CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 'THIS BOOK IS ONE OF A 
 COLLECTION MADE BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 .,.^,1854-1919 
 
 AND BEQUEATHED TO 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4659.E7 1884a 
 
 Essays and Leaves from a note-book 
 
 3 1924 012 963 512 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012963512 
 
ESSAYS 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 AND 
 
 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDGCCLXXXIV 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Wishes have often been expressed that the 
 articles known to have been written by George 
 Eliot in the ' Westminster Review ' before she 
 had become famous under that pseudonym, 
 should be republished. Those wishes are now 
 gratified — as far, at any rate, as it is possible 
 to gratify them. For it was not George Eliot's 
 desire that the whole of those articles should be 
 rescued from oblivion. And in order that there 
 might be no doubt on the subject, she made 
 some time before her death a collection of such 
 of her fugitive writings as she considered deserv- 
 ing of a permanent form ; carefully revised them 
 for the press ; and left them, in the order in which 
 they here appear, with written injunctions that no 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 other pieces written by her, of date prior to 
 1857, should be republished. 
 
 It will thus be seen that the present collection 
 of Essays has the weight of her sanction, and has 
 had, moreover, the advantage of such corrections 
 and alterations as a revision long subsequent to 
 the period of writing may have suggested to her. 
 
 The opportunity afforded by this republication 
 seemed a suitable one for giving to the world 
 some " notes," as George Eliot simply called them, 
 which belong to a much later period, and which 
 have not been previously published. The exact 
 date of their writing cannot be fixed with any 
 certainty, but it must have been some time be- 
 tween the appearance of ' Middlemarch ' and that 
 of ' Theophrastus Such.' They were probably 
 written without any distinct view to publication 
 — some of them for the satisfaction of her own 
 mind; others perhaps as memoranda, and with 
 an idea of working them out more fully at some 
 later time. It may be of interest to know that, 
 besides the "notes" here given, the note-book 
 contains four which appeared in 'Theophrastus 
 
PREFACE. VU 
 
 Such,' three of them practically as they there 
 stand; and it is not impossible that some of 
 those in the present volume might also have been 
 so utilised had they not happened to fall outside 
 the general scope of the work. The marginal 
 titles are George Eliot's own, but for the gen- 
 eral title, " Leaves from a Note -book," I am 
 responsible. 
 
 I need only add that, in publishing these 
 notes, I have the complete concurrence of my 
 
 friend, Mr Cross. 
 
 CHARLES LEE LEWES. 
 
 IIiOHGATE, Decemher 1883. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. WOELDLINESS AND OTIIEE - WOELDLINESS : THE 
 
 POET YOUNG, ....... 1 
 
 (Westminster Review, 1857.) 
 
 II. GERMAN WIT I HEINRICH HEINE, , . 79 
 
 (Westminster Review, 185(;.) 
 
 III. EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DE CDMMING, . . 145 
 
 (Westminster Review, 1855.) 
 
 IV. THE INFLUENCE OP RATIONALISM: LECKY's HISTOEY, 200 
 
 (Fortnightly Review, 1865.) 
 
 V. THE NATURAl, HISTORY OP GEEMAN LIFE : RIEIIL, 229 
 
 (Westminster Review, 1856.) 
 
 VI. THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR, .... 290 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, 1855.) 
 
 VII. ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, BY FELIX HOLT, . 322 
 
 (Blackwood's Magazine, 1868.) 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 LEAVES EEOM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 AUXnORSHIP, ... . . 353 
 
 JUDGMENTS ON AUTHORS, . . . . 362 
 
 STORY-TELLING, ... 366 
 
 HISTORIC IMAGINATION, . . 371 
 
 VALUE IN ORIGINALITY, . . 374 
 
 TO THE PROSAIC ALL THINGS ARE PROSAIC, . 375 
 
 " DEAR RELIGIOUS LOVE,'' . . .375 
 
 ■\VE MAKE OUR OWN PRECEDENTS, . 376 
 
 BIRTH OF TOLERANCE, . 377 
 FELIX QUI NGN POTUIT, ...... 378 
 
 DIVINE GRACE A REAL EMANATION, .... ,378 
 
 "A FINE EXCESS." FEELING IS ENERGY, . . .379 
 
ESSAYS. 
 
 WOELDLINESS AND OTHER-WOELDLINESS : 
 THE POET YOUNG. 
 
 The study of men, as they have appeared in dif- 
 ferent ages, and under various social conditions, 
 may be considered as the natural history of the 
 race. Let us, then, for a moment imagine our- 
 selves, as students of this natural history, " dredg- 
 ing " the first half of the eighteenth century in 
 search of specimens. About the year 1730 we 
 have hauled up a remarkable individual of the 
 species divine — a surprising name, considering 
 the nature of the animal before us ; but we are 
 used to unsuitable names in natural history. 
 Let us examine this individual at our leisure. 
 He is on the verge of fifty, and has recently un- 
 dergone his metamorphosis into the clerical form. 
 
 A 
 
2 WOELDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLIXESS : 
 
 Eather a paradoxical specimen, if you observe 
 him narrowly : a sort of cross between a syco- 
 phant and a psalmist ; a poet whose imagination 
 is alternately fired by the " Last Day " and by a 
 creation of peers, who fluctuates between rhap- 
 sodic applause of King George and rhapsodic 
 applause of Jehovah. After spending " a foolish 
 youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being 
 a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of "Wharton, 
 after aiming in vain at a parliamentary career, and 
 angling for pensions and preferment with ful- 
 some dedications and fustian odes, he is a little 
 disgusted with his imperfect success, and has 
 determined to retire from the general mendi- 
 cancy business to a particular branch ; in other 
 words, he has determined on that renunciation of 
 the world implied in "taking orders," with the 
 prospect of a good Hving and an advantageous 
 matrimonial connection. And he personifies the 
 nicest balance of temporalities and spiritualities. 
 He is equally impressed with the momentousness 
 of death and of burial fees ; he languishes at once 
 for immortal life and for " livings " ; he has a 
 fervid attachment to patrons in general, but on 
 the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, 
 with something more than official conviction, the 
 nothingness of earthly things ; and he will feel 
 something more than private disgust if his meri- 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 3 
 
 torious efforts in directing men's attention to 
 anotlaer world are not rewarded by substantial 
 preferment in this. His secular man believes in 
 cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic 
 attire for " an ornament of religion and virtue " ; 
 hopes courtiers will never forget to copy Sir 
 Eobert Walpole ; and writes begging-letters to 
 the King's mistress. His spiritual man recog- 
 nises no motives more familiar than Golgotha 
 and " the skies " ; it walks in graveyards, or it 
 soars among the stars. His religion exhausts 
 itself in ejaculations and rebukes, and knows no 
 medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. 
 If it were not for the prospect of immortality, he 
 considers, it would be wise and agreeable to be 
 indecent, or to murder one's father ; and, heaven 
 apart, it would be extremely irrational in any 
 man not to be a knave. Man, he thinks, is a 
 compound of the angel and the brute : the brute 
 is to be humbled by being reminded of its " rela- 
 tion to the stalls," and frightened into moder- 
 ation by the contemplation of deathbeds and 
 skulls ; the angel is to be developed by vituper- 
 ating this world and exalting the next ; and by 
 this double process you get the Christian—" the 
 highest style of man." With all this, our new- 
 made divine is an unmistakeable poet. To a clay 
 compounded chiefly of the worldling and the 
 
4 AVOELDLINESS AXD OTHER-WOELDLINESS : 
 
 rhetorician, there is added a real spark of Prome- 
 thean fire. He will one day clothe his apostro- 
 phes and objurgations, his astronomical religion 
 and his charnel-house morality, in lasting verse, 
 which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold 
 and jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive : 
 for this divine is Edward Young, the future 
 author of the " Night Thoughts." 
 
 Judging from Young's works, one might im- 
 agine that the preacher had been organised in 
 him by hereditary transmission through a long 
 line of clerical forefathers, ^that the diamonds 
 of the " Night Thoughts " had been slowly con- 
 densed from the charcoal of ancestral sermons. 
 Yet it was not so. His grandfather, apparently, 
 wrote himself gentleman , not clerk; and there 
 is no evidence that preaching had run in the 
 family blood before it took that turn in the 
 person of the poet's father, who was quadruply 
 clerical, being at once rector, prebendary, court 
 chaplain, and dean. Young was born at his 
 father's rectory of Upham, in 1681. In due 
 time the boy went to Winchester College, and 
 subsequently, though not till he was twenty- 
 two, to Oxford, where, for his father's sake, he 
 was befriended by the wardens of two colleges, 
 and in 1708, three years after his father's death, 
 nominated by Archbishop Tenison to a law fel- 
 
THE POET YOUKG. 5 
 
 lowship at All Souls. Of Young's life at Oxford 
 in these years, hardly anything is known. His 
 biographer, Croft, has nothing to tell us but the 
 vague report that, when " Young found himself 
 independent and his own master at All Souls, 
 he was not the ornament to religion and mor- 
 ality that he afterwards became," and the per- 
 haps apocryphal anecdote, that Tindal, the 
 atheist, confessed himself embarrassed by the 
 originality of Young's arguments. Both the 
 report and the anecdote, however, are borne out 
 by indirect evidence. As to the latter, Young 
 has left us sufficient proof that he was fond 
 of arguing on the theological side, and that he 
 had his own way of treating old subjects. As 
 to the former, we learn that Pope, after saying 
 other things which we know to be true of Young, 
 added, that he passed " a foolish youth, the sport 
 of peers and poets"; and, from all the indications 
 we possess of his career till he was nearly fifty, 
 we are inclined to think that Pope's statement 
 only errs by defect, and that he should rather 
 have said, " a foolish youth and middle age." 
 It is not likely that Young was a very hard 
 student, for he impressed Johnson, who saw him 
 in his old age, as " not a great scholar," and as 
 surprisingly ignorant of what Johnson thought 
 " quite common maxims " in literature ; and there 
 
6 WOELDLINESS AND OTHER- WOELDLINESS : 
 
 is 110 evidence that lie filled either his leisure or 
 his purse by taking pupils. His career as an 
 author did not begin till he was nearly thirty, 
 even dating from the publication of a portion 
 of the " Last Day," in the Tatler ; so that he 
 could hardly have been absorbed in composi- 
 tion. But where the fully developed insect is 
 parasitic, we believe the larva is usually parasitic 
 also, and we shall probably not be far wrong in 
 supposing that Young at Oxford, as elsewhere, 
 spent a good deal of his time in hanging 
 about possible and actual patrons, and accom- 
 modating himself to their habits with consider- 
 able flexibility of conscience and of tongue ; being 
 none the less ready, upon occasion, to present 
 himself as the champion of theology, and to 
 rhapsodise at convenient moments in the com- 
 pany of the skies or of skulls. That brilliant 
 profligate, the Duke of Wharton, to whom Young 
 afterwards clung as his chief patron, was at this 
 time a mere boy; and, though it is probable 
 that their intimacy had already begun, since the 
 Duke's father and mother were friends of the 
 old Dean, that intimacy ought not to aggravate 
 any unfavourable inference as to Young's Oxford 
 life. It is less likely that he fell into any excep-. 
 tional vice, than that he diff'ered from the men 
 around him chiefly in his episodes of theolooical 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 7 
 
 advocacy and rhapsodic solemnity. He prob- 
 ably sowed his wild oats after the coarse fashion 
 of his times, for he has left us sufficient evidence 
 that his moral sense was not delicate ; but his 
 companions, who were occupied in sowing their 
 own oats, perhaps took it as a matter of course 
 that he should be a rake, and were only struck 
 with the exceptional circumstance that he was 
 a pious and moralising rake. 
 
 There is some irony in the fact that the two 
 first poetical productions of Young, published in 
 the same year, were his " Epistle to Lord Lans- 
 downe," celebrating the recent creation of peers 
 — Lord Lansdowne's creation in particular ; and 
 the " Last Day." Other poets, besides Young, 
 found the device for obtaining a Tory majority 
 by turning twelve insignificant commoners into 
 insignificant lords, an irresistible stimulus to 
 verse ; but no other poet showed so versatile an 
 enthusiasm — so nearly equal an ardour for the 
 honour of the new baron and the honour of the 
 Deity. But the twofold nature of the sycophant 
 and the psalmist is not more |strikingly shown 
 in the contrasted themes of the two poems, than 
 in the transitions from bombast about monarchs, 
 to bombast about the resurrection, in the " Last 
 Day " itself. The dedication of this poem to 
 Queen Anne, Young afterwards suppressed, for 
 
8 WORLDLINESS ANI) OTHER--\^'ORLDLINESS : 
 
 he was always ashamed of having flattered a 
 dead patron. In this dedication, Croft tells us, 
 " he gives her Majesty praise indeed for her vic- 
 tories, but says that the author is more pleased 
 to see her rise from this lower world, soaring 
 above the clouds, passing the first and second 
 heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her ; 
 nor will he lose her there, he says, but keep her 
 stm in view through the boundless spaces on 
 the other side of creation, in her journey towards 
 eternal bliss, till he behold the heaven of heavens 
 open, and angels receiving and conveying her 
 stUl onward from the stretch of his imagina- 
 tion, which tires in her pursuit, and falls back 
 again to earth." 
 
 The self-criticism which prompted the suppres- 
 sion of the dedication, did not, however, lead 
 him to improve either the rhyme or the reason 
 of the unfortunate couplet — 
 
 " When other Bourbons reign in other lands, 
 And, if men's sins forbid not, other Annes." 
 
 In the "Epistle to Lord Lansdowne," Young 
 indicates his taste for the drama ; and there is 
 evidence that his tragedy of " Busiris " was " in 
 the theatre " as early as this very year, 1713, 
 though it was not brought on the stage till nearly 
 six years later ; so that Young was now very 
 
THE POET YOUKG. 9 
 
 decidedly bent on authorship, for which his 
 degree of B.C.L., taken in this year, was doubt- 
 less a magical equipment. Another poem, " The 
 Force of Eeligion ; or. Vanquished Love," founded 
 on the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her 
 husband, quickly followed, showing fertility in 
 feeble and tasteless verse; and on the Queen's 
 death, in 1714, Young lost no time in mak- 
 ing a poetical lament for a departed patron a 
 vehicle for extravagant laudation of the new 
 monarch. No further literary production of his 
 appeared until 1716, when a Latin oration which 
 he delivered on the foundation of the Cod- 
 rington Library at All Souls, gave him a new 
 opportunity for displaying his alacrity in inflated 
 panegyric. 
 
 In 1717 it is probable that Young accom- 
 panied the Duke of Wharton to Ireland, though 
 so slender are the materials for his biography, 
 that the chief basis for this supposition is a 
 passage in his " Conjectures on Original Com- 
 position," written when he was nearly eighty, in 
 which he intimates that he had once been in 
 that country. But there are many facts surviv- 
 ing to indicate that for the next eight or nine 
 years Young was a sort of attache of Whar- 
 ton's. In 1719, according to legal records, the 
 Duke granted him an annuity, in consideration 
 
10 WOELDLINESS AND OTHER- WO RLDLINESS : 
 
 of his having relinquished the office of tutor to 
 Lord Burleigh, with a life annuity of £100 a- 
 year, on his Grace's assurances that he would 
 provide for him in a much more ample manner. 
 And again, from the same evidence, it appears 
 that in 1721 Young received from Wharton a 
 bond for £600, in compensation of expenses in- 
 curred in standing for Parliament at the Duke's 
 desire, and as an earnest of greater services which 
 his G-race had promised him on his refraining 
 from the spiritual and temporal advantages of 
 taking orders with a certainty of two livings 
 in the gift of his college. It is clear, therefore, 
 that lay advancement, as long as there was any 
 chance of it, had more attractions for Young 
 than clerical preferment ; and that at this time 
 he accepted the Duke of Wharton as the pilot 
 of his career. 
 
 A more creditable relation of Youne-'s was his 
 friendship with Tickell, with whom he was in the 
 habit of interchanging criticisms, and to whom 
 in 1719 — the same year, let us note, in which he 
 took his doctor's degree — he addressed his " Lines 
 on the Death of Addison." Close upon these fol- 
 lowed his "Paraphrase of Part of the Book of 
 Job," with a dedication to Parker, recently made 
 Lord Chancellor, showing that the possession 
 of Wharton's patronage did not prevent Young 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 11 
 
 from fishing in other waters. He knew nothing 
 of Parker, but that did not prevent him from 
 magnifying the new Chancellor's merits ; on the 
 other hand, he did know Wharton, but this again 
 did not prevent him from prefixing to his tragedy, 
 " The Eevenge," which appeared in 1721, a dedi- 
 cation attributing to the Duke all virtues, as well 
 as all accomplishments. In the concluding sen- 
 tence of this dedication. Young naively indicates 
 that a considerable ingredient in his gratitude 
 was a Kvely sense of anticipated favours. " My 
 present fortune is his bounty, and my future his 
 care ; which I will venture to say will always be 
 remembered to his honour ; since he, I know, 
 intended his generosity as an encouragement to 
 merit, though, through his very pardonable par- 
 tiality to one who bears him so sincere a duty 
 and respect, I happen to receive the benefit of 
 it." Young was economical with his ideas and 
 images ; he was rarely satisfied with using a 
 clever thing once, and this bit of ingenious 
 humility was afterwards made to do duty in the 
 " Instalment," a poem addressed to Walpole : — 
 
 " Be this thy partial smile, from censure free, 
 'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me." 
 
 It was probably " The Eevenge " that Young 
 was writing when, as we learn from Spence's 
 
1 2 WOELDLINESS AND OTHKR-WORLDLINESS : 
 
 anecdotes, the Duke of Wharton gave him a 
 skull with a candle fixed in it, as the most ap- 
 propriate lamp by which to write tragedy. Ac- 
 cording to Young's dedication, the Duke was 
 " accessory " to the scenes of this tragedy in a 
 more important way, "not only by suggesting 
 the most beautiful incident in them, but by 
 making all possible provision for the success of 
 the whole." A statement which is credible, not 
 indeed on the ground of Young's dedicatory 
 assertion, liut from the known ability of the 
 Duke, who, as Pope tells us, possessed 
 
 " Eacli gift of ISTature and of Art, 
 And wanted nothing but an lionest lieart." 
 
 The year 1722 seems to have been the period 
 of a visit to Mr Dodington, at Eastbury, in Dor- 
 setshire — the "pure Dorsetian downs" celebrated 
 by Thomson, — • in which Young made the ac- 
 quaintance of Voltaire ; for in the subsequent 
 dedication of his " Sea Piece "to " Mr Voltaire," 
 he recalls their meeting on Dorset Downs ; and it 
 was in this year that Christopher Pitt, a gentle- 
 man-poet of those days, addressed an " Epistle 
 to Dr Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorset- 
 shire," which has at least the merit of this 
 biographical couplet — 
 
 " While with your Dodington retired you sit, 
 Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit." 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 13 
 
 Dodington, apparently, was charmed in his turn, 
 for he told Dr Warton that Young was " far 
 superior to the French poet in the variety and 
 novelty of his hon-mots and repartees." Unfor- 
 tunately, the only specimen of Young's wit on 
 this occasion that has been preserved to us is 
 the epigram represented as an extempore retort 
 (spoken aside, surely) to Voltaire's criticism of 
 MUton's episode of Sin and Death : — 
 
 " Thou art so witty, profligate, and tliin, 
 At once we tliink tliee ililton, Death, and Sin ; " — 
 
 an epigram which, in the absence of " flowing 
 Burgundy," does not strike us as remarkably 
 brilliant. Let us give Young the benefit of the 
 doubt thrown on the genuineness of this epi- 
 gram by his own poetical dedication, in which 
 he represents himself as having "soothed" 
 Voltaire's " rage " against Milton " with gentle 
 rhymes " ; though in other respects that dedica- 
 tion is anything but favourable to a high esti- 
 mate of Young's wit. Other evidence apart, we 
 should not be eager for the after-dinner conver- 
 sation of the man who wrote, — 
 
 " Thine is the Drama, how renown'd ! 
 Thine Epic's loftier trump to sound ; — 
 But let Arion's sea-drung liarp he mine . 
 But iohere's his dolphin ? Know'st thou where ? 
 May that he found in thee, Voltaire / " 
 
14 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLD LINESS : 
 
 The "Satires" appeared in 1725 and 1726, 
 eacli, of course, with its laudatory dedication 
 and its compliments insinuated amongst the 
 rhymes. The seventh and last is dedicated to 
 Sir Eobert Walpole, is very short, and contains 
 nothing in particular except lunatic flattery of 
 George I. and his prime minister, attribut- 
 ing that monarch's late escape from a storm 
 at sea to the miraculous influence of his grand 
 and virtuoiTS soul — for George, he says, rivals 
 the angels : — 
 
 " George, who in foes can soft affections raise, 
 And charm envenomed satire into praise. 
 Xor human rage alone his pow'r perceives, 
 But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves. 
 Ev'n storms (Death's fiercest ministers !) forbear, 
 And in their own wUd empire learn to spare. 
 Thus, !N"ature's self, supporting Plan's decree. 
 Stales Britain's sovereign, sovereign of the sea,'' 
 
 As for Walpole, what he felt at this tremen- 
 dous crisis 
 
 " Xo powers of language, but his own, can tell, — - 
 His own, which Nature and the (traces form, 
 At will, to raise, or hush, the ci^'il storm." 
 
 It is a coincidence worth noticins;, that this 
 seventh Satire was published in 1726, and that 
 the warrant of George I., granting Young a 
 pension of £200 a-year from Lady-day 1725, 
 is dated May 3, 1726. The gratitude exhibited 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 15 
 
 in this Satire may have been chiefly prospective, 
 but the " Instalment " — a poem inspired by the 
 thrilling event of Walpole's installation as Knight 
 of the Garter — was clearly written with the 
 double ardour of a man who has got a pension, 
 and hopes for something more. His emotion 
 about Walpole is precisely at the same pitch as 
 his subsequent emotion about the Second Advent. 
 In the " Instalment " he says : — 
 
 " With invocations some tlieir hearts inflame ; 
 / need no muse, a Walpole is my theme. 
 
 And of God coming to judgment, he says, in the 
 " Night Thoughts " :— 
 
 " I find my inspiration in my theme ; 
 The grandeur of my suhject is my muse." 
 
 Nothing can be feebler than this " Instal- 
 ment," except in the strength of impudence with 
 which the writer professes to scorn the prostitu- 
 tion of fair fame, the "profanation of celestial 
 fire." 
 
 Herbert Croft tells us that Young made more 
 than three thousand pounds by his " Satires," — a 
 surprising statement, taken in connection with 
 the reasonable doubt he throws on the story 
 related in Spence's 'Anecdotes,' that the Duke 
 of Wharton gave Young £2000 for this work. 
 Young, however, seems to have been tolerably 
 
1 6 WOBLDLINESS AND OTHER-WOELDLINESS : 
 
 fortunate in the pecuniary results of his publica- 
 tions ; and with his literary profits, his annuity 
 from Wharton, his fellowship, and his pension, 
 not to mention other bounties which may be 
 inferred from the high merits he discovers in 
 many men of wealth and position, we may fairly 
 suppose that he now laid the foundation of the 
 considerable fortune he left at his death. 
 
 It is probable that the Duke of Wharton's final 
 departure for the Continent and disgrace at 
 Court in 1726, and the consequent cessation of 
 Young's reliance on his patronage, tended not 
 only to heighten the temperature of his poetical 
 enthusiasm for Sir Eobert Walpole, but also to 
 turn his thoughts towards the Church again, as 
 the second-best means of rising in the world. 
 On the accession of George II., Young found 
 the same transcendent merits in him as in 
 his predecessor, and celebrated them in a style 
 of poetry previously unattempted by him — the 
 Pindaric ode, a poetic form which helped him to 
 surpass himself in furious bombast. " Ocean, an 
 Ode : concluding with a Wish," was the title of 
 this piece. He afterwards pruned it, and cut 
 off, amongst other things, the concluding Wish, 
 expressing the yearning for humble retirement, 
 which, of course, had prompted him to the efi"u- 
 sion ; but we may judge of the rejected stanzas 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 17 
 
 by the quality of those lie has allowed to remain. 
 For example, calling on Britain's dead mariners 
 to rise and meet their " country's full blown 
 glory " in the person of the new King, he says : — 
 
 " "What powerful charm 
 
 Can death disarm 1 
 Your long, your iron slumbers break 1 
 
 By Jove, hy Fame, 
 
 By George's name 
 Awake ! awake ! awake ! awake ! " 
 
 Soon after this notable production, which was 
 written with the ripe folly of forty-seven, Young 
 took orders, and was presently appointed chap- 
 lain to the King. " The Brothers," his third and 
 last tragedy, which was already in rehearsal, he 
 now withdrew from the stage, and sought repu- 
 tation in a way more accordant with the decorum 
 of his new profession, by turning prose-Tsrriter. 
 But after publishing " A True Estimate of 
 Human Life," with a dedication to the Queen, 
 as one of the "most shining representatives" 
 of God on earth, and a sermon, entitled " An 
 Apology for Princes ; or, the Eeverence due to 
 Government," preached before the House of 
 Commons, his Pindaric ambition again seized 
 him, and he matched his former ode by another, 
 called " Imperium Pelagi ; a Naval Lyric, written 
 in Imitation of Pindar's spirit, occasioned by his 
 Majesty's Eeturn from Hanover, 1729, and the 
 
 B 
 
18 WORLD LINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS : 
 
 succeeding Peace." Since he afterwards sup- 
 pressed tliis second ode, we must suppose that it 
 was rather worse than the first. Next came his 
 two " Epistles to Pope, concerning the Authors 
 of the Age," remarkable for nothing but the 
 audacity of affectation with which the most 
 servile of poets professes to despise servility. 
 
 In 1730, Young was presented by his college 
 with the rectory of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire ; 
 and in the following year, when he was just 
 fifty, he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a widow 
 with two children, who seems to have been in 
 favour with Queen Caroline, and who probably 
 had an income — two attractions which doubtless 
 enhanced the power of her other charms. Pas- 
 toral duties and domesticity probably cured 
 Young of some bad habits ; but, unhappily, they 
 did not cure him either of flattery or of fustian. 
 Three more odes followed, quite as bad as those 
 of his bachelorhood, except that in the third he 
 announced the wise resolution of never writino- 
 another. It must have been about this time, 
 since Young was now " turned of fifty," that he 
 wrote the letter to Mrs Howard (afterwards Lady 
 Sufi'olk), George II.'s mistress, which proves that 
 he used other engines, besides the Pindaric, in 
 "besieging Court favour." The letter is too 
 characteristic to be omitted : — 
 
THE POET YOUNtt. 19 
 
 " Monday Morning. 
 " Madam, — I know his majesty's goodness to his 
 servants, and his love of justice in general, so well, 
 that I am confident, if his majesty knew my case, I 
 should not have any cause to despair of his gracious 
 favour to me. 
 
 Abilities. 
 
 Want. 
 
 Good Manners. 
 
 Sufferings 
 
 Service. 
 
 and 
 
 Awe. 
 
 Zeal 
 
 ' for his 
 I majesty. 
 
 These, madam, are the proper points of consideration 
 in the person that humbly hopes his majesty's favour. 
 
 " As to Abilities, all I can presume to say is, I have 
 done the best I could to improve them. 
 
 "As to Good Manners, I desire no favour, if any 
 just objection lies against them. 
 
 " As for Service, I have been near seven years in his 
 majesty's, and never omitted any duty in it, which few 
 can say. 
 
 " As for Age, I am turned of fifty. 
 
 " As for Want, I have no manner of preferment. 
 
 "As for Sufferings, I have lost £300 per ann. by 
 being in his majesty's service ; as I have shown in a 
 Representation which his majesty has been so good as 
 to read and consider. 
 
 "As for Zeal, I have written nothing without show- 
 ing my duty to their majesties, and some pieces are 
 dedicated to them. 
 
 " This, madam, is the short and true state of my 
 case. They that make their court to the ministers, 
 and not their majesties, succeed better. If my case 
 deserves some consideration, and you can serve me in 
 it, I humbly hope and believe you will : I shall, there- 
 
20 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLD LINESS : 
 
 fore, trouble you no farther; but beg leave to sub- 
 scribe myself, with truest respect and gratitude, yours, 
 &c., Edwakd Young. 
 
 " P.S. — I have some liope that my Lord Townshend 
 is my friend ; if therefore soon, and before he leaves the 
 court, you had an opportunity of mentioning me, with 
 that favour you have been so good to show, I think it 
 would not fail of success ; and, if not, I shall owe you 
 more than any." — Suffolk Letters, vol. i. p. 285. 
 
 roung's wife died in 1741, leaving him one 
 son, born in 1733. That he had attached him- 
 self strongly to her two daughters by her former 
 marriage, there is better evidence in the report, 
 mentioned by Mrs Montagu, of his practical 
 kindness and liberality to the younger, than in 
 his lamentations over the elder as the "Narcissa" 
 of the " Night Thoughts." " Narcissa " had died 
 in 1735, shortly after marriage to Mr Temple, 
 the son of Lord Palmerston; and Mr Temple 
 himself, after a second marriage, died in 1740, a 
 year before Lady Elizabeth Young. These, then, 
 are the three deaths supposed to have inspired 
 "The Complaint," w^hich forms the three first 
 books of the " Night Thoughts " :— 
 
 '■ Insatiate archer, could not one suffice ? 
 Thy shaft flew thrice ; and thrice my peace was slain ; 
 And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn." 
 
 Since we find Young departing from the truth 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 21 
 
 of dates, in order to heigliten the effect of his 
 calamity, or at least of his climax, we need not 
 be surprised that he allowed his imagination 
 great freedom in other matters besides chronol- 
 ogy, and that the character of " Philander " can, 
 by no process, be made to fit Mr Temple. The 
 supposition that the much-lectured " Lorenzo " 
 of the " Night Thoughts " was Young's own son, 
 is hardly rendered more absurd by the fact that 
 the poem was written when that son was a boy, 
 than by the obvious artificiality of the characters 
 Young introduces as targets for his arguments 
 and rebukes. Among all the trivial efforts of 
 conjectural criticism, there can hardly be one 
 more futile than the attempt to discover the 
 original of those pitiable lay-figures, the " Lor- 
 enzos " and " Altamonts " of Young's didactic 
 prose and poetry. His muse never stood face to 
 face with a genuine, living human being ; she 
 would have been as much startled by such an 
 encounter as a stage necromancer whose incan- 
 tations and blue fire had actually conjured up 
 a demon. 
 
 The " Night Thoughts " appeared between 1741 
 and 1745. Although he declares in them that 
 he has chosen God for his " patron " henceforth, 
 this is not at all to the prejudice of some half- 
 dozen lords, duchesses, and right honourables, 
 
22 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS : 
 
 who liave the privilege of sharing finely turned 
 compliments with their co -patron. The line 
 which closed the Second Night in the earlier 
 editions — ■ 
 
 '■ Wits spare not Heaven, Wilmington I — nor tliee "— 
 
 is an intense specimen of that perilous juxta- 
 position of ideas by which Young, in his inces- 
 sant search after point and novelty, unconsciously 
 converts his compliments into sarcasms ; and his 
 apostrophe to the moon as more likely to be 
 favourable to his song if he calls her " fair Port- 
 land of the skies," is worthy even of his Pindaric 
 ravings. His ostentatious renunciation of worldly 
 schemes, and especially of his twenty - years' 
 siege of Court favour, are in the tone of one 
 who retains some hope, in the midst of his quer- 
 ulousness. 
 
 He descended from the astronomical rhapsodies 
 of his Ninth Night, published in 1745, to more 
 terrestrial strains in his " Eeflections on the 
 Public Situation of the Kingdom," dedicated to 
 the Duke of Newcastle ; but in this critical 
 year we get a glimpse of him through a more 
 prosaic and less refracting medium. He spent a 
 part of the year at Tunbridge Wells ; and Mrs 
 Montagu, who was there too, gives a very lively 
 picture of the " divine Doctor " in her letters to 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 23 
 
 the Duchess of Portland, on whom Young had 
 bestowed the superlative bombast to which we 
 have just referred. We shall borrow the quota- 
 tions from Dr Doran, in spite of their length, 
 because, to our mind, they present the most 
 agreeable portrait we possess of Young : — 
 
 " ' I have great joy in Dr Young, whom I disturbed 
 in a reverie. At first he started, then bowed, then 
 fell back into a surprise ; then began a speech, re- 
 lapsed into his astonishment two or three times, forgot 
 what he had been saying ; began a new subject, and 
 so went on. I told him your grace desired he would 
 write longer letters ; to which he cried " Ha ! " most 
 emphatically, and I leave you to interpret what it 
 meant. He has made a friendship with one person 
 here, whom I believe you would not imagine to have 
 been made for his bosom friend. You would, perhaps, 
 suppose it was a bishop or dean, a prebend, a pious 
 preacher, a clergyman of exemplary life, or, if a lay- 
 man, of most virtuous conversation, one that had para- 
 phrased St Matthew, or wrote comments on St Paul. 
 . . You would not guess that this associate of the 
 doctor's was — old Gibber ! Certainly, in their religious, 
 moral, and civil character, there is no relation ; but in 
 their dramatic capacity there is some.' — Mrs Montagu 
 was not aware that Gibber, whom Young had named 
 not disparagingly in his Satires, was the brother of his 
 old schoolfellow ; but to return to our hero. ' The 
 waters,' says Mrs Montagu, ' have raised his spirits to 
 a fine pitch, as your grace will imagine, when I tell 
 you how sublime an answer he made to a very vulgar 
 question. I asked him how long he stayed at the 
 
24 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WOELDLINESS : 
 
 Wells : he said, As long as my rival stayed ; — as long 
 as the sun did.' Among the visitors at the Wells were 
 Lady Sunderland (wife of Sir Eobert Sutton) and her 
 sister, Mrs Tichborne. ' He did an admirable thing to 
 Lady Sunderland : on her mentioning Sir Eobert Sut- 
 ton, he asked her where Sir Eobert's lady was ; on 
 which we all laughed very heartily, and I brought him 
 off, half ashamed, to my lodgings, where, during break- 
 fast, he assured me he had asked after Lady Sunder- 
 land, because he had a great honour for her ; and that, 
 having a respect for her sister, he designed to have 
 inquired after her, if we had not put it out of his head 
 by laughing at him. You must know, Mrs Tichborne 
 sat next to Lady Sunderland. It would have been 
 admirable to have had him finish his compliment in 
 that manner.' . ' His expressions all bear the stamp 
 of novelty, and his thoughts of sterling sense. He 
 practises a kind of philosophical abstinence. . . He 
 carried Mrs Eolt and myself to Tunbridge, five miles 
 from hence, where we were to see some fine old ruins. 
 . . First rode the doctor on a tall steed, decently 
 caparisoned in dark grey ; next, ambled Mrs Eolt on 
 a hackney horse ; . . then followed your humble 
 servant on a milk-white palfrey. I rode on in safety, 
 and at leisure to observe the company, especially the 
 two figures that brought up the rear. The iirst was 
 my servant, valiantly armed with two uncharged pis- 
 tols ; the last was the doctor's man, whose uncombed 
 hair so resembled the mane of the horse he rode, one 
 could not help imagining they were of kin, and wish- 
 ing, for the honour of the family, that they had had 
 one comb betwixt them. On his head Avas a velvet 
 cap, much resembling a black saucepan, and on his side 
 hung a little basket. — At last we arrived at the King's 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 25 
 
 Head, where the loyalty of the doctor induced him to 
 alight ; and then, knight-errant-like, he took his damsels 
 from off their palfreys, and courteously handed us into 
 the inn.' . . The party returned to the Wells ; and 
 ' the silver Cynthia held up her lamp in the heavens ' 
 the while. ' The night silenced all but our divine 
 doctor, who sometimes uttered things fit to be spoken 
 in a season when all nature seems to be hushed and 
 hearkening. I followed, gathering wisdom as I went, 
 till I found, by my horse's stumbling, that I was in a 
 bad road, and that the blind was leading the blind. 
 So I placed my servant between the doctor and myself ; 
 which he not perceiving, went on in a most philosoph- 
 ical strain, to the great admiration of my poor clown 
 of a servant, who, not being wrought up to any pitch 
 of enthusiasm, nor making any answer to all the fine 
 things he heard, the doctor, wondering I was dumb, 
 and gTieving I was so stupid, looked round and declared 
 his surprise.' " 
 
 Young's oddity and absence of mind are 
 gathered from other sources besides these stories 
 of Mrs Montagu's, and gave rise to the report 
 that he was the original of Fielding's " Parson 
 Adams " ; but this Croft denies, and mentions 
 another Young, who really sat for the portrait, 
 and who, we imagine, had both more Greek and 
 more genuine simplicity than the poet. His 
 love of chatting with CoUey Giber was an indi- 
 cation that the old predilection for the stage 
 survived, in spite of his emphatic contempt for 
 "all joys but joys that never can expire"; and 
 
26 WOELDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : 
 
 the production of " The Brothers " at Drury Lane 
 in 1753, after a suppression of fifteen years, was 
 perhaps not entirely due to the expressed desire 
 to give the proceeds to the Society for the Pro- 
 pagation of the Gospel. The author's profits 
 were not more than £400 — in those days a dis- 
 appointing sum ; and Young, as we learn from 
 his friend Eichardson, did not make this the limit 
 of his donation, but gave a thousand guineas to 
 the Society. " I had some talk with him," says 
 Eichardson, in one of his letters, " about this 
 great action. ' I always,' said he, ' intended to 
 do something handsome for the Society. Had 
 I deferred it to my demise, I should have given 
 away my son's money. All the world are in- 
 clined to pleasure ; could I have given myself a 
 greater by disposing of the sum to a different 
 use, I should have done it.' " 
 
 His next work was " The Centaur not Fabu- 
 lous ; in Six Letters to a Friend, on the Life in 
 Vogue," which reads very much like the most 
 objurgatory parts of the " Night Thoughts " re- 
 duced to prose. It is preceded by a preface 
 which, though addressed to a lady, is in its 
 denunciations of vice as grossly indecent and 
 almost as flippant as the epilogues written by 
 " friends," which he allowed to be reprinted 
 after his tragedies in the latest edition of his 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 2 7 
 
 works. We like mucli better than " The Cen- 
 taur," " Conjectures on Original Composition," 
 written in 1759, for the sake, he says, of com- 
 municating to the world the well-known anec- 
 dote about Addison's deathbed, and, with the 
 exception of his poem on Eesignation, the last 
 thing he ever published. 
 
 The estrangement from his son, which must 
 have embittered the later years of his life, ap- 
 pears to have begun not many years after the 
 mother's death. On the marriage of her second 
 daughter, who had previously presided over 
 Young's household, a Mrs Hallows, understood 
 to be a woman of discreet age, and the daughter 
 (or widow) of a clergyman who was an old friend 
 of Young's, became housekeeper at Welwyn. 
 Opinions about ladies are apt to differ. " Mrs 
 Hallows was a woman of piety, improved by 
 reading," says one witness. " She was a very 
 coarse woman," says Dr Johnson ; and we shall 
 presently find some indirect evidence that her 
 temper was perhaps not quite so much improved 
 as her piety. Servants, it seems, were not fond 
 of remaining long in the house with her ; a satir- 
 ical curate, named Kidgell, hints at "drops of 
 juniper " taken as a cordial (but perhaps he was 
 spiteful, and a teetotaler) ; and Young's son is 
 said to have told his father that " an old man 
 
28 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : 
 
 should not resign himself to the management 
 of anybody." The result was, that the son was 
 banished from home for the rest of his father's 
 lifetime, though Young seems never to have 
 thought of disinheriting him. 
 
 Our latest glimpses of the aged poet are 
 derived from certain letters of Mr Jones, his 
 curate — letters preserved in the British Museum, 
 and, happily, made accessible to common mortals 
 in Nichols's ' Anecdotes.' Mr Jones was a man 
 of some literary activity and ambition, — a col- 
 lector of interesting documents, and one of those 
 concerned in the " Free and Candid Disquisi- 
 tions," the design of which was "to point out 
 such things in our ecclesiastical establishment 
 as want to be reviewed and amended." On 
 these and kindred subjects he corresponded with 
 Dr Birch, occasionally troubling him with queries 
 and manuscripts. We have a respect for Mr 
 Jones. Unlike most persons who trouble others 
 with queries or manuscripts, he mitigates the 
 infliction by such gifts as " a fat pullet," wishing 
 he " had anything better to send ; but this de- 
 pauperising vicarage (of Alconbury) too often 
 checks the freedom and forwardness of my mind." 
 Another day comes a " pound canister of tea " ; 
 another, a " young fatted goose." Mr Jones's 
 first letter from Welwyn is dated June 1759, not 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 29 
 
 quite six years before Young's death. In June 
 1762, he expresses a wish to go to London " this 
 summer. But," he continues, — 
 
 " My time and pains are almost continually taken 
 up here, and . . I have been (I now find) a consider- 
 able loser, upon the whole, by continuing here so long. 
 The consideration of this, and the inconveniences I sus- 
 tained, and do still experience, from my late illness, 
 obliged me at last to acquaint the Doctor (Young) 
 with my case, and to assure him that I plainly per- 
 ceived the duty and confinement here to be too much 
 for me ; for which reason I must (I said) beg to be at 
 liberty to resign my charge at Michaelmas. I began 
 to give him these notices in February, when I was very 
 ill : and now I perceive, by what he told me the other 
 day, that he is in some difficulty: for which reason he 
 is at last (he says) resolved to advertise, and even 
 {which is much wondered at) to raise the salary consider- 
 ably higher. (What he allowed my predecessors was 
 £20 per annum ; and now he proposes £50, as he tells 
 me.) I never asked him to raise it for me, though I 
 well knew it was not equal to the duty ; nor did I say 
 a word about myself when he lately suggested to me 
 his intentions upon this subject." 
 
 In a postscript to this letter he says : — 
 
 " I may mention to you farther, as a friend that may 
 be trusted, that, in all likelihood, the poor old gentle- 
 man will not find it a very easy matter, unless by dint 
 of money, and force u2)on himself, to procure a man 
 that he can like for his next curate, nor one that will 
 stay with him so long as I have done. Then, his great 
 age will recur to people's thoughts ; and if he has any 
 
oO WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WOELDLINESS : 
 
 foibles, either in temper or conduct, they will be sure 
 not to be forgotten on this occasion by those who know 
 him ; and those who do not will probably be on their 
 guard. On these and the like considerations, it is by 
 no means an eligible office to be seeking out for a 
 curate for him, as he has several times wished me to 
 do ; and would, if he knew that I am now writing to 
 you, wish your assistance also. But my best friends 
 here, who well foresee the prohable consequences, and wish 
 me well; earnestly dissuade me from complying ; and I 
 will decline the office with as much decency as I can : 
 but high salary will, I suppose, fetch in somebody or 
 other, soon." 
 
 In tlie following July, lie writes : — 
 
 " The old gentleman here (I may venture to tell you 
 freely) seems to me to be in a pretty odd way of late, 
 — moping, dejected, self-willed, and as if surrounded 
 with some perplexing circumstances. Though I visit 
 him pretty frequently for short intervals, I say very 
 little to his affairs, not choosing to be a party con- 
 cerned, especially in cases of so critical and tender a 
 nature. There is much mystery in almost all his tem- 
 poral affairs, as well as in many of his speculative 
 theories. Whoever lives in this neighbourhood to see 
 liis exit, will probably see and hear some very strange 
 things. Time will show ; — I am afraid, not greatly to 
 his credit. There is thought to be an irremoveaUe 
 obstruction to his hap^nncss ivithin his walls, as well as 
 another without them ; but the former is the more 
 powerful, and like to continue so. He has this day 
 been trying anew to engage me to stay with him. No 
 lucrative views can tempt me to sacrifice my liberty or 
 my health, to such measures as are proposed here. 
 
THE POET YOUKG. 31 
 
 iVo7' do I like to have to do with persons whose luord and 
 honour cannot he de-pended on. So much for this very 
 odd and unhappy topic." 
 
 In August, Mr Jones's tone is slightly modi- 
 fied. Earnest entreaties, not lucrative considera- 
 tions, have induced him to cheer the Doctor's 
 dejected heart by remaining at Welwyn some 
 time longer. The Doctor is, " in various respects, 
 a very unhappy man," and few know so much of 
 these " respects " as Mr Jones. In September, 
 he recurs to the subject : — 
 
 " My ancient gentleman here is still full of trouble : 
 which moves my concern, though it moves only the 
 secret laughter of many, and some untoward surmises 
 in disfavour of him and his household. The loss of a 
 very large sum of money (about £200) is talked of; 
 whereof this vill and neighbourhood is full. Some 
 disbelieve ; others say, ' It is no wonder, lohere ahout 
 eighteen or more servants are sometimes taken and dis- 
 missed in the course of a year.' The gentleman himself 
 is allowed by all to be far more harmless and easy in 
 his family than some one else who hath too much the 
 lead in it. This, among others, was one reason for my 
 late motion to quit." 
 
 No other mention of Young's affairs occurs 
 until April 2, 1765, when he says that Dr Young 
 is very ill, attended by two physicians. 
 
 " Having mentioned this young gentleman (Dr 
 Young's son), I would acquaint you next, that he came 
 
32 AVOELDLINESS AXD OTHEE-WORLDLINESS : 
 
 hither this morning, having been sent for, as I am told, 
 by the direction of Mrs Hallows. Indeed, she inti- 
 mated to me as much herself. And if this be so, I 
 must say that it is one of the most prudent acts she 
 ever did, or could have done in such a case as this ; as 
 it may prove a means of preventing much confusion 
 after the death of tlie Doctor. I have had some little 
 discourse with the son : he seems much affected, and I 
 believe really is so. He earnestly wishes his father 
 might be pleased to ask after him ; for you must know 
 he has not yet done this, nor is, in my opinion, like to 
 do it. And it has been said farther, that upon a late 
 application made to him on the behalf of his son, he 
 desired that no more might be said to him about it. 
 How true this may be, I cannot as yet be certain ; all 
 I shall say is, it seems not improbable. . I heartily 
 wish the antient man's heart may prove tender towards 
 his son ; though, knowing Mm so well, I can scarce hope 
 to hear such clcsirdble neics." 
 
 Eleven days later, he writes : — - 
 
 " I have now the pleasure to acquaint you, that the 
 late Dr Young, though he had for many years kept his 
 son at a distance from him, yet has now at last left 
 him all his possessions, after the payment of certain 
 legacies ; so that the young gentleman (who bears a 
 fair character, and behaves well, as far as I can hear 
 or see) will, I hope, soon enjoy and make a prudent 
 use of a handsome fortune. The father, on his death- 
 bed, and since my return from London, was applied to 
 in the tenderest manner, by one of his physicians, and 
 by another person, to admit the son into his presence, 
 to make submission, intreat forgiveness, and obtain his 
 blessing. As to an interview with his son, he inti- 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 33 
 
 mated that he chose to decline it, as his spirits were 
 then low, and his nerves weak. With regard to the 
 next particular, he said, ' I heartily forgive him'; and 
 upon mention of this last, he gently lifted up liis hand, 
 and letting it gently fall, pronounced these words, 
 ' Crod iless him !'...! know it will give you plea- 
 sure to be farther informed, that he was pleased to 
 make respectful mention of me in his will ; expressing 
 his satisfaction in my care of his parish, bequeathing to 
 me a handsome legacy, and appointing me to be one of 
 his executors." 
 
 So far Mr Jones, in his confidential correspon- 
 dence with a "friend who may be trusted." 
 In a letter communicated apparently by him to 
 the 'Gentleman's Magazine' seventeen years later 
 — namely, in 1782 — on the appearance of Croft's 
 biography of Young, we find him speaking of 
 " the ancient gentleman " in a tone of reverential 
 eulogy, quite at variance with the free comments 
 we have just quoted. But the Eev. John Jones 
 was probably of opinion, with Mrs Montagu, 
 whose contemporary and retrospective letters are 
 also set in a difi'erent key, that " the interests of 
 religion were connected with the character of a 
 man so distinguished for piety as Dr Young." 
 At ,all events, a subsequent quasi ofiicial state- 
 ment weighs nothing as evidence against con- 
 temporary, spontaneous, and confidential hints. 
 
 To Mrs Hallows, Young left a legacy of £1000, 
 
 
 
34 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WOELDLIKESS : 
 
 with the request that she would destroy all his 
 manuscripts. This final request, from some un- 
 known cause, was not complied with, and among 
 the papers he left behind him was the follow- 
 ing letter from Archbishop Seeker, which prob- 
 ably marks the date of his latest effort after 
 preferment : — • 
 
 "Deakert of St Paul's, July 8, 1758. 
 " Good De Young, — I have long wondered that 
 more suitable notice of your great merit hath not been 
 taken by persons in power. But how to remedy the 
 omission I see not. Xo encouragement hath ever been 
 given me to mention things of this nature to liis 
 Majesty. And therefore, in all likelihood, the only 
 consequence of doing it would be weakening the little 
 influence which else I may possibly have on some other 
 occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set you 
 above the need of adranccmcnt ; and your sentiments 
 above that coneern for it on your own aceount, which, on 
 that of the public, is sincerely felt by 
 " Your loving Brother, 
 
 " Tho. Caxt." 
 
 The loving brother's irony is severe ! 
 
 Perhaps the least questionable testimony to 
 the better side of Young's character is that of 
 Bishop Hildesley, who, as the vicar of a parish 
 near Welwyn, had been Young's neighbour for 
 upwards of twenty years. The affection of the 
 clergy for each other, we have observed, is, like 
 that of the fair sex, not at all of a blind and in- 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 35 
 
 fatuated kind ; and we may therefore the rather 
 believe them when they give each other any 
 extra-official praise. Bishop Hildesley, then, 
 writing of Young to Eichardson, says : — 
 
 "The impertinence of my frequent visits to him 
 was amply rewarded ; forasmuch as, I can truly say, 
 he never received me but with agreeable open com- 
 placency ; and I never left him but with profitable 
 pleasure and improvement. He was one or other, the 
 most modest, the most patient of contradiction, and 
 the most informing and entertaining I ever conversed 
 with — at least, of any man who had so just pretensions 
 to pertinacity and reserve.'' 
 
 Mr Langton, however, who was also a frequent 
 visitor of Young's, informed Boswell — 
 
 " That there was an air of benevolence in his man- 
 ner ; but that he could obtain from him less informa- 
 tion than he had hoped to receive from one who had 
 lived so much in intercourse with the brightest men of 
 what had been called the Augustan age of England ; 
 and that he showed a degree of eager curiosity con- 
 cerning the common occurrences that were then pass- 
 ing, which appeared somewhat remarkable in a man 
 of such intellectual stores, of such an advanced age, 
 and who had retired from life with declared disappoint- 
 ment in his expectations." 
 
 The same substance, we know, will exhibit 
 different qualities under different tests ; and, after 
 all, imperfect reports of individual impressions. 
 
36 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WOELDLIXESS : 
 
 whether immediate or traditional, are a very frail 
 basis on wMcli to build our opinion of a man. 
 One's character may be very indifferently mir- 
 rored in the mind of the most intimate neigh- 
 bour ; it all depends on the quality of that 
 gentleman's reflecting surface. 
 
 But, discarding any inferences from such un- 
 certain evidence, the outline of Young's character 
 is too distinctly traceable in the well -attested 
 facts of his life, and yet more in the self- be- 
 trayal that runs through all his works, for us 
 to fear that our general estimate of him may be 
 false. For, while no poet seems less easy and 
 spontaneous than Young, no poet discloses him- 
 self more completely. Men's minds have no 
 hiding-place out of themselves — their affecta- 
 tions do but betray another phase of their nature. 
 And if, in the present view of Young, we seem 
 to be more intent on laying bare unfavourable 
 facts than on shrouding them in charitable 
 speeches, it is not because we have any irrev- 
 erential pleasure in turning men's characters 
 the seamy side without, but because we see no 
 great advantage in considering a man as he 
 was not. Young's biographers and critics have 
 usually set out from the position that he was a 
 great religious teacher, and that his poetry is 
 morally sublime ; and they have toned down his 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 37 
 
 failings into harmony with their conception of 
 the divine and the poet. For our own part, we 
 set out from precisely the opposite conviction — 
 namely, that the religious and moral spirit of 
 Young's poetry is low and false ; "and we think 
 it of some importance to show that the " Night 
 Thoughts " are the reflex of a mind in which the 
 higher human sympathies were inactive. This 
 judgment is entirely opposed to our youthful 
 predilections and enthusiasm. The sweet garden- 
 breath of early enjoyment lingers about many a 
 page of the " Night Thoughts," and even of the 
 " Last Day," giving an extrinsic charm to pas- 
 sages of stilted rhetoric and false sentiment ; 
 but the sober and repeated reading of maturer 
 years has convinced us that it would hardly be 
 possible to find a more typical instance than 
 Young's poetry, of the mistake which substitutes 
 interested obedience for sympathetic emotion, 
 and baptises egoism as religion. 
 
 Pope said of Young, that he had " much of 
 a sublime genius without common-sense." The 
 deficiency Pope meant to indicate was, we im- 
 agine, moral rather than intellectual : it was the 
 want of that fine sense of what is fitting in 
 speech and action, which is often eminently 
 possessed by men and ^TOmen whose intellect 
 
38 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WOELDLINESS : 
 
 is of a very common order, but who have the 
 sincerity and dignity which can never coexist 
 with the selfish preoccupations of vanity or in- 
 terest. This was the " common-sense " in which 
 Young was conspicuously deficient ; and it was 
 partly owing to this deficiency that his genius, 
 waiting to be determined by the highest prizes, 
 fluttered uncertainly from efi"ort to eff"ort, until, 
 when he was more than sixty, it suddenly spread 
 its broad wing, and soared so as to arrest the 
 gaze of other generations besides his own. For 
 he had no versatility of faculty to mislead him. 
 The " Night Thoughts " only difi"er from his pre- 
 vious works in the degree and not in the kind 
 of power they manifest. Whether he writes 
 prose or poetry, rh3ane or blank verse, dramas, 
 satires, odes, or meditations, we see everywhere 
 the same Young — the same narrow circle of 
 thoughts, the same love of abstractions, the 
 same telescopic view of human things, the same 
 appetency towards antithetic apothegm and 
 rhapsodic climax. The passages that arrest us 
 in his tragedies are those in which he antici- 
 pates some fine passage in the " Night Thoughts," 
 and where his characters are only transparent 
 shadows through which we see the bewigged 
 embonpoint of the didactic poet, excogitating 
 epigrams or ecstatic soliloquies by the light of a 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 39 
 
 candle fixed in a skull. Thus, in " The Eevenge," 
 
 Alonzo, in the conflict of jealousy and love that 
 
 at once urges and forbids him to murder his wife, 
 
 says : — 
 
 " This vast and solid earth, that blaziag sun, 
 Those skies, through which it rolls, must all have end. 
 What then is man ? The smallest part of nothing. 
 Day buries day ; month, month ; and year the year ! 
 Our life is but a chain of many deaths. 
 Can then Death's self be feared ? Our life much rather : 
 Life is the desert, life the solitude ; 
 Death joins us to the great majority : 
 'Tis to be born to Plato and to Caesar ; 
 'Tis to be great for ever ; 
 'Tis pleasure, 'tis ambition, then, to die.'' 
 
 His prose writings all read like the " Night 
 Thoughts," either diluted into prose, or not yet 
 crystallised into poetry. For example, in his 
 " Thoughts for Age," he says : — 
 
 " Though we stand on its awful brink, such our 
 leaden bias to the world, we turn our faces the wrong 
 way; we are still looking on our old acquaintance, 
 Time; though now so wasted and reduced, that we 
 can see little more of him than his wings and his 
 scythe : our age enlarges his wings to our imagination; 
 and our fear of death, his scythe ; as Time himself 
 grows less. His consumption is deep ; his annihila- 
 tion is at hand. " 
 
 This is a dilution of the magnificent image : — 
 
 " Time in advance behind him hides his wings. 
 And seems to creep decrepit with his age. 
 Behold him when past by ! What then is seen 
 But his proud pinions, swifter than the winds % " 
 
40 WORLD LINESS AND OTHEE-WORLDLINESS : 
 
 Again : — 
 
 " A requesting Omnipotence ? What can stun and 
 confound thy reason more ? What more can ravish 
 and exalt thy heart ? It cannot but ravish and exalt; 
 it cannot but gloriously disturb and perplex thee, to 
 take in all that thought suggests. Thou child of the 
 dust ! thou speck of misery and sin ! how abject thy 
 weakness ! liovv great is thy power ! Thou crawler on 
 earth, and possible (I was about to say) controuller of 
 the skies ! weigh, and weigh well, the wondrous truths 
 I have in view : which cannot be weighed too much ; 
 which the more they are weighed, amaze the more ; 
 which to have supposed, before they were revealed, 
 would have been as great madness, and to have pre- 
 sumed on as great sin, as it is now madness and sin 
 not to believe." 
 
 Even in his Pindaric odes, in which he made 
 the most violent effort against nature, he is still 
 neither more nor less than the Young of the 
 " Last Day," emptied and swept of his genius, 
 and possessed by seven demons of fustian and 
 bad rhyme. Even here, his " Ercles' vein " alter- 
 nates with his moral platitudes, and we have the 
 perpetual text of the " Night Thoughts " : — 
 
 " Gold pleasure buys ; 
 
 But pleasure dies. 
 For soon the gross fruition cloys ; 
 
 Though raptures court. 
 
 The sense is short ; 
 But virtue kindles living joys; — 
 
THE POET YOUKG. 41 
 
 Joys felt alone ! 
 
 Joys asked of none ! 
 Which Time's and Fortune's arrows miss : 
 
 Joys that subsist, 
 
 Though fates resist, 
 An unprecarious, endless bliss ! 
 
 Unhappy they ! 
 
 And falsely gay ! 
 Who bask for ever in success ; 
 
 A constant feast 
 
 Quite palls the taste, 
 And long enjoyment is distress." 
 
 In the " Last Day," again, wliieli is tlie earli- 
 est thing he wrote, we have an anticipation of 
 all his greatest faults and merits. Conspicuous 
 among the faults is that attempt to exalt our 
 conceptions of Deity by vulgar images and com- 
 parisons, which is so offensive in the later " Night 
 Thoughts." In a burst of prayer and homage to 
 God, called forth by the contemplation of Christ 
 coming to judgment, he asks. Who brings the 
 change of the seasons ? and answers — 
 
 " Xot the great Ottoman, or greater Czar ; 
 Xot Europe's arbitress of peace and war ! " 
 
 Conceive the soul, in its most solemn moments, 
 assuring God that it does not place His power 
 below that of Louis Napoleon or Queen Victoria ! 
 But in the midst of uneasy rhymes, inappro- 
 priate imagery, vaulting sublimity that o'erleaps 
 itself, and vulgar emotions, we have in this poem 
 
42 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS : 
 
 an occasional flash of genius, a touch of simple 
 grandeur, which promises as much as Young ever 
 achieved. Describing the on-coming of the dis- 
 solution of all things, he says : — 
 
 " ITo sun in radiant glory shines on high ; 
 yo light hut from the terrors of the slcy." 
 
 And again, speaking of great armies : — 
 
 " '^^'^lose rear lay -wrapt in night, while breaking dawn 
 Eous'd the broad front, and call'd the battle on." 
 
 And this wail of the lost souls is fine : — 
 
 " And this for sin ? 
 Could I offend if I had never been 1 
 But still increas'd the senseless, happy mass, 
 Flow'd in the stream, or shiver'd in the grass / 
 Father of mercies ! why from sUent earth 
 Didst Thou awake and curse me into birth t 
 Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night, 
 And make a thankless present of thy light 1 
 Push into being a reverse of Thee, 
 And animate a clod with misery 1 " 
 
 But it is seldom in Young's rhymed poems 
 that the efi"ect of a felicitous thought or image is 
 not counteracted by our sense of the constraint 
 he suffered from the necessities of rhyme, — ^that 
 " Gothic demon," as he afterwards called it, 
 " which modern poetry tasting, became mortal." 
 In relation to his own power, no one will question 
 the truth of his dictum, that " blank verse is verse 
 unfaUen, uncurst ; verse reclaimed, reinthroned 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 43 
 
 in the true language of the gods ; who never 
 thundered nor suffered their Homer to thunder 
 in rhyme." His want of mastery in rhyme is 
 especially a drawback on the effect of his Satires ; 
 for epigrams and witticisms are peculiarly sus- 
 ceptible to the intrusion of a superfluous word, 
 or to an inversion which implies constraint. 
 Here, even more than elsewhere, the art that 
 conceals art is an absolute requisite, and to have 
 a witticism presented to us in limping or cum- 
 brous rhythm is as coimteractive to any electri- 
 fying effect as to see the tentative grimaces by 
 which a comedian prepares a grotesque counte- 
 nance. We discern the process, instead of being 
 startled by the result. 
 
 This is one reason why the Satires, read seria- 
 tim, have a flatness to us, which, when we after- 
 wards read picked passages, we are inclined to 
 disbelieve in, and to attribute to some deficiency 
 in our own mood. But there are deeper reasons 
 for that dissatisfaction. Young is not a satirist 
 of a high order. His satire has neither the ter- 
 rible vigour, the lacerating energy of genuine in- 
 dignation, nor the humour which owns loving 
 fellowship with the poor human nature it laughs 
 at ; nor yet the personal bitterness which, as in 
 Pope's characters of Sporus and Atticus, ensures 
 those living touches by virtue of which the in- 
 
44 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WOELDLINESS : 
 
 dividual and particular in Art becomes the uni- 
 versal and immortal. Young could never describe 
 a real complex human being ; but what he could 
 do with eminent success, was to describe with 
 neat and finished point obvious types of manners 
 rather than of character, — to write cold and 
 clever epigrams on personified vices and absurd- 
 ities. There is no more emotion in his satire 
 than if he were turning witty verses on a waxen 
 image of Cupid, or a lady's glove. He has none 
 of those felicitous epithets, none of those preg- 
 nant lines, by which Pope's Satires have en- 
 riched the ordinary speech of educated men. 
 Young's wit will be found in almost every in- 
 stance to consist in that antithetic combination 
 of ideas which, of all the forms of wit, is most 
 within reach of clever efi"ort. In his gravest 
 arguments, as well as in his lightest satire, one 
 might imagine that he had set himself to work 
 out the problem, how much antithesis might be 
 got out of a given subject. And there he com- 
 pletely succeeds. His neatest portraits are all 
 wrought on this plan. Narcissus, for example, 
 who — 
 
 " ()mits no duty; nor can Envy say 
 He miss'd, these many years, the Church or Play : 
 lie makes no noise in Parliament, 'tis true ; 
 Ijut pays his dclits, and visit when 'tis due ; 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 45 
 
 His character and gloves are ever clean, 
 
 And then he can out-bow the bowing Dean ; 
 
 A smile eternal on his lip he wears, 
 
 Which equally the wise and worthless shares. 
 
 In gay fatigues, this most undaunted chief. 
 
 Patient of idleness beyond belief, 
 
 Most charitably lends the town his face 
 
 For ornament in every public place ; 
 
 As sure as cards he to th' assembly comes, 
 
 And is the furniture of drawing-rooms : 
 
 When Ombre calls, his hand and heart are free. 
 
 And, joined to two, he fails not — to make three : 
 
 JSTarcissus is the glory of his race ; 
 
 Por who does nothing with a better grace 1 
 
 To deck my list by nature were designed 
 
 Such shining expletives of human kind, 
 
 Who want, while through blank life they dream along, 
 
 Sense to be right and passion to be wrong." 
 
 It is but seldom that we find a touch of that 
 easy slyness which gives an additional zest to 
 surprise ; but here is an instance : — 
 
 " See Tityrus, with merriment possest. 
 Is burst with laughter ere he hears the jest. 
 What need he stay ? for when the joke is o'er. 
 His teetJi will be no whiter than before." 
 
 Like Pope, whom he imitated, he sets out with 
 a psychological mistake as the basis of his satire, 
 attributing all forms of folly to one passion — the 
 love of fame, or vanity, — a much grosser mistake, 
 indeed, than Pope's exaggeration of the extent to 
 which the " ruling passion " determines conduct 
 in the individual. Not that Young is consistent 
 in his mistake. He sometimes implies no more 
 
46 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WOELDLINESS : 
 
 than what is the truth — that the love of fame is 
 the cause, not of all follies, but of many. 
 
 Young's satires on women are superior to 
 Pope's, which is only saying that they are superior 
 to Pope's greatest failure. We can more frequent- 
 1)^ pick out a couplet as successful than an entire 
 sketch. Of the too emphatic Syrena, he says : — 
 
 " Her judgment just, her sentence is too strong ; 
 liecause she's right, she's ever in the wrong." 
 
 Of the diplomatic Julia : — 
 
 " For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme, 
 Xor take her tea without a strategem." 
 
 Of Lyce, the old painted coquette : — 
 
 " In vain the cook has summoned sprites away ; 
 She walks at noon and blasts the bloom of daj-.'' 
 
 Of the nymph who, " gratis, clears religious mys- 
 teries " : — 
 
 " 'Tis hard, too, she who makes no use but chat 
 Of her religion, should be barr'd in that." 
 
 The description of the literary helle, Daphne, 
 well prefaces that of Stella, admired by John- 
 son : — 
 
 " With legs toss'd high, on her sophee she sits. 
 Vouchsafing audience to contending wits : 
 Of each performance she's the final test ; 
 One act read o'er, she prophesies the rest ; 
 And then, pronouncing with decisive air, 
 Fully convinces all the town — she'it fair. 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 47 
 
 Had lovely Daphne Hecatessa's face, 
 How -would her elegance of taste decrease ! 
 Some ladies' judgment in their features lies, 
 And all their genius sparkles in their eyes. 
 But hold, she cries, lampooner ! have a care : 
 Must I want common sense because I'm fair 1 
 no ; see Stella : her eyes shine as bright 
 As if her tongue was never in the right ; 
 And yet what real learning, judgment, fire ! 
 She seems inspir'd, and can herself inspire. 
 How then (if malice ruled not all the fair) 
 Could Daphne publish, and could she forbear 1 " 
 
 After all, when we have gone through Young's 
 seven Satires, we seem to have made but an indif- 
 ferent meal. They are a sort of fricassee, with 
 little solid meat in them, and yet the flavour is 
 not always piquant. It is curious to find him, 
 when he pauses a moment from his satiric sketch- 
 ing, recurring to his old platitudes : — 
 
 " Can gold calm passion, or make reason shine 1 
 Can we dig peace or wisdom from the mine ? 
 Wisdom to gold prefer ; " — 
 
 platitudes which he seems' inevitably to fall into, 
 for the same reason that some men are constantly 
 asserting their contempt for criticism — because 
 he felt the opposite so keenly. 
 
 The outburst of genius in the earlier books of 
 the " Night Thoughts " is the more remarkable, 
 that in the interval between them and the 
 Satires, he had produced nothing but his Pin- 
 
48 WOELDLINESS AND OTHEE-WOELDLINESS : 
 
 claric odes, in whicli he fell far below tlie level 
 of his previous works. Two sources of this 
 sudden strength were the freedom of blank 
 verse and the presence of a genuine emo- 
 tion. Most persons, in speaking of the "Night 
 Thoughts," have in their minds only the two 
 or three first Nights, the majority of readers 
 rarely getting beyond these, unless, as WUson 
 says, they " have biit few books, are poor, and 
 live in the country." And in these earlier 
 Nights there is enough genuine sublimity and 
 genuine sadness to bribe us into too favourable 
 a judgment of them as a whole. Young had 
 only a very few things to say or sing — such 
 as that life is vain, that death is imminent, 
 that man is immortal, that virtue is wisdom, 
 that friendship is sweet, and that the source 
 of virtue is the contemplation of death and 
 immortality, — and even in his two first Nights 
 he had said almost all he had to say in his 
 finest manner. Through these first outpourings 
 of " complaint " we feel that the poet is really 
 sad, that the bird is singing over a rifled nest ; 
 and we bear with his morbid picture of the 
 world and of life, as the Job-like lament of a 
 man whom "the hand of God hath touched." 
 Death has carried away his best-beloved, and 
 that " silent land " whither they are gone has 
 
THE POET YOUjSTG. 49 
 
 more reality for the desolate one than this world 
 which is empty of their love : — • 
 
 " This is tlie desert, this the solitude ; 
 How populous, ho-sv vital is the grave 1 " 
 
 Joy died with the loved one : — 
 
 " The disenchanted earth 
 Lost all her lustre. "Where her glitt'ring towers 1 
 Her golden mountains, where ? All darken'd down 
 To naked waste ; a dreary vale of tears : 
 The great mar/icicm'a dead / " 
 
 Under the pang of parting, it seems to the 
 bereaved man as if love were only a nerve to 
 suffer with, and he sickens at the thought of 
 every joy of which he miist one day say — "it 
 was." In its unreasoning anguish, the soul 
 rushes to the idea of perpetuity as the one 
 element of bliss : — 
 
 " ye blest scenes of permanent delight ! — 
 Could ye, so rich in rapture, fear an end, — 
 That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy, 
 And quite iinparadise the realms of light." 
 
 In a man under the immediate pressure of a 
 great sorrow, we tolerate morbid exaggerations ; 
 we are prepared to see him turn away a weary 
 eye from sunlight and flowers and sweet human 
 faces, as if this rich and glorious life had no 
 significance but as a preliminary of death ; we 
 do not criticise his views, we compassionate his 
 
 D 
 
50 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WOELDLINESS : 
 
 feelings. And so it is with Young in these 
 earlier Nights. There is already some artifici- 
 ality even in his grief, and feeling often slides 
 into rhetoric, but through it all we are thrilled 
 with the unmistakeable cry of pain, which makes 
 us tolerant of egoism and hyperbole : — • 
 
 " In every varied posture, place, and hour, 
 How -widow'd ev'ry thought of ev'ry joy ! 
 Thought, busy thought ! too busy for my peace ! 
 Through the dark postern of time long elapsed 
 Led softly, by the stillness of the night, — 
 Led like a murderer (and such it proves !) 
 Strays (wretched rover !) o'er the pleasing past, — 
 In quest of wretchedness, perversely strays ; 
 And finds all desert now ; and meets the ghosts 
 Of my departed joys." 
 
 But when he becomes didactic, rather than 
 complaining, — when he ceases to sing his sor- 
 rows, and begins to insist on his opinions,— 
 when that distaste for life which we pity as a 
 transient feeling, is thrust upon us as a theory, 
 we become perfectly cool and critical, and are 
 not in the least inclined to be indulgent to false 
 views and selfish sentiments. 
 
 Seeing that we are about to be severe on 
 Young's failings and failures, we ought, if a re- 
 viewer's space were elastic, to dwell also on his 
 merits, — on the startling vigour of his imagery — 
 on the occasional grandeur of his thought — on the 
 piquant force of that grave satire into which his 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 51 
 
 meditations continually run. But, since our 
 " limits " are rigorous, we must content ourselves 
 with the less agreeable half of the critic's duty ; 
 and we may the rather do so, because it would 
 be difficult to say anything new of Young in 
 the way of admiration, while we think there are 
 many salutary lessons remaining to be drawn 
 from his faults. 
 
 One of the most striking characteristics of 
 Young is his radical insincerity as a poetic 
 artist. This, added to the thin and artificial 
 texture of his wit, is the true explanation of the 
 paradox — that a poet who is often inopportunely 
 witty has the opposite vice of bombastic absurd- 
 ity. The source of all grandiloquence is the 
 want of taking for a criterion the true qualities 
 of the object described, or the emotion expressed. 
 The grandiloquent man is never bent on saying 
 what he feels or what he sees, but on producing 
 a certain effect on his audience ; hence he may 
 float away into utter inanity without meeting 
 any criterion to arrest him. Here lies the dis- 
 tinction between grandiloquence and genuine 
 fancy or bold imaginativeness. The fantastic 
 or the boldly imaginative poet may be as sin- 
 cere as the most realistic : he is true to his own 
 sensibilities or inward vision, and in his wildest 
 flights he never breaks loose from his criterion — 
 
52 WOELDLINESS AND OTHEE-WOELDLINESS : 
 
 the truth of his own mental state. Now, this 
 disruption of language from genuine thought and 
 feeling is what we are constantly detecting in 
 Young ; and his insincerity is the more likely to 
 betray him into absurdity, because he habitually 
 treats of abstractions, and not of concrete objects 
 or specific emotions. He descants perpetually 
 on virtue, religion, " the good man," life, death, 
 immortality, eternity — subjects which are apt to 
 give a factitious grandeur to empty wordiness. 
 When a poet floats in the empyrean, and only 
 takes a bird's-eye view of the earth, some people 
 accept the mere fact of his soaring for sublimity, 
 and mistake his dim vision of earth for proximity 
 to heaven. Thus : — 
 
 '■ His hand tlie good man fixes on the skies, 
 And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl," 
 
 may perhaps pass for sublime with some readers. 
 But pause a moment to realise the image, and 
 the monstrous absurdity of a man's grasping the 
 skies, and hanging habitually suspended there, 
 while he contemptuously bids the earth roll, 
 warns you that no genuine feeling could have 
 suggested so unnatural a conception. 
 
 Examples of such vicious imagery, resulting 
 from insincerity, may be found, perhaps, in 
 almost every page of the "Night Thoughts." 
 But simple assertions or aspirations, undisguised 
 
THE POET YOnXG. 53 
 
 by imagery, are often equally false. No writer 
 wtose rhetoric was checked by the slightest truth- 
 ful intentions, could have said — ■ 
 
 " An eye of awe and wonder let me roll, 
 And roll for ever." 
 
 Abstracting the more poetical associations with 
 the eye, this is hardly less absurd than if he had 
 wished to stand for ever with his mouth open. 
 Again — 
 
 " Far beneath 
 A soul immortal is a mortal joy." 
 
 Happily for human nature, we are sure no man 
 really believes that. Which of us has the im- 
 piety not to feel that our souls are only too 
 narrow for the joy of looking into the trusting 
 eyes of our children, of reposing on the love of a 
 husband or wife, — nay, of listening to the divine 
 voice of music, or watching the calm brightness 
 of autumn afternoons ? But Young could utter 
 this falsity without detecting it, because, when 
 he spoke of " mortal joys," he rarely had in his 
 mind any object to which he could attach sacred- 
 ness. He was thinking of bishoprics and bene- 
 fices, of smiling monarchs, patronising prime 
 ministers, and a "much indebted muse." Of 
 anything between these and eternal bliss, he was 
 but rarely and moderately conscious. Often, in- 
 deed, he sinks very much below even the bishopric. 
 
54 WOELDLIJs'ESS AND OTHER-WOELDLINESS : 
 
 and seems to have no notion of earthly pleasure, 
 but such as breathes gaslight and the fumes of 
 wine. His picture of life is precisely such as 
 you would expect from a man who has risen 
 from his bed at two o'clock in the afternoon with 
 a headache, and a dim remembrance that he has 
 added to his " debts of honour " : — 
 
 " Wliat ■\7retched repetition cloys us here ! 
 What periodic potions for the sick, 
 Distemper'd bodies, and distemper'd minds ! " 
 
 And then he flies off to his usual antithesis : — 
 
 " In an eternity what scenes shall strike ! 
 Adventures thicken, novelties surprise ! " 
 
 "Earth" means lords and levees, duchesses 
 and Dalilahs, Sorith-Sea dreams and illegal per- 
 centage ; and the only things distinctly prefer- 
 able to these are, eternity and the stars. De- 
 prive Young of this antithesis, and more than 
 half his eloquence would be shrivelled up. Place 
 him on a breezy common, where the furze is in 
 its golden bloom, where children are playing, and 
 horses are standing in the sunshine with fond- 
 ling necks, and he would have nothing to say. 
 Here are neither depths of guilt, nor heights of 
 glory ; and we doubt whether in such a scene he 
 would be able to pay his usual compliment to the 
 Creator : — 
 
 " Where'er I turn, what claim on all applause ! " 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 55 
 
 It is true that he sometimes — not often — 
 speaks of virtue as capable of sweetening life, as 
 well as of taking the sting from death and win- 
 ning heaven ; and, lest we should be guilty of 
 any unfairness to him, we will quote the two 
 passages which convey this sentiment the most 
 explicitly. In the one, he gives Lorenzo this 
 excellent recipe for obtaining cheerfulness : — 
 
 " Go, fix some weiglity truth ; 
 Chain down some passion ; do some generous good ; 
 Teach Ignorance to see, or Grief to smile ; 
 Correct thy friend ; hefriend thy greatest foe ; 
 Or, with warm heart, and confidence divine, 
 Spring up, and lay strong hold on Him who made thee.'' 
 
 The other passage is vague, but beautiful, and 
 its music has murmured in our minds for many 
 years : — 
 
 " The cuckoo seasons sing 
 The same dull note to such as nothing prize 
 But what those seasons from the teeming earth 
 To doting sense indulge. But nobler minds, 
 "Which relish fruit unripen'd by the sun, 
 Make their days various ; various as the dyes 
 On the dove's neck, which wanton in his rays. 
 On minds of dove-like innocence possess'd. 
 On lighten'd minds that bask in Virtue's beams, 
 jSTothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves 
 In that for which they long, for which they live. 
 Their glorious efforts, wing'd with heavenly hopes, 
 Each rising morning sees stiU higher rise ; 
 Each bounteous dawn its novelty presents 
 To worth maturing, new strength, lustre, fame ; 
 
5 6 WORLDLIXESS A^'D OTHER- WORLDLIXESS : 
 
 While Nature's circle, lilie a chariot wheel, 
 Eolling beneath their elevated aims, 
 ]Makes their fair prospect fairer every hour ; 
 Advancing virtue in a line to bliss." 
 
 Even here, where lie is in his most amiable 
 mood, you see at what a telescopic distance he 
 stands from mother Earth and simple human 
 joys — " Nature's circle roUs beneath." Indeed, 
 we remember no mind in poetic literature that 
 seems to have absorbed less of the beauty and 
 the healthy breath of the common landscape than 
 Young's. His images, often grand and finely 
 presented — witness that sublimely sudden leap 
 of thought, 
 
 " Embryos we must be till we burst the shell, 
 Yon amhient a-^tire shell, and spring to life '' — 
 
 lie almost entirely within that circle of observa- 
 tion which would be familiar to a man who lived 
 in town, hung about the theatres, read the news- 
 paper, and went home often by moon and star 
 light. There is no natural object nearer than 
 the moon that seems to have any strong attrac- 
 tion for him, and even to the moon he chiefly 
 appeals for patronage, and "pays his court" to 
 her. It is reckoned among the many deficiencies 
 of Lorenzo, that he " never asked the moon one 
 question" — an omission which Young thinks 
 eminently unbecoming a rational being. He 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 57 
 
 describes nothing so well as a comet, and is 
 tempted to linger with fond detail over nothing 
 more familiar than the day of judgment and an 
 imaginary journey among the stars. Once on 
 Saturn's ring, he feels at home, and his language 
 becomes quite easy : — • 
 
 "What behold I now? 
 A wilderness of wonders burning round, 
 Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres ; 
 Perhaps tlie villas of descending gods I " 
 
 It is like a sudden relief from a strained pos- 
 ture when, in the " Night Thoughts," we come on 
 any allusion that carries us to the lanes, woods, 
 or fields. Such allusions are amazingly rare, and 
 we could almost count them on a single hand. 
 That we may do him no injustice, we will quote 
 the three best : — 
 
 "Like blossom'd trees o'erturned hy vernal storm, 
 Lovely in death the beauteous ruiu lay." 
 
 " In the same brook none ever bathed him twice : 
 To the same life none ever twice awoke. 
 We call the brook the same — the same we think 
 Our life, though still more rapid in its flow ; 
 ISTor mark the much irrevocably lapsed, 
 And mingled with the sea." 
 
 " The crown of manhood is a winter joy; 
 An evergreen that stands the northern blast, 
 And blossoms in the rigour of our fate." 
 
 The adherence to abstractions, or to the per- 
 
58 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : 
 
 sonification of abstractions, is closely allied in 
 Young to the ivant of genuine emotion. He sees 
 Virtue sitting on a mount serene, far above the 
 mists and storms of earth : he sees Religion com- 
 ing down from the skies, with this world in her 
 left hand and the other world in her right : but 
 we never find him dwelling on virtue or religion 
 as it reaUy exists — in the emotions of a man 
 dressed in an ordinary coat, and seated by his 
 fireside of an evening, with his hand resting on 
 the head of his little daughter ; in courageous 
 effort for iinselfish ends, in the internal triumph 
 of justice and pity over personal resentment, in 
 all the sublime self-renunciation and sweet chari- 
 ties which are found in the details of ordinary 
 life. Now, emotion links' itself with particulars, 
 and only in a faint and secondary manner with 
 abstractions. An orator may discourse very 
 eloquently on injustice in general, and leave his 
 audience cold ; but let him state a special case 
 of oppression, and every heart will throb. The 
 most untheoretic persons are aware of this rela- 
 tion between true emotion and particular facts, 
 as opposed to general terms, and impKcitly recog- 
 nise it in the repulsion they feel towards any one 
 who professes strong feeling about abstractions, 
 — in the interjectional "humbug !" which imme- 
 diately rises to their lips. 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 59 
 
 If we except the passages in Philander, Nar- 
 cissa, and Lucia, there is hardly a trace of human 
 sympathy, of self-forgetfulness in the joy or sor- 
 row of a fellow-being, throughout this long poem, 
 which professes to treat the various phases of 
 man's destiny. And even in the Narcissa Night, 
 Young repels us by the low moral tone of his 
 exaggerated lament. This married step-daughter 
 died at Lyons, and, being a Protestant, was de- 
 nied burial, so that her friends had to bury her 
 in secret — one of the many miserable results of 
 superstition, but not a fact to throw an educated, 
 still less a Christian man, into a fury of hatred 
 and vengeance, in contemplating it after the 
 lapse of five years. Young, however, takes great 
 pains to simulate a bad feeling : — 
 
 " Of grief 
 And indignation rival bursts I pour'd, 
 Half execration mingled with my pray'r ; 
 Kindled at man, while I his God ador'd ; 
 Sore grudg'd the savage land her sacred dust ; 
 Stamp'd the cursed soil ; and with liumanity 
 {Denied Narcissa) wish'd them all a grave." 
 
 The odiously bad taste of this last clause 
 makes us hope that it is simply a platitude, and 
 not intended as a witticism, until he removes 
 the possibility of this favourable doubt by im- 
 mediately asking, " Flows my resentment into 
 guilt ? " 
 
60 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WOELDLINESS : 
 
 When, by an afterthought, he attempts some- 
 thing like sympathy, he only betrays more 
 clearly his want of it. Thus, in the first Night, 
 when he turns from his private griefs to depict 
 earth as a hideous abode of misery for all man- 
 kind, and asks — 
 
 " ^^^lat tlien am I, wlio sorrow for myself? '" — 
 
 he falls at once into calculating the benefit of 
 sorrowing for others : — 
 
 " More generous sorrow, wliile it sinks, exalts ; 
 A7id coiiscious virtue mitigates the pang. 
 Nor virtue, more tlian prudence, bids me give 
 Swollen tliouglit a second channel." 
 
 This remarkable negation of sympathy is in 
 perfect consistency with Young's theory of 
 ethics : — 
 
 " Virtue is a crime, 
 A crime to reason, if it costs us pain 
 Unpaid." 
 
 If there is no immortality for man, — - 
 
 " Sense ! take the rein ; blind Passion, drive us on ; 
 And Ignorance ! befriend us on our way. . . . 
 Tes ; give the pulse full empire ; live the Brute, 
 Since as the brute we die. The sum of man, 
 Of godlike man, to revel and to rot." 
 
 " If this life's gain invites him to the deed, 
 Why not his country sold, his father slain ? " 
 
THE POET YOUNa. 61 
 
 " Ambition, avarice, by the wise disdain' d, 
 Is perfect wisdom, -while mankind are fools. 
 And think a turf or tombstone covers all." 
 
 " Die for thy country, thou romantic fool ! 
 Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink." 
 
 " As in the dying parent dies the child, 
 A^irtue with Immortality expires. 
 Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, 
 Wliateer his hoast, has told me he's a knave. 
 His duty 'tis to love himself alone, 
 Nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles." 
 
 AVe can imagine the man who " denies his 
 soul immortal," replying, " It is quite possible 
 that you would be a knave, and love yourself 
 alone, if it were not for your belief in immortal- 
 ity; but you are not to force upon me what 
 would result from your own utter want of moral 
 emotion. I am just and honest, not because I 
 expect to live in another world, but because, 
 having felt the pain of injustice and dishonesty 
 towards myself, I have a fellow - feeling with 
 other men, who would suffer the same pain if I 
 were unjust or dishonest towards them. Why 
 should I give my neighbour short weight in this 
 world, because there is not another world in 
 which I should have nothing to weigh out to 
 him ? I am honest, because I don't like to in- 
 flict evil on others in this life, not because I'm 
 afraid of evil to myself in another. The fact is, 
 
62 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : 
 
 I do not love myself alone, whatever logical 
 necessity there may be for that conclusion in 
 your mind. I have a tender love for my wife, 
 and children, and friends, and through that love 
 I sympathise with like affections in other men. 
 It is a pang to me to witness the suffering of a 
 fellow-being, and I feel his suffering the more 
 acutely because he is mortal — because his life is 
 so short, and I would have it, if possible, filled 
 with happiness and not misery. Through my 
 union and fellowship with the men and women I 
 have seen, I feel a like, though a fainter, sympa- 
 thy with those I have not seen ; and I am able 
 so to live in imagination with the generations to 
 come, that their good is not alien to me, and is a 
 stimulus to me to labour for ends which may not 
 benefit myself, but wiU benefit them. It is pos- 
 sible that you might prefer to ' live the brute,' to 
 seU your country, or to slay your father, if you 
 were not afraid of some disagreeable consequences 
 from the criminal laws of another world; but 
 even if I could conceive no motive but by my 
 own worldly interest or the gratification of my 
 animal desires, I have not observed that beastli- 
 ness, treachery, and parricide, are the direct way 
 to happiness and comfort on earth." 
 
 Thus far the man who " denies himself immor- 
 tal " might give a warrantable reply to Young's 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 63 
 
 assumption of peculiar loftiness in maintaining 
 that "virtue with immortality expires." We 
 may admit, indeed, that if the better part of 
 virtue consists, as Young appears to think, in 
 contempt for mortal joys, in "meditation of our 
 own decease," and in " applause " of God in the 
 style of a congratulatory address to her Majesty 
 — all which has small relation to the wellbeing 
 of mankind on this earth — the motive to it must 
 be gathered from something that lies quite out- 
 side the sphere of human sympathy. But, for 
 certain other elements of virtue, which are of 
 more obvious importance to plain people, — a 
 delicate sense of our neighbour's rights, an active 
 participation in the joys and sorrows of our fel- 
 low-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation 
 or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition 
 of rescue for others — in a word, the widening 
 and strengthening of our sympathetic nature,- — • 
 it is surely of some moment to contend, that they 
 have no more direct dependence on the belief in 
 a future state than the interchange of gases in 
 the lungs on the plurality of worlds. Nay, it is 
 conceivable that in some minds the deep pathos 
 lying in the thought of human mortality — that 
 we are here for a little while and then vanish 
 away, that this earthly life is all that is given to 
 our loved ones and to our many suffering fellow- 
 
64 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-"\VORLDLIjSrESS : 
 
 men — lies nearer the fountains of moral emotion 
 than tlie conception of extended existence. And 
 surely it ought to be a welcome fact, if the 
 thought of mortality, as well as of immortality, 
 be favourable to virtue. We can imagine that 
 the proprietors of a patent water-supply may 
 have a dread of common springs ; but for those 
 who only share the general need there cannot be 
 too great a security against a lack of fresh water 
 — or of pure morality. It should be matter of 
 unmixed rejoicing if this latter necessary of 
 healthful life has its evolution ensured in the 
 interaction of human souls as certainly as the 
 evolution of science or of art, with which, indeed, 
 it is but a twin ray, melting into them with un- 
 definable limits. 
 
 To return to Young. We can often detect a 
 man's deficiencies in what he admires more clearly 
 than in what he contemns, — in the sentiments 
 he presents as laudable rather than in those he 
 decries. And in Young's notion of what is lofty 
 he casts a shadow by which we can measure him 
 without further trouble. For example, in arguing 
 for human immortality, he says : — 
 
 " First, Avliat is true ambition I The pursuit 
 Of glory nothing less than man can share. 
 
 The Visible and Present are for lirutes, 
 A slender portion, and a narrow bound ! 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 65 
 
 These Eeason, witli an energy divine 
 O'erleaps, and claims the Future and Unseen ; 
 The vast Unseen, the Future fathomless ! 
 "When the great soul buoys up to this high point, 
 Leaving gross JSTature's sediments below, 
 Then, and then only, Adam's offspring quits 
 The sage and hero of the fields and woods, 
 Asserts his rank, and rises into man." 
 
 So, then, if it were certified that, as some 
 benevolent minds have tried to infer, our dumb 
 fellow-creatures would share a future existence, 
 in which it is to be hoped we should neither beat, 
 starve, nor maim them, our ambition for a future 
 life would cease to be " lofty" ! This is a notion 
 of loftiness which may pair off with Dr Whewell's 
 celebrated observation, that Bentham's moral 
 theory is low, because it includes justice and 
 mercy to brutes. 
 
 But, for a reflection of Young's moral person- 
 ality on a colossal scale, we must turn to those 
 passages where his rhetoric is at its utmost 
 stretch of inflation — where he addresses the 
 Deity, discourses of the Divine operations, or 
 describes the last judgment. As a compound of 
 vulgar pomp, crawling adulation, and hard self- 
 ishness, presented under the guise of piety, there 
 are few things in literature to surpass the ninth 
 Night, entitled " Consolation," especially in the 
 pages where he describes the last judgment — a 
 subject to which, with naive self-betrayal, he 
 
66 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WOELDLINESS : 
 
 applies phraseology favoured by the exuberant 
 penny-a-liner. Thus, when God descends, and 
 the groans of hell are opposed by " shouts of 
 joy," much as cheers and groans contend at a 
 public meeting Avhere the resolutions are not 
 passed unanimously, the poet completes his 
 climax in this way : — 
 
 '■ Hence, in one peal of loud, eternal praise, 
 Tlie dianiied sjiectutors thunder their applause." 
 
 In the same taste, he sings : — 
 
 " Eternity, the various sentence past. 
 Assigns the sever'd throng distinct aljodes, 
 Sidphureotis or ambrosial." 
 
 Exquisite delicacy of indication ! He is too nice 
 to be specific as to the interior of the " sul- 
 phureous " abode ; but when once half the human 
 race are shut up there, hear how he enjoys turn- 
 ing the key on them ! — 
 
 " What ensues 1 
 The deed predominant, the deed of deeds ! 
 "NMiich makes a hell of hell, a heaven of hearcii J 
 The goddess, -svith deternun'd aspect, tiu'ns 
 Her adamantine key's enormous size 
 Through Destiny's inextricable wards, 
 Deep ilrivinrj every holt on hoth their fates. 
 Then, from the crystal battlements of heaven, 
 Down, down she hurls it through the dark ]irofound, 
 Ten thousand, thousand fathom ; there to rust 
 And ne'er unlock her resolution more. 
 The deep resounds ; and Hell, through all her glooms, 
 Eeturns, in groans, the melancholy roar.'' 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 67 
 
 This is one of the blessings for which Dr 
 
 t)^ 
 
 Young thanks God " most " :- 
 
 " For all I bless Thee, most, for the severe ; 
 Her death — my own at hand — the fienj gulf, 
 That flaming hound of wrath omnipotent ! 
 It thunders ; — hut it thunders to preserve , 
 
 its ■wholesome dread 
 Averts the dreaded pain ; its hideous groans 
 Join Heaven's sweet Halleluiahs in Thy jjraise, 
 Great Source of good alone ! How kind in all ! 
 In vengeance kind ! Pain, Death, Gehenna, save " . . 
 
 i.e., save me, Dr Young, who, in return for that 
 favour, promise to give my divine patron the 
 monopoly of that exuberance in laudatory epithet, 
 of which specimens may be seen at any moment 
 in a large number of dedications and odes to 
 kings, queens, prime ministers, and other persons 
 of distinction. That, in Young's conception, is 
 what God delights in. His crowning aim in the 
 " drama " of the ages is to vindicate his own 
 renown. The God of the " Night Thoughts " is 
 simply Young himself " writ large " — a didactic 
 poet, who "lectures" mankind in the antithetic 
 hyperbole of mortal and immortal joys, earth and 
 the stars, hell and heaven; and expects the 
 tribute of inexhaustible " applause." Young has 
 no conception of religion as anything else than 
 egoism turned heavenward ; and he does not 
 merely imply this, he insists on it. Religion, he 
 
68 WORLDLIlSrESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : 
 
 tells US, in argumentative passages too long to 
 quote, is " ambition, pleasure, and the love of 
 gain," directed towards the joys of the future 
 life instead of the present. And his ethics cor- 
 respond to his religion. He vacillates, indeed, in 
 his ethical theory, and shifts his position in order 
 to suit his immediate purpose in argument ; but 
 he never changes his level so as to see beyond 
 the horizon of mere selfishness. Sometimes he 
 insists, as we have seen, that the belief in a 
 future life is the only basis of morality; but 
 elsewhere he tells us — 
 
 " In self-applause is virtue's golden prize." 
 
 Virtue, with Young, must always squint — 
 must never look straight towards the immediate 
 object of its emotion and effort. Thus, if a man 
 risks perishing in the snow himself rather than 
 forsake a weaker comjade, he must either do this 
 because his hopes and fears are directed to another 
 world, or because he desires to applaud himself 
 afterwards ! Young, if we may believe him, 
 would despise the action as folly unless it had 
 these motives. Let us hope he was not so bad 
 as he pretended to be ! The tides of the divine 
 life in man move under the thickest ice of theory. 
 
 Another indication of Young's deficiency in 
 moral, i.e., in sympathetic emotion, is his unin- 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 69 
 
 termitting habit of pedagogic moralising. On 
 its theoretic and perceptive side, Morality touches 
 Science ; on its emotional side, poetic Art. Now, 
 the products of poetic Art are great in proportion 
 as they result from the immediate prompting of 
 innate power, and not from laboured obedience 
 to a theory or rule ; and the presence of genius 
 or innate prompting is directly opposed to the 
 perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of 
 faculty is imperious, and supersedes the reflec- 
 tion why it should act. In the same way, in 
 proportion as morality is emotional, it will ex- 
 hibit itself in direct sympathetic feeling and 
 action, and not as the recognition of a rule. 
 Love does not say, " I ought to love " — it loves. 
 Pity does not say, " It is right to be pitiful " — it 
 pities. Justice does not say, " I am bound to 
 be just " — it feels justly. It is only where moral 
 emotion is comparatively weak that the contem- 
 plation of a rule or theory habitually mingles 
 with its action ; and in accordance with this, we 
 think experience, both in literature and life, has 
 shown that the minds which are predominantly 
 didactic, are deficient in sympathetic emotion. 
 A man who is perpetually thinking in monitory 
 apothegms, who has an unintermittent flux of 
 rebuke, can have little energy left for simple 
 feeling. And this is the case with Young. In 
 
70 WOELDLINESS AND OTHEE-WOELDLINESS : 
 
 his highest flights of contemplation, and his most 
 waihng soliloquies, he interrupts himself to fling 
 an admonitory parenthesis at Lorenzo, or to 
 hint that "folly's creed" is the reverse of his 
 own. Before his thoughts can flow, he must fix 
 his eye on an imaginary miscreant, who gives 
 unlimited scope for lecturing, and recriminates 
 just enough to keep the spring of admonition 
 and argument going to the extent of nine books. 
 It is curious to see how this pedagogic habit of 
 mind runs through Young's contemplation of 
 Nature. As the tendency to see our own sadness 
 reflected in the external world has been called by 
 Mr Euskin the "pathetic fallacy," so we may 
 call Young's disposition to see a rebuke or a 
 warning in every natural object, the "pedagogic 
 fallacy." To his mind, the heavens are "for 
 ever scolding as they shine " ; and the great func- 
 tion of the stars is to be a " lecture to mankind." 
 The conception of the Deity as a didactic author 
 is not merely an implicit point of view with him; 
 he works it out in elaborate imagery, and at 
 length makes it the occasion of his most extra- 
 ordinary achievement in the " art of sinking," by 
 exclaiming — a propos, we need hardly say, of the 
 nocturnal heavens — 
 
 " Divine Instructor ! Thy first volume this 
 For man's perusal ! all in capitals ! " 
 
 It is this pedagogic tendency, this sermonising 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 71 
 
 attitude of Young's mind, wMcli produces tile 
 wearisome monotony of his pauses. After the 
 first two or three Nights, he is rarely singing, 
 rarely pouring forth any continuous melody 
 inspired by the spontaneous flow of thought or 
 feeling. He is rather occupied with argumenta- 
 tive insistance, with hammering in the proofs of 
 his propositions by disconnected verses, which 
 he puts down at intervals. The perpetual recur- 
 rence of the pause at the end of the line through- 
 out long passages, makes them as fatiguing to 
 the ear as a monotonous chant, which consists 
 of the endless repetition of one short musical 
 phrase. For example : — 
 
 " Past hours, 
 If not by guilt, yet wound us by tlieir flight, 
 If folly bound our prospect by the grave, 
 All feeling of futurity be numb'd, 
 All godlike passion for eternals quench'd, 
 All relish of realities expired; 
 Eenounced all correspondence with the skies ; 
 Our freedom chain'd ; quite wingless our desire ; 
 In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar ; 
 Prone to the centre ; crawling in the dust ; 
 Dismounted every great and glorious aim ; 
 Enthralled every faculty divine, 
 Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world." 
 
 How different from the easy, graceful melody 
 of Cowper's blank verse ! Indeed it is hardly 
 possible to criticise Young, without being re- 
 minded at every step of the contrast presented 
 to him by Cowper. And this contrast urges 
 
72 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS : 
 
 itself upon us the more from the fact that there 
 is, to a certain extent, a parallelism between the 
 "Night Thoughts" and the "Task." In both 
 poems, the author achieves his greatest in virtue 
 of the new freedom conferred by blank verse ; 
 both poems are professedly didactic, and mingle 
 much satire with their graver meditations ; both 
 poems are the productions of men whose estimate 
 of this life was formed by the light of a belief in 
 immortality, and who were intensely attached to 
 Christianity. On some grounds, we might have 
 anticipated a more morbid view of things from 
 Cowper than from Young. Cowper's religion 
 was dogmatically the more gloomy, for he was a 
 Calvinist; while Young was a " low " Arminian, 
 believing that Christ died for all, and that the 
 only obstacle to any man's salvation lay in his 
 will, which he could change if he chose. There 
 was deep and unusual sadness involved in Cow- 
 per's personal lot ; while Young, apart from his 
 ambitious and greedy discontent, seems to have 
 had no exceptional sorrow. 
 
 Yet see how a lovely, sympathetic nature 
 manifests itself in spite of creed' and circum- 
 stance ! Where is the poem that surpasses the 
 " Task " in the genuine love it breathes, at once 
 towards inanimate and animate existence — in 
 truthfulness of perception and sincerity of pre- 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 73 
 
 sentation — in the calm gladness that springs 
 from a delight in objects for their own sake, 
 without self-reference — ^in divine sympathy with 
 the lowliest pleasures, with the most short-lived 
 capacity for pain ? Here is no railing at the 
 earth's " melancholy map," but the happiest 
 lingering over her simplest scenes with all the 
 fond minuteness of attention that belongs to 
 love ; no pompous rhetoric about the inferiority 
 of the " brutes," but a warm plea on their be- 
 half against man's inconsiderateness and cruelty, 
 and a sense of enlarged happiness from their 
 companionship in enjoyment ; no vague rant 
 about human misery and human virtue, but 
 that close and vivid presentation of particular 
 sorrows and privations, of particular deeds and 
 misdeeds, which is the direct road to the emo- 
 tions. How Cowper's exquisite mind falls with 
 the mild warmth of morning sunlight on the 
 commonest objects, at once disclosing every 
 detail and investing every detail with beauty ! 
 No object is too small to prompt his song — not 
 the sooty film on the bars, or the spoutless tea- 
 pot holding a 'bit of mignonnette that serves to 
 cheer the dingy town-lodging with a " hint that 
 Nature lives " ; and yet his song is never trivial, 
 for he is alive to small objects, not because his 
 mind is narrow, but because his glance is clear 
 
74 WORLDLINESS AND OTHEE-WOKLDLINESS : 
 
 and his heart is large. Instead of trying to 
 edify us by supercilious allusions to the " brutes " 
 and the " stalls," he interests us in that tragedy 
 of the hen-roost when the thief has wrenched the 
 door — 
 
 " AVliere Chanticleer amidst his harem sleeps 
 In unsuspecting pomp ; " 
 
 in the patient cattle, that on the winter's morn- 
 ing 
 
 " ]\Iourn in corners where the fence 
 Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep 
 In unrccuvibent sadness ;" 
 
 in the little squirrel, that, surprised by him in 
 his woodland walk, 
 
 " At once, swift as a bird, 
 Ascends the neighbouring beech ; there whisks his brush. 
 And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud, 
 "With all the prettiness of feigned alarm 
 And anger insignificantly fierce." 
 
 And then he passes into reflection, not with 
 curt apothegm and snappish reproof, but with 
 that melodious flow of utterance which belongs 
 to thought when it is carried in a stream of 
 feeling : — ■ 
 
 " The heart is hard in nature, and unfit 
 For human fellowship, as being void 
 Of sj'mpathy, and therefore dead alike 
 To love and friendship both, that is not pleased 
 With sight of animals enjoying life, 
 Kor feels their happiness augment his own." 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 75 
 
 His large and tender heart embraces the most 
 everyday forms of human life : the carter driv- 
 ing his team through the wintry storm ; the 
 cottager's wife who, painfully nursing the embers 
 on her hearth, while her infants " sit cowering 
 o'er the sparks," 
 
 " Eetires, content to quake, so tliey be warmed ; " 
 
 or the villager, with her little ones, going out to 
 pick 
 
 " A cheap but ■wholesome salad from the brook ; " 
 
 and he compels our colder natures to follow his 
 in its manifold sympathies, not by exhortations, 
 not by telling us to meditate at midnight, to 
 " indulge " the thought of death, or to ask our- 
 selves how we shall " weather an eternal night," 
 hut by presenting to us the object of his com- 
 passion truthfully and lovingly. And when he 
 handles greater themes, when he takes a wider 
 survey, and considers the men or the deeds 
 which have a direct influence on the welfare of 
 communities and nations, there is the same un- 
 selfish warmth of feeling, the same scrupulous 
 truthfulness. He is never vague in his remon- 
 strance or his satire ; but puts his finger on 
 some particular vice or folly, which excites his 
 indignation or " dissolves his heart in pity," 
 because of some specific injury it does to his 
 
76 WORLDLINESS AND OTHBR-WORLDLINESS : 
 
 fellow-man or to a sacred cause. And when he 
 is asked why he interests himself about the 
 sorrows and wrongs of others, hear what is the 
 reason he gives. Not, like Young, that the 
 movements of the planets show a mutual de- 
 pendence, and that 
 
 " Thus man his sovereign duty leains in this 
 Material picture of benevolence ; "- — 
 
 or that, — 
 
 " jSIore generous sorrow while it sinks, exalts, 
 And conscious virtue mitigates the pang." 
 
 What is Cowper's answer, when he imagines 
 some " sage erudite, profound," asking him 
 " What's the world to you ? "— 
 
 " Much. / was iorti of woman, and drew milk 
 As sioeet as charity from human breasts. 
 I think, articulate, I laugh and weep, 
 And exercise all functions of a man. 
 How then should I and any man that lives 
 Be strangers to each other % " 
 
 Young is astonished that men can make war 
 on each other- — ^that any one can "seize his 
 brother's throat," while 
 
 " The Planets cry, ' Forbear.' " 
 
 Cowper weeps because — 
 
 " There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart : 
 Jt does not feel for man." 
 
 Young applauds God as a monarch with an 
 
THE POET YOUNG. 77 
 
 empire and a court quite superior to the English, 
 or as an author who produces " volumes for 
 man's perusal." Cowper sees his Father's love in 
 all the gentle pleasures of the home fireside, in 
 the charms even of the wintry landscape, and 
 thinks — 
 
 " Happy who walks with him ! whom what he finds 
 Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower, 
 Or what he views of beautiful or grand 
 In natiire, from the broad majestic oak 
 To the green blade that twinkles in the sun 
 Prompts with remembrance of a present God." 
 
 To conclude — for we must arrest ourselves in 
 a contrast that would lead us beyond our bounds : 
 Young flies for his utmost consolation to the day 
 of judgment, when 
 
 " Final Euin fiercely drives 
 Her ploughshare o'er Creation ; " 
 
 when earth, stars, and suns are swept aside — 
 
 " And now, all dross removed. Heaven's own pure day 
 Full on the confines of our ether, flames : 
 While (dreadful contrast !) far (how far !) beneath, 
 Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas, 
 And storms sulphureous ; her voracious jaws 
 Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey," — 
 
 Dr Young, and similar " ornaments of religion 
 and virtue," passing, of course, with grateful 
 "applause" into the upper region. Cowper 
 finds his highest inspiration in the Millennium 
 
78 WOKLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 
 
 — in the restoration of this our beloved home 
 of earth to perfect holiness and bliss, when the 
 Supreme 
 
 " Shall visit eartli in mercy ; shall descend 
 Propitious in His chariot paved with love; 
 And what His storms have blasted and defaced 
 For man's revolt, shall with a smile repair." 
 
 And into what delicious melody his song flows 
 at the thought of that blessedness to be enjoyed 
 by future generations on earth ! — ■ 
 
 " The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks 
 Shout to each other, and the mountain-tops 
 From distant mountams catch the flying joy ; 
 Till, nation after nation taught the strain, 
 Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round ! " 
 
 The sum of our comparison is this : In Young 
 we have the type of that deficient human sym- 
 pathy, that impiety towards the present and the 
 visible, which flies for its motives, its sanctities, 
 and its religion, to the remote, the vague, and 
 the unknown ; in Cowper we have the type of 
 that genuine love which cherishes things in 
 proportion to their nearness, and feels its rever- 
 ence grow in proportion to the intimacy of its 
 knowledge. 
 
79 
 
 GEEMM WIT: HEIMICH HEINE. 
 
 "Nothing," says Goethe, "is more significant of 
 men's character than what they find laughable." 
 The truth of this observation would perhaps 
 have been more apparent if he had said culture 
 instead of character. The last thing in which 
 the cultivated man can have community with 
 the vulgar is their jocularity ; and we can hardly 
 exhibit more strikingly the wide gulf which 
 separates him from them than by comparing the 
 object which shakes the diaphragm of a coal- 
 heaver with the highly complex pleasure derived 
 from a real witticism. That any high order of 
 wit is exceedingly complex, and demands a ripe 
 and strong mental development, has one evidence 
 in the fact that we do not find it in boys at all 
 in proportion to their manifestation of other 
 powers. Clever boys generally aspire to the 
 heroic and poetic rather than the comic, and 
 
80 GERMAN ■\VIT : 
 
 tlie crudest of all their efforts are their jokes. 
 Many a witty man will remember how, in his 
 school-days, a practical joke, more or less Eabe- 
 laisian, was for him the ne j^hos ultra of the ludi- 
 croiis. It seems to have been the same with the 
 boyhood of mankind. The fun of early races 
 was, we fancy, of the after-dinner kind — ^loud- 
 throated laughter over the wine-cup, taken too 
 little account of in sober moments to enter as an 
 element into their Art, and differing as much 
 from the laughter of a Chamfort or a Sheridan as 
 the gastronomic enjoyment of an ancient Briton, 
 whose dinner had no other "removes" than from 
 acorns to beech-mast and back again to acorns, 
 differed from the subtle pleasures of the palate 
 experienced by his turtle-eating descendant. It 
 was their lot to live seriously through stages 
 which to later generations were to become 
 comedy, as those amiable-looking pre-Adamite 
 amphibia which Professor Owen has restored for 
 us in effigy at Sydenham doubtless took seriously 
 the grotesque physiognomies of their kindred. 
 Heavy experience in their case, as in every other, 
 wiis the base from which the salt of future wit 
 was to be made. 
 
 Humour is of earlier growth than Wit, and it 
 is in accordance with this earlier growth that it 
 has more affinity with the poetic tendencies, while 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 
 
 Wit is more nearly allied to the ratiocinatiVc 
 intellect. Humour draws its materials from 
 situations and characteristics ; Wit seizes on 
 unexpected and complex relations. Humour is 
 chiefly representative and descriptive ; it is dif- 
 fuse, and flows along without any other law than 
 its own fantastic will ; or it flits about like a will- 
 o'-the-wisp, amazing us by its whimsical transi- 
 tions. Wit is brief and sudden, and sharply 
 defined as a crystal ; it does not make pictures, 
 it is not fantastic ; but it detects an unsuspected 
 analogy, or suggests a startling or confounding 
 inference. Every one who has had the oppor- 
 tunity of making the comparison will remember 
 that the eff'ect produced on him by some witti- 
 cisms is closely akin to the efi"ect produced on 
 him by subtle reasoning which lays open a fallacy 
 or absurdity; and there are persons whose de- 
 light in such reasoning always manifests itself in 
 laughter. This afiinity of Wit with ratiocination 
 is the more obvious in proportion as the species 
 of wit is higher and deals less with words and 
 with superficialities than with the essential quali- 
 ties of things. Some of Johnson's most admir- 
 able witticisms consist in the suggestion of an 
 analogy which immediately exposes the absurdity 
 of an action or proposition ; and it is only their 
 ingenuity, condensation, and instantaneousness 
 
 F 
 
82 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 wliich lift them from reasoning into M'^it — they 
 are reasoning raised to a higher poioer. On the 
 other hand, Humour, in its higher forms, and in 
 proportion as it associates itself with the sympa- 
 thetic emotions, continually passes into poetry: 
 nearly all great modern humorists may be called 
 prose poets. 
 
 Some confusion as to the nature of humour 
 has been created by the fact, that those who 
 have written most eloquently on it have dwelt 
 almost exclusively on its higher forms, and have 
 defined humour in general as the sympathetic 
 presentation of incongruous elements in human 
 nature and life — a definition which only applies 
 to its later development. A great deal of hu- 
 mour may coexist with a great deal of barbarism, 
 as we see in the middle ages ; but the strongest 
 flavour of the humour in such cases will come, 
 not from syrapathy, but more probably from 
 triumphant egoism or intolerance ; at best it will 
 be the love of the ludicrous exhibiting itself in 
 illustrations of successful cunning and of the lex 
 talionis, as in ' Eeineke Fuchs,' or shaking off in 
 a holiday mood the yoke of a too exacting faith, 
 as in the old Mysteries. Again, it is impossible 
 to deny a high degree of humour to many prac- 
 tical jokes, but no sympathetic nature can enjoy 
 them. Strange as the genealogy may seem, the 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 83 
 
 original parentage of that wonderful and delicious 
 mixture of fun, fancy, philosophy, and feeling 
 which constitutes modern humour, was probably 
 the cruel mockery of a savage at the writhings 
 of a suffering enemy — such is the tendency of 
 things towards the better and more beautiful ! 
 Probably the reason why high culture demands 
 more complete harmony with its moral sympa- 
 thies in humour than in wit, is that humour is 
 in its nature more prolix — that it has not the 
 direct and irresistible force of wit. Wit is an 
 electric shock, which takes us by violence quite 
 independently of our predominant mental dis- 
 position ; but humour approaches us more de- 
 liberately and leaves us masters of ourselves. 
 Hence it is that, while coarse and cruel humour 
 has almost disappeared from contemporary litera- 
 ture, coarse and cruel wit abounds. Even re- 
 fined men cannot help laughing at a coarse bon 
 7)iot or a lacerating personality, if the " shock " 
 of the witticism is a powerful one ; while mere 
 fun will have no power over them if it jar on 
 their moral taste. Hence, too, it is that, while 
 wit is perennial, humour is liable to become 
 superannuated. 
 
 As is usual with definitions and classifica- 
 tions, however, this distinction between wit and 
 humour does not exactly represent the actual 
 
84 GEKMAN WIT : 
 
 fact. Like all other species, Wit and Humour 
 overlap and blend witli each, other. There are 
 bon-mots, like many of Charles Lamb's, which 
 are a sort of facetious hybrids, we hardly know 
 whether to call them witty or humorous ; there 
 are rather lengthy descriptions or narratives 
 which, like Voltaire's ' Micromdgas,' would be 
 humorous if they were not so sparkling and anti- 
 thetic, so pregnant with suggestion and satire, 
 that we are obliged to call them witty. We 
 rarely find wit untempered by humour, or 
 humour without a spice of wit ; and sometimes 
 we find them both united in the highest degree 
 in the same mind, as in Shakespeare and Moliere. 
 A happy conjunction this, for wit is apt to be 
 cold, and thin-lipped, and Mephistophelean in 
 men who have no relish for humour, whose lungs 
 do never crow like Chanticleer at fun and droll- 
 ery ; and broad-faced rollicking humour needs 
 the refining influence of wit. Indeed it may be 
 said that there is no really fine writing in which 
 wit has not an implicit, if not an exphcit action. 
 The wit may never rise to the surface, it may 
 never flame out into a witticism ; but it helps to 
 give brightness and transparency, it warns ofi' 
 from flights and exaggerations which verge on 
 the ridiculous — in every genre of writing it pre- 
 serves a man from sinking into the genre en- 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 85 
 
 miyeux. And it is eminently needed for this 
 ofl&ce in humorous writing ; for, as humour has 
 no limits imposed on it by its material, no law 
 but its own exuberance, it is apt to become 
 preposterous and wearisome unless checked by 
 wit, which is the enemy of all monotony, of all 
 lengthiness, of all exaggeration. 
 
 Perhaps the nearest approach Nature has given 
 us to a complete analysis, in which wit is as 
 thoroughly exhausted of humour as possible, and 
 humour as bare as possible of wit, is in the tjrp- 
 ical Frenchman and the typical German. Vol- 
 taire, the intensest example of pure wit, fails in 
 most of his fictions from his lack of humour. 
 'Micromdgas' is a perfect tale, because, as it 
 deals chiefly with philosophic ideas and does not 
 touch the marrow of human feeling and life, the 
 writer's wit and wisdom were all-sufficient for 
 his purpose. Not so with 'Candide.' Here 
 Voltaire had to give pictures of Hfe as well as to 
 convey philosophic truth and satire, and here we 
 feel the want of humour. The sense of the ludi- 
 crous is continually defeated by disgust, and the 
 scenes, instead of presenting us with an amusing 
 or agreeable picture, are only the frame for a 
 ■witticism. On the other hand, German humour 
 generally shows no sense of measure, no instinc- 
 tive tact ; it is either floundering and clumsy as 
 
86 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 the antics of a leviathan, or laborious and inter- 
 minable as a Lapland day, in which one loses all 
 hope that the stars and quiet will ever come. 
 For this reason Jean Paul, the greatest of Ger- 
 man humorists, is unendurable to many readers, 
 and frequently tiresome to all. Here, as else- 
 where, the German shows the absence of that 
 delicate perception, that sensibility to gradation, 
 which is the essence of tact and taste, and the 
 necessary concomitant of wit. All his subtlety 
 is reserved for the region of metaphysics. For 
 Identitat, in the abstract, no one can have an 
 acuter vision ; but in the concrete he is satisfied 
 Tidth a very loose approximation. He has the 
 finest nose for Empirismus in philosophical 
 doctrine, but the presence of more or less to- 
 bacco-smoke in the air he breathes is impercep- 
 tible to him. To the typical German — Vetter 
 Michel — it is indifferent whether his door-lock 
 will catch ; whether his teacup be more or less 
 than an inch thick ; whether or not his book 
 have every other leaf unstitched; whether his 
 neighbour's conversation be more or less of a 
 shout ; whether he pronounce h or p, t or d; 
 whether or not his adored one's teeth be few and 
 far between. He has the same sort of insensi- 
 bility to gradations in time. A German comedy 
 is like a German sentence : you see no reason in 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 87 
 
 its structure wli}^ it should ever come to an end, 
 and you accept the conclusion as an arrangement 
 of Providence rather than of -the author. We 
 have heard Germans use the word Langeweile, the 
 equivalent for ennui, and we have secretly won- 
 dered what it can be that produces ennui in a 
 German. Not the longest of long tragedies, for 
 we have known him to pronounce that hochst 
 fesselnd; not the heaviest of heavy books, for 
 he delights in that as grundlich ; not the slowest 
 of journeys in a Post-wagen, for the slower the 
 horses the more cigars he can smoke before he 
 reaches his journey's end. German ennui must 
 be something as superlative as Barclay's treble 
 X, which, we suppose, implies an extremely 
 unknown quantity of stupefaction. 
 
 It is easy to see that this national deficiency 
 in nicety of perception must have its effect 
 on the national appreciation and exhibition of 
 Humour. You find in Germany ardent admirers 
 of Shakespeare, who tell you that what they think 
 most admirable in him is his Wortspiel, his verbal 
 quibbles ; and it is a remarkable fact that, among 
 the five great races concerned in modern civilisa- 
 tion, the German race is the only one which, up 
 to the present century, had contributed nothing 
 classic to the common stock of European wit and 
 humour ; unless ' Eeineke Fuchs ' can be fairly 
 
88 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 claimed as a peculiarly Teutonic product. Italy 
 was the birthplace of Pantomime and the immor- 
 tal Pulcinello ; Spain had produced Cervantes ; 
 France had produced Eabelais and Moliere, and 
 classic wits innumerable; England had pelded 
 Shakespeare and a host of humorists. But Ger- 
 many had borne no great comic dramatist, no 
 great satirist, and she has not yet repaired the 
 omission ; she had not even produced any 
 humorist of a high order. AmoDg her great 
 writers, Lessing is the one who is the most 
 specifically witty. We feel the implicit influ- 
 ence of wit — the " flavour of mind " — through- 
 out his writings ; and it is often concentrated 
 into pungent satire, as every reader of the 
 ' Hamburgische Dramaturgic ' remembers. Still, 
 Lessing's name has not become European through 
 his wit, and his charming comedy, ' Minna von 
 Barnhelm,' has won no place on a foreign stage. 
 Of course, we do not pretend to an exhaustive 
 acquaintance with German literature ; we not 
 only admit — we are sure — that it includes much 
 comic writing of which we know nothing. We 
 simply state the fact, that no German production 
 of that kind, before the present century, ranked 
 as European — a fact which does not, indeed, 
 determine the amount of the national facetious- 
 ness, but which is quite decisive as to its quality. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 89 
 
 Whatever may be the stock of fun which Germany 
 yields for home consumption, she has provided 
 little for the palate of other lands. All honour 
 to her for the still greater things she has done 
 for us ! She has fought the hardest fight for 
 freedom of thought, has produced the grandest 
 inventions, has made magnificent contributions 
 to science, has given us some of the divinest 
 poetry, and quite the divinest music, in the 
 world. We revere and treasure the products 
 of the German mind. To say that that mind 
 is not fertile in wit, is only like saying that 
 excellent wheat-land is not rich pasture ; to say 
 that we do not enjoy German facetiousness, is 
 no more than to say, that though the horse is 
 the finest of quadrupeds, we do not like him to 
 lay his hoof playfully on our shoulder. Still, as 
 we have noticed that the pointless puns and 
 stupid jocularity of the boy may ultimately be 
 developed into the epigrammatic brilliancy and 
 polished playfulness of the man ; as we believe 
 that racy wit and chastened delicate humour are 
 inevitably the results of invigorated and refined 
 mental activity, — we can also believe that Ger- 
 many will one day yield a crop of wits and 
 humorists. 
 
 Perhaps there is already an earnest of that 
 future crop in the existence of Heinrich Heine, 
 
90 GERMAIv" ^YIT : 
 
 a German boru with tlie present century, who, 
 to Teutonic imagination, sensibility, and humour, 
 adds an amount of esjyrit that would make him 
 brilliant amons; the most brilliant of Frenchmen. 
 True, this unique German wit is half a Hebrew ; 
 but he and his ancestors spent their youth in 
 German air, and were reared on W^irst and 
 Sauerkraut, so that he is as much a German 
 as a pheasant is an English bird, or a potato an 
 Irish vegetable. But whatever else he may be, 
 Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this 
 age ; no echo, but a real voice, and therefore, like 
 all genuine things in this world, worth studying ; 
 a surpassing Ipic poet, who has uttered our feel- 
 ings for us in delicious song ; a humorist, who 
 touches leaden folly with the magic wand of his 
 fancy, and transmutes it into the fine gold of art 
 — who sheds his sunny smile on human tears, 
 and makes them a beauteous rainbow on the 
 cloudy background of life ; a wit, who holds in 
 his mighty hand the most scorching lightnings 
 of satire ; an artist in prose literature, who has 
 shown even more completely than Goethe the 
 possibilities of German prose ; and — in spite of 
 all charges against him, true as well as false — 
 a lover of freedom, who has spoken wise and 
 brave words on behalf of his fellow-men. He 
 is, moreover, a suffering man, who, with all the 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 91 
 
 highly wrought sensibility of genius, has to en- 
 dure terrible physical ills ; and as such he calls 
 forth more than an intellectual interest. It is 
 true, alas ! that there is a heavy weight in the 
 other scale — that Heine's magnificent powers 
 have often served only to give electric force to 
 the expression of debased feeling, so that his 
 works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, 
 and gems, but have not a little brass, and iron, 
 and miry clay mingled with the precious metal. 
 The audacity of his occasional coarseness and 
 personality is unparalleled in contemporary lit- 
 erature, and has hardly been exceeded by the 
 licence of former days. Hence, before his 
 volumes are put within the reach of immature 
 minds, there is need of a friendly penknife to 
 exercise a strict censorship. Yet, when all 
 coarseness, all scurrility, all Mephistophelean 
 contempt for the reverent feelings of other men, 
 is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder 
 of exquisite poetry, of wit, humour, and just 
 thought. It is apparently too often a congenial 
 task to write severe words about the transgres- 
 sions committed by men of genius, especially 
 when the censor has the advantage of being 
 himself a man of no genius, so that those trans- 
 gressions seem to him quite gratuitous ; he, for- 
 sooth, never lacerated any one by his wit, or 
 
92 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 gave irresistible piquancy to a coarse allusion, 
 and his indignation is not mitigated by any 
 knowledge of the temptation that lies in trans- 
 cendent power. We are also apt to measure 
 what a gifted man has done by our arbitrary 
 conception of what he might have done, rather 
 than by a comparison of his actual doings with 
 our own or those of other ordinary men. We 
 make ourselves over-zealous agents of heaven, 
 and demand that our brother should bring usu- 
 rious interest for his five Talents, forgetting that 
 it is less easy to manage five Talents than two. 
 Whatever benefit there may be in denouncing 
 the evil, it is after all more edifying, and cer- 
 tainly more cheering, to appreciate the good. 
 Hence, in endeavouring to give our readers some 
 account of Heine and his works, we shall not 
 dwell lengthily on his faihngs ; we shall not 
 hold the candle up to dusty, vermin -haunted 
 corners, but let the light fall as much as pos- 
 sible on the nobler and more attractive details. 
 Our sketch of Heine's life, which has been drawn 
 from various sources, wiU be free from every- 
 thing like intrusive gossip, and will derive its 
 colouring chiefly from the autobiographical hints 
 and descriptions scattered through his own writ- 
 ings. Those of our readers who happen to know 
 nothing of Heine, will in this way be making 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 93 
 
 their acquaintance witli the writer while they 
 are learning the outline of his career. 
 
 We have said that Heine was born with the 
 present centiiry; but this statement is not 
 precise, for we learn that, according to -his certi- 
 ficate of baptism, he was born December 12, 
 1799. However, as he himself says, the import- 
 ant point is, that he was born, and born on the 
 banks of the Ehine, at Dlisseldorf, where his 
 father was a merchant. In his ' EeisebUder ' 
 he gives us some recollections, in his wild poetic 
 way, of the dear old town where he spent his 
 childhood, and of his schoolboy troubles there. 
 We shall quote from these in butterfly fashion, 
 sipping a little nectar here and there, without 
 regard to any strict order : — 
 
 " I first saw the liglit on the banks of that lovely 
 stream, where Polly grows on the green hills, and in 
 autumn is plucked, pressed, poured into casks, and 
 sent into foreign lands. Believe me, I yesterday heard 
 some one utter folly which, in anno 1811, lay in a 
 bunch of grapes T then saw growing on the Johannis- 
 berg. . . . Mon Dieu ! if I had only such faith in me 
 that I could remove mountains, the Johannisberg would 
 be the very motintain I should send for wherever I 
 might be; but as my faith is not so strong, imagina- 
 tion must help me, and it transports me at once to 
 the lovely Ehtne. ... I am again a child, and playing 
 with other children on the Schlossplatz, at Dlisseldorf 
 on the Ehine. Yes, madam, there was I born ; and 
 
94 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 I note this expressly, in case, after my death, seven 
 cities — Schilda, Kriihwinkel, Polkwitz, Bockuni, Dtil- 
 ken, Gottingen, and Schoppenstadt — should contend 
 for the honour of being my birthplace. Dlisseldorf is 
 a town on the Ehine ; sixteen thousand men live there, 
 and many hundred thousand men besides lie buried 
 there. . . Among them, many of -whom my mother 
 says, that it would be better if they were still living ; 
 for example, my grandfather and my uncle, the old 
 Herr Von Geldern and the young Herr Von Geldern, 
 both such celebrated doctors, who saved so many men 
 from death, and yet must die themselves. And the 
 pious Ursula, who carried me in her arms when I was 
 a child, also lies buried there, and a rose-bush grows 
 on her grave ; she loved the scent of roses so well in 
 life, and her heart was pure rose-incense and goodness. 
 The knowing old Canon, too, lies buried there. Heavens, 
 what an object he looked when I last saw him ! He 
 was made up of nothing tut mind and plasters, and 
 nevertheless studied day and night, as if he were 
 alarmed lest the worms should find an idea too little 
 in his head. And the little William lies there, and 
 for this I am to blame. We were schoolfellows in the 
 Franciscan monastery, and were playing on that side 
 of it where the Diissel flows between stone walls, and 
 I said — ' William, fetch out the kitten that has just 
 fallen in '• — and merrily he went down on to the plank 
 which lay across the brook, snatched the kitten out of 
 the water, but fell in himself, and was dragged out 
 dripping and dead. Tlic kitten lived to a good old age. 
 . . Princes in that day were not the tormented race 
 they are now; the crown grew firmly on their heads, 
 and at night they drew a nightcap over it, and slept 
 peacefully, and peacefully slept the people at their 
 
HEINRICH HEI.NE. 95 
 
 feet ; and when the people waked in the morning, 
 they said ' Good morning, father ! ' — and the princes 
 answered, ' Good morning, dear children ! ' But it 
 was suddenly quite otherwise ; for when we awoke 
 one morning at Diisseldorf, and were ready to say, 
 ' Good morning, father ! ' — lo ! the father was gone 
 away ; and in the whole town there was nothing but 
 dumb sorrow, everywhere a sort of funeral disposition ; 
 and people glided along silently to the market, and read 
 the long placard placed on the door of the Town Hall. 
 It was dismal weather ; yet the lean tailor, Kihan, stood 
 in his nankeen jacket which he usually wore only in 
 the house, and his blue worsted stockings hung down 
 so that his naked legs peeped out mournfully, and his 
 thin lips trembled while he muttered the announce- 
 ment to himself. And an old soldier read rather 
 louder, and at many a word a crystal tear trickled 
 down to his brave old moustache. I stood near him 
 and wept in company, and asked him, ' Why tee 
 wept ? ' He answered, ' The Elector has abdicated.' 
 And then he read again, and at the words, 'for the 
 long-manifested fidelity of my subjects,' and ' hereby 
 set you free from your allegiance/ he wept more than 
 ever. It is strangely touching to see an old man like 
 that, with faded uniform and scarred face, weep so 
 bitterly all of a sudden. While we were reading, the 
 Electoral arms were taken down from the Town Hall ; 
 everything had such a desolate air, that it was as if an 
 eclipse of the sun were expected. . . I went home and 
 we.pt, and wailed out, ' The Elector has abdicated ! ' 
 In vain my mother took a world of trouble to explain 
 the thing to me. I knew what I knew ; I was not to 
 be persuaded, but went crying to bed, and in the night 
 dreamed that the world was at an end." 
 
96 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 The next morning, however, the stm rises as 
 usual, and Joachim Murat is proclaimed Grand 
 Duke, whereupon there is a holiday at the public 
 school, and Heimdch (or Harry, for that was his 
 baptismal name, which he afterwards had the 
 good taste to change), perched on the bronze 
 horse of the Electoral statue, sees quite a 
 different scene from yesterday's : — 
 
 " The next day the world was again all in order, and 
 we had school as before, and things were got by heart 
 as before — the Eoman emperors, chronology, the nouns 
 in im, the verha irregularia, G-reek, Hebrew, geography, 
 mental arithmetic ! — heavens ! my head is still dizzy 
 with it, — all must be learned by heart ! And a great 
 deal of this came in very conveniently for me in after- 
 life. For if I had not known the Eoman kings by 
 heart, it would subsequently have been quite indifferent 
 to me whether Niebuhr had proved or had not proved 
 that they never really existed. . . . But oh ! the trouble 
 I had at school with the endless dates. And with 
 arithuietic it was still worse. What I understood 
 best was subtraction, for that has a very practical 
 rule : ' Four can't be taken from three, therefore I 
 must borrow one.' But I advise every one in such 
 a case to borrow a few extra pence, for no one can 
 tell what may happen. ... As for Latin, you have 
 no idea, madam, what a complicated affair it is. The 
 Eomans would never have found time to conquer the 
 world if they had first had to learn Latin. Luckily for 
 them, thej^ already knew in their cradles what nouns 
 have their accusative in im. I, on the contrary, had 
 to learn them by heart in the sweat of my brow ; 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 97 
 
 nevertheless, it is fortunate for me that I know them ; 
 . . . and the fact that I have them at my finger-ends 
 if I should ever happen to want them suddenly, affords 
 me much inward repose and consolation in many 
 troubled hours of life. ... Of Greek I will not say 
 a word ; I should get too much irritated. The monks 
 in the middle ages were not so far wrong when they 
 maintained that Greek was an invention of the devil. 
 God knows the suffering I endured over it. . . . With 
 Hebrew it went somewhat better, for I had always a 
 great liking for the Jews, though to this very hour 
 they crucify my good name ; but I could never get on 
 so far in Hebrew as my watch, which had much familiar 
 intercourse with pawnbrokers, and in this way con- 
 tracted many Jewish habits — for example, it wouldn't 
 go on Saturdays." 
 
 Heine's parents were apparently not wealthy, 
 but his education was cared for by his uncle, 
 Solomon Heine, a great banker in Hamburg, so 
 that he had no early pecuniary disadvantages to 
 struggle with. He seems to have been very 
 happy in his mother, who was not of Hebrew, 
 but of Teutonic blood ; he often mentions her 
 with reverence and affection, and in the ' Buch 
 der Lieder' there are two ezquisite sonnets 
 addressed to her, which teU how his proud spirit 
 was always subdued by the charm of her presence, 
 and how her love was the home of his heart 
 after restless weary wandering : — 
 
 G 
 
98 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 '■' Wie maohtig auch mein stoker Mutli sioh blahe, 
 In deiner selig siissen, trauten Nahe 
 Ergreift mich oft ein demuthvoUe Zagen. 
 
 Und immer irrte ich. nacK Liebe, immer 
 Nach Liebe, doch die Liebe fand icb nimmer, 
 Und kebrte um nach Hause, krank und triibe. 
 Doch da bist du entgegen mir gekommen, 
 Und aob ! was da in deinem Aug' geschwommen, 
 Das war die siisse, langgesucbte Liebe." 
 
 He was at first destined for a mercantile life, 
 but Nature declared too strongly against tHs plan. 
 " Grod knows," he has lately said in conversation 
 with his brother, " I would willingly have be- 
 come a banker, but I could never bring myself 
 to that pass. I very early discerned that 
 bankers would one day be the rulers of the 
 world." So commerce was at length given up 
 for law, the study of which he began in 1819 at 
 the University of Bonn. He had already pub- 
 lished some poems in the corner of a newspaper, 
 and among them was one on Napoleon, the 
 object of his youthful enthusiasm. This poem, 
 he says in a letter to St Rend Taillandier, was 
 written when he was only sixteen. It is still to 
 be found in the ' Buch der Lieder ' under the 
 title " Die Grenadiere," and it proves that even 
 in its earhest efforts his genius showed a strongly 
 specific character. 
 
 It will be easily imagined that the germs of 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 99 
 
 poetry sprouted too vigorously in Heine's brain 
 for jurisprudence to find much room there. 
 Lectures on history and literature, we are told, 
 were more diligently attended than lectures 
 on law. He had taken care, too, to furnish his 
 trunk with abundant editions of the poets, and the 
 poet he especially studied at that time was Byron. 
 At a later period we find his taste taking another 
 direction, for he writes : " Of all authors, Byron 
 is precisely the one who excites in me the most 
 intolerable emotion ; whereas Scott, in every one 
 of his works, gladdens my heart, soothes and 
 invigorates me." Another indication of his bent 
 in these Bonn days was a newspaper essay, in 
 which he attacked the Eomantic school; and 
 here also he went through that chicken-pox of 
 authorship — ^the production of a tragedy. Heine's 
 tragedy — " Almansor" — is, as might be expected, 
 better than the majority of these youthful mis- 
 takes. The tragic collision lies in the conflict be- 
 tween natural affection and the deadly hatred of 
 religion and of race — in the sacrifice of youthful 
 lovers to the strife between Moor and Spaniard, 
 Moslem and Christian. Some of the situations 
 are striking, and there are passages of consider- 
 able poetic merit ; but the characters are little 
 more than shadowy vehicles for the poetry, and 
 there is a want of clearness and probability in 
 
100 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 the structure. It was published two years later, 
 in company with another tragedy, in one act, 
 called "William Eatcliffe," in which there is 
 rather a feeble use of the Scotch second-sight 
 after the manner of the Fate in the Greek 
 tragedy. We smile to find Heine saying of his 
 tragedies, in a letter to a friend soon after their 
 publication : " I know they will be terribly cut 
 u.p, but I will confess to yovi in confidence that 
 they are very good, — better than my collection 
 of poems, which are not worth a shot." Else- 
 where he tells us, that when, after one of Paga- 
 nini's concerts, he was passionately compliment- 
 ing the great master on his violin - plajdng, 
 Paganini interrupted him thus : " But how were 
 you pleased with my hoivsf" 
 
 In 1820, Heine left Bonn for Gottingen. He 
 there pursued his omission of law studies ; and 
 at the end of three months he was rusticated for 
 a breach of the laws against duelling. While 
 there, he had attempted a negotiation with 
 Brockhaus for the printing of a volume of poems, 
 and had endured that first ordeal of lovers and 
 poets — a refusal. It was not until a year after, 
 that he found a Berlin publisher for his first 
 volume of poems, subsequently transformed, with 
 additions, into the ' Buch der Lieder.' He re- 
 mained between two and three years at Berlin, 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 101 
 
 and the society he found there seems to have 
 made these years an important epoch in his 
 culture. He was one of the youngest members 
 of a circle which assembled at the house of the 
 poetess Elise von Hohenhausen, the translator of 
 BjT^on — a circle which included Chamisso, Varn- 
 hagen, and Eahel (Yarnhagen's wife). For Eahel, 
 Heine had a profound admiration and regard. 
 He afterwards dedicated to her the poems in- 
 cluded under the title ' Heimkehr ' ; and he 
 frequently refers to her or quotes her in a way 
 that indicates how he valued her influence. 
 According to his friend, F. von Hohenhausen, the 
 opinions concerning Heine's talent were very 
 various among his Berlin friends, and it was 
 only a small minority that had any presentiment 
 of his future fame. In this minority was Elise 
 von Hohenhausen, who proclaimed Heine as the 
 Byron of Germany; but her opinion was met 
 with much head-shaking and opposition. We 
 can imagine how precious was such a recognition 
 as hers to the young poet, then only two or three 
 and twenty, and with by no means an impres- 
 sive personality for superficial eyes. Perhaps 
 even the deep-sighted were far from detecting in 
 that small, blond, pale young man, with quiet, 
 o-entle manners, the latent powers of ridicule and 
 sarcasm — the terrible talons that were one day 
 
102 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 to be thrust out from the velvet paw of the 
 young leopard. 
 
 It was apparently during this residence in 
 BerHn that Heine united, himself with the 
 Lutheran Church. He would willingly, like 
 many of his friends, he teUs us, have remained 
 free from aU ecclesiastical ties if the author- 
 ities there had not forbidden residence in Prus- 
 sia, and especially in Berlin, to every one who 
 did not belong to one of the positive religions 
 recognised by the State : — 
 
 " As Henry IV. once laughingly said, ' Paris vaut 
 Men une messe' so I might with reason say, 'Berlin 
 vaut Men lonepreche'; and I could afterwards, as before, 
 accommodate myself to the very enlightened Christian- 
 ity, filtrated from all superstition, wliich could then be 
 had in the churches of Berlin, and which was even free 
 from the divinity of Christ, like turtle-soup without 
 turtle." 
 
 At the same period, too, Heine became ac- 
 quainted with Hegel. In his lately published 
 ' Gestandnisse ' (Confessions), he throws on 
 Hegel's influence over him the blue light of 
 demoniacal wit, and confounds us by the most 
 bewildering, double - edged sarcasms ; but that 
 influence seems to have been at least more 
 wholesome than the one which produced the 
 mocking retractations of the ' Gestandnisse.' 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 103 
 
 Througli all his self-satire, we discern that in 
 those days he had something like real earnest- 
 ness and enthusiasm, which are certainly not 
 apparent in his present theistic confession of 
 faith : — 
 
 " On the whole, I never felt a strong enthusiasm 
 for this philosophy, and conviction on the subject was 
 out of the question. I never was an abstract thinker, 
 and I accepted the synthesis of the Hegelian doctrine 
 without demanding any proof, since its consequences 
 flattered my vanity. I was young and proud, and it 
 pleased my vainglory when I learned from Hegel that 
 the true God was not, as my grandmother believed, the 
 God who lives in heaven, but myself here tipon earth. 
 This foolish pride had not in the least a pernicious in- 
 fluence on my feelings ; on the contrary, it heightened 
 these to the pitch of heroism. I was at that time 
 so lavish in generosity and self-sacrifice that I must 
 assuredly have eclipsed the most brilliant deeds of 
 those good bourgeois of virtue who acted merely from 
 a sense of duty, and simply obeyed the laws of 
 morality." 
 
 His sketch of Hegel is irresistibly amusing; 
 but we must warn the reader that Heine's anec- 
 dotes are often mere devices of style by which 
 he conveys his satire or opinions. The reader 
 will see that he does not neglect an opportunity 
 of giving a sarcastic lash or two, in passing, to 
 Meyerbeer, for whose music he has a great con- 
 tempt. The sarcasm conveyed in the substitu- 
 
104 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 tion of o'-eputation for music and journalists for 
 musicians might perhaps escape any one "unfamil- 
 iar with the sly and unexpected turns of Heine's 
 ridicule : — 
 
 " To speak frankly, I seldom understood him, and 
 only arrived at the meaning of his words by subse- 
 quent reflection. I believe he wished not to be under- 
 stood ; and hence his practice of sprinkling his dis- 
 course with modifying parentheses ; hence, perhaps, 
 his preference for persons of whom he knew that they 
 did not understand him, and to whom he all the more 
 willingly granted the honour of his familiar acquaint- 
 ance. Thus every one in Berlin wondered at the in- 
 timate companionship of the profound Hegel with the 
 late Heinrich Beer, a brother of Giacomo Meyerbeer, 
 who is universally known by his reputation, and who 
 has been celebrated by the cleverest journahsts. This 
 Beer, namely Heinrich, was a thoroughly stupid fellow, 
 and indeed was afterwards actually declared imbecile 
 by his family, and placed under guardianship, because 
 instead of making a name for himself in art or in. 
 science by means of his great fortune, he squandered 
 his money on childish trifles ; and, for example, one 
 day bought six thousand thalers' worth of walking- 
 sticks. This poor man, who had no wish to pass either 
 for a great tragic dramatist, or for a great star-gazer, 
 or for a laurel-crowned musical genius, a rival of 
 Mozart and Eossini, and preferred giving his money 
 for walking-sticks — this degenerate Beer enjoyed He- 
 gel's most confidential society ; he was the philoso- 
 pher's bosom friend, his Pylades, and accompanied him 
 everywhere like his shadow. The equally witty and 
 gifted Felix Mendelssohn once sought to explain this 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 105 
 
 phenomenon by maintaining that Hegel did not under- 
 stand Heinrich Beer. I now believe, however, that 
 the real ground of that intimacy consisted in this — 
 Hegel was convinced that no word of what he said 
 was understood by Heinrich Beer ; and he could there- 
 fore, in his presence, give himself up to all the intel- 
 lectual outpourings of the moment. In general, Hegel's 
 conversation was a sort of monologue, sighed forth by 
 starts in a noiseless voice : the odd roughness of his 
 expressions often struck me, and many of them have 
 remained in my memory. One beautiful starlight 
 evening we stood together at the window, and I, a 
 young man of one-and-twenty, having just had a good 
 dinner and finished my coffee, spoke with enthusiasm 
 of the stars, and called them the habitations of the 
 departed. But the master muttered to himself, ' The 
 stars ! hum ! hum ! The stars are only a brilliant 
 leprosy on the face of the heavens.' ' For God's sake,' 
 I cried, ' is there, then, no happy place above, where 
 virtue is rewarded after death ? ' But he, staring at 
 me with his pale eyes, said, cuttingly, ' So you want a 
 bonus for having taken care of your sick mother, and 
 refrained from poisoning your worthy brother ? ' At 
 these words he looked anxiously round, but appeared 
 immediately set at rest when he observed that it was 
 only Heinrich Beer, who had approached to invite him 
 to a game at whist." 
 
 In 1823, Heine returned to Gottingen to com- 
 plete his career as a law-student, and this time 
 he gave evidence of advanced mental maturity, 
 not only by producing many of the charming 
 poems subsequently included in the 'Eeisebil- 
 
106 GERMAN wit: 
 
 der,' but also by prosecuting his professional 
 studies diligently enough to leave Gottingen in 
 1825 as Doctor juris. Hereupon he settled at 
 Hamburg as an advocate, but his profession 
 seems to have been the least pressing of his 
 occupations. In those days, a small blond young 
 man, with the brim of his hat drawn over his 
 nose, his coat flying open, and his hands stuck 
 in his trouser-pockets, might be seen stumbling 
 along the streets of Hamburg, staring from side 
 to side, and appearing to have small regard to 
 the figure he made in the eyes of the good 
 citizens. Occasionally an inhabitant, more liter- 
 ary than usual, would point out this young man 
 to his companion as Heinrich Heine; but in 
 general, the young poet had not to endure the 
 inconveniences of being a lion. His poems were 
 devoured, but he was not asked to devour flat- 
 tery in return. Whether because the fair Ham- 
 burgers acted in the spirit of Johnson's advice 
 to Hannah More — to " consider what her flattery 
 was worth before she choked him with it" — or 
 for some other reason, Heine, according to the 
 testimony of August Lewald, to whom we owe 
 these particulars of his Hamburg life, was left 
 free from the persecution of tea-parties. Not, 
 however, from another persecution of genius — 
 nervous headaches, which some persons, we are 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 107 
 
 told, regarded as an improbable fiction, intended 
 as a pretext for raising a delicate white hand to 
 his forehead. It is probable that the sceptical 
 persons alluded to were themselves untroubled 
 with nervous headache, and that their hands 
 were not delicate. Slight details these, but 
 worth telling about a man of genius, because 
 they help us to keep in mind that he is, after 
 all, our brother, having to endure the petty- 
 everyday ills of life as we have ; with this differ- 
 ence, that his heightened sensibility converts 
 what are mere insect-stings for us into scorpion- 
 stings for him. 
 
 It was perhaps in these Hamburg days that 
 Heine paid the visit to Goethe, of which he gives 
 us this charming little picture : — 
 
 " When I visited him in Weimar, and stood before 
 him, I involuntarily glanced at his side to see whether 
 the eagle was not there with the hghtning in his beak. 
 I was nearly speaking Greek to him ; but, as I ob- 
 served that he understood German, I stated to him, in 
 German, that the plums on the road between Jena and 
 Weimar were very good. I had for so many long 
 winter nights^ thought over what lofty and profound 
 things I would say to Goethe, if ever I saw him. And 
 when I saw him at last, I said to him, that the Saxon 
 plums were very good ! And Goethe smiled." 
 
 During the next few years, Heine produced 
 the most popular of aU his works — those which 
 
108 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 have won him his place as the greatest of living 
 G-erman poets and humorists. Between 1826 and 
 1829, appeared the four volumes of the 'Reise- 
 bilder' (Pictures of Travel), and the ' Buch der 
 Lieder' (Book of Songs) — a volume of lyrics, of 
 which it is hard to say whether their greatest 
 charm is the lightness and finish of their style, 
 their vivid and original imaginativeness, or their 
 simple, pure sensibility. In his ' Eeisebilder,' 
 Heine carries us with him to the Harz, to the 
 isle of Norderney, to his native town Dusseldorf, 
 to Italy, and to England, sketching scenery and 
 character, now with the wildest, most fantastic 
 humour, now with the finest idyllic sensibility, 
 — letting his thoughts wander from poetry to 
 politics, from criticism to dreamy reverie, and 
 blending fun, imagination, reflection, and satire 
 in a sort of exquisite, ever-varying shimmer, like 
 the hues of the opal. 
 
 Heine's journey to England did not at aU 
 heighten his regard for the English. He calls 
 our language the "hiss of egoism" [Zischlaute 
 des Egoismus) ; and his ridicule of English awk- 
 wardness is as mercUess as — English ridicule of 
 German awkwardness. His antipathy towards 
 us seems to have grown in intensity, like many 
 of his other antipathies ; and in his ' Vermischte 
 Schriften' he is more bitter than ever. Let us 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 109 
 
 quote one of his philippics; since bitters are 
 understood to be wholesome : — 
 
 " It is certainly a frightful injustice to pronounce 
 sentence of condemnation on an entire people. But 
 with regard to the English, momentary disgust might 
 betray me into this injustice ; and on looking at 
 the mass, I easily forget the many brave and noble 
 men who distinguished themselves by intellect and 
 love of freedom. But these, especially the British 
 poets, were always all the more glaringly in contrast 
 with the rest of the nation ; they were isolated martyrs 
 to their national relations ; and besides, great geniuses 
 do not belong to the particular land of their birth : 
 they scarcely belong to this earth, the Golgotha of 
 their sufferings. The mass — the English blockheads, 
 God forgive me ! — are hateful to me in my inmost 
 soul ; and I often regard them not at all as my fellow- 
 men, but as miserable automata — machines, whose 
 motive-power is egoism. In these moods, it seems to 
 me as if I heard the whizzing wheel-work by which 
 they think, feel, reckon, digest, and pray : their pray- 
 ing, their mechanical Anglican church-going, with the 
 gilt Prayer-book under their arms, their stupid, tire- 
 some Sunday, their awkward piety, is most of all odious 
 to me. I am firmly convinced that a blaspheming 
 Frenchman is a more pleasing sight for the Divinity 
 than a praying Englishman." 
 
 On his return from England, Heine was em- 
 ployed at Munich in editing the Allgemeinen 
 Politisclien Annalen ; but in 1830 he was again 
 in the north, and the news of the July Eevolu- 
 
110 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 tion surprised him on the island of Heligoland. 
 He has given us a graphic picture of his demo- 
 cratic enthusiasm in those days in some letters, 
 apparently written from Heligoland, which he 
 has inserted in his book on Borne. We quote 
 some passages, not only for their biographic 
 interest as showing a phase of Heine's mental 
 history, but because they are a specimen of 
 his power in that kind of dithyrambic writing 
 which, in less masterly hands, easily becomes 
 ridiculous : — 
 
 " The tliick packet of newspapers arrived from the 
 Continent with these warm, glowing-hot tidings. They 
 were sunbeams wrapped up in packing-paper, and they 
 inflamed my soul till it burst into the wildest confla- 
 gration. . . . It is all like a dream to me ; especially 
 the name Lafayette sounds to me like a legend out of 
 my earliest childhood. Does he really sit again on 
 horseback, commanding the National Guard ? I al- 
 most fear it may not be true, for it is in print. I will 
 myself go to Paris, to be convinced of it with my 
 bodily eyes. ... It must be splendid, when he rides 
 through the streets, the citizen of two worlds, the god- 
 like old man, with his silver locks streaming down his 
 sacred shoulder. . . . He greets, with his dear old 
 eyes, the grandchildren of those who once fought with 
 him for freedom and equality. ... It is now sixty 
 years since he returned from America with the Declar- 
 ation of Human Eights — the decalogue of the world's 
 new creed, which was revealed to him amid the thun- 
 ders and lightnings of cannon. . . . And the tricoloured 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. Ill 
 
 flag waves again on the towers of Paris, and its streets 
 resound with the Marseillaise ! ... It is all over 
 with my yearning for repose. I know now again 
 what I will do, what I ought to do, what I must do. 
 . . . I am the son of the Eevolution, and seize again 
 the hallowed weapons on which my mother pronounced 
 her magic benediction. . . . Flowers ! flowers ! I will 
 crown my head for the death-fight. And the lyre too 
 — reach me the lyre, that I may sing a battle-song. 
 . . . Words like flaming stars, that shoot down from 
 the heavens, and burn up the palaces, and illuminate 
 the huts. . . . Words like bright javelins, that whirr 
 up to the seventh heaven and strike the pious hypo- 
 crites who have skulked into the Holy of Holies. . . . 
 I am all joy and song, all sword and flame ! Perhaps, 
 too, all delirium. . . . One of those sunbeams wrapped 
 in brown paper has flown to my brain, and set my 
 thoughts aglow. In vain I dip my head into the sea. 
 No water extinguishes this Greek fire. . . . Even the 
 poor Heligolanders shout for joy, although they have 
 only a sort of dim instinct of what has occurred. The 
 fisherman who yesterday took me over to the little 
 sand island, which is the bathing-place here, said to 
 me, smilingly, ' The poor people have won ! ' Yes ; 
 instinctively the people comprehend such events — per- 
 haps better than we, with all our means of knowledge. 
 Thus Frau von Varnhagen once told me that when the 
 issue of the battle of Leipzig was not yet known, the 
 maid-servant suddenly rushed into the room, with the 
 sorrowful cry, ' The nobles have won ! ' . . . This 
 morning another packet of newspapers is come. I 
 ■devour them like manna. Child that I am, affecting 
 details touch me yet more than the momentous whole. 
 Oh, if I could but see the dog Medor ! . . . The dog 
 
112 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 Medor brought his master his gun and cartridge-box, 
 and when his master fell, and was buried with his 
 fellow-heroes in the Court of the Louvre, there stayed 
 the poor dog, like a monument of faithfulness, sitting 
 motionless on the grave, day and night, eating but 
 little of the food that was offered him- — burying the 
 greater part of it in the earth, perhaps as nourishment 
 for his buried master ! " 
 
 The enthusiasm wHcli v?as kept thus at boiling- 
 heat by imagination, cooled down rapidly when 
 brought into contact with reality. In the same 
 book he indicates, in his caustic way, the com- 
 mencement of that change in his political tem- 
 perature — for it cannot be called a change in 
 opinion — which has drawn down on him im- 
 mense vituperation from some of the patriotic 
 party, but which seems to have resulted simply 
 from the essential antagonism between keen wdt 
 and fanaticism : — 
 
 " On the very first days of my arrival in Paris, I 
 observed that things wore, in reality, quite different 
 colours from those which had been shed on them, when 
 in perspective, by the light of my enthusiasm. The 
 silver locks which I saw fluttering so majestically on 
 the shoiilders of Lafayette, the hero of two worlds, 
 were metamorphosed into a brown perruque, which 
 made a pitiable covering for a narrow skull. And 
 even the dog Medor, which I visited in the Court of 
 the Louvre, and which, encamped under tricoloured 
 flags and trophies, very quietly allowed himself to be 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 113 
 
 fed — lie was not at all the right dog, but quite an 
 ordinary brute, who assumed to himself merits not his 
 own, as often happens with the French; and, like 
 many others, he made a profit out of the glory of the 
 Eevolution. . . . He was pampered and patron- 
 ised, perhaps promoted to the highest posts, while the 
 true Medor, some days after the battle, modestly slunk 
 out of sight, like the true people who created the 
 Eevolution." 
 
 That it was not merely interest in Frencli 
 politics which sent Heine to Paris in 1831, but 
 also a perception that German air was not 
 friendly to sympathisers in July revolutions, is 
 humorously intimated in the ' Gestandnisse ' : — 
 
 " I had done much and suffered much, and when the 
 sun of the July Eevolution arose in France, I had 
 become very weary, and needed some recreation. Also, 
 my native air was every day more unhealthy for me, 
 and it was time I should seriously think of a change 
 of climate. I had visions : the clouds terrified me, 
 and made all sorts of ugly faces at me. It often 
 seemed to me as if the sun were a Prussian cockade ; 
 at night I dreamed of a hideous black eagle, which 
 gnawed my liver ; and I was very melancholy. Add 
 to this, I had become acquainted with an old Berlin 
 Justizrath, who had spent many years in the fortress 
 of Spandau, and he related to me how unpleasant it is 
 when one is obliged to wear irons in winter. For 
 myself I thought it very unchristian that the irons 
 were not warmed a trifle. If the irons were warmed 
 a little for us they would not make so unpleasant an 
 impression, and even chilly natures might then bear 
 
 H 
 
114 GEKMAN WIT : 
 
 them very well ; it would be only proper consideration, 
 too, if the fetters were perfumed with essence of roses 
 and laurels, as is the case in this country (France). I 
 asked my Justizrath whether he often got oysters to 
 eat at Spandau ? He said, No ; Spandau was too far 
 from the sea. Moreover, he said meat was very scarce 
 there, and there was no kind of volaille except flies, 
 which fell into one's soup. . . . Now, as I really 
 needed some recreation, and as Spandau is too far 
 from the sea for oysters to be got there, and the 
 Spandau fly-soup did not seem very appetising to me ; 
 as, besides all this, the Prussian chains are very cold 
 in wiuter, and could not be conducive to my health, I 
 resolved to visit Paris." 
 
 Since this time Paris has been Heine's home, 
 and his best prose works have been written 
 either to inform the Germans on French affairs 
 or to inform the French on German philosophy 
 and literature. He became a correspondent of 
 the ' Allgemeine Zeitung,' and his correspond- 
 ence, which extends, with an interruption of 
 several years, from 1831 to 1844, forms the 
 volume entitled ' Franzosische Zustande ' (French 
 Affairs), and the second and third volumes of his 
 ' Vermischte Schriften.' It is a witty and often 
 wise commentary on public men and public 
 events : Louis Philippe, Casimir P^rier, Thiers, 
 Guizot, Eothschild, the Catholic party, the 
 Socialist party, have their turn of satire and 
 appreciation, for Heine deals out both with an 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 115 
 
 impartiality which made his less favourable 
 critics — Borne, for example — charge him with 
 the rather incompatible sins of reckless caprice 
 and venality. Literature and art alternate with 
 politics : we have now a sketch of Georges Sand, 
 or a description of one of Horace Vernet's pic- 
 tures, — now a criticism of Victor Hugo, or of 
 Liszt, — now an irresistible caricature of Spon- 
 tini, or Kalkbrenner, — and occasionally the pre- 
 dominant satire is relieved by a fine saying or 
 a genial word of admiration. And all is done 
 with that airy lightness, yet precision of touch, 
 which distinguishes Heine beyond any living 
 writer. The charge of venality was loudly made 
 against Heine in Germany : first, it was said that 
 he was paid to write ; then, that he was paid to 
 abstain from writing ; and the accusations were 
 supposed to have an irrefragable basis in the 
 fact that he accepted a stipend from the French 
 Government. He has never attempted to con- 
 ceal the reception of that stipend, and we think 
 his statement (in the ' Vermischte Schriften ') of 
 the circumstances under which it was offered 
 and received, is a sufiicient vindication of him- 
 self and M. Guizot from any dishonour in the 
 matter. 
 
 It may be readily imagined that Heine, with 
 so large a share of the Gallic element as he has in 
 
116 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 his composition, was soon at liis ease in Parisian 
 society, and the years here were bright with in- 
 tellectual activity and social enjoyment. "His 
 wit," wrote August Lewald, " is a perpetual gnish- 
 inp- fountain ; he throws off the most delicious 
 descriptions with amazing facUity, and sketches 
 the most comic characters in conversation." 
 Such a man could not be neglected in Paris, and 
 Heine was sought on all sides — as a guest in dis- 
 tinguished salons, as a possible proselyte in the 
 circle of the Saint Simonians. His literary pro- 
 ductiveness seems to have been furthered by this 
 congenial life, which, however, was soon to some 
 extent embittered by the sense of exile ; for since 
 1835 both his works and his person have been 
 the object of denunciation by the German Gov- 
 ernments. Between 1833 and 1845 appeared the 
 four volumes of the ' Salon,' ' Die Romantische 
 Schule' (both written, in the first instance, in 
 French) ; the book on Borne ; " Atta Troll," a 
 romantic poem ; " Deutschland," an exquisitely 
 humorous poem, describing his last visit to Ger- 
 many, and containing some grand passages of 
 serious writing ; and the ' Neue Gedichte,' a col- 
 lection of lyrical poems. Among the most inter- 
 esting of his prose works are the second volume 
 of the ' Salon,' which contains a survej^ of reli- 
 gion and philosophy in German}-, and the ' Eo- 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 117 
 
 mantische Schule,' a delightful introduction to 
 that phase of German literature known as the 
 Eomantic School. The book on Borne, which 
 appeared in 1840, two or three years after the 
 death of that writer, excited great indignation in 
 Germany, as a wreaking of vengeance on the 
 dead, an insult to the memory of a man who had 
 worked and suffered in the cause of freedom — a 
 cause which was Heine's own. Borne, we may 
 observe parenthetically, for the information of 
 those who are not familiar with recent German 
 literature, was a remarkable political writer of 
 the ultra- Liberal party in Germany, who resided 
 in Paris at the same time as Heine, — a man of 
 stern uncompromising partisanship, and bitter 
 humour. Without justifying Heine's production 
 of this book, we see excuses for him which should 
 temper the condemnation passed on it. There 
 was a radical opposition of nature between him 
 and Borne : to use his own distinction, Heine is 
 a Hellene — sensuous, realistic, exquisitely alive 
 to the beautiful ; while Borne was a Nazarene — 
 ascetic, spiritualistic, despising the pure artist as 
 destitute of earnestness. Heine has too keen a 
 perception of practical absurdities and damaging 
 exaggerations ever to become a thorough-going 
 partisan ; and with a love of freedom, a faith in 
 the ultimate triumph of democratic principles, of 
 
118 GEEMAN WIT : 
 
 which we see no just reason to doubt the genu- 
 ineness and consistency, he has been unable to 
 satisfy more zealous and one-sided Liberals by 
 giving his adhesion to their views and measures, 
 or by adopting a denunciatory tone against those 
 in the opposite ranks. Borne could not forgive 
 what he regarded as Heine's epicurean indiffer- 
 ence and artistic dalliance, and he at length gave 
 vent to his antipathy in savage attacks on him 
 through the press, accusing him of utterly lack- 
 ing character and principle, and even of writing 
 under the influence of venal motives. To these 
 attacks Heine remained absolutely mute — from 
 contempt, according to his own account ; but the 
 retort, which he resolutely refrained from making 
 during Borne's life, comes in this volume pub- 
 lished after his death with the concentrated force 
 of long-gathering thunder. The utterly inex- 
 cusable part of the book is the caricature of 
 Borne's friend, Madame Wohl, and the scurrilous 
 insinuations concerning Borne's domestic life. It 
 is said, we know not with how much truth, that 
 Heine had to answer for these in a diiel with 
 Madame "Wohl's husband, and that, after receiv- 
 ing a serious wound, he promised to withdraw 
 the offensive matter from a future edition. That 
 edition, however, has not been called for. What- 
 ever else we may think of the book, it is impos- 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 119 
 
 sible to deny its transcendent talent — the dra- 
 matic vigour with which Borne is made present 
 to lis, the critical acumen with which he is char- 
 acterised, and the wonderful play of wit, pathos, 
 and thought which runs through the whole. But 
 we will let Heine speak for himself, and first we 
 will give part of his graphic description of the 
 way in which Borne's mind and manners grated 
 on his taste : — 
 
 " To the disgust which, in intercourse with Borne, I 
 was in danger of feeling towards those who surrounded 
 him, was added the annoyance I felt from his perpetual 
 talk about politics. Nothing but political argument, 
 and again political argument, even at table, where he 
 managed to hunt me out. At dinner, when I so gladly 
 forget all the vexations of the world, he spoiled the 
 best dishes for me by his patriotic gall, which he 
 poured as a bitter sauce over everything. Calf's feet, 
 (i la maitre d'hStel, then my innocent bo7me boiwhe, he 
 completely spoiled for me by Job's tidings from Ger- 
 many, which he scraped together out of the most 
 unreliable newspapers. And then his accursed remarks, 
 which spoiled one's appetite ! . . . This was a 
 sort of table-talk which did not greatly exhilarate me, 
 and I avenged myself by affecting an excessive, almost 
 impassioned indifference for the objects of Borne's 
 enthusiasm. For example. Borne was indignant that 
 immediately on my arrival in Paris, I had nothing 
 better to do than to write for German papers a long 
 account of the Exhibition of Pictures. I omit all dis- 
 cussion as to whether that interest in Art which 
 
120 GEEMAX ^VIT : 
 
 induced me to undertake this work was so utterly- 
 irreconcilable with the revolutionary interests of the 
 day ; but Borne saw in it a proof of my indifference 
 towards the sacred cause of humanity, and I could in 
 my turn spoil the taste of his patriotic Sauerkraut for 
 him by talking all dinner-time of nothing but pictures, 
 of Eobert's Eeapers, Horace Vernet's Judith, and 
 Scheffer's Faust. . . . That I never thought it 
 worth while to discuss my political principles with 
 him it is needless to say ; and once when he declared 
 that he had found a contradiction in my writings, I 
 satisfied myself with the ironical answer, ' You are 
 mistaken, mon chcr ; such contradictions never occur 
 in my works, for always before I begin to write I read 
 over the statement of my political principles in my 
 previous writings, that I may not contradict myself, 
 and that no one may be able to reproach me with 
 apostasy from my liberal principles.' " 
 
 Aud here is his own account of the spirit in 
 which the book was written : — 
 
 " I was never Borne's friend, nor was I ever his 
 enemy. The displeasure which he could often excite 
 in me was never very important, and he atoned for it 
 sufficiently by the cold silence which I opposed to all 
 his accusations and raillery. While he lived I wrote 
 not a line against him, I never thought about him, I 
 ignored him completely ; and that enraged him beyond 
 measure. If I now speak of him, I do so neither out 
 of enthusiasm nor out of uneasiness ; I am conscious 
 of the coolest impartiality. I write here neither an 
 apology nor a critique, and as in painting the man I 
 go on my own observation, the image I present of him 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 121 
 
 ought perhaps to be regarded as a real portrait. And 
 such a monument is due to him — to the great wrestler 
 who, in the arena of our political games, wrestled so 
 courageously, and earned, if not the laurel, certainly 
 the crown of oak leaves. I give an image with his 
 true features, without idealisation — the more like him 
 the more honourable for his memory. He was neither 
 a genius nor a hero ; he was no Olympian god. He 
 was a man, a denizen of this earth ; he was a good 
 writer and a great patriot. . . . Beautiful delicious 
 peace, which I feel at this moment in the depths of 
 my soul ! thou rewardest me sufficiently for every- 
 thing I have done and for everything T have despised. 
 ... I shall defend myself neither from the reproach 
 of indifference nor from the suspicion of venality. I 
 have for years, during the life of the insinuator, held 
 such self -justification unworthy of me ; now even de- 
 cency demands silence. That would be a frightful 
 spectacle ! — polemics between Death and Exile ! Dost 
 thou stretch out to me a beseeching hand from the 
 grave ? Without rancour I reach mine towards thee. 
 . . . See how noble it is and pure ! It was never soiled 
 by pressing the hands of the mob, any more than by 
 the impure gold of the people's enemy. In reality thou 
 hast never injured me. ... In all thy insinuations 
 there is not a louis-d'or's worth of truth." 
 
 In one of these years Heine was married, and, 
 in deference to tlie sentiments of liis wife, married 
 according to tlie rites of the Catholic Church. 
 On this fact busy rumour afterwards founded 
 the story of his conversion to Catholicism, and 
 could of course name the day and the spot on 
 
122 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 which he abjured Protestantism. In his ' Ges- 
 tandnisse ' Heine publishes a denial of this ru- 
 mour; less, he says, for the sake of depriving 
 the Catholics of the solace they may derive from 
 their belief in a new convert, than in order to 
 cut off from another party the more spiteful 
 satisfaction of bewailing his instability : — 
 
 " That statement of time and place was entirely 
 correct. I was actually on the specified day in the 
 specified church, which was, moreover, a Jesuit church — 
 namely, St Sulpice ; and I then went through a reh- 
 gious act. But this act was no odious abjuration, but 
 a very innocent conjugation; that is to say, my mar- 
 riage, already performed according to the civil law, 
 there received the ecclesiastical consecration, because 
 my wife, whose family are stanch Catholics, would not 
 have thought her marriage sacred enough without such 
 a ceremony. And I would on no account cause this 
 beloved being any uneasiness or disturbance in her 
 religious views." 
 
 For sixteen years — from 1831 to 1847 — Heine 
 lived that rapid concentrated life which is known 
 only in Paris ; but then, alas ! stole on the 
 " days of darkness," and they were to be many. 
 In 1847 he felt the approach of the terrible 
 spinal disease which has for seven years chained 
 him to his bed in acute suffering. The last time 
 he went out of doors, he tells us, was in May 
 1848 :— 
 
HEINMCH HEINE. 123 
 
 " With difficulty I dragged myself to the Louvre, and 
 I almost sank down as I entered the magnificent hall 
 where the ever-blessed goddess of beauty, our beloved 
 Lady of Milo, stands on her pedestal. At her feet I 
 lay long, and wept so bitterly that a stone must have 
 pitied me. The goddess looked compassionately on 
 me, but at the same time disconsolately, as if she would 
 say : Dost thou not see, then, that I have no arms, 
 and thus cannot help thee ? " 
 
 Since 1848, then, this poet, whom the lovely 
 objects of Nature have always " haunted like a 
 passion," has not descended from the second 
 storey of a Parisian house ; this man of hungry 
 intellect has been shut out from all direct obser- 
 vation of life, all contact with society, except 
 such as is derived from visitors to his sick-room. 
 The terrible nervous disease has affected his eyes ; 
 the sight of one is utterly gone, and he can only 
 raise the lid of the other by lifting it with his 
 finger. Opiiim alone is the beneficent genius 
 that stills his pain. We hardly know whether 
 to call it an alleviation or an intensification of 
 the torture that Heine retains his mental vigour, 
 his poetic imagination, and his incisive wit ; for 
 if his intellectual activity fills up a blank, it 
 widens the sphere of suifering. His brother 
 described him in 1851 as still, in moments when 
 the hand of pain was not too heavy on him, the 
 same Heinrich Heine, poet and satirist by turns. 
 
124 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 In such moments, lie would narrate the strangest 
 things in the gravest manner. But when he 
 came to an end, he wotild roguishly lift up the 
 hd of his right eye with his finger to see the im- 
 pression he had produced; and if his audience 
 had been listening with a serious face, he would 
 break into Homeric laughter. We have other 
 proof than personal testimony that Heine's dis- 
 ease allows his genius to retain much of its 
 energy, in the ' Eomanzero,' a volume of poems 
 published in 1851, and written chiefly during the 
 first three years of his illness ; and in the first 
 volume of the ' Vermischte Schriften,' also the 
 product of recent years. Very plaintive is the 
 poet's own description of his condition, in the 
 epilogue to the ' Romanzero ' : — 
 
 " Do I really exist ? My body is so shrunken that 
 I am hardly anything but a voice ; and my bed re- 
 minds me of the singing grave of the magician Merlin, 
 which lies in the forest of Brozeliand, in Brittany, under 
 taU oaks whose tops soar like green flames towards 
 heaven. Alas ! I envy thee those trees and the fresh 
 breeze that moves their branches, brother Merlin, for 
 no green leaf rustles about my mattress-grave in Paris, 
 where early and late I hear nothing but the rolling of 
 vehicles, hammering, quarrelling, and piano-strumming. 
 A grave without repose, death without the privileges 
 of the dead, who have no debts to pay, and need write 
 neither letters nor books — that is a piteous condition. 
 Long ago the measure has been taken for my coffin and 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 125 
 
 for my necrology ; but I die so slowly, that the process 
 is -tedious for me as well as my friends. But patience ; 
 everything has an end. You will one day find the 
 booth closed where the puppet-show of my humour has 
 so often delighted you." 
 
 As early as 1850, it was rumoured that since 
 Heine's illness a change had taken place in his 
 religious views ; and as rumour seldom stops 
 short of extremes, it was soon said that he had 
 become a thorough pietist, Catholics and Protes- 
 tants by turns claiming him as a convert. Such 
 a change in so uncompromising an iconoclast, in 
 a man who had been so zealous in his negations 
 as Heine, naturally excited considerable sensa- 
 tion in the camp he was supposed to have quitted, 
 as well as in that he was supposed to have joined. 
 In the second volume of the ' Salon,' and in the 
 'Eomantische Schule,' written in 1834 and '35, 
 the doctrine of Pantheism is dwelt on with a fer- 
 vour and unmixed seriousness which show that 
 Pantheism was then an animating faith to Heine, 
 and he attacks what he considers the false spir- 
 itualism and asceticism of Christianity as the 
 enemy of true beauty in Art, and of social well- 
 being. Now, however, it was said that Heine 
 had recanted all his heresies ; but from the fact 
 that visitors to his sick-room brought away very 
 various impressions as to his actual religious 
 
126 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 views, it seemed probable that bis love of mysti- 
 fication bad found a tempting opportunity for 
 exercise on tbis subject, and tbat, as one of bis 
 friends said, be was not inclined to pour out un- 
 mixed wine to tbose wbo asked for a sample out 
 of mere curiosity. At lengtb, in tbe epilogue 
 to tbe 'Eomanzero,' dated 1851, tbere appeared, 
 amidst mucb mystifying banter, a declaration 
 tbat be bad embraced Tbeism and tbe belief in a 
 future life ; and wbat cbiefly lent an air of seri- 
 ousness and reliability to tbis afiirmation, was 
 tbe fact tbat be took care to accompany it witb 
 certain negations : — 
 
 " As concerns myself, I can boast of no particular 
 progress in politics; I adhered (after 1848) to the 
 same democratic principles which had the homage of 
 my youth, and for which- I have ever since glowed 
 with increasing fervour. In theology, on the contrary, 
 1 must accuse myself of retrogression, since, as I have 
 akeady confessed, 1 returned to the old superstition 
 — to a personal God. This fact is, once for aU, not 
 to be stifled, as many enliglitened and well-meaning 
 friends would fain have had it. But I must ex- 
 pressly contradict the report that my retrograde move- 
 ment has carried me as far as to the threshold of a 
 Church, and that I have even been received into her 
 lap. No : my religious convictions and views have 
 remained free from any tincture of ecclesiasticism ; no 
 chiming of bells has allured me, no altar-candles have 
 dazzled me. I have dallied with no dogmas, and have 
 not utterly renounced my reason." 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 127 
 
 This sounds like a serious statement. But 
 what shall we say to a convert who plays with 
 his newly acquired belief in a future life as 
 Heine does in the very next page ? He says 
 to his reader : — • 
 
 " Console thyself ; we shall meet again in a better 
 world, where I also mean to write thee better books. 
 I take for granted that my health will there be im- 
 proved, and that Swedenborg has not deceived me. 
 He relates, namely, with great confidence, that we 
 shall peacefully carry on our old occupations in the 
 other world, just as we have done in this ; that we 
 shall there preserve our individuality unaltered, and 
 that death will produce no particular change in our 
 organic development. Swedenborg is a thoroughly 
 honourable fellow, and quite worthy of credit in what 
 he tells us about the other world, where he saw with 
 his own eyes the persons who had played a great part 
 on our earth. Most of them, he says, remained un- 
 changed, and busied themselves with the same things 
 as formerly ; they remained stationary, were old- 
 fashioned, rococo — which now and then produced a 
 ludicrous effect. For example, our dear Dr Martin 
 Luther kept fast by his doctrine of Grace, about which 
 he had for three hundred years daily written down the 
 same mouldy arguments — just in the same way as the 
 late Baron Ekstein, who during twenty years printed 
 in the ' Allgemeine Zeitung ' one and the same article, 
 perpetually chewing over again the old cud of Jesuit- 
 ical doctrine. But, as we have said, all- persons who 
 once figured here below were not found by Sweden- 
 borg in such a state of fossil immutability : many had 
 
128 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 considerably developed their character, both for good 
 and evil, in the other world ; and this gave rise to 
 some singular results. Some who had been heroes 
 and saints on earth had there sunk into scamps and 
 good-for-nothings ; and there were examples, too, of a 
 contrary transformation. For instance, the fumes of 
 self-conceit mounted to St Anthony's head when he 
 learned what immense veneration and adoration had 
 been paid to him by all Christendom ; and he who 
 here below withstood the most terrible temptations, 
 was now quite an impertinent rascal and dissolute 
 gallows-bird, who vied with his pig in rolling himself 
 in the mud. The chaste Susanna, from having been 
 excessively vain of her virtue, which she thought in- 
 domitable, came to a shameful fall, and she who once 
 so gloriously resisted the two old men, was a victim 
 to the seductions of the young Absalom, the son of 
 David. On the contrary. Lot's daughters had in the 
 lapse of time become very virtuous, and passed in the 
 other world for models of propriety : the old man, 
 alas ! had stuck to the wine-flask." 
 
 In his ' Gestandnisse,' the retractation of for- 
 mer opinions and profession of Theism are re- 
 newed, but in a strain of irony that repels our 
 sympathy and baffles our psychology. Yet 
 what strange, deep pathos is mingled with the 
 audacity of the following passage ! — 
 
 "What avails it me, that enthusiastic youths and 
 maidens crown my marble bust with laurel, when the 
 withered hands of an aged nurse are pressing Spanish 
 flies behind my ears ? What avails it me, that all 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 129 
 
 the roses of Shiraz glow and waft incense for me ? 
 Alas ! Shiraz is two thousand miles from the Eue 
 d'Amsterdam, where, in the wearisome loneliness of 
 my sick-room, I get no scent except it be, perhaps, the 
 perfume of warmed towels. Alas ! God's satire weighs 
 heavily on me. The great Author of the universe, the 
 Aristophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating, 
 with crushing force, to me, the little, earthly, German 
 Aristophanes, how my wittiest sarcasms are only pitiful 
 attempts at jesting in comparison with His, and how 
 miserably I am beneath Him in humour, in colossal 
 mockery." 
 
 For our own part, we regard tlie paradoxical 
 irreverence with which Heine professes his theo- 
 retical reverence as pathological, as the diseased 
 exhibition of a predominant tendency urged into 
 anomalous action by the pressure of pain and 
 mental privation — as the delirium of wit starved 
 of its proper nourishment. It is not for us to 
 condemn, who have never had the same burthen 
 laid on us ; it is not for pigmies at their ease 
 to criticise the writhings of the Titan chained to 
 the rock. 
 
 On one other point we must touch before 
 quitting Heine's personal history. There is a 
 standing accusation against him in some quarters 
 of wanting political principle, of wishing to de- 
 nationalise himself, and of indulging in insults 
 against his native country. Whatever ground 
 
 I 
 
130 GEJRMAN WIT : 
 
 may exist for these accusations, that ground is 
 not, so far as we see, to be found in his writings. 
 He may not have much faith in German revolu- 
 tions and revolutionists ; experience, in his case 
 as in that of others, may have thrown his millen- 
 nial anticipations into more distant perspective ; 
 but we see no evidence that he has ever swerved 
 from his attachment to the principles of freedom, 
 or written anything which to a philosophic mind 
 is incompatible with true patriotism. He has 
 expressly denied the report that he wished to 
 become naturalised in France ; and his yearning 
 towards his native land and the accents of his 
 native language is expressed with a pathos the 
 more reliable from the fact that he is sparing 
 in such effusions. We do not see why Heine's 
 satire of the blunders and foibles of his fellow- 
 countrymen should be denounced as the crime of 
 lese-patrie, any more than the political caricatures 
 of any other satirist. The real offences of Heine 
 are his occasional coarseness and his unscrupu- 
 lous personalities, which are reprehensible, not 
 because they are directed against his fellow- 
 countrymen, but because they are personalities. 
 That these offences have their precedents in men 
 whose memory the world delights to honour, does 
 not remove their turpitude, but it is a fact which 
 should modify our condemnation in a particular 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 131 
 
 case — unless, indeed, we are to deliver our judg- 
 ments on a principle of compensation, making 
 up for our indulgence in one direction by our 
 severity in another. On this ground of coarse- 
 ness and personality, a true bill may be found 
 against Heine — not, we think, on the ground 
 that he has laughed at what is laughable in his 
 compatriots. Here is a specimen of the satire 
 under which we suppose German patriots wince : — 
 
 " Ehenish Bavaria was to be the starting-point of the 
 German revolution. Zweibriicken was the Bethlehem 
 in which the infant Saviour — Freedom — lay in the 
 cradle, and gave whimpering promise of redeeming the 
 world. ISTear his cradle bellowed many an ox, who 
 afterwards, when his horns were reckoned on, showed 
 himself a very harmless brute. It was confidently 
 believed that the German revolution would begin in 
 Zweibriicken, and everything was there ripe for an 
 outbreak. But, as has been hinted, the tender-heart- 
 edness of some persons frustrated that illegal under- 
 taking. For example, among the Bipontine conspirators 
 there was a tremendous braggart, who was always 
 loudest in his rage, who boiled over with the hatred of 
 tyranny, and this man was fixed on to strike the first 
 blow, by cutting down a sentinel who kept an im- 
 portant post. . . . ' "What ! ' cried the man, when this 
 order was given him — ' what ' — me ! Can you expect 
 so horrible, so bloodthirsty an act of me ? I — /, kill 
 an innocent sentinel ? I, who am father of a family ! 
 And this sentinel is perhaps also father of a family. 
 One father of a family kill another father of a family ? 
 Yes ! Kill— murder ! ' " 
 
132 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 Tn political matters, Heine, like all men whose 
 intellect and taste predominate too far over then- 
 impulses to allow of their becoming partisans, is 
 offensive alike to the aristocrat and the demo- 
 crat. By the one he is denounced as a man who 
 holds incendiary principles, by the other as a 
 half-hearted " trimmer." He has no sympathy, 
 as he says, with " that vague, barren pathos, 
 that useless effervescence of enthusiasm, which 
 plunges, with the spirit of a martyr, into an 
 ocean of generalities, and which always reminds 
 me of the American sailor, who had so fervent 
 an enthusiasm for General Jackson, that he at 
 last sprang from the top of a mast into the sea, 
 crjdng, " I die for General Jackson!" 
 
 " But thou liest, Bratus, thou liest, Cassius, and 
 thou, too, hest, Asinius, in maintaiuing that my ridicule 
 attacks those ideas which are the precious acquisition 
 of Humanity, and for which I myself have so striven 
 and suffered. No ! for the very reason that those 
 ideas constantly hover before the poet in glorious 
 splendour and majesty, he is the more irresistibly over- 
 come by laughter when he sees how rudely, awkwardlj', 
 and clumsily those ideas are seized and mirrored in the 
 contracted minds of contemporaries. . . . There are 
 mirrors which have so rough a surface that even an 
 Apollo reflected in them becomes a caricature, and 
 excites our laughter. But wc laugh then only at the 
 caricature, not at the god." 
 
 For the rest, why should we demand of Heine 
 
HEINEICH HEINK. 133 
 
 that he should be a hero, a patriot, a solemn 
 prophet, any more than we should demand of a 
 gazelle that it should draw well in harness ? 
 Nature has not made him of her sterner stuff — 
 not of iron and adamant, but of pollen of flowers, 
 the juice of the grape, and Puck's mischievous 
 brain, plenteously mixing also the dews of kindly 
 aff'ection and the gold-dust of noble thoughts. 
 It is, after all, a tribute which his enemies pay 
 him when they utter their bitterest dictum — 
 namely, that he is " nu7- Dichter " — only a poet. 
 Let us accept this point of view for the present, 
 and, leaving all consideration of him as a man, 
 look at him simply as a poet and literary artist. 
 
 Heine is essentially a lyric poet. The finest 
 products of his genius are 
 
 " Short swallow-flights of song that dip 
 Their wings in tears, and skim away ; ''" 
 
 and they are so emphatically songs, that, in read- 
 ing them, we feel as if each must have a twin 
 melody born in the same moment and by the 
 same inspiration. Heine is too impressible and 
 mercurial for any sustained production : even in 
 his short lyrics his tears sometimes pass into 
 laughter, and his laughter into tears ; and his 
 longer poems, " Atta Troll" and " Deutschland,'' 
 are full of Ariosto-like transitions. His song has 
 a wide compass of notes : he can take us to the 
 
134 GEEMAX WIT : 
 
 shores of tlie Northern Sea and thrill us by the 
 sombre sublimity of his pictures and dreamy 
 fancies ; he can dra"\v forth our tears by the 
 voice he gives to our own sorrows, or to the 
 sorrows of "Poor Peter"; he can throw a cold 
 shudder over us by a mysterious legend, a 
 ghost - story, or a still more ghastly rendering 
 of hard reality ; he can charm us by a quiet 
 idyl, shake us with laughter at his overflowing 
 fun, or give us a piquant sensation of surprise 
 by the ingenuity of his transitions from the lofty 
 to the ludicrous. This last power is not, indeed, 
 essentially poetical ; but only a poet can use it 
 with the same success as Heine, for only a poet 
 can poise our emotion and expectation at such 
 a height as to give effect to the sudden fall. 
 Heine's greatest power as a poet lies in his 
 simple pathos, in the ever varied but always 
 natural expression he has given to the tender 
 emotions. We may perhaps indicate this phase 
 of his genius by referring to Wordsworth's 
 beautiful little poem, " She dwelt among the 
 untrodden ways " ; the conclusion — 
 
 " She dwelt alone, and few could know 
 When Lucy ci'ased to he ; 
 But she is in her grave, and oh ! 
 The diti'erence to me " — ■ 
 
 is entirely in Heine's manner ; and so is Tenuy- 
 
HEINPJCH HEINE. 135 
 
 son's poem of a dozen lines, called " Circum- 
 stance." Both, these poems have Heine's preg- 
 nant simplicity. But lest this comparison 
 should mislead, we must say that there is no 
 general resemblance between either Wordsworth, 
 or Tennyson, and Heine. Their greatest qual- 
 ities lie quite away from the light, delicate 
 lucidity, the easy, rippling music, of Heine's 
 style. The distinctive charm of his lyrics may 
 best be seen by comparing them with Goethe's. 
 Both have the same masterly finished simplicity 
 and rhythmic grace ; but there is more thought 
 mingled with Goethe's feeling — his lyrical genius 
 is a vessel that draws more water than Heine's, 
 and though it seems to glide along with equal 
 ease, we have a sense of greater weight and force 
 accompanying the grace of its movement. But, 
 for this very reason, Heine touches our hearts 
 more strongly ; his songs are all music and feel- 
 ing — they are like birds that not only enchant 
 us with their delicious notes, but nestle against 
 us with their soft breasts, and make us feel the 
 agitated beating of their hearts. He indicates a 
 whole sad history in a single quatrain : there is 
 not an image in it, not a thought ; but it is 
 beautiful, simple, and perfect as a " big round 
 tear" — it is pure feeling breathed in pure 
 music : — ■ 
 
136 GERMAN AVIT : 
 
 " Anfangs wollt' ich fast verzagen 
 Und ich. glaubt' ich. trug es nie, 
 Und ich hab' es doch getragen, — 
 Aber fragt mich nur nicht, wie." •'■ 
 
 He excels equally in the more imaginative 
 expression of feeling : he represents it by a brief 
 image, like a finely cut cameo ; he expands it 
 into a mysterious cbeam, or dramatises it in a 
 little story, half ballad, half idyl; and in all these 
 forms his art is so perfect, that we never have 
 a sense of artificiality or of unsuccessful efi'ort ; 
 but all seems to have developed itself by the 
 same beautiful necessity that brings forth vine- 
 leaves and grapes and the natural curls of child- 
 hood. Of Heine's humorous poetry, " Deutsch- 
 land " is the most charming specimen — charming 
 especially, because its wit and humour grow out 
 of a rich loam of thought. " Atta Troll" is 
 more original, more various, more fantastic ; but 
 it is too great a strain on the imagination to be 
 a general favourite. We have said that feehng 
 is the element in which Heine's poetic genius 
 habitually floats ; but he can occasionally soar 
 to a higher region, and impart deep significance 
 to picturesque symbolism ; he can flash a sub- 
 lime thought over the past and into the future ; 
 
 1 At first I was almost in despair, and I thought I could never 
 bear it, and yet I have borne it — only do not ask me how? 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 137 
 
 he can pour forth a lofty strain of hope or indig- 
 nation. Few could forget, after once hearing 
 them, the stanzas at the close of " Deutschland," 
 in which he warns the King of Prussia not to 
 incur the irredeemable hell which the injured 
 poet can create for him — the singing Jlaines 
 of a Dante's terza rima ! 
 
 " Kennst du die HoUe des Dante nicht, 
 Die schrecklichen. Terzetten ? 
 Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt 
 Den kann kein Gott mchr retten. 
 
 Kein Gott, kein Heiland, erlost iin je 
 Aus diesen singenden flammen ! 
 Nimm dich. in Acht, das wir dioli nicht 
 Zu solcher HoUe verdammen." ^ 
 
 As a prosaist, Heine is, in one point of view, 
 even more distinguished than as a poet. The 
 German language easily lends itself to all the 
 purposes of poetry ; like the ladies of the Middle 
 Ages, it is gracious and compliant to the Trou- 
 badours. But as these same ladies were often 
 crusty and repulsive to their unmusical mates, 
 
 ^ It is not fair to the English, reader to indulge in German 
 quotations, but in our opinion poetical translations are usually 
 worse than valueless. For those who think differently, however, 
 we may mention that Mr Stores Smith has published a modest 
 little book, containing " Selections from the Poetry of Heinrioh 
 Heine," and that a meritorious (American) translation of Heine's 
 complete works, by Charles Leland, is now appearing in shilling 
 numbers. 
 
138 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 SO the German language generally appears awk- 
 ward and unmanageable in the hands of prose 
 ■^Titers. Indeed the number of really fine Ger- 
 man prosaists before Heine, would hardly have 
 exceeded the numerating powers of a New Hol- 
 lander, who can count three and no more. Per- 
 sons the most familiar with German prose testify 
 that there is an extra fatigue in reading it, just 
 as we feel an extra fatigue from our walk when 
 it takes us over ploughed clay. But in Heine's 
 hands German prose, usually so heavy, so clums}", 
 so dull, becomes, like clay in the hands of the 
 chemist, compact, metallic, brilliant ; it is Ger- 
 man in an allotropic condition. No dreary, laby- 
 rinthine sentences in which you find "no end 
 in wandering mazes lost"; no chains of adjec- 
 tives in linked harshness long: drawn out ; no 
 digressions thrown in as parentheses ; but crys- 
 talline definiteness and clearness, fine and varied 
 rhythm, and all that delicate precision, all those 
 felicities of word and cadence, which belong to 
 the highest order of prose. And Heine has 
 proved — what Madame de Stael seems to have 
 doubted — that it is possible to be witty in Ger- 
 man ; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine 
 that German was pre-eminently the language of 
 wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant does it 
 become under his management. He is far more 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 139 
 
 an artist in prose than Goethe. He has not the 
 breadth and repose, and the calm development 
 which belong to Goethe's style, for they are 
 foreign to his mental character; but he excels 
 Goethe in susceptibility to the manifold qualities 
 of prose, and in mastery over its effects. Heine 
 is full of variety, of light and shadow : he alter- 
 nates between epigrammatic pith, imaginative 
 grace, sly allusion, and daring piquancy ; and 
 athwart all these there runs a vein of sadness, 
 tenderness, and grandeur which reveals the poet. 
 He continually throws out those finely chiselled 
 sayings which stamp themselves on the memory, 
 and become familiar by quotation. For example : 
 " The People have time enough, they are im- 
 mortal ; kings only are mortal." " Wherever a 
 great soul utters its thoughts, there is Golgotha." 
 " Nature wanted to see how she looked, and she 
 created Goethe." " Only the man who has known 
 bodily suffering is truly a man ; his limbs have 
 their Passion - history, they are spiritualised." 
 He calls Eubens " this Flemish Titan, the wings 
 of whose genius were so strong that he soared 
 as high as the sun, in spite of the hundred- 
 weight of Dutch cheeses that hung on his legs." 
 Speaking of Borne's dislike to the calm creations 
 of the true artist, he says, "He was hke a child 
 which, insensible to the glowing significance of 
 
140 GERMAN" WIT : 
 
 a Greek statue, only touches the marble and 
 complains of cold." 
 
 The most poetic and specifically humorous of 
 Heine's prose writings are the ' Reisebilder.' 
 The comparison with Sterne is inevitable here ; 
 but Heine does not suffer from it, for if he falls 
 below Sterne in raciness of humour, he is far 
 above him in poetic sensibility and in reach and 
 variety of thought. Heine's humour is never 
 persistent, it never flows on long in easy gaiet}^ 
 and drollery ; where it is not swelled by the tide 
 of poetic feeling, it is continually dashing down 
 the precipice of a witticism. It is not broad and 
 unctuous ; it is aerial and sprite-like, a moment- 
 ary resting-place between his poetry and his wit. 
 In the ' EeisebUder ' he runs through the whole 
 gamut of his powers, and gives us every hue 
 of thought, from the wildly droU and fantastic 
 to the sombre and the terrible. Here is a pas- 
 sage almost Dantesque in its conception : — 
 
 " Alas ! one ought in truth to write against no one 
 in this world. Each of us is sick enough in this great 
 lazaretto, and many a polemical writing reminds me 
 involuntarily of a revolting quarrel, in a little hospital 
 at Cracow, of which I chanced to be a witness, and 
 where it was horrible to hear how the patients mock- 
 ingly reproached each other with their infirmities : how 
 one who was wasted by consumption jeered at another 
 who was bloated by dropsy ; how one laughed at an- 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 141 
 
 other's cancer in the nose, and this one again at his 
 neighbour's locked-jaw or squint, until at last the delir- 
 ious fever-patient sprang out of bed and tore away 
 the coverings from the wounded bodies of his com- 
 panions, and nothing was to be seen but hideous misery 
 and mutilation." 
 
 And how fine is the transition in the very next 
 chapter, vi^here, after quoting the Homeric de- 
 scription of the feasting gods, he says : — 
 
 "Then suddenly approached, panting, a pale Jew, 
 with drops of blood on his brow, with a crown of thorns 
 on his head, and a great cross laid on his shoulders ; 
 and he threw the cross on the high table of the gods, 
 so that the golden cups tottered, and the gods became 
 dumb and pale, and grew ever paler, till they at last 
 melted away into vapour." 
 
 The richest specimens of Heine's wit are per- 
 haps to be found in the works which have 
 appeared since the ' Eeisebilder.' The years, if 
 they have intensified his satirical bitterness, have 
 also given his wit a finer edge and pplish. His 
 sarcasms are so subtly prepared and so slily allu- 
 sive, that they may often escape readers whose 
 sense of wit is not very acute ; but for those who 
 delight in the subtle and delicate flavours of 
 style, there can hardly be any wit more irresist- 
 ible than Heine's. We may measure its force 
 by the degree in which it has subdued the Ger- 
 man language to its purposes, and made that 
 
14:2 GERMAN WIT : 
 
 language brilliant in spite of a long hereditary 
 transmission of dulness. As one of the most 
 harmless examples of his satire, take this on 
 a man who has certainly had his share of 
 adulation : — 
 
 " Assuredly it is far from my purpose to depreciate 
 M. Victor Cousin. The titles of this celebrated philos- 
 opher even lay me under au obligation to praise him. 
 He belongs to that living pantheon of France, wliich 
 we call the peerage, and his intelligent legs rest on the 
 velvet benches of the Luxembourg. I must indeed 
 sternly repress all private feelings which might seduce 
 me into an excessive enthusiasm. Otherwise I might 
 be suspected of servility ; for M. Cousin is very uaflu- 
 ential in the State by means of his position and his 
 tongue. This consideration might even move me to 
 speak of his faults as frankly as of his virtues. Will 
 he himself disapprove of this ? Assuredly not. I know 
 that we cannot do higher honour to great minds than 
 when we throw as strong a light on their demerits as 
 on their merits. When we sing the praises of a Her- 
 cules, we must also mention tliat he once laid aside 
 the lion's skin and sat down to the distaff : what then ? 
 he remains notwithstanding a Hercules ! So when we 
 relate similar circumstances concerning M. Cousin, we 
 must nevertheless add, with discriminating eulogy : M. 
 Cousin, if he has sometimes sat twaddling at the distajf, 
 lias never laid aside the lion's skin. . . . It is true 
 that, having been suspected of demagogy, he spent some 
 time in a German prison, just as Lafayette and Eicliard 
 Coeur de Lion. But that M. Cousin there in his leisure 
 hours studied Kant's ' Critique of Pure Eeason ' is to 
 
HEINEICH HEINE. 143 
 
 be doubted on three grounds. First, this book is 
 written in German. Secondly, in order to read this 
 book, a man must understand German. Thirdly, M. 
 Cousin does not understand German. . . I fear I 
 am passing unawares from the sweet waters of praise 
 into the bitter ocean of blame. Yes, on one account 
 I cannot refrain from bitterly blaming M. Cousin — 
 namely, that he who loves truth far more than he loves 
 Plato and Tenneman, is unjust to himself when he 
 wants to persuade us that he has borrowed something 
 from the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel. Against 
 this self-accusation, I must take M. Cousin under my 
 protection. On my word and conscience ' this honour- 
 able man has not stolen a jot from Schelling and Hegel, 
 and if he brought home anything of theirs, it was merely 
 their friendship. That does honour to his heart. But 
 there are many instances of such false self-accusation 
 in psychology. I knew a man who declared that he 
 had stolen silver spoons at the king's table ; and yet 
 we all knew that the poor devil had never been pre- 
 sented at Court, and accused himself of stealing these 
 spoons to make us believe that he had been a guest at 
 the palace. ISTo ! In German philosophy M. Cousin has 
 always kept the sixth commandment ; here he has 
 never pocketed a single idea, not so much as a salt- 
 spoon of an idea. All witnesses agree in attesting that 
 in this respect M. Cousin is honour itself. ... I 
 prophesy to you that the renown of M. Cousin, like the 
 French Eevolution, will go round the world ! I hear 
 some one wickedly add: Undeniably the renown of 
 M. Cousin is going round the world, and it has already 
 taken its departure from France." 
 
 The following " symbolical myth " about Lonis 
 
144 GERMAN "WIT. 
 
 Philippe is very characteristic of Heine's man- 
 ner : — 
 
 "I remember very well that immediately on my 
 arrival (in Paris) I hastened to the Palais Pioyal to 
 see Louis Philippe. The friend who conducted me told 
 me that the king now appeared on the terrace only at 
 stated hours, but that formerly he was to be seen at 
 any time for five francs. ' For five francs ! ' I cried, 
 with amazement ; ' does he then show himself for 
 money ? ' ' Xo ; but he is shown for money, and it 
 happens in this way : There is a society of claqueurs, 
 marcliands clc contrcmarques, and such riff-raff, who 
 offered every foreigner to show liim the king for five 
 francs : if he would give ten francs, he might see the 
 king raise his eyes to heaven, and lay his hand pro- 
 testingly on his heart ; if he would give twenty francs, 
 the king would sing the Marseillaise. If the foreigner 
 gave five francs, they raised a loud cheering under the 
 king's windows, and his Majesty appeared on the ter- 
 race, bowed, and retired. If ten francs, they shouted 
 still louder, and gesticulated as if they had been pos- 
 sessed, when the king appeared, who then, as a sign of 
 sUent emotion, raised his eyes to heaven, and laid his 
 hand on his heart. English visitors, however, would 
 sometimes spend as much as twenty francs, and then 
 the enthusiasm mounted to the highest pitch : no 
 sooner did the king appear on the terrace, than the 
 Marseillaise was struck up and roared out frightfully, 
 until Louis Philippe, perhaps only for the sake of 
 putting an end to the singing, bowed, laid his hand on 
 his heart, and joined in the Marseillaise. Whether, as 
 is asserted, he beat time with his foot, I cannot say.' " 
 
145 
 
 EYANGELICAL TEACHING: DR GUMMING. 
 
 Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral 
 standard not higher than the average, some 
 rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, 
 what is the career in which, without the aid of 
 birth or money, he may most easily attain power 
 and reputation in English society? Where is 
 that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering 
 of science and learning will pass for profound 
 instruction, where platitudes will be accepted 
 as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, 
 unctuous egoism as God-given piety ? Let such 
 a man become an evangelical preacher; he will 
 then find it possible to reconcile small ability 
 with great ambition, superficial knowledge with 
 the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with 
 a high reputation for sanctity. Let him shun 
 practical extremes and be ultra only in what is 
 purely theoretic : let him be stringent on pre- 
 
 K 
 
146 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 destination, but latitudinarian on fasting; un- 
 flinching in insisting on the eternity of punish- 
 ment, but diffident of curtailing the substantial 
 comforts of time ; ardent and imaginative on the 
 pre -millennial advent of Christ, but cold and 
 cautious towards every other infringement of 
 the status quo. Let him fish for souls not with 
 the bait of inconvenient singularity, but with 
 the drag-net of comfortable conformity. Let 
 him be hard and literal in his interpretation 
 only when he wants to hurl texts at the heads 
 of unbelievers and adversaries, but when the 
 letter of the Scriptures presses too closely on 
 the genteel Christianity of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, let him use his spiritualising alembic and 
 disperse it into impalpable ether. Let him preach 
 less of Christ than of Antichrist ; let him be less 
 definite in showing what sin is than in showing 
 who is the Man of Sin, less expansive on the 
 blessedness of faith than on the accursedness of 
 infidelity. Above all, let him set up as an inter- 
 preter of prophecy, and rival Moore's Almanack 
 in the prediction of political events, tickling the 
 interest of hearers who are but moderately 
 spiritual by showing how the Holy Spirit has 
 dictated problems and charades for their benefit, 
 and how, if they are ingenious enough to solve 
 these, they may have their Christian graces 
 
DE, GUMMING. 147 
 
 nourished by learning precisely to wliom they 
 may point as the "horn that had eyes," "the 
 lying prophet," and the "unclean spirits." In 
 this way he will draw men to him by the strong 
 cords of their passions, made reason-proof by 
 being baptised with the name of piety. In this 
 way he may gain a metropolitan pulpit ; the 
 avenues to his church will be as crowded as the 
 passages to the opera ; he has but to print his pro- 
 phetic sermons and bind them in lilac and gold, 
 and they will adorn the drawing-room table of 
 all evangelical ladies, who will regard as a sort of 
 pious " light reading " the demonstration that the 
 prophecy of the locusts whose sting is in their 
 tail, is fulfilled in the fact of the Turkish com- 
 mander's having taken a horse's tail for his 
 standard, and that the French are the very frogs 
 predicted in the Revelation. 
 
 Pleasant to the clerical flesh under such cir- 
 cumstances is the arrival of Sunday ! Somewhat 
 at a disadvantage during the week, in the pres- 
 ence of working-day interests and lay splendours, 
 on Sunday the preacher becomes the cynosure of 
 a thousand eyes, and predominates at once over 
 the Amphitryon with whom he dines, and the 
 most captious member of his church or vestry. 
 He has an immense advantage over all other 
 public speakers. The platform orator is subject 
 
148 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 to the criticism of hisses and groans. Counsel 
 for the plaintiff expects the retort of counsel for 
 the defendant. The honourable gentleman on 
 one side of the House is liable to have his facts 
 and figures shown up by his honourable friend 
 on the opposite side. Even the scientific or 
 literary lecturer, if he is dull or incompetent, 
 may see the best part of his audience slip quietly 
 out one by one. But the preacher is completely 
 master of the situation : no one may hiss, no 
 one may depart. Like the writer of imaginary 
 conversations, he may put what imbecilities he 
 pleases into the mouths of his antagonists, and 
 swell with triumph when he has refuted them. 
 He may riot in gratuitous assertions, confident 
 that no man will contradict him ; he may exer- 
 cise perfect free-will in logic, and invent illus- 
 trative experience ; he may give an evangelical 
 edition of history with the inconvenient facts 
 omitted ; - — all this he may do with impunity, 
 certain that those of his hearers who are not 
 sympathising are not listening. For the Press 
 has no band of critics who go the round of the 
 churches and chapels, and are on the watch for a 
 slip or defect in the preacher, to make a " fea- 
 ture " in their article : the clergy are, practically, 
 the most irresponsible of all talkers. For this 
 reason, at least, it is well that they do not always 
 
DK CUMMING. 149 
 
 allow their discourses to be merely fugitive, but 
 are often induced to fix them in that black and 
 white in which they are open to the criticism of 
 any man who has the courage and patience to 
 treat them with thorough freedom of speech and 
 pen. 
 
 It is because we think this criticism of clerical 
 teaching desirable for the public good, that we 
 devote some pages to Dr Gumming. He is, as 
 every one knows, a preacher of immense popu- 
 larity, and of the numerous publications in which 
 he perpetuates his pulpit labours, all circulate 
 widely, and some, according to their title-page, 
 have reached the sixteenth thousand. Now our 
 opinion of these publications is the very opposite 
 of that given by a newspaper eulogist : we do 
 not " believe that the repeated issues of Dr Cum- 
 ming's thoughts are having a beneficial effect 
 on society," but the reverse ; and hence, little 
 incHned as we are to dwell on his pages, we 
 think it worth while to do so, for the sake of 
 pointing out in them what we believe to be pro- 
 foundly mistaken and- pernicious. Of Dr Gum- 
 ming personally we know absolutely nothing : 
 our acquaintance with him is confined to a per- 
 usal of his works, our judgment of him is founded 
 solely on the manner in which he has written 
 himself down on his pages. We know neither 
 
150 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 how he looks nor how he lives. We are ignorant 
 whether, like St Paul, he has a bodily presence 
 that is weak and contemptible, or whether his 
 person is as florid and as prone to amphfication 
 as his st5de. For aught we know, he may not 
 only have the gift of prophecy, but may bestow 
 the profits of aU his works to feed the poor, and 
 be ready to give his own body to be burned vnih 
 as much alacrity as he infers the everlasting 
 burning of Eoman Cathohcs and Pusejdtes. Out 
 of the pulpit he may be a model of justice, truth- 
 fulness, and the love that thinketh no evil ; but 
 we are obliged to judge of his charity by the 
 spirit we find in his sermons, and shall only be 
 glad to learn that his practice is, in many re- 
 spects, an amiable -non seqvitur from his teaching. 
 
 Dr Cumming's mind is evidently not of the 
 pietistic order. There is not the slightest lean- 
 ing towards mysticism in his Christianity — no 
 indication of religious raptures, of delight in 
 God, of spiritual communion with the Father. 
 He is most at home in the forensic view of Justi- 
 fication, and dwells on salvation as a scheme 
 rather than as an experience. He insists on 
 good works as the sign of justifying faith, as 
 labours to be achieved to the glory of God, but 
 he rarely represents them as the spontaneous. 
 
DK GUMMING. 151 
 
 necessary outflow of a soul filled with Divine 
 love. He is at home in the external, the polem- 
 ical, the historical, the circiimstantial, and is only 
 episodically devout and practical. The great 
 majority of his published sermons are occupied 
 with argument or philippic against Eomanists 
 and unbelievers, with " vindications " of the 
 Bible, with the political interpretation of pro- 
 phecy, or the criticism of public events ; and the 
 devout aspiration, or the spiritual and practical 
 exhortation, is tacked to them as a sort of fringe 
 in a hurried sentence or two at the end. He 
 revels in the demonstration that the Pope is the 
 Man of Sin ; he is copious on the downfall of the 
 Ottoman empire ; he appears to glow with satis- 
 faction in turning a story which tends to show 
 how he abashed an "infidel"; it is a favourite 
 exercise with him to form conjectures of the pro- 
 cess by which the earth is to be burned up, and 
 to picture Dr Chalmers and Mr Wilberforce being 
 caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Eoman- 
 ists, Puseyites, and infidels are given over to 
 gnashing of teeth. But of really spiritual joys 
 and sorrows, of the life and death of Christ as a 
 manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of 
 sympathy with that yearning over the lost and 
 erring which made Jesus weep over Jerusalem, 
 and prompted the sublime prayer, " Father, for- 
 
152 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 give them," of the gentler fruits of the Spirit, 
 and the peace of God which passeth understand- 
 ing — of all this, we find little trace in Dr 
 Cumming's discourses. 
 
 His style is in perfect correspondence with 
 this habit of mind. Though diffuse, as that of 
 all preachers must he, it has rapidity of move- 
 ment, perfect clearness, and some aptness of illus- 
 tration. He has much of that literary talent 
 which makes a good journalist — the power of 
 beating out an idea over a large space, and of 
 introducing far-fetched a propos. His writ- 
 ings have, indeed, no high merit : they have no 
 originality or force of thought, no striking felicity 
 of presentation, no depth of emotion. Through- 
 out nine volumes we have alighted on no passage 
 which impressed us as worth extracting and plac- 
 ing among the " beauties " of evangelical writers, 
 such as Robert Hall, Foster the Essayist, or Isaac 
 Taylor. Everywhere there is commonplace clever- 
 ness, nowhere a spark of rare thought, of lofty 
 sentiment, or pathetic tenderness. We feel our- 
 selves in company with a voluble retail talker, 
 whose language is exuberant but not exact, and 
 to whom we should never think of referring for 
 precise information, or for well-digested thought 
 and experience. His argument continually slides 
 into wholesale assertion and vague declamation, 
 
DR CUMMING. 153 
 
 and in his love of ornament he frequently be- 
 comes tawdry. For example, he tells ns (Apoc. 
 Sketches, p. 265) that " Botany weaves around 
 the cross her amaranthine garlands ; and Newton 
 comes from his starry home — Linnaeus from his 
 flowery resting-place — and Werner and Hutton 
 from their subterranean graves at the voice of 
 Chalmers, to acknowledge that all they learned 
 and elicited in their respective provinces has 
 only served to show more clearly that Jesus of 
 Nazareth is enthroned on the riches of the uni- 
 verse." And so prosaic an injunction to his 
 hearers as that they should choose a residence 
 within an easy distance of church, is magnifi- 
 cently draped by him as an exhortation to prefer 
 a house "that basks in the sunshine of the coun- 
 tenance of God." Like aU preachers of his class, 
 he is more" fertile in imaginative paraphrase than 
 in close exposition, and in this way he gives us 
 some remarkable fragments of what we may call 
 the romance of Scripture, filling up the outline 
 of the record with an elaborate colouring quite 
 undreamed of by more literal minds. The ser- 
 pent, he informs us, said to Eve, " Can it be so ? 
 Surely you are mistaken, that God hath said you 
 shall die, a creature so fair, so lovely, so beauti- 
 ful. It is impossible. The laws of nature and 
 physical science tell you, that my interpretation 
 
154 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 IS correct ; you shall not die. I can teU you by 
 my own experience as an angel that you shall 
 be as gods, knowing good and evil." — (Apoc. 
 Sketches, p. 294.) Again, according to Dr Gum- 
 ming', Abel had so clear an idea of the Incarna- 
 tion and Atonement, that when he offered his 
 sacrifice " he must have said, ' I feel myself a 
 guilty sinner, and that in myself I cannot meet 
 Thee alive ; I lay on Thine altar this victim, and 
 I shed its blood as my testimony that mine 
 should be shed ; and I look for forgiveness and 
 undeserved mercy through Him who is to bruise 
 the serpent's head, and whose atonement this 
 typifies." — (Occas. Disc, vol. i. p. 23.) Indeed 
 his productions are essentially ephemeral ; he is 
 essentially a journalist, who writes sermons in- 
 stead of leading articles, who, instead of venting 
 diatribes against her Majesty's Ministers, directs 
 his power of invective against Cardinal Wiseman 
 and the Puseyites, — instead of declaiming on 
 public spirit, perorates on the "glory of God." 
 We fancy he is called, in the more refined evan- 
 gelical circles, an "intellectual preacher"; by the 
 plainer sort of Christians, a " flowery preacher " ; 
 and we are inclined to think that the more spirit- 
 ually minded class of believers, who look with 
 greater anxiety for the kingdom of God within 
 them than for the visible advent of Christ in 
 
DR GUMMING. 155 
 
 1864, will be likely to find Dr Cumming's de- 
 clamatory flights and historico-prophetical exer- 
 citations as little better than " clouts o' canld 
 parritch." 
 
 Such is our general impression from his writ- 
 ings after an attentive perusal. There are some 
 particular characteristics which we shall con- 
 sider more closely, but in doing so we must be 
 understood as altogether declining any doctrinal 
 discussion. We have no intention to consider 
 the grounds of Dr Cumming's dogmatic system, 
 to examine the principles of his prophetic exe- 
 gesis, or to question his opinion concerning the 
 little horn, the river Euphrates, or the seven 
 vials. We identify ourselves with no one of the 
 bodies whom he regards it as his special mission 
 to attack : not giving adhesion either to Eoman- 
 ism, to Puseyism, or to that anomalous combina- 
 tion of opinions which he introduces to us under 
 the name of infidelity. It is simply as specta- 
 tors that we criticise Dr Cumming's mode of 
 warfare : as spectators concerned less with what 
 he holds to be Christian truth than with his 
 manner of enforcing that truth, less with the 
 doctrines he teaches than with the moral spirit 
 and tendencies of his teaching. 
 
 One of the most striking characteristics of Dr 
 Cumming's writings is unscrupulosity of state- 
 
156 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 ment. His motto apparently is, Christiamtatem, 
 quocunque inodo, Christianitatem ; and the only 
 system he includes under the term Christianity 
 is Calvinistic Protestantism. Experience has so 
 long shown that the human brain is a congenial 
 nidus for inconsistent beliefs, that we do not 
 pause to inquire how Dr Gumming, who attri- 
 butes the conversion of the unbelieving to the 
 Divine Spirit, can think it necessary to co-oper- 
 ate with that Spirit by argumentative white lies. 
 Nor do we for a moment impugn the genuine- 
 ness of his zeal for Christianity, or the sincerity 
 of his conviction that the doctrines he preaches 
 are necessary to salvation ; on the contrary, w^e 
 regard the flagrant un veracity found on his pages 
 as an indirect result of that conviction — as a 
 result, namely, of the intellectual and moral 
 distortion of view which is inevitably produced 
 by assigning to dogmas, based on a very complex 
 structure of evidence, the place and authority of 
 first truths. A distinct appreciation of the value 
 of evidence — in other words, the intellectual per- 
 ception of truth — is more closely allied to truth- 
 fulness of statement, or the moral quality of 
 veracity, than is generally admitted. That 
 highest moral habit, the constant preference of 
 truth, both theoretically and practically, pre- 
 eminently demands the co-operation of the in- 
 
DE GUMMING. 157 
 
 tellect with the impulses — as is indicated by the 
 fact that it is only found in anything like com- 
 pleteness in the highest class of minds. And it 
 is commonly seen that, in proportion as religious 
 sects believe themselves to be guided by direct 
 inspiration rather than by a spontaneous exer- 
 tion of their faculties, their sense of truthfulness 
 is misty and confused. No one can have talked 
 to the more enthusiastic Methodists and listened 
 to their stories of miracles without perceiving 
 that they require no other passport to a state- 
 ment than that it accords with their wishes and 
 their general conception of God's dealings ; nay, 
 they regard as a symptom of sinfvil scepticism an 
 inquiry into the evidence for a story which they 
 think unquestionably tends to the glory of God, 
 and in retailing such stories, new particulars, 
 further tending to his glory, are "borne in" upon 
 their minds. Now, Dr Gumming, as we have 
 said, is no enthusiastic pietist : within a certain 
 circle — within the mill of evangelical orthodoxy 
 — his intellect is perpetually at work ; but that 
 principle of sophistication which our friends the 
 Methodists derive from the predominance of 
 their pietistic feelings, is involved for him in the 
 doctrine of verbal inspiration ; what is for them 
 a state of emotion submerging the intellect, is 
 with him a formula imprisoning the intellect, 
 
158 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 depriving it of its proper function — the free 
 search for truth — and making it the mere ser- 
 vant-of-all-work to a foregone conclusion. Minds 
 fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire con- 
 cerning a proposition whether it is attested by 
 sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with 
 Scripture ; they do not search for facts, as such, 
 but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. 
 They become accustomed to reject the more 
 direct evidence in favour of the less direct, and 
 where adverse evidence reaches demonstration 
 they must resort to devices and expedients in 
 order to explain away contradiction. It is easy 
 to see that this mental habit blunts not only the 
 perception of truth, but the sense of truthful- 
 ness, and that the man whose faith drives him 
 into fallacies, treads close upon the precipice of 
 falsehood. 
 
 We have entered into this digression for the 
 sake of mitigating the inference that is likely to 
 be drawn from that characteristic of Dr Cum- 
 ming's works to which we have pointed. He is 
 much in the same intellectual condition as that 
 professor of Padua, who, in order to disprove 
 Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's satellites, urged 
 that as there were only seven metals there could 
 not be more than seven planets — a mental con- 
 dition scarcely compatible with candour. And 
 
DE CUMMIKG. 159 
 
 we may well suppose that if the Professor had 
 held the behef in seven planets, and no more, to 
 be a necessary condition of salvation, his mental 
 vision would have been so dazed that even if he 
 had consented to look through Galileo's telescope, 
 his eyes would have reported in accordance with 
 his inward alarms rather than with the external 
 fact. So long as a belief in propositions is re- 
 garded as indispensable to salvation, the pursuit 
 of truth as such is not possible, any more than it 
 is possible for a man who is swimming for his life 
 to make meteorological observations on the storm 
 which threatens to overwhelm him. The sense of 
 alarm and haste, the anxiety for personal safety, 
 which Dr Gumming insists upon as the proper 
 religious attitude, unmans the nature, and allows 
 no thorough, calm thinking, no truly noble, dis- 
 interested feeling. Hence, we by no means sus- 
 pect that the unscrupulosity of statement with 
 which we charge Dr Gumming, extends beyond 
 the sphere of his theological prejudices ; reli- 
 gion apart, he probably appreciates and practises 
 veracity. 
 
 A grave general accusation must be supported 
 by details, and in adducing these, we purposely 
 select the most obvious cases of misrepresentation 
 — such as require no argument to expose them, 
 but can be perceived at a glance. Among Dr 
 
160 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 Cumming's numerous books, one of the most 
 notable for unscrupulosity of statement is the 
 ' Manual of Christian Evidences,' written, as he 
 tells us in his Preface, not to give the deepest 
 solutions of the difficulties in question, but to 
 furnish Scripture-readers, city missionaries, and 
 Sunday-school teachers with a "ready reply" 
 to sceptical arguments. This announcement that 
 readiness was the chief quality sought for in the 
 solutions here given, modifies our inference from 
 the other qualities which those solutions present; 
 and it is but fair to presume, that when the Chris- 
 tian disputant is not in a hurry, Dr Cumming 
 would recommend replies less ready and more 
 veracious. Here is an example of what in ano- 
 ther place ^ he tells his readers is " change in 
 their pocket, ... a little ready argument which 
 they can employ, and therewith answer a fool 
 according to his folly." From the natm^e of this 
 argumentative small-coin, we are iuclined to think 
 Dr Cumming understands answering a fool accord- 
 ing to his folly to mean, giving him a foolish an- 
 swer. "We quote from the ' Manual of Christian 
 E\idences,' p. 62 : — 
 
 " Some of the gods which the heathen worshipped 
 were among the greatest monsters that ever walked 
 the earth. Mercury was a thief; and because he was 
 
 1 Lect. on Daniel, p. 6. 
 
DR GUMMING. 161 
 
 an expert thief he was enrolled among the gods. 
 Bacchus was a mere sensualist and drunkard ; and 
 therefore he was enrolled among the gods. Venus was 
 a dissipated and abandoned courtesan ; and therefore 
 she was enrolled among the goddesses. Mars was a 
 savage, that gloried in battle and in blood ; and there- 
 fore he was deified and enrolled among the gods." 
 
 Does Dr Gumming believe the purport of these 
 sentences ? If so, this passage is worth handing 
 down as his theory of the Greek myth— as a 
 specimen of the astounding ignorance which was 
 possible in a metropolitan preacher a.d. 1854. 
 And if he does not believe them . . . The 
 inference must then be, that he thinks delicate 
 veracity about the ancient Greeks is not a 
 Christian virtue, but only a "splendid sin" of 
 the unregenerate. This inference is rendered 
 the more probable by our finding, a little fur- 
 ther on, that he is not more scrupulous about 
 the moderns, if they come under his definition 
 of " Infidels." But the passage we are about 
 to quote in proof of this has a worse quahty 
 than its discrepancy with fact. Who that has 
 a spark of generous feeling, that rejoices in the 
 presence of good in a fellow-being, has not dwelt 
 with pleasure on the thought that Lord Byron's 
 unhappy career was ennobled and purified to- 
 wards its close by a high and sympathetic pur- 
 
162 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 pose, by honest and energetic efforts for his 
 fellow-men ? Who has not read with deep emo- 
 tion those last pathetic lines, beautiful as the 
 after-glow of sunset, in which love and resigna- 
 tion are mingled with something of a melancholy 
 heroism ? Who has not lingered with com- 
 passion over the dying scene at Missolonghi — 
 the sufferer's inability to make his farewell mes- 
 sages of love intelligible, and the last long hours 
 of silent pain ? Yet for the sake of furnishing 
 his disciples with a " ready reply," Dr Gumming 
 can prevail on himself to inoculate them with a 
 bad-spirited falsity like the following : — 
 
 " We have one striking exliibition of an infidel's 
 brightest thoughts, in some lines written in his dying 
 moments by a man, gifted with great genius, capable of 
 prodigious intellectual prowess, but of worthless prin- 
 ciple, and yet more worthless practices — I mean the 
 celebrated Lord Byron. He says — 
 
 " ' Though gay companions o'er the bowl 
 Dispel awhile the sense of ill, 
 Though pleasure fills the maddening soul, 
 The heart — the heart is lonely still. 
 
 Ay, but to die, and go, alas ! 
 
 Where aU have gone and all must go ; 
 To be the Nothing that I was. 
 
 Ere born to life and living woe ! 
 
 Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
 Count o'er thy days from anguish free, 
 
 Ani know, whatever thou hast been, 
 'Tis something better not to be. 
 
DE, CUMMING. 163 
 
 ITay, for myself, so dark my fate 
 
 Through every turn of life hath been, 
 
 Man and the world so much / hate, 
 I care not when I quit the scene.' " 
 
 It is difficult to su|)pose that Dr dimming can 
 liave been so grossly imposed upon — that he can 
 be so ill-informed as really to believe that these 
 lines were " written " by Lord Byron in his dying 
 moments ; but, allowing him the full benefit of 
 that possibility, how shall we explain his intro- 
 duction of this feebly rabid doggerel as "an 
 infidel's brightest thoughts " ? 
 
 In marshalling the evidences of Christianity, 
 Dr Gumming directs most of his arguments 
 against opinions that are either totally imaginary, 
 or that belong to the past rather than to the 
 present ; while he entirely fails to meet the diffi- 
 culties actually felt and urged by those who are 
 unable to accept Eevelation. There can hardly 
 be a stronger proof of misconception as to the 
 character of free-thinking in the present day 
 than the recommendation of Leland's ' Short and 
 Easy Method with the Deists,' — a method which 
 is unquestionably short and easy for preachers 
 disinclined to consider their stereotyped modes of 
 thinking and arguing, but which has quite ceased 
 to realise those epithets in the conversion of Deists. 
 Yet Dr Gumming not only recommends this book. 
 
164 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 but takes the trouble himself to write a feebler 
 version of its arguments. For example, on the 
 question of the genuineness and authenticity of 
 the New Testament writings, he says : — 
 
 " If, therefore, at a period long subsequent to the 
 death of Christ, a number of men had appeared in the 
 world, drawn up a book which they christened by the 
 name of Holy Scripture, and recorded these things 
 which appear in it as facts when they were only the 
 fancies of their own imagination, surely the Jnvs would 
 have instantly reclaimed that no such events transpired, 
 that no such person as Jesus Christ appeared in their 
 capital, and that their crucifixion of Him, and their 
 alleged evil treatment of His apostles, were mere 
 fictions." -^ 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that, in such 
 argument as this, Dr Gumming is beating the 
 air. He is meeting a hypothesis which no one 
 holds, and totally missing the real question. The 
 only tj^e of " infidel " whose existence Dr Gum- 
 ming recognises is that fossU personage who 
 " calls the Bible a lie and a forgery." He seems 
 to be ignorant — or he chooses to ignore the fact 
 — that there is a large body of eminently in- 
 structed and earnest men who regard the Hebrew 
 and Ghristian Scriptures as a series of historical 
 documents, to be dealt with according to the 
 rules of historical criticism ; and that an equally 
 
 1 Man. of Ev., p. 8L 
 
DE, GUMMING. 165 
 
 large number of men, wlio are not historical 
 critics, find the dogmatic scheme built on the 
 letter of the Scriptures opposed to their pro- 
 foundest moral convictions. Dr Cumming's in- 
 fidel is a man who, because his life is vicious, 
 tries to convince himself that there is no God, 
 and that Christianity is an imposture, but who is 
 all the while secretly conscious that he is oppos- 
 ing the truth, and cannot help "letting out" 
 admissions " that the Bible is the Book of Grod." 
 We are favoured with the following "Creed of 
 the Infidel":— 
 
 " I believe that there is no God, but that matter is 
 God, and God is matter ; and that it is no matter 
 whether there is any God or not. I believe also that 
 the world was not made, but that the world made itself, 
 or that it had no beginning, and that it will last for 
 ever. I believe that man is a beast ; that the soul is 
 the body, and that the body is the soul ; and that after 
 death there is neither body nor soul. I believe that 
 there is no religion, that natural religion is the only 
 religion, and all religion unnatural. I believe not in 
 Moses ; I beheve in the first philosophers. I believe 
 not in the evangelists ; I believe in Chubb, Collins, 
 Toland, Tindal, and Hobbes. I believe in Lord Boling- 
 broke, and I believe not in St Paul. I believe not in 
 revelation ; / believe in tradition ; I believe in the Tal- 
 mud : I believe in the Koran; I believe not in the 
 Bible. I believe in Socrates ; I believe in Confucius ; 
 I believe in Mahomet ; I believe not in Christ. And 
 lastly, / believe in all unbelief." 
 
166 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 The intellectual and moral monster whose creed 
 is this complex web of contradictions is, moreover, 
 according to Dr Gumming, a being who unites 
 much simplicity and imbecility with his Satanic 
 hardihood, — much tenderness of conscience with. 
 his obdurate vice. Hear the "proof" : — 
 
 " I once met with an acute and enlightened infidel, 
 with whom I reasoned day after day, and for hours 
 together ; I submitted to him the internal, the external, 
 and the experimental evidences, but made no impres- 
 sion on his scorn and unbelief. At length I enter- 
 tained a suspicion that there was something morally, 
 rather than intellectually wrong, and that the bias was 
 not in the intellect, but in the heart ; one day there- 
 fore I said to him — ' I must now state my conviction, 
 and you may call me uncharitable, but duty compels 
 me : you are living in some known and gross sin.' 
 The Allan's countenance iecame ^Jff/c ; he howed and left 
 inc." — Man. of Evidences, p. 2 54. 
 
 Here we have the remarkable psychological 
 phenomenon of an " acute and enlightened " 
 man who, deliberately purposing to indulge in 
 a favourite sin, and regarding the Gospel with 
 scorn and unbelief, is nevertheless so much more 
 scrupulous than the majority of Christians, that 
 he cannot " embrace sin and the Gospel simul- 
 taneously " ; who is so alarmed at the Gospel in 
 which he does not believe, that he cannot be 
 easy without trying to crush it ; whose acuteness 
 
DR GUMMING. 167 
 
 and enlightenment suggest to him, as a means 
 of crushing the Gospel, to argue from day to day 
 with Dr Gumming ; and who is withal so naive 
 that he is taken by surprise when Dr Gumming, 
 failing in argument, resorts to accusation, and so 
 tender in conscience that, at the mention of his 
 sin, he turns pale and leaves the spot. If there 
 be any human mind in existence capable of hold- 
 ing Dr Gumming's " Creed of the Infidel," of at 
 the same time believing in tradition and " believ- 
 ing in all unbelief," it must be the mind of the 
 infidel just described, for whose existence we have 
 Dr Gumming's ex officio word as a theologian ; and 
 to theologians we may apply what Sancho Panza 
 says of the bachelors of Salamanca, that they never 
 ten lies — except when it suits their purpose. 
 
 The total absence from Dr Gumming's theo- 
 logical mind of any demarcation between fact 
 and rhetoric is exhibited in another passage, 
 where he adopts the dramatic form : — ■ 
 
 " Ask the peasant on the hills — and I have, asked 
 amid the mountains of Braemar and Deeside — 'How 
 do you know that this book is divine, and that the 
 rehgion you profess is true ? You never read Paley 1 ' 
 ' No, I never heard of him.' ' You have never read 
 Butler ? ' ' No, I have never heard of him.' ' JSTor 
 Chalmers ? ' ' No, I do not know him.' ' You have 
 never read any books on evidence 1 ' ' No, I have 
 read no such books.' ' Then, how do you know 
 
168 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 this book is true ? ' ' Know it ! Tell me that the 
 Dee, the Clunie, and the Garrawalt, the streams at 
 my feet, do not run ; that the winds do not sigh amid 
 the gorges of these blue hills ; that the sun does not 
 kindle the peaks of Loch-na-Gar, — tell me my heart 
 does not beat, and I will believe you ; but do not teU 
 me the Bible is not divine. I have found its truth 
 illuminating my footsteps ; its consolations sustaining 
 my heart. May my tongue cleave to my mouth's 
 roof, and my right hand forget its cunning, if I ever 
 deny what is my deepest inner experience, that this 
 blessed book is the Book of God.' " — Church before the 
 Flood, p. 35. 
 
 Dr Gumming is so slippery aud lax in his mode 
 of presentation, that we find it impossible to 
 gather whether he means to assert, that this is 
 what a peasant on the mountains of Braemar 
 did say, or that it is what such a peasant woidd 
 say : in the one case, the passage may be taken 
 as a measure of his truthfulness ; in the other, of 
 his judgment. 
 
 His own faith, apparently, has not been alto- 
 gether intuitive, like that of his rhetorical 
 peasant, for he tells us (Apoc. Sketches, p. 405) 
 that he has himself experienced what it is to 
 have religious doubts. " I was tainted while at 
 the University by this spirit of scepticism. I 
 thought Christianity might not be true. The 
 very possibility of its being true was the thought 
 
DR GUMMING. 169 
 
 I felt I must meet and settle. Conscience could 
 give me no peace till I had settled it. I read, 
 and I have read from that day, for fourteen or 
 fifteen years, till this, and now I am as con- 
 vinced, upon the clearest evidence, that this 
 book is the Book of God as that I now address 
 you." This experience, however, instead of im- 
 pressing on him the fact that doubt may be the 
 stamp of a truth-loving mind — that sunt quibus 
 11011 credidisse honor est, et Jidei futurce pignus 
 ■ — seems to have produced precisely the contrary 
 effect. It has not enabled him even to conceive 
 the condition of a mind "perplext in faith but 
 pure in deed," craving light, yearning for a faith 
 that mil harmonise and cherish its highest powers 
 and aspirations, but unable to find that faith in 
 dogmatic Christianity. His own doubts appa- 
 rently were of a different kind. Nowhere in his 
 pages have we found a humble, candid, sym- 
 pathetic attempt to meet the difficulties that may 
 be felt by an ingenuous mind. Everywhere he 
 supposes that the doubter is hardened, conceited, 
 consciously shutting his eyes to the light — a fool 
 who is to be answered according to his foUy — 
 that is, with ready replies made up of reckless 
 assertions, of apocryphal anecdotes, and, where 
 other resources fail, of vituperative imputations. 
 As to the reading which he has prosecuted for 
 
170 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 fifteen years — either it lias left him totally igno- 
 rant of the relation which his own religious creed 
 bears to the criticism and philosophy of the 
 nineteenth century, or he systematically blinks 
 that criticism and that philosophy ; and instead 
 of honestly and seriously endeavouring to meet 
 and solve what he knows to be the real difficulties, 
 contents himself with setting up popinjays to 
 shoot at, for the sake of confirming the ignorance 
 and winning the cheap admiration of his evan- 
 gelical hearers and readers. Like the Catholic 
 preacher who, after throwing down his cap and 
 apostrophising it as Luther, turned to his audi- 
 ence and said, " You see this heretical fellow has 
 not a word to say for himself," Dr Gumming, 
 having drawn his ugly portrait of the infidel, 
 and put arguments of a convenient quality into 
 his mouth, finds a " short and easy method " of 
 confounding this " croaking frog." 
 
 In his treatment of infidels, we imagine he 
 is guided by a mental process which may be 
 expressed in the following syllogism : Whatever 
 tends to the glory of God is true ; it is for the 
 glory of God that infidels should be as bad as 
 possible ; therefore, whatever tends to show that 
 infidels are as bad as possible is true. All 
 infidels, he tells us, have been men of "gross 
 and licentious lives." Is there not some well- 
 
DE GUMMING. l7l 
 
 known unbeliever — David Hume, for example — 
 of wliom even Dr Cumming's readers may liave 
 heard as an exception ? No matter. Some one 
 suspected that lie was not an exception ; and as 
 that suspicion tends to the glory of God, it is 
 one for a Christian to entertain. — (See Man. 
 of Ev., p. 73.) If we were unable to imagine 
 this kind of self -sophistication, we should be 
 obliged to suppose that, relying on the igno- 
 rance of his evangelical disciples, he fed them 
 with direct and conscious falsehoods. "Vol- 
 taire," he informs them, " declares there is no 
 God"; he was "an antitheist — that is, one who 
 deliberately and avowedly opposed and hated 
 God ; who swore in his blasphemy that he would 
 dethrone him ; " and " advocated the very depths 
 of the lowest sensuality." With regard to many 
 statements of a similar kind, equally at variance 
 with truth, in Dr Cumming's volumes, we pre- 
 sume that he has been misled by hearsay or by 
 the second-hand character of his acquaintance with 
 free-thinking literature. An evangelical preacher 
 is not obliged to be well read. Here, however, 
 is a case which the extremest supposition of edu- 
 cated ignorance will not reach. Even books of 
 " evidences " quote from Voltaire the line — 
 " Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait Tinventer ; " 
 even persons fed on the mere whey and butter- 
 
172 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 milk of literature must know that in philosophy 
 Voltaire was nothing if not a theist — must know 
 that he wrote not against God, but against 
 Jehovah, the God of the Jews, whom he believed 
 to be a false God — must know that to say Vol- 
 taire was an atheist on this ground is as absurd 
 as to say that a Jacobite opposed hereditary 
 monarchy because he declared the Brunswick 
 family had no title to the throne. That Dr 
 Gumming should repeat the vulgar fables about 
 Voltaire's death is merely what we might ex- 
 pect from the specimens we have seen of his 
 illustrative stories. A man whose accounts of 
 his own experience are apocryphal is not likely 
 to put borrowed narratives to any severe test. 
 The alliance between intellectual and moral 
 perversion is strikingly typified by the way in 
 which he alternates from the unveracious to the 
 absurd, from misrepresentation to contradiction. 
 Side by side with the adduction of " facts " such 
 as those we have quoted, we find him arguing on 
 one page that the doctriae of the Trinity was 
 too grand to have been conceived by man, and 
 was therefore Divine ; and on another page, that 
 the Incarnation had been preconceived by man, 
 and is therefore to be accepted as Divine. But 
 we are less concerned with the fallacy of his 
 "ready replies" than with their falsity; and 
 
DE, GUMMING. 173 
 
 even of this we can only afford space for a very 
 few specimens. Here is one : " There is a thou- 
 sand times more proof that the Gospel of John 
 was written by him than there is that the k.va- 
 I3aa-is was written by Xenophon, or the ' Ars 
 Poetica' by Horace." If Dr Gumming had 
 chosen Plato's Epistles or Anacreon's Poems, 
 instead of the ' Anabasis ' or the ' Ars Poetica,' 
 he would have reduced the extent of the false- 
 hood, and would have furnished a ready reply, 
 which would have been equally effective with 
 his Sunday-school teachers and their disputants. 
 Hence we conclude this prodigality of misstate- 
 ment, this exuberance of mendacity, is an effer- 
 vescence of zeal in majorem gloriam Dei. Else- 
 where he tells us that " the idea of the author of 
 the ' Vestiges ' is, that man is the development 
 of a monkey, that the monkey is the embryo 
 man ; so that if you heep a haboon long enough, 
 it will develop itself into a man." How well Dr 
 Gumming has qualified himself to judge of the 
 ideas in "that very unphilosophical book," as he 
 pronounces it, may be inferred from the fact 
 that he implies the author of the ' Vestiges ' to 
 have originated the nebular hypothesis. 
 
 In the volume from which the last extract is 
 taken, even the hardihood of assertion is sur- 
 passed by the suicidal character of the argument. 
 
174 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 It is called ' The Churcli before the Flood,' and 
 is devoted chiefly to the adjustment of the ques- 
 tion between the Bible and Geology. Keeping 
 within the limits we have prescribed to our- 
 selves, we do not enter into the matter of this 
 discussion ; we merely pause a little over the 
 volume in order to point out Dr Cumming's 
 mode of treating the question. He first tells us 
 that " the Bible has not a single scientific error 
 in it"; that " its slightest intimations of scientific 
 principles or natural phenomena have in every 
 instance been demonstrated to he exactly and 
 strictly true"; and he asks : — 
 
 " How is it that Moses, with no greater education 
 tlian the Hindoo or the ancient philosopher, has written 
 his book, touching science at a thousand points, so 
 accurately, that scientific research has discovered no 
 ilaws in it ; and yet in those investigations which 
 have taken place in more recent centuries, it has not 
 been shown that he lias committed one single error, or 
 made one solitary assertion which can be proved by 
 the maturist science, or by the most eagle-eyed philos- 
 opher, to be incorrect, scientifically or historically 1 " 
 
 According to this, the relation of the Bible to 
 science should be one of the strong points of 
 apologists for revelation : the scientific accuracy 
 of Moses should stand at the head of their evi- 
 dences ; and they might urge with some cogency, 
 that since Aristotle, who devoted himself to 
 
DR GUMMING. 175 
 
 science, and lived many ages after Moses, does 
 little else than err ingeniously, this fact, that 
 the Jewish lawgiver, though touching science 
 at a thousand points, has written nothing that 
 has not been " demonstrated to be exactly and 
 strictly true," is an irrefragable proof of his 
 having derived his knowledge from a super- 
 natural source. How does it happen, then, that 
 Dr Gumming forsakes this strong position ? How 
 is it that we find him, some pages further on, 
 engaged in reconciling Genesis with the discov- 
 eries of science, by means of imaginative hypo- 
 theses and feats of " interpretation " ? Surely 
 that which has been demonstrated to be exactly 
 and strictly true does not require hypothesis and 
 critical argument, in order to show that it may 
 possibly agree with those very discoveries by 
 means of which its exact and strict truth has 
 been demonstrated. And why should Dr Gum- 
 ming suppose, as we shall presently find him 
 supposing, that men of science hesitate to accept 
 the Bible because it appears to contradict their 
 discoveries? By his own statement, that ap- 
 pearance of contradiction does not exist ; on the 
 contrary, it has been demonstrated that the 
 Bible precisely agrees with their discoveries. 
 Perhaps, however, in saying of the Bible that 
 its " slightest intimations of scientific principles 
 
176 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 or natural plienomeiia have in every instance 
 been demonstrated to be exactly and strictly 
 true," Dr Gumming merely means to imply that 
 theologians have found out a way of explainirig 
 the Biblical text so that it no longer, in their 
 opinion, appears to be in contradiction with the 
 discoveries of science. One of two things, there- 
 fore : either, he uses language without the 
 slightest appreciation of its real meaning; or, 
 the assertions he makes on one page are directly 
 contradicted by the arguments he urges on 
 another. 
 
 Dr Cumming's principles — or, we should rather 
 say, confused notions — of Biblical interpretation, 
 as exhibited in this volume, are particularly sig- 
 nificant of his mental caHbre. He says (' Church 
 before the Flood,' p. 93) :— 
 
 "Men of science, who are full of scientific inves- 
 tigation, and enamoured of scientific discovery, will 
 hesitate before they accept a book which, they think, 
 contradicts the plainest and the most unequivocal dis- 
 closures they have made in the bowels of the earth, 
 or among the stars of the sky. To all these we an- 
 swer, as we have already indicated, there is not the 
 least dissonance between God's written book and the 
 most mature discoveries of geological science. One 
 thing, however, there may be : there may he a contra- 
 diction bettvccn the discoveries of geology and onr precon- 
 ceived interpretations of the Bible. But this is not 
 because the Bible is wrong, but because our interpre- 
 
DE, GUMMING. 177 
 
 tation is wrong." (The italics in all cases are our 
 own.) 
 
 Elsewhere he says : — 
 
 " It seems to me plainly evident that the record of 
 Genesis, when read fairly, and not in the light of our 
 prejudices, — and mind yoio, the essence of Popery is to 
 read the Bible in the light of our opinions, instead of 
 viewing our opinions in the light of the Bible, in its 
 plain and obvious sense, — falls in perfectly with the 
 assertion of geologists." 
 
 On comparing these two passages, we gather 
 that when Dr Gumming, under stress of geo- 
 logical discovery, assigns to the Biblical text a 
 meaning entirely different from that which, on 
 his own showing, was universally ascribed to it 
 for more than three thousand years, he regards 
 himself as " viewing his opinions in the light of 
 the Bible in its plain and obvious sense " ! Now 
 he is reduced to one of two alternatives : either, 
 he must hold that the " plain and obvious mean- 
 ing " Hes in the sum of knowledge possessed by 
 each successive age — the Bible being an elastic 
 garment for the growing thoiight of mankind ; 
 or, he must hold that some portions are amen- 
 able to this criterion, and others not so. In the 
 former case, he accepts the principle of inter- 
 pretation adopted by the early German rational- 
 ists ; in the latter case, he has to show a further 
 
 M 
 
178 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 criterion by which we can judge what parts of 
 the Bible are elastic and what rigid. If he says 
 that the interpretation of the text is rigid wher- 
 ever it treats of doctrines necessary to salvation, 
 we answer, that for doctrines to be necessary to 
 salvation they must first be true ; and in order 
 to be true, according to his o-«ti principle, they 
 must be founded on a correct interpretation of 
 the Biblical text. Thus he makes the necessity 
 of doctrines to salvation the criterion of infallible 
 interpretation, and infallible interpretation the 
 criterion of doctrines being necessary to salvation. 
 He is whirled round in a circle, having, by admit- 
 ting the principle of novelty in interpretation, 
 completely deprived himself of a basis. That 
 he should seize the very moment in which he is 
 most palpably betraying that he has no test of 
 Biblical truth beyond his own opinion, as an ap- 
 propriate occasion for flinging the rather novel re- 
 proach against Popery that its essence is to " read 
 the Bible in the light of our opinions," would be 
 an almost pathetic self-exposure, if it were not 
 disgusting. Imbecility that is not even meek, 
 ceases to be pitiable and becomes simply odious. 
 Parenthetic lashes of this kind against Popery 
 are very frequent with Dr Gumming, and occur 
 even in his more devout passages, where their 
 introduction must surely disturb the spiritual 
 
DK GUMMING. 179 
 
 exercises of his hearers. Indeed, Eoman Catholics 
 fare worse with him even than infidels. Infidels 
 are the small vermin — the mice to be bagged 
 en passant. The main object of his chase — the 
 rats which are to be nailed up as trophies — are 
 the Eoman Catholics. Romanism is the master- 
 piece of Satan. But reassure yourselves ! Dr 
 Cumming has been created. Antichrist is en- 
 throned in the Vatican ; but he is stoutly with- 
 stood by the Boanerges of Crown Court. The 
 personality of Satan, as might be expected, is 
 a very prominent tenet in Dr Cumming's dis- 
 courses ; those who doubt it are, he thinks, 
 " generally specimens of the victims of Satan 
 as a triumphant seducer " ; and it is through 
 the medium of this doctrine that he habitually 
 contemplates Eoman Catholics. They are the 
 puppets of which the devil holds the strings. 
 It is only exceptionally that he speaks of them 
 as fellow-men, acted on by the same desires, 
 fears, and hopes as himself; his rule is to hold 
 them up to his hearers as foredoomed instru- 
 ments of Satan, and vessels of wrath. If he is 
 obliged to admit that they are " no shams," that 
 they are " thoroughly in earnest " — that is be- 
 cause they are inspired by hell, because they 
 are under an " infra-natural " influence. If their 
 missionaries are found wherever Protestant mis- 
 
180 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 sionaries go, this zeal in propagating their faith 
 is not in them a consistent virtue, as it is in 
 Protestants, but a " melancholy fact," affording 
 additional evidence that they are instigated and 
 assisted by the devil. And Dr Gumming is in- 
 clined to think that they -n-ork miracles, because 
 that is no more than might be expected from 
 the known ability of Satan who inspires them.^ 
 He admits, indeed, that " there is a fragment of 
 the Church of Christ in the very bosom of that 
 awful apostasy," ^ and that there are members of 
 the Church of Eome in glory ; but this admis- 
 sion is rare and episodical — is a declaration, 
 pro forma, about as influential on the general 
 disposition and habits as an aristocrat's profession 
 of democracy. 
 
 This leads us to mention another conspicuous 
 characteristic of Dr Cumming's teaching — the 
 absence of genuine charity. It is true that he 
 makes large profession of tolerance and liberality 
 within a certain circle ; he exhorts Christians to 
 unity ; he would have Churchmen fraternise Tsith 
 Dissenters, and exhorts these two branches of 
 God's family to defer the settlement of their 
 differences till the millennium. But the love 
 thus taught is the love of the clan, which is the 
 correlative of antagonism to the rest of mankind. 
 
 1 Signs of the Time?, p. 38. - Apoe. Sketclies, p. 243. 
 
DR GUMMING. 181 
 
 It is not sympathy and helpfulness towards men 
 as men, but towards men as Christians, and as 
 Christians in the sense of a small minority. Dr 
 Cumming's religion may demand a tribute of 
 love, but it gives a charter to hatred ; it may 
 enjoin charity, but it fosters all uncharitableness. 
 If I believe that God tells me to love my enemies, 
 but at the same time hates His own enemies and 
 requires me to have one will with Him, which 
 has the larger scope, love or hatred? And we 
 refer to those pages of Dr Cumming's in which 
 he opposes Roman Catholics, Puseyites, and 
 infidels ^ — pages which form the larger propor- 
 tion of what he has published — for proof that 
 the idea of God which both the logic and spirit 
 of his discourses keep present to his hearers, is 
 that of a God who hates His enemies, a God who 
 teaches love by fierce denunciations of wrath — a 
 God who encourages obedience to His precepts by 
 elaborately revealing to us that His own govern- 
 ment is in precise opposition to those precepts. 
 We know the usual evasions on this subject. 
 We know Dr Cumming would say that even 
 Eoman Catholics are to be loved and succoured 
 as men ; that he would help even that " unclean 
 spirit," Cardinal Wiseman, out of a ditch. But 
 who that is in the slightest degree acquainted 
 with the action of the human mind, will believe 
 
182 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 that any genuine and large charity can grow out 
 of an exercise of love which is always to have 
 an arriere-pensee of hatred? Of what quality 
 would be the conjugal love of a husband who 
 loved his spouse as a wife, but hated her as a 
 woman ? It is reserved for the regenerate mind, 
 according to Dr Cumming's conception of it, to 
 be " wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal 
 and netitral, in a moment." Precepts of charity 
 uttered with faint breath at the end of a sermon 
 are perfectly futile, when all the force of the 
 lungs has been spent in keeping the hearer's 
 mind fixed on the conception of his fellow-men, 
 not as fellow-sinners and fellow-sufferers, but as 
 agents of hell, as aiitomata through whom Satan 
 pla5"s his game upon earth, — not on objects 
 which call forth their reverence, their love, 
 their hope of good even in the most strayed 
 and perverted, but on a minute identification 
 of human things with such symbols as the scar- 
 let whore, the beast out of the abyss, scor- 
 pions whose sting is in their tails, men who have 
 the mark of the beast, and unclean spirits like 
 frogs. You might as well attempt to educate a 
 child's sense of beauty by hanging its nursery 
 with the horrible and grotesque pictures in 
 which the early painters represented the Last 
 Judgment, as expect Christian graces to flourish 
 
DE, GUMMING. 183 
 
 on that prophetic interpretation which Dr Gum- 
 ming offers as the principal nutriment of his 
 flock. Quite apart from the critical basis of 
 that interpretation, quite apart from the degree 
 of truth there may be in Dr Cumming's prognos- 
 tications — questions into which we do not choose 
 to enter — his use of prophecy must be it, priori 
 condemned in the judgment of right-minded 
 persons, by its results as testified in the net 
 moral effect of his sermons. The best minds 
 that accept Christianity as a divinely inspired 
 system, believe that the great end of the Gospel 
 is not merely the saving but the educating of 
 men's souls, the creating within them of holy 
 dispositions, the subduing of egoistical preten- 
 sions, and the perpetual enhancing of the desire 
 that the will of God — a will synonjrmous with 
 goodness and truth — may be done on earth. 
 But what relation to all this has a system of 
 interpretation which keeps the mind of the 
 Christian in the position of a spectator at a glad- 
 iatorial show, of which Satan is the wild beast 
 in the shape of the great red dragon, and two- 
 thirds of mankind the victims — the whole pro- 
 vided and got up by God for the edification of 
 the saints ? The demonstration that the Second 
 Advent is at hand, if true, can have no really 
 holy, spiritual effect ; the highest state of mind 
 
184 EVANGELICAL TEACHIXG : 
 
 inculcated by the Gospel is resignation to the 
 disposal of God's providence — " WTietlier we 
 live, we live unto the Lord ; whether we die, 
 we die unto the Lord " — not an eagerness to see 
 a temporal manifestation which shall confound 
 the enemies of God and give exaltation to the 
 saints ; it is to dwell in Christ by spiritual com- 
 munion with His nature, not to fix the date 
 when He shall appear in the sky. Dr Cum- 
 ming's delight in shadowing forth the downfall 
 of the Man of Sin, in prognosticating the battle 
 of Gog and Magog, and in advertising the pre- 
 niillennial Advent, is simply the transportation 
 of political passions on to a so-called religious 
 platform ; it is the anticipation of the triumph 
 of " our party," accomplished by our priQcipal 
 men being " sent for " into the clouds. Let us 
 be understood to speak in all seriousness. If 
 we were in search of amusement, we should not 
 seek for it by examining Dr Cumming's works 
 in order to ridicule them. AYe are simply dis- 
 charging a disagreeable duty in delivering our 
 opinion that, judged by the highest standard 
 even of orthodox Christianity, they are little 
 calculated to produce 
 
 " A closer -walk with God, 
 A calm and lieavenly frame ; " 
 
 but are more likely to nourish egoistic compla- 
 
DR GUMMING. 185 
 
 cency and pretension, a hard and condemnatory 
 spirit towards one's fellow-men, and a busy occu- 
 pation with, the minutiae of events, instead of a 
 reverent contemplation of great facts and a wise 
 application of great principles. It would be idle 
 to consider Dr Cumming's theory of prophecy in 
 any other light, — as a philosophy of history or 
 a specimen of Biblical interpretation ; it bears 
 about the same relation to the extension of 
 genuine knowledge as the astrological " house " 
 in the heavens bears to the true structure and 
 relations of the universe. 
 
 The slight degree in which Dr Cumming's faith 
 is imbued with truly human sympathies is ex- 
 hibited in the way he treats the doctrine of Eter- 
 nal Punishment. Here a little of that readiness 
 to strain the letter of the Scriptures which he so 
 often manifests when his object is to jjrove a 
 point against Romanism, would have been an 
 amiable frailty if it had been applied on the side 
 of mercy. When he is bent on proving that the 
 prophecy concerning the Man of Sin, in the 
 Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, refers to 
 the Pope, he can extort from the innocent word 
 KaOiaai the meaning cathedrise ; though why we 
 are to translate "He as God cathedrises in the 
 temple of God," any more than we are to trans- 
 late "cathedrise here, while I go and pray 
 
186 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 yonder," it is for Dr Gumming to sliow more 
 clearly than lie lias yet done. But wlien rigor- 
 ous literality will favour the conclusion that the 
 greater proportion of the human race wUl be 
 eternally miserable, then he is rigorously literal. 
 He says — ■ 
 
 " The Greek words, eiV tovs ulwva^ twv alwvwv, here 
 translated ' everlasting,' signify literally ' unto the ages 
 of ages ; ' aleL Siv, ' always being,' that is, everlasting, 
 ceaseless existence. Plato uses the word in this sense 
 when he says, ' The gods that live for ever.' But I 
 must also admit, that this word is used several times in 
 a limited extent, — as for instance, ' The everlasting 
 hills.' Of course, this does not mean that there never 
 will be a time when the hills will cease to stand ; the 
 expression here is evidently figurative, but it implies 
 eternity. The hills shall remain as long as the earth 
 lasts, and no hand has power to remove them but that 
 Eternal One which first called them into being ; so 
 the state of the sovl remains the same after death as 
 long as the soul exists, and no one has power to alter 
 it. The same word is often applied to denote the 
 existence of God — ' the Eternal God.' Can we limit 
 the word when applied to Him ? Because occasionally 
 used in a limited sense, we must not infer it is always 
 so. ' Everlasting ' plainly means in Scripture ' with- 
 out end ' ; it is only to be explained figuratively when 
 it is evident it cannot be interpreted in any other 
 way." 
 
 We do not discuss whether Dr Cumming's 
 interpretation accords with the meaning of the 
 
DR GUMMING. 1»7 
 
 New Testament writers : we simply point to the 
 fact that the text becomes elastic for him when 
 he wants freer play for his prejudices ; while he 
 makes it an adamantine barrier against the ad- 
 mission that mercy will ultimately triumph, that 
 God — i.e., Love — will be all in all. He assures 
 us that he does not "delight to dwell on the 
 misery of the lost " ; and we believe him. That 
 misery does not seem to be a question of feeling 
 with him, either one way or the other. He does 
 not merely resign himself to the awful mystery 
 of eternal punishment ; he contends for it. Do 
 we object, he asks,^ to everlasting happiness ? 
 then why object to everlasting misery? — reason- 
 ing which is perhaps felt to be cogent by theo- 
 logians who anticipate the everlasting happiness 
 for themselves, and the everlasting misery for 
 their neighbours. 
 
 The compassion of some Christians has been 
 glad to take refuge in the opinion, that the Bible 
 allows the supposition of annihilation for the 
 impenitent ; but the rigid sequence of Dr Cum- 
 ming's reasoning will not admit of this idea. He 
 sees that flax is made into linen, and linen into 
 paper; that paper, when burnt, partly ascends 
 as smoke, and then again descends in rain, 
 or in dust and carbon. "Not one particle 
 
 1 Man. of Christ. Ev., p. 184. 
 
188 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 of the original flax is lost, altliougli there raay 
 be not one j)article that has not undergone an 
 entire change : annihilation is not, but change of 
 form is. /( ivill he thus with our hodies at the 
 resurrection. The death of the body means not 
 annihilation. Not one feature of the face will be 
 annihilated." Having established the perpetuity 
 of the body by this close and clear analogy- — 
 namely, that as there is a total change in the 
 particles of flax in consequence of which they no 
 longer appear as flax, so there will not be a total 
 change in the particles of the human body, but 
 they will reappear as the human body — he does 
 not seem to consider that the perpetuity of the 
 body involves the perpetuity of the soul, but 
 requires separate evidence for this, and finds such 
 evidence by begging the very question at issue — 
 namely, by asserting that the text of the Scrip- 
 tures implies " the perpetuity of the punishment 
 of the lost, and the consciousness of the punish- 
 ment which they endure." Yet it is drivelling 
 like this which is hstened to and lauded as elo- 
 quence by hundreds, and which a Doctor of 
 Divinity can beUeve that he has his "reward 
 as a saint " for preaching and publishing ! 
 
 One more characteristic of Dr Cumming's 
 writings, and we have done. This is the per- 
 verted )noraI judgment that everywhere reigns 
 
DR GUMMING. 189 
 
 in them. Not that this perversion is peculiar to 
 Dr Gumming; it belongs to the dogmatic sys- 
 tem which he shares with all evangelical believers. 
 But the abstract tendencies of systems are rep- 
 resented in very different degrees, according to 
 the different characters of those who embrace 
 them ; just as the same food tells differently on 
 different constitutions : and there are certain 
 qualities in Dr Gumming that cause the perver- 
 sion of which we speak to exhibit itself with 
 peculiar prominence in his teaching. A single 
 extract will enable us to explain what we mean : 
 
 " The ' thoughts ' are evil. If it were possible f or 
 human eye to discern and to detect the thoughts that 
 flutter round the heart of an unregenerate man — to 
 mark their hue and their multitude — it would be found 
 that they are indeed ' evil.' We speak not of the thief, 
 and the murderer, and the adulterer, and suchlike, whose 
 crimes draw down the cognisance of earthly tribunals, 
 and whose unenviable character it is to take the lead 
 in the paths of sin ; but we refer to the men who are 
 marked out by their practice of many of the seemliest 
 moralities of life — by the exercise of the kindliest 
 affections, and the interchange of the sweetest recipro- 
 cities — and of these men, if unrenewed and unchanged, 
 we pronounce that their thoughts are evil. To ascer- 
 tain this, we must refer to the object around which 
 our thoughts ought continually to circulate. The 
 Scriptures assert that this object is the glory of God ; 
 that for this we ought to think, to act, and to speak ; 
 and that in thus thinking, acting, and speaking, there 
 
190 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 is involved the purest and most endearing bliss. ISTow 
 it wiU be found true of the most amiable men, that 
 with all their good society and kindliness of heart, and 
 all their strict and unbending integrity, they never or 
 rarely think of the glory of God. The question never 
 occurs to them — Will this redound to the glory of 
 God ? Will this make His name more known, His 
 being more loved, His praise more sung ? And just 
 inasmuch as their every thought comes short of this 
 lofty aim, in so much does it come short of good, and 
 entitle itself to the character of evil. If the glory of 
 God is not the absorbing and the influential aim of 
 their thoughts, then they are evU ; but God's glory 
 never enters into their minds. They are amiable, be- 
 cause it chances to be one of the constitutional tend- 
 encies of their individual character, left uneffaced by 
 the Fall ; and they arc just awl upright, because they 
 have ])erha'ps no occcision to be otherwise, or fiiid it sub- 
 servient to their interests to niaintain such a character." 
 — Occ. Disc, vol. i. p. 8. 
 
 Again we read (Ibid., p. 236) : — 
 
 "There are traits in the Christian character which 
 the mere worldly man cannot understand. He can 
 understand the outward morality, but he cannot 
 understand the inner spring of it ; he can understand 
 Dorcas's liberality to the poor, but he cannot pene- 
 trate the ground of Dorcas's liberality. Some men 
 give to the poor beeausc they are ostentatious, or because 
 they think the poor u-ill ultimately avenge their lugleet; 
 but the Christian gives to the poor, not only because he 
 has sensibilities lilce other men, but because inasmuch 
 as ye did it to the least of these my brethren, ye did 
 it unto me." 
 
DE, GUMMING. 191 
 
 Before entering on the more general question 
 involved in these quotations, we must point to 
 the clauses we have marked with italics, where 
 Dr Gumming appears to express sentiments 
 which, we are happy to think, are not shared by 
 the majority of his brethren in the faith. Dr 
 Gumming, it seems, is unable to conceive that the 
 natural man can have any other motive for being 
 just and upright than that it is useless to be 
 otherwise, or that a character for honesty is pro- 
 fitable ; according to his experience, between the 
 feelings of ostentation and selfish alarm and the 
 feeling of love to Christ, there lie no sensibilities 
 which can lead a man to relieve want. Grant- 
 ing, as we should prefer to think, that it is Dr 
 Gumming's exposition of his sentiments which is 
 deficient rather than his sentiments themselves, 
 still, the fact that the deficiency lies precisely 
 here, and that he can overlook it not only in the 
 haste of oral delivery but in the examination of 
 proof-sheets, is strongly significant of his mental 
 bias — of the faint degree in which he sympathises 
 with the disinterested elements of human feeling, 
 and of the fact, which we are about to dwell 
 upon, that those feelings are totally absent from 
 his religious theory. Now, Dr Gumming invari- 
 ably assumes that, in fulminating against those 
 who difi'er from him, he is standing on a moral 
 
192 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 elevation to whicli they are compelled reluctantly 
 to look up ; that his theory of motives and con- 
 duct is in its loftiness and purity a perpetual 
 rebuke to their low and vicious desires and 
 practice. It is time he should be told that the 
 reverse is the fact ; that there are men who do 
 not merely cast a superficial glance at his doc- 
 trine, and fail to see its beauty or justice, but 
 who, after a close consideration of that doctrine, 
 pronounce it to be subversive of true moral 
 development, and therefore positively noxious. 
 Dr Gumming is fond of showing-up the teaching 
 of Eomanism, and accusing it of undermining 
 true moralit}^ : it is time he should be told that 
 there is a large body, both of thinkers and 
 practical men, who hold precisely the same 
 opinion of his own teaching — with this difference, 
 that they do not regard it as the inspiration of 
 Satan, but as the natural crop of a human mind 
 where the soil is chiefly made up of egoistic 
 passions and dogmatic beliefs. 
 
 Dr Cumming's theory, as we have seen, is that 
 actions are good or evil according as they are 
 prompted or not prompted by an exclusive refer- 
 ence to the " glory of God." God, then, in Dr 
 Cumming's conception, is a Being who has no 
 pleasure in the exercise of love and truthfulness 
 and justice, considered as affecting the wellbeing 
 
DE, GUMMING. 193 
 
 of His creatures ; He lias satisfaction in us only 
 in so far as we exhaust our motives and disposi- 
 tions of all relation to our fellow-beings, and 
 replace sympathy with men by anxiety for the 
 " glory of God." The deed of Grace Darling, 
 when she took a boat in the storm to rescue 
 drowning men and women, was not good if it 
 was only compassion that nerved her arm and 
 impelled her to brave death for the chance of 
 saving others ; it was only good if she asked 
 herself — Will this redound to the glory of God ? 
 The man who endxires tortures rather than be- 
 tray a trust, the man who spends years in toil 
 in order to discharge an obligation from which 
 the law declares him free, must be animated not 
 by the spirit of fidelity to his fellow-man, but by 
 a desire to make " the name of God more known." 
 The sweet charities of domestic life — the ready 
 hand and the soothing word in sickness, the for- 
 bearance towards frailties, the prompt helpfulness 
 in all efforts and sympathy in all joys — are simply 
 evil if they result from a " constitutional ten- 
 dency," or from dispositions disciplined by the 
 experience of suffering and the perception of 
 moral loveliness. A wife is not to devote her- 
 self to her husband out of love to him and a 
 sense of the duties implied by a close relation 
 — she is to be a faithful wife for the glory of 
 
 N 
 
194 EVA^-GELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 God ; if she feels her natural affections welling 
 up too strongly, she is to repress them ; it will 
 not do to act from natural affection — she must 
 think of the glory of God. A man is to guide 
 his affairs with energy and discretion, not from 
 an honest desire to fulfil his responsibilities as 
 a member of society and a father, but — that 
 " God's praise may be sung." Dr Cumming's 
 Christian pays his debts for the glory of God : 
 were it not for the coercion of that supreme 
 motive, it would be evil to pay them. A man 
 is not to be just from a feeling of justice ; he 
 is not to help his feUow-men out of goodwill 
 to his feUow-men ; he is not to be a tender hus- 
 band and father out of affection : all these natural 
 muscles and fibres are to be torn away and 
 replaced by a patent steel-spring — anxiety for 
 the " glory of God." 
 
 HappUy, the constitution of human nature for- 
 bids the complete prevalence of such a theory. 
 Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, 
 human nature is stronger and wider than religi- 
 ous systems, and though dogmas may hamper, 
 they cannot absolutely repress its growth : build 
 walls round the living tree as you will, the bricks 
 and mortar have by-and-by to give way before 
 the slow and sure operation of the sap. But next 
 to that hatred of the enemies of God which is the 
 
DE, GUMMING. 195 
 
 principle of persecution, there perhaps has been 
 no perversion more obstructive of true moral 
 development than this substitution of a reference 
 to the glory of God for the direct promptings of 
 the sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and jus- 
 tice are strong only in proportion as they are 
 directly and inevitably called into activity by 
 their proper objects : pity is strong only because 
 we are strongly impressed by suffering ; and only 
 in proportion as it is compassion that speaks 
 through the eyes when we soothe, and moves 
 the arm when we succour, is a deed strictly be- 
 nevolent. If the soothing or the succour be given 
 because another being wishes or approves it, the 
 deed ceases to be one of benevolence, and be- 
 comes one of deference, of obedience, of self- 
 interest, or vanity. Accessory motives may aid 
 in producing an action, but they presuppose the 
 weakness of the direct motive ; and conversely, 
 when the direct motive is strong, the action of 
 accessory motives will be excluded. If then, as 
 Dr Gumming inculcates, the glory of God is to 
 be " the absorbing and the influential aim " in 
 our thoughts and actions, this must tend to neu- 
 tralise the human sympathies ; the stream of 
 feeling will be diverted from its natural current 
 in order to feed an artificial canal. The idea of 
 God is really moral in its influence — it really 
 
196 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 
 
 cherislies all that is best and loveliest in man — 
 only when God is contemplated as sympathising 
 with the pure elements of human feeling, as pos- 
 sessing infinitely all those attributes which we 
 recognise to be moral in humanity. In this 
 light, the idea of God and the sense of His pres- 
 ence intensify all noble feeling, and encourage 
 all noble effort, on the same principle that human 
 sympathy is found a source of strength : the 
 brave man feels braver when he knows that an- 
 other stout heart is beating time with his ; the 
 devoted woman who is wearing out her years in 
 patient effort to alleviate suffering or save vice 
 from the last stages of degradation, finds aid in 
 the pressure of a friendly hand which teUs her 
 that there is one who understands her deeds, and 
 in her place would do the like. The idea of a 
 God who not only sjnnpathises with all we feel 
 and endure for our fellow-men, but who will pour 
 new life into our too languid love, and give firm- 
 ness to our vacillating purpose, is an extension 
 and multiplication of the efi"ects produced by 
 human sympathy ; and it has been intensified 
 for the better spirits who have been under the 
 influence of orthodox Christianity, by the con- 
 templation of Jesus as " God manifest in the 
 flesh." But Dr Cumming's God is the very op- 
 posite of aU this : He is a God who, instead of 
 
DR GUMMING. 197 
 
 sharing and aiding our human sympathies, is 
 directly in collision with them ; who, instead of 
 strengthening the bond between man and man, by 
 encouraging the sense that they are both alike 
 the objects of His love and care, thrusts himself 
 between them and forbids them to feel for each 
 other except as they have relation to Him. He 
 is a God who, instead of adding His solar force 
 to swell the tide of those impulses that tend to 
 give humanity a common life in which the good 
 of one is the good of all, commands us to check 
 those impulses, lest they should prevent us from 
 thinking of His glory. It is in vain for Dr Gum- 
 ming to say that we are to love man for God's 
 sake : with the conception of God which his 
 teaching presents, the love of man for God's 
 sake involves, as his writings abundantly show, 
 a strong principle of hatred. We can only love 
 one being for the sake of another when there 
 is an habitual delight in associating the idea of 
 those two beings — that is, when the object of 
 our indirect love is a source of joy and honour 
 to the object of our direct love. But, according 
 to Dr Cumming's theory, the majority of man- 
 kind — the majority of his neighbours — are in 
 precisely the opposite relation to God. His soul 
 has no pleasure in them : they belong more to 
 Satan than to Him ; and if they contribute to 
 
198 EVANaELICAL TEACHING : 
 
 His glory, it is against their will. Dr Cununing, 
 tlien, can only love some men for God's sake ; 
 the rest lie must in consistency hate for God's 
 sake. 
 
 There must be many, even in the circle of Dr 
 Cumming's admirers, who would be revolted by 
 the doctrine we have just exposed, if their natu- 
 ral good sense and healthy feeling w^ere not early 
 stifled by dogmatic beliefs, and their reverence 
 misled by pious phrases. But as it is, many a 
 rational qtiestion, many a generous instinct, is 
 repelled as the suggestion of a supernatural 
 enemy, or as the ebullition of human pride and 
 corruption. This state of inward contradiction 
 can be put an end to only by the conviction that 
 the free and diligent exertion of the intellect, 
 instead of being a sin, is a part of theii' responsi- 
 bility — that Eight and Eeason are synonjTnous. 
 The fundamental faith for man is faith in the 
 result of a brave, honest, and steady use of 
 all his faculties : — 
 
 " Let knowledge groiv from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
 That mind and soul according well 
 ]\Iay make one music as before, 
 But vaster," 
 
 Before taking leave of Dr Gumming, let us 
 express a hope that we have in no case exagger- 
 ated the unfavourable character of the inferences 
 
DR GUMMING. 199 
 
 to be drawn from his pages. His creed often 
 obliges him to hope the worst of men, and to 
 exert himself in proving that the worst is true ; 
 but thus far we are happier than he. We have 
 no theory which requires us to attribute unwor- 
 thy motives to Dr Gumming, no opinions, religi- 
 oiis or irreligious, which can make it a gratifica- 
 tion to us to detect him in delinquencies. On 
 the contrary, the better we are able to think of 
 him as a man, while we are obliged to disap- 
 prove him as a theologian, the stronger will be 
 the evidence for our conviction, that the tend- 
 ency towards good in human nature has a force 
 which no creed can utterly counteract, and which 
 ensures the ultimate triumph of that tendency 
 over all dogmatic perversions. 
 
200 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIOX.U.ISM : 
 LECKY'S HISTOEY. 
 
 There is a valuable class of books on great sub- 
 jects w'hicb have something of the character and 
 functions of good popular lectm'ing. They are 
 not original, not subtle, not of close logical tex- 
 ture, not exquisite either in thought or style ; 
 but by virtue of these negatives they are all the 
 more fit to act on the average intelligence. They 
 have enough of organising purpose in them to 
 make their facts illustrative, and to leave a dis- 
 tinct result in the mind, even when most of the 
 facts are forgotten ; and they have enough of 
 vagueness and vacillation in their theory to win 
 them ready acceptance from a mixed audience. 
 The vagueness and vacillation are not devices 
 of timidity ; they are the honest result of the 
 'm.iter's own mental character, which adapts him 
 to be the instructor and the favourite of " the 
 
lecky's history. 201 
 
 general reader." For the most part, the general 
 reader of the present day does not exactly know 
 what distance he goes ; he only knows that he 
 does not go "too far." Of any remarkable 
 thinker whose writings have excited controversy, 
 he likes to have it said that " his errors are to be 
 deplored," leaving it not too certain what those 
 errors are : he is fond of what may be called dis- 
 embodied opinions, that float in vapoury phrases 
 above all systems of thought or action ; he likes 
 an undefined Christianity which opposes itself 
 to nothing in particular, an undefined education 
 of the people, an undefined amelioration of all 
 things : in fact, he likes sound views, — nothing 
 extreme, but something between the excesses of 
 the past and the excesses of the present. This 
 modern type of the general reader may be known 
 in conversation by the cordiality with which he 
 assents to indistinct, blurred statements : say 
 that black is black, he will shake his head and 
 hardly think it ; say that black is not so very 
 black, he will reply, " Exactly." He has no hesi- 
 tation, if you wish it, even to get up at a public 
 meeting and express his conviction that at times, 
 and within certain limits, the radii of a circle 
 have a tendency to be equal ; but, on the other 
 hand, he would urge that the spirit of geom- 
 etry may be carried a little too far. His only 
 
202 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM : 
 
 bigotry is a bigotry against any clearly defined 
 opinion; not in the least based on a scientific 
 scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent 
 thought, — a spongy texture of mind, that grav- 
 itates strongly to nothing. The one thing he 
 is stanch for is the utmost liberty of private 
 haziness. 
 
 But precisely these characteristics of the general 
 reader, rendering him incapable of assimilating 
 ideas unless they are administered in a highly 
 diluted form, make it a matter of rejoicing that 
 there are clever, fair-minded men, who TviU vn:ite 
 books for him, — men very much above him in 
 knowledge and ability, but not too remote from 
 him in their habits of thinking, and who can thus 
 prepare for him infusions of history and science 
 that will leave some solidifying deposit, and save 
 him from a fatal softening of the intellectual 
 skeleton. Among such serviceable writers, Mr 
 Lecky's ' History of the Else and Influence of the 
 Spirit of Eationalism in Europe ' entitles him to 
 a high place. He has prepared himself for its 
 production by an unusual amount of well-directed 
 reading ; he has chosen his facts and quotations 
 with much judgment ; and he gives proof of 
 those important moral qualifications — impartial- 
 ity, seriousness, and modesty. This praise is 
 chiefly applicable to the long chapter on the his- 
 
lecky's history. 203 
 
 tory of magic and witchcraft, which opens the 
 work, and to the two chapters on the antecedents 
 and history of persecution, which occur, the one 
 at the end of the first volume, the other at the 
 beginning of the second. In these chapters Mr 
 Lecky has a narrower and better-traced path 
 before him than in other portions of his work ; 
 he is more occiipied with presenting a particular 
 class of facts in their historical sequence, and 
 in their relation to certain grand tide-marks of 
 opinion, than with disquisition ; and his writing 
 is freer than elsewhere from an apparent con- 
 fusedness of thought and an exuberance of 
 approximative phrases, which can be serviceable 
 in no other way than as diluents needful for the 
 sort of reader we have just described. 
 
 The history of magic and witchcraft has been 
 judiciously chosen by Mr Lecky as the subject of 
 his first section on the Declining Sense of the 
 Miraculous, because it is strikingly illustrative of 
 a position with the truth of which he is strongly 
 impressed, though he may not always treat of it 
 with desirable clearness and precision — namely, 
 that certain beliefs become obsolete, not in con- 
 sequence of direct arguments against them, but 
 because of their incongruity with prevalent habits 
 of thought. Here is his statement of the two 
 " classes of influences," by which the mass of 
 
204 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM : 
 
 men, in what is called civilised society, get their 
 beliefs gradually modified : — 
 
 " If we ask why it is that the world has rejected 
 what was once so universally and so intensely believed, 
 why a narrative of an old woman who had been seen 
 riding on a broomstick, or who was proved to have 
 transformed herself into a wolf, and to have devoured 
 the flocks of her neighbours, is deemed so entirely in- 
 credible, most persons would probably be unable to 
 give a very definite answer to the question. It is not 
 because we have examined the evidence and found it 
 insufficient, for the disbelief always precedes, when it 
 does not prevent, examination. It is rather because 
 the idea of absurdity is so strongly attached to such 
 narratives, that it is difficult even to consider them 
 with gravity. Yet at one time no such improbability 
 was felt, and hundreds of persons have been burnt 
 simply on the two grounds I have mentioned. 
 
 " When so complete a change takes place in pubhc 
 opinion, it may be ascribed to one or other of two 
 causes. It may be the result of a controversy which 
 has couclusively settled the question, establishing to 
 the satisfaction of all parties a clear preponderance of 
 argument or fact in favour of one opinion, and making 
 that opinion a truism which is accepted by all enlight- 
 ened men, even though they have not themselves ex- 
 amined the evidence on which it rests. Thus, if any 
 one in a company of ordinarily educated persons were 
 to deny the motion of the earth, or the circulation of 
 the blood, his statement would be received with de- 
 rision, though it is probable that some of his audience 
 would be unable to demonstrate the first truth, and 
 that very few of them could give sufficient reasons 
 
lecky's history. 205 
 
 for the second. They may not themselves be able 
 to defend their position ; but they are aware that, at 
 certain known periods of history, controversies on 
 those subjects took place, and that known writers 
 then brought forward some definite arguments or 
 experiments, which were ultimately accepted by the 
 whole learned world as rigid and conclusive demon- 
 strations. It is possible, also, for as complete a change 
 to be effected by what is called the spirit of the age. 
 The general intellectual tendencies pervading the liter- 
 ature of a century profoundly modify the character of 
 the public mind. They form a new tone and habit of 
 thought. They alter the measure of probability. They 
 create new attractions and new antipathies, and they 
 eventually cause as absolute a rejection of certain old 
 opinions as could be produced by the most cogent and 
 definite arguments." 
 
 Mr Lecky proceeds to some questionable views 
 concerning tlie evidences of witchcraft, which 
 seem to be irreconcilable even with his own 
 remarks later on ; but they lead him to the 
 statement, thoroughly made out by his histor- 
 ical survey, that " the movement was mainly 
 silent, unargumentative, and insensible ; that 
 men came gradually to disbelieve in witchcraft, 
 because they came gradually to look upon it as 
 absurd ; and that this new tone of thought ap- 
 peared, first of all, in those who were least sub- 
 ject to theological influences, and soon spread 
 through the educated laity, and, last of all, took 
 possession of the clergy." 
 
206 THE INFLXJENCE OF RATIONALISM : 
 
 We have rather painful proof that this " second 
 class of influences " with a vast number go hardly 
 deeper than fashion, and that witchcraft to many 
 of us is absurd only on the same ground that our 
 grandfathers' gigs are alisurd. It is felt prepos- 
 terous to think of spiritual agencies in connection 
 with ragged beldames soaring on broomsticks, in 
 an age when it is known that mediums of com- 
 munication with the invisible world are usually 
 unctuous personages dressed in excellent broad- 
 cloth, who soar above the curtain-poles without 
 any broomstick, and who are not given to un- 
 profitable intrigues. The enlightened imagina- 
 tion rejects the figure of a witch with her profile 
 in dark relief against the moon and her broom- 
 stick cutting a constellation. No undiscovered 
 natural laws, no names of " respectable " ■wit- 
 nesses, are invoked to make us feel our pre- 
 sumption in questioning the diabolic intimacies 
 of that obsolete old woman, for it is known now 
 that the undiscovered laws, and the witnesses 
 qualified by the payment of income-tax, are all 
 in favour of a different conception — the image 
 of a heavy gentleman in boots and black coat- 
 tails foreshortened against the cornice. Yet no 
 less a person than Sir Thomas Browne once wTote 
 that those who denied there were witches, inas- 
 much as they thereby denied spirits also, were 
 
lecky's history. 207 
 
 " obliquely and iipon consequence a sort, not of 
 infidels, but of atheists." At present, doubtless, 
 in certain circles, unbelievers in heavy gentlemen 
 who float in tbe air by means of undiscovered 
 laws are also taxed with atheism ; illiberal as it 
 is not to admit that mere weakness of under- 
 standing may prevent one from seeing how that 
 phenomenon is necessarily involved in the Divine 
 origin of things. With still more remarkable 
 parallelism. Sir Thomas Browne goes on : " Those 
 that, to refute their incredulity, desire to see 
 apparitions, shall questionless never behold any, 
 nor have the power to be so much as witches. 
 The devil hath made them already in a heresy 
 as capital as witchcraft, and to appear to them 
 were hut to convert them!' It would be difficult 
 to see what has been changed here but the mere 
 drapery of circumstance, if it were not for this 
 prominent difference between our own days and 
 the days of witchcraft, that instead of torturing, 
 drowning, or burning the innocent, we give hos- 
 pitality and large pay to — the highly distin- 
 guished medium. At least we are safely rid of 
 certain horrors ; but if the multitude — that " far- 
 raginous concurrence of all conditions, tempers, 
 sexes, and ages" — do not roll back even to a 
 superstition that carries cruelty in its train, it 
 is not because they possess a cultivated Eeason, 
 
208 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM : 
 
 but because tbey are pressed upon and held up 
 by what we may call an external Reason — tbe 
 sum of conditions resulting from the laws of 
 material growth, from changes produced by great 
 historical collisions shattering the structm'es of 
 ages and making new highways for events and 
 ideas, and from the activities of higher minds 
 no longer existing merely as opinions and teach- 
 ing, but as institutions and organisations with 
 which the interests, the affections, and the habits 
 of the multitude are inextricably interwoven. 
 No undiscovered laws accounting for small 
 phenomena going forward under drawing-room 
 tables are likely to affect the tremendous facts 
 of the increase of population, the rejection of 
 convicts by our colonies, the exhaustion of the 
 soil by cotton plantations, which urge even upon 
 the foolish certain questions, certain claims, cer- 
 tain views concerning the scheme of the world, 
 that can never again be silenced. If right reason 
 is a right representation of the coexistences and 
 sequences of things, here are coexistences and 
 sequences that do not wait to be discovered, but 
 press themselves upon us like bars of iron. No 
 seances at a guinea a-head for the sake of being 
 pinched by "Mary Jane" can annihilate rail- 
 ways, steamships, and electric telegraphs, which 
 are demonstrating the interdependence of all 
 
lecky's history. 209 
 
 human interests, and making self-interest a duct 
 for sympathy. These things are part of the 
 external Reason to which internal silliness has 
 inevitably to accommodate itself. 
 
 Three points in the history of magic and witch- 
 craft are well brought out by Mr Lecky. First, 
 that the cruelties connected with it did not begin 
 until men's minds had ceased to repose implicitly 
 in a sacramental system which made them feel 
 well armed against evil spirits — that is, until the 
 eleventh century, when there came a sort of 
 morning dream of doubt and heresy, bringing 
 on the one side the terror of timid consciences, 
 and on the other the terrorism of authority or 
 zeal bent on checking the rising struggle. In 
 that time of comparative mental repose, says 
 Mr Lecky — 
 
 " All those conceptions of diabolical presence ; all 
 that predisposition towards the miraculous, which acted 
 so fearfully upon the imaginations of the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries, existed ; but the implicit faith, the 
 boundless and triumphant credulity with which the 
 virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, rendered 
 them comparatively innocuous. If men had been a 
 little less superstitious, the effects of their superstition 
 would have been much more terrible. It was firmly 
 believed that any one who deviated from the strict 
 line of orthodoxy must soon succumb beneath the 
 power of Satan ; but as there was no spirit of rebellion 
 
 
 
210 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM : 
 
 or doubt, this persuasion did not produce any extra- 
 ordinary terrorism." 
 
 The Church was disposed to confound heretical 
 opinion with sorcery ; false doctrine was espe- 
 cially the devil's work, and it was a ready con- 
 clusion that a denier or innovator had held 
 consultation with the father of lies. It is a 
 saying of a zealous Catholic in the sixteenth 
 century, quoted by j\Iaury in his excellent work, 
 'De la Magie' — " Crescit cum magia hceresis, 
 cum hceresi magia." Even those who doubted 
 were terrified at their doubts, for trust is more 
 easily undermined than terror. Fear is earlier 
 born than hope, lays a stronger grasp on man's 
 system than any other passion, and remains 
 master of a larger group of involuntary actions. 
 A chief aspect of man's moral development is the 
 slow subduing of fear by the gradual growth of 
 intelligence, and its suppression as a motive by 
 the presence of impulses less animally selfish ; 
 so that in relation to invisible Power, fear at last 
 ceases to exist, save in that interfusion with higher 
 faculties which we call awe. 
 
 Secondly, Mr Lecky shows clearly that dog- 
 matic Protestantism, holding the vivid belief in 
 Satanic agency to be an essential of piety, would 
 have felt it shame to be a whit behind Catholicism 
 in severity against the devil's servants. Luther's 
 
lecky's history. 211 
 
 sentiment was that lie would not suffer a witch 
 to live (he was not much more merciful to 
 Jews) ; and, in spite of his fondness for child- 
 ren, believing a certain child to have been be- 
 gotten by the devil, he recommended the parents 
 to throw it into the river. The torch must be 
 turned on the worst errors of heroic minds — not 
 in irreverent ingratitude, but for the sake of 
 measuring our vast and various debt to all the 
 influences which have concurred, in the inter- 
 vening ages, to make us recognise as detestable 
 errors the honest convictions of men who, in 
 mere individual capacity and moral force, were 
 very much above us. Again, the Scotch Puri- 
 tans, during the comparatively short period of 
 their ascendency, surpassed all Christians before 
 them in the elaborate ingenuity of the tortures 
 they applied for the discovery of witchcraft and 
 sorcery, and did their utmost to prove that if 
 Scotch Calvinism was the true religion, the chief 
 "note" of the true religion was cruelty. It is 
 hardly an endurable task to read the story of 
 their doings ; thoroughly to imagine them as a 
 past reality is already a sort of torture. One 
 detail is enough, and it is a comparatively mild 
 one. It was the regular profession of men called 
 " prickers " to thrust long pins into the body of 
 a suspected witch in order to detect the insen- 
 
212 THE INFLUENCE OF EATIONALISM : 
 
 sible spot wMch was the infallible sign of her 
 guilt. On a superficial view one would be in 
 danger of saying that the main difi"erence be- 
 tween the teachers who sanctioned these things 
 and the much -despised ancestors who offered 
 human victims inside a huge wicker idol, was 
 that they arrived at a more elaborate barbarity 
 by a longer series of dependent propositions. I 
 do not share Mr Buckle's opinion that a Scotch 
 minister's groans were a part of his deliberate 
 plan for keeping the people in a state of terrified 
 subjection ; the ministers themselves held the 
 belief they taught, and might well groan over it. 
 AVhat a blessing has a little false logic been to 
 the world ! Seeing that men are so slow to 
 question their premises, they must have made 
 each other much more miserable, if pity had not 
 sometimes drawn tender conclusion not warranted 
 by Major and Minor; if there had not been 
 people with an amiable imbecility of reasoning 
 which enabled them at once to cling to hideous 
 beliefs, and to be conscientiously inconsistent 
 with them in their conduct. There is nothing 
 like acute deductive reasoning for keeping a man 
 in the dark : it might be called the technique of 
 the intellect, and the concentration of the mind 
 upon it corresponds to that predominance of 
 technical skdl in art which ends in degradation 
 
lecky's history. 213 
 
 of tlie artist's function, unless new inspiration 
 and invention come to guide it. 
 
 And of this there is some good illustration 
 furnished by that third node in the history of 
 witchcraft, the beginning of its end, which is 
 treated in an interesting manner by Mr Lecky. 
 It is worth noticing, that the most important 
 defences of the belief in witchcraft, against the 
 growing scepticism in the latter part of the 
 sixteenth century and in the seventeenth, were 
 the productions of men who in some departments 
 were among the foremost thinkers of their time. 
 One of them was Jean Bodin, the famous writer 
 on government and jurisprudence, whose ' Re- 
 public,' Hallam thinks, had an important in- 
 fluence in England, and furnished "a store of 
 arguments and examples that were not lost on 
 the thoughtful minds of our^ countrymen." In 
 some of his views he was original and bold ; for 
 example, he anticipated Montesquieu in attempt- 
 ing to appreciate the relations of government 
 and climate. Hallam inclines to the opinion that 
 he was a Jew, and attached Divine authority 
 only to the Old Testament. But this was enough 
 to furnish him with his chief data for the exist- 
 ence of witches and for their capital punishment ; 
 and in the account of his ' Eepublic ' given 
 by Hallam, there is enough evidence that the 
 
214 THE INFLUENCE OF KATIONALISM : 
 
 sagacity which, often enabled him to make fine 
 use of his learning was also often entangled in it, 
 to temper our surprise at finding a writer on 
 political science of whom it could be said that, 
 along with Montesquieu, he was " the most phil- 
 osophical of those who had read so deeply, the 
 most learned of those who had thought so much," 
 in the van of the forlorn hope to maintain the 
 realit}^ of witchcraft. It should be said that he 
 was equally confident of the unreaHty of the 
 Copernican hypothesis, on the ground that it 
 was contrary to the tenets of the theologians 
 and philosophers and to common - sense, and 
 therefore subversive of the foundations of every 
 science. Of his work on witchcraft, Mr Lecky 
 says : — 
 
 " The ' Demonomanie des Sorciers ' is cliiefly an 
 appeal to authority, which the author deemed on this 
 subject so unanimous and so conclusive, that it was 
 scarcely possible for any sane man to resist it. He 
 appealed to the popular belief in all countries, in all 
 ages, and in all religions. He cited the opinions of 
 an immense multitude of the greatest writers of pagan 
 antiquity, and of the most illustrious of the Fathers. 
 He showed how the laws of all nations recognised the 
 existence of witchcraft ; and he collected hundreds of 
 cases which had been investigated before the tribunals 
 of his own or of other countries. He relates with the 
 most minute and circumstantial detail, and with the 
 most unfaltering confidence, all the proceedings at the 
 
lecky's history. 215 
 
 witches' Sabbath, the methods which the witches 
 employed in transporting themselves through the air, 
 their transformations, their carnal intercourse with the 
 Devil, their various means of injuring their enemies, 
 the signs that lead to their detection, their confessions 
 when condemned, and their demeanour at the stake." 
 
 Something must be allowed for a lawyer's 
 afFection towards a belief which had furnished so 
 many " cases." Bodin's work had been immedi- 
 ately prompted by the treatise ' De Prestigiis 
 Daenionum,' written by John Wier, a German 
 physician — a treatise which is worth notice as 
 an example of a transitional form of opinion for 
 which many analogies may be found in the his- 
 tory both of religion and science. Wier believed 
 in demons, and in possession by demons, but his 
 practice as a physician had convinced him that 
 the so-called witches were patients and victims, 
 that the Devil took advantage of their diseased 
 condition to delude them, and that there was no 
 consent of an evil will on the part of the women. 
 He argued that the word in Leviticus translated 
 "witch" meant "poisoner," and besought the 
 princes of Europe to hinder the further spilling 
 of innocent blood. These heresies of Wier threw 
 Bodin into such a state of amazed indignation, 
 that if he had been an ancient Jew instead of a 
 modern economical one, he would have rent his 
 
216 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM: 
 
 garment. " No one tad ever heard of pardon 
 being accorded to sorcerers ; " and probably the 
 reason why Charles IX. died young was because 
 he had pardoned the sorcerer, Trois EcheUes! 
 We must remember that this was in 1581, when 
 the great scientific movement of the Eenaissance 
 had hardly begun — when Galileo was a youth of 
 seventeen, and Kepler a boy of ten. 
 
 But directly afterwards, on the other side, 
 came Montaigne, whose sceptical acuteness could 
 arrive at negatives without any apparatus of 
 method. A certain keen narrowness of nature 
 will secure a man from many absurd beliefs which 
 the larger soul, vibrating to more manifold in- 
 fluences, would have a long struggle to part 
 with. And so we find the charming, chatty 
 Montaigne — in one of the brightest of his essays, 
 " Des Boiteux," where he declares that, from his 
 own observation of witches and sorcerers, he 
 should have recommended them to be treated 
 with curative hellebore — stating in his own way 
 a pregnant doctrine, since taught more gravely. 
 It seems to him much less of a prodigy that men 
 should lie, or that their imaginations should 
 deceive them, than that a human body should be 
 carried through the air on a broomstick, or up a 
 chimney by some unknown spirit. He thinks it 
 a sad business to persuade one's self that the test 
 
lecky's histoby. 217 
 
 of truth, lies in the multitude of believers — " en 
 una presse oil les fols surpassent de tant les sages 
 en nombre." Ordinarily, he has observed, when 
 men have something stated to them as a fact, 
 they are more ready to explain it than to inquire 
 whether it is real : " lis passent par-dessus les 
 propositions, mais ils examinent les consequences ; 
 Us laissent les choses, et courent aux causes." 
 There is a sort of strong and generous ignorance 
 which is as honourable and courageous as science 
 — "ignorance pour laquelle concevoir il n'y a pas 
 moins de science qii'k concevoir la science." And 
 a propos of the immense traditional evidence 
 which weighed with such men as Bodin, he says : 
 " As for the proofs and arguments founded on 
 experience and facts, I do not pretend to unravel 
 these. What end of a thread is there to lay hold 
 of ? I often cut them as Alexander did his knot. 
 Apres tout, c'est mettre ses conjectures a hien haut 
 prix, que d'en faire cuire un liomme tout vif." 
 
 Writing like this, when it finds eager readers, 
 is a sign that the weather is changing ; yet 
 much later, namely, after 1665, when the Eoyal 
 Society had been founded, our own Glanvil, the 
 author of the ' Scepsis Scientifica,' a work that 
 was a remarkable advance towards a true defini- 
 tion of the limits of inquiry, and that won him 
 his election as fellow of the Society, published an 
 
218 THE IKFLTJENCE OF RATIONALISM : 
 
 energetic vindication of the belief in T\itc]icraft, 
 of which ]\Ir Lecky gives the following sketch : — 
 
 " The ' Sadducismus Triumphatus,' which is iDrob- 
 ably the ablest book ever published in defence of the 
 superstition, opens with a striking picture of the rapid 
 progress of the scepticism in England. Everywhere, a 
 disbelief in witchcraft was becoming fashionable in the 
 upper classes ; but it was a disbelief that arose entirely 
 from a strong sense of its antecedent improbability. 
 All who were opposed to the orthodox faith united in 
 discrediting witchcraft. They laughed at it, as palpably 
 absurd, as involving the most grotesque and ludicrous 
 conceptions, as so essentially incredible that it would 
 be a waste of time to examine it. This spirit had 
 arisen since the Eestoration, although the laws were 
 still in force, and although little or no direct reasoning 
 had been brought to bear upon the subject. In order 
 to combat it, Glanvil proceeded to examine the general 
 question of the credibility of the miraculous. He saw 
 that the reason why witchcraft was ridiculed was, be- 
 cause it was a phase of the miraculous and the work 
 of the Devil ; that the scepticism was chiefly due to 
 those who disbelieved in miracles and the Devil ; and 
 that the instances of witchcraft or possession in the 
 Bible were invariably placed on a level with those 
 that were tried in the law courts of England. That 
 the evidence of the belief was overwhelming, he firmly 
 believed — and this, indeed, was scarcely disputed ; but, 
 until the sense of a ijriori improbability was removed, 
 no possible accumulation of facts would cause men to 
 believe it. To that task he accordingly addressed him- 
 self. Anticipating the idea and almost the words of 
 modern controversialists, he urged that there was such 
 
lecky's history. 219 
 
 a thing as a credulity of unbelief ; and that those who 
 believed so strange a concurrence of delusions, as was 
 necessary on the supposition of the unreality of witch- 
 craft, were far more credulous than those who accepted 
 the belief. He made his very scepticism his principal 
 weapon ; and, analysing with much acuteness the 
 a priori objections, he showed that they rested upon 
 an unwarrantable confidence in our knowledge of the 
 laws of the spirit world ; that they implied the exist- 
 ence of some strict analogy between the faculties of 
 men and of spirits ; and that, as such analogy most 
 probably did not exist, no reasoning based on the 
 supposition could dispense men from examining the 
 evidence. He concluded with a large collection of 
 cases, the evidence of which was, as he thought, 
 incontestable." 
 
 We have quoted this sketch because Glanvil's 
 argument against the a priori objection of ab- 
 surdity is fatiguingly urged in relation to other 
 alleged marvels which, to busy people seriously 
 occupied with the difficulties of affairs, of science, 
 or of art, seem as little worthy of examination as 
 aeronautic broomsticks. And also because we 
 here see Glanvil, in combating an incredulity 
 that does not happen to be his own, wielding 
 that very argument of traditional evidence 
 which he had made the subject of vigorous 
 attack in his ' Scepsis Scientifica.' But per- 
 haps large minds have been peculiarly liable to 
 this fluctuation concerning the sphere of tradi- 
 
220 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM : 
 
 tion, because, while they have attacked its mis- 
 applications, they have been the more solicited 
 by the vague sense that tradition is reaUy the 
 basis of our best life. Our sentiments may be 
 called organised traditions ; and a large part of 
 our actions gather all their justification, all then- 
 attraction and aroma, from the memory of the 
 life Hved, of the actions done, before we were 
 born. In the absence of any profound research 
 into psychological functions or into the mysteries 
 of inheritance, in the absence of any comprehen- 
 sive view of man's historical development and the 
 dependence of one age on another, a mind at all 
 rich in sensibilities must always have had an 
 indefinite uneasiness in an undistinguishing at- 
 tack on the coercive influence of tradition. And 
 this may be the apology for the apparent incon- 
 sistency of Glanvil's acute criticism on the one 
 side, and his indignation at the " looser gentry," 
 who laughed at the evidences for -nitchcraft, on 
 the other. We have akeady taken up too much 
 space with this subject of witchcraft, else we 
 should be tempted to dwell on Sir Thomas 
 Browne, who far surpassed Glanvil in magnifi- 
 cent incongruity of opinion, and whose works 
 are the most remarkable combination existing, 
 of witty sarcasm against ancient nonsense and 
 modern obsequiousness, with indications of a 
 
lecky's history. 221 
 
 capacious credulity. After all, we may be shar- 
 ing what seems to us the hardness of these men, 
 who sat in their studies and argued at their ease 
 about a belief that would be reckoned to have 
 caused more misery and bloodshed than any 
 other superstition, if there had been no such 
 thing as persecution on the ground of religious 
 opinion. 
 
 On this subject of Persecution, Mr Lecky 
 writes his best : with clearness of conception, 
 with calm justice, bent on appreciating the 
 necessary tendency of ideas, and with an appro- 
 priateness of illustration that could be supplied 
 only by extensive and intelligent reading. Per- 
 secution, he shows, is not in any sense peculiar 
 to the Catholic Church ; it is a direct sequence 
 of the doctrines that salvation is to be had only 
 within the Church, and that erroneous belief is 
 damnatory — doctrines held as fully by Protes- 
 tant sects as by the Catholics ; and in propor- 
 tion to its power. Protestantism has been as 
 persecuting as Catholicism. He maintains, in 
 opposition to the favourite modern notion of 
 persecution defeating its own object, that the 
 Church, holding the dogma of exclusive sal- 
 vation, was perfectly consequent, and really 
 achieved its end of spreading one belief and 
 quenching another by calling in the aid of the 
 
222 THE INFLUENCE OF EATIONAIJSM : 
 
 civil arm. Who will say tliat Governments, by 
 their power over institutions and patronage, as 
 well as over punishment, have not power also 
 over the interests and inclinations of men, and 
 over most of those external conditions into 
 which subjects are born, and which make them 
 adopt the prevalent belief as a second nature ? 
 Hence, to a siucere believer in the doctrine of 
 exclusive salvation. Governments had it in then- 
 power to save men from perdition ; and wher- 
 ever the clergy were at the elbow of the civil 
 arm, no matter whether they were Catholic or 
 Protestant, persecution was the result. " Com- 
 pel them to come in " was a rule that seemed 
 sanctioned by mercy, and the horrible sufferings 
 it led men to inflict seemed small to minds ac- 
 customed to contemplate, as a perpetual source 
 of motive, the eternal unmitigated miseries of 
 a hell that was the inevitable destination of a 
 majority amongst mankind. 
 
 It is a significant fact, noted by Mr Lecky, 
 that the only two leaders of the Reformation 
 who advocated tolerance were Zuinglius and 
 Socinus, both of them disbelievers in exclusive 
 salvation. And in corroboration of other evi- 
 dence that the chief triumphs of the Reforma- 
 tion were due to coercion, he commends to the 
 special attention of his readers the following 
 
LECKYS HISTOEY. 223 
 
 quotation from a work attributed without ques- 
 tion to the famous Protestant theologian, Jurieu, 
 who had himself been hindered, as a Protestant, 
 from exercising his professional functions in 
 France, and was settled as pastor at Eotterdam. 
 It should be remembered that Jurieu's labours 
 fell in the latter part of the seventeenth century 
 and in the beginning of the eighteenth, and that 
 he was the contemporary of Bayle, with whom 
 he was in bitter controversial hostility. He 
 wrote, then, at a time when there was warm 
 debate on the question of Toleration ; and it 
 was his great object to vindicate himself and 
 his French fellow -Protestants from all laxity 
 on this point : — 
 
 " Peut-on nier que le paganisme est tomb6 dans le 
 monde par I'autoritd des empereurs Eomains ? On 
 pent assurer sans temerite que le paganisme seroit en- 
 core debout, et que les trois quarts de I'Europe seroient 
 encore payens si Constantin et ses successeurs n'avaient 
 employ^ leur autoritd pour Tabolir. Mais, je vous prie, 
 de quelles voies Dieu s'est-il servi dans ces derniers 
 sifecles pour r^tablir la veritable religion dans I'Occi- 
 dent ? Les rois de Sudde, ceux de Danemarch, ceux 
 d' Angleterre, les magistrats souverains de Suisse, des Pals 
 Bas, des villes litres d'AUemagne, les princes decteiors, et 
 autres -princes souverains de I'empire, n'ont-ils pas em- 
 ploie leur autoriU pour abhattre le Papisrne ?- " 
 
 Indeed, wherever the tremendous alternative 
 
224 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM : 
 
 of everlasting torments is believed in — believed 
 in so that it becomes a motive determining tte 
 life — not only persecution, but every other form 
 of severity and gloom are the legitimate conse- 
 quences. There is much ready declamation in 
 these days against the spirit of asceticism and 
 against zeal for doctrinal conversion ; but surely 
 the macerated form of a Saint Francis, the fierce 
 denunciations of a Saint Dominic, the groans and 
 prayerful wrestlings of the Puritan who seasoned 
 his bread with tears and made all pleasurable 
 sensation sin, are more in keeping with the con- 
 templation of unending anguish as the destiny 
 of a vast multitude whose nature we share, than 
 the rubicund cheerfulness of some modern divines, 
 who profess to unite a smiling Kberalism with 
 a well-bred and tacit but unshaken confidence in 
 the reality of the bottomless pit. But in fact, 
 as Mr Lecky maintains, that awful image, with 
 its group of associated dogmas concerning the 
 inherited curse, and the damnation of unbaptised 
 infants, of heathens, and of heretics, has passed 
 away from what he is fond of calling " the real- 
 isations " of Christendom. These things are no 
 longer the objects of practical belief. They may 
 be moiirned for in encyclical letters ; bishops 
 may regret them ; doctors of divinity may sign 
 testimonials to the excellent character of these 
 
LECKYS HISTORY. 225 
 
 decayed beliefs; but for the mass of Christians 
 they are no more influential than unrepealed but 
 forgotten statutes. And with these dogmas has 
 melted away the strong basis for the defence of 
 persecution. No man now writes eager vindi- 
 cations of himself and his colleagues from the 
 suspicion of adhering to the principle of tolera- 
 tion. And this momentous change, it is Mr 
 Lecky's object to show, is due to that concur- 
 rence of conditions which he has chosen to call 
 " the advance of the Spirit of Eationalism." 
 
 In other parts of his work, where he attempts 
 to trace the action of the same conditions on 
 the acceptance of miracles and on other chief 
 phases of our historical development, Mr Lecky 
 has laid himself open to considerable criticism. 
 The chapters on the Miracles of the Church, the 
 aesthetic, scientific, and moral Development of 
 Eationalism, the Secularisation of Politics, and 
 the Industrial history of Eationalism, embrace 
 a wide range of diligently gathered facts ; but 
 they, are nowhere illuminated by a sufiiciently 
 clear conception and statement of the agencies at 
 work, or the mode of their action, in the gradual 
 modification of opinion and of life. The writer 
 frequently impresses us as being in a state of 
 hesitation concerning his own standing-point, 
 which may form a desirable stage in private 
 
 p 
 
226 THE INFLCTENCE OF RATIONALISM: 
 
 meditation but not in published exposition. Cer- 
 tain epochs in theoretic conception, certain con- 
 siderations, which should be fundamental to his 
 survey, are introduced quite incidentally in a 
 sentence or two, or in a note which seems to be 
 an afterthought. Great writers and their ideas 
 are touched upon too slightly and with too little 
 discrimination, and important theories are some- 
 times characterised with a rashness which con- 
 scientious revision will correct. There is a fatigu- 
 ing use of vague or shifting phrases, such as 
 " modern civilisation," " spirit of the age," "tone 
 of thought," " intellectual type of the age," " bias 
 of the imagination," " habits of religious thought," 
 unbalanced by any precise definition ; and the 
 spirit of rationalism is sometimes treated of as 
 if it lay outside the specific mental activities of 
 which it is a generalised expression. Mr Curdle's 
 famous definition of the dramatic unities as " a 
 sort of a general oneness," is not totally false ; but 
 such luminousness as it has could only be per- 
 ceived by those who already knew what the 
 unities were. Mr Lecky has the advantage of 
 being strongly impressed with the great part 
 played by the emotions in the formation of 
 opinion, and with the high complexity of the 
 causes at work in social evolution ; but he fre- 
 quently writes as if he had never yet distin- 
 
lecky's history. 227 
 
 guislied between the complexity of the condi- 
 tions that produce prevalent states of mind, and 
 the inability of particular minds to give distinct 
 reasons for the preferences or persuasions pro- 
 duced by those states. In brief, he does not 
 discriminate, or does not help his reader to dis- 
 criminate, between objective complexity and sub- 
 jective confusion. But the most muddle-headed 
 gentleman who represents the spirit of the age 
 by observing, as he settles his collar, that the 
 development-theory is quite "the thing," is a 
 result of definite processes, if we could only trace 
 them. "Mental attitudes " and " predispositions," 
 however vague in conscioiisness, have not vague 
 causes, any more than the " blind motions of the 
 spring " in plants and animals. 
 
 The word " Eationalism " has the misfortune, 
 shared by most words in this grey world, of 
 being somewhat equivocal. This evil may be 
 nearly overcome by careful preliminary defini- 
 tion; but Mr Lecky does not supply this, and 
 the original specific application of the word to a 
 particular phase of Biblical interpretation seems 
 to have clung about his use of it with a mis- 
 leading effect. Through some parts of his book 
 he appears to regard the grand characteristic of 
 modern thought and civilisation, compared with 
 ancient, as a radiation in the first instance from 
 
228 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 
 
 a change in religious conceptions. The supremely 
 important fact, that the gradual reduction of all 
 phenomena within the sphere of established law, 
 which carries as a consequence the rejection of 
 the miraculous, has its determining current in 
 the development of physical science, seems to 
 have engaged comparatively little of his atten- 
 tion ; at least, he gives it no prominence. The 
 great conception of universal regular sequence, 
 without partiality and without caprice — ^the con- 
 ception which is the most potent force at work 
 in the modification of our faith, and of the prac- 
 tical form given to our sentiments — could only 
 grow out of that patient watching of external 
 fact, and that silencing of preconceived notions, 
 which are urged upon the mind by the problems 
 of physical science. 
 
229 
 
 THE NATUEAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 EIEHL, 
 
 It is an interesting brancli of psychological ob- 
 servation to note the images that are habitually 
 associated with abstract or collective terms — 
 ■what may be called the picture-writing of the 
 mind, which it carries on concurrently with the 
 rhore subtle symbolism of language. Perhaps 
 the fixity or variety of these associated images 
 would furnish a tolerably fair test of the amount 
 of concrete knowledge and experience which a 
 given word represents, in the minds of two per- 
 sons who use it with equal familiarity. The 
 word railivays, for example, will probably call 
 up, in the mind of a man who is not bighly loco- 
 motive, the image either of a ' Bradshaw,' or of 
 the station with which he is most familiar, or of 
 an indefinite length of tram-road ; he will alter- 
 nate between these three images, which represent 
 his stock of concrete acquaintance with railways. 
 
230 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 But suppose a man to have had successively the 
 experience of a " navvy," an engineer, a traveller, 
 a railway director and shareholder, and a landed 
 proprietor in treaty with a railway company, and 
 it is probable that the range of images which 
 would by turns present themselves to his mind 
 at the mention of the word " railways," would 
 include all the essential facts in the existence and 
 relations of the thing. Now it is possible for 
 the first-mentioned personage to entertain very 
 expanded views as to the multiplication of rail- 
 ways in the abstract, and their ultimate function 
 in civilisation. He may talk of a vast network 
 of railways stretching over the globe, of future 
 " lines " in Madagascar, and elegant refreshment- 
 rooms in the Sandwich Islands, with none the 
 less giibness because his distinct conceptions on 
 the subject do not extend beyond his one station 
 and his indefinite length of tram-road. But it is 
 evident that if we want a railway to be made, 
 or its afi"airs to be managed, this man of wdde 
 views and narrow observation will not serve our 
 purpose. 
 
 Probably, if we could ascertain the images 
 called up by the terms "the people," "the 
 masses," " the proletariat," " the peasantry," by 
 many who theoiise on those bodies with elo- 
 quence, or who legislate for them without elo- 
 
EIEHL. 231 
 
 quence, we should find that they indicate almost 
 as small an amount of concrete knowledge — that 
 they are as far from completely representing the 
 complex facts summed up in the collective term, 
 as the railway images of our non - locomotive 
 gentleman. How little the real characteristics 
 of the working-classes are known to those who are 
 outside them, how little their natural history has 
 been studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our Art 
 as well as by our political and social theories. 
 Where, in our picture exhibitions, shall we find 
 a group of true peasantry ? What English art- 
 ist even attempts to rival in truthfulness such 
 studies of popular life as the pictures of Teniers 
 or the ragged boys of Murillo ? Even one of the 
 greatest painters of the pre-eminently realistic 
 school, while, in his picture of " The Hireling 
 Shepherd," he gave us a landscape of marvellous 
 truthfulness, placed a pair of peasants in the 
 foreground who were not much more real than 
 the idyllic swains and damsels of our chimney 
 ornaments. Only a total absence of acquaint- 
 ance and sympathy with our peasantry, could 
 give a moment's popularity to such a picture as 
 " Cross Purposes," where we have a peasant girl 
 who looks as if she knew L. E. L.'s poems by 
 heart, and English rustics, whose costume seems 
 to indicate that they are meant for ploughmen, 
 
232 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 with exotic features that remind us of a hand- 
 some primo tenore. Eather than such Cockney 
 sentimentahty as this, as an education for the 
 taste and sympathies, we prefer the most crapu- 
 lous group of boors that Teniers ever painted. 
 But even those among our painters who aim at 
 giving the rustic type of features, who are far 
 above the effeminate feebleness of the "Keep- 
 sake" style, treat their subjects under the influ- 
 ence of traditions and prepossessions rather than 
 of direct observation. The notion that peasants 
 are joyous, that the tjrpical moment to represent 
 a man in a smock-frock is when he is cracking a 
 joke and showing a row of sound teeth, that 
 cottage matrons are usually buxom, and village 
 children necessarily rosy and merry, are preju- 
 dices difficult to dislodge from the artistic mind, 
 which looks for its subjects into literature instead 
 of life. The painter is still under the influence 
 of idyllic literature, which has always expressed 
 the imagination of the cultivated and town- 
 bred, rather than the truth of rustic life. Idyllic 
 ploughmen are jocund when they drive their 
 team afield ; idyllic shepherds make bashful love 
 under hawthorn - bushes ; idyllic villagers dance 
 in the chequered shade and refresh themselves, 
 not immoderately, with spicy nut-brown ale. 
 But no one who has seen much of actual plough- 
 
EIEHL. 233 
 
 men thinks them jocund ; no one who is well 
 acquainted with the English peasantry can pro- 
 nounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which 
 no sense of beauty beams, no humour twinkles, 
 — the slow utterance, and the heavy slouching 
 walk, remind one rather of that melancholy 
 animal the camel, than of the sturdy country- 
 man, with striped stockings, red waistcoat, and 
 hat aside, who represents the traditional English 
 peasant. Observe a company of haymakers. 
 When you see them at a distance, tossing up the 
 forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the 
 waggon creeps slowly with its increasing burthen 
 over the meadow, and the bright green space 
 which tells of work done gets larger and larger, 
 you pronounce the scene " smiling," and you 
 think these companions in labour must be as 
 bright and cheerful as the picture to which they 
 give animation. Approach nearer, and you will 
 certainly find that haymaking-time is a time for 
 joking, especially if there are women among the 
 labourers ; but the coarse laugh that bursts out 
 every now and then, and expresses the trium- 
 phant taunt, is as far as possible from your con- 
 ception of idyllic merriment. That delicious 
 effervescence of the mind which we call fun, has 
 no equivalent for the northern peasant, except 
 tipsy revelry ; the only realm of fancy and ima- 
 
234 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 eination. for tlie English, clown exists at the 
 bottom of the third quart-pot. 
 
 The conventional countryman of the stage, 
 who picks up pocket-books and never looks into 
 them, and who is too simple even to know that 
 honesty has its opposite, represents the still 
 lingering mistake, that an unintelligible dialect 
 is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that 
 slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposi- 
 tion. It is quite true that a thresher is likely to 
 be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, 
 but he is not the less likely to carry home his 
 master's corn in his shoes and pocket ; a reaper 
 is not given to -^Titing begging-letters, but he is 
 quite capable of caj oiling the dairymaid into fill- 
 ing his smaU-beer bottle with ale. The selfish 
 ■; instincts are not subdued by the sight of butter- 
 jcups, nor is integrity in the least established by 
 that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To 
 make men moral, something more is requisite 
 than to turn them out to grass. 
 
 Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr 
 Euskin's indignation, are surely too frank an 
 idealisation to be misleading ; and since popular 
 chorus is one of the most effective elements of 
 the opera, we can hardly object to lyric rustics 
 in elegant laced bodices and picturesque motley, 
 unless we are prepared to advocate a chorus of 
 
RIEHL. 235 
 
 colliers in their pit costume, or a ballet of char- 
 women and stocking-weavers. But our social 
 novels profess to represent the people as they 
 are, and the unreality of their representations is 
 a grave evil. The greatest benefit we owe to the 
 artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the 
 extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded 
 on generalisations and statistics require a sym- 
 pathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in 
 activity ; but a picture of human life such as al 
 great artist can give, surprises even the trivial 
 and the selfish into that attention to what is 
 apart from themselves, which may be called th6 
 raw material of moral sentiment. When Scott 
 takes us into Luckie Mucklebackit's cottage, or 
 tells the story of " The Two Drovers," — when 
 Wordsworth sings to us the reverie of " Poor 
 Susan," — when Kingsley shows us Alton Locke 
 gazing yearningl}^ over the gate which leads 
 from the highway into the first wood he ever 
 saw, — when Hornimg paints a group of chimney- 
 sweepers, — more is done towards linking the 
 higher classes with the lower, towards obliterat- 
 ing the vulgarity of exclusiveness, than by hun- 
 dreds of sermons and philosophical dissertations. 
 Art is the nearest thing to life ; it is a mode of 
 amplifying experience and extending our contact 
 with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our 
 
236 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of 
 the artist when he undertakes to paint the life 
 
 I of the People. Falsification here is far more per- 
 nicious than in the more artificial aspects of life. 
 It is not so very serious that we should have false 
 ideas about evanescent fashions — about the man- 
 ners and conversation of beaux and duchesses ; 
 but it is serious that our sympathy with the per- 
 ennial joys and struggles, the toil, the tragedy, 
 and the humour in the life of our more heavily 
 laden feUow-men, should be perverted, and turned 
 
 i towards a false object instead of the true one. 
 
 This perversion is not the less fatal because the 
 misrepresentation which gives rise to it has what 
 the artist considers a moral end. The thing for 
 mankind to know is, not what are the motives 
 and influences which the moralist thinks ought to 
 act on the labourer or the artisan, but what are 
 the motives and influences which do act on him. 
 iWe want to be taught to feel, not for the heroic 
 
 !|artisan or the sentimental peasant, but for the 
 peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan 
 ,in aU his suspicious selfishness. 
 
 We have one great novelist who is gifted with 
 the utmost power of rendering the external traits 
 of our town popidation ; and if he could give us 
 their psychological character — their conceptions 
 of life, and their emotions — with the same truth 
 
RIEHL. 237 
 
 as their idiom and manners, his books would be 
 the greatest contribution Art has ever made to 
 the awakening of social sympathies. But while 
 he can copy Mrs Plornish's colloquial style with 
 the delicate accuracy of a sun-picture, while there 
 is the same startling inspiration in his description 
 of the gestures and phrases of " Boots," as in the 
 speeches of Shakespeare's mobs or ntimskuUs, 
 he scarcely ever passes from the humorous and 
 external to the emotional and tragic, without 
 becoming as transcendent in his unreality as he 
 was a moment before in his artistic truthfulness. 
 But for the precious salt of his humour, which 
 compels him to reproduce external traits that 
 serve, in some degree, as a corrective to his fre- 
 quently false psychology, his preternaturally 
 virtuous poor children and artisans, his melo- 
 dramatic boatmen and courtesans, would be as 
 noxious as Eugene Sue's idealised proletaires in 
 encouraging the miserable fallacy that high 
 morality and refined sentiment can grow out 
 of harsh social relations, ignorance, and want ; 
 or that the working-classes are in a condition to 
 enter at once into a millennial state of altruism, 
 wherein every one is caring for every one else, 
 and no one for himself. 
 
 If we need a true conception of the popular 
 character to guide our sympathies rightly, we 
 
238 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 need it equally to ckeck our theories, and direct 
 us in their application. The tendency created 
 by the splendid conquests of modern generali- 
 sation, to believe that all social questions are 
 merged in economical science, and that the rela- 
 tions of men to their neighbours may be settled 
 by algebraic equations, — the dream that the un- 
 cultured classes are prepared for a condition 
 which appeals principally to their moral sensi- 
 bilities, — the aristocratic dilettanteism which 
 attempts to restore the "good old times" by a 
 sort of idylHc masquerading, and to grow feudal 
 fidelity and veneration as we grow prize turnips, 
 by an artificial system of culture, — none of these 
 diverging mistakes can coexist with a real know- 
 ledge of the People, with a thorough study of 
 their habits, their ideas, their motives. The 
 landholder, the clergyman, the mill-owner, the 
 mining - agent, have each an opportunity for 
 making precious observations on different sec- 
 tions of the working-classes ; but unfortunately 
 their experience is too often not registered at all, 
 or its results are too scattered to be available 
 as a source of information and stimulus to the 
 pubHc mind generally. If any man of sufiicient 
 moral and intellectual breadth, whose observa- 
 tions would not be vitiated by a foregone conclu- 
 sion, or by a professional point of view, would 
 devote himself to studying the natural history 
 
EIEHL. 239 
 
 of our social classes, especially of the small shop- 
 keepers, artisans, and peasantry, — the degree in 
 which they are influenced by local conditions, 
 their maxims and habits, the points of view from 
 which they regard their religious teachers, and 
 the degree in which they are influenced by reli- 
 gious doctrines, the interaction of the various 
 classes on each other, and what are the tend- 
 encies in their position towards disintegration 
 or towards development, — and if, after all this 
 study, he would give us the result of his obser- 
 vations in a book well nourished with specific 
 facts, his work would be a valuable aid to the 
 social and political reformer. 
 
 What we are desiring for ourselves has been 
 in some degree done for the Germans by Eiehl, 
 the author of the very remarkable books the 
 titles of which are placed at the bottom of this 
 page ; ^ and we wish to make these books known 
 to our readers, not only for the sake of the inter- 
 esting matter they contain and the important 
 reflections they suggest, but also as a model for 
 some future or actual student of our own people. 
 By way of introducing Eiehl to those who are 
 unacquainted with his writings, we will give a 
 rapid sketch from his picture of the German 
 Peasantry, and perhaps this indication of the 
 
 1 Die Biirgerliche Gesellschaft. Von W. H. Eiehl. Dritte Au- 
 flage, 1855. 
 Land und Leiite. Von W. H. Eielil. Dritte Aiiflage, 1856. 
 
240 NATtJEAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 mode in which he treats a particular branch of 
 his subject may prepare them to follow us with 
 more interest when we enter on the general pur- 
 pose and contents of his works. 
 
 In England, at present, when we speak of the 
 peasantry, we mean scarcely more than the class 
 of farm-servants and farm-labourers ; and it is 
 only in the most primitive districts — as in Wales, 
 for example — that farmers are included under 
 the term. In order to appreciate what Eiehl 
 says of the German peasantry, we must remem- 
 ber what the tenant-farmers and small proprie- 
 tors were in England half a century ago, when 
 the master helped to milk his own cows, and the 
 daughters got up at one o'clock in the morning 
 to brew, — when the family dined in the kitchen 
 with the servants, and sat vdih them round the 
 kitchen fire in the evening. In those days, the 
 cj^uarried parlour was innocent of a carpet, and 
 its only specimens of art were a framed sampler 
 and the best tea-board ; the daughters even of 
 substantial farmers had often no greater accom- 
 plishment in writing and spelling than they 
 could procure at a dame - school ; and, instead 
 of carrying on sentimental correspondence, they 
 were spinning their future table-linen, and look- 
 ing after every saving in butter and eggs that 
 might enable them to add to the little stock of 
 
RIEHL, 241 
 
 plate and china which they were laying in against 
 their marriage. In our own day, setting aside 
 the superior order of farmers, whose style of 
 living and mental culture are often equal to 
 that of the professional class in provincial towns, 
 we can hardly enter the least imposing farm- 
 house without finding a bad piano in the " draw- 
 ing-room," and some old annuals, disposed with 
 a symmetrical imitation of negligence, on the 
 table ; though the daughters may still drop their 
 Ks, their vowels are studiously narrow; and it 
 is only in very primitive regions that they will 
 consent to sit in a covered vehicle without 
 springs, which was once thought an advance in 
 luxury on the pillion. 
 
 The condition of the tenant-farmers and small 
 proprietors in Germany is, we imagine, about on 
 a par, not, certainly, in material prosperity, but 
 in mental culture and habits, with that of the 
 English farmers who were beginning to be thought 
 old-fashioned nearly fifty years ago ; and if we 
 add to these the farm servants and labourers, we 
 shall have a class approximating in its character- 
 istics to the Bauernthum, or peasantry, described 
 by Eiehl. 
 
 In Germany, perhaps more than in any other 
 country, it is among the peasantry that we must 
 look for the historical type of the national 
 
242 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 physique. In the towns this type has become 
 so modified to express the personality of the 
 individual, that even " family likeness " is often 
 but faintly marked. But the peasants may still 
 be distinguished into groups by their physical 
 peculiarities. In one part of the country we find 
 a longer-legged, in another a broader-shouldered 
 race, which has inherited these peculiarities for 
 centuries. For example, in certain districts of 
 Hesse are seen long faces, with high foreheads, 
 long, straight noses, and small eyes with arched 
 eyebrows and large eyelids. On comparing these 
 physiognomies with the sculptures in the church 
 of St Elizabeth, at Marburg, executed in the 
 thirteenth century, it will be found that the 
 same old Hessian type of face has subsisted 
 unchanged, with this distinction only, that the 
 sculptures represent princes and nobles, whose 
 features then bore the stamp of their race, while 
 that stamp is now to be found only among the 
 peasants. A painter who wants to draw mediae- 
 val characters with historic truth, must seek his 
 models among the peasantry. This explains why 
 the old German painters gave the heads of their 
 subjects a greater uniformity of tj^pe than the 
 painters of our day : the race had not attained 
 to a high degree of individualisation in features 
 and expression. It indicates, too, that the cul- 
 
EIEHL. 243 
 
 tured man acts more as an individual ; the 
 peasant, more as one of a group. Hans drives 
 the plough, lives, and thinks just as Kunz does ; 
 and it is this fact, that many thousands of men 
 are as like each other in thoughts and habits as 
 so many sheep or oysters, which constitutes the 
 weight of the peasantry in the social and polit- 
 ical scale. 
 
 In the cultivated world each individual has his 
 style of speaking and writing. But among the 
 peasantry it is the race, the district, the province, 
 that has its style — namely, its dialect, its phrase- 
 ology, its proverbs, and its songs, which belong 
 alike to the entire body of the people. This 
 provincial style of the peasant is again, like his 
 'physique, a remnant of history to which he clings 
 with the utmost tenacity. In certain parts of 
 Hungary, there are still descendants of German 
 colonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
 who go about the country as reapers, retaining 
 their old Saxon songs and manners, while the 
 more cultivated German emigrants in a very 
 short time forget their own language, and speak 
 Hungarian. Another remarkable case of the 
 same kind is that of the "Wends, a Sclavonic 
 race settled in Lusatia, whose numbers amount 
 to 200,000, living either scattered among the 
 German population or in separate parishes. They 
 
244 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 have their own schools and churches, and are 
 taught in the Sclavonic tongue. The Catholics 
 among them are rigid adherents of the Pope ; the 
 Protestants not less rigid adherents of Luther, or 
 Doctor Luther, as they are particular in calling 
 him — a custom which, a hundred years ago, was 
 universal in Protestant Germany. The "Wend 
 clings tenaciously to the usages of his Church, 
 and perhaps this may contribute not a little to 
 the purity in which he maintains the specific 
 characteristics of his race. German education, 
 German law and government, service in the 
 standing army, and many other agencies, are 
 in antagonism to his national exclusiveness ; but 
 the ivives and Tiiothers here, as elsewhere, are a 
 conservative influence, and the habits tempo- 
 rarily laid aside in the outer world are recovered 
 by the fireside. The Wends form several stout 
 regiments in the Saxon army ; they are sought 
 far and wide, as diligent and honest servants ; 
 and many a weakly Dresden or Leipzig child 
 becomes thriving under the care of a Wendish 
 nurse. In their villages they have the air and 
 habits of genuine, sturdy peasants, and all their 
 customs indicate that they have been, from the 
 first, an agricultural people. For example, they 
 have traditional modes of treating their domestic 
 animals. Each cow has its own name, generally 
 
RIEHL. 245 
 
 chosen carefully, so as to express the special 
 qualities of the animal ; and all important family 
 events are narrated to the bees — a custom which 
 is found also in Westphaha. Whether by the 
 help of the bees or not, the Wend farming is 
 especially prosperous ; and when a poor Bohe- 
 mian peasant has a son born to him, he binds 
 him to the end of a long pole and turns his face 
 towards Lusatia, that he may be as lucky as the 
 Wends who live there. 
 
 The peculiarity of the peasant's language con- 
 sists chiefly in his retention of historical peculi- 
 arities, which gradually disappear under the fric- 
 tion of cultivated circles. He prefers any proper 
 name that may be given to a day in the calendar, 
 rather than the abstract date, by which he very 
 rarely reckons. In the baptismal names of his 
 children he is guided by the old custom of the 
 country, not at all by whim and fancy. Many 
 old baptismal names, formerly common in Ger- 
 many, would have become extinct but for their 
 preservation among the peasantry, especially in 
 North Germany; and so firmly have they ad- 
 hered to local tradition in this matter, that it 
 would be possible to give a sort of topographical 
 statistics of proper names,' and distinguish a dis- 
 trict by its rustic names as we do by its Flora 
 and Fauna. The continuous inheritance of cer- 
 
246 NATURAL HISTORY OJF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 tain favourite proper names in a family, in some 
 districts, forces the peasant to adopt tlie princely 
 custom of attaching a numeral to the name, and 
 saying, when three generations are living at 
 once, Hans I., II., and III. ; or, in the more 
 antique fashion, Hans the elder, the middle, and 
 the younger. In some of our English counties 
 there is a similar adherence to a narrow range of 
 proper names ; and as a mode of distinguishing 
 collateral branches in the same family, you will 
 hear of Jonathan's Bess, Thomas's Bess, and 
 Samuel's Bess — the three Bessies beino- cousins. 
 The peasant's adherence to the traditional has 
 much greater inconvenience than that entailed 
 by a paucity of proper names. In the Black 
 Forest and in Hlittenberg you will see him in 
 the dog-days wearing a thick fur cap, because it 
 is a historical fur cap — a cap worn by his grand- 
 father. In the Wetterau, that peasant girl is 
 considered the handsomest who wears the most 
 petticoats. To go to field-labour in seven petti- 
 coats can be anything but convenient or agree- 
 able, but it is the traditionally correct thing ; 
 and a German peasant girl would think herself 
 as unfavourably conspicuous in an untraditional 
 costume as an English servant-girl would now 
 think herself in a " linsey-woolsey " apron or a 
 thick muslin cap. In many districts no medical 
 
RIEHL. 247 
 
 advice would induce the rustic to renounce the 
 tight leather belt with which he injures his 
 digestive functions ; you could more easily per- 
 suade him to smile on a new communal system 
 than on the unhistorical invention of braces. In 
 the eighteenth century, in spite of the philan- 
 thropic preachers of potatoes, the peasant for 
 years threw his potatoes to the pigs and the 
 dogs, before he could be persuaded to put 
 them on his own table. However, the unwill- 
 ingness of the peasant to adopt innovations has 
 a not unreasonable foundation in the fact, that 
 for him experiments are practical, not theoret- 
 ical, and must be made with expense of money 
 instead of brains — a fact that is not, perhaps, 
 sufficiently taken into account by agricultural 
 theorists, who complain of the farmer's obsti- 
 nacy. The peasant has the smallest possible 
 faith in theoretic knowledge ; he thinks it rather 
 dangerous than otherwise, as is well indicated by 
 a Lower Ehenish proverb : " One is never too old 
 to learn, said an old woman ; so she learned to 
 be a witch." 
 
 Between many villages an historical feud — 
 once perhaps the occasion of much bloodshed — 
 is still kept up under the milder form of an occa- 
 sional round of cudgelling, and the launching 
 of traditional nicknames. An historical feud of 
 
248 NATXJEAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 this kind still exists, for example, among many 
 villages on the Rhine and more inland places in 
 the neighbourhood. Rheinschnacke (of which 
 the equivalent is perhaps " water-snake ") is the 
 standing term of ignominy for the inhabitant of 
 the Ehine village, who repays it in kind by the 
 epithet " karst " (mattock) or " kukuk " (cuckoo), 
 according as the object of his hereditary hatred 
 belongs to the field or the forest. If any Romeo 
 among the "mattocks" were to marry a Juliet 
 among the "water-snakes," there would be no 
 lack of Tybalts and Mercutios to carry the con- 
 flict from words to blows, though neither side 
 knows a reason for the enmity. 
 
 A droll instance of peasant conservatism is 
 told of a village on the Taunus, whose inhab- 
 itants from time immemorial had been famous 
 for impromptu cudgelling. For this historical 
 ofi"ence the magistrates of the district had always 
 inflicted the equally historical punishment of 
 shutting up the most incorrigible ofi"enders, not 
 in prison, but in their own pig-sty. In recent 
 times, however, the Government, wishing to cor- 
 rect the rudeness of these peasants, appointed an 
 " enlightened " man as magistrate, who at once 
 abolished the original penalty above-mentioned. 
 But this relaxation of punishment was so far from 
 being welcome to the villagers, that they pre- 
 
RIEHL. 249 
 
 sented a petition praying that a more energetic 
 man might be given them as a magistrate, who 
 would have the courage to punish according to 
 law and justice, " as had been beforetime." And 
 the magistrate who abolished incarceration in 
 the pig-sty could never obtain the respect of the 
 neighbourhood. This happened no longer ago 
 than the beginning of the present century. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that the histor- 
 ical piety of the German peasant extends to any- 
 thing not immediately connected with himself. 
 He has the warmest piety towards the old 
 tumble-down house which his grandfather built, 
 and which nothing will induce him to improve ; 
 but towards the venerable ruins of the old castle 
 that overlooks his village he has no piety at all, 
 and carries off its stones to make a fence for his 
 garden, or tears down the Gothic carving of the 
 old monastic church, which is " nothing to him," 
 to mark off a footpath through his field. It is 
 the same with historical traditions. The peasant 
 has them fresh in his memory, so far as they 
 relate to himself. In districts where the peas- 
 antry are unadulterated, you discern the rem- 
 nants of the feudal relations in innumerable 
 customs and phrases, but you will ask in vain 
 for historical traditions concerning the empire, 
 or even concerning the particular princely house 
 
250 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 to which, the peasant is subject. He can tell you 
 what "half people and whole people" mean; in 
 Hesse you will still hear of " four horses making 
 a whole peasant," or of " fom'-day and three-day 
 peasants " : but you will ask in vain about Char- 
 lemagne and Frederic Barbarossa. 
 
 Eiehl well observes that the feudal system, 
 which made the peasant the bondman of his lord, 
 was an immense benefit in a country the greater 
 part of which had stUl to be colonised, — rescued 
 the peasant from vagabondage, and laid the foun- 
 dation of persistency and endurance in future 
 generations. If a free German peasantry belongs 
 only to modern times, it is to his ancestor 
 who was a serf, and even, in the earliest times, 
 a slave, that the peasant owes the foundation of 
 his independence — namely, his capability of a 
 settled existence, — nay, his unreasoning persist- 
 ency, which has its important function in the 
 development of the race. 
 
 Perhaps the very worst result of that unreason- 
 ing persistency is the peasant's inveterate habit 
 of litigation. Every one remembers the immortal 
 description of Dandie Dinmont's importunate 
 application to Lawyer Pleydell to manage his 
 "bit lawsuit," till at length Pleydell consents 
 to help him ruin himself, on the ground that 
 Dandie may fall into worse hands. It seems. 
 
RIEHL. 251 
 
 this is a scene which, has many parallels in Ger- 
 many. The farmer's lawsuit is his point of hon- 
 our ; and he will carry it through, though he 
 knows from the very first clay that he shall get 
 nothing by it. The litigious peasant piques 
 himself, like Mr Saddletree, on his knowledge of 
 the law, and this vanity is the chief impulse to 
 many a lawsuit. To the mind of the peasant, 
 law presents itself as the " custom of the coun- 
 try," and it is his pride to be versed in all cus- 
 toms. Custom ivith him holds the place of senti- 
 ment, of theory, and in many cases of affection. 
 Riehl justly urges the importance of simplifying 
 law proceedings, so as to cut off this vanity at 
 its source, and also of encouraging, by every 
 possible means, the practice of arbitration. 
 
 The peasant never begins his lawsuit in summer, 
 for the same reason that he does not make love 
 and marry in summer, — because he has no time 
 for that sort of thing. Anything is easier to him 
 than to move out of his habitual course, and he is 
 attached even to his privations. Some years ago, 
 a peasant youth, out of the poorest and remotest 
 region of the Westerwald, was enlisted as a re- 
 cruit, at Weilburg in Nassau. The lad having 
 never in his life slept in a bed, when he had to 
 get into one for the first time began to cry like a 
 child ; and he deserted twice because he could not 
 
252 NATUEAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 reconcile himself to sleeping in a bed, and to the 
 " fine " life of the barracks : he was homesick at 
 the thought of his accustomed poverty and his 
 thatched hut. A strong contrast this with the feel- 
 ing of the poor in towns, who would be far enough 
 from deserting because their condition was too 
 much improved ! The genuine peasant is never 
 ashamed of his rank and calling ; he is rather in- 
 chned to look down on every one who does not 
 wear a smock-frock, and thinks a man who has 
 the manners of the gentry is likely to be rather 
 windy and unsubstantial. In some places, even 
 in French districts, this feeling is strongly sym- 
 bolised by the practice of the peasantry, on cer- 
 tain festival days, to dress the images of the 
 saints in peasant's clothing. History tells us of 
 all kinds of peasant insurrections, the object of 
 which was to obtain relief for the peasants from 
 some of their many oppressions ; but of an efi'ort 
 on their part to step out of their hereditary rank 
 and calUng, to become gentry, to leave the plough 
 and carry on the easier business of capitalists or 
 Government functionaries, there is no example. 
 
 The German novelists who undertake to give 
 pictures of peasant life, fall into the same mis- 
 take as our English novelists ; they transfer their 
 own feelings to ploughmen and woodcutters, and 
 give them both joys and sorrows of which they 
 
KIEHL. 253 
 
 know nothing. The peasant never questions the 
 obligation of family ties — he questions no custom, 
 — but tender affection, as it exists amongst the 
 refined part of mankind, is almost as foreign to 
 him as white hands and filbert -shaped nails. 
 That the aged father who has given up his pro- 
 perty to his children on condition of their main- 
 taining him for the remainder of his life, is very 
 far from meeting with delicate attentions, is in- 
 dicated by the proverb current among the peas- 
 antry — " Don't take your clothes ofi" before you 
 go to bed."^ Among rustic moral tales and 
 parables, not one is more universal than the story 
 of the ungrateful children, who made their grey- 
 headed father, dependent on them for a mainte- 
 nance, eat at a wooden trough because he shook 
 the food out of his trembling hands. Then 
 these same ungrateful children observed one day 
 that their o^n little boy was making a tiny 
 wooden trough ; and when they asked him what 
 it was for, he answered — that his father and 
 mother might eat out of it, when he was a man 
 and had to keep them. 
 
 Marriage is a very prudential aff'air, especially 
 among the peasants who have the largest share 
 of property. Politic marriages are as common 
 among them as among princes ; and when a 
 
 1 This proverb is common among the English farmers also. 
 
254 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 peasant-lieiress in Westphalia marries, her hus- 
 band adopts her name, and places his own after 
 it with the prefix geborner [ne). The girls marry 
 young, and the rapidity with which they get old 
 and ugly is one among the many proofs that the 
 early years of marriage are fuller of hardships 
 than of conjugal tenderness. " When our writers 
 of village stories," says Eiehl, " transferred their 
 own emotional life to the peasant, they obliter- 
 ated what is precisely his most predominant 
 characteristic — namely, that with him general 
 custom holds the place of individual feeling." 
 
 We pay for greater emotional susceptibility 
 too often by nervous diseases of which the 
 peasant knows nothing. To him headache is 
 the least of physical evils, because he thinks 
 head-work the easiest and least indispensable of 
 all labour. Happily, many of the younger sons 
 in peasant families, by going to seek their living 
 in the towns, carry their hardy nervous system 
 to amalgamate with the over-wrought nerves of 
 our town population, and refresh them with a 
 little rude vigour. And a return to the habits 
 of peasant Hfe is the best remedy for many moral 
 as well as physical diseases induced by perverted 
 civilisation. Eiehl points to colonisation as pre- 
 senting the true field for this regenerative pro- 
 cess. On the other side of the ocean a man wUl 
 
EIEHL. 255 
 
 have the courage to begin life again as a peasant, 
 while at home, perhaps, opportunity as well as 
 courage wiU fail him. Apropos of this subject 
 of emigration, he remarks the striking fact that 
 the native shrewdness and mother -wit of the 
 German peasant seem to forsake him entirely 
 when he has to apply them under new circum- 
 stances, and on relations foreign to his expe- 
 rience. Hence it is that the German peasant 
 who emigrates, so constantly falls a victim to 
 unprincipled adventurers in the preliminaries 
 to emigration ; but if once he gets his foot on 
 the American soil, he exhibits all the first-rate 
 qualities of an agricultural colonist ; and among 
 all German emigrants, the peasant class are the 
 most successful. 
 
 But many disintegrating forces have been at 
 work on the peasant character, and degeneration 
 is unhappily going on at a greater pace than 
 development. In the wine districts especially, 
 the inability of the small proprietors to bear up 
 under the vicissitudes of the market, or to ensure 
 a high quality of wine by running the risks of 
 a late vintage, and the competition of beer and 
 cider with the inferior wines, have tended to 
 produce that uncertainty of gain which, with the 
 peasant, is the inevitable cause of demoralisation. 
 The small peasant proprietors are not a new class 
 
256 KATURAL HISTOEY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 in Germany, but many of the evils of their po- 
 sition are new. They are more dependent on 
 ready money than formerly ; thus, where a 
 peasant used to get his wood for building and 
 firing from the common forest, he has now to 
 pay for it with hard cash ; he used to thatch 
 his own house, with the help perhaps of a 
 neighbour, but now he pays a man to do it 
 for him ; he used to pay taxes in kind, he now 
 pays them in money. The chances of the 
 market have to be discounted, and the peasant 
 falls into the hands of money-lenders. Here is 
 one of the cases in which social policy clashes 
 with a purely economical policy. 
 
 Political vicissitudes have added their influ- 
 ence to that of economical changes in disturbing 
 that dim instinct, that reverence for traditional 
 custom, which is the peasant's principle of ac- 
 tion. He is in the midst of novelties for which 
 he knows no reason — changes in political geo- 
 graphy, changes of the Government to which he 
 owes fealty, changes in bureaucratic management 
 and police regulations. He finds himself in a 
 new element before an apparatus for breathing 
 in it is developed in him. His only knowledge 
 of modern history is in some of its results — for 
 instance, that he has to pay heavier taxes from 
 year to year. His chief idea of a Government 
 
EIEHL. 257 
 
 is of a power that raises his taxes, opposes his 
 harmless customs, and torments him with new 
 formalities. The source of all this is the falsfe 
 system of " enlightening" the peasant which has 
 been adopted by the bureaucratic Governments. 
 A system which disregards the traditions and 
 hereditary attachments of the peasant, and ap- 
 peals only to a logical understanding which is 
 not yet developed in him, is simply disinte- 
 grating and ruinous to the peasant character. 
 The interference with the communal regulations 
 has been of this fatal character. Instead of en- 
 deavouring to promote to the utmost the healthy 
 life of the Commune, as an organism the condi- 
 tions of which are bound up with the historical 
 characteristics of the peasant, the bureaucratic 
 plan of government is bent on improvement by 
 its patent machinery of State -appointed func- 
 tionaries, and off-hand regulations in accordance 
 with modern enlightenment. The spirit of com- 
 munal exclusiveness — the resistance to the in- 
 discriminate establishment of strangers — is an 
 intense traditional feeling in the peasant. " This 
 gallows is for us and our children," is the typical 
 motto of this spirit. But such exclusiveness is 
 highly irrational and repugnant to modern lib- 
 eralism ; therefore a bureaucratic Government at 
 once opposes it, and encourages to the utmost 
 
 R 
 
258 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 the introduction of new inhabitants in the pro- 
 vincial communes. Instead of allowing the 
 peasants to manage their own affairs, and, if 
 they happen to believe that five and four make 
 eleven, to unlearn the prejudice by their own 
 experience in calculation, so that they may 
 gradually understand processes, and not merely 
 see results, bureaucracy comes with its " Eeady 
 Eeckoner " and works all the peasant's sums for 
 him — the surest way of maintaining him in his 
 stupidity, however it may shake his prejudice. 
 Another questionable plan for elevating the 
 peasant is the supposed elevation of the clerical 
 character, by preventing the clergyman from 
 cultivating more than a trifling part of the land 
 attached to his benefice, — that he may be as much 
 as possible of a scientific theologian, and as little 
 as possible of a peasant. In this, Riehl observes, 
 lies one great source of weakness to the Protes- 
 tant Church as compared with the Catholic, 
 which finds the great majority of its priests 
 among the lower orders ; and we have had the 
 opportunity of making an analogous comparison 
 in England, where many of us can remember 
 country districts in which the great mass of the 
 people were christianised by illiterate Methodist 
 and Independent ministers ; while the influence 
 of the parish clergyman among the poor did not 
 
EIEHL. 259 
 
 extend irnicli beyond a few old women in scarlet 
 cloaks, and a few exceptional churcli-going 
 labourers. 
 
 Bearing in mind the general characteristics of 
 the German peasant, it is easy to understand his 
 relation to the revolutionary ideas and revolu- 
 tionary movements of modern times. The peas- 
 ant in Germany, as elsewhere, is a born grum- 
 bler. He has always plenty of grievances in his 
 pocket, but he does not generalise those griev- 
 ances ; he does not complain of " government " 
 or " society," probably because he has good 
 reason to complain of the burgomaster. When 
 a few sparks from the first French Eevolution 
 fell among the German peasantry, and in certain 
 villages of Saxony the country people assembled 
 together to write down their demands, there was 
 no glimpse in their petition of the " universal 
 rights of man," but simply of their own particu- 
 lar affairs as Saxon peasants. Again, after the 
 July revolution of 1830, there were many insig- 
 nificant peasant insurrections ; but the object of 
 almost aU was the removal of local grievances. 
 Toll-houses were pulled down ; stamped paper 
 was destroyed ; in some places there was a per- 
 secution of wild boars, in others of that plentiful 
 tame animal, the German Rath, or councillor who 
 is never called into council. But in 1848 it 
 
260 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 seemed as if the movements of the peasants had 
 taken a new character; in the small western 
 states of G-ermany it seemed as if the whole class 
 of peasantry was in insurrection. But, in fact, 
 the peasant did not know the meaning of the 
 part he was playing. He had heard that every- 
 thing was being set right in the towns, and that 
 wonderful things were happening there, so he 
 tied up his bundle and set off. Without any 
 distinct object or resolution, the country people 
 presented themselves on the scene of commotion, 
 and were warmly received by the party leaders. 
 But, seen from the windows of ducal palaces and 
 ministerial hotels, these swarms of peasants had 
 quite another aspect, and it was imagined that they 
 had a common plan of co-operation. This, how- 
 ever, the peasants have never had. Systematic 
 co-operation implies general conceptions, and a 
 provisional subordination of egoism, to which 
 even the artisans of towns have rarely shown 
 themselves equal, and which are as foreign to the 
 mind of the peasant as logarithms or the doctrine 
 of chemical proportions. And the revolutionary 
 fervour of the peasant was soon cooled. The old 
 mistrust of the towns was reawakened on the 
 spot. The Tyrolese peasants saw no great good 
 in the freedom of the press and the constitution, 
 because these changes " seemed to please the 
 
KIEHL. 261 
 
 gentry so much." Peasants who had given their 
 voices stormily for a German parliament asked 
 afterwards, with a doubtful look, whether it were 
 to consist of infantry or cavalry. When royal 
 domains were declared the property of the State, 
 the peasants in some small principalities rejoiced 
 over this, because they interpreted it to mean 
 that every one would have his share in them, after 
 the nianner of the old common and forest rights. 
 
 The very practical views of the peasants, with 
 regard to the demands of the people, were in 
 amusing contrast with the abstract theorising of 
 the educated townsmen. The peasant continually 
 withheld all State payments until he saw how 
 matters would turn out, and was disposed to 
 reckon iip the solid benefit, in the form of land 
 or money, that might come to him from the 
 changes obtained. While the townsman was 
 heating his brains about representation on the 
 broadest basis, the peasant asked if the relation 
 between tenant and landlord would continue as 
 before, and whether the removal of the " feudal 
 obligations " meant that the farmer should be- 
 come owner of the land ? 
 
 It is in the same naive way that Communism 
 is interpreted by the German peasantry. The 
 wide spread among them of communistic doc- 
 trines, the eagerness with which they listened to 
 
262 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 a plan for the partition of property, seemed to 
 countenance the notion that it was a delusion to 
 suppose the peasant would be secured from this 
 intoxication by his love of secure possession and 
 peaceful earnings. But, in fact, the peasant 
 contemplated " partition " by the light of a his- 
 torical reminiscence rather than of novel theory. 
 The golden age, in the imagination of the peasant, 
 was the time when every member of the com- 
 mune had a right to as much wood from the 
 forest as would enable him to sell some, after 
 using what he wanted in firing, — in which the 
 communal possessions were so profitable that, in- 
 stead of his having to pay rates at the end of the 
 year, each member of the commune was some- 
 thing in pocket. Hence the peasants in general 
 understood by " partition " that the State lands, 
 especially the forests, would be divided among 
 the communes, and that, by some political leger- 
 demain or other, everybody would have free fire- 
 wood, free grazing for his cattle, and, over and 
 above that, a piece of gold without working for 
 it. That he should give up a single clod of his 
 own to further the general " partition " had never 
 entered the mind of the peasant communist ; and 
 the perception that this was an essential pre- 
 liminary to "partition" was often a sufficient 
 cure for his Communism. 
 
KIEHL. 263 
 
 In villages lying in tlie neighbourhood of 
 large towns, however, where the circumstances 
 of the peasantry are very different, quite another 
 interpretation of Communism is prevalent. Here 
 the peasant is generally sunk to the position of 
 the proletaire, living from hand to mouth ; he 
 has nothing to lose, but everything to gain by 
 " partition." The coarse nature of the peasant 
 has here been corrupted into bestiality by the 
 disturbance of his instincts, while he is as yet 
 incapable of principles ; and in this type of the 
 degenerate peasant is seen the worst example of 
 ignorance intoxicated by theory. 
 
 A significant hint as to the interpretation the 
 peasants put on revolutionary theories, may be 
 drawn from the way they employed the few 
 weeks in which their movements were unchecked. 
 They felled the forest trees and shot the game ; 
 they withheld taxes ; they shook off the imagin- 
 ary or real burdens imposed on them by their 
 mediatised princes, by presenting their " de- 
 mands " in a very rough way before the ducal or 
 princely " Schloss"; they set their faces against 
 the bureaucratic management of the communes, 
 deposed the Government functionaries who had 
 been placed over them as burgomasters and mag- 
 istrates, and abolished the whole bureaucratic 
 system of procedure, simply by taking no notice 
 
264 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 of its regulations, and recurring to some tradi- 
 tion—some old order or disorder of things. In 
 all this it is clear that they were animated not in 
 the least by the spirit of modern revolution, but 
 by a purely narrow and personal impulse towards 
 reaction. 
 
 The idea of constitutional government lies 
 quite beyond the range of the German peasant's 
 conceptions. His only notion of representation 
 is that of a representation of ranks — -of classes ; 
 his only notion of a deputy is of one who takes 
 care, not of the national welfare, but of the in- 
 terests of his own order. Herein lay the great 
 mistake of the democratic party, in common with 
 the bureaucratic Governments, that they entirely 
 omitted the peculiar character of the peasant 
 from their political calculations. They talked of 
 the " people," and forgot that the peasants were 
 included in the term. Only a baseless miscon- 
 ception of the peasant's character could induce 
 the supposition that he would feel the slight- 
 est enthusiasm about the principles involved in 
 the reconstitution of the Empire, or even about 
 that reconstitution itself. He has no zeal for a 
 written law, as such, but only so far as it takes 
 the form of a living law — a tradition. It 
 was the external authority which the revo- 
 lutionary party had won in Baden that at- 
 
RIEHL. 265 
 
 tracted the peasants into a participation in the 
 struggle. 
 
 Such, Eiehl tells us, are the general character- 
 istics of the German peasantry — characteristics 
 which subsist amidst a wide variety of circum- 
 stances. In Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Bran- 
 denburg, the peasant lives on extensive estates ; 
 in Westphalia he lives in large isolated home- 
 steads ; in the Westerwald and in Sauerland, in 
 little groups of villages and hamlets ; on the 
 Ehine, land is for the most part parcelled out 
 among small proprietors, who live together in 
 large villages. Then, of course, the diversified 
 physical geography of Germany gives rise to 
 equally diversified methods of land-culture ; and 
 out of these various circumstances grow numer- 
 ous specific difli"erences in manner and character. 
 But the generic character of, the German peasant 
 is everywhere the same : in the clean mountain- 
 hamlet and in the dirty fishing -village on the 
 coast ; in the plains of North Germany and in the 
 backwoods of America. " Everywhere he has the 
 same historical character — everywhere custom is 
 his supreme law. Where religion and patriotism are 
 still a naive instinct — are still a sacred custom — 
 there begins the class of the German Peasantry." 
 
 Our readers will perhaps already have gathered 
 
266 NATTJEAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 from the foregoing portrait of the German peas- 
 ant, that Eiehl is not a man who looks at objects 
 through the spectacles either of the doctrinaire 
 or the dreamer ; and they will be ready to be- 
 lieve what he tells us in his Preface — namely, 
 that years ago he began his wanderings over the 
 hills and plains of Germany for the sake of ob- 
 taining, in immediate intercourse with the people, 
 that completion of his historical, political, and 
 economical studies which he was unable to find 
 in books. He began his investigations with no 
 party prepossessions, and his present views were 
 evolved entirely from his q-rti gradually amassed 
 observations. He was, first of all, a pedestrian, 
 and only in the second place a political author. 
 The views atwhich he has arrived by this indiictive 
 process, he sums up in the term — social -political- 
 conservatism; but his conservatism is, we conceive, 
 of a thoroughly philosophical kind. He sees in 
 European society incarnate history, and any at- 
 tempt to disengage it from its historical elements 
 must, he believes, be simply destructive of social 
 vitality.^ What has grown up historically can 
 only die out historically, by the gradual opera- 
 tion of necessary laws. The external conditions 
 
 1 Tlirougliout this article, in our statement of Rielil's opinions, 
 we must be understood not as quoting Riehl, but as interpreting 
 and illustrating him. 
 
EIEHL. 267 
 
 which society has inherited from the past are but 
 the manifestation of inherited internal conditions 
 in the human beings who compose it ; the inter- 
 nal conditions and the external are related to 
 each other as the organism and its medivim, and 
 development can take place only by the gradual 
 consentaneous development of both. Take the 
 famdiar example of attempts to abolish titles, 
 which have been about as effective as the pro- 
 cess of cutting off poppy-heads in a corn-field. 
 " Jedem Menschen" says Eiehl, " ist sein Zoijf 
 angehoren, warum soil denn der sociale Sprach- 
 gebrauch nicht auch seinen Zopf hahen ? " — 
 which we may render — ■" As long as snobbism 
 runs in the blood, why should it not run in our 
 speech ? " As a necessary preliminary to a purely 
 rational society, you must obtain purely rational 
 men, free from the sweet and bitter prejudices of 
 hereditary affection and antipathy ; which is as 
 easy as to get running streams without springs, 
 or the leafy shade of the forest without the 
 secular growth of trunk and branch. 
 
 The historical conditions of society may be 
 compared with those of language. It must be 
 admitted that the language of cultivated nations 
 is in anything but a rational state ; the great 
 sections of the civilised world are only approxi- 
 matively intelligible to each other, and even that. 
 
268 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAX LIFE : 
 
 only at the cost of long study ; one word stands 
 for many things, and many words for one thing ; 
 the subtle shades of meaning, and still subtler 
 echoes of association, make language an instru- 
 ment which scarcely anything short of genius 
 can wield with definiteness and certainty. Sup- 
 pose, then, that the effort which has been again 
 and again made to construct a universal language 
 on a rational basis has at length succeeded, and 
 that you have a language which has no uncer- 
 tainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, 
 no fitful shimmer of many-hued significance, no 
 hoary archaisms " familiar with forgotten years " 
 — a patent deodorised and non-resonant language, 
 which efli'ects the purpose of communication as 
 perfectly and rapidly as algebraic signs. Your 
 language may be a perfect medium of expression 
 to science, but will never express life, which is a 
 great deal more than science. "With the anom- 
 alies and inconveniences of historical language, 
 you will have parted with its music and its 
 passion, with its vital qualities as an expression 
 of individual character, with its subtle capabilities 
 of wit, with ever3"'thing that gives it power over 
 jthe imagination ; and the next step in simplifica- 
 tion will be the invention of a talking watch, 
 which will achieve the utmost facility and 
 despatch in the communication of ideas by a 
 
RIEHL. 269 
 
 graduated adjustment of ticks, to be represented 
 in writing by a corresponding arrangement of 
 dots. A melancholy " language of the future " ! 
 The sensory and motor nerves that run in the 
 same sheath, are scarcely bound together by 
 a more necessary and delicate union than that' 
 which binds men's affections, imagination, wit, 
 and humour, with the subtle ramifications of 
 historical language. Language must be left tq 
 grow in precision, completeness, and unity, as, 
 minds grow in clearness, comprehensiveness, 
 and sympathy. And there is an analogous 
 relation between the moral tendencies of men 
 and the social conditions they have inherited. 
 The nature of European men has its roots inter- 
 twined with the past, and can only be developed 
 by allowing those roots to remain undisturbed 
 while the process of development is going on, 
 until that perfect ripeness of the seed which 
 carries with it a life independent of the root. 
 This vital connection with the past is much more 
 vividly felt on the Continent than in England, 
 where we have to recall it by an eff"ort of 
 memory and reflection ; for though our English 
 life is in its core intensely traditional. Protes- 
 tantism and commerce have modernised the face 
 of the land and the aspects of society in a far 
 greater degree than in any Continental country: — 
 
270 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 " Abroad," says Euskin, " a building of the eighth or 
 tenth century stands ruinous in tlie open street ; the 
 children play around it, the peasants heap their corn 
 in it, the buildings of yesterday nestle about it, and fit 
 their new stones in its rents, and tremble in sympathy 
 as it trembles. oSI^o one wonders at it, or thinks of it 
 as separate, and of another time ; we feel the ancient 
 world to be a real thing, and one with the new ; anti- 
 quity is no dream ; it is rather the children playing 
 about the old stones that are the dream. But all is 
 continuous, and the words, ' from generation to genera- 
 tion,' understandable here." 
 
 This conception of European society as incarnate 
 history, is the fundamental idea of Eiehl's books. 
 After the notable failure of revolutionary 
 attempts conducted from the point of view of 
 abstract democratic and socialistic theories, after 
 the practical demonstration of the evils resulting 
 from a bureaucratic system which governs by an 
 undiscriminating, dead mechanism, Riehl wishes 
 to urge on the consideration of his countrjonen 
 a social policy founded on the special study of 
 the people as they are — on the natural history 
 of the various social ranks. He thinks it wise 
 to pause a little from theorising, and see what is 
 the material actually present for theory to work 
 upon. It is the glory of the Socialists — in con- 
 trast with the democratic doctrinaires who have 
 been too much occupied with the general idea of 
 
EIEHL. 271 
 
 " the people " to inquire particularly into the 
 actual life of the people — that they have 
 thrown themselves with enthusiastic zeal into 
 the study at least of one social group— namely, 
 the factory operatives ; and here lies the secret 
 of their partial success. But, unfortunately, they 
 have made this special study of a single fragment 
 of society the basis of a theory which quietly 
 substitutes for the small group of Parisian pro- 
 letaires or English factory-workers, the society of 
 all Europe^nay, of the whole world. And in 
 this way they have lost the best fruit of their 
 investigations. For, says Eiehl, the more deeply 
 we penetrate into the knowledge of society in its 
 details, the more thoroughly we shall be con- 
 vinced that a universal social joolicy has no 
 validity except on 2Japer, and can never be carried 
 into successful practice. The conditions of Ger- 
 man society are altogether different from those 
 of French, of English, or of Italian society ; and 
 to apply the same social theory to these nations 
 indiscriminately, is about as wise a procedure as 
 Triptolemus Yellowley's application of the agri- 
 cultural directions in Virgd's "Georgics" to his 
 farm in the Shetland Isles. 
 
 It is the clear and strong light in which Eiehl 
 places this important position, that in our opinion 
 constitutes the suggestive value of his books for 
 
272 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 foreio-ii as well as German readers. It has not 
 
 O 
 
 been sufficiently insisted on, tliat in the various 
 branches of Social Science there is an advance 
 from the general to the special, from the simple 
 to the complex, analogous with that which is 
 found in the series of the sciences, from Mathe- 
 matics to Biology. To the laws of quantity 
 comprised in Mathematics and Physics are 
 superadded, in Chemistry, laws of quality; to 
 these again are added, in Biology, laws of life ; 
 and lastly, the conditions of life in general, 
 branch out into its special conditions, or ISTatm-al 
 History, on the one hand, and into its abnormal 
 conditions, or Pathology, on the other. And in 
 this series or ramification of the sciences, the 
 more general science will not suffice to solve the 
 problems of the more special. Chemistry em- 
 braces phenomena which are not explicable by 
 Physics ; Biologj^ embraces phenomena which 
 are not explicable by Chemistry; and no bio- 
 logical generalisation -nill enable us to predict 
 the infinite specialities produced by the com- 
 plexity of vital conditions. So Social Science, 
 while it has departments which in their funda- 
 mental generality correspond to mathematics 
 and physics — namely, those grand and simple 
 generahsations which trace out the inevitable 
 march of the human race as a whole, and, as a 
 
RIEHL. 273 
 
 ramification of these, the laws of economical 
 science — has also, in the departments of govern- 
 ment and jurisprudence, which embrace the con- 
 ditions of social life in all their complexity, what 
 may be called its Biology, carrying us on to in- 
 numerable special phenomena which outlie the 
 sphere of science, and belong to Natviral History. 
 And just as the most thorough acquaintance with 
 physics, or chemistry, or general physiology will 
 not enable you at once to establish the balance 
 of life in your private vivarium, so that your 
 particular society of zoophytes, molluscs, and 
 echinoderms may feel themselves, as the Ger- 
 mans say, at ease in their skin ; so the most 
 complete equipment of theory will not enable a 
 statesman or a political and social reformer to 
 adjust his measures wisely, in the absence of a 
 special acquaintance with the section of society 
 for which he legislates, with the peculiar char- 
 acteristics of the nation, the province, the class 
 whose wellbeing he has to consult. In other 
 words, a wise social policy must be based not 
 simply on abstract social science, but on the 
 Natural History of social bodies. 
 
 Eiehl's books are not dedicated merely to the 
 argumentative maintenance of this or of any other 
 position ; they are intended chiefly as a contri- 
 bution to that knowledge of the German people 
 
 s 
 
274 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 on the importance of which, he insists. He is 
 less occupied with urging his own conclusions 
 than with impressing on his readers the facts 
 which have led him to those conclusions. In 
 the volume entitled 'Land und Leute,' which, 
 though published last, is properly an introduc- 
 tion to the volume entitled 'Die Blirgerliche 
 Gesellschaft,' he considers the German people in 
 their physical-geographical relations ; he com- 
 pares the natural divisions of the race, as deter- 
 mined by land and climate, and social traditions, 
 with the artificial divisions which are based on 
 diplomacy ; and he traces the genesis and infiu- 
 ences of what we may call the ecclesiastical 
 geography of Germany — its partition between 
 Catholicism and Protestantism. He shows that 
 the ordinary antithesis of North and South 
 Germany represents no real ethnographical dis- 
 tinction, and that the natural di%isions of Ger- 
 many, founded on its physical geography, are 
 threefold — namely, the low plains, the middle 
 mountain region, and the high mountain region, 
 or Lower, Lliddle, and Upper Germany ; and on 
 this primary natural division all the other broad 
 ethnographical distinctions of Germany will be 
 found to rest. The plains of North or Lower 
 Germany include all the seaboard the nation 
 possesses ; and this, together -ndth the fact that 
 
EIEHL. 275 
 
 they are traversed to the depth of 600 miles by 
 navigable rivers, makes them the natural seat of 
 a trading race. Quite different is the geograph- 
 ical character of Middle Germany. While the 
 northern plains are marked off into great divi- 
 sions, by such rivers as the Lower Ehine, the 
 Weser, and the Oder, running almost in parallel 
 lines, this central region is cut up like a mosaic 
 by the capricious lines of valleys and rivers. 
 Here is the region in which you find those 
 famous roofs from which the rain-water runs 
 towards two different seas, and the mountain- 
 tops from which you may look into eight or 
 ten German States. The abundance of water- 
 power and the presence of extensive coal-mines 
 allow of a very diversified industrial develop- 
 ment in Middle Germany. In Upper Germany, 
 or the high mountain region, we find the same 
 symmetry in the lines of the rivers as in the 
 north ; almost all the great Alpine streams flow 
 parallel with the Danube. But the majority of 
 these rivers are neither navigable nor available 
 for industrial objects, and instead of serving for 
 communication, they shut off one great tract 
 from another. The slow development, the 
 simple peasant -life of many districts, is here 
 determined by the mountain and the river. 
 In the south-east, however, industrial activity 
 
276 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 spreads through Bohemia towards Austria, and 
 forms a sort of balance to the industrial districts 
 of the Lower Ehine. Of course, the boundaries 
 of these three regions cannot be very strictly 
 defined ; but an approximation to the limits of 
 Middle Germany may be obtained by regarding 
 it as a triangle, of which one angle lies in Silesia, 
 another in Aix-la-Chapelle, and a third at Lake 
 Constance. 
 
 This triple division corresponds with the broad 
 distinctions of climate. In the northern plains the 
 atmosphere is damp and heavy ; in the southern 
 mountain region it is dry and rare, and there are 
 abrupt changes of temperature, sharp contrasts 
 between the seasons, and devastating storms ; 
 but in both these zones men are hardened by 
 conflict with the rovighnesses of the climate. In 
 jMiddle Germany, on the contrary, there is little 
 of this struggle ; the seasons are more equable, 
 and the mild, soft air of the valleys tends to 
 make the inhabitants luxurious and sensitive to 
 hardships. It is only in exceptional mountain 
 districts that one is here reminded of the rough, 
 bracing air on the heights of Southern Germany. 
 It is a curious fact that, as the air becomes grad- 
 ually lighter and rarer from the North German 
 coast towards Upper Germany, the average of 
 suicides regularly decreases. ]\Iecklenburg has 
 
aiEHL. 27*7 
 
 the highest number, then Prussia, while the 
 fewest suicides occur in Bavaria and Austria. 
 
 Both the northern and southern regions have 
 still a large extent of waste lands, downs, mo- 
 rasses, and heaths ; and to these are added, in the 
 south, abundance of snow-fields and naked rock ; 
 while in Middle Grermany culture has almost 
 overspread the face of the land, and there are 
 no large tracts of waste. There is the same pro- 
 portion in the distribution of forests. Again, in 
 the north we see a monotonous continuity of 
 wheat-fields, potato-grounds, meadow-lands, and 
 vast heaths ; and there is the same uniformity of 
 culture over large surfaces in the southern table- 
 lands and the Alpine pastures. In Middle Ger- 
 many, on the contrary, there is a perpetual 
 variety of crops within a short space ; the diver- 
 sity of land surface and the corresponding variety 
 in the species of plants are an invitation to the 
 splitting up of estates, and this again encourages 
 to the utmost the motley character of the culti- 
 vation. 
 
 According to this threefold division, it appears 
 that there are certain features common to North 
 and South Germany in which they difi'er from 
 Central Germany, and the nature of this diff"er- 
 ence Riehl indicates by distinguishing the former 
 as Centralised Land and the latter as Individ- 
 
278 NATUKAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 ualised Land — a distinction whick is well sym- 
 bolised by the fact that North and South Ger- 
 many possess the great lines of railway which are 
 the medium for the traffic of the world, while 
 Middle Germany is far richer in lines for local 
 communication, and possesses the greatest length 
 of railway within the smallest space. Disregard- 
 ing superficialities, the East Frieslanders, the 
 Schleswig-Holsteiners, the Mecklenburgers, and 
 the Pomeranians are much more nearly allied to 
 the old Bavarians, the Tyrolese, and the Styrians, 
 than any of these are allied to the Saxons, the 
 Thuringians, or the Ehinelanders. Both in North 
 and South Germany original races are stdl found 
 in large masses, and popular dialects are spoken ; 
 you still find there thoroughly peasant districts, 
 thorough villages, and also, at great intervals, 
 thorough cities ; 3'ou still find there a sense of 
 rank. In IVliddle Germany, on the contrary, the 
 original races are fused together or sprinkled 
 hither and thither ; the peculiarities of the popu- 
 lar dialects are worn down or confused ; there is 
 no very strict line of demarcation between the 
 country and the town population, hundreds of 
 small towns and large villages being hardly dis- 
 tinguishable in their characteristics ; and the 
 sense of rank, as part of the organic structure 
 of society, is almost extinguished. Again, both 
 
KIEHL. 279 
 
 in the north and south there is still a strong 
 ecclesiastical spirit in the people, and the Pome- 
 ranian sees Antichrist in the Pope as clearly as 
 the Tryolese sees him in Doctor Luther ; while in 
 Middle Germany the confessions are mingled — 
 they exist peaceably side by side in very narrow- 
 space, and tolerance or indifference has spread 
 itself widely even in the popular mind. And the 
 analogy, or rather the causal relation, between 
 the physical geography of the three regions and 
 the development of the population goes still 
 further : — 
 
 " For,'' observes Eielil, " the striking connection 
 which has been pointed out between the local geolog- 
 ical formations in Germany and the revolutionary dis- 
 position of the people, has more than a metaphorical 
 significance. Where the primeval physical revolutions 
 of the globe have been the wildest in their effects, and 
 the most multiform strata have been tossed together 
 or thrown one upon the other, it is a very intelligible 
 consequence that on a land surface thus broken up, 
 the population should sooner develop itself into small 
 communities, and that the more intense life generated 
 in these smaller communities should become the most 
 favourable nidus for the reception of modern culture, 
 and with this a susceptibility for its revolutionary 
 ideas ; while a people settled in a region where its 
 groups are spread over a large space will persist much 
 more obstinately in the retention of its original char- 
 acter. The people of Middle Germany have none 
 of that exclusive one-si dedness which determines the 
 
280 NATURAL HISTOEY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 peculiar genius of great national groups, just as this 
 one-sidedness or uniformity is wanting to the geolog- 
 ical and geographical character of their land." 
 
 This ethnograplLical outline EieM fills up with 
 special and typical descriptions, and then makes 
 it the starting-point for a criticism of the actual 
 political condition of Germany. The volume is 
 full of vivid pictures, as well as penetrating 
 glances into the maladies and tendencies of 
 modern society. It would be fascinating as 
 literature, if it were not important for its facts 
 and philosophy. But we can only commend it 
 to our readers, and pass on to the volume en- 
 titled ' Die Blirgerliche Gesellschaft,' from which 
 we have drawn our sketch of the German peas- 
 antry. Here Eiehl gives us a series of studies 
 in that natural history of the people, which he 
 regards as the proper basis of social policy. He 
 holds that, in European society, there are three 
 natural ranks or estates : the hereditary landed 
 aristocracy, the citizens or commercial class, and 
 the peasantry or agricultural class. By natiiral 
 ranks he means ranks which have their roots 
 deep in the historical structure of society, and 
 are still, in the present, showing vitality above 
 ground ; he means those great social groups 
 which are not only distinguished externally by 
 their vocation, but essentially by their mental 
 
RIEHL. 281 
 
 character, their habits, their mode of life, — by 
 the principle they represent in the historical 
 development of society. In his conception of 
 the " Fourth Estate " he differs from the usual 
 interpretation, according to which it is simply 
 equivalent to the Proletariat, or those who are 
 dependent on daily wages, whose only capital is 
 their skill or bodily strength — factory opera- 
 tives, artisans, agricultural labourers, to whom 
 might be added, especially in Germany, the day- 
 labourers with the quill, the literary proletariat. 
 This, Eiehl observes, is a valid basis of econom- 
 ical classification, but not of social classification. 
 In his view, the Fourth Estate is a stratum pro- 
 duced by the perpetual abrasion of the other 
 great social groups ; it is the sign and result of 
 the decomposition which is commencing in the 
 organic constitution of society. Its elements are 
 derived alike from the aristocracy, the bour- 
 geoisie, and the peasantry. It assembles under 
 its banner the deserters of historical society, and 
 forms them into a terrible army, which is only 
 just awaking to the consciousness of its corporate 
 power. The tendency of this Fourth Estate, by 
 the very process of its formation, is to do away 
 with the distinctive historical character of the 
 other estates, and to resolve their peculiar 
 rank and vocation into a uniform social relation 
 
282 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 
 
 founded on an abstract conception of society. 
 According to Riehrs classification, the day- 
 labourers, wbom the political economist desig- 
 nates as the Fourth Estate, belong partly to the 
 peasantry or agricultural class, and partly to the 
 citizens or commercial class. 
 
 Eiehl considers, in the first place, the peas- 
 antry and aristocracy as the " Forces of social 
 persistence," and, in the second, the bourgeoisie 
 and the " fourth estate " as the " Forces of social 
 movement." 
 
 The aristocracy, he observes, is the only one 
 among these four groups which is denied by 
 others besides Socialists to have any natural 
 basis as a separate rank. It is admitted that 
 there was once an aristocracy which had an in- 
 trinsic ground of existence ; but now, it is alleged, 
 this is an historical fossil, an antiquarian relic, 
 venerable because grey with age. In what, it is 
 asked, can consist the peculiar vocation of the 
 aristocracy, since it has no longer the monopoly 
 of the land, of the higher military functions, and 
 of Government offices, and since the service of 
 the Court has no longer any political importance? 
 To this Eiehl replies that in great revolutionary 
 crises, the "men of progress" have more than 
 once " abolished " the aristocracy. But remark- 
 ably enough, the aristocracy has always reap- 
 
EIEHL. 283 
 
 peared. This measure of abolition showed that 
 the nobility were no longer regarded as a real 
 class, for to abolish a real class would be an 
 absurdity. It is quite possible to contemplate 
 a voluntary breaking-up of the peasant or citizen 
 class in the socialistic sense, but no man in his 
 senses would think of straightway " abolishing " 
 citizens and peasants. The aristocracy, then, 
 was regarded as a sort of cancer, or excrescence 
 of society. Nevertheless, not only has it been 
 found impossible to annihilate a hereditary 
 nobility by decree ; but also, the aristocracy of 
 the eighteenth century outlived even the self- 
 destructive acts of its own perversity. A life 
 which was entirely without object, entirely des- 
 titute of functions, would not, says Riehl, be so 
 persistent. He has an acute criticism of those 
 who conduct a polemic against the idea of a 
 hereditary aristocracy while they are proposing 
 an "aristocracy of talent," which after all is 
 based on the principle of inheritance. The 
 Socialists are, therefore, only consistent in de- 
 claring against an aristocracy of talent. "But 
 when they have turned the world into a great 
 Foundling Hospital, they will stHl be unable to 
 eradicate the 'privileges of birth.'" We must 
 not follow him in his criticism, however; nor 
 can we afford to do more than mention hastily 
 
284 NATURAL HISTOEY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 his interestino- sketch of the medigeTal aristoc- 
 racy, and his admonition to the German aristoc- 
 racy of the present day, that the vitality of 
 their class is not to be sustained by romantic 
 attempts to revive medieval forms and senti- 
 ments, but only by the exercise of functions as 
 real and salutary for actual society as those of 
 the mediaeval aristocracy were for the feudal age. 
 "In modern society the divisions of rank indi- 
 cate division of labour, according to that distri- 
 bution of functions in the social organism which 
 the historical constitution of society has deter- 
 mined. In this way the principle of differentia- 
 tion and the principle of unity are identical." 
 
 The elaborate study of the G-erman bourgeoisie 
 which forms the next division of the volume, 
 must be passed over ; but we may pause a mo- 
 ment to note Kiehl's definition of the social 
 PJiiliste)' (Philistine), an epithet for which we 
 have no equivalent — not at all, however, for want 
 of the object it represents. Most people who 
 read a little German, know that the epithet 
 Philisto- originated in the Burschen-Lehen, or 
 student-life of Germany, and that the antithesis 
 of Bursch and Philister was equivalent to the 
 antithesis of " gown " and " town " ; but since 
 the word has passed into ordinary language, it 
 has assumed several shades of significance which 
 
KIEHL. 285 
 
 have not yet been merged in a single absolute 
 meaning; and one of the questions which an 
 English visitor in Germany will probably take 
 an opportunity of asking is, " What is the strict 
 meaning of the woid Philister ?" Eiehl's answer 
 is, that the Philister is one who is indifferent to 
 all social interests, all public life, as distinguished 
 from selfish and private interests ; he has no 
 sympathy with political and social events ex- 
 cept as they affect his own comfort and pros- 
 perity, as they offer him material for amusement 
 or opportunity for gratifying his vanity. He 
 has no social or political creed, but is always of 
 the opinion which is most convenient for the 
 moment. He is always in the majority, and is 
 the main element of unreason and stupidity in 
 the judgment of a " discerning public." It seems 
 presumptuous in us to dispute Eiehl's interpreta- 
 tion of a German word, but we must think that, 
 in literature, the epithet Philister has usually a 
 wider meaning than this — includes his definition 
 and something more. We imagine the Philister 
 is the personification of the spirit which judges 
 everything from a lower point of view than the 
 subject demands — which judges the affairs of the 
 parish from the egotistic or purely personal point 
 of view — which judges the affairs of the nation 
 from the parochial point of view, and does not 
 
286 NATURAL HISTOEY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 hesitate to measure the merits of the universe 
 from the human point of view. At least, this 
 must surely be the spirit to which Goethe alludes 
 in a passage cited by Riehl himself, where he 
 says that the Germans need not be ashamed 
 of erecting; a monument to him as well as to 
 Blucher; for if Blucher had freed them from 
 the French, he (Goethe) had freed them from 
 the nets of the Phdiste)-: — 
 
 " Ihr mogt mil imnier ungescheut 
 Gleicli Eliicliern Denkmal setzen ! 
 Yon Franzosen hat er euch. befreit, 
 Icli ^'on Pliilister-netzen." 
 
 Goethe could hardly claim to be the apostle 
 of public spirit ; but he is eminently the man 
 who helps us to rise to a lofty point of observa- 
 tion, so that we may see things in their relative 
 proportions. 
 
 The most interesting chapters in the descrip- 
 tion of the " Fourth Estate," which concludes 
 the volume, are those on the " Aristocratic Pro- 
 letariat " and the " Intellectual Proletariat." 
 The Fourth Estate in Germany, says Riehl, has 
 its centre of gravity not, as in England and 
 France, in the day-labourers and factory opera- 
 tives, and still less in the degenerate peas- 
 antry. In Germany, the educated proletariat 
 is the leaven that sets the mass in fermentation ; 
 
KIEHL. 287 
 
 the dangerous classes there go about, not in 
 blouses, but in frock-coats ; they begin with the 
 impoverished prince and end in the hungriest 
 litterateur. The custom that all the sons of a 
 nobleman shall inherit their father's title, neces- 
 sarily goes on multiplying that class of aristo- 
 crats who are not only without function but 
 without adequate provision, and who shrink 
 from entering the ranks of the citizens by ad- 
 opting some honest calling. The younger son 
 of a prince, says Eiehl, is usually obliged to 
 remain without any vocation ; and however 
 zealously he may study music, painting, litera- 
 ture, or science, he can never be a regular 
 musician, painter, or man of science ; his pur- 
 suit wiU be called a " passion," not a " calling," 
 and to the end of his days he remains a dilet- 
 tante. " But the ardent pursuit of a fixed 
 practical calling can alone satisfy the active 
 man." Direct legislation cannot remedy this 
 evil. The inheritance of titles by younger sons 
 is the universal custom, and custom is stronger 
 than law. But if all Government preference for 
 the " aristocratic proletariat " were withdrawn, 
 the sensible men among them would prefer 
 emigration, or the pursuit of some profession, to 
 the hungry distinction of a title without rents. 
 The intellectual proletaires Eiehl calls the 
 
288 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 
 
 " cliiircli militant " of the Fourtli Estate in 
 Germany. In no other country are they so 
 numerous ; in no other country is the trade in 
 material and industrial capital so far exceeded 
 by the wholesale and retail trade, the traffic 
 and the usur}^, in the intellectual capital of 
 the nation. Germany yields more intellectual 
 produce than it can use and pay for. 
 
 " This over-production, which is not transient but 
 permanent, nay, is constantly on the increase, evidences 
 a diseased state of the national industry, a perverted 
 application of industrial powers, and is a far more 
 pungent satire on the national condition than all the 
 poverty of operatives and peasants. . . . Other nations 
 need not envy us the preponderance of the intellectual 
 proletariat over the proletaires of manual labour. For 
 man more easily becomes diseased from over-study 
 than from the labour of the hands ; and it is precisely 
 in the intellectual proletariat that there are the most 
 dangerous seeds of disease. This is the group in which 
 the opposition between earnings and wants, between 
 the ideal social position and the real, is the most 
 hopelessly irreconcilable."' 
 
 We must un-nillingiy leave our readers to 
 make acquaintance for themselves with the 
 graphic details -with which Riehl follows up 
 this general statement ; but before quitting 
 these admirable volumes, let us say, lest our 
 inevitable omissions should have left room for 
 a different conclusion, that Eiehl's conservatism 
 
KIEHL. 289 
 
 is not in the least tinged with the partisanship 
 of a class, with a poetic fanaticism for the past, 
 or with the prejudice of a mind incapable of 
 discerning the grander evolution of things to 
 which all social forms are but temporarily sub- 
 servient. It is the conservatism of a clear-eyed, 
 practical, but withal large-minded man — a little 
 caustic, perhaps, now and then in his epigrams 
 on democratic doctrinaires who have their nos- 
 trum for all political and social diseases, and on 
 communistic theories which he regards as " the 
 despair of the individual in his own manhood, 
 reduced to a system," but nevertheless able and 
 willing to do justice to the elements of fact and 
 reason in every shade of opinion and every form 
 of effort. He is as far as possible from the folly 
 of supposing that the surL will go backward on 
 the dial, because we put the hands of our clock 
 backward ; he only contends against the oppo- 
 site folly of decreeing that it shall be mid-day, 
 while in fact the sun is only just touching the 
 mountain-tops, and all along the valley men are 
 stumbling in the twilight. 
 
290 
 
 THEEE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 
 
 It was between three and four o'clock, on a fine 
 morning in August, that, after a ten hours' jour- 
 ney from Frankfort, I awoke at the Weimar 
 station. No tipsiness can be more dead to all 
 appeals than that which comes from fitful 
 draughts of sleep on a railway journey by night. 
 To the disgust of your wakeful companions, you 
 are totally insensible to the existence of your 
 umbrella, and to the fact that your carpet-bag 
 is stowed under your seat, or that you have 
 borrowed books and tucked them behind the 
 cushion. " What's the odds, so long as one can 
 sleep ? " is your philosophic formula, and it is 
 not until you have begun to shiver on the plat- 
 form in the early morning air that you become 
 alive to property and its duties — i.e., to the 
 necessit}^ of keeping a fast grip upon it. Such 
 was my condition when I reached the station at 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 291 
 
 Weimar. The ride to the town thoroughly- 
 roused me, all the more because the glimpses I 
 caught from the carriage-window were in start- 
 ling contrast with my preconceptions. The lines 
 of houses looked rough and straggling, and were 
 often interrupted by trees peeping out from the 
 gardens behind. At last we stopped before the 
 Erbprinz, an inn of long standing in the heart of 
 the town, and were ushered along heavy-looking 
 in-and-out corridors, such as are found only in 
 German inns, into rooms which overlooked a 
 garden just like one you may see at the back of 
 a farmhouse in many an English village. 
 
 A walk in the morning in search of lodgings 
 confirmed the impression that Weimar was more 
 like a market-town than the precinct of a Court. 
 " And this is the Athens of the North ! " we 
 said. Materially speaking, it is more like Sparta. 
 The blending of rustic and civic life, the indica- 
 tions of a central government in the midst of 
 very primitive-looking objects, has some distant 
 analogy with the condition of old Lacedsemon. 
 The shops are most of them such as you would 
 see in the back streets of an English provincial 
 town, and the commodities on sale are often 
 chalked on the doorposts. A loud rumbling of 
 vehicles may indeed be heard now and then ; 
 but the rumbling is loud, not because the vehicles 
 
292 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAK. 
 
 are many, but because tbe springs are few. The 
 inhabitants seemed to us to have more than the 
 usual heaviness of Germanity ; even their stare 
 was slow, like that of herbivorous quadrupeds. 
 We set out with the intention of exploring the 
 to^mi, and at every other turn we came into a 
 street which took us out of the town, or else into 
 one that led us back to the market from which 
 we set out. One's first feeling was, How could 
 Goethe live here in this dull, lifeless village ? 
 The reproaches cast on him for his worldhness 
 and attachment to Court splendour seemed ludic- 
 rous enough, and it was inconceivable that the 
 stately Jupiter, in a frock-coat, so familiar to us 
 all through Eauch's statuette, could have habit- 
 ually walked along these rude streets and among 
 these slouching mortals. Not a picturesque bit 
 of building was to be seen ; there was no quaint- 
 ness, nothing to remind one of historical associ- 
 ations, nothing but the most arid prosaism. 
 
 This was the impression produced by a first 
 morning's walk in Weimar — an impression which 
 very imperfectly represents what Weimar is, but 
 which is worth recording, because it is true as a 
 sort of back view. Our ideas were considerably 
 modified when, in the evening, we found our way 
 to the Belvedere chaussee, a splendid avenue of 
 chestnut-trees, two miles in length, reaching from 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 293 
 
 the town to the summer residence of Belvedere ; 
 when we saw the Schloss, and discovered the 
 labyrinthine beauties of the park ; indeed every 
 day opened to us fresh charms in this quiet little 
 valley and its environs. To any one who loves 
 Nature in her gentle aspects, who delights in 
 the chequered shade on a summer morning, and 
 in a walk on the corn-clad upland at sunset, 
 within sight of a little town nestled among the 
 trees below, I say — come to Weimar. And if 
 you are weary of English unrest, of that society 
 of " eels in a jar," where each is trying to get his 
 head above the other, the somewhat stupid well- 
 being of the Weimarians will not be an unwel- 
 come contrast, for a short time at least. If you 
 care nothing about Goethe and Schiller and Her- 
 der and Wieland, why, so much the worse for 
 you — you will miss many interesting thoughts 
 and associations ; still, Weimar has a charm in- 
 dependent of these great names. 
 
 First among all its attractions is the Park, 
 which would be remarkably beautiful even among 
 English parks, and it has one advantage over all 
 these — namely, that it is without a fence. It 
 runs up to the houses, and far out into the corn- 
 jfields and meadows, as if it had a " sweet will " 
 of its own, like a river or a lake, and had 
 not been planned and planted by human will. 
 
294 THREE MOKTHS IN WEIMAE. 
 
 Througli it flows the Ilm, — not a clear stream, it 
 must be confessed, but, like all water, as Novalis 
 says, " an eye to tbe landscape." Before we came 
 to Weimar we bad bad dreams of boating on the 
 Ilm, and we were not a little amused at the dif- 
 ference between this -^dsion of our own and the 
 reabty. A few water-fowl are the only navi- 
 gators of the river, and even they seem to confine 
 themselves to one spot, as if they were there 
 purely in the interest of the picturesque. The real 
 extent of the park is small, but the walks are so 
 ingeniously arranged, and the trees are so luxu- 
 riant and various, that it takes weeks to learn 
 the turnings and windings by heart, so as no 
 longer to have the sense of novelty. In the 
 warm weather our great delight was the walk 
 which follows the course of the Hm, and is over- 
 arched by tall trees with patches of dark moss on 
 their trunks, in rich contrast ^ith the trans- 
 parent green of the debcate leaves, through 
 which the golden sunbght played, and chequered 
 the walk before us. On one side of this walk the 
 rocky ground rises to the height of twenty feet 
 or more, and is clothed with mosses and rock- 
 plants. On the other side there are, every now 
 and then, openiags, — breaks in the continuity of 
 shade, which show you a piece of meadow-land, 
 with fine groups of trees ; and at every such 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 295 
 
 opening a seat is placed under the rock, where 
 yon may sit and chat away the sunny hoiirs, or 
 listen to those delicate sounds which one might 
 fancy came from tiny bells worn on the garment 
 of Silence to make us aware of her invisible pres- 
 ence. It is along this walk that you come upon 
 a truncated column, with a serpent twined round 
 it, devouring cakes, placed on the column as 
 offerings, — a bit of rude sculpture in stone. The 
 inscription — Genio loci — enlightens the learned 
 as to the significance of this symbol, but the 
 people of Weimar, unedified by classical allusions, 
 have explained the sculpture by a story which is 
 an excellent example of a modern myth. Once 
 on a time, say they, a huge serpent infested the 
 park, and evaded all attempts to exterminate 
 him, until at last a cunning baker made some 
 appetising cakes which contained an effectual 
 poison, and placed them in the serpent's reach, 
 thus meriting a place with Hercules, Theseus, 
 and other monster-slayers. Weimar, in grati- 
 tude, erected this column as a memorial of the 
 baker's feat and its own deliverance. A little 
 farther on is the Borkenhaus, where Carl August 
 used to play the hermit for days together, and 
 from which he used to telegraph to Goethe in his 
 Gartenhaus. Sometimes we took our shady walk 
 in the Stern, the oldest part of the park planta- 
 
296 THREE MOl^THS IN WEIMAE. 
 
 tions, on the opposite side of tlie river, lingering 
 on our way to watch, the crystal brook which 
 hurries on, like a foolish young maiden, to wed 
 itself with the muddy Ilm. The Stern (Star), a 
 large circular opening amongst the trees, with 
 walks radiating from it, has been thought of as 
 the place for the projected statues of Goethe and 
 SchUler. In Eauch's model for these statues the 
 poets are draped in togas, Goethe, who was con- 
 siderably the shorter of the two, resting his hand 
 on Schiller's shoulder ; but it has been wisely 
 determined to represent them in their "habit 
 as they lived"; so Eauch's design is rejected. 
 Against classical idealising in portrait sculpture, 
 Weimar has already a sufficient warning in the 
 colossal statue of Goethe, executed after Bettina's 
 design, which the readers of the ' Correspondence 
 with a Child ' may see engraved as a frontispiece 
 to the second volume. This statue is locked up 
 in an odd structure, standing in the park, and 
 looking like a compromise between a church and 
 a summer-house (Weimar does not shine in its 
 buildings !) How little real knowledge of Goethe 
 must the mind have that could wish to see him 
 represented as a naked Apollo, with a Psyche at 
 his knee ! The execution is as feeble as the 
 sentiment is false ; the Apollo-Goethe is a cari- 
 cature, and the Psyche is simply vulgar. The 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 297 
 
 statue was executed under Bettina's encourage- 
 ment, in the hope that it would be bought by 
 the King of Prussia ; but a breach having taken 
 place between her and her Eoyal friend, a pur- 
 chaser was sought in the Grand Duke of Weimar, 
 who, after transporting it at enormous expense 
 from Italy, wisely shut it up where it is seen 
 only by the curious. 
 
 As autumn advanced and the sunshine became 
 precious, we preferred the broad walk on the 
 higher grounds of the park, where the masses of 
 trees are finely disposed, leaving wide spaces of 
 meadow which extend on one side to the Bel- 
 vedere allde with its avenue of chestnut-trees, 
 and on the other to the little cliffs which I have 
 already described as forming a wall by the walk 
 along the Ilm. Exquisitely beau.tiful were the 
 graceful forms of the plane - trees, thrown in 
 golden relief on a background of dark pines. 
 Here we used to turn and turn again in the 
 autumn afternoons, — at first bright and warm, 
 then sombre with low-lying purple clouds, and 
 chill with winds that sent the leaves raining from 
 the branches. The eye here welcomes, as a con- 
 trast, the white fa9ade of a building looking like 
 a small Greek temple, placed on the edge of the 
 cliff, and you at once conclude it to be a bit of 
 pure ornament, — a device to set off the land- 
 
2 98 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 
 
 scape ; but you presently see a porter seated near 
 the door of tlie basement storey, beguiling the 
 ennui of his sinecure by a book and a pipe, and 
 you learn mth surprise that this is another re- 
 treat for ducal dignity to unbend and philoso- 
 phise in. Singularly ill-adapted to such a pur- 
 pose it seems to beings not ducal. On the other 
 side of the Ilm the park is bordered by the road 
 leading to the little village of Ober Weimar, — 
 another sunny walk which has the special attrac- 
 tion of taking one by Goethe's Gartenhaus, his 
 first residence at Weimar. Inside, this Garten- 
 haus is a homely sort of cottage, such as many 
 an English nobleman's gardener lives in ; no fur- 
 niture is left in it, and the family wish to sell it. 
 Outside, its aspect became to us like that of a 
 dear friend, whose irregidar features and rusty 
 clothes have a peculiar charm. It stands, with 
 its bit of garden and orchard, on a pleasant slope, 
 fronting the west ; before it the park stretches 
 one of its meadowy openings to the trees which 
 fringe the Ilm, and between this meadow and 
 the garden hedge lies the said road to Ober 
 Weimar. A grove of weeping birches sometimes 
 tempted us to turn out of this road up to the 
 fields at the top of the slope, on which not only 
 the Gartenhaus but several other modest villas 
 are placed. From this little height one sees to 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 299 
 
 advantage the plantations of the park in their 
 autumnal colouring ; the town, with its steep- 
 roofed church, and castle clock-tower, painted a 
 gay green ; the bushy line of the Belvedere 
 chaussde, and Belvedere itself peeping on an 
 eminence from its nest of trees. Here, too, was 
 the place for seeing a lovely sunset, — such a 
 sunset as September sometimes gives us, — when 
 the western horizon is like a rippled sea of gold, 
 sending over the whole hemisphere golden va- 
 pours, which, as they near the east, are subdued 
 to a deep rose-colour. 
 
 The Schloss is rather a stately, ducal-looking 
 building, forming three sides of a quadrangle. 
 Strangers are admitted to see a suite of rooms 
 called the Dichter-Zimmer (Poets' Eooms), dedi- 
 cated to Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland. The 
 idea of these rooms is really a pretty one : in 
 each of them there is a bust of the poet who is 
 its presiding genius, and the walls of the Schiller 
 and Goethe rooms are covered with frescoes rep- 
 resenting scenes from their works. The Wieland 
 room is much smaller than the other two, and 
 serves as an antechamber to them; it is also 
 decorated more sparingly, but the arabesques on 
 the walls are very tastefully designed, and satisfy 
 one better than the ambitious compositions from 
 Goethe and Schiller. 
 
300 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 
 
 A more interesting place to visitors is the 
 library, which occupies a large building not far 
 from the Schloss. The principal Saal, surround- 
 ed by a broad gallery, is ornamented with some 
 very excellent busts and some very bad portraits. 
 Of the busts, the most remarkable is that of 
 Gluck, by Houdon — a striking specimen of the 
 real in art. The sculptor has given every scar 
 made by the smallpox ; he has left the nose as 
 pug and insignificant, and the mouth as common, 
 as Nature made them ; but then he has done 
 what, doubtless. Nature also did — he has spread 
 over those coarsely cut features the irradiation of 
 genius. A specimen of the opposite style in art 
 is Trippel's bust of Goethe as the young Apollo, 
 also fine in its way. It was taken when Goethe 
 was in Italy ; and in the ' Italianische Eeise,' men- 
 tioning the progress of the bust, he says that he 
 sees little likeness to himself, but is not discon- 
 tented that he should o-q forth to the world as 
 such a good-looking fellow — hiihscher Biirsch. 
 This bust, however, is a frank idealisation ; when 
 an artist tells us that the ideal of a Greek god 
 divides his attention with his immediate subject, 
 we are warned. But one gets rather irritated 
 with idealisation in portrait when, as in Dan- 
 necker's bust of Schiller, one has been misled 
 into supposing that Schiller's brow was square 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 301 
 
 and massive, while, in fact, it was receding. We 
 say this partly on the evidence of his skull, a 
 cast of which is kept in the library, so that we 
 could place it in juxtaposition with the bust. 
 The story of this skull is curious. When it was 
 determined to disinter Schiller's remains, that 
 they might repose in company with those of Carl 
 August and Goethe, the question of identification 
 was found to be a difiicult one, for his bones were 
 mingled with those of ten insignificant fellow- 
 mortals. When, however, the eleven skuUs were 
 placed in juxtaposition, a large number of per- 
 sons who had known Schiller, separately and 
 successively fixed upon the same skull as his, 
 and their evidence was clenched by the discovery 
 that the teeth of this skull corresponded to the 
 statement of Schiller's servant, that his master 
 had lost no teeth, except one, which he specified. 
 Accordingly it was decided that this was Schil- 
 ler's skull, and the comparative anatomist, Loder, 
 was sent for from Jena to select the bones which 
 completed the skeleton.^ The evidence certainly 
 leaves room for a doubt ; but the receding fore- 
 head of the skull agrees with the testimony of 
 persons who knew Schiller, that he had, as Ranch 
 
 ^ I tell this story from my recollection of Stahr's account in 
 his ' Weimar und Jena,' an account which was confirmed to me by 
 residents in Weimar ; but as I have not the book by me, I cannot 
 test the accuracy of my memory. 
 
302 THEEE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 
 
 said to us, a "miserable forehead"; it agrees, 
 also, with, a beautiful miniature of Schiller, taken 
 when he was about twenty. This miniature is 
 deeply interesting ; it shows us a youth whose 
 clearly cut features, with the mingled fire and 
 melancholy of their expression, could hardly have 
 been passed with indifference ; it has the langer 
 Gdnselials (long goose-neck) which he gives to 
 his Karl Moor ; but instead of the black, spark- 
 Hng eyes, and the gloomy, overhanging, bushy 
 eyebrows he chose for his robber hero, it has the 
 fine wavy, auburn locks, and the light-blue eyes 
 which belong to our idea of pure German race. 
 We may be satisfied that we know at least the 
 form of Schiller's features, for in this particular his 
 busts and portraits are in striking accordance ; un- 
 like the busts and portraits of Goethe, which are 
 a proof, if any were wanted, how inevitably sub- 
 jective art is, even when it professes to be purely 
 imitative — how the most active perception gives 
 us rather a reflex of what we think and feel, than 
 the real sum of objects before us. The Goethe of 
 Eauch or of Schwanthaler is widely different ia 
 form, as well as expression, from the Goethe of 
 Stieler ; and Winterberger, the actor, who knew 
 Goethe intimately, told us that to him not one of 
 all the likenesses, sculptured or painted, seemed 
 to have more than a faint resemblance to their 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 303 
 
 original. There is, indeed, one likeness, taken in 
 his old age, and preserved in the library, which 
 is startling from the conviction it produces of 
 close resemblance, and Winterberger admitted it 
 to be the best he had seen. It is a tiny minia- 
 ture painted on a small cup, of Dresden china, 
 and is so wonderfully executed, that a magnify- 
 ing-glass exhibits the perfection of its texture as 
 if it were a flower or a butterfly's wing. It is 
 more like Stieler's portrait than any other ; the 
 massive neck, unbent though withered, rises out 
 of his dressing-gown, and supports majestically a 
 head, from which one might imagine (though, 
 alas ! it never is so in reality) that the discipline 
 of seventy years had purged away all meaner 
 elements than those of the sage and the poet— a 
 head which might serve as a type of sublime old 
 age. Amongst the collection of toys and trash, 
 melancholy records of the late Grand Duke's 
 eccentricity, which occupy the upper rooms of 
 the library, there are some precious relics hang- 
 ing together in a glass case, which almost betray 
 one into sympathy with "holy coat" worship. 
 They are — Luther's gown, the coat in which Gus- 
 tavus Adolphus was shot, and Goethe's Court coat 
 and Schlafrock. What a rush of thoughts from 
 the mingled memories of the passionate reformer, 
 the heroic warrior, and the wise singer ! 
 
304 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 
 
 The only one of its great men to whom Wei- 
 mar has at present erected a statue in the open 
 air is Herder. His statue, erected in 1850, 
 stands in what is called the Herder Platz, with 
 its back to the church in which he preached ; in 
 the right hand is a roll bearing his favourite 
 motto — Liclit, Liebe, Lehen (Light, Love, Life), 
 and on the pedestal is the inscription — Von 
 Deutschen aller Lander (from Germans of all 
 lands). This statue, which is by Schaller of 
 Munich, is very much admired ; but, remember- 
 ing the immortal description in the 'Dichtung 
 und Wahrheit,' of Herder's appearance when 
 Goethe saw him for the first time at Strasburg, 
 I was disappointed with the parsonic appearance 
 of the statue, as well as of the bust in the library. 
 The part of the town which imprints itself on 
 the memory, next to the Herder Platz, is the 
 Markt, a cheerful square, made smart by a new 
 Pi,ath-haus. Twice a-week it is crowded with 
 stalls and country people ; and it is the very 
 pretty custom for the band to play in the balcony 
 of the Eath-haus about twenty minutes every 
 market-day to delight the ears of the peasantry. 
 A head-dress worn by many of the old women, 
 and here and there by a young one, is, I think, 
 peculiar to Thuringia. Let the fair reader im- 
 agine half-a-dozen of her broadest French sashes 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 305 
 
 dyed black, and attached as streamers to tte 
 back of a stiff black skull-cap, ornamented in 
 front with a large bow, which stands out like a 
 pair of donkey's ears; let her further imagine, 
 mingled with the streamers of ribbon, equally 
 broad pendants of a thick woollen texture, some- 
 thing like the fringe of an urn-rug, — and she will 
 have an idea of the head-dress in which I have 
 seen a Thuringian damsel figure on a hot sum- 
 mer's day. Two houses in the Markt are pointed 
 out as those from which Tetzel published his 
 indulgences and Luther thundered against them ; 
 but it is difficult to one's imagination to conjure 
 up scenes of theological controversy in Weimar, 
 where, from princes down to pastry-cooks, ration- 
 alism is taken as a matter of course. 
 
 Passing along the Schiller - strasse, a broad 
 pleasant street, one is thrilled by the inscription, 
 Hier ivohnte Schiller, over the door of a small 
 house with casts in its bow-window. Mount up 
 to the second storey and you will see Schiller's 
 study very nearly as it was when he worked in 
 it. It is a cheerful room with three windows, 
 two towards the street and one looking on a 
 little garden which divides his house from the 
 neighbouring one. The writing-table, which he 
 notes as an important purchase in one of his 
 letters to Korner, and in one of the drawers of 
 
 u 
 
306 THREE MONTHS IN "WEIMAR. 
 
 which he used to keep rotten apples for the sake 
 of their scent, stands near the last-named window, 
 so that its light would fall on his left hand. On 
 another side of the room is his piano, with his 
 guitar lying upon it ; and above these hangs an 
 ugly print of an Italian scene, which has a com- 
 panion equally ugly on another wall. Strange 
 feelings it awakened in me to run my fingers 
 over the keys of the little piano and call forth 
 its tones, now so queer and feeble, like those of 
 an invahded old woman whose voice could once 
 make a heart beat with fond passion or soothe its 
 angry pulses into calm. The bedstead on which 
 Schiller died has been removed into the study, 
 from the small bedroom behind, which is now 
 empty. A little table is placed close to the head 
 of the bed, with his drinking-glass upon it, and 
 on the wall above the bedstead there is a beauti- 
 ful sketch of him lying dead. He used to occupy 
 the whole of the second floor. It contains, be- 
 sides the study and bedroom, an ante-chamber, 
 now furnished with casts and prints on sale, in 
 order to remunerate the custodiers of the house, 
 and a salon tricked out, since his death, with a 
 symbolical cornice, statues, and a carpet worked 
 by the ladies of Weimar. 
 
 Goethe's house is much more important -look- 
 ing, but, to English eyes, far from being the 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 307 
 
 palatial residence whicli might be expected, from 
 tlie descriptions of German writers. The entrance- 
 hall is indeed rather imposing, with its statues in 
 niches, and its broad staircase, but the rest of 
 the house is not proportionately spacious and 
 elegant. The only part of the house open to the 
 public — and this only on a Friday — is the prin- 
 cipal suite of rooms which contain his collection 
 of casts, pictures, cameos, &c. This collection is 
 utterly insignificant, except as having belonged 
 to him ; ;and one turns away from bad pictures 
 and familiar casts, to linger over the manuscript 
 of the wonderful ' Romische Elegien,' written by 
 himself in the Italian character. It is to be 
 regretted that a large sum ojffered for this house 
 by the German Diet, was refused by the Goethe 
 family, in the hope, it is said, of obtaining a still 
 larger sum from that mythical English Croesus 
 always ready to turn fabulous sums into dead 
 capital, who haunts the imagination of Conti- 
 nental people. One of the most fitting tributes 
 a nation can pay to its great dead, is to make 
 their habitation, like their works, a public posses- 
 sion, a shrine where aff"ectionate reverence may 
 be more vividly reminded that the being who 
 has bequeathed to us immortal thoughts or im- 
 mortal deeds, had to endure the daily struggle 
 with the petty details, perhaps with the sordid 
 
308 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 
 
 cares of this working-day world ; and it is a sad 
 pity that Goethe's study, bedroom, and library, 
 so fitted to call up that kind of sympathy, 
 because they are preserved just as he left them, 
 should be shut out from all but the specially 
 privileged. AVe were happy enough to be 
 amongst these, — to look through the mist of 
 rising tears at the duU study with its two small 
 windows, and without a single object chosen for 
 the sake of luxury or beauty ; at the dark little 
 bedroom with the bed on which he died, and the 
 arm-chair where he took his morning coffee as 
 he read ; at the library with its common deal 
 shelves, and books containing his own paper 
 marks. In the presence of this hardy simpHcity, 
 the contrast suggests itself of the study at Ab- 
 botsford, with its elegant Gothic fittings, its deli- 
 cious easy-chair, and its oratory of painted glass. 
 We were very much amused at the privacy 
 with which people keep their shops at Weimar. 
 Some of them have not so much as their names 
 written up ; and there is so much indifference 
 of manner towards customers, that one might 
 suppose every shopkeeper was a salaried function- 
 ary employed by Government. The distribution 
 of commodities, too, is carried on according to a 
 pecuhar Weimarian logic : we bought our lemons 
 at a ropemaker's, and should not have felt our- 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 309 
 
 selves very unreasonable if we had asked for 
 shoes at a stationer's. As to competition, I 
 should think a clever tradesman or artificer is 
 almost as free from it at Weimar as ^sculapius 
 or Vulcan in the days of old Olympus. Here 
 is an illustration. Our landlady's husband was 
 called the " siisser Eabenhorst," by way of distin- 
 guishing" him from a brother of his who was the 
 reverse of sweet. This Eabenhorst, who was not 
 sweet, but who nevertheless dealt in sweets, for 
 he was a confectioner, was so utter a rogue that 
 any transaction with him was avoided almost as 
 much as if he had been the Evil One himself, yet 
 so clever a rogue that he always managed to keep 
 on the windy side of the law. Nevertheless, he 
 had so many dainties in the confectionery line — 
 so viel Silssigkeiten und Leckerbissen — that people 
 bent on giving a fine entertainment were at last 
 constrained to say, " After all, I must go to 
 Eabenhorst ; " and so he got abundant custom, 
 in spite of general detestation. 
 
 A very fair dinner is to be had at several tables 
 d'hdte in Weimar for ten or twelve groschen (a 
 shilling or fifteenpence). The Germans certainly 
 excel us in their Mehlspeise, or farinaceous pud- 
 dings, and in their mode of cooking vegetables ; 
 they are bolder and more imaginative in their 
 combination of sauces, fruits and vegetables with 
 
310 THEEE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 
 
 animal food, and they are faithful to at least one 
 principle of dietetics — variety. The only thing 
 at table we have any pretext for being super- 
 cilious about is the quality and dressing of ani- 
 mal food. The meat at a table d'hote in Thurin- 
 gia, and even Berlin, except in the very first 
 hotels, bears about the same relation to ours as 
 horse-flesh probably bears to German beef and 
 mutton ; and an Englishman with a bandage 
 over his eyes would often be sorely puzzled to 
 guess the kind of flesh he was eating. For ex- 
 ample, the only flavour we could ever discern in 
 hare, which is a very frequent dish, was that of 
 the more or less disagreeable fat which predom- 
 inated in the dressing ; and roast-meat seems to 
 be considered an extravagance rarely admissible. 
 A melancholy sight is a flock of Weimarian sheep, 
 followed or led by their shepherd. They are as 
 dingy as London sheep, and far more skinny; 
 indeed an Englishman who dined with us said 
 the sight of the sheep had set him against mut- 
 ton. Still, the variet}^ of dishes jow. get for ten 
 groschen is something marvellous to those who 
 have been accustomed to English charges, and 
 amona; the six courses it is not a great evil to 
 find a dish or two the reverse of appetising. I 
 suppose, however, that the living at tables d'hote 
 gives one no correct idea of the mode in which 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 3 1 1 
 
 the people live at home. The basis of the 
 national food seems to be raw ham and sausage, 
 ■with a copious superstratum oi Blaukraut, Sauer- 
 kraut, and black bread. Sausage seems to be to 
 the German what potatoes were to the Irish — 
 the sine quel non of bodily sustenance. Goethe 
 asks the Frau von Stein to send him so eine Wwst 
 when he wants to have a make-shift dinner away 
 from home ; and in his letters to Kestner he is 
 enthusiastic about the delights of dining on 
 Blaukraut and Leberwurst (blue cabbage and 
 liver sausage). If Kraut and Wurst may be 
 called the solid prose of Thuringian diet, fish 
 and Kuchen (generally a heavy kind of fruit 
 tart) are the poetry : the German appetite dis- 
 ports itself with these as the English ajopetite 
 does with ices and whipped creams. 
 
 At the beginning of August, when we arrived 
 in Weimar, almost every one was away — " at the 
 Baths," of course — except the tradespeople. As 
 birds nidify in the spring, so Germans wash 
 themselves in the summer ; their Wcischimgstrieb 
 acts strongly only at a particular time of the year , 
 during all the rest, apparently, a decanter and 
 a sugar-basin or pie-dish are an ample toilette- 
 service for them. We were quite contented, 
 however, that it was not yet the Weimar "season," 
 fashionably speaking, since it was the very best 
 
312 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 
 
 time for enjoying something far better than Wei- 
 mar gaieties — the lovely park and en^drons. It 
 was pleasant, too, to see the good bovine citizens 
 enjoying life in their quiet fashion. Unlike our 
 English people, they take pleasure into their cal- 
 culations, and seem regularly to set aside part 
 of their time for recreation. It is understood 
 that somethina; is to be done in life besides busi- 
 ness and housewifery : the women take then- 
 children and their knitting to the ErJioUing, or 
 walk with their husbands to Belvedere, or in 
 some other direction where a cup of coffee is to 
 be had. The Erholvng, by the way, is a pretty 
 garden, with shady walks, abundant seats, an 
 orchestra, a ball-room, and a place for refresh- 
 ments. The higher classes are subscribers and 
 visitors here as well as the bourgeoisie ; but there 
 are several resorts of a similar kind frequented 
 by the latter exclusively. The reader of Goethe 
 wiU remember his little .poem, " Die Lustigen von 
 Weimar," which still indicates the round of amuse- 
 ments in this simple capital : the walk to Belve- 
 dere or Tiefurt ; the excursion to Jena, or some 
 other trip, not made expensive by distance ; the 
 round game at cards ; the dance ; the theatre ; 
 and so many other enjoyments to be had by a 
 people not bound to give dinner-parties and 
 " keep up a position." 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 313 
 
 It is charming to see how real an amuse- 
 ment the theatre is to the Weimar people. 
 The greater number of places are occupied by 
 subscribers, and there is no fuss about toilette 
 or escort. The ladies come alone, and slip quietly 
 into their places without need of "protection" 
 — a proof of civilisation perhaps more than equiv- 
 alent to our pre-eminence in patent locks and 
 carriage springs — and after the performance is 
 over, you may see the same ladies following their 
 servants, with lanterns, through streets innocent 
 of gas, in which an oil -lamp, suspended from a 
 rope slung across from house to house, occasion- 
 ally reveals to you the shafts of a cart or omni- 
 bus, conveniently placed for you to run upon 
 them. 
 
 A yearly autumn festival at Weimar is the 
 Vogelschiessen, or Bird-shooting ; but the reader 
 must not let his imagination wander at this word 
 into fields and brakes. The bird here concerned 
 is of wood, and the shooters, instead of wander- 
 ing over breez}'' down and common, are shut up, 
 day after day, in a room clouded with tobacco- 
 smoke, that they may take their turn at shoot- 
 ing with the rifle from the window of a closet 
 about the size of a sentinel's box. However, 
 this is a mighty enjoyment to the Thuringian 
 yeomanry, and an occasion of profit to our friend 
 
314 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 
 
 Punch, and other itinerant performers ; for whUe 
 the Vogelschiessen lasts, a sort of fair is held in 
 the field where the marksmen assemble. 
 
 Among the quieter everyday pleasures of the 
 Weimarians, perhaps the most delightful is the 
 stroll on a bright afternoon or evening to the 
 Duke's summer residence of Belvedere, about 
 two miles from Weimar. As I have said, a glo- 
 rious avenue of chestnut-trees leads all the way 
 from the town to the entrance of the grounds, 
 which are open to all the world as much as 
 to the Duke himself. Close to the palace 
 and its subsidiary buildings there is an inn, for 
 the accommodation of the good people who 
 come to take dinner or any other meal here, 
 by way of holiday-making. A sort of pavilion 
 stands on a spot commanding a lovely view of 
 AYeimar and its valley, and here the Weimarians 
 constantly come on summer and autumn even- 
 ings to smoke a cigar, or drink a cup of coffee. 
 In one wing of the little palace, which is made 
 smart by wooden cupolas, with gilt pinnacles, 
 there is a saloon, which I recommend to the 
 imitation of tasteful people in their country 
 houses. It has no decoration but that of natural 
 foliage : ivy is trained at regular intervals up 
 the pure white walls, and aU round the edge of 
 the ceiHng, so as to form pUasters and a cornice ; 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 315 
 
 ivy again, trained on trellis-work, forms a blind 
 to the window, wMcli looks towards tte entrance- 
 court ; and beautiful ferns, arranged in tall bas- 
 kets, are placed here and there against the walls. 
 The furniture is of light cane-work. Another 
 pretty thing here is the Natur-Theater — a theatre 
 constructed with living trees, trimmed into walls 
 and side scenes. We pleased ourselves for a 
 little while with thinking that this was one of 
 the places where Goethe acted in his own dramas, 
 biit we afterwards learned that it was not made 
 until his acting days were over. The inexhaust- 
 ible charm of Belvedere, however, is the grounds, 
 which are laid out with a taste worthy of a first- 
 rate landscape-gardener. The tall and graceful 
 limes, plane-trees, and weeping birches, the little 
 basins of water here and there, with fountains 
 playing in the middle of them, and with a fringe 
 of broad-leaved plants, or other tasteful border- 
 ing round them, the gradual descent towards the 
 river, and the hill clothed with firs and pines on 
 the opposite side, forming a fine dark background 
 for the various and light foliage of the trees that 
 ornament the gardens — all this we went again 
 and again to enjoy, from the time when every- 
 thing was of a vivid green until the Virginian 
 creepers which festooned the silver stems of the 
 birches were bright scarlet, and the touch of 
 
316 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 
 
 autumn had turned all the green to gold. One 
 of the spots to linger in is at a semicircular seat 
 against an artificial rock, on which are placed 
 large glass globes of different colours. It is 
 wonderful to see with what minute perfection 
 the scenery around is painted in these globes. 
 Each is like a pre-Eaphaelite picture, with every 
 little detail of gravelly walk, mossy bank, and 
 delicately leaved, interlacing boughs, presented 
 in accurate miniature. 
 
 In the opposite direction to Belvedere lies 
 Tiefurt, with its small park and tiny chateau, 
 formerly the residence of the Duchess Amalia, 
 the mother of Carl August, and the friend and 
 patroness of Wieland, but now apparently serv- 
 ing as little else than a receptacle for the late 
 Duke Carl Friederich's rather childish collections. 
 In the second storey there is a suite of rooms, so 
 small that the largest of them does not take up 
 as much space as a good dining-table, and each 
 of these doll-house rooms is crowded with prints, 
 old china, and aU sorts of knick-knacks and 
 rococo wares. The park is a little paradise. 
 The Ilm is seen here to the best advantage : 
 it is clearer than at Weimar, and winds about 
 gracefully between the banks, on one side steep, 
 and curtained with turf and shrubs, or fine trees. 
 It was here, at a point where the bank forms a 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 317 
 
 promontory into the river, that Goethe and his 
 Court friends got up the performance of an oper- 
 etta, "Die Fischerin," by torchlight. On the 
 way to Tiefurt lies the Webicht, a beautiful wood, 
 throxigh which run excellent carriage-roads and 
 grassy footpaths. It was a rich enjoyment to 
 skirt this wood along the Jena road, and see the 
 sky arching grandly down over the open fields 
 on the other side of us, the evening red flushing 
 the west over the town, and the stars coming 
 out as if to relieve the sun in its watch ; or to 
 take the winding road through the wood, under 
 its tall overarching trees, now bending their 
 mossy trunks forward, now standing with the 
 stately erectness of lofty pillars ; or to saunter 
 along the grassy footpaths where the simlight 
 streamed through the fairy-like foliage of the 
 silvery barked birches. 
 
 Stout pedestrians who go to Weimar will do 
 wel]. to make a walking excursion, as we did, to 
 Ettersburg, a more distant summer residence of 
 the Grand Duke, interesting to us beforehand 
 as the scene of private theatricals and sprees in 
 the Goethe days. We set out on one of the 
 brightest and hottest mornings that August ever 
 bestowed, and it required some resolution to 
 trudge along the shadeless chaussee, which formed 
 the first two or three miles of our way. One com- 
 
318 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAK. 
 
 pensating pleasure was the sight of the beautiful 
 mountain-ash trees in full berry, which, alter- 
 nately with cherry-trees, border the road for a 
 considerable distance. At last we rested from 
 our broihng walk on the borders of a glorious 
 pine-wood, so extensive that the trees in the 
 distance form a complete wall mth their trunks, 
 and so give one a twilight very welcome on a 
 summer's noon. Under these pines you tread on 
 a carpet of the softest moss, so that you hear no 
 sound of a footstep, and all is as solemn and still 
 as in the crypt of a cathedral. Presently we 
 passed out of the pine-wood into one of limes, 
 beeches, and other trees of transparent and light 
 foliage, and from this again we emerged into 
 the open space of the Ettersburg Park in front 
 of the Schloss, which is finely placed on an emi- 
 nence commanding a magnificent view of the 
 far-reaching woods. Prince Piickler Muskau has 
 been of service here by recommending openings 
 to be made in the woods, in the taste of the 
 English parks. The Schloss, which is a favour- 
 ite residence of the Grand Duke, is a house of 
 very moderate size, and no pretension of any 
 kind. Its stuccoed walls, and doors long un- 
 acquainted with fresh paint, would look distress- 
 ingly shabby to the owner of a villa at Eich- 
 mond or Twickenham ; but much beauty is 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 319 
 
 procured here at slight expense, by the tasteful 
 disposition of creepers on the balustrades, and 
 pretty vases full of plants ranged along the steps, 
 or suspended in the little piazza beneath them. 
 A walk through a beech-wood took us to the 
 Mooshlitte, in front of which stands the famous 
 beech from whence Goethe denounced Jacobi's 
 ' Woldemar.' The bark is covered with initials 
 cut by him and his friends. 
 
 People who only allow themselves to be idle 
 under the pretext of hydropathising, may find all 
 the apparatus necessary to satisfy their conscience 
 at Bercka, a village seated in a lovely valley 
 about six miles from Weimar. Now and then a 
 Weimar family takes lodgings here for the sum- 
 mer, retiring from the quiet of the capital to 
 the deeper quiet of Bercka ; but generally the 
 place seems not much frequented. It would be 
 difficult to imagine a more peace-inspiring scene 
 than this little valley. The hanging woods — the 
 soft colouring and graceful outline of the uplands 
 — the village, with its roofs and spire of a red- 
 dish-violet hue, muffled in luxuriant trees — the 
 white Kurhaus glittering on a grassy slope — the 
 avenue of poplars contrasting its pretty prim- 
 ness with the wild bushy outline of the wood- 
 covered hill, which rises abruptly from the smooth, 
 green meadows — the clear winding stream, now 
 
320 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 
 
 sparkling in the sun, now hiding itself under 
 soft grey willows, — all this makes an enchanting 
 picture. The walk to Bercka and back was a 
 favourite expedition with us and a few Weimar 
 friends, for the road thither is a pleasant one, 
 leading at first through open cultivated fields, 
 dotted here and there with villages, and then 
 through wooded hills — the outskirts of the Thur- 
 ingian Forest. We used not to despise the fine 
 plums which hung in tempting abundance by 
 the roadside ; but we afterwards found that we 
 had been deceived in supposing ourselves free to 
 pluck them, as if it were the golden age, and that 
 we were liable to a penalty of ten groschen for 
 our depredations. 
 
 But I must not allow myself to be exhaustive 
 on pleasures which seem monotonous when told, 
 though in enjoying them one is as far from Tsdsh- 
 ing them to be more various as from wishing for 
 any change in the sweet sameness of successive 
 summer days. I will only advise the reader who 
 has yet to make excursions in Thuringia to visit 
 Jena, less for its traditions than for its fine scen- 
 ery, which makes it, as Goethe says, a delicious 
 place, in spite of its dull, ugly streets ; and ex- 
 hort him, above all, to brave the discomforts of 
 a Postwagen for the sake of getting to Ilmenau. 
 Here he will find the grandest pine-clad hills, 
 
THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAK. 321 
 
 with endless walks under their solemn shades ; 
 beech-woods where every tree is a picture ; an 
 air that he will breathe with as conscious a pleas- 
 ure as if he were taking iced water on a hot 
 day ; baths ad libitum, with a douche lofty and 
 tremendous enough to invigorate the giant Cor- 
 moran ; and, more than all, one of the most inter- 
 esting relics of Goethe, who had a great love for 
 Ilmenau. This is the small wooden house, on 
 the height called the Kickelhahn, where he often 
 lived in his long retirements here, and where you 
 may see written by his own hand, near the win- 
 dow-frame, those wonderful lines — perhaps the 
 finest expression yet given to the sense of resig- 
 nation inspired by the sublime calm of Nature — 
 
 " Ueber alien Gipfeln 
 1st Euh, 
 
 In alien "Wipfeln 
 Spiirest du 
 Kaum einen Haucli ; 
 Die Yogelein scliweigen im Walde. 
 Warte nur, balde 
 Euliest du audi." 
 
 X 
 
322 
 
 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEX, 
 BY FELIX HOLT. 
 
 PELLOW-WoEKMEisr, — I am not going to take up 
 your time by complimentiag you. It has been 
 the fashion to compliment kings and other au- 
 thorities when they have come into power, and 
 to teU them that, under their wise and benefi- 
 cent rule, happiness would certainly overflow the 
 land. But the end has not always corresponded 
 to that beginning. If it were true that we who 
 work for wages had more of the wisdom and 
 virtue necessary to the right use of power than 
 has been shown by the aristocratic and mercan- 
 tile classes, we should not glory much ia that 
 fact, or consider that it carried with it any near 
 approach to infallibility. 
 
 In my opinion, there has been too much com- 
 plimenting of that sort ; and whenever a speaker, 
 whether he is one of ourselves or not, wastes our 
 time in boasting or flattery, I say, let us hiss 
 him. If we have the beginning of wisdom, 
 
ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN. 323 
 
 which is, to know a little truth about ourselves, 
 we know that as a body we are neither very wise 
 nor very virtuous. And to prove this, I will 
 not point specially to our own habits and 
 doings, but to the general state of the country. 
 Any nation that had within it a majority of 
 men — and we are the majority — possessed of 
 much wisdom and virtue, would not tolerate 
 the bad practices, the commercial lying and 
 swindbng, the poisonous adulteration of goods, 
 the retail cheating, and the political bribery, 
 which are carried on boldly in the midst of us. 
 A majority has the power of creating a public 
 opinion. We could groan and hiss before we 
 had the franchise : if we had groaned and hissed 
 in the right place, if we had discerned better 
 between good and evil, if the multitude of us 
 artisans, and factory hands, and miners, and 
 labourers of aU sorts, had been skilful, faithful, 
 well-judging, industrious, sober — and I don't see 
 how there can be wisdom and virtue anywhere 
 without those qualities — we should have made 
 an audience that would have shamed the other 
 classes out of their share in the national vices. 
 We should have had better members of Parlia- 
 ment, better religious teachers, honester trades- 
 men, fewer foolish demagogues, less impudence 
 in infamous and brutal men; and we should 
 
324 ADDRESS TO WOEKING MEjST, 
 
 not have had among us the abomination of men 
 calling themselves religious while living in splen- 
 dour on ill-gotten gains. I say, it is not possible 
 for any society in which there is a very large 
 body of wise and virtuous men to be as vicious 
 as our society is — to have as low a standard of 
 right and wrong, to have so much belief in false- 
 hood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a notion 
 of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises a 
 man above his fellows. Therefore, let us have 
 done with this nonsense about our being much 
 better than the rest of our countrymen, or the 
 pretence that that was a reason why we ought to 
 have such an extension of the franchise as has 
 been given to us. The reason for our having the 
 franchise, as I want presently to show, lies some- 
 where else than in our personal good qualities, 
 and does not in the least lie in any high bet- 
 ting chance that a delegate is a better man than 
 a duke, or that a Sheffield grinder is a better 
 man than any one of the firm he works for. 
 
 However, we have got our franchise now. We 
 have been sarcastically called in the House of 
 Commons the future masters of the country ; 
 and if that sarcasm contains any truth, it seems 
 to me that the first thing we had better think of 
 is, our heavy responsibility ; that is to say, the 
 terrible risk we run of working mischief and 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 325 
 
 missing good, as others have done before us. 
 Suppose certain men, discontented witli the irri- 
 gation of a country which depended for all its 
 prosperity on the right direction being given to 
 the waters of a great river, had got the manage- 
 ment of the irrigation before they were quite 
 sure how exactly it could be altered for the bet- 
 ter, or whether they could command the neces- 
 sary agency for such an alteration. Those men 
 would have a difficult and dangerous business on 
 their hands ; and the more sense, feeling, and 
 knowledge they had, the more they would be like- 
 ly to tremble rather than to triumph. Our situa- 
 tion is not altogether unlike theirs. For general 
 prosperity and wellbeing is a vast crop, that 
 like the corn in Egypt can be come at, not at all 
 by hurried snatching, but only by a well-judged 
 patient process ; and whether our political power 
 will be any good to us now we have got it, must 
 depend entirely on the means and materials — the 
 knowledge, ability, and honesty — we have at com- 
 mand. These three things are the only condi- 
 tions on which we can get any lasting benefit, 
 as every clever workman among us knows : he 
 knows that for an article to be worth much there 
 must be a good invention or plan to go upon, 
 there must be well-prepared material, and there 
 must be skilful and honest work in carrying out 
 
326 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 the plan. And by this test we may try those 
 who want to be our leaders. Have they anything 
 to oflfer us besides indignant talk ? When they 
 tell us we ought to have this, that, or the other 
 thing, can they explain to us any reasonable, 
 fair, safe way of getting it ? Can they argue in 
 favour of a particular change by showing us 
 pretty closely how the change is likely to work ? 
 I don't want to decry a just indignation ; on the 
 contrary, I should like it to be more thorough 
 and general. A wise man, more than two thou- 
 sand years ago, when he was asked what would 
 most tend to lessen injustice in the world, said, 
 " That every bystander should feel as indignant 
 at a wrong as if he himself were the sufferer." 
 Let us cherish such indignation. But the long- 
 growing evils of a great nation are a tangled 
 business, asking for a good deal more than indig- 
 nation in order to be got rid of. Indignation is 
 a fine war-horse, but the war-horse must be rid- 
 den by a man : it must be ridden by rationahty, 
 skill, courage, armed with the right weapons, and 
 taking definite aim. 
 
 We have reason to be discontented with many 
 things, and, looking back either through the his- 
 tory of England to much earlier generations or to 
 the legislation and administration of later times, 
 we are justified in sayiug that many of the evils 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 327 
 
 under which, our country now suffers are the con- 
 sequences of folly, ignorance, neglect, or self-seek- 
 ing in those who, at different times, have wielded 
 the powers of rank, office, and money. But the 
 more bitterly we feel this, the more loudly we 
 utter it, the stronger is the obligation we lay on 
 ourselves to beware lest we also, by a too hasty 
 wresting of measures which seem to promise an 
 immediate partial relief, make a worse time of 
 it for our OAvn generation, and leave a bad in- 
 heritance to our children. The deepest curse of 
 wrong-doing, whether of the foolish or wicked 
 sort, is that its effects are difficult to be undone. 
 I suppose there is hardly anything more to be 
 shuddered at than that part of the history of 
 disease which shows how, when a man injures 
 his constitution by a life of vicious excess, his 
 children and grandchildren inherit diseased 
 bodies and minds, and how the effects of that 
 unhappy inheritance continue to spread beyond 
 our calculation. This is only one example of 
 the law by which human lives are linked to- 
 gether : another example of what we complain 
 of when we point to our pauperism, to the 
 brutal ignorance of multitudes among our fellow- 
 countrymen, to the weight of taxation laid on 
 us by blamable wars, to the wasteful channels 
 made for the public money, to the expense and 
 
328 ADDRESS TO WOKKING MEN, 
 
 trouble of getting justice, and call these the 
 eflfects of bad rule. This is the law that we all 
 bear the yoke of, the law of no man's making, 
 and which no man can undo. Everybody now 
 sees an example of it in the case of Ireland. 
 We who are living now are sufferers by the 
 WTong-doing of those who lived before us ; we 
 are sufferers by each other's wrong-doing; and 
 the chUdren who come after us are and will be 
 sufferers from the same causes. Will any man 
 say he doesn't care for that law — it is nothing 
 to him — what he wants is to better himself? 
 With what face then will he complain of any 
 injury ? If he says that in politics or in 
 any sort of social action he will not care to 
 know what are likely to be the conseqiiences to 
 others besides himself, he is defending the very 
 worst doings that have brought about his dis- 
 content. He might as well say that there is no 
 better rule needful for men than that each should 
 tug and rive for what will please him, without 
 caring how that tussinsc will act on the fine 
 widespread network of society in which he is 
 fast meshed. If any man taught that as a 
 doctrine, we should know him for a fool. But 
 there are men who act upon it : every scoim- 
 drel, for example, whether he is a rich religious 
 scoundrel who lies and cheats on a large scale, 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 329 
 
 and will perhaps come and ask you to send him 
 to Parliament, or a poor pocket-picking scoun- 
 drel, who will steal your loose pence while you 
 are listening round the platform. None of us 
 are so ignorant as not to know that a society, 
 a nation, is held together by just the opposite 
 doctrine and action — by the dependence of men 
 on each other and the sense they have of a 
 common interest in preventing injury. And 
 we working men are, I think, of all classes the 
 last that can afford to forget this ; for if we did 
 we should be much like sailors cutting away 
 the timbers of our own ship to warm our grog 
 with. For what else is the meaning of our 
 Trades -unions ? What else is the meaning of 
 every flag we carry, every procession we make, 
 every crowd we collect for the sake of making 
 some protest on behalf of our body as receivers 
 of wages, if not this : that it is our interest to 
 stand by each other, and that this being the 
 common interest, no one of us will try to make 
 a good bargain for himself without considering 
 what will be good for his fellows ? And every 
 member of a union believes that the wider he 
 can spread his union, the stronger and surer will 
 be the eff"ect of it. So I think I shall be borne 
 out in saying that a working man who can put 
 two and two together, or take three from four 
 
330 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 and see what will be tlie remainder, can under- 
 stand that a society, to be well off, must be made 
 up chiefly of men who consider the general good 
 as well as their own. 
 
 Well, but taking the world as it is — and this 
 is one way we mu?t take it when we want to 
 find out how it can be improved — ^no society is 
 made up of a single class : society stands before 
 us like that wonderful piece of life, the human 
 body, with all its various parts depending on 
 one another, and with a terrible liability to get 
 wrong because of that delicate dependence. We 
 all know how many diseases the human body is 
 apt to suffer from, and how difficult it is even 
 for the doctors to find out exactly where the seat 
 or beginning of the disorder is. That is because 
 the body is made up of so many various parts, 
 all related to each other, or likely all to feel the 
 effect if any one of them goes wrong. It is 
 somewhat the same with our old nations or 
 societies. No society ever stood long in the 
 world without getting to be composed of dif- 
 ferent classes. Now, it is aU pretence to say 
 that there is no siTch thing as Class Interest. It 
 is clear that if any particular number of men get 
 a particular benefit from any existing institution, 
 they are likely to band together, in order to 
 keep up that benefit and increase it, until it is 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 331 
 
 perceived to be unfair and injurious to another 
 large number, who get knowledge and strength 
 enough to set up a resistance. And this, again, 
 has been part of the history of every great society 
 since history began. But the simple reason for 
 this being, that any large body of men is likely 
 to have more of stupidity, narrowness, and greed 
 than of far-sightedness and generosity, it is plain 
 that the number who resist unfairness and injury 
 are in danger of becoming injurious in their turn. 
 And in this way a justifiable resistance has be- 
 come a damaging convulsion, making everything 
 worse instead of better. This has been seen so 
 often that we ought to profit a little by the ex- 
 perience. So long as there is selfishness in men; 
 so long as they have not found out for them- 
 selves institutions which express and carry into 
 practice the truth, that the highest interest of 
 mankind must at last be a common and not a 
 divided interest ; so long as the gradual opera- 
 tion of steady causes has not made that truth a 
 part of every man's knowledge and feeling, just 
 as we now not only know that it is good for our 
 health to be cleanly, but feel that cleanliness is 
 only another word for comfort, which is the 
 under-side or lining of all pleasure; so long, I 
 say, as men wink at their own knowingness, or 
 hold their heads high, because they have got an 
 
332 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 advantage over tlieir fellows ; so long Class In- 
 terest will be in danger of making itself felt 
 injuriously. No set of men will get any sort of 
 power without being in danger of wanting more 
 than their right share. But, on the other hand, 
 it is just as certain that no set of men will get 
 angry at having less than their right share, and 
 set up a claim on that ground, without falling 
 into just the same danger of exacting too much, 
 and exacting it in wrong ways. It's human 
 nature we have got to work with all round, and 
 nothing else. That seems like saying something 
 very commonplace — nay, obvious ; as if one 
 should say that where there are hands there are 
 mouths. Yet, to hear a good deal of the speech- 
 ifying and to see a good deal of the action that 
 goes forward, one might suppose it was forgotten. 
 But I come back to this : that, in our old 
 society, there are old institutions, and among 
 them the various distinctions and inherited ad- 
 vantages of classes, which have shaped them- 
 selves along with all the wonderful slow-growing 
 system of things made up of our laws, our com- 
 merce, and our stores of all sorts, whether in 
 material objects, such as buildings and machin- 
 ery, or in knowledge, such as scientific thought 
 and professional skill. Just as in that case I 
 spoke of before, the irrigation of a country, which 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 333 
 
 must absolutely have its water distributed or it 
 will bear no crop ; there are the old channels, the 
 old banks, and the old pumps, which must be 
 used as they are until new and better have been 
 prepared, or the structure of the old has been 
 gradually altered, Bu.t it would be fool's work 
 to batter down a pump only because a better 
 might be made, when you had no machinery 
 ready for a new one : it would be wicked work, 
 if villages lost their crops by it. Now the only 
 safe way by which society can be steadily im- 
 proved and our worst evUs reduced, is not by 
 any attempt to do away directly with the actu- 
 ally existing class distinctions and advantages, 
 as if everybody could have the same sort of 
 work, or lead the same sort of life (which none 
 of my hearers are stupid enough to suppose), but 
 by the turning of Class Interests into Class Func- 
 tions or duties. "What I mean is, that each class 
 should be urged by the surrounding conditions 
 to perform its particular work under the strong 
 pressure of responsibility to the nation at large ; 
 that our public affairs should be got into a state 
 in which there should be no impunity for foolish 
 or faithless conduct. In this way, the public 
 judgment would sift out incapability and dis- 
 honesty from posts of high charge, and even 
 personal ambition would necessarily become of a 
 
334 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 wortliier sort, since the desires of the most selfish 
 men must be a good deal shaped by the opinions 
 of those around them ; and for one person to put 
 on a cap and bells, or to go about dishonest or 
 paltry ways of getting rich that he may spend a 
 vast sum of money in having more finery than 
 his neighbours, he must be pretty sure of a crowd 
 who will applaud him. Now changes can only 
 be good in proportion as they help to bring about 
 this sort of result : in proportion as they put 
 knowledge in the place of ignorance, and fellow- 
 feeling in the place of selfishness. In the course 
 of that substitution class distinctions must inev- 
 itably change their character, and represent the 
 varying Duties of men, not their varying Inter- 
 ests. But this end will not come by impatience. 
 " Day wUl not break the sooner because we get 
 up before the twilight." Still less will it come 
 by mere undoing, or change merely as change. 
 And moreover, if we believed that it would be 
 unconditionally hastened by our getting the 
 franchise, we should be what I call superstitious 
 men, believing in magic, or the production of a 
 result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the franchise 
 wiU greatly hasten that good end in proportion 
 only as every one of us has the knowledge, the 
 foresight, the conscience, that will make him 
 well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 335 
 
 The nature of things in this world has been 
 determined for us beforehand, and in such a 
 way that no ship can be expected to sail well 
 on a difficult voyage, and reach the right port, 
 unless it is well manned : the nature of the 
 winds and the waves, of the timbers, the sails 
 and the cordage, will not accommodate itself to 
 drunken, mutinous sailors. 
 
 You will not suspect me of wanting to preach 
 any cant to you, or of joining in the pretence 
 that everything is in a fine way, and need not 
 be made better. What I am striving to keep in 
 our minds is the care, the precaution, with which 
 we should go about making things better, so that 
 the public order may not be destroyed, so that 
 no fatal shock may be given to this society of 
 ours, this living body in which our lives are 
 bound up. After the Eeform Bill of 1832 I was 
 in an election riot, which showed me clearly, on 
 a small scale, what public disorder must always 
 be ; and I have never forgotten that the riot was 
 brought about chiefly by the agency of dishonest 
 men who professed to be on the people's side. 
 Now, the danger hanging over change is great, 
 just in proportion as it tends to produce such 
 disorder by giving any large number of ignorant 
 men, whose notions of what is good are of a low 
 and brutal sort, the belief that they have got 
 
336 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 power into their tands, and may do pretty niucli 
 as they like. If any one can look round us and 
 say that he sees no signs of any such danger 
 now, and that our national condition is running 
 along like a clear broadening stream, safe not to 
 get choked with mud, I call him a cheerful 
 man : perhaps he does his own gardening, and 
 seldom takes exercise far away from home. To 
 us who have no gardens, and often walk abroad, 
 it is plain that we can never get into a bit of a 
 crowd but we must rub clothes with a set of 
 Eoughs, who have the worst vices of the worst 
 rich — who are gamblers, sots, libertines, knaves, 
 or else mere sensual simpletons and victims. 
 They are the ugly crop that has sprung up while 
 the stewards have been sleeping ; they are the 
 multiplpng brood begotteii by parents who have 
 been left mthout all teaching save that of a too 
 craving body, without all wellbeing save the fad- 
 ing delusions of drugged beer and gin. They 
 are the hideous margin of society, at one edge 
 drawing towards it the undesigning ignorant poor, 
 at the other darkening imperceptibly into the 
 lowest criminal class. Here is one of the e^ils 
 which cannot be got rid of quickly, and against 
 which any of us who have got sense, decency, 
 and instruction have need to watch. That these 
 degraded fellow-men could really get the mastery 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 3 37 
 
 in a persistent disobedience to the laws and in a 
 struggle to subvert order, I do not believe ; but 
 wretched calamities would come from the very 
 beginning of such a struggle, and the continu- 
 ance of it would be a civil war, in which the 
 inspiration on both sides might soon cease to be 
 even a false notion of good, and might become 
 the direct savage impulse of ferocity. We have 
 all to see to it that we do not help to rouse what 
 I may call the savage beast in the breasts of our 
 generation — that we do not help to poison the 
 nation's blood, and make richer provision for 
 bestiality to come. We know well enough that 
 oppressors have sinned in this way — that oppres- 
 sion has notoriously made men mad ; and we are 
 determined to resist oppression. But let us, if 
 possible, show that we can keep sane in our 
 resistance, and shape our means more and more 
 reasonably towards the least harmful, and there- 
 fore the speediest, attainment of our end. Let 
 us, I say, show that our spirits are too strong to 
 be driven mad, but can keep that sober deter- 
 mination which alone gives mastery over the 
 adaptation of means. And a first guarantee of 
 this sanity will be to act as if we understood 
 that the fundamental duty of a Government is 
 to preserve order, to enforce obedience of the 
 laws. It has been held hitherto that a man can 
 
338 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 be depended on as a guardian of order only when 
 he has much money and comfort to lose. But a 
 better state of things would be, that men who 
 had little money and not much comfort should 
 stni be guardians of order, because they had 
 sense to see that disorder would do no good, 
 and had a heart of justice, pity, and fortitude, 
 to keep them from making more misery only 
 because they felt some misery themselves. There 
 are thousands of artisans who have already shown 
 this fine spirit, and have endured much with 
 patient heroism. If such a spirit spread, and 
 penetrated us all, we should soon become the 
 masters of the country in the best sense and to 
 the best ends. For, the public order being pre- 
 served, there can be no government in future 
 that will not be determined by our insistance on 
 our fair and practicable demands. It is only by 
 disorder that our demands will be choked, that 
 we shall find ourselves lost amongst a brutal 
 rabble, with all the intelligence of the country 
 opposed to us, and see government in the shape 
 of guns that will sweep us down in the ignoble 
 martyrdom of fools. 
 
 It has been a too common notion that to insist 
 much on the preservation of order is the part of 
 a selfish aristocracy and a selfish commercial class, 
 because among these, in the nature of things, 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 339 
 
 have been found the opponents of change. I am 
 a Radical ; and, what is more, I am not a Radical 
 with a title or a French cook or even an entrance 
 into fine society. I expect great changes, and I 
 desire them. But I don't expect them to come 
 in a hurry, by mere inconsiderate sweeping. A 
 Hercules with a big besom is a fine thing for a 
 filthy stable, but not for weeding a seed-bed, 
 where his besom would soon make a barren floor. 
 
 That is old-fashioned talk, some one may say. 
 We know all that. 
 
 Yes, when things are put in an extreme way, 
 most people think they know them ; but, after 
 all, they are comparatively few who see the small 
 degrees by which those extremes are arrived at, 
 or have the resolution and self-control to resist 
 the little impulses by which they creep on surely 
 towards a fatal end. Does anybody set out 
 meaning to ruin himself, or to drink himself to 
 death, or to waste his life so that he becomes a 
 despicable old man, a superannuated nuisance, 
 like a fly in winter? Yet there are plenty, of 
 whose lot this is the pitiable story. Well now, 
 supposing us all to have the best intentions, we 
 working men, as a body, run some risk of bring- 
 ing evil on the nation in that unconscious man- 
 ner — half-hurrying, half -pushed in a jostling 
 march towards an end we are not thinking of. 
 
340 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 For just as there are many tMngs which we know 
 better and feel much more strongly than the 
 richer, softer - handed classes can know or feel 
 them ; so there are many things — many precious 
 benefits — which we, by the very fact of our pri- 
 vations, our lack of leisure and instruction, are 
 not so likely to be aware of and take into our 
 account. Those precious benefits form a chief 
 part of what I may call the common estate of 
 society : a wealth over and above buildings, 
 machinery, produce, shipping, and so on, though 
 closely connected with these ; a wealth of a more 
 delicate kind, that we may more unconsciously 
 bring into danger, doing harm and not knowing 
 that we do it. I mean that treasure of know- 
 ledge, science, poetry, refinement of thought, 
 feeling, and manners, great memories, and the 
 interpretation of great records, which is carried 
 on from the miuds of one generation to the minds 
 of another. This is something distinct from the 
 indulgences of luxury and the pursuit of vain 
 finery ; and one of the hardships in the lot of 
 working men is that they have been for the most 
 part shut out from sharing in this treasure. It 
 can make a man's life very great, very full of 
 delight, though he has no smart furniture and no 
 horses : it also yields a great deal of discovery 
 that corrects error, and of invention that lessens 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 341 
 
 bodily pain, and must at last make life easier 
 for all. 
 
 Now the security of this treasure demands, 
 not only the preservation of order, but a certain 
 patience on our part with many institutions and 
 facts of various kinds, especially touching the 
 accumulation of wealth, which, from the light 
 we stand in, we are more likely to discern the 
 evil than the good of. It is constantly the task 
 of practical wisdom not to say, " This is good, 
 and I will have it," but to say, " This is the less 
 of two unavoidable evils, and I will bear it." 
 And this treasure of knowledge, which consists 
 in the fine activity, the exalted vision of many 
 minds, is bound up at present with conditions 
 which have much evil in them. Just as in the 
 case of material wealth and its distribution we 
 are obliged to take the selfishness and weaknesses 
 of human nature into account, and, however we 
 insist that men might act better, are forced, 
 unless we are fanatical simpletons, to consider 
 how they are likely to act ; so in this matter of 
 the wealth that is carried in men's minds, we 
 have to reflect that the too absolute predomi- 
 nance of a class whose wants have been of a com- 
 mon sort, who are chiefly struggling to get 
 better and more food, clothing, shelter, and 
 bodily recreation, may lead to hasty measures 
 
342 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 for the sake of having things more fairly shared, 
 which, even if they did not fail of their object, 
 would at last debase the life of the nation. Do 
 anything which will tlirow the classes who hold 
 the treasures of knowledge — nay, I may say, the 
 treasure of refined needs^into the background, 
 cause them to withdraw from public affairs, stop 
 too suddenly any of the sources by which their 
 leisure and ease are fm'nished, rob them of the 
 chances by which they may be influential and 
 pre-eminent, and you do something as short- 
 sighted as the acts of France and Spain when in 
 jealousy and \sTath, not altogether unprovoked, 
 they drove from among them races and classes 
 that held the traditions of handicraft and agri- 
 culture. You injure your own inheritance and 
 the inheritance of your children. You may 
 truly say that this which I call the common 
 estate of society has been anything but common 
 to you ; but the same may be said, by many of 
 us, of the sunlight and the air, of the sky and 
 the fields, of parks and holiday games. Never- 
 theless, that these blessings exist makes life 
 worthier to us, and urges us the more to ener- 
 getic, likely means of getting our share in them ; 
 and I say, let us watch carefully, lest we do any- 
 thing to lessen this treasure which is held in the 
 minds of men, while we exert ourselves first of aU, 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 343 
 
 and to tlie very utmost, that we and our children 
 may share in all its benefits. Yes ; exert our- 
 selves to the utmost, to break the yoke of igno- 
 rance. If we demand more leisure, more ease in 
 our lives, let us show that we don't deserve the 
 reproach of wanting to shirk that industry which, 
 in some form or other, every man, whether rich 
 or poor, should feel himself as much bound to as 
 he is bound to decency. Let us show that we 
 want to have some time and strength left to us, 
 that we may use it, not for brutal indulgence, but 
 for the rational exercise of the faculties which 
 make us men. Without this no political meas- 
 ures can benefit us. No political institution will 
 alter the nature of Ignorance, or hinder it from 
 producing vice and misery. Let Ignorance start 
 how it will, it must run the same round of low 
 appetites, poverty, slavery, and superstition. 
 Some of us know this well — nay, I will say, feel 
 it ; for knowledge of this kind cuts deep ; and to 
 us it is one of the most painful facts belonging to 
 our condition that there are numbers of our fel- 
 low-workmen who are so far from feeling in the 
 same way, that they never use the imperfect 
 opportunities already ofi"ered them for giving 
 their children some schooling, but turn their 
 little ones of tender age into bread-winners, often 
 at cruel tasks, exposed to the horrible infection 
 
344 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 of childish vice. Of course, the causes of these 
 hideous things go a long way back. Parents' 
 misery has made parents' wickedness. But we, 
 who are still blessed with the hearts of fathers 
 and the consciences of men — we who have some 
 knowledge of the curse entailed on broods of 
 creatures in human shape, whose enfeebled bodies 
 and duU perverted minds are mere centres of 
 uneasiness, in whom even appetite is feeble, and 
 joy impossible, — I say we are bound to use aU 
 the means at our command to help in putting a 
 stop to this horror. Here, it seems to me, is a 
 way in which we may use extended co-operation 
 among us to the most momentous of all purposes, 
 and make conditions of enrolment that would 
 strengthen all educational measures. It is true 
 enough that there is a low sense of parental 
 duties in the nation at large, and that numbers 
 who have no excuse in bodily hardship seem to 
 think it a light thing to beget children, — ^to bring 
 human beings, with all their tremendous possi- 
 bilities, into this difficult world, — and then take 
 httle heed how they are disciplined and furnished 
 for the perilous journey they are sent on without 
 any asking of their own. This is a sin shared in 
 more or less by all classes ; but there are sins 
 which, like taxation, fall the heaviest on the 
 poorest, and none have such galling reasons as 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 345 
 
 we working men to try and rouse to the ut- 
 most the feeling of responsibility in fathers and 
 mothers. We have been urged into co-operation 
 by the pressure of common demands. In war 
 men need each other more ; and where a given 
 point has to be defended, fighters inevitably find 
 themselves shoulder to shoulder. So fellowship 
 grows ; so grow the rules of fellowship, which 
 gradually shape themselves to thoroughness as 
 the idea of a common good becomes more com- 
 plete. We feel a right to say. If you will be one 
 of us, you must make such and such a contribu- 
 tion, you must renounce such and such a separate 
 advantage, you must set your face against such 
 and such an infringement. If we have any false 
 ideas about our common good, our rules will be 
 wrong, and we shall be co-operating to damage 
 each other. But now, here is a part of our good, 
 without which everything else we strive for will 
 be worthless, — I mean the rescue of our children. 
 Let us demand from the members of our Unions 
 that they fulfil their duty as parents in this 
 definite matter, which rules can reach. Let us 
 demand that they send their children to school, 
 so as not to go on recklessly breeding a moral 
 pestilence among us, just as strictly as we de- 
 mand that they pay their contributions to a 
 common fund, understood to be for a common 
 
346 ADDRESS TO WOEKING MEN, 
 
 benefit. While we watch our public men, let us 
 watch one another as to this duty, which is also 
 public, and more momentous even than obedience 
 to sanitary regulations. While we resolutely de- 
 clare against the wickedness in high places, let 
 us set ourselves also against the wickedness in 
 low places ; not quarrelling which came first, or 
 which is the worse of the two, — not trying to 
 settle the miserable precedence of plague or 
 famine, but insisting unflinchingly on remedies 
 once ascertained, and summoning those who hold 
 the treasure of knowledge to remember that they 
 hold it in trust, and that with them lies the task 
 of searching for new remedies, and finding the 
 right methods of appljdng them. 
 
 To find right remedies and right methods ! 
 Here is the great function of knowledge : here 
 the life of one man may make a fresh era straight 
 away, in which a sort of suff'ering that has ex- 
 isted shall exist no more. For the thousands of 
 years, down to the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury since Christ, that human limbs had been 
 hacked and amputated, nobody knew how to 
 stop the bleeding except by searing the ends of 
 the vessels with red-hot iron. But then came a 
 man named Ambrose Pard, and said, "Tie up 
 the arteries ! " That was a fine word to utter. 
 It contained the statement of a method — a plan 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 347 
 
 by which a particular evil was for ever assuaged. 
 Let us try to discern the men whose words 
 carry that sort of kernel, and choose such men 
 to be our guides and representatives — not choose 
 platform swaggerers, who bring us nothing but 
 the ocean to make our broth with. 
 
 To get the chief power into the hands of the 
 wisest, which means to get our life regulated 
 according to the truest principles mankind is in 
 possession of, is a problem as old as the very 
 notion of wisdom. The solution comes slowly, 
 because men collectively can only be made to 
 embrace principles, and to act on them, by the 
 slow stupendous teaching of the world's events. 
 Men will go on planting potatoes, and nothing 
 else but potatoes, till a potato disease comes and 
 forces them to find out the advantage of a varied 
 crop. Selfishness, stupidity, sloth, persist in 
 trying to adapt the world to their desires, till a 
 time comes when the world manifests itself as 
 too decidedly inconvenient to them. Wisdom 
 stands outside of man and urges itself upon him, 
 like the marks of the changing seasons, before it 
 finds a home within him, directs his actions, and 
 from the precious effects of obedience begets a 
 corresponding love. 
 
 But while still outside of us, wisdom often looks 
 terrible, and wears strange forms, wrapped in 
 
348 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 
 
 the changing conditions of a struggling world. 
 It wears now the form of wants and just de- 
 mands in a great multitude of British men : 
 wants and demands' urged into existence by 
 the forces of a maturing world. And it is in 
 virtue of this — in virtue of this presence of wis- 
 dom on our side as a mighty fact, physical and 
 moral, which must enter into and shape the 
 thoughts and actions of mankind — that we 
 working men have obtained the suflErage. Not 
 because we are an excellent multitude, but be- 
 cause we are a needy multitude. 
 
 But now, for our own part, we have seriously 
 to consider this outside wisdom which lies in the 
 supreme unalterable nature of things, and watch 
 to give it a home within us and obey it. If the 
 claims of the unendowed multitude of working 
 men hold within them principles which must 
 shape the future, it is not less true that the en- 
 dowed classes, in their inheritance from the past, 
 hold the precious material without which no 
 worthy, noble future can be moulded. Many of 
 the highest uses of life are in their keeping ; and 
 if privilege has often been abused, it has also 
 been the nurse of excellence. Here again we 
 have to submit ourselves to the great law of in- 
 heritance. If we quarrel with the way in which 
 the labours and earnings of the past have been 
 
BY FELIX HOLT. 349 
 
 preserved and handed down, we are just as big- 
 oted, just as narrow, just as wanting in that re- 
 ligion which keeps an open ear and an obedient 
 mind to the teachings of fact, as we accuse those 
 of being who quarrel with the new truths and 
 new needs which are disclosed in the present. 
 The deeper insight we get into the causes of 
 human trouble, and the ways by which men are 
 made better and happier, the less we shall be in- 
 clined to the unprofitable spirit and practice of 
 reproaching classes as such in a wholesale fashion. 
 Not all the evils of our condition are such as we 
 can justly blame others for ; and, I repeat, many 
 of them are such as no change of institutions 
 can quickly remedy. To discern between the 
 evils that energy can remove and the evils that 
 patience must bear, makes the diff"erence between 
 manliness and childishness, between good sense 
 and folly. And more than that, without such 
 discernment, seeing that we have grave duties 
 towards our own body and the country at large, 
 we can hardly escape acts of fatal rashness and 
 injustice. 
 
 I am addressing a mixed assembly of work- 
 men, and some of you may be as well or better 
 fitted than I am to take up this ofiice. But they 
 will not think it amiss in me that I have tried 
 to bring together the considerations most likely 
 
350 ADDRESS TO WORKING ME^. 
 
 to be of service to us in preparing ourselves for 
 the use of our new opportunities. I have avoid- 
 ed touching on special questions. The best help 
 towards judging well on these is to approach 
 them in the right temper, without vain expecta- 
 tion, and with a resolution which is mixed with 
 temperance. 
 
LEAVES EEOM A NOTE-BOOK 
 
LEAVES FEOM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 To lay down in the shape of practical moral authob- 
 rules courses of conduct only to be made real 
 by the rarest states of motive and disposi- 
 tion, tends not to elevate but to degrade the 
 general standard, by turning that rare attain- 
 ment from an object of admiration into an 
 impossible prescription, against which the 
 average nature first rebels and then flings 
 out ridicule. It is for art to present images 
 of a lovelier order than the actual, gently 
 winning the affections, and so determining 
 the taste. But in any rational criticism 
 of the time which is meant to guide a prac- 
 tical reform, it is idle to insist that action 
 ought to be this or that, without consider- 
 ing how far the outward conditions of such 
 change are present, even supposing the in- 
 ward disposition towards it. Practically, we 
 must be satisfied to aim at something short 
 
354 LEAVES FKOM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 of perfection — and at sometliing very much 
 further off it in one case than in another. 
 While the fundamental conceptions of mor- 
 ality seem as stationary through ages as 
 the laws of life, so that a moral manual 
 written eighteen centuries ago still admon- 
 ishes us that we are low in our attainments, 
 it is quite otherwise with the degree to which 
 moral conceptions have penetrated the various 
 forms of social activity, and made what may 
 be called the special conscience of each call- 
 ing, art,- or industry. While on some points 
 of social duty public opinion has reached a 
 tolerably high standard, on others a public 
 opinion is not yet born ; and there are even 
 some functions and practices with regard to 
 which men far' above the line in honourable- 
 ness of nature feel hardly any scrupulosity, 
 though their consequent behaviour is easily 
 shown to be as injurious as bribery, or any 
 other slowly poisonous procedure which de- 
 grades the social vitality. 
 
 Among those callings which have not yet 
 acquired anything near a full - grown con- 
 science in the public mind is Authorship. 
 Yet the changes brought about by the spread 
 of instruction and the consequent struggles 
 of an uneasy ambition, are, or at least might 
 
LEAVES FEOM A NOTE-BOOK. 355 
 
 well be, forcing on many minds the need of 
 some regulating principle with regard to the 
 publication of intellectual products, which 
 would override the rule of the market : a 
 principle, that is, which should be derived 
 from a fixing of the author's vocation accord- 
 ing to those characteristics in which it differs 
 from the other bread - winning professions. 
 Let this be done, if possible, without any 
 cant, which would carry the subject into 
 Utopia away from existing needs. The 
 guidance wanted is a clear notion of what 
 should justify men and women in assuming 
 public authorship, and of the way in which 
 they should be determined by what is usually 
 called success. But the forms of authorship 
 must be distinguished ; journalism, for ex- 
 ample, carrying a necessity for that contin- 
 uous production which in other kinds of 
 writing is precisely the evil to be fought 
 against, and judicious careful compilation, 
 which is a great public service, holding in 
 its modest diligence a guarantee against those 
 deductions of vanity and idleness which draw 
 many a young gentleman into reviewing, in- 
 stead of the sorting and copying which his 
 small talents could not rise to with any 
 vigour and completeness. 
 
356 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 A manufacturer goes on producing cali- 
 coes as long and as fast as lie can find a 
 market for them ; and in obeying this indi- 
 cation of demand he gives his factory its 
 utmost usefulness to the world in general 
 and to himself in particular. Another manu- 
 facturer buys a new invention of some light 
 kind likely to attract the public fancy, is 
 successful in finding a multitude who will 
 give their testers for the transiently desir- 
 able commodity, and before the fashion is 
 out, pockets a considerable sum : the com- 
 modity was coloured with a green which had 
 arsenic in it that damaged the factory work- 
 ers and the purchasers. "What then ? These, 
 he contends (or does not know or care to 
 contend), are superficial effects, which it is 
 folly to dwell upon while we have epidemic 
 diseases and bad government. 
 
 The first manufacturer we will suppose 
 blameless. Is an author simply on a par with 
 him, as to the rules of production ? 
 
 The author's capital is his brain-power — 
 power of invention, power of writing. The 
 manufacturer's capital, in fortunate cases, is 
 being continually reproduced and increased. 
 Here is the first grand difi"erence between 
 the capital which is turned into calico and 
 
LEAVES FEOM A NOTE-BOOK. 357 
 
 the brain capital which, is turned into litera- 
 ture. The calico scarcely varies in appro- 
 priateness of quality, no consumer is in dan- 
 ger of getting too much of it, and neglecting 
 his boots, hats, and flannel-shirts in conse- 
 quence. That there should be large quan- 
 tities of the same sort in the calico manu- 
 facture is an advantage : the sameness is 
 desirable, and nobody is likely to roll his 
 person in so many folds of calico as to become 
 a mere bale of cotton goods, and nullify his 
 senses of hearing and touch, while his morbid 
 passion for Manchester shirtings makes him 
 still cry " More ! " The wise manufacturer 
 gets richer and richer, and the consumers he 
 supplies have their real wants satisfied and 
 no more. 
 
 Let it be taken as admitted that all 
 legitimate social activity must be beneficial 
 to others besides the agent. To write prose 
 or verse as a private exercise and satisfaction 
 is not social activity ; nobody is culpable for 
 this any more than for learning other people's 
 verse by heart if he does not neglect his pro- 
 per business in consequence. If the exercise 
 made him sillier or secretly more self-satisfied, 
 that, to be sure, would be a roundabout way 
 of injuring society ; for though a certain 
 
358 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 mixture of silliness may lighten existence, we 
 have at present more than enough. 
 
 But man or woman who publishes writings 
 inevitably assumes the office of teacher or 
 influencer of the public mind. Let him pro- 
 test as he will that he only seeks to amuse, 
 and has no pretension to do more than while 
 away an hour of leisure or weariness — " the 
 idle singer of an empty day " — he can no more 
 escape influencing the moral taste, and with 
 it the action of the intelligence, than a setter 
 of fashions in furniture and dress can fill the 
 shops with his designs and leave the garni- 
 ture of persons and houses unafi"ected by his 
 industry. 
 
 For a man who has a certain gift of writing 
 to say, " I will make the most of it while the 
 public likes my wares — as long as the market 
 is open and I am able to supply it at a money 
 profit— ^such profit being the sign of liking " 
 — he should have a belief that his wares have 
 nothing akin to the arsenic green in them, 
 and also that his continuous supply is secure 
 from a degradation in quality which the habit 
 of consumption encouraged in the buyers 
 may hinder them from marking their sense, 
 of by rejection; so that they complain, but 
 pay, and read while they complain. Unless 
 
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 359 
 
 he has that behef, he is on a level with the 
 manufacturer who gets rich by fancy-wares 
 coloured with arsenic green. He reaUy cares 
 for nothing but his income. He carries on 
 authorship on the principle of the gin-palace. 
 
 And bad literature of the sort called amus- 
 ing is spiritual gin. 
 
 A writer capable of being popular can only 
 escape this social culpability by first of all 
 getting a profound sense that literature is 
 good-for-nothing, if it is not admirably good : 
 he must detest bad literature too heartily to 
 be indifferent about producing it if only other 
 people don't detest it. And if he has this 
 sign of the divine afflatus within him, he 
 must make up his mind that he must not 
 pursue authorship as a vocation with a trad- 
 ing determination to get rich by it. It is in 
 the highest sense lawful for him to get as 
 good a price as he honourably can for the 
 best work he is capable of ; but not for him 
 to force or hurry his production, or even do 
 over again what has already been done, either 
 by himself or others, so as to render his work 
 no real contribution, for the sake of bringing 
 up his income to the fancy pitch. An author 
 who would keep a pure and noble conscience, 
 and with that a developing instead of degen- 
 
360 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 eratiug intellect and taste, must cast out of 
 his aims the aim to-be ricli. And therefore 
 he must keep his expenditure low — he must 
 make for himself no dire necessity to earn 
 sums in order to pay bills. 
 
 In opposition to this, it is common to cite 
 Walter Scott's case, and cry, " Would the 
 world have got as much innocent (and there- 
 fore salutary) pleasure out of Scott, if he had 
 not brought himself under the pressure of 
 money -need ? " I think it would — and more ; 
 but since it is impossible to prove what 
 would have been, I confine myself to reply- 
 ing that Scott was not justified in bringing 
 himself into a position where severe conse- 
 quences to others depended on his retaining 
 or not retaining his mental competence. Still 
 less is Scott to be taken as an example to 
 be followed in this matter, even if it were 
 admitted that money-need served to press at 
 once the best and the most work out of him ; 
 any more than a great navigator who has 
 brought his ship to port in spite of having 
 taken a viTong and perilous route, is to be 
 followed as to his route by navigators who 
 are not yet ascertained to be great. 
 
 But after the restraints and rules which 
 must guide the acknowledged author, whose 
 
LEAVES FROM A KOTE-BOOK. 361 
 
 power of making a real contribution is ascer- 
 tained, comes the consideration, how or on 
 what principle are we to find a check for 
 that troublesome disposition to authorship 
 arising from the spread of what is called 
 Education, which turns a growing rush of 
 vanity and ambition into this current ? The 
 weE-taught, an increasing number, are almost 
 all able to write essays on given themes, 
 which demand new periodicals to save them 
 from lying in cold obstruction. The ill- 
 taught — also an increasing number — read 
 many books, seem to themselves able to 
 write others surprisingly like what they 
 read, and probably superior, since the vari- 
 ations are such as please their own fancy, 
 and such as they would have recommended 
 to their favourite authors : these ill -taught 
 persons are perhaps idle and want to give 
 themselves "an object"; or they are short 
 of money, and feel disinclined to get it by 
 a commoner kind of work ; or they find a 
 facility in putting sentences together which 
 gives them more than a suspicion that they 
 have genius, which, if not very cordially 
 believed in by private confidants, will be 
 recognised by an impartial public ; or finally, 
 they observe that writing is sometimes well 
 
362 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 paid, and sometimes a ground of fame or 
 distinction, and without any use of punc- 
 tilious logic, they conclude to become writers 
 themselves. 
 
 As to these Hi-taught persons, whatever 
 medicines of a spiritual sort can be found 
 good against mental emptiness and inflation 
 — such medicines are needful for them. The 
 contempt of the world for their productions 
 only comes after their disease has wrought 
 its worst effects. But what is to be said to 
 the well-taught, who have such an alarming 
 equality in their power of writing " like a 
 scholar and a gentleman " ? Perhaps they, 
 too, can only be cured by the medicine of 
 higher ideals in social duty, and by a fuller 
 representation to themselves of the processes 
 by which the general culture is furthered or 
 impeded. 
 
 Judgments In endeavouring to estimate a remarkable 
 
 ON Au- 
 thors. 
 
 writer who aimed at more than temporary 
 influence, we have first to consider what 
 was his individual contribution to the spirit- 
 ual wealth of mankind ? Had he a new con- 
 ception ? Did he animate long-known but 
 neglected truths with new vigour, and cast 
 
LEAVES FEOM A NOTE-BOOK. 363 
 
 fresh light on their relation to other admitted 
 truths ? Did he impregnate any ideas with 
 a fresh store of emotion, and in this way en- 
 large the area of moral sentiment ? Did he 
 by a wise emphasis here, and a wise disregard 
 there, give a more useful or beautiful propor- 
 tion to aims or motives ? And even where 
 his thinking was most mixed with the sort of 
 mistake which is obvious to the majority, as 
 well as that which can only be discerned by 
 the instructed, or made manifest by the pro- 
 gress of things, has it that salt of a noble 
 enthusiasm which should rebuke our critical 
 discrimination if its correctness is inspired 
 with a less admirable habit of feeling? 
 
 This is not the common or easy course 
 to take in estimating a modern writer. It 
 requires considerable knowledge of what he 
 has himself done, as well as of what others 
 had done before him, or what they were 
 doing contemporaneously ; it requires delib- 
 erate reflection as to the degree in which 
 our own prejudices may hinder us from 
 appreciating the intellectual or moral bearing 
 of what on a first view ofi"ends us. An easier 
 course is to notice some salient mistakes, and 
 take them as decisive of the writer's in- 
 competence ; or to find out that something 
 
364 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 apparently much the same as what he has 
 said in some connection not clearly ascer- 
 tained, had been said by somebody else, 
 though without great effect, until this new 
 effect of discrediting the other's originality 
 had shown itself as an adequate final cause ; 
 or to pronounce from the point of view of 
 individual taste that this writer for whom 
 regard is claimed is repulsive, wearisome, 
 not to be borne except by those dull per- 
 sons who are of a different opinion. 
 
 Elder writers who have passed into classics 
 were doubtless treated in this easy way when 
 they were stiU under the misfortune of being 
 recent— nay, are still dismissed with the same 
 rapidity of judgment by daring ignorance. 
 But people who think that they have a 
 reputation to lose in the matter of know- 
 ledge, have looked into cyclopsedias and 
 histories of philosophy or literature, and 
 possessed themselves of the duly balanced 
 epithets concerning the immortals. They are 
 not left to their own unguided rashness, or 
 their own unguided pusillanimity. And it 
 is this sheeplike flock who have no direct 
 impressions, no spontaneous delight, no gen- 
 uine objection or self-confessed neutrahty in 
 relation to the writers become classic — it is 
 
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 365 
 
 these who are incapable of passing a genuine 
 judgment on the living. Necessarily. The 
 susceptibility they have kept active is a sus- 
 ceptibility to their own reputation for passing 
 the right judgment, not the susceptibility to 
 qualities in the object of judgment. Who 
 learns to discriminate shades of colour by con- 
 sidering what is expected of him ? The habit 
 of expressing borrowed judgments stupefies 
 the sensibilities, which are the only founda- 
 tion of genuine judgments, just as the con- 
 stant reading and retailing of results from 
 other men's observations through the micro- 
 scope, without ever looking through the lens 
 oneself, is an instruction in some truths and 
 some prejudices, but is no instruction in 
 observant susceptibility ; on the contrary, it 
 breeds a habit of inward seeing according to 
 verbal statement, which dulls the power of 
 outward seeing according to visual evidence. 
 On this subject, as on so many others, it 
 is difficult to strike the balance between the 
 educational needs of passivity or receptivity, 
 and independent selection. We should learn 
 nothing without the tendency to implicit ac- 
 ceptance ; but there must clearly be a limit 
 to such mental submission, else we should 
 come to a stand -still. The human mind 
 
TELLING. 
 
 366 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 would be no better than a dried specimen, 
 representing an nncbangeable type. A\Tien 
 tlie assimilation of new matter ceases, decay- 
 must begin. In a reasoned self-restraining 
 deference there is as much energy as in 
 rebellion ; but among the less capable, one 
 must admit that the superior energy is on 
 the side of the rebels. And certainly a man 
 who dares to say that he finds an eminent 
 classic feeble here, extravagant there, and in 
 general overrated, may chance to give an 
 opinion which has some genuine discrimina- 
 tion in it concerning a new work or a living 
 thinker — an opinion such as can hardly ever 
 be got from the reputed judge who is a correct 
 echo of the most approved phrases concerning 
 those who have been already canonised. 
 
 stoky- What is the best way of telling a story? 
 
 Since the standard must be the interest of 
 the audience, there must be several or many 
 good ways rather than one best. For we get 
 interested in the stories life presents to us 
 through divers orders and modes of presenta- 
 tion. Very commonly our first awakening 
 to a desire of knowing a man's past or future" 
 
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 367 
 
 comes from our seeing him as a stranger in 
 some unusual or pathetic or humorous situa- 
 tion, or manifesting some remarkable charac- 
 teristics. We make inquiries in consequence, 
 or we become observant and attentive when- 
 ever opportunities of knowing more may 
 happen to present themselves without our 
 search. You have seen a refined face among 
 the prisoners picking tow in gaol ; you after- 
 wards see the same unforgetable face in a 
 pulpit : he must be of dull fibre who would 
 not care to know more about a life which 
 showed such contrasts, though he might 
 gather his knowledge in a fragmentary and 
 unchronological way. 
 
 Again, we have heard much, or at least 
 something not quite common, about a man 
 whom we have never seen, and hence we look 
 round with curiosity when we are told that 
 he is present ; whatever he says or does 
 before us is charged with a meaning due to 
 our previous hearsay knowledge about him, 
 gathered either from dialogue of which he 
 was expressly and emphatically the subject, 
 or from incidental remark, or from general 
 report either in or out of print. 
 
 These indirect ways of arriving at know- 
 ledge are always the most stirring even in 
 
368 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 relation to impersonal subjects. To see a 
 chemical experiment gives an attractiveness 
 to a definition of chemistry, and fills it with, 
 a significance which it would never have had 
 without the pleasant shock of an unusual 
 sequence such as the transformation of a 
 soHd into gas, and vice versa. To see a word 
 for the first time either as substantive or 
 adjective in a connection where we care 
 about knowing its complete meaning, is the 
 way to vivify its meaning in our recollec- 
 tion. Curiosity becomes the more eager from 
 the incompleteness of the first information. 
 Moreover, it is in this way that memory 
 works in its incidental revival of events : 
 some salient experience appears in inward 
 vision, and in consequence the antecedent 
 facts are retraced from what is regarded as 
 the beginning of the episode in which that 
 experience made a more or less strikingly 
 memorable part. " Ah ! I remember address- 
 ing the mob from the hustings at Westmin- 
 ster — you wouldn't have thought that I could 
 ever have been in such a position. WeU, 
 
 how I came there was in this way " ; and 
 
 then follows a retrospective narration. 
 
 The modes of telling a story founded on 
 these processes of outward and inward life 
 
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 369 
 
 derive their effectiveness from the superior 
 mastery of images and pictures in grasping 
 the attention — or, one might say with more 
 fundamental accuracy, from the fact that our 
 earliest, strongest impressions, our most inti- 
 mate convictions, are simply images added to 
 more or less of sensation. These are the 
 primitive instruments of thought. Hence 
 it is not surprising that early poetry took 
 this way — telling a daring deed, a glorious 
 achievement, without caring for what went 
 before. The desire for orderly narration is 
 a later, more reflective birth. The presence 
 of the Jack in the box affects every child : 
 it is the more reflective lad, the miniature 
 philosopher, who wants to know how he got 
 there. 
 
 The only stories life presents to us in an 
 orderly way are those of our autobiography, 
 or the career of our companions from our 
 childhood upwards, or perhaps of our own 
 children. But it is a great art to make a 
 connected strictly relevant narrative of such 
 careers as we can recount from the beginning. 
 In these cases the sequence of associations is 
 almost sure to overmaster the sense of pro- 
 portion. Such narratives ab ovo are sum- 
 mer's -day stories for happy loungers; not 
 2 A 
 
370 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 the cup of self- forgetting excitement to 
 the busy who can snatch an hour of enter- 
 tainment. 
 
 But the simple opening of a story with a 
 date and necessary account of places and 
 people, passing on quietly towards the more 
 rousing elements of narrative and dramatic 
 presentation, without need of retrospect, has 
 its advantages which have to be measured by 
 the nature of the story. Spirited narrative, 
 without more than a touch of dialogue here 
 and there, may be made eminently interest- 
 ing, and is suited to the novelette. Examples 
 of its charm are seen in the short tales 
 in which the French have a mastery never 
 reached by the English, who usually demand 
 coarser flavours than are given by that de- 
 lightful gaiety which is well described by 
 La Fontaine ^ as not anything that provokes 
 fits of laughter, but a certain charm, an agree- 
 able mode of handling which lends attractive- 
 ness to all subjects even the most serious. 
 And it is this sort of gaiety which plays 
 around the best French novelettes. But the 
 opening chapters of the ' Vicar of "Wakefield ' 
 
 1 " Je n'appelle pas gayetd ce qui excite le rire, mais un 
 certain oharme, un air agr^able qu'on peut donner k toutes 
 Bortes de sujets, mesme les plus si5rieux." — Preface to Fables. 
 
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 371 
 
 are as fine as anything that can be done in 
 this way. 
 
 Why should a story not be told in the 
 most irregular fashion that an author's 
 idiosyncrasy may prompt, provided that he 
 gives us what we can enjoy? The objec- 
 tions to Sterne's wild way of telling ' Tris- 
 tram Shandy ' lie more solidly in the quality 
 of the interrupting matter than in the fact 
 of interruption. The dear public would do 
 well to reflect that they are often bored from 
 the want of flexibility in their own minds. 
 They are like the topers of " one liquor." 
 
 The exercise of a veracious imagination in histokic 
 historical picturing seems to be capable of a ^on!^^' 
 development that might help the judgment 
 greatly with regard to present and future 
 events. By veracious imagination, I mean 
 the working out in detail of the various 
 steps by which a political or social change 
 was reached, using all extant evidence and 
 supplying deficiencies by careful analogical 
 creation. How triumphant opinions origin- 
 ally spread — how institutions arose — what 
 were the conditions of great inventions, dis- 
 
372 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 coveries, or theoretic conceptions — what cir- 
 cumstances affecting individual lots are at- 
 tendant on the decay of long - established 
 systems, — all these grand elements of history 
 require the illumination of special imagina- 
 tive treatment. But effective truth in this 
 application of art requires freedom from the 
 vulgar coercion of conventional plot, which 
 is become hardly of higher influence on 
 imaginative representation than a detailed 
 " order " for a picture sent by a rich grocer 
 to an eminent painter — allotting a certain 
 portion of the canvas to a rural scene, 
 another to a fashionable group, with a re- 
 quest for a murder in the middle distance, 
 and a little comedy to relieve it. A slight 
 approximation to the veracious glimpses of 
 history artistically presented, which I am 
 indicating, but applied only to an incident 
 of contemporary life, is " Un paquet de 
 lettres " by Gustave Droz. For want of 
 such real, minute vision of how changes 
 come about in the past, we fall into ridicu- 
 lously inconsistent estimates of actual move- 
 ments, condemning in the present what we 
 belaud in the past, and pronouncing impos- 
 sible processes that have been repeated again 
 and again in the historical preparation of the 
 
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 3 7 3 
 
 very system under which we live. A false 
 kind of idealisation dulls our perception of 
 the meaning in words when they relate to 
 past events which have had a glorious issue : 
 for lack of comparison no warning image rises 
 to check scorn of the very phrases which in 
 other associations are consecrated. 
 
 Utopian pictures help the reception of ideas 
 as to constructive results, but hardly so much 
 as a vivid presentation of how results have 
 been actually brought about, especially in 
 religious and social change. And there is 
 the pathos, the heroism often accompanying 
 the decay and final struggle of old systems, 
 which has not had its share of tragic com- 
 memoration. What really took place in and 
 around Constantine before, upon, and im- 
 mediately after his declared conversion ? 
 Could a momentary flash be thrown on 
 Eusebius in his sayings and doings as an 
 ordinary man in bishop's garments? Or 
 on Julian and Libanius? There has been 
 abundant writing on such great turning- 
 points, but not such as serves to instruct 
 the imagination in true comparison. I want 
 something difi'erent from the abstract treat- 
 ment which belongs to grave history from 
 a doctrinal point of view, and something 
 
374 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 diflPerent from the schemed picturesqueness 
 of ordinary historical fiction. I want brief, 
 severely conscientious reproductions, in their 
 concrete incidents, of pregnant movements in 
 the past. 
 
 Value in The Supremacy given in European cultures 
 iTY. ' " to the literatures of Greece and Eome has 
 had an efi'ect almost equal to that of a com- 
 mon religion in binding the Western nations 
 together. It is foolish to be for ever com- 
 plaining of the consequent uniformity, as if 
 there were an endless power of originality 
 in the human mind. Great and precious 
 origination must always be comparatively 
 rare, and can only exist on condition of a 
 wide massive uniformity. When a multi- 
 tude of men have learned to use the same 
 language in speech and writing, then and 
 then only can the greatest masters of lan- 
 guage arise. For in what does their mastery 
 consist ? They use words which are already 
 a familiar medium of understanding and 
 sympathy in such a way as greatly to 
 enlarge the understanding and sympathy. 
 Originality of this order changes the wild 
 
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 375 
 
 grasses into world-feeding grain. Idiosyn- 
 crasies are pepper and spices of question- 
 able aroma. 
 
 " Is the time we live in prosaic ? " " That To the 
 depends : it must certainly be prosaic to one j^j^ 
 whose mind takes a prosaic stand in contem- '^'^^^l^ 
 plating it." "But it is precisely the most saio. 
 poetic minds that most groan over the vul- 
 garity of the present, its degenerate sensi- 
 bility to beauty, eagerness for materialistic 
 explanation, noisy triviality." " Perhaps they 
 would have had the same complaint to make 
 about the age of Elizabeth, if, living then, 
 they had fixed their attention on its more 
 sordid elements, or had been subject to the 
 grating influence of its everyday meannesses, 
 and had sought refuge from them in the 
 contemplation of whatever suited their taste 
 in a former age." 
 
 "We get our knowledge of perfect Love by "Dear 
 glimpses and in fragments chiefly — the rarest loveT^^ 
 only among us knowing what it is to worship 
 
376 LEAVES FKOM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 and caress, reverence and cherish, divide our 
 bread and mingle our thoughts at one and 
 the same time, under inspiration of the same 
 object. Finest aromas will so often leave 
 the fruits to which they are native and cling 
 elsewhere, leaving the fruit empty of all but 
 its coarser structure ! 
 
 We Make Iu the timcs of national mixture when 
 
 OUE OWN 
 
 DEXTS. 
 
 VVU OWN 1 -m 1 
 
 PnECE- modern Jbiurope was, as one may say, a- brew- 
 ing, it was open to a man who did not like 
 to be judged by the Eoman law, to choose 
 which of certain other codes he would be 
 tried by. So, in our own times, they who 
 openly adopt a higher rule than their neigh- 
 bours, do thereby make act of choice as to 
 the laws and precedents by which they shall 
 be approved or condemned, and thus it may 
 happen that we see a man morally pdloried 
 for a very customary deed, and yet having 
 no right to complain, inasmuch as in his 
 foregoing deliberative course of life he had 
 referred himself to the tribunal of those 
 higher conceptions, before which such a deed 
 is without question condemnable. 
 
TOLEE- 
 ASOE. 
 
 LEAVES FKOM A NOTE-BOOK. 377 
 
 Tolerance first comes through equality of birth of 
 struggle, as in the case of Arianism and Cath- 
 olicism in the early times — Valens, Eastern 
 and Arian, Valentinian, Western and Catho- 
 lic, alike publishing edicts of tolerance ; or it 
 comes from a common need of relief from an 
 oppressive predominance, as when James II. 
 published his Act of Tolerance towards non- 
 Anglicans, being forced into liberality towards 
 the Dissenters by the need to get it for the 
 Catholics. Community of interest is the root 
 of justice ; community of suffering, the root 
 of pity ; community of joy, the root of love. 
 
 Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to. 
 walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only 
 the mist that enshrouds others. 
 
 Sympathetic people are often incommuni- 
 cative about themselves : they give backfre- 
 flected images which hide their own depths. 
 
378 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 The pond said to the ocean, " Why do you 
 rage so ? The wind is not so very violent — 
 nay, it is akeady fallen. Look at me. I rose 
 into no foaming waves, and am already smooth 
 again." 
 
 Felix QUI Many feel themselves very confidently on 
 poTuiT. safe ground whea they say : It must be good 
 for man to know the Truth. But it is clearly 
 not good for a particrdar man to know some 
 particular truth, as irremediable treachery 
 in one whom he cherishes — better that he 
 shoidd die without knowing it. 
 
 Of scientific truth, is it not coDceivable 
 that some facts as to the tendency of things 
 afi'ecting the final destination of the race 
 might be more hm^tful when they had entered 
 into the human consciousness than they would 
 have been if they had remained purely exter- 
 nal in their activity ? 
 
 Divine There is no such thing as an impotent or 
 
 keal Em ^s^t^^l deity, if the deity be really believed 
 ANATioN. in, and contemplated either in prayer or 
 
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 379 
 
 meditation. Every object of thought reacts 
 on the mind that conceives it, still more on 
 that which habitually contemplates it. In 
 this we may be said to solicit help from a 
 generalisation or abstraction. Wordsworth 
 had this truth in his consciousness when he 
 wrote (in the Prelude) : — 
 
 " Xor general truths, which a,re themselves a sort 
 Of elements and agents, Under-pnwers 
 Subordinate helpers of the living mind" — 
 
 not indeed precisely in the same relation, 
 but with a meaning which involves that wider 
 moral influence. 
 
 One can hardly insist too much, in the " a fine 
 present stage of thinking, on the efiicacy of feeling is 
 feeling in stimulating to ardent co-operation, ^=^«"^- 
 quite apart from the conviction that such 
 co-operation is needed for the achievement of 
 the end in view. Just as hatred will vent 
 itself in private curses no longer believed to 
 have any potency, and joy, in private singing 
 far out among the woods and fields, so sjm- 
 pathetic feeling can only be satisfied by join- 
 ing in the action which expresses it, though 
 the added "Bravo!" the added push, the 
 
380 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 added penny, is no more than a grain of 
 dust on a rolling mass. When students take 
 the horses out of a political hero's carriage, 
 and draw him home by the force of their own 
 muscle, 'the struggle in each is simply to 
 draw or push, without consideration whether 
 his place would not be as well filled by some- 
 body else, or whether his one arm be really 
 needful to the effect. It is under the same 
 inspiration that abundant help rushes towards 
 the scene of a fire, rescuing imperilled lives, 
 and labouring with generous rivalry in carry- 
 ing buckets. So the old blind King John of 
 Bohemia at the battle of Cre^y begged his 
 vassals to lead him into the fight that he 
 might strike a good blow, though his own 
 stroke, possibly fatal to himself, could not 
 turn by a hair's-breadth the imperious course 
 of victory. 
 
 The question, " Of what use is it for me 
 to work towards an end confessedly good ? " 
 comes from that sapless kind of reasoning 
 which is falsely taken for a sign of supreme 
 mental activity, but is really due to languor, 
 or incapability of that mental grasp which 
 makes objects strongly present, and to a lack 
 of sympathetic emotion. In the ' Spanish 
 Gypsy ' Fedalma says — 
 
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 381 
 
 " The grandest death ! to die in vain — for Love 
 Greater than sways the forces of the world,"^ — 
 
 referring to the image of the disciples throw- 
 ing themselves, consciously in vain, on the 
 Eoman spears. I really believe and mean 
 this, — not as a rule of general action, but 
 as a possible grand instance of determining 
 energy in human sympathy, which even in 
 particular cases, where it has only a mag- 
 nificent futility, is more adorable, or as we 
 say divine, than unpitying force, or than a 
 prudent calculation of results. Perhaps it 
 is an implicit joy in the resources of our 
 human nature which has stimulated admira- 
 tion for acts of self-sacrifice which are vain 
 as to their immediate end. Marciis Curtius 
 was probably not imagined as concluding to 
 himself that he and his horse would so fill 
 up the gap as to make a smooth terra Jirma. 
 The impulse and act made the heroism, not 
 the correctness of adaptation. No doubt the 
 passionate inspiration which prompts and sus- 
 tains a course of self-sacrificing labour in the 
 light of soberly estimated results gathers the 
 highest title to our veneration, and makes 
 
 1 V. what Demosthenes says (De Corona) about Athens 
 pursuing the same course, though she had known from the 
 hecinning that her heroic resistance would be in vain. 
 
382 LEAVES EROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 the supreme heroism. But the generous leap 
 of impulse is needed too to swell the flood 
 of sympathy in us beholders, that we may 
 not fall completely under the mastery of 
 calculation, which in its turn may fail of 
 ends for want of energy got from ardour. 
 We have need to keep the sluices open for 
 possible influxes of the rarer sort. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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