of the piece by introducing an
artificial element, a song about Alice's ear-ring and neck
lace, a touch which, however true it may be to life — (ear
rings and necklaces are just what millers' daughters would
most value) — is idyllically false as destroying the simpli
city of the picture, just as it might have been true to life,
but would have been idyllically false, to call the heroine
Juliana or Matilda, instead of Alice. The simplest and
most lyrical heroines, heroines like Gretchen in " Faust,"
or Mignon in "Wilhelm Meister," are hardly in Mr.
Tennyson's way. He loves something of the air and
manner which a fixed social status gives. His "May
Queen " has always seemed to me one of his few falsetto
poems. There is art, in the sense of complex harmony, in
all his greatest poems.
The simplest though hardly the most characteristic form
of that art is no doubt the " Idyll," in which Mr. Tennyson

3io TENNYSON.
has delighted from the first; — so much so, that he has
applied the term, somewhat misleadingly I think, to one of
his last, and in many respects his greatest, works. The
" idyll " proper is, I suppose, a picture coloured by a single
emotion, and intended to give a perfect illustration of that
emotion. (The power which makes Mr. Tennyson's idylls
so unique in their beauty is, I think, his wonderful skill
in creating a perfectly real and living scene,* — such as
always might, and perhaps somewhere does, exist in
external Nature, — for the theatre of the feeling he is about
to embody, and yet a scene, every feature of which helps to
make the emotion delineated more real and vivid. For;
illustrations of what I mean take the idylls of "The
Miller's Daughter" and "The Gardener's Daughter," both
stories of happy first love, told in their later years by old
men who had married rustic beauties. The former, how
ever, paints a boy's first unexpected passion, which finds
him a dreaming lad, and breaking upon his quiet suddenly
transforms him into a man ; the latter paints the passion
of an artist who had long played with the feeling of love,
and who had heard enough beforehand of the rustic beauty
he was going to visit, to be thrilling with hope and
expectation of his destiny. Remembering this, notice the
completely different key of the two poems, the simple
brook-like music of the first, which seems to keep time to
the mill-stream, and its cool April scenery, — the rich, full,
conscious sweetness of the second, and its fragrant scents
of May : — " But, Alice, what an hour was that,
When after roving in the woods
('Twas April then), I came and sat
Below the chestnuts, when their buds

* This criticism was first made in a very fine essay on Tennyson's
genius, by the late Mr. W. C. Roscoe, which will be found in his volumes
of posthumous poems and essays, published by Chapman and Hall.

TENNYSON. 3,,
Were glistening to the breezy blue ;
And on the slope, an absent fool,
I cast me down, nor thought of you,
But angled in the higher pool.
A love-song I had somewhere read,
An echo from a measured strain,
Beat time to nothing in my head
From some odd corner of the brain.
It haunted me, the morning long,
With weary sameness in the rhymes,
The phantom of a silent song,
That went and came a thousand times.
Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood
I watched the little circles die ;
They past into the level flood,
And there a vision caught my eye ;
The reflex of a beauteous form,
A glowing arm, a gleaming neck ;
As when a sunbeam wavers warm
Within the dark and dimpled beck.
For you remember you had set,
That morning, on the casement's edge
A long green box of mignonette,
And you were leaning from the ledge :
And when I raised my eyes above,
They met with two so full and bright —
Such eyes ! I swear to you, my love,
That these have never lost their light."
That is April love in the heart of April, keeping time to
the liquid rapids of the mill-weir. The vivid picture, too,
of the kindly, dusty miller, with his smile that seemed
" half within and half without, and full of dealings with
the world," which introduces the piece, and suggests the
inequality of lot over which this boyish passion was to
leap, prepares us for the sort of love — sudden, youthful,
defying obstacles of station — which the bubbling mill-
stream was to witness.
Now turn to the fair, rich, elaborate, and still more
lovely scene, by which the reader's mind is prepared for

3!2 TENNYSON.
the love-story of an artist, who, as the prelude shows, had,
like St. Augustine, been eagerly loving to love (amans
amare), and who was in his heart fully prepared for the
first plunge. "And sure this orbit of the memory folds
For ever in itself the day we went
To see her. All the land in flowery squares,
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,
Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud
Drew downward ; but all else of heaven was pure
Up to the sun, and May from verge to verge,
And May with me from head to heel. And now,
As though 'twere yesterday, as though it were
The hour just flown, that morn with all its sound
(For those old Mays had thrice the life of these)
Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to graze,
And, where the hedge-row cuts the pathway, stood
Leaning his horns into the neighbour field,
And lowing to his fellows. From the woods
Came voices of the well-contented doves.
The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,
But shook his song together as he near'd
His happy home, the ground. To left and right,
The cuckoo told his name to all the hills ;
The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm ;
The red-cap whistled ; and the nightingale
Sang loud, as though he were the bird of day."
That is the rich gladness which prepares for the fuller and
deeper passion of a mind devoted to the study of beauty
and nearing the verge of an anticipated joy. Note
especially the realism (which Tennyson never fails to
show) in the explanation of the especial fragrance of the
air, — that "one large cloud drew downward,"— so sup
plying the moisture that brings out the odours of the
spring. Observe, too, that instead of the dancing mill-
stream, we have a stream in harmony with the richer,
riper passion of the conscious love of beauty : —
" News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells ;
And sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear

TENNYSON. 313
The windy clanging of the minster clock ;
Although between it and the garden lies
A league of grass, wash'd by a slow, broad stream,
That, stiri^d with languid pulses of the oar,
Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on,
Barge laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crown'd with the minster-towers."
Two more real scenes cannot be imagined than these.
And yet how delicately their differences are fitted (whether
calculated or not I cannot say) to deepen and enhance the
impressions of the special shade of love which each poem
delineates. But I should quote for ever were I to illustrate as fully
as might be Mr. Tennyson's wonderful power of putting
Nature under contribution to help him in delineating
moods of feeling. It is not limited to his idylls, but is
equally marvellous in his pure lyrics. Especially won
derful is this power in the illustration of the sense of loss.
Not to touch " In Memoriam," take the voice which Mr.
Tennyson has found for a dumb, wistful grief in the
following little lyric. No poet ever made the dumb speak
so effectually : —
" Break, break, break
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea !
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play !
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay !
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill ;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still !
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea !
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me ! "

314 TENNYSON.
Observe how the wash of the sea on the cold grey
stones is used to prepare the mind for the feeling of
helplessness with which the deeper emotions break
against the hard and rigid element of human speech ; how
the picture is then widened out till you see the bay with
children laughing on its shore, and the sailor-boy singing
on its surface, and the stately ships passing on in the
offing to their unseen haven, all with the view of helping
tis to feel the contrast between the satisfied and the
unsatisfied yearnings of the human heart. Mr. Tennyson,
like every true poet, has the strongest feeling of the
spiritual and almost mystic character of the associations
attaching to the distant sail which takes the ship on its
lonely journey to an invisible port, and has more than once
used it to lift the mind into the attitude of hope or trust.
But then the song returns again to the helpless break
ing of the sea at the foot of crags it cannot climb, not
this time to express the inadequacy of human speech to
express human yearnings, but the defeat of those very
yearnings themselves. Thus does Mr. Tennyson turn an
ordinary sea-shore landscape into a means of finding a
voice indescribably sweet for the dumb spirit of human
loss. Another closely analogous illustration, at least
as signal of the same magic power to press Nature into
the service of the heart in uttering the sense of loss,
will be familiar to every one who loves Mr. Tennyson's
genius in that wonderful song in "The Princess" con
cerning the sad strange "days that are no more," in
which he likens the mingled freshness and sadness
with which we contemplate them as they flash upon our
memory to a mixture of the feelings with which we see
the light upon an approaching sail that brings us friends
from the other hemisphere, and the light upon a retreating
sail which takes them away thither; for does not the
memory of those days both bring and take away? does

TENNYSON. 31 s
it not restore us the vivid joy of the past only to make
us feel that it is vanished ? No poet has ever had a
greater mastery than Mr. Tennyson of the power of real
things— with him they are always real, and not mere
essences or abstractions — to express evanescent emotions
that almost defy expression. I know no other poet,
except the author of "Antony and Cleopatra" himself,
who might have imagined Cleopatra's passionate cry over
the corpse of Antony —
"And there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon."
Mr. Tennyson's power of compelling the external world
to lend him a language for the noblest feelings is, how
ever, but the instrument of a still higher faculty, the
power of apprehending those feelings themselves with the
vigour of a great dramatist ; and though his range is not
wide, they include some of the most delicate and intel
lectual, and some of the coarsest and most earthly^) He
is not a great dramatist, for his delineations move almost
wholly in one plane, in the mood he has studied and
writes to interpret. He can find the exactly appropriate
reverie for the smarting and not very deeply wounded
heart of a grandiose and somewhat bumptious lover
dismissed like the rejected of Locksley Hall, for his
deficiencies in wealth and station, and who does not
suffer too much to concern himself even then with the
prospects of the race and "the process of the suns."
He can give you to perfection the random and humorous
fancies of the poet under the mellowing influence of a pint
of port, when the Muse
" Used all her fiery will and smote
Her life into the liquor."
He can tell you how St. Simeon Stylites must have felt
when the glory of his penances, mounting like fumes into

3i6 TENNYSON.
his head, aided the delirium of his wandering brain to
triumph over the half-dead body which had in great
measure dropped away from him before he died. He can
portray the intolerable restlessness of the wanderer born
and bred, when, like Ulysses, he is expected to shut
himself in between the narrow walls of humdrum duties.
He can conceive with the subtlest power the passionate
longing for death of a mortal endowed with immortality,
doomed like Tithonus to outlive all life and joy, and
tremble at the awful prospect of a solitary eternity of
decay. Nay, he can find a language as real as the thought
for the kind grandmother's wandering maternal memories,
as well as for the overweening vanity of the coarse old
Northern Farmer, whose only notion of duty is to serve
the "squoire" and the "lond" with a loyal and even
passionate service, and who has no patience with " God-
amoighty" for not sparing him to calve the cows and
finish the " stubbing " of Thornaby waste, — and finally for
the far sordider and more selfish farmer of the new style,
who worships "proputty," especially in land, with a
devout worship, and can tell his son with the most serious
and earnest assurance —
" Taake my word for it, Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad."
All this he can do with marvellous finish ; but he has
hardly attempted, except in "Queen Mary" and his three
Studies taken from the yeoman class, to draw a character
in all its variety of attitudes ; and though those poems are
quite fine enough to show his dramatic power, they are not
sufficiently characteristic of his genius to show any wealth
of dramatic fancy. Hence his genius can hardly be called
dramatic, though in relation to single moods he finds an
infinitely more characteristic language for their expression
than Mr. Browning, who would make Tithonus, Ulysses,

TENNYSON.

3'7

St. Simeon Stylites, and the Northern Farmers all talk
Browningese. But admitting the partial limitation of Mr.
Tennyson's genius to the interpretration of moods, admit
ting even the limited number of moods he can interpret
adequately, — for he seems to fail through caricature when
he attempts, as in " Maud " or " The Vision of Sin," to
express misanthropical moods, — yet no other poet has
rivalled, in force and subtlety, the work he has thus
achieved. When first published, " The Northern Farmer
(Old Style) " and " Tithonus " stood side by side, and it is
hardly possible to find specimens of wider-removed human
emotions on the subject of death : —
" But summun 'ull come arter mea mayhap wi' 'is kittle o' steam
Huzzin' an' maazin' the blessed fealds wi' the Divil's oan team.
Gin I mun doy, I mun doy, an' loife they says is sweet,
But gin I mun doy, I mun doy, for I couldn abear to see it.
What atta stannin' theer for, an' doesn bring ma the yaale ?
Doctor's a 'tottler, lass, an' a's hallus i' the owd taale ;
I wean't break rules for Doctor a knaws naw moor than a floy ;
Git ma my yaale, I tell tha, an' gin I mun doy, I mun doy."
Now hear Tithonus : —
" The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality ^
Consumes : I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-haired shadow, roaming like a dream
The ever silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists and gleaming halls of morn.
Alas for this gray shadow, once a man — ¦
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem'd
To his great heart none other than a God !
I asked thee, ' Give me immortality.'
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills,
And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me,

318 TENNYSON.
And tho' they could not end me, left me maim'd
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was in ashes."
The atom of common thought that connects the two pas
sages is the feeling expressed in both that there is a price
at which life, with its sweetness lost, is not worth purchas
ing ; and though to the Northern Farmer that price is the
sacrifice of what he calls " breaking rules " to please the
doctor, i.e. giving up his accustomed draught of ale, and to
Tithonus it is the loss of all that made up the vigour and
gladness of life, incurred to save an ever-dwindling con
sciousness of personality stripped of all command over the
old springs of happiness, still there is just enough common
to the two thoughts to make the range of dialect and feel
ing the more startling and effective. I should certainly
have supposed, till " The Grandmother," the two " North
ern Farmers," and " Queen Mary " were published, that
Mr. Tennyson's power of poetical interpretation extended
only to the more refined, if not the more intellectual habits
of mind ; but that notion has been entirely disposed of.
He can furnish good grandmotherly reminiscences, or a
hearty devotion to a narrow calling and a coarse obtuse-
ness to everything beyond, with a voice at least as
appropriate as he finds for that restless craving for ever
new experience, and that contemptuous pity for plodding
humdrum piety, which he attributes to his somewhat
modernised but marvellously conceived Ulysses. But I
think that while the latter class of poems belong to him,
as it were, the former are the results of study, though of a
study which only a poet's imagination could have har
monized into wholes so perfect. It is impossible to forget,
in reading the three studies of rural character I have
just referred to, that Mr. Tennyson's powers of obser
vation, though by no means rapid, are exceedingly close

TENNYSON. 319
and tenacious, and that he has the strong apprehensive
grasp of a naturalist in conjunction with the harmonizing
faculty of the poet. He seems to me to have studied his
" Grandmother " and his two " Northern Farmers \'l much
as he has studied the habits of trees and animals./ He has
a striking microscopic faculty on which his poetic ima
gination works. No poet has so many and such accurate
references to the vegetable world, and yet at the same time
references so thoroughly poetic. He calls dark hair
" More black than ash-buds in the front of March ;"
auburn hair, " In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides three-fold to show the fruit within."
He is never tired of reflecting in his poetry the physiology
of flowers and trees and buds. The " living smoke " of the
yew is twice commemorated in his poems. He tells us
how the sunflower, " shining fair,"
" Rays round with flames her disk of seed ; "
observes on the blasts " that blow the poplars white ; "
and, to make a long story short,— for the list of instances
might be multiplied to hundreds,— in his latest published
" Idylls of the King," he thus dates an early hour in the
night : — " Nigh upon that hour
When the lone hem forgets his melancholy,
Lets down his other leg, and stretching, dreams
Of goodly supper in the distant pool."
It is precisely the same microscopic faculty as this
applied to characteristic human habits which has produced
the three wonderful studies in English vernacular life.
Just as Mr. Tennyson delights to chronicle that at a

3?o TENNYSON.
given hour of the night the heron lets down his other leg
and stretches himself, and as he conjectures that the
heron's dreams then take a happier turn, so he delights
to chronicle that an old woman with her faculties failing,
"when she hears of the death of her eldest-born, himself an
old man, will muse on the beauty of his baby legs after
this fashion : —
" Willy, my beauty, my eldest-born, the flower of the flock ;
Never a man could fling him, for Willy stood like a rock.
' Here's a leg for a babe of a week,' says Doctor, and he would be bound
There was not his like, that year, in twenty parishes round."
And so precisely, too, he makes the property-worshipping
" Northern Farmer " of the new style put the poor curate,
whose daughter his eldest son wishes to marry, under the
microscope, as if he were a kind of insect, in this con
temptuous way : —
" Parson's lass 'ant nowt, and she weant 'a nowt when 'e's dead,
Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle her bread ;
Why ? fur 'e's nobbut a curate, an' wean't nivir git naw 'igher ;
An' 'e maa.de the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e coom'd to the shire.
And thin 'e coom'd to the parish wi' lots o' 'Varsity debt,
Stook to his taail they did, an' 'e 'an't got shut on 'em yet.
An' 'e ligs on 'is back i' the grip, wi' noan to lend 'im a shove,
Woorse nor a far-welter'd yowe : fur, Sammy, 'e married fur luw."
It is impossible not to see that it is much more as
naturalist than as poet that Mr. Tennyson has mastered
the materials for these three most remarkable poems,
though without his imaginative faculty he could never have
harmonized them into these wonderful wholes. When
Shakespeare gives us a character like Juliet's nurse, we
feel somehow that Juliet's nurse was in him, that he
needed as little study to enter into her and appropriate
her as Mr. Tennyson needed to enter into the full ripe
passion which breathes through "The Gardener's Daughter"
or the gusty heroics of " Locksley Hall." But his fine

TENNYSON. 321
studies of those three rustics have been like the studies
which the late Mr. Waterton devoted to the habits of
birds, or which Mr. Frank Buckland bestows on the
hippopotamuses of his heart. He has made them his
own, and made them perfectly living and true ; and if
he had time to give to other types as large and simple,
he could paint them also as faithfully and impressively.
But his insight into them does not come through his
sympathy with active life, as Shakespeare's did ; it comes
of the careful scrutinizing eye of a naturalist feeding the
brooding heart of a poet. And there are plenty of indi
cations of the same kind of close microscopic power in the
higher and purely spiritual sphere of Mr. Tennyson's
genius. What, for instance, can be finer than the picture
of the gloomy forecast of evil which haunts Merlin before
his living burial ? —
" So dark a forethought rolled about his brain
As on a dull day in an ocean cave
The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall
In silence."
"In Memoriam" is full of such magnifying-glasses for
secret feelings, and doubts, and fears, and hopes, and
trusts. How true and pathetic, yet how like the effect of
a brooding reverie under a microscope, is the passage in
which Mr. Tennyson describes his minute comparison of
the path of the moonbeams in his bedroom with what he
knows it must be in the chancel where the tablet to his
friend is placed, and paints the half-superstitious anxiety
with which he watches them while they are lighting up
the letters of the name, and then passing away, leaving
it in darkness till the glimmer of the dawn returns upon
it ! How large he makes the fear that when he follows his
friend into the other world he may find himself " a life
behind " him, and evermore doomed to follow at the same
distance ! How big seems the doubt we must all feeling
VOL. II. Y

322 TENNYSON.
such cases, that he is exaggerating the delight which the
past companionship of his friend had caused him, that it
is but "the haze of grief" which made the "former glad
ness loom so great." Unquestionably there is much of
the microscopic naturalist in the spiritual as well as the
physical part of Mr. Tennyson's musings. Any mood,
however subtle, when submitted to his eye, grows large
beneath that close and minute scrutiny, and reappears on
a new and magnified scale, like Plato's moral law of the
individual conscience when written out large in the struc
ture and function of the perfect State.
And yet it would be completely false to give the impres
sion that Mr. Tennyson's studies are studies in " still " life,
studies of human nature as much at rest as the fragment
of a bat's wing under a microscope. There is always the
movement of real life in his poems, even in passages where
the movement could never show, if the movement itself,
like the subject of it, were not magnified by the medium
through which he makes us view it. J " Will Waterproofs
Lyrical Monologue," for instance, never halts a moment
at any one point, though the whole might have actually
passed through the mind in a few seconds. The " Grand
mother's " and " Northern Farmer's " reveries flow on at
much the same rate they might flow at in actual life ; and it
is only the extreme elaboration of the picture, reminding
one of some of Denner's portraits of rustic life, in which
every wrinkle and every shade of colour is accurately
rendered, that suggests to the reader the impression of
slow movement. So, too, the scorn of Ulysses for the
petty drudgery of his Ithacan household and government,
his longing to be once more shooting the rapids of earthly
adventure, his contemptuous satisfaction in the capacity
of Telemachus to fill his place, and the great bound which
his heart makes towards the sea that " moans round with
many voices," succeed each other with a movement cer-

TENNYSON. 323
tainly not more languid than that of Homer himself. In
painting, Mr. Tennyson is so terse and compressed, that,
though he never suggests the idea of swiftness,— there is
too much pains spent on the individual stroke for that,—
it would be simply absurd to call his manner dilatory.
Indeed, his pictures often succeed each other too rapidly,
without the graduation which prepares the mind for the
change, so as to give a sense of effort to the reader by
implying an- extreme condensation in the writer. It is
only in the song, or pieces closely approaching a song in
structure, like "The Brook," that his style ripples along
with perfect ease and grace. If we compare the lovely
modulation of " The Brook," or the liquid notes of " Blow,
bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying," or the delicate
rapture of " Come into the garden, Maud," with the stately
compression of " The Palace of Art " or of most of the
" Idylls of the King," we shall at once see that it is not
want of motion, but rather excessive compression, which
gives to so many of Mr. Tennyson's poems the air of
moving through a resisting medium. There is nothing
like " still " life to be found in his poems. When he puts
a half-understood emotion or a new natural fact under his
poetic object-glass, it may occupy a larger space than it
ever did in the poems of other poets, but that is only
because the scale of life is really larger. No poet is less
justly liable to the charge of making much of a little or of
pottering over his poetic discoveries.
And, indeed, " In Memoriam " is the only one of Mr.
Tennyson's poems of which even his most hostile critics
could say that its movement is slow. Here, however,
there is necessarily the brooding movement of a haunting
grief, for it is of the very essence of a poem devoted to the
expression of the pain, and fear, and doubt, and hope, and
faith, which a great wound to the heart causes, to hover
perpetually over the same theme, and to transform every
Y 2

324 TENNYSON.
seemingly foreign subject of reflection into new food for
suffering or new promise of peace. Mrs. Browning, in
perhaps her finest sonnet, has said that
" If to conquer love has tried,
To conquer grief tries more, as all things prove,
For grief indeed is love, and grief beside.
Alas, I have grieved so, I'm hard to love."
And Mr. Tennyson's great poem is a comment on this text,
a comment showing how much more grief may be than
love — not only more absorbing, which it must be, not only
more tasking and more urgent in pushing the sufferer on
to seemingly vain and thankless efforts to vindicate his
fidelity of heart, from which he sinks back exhausted into
himself, for that to a great extent it must be also — but
also more fruitful of strength, of courage, of hope, and of
peace. St. Paul has not got much credit for poetic feeling
amongst the many great poets of the Bible, and no doubt
the passages in which he rises into poetry are somewhat
rare ; but of one of them, I suspect, we miss the beauty and
force rather for want of such a mental history as that of
" In Memoriam " to explain it, than from any want of
pathos, depth, and singular precision of feeling in the
passage itself. It would injure " In Memoriam " to give it
a Biblical motto, for that would tend to classify a great
modern poem in that dismal category of works known as
" Serious reading," and so to diminish its just influence ;
otherwise it would be hard to find a more exact and pro
found summary of its cycle of thought and emotion than
St. Paul's reason (evidently an afterthought) for "glory
ing in tribulation" — "knowing that tribulation worketh
patience, and patience experience, and experience hope ;
and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is
shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is
given unto us." That is a true summary of the drift of

TENNYSON. 325
" In Memoriam." The poet sets out with a cry of desola
tion, of self-pitying numbness of heart ;— for the piece which
now stands first of the series, and immediately follows the
grand apostrophe, " Strong Son of God, immortal Love,"
is evidently a poetical preface to the whole, and not even
one of the first in point of time. The first apostrophe to
the tree of churchyards, the funeral yew, whose roots " are
wrapped about the bones " of the dead, is a cry of life in
death, a cry of horror at the prospect of death in life. And
in all those which follow it, till the poet's interest begins
to awaken as to the fate of the ship which was to bring
home his friend's body from the Adriatic, we hear, under
the various restlessly changing forms of a stunned spirit,
the constant presence of the thought —
" Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears
That grief hath shaken into frost."
Then his imagination begins to fix itself, at intervals,
with the fanciful fidelity which grief always transfers from
the dead to some half-living representative of the dead, on
the ship that is bringing home all that remained of his
friend, and some of the most beautiful reveries in the
language describe how he follows all its motions as if they
were the motions of his friend himself : —
" I hear the noise about thy keel ;
I hear the bell struck in the night ;
I see the cabin windows bright ;
I see the sailor at the wheel."
He flies off in reverie, on visionary wings, " a weight of
nerves without a mind" (could there be a finer expression
for the acute sensation which renders thought impossible ?),
to meet the vessel on her way, and " circles moaning in
the air, ' Is this the end ? Is this the end ? ' " Then he tries
to convince himself that he does not suffer " in a dream ; "
records, what every one has felt in such cases, that if the

326 TENNYSON.
dead should prove to be alive and express compassion and
grief for the illusions that have given so much pain,
nothing would seem more natural to him; he hails the
vessel bearing the remains of his friend on her arrival
with a gleam of thankfulness that is the first softening
touch ; and from that point we have gentler moods of grief
alternating with the despair : —
" Ah yet, e'en yet, if this might be,
I, falHng on his faithful heart,
Would breathing thro' his lips impart
The life that almost dies in me ;
That dies not, but endures with pain,
And slowly forms the firmer mind,
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again."
Tribulation has already worked patience.
Then, first, we meet with "the Shadow cloak'd from
head to foot, who keeps the keys of all the creeds," and the
long series of poems full of searching thought, and, here
and there, of gleams of returning serenity of spirit, in
which the self-accusations, the self-justifications, the
doubts of science, the hopes of conscience, the glimpses
of God's love, alternate like the parting clouds and shin
ing stars of a stormy November night. At last he can
answer thus his own question, whether love would not
survive in this life, even if it could hope for nothing
beyond : — " And Love would answer with a sigh,
' The sound of that forgetful shore
Will change my sweetness more and more,
Half-dead to know that I shall die.'
O me, what profits it to put
An idle case ? If Death were seen
At first as Death, Love had not been,
Or been in narrowest working shut."

TENNYSON. 327
And then we know that patience is already working
experience, and experience hope; and hope the greater
and not the less, for that vivid insight into not merely the
thoughts, but the living facts that are the food of Doubt,
which Mr. Tennyson has compressed into some of these
noble poems. There is hardly finer reflective poetry in
existence than the series of poems in which he adduces the
evidence that Nature, as Nature, cares for neither indi
vidual nor type ; that
" She cries, ' A thousand types are gone,
I care for nothing, all shall go ; '

. .";

that she is utterly indifferent whether or not Man,
" Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust
Or sealed within the iron hills."
And when he breasts all these hostile demonstrations of
science with the unconquerable though trembling faith
which man's nature and God's revelations oppose to all the
vestiges of the lower creation, and ends with the cry to
what he feels is " Lord of all," and faintly trusts " the
larger hope," we cannot help confessing that "hope
maketh not ashamed," since it can face boldly even this
dread array of dumb discouragements.
From this point the poet's grief passes more and more
into gentle memory, contemplation, and even joy. Here
and there, before the anguish dies wholly away, we have
exquisite bursts of returning life and joy, like that wonder
ful little address to the nightingale, which seems to express
the rapture at once of pain and of victory over it : —
" Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks,
O tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet,

328 TENNYSON.
Whence radiate ; fierce extremes employ
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy :
And I — my harp would prelude woe, —
I cannot all command the strings ;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go."
With such alternations of joy, and an always rising note
of love and faith, this great history of grief comes to a
triumphant end,
" With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved
And all we flow from, soul in soul,"
— where, if ever in human poetry, we see the glow of that
" love of God which is shed abroad in our hearts by the
Holy Ghost that is given us." I know of no poem so
great or so perfect which deals with grief at all. The
higher poetry has a tendency to shun grief — submissive
grief at least ; for grief that bows to the stroke is of all
emotions the one most depressing to the immediate store
of mental vitality ; and the higher poetry springs from the
fullest well of life. Pain of all other kinds, including even
that defiant despair which fights against God, finds ample
voice in poetry ; but grave and quiet anguish under the
acknowledged fact of loss, anguish which does not strive
to kick against the pricks, and yet does not seek to quench
itself in mystic passion, has had few and fragmentary
representatives in our higher poetry. Only a very strong
spirit of poetry could have prevented so long a series of
mournful poems as this from becoming oppressively
sombre. Even as it is, it is only in one's sadder moods
that one turns to this great poem ; and, indeed, it is only
in one or two of the latter poems of the series that it is
possible for Mr. Tennyson to embody the full strength and

TENNYSON. 329
elasticity of his poetic genius. There is a natural limita
tion of power and vitality imposed by the nature of the
subject in this respect.
In one respect, however, I think " In Memoriam " sur
passes all his other works — I mean in the exquisite tone
of the pictures it contains. Elsewhere his pictures are apt
to start out from the surface of his poems with colours
almost too brilliant and outlines almost too strongly
defined, so that one is dazzled by the detail, and the main
subject of the poem is thrown into the shade. It is never
so in "In Memoriam," where the lowered key of grief
and hesitating hope, results in colours as liquid in tone as
the mood they illustrate. Is there in the whole range of
English poetry such a picture of a summer twilight, itself
drawn in the very mood of such a twilight, as this ? —
" By night we linger'd on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry,
And genial warmth ; and o'er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn ;
And calm that let the tapers burn
Unwaving : not a cricket chirfd :
The brook alone far off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn :
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes ;
While now we sang old songs that peal'd
From knoll to knoll, where couch'd at ease,
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field."
And what a living picture of the dawn ends the same
wonderful poem ! —
" Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd
The knoll once more where, couch'd at ease,
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field ;

330 TENNYSON.
And, suckd from out the distant gloom,
A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said,
' The dawn, the dawn,' and died away :
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day."
I know no descriptive poetry that has the delicate spiritual
genius of that passage, its sweet mystery, its subdued
lustre, its living truth, its rapture of peace. And besides
the indescribable beauty of the pictures in "In Memo
riam," in intellectual depth, especially in the truthfulness
of its knowledge of the heart, and in the elasticity of soul
which thrusts back the heaviest burdens by its own inhe
rent force, this poem has never been rivalled in its kind
by any English poet. Its defects are few and very slight,
and mostly what I observe in all Mr. Tennyson's poems.
He always shows a certain tendency to over-express any
morbid thought or feeling he wishes to resist, and this jars
more on the ear in a poem of which the very essence is its
sad self-possession and submissive pain. Thus, where he
says that man tried to believe Love to be " Creation's final
law,"
" Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed,"
the phrase sounds to me hysterical, for Nature is very
much besides the teeth and claws of beasts of prey, and the
" shrieks " of her victims can hardly be fairly represented
as her voice. The significance of the objection, which
is undeniable, loses, I think, instead of gaining in weight,
from so excited a form of expression. I feel just the same

TENNYSON. 331
jar at the phrase twice used of sorrow, " Sorrow with thy
lying lip," which, as representing the illusions into which
sorrow betrays us, sounds harsh, almost like the phrase of
a scold ; — yet nothing can be conceived less like the
general tenor of feeling in the poem than the scolding
mood. Now and then, too, there is a tone of " effusion "
beyond what a perfectly simple taste admits, as where the
poet supposes that his friend might come down alive from
the ship in which he was looking only for his corpse, and
" strike a sudden hand in mine," where " strike " is surely
too pronounced, too emphatic a word for the occasion,
especially as the idea is conveyed by the word "sudden."
But when seeming faults, so " infinitely little " as these,
are the only ones to be perceived in such a poem as this,
the poem must be great, unless indeed the critic be very
blind. Certainly to me it seems the most beautiful and
vivid of all poems that ever grew out of a grave.
No one can criticise " In Memoriam " and " The Idylls of
the King," still less pass from the one to the other, with
out being conscious of the immense influence which ethical
principles have had in moulding Mr. Tennyson's work as
an artist, or without reflecting in some form on the charge
so commonly made or implied against him, that he has
injured the character of his art for the sake of the per
fectly irrelevant interests of morality. No one can doubt
that if a poem which is, as it asserts itself, the simple out
pouring of long years of grief, has what may be called a
moral teaching at all, the teaching of " In Memoriam " is
that Knowledge severed from Love and Faith is " a child
and vain ; " that she should know her place, which is to be
second, not the first ; that
" A higher hand must make her mild
If all be not in vain ; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With Wisdom, like the younger child."

332 TENNYSON.
If " In Memoriam " has a definite teaching at all, as dis
tinguished from a lyrical burden, this is it. And no doubt
it expresses a conviction which springs from the very-
depths of the poet's soul. Whether it injures his poetry
or not must depend on two conditions. First, is it obtruded
didactically instead of merely shaping and turning his
song ? In other words, does it mar the music, or is it of
the essence of the music ? For any one may spoil a song
or a poem of any kind by incorporating with it fragments
of a sermon. The second question is, " Is it true ? " For
if the doctrine that Knowledge severed from Love and
Faith is out of place, be incorporated into the very heart
of the music, and be yet false, unmanly, enervating
doctrine, I at least should admit at once that it must
injure the poem, as well as the morality of the poem.
Mr. Swinburne, — who, when he can lay aside petty resent
ments and clear his essays from the intricate inuendoes
inspired by a whole host of unintelligible literary ani
mosities, always writes with the lucid beauty of genius,
though somewhat too much also with the " high action "
of complacent consciousness, — appears to think the first
question alone relevant. He has declared that " the
worth of a poem has properly nothing to do with its
moral meaning or design ; " that " the only absolute duty
of Art is the duty she owes to herself; " that " she is
dependent on herself alone, and on nothing above or
beneath." He does not therefore prohibit Art from taking
a moral aim, so long as the aim does not so protrude as to
injure the art. But he will not admit that the character of
the morality involved is even an element in the matter.
Indeed, "there is a value," he says, "beyond price and
beyond thought, in the Lesbian music which spends itself
on the record of fleshly fever and amorous malady." Un
questionably this is not Mr. Tennyson's doctrine. In
verses which, had they not been in all probability written

TENNYSON. 333
long before Mr. Swinburne was born, might have been
supposed to bear some reference to his genius, the Laureate
has said that the highest creative beauty, whether of the
divine or of the poetic kind, must imply a moral law : —
" My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core
And dust and ashes all that is ;
This round of green, this orb of flame
Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks
In some wild Poet when he works
Without a conscience or an aim!'
Nor can I conceive of any rational interpretation of the
view for which Mr. Swinburne declares himself so abso
lutely — without, however, himself attempting to give it a
rational interpretation. I doubt if he even agrees heartily
with himself. He declares, for instance, against Mr. Ten
nyson's " Vivien," on the ground that in depicting an un
chaste woman, Art requires " at least some trace of human,
or, if need be, of devilish dignity." Now, I do not suppose
that Mr. Swinburne means to imply that all the proper
subjects of Art must have dignity, either human, devilish,
or of any other kind. Malvolio and Caliban are both, I
suppose, fit subjects for Art, and neither of them by reason
of their dignity, rather by reason of the want of it. What
Mr. Swinburne meant, I suppose, was that in a figure of
the type of Vivien, some trace of other dignity is needed to
render the intrinsic want of womanly dignity tolerable.
But if this be admitted, Mr. Swinburne's " absolute inde
pendence of Art " is surrendered at once. Why is some
vestige of dignity specially needed in the portraiture of
one of Vivien's type, except because the higher taste is so
intolerant of mere meanness — especially meanness of the
sensual order — that when you are painting a character in
this essential respect destitute of worth, you are bound to

334 TENNYSON.
relieve the picture by portraying some trait of greatness of
some other kind, greatness of passion, or intelligence, or, if
it must be so, greatness of evil purpose itself? I agree
with the general principle, if not with its special applica
tion to Vivien, but what does it imply ? This fastidious
ness of the higher taste is not an accident of the artistic
temperament. We shrink from the meaner types of evil
in Art, because they are less representative of our nature,
because they fail to call out the deeper and more en
nobling moral emotions; because, while we can despise
and loathe them, we cannot dread or hate them. Well,
but this is a virtual admission that Art acknowledges the
supremacy of these moral emotions — in other words, of the
conscience which shapes them ; and, if it be so, then the
poetry which makes the lower passions speak as if there
were no such moral emotions at all, is worse as poetry for
its grovelling blindness. Mr. Swinburne's " Lesbian music
which spends itself on the record of fleshly fever and
amorous malady " seems to me the music of the satyr, not
the music of human beings, and to be condemned by the
very reasons which he assigns for condemning " Vivien."
It is wanting in all dignity except the dignity of flame, or
rather it revels in indignity, in what is the disgrace and
not the honour of human nature. You might as well say
that it is a fit subject for Art to paint the morbid ecstasy
of cannibals over their horrid feasts, as to paint lust
without love. If you are to delineate man at all, you
must delineate him with his human nature, and therefore
you can never really omit from any worthy picture that
conscience which is its crown. I believe, myself, that
Mr. Tennyson is never guilty of letting his moral purpose
crop out ostentatiously so as to injure his art ; indeed,
I have never seen it even alleged- that he is so guilty,
except in relation to his picture p# Arthur, of which I
have presently to speak. And as I believe that his

TENNYSON. 335
intense conviction, that Knowledge is "the second, not
the first," is true — 'that Art herself must walk by the light
of Love and Faith, and must not paint human nature in
the monstrous and conscienceless shapes it sometimes
really assumes, unless with some foil which shall make the
void where the moral life should be, painfully visible, — I
cannot think that in any respect Mr. Tennyson has shown
himself a higher artist than in the important but generally
unostentatious place which the conscience takes in his
greater poems.
Of course the soundness of this judgment on Mr.
Tennyson as a poet must depend on the real value of the
great poem called, I think with somewhat unfortunate
modesty, " The Idylls of the King." The title misled the
public, and the fragmentary mode in which the poem
appeared misled it the more. I confess that when the
first four Idylls first appeared I did not enjoy them nearly
so much as many of the Laureate's earlier poems. No
one, I suppose, with any taste for poetry at all could
possibly have read " Elaine " and " Guinevere," especially
the latter, without delight. But appearing, as they did,
without any notice of their fragmentary character, and
with, I still think, a good deal in the first of them, " Enid,"
to suggest that they were rich pictorial fancies, taken,
certainly not altogether at random, but yet without any
really coherent design, out of a great magazine of romantic
story, there was some excuse, I think, for the hasty impres
sion that they were four minutely finished cabinet pictures,
painted of course to hang by and illustrate each other, but
nevertheless with more view to the beauty of the individual
effects than to their relation to each other. By the side of
" Ulysses," " The Two Voices," and many others of Mr.
Tennyson's earlier poems, I certainly thought at first the'
four first " Idylls " a Ift'tfe wanting in intellectual interest,
a little too dependent on their pictorial brilliancy. But as

336 TENNYSON.
the poem put forth new shoots in both directions, back
wards and forwards, and the noble portions . on " The
Coming of Arthur," "The Holy Grail," and "The Passing
of Arthur," appeared, — poems in which the gradual growth
and fall of the ideal kingdom of the spiritual chivalry were
depicted, — the grandeur of the new poem began, for me
at least, to eclipse in interest almost everything that
Mr. Tennyson had written, and the first published Idylls
themselves grew in intellectual fascination. "The Last
Tournament," and " Gareth and Lynette," which furnished
respectively almost the last and first links in the chain,
except the "Passing" and "Coming" of Arthur them
selves, seem to me to have wrought up the poet's con
ceptions into a far completer expression, and to have
put the final touches to a very great, though not quite
perfect whole. Most readers seem to find much less of
grace and finish in the later than in the earlier published
Idylls. As regards "Pelleas and Ettarre" and "The
Last Tournament," this is not only true, but was neces
sary to the poet's purpose, which was to give the impres
sion of rude storms, gloom, and coming ruin before the
tragic close. I do not think myself that it is true at all of
the other parts. The new additions to " The Passing of
Arthur " — which now embodies Mr. Tennyson's earliest as
well as his latest work on this great poem — seem to me
to contain the grandest lines he has ever written, lines
resonant with the highest chords of spiritual yearning and
bewildered trust, lines which echo and re-echo in one's
imagination like the dying tones of the organ in a great
cathedral's aisles. "Gareth and Lynette," which is in
tended to paint the freshest period of the ideal kingdom
and also to foreshadow its course, has to my ear a mingled
sweetness and depth that make it far surpass " Enid " in
poetic power, and so no doubt it introduces a certain flaw
into the workmanship of the whole poem, which rather

TENNYSON. 337
.declines in power as it passes from its first to its second
stage and shows the origin of* the evil influence which is to
lay the whole fair structure in ruins. I think, too, there is
a flaw of the same kind in the comparative inferiority of
"Pelleas and Ettarre " to the parts which precede and follow
it. "Pelleas and Ettarre" is not merely harsh and revolting,
as " The Last Tournament " is harsh and revolting — that it
must have been : it is harsh and revolting without present
ing any of the assuaging and ennobling effects of Arthur's
exalting influence, without any reconciling touch such as
the passionate fidelity of the fool gives to "The Last Tour
nament," and also I think without sufficient grandeur even
in the evil. Ettarre, at all events, is hardly a figure dignified
enough for the evil part she has to play in a great tragedy.
She is no greater than she is in the old story itself, where
she has to play a far less important part, and where there
is a foil to her wanting in Mr. Tennyson's picture.
These are the kind of artistic objections — objections of
detail — to which I think Mr. Tennyson's great Arthurian
poem is justly liable. The design as a whole seems to
me more within true poetic limits, if not nobler in itself,
than anything in our epic literature; and though Mr.
Tennyson does not of course bring to its execution a voice
of the mighty volume of Milton, he has not only written
what is far more perfect as a work of art, though less
imposing as a work of genius, than "Paradise Lost" —
indeed, the former might easily be — but one which shadows
forth the ideal faith of his own time — a time of at least as
sincere if much less definite faith, and of far higher moral
and intellectual discrimination — more adequately.
In taking his subject from the great mediaeval myth of
English chivalry, it was of course open to Mr. Tennyson
to adopt any treatment of it which would really incorporate
the higher and grander aspects of the theme, and also find
an ideal unity for a number of legends in which of unity
VOL. 11. z

338 TENNYSON.
there was none. It is obvious that in dealing with the
chivalric story with which strange and grand fragments
of mediseval Christian mysticism are closely interwoven,
it was impossible to avoid the blending of the distinct
themes of ideal courage and honour, ideal love and purity,
and the rapt visions of an ideal faith. This could not
have been avoided. But undoubtedly these various ele
ments might have blended in various ways ; and it would
have been possible, no doubt, to make the central figure
of the poem one in which the highest ideal aims were
crossed by the tragic consequences of a youthful sin, so
that everywhere his own sin rose up against him till it
brought to ruin the fair dream of his life. This is the
view of the story of Arthur which Mr. Swinburne and
his school maintain to be the only natural and legitimate
one. And there is no doubt that the treachery which
finally undermines and ruins Arthur's work is the treachery
of Modred, nor that, according to the • story of the old
legend, Modred is Arthur's own son, the offspring of the
guilty passion of his father for one whom he did not then
know to be his half-sister Bellicent. According to the
old story, Merlin prophesied to him the evil destiny in
store for him as the penalty of this sin, and also forbade
him to take part in the search for the Holy Grail, as being
rendered unworthy of it by that sin. Nor can it be denied
that there are various other traces in the early part, of
these legends of the moral taint which Arthur's nature
had thus incurred. For instance, the sword brought by
the lady of the isle of Avelyon cannot be drawn by Arthur,
because it can only be drawn by a knight in whom there is
no hidden shame.
For the rest, the picture of Arthur as given in the old
legends is exceedingly wavering and uncertain. For the
most part it is the picture of a gracious and noble figure
of mysterious origin and mysterious destiny, — "Rex

TENNYSON. 339
quondam, Rexque futurus," according to the legendary
inscription on his tomb, — whose nobility inspires a passion
of love and fidelity in his knights, and the profoundest
agony of remorse in his unfaithful queen ; but also at times
crafty, and at times weak, trying in the beginning of his
reign, like Herod, to exterminate the infants amongst
whom Merlin's lore pronounces that the cause of his own
ruin and death is to be found ; and yielding at the end
of his reign, against his own better mind, to the bloody
and vindictive counsels of his nephew Gawain in the war
with Lancelot. I will venture to say that if only those
legends collected by Sir Thomas Malory were to be taken
as authorities (and though I do not profess a knowlege of
the various other collections, -if is quite clear that many of
them are far more favourable to the ideal view of Arthur
than Sir Thomas Malory's), and if everything they say
of Arthur were put together, no coherent character at all
could be constructed out of them. It would have been
impossible to draw any poetical portrait of the king
without the freest principle of selection. Had Mr. Tenny
son taken the view which Mr. Swinburne affirms, — with a
pert dogmatism quite unworthy of the exquisite English
in which he writes, and the frequent flashes of genius in
the substance of what he writes, — to be the only possible
one ; had the story of Arthur been turned into that of a
kind of mediaeval CEdipus, and the awful destiny which
avenged his voluntary sin but involuntary incest, that of
death by the hand of his own son, been made the subject
of it, — there would have been no room at all for the spiritual
halo which the mysterious stories of Arthur's birth and
of his return from the island of his rest shed round the
subject. No Greek tragedian would have dreamt of invest
ing CEdipus with such a halo as that. This view of the
story is a tragic one in the true old sense of a story
purifying the heart by pity and by fear. The subject of
z 2

340 TENNYSON.
so dread and dark a destiny may be enabled to answer
Sphinx-riddles as a step to his own doom, but he cannot
be one whose coming is preceded by heavenly portents,
and whose passing takes place amidst the wailing of un
earthly mourners, the bitter grief and remorse of faithless
companions, and the mystic presage of a glorious return.
It seems to me perfectly evident that Mr. Tennyson, as
every true poet — Mr. Swinburne himself, for example — had
to choose between the various inconsistent elements in the
Arthurian legends, which of them he would keep and
which he would eliminate, that it would have been simply
impossible to keep the element of shame and retribution
along with the element of mystic spiritual glory, and that
the last is far the most characteristic and the most in
keeping with the Christian mysticism of the San Grail
legends, of the two. Let any one read either Sir Thomas
Malory's book, or the brief, graceful, and classical com
pilation * of the Legends of King Arthur by J. T. K., and
then judge for himself whether the sin of King Arthur or
his unearthly glory be the more deeply ingrained element
of the two, and I suspect he will end by accepting as the
overruling idea, and also as by far the better adapted for
coherent treatment, the verdict of the old chroniclers, of
Joseph of Exeter, for example : " The old world knows
not his peer, nor will the future show us his equal ; he
alone towers over all other kings, better than the past
ones, and greater than those that are to be ; " and again
another old compiler : " In short, God has not made, since
Adam was, the man more perfect than King Arthur." f
It is perfectly evident that this tradition of unrivalled
spiritual glory was a development of elements of the
story quite inconsistent with that of his great sin and
shame. * Strahan and Co.
t I quote these from the preface to J. T. K.'s compilation.

TENNYSON. 3+,
Mr. Swinburne asserts, however, that Guinevere's sin is
closely implicated with Arthur's : "From the sih of Arthur's
youth proceeds the ruin of his reign and realm through
the falsehood of his wife — a wife unloving and unloved." *
I believe this is not only without basis in the story as
told by Sir Thomas Malory, but wholly inconsistent with
it. So far is Guinevere from being " unloved," that when
Merlin asks Arthur, " Is there any faire lady that yee love
better than another?" he answers, "Yea, I love Guine
vere the King's daughter, Leodegrance of the land of
Camelyard, which Leodegrance holdeth in his power the
Table Round that yee told hee had of my father Uther.
And this demosell is the most gentilest and fairest lady
that I know living, or yet that I ever could find." " Sir,"
said Merlin, " as of her beautie and fairenesse, she is one
of the fairest that live ; but an yee loved her not so well as
yee doe, I would finde yee a demosell of beautie and of good-
nesse that should like yee and please yee, and your heart were
not set. But there as a man's heart is set, he will be loth to
return." "That is truth," said Arthur; — and here not
only is Arthur's passion for his queen represented as
beyond resistance, but Merlin treats the want of love of
Guinevere as the root of the calamities that, were to
come, and intimates that by a happier choice these
calamities might have been avoided. And the simple
truth is, that this is the whole drift of the legends, from
the date of Arthur's marriage to the close. After Arthur's
mysterious death, Guinevere freely takes upon herself and
Lancelot the whole guilt of the ruin of Arthur's kingdom.
"Through this knight and mee all these warres were
wrought, and the death of the most noble knights of the
world ; for through our love that we have loved together
is my most noble lord slaine .... For as well as I have
* " Under the Microscope," by Algernon Charles Swinburne, p. 37.
(White, Coventry Street.)

342 TENNYSON.
loved thee, Sir Lancelot, now mine heart will not once
serve mee to see thee ; for through thee and mee is the
floure of kings and knights destroyed." And her last
prayer is not to see Sir Lancelot again with her bodily
eyes, lest her earthly and disloyal love should return upon
her, but that he should bury her beside her true lord and
master, King Arthur. No one can read Sir Thomas
Malory's book without being struck by the complete dis
appearance, as it proceeds, of all trace of remorse or
shame in King Arthur, and by the weight of guilt thrown
upon the passionate love of Lancelot and Guinevere.
Obviously, if Mr. Tennyson was to keep to the legends
which cast so mysterious a halo of spiritual glory around
King Arthur, he had no choice but to ignore those which
connected, CEdipus-fashion, his youthful sin with the final
catastrophe. But it has been said that Arthur's exclusion from the
search for the San Grail is only intelligible on the ground
of his youthful guilt. Here again, I think, Mr. Tenny
son's poetic instinct proves triumphant. For in the
story of it as told by Sir Thomas Malory, there is not
only no trace of this, but a distinct justification of the
Poet Laureate's view that Arthur looked on this search
for the San Grail as almost a disloyalty to the higher
though humbler task that he had set himself and his
knights — of restoring order on earth ; while, on the other
hand, knights, who, like Sir Lancelot, are stained with far
deeper and more voluntary guilt than any the King, even
on Mr. Swinburne's view, is chargeable with, are allowed
to join in the search. I do not know anything happier or
more true in its instinct, in English poetry, than the tone
Mr. Tennyson has attributed to Arthur's reluctant assent
to the search for the San Grail. It is amply justified by
the old legends, and it just enables the poet to express
through Arthur that spiritual distrust of signs and wonders

TENNYSON. 343
which, while it serves to link his faith closely with modern
thought, is in no way inconsistent with the chivalric cha
racter of the whole story. In Sir Thomas Malory's version,
after the descent of the Holy Ghost, the vision of the holy
vessel, and that Pentecostal scene in which all the knights ,
amid profound silence, had beheld each other invested with
a higher beauty than their own, Arthur yields thanks to
God " of his grace that hee had sent them, and for the vision
hee had showed them at the high feast of Pentecost," yet
not only suggests no quest, but imagines none ; nor is it
the holiest of the knights, nor one of those who are to suc
ceed wholly or partially in achieving it, who proposes it.
It is Sir Gawain ; — though Mr. Tennyson, who has accepted
for other reasons a lower conception of Sir Gawain than
the old chroniclers, puts the first oath into the mouth of
the mystic-minded Percivale. Arthur at once expresses
his displeasure in language at least fairly interpretable as
implying disapprobation of the surrender of a prior earthly
duty for a visionary spiritual aim. "'Alas!' said King
Arthur unto Sir Gawain, ' yee have nigh slaine mee with
the vow and promise yee have made ; for through you yee
have bereft mee of the fairest fellowship and the truest of
knighthood that ever were seene together in any realme of
the world. For when they shall depart from hence, I am
sure that all shall never meete more in this world, for there
shall many die in the quest, and so it forethinketh (re-
penteth) mee a little, for I have loved them as well as my
life ; wherefore it shall grieve me right sore the separation
of this fellowship, for I have had an old custome to have
them in my fellowship.' " And again, more passionately :
" ' Ah, Sir Gawain, Sir Gawain, yee have betraied mee,
for never shall my heart be amended by you, but yee will
never be sorry for mee as I am for you ;' and therewith the
teeres began to runne downe by his visage. And there
with the King said : 'Ah, knight, Sir Lancelot, I require

3+4 TENNYSON.
thee that thou wilt counsaile mee, for I would this quest
were undone, and it might bee.' " This is not the language
of one too guilty to join in the quest himself, but of one
who sincerely disapproves it, as the exchange of a clear
prior duty undertaken by his knights, for one of doubtful
obligation, though of spiritual ambition.
On the whole, I cannot help thinking that Mr. Swin
burne's hostile criticism of " The Idylls of the King" for
their omission of the taint in the King's life and character,
is virtually a complaint that the poet has not excluded the
whole halo of spiritual glory from the Arthurian tradition,
and substituted an old Greek tragedy for a mystic mediaeval
vision. Doubtless Mr. Swinburne himself would have
preferred the former subject — the dark shadows of fate, the
sensual horror, the black remorse, and the fell retribution,
which haunt a sin of passion and an unnatural though
partly involuntary crime. He has often shown an almost
ostentatious preference for artistic subjects of this specially
painful kind. But looking solely to the Arthurian legends
themselves, I think Mr. Tennyson was more than justified
in taking the other view, By doing so he has not only
raised the character of his poem, but connected it with
some of the most prominent and distinctive threads in our
modern spiritual life.
To come to the poem itself, — the various links in which
too few of its readers have, I fear, as yet considered in the
order in which Mr. Tennyson means them to be ultimately
studied, ra.ther than in that in which he has given them to
the world, — what a splendour of dusk and dawn is there
not in the introductory poem, " The Coming of Arthur ;"
what a veil of lustre is drawn over the birth and origin of
this mysterious king, whose royal right is half reflected
rumour flashed back from the greatness of his subsequent
deeds, and half that dim oracular testimony which always
seems to anticipate the higher orders of greatness from

TENNYSON.

3+5

their earliest days ! His knights believe him to be of the
old royal race, the more that his tones of command " and
simple words of great authority" sink into them with a self-
attesting power, so
" That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some
Were pale as at the passing of a ghost,
Some flush'd, and others dazed, as one who wakes
Half-blinded at the coming of a light."
His sister, full of a deeper loyalty and a more feminine
faith, believes the rumour of a supernatural origin, — that
he came with portents, borne a naked babe upon the sea,
the sign of the winged dragon above him in heaven, and a
lambent fire playing round him as the last and greatest of
nine great waves bore him to Merlin's feet. Merlin him
self, the great master of all mediaeval lore, could only say
of Arthur that though men might wound him, he could
never die, but " pass, again to come," declaring of him in
words that haunt the mind of Guinevere when she sees
him depart to return to her no more —
" From the great deep to the great deep he goes."
Leodogran's dream, when he is doubting whether Arthur's
mysterious descent is truly royal, so that he may give him
Guinevere for his wife, or not, — the dream in which he
mingles the story of the actual wars of Arthur against the
heathen with the rumours of the still struggling passions
of his rebellious subjects, and yet augurs that the grandeur
of the King will survive even the history of his deeds, —
is a splendid embodiment of Mr. Tennyson's drift through
out the poem. Grant that a perfect king is a phantom of
the human imagination, yet it is a phantom which will
haunt it long after what we call the real earth shall have
been dissolved : —
" She spake and King Leodogran rejoiced,
But musing, ' Shall I answer yea or nay ?'
Doubted, and drowsed, nodded and slept, and saw,

346 TENNYSON.
Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew,
Field after field, up to a height, the peak
Haze-hidden/and thereon a phantom king,
Now looming, and now lost ; and on the slope
The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd was driven,
Fire glimpsed ; and all the land from roof and rick,
In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind,
Stream'd to the peak, and mingled with the haze
And made it thicker ; while the phantom king
Sent out at times a voice ; and here or there
Stood one who pointed toward the voice, the rest
Slew on and burnt, crying, ' No king of ours,
No son of Uther, and no king of ours ; '
Till with a wink his dream was changed, the haze
Descended, and the solid earth became
As nothing, and the king stood out in heaven,
Crown'd. And Leodogran awoke, and sent
Ulfius, and Brastias and Bedivere,
Back to the court of Arthur answering yea."
Like all true authority, that of the ideal king is
hidden in mystery, but the image of his glory in the
heavens survives the crumbling of his kingdom on earth.
Not in painting the restless hunger of travel in his
"Ulysses," not in making us shudder at the immortal
mortality of the weary "Tithonus," has Mr. Tennyson
displayed more power than in this wonderful picture of the
mystery which envelopes, and the inspiration which seems
to attend, the exercise of spiritual authority over the wills
of men, — of the spell which it lays upon them, — of the
certain failure of that spell as passion and pleasure and
selfish interest reassert their sway, and yet of the inevitable
reassertion of its power in memory and its eternal triumph
in faith.
The second of these poems, and the newest of them,
" Gareth and Lynette," is meant to paint the golden age of
Arthur's reign, while as yet no germ of guilt has sprung
into visible life, while the chivalry of perfect courage,
perfect love, and perfect faith is still dominant, and all
Arthur's knights are aiding him in redeeming the earth

TENNYSON. 347
and the souls of men from the tyranny of brutal instincts
and the lawless caprice of human self-will. Gareth is the
embodiment of childlike loyalty and buoyant youthful
faith, willing for any service, however seemingly ignomi
nious, Avhich is the service of the true King " who makes us
free," and not only willing for it, but happy and radiant in
it. He is chosen for one which is representative of the
aims of Arthur's whole kingdom, — to rescue her who is
beset in " Castle Perilous" by four strong but foolish and
boastful knights, who resist Arthur's authority and wish to
destroy the order he has founded, and who have challenged
him to send his bravest and most glorious knight to
encounter them, and deliver their fair captive if he may.
Whom the fair captive of " Castle Perilous" may represent,
and of what fashion the knights who there confine her,
Mr. Tennyson has not left us to conjecture, though the
allegory must not be pushed so far as to destroy the beauty
of the poetic story : —
" Anon they past a narrow comb wherein
Were slabs of rock with figures, knights on horse
Sculptured, and deckt in slowly-waning hues.
' Sir Knave, my knight, a hermit once was here,
Whose holy hand hath fashion'd on the rock
The war of Time against the soul of man.
And yon four fools have suck'd their allegory
From these damp walls, and taken but the form.
Know ye not these ? ' and Gareth lookt and read —
In letters like to those the vexillary
Hath left crag-craven o'er the streaming Gelt —
' Phosphorus,' then ' Meridies,' — ' Hesperus' —
' Nox' — ' MORS,' beneath five figures, armed men,
Slab after slab, their faces forward all,
And running down the Soul, a Shape that fled
With broken wings, torn raiment and loose hair,
For help and shelter to the hermit's cave."
In this the earliest and most joyous of the pictures of
Arthur's reign, something more of symbolism is permis
sible, by way of illustrating the drift and bearing of the

348 TENNYSON.
whole, than in the later poems, where sin and shame have
struck their dark personal impress on the story; and
nothing can be brighter and yet in its way more thrilling
than the story of Gareth's fearful encounter with the
Evening Star — him who with the wiry tenacity of worldly
experience and indurated habit, warded off the daring
enthusiasm of youth and faith, — and him who chilled the
blood of all under the awful seeming of Night and Death,
and yet proved to be but a blooming boy, disguised in
false terrors by the stratagem of the children of Time.
Of course Mr. Tennyson means that the whole aim of
Arthur's Order was to deliver the spiritual captive of
" Castle Perilous " from the power of these worldlings of
the flesh, and that the battle was to grow more grievous
as the long day grew towards its close, though " the pass
ing of Arthur " at the last, fearful as it seemed, should be
but the easy victory over a danger really conquered before
— the passing into an isle of rest, whence in higher glory
he should return again. The mixture of buoyant life with
symbolism in this story of Gareth, and the delicacy with
which Mr. Tennyson has used and yet quite transformed
the old Arthurian story of this relief of " Castle Perilous,"
seem to me to rank this poem amongst his happiest efforts.
In " Enid," where it is the purpose of the poet to picture
the infection of distrust, the contagious jealousy which the
rumour of Guinevere's unfaithfulness with Lancelot spread
downwards amongst the knights of Arthur, though as yet
in but a comparatively incipient and conquerable stage,
Mr. Tennyson's delight in picture a little overpowers his
main purpose ; and we approach nearer to the type of the
versified novellette — the type of "Enoch Arden" and
"Aylmer's Field" — than in any other section of the
Arthurian epic. We must remember, however, that Enid
is painted as especially distinguished by Guinevere's love ;
that it is her closeness to Guinevere which alarms Geraint

TENNYSON. 349
on her behalf when he hears Guinevere's virtue impugned ;
and that it is the King's healing influence, no less than
Enid's spotless purity, which restores Geraint to himself.
Arthur's chivalry is already attacked from the side of
purity, but the taint is not yet deep. In " Vivien " and
" Elaine " the taint spreads. In the former, which Mr.
Swinburne has assailed for vulgarity and grossness, we
have certainly, in Vivien's wiles with Merlin, the picture
of a true harlot worming out of that time-worn craft and
intellect — which, while it is high enough to discern and
serve willingly the true spiritual king, yet is not itself of
moral or spiritual descent, — its secrets of power, in the very
wantonness of selfish envy. She had first tried her wiles
with the higher nature, with the King himself, and failed.
She has heard of the sensual charm by which a living
death may be brought upon the highest mind : —
" And Vivien ever sought to work the charm
Upon the great Enchanter of the Time,
As fancying that her glory would be great
According to his greatness whom she quench'd."
How the great Enchanter hears the foul libels of her
evil heart with loathing, and then, " overtalked and over
worn," yields to her allurements, tells her the charm, and.
becomes its victim, so robbing Arthur's kingdom of its
shrewdest mind, Mr. Tennyson tells in one of his most
powerful but certainly not one of his most attractive poems.
Yet I cannot see that it would have been right, as Mr.
Swinburne asserts, to clothe Vivien with some sort of
dignity, " human or diabolic." Shakespeare himself never
clothes with dignity, even in tragedy, characters against
which he desires to excite pure loathing, — like Goneril
and Regan. What is wanted is to show the power which
sensual natures, partly because they are without dignity,
may attain over the highest and most experienced intellects

3So TENNYSON.
unprotected by something higher yet. Any addition of
dignity to Vivien would have been a fault for the purposes
of the picture. But I do think that Vivien's naked wicked
ness is insufficiently connected with the taint on Arthur's
Court caused by Guinevere's and Lancelot's sin. Vivien
should belong, at all events, to the last and not to the
earliest period. She might be conceivable when Ettarre
was the Queen of Beauty, and during the open shameless-
ness of " The Last Tournament." She is before her time
in the period when even Guinevere's fall has only just
become the scandal of the time. Vivien, the type of those
who " Inflate themselves with some insane delight
And judge all Nature from her feet of clay,"
is surely premature !
I do not suppose any one questions the exquisite beauty
of the poem in which Elaine's pure first love for Lancelot,
and her death on his behalf, is contrasted with the Queen's
jealous and guilty passion. The lurid picture of the
crowned skeleton on which Arthur trod in a moonlit pass,
long before he became king, when he broke from it that
diadem all the jewels in which Lancelot was to win for
the object of his guilty passion, makes a fine opening of
evil augury to this contrast between guilty and innocent
love, just as the passage of Elaine's corpse in the boat
to Camelot makes for it a noble and tragic close. The
contrast between Guinevere and Elaine, imaged in that
simple and exquisite passage where the Queen flings the
diamonds that Lancelot offers her into the river, —
" And down they flash'd, and smote the stream,
Then from the smitten surf ace flash' d as it were,
Diamonds to meet them, and they pass 'd away I' —
marks the turning point of the Arthurian story. The
King's pure influence wanes, and the Queen's guilty

TENNYSON. 3Si
passion grows. Sir Gawain, the type of gay and gallant
pleasure-seeking, has already begun to trifle disloyally
with his King's orders. And the burst of grand remorse
in Lancelot, with which the poem ends, prepares the way
for that morbid, self-introspective cast of thought, those
fever-fits of spiritual craving and despondency, that yearn
ing for signs and wonders, that thirst for expiation, by
which the search for the Holy Grail, with its lurid enthu
siasms and its apocalyptic dreams, is ushered in. " The
year of miracle " is painted, as it seems to me, with even
more than Mr. Tennyson's higher kind of power. The
mystic passion in it, the stormy remorse, the fitful
humility, the dreamy mingling of earth and heaven, tell
of the closest study of the literature of ecstasy and the
rapture of the seventh heaven. The picture is heightened
by the striking glimpse given us of that common-place
monk with his village gossips, and his earthly cares, all
glued like " the martin's nest " to the little thorpe which
lies under the monastery's walls, to whom Percivale relates
it — a picture almost worthy to set by that of the
"Northern Farmers" for its realism and its force. The
close of the poem, in which Arthur claims for himself
spiritual visions more than all of them, and yet condemns
the neglect of one plain practical duty in order to indulge
these visions, one of Mr. Tennyson's finest touches, serves
to mark at once the waning influence of the King,
and the growing stature of the " phantom " whom men
disowned : —
" And some among you held, that if the King
Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow :
Not easily, seeing that the King must guard
That which he rules, and is but as the hind
To whom a space of land is given to plough,
Who may not wander from the allotted field
Before his work be done ; but, being done,
Let visions of the night or of the day
Come, as they will ; and many a time they come.

352 TENNYSON.
Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,
This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,
This air that smites his forehead is not air,
But vision — yea, his very hand and foot —
In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again : ye have seen what ye have seen."
I have said I cannot greatly admire the poem which
follows, " Pelleas and Ettarre." It has great power, and
delineates the growth of a sensual chaos with terrible
force, but there is no relieving element in it. Pelleas, who
starts with an enthusiastic purity, deserves a better fate
(which, indeed, in the old legends he obtains) than that of
desperation and wild defiance of the kingdom in whose
greatness he had believed. We miss altogether Arthur's
presence. All is sensual anarchy, and the victory of the
harlot is complete. The reader greatly needs a touch like
that which ends "The Last Tournament," where the
fidelity even of a fool turns horror into true tragedy, and
opens a glimpse of love behind the foul orgies of victorious
lust. I think the Arthurian poem would be a more perfect
whole if " Pelleas and Ettarre " were completely omitted.
" The Last Tournament " seems to me not only to give us
over again all that " Pelleas and Ettarre " gives, but to give
it in a nobler form, in less harsh and grating discords.
"Guinevere," and "The Passing of Arthur," however,
heal all wounds. The passage in which the King, while
shrinking from even the touch of the Queen's hand, tells
her it is his doom to love her still, and that he claims her
in the eternal world as his — one of those passages on
which, I believe, the taunt has been founded, that Mr.
Tennyson's "Arthur" is "an impeccable prig,"— seems
to me one of the noblest and most moving in English
poetry. Doubtless, in one view, all sinlessness is didactic,
and therefore jarring to those who are not sinless. But

TENNYSON. 353
Mr. Tennyson means Arthur for the impersonation of
spiritual authority from the first, as he means Guinevere
for the impersonation of that highest form of woman's
beauty, which is the noblest embodiment of purity, and
therefore shows most sadly the flaw of passionate sin.
If the spirit of holiness, of mercy, of love, is priggish
because it is impeccable, then, and only then, could I
see the truth of that flippant charge against language such
as this : —
" I cannot take thy hand, that too is flesh,
And in the flesh thou hast sinn'd ; and mine own flesh,
Here looking down on thine polluted, cries
' I loathe thee : ' yet not less, O Guinevere,
For I was ever virgin save for thee,
My love thro' flesh hath wrought into my life
So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thine husband — not a smaller soul,
Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that,
I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence.
Thro' the thick night I hear the trumpet blow :
They summon me their King to lead mine hosts
Far down to that great battle in the west,
Where I must strike against my sister's son,
Leagued with the lords of the White Horse and knights
Once mine, and strike him dead, and meet myself
Death, or I know not what mysterious doom.
And thou remaining here wilt learn the event ;
But hither shall I never come again,
Never lie by thy side, see thee no more,
Farewell ! ' And while she grovell'd at his feet,
She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck,
And, in the darkness o'er her fallen head,
Perceived the waving of his hands that blest."

" The Passing of Arthur," which contains some of Mr.
Tennyson's earliest, and also his very latest, work, and all
VOL. II. A A

354 TENNYSON.
of it in his best and highest and most masculine strain, .is
a striking" evidence of the singular unity of his genius.
No single poem of his contains at once so much. vivid
colour and so much intellectual and spiritual magic. The
wonderful picture of the weird and desolate hour of seem
ing spiritual failure, of the wounded heart, of forsaken
suffering, of sinking trust, but not of failing fortitude or
shrinking will, which precedes and follows the last great
battle, is perhaps the highest Mr. Tennyson has drawn.
Nothing in all his poems gives me so strong a feeling
of his power as those which contain the dream in which
he seems to see the ghost of the pleasure-loving, pleasure-
seeking Gawain : —
" Before that last weird battle in the west
There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain kill'd
In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown
Along a wandering wind, and past his ear
Went shrilling ' Hollow, hollow, all delight !
Hail, King ! to-morrow thou shalt pass away.
Farewell ! there is an isle of rest for thee.
And I am blown along a wandering wind,
And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.'
And fainter onward, like wild birds that change
Their season in the night and wail their way
From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream
Shrill'd ; but in going mingled with dim cries
Far in the moonlit haze among the hills,
As of some lonely city sack'd by night,
When all is lost, and wife and child with wail
Pass to new lords ; and Arthur woke and call'd,
' Who spake ? A dream. O light upon the wind,
Thine, Gawain, was the voice — are these dim cries
Thine ? or doth'all that haunts the waste and wild
Mourn, knowing it will go along with me ?'"
The state of mind in which the spirit begins to creep
against the flesh, as knowing that the period of united ex
istence is past, and all things look spectral, while a horror
descends even upon the highest courage at a prospect

TENNYSON 355
rendered in this case indefinitely more chill by the broken
honour and sullied vows of others, and the seeming failure
of the purest spiritual constancy to subdue the world to
itself, is delineated as only one of the greater poets of the
world can delineate anything. Mr. Tennyson is never so
great as when he has a mystic dread to paint, when
Tithonus is shivering at the prospect of an immortal
burden, or Arthur asking himself on the edge of the here
after, whether there had been anything of true eternity
in his life here. I have said that what is rich and complex,
like the beauty and chivalry and faith of this great poem,
always attracts the Laureate most ; that his most charac
teristic poetry contains in it all the richest elements of
artistic composition. But, perhaps, for that very reason,
no other poet has painted so powerfully that mysterious
thrill with which the glory of this world passes away, and
leaves the nakedness of the soul behind. Percivale, with
every grand and lovely vision, falling into dust at his
touch, and leaving him alone, and " wearying in a land of
sand and thorns," or Arthur feeling a way
" Thro' this blind haze, which ever since I saw
One lying in the dust at Almesbury,
Hath folded in the passes of the world,"
is alike clad in the sublimity of that deepest kind of
desolation from which a vesture of rich thought and hope
has suddenly been stripped away. The very grandeur of
the scenery from which Arthur passes to his isle of rest,
when after the long day's battle wrapped in mist, and the
grievous wound from the traitor's hand, and the one
remaining knight's unfaithfulness, he is borne to the
margin of the mystic water, —
" When on a sudden, lo ! the level lake
And the long glories of the winter moon,"
A A 2

3S6 TENNYSON.
contributes, by the rich flash of its contrast, to enhance
the impression of a ghostly solitude of spirit and a
trembling, halting faith. The vision of Leodogran's dream
is literally fulfilled. The cloud has rolled down upon the
earth, and the King, a mighty phantom, stands out in
heaven— but stands out crowned, for he has lost nothing
in himself of the spiritual elements of his kingdom ; his
courage is unshaken, his honour unsullied, his purity
untarnished, and his faith, though wavering as, in the
hour of deepest darkness, it wavers in the most perfect
humanity, is still the life and blossom of his nature.
And as Merlin's riddling prophecy rings in our ears,
" Where is he who knows ?
From the great deep to the great deep he goes,"
we recognise in the drooping King, as the barge takes
him slowly to his isle of rest, the image of the " new
order" almost as much as of the old — the elements of
that true chivalry, in which courage, truth, purity, and
faith are even more of spiritual and inward than of out
ward gifts, and stretch out arms of yearning towards the
life beyond the veil.
If not the most perfectly finished of Mr. Tennyson's
poems, " The Idylls of the King " has a grander aim and
larger scope than any, and paints the waste places of the
heart and the strength of the naked soul with a stronger
and more nervous touch. As the rich colours of the great
story fade, the air fills with low, spiritual rumours of that
higher life of which the order of the Round Table is but
a symbol ; while Mr. Tennyson paints the stately passing
of the spirit to its rest as he painted the greatness of its
rising, but with added touches of mystery and beauty.
The great Arthurian epic has been rendered by Mr.
Tennyson significant to modern ears. In it he has found

TENNYSON. 3S7
the common term between the ideas of chivalry and the
ideas of an age of hesitating trust, an age of a probing
intellect and of a trusting heart. The conquests and the
yearnings, and the sad resolves of a spirit far too kingly
to rule successfully men who only half recognise the
kingly voice, have never before been delineated by a poet
who can use almost all the wealth of colour belonging
at once to the visible and the invisible life, with the
reticent hand and sure eye of Mr. Tennyson's rich and
patient and spiritual genius. ^_^
Of Mr. Tennyson's latest work, " Queen Mary," no one
will, I think, be inclined to say that it is his finest. Though
he has the dramatic mind, yet his mind is not in the first
instance and by instinct dramatic. On the contrary, you
see that drama is to a certain extent foreign to him, and
puts the curb on his favourite modes of thought. Still
" Queen Mary " is strong from end to end, which could not
be said of nearly all his earlier poems. It is so thoroughly
dramatic that it might, with an adequate cast of actors, be
produced with the highest effect on the stage, and if this
has not been done, it is chiefly that the number of the
actors, and of the good actors required, is too great for the
command of any manager. Almost all the characters who
play a real part in the drama, however slightly touched,
are clearly defined — Philip, whose disgust for the
Queen is powerfully painted, but who remains otherwise
something of a cold, cruel, and sensual shadow, being
perhaps in some degree an exception. Courtenay, Earl
of Devon, — the vain and flighty Catholic Plantagenet, —
"this Prince of fluff and feather," as Lord Howard in
speaking to Elizabeth calls him ; Reginald Pole, the
fair-weather Papal Legate, who shrinks alike from
being persecuted and from persecuting, but is easily
driven into the latter policy under fear of the former ;
Bishop Gardiner, with his fierce Romanising dogmatism

358 TENNYSON.
and his English hatred of Italian interference in English
concerns, —  " His big baldness,
That irritable forelock which he rubs,
His buzzard beak, and deep incavern'd eyes ; "
Bonner and his moral brutality; Lord Paget, with the
half-confessed Protestantism of his statesman's intellect,
and yet that craving for English influence abroad which
makes him support the alliance with Spain ; Lord Howard,
with his aristocratic Catholicism, his complete contempt
for the vulgarity and ' ignorance of the new schismatics,
and yet his thoroughly rooted antipathy to the bigotry of
the sacerdotal spirit ; Sir Thomas Wyatt, with his tasteful
literary cravings, and the keen, audacious soldier beneath
them ; Sir Ralph Bagenhall, with his bold, meditative
insubordination and his hopelessness of active resistance ;
Sir Thomas White (the Lord Mayor), with his political
indecision, and his • wonderful dexterity at swaying the
London Guilds directly the feather's-weight has turned
the scale which he is pleased to call his mind, so as to
decide him on his own course; Cranmer, with his some
what questionable faith and courage, — questionable we
mean as regards historical fact, not questionable at all in
Mr. Tennyson's picture, — his humility, penitence, and
sweetness; and lastly, the imaginary servants and pea
sants, both men and women, who are made parties to the
drama,— these are all drawn with a firm hand and painted
with a delicate touch. But the great characters of the
piece are, as of course they ought to be, Mary and her
half-sister Elizabeth, whose star declines as the Catholic
Queen's rises, and rises fair again as Mary's sets. Of
course the portrait of Elizabeth is comparatively slight as
compared with that of Mary, but though much less care
fully filled-in, it is to the full as dramatic and life-like.
Moreover, as it is intended to do, it makes by contrast the

TENNYSON. 359
chief portrait all the more striking and characteristic.
Both Mary and Elizabeth have the Tudor courage in emer
gencies, and flashes of what may be called that dramatic
magnanimity which enables them to see how best to seem
superior to suspicion and fear in a moment of danger.
Mary, when she met Elizabeth at Wanstead, at the
moment when her own accession was still doubtful, took
her rival's hand, as Mr. Tennyson's drama reminds us,
called her " sweet sister," and kissed not her alone, but all
the ladies of her following, and further spoke of the Lady
Jane Grey as a poor innocent child who had but obeyed
her father. Elizabeth, again, could so far feel with the
dead Queen, whose reign had been one long menace to
her, as to half-believe in her own reluctance to succeed
her, and to be absorbed for the moment, or think herself
absorbed, in pity for the sad fate which had darkened
steadily down to the miserable close. But while both had
the Tudor instinct in emergencies, in Mary it was, as a
rule, entirely subordinated to personal emotions, like her
irrational passion for the Spanish prince she had never
seen, her fixed hatred for the counsellors who were forward
in advocating her mother's divorce, and her superstitious
craving for the blood of the enemies of the Church. On
the contrary, in Elizabeth, personal feeling was, as a rule,
subordinated to her strong instinct of policy, so that her
personal wilfulness flashed up almost as capriciously in her
as the Tudor sagacity did in Mary's less sober mind. The
masterly sketch of Elizabeth which Mr. Tennyson puts
into Cecil's mouth at the close of the play, — a sketch
which ends it with a Shakespearian strength and pithiness
that make Cranmer's somewhat hyperbolic and certainly
by no means discriminating eloge of Elizabeth, at the close
of the play of Henry VIII., sound flat as well as flattering
in the comparison, — is a key to Mr. Tennyson's drift
throughout his delineation of Mary. I may be excused

360 TENNYSON.
for giving the closing passage of the play first, on the
ground that the critic who wants to point out the move
ment of the poet's thought in the drama to those who have
not yet read it, cannot follow the gradually opening
purpose of the play itself, but must make the end clear
from the beginning. This is Cecil's brief picture of
Elizabeth : — " Much it is
To be nor mad, nor bigot — have a mind —
Nor let priests' talk, or dream of worlds to be,
Miscolour things about her — sudden touches
For him, or him — sunk rocks ; no passionate faith —
But — if let be — balance and compromise ;
Brave, wary, sane to the heart of her — a Tudor
School'd by the shadow of death — a Boleyn, too,
Glancing across the Tudor— not so well."
It is against this background, as it were, of the ideal Tudor
character, that Mr. Tennyson paints, with great power and
many flashes of striking detail, the break-down of Mary's
reign, — the picture of the woman who, with momentary
intervals of true English feeling and true Tudor sagacity,
yet sacrificed her realm to a hopeless and capricious
passion which even her most devoted ecclesiastical ad
visers discouraged ; who was, in addition, mad with
bigotry; who let "priests' talk miscolour things about
her " while dreaming of worlds to be ; who had a pas
sionate prejudice which she supposed to be faith forbidding
all " balance and compromise ; " who, with all her courage
and self-devotion, was neither "sane" nor "wary;" and
who, instead of having been " schooled " by the shadow of
death, had been rendered by it fierce, wild, and vindictive.
The personal caprices of the Tudors were almost always
dangerous and evil; it was only the power that lay in
them of subordinating the personal to the national feeling
on matters which most deeply affected the nation which
made them great Sovereigns ; and Mary Tudor either had

TENNYSON. 361
not this power, or cast it away from her in the heat of
her Spanish passion and gloomy superstition. The fitful
ascendancy of these personal impulses over the political
instincts which were never quite wanting to Mary, is finely
delineated in an early scene : —
[" Mary with Philip's miniature. Alice.
Mary (kissing the miniature). Most goodly, kinglike and an
Emperor's son, —
A king to be, — is he not noble, girl ?
Alice. Goodly enough, your Grace, and yet, methinks,
I have seen goodlier.
Mary. Ay, some waxen doll
Thy baby eyes have rested on, belike ;
All red and white, the fashion of our land.
But my good mother came (God rest her soul)
Of Spain, and I am Spanish in myself,
And in my likings.
Alice. By your Grace's leave
Your royal mother came of Spain, but took
To the English red and white. Your royal father
(For so they say) was all pure lily and rose
In his youth, and like a lady.
Mary. O, just God !
Sweet mother, you had time and cause enough
To sicken of his lilies and his roses.
Cast off, betray'd, defamed, divorced, forlorn !
And then the king — that traitor past forgiveness,
The false archbishop fawning on him, married
The mother of Elizabeth — a heretic
EVn as she is ; but God hath sent me here
To take such order with all heretics
That it shall be, before I die, as tho'
My father and my brother had not lived.
What wast thou saying of this Lady Jane,
Now in the Tower ?
Alice. Why, Madam, she was passing
Some chapel down in Essex, and with her
Lady Anne Wharton, and the Lady Anne
Bow'd to the Pyx ; but Lady Jane stood up
Stiff as the very backbone of heresy.
And wherefore bow ye not, says Lady Anne,
To him within there who made Heaven and Earth ?
I cannot, and I dare not, tell your Grace
What Lady Jane replied.

36i TENNYSON.
Mary. But I will have it.
Alice. She said— pray pardon me, and pity her—
She hath hearken'd evil counsel— ah ! she said,
The baker made him.
Mary. Monstrous ! blasphemous !
She ought to burn. Hence, thou (Exit Alice). No— being traitor ,
Her head will fall : shall it ? she is but a child.
We dp not kill the child for doing that
His father whipt him into doing— a head
So full of grace and beauty ! would that mine
Were half as gracious ! O, my lord to be,
My love, for thy sake only.
I am eleven years older than he is.
But will he care for that ?
No, by the Holy Virgin, being noble,
But love me only ; then the bastard sprout,
My sister, is far fairer than myself.
Will he be drawn to her ?
No, being of the true faith with myself.
Paget is for him — for to wed with Spain
Would treble England — Gardiner is against him ;
The Council, people, Parliament against him ;
But I will have him ! My hard father hated me ;
My brother rather hated me than loved ;
My sister cowers and hates me. Holy Virgin,
Plead with thy blessed son ; grant me my prayer ;
Give me my Philip ; and we two will lead
The living waters of the Faith again
Back thro' their widoVd channel here, and watch
The parch'd banks rolling incense, as of old,
To heaven, and kindled with the palms of Christ ! "
Then comes the picture of infatuated and almost mad
hope for the birth of a son in which Mary indulges,, in the
childish belief that that event, without any other change
of character or policy, will bring her Philip's love, and
restore the nation's pride in her — the self-will of the Tudor
caprice clouding her brain more and more, and the cool
Tudor sympathy with English policy showing itself less
and less, — indeed, only when her advisers urge her to
something conspicuously opposed to all the currents of
national feeling, like the execution of Elizabeth, or when
the open detestation felt for her proposed marriage and

TENNYSON. 363
the perils of a great revolt call her out of herself into that
world of action in which she was always most of a Tudor,
and least of a brooding fanatic. One of the finest scenes
in the play is the one in which the two morbid veins of
Mary's nature, her religious fanaticism and the passion
for Philip, including the power of persuading herself that
her son is quick within her, beat with the fullest pulse of
hope, and extinguish for the time all the latent sagacity
of the Tudor monarch. Cardinal Pole's ingratiating pro
fessional quotation from the Song of Solomon, as he places
Mary between himself and Philip, and the grim, ill-
omened jokes with which he garnishes his conversation
on the happy occasion of his inauguration at Lambeth,
lend the additional force of a fine contrast to the fierce
intensity of Mary's brooding hopes : —
" Ah, gentle cousin, since your Herod's death,
How oft hath Peter knock'd at Mary's gate !
And Mary would have risen and let him in,
But, Mary, there were those within the house
Who would not have it.
Mary. True, good cousin Pole ;
And there were also those without the house
Who would not have it.
Pole. I believe so, cousin.
State-policy and church-policy are conjoint,
But Janus-faces looking diverse ways.
I fear the Emperor much misvalued me,
But all is well ; 'twas ev'n the will of God,
Who, waiting till the time had ripen'd, now,
Makes me his mouth of holy greeting. ' Hail,
Daughter of God, and saver of the faith.
Sit benedictus fructus ventris tui ! '
Mary. Ah, heaven !
Pole. Unwell, your Grace ?
Mary. No, cousin, happy —
Happy to see you ; never yet so happy
Since I was crown'd.
Pole. Sweet cousin, you forget
That long low minster where you gave your hand
• To this great Catholic King.
Philip. Well said, Lord Legate.

364 TENNYSON.
Mary. Nay, not well said ; I thought of you, my Uege,
Ev'n as I spoke.
Philip. Ay, Madam ; my Lord Paget
Waits to present our Council to the Legate.
Sit down here, all ; Madam, between us you.
Pole. Lo, now you are enclosed with boards of cedar,
Our little sister of the Song of Songs !
You are doubly fenced and shielded sitting here
Between the two most high-set thrones on earth,
The Emperor's highness happily symboll'd by
The King your husband, the Pope's Holiness
By mine own self.
Mary. True, cousin, I am happy.
When will you that we summon both our houses
To take this absolution from your lips,
And be regather'd to the Papal fold ?
Pole. In Britain's calendar the brightest day
Beheld our rough forefathers break their Gods,
And clasp the faith in Christ ; but after that
Might not St. Andrew's be her happiest day.
Mary. Then these shall meet upon St. Andrew's day.
[Enter PAGET, who presents the Council. Dumb show.
Pole. I am an old man wearied with my journey,
Ev'n with my joy. Permit me to withdraw.
To Lambeth ?
Philip. Ay, Lambeth has ousted Cranmer.
It was not meet the heretic swine should live
In Lambeth.
Mary. There or anywhere, or at all.
Philip. We have had it swept and garnish'd after him.
Pole. Not for the seven devils to enter in ?
Philip. No, for we trust they parted in the swine.
Pole. True, and I am the Angel of the Pope.
Farewell, your Graces.
Philip. Nay, not here — to me ;
I will go with you to the waterside.
Pole. Not be my Charon to the counter side ?
Philip. No, my Lord Legate, the Lord Chancellor goes.
Pole. And unto no dead world ; but Lambeth palace,
Henceforth a centre of the living faith.
[Exeunt Philip, Pole, Paget, &*c-
Mary (manet). He hath awaked ! he hath awaked !
He stirs within the darkness !
Oh, Philip, husband ! now thy love to mine
Will cling more close, and those bleak manners thaw,
That make me shamed and tongue-tied in my love.
The second Prince of Peace —

TENNYSON.

3^5

The great unbom defender of the Faith,
Who will avenge me of mine enemies —
He comes, and my star rises.
The stormy Wyatts and Northumberlands,
The proud ambitions of Elizabeth,
And all her fieriest partisans — are pale
Before my star !
The light of this new learning wanes and dies :
The ghosts of Luther and Zuinglius fade
Into the deathless hell which is their doom
Before my star !
His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind !
His sword shall hew the heretic peoples down !
His faith shall clothe the world that will be his,
Like universal air and sunshine ! Open,
Ye everlasting gates ! The King is here !—
My star, my son ! [Enter PHILIP, DUKE OF ALVA, &*c.
Oh, Philip, come with me ;
Good news have I to tell you, news to make
Both of us happy — ay, the Kingdom too.
Nay come with me — one moment !
Philip (to Alva). More than that :
There was one here of late — William the Silent
They call him — he is free enough in talk,
But tells me nothing. You will be, we trust,
Sometime the viceroy of those provinces —
He must deserve his surname better.
Alva. Ay, sir,
Inherit the Great Silence.
Philip. True, the provinces
Are hard to rule and must be hardly ruled ;
Most fruitful, yet, indeed, an empty rind,
All hollow'd out with stinging heresies ;
And for their heresies, Alva, they will fight :
You must break them or they break you.
Alva (proudly). The first.
Philip. Good !
Well, Madam, this new happiness of mine. [Exeunt."
Except the close, this is, we think, the finest portion of
the play. The scene in which Pole absolves the Estates
of the Kingdom assembled in Parliament for their heresy,
and receives them back into the Catholic Church, the
quarrel in the Council as to the revival of the statutes
against LoUardism, and the scene of Mary's cold refusal

366 TENNYSON.
to spare Cranmer even after his retractation, are scenes
of a fair level of power, but tame as compared with many
in the book. Especially it is not made clear why Philip
takes his wife's part in urging and flattering Cardinal Pole
into the policy of bitter persecution to which the Legate
was opposed, and to which it seems probable that, in
England at least, where he desired popularity for the sake
of the political help it might bring him against his
enemies abroad, Philip also was opposed. Nor does Lord
Paget, who is eager for a policy of tolerance, though
probably as much from sympathy with the Protestants as
from pure statesmanship, give Cardinal Pole the sort of
support we might have expected, or avail himself, as so
shrewd a statesman would, both of the Cardinal's influence
and of his own former good service in forwarding the
Queen's marriage, to bring the Queen to her senses as
regards the violent policy proposed. On the whole, the
scene of the quarrel in the Council as to the revival. of the
Lollard Acts is the tamest in the play, and that in which*
Mary declines to spare Cranmer is, perhaps, the next to
it in deficiency of colour. In that scene we should have
expected signs of a fiercer struggle between the Tudor
Queen, with her keen instinct for the true policy, and the
Spanish fanatic, with her frantic thirst for revenge on
the author of her mother's divorce, than any Mr. Tennyson
gives us. With the scenes of Cranmer's martyrdom the
fire of the play revives, though the view of Cranmer is, we
suspect, a good deal too heroic. Yet he permits himself,
as we suppose, one sarcasm at Cranmer's expense : —

" Cranmer. Last night, I dream'd the faggots were alight,
And that myself was fasten'd to the stake,
And found it all a visionary flame,
Cool as the light in old decaying wood ;
And then King Harry look'd from out a cloud,
And bad me have good courage ; and I heard

TENNYSON. 367
An angel cry, ' There is more joy in heaven,' —
And after that, the trumpet of the dead."
That notion of the self-willed, bloody, and cruel King
Henry, as the ministering angel who raises the old Arch
bishop's courage, even though it was only in his dreams,
ought to be intended as a bitter satire on the pliant eccle
siastic's former subservience. No whitewashing will ever
turn Henry VIII. into an angel of light, and it can hardly
be doubted that Mr. Tennyson here allows himself the
only sneer at Cranmer's worldliness and servility which
the play contains. After Cranmer's withdrawal of his re
tractation, there follows a dialogue between two country
women, Tib and Joan, which brings out the popular
feeling about Gardiner and the burning of Cranmer, and
which is admirably dramatic of its kind — and after it the
gloom of the play grows rapidly towards its tragic end.
The scene in which Mary — with her reason already on the
verge of delirium — hears of the loss of Calais, and in
which her despair pours itself forth in the one exquisite
lyrical wail of the drama, is as fine as anything in modern
literature. Take this passage, for instance, where Mary,
among her ladies, picks up one of the seditious papers
strewn about the palace, which Cardinal Pole had intended
but failed to remove : —
" Mary (seeing the paper dropt by Pole). There, there ! another paper I
said you not
Many of these were loyal ? Shall I try
If this be one of such ?
.Lady Clarence. Let it be, let it be.
God pardon me ! I have never yet found one. [Aside.
Mary (reads). " Your people hate you as your husband hates you."
Clarence, Clarence, what have I done ? what sin
Beyond all grace, all pardon ? Mother of God,
Thou knowest never woman meant so well,
And fared so ill in this disastrous world.
My people hate me and desire my death.
Lady Clarence. No, Madam, no.

368 TENNYSON.
Mary. My husband hates me, and desires my death.
Lady Clarence. No, Madam ; these are libels.
Mary. I hate myself, and I desire my death.
Lady Clarence. Long live your Majesty ! Shall Alice sing you
One of her pleasant songs ? Alice, my child,
Bring us your lute (ALICE goes). They say the gloom of Saul
Was lighten'd by young David's harp. >-
Mary. * Too young !
And never knew a Philip (re-enter Alice). Give me the lute.
He hates me ! (She sings!)
' Hapless doom of woman happy in betrothing !
Beauty passes like a breath, and love is lost in loathing :
Low, my lute ; speak low, my lute, but say the world is nothing —
Low, lute, low !
Love will hover round the flowers when they first awaken ;
Love will fly the fallen leaf, and not be overtaken ;
Low, my lute ! oh low, my lute ! we fade and are forsaken —
Low, dear lute, low ! '
Take it away ! not low enough for me !
Alice. Your Grace hath a low voice.
Mary. How dare you say it ?
Even for that he hates me. A low voice
Lost in a wilderness where none can hear !
A voice of shipwreck on a shoreless sea !
A low voice from the dust and from the grave (sitting on the ground),
There, am I low enough now ?
Alice. Good Lord ! how grim and ghastly looks her Grace,
With both her knees drawn upward to her chin.
There was an old-world tomb beside my father's,
And this was open'd, and the dead were found
Sitting, and in this fashion ; she looks a corpse."
Such gloom as that can hardly be said to deepen even in
the final scene, but it spreads. The reader is made to see
the hatred in which the Queen's policy is held out of doors,
and the confusion which it has introduced within. The
disgrace of Pole, too, gives a fresh element of darkness
to the play, and the vague ringing in his brain of the
words uttered by Cranmer before his martyrdom concern
ing " the bubble world, whose colours in a moment break
and fly,"— words whose authorship of course he does not
recall, — adds a fine touch to the moral Nemesis of the
play.

TENNYSON. 369
On the whole, I think I may say that this is a play
which will compare with something more than advantage
with Shakespeare's Henry VIII. Of course that is by no
means the finest even of the historical plays of Shake
speare, nor is it probably wholly his own, — and I only
mention it because it, too, contains a study of the good
and of the evil qualities of the Tudor character, — but then
no play of any modern poet's would be likely to rank with
any of the greater plays of Shakespeare. Certainly I
should be surprised to hear that any true critic would rate
" Queen Mary," whether in dramatic force or in general
power, below Henry VIII., and my own impression is that
it is a decidedly finer work of dramatic art. The morbid
passions of Mary, the brief intervals of her lucid and
energetic action, the gloom of her physical decay, and the
despair of her moral desolation, together make up a picture
which it would be impossible for any one who can enter
into it ever to forget.

VOL. IL F' B

IX.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

HAWTHORNE has been called a mystic, which he
was not, — and a psychological dreamer, which he
was in very slight degree. He was really the ghost of
New England, — I do not mean the "spirit," nor the
"phantom," but the ghost in the older sense in which
that term is used, the thin, rarified essence which is sup
posed to be found somewhere behind the physical organi
zation : embodied, indeed, and not at all in a shadowy
or diminutive earthly tabernacle, but yet only half em
bodied*' in it, endowed with a certain painful sense of the
gulf between his nature and its organization, always recog
nising the gulf, always trying to bridge it over, and always
more or less unsuccessful in the attempt. His writings
are not exactly spiritual writings, for there is no domi
nating spirit in them. They are ghostly writings. Haw
thorne was, to my mind, a sort of sign to New England
of the divorce that has been going on there (and not less
perhaps in old England) between its people's spiritual and
earthly nature, and of the difficulty which they will soon
feel, if they are to be absorbed more and more in that
shrewd hard common sense which is one of their most
striking characteristics, in even communicating with their
former self. Hawthorne, with all his shyness, and tender
ness, and literary reticence, shows very distinct traces

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 371
also of understanding well the cold, inquisitive, and
shrewd spirit which besets the Yankees even more than
other commercial peoples. His heroes have usually not
a little of this hardness in them. Coverdale, for instance,
in "The Blithedale Romance," and Holgrave, in "The
House of the Seven Gables," are of this class of shrewd,
cold, inquisitive heroes. Indeed there are few of his
tales without a character of this type. But though
Hawthorne had a deep sympathy with the practical as
well as the literary genius of New England, it was always
in a far-removed and ghostly kind cf way, as though he
were stricken by some spell which half-paralysed him
from communicating with the life around him, as though
he saw it only by a reflected light. His spirit haunted
rather than ruled his body; his body hampered his
spirit. Yet his external career was not only not romantic, but
identified with all the dullest routine of commercial duties.
That a man who consciously telegraphed, as it were, with
the world, transmitting meagre messages through his
material organization, should have been first a custom
house officer in Massachusetts, and then the consul in
Liverpool, brings out into the strongest possible relief
the curiously representative character in which he stood
to New England as its literary or intellectual ghost,
There is nothing more ghostly in his writings than his
account of the consulship in Liverpool, — how he began
by trying to communicate frankly with his fellow-country
men, how he found the task more and more difficult, and
gradually drew back into the twilight of his reserve, how
he shrewdly and somewhat coldly watched "the dim
shadows as they go and come," speculated idly on their
fate, and all the time discharged the regular routine of
consular business, witnessing the usual depositions, giving
captains to captainless crews, affording meagrely doled-
B B 2

372 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
out advice or assistance to Yankees when in need of a
friend, listening to them when they were only anxious to
offer, not ask, assistance, and generally observing them
from that distant and speculative outpost of the universe
whence all common things looked strange.
Hawthorne, who was a delicate critic of himself, was
well aware of the shadowy character of his own genius,
though hardly aware that precisely here lay its curious and
thrilling power. In the preface to " Twice-told Tales "
he tells us frankly, " The book, if you would see anything
in it, requires to be read in the clear brown twilight
atmosphere in which it was written ; if opened in the
sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of
blank pages."
It is one of his favourite theories that there must be
a vague, remote, and shadowy element in the subject-
matter of any narrative with which his own imagination
can successfully deal. Sometimes he apologises for this
idealistic limitation to his artistic aims. " It was a folly,"
he says in his preface to "The Scarlet Letter," "with
the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively
upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another
age, or to insist on creating the semblance of a world
out of airy matter, when at every moment the impal
pable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken by the rude
contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort
would have been to diffuse thought and imagination
through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus to make
it a bright transparency ; to spiritualise the burden that
began to weigh so heavily ; to seek resolutely the true
and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and
wearisome incidents and ordinary characters with which
I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page
of life that was spread out before me was so dull and
commonplace only because I had not fathomed its deeper

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 373
import. A better book than I shall ever write was there ;
leaf after leaf presenting itself to me just as it was written
out by the reality of the flitting hour, and vanishing as
fast as written, only because my brain wanted the insight
and my hand the cunning to transcribe it. At some
future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered
fragments and broken paragraphs and write them down,
and find the letters turn to gold upon the page."
And yet that dissatisfaction with his own idealism which
Hawthorne here expresses never actually sufficed to divert
his efforts into the channel indicated. In " The Blithedale
Romance " he tells us that he chose the external scenery
of the Socialist community at Brook Farm " merely to
establish a theatre, a little removed from the highway
of ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may
play their phantasmagorical antics without exposing them
to too close a comparison with the actual events of real
lives. In the old countries with which fiction has long
been conversant, a certain conventional privilege seems to
be awarded to the romancer ; his work is not put exactly
side by side with nature ; and he is allowed a license with
regard to every-day probability, in view of the improved
effects which he is bound to produce thereby. Among
ourselves, on the contrary, there is as yet no such Fairy
Land so like the real world that, in a suitable remoteness,
one cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere
of strange enchantment, beheld through which the inha
bitants have a propriety of their own. This atmosphere
is what the American romancer wants. In its absence, the
beings of imagination are compelled to show themselves
in the same category as actually living mortals, — a neces
sity that, generally renders the paint and pasteboard of
their composition but too painfully discernible." And
once more, in the preface to his last novel, " Transforma
tion," he reiterates as his excuse for laying the scene in

374 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
Italy, that " no author without a trial can conceive of the
difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there
is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and
gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity
in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with
my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before
romance writers may find congenial and easily-handled
themes either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or
in any characteristic and probable event of our individual
lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers,
need ruin to make them grow." These passages throw
much light on the secret affinities of Hawthorne's genius.
But it would be a mistake to conclude from them, as he
himself would apparently have us, that he is a mere
romantic idealist, in the sense in which these words are
commonly used, — that he is one all whose dramatic con
ceptions are but the unreal kaleidoscopic combinations of
fancies | in his own brain.
I may, perhaps, accept a phrase of which Hawthorne
himself was fond, — " the moonlight of romance," — and
compel it to explain something of the secret of his
characteristic genius. There are writers — chiefly poets,
but also occasionally writers of fanciful romances like
Longfellow's " Hyperion " — whose productions are purely
ideal, are not only seen by the light of their own imagi
nation but constituted out of it, — made of moonshine, —
and rendered vivid and beautiful, so far as they are vivid
and beautiful, with the vividness and beauty merely of
the poet's own mind. In these cases there is no dis
tinction between the delineating power and the delineated
object ; the dream is indistinguishable from the mind of
the dreamer, and varies wholly with its laws. Again, at
the opposite extreme, there is a kind of creative imagina
tion which has its origin in a deep sympathy with, and
knowledge of, the real world. That which it deals with is

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 375
actual life as it has existed, or still exists, in forms so
innumerable that it is scarcely possible to assert that its
range is more limited than life itself. Of course the only
adequate example of such an imagination is Shake
speare's, and this kind of imaginative power resembles
sunlight, not only in its brilliancy, but especially in this,
that it casts a light so full and equable over the universe
it reveals, that we never think of its source at all. We
forget altogether, as we do by common daylight, that the
light by which we see is not part and parcel of the world
which it presents to us. The sunlight is so efficient that
we forget the sun. We find so rich and various a world
before us, dressed in its own proper colours, that no one is
reminded that the medium by which those proper colours
are seen is uniform and from a single source. We merge
the delineative magic by which the scene is illuminated, in
the details of the scene itself.
Between these two kinds of creative imagination there
is another, which also shows a real world, but shows it so
dimly in comparison with the last as to keep constantly
before our minds the unique character of the light by
which we see. The ideal light itself becomes a more
prominent element in the picture than even the objects on
which it shines ; and yet is made so chiefly by the very
fact of shining on those objects which we are accustomed
to think of as they are seen in their own familiar details in
full daylight. If the objects illuminated were not real and
familiar, the light would not seem so mysterious ; it is the
pale uniform tint, the loss of colour and detail, and yet
the vivid familiar outline and the strong shadow, which
produce what Hawthorne calls the " moonlight of romance."
" Moonlight in a familiar room," he says, in his preface to
" The Scarlet Letter," " falling so white upon the carpet,
and showing all its figures so distinctly, making every
object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or

37° NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
noontide visibility, — is a medium the most suitable for a
romance writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests.
There is the little domestic scenery of the well-known
apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality;
the centre table, sustaining, a work-basket, a volume or
two, and an extinguished lamp ; the sofa, the bookcase,
the picture on the wall ; — all these details, so completely
seen, are so spiritualised by the unusual light, that they
seem to lose their actual substance and become things of
intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo
this change and acquire dignity thereby. A child's shoe,
the doll seated in her little wicker carriage, the hobby
horse, — whatever, in a word, has been used or played with
during the day, is now invested with a quality of strange
ness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present
as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar
room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between
the real world and fairyland," where the Actual and the
Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the
nature of the other." Sir Walter Scott's delineative power
partakes both of this moonlight imagination and of the
other more powerful, brilliant, and realistic kind. Often
it is a wide genial sunshine, of which we quite forget the
source in the vividness of the common life which it
irradiates. At other times, again, when Scott is in his
Black Douglas mood, as I may call it, it has all the
uniformity of tint and the exciting pallor of what Haw
thorne terms the moonlight of romance.
At all events, there is no writer to whose creations the
phrase applies more closely than to Hawthorne's own.
His characters are by «no means such unreal webs of
moonshine as the idealists proper constitute into the
figures of their romance. They' are real and definitely
outlined, but they are all seen in a single light,— the
contemplative light of the particular idea which has

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 377
floated before him in each of his stories, — and they are
seen, not fully and in their integrity, as things are seen by
daylight, but like things touched by moonlight, — only so
far as they are lighted up by the idea of the story. The
thread of unity which connects his tales is always some
pervading thought of his own ; they are not written mainly
to display character, still less for the mere narrative
interest, but for the illustration they cast on some idea or
conviction of their author's. Amongst English writers of
fiction, we have many besides Shakespeare whose stories
are merely appropriate instruments for the portraiture of
character, and who therefore never conceive themselves
bound to confine themselves scrupulously to the one aspect
most naturally developed by the tale. Once introduced,
their characters are given in full, — both that side of them
which is, so to say, turned towards the story, and others
which are not. Other writers, again, make the characters
quite subsidiary to the epical interest of the plot, using
them only to heighten the colouring of the action it
describes. Hawthorne's tales belong to neither of these
classes. Their unity is ideal. His characters are often
real and distinct, but they are illuminated only from one
centre of thought. So strictly is this true of them that he
has barely room for a novel in the ordinary sense of the
word. If he were to take his characters through as many
phases of life as are ordinarily comprised in a novel, he
could not keep the ideal unity of his tales unbroken ; he
would be obliged to delineate them from many different
points of view.. Accordingly his novels are not novels in
the ordinary sense ; they are ideal situations, expanded by
minute study and trains of clear, pale thought into the
dimensions of novels. A very small group of figures is
presented to the reader in some marked ideal relation ; or
if it be in consequence of some critical event, then it must
be some event which has struck the author as rich in ideal

378 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
or spiritual suggestion. But it is not usually in his way—
though his last complete novel gives us one remarkable
exception to this observation — to seize any glowing crisis
of action when the passion is lit or the blow is struck
that gives a new mould to life, for his delineation; he
prefers to assume the crisis past, and to delineate as
fully as he can the ideal situation to which it has given
rise, when it is beginning to assume a fainter and more
chronic character.
. But, however this may be, almost all Hawthorne's tales
embody single ideal situations, scarcely ever for a moment
varied in their course in any essential respect. For in
stance, to take his shorter tales, the mockery of the attempt
to renew in wasted age the blasted hopes of youth is crys
tallized into a ghostly tableau vivant in "The Wedding-
Knell." The absolute isolation of every man's deepest
life, and the awe which any visible assertion of that isola
tion inspires, even when made by the mildest of our guilty
race, is translated into an eerie picture in " The Minister's
Black Veil." So in " The Great Stone Face " we have an
embodiment of the conviction that he is best fitted to fulfil
any great human hope or trust whose heart is constantly
fed upon the yearning to find the perfect fulfilment of it in
another. So in " Roger Malvin's Burial " we are shown
how an innocent man, who is too cowardly to face the
mere appearance of guilt, may thereby incur a remorse and
guilt as deep as that from the faintest suspicion of which
he shrank. And so we may run through almost all the
tales properly so called.
I do not mean that in any of them the author thought
the thought first in its abstract form, and then condensed
it into a story. I should suppose, on the contrary, that the
artistic form is the one in which the idea of the tale first
flashed on him, and that the work of elaboration only gave
more substance and greater variety of colour to the parts.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 379.
But not the less was the essence originally ideal, since
every touch and line in his imagined- picture was calculated
to impress some leading thought on the reader.
But it is only when we look at his longer tales, whose
dimensions would lead us to expect more variety of aspect
in the characters, more circumstance, and less sameness of
leading thought, that this characteristic of Hawthorne's tales
becomes striking. The stories of " The Scarlet Letter," of
"The House of the Seven Gables," and of "Transforma
tion," might all have been included in their full ideal
integrity, and with all the incident they contain, in the
" Twice-told Tales " without adding more than a few pages
to the book. I do not mean that thus compressed they
would produce the same, or anything like the same, haunt
ing impression ; but only that, as far as either the aspect of
his characters or the circumstantial interest of the stories
is concerned, there need be no compression in thus shorten
ing them. The omissions would be most important, indeed,
to the effect; but they would be the omission of pale
contemplative touches, imaginative self-repetitions, and so
forth, which seldom indeed give us a single glimpse of any
other than the one side of his characters, or add a second,
thread to the one interest of the tale.
In " The Scarlet Letter," for instance, there is but one
conception, which is developed in three — perhaps I should
say four — scenes of great power, and that is the deranging
effect of the sin of adultery on the intrinsically fine charac
ters of those principally affected by it, with a special view
to its different influence on the woman, who is openly
branded with the shame, and on the man, whose guilt is
not published, and who has a double remorse to suffer, for
the sin, and for the growing burden of insincerity. The
effect of the sin on the child who is the offspring of it is
made a special study, as are the false relations it intro
duces between the mother and child. Throughout the tale

380 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
every one of the group of characters studied is seen in the
lurid light of this sin, and in no other. The only failure is
in the case of the injured and vindictive husband, whose
character is subordinated entirely to the artistic develop
ment of the other three.
In the same way, the predominant idea of " The Blithe-/
dale Romance " is to delineate the deranging effect of afi
absorbing philanthropic idea on a powerful mind, — the
unscrupulous sacrifices of personal claims which it induces,
and the misery in which it ends. There is scarcely one
incident in the tale properly so called except the cata
strophe, and what there is, is so shrouded in mystery as to
have the enigmatic character of a tableau vivant, not too
mysterious for a distinct drift, but of doubtful interpretation
as to details. The author seems to say to the reader,
"Here is a group of characters in relations tending to
illustrate how much more sacred are personal affections
than any abstract cause, however noble : what these rela
tions exactly are, except as they illustrate my idea, I will
not say, as that is quite non-essential ; you may imagine
them what you please, — I tell you only enough to impress
you with my predominant conviction."
Again, in " The House of the Seven Gables " we have
a picture studied to impress on us that both personal
character, and the malign influences of evil action, are
transmitted, sometimes with accumulating force, even
through centuries, blighting every generation through
which they pass. This subject would apparently involve
a series of sketches, but only two are introduced from
the past, and the family characteristics are so anxiously
preserved as to make even these seem like slight modi
fications of some of the living group. Hawthorne with
rare art pictures the shadow of the past as constantly
hanging, like a baneful cloud, over the heads of his
figures ; and every detail, even the minutest, is made to

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 381
point backwards to the weary past from which it has.
derived its constitutional peculiarities. Even the little
shop which "old maid Pyncheon" reopens in the dark
old house is not new. A miserly ancestor of the family
had opened it a century before, who is supposed to haunt
it, and the scales are rusty with the rust of generations.
The half-effaced picture of the ancestral Pyncheon which
hangs on the walls, the garden-mould black with the vege
table decay of centuries, the exhausted breed of aristo
cratic fowls which inhabit the garden,— every touch is
studied to condense the dark past into a cloud hanging
over the living present, and make the reader feel its malign
influence. The only incident in the tale is the light thrown
upon a crime, — which had been committed thirty years
before the story opens, — by the sudden death of the
principal representative of the family, from the same
specific disease, in the same chair, and under the same
circumstances, as that of the old ancestor and founder of
the family whose picture hangs above the chair.
The same criticism may be made on Hawthorne's last
complete novel. The sole idea of " Transformation " is
to illustrate the intellectually and morally awakening
power of a sudden impulsive sin, committed by a simple
joyous, instinctive, " natural " man. The whole group of
characters is imagined solely with a view to the develop
ment of this idea. Hawthorne even hints, though rather
hesitatingly, that without sin the higher humanity of man
could not be taken up at all; that sin may be essential
to the first conscious awakening of moral freedom and
the possibility of progress. The act of sin itself is the
only distinct incident of the tale ; all the rest is either
extraneous dissertation on Art, or the elaboration and
study of the group of characters requisite to embody this
leading idea. A tale containing the whole ideal essence
of the book, and in this instance, though only in this

382 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE,
instance, almost equally powerful, might have been told in
a few pages.
And yet I am very far indeed from meaning to say
that the microscopic diffuseness with which Hawthorne
enlarges these pale studies into the length of an ordi
nary novel is wasted. For the secret of his power lies in
the great art with which he reduplicates and reflects and
re-reflects the main idea of the tale from the countless
faces of his ghostly imagination, until the reader's mind
is absolutely haunted by it. There are many among his
shorter tales, which now occupy perhaps only five or ten
pages, which would have gained infinitely in power by
similar treatment, without the addition of a single fresh
incident or scene. As they read now they have almost
a feeble effect : they give the writer's idea, and no more ;
they do not fill the reader with it; and Hawthorne's
peculiar genius lies in the power he possesses to be
haunted, and in his turn to haunt the reader with his
conceptions, far more than in their intrinsic force. Look
at the central notion of his various minor tales, and you
will perhaps be struck with a certain ideal simplicity, and
a strange dash of lurid colour in them that will impress
you as promising, but no more. But let him summon this
idea before you in the innumerable Protean shapes of his
own imagination, with alterations of form just striking
enough to make it seem at once the same and something
fresh, and before he has done with you you are pursued,
you are possessed, you are beset with his notion : it is in
your very blood ; it stares at you with ghastly force from
every word of his narrative ; it is in the earth and in the
air; and every mouth that opens among his characters,
however little they may be involved in the secret of the
tale, only sends it thrilling with greater force through
your heart. What a story, for instance, might he not
have made out of the very eerie tales called fi Roger

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 383
Malvin's Burial," or "Rappacini's Daughter," if he had
elaborated them with anything like the art shown in
" The House of the Seven Gables ! "
Hawthorne was quite aware of the slight ideal structure
of his earlier and shorter tales. He himself criticised
them with rare candour and subtlety, though not with a
fair appreciation of the promise of deeper power which
they contained, in that preface to one of the editions of
the "Twice-told Tales," to which I have already once
referred : —
" At all events, there can be no harm in the Author's remarking that he
rather wonders how the ' Twice-told Tales' should have gained what
vogue they did, than that it was so little and so gradual. They have the
pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade — the coolness of
a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observa
tion of every sketch. Instead of passion there is sentiment ; and, even
in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always
so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken
into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power, or
an unconquerable reserve, the Author's touches have often an effect of
tameness ; the merriest man can hardly contrive to laugh at his broadest
humour ; the tenderest woman, one would suppose, will hardly shed
warm tears at his deepest pathos. With the foregoing characteristics,
proper to the productions of a person in retirement (which happened to
be the Author's category at the time), the book is devoid of others that we
should quite as naturally look for. The sketches are not, it is hardly
necessary to say, profound ; but it is rather more remarkable that they so
seldom, if ever, show any design on the writer's part to make them so.
They have none of the abstruseness of idea,. or obscurity of expression,
which mark the written communications of a solitary mind within itself.
They never need translation. It is, in fact, the style of a man of society.
Every sentence, so far as it embodies thought or sensibility, may be
understood and felt by anybody who will give himself the trouble to read
It, and will take up the book in a proper mood. This statement of
apparently opposite peculiarities leads us to a perception of what the
sketches truly are. They are not the talk of a secluded man with his
own mind and heart (had it been so, they could hardly have failed to be
more deeply and permanently valuable) but his attempts^ and very
imperfectly successful ones, to open an intercourse with the world." -
This passage contains some of the truest and finest
touches in the way of literary self-criticism with which I

384 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
am acquainted ; but it does not, as I said, do justice to
the undeveloped germs of power in many of the pieces
comprised in this and Hawthorne's other collections of
short tales. It is true, indeed, that, throughout almost
all he wrote, sentiment takes the place of passion, and
it is frequently true, though it by no means holds of the
majority of his finished studies of character, that, in the
place of "pictures of actual life, we have allegory hot
always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and
blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a
shiver." But there is enough even in the early tales of
which Hawthorne here speaks to prove that the allegorical
turn which his tales are apt to take was not with him,
as it often is, a sign of meagre or shallow imaginative
endowments — a proof that fancy predominated in him
rather than genuine imagination.
When a man sits down professing to paint human life
and character, and in place thereof succeeds only in repre
senting abstract virtues, vices, passions, and the like,
under human names, we may fairly say that with him the
allegorical vein proves the general poverty of his spiritual
blood. He has peeled off the outer surface where he
professed to model the substance. But when, on the other
hand, the same truth, which by an ordinary intellect
would be expressed in a purely abstract form, naturally
takes shape in a man's mind under an imaginative
clothing which savours of allegory, no inference of the
kind is legitimate. In the one case the allegory is a
degenerate romance, in the other it is a thought ex
pressing itself in the language of the imagination. The
weakness in the former case is measured by the inability
of the imagination to see the broad chasm between the
reality and the allegorical shadow. In the latter case
there is no such inability, but the thought which would
have entered an ordinary mind in a purely abstract

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 385
form presents itself to this in the form of a distinct shadow-
picture. And it is a sign that Hawthorne's genius has not the
weakness usually belonging to allegorists, that the longer
a subject rests in his mind, the more certainly do the
allegorical shadows of its first outline gather solidity of
form and variety of colour, and gradually substantiate
themselves into real though dimly-lighted figures. In the
ideal situation as it first presents itself to the author's
mind, the places of the human actors are perhaps occupied
by appropriate symbols of some predominant sentiment
or characteristic which each of the group subsequently
embodies. If written down in that faint early form, the
tale seems allegorical. But if allowed to lie by in the
imagination, it deepens into a pallid dramatic situation ;
a body of human life and character gathers round, and
clothes each of the ideal skeletons in the original plan, '
turning the faint allegory into a chapter of human expe
rience. So clearly did Edgar Poe perceive this vein of
genuine imaginative power in Hawthorne's writings, even
at a time when he had published only his shorter tales,
that he boldly asserted, — in this, as I think, overleaping
the truth, — that the conspicuously ideal scaffoldings of
Hawthorne's stories were but the monstrous fruits of the
bad transcendental atmosphere which he had breathed so
long, — the sign of the Emersonian school of thought in
which he had studied. " He is infinitely too fond of alle
gory," said Edgar Poe, " and can never hope for popularity
so long as he persists in it. This he will not do, for alle
gory is at war with the whole tone of his nature, which
disports itself never so well as when escaping from the
mysticism of his Goodman Browns and White Old Maids
into the hearty, genial, but still Indian-summer sunshine
of his Wakefields and Little Annie's Rambles. Indeed,
his spirit of metaphor run mad is clearly imb'ibed from the
VOL. II. C C

386 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
phalanx and phalanstery atmosphere in which he has been
so long struggling for truth. He has not half the material
for the exclusiveness of authorship that he possesses for its
universality. He has the purest style, the finest taste, the
most available scholarship, the most delicate humour, the
most touching pathos, the most radiant imagination, the
most consummate ingenuity, and with these varied good
qualities he has done well as a mystic. But is there any
one of these qualities which should prevent his doing
doubly well in a career of honest, upright, sensible, pre-
hensible, and comprehensible things ? Let him mend
his pen, get a bottle of visible ink, come out from
the Old Manse, cut Mr. Alcott, hang (if possible) the
editor of The Dial, and throw out of the window to
the pigs all his odd numbers of The North-American
Review." The caustic American critic was, I think, confusing two
things in this brief summary of Hawthorne's qualifications
and deficiencies. He saw that Hawthorne could produce
the most skilful studies from real life, as, for instance — to
take one amongst many — in his sketch of the old Apple
Dealer; he saw also that almost all his tales proper
embodied an idea or a truth, and he thought the former
the natural bent of Hawthorne's mind, the latter the
imported mannerism of a clique. But the truth is, that
both are equally natural to him, the pale transparency of
an idea being quite as essential to him in putting together
a tale as an unlimited store of exciting emergencies is to
Fennimore Cooper or G. P. R. James, or a picturesque
episode in history to Sir Walter Scott. Hawthorne could
never weave his studies of human nature into a continuous
narrative, based on mere circumstantial incident and
striking adventure. The constructive talent, probably the
special tastes and interests, requisite for that kind of
framework of a tale^ were not a part of his genius. He

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 387
must have a ghostly centre of his own, or he could not
write at all.
His power over his readers always arises from much
the same cause as that of his own fanciful creation, — the
minister who wore the black veil as a symbol of the veil
which is on all hearts, and who startled men less because
he was hidden from their view than because he made them
aware of their own solitude. " Why do you tremble at me
alone?" says the mild old man on his deathbed, from
beneath his black veil, and with the glimmering smile on
his half-hidden lips ; " tremble also at each other ! Have
men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children
screamed and fled only from my black veil? What but
the mystery which it obscurely typifies has made this piece
of crape so awful ? When the friend shows his inmost
heart to his friend, the lover to his best beloved, when man
does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loath
somely treasuring up the secret of his sin, then deem me a
monster for the symbol beneath which I have lived and
died ! I look around me, and lo ! on every visage a black/
veil ! " Hawthorne, with the pale melancholy smile that ,
seems to be always on his lips, speaks from a somewhat
similar solitude. Indeed I suspect the story was a kind of
parable of his own experience.
But, though Hawthorne's imagination was a solitary
and twilight one, there was nothing allegorical about his
genius. If we want to find his power at the very highest,
we must look to his instinctive knowledge of what we may
call the laws, not exactly of discordant emotions, but of
emotions which ought to be mutually exclusive, and which
combine with the thrill and the shudder of disease. This
is almost the antithesis of Allegory. And he makes his
delineation of such "unblest unions" the more striking,
because it stands out from a background of healthy life, of
genial scenes and simple beauties, which renders the con-
C C 2

3 88 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
trast the more thrilling. I have often heard the term
" cobweby" applied to his romances ; and their most mark
ing passages certainly cause the same sense of unwel
come shrinking to the spirit which a line of unexpected
cobweb suddenly drawn across the face causes physically
when one enters a deserted but familiar room. Edgar
Poe, indeed, is much fuller of uncanny terrors ; but then
there is nothing in his writings of the healthy, simple, and
natural background which gives sin and disease all its
horror. It is the pure and severe New England simplicity
which Hawthorne paints so delicately that brings out in
full relief the adulterous mixture of emotions on which he
spends his main strength. I might almost say that he
has carried into human affairs the old Calvinistic type of
imagination. The same strange combination of clear
simplicity, high faith, and reverential reality, with a
reluctant, but for that very reason intense and devouring,
conviction of the large comprehensiveness of the Divine
Damnation which that grim creed taught its most honest
believers to consider as the true trust in God's providence,
Hawthorne copies into his pictures of human life. He
presents us with a scene of pale severe beauty, full of
truthful goodness, and then he uncovers in some one point
of it a plague-spot, that, half-concealed as he keeps it, yet
runs away with the imagination till one is scarcely con
scious of anything else. Just as Calvinism, with all its
noble" features, can never keep its eyes off that one fact, as
it thinks it, of God's calm foreknowledge of a widespread
damnation ; and this gradually encroaches on the atten
tion till the mind is utterly absorbed in the fascinating
terror of the problem how to combine the clashing
emotions of love and horror which its image of Him
inspires ; — so Hawthorne's finest tales, with all the simpli
city of their general outline, never detain you long from
some uneasy mixture of emotions which only disease can

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 389
combine in the same subject, until at last you ask for
nothing but the brushing clean away of the infected web.
There .are many illustrations of this peculiarity of Haw
thorne's genius in his earlier and shorter tales. In one of
them he exclaims, and it is the key to his genius, " Blessed
are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright ! It is the
lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating
blazes of the infernal regions." The tale in which Haw
thorne makes this remark, " Rappacini's Daughter," itself
exemplifies in a somewhat fanciful but striking form this
constant bent of his imagination. Dr. Rappacini is a pro
fessor of medical science in the University of Padua. He
has devoted himself to the study of deadly poisons, and
learnt how to infuse them so subtly into both animal and
vegetable natures as to render that which would be fatal in
the ordinary way essential to life and health, and even
productive of unusual lustre and bloom. Hawthorne has
evidently based his tale on the physiological fact — which,
at least in the case of arsenic, is well attested — that a
malignant poison, if gradually administered, may at
length become a condition of life and conducive to beauty.
Dr. Rappacini has filled his garden with flowers so poison
ous that he himself dare not touch them, and can scarcely
venture to breathe the air around them. But the life of
his daughter Beatrice has been imbued and fed with the
same poisons which give so rich a bloom and so sweet
but deadly a perfume to these rare plants; and to her
they are health and added loveliness. Her breath is
instantly fatal to the insect or the butterfly that drinks it
in, and even her touch is deadly. But her heart is stain
less and noble, and she shudders herself at the malign
influences which she involuntarily puts forth as insects
fall dead around her. Her great beauty fascinates one of
the students, whose lodging looks out above this strange
garden; and by Rappacini's skill, exercised without the

390 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
young man's knowledge, he is gradually imbued with the
same poisons which enter so deeply into the life and con
stitution of Beatrice. The point and art of this eerie tale
lie in the conflict of emotions which Beatrice's true
spiritual beauty and malignant physical influences raise
in the mind of her lover, filling him with a passion blended
equally of love and horror ; and in the description of the
despair with which he discovers that the same malignant
influences are already part of himself.
The same tendency of imagination, in perhaps quite as
characteristic, but in a far more unpleasant form, is shown
in the tale called "The Birth-mark," which turns on the
morbid horror inspired by a slight birth-mark on the
cheek of a beautiful woman in the mind of her husband,
who is at the same time passionately attached to her and
bent on eradicating it. This tale has no imaginative
beauty, and is only remarkable for the diseased mixture
of emotions which it depicts. Again, in the tale con
cerning " The Man with the Snake in his Bosom," and
"Young Goodman Brown," and, indeed, all the most re
markable of Hawthorne's shorter tales, the same promi
nent feature, in some form or other, may be discerned.
But it is in the more elaborate tales that Hawthorne
has most scope, at once for the relieving elements which
these morbid interests, if they are to be artistically treated
at all, especially require, and for the fuller development
and justification, so to say, of emotions so subtle and
unhealthy. In " The Scarlet Letter " he has a subject
naturally so painful as exactly to suit his genius. He
treats it with perfect delicacy, for his attention is turned
to the morbid anatomy of the relations which have origi
nated in the sin of adultery, rather than to the sin itself.
There are two points on which Hawthorne concentrates
his power in this remarkable book. The first is the false
position of the minister, who gains fresh reverence and

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 391
popularity as the very fruit of the passionate anguish with
which his heart is consumed. Frantic with the stings of
unacknowledged guilt, he is yet taught by those very
stings to understand the hearts and stir the consciences of
others. His character is a pre-Raphaelite picture of the
tainted motives which fill a weak but fine and sensitive
nature when placed in such a position ; of self-hatred quite
too passionate to conquer self-love ; of a quailing con
science smothered into insane cravings for blasphemy ; of
the exquisite pain of gratified ambition conscious of its
shameful falsehood. The second point on which Haw
thorne concentrates his power is the delineation of ano
malous characteristics in the child who is the offspring of
this sinful passion. He gives her an inheritance of a law
less, mischievous, and elfish nature, not devoid of strong
affections, but delighting to probe the very sorest points of
her mother's heart, induced in part by some mysterious fas
cination to the subject, in part by wanton mischief. The
scarlet A, which is the brand of her mother's shame, is the
child's delight. She will not approach her mother unless
the A be on her bosom ; and the unnatural complication
of emotions thus excited in Hester Prynne's heart presents
one of the most characteristic features of the book, and
are painfully engraved on the reader's mind.
The scene of most marvellous power which the book
contains, contrives to draw to a focus all the many clash
ing affections portrayed. Mr. Dimmesdale, the unhappy
minister, eager to invent vain penances in expiation of
the guilt which he dares not avow, creeps out at midnight
in his canonical robe to stand for an hour on the scaffold
on which Hester and her child had been pilloried years
before. It is the night when many are watching by the
dying-bed of the governor of Massachusetts, and one of
the minister's reverend colleagues, who has been praying
with the governor, passes under the scaffold, lantern in

3gz NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
hand. In his nervous and excited mood, Dimmesdale
almost addresses him aloud, and then, paralysed by dread
and his limbs stiffened by cold, it occurs to him that he
will never be able to descend the steps of the scaffold, and
that morning will break to show him there to all his
revering flock : —
" Morning would break and find him there. The neighbourhood would
begin to rouse itself. The earliest riser coming forth in the dim twilight,
would perceive a vaguely-defined figure aloft on the place of shame ; and
half crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go knocking from door to
door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost — as he needs must
think it— of some defunct transgressor. A dusky tumult would flap its
wings from one house to another. Then — the morning light still waxing
stronger — old patriarchs would rise up in great haste, each in his flannel
gown, and matronly dames without pausing to put off their night gear.
The whole tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been
seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public view
with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old Governor Bel-
lingham would come grimly forth, with his King James' ruff fastened
askew ; and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of the forest clinging to
her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of
sleep after her night ride ; and good Father Wilson too, after spending
half the night at a deathbed, and liking ill to be disturbed thus early out
of his dreams about the glorified saints. Hither likewise would come the
elders and deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's church, and the young virgins
who so idolised their minister, and had made a shrine for him in their
white bosoms ; which now, by-the-by, in their hurry and confusion, they
would scantily have given themselves time to cover with their kerchiefs.
All people, in a word, would come stumbling over their thresholds, and
turning up their amazed and horror-stricken visages around the scaffold.
Whom would they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his
brow? Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half-frozen to
death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had
stood !
" Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the minister,
unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a great peal of
laughter. It was immediately responded to by a light, airy, childish
laugh, in which, with a thrill of the heart— but he knew not whether of
exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute— he recognised the tones of little
Pearl. " ' Pearl ! Little Pearl ! ' cried he, after a moment's pause ; then, sup
pressing his voice, ' Hester ! Hester Prynne ! Are you there ? ' ' Yes ;
it is Hester Prynne ! ' she replied in a tone of surprise ; and the minister
heard her footsteps approaching from the side walk, along which she had

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 393
been passing. 'It is I, and my little Pearl.' 'Whence come you,
Hester?' asked the minister. 'What sent you hither?' 'I have been
watching at a death-bed,' answered Hester Prynne ; ' at Governor
Winthrop's death-bed, and have taken his measure for a robe, and am
now going homeward to my dwelling.' ' Come up hither, Hester, thou
and little Pearl,' said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. ' Ye have both
been here before, but I was not with you. Come up hither once again,
and we will stand all three together.'
" She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform, holding
little Pearl by the hand. The minister felt for the child's other hand, and
took it. The moment that he did so, there came what seemed a tumul
tuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into
his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as if the mother and the
child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system.
The three formed an electric chain.
" ' Minister ! ' whispered little Pearl. ' What wouldst thou say, child ? *
asked Mr. Dimmesdale. ' Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to
morrow noontide?' inquired Pearl. 'Nay; not so, my little Pearl,'
answered the minister ; for, with the new energy of the moment, all the
dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life>
had returned upon him ; and he was already trembling at the conjunction
in which, with a strange joy nevertheless, he now found himself — ' not so,
my child. I shall indeed stand with thy mother and thee one other
day, but not to-morrow.'
" Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. But the
minister held it fast. ' A moment longer, my child ! ' said he. ' But
wilt thou promise,' asked Pearl, ' to take my hand, and mother's hand, to
morrow noontide ? ' "
At this moment a sudden meteoric light flashes across
the sky, and lights up the scaffold ; after describing it the
tale proceeds : —

" There was a singular circumstance that characterised Mr. Dimmes-
dale's psychological state at this moment. All the time that he gazed
upward to the zenith, he was nevertheless perfectly aware that little Pearl
was pointing her finger towards old Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no
great distance from the scaffold. The minister appeared to see him with
the same glance that discerned the miraculous letter. To his features, as
to all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression ; or it
might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at all other
times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked upon his victim.
Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with
an awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the
day of judgment, then might Roger Chillingworth have passed with them

39+ NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
for the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and a scowl to claim his
own. So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's percep
tion of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness, after the
meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else
were at once annihilated.
" ' Who is that man, Hester ? ' gasped Mr. Dimmesdale, overcome with
terror. ' I shiver at him ! Dost thou know the man ? I hate him,
Hester!' " She remembered her oath and was silent.
" ' I tell thee, my soul shivers at him ! ' muttered the minister again.
¦* Who is he ? Who is he ? Canst thou do nothing for me ? I have a
nameless horror of the man ! '
" ' Minister,' said little Pearl, ' I can tell thee who he is.'
'"Quickly, then, child !' said the minister, bending his ear close to her
lips. ' Quickly ! and as low as thou canst whisper.'
" Pearl mumbled something into his ear that sounded, indeed, like
. human language, but was only such gibberish as children may be heard
amusing themselves with by the hour together. At all events, if it
involved any secret information in regard to old Roger Chillingworth, it
was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase
the bewilderment of his mind. The elvish child then laughed aloud."

This strange vigil, the grim hysteric humour of the
minister, the proud and silent fortitude of Hester, the
mocking laughter of the child as she detects her unknown
father's cowardice, together make as weird-like a tangle
of human elements as ever bubbled together in a witches'
caldron. Yet this scene, though probably the most
powerful which Hawthorne ever painted, scarcely ex
emplifies his uncanny fashion of awakening the most
mutually repellant feelings at the same moment towards
the same person so characteristically as many of his other
tales. In the most striking chapter of "The House of the
Seven Gables," Hawthorne makes Judge Pyncheon, who
has died in his chair from a sudden effusion of blood,
holding his still ticking watch in his hand, a subject at
once for awe and scorn. He recalls all the judge's
engagements for the day, — the bank-meeting at which he
was to take the chair, — the business appointment he was

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 395
to keep, — the private purchases he was to make, — the
little act of charity which he had thought of, time and
purse permitting, — the half-formal call on his physician
concerning some trifling symptoms of indisposition, — the
political dinner to discuss the election of the next State
governor ; and then he taunts the judge with his forgetful
ness. He had resolved to spend only half-an-hour in this
house. " Half-an-hour ! Why, judge, it is already two
hours by your own undeviatingly accurate chronometer.
Glance your eye down on it and see. Ah ! he will not
give himself the trouble either to bend his head or elevate
his hand, so as to bring the faithful time-keeper within his
range of vision. Time all at once appears to have become
a matter of no moment with the judge ! " And so Haw
thorne goes on through the list of his engagements,
reminding him separately of each as the time comes for
it, recalling to the dead man the importance he had
attached to it when he made his plans in the morning.
The private dinner would, in all probability, determine the
next election, — and Judge Pyncheon was a candidate, and
with rare chances of success. " Make haste, then ; do
your part !  Drink a glass or two of that noble
wine ! — make your pledges in as low a whisper as you
will — and you rise up from table virtually governor of the
glorious old State — Governor Pyncheon of Massachusetts !
And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a
certainty like this ? It has been the grand purpose of
half your lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there needs
little more than to signify your acceptance, why do you
sit so lumpishly in your great-grandfather's old chair, as if
preferring it to the gubernatorial one ?" Thus Hawthorne
goes on throughout the twenty-four hours during which
the judge's body remains undiscovered, — mingling with
the most powerful picture of the supernatural side of
death, which he never ceases to keep vividly before us, the

396 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
feelings that cluster round petty business, the sarcasms
that might sting the sensitive, the urgency that might
hasten the dilatory, the incentives that would spur the
ambitious, flinging them all in cold irony at the corpse
with an eerie effect that only Hawthorne could produce.
But the most characteristic instance of Hawthorne's
power in studying combinations of emotions that are as it
were at once abhorrent to nature and true to life, is in
"Transformation." The one powerful scene in that
distended work is the scene of crime. The young Tuscan
Count Donatello, — the " natural man " of the book, who is
rumoured to be a descendant of an ancient Faun, and
described in the opening of the tale as possessed only of
the happy spontaneous life of the natural creatures, but
who is afterwards awakened to the higher responsibilities
and life of man by his remorse for an impulsive crime, —
has fallen in love with Miriam, a lady artist of warm and
passionate nature, high powers, and mysterious origin.
This young lady is pursued by some half-madman, half-
demon, who from some (unexplained) connection with her
previous life has power to torment her by his threats to
the very verge of unsettling her reason. Walking with
Donatello, one moonlight night, at a little distance from
their party, on the verge of the Tarpeian rock, this
tormenting being is discovered, dogging her footsteps as
usual, under the shadow of an archway. Donatello seizes
him, holds him over the precipice, catches Miriam's eye,
reads in it eager and fierce assent to the act he is medi
tating, and drops him down ; there is a dead thump on the
stones below and all is over. Up to this instant Miriam
had felt nothing but pity for her young lover. Now for the
first time, in this hideous moment, horror and love are
born together in her breast, and the monstrous birth, the
delirium of love born in blood, is thus powerfully de
scribed ;— except, by the way, that Miriam certainly never

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 397
addressed Donatello at such a moment as " Oh, friend ! "
either "with heavy richness of meaning" or otherwise,
and that this is a sentimental blot on Hawthorne's
picture. "'Did you not mean that he should die?' sternly asked Donatello,
still in the glow of that intelligence which passion had developed in him.
' There was short time to weigh the matter ; but he had his trial in that
breath or two, while I held him over the cliff, and his sentence in that
one glance, when your eyes responded to mine ! Say that I have slain him
against your will — say that he died without your whole consent — and in
another breath, you shall see me lying beside him.' ' Oh, never ! ' cried
Miriam. ' My one own friend ! Never, never, never !' She turned to him —
the guilty, blood-stained, lonely woman — she turned to her fellow-criminal,
the youth so lately innocent, whom she had drawn into her doom. She
pressed him close, close to her bosom, with a clinging embrace that
brought their two hearts together, till the horror and agony of each was
combined into one emotion, and that a kind of rapture. ' Yes, Donatello,
you speak the truth ! ' said she ; ' my heart consented to what you did.
We two slew yonder wretch. The deed knots us together for time and
eternity, like the coil of a serpent ! ' They threw one other glance at the
heap of death below, to assure themselves that it was there ; so like a
dream was the whole thing. Then they turned from that fatal precipice,
and came out of the court-yard, arm in arm, heart in heart. Instinctively,
they were heedful not to sever themselves so much as a pace or two from
one another, for fear of the terror and deadly chill that would henceforth
wait for them in solitude. Their deed— the crime which Donatello wrought,
and Miriam accepted on the instant — had wreathed itself, as she said,
like a serpent, in inextricable links about both their souls, and drew them
into one by its terrible contractile power. It was closer than a marriage-
bond. So intimate, in those first moments, was the union that it seemed
as if their new sympathy annihilated all other ties, and that they were
released from the chain of humanity ; a new sphere, a special law, had
been created for them alone. The world could not come near them ;
they were safe ! . . . . ' Oh, friend,' cried Miriam, so putting her soul
into that word that it took a heavy richness of meaning, and seemed
never to have been spoken before, — ' oh, friend, are you conscious, as I
am, of this companionship that knits our heart strings together ? ' 'I feel
it, Miriam,' said Donatello. ' We draw one breath ; we live one life ! '
' Only yesterday,' continued Miriam ; ' nay, only a short half-hour ago,
I shivered in an icy solitude. No friendship, no sisterhood, could come
near enough to keep the warmth within my heart. In an instant, all is
changed ! There can be no more loneliness ! ' ' None, Miriam ! ' said
Donatello. ' None, my beautiful one ! ' responded Miriam, gazing in his
face, which had taken a higher, almost an heroic aspect from the strength
of passion. ' None, my innocent one ! Surely, it is no crime that we

398 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
have committed. One wretched and worthless life has been sacrificed,
to cement two other lives for evermore.' ' For evermore, Miriam ! ' said
Donatello. ' cemented with his blood ! ' The young man started at the
word which he had himself spoken ; it may be that it brought home, to
the simplicity of his imagination, what he had not before dreamed of—
the ever-increasing loathsomeness of a union that consists in guilt.
Cemented with blood, which would corrupt and grow more noisome for
ever and for ever, but bind them not the less strictly for that ! ' ' Forget
it ! Cast it all behind you ! ' said Miriam, detecting, by her sympathy,
the pang that was in his heart. ' The deed has done its office, and has
no existence any more.' They flung the past behind them, as she
counselled, or else distilled from it a fiery intoxication, which sufficed to
carry them triumphantly through those first moments of their doom. For
guilt has its moment of rapture too. The foremost result of a broken
law is ever an ecstatic sense of freedom. And thus there exhaled
upward (out of their dark sympathy, at the base of which lay a human
corpse) a bliss, or an insanity, which the unhappy pair imagined to be
well worth the sleepy innocence that was for ever lost to them. As their
spirits rose to the solemn madness of the occasion, they went onward —
not stealthily, not fearfully — but with a stately gait and aspect. Passion
lent them (as it does to meaner shapes) its brief nobility of carriage.
They trode through the streets of Rome as if they too were among the
majestic and guilty shadows that, from ages long gone by, have haunted
the blood-stained city."
This is very finely conceived and yet revolting. Have
I not reason for saying, that Hawthorne's chief power lies
in the delineation of unnatural alliances of feeling, which
are yet painfully real, — of curdling emotions that may mix
for a moment, but shrink apart again quickly, as running
water from clotted blood ?
But it would be very unjust to Hawthorne to represent
him as in any degree addicted, like Edgar Poe, to the
invention of monstrosities and horrors. I only mean that
his genius naturally leads him to the analysis and repre
sentation of certain outlying moral anomalies, which are
not the anomalies of ordinary evil and sin, but have a
certain chilling unnaturalness of their own. But under
Hawthorne's treatment these anomalies are only the
subtle flaws or passionate taints of natures full of fine
elements ; they are never superlatives of physical horror

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 399
like Edgar Poe's. They are the dark spots in a fine pic
ture, never the very substance of the whole. There is, for
instance, every palliation which a charitable imagination
can invent for Hester's sin and Dimmesdale's cowardice
in " The Scarlet Letter ;" and even the child's elfish wan
tonness, though in some degree preternatural, is not demo
niacal, but the mere lawless taint in an otherwise warm
and open heart. So, too, in " Transformation," there is
every excuse that circumstances can give to the crime which
Donatello commits and Miriam sanctions ; — after the first
moment of mad excitement is over, it fills them with un
speakable anguish ; it rouses all the tender devotion of the
woman in Miriam for the man who had thus stained his
conscience under the impulse of love to her ; it awakens
the sleeping soul of Donatello ; — and the book is meant to
record their uninterrupted upward progress from that
moment. Moreover, in the two other characters we find a
peaceful contrast to the turbid hearts of the sinful lovers.
Neither in this nor in any other tale does Hawthorne cast any
slur on human nature. He loves to picture it in its highest
and tenderest aspects. And when he delineates what is
revolting, one of the main elements that makes it so
revolting is the Manichean incarceration of some noble and
half-angelic affection in a malignant body of evil, from
which it vainly seeks to be divorced.
This bent of Hawthorne's genius is no doubt in great
degree determined by the lonely wistfulness of his mind. ;
Even his imagination is inquisitive and — if I may call it
what he calls it himself in " The Blithedale Romance"
— rather prying than ardent. It is curious to find that
Hawthorne was a descendant of the "witch-judge," —
the Hawthorne of whom Longfellow introduced a sketch
into his New England tragedies. One might fancy that
Hawthorne had inherited not a little of the eeriness of the
spiritual inquisitor without any touch of his cruelty,' —

400 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
except so far as a passionless curiosity which is very little
agitated by sympathy, even where it is analyzing painful
subjects, may popularly (and very unjustly) be confused
with cruelty. But it is not only the inquisitorial side of
Hawthorne's cold fancy which seems to connect him with
his ancestor the "witch-judge." There seems to have
been in him a considerable vein of what would probably
very unjustly be called superstition, — i.e. a special attrac
tion towards the morbid side of mental phenomena, with,
perhaps, an undue tendency to credulity. As to the
credulity, I am not sure. It may well be that Hawthorne
believed no more of the so-called science of mesmeric and
spiritualistic phenomena than the most acute and incre
dulous men of his society. But that he was specially
fascinated by these morbid phenomena, as by all morbid
phenomena of human nature, is proved by a vast number
of passages in his various notebooks, as well as by the
subjects of his novels. /
His notes are full of suggestions for imaginative inquisi
tions into morbid subjects. In one page we find a suggestion,
more cynical and less preternatural than usual, that two
persons might make their wills in each other's favour, and
then wait impatiently for the death of the other, till each
was informed that the long-desired event had taken place,
and hastening to be present at the other's funeral, they
might meet each other in perfect health. In another page
we find noted down, " Curious to imagine what murmurings
and discontent would be excited if any of the great so-
called calamities of human beings were to be abolished, —
as, for instance, death." Again, we have a suggestion for
a new sort of reading of Boccaccio's story of Isabel, that a
girl, not knowing her lover to be dead and buried in her
own garden, might yet feel an indescribable impulse of
attraction towards the flowers growing out of his grave,
might find them of admirable splendour, beauty, and

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 401
perfume, and rejoice in keeping them in her bosom and
scenting her room with them. Again, on another page we
have a suggested sketch of a man who tries to be happy
in love, but who cannot really give his heart, or prevent
the affair from seeming a pure dream ; — in domestic life,
in politics, in every sphere it is to be the same, — he is to
seem a patriot, and care nothing really for his country,
only try to care ; he is to seem the kindest of sons and
brothers, but feel the whole relation unreal ; in a word, he
is to be wholly " detached" from life, like a Roman Catholic
monk or nun, but without that life in another world after
which they aim. These are only a very few illustrations of
the fascination with which Hawthorne's fancy dwelt on
morbid psychology as his natural subject. There are but
few pages in his notebooks which do not afford examples of
the same thing. Hawthorne seems to have illustrated his
contemporary and friend Dr. Holmes's theory that we are
each of us a sort of physiological and psychological omnibus
for bringing back our ancestors in new shapes and under
different conditions to this earth. The "witch-judge,"
associating himself, perhaps, with some more literary an
cestor of Hawthorne's, reappeared in this most original of
American novelists. Hawthorne was a novelist because he
was an intellectual and moral inquisitor. " Inquisitor and
novelist," would describe him even better than " novelist
and inquisitor," always carefully expelling, of course, all
notion of torture from the inquisitorial character of his
imagination. Hawthorne's genius, then, was fertile, but in a cold and
restless way. It was used more to help him to explore
mysteries than in obedience to the glowing creative impulse
that cannot choose but paint. He stated to himself a
problem, and set his imagination to work to solve it.
How was it the woman felt who wore publicly the symbol
of her own sin and shame fancifully embroidered on her
VOL. 11. D D

402 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
bosom ? What would be the state of mind of one who had
unhappily killed another, and could never clearly deter
mine in his own conscience whether his will had con
sented to the deed or not ? What would be the result of a
wrongful life-imprisonment on a soft aesthetic nature made
for the enjoyment of the beautiful ? How would a sin of
passion work on a healthy, innocent, natural man of un-
awakened spirit ? These are the kind of hypotheses on
which Hawthorne's imagination worked; and from the
nature of the case, images summoned up in obedience to
such questionings could not always be of a very wholesome
kind. The problems that Hawthorne started were usually
connected with the deepest mysteries of the human mind
and conscience ; and the imagination which attempts to
keep pace with the inquisitive intellect cannot but paint
strange and thrilling anomalies in reply to its queries.
"That cold tendency," says Mr. Coverdale, the hero
of "The Blithedale Romance," who has many points of
intellectual affinity with its author,' — " that cold tendency
between instinct and intellect, which made me pry with
a speculative interest into people's passions and impulses,
appeared to have gone far towards unhumanising my
heart." I do not suppose that it went far, or any way at
all, towards unhumanising Hawthorne's heart, which was
evidently tender. But no doubt, he was led by the specu
lative bias of his mind to steep his imagination in arcana
on which it is scarcely good to gaze at all.
It is remarkable, and, perhaps, a symptom of the same
imaginative constitution, that while Hawthorne had the
most eager desire, to penetrate the secret attitudes of
minds painfully or anomalously situated, he had little or
no interest in picturing the exact combination of circum
stances which brought them into these attitudes. His
imagination was the very converse of De Foe's. De Foe
seizes the outer fact with the most vivid force ; indirectly

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 403
only, by the very force and minuteness of his conception
of the visible circumstances, actions, and gestures he
narrates, do you get at the inward mind of his characters.
Hawthorne, on the contrary, is often positively anxious
to suppress all distinct account of the actual facts which
have given rise to his ideal situations. He wishes to save
the mental impression from being swallowed up, so to say,
in the interest of the outward facts and events. He sees
that people of a matter-of-fact turn of mind attach more
value to knowing the exciting causes than to knowing
the state of mind which results. If they hear what seems
to them an insufficient cause for a heroine's misery, they
set her down as feeble-minded, and give up their interest
in her fate. If they hear a too sufficient cause, they say
she deserved all she suffered, and for that reason discard
her from their sympathies. Hawthorne saw the difficulty
of inventing facts that would exactly hit the shade of
feeling that he desired to excite in his readers' minds,
and so he often refused to detail the facts distinctly at all.
He often gives us our choice of several sets of facts which
might be adequate to the results, declines to say which
he himself prefers, and insists only on the attitude of mind
produced. Thus, in "The Blithedale Romance," he preludes a far
from explanatory or lucid conversation with this mysti
fying sentence, "I hardly could make out an intelligible
sentence on either side. What I seem to remember I yet
suspect may have been patched together by my fancy in
brooding over the matter afterwards." Again, in another
part of the same book, " The details of the interview that
followed being unknown to me, while notwithstanding it
would be a pity quite to lose the picturesqueness of the
situation, I shall attempt to sketch it mainly from fancy,
although with some general grounds of surmise in regard
to the old man's feelings." But he carried this preference
D D 2

404 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
for delineating states of mind, and obscurely suggesting
the class of facts which may have given rise to them, to
the furthest point in his last novel, "Transformation."
" Owing, it may be," he tells us, in a chapter justly headed
"Fragmentary Sentences," at a critical juncture in the
tale, " to this moral estrangement, — this chill remoteness
of their position, — there have come to us but a few vague
whisperings of what passed in Miriam's interview that
afternoon with the sinister personage who had dogged her
footsteps ever since her visit to the catacomb. In weaving
these mystic utterances into a continuous scene, we under
take a task resembling in its perplexity that of gathering
up and piecing together the fragments of a letter which
has been torn and scattered to the winds. Many words
of deep significance, — many entire sentences, and these
probably the most important ones, — have flown too far
on the winged breeze to be recovered. If we insert our
own conjectural amendments, we may perhaps give a pur
port utterly at variance with the true one." And then he
continues, " Of so much we are sure, that there seemed
to be a sadly mysterious fascination in the influence of
this ill-omened person over Miriam ; it was such as beasts
and reptiles of subtle and evil natures sometimes exercise
over their victims. . . . Yet let us trust there may
have been no crime in Miriam, but only one of those
fatalities which are among the insoluble riddles pro
pounded to mortal comprehension — the fatal doom by
which every crime is made to be the agony of many
innocent persons, as well as of the single guilty one."
In other words, Hawthorne wishes us to picture a mind
perturbed, flushed, on the verge of despair, but does not
wish us to know how far the exciting causes had involved
her in real guilt, or merely in misery. It is not essential,
he thinks, to the purpose of the book, which is rather to
trace the effects of the subsequent guilt on the relation

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 4oS
between Miriam and Donatello than to develop fully the
previous character of the woman who draws the poor
young Count into crime. As far as regards Miriam, the
problem set himself by the author in this book is only to
delineate the influence exerted over her heart by Dona-
tello's plunge into guilt on her behalf. He thinks it
enough to indicate that she who led Donatello into guilt
was either herself guilty, or at least intimately imbued
with all the infectious fever of a guilty atmosphere. More
is not essential to the author's purpose, and more he will
not tell us. He seems to hint, perhaps truly, that the
chasm between guilt and wretchedness in a woman's mind
is not always so wide as in a man's ; and that, at all
events, there is as much power in any deeply roused
affection to extricate her from the one as from the other.
For like reasons, I suppose, the end of the tale is as
shadowy as the beginning. The transformation is accom
plished : the Faun is no longer a Faun ; and all the author
contemplated is therefore attained. The wreath of mist
which hangs over Miriam's past is allowed also to settle
over her own and Donatello's future. The problem has
been solved in the dissolving colours of two dimly-
outlined minds. And their earthly destiny is nothing
to the reader ; to know it might even divert his attention
from the artist's true purpose, and concentrate it on the
denouement oi a commonplace story.
This predominance of moral colouring over the definite
forms of actual fact in Hawthorne's novels is to me, I
confess, unsatisfactory. And the degree to which it is
absent or prevails in his several works, seems to me a
fair measure of their relative artistic worth. " The Scarlet
Letter," in which there is by far the most solid basis of
fact, is, I think, also considerably the finest and most
powerful of his efforts. " The House of the Seven Gables,"
in itself nearly a perfect work of art, is yet composed of

406 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
altogether thinner materials. Yet the details are worked
up with so much care and finish, — the whole external
scenery of this, as well as of "The Scarlet Letter," is so
sharply defined, so full of the clear air of New England
life, — that one can bear better the subtle moral colouring
and anatomy with which they both abound. In "The
Blithedale Romance" I observe the first tendency to
shroud certain portions of the narrative in an intentional
veil, and to attempt to paint a distinct moral expression
without giving a distinct outline of fact. The effect is
powerful, but vague and not satisfying. The figures
wander vagrant-like through the imagination of the reader.
They seem to have no distinct place of their own assigned
to them. You know what sort of characters you have
beheld, but not when and under what circumstances you
have beheld them. In " Transformation " these defects
are at their maximum ; and the evil is exaggerated by the
mass of general padding — artistic criticisms, often power
ful, and always subtle, upon Italian art ; — puffs of the
works of American sculptors ; — silly attacks upon nude
figures, and the like, — which distend, alloy, and un
gracefully speckle the ideal tenor of the tale.
Both the novels and the notebooks testify to their
author's melancholy, though hardly melancholy of a deep
order. It is the melancholy of a man with a rather slow
flow of blood in his veins, and almost a horror of action,
rather than any deep melancholy, which speaks in him.
He is always sensible, but always apart from the rest of
the world. There is a sort of capillary repulsion between
his mind and that of the society in which he mixes, and
this it is which gives a slight gloom to the general tone of
his observations. "The world is so sad and solemn," he
says, "that things meant in jest are liable by an over
powering influence to become dreadful earnest, — gaily
dressed fantasies turning to ghostly and black-clad images,

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 407
of themselves." This was, no doubt, an observation founded
on considerable experience of his own mental life, and
any one who knows well his minor tales will be able at
once to verify it from them. But there is very little . of
deep pain in either his criticisms of life or his pictures of
it. He pictured real anguish, but more as an anatomist
would lay bare a convulsive movement of the nerves, than
as a poet would express passion. You feel that you are
reading a study of human pain, rather than feeling the
throb of the pain itself. The melancholy is the meditative
and microscopic melancholy of a curious and speculative
intelligence; there is little of that imaginative sympathy
with pain which is at the heart of all true tragedy.
Hawthorne's humour is partly of the same root as his
melancholy, springing from slow, close, inquisitive scrutiny
of the paradoxes of life, — the humour which is quite as
much true criticism as true humour. Take, for example,
this observation on one of his children : " One of the
children drawing a cow on the black board says, ' I'll kick
this leg out a little more,' a very happy energy of expression,
completely identifying herself with the cow ; or perhaps as
the cow's creator, conscious of full power over its movements!'
Or take the remark, " There is a kind of ludicrous unfit
ness in the idea of a venerable rose-bush. . . . apple-
trees, on the other hand, grow old without reproach."
Or again, take the following, apparently written at
a time when his wife was away, and he had no servant
to look after his house: "The washing of dishes does
seem to me the most absurd and unsatisfactory business
that I ever undertook. If, when once washed, they
would remain clean for ever and ever (which they
ought in all reason to do, considering how much trouble
it is) there would be less occasion to grumble; but no
sooner is it done than it requires to be done again. On the
whole, I have come to the resolution not to use more. than

408 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
one dish at each meal." Or this, on a piece of boiled beef
which he had boiled himself at great pains and trouble :
"I am at this moment superintending the corned beef,
which has been on the fire, as it seems to me, ever since
the beginning of time, and shows no symptom of being
done before the crack of doom. . . . The corned beef
is exquisitely done, and as tender as a young lady's heart,
all owing to my skilful cookery. ... To say the
truth, I look upon it as such a masterpiece in its way
that it seems irreverential to eat it. Things on which so
much thought and labour are bestowed should surely be
immortal." His humour arises, as it seems to me, in all
these cases from the magnifying glass under which he
views a somewhat minute phenomenon, till we see its
characteristics exaggerated and caricatured in relation to
the proportions of ordinary life ; and partly also from the
humorous but determined resistance which his mind offers
to every attempt to - subdue it to uncongenial habits.
Thus he says elsewhere: "I went to George Hillard's
office, and he spoke with immitigable resolution of the
necessity of my going to dine with Longfellow before
returning to Concord ; but I have an almost miraculous
power of escaping from necessities of this kind. Destiny
itself has often been worsted in the attempt to get me out to
dinner" which strikes me as a stroke of true humour and
true self-knowledge all in one. His own shy, solitary
nature was so averse to any attempt to assimilate it to the
temper of ordinary society, that it might truly be said that
destiny itself had failed in the attempt to get him to dine
out like other folks, just as the most solid masonry often
fails to crush a flower, and will even be rent asunder by
the upward growth of a tender plant. But besides the
truth of the application to himself, there is real humour in
the conception of Destiny as trying to get any man " out
to dinner." It really is what Destiny seems oftenest to

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 409
insist upon, and to succeed in, in these days, in spite of
enormous obstacles. Hawthorne seldom displayed his
humour more finely than in thus depicting the same
Destiny which, in the Greek drama, devotes itself to the
most sublime tasks, as engaging itself, in this flaccid, and
yet in some senses far more closely-knit, nineteenth
century, in the ignoble task of bringing an irresistible
pressure to bear in order to get men to go out to dinner !
The most distinguishing deficiency in Hawthorne's mind,
which is also in close connection with its highest power,
is his complete want of sympathy not only with the world
of- voluntary action, but with the next thing to action —
namely, the world of impulsive passion. With exceed
ingly rare exceptions — the scene of crime and passion
which I have quoted from "Transformation" is the only
exception I can recall — the highest power of Hawthorne
is all spent on the delineation of chronic suffering or senti
ment, in which all desire to act on others is in a measure
paralysed. He likes to get past the rapids any way he
can ; — as we have seen, he not seldom introduces you to
his tale with only the distant rush of them still audible
behind you, his delight being to trace the more lasting
perturbations which they effect for winding miles below.
But what he does paint for you, he likes to study
thoroughly ; he loves to get beneath the surface, to sound
the deeper and mysterious pools, measure the power of the
fretted waters, and map carefully out the sandy shallows.
The result is necessarily a considerable limitation in the
field of his genius. The excitement which other writers
find in delineating the swaying fortunes of an active
career, he is — I will not say obliged to find, for of course
the positive capacity of his genius, not its incapacity for
other fields, leads him in this direction— but he is obliged
to find only in curious and often painful pictures of un
healthy sentiment.

410 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
This is what circles so closely the range of Hawthorne's
characters. They are necessarily very limited both in
number and in moral attitude. We have but two studies,
in his tales, of characters with any active bent — Hollings-
worth in " The Blithedale Romance," and Phcebe in "The
House of the Seven Gables." Both are carefully drawn,
but both are far slighter sketches, and more evidently
taken from observation only, than his other characters.
His nearest approach to the delineation of impulsive pas
sion is seen in the sketch of Zenobia in " The Blithedale
Romance," and of Miriam in " Transformation." But in
neither case is it real impulse to act on others which he
draws well ; it is rather the turbid tossing of a rich mind
ill at ease with itself, and casting about for sympathy and
help. The characters which he draws most completely —
though they are not always the pleasantest — are those
which, like Mr. Coverdale in " The Blithedale Romance,"
and Holgrave in " The House of the Seven Gables," have
" no impulse to help or to hinder," caring only " to look
on, to analyze, to explain matters to themselves." Clifford,
too, in the latter tale — who evidently represents the sensi
tive and aesthetic side of the author's own mind, "that
squeamish love of the beautiful " (to use his own expressive
phrase), which is in him, when stripped of that cold con
templative individuality which seems to me to be at the
centre of Hawthorne's literary genius and personality — is
a fine study.
But one criticism more. The moral ideal which Haw
thorne keeps before himself and his readers throughout
his works is, on the whole, not only pure but noble. It
is defective, however, as we might expect, on the same
side on which his genius seems to fail. He was, in political
and social conviction, a democratic quietist ; one might
almost say a fatalist. Was it not a part of this fatalistic
disposition to encourage the cultivated and thinking

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 411
portion of society to resign to the masses the duty of form
ing the political judgment of his nation, and to permit
himself to be quietly sucked in by that fatally fascinating
and overmastering tide swaying the Will of democracy ?
However this may be, in political and social life, he was
one who deprecated all spasmodic reforms, and attached
little value to any reformatory efforts, except as the indis
pensable conditions of generous hopes and youthful aspira
tions. Speaking of such an experiment of social reform,
he said, " After all, let us acknowledge it wise, if not more
sagacious, to follow out one's day-dream to its natural
consummation, although, if the vision have been worth
the having, it is certain never to be consummated other
wise than by a failure." Again he said, in another tale,
and with much of true moral insight, though it be the
one-sided moral insight of the quietest recluse, "the
haughty faith with which he [the enthusiastic practical
reformer] began life would be well bartered for, a far
humbler one at its close, in discerning that man's best-
directed effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while God is
the sole worker of realities."
Nor should I find fault with him for his very deeply-
rooted conviction that, so far as any real and deep reform
is accomplished, it may in a certain sense be said to
accomplish itself, instead of being forced on society by the
enthusiastic patronage of crusading philanthropists, had
he but confined this theory within modest limits— had he
not pressed it into the service of what seems to me the
grossest political immorality. I can sympathise with him
when he so finely moralises at the end of " The Blithedale
Romance " on the dangers of philanthropy : —
"Admitting what is called philanthropy, when adopted as a profession,.
to be often useful by its energetic impulses to society at large, "it is
perilous to the individual whose ruling passion, in one exclusive channel,.
it thus becomes. It ruins, or is fearfully apt to ruin, the heart, the rich

412 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
juices of which God never meant should be pressed violently out and
distilled into alcoholic liquor by an unnatural process ; but should render
life sweeet, bland, and gently beneficent, and insensibly influence other
hearts and other lives to the same blessed end."
Yet more; I can even go with him, quite as far as he
wishes his readers to go, when he ironically prescribes a
universal slumber as_ the one only cure for .the world's
overstrained nerves : —
" The world should recline its vast head on the first convenient pillow,
and take an age-long nap. It has gone distracted through a morbid
activity, and while preternaturally wide awake is nevertheless tormented
by visions that seem real to it now, but would assume their true aspect
and character were all things once set right by an interval of sound
repose. This is the only method of getting rid of old delusions and
avoiding new ones, — of regenerating our race so that it might in due time
awake as an infant out of dewy slumber, — of restoring to us the simple
perception of what is right and the single-hearted desire to achieve it,
both of which have long been lost in consequence of this weary activity
of brain, and torpor or passion of the heart, that now afflict the
universe ; " —
to which he characteristically added, in a different passage
of his writings, his own present yearning for a long and
profound sleep of at least a thousand years between Death
and Resurrection.
For none of these thoughts and sayings, however depre-
ciative of effort, or destructive of the sanguine hopes with
which effort spurs itself on, could I reproach Hawthorne.
It is fitting that, after the preacher of one-sided action and
overstrained vigilance has spoken, this too restless age
should also hear the invitation to distrust its own
" earnestness," and renew its highly-strung energies by
rest. Nay, the function of the contemplative man, who
keeps clear of the many streams of human energy, and
passes his solitary criticisms upon their tendency from
some nook of seemingly selfish retirement, is justified in
the scheme of Providence by the very existence of the
philanthropic class of one-sided workers. But it is when

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 413
Hawthorne came to apply his quietistic creed t6 the actual
political world in which he lived, that I find his moral
shortcomings painfully evident, and see that he had per
mitted a mere theory to confuse " that simple perception
of what is right, and the single-hearted desire to achieve
it," of which he speaks so well, as grievously as ever a
professional philanthropist was deceived by his one
dominant idea.
Little as Hawthorne was disposed to mix in the strife of
the political arena, once at least he was not willing to let
that vox populi in which he placed so much confidence-
speak without a suggestion from himself. In the little-
electioneering volume on the life of Franklin Pierce, who-
was then (in 1852) a candidate, and as it proved a success
ful candidate, for the Presidency of the United States,
Hawthorne offered his suggestion in the form of an appli
cation of his theory to the subject of spasmodic philan
thropy as exhibited on the question of slavery. The
contest, at the time of General Pierce's election, turned,
as all the contests then did, chiefly on this question.
General Pierce represented the party of conciliation to
the South, — the party of union at almost any sacrifice of
Northern principles. The fugitive-slave law had just
passed, and the higher-minded politicians of the Northern
States were eager to get a reversal of that disgraceful
Act. General Pierce had pledged himself to sustain that
Act and the whole system of which it was a part ; and it
was Hawthorne's object to justify the policy of his friend.
After condemning the Northern men, who thought that the
world stood still except so far as the anti-slavery cause
went forward, for their narrowness, he proceeded thus : —
"There is still another view, and probably as wise a one. It looks
upon slavery as one of those evils which Divine Providence does not
leave to be remedied by human contrivances, but which, in its own good
time, by some means impossible to be anticipated, but of the simplest and

4i4 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
easiest operation,' when all its uses shall have been fulfilled, shall vanish
like a dream. There is no instance in all history of the human will and
intellect having perfected any great moral reform by methods which
it adapted to that end ; but the progress of the world at every step leaves
some e_vil or wrong on the path behind it, which the wisest of mankind, of
their own set purpose, could never have found the way to rectify." *
Accordingly, Hawthorne's recommendation to the people
of the Northern States was to acquiesce in the Southern
encroachments, and trust to Providence for the removal
of this foul blot on American institutions. He eulogised
General Pierce as " the man who dared to love that great
and grand reality — his whole united native country — better
than the mistiness of a philanthropic theory." \ And he
warned the anti-slavery party, in General Pierce's name,
that the evil of disunion would be certain, while the good
was "at best a contingency, and (to the clear practical
foresight with which he looked into the future) scarcely so
much as that, attended as the movement was, and must be
during its progress, with the aggravated injury of those
whose condition it aimed to ameliorate, and terminating
in its possible triumph, — if such possibility there were, —
with the ruin of two races which now dwelt together in
greater peace and affection, it is not too much to say, than
had ever elsewhere existed between the taskmaster and
the serf." %
This is the most immoral kind of political fatalism. It
is true enough, and is often forgotten by philanthropists,
that men can do little enough for each other's highest
good by any voluntary effort. Most men who undertake
such efforts, fall victims not, perhaps, to the " mistiness "
so much as to the narrow definiteness " of philanthropic
theory." They forget that philanthropic tastes can only
be safely humoured by those who keep constantly before
* Life of " Franklin Pierce," pp. 1 13, 1 14.
t Ibid., p. 31. % Ibid., pp. in, 112.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. '413
their inmost hearts the exhortation, " Physician, heal
thyself." . But there is a wide distinction between a
philanthropic cause and a concession of the barest justice
to the oppressed. Measured by Hawthorne's standard,
there would be no criminal national custom, however
oppressive, with which it would be our duty to proclaim
open war. He might denounce the political advocates of
any such war as sacrificing the national peace to the
"mistiness of philanthropic theory." Was there, then,
no distinction in moral sacredness between the claims of
schemes for doing good to others, — little good of the
deeper kind as we can do for any but ourselves, — and the
duty of removing obstructions which entirely blotted out
the proper voluntary existence of other men ? Was the
duty of restoring moral freedom to a whole race to be
classed as one of the doubtful visionary philanthropies of
modern times ? Is it not obvious that, little as we may be
able to organise mutual spiritual help of the higher kind,
we are most fearfully competent to organise mutual moral
injury of the lowest kind, and that slavery was one of the
grandest of diabolic devices for that end ?
I do not say that Hawthorne was bound to be an
anti-slavery agitator. I do say that he prostituted the
noblest speculative faculties, when he attempted to per
petuate a fearful national sin on the dishonest plea
that those who strove to resist its extension and to limit
its duration were endangering the Union for the sake of
a " misty philanthropic theory." The fatalism which
Hawthorne rather suggested than advocated in " Trans
formation," when he presented sin as the necessary condi
tion of moral growth, received a terrible elucidation when
he calmly deprecated all impatient criticism of the provi
dential " uses " of slavery as if they were the affair of
Providence alone. In the great civil war, his sympathies,
as might be expected, were with the trimming Buchanans

4i 6 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
and Douglasses of the hour, not with Mr. Lincoln, of whom
he spoke slightingly as a man incapable of true statesr
manship. I need scarcely apologise for treating Hawthorne as
something more than a mere writer of fiction. His
writings have a very wide and justly deserved influence
in America ; for as a literary artist, if not in mere rough
genius, he may safely be considered almost the first, and
quite the highest, fruit of American culture. He himself
recognised, the close connection between the political and
literary condition of nations, in his plea that America
was too |iappy, too prosperous, too free " from any pic
turesque and .gloomy wrong," to be made the scene of a
romance. Let me sum up my criticism on his literary
deficiencies in a single sentence, by expressing my con
viction, that if he had conceded less to his " squeamish
love of the beautiful," if he had cultivated a deeper
sympathy with action and its responsibilities, he would
not only have taken some interest in the romoval of
wrongs that were gloomy enough whether picturesque
or not, but might have widen-ed greatly the range of his
artistic power, and deepened considerably the spell of the
great fascination which he wielded over his countrymen.

THE END.

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