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 The greater English poets of the ninetee 
 
 3 1924 013 267 988 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013267988 
 
THE 
 
 GREATER ENGLISH POET! 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE, LL.D. 
 
 •SI- 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE BELL AND SONS 
 
 NEW YORK: HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1907 
 
Copyright, ,'907, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 Published October, rgoj 
 
 THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS 
 RAHWAY, N. J. 
 
TO THE MEMORY 
 
 or 
 
 Qbntlee "RendaU Bdams 
 
 LATE PRESIDENT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN 
 
IPreface 
 
 This volume is based upon a course of lectures 
 given at the Universities of Wisconsin, Kansas, and 
 Chicago. While some slight changes have been made 
 in revising the text for publication, the matter is 
 here reproduced substantially as it was delivered, 
 the twelve lectures becoming the twelve chapters of 
 the book. This explanation of the origin of the 
 work will account for its salient features, such as 
 the avoidance of minutias, the direct manner of the 
 discourse, and the liberal use of quotations, both by 
 way of illustration and of commentary. The author 
 has not hesitated to give copious extracts from the 
 poets considered, and he has also made free, with due 
 acknowledgment, of the opinions of other critics 
 whenever they have Seemed to him possessed of per- 
 tinence and finality. 
 
 As the text explains and frequently emphasises, the 
 purpose of this work is not so much to discuss the 
 twelve men considered in their character as poetic 
 artists, as to view them in their relations to the 
 world of thought and action. Although the char- 
 acter of their work as an sestfietic product is by no 
 means ignored, it is given a place of secondary im- 
 portance in the exposition, the author's main object 
 being to examine their poetry with respect to its 
 
 V 
 
3obn lReat0 
 
 The nineteenth century is a well-defined period in 
 the history of English poetry, and, now that its 
 accounts have been definitely closed, the occasion 
 seems fitting to undertake a review of its contribu- 
 tion to the highest form of literary art. The 
 Romantic Movement which, in its various phases, 
 constitutes so large a part of the century's literary 
 history, whether in England or in the world of let- 
 ters at large, may be said to have been ushered in for 
 English poetry by the publication of the "Lyrical 
 Ballads" in 1798. The one great poet left at the end 
 of the century to the English-speaking race, pub- 
 lished, in 1899, a volume which, in its display of 
 restrained and ripened art, was no unworthy addi- 
 tion to the glorious roll of nineteenth-century Eng- 
 lish poems. Between the date which witnessed the 
 appearance of the epoch-making Httle volume in 
 which Wordsworth and Coleridge made their ten- 
 tative proclamation of a new assthetic gospel, and 
 the date of the appearance of Mr. Swinburne's 
 "Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards," there was 
 worked out a transformation in English poetry, its 
 spirit and its aims, greater, perhaps, or, if not 
 greater, at least farther-reaching, than any previous 
 
2 JOHN KEATS 
 
 transformation in the history of our literature. It will 
 be remarkable, indeed, if the twentieth century shall, 
 with respect to its poetical activity, exhibit as 
 marked a departure from the nineteenth, as the 
 poetry of the century recently ended exhibits from 
 the ideals and the methods, of the one preceding it. 
 It is true that the romantic eclosion had long been 
 preparing at the time when the "Lyrical Ballads" 
 saw the Hght. We understand this now better than 
 it could have been understood a hundred years ago. 
 In the first place, study of the romantic origins, as 
 illustrated by the useful little book of Professor W. 
 L. Phelps and the more comprehensive work of Pro- 
 fessor H. A. Beers upon the same subject, has gone 
 much further in our own day than it could have gone 
 at a time when the possibilities of romanticism were 
 first being unfolded; in the second place, the concep- 
 tion of evolution was not then, as it is now, a con- 
 trolling influence in all the departments of human 
 thought, and no one, a hundred years ago, could 
 have felt as we now feel it, the imperative intel- 
 lectual necessity of accounting for so starthng a 
 series of poetical productions as were characteristic 
 of the first quarter of the last century. What to 
 the observer of a hundred years ago were independent 
 phenomena appear to us rather as links in the causal 
 sequence, and as products into which tradition and 
 environment enter for no inconsiderable part. 
 
 Be that as it may, it is not the purpose of the 
 present work to inquire too curiously into the causes 
 
JOHN KEATS 3 
 
 of the change which English poetry underwent in 
 the age of Keats and Shelley, of Byron and Cole- 
 ridge, of Wordsworth and Landor, It is rather 
 my purpose to consider the personalities and the 
 works of these six poets, and of the six other poets, 
 Arnold and Browning, Tennyson and Rossetti, Mor- 
 ris and Swinburne, whose influence has been dominant 
 in the English poetry of the latter half of the cen- 
 tury. The death of Wordsworth, in 1850, marks the 
 exact division of the century into halves, and each 
 of these halves has its group of six poets. The fact 
 that Landor outlived by some fourteen years the 
 first of these terms, does not seriously interfere with 
 the division that has been made, for the bulk of his 
 work was done before the mid-year of the century, 
 and his associations were almost wholly with the 
 earlier group of poets. While it is true that he is 
 in a measure linked to the later period by his relations 
 with Browning, and still more by the reverent affec- 
 tion toward him of Mr. Swinburne, expressed in 
 many a tribute from 
 
 "The youngest to the oldest singer 
 That England bore," 
 
 the fact remains that he was essentially a poet of 
 the age over which the storm-cloud of the Revolution 
 had passed, leaving its new bow of promise in the 
 skies. The twelve poets that have been named are, 
 then, "The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth 
 Century," and constitute the subject of the present 
 
4 JOHN KEATS 
 
 volume. The century had many other poets of im- 
 portance, no doubt, but, after weighing carefully the 
 claims of all other possible candidates, it has seemed 
 to me that the best of those remaining belong dis- 
 tinctly to the second rank. Even the great name 
 of Scott, when we think of him as a poet, is over- 
 shadowed by the names already mentioned of his con- 
 temporaries, and we cannot but approve of the reso- 
 lution which led him to give up the attempt to com- 
 pete with the growing popularity of Byron, and to 
 devote himself to that series of prose romances in 
 which his wizardry is most manifest and most potent. 
 The names of Southey, Moore, and Hood are not to 
 be considered very seriously in this Connection, and, 
 coming down nearer to our own times, I feel no 
 marked compunctions of conscience, except in the 
 cases of the two women whose work will be forever 
 memorable in the history of Enghsh song. But for 
 neither Mrs. Browning nor Miss Rossetti is it quite 
 justifiable to advance the claim that should place 
 them fully upon the level of the six greater names — 
 the dii majores — of the later Victorian period. Fine 
 as is their work, we may hardly say that Mrs. 
 Browning was the poetic equal of her husband, or 
 Miss Rossetti of her brother. My subject, then, 
 seems marked out with reasonable clearness by the 
 facts of the situation, and, in the case at least of all 
 but the most recent of our greater poets, by a con- 
 sensus of critical opinion too definite and pro- 
 nounced to be at this day open to revisioUf 
 
JOHN KEATS 6 
 
 Mr. Mallock, in "The New Republic," makes one 
 of his characters attribute this opinion to John 
 Stuart Mill : "When all the greater evils of life shall 
 have been removed, he thinks the human race is to 
 find its chief enjoyment in reading Wordsworth's 
 poetry." What Mill really did say was that from 
 the poems of Wordsworth he "seemed to learn what 
 would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all 
 the greater evils of life shall have been removed." 
 This serious view of the function of poetry finds 
 many expressions in English literature, all the way 
 from Sidney to Arnold. It is in Sidney's "Apologie 
 for Poetrie" that we find these words : 
 
 "Sith the ever-praise-worthy Poesie, is full of vertue-breedlng 
 delightfulness, ,and voyde of no gyfte, that ought to be in 
 the noble name of learning: sith the blames laid against it, 
 are either false, or feeble; sith the cause why it is not es- 
 teemed in Englande, is the fault of Poet-apes, not poets: sith 
 lastly, our tongue is most fit to honor Poesie, and to bee 
 honored by Poesie, I conjure you aU, that have had the evill 
 lucke to reade this incke-wasting toy of mine, even in the 
 name of the nyne Muses, no more to seorne the sacred misteries 
 of Poesie: no more to laugh at the name of Poets, as though 
 they were next inheritours to Fooles: no more to jest at the 
 reverent title of a Rymer: but to beleeve with Aristotle, 
 that they were the auncient Treasurers, of the Grsecians 
 Divinity. To beleeve with Bembus, that they were first 
 bringers in of all civilitie. To beleeve with Sca^ei", that no 
 Philosophers precepts can sooner make you an honest man, 
 then the reading of Virgin." 
 
 Sidney's faith in the fitness of the Enghsh tongue 
 "to honor Poesie," was destined to receive ample 
 
6 JOHN KEATS 
 
 justification almost during his own lifetime. When 
 Shelley, in similar strain, undertook a new and less 
 needed "Defence of Poetry," he had for inspiration 
 not only the achievements of the English past, but 
 also the resurgent poetic impulse of his own day and 
 generation. "It is impossible," he said, 
 
 "to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of 
 the present day without being startled with the electric life 
 which burns within their words. They measure the circum- 
 ference and sound the depths of human nature with a com- 
 prehensive and aU-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves 
 perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; 
 for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are 
 the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors 
 of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; 
 the words which express what they understand not; the 
 trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; 
 the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the 
 unacknowledged legislators of the world." 
 
 This view of the high seriousness of poetry is the 
 one which I wish to emphasise in the following dis- 
 cussions. It is the view which Arnold emphasises 
 when he calls the future of poetry "immense," and 
 tells us that "we should conceive of it as capable of 
 higher uses, and called to higher destinies, than those 
 which in general men have assigned to it hitherto." 
 He invokes Wordsworth's definition of poetry as 
 "the breath and finer spirit of aU knowledge," and 
 echoes Mill's sentiment when he says that "more and 
 more mankind will discover that we have to turn to 
 poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sus- 
 
JOHN KEATS 7 
 
 tain us." The function of poetry as the interpreter 
 of life was, as we all know, given too great a relative 
 importance by Arnold, for it found its final expres- 
 sion in that famous and much-discussed dictum to 
 the effect that poetry is a "criticism of life," than 
 which no definition could be more inadequate. So far 
 from being merely a critical commentary upon life, 
 poetry is the most intense and direct expression of 
 life itself ; as Shelley says, it is "the very image of life 
 expressed in its eternal truth." To the extent to 
 which the critical element enters into poetry, we may 
 almost say that its real appeal becomes weakened. 
 Speaking particularly of lyrical poetry, Pater tells 
 us that its very perfection "often seems to depend, in 
 partjjn a certain suppression or vagueness of mere 
 subject, so that the meaning reaches us through ways 
 not distinctly traceable by the understanding." 
 Every art, poetry as well as the others, "constantly 
 aspires towards the condition of music," which is 
 "the true type or measure of perfected art." And 
 W. J. Stillman goes so far as to say that all ele- 
 ments of representative art which have no analogies 
 in music, are necessarily non-artistic elements. 
 
 These considerations might seem upon first thought 
 to lead us directly into the company of those who 
 preach the doctrine of "art for art's sake." But I 
 would not be understood as accepting this principle, 
 for it is the broader principle of "art for life's sake" 
 that this work is intended to illustrate. The advo- 
 cates of "art for art's sake" have exerted a marked 
 
8 JOHN KEATS 
 
 influence upon criticism, and a few words upon their 
 fundamental dogma may not be out of place at this 
 point. If we consider the case of literary art alone, 
 there were two things that brought much support to 
 their view. The first was the fact that didacticism 
 in literature had been greatly overdone. When we 
 think of the long and dreary annals of allegorical 
 composition and sermonising in verse, we naturally 
 revolt from the assumption that this sort of activity 
 has anything to do with literature proper, and it 
 gives us a sense of satisfaction to take refuge in 
 even the extreme opinion that poetry has no busi- 
 ness to teach anything, that its message is one of 
 pure beauty, and that, by just so much as it de- 
 parts from this aim, its purpose becomes weakened 
 and its spiritual power impaired. The second reason 
 which seemed to justify the principle of "art for 
 art's sake," was offered by those over-zealous critics 
 of literature who were constantly dragging petty 
 personalities into their work, raising a great pother 
 over the superficial aspects of a poet's private life, 
 and making out of some carelessness of habit or fault 
 of temper a structural defect in character which 
 must always be kept in the foreground of thought 
 when the poet's work was under consideration. It 
 was no wonder that these two influences combined drove 
 many sensitive intelligences to the extreme of revolt. 
 The fact that, on the one hand, such didacticism as 
 Young's "Night Thoughts" and PoUok's "Course 
 of Time" could pass for poetry at all, and that, on 
 
JOHN KEATS 9 
 
 the other, whole sections of the reading public should 
 be warned against the poetry of Byron and Shelley 
 because their lives did not square with the social con- 
 ventions of their time — this twofold fact, I say, 
 based upon a false perspective and a complete mis- 
 understanding of the poetic art, was amply sufH- 
 cient to account for the success of a form of doc- 
 trine whose fundamental object was to restore to 
 poetry the dignity which it seemed to be in danger 
 of losing. 
 
 When, however, we come to take a broader view of 
 the whole question, it must be admitted that the doc- 
 trine of "art for art's sake," the doctrine that the 
 artist must deliberately eschew the intention of teach- 
 ing, that, if he have the divine fire within him, the 
 purity of its glow will remain undimmed whatever the 
 life he may lead, is almost as narrow as the doctrine 
 against which it was raised in protest. Because cer- 
 tain dull poets have been offensively didactic, we have 
 no right to say that poets of genius may not engage 
 their powers in the furtherance of worthy ideals. 
 That some great poets have had personal failings, 
 about which their critics have been more curious than 
 was necessary, is no reason why we should deny that, 
 other things being equal, the blameless life will in the 
 long run express itself in nobler forms than the life 
 that has not escaped "the contagion of the world's 
 slow stain." As far as the latter of these two prop- 
 ositions is concerned, we take a just pride in the 
 thought that Milton and Tennyson were no less great 
 
10 JOHN KEATS 
 
 as men than as poets, and, while giving full accept- 
 ance as poetry to the work of men whose character 
 we may not call unblemished, it would distinctly add 
 to our satisfaction could we know them to have 
 lived lives in stricter consonance with their ideals. 
 As for the former proposition, we need only point, 
 as Swinburne does in a passage here substantially 
 reproduced, to the long line of great poets who have 
 allied their work with the practical human causes of 
 religious and ethical teaching, of political and social 
 progress. From the defence of the Areopagus and 
 the old conservative order by ^schylus to the de- 
 nunciation by Hugo of the saturnalia of a bastard 
 French imperialism, the most famous of poets have 
 always been ready — ^have found themselves irresisti- 
 bly impelled — to make their work tell in the never- 
 ending struggle between truth and error, between 
 right and wrong, between the conservative and the 
 destructive agencies in the life of the social organism. 
 If we make our definitions sufficiently liberal, it is 
 probable that "art's sake" and "life's sake" will 
 be found synonymous. The essential unity of the 
 good, the true, and the beautiful, has long been 
 proverbial, and Goethe, taking "the true" for 
 granted, gave to this formula the stiU more compre- 
 hensive form of "the whole, the good, and the beauti- 
 ful." Abjuring all faltering and inadequate ideals 
 of life, he set himself with firm resolve to realise this 
 threefold aim, and sounded the note of a conception 
 of culture which answers to the fullest spiritual de- 
 
JOHN KEATS 11 
 
 mands of our modern age. In the final synthesis, 
 beauty and truth and virtue are one and the same 
 thing, and the "art's sake" shibboleth appears but a 
 question-begging phrase. We cannot judge the 
 artist without, in large measure, taking account of 
 the man as well, and of the message which he has to 
 convey; our reckoning must include both his out- 
 look upon the world of thought and action and the 
 nature of the personality wherein, as in a mirror, 
 that world is reflected. The personalities and the 
 works of the great poets are con-substantial, says 
 Professor Corson, and we may add that their works 
 are shaped in no slight degree by the social and 
 intellectual pressure of the times in which they are 
 written. 
 
 If the creation of pure beauty were the sole aim 
 of poetry, such dicta as those which I have quoted 
 from Mill and Arnold would find sufficient justifica- 
 tion ; how much more, then, is this the case if we find 
 in poetry not only that beauty which the soul craves, 
 but also, without any sacrifice of the esthetic ideal, 
 we find conjoined with beauty a wise commentary 
 upon the age, a ripe philosophy, and a worthy ethic. 
 It may be said that this is impossible, that these 
 things are absolutely incompatible with the true aims 
 of poetry. I admit that the combination is difficult, 
 and that the poet who deliberately sets out to make 
 it will most likely come to grief. I admit, moreover, 
 that when we find such things in poetry, a justifia- 
 ble suspicion arises that we are being practised upon. 
 
12 JOHN KEATS 
 
 But at the same time I insist that when these things — - 
 philosophy, ethics, and the like — are properly im- 
 plicit, as they should be, and not forced upon us in 
 the forms of exphcit utterance, they are not out of 
 place even in poetry of the highest sort. Practically 
 all the great poets bear witness to this conclusion. 
 They are, in Mrs. Browning's famihar words, 
 
 "The only truth-tellers now left to God, 
 The only speakers of essential truth. 
 Opposed to relative, comparative. 
 And temporal truths; the only holders by 
 His sun-skirts, through conventional grey glooms; 
 The only teachers who instruct mankind. 
 From just a shadow on the charnel wall. 
 To find man's venerable stature out. 
 Erect, sublime, — the measure of a man." 
 
 Allowing all this, however, let me say oncp more that 
 the first and foremost aim of poetry is to be beauti- 
 ful, to arouse the aesthetic emotions, to address the 
 soul through a subtler medium than that of the mere 
 intelligence. 
 
 I have indulged myself in this repetition because 
 I wish the proposition to be kept in mind throughout 
 this work, and taken for granted all the while. For 
 my purpose is not that of examining the greater 
 poets of the century in the light of this principle so 
 much as that of considering them with reference to 
 their content. While denying that "criticism of 
 life" affords a definition of poetry even approxi- 
 mately adequate, I intend, nevertheless, to devote my 
 discussion mainly to that aspect of the subject which 
 
JOHN KEATS 13 
 
 this phrase indicates. Our modern poets have been 
 made the subject of so much criticism of the "lit- 
 erary" or strictly aesthetic sort, that I should despair 
 of finding anything new to say about them from that 
 point of view. Certainly in the case of the older 
 group the main points have been decided, and a fairly 
 definitive judgment pronounced. If controversy con- 
 cerning the rank of Byron is still in the acrimonious 
 stage, and if the question of primacy, as between 
 Shelley and Wordsworth, still remains an open one, 
 there is substantial agreement among critics con- 
 cerning the stylistic and other technical qualities of 
 these poets. But concerning the content of their 
 work, their outlook upon the world about them and 
 the larger aspects of human life, their relation to 
 the main currents of modern thought and the main 
 phases of modern social activity, their envisagement 
 of the problems of science and philosophy, of society 
 and politics, of religion and the conduct of life, some- 
 what less has been said and written ; and it is to these 
 matters that I wish chiefly to direct attention. "I 
 hate both poetry and wine without body," said Lan- 
 der in his vehement way. I am so far from sharing 
 in this antipathy that the lyrics of the "Prometheus 
 Unbound" seem to me to outweigh in absolute value 
 all the abstract philosophising of "The Excursion," 
 but man does not live by lyrics alone, and the poetry 
 which has a definite message, which ministers to the 
 deeper spiritual needs, is not to be slighted merely 
 because it attempts something more than the raptu- 
 
14 JOHN KEATS 
 
 rous outpouring of melody. At all events, it is the 
 "body" of nineteenth-century English poetry, rather 
 than its technique, that I wish to examine, and this 
 in the light of the entire utterance of our poets, their 
 personality, the form and pressure of their environ- 
 ment. 
 
 Of our twelve poets, John Keats, although the 
 youngest of the earlier group, was the one whose 
 work was first completed. For this reason, I give 
 him the first place, as well as for the reason that his 
 life was so brief, the amount of his work so limited, 
 and the purely artistic element in his nature so pre- 
 dominant, that there is less to say of him from the 
 point of view that I have chosen than there is of 
 any of the others. The restricted space that re- 
 mains for this chapter, now that the necessary pre- 
 liminaries have been disposed of, seems more nearly 
 sufficient to deal with Keats than it would be to deal 
 with Shelley, or Byron, or Wordsworth. Born in a 
 London stable, in 1795, he received only the begin- 
 nings of an education, was apprenticed to an apoth- 
 ecary, lived for a few years in the cherished intimacy 
 of a small circle of friends, varying the monotony 
 of London by an occasional excursion into the coun- 
 try, felt the poetic impulse growings stronger and 
 stronger within him, published three small volumes of 
 verse, experienced the overmastering passion of love, 
 and, at a time when his life seemed filled with the 
 fairest promise, was overtaken by a fatal disease. A 
 journey to Italy, which did not avail to stay the 
 
JOHN KEATS 15 
 
 rapid progress of his malady, brought him to his 
 deathbed, in Rome, in 1821. He was buried in the 
 Protestant Cemetery in the shadow of the pyramid 
 of Caius Cestius. In a moment of depression, he had 
 requested that the words, "Here lies one whose name 
 was writ in water," should be the inscription upon 
 his gravestone. This sentiment was not the expres- 
 sion of his better self. That expression is found in 
 the words of a letter which he wrote in the full 
 flush of health: "I think I shall be among the Eng- 
 lish poets after my death." Concerning this, Mat- 
 thew Arnold says : "He is, he is with Shakespeare." 
 
 Keats came to manhood and artistic self-conscious- 
 ness at the time when England was engaged in the 
 last act of the great drama of anti-Napoleonic war- 
 fare. For a full quarter of a century she had been 
 engaged in the struggle for the preservation of 
 European liberty. The Corsican brigand had ended 
 his career at Waterloo, and the Congress at Vienna 
 had done its fatuous work. England, no less than 
 the rest of Europe, had known to the full the curse 
 of militarism, and its burdens weighed heavily upon 
 all classes of society. It is proverbial that the laws 
 are silent amid the clash of arms, and it is equally 
 true that there is no hope of social progress for a 
 nation whose energies are preoccupied with the busi- 
 ness of fighting. The Revolution had defeated itself 
 by its own excesses. The humanitarian impulse which 
 had been well under way in the later eighteenth cen- 
 tury had lapsed, and England was in worse case, both 
 
16 JOHN KEATS 
 
 socially and morally, than she had been for many 
 years. It was an age of intolerable taxation, and 
 the masses of the people found it dIfBcult to obtain 
 for themselves the bare necessaries of life. It was 
 an age of criminal legislation so savage that more 
 than two hundred capital offences were designated 
 upon the statute-book. It was an age of foul prisons 
 and brutal forms of punishment. It was an age 
 when actual slavery was sanctioned in the colonies, 
 and conditions closely approaching slavery were fa- 
 miliar at home. It was an age when factory legis- 
 lation was unknown, when the monstrous evil of child 
 labor was unchecked, and when men and women toiled 
 long hours to gain the miserable pittance upon which 
 their existence was supported. It was an age of 
 beggars and epidemics, of coarse manners and illit- 
 eracy. It was an age in which people still travelled 
 by stagecoaches, and in which most of the comforts 
 and conveniences which we take as a matter of course 
 were unknown. It was an age of venal politics, of 
 rotten boroughs, and of exaggerated distinctions be- 
 tween the different classes of society. It would seem 
 that such conditions as these should have aroused the 
 indignation and invoked the sympathies of a poet; 
 we shall see later how they did influence the poetical 
 activities of Shelley and Byron. Upon Keats they 
 seem to have made no very deep impression. We 
 can find in all of his writings only a faint occasional 
 echo of the social distress of his times. So complete 
 was his intellectual detachment, so absolute was his 
 
JOHN KEATS 17 
 
 absorption in the considerations of art, that we are 
 surprised when, in "Isabella," we find so mild an in- 
 dictment of purse-proud arrogance as is implied in 
 this series of questions concerning the two brothers 
 of the heroine. 
 
 "Why were they proud? Because their marble founts 
 Gush'd with more pride than do a wretch's tears? — 
 
 Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts 
 Were of more soft ascent than laaiar stairs? — 
 
 Why were they proud? Because red-lined accounts 
 Were richer than the songs of Grecian years? — 
 
 Why were they proud? again we ask aloud. 
 
 Why in the name of Glory were they proud?" 
 
 I would not be considered as casting even the faintest 
 shadow of reproach upon Keats for the failure to 
 reflect in his verse any of the aspects of contemporary 
 life. He was hardly more than a boy, and he had 
 more than the usual exuberance of youth. He felt 
 that his own sacred mission was that of shaping 
 speech into forms of everlasting beauty ; he knew that 
 this power was his, and he believed that by its exer- 
 cise he could best serve the interests of his fellow 
 man. Not imacquainted with "the weariness, the 
 fever, and the fret" of life, he used these things for 
 what we may call the emotional decoration of his 
 verse, and not as themes for an impassioned appeal 
 to the hearts of his readers. Professor Masson 
 speaks of two orders of poets. The peculiarity of 
 one "is that their poems are vehicles for certain 
 fixed ideas lying in the minds of their authors, out- 
 bursts of their personal character, impersonations 
 
18 JOHN KEATS 
 
 under shifting guises of their wishes, feelings, and 
 beliefs." The poets of the second order "simply 
 fashion their creations by a kind of inventive craft, 
 working amid materials supplied by sense, memory, 
 and reading, without the distinct infusion of any 
 element of personal opinion." It is evident that 
 Keats is a poet of this second order. He is the 
 typical poet of "art for art's sake," in the best sense 
 of that expression. Rejecting the obligation to teach 
 otherwise than implicitly, and the obligation to re- 
 flect common life otherwise than incidentally, he gets 
 his inspiration from the great masters of poetry, 
 from classical or mediaeval legend, and penetrates 
 with wonderful certainty to secrets of which scholar- 
 ship is popularly supposed to guard the approach. 
 His genius is as great a mystery as that of Shakes- 
 peare. Possibly some future expert in "the nidifica- 
 tion of mare's nests" may argue learnedly, in the face 
 of all the evidence, that a man of Keats's limited edu- 
 cation could not possible have written "Hyperion," 
 just as it has been gravely argued, in the face of 
 equally unimpeachable evidence, that the man whose 
 education was confined to what he learned in the 
 Stratford grammar school could not possibly have 
 written "Hamlet" and "The Tempest." The argu- 
 ment seems to be that, since many persons who have 
 enjoyed liberal educations administered in the ortho- 
 dox way have, nevertheless, failed to write "Ham- 
 lets" and "Hyperions," no one who has not had these 
 advantages could possibly have done anything of 
 
JOHN KEATS 19 
 
 the sort. Genius, however, has a way of achieving 
 its purposes by means unknown to pedagogy, and 
 what it was possible for Keats to accomplish with so 
 rude a tool as Lempriere's "Classical Dictionary," 
 may, nevertheless, remain entirely beyond the reach 
 of the student who has achieved distinction in the 
 most thorough schools of classical philology. 
 Shakespeare, likewise, although his "small Latin and 
 less Greek" has been too much insisted upon, was 
 assuredly not a classical scholar in the technical 
 sense, but he had read "North's "Plutarch," and to 
 some purpose, as the Roman plays sufficiently testify. 
 Coming back to the question of the relation in 
 which Keats stood toward the age in which he lived, 
 we see that he absolutely rejected the notion that it 
 is a poet's business to take, as some people will always 
 insist that poets should take, "the ideas, manners, 
 and customs of his own time, and in his poetic imag- 
 ination weigh the essential and assign — ^in some 
 measure, at least — the things of to-day to their 
 places in cosmic development." This particular 
 formula was given us by a writer in The Saturday 
 Review, who objected to the pure beauty of the 
 "Paolo and Francesca" of Mr. Stephen Phillips, just 
 as he would doubtless have objected to the pure beauty 
 of "Hyperion." He developed his programme in the 
 following terms: 
 
 "The poet must grapple with underground railways,' crowded 
 public-houses, with vast neighbourhoods inhabited by jabber- 
 ing human beasts, with A. B. C. restaurants, the Stock £x- 
 
20 JOHN KEATS 
 
 change, with parti-coloured Whitechapel High Street, the 
 ranting daily papers, telephones, telegraphs, mutoscopes, i;iusic- 
 halls, street-women, Hampstead artistic nibbling, Clapham 
 chapels, Crouch End, Atlas omnibuses, Olympia, Parliament, 
 the Yiddish group of Anarchists, — the whole pell-mell of our 
 modern life, without even going out of London." 
 
 I quote this programme as an illustration of the 
 extremes to which the mad demand for realism in 
 art can go, and as giving us occasion for renewed 
 thankfulness that Keats had no such conception of 
 the poetic function. When we read the letters of 
 Keats, especially those written during the last three 
 years of his life, we discover that he was not without 
 a healthy interest in the political and social con- 
 ditions of his age, although he never dreamed of 
 finding in them the material for poetry. In his poems 
 we shall hardly find anything more political than 
 the praiseworthy but vague sentiment of the fol- 
 lowing lines: 
 
 "In the long vista of the years to roll 
 
 Let me not see our country's honour fade; 
 O let me see our land retain her soul. 
 Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade." 
 
 But when we turn to his prose, we now and then come 
 across passages which indicate that he is at least 
 feeling his way toward a definite philosophical out- 
 look upon history and modern life. We find this 
 passage, for instance: 
 
 "I have been reading lately two very diflferent books, Robert- 
 son's America and Voltaire's Sifecle de Louis XIV. It is like 
 
JOHN KEATS 21 
 
 walking amn and arm between Pizarro and the great-little 
 Monarch. In how lamentable a case we see the great body of 
 the people in both instances ; in the first when Men might seem 
 to inherit quiet of Mind from unsophisticated senses, from 
 uncontamination of civilisation, and especially from their' beiii^ 
 as it were estrayed from the mutual helps bf Society and its 
 mutual injuries — and thereby more immediately under the Pro- 
 tection of Providence — even there they had mortal pains to 
 bear as bad, or worse even than Bailiffs, Debts, and Poverties 
 of civilised Life. The whole appears to resolve into this — ^that 
 Man is originally a poor forked creature subject to the same 
 mischances as the beasts of the forest, destined to hardships 
 and disquietude of some kind or other. If he improves by 
 degrees his bodily accommodations and comforts — at each 
 stage, at each accent there are waiting for him a fresh set of 
 annoyances — ^he is mortal and there is still a heaven with its 
 stars above his head." 
 
 There is nothing very profound about this, to be 
 sure; it is nothiag more than the vague pessimism 
 that overtakes almost every young man, when the 
 mood is upon him, and he begins to think seriously 
 about the meaning of life. We find a more direct 
 reflection of the poet's immediate surroundings in 
 the following passage: 
 
 "The example of England and the liberal writers of France 
 and England sowed the seeds of opposition to tyranny, and it 
 was swelling in the ground till it burst out in the French 
 Revolution. That has had an imlucky termination. It put a 
 stop to the rapid progress of fr^e sentiments in England, and 
 gave our Court hopes of turning back to the despotism of the 
 sixteenth century. They have made a handle of this event in 
 every way to undermine our freedom. They spread a horrid 
 superstition against all innovation and improvement. The 
 present struggle in England of the people is to destroy this 
 superstition. What has roused them to do it is their distress." 
 
22 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Certain passages which occur in a long letter dated 
 1818, and written by Keats to his brother in America, 
 seem to me to afford on the whole the most inter- 
 esting reflex of his political opinion to be found any- 
 where in his writings. 
 
 "The long-continued peace of England," he writes, "has given 
 us notions of personal safety which are likely to prevent the 
 reestahlishment of our national honesty. There is of a truth 
 nothing manly or sterling in any part of the Government. . . . 
 Notwithstanding the noise the Liberals make in the cause of 
 Napoleon, I cannot but think he has done more harm to the 
 life of Liberty than any one else could have done. Not that 
 the Divine Right gentlemen have done or intend to do any 
 good — no, they have taken the lesson of him, and will do all 
 the further harm he would have done, without any of the 
 good." 
 
 There is even something of successful political 
 prophecy in what follows: 
 
 "The Emperor Alexander, it is said, intends to divide his 
 Empire, as did Dioclesian — creating two czars beside himself, 
 and continuing supreme monarch of the whole. Should he do 
 so, and they for a series of years keep peaceable among them- 
 selves, Russia may spread her conquest even to China — I think 
 it a very likely thing that China may fall of itself; Turkey 
 certainly will. MeanwhUe European North Russia will hold 
 its horn against the rest of Europe, intriguing constantly with 
 France." 
 
 It would have been well for the writer's reputation for 
 sagacity had he been content to stop with this re- 
 markable prediction. But he goes on to say things 
 which we as Americans may be justified in resenting. 
 
JOHN KEATS 23 
 
 "Dilke, whom you know to be a Godwin-perfectibilHy man, 
 pleases himself with the idea that America will be the country 
 to take up the human intellect where England leaves off. I 
 differ there with him greatly — a country like the United States, 
 whose greatest men are Franklins and Washingtons, will never 
 do that. Tliey are great men, doubtless, but how are they to 
 be compared to these our countrymen, Milton and the two 
 Sidneys? The one is a philosophical Quaker, full of mean 
 and thrifty maxims; the other sold the very charger who had 
 taken him through all his Battles. These Americans are great, 
 but they are not sublime, men; the humanity of the United 
 States can never reach the sublime." 
 
 A careful examination of the correspondence of 
 Keats would disclose a few other passages, more or 
 less suggestive, in which his outlook upon the world 
 of action finds expression. But his letters are for 
 the most part as subjective as his poems. When 
 they make an occasional excursion into philosophy, 
 the writer is obviously out of his depth, and flounders 
 aimlessly about. It is not for matters of this sort 
 that we read and enjoy the letters of Keats. Their 
 charm is provided by their peculiarly intimate char- 
 acter, their gossip, their small talk, their rollicking 
 humour, their youthful exuberance of feeling, and 
 their keen literary criticism. We find in them neither 
 a message nor a body of doctrine. We cherish them 
 most of all for their occasional revelations of the 
 poet's proud consciousness of his own powers, of his 
 absolute absorption in the art to which his life 
 was dedicated. "I find I cannot exist without Poetry 
 — ^without eternal Poetry ; half the day will not do — 
 the whole of it; I began with a little, but habit has 
 
24 JOHN KEATS 
 
 made me a leviathan." "I feel more and more every 
 day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not 
 live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds." 
 "I have not the slightest feeling of humility towards 
 the public or to anything in existence but the Eternal 
 Being, the Principle of Beauty, and the Memory 
 of great Men." Such passages as these should 
 effectively dispose of the legend, if it still finds any 
 believers, that the savage attacks of the reviewers 
 upon his work impaired his self-confidence and has- 
 tened his death. He "had flint and iron in him," as 
 Arnold says, and, although he was keenly sensitive 
 to criticism, he knew his powers too well to be dis- 
 heartened by the vulgarity which counselled him 
 to forsake poetry and go back to his pills and oint- 
 ments. After all, with the exception of the review 
 in Blackwood's, which was too ill-natured and 
 virulent to have any great influence, Keats did not 
 fare so badly at the hands of the critics. It must 
 be borne in mind that his work, with all its beauties, 
 had very obvious defects; the trouble with the re- 
 viewers was that they had not the sympathy to see 
 what Leigh Hunt saw when he wrote: "The very 
 faults of Mr. Keats arise from a passion for beauties, 
 and a young impatience to vindicate them." The 
 Quarterly Review article does not seem to us so 
 very severe; it is written in a vein of mild sarcasm, 
 but it displays no very marked prejudice. And 
 Jeffreys was by no means unjust when he wrote of 
 Keats in The Edmburgh Review: "He deals too much 
 
JOHN KEATS 25 
 
 with shadowy and incomprehensible beings, and is 
 too constantly rapt into an extra-mundane Elysium, 
 to command a lasting interest with ordinary mor- 
 tals." Byron proved himself even more vulgar than 
 the critic of the "Cockney School of Poetry," when in 
 one of his letters he called the poet "A tadpole of the 
 Lakes," and added: "No more Keats, I entreat, — 
 flay him alive, — if some of you don't, I must skin 
 him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiot- 
 ism of the manikin." After the death of Keats, 
 Byron made a tardy acknowledgment of his mistaken 
 judgment, but the whole episode does no credit to 
 his memory. We may, however, be thankful for the 
 very virulence of the critical onslaught which made 
 Keats its victim, for without it there would have 
 been no "Adonais" in English poetry, and "Lycidas" 
 would have been without a rival. 
 
 The three thin volumes in which Keats gave to 
 the world the work of his creation constitute one 
 of the choicest treasures of English song. 
 
 "O for ten years, that I may overwhelm 
 Myself in poesy," 
 
 was his passionate prayer; only about five years 
 were vouchsafed him, and, when we note the rapid 
 growth of his powers, when we contrast the flickering 
 beauty of the "Endymion" with the high sublimity 
 of the "Hyperion," or with the faultless supremacy 
 of the "Odes," we are almost awe-stricken at the 
 thought of what five more years might have done for 
 
26 JOHN KEATS 
 
 the development of his genius. The cases of Mar- 
 lowe and Shelley afford the only parallels to the loss 
 suffered by English poetry in the premature death 
 of Keats. What poetry meant to him finds its best 
 and fullest statement in that confession of faith 
 which may be found in his first published volume. 
 
 "What though I am not wealthy in the dower 
 Of spanning wisdom; though I do not know 
 The shifting of the mighty winds that blow 
 Hither and thither all the changing thoughts 
 Of man; though no great ministering reason sorts 
 Out the dark mysteries of human souls 
 To clear conceiving: yet there ever rolls 
 A vast idea before me, and I glean 
 Therefrom my liberty; then too I've seen 
 The end and aim of Poesy. 'Tis clear 
 As anything most true; as that the year 
 Is made of the four seasons — ^manifest 
 As a large cross, some old cathedral's crest. 
 Lifted to the white clouds." 
 
 There was a time when English pdetry had meant 
 all that the most clear-visioned votary of the art 
 could wish. "Here her altar shone, E'en in this isle," 
 but the traditions of her earlier priesthood had been 
 forgotten and "a schism Nurtured by foppery and 
 barbarism, Made great Apollo blush for this his 
 land." 
 
 "Men were thought wise who could not understand 
 ~ His glories; with a puling infant's force 
 
 They sway'd about upon a rocking horse, 
 And thought it Pegasus. Ah, dismal soul'd ! 
 The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roU'd 
 
JOHN KEATS 27 
 
 Its gathering waves — ^ye felt it not. The blue 
 Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew 
 Of summer nights collected still to make 
 The morning precious: beauty was awake I 
 Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead 
 To things ye knew not of,— were closely wed 
 To musty laws lined out with wretched rule 
 And compass vile: so that ye taught a school 
 Of dolts to smoothe, inlay, and clip, and fit. 
 Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, 
 Their verses tallied. Easy was the task: 
 A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask 
 Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race! 
 That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face. 
 And did not know it, — no, they went about. 
 Holding a poor, decrepid standard out 
 Marked with most flimsy mottos, and in large 
 The name of one Boileau 1" 
 
 This passage, says Mr. Sidney Colvin, "is likely to 
 remain for posterity the central expression of the 
 spirit of literary emancipation then militant and 
 about to triumph in England." It deserves to 
 be carefully studied, and especially to be com- 
 pared with the famous prefaces of Wordsworth, and 
 the fragmentary disquisitions of Coleridge upon 
 the same subject. 
 
 Quoting again from Mr. Colvin, it may be said 
 that "one of the great symptoms of returning vitality 
 in the imagination of Europe toward the close of the 
 last century, was its awakening to the forgotten 
 charm of past modes of faith and life. When men, 
 in the earlier part of that century, spoke of Greek 
 antiquity, it was in stale and borrowed terms, which 
 
28 JOHN KEATS 
 
 showed that they had never felt its power ; just as, 
 when they spoke of nature, it was in set phrases that 
 showed that they had never looked at her," Keats 
 was not the only poet of his time to hark back to 
 classical antiquity for his inspiration, nor was he 
 the only poet to look upon nature with his own eyes, 
 and to reproduce the vision as it appeared to him 
 in terms clarified of the conceits and affectations which 
 an artificial age had held in fashion. But there is a 
 difference between the envisagement of nature whi6h 
 we find in the poetry of Keats and that which we find 
 in the poetry of Shelley and Wordsworth. To quote 
 once more from Mr. Colvin : 
 
 "The instinct of Wordsworth was to interpret all the opera- 
 tions of nature by those of his own strenuous soul, and the 
 imaginative impressions he had received in youth from the 
 scenery of his home, deepened and enriched by continual after- 
 meditation, and mingling with all the currents of his adult 
 thought and feeling, constituted for him throughout all his life 
 the most vital part alike of patriotism, of philosophy, and of 
 religion. For Shelley, on his part, natural beauty was in a 
 twofold sense symbolical. In the visible glories of the world 
 his philosophy saw the veil of the unseen, while his philanthropy 
 found in them types and auguries of a better life on earth." 
 
 Keats, on the other hand, loved nature for her own 
 sake, and gave slight thought to the infusion of 
 spiritual meaning into what he saw. His was the 
 more absolute vision, which is neither obscured nor 
 heightened, as the case may be, by an adventitious 
 symbolism or an obtrusive morality. 
 
 That sense of the charm of outworn modes of life 
 
JOHN KEATS 29 
 
 and faith, which Keats did so much to bring back 
 into English poetry, is illustrated, on the classical 
 side, by his "Endymion," the colossal fragment of 
 his "Hyperion," which may be called a sort of Greek 
 Gotterdammerung, the famous sonnet on the Elgin 
 marbles, and the even more famous and beautiful 
 "Ode on a Grecian Urn." These were his contribu- 
 tions to what we may call the modern Renaissance, 
 the movement to which Goethe and Winckelmann had 
 given so marked an impetus in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, and which has been felt throughout our own. 
 In this respect Keats connects directly with the poet 
 of "Atalanta in Calydon" and "Erechtheus." In his 
 sympathy with the spirit of raediasvalism, as illus- 
 trated by "Isabella" and "The Eve of Saint Agnes," 
 he connects equally with Rossetti and Morris. In 
 English poetry, his chief sources of inspiration were 
 Chaucer and Spenser, Milton and the great Eliza- 
 bethans. It must be added also that his genius was 
 characterised by a distinct Oriental strain, a sort 
 of natural magic which the fashion of our own day is 
 apt to describe as Celtic, although by no means 
 thereby accounting for it. In a recent selection from 
 the "Arabian Nights," prepared for school use by 
 Mr. Adam Singleton, this striking statement is made: 
 "In the whole of English literature there are only 
 a couple of lines that even suggest the kind of en- 
 chanted dreaming of which the Nights are full." 
 These lines are, it is hardly necessary to say, those 
 which describe the 
 
30 JOHN KEATS 
 
 "Magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." 
 
 The statement is hardly exaggerated, and illustrates 
 a phase of the poet's genius that must be reckoned 
 with in any estimate of his work. 
 
 These are the essential things for which the poetry 
 of Keats stands in our literature. The volume of his 
 work is small, and a considerable part even of what 
 we have might be spared without serious loss, being 
 chiefly valuable for its showing of the astonishing de- 
 velopment of his powers during the few years of his 
 activity. That the author of a poem so glaringly 
 faulty as the "Endymion," should, so soon thereafter, 
 have become capable of giving us the weirdness of 
 "Lamia," the tender pathos of "Isabella," the pure 
 romance of "The Eve of Saint Agnes" and "La 
 Belle Dame sans Merci," is one of the most marvellous 
 facts in the history of poetic art. And it is an even 
 more marvellous fact that the tentative earlier poems 
 should have been the precursors of "Hyperion" and 
 the "Odes." The "Odes," indeed, constitute one of 
 the supreme achievements of English poetry. Their 
 finished and flawless beauty is unequalled elsewhere 
 in Keats, is hardly surpassed anywhere in our lit- 
 erature. The critic of rule and line may occasionally 
 find fault with them, and the gaiety of the nation 
 was considerably enhanced a few years ago by the 
 laboured attempt of a worthy professor of hterature 
 to prove the "Odes" undeserving of their reputation, 
 ^uch an attempt serves only to bring out more clearly 
 
JOHN KEATS 31 
 
 than ever their immortal beauty. They have what 
 Mr. Forman calls "the tremulous thickness of utter- 
 ance arising from intense emotion." This quality will 
 not bear strict logical analysis, for it appeals to the 
 heart more than it does to the intellect. The "Odes," 
 the four or five longer poems that at once occur to the 
 mind of every reader, together with a few of the 
 sonnets, are the credentials which Keats brings to the 
 critical Areopagus. They are supplemented by a 
 few such phrases of royal mintage as: 
 
 "A thing of beauty is a joy forever.'' 
 
 "The poetry of earth is never dead." 
 
 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all 
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 
 
 "That large utterance of the early gods." 
 
 "Those green-robed senators of mighty woods. 
 Tall oaks, branch-charmM by the earnest stars. 
 Dream, and so dream all night without a stir." 
 
 "The moving waters at their priestlike task 
 Of pure ablution roimd earth's human shores." 
 
 The fame of the poet is secure who can bring us such 
 gifts as these. He has achieved 
 
 "The great end 
 Of poesy, that it should be a friend 
 To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man." 
 
 His fame has been comparatively free from those 
 vicissitudes which have attended the fame of his con- 
 
32 JOHN KEATS 
 
 temporaries. The voice of detraction died away 
 soon after his death, and there have been few jarring 
 notes in the criticism of his finished work. While 
 Wordsworth, and Byron, and Shelley have divided 
 the critics into hostile camps, Keats has united them 
 in an almost unbroken chorus of praise. His influence 
 upon the poets who have succeeded him has been 
 very great. We find it particularly marked in the 
 cases of Tennyson, Rossetti, and Arnold. In re- 
 viewing the poetry of the century, says Miss Guiney, 
 "one feels the breath and touch of Keats like an in- 
 cantation." And the poets yet to come will, like 
 those who have passed from us, experience the con- 
 tagion of that breath and that spirit, and will still 
 direct their gaze to those skies where 
 
 "Burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star. 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.'' 
 
In the voluminous literature which has the life 
 and work of Shelley for its subject, there is no 
 phrase more familiar or more frequently quoted than 
 Matthew Arnold's variation of the remark made by 
 Joubert about Plato. The French "thought" runs: 
 "Plato loses himself in the void, but one sees the play 
 of his wings, one hears them rustle." Arnold, mak- 
 ing use of this image, describes Shelley as "a beauti- 
 ful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his 
 Ixuninous wings in vain." The poetical form of this 
 characterisation serves to impress it upon the mem- 
 ory, but it must be reckoned, as to its content, one 
 of the least felicitous things that Arnold ever said. 
 It embodies too much of the patronising and even 
 contemptuous spirit displayed by many well-inten- 
 tioned writers when dealing with the work of Shelley. 
 It is one of many illustrations of what Professor 
 Woodberry calls the "poor, poor Shelley" theory 
 of the poet's Uf e. Recurring, however, to the original 
 of Arnold's dictum, we are reminded that erring with 
 Plato is at least a creditable form of intellectual in- 
 firmity, and those of us who have long held Shelley's 
 memory enshrined in our heart of hearts may perhaps 
 be content with the implied admission that his in- 
 effectuality was of the same kind as that of Plato. 
 
 33 
 
84 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 If it be the mark of ineffectual effort to arouse the 
 most generous ardors of the spirit in behalf of an 
 exalted ideal of social reorganisation, to inspire many 
 of the best intellects of three successive generations 
 with a renewed faith in mankind, to kindle in hun- 
 dreds of thousands of souls a flaming passion for 
 justice, for liberty, and for the brotherhood of man 
 — if to accomplish these things be "vain," then, and 
 then only, may we accept Arnold's bit of rhetoric as 
 a plain statement of the truth. The notion that 
 Shelley was a mere visionary, a being as fragile in 
 intellect as in frame, a nature of almost feminine 
 weakness as well as feminine sensitiveness, has long 
 had currency, although its refutation may be found 
 easily enough in any of his biographies. If space 
 permitted, it would be well to introduce at this point 
 two or three of his very practical letters to Godwin. 
 They would afford a most effective antidote to the 
 belief that poats in general, and Shelley more than 
 most other poets, can have no firm grasp upon the 
 realities of every-day existence. I have never been 
 able to understand what people mean when they com- 
 plain of a poet like Shelley that his message is too 
 vague and ethereal to have any perceptible influence 
 upon human conduct. Would they have a poet abdi- 
 cate his genius and descend to the homely level of 
 Poor Richard and his maxims ? Nor do I understand 
 what they mean when they belittle such a poet by 
 asserting that he has made no additions to human 
 thought. Even Professor Dowden, who certainly 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 35 
 
 cannot be charged with a failure to write sympa- 
 thetically of Shelley, says that "he did not contribute 
 a single original idea of importance" to our nine- 
 teenth-century stock. What other poet, we may ask, 
 has made such a contribution? If this be a reason 
 for sUghting Shelley, how much more are we bound 
 to speak disapprovingly of Keats, who of set purpose 
 refrained from putting philosophy into his verse ; or 
 of Byron, whose philosophy was as destructive and 
 negative as that of Shelley was positive and con- 
 structive. We have no right to expect of a poet that 
 he shall do things like the Kantian "Transcendental 
 Esthetic," or the Darwinian "Origin of Species." A 
 reasoned philosophy, such as that for the lack of 
 which Arnold was reproached by Mr. Frederic Har- 
 rison, is the last thing that a poet should seek to give 
 us. His function is rather to seize intuitively upon 
 isolated and ultimate truths, or to interpret such 
 results as have been achieved by the laborious 
 processes of philosophy in that heightened language 
 of which the poet alone is master, and in which ordi- 
 nary words become raised to algebraic powers. 
 Truth is many-sided, and its whole body is not to be 
 sought in poetry ; rather do its separate facets flash 
 out here and there in the light which they reflect from 
 the genius which shines upon them. When the 
 thinker has done his work, the poet flnds his opportu- 
 nity ; Coleridge found it in the transcendental philos- 
 ophy, Tennyson found it in the doctrine of evolution. 
 The opportunity^ of Shelley was found in the doc- 
 
S6 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 trines of the philosophers who prepared the way for 
 the French Revolution. From the time when Burke 
 leaped into the arena with his tremendous denuncia- 
 tions of the Revolution, and Fox greeted the fall of 
 the Bastile as much the greatest event that had ever 
 happened in the history of mankind, the French 
 Revolution became a part of English literature in 
 the sense that it almost superseded domestic topics 
 as a subject of controversial discussion, and gave 
 a new impulse to the group of writers who were des- 
 tined to occupy the foreground of English poetry 
 during the first half of the nineteenth century. 
 Keats alone pursued his art, as we have seen, with 
 what tranquillity he might, during the few years 
 allotted him, unaffected by the upheaval of the 
 social order which had taken place in Europe. But 
 he was practically alone in this attitude of artistic 
 detachment. How Byron and Coleridge, Wordsworth 
 and Landor, were influenced by the Revolution it will 
 be the task of subsequent chapters to state. It is 
 with the case of Shelley that we are now concerned, 
 and he was the child of the Revolution in its nobler 
 spiritual aspects as distinctively as Byron was its 
 child in its more violent aspects and their extensions 
 beyond the domain of politics into those of literature 
 and society. We may distinguish three phases in 
 English opinion concerning the Revolution. There 
 was first the phase of general sympathy, which was 
 typified by the outburst of Fox and the early enthu- 
 siasm of Coleridge and Wordsworth. English politi- 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 87 
 
 cal philosophy and practice had done much, through 
 the influence of Rousseau and Voltaire, to bring 
 about the upheaval of 1789, and many Englishmen 
 recognised the stirring events of the years that fol- 
 lowed as affording a practical application of princi- 
 ples with which they had long been familiar, and 
 which they had long cherished. The second phase of 
 opinion was that of indignant protest against the 
 unbridled passions set free by the Revolution, of 
 revolt against its excesses, and of despair at the 
 triiunph of the military despotism into which it be- 
 came merged. Burke was the first and the most 
 fiery exponent of this phase of opinion, and many who 
 had at first dissented from his views were led by 
 subsequent developments to add their influence to the 
 conservative reaction. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
 Southey were conspicuous among those who suffered 
 disillusionment, and abandoned the hopes with which 
 they had at first acclaimed the Revolution. The third 
 phase of opinion was that of the men whose con- 
 victions of the ultimate validity of the principles 
 upon which the Revolution was based were too firm 
 to be overthrown, who were sobered yet undaunted 
 by its outcome, and who held fast to the faith which 
 had been rooted in them from the time of its earliest 
 manifestations. They were the ones who 
 
 "Never doubted clouds would break. 
 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong 
 
 would triumph. 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 Sleep to wake." 
 
38 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 Among them Landor was particularly noteworthy, 
 and his invincible optimism became the legacy of his 
 friend Robert Browning, who kept it alive in Eng- 
 lish poetry down to our own time. These three 
 phases of opinion were not strictly consecutive, they 
 were rather concurrent in men of different tempera- 
 ments and different degrees of hopefulness. Shelley, 
 although born too late to feel the impact of the first 
 waves of the revolutionary movement, represents the 
 third phase of opinion, and must be counted among 
 those whose unwavering faith could not conceive it 
 possible that the right should not eventually triumph 
 in a reorganised and regenerated society. He was 
 in close spiritual kinship with Condorcet, who, as Mr. 
 John Morley says, "while each moment expecting the 
 knock of the executioner at his door, found as reli- 
 gious a solace as any early martyr had ever found in 
 his barbarous mysteries, when he linked his own efforts 
 for reason and freedom with the eternal chain of the 
 destinies of man." "This contemplation," Condorcet 
 wrote, at a time "when every hope that he had ever 
 cherished seemed to one without the eye of faith 
 to be extinguished in bloodshed, disorder, and bar- 
 barism" — 
 
 "This contemplation is for him a refuge into which the rancour 
 of his persecutors can never follow him; in which, living in 
 thought with man reinstated in the rights and the dignity of his 
 nature, he forgets man tormented and corrupted by greed, 
 by base fear, by envy; it is here that he truly abides with his 
 fellows, in an elysium that his reason knows how to create for 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 89 
 
 itself, and that his love for humanity adorns with all purest 
 deUghts." 
 
 These words might easily pass for Shelley's, so ex- 
 actly do they express the spirit and the temper 
 of his life work. A frequently quoted passage from 
 Wordsworth occupies a central position in the poetry 
 of this period as a description of the feelings with 
 which the Revolution was hailed by those who look 
 forward to a realisation of the golden years of the 
 fabled past. 
 
 "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. 
 But to be young was very heaven 1 O times 
 In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways 
 Of custom, law, and statute, took at once 
 The attraction of a country in romance! 
 Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth 
 The beauty wore of promise." 
 
 Professor Woodberry says: 
 
 "When Shelley began to think and feel, and became a living 
 soul, the first ilush of dawn had gone by; but the same hope- 
 fulness sprang up in him, it was invincible, and it made him 
 the poet of the Revolution, of which he was the child. So far 
 as the Revolution was speculative or moral, he reflected it com- 
 pletely. Its commonplaces were burning truths in his heart; 
 its ferment was his own intellectual life; its confusions, its 
 simplicities, its misapprehensions of the laws of social change, 
 were a part of himself. It would be wrong to ascribe the 
 crudities of Shelley's thought merely to his immature and boy- 
 ish development: they belonged quite as much to the youth of 
 the cause: he. received what he was taught in the form in which 
 his masters held it." 
 
 The most complete exposition of Shelley's social 
 and religious philosophy is to be found in the three 
 
40 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 longer poems : "Queen Mab," "The Revolt of Islam," 
 and "Prometheus Unbound." They were published 
 at the respective ages of twenty-one, twenty-five, and 
 twenty-eight. The seven years that fall between the 
 first and the last of these dates were years of swiftly 
 ripening thought and broadening ideals. The youth- 
 ful poem of "Queen Mab," although it cannot be 
 ignored in any study of the poet's intellectual devel- 
 opment, has had far too large a share in forming 
 the popular estimate of Shelley's teachings. It is full 
 of crudities, both of thought and expression, and 
 precisely because of these crudities it made a strong 
 appeal to radicals of the narrow and uncultivated 
 type. Its rather cheap declamation against the 
 "kings, priests, and statesmen" who "blast the human 
 flower Even in its tender bud" ; its audacious adoption 
 of the Voltairian watchword, icrasez I'mfame; its 
 blatant avowal of an atheism which the poet took no 
 care to explain as being nothing more than a pro- 
 test against the forms and the vices of an ofiicial 
 religion — these were the qualities by virtue of which 
 "Queen Mab" appealed to a certain class of raw and 
 intolerant thinkers, who at once seized upon the poem 
 as an effective tract for the uses of their propaganda. 
 Shelley himself soon became ashamed of "Queen 
 Mab," and sought to suppress it, but the circulation 
 had gone beyond his control. The poem is not, how- 
 ever, without its passages of unusual beauty, and the 
 young reader, who takes small heed of the niceties of 
 thought or of poetic art, may well find in it a favour- 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 41 
 
 able introduction to Shelley, or even, as the present 
 writer has a vivid personal recollection of having 
 found, an introduction to the whole realm of poetry, 
 hitherto unappreciated and unexplored. There is 
 something peculiarly forcible about the manner in 
 which the poem depicts the wretchedness of man's 
 estate under the withering influences of selfishness 
 and superstition, while its eloquent exposition of the 
 doctrine of human perfectibility, which Shelley got 
 directly from Godwin and indirectly from the French 
 philosophers of the eighteenth century, is still capa- 
 ble of stirring the soul to a fine enthusiasm. Shel- 
 ley's vision of the future and all the wonder that shall 
 be, is expressed in this poem with the glow of emo- 
 tion, at least, if not with the perfection of art, which 
 we find in the choruses of "Prometheus Unbound" and 
 "HeUas." 
 
 "O happy Earth I reality of heaven! 
 To which those restless souls that ceaselessly 
 Throng through the human universe, aspire; 
 Thou consummation of all mortal hopel 
 Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will! 
 Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time, 
 yerge to one point and blend forever there: 
 Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling place! 
 Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime. 
 Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come: 
 O happy Earth, reality of heaven! 
 
 "Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams. 
 And dim forebodings of thy loveliness 
 Haunting the human heart, have there entwined 
 Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss 
 
42 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 Where friends and lovers meet to part no more. 
 Thou art the end of all desire and will, 
 The product of all action; and the souls 
 That by the paths of an aspiring change 
 Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace. 
 There rest from the eternity of toil 
 That framed the fabric of thy perfectness." 
 
 In the renovated earth of that vision, 
 
 "Mild was the slow necessity of death: 
 The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp. 
 Without a groan, almost without a fear. 
 Calm as a voyager to some distant land. 
 And fuU of wonder, full of hope as he." 
 
 And the final invocation to the spirit before whose 
 gaze all this panorama of past, present, and future 
 has been unrolled, may still have for us the inspi- 
 ration, if only the faith be given us, that it had for 
 Shelley and his readers of nearly a hundred years 
 ago. 
 
 "Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course. 
 Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 
 The gradual paths of an aspiring change: 
 For birth and life and death, and that strange state 
 Before the naked soul has found its home. 
 All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 
 The restless wheels of being on their way. 
 Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life. 
 Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal. 
 
 "Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand. 
 So welcome when the tyrant is awake. 
 So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns; 
 'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour. 
 The transient gulph-dream of a startling sleep. 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 43 
 
 Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seen 
 Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, 
 Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there. 
 And presaging the truth of visioned bliss." 
 
 "The Revolt of Islam," which was at first entitled 
 "Laon and Cythna," exhibits a great advance over 
 "Queen Mab" in poetic art, although we are still 
 far from the sunlit uplands of "Prometheus Un- 
 bound." Shelley was careful to say that he intended 
 it for a narrative, and not a didactic poem, but he 
 could not prevent it from becoming the vehicle of his 
 hopes and aspirations for the welfare of mankind. 
 In place of the aggressive motto of "Queen Mab," 
 we are given those noble lines of Chapman, which 
 depict the attitude of the self-poised soul, proudly 
 conscious of its own powers, and determined to live 
 by its own light. 
 
 "There is no danger to a man, that knows 
 What life and death is: there's not any law 
 Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful 
 That he should stoop to any other law." 
 
 In the preface to this poem, Shelley gives us the 
 fullest statement to be found anywhere in his work 
 concerning his attitude toward the French Revolu- 
 tion. He says: 
 
 "The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all 
 classes of men during the excesses consequent upon the French 
 Revolution, is gradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased 
 to be believed, that whole generations of mankind ought to 
 consign themselves to a hopeless inheritance of ignorance and 
 misery, because a nation of men who had been dupes and slaves 
 for centuries, were incapable of conducting themselves with the 
 
44 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon as some of their 
 fetters were partially loosened. That their conduct could not 
 have been marked by any other characters than ferocity and 
 thoughtlessness, is the historical fact from which liberty derives 
 all its recommendations, and falsehood the worst features of its 
 deformity. There is a reflux in the tide of human things which 
 bears the shipwrecked hopes of men into a secure haven, after 
 the storms are passed. . . . The French Revolutibn may be con- 
 sidered as one of those manifestations of a, general state of 
 feeling among civilised mankind, produced by a defect of cor- 
 respondence between the knowledge existing in society and the 
 improvement, or gradual abolition of political institutions. . . . 
 The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the demagogues 
 and the reestablishment of successive tyrannies in France was 
 terrible, and felt in the remotest comer of the civilised 
 world. . . . Thus many of the most ardent and tender-hearted 
 of the worshippers of public good, have been morally ruined 
 by what a partial glimpse of the events they deplored, ap- 
 peared to show as the melancholy desolation of all their 
 cherished hopes. Hence gloom and misanthropy have become 
 the characteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of a 
 disappointment that unconsciously finds relief only in the wilful 
 exaggeration of its own despair. This influence has tainted the 
 literature of the age with the hopelessness of the minds from 
 which it flows. . . . Our works of fiction and poetry have been 
 overshadowed by the same infectious gloom. But mankind 
 appears to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware, 
 methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that belief I 
 have composed the following Poem." 
 
 What may be taken as a typical passage in 'The 
 Revolt of Islam," typical, that is, in its expression of 
 the poet's optimism, occurs in the ninth of the twelve 
 cantos, and embraces the following stanzas : \ 
 
 "This is the winter of the world; — and here 
 We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade. 
 Expiring in the frore and foggy air. — 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 46 
 
 Behold ! Spring comes, tho' we must pass, who made 
 The promise of its birth, — even as the shade 
 Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings 
 The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed 
 As with the plumes of overshadowing wings. 
 From its dark gulph of chains. Earth like an eagle springs. 
 
 "O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold 
 Before this morn may on the world arise; 
 Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold? 
 Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes 
 On thine own heart — it is a Paradise 
 Which everlasting spring has made its own. 
 And while drear winter fills the naked skies, 
 Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh blown 
 Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one. 
 
 "In their own hearts the earnest of the hope 
 Wliich made them great, the good will ever find; 
 And tho' some envious shade may interlope 
 Between the effect and it, — One comes behind. 
 Who aye the future to the past will bind — 
 Necessity, whose sightless strength forever 
 Evil with evil, good with good must vidnd 
 In bands of union, which no power may sever: 
 They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never ! 
 
 "The good and mighiy of departed ages 
 Are in their graves, the innocent and free. 
 Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages, 
 Who leave the vesture of their majesty 
 To adorn and clothe this naked world; — and we 
 Are like to them — such perish, but they leave 
 All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty. 
 Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive 
 To be a rule and law to ages that survive." 
 
46 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 This poem, this "story of human passion in its most 
 universal character," as Shelley himself called it, 
 this "succession of pictures illustrating the growth 
 and progress of individual mind aspiring after ex- 
 cellence, and devoted to the love of mankind," is less 
 read than the other long poems of Shelley; but its 
 perusal will richly reward the student, and its inter- 
 mediate position between "Queen Mab" and "Prome- 
 theus Unbound" makes its examination essential to 
 an understanding of the development of the poet's 
 idealism. 
 
 Turning now to "Prometheus Unbound," we stand 
 at the entrance to the highest heaven of Shelley's 
 imagination. He has at last found himself, and has 
 subdued his passion for reform to the requirements of 
 the most exacting art. The didactical and polemical 
 elements of those earlier poems in which his vision of 
 the glorious future of humanity had been embodied, 
 find no place in this rapturous lyrical drama, which 
 bears us upon its strong pinions to a height which 
 only the greatest of poets — Dante, and Milton, and 
 Goethe — have ever reached. "It is a mistake," he 
 says in the preface to this poem, and is at last com- 
 pletely justified in the assertion, 
 
 "it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical com- 
 positions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that 
 I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system 
 on the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhor- 
 rence; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is 
 not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My purpose has 
 hitherto been simply to familiarise the highly reiined imagina- 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 47 
 
 tion of the more select classes of poetical readers with beauti- 
 ful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that until the mind 
 can loTe, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, rea- 
 soned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the high- 
 way of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, 
 although they would bear the harvest of his happiness." 
 
 What the harvest of that happiness might be, Prome- 
 theus saw when, having clothed Jupiter with power 
 and dominion, the race of man suffered 
 
 "First famine, and then toU, and then disease. 
 Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before, — " 
 
 All this 
 
 "Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes 
 Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers. 
 Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms. 
 That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings 
 The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind 
 The disunited tendrils of that vine 
 Which bears the wine of life, the human heart; 
 And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey. 
 Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath 
 The frown of man; and tortured to his will 
 Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power. 
 And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms 
 Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves. 
 He gave man speech, and speech created thought. 
 Which is the measure of the universe; 
 And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven. 
 Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind 
 Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song; 
 And music lifted up the listening spirit 
 Until it walked, exempt from mortal care. 
 Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound; 
 And human hands first mimicked and then mocked, 
 
48 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 With moulded limbs more lovely than its own, 
 
 The human form, till marble grew divine; 
 
 And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see 
 
 Reflected in their race, behold, and perish. 
 
 He told the hidden power of herbs aiid springs. 
 
 And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep. 
 
 He taught the implicated orbits woven 
 
 Of the vidde-wandering stars; and how the sun 
 
 Changes his lair, and by what secret spell 
 
 The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye 
 
 Gazes not on the interlunar sea: 
 
 He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs. 
 
 The tempest-wingfed chariots of the Ocean, 
 
 And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then 
 
 Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed 
 
 The warm winds, and the azure aether shone, 
 
 And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen. 
 
 Such, the alleviations of his state, 
 
 Prometheus gave to man.'' 
 
 This magnificent passage, it will be remembered, is 
 placed upon the lips of Asia, and occurs in her col- 
 loquy with Demogorgon in the second act. The 
 allegory of the poem presents great difficulties, and 
 it is practically certain that Shelley had not thought 
 it out with logical clearness in all its details. Mr. 
 W. M. Rossetti's painstaking analysis has worked 
 out as reasonable an interpretation as is likely to 
 be found. According to this critic, Prometheus is 
 the mind of man, which has created in Jupiter the 
 anthropomorphic God of the theologians. This 
 deity, being but a creation of the mind, "could con- 
 tinue to exist in that character and with that potency 
 only so long as the human mind, which he tormented. 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 49 
 
 would tolerate his existence." Asia symbolises na- 
 ture, and Demogorgon's own words declare him to be 
 
 "Eternity; demand no direr name." 
 
 The unbinding of Prometheus, then, becomes inevita- 
 ble, for it means the liberation of the mind of man 
 from a tyranny of its own creating, the loosening 
 of the shackles fixed upon it by its own act. When 
 the day of emancipation shall come, the race of man 
 will realise to the full all the blessings originally in- 
 tended by Prometheus, but which were withheld by 
 the very act whereby Prometheus gave power to 
 Jupiter, and suffered ages of torment in consequence 
 thereof. In the glorious closing act of the drama the 
 hour of liberation has come, and the spirits of earth 
 and air and sky sing the happy event in ecstatic 
 strains of intricately interwoven melody. The solemn 
 voice of Eternity itself hymns the hour when "Con- 
 quest is dragged captive through the deep," and when 
 
 "Love, from its awful throne of patient power 
 In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour 
 Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep. 
 And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs. 
 And folds over the world its healing wings." 
 
 Then, as if to seal the poem, as Dante's "Paradise" 
 is sealed, "with sudden music of pure peace," we close 
 the page upon these words : 
 
 "To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; 
 To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; 
 To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; 
 
60 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates 
 From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; 
 
 Neither to change, nor faulter, 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." 
 
 The analogy of music is fitting here, as so frequently 
 it becomes when we try to speak adequately concern- 
 ing the highest reaches of poetry, and it seems to me 
 that the closing act of "Prometheus Unbound" finds 
 its closest parallel — almost the only parallel of which 
 it is worthy — in the choral ending of the Ninth Sym- 
 phony of Beethoven. The joy which is as unmeas- 
 ured as the light of the liberal sun, and the love 
 which is as deep as the very heart of the universe, 
 have found in these two works — the symphony and 
 the lyrical drama — their supremest utterance, their 
 most complete and comprehensive expression. Just 
 as music reaches its greatest imaginable height in 
 the Ninth Symphony, so lyrical poetry achieves its 
 utmost in "Prometheus Unbound." Lyrical poetry 
 has many qualities; in tenderness, in poignancy of 
 pathos, in mastery of the elegiac note, other poets 
 have equalled Shelley ; but for exuberant splendour of 
 imaginative diction, for the flight of the eagle as dis- 
 tinguished from the flight of the lark, where else 
 in all poetry shall we find his peer, unless we go back 
 to the Theban Eagle and the crowning glory of 
 Greek song? 
 
 It seems impossible that lyrical drama should out- 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 51 
 
 soar the "Prometheus Unbound," but when we read 
 the "Hellas," we are almost tempted to believe that 
 the impossible has been achieved. We do not find in 
 this poem the sustained splendour of the other; but 
 we do find, at least in its choruses, such music as even 
 Shelley was not often inspired to make. When the 
 Greeks began their War of Independence in 1821, 
 Shelley, like Byron, threw himself heart and soul into 
 their cause. It seemed to him that here was a mani- 
 fest sign of the actual breaking of that new dawn for 
 humanity which had hitherto been but previsioned in 
 his poems. 
 
 "In the great morning of the world, 
 
 The spirit of God with might unfurled 
 
 The flag of Freedom over Chaos, 
 And all its banded anarchs fled. 
 
 Like vultures frighted from Imaus, 
 Before an earthquake's tread. — 
 
 So from Time's tempestuous dawn 
 
 Freedom's splendour burst and shone: — 
 
 Thermopylas and Marathon 
 
 Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted. 
 The springing Fire. — The wingM glory 
 
 On Philippi half-alighted. 
 Like an eagle on a promontory." 
 
 And at last once more, after centuries of exile, 
 
 "Freedom, so 
 To what of Greece remaineth now 
 Returns; her hoary ruins glow 
 Like Orient mountains lost in day; 
 
 Beneath the safety of her wings 
 Her renovated nurslings prey. 
 
 And in the naked lightnings 
 Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes." 
 
52 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 The description of the heroic resistance of a band 
 of Greek patriots to the Turkish onslaught, as re- 
 ported to Mahmud by the trembling messenger, is 
 one of the most memorable pages in all the work of 
 Shelley. 
 
 "The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead. 
 Grew weak and few. — Then said the Pacha, 'Slaves, 
 Render yourselves — they have abandoned you — 
 What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid? 
 We grant your lives.' 'Grant that which is thine own!' 
 Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died ! 
 Another — 'God, and man, and hope abandon me; 
 But I to them, and to myself, remain 
 Constant': — ^he bowed his head, and his heart burst. 
 A third exclaimed, 'There is a refuge, tyrant. 
 Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm, 
 Should'st thou pursue; there we shall meet again.' 
 Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm. 
 The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment 
 Among the slain — dead earth upon the earth! 
 So these survivors, each by different ways. 
 Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable. 
 Met in triumphant death; and when our army 
 Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame. 
 Held back the base hyenas of the battle 
 That feed upon the dead and fly the living. 
 One rose out of the chaos of the slain; 
 And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit 
 Of the old saviours of the land we rule 
 Had lifted in its anger wandering by; — 
 Or if there burned within the dying man 
 Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith 
 Creating what it feigned; — I cannot tell — 
 But he cried, 'Phantoms of the free, we come! 
 Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike 
 To dust the citadels of sanguine kings. 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 53 
 
 And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, 
 
 And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew; — 
 
 O ye who float around this clime, and weave 
 
 The garment of the glory which it wears. 
 
 Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped. 
 
 Lies sepulchred in monumental thought; — 
 
 Progenitors of all that yet is great, 
 
 Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept 
 
 In your high ministrations, us, your sons — 
 
 Us first, and the more glorious yet to come !' " 
 
 Of the closing chorus of this drama, at least the first 
 two stanzas must be given, for the sake of their ever- 
 lasting beauty. 
 
 "The world's great age begins anew. 
 
 The golden years return. 
 The earth doth like a snake renew 
 
 Her winter weeds outworn: 
 Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam. 
 Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. 
 
 "A brighter Hellas rears its mountains 
 From waves serener far; 
 A new Peneus rolls his fountains 
 
 Against the morning-star. 
 Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep 
 Young Cyclads on a simnier deep." 
 
 Lest all that has been said by way of comment, 
 and quoted by way of illustration, respecting Shel- 
 ley's lyrical envisagement of the golden years to come, 
 should have the effect of fortifying the erroneous 
 impression that he was a visionary and nothing more, 
 it seems advisable to close this section of the exposi- 
 tion with some expert testimony concerning his hold 
 
54 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 upon the actual facts of life and upon the processes 
 of the practical reason. The Rev. Stopford Brooke 
 advises us to make a careful comparison between 
 Shelley's views on political and social topics as ex- 
 pressed in verse and his views on the same topics as 
 found in his prose writings. In the latter case he 
 "expresses himself with a quietness and coolness, 
 a strictness of logic, and a temperance of argument 
 and metaphor, worthy of John Stuart Mill." It is 
 only in his poetry that "the same ideas soar into the 
 sky, and become children of the lightning and the 
 sun." Professor Woodberry, recalling Shelley's 
 many practical activities in connection with the free- 
 dom of the press, the condition of Ireland, the ques- 
 tion of Catholic emancipation, the putting of reform 
 to vote, the Manchester riots, and the Revolutionary 
 movement upon the Continent, declares that he had a 
 strongly practical temperament, that "he wished to 
 apply ideas as well as to express them, and in his 
 own life he was always restlessly doing what he 
 thought, linking the word with an act, carrying con- 
 viction to the extreme issue of duty performed." 
 And Robert Browning says "that one of the causes of 
 his failure at the outset was the peculiar practical- 
 ness of his mind. . . . The early fervour and power 
 to see was accompanied by as precocious a fertility to 
 contrive: he endeavoured to realise as he went on 
 idealising; every wrong had simultaneously its rem- 
 edy, and, out of the strength of his hatred for the 
 former, he took the strength of his confidence in the 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 56 
 
 latter." Such testimony as this is not easily to be 
 controverted, and, to quote again from Professor 
 Woodberry, I feel bound to insist that Shelley, "had 
 he left unwritten those personal lyrics which some 
 who conceived the poet's art less nobly would exalt 
 above his grander poems, would stand preemi- 
 nent and almost solitary for his service to the strug- 
 gling world, for what he did as a quickener of men's 
 hearts by his passion for supreme and simple truths." 
 We have seen how Keats took for his formula the 
 equation of truth and beauty; with Shelley the 
 formula became broadened, and his essential mes- 
 sage is that beauty is goodness, while both are truth. 
 In a word, the writings of Shelley afford the most 
 triumphant illustration in our literature of the 
 principle that poetry need not fear to ally itself with 
 worthy practical issues, that it is entirely possible 
 for poetry to become the agent of progress without 
 derogating from its lofty artistic mission. 
 
 Much has been written, much more than need have 
 been, or than has proved profitable, upon the subject 
 of Shelley's religious and philosophical opinions. 
 Concerning the latter, the influence of Plato is very 
 evident, and the influence of Berkeley is also marked. 
 Mrs. Shelley believed that, had his life been spared, 
 "he would have presented the world with a complete 
 theory of mind; a theory to which Berkeley, Cole- 
 ridge, and Kant would have contributed; but more 
 simple, unimpugnable, and entire than the systems 
 of these writers." However this may be, it is clear 
 
56 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 that he was attracted by the mystical rather than 
 by the logical aspect of the philosophers whom he 
 most read, and we may see in his "Epipsychidion" 
 the form which at least one aspect of Platonism as- 
 sumed in his imagination. As for his religious opin- 
 ions, the pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism," 
 written at the age of eighteen, was a piece of boyish 
 bravado, and does not deserve very serious consid- 
 eration. Hardly more serious was the inscription in 
 the Swiss album which, in bad Greek, declared the 
 writer to be "a democrat, a philanthropist, and an 
 atheist." The provocation in this case was an effu- 
 sion of what Mr. Swinburne calls the "rancid piety" 
 of some tourist whose type was destined afterwards 
 to become immortalised in the character of Monsieur 
 Perrichon. Under the circumstances, considering his 
 youth, Shelley could hardly have been expected to do 
 less than express his sentiments in this startling 
 fashion. The famous notes to "Queen Mab," al- 
 though more premeditated than the defiant acts above 
 mentioned, are really nothing more than the vehement 
 utterance of a mind which discovers that it has been 
 tricked by the teachings of childhood, and finds in- 
 dignant vent in extreme forms of expression. "I used 
 the word atheism to express my abhorrence of super- 
 stition," wrote Shelley in later years, "I took it up as 
 a knight takes up a gauntlet in defiance of injustice." 
 We may easily enough glean from Shelley's maturer 
 work a sheaf of passages to support the proposition 
 that he was in full sympathy with the spirit of 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 67 
 
 Christianity, and opposed only to the false trap- 
 pings with which it had been invested by the theo- 
 logians. The poem inscribed by Victor Hugo "To 
 the Bishop Who Called Me Atheist" might have been 
 acknowledged by Shelley as his own confession of 
 faith. Robert Browning, in that precious essay on 
 Shelley which is practically his only contribution 
 to English prose, says that "had Shelley lived he 
 would have finally ranged himself with the Chris- 
 tians; his very instinct for helping the weaker side 
 (if numbers make strength), his very 'hate of hate,' 
 which at first mistranslated itself into delirious 
 'Queen Mab' notes and the like, would have got clear- 
 sighted by exercise." And Browning goes on to say : 
 "Meantime, as I call Shelley a moral man, because 
 he was true, simple-hearted, and brave, and because 
 what he acted corresponded with what he knew, so 
 I call him a man of religious mind, because every 
 audacious negative cast up by him against the Divine 
 was interpenetrated with a mood of reverence and 
 adoration, and because I find him everywhere taking 
 for granted some of the capital dogmas of Chris- 
 tianity, while most vehemently denying their histo- 
 rical basement." Nor are we lacking in testimony 
 from the clerical profession to the same effect. What 
 the Rev. Stopford Brooke says upon this subject may 
 be taken to stand for what hundreds of other teachers 
 of religion have also said. Few have done more than 
 Shelley, we are told, "to overthrow false conceptions 
 of God, and to shake the foundations of supersti- 
 
68 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 tion, caste, tyranny, and slavery of mind and body. 
 His desire to see justice made imiversal between man 
 and man, to extend the bounds of freedom, to pro- 
 mote the love of his fellows, was with him a fervent 
 passion. His poetry is steeped in these things as a 
 smnmer garden in sunshine. They are part of the 
 serious body of his poetry, and the world will always 
 be drawn to Shelley for this religious gravity of his 
 teaching. His method was the method of Jesus 
 Christ, reliance on spiritual force only, and was 
 marked out in the strongest way." 
 
 The fortunes of Shelley's poetry have been greatly 
 influenced by the early misconceptions of his life 
 and character. As Browning says : "The disbelief in 
 him as a man even preceded the disbelief in him as a 
 writer ; the misconstruction of his moral nature pre- 
 paring the way for the misappreciation of his intel- 
 lectual labours." He had incurred the odium theo- 
 logicum, and no enmity is more unscrupulous, 
 more relentless, or more vindictive. The merely ht- 
 erary abuse to which Keats was subjected seems al- 
 most urbane in comparison with the assaults which 
 were made upon Shelley's character and opinions by 
 the organs of British respectability. This, for ex- 
 ample, was what The Gentleman's Magazine had to 
 say of him a few months after his death : "Concern- 
 ing the talents of Mr. Shelley, we know no more than 
 that he pubhshed certain convulsive caperings of 
 Pegasus labouring under cholic pains: namely, some 
 purely fantastic verses, in the hubble-bubble, toil. 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 59 
 
 and trouble style; and as to Mr. Shelley's virtues, 
 ... we ought as justly to regret the decease of the 
 devil (if that were possible) as of one of his coadju- 
 tors. . . . Percy Byssche Shelley is a fitter subject 
 for a penitentiary dying speech, than a lauding 
 elegy; for the muse of the rope rather than of the 
 cypress." We now read such a screed as this with 
 sad amusement, knowing how completely the poetry 
 of Shelley, and his character as well, have "out- 
 soared the shadow" of that night of calumny. If 
 there are still a few "Christian apologists" of the 
 sort represented by that English stranger who met 
 Shelley in the post office at Pisa, called him "a 
 damned atheist," and knocked him down, they have no 
 power to obscure the splendour of his fame. That 
 fame has grown brighter and brighter since his death, 
 and Wordsworth now remains the only poet of the 
 earlier nineteenth-century group for whom any con- 
 siderable number of critics dispute with Shelley the 
 claim to supremacy. It is curiously noticeable that 
 his poems do not lend themselves readily to the pur- 
 poses of familiar quotation. Tested by Bartlett, 
 Byron has nearly ten times as much of this sort of 
 vogue as Shelley has; but then, for that matter. 
 Young and Cowper and Moore have each given cur- 
 rency to many more phrases than we can set to the 
 credit of Shelley. This fact, however, is of little sig- 
 nificance. Lyrics are usually the least quotable of 
 poems, but despite that fact they are our most cher- 
 ished treasures. "Something of what Shelley has come 
 
60 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 to mean to the cultivated intelligence is expressed by 
 Mr. Andrew Lang, in his address to the shade of the 
 poet, when, speaking of the gradual extinction of life 
 upon this planet which is prophesied by science, he 
 
 "If this nightmare be fulfilled, perhaps the Last Man, in some 
 fetid hut on the ice-bound Equator, will read, by a fading 
 lamp charged with the dregs of the oil in his cruse, the poetry 
 of Shelley. So reading, he, the latest of his race, will not 
 wholly be deprived of those sights which alone (says the name- 
 less Greeli) make life worth enduring. In your verse he will 
 have sight of sky, and sea, and cloud, the gold of dawn and 
 the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. He wiU be face to face, 
 in fancy, with the great powers that are dead, sun, and ocean, 
 and the illimitable azure of the heavens. In Shelley's poetry, 
 while Man endures, all those will survive; for your 'voice is 
 as the voice of winds and tides,' and perhaps more deathless 
 than all of these, and only perishable with the perishing of the 
 human spirit." 
 
 What was lost to English poetry, when a sudden 
 summer storm struck that "broad white sail in 
 Spezzia's treacherous bay," and ended the poet's life 
 as perhaps he would have wished it to end, is a mat- 
 ter beyond any human divination. His thirtieth year 
 not quite completed, he was taken "where Orpheus 
 and where Homer are," or raider where are Keats 
 and ^schylus, for they were his companions on that 
 fatal day. His own poetry supplies the only words 
 fit to express what is felt in contemplation of this 
 tragedy. He had become his own Alastor, and we 
 cannot now read the poem of that name without 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 61 
 
 thinking more of its author than of its subject when 
 we come to its closing lines : 
 
 "Art and eloquence, 
 And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain 
 To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. 
 It is a woe 'too deep for tears,' when all 
 Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit. 
 Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 
 Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans. 
 The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; 
 But pale despair and cold tranquiUity, 
 Nature's vast frame, the web of human things. 
 Birth and the grave, that are not as they were." 
 
 Shelley lies buried by the side of Keats in the 
 
 Protestant Cemetery at Rome. His ashes were sent 
 
 there by Trelawny, who in the spring of the year 
 
 following the poet's death caused two tombs to be 
 
 prepared, in one of which the remains of Shelley were 
 
 deposited. Upon the simple stone that covered his 
 
 ashes, besides the name and the necessary dates, were 
 
 cut the words "Cor cordium" of Leigh Hunt's choice, 
 
 and to them Trelawny added the Shakespearean 
 
 lines: 
 
 "Nothing of him that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
 Violets grow about the stone, and the shape of their 
 leaves is exquisitely symbolical of the inscription. 
 For nearly sixty years nothing was heard by the 
 directors of the Cemetery from the Englishman who 
 had bought the plot. Early in 1881, a letter was 
 
62 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 received from Mr. Trelawny saying that, as he was 
 now very old, he wished to prepare for his death, 
 and requesting that the second tomb be made ready 
 for his ashes. In August of that year he died, at 
 the age of eighty-eight. His body was burned, and 
 a friend brought the ashes to the resting-place thus 
 provided for them. The following lines bear witness 
 to the friendship by which the poet and the wanderer 
 remained united in spirit throughout the intervening 
 years. 
 
 "These are two friends whose lives were undivided; 
 So let their memory be now they have glided 
 Under the grave; let not their bones be parted. 
 For their two hearts in life were single-hearted." 
 
 This incident is not as irrelevant as it might seem, 
 for it is typical of the feelings with which Shelley 
 was regarded by every one who enjoyed his intimacy. 
 As Syraonds reminds us in his biography of the poet : 
 "Shelley in his lifetime bound those who knew him 
 with a chain of loyal affection, impressing observers 
 so essentially different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, 
 Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, Medwin, Williams, with the 
 conviction that he was the gentlest, purest, bravest, 
 and most spiritual being they had ever met." And 
 the number of those who feel for him as these felt 
 has gone on increasing year by year, until his posi- 
 tion as the best beloved of English poets has been 
 placed beyond dispute. The one great poet now liv- 
 ing, who is closer to Shelley in spiritual kinship than 
 any between them, has given us an. exquisite tribute 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 63 
 
 to his memory in the sonnet which has these for its 
 closing lines : 
 
 "O heart whose beating blood was running song, 
 O sole thing sweeter than thine own songs were. 
 Help us for thy free love's sake to be free. 
 True for thy truth's sake, for thy strength's sake strong, 
 TUl very liberty make clean and fair 
 The nursing earth as the sepulchral sea," 
 
(Beoroe C5or&on 'B^von 
 
 In discussing the content of Shelley's poetry, we 
 found it necessary to deal with him very largely as 
 the product of his age, and especially as the preacher 
 of the revolutionary gospel in its more spiritual 
 phases and developments. Turning now to Byron, 
 we again find the Revolution in the background of 
 nearly all that he said and did, we find in it the ex- 
 planation of nearly all that he was. In saying this 
 I would not be taken to give unqualified assent to the 
 doctrine of Taine which accounts for literature as a 
 product of the race, the age, and the environment. 
 Criticism has gone far beyond that doctrine, and 
 recognises the claims of the incalculable element of 
 individual genius. But with Byron and Shelley aUke, 
 the circumstances amid which they were nurtured, 
 the intellectual and moral atmosphere of the period in 
 which they hved, count for much more than they do 
 with most poets, more even than they count for with 
 the conteniporaries of these men. I have spoken of 
 Shelley as the child of the Revolution in its spiritual 
 aspect; I must speak of Byron as the voice of the 
 Revolution in its temper of revolt, its blind fury, its 
 reckless destructiveness. Of course such distinctions 
 as these are by no means hard and fast, but they 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 65 
 
 express the fundamental contrast between the two 
 poets. The intellect of Byron was less constructive 
 than destructive, in that of Shelley the ratio becomes 
 inverted. Byron's influence was in the main negative, 
 his was "the spirit that denies"; Shelley's influence 
 was in the main positive, and he was concerned far 
 more with the affirmation of truth than with the 
 denial of error. Professor Dowden embodies this 
 distinction in the following beautiful simile : "As the 
 wave of revolution rolls onward, driven forth from 
 the vast volcanic upheaval in France, and as it be- 
 comes a portion of the literary movement of Great 
 Britain, its dark and hissing crest may be the poetry 
 of Byron; but over the tumultuous wave hangs an 
 iris of beauty and promise, and that foam-bow of 
 hope, flashing and failing, and ever reappearing as 
 the wave sweeps on, is the poetry of Shelley." As 
 the qualities of the two poets differ, so have their 
 fates proved diverse. Amid the fury of the tempest, 
 the still small voice is heard by but few, yet to those 
 whose ears are attuned to hear it the utterance is 
 fraught with a deeper meaning than is found in the 
 sound of the storm, and it remains a memory and an 
 inspiration long after the heavens have cleared. In 
 his own time, the poetry of Byron was one of the 
 most tremendous intellectual forces that had ever 
 stirred the souls of men; the poetry of Shelley, on 
 the other hand, fell almost unheeded upon the gen- 
 eral ear, and was slow in winning its way to the 
 exalted place wljich it was destined to occupy in the 
 
66 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 affections of mankind. The conditions are now al- 
 most completely reversed, and, while the poetry of 
 Byron has lost its hold upon the mature intelligence, 
 the poetry of Shelley has become strengthened from 
 year to year in its influence, because its appeal is 
 made to those instincts and sentiments which are 
 the most enduring in human nature. In a word, the 
 poetry of Shelley has everlasting value because it is 
 endowed with everlasting beauty and truth; the 
 poetry of Byron, on the other hand, has largely spent 
 its force, and its present appeal is made directly to 
 the immature mind alone, or indirectly to the mind 
 that takes a greater satisfaction in renewing the life 
 of the past than in living in the present or in con- 
 templating the future. 
 
 Byron was four years older than Shelley, and out- 
 lived him by two; the lives of these poets thus ran 
 closely side by side, and their environment was prac- 
 tically the same. How differently they reacted to 
 that environment does not need to be set forth in de- 
 tail. Byron, like Shelley, came to manhood at a time 
 when the revolutionary ideas had lost much of their 
 force, and when the conservative reaction seemed 
 well under way. The intellectual and emotional move- 
 ment of which Byron was the central figure is to be 
 described rather as a second revolution than as a 
 direct continuation of the first. It was also a moral 
 revolution, an uprising of the spirit against all the 
 hypocrisies and empty forms that so weighed it down 
 in England arid elsewhere. It was a revolt, among 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 67 
 
 other things, against what Mr. John Morley calls 
 "that mean and poor form of domesticity which 
 has always been too apt to fascinate the English 
 imagination, ever since the last great effort of the 
 Rebellion, and which rose to the climax of its popu- 
 larity when George III. won all hearts by living like 
 a farmer." As Mr. Morley goes on to say : "Instead 
 of the fierce light beating about a throne, it played 
 lambently upon a sty. And the nation who admired, 
 imitated. When the Regent came, and with him that 
 coarse profligacy which has alternated with cloudy 
 insipidity in the annals of the line, the honest part of 
 the world, out of antipathy to the son, was driven 
 even further into domestic sentimentality of a greasy 
 kind than it had gone from affection for the sire." 
 The society that could deserve such a characterisa- 
 tion as this needed a Byron to arouse it from its 
 sluggishness and apathy. Whatever his intellectual 
 faults, whatever the recklessness with which he made 
 his attack upon the bulwarks of respectability, his 
 influence was on the whole uplifting, and we must 
 agree with our author in saying : "His fire, his lofty 
 spaciousness of outlook, his spirited interest in great 
 national causes, his romance, and the passion both of 
 his animosity and his sympathy, acted for a while 
 like an electric current, and every one within his influ- 
 ence became ashamed to barter the large heritage 
 of manhood, with its many realms and illimitable 
 interests, for the sordid ease of the hearth and the 
 good word of the unworthy." It was well that the 
 
68 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 souls of men living in "a society that the inward faith 
 had abandoned, but which clung to every outward 
 ordinance, which only remembered that man had 
 property, and forgot that he had a spirit," should be 
 stirred in some such way as this. That it was thus 
 stirred is one of the capital facts of the moral history 
 of this Age, a fact evidenced alike by the bitterness 
 of the denunciation with which the "satanic" influ- 
 ence of the poet was assailed, and by the new impulse 
 which he gave to the forces of revolt and emotional 
 discontent with existing conditions. 
 
 This influence was European in its extent. To us, 
 Byron is only one of the half dozen great English 
 poets of his time, and from a strictly literary point 
 of view not the most important. But to Europe 
 at large he was, and has remained, the single com- 
 manding figure in the English literature of the 
 period. From the standpoint of Continental appre- 
 ciation, Byron was the only English poet who 
 counted; he stood first, and the rest were nowhere. 
 Even in our own time, this exaggeration of his im- 
 portance prevails in the general European criticism 
 of English poetry. It is only within the last few 
 years that French criticism, for example, has dis- 
 covered Burns, and Shelley, and Wordsworth, while 
 German criticism, with all its receptiveness for 
 the literature of other nations, has not yet done any- 
 thing like relative justice to the claims of Byron's 
 great contemporaries. The explanation of this 
 critical aberration is not difficult. Mr. Swinburne 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 69 
 
 has explained it in part, although with his customary 
 vehemence of exaggeration, by saying that Byron's 
 poetical form is so bad that it becomes improved by 
 translation. He writes : 
 
 "On taking up a fairly good version of 'Childe Harold's Pil- 
 grimage' in French or Italian prose, a reader whose eyes and 
 ears are not hopelessly sealed against all distinction of good 
 from bad in rhythm or in style will infallibly be struck by the 
 vast improvement which the text has undergone in the course 
 of translation. The blundering, floundering, lumbering, and 
 stumbling stanzas, transmuted into prose and transfigured 
 into grammar, reveal the real and latent force of rhetorical 
 energy that is in them: the gasping, ranting, wheezing, broken- 
 winded verse has been transformed into really effective and 
 fluent oratory. ... It is impossible to express how much 
 'Childe Harold' gains by being done out of wretchedly bad 
 metre into decently good prose: the New Testament did not 
 gain more by being translated out of canine Greek into divine 
 English.'- 
 
 But this is not the whole of the explanation. The 
 laudation of Byron on the part of Continental critics 
 results chiefly from the fact that he gave voice 
 to ideals and aspirations that were the common prop- 
 erty of the enlightened part of European opinion, 
 and that were less distinctively English than they 
 ■were French or German, Italian or Spanish, Russian, 
 Polish, or Scandinavian. The effectiveness of 
 Byron's appeal is properly to be judged only when 
 we take into account its influence upon such different 
 types of men as Goethe, Taine, Mazzini, Castelar, 
 Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and Paludan-Miiller. These 
 men, each in his own way, besides many others less 
 
70 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 prominent, have given eloquent testimony to the ele- 
 mental energy with which the poetry of Byron stirred 
 the waters of European thought. We find his influ- 
 ence everywhere in the European literature of the 
 century. We find it in the greater literatures of 
 the Continent, and we find it also in the lesser litera- 
 tures of Greece, and Portugal, and the Balkan 
 States. We find it in Hugo, Lamartine, Delavigne, 
 Musset, and Flaubert. We find it in Wilhelm Miiller, 
 Chamisso, Platen, Immermann, Borne, and Heine. 
 We find it, in short, wherever literature has sought 
 to renew its life, to escape from the bondage of tra- 
 dition, and to reassert the claims of the individual 
 spirit. This influence has been so great partly be- 
 cause Byron dealt with large and simple ideas, and 
 partly because his work reflected so many of the 
 external happenings of his time and so many of the 
 feelings and impulses which those happenings were 
 arousing in the souls of the generation that had out- 
 lived the early reaction against the revolutionary 
 movement, and were again pressing forward toward 
 the realisation of its fundamental aims. When Byron 
 "was struck hard by events," says Professor Dowden, 
 "there came a resonant response; his strangely dis- 
 cordant powers were for the moment fused, and he 
 uttered his feelings with incomparable energy and 
 directness. Pride and passion, love and hatred, grief 
 and joy, flowed together and flowed forth in one 
 strong, abounding stream." 
 
 The quality which we call Byronism may be illus- 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 71 
 
 trated by countless passages from the poet's writ- 
 ings. Probably the most tjrpical passages are to be 
 found in "Childe Harold," which Byron himself called 
 "a fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation." We 
 find it, for example, in this stanza : 
 
 "He, who grown aged in this world of woe. 
 In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, 
 So that no wonder waits him; nor below 
 Can love, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife. 
 Cut to his heart again with the keen knife 
 Of silent, sharp endurance; he can tell 
 Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves yet rife 
 With airy images, and shapes which dwell 
 Still unimpair'd, though old, in the soul's haunted cell." 
 
 Again we find it In this : 
 
 "Existence may be borne, and the deep root 
 Of life and sufferance makes its firm abode 
 In bare and desolated bosoms; mute 
 The camel labours with the heaviest load. 
 And the wolf dies in silence, — ^not bestow'd 
 In vain should such example be; if they. 
 Things of ignoble or of savage mood. 
 Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay 
 May temper it to bear, — ^it is but for a day." 
 
 And still again we find it in these: 
 
 "And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now 
 I shrink from what is suffer'd: let him speak 
 Who hath beheld decline upon my brow. 
 Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak; 
 But in this page a record wUl I seek. 
 Not in the air shall these my words disperse. 
 Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak 
 The deep prophetic fulness of this verse. 
 And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse 1 
 
72 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 "That curse shall be Forgiveness. — Have I not — 
 Hear me, my mother Earth ! behold it. Heaven ! — 
 Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? 
 Have I not suffer'd things to be forgiven? 
 Have I not had my brain sear'd, my heart riven, 
 Hopes sapp'd, name blighted. Life's life lied away? 
 And only not to desperation driven. 
 Because not altogether of such clay 
 As rots into the souls of those whom I survey." 
 
 It is easy to say that there is something morbid in 
 these self-revelations. What the robust judgment of 
 Carlyle thought about them is well known, and in our 
 modern reaction against Byronism we have probably 
 been too apt to join with Carlyle in his scorn of all 
 such caterwaulings. We are inclined to ask with 
 Arnold 
 
 "What helps it now, that Byron bore. 
 With haughty scorn which mock'd the smart. 
 Through Europe to the JEtolian shore 
 The pageant of his bleeding heart?" 
 
 But we must remember that Arnold himself was one 
 of the stoutest defenders of Byron's poetical fame, 
 and it may also be profitable to recall the fact that 
 Mazzini, who stood for something very different from 
 Byronism, who supplemented the revolutionary de- 
 mand for the rights of man with an insistent appeal 
 for the equal recognition of the duties of man, could 
 write of Byron in such terms as these: 
 
 "Never did 'the eternal spirit of the chainless mind' make a 
 brighter apparition amongst us. He seems at times a trans- 
 formation of that immortal Prometheus, of whom he has writ- 
 ten so nobly; whose cry of agony, yet of futurity, sounded 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 73 
 
 above the cradle of the European world; and whose grand and 
 mysterious form, transfigured by time, reappears from age to 
 age, between the entombment of one epoch and the accession of 
 another; to wail forth the lament of genius, tortured by the 
 presentiment of things it will not see realised in its time." 
 
 It is impossible to deal with Byronism without 
 thinking at the same time of Wertherism, which was 
 its eighteenth-century counterpart, and of which it 
 was so close a reflex. The words which have just 
 been quoted from Mazzini might also be applied to 
 Goethe, with whom, indeed, Byron is coupled in the 
 remarkable essay from which the passage is taken. 
 I mean, of course, the youthful Goethe in the days 
 of his storm and stress, who was, like Byron, 
 
 "Wandering between two worlds, one dead. 
 The other powerless to be born." 
 
 Perhaps even Byron might have attained to some- 
 thing like serenity of soul had he lived to the great 
 age of Goethe. What Carlyle says about "Werther" 
 and the time in which it was written bears directly 
 upon the present comparison. 
 
 "That nameless unrest, the blind struggle of a soul in bondage, 
 that high, sad, longing discontent which was agitating every 
 bosom, had driven Goethe almost to despair. All felt it; he 
 alone could give it voice. And here lies the secret of his 
 popularity; in his deep susceptive heart he felt a thousand 
 times more keenly what every one was feeling; with the creative 
 gift which belonged to him as a poet, he bodied it forth into 
 visible shape, gave it a local habitation and a. name; and so 
 made himself the spokesman of his generation. 'Werther' is 
 
74 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 but the cry of that dim, rooted pain under which all thoughtful 
 men of a certain age were languishing; it paints the misery, it 
 passionately utters the complaint; and heart and voice all over 
 Europe loudly and at once respond to it. True, it prescribes 
 no remedy; for that was a far different, far harder enterprise, 
 to which other years and a higher culture were required; but 
 even this utterance of pain, even this little, for the present is 
 grasped at, and with eager sympathy appropriated in every 
 bosom." 
 
 This diagnosis of Wertherism fits the case of Byron- 
 ism with almost equal exactness; the words at once 
 describe its nature, set forth its essential limita- 
 tions, and account for its widespread influence. The 
 Weltschmerz which found intensified expression in 
 Goethe's youthful romance, and again a generation 
 later in Byron's melancholy outpourings, is never al- 
 together absent from literature, but there are not 
 many periods in which it takes possession of so many 
 minds, and becomes so distinctly the characteristic 
 note of the age, as it did in the two periods here set 
 side by side. The epochs of Wertherism and of 
 Byronism were epochs of morbid sensibility and un- 
 settled convictions. The emotional wave which thus 
 twice reared its crest was slow to subside, and when 
 it did at last spend its force, there were many who 
 felt that something had been lost out of life, that 
 the philosophy of comfortable acquiescence was an 
 unsatisfying substitute for the philosophy of revolt. 
 That the wave did subside is a matter of the intel- 
 lectual history of the century. In England, as we 
 shall see, the turbulent temper of the revolutionary 
 
GEORGE Gordon byroN 16 
 
 spirit gave place to the serener temper and the re- 
 newed hopefulness that were to be found in the poetry 
 of Wordsworth. In France, the magnificent faith of 
 the master poet of the century put to shame the 
 voices of doubt and despair. In Germany, the magic 
 of Heine's genius dissolved despondency in irony, 
 and with a smile upon its lips, the human spirit made 
 reassertion of its sovereignty, and bade defiance to 
 all the malign fates. 
 
 We have seen that Byronism was essentially a re- 
 crudescence of Wertherism, but it was also some- 
 thing more than that. In seeking for its origins, we 
 must take Rousseau into the account no less than 
 Goethe. How deeply Byron was influenced by 
 Rousseau is made evident by the stanzas which 
 "Childe Harold" gives to the scenes associated with 
 the author of "La Nouvelle H^loise" : 
 
 "Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, 
 The apostle of afiUction, he who threw 
 Enchantment over passion, and from woe 
 Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew 
 The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew 
 How to make madness beautiful, and cast 
 O'er erring deeds and thoughts, a heavenly hue 
 Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past 
 The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast." 
 
 His was the love 
 
 "Of ideal beauty, which became 
 In him existence, and o'erflowing teems 
 Along his burning page, distemper'd though it seems." 
 
76 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 And to him, "phrensied by disease or woe," there 
 came such inspiration as came from the Pythian cave, 
 
 "Those oracles which set the world in flame, 
 Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more.'' 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, who certainly knew good criticism 
 when he saw it, recognised in Byron's characterisa- 
 tion of Rousseau a masterly piece of sympathetic 
 analysis. Dr. A, E. Hancock, in his excellent study 
 of "The French Revolution and the English Poets," 
 a work which supplements Professor Dowden's vol- 
 ume of lectures upon the same subject in several im- 
 portant respects, makes a careful examination of 
 Byron's indebtedness to Rousseau, and finds the two 
 writers to have much in common. He says : 
 
 "Rousseau and Byron spoke for hosts of comrades; they 
 spoke the common experience. Man, exiled in spirit from 
 existing institutions, was flung back upon himself and his own 
 thoughts; his spirit was imprisoned within his own experience; 
 he became, therefore, subjective and intenjsely self-conscious. 
 Finding no satisfaction in the world about him, he turned his 
 attention to himself, scrutinised his own soul, and forged a 
 subjective world of ideal forms. Under the spell and incite- 
 ment of the contemporary outburst of romanticism and im- 
 agination, he was lured, perforce, into the idealising processes 
 which resulted in the malady of the century, the Weltschmerz; 
 that spiritual agony caused by the inadequacy of the world of 
 fact to satisfy the world of the idealist's brain." 
 
 The message of Rousseau is commonly summed up 
 in the appeal for a "return to nature." There are 
 many ways of returning to nature, and many degrees 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 77 
 
 of communion with her. The rich spiritual reward 
 that Wordsworth was to win from this communion 
 was not for Byron. To the former, nature proved 
 a stimulus to thought, a means whereby reflection 
 was heightened, and human life given a fuller mean- 
 ing. To the latter, nature was not so much a stim- 
 ulus as a sedative, not merely a refuge, but a means of 
 forgetfulness. 
 
 "I live not in myself, but I become 
 
 Portion of that around me; and to me 
 
 High mountains are a feeling.'' 
 
 "Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part 
 Of me and of my soul, as I of them?" 
 
 There are no more familiar verses in Byron than 
 these, and they occur in direct connection with his 
 tribute to Rousseau. The latter, however, was without 
 the gift of wit, which Byron possessed in the fullest 
 measure. Although he was never influenced as deeply 
 and directly by Voltaire as he was by Rousseau, upon 
 an important side — ^perhaps the most important side — 
 of his genius he shared in the inheritance which the 
 philosopher of Femey had bequeathed to European 
 thought. His characterisation of Voltaire is almost 
 a characterisation of himself as the poet of "Don 
 Juan" and the "Vision of Judgment." In those 
 poems he reveals himself, like Voltaire, as 
 
 "Fire and fickleness, a child 
 Most mutable in wishes, but in mind 
 A wit as various, — gay, grave, sage, or wild, — 
 Historian, bard, philosopher, combined; 
 
78 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 He multiplied Wmself among mankind. 
 The Proteus of their talents: But his own 
 Breathed most in ridicule, — ^which, as the wind. 
 Blew where it listed, lay all things prone, — 
 Now to o'erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne." 
 
 It is common to speak of Byron as a pessimist, 
 and Schopenhauer found in him a shining example 
 of that view of the world which finds 'the soul of 
 things to be pain, and evil to be rooted in the very 
 heart of human life. Schopenhauer was particu- 
 larly fond of quoting the last stanza of the poem 
 "Euthanasia" as a typical expression of the pes- 
 simistic philosophy. 
 
 "Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen. 
 Count o'er thy days from anguish free. 
 And know, whatever thou hast been, 
 'Tis something better not to be." 
 
 Taken by themselves, these words were well enough 
 suited to Schopenhauer's purpose, which was that of 
 proving all the great poets to have been, in a sense, 
 the forerunners or unconscious exponents of the sys- 
 tem of thought which he worked out with so much 
 of ingenuity and philosophical insight. But the 
 ascription of pessimism to the work of Byron as a 
 whole embodies a superficial judgment, and the note 
 of despair is not the characteristic note of his poetry. 
 It would be straining the point to describe Byron as 
 a poet of faith in the future happiness of mankind. 
 When we think of the sublime faith of Shelley, Byron 
 seems to offer as sharp a contrast as is possible. He 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 79 
 
 was essentially a destructive force, bent upon tear- 
 ing away those barriers to human progress which were 
 defended by the champions of religious and social 
 conservatism, and the radiant vision of a renovated 
 world was withheld from his eyes. Yet even for 
 Byron there were rifts in the storm clouds, and occa- 
 sional glimpses of the blue sky beyond. Pessimism 
 is both a mood and a philosophical doctrine. With 
 Schopenhauer it was the latter, but the host of those 
 who have been fascinated by his exposition thereof 
 are without the analytic power needed to follow the 
 argument, and are far from being the reasoned 
 pessimists that the philosopher would have them. 
 Pessimism as a mood, on the other hand, is an attri- 
 bute of most serious minds at one time or another. 
 What Arnold calls 
 
 "The barren optimistic sophistries 
 Of comfortable moles" 
 
 are so crass and unendurable to the mind of earnest 
 bent, that it is often driven to the extreme of reaction 
 against a view which calmly ignores some of the 
 most obvious facts of life, and to indulge itself in 
 a pessimism which it feels rather than believes. In its 
 common use, the term pessimism is confounded with 
 all sorts of things, with despondency, for example, 
 with righteous indignation at the maladjustments of 
 society, or with that cynicism which is one of the 
 basest of all mental attributes. This misuse of the 
 word may be illustrated in our own time by its f re- 
 
80 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 quent application to the work of Ibsen, who was one 
 of the most passionate idealists that ever lived, and 
 the very fierceness of whose indignation against the 
 existing social order sprang from a deep conviction 
 that man has it within his own power to shape life in 
 fairer and nobler forms than he has ever known. 
 There is something of this temper in Byron, there is 
 also, unfortunately, something more of cynicism. Of 
 philosophy, whether pessimistic or optimistic, there 
 is none worth speaking of, and the deep mood of 
 pessimism finds hardly any expression in his poetry. 
 When we examine the stanza of which Schopenhauer 
 made so much, we cannot escape the feehng that 
 haunts us even in the presence of the best of Byron's 
 work, the feeling that we are in the presence 
 of rhetoric rather than of passion. The sug- 
 gestion of pose, of insincerity, is rarely absent; 
 we feel that there is some degree of truth in Car- 
 lyle's description of Byron as writing, "over many 
 reams of paper, the following sentence, with varia- 
 tions : Saw ever the world one greater or unhappier ?" 
 The true note of pessimism is not heard in Byron, 
 nor is it heard in the European literature which re- 
 flected Byronism. It is heard at its deepest in 
 Leopardi; it is heard in such modern writers as 
 ' "ve been least influenced by Byron, such writers as 
 'enieff and Wilham Morris and Matthew 
 
 , ij ' n^^"- stanza from "Euthanasia" seems the 
 Arnold. 1 Uv , . , , . , , , . 
 
 .1 ^ kmg when set beside the closmg 
 
 merest phrase-rtla- p^^ ° 
 
 lines of "Dover Beach. 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 81 
 
 "For the world, which seems 
 To lie before us like a land of dreams. 
 So various, so beautiful, so new. 
 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light. 
 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 
 And we are here as on a darkling plain 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night." 
 
 Mr. Holger Drachmann, the Danish translator of 
 Byron, once told me, in response to a question, that 
 he still considered Byron a vital force in European 
 literature, but he hastened to add that it was only 
 the Byron of "Don Juan" who had thus survived. 
 Dr. Brandes, the acute critic, Mr. Drachmann's 
 countryman, has written of Byron at great length 
 in the volume entitled "Naturalism in England," and 
 it is particularly of "Don Juan" that he is speak- 
 ing when he discourses as follows: 
 
 "What speech! What tones amid the stillness of death in op- 
 pressed Europe! They cut through the political atmosphere 
 and echoed far and wide; no word of Lord Byron fell unheard 
 to the ground, and the countless ranks of the exiled and the 
 persecuted, the oppressed and the conspirators all over Europe 
 fixed their eyes on this one man, who alone stood erect amidst 
 the universal depression to a low level of both Intelligence and 
 character, fair as an Apollo, brave as an Achilles, prouder than 
 all the European monarchs together. He, the inviolate 
 English peer, became the organ for the dumb bitterness of 
 feeling which tortured the best souls of Europe, the souls of 
 these who most loved freedom, as unchecked and unpunished 
 he poured forth the awful outbursts of his revolutionary 
 wrath." 
 
82 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 Listen to his incisive speech, and note the passion 
 that burns beneath the playfulness of its manner. 
 
 "But never mind; — 'God save the king!' and kings! 
 For if he don't, I doubt if men will longer — 
 I think I hear a little bird, who sings 
 
 The people by and by will be the stronger: 
 The veriest jade will wince whose harness wrings 
 
 So much into the raw as quite to wrong her 
 Beyond the rules of posting, — and the mob 
 At last fall sick of imitating Job. 
 
 "At first it grumbles, then it swears, and then. 
 
 Like David, flings smooth pebbles 'gainst a giant; 
 
 At last it takes to weapons such as men 
 
 Snatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant. 
 
 Then comes the 'tug of war'; 'twill come again 
 I rather doubt; and I would fain say 'fie on't,' 
 
 If I had not perceived that revolution 
 
 Alone can save the earth from hell's pollution. 
 
 "And I will war, at least in words (and — should 
 My chance so happen — deeds) with all who war 
 
 With Thought; — and of Thought's foes by far most rude 
 Tyrants and sycophants have been and are. 
 
 I know not who may conquer; if I could 
 Have such a prescience, it should be no bar 
 
 To this my plain, sworn, downright detestation 
 
 Of every despotism in every nation." 
 
 It must not be forgotten, as the fun waxes fast and 
 furious in this satirical epic, that a current of seri- 
 ous thought flows beneath the rippling surface, and 
 that the very jests of the poet are conceived in a 
 spirit of deadly earnestness. The society of Byron's 
 own time, finding its hypocrisies and mean vices of 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 83 
 
 every description so mercilessly scourged, was quick 
 to recognise that this new form of Byronism was 
 more dangerous than the earlier one, and set about 
 discrediting the work in every possible way. The 
 contemporary criticisms of the poem in the English 
 reviews offer almost unanimous testimony to the 
 effective aim of its satirical shafts. A typically 
 abusive specimen may be taken from The British 
 Critic: 
 
 "Of the four hundred and odd stanzas which the [first] two 
 Cantos contain, not a tittle could, even in the utmost latitude 
 of interpretation, be dignified by the name of poetry. It has 
 not wit enough to be comic, it has not spirit enough to be lyric: 
 nor is it didactic of anything but mischief. The versification 
 and morality are about upon a par; as far, therefore, as we 
 are enabled to give it any character at all, we should pronounce 
 it a narrative of degrading debauchery in doggerel rhyme. The 
 style which the noble lord has adopted is tedious and weari- 
 some to a most insufferable degree. In the present thick and 
 heavy quarto, containing upwards of four himdred doggerel 
 stanzas, there are not a dozen places that, even in the merriest 
 mood, could raise a smile." 
 
 Whoever wrote this opinion was evidently hurt, so 
 much hurt that he does not seem to realise how 
 plainly he was stating the fact. Let us place beside 
 this outcry the opinion of Goethe, who wrote: 
 
 "When we examine the piece more narrowly, we feel that 
 English poetry is in possession of what the German has never 
 attained, a classically elegant comic style. If I am blamed for 
 recommending tliis work for translation — for throwing out 
 hints which may serve to introduce so immoral a performance 
 among a quiet and uncorrupted nation — I answer, that I really 
 
84 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 do not perceive any likelihood of our virtue's sustaining serious 
 damage in this way: Poets and Romancers, bad as they may be, 
 have not yet learned to be more pernicious than the daily 
 newspapers which lie on every table." 
 
 One is tempted to add that they are at the present 
 day still farther from having learned the lesson than 
 they were in Goethe's time. And yet our poets and 
 romancers have gone far. Certainly, as Professor 
 Trent says, "an age that reads without abhorrence 
 certain chapters in 'The Manxman,' in 'Jude the 
 Obscure,' and in 'Evelyn Innes,' cannot with con- 
 sistency put 'Don Juan' beyond the pale." And for 
 a sympathetic estimate of the poem we may turn 
 to the same writer where he says : "It is the greatest 
 of humorous epics, couched in a style that could not 
 be changed except for the worse, and unique in its 
 combination of wit, humour, and satire with a genu- 
 ine and rich vein of romantic and descriptive poetry." 
 It is, in the opinion of this critic, 
 
 "the single sustained work of poetic imagination produced 
 in nineteenth-century England that keeps a level flight, the only 
 one written in a style and verse-form as absolutely appropri- 
 ated by its author as English blank verse is by Milton, the 
 Latin hexameter by Virgil, and the Romantic Alexandrine by 
 Victor Hugo. ... It is the single long poem in English that 
 grows fresher with each reading, and that gives the sense of 
 being in the presence of a spirit of almost boundless capacity." 
 
 The history of public opinion concerning Byron is 
 marked by sudden changes and sharp reactions. The 
 poet who is overpraised in his own generation is 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 85 
 
 reasonably sure of being underpraised in the next, 
 but there are few poets whose fame has suffered such 
 vicissitudes as those to which the fame of Byron has 
 been subject. If he awoke to find himself famous 
 the morning after the appearance of the first two 
 cantos of "Childe Harold," he awoke to find himself 
 infamous when, some three years later, the public 
 learned that Lady Byron had left her husband, after 
 a little more than a year of wedded life. He at once 
 became the victim of almost every form of defamation 
 that could be devised by ingenious malignity, and the 
 British public was shaken by a spasm of virtuous 
 hypocrisy which was unwilling to admit that there 
 was any good whatever in either the life or the work 
 of a poet concerning whom such stories were cir- 
 culated. "He was compared," says Professor Nichol, 
 "to Sardanapalus, Nero, Tiberius, the Duke of 
 Orleans, Heliogabalus, and Satan — all the most dis- 
 reputable persons mentioned in sacred and profane 
 history; his benevolences were maligned, his most 
 disinterested actions perverted." Small wonder that 
 he shook from his feet the dust of a country that 
 could deal with him in such fashion, and that he left 
 England in 1816, never to return. How persistently 
 he was pursued by the voice of slander throughout 
 the remaining eight years of his life, and his memory 
 for many years thereafter, may be read in all the 
 histories of English literature. And strangely 
 enough;, as Professor Nichol goes on to say, "it is 
 from the country of Washington, whom the poet 
 
86 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 was wont to reverence as the purest patriot of the 
 modern world, that in 1869 there emanated the hide- 
 ous story which scandalised both continents, and ulti- 
 mately recoiled on the retailer of the scandal." The 
 abuse which Byron drew upon himself by his reckless- 
 ness of public opinion, and by the irregularities of his 
 life both in England and abroad, could not fail to 
 impair his fame as a poet among his fellow-country- 
 men. The brief period of his early vogue was suc- 
 ceeded by a long term of years during which criti- 
 cism found much to say in his dispraise, and did its 
 best to ignore his real services to English poetry. 
 European critics in general observed this revulsion 
 of feeling with amazement, and accounted for it as 
 a manifestation of British cant, of the social hypoc- 
 risy which was almost universally believed to be the 
 most marked of national characteristics. And so, 
 as Byron's fame waned at home it waxed abroad, 
 and came to assume colossal dimensions. There was 
 something of truth, no doubt, in this Continental 
 theory of the causes which led to the rejection of 
 Byron by his own people. During the eight years 
 of his self-imposed exile, his work was constantly 
 gaining in depth and artistic value, but the English 
 public refused to accord it a reception in any way 
 proportional to its merits. That public had gone 
 into ecstasies over the sentimental first part of 
 "Childe Harold," but refused to be stirred to any- 
 thing like the same degree by the genuine and noble 
 passion of the second part. It was really impossible 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 87 
 
 to approve of the poet whose life in Venice was so 
 scandalous, and who flouted with such contempt the 
 conventions of English respectability. But this ex- 
 planation of the reaction against Byron, although 
 the only one to which Continental critics have ever 
 been willing to listen, is altogether inadequate. It 
 accounts in part only for the rejection of Byron by 
 his own generation, and it accounts hardly at all for 
 the fact that the succeeding generation cared even 
 less for him than his own. The real explanation is 
 a very different one. During the years that elapsed 
 between the death of Byron and the death of Words- 
 worth, that portion of the English public possessed 
 of sufficient intelligence to make its opinion worth 
 considering was undergoing such an education in 
 poetry as has rarely fallen to the share of any mod- 
 em people. Keats and Shelley were coming to their 
 own; Coleridge and Wordsworth were winning their 
 way to that critical acceptance which is based upon 
 the permanent principles of aesthetics rather than 
 upon the passing mood of an age; and the star of 
 Tennyson was burning bright far above the horizon. 
 Readers of nice discernment found in these poets 
 qualities for which they might search Byron in vain, 
 and fine art once more triumphed over the crude ex- 
 pression of passion. It was simply impossible for a 
 generation that had learned to appreciate Tenny- 
 son to 
 
 "Recapture 
 That first, fine, careless rapture" 
 
88 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 of the generation that had been stirred by Byron. 
 German and French critics have never understood 
 this, because, at least until very recent years, they 
 have never known how to value the finer qualities of 
 modern English poetry. The art of Tennyson abso- 
 lutely defies translation into the terms of any other 
 idiom than the English, a statement which may be 
 made with confidence in spite of such an occasional 
 tour de force as Freiligrath's version of "The splen- 
 dour falls on castle walls." The reaction against 
 Byron in English criticism is, on the whole, justified 
 by the development of English poetry since his day. 
 Making all allowances for the unworthy motives 
 which were associated with that reaction when it 
 first became declared, and resting our judgment 
 solely upon such considerations as are legitimate in 
 literary criticism, it seems safe to say that Byron 
 can never again be ranked where he was ranked by 
 his contemporaries, and that the final pronouncement 
 concerning him will take substantially the shape 
 given it by Mr. Swinburne: "As a poet, Byron was 
 surpassed, beyond all question and all comparison, by 
 three men at least of his own time, and matched, if 
 not now and then overmatched, by one or two others." 
 This judgment has been expressed by so many critics 
 of the last thirty or forty years that such occa- 
 sional voices as those of Arnold and Henley, in our 
 own time raised in his behalf, are heard as if crying 
 in the wilderness, and are not likely to reverse the 
 general verdict. 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 89 
 
 As far as the form and spirit of Byron's poetry are 
 
 concerned, the words of Mr. John Morley, whose 
 
 natural sympathies would incline him toward the 
 
 most favourable view, may be taken to indicate the 
 
 modem feeling for Byron as a poet. The work of 
 
 Shelley is the touchstone by which Mr. Morley tests 
 
 the work of Byron, and the comparison is in these 
 
 words : 
 
 "That Shelley was immeasurably superior to Byron in all the 
 rarer qualities of the specially poetic mind appears to us so 
 unmistakably assured a fact, that difference of opinion upon 
 it can only spring from a more fundamental difference of 
 opinion as to what it is that constitutes this specially poetic 
 quality. If more than anything else it consists in the power 
 of transfiguring action, character, and thought, in the serene 
 radiance of the purest imaginative intelligence, and the gift 
 of expressing these transformed products in the finest articulate 
 vibrations of emotional speech, then must we not confess that 
 Byron has composed no piece which from this point may com- 
 pare with 'Prometheus' or the 'Cenci,' any more than Rubens may 
 take his place with Raphael? We feel that Shelley transports 
 the spirit to the highest bound and limit of the intelligible; 
 and that with him thought passes through one superadded and 
 more rarefying process than the other poet is master of. If 
 it be true, as has been written, that 'Poetry is the breath and 
 finer spirit of all knowledge,' we may say that Shelley teaches 
 us to apprehend that further something, the breath and finer 
 spirit of poetry itself. Contrasting, for example, Shelley's 
 'Ode to the West Wind,' with the famous and truly noble 
 stanzas on the eternal sea which closed the fourth canto of 
 'Childe Harold,' who does not feel that there is in the first a 
 volatile and unseizable element that is quite distinct from 
 the imagination and force and high impressiveness, or from 
 any indefinable product of all of these united, which form the 
 glory and power of the second? We may ask in the same 
 way whether 'Manfred,' where the spiritual element is as pre- 
 
90 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 dominant as it ever is in Byron, is worth half a page of 
 'Prometheus.' " 
 
 Concerning the substance of Byron's poetry, Arnold 
 makes this criticism: 
 
 "Byron threw himself upon poetry as his organ; and in 
 poetry his topics were not Queen Mab, and the Witch of Atlas, 
 and the Sensitive Plant, they were the upholders of the old 
 order, George the Third, and Lord Castlereagh, and the Duke 
 of Wellington, and Southey, and they were the canters and 
 tramplers of the great world, and they were his enemies and 
 himself." 
 
 Upon which, Mr. Swinburne delivers himself of the 
 following caustic but not unfair judgment: 
 
 "If I wanted an instance of provincial and barbarian criticism, 
 of criticism inspired by a spirit of sour unreasonableness, a 
 spirit of bitterness and darkness, I should certainly never 
 dream of seeking further than this sentence for the illustration 
 required. It is almost too contemptibly easy to retort in kind 
 by observing that when Shelley threw himself upon poetry as 
 his organ, his topics were not Hours of Idleness, and Hints 
 from Horace, and the Waltz, they were the redemption of the 
 world by the martyrdom of righteousness, and the regeneration 
 of man through 'Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,' 
 and they were the heroism of Beatrice and the ascension of 
 Adonais, and they were the resurrection of Italy and of Greece, 
 and they were the divinest things of nature, made more divine 
 through the interpretation of love infallible and the mastery of 
 insuperable song." 
 
 The subject of Byron's life and character is one 
 with which we are here less concerned than with his 
 poetry, but one which may not be altogether neglected 
 in view of the fact that what he wrote stood in unusu- 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 91 
 
 ally close relations to what he was and what he did. 
 Symonds has written of the various contradictions 
 of his nature in these words, which seem to pene- 
 trate to the root of the matter : 
 
 "The ostentation which repels us in Byron's correspondence 
 and in the records left of him by his associates, the swaggering 
 tone that spoils so much of his best work and makes it im- 
 possible to love the man as we should like to do, may be 
 ascribed to a habit early acquired of self-sophistication. He 
 veneered the true and noble self which gave life to his poetry 
 with a layer of imperfectly comprehended cynicism and weak 
 misanthropy, that passed with him for worldly wisdom. There 
 are two distinct Byrons, interpenetrative, blended in his life 
 and work. To disentangle them is wellnigh impossible; for 
 he cherished his inferior self, and mistook its weakness and its 
 falsehood for strength and sincerity of insight." 
 
 We are compelled, then, to defend Byron against 
 himself if we wish to deal fairly with him. It is 
 easy to be cheaply virtuous, and to denounce the 
 specific failings of a man; it is far less easy to view 
 his character from within, and to interpret his 
 actions with full synfpathy and understanding. The 
 last episode in Byron's life, his devotion to the cause 
 of Greek independence, and the ungrudging gift of 
 all his resources and all his powers to the furtherance 
 of this high impersonal aim, goes far to atone for 
 much that we could wish to have been otherwise in 
 the rest of his life. Upon those closing months, at 
 least, there is no stain, but there is set instead the 
 seal of unselfish heroic endeavour. We may surely 
 be as generous to his memory as Landor was, who 
 
92 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 had been lampooned by Byron, and had joined in 
 the outcry against him. To the "Imaginary Conver- 
 sation" in which Landor had described Byron as a 
 profligate, and reviewed his faults with biting sar- 
 casm, he afterwards added a note containing this 
 language : 
 
 "If, before the dialogue was printed, he had performed those 
 services to Greece which will render his name illustrious to 
 eternity, those by which he merited such funereal honours as, 
 in the parsimony of praise, knowing its value in republics, she 
 hardly would have decreed to the most deserving of her heroes, 
 if, I repeat it, he had performed those services, the performance 
 of which I envy him from my soul, and as much as any other 
 does the gifts of heaven he threw away so carelessly, never 
 would I, from whatever provocation, have written a syllable 
 against him. I had avoided him; I had slighted him; he knew 
 it: he did not love me; he could not. ... I do not talk of 
 weeping or bewailing or lamenting, for I hate false words, and 
 seek with care, difficulty, and moroseness, those that fit the 
 thing — ^why then should I dissemble that, if I have shed no 
 tears, they are at this moment in my eyesl O that I could 
 have clasped his hand before he died! only to make him more 
 enamoured of his own virtues and to keep him with them 
 always !" 
 
 The spirit in which Byron entered upon his mission 
 as an auxiliary in the liberation of Greece, may be 
 illustrated by a passage from his journal, in which 
 he writes: 
 
 "Onwards! it is now the time to act; and what signifies self, 
 if a single spark of that which would be worthy of the past 
 can be bequeathed unquenchably to the future? It is not one 
 man, nor a million, but the gpirit of liberty which must be 
 spread. The waves which dash on the shore are, one by one, 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 93 
 
 broken; but yet the ocean CMiquers nevertheless. It over- 
 whelms the armada; it wears the rock; and if the Neptunians 
 are to be believed, it has not only destroyed but made a worldV 
 
 This, says Mazzini, "is the very abstract of the law 
 governing the efforts of the true party of progress 
 at the present day." And when Byron had once em- 
 barked upon this final venture, all that was visionary 
 about him seemed to vanish. The poet of reverie gave 
 place to the man of action. The hard practical sense 
 that had always been an underlying element in his 
 nature now dominated his thought, and he planned 
 his expedition with all the cool calculation of an old 
 campaigner. He had at last found something to do, 
 something in which he believed with his whole heart, 
 and to do it he gathered together all the energy 
 that was left him. Even the weight of the world- 
 weariness, that had long been upon him, seemed 
 lightened, and, although the Byronic note is not miss- 
 ing from his verses and journals during the last few 
 months of his hfe, it has lost something of its lan- 
 guor, and no longer seems to claim sympathy for the 
 personal woes of the poet alone. In reading of these 
 last few weeks of his life, we are impressed with the 
 sanity and strength of his purpose, and smile at 
 Carlyle's description of the "sham strong man" who 
 "fights little for any good cause anywhere." A 
 responsive echo is struck within us, not by such carp- 
 ings as those of Carlyle, but rather by the eloquent 
 words with which Mr. Swinburne closes the earlier 
 and the more temperate of his two essays on Byron : 
 
94 GEORGE GORDON BYRON 
 
 "As it is, his work was done at Missolonghi; all of his work 
 for which the fates could spare him time. A little space was 
 allowed him to show at least a heroic purpose, and attest a 
 high design: then, with all things unfinished before him and 
 behind, he fell asleep after many troubles and triumphs. Few 
 can ever have gone wearier to the grave; none with less fear. 
 He had done enough to earn his rest. Forgetful now and set 
 free forever from all faults and foes, he passed through the 
 doorway of no ignoble death out of reach of time, out of sight 
 of love, out of hearing of hatred, beyond the blame of England 
 and the praise of Greece. In the full strength of spirit and 
 of body his destiny overtook him and made an end of all his 
 labours. He had seen and borne and achieved more than most 
 men on record. 'He was a great man, good at many things, 
 and now he has attained this also — ^to be at rest.' " 
 
 Many a poet writes his own best epitaph, and Byron 
 has furnished more fitting words for this purpose 
 than another would be hkely to provide. Professor 
 Dowden suggests these lines from "Manfred" : 
 
 "This should have been a noble creature; he 
 Hath all the energy which would have made 
 A goodly frame of glorious elements. 
 Had they been wisely mingled; as it is 
 It is an awful chaos — light and darkness. 
 And mind and dust, and passions and pure thoughts 
 Mix'd, and contending without end or order." 
 
 But even more fitting than these words, in view of 
 the cause for which Byron gave his life, are thpse 
 pf Israel Bertuccio in "Marino Faliero" : 
 
 "They never fail who die 
 In a great cause; the block may soak their gore; 
 Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs 
 Be strung to city gates and castle walls^ 
 
GEORGE GORDON BYRON 96 
 
 But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years 
 Elapse, and others share as dark a doom. 
 They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts 
 Which overpower all others, and conduct 
 The world at last to freedom." 
 
 Let our final memory of Byron remain, then, the 
 memory of those "deep and sweeping thoughts" which 
 flowed from his personality into the intellectual cur- 
 rent of the nineteenth century, and moved the 
 European world as it had never before been moved 
 by any English poet. 
 
Samuel ^ai^lor (toIerit)as 
 
 In discussing the English poets of the first half 
 of the century, it has seemed best, on the whole, to 
 take them up in the order suggested by the dates 
 of their death rather than of their birth. In the 
 cases of all except Landor, this order of treatment 
 has the disadvantage of taking us further back into 
 the eighteenth century with each of the poets con- 
 sidered, although each of them at the same time 
 carries us further on into the nineteenth century. 
 AVhen we set the dates of the five poets side by side 
 for purposes of comparison, the interesting fact 
 appears that the youngest born of them was the first 
 to die, and that, taken in this order, each poet's span 
 of life overlaps at both ends that of the one previ- 
 ously considered. Thus the eighty years of Words- 
 worth embrace the sixty-two of Coleridge, the sixty- 
 two of Coleridge embrace the thirty-six of Byron, 
 the thirty-six of Byron embrace the thirty of Shelley, 
 and the thirty of Shelley embrace the twenty-six of 
 Keats. This singular "telescoping" of the respective 
 periods fails only when we come to Landor, who was 
 five years the junor of Wordsworth, and who out- 
 lived him by fourteen. Since the attitude of these 
 poets toward the revolutionary movement in politics, 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 97 
 
 the rationalising movement in thought, and the ro- 
 mantic movement in literature, is the chief subject of 
 the present chapters, we are compelled to work back- 
 ward as well as forward in summing up their relations 
 to this threefold development. With Byron, Shelley, 
 and Keats, whom we have already considered, this 
 makes very little difference, for they were nearly 
 enough of the same age to be for all practical pur- 
 poses contemporaries. They all reached manhood 
 when the Revolution had become a memory, when "the 
 reactionary spirit had seemed to triumph, and it 
 was their function, or at least the function of two 
 of them, to revive the fading embers, and to prove 
 that the Revolution in its wider meaning had only 
 just begun. With Coleridge and Wordsworth, to 
 whom attention is next invited, the case is different. 
 Coleridge was seventeen and Wordsworth was nine- 
 teen when the Day of the Republic dawned for 
 France, and inaugurated the new era of European 
 thought. In other words, they were at precisely the 
 most impressionable age when the stirring events of 
 1789 made their appeal to all ardent spirits through- 
 out the world, vitalising the thought and action of a 
 generation that had seemed to be sunk in sluggish- 
 ness. Just then Coleridge was still a "charity boy" 
 at Christ's Hospital. He went to Cambridge two 
 years later, and, although our knowledge of his 
 university career is meagre, it includes abundant evi- 
 dence that he was in hearty sympathy with the 
 revolutionary movement. One of his friends tells 
 
98 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 us that the rooms of Coleridge, at that time, were a 
 sort of hotbed of radical discussion, and were 
 "crowded by friends who came to hear their host 
 declaim, and repeat 'whole passages verbatim' from 
 the political pamphlets which then swarmed from the 
 press." He had already celebrated the fall of the 
 Bastile in a boyish ode which declared: 
 
 "I see, I see ! glad Liberty succeed 
 
 With every patriot virtue in her train ! 
 And mark yon peasant's raptured eyes; 
 Secure he views his harvests rise; 
 No fetter vile the mind shall know. 
 And Eloquence shall fearless glow. 
 Yes ! Liberty the soul of Life shall reign. 
 Shall throb in every pulse, shall flow thro' every vein !" 
 
 Three years later, in some lines addressed "To a 
 Young Lady," he described the feelings which had 
 been aroused in him when "slumbering freedom" on 
 that great day "with giant fury burst her triple 
 chain." 
 
 "Fierce on her front the blasting Dog-star glowed; 
 Her banners, like a midnight meteor, flowed; 
 Amid the yelling of the storm-rent skies! 
 She came, and scattered battles from her eyes! 
 Then Exultation waked the patriot fire 
 And swept with wilder hand the Alcaean lyre: 
 Red from the Tyrant's wound I shook the lance, 
 And strode in joy the reeking plains of France!" 
 
 In the autumn of 1794, he joined with Southey in 
 writing the three-act drama, "The Fall of Robes- 
 pierre/' attempting, in his own words, "to imitate 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 99 
 
 the empassioned and highly figurative language of 
 the French orators, and to develop the characters 
 of the chief actors on a vast stage of horrors." It is 
 a performance of no particular value, but interesting 
 as an index to the state of the poet's mind at that 
 time. A few months later, he contributed to The 
 Morning Chronicle those "Sonnets on Eminent Char- 
 acters," which Brandl calls "the most burning and di- 
 rect effusions of anger that the English lyrical school 
 of the eighteenth century ever poured forth." Among 
 the subjects of these sonnets were Burke, Priestley, 
 Pitt, Godwin, Southey, Lafayette, and Kosciusko. 
 Burke, for example, is thus apostrophised by the per- 
 sonified spirit of freedom: 
 
 "Great Son of Genius ! sweet to me thy name. 
 Ere in an evil hour with altered voice 
 "Hiou badst Oppression's hireling crew rejoice 
 Blasting with wizard spell my laurelled fame." 
 
 When Coleridge wrote these lines he little realised 
 that the irony of fate would within a few years make 
 them fairly apphcable to himself. Nor in describing 
 Pitt as a "foul apostate from his Father's fame," 
 could he foresee that he would himself soon deserve the 
 ascription of apostasy. It would be interesting for 
 us to know more fully than is now possible the 
 reasons why the revolutionary ardour of Coleridge 
 became so quickly cooled. How it was that the en- 
 thusiastic champion of the French in their struggle 
 for freedom so soon relapsed ipto the complacei}|; 
 
100 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 English Tory, or something like that, distrustful 
 of all subversions and popular movements, it is diffi- 
 cult to comprehend. We know that this change of 
 feeling occurred in him, in common with Wordsworth 
 and Southey, and even more rapidly than with them. 
 It is true that the French struggle for freedom was 
 about to be transformed into a mad struggle for 
 dominion over the rest of Europe, and that the im- 
 pending military despotism of Napoleon was in a 
 way foreshadowed even before the expedition to 
 Egypt. The disillusionment of this prospect was a 
 sad blow to the hopes of all lovers of liberty in Eng- 
 land and elsewhere, but it need not have led to that 
 condemnation of the Revolution and all its ways 
 which finds expression in the later work of Coleridge 
 and Wordsworth. We know that the excesses of the 
 Revolution and the abandonment of the early ideal 
 of freedom for France in favour of the later ideal 
 of subjugation for the rest of Europe, created a 
 feeling of distrust and horror in many men of noble 
 impulses but contracted vision. We can- understand 
 the eiFect of these things upon the mind of Southey, 
 and even upon the mind of Wordsworth, but upon 
 the mind of Coleridge, distinguished for analytical 
 power and prophetic insight, we cannot so easily 
 understand it. The faith of Landor in the principles 
 of the Revolution remained firm to the end, but the 
 faith of Coleridge could not bear the strain put upon 
 it by the events of the hour. His change of attitude 
 is indissolubly associated with the two "Odes" which 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 101 
 
 are among the greater glories of all English poetry. 
 The "Ode on the Departing Year" was written in 
 December, 1796, the "France" in February, 1798. 
 Who can ever forget the magnifipent music with 
 which the first of these odes begins.'' 
 
 "Spirit who sweepest the wild Harp of Time! 
 
 It is most hard, with an untroubled ear 
 
 Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear I 
 Yet, mine eye fixed on Heaven's unchanging clime 
 Long had I listened, free from mortal fear, 
 
 With inward stillness, and submitted mind; 
 
 When lo ! its folds far waving on the wind, 
 I saw the train of the Departing Year I" 
 
 In this ode the poet's love for his own country strug- 
 gles with his sense of her guilt. The spirit of Liberty 
 is abroad, and England still clings to the gods of 
 avarice and materialism. Her crimes call for atone- 
 ment, yet the poet believes her "not yet enslaved, not 
 wholly vile." He fears for her, yet is not altogether 
 without hope. Meanwhile, the increasing dangers 
 to which she is subject, both from her own vices and 
 from the menace of French invasion, are instinctively 
 arousing the poet's latent patriotism, and preparing 
 him for the second of the great odes. The encroach- 
 ment of the French forces upon the hitherto inviolate 
 soil of the Swiss Cantons was the immediate cause of 
 this second ode, which is sometimes called the "Recan- 
 tation," and which marks the turning point in the 
 development of Coleridge's ideals. All lovers of 
 poetry know these magnificent lines, which invoke the 
 
102 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 forests and the seas, the skies and the sun, to bear 
 witness with what deep worship the poet has ever 
 adored "the spirit of divinest Liberty." 
 
 "When Prance in wrath her giant-limbs upreared. 
 
 And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea. 
 
 Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free. 
 Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared! 
 With what a joy my lofty gratulation 
 
 Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band: 
 And when to whelm the disenchanted nation. 
 
 Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand. 
 The Monarchs marched in evil day. 
 And Britain join'd the dire array; 
 
 Though dear her shores and circling ocean. 
 Though many friendships, many youthful loves 
 
 Had swoln the patriot emotion 
 And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves; 
 Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat 
 
 To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance, 
 And shame too long delay'd and vain retreat ! 
 For ne'er, O Liberty! with partial aim 
 I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame; 
 
 But blessed the pseans of delivered France, 
 And hung my head and wept at Britain's name." 
 
 Even when "Blasphemy's loud scream" had brought 
 discord into the "sweet music of deliverance," even 
 when storms "round the dawning east assembled," 
 he did not falter, but only "reproached the fears that 
 would not flee." But the attack upon Switzerland 
 brought about a revulsion of feeling; he discovered 
 that he had been tricked, deluded by false promises 
 and spurious professions of a lofty purpose. 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 103 
 
 "O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind. 
 
 And patriot only in pernicious toils ! 
 Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? 
 
 To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway. 
 Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey; 
 To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils 
 
 From freemen torn; to tempt and to betray?" 
 
 His hopes thus frustrated, he takes refuge in an 
 abstract and metaphysical conception of freedom, 
 and turns to nature, somewhat as Byron did, to find 
 in her an anodyne for grief. 
 
 "The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 
 
 Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad game 
 
 They burst their manacles and wear the name 
 
 Of Freedom graven on a heavier chain !" 
 
 The true spirit of freedom is that of the winds and 
 the waves, and in communion with them the soul finds 
 the peace which it has sought in vain amid the 
 turmoil of human strife. 
 
 "And there I felt thee I — on that sea-cliff's verge, 
 Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above. 
 Had made one murmur with the distant surge! 
 Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare. 
 And shot my being through earth, sea and air. 
 Possessing all things with intensest love, 
 O Liberty ! my spirit felt thee there." 
 
 "Such a doctrine approaches hazardously near to 
 political ' despair," says Professor Dowden, who thus 
 summarises the final conclusion of the poet : 
 
 "The idea of God possessed him; he seemed to feel the Divine 
 Presence as a breeze, plastic and vast, which plays over and 
 
104 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 through the whole of animated nature like the wind amid the 
 chords of an ^olian harp. True freedom was to be found in 
 communion and co-operancy with this universal Deity; to chain 
 down one's thoughts in false philosophy to the gross and visible 
 sphere, — ^that indeed was slavery. Through the fierce strife 
 between the powers of chaos and the powers of order which 
 fills the world there is yet discernible to the eye of faith an 
 eternal process of good. In this religious optimism, this belief 
 of a divine evolution of society, unhasting, unresting, lay in 
 embryo the future conservatism of Coleridge." 
 
 In his later view, the one palpable product of the 
 Revolution had become that reckless ambition which, 
 incarnate in Napoleon, sought to destroy for the rest 
 of Europe the very liberties which France had so 
 strenuously asserted for herself. And when, with 
 the immediate danger to England that came with the 
 French forces gathered at Boulogne for their con- 
 templated expedition across the Channel, "a second 
 springtime of enthusiasm" came for the English peo- 
 ple, the enthusiasm was for a national rather than 
 for a cosmopolitan ideal. Coleridge and Words- 
 worth and Southey became ardent nationalists. This 
 new attitude of Coleridge finds expression in his verse, 
 which declares 
 
 "There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul 
 Unborrowed from my country," 
 
 and in the "Biographia Literaria," in which French 
 ideas and French influences are denounced with the 
 utmost vehemence. In his later prose writings, par- 
 ticularly in "The Friend," he seeks to justify his 
 change of attitude by pointing out the fallacies of 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 105 
 
 Rousseau and his followers, and characterising 
 French philosophy in general as sensual and 
 atheistic. 
 
 It seems to be desirable at this point of the dis- 
 cussion to pause for an inquiry into the meaning of 
 freedom as the concept was held by Coleridge, by 
 his contemporaries and his successors. With the 
 purely metaphysical conception of individual free- 
 dom we are not now concerned. But of freedom in 
 the sense in which the term was commonly used by 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth, by Shelley and Byron, 
 there are some important things to say, and an im- 
 portant distinction to be drawn. Freedom may be 
 either external or internal, and the ideal of the latter 
 is very different from the ideal of the former, al- 
 though to a certain extent conditioned by it. Groethe, 
 with that marvellous insight into the spiritual life of 
 his own and the coming generations which made him 
 the chief voice of the nineteenth century, declared that 
 his best gift to mankind was the gift of a certain inner 
 freedom which is the most precious of aU intellectual 
 possessions. This freedom of the spirit was to him 
 a far more important thing than the political free- 
 dom for which so much clamour was made about him, 
 and he remained serenely unmoved by all the re- 
 proaches of those who censured him for a lack of 
 the narrower sort of patriotic fervour. Conscious 
 that he was working for a larger emancipation than 
 was aimed at by the revolutionary forces of his time, 
 he bore the burden of unjust reproach, and his enor- 
 
106 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 mous influence upon the century recently ended, has 
 justified an attitude toward the problems of his own 
 time which to his contemporaries seemed too unsym- 
 pathetic and Olympian. Of the group of English 
 poets with which we are now dealing, Goethe thought 
 Byron much the greatest, because he discovered in 
 that forceful personality an aspiration toward the 
 wider spiritual freedom which the entire work of 
 Goethe's own life sought to secure for his fellow men. 
 In this view Goethe was right, for Byron was at least 
 struggling toward a higher ideal of freedom than 
 that which Coleridge and Wordsworth, in their early 
 revolutionary enthusiasm, had in view. Had Goethe 
 become better acquainted with the work of Shelley, 
 he could hardly have failed to recognise in that work, 
 as we now recognise in it, a spirit more akin to his 
 own than that which wa? manifested in the work of 
 Byron. The ideals which remained turbid in the best 
 of Byron's rhetoric became clarified in Shelley's song, 
 and it is in the latter poet that the freedom of the 
 spirit finds its supreme expression in Enghsh litera- 
 ture. And in our own time, the message of Goethe 
 and Shelley again comes to our ears in the words of 
 Ibsen, who expresses the fundamental distinction be- 
 tween Coleridge and Wordsworth in their revolution- 
 ary phase, on the one hand, and Byron and Shelley 
 on the other, when he says : "Men still call for special 
 revolutions — for revolutions in politics, in externals. 
 But all that sort of thing is trumpery. It is the 
 human soul that must revolt." The distinction be- 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 107 
 
 tween the two conceptions of freedom to be found in 
 the work of the English poets of the Revolution has 
 been so clearly drawn by Dr. Brandes, in his "Main 
 Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury," that I wish to translate from him at some 
 length. To analyse this twofold use of the concept, 
 he says, we must ask two simple questions: freedom 
 from what.? freedom to do what.!" and he continues 
 as follows: 
 
 "For these conservative poets freedom is a single definite thing, 
 which England has and which Europe lacks, the right of a 
 country to govern itself without an absolute ruler, particularly 
 without an absolute ruler of foreign origin. The country 
 which has this privilege is free. Freedom in this camp means 
 freedom from foreign political despotism; freedom to do 
 something does not enter into the question. Glance at Words- 
 worth's sonnets upon freedom, and see what he sings about. 
 It is the struggle of the European peoples against Napoleon, 
 who figures as a sort of Antichrist. The poet laments the 
 French conquest of Spain, of Switzerland, of Venice, of the 
 Tyrol. . . . His poems follow his country in its struggles, and, 
 lilte Southey, he celebrates each of its victories." 
 
 For Coleridge and Wordsworth, the people as it 
 was constituted an ideal, but Byron and Shelley 
 
 "sought to compel their people to direct its gaze toward a 
 distant, even an unrecognised ideal; the former flattered the 
 people and were crowned with laurel, the latter instructed 
 and disciplined the people and were cast out of its 
 bosom. . . . For these latter the idea of freedom was not 
 to be realised in a country or in a constitution; it was 
 no ready-made thing, nor for them was the struggle for free- 
 dom realised in an essentially selfish war against a revolu- 
 tionary conqueror. They felt deeply how great a bondage. 
 
108 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 political as well as spiritual, religious as well as social, might 
 exist under a so-called free constitution. Not deeply aroused 
 to sing hymns of praise concerning what mankind, and 
 particularly their fellow countrymen, had accomplished, they 
 felt under the so-called free regime a deep and burning need 
 of freedom, a need of freedom to do many things — to think 
 without regard for dogma and to write without bowing to 
 public opinion, to act in consonance with the inmost individuality 
 without being controlled by people who, themselves without 
 distinctive personality, were the most esteemed and the most 
 merciless judges of those defects of character which were 
 bound up with self-sufficiency, originality, and genius. . . . 
 For the Lake poets constraint was not constraint if it was 
 English, tyranny was not tyranny if it proceeded from the 
 constitutional monarchy, obscurantism was not really ob- 
 scurantism if it proceeded from the Protestant church. The 
 radical poets called constraint constraint, even when it raised 
 England's own banner over its head and confronted its op- 
 ponents with the English cockade; they extended the opposition 
 against absolute kings to kings in general, they wished the 
 world not merely freed from the rule of Catholic priests but 
 from priestcraft of every description. When they beheld the 
 poets of the opposing school, who in the ardour of youth had 
 gone quite as far as they themselves had gone, devote them- 
 selves with all the zeal of renegades to the laudation of the 
 Tory government of England, they could not consider such 
 men as other than the enemies of freedom. . . . When Shelley 
 sings of freedom, we feel that it is no thing to be seized by the 
 hands, or granted by a constitution, or confirmed by a national 
 church, but that it is the eternal demand of the human spirit, 
 its indispensable craving, the Are from heaven which Prome- 
 theus set as a spark in the human heart, and which it has been 
 the endeavour of the greatest poets to fan into flame, which 
 is the source of all light and warmth for those who feel how 
 cold and deathly life would be without it. This is the freedom 
 which in every century arises under a new name, which in the 
 Middle Ages was persecuted and rooted out under the name of 
 heresy, in the sixteenth century was fought and championed 
 under the name of Reformation, in the seventeenth century 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 109 
 
 was doomed to Are and sword as witchcraft and atheism, in 
 the eighteenth century became a gospel in the form of phi- 
 losophy and then with the Revolution a power in political guise, 
 and which iinally in our own century receives the contemptuous 
 epithet of 'radicalism' from the spokesmen of an outworn past." 
 
 Thus far Dr. Brandes, whose own pronounced 
 radicalism makes him a peculiarly unsympathetic 
 critic of the conservative temper. We can easily 
 understand how, to such a mind, a thinker of the 
 type of Coleridge must appear in an altogether un- 
 favourable light. At an early age Coleridge came 
 to realise the inadequacy, if not the futility, of the 
 external ideal of freedom which had enlisted his 
 youthful sympathies. The bent of his intellect was 
 such as to make it impossible that he should trans- 
 form this ideal into the deeper one of spiritual free- 
 dom as conceived by Goethe and Shelley. As far as 
 the institutions and the organisation of society were 
 concerned, he accepted the reactionary programme 
 almost in its entirety, and seemed to delight in its 
 bondage. Freedom to dream was about the only 
 freedom that his personal need demanded, and in this 
 he could indulge as an adherent of the Monarchy, 
 the Establishment, and the conservative order in gen- 
 eral. Thought and action became in him so dis- 
 sociated, speculation became a thing so unrelated to 
 practical life, that he did not feel the imperious need 
 of that form of aggressive intellectual freedom which 
 ever seeks to ally itself with deed, and to become 
 translated into the terms of life. He remained a 
 
110 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 visionary throughout his career, for imagination 
 overbalanced the practical instinct, and the infirmity 
 of his will precluded him from acting effectively and 
 directly upon his age in accordance with any definite 
 plan. We smile at some of the earlier efforts of 
 Shelley to give effect to his idealism, but they seem 
 the very embodiment of hard practical sense when 
 compared with the best efforts of Coleridge to fit 
 means with ends. From his childhood he was marked 
 out to be a dreamer. He says : 
 
 "I used to lie by the wall and mope; and ray spirits used to 
 come upon me sudden, and in a flood; and I then was ac- 
 customed to run up and down the church-yard and act over 
 again all I had been reading, to the docks and the nettles and 
 the rank grass. ... At six years of age ... I found the 
 'Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' one tale of which . . . made 
 so deep an impression on me . . . that I was haunted by 
 spectres whenever I was in the dark; and I distinctly recollect 
 the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch 
 the window where the book lay, and when the sun came upon it, 
 I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask and read. , . . 
 So I became a dreamer, and acquired an indisposition to all 
 bodily activity. ... I never thought as a child, never had the 
 language of a child. . . . From my early reading of fairy 
 tales and about genii, and the like, my mind had been habituated 
 to the Vast; and I never regarded my senses in any way as the 
 criteria of my belief. I regulated all my creeds by my con- 
 ceptions, not by my sight, even at that age." 
 
 No wonder that the childhood whose fancy was thus 
 unregulated grew into the manhood which described 
 "accounts of all strange phantasms that ever pos- 
 sessed your philosophy-dreamers," as its "darling 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 111 
 
 studies," and found sustenance in the neo-Platonism 
 of Proclus and Plotinus. The tendency to mysticism, 
 thus manifested at an early age, became the char- 
 acteristic feature of the poet's thought. Expressed 
 in verse, it gave to English literature those composi- 
 tions which for sheer imaginative vision stand abso- 
 lutely without companions, and indicate the high- 
 water mark of the poet's genius. Expressed in prose, 
 it introduced into English philosophy an element 
 which was much needed by the countrymen of Hobbes 
 and Locke, the element of transcendentalism which 
 Coleridge brought back with him from Germany. 
 It is to be noted that, as at an earlier period he had 
 found sustenance in the neo-Platonists rather than 
 in Plato himself, so his excursions into German phi- 
 losophy made him better acquainted with the second- 
 rate thinkers who were the successors of Kant rather 
 than with Kant himself. The compact and logical 
 structure of the Kantian system made less appeal to 
 him than the blurred and distorted outlines of that 
 system as they appeared in the iridescent romantic 
 colouring of Schelling. For a philosophy devoid of 
 mysticism he could have little sympathy, and the 
 element of mysticism was supplied by Schelling. Car- 
 lyle, a few years later, similarly seeking the German 
 philosophical pasture, required a more dominant and 
 aggressive ethical doctrine than Kant could provide, 
 and found it in Fichte. I might also mention the 
 case of our own Concord philosophers, who got so 
 much valuable stimulus from their explorations of 
 
112 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 German philosophy, but who got it mainly from the 
 secondary sources. They had a great deal to say 
 about transcendentalism, but it is doubtful if they 
 ever understood its meaning. And it is likewise doubt- 
 ful if Coleridge ever had any conception of what the 
 "Critique of Pure Reason" had accomplished for 
 philosophical thought. His own attitude toward the 
 fundamental problem of philosophy is that which 
 Walter Pater has characterised in the following 
 words: "The suspicion of a mind latent in nature, 
 struggling for relief, and intercourse with the intel- 
 lect of man through true ideas, has never ceased to 
 haunt a certain class of minds. . . . Wherever the 
 speculative instinct has been united with a certain 
 poetic inwardness of temperament, as in Bruno, in 
 Schelling, there that old Greek conception, like some 
 seed floating in the air, has taken root and sprung up 
 anew." Coleridge had precisely this type of mind, 
 and his philosophy, if we may give so ambitious a 
 name to so incoherent a thing, is a philosophy in 
 which nature is viewed as thus interpenetrated with 
 the element of the Divine. His philosophy embodies 
 a reaction from the eighteenth-century philosophy 
 of experience, and endeavours to restore the intuitive 
 faculty to the place from which it has been cast. 
 Coleridge fastened particularly upon the technical 
 Kantian distinction between understanding and rea- 
 son (Ver stand and Vernimft) and made it the control- 
 ling principle of his philosophical teaching. John 
 Stuart Mill's statement of this doctrine, as held by 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 113 
 
 Coleridge, may be quoted by way of explana- 
 tion. 
 
 "He claims for the human mind a capacity, within certain 
 limits, of perceiving the nature and properties of things in 
 themselves! He distinguishes in the human intellect two 
 faculties, which, in the technical language common to him with 
 the Germans, he calls Understanding and Reason. The former 
 faculty judges of phenomena, or the appearances of things, 
 and forms generalisations from these: to the latter it belongs, 
 by direct intuition, to perceive things, and recognise truths, 
 not cognisable by our senses. These perceptions are not indeed 
 innate, nor could ever have been awakened in us without ex- 
 perience; but they are not copies of it: experience is not their 
 prototype; it is only the occasion by which they are irresistibly 
 suggested. . . . Among the truths which are thus known 
 A priori, by occasion of experience, but not themselves the sub- 
 ject of experience, Coleridge includes the fundamental doc- 
 trines of religion and morals, the principles of mathematics, 
 and the ultimate laws even of physical nature; which he con- 
 tends cannot be proved by experience, though they mus^ii neces- 
 sarily be consistent with it, and would, if we knew them 
 perfectly, enable us to account for all observed facts, and to 
 predict all those which are as yet unobserved." 
 
 Provided with this distinction as a basis for his philo- 
 sophical reflections, Coleridge believed that it was pos- 
 sible to harmonise the conquests of metaphysical 
 thought with the doctrines of revealed religion as 
 held by the Church of which he became so zealous a 
 champion. His belief in the transcendental power 
 of the reason opened the way for his intellectual 
 acceptance of the ideas, however fantastic, that 
 appealed to him in the writings of such men as 
 Bruno, and Boehme, and the author of the "Theologia 
 
114 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 Germanica." "The writings of these mystics," he 
 himself confesses, 
 
 "acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being 
 imprisoned within the outline of any single dogmatic system. 
 They contributed to keep alive the heart in the head; gave me 
 an indistinct, yet stirring and working presentiment, that all 
 the products of the mere reflective faculty partook of death, 
 and were as the rattling twigs and sprays in winter, into which 
 a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had 
 not penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or 
 shelter. If they were too often a moving cloud of smoke to 
 me by day, yet they were always a, pillar of fire throughout 
 the night, during my wanderings through the wilderness of 
 doubt, and enabled me to skirt, without crossing, the sandy 
 deserts of utter unbelief." 
 
 Coleridge shares with Scott and Carlyle the dis- 
 tinction of having been a pioneer in the work of 
 making the English public acquainted with the 
 literary and philosophical movement of German 
 thought. The nineteenth-century influence of Ger- 
 man upon English literature has been no less wide- 
 spread and profound than were the earlier influences 
 of Itahan and French literature. Before these three 
 men did their work, German literature was prac- 
 tically unknown in England, and few Englishmen 
 ever thought of learning the German language. 
 Since their time, German literature has become the 
 greatest of all foreign influences upon our own, and 
 acquaintance with the German language has become 
 indispensable for every reader who hopes to keep 
 a,breast of modern culture. The particular treasures 
 of thought or of literary expression which these men 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 115 
 
 brought back from their German wanderings are of 
 less importance than the simple fact that they turned 
 the minds of Englishmen toward German sources of 
 inspiration. In most matters of intellectual concern, 
 England at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 had fallen behind the rest of Europe. It took a pa- 
 rochial view of both art and life. In literature, the ro- 
 mantic movement in England was struggling to make 
 itself felt, while upon the Continent it was carrying 
 all before it. The England of an earlier age had 
 taught political philosophy to the rest of Europe, but 
 was forgetting its own lessons, while other countries 
 were bettering the instruction. Weimar and Konigs- 
 berg were the intellectual foci of the Continent, and 
 the influence of Goethe and Kant was quickening the 
 life of the new generation. Nor was the predomi- 
 nance of Germany dependent alone upon the influ- 
 ence of the greatest of modern poets and the great- 
 est of modern philosophers. The new movement had 
 affected all the departments of intellectual and artis- 
 tic activity. Under the influence of Herder, a new 
 philosophy of history had come into being. A new 
 sense of the meaning of classical art had been created 
 by Winckelmann and Lessing. Lessing had also given 
 to criticism a new significance. Classical scholarship 
 had received a new impetus from the bold specula- 
 tions of Wolf. The one new art of the modern world 
 — the art of music — ^had found its richest develop- 
 ment in Germany, and had achieved almost complete 
 mastery of its material. Of all this vigorous Intel- 
 
116 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 lectual life England knew practically nothing until 
 Coleridge and Carlyle made their report, and ap- 
 prised their countrymen that the spirit of slothful- 
 ness was fast leading them to a condition of intel- 
 lectual decay. 
 
 "In the more advanced nations of the Continent," says Mill, 
 "the prevailing philosophy had done its work completely: it 
 had spread itself over every department of human knowledge; 
 it had taken possession of the whole Continental mind; and 
 scarcely one educated person was left who retained any alle- 
 giance to the opinons or the institutions of ancient times. In 
 England, the native country of compromise, things had stopped 
 far short of this; the philosophical movement had been brought 
 to a halt in an early stage; and a peace had been patched up 
 by concessions on both sides, between the philosophy of the 
 time and its traditional institutions and creeds. Hence the 
 aberrations of the age were generally, on the Continent, at 
 that period, the extravagances of new opinions; in England, the 
 corruptions of old ones." 
 
 As a specific illustration of this blissful insular igno- 
 rance of what the world at large was thinking and 
 doing, Mill mentions the fact that an English scholar 
 of repute had recently announced, "with all the pomp 
 and heraldry of triumphant genius," the discovery 
 that "the Roman Empire perished, not from outward 
 violence, but from inward decay; and that the bar- 
 barian conquerors were the renovators, not the de- 
 stroyers, of its civiHsation." Whereupon Mill ob- 
 serves: "There is not a schoolboy in France or Ger- 
 many who did not possess this writer's discovery 
 before him: the contrary opinion has receded so far 
 into the past, that it must be rather a learned 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 117 
 
 Frenchman or German who remembers that it was 
 ever held." This indication of the intellectual con- 
 dition of the nation that had produced a Gibbon 
 shows how greatly the England of the early nine- 
 teenth century was in need of a current of fresh 
 thought. It was the mission of Coleridge and a 
 few of his contemporaries to divert this current into 
 the English channels that had run dry, and to irri- 
 gate the soil as a preparation for a new intellectual 
 harvest. It was not, then, merely as the translator 
 of Schiller's "Wallenstein" that Coleridge brought 
 the German influence into English literature, it was 
 rather as the student of the great philosophers and 
 scholars and humanists of the Continent that he per- 
 formed his essential service to his countrymen. Im- 
 perfect and confused as was his apprehension of the 
 new thought which he thus aimed to interpret, his 
 influence was very great because it was exerted in 
 the right direction rather than because of any finality 
 in what it immediately accomplished. Mill hardly 
 says too much of him when he declares, writing in 
 1840, that, "Bentham excepted, no Englishman has 
 left his impress so deeply in the opinions and mental 
 tendencies of those among us who attempt to en- 
 lighten their practice by philosophical meditation." 
 What Coleridge did for England at this time was 
 similar to what Madame de Stael and Benjamin 
 Constant had done a few years before for France, 
 and what Henrik Steffens was at the same time doing 
 for the Scandinavian countries. In the history of 
 
118 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 intellectual development, there are no more inter- 
 esting periods than those in which some nation, which 
 has lagged behind in the race, receives the impact of 
 fresh ideas from abroad, and responds to their quick- 
 ening influence. This is what gives such extraordi- 
 nary interest to the study of the Renaissance period, 
 the eighteenth-century period of French political 
 philosophy, and our own modern period of complex 
 international and interracial reactions. 
 
 In the history of literary criticism Coleridge occu- 
 pies an important place, and his influence upon mod- 
 ern English poetics has been considerable. It would 
 have been far greater were it not for the frag- 
 mentary character of his critical writings. His 
 marginalia, his lecture-notes, and his "Biographia 
 Literaria" constitute a rich treasury of subtle 
 thought upon the problems of literary art, and no 
 student can aff'ord to neglect them. The exposition 
 is often laboured and forbidding, but the reader will 
 find his reward in those flashes of insight which so 
 frequently illuminate the subject under discussion, 
 and penetrate to the very heart of the question at 
 issue. What Professor Dowden calls "the passion 
 for truth-seeking and the desire to find rest in 
 primary principles" are everywhere characteristic 
 of Coleridge's criticism, when dealing with a literary 
 composition no less than with a system of meta- 
 physics. This endeavour to fix upon fundamental 
 ideas, and to estimate literature in accordance with 
 them, marks a new departure in English criticism. 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 119 
 
 It is one application of the lesson which Coleridge 
 learned from the German, and it gives to his critical 
 vision a depth greater than that possessed by the 
 vision of his predecessors of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. What his thoroughgoing 
 methods did for Shakespeare is well known; they 
 helped Englishmen to understand the true greatness of 
 their myriad-minded poet as it had never been under- 
 stood before. The methods proved equally illuminat- 
 ing when applied to the critic's own contemporaries, 
 and in defending Wordsworth the poet against 
 Wordsworth the theorist Coleridge marked out a 
 true critical course, and anticipated the verdict of 
 posterity. If we set any page of Coleridge side by 
 side with any page of Dr. Johnson, the diiFerences 
 in method and in spirit appear startling indeed. The 
 one is all prejudice and dogmatism, the other is all 
 suggestion and inquiry. To find "the inner springs 
 of life in each work of art, and so put us on the 
 track which the artist followed in the act of crea- 
 tion" is the aim of Coleridge, as it has been the aim 
 of all serious criticism since his time. The essential 
 article of his creed, as far as poetry is concerned, is 
 found in the following passage: "I adopt with full 
 faith the principle of Aristotle, that poetry, as 
 poetry, is essentially ideal, that it avoids and ex- 
 cludes all accident; that its apparent individualities 
 of rank, character, or occupation, must be repre- 
 sentative of a class: and that the persons of poetry 
 must be clothed with generic attributes, with the 
 
120 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 common attributes of the class : not with such as one 
 gifted individual might possibly possess, but such 
 as from his situation it is most probable beforehand 
 that he would possess." This quotation must suffice 
 for our present purpose; to disentangle the critical 
 principles of Coleridge from their context of bramble, 
 and to set them forth in any coherent and orderly 
 fashion, is a task that would require a volume to 
 itself. I must remain content with calling attention ■ 
 to the fact that Coleridge is one of those poets who, 
 like Wordsworth and Arnold, are also important 
 critics, and not a poet who eschews criticism, as 
 Keats did, or whose excursions into criticism, like 
 those of Byron, were so luckless as to make us wish 
 that they had never been taken. 
 
 Although primarily a poet, Coleridge was so much 
 more than a poet that any well-proportioned account 
 of his activities must take account of many other 
 things besides his verse. Some account has already 
 been taken of his philosophy and of his criticism. 
 We all know the words of Lamb's passionate invoca- 
 tion to the memory of the friend of his youth, who 
 even as a boy gave evidence of the speculative range 
 that was to characterise the thought of his man- 
 hood: 
 
 "Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspririg 
 of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee — ^the 
 dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge — ^Logician, 
 Metaphysician, Bard! — How have I seen the casual passer 
 through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration, 
 (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE lai 
 
 the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in 
 thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, 
 or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale 
 at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greelc, 
 or Pindar — ^while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed 
 to the accents of the inspired charity boy I" 
 
 In this famous passage, the metaphysician takes 
 precedence over the poet, and the prose writings of 
 Coleridge, as we know, greatly exceed in quantity his 
 original verse. When we consider the fact that for 
 about fifteen years of the best part of his life the 
 pillar of fire was transformed into the pillar of cloud, 
 we may well be surprised at the extent and value of 
 his performance. Something must be said of those 
 phases of his activity which made him a journalist 
 and a lecturer. His first venture in journahsm was 
 The Watchman, of which Mr. Traill gives an inter- 
 esting account. 
 
 "This paper was to be published on every eighth day, so that 
 the week-day of its appearance would of course vary with each 
 successive week — an arrangement as ingeniously calculated to 
 irritate and alienate its public as any, perhaps, that the wit 
 of man could have devised. By dint of diligent canvassing a 
 subscription-list was secured and the publication began. Ten 
 numbers were issued altogether, and then it came to an end. 
 A naturally short life was suicidally shortened. In the second 
 number, records Coleridge, with delightful naivete, 'an essay 
 against fast-days, with a most censurable application of a text 
 from Isaiah (Wherefore my bowels shall sound like a harp) 
 for its motto, lost me near Ave hundred subscribers at one blow.' 
 In the two following numbers he made enemies of all his 
 Jacobin and democratic patrons by playing Balaam to the 
 legislation of the government and pronouncing something 
 
122 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 almost like a blessing on the 'gagging bills' — measures, he 
 declared, which, 'whatever the motive of their introduction, 
 would produce an effect to be desired by all true friends of 
 freedom, as far as they should contribute to deter men from 
 openly declaiming on subjects the principles of which they had 
 never fathomed, and from pleading to the poor and ignorant 
 instead of pleading for them.' At the same time the editor 
 of 'The Watchman avowed his conviction that national educa- 
 tion and a concurring spread of the gospel were the indispen- 
 sable conditions of any true political amelioration. We can 
 hardly wonder, on the whole, that by the time the seventh num- 
 ber was published its predecessors were being exposed in sun- 
 dry old-iron shops at a penny apiece.' " 
 
 On his return from Germany, Coleridge began to con- 
 tribute regularly to The Mornimg Post, for which he 
 wrote for some three years, but the efforts of tlie 
 proprietor, his friend Mr. Stuart, and very liberal 
 offers, could not induce him to give his whole attention 
 to journalism. That the work which he did in this 
 connection was able goes without saying. Of his 
 merits as a professional journalist Mr. Traill has 
 the highest opinion. His second and most important 
 venture for himself in the field of journalism was 
 made in 1809, when the first number of The Friend 
 made its appearance. A paper whose main object 
 was "to establish the philosophical distinction be- 
 tween the reason and the understanding" could 
 hardly hope for a popular success, and he handi- 
 capped himself at the start by selecting an out-of- 
 the-way town, twenty-eight miles from his own resi- 
 dence, as the place of publication. A list of one 
 hundred subscribers was obtained, ninety of whom 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 123 
 
 threw up their subscriptions without notice before 
 the appearance of the fourth number. The paper 
 lived on through twenty-eight issues, and then gave 
 up the ghost. A brief connection with The Courier, 
 in which his work showed Httle of the old vigour, is 
 the last episode in his life as a journahst. 
 
 Coleridge took to lecturing as he took to journal- 
 ism, in a random, haphazard sort of fashion, and does 
 not seem to have had much more taste for it than 
 Carlyle had. His first series of lectures, on poetry 
 and the fine arts, was delivered in 1808. It was not 
 very successful, as Coleridge was then in no condi- 
 tion to do any kind of sustained mental work, and he 
 frequently disappointed his audiences by failing to 
 appear at all. Two years after, he gave his lectures 
 on Shakespeare, decidedly his most valuable plat- 
 form utterance, and a priceless contribution to the 
 meagre literature of worthy Shakespearean criticism. 
 In 1814 he repeated, in substance, some of his earlier 
 lectures; this time, however, not at London, but at 
 Bristol. In 1818 he gave his last course of lectures 
 — fourteen in number — chiefly remarkable for their 
 immense scope, the subject of the first of them being 
 "the manners, morals, literature, philosophy, reli- 
 gion, and state of society in general in European 
 Christendom, from the eighth to the fifteenth cen- 
 tury," while the others were in proportion. An 
 interesting account of a lecture given at this time 
 before the London Philosophical Society, affords a 
 good illustration of the marvellous powers of ex- 
 
124 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 tempore discourse which at all times so impressed 
 all who came into close personal contact with Cole- 
 ridge. For some reason or other it was desired that 
 this lecture should be entirely impromptu, and he 
 knew nothing of the subject upon which he was to 
 speak until he found himself upon the platform and 
 facing his audience. He was then told that he was 
 expected to speak upon "The Growth of the Individ- 
 ual Mind," "a pretty stiff subject" for an extempore 
 address, as he whispered to a friend at his side upon 
 hearing it announced. He spoke for over an hour 
 and a half and held his audience to the last by the 
 eloquence, learning, and philosophical power he dis- 
 ployed. Of the ability of Coleridge as a lecturer we 
 shall never be able to form a just estimate. Those 
 of his lectures which are preserved and printed with, 
 his other works are for the most part in the form 
 of rough notes, and evidently bear little resemblance 
 to what he actually said. Powerful these notes are, 
 and those upon Shakespearean criticism are, even in 
 this state, of quite inestimable value, but judging 
 them most favourably, the impression produced by 
 the perusal of his lectures or his conversations as 
 they now appear in print, does not tally with the im- 
 pression which so many observers bear witness to his 
 having actually produced upon his hearers. The 
 best part of Coleridge the lecturer is gone forever 
 with those who had the inestimable privilege of hear- 
 ing him speak. 
 
 When Mill, writing a few years after the death of 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 125 
 
 Coleridge, expressed the opinion that no one had 
 contributed more toward shaping the ideas of the 
 younger generation, he must have had chiefly in mind 
 the lecturer and journalist rather than the maker of 
 books. He must also have taken largely into account 
 the marvellous personal influence which Coleridge 
 exerted over all who came into close contact with 
 him. All the evidence goes to show that he was one 
 of the best talkers that ever lived, a fact which 
 Lamb expressed in his humorous way \*^hen Cole- 
 ridge once asked him: "Charles, did you ever hear 
 me preach?" "I never heard you do anything else," 
 was the reply. The best tribute to the personal 
 influence of Coleridge, as well as the most acute char- 
 acterisation of his philosophical and religious char- 
 acter, is that given us by Carlyle : 
 
 "His express contributions to poetry, philosophy, or any specific 
 province of human literature or enlightenment, had been small 
 and sadly intermittent; but he had, especially among young 
 inquiring men, a higher than literary, a kind of prophetic or 
 magician character. He was thought to hold, he alone in 
 England, the key of German and other Transcendentalisms; 
 knew the sublime secret of believing by 'the reason' what the 
 understanding* had been obliged to fling out as incredible; and 
 could still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and 
 worst with him, profess himself an orthodox Christian, and say 
 and print to the Church of England, with its singular old 
 rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, Eato perpetua. A sub- 
 lime man; who, alone in those dark days, had saved his crown 
 of spiritual mankind; escaping from the black materialisms, 
 and revolutionary deluges, with 'God, Freedom, Immortality' 
 still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the world 
 did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a meta- 
 
126 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 physical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young genera- 
 tion he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a 
 kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak- 
 grove (Mr. Gillman's house at Highgate) whispering strange 
 things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon." 
 
 Concerning the life of Coleridge, the patient and 
 loving industry of J. Dykes Campbell has collected 
 all the facts that are likely to be discovered, and that 
 are worth preserving. Concerning his poetry, criti- 
 cism has pronounced what must be practically the 
 final judgment. Something like two-thirds of his 
 verse is either ephemeral or puerile in character, and 
 may be left out of the reckoning altogether. The 
 remaining fraction, about equal in bulk to that which 
 we cherish in the work of Keats, constitutes one 
 of the supreme achievements of Enghsh poetry. Of 
 his best verses Mr. Swinburne affirms 
 
 "that the world has nothing like them, and can never have: 
 that they are the highest kind, and of their own. They are 
 jewels of the diamond's price, flowers of the rose's rank, but 
 unlike any rose or diamond known. . . . The 'Christabel,' the 
 'Kubla Khan,' with one or two more, are outside all law and 
 jurisdiction of ours. When it has been said that such melodies 
 were never heard, such dreams never dreamed, such speech 
 never spoken, the chief thing remains unsaid, and unspeakable. 
 There is a charm upon these poems which can only be felt in 
 silent submission of wonder. . . . The highest lyric work is 
 either passionate or imaginative; of passion Coleridge has 
 nothing; but for height and perfection of imaginative quality 
 he is the greatest of lyric poets. This was his special power, 
 and this is his special praise." 
 
 A few months before his death, Coleridge wrote 
 an epitaph for himself. It is a simple appeal for 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 127 
 
 the prayers of those who passed by his tomb, and 
 it has not the faintest suggestion of having been 
 written by a great poet. For our closing words let 
 us turn rather to the "Tombless Epitaph," written a 
 quarter of a century earlier, which is, perhaps, the 
 most intimate bit of autobiography that the poet 
 has left us. 
 
 "Sickness, 'tis true, 
 Whole years of weary days, besieged him close. 
 Even to the gates and inlets of his life ! 
 But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm. 
 And with a natural gladness, he maintained 
 The citadel unconquered, and in joy 
 Was strong to follow the delightful Muse. 
 For not a hidden path, that to the shades 
 Of the beloved Parnassian forest leads, 
 Lurked undiscovered by him; not a rill 
 There issues from the fount of Hippocrene, 
 But he had traced it upward to its source. 
 Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell. 
 Knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and culled 
 Its med'cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone. 
 Piercing the long-neglected holy cave. 
 The haunt obscure of old Philosophy, 
 He bade with lifted torch its starry walls 
 Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame 
 Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage." 
 
 These lines, written before the "shaping spirit of 
 imagination" had taken flight from the poet, afford 
 a singularly comprehensive and exact characterisa- 
 tion of his spiritual life. In them we are given 
 the most sincere self-expression of one who, in the, 
 words of the dearest of his friends, had "from his 
 childhood hungered for eternity." 
 
MilUam Mor&swortb 
 
 The great poet who was born thirty years before 
 the close of the eighteenth century, and who became 
 the most honoured and the most venerable figure of 
 the first half of the nineteenth, has been made the 
 subject of more critical controversy than any of 
 his contemporaries. His work has been exalted to 
 the skies by men whose opinions carry great 
 weight, and it has been decried as unsound in theory 
 and prosaic in expression by other men whose opin- 
 ions cannot be neglected. In all this clash of criti- 
 cism, which has been prolonged into our own time, 
 it is to be observed that the personal element has not 
 appeared to any considerable extent. While it is true 
 that Wordsworth suffered a reprobation that was 
 perhaps deserved on account of his renunciation of 
 the liberal principles of his earlier years, he did not 
 set the conventions of society at defiance in the man- 
 ner of Byron and Shelley, and was spared the vio- 
 lence of the attacks to which they were subjected. 
 The discussion which was raised about him in his 
 own time, and which has continued to be raised about 
 him ever since, has been in the main a discussion of 
 literary principles and aesthetical canons. It began 
 
 189 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 129 
 
 over one hundred years ago, when the second edition 
 of the "Lyrical Ballads" was published, with the 
 famous Preface which contained the profession of 
 the poet's literary faith. To a public educated upon 
 the traditions of the eighteenth century the proposi- 
 tions enunciated in that essay were indeed startling, 
 and their practical applications, as illustrated by the 
 poems which they accompanied, were of so uncom- 
 promising a nature as to arouse much active antago- 
 nism. "They who have been accustomed to the gaudi- 
 ness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, 
 if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, 
 will, no doubt, frequently have to struggle with 
 feelings of strangeness and awkwardness; they will 
 look round for poetry, and will be induced to inquire 
 by what species of courtesy these attempts can be 
 permitted to assume that title." The writer's theory 
 was expressed in such statements as these: 
 
 "The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to 
 choose incidents and situations from common life, and to re- 
 late or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a 
 selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, 
 to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby 
 ordinary things should be presented to the mind In an unusual 
 aspect." "There will also be found in these pieces little of 
 what is usually called poetic diction; as much pains has been 
 taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it." "The 
 language of a very large portion of every good poem, even of 
 the most elevated character, must necessarily, except with 
 reference to the metre, in no respect differ from that of good 
 prose.'' "It may be safely afSrmed, that there neither is, nor 
 can be, any essential difference between the language of prose 
 and metrical composition" 
 
130 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 Translated into practice, these theories resulted 
 in such compositions as the ballad of "The Idiot 
 Boy," the true story of "Goody Blake and Harry 
 Gill," and such descriptions as this of Simon Lee, 
 the old huntsman: 
 
 "But, oh the heavy change! — bereft 
 Of health, strength, friends, and kindred, see I 
 Old Simon to the world is left 
 In liveried poverty. 
 His Master's dead, — and no one now 
 Dwells in the Hall of Ivor; 
 Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead; 
 He is the sole survivor. 
 
 "And he is lean and he is sick; 
 His body, dwindled and awry. 
 Rests upon ankles swoln and thick; 
 His legs are thin and dry. 
 One prop he has, and only one. 
 His wife, an aged woman. 
 Lives with him, near the waterfall. 
 Upon the village Common." 
 
 Such verses as these offered fair game to the critic, 
 and such propositions as have just been quoted were 
 so subversive of all literary traditions that it is 
 easy to understand with what vehemence they were 
 assailed and with what energy they were repudiated. 
 Removed to the vantage point of a century's dis- 
 tance, we can see easily enough that Wordsworth 
 went too far in his revolt against the artificial, and 
 that he was altogether too uncompromising in the 
 practical application of Ms theories. It has be- 
 come, indeed, the veriest commonplace of criticism 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 131 
 
 to say that Wordsworth was a great poet in spite of 
 his theories, and that he was greatest when he ignored 
 them most completely. How fully this fact was also 
 recognised by his contemporaries, even by the most 
 intimate of his friends, we may read in the "Bio- 
 graphia Literaria" of Coleridge. But if we wish to 
 do entire justice to the "Lyrical Ballads," and to 
 the famous Preface which appeared with their sec- 
 ond edition, we must do more than single out such 
 points of attack as are obvious to the most casual 
 observer. The Preface in question, taken as a whole, 
 is one of the most important contributions ever made 
 to literary criticism. It is important, not merely 
 on account of its historical position, but on account 
 of its insight and its fundamental sanity. Let us 
 quote, as an offset to the passages which are popu- 
 larly taken to sum up the writer's message, some 
 of his sayings that have deep and lasting value. He 
 tells us that he would not have undertaken his cru- 
 sade against the prevailing literary tendencies of 
 his age had it not been for "a deep impression of 
 certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the 
 human mind, and likewise of certain powers in the 
 great and permanent objects that act upon it, which 
 are equally inherent and indestructible." To the 
 question, "What is a Poet ?" this answer is given : 
 
 "He is a man speaking to men; a man, it is true, endowed with 
 more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who 
 has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more com- 
 prehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among man- 
 
132 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 kind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and 
 who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is 
 in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and pas- 
 sions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and 
 habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them." 
 
 Contrasting poetry with science, he says : 
 
 "The man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown 
 benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet, 
 singing a song in which aU human beings join with him, re- 
 joices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly 
 companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowl- 
 edge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the counte- 
 nance of all Science. Emphatically may it be said of the Poet, 
 as Shakespeare hath said of man, that he looks before and 
 after. He is the rock of defense of human nature; and up- 
 holder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relation- 
 ship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of 
 language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things 
 silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the 
 Poet Ijinds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire 
 of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and 
 over all time. . . . Poetry is the first and last of all knowl- 
 edge — it is as immortal as the heart of man." 
 
 Turning now to the "Lyrical Ballads" themselves 
 and assuming an attitude of sympathy rather than 
 of opposition, it is not difficult to find even in those 
 early verses many passages of that rare and ex- 
 quisite beauty which all lovers of English poetry 
 associate with the name of Wordsworth. Even "The 
 Thorn," in which we are told how Martha Ray 
 
 "Gave with a maiden's true good-will 
 Her company to Stephen Hill," 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 yields such words as these : 
 
 "At all times of the day and night 
 This wretched Woman thither goes; 
 And she is known to every star. 
 And erery wind that blows." 
 
 The last two lines of this passage illustrate, thus 
 early in the poet's career, what Mr. Swinburne calls 
 "the wonderful touch and flash of poetic imagina- 
 tion which all Wordsworth's intense and concentrated 
 self-will could not enable him utterly to suppress 
 or persistently to subdue." Such flashes of imagina- 
 tion, brightening the most prosaic tracts of Words- 
 worth's verse, go far to redeem it from the reproach 
 of trivial garrulity, and when they gleam upon our 
 vision, we feel richly repaid for our patient search. 
 And the "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern 
 Abbey," which also belongs to the collection of the 
 "Lyrical Ballads," is a poem so Wordsworthian in 
 the best sense that the critic who could find in that 
 collection no promise of a new dawn for English 
 poetry must have been blind irtdeed. The mood of 
 those verses may have been felt by others before 
 Wordsworth, but he was the first to give it ex- 
 pression — 
 
 "That blessed mood. 
 In which the burthen 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 
 
134 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 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." 
 
 The poet, thus revisiting the scenes familiar in earlier 
 years, falls into this mood, and it prompts him to 
 grave reflection. 
 
 "For I have learned 
 To look on nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 
 The stiU, sad music of humanity. 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused. 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. 
 And the round ocean and the living air. 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 The "blessed mood" of which Wordsworth speaks 
 in the lines above quoted, the "serene and blessed 
 mood" of a contemplative quietism which takes com- 
 plete possession of the spirit, and fills it with the 
 deep sense of the harmony existing between nature 
 and the human soul, was destined to become the pre- 
 vaihng mood of the poet's manhood and old age, 
 and the power to impart that mood to others is the 
 secret of Wordsworth. Yet this mood, although the 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 135 
 
 inevitable outcome of his mystical imagination and 
 philosophical temper, was not easily attained, and for 
 a number of years had to struggle with the rebellious 
 mood which was nurtured by the revolutionary influ- 
 ences that shaped later eighteenth-century thought. 
 Lowell seemed to think that Wordsworth became a 
 conservative through intellectual conviction, and re- 
 tained "to the last a certain radicalism of tempera- 
 ment and instinct." I am rather inclined to believe 
 that he was a conservative by natural bent, and 
 that whatever radicalism he retained was the product 
 of intellectual conviction. It must, of course, be 
 remembered that Wordsworth, like Coleridge and 
 Landor, belonged to the earlier generation of the 
 poets who felt the influence of the Revolution. It 
 must also be remembered that he was not content 
 to feel the influence from afar, but that he visited 
 the scenes and came into close relations with some 
 of the actors in the great revolutionary drama. At 
 the age of twenty he made his first visit to France, 
 but this was a very brief one, and may be passed over 
 as comparatively unimportant. A year later, in 
 the autumn of 1791, he again crossed the silver 
 streak that separates France from England, and 
 passed through Paris to Blois, where he remained 
 for a year, and set himself to study both the language 
 and the social situation. Here he made the intimate 
 acquaintance of Michel Beaupuy, an aristocrat with 
 revolutionary sympathies, a man about fifteen years 
 his senior. Professor Dowden describes this man, 
 
136 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 who exercised a powerful influence over the young 
 poet, as "of most engaging person, a thinker as well 
 as a soldier, a man of the purest morals, one who 
 had something of antique virtue united with a modern 
 enthusiasm, one to whom the humanitarian beliefs had 
 the force of a religion." This man made Words- 
 worth understand the real meaning of the Revolution. 
 He was less influenced, however, by the theoretical 
 discussions of the French philosophers than by the 
 actual incidents that came under his observation, and 
 by the pure and glowing sentiment of the people 
 with whom he came in contact. '"Tis against that 
 that we are fighting," said his friend and mentor one 
 day, pointing to a little peasant girl made thin and 
 pale by unremitting toil. Wordsworth visited Paris 
 again just after the September massacres of 1792, 
 and thought seriously of devoting himself heart and 
 soul to the French patriot cause. It was then that 
 the full tide of enthusiasm rose and well-nigh swept 
 him away from his moorings, it was of that time that 
 he could say: ' 
 
 "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. 
 But to be young was very heaven." 
 
 It was of that period that he afterwards wrote in 
 "The Prelude": 
 
 "In the People was my trust: 
 And in the virtues which mine eyes had seen, 
 I knew that wound external could not take 
 Life from the young Republic ; that new foes 
 Would only foUow, in the path of shame. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 137 
 
 Their brethren, and her triumphs be in the end 
 
 Great, universal, irresistible. 
 
 This intuition led me to confound 
 
 One victory with another, higher far, — 
 
 Triumphs of unambitious peace at home, 
 
 And noiseless fortitude." 
 
 Of the three books of "The Prelude" which contain 
 the poet's spiritual autobiography during his French 
 sojourn, Mr. John Morley, comparing them with the 
 dithyrambic utterance of such writers as Carlyle, 
 Michelet, and Hugo, declares: "By their strenuous 
 simplicity, their deep truthfulaess, their slowfooted 
 and inexorable transition from ardent hope to dark 
 imaginations, sense of woes to come, sorrow for 
 human kind, and pain of heart, they breathe the very 
 spirit of the great catastrophe. . . . The story of 
 these three books has something of the severity, the 
 self-control, the inexorable necessity of classic trag- 
 edy, and like classic tragedy it has a noble end." 
 Wordsworth's impassioned advocacy of the French 
 Revolution found a remarkable expression in prose 
 during the year of his return to England. The 
 Bishop of LlandafF had condemned the Revolution in 
 the most approved language of Tory conservatism, 
 and the sermon in which his Lordship's reactionary 
 opinions were set forth evoked from Wordsworth that 
 Letter which remains one of the most instructive of 
 all his writings. "Have you so little knowledge of 
 the nature of man," he asks the Bishop, 
 
 "as to be ignorant that a time of revolution is not the season 
 of true Liberty? Alas, the obstinacy and perversion of man 
 
138 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 is such that she is too often obliged to borrow the very arms 
 of Despotism to overthrow him, and, in order to reign in peace, 
 must establish herself by violence. She deplores such stern 
 necessity, but the safety of the people, her supreme law, is her 
 consolation. This apparent contradiction between the principles 
 of liberty and the march of revolutions; this spirit of jealousy, 
 of severity, of disquietude, of vexation indispensable from a 
 state of war between the oppressors and oppressed, must of 
 necessity confuse the ideas of morality, and contract the benign 
 exertion of the best affections of the human heart. Political 
 virtues are developed at the expense of moral ones; and the 
 sweet emotions of compassion, evidently dangerous when 
 traitors are to be punished, are too often altogether smothered. 
 But is this a sufScient reason to reprobate a convulsion from 
 which is to spring a fairer order of things? It is the province 
 of education to rectify the erroneous notion which a habit of 
 oppression, and even of resistance may have created, and to 
 soften this ferocity of character, proceeding from a necessary 
 suspension of the mild and social virtues; it belongs to her to 
 create a race of men who, truly free, wUl look upon their 
 fathers as only enfranchised." 
 
 Shelley might have written this, as he might have 
 written the philosophical defence of republicanism 
 that follows. "My grand objection to monarchy," 
 Wordsworth goes on to say, "is drawn from the 
 ETEENAL NATURE OP MAN. The ofBce of king is a 
 trial to which human virtue is not equal. Pure and 
 universal representation, by which alone liberty can 
 be secured, cannot, I think, exist together with 
 monarchy." It is melancholy to reflect that the man 
 who penned these incontestable truths in 1793 should 
 have become in 1832 the violent opponent of the 
 Reform Bill. 
 
 We all know how Wordsworth, like his friend Cole- 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 139 
 
 ridge, lost the faith of those early years and became 
 the enemy of all revolutionary movements, the cham- 
 pion of all established institutions. The immediate 
 cause of this revulsion pf feeling was much the same 
 in both cases. The declaration of war between 
 France and England imposed a violent strain upon 
 the patriotism of both poets; they felt that their 
 country deserved chastisement for its manifold sins, 
 yet they could not altogether make common cause 
 with the national enemy. Then came the attack of 
 the French armies upon the very principles of that 
 liberty which they had been raised to defend, and 
 the spirit of the Revolution became transformed 
 into the spirit of aggression, of conquest, of the 
 intoxication of military glory. To the France that 
 had stood alone as the champion of liberty, and held 
 the allied monarchies of Europe at bay, there suc- 
 ceeded the France that sought only for aggrandise- 
 ment, and for a score of years made the Continent 
 one battlefield of needless and wanton warfare. 
 Napoleonic France became as depressing a spectacle 
 to the lovers of liberty as Republican France had 
 been an inspiring one; both Wordsworth and Cole- 
 ridge found themselves compelled by the inexorable 
 logic of events to forswear their old allegiance, and to 
 denounce what they had hitherto extolled. For both 
 poets the experience was a bitter one, endured with 
 deep anguish of soul, but both at last found a sort 
 of refuge in the contemplative life and the ministry 
 of a mysticism of which they were by nature pecu- 
 
140 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 liarly inclined to be receptive. In the case of Words- 
 worth, it is possible to take a harsh view of his de- 
 sertion from the republican camp, but it is also pos- 
 sible to take a sympathetic view. Nothing could be 
 more unfair than the application to him, without 
 many qualifications, of the familiar lines: 
 
 "Just for a handful of silver he left us. 
 Just for a riband to stick in his coat." 
 
 Yet in spite of all disclaimers, it remains true, upon 
 Browning's own admission, that Wordsworth was 
 in the mind of the poet when he wrote "The Lost 
 Leader." When the question direct was put to 
 Browning thirty years later, he said : 
 
 "I can only answer, with something of shame and contrition, 
 that I undoubtedly had Wordsworth in my mind — but simply 
 as a model; you know an artist takes one or two striking 
 traits in the features of his model and uses them to start his 
 fancy on a flight which may end far enough from the good 
 man or woman who happens to be sitting for nose and eye. I 
 thought of the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism at an 
 unlucky juncture, and no repaying consequence that I could 
 ever see. But once call my fancy portrait Wordsworth — and 
 how much more ought one to sayl" 
 
 Much more, indeed, and voices have not been want- 
 ing to say it. But in spite of all that is to be urged 
 in extenuation of Wordsworth's change of attitude, 
 he undoubtedly became a lost leader: that is, a lost 
 leader of the forces that were making for one form 
 of social regeneration, and had reason to count upon 
 his support. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 141 
 
 "We that had loved him so, followed himi honoured him, 
 
 Lived in his mild and magnificent eye. 
 Learned his great language, caught his clear accents. 
 
 Made him our pattern to live and to die I 
 Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us. 
 
 Burns, Shelley, were with us — ^they watch from their graves ! 
 He alone breaks from the van and the freemen. 
 
 He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves !" 
 
 What the Wordsworthians claim is, of course, that 
 their poet became a truer worker in the cause of ad- 
 vancing humanity when he turned his gaze away from 
 external revolutions, and fixed it upon the deep 
 springs of the inner life. It became his mission to 
 stir "the depth and not the tumult of the soul," a 
 phrase which marks perfectly the distinction between 
 Wordsworthianism and Byronism. The sympathetic 
 view of his course, which we may adopt without 
 lessening our regret at his abandonment of liberalism, 
 is expressed by Mr. John Morley. "The French 
 Revolution made the one crisis in Wordsworth's men- 
 tal history, the one heavy assault on his continence 
 of soul, and when he emerged from it all his great- 
 ness remained to him. After a long spell of bewilder- 
 ment, mortification, and sore disappointment, the 
 old faith in new shapes was given back." In the 
 poet's own words, 
 
 "Nature's self, 
 By all varieties of human love 
 Assisted, led me back through opening day 
 To those sweet counsels between head and heart 
 Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace, 
 Which, through the later sinkings of this cause, 
 Hath still upheld me and upholds me now." 
 
142 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 Wordsworth was about thirty years of age when 
 he learned the true direction of his genius, and ac- 
 quired the abiding consciousness of his powers. When 
 he took up his residence in the Grasmere vale at 
 the close of the eighteenth century, his time of storm 
 and stress was over, and his external history, as far 
 as noteworthy events were concerned, had come to 
 an end. It is true that his marriage came a little 
 later, that he made long journeys abroad during 
 the ensuing year, that in 1839 he took an honorary 
 degree at Oxford, and that in 184!3 he succeeded 
 Southey as Poet Laureate. But these happenings, 
 and others, had little effect upon the tranquil tenor 
 of his existence. The Grasmere period of his life 
 covered a full half-century, and it was a period of 
 almost unbroken communion with himself and with 
 the few who were gathered about him in personal 
 relationship. Few men have Hved so apart from the 
 world as Wordsworth lived during the last fifty years 
 of his life. As thinker and poet he stood strangely 
 alone. In the ideals which he was seeking to realise 
 he had no predecessors, unless we make a possible 
 exception of Cowper ; of his contemporaries, although 
 some slight degree of kinship with him may be claimed 
 for Crabbe, Coleridge alone stood really close to him. 
 He grew more and more self-contained as the years 
 went on, more and more uninfluenced by ideas that 
 were not the product of his own philosophy of nature 
 and of man. Under such self-imposed limitations 
 the master is first revealed, we are reminded by 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 143 
 
 Goethe, and intellectual freedom comes only with full 
 submission to the law of our being. If this figure of 
 Wordsworth the recluse has its unpleasant features, 
 if his self -absorption seems at times too pronounced, 
 if we are repelled by his attitude toward his con- 
 temporaries and by his lack of the sjrmpathy which 
 accords generous appreciation to the work of others, 
 we should bear in mind that his genius required just 
 this concentration upon itself to achieve its char- 
 acteristic expression. We must admit that he did 
 not have the open mind, but we are also constrained 
 to believe that his original and peculiar powers 
 would have become dissipated, would have failed in 
 their effective development, had he forced his mind 
 into that receptive attitude which brings to minds of 
 a different type their best inspiration. No poet ever 
 gored his own thoughts more persistently than did 
 Wordsworth, and the result of this unremitting in- 
 trospection was that body of work which, allowing 
 for all that may be set aside as commonplace and 
 uninspired, remains one of the lasting intellectual 
 forces of the past century. 
 
 It must not be thought, because Wordsworth thus 
 withdrew himself from the world, that he became 
 indifferent to the political and social evolution of 
 his age. On the contrary, he kept himself well in- 
 formed concerning public affairs, and was intently 
 observant of the whole historical drama that ended 
 with Waterloo, leaving Europe free to breathe once 
 more, and making it possible to reconstruct the 
 
144 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 civilisation that had been ravaged by twenty-five 
 years of warfare. Take the sonnets dedicated "To 
 Liberty," for example, and note how the poet seizes 
 upon every occasion offered by passing events to 
 set forth his exalted and chastened conception of 
 that most precious birthright of the spirit of man. 
 "These sonnets," says Frederic Myers, "are worthy 
 of comparison with the noblest passages of patriotic 
 verse or prose which all our history has inspired — 
 the passages where Shakespeare brings his rays to 
 focus on 'this earth, this realm, this England' — or 
 where the dread of national dishonour has kindled 
 Chatham to an iron glow — or where Milton rises 
 from the polemic into the prophet, and Burke from 
 the partisan into the philosopher." Liberty, in 
 Wordsworth's conception, is a thing 
 
 "Not to be given 
 By all the blended powers of Earth and Heaven ;" 
 
 no external arrangements can bestow it upon a peo- 
 ple or upon an individual ; a people must conquer it, 
 and first be worthy to conquer it ; an individual must 
 struggle for it in his own soul, defending his soul 
 as a citadel against the invader. 
 
 "There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear 
 Than his who breathes, by roof, and floor, and wall, 
 Pent in, a tyrant's solitary Thrall: 
 'Tis his who walks about in the open air. 
 One of a Nation who, henceforth, must wear 
 Their fetters in their souls. For who could be. 
 Who, even the best, in such condition, free. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 146 
 
 From self-reproach, reproach that he must share 
 With Human-nature? Never he it ours 
 To see the sun how brightly it will shine, 
 And know that noble feelings, manly powers. 
 Instead of gathering strength, must droop and pine; 
 And earth with all her pleasant fruits and flowers 
 Fade, and participate in man's decline." 
 
 No phase of the struggle against Napoleon 
 escaped the attention of this vigilant poet, and, 
 whether his utterances take the direct form of per- 
 sonal tributes to the heroes of that struggle — SchiU, 
 Hofer, Toussaint, Palafox, — whether they celebrate 
 such immediate events as the subjugation of Switzer- 
 land, the siege of Zaragoza, the destruction of Mos- 
 cow, and the battle of Waterloo, or whether they 
 praise by indirection the valour of the present by 
 recalling the valour of the past, they are inspired 
 by the same stern indignation, and the same passion- 
 ate endeavour to strip the ideal of freedom from 
 aU its ignoble accidental associations, and to enforce 
 its deep spiritual significance. The heroic struggle 
 of the Spaniards against Napoleon enlisted Words- 
 worth's sympathies, as they did those of Landor, 
 more, perhaps, than any other phase of the conflict 
 upon the Continent. "There is not a man in these 
 Islands," he says, "who is not convinced that the 
 cause of Spain is the most righteous cause in which, 
 since the opposition of the Greek Republics to the 
 Persian Invader at Thermopylae and Marathon, 
 sword ever was drawn." The sonnet upon the "In- 
 dignation of a High-Minded Spaniard" affords a 
 
146 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 particularly good illustration of Wordsworth's in- 
 tense feeling upon this subject. 
 
 "We can endure that he should waste our lands. 
 Despoil our temples, and by sword and flame 
 Return us to the dust from which we came; 
 Such food a Tyrant's appetite demands: 
 And we can brook the thought that by his hands 
 Spain may be overpowered, and he possess. 
 For his delight, a solemn wilderness 
 Where all the brave lie dead. But, when of bands 
 Which he will break for us he dares to speak. 
 Of benefits, and of a future day 
 When our enlightened minds shall bless his sway; 
 Then, the strained heart of fortitude proves weak; 
 Our groans, our blushes, our pale cheeks declare 
 That he has power to inflict what we lack strength to bear." 
 
 This commentary upon the hypocrisies of interna- 
 tional politics has its application to many other 
 situations, both ancient and modern, besides the one 
 for which it was written. The pamphlet upon the 
 Convention of Cintra, which is the most important of 
 Wordsworth's prose writings, provides us with the 
 fullest expression of his political philosophy as that 
 philosophy took shape from the pressure of events in 
 France and Spain. The very title of the pamphlet is 
 eloquent. It reads: "Concerning the relations of 
 Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal, to each other, 
 and to the common enemy, at this crisis ; and specific- 
 ally as affected by the Convention of Cintra: the 
 whole brought to the test of those principles by which 
 alone the independence and freedom of nations can 
 be preserved or recovered." The Convention which 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 147 
 
 occasioned this pamphlet does not seem, in our modern 
 perspective, as important as it seemed to Words- 
 worth. Events succeeded one another rapidly in 
 those days, and the agreement of Cintra was already 
 half-forgotten when the pamphlet appeared. The 
 agreement provided, in substance, that the French 
 should retreat from Spain upon terms far more 
 favourable than -they deserved, terms which out- 
 raged the sensibilities of the people whose soil had 
 suffered so wanton an invasion. A righteous cause 
 was at the very point of triumph, and the best fruits 
 of the victory were suddenly snatched away. It 
 was a compromise where compromise meant the de- 
 sertion of principle, and upon Wordsworth it pro- 
 duced an effect not unlike that which was to be 
 produced upon Mrs. Browning half a century later 
 by the news of Villafranca. But if the Convention of 
 Cintra no longer occupies a conspicuous place among 
 the happenings of the Napoleonic period, the pam- 
 phlet which Wordsworth devoted to its discussion re- 
 mains a permanent contribution to English political 
 literature. Canning called it "the finest piece of 
 political eloquence which had appeared since Burke," 
 and Professor Dowden reaffirms this judgment. I 
 must find space for at least one impressive passage. 
 
 "I have announced the feelings of those who hope: yet one 
 word more to those who despond. And first; he stands upon a 
 hideous precipice (and it will be the same with all who may 
 succeed to him and his iron sceptre) — ^he who has outlawed 
 himself from society by proclaiming, with word and act, that 
 he acknowledges no mastery but power. This truth must be 
 
148 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 evident to all who breathe — from the dawn of childhood, till 
 the last gleam of twilight is lost in the darkness of dotage. 
 But take the tyrant as he is, in the plenitude of his supposed 
 strength. The vast country of Germany, in spite of the rusty 
 but too strong fetters of corrupt princedoms and degenerate 
 nobility, — Germany — with its citizens, its peasants, and its 
 philosophers — will not lie quiet under the weight of injuries 
 which has been heaped upon it. There is a sleep, but no death, 
 among the mountains of Switzerland. Florence, and Venice, 
 and Genoa, and Rome, — ^have their own poignant recollections, 
 and a majestic train of glory in past ages. The stir of emanci- 
 pation may again be felt at the mouths as well as at the sources 
 of the Rhine. Poland perhaps will not be insensible; Kosciusko 
 and his compeers may not have bled in vain. Nor is Hun- 
 garian loyalty to be overlooked. And, for Spain itself, the 
 territory is wide: let it be overrun: the torrent will weaken as 
 the torrent spreads. And, should all resistance disappear, be 
 not daunted: Extremes meet: and how often do hope and 
 despair almost touch each other — ^though unconscious of thrar 
 neighbourhood, because their faces are turned different ways! 
 Yet, in a moment, the one shall vanish; and the other begin a 
 career in the fulness of her joy." 
 
 The calm conviction here expressed of the moral order 
 of the world has made many despondent observers 
 take heart anew, may, perhaps, help us to take heart 
 amid the dark perplexities of our own time. To be 
 read in connection with this tractate, because com- 
 plementary to it, are the sonnets written at the same 
 time and with the same inspiration. 
 
 "The power of Armies is a visible thing, 
 Formal, and circumscribed in time and space; 
 But who the limits of that power shall trace 
 Which a brave People into light can bring 
 Or hide, at will — for freedom combating 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 149 
 
 By just revenge inflamed ? No foot may chase. 
 No eye can follow, to a fatal place 
 That power, that spirit, whether on the wing 
 Like the strong wind, or sleeping like the wind 
 Within its awful caves." 
 
 With the close of the long war, Wordsworth's politi- 
 cal poems came to an end. The sonnet gave place to 
 the ode, and the day of a general national thanks- 
 giving, appointed early in 1816, was hailed in an 
 outburst of memorable song, 
 
 "For tyranny subdued. 
 And for the sway of equity renewed. 
 For liberty confirmed, and peace restored I" 
 
 Professor Dowden says: "Not by force of mortal 
 arms had the triumph been achieved, but by the might 
 of a righteous cause; by the soul of a nation; and 
 by the divine wrath against the tyrant, the divine 
 pity for the oppressed, which breathed through the 
 spirit of a people who did not shrink from sacrifice 
 or death. The temper of these poems is higher than 
 ethical ; it is, in the truest sense, religious : there is a 
 breadth and majesty in the versification which corre- 
 sponds with the sublimity of the occasion." 
 
 Wordsworth is rightly reckoned among the great 
 religious poets, for no modern singer has made a 
 stronger appeal to the religious emotions. He allies 
 those emotions, on the one hand, with the deepest of 
 patriotic feeling, and on the other, with that form 
 of worship which becomes associated with the con- 
 
150 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 templation of nature, and of which he is the chief 
 priest of our modern age. There is, however, one 
 point of view from which his religious views do not 
 appear in an attractive light. As an opponent of 
 Catholic emancipation he is not a sympathetic figure, 
 and the long series of discussions comprised within 
 the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets" are arid rather than in- 
 spiring. As Mr. Morley tersely remarks, these son- 
 nets are ecclesiastical, not religious. Myers says 
 the same thing less tersely in the following words : 
 
 "The religion which these later poems of Wordsworth's embody 
 is rather the stately tradition of a great church than the pangs 
 and aspirations of a holy soul. There is little in them, whether 
 for good or evil, of the stuff of which a Paul, a Francis, a 
 Dominic are made. That fervent emotion — akin to the passion 
 of love rather than to intellectual or moral conviction — ^finds 
 voice through singers of a very different tone. It is fed by an 
 inward anguish and felicity which, to those who have not felt 
 them, seem as causeless as a lover's moods; by wrestlings not 
 with flesh and blood; by nights of despairing self-abasement; 
 by ecstasies of an incommunicable peace." 
 
 For what we must call the narrowness of Words- 
 worth's religious outlook, as the opinions of his later 
 years became more and more stiffened with ecclesias- 
 ticism, we may at least be sympathetic to the extent 
 of accepting Professor Dowden's explanation. 
 
 "When with growing years he became better acquainted with 
 suffering, trial, and human inflrmity, he came to value more 
 than he did at first all those aids to the spiritual in man which 
 are afforded by institutions, customs, ceremonies, places, rites, 
 ordinances, about which our best feelings are gathered and 
 which are associated with our most sacred experiences. He 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 151 
 
 found higher uses than he had formerly conceived in what is 
 historical, in what is traditional." 
 
 Yet we cannot help feeling that, to quote from the 
 most thoroughgoing of modern Wordsworthians, 
 
 "Not here, O Apollo! 
 Are haunts meet for thee. 
 But, where Helicon breaks down 
 In cliff to the sea." 
 
 In other words, this singer and priest of natural reli- 
 gion finds himself in an element alien to his genius 
 when he has recourse to the historical and tradi- 
 tional phases of religious belief ; the haunts meet for 
 him are, not indeed the chfF of Helicon, but the Cum- 
 berland Hills and the lakes that nestle among them. 
 
 The essential spirit of the Tintern Abbey verses, 
 which we remember were included among the "Lyrical 
 Ballads," "was for practical purposes as new to man- 
 kind as the essential spirit of the Sermon on the 
 Mount," says Frederic Myers, and thus goes on: 
 "therefore it is that Wordsworth is venerated; be- 
 cause to so many men — indiifferent, it may be, to 
 literary or poetical effects, as such — he has shown 
 by the subtle intensity of his own emotion how the 
 contemplation of Nature can be made a revealing 
 agency, hke Love or Prayer — an opening, if indeed 
 there be any opening, into the transcendent world." 
 All lovers of poetry know this new vision of the world 
 that Wordsworth has given to them, know it and 
 count it among the most precious of their spiritual 
 
152 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 possessions. It is to him that we owe those rare hours 
 
 or moments, 
 
 "When the light of sense 
 Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed 
 The invisible world;" 
 
 he it is who has added to our vision of nature 
 
 "The gleam, 
 The light that never was, on sea or land. 
 The consecration, and the Poet's dream." 
 
 A recent writer, Mr. Edmond Holmes, discusses the 
 way in which the poet becomes the interpreter of 
 nature to ordinary men. He tells us, for example, 
 of the dawn, and, 
 
 "in and through the feelings that the beauty and dawn have 
 generated, another feeling, at once more subtle and more in- 
 tense, begins to live and work in our hearts; a feeling of 
 inexpugnable certitude; a sense of partnership In a world-wide 
 and eternal victory; an overmastering conviction that the 
 problems which baffle us, the riddles which mock us, have no 
 real existence, the whole course of nature being in very truth 
 as sure, as clear, and as glorious as the dawn of day, ... It 
 is the function of the poet who describes the dawn to expe- 
 rience this incommunicable feeling and awake it in us. He can 
 do this by so painting the dawn as to ravish our bodily senses 
 through the medium of memory and imagination, and then 
 leaving it to us to discover, behind and beyond the more 
 sensuous feeling, that deeper emotion which I have vainly tried 
 to describe," 
 
 No such passage as this could have been written, no 
 such analysis would have been possible, were it not 
 for the spell of Wordsworth upon our poetry. There 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 153 
 
 are so many pages of Wordsworth upon which this 
 passage may serve as a commentary that I hardly 
 know which to select. These verses from the "Pre- 
 lude" will do as well as any. 
 
 "Magnificent 
 The morning rose, in memorable pomp. 
 Glorious as e'er I had beheld — in front. 
 The sea lay laughing at a distance; near. 
 The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds. 
 Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light; 
 And in the meadows and the lower grounds 
 Was all the sweetness of a common dawn — 
 Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds. 
 And labourers going forth to till the field. 
 Ah I need I say, dear Friend ! that to the brim 
 My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows 
 Were then made for me; bond unknown to me 
 Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, 
 A dedicated Spirit." 
 
 "A dedicated spirit." These words are the keynote 
 of Wordsworth's character. A spirit dedicated to 
 the service of man, to the task of unsealing those 
 springs of joy that are so near at hand, if we only 
 knew the approaches to them. Let us take, as an- 
 other illustration of Wordsworth's power to make 
 us share in the deep and spiritualised emotion with 
 which he looked upon nature, this sonnet on "The 
 Trossaehs." 
 
 "There's not a nook within this solemn pass, 
 But were an apt confessional for one 
 Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone. 
 That life is but a tale of morning grass 
 Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase 
 That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes 
 
154 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities. 
 Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass 
 Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy guest. 
 If from a golden perch of aspen spray 
 (October's workmanship to rival May) 
 The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast 
 That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay 
 Lulling the year, with all its cares, to restl" 
 
 Talking one day with Aubrey de Vere, Wordsworth 
 contrasted his own observation of nature with Scott's 
 pencil and notebook method, and said: "Nature does 
 not permit an inventory to be made of her charms ! 
 He should have left his pencil and notebook at home, 
 fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent attention 
 on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a 
 heart that could understand and enjoy." This is 
 the secret of Wordsworth, the heart that can under- 
 stand and enjoy was his possession, and he made it 
 the possession of those who came after him and lis- 
 tened to his voice. Pater remarks that "this sense 
 of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry 
 is but a rhetorical artifice, is with Wordsworth the 
 assertion of what for him is almost literal fact." 
 And with what lofty ideals, eternal as the heavens, 
 does he associate this vision of the divine in nature. 
 The central expression of this association is that ode 
 to the "stern daughter of the voice of God," of which 
 Swinburne asks, in words so framed that no answer 
 is needed: 
 
 "Is there anything in modern poetry at once so exalted and 
 §0 composed, so ardent and serene, so full of steadfast light 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 155 
 
 and the flameless fire of imaginative thought, as the hymn 
 which assigns to the guardianship of Duty or everlasting law 
 the fragrance of the flowers on earth and the splendour of 
 the stars in heaven? Here at least his conception of duty, of 
 righteousness, and of truth is one with the ideal of jEschylus, 
 of Alighieri, and of Hugo: no less positive and pure, no more 
 conventional or accidental than is theirs." 
 
 The fame of Wordsworth has suffered sharp vicis- 
 situdes. It has had to contend against two currents 
 of adverse criticism, both of which find much justi- 
 fication. The one is expressed by Bagehot when he 
 says that about Wordsworth's work "there is a taint 
 of duty, a vicious sense of the good man's task." 
 The other is directly suggested by Lowell when he 
 remarks: "It is not a great Xerxes-army of words, 
 but a compact Greek ten thousand, that march safely 
 down to posterity." Concerning the former charge, it 
 must be admitted that the Wordsworthians themselves 
 have injured their master's fame by over-insistence 
 upon the formal and didactic aspects of his work. 
 "We cannot do him justice," says Matthew Arnold, 
 "until we dismiss his formal philosophy." And the 
 same critic is entirely right when he insists that, even 
 after subtracting all the dull and prosaic pages from 
 the sum of Wordsworth's achievement, there remains 
 to him a "great body of powerful and significant 
 work." If we consider quality alone, we must admit 
 that Wordsworth was equalled, if not overmatched by 
 three of his contemporaries. But when we consider 
 quantity as well as quality, both Keats and Coleridge 
 drop out of the competition, and Shelley alone re- 
 
156 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 mains to be reckoned with. As between Shelley and 
 Wordsworth, the question of supremacy is likely to 
 remain unsettled, for it is a question into which the 
 subjective element enters more largely than into most 
 comparisons of this sort. If it came to the hard 
 choice of relinquishing one of the two poets, my 
 personal feeling would be that the work of Shelley 
 must be preserved at whatever sacrifice, but I have 
 no quarrel with those who would choose the other 
 alternative. Happily, such difficult decisions are 
 purely academic, and even to discuss them is futile. 
 Of Wordsworth it should be observed that recent 
 years have amply atoned for the neglect into which 
 his fame seemed to have fallen during the generation 
 that succeeded his death. His own confidence in the 
 future of his poems was not misplaced, as is proved by 
 many recent critical indications. "Trouble not your- 
 self," he wrote to Lady Beaumont, "upon their pres- 
 ent reception ; of what moment is that compared with 
 what I trust is their destiny? — ^to console the af- 
 flicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the 
 happy happier ; to teach the young and the gracious 
 of every age to see, to think and feel, and, therefore, 
 to become more actively and securely virtuous; this 
 is their office, which I trust they will faithfully per- 
 form, long after we (that is, all that is mortal of us) 
 are mouldered in our graves." 
 
 This power to console the afflicted, to bring heal- 
 ing into our lives and peace into our souls, is what 
 makes the poetry of Wordsworth so unspeakably 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 167 
 
 precious to us. No words can ever express what 
 Wordsworth has been to thousands of men and women 
 in their hour of trial, no tribute of love can ever 
 embody all the gratitude which they have felt for 
 his soothing ministry. Arnold came as near as pos- 
 sible to expressing the inexpressible when he wrote 
 these familiar hnes: 
 
 "He found us when the age had bound 
 Our souls in its benumbing round; 
 He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears, 
 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 return'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." 
 
 A minor poet of our own time, also, a poet who 
 sometimes strikes a note of sustained purity, has 
 given utterance to the same sense of heartfelt grati- 
 tude in words peculiarly fitting to be read by the 
 poet's grave. 
 
 "Poet who sleepest by this wandering wave! 
 
 When thou wast born, what birth-gift hadst thou then? 
 To thee what wealth was that the Immortals gave. 
 The wealth thou gavest in thy turn to men? 
 
 Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine; 
 
 Not Shakespeare's cloudless, boundless human view; 
 Not Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine; 
 
 Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew. 
 
158 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 "What hadst thou that could make so large amends 
 For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed. 
 Motion and Are, swift means to radiant ends? — 
 TTiou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest. 
 
 "Prom Shelley's dazzling glow or thunderous haze, 
 
 From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth. 
 Men turned to thee and found — not blast and blaze. 
 Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth. 
 
 "Nor peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower, 
 There in white languors to decline and cease; 
 But peace whose names are also rapture, power. 
 Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of peace." 
 
Matter Savaae Xandor 
 
 In dealing with the six English poets who belong 
 to the first half of the century, it has seemed best, 
 for reasons already noted, to arrange them in the 
 order provided by the dates of their respective deaths. 
 Attention has already been called to the curious fact 
 that each of the poets thus far considered enjoyed 
 a span of life which overlapped at both ends that 
 of the poet who precedes him in this discussion. Thus 
 the death-dates of our poets have carried us forward 
 into the nineteenth century from 1821, when Keats 
 died, to 1850, when Wordsworth breathed his last, 
 and the laurel passed "from the brows of him who 
 uttered nothing base." On the other hand, the birth- 
 dates of the same poets have carried us backward into 
 the eighteenth century from 179S, when Keats first 
 saw the light, to 1770, the year which gave Words- 
 worth to the world. Turning now to Walter Savage 
 Landor, the first break appears in the series, for, 
 although he outlived Wordsworth by fourteen years, 
 he was five years his junior by birth. There are 
 several things to remark about the long term of 
 Landor's life. Longer even than that of Tennyson, 
 it made Landor in his old age the most venerable 
 figure among our poets. And if his life was remark- 
 
 159 
 
160 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 able for its length, it was even more remarkable for 
 the number of years during which he retained his 
 intellectual faculties unimpaired. "Gebir" was pub- 
 lished in 1798, the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," and 
 it was not the poet's first venture, for he had pub- 
 lished a small volume of verse two years earlier. 
 Half a century later, when the flame of Wordsworth's 
 genius was flickering out, Landor's "Hellenics" were 
 given to the world. He had already exceeded the 
 scriptural tale of years, and seemed to have just 
 reached his intellectual prime. For nearly a score 
 of years longer his pen remained active ; great quan- 
 tities of prose and verse continued to flow from it, 
 and in the year before his death, at the age of eighty- 
 eight, the volume of his "Heroic Idylls" crowned the 
 astonishing performance of his life. For seventy 
 years he had been producing work that belongs to 
 English literature, work that was almost as finished 
 and satisfactory to the artistic sense at the beginning 
 of his career as at any later period. The best 
 passages of "Gebir" are equal to anything he did 
 afterwards. As Mr. Stedman finely says: "He 
 attained the summit early, and moved along an ele- 
 vated plateau, forbearing as he grew older to descend 
 the further side, and at death flung off somewhere 
 into the sether still facing the daybreak and wor- 
 shipped by many rising stars." Nothing is more 
 striking about the work of Landor than this even 
 excellence by which it is characterised throughout.. 
 With most poets we have periods to consider, and our 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 161 
 
 interest in their work is largely the interest which 
 we taks' in observing the gradual development of 
 their powers. Little of this sort of interest attaches 
 to the work of Landor; he sprang full-armed into 
 the arena, and for seventy years held his own with 
 substantially the same fighting equipment. Mean- 
 while, the great panorama of European society and 
 politics was unrolling itself before him, and he was 
 following the succession of scenes with close atten- 
 tion, keen in observation and alert in criticism to the 
 very end, taking for his province almost the whole 
 of contemporaneous thought and action. He grew 
 to manhood during the years of the Revolution, felt 
 the shock of that great convulsion in much the same 
 manner as Wordsworth and Coleridge felt it, was 
 aroused to an even fiercer indignation than any of 
 his fellow-poets by the Napoleonic attack upon the 
 Kberties of Europe, and, like Byron at a later period, 
 for a time actually cast his lot with a people strug- 
 gling to be free. His unquenchable faith in the 
 republican principle survived the reaction which car- 
 ried Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey into 
 the conservative camp, and made them lost leaders to 
 the cause of liberty. When the year of Revolution 
 returned to Europe in 1848, and his faith was again 
 justified by passing events, he was the same eloquent 
 and resolute champion of republicanism that he had 
 been forty and fifty years earlier. And still he lived 
 on, long enough to witness the liberation of the 
 greater part of Italy from oppressors, domestic and 
 
162 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 foreign; long enough to see the dream of Italian 
 patriotism almost accomplished, and the capital of 
 the nearly united kingdom about to be established 
 in the city which for many years had been his chosen 
 home. Swinburne's beautiful verses, written in 1865, 
 at once celebrate this event and mourn the death of 
 the poet by whom it would have been acclaimed with 
 so much enthusiasm. 
 
 "Back to the flower-town, side by side. 
 The bright months bring. 
 New-born, the bridegroom and the bride. 
 Freedom and spring. 
 
 "The sweet land laughs from sea to sea. 
 Filled full of sun; 
 All things come back to her, being free; 
 AU things but one." 
 
 The convention which made Florence the temporary 
 capital of Italy had been signed just two days before 
 Landor's death. 
 
 Landor's politics were always impetuous and some- 
 what boyish. One of his earliest enthusiasms was 
 for George Washington, and one of his first poems 
 was an ode to the American general, written at the 
 age of nineteen. Here are two of the stanzas : 
 
 "Exulting on unwearied wings 
 Above where incense clouds the court of kings, 
 
 Arise, immortal Muse! arise! 
 Beyond the confines of the Atlantic waves. 
 O'er cities free from despots, free from slaves, 
 
 Go, seek the tepid calm of purer skies. 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 163 
 
 But, hail thou hero ! born to prove 
 
 Thy country's glory and thy country's love, 
 
 To break her regal iron rod: 
 Of justice certain, fearless of success. 
 Her rights to vindicate, her wrongs redress. 
 Her sceptre to transfer from tyrants to her God." 
 
 His admiration for Washington was associated with 
 an equally pronounced aversion for George III. 
 When a child, he startled his family by expressing 
 a wish that the French would invade England and 
 hang the King together with the two Archbishops, 
 for which sentiment his ears were soundly boxed. At 
 Oxford, his radical opinions earned for him the title 
 of the "Mad Jacobin." When he went into journal- 
 ism a few years later, he found his special antipathy 
 in Pitt, for whom his favourite epithet was "the ex- 
 ecrable." During the years of the Directory and 
 the Consulate, he continued to believe in the Revolu- 
 tion, but he learned to despise the French people as 
 the most inconstant of human beings. "As to the 
 cause of liberty, this cursed nation has ruined it for- 
 ever," he wrote from Paris at this time. He was 
 never misled by the vapourings of the revolutionary 
 philosophy, and his intellect always had a practical 
 bent which saved him from taking too seriously the 
 abstractions of such a book as Godwin's "Political 
 Justice," which for a period shaped the entire 
 thought of Wordsworth and Shelley. Professor 
 Dowden says that "Landor's scorn for what may be 
 pajled the metaphysics of revolution preserved hiij} 
 
164 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 from the vacuous rhetoric and the bandying of popu- 
 lar catchwords which are dear to the hearts of some 
 prophets of democracy. He was in no sense of the 
 school of the prophets. His conception of a free, 
 adult, proud, and cultivated nation has a grandeur 
 derived from the definite and positive character of 
 his imagination." He was particularly interested 
 in the young South American republics, and hoped 
 that there might arise in the southern continent of 
 the new World a confederacy united against all 
 "institutions not founded upon that equable, sound, 
 beneficent system, to which the best energies of man, 
 the sterner virtues, the milder charities, the com- 
 forts and satisfactions of life, its regulated and right 
 affections, the useful arts, the ennobling sciences, with 
 whatever is innocent in glory or useful in pleasure, 
 owe their origin, their protection, their progress, 
 and their maturity." His ideals were expressed 
 many years later in the beautiful lines of his 
 "Hellenics." 
 
 "We are what suns and winds and waters make us ; 
 The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills 
 Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles. 
 But where the land is dim with tyranny, 
 There tiny pleasures occupy the place 
 Of glories and of duties; as the feet 
 Of fabled faeries when the sun goes down 
 Trip o'er the grass where wrestlers strove by day." 
 
 When the infamous plot of Napoleon to make him- 
 self master of Spain and Portugal was disclosed, 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 165 
 
 Landor joined in the indignant outcry which arose 
 from all England. Nor was he content with indig- 
 nant words alone, but at once set about the organisa- 
 tion of a relief expedition. He set sail for Corunna, 
 and offered his services to the Spanish patriots, 
 agreeing to equip a regiment of a thousand volun- 
 teers. The offer was gratefully received, and the 
 troop was enrolled. He remained with it for about 
 three months, and took part in some petty skir- 
 mishing, but misunderstandings arose, he took um- 
 brage at a fancied slight, and returned to England 
 without having accomplished anything of great im- 
 portance. Just at this time the Convention of 
 Cintra was made, which aroused him as it did Words- 
 worth, and to even more vehement utterance. "If 
 nothing personal had driven me home," he wrote, 
 "still I could not have endured the questions of brave 
 and generous Spaniards, — ^why we permitted the 
 French to retain their plunder, why we placed them 
 again in array against Spain, why we snatched them 
 from the fury of the Portuguese, why we indulged 
 them with more precious fruits than they could have 
 gathered from the completest victory.?" The chief 
 literary significance of this Spanish expedition is to 
 be found in the fact that it inspired, at least indir 
 rectly, the lofty tragedy of "Count Julian." This 
 work, which Swinburne calls "the sublimest poem 
 published in our language between the last master- 
 piece of Milton and the first masterpiece of Shelley — 
 one equally worthy to stand unchallenged beside 
 
166 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 either for poetic perfection as well as moral maj- 
 esty," — deals with the period of the last of the 
 Gothic kings of Spain. Julian is the most powerful 
 of the Spanish nobles, and has just expelled the 
 Moors from his country, when, learning that his 
 daughter has been dishonoured by the king himself, 
 he brings back the infidel hosts whom he has just 
 driven out, and overthrows the monarchy. "A more 
 tragical conception nowhere exists," Landor's biog- 
 rapher truthfully observes. Swinburne says that it 
 has "some points of greatness in common" with 
 "Samson Agonistes" and "Prometheus Unbound," 
 adding that "the superhuman isolation of agony and 
 endurance which encircles and exalts the hero is in 
 each case expressed with equally appropriate magnifi- 
 cence of effect." And De Quincey, whose estimate of 
 Landor is otherwise grudging and unsympathetic, 
 goes so far as to liken the tragedy to a greater 
 "Prometheus" than that of Shelley. 
 
 "After all has been done which intellectual power could do 
 since ^Eschylus, and since Milton in his Satan, no embodiment 
 of the Promethean situation, none of the Promethean character, 
 fixes the attentive eye upon itself with the same secret feeling 
 of fidelity to the vast archetype, as Mr. Landor's 'Count Julian.' 
 There is in this modern aerolith the same jewelly lustre which 
 cannot be mistaken; the same non imitdbile fulgor; and the 
 same character of fracture or cleavage, as mineralogists speak, 
 for its beaming iridescent grandeur, redoubling under the 
 crush of misery. The colour and the coruscation are the 
 same when splintered by violence, the tones of the rocky harp 
 are the same when swept by sorrow. There is the same spirit 
 of heavenly persecution against his enemy, persecution that 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 167 
 
 would have hung upon his rear, and burned after him to the 
 bottomless pit, though it had yawned for both; there is the 
 same gulf fixed between the possibilities of their reconciliation ; 
 the same immortality of their resistance, the same eternity of 
 abysmal sorrow." 
 
 No calm will ever be his, says the Moor, 
 
 "Not victory that o'ershadows him sees he; 
 No airy and light passion stirs abroad 
 To ruffle or to soothe him; all are quelled 
 Beneath a mightier, sterner stress of mind: 
 Walseful he sits, and lonely, and unmoved. 
 Beyond the arrows, views, or shouts of men; 
 As oftentimes an eagle, ere the sun 
 Throws o'er the varying earth his early ray. 
 Stands solitary, stands immovable 
 Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye. 
 Clear, constant, unobservant, unabased. 
 In the cold light above the dews of morn.'' 
 
 And still another of the Moorish allies declares : 
 
 "He fills me with a greater awe than e'er 
 The field of battle, with himself the first. 
 When every flag that waved along our host 
 Droop't down the staff, as if the very winds 
 Hung in suspense before him. Bid him go 
 And peace be with him, or let me depart. 
 Lol like a Grod, sole and inscrutable. 
 He stands above our pity." 
 
 Here was a subject that appealed strongly to Lan- 
 
 dor, and he concentrated all his powers upon it. 
 
 When he sent the completed tragedy to Southey, he 
 
 wrote : 
 
 "My hours were four or five together, after long walks, in 
 which I brought before me the various characters, the very 
 
168 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 tones of their voices, tlieir forms, complexions, and step. In 
 the daytime I laboured and at night unburdened my mind, 
 shedding many tears. People have laughed at Voltaire for 
 weeping at the representation of his own tragedies. For my 
 own part I believe he never was half so sincere on any other 
 occasion. Thorough-paced rascal and true Frenchman as he 
 was, here was neither deceit nor affectation," 
 
 One other result of Lander's Spanish expedition, a 
 result as lasting as the marble upon which it was 
 engraved, was the Latin inscription written for the 
 Spanish patriots who had given their lives for their 
 country. "That scripture of the sun," Swinburne 
 calls it, 
 
 "Writ as with fire and light on heaven's own crest. 
 Of all words heard on earth the noblest one 
 ITiat ever spake for souls and left them blest." 
 
 It runs as follows : 
 
 "Emeriti lubenter quiesceremus, 
 Libertate partd: 
 Quiescimus amissS perlubenter," 
 
 and preserves nearly all of its dignity in Swinburne's 
 translation. 
 
 "Gladly we should rest ever, had we won 
 Freedom: we have lost, and very gladly rest." 
 
 When the Greek revolution broke out in 1821, it 
 found in Landor a champion no less impassioned than 
 Shelley, and if there be anywhere in English poetry 
 lines which vie in sublimity with the best parts of 
 Shelley's "Hellas," they must be sought in Landor's 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOU 169 
 
 two poems, "Regeneration" and "To Corinth," in- 
 spired by the Greek uprising. It was the destruction 
 of the Turkish fleet by Canaris, with two fireships 
 and a handful of men, that occasioned the following 
 outburst : 
 
 "What thunder bursts upon mine ear I some isle 
 Hath surely risen from the gulphs profound, 
 Eager to suck the sunshine from the breast 
 Of beauteous Nature, and to catch the gale 
 From golden Hermus and Helena's brow. 
 A greater thing than isle, than continent. 
 Than earth itself, than ocean circling earth. 
 Hath risen there; regenerate Man hath risen. 
 Generous old bard of Chios! not that Jove 
 Deprived thee in thy latter days of sight 
 Would I complain, but that no higher theme 
 Than a disdainful youth, a lawless king, 
 A pestilence, a pyre, awoke thy song. 
 When on the Chian coast, one javelin's throw 
 From where thy tombstone, where thy cradle stood. 
 Twice twenty self-devoted Greeks assail'd 
 The naval host of Asia, at one blow 
 Scattered it into air . . . and Greece was free. . . 
 And ere these glories beam'd, thy day had closed. 
 Let all that Elis ever saw, give way. 
 All that Olympian Jove e'er smiled upon: 
 The Marathonian columns never told 
 A tale more glorious, never Salamis, 
 Nor, faithful in the centre of the false, 
 Platea, nor Anthela, from whose moimt 
 Benignant Ceres wards the blessed Laws, 
 And sees the Amphictyon dip his weary foot 
 In the warm streamlet of the strait below." 
 
 To these heroes of modern Greece even the shades 
 of Leonidas and of Timoleon will not grudge a wel- 
 
170 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 come ; their glory is one with the glory of the great 
 spirits of antiquity. 
 
 "Peace, praise, eternal gladness, to the souls 
 That, rising from the seas into the heavens, 
 Have ransom'd first their country with their blood I 
 O thou immortal Spartan I at whose name 
 The marble table sounds beneath my palms, 
 Leonidas ! even thou wilt not disdain 
 To mingle names august as these with thine; 
 Nor thou, twin-star of glory, thou whose rays 
 Stream'd over Corinth on the double sea, 
 Achaian and Saronic; whom the sons 
 Of Syracuse when Death removed thy light. 
 Wept more than slavery ever made them weep, 
 But shed (if gratitude is sweet) sweet tears." 
 
 The lines "To Corinth," although less specific in their 
 inspiration than those of the poem from which the 
 preceding extracts have been made, must be drawn 
 upon for two passages of exquisite and typically 
 Landorian beauty. They begin thus: 
 
 "Queen of the double sea, beloved of him 
 Who shakes the world's foundations, thou hast seen 
 Glory in all her beauty, all her forms ; 
 Seen her walk back with Theseus when he left 
 The bones of Sciron bleaching to the wind. 
 Above the ocean's roar and cormorant's flight. 
 So high that vastest billows from above 
 Show but like herbage waving in the mead; 
 Seen generations throng thy Isthmian games, 
 And pass away; the beautiful, the brave. 
 And them who sang their praises." 
 
 And thus they close: 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 171 
 
 "To give the Inertest masses of our earth 
 Her loveliest forms, was thine; to fix the Gods 
 Within thy walls, and hang their tripods romid 
 With fruits and foliage knowing not decay. 
 A nobler work remains: thy citadel 
 Invites all Greece; o'er lands and floods remote 
 Many are the hearts that still beat high for thee: 
 Confide then in thy strength, land unappall'd 
 Look down upon the plain, while yokemate kings 
 Run bellowing where their herdsmen goad them on. 
 Instinct is sharp in them and terror true. 
 They smell the floor whereon their necks must lie." 
 
 The Homeric simplicity and directness of that last 
 figure is beyond all praise. Throughout his life 
 Landor continued to observe with the closest atten- 
 tion the political happenings of his time, taking fresh 
 heart for humanity with every new revolutionary out- 
 burst. He poured out the fuU measure of his indig- 
 nation upon the Holy Alliance, and upon the broken 
 pledges of the period of reaction. One of the revolts 
 at Naples made him exclaim: "I wish I had some 
 thousand pounds to spare, as I had when the Span- 
 iards rose against Bonaparte, that what I offered 
 to them I might offer to the Neapolitans." In his 
 old age he sent greeting to Mazzini in these words: 
 
 "And could not you, Mazzini! wait awhile? 
 The grass is wither'd, but shall spring again; 
 The Gods, who frown on Italy, wUl smile 
 As in old times, and men once more be men." 
 
 His hatred of all tyrants and all forms of political 
 oppression occasionally impelled him to say unwise 
 
m WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 and Intemperate things, to sanction violent methods 
 and measures. We can hardly go with him to the 
 extreme of such a declaration as this: 
 
 "Most dear of all the Virtues to her Sire 
 
 Is Justice; and most dear 
 To Justice is Tyrannicide; the fire 
 That guides her flashes near," 
 
 but his pitiless judgments upon individual tyrants 
 are acceptable to every lover of human liberty. His 
 judgment upon the arch-offender Napoleon, ex- 
 pressed in the two following passages, is not easily to 
 be matched for incisive finality. 
 
 "He was urged by no necessity, he was prompted by no policy; 
 his impatience of courage in an enemy, his hatred of patriot- 
 ism and integrity, in all of which he had no idea himself and 
 saw no image in those about him, outstripped his blind passion 
 for fame and left him nothing but power and celebrity." 
 "There is no example in history of a man who made so little of 
 so much: there is no example of one who lost so many armies, 
 alienated so many adherents, exasperated so many potentates, 
 defrauded so many nations; there is no example of one who, 
 capable of doing so extensive good, did preferably so extensive 
 evil. He opened the flood gates he was employed to close; 
 and through them heaved back again the stagnant waters, 
 pestilential to all Europe, which had been excluded with so 
 much labour." 
 
 It is sometimes said, I think unfairly, that Lan- 
 dor's political philosophy is little more than so much 
 noisy declamation against oppression and despotism. 
 Without claiming for him the title of a constructive 
 political philosopher, I think we must admit that 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 173 
 
 he had a fairly definite ideal of a free human society. 
 It was the ideal of the republic as distinguished from 
 that of the democracy. It was the Miltonic ideal of 
 a commonwealth, in which the wise should rule, and 
 should be trusted to safeguard the interests of the 
 people. That form of democracy which treats its 
 representatives as servants, which allows them no 
 discretion, which is ever seeking to force upon them 
 the mandate of the moment, and which repudiates 
 them when they endeavour to exercise an independent 
 judgment, seemed to Landor, as it has seemed to many 
 stout republicans before and after him, a perver- 
 sion of the republican idea. It was because he saw 
 this theory gaining ground in our own country that 
 he declared to Emerson his abhorrence of the Ameri- 
 can democracy. His view of our earlier history has 
 already been illustrated by his boyish ode to Wash- 
 ington. In his diatribe against Fox, written in 1811, 
 printed but suppressed the following year, and not 
 actually published until 1907, he declares that "those 
 who excited the American war were guilty of high 
 treason, in violating the liberty of the subject, and 
 in advising the sovereign to decline the redress of 
 grievances." This work was dedicated to President 
 Madison, "the wisest and most dignified chief magis- 
 trate that presides in the present day over the des- 
 tinies of a nation," words which elicited from GifFord 
 a characteristic expression of virulent Toryism: 
 "Nothing but a rooted hatred of his country could 
 have made him dedicate his Jacobinical book to the 
 
174 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 most contemptible wretch that ever crept into author- 
 ity." This dedication was essentially an appeal to 
 the President to avert the war which was about to be 
 forced upon his reluctant administration, and elo- 
 quently put the question: "Would it not be deplor- 
 able, would it not be intolerable to reason and hu- 
 manity, that the language of a Locke and a Milton 
 should convey and retort the sentiments of a Bona- 
 parte and a Robespierre?" 
 
 Several years later President Jackson was made 
 the subject of a poem which bade the world 
 
 "Behold the golden scales of Justice stand 
 Well balanced in a mailed hand." 
 
 The sturdy democracy typified by Andrew Jackson 
 had some admirable qualities, but if Landor had 
 observed it at closer range, he would hardly have 
 thought it the realisation of his poHtical ideal. What 
 he saw and praised in Jackson was the strong man; 
 what he did not discover was the headstrong partisan. 
 Believing in republicanism of the Miltonic type, he 
 was forced despairingly to admit that it could hardly 
 be found existing anywhere on earth. His opinions 
 are svunmarised by his biographer, who says: "The 
 nations on the Ebro, and the mountaineers of Biscay 
 have enjoyed it substantially for century after cen- 
 tury. Holland, Ragusa, Genoa, Venice, had been 
 deprived of it by that Holy Alhance whose influence 
 had withered the Continent, and changed even the 
 features of England. One of the worst of public 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 175 
 
 calamities, in Landor's opinion, was the overthrow 
 of the Venetian republic. Then was swept away 
 the oldest and truest nobility in the world." These 
 are Landor's words: "How happy were the Venetian 
 states, governed for a thousand years by the brave 
 and intelligent gentlemen of the island city! All 
 who did not conspire against its security were secure. 
 Look at the palaces they erected. Look at the arts 
 they cultivated. And look now at their damp and 
 decaying walls." Landor's mind was not of the 
 despairing sort, however, and even the present spec- 
 tacle of Venetian decay did not quench his hope of 
 a future Venetian regeneration. The political phi- 
 losophy which distrusts those systems in which im- 
 pulse is not restrained by self-imposed checks against 
 its own excesses, which holds that a wise people will 
 rely upon the wisdom of its representatives instead 
 of regarding them as objects of constant suspicion, 
 is a philosophy neither discredited by historical fact 
 nor condemned by theory as utopian. It offers an 
 ideal which is realised in countless numbers of the 
 lesser societies formed for various specific purposes ; 
 why should it not become realised in the greater 
 societies formed for the purpose of government? At 
 all events, Landor's view is that of many among the 
 closest and most practical students of the subject, 
 to whom it seems to offer the only possible permanent 
 solution of the great democratic problem. 
 
 Landor was by temperament unfitted for abstract 
 speculation, and we must not expect to find any 
 
176 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 formal philosophy in his writings. It is unwise to 
 seek for a formal philosophy in any poet, although 
 we are tempted to make the search in the case of such 
 men as Coleridge and Wordsworth, who are char- 
 acterised by the speculative temper, and whose works 
 seem to invite us to such a quest. Even in those 
 cases, we get results of questionable value, and run 
 the risk of missing the true meaning and significance 
 of the work; in the case of Landor we should find 
 even less to reward us for our pains. Abstractions 
 were not for him; his mind was of the concrete type 
 which delights in observing individual phenomena, 
 and is content with the presentation of what it sees. 
 What he thought and felt about religious matters 
 may be illustrated by two or three passages. In 
 the conversation between Calvin and Melancthon, the 
 latter is made to say : "What a curse hath metaphor 
 been to religion ! It is the wedge that holds asunder 
 the two great portions of the Christian world. We 
 hear of nothing so commonly as fire and sword. And 
 here, indeed, what was metaphor is converted into 
 substance and applied to practice." In the dialogue 
 between Luclan and Timotheus, the pagan gets the 
 better of the Christian, and is given such words as 
 these: "We are upon earth to learn what can be 
 learnt upon earth, and not to speculate on what never 
 can be. . . . Let men learn what benefits men; 
 above all things, to contract their wishes, to calm 
 their passions, and, more especially, to dispel their 
 fears. Now they are to be dispelled, not by collecting 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 177 
 
 clouds, but by piercing and scattering them. In 
 the dark we may imagine depths and heights im- 
 measurable, which, if a torch be carried right before 
 us, we find it easy to leap across. Much of what we 
 call sublime is only the residue of infancy, and the 
 worst of it." Such fancies as inspire Wordsworth's 
 famous "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," 
 with all their unspeakable power to charm us, do not 
 afford the mind so secure a resting-place as do the 
 words above quoted^ which supply the vagrant mind 
 with a corrective greatly needed in an age over which 
 the romantic spirit is dominant. Here Landor calls 
 up Wordsworth by contrast ; by the association of re- 
 semblance he suggests a greater than Wordsworth, 
 even Goethe, and the ripe philosophy of the closing 
 pages of "Faust." One more extract, quoted by 
 Lord Houghton from his unique copy of one of Lan- 
 dor's fugitive writings, may be given in illustration 
 of Lander's religious opinions. 
 
 "I have nothing to say on any man's religion; and, indeed, where 
 a man is malignant in his words or actions his creed is unim- 
 portant to others and unavailing to himself. . . . Whether in 
 the Established Church the last consolations of religion are 
 quite so impressive and efficacious; whether they always are 
 administered with the same earnestness and tenderness as the 
 parent Church administers them, is a question which I should 
 deem it irreverent to discuss. Certainly he is happiest in his 
 death, whose fortitude is most confiding and most peaceful: 
 whose composure rests not merely on the suppression of doubts 
 and fears; whose pillow is raised up, whose bosom is lightened, 
 whose mortality is loosened from him, by an assemblage of 
 all consolatory hopes, indescribable, indistinguishable, indefinite, 
 yet surer than ever were the senses." 
 
178 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 The secret of much that would otherwise be per- 
 plexing in Lander's work and influence may be 
 found in the simple statement that he was a classical 
 poet writing in a romantic age. This is what sets 
 him so far apart from his contemporaries, in spite 
 of his warm friendship for many of them, and his 
 generous appreciation of their work. This is what 
 made him exert so special and subtle an influence 
 upon his fellow-poets, an influence probably greater 
 than Landor's natural gifts would have made possible 
 had he himself been merely one among the brethren 
 of the romantic guild. This is what reduced his 
 audience in numbers, and enriched it in quality, so 
 that I sometimes think his chances of immortality are 
 better than those of certain of his more famous con- 
 temporaries. For romantic art is a thing of fash- 
 ions, of shifting phases of thought and imagination, 
 of moods and impulses that pass away, while the clas- 
 sical art which Landor represents is more surely 
 allied with the enduring aesthetic interests of man- 
 kind. Thus it is that Landor seems at once old- 
 fashioned and ultra-modem, that his workmanship 
 now recalls that of the Georgians and the reign of 
 Queen Anne, and now suggests the later Victorian 
 style that arose when the romantic movement began 
 to lose something of its energy. Mr. Stedman is 
 of the opinion that, "so far as his manner was any- 
 thing save his own, it was that of recent years, . . . 
 that the popular method constantly approached Lan- 
 dor's until the epoch of his death." In "Gebir," this 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 179 
 
 critic finds "the prototype of our modern formation, 
 cropping out a great distance in advance." When 
 we call Landor a classical writer, the fact that his 
 subjects were largely drawn from classical antiquity 
 has little to do with the judgment. It is not the 
 matter, but the manner of his work that makes him 
 a classic. The classical age is past, Landor writes, 
 
 "But poetry may reassume 
 That glorious name with Tartar and with Turk, 
 With Goth or Arab, Sheik or Paladin, 
 And not with Roman or with Greek alone. 
 The name is graven on the workmanship." 
 
 Sidney Colvin, in his discussion of Landor's manner, 
 presents the distinction between the classical and 
 the romantic ways of working in terms so admirable 
 that they must be quoted. 
 
 "In classical writing every idea is called up to the mind as 
 nakedly as possible, and at the same time as distinctly; it is 
 exhibited in white light, and left to produce its effect by its 
 own unaided power. In romantic writing, on the other hand, 
 aU objects are exhibited as it were through a coloured and 
 iridescent atmosphere. Round about every central idea the 
 romantic writer summons up a cloud of accessory and subor- 
 dinate ideas for the sake of enhancing its effect, if at the risk 
 of confusing its outlines. The temper, again, of the romantic 
 writer is one of excitement, while the temper of the classical 
 writer is one of self-possession. No matter what the power of 
 his subject, the classical writer does not fail to assert his 
 mastery over it and over himself, while the romantic writer 
 seems as though his subject were ever on the point of dazzling 
 and carrying him away. On the one hand there is calm, on the 
 other hand enthusiasm: the virtues of the one style are strength 
 of grasp, with clearness and justness of presentment: the 
 
180 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 virtues of the other style are glow of spirit, with magic and 
 richness of suggestion." 
 
 A further extremely important suggestion made by 
 Mr. Colvin should also be taken into account. 
 
 "The romantic manner lends itself, as the true classical does 
 not, to inferior work. Second-rate conceptions excitedly and 
 approximately put into words derive from it an illusive attrac- 
 tion which may make them for a time, and with all but the 
 coolest judges, pass as flrst-rate. Whereas about true classical 
 writing there can be no illusion. It presents to us conceptions 
 calmly realised in words that exactly define them, conceptions 
 depending for their attraction, not on their halo, but on them- 
 selves." 
 
 In this classical bareness of style Landor stood alone 
 among his English contemporaries ; for anything like 
 a close comparison we must go to Italian Hterature 
 and the tragedies of Alfieri, between whom and Lan- 
 dor, both in literary and in personal character, there 
 are many points of resemblance. Of "Gebir," which 
 exhibits this artistic restraint in the most marked 
 manner, the author himself wrote : "I am certain that 
 I rejected what almost every man would call the 
 best part. I am afraid that I have boiled away too 
 much, and that something of a native flavour has been 
 lost in procuring a stronger and more austere one." 
 The concentration, the elliptical method, the auster- 
 ity of manner which this poem exemplifies, are such 
 that it does not seem best to give any considerable 
 extract from it by way of illustration. Instead of 
 resorting to "Gebir," I will take the poem of 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 181 
 
 "Iphigeneia and Agamemnon," equally severe in de- 
 sign, but simpler and more direct in expression. 
 
 "IpMgeneia, when she heard her doom 
 At Aulis, and when all beside the King 
 Had gone away, took his right hand, and said, 
 'O father. I am young and very happy. 
 I do not think the pious Calchas heard 
 Distinctly what the Goddess spake. Old-age 
 Obscures the senses. If my nurse, who knew 
 My voice so well, sometimes misunderstood 
 While I was resting on her knee both arms 
 And hitting it to make her mind my wordSj 
 And looking in her face, and she in mine. 
 Might he not also hear one word amiss. 
 Spoken from so far off, even from Olympus?' 
 The father placed his cheek upon her head. 
 And tears dropt down it, but the king of men 
 Replied not. Then the maiden spake once more. 
 'O father! sayst thou nothing? Hear'st thou not 
 Me, whom thou ever hast, until this hour. 
 Listened to fondly, and awakened me 
 To hear my voice amid the voice of birds. 
 When it was inarticulate as theirs. 
 And the down deadened it within the nest?' 
 He moved her gently from him, silent still. 
 And this, and this alone, brought tears from her. 
 Although she saw fate nearer: then with sighs, 
 'I thought to have laid down my hair before 
 Benignant Artemis, and not have dimmed 
 Her polisht altar with my virgin blood; 
 I thought to have selected the white flowers 
 To please the Nymphs, and to have asked of each 
 By name, and with no sorrowful regret. 
 Whether, since both my parents willed the change, 
 I might at Hymen's feet bend my dipt brow; 
 And (after those who mind us girls the most) 
 Adore our own Athena, that she would 
 
182 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Regard me mildly with her azure eyes. 
 
 But, father ! to see you no more, and see 
 
 Your love, O father 1 go ere I am gone.' 
 
 Gently he moved her off, and drew her back. 
 
 Bending his lofty head far over hers, 
 
 And the dark depths of nature heaved and burst. 
 
 He turned away; not far, but silent stiU. 
 
 She now first shuddered; for in him, so nigh. 
 
 So long a silence seemed the approach of death. 
 
 And like it. Once again she raised her voice. 
 
 'O father ! if the ships are now detained. 
 
 And all your vows move not the Gods above. 
 
 When the knife strikes me there will be one prayer 
 
 The less to them: and purer can there be 
 
 Any, or more fervent than the daughter's prayer 
 
 For her dear father's safety and success?' 
 
 A groan that shook him shook not his resolve. 
 
 An aged man now entered, and without 
 
 One word, stept slowly on, and took the wrist 
 
 Of the pale maiden. She looked up, and saw 
 
 The fillet of the priest and calm cold eyes. 
 
 Then turned she where her parent stood, and cried: 
 
 'O father! grieve no more: the ships can sail.' " 
 
 If there be anywhere in English literature a poem of 
 more serene and flawless beauty than this, I, for one, 
 should not know where to look for it. But the poem 
 is strictly classical in style, offering no romantic 
 allurements to the sense, and its appeal is obviously 
 made to a limited class of readers of refinement. Lan- 
 der is the poet's poet among moderns, as Spenser is 
 the poet's poet among Elizabethans. It is not proba- 
 ble that he will ever be a widely popular poet. In 
 spite of Lowell's dictum that, save Shakespeare alone, 
 no other writer of English "has furnished us with so 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 183 
 
 many delicate aphorisms of human nature," his 
 phrases have never found general currency. Bart- 
 lett's "Familiar Quotations" leaves Landor but poorly 
 represented, although one might reasonably expect 
 to find such lines as "We are what suns and 
 winds and waters make us," and "Grief hunts us down 
 the precipice of years," and the phrase descriptive of 
 that "world of memories and sighs" consecrated to 
 Rose Aylmer, But in spite of this neglect, it may 
 at least be said that Landor has held his own, and 
 the surprisingly large sales of the recent editions of 
 certain of his writings even justify the assertion that 
 he has been gaining ground. 
 
 Swinburne has constituted himself Landor's eulo- 
 gist-in-chief for our modern generation, and it is not 
 the least among the many services done for the crit- 
 icism of English literature by the one great poet 
 who has survived the past century that he has 
 directed our attention, both in and out of season, so 
 frequently and with such generous appreciation, to 
 the rightful claims of this great master of verse and 
 prose. I have already quoted from his memorial 
 verses written just after Landor's death, from his 
 article on Landor written for the "Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica," and from his "Song for the Centenary 
 of Walter Savage Landor." This latter poem, ex- 
 tending to upwards of fifty pages, is a catalogue 
 raisorme of a large number of Landor's writings, 
 and goes to the extreme of panegyric as one work 
 after another is reviewed. The praise must be taken 
 
184 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 with some qualifications, but, for my part, such un- 
 restrained enthusiasm is more grateful than criticism 
 of the carping sort which fixes its eye chiefly upon 
 Lander's defects. If we hesitate to call Landor 
 
 "The mightiest heart since Milton's leapt. 
 The gentlest since the gentlest heart of Shakspeare slept," 
 
 we may at least agree that, 
 
 "All sweet, all sacred, all heroic things. 
 
 All generous names and loyal, and all wise. 
 With all his heart in all its wayfarings 
 He sought, and worshipped." 
 
 Nor did criticism ever strike with more unerring aim 
 to the very centre of its target than in the often 
 quoted lines which tell us how, in the verse of Landor, 
 
 "Through the trumpet of a child of Rome 
 Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece." 
 
 This is the final word upon Landor's relations to 
 classical antiquity. But of all Swinburne's tributes 
 to Landor the finest of all, although probably the 
 least familiar, is that embodied in the poem "Thalas- 
 sius." Here the poet writes his spiritual autobiog- 
 raphy, picturing himself as a flower born of the sea, 
 and found and fostered by the spirit of Landor. 
 
 "But he that found the sea flower by the sea 
 And took to foster like a graft of earth 
 Was born of man's most highest and heavenliest birth, 
 Free-born as winds and stars and waves are free; 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 185 
 
 A warrior grey with glories more than years. 
 Though more of years than change the quick to dead 
 Had rained their light and darkness on his head; 
 A singer that in time's and memory's ears 
 Should leave such words to sing as all his peers 
 Might praise with hallowing heat of rapturous tears 
 Till all the days of human flight were fled." 
 
 And from the song of his spiritual foster-father the 
 child learned the love of all things lovely, and the 
 hate of all things hateful, and the hope "that can 
 see what earth beholds not," and the "fear to be 
 Worthless the dear love of the wind and sea That 
 bred him fearless." And highest of all the lessons 
 that the master taught him was this : 
 
 "How the breath 
 Too frail for life may be more strong than death; 
 And this poor flash of sense in life, that gleams 
 As a ghost's glory in dreams. 
 
 More stabile than the world's own heart's root seems. 
 By that strong faith of lordliest love which gives 
 To death's own sightless-seeming eyes a light 
 Clearer, to death's bare bones a verier might. 
 Than shines or strikes from any man that lives. 
 How he that loves life overmuch shall die 
 The dog's death, utterly; 
 And he that much less loves it than he hates 
 AU wrongdoing that is done 
 Anywhere always underneath the sun 
 Shall live a mightier life than time's or fate's. 
 One fairer thing he showed him, and in might 
 More strong than day and night 
 Whose strengths build up time's towering period; 
 Yea, one thing stronger and more high than God, 
 Which if man had not, then should God not be; 
 And that was Liberty. 
 
186 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 And gladly shotdd man die to gain, he said. 
 Freedom; and gladlier, having lost, lie dead. 
 For man's earth was not, nor the sweet sea-waves 
 His, nor his own land, nor its very graves, 
 Except they bred not, bore not, hid not slaves: 
 But all of all that is. 
 Were one man free in body and soul, were his." 
 
 The essential message of Landor, thus interpreted 
 with profound and generous sympathy by his disci- 
 ples, is one of the most inspiring to be found in 
 the whole range of English poetry. Its ethical import 
 is so weighty, its form of utterance so large and 
 noble, its fundamental truth so absolute, that it will 
 be cherished by souls fit to receive it as long as 
 English poetry endures. "My writings are not 
 upon slate," Landor once wrote, with that proud 
 self-consciousness which in a man less great 
 than he would savour of egotism, "no finger, not 
 of Time himself, who dips it in the clouds of 
 years and in the storm and tempest, can efface 
 the written." 
 
 One would have to search far through the history 
 of literature to find another contrast as sharp as 
 that which exists between Landor the man and Landor 
 the poet. The inner personality which addresses 
 us through the medium of his verse and imaginative 
 prose has little suggestion of the outer personality 
 which confronts us in his biography. The caricature 
 of the man, which one of the novels of Dickens has 
 made familiar to the general reading public, seems, 
 to one acquainted with the writer alone, absolutely 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 187 
 
 unreconcilable with the testimony of Landor's many 
 printed pages. Even allowing for the fact that the 
 figure drawn by Dickens is a caricature of the broad- 
 est type, we still find it difficult to see how the Boy- 
 thorn of the novel can be one and the same person 
 with the author of "The Hellenics" and "Pericles and 
 Aspasia." Yet the conjunction of impulsive and 
 violent passion with an almost infinite tenderness of 
 heart, to which the caricature of the novelist reduces, 
 seems to have been exactly the conjunction which was 
 known to Landor's friends. It is illustrated by the 
 story, presumably apocryphal yet not without essen- 
 tial verisimiHtude, according to which Landor one 
 day threw an offending servant out of the window, 
 and then remorsefully exclaimed: "My God! I for- 
 got the violets." Mr. Sidney Colvin calls Landor's 
 inner personality "that of a stately and benign phi- 
 losopher, the outer that of a passionate and rebel- 
 lious schoolboy," and goes on to say "that Landor's 
 inner and nobler self had little hold on or government 
 over his other self must be admitted. From his na- 
 ture's central citadel, to use a mediaeval figure, of 
 Pride, High Contemplation, and Honourable Pur- 
 pose, he failed to keep ward over its outlying arsenals 
 of Wrath, which haste and mis judgment were for- 
 ever wantonly igniting, to the ruin of his own 
 fortunes, and the dismay of his neighbours and well- 
 wishers." The contrast between the two Landors is 
 well set forth by Lord Houghton, who knew them 
 both, in the following terms: 
 
188 WALTER SAVAGE LANIJOR 
 
 • 
 "By the side of, or rather above, the impulsive, reckless, 
 creature, there was the critical, humorous, nature, as well aware 
 of its own defect as any enemy could be, ever strong enough to 
 show and probe the wound, but impotent to heal it, and pathet- 
 ically striving to remedy, through the judgments of the intel- 
 lect, the faults and the miseries of the living actor. Thus 
 nowhere in the range of the English language are the glory 
 and happiness of moderation of mind more nobly preached 
 and powerfully illustrated than in the writings of this most 
 intemperate man; nowhere is the sacredness of the placid life 
 more hallowed and honoured than in the utterances of this 
 tossed and troubled spirit; nowhere are heroism and self- 
 sacrifice and forgiveness more eloquently adored than by this 
 intense and fierce individuality, which seemed unable to forget 
 for an instant its own claims, its own wrongs, its own fancied 
 superiority over aU its fellow-men." 
 
 The legend which grew up about Landor, both in 
 England and on the Continent, was both varied and 
 picturesque. The incidents which it included had 
 some slight foundation of fact, but became gro- 
 tesquely distorted as they passed from mouth to 
 mouth. It was told of him, for example, that he had 
 been expelled from school after thrashing the head 
 master, who disagreed with him on the subject of a 
 Latin quantity, that he had been removed from the 
 university because he had taken a shot at one of the 
 college fellows who had annoyed him, that he had 
 been banished from England for knocking down a 
 barrister who had cross-examined him, that when the 
 authorities of Como charged him with libel he threat- 
 ened them all with a fine thrashing {una bella bas- 
 tonata), that in Florence he had challenged the Sec- 
 retary of the English Legation for whistling in the 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 189 
 
 street when Mrs. Landor passed, and that he was 
 banished from Florence for taking a bag of coin into 
 the courtroom one day, and asking how much he 
 must pay for a favourable verdict. These stories, 
 and many others, were related about him, and lost 
 nothing in the telling. All Englishmen are mad, runs 
 the Italian proverb, and the Italians of Como and Pisa 
 and Florence must have thought Landor about the 
 maddest specimen of his race that they had even seen. 
 To use a familiar phrase, he kept himself in hot water 
 during the greater part of his life, engaging, as 
 Mr. Stedman says, "at eighty-two in a quixotic war- 
 fare with people immeasurably beneath him, and 
 sending forth epigrams, like some worn-out, crazy 
 warrior toying with the bow-and-arrows of his child- 
 hood." It is unpleasant to dwell upon these acci- 
 dents of Lander's life, and we turn from them with 
 relief to the writings in which his better and truer 
 self stands revealed. We turn with especial pleasure 
 and satisfaction to those verses which embody his 
 serene self-assurance, in which his calm acceptance of 
 whatever life may bring to him finds expression, in 
 which he faces old age and death with dignity of 
 soul. "Nur die Lumpen smd bescheiden," says 
 Goethe, and Landor, like Goethe, was neither the one 
 nor the other. His scorn of the mob was such that 
 he never sought to win its applause, and his attitude 
 toward the masses of mankind had no slight resem- 
 blance to the attitude of Shakespeare's Coriolanus 
 toward the Roman populace. He said in the preface 
 
190 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 to "Gebir": "If there are now in England ten men 
 of taste and genius who will applaud my poem, I 
 declare myself fully content. I will call for a divi- 
 sion. I shall count a majority." He wrote to Parr : 
 "I never court the vulgar, and how immense a ma- 
 jority of every rank and description this happy word 
 comprises ! Perhaps about thirty in the universe may 
 be excepted, and never more at a time." In the lines 
 addressed to Joseph Ablett, he said: 
 
 "I never courted friends or Fame; 
 She pouted at me long, at last she came. 
 And threw her arms around my neck and said, 
 'Take what hath been for years delay'd. 
 And fear not that the leaves will fall 
 One hour the earlier from thy coronal.' " 
 
 He welcomed the decline of life with the reflection 
 
 that 
 
 "He who hath braved Youth's dizzy heat 
 Dreads not the frost of age." 
 
 The imminence of death found him resigned, but "no 
 less erect than ever in spiritual stature. 
 
 "Death stands above me, whispering low 
 I know not what into my ear: 
 Of his strange language aU I know 
 Is, there is not a word of fear." 
 
 The most finished and faultless of all these epigram- 
 matic confessions is the quatrain which is more fre- 
 quently quoted, perhaps, than any other of Landor's 
 verses, the quatrain with which this summary of his 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 191 
 
 essential aims and aspirations may most fitly be 
 closed : 
 
 "I strove with none; for none was worth my strife. 
 Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art; 
 I warmed both hands before the fire of life. 
 It sinks and I am ready to depart." 
 
iRobert Brownina 
 
 It was in the year 1850, the central year of the 
 nineteenth century, that the laurel which England 
 bestows, sometimes worthily and sometimes unworth- 
 ily, upon the poet chosen for this distinction, passed 
 "from the brows of him that uttered nothing base" 
 to the brows of him whose work, already outshining 
 that of all his contemporaries, was destined to grow 
 still further in the graces of power and of wisdom, 
 and to rule with unrivalled domination the poetic 
 thought of the Victorian period. The year in ques- 
 tion thus marks a dividing line of more than ordinary 
 significance. Of the six great poets who had made the 
 first half of the century memorable, Landor alone 
 remained among the living. Of the six great poets 
 who were to make the second half of the century al- 
 most equally memorable, only two had been heard at 
 all, and only one of those two had become really 
 famous. The separation between the two groups of 
 poets is thus almost complete; by the middle of the 
 century a generation had arisen that had forgotten 
 Byron and Coleridge and Wordsworth, that had 
 hardly learned to know Keats and Shelley and Lan- 
 dor. New forms of human and artistic and intel- 
 lectual interest, moreover, were calling for expression 
 
 19? 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 193 
 
 jn English poetry, and the voices of the past, even 
 when heeded with all due reverence, were no longer 
 adequate to interpret the new interests, the new 
 dreams and aspirations, of the mid-Victorian age. 
 The revolutionary movement, though fanned into 
 renewed flame on the Continent, had ceased to influ- 
 ence strongly the English mind. The essential ob- 
 jects of the Revolution had already been in large 
 measure attained, as far as England was concerned, 
 and what remained to be accomplished for the cause 
 of liberalism, for representative government and in- 
 dividual freedom, was being gradually brought about 
 in the cautious and undemonstrative English fashion. 
 Even the great year of 184)8, the year of violent and 
 spectacular outbursts in Germany and Austria, in 
 France and Italy, witnessed no more serious disturb- 
 ance of the English social structure than was occa- 
 sioned by the Chartist agitators. The "red fool- 
 fury of the Seine" could find no counterpart by the 
 peaceful banks of the Thames, and the political and 
 social developments of this period in England seem 
 tame and uninspiring when contrasted with the pas- 
 sions that were stirring the rest of Europe. The 
 new poetry was constrained to find its subject-matter, 
 as far as that subject-matter was provided by exist- 
 ing conditions, not in the pageant of warfare and 
 the clash of revolutionary forces, but rather in the 
 unfolding of the new social order, the conquests of 
 the new scientific thought, the ardours of the new 
 religious awakening, and the inspiration of the new 
 
194 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 insight into the complex workings of the human soul. 
 These were the essential themes that were destined 
 to occupy and to control the thought of Browning, 
 Tennyson, and Arnold; in somewhat lesser degree, 
 and allied with certain special personal interests, 
 they were destined to occupy and control the thought 
 of Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. 
 
 Preoccupied as our modern poets have been, how- 
 ever, with the happenings of their own period, 
 they could not escape the shaping influence 
 of their immediate predecessors. In this respect 
 they are unlike the poets of the earlier group. 
 Our romantic poets of the first half of the 
 century made so complete a break from the 
 traditions and the ideals of the artificial period 
 stretching behind them that they almost seemed to 
 have started poetry over again, much as the Revolu- 
 tion seemed to aim at starting human society over 
 again. Whatever inspiration they received from 
 the past they took from Milton, and the Elizabethans, 
 and the ancients, repudiating the eighteenth cen- 
 tury and all its works. Byron alone offers a seeming 
 exception to this generalisation, but even his fre- 
 quently confessed allegiance to the school of Pope 
 was not the true index of his poetical character. 
 Between the early romantic poets and our modern 
 semi-romantic ones, on the other hand, there was 
 nothing like so complete a break as has just been in- 
 stanced. Tennyson was strongly influenced by Byron 
 and Keats, Browning by Shelley, Arnold by Words- 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 195 
 
 worth, Rossetti by Keats and Coleridge, and Swin- 
 burne by Shelley and Landor. Morris alone seems 
 to have been measurably free from the influence of 
 our early nineteenth-century poets ; he alone, in his 
 sympathy for the mediaeval spirit, went back to 
 Chaucer for his inspiration — that is, as far back 
 as it was possible to go in English poetry, — and even 
 beyond Chaucer to the writers of the primitive age 
 of epic and romance and early Christian legend. 
 
 Professor Herford, at the close of his admirable 
 little book upon "The Age of Wordsworth," thus 
 speaks of the relations of Landor toward the poetry 
 of the new age into which his life was prolonged : 
 
 "His region was man; but it was neither the abstract Man of 
 Shelley, nor the simplified and, as it were, sifted Man of 
 Wordsworth; as little was it the heterogeneous and motley 
 throng that Scott's vast sympathetic imagination gathered in 
 from the tavern and the castle, the hovel and the throne; it was 
 the procession of the distinguished and significant souls of 
 all nations and times, the expressive types or articulate ex- 
 ponents of the energies of the civilised world. Comparatively 
 isolated as Landor was, however, it was in the direction of his 
 lonely outpost that the area of poetical sensibility was, during 
 the age of Wordsworth, being slowly enlarged. And the poetry 
 of the nejct generation, of which Landor witnessed the entire 
 compass, was a continuous effort to gather in the harvest of this 
 wider area, — ^to give imaginative expression not only to the 
 elemental emotions of men. Earth's common growth of mirth 
 and tears, but to the complexities of the cultivated intellect, 
 and its infinitely varied modes of impressing its own rhythms 
 upon the dance of plastic circumstance, in art and science, in 
 statecraft and citizenship, in philosophy and religion. Here 
 Landor lived to see, and, with his royal incapacity for envy, 
 to rejoice in seeing, his work continued and surpassed, by one 
 
196 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 who added to an intellect as ample and fertile as bis own the 
 imagination of SheUey; and who, armed with keen psycho- 
 logical insight, and with a divining faith as ardent and illimiin- 
 ing as Shelley's in 'the Love whose smile kindles the universe,' 
 wrought the very souls of men into the woof of poetry." 
 
 How Browning befriended Landor in those last soli- 
 tary Florentine years of the old Roman is one of 
 the most touching incidents in modern literary biog- 
 raphy. The transition from Landor to Browning is^ 
 thus made a natural one, both by external and by 
 internal circumstance, for Professor Herf ord is right 
 when he says: "The last great survivor of the age 
 of Wordsworth was nearest of kin to the more orig- 
 inal of its two great inheritors in poetry, and the 
 torch passes visibly from hand to hand in the sym- 
 bolical friendship of Landor with Robert Browning." 
 The verses with which Landor welcomed Browning to 
 the company of English poets are well known. 
 
 "Since Chaucer was alive and hale. 
 No man hath walk'd along our roads with step 
 So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 
 So varied in discourse." 
 
 There is sound criticism in these words, for they 
 seize upon Browning's most salient intellectual char- 
 acteristics. How active was his step, how inquiring 
 his eye, how varied his discourse upon all that con- 
 cerns life and art, the relations of men with one 
 another and the recesses of the individual soul, is 
 now known by all readers, as it was gradually being 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 197 
 
 discovered by discerning minds at the time when 
 Landor's words were written. 
 
 The influence exercised by Shelley upon the direc- 
 tion of Browning's spiritual bent was so great that 
 it becomes one of the first things to be considered 
 in our attempt to set forth the fundamental attri- 
 butes of Browning's thought. His one important 
 piece of prose writing, from which considerable ex- 
 tracts were made in an earlier chapter, was a glorifi- 
 cation of the genius of Shelley. The "Memorabilia" 
 with which readers of Browning are so familiar is a 
 tribute to the memory of Shelley all the more im- 
 pressive for the naive simplicity of its diction. But 
 the most important record of Browning's feeling 
 toward the poet who brought to his own song its chief 
 inspiration is found in "Pauline," written at a time 
 when the influence of the master was fresh and won- 
 derful. There are more reasons than one why we 
 should be grateful to Rossetti for having discovered 
 this neglected poem some twenty years after its 
 publication, transcribing it for his own deUght. But 
 the chief of these reasons seems to me that Brown- 
 ing's apostrophe to Shelley was thereby recovered 
 for English poetry. 
 
 "Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever I 
 Thou art gone from us; years go by and spring 
 Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful, 
 Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise. 
 But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties. 
 Like mighty works which tell some spirit there 
 Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn. 
 
198 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Till, its long task completed, it hath risen 
 And left us, never to return, and all 
 Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain 
 The air seems bright with thy past presence yet. 
 But thou art still for me as thou hast been 
 When I have stood with thee as on a throne 
 With all thy dim creations gathered round 
 Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them. 
 And with them creatures of my own were mixed. 
 Like things half-lived, catching and giving life." 
 
 And then the young poet goes on, analysing his own 
 emotions, and recounting his spiritual struggles, his 
 search for a guiding clue through the thickets of life, 
 until his choice finally fell 
 
 "Not so much on a system as on a man — 
 On one, whom praise of mine shall not offend. 
 Who was as calm as beauty, being such 
 Unto mankind as thou to me, Pauline, — 
 Believing in them and devoting all 
 His soul's strength to their winning back to peace ; 
 Who sent forth hopes and longings for their sake 
 Clothed in aU passion's melodies. . . . 
 
 Soon the orb 
 Of his conceptions dawned on me; its praise 
 Lives in the tongues of men, men's brows are high 
 When his name means a triumph and a pride. 
 So, my weak voice may well forbear to shame 
 What seemed decreed my fate: I ilirew myself 
 To meet it, I was vowed to liberty. 
 Men were to be as Gods and earth as heaven. 
 And I — ah, what a life was mine to prove ! 
 My whole soul rose to meet it." 
 
 At the end of the poem, Shelley is once more invoked, 
 and called upon to hear the poet's confession of faith. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 199 
 
 "Sun-treader, I believe in God and truth 
 And love; and as one just escaped from death 
 Would bind himself in bands of friends to feel, 
 He lives indeed, so, I would lean on thee! 
 Thou must be ever with me, most in gloom 
 If such must come, but chiefly when I die. 
 For I seem, dying, as one going in the dark 
 To flght a giant: but live thou forever. 
 And be to aU what thou hast been to me !" 
 
 The well-intentioned efforts of the Browning So- 
 cieties have made much of the so-called philosophy of 
 their poet, and have found in his work a complex sys- 
 tem of thought which has amused no one more tha^ it 
 amused Browning himself. I believe it is fair to say 
 that few great poets have had the philosophical 
 mind in less degree than Browning. Coleridge and 
 Wordsworth among his predecessors, Arnold and 
 Tennyson among his contemporaries, were poets of 
 a philosophical type much more distinctly than 
 Browning was ; something at least approximating to 
 a definite and coherent system of thought may be 
 found in their writings, but Browning remained to 
 the end a poet in whom the rational temper was mas- 
 tered, by the emotional, a poet of impulse, of un- 
 reasoning optimism, and of elementary faith. The 
 declaration quoted a few lines back from the first 
 of his published poems, "I believe in God and truth 
 and love," represents the substance of his creed. He 
 found many strange modes of expression for these 
 simple convictions, and elaborated them in so many 
 guises that his devotees find it difficult to believe that 
 
200 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 his teachings reduce to so elementary a formula. 
 Browning's theistic faith, says Professor Royce, was 
 "never a philosophy, always an intuition, but freely 
 illustrated from experience, and insistently pondered 
 through long and manifold arguments. By this faith 
 he met, in his own way, the problems set before him 
 not only by life, but by that extremely complex 
 product of tradition, the Christian conception of 
 God." When he said, "I believe in God and truth 
 and love," he was stating a single proposition rather 
 than three separate ones. For him, God was one 
 and the same thing with both truth and love. None 
 of the narrow dogmatisms of theology had power to 
 arrest his thought in its soaring flight toward that 
 philosophical synthesis which, for want of a better 
 name, is called monism. Whatever path his thought 
 might take, it always reached out toward that ab- 
 stract conception of Deity which merges the Creator 
 with the creation, and has for the object of its 
 worship that soul of the universe which intuition ap- 
 prehends, but which baffles the attempts of reason 
 to demonstrate. To quote again from Professor 
 Royce, "The road Godwards is for Browning the 
 same, whoever it is that wanders over that lonely 
 path or pauses by the wayside after obtaining a dis- 
 tant view of the goal, or traitorously abandons the 
 quest, or reaches at last the moment of blowing the 
 slughorn before the Dark Tower." Certainly there 
 was nothing anthropomorphic about Browning's con- 
 ception of God. What he thought of the instinct 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 201 
 
 that impels men to fashion God after their own image 
 is made clear enough in "Caliban on Setebos." His 
 two names for the Creator were Power and Love, 
 and the latter of these two looms much the larger 
 in his conception. But "love includes strenuous- 
 ness; therefore, the human lover must be often far 
 from his goal, embarked on a dark quest, and so 
 at war with power." Thus we are brought face to 
 face with the problem of evil, for "love means tri- 
 umph amid suffering, and . . . even the divine love 
 itself must need for its fulfilment those struggles, 
 paradoxes, estrangements, pursuits, mistakes, fail- 
 ures, dark hours, sins, hopes, and horrors of the world 
 of human passion in which, according to our poet, the 
 divine is incarnate. Perfect love includes and means 
 the very experience of suffering, and of powers that 
 oppose love's aims." To this commentary of Pro- 
 fessor Royce, we may add a few words upon the same 
 subject taken from the important work of Mr. Henry 
 Jones upon "Browning as a Philosophical and Re- 
 ligious Teacher." 
 
 "The meeting point of God and man is love. Love, in other 
 words, is, for the poet, the supreme principle both of morality 
 and religion. Love, once for all, solves that contradiction 
 between them which, both in theory and in practice, has em- 
 barrassed the world for so many ages. Love is the sublimest- 
 . conception attainable by man; a life inspired by it is the most 
 perfect form of goodness he can conceive; therefore, love is, 
 at the same moment, man's moral ideal, and the very essence of 
 Godhood. A life actuated by love is divine whatever other 
 limitations it may have. Such is the perfection and glory of 
 this emotion, when it has been translated into a self-conscious 
 
202 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 motive and become the energy of an intelligent will, that it 
 lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height of being." 
 
 "For the loving worm within its clod. 
 Were diviner than a loveless God ' 
 
 Amid his worlds, I will dare to say." 
 
 This view of the comparative simplicity and un- 
 reasoned character of Browning's philosophy leads us 
 necessarily to an examination of Browning's style 
 considered as the reflex of his thought. The poet 
 who prepared himself for his vocation, as we are 
 told that Browning did, by such a self-imposed task 
 as that of reading and digesting the whole of John- 
 son's Dictionary, was certain to astonish his readers 
 by the opulence of his vocabulary, and by his almost 
 unexampled command over the verba,! resources of 
 English speech. Had this command been accom- 
 panied by anything like an equal command over the 
 harmonies of our language, he would have been a 
 poet indeed. He chose instead, or was constrained 
 by temperament, to write in a manner so perverse, so 
 grotesque, so impatient of all artistic restraint, that 
 his warmest admirers find it difficult to say much 
 in favour of a good half of his work. The fantastic 
 invention which could devisie such a title as "Red 
 Cotton Night-Cap Country; or, Turf and Towers" 
 extended, unhappily, into the substance of the poems 
 thus grotesquely named. Many a reader has been 
 baffled by the involved, tortuous, and elliptical style 
 of Browning's most characteristic writings, and 
 turned away in despair from the words that have 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 203 
 
 confronted him in such forbidding cohorts. Many 
 a reader has missed the kernel to be found within 
 the hard nut of "Sordello," and remained perforce 
 content with the opening line, 
 
 "Who will, may hear Sordello's story told," 
 
 and the closing line, 
 
 "Who would has heard Sordello's story told." 
 
 The presumably unconscious irony of these words has 
 sunk deep into the souls of disconcerted explorers, 
 and made them put aside unread the poem wherein 
 they might have found such glorious things as this 
 description of Dante, for example: 
 
 "Dante, pacer of the shore 
 Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom, 
 Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spiune — 
 Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope 
 Into a darkness quieted by hope; 
 Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye 
 In gracious twilights where his chosen lie." 
 
 Those who are prepared to endure hardships by the 
 way will find such things as this to reward them in 
 the most unpromising of Browning's poems; once 
 fairly afloat upon the eddying stream of his verbiage, 
 the "obscure waters" will often be found to "slope 
 into a darkness quieted by hope," and some imagi- 
 native gleam or flush of tender beauty will com- 
 pensate for the roughness of the journey. The 
 commonest charge against Browning is that of ob- 
 
204 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 scurity, but he does not seem to me to be quite deserv- 
 ing of that ascription. An example may be given 
 to illustrate just what I mean. The dramatic lyric 
 entitled "Popularity" pictures a poet whose genius 
 the world has not recognised, comparing him with a 
 fisherman drawing up in his net those Tyrian mol- 
 lusks which yield the purple dye of royalty. The 
 public does not recognise the royal colour until others 
 have extracted and refined it. Then it becomes the 
 fashion, it is praised by everybody, and all sorts 
 of middlemen exploit it to their own profit. Mean- 
 while, the poet-fisherman, who first brought it from 
 the depths, has died of neglect and a broken heart. 
 Such is the story which this lyric has to tell, and 
 now let us see how it is told. The closing stanza will 
 suflice for the present purpose : 
 
 "Hobbs hints blue, — straight he turtle eats: 
 Nobbs prints blue, — claret crowns his cup: 
 
 Noltes outdares Stokes in azure feats, — 
 Both gorge. Who fished the murex up? 
 
 What porridge had John Keats?" 
 
 It is very simple, after all, and quite intelligible, 
 taken with the explanation, and the explanation was, 
 of course, superfluous to those readers who knew the 
 poem beforehand. But with what blank amazement 
 would one listen to the stanza, did he not know the 
 poem, or were its reading prefaced by no explanation ! 
 Now this poem is not obscure. It is difficult, no doubt, 
 and not fitted for reading aloud. But the thought 
 of it, once grasped, is absolutely simple and clean-cut. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING ^06 
 
 "Obscurity is the natural product of turbid forces 
 and confused ideas," says Swinburne, "of a feeble 
 and clouded or of a vigorous but unfixed and chaotic 
 intellect." No one has discussed this question of 
 Browning's alleged obscurity with more force and 
 insight than the critic just mentioned, and I pro- 
 pose to draw upon him at some length. 
 
 "If there is any great quality more perceptible than another in 
 Mr. Browning's intellect it is his decisive and incisive faculty 
 of thought, his sureness and intensity of perception, his rapid 
 and trenchant resolution of aim. To charge him with obscurity 
 is about as accurate as to call Lynceus purblind or complain of 
 the sluggish action of the telegraphic wire. He is something 
 too much the reverse of obscure; he is too brilliant and subtle 
 for the ready reader of a ready writer to follow with any 
 certainty the track of an intelligence which moves with such 
 incessant tapidity, or even to re?ilise with what spider-like 
 swiftness and sagacity his building spirit leaps and lightens 
 to and fro and backward and forward as it lives along the 
 animated line of its labour, springs from thread to thread and 
 darts from centre to circumference of the glittering and 
 quivering web of living thought woven from the inexhaustible 
 stores of his perception and kindled from the inexhaustible 
 fire of his imagination. . . . We find no obscurity in the 
 lightning, whether it play about the heights of metaphysical 
 speculation or the depths of character and motive; the mind 
 derives as much of vigorous enjoyment from the study by 
 such light of the one as of the other. ... If indeed there be 
 any likelihood of error in his exquisite analysis, he will doubt- 
 less be found to err rather through excess of light than 
 through any touch of darkness; we may doubt , . . whether 
 the perception of good or evil would actually be so acute in the 
 mind of the supposed reasoner; whether, for instance, a veri- 
 table household assassin, a veritable saviour of society or other 
 incarnation of moral pestilence, would in effect see so clearly 
 and so far, with whatever perversion or distortion of view, into 
 
206 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 the recesses of hell, wherein he lives and moves and has his 
 being; recognising veith quick and delicate apprehension what 
 points of vantage he must strive to gain, what outposts of self- 
 defence he may hope to guard, in the explanation and vindica- 
 tion of the motive forces of his nature and the latent main- 
 spring of his deeds." 
 
 These words afford the most luminous imaginable 
 commentary upon Browning's treatment of the char- 
 acter of Guido Franceschini in "The Ring and the 
 Book," or the character of Louis Napoleon in "Prince 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau." It is almost equally lumi- 
 nous when applied to such famous studies of char- 
 acter as those of Sludge, Aristophanes, and Bishop 
 Blougram. 
 
 It has become a critical commonplace to say that 
 in Browning the dramatic instinct was more fully 
 developed than in any other English poet since 
 the Elizabethans. And this dramatic instinct was 
 accompanied by a psychological insight, certainly 
 not deeper than that of Shakespeare, but in some 
 respects even more minute and subtle, because reflect- 
 ing the greater complexity of modern thought and 
 the wider range of the intellectual life. "The inci- 
 dents in the development of a soul: httle else is worth 
 study," Browning" said in the preface to the second 
 edition of "Sordello." He made it his chief artistic 
 business to study souls of all types and complexions, 
 to enter into their inmost workings, to lay bare their 
 profoundest secrets. He makes us understand, as no 
 one had made us understand before him, what it was 
 like to be a participant in the victory of Marathon, 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 207 
 
 an Arabian scholar brought into fortuitous contact 
 with the influence of Christ, a mediaeval scholastic, 
 a Bishop of the Renaissance, a spokesman of the 
 charlatanry of modern spiritualism, a casuistical 
 defender of a bastard modem imperialism. To the 
 study of these historical types, generalised or special- 
 ised as the case might be, he added a long series of 
 studies of the types of private character shaped by 
 the conditions of our own time, equally profound in 
 their psychology, equally deep in their sympathy, 
 equally generous in their endeavour to permit each 
 to speak for itself, and plead its own cause in the 
 face of whatever violation of the code of conventional 
 morality may have been laid to its charge. One of 
 the diflScult questions of criticism is to know what 
 inferences may be drawn from the writings of an 
 essentially dramatic poet concerning his own personal 
 opinions and his own relation toward the problems 
 which are embodied in the dramatic situations por- 
 trayed by him. We are all familiar with Browning's 
 rejection of the notion that the poet's heart was 
 unlocked in the sonnets of Shakespeare. "If so, the 
 less Shakespeare he!" is Browning's indignant an- 
 swer to that claim. Nevertheless, I believe that 
 neither Shakespeare nor Browning was really so 
 impersonal in utterance as the strictly dramatic 
 theory would have us maintain. Many writers. Dr. 
 Brandes and Professor Goldwin Smith being among 
 the more recent, have supported the thesis, to my 
 mind quite convincingly, that the opinions of Shakes- 
 
208 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 peare upon all fundamental matters stand clearly 
 revealed in his writings. And this I believe to be quite 
 as true of Browning as of Shakespeare, But the 
 tests by which we may know when a poet is speaking 
 solely as the mouthpiece of one of his characters, 
 and when he is speaking, at least in part, from the 
 depth of his own convictions, are too delicate to re- 
 ceive exact formulation. Browning himself, in the 
 very poem which repudiates the notion of a dramatic 
 poet's self-revelation, tells us that the 
 
 "Outside should suffice for evidence; 
 
 And whoso desires to penetrate 
 Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense." 
 
 It is by this spirit-sense, which all lovers of poetry 
 have in some measure, that we divine the poet's per- 
 sonal message, even when placed upon the lips of 
 some dramatic creation. Who can doubt, for ex- 
 ample, that Browning projects bis own personality 
 into the poem of "Abt Vogler," when the soul of the 
 musician pours itself out in the following utterances : 
 
 "Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name? 
 Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands ! 
 What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? 
 Doubt that thy power can fUl the heart that thy power 
 expands? 
 There shaU never be one lost good! What was, shall live as 
 before; 
 The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; 
 What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good 
 more; 
 On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING S09 
 
 All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; 
 Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor 
 power 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist 
 When eternity a£Brms the conception of an hour. 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard. 
 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky. 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; 
 Enough that he heard it once : we shall hear it by-and-by." 
 
 Browning is one of the poets of optimism, and 
 the passage just quoted is one of the central ex- 
 pressions of his optimistic philosophy. Optimism, 
 as I have remarked upon an earlier occasion in this 
 volume, is more apt to be a matter of temperament 
 than of rational conviction. It certainly was a mat- 
 ter of temperament in the case of Browning. His 
 intellectual interests were so wide, and his vitality so 
 abounding, that it was not within his power to be- 
 come a poet of melancholy and despair. He faced 
 the problem of evil with such resolute courage that 
 we can hardly say that his eyes were of those that 
 "avert their ken from half of human fate," yet the 
 seriously reflective mind can never become wholly 
 reconciled to a view of life that seems unwilling to 
 allow to sin and suffering their full share in human 
 affairs. We may be moved by the argument that 
 they are a part of the divine scheme, and essential 
 to its completeness, but when the glow caused by the 
 poet's eloquence has faded from our souls, there re- 
 mains a lurking suspicion that his reasoning is 
 sophistical, and that from a universe in very truth 
 
210 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 the result of a divine ordinance, some, at least, of 
 the more terrible afflictions of mankind might have 
 been spared. "What can be more idle," says Mr. 
 John Morley, 
 
 "when one of the world's bitter puzzles is pressed on the teacher, 
 than that he should betake himself to an altitude whence it is 
 not visible, and then assure us that it is not only invisible, but 
 non-existent? This is not to see the facts clearly, but to pour 
 the fumes of obscuration round them. . . . The believer who 
 looks to another world to redress the wrongs and horrors of 
 this; the sage who warns us that the law of life is resignation, 
 renunciation, and doing-without — each of these has a foothold in 
 common language. But to say that all infractions of love and 
 equity are speedily punished — punished by fear — and then to 
 talk of tlie perfect compensation of the universe is mere play- 
 ing with words, for it does not solve the problem in the terms 
 in which men propound it." 
 
 Mr. Morley is writing about Emerson when he makes 
 these remarks, and they do not strictly apply to a 
 poet who envisaged the problem of evil as squarely 
 as Browning did, but in the presence of Browning's 
 conclusions, it seems necessary to recall the fact that 
 the tragic view of life is, after all, the view that has 
 been held by the greatest poets in their deepest moods. 
 
 "Have your found your life distasteful? 
 
 My life did, and does, smack sweet. 
 Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? 
 
 Mine I saved and hold complete. 
 Do your joys with age diminish? 
 
 When mine fail me I'll complain. 
 Must in death your daylight finish? 
 
 My sun sets to rise again. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 211 
 
 I find earth not grey but rosy, 
 Heaven not grim but fair of hue. 
 
 Do I stoop? I pluck a posy. 
 Do I stand and stare? All's blue." 
 
 This is the clear expression of a temperament rather 
 than of an intellectual conviction. It may have 
 power to reclaim the spirit that is Covering between a 
 lighter and a darker mood ; it will hardly seem other 
 than ironical to the soul that is passing through the 
 valley of the shadow of death. 
 
 We expect of a poet that he shall be responsive to 
 the main intellectual movements of the age in which 
 he lives, that he shall react against the tendencies of 
 contemporary thought, either carrying them on to 
 a further stage of development, or resisting them if 
 they seem to deviate from the line of progress. Now 
 the great watchword of contemporary thought for 
 every one reaching manhood about the middle of the 
 nineteenth century was the word Evolution, that 
 transforming concept which has given to our modern 
 view of man and nature a unity that it could not 
 have in any earlier age. As I have said elsewhere, 
 this concept "has so entered in^o the tissue of all 
 our thinking that it is weU-nigh impossible for a 
 man born during the half -century just ending to 
 put himself into what was the characteristic state of 
 the intelligent mind fifty or a hundred years ago. 
 Questions which were then debatable are now closed 
 forever; positions which might then be held in all 
 seriousness now seem the merest childishness; the 
 
212 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 animistic view of nature, the cataclysmic geology, 
 the special-creation hypothesis, the notion that or- 
 dered government originated in a social contract — 
 these things, and a host of others Uke unto them, 
 all of which once swayed the minds of able men, are 
 now swept into the intellectual rubbish-heap. The 
 disciplined intelligence can no longer think in those 
 terms." When we inquire into Browning's relation- 
 ship toward the evolutionary philosophy — and such 
 an inquiry provides us with a perfectly legitimate 
 touchstone by which to test the probable value of 
 his teaching — ^it is extremely interesting to find him 
 among those precursors of the modern way of think- 
 ing who were evolutionists of a sort before "The 
 Origin of Species" was published, who had reached 
 by intuition some notion of the central truth of the 
 doctrine which Darwin and Spencer were afterwards 
 to establish upon so solid a scientific basis. As early 
 as 1835, in "Paracelsus," Browning wrote these 
 lines: 
 
 "The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth. 
 And the earth changes like a human face; 
 The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
 Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright 
 In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, 
 Crimibles into fine sand where sunbeams bask — 
 God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged 
 With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate. 
 When, in the solitary waste, strange groups 
 Of yoimg volcanoes come up, Cyclops-like, 
 Staring together vidth their eyes on flame — 
 Gtod tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 213 
 
 Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: 
 
 But spring-wind like a dancing psaltress passes 
 
 Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure 
 
 Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
 
 The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost. 
 
 Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; 
 
 The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms 
 
 Like chrysalids impatient for the air. 
 
 The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run 
 
 Along the furrows; ants make their ado; 
 
 Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark 
 
 Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 
 
 Afar the ocean sleeps; white flshing-guUs 
 
 Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
 
 Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek 
 
 Their loves in wood and plain— ^and God renews 
 
 His ancient rapture. Thus he dwells in all. 
 
 From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
 
 To man — ^the consummation of this scheme 
 
 Of being, the completion of this sphere 
 
 Of life; whose attributes had here and there 
 
 Been scattered o'er the visible world before. 
 
 Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant 
 
 To be united in some wondrous whole. 
 
 Imperfect qualities throughout creation. 
 
 Suggesting some one creature yet to make. 
 
 Some point where all those scattered rays should meet 
 
 Convergent in the facultie3*^of man." 
 
 In the creation of man, however, the process of evo- 
 lution takes upon itself a new phase. 
 
 "So far the seal 
 Is put on life; one stage of being complete. 
 One scheme wound up." 
 
 With this new epoch of creation, there begins the re- 
 action of man upon his environment, the reaction of 
 
214 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 intelligence upon the unintelligent forces that have 
 evolved it, the reaction of feeling and human sym- 
 pathy upon unsentient nature. It is all a pathetic 
 fallacy, if you will, but it is the substance of the 
 poetical doctrine of Wordsworth, it is also suggestive 
 of the metaphysics of Schopenhauer, and it seems to 
 foreshadow the ethical position of Huxley. 
 
 "Man, once descried, imprints forever 
 His presence on all lifeless things: tlie winds 
 Are henceforth voices, waUing or a shout, 
 A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh. 
 Never a senseless gust now man is born. 
 The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts, 
 A secret they assemble to discuss 
 When the sun drops behind their trunks which glare 
 Like grates of hell: the peerless cup afloat 
 Of the lake-lily is an urn, some nymph 
 Swims bearing high above her head: no bird 
 Whistles unseen, but through the gaps above 
 That let light in upon the gloomy woods, 
 A shape peeps from the breezy forest-top. 
 Arch with small puckered mouth and mocking eye. 
 The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops 
 With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour. 
 Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn 
 Beneath a warm moon like a happy face: 
 — ^And this to fill us with regard for man. 
 With apprehension of his passing worth. 
 Desire to work his proper nature out. 
 And ascertain his rank and final place. 
 For these things tend still upward, progress iS 
 The law of life, man is not Man as yet." 
 
 In "The Making of Man," one of the very last of 
 Tennyson's poems, we find this same thought ex- 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 215 
 
 pressed with ampler elaboration and richer beauty. 
 
 Returning to Browning once more, we must find room 
 
 for his forecast of the future of mankind as thus 
 
 outlined : 
 
 "Prognostics told 
 Man's near approach; so in man's self arise 
 August anticipations, symbols, types 
 Of a dim splendour ever on before 
 In that eternal circle life pursues. 
 For men begin to pass their nature's bound. 
 And find new hopes and cares which fast supplant 
 Their proper joys and griefs; they grow too great 
 For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade 
 Before the unmeasured thirst for good: while peace 
 Rises within them ever more and more," 
 
 Writing a full generation later, and in the clearer 
 light of the Darwinian period. Browning expresses 
 the idea of evolution in more exact terms, although, 
 it must be admitted, with less of poetical effective- 
 ness. The lines are from the soliloquy of the modem 
 saviour of society. 
 
 " "Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact 
 Made plain as pikestaff?' Modern Science asks. 
 'That mass man sprung from was a jeUy-lurap 
 Once on a time; he kept an after course 
 Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast. 
 Till he attained to be an ape at last 
 Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock 
 In aught the natural pride' . . . Friend, banish fear. 
 The natural humility replies ! 
 Do you suppose, even I, poor potentate, 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, who once ruled the roast, — 
 I was born able at all points to ply 
 
216 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 My tools? or did I have to learn my trade, 
 
 Practise as exile ere perform as prince? 
 
 The world knows something of my ups and downs: 
 
 But grant me time, give me the management 
 
 And manufacture of a model me. 
 
 Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw, — 
 
 Why, there's no social grade, the sordidest. 
 
 My embryo potentate should blink and scape. 
 
 King, aU the better he was cobbler once. 
 
 He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes 
 
 Life to who sweeps the doorway." 
 
 .... "God takes time. 
 I like the thought he should have lodged me once 
 I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement. 
 The mansion, and the palace; made me learn 
 The feel o' the first, before I found myself 
 Loftier i' the last, not more emancipate; 
 From first to last of lodging, I was I, 
 And not at all the place that harboured me. 
 Do I refuse to follow farther yet 
 I' the backwardness, repine if tree or flower. 
 Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place 
 Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusk? 
 As well account that way for many a thrill 
 Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers 
 Called Nature: animate, inanimate. 
 In parts or in the whole, there's something there 
 Man-like that somehow meets the man in me." 
 
 There is nothing very profound about all this, and 
 nothing to show that the poet had any exact un- 
 derstanding of the process of organic development. 
 It means merely that the central truth of the evo- 
 lutionary doctrine was felt to be in accord with 
 Browning's intuition of the close relationship of 
 man with nature, and thus found in his mind a re- 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 217 
 
 sponsive echo. If we seek to trace the workings of 
 that mind in connection with other forms of philo- 
 sophical construction, we shall arrive at similar re- 
 sults. It was his instinct, rather than his reason, 
 that accepted a given body of doctrine, and he 
 brought a new theory to the test, not of any process 
 of logical analysis, but of its fitness to satisfy the 
 needs of his peculiar temperament. In politics, for 
 example, he was a liberal, and tells us why he was in 
 a sonnet that shows us with singular clearness the 
 process — ^if we may call it a process — ^by which he 
 reached his conclusions upon philosophical subjects 
 in general. 
 
 "Why? Because all I haply can and do, 
 All that I am now, all I hope to be, — 
 Whence comes it save from fortune setting fres 
 
 Body and soul the purpose to pursue, 
 
 God traced for both? If fetters, not a few. 
 Of prejudice, convention, fall from me. 
 These shall I bid men — each in his degree 
 
 Also God-guided — ^bear, and gayly too? 
 
 But little do or can the best of us: 
 That little is achieved through Liberty. 
 
 Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus. 
 His fellow shall continue bouijd? Not I, 
 
 Who live, love, labour freely, nor, discuss 
 A brother's right to freedom. That is why." 
 
 The fact is, Browning's whole view of life is coloured 
 by his own robust individualism and takes little ac- 
 count of abstract reasoning, A man's own instincts 
 are a sufficient mandate for his actions; they are to 
 be given the freest exercise, instead of being sub- 
 
218 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 jected to ascetic restraints. Those who have failed 
 to catch this note of the imperiousness of passion, or 
 have sought to refine away from it all its sensuous 
 implications, have missed the essence of his teach- 
 ing. For Tennyson the aim of life is the victory 
 of soul over sense, but Browning will have it other- 
 wise. 
 
 "Not with my soul. Love — ^bid no soul like mine 
 
 Lap thee around, nor leave the poor sense room ! 
 Soul — ^travel-worn, toil-weary — ^would confine 
 
 Along with Soul, Soul's gains from glow and gloom. 
 Captures from soarings high and divings deep. 
 Spoil-laden Soul, how should such memories sleep? 
 Take Sense, too — ^let me love entire and whole — 
 Not with my soul I 
 
 "Eyes shall meet eyes and find no eyes between. 
 
 Lips feed on lips, no other lips to fear! 
 No past, no future — so thine arms but screen 
 
 The present from surprise I not there, 'tis here — 
 Not then, 'tis now — back, memories that intrude! 
 Make, Love, the universe our solitude. 
 And, over all the rest, oblivion roll — 
 Sense quenching Soul!" 
 
 Professor Santayana thus characterises Browning's 
 outlook upon life : 
 
 "His notion is simply that the game of life, the exhilaration of 
 action, is inexhaustible. You may set up your tenpins again 
 after you have bowled them over, and you may keep up the 
 sport forever. The point is to bring them down as often as 
 possible with a master-stroke and a big bang. That will tend 
 to invigorate in you that self-confidence which in this system 
 passes for faith. ... In Browning . . . the zest of life be- 
 comes a cosmic emotion; we lump the whole together and cry, 
 'Hurrah for the Universe!' A faith which is thus a pure 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 219 
 
 matter of lustiness and inebriation rises and falls, attracts or 
 repels, with the ebb and flow of the mood from which it springs. 
 It is invincible because unseizable; it is as safe from refuta- 
 tion as it is rebellious to embodiment. But it cannot enlighten 
 or correct the passions on which it feeds. Like a servile priest, 
 it flatters them in the name of Heaven. It cloaks irrationality 
 in sanctimony; and its admiration for every bluflf folly, being 
 thus justified by a theory, becomes a positive fanaticism, eager 
 to defend any wayward impulse." 
 
 This judgment is severe, and the very selection of 
 Browning to illustrate an essay upon "The Poetry 
 of Barbarism" is even more severe, but it represents 
 a point of view so deliberately ignored by Brown- 
 ing enthusiasts that I make no apology for bringing 
 it forward to restore the critical balance. Given over 
 almost completely to the sway of impulse. Brown- 
 ing's activity was, on the whole, shaped to fine issues. 
 If his view of life was lacking in philosophical depth, 
 his attitude toward life was a thoroughly brave one, 
 and wins our heartiest admiration. The poem en- 
 titled "Prospice," blending as it does the note of 
 passion and the note of courage, is one of Brown- 
 ing's most characteristic utterances ; and, better than 
 any epitaph, real or imaginary, may serve our pres- 
 ent purpose as we take leave of a spirit at all times 
 so intensely alive that we are fain to ask : "O strong 
 soul, by what shore tarriest thou now?" — to insist 
 
 that 
 
 "Somewhere, surely, afar. 
 In the sounding labour-house vast 
 Of being, is practised that strength. 
 Zealous, beneficent, firm !" 
 
220 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Here are the words with which the poet of life ex- 
 uberant and abounding greeted the arch enemy of 
 human hopes and endeavours. 
 
 "Pear death? to feel the fog In my throat. 
 
 The mist in my face. 
 When the mists begin, and the blasts denote 
 
 I am Hearing the place. 
 The power of the night, the press of the storm. 
 
 The post of the foe; 
 Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, 
 
 Yet the strong man must go; 
 For the journey is done and the summit attained. 
 
 And the barriers fall. 
 Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, 
 
 The reward of it all. 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 
 
 The best and the last I 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore. 
 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No! let me taste the whole of it, fare" like my peers 
 
 The heroes of old. 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 
 
 Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 
 
 The black minute's at end. 
 And the element's rage, the fiend-voices that rave. 
 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
 Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain. 
 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul 1 I shall clasp thee again. 
 
 And with God be the rest!" 
 
Hlfrcb ^enni^son 
 
 DuRiN^ the thirties and forties, our literature was 
 greatly in need of a new poet. Keats, Shelley, Byron, 
 and Coleridge had all passed away. Wordsworth had 
 become the shadow of a great name, and Landor, 
 despising popularity, had remained the poet of an 
 aristocracy of readers. We have seen how Brown- 
 ing, who was vigorously productive during those two 
 decades, failed to become widely known, and seemed 
 to invite a fate similar to that which had overtaken 
 Landor. With Tennyson it was different. His ap- 
 pearance was fortunately timed, and he appealed 
 in peculiarly seductive strains to a public that had 
 wearied of Byronism, of revolutionary heroics, and 
 of philosophical mysticism. Yet he had himself 
 served a sort of apprenticeship to all of these things. 
 He had been influenced by the metaphysical bent of 
 Hallam's mind; he had even joined with his friend 
 in that mysterious Pyrennean expedition made in be- 
 half of the Spanish insurrection against the absolu- 
 tism of Ferdinand, and he had but recently shaken 
 off the spell of the poet who had dominated over his 
 youthful imagination. When he came to manhood, 
 there was a new spirit of hopefulness in the air. The 
 period of the long war was long past ; the lethargy of 
 
 221 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 the period of reaction was giving way to a renewed 
 effort in the direction of social progress. England 
 was girding her loins for the task of righting the 
 social and political wrongs that had prevailed un- 
 checked during the Napoleonic years. Science was 
 making new conquests in the domain of theory, and 
 finding new ways to enter into the service of man. 
 There were signs, also, of the new religious impulse 
 that, proceeding from the universities, was destined 
 to exercise so powerful an influence upon the coming 
 generation, and restore something of vitality to the 
 lifeless traditional creeds. To interpret the finer 
 spirit of this new age, a new poet, nourished from the 
 fresh springs of its inspiration, was clearly needed, 
 and with the publication, in 1830, of a slender volume 
 of "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," there were at least a 
 few observers of enough critical discernment to rec- 
 ognise the fact that the star of such a poet had risen 
 above the horizon. Arthur Hallam, writing of the 
 volume of 1830, emphasised the distinctive manner 
 of the new poet, and singled out five features for 
 special comment: 
 
 "First, his luxuriance of imagination, and at tlie same time liis 
 control over it. Secondly, his power of embodying himself in 
 ideal characters, or rather moods of character, with such ac- 
 curacy of adjustment that the circumstances of the narrative 
 seem to have a natural correspondence with the predominant 
 feeling and, as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative 
 force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation of objects, 
 and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of them fused, 
 to borrow a njetaphor from science, in a med|um of strong 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 22a 
 
 emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures and the 
 exquisite modulation of harmonious words and cadences to the 
 swell and fall of the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated 
 habits of thought, implied in these compositions, and importing 
 a mellow soberness of tone, more impressive to our minds than 
 if the author had drawn up a set of opinions in verse, and 
 sought to instruct the understanding rather than to communi- 
 cate the love of beauty to the heart." 
 
 This passage is a striking illustration of what criti- 
 cism can do when inspired by genuine sympathy. 
 With the whole of Tennyson's work before us, in- 
 stead of that single slender volume which was in 
 Hallaiii's hands, we should be compelled to make 
 much the same analysis, enlarging, perhaps, upon the 
 greater refinement of experience and the greater ele- 
 vation of thought achieved at a later period. There 
 would be nothing essential to add, unless it were 
 a tribute to the weight, solidity, and ripeness of the 
 thought which made the Tennyson of our own recent 
 times so much more than a dexterous craftsman in 
 vocables and rhythms, so sage a counsellor and so 
 trustworthy a spiritual guide in our social and reli- 
 gious perplexities. 
 
 There is no doubt that in this volume of 1830 the 
 artistic element was the predominant one. It re- 
 quired an attentive listener to discern the philosophi- 
 cal undercurrent of these delicate and fanciful 
 measures — these songs to Claribel and Margaret and 
 Adeline. One day at rehearsal, a famous orchestral 
 conductor laid down his baton, and remarked: "Gen- 
 tlemen, that passage should sound like a bluebell 
 
224 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 touched by a fairy." To the readers of Tennyson's 
 early lyrics some such thought as this must fre- 
 quently have come. A bluebell touched by a fairy is 
 an admirable metaphor for the characterisation of 
 these exquisite metrical arrangements. But readers 
 in search of something more than melodious grace 
 could find in the "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical" an occa- 
 sional deep note. They could find, for example, that 
 declaration of the poet's mission, who 
 
 "Saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill. 
 He saw thro' his own soul. 
 The marvel of the everlasting will. 
 An open scroll." 
 
 They could read how "Freedom reared her beautiful 
 
 bold brow" in the "august sunrise" of that genius, 
 
 and how 
 
 "In her raiment's hem was traced in flams 
 Wisdom, a name to shake 
 AU evil dreams of power — a sacred name." 
 
 They could find something of the political passion 
 of Shelley and Wordsworth in the sonnets to "Bona- 
 parte" and "Poland." And in the rambling verses 
 entitled "Supposed Confessions of a Second-Rate 
 Sensitive Mind" they could find more than a hint 
 of that preoccupation with the problems of religious 
 philosophy which was to become more and more pro- 
 nounced with the development of Tennyson's powers. 
 There is nothing uncommon in the condition of mind 
 revealed in this poem. It reflects the questionings 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 225 
 
 and perplexities that beset every serious soul that 
 has outgrown the period of childish acceptance of 
 its religious teachings. "Why not believe then?" 
 asks the young poet. 
 
 "Why not yet 
 
 Anchor thy frailty there, Where man 
 
 Hath moor'd and rested? Ask the sea 
 
 At midnight, when the crisp slope waves 
 
 After a tempest, rib and fret 
 
 The brood-imbasfed beach, why he 
 
 Slumbers not like a mountain tarn? 
 
 Wherefore his ripples are not curls 
 
 And ripples of an inland mere? 
 
 Wherefore he moaneth thus, nor can 
 
 Draw down into his vexfed pooU 
 
 All that blue heaven which hues and paves 
 
 The other?" 
 
 To ask these questions is to answer them, or rather 
 to indicate how impossible it is that they should be 
 answered in the sense that youth might wish. It is 
 only after a sharp spiritual struggle that the soul 
 rises to a plane where such questionings no longer 
 have power to rend it. Such calm and self-possession, 
 as Arnold says, 
 
 "Is all perhaps which man acquires, 
 But 'tis not what our youth desires." 
 
 There is, at least, a faint foreshadowing of the faith 
 of "In Memoriam" in the conjecture that 
 
 "From doubt at length 
 Truth may stand forth unmoved of change. 
 An image with profulgent brows 
 And perfect limbs." 
 
226 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 The study of Tennyson offers no problem more 
 interesting than that of tracing the development 
 of the thought thus presented in embryo in this early 
 poem. Is there a moral order at the heart of this 
 universe which seems so unmoral? Is there a divine 
 guidance in the affairs of men? Are we merely 
 cheated by all those passionate aspirations which we 
 associate with religious belief, or are they themselves 
 the warrant of their own validity? For sixty years 
 Tennyson wrestled with these questions, viewing them 
 in the light of every new development of scientific 
 or philosophical thought, bringing to their consid- 
 eration an open mind and an intellect of which the 
 present century will understand the power better than 
 the last century understood it. For himself, at least, 
 victory was the crown of his struggle, — victory for 
 the fundamental ideas that he sought to vindicate, 
 victory attested by the very scars of the spiritual 
 conflict. We have in this history of the poet's 
 inmost life, first the early phase of doubt and inde- 
 cision, then the experience of sorrow that led to the 
 chastened faith of "In Memoriam," and, last of all, 
 the long period of broadening vista and ripening 
 thought that found expression in these poems of his 
 later years that we are only just beginning to under- 
 stand and to appraise at their true value. This 
 steady development of Tennyson's intellectual power, 
 this continuous growth whereby the poet became 
 gradually merged into the prophet, although by a 
 process so insensible that many did not realise it until 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 227 
 
 his death directed their thought into retrospective 
 channels, has been admirably expressed by Frederic 
 Myers : 
 
 "For indeed, both in aspect and in mood of mind, there has 
 arisen between the poet of the 'Dream of Fair Women' and the 
 poet of 'Vastness' a change like the change between the poet of 
 'Comus' and the poet of 'Samson Agonistes.' In each case the 
 potent nature, which in youth felt keenlier than any contem- 
 porary the world's beauty and charm, has come with age to 
 feel with like keenness its awful majesty, the clash of unknown 
 energies, and 'the doubtful doom of humankind.' And the 
 persistence, of Lord Tennyson's poetic gift in all its glory — ^a 
 persistence scarcely rivalled since Sophocles — ^has afforded a 
 channel for the emergence of forces which must always have 
 lain deep in his nature, but which were hidden from us by the 
 very luxuriance of the fancy and the emotion of youth." 
 
 Carlyle's characterisation of Tennyson as a young 
 man has often been quoted. "Alfred," he wrote, "is 
 one of the few British and foreign figures (a not 
 increasing number, I think) who are and remain 
 beautiful to me, a true human soul, or some authentic 
 approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can 
 say, 'Brother!' ... A man solitary and sad, as 
 certain men are dwelling in an element of gloom, 
 carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which 
 he is manufacturing into Cosmos." The process of 
 manufacturing cosmos out of chaos was a slow one, 
 but every new volume published by Tennyson showed 
 that something 6f the sort was going on. In "The 
 Palace of Art," which appeared in the volume of 
 1838-33, he is perplexed by "th? riddle of the pain- 
 
228 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 ful earth," and feels that art alone is not adequate 
 for its solution. The ethical burden of this poem has 
 sometimes been taken as a protest against the ideal 
 of Goethe, but it is rather a protest against a mis- 
 conception of that ideal. When Matthew Arnold 
 reports the message of Goethe in the familiar line, 
 
 "Art still has truth — ^take refuge there," 
 
 he does the great poet much less than justice. Goethe 
 presented the claims of art in forceful terms, but 
 did not make it the final aim of human aspiration. 
 Goethe's essential ideal is that presented in the clos- 
 ing scenes of "Faust," the ideal of practical help- 
 fulness and disinterested effort for the betterment of 
 man's estate. "The Two Voices" is the most sig- 
 nificant, for our present purpose, of these early 
 poems of Tennyson. Although not published until 
 1842, it was written nearly ten years earher. Here 
 is presented in intensely subjective form the con- 
 flict between doubt and belief, between the mood of 
 despair and the mood of faith. Tennyson was ever 
 haunted by these two voices, although in his later 
 years he came to listen with growing confidence to 
 the one that seemed to him to embody the divine 
 message. In the poem now under consideration, after 
 a long argument, the baffled spirit takes refuge in 
 a sort of Wordsworthian mysticism. 
 
 " 'Moreover, something is or seems. 
 That touches me with mystic gleams, 
 Like glimpses of forgotten dreams — 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 229 
 
 "'Of something felt, like something here; 
 Of something done, I know not where; 
 Such as no language may declare.' 
 
 "The stUl voice laugh'd. 'I talk,' said he, 
 'Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee 
 Thy pain is a reality.' 
 
 " 'But thou,' said I, "hast missed thy mark. 
 Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark. 
 By making all the horizon dark. 
 
 " 'Why not set forth, if I should do 
 This rashness, that which might ensue 
 With this old soul in organs new? 
 
 "'Whatever crazy sorrow saith. 
 No life that breathes with human breath 
 Has ever truly longed for death. 
 
 " ' 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant. 
 Oh life, not death, for which we pant; 
 More life, and fuller, that I want.' " 
 
 When this fervent prayer for increased fuhiess of 
 life went up from the lips of the young poet, the 
 venerable poet of Weimar was breathing his last, 
 and upon his lips the prayer took the form, not of 
 "more life," but of "more light." Life and light 
 are, perhaps, the same thing under different aspects, 
 and with Tennyson also, the imperious demand of 
 impetuous youth gave way, in course of time, to the 
 humbler appeal of contemplative age. More than 
 fifty years later, the prayer of the poet was to be- 
 come thus transformed: 
 
230 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 "My Father, and my Brother, and my God 1 
 Heal me with patience ! soften me with grief I 
 Let blow the trumpet strongly while I pray. 
 Till this embattled wall of unbelief 
 My prison, not my fortress, fall awayl 
 Then, if Thou wiliest, let my day be brief. 
 So Thou wilt strike Thy glory thro' the day." 
 
 Tennyson's elaboration of cosmos out of chaos, 
 to use Carlyle's figure once again, went steadily on 
 for sixty years. How constant was his preoccupa- 
 tion with matters of spiritual import is made suffi- 
 ciently evident by his poems alone, and we hardly 
 need to supplement them by external evidence. It 
 will do no harm, however, to mention a few per-^ 
 tinent facts. At the university, he belonged to a 
 coterie of young men who found their favourite 
 reading in metaphysics. "Soon after marriage," 
 his son and biographer tells us, "he took to reading 
 different systems of philosophy." Still later, he was 
 a member of that famous Metaphysical Society in 
 which the foremost thinkers of the time, representing 
 all shades of opinion, met upon a common ground 
 of mutual tolerance for the discussion of funda- 
 mental scientific and philosophical principles. Of 
 the long series of his poems which are concerned 
 chiefly with the play of his intellect and emotions 
 about the essential ideas of religion, "In Memoriam" 
 seems to me altogether the most precious, seems to 
 me the poem which we should miss more than any 
 other were some inconceivable mishap to deprive us 
 of the entire work of Tennyson. How deeply that 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 231 
 
 poem has sunk into the consciousness of our race 
 there is no need of setting forth. For those who 
 have listened to its message, and especially for those 
 who have felt its consoling influence, it seems to have 
 entered into the very fibre of the mind, to have been 
 a possession from the very beginnings of the intro- 
 spective life. Tennyson spoke for himself as well as 
 for his lost friend, for countless thousands of his 
 readers as well as for himself, when he wrote : 
 
 "One indeed I knew 
 In many a subtle question versed. 
 Who touched a jarring lyre at first, 
 But ever strove to make it true. 
 
 "Pefplext in faith, but pure in deeds. 
 At last he beat his music out. 
 There lives more faith in honest doubt. 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds. 
 
 "He fought his doubts and gather'd strength 
 He would not make his judgment blind. 
 He faced the spectres of the mind 
 And laid them: thus he came at length 
 
 "To find a stronger faith his own; 
 
 And Power was with him in the night. 
 Which makes the darkness and the light. 
 And dwells not in the light alone, 
 
 "But in the darkness and the cloud. 
 As over Sinai's peaks of old. 
 While Israel made their gods of gold, 
 Altho' the trumpet blew so loud." 
 
232 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 And there is at least an adumbration of his serene 
 later vision in the lines which so exquisitely express 
 the essential meaning of prayer : 
 
 "O living will that shalt endure 
 
 When all that seems shall suffer shock. 
 Rise in the spiritual rock. 
 Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 
 
 "That we may lift from out of dust 
 A voice as unto Him that hears, 
 A cry above the conquer'd years 
 To one that with us works, and trust 
 
 "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." 
 
 How Tennyson faced the spectres of his own mind, 
 and found his own that stronger faith of which he 
 had written in "In Memoriam," is best seen in certain 
 of those poems of his closing years that have found 
 scant favour with some critics, but that seem to me 
 to belong to the very noblest expressions of his 
 genius. Before turning our attention to those poems, 
 let us pause for a moment to consider the stanzas, 
 entitled "The Higher Pantheism," which Tennyson 
 read at the opening meeting of that Metaphysical 
 Society already mentioned. 
 
 "The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains — 
 Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON ^33 
 
 "Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems? 
 Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? 
 
 "Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can 
 meet — 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. 
 
 "And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot 
 see; 
 But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not He?" 
 
 It is easy to dismiss this as mysticism ; it is easy, even, 
 to parody it, as Swinburne did, 
 
 "For fiddle, they say, is diddle, and diddle, we know, is dee," 
 
 but we cannot miss its impressiveness, or escape the 
 feeling that we are in the presence of a poet who is 
 also a seer. Frederic Myers makes an apt quota- 
 tion from Plotinus in illustration of this poem : 
 
 "But to see and' to have Seen that Vision is reason no longer, 
 but more than reason, and after reason; as also is that Vision 
 which is seen. And perchance we should not speak of sight. 
 For that which is seen — if we must needs speak of the Seer 
 and the Seen as twain and not as one — that which is seen is 
 not discerned by the seer nor conceived of by him as a second 
 thing; but, becoming as it were other than himself, he of him- 
 self contributeth nought, but as when one layeth centre upon 
 centre he becometh God's and one with God. Wherefore this 
 vision is hard to tell of. For how can a man tell of that as 
 other than himself, which when he discerned it seemed not 
 other, but one with himself Indeed? 
 
 Among the later poems which embody Tennyson's 
 ripest prophetic utterance, which relate the vision 
 whereof, in the words of the Alexandrian ecstatic, 
 
234 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 it is hard to tell, "The Ancient Sage" is one of the 
 most significant. Here we find the injunction to 
 
 "Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 
 And cling to Faith beyond the forms of faith." 
 
 Here, also, we find the intimate confession of a per- 
 sonal experience of which Tennyson made much in 
 intercourse with his friends, an experience of a 
 trance-like condition into which he sometimes fell, 
 and which may be interpreted either as a higher or 
 as a lower condition than that of normal waking 
 life. 
 
 "More than once when I 
 Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
 The word that is the symbol of myself. 
 The mortal limit of the Self was loosed. 
 And passed into the Nameless, as a. cloud 
 Melts Into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs 
 Were strange not mine — and yet no shade of doubt. 
 But utter clearness, and thro' loss of self 
 ?Tie gain of such large life as match'd with ours 
 Were Sim to spark — unshadowable in words. 
 Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world." 
 
 And in the same poem we find also this suggested 
 solution of the dark problem of evil and suffering — 
 a solution which no longer seems, as that of "In 
 Memoriam," to hold doubt and hope in nearly equal 
 balance, but rather to triumph over doubt as in some 
 hour of rapt transcendental vision. 
 
 "The world is dark with griefs and graves. 
 So dark that men cry out against the Heavens. 
 Who knows but that the darkness is in man? 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 285 
 
 The doors of Night may be the gates of Light; 
 For wert thou born or blind or deaf, and then 
 Suddenly healed, how would'st thou glory in all 
 The splendours and the voices of the world I 
 And we, the poor earth's dying race, and yet 
 No phantoms, watching from a phantom shore 
 Await the last and largest sense to make 
 The phantom walls of this Ulusion fade. 
 And show us that the world is wholly fair." 
 
 (C 
 
 If, indeed, the Cosmos make for good," says Fred- 
 eric Myers, "and evolution be a moral as well as a 
 material law, 
 
 "Men may come to think of these later Tennysonian utterances 
 as they thought of the Messianic Eclogue of Virgil, as the 
 foreshadowing of a new dawn of human hope. They may look 
 back to Tennyson as no belated dreamer, but as a leader who 
 in the darkest hour of the world's thought would not despair 
 of the destiny of man. They will look back on him as Romans 
 looked back on that unshaken Roman who purchased at its fuU 
 price the field of Cannae, on which at that hour victorious Han- 
 nibal lay encamped with his Carthaginian host." 
 
 It is evident enough that Tennyson's religious 
 philosophy lost well-nigh all of its earlier trappings 
 of dogma as his mind probed deeper and deeper into 
 the mysteries of hfe. His theology ceased to be sys- 
 tematic in the narrow sense, and tended to become 
 more and more embodied in a few simple and sublime 
 ideas. His conception of God was akin to that of 
 Spinoza and of Goethe; his approach to that con- 
 ception was by the Kantian path of the practical 
 reason, or, to employ the latest of philosophical 
 catchwords, the path of pragmatism. The im- 
 
S36 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 portance which he gave to the notion of immortality 
 is, perhaps, the most striking characteristic of his 
 religious thought. There is a passionate note, almost 
 a vehemence, in his assertion of this belief that we 
 do not find elsewhere in his work. It meets us early 
 and late in the poems. The central quotation from 
 "The Two Voices" has already been given. "In 
 Memoriam" yields these verses, among others : 
 
 "My own dim life should teach me thia. 
 That life shall live for evermore. 
 Else earth is darkness at the core. 
 And dust and ashes all that is." 
 
 "Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why. 
 He thinks he was not made to die; 
 And thou hast made him: thou art just." 
 
 The belief in a conscious personal immortality finds 
 no more touching expression than in the Epilogue to 
 "Teiresias," addressed to the memory of Fitz Gerald : 
 
 "Gone into darkness, that full light 
 
 Of friendship! past, in sleep, away 
 By night, into the deeper night 1 
 
 The deeper night? a clearer day 
 Than our poor twilight dawn on earth — 
 
 If night, what barren toil to be I 
 What life, so maim'd by night, were worth 
 
 Our living out? Not mine to me 
 Remembering all the golden hours 
 
 Now silent, and so many dead. 
 And him the last." 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 237 
 
 In "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After" there is a 
 group of moving couplets upon the same subject. 
 
 "Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worship't, being true as he was 
 brave; 
 Good, for Good is Good, he follow'd, yet he look'd beyond the 
 grave, 
 
 "Wiser there than you, that crowning barren Death as lord of 
 
 aU, 
 Deem this over-tragic drama's closing curtain is the pall ! 
 
 "Beautiful was death in him, who saw the death, but kept the 
 
 decki 
 Saving women and their babes, and sinking with the sinking 
 wreck. 
 
 "Gone for ever! Ever? no — for since our dying race began. 
 Ever, ever, and for ever was the leading light of man." 
 
 Finally, in the poem called "Vastness," to select one 
 further instance of the poet's passionate faith in 
 immortality, the appeal to the feelings is put upon 
 the strongest possible basis. 
 
 "Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish'd 
 
 face. 
 Many a planet by many a sun may roU with the dust of a 
 vanish'd reice. ' 
 
 "Raving politics, never at rest — as this poor earth's pale history 
 runs, — 
 What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million 
 million of suns? 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 "What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own corpse- 
 
 cofSns at last. 
 Swallowed in Vastness, lost in silence, drown'd in the deeps of 
 a meaningless Past? 
 
 "What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's 
 anger of bees in their hive?" 
 
 And then comes that closing personal touch which 
 is better than any reasoned argument — 
 
 "Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him for ever: the 
 dead are not dead but alive." 
 
 It may be said that in this matter Tennyson "pro- 
 tests too much" to gain the completest confidence, 
 and that his appeal is to the logic of the emotions 
 rather than to the logic of the intellect. Granting 
 all this, it nevertheless remains true that his poetry 
 has proved one of the most potent influences that the 
 last half -century has developed for the strengthen- 
 ing of belief in the essentials of religion. Before 
 leaving this phase of my subject, I wish to reproduce 
 the weighty opinion of his famous contemporary, Dr. 
 Martineau, who wrote to the present Lord Tenny- 
 son as follows: 
 
 "That in a certain sense our great Laureate's poetry has never- 
 theless had a dissolving influence upon the over-definite dogmatic 
 creeds within hearing or upon the modes of religious thought 
 amid which it was born, can hardly be doubted. In laying bare, 
 as it does, the history of his own spirit, its conflicts and aspira- 
 tions, its alternate eclipse of doubt and glow of faith, it has 
 reported more than a personal experience: he has told the story 
 of an age which he has thus brought into self-knowledge. 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 239 
 
 And as he has never for himself surrendered the traditional 
 form of a devout faith, tiU he has seized its permanent spirit, 
 and invested it vrith a purer glory, so has he saved it for others 
 by making it fairer than they had dreamt. Among thousands 
 of readers previously irresponsive to anything Divine he has 
 created, or immeasurably intensified, the susceptibility of 
 religious reverence." 
 
 Large as is the part of religious philosophy in 
 Tennyson's thought, it must not be forgotten that 
 his outlook upon the world in which he lived included 
 many other matters within its purview. He was 
 no less awake to whatever concerned the permanent 
 interests of his fellow-men in society and politics, 
 in art and science, than he was to those matters 
 of deeper concern that have hitherto engaged our 
 attention. The following words by Projfessor Paul 
 Shorey characterise with exactitude and admirable 
 fitness both the range of Tennyson's intellectual ex- 
 plorations and the perfection of the art with which 
 he invested his thought. 
 
 "The large ideas of scientific and industrial progress that have 
 widened the thoughts of men in this century; the partial failure 
 of these ideals during the last three decades to satisfy our 
 legitimate social aspirations; winds of doctrine and gusts of 
 feeling that shake our souls in the wreck of ancient faiths; 
 the finer modern feeling for the subtler aspects of the beautiful 
 in nature; the more penetrating scholarship and the sympa- 
 thetic historic insight that have enabled us to enter into full 
 possession of our rich heritage as heirs of all the literatures 
 and all the arts of the centuries behind us, — these are the 
 dominant thoughts of the cultivated modern man. In the 
 varied and vigorous expression of each and every one of these 
 ideas, Tennyson, by citation of chapter and verse, can easUy 
 
240 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 be proved supreme. But, true to his poet's mission as prophet 
 of the beautiful, he has never permitted himself to be hurried 
 into impatient, grotesque, or intemperate expression of them. 
 He gives us more meaning to the line than any other English 
 poet except Shakespeare; but he himself said that he would 
 almost rather sacrifice a meaning than allow two s's to come to- 
 gether. This is his condemnation in the eyes of those students 
 of literature who in their inmost souls care nothing for dis- 
 tinctive poetifc beauty — ^who have never apprehended the fidl 
 ethical and aesthetic significance of Keats's saying that beauty 
 is truth, truth beauty, and who are not aware that only by self- 
 abnegating consecration to the beautiful can the poet attain to 
 the Platonic unity of the good, the beautiful, and the true." 
 
 We may take Tennyson's attitude toward the rational 
 view of nature and man, made possible by the doc- 
 trine of evolution, as an illustration of the way in 
 which his mind assimilated new truth, and even an- 
 ticipated it by some intuitive process. In the pre- 
 ceding chapter, Browning's remarkable anticipation 
 of the evolutionary idea, as found in his early poem 
 of "Paracelsus," was quoted. Tennyson's "In 
 Memoriam" affords an illustration of the same subject 
 equally remarkable for its insight, and expressed 
 with a refinement of poetic art far beyond anything 
 of which Browning was capable. 
 
 "Are God and Nature then at strife, 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
 So careful of the type she seems. 
 So careless of the single life. 
 
 " 'So careful of the type?' but no. 
 
 From scarpfed cliff and quarried stone 
 She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: 
 I care for nothing, all shall go. 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 241 
 
 "'Thou makest thine appeal to me; 
 I bring to life, I bring to death: 
 The spirit does but mean the breath: 
 I Isnow no more.' And he, shall he, 
 
 "Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, 
 Such splendid purpose in his eyes. 
 Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies. 
 Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer. 
 
 Who trusted God was love indeed 
 
 And love Creation's final law — 
 
 Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
 With ravine, shriek'd against his creed — 
 
 "Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills. 
 Who battled for the True, the Just, 
 Be blown about the desert dust. 
 Or seal'd within the iron hills? 
 
 "Contemplate all this work of Time, 
 The giant labouring in his youth; 
 Nor dream of human love and truth. 
 As dying Nature's earth and lime; 
 
 "But trust that those we call the dead 
 Are breathers of an ampler day 
 For ever nobler ends. They say 
 The solid earth whereon we tread, 
 
 "In tracts of 'fluent heat began. 
 
 And ^ew to seeming-random forms. 
 The seeming prey of cyclic storms. 
 Till at the last arose the man; 
 
 "Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime^ 
 The herald of a higher race, 
 And of himself in higher place. 
 If so he type this work of time 
 
242 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 "Within himself, from more to more; 
 Or, crown'd with attributes of woe 
 Like glories, move his course, and show 
 That life is not as idle ore, 
 
 "But iron dug from central gloom, 
 And heated hot with burning fears. 
 And dipt in baths of hissing tears. 
 And batter'd with the shocks of doom 
 
 "To shape and use. Arise and fly 
 The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; 
 Move upwards, working out the beast, 
 And let the ape and tiger die." 
 
 This conception of man as engaged in the task of 
 "working out the beast," and growing to full moral 
 nature in the course of the ages, was thus familiar 
 to Tennyson long before the publication of "The 
 Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man." 
 Those epoch-making books merely served to confirm 
 him in an opinion that he had long held — ^in general 
 terms, to be sure, — ^but definitely enough for the 
 purposes of poetry. The words spoken by him many 
 years later, in the character of an avowed evolutionist, 
 do not differ greatly in their meaning from those 
 just quoted from "In Memoriam." 
 
 "I have climb'd to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the 
 Past, 
 Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low 
 desire. 
 But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the man is quiet at last 
 As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a 
 height that is higher." 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 243 
 
 In a still later poem than this — one of the very last 
 that he wrote — the poet's acceptance of the principle 
 of continuous development is once more afSrmed, and 
 this time in a strain of prophetic rapture. The poem 
 is called "The Making of Man." 
 
 "Where is one that, born of woman, altogether can escape 
 From the lower world within him, moods of tiger, or of ape? 
 Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning Age of 
 ages. 
 Shall not aeon after aeon pass and touch him into shape?" 
 
 "All about him shadow still, but, while the races flower and 
 
 fade. 
 Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the shade. 
 Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices blend in 
 choric 
 Hallelujah to the Maker: 'It is finish'd. Man is made.' " 
 
 There is no more hopeful and inspiring message in 
 our poetry than these words contain — these words 
 that come to us from the poet's ripest age, from 
 the spiritual uplands of a soul that sought higher and 
 higher altitudes all its life long. 
 
 I have laid so much stress upon the exalted beauty 
 of some of these later poems because it has been 
 the fashion to decry them, and to speak slightingly of 
 them as the product of declining powers. They 
 are the product of the poet's age, it is true, not of 
 his youth, and have not the youthful glow and ardour 
 of aspiration. But Tennyson's Ulysses long ago 
 reminded us that 
 
244 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 "Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; 
 Death closes all; but something ere the end. 
 Some work of noble note, may yet be done. 
 Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods." 
 
 And I have also sought to show that these later poems 
 have a hopefulness of their own, a chastened hopeful- 
 ness, to be sure, but something very different from 
 the pessimism which was charged against Tennyson 
 by the "chorus of indolent reviewers" when the sec- 
 ond "Locksley Hall" made its appearance. 
 
 "When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, 
 spoken lies?" 
 
 That sounds like the voice of despair, indeed, — ^not at 
 all like the voice that had said half a century earlier : 
 
 "Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something 
 
 new: 
 That which they have done but earnest of the things that they 
 shall do." 
 
 But a close examination of the first "Locksley Hall" 
 will disclose almost as great an impatience with ex- 
 isting conditions as the second poem displays, and 
 in both cases the dramatic element must be taken 
 into account. Tennyson was addicted to drawing 
 sharp moral contrasts. In his religious poems he 
 depicted the depths of despair that he might more 
 effectively urge his message of hope; he plunged 
 his readers once and again into "the sunless gulfs of 
 doubt" that they might the more fuUy realise the 
 consolations of sunlit faith. In the second "Locksley 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 245 
 
 Hall," he dips his brush in the darkest of colours 
 in order that he may intensify the radiance of his 
 prophetic vista. 
 
 "Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue, 
 I have seen her far away — for is not Earth as yet so young? 
 
 "Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion kiU'd, 
 Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd, 
 
 "Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles. 
 Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles. 
 
 "Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be 
 "Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me. 
 
 "Forward then, but still remember how the course of time will 
 
 swerve. 
 Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming 
 curve. 
 
 "Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or 
 mine. 
 Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine. 
 
 "FoUow Light, and do the Right — for man can half-control 
 his doom — 
 Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb." 
 
 It is for such gifts as these, answering to the 
 deepest spiritual needs of manldnd, that Tennyson 
 earned, beyond any other poet of his time, the love, 
 the gratitude, and the reverence of his fellow-men. 
 He enforced the lesson that "all life needs for life is 
 possible to will." He showed us the difference be- 
 
246 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 tween the freedom that is one with license, and the 
 far nobler freedom that can restrain itself from ex- 
 cess, that "broadens slowly down from precedent to 
 precedent" instead of convulsing the social organism 
 by some outburst of reckless energy. He showed 
 us the true path of duty, and how 
 
 "He that walks it, only tWrsting 
 For the right, and learns to deaden 
 Love of self, before his journey closes. 
 He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 
 Into glossy purples, which outredden 
 All voluptuous garden-roses." 
 
 Nay, more, he showed us how 
 
 "He, that ever following her commands. 
 On with toil of heart and knees and hands. 
 Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won 
 His path upward, and prevailed, 
 Shall find the topplings crags of Duty scaled 
 Are close upon the shining table-lands 
 To which our God himself is moon and sun." 
 
 And all those things, and many others, came to us 
 clothed in the perfection of artistic expression, a 
 perfection so supreme that we can only liken it to 
 that of the greatest poets of the past, of Sophocles, 
 Virgil, and Shakespeare. It is because of this mar- 
 vellous gift for the harmonious arrangement of 
 words, for the exquisite chiselling of phrases, that 
 Tennyson stands far above all of his English con- 
 temporaries. So royal a suzerainty as that which 
 he has exercised over the poetry of the Victorian 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 247 
 
 age, is almost unexampled in the history of our lit- 
 erature. The only people who have ever seriously 
 challenged it have been the members of the Browning 
 Societies, and with those readers who in good faith 
 believe Browning to be as great a poet as Tennyson, 
 or even a greater, it is difficult to argue. They are 
 attracted by the combined subtlety and robustness 
 of Browning's thought, and are colour-blind to the 
 glaring defects of his style. Professor Shorey does 
 not seem unduly severe when he says that what 
 the majority of Browning's devotees 
 
 "chiefly admire in him is the slangy vehemence with which he 
 detaches and emphasises ideas that fail to stimulate their at- 
 tention when expressed in quiet artistic English. They de- 
 liberately prefer 'God's in his heaven, all's right with the 
 world,' to 
 
 'And hear at times a sentinel 
 
 Who moves about from place to place. 
 And whispers to the worlds of space 
 In the deep night that all is well.' 
 
 Their souls are strengthened by the virile if cacophonous 
 optimism of 
 
 'AH the same of absolute 
 
 And irretrievable black — black's soul of black — 
 
 Beyond white power to disintensify. 
 
 Of that I saw no sample. Such may wreck 
 
 My life and ruin my philosophy 
 
 To-morrow doubtless.' 
 
 But they remain cold to the 'elegant virtuoso' who writes 
 
 'Oh, yet we trust that somehow good 
 
 Will be the final goal of iU, 
 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will. 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; 
 
248 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 'That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
 
 That not one life shall be destroy'd 
 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete.' 
 
 'You that way and we this' is the last word in this matter of 
 critics whose taste has been formed by Homer, Sophocles, 
 Tennyson, and Virgil. Yet the Tennysonian may safely chal- 
 lenge the production from the writings of the competitors for 
 the throne of modern poetry, of one sane and suggestive ethical 
 or religious idea that cannot be found better expressed in 
 Tennyson." 
 
 Tennyson died in 1892, at the age of eighty-three 
 — the age of Goethe, and a few months more. The 
 scene offered by the closing hour of his hfe will long 
 remain engraved upon the memory. The midnight 
 time, the full harvest moon streaming in over the 
 Surrey hills and flooding the chamber with light, 
 the august head, the features calm save for lips 
 that murmured — what other words so fit.'' — 
 
 "Pear no more the heat o' the sun. 
 Nor the furious winter's rages," — 
 
 the faces of the mourners stricken with grief and 
 awe as that great soul faded "into the imknown," — 
 nothing could have been more impressive; nothing 
 could have added to the solemn pathos of the scene. 
 It will be remembered that "The Silent Voices," set 
 to music by Lady Tennyson, was sung at the funeral 
 services in Westminster Abbey. Mr. Theodore 
 Watts-Dunton, writing a sequence of sonnets upon 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON M9 
 
 this impressive occasion, makes mention of the fact 
 in the following beautiful words: 
 
 "Sweet was the sweet wife's music, and consoling: 
 The past returned: I heard the master's talk. 
 That many a time in many a happy walk 
 I heard when through the whin of Aldworth strolling. 
 Or on the cliffs of Wight with biUows rolling 
 Below the jaggy walls of gleaming chalk: 
 Again I saw him stay his giant-stalk 
 To watch the foamy-crested breakers shoaling. 
 
 "And when the music ceased and pictures fled 
 I walked as in a dream around the grave. 
 And looked adown and saw the flowers outspread. 
 And spirit-voices spake from aisle and nave: — 
 'To follow him be true, be pure, be brave: 
 Thou needest not his lyre,' the voices said. 
 
 " 'Beyond the sun, beyond the furthest star. 
 
 Shines still the land which poets stUl may win 
 Whose poems are their lives — ^whose souls within 
 Hold naught in dread save Art's high conscience-bar — 
 Who have for muse a maiden free from scar — 
 Who know how beauty dies at touch of sin — 
 Who love mankind, yet, having Gods for kin. 
 Breathe, in Life's wood, zephyrs from climes afar. 
 
 " 'Heedless of phantom Fame — ^heedless of all 
 Save pity and love to light the life of Man — 
 True poets work, winning a sunnier span 
 For Nature's martyr — Night's ancestral thrall: 
 True poets work, yet listen for the call 
 
 Bidding them join their country and their clan.'" 
 
 These sonnets might fitly close the present discussion 
 of the great poet to whose memory I have brought 
 
260 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 the tribute of what poor words were at my command. 
 But I cannot resist the temptation to reproduce in 
 addition the one other memorable tribute of song 
 evoked from an English poet by the passing of Alfred 
 Tennyson. The words that follow are taken from 
 "Lacrymas Musarum," Mr. WiUiam Watson's noble 
 threnody, and are worthy of their lofty theme. 
 
 "In far retreats of elemental mind 
 Obscurely comes and goes 
 The imperative breath of song, that as the wind 
 Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows. 
 Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, 
 Extort her crimson secret from the rose. 
 But ask not of the Muse that she disclose 
 The meaning of the riddle of her might: 
 Somewhat of aU things sealed and recondite, 
 Save the enigma of herself, she knows. 
 The master could not tell, with all his lore. 
 Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped; 
 Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said; — 
 Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, 
 That held in trance the ancient Attic shore. 
 And charms the ages with the notes that o'er 
 All woodland chants immortally prevail! 
 And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled. 
 He with diviner silence dwells instead. 
 And on no earthly sea with transient roar. 
 Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail. 
 But far beyond our vision and our hail 
 Is heard forever and is seen no more." 
 
fiDattbew HrnoIJ) 
 
 Man is a creature of many moods, and it is the 
 function of poetry to remain unresponsive to no one 
 of them. It would seem as though Browning and 
 Tennyson had ranged over the whole diversified field 
 of modern emotion and modem thought, analysed 
 all the complex processes of the modem soul, and left 
 nothing for other poets to interpret. Yet there 
 has been room in our own time for other poets, de- 
 spite the comprehensive vision of these two, and of 
 those others, there is, perhaps, none whom we would 
 spare more reluctantly than Matthew Arnold. Es- 
 pecially to those who cannot share the robust tem- 
 peramental optimism of Browning, and whose faith 
 in the divine order of the world, in the assured future 
 both of individual man and collective mankind, has 
 not, like that of Tennyson, triumphantly survived 
 the shock of doubt, the poetry of Arnold comes as 
 one of the most precious of gifts. For such readers, 
 it seems to afford an even more exact and intimate 
 reflection of their deepest experience than the imag- 
 inings of either Tennyson or Browning. It seems 
 less specious and rhetorical; more direct and sincere. 
 I have spoken of the sharp contrasts which Tenny- 
 son was fond of drawing between the philosophies 
 
 251 
 
252 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 of doubt and of faith. There is something almost 
 theatrical in his method of portraying the agonies 
 of the soul plunged in "the sunless gulfs of doubt," 
 and his appeal for the acceptance of the fundamental 
 articles of the Christian faith is made rather to 
 the heart than to the reason. It comes near to de- 
 feating itself by its vehement intensity of emotion. 
 It seems unwilling to admit the possibility of a secure 
 resting-place for the soul outside the citadel of his- 
 torical Christianity, and the life unfortified by these 
 entrenchments seems a mockery of every noble aspi- 
 ration. The essentials of Christian belief must be 
 true, 
 
 "Else earth is darkness at the core. 
 And dust and ashes all that is." 
 
 But the pressure of our modern age, the widening of 
 our modern thought with the process of the suns, 
 has produced a type of mind which is forced to re- 
 ject, sorrowfully but firmly, much of the religious 
 teaching of the past, to readjust to new conditions 
 the old beliefs, to find new sanctions for the conduct 
 of the upright life. This spiritual temper, unwilling 
 to blink what it conceives to be falsehood, yet reso- 
 lute to uphold the dignity of man's moral nature 
 when the props of dogma — when what builders call 
 the "false work" of the structure — ^have been re- 
 moved, may be illustrated by a passage in which Mr. 
 Morley, speaking of the Savoyard Vicar of Rousseau, 
 contrasts the "infinite unseen which is in truth beyond 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD «58 
 
 contemplation by the limited faculties of man" with 
 
 "the visible, Intelllglblej and still sublime possibilities of the 
 human destiny — ^that imperial conception, which alone can shape 
 an existence of entire proportion in all its parts, and leave no 
 natural energy of life idle or athirst. Do you ask for sanc- 
 tions? One whose conscience has been strengthened from youth 
 in this faith, can know no greater bitterness than the stain 
 cast by wrong act or unworthy thought on the high memories 
 with which he has been used to walk, and the discord wrought 
 in hopes that have become the ruUng harmony of his days." 
 
 It is to spirits tempered by such experiences as these 
 that the poetry of Arnold makes its special appeal. 
 They have parted with all that is formal and dog- 
 matic in the current religious belief^ but they have 
 saved its spiritual essence, and this they have come 
 to cherish more deeply than they could when it was 
 still confused with its historical accretions. There is 
 something of stoicism in this attitude, but there is 
 also something more. Ruskin is only half-sympa- 
 thetic when he says: "A brave belief in death has 
 been assuredly held by many not ignoble persons ; and 
 it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself, 
 when it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with 
 either purity of character, or energy of hand," and 
 then extends his condolences to those "men for whom 
 feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, or the offence 
 given by the conduct of those who claim higher hope, 
 may have rendered this painful creed the only pos- 
 sible one." There is neither feebleness of sight nor 
 bitterness of soul — there is at most the tinge of mel- 
 
254 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ancholy resignation — ^in the beautiful lines which 
 embody Arnold's acceptance of the possibiUty which 
 seemed to Tennyson so intolerable. 
 
 "But 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 steps 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 hath the hope to come. 
 One day, to harbour in the tomb? 
 Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one 
 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 hot what our youth desires." 
 
 One of Arnold's most beautiful poems, "In Utrumque 
 Paratus," bids us be prepared for either of the al- 
 ternatives which seem to be presented to the mind 
 by this bewildering universe. Whether this visible 
 world be in very fact the unfolding of the thought 
 of God, or "if the wild unfather'd mass no birth in 
 divine seats hath known," the soul has resources of 
 its own wherewith to confront undaunted even the 
 latter alternative, and to stand erect in its own 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 25S 
 
 strength. Much of Arnold's verse reflects this calm 
 of stoic soulsj who have learned 
 
 "Life wellj and find it wanting, nor deplore; 
 But in disdainful silence turn away, 
 Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more." 
 
 This is far from being a merely negative attitude. 
 Over and over again we come upon passages which 
 clothe the poet's thought in the raiment of positive 
 faith. The overworked preacher toiUng in the slums 
 of London evokes this outcry: 
 
 "O human soul! as long as thou canst so 
 Set up a mark of everlasting light. 
 Above the howling senses' ebb and flow, 
 
 "To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam — 
 Not lost vdth toil thou labourest through the night ! 
 Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home." 
 
 It is, moreover, a militant faith, as we learn from 
 such a poem as "The Last Word," which urges the 
 soul on to struggle even in the most desperate 
 adversity. 
 
 "Creep into thy narrow bed. 
 Creep, and let no more be said! 
 Vain thy onset! all stands fast. 
 Thou thyself must break at last. 
 
 "Let the long contention cease! 
 Geese are swans, and swans are geese. 
 Let them have it how they will! 
 Thou art tired; best be stiU. 
 
256 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 "They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee, tore thee? 
 Better men fared thus before thee; 
 Fired their ringing shot and pass'd, 
 Hotly charged — and sank at last. 
 
 "Charge once more, then, and be dimib ! 
 Let the victors, when they come, 
 When the forts of folly fall. 
 Find thy body by the wall!" 
 
 Like the Trojan Palladium, the soul may at times 
 appear to us as something apart from life, con- 
 trolling life from some far-off moonlit height. 
 
 "Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high. 
 Upon our life a ruling eflSuence send. 
 And when it fails, fight as we will, we die; 
 And while it lasts, we cannot whoUy end." 
 
 Briefer and more pithy phrases expressing the same 
 attitude toward life will occur to the mind of every 
 reader. "The aids to noble life are all within," for 
 example, or, 
 
 "Resolve to be thyself, and know that he 
 Who finds himself, loses his misery." 
 
 This philosophy of the self-contained soul finds its 
 fullest expression in the solemn monologue of Em- 
 pedocles, spoken as he stands alone upon the heights 
 of Etna. 
 
 "Once read thy own breast right. 
 And thou hast done with fears; 
 Man gets no other light. 
 Search he a thousand years. 
 Sink in thyself ! there ask what ails thee, at that shrin? ! 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 257 
 
 "We would have inward peaccj 
 Yet will not look within; 
 We would have misery cease. 
 Yet will not cease from sin; 
 We want all pleasant ends, but will use no harsh means ; 
 
 "We do not what we ought, 
 What we ought not, we do, 
 And lean upon the thought 
 That chance will bring us through; 
 But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers. 
 
 "Is it so small a thing 
 To have enjoy'd the sun, 
 To have lived in the spring. 
 To have loved, to have thought, to have done; 
 To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes — 
 
 "That we must feign a bliss 
 Of doubtful future date. 
 And, while we dream on this. 
 Lose all our present state. 
 And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?" 
 
 This is the ripe wisdom to which Faust attained, 
 after having learned to know the greater and lesser 
 worlds. We cannot help recalling those pregnant 
 words which Goethe places upon the lips of Faust 
 in that wonderful scene of the midnight visit of Want 
 and Guilt and Care and Necessity. I quote from 
 Taylor's translation: 
 
 "This sphere of Earth is known enough to me; 
 The view beyond is barred immutably: 
 A fool, who there his blinking eyes directeth, 
 And o'er his clouds of peers a place expecteth ! 
 
258 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Firm let him stand, and look around him well ! 
 This World means something to the Capable. 
 Why needs he through Eternity to wend? 
 He here acquires what he can apprehend." 
 
 Swinburne, writing of the noble monologue of 
 Empedocles, quotes Arnold's own words, spoken 
 of Epictetus, to the eiFect that "the fortitude of 
 that is for the strong, for the few; even for them, 
 the spiritual atmosphere with which it surrounds 
 them is bleak and grey," and goes on to say upon 
 his own account that 
 
 "it is no small or common comfort, after all the delicate and 
 ingenious shuffling of other English poets about the edge of 
 deep things, to come upon one who speaks with so large and 
 clear and calm an utterance; who begins at the taproot and 
 weUspring of the matter, leaving others to wade ankle-deep in 
 still waters and weave river-flags or lake-lilies in lieu of stem- 
 ming the stream. Nothing in verse is more wearisome than 
 the delivery of reluctant doubt, of half-hearted hope and half- 
 incredulous faith. A man who suffers from the strong desire 
 either to believe or disbelieve something he cannot, may be 
 worthy of sympathy, is certainly worthy of pity, until he be- 
 gins to speak; and if he tries to speak in verse, he misuses the 
 implement of an artist. We have had evidences of religion, 
 aspirations and suspirations of all kinds, melodious regrets 
 and tortuous returns in favour of this creed or that — all by way 
 of poetic worki and all within the compass and shot-range 
 of a single faith; all, at the widest, bounded north, south, east, 
 and west by material rivers or hiUs, by an age or two since, 
 by a tradition or two; all leaving the spirit cramped and thirsty. 
 We have had Christian sceptics, handcuffed fighters, tongue- 
 tied orators, plume-plucked eagles; believers whose belief was 
 a sentiment, and free-thinkers who saw nothing before Christ 
 or beyond Judea. To get at the bare rock is a relief after 
 acres of such quaking ground." 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 259 
 
 Arnold confronts the dark problem of the grave, 
 not, as Tennyson did, with the agony of a self- 
 tortured spirit, passionately clinging to the one solu- 
 tion upon which the heart is set, and finding no pos- 
 sibility of solace in any other, but rather with a 
 spirit which is ready to acquiesce in the order of 
 the universe, whatever that order may be, and to 
 live a life no less strenuous for the abandonment of 
 the certainty of its conscious prolongation after 
 death. "Hath man no second life? — ^Pitch this one 
 high!" — Such is Arnold's essential message, and it 
 has an inspiration, an ethical energy, that we do not 
 get from Tennyson's utterances upon the same theme. 
 "The free man," says Spinoza, "thinks of nothing 
 less than of death." It is in the spirit of that great 
 saying that Arnold wrote the following sonnet: 
 
 "FoU'd by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn. 
 We leave the brutal world to take its way. 
 And, Patience I in another life, we say. 
 The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne. 
 
 And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn 
 The worid's poor, routed leavings? or vdll they. 
 Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day. 
 Support the fervours of the heavenly morn? 
 
 No, no! the energy of life may be 
 Kept on after the grave, but not begun; 
 And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife. 
 From strength to strength advancing — only he. 
 His soul well-knit, and all his battles won. 
 Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life." 
 
260 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 It is the fashion to call Arnold a poet of despair, 
 and it is easy to make selections from his verse which 
 will lend colour to that view. Certainly, "his sad 
 lucidity of soul" has little in common with the burly 
 temper of such an optimist as Browning, i or with 
 the buoyancy of spirit that we often find in Tenny- 
 son and always in Shelley. It would be difficult to 
 express the mood of pure pessimism more absolutely 
 than it is expressed in the closing hues of "Dover 
 Beach," quoted in a previous chapter. And the 
 many passages in which the poet seems to bewail 
 the fate that made him the child of an age of laps- 
 ing faith, and to look longingly back upon those 
 earlier ages when men might beheve things now im- 
 possible to the cultured mind, fill us, no doubt, with 
 the sense of spiritual tragedy. Yet the note of calm- 
 ness, of spiritual serenity, which, as I have already 
 urged, is more than the merely stoical acceptance of 
 the common lot of human sufi'ering, seems to me, on 
 the whole, the prevailing note of Arnold's poetry. 
 It is the note that we find, for example, in this well- 
 known stanza: 
 
 "Calm soul of all things! make it mine 
 To feel, amid the city's jar, 
 That there abides a peace of thine, 
 Man did not make, and cannot mar." 
 
 Sometimes this sense of deep and abiding peace comes 
 to us as an echo of the Wordsworthian spirit, al- 
 though tinged with the reflection that Wordsworth's 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 261 
 
 philosophy has been tested and found less adequate 
 than it once seemed to meet the deepest spiritual 
 needs of mankind. 
 
 "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. 
 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 whirl'd. 
 The something that infects the world." 
 
 Sometimes it comes to us almost unburdened by the 
 weight of the world's mischance, and restores the soul 
 that has grown faint in the world's strife. Then 
 
 "A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast. 
 And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. 
 The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain. 
 And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. 
 A man becomes aware of his life's flow. 
 And hears its winding murmur; and he sees 
 The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. 
 And there arrives a lull in the hot race 
 Wherein he doth forever chase 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 That flying and elusive shadow, rest. 
 An air of coolness plays upon his face. 
 And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. 
 And then he thinks he loiows 
 The hills where his life rose. 
 And the sea where it goes." 
 
 Sometimes, again, it previsions a future when man 
 and nature shall become so merged, when the spirit 
 of man shall be so completely in harmony with the 
 spirit of the universe, that the questionings of our 
 restless age will no longer have power to perplex, 
 and life will no longer offer so distressing a con- 
 trast between aim and achievement. 
 
 "Haply, the river of Time — 
 As it grows, as the towns on its marge. 
 Fling their wavering lights 
 On a wider, statelier stream — 
 May acquire, if not the calm 
 Of its early mountainous shore. 
 Yet a solemn peace of its own. 
 And the width of the waters, the hush 
 Of the grey expanse where he floats. 
 Freshening its current and spotted with foam 
 As it draws to the Ocean, may strike 
 Peace to the soul of the man on its breast — 
 As the pale waste widens around him. 
 As the banks fade dimmer away. 
 As the stars come out, and the night-wind 
 Brings up the stream 
 Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea." 
 
 In these deep moods the poet seems haunted by that 
 feeling of the unreality of this world of space and 
 time which comes now and then with overwhelming 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 263 
 
 force to all thoughtful men; the feeling that 
 
 prompted the profoundest utterances of the poet 
 
 who tells us that 
 
 "We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on;" 
 
 the feeling that 
 
 "This earth, this vale whereon we dream," 
 
 is a thing in and of ourselves; the feeling that indi- 
 vidual existence is but a transitory illusion, and that, 
 although we are for a brief space 
 
 "In the sea of life enisled 
 With echoing straits between us thrown," 
 
 there is a unity in existence which knows nothing 
 
 of the individual; that surely once 
 
 "We were 
 Parts of a single continent," 
 
 although for a time there lie between us 
 
 "The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." 
 
 Swinburne has given exquisite expression to the 
 quality of high serenity in Arnold's verse which I 
 have sought to illustrate by means of the preceding 
 quotations. "In his best work there is always rest, 
 and air, and a high relief; it satisfies, enlarges, re- 
 freshes with its cool full breath and serenity. . . . 
 His poetry is a pure temple, a white flower of marble, 
 unfretted without by intricate and grotesque tracer- 
 ies, unvexed within by fumes of shaken censers or 
 
264 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 intoning of hoarse choristers; large and clear and 
 cool, with many chapels in it and outer courts, full 
 of quiet and of music." 
 
 In dealing with the great intellectual and spiritual 
 movements of civilisation, Arnold showed a fine histor- 
 ical sense, which enabled him to enter with deep sym- 
 pathy into modes of thought which had become for 
 himself outworn. This is particularly true of his 
 study of historical Christianity, and he was unfail- 
 ing in his sympathy with a faith to which he could 
 not give intellectual assent. 
 
 "The sea of faith 
 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
 Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 
 But now I only hear 
 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. 
 Retreating, to the breath 
 Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
 And naked shingles of the world." 
 
 Swinburne, who is conspicuously lacking in the his- 
 torical sense which Arnold possessed in so full a 
 measure, makes a reproach of "this occasional habit 
 of harking back and loitering in mind among the 
 sepulchres." But for most intelligent readers of 
 Arnold the poems which embody this phase of retro- 
 spection are among the most precious of all, they 
 are the poems which make the deepest appeal to our 
 deepest instincts. Those "Stanzas from the Grande 
 Chartreuse," for example, who can ever forget their 
 sweet and melancholy cadence.-' 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 265 
 
 "I come not here to be your foe ! 
 I seek these anchorites, not in ruth. 
 To curse and to deny your truth; 
 
 "Not as their friend, or child, I speak! 
 But as, on some far northern strand. 
 Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek 
 In pity and mournful awe might stand 
 Before some fallen Runic stone — 
 For both were faiths, and both are gone. 
 
 "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." 
 
 And there are probably no verses of Arnold more 
 frequently quoted than those from the second "Ober- 
 mann," which describe the coming of Christianity 
 to the jaded civilisation of the ancient world. 
 
 "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. 
 
 "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." 
 
266 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Then came that strange voice from "the brooding 
 East" to which the Roman world listened, first with 
 amazement and then with recognition of its deep 
 meaning. 
 
 "She veil'd her eagles, snapp'd her sword. 
 And laid her sceptre down; 
 Her stately purple she abhorr'd. 
 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 chUd ! 
 'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood — a place 
 Of ruin — but she smiled! 
 
 "Oh, had I liyed in that great day. 
 How had its glory new 
 FiU'd earth and heaven, and caught away 
 My ravish'd spirit too!" 
 
 These words are attributed to the shade of Ober- 
 mann, but they are more than dramatic, and it is 
 perfectly obvious to all who know Arnold's way of 
 thinking that their note of passionate longing and 
 regret issued from the poet's own heart. 
 
 Arnold's poetical productivity lasted for about 
 twenty years. His first volume of verse appeared in 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 261 
 
 1849, and the "New Poems" in 1867. He lived and 
 wrote for some twenty years longer, but, during 
 those twenty years he made prose practically the 
 sole vehicle of his thought. There are only about 
 half a dozen poems altogether, and those of an occa- 
 sional character, which bear a date later than that 
 of the "New Poems." He carried on into his prose 
 writings something of the spirit and many of the 
 preoccupations of his verse, as will presently be seen. 
 Before taking leave of his poetry as a whole, I wish 
 to consider two or three features that have not 
 hitherto been mentioned. In his very earliest verse, 
 we find those two significant sonnets addressed "To 
 a Republican Friend, 1848," which foreshadow what 
 was to be the constant conservatism of his attitude 
 toward the politics of his time. "God knows it, I 
 am with you," he says, if your aim is to better the 
 condition of the homeless and unfed, to help men to 
 a deeper view of life than is found in the shallow 
 optimism of our age, to restore to the soul of man 
 something of its lost heritage. But we must not 
 expect too much of revolutions, and it is the freedom 
 of the spirit that we should seek rather than the 
 external freedom that constitutes the ideal of poli- 
 ticians. For our life 
 
 "Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the high 
 Uno'erleap'd Mountains of Necessity, 
 Sparing us narrower margin than we deem. 
 Nor wiU that day dawn at a human nod. 
 When, bursting through the network superposed 
 
268 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 By ^elfish occupation — ^plot and plan. 
 Lust, avarice, envy — liberated man, 
 All difference with his fellow-mortal closed, 
 Shall be left standing face to face with God." 
 
 The later stanzas on the French Revolution are won- 
 derfully picturesque and vivid in their imagery, but 
 they recognise the fact that the mightiest of all 
 modern social upheavals failed to accomplish the 
 true liberation of the individual soul. 
 
 "Down came the storm! In ruins fell 
 The worn-out world we knew. 
 It pass'd, that elemental swell 1 
 Again appear'd the blue; 
 
 "The sun shone in the new-wash'd sky. 
 And what from heaven saw he? 
 Blocks of the past, like icebergs high. 
 Float on a rolling sea! 
 
 "The millions suffer still, and grieve. 
 And what can helpers heal 
 With old-world cures men half believe 
 For woes they wholly feel? 
 
 "And yet men have such need of joy! 
 But joy whose grounds are true; 
 And joy that should all hearts employ 
 As when the past was new." 
 
 If this work were concerned with literary criticism 
 in the narrower sense, many features of Arnold's 
 poetry would demand more than the passing mention 
 which it is now alone possible to make. I should 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 269 
 
 have to discuss such things as the constant pervasion 
 of his verse by the Greek spirit, the chaste loveliness 
 of his lyrics, the felicity of his occasional pieces, 
 and the noble beauty of his elegiac song. To the 
 later, particularly, much attention would need to be 
 given, for the poet of "Thyrsis" challenges compari- 
 son with the poet of "Lycidas," and the lines dedi- 
 cated to Wordsworth and to Heine are almost equally 
 memorable. But other matters, having to do with 
 his thought rather than his art, are insistent in their 
 claim upon our attention. Arnold's own judgment 
 upon his poems is extremely interesting, and the 
 claim which he made for them is not unreasonable. 
 "My poems," he said, "represent the main movement 
 of mind of the last quarter of a century, and thus 
 they will probably have their day as people become 
 conscious to themselves of what that movement of 
 mind is, and interested in the literary productions 
 which reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have 
 less poetical sentiment than Tennyson and less intel- 
 lectual vigour and abundance than Browning; yet, 
 because I have, perhaps, more of a fusion of the 
 two than either of them, and have more regularly 
 applied that fusion to the main line of modern de- 
 velopment, I am likely enough to have my turn as 
 they have had theirs." Arnold is not likely to have 
 his turn as a poet in the sense in which Browning and 
 Tennyson have had theirs, but he is likely to hold his 
 audience, and even to increase it, during the coming 
 years. He has hardly more of the elements of popu- 
 
270 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 larity than Landor had, but he has equal reason to 
 be proud of the quality of his limited following. 
 
 Among the preoccupations which Arnold carried 
 over into his prose from his verse, none are more im- 
 portant than those which relate to ethical and re- 
 ligious questions. That conduct is three-fourths of 
 life, is a maxim he never ceased to reiterate, and 
 to enforce with a seriousness none the less real be- 
 cause sometimes disguised by the playful vivacity of 
 his manner. The influence exercised upon religious 
 thought by those famous books, "Literature and 
 Dogma" and "God and the Bible," has been both 
 far-reaching and profound. It is an influence which 
 professional theologians, with a sense of alarm 
 heightened by the suspicion that there was even more 
 in the argument than they could understand, have 
 done their best to minimise. Those books, so unlike 
 the dull tomes which their subjects naturally suggest, 
 may be lacking In exact scholarship, and the latest 
 developments of the higher criticism may have ren- 
 dered some of their positions untenable, but their 
 fundamental logic remains unanswerable, and the 
 spirit of sweet reasonableness which informs them 
 will long remain potent to shape the religious con- 
 sciousness of open-minded readers. Their rational 
 and gracious conception of Christianity has proved 
 a comfort to countless thousands of inquiring spirits 
 who might, save for this soothing ministry, have 
 been driven to the extreme of revolt. Such testi- 
 mony to their influence as has been recently given 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 271 
 
 us by Mr. Arthur Galton is very significant. He 
 says: "That I held to any sort of Christianity, and 
 continued to use and enjoy the Bible, I owe entirely 
 to Matthew Arnold. • . . He undoubtedly saved me 
 from leaving the Papal Church a blind and blank 
 materialist, thoroughly and violently anti-Christian, 
 and his gentle influence tended me through the next 
 few years, until I was mellowed for a process of 
 reconstruction." What Arnold did for this writer 
 he has done for innumerable others, and it is no 
 slight thing to have won such gratitude as is here 
 expressed. In a transitional age like this, when re- 
 ligious thought is undergoing so profound a trans- 
 formation, the problem of religious teaching for the 
 young is a very serious one. The substitutes for 
 the traditional teaching are far from satisfactory, 
 but if we adhere to the old methods, and leave to a 
 later period the inculcation of the more rational view, 
 there is always the danger that when the grown-up 
 child comes into his intellectual estate he will be so 
 indignant at the way in which he was dealt with 
 during his early years that he will lose not only faith 
 but the possibilities of faith. The f eeUng of having 
 been tricked, of having been taught things which 
 were known to be false, has a very imfortunate effect 
 upon a young man's mind. We saw the effect which 
 it had upon Shelley; we have just seen the effect 
 which it had upon the mind of a modern young man. 
 To restore to its normal balance a mind in this per- 
 turbed stage of its development is no easy task, and 
 
272 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 a book that can help toward such a restoration is 
 engaged in a most beneficent work. Now "Litera- 
 ture and Dogma" is just such a book as this; it 
 appeals strongly to the inquiring mind, it offers no 
 outrage to the reason, it soothes the injured sensi- 
 bilities, and creates in its readers a sense of having 
 gained something more precious than all that has 
 been lost. "I write," says Arnold, 
 
 "to convince the lover of religion that by following habits of 
 intellectual seriousness he need not, so far as religion is con- 
 cerned, lose anything. Taking the Old Testament as Israel's 
 magnificent establishment of the theme, Righteousness is salva- 
 tion! taking the New as the perfect elucidation by Jesus of 
 what righteousness is and how salvation is won, I do not fear 
 comparing even the power over the soul and imagination of the 
 Bible, taken in this sense, — a sense which is at the same time 
 solid, — ^with the like power in the old materialistic and mirac- 
 ulous sense for the Bible, which is not." 
 
 We get from Arnold's writings, in the words of 
 Mr. Forman, "a gospel of ideas as opposed to the 
 many gospels of practice." To have clear ideas, 
 first of all, the best ideas that human culture has 
 formulated, and then to apply them to life — ^this is 
 Arnold's method. How the method worked in the 
 case of ideas upon religious subjects has already been 
 suggested; it now remains to say a few words about 
 the method as related to the problems of society, 
 of education, of politics, and of that broad ideal of 
 culture for which Arnold so preeminently stands. 
 Nothing is more familiar to his readers than the clas- 
 sification of Enghsh society into Barbarians, Philis- 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 273 
 
 tines, and Populace. Incidentally, "America is just 
 ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the 
 Populace nearly." His conception of the Philistine, 
 particularly, is one of the most noticeable features 
 of his social philosophy. A few words about the 
 modern history of this term may not be out of place. 
 The biblical Philistine is the dull and brutish enemy 
 of the chosen people, the foe of the children of light. 
 The word became popular in the slang of German 
 students a hundred years or more ago, and was used 
 by them to designate such people as tradesmen and 
 landlords and money-lenders and hard-headed, pros- 
 perous citizens — all sorts of people, in short, whose 
 interests were opposed to those of the student class. 
 Goethe used the word, in one of his early poems, 
 to describe the farmer who sees in the fresh verdure 
 of the springtime fields nothing more than the prom- 
 ise of successful crops. Heine took up the word 
 and made much of it, finding it a convenient epithet 
 for all kinds of dull-witted people, impervious to 
 ideas, and insensible to the appeal of any form of art. 
 Carlyle brought the word into English, explaining it 
 as a nickname given to the eighteenth-century ra- 
 tionalists of Germany by the partisans of the phi- 
 losophy of idealism. Among later definitions, Leslie 
 Stephen's is noteworthy. He calls it a "word which 
 I understand properly to denote indifference to the 
 higher intellectual interests. The word may also be 
 defined, however, as the name applied by prigs to the 
 rest of their species." Arnold's use of the term may 
 
274 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 be illustrated by the following extracts. After speak- 
 ing of the English people as "of all people the most 
 inaccessible to ideas and the most impatient of them," 
 he goes on to say : 
 
 "Philistia has come to be thought by us the true Land of 
 Promise, and it is anything but that; the born lover of ideas, 
 the born hater of commonplaces, must feel in this country, that 
 the sky over his head is of brass and iron. The enthusiast for 
 the idea, for reason, values reason, the idea, in and for them- 
 selves; he values them, irrespectively of the practical conveni- 
 ences which their triumph may obtain for him; and the man 
 who regards the possession of these practical conveniences as 
 something sufficient in itself, something which compensates for 
 the absence or surrender of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes, 
 a, Philistine." 
 
 But "there is balm in Philistia as well as in Gilead," 
 and there is a soul of goodness in Philistinism itself. 
 
 "This soul of goodness I, who am often supposed to be Phi- 
 listinism's mortal enemy merely because I do not wish it to 
 have things all its own way, cherish as much as anybody. This 
 steady-going habit leads at last, as I have said, up to science, 
 up to the comprehension and interpretation of the world. . . . 
 Doors that open, windows that shut, locks that turn, razors 
 that shave, coats that wear, watches that go, and a thousand 
 more such good things, are the invention of the Philistines." 
 
 But man does not live by these things alone, and 
 Arnold's conception of the relation between the 
 Philistine and the idealist is beautifully expressed 
 in his apostrophe to the University of Oxford. 
 
 "Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic! who 
 hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to 
 heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of lost 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 275 
 
 causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and im- 
 possible loyalties! what example could ever so inspire us to 
 keep down the Philistine in oilrselves, what teacher could ever 
 so save us from that bondage to which we are all prone, that 
 bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death 
 of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise (and nobly did 
 Schiller deserve the praise) to have left miles out of sight 
 behind him; the bondage of ^Was uns alle bandigt. Das 
 Gemeine!' Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare 
 against the Philistines, compared with the warfare which this 
 queen of romance has been waging against them for centuries, 
 and will wage after we are gone?" 
 
 Arnold had so much to say about the Philistines be- 
 cause he felt, as Professor Gates says, that "society 
 is in serious danger unless men of this class can be 
 touched with a sense of their shortcomings; made 
 aware of the larger values of life ; made pervious to 
 ideas; brought to recognise the importance of the 
 things of the mind and of the spirit." The human 
 being who was devoid of taste in literature and art, 
 whose religion was more than touched with vul- 
 garity, "and who had a morbid hankering after mar- 
 riage with his deceased wife's sister," this was the 
 creature in whom Arnold found a perpetual griev- 
 ance, and against whom he directed the shafts of his 
 keenest satire. 
 
 Another distinction, almost as prominent in 
 Arnold's social philosophy as the one just under 
 consideration, is the distinction between Hebraism 
 and Hellenism. "The uppermost idea with Hellenism 
 is to see things as they really are; the uppermost 
 idea with Hebraism is conduct and obedience." 
 
276 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Arnold found the English character heavily charged 
 with Hebraism, which was itself the legacy of that 
 Puritan movement which had turned the key on the 
 human spirit more than two hundred years before. 
 He would have been the last of men to deny the virtues 
 of Puritanism, which, in its insistence upon the over- 
 whelming importance of conduct, exalted an ideal 
 fundamentally the same as his own. But it seemed 
 to him that the Puritan way of regarding life had 
 taken too complete possession of the English char- 
 acter, and that the service which he could best render 
 would be to present the forgotten claim of a more 
 gracious and clear-sighted view. 
 
 "To get rid of one's ignorance, to see things as they are, and 
 by seeing them as they are to see them in their beauty, is the 
 simple and attractive ideal which Hellenism holds out before 
 human nature; and from the simplicity and charm of this ideal, 
 Hellenism, and human life in the hands of Hellenism, is in- 
 vested with a kind of aerial ease, clearness, and radiancy; they 
 are full of what we call sweetness and light. . . . The space 
 which sin fills in Hebraism, as compared with Hellenism, is 
 indeed prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills the whole 
 scene, and perfection appears remote and rising away from 
 earth, in the background. . . . The discipline of the Old 
 Testament may be summed up as a discipline teaching us to 
 abhor and flee from sin; the discipline of the New Testament, 
 as a discipline teaching us to die to it. As Hellenism speaks 
 of thinking clearly, seeing things in their essence and beauty, 
 as a grand and precious feat for man to achieve, so Hebraism 
 speaks of becoming conscious of sin, of awakening to a sense of 
 Sin, as a feat of this kind. It is obvious to what wide diverg- 
 ence these differing tendencies, actively followed, must lead. 
 As one passes and repasses from Hellenism to Hebraism, from 
 Plato to St. Paul, one feels inclined to rub one's eyes and ask 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 277 
 
 one's self whether man is indeed a gentle and simple being, 
 showing the traces of a noble and divine nature; or an unhappy 
 chained captive, labouring with groanings that cannot be uttered 
 to free himself from the body of this death." 
 
 In the issue thus drawn, Arnold stood, of course, 
 on the side of Hellenism, not, as has already been said, 
 because he deemed it to represent the most important 
 aspect of the spiritual life, but rather because it 
 did not seem to him to have had a fair show in mod- 
 ern England. Its touch was needed to soften the 
 asperity of the English moral temper; its glasses 
 were needed to widen the English intellectual out- 
 look. 
 
 There is one aspect of Arnold's work which has 
 not usually received the attention it deserves, and 
 which I would be unwilling to neglect even in so 
 summary an account of his leading ideas as that 
 now attempted. The fact is apt to be forgotten that 
 during a long period of the best years of his life 
 his literary pursuits constituted an avocation, and 
 that his real work was the very practical one of in- 
 specting schools and marking examination papers. 
 In his capacity as an officer of public education he 
 prepared many reports of his work, and also wrote 
 those volumes upon the schools of France and Ger- 
 many which no one engaged in the work of education 
 can afford to neglect. These educational writings 
 have something less than the full charm of his man- 
 ner at its best, but they are no less stimulating in 
 their influence than his more popular books, and no 
 
278 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 weighty in their judgments. It Is so rare a 
 thing for an intelligence of the first order to be 
 applied to the technical questions of teaching that 
 Arnold's writings in this department have a value 
 that is well-nigh unique. That value is as great 
 now as it ever was, foil Arnold's discussion of edu- 
 cational questions, however closely concerned with 
 the matter immediately in hand, never loses sight of 
 the permanent principles that underlie all sound 
 educational work. These writings have particular 
 value in our own time, for they serve as a corrective 
 to what must be regarded as the two most unfortu- 
 nate tendencies in the current educational movement 
 — the tendency to place faith in machinery, and the 
 tendency to demand for subjects of secondary im- 
 portance a recognition equal to that given to the 
 humanities. It Is hardly necessary to say that the 
 weight of Arnold's influence was always thrown 
 against machinery and in favour of the humanities. 
 A passage in one of his essays on religious subjects 
 sets forth his essential Ideal of education In very 
 clear terms. I quote the passage, only substituting 
 the word "humanities" for the word "religion." 
 
 "Undoubtedly there are times when a reaction sets in, when an 
 interest in the processes of productive industry, in physical 
 science and the practical arts, is called an interest in things, 
 and an interest in the humanities is called an interest in words. 
 People really do seem to imagine that in seeing and learning 
 how buttons are made, or papier mdcM, they shall find some 
 new and untried vital resource; that our prospects from this 
 sort of study have something peculiarly hopeful and animating 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 279 
 
 about them; and that the positive and practical thing to do is 
 to give up the humanities and turn to them." 
 
 Arnold's story of the schoolboy who was required to 
 paraphrase Macbeth's "Canst thou not minister to 
 a mind diseased?" and wrote, "Can you not wait upon 
 the lunatic?" is known to most readers, and affords 
 a typical illustration of the state of mind which our 
 mechanical education is apt to produce. It was 
 against the tendency to produce such results as this 
 that Arnold threw the entire weight of his influ- 
 ence. The little book of selections from the prophet 
 Isaiah which he prepared for school use is unknown 
 to the great body of his readers, but it gives us in 
 a preface some of his ripest educational wisdom. 
 
 "Why is this attempt made? It is made because of my con- 
 viction of the immense importance in education of what is 
 called letters; of the side which engages our feelings and 
 imagination. Science, the side which engages our faculty of 
 exact knowledge, may have been too much neglected; more 
 particularly this may have been so as regards our knowledge 
 of nature. This is probably true of our secondary schools and 
 universities. But on our schools for the people . . . the power 
 of letters has hardly been brought to bear at all; certainly it 
 has not been brought to bear in excess, as compared with the 
 power of the natural sciences. . . . For any one who believes 
 in the civilising power of letters, and often talks of this belief, 
 to think that he has for more than twenty years got his living 
 by inspecting schools for the people, has gone in and out 
 among them, has seen that the power of letters never reaches 
 them at aU, and that the whole study of letters is thereby 
 discredited, and its power called in question, and yet has at- 
 tempted nothing to remedy this state of things, cannot but be 
 vexing and disquieting. He may truly say, like the Israel of 
 the prophet, 'We have not wrought any deliverance in the 
 
280 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 earth!' and he may well desire to do something to pay his 
 debt to popular education before he finally departs, and to 
 serve it, if he can, in that point where its need is sorest, where 
 he has always said its need was sorest, and where, nevertheless, 
 it is as sore still as when he began saying this twenty years 
 ago." 
 
 With all the progress that has been made in public 
 education since the above words were written, it is 
 to be feared that the need for such words is still 
 almost as great as it was twenty or thirty years 
 ago. 
 
 I should like to say something of Arnold as a critic 
 of current politics, for in this respect full justice has 
 never been done him, but the limitations of my space 
 forbid. Even of Arnold as a critic of literature, 
 there is room for but a few words. Concerning the 
 general sanity and acuteness of his Uterary judg- 
 ments it is not easy to speak in terms of praise suffi- 
 ciently high. It is the simple truth to say that he 
 was the greatest English critic of his time. And yet, 
 for all his balance and insight, he occasionally gave 
 utterance to opinions so perverse and exasperating 
 that they produce a feeling of blank amazement. 
 When he tells us, for example, that Shelley's prose is 
 better than his poetry, we can only say with Swin- 
 burne that it would not take many such dicta to ruin 
 the reputation of any critic, however eminent. But 
 if I have taken occasion to dissent, with all the em- 
 phasis at my command, from certain of Arnold's 
 vagaries, I feel boimd to add a tribute of the deepest 
 gratitude to the critic who has, on the whole, done 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 281 
 
 more than any of his contemporaries to aid men in 
 clear thinking and right feeling about literature. 
 His instinct in such matters was nearly always sure, 
 and his guidance is nearly always safe. As far as it 
 is possible to take any general exception to his 
 method, it must be based upon the fact that he was, 
 in Mr. Harrison's phrase of which Arnold made 
 such humorous use, "without a philosophy based 
 on interdependent, subordinate, and coherent princi- 
 ples." He had, in fact, more of such a philosophy 
 than he was wilUng to admit, but there is still some 
 degree of justice in the charge that his criticism 
 really suffered from this defect. Professor Gates 
 puts the matter fairly enough when he says : 
 
 "As we read his essays we have no sense of making definite 
 progress in the comprdiension of literature as an art among 
 arts, as well as in the appreciation of an individual author or 
 poem. We are not being intellectually oriented as we are in 
 reading the most stimulating critical work; we are not getting 
 an ever surer sense of the points of the compass. Essays, to 
 have this orienting power, need not be continually prating of 
 theories and laws; they need not be rabidly scientific in phrase 
 or in method. But they must issue from a mind that has 
 come to an understanding with itself about the genesis of art 
 in the genius of the artist; about the laws that, when the 
 utmost plea has been made for freedom and caprice, regulate 
 artistic production; about the history and evolution of art 
 forms; and about the relations of the arts among themselves 
 and to the other activities of life. It may fairly be doubted if 
 Arnold had ever wrought out for himself consistent conclu- 
 sions on all or on most of these topics." 
 
 Arnold was still in his intellectual prime when he 
 was taken away from us in the spring of 1888. The 
 
282 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 suddenness of his death suggests the closing verses 
 of his own fragment of a Greek chorus. 
 
 "But him, on whom, in the prime 
 Of life, with vigour undimm'd, 
 With unspent mind, and a soul 
 Unworn, undebased, undecay'd, 
 Mournfully grating, the gates 
 Of the city of death have forever closed — 
 Him, I count him, well-starr'd." 
 
 And the season of his death inspired a young Cana- 
 dian poet, filled with gratitude for Arnold's influence 
 and reverence for his memory, to so lofty a strain of 
 elegiac song that Mr. Carman's "Death in April" 
 can hardly fail to take high rank among the finer 
 threnodies of modern poetry. It is not far from 
 being a match to Arnold's own "Thyrsis," upon 
 Arnold's own ground. 
 
 "O mother April, mother of all dreams. 
 
 Child of remembrance, mother of regret. 
 Inheritor of silence and desire. 
 Who dost revisit now forsaken streams. 
 
 Canst thou, their spirit, evermore forget 
 How one sweet touch of immemorial Are 
 
 Erewhile did use to flush 
 The music of their wells, as sunset light 
 
 Is laid athwart the springtime with keen hush? 
 
 Being so gracious and so loved, hast thou 
 In all thy realm no shelter from the night 
 
 Where Cory don may keep with Thyrsis now? 
 
 "With what high favour hast thou rarely given 
 A sprmgtime death as thy bestowal of bliss? 
 On Avon once thy tending hands laid by 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 283 
 
 The puppet robes, the curtained scenes were riven. 
 And the great prompter smiled at thy long kiss; 
 
 And Corydon's own master sleeps a-nigh 
 The stream of Rotha's well. 
 
 Where thou didst bury him, thy dearest child; 
 In one sweet year the Blessed Damozel 
 Beholds thee bring her lover, loved by thee. 
 
 Outworn for rest, whom no bright shore beguiled. 
 To voyage out across the grey North Sea; 
 
 "And slowly Assabet takes on her charm. 
 
 Since him she most did love thou hast withdrawn 
 
 Beyond the wellsprings of perpetual day. 
 
 And now 'tis Laleham; from all noise and harm. 
 Blithe and boy-hearted, whither is he gone, 
 
 (Like them who fare in peace, knowing thy away 
 Is over carls and kings. 
 
 He was too great to cease to be a child. 
 Too wise to be content with childish things,) 
 Having heard swing to the twin-leaved doors of gloom. 
 
 Pillared with autumn dust from out the wild. 
 And carved upon with Beauty and Fobedoom? 
 
 "Awhile within the roaring iron house 
 
 He toiled to thrill the bitter dark with cheer; 
 
 But ever the earlier prime wrapped his white soul 
 
 In sure and flawless welfare of repose. 
 Kept like a rare Greek song through many a year 
 
 With Chian terebinth, — an illumined scroll 
 No injury can deface. 
 
 And men will toss his name from sea to sea 
 Along the wintry dusk a little space. 
 Till thou return with flight of swallow and sun 
 
 To weave for us the rain's hoar tracery. 
 With blossom and dream unravelled and undone." 
 
Dante (Ba&riel iRossetti 
 
 In the history of nineteenth-century English 
 poetry, the year 1850 is memorable as the date of 
 Wordsworth's death, and of Tennyson's assumption 
 of the official laurel. Save for the verse of Tenny- 
 son (since Browning's vogue had hardly got be- 
 yond the confines of a coterie), there seemed to be 
 no considerable poetic force at work in our literature. 
 The earUer impulse had become spent; the poets of 
 the Revolution had done their work and had passed 
 away. Of that group of singers Landor alone was 
 left, and his voice had never reached the multitude. 
 The Revolution itself, as an influence upon Eng- 
 lish thought, had become a memory "of old, unhappy, 
 far-off things," and had lost all power of inspira- 
 tion for the present moment. The Romantic move- 
 ment, also, had done its best and its worst, had tri- 
 umphed over tradition, had enlarged the emotional 
 capacities of readers, but had ceased to be a dominant 
 and controlling force. We have seen that there was 
 no lack of romantic colouring in the poetry of Tenny- 
 son and Browning and Arnold, but we have seen also 
 that these men had qualities in which their prede- 
 cessors were lacking — a more definite vision and a 
 more delicate naturalism, a more introspective turn 
 and a more exact psychological analysis. In the 
 
 384 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 285 
 
 year 1850, there was only one star of the first mag- 
 nitude plainly visible in the heavens, and the hopes 
 of English poetry seemed bound up in the career of 
 a solitary writer. We have seen how to the single 
 star of Tennyson's genius there were added, as the 
 skies cleared, the stars that represented the genius 
 of Browning and of Arnold; our remaining task is 
 to record the appearance, and to indicate the influ- 
 ence, of i\e triple constellation that represents the 
 genius of Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. The 
 last half of the nineteenth century gave these three 
 names to English poetry, and Time has brought few 
 gifts equally precious to our race. In the weight 
 and beauty of its poetic achievement, the second half 
 of the century need not fear comparison with the 
 first; to a discerning observer, in the year 1820, the 
 six great poets then living may well have seemed 
 to constitute a galaxy of luminaries not likely again 
 to be equalled, but an observer in the year 1870, 
 just half a hundred years later, was privileged to 
 behold in the heavens a cluster of six stars no less 
 brilliant and far-shining. There are three Ages 
 of Gold in the history of English poetry, and in 
 one of the three it has been our own good fortune 
 to live. 
 
 If we place our hypothetical observer in the year 
 1860, and attribute to him unusual powers of dis- 
 cernment, we must think of him as regarding with 
 curious interest, and even with excited hopefulness, 
 an obscure and short-lived periodical which ap- 
 
286 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 peared in that year. It was entitled The Germ, and 
 four numbers were published between January and 
 April. The last two numbers appeared with the 
 special title Art and Poetry. It was a forlorn 
 little magazine, and only a few hundred copies of 
 each number were printed, but it marked the begin- 
 ning of the most distinctive development that has 
 been made in English poetry during the last fifty 
 years. "So that never was periodical better named," 
 says Mr. Gosse, "than The Germ, the seed which put 
 forth two cotyledons, and then called itself Art and 
 Poetry: and put forth two more little leaves, and then 
 seemed to die." Among the names of the contributors 
 were those of Thomas Woolner, Ford Madox Brown, 
 William Bell Scott, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. One 
 illustration went with each number, and the first 
 of the four was signed William Holman Hunt. Chris- 
 tina Rossetti, writing over the pseudonym of "Ellen 
 AUeyn," contributed a number of poems, and there 
 were three pieces by Coventry Patmore, who wrote 
 over no signature at all. These names did not mean 
 much in 1850, but the world was to hear a great deal 
 of them during the next quarter of a century. Two 
 years before the publication of The Germ, a group of 
 seven young men, five of whom were painters, had 
 banded themselves together for the purpose of in- 
 augurating a new movement in art. It was their 
 belief that the traditions of modern art were mis- 
 leading, that conventions had taken the place of 
 truths in the interpretation of nature, "that paint- 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 287 
 
 ing had, therefore, become more of a handicraft and 
 less of an inspiration: and that to find examples of 
 veracious and noble workmanship it was necessary to 
 go back to the men who were the immediate prede- 
 cessors of Raphael, and whose work remained as the 
 precious memorial of a time when art had not ceased 
 to be simple, sincere, and religious." This was the 
 famous "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, familiarly 
 known to the initiated as the P. R. B. The name was 
 not altogether fortunate, but the little band of 
 workers for whom it stood, although their activities 
 afterwards diverged in many directions from their 
 early simple aim, were unable to shake it off after 
 it had once become familiar to the public. As Pre- 
 Raphaelites they were forced to fight their battle 
 against adverse criticism, as Pre-Raphaelites they 
 found an eloquent champion in John Ruskin, and 
 Pre-Raphaelites they continued to be dubbed for the 
 rest of their lives. This ascription also attached 
 itself to the men who afterwards became associated 
 with these pioneers in the public mind, and particu- 
 larly to Burne-Jones, Morris, and Swinburne. As 
 the term came to be applied to more and more men, 
 and to a greater and greater variety of artistic 
 products, it became even more hopelessly vague in 
 its meaning than it had been at first, but it had 
 evidently come to stay in the jargon of literary crit- 
 icism, and there is no use in trying to replace it now. 
 Nor would it be easy to find any single term more 
 adequate to designate the complex and comprehensive 
 
288 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 artistic movement which had its humble beginnings 
 in that little coterie of obscure and earnest reform- 
 ers. The Germ, it need hardly be added, was pro- 
 jected by these young men for the purpose of explain- 
 ing their ideas and aspirations more distinctly than 
 oils and canvas would permit. We can now see how 
 much this movement meant for English art and 
 poetry, and find in the history of that short-lived 
 literary venture one of the landmarks in the develop- 
 ment of modern English culture. 
 
 In position and significance The Germ cannot 
 fail to suggest to an American student the 
 short-lived periodical organ of the Concord 
 transcendentalists, started ten years earlier. The 
 importance of The Germ in English literature 
 corresponds very closely to the importance in 
 American literature of The Dial, which enjoyed, 
 however, four years of existence instead of as many 
 months. What Emerson and his associates were try- 
 ing to do in 1840 in Concord was what Rossetti and 
 his associates were trying to do: in London ten years 
 later: that is, they were trying to direct a current 
 of fresh thought into the channels of criticism, and 
 to call attention to fresh and fruitful ideals of art 
 and life. The difference is, of course, that in the 
 one case the predominant motive was philosophical, 
 and in the other aesthetic. A few more facts and 
 dates are needed to indicate the early development 
 of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. In 1856, The Germ 
 found a successor in The Oxford and Cambridge 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 289 
 
 Magassme, with which Morris and Burne-Jones were 
 associated, and which was published for about a year, 
 the cost being defrayed by Morris. To this periodi- 
 cal Rossetti became a contributor. In 1858, Morris 
 published his first volume of poems. At about this 
 time, also, Swinburne became associated with 
 Rossetti and Morris and Burne-Jones. His dedica- 
 tion to the latter of the first collection of "Poems and 
 Ballads" is a memorable expression of that early 
 friendship. Swinburne's first volume, however, was 
 "The Queen Mother" and "Rosamond" of 1860, 
 followed a year later by Rossetti's volume of transla- 
 tions from the early Italian poets. Although both 
 Morris and Swinburne published volumes of original 
 poetry before Rossetti appealed to the public in this 
 way, Rossetti's poems had for many years enjoyed 
 a sort of esoteric vogue, not only among readers of 
 The Germ and The Oxford and Cambridge Maga- 
 zine, but also among others who had circulated his 
 verses in manuscript from hand to hand. Rossetti 
 was by a number of years the senior of both, and 
 both looked up to him as to their master in the 
 poetic art. When the "Poems" of Rossetti appeared 
 in 1870, Swinburne, who had himself taken the larger 
 public by storm four years earlier, reviewed them 
 with his customary generous enthusiasm, and paid 
 tribute to their author by calling him "the great 
 artist by the light of whose genius and kindly guid- 
 ance [Morris] put forth the first fruits of his work, 
 and I did afterwards." Perhaps we had better add 
 
290 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 to this summary of facts and dates the statement 
 that in 1863 Morris, in conjunction with Rossetti, 
 Ford Madox Brown, and Burne-Jones, started his 
 famous London establishment for the designing of 
 wallpaper and other household decorations. 
 
 We have thus seen how it came about that between 
 the year 1850, the year of The Germ, and the year 
 1870, the year of the collected volume of Rossetti's 
 poems, a new and powerful artistic impulse had made 
 itself felt in England. It was an impulse in which 
 expression, whether embodied in design or colour or 
 verse, sought to free itself from traditional tram- 
 mels, and to make its appeal to the public by the light 
 that shines from the lamp of simple truth and sin- 
 cerity. In its endeavour to be absolutely sincere this 
 new artistic impulse went to the extreme of naivete, 
 and, in its recourse to the forms and moods of primi- 
 tive and unsophisticated art, even earned for itself, 
 and possibly deserved, the charge of affectation. Let 
 us listen a moment to its form of expression as ex- 
 emplified by a few typical pasages. In "The Blessed 
 Damozel," for example, there are such stanzas as this : 
 
 "We two will lie 1' the shadow of 
 
 That living mystic tree 
 Within whose secret growth the Dove 
 
 Is sometimes felt to be. 
 While every leaf that his plumes touch 
 
 Saith His Name audibly." 
 
 In Morris's first volume we read of such things as 
 this; 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 291 
 
 "There was a lady lived in a hall, 
 Large in the eyes, and slim and tall; 
 And ever she sung from noon to noon. 
 Two red roses across the moon." 
 
 And in the "Poems and Ballads" of Swinburne, King 
 
 David in the miracle-play is given such speech as 
 
 this: 
 
 "Lord God, alas, what shall I sain? 
 Lo, thou art as an hundred men 
 Both to break and build again: 
 The wild ways thou makest plain. 
 Thine hands hold the hail and rain. 
 And thy fingers both grape and grain; 
 Of their largess we be all well fain. 
 
 And of their great pity: 
 The sun thou madest of good gold. 
 Of clean silver the moon cold. 
 All the great stars thou hast told 
 As thy cattle in thy fold 
 Every one by his name of old; 
 Wind and water thou hast in hold. 
 
 Both the land and the long sea." 
 
 These echoes of religious mysticism, of old-time bal- 
 ladry, of the drama in its rude beginnings, carry us 
 far back in thought, back to a period when art 
 had not grown conscious of itself, back, in short, to 
 the times and ideals of medieval Europe. Sympathy 
 with the mediaeval mind and temper is the prevailing 
 note of all this work, which was never more happily 
 characterised than when Mr. Stedman called it 
 stained-glass poetry. With the manifestations of 
 this artistic spirit in other directions than in that 
 
292 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 of literary activity we are not now concerned, but it 
 must be remembered all the while that the impulse 
 which gave us this early work in verse of our three 
 poets was the same as the impulse which produced the 
 paintings of Rossetti and Holman Hunt and Burne- 
 Jones, which produced the wallpapers and the tapes- 
 tries of Morris, not to mention his Kelmscott books 
 and his translations of Icelandic sagas. "The 
 Blessed Damozel" in The Germ of 1850, "The Burden 
 of Nineveh" in The Oxford and Cambridge Maga- 
 zine of 1856, Morris's "The Defence of Guenevere 
 and Other Poems" published in 1858, Swinburne's 
 earlier poetic dramas dated from 1860 to 1866 and 
 his "Poems and Ballads" dated 1866, and, finally, 
 Rossetti's "Poems" of 1870, — these are the milestones 
 in the history of the one important new departure 
 that has taken place in the English poetry of the 
 last fifty years. In 1850, Tennyson was not merely 
 supreme, he was practically alone among English 
 poets. Browning had not been discovered by the 
 larger public, and Arnold had only just begun to 
 write. In 1860, matters did not stand very differ- 
 ently, although Browniag's "Men and Women" had 
 won for him some measure of his long-delayed fame, 
 and Arnold's poems had found readers in increasing 
 numbers. But in 1870, the poet of "The Earthly 
 Paradise" and the poet of "Atalanta" and of the 
 "Poems and Ballads" had both won resoimding ap- 
 plause, and the poems of Rossetti, published in that 
 year, found an eager audience awaiting them. Dur- 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 293 
 
 ing the next twelve years England could boast the 
 possession of no less than six living poets of the 
 first order, a condition only to be paralleled by the 
 second decade of the century, when the poets con- 
 sidered in the first six chapters of this book were all 
 actively at work, or by the glorious period of the 
 Elizabethans. Five out of the six were taken from 
 us during a period of about fifteen years, and we 
 entered upon the twentieth century with only one 
 great living poet to represent our literature in its 
 highest reach. As we have seen, there is a marked 
 distinction between the two groups of three poets 
 each into which the larger group of six divides. 
 Browning, Tennyson, and Arnold, on the whole, made 
 no such departure from tradition as was made by 
 Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. The first three 
 were conventional poets from the beginning; each 
 had his distinctive individual temperament, it is true, 
 but each carried on the current of romantic thought 
 and emotion as its course had been shaped by the 
 influences of the first half of the century. But 
 Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne, instead of plunging 
 into the stream at the start, brought to it new tribu- 
 taries from strange springs of inspiration. Their 
 waters became mingled with the main current after a 
 time, or, to drop the metaphor, they came to write 
 much more nearly in the conventional manner than 
 they had written at first. In other words, the two 
 groups of poets were much farther apart in their 
 beginnings than in their later developments. 
 
294 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 The story of Rossetti's famous first volume is one 
 of the most familiar in our modern literary annals; 
 it belongs to what may be called the pathetic history 
 of literature. Rossetti shrank from the pubhcation 
 of his poems as he shrank from the exhibition of 
 his pictures, and, although repeatedly urged to 
 give them to the world, was reluctant to bestow upon 
 them that sort of publicity. When his wife died in 
 1863, his grief was such that he thought to pay a 
 tribute to her memory by placing in her grave the 
 manuscript of the poems. But the friends who had 
 read them, and who knew that they must become a 
 permanent part of English literature, were so urgent 
 in their demand for a reconsideration of Rossetti's 
 decision that they finally prevailed upon him to allow 
 the precious manuscript to be disinterred and put 
 into print. One does not like to think of what would 
 have been lost to us had the poet not relented, and had 
 all the marvellous beauty of that volume remained 
 buried to the world. The volume did not have to wait 
 long for appreciation. It was at once recognised by 
 all discerning critics as a treasure-house of master- 
 pieces, as the embodiment of a new and rich poetic 
 manner. If its diction was not exactly simple, it 
 answered fully to the other requirements of Milton's 
 phrase, being both sensuous and passion&te in a de- 
 gree rare even with the greatest poets. Swinburne 
 was one of the first to come forward with an appre- 
 ciation of the volume, and the essay which he devoted 
 to it remains probably the most sympathetic and 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 295 
 
 subtle criticism that it has ever received. Speaking 
 of Rossetti's style, he says : 
 
 "It has the fullest fervour and fluency of impulse, and the 
 Impulse is always towards harmony and perfection. It has the 
 inimitable note of instinct, and the instinct is always high and 
 right. It carries weight enough to overbear the style of a 
 weaker man, but no weight of thought can break it, no subtlety 
 of emotion attenuate, no ardour of passion deface. It can 
 breathe unvexed in the finest air and pass unsinged through the 
 keenest fire; it has all the grace of perfect force and all the 
 force of perfect grace." 
 
 Browning tells us of another painter who wrote "a 
 century of sonnets," which the world was never per- 
 mitted to read. Rossetti's sonnets, fortunately, did 
 not share the fate of Raphael's, but rather remain 
 to us as do the sonnets of Michelangelo, in eloquent 
 testimoiiy of the fact that it is possible for an 
 artist to achieve supreme excellence in more than 
 one form of art. The sonnet-sequence called "The 
 House of Life," which was not completed until the 
 publication of Rossetti's second volume the year be- 
 fore his death, but of which the greater part ap- 
 peared in his first volume, is so rich in its varied 
 beauty that we can compare it only with the great- 
 est work of its kind, with the sonnets of Shakespeare 
 and of Milton,- of Wordsworth and of Keats. Swin- 
 burne says of this work that 
 
 "there is not a jewel but it fits, not a beauty but it subserves an 
 end. There seems no story in this sequence of sonnets, yet they 
 hold in them all the action and passion of a spiritual history 
 with tragic stages and elegiac pauses and lyric motions of the 
 
296 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 living soul. . . . All passion and regret and strenuous hope 
 and fiery contemplation, all beauty and glory of thought and 
 vision, are built into this golden house where the life that reigns 
 is love; the very face of sorrow is not cold or withered, but has 
 the breath of heaven between its fresh live lips and the light 
 of pure sweet blood in its cheeks; there is a glow of summer 
 on the red leaves of its regrets and the starry frost-flakes of 
 its tears." 
 
 These sonnets have often been charged with obscurity, 
 but the charge means even less with Rossetti than it 
 does with Browning. The concentration of their 
 thought is so great that frequently its meaning does 
 not become apparent until a sonnet has been read 
 several times, but when the meaning is once fuUy 
 grasped, there remains no doubt that the vision of 
 the poet was absolutely clear. Many of them, in- 
 deed, one would not think of reading aloud, any more 
 than one would think of reading "Sordello" aloud, 
 because their thought flies so swiftly from image 
 to image, and because their emotion is so intense 
 that it must be hngered over to become fully im- 
 parted to the listener. But one need have no hesi- 
 tation about reading aloud such a sonnet as "Hoarded 
 Joy," which is about as nearly faultless in its beauty 
 as a sonnet can be. 
 
 "I said: 'Nay, pluck not,— let the first fruit be: 
 Evfen as thou sayest, it is sweet and red. 
 But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head 
 Sees in the stream its own fecundity 
 And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we 
 At the sun's hour that day possess the shade. 
 And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade. 
 And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?* 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 297 
 
 I say: 'Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun 
 Too long, — ^"tis fallen and floats down the stream. 
 
 Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one, 
 And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam 
 
 Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free. 
 
 And the woods wail like echoes from the sea." 
 
 The distinction between the sensuous and the 
 sensual, between the legitimate and the illegitimate 
 use of love as a poetic motive, is perfectly illustrated 
 by this sequence of sonnets, although it is a dis- 
 tinction that some of Rossetti's critics have failed 
 to understand^ The Muse of his inspiration is like 
 the woman of his own divine song, 
 
 "Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought. 
 Nor Love her body from her soul." 
 
 Noteworthy in bad eminence among the purblind per- 
 sons who were incapable of grasping this distinction, 
 or of realising how essentially pure and spiritual 
 was the conception of love as embodied in "The House 
 of Life," was the author of a pseudonymous article 
 published in one of the English reviews soon after 
 the appearance of Rossetti's volume. This article 
 was entitled "The Fleshly School of Poetry," and it 
 soon transpired that Robert Buchanan was the 
 writer. It was a foul piece of work, and Rossetti 
 felt keenly the aspersions which it cast upon his 
 ideas and his motives. Even the writer came in time 
 to get some inkling of the peculiar grossness of his 
 offence, to regret what he had said, and to offer 
 
298 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 what apology he might. But the mischief was done, 
 a mischief far greater than was done to Keats by 
 the attacks of the reviewers, for Rossetti's nature 
 was almost morbidly sensitive, and he brooded over 
 the matter for years afterwards. The castigation 
 administered to the offender by Swinburne, in the 
 httle book entitled "Under the Microscope," was so 
 thorough and severe that it disposed of the reviler 
 once for all, and makes any other reprobation seem 
 both mild and superfluous. Frederic Myers struck 
 the just note of criticism when he wrote: 
 
 "Enough, perhaps, has been said to indicate not only how 
 superficial is the view which represents Rossetti as a dangerous 
 sensualist, but also how inadequately we shall understand him 
 if we think to find in him only the commonplaces of passion 
 dressed out in fantastic language and Italianised allegory. . . . 
 If we contrast aestheticism with pure hedonism — the pursuit of 
 pleasure through art with the pursuit of pleasure simply as 
 pleasure — the one has a tendency to quicken and exalt, as the 
 other to deaden and vulgarise, the emotions and appetencies of 
 man. If only the artist can keep clear of the sensual selfish- 
 ness which will, in its turn, degrade the art which yields to it; 
 if only he can worship beauty with a strong and single heart, 
 his emotional nature will acquire a grace and elevation which 
 are not, indeed, identical with the elevation of virtue, the grace 
 of holiness, but which are, none the less, a priceless enrichment 
 of the complex life of man. . . . Yet who can read 'The 
 House of Life' and not feel that the poet has known Love as 
 Love can be — ^not an enjoyment only or a triumph, but a 
 worship and a regeneration; Love not fleeting or changeful, 
 but 'Par above all passionate winds of welcome and farewell:' 
 Love offering to the soul no mere excitation and by-play, but 
 'a heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;' Love whose 'hours 
 elect in choral consonancy' bear with them nothing that is vain 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 299 
 
 or vulgar, common or unclean. He must have felt as no pass- 
 ing tragedy the long ache of parted pain, 'the ground-whirl of 
 the perished leaves of hope,' 'the sunset's desolate disarray,' 
 the fruitless striving 'to wrest a bond from night's inveteracy,' 
 to behold 'for once, for once alone,' the unforgotten eyes re- 
 risen from the dark of death." 
 
 A considerable part of Rossetti's most character- 
 istic work is so purely aesthetic in its appeal that it 
 does not come within the scope of the present dis- 
 cussion. I must be contented with mere mention 
 of the whole group of tragic ballads, of the sonnets 
 written for pictures, and the lyrics which seemed 
 to endow English poetry with notes and harmo- 
 nies before unknown. Even the dramatic mono- 
 logue, "A Last Confession," which vies with Brown- 
 ing upon his own ground, may not be considered 
 here. A few words may be given, however, to the 
 poem "Jenny," the one poem in which Rossetti sub- 
 jects a present-day subject to realistic treatment. 
 The subject is a delicate one to handle, and the poem 
 is one, in Mr. Forman's words, "that almost all criti- 
 cism or discussion must mispresent, not on account of 
 any ineffable workmanship such as may be found in 
 many of these poems, but simply because of the utter 
 cleanliness and manhness with which the matter in 
 hand has been treated." The burden of the speaker's 
 reflections, as he gazes upon this outcast woman 
 asleep, is in the deepest degree impressive, and the 
 moral which it suggests but does not obtrude is made 
 to take the strongest possible hold upon us. 
 
300 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 "Just as another woman sleeps 1 
 Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps 
 Of doubt and horror, — ^what to say 
 Or think, — ^this awful secret sway, 
 The potter's power over the clay ! 
 Of the same lump (it has been said) 
 For honour and dishonour made. 
 Two sister vessels. Here is one." 
 
 And for grim concentration of thought, for vivid 
 presentation of the appalling problem of evil, I 
 would not know where to match the simple single 
 line which is the poet's sole comment upon the passage 
 I have quoted. 
 
 "It makes a goblin of the sun." 
 
 Of this poem Swinburne says : 
 
 "Its plainness of speech and subject gives it power to touch 
 the heights and sound the depths of tragic thought without 
 losing the force of its hold and grasp upon the palpable truths 
 which men often seek and cry out for in poetry, without know- 
 ing that these are only good when greatly treated, and that to 
 artists who can treat them greatly all times and all truths are 
 equal, and the present, though assuredly no worse, yet as- 
 suredly no better topic than the past. . . . AU the open 
 sources of pathetic effusion to which a common shepherd of 
 souls would have led the flock of his readers to drink and weep 
 and be refreshed, and leave the medicinal wellspring of senti- 
 ment warmer and fuller from their easy tears, are here dried 
 up. . . . Without a taint on it of anything coarse or trivial, 
 without shadow or suspicion of any facile or vulgar aim at 
 pathetic effect of a tragical or moral kind, it cleaves to absolute 
 fact and reality closer than any common preacher or realist 
 could come; no side of the study is thrown out or thrown back 
 into false light or furtive shadow; but the purity and nobility 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 301 
 
 of its high and ardent pathos are qualities of a moral weight 
 and beauty beyond reach of any rivalry." 
 
 The influence of Dante upon the work of Rossetti 
 — both in his painting and in his poetry — is so 
 marked that it calls for special consideration. That 
 influence could hardly fail in a poet of his tempera- 
 ment, antecedents, and home associations. With 
 the whole Rossetti family, Dante was more than a 
 poet among other poets, he was rather a religion, an 
 unfailing source of spiritual inspiration. Every 
 member of that family gave some sort of testimony 
 to his reverence for the Florentine poet and the 
 Sacred Song that bears his name. The elder Ros- 
 setti was the author of an acute and learned com- 
 mentary upon Dante, a commentary rendered some- 
 what futile by its insistence upon mystical and alle- 
 gorical interpretations, but still a noteworthy con- 
 tribution to the vast literature of the subject. Wil- 
 liam Michael Rossetti was one of the many English 
 translators of the "Inferno," and was otherwise con- 
 siderably occupied with studies in Dante. Maria 
 Francesca Rossetti, in her work entitled "The 
 Shadow of Dante," gave to English readers one of 
 the most helpful guides for the understanding of 
 the poet. The poems of Christina Rossetti abound 
 in echoes from Dante, and are saturated with his 
 spirit. His influence upon Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
 is shown in many tributes, both direct And indirect; 
 in none, perhaps, more beautifully than in the lines 
 inscribed to the memory of his father : 
 
302 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 "And didst thou know indeed, when at the font 
 Together with thy name thou gav'st me his. 
 That also on thy son must Beatrice 
 
 Decline her eyes according to her wont. 
 
 Accepting me to be of those that haunt 
 The vale of magical dark mysteries 
 Where to the hills her poet's foot-track lies 
 
 And wisdom's living fountain to his chaunt 
 
 Trembles in music?" 
 
 How Rossetti haunted that "vale of magical dark 
 mysteries" is well known. His first published book 
 was that volume on "The Early Italian Poets," with 
 which readers are more familiar under its later title 
 of "Dante and His Circle." That work, which in- 
 cludes Rossetti's wonderfully poetical and sympa- 
 thetic translation of "The New Life" — which I am 
 sometimes tempted to call the most beautiful book 
 in all literature, — has a special niche in the affections 
 of lovers of Dante. Rossetti's translation of the 
 fragment containing the episode of Paolo and Fran- 
 cesca makes us think regretfully of what he might 
 have done for the entire "Divine Comedy," had he 
 been so minded. Such a translation as he could have 
 made would have become one of the most imperishable 
 possessions of English literature; such a conjunction 
 of genius and sympathy between Dante and an Eng- 
 lish poet has never before occurred, and is never 
 likely to occur again. To the "Vita Nuova," which 
 happily he did translate in full, Rossetti's thoughts 
 went back in one of his later sonnets, and described 
 the influence of that book upon his youthful mind. 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 "As he that loves oft looks on the dear form 
 And guesses how it grew to womanhood. 
 And gladly would have watched the beauties bud 
 
 And the mild fire of precious life wax warm; 
 
 So I, long bound within the threefold charm 
 Of Dante's love sublimed to heavenly mood. 
 Had marvelled, touching his Beatitude, 
 
 How grew such presence from man's shameful swarm. 
 
 At length within this book I found pourtrayed 
 
 Newborn that Paradisal Love of his. 
 And simple like a child; with whose clear aid 
 
 I understood. To such a child as this, 
 Christ, charging well His chosen ones, forbade 
 
 Offence: 'For lo! of such my kingdom is.' " 
 
 Rossetti's chief personal tribute to the great Italian 
 poet is, of course, the long and noble poem, "Dante 
 at Verona." This poem appeals to us, not only with 
 the force of its author's own personality, but with the 
 superadded weight and authority of Dante's genius. 
 Dante's own words are woven with happy craft into 
 the text, and fitted to the metrical scheme without 
 any essential alteration. The emotion which we feel 
 in reading is thus referable to him who inspired 
 the song almost as much as to him who wrote it. 
 From an external point of view, the poem is a chron- 
 icle of the years spent by Dante at the court of the 
 Scaligers ; viewed from within, it is an eflFective con- 
 trast between the outer life shaped by environment, 
 and the spiritual life fed by its own springs. Lowell 
 puts the contrast in these words: "Looked at out- 
 wardly, the life of Dante seems to have been an utter 
 and disastrous failure. What its inward satisfac- 
 
304 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 tion must have been, we, with the 'Paradiso' open 
 before us, can form some faint conception." Ros- 
 setti puts the same thought in this way : 
 
 "Follow his feet's appointed way; — 
 But little light we find that clears 
 The darkness of the exiled years. 
 Follow his spirit's journey: — nay, 
 What fires are blent, what winds are blown 
 On paths his feet may tread alone?" 
 
 Yet, he goes on to say — and this is the programme of 
 his poem — 
 
 "Yet of the two-fold life he led 
 
 In chainless thought and fettered will 
 Some glimpses reach us, — somewhat still 
 Of the steep stairs and bitter bread, — 
 Of the soul's quest whose stern avow 
 For years had made him haggard now." 
 
 One of the most familiar anecdotes of those years 
 spent at Verona is thus turned to account : 
 
 "For a tale tells that on his track. 
 As through Verona's streets he went, 
 This saying certain women sent: — 
 
 'Lo, he that stroUs to Hell and back 
 At will ! Behold him, how Hell's reek 
 Has crisped his beard and singed his cheek.' 
 
 "'Whereat' (Boccaccio's words) 'he smil'd 
 For pride in fame.' It might be so: 
 Nevertheless we cannot know 
 If haply he were not beguil'd 
 To bitterer mirth, who scarce could tell 
 If he Indeed were back from Hell." 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 305 
 
 But bitter as were those years of exile, Dante re- 
 jected with scorn the terms offered him by his native 
 city. Rossetti's treatment of this reception of the 
 amnesty, proffered upon terms that were felt to be 
 an intolerable insult by the indignant soul of the 
 poet, is particularly interesting because of the man- 
 ner in which it makes use — ^almost without para- 
 phrase — of the words contained in that famous 
 "Letter to a Florentine Friend," which is, perhaps, 
 the most precious document of Dante's life that has 
 come down to us. 
 
 "Neverthdess, when from his kin 
 There came the tidings how at last 
 In Florence a decree was pass'd 
 Whereby all banished folk might win 
 Free pardon, so a fine were paid 
 And act of public penance made, — 
 
 "This Dante writ in answer thus. 
 
 Words such as these: 'That clearly they 
 In Florence must not have to say, — 
 The man abode aloof from us 
 Nigh fifteen years, yet lastly skulk'd 
 Hither to candleshrift and mulct. 
 
 " 'That he was one the Heavens forbid 
 To traffic in God's justice sold 
 By market-weight of earthly gold, 
 Or to bow down over the lid 
 Of steaming censers, and so be 
 Made clean of manhood's obloquy. 
 
 " 'That since no gate led, by God's will. 
 To Florence, but the one whereat 
 The priests and money-changers sat. 
 He still would wander; for that still. 
 
306 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 Even though the body's prison-bars, 
 His soul possessed the sun and stars.' 
 
 "Such were his words. It is indeed 
 For ever well our poets should 
 Utter good words and know them good 
 Not through song only; with good heed 
 Lest, having spent for the work's sake 
 Six days, the man be left to make." 
 
 The poet who wrote these lines has been accused of 
 being without convictions. The charge does not need 
 any further refutation. It means merely that the 
 poet's convictions are too broad-based to square 
 with the narrow prejudices of those who make it — 
 that they are convictions resting upon the funda- 
 mental rock of righteousness rather than upon the 
 shifting sands of some accidental ethical system. 
 
 Rossetti was not frequently moved to embody po- 
 litical passion in his verse, but the occasional pieces 
 which are inspired by current events are sufficient 
 to reveal the direction in which his sympathies lay. 
 We have seen how the Revolution of 1848 found in 
 Arnold at twenty-six a conservative critic, doubtful 
 of the real efficacy of such efforts to cast off the 
 burden of oppression. Rossetti, who was twenty 
 years of age at that time, hailed the revolutionary 
 outburst as a new sunrise of freedom, in words that 
 suggest what Byron or Shelley might have written. 
 
 "God said. Let there be light; and there was light. 
 Then heard we sounds as though the Earth did sing 
 And the Earth's angel cried upon the wing." 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 307 
 
 The funeral of the Duke of Wellington evoked a 
 striking ode from Rossetti, but in this case the splen- 
 dour of Tennyson's triumphant paean makes all other 
 attempts to commemorate the occasion seem insig- 
 nificant. The sonnet upon the death of Alexander 
 the Second expresses deep indignation at the das- 
 tardly act of the assassin, made to seem so pecu- 
 liarly atrocious by the memory of what the Czar 
 had done for the emancipation of his people. 
 
 "From him did forty million serfs, endow'd 
 Each with six feet of death-due soil, receive 
 Rich freeborn lifelong land, whereon to sheave 
 Their country's harvest. These to-day aloud 
 Demand of Heaven a father's blood, — sore-bow'd 
 With tears and thrilled with wrath; who, whUe they grieve, 
 On every guilty head would fain achieve 
 All torment by his edicts disallow'd. 
 He stayed the knout's red-ravening fangs; and first 
 Of Russian traitors, his own murderers go 
 White to the tomb. While he, — ^laid foully low 
 With limbs red-rent, with festering brain which erst 
 Willed kingly freedom, — ^"gainst the deed accurst 
 To God bears witness of his people's woe." 
 
 It is interesting to compare this sonnet with that 
 written by Swinburne upon the same theme. In the 
 latter poem, commingled with the notes of awe and 
 pity occasioned by the murder, there is another note 
 that we do not hear in the former — a note expressive 
 of the nemesis that has attended so many despots. 
 
 "By no dry death another king goes down 
 The way of kings." 
 
308 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 It is, however, in the sonnet "On Refusal of Aid 
 between Nations" that Rossetti's political ethics 
 reach their highest expression. In this noble utter- 
 ance not individuals, merely, but the nations of the 
 earth are brought to the bar of a righteous tribunal 
 and condemned for their selfish absorption in their 
 own aifairs. 
 
 "Not that the earth is chanpng, O my God! 
 Not that the seasons totter in their walk, — 
 Not that the virulent ill of act and talk 
 Seethes ever as a wine-press ever trod, — 
 Not therefore are we certain that the rod 
 Weighs in thine hand to smite the world; though now 
 Beneath thine hand so many nations bow. 
 So many kings; — ^not therefore, O my God! — 
 But because Man is parcelled out in men 
 To-day; because, for any wrongful blow 
 No man notstricken asks, 'I would be told 
 Why thou dost thus;' but his heart whispers then 
 'He is hei I am I.' By this we know 
 That our earth falls asunder, being old." 
 
 Here is the very accent of Milton, the very majesty 
 of his stern exaltation of the immutable moral law. 
 
 Among the poems of Rossetti there is one which, 
 for imaginative power combined with a sweep of 
 historical vision that is both retrospective and pro- 
 phetic, occupies a place by itself. This is "The 
 Burden of Nineveh," that marvellous reflective com- 
 position inspired by the chance sight of an Assyrian 
 bull-god brought to the doors of the British Museum. 
 When we recall the fact that this poem was written 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 309 
 
 at the age of twenty-three, we can only wonder at 
 the precocity of the genius which thus declared itself. 
 
 "Within thy shadow, haply, once 
 Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons 
 Smote him between the altar-stones: 
 Or pale Semiramis her zones 
 
 Of gold, her incense brought to thee, 
 In love for grace, in war for aid: . . . 
 Ay, and who else? . . - till 'neath thy shade 
 Within his trenches newly made 
 Last year the Christian knelt and prayed — 
 Not to thy strength — in Nineveh. 
 
 "Now, thou poor god, within this hall 
 Where the blank windows blind the wall 
 From pedestal to pedestal. 
 The kind of light shall on thee fall 
 
 Which London takes the day to be: 
 While school-foundations in the act 
 Of holiday, three files compact. 
 Shall learn to view thee as a fact 
 Connected with that zealous tract; 
 'Rome, — Babylon and Nineveh.' 
 
 "Deemed they of this, those worshippers. 
 When, in some mythic chain of verse 
 Which man shall not again rehearse. 
 The faces of thy ministers 
 
 Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy? 
 Greece, Egypt, Rome, — did any god 
 Before whose feet men knelt unshod 
 Deem that in this unblest abode 
 Another scarce more unknown god 
 
 Should house with him, from Nineveh?" 
 
 And then the poet's thought, turning from the 
 strange extinct civilisation from whose ruins this 
 
310 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 winged beast had been disinterred, reflects upon some 
 future as remote as the past now vividly brought to 
 mind, some future in which this ancient god, again 
 buried beneath the accumulations of centuries, shall 
 again be unearthed, and again set men to speculate 
 upon the faith to which it bears witness. 
 
 "It may chance indeed that when 
 Man's age is hoary among men, — 
 His centuries three-score and ten, — 
 His furthest childhood shall seem then 
 
 More clear than later times may be; 
 Who, finding in this desert place 
 This form, shall hold us for some race 
 That walked not in Christ's lowly ways 
 But bowed its pride and vowed its praise 
 
 Unto the God of Nineveh." 
 
 Then comes the moral of it all, significant and pro- 
 found : 
 
 "The smile rose first, — anon drew nigh 
 The thought: . . . Those heavy wings, spread high, 
 So sure of flight, which do not fly; 
 That set gaze never on the sky; 
 
 Those scriptured flanks it cannot see; 
 Its crown, a brow-contracting load; 
 Its planted feet which trust the sod: . . . 
 (So grew the image as I trod;) 
 O Nineveh, was this thy God, — 
 Thine also, mighty Nineveh?" 
 
 Fossetti's religious message is not unhke that of 
 Arnold; it is a message of tempered hopefulness, a 
 call to seize upon what the present moment offers, 
 to live simply and sincerely, to welcome those moods 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 311 
 
 of awe and reverence in which the soul feels lifted up, 
 and to realise the utmost possibilities of a spiritual 
 development which holds its even course between sen- 
 suous enjoyment and rapt contemplation of the eter- 
 nal verities. He felt the wonder and the vastness 
 of the universe too deeply to admit that its mystery 
 was fathomed by any of the creeds, yet he could enter 
 into the spirit of the most naive embodiments of reli- 
 gious emotion, and find tender and wistful music for 
 their expression. In the group of sonnets entitled 
 "The Choice," written early in life, the epicurean 
 ideal is contrasted with the ascetic ideal, but neither 
 has power to satisfy the well-balanced soul. 
 
 "Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die." 
 
 is too material a mandate for the conduct of life, and 
 the alternative mandate, 
 
 "Watch thou and pray; to-morrow thou shalt die," 
 
 is made equally inadequate by its excessive insistence 
 upon spirituality. But a third choice remains, and 
 this is clearly the poet's refuge from the other two. 
 
 "Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die. 
 Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore. 
 Thou say'st: 'Man's measured path is aU gone o'er; 
 Up aU his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, 
 Man clomb until he touched the truth, and I, 
 Even I, am he whom it was destined for.' 
 How should this be ? Art thou then so much more 
 Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby? 
 
312 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 'Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound 
 Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me; 
 
 Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. 
 Miles and miles distant though the last line be. 
 
 And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond, — 
 Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea." 
 
 Here is suggested an ideal of strenuous spiritual ac- 
 tivity not unworthy to be placed beside the noblest 
 utterances of Tennyson and of Arnold. Not to be 
 concerned overmuch with vain questionings, but to 
 find in the boundless possibilities of the visible uni- 
 verse matter for the highest aspiration and the deep- 
 est arwe — this Is what Rossetti enjoins upon us in 
 the magnificent verses just quoted. In the poem en- 
 titled "Soothsay," that "monumental lyrical piece," 
 as Pater calls it, we have an illustration of "the re- 
 flective force, the dry reason, always at work behind 
 his imaginative creations," and at the same time a 
 clear statement of his attitude towards the funda- 
 mental questions which concern the conduct of Ufe. 
 
 "Crave thou no dower of earthly things 
 Unworthy Hope's imaginings. 
 To have brought true birth of Song to be 
 And to have won hearts to Poesy, 
 Or anywhere in the sun or rain 
 To have loved and been beloved again. 
 Is loftiest reach of Hope's bright wings. 
 
 "Let lore of all Theology 
 Be to thy soul what it can be: 
 But know, — ^the Power that fashions man 
 Measured not out thy little span 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 313 
 
 For thee to take the meting-rod 
 In turn, and so approve on God 
 Thy science of Theometry. 
 
 "To God at best, to Chance at worst. 
 Give thanlis for good things, last as first. 
 But windstrown blossom is that good 
 Whose apple is not gratitude. 
 Even if no prayer uplift thy face. 
 Let the sweet right to render grace 
 As thy soul's cherished child be nurs'd. 
 
 "Didst ever say, 'Lo, I forget'? 
 Such thought was to remember yet. 
 As in a gravegarth, count to see 
 The monuments of memory. 
 Be this thy soul's appointed scope: — 
 Gaze onward without claim to hope. 
 Nor, gazing backward, court regret." 
 
 The death of Rossetti, in 1882, was the first break 
 in the company of the greater Victorian poets. His 
 life was burned out by the very intensity of his 
 genius, and the end was no doubt hastened by his 
 resort to those drugs that for a time bring respite 
 for suffering, but at the price of irremediable physi- 
 cal impairment. What his suiFerings were during 
 those last secluded years may be guessed at from 
 some of his later lyrics. The personal note is un- 
 mistakable in such poems as "The Cloud Confines," 
 and "Insomnia," and "Spheral Change." Can there 
 be, he asks in one of them, 
 
 "At length some hard-earned heart-won home. 
 Where, — exile changed for sanctuary, — 
 Our lot may fill indeed its smn?" 
 
314 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 and in another he asks, 
 
 "Is there a home where heavy earth 
 
 Melts to bright air that breathes no pain. 
 Where water leaves no thirst again 
 And springing fire is Love's new birth?" 
 
 At last the home of which he dreamed became his 
 possession, and the poet-friend who was with him at 
 the close of life wrote those sonnets on "A Grave by 
 the Sea" which are among the most tender of all 
 memorial verses. 
 
 "Last night Death whispered: 'Life's purblind procession, 
 Flickering with blazon of the human story — 
 Time's fen-flame over Death's dark territory — 
 
 Will leave no trail, no sign of Life's aggression. 
 
 Yon moon that strikes the pane, the stars in session. 
 Are weak as Man they mock with fleeting glory. 
 Since Life is only death's frail feudatory. 
 
 How shall love hold of Fate in true possession?' 
 
 I answered thus: 'If Friendship's isle of palm 
 
 Is but a vision, every loveliest leaf. 
 Can knowledge of its mockery soothe and calm 
 
 This soul of mine in this most fiery grief? 
 
 If Love but holds of Life through Death in fief. 
 What balm in knowing that Love is Death's — ^what balm?- 
 
 "Yes, thus I boldly answered Death — even I 
 
 Who have for boon — who have for deathless dower — 
 Thy love, dear friend, which broods, a magic power. 
 Filling with music earth and sea and sky: 
 'O Death,' I said, 'not Love, but thou shalt die 
 For, this I know, though thine is now the hour. 
 And thine these angry clouds of doom that lour. 
 Death striking Love but strikes to deify.' 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 315 
 
 "Yet while I spoke I sighed in loneliness. 
 For strange seemed Man, and Life seemed comfortless, 
 
 And night, whom we two loved, seemed strange and dumb; 
 And, waiting till the dawn the promised sign, 
 I watched — I listened for that voice of thine. 
 Though Reason said: 'Nor voice nor face can come.'" 
 
Milliam fiDorris 
 
 WiiiLiAM MoRBis was so much more than a poet, 
 so much more even than a mere man of letters, that 
 any attempt to set forth his ideals and his activities 
 in these few pages must be hopelessly inadequate. He 
 was so full of life, his interests were so many ancl 
 so varied, his capacity for work so extraordinary, 
 that many phases of his career must be left un- 
 touched during the present discussion. He requires a 
 volume merely to enumerate the titles of all his books 
 and fugitive writings. Yet literature was his avoca- 
 tion rather than his vocation, for the greater part 
 of his days were given to the toil of the craftsman 
 and the designer. How he turned from architecture 
 to mural decoration, and from that to the drawing 
 of patterns for carpets and wall-papers, and from 
 that to the task of giving artistic form to other 
 kinds of household furnishings, and from that again 
 to the designing of type-faces and the printing of 
 beautiful books, is a story that must be left to his 
 biographer. It is only by a minute study of his life 
 that we can fully realise what all these activities 
 meant to him. For he entered into every one of them 
 with his whole soul, and every one of them required 
 from him many forms of collateral investigation and 
 
 316 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 317 
 
 observation and experiment. It is something of a 
 surprise to us that his friend Rossetti should have 
 achieved mastery in the two arts of poetry and paint- 
 ing; it is with a feeling more bewildering than sur- 
 prise that we learn of the mastery achieved by Morris 
 in arts and crafts almost too numerous to specify. 
 In the most famihar of his verses he describes him- 
 self as "the idle singer of an empty day." When Ros- 
 setti parodied this line into "the busy Morris of a 
 twelve hours' day," he gave but an imperfect ex- 
 pression to the tireless energy by which the career 
 of Morris was characterised from first to last, 
 
 "He had time to read, to study, — and some of his Scandinavian 
 studies, in particular, involved prolonged time and absorp- 
 tion, — ^to write incessantly in imaginative prose, in verse; to 
 occupy himself with socialistic labours, humanitarian pam- 
 phlets, speeches, papers; to make his house a centre for the 
 'advanced wing;' to work daily at Some one or other of his 
 innumerable decorative undertaldngs; and to superintend a 
 busy and complex business, for a business in the ordinary sense 
 the manufacture of decorative tapestry and other craft-pro- 
 ductions imquestionably was." 
 
 These words of his friend William Sharp give us 
 some idea of his complex activity. 
 
 "Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time. 
 Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?" — 
 
 this was the self -questioning note with which he intro- 
 duced "The Earthly Paradise" to its readers. In 
 reality, nothing could be less typical of the man than 
 this, for he did set the crooked straight in more ways 
 
318 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 than one, and he knew better than most men how 
 to give practical effect to his dreams. 
 
 Morris made his first contributions to Uterature 
 through the medium of The Oxford and Cambridge 
 Magazine, which, as has previously been stated, 
 was published during the one year of 1856. In that 
 short-hved periodical a few of his poems were pub- 
 lished, and also those early prose romances which 
 must be regarded as the precursors of the long series 
 with which his closing years were occupied. Two 
 years later he published "The Defence of Guenevere 
 and Other Poems," his first volume, which was also 
 the first that proceeded from the Pre-Raphaelite 
 group of poets. The volume was almost unnoticed 
 by the professional critics, and it did not reach any 
 large number of readers until the poet of "The 
 Earthly Paradise" had become so famous that a re- 
 print of his early verse was demanded. It was a 
 volume inspired in part by Malory, and in part by 
 the ballad-poetry of the fifteenth century. The note 
 which it struck was unheeded by the public whose 
 ears had become attuned to Tennysonian measures 
 and cadences, and only a reader here and there was 
 found responsive to its appeal. Yet the volume con- 
 tained many pages of wonderful beauty, of a beauty 
 which now, after more than a generation of schooling 
 in a fashion which seemed then so strange, we can 
 both understand and cherish. We wonder now that 
 such a volume could have fallen still-born from the 
 press at any time, yet that was its fate. Such a 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 319 
 
 poem as the irregular sonnet entitled "Summer 
 Dawn," for example, has a quiet beauty that would 
 seem to make it altogether independent of any lit- 
 erary fashion. 
 
 "Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips, 
 Think but one thought of me up in the stars. 
 
 The summer night waneth, the morning light slips. 
 Faint and grey 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt 
 the cloud-bars. 
 
 That are patiently waiting there for the dawn: 
 Patient and colourless, though Heaven's gold 
 
 Waits to float through them along with the sun. 
 
 Far out in the meadows, above the young corn. 
 The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold 
 
 The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun; 
 
 Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn. 
 
 Round the lone house in the midst of the corn. 
 Speal: but one word to me over the corn. 
 Over the tender, bow'd loclcs of the corn." 
 
 It is true that this poem is somewhat smoother in 
 diction and more nearly conventional in manner than 
 the majority of those with which it was associated in 
 that significant first volume of Pre-Raphaelite song. 
 It is also true that many of the poems were carelessly, 
 almost recklessly, put together, were anything but 
 clear in their meaning, and were sometimes harsh in 
 their expression. But one could not examine the 
 volume at all closely without realising that a forceful 
 individuality stood behind it, or that it embodied a 
 noteworthy individual utterance. As Swinburne 
 says : "Such things as were in this book are taught 
 and learnt in no school but that of instinct. Upon 
 
320 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 no piece of work in the world was the impress of na- 
 tive character ever more distinctly stamped, more 
 deeply branded. It needed no exceptional acuteness 
 of ear or eye to see or hear that this poet held of 
 none, stole from none, clung to none, as tenant or as 
 beggar or as thief. Not as yet a master, he was 
 assuredly no longer a pupil." 
 
 The very year in which the public turned 
 a deaf ear to the studies of Morris in Arthurian 
 legend was the year in which the most popular 
 poet of the age was engaged in completing 
 the first section of his "Idylls of the King." 
 This was the sort of Arthurian romance that 
 the pubHc found acceptable, and the immediate 
 vogue of Tennyson's poem stands in striking con- 
 trast to the neglect with which Morris was treated 
 when he besought the interest of readers for his own 
 studies in Malory. I have no intention of exalting 
 the "Guenevere" of Morris at the expense of the 
 "Guinevere" of Tennyson; the latter poem, together 
 with the whole cycle of Idylls to which it belongs, 
 constituted a far greater contribution to English 
 poetry than did the Arthurian studies of Morris. 
 Tennyson was perfect where Morris was imperfect, 
 strong where he was weak, but it is nevertheless true 
 that the Tennysonian version of Malory was a highly 
 sophisticated one, was Infused with modern sentiment 
 and modern ethics, whereas the version made by 
 Morris was a sincere reproduction of the manner 
 Jind feeling of the fifteenth century. Taking "King 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 821 
 
 Arthur's Tomb" as an example, Swinburne says "it 
 has not been constructed at all ; the parts hardly hold 
 together; it has need of joists and screws, props and 
 rafters. . . . There is scarcely connection here, and 
 scarcely composition. There is hardly a trace of 
 narrative power or mechanical arrangement. There 
 is a perceptible want of tact and practice, which 
 leaves the poem in parts indecorous and chaotic. 
 But where among better and older poets of his time 
 and country is one comparable for perception and 
 expression of tragic truth, of subtle and noble, ter- 
 rible and piteous things.'' where a touch of passion 
 at once so broad and so sure?" Morris was so dis- 
 couraged by the fact that the public preferred Ten- 
 nyson's treatment of Malory to his own that he kept 
 silent for nearly ten years, when his "Jason" won 
 for him all the applause of which his "Guenevere" 
 had failed. But he was enabled to understand, as the 
 years went on, that his first volume had not been 
 without its influence in shaping the new imaginative 
 tendency of English poetry. Like Lander's "Gebir," 
 it had won the suffrages of the elect, and its influ- 
 ence, although hidden, had been far-reaching. This 
 first volume, in the words of his biographer, "is one 
 of those books which, without ever reaching a wide 
 circle or a large popularity, have acted with great 
 intensity on a small circle of minds, and, to those 
 on whom they fully struck home, given a new colour 
 to the art of poetry and the whole imaginative as- 
 pect of things." 
 
322 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 "The Life and Death of Jason" was published in 
 1867, and achieved instant popularity. Here was 
 verse that did not require from its readers a com- 
 plete readjustment of their ideals, verse which was 
 simple and direct and sincere, verse of which the cur- 
 rent was both strong and limpid. It seemed to 
 restore to English poetry the art of narrative, which 
 had been almost forgotten since the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. The poet had now gone back of Malory for 
 his inspiration, back to "the well of English unde- 
 filed." His tribute to Chaucer in the closing book 
 of the poem is so beautiful that I must quote it, 
 although it has been quoted numberless times before. 
 
 "Would that I 
 Had but some portion of that mastery 
 That from the rose-hung lanes of woody Kent 
 Through these five hundred years such songs have sent 
 To us, who meshed within this smoky net 
 Of unrejoicing labour, love them yet. 
 And thou, O Master! — ^Yes, my Master still, 
 Whatever feet have scaled Parnassus hiU, 
 Since like thy measures, clear, and sweet, and strong, 
 Thames' stream scarce fettered bore the bream along 
 Unto the bastioned bridge, his only chain — 
 O Master, pardon me, if yetin vain 
 Thou art my Master, and I fail to bring 
 Before men's eyes the image of the thing 
 My heart is filled with: thou whose dreamy eyes 
 Beheld the flush to Cressid's cheeks arise. 
 When Troilus rode up the praising street. 
 As clearly as they saw thy townsmen meet 
 Those who in vineyards of Poictou withstood 
 The glittering horror of the steel-topped wood." 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 323 
 
 But there was no need, save for the sake of its own 
 beauty, that the poet should make this acknowledg- 
 ment of grateful discipleship. No one could read 
 the new poem without thinking of Chaucer, or with- 
 out something of surprised realisation of the fact 
 that there had been no such romantic narrative in 
 Enghsh poetry since the time of Chaucer. "In all 
 the noble role of our poets there has been since 
 Chaucer no second teller of tales, no second rhapsode 
 comparable to the first, till the advent of this one." 
 These were Swinburne's words, and they were sub- 
 stantially the words of all the other critics. "Rarely 
 but in the ballad and romance periods has such 
 poetry been written, so broad and sad and simple, 
 so full of deep and direct fire, certain of its aim, 
 without finish, without fault. . . . Even against 
 the great master his pupil may fairly be matched for 
 simple sense of right, for grace and speed of step, 
 for purity and justice of colour." 
 
 At the time when "Jason" was given to the public, 
 a still more ambitious narrative work was well under 
 way. In fact, "Jason" itself had been planned as a 
 part of that larger work, but had so outrun the orig- 
 inal intention of the author that it had to be pub- 
 lished as an independent poem. The larger work 
 of which I am speaking was, of course, "The Earthly 
 Paradise," and the volume which contained "Jason" 
 contained also an announcement that the larger work 
 was in preparation. The plan of "The Earthly 
 Paradise" is so well known that I do not need to 
 
324 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 enlarge upon it in detail. Following in the foot- 
 steps of Chaucer and Boccaccio, the author's design 
 was to tell a long series of stories, and to devise a 
 framework for the structure that should have at 
 least the appearance of verisimilitude, and that 
 should serve to hnk together tales of the most varied 
 provenance. Unlike Chaucer and Boccaccio, how- 
 ever, the tales which Morris wished to tell were the 
 world-famous tales of classical and mediseval tradi- 
 tion. It was something of a problem to invent a 
 situation which should justify the bringing together 
 of stories from such different sources, and which 
 should give any degree of coherency to the work as 
 a whole. 
 
 The tradition upon which the structure of "The 
 Earthly Paradise" was based, although purely fanci- 
 ful, was not without certain analogies in fact. As 
 Mr. Mackail says: 
 
 "The Greek epic, it is true, ends in tlie fifth century; but 
 Greek poetry went on being written certainly till the eleventh; 
 and the collection of minor poetry loiown as the Anthology 
 owes its final form to a Byzantine scholar who was ambassador 
 to Venice at the time of Edward III.'s accession to the crown 
 of England, and was probably still alive when Chaucer was 
 born. . . . Given then, this living tradition of early Greece, 
 inherited by some outlying fragment of the Greek speech and 
 blood such as actually existed for some hundreds of years in' 
 Central Asia, for some hundreds more in Southern Russia, 
 and might conceivably have existed in some remote ocean 
 fastness much longer: ^ven a sufBcient reason for the 
 inheritors of this tradition being joined, in their for- 
 gotten island, by a group of mixed Western blood, Germanic, 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 325 
 
 Norse, and Celtic, bearing with them the mass of stories cur- 
 rent in their own time throughout western Europe; and a 
 setting is provided in which may be rationally included any 
 story in the world. Make this reason a combination of the 
 Norse explorations of the Atlantic and the earliest discoveries 
 of America with the flight out of a land stricken with the Black 
 Death, and there results the whole idea and structure of "The 
 Earthly Paradise.'" 
 
 The plan thus devised is carried out with great skill. 
 The wanderers of the poet's invention, embarked in 
 quest of adventure, are driven out of their course by 
 a tempest, and at last find a haven in 
 
 "A nameless city in a distant sea. 
 White as the changing walls of faerie." 
 
 Here in this outpost of a civilisation that has van- 
 ished from Europe they are warmly welcomed by 
 the elders of the icity, and bidden to remain as guests. 
 After a year has gone by, and spring has come again, 
 "when new-born March made fresh the hopeful air," 
 the wanderers are assembled one day with the elders 
 of the city, and the chief priest thus addresses them : 
 
 "Dear Guests, the year begins to-day. 
 And fain are we, before it pass away. 
 To hear some tales of that now altered world, 
 Wherefrom our fathers in old time were hurled 
 By the hard hands of fate and destiny. 
 Nor would ye hear perchance unwillingly 
 How we have dwelt with stories of the land 
 Wherein the tombs of our forefathers stand: 
 Wherefore henceforth two solemn feasts shall be 
 In every month, at which some history 
 
326 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 Shall crown our joyance; and this day, indeed, 
 
 I have a story ready for our need. 
 
 If ye will hear it, though perchance it is 
 
 That many things therein are writ amiss. 
 
 This part forgotten, that part grown too great. 
 
 For these things, too, are in the hands of fate." 
 
 Thus the story-telling begins, and each month of 
 the ensuing year the wanderers exchange tales with 
 their hosts, the latter recounting such classical leg- 
 ends as the race of Atalanta, the love of Alcestis, the 
 death of Paris, and the quest of the golden apples 
 of the Hesperides ; the former responding with such 
 mediasval stories as that of Ogier the Dane, of the 
 land east of the sun and west of the moon, and of 
 the hollow hill wherein Lady Venus set sensual snares 
 for the souls of pious pilgrims who found their way 
 to her unblest abode. When the year is ended, and 
 the two dozen stories are all told, both guests and 
 hosts are left to their old age, and their approaching 
 death. The work ends, as "Jason" did, with a tribute 
 to the memory of Chaucer. 
 
 "O Master, if thine heart could love as yet. 
 Spite of things left undone, and wrongly done. 
 Some place in loving hearts then should we get. 
 For thou, sweet-souled, didst never stand alone, 
 But knew'st the joy and woe of many an one — 
 — By lovers dead, who live through thee, we pray, 
 Help thou us singers of an empty day !" 
 
 The forty thousand lines to which "The Earthly 
 Paradise" extends embrace such a treasure of narra- 
 tive romance as English poetry had not seen since 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 327 
 
 the time of the master whom Morris acknowledged 
 as his exemplar. Nearly five hundred years had to 
 elapse after the death of Chaucer before England 
 could produce his peer as a story-teller by right 
 divine. But the similarity between the two poets 
 does not extend far beyond this fact. Chaucer's 
 tales were in their essence prophetic rather than 
 retrospective; they heralded the coming glories of 
 English literature, they were in a sense the precursors 
 of the Elizabethan drama and the modern novel. The 
 tales told by Morris have in common with them little 
 except the qualities of easy rhythm and noble diction 
 that belong to all great poetry, and the fact that 
 they are tales and not subjective outpourings. Of 
 the wit, the shrewdness, the practical good sense, the 
 dramatic faculty, and the insight into the recesses of 
 individual character displayed by Chaucer, there is 
 very little to be found in Morris ; but we find instead 
 the conception of men as types rather than indi- 
 viduals, the fresh and simple outlook upon nature, 
 the very breath and finer spirit of all romance. We 
 find, too, a curious blend of Hellenism with mediasval- 
 ism, or rather an amalgam of the elements of pure 
 beauty common to both styles, the objectivity, the 
 simphcity, and the grace of an art hardly tinged with 
 self-consciousness and innocent of any concealed ulte- 
 rior motive. Pure beauty may indeed be taken as 
 the note of nearly all the poetry that William Morris 
 has left for the enrichment of our literature. "Full 
 of soft music and familiar olden charm," to use Mr. 
 
828 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 Stedman's felicitous phrase, it has the power to lull 
 the senses into forgetfulness of this modern worka- 
 day world, to restore the soul with draughts from 
 the wellsprings of life, to bring back the wonder of 
 childhood, the glory and the dream that we may per- 
 haps have thought to be vanished beyond recall. It 
 is poetry to read in the long summer days when we 
 seek rest from strenuous endeavour; it is poetry for 
 the beguilement of all weariness, and for the refresh- 
 ment of our faith in the simple virtues and the unso- 
 phisticated life; it is poetry that brings a whole- 
 some and healing ministry akin to that of Nature 
 herself ; it is poetry that leaves the recollection unsul- 
 lied by any suggestion of impurity and unhaunted 
 by any spectre of doubt. Like Lethe, it has the gift 
 of oblivion for those who seek the embrace of its 
 waters; but, unlike the dark-flowing stream of the 
 underworld, its surface is rippled by the breezes of 
 earth, its banks are overarched by living foliage, and 
 its waves mirror the glad sunlight. 
 
 There is, however, about "The Earthly Paradise" 
 a cast of melancholy that we find it difficult to recon- 
 cile with the poet's own healthy and robust person- 
 ality. The immensely rich and varied activity of his 
 life, and the abounding vitality that characterised 
 him throughout his career, in no wise suggest the 
 poetry of languor and world-weariness, yet such un- 
 doubtedly is the poetry of "The Earthly Paradise." 
 The vanitas vanitatum of the Preacher is the ever- 
 recurrent strain of the prologue, the envoi, and the 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 329 
 
 lyrical passages that serve to connect the several 
 stories. The feeling that thus finds expression is a 
 genuine pessimism, a very different thing from the 
 rhetorical lamentations of Byron and his imitators. 
 
 "The heavy trouble, the bewildering care 
 That veighs us down who live and earn our bread. 
 These idle verses have no power to bear," 
 
 is the disclaimer which is made at the very outset. 
 
 "Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time. 
 Why should 1 strive to set the crooked straight? 
 Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme 
 Beats with light wing against the ivory gate. 
 Telling a tale not too importunate 
 To those who in the sleepy regions stay. 
 Lulled by the singer of an empty day." 
 
 Scattered through the work we find many expressions 
 of the blank hopelessness that sometimes takes pos- 
 session of the soul, and makes all nature seem awry 
 even in her fairest moods. 
 
 "Shall it not hap that on some dawn of May 
 Thou Shalt awake, and, thinking of days dead. 
 See nothing clear but this same dreary day 
 Of all the days that have passed o'er thine head? 
 Shalt thou not wonder, looking from thy bed. 
 Through green leaves on the windless east a-flrc. 
 That this day too thine heart doth still desire? 
 
 "Shalt thou not wonder that it liveth yet, 
 The useless hope, the useless craving pain. 
 That made^thy face, that lonely noontide, wet 
 With more than beating of the chilly raiij? 
 Shalt thou not hope for joy new born again. 
 
330 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 Since no grief ever born can ever die 
 
 Through changeless change of seasons passing by?" 
 
 And at the very end of the work we are again re- 
 minded that "each tale's ending needs must be the 
 same, and we men call it Death." And still again, 
 addressing Death, the verses say: 
 
 "Thus do we work that thou mayst take away I 
 Look at this beauty of young children's mirth I 
 Soon to be swallowed by thy noiseless dearth I 
 Look at this faithful love that knows no end 
 Unless thy cold thrill through it thou shouldst send I 
 Look at this hand ripening to perfect skill 
 Unless the fated measure thou didst fill; 
 This eager knowledge that would stop for nought. 
 Unless thy net both chase and hunter caught !" 
 
 But of all this seemingly settled melancholy there are 
 two things that should in fairness be said. Although 
 the subjective element is unquestionably predominant 
 in the lyrical interludes of "The Earthly Paradise," 
 there is something of the dramatic element as well. 
 The poet is depicting the mood of old age, which has 
 lost the spring and the ardour of youth, and to which 
 the stories told can offer only a brief beguilement. 
 And of Morris himself it must be said that he out- 
 grew the mood in which "The Earthly Paradise" was 
 written, and came to have a braver belief in actual 
 life than it would indicate. The somewhat morbid 
 dread of death which haunted his earlier years passed 
 almost completely away, and he found a new hope 
 for mankind in the social reorganisation which he be- 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 331 
 
 lieved to be near at hand, and of which he became 
 a whole-hearted advocate. Of this I shall have much 
 to say a little later, but before coming to the story 
 of his work for sociaUsm, it is necessary to take some 
 further account of his intellectual development. 
 
 Morris was born with a sympathy for the mediae- 
 val spirit, and a power to enter into the conscious- 
 ness of early epochs and primitive peoples. View- 
 ing his activity as a whole, it will be seen that the 
 mediaevalism wherein he took delight covered a more 
 extended period than that which we usually associate 
 with the term. It is a period which stretches, roughly 
 speaking, all the way back from Malory and Chaucer 
 to Beowulf and the Eddas. As we follow the suc- 
 cession of his ideals, it is extremely interesting to note 
 how they harked ever backward toward simpler 
 societies and more primitive conditions. We have 
 already seen how the enthusiasm for Malory gave 
 place to the enthusiasm for Chaucer, and how deeply 
 his interests were enlisted by the wealth of mediaeval 
 romance and legend in the narrower sense, by the 
 "matter of France and of Britain and of Rome the 
 Great," by Germanic myth and the "Golden Legend" 
 of the lives of the Saints. A critical point in his 
 development was reached during the writing of "The 
 Earthly Paradise," in which we note the gradual 
 subordination of romance to epic. The stories of the 
 type of "The Man Born to Be King" give place to 
 stories of the type of "The Lovers of Gudrun." It 
 was, indeed, during the years which fourfd Morris 
 
382 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 occupied with "The Earthly Paradise," that his 
 interest became awakened in Icelandic literature, and 
 that he entered upon those studies of the saga-men and 
 their works which were to occupy a large share of his 
 thoughts for the rest of his life. His translation 
 of the "Grettis Saga" was published in 1869, and 
 his translation of the "Volsunga Saga" in the follow- 
 ing year. The labour of these translations, as well 
 as of those included many years afterwards in "The 
 Saga Library," was shared with Morris by his 
 teacher and friend Professor Magnusson. Of all the 
 enthusiasms which successively took possession of 
 Morris during his long and busy life, this enthu- 
 siasm for the literature of the old Norsemen was 
 probably the greatest, as well as the most significant 
 as a shaping influence upon his ideals. In those mar- 
 vellous writings which for two or three centuries 
 made the little volcanic island close up to the Arctic 
 Circle one of the most important literary centres of 
 the world, he found a native vigour and a clean per- 
 fection of style which seemed to him even more ad- 
 mirable than what Malory and Chaucer had to offer. 
 It became his ambition to convert into English as 
 much of this literature as he might, and, a number 
 of years later, to create sagas of his own. The 
 interest thus strongly aroused in him made it in- 
 evitable that he should seek out the scenes which had 
 given it birth, and so we find him, in the summer of 
 1871, setting out for the Island of Fire. "To enter 
 into his feelings," says Mr. Mackail, 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 333 
 
 "one must imagine a strange combination of Johnson in the 
 Hebrides and Byron in Greece. . . . The hereic stories of 
 Iceland stood in his mind at the head of the world's literature; 
 the deeds which they chronicled were the summit in their tragic 
 force of all human achievement. And the Icelandic Republic 
 represented more nearly than any other state of things re- 
 corded in history, the political and social framework of life 
 which satisfied his mind and imagination. On the Law-Mound 
 of ThingvaUa, by the steads of Herdholt or Lithend, he stood 
 with deeper-kindled emotion than would have been roused in 
 him in the Roman Forum or on the Athenian Acropolis, or 
 where grass grows over the fallen towers of Troy." 
 
 In one of the most beautiful of his "Poems By the 
 Way," he describes the feelings with which he neared 
 the coast of Iceland. 
 
 "Lo from our loitering ship 
 a new land at last to be seen; 
 Toothed rocks down the side of the firth 
 on the east guard a weary wide lea, 
 And black slope the hillsides above, 
 striped adown with their desolate green: 
 And a peak rises up on the west 
 from the meeting of cloud and of sea. 
 Foursquare from base unto point 
 like the buildings of Gods that have been, 
 The last of that waste of the mountains, 
 all cloud-wreathed and snow-flecked and grey, 
 And bright with the dawn that began 
 just now at the ending of day. 
 
 "Ah ! what came we forth for to see 
 that our hearts are so hot with desire? 
 Is it enough for our rest, 
 the sight of this desolate strand. 
 And the mountain-waste voiceless as death 
 but for winds that may sleep not nor tire? 
 
334 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 Why do we long to wend forth 
 
 through the length and breadth of a land. 
 
 Dreadful with grinding of ice, 
 
 and record of scarce hidden Are, 
 
 But that there mid the grey grassy dales 
 
 sore scarred by the ruining streams 
 
 Lives the tale of the Northland of old 
 
 and the undying glory of dreams?" 
 
 An Icelandic paper, reporting his arrival, described 
 him as William Morris, Skald, which greatly de- 
 lighted him. He explored a considerable part of the 
 island, and his explorations were extended upon the 
 occasion of his second visit two years later. The 
 most important product of his Icelandic studies is 
 the great epic poem of "The Story of Sigurd the 
 Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs," which was 
 published in 1876. "This is the Great Story of the 
 North," he says, "which should be to all our race 
 what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks : to all our 
 race first, and afterwards, when the change of the 
 world has made our race nothing more than a name of 
 what has been, a story too, then should it be to those 
 that come after us no less than the Tale of Troy 
 has been to us." No doubt Morris would have dealt 
 with this epic material in some superb fashion had he 
 never visited the home of the race which conceived 
 it; but there is no doubt also that it drew a fresher 
 and more vital inspiration from the direct contact 
 of the author with the people and the scenes which 
 it describes. Compared with the primitive power 
 of the treatment of this great theme by Morris, its 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 335 
 
 treatment by Wagner, and even its treatment by 
 Ibsen, seems somewhat modernised and sophisticated. 
 "In this great work," says William Sharp, 
 
 "we come upon William Morris as the typical saga-man of 
 modern literature. The breath of the North blows across these 
 billowy lines, as the polar wind across the green waves of the 
 North Sea. The noise of waters, the splashing of oars, the 
 whirling of swords, the conflict of battle, cries and heroic 
 summons to death, reecho in the reader's ears. All the romance 
 which gives so wonderful an atmosphere to his earlier poems, 
 all the dreamy sweetness of 'The Earthly Paradise' and creations 
 such as 'Love is Enough,' are here also; but with them are a 
 force, a vigour and intensity, of which, save in his translation of 
 the 'Odyssey,' there are few prior indications." 
 
 Even so pronounced a classicist as Mr. Mackail, 
 whom we could hardly expect to go to the extreme 
 of enthusiasm aroused in Morris by this subject, 
 declares "Sigurd the Volsung" to be "the most 
 Homeric poem which has been written since Homer." 
 As the progress of "The Earthly Paradise" was 
 marked by the slow infiltration into the author's mind 
 of a new poetic ideal, so we may find in "Sigurd the 
 Volsung" the early workings of still another ideal, 
 of the social ideal which was to become the chief con- 
 cern of the poet during the last twenty years of his 
 life. In this poem, as Mr. Forman says, 
 
 "Not only does he All a large canvas with an art higher and 
 subtler than that shown in 'Jason', or even in 'The Earthly 
 Paradise,' but he betrays a profound concern in the destinies 
 of the race, such as we do not exact from the mere story- 
 teller. Love and adventure he had already treated in a manner 
 
336 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 approaching perfection; and a sympathetic intelligence of all 
 beautiful legends breathes throughout his works; but Sigurd is 
 something more than a lover and a warrior; he is at once heroic 
 and tragic; and he is surrounded by characters heroic and 
 tragic. In his mythic person large spiritual questions are sug- 
 gested; he is the typical saviour as conceived by the Northern 
 race; and this side of the conception is more emphatic and 
 unmistakable in the modern work than in the 'Volsunga Saga,' 
 which is the basis of this great poem." 
 
 But before turning to the consideration of the 
 social reformer that had always been latent in the 
 personality of Morris, we must pause to consider 
 that wonderful series of romances in prose, with verse 
 interspersed, which began in 1889, and ended in 1896, 
 the year of his death. "What is Morris going to do 
 next?" was a question frequently asked among his 
 friends. Of all the surprises which he had in store 
 both for his friends and for the larger public, none 
 was greater than that occasioned by the appearance 
 of "A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and all the 
 Kindreds of the Mark," Here was a new kind of 
 composition, almost a new kind of literature. It was 
 a story of life among the primitive Germanic peo- 
 ples, which may be roughly dated in the fourth cen- 
 tury, and which dealt with one of the many attempts 
 of the Romans to subjugate the clansmen and take 
 possession of their land. A little archaic in vocabu- 
 lary, and touched with a primitive emotion befitting 
 the childhood of our race, it had also the sure poetic 
 vision and deeply sympathetic feeling of the modern 
 artist; it gleamed with a light that never was on 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS S37 
 
 either saga or popular epic. Here is a passage which 
 may serve to illustrate its manner: 
 
 "Then she turned toward Thiodolf with a calm and solemn facts, 
 though it was very pale and looked as if she would not smile 
 again. Elfric had risen up and was standing by the board 
 speechless, and the passion of sobs still struggling in her bosom. 
 She put him aside gently, and went up to Thiodolf and stood 
 above him, and looked down on his face awhile; then she put 
 forth her hand and closed his eyes, and stooped down, and 
 kissed his face. Then she stood up again and faced the Hall, 
 and looked and saw that many were streaming in, and that 
 though the smoke was still eddying overhead, the fire was well- 
 nigh quenched within, and without the sound of battle had sunk 
 and died away. For indeed the Markmen had ended their day's 
 work before noontide that day, and the more part of the 
 Romans were slain, and to the rest they had given peace till 
 the folk-mote should give Doom concerning them; for the pity 
 of these valiant men was growing in the hearts of the valiant 
 men who had vanquished them, now that they feared them no 
 more." 
 
 Should this sort of composition be called prose or 
 poetry? It is technically the former, but it has all 
 the essential characteristics of the latter, excepting, 
 of course, metrical form. Mr, Theodore Watts- 
 Dunton discusses this question at considerable length, 
 and reaches the conclusion that the work must be 
 called a poem. At least, it is poetic prose in the true 
 sense, not in the rhetorical sense which calls prose 
 poetic because it has some sort of ill-concealed 
 rhythmical movement. Our critic says : 
 
 "While the poet's object is to arouse in the listener an 
 expectancy of caesuric effects, the great goal before the writer 
 
338 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 of poetic prose is in the very opposite direction; it is to make 
 use of the concrete figures and impassioned diction that are 
 the poet's vehicle, but at the same time to avoid the expectancy 
 of metrical bars. The moment that the regular bars assert 
 themselves and lead the reader's ear to expect other bars of the 
 like kind, sincerity ends." 
 
 The sincerity of these prose romances is as absolute 
 as their beauty. Their author has found the true 
 springtime of the world, not even in the poems of 
 Homer, but in the sagas of Iceland, in the conditions 
 of Germanic life of which Tacitus affords us a 
 glimpse, and in the still more primaeval regions which 
 myth and folk-lore enable us to penetrate. And he 
 has developed a style in keeping with the life which 
 he depicts, a style of severe and noble simplicity from 
 which the Latin element of the language is all but 
 wholly banished. In "The Roots of the Mountains," 
 published a year later, a similar situation is depicted, 
 although the people described seemed to have taken a 
 step forward in their social development, to have 
 passed into the condition of settled village commu- 
 nities. The very titles of these works are poems — 
 "The Wood beyond the World," "The Well at the 
 World's End," "The Water of the Wondrous Isles," 
 "The Sundering Flood," and, best of all, "The Story 
 of the Glittering Plain, which Has Been also Called 
 the Land of Living Men or the Acre of the Undying." 
 These seven romances are almost comparable with 
 "The Earthly Paradise" as a source of clean and pure 
 delight, as a refuge for the soul made weary by mod- 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 ern perplexities and "the burden of the wronged 
 world's weight." 
 
 It was about twenty years before his death that 
 Morris became connected with two organisations 
 which were destined to react powerfully upon him for 
 the remainder of his life. These organisations were 
 the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — 
 famiharly known as the Anti-Scrape Society — ^which 
 Morris originated; and the Eastern Question Asso- 
 ciation, to which he contributed both time and money. 
 His biographer tells us that "from Morris's work on 
 the former grew the whole of his later activity as a 
 lecturer and instructor in the principles of art, and 
 as founder and leader of a guild of craftsmen who 
 exist now as the permanent result of his influence. 
 From his work on the latter was developed, by a proc- 
 ess of which every step can be clearly traced, his con- 
 version to a definite and dogmatic socialism." It was 
 a fundamental article of his creed, as it was of Rus- 
 kin's and is of Tolstoy's, that art should not be a 
 source of enjoyment for the cultured few, but a 
 solace for the whole of mankind. Art had fulfilled 
 this function in the past, and the hopes of the race 
 were largely bound up in the restoration of art to 
 common life. "Time was," he said in a provincial 
 address made in 1881, 
 
 "time was when everybody that made anything made a work 
 of art besides a useful piece of goods, and it gave them 
 'pleasure to make it. Whatever I doubt, I have no doubt of 
 that. I know that in those days life was often rough and evil 
 
340 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 enough, beset by violence, superstition, ignorance, slavery; yet 
 sorely as poor folks needed a solace, they did not altogether 
 lack one, and that solace was a pleasure in their work Much 
 as the world has won since then, I do not think it has won for 
 all men such perfect happiness that we can afford to cast aside 
 any solace that nature holds forth for us. Or must we forever 
 be casting out one devil for another? Shall we never make a 
 push to get rid of the whole pack of them at once?" 
 
 If one accepts this proposition — and it is eternally 
 true — one must array himself, as both Morris and 
 Ruskin did, in uncompromising opposition to the 
 whole modern system of machine-aided industry. 
 "The work which is the result of division of labour, 
 whatever else it can do, cannot produce art: which 
 must, as long as the present system lasts, be entirely 
 confined to such works as are the work from begin- 
 ning to end of one man — pictures, independent sculp- 
 ture, and the like." 
 
 The sociological trend of the last twenty or thirty 
 years constitutes what is probably the most char- 
 acteristic feature of recent European literature. The 
 social consciousness has been aroused as never before, 
 and the complex relations of men and women, both to 
 each other and to society in the aggregate, have 
 supplied themes for a constantly increasing number 
 of Uterary productions. It cannot have been acci- 
 dental, it must have been rather in obedience to an 
 irresistible tendency of modern thought, that such 
 men as Ruskin, Tolstoy, Bjornson, and Ibsen turned 
 at about the same time, and as with a common im- 
 pulse, from the past to the present, from the romantic 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 341 
 
 to the real, from work in which the sesthetical ele- 
 ment was predominant to work in which the ethical 
 element was set, sometimes far too obtrusively, in 
 the foreground. Morris was a little later to feel 
 this impulse than the men who have just been men- 
 tioned, but when he felt it at last it took almost com- 
 plete possession of him, and became the controlling in- 
 fluence upon his work. Mr. Mackail speaks of "the 
 patient revenge of the modern or scientific spirit, so 
 long fought against, first by his aristocratic, and then 
 by his artistic instincts, when it took hold of him 
 against his will and made him a dogmatic socialist." 
 When the Eastern Question appeared as a dark cloud 
 upon the horizon of English politics in 1877, and 
 there was danger that England herself would be 
 brought by an unscrupulous Government into the 
 vortex of the war between Turkey and Russia, Morris 
 was aroused to earnest action, and, putting art aside 
 for the nonce, issued a manifesto "to the workingmen 
 of England." 
 
 "Workingmen of England, one word of warning yet: I doubt 
 if you know the bitterness of hatred against freedom and 
 progress that lies in the hearts of a certain part of the richer 
 classes in this country: their newspapers veil it in a kind of 
 decent language; but do but hear them talking among them- 
 selves, as I have often, and I know not whether scorn or anger 
 would prevail in you at their folly and insolence. These men 
 cannot speak of your order, of its aims, of its leaders, without 
 a sneer or an insult: these men, if they had the power (may 
 England perish rather!), would thwart your just aspirations, 
 would silence you, and deliver you bound hand and foot forever 
 to irresponsible capital. Fellow-Citizens, look to it, and if you 
 
342 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 have any wrongs to be redressed, if you cherish your most 
 worthy hope of raising your whole order peacefully, and solidly, 
 if you thirst for leisure and knowledge, if you long to lessen 
 these inequalities which have been our stumbling-block since the 
 beginning of the world, then cast aside sloth and cry out 
 against an Unjust War, and urge us of the middle classes to 
 do no less." 
 
 Comparing this utterance with that of Tennyson 
 some years later, in which a similar question is con- 
 sidered, we are bound to declare in favour of Morris. 
 The poet who distrusts "the voices in the field," 
 and who asks with scorn if "the suffrage of the 
 plow" shall be taken as a guide in matters of impe- 
 rial politics, is not as safe a leader as the poet who 
 appeals to the simple and humane instincts of the 
 masses whose interests are, after all, chiefly at stake. 
 When the crisis of 1877 was over, Morris was left 
 in close touch with the radical leaders of English 
 politics, and he threw himself vigorously into the 
 work of the socialist propaganda. His socialism 
 was never of the theoretical Marxian type; it was a 
 matter of the heart much more than of the head, the 
 revolt of a simple and humane soul against social 
 conditions that had come to seem intolerable. It was 
 conceived in the spirit of Chartism, of which the poet 
 possibly had some boyish memories, in the spirit of 
 the Christian socialism which Kingsley and Maurice 
 had made popular a generation before. It was a 
 socialism that for a short time seemed to sanction 
 revolutionary measures, but that soon became con- 
 vinced that "ructions with police" were likely to do 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 343 
 
 the cause more harm than good. From 1882 to 1884 
 Morris was an active member of the Democratic 
 Federation, and for the six years following he was 
 a member of the Socialist League. During those 
 eight years, he was undergoing a process of gradual 
 disillusionment, as he learned that even the socialist 
 party had its share of greed, of self-seeking, and of 
 the willingness to resort to unworthy political expe- 
 dients. His final attitude was practically that of 
 the Fabians, whose more conservative methods seemed 
 to give promise of better results than the militant 
 methods of his earlier associates. The literary out- 
 come of his socialist activities and dreams is illus- 
 trated by "News from Nowhere," "A Dream of John 
 Ball," "Songs of Change," and the work entitled 
 "Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome," which he 
 wrote in connection with Mr. Belf ort Bax. These are 
 his books upon the subject; his fugitive publications 
 in the form of lectures and pamphlets and leaflets 
 and contributions to the socialist periodicals, are 
 nmnbered almost by hundreds. The most lasting lit- 
 erary expression of these views is given in "A Dream 
 of John Ball" and in some of those "Poems by the 
 Way" which constitute the last collected volume of 
 his verse. Let us listen for a moment to "The Mes- 
 sage of the March Wind." 
 
 "Hark I the March wind again of a people is telling; 
 Of the life that they live there, so haggard and grim. 
 That if we and our love amidst them had been dwelling 
 My fondness had faltered, thy beauty grown dim. 
 
344 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 "This land we have loved in our love and our leisure 
 For them hangs in heaven, high out of their reach; 
 The wide hills o'er the sea-plain for them have no pleasure, 
 The grey homes of their fathers no story to teach. 
 
 "The singers have sung and the builders have builded. 
 The painters have fashioned their tales of delight; 
 For what and for whom hath the world's book been gilded, 
 When all is for these but the blackness of night? 
 
 "How long, and for what, is their patience abiding? 
 How oft and how oft shall their story be told. 
 While the hope that none seeketh in darkness is hiding. 
 And in grief and in sorrow the world groweth old?" 
 
 And what will the world have to offer when the old 
 selfish order has passed away, and the brotherhood 
 of man has become an accomplished fact ? 
 
 "And what wealth then shall be left us 
 when none shall gather gold 
 To buy his friend in the market, 
 and pinch and pine the sold? 
 
 "Nay, what save the lovely city, 
 and the little house on the hill, 
 And the wastes and the woodland beauty, 
 and the happy fields we till; 
 
 "And the homes of ancient stories, 
 the tombs of the mighty dead; 
 And the wise men seeking out marvels, 
 and the poet's teeming head; 
 
 "And the painter's hand of wonder; 
 and the marvellous fiddle-bow. 
 And the banded choirs of music: 
 all those that do and know. 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 845 
 
 "For all these shall be ours and all men's, 
 nor shall any lack a share 
 Of the toil and the gain of living 
 in the days when the world grows fair." 
 
 "How should it be," says John Ball to the men of 
 Kent, 
 
 "when these cumberers of the ground are gone? What else 
 shall ye lack when ye lack masters? Ye shall not lack for the 
 fields ye have tiUed, nor the houses ye have built, nor the cloth 
 ye have woven; all these shall be yours, and whatso ye will of 
 all that the earth beareth. Then shall no man mow the deep 
 grass for another, while his own kine lack cow-meat; and he 
 that soweth shall reap, and the reaper shall eat in fellowship 
 the harvest that in fellowship he hath won; and he that buUdeth 
 a house shall dwell in it with those that he biddeth of his own 
 free will; and the tithe barn shall garner the wheat for all men 
 to eat of when the seasons are untoward, and the rain-drift 
 hideth the sheaves in August; and all shall be without money 
 and without price. Faithfully and merrily, then, shall all men 
 keep the holidays of the Church in peace of body and joy of 
 heart. And man shall help man, and the saints in heaven shall 
 be glad, because men no more fear each other; and the churl 
 shall be ashamed, and shall hide his churlishness tiU it be gone, 
 and he be no more a churl; and fellowship shall be established 
 in heaven and on the earth." 
 
 This is the earthly paradise to which the dreamer of 
 dreams at last found his way. Not to an imagined 
 paradise in distant seas, but to an actual paradise in 
 the poet's own native land, a paradise that men may 
 realise for themselves whenever they will, he directs 
 the attention of his hearers. It is an alluring pros- 
 pect, to ameliorate the lot of the toiler, and help him 
 to impart beauty to the humblest phases of life ; it is 
 
346 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 the vision, in modern guise, of that "happy earth," 
 the "reality of Heaven" whereof Shelley sang in 
 the dawn of hope that appeared with the new century 
 now dead. Is it altogether a satisfactory ideal? 
 There are many who would be reluctant to accept it 
 as the sum of all human strivings. Such dissenters 
 from the gospel according to Morris find their feel- 
 ings exquisitely expressed by Frederic Myers, when he 
 says: "That old and just gravamen against almost 
 all theological paradises — that they provide for joy 
 but not for progress — ^holds good of Morris's many 
 imagined paradises as well. They are abodes of un- 
 changing bliss, dimly felt to be in themselves unsat- 
 isfactory, though attractive in comparison with the 
 briefer pleasures which man's common life affords. 
 • . . Perhaps, indeed, the fact may be that man is 
 not constructed for flawless happiness, but for moral 
 evolution." Carlyle's contrast of blessedness with 
 happiness, and Renan's saying, "It is not a question 
 of being happy, but of being perfect," seem to em- 
 body a finer ethical ideal than that of any seeker of 
 an earthly paradise, present or to come. But, in 
 any case, we may find ourselves in the completest sym- 
 pathy with Morris when he writes, as once he wrote 
 to a friend bowed down by grief: "I entreat you 
 (however trite the words may be) to think that life 
 is not empty nor made for nothing, and that the 
 parts of it fit into one another in some way ; and that 
 the world goes on, beautiful and strange and dreadful 
 and worshipful." It was, indeed, no empty hfe that 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 347 
 
 was ended in the summer of 1896, when Morris ceased 
 from his manifold labours. Swinburne's memorial 
 tribute, properly emphasising the humanitarian as- 
 pect of the activity of his indefatigable friend, may 
 be drawn upon for our closing word. 
 
 "No braver, no trustier, no purer. 
 
 No stronger and clearer a soul 
 Bore witness more splendid and surer 
 
 For manhood found perfect and whole 
 Since man was a warrior and dreamer 
 
 Than his who in hatred of wrong 
 Would fain have arisen a redeemer 
 
 By sword or by song." 
 
Hlgernon Cbarlee SwinDurne 
 
 During the fifteen years from 1882, when Rossetti 
 died, to 1896, when Morris died, English literature 
 lost five of the six great poets that had made the 
 latter half of the century memorable. The close 
 of the nineteenth century found only one poet of the 
 first rank left alive among the English-speaking peo- 
 ples; it is hardly too much to say among all the 
 peoples of the world. The solitary preeminence thus 
 bestowed upon Swinburne is almost unparalleled in the 
 history of modern literature. Neither in France nor 
 in Germany is there any poet now living who may be 
 brought into serious comparison with him, and even 
 the great poet of modern Italy, who with him survived 
 the century of their common birth, has now passed 
 away. The England of the present day, rich as it 
 is in accomplished writers of verse, can hardly 
 be said to possess another poet entitled either by gift 
 or achievement to dispute with Swinburne his 
 sovereignty over the realms of song. Yet this sover- 
 eignty, which is not questioned, as far as I know, by 
 any well-informed and serious critic, is far from 
 being clearly recognised by the masses of readers. 
 The poet certainly does not sway them as they were 
 swayed by Byron and Wordsworth and Tennyson, 
 
 348 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 849 
 
 the phrases of his mintage have not passed into gen- 
 eral currency; the winged words of his song have 
 not become domesticated as household words except 
 to a very limited extent. There is a twofold expla- 
 Jiation of this fact. It is explained in part by the 
 nature of his subject-matter, which has been far re- 
 moved from men's everyday interests. Aside from 
 his lovely verses in praise of childhood, there is no 
 considerable group of his poems that appeals to the 
 common instincts of domestic hfe. He has written 
 nothing of the type of "Maud" or "Enoch Arden" or 
 "The Princess." Although the passion of love counts 
 for much in his work, it is not the form of love that 
 Browning's "Men and Women" brings into such inti- 
 mate relations with our own most vivid personal expe- 
 riences; it is rather the form that is coupled with 
 high endeavour and heroic energy, with fateful old- 
 world histories, with Tristram and Yseult, with the 
 Queen of Scots, with the English and the Lombard 
 Rosamunds. This choice of themes, combined with a 
 treatment that allows almost nothing for sentiment, 
 that is both abstract and austere, is not calculated 
 to bring the generality of readers into intimacy 
 with his work; it requires a certain strenuousness 
 of temper, a certain detachment from the habitual 
 plane of life, to catch the contagion of his spirit, 
 to participate in his pursuit of lofty and remote 
 ideals. The other part of the explanation is found 
 in the simple fact that the general public has never 
 had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with 
 
350 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 the bulk of Swinburne's writings. He seems to have 
 shrunk from popular applause, much as Landor did, 
 and his books have been produced in an expensive 
 form, in numerous slender volumes instead of a few 
 comprehensive ones. The reader who has wished to 
 add Swinburne's complete writings to his library has 
 been required, until recently, to purchase upwards of 
 twenty volumes of the poems alone, and at least ten 
 volumes more of the prose, at a price that has been 
 practically prohibitive. We do not need to go beyond 
 this fact to understand why he has never had his 
 due of popular appreciation; he has been handi- 
 capped all the time by an impediment of his own mak- 
 ing. Until the public is offered a compact edition 
 of his poems, at least, in not more than two or three 
 volumes, his reputation will never become at all com- 
 mensurate with his deserts. 
 
 The manner of his introduction to the larger pub- 
 lic was peculiarly unfortunate; the succes d'estime 
 of his earlier books was followed by the succes de 
 scandale of the first collection of "Poems and Bal- 
 lads." When that startling volume was given to 
 the world, he had already attracted the attention of 
 the discerning, and won the applause of the judicious, 
 by the first four of his dramatic poems. "Rosamond" 
 and "The Queen Mother" had appeared in 1860, 
 "Atalanta in Calydon" and "Chastelard" in 1865. 
 But these extraordinary books had found their way to 
 no very wide circle of readers. A year later, the 
 name of the poet was upon the lips of every reader 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 851 
 
 who took any interest whatever in poetry, and Swin- 
 burne had become, if not the most popular, certainly 
 the most notorious, of living poets. There had been 
 no such sensation in English poetry since the appear- 
 ance of the first two books of "Childe Harold" as 
 was occasioned by this famous first volume of "Poems 
 and Ballads," and there has been no such sensation 
 since. Thousands of young men got the poems by 
 heart and declaimed them to each other upon every 
 possible occasion. The reviewers pounced upon the 
 volume and waxed unusually virtuous in their solemn 
 deliberations. The newspapers took up the chorus 
 and brought word of the new poet into the remotest 
 regions. This sudden and extraordinary vogue was 
 the result, of course, not of the magnificent merits 
 of the volume as a whole, but rather of the license of 
 a few — a very few — of the pieces which it contained. 
 These half-dozen pieces, more or less, were singled out 
 by the unerring instinct of journalism for sensational 
 effects, and the hapless poet was assailed with every 
 form of denunciation and vituperation in the arsenal 
 of the newspaper custodians of morality. The ani- 
 mus and the persistence of this outcry were such that 
 its echoes have not yet died away. Even at the pres- 
 ent day, there are thousands of worthy and well- 
 meaning people whose only notion of Swinburne's 
 poetry is a reflection of the feeling aroused a full 
 generation ago by a few poems full of the reckless- 
 ness of boyhood, poems which are the least typical 
 and characteristic of all his writings. To these 
 
352 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 people the poet of "Thalassius" and the "Songs 
 before Sunrise" still remains the poet of morbid 
 sensualism, to these the poet who almost more than 
 any of his fellow-singers exalts spirit above sense, 
 and transports his readers to an atmosphere almost 
 too rarefied for ordinary mortals to breathe, remains 
 the poet of unregulated passion and defiance of the 
 most universally accepted eithical sanctions. Of course 
 there were many critics — to the honour of our own 
 country Richard Grant White and Edmund Clarence 
 Stedman among them — ^who took a rational view of 
 the "Poems and Ballads," who judged the volume 
 upon its merits instead of singling out its defects, and 
 who recognised the patent fact that here indeed was 
 a new poet in the true sense, a veritable singer arisen 
 among men in an age fast lapsing into the prosaic. 
 Even the severest of Swinburne's early critics 
 could not deny that he had the gift of melody, that 
 he played upon English speech as a virtuoso plays 
 upon his instrument, that he evoked from our lan- 
 guage wonderful new rhythmical effects and hitherto 
 unsuspected possibilities of harmony. It would have 
 been a dull ear indeed that could remain deaf to 
 the music of "Hesperia" and the "Hymn to Pros- 
 erpine." 
 
 "Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without 
 shore is. 
 Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of 
 
 joy. 
 
 As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region 
 of stories. 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 353 
 
 Blows with the perfume of song and of memories beloved 
 
 from a boy. 
 Blows from the capes of the past over-sea to the bays of the 
 
 present. 
 Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible 
 
 feet. 
 Far out to the shadows and straits of the future, by rough 
 
 ways or pleasant. 
 Is it thither the wind's wings beat? is it thither to me, O 
 
 my sweet?" 
 
 Even the most indignant repudiation of the poet's 
 so-called paganism could not fall to admit that 
 paganism was made very alluring by such verse 
 as this: 
 
 "Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen and 
 
 hidden her head. 
 Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down 
 
 to thee dead. 
 Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace 
 
 clad around: 
 Thou art throned where another was king; where another was 
 
 queen she is crowned. 
 Yea, once we had sight of another; but now she is queen, say 
 
 these. 
 Not as thine, not as thine was our mother — a blossom of 
 
 flowering seas. 
 Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and 
 
 fair as the foam. 
 And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of 
 
 Rome. 
 For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but 
 
 ours 
 Her deep hair heavenly laden with odour and colour of flowers. 
 White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame, 
 Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet 
 
 with her name." 
 
354 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 The "Hymn to Proserpine," from which this cry of 
 the pagan spirit is taken, is probably the finest poem 
 in the collection. If there be a finer, it is perhaps 
 the poem called "The Garden of Proserpine," with 
 its burden of utter world-weariness, and its vision of 
 the sacred refuge provided for the human wanderer 
 at the end of his journey ings. 
 
 "She waits for each and other, 
 
 She waits for all men born; 
 Forgets the earth her mother. 
 
 The life of fruits and corn; 
 And spring and seed and swallow 
 Take wing for her and follow 
 Where summer song rings hollow 
 
 And flowers are put to scorn." 
 
 The sense of satiety, the deadly languor of the ex- 
 hausted spirit, the longing for rest final and complete 
 that at times takes possession of most men and 
 women, here finds the most perfect expression it has 
 ever received. 
 
 "From too much love of living. 
 
 From hope and fear set free. 
 We thank with brief thanksgiving 
 
 Whatever gods may be 
 That no life lives for ever; 
 That dead men rise up never; 
 That even the weariest river 
 
 Winds somewhere safe to sea." 
 
 It is of this poem that Frederic Myers writes : 
 
 "There is here far more than the Lucretian satisfaction in the 
 thought that we shall sleep tranquilly through the hazardous 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 355 
 
 future as we slept tranquilly through the raging past — ad 
 confligendum venientibus wndique Pcems — when all the perils 
 which menaced Rome were as nothing to us yet unborn. No, 
 there is here a profounder renouncement of life; there is the 
 grim suspicion which has stolen into many a heart, that we do in 
 truth feel within us, as years go by, a mortality of spirit as 
 well as flesh; that the 'bower of unimagined flower and tree' 
 withers inevitably into a frozen barrenness from which no new 
 life can spring: — 
 
 'And love, grown faint and fretful. 
 With lips but half regretful 
 Sighs, and with eyes forgetful 
 Weeps that no loves endure.' " 
 
 Since the publication of the "Poems and Ballads," 
 few years have passed that have not made considera- 
 ble additions to Swinburne's verse, hardly any year 
 has passed in which he has not published something 
 of importance in either verse or prose. His poetry 
 alone now fills upwards of a score of volumes, about 
 one-half of them dramatic, the other half narrative 
 and lyrical in content. Of his dramatic poems we 
 may say that there has been nothing equal to them 
 in our literature since "The Cenci," nothing save 
 "The Cenci" since the work of the Elizabethans. 
 Even the noble dramatic pieces of Tennyson and 
 Browning must take a lower place than is occupied 
 by the magnificent trilogy which deals with the for- 
 tunes of Mary Stuart ; Swinburne's "Marino Faliero" 
 is so much finer than Byron's as to be beyond com- 
 parison ; while his "Atalanta" and his "Erechtheus," 
 if less great than "Samson Agonistes" considered g,s 
 
366 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 pure poetry, give us a much closer reproduction of 
 Greek tragedy in both form and spirit. In narrative 
 verse he has given us two splendid works, "Tristram 
 of Lyonesse" and "The Tale of Balen," studies in 
 Arthurian legend more sympathetic and faithful 
 than those of Arnold and Tennyson. The lyrical sec- 
 tion of his work is so rich and varied that it becomes 
 almost invidious to specify particular examples. 
 There are odes of intricate structure and almost un- 
 approachable harmony, there are memorial tributes 
 of matchless grace and tenderness, there are songs 
 of childhood outvying in loveliness the best of their 
 kind, there are poems of the sea such as no other 
 English poet has written, there are ballads which 
 have caught the very accent of old-time minstrelsy, 
 and there are such memorable compositions as 
 "Siena" and "Thalassius" and "The Last Oracle" 
 and "The Hymn of Man" and "Ave atque Vale" and 
 the matchless group of lyrics "By the North Sea." 
 To dwell upon the poet's metrical craft, upon his 
 unparalleled mastery of the resources of English 
 song, of its hitherto half-hidden possibilities of mel- 
 ody and harmony, would be a superfluous task, even 
 were it within the scope of my present purpose. This 
 quality of Swinburne's poetry "leaps to the eye" of 
 the dullest critic ; tmf ortunately there are many crit- 
 ics who have never got beyond the discovery of this 
 quality, or who, offended by the ideas of the poet's 
 inculcation, have pretended to discover in his work 
 little more than so much meaningless verbiage. The 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 857 
 
 reader is apt, no doubt, to be at first somewhat dazed 
 by the affluence of Swinburne's poetic diction, and to 
 lose sight of the meaning which it conceals from care- 
 less observation. And there is some slight degree of 
 truth, although far too much has been made of it, in 
 Mr. Saintsbury's statement when he says of the poet 
 that "his extraordinary command of metre has led 
 him to make new and ever new experiments in it which 
 have been too often mere tours de force, to plan sea- 
 serpents in verse in order to show how easily and 
 gracefully he can make them coil and uncoil their 
 enormous length, to build mastodons of metre that 
 we may admire the proportion and articulation of 
 their mighty Hmbs." The same critic says elsewhere, 
 with no more than simple truth, that "the verse does 
 not merely run, it spins, gyrating and revolving in 
 itself as well as proceeding in its orbit : the wave 
 as it rushes on has eddies and backwaters of live 
 interior movement. All the metaphors and similes 
 of water, light, wind, fire, all the modes of motion, 
 inspire and animate this astonishing poetry." But 
 with all its verbal magic, there is meaning enough 
 and to spare in Swinburne's verse, as I trust will be 
 shown further on. Meanwhile we may take a single 
 illustration of his supremacy as a metrical artist. 
 It has been said that he restored the anapast 
 to English poetry. And where, in English po- 
 etry or any other, may be found a match to 
 the anapaestic roll of the closing chorus of "Erech- 
 theus"? 
 
358 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 "From the depth of the springs of my spirit a fountain is 
 poured of thanksgiving. 
 
 My country, my mother, for thee. 
 That thy dead for their death shall have life in thy sight and 
 a name ever living 
 
 At heart of thy people to be. 
 In the darkness of change on the waters of time they shall 
 
 turn from afar 
 To the beam of this dawn for a beacon, the light of these 
 
 pyres for a star. 
 They shall see thee who love and take comfort, who hate thee 
 shall see and take warning. 
 
 Our mother that makest us free; 
 And the sons of thine earth shall have help of the waves that 
 made war on their morning. 
 
 And friendship and fame of the sea." 
 
 Swinburne's prose is so considerable in amount and 
 so rich in content that, were he not so much greater 
 as a poet, it would still mark him as one of the intel- 
 lectual forces of his age. But being primarily a 
 poet, his prose suffers neglect, and readers in general 
 have not yet discovered that it is comparable in 
 importance with the prose of Carlyle. With that 
 prose it has, indeed, several things in common. It 
 is no less distinctive and impressive in its individu- 
 ality, and no less detestable as a model of what prose 
 ought to be. In the case of both writers, prose be- 
 comes an instrument of great power, but the instru- 
 ment is one that their followers should beware of 
 seeking to grasp. In both cases a crotchety and 
 turgid style is made use of to impart real ideas, and 
 becomes the vehicle of a moral fervour that verges 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 359 
 
 upon the prophetic. Swinburne's prose is, of course, 
 so largely concerned with the criticism of literature 
 that its opportunities are restricted, but this does not 
 prevent it from throwing side-lights upon many sub- 
 jects of other than literary interest, or from stimu- 
 lating the whole intellectual life rather than that 
 section of it which is preoccupied with questions of 
 taste and the fitness of literary form to subserve 
 their respective ends. Swinburne's prose certainly 
 commands attention upon its own account, and not 
 merely the attention one is inclined to give it as 
 the work of a poet. Considered as a critic of litera- 
 ture, I think that Swinburne is entitled to a very high 
 place. His involved manner of saying things, and 
 the extravagance of the praise which he sometimes 
 bestows, are but incidental defects, after all, and 
 should not be allowed to obscure the very real and 
 solid merits of his analysis. I know of no more help- 
 ful and stimulating book to place in the hands of a 
 reader of Shakespeare than Swinburne's study of 
 the greatest of poets. It will do for the student pre- 
 cisely what a whole library of scientific criticism will 
 not do ; it will save him from mechanical methods of 
 judgment and all the deadening influences of pedan- 
 try; it will impart to him something of its own gen- 
 erous enthusiasm and genial insight. It will, in 
 short, by the very contagion of its spirit, do more to 
 make a student feel the power and beauty of Shakes- 
 peare than can be done by all the heavy tomes of 
 the Germans. What Swinburne calls "the noble 
 
360 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 pleasure of praising" is certainly one of the most 
 important functions of criticism, and if he sometimes 
 over-emphasises this function, shall it not be imputed 
 to him for righteousness in an age when the tendency 
 of criticism, and of literary scholarship, in general, 
 runs too far in the direction of historical explanation 
 and dispassionate analysis? What I have said of 
 Swinburne's "Study of Shakespeare" applies with 
 comparable validity to his studies of Jonson and 
 Chapman, which also exist as separate books, and 
 to the long series of his essays upon the other Eliza- 
 bethan dramatists. I doubt if any other critic has 
 done as much for the true appreciation of the poetry 
 of our great dramatic period; certainly no one has 
 discussed that poetry with warmer sympathy or 
 deeper insight. We owe not a little to Swinburne 
 for the example he sets against that complacent criti- 
 cism which is far too commonly met with. There is 
 no doubt that catholicity can be carried too far 
 here as elsewhere, and that a critic is often forced 
 to attack by the very nature of what he defends. It 
 is probably true that Swinburne is too vehement when 
 he does feel impelled to attack any one, but no one 
 can deny that the preponderance of his critical work 
 is upon the side of generous praise of the excellences 
 discerned by him. Serious objection has been made 
 to the way in which his critical studies sometimes 
 attack eminent writers; these are the words with 
 which he meets the objection: "All belief involves or 
 implies a corresponding disbelief; it is impossible, if 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 361 
 
 words have any meaning, for any one who xmder- 
 stands that meaning to assert that he believes in orig- 
 inal sin, or the infernal predestination of unregener- 
 ate or unchristened infancy, and in the same breath 
 to proclaim his belief in the divine word which affirms 
 that of such as unchristened and unregenerate chil- 
 dren is the kingdom of heaven." For the harshness 
 with which he assails certain distinguished writers, he 
 defends himself in these terms: 
 
 "We may heartily appreciate, we may cordially admire, the 
 literary and personal energies of such writers as Byron and 
 Carlyle; but we must recognise that the man who sees a great 
 poet in the histrionic rhapsodist to whom all great poetry was 
 hateful, or a great philosophic and political teacher in the 
 passionate and distempered humorist whose religious ideal was 
 a modified Moloch worship, and whose political creed found 
 practical expression in the plantations of a slave-owner and the 
 dungeons of a czar, does rightly or wrongly accept and respect 
 the pretensions of writers who can be acceptable as prophets or 
 respectable as teachers to no man who accepts the traditions of 
 English independence or respects the inheritance of English 
 poetry." 
 
 Yet, however just this defence may be as far as it 
 goes, it cannot be denied that Swinburne, by sihgling 
 out and laying undue stress upon the objectionable 
 characteristics of such writers as these, gives but a 
 distorted idea of their work and their lives. That 
 Shelley was a far greater and truer poet than Byron 
 seems to me a matter so well assured that I can only 
 account for failure to recognise it as due to some in- 
 curable defect of sense, but I do not think that this 
 position is fortified by Swinburne's array of abusive 
 
362 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 terms applied to the verse and the character of 
 Byron. In this and a few other instances he cer- 
 tainly gets far away from that "noble pleasure of 
 praising" which the greater part of his criticism so 
 amply illustrates. 
 
 Delight in the sea and pride in the fame of Eng- 
 land are two motives that can always be counted upon 
 to evoke from this poet his most ringing and exultant 
 strains. In his great choral ode to "Athens," the 
 sea fight with the Persians is given an added glory 
 by its suggestion of the sea fight with the Spaniards 
 two thousand years later. 
 
 "Sons of Athens born in spirit and truth are all born freemen ; 
 Most of all, we, nurtured where the north wind holds his 
 reign ! 
 Children all we sea-folk of the Salaminian seamen. 
 
 Sons of them that beat back Persia they that beat back 
 Spain. 
 Since the songs of Greece fell silent, none like ours have risen ; 
 Since the sails of Greece fell slack, no ships have sailed like 
 ours; 
 How should we lament not, if her spirit sit in prison? 
 How should we rejoice not, if her wreaths renew their 
 flowers?" 
 
 In the tercentenary of the defeat of the Spanish 
 Armada, Swinburne found a subject that enlisted his 
 noblest sympathies, and produced one of the greatest 
 of his patriotic poems. The far-reaching conse- 
 quences and the tremendous significance of the vic- 
 tory won by England and the sea over Spain, in 
 that summer of 1588, are here brought home to the 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 mind as by no other description of the event in our 
 literature. I quote from the psean of victory with 
 which the poem closes. 
 
 "England, queen of the waves whose green inviolate girdle 
 
 enrings thee round. 
 Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy 
 
 foemen found? 
 Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, 
 
 acclaims thee crowned. 
 Times may change, and the skies grow strange with signs of 
 
 treason and fraud and fear; 
 Foes in union of strange communion may rise against thee 
 
 from far and near: 
 Sloth and greed on thy strength may feed as cankers waxing 
 
 from year to year. 
 Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie 
 
 and defame and smite. 
 We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the 
 
 sons of night. 
 We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of 
 
 life in light. 
 
 Mother, mother beloved, none other could claim in place of 
 
 thee England's place; 
 Earth bears none that beholds the sun so pure of record, so 
 
 clothed with grace: 
 Dear our mother, nor son nor brother is thine, as strong or as 
 
 fair of face. 
 How Shalt thou be abased? or how shall fear take hold of thy 
 
 heart? of thine, 
 England, maiden immortal, laden with charge of life and with 
 
 hopes divine? 
 Earth shall wither, when eyes turned hither behold not light in 
 
 her darkness shine. 
 
364 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 England, none that is born thy son, and lives, by grace of thy 
 
 glory, free, 
 Jjives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve 
 
 as he worships thee; 
 None may sing thee: the sea-wind's wing beats down our 
 
 song as it hails the sea." 
 
 For the last thirty or forty years, Swinburne has 
 been a close observer of passing events in the world 
 of society and of politics, and no inconsiderable por- 
 tion of his poetry has found its inspiration in current 
 happenings. Sometimes with scorn, sometimes with 
 bitter irony, and sometimes with fierce and splendid 
 indignation, the torrent of his song has been poured 
 out upon men and measures and ideas that have 
 seemed to him deserving of reprobation. The scorn 
 may be illustrated by this sonnet upon "The Moder- 
 ates" — ^the weak and timorous souls in France who 
 were willing, in the last days of the Empire, to make 
 terms with tyranny and to compromise with cor-i 
 ruption. 
 
 "She stood before her traitors bound and bare. 
 
 Clothed with her wounds and with her naked shame 
 As with a weed of fiery tears and flame. 
 Their mother-land, their common weal and care. 
 And they turned from her and denied, and sware 
 They did not know this woman nor her name. 
 And they took truce with tyrants and grew tame. 
 And gathered up cast crowns and creeds to wear. 
 And rags and shards reg^lded. Then she took 
 In her bruised hands their broken pledge, and eyed 
 Those men so late so loud upon her side 
 With one inevitable and tearless look. 
 That they might see her face whom they forsook; 
 And they beheld what they had left, and died." 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 365 
 
 Of the bitterness of the irony at his command there 
 is no better illustration than is afforded by a series 
 of sonnets which chant "The Conservative Journal- 
 ist's Anthem." At the time when Tennyson accepted 
 a peer's title, there was a good deal of ill-natured 
 comment upon the act. Radical critics fairly foamed 
 at the mouth at what they were pleased to consider 
 the degradation involved in this acceptance. They 
 seemed incapable of understanding that the honour 
 was bestowed in all good faith, and that it would 
 have been the merest boorishness to refuse it. In 
 this discussion, The Saturday Review, that staunch 
 defender of crusted conservatism, delivered itself of 
 the following unguarded opinion: "As a matter of 
 fact, no man living, or who ever lived — ^not Caesar 
 or Pericles, not Shakespeare or Michael Angelo — 
 could confer honour more than he took on entering 
 the House of Lords." Here was an opportunity not 
 to be missed by the poet-satirist, of whose three son- 
 nets upon the subject the following is the first and 
 best: 
 
 "O Lords our Gods, beneficent, sublime. 
 
 In the evening, and before the morning flames, 
 We, praise, we bless, we magnify your names. 
 The slave is he that serves not, his the crime 
 And shame, who hails not as the crown of Time 
 That House wherein the all-envious world acclaims 
 Such glory that the reflex of it shames 
 All crowns bestowed of men for prose or rhyme. 
 The serf, the cur, the sycophant, is he 
 Who feels no cringing motion twitch his knee 
 
366 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 When from a height too high for Shakespere nods 
 The wearer of a higher than Milton's crown. 
 Stoop, Chaucer, stoop ; Keats, Shelley, Burns, bow down; 
 
 These have no part with you, O Lords our Gods." 
 
 Of the fierceness of his indignation, which equals 
 that of Tacitus or of Swift, of Juvenal or of Hugo, 
 those terrible sonnets called "Diras" stand as last- 
 ing monuments. They are almost too terrible to 
 quote, but I will give one of the two that describe 
 "The Descent into Hell" of that modern saviour of 
 society, Napoleon the Little, the cynical and sinister 
 Man of December. 
 
 "What shapes are these and shadows without end 
 That fill the night full as a storm of rain 
 With myriads of dead men and women slain. 
 Old with yoimg, chUd with mother, friend with friend. 
 That on the deep mid wintering air impend. 
 Pale yet with mortal wrath and human pain, 
 Who died that this man dead now too might reign, 
 Toward whom their hands point and their faces bend? 
 The ruining flood would redden earth and air 
 If for each soul whose guiltless blood was shed 
 There fell but one drop on this man's head 
 Whose soul to-night stands bodiless and bare. 
 For whom our hearts give thanks who put up prayer. 
 That we have lived to say. The dog is dead." 
 
 It may be said that such vehemence of utterance de- 
 feats its own purpose, that a more restrained expres- 
 sion would also be more effective. But, however 
 uncomfortably we may be stirred by the intensity of 
 the poet's emotion, it must be observed that his lack 
 of restraint does not extend to the artistic form 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 367 
 
 of his expression, for that is as flawless as if it were 
 concerned with the gentlest and least passionate of 
 themes. And there are many who, considering the 
 deep wrongs that engaged his eloquence, will find in 
 the poet's own closing "Apologia" the sufiicient justi- 
 fication of his most intemperate speech. 
 
 "If wrath embitter the sweet mouth of song, 
 And make the sunlight fire before those eyes 
 That would drink draughts of peace from the unsoiled 
 skies. 
 The wrongdoing is not ours, but ours the wrong. 
 Who hear too loud on earth and see too long 
 The grief that dies not with the groan that dies. 
 Till the strong bitterness of pity cries 
 Within us, that our anger should be strong." 
 
 The heat of the poet's indignation is matched by the 
 warmth of his praise. Such tributes as he has paid 
 to the great apostles and champions of human free- 
 dom have a generosity and enthusiasm of apprecia- 
 tion elsewhere unequalled in panegyric poetry. How 
 he has sung the praises of Cromwell and Milton, of 
 Shelley and Landor, of Hugo and Mazzini, is well 
 known to all of his readers. Mazzini, in particular, 
 has always been the god of his idolatry, and Swin- 
 burne, in helping us to understand the supreme im- 
 portance of Mazzini's share in the regeneration of 
 Italy, has done what the historians have signally 
 failed in doing. "It is well for the world," says 
 Frederic Myers, "that the representative, for poetry 
 even more than for history, of the last great strug- 
 gle where all chivalrous sympathies could range them- 
 
S68 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 selves undoubtingly on one side, should have received 
 a crown of song such as had scarcely before been laid 
 at the feet of any living hero." I need hardly recall 
 the beautiful dedication to Mazzini of the "Songs 
 before Sunrise," the magnificent paean of "A Song of 
 Italy," or the exquisite verses written for the Monu- 
 ment at Genoa. 
 
 "Not his own heavenly tongue hath heavenly speech 
 Enough to say 
 What this man was, whose praise no thought may reach, 
 No words can weigh. 
 
 "Since man's first mother brought to mortal birth 
 Her first-born son. 
 Such grace befell not ever man on earth 
 As crowns this one. 
 
 "Of God nor man was ever this thing said. 
 That he could give 
 Life back to her who gave him, whencehis dead 
 Mother might live. 
 
 "But this man found his mother dead and slain. 
 With fast sealed eyes. 
 And bade the dead rise up and live again. 
 And she did rise: 
 
 "And all the world was bright with her through him: 
 
 But dark with strife. 
 Like heaven's own sun that storming clouds bedim, 
 Was all his life. 
 
 "Life and the clouds are vanished: hate and fear 
 Have had their span 
 Of time to hurt, and are not: he is here. 
 The sunlike man. 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 369 
 
 "City superb that hadst Columbus first 
 For sovereign son. 
 Be prouder that thy breast hath later nurst 
 This mightier one. 
 
 "Glory be his for ever, while his land 
 Lives and is free. 
 As with controlling breath and sovereign hand 
 He bade her be. 
 
 "Earth shows to heaven the names by thousands told 
 That crown her fame. 
 But highest of all that heaven and earth behold 
 Mazzini's name." 
 
 More enduring even than the marble of the Genoese 
 Monument are those "Songs before Sunrise" of which 
 Mazzini and the cause to which he dedicated his life 
 were the inspiration. I doubt if a greater than this 
 volume of lyrics can be found elsewhere in English 
 poetry. Such rich and varied utterance, such pas- 
 sion of love and scorn, such expression of the most 
 exalted idealism, was never before found, it seems to 
 me, nor has ever since been found, in such spontaneity 
 of flow and amplitude of stream, within the limits of 
 any single volume of verse. It is here that we find 
 Swinburne at his best, it is here that we learn clearly 
 to read his title to a place among the greatest of 
 English poets. From dedication to epilogue, in all 
 the two-score pieces, some of them of great length, 
 we find hardly a jarring note, hardly a discordant 
 strain; the volume is one unbroken series of master- 
 pieces, having a sweep and an energy and a harmony 
 
370 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 that set them among the highest achievements of 
 lyrical inspiration. It is in this volume that we find 
 such poems as "The Eve of Revolution," "The Lit- 
 any of Nations," "Mater Dolorosa," "Mater Tri- 
 umphalis," "Tiresias," and "A Marching Song," 
 with their prophetic vision of the Republic victo- 
 rious ; it is in this volume that we find "Hertha" and 
 the "Hymn of Man," with their glorified pantheism ; 
 it is in this volume that we find "The Pilgrims" 
 and "Super Flumina Babylonis," with their exalted 
 ethical ideal and their appeal to the soul to make 
 the most complete sacrifice of self, to endure and to 
 suff'er all things, rather than fail in pursuit of "the 
 light whereby we run with girdled loins our lamplit 
 race," rather than fail in utter devotion to our 
 "lady of love" "who is tender and swift to save," 
 who hath for gifts to us only these — 
 
 "That whoso hath seen her shall not live 
 Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain, 
 Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears; 
 And when she bids die he shall surely die. 
 And he shall leave all things under the sky 
 And go forth naked under sun and rain 
 
 And work and wait and watch out all his years." 
 
 The love of Italy has been a common possession of 
 nearly all our nineteenth-century poets, and hardly 
 one of them has failed to give eloquent expression to 
 this feeling. But Swinburne has surpassed all the 
 rest in the ardour of his devotion, and in the rap- 
 turous utterance of his praise. 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 371 
 
 "The very thought in us how much we love thee 
 Makes the throat sob with love and blinds the eyes," 
 
 he says, and at the thought of her ahnost-accom- 
 plished freedom from the bonds of domestic and for- 
 eign oppression he is inspired to sing, 
 
 "All things are glad because of her, but we 
 
 Most glad, who loved her when the worst days were. 
 
 O sweetest, fairest, first, 
 
 O flower, when times were worst. 
 Thou hadst no stripe wherein we had no share. 
 
 Have not our hearts held close. 
 
 Kept fast the whole world's rose? 
 Have we not worn thee at heart whom none would wear? 
 
 First love and last love, light of lands. 
 Shall we not touch thee full-blown with our lips and hands?" 
 
 Swinburne has always been an avowed republican, 
 his ideal of republicanism being that of Milton and 
 Landor and Mazzini rather than that of the spokes- 
 men of modem democracy. It is such a republic, a 
 commonwealth in which men shall be wise enough to 
 trust those whom they have exalted to leadership, in 
 which a recognition of the duties of man shall be 
 reckoned of more importance than a clamorous in- 
 sistence upon his rights, that he invokes in these 
 lines: 
 
 "O our Republic that shalt bind in bands 
 
 The kingdomless far lands 
 And link the chainless ages; thou that wast 
 
 With England ere she passed 
 Among the faded nations, and shalt be 
 
 Again, when sea to sea 
 
372 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 Calls through the wind and light of morning time, 
 
 And throneless clime to clime 
 Makes antiphonal answer; thou that art 
 
 Where one man's perfect heart 
 Burns, one man's brow is brightened for thy sake. 
 
 Thine, strong to make or break." 
 
 It is this republic that he pictures as Mater Dolorosa, 
 sitting in rent raiment by the wild wayside — ■ 
 
 "This is she for whose sake being fallen, for whose abject sake. 
 Earth groans in the blackness of darkness, and men's hearts 
 
 break. 
 This is she for whose love, having seen her, the men that were 
 Poured life out as water, and shed their souls upon air. 
 This is she for whose glory their years were counted as foam; 
 Whose face was a light upon Greece, was a iire upon Rome." 
 
 This is also the republic that he pictures as Mater 
 Triumphalis, at last no longer rejected of men, but 
 enthroned forever in their hearts. 
 
 "The years are as thy garments, the world's ages 
 As sandals bound and loosed from thy swift feet; 
 Time serves before thee, as one that hath for wages 
 Praise or shame only, bitter words or sweet. 
 
 "Thou sayest 'Well done,' and all a century kindles; 
 
 Again thou sayest 'Depart from sight of me,' 
 And all the light of face of all men dwindles. 
 And the age is as the broken glass of thee. 
 
 "Thou art the player whose organ-keys are thunders, 
 And I beneath thy foot the pedal prest; 
 Thou art the ray whereat the rent night sunders. 
 And I the cloudlet borne upon thy breast. 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 373 
 
 "I shall burn up before thee, pass and perish. 
 
 As haze in sunrise on the red sea-line; 
 But thou from dawn to sunsetting shalt cherish 
 The thoughts that led and souls that lighted mine." 
 
 And it is this republic that he has in mind in his 
 vision of the spirit of Liberty, standing over a corpse- 
 like England — fermde ac cadaver — and pronounc- 
 ing stern and deliberate judgment. 
 
 "Freeman he is not, but slave. 
 Who stands not out on my side; 
 
 His own hand hollows his grave. 
 
 Nor strength is in me to save 
 Where strength is none to abide. 
 
 "Time shall tread on his name 
 
 That was written for honour of old. 
 
 Who hath taken in change for fame 
 
 Dust, and silver, and shame. 
 Ashes, and iron, and gold." 
 
 Swinburne's religious attitude is that of one who 
 resolutely rejects aU dogmas and historical creeds, 
 and with equal earnestness clings to the divine idea 
 that lies beneath the creeds and bestows upon them 
 their vitality. He draws the same sharp contrast 
 that is drawn by Shelley and Hugo between the eter- 
 nal spirit of Christianity and its historical associa- 
 tions. In that terrible poem, "Before a Crucifix," he 
 addresses the emblem of faith in such words as these : 
 
 "The nineteenth wave of the ages rolls 
 Now deathward since thy death and birth. 
 Hast thou fed full men's starved-out souls? 
 Hast thou brought freedom upon earth? 
 
874 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 Or are there less oppressions done 
 In this wild world under the sun? 
 
 "This dead God here against my face 
 Hath help for no man; who hath seen 
 The good works of it, or such grace 
 
 As thy grace in it, Nazarene, 
 As that from thy live lips which ran 
 For man's sake, O thou son of man? 
 
 "The tree of faith ingraffed by priests 
 Puts its foul foliage out above thee. 
 And round it feed man-eating beasts 
 
 Because of whom we dare not love thee. 
 Though hearts reach back and memories ache. 
 We cannot praise thee for their sake." 
 
 In that even more terrible poem, the "Hymn of Man," 
 the god of superstition, whose empire has no other 
 foundation than that of terror and cruelty, is thus 
 apostrophised : 
 
 "O thou that hast built thee a shrine of the madness of man and 
 
 his shame. 
 And hast hung in the midst for a sign of his worship the lamp 
 
 of thy name; 
 That hast shown him for heaven in a vision a void world's 
 
 shadow and shell. 
 And hast fed thy delight and derision with fire of belief as of 
 
 hell; 
 That hast ileshed on the souls that believed thee the fang of 
 
 the death worm fear. 
 With anguish of dreams tcr deceive them whose faith cries out 
 
 in thine ear; 
 By the face of the spirit confounded before thee and humbled 
 
 in dust. 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 375 
 
 By the dread wherewith life was astounded and shamed out 
 
 of sense of its trust, 
 By the scourges of doubt and repentance that fell on the soul 
 
 at thy nod, 
 Thou art judged, O judge, and the sentence is gone forth 
 
 against thee, O God. 
 Thy slave that slept is awake; thy slave but slept for a span; 
 Yea, man thy slave shall unmake thee, who made thee lord over 
 
 man. 
 For his face is set to the east, his feet on the past and its 
 
 dead; 
 The sun rearisen is his priest, and the heat thereof hallows his 
 
 head. 
 His eyes take part in the morning; his spirit outsounding the 
 
 sea 
 Asks no more witness or warning from temple or tripod or 
 
 tree. 
 He hath set the centuries at union; the night is afraid at his 
 
 name; 
 Equal with life, in communion with death, he hath found them 
 
 the same. 
 Past the wall unsurmounted that bars out our vision with iron 
 
 and fire 
 He hath sent forth his soul for the stars to comply with and 
 
 suns to conspire. 
 His thought takes flight for the centre wherethrough it hath 
 
 part in the whole; 
 The abysses forbid it not enter: the stars make room for the 
 
 soull" 
 
 It is in the same poem that expression is given to 
 what may be called, for want of a better name, 
 Swinburne's pantheism, that Grod-intoxicated con- 
 ception of the universe which penetrates beneath the 
 distinction of subject and object, the distinction even 
 of Creator and created, and rests upon the idea of 
 
376 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 the underlying unity, the idea of God everywhere 
 immanent in nature. 
 
 "Therefore the God that ye make you is grievous, and ^ves not 
 
 aid. 
 Because it is but for your sake that the God of your making 
 
 is made. 
 Thou and I and he are not Gods made men for a span, 
 But God, if a God there be, is the substance of men which is 
 
 man. 
 Our lives are as pulses or pores of his manifold body and 
 
 breath; 
 As waves of his sea on the shores where birth is the beacon of 
 
 death. 
 We men, the multiform features of man, whatsoever we be. 
 Recreate him of whom we are creatures, and all we only are 
 
 he. 
 For each man of all men is God, but God is the fruit of the 
 
 whole; 
 Indivisible spirit and blood, indiscernible body from soul." 
 
 Swinburne made sport, in an ingenious parody, of 
 Tennyson's "Higher Pantheism," but his own panthe- 
 ism is quite as high, and even more pronounced. Its 
 clearest expression occurs in the poem "Hertha," 
 which is very perplexing to the type of mind which 
 finds a stumbling-block in Emerson's "Brahma," 
 but which is lucid enough in its meaning to those 
 who know their Goethe and their Spinoza. 
 
 "I am that which began; 
 
 Out of me the years roll; 
 Out of me God and man; 
 I am equal and whole; 
 God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the 
 soul. 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 377 
 
 "The tree many-rooted 
 
 That swells to the sky 
 With frondage red-fruited. 
 The life-tree am I; 
 In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves; ye shall live 
 and not die. 
 
 "But the Gods of your fashion 
 That take and that give. 
 In their pity and passion 
 That scourge and forgive. 
 They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they 
 shall die and not live. 
 
 "My own blood is what stanches 
 
 The wounds in my bark: 
 Stars caught in my branches 
 Make day of the dark, 
 ■And are worshipped as suns tiU the sunrise shall tread out their 
 fires as a spark." 
 
 This poem may be particularly commended to the 
 attention of those who deny its author the possession 
 of keen intellectual powers and profound philo- 
 sophical thought. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Swinburne, besides being the 
 most musical of our modern poets, is at least equal 
 to any of the others both in point of scholarship and 
 of intellectual grasp. In his treatment of the his- 
 torical problems connected with the life of Mary 
 Stuart, his scholarship elicits a degree of admiration 
 less only than that which we accord to his art. This 
 scholarship is particularly attested by the article 
 on Mary Stuart which he wrote for the "Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica," by his exhaustive study of Ben 
 
378 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 'Jonson, and by many of his essays in literary criti- 
 cism. Of his poetry we may ahnost say that it has 
 the fault of being too intellectual, of standing too 
 far aloof from the emotional hfe. There is a certain 
 justice in the complaint which Morris made to the 
 effect that Swinburne's poetry is too "hterary," that 
 it gets too large a share of its inspiration from books. 
 His subjects are nature and man, in common with 
 other poets, but while we feel him to be in direct 
 contact with nature, his contact with man seems to 
 be made indirectly, through the medium of human 
 records, the medium of philosophical systems and 
 works of literary art. His treatment of man thus 
 becomes highly abstract, it does not appeal to us 
 upon the human basis of our common experience. It 
 requires only a cursory examination of his work to 
 realise how grotesquely false is the popular idea 
 which makes of him a poet of passion in the ordinary 
 sense. That idea is based upon a few of the poems 
 contained in a single early volume, of which he him- 
 self has said that 
 
 "The yoiingest were born of boy's pastime. 
 The eldest are young," 
 
 and affords a striking illustration of the persistence 
 of an irrational prejudice. Passion he has in 
 abundance, but it is the passion of the intellect rather 
 than of the heart. It is the passion of Shelley's 
 "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," or of Arnold's "Em- 
 pedocles on Etna." In his verse, 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 879 
 
 "Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow. 
 And faint the city gleams j" 
 
 we seem transported into a purer and rarer atmos- 
 phere than invests our daily life, and brought into 
 communion with the mountain-peaks and the stars. 
 Nowhere else in our poetry, except in Wordsworth's 
 loftiest flights, do we get this sense of spaciousness, 
 of the free emotion of the spirit in some supramun- 
 dane sphere. 
 
 In closing, I wish to say a few words about Swin- 
 burne's fundamental attitude toward the problem of 
 life and the relation between man and the universe. 
 No one has expressed more impressively than he the 
 contrast between the vexed insignificance of man and 
 the calm sublimity of nature. 
 
 "O strong sun I O sea! 
 I bid not you, divine things ! comfort me, 
 I stand not up to match you in your sight; 
 Who hath said ye have mercy toward us, ye who have might?" 
 
 But no poet has also more proudly matched the 
 human spirit against all the material immensities 
 which it contemplates, and has so asserted its in- 
 herent dignity and indefectible strength. Most of 
 the attributes of the religious temper receive his 
 fullest sympathy, but for the meek and lowly attitude 
 he has only scorn. Like Kant, he is filled with awe in 
 contemplation of the boundless universe and of the 
 soul of man alike, and the notion of humility does 
 not comport with his exalted conception of man's 
 
380 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 spiritual possibilities. His attitude is that of Chap- 
 man, holding it unlawful that man "should stoop to 
 any other law" than that laid down by his own higher 
 nature, of the Persian Tent-maker, offering to treat 
 with his Creator upon equal terms, and abating not 
 one jot or tittle of his own self-respect. 
 
 "A creed is a rod. 
 
 And a crown is of night; 
 But this thing is God, 
 
 To be man with thy might; 
 To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out thy 
 life as the light." 
 
 It is in the prelude of the "Songs before Sunrise" 
 that we find the most magnificent expression of the 
 claims of the indomitable human spirit, of the soul 
 that stands erect in the presence of all adverse for- 
 tunes, and bids defiance to all malign fates. 
 
 "His soul is even with the sun 
 Whose spirit and whose eyes are one. 
 
 Who seeks not stars by day nor light 
 
 And heavy heat of day by night. 
 Him can no God cast down, whom none 
 
 Can lift in hope beyond the height 
 Of fate and nature and things done 
 
 By the calm rule of might and right 
 That bids men be and bear and do. 
 And die beneath blind skies or blue. 
 
 "But weak is change, but strengthless time. 
 To take the light from heaven or climb 
 The hills of heaven with wasting feet. 
 Songs they can stop that earth found meet. 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 381 
 
 But the stars keep their ageless rhyme: 
 Flowers they can slay that spring thought sweet. 
 
 But the stars keep their spring sublime; 
 Passions and pleasures can defeat, 
 
 Actions and agonies control. 
 
 And life and death, but not the soul. 
 
 "Because man's soul is man's God still. 
 What wind soever waft his wiU 
 
 Across the waves of day and night 
 
 To port or shipwreck, left or right. 
 By shores and shoals of good and ill; 
 
 And stUl its flame at mainmast height 
 Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill 
 
 Sustains the indomitable light 
 Whence only man hath strength to steer 
 Or helm to handle without fear. 
 
 "Save his own soul's light overhead. 
 None leads him, and none ever led. 
 
 Across birth's hidden harbour bar. 
 
 Past youth where shoreward shallows are, 
 Through age that drives on toward the red 
 
 Vast void of sunset hailed from far. 
 To the equal waters of the dead; 
 
 Save his own soul he hath no star. 
 And sinks, except his own soul guide, 
 Helmless in middle turn of tide. 
 
 "No blast of air or fire of sun 
 Puts out the light whereby we run 
 
 With girdled loins our lamp-lit race, 
 
 And each from each takes heart of grace 
 And spirit till his turn be done. 
 
 And light of face from each man's face 
 In whom the light of trust is one; 
 
 Since only souls that keep their place 
 By their own light, and watch things roll, 
 And stand, have light for any soul," 
 
382 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 Closely associated with this attitude of the full- 
 statured soul, proud in the consciousness of its own 
 strength, is the poet's conception of duty, and his 
 strenuous demand for complete sacrifice of self, for 
 utter and absolute devotion to the cause of man's 
 freedom in both body and spirit. This ideal finds 
 its completest expression in "The Pilgrims," with its 
 alternation of sceptical questioning and convincing 
 response. 
 
 — ^"Are ye not weary and faint not by the way 
 Seeing night by night devoured of day by day. 
 Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire? 
 Sleepless; and ye too, when shall ye too sleep? 
 — ^We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet. 
 And surely more than all things sleep were sweet. 
 Than aU things save the inexorable desire 
 Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep. 
 
 — "Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow? 
 Is this so sure where aU men's hopes are hollow. 
 Even this your dream, that by much tribulation 
 Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks 
 straight? 
 — Nay though our life were blind, our death were frtiitless. 
 Not therefore were the whole world's high hope rootless; 
 But man to man, nation would turn to nation. 
 And the old life live, and the old great word be great." 
 
 There is no finer ethical inspiration in all English 
 poetry than breathes through the lines of these noble 
 stanzas. No other poet has enforced upon us with 
 greater impressiveness what Myers calls "the resolve 
 that even if there be no moral purpose already in the 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 world, man shall put it there; that even if all evolu- 
 tion be necessarily truncated, yet moral evolution, so 
 long as our race lasts, there shall be; that even if 
 man's virtue be momentary, he shall act as though it 
 were an eternal gain." It was an inspiring message 
 that the finer spirits of the French Revolution be- 
 queathed as a legacy to the nineteenth century; is 
 not the message equally inspiring which the one great 
 poet left Hving at the close of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury has brought to the twentieth as a gift? That 
 message is again illustrated, and if possible even 
 more impressively, in the poem entitled "Super 
 riumina Babylonis." 
 
 "Unto each man his handiwork, unto each his crown, 
 
 The just Fate gives; 
 Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own lays down. 
 He, dying so, lives. 
 
 "Whoso bears the whole heaviness of the wronged world's weight 
 And puts it by. 
 It is well with him suffering, thdugh he face man's fate; 
 How should he die? 
 
 "Seeing death has no part in him any more, no power 
 Upon his head; 
 He has bought his eternity with a little hour. 
 And is not dead. 
 
 "For an hour, if ye look for him, he is no more found. 
 For one hour's space; 
 Then ye lift up your eyes to him and behold him crowned, 
 A deathless face. 
 
 "On the mountains of memory, by the world's well-springs. 
 
 In all men's eyes. 
 Where the light of the life of him is on all past things, 
 Death only dies," 
 
1Fn^eI 
 
 jEschylus, 10, 14, 60, 166. 
 
 Alfleri, v., 180. 
 
 America, 22-3. 
 
 Anti-scrape Society, 339. 
 
 Aristotle, 119. 
 
 Arnold, M., 6, IS, 24, 33, 72, 
 79, 80, 88, 90, 130, ISl, 155, 
 157, 199, 225, 228, 251-283, 
 292. 
 
 Art for art's sake, 7-11, 18. 
 
 Arthurian romance, 320. 
 
 Bagehot, W., 155. 
 
 Bax, B., 343. 
 
 Beers, H. A., 2. 
 
 Beethoven, L. van, 50. 
 
 Berkeley, G., 55. 
 
 Bjornson, B., 340. 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 24. 
 
 Boehme, J., 113. 
 
 Boerne, L., 70. 
 
 Brandes, G.j 81, 107-9, 207. 
 
 British Critic, 83. 
 
 Brooke, S., 54, 57. 
 
 Brown, F. M., 290. 
 
 Browning, E. B., 4, 12, 147. 
 
 Browning, R., 38, 54, 57, 58, 
 
 140, 192-230, 247, 369, 293, 
 
 349. 
 Bruno, G., 113, 113. 
 Buchanan, R., 297. 
 Burke, E., 36, 57, 99. 
 Burne-Jones, E., 387, 389, 290, 
 
 292. 
 Burns, R., 68. 
 Byron, G. G., 13, 25, 35, 59, 
 
 64-95, 106, 107, 130, 141, 361. 
 
 Caine, H., 84. 
 Canning, G., 147, 
 
 Campbell, J. D., 126. 
 
 Carducci, G., 348. 
 
 Carlyle, T., 73, 73, 80, 93, 114, 
 116, 125, 227, 273, 346, 358, 
 361. 
 
 Carman, B., 282. 
 
 Castelar, E., 49. 
 
 Chamisso, A. v., 70. 
 
 Chapman, G., 43, 380. 
 
 Chartism, 193, 343. 
 
 Chaucer, 322-4, 326-7. 
 
 Classicism, 179. (See Ro- 
 manticism.) 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 35, 37, 55, 87, 
 96-127, 131, 142, 176, 199. 
 
 Colvin, S., 27, 179-80, 187. 
 
 Condorcet, J. de, 38. 
 
 Constant, B., 117. 
 
 Convention of Cintra, 146, 
 165. 
 
 Corson, H., 11. 
 
 Cowper, W., 59, 142. 
 
 Crabbe, G., 142. 
 
 Dante, 46, 49, 203, 301-6. 
 Darwin, C, 35, 212, 342. 
 Delavigne, C, 70. 
 De Quincey, T., 166. 
 DeVere, A., 154. 
 Dial, 288. 
 Dickens, C, 186. 
 Didactic literature, 8. 
 Dowden, E., 34, 65, 70, 76, 94, 
 
 103, 118, 147, 149, 163. 
 Draclimann, H., 81. 
 
 Eastern Question Association, 
 
 339. 
 Edinburgh Review, 34. 
 Education, 377-80. 
 
 385 
 
386 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 210, 288, 376. 
 English society, 16, 66, 81-2. 
 Ethics, 186, 382. 
 Evolution, 2, 211-6, 239-43. 
 (See Darwin.) 
 
 Fichte, J. G., 111. 
 
 Fitz Gerald, E., 236. 
 
 Flaubert, G., 70. 
 
 Forman, H. B., 31, 272, 299, 
 
 335. 
 Fox, C. J., 36, 173. 
 Freedom, 105-7, 144, 267. 
 French Revolution, 3, 15, 36, 
 
 37, 39, 43-4, 64, 97-8, 100, 
 
 135-9, 161, 163, 193, 268, 
 
 284, 306, 383. 
 
 Galton, A., 271. 
 
 Gates, L. E., 275, 281. 
 
 Gentleman's Magazine, 58. 
 
 Germ, 286. 
 
 German literature, 114. 
 
 Gifford, W., 173. 
 
 Godwin, W., 41, 163. 
 
 Goethe, 10, 29, 46, 69, 73, 74, 
 83, 105, 115, 143, 117, 189, 
 228, 229, 235, 257, 273, 376. 
 
 Gosse, E., 286. 
 
 Greek Revolution, 51, 91, 92, 
 168. 
 
 Guiney, L. I., 32. 
 
 Hallam, A. H., 221, 222-3. 
 Hancock, A. E., 76. 
 Hardy, T., 84. 
 Harrison, F., 35, 281. 
 Hebraism, 275. 
 Heine, H., 75. 
 Henley, W. T., 88. 
 Hellenism, 275-6, 327. 
 Herder, J. G., 165. 
 Herford, C. H., 195-6. 
 Holmes, E., 152. 
 Hood, T., 4. 
 
 Houghton. (See Milnes, R. 
 M.) 
 
 Hugo, v., 57, 70, 75, 373. 
 Hunt, H., 292. 
 Hunt, L., 24. 
 Huxley, T. H., 214. 
 
 Ibsen, H., 80, 106, 335, 340. 
 Iceland, 332, 334. 
 Immermann, K., 70. 
 Italy, 161-2, 370-1. 
 
 Jackson, A., 174. 
 Johnson, S., 119. 
 Jones, H., 201. 
 Joubert, J., 33. 
 
 Kant, I., 35, 55, 111, 112, 115, 
 
 235 379. 
 Keats', J.,'r-32, 35, 55, 61, 87, 
 
 110. 
 Kingsley, C, 342. 
 
 Lamartine, A. de, 70. 
 
 Lamb, C, 120, 125. 
 
 Landor, W. S., 3, 13, 38, 91-2, 
 
 100, 159-191, 195-6, 321, 371. 
 Lang, A., 60. 
 Leopardi, G., 80. 
 Lessing, G. E., 115. 
 Liberty. (See Freedom.) 
 Life and poetry, 7, 12. 
 Llandaff, Bishop of, 137. 
 LoweU, J. R., 135, 155, 182, 
 
 303. 
 
 Mackail, J. W., 324, 332-3, 
 
 335, 341. 
 Madison, J., 173. 
 Magnusson, E., 332. 
 Mallock, W. H., 5. 
 Martineau, J., 238. 
 Masson, D., 17. 
 Maurice, F. D., 342. 
 Mazzini, G., 69, 72, 93, 171, 
 
 367-9, 371. 
 Mickiewicz, A., 69. 
 Mill, J. S., 6, 112, 116, 124-5. 
 
INDEX 
 
 387 
 
 MUnes. R. M., 177, 187-8. 
 
 Milton, J., 46, 173, 371. 
 
 Moore, G., 84. 
 
 Moore, T., 4, S9. 
 
 Morley, J., 38, 67, 89, 137, 
 
 141, ISO, 310, 252. 
 Morris, W., 80, 195, 287, 389, 
 
 290, 292, 316-347, 378. 
 Miiller, W., 70. 
 Musset, A. de, 70. 
 Myers, F. W. H., 144, 150, 
 
 161, 237, 333, 235, 298, 346, 
 
 354, 367, 382. 
 Mysticism, 111, 113, 228, 234. 
 
 Napoleon, 15, 100, 104, 145, 
 
 164, 172. 
 Napoleon, Louis, 206, 366. 
 Nature, 76-7. 
 Nichol, J., 85. 
 
 Omar Khayyam, 380. 
 
 Optimism, 209. (See Pessi- 
 mism.) 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge Maga- 
 zine, 288, 318. 
 
 Paludan-MUller, F., 69. 
 Pater, W., 7, 112, 154. 
 Pessimism, 78-9, 80, 260, 329. 
 
 (See Optimism.) 
 Phelps, W. L., 2. 
 Philistinism, 373-5. 
 Pindar, 50. 
 Pitt, W., 99, 163. 
 Platen, A. 70. 
 Plato, 33, 55, 111. 
 Plotinus, 110, 333. 
 Poetry and Science, 132. 
 Poetry, Seriousness of, 6. 
 Poets, Kinds of, 17. 
 Pollok, R., 8. 
 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 
 
 287. 
 Proclus, 110. 
 Puritanism, 275. 
 Pushkin, A. S., 69. 
 
 Quarterly Review, 24. 
 
 Republicanism, 173-5, 371-3. 
 Religion, 56-8, 149-51, 176-7, 
 
 200, 222, 224, 232-3, 338-9, 
 
 262-4, 264-6, 270-2, 310-3, 
 
 373. 
 Renan, E., 346. 
 Romanticism, 1, 178. 
 Rossetti, C, 4, 286, 301. 
 Rossettl, D. G., 197, 284-315, 
 
 317. 
 Rossetti, G., 301. 
 Rossetti, M. F., 301. 
 Rossetti, W. M., 48. 
 Rousseau, J. J., 37, 75, 76, 77, 
 
 252. 
 Royce, J., 200. 
 Ruskin, J., 253, 287, 339-40. 
 
 Sagas, 332. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, C. A., 76. 
 Saintsbury, G., 357. 
 Santayana, G., 318-9. 
 Saturday Review, 19, 365. 
 Schelling, F. W. J., 111-2. 
 Schopenhauer, A., 78-80, 214. 
 Scott, W., 4, 114, 154. 
 Shakespeare, W., 18, 119, 123, 
 
 207, 359. 
 Sharp, W., 317, 335. 
 Shelley, P. B., 6, 13, 28, 33-63, 
 
 64-6, 68, 78, 87, 89, 106, 107, 
 
 110, 138, 150, 197-9, 280, 
 
 361, 373. 
 Shorey, P., 239, 247. 
 Sidney, P., 5. 
 Single1:on, A., 29. 
 Smith, G., 207. 
 Socialism, 342-3. 
 Southey, R., 4, 37, 98, 104, 142, 
 
 167. 
 Spain, 146, 165. 
 Spencer, H., 212. 
 Spinoza, B., 335, 259, 376. 
 Stael, Mme. de, 117. 
 Stedman, E. C, 160, 178, 189, 
 
 291, 328, 352. 
 
388 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Steffens, H., IIT. 
 
 Stephen, L., 273. 
 
 StiUman, W. J., 1. 
 
 Stowe, H. B., 86. 
 
 Swinburne, 1, 3, 10, S6, 63, 69, 
 88, 90, 93, 126, 133, 1S4, 162, 
 166, 168, 183, 205-6, 232, 258, 
 263-4, 380, 287, 289, 291-2, 
 294.-5, 398, 300, 307, 319, 
 331-47, 348, 383. 
 
 Switzerland, 101-2. 
 
 Symonds, J. A., 62. 
 
 Taine, H. A., 64, 69. 
 
 Tennyson, A., 35, 87, 88, 192, 
 199, 214, 231-50, 359, 369, 
 393, 330-1, 343, 349, 365, 
 376. 
 
 "Theologia Germanica," 113. 
 
 Tolstoy, L., 339-40. 
 
 Tourgu^nieff, I. S., 80. 
 
 TraiU, H. D., 131. 
 
 Transcendentalism, 111. 
 
 Trelawny, E. J., 61. 
 Trent, W. P., 84. 
 
 Venice, 175. 
 
 Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 37, 40, 
 
 77. 
 
 Washington, G., 162. 
 Watson, W., 158-9, 350. 
 Watts-Dunton, T., 248, 314, 
 
 337-8. 
 Wertherism, 73-5. 
 White, R. G., 352. 
 Winckelmann, J. J., 29, 115. 
 Wolf, F. A., 115. 
 Woodberry, G. E., 33, 39, 54, 
 
 Wordsworth, W., 1, 5, 13, 28, 
 37, 39, 59, 68, 75, 77, 87, 97, 
 104, 107, 119-20, 128-158, 
 176-7, 199, 314, 361, 379. 
 
 Young, E., 8, 59. 
 
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 A discussion of the chief types of English verse 
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 of meter are described with snfHcient fullness and illustration to 
 give the intelligent lover of poetry all the information he needs 
 and to furnish also an excellent text-book." — N. Y. Outlook. 
 
 Henry Holt and Company 
 
 Publishers (viii '07) New York 
 
^^ One of the most important contributions yet made to literary history 
 by an American scholar. — Outlook. 
 
 ENGLISH ROMANTICISM. 
 
 By PROF. HENRY A. BEERS, of Yale. 2 vols. Iimo. 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 CONTENTS: The Subject Defined, The Augustaus, The 
 Spenserians, The Landscape Poets, The Miltonic Groiip, The 
 School of Warton. The Gothic Revival. Percy and the Ballads, 
 Ossian, Thomas Chatterton, and The German Tributary. 
 N. y. COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER: 
 
 "The individuality of his style, its humor, its color, its 
 delicacy . . . will do quite as much to continue its au- 
 thor's reputation as his scholarship. The book is the work 
 of a man who has studied hard, but who has also lived." 
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 teresting period." 
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 ject of the literary revival of mediaevalism in the eighteenth 
 century in England." 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
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 CONTENTS: Walter Scott; Coleridge, Bowles and the Pope 
 Controversy; Keats, Leigh Hunt and the Dante Revival, The 
 Romantic School in Germany, The Romantic Movement in 
 France, Diffused Romanticism in the Literature of the Nine- 
 teenth Century, The Pre-Raphaelites, Tendencies and Results. 
 MAIL AND EXPRESS: 
 
 "Among the few really great contributions to the study 
 of Anglo-Saxon literature yet made by American scholars. 
 . . . Prof. Beers is a delightfully human student, a com- 
 panion on the way, not a Dry-as-dust of portentous mien." 
 NATION: 
 
 "Where there is need of taste in forming and realizing 
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 esque phrase of expression, Prof. Beers is at his best. . . . 
 Full of felicitous judgments and memorable sentences." 
 BOOK-BUYER: 
 
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 that is almost dramatic. . . . It is in making his readers 
 understand the spirit of the age that Prof. Beers excels." 
 CHICAGO POST: 
 
 "Full of color, change, animation and vivacity. The gen- 
 eral romantic 'chain' is traced with an instinct that is un- 
 erring. . . . He does not neglect to mention such new- 
 comers as Hewlett, Yeats and John Davidson." 
 
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