,,appreciations1 ,,with ,,an ,,essay ,,on ,,style ,by ,,walter ,,horatio ,,pater ,e-text ,editor3 ,alfred ,j4 ,drake1 ,ph4,d4 ,electronic ,version #a4j _/ ,date #aj-ab-ja ,,notes ,,by ,,the ,e-,,text ,,editor3 ,reliability3 ,although ,i have done my best to ensure that the text you read is error-free in comparison with an exact reprint of the standard edition--,macmillan's #aiaj ,library ,edition--please exercise scholarly caution in using it4 ,it is not intended as a substitute for the printed original but rather as a searchable supplement4 ,my e-texts may prove convenient substitutes for hard-to-get works in a course where both instructor and students accept the possibility of some imperfections in the text1 but if you are writing a scholarly article1 dissertation1 or book1 you should use the standard hard-copy editions of any works you cite4 ,pagination and ,paragraphing3 ,to avoid an unwieldy electronic copy1 ,i have transferred original pagination to brackets4 ,a bracketed numeral such as #bb indicates that the material immediately following the number marks the beginning of the relevant page4 ,i have preserved paragraph structure except for first-line indentation4 ,hyphenation3 ,i have not preserved original hyphenation since an e-text does not require line-end or page-end hyphenation4 ,greek typeface3 ,for this full-text edition1 ,i have transliterated ,pater's ,greek quotations4 ,if there is a need for the original ,greek1 it can be viewed at my site1 http3_/_/www4ajdrake4com_/etexts1 a ,victorianist archive that contains the complete works of ,walter ,pater and many other nineteenth-century texts1 mostly in first editions4 ,,contents ,style3 #e-ch ,wordsworth3 #ci-fd ,coleridge3 #fe-ajd ,charles ,lamb3 #aje-abc ,sir ,thomas ,browne3 #abd-afj ,love's ,labours ,lost3 #afa-afi ,measure for ,measure3 #agj-ahd ,shakespeare's ,english ,kings3 #ahe-bjd ,dante ,gabriel ,rossetti3 #bje-bah ,feuillet's ,la ,morte3 #bai-bdj ,postscript3 #bda-bfa ,,appreciations ,,style #e ,,since all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation1 in the resolution of an obscure and complex object into its component aspects1 it is surely the stupidest of losses to confuse things which right reason has put asunder1 to lose the sense of achieved distinctions1 the distinction between poetry and prose1 for instance1 or1 to speak more exactly1 between the laws and characteristic excellences of verse and prose composition4 ,on the other hand1 those who have dwelt most emphatically on the distinction between prose and verse1 prose and poetry1 may sometimes have been tempted to limit the proper functions of prose too narrowly2 and this again is at least false economy1 as being1 in effect1 the renunciation of a certain means or faculty1 in a world where after all we must needs make the most of things4 ,critical efforts to limit art a priori1 by anticipations regarding the natural incapacity of the material with which this or that artist works1 as the sculptor with solid form1 or the prose-writer with the ordinary #f language of men1 are always liable to be discredited by the facts of artistic production2 and while prose is actually found to be a coloured thing with ,bacon1 picturesque with ,livy and ,carlyle1 musical with ,cicero and ,newman1 mystical and intimate with ,plato and ,michelet and ,sir ,thomas ,browne1 exalted or florid1 it may be1 with ,milton and ,taylor1 it will be useless to protest that it can be nothing at all1 except something very tamely and narrowly confined to mainly practical ends--a kind of good round-hand2 as useless as the protest that poetry might not touch prosaic subjects as with ,wordsworth1 or an abstruse matter as with ,browning1 or treat contemporary life nobly as with ,tennyson4 ,in subordination to one essential beauty in all good literary style1 in all literature as a fine art1 as there are many beauties of poetry so the beauties of prose are many1 and it is the business of criticism to estimate them as such2 as it is good in the criticism of verse to look for those hard1 logical1 and quasi-prosaic excellences which that too has1 or needs4 ,to find in the poem1 amid the flowers1 the allusions1 the mixed perspectives1 of ,lycidas for instance1 the thought1 the logical structure3--how wholesome6 how delightful6 as to identify in prose what we call the poetry1 the imaginative power1 not treating it as out of place and a kind of vagrant intruder1 but by way of an estimate of its rights1 that is1 of its achieved powers1 there4 #g ,dryden1 with the characteristic instinct of his age1 loved to emphasise the distinction between poetry and prose1 the protest against their confusion with each other1 coming with somewhat diminished effect from one whose poetry was so prosaic4 ,in truth1 his sense of prosaic excellence affected his verse rather than his prose1 which is not only fervid1 richly figured1 poetic1 as we say1 but vitiated1 all unconsciously1 by many a scanning line4 ,setting up correctness1 that humble merit of prose1 as the central literary excellence1 he is really a less correct writer than he may seem1 still with an imperfect mastery of the relative pronoun4 ,it might have been foreseen that1 in the rotations of mind1 the province of poetry in prose would find its assertor2 and1 a century after ,dryden1 amid very different intellectual needs1 and with the need therefore of great modifications in literary form1 the range of the poetic force in literature was effectively enlarged by ,wordsworth4 ,the true distinction between prose and poetry he regarded as the almost technical or accidental one of the absence or presence of metrical beauty1 or1 say6 metrical restraint2 and for him the opposition came to be between verse and prose of course2 but1 as the essential dichotomy in this matter1 between imaginative and unimaginative writing1 parallel to ,de ,quincey's distinction between the literature of power and the literature of knowledge1 in the former of which the composer gives us #h not fact1 but his peculiar sense of fact1 whether past or present4 ,dismissing then1 under sanction of ,wordsworth1 that harsher opposition of poetry to prose1 as savouring in fact of the arbitrary psychology of the last century1 and with it the prejudice that there can be but one only beauty of prose style1 ,i propose here to point out certain qualities of all literature as a fine art1 which1 if they apply to the literature of fact1 apply still more to the literature of the imaginative sense of fact1 while they apply indifferently to verse and prose1 so far as either is really imaginative--certain conditions of true art in both alike1 which conditions may also contain in them the secret of the proper discrimination and guardianship of the peculiar excellences of either4 ,the line between fact and something quite different from external fact is1 indeed1 hard to draw4 ,in ,pascal1 for instance1 in the persuasive writers generally1 how difficult to define the point where1 from time to time1 argument which1 if it is to be worth anything at all1 must consist of facts or groups of facts1 becomes a pleading--a theorem no longer1 but essentially an appeal to the reader to catch the writer's spirit1 to think with him1 if one can or will--an expression no longer of fact but of his sense of it1 his peculiar intuition of a world1 prospective1 or discerned below the faulty conditions of the present1 in either case changed somewhat from the actual #i world4 ,in science1 on the other hand1 in history so far as it conforms to scientific rule1 we have a literary domain where the imagination may be thought to be always an intruder4 ,and as1 in all science1 the functions of literature reduce themselves eventually to the transcribing of fact1 so all the excellences of literary form in regard to science are reducible to various kinds of pains-taking2 this good quality being involved in all skilled work whatever1 in the drafting of an act of parliament1 as in sewing4 ,yet here again1 the writer's sense of fact1 in history especially1 and in all those complex subjects which do but lie on the borders of science1 will still take the place of fact1 in various degrees4 ,your historian1 for instance1 with absolutely truthful intention1 amid the multitude of facts presented to him must needs select1 and in selecting assert something of his own humour1 something that comes not of the world without but of a vision within4 ,so ,gibbon moulds his unwieldy material to a preconceived view4 ,livy1 ,tacitus1 ,michelet1 moving full of poignant sensibility amid the records of the past1 each1 after his own sense1 modifies--who can tell where and to what degree8--and becomes something else than a transcriber2 each1 as he thus modifies1 passing into the domain of art proper4 ,for just in proportion as the writer's aim1 consciously or unconsciously1 comes to be the transcribing1 not of the world1 not of mere fact1 but of his sense #aj of it1 he becomes an artist1 his work fine art2 and good art 7as ,i hope ultimately to show7 in proportion to the truth of his presentment of that sense2 as in those humbler or plainer functions of literature also1 truth--truth to bare fact1 there--is the essence of such artistic quality as they may have4 ,truth6 there can be no merit1 no craft at all1 without that4 ,and further1 all beauty is in the long run only fineness of truth1 or what we call expression1 the finer accommodation of speech to that vision within4 --,the transcript of his sense of fact rather than the fact1 as being preferable1 pleasanter1 more beautiful to the writer himself4 ,in literature1 as in every other product of human skill1 in the moulding of a bell or a platter for instance1 wherever this sense asserts itself1 wherever the producer so modifies his work as1 over and above its primary use or intention1 to make it pleasing 7to himself1 of course1 in the first instance7 there1 fine as opposed to merely serviceable art1 exists4 ,literary art1 that is1 like all art which is in any way imitative or reproductive of fact--form1 or colour1 or incident--is the representation of such fact as connected with soul1 of a specific personality1 in its preferences1 its volition and power4 ,such is the matter of imaginative or artistic literature--this transcript1 not of mere fact1 but of fact in its infinite variety1 as modified by human preference in all its infinitely varied #aa forms4 ,it will be good literary art not because it is brilliant or sober1 or rich1 or impulsive1 or severe1 but just in proportion as its representation of that sense1 that soul-fact1 is true1 verse being only one department of such literature1 and imaginative prose1 it may be thought1 being the special art of the modern world4 ,that imaginative prose should be the special and opportune art of the modern world results from two important facts about the latter3 first1 the chaotic variety and complexity of its interests1 making the intellectual issue1 the really master currents of the present time incalculable--a condition of mind little susceptible of the restraint proper to verse form1 so that the most characteristic verse of the nineteenth century has been lawless verse2 and secondly1 an all-pervading naturalism1 a curiosity about everything whatever as it really is1 involving a certain humility of attitude1 cognate to what must1 after all1 be the less ambitious form of literature4 ,and prose thus asserting itself as the special and privileged artistic faculty of the present day1 will be1 however critics may try to narrow its scope1 as varied in its excellence as humanity itself reflecting on the facts of its latest experience--an instrument of many stops1 meditative1 observant1 descriptive1 eloquent1 analytic1 plaintive1 fervid4 ,its beauties will be not exclusively pedestrian3 it will exert1 in due measure1 all the varied charms of poetry1 down to the rhythm which1 as in ,cicero1 #ab or ,michelet1 or ,newman1 at their best1 gives its musical value to every syllable499 ,the literary artist is of necessity a scholar1 and in what he 4 proposes to do will have in mind1 first of all1 the scholar and the scholarly conscience--the male conscience in this matter1 as we must think it1 under a system of education which still to so large an extent limits real scholarship to men4 ,in his self-criticism1 he supposes always that sort of reader who will go 7full of eyes7 warily1 considerately1 though without consideration for him1 over the ground which the female conscience traverses so lightly1 so amiably4 ,for the material in which he works is no more a creation of his own than the sculptor's marble4 ,product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues1 compact of obscure and minute association1 a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws1 in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists4 ,a writer1 full of a matter he is before all things anxious to express1 may think of those laws1 the limitations of vocabulary1 structure1 and the like1 as a restriction1 but if a #ac real artist will find in them an opportunity4 ,his punctilious observance of the proprieties of his medium will diffuse through all he writes a general air of sensibility1 of refined usage4 ,exclusiones debitae--the exclusions1 or rejections1 which nature demands--we know how large a part these play1 according to ,bacon1 in the science of nature4 ,in a somewhat changed sense1 we might say that the art of the scholar is summed up in the observance of those rejections demanded by the nature of his medium1 the material he must use4 ,alive to the value of an atmosphere in which every term finds its utmost degree of expression1 and with all the jealousy of a lover of words1 he will resist a constant tendency on the part of the majority of those who use them to efface the distinctions of language1 the facility of writers often reinforcing in this respect the work of the vulgar4 ,he will feel the obligation not of the laws only1 but of those affinities1 avoidances1 those mere preferences1 of his language1 which through the associations of literary history have become a part of its nature1 prescribing the rejection of many a neology1 many a license1 many a gipsy phrase which might present itself as actually expressive4 ,his appeal1 again1 is to the scholar1 who has great experience in literature1 and will show no favour to short-cuts1 or hackneyed illustration1 or an affectation of learning designed for the unlearned4 ,hence a contention1 a sense #ad of self-restraint and renunciation1 having for the susceptible reader the effect of a challenge for minute consideration2 the attention of the writer1 in every minutest detail1 being a pledge that it is worth the reader's while to be attentive too1 that the writer is dealing scrupulously with his instrument1 and therefore1 indirectly1 with the reader himself also1 that he has the science of the instrument he plays on1 perhaps1 after all1 with a freedom which in such case will be the freedom of a master4 ,for meanwhile1 braced only by those restraints1 he is really vindicating his liberty in the making of a vocabulary1 an entire system of composition1 for himself1 his own true manner2 and when we speak of the manner of a true master we mean what is essential in his art4 ,pedantry being only the scholarship of le cuistre 7we have no ,english equivalent7 he is no pedant1 and does but show his intelligence of the rules of language in his freedoms with it1 addition or expansion1 which like the spontaneities of manner in a well-bred person will still further illustrate good taste4--,the right vocabulary6 ,translators have not invariably seen how all-important that is in the work of translation1 driving for the most part at idiom or construction2 whereas1 if the original be first-rate1 one's first care should be with its elementary particles1 ,plato1 for instance1 being often reproducible by an exact following1 with no variation in structure1 of word after word1 as #ae the pencil follows a drawing under tracing-paper1 so only each word or syllable be not of false colour1 to change my illustration a little4 ,well6 that is because any writer worth translating at all has winnowed and searched through his vocabulary1 is conscious of the words he would select in systematic reading of a dictionary1 and still more of the words he would reject were the dictionary other than ,johnson's2 and doing this with his peculiar sense of the world ever in view1 in search of an instrument for the adequate expression of that1 he begets a vocabulary faithful to the colouring of his own spirit1 and in the strictest sense original4 ,that living authority which language needs lies1 in truth1 in its scholars1 who recognising always that every language possesses a genius1 a very fastidious genius1 of its own1 expand at once and purify its very elements1 which must needs change along with the changing thoughts of living people4 ,ninety years ago1 for instance1 great mental force1 certainly1 was needed by ,wordsworth1 to break through the consecrated poetic associations of a century1 and speak the language that was his1 that was to become in a measure the language of the next generation4 ,but he did it with the tact of a scholar also4 ,english1 for a quarter of a century past1 has been assimilating the phraseology of pictorial art2 for half a century1 the phraseology of the great ,german metaphysical movement of eighty years ago2 in part also the #af language of mystical theology3 and none but pedants will regret a great consequent increase of its resources4 ,for many years to come its enterprise may well lie in the naturalisation of the vocabulary of science1 so only it be under the eye of a sensitive scholarship--in a liberal naturalisation of the ideas of science too1 for after all the chief stimulus of good style is to possess a full1 rich1 complex matter to grapple with4 ,the literary artist1 therefore1 will be well aware of physical science2 science also attaining1 in its turn1 its true literary ideal4 ,and then1 as the scholar is nothing without the historic sense1 he will be apt to restore not really obsolete or really worn-out words1 but the finer edge of words still in use3 ascertain1 communicate1 discover--words like these it has been part of our business to misuse4 ,and still1 as language was made for man1 he will be no authority for correctnesses which1 limiting freedom of utterance1 were yet but accidents in their origin2 as if one vowed not to say its1 which ought to have been in ,shakespeare2 his hers1 for inanimate objects1 being but a barbarous and really inexpressive survival4 ,yet we have known many things like this4 ,racy ,saxon monosyllables1 close to us as touch and sight1 he will intermix readily with those long1 savoursome1 ,latin words1 rich in second intention4 ,in this late day certainly1 no critical process can be conducted reasonably without eclecticism4 ,of #ag such eclecticism we have a justifying example in one of the first poets of our time4 ,how illustrative of monosyllabic effect1 of sonorous ,latin1 of the phraseology of science1 of metaphysic1 of colloquialism even1 are the writings of ,tennyson2 yet with what a fine1 fastidious scholarship throughout6 ,a scholar writing for the scholarly1 he will of course leave something to the willing intelligence of his reader4 ,to go preach to the first passer-by1 says ,montaigne1 to become tutor to the ignorance of the first ,i meet1 is a thing ,i abhor2 a thing1 in fact1 naturally distressing to the scholar1 who will therefore ever be shy of offering uncomplimentary assistance to the reader's wit4 ,to really strenuous minds there is a pleasurable stimulus in the challenge for a continuous effort on their part1 to be rewarded by securer and more intimate grasp of the author's sense4 ,self-restraint1 a skilful economy of means1 ascsis1 that too has a beauty of its own2 and for the reader supposed there will be an aesthetic satisfaction in that frugal closeness of style which makes the most of a word1 in the exaction from every sentence of a precise relief1 in the just spacing out of word to thought1 in the logically filled space connected always with the delightful sense of difficulty overcome4 ,different classes of persons1 at different times1 make1 of course1 very various demands upon literature4 ,still1 scholars1 ,i suppose1 and not #ah only scholars1 but all disinterested lovers of books1 will always look to it1 as to all other fine art1 for a refuge1 a sort of cloistral refuge1 from a certain vulgarity in the actual world4 ,a perfect poem like ,lycidas1 a perfect fiction like ,esmond1 the perfect handling of a theory like ,newman's ,idea of a ,university1 has for them something of the uses of a religious retreat4 ,here1 then1 with a view to the central need of a select few1 those men of a finer thread who have formed and maintain the literary ideal1 everything1 every component element1 will have undergone exact trial1 and1 above all1 there will be no uncharacteristic or tarnished or vulgar decoration1 permissible ornament being for the most part structural1 or necessary4 ,as the painter in his picture1 so the artist in his book1 aims at the production by honourable artifice of a peculiar atmosphere4 ,the artist1 says ,schiller1 may be known rather by what he omits2 and in literature1 too1 the true artist may be best recognised by his tact of omission4 ,for to the grave reader words too are grave2 and the ornamental word1 the figure1 the accessory form or colour or reference1 is rarely content to die to thought precisely at the right moment1 but will inevitably linger awhile1 stirring a long brain-wave behind it of perhaps quite alien associations4 ,just there1 it may be1 is the detrimental tendency of the sort of scholarly attentiveness #ai of mind ,i am recommending4 ,but the true artist allows for it4 ,he will remember that1 as the very word ornament indicates what is in itself non-essential1 so the one beauty of all literary style is of its very essence1 and independent1 in prose and verse alike1 of all removable decoration2 that it may exist in its fullest lustre1 as in ,flaubert's ,madame ,bovary1 for instance1 or in ,stendhal's ,le ,rouge et ,le ,noir1 in a composition utterly unadorned1 with hardly a single suggestion of visibly beautiful things4 ,parallel1 allusion1 the allusive way generally1 the flowers in the garden3--he knows the narcotic force of these upon the negligent intelligence to which any diversion1 literally1 is welcome1 any vagrant intruder1 because one can go wandering away with it from the immediate subject4 ,jealous1 if he have a really quickening motive within1 of all that does not hold directly to that1 of the facile1 the otiose1 he will never depart from the strictly pedestrian process1 unless he gains a ponderable something thereby4 ,even assured of its congruity1 he will still question its serviceableness4 ,is it worth while1 can we afford1 to attend to just that1 to just that figure or literary reference1 just then8--,surplusage6 he will dread that1 as the runner on his muscles4 ,for in truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage1 from the last finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the last particle of invisible dust1 back to the earliest divination of #bj the finished work to be1 lying somewhere1 according to ,michelangelo's fancy1 in the rough-hewn block of stone4 ,and what applies to figure or flower must be understood of all other accidental or removable ornaments of writing whatever2 and not of specific ornament only1 but of all that latent colour and imagery which language as such carries in it4 ,a lover of words for their own sake1 to whom nothing about them is unimportant1 a minute and constant observer of their physiognomy1 he will be on the alert not only for obviously mixed metaphors of course1 but for the metaphor that is mixed in all our speech1 though a rapid use may involve no cognition of it4 ,currently recognising the incident1 the colour1 the physical elements or particles in words like absorb1 consider1 extract1 to take the first that occur1 he will avail himself of them1 as further adding to the resources of expression4 ,the elementary particles of language will be realised as colour and light and shade through his scholarly living in the full sense of them4 ,still opposing the constant degradation of language by those who use it carelessly1 he will not treat coloured glass as if it were clear2 and while half the world is using figure unconsciously1 will be fully aware not only of all that latent figurative texture in speech1 but of the vague1 lazy1 half-formed personification--a rhetoric1 depressing1 and worse than nothing1 #ba because it has no really rhetorical motive--which plays so large a part there1 and1 as in the case of more ostentatious ornament1 scrupulously exact of it1 from syllable to syllable1 its precise value4 ,so far ,i have been speaking of certain conditions of the literary art arising out of the medium or material in or upon which it works1 the essential qualities of language and its aptitudes for contingent ornamentation1 matters which define scholarship as science and good taste respectively4 ,they are both subservient to a more intimate quality of good style3 more intimate1 as coming nearer to the artist himself4 ,the otiose1 the facile1 surplusage3 why are these abhorrent to the true literary artist1 except because1 in literary as in all other art1 structure is all-important1 felt1 or painfully missed1 everywhere8--that architectural conception of work1 which foresees the end in the beginning and never loses sight of it1 and in every part is conscious of all the rest1 till the last sentence does but1 with undiminished vigour1 unfold and justify the first--a condition of literary art1 which1 in contradistinction to another quality of the artist himself1 to be spoken of later1 ,i shall call the necessity of mind in style4 ,an acute philosophical writer1 the late ,dean ,mansel 7a writer whose works illustrate the literary beauty there may be in closeness1 and with obvious repression or economy of a fine #bb rhetorical gift7 wrote a book1 of fascinating precision in a very obscure subject1 to show that all the technical laws of logic are but means of securing1 in each and all of its apprehensions1 the unity1 the strict identity with itself1 of the apprehending mind4 ,all the laws of good writing aim at a similar unity or identity of the mind in all the processes by which the word is associated to its import4 ,the term is right1 and has its essential beauty1 when it becomes1 in a manner1 what it signifies1 as with the names of simple sensations4 ,to give the phrase1 the sentence1 the structural member1 the entire composition1 song1 or essay1 a similar unity with its subject and with itself3--style is in the right way when it tends towards that4 ,all depends upon the original unity1 the vital wholeness and identity1 of the initiatory apprehension or view4 ,so much is true of all art1 which therefore requires always its logic1 its comprehensive reason--insight1 foresight1 retrospect1 in simultaneous action--true1 most of all1 of the literary art1 as being of all the arts most closely cognate to the abstract intelligence4 ,such logical coherency may be evidenced not merely in the lines of composition as a whole1 but in the choice of a single word1 while it by no means interferes with1 but may even prescribe1 much variety1 in the building of the sentence for instance1 or in the manner1 argumentative1 descriptive1 discursive1 of this or that #bc part or member of the entire design4 ,the blithe1 crisp sentence1 decisive as a child's expression of its needs1 may alternate with the long-contending1 victoriously intricate sentence2 the sentence1 born with the integrity of a single word1 relieving the sort of sentence in which1 if you look closely1 you can see much contrivance1 much adjustment1 to bring a highly qualified matter into compass at one view4 ,for the literary architecture1 if it is to be rich and expressive1 involves not only foresight of the end in the beginning1 but also development or growth of design1 in the process of execution1 with many irregularities1 surprises1 and afterthoughts2 the contingent as well as the necessary being subsumed under the unity of the whole4 ,as truly1 to the lack of such architectural design1 of a single1 almost visual1 image1 vigorously informing an entire1 perhaps very intricate1 composition1 which shall be austere1 ornate1 argumentative1 fanciful1 yet true from first to last to that vision within1 may be attributed those weaknesses of conscious or unconscious repetition of word1 phrase1 motive1 or member of the whole matter1 indicating1 as ,flaubert was aware1 an original structure in thought not organically complete4 ,with such foresight1 the actual conclusion will most often get itself written out of hand1 before1 in the more obvious sense1 the work is finished4 ,with some strong and leading sense of the world1 the #bd tight hold of which secures true composition and not mere loose accretion1 the literary artist1 ,i suppose1 goes on considerately1 setting joint to joint1 sustained by yet restraining the productive ardour1 retracing the negligences of his first sketch1 repeating his steps only that he may give the reader a sense of secure and restful progress1 readjusting mere assonances even1 that they may soothe the reader1 or at least not interrupt him on his way2 and then1 somewhere before the end comes1 is burdened1 inspired1 with his conclusion1 and betimes delivered of it1 leaving off1 not in weariness and because he finds himself at an end1 but in all the freshness of volition4 ,his work now structurally complete1 with all the accumulating effect of secondary shades of meaning1 he finishes the whole up to the just proportion of that ante-penultimate conclusion1 and all becomes expressive4 ,the house he has built is rather a body he has informed4 ,and so it happens1 to its greater credit1 that the better interest even of a narrative to be recounted1 a story to be told1 will often be in its second reading4 ,and though there are instances of great writers who have been no artists1 an unconscious tact sometimes directing work in which we may detect1 very pleasurably1 many of the effects of conscious art1 yet one of the greatest pleasures of really good prose literature is in the critical tracing out of that conscious artistic structure1 and the pervading sense of it #be as we read4 ,yet of poetic literature too2 for1 in truth1 the kind of constructive intelligence here supposed is one of the forms of the imagination4 ,that is the special function of mind1 in style4 ,mind and soul3--hard to ascertain philosophically1 the distinction is real enough practically1 for they often interfere1 are sometimes in conflict1 with each other4 ,blake1 in the last century1 is an instance of preponderating soul1 embarrassed1 at a loss1 in an era of preponderating mind4 ,as a quality of style1 at all events1 soul is a fact1 in certain writers--the way they have of absorbing language1 of attracting it into the peculiar spirit they are of1 with a subtlety which makes the actual result seem like some inexplicable inspiration4 ,by mind1 the literary artist reaches us1 through static and objective indications of design in his work1 legible to all4 ,by soul1 he reaches us1 somewhat capriciously perhaps1 one and not another1 through vagrant sympathy and a kind of immediate contact4 ,mind we cannot choose but approve where we recognise it2 soul may repel us1 not because we misunderstand it4 ,the way in which theological interests sometimes avail themselves of language is perhaps the best illustration of the force ,i mean to indicate generally in literature1 by the word soul4 ,ardent religious persuasion may exist1 may make its way1 without finding any equivalent heat in language3 or1 again1 it may enkindle #bf words to various degrees1 and when it really takes hold of them doubles its force4 ,religious history presents many remarkable instances in which1 through no mere phrase-worship1 an unconscious literary tact has1 for the sensitive1 laid open a privileged pathway from one to another4 ,the altar-fire1 people say1 has touched those lips6 ,the ,vulgate1 the ,english ,bible1 the ,english ,prayer-,book1 the writings of ,swedenborg1 the ,tracts for the ,times3--there1 we have instances of widely different and largely diffused phases of religious feeling in operation as soul in style4 ,but something of the same kind acts with similar power in certain writers of quite other than theological literature1 on behalf of some wholly personal and peculiar sense of theirs4 ,most easily illustrated by theological literature1 this quality lends to profane writers a kind of religious influence4 ,at their best1 these writers become1 as we say sometimes1 prophets2 such character depending on the effect not merely of their matter1 but of their matter as allied to1 in electric affinity with1 peculiar form1 and working in all cases by an immediate sympathetic contact1 on which account it is that it may be called soul1 as opposed to mind1 in style4 ,and this too is a faculty of choosing and rejecting what is congruous or otherwise1 with a drift towards unity--unity of atmosphere here1 as there of design--soul securing colour 7or perfume1 might #bg we say87 as mind secures form1 the latter being essentially finite1 the former vague or infinite1 as the influence of a living person is practically infinite4 ,there are some to whom nothing has any real interest1 or real meaning1 except as operative in a given person2 and it is they who best appreciate the quality of soul in literary art4 ,they seem to know a person1 in a book1 and make way by intuition3 yet1 although they thus enjoy the completeness of a personal information1 it is still a characteristic of soul1 in this sense of the word1 that it does but suggest what can never be uttered1 not as being different from1 or more obscure than1 what actually gets said1 but as containing that plenary substance of which there is only one phase or facet in what is there expressed4 ,if all high things have their martyrs1 ,gustave ,flaubert might perhaps rank as the martyr of literary style4 ,in his printed correspondence1 a curious series of letters1 written in his twenty-fifth year1 records what seems to have been his one other passion--a series of letters which1 with its fine casuistries1 its firmly repressed anguish1 its tone of harmonious grey1 and the sense of disillusion in which the whole matter ends1 might have been1 a few slight changes supposed1 one of his own fictions4 ,writing to ,madame ,x4 certainly he does display1 by taking thought mainly1 by constant and delicate pondering1 as in his love for literature1 a heart really moved1 but #bh still more1 and as the pledge of that emotion1 a loyalty to his work4 ,madame ,x41 too1 is a literary artist1 and the best gifts he can send her are precepts of perfection in art1 counsels for the effectual pursuit of that better love4 ,in his love-letters it is the pains and pleasures of art he insists on1 its solaces3 he communicates secrets1 reproves1 encourages1 with a view to that4 ,whether the lady was dissatisfied with such divided or indirect service1 the reader is not enabled to see2 but sees that1 on ,flaubert's part at least1 a living person could be no rival of what was1 from first to last1 his leading passion1 a somewhat solitary and exclusive one4 ,i must scold you 7he writes7 for one thing1 which shocks1 scandalises me1 the small concern1 namely1 you show for art just now4 ,as regards glory be it so3 there1 ,i approve4 ,but for art6--the one thing in life that is good and real--can you compare with it an earthly love8--prefer the adoration of a relative beauty to the cultus of the true beauty8 ,well6 ,i tell you the truth4 ,that is the one thing good in me3 the one thing ,i have1 to me estimable4 ,for yourself1 you blend with the beautiful a heap of alien things1 the useful1 the agreeable1 what not8-- ,the only way not to be unhappy is to shut yourself up in art1 and count everything else as nothing4 ,pride takes the place of all beside when it is established on a large basis4 ,work6 ,god wills it4 ,that1 it seems to me1 is clear4-- ,i am reading over again the ,aeneid1 certain verses of which ,i repeat to myself to satiety4 ,there are phrases there which stay in one's head1 by which ,i find myself beset1 as with those musical airs which are for ever returning1 and cause you pain1 you love them so much4 ,i observe that ,i no longer laugh much1 and am no longer depressed4 ,i am ripe4 ,you talk of my serenity1 and envy me4 ,it may well surprise you4 ,sick1 #bi irritated1 the prey a thousand times a day of cruel pain1 ,i continue my labour like a true working-man1 who1 with sleeves turned up1 in the sweat of his brow1 beats away at his anvil1 never troubling himself whether it rains or blows1 for hail or thunder4 ,i was not like that formerly4 ,the change has taken place naturally1 though my will has counted for something in the matter4-- ,those who write in good style are sometimes accused of a neglect of ideas1 and of the moral end1 as if the end of the physician were something else than healing1 of the painter than painting-as if the end of art were not1 before all else1 the beautiful4 ,what1 then1 did ,flaubert understand by beauty1 in the art he pursued with so much fervour1 with so much self-command8 ,let us hear a sympathetic commentator3-- ,possessed of an absolute belief that there exists but one way of expressing one thing1 one word to call it by1 one adjective to qualify1 one verb to animate it1 he gave himself to superhuman labour for the discovery1 in every phrase1 of that word1 that verb1 that epithet4 ,in this way1 he believed in some mysterious harmony of expression1 and when a true word seemed to him to lack euphony still went on seeking another1 with invincible patience1 certain that he had not yet got hold of the unique word4444 ,a thousand preoccupations would beset him at the same moment1 always with this desperate certitude fixed in his spirit3 ,among all the expressions in the world1 all forms and turns of expression1 there is but one--one form1 one mode--to express what ,i want to say4 ,the one word for the one thing1 the one thought1 amid the multitude of words1 terms1 that might just do3 the problem of style was there6--the unique word1 phrase1 sentence1 paragraph1 essay1 or song1 absolutely proper to the single mental presentation or vision within4 #cj ,in that perfect justice1 over and above the many contingent and removable beauties with which beautiful style may charm us1 but which it can exist without1 independent of them yet dexterously availing itself of them1 omnipresent in good work1 in function at every point1 from single epithets to the rhythm of a whole book1 lay the specific1 indispensable1 very intellectual1 beauty of literature1 the possibility of which constitutes it a fine art4 ,one seems to detect the influence of a philosophic idea there1 the idea of a natural economy1 of some pre-existent adaptation1 between a relative1 somewhere in the world of thought1 and its correlative1 somewhere in the world of language--both alike1 rather1 somewhere in the mind of the artist1 desiderative1 expectant1 inventive--meeting each other with the readiness of soul and body reunited1 in ,blake's rapturous design2 and1 in fact1 ,flaubert was fond of giving his theory philosophical expression4-- ,there are no beautiful thoughts 7he would say7 without beautiful forms1 and conversely4 ,as it is impossible to extract from a physical body the qualities which really constitute it--colour1 extension1 and the like--without reducing it to a hollow abstraction1 in a word1 without destroying it2 just so it is impossible to detach the form from the idea1 for the idea only exists by virtue of the form4 ,all1 the recognised flowers1 the removable ornaments of literature 7including harmony and ease in reading aloud1 very carefully considered #ca by him7 counted1 certainly2 for these too are part of the actual value of what one says4 ,but still1 after all1 with ,flaubert1 the search1 the unwearied research1 was not for the smooth1 or winsome1 or forcible word1 as such1 as with false ,ciceronians1 but quite simply and honestly1 for the word's adjustment to its meaning4 ,the first condition of this must be1 of course1 to know yourself1 to have ascertained your own sense exactly4 ,then1 if we suppose an artist1 he says to the reader1--,i want you to see precisely what ,i see4 ,into the mind sensitive to form1 a flood of random sounds1 colours1 incidents1 is ever penetrating from the world without1 to become1 by sympathetic selection1 a part of its very structure1 and1 in turn1 the visible vesture and expression of that other world it sees so steadily within1 nay1 already with a partial conformity thereto1 to be refined1 enlarged1 corrected1 at a hundred points2 and it is just there1 just at those doubtful points that the function of style1 as tact or taste1 intervenes4 ,the unique term will come more quickly to one than another1 at one time than another1 according also to the kind of matter in question4 ,quickness and slowness1 ease and closeness alike1 have nothing to do with the artistic character of the true word found at last4 ,as there is a charm of ease1 so there is also a special charm in the signs of discovery1 of effort and contention towards a due end1 as so often with ,flaubert himself--in the style which has #cb been pliant1 as only obstinate1 durable metal can be1 to the inherent perplexities and recusancy of a certain difficult thought4 ,if ,flaubert had not told us1 perhaps we should never have guessed how tardy and painful his own procedure really was1 and after reading his confession may think that his almost endless hesitation had much to do with diseased nerves4 ,often1 perhaps1 the felicity supposed will be the product of a happier1 a more exuberant nature than ,flaubert's4 ,aggravated1 certainly1 by a morbid physical condition1 that anxiety in seeking the phrase1 which gathered all the other small ennuis of a really quiet existence into a kind of battle1 was connected with his lifelong contention against facile poetry1 facile art--art1 facile and flimsy2 and what constitutes the true artist is not the slowness or quickness of the process1 but the absolute success of the result4 ,as with those labourers in the parable1 the prize is independent of the mere length of the actual day's work4 ,you talk1 he writes1 odd1 trying lover1 to ,madame ,x4-- ,you talk of the exclusiveness of my literary tastes4 ,that might have enabled you to divine what kind of a person ,i am in the matter of love4 ,i grow so hard to please as a literary artist1 that ,i am driven to despair4 ,i shall end by not writing another line4 ,happy1 he cries1 in a moment of discouragement at that patient labour1 which for him1 certainly1 was the condition of a great success--#cc ,happy those who have no doubts of themselves6 who lengthen out1 as the pen runs on1 all that flows forth from their brains4 ,as for me1 ,i hesitate1 ,i disappoint myself1 turn round upon myself in despite3 my taste is augmented in proportion as my natural vigour decreases1 and ,i afflict my soul over some dubious word out of all proportion to the pleasure ,i get from a whole page of good writing4 ,one would have to live two centuries to attain a true idea of any matter whatever4 ,what ,buffon said is a big blasphemy3 genius is not long-continued patience4 ,still1 there is some truth in the statement1 and more than people think1 especially as regards our own day4 ,art6 art6 art6 bitter deception6 phantom that glows with light1 only to lead one on to destruction444 ,again-- ,i am growing so peevish about my writing4 ,i am like a man whose ear is true but who plays falsely on the violin3 his fingers refuse to reproduce precisely those sounds of which he has the inward sense4 ,then the tears come rolling down from the poor scraper's eyes and the bow falls from his hand4 ,coming slowly or quickly1 when it comes1 as it came with so much labour of mind1 but also with so much lustre1 to ,gustave ,flaubert1 this discovery of the word will be1 like all artistic success and felicity1 incapable of strict analysis3 effect of an intuitive condition of mind1 it must be recognised by like intuition on the part of the reader1 and a sort of immediate sense4 ,in every one of those masterly sentences of ,flaubert there was1 below all mere contrivance1 shaping and afterthought1 by some happy instantaneous concourse of the various faculties of the mind with each other1 the exact apprehension of what was needed to carry the meaning4 ,and that it fits with absolute justice will be a judgment of #cd immediate sense in the appreciative reader4 ,we all feel this in what may be called inspired translation4 ,well6 all language involves translation from inward to outward4 ,in literature1 as in all forms of art1 there are the absolute and the merely relative or accessory beauties2 and precisely in that exact proportion of the term to its purpose is the absolute beauty of style1 prose or verse4 ,all the good qualities1 the beauties1 of verse also1 are such1 only as precise expression4 ,in the highest as in the lowliest literature1 then1 the one indispensable beauty is1 after all1 truth3--truth to bare fact in the latter1 as to some personal sense of fact1 diverted somewhat from men's ordinary sense of it1 in the former2 truth there as accuracy1 truth here as expression1 that finest and most intimate form of truth1 the vraie vrit4 ,and what an eclectic principle this really is6 employing for its one sole purpose--that absolute accordance of expression to idea--all other literary beauties and excellences whatever3 how many kinds of style it covers1 explains1 justifies1 and at the same time safeguards6 ,scott's facility1 ,flaubert's deeply pondered evocation of the phrase1 are equally good art4 ,say what you have to say1 what you have a will to say1 in the simplest1 the most direct and exact manner possible1 with no surplusage3--there1 is the justification of the sentence so fortunately born1 entire1 smooth1 and round1 that it needs no punctuation1 and also #ce 7that is the point67 of the most elaborate period1 if it be right in its elaboration4 ,here is the office of ornament3 here also the purpose of restraint in ornament4 ,as the exponent of truth1 that austerity 7the beauty1 the function1 of which in literature ,flaubert understood so well7 becomes not the correctness or purism of the mere scholar1 but a security against the otiose1 a jealous exclusion of what does not really tell towards the pursuit of relief1 of life and vigour in the portraiture of one's sense4 ,license again1 the making free with rule1 if it be indeed1 as people fancy1 a habit of genius1 flinging aside or transforming all that opposes the liberty of beautiful production1 will be but faith to one's own meaning4 ,the seeming baldness of ,le ,rouge et ,le ,noir is nothing in itself2 the wild ornament of ,les ,misrables is nothing in itself2 and the restraint of ,flaubert1 amid a real natural opulence1 only redoubled beauty--the phrase so large and so precise at the same time1 hard as bronze1 in service to the more perfect adaptation of words to their matter4 ,afterthoughts1 retouchings1 finish1 will be of profit only so far as they too really serve to bring out the original1 initiative1 generative1 sense in them4 ,in this way1 according to the well-known saying1 ,the style is the man1 complex or simple1 in his individuality1 his plenary sense of what he really has to say1 his sense of the world2 all cautions regarding style arising out of so many #cf natural scruples as to the medium through which alone he can expose that inward sense of things1 the purity of this medium1 its laws or tricks of refraction3 nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that4 ,style in all its varieties1 reserved or opulent1 terse1 abundant1 musical1 stimulant1 academic1 so long as each is really characteristic or expressive1 finds thus its justification1 the sumptuous good taste of ,cicero being as truly the man himself1 and not another1 justified1 yet insured inalienably to him1 thereby1 as would have been his portrait by ,raffaelle1 in full consular splendour1 on his ivory chair4 ,a relegation1 you may say perhaps--a relegation of style to the subjectivity1 the mere caprice1 of the individual1 which must soon transform it into mannerism4 ,not so6 since there is1 under the conditions supposed1 for those elements of the man1 for every lineament of the vision within1 the one word1 the one acceptable word1 recognisable by the sensitive1 by others who have intelligence in the matter1 as absolutely as ever anything can be in the evanescent and delicate region of human language4 ,the style1 the manner1 would be the man1 not in his unreasoned and really uncharacteristic caprices1 involuntary or affected1 but in absolutely sincere apprehension of what is most real to him4 ,but let us hear our ,french guide again4-- ,styles 7says ,flaubert's commentator71 ,styles1 as so many #cg peculiar moulds1 each of which bears the mark of a particular writer1 who is to pour into it the whole content of his ideas1 were no part of his theory4 ,what he believed in was ,style3 that is to say1 a certain absolute and unique manner of expressing a thing1 in all its intensity and colour4 ,for him the form was the work itself4 ,as in living creatures1 the blood1 nourishing the body1 determines its very contour and external aspect1 just so1 to his mind1 the matter1 the basis1 in a work of art1 imposed1 necessarily1 the unique1 the just expression1 the measure1 the rhythm--the form in all its characteristics4 ,if the style be the man1 in all the colour and intensity of a veritable apprehension1 it will be in a real sense impersonal4 ,i said1 thinking of books like ,victor ,hugo's ,les ,misrables1 that prose literature was the characteristic art of the nineteenth century1 as others1 thinking of its triumphs since the youth of ,bach1 have assigned that place to music4 ,music and prose literature are1 in one sense1 the opposite terms of art2 the art of literature presenting to the imagination1 through the intelligence1 a range of interests1 as free and various as those which music presents to it through sense4 ,and certainly the tendency of what has been here said is to bring literature too under those conditions1 by conformity to which music takes rank as the typically perfect art4 ,if music be the ideal of all art whatever1 precisely because in music it is impossible to distinguish the form from the substance or matter1 the subject from the expression1 then1 literature1 by finding its specific excellence in the absolute correspondence of the term to its import1 will be #ch but fulfilling the condition of all artistic quality in things everywhere1 of all good art4 ,good art1 but not necessarily great art2 the distinction between great art and good art depending immediately1 as regards literature at all events1 not on its form1 but on the matter4 ,thackeray's ,esmond1 surely1 is greater art than ,vanity ,fair1 by the greater dignity of its interests4 ,it is on the quality of the matter it informs or controls1 its compass1 its variety1 its alliance to great ends1 or the depth of the note of revolt1 or the largeness of hope in it1 that the greatness of literary art depends1 as ,the ,divine ,comedy1 ,paradise ,lost1 ,les ,misrables1 ,the ,english ,bible1 are great art4 ,given the conditions ,i have tried to explain as constituting good art2--then1 if it be devoted further to the increase of men's happiness1 to the redemption of the oppressed1 or the enlargement of our sympathies with each other1 or to such presentment of new or old truth about ourselves and our relation to the world as may ennoble and fortify us in our sojourn here1 or immediately1 as with ,dante1 to the glory of ,god1 it will be also great art2 if1 over and above those qualities ,i summed up as mind and soul--that colour and mystic perfume1 and that reasonable structure1 it has something of the soul of humanity in it1 and finds its logical1 its architectural place1 in the great structure of human life4 #ahhh4 ,,notes #ab4 99,mr4 ,saintsbury1 in his ,specimens of ,english ,prose1 from ,malory to ,macaulay1 has succeeded in tracing1 through successive ,english prose-writers1 the tradition of that severer beauty in them1 of which this admirable scholar of our literature is known to be a lover4 ,english ,prose1 from ,mandeville to ,thackeray1 more recently chosen and edited by a younger scholar1 ,mr4 ,arthur ,galton1 of ,new ,college1 ,oxford1 a lover of our literature at once enthusiastic and discreet1 aims at a more various illustration of the eloquent powers of ,english prose1 and is a delightful companion4 #bh4 ,in the original1 the quoted material is not indented but instead appears in a smaller typeface2 ,i have chosen to indent the material half an inch to make it easier to read4 ,,wordsworth #ci ,,some ,english critics at the beginning of the present century had a great deal to say concerning a distinction1 of much importance1 as they thought1 in the true estimate of poetry1 between the ,fancy1 and another more powerful faculty--the ,imagination4 ,this metaphysical distinction1 borrowed originally from the writings of ,german philosophers1 and perhaps not always clearly apprehended by those who talked of it1 involved a far deeper and more vital distinction1 with which indeed all true criticism more or less directly has to do1 the distinction1 namely1 between higher and lower degrees of intensity in the poet's perception of his subject1 and in his concentration of himself upon his work4 ,of those who dwelt upon the metaphysical distinction between the ,fancy and the ,imagination1 it was ,wordsworth who made the most of it1 assuming it as the basis for the final classification of his poetical writings2 and it is in these writings that the deeper and more vital distinction1 which1 as ,i have said1 underlies the metaphysical #dj distinction1 is most needed1 and may best be illustrated4 ,for nowhere is there so perplexed a mixture as in ,wordsworth's own poetry1 of work touched with intense and individual power1 with work of almost no character at all4 ,he has much conventional sentiment1 and some of that insincere poetic diction1 against which his most serious critical efforts were directed3 the reaction in his political ideas1 consequent on the excesses of #agie1 makes him1 at times1 a mere declaimer on moral and social topics2 and he seems1 sometimes1 to force an unwilling pen1 and write by rule4 ,by making the most of these blemishes it is possible to obscure the true aesthetic value of his work1 just as his life also1 a life of much quiet delicacy and independence1 might easily be placed in a false focus1 and made to appear a somewhat tame theme in illustration of the more obvious parochial virtues4 ,and those who wish to understand his influence1 and experience his peculiar savour1 must bear with patience the presence of an alien element in ,wordsworth's work1 which never coalesced with what is really delightful in it1 nor underwent his special power4 ,who that values his writings most has not felt the intrusion there1 from time to time1 of something tedious and prosaic8 ,of all poets equally great1 he would gain most by a skilfully made anthology4 ,such a selection would show1 in truth1 not so much what he was1 or to himself or others #da seemed to be1 as what1 by the more energetic and fertile quality in his writings1 he was ever tending to become4 ,and the mixture in his work1 as it actually stands1 is so perplexed1 that one fears to miss the least promising composition even1 lest some precious morsel should be lying hidden within--the few perfect lines1 the phrase1 the single word perhaps1 to which he often works up mechanically through a poem1 almost the whole of which may be tame enough4 ,he who thought that in all creative work the larger part was given passively1 to the recipient mind1 who waited so dutifully upon the gift1 to whom so large a measure was sometimes given1 had his times also of desertion and relapse2 and he has permitted the impress of these too to remain in his work4 ,and this duality there--the fitfulness with which the higher qualities manifest themselves in it1 gives the effect in his poetry of a power not altogether his own1 or under his control1 which comes and goes when it will1 lifting or lowering a matter1 poor in itself2 so that that old fancy which made the poet's art an enthusiasm1 a form of divine possession1 seems almost literally true of him4 ,this constant suggestion of an absolute duality between higher and lower moods1 and the work done in them1 stimulating one always to look below the surface1 makes the reading of ,wordsworth an excellent sort of training towards the things of art and poetry4 ,it begets in those1 #db who1 coming across him in youth1 can bear him at all1 a habit of reading between the lines1 a faith in the effect of concentration and collectedness of mind in the right appreciation of poetry1 an expectation of things1 in this order1 coming to one by means of a right discipline of the temper as well as of the intellect4 ,he meets us with the promise that he has much1 and something very peculiar1 to give us1 if we will follow a certain difficult way1 and seems to have the secret of a special and privileged state of mind4 ,and those who have undergone his influence1 and followed this difficult way1 are like people who have passed through some initiation1 a disciplina arcani1 by submitting to which they become able constantly to distinguish in art1 speech1 feeling1 manners1 that which is organic1 animated1 expressive1 from that which is only conventional1 derivative1 inexpressive4 ,but although the necessity of selecting these precious morsels for oneself is an opportunity for the exercise of ,wordsworth's peculiar influence1 and induces a kind of just criticism and true estimate of it1 yet the purely literary product would have been more excellent1 had the writer himself purged away that alien element4 ,how perfect would have been the little treasury1 shut between the covers of how thin a book6 ,let us suppose the desired separation made1 the electric thread untwined1 the golden pieces1 #dc great and small1 lying apart together499 ,what are the peculiarities of this residue8 ,what special sense does ,wordsworth exercise1 and what instincts does he satisfy8 ,what are the subjects and the motives which in him excite the imaginative faculty8 ,what are the qualities in things and persons which he values1 the impression and sense of which he can convey to others1 in an extraordinary way8 ,an intimate consciousness of the expression of natural things1 which weighs1 listens1 penetrates1 where the earlier mind passed roughly by1 is a large element in the complexion of modern poetry4 ,it has been remarked as a fact in mental history again and again4 ,it reveals itself in many forms2 but is strongest and most attractive in what is strongest and most attractive in modern literature4 ,it is exemplified1 almost equally1 by writers as unlike each other as ,senancour and ,thophile ,gautier3 as a singular chapter in the history of the human mind1 its growth might be traced from ,rousseau to ,chateaubriand1 from ,chateaubriand to ,victor ,hugo3 it has doubtless some latent connexion with those pantheistic theories which locate an intelligent soul in material things1 and have largely exercised men's minds in some modern systems of philosophy3 it is traceable even in #dd the graver writings of historians3 it makes as much difference between ancient and modern landscape art1 as there is between the rough masks of an early mosaic and a portrait by ,reynolds or ,gainsborough4 ,of this new sense1 the writings of ,wordsworth are the central and elementary expression3 he is more simply and entirely occupied with it than any other poet1 though there are fine expressions of precisely the same thing in so different a poet as ,shelley4 ,there was in his own character a certain contentment1 a sort of inborn religious placidity1 seldom found united with a sensibility so mobile as his1 which was favourable to the quiet1 habitual observation of inanimate1 or imperfectly animate1 existence4 ,his life of eighty years is divided by no very profoundly felt incidents3 its changes are almost wholly inward1 and it falls into broad1 untroubled1 perhaps somewhat monotonous spaces4 ,what it most resembles is the life of one of those early ,italian or ,flemish painters1 who1 just because their minds were full of heavenly visions1 passed1 some of them1 the better part of sixty years in quiet1 systematic industry4 ,this placid life matured a quite unusual sensibility1 really innate in him1 to the sights and sounds of the natural world--the flower and its shadow on the stone1 the cuckoo and its echo4 ,the poem of ,resolution and ,independence is a storehouse of such records3 for its fulness of imagery it may be compared to ,keats's ,saint ,agnes' ,eve4 ,to #de read one of his longer pastoral poems for the first time1 is like a day spent in a new country3 the memory is crowded for a while with its precise and vivid incidents-- ,the pliant harebell swinging in the breeze ,on some grey rock2-- ,the single sheep and the one blasted tree ,and the bleak music from that old stone wall2-- ,in the meadows and the lower ground ,was all the sweetness of a common dawn2-- ,and that green corn all day is rustling in thine ears4 ,clear and delicate at once1 as he is in the outlining of visible imagery1 he is more clear and delicate still1 and finely scrupulous1 in the noting of sounds2 so that he conceives of noble sound as even moulding the human countenance to nobler types1 and as something actually profaned by colour1 by visible form1 or image4 ,he has a power likewise of realising1 and conveying to the consciousness of the reader1 abstract and elementary impressions--silence1 darkness1 absolute motionlessness3 or1 again1 the whole complex sentiment of a particular place1 the abstract expression of desolation in the long white road1 of peacefulness in a particular folding of the hills4 ,in the airy building of the brain1 a special day or hour even1 comes to have for him a sort of personal identity1 a spirit or angel given to it1 by which1 for its exceptional #df insight1 or the happy light upon it1 it has a presence in one's history1 and acts there1 as a separate power or accomplishment2 and he has celebrated in many of his poems the efficacious spirit1 which1 as he says1 resides in these particular spots of time4 ,it is to such a world1 and to a world of congruous meditation thereon1 that we see him retiring in his but lately published poem of ,the ,recluse--taking leave1 without much count of costs1 of the world of business1 of action and ambition2 as also of all that for the majority of mankind counts as sensuous enjoyment499 ,and so it came about that this sense of a life in natural objects1 which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice1 is with ,wordsworth the assertion of what for him is almost literal fact4 ,to him every natural object seemed to possess more or less of a moral or spiritual life1 to be #dg capable of a companionship with man1 full of expression1 of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse4 ,an emanation1 a particular spirit1 belonged1 not to the moving leaves or water only1 but to the distant peak of the hills arising suddenly1 by some change of perspective1 above the nearer horizon1 to the passing space of light across the plain1 to the lichened ,druidic stone even1 for a certain weird fellowship in it with the moods of men4 ,it was like a survival1 in the peculiar intellectual temperament of a man of letters at the end of the eighteenth century1 of that primitive condition1 which some philosophers have traced in the general history of human culture1 wherein all outward objects #dh alike1 including even the works of men's hands1 were believed to be endowed with animation1 and the world was full of souls--that mood in which the old ,greek gods were first begotten1 and which had many strange aftergrowths4 ,in the early ages1 this belief1 delightful as its effects on poetry often are1 was but the result of a crude intelligence4 ,but1 in ,wordsworth1 such power of seeing life1 such perception of a soul1 in inanimate things1 came of an exceptional susceptibility to the impressions of eye and ear1 and was1 in its essence1 a kind of sensuousness4 ,at least1 it is only in a temperament exceptionally susceptible on the sensuous side1 that this sense of the expressiveness of outward things comes to be so large a part of life4 ,that he awakened a sort of thought in sense1 is ,shelley's just estimate of this element in ,wordsworth's poetry4 ,and it was through nature1 thus ennobled by a semblance of passion and thought1 that he approached the spectacle of human life4 ,human life1 indeed1 is for him1 at first1 only an additional1 accidental grace on an expressive landscape4 ,when he thought of man1 it was of man as in the presence and under the influence of these effective natural objects1 and linked to them by many associations4 ,the close connexion of man with natural objects1 the habitual association of his thoughts and feelings with a particular spot of earth1 has sometimes seemed to #di degrade those who are subject to its influence1 as if it did but reinforce that physical connexion of our nature with the actual lime and clay of the soil1 which is always drawing us nearer to our end4 ,but for ,wordsworth1 these influences tended to the dignity of human nature1 because they tended to tranquillise it4 ,by raising nature to the level of human thought he gives it power and expression3 he subdues man to the level of nature1 and gives him thereby a certain breadth and coolness and solemnity4 ,the leech-gatherer on the moor1 the woman stepping westward1 are for him natural objects1 almost in the same sense as the aged thorn1 or the lichened rock on the heath4 ,in this sense the leader of the ,lake ,school1 in spite of an earnest preoccupation with man1 his thoughts1 his destiny1 is the poet of nature4 ,and of nature1 after all1 in its modesty4 ,the ,english lake country has1 of course1 its grandeurs4 ,but the peculiar function of ,wordsworth's genius1 as carrying in it a power to open out the soul of apparently little or familiar things1 would have found its true test had he become the poet of ,surrey1 say6 and the prophet of its life4 ,the glories of ,italy and ,switzerland1 though he did write a little about them1 had too potent a material life of their own to serve greatly his poetic purpose4 ,religious sentiment1 consecrating the affections and natural regrets of the human heart1 above all1 that pitiful awe and care for the #ej perishing human clay1 of which relic-worship is but the corruption1 has always had much to do with localities1 with the thoughts which attach themselves to actual scenes and places4 ,now what is true of it everywhere1 is truest of it in those secluded valleys where one generation after another maintains the same abiding-place2 and it was on this side1 that ,wordsworth apprehended religion most strongly4 ,consisting1 as it did so much1 in the recognition of local sanctities1 in the habit of connecting the stones and trees of a particular spot of earth with the great events of life1 till the low walls1 the green mounds1 the half-obliterated epitaphs seemed full of voices1 and a sort of natural oracles1 the very religion of these people of the dales appeared but as another link between them and the earth1 and was literally a religion of nature4 ,it tranquillised them by bringing them under the placid rule of traditional and narrowly localised observances4 ,grave livers1 they seemed to him1 under this aspect1 with stately speech1 and something of that natural dignity of manners1 which underlies the highest courtesy4 ,and1 seeing man thus as a part of nature1 elevated and solemnised in proportion as his daily life and occupations brought him into companionship with permanent natural objects1 his very religion forming new links for him with the narrow limits of the valley1 the low vaults of his church1 the rough stones of his #ea home1 made intense for him now with profound sentiment1 ,wordsworth was able to appreciate passion in the lowly4 ,he chooses to depict people from humble life1 because1 being nearer to nature than others1 they are on the whole more impassioned1 certainly more direct in their expression of passion1 than other men3 it is for this direct expression of passion1 that he values their humble words4 ,in much that he said in exaltation of rural life1 he was but pleading indirectly for that sincerity1 that perfect fidelity to one's own inward presentations1 to the precise features of the picture within1 without which any profound poetry is impossible4 ,it was not for their tameness1 but for this passionate sincerity1 that he chose incidents and situations from common life1 related in a selection of language really used by men4 ,he constantly endeavours to bring his language near to the real language of men3 to the real language of men1 however1 not on the dead level of their ordinary intercourse1 but in select moments of vivid sensation1 when this language is winnowed and ennobled by excitement4 ,there are poets who have chosen rural life as their subject1 for the sake of its passionless repose1 and times when ,wordsworth himself extols the mere calm and dispassionate survey of things as the highest aim of poetical culture4 ,but it was not for such passionless calm that he preferred the scenes of pastoral life2 and the meditative poet1 sheltering #eb himself1 as it might seem1 from the agitations of the outward world1 is in reality only clearing the scene for the great exhibitions of emotion1 and what he values most is the almost elementary expression of elementary feelings4 ,and so he has much for those who value highly the concentrated presentment of passion1 who appraise men and women by their susceptibility to it1 and art and poetry as they afford the spectacle of it4 ,breaking from time to time into the pensive spectacle of their daily toil1 their occupations near to nature1 come those great elementary feelings1 lifting and solemnising their language and giving it a natural music4 ,the great1 distinguishing passion came to ,michael by the sheepfold1 to ,ruth by the wayside1 adding these humble children of the furrow to the true aristocracy of passionate souls4 ,in this respect1 ,wordsworth's work resembles most that of ,george ,sand1 in those of her novels which depict country life4 ,with a penetrative pathos1 which puts him in the same rank with the masters of the sentiment of pity in literature1 with ,meinhold and ,victor ,hugo1 he collects all the traces of vivid excitement which were to be found in that pastoral world--the girl who rung her father's knell2 the unborn infant feeling about its mother's heart2 the instinctive touches of children2 the sorrows of the wild creatures1 even--their home-sickness1 their strange yearnings2 the tales of passionate regret that hang #ec by a ruined farm-building1 a heap of stones1 a deserted sheepfold2 that gay1 false1 adventurous1 outer world1 which breaks in from time to time to bewilder and deflower these quiet homes2 not passionate sorrow only1 for the overthrow of the soul's beauty1 but the loss of1 or carelessness for personal beauty even1 in those whom men have wronged--their pathetic wanness2 the sailor who1 in his heart1 was half a shepherd on the stormy seas2 the wild woman teaching her child to pray for her betrayer2 incidents like the making of the shepherd's staff1 or that of the young boy laying the first stone of the sheepfold2--all the pathetic episodes of their humble existence1 their longing1 their wonder at fortune1 their poor pathetic pleasures1 like the pleasures of children1 won so hardly in the struggle for bare existence2 their yearning towards each other1 in their darkened houses1 or at their early toil4 ,a sort of biblical depth and solemnity hangs over this strange1 new1 passionate1 pastoral world1 of which he first raised the image1 and the reflection of which some of our best modern fiction has caught from him4 ,he pondered much over the philosophy of his poetry1 and reading deeply in the history of his own mind1 seems at times to have passed the borders of a world of strange speculations1 inconsistent enough1 had he cared to note such inconsistencies1 with those traditional beliefs1 which #ed were otherwise the object of his devout acceptance4 ,thinking of the high value he set upon customariness1 upon all that is habitual1 local1 rooted in the ground1 in matters of religious sentiment1 you might sometimes regard him as one tethered down to a world1 refined and peaceful indeed1 but with no broad outlook1 a world protected1 but somewhat narrowed1 by the influence of received ideas4 ,but he is at times also something very different from this1 and something much bolder4 ,a chance expression is overheard and placed in a new connexion1 the sudden memory of a thing long past occurs to him1 a distant object is relieved for a while by a random gleam of light--accidents turning up for a moment what lies below the surface of our immediate experience--and he passes from the humble graves and lowly arches of the little rock-like pile of a ,westmoreland church1 on bold trains of speculative thought1 and comes1 from point to point1 into strange contact with thoughts which have visited1 from time to time1 far more venturesome1 perhaps errant1 spirits4 ,he had pondered deeply1 for instance1 on those strange reminiscences and forebodings1 which seem to make our lives stretch before and behind us1 beyond where we can see or touch anything1 or trace the lines of connexion4 ,following the soul1 backwards and forwards1 on these endless ways1 his sense of man's dim1 potential powers became a pledge to him1 indeed1 of a future life1 #ee but carried him back also to that mysterious notion of an earlier state of existence--the fancy of the ,platonists--the old heresy of ,origen4 ,it was in this mood that he conceived those oft-reiterated regrets for a half-ideal childhood1 when the relics of ,paradise still clung about the soul--a childhood1 as it seemed1 full of the fruits of old age1 lost for all1 in a degree1 in the passing away of the youth of the world1 lost for each one1 over again1 in the passing away of actual youth4 ,it is this ideal childhood which he celebrates in his famous ,ode on the ,recollections of ,childhood1 and some other poems which may be grouped around it1 such as the lines on ,tintern ,abbey1 and something like what he describes was actually truer of himself than he seems to have understood2 for his own most delightful poems were really the instinctive productions of earlier life1 and most surely for him1 the first diviner influence of this world passed away1 more and more completely1 in his contact with experience4 ,sometimes as he dwelt upon those moments of profound1 imaginative power1 in which the outward object appears to take colour and expression1 a new nature almost1 from the prompting of the observant mind1 the actual world would1 as it were1 dissolve and detach itself1 flake by flake1 and he himself seemed to be the creator1 and when he would the destroyer1 of the world in which he lived--that old isolating thought of many a brain-sick mystic of ancient and modern times4 #ef ,at other times1 again1 in those periods of intense susceptibility1 in which he appeared to himself as but the passive recipient of external influences1 he was attracted by the thought of a spirit of life in outward things1 a single1 all-pervading mind in them1 of which man1 and even the poet's imaginative energy1 are but moments--that old dream of the anima mundi1 the mother of all things and their grave1 in which some had desired to lose themselves1 and others had become indifferent to the distinctions of good and evil4 ,it would come1 sometimes1 like the sign of the macrocosm to ,faust in his cell3 the network of man and nature was seen to be pervaded by a common1 universal life3 a new1 bold thought lifted him above the furrow1 above the green turf of the ,westmoreland churchyard1 to a world altogether different in its vagueness and vastness1 and the narrow glen was full of the brooding power of one universal spirit4 ,and so he has something1 also1 for those who feel the fascination of bold speculative ideas1 who are really capable of rising upon them to conditions of poetical thought4 ,he uses them1 indeed1 always with a very fine apprehension of the limits within which alone philosophical imaginings have any place in true poetry2 and using them only for poetical purposes1 is not too careful even to make them consistent with each other4 ,to him1 theories which for other men #eg bring a world of technical diction1 brought perfect form and expression1 as in those two lofty books of ,the ,prelude1 which describe the decay and the restoration of ,imagination and ,taste4 ,skirting the borders of this world of bewildering heights and depths1 he got but the first exciting influence of it1 that joyful enthusiasm which great imaginative theories prompt1 when the mind first comes to have an understanding of them2 and it is not under the influence of these thoughts that his poetry becomes tedious or loses its blitheness4 ,he keeps them1 too1 always within certain ethical bounds1 so that no word of his could offend the simplest of those simple souls which are always the largest portion of mankind4 ,but it is1 nevertheless1 the contact of these thoughts1 the speculative boldness in them1 which constitutes1 at least for some minds1 the secret attraction of much of his best poetry--the sudden passage from lowly thoughts and places to the majestic forms of philosophical imagination1 the play of these forms over a world so different1 enlarging so strangely the bounds of its humble churchyards1 and breaking such a wild light on the graves of christened children4 ,and these moods always brought with them faultless expression4 ,in regard to expression1 as with feeling and thought1 the duality of the higher and lower moods was absolute4 ,it belonged to the higher1 the imaginative mood1 and was the pledge of its reality1 to bring the #eh appropriate language with it4 ,in him1 when the really poetical motive worked at all1 it united1 with absolute justice1 the word and the idea2 each1 in the imaginative flame1 becoming inseparably one with the other1 by that fusion of matter and form1 which is the characteristic of the highest poetical expression4 ,his words are themselves thought and feeling2 not eloquent1 or musical words merely1 but that sort of creative language which carries the reality of what it depicts1 directly1 to the consciousness4 ,the music of mere metre performs but a limited1 yet a very peculiar and subtly ascertained function1 in ,wordsworth's poetry4 ,with him1 metre is but an additional grace1 accessory to that deeper music of words and sounds1 that moving power1 which they exercise in the nobler prose no less than in formal poetry4 ,it is a sedative to that excitement1 an excitement sometimes almost painful1 under which the language1 alike of poetry and prose1 attains a rhythmical power1 independent of metrical combination1 and dependent rather on some subtle adjustment of the elementary sounds of words themselves to the image or feeling they convey4 ,yet some of his pieces1 pieces prompted by a sort of half-playful mysticism1 like the ,daffodils and ,the ,two ,april ,mornings1 are distinguished by a certain quaint gaiety of metre1 and rival by their perfect execution1 in this respect1 similar pieces among our own ,elizabethan1 or contemporary ,french poetry4 #ei ,and those who take up these poems after an interval of months1 or years perhaps1 may be surprised at finding how well old favourites wear1 how their strange1 inventive turns of diction or thought still send through them the old feeling of surprise4 ,those who lived about ,wordsworth were all great lovers of the older ,english literature1 and oftentimes there came out in him a noticeable likeness to our earlier poets4 ,he quotes unconsciously1 but with new power of meaning1 a clause from one of ,shakespeare's sonnets2 and1 as with some other men's most famous work1 the ,ode on the ,recollections of ,childhood had its anticipator499 ,he drew something too from the unconscious mysticism of the old ,english language itself1 drawing out the inward significance of its racy idiom1 and the not wholly unconscious poetry of the language used by the simplest people under strong excitement--language1 therefore1 at its origin4 ,the office of the poet is not that of the moralist1 and the first aim of ,wordsworth's poetry is to give the reader a peculiar kind of pleasure4 ,but through his poetry1 and through this pleasure in it1 he does actually convey to the reader an extraordinary wisdom in the things of practice4 ,one lesson1 if men must have lessons1 he conveys more clearly than all1 the supreme importance of contemplation in the conduct of life4 #fj ,contemplation--impassioned contemplation--that1 is with ,wordsworth the end-in-itself1 the perfect end4 ,we see the majority of mankind going most often to definite ends1 lower or higher ends1 as their own instincts may determine2 but the end may never be attained1 and the means not be quite the right means1 great ends and little ones alike being1 for the most part1 distant1 and the ways to them1 in this dim world1 somewhat vague4 ,meantime1 to higher or lower ends1 they move too often with something of a sad countenance1 with hurried and ignoble gait1 becoming1 unconsciously1 something like thorns1 in their anxiety to bear grapes2 it being possible for people1 in the pursuit of even great ends1 to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and temper1 thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world1 at its very sources4 ,we understand this when it is a question of mean1 or of intensely selfish ends--of ,grandet1 or ,javert4 ,we think it bad morality to say that the end justifies the means1 and we know how false to all higher conceptions of the religious life is the type of one who is ready to do evil that good may come4 ,we contrast with such dark1 mistaken eagerness1 a type like that of ,saint ,catherine of ,siena1 who made the means to her ends so attractive1 that she has won for herself an undying place in the ,house ,beautiful1 not by her rectitude of soul only1 but by its fairness--by those quite different qualities #fa which commend themselves to the poet and the artist4 ,yet1 for most of us1 the conception of means and ends covers the whole of life1 and is the exclusive type or figure under which we represent our lives to ourselves4 ,such a figure1 reducing all things to machinery1 though it has on its side the authority of that old ,greek moralist who has fixed for succeeding generations the outline of the theory of right living1 is too like a mere picture or description of men's lives as we actually find them1 to be the basis of the higher ethics4 ,it covers the meanness of men's daily lives1 and much of the dexterity with which they pursue what may seem to them the good of themselves or of others2 but not the intangible perfection of those whose ideal is rather in being than in doing--not those manners which are1 in the deepest as in the simplest sense1 morals1 and without which one cannot so much as offer a cup of water to a poor man without offence--not the part of antique ,rachel1 sitting in the company of ,beatrice2 and even the moralist might well endeavour rather to withdraw men from the too exclusive consideration of means and ends1 in life4 ,against this predominance of machinery in our existence1 ,wordsworth's poetry1 like all great art and poetry1 is a continual protest4 ,justify rather the end by the means1 it seems to say3 whatever may become of the fruit1 make sure of #fb the flowers and the leaves4 ,it was justly said1 therefore1 by one who had meditated very profoundly on the true relation of means to ends in life1 and on the distinction between what is desirable in itself and what is desirable only as machinery1 that when the battle which he and his friends were waging had been won1 the world would need more than ever those qualities which ,wordsworth was keeping alive and nourishing499 ,that the end of life is not action but contemplation--being as distinct from doing--a certain disposition of the mind3 is1 in some shape or other1 the principle of all the higher morality4 ,in poetry1 in art1 if you enter into their true spirit at all2 you touch this principle1 in a measure3 these1 by their very sterility1 are a type of beholding for the mere joy of beholding4 ,to treat life in the spirit of art1 is to make life a thing in which means and ends are identified3 to encourage such treatment1 the true moral significance of art and poetry4 ,wordsworth1 and other poets who have been like him in ancient or more recent times1 are the masters1 the experts1 in this art of impassioned contemplation4 ,their work is1 not to teach lessons1 or enforce rules1 or even to stimulate us to noble ends2 but to withdraw the thoughts for a little while from the mere machinery of life1 to fix #fc them1 with appropriate emotions1 on the spectacle of those great facts in man's existence which no machinery affects1 on the great and universal passions of men1 the most general and interesting of their occupations1 and the entire world of nature1--on the operations of the elements and the appearances of the visible universe1 on storm and sunshine1 on the revolutions of the seasons1 on cold and heat1 on loss of friends and kindred1 on injuries and resentments1 on gratitude and hope1 on fear and sorrow4 ,to witness this spectacle with appropriate emotions is the aim of all culture2 and of these emotions poetry like ,wordsworth's is a great nourisher and stimulant4 ,he sees nature full of sentiment and excitement2 he sees men and women as parts of nature1 passionate1 excited1 in strange grouping and connexion with the grandeur and beauty of the natural world3--images1 in his own words1 of man suffering1 amid awful forms and powers4 ,such is the figure of the more powerful and original poet1 hidden away1 in part1 under those weaker elements in ,wordsworth's poetry1 which for some minds determine their entire character2 a poet somewhat bolder and more passionate than might at first sight be supposed1 but not too bold for true poetical taste2 an unimpassioned writer1 you might sometimes fancy1 yet thinking the chief aim1 in life and art alike1 to be a certain deep emotion2 seeking most often the great #fd elementary passions in lowly places2 having at least this condition of all impassioned work1 that he aims always at an absolute sincerity of feeling and diction1 so that he is the true forerunner of the deepest and most passionate poetry of our own day2 yet going back also1 with something of a protest against the conventional fervour of much of the poetry popular in his own time1 to those older ,english poets1 whose unconscious likeness often comes out in him4 #ahgd4 ,,notes #dc4 99,since this essay was written1 such selections have been made1 with excellent taste1 by ,matthew ,arnold and ,professor ,knight4 #df-dg4 99,in ,wordsworth's prefatory advertisement to the first edition of ,the ,prelude1 published in #ahej1 it is stated that that work was intended to be introductory to ,the ,recluse2 and that ,the ,recluse1 if completed1 would have consisted of three parts4 ,the second part is ,the ,excursion4 ,the third part was only planned2 but the first book of the first part was left in manuscript by ,wordsworth--though in manuscript1 it is said1 in no great condition of forwardness for the printers4 ,this book1 now for the first time printed in extenso 7a very noble passage from it found place in that prose advertisement to ,the ,excursion71 is included in the latest edition of ,wordsworth by ,mr4 ,john ,morley4 ,it was well worth adding to the poet's great bequest to ,english literature4 ,a true student of his work1 who has formulated for himself what he supposes to be the leading characteristics of ,wordsworth's genius1 will feel1 we think1 lively interest in testing them by the various fine passages in what is here presented for the first time4 ,let the following serve for a sample3-- ,thickets full of songsters1 and the voice ,of lordly birds1 an unexpected sound ,heard now and then from morn to latest eve1 ,admonishing the man who walks below ,of solitude and silence in the sky3-- ,these have we1 and a thousand nooks of earth ,have also these1 but nowhere else is found1 ,nowhere 7or is it fancy87 can be found ,the one sensation that is here2 'tis here1 ,here as it found its way into my heart ,in childhood1 here as it abides by day1 ,by night1 here only2 or in chosen minds ,that take it with them hence1 where'er they go4 --',tis1 but ,i cannot name it1 'tis the sense ,of majesty1 and beauty1 and repose1 ,a blended holiness of earth and sky1 ,something that makes this individual spot1 ,this small abiding-place of many men1 ,a termination1 and a last retreat1 ,a centre1 come from wheresoe'er you will1 ,a whole without dependence or defect1 ,made for itself1 and happy in itself1 ,perfect contentment1 ,unity entire4 #ei4 99,henry ,vaughan1 in ,the ,retreat4 #fb4 99,see an interesting paper1 by ,mr4 ,john ,morley1 on ,the ,death of ,mr4 ,mill1 ,fortnightly ,review1 ,june #ahgc4 ,,coleridge99 #fe ,,forms of intellectual and spiritual culture sometimes exercise their subtlest and most artful charm when life is already passing from them4 ,searching and irresistible as are the changes of the human spirit on its way to perfection1 there is yet so much elasticity of temper that what must pass away sooner or later is not disengaged all at once1 even from the highest order of minds4 ,nature1 which by one law of development evolves ideas1 hypotheses1 modes of inward life1 and represses them in turn1 has in this way provided that the earlier growth should propel its fibres into the later1 and so transmit the whole of its forces in an unbroken continuity of life4 ,then comes the spectacle of the reserve of the elder generation exquisitely refined by the antagonism of the new4 ,that current of new life chastens them while they contend against it4 ,weaker minds fail to perceive the change3 the clearest minds abandon themselves to it4 ,to #ff feel the change everywhere1 yet not abandon oneself to it1 is a situation of difficulty and contention4 ,communicating1 in this way1 to the passing stage of culture1 the charm of what is chastened1 high-strung1 athletic1 they yet detach the highest minds from the past1 by pressing home its difficulties and finally proving it impossible4 ,such has been the charm of many leaders of lost causes in philosophy and in religion4 ,it is the special charm of ,coleridge1 in connexion with those older methods of philosophic inquiry1 over which the empirical philosophy of our day has triumphed4 ,modern thought is distinguished from ancient by its cultivation of the relative spirit in place of the absolute4 ,ancient philosophy sought to arrest every object in an eternal outline1 to fix thought in a necessary formula1 and the varieties of life in a classification by kinds1 or genera4 ,to the modern spirit nothing is1 or can be rightly known1 except relatively and under conditions4 ,the philosophical conception of the relative has been developed in modern times through the influence of the sciences of observation4 ,those sciences reveal types of life evanescing into each other by inexpressible refinements of change4 ,things pass into their opposites by accumulation of undefinable quantities4 ,the growth of those sciences consists in a continual analysis of facts of rough and general observation into groups of facts more precise and minute4 #fg ,the faculty for truth is recognised as a power of distinguishing and fixing delicate and fugitive detail4 ,the moral world is ever in contact with the physical1 and the relative spirit has invaded moral philosophy from the ground of the inductive sciences4 ,there it has started a new analysis of the relations of body and mind1 good and evil1 freedom and necessity4 ,hard and abstract moralities are yielding to a more exact estimate of the subtlety and complexity of our life4 ,always1 as an organism increases in perfection1 the conditions of its life become more complex4 ,man is the most complex of the products of nature4 ,character merges into temperament3 the nervous system refines itself into intellect4 ,man's physical organism is played upon not only by the physical conditions about it1 but by remote laws of inheritance1 the vibration of long-past acts reaching him in the midst of the new order of things in which he lives4 ,when we have estimated these conditions he is still not yet simple and isolated2 for the mind of the race1 the character of the age1 sway him this way or that through the medium of language and current ideas4 ,it seems as if the most opposite statements about him were alike true3 he is so receptive1 all the influences of nature and of society ceaselessly playing upon him1 so that every hour in his life is unique1 changed altogether by a stray word1 or glance1 or touch4 ,it is the truth of these relations that experience #fh gives us1 not the truth of eternal outlines ascertained once for all1 but a world of fine gradations and subtly linked conditions1 shifting intricately as we ourselves change--and bids us1 by a constant clearing of the organs of observation and perfecting of analysis1 to make what we can of these4 ,to the intellect1 the critical spirit1 just these subtleties of effect are more precious than anything else4 ,what is lost in precision of form is gained in intricacy of expression4 ,it is no vague scholastic abstraction that will satisfy the speculative instinct in our modern minds4 ,who would change the colour or curve of a rose-leaf for that ousia akhrmatos1 askhmatistos1 anaphs--that colourless1 formless1 intangible1 being--,plato put so high8 ,for the true illustration of the speculative temper is not the ,hindoo mystic1 lost to sense1 understanding1 individuality1 but one such as ,goethe1 to whom every moment of life brought its contribution of experimental1 individual knowledge2 by whom no touch of the world of form1 colour1 and passion was disregarded4 ,now the literary life of ,coleridge was a disinterested struggle against the relative spirit4 ,with a strong native bent towards the tracking of all questions1 critical or practical1 to first principles1 he is ever restlessly scheming to apprehend the absolute1 to affirm it effectively1 to get it acknowledged4 ,it was an effort1 surely1 an effort of sickly thought1 that saddened his #fi mind1 and limited the operation of his unique poetic gift4 ,so what the reader of our own generation will least find in ,coleridge's prose writings is the excitement of the literary sense4 ,and yet1 in those grey volumes1 we have the larger part of the production of one who made way ever by a charm1 the charm of voice1 of aspect1 of language1 above all by the intellectual charm of new1 moving1 luminous ideas4 ,perhaps the chief offence in ,coleridge is an excess of seriousness1 a seriousness arising not from any moral principle1 but from a misconception of the perfect manner4 ,there is a certain shade of unconcern1 the perfect manner of the eighteenth century1 which may be thought to mark complete culture in the handling of abstract questions4 ,the humanist1 the possessor of that complete culture1 does not weep over the failure of a theory of the quantification of the predicate1 nor shriek over the fall of a philosophical formula4 ,a kind of humour is1 in truth1 one of the conditions of the just mental attitude1 in the criticism of by-past stages of thought4 ,humanity cannot afford to be too serious about them1 any more than a man of good sense can afford to be too serious in looking back upon his own childhood4 ,plato1 whom ,coleridge claims as the first of his spiritual ancestors1 ,plato1 as we remember him1 a true humanist1 holds his theories lightly1 glances with a somewhat blithe and naive inconsequence from #gj one view to another1 not anticipating the burden of importance views will one day have for men4 ,in reading him one feels how lately it was that ,croesus thought it a paradox to say that external prosperity was not necessarily happiness4 ,but on ,coleridge lies the whole weight of the sad reflection that has since come into the world1 with which for us the air is full1 which the children in the market-place repeat to each other4 ,his very language is forced and broken lest some saving formula should be lost--distinctities1 enucleation1 pentad of operative ,christianity2 he has a whole armoury of these terms1 and expects to turn the tide of human thought by fixing the sense of such expressions as reason1 understanding1 idea4 ,again1 he lacks the jealousy of a true artist in excluding all associations that have no colour1 or charm1 or gladness in them2 and everywhere allows the impress of a somewhat inferior theological literature4 ,i was driven from life in motion to life in thought and sensation3 so ,coleridge sums up his childhood1 with its delicacy1 its sensitiveness1 and passion4 ,but at twenty-five he was exercising a wonderful charm1 and had already defined for himself his peculiar line of intellectual activity4 ,he had an odd1 attractive gift of conversation1 or rather of monologue1 as ,madame de ,stal observed of him1 full of bizarreries1 with the rapid alternations of a dream1 and here or there an unexpected summons into a world #ga strange to the hearer1 abounding in images drawn from a sort of divided imperfect life1 the consciousness of the opium-eater1 as of one to whom the external world penetrated only in part1 and1 blent with all this1 passages of deep obscurity1 precious1 if at all1 only for their musical cadence1 echoes in ,coleridge of the eloquence of those older ,english writers of whom he was so ardent a lover4 ,and all through this brilliant early manhood we may discern the power of the ,asiatic temperament1 of that voluptuousness1 which is connected perhaps with his appreciation of the intimacy1 the almost mystical communion of touch1 between nature and man4 ,i am much better1 he writes1 and my new and tender health is all over me like a voluptuous feeling4 ,and whatever fame1 or charm1 or life-inspiring gift he has had as a speculative thinker1 is the vibration of the interest he excited then1 the propulsion into years which clouded his early promise of that first buoyant1 irresistible1 self-assertion4 ,so great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal life1 of even a temporary escape of the spirit from routine4 ,in #agih he visited ,germany1 then1 the only half-known1 promised land1 of the metaphysical1 the absolute1 philosophy4 ,a beautiful fragment of this period remains1 describing a spring excursion to the ,brocken4 ,his excitement still vibrates in it4 ,love1 all joyful states #gb of mind1 are self-expressive3 they loosen the tongue1 they fill the thoughts with sensuous images1 they harmonise one with the world of sight4 ,we hear of the rich graciousness and courtesy of ,coleridge's manner1 of the white and delicate skin1 the abundant black hair1 the full1 almost animal lips--that whole physiognomy of the dreamer1 already touched with narcotism4 ,one says1 of the beginning of one of his ,unitarian sermons3 ,his voice rose like a stream of rich1 distilled perfumes2 another1 ,he talks like an angel1 and does--nothing6 ,the ,aids to ,reflection1 ,the ,friend1 ,the ,biographia ,literaria3 those books came from one whose vocation was in the world of the imagination1 the theory and practice of poetry4 ,and yet1 perhaps1 of all books that have been influential in modern times1 they are furthest from artistic form--bundles of notes2 the original matter inseparably mixed up with that borrowed from others2 the whole1 just that mere preparation for an artistic effect which the finished literary artist would be careful one day to destroy4 ,here1 again1 we have a trait profoundly characteristic of ,coleridge4 ,he sometimes attempts to reduce a phase of thought1 subtle and exquisite1 to conditions too rough for it4 ,he uses a purely speculative gift for direct moral edification4 ,scientific truth is a thing fugitive1 relative1 full of fine gradations3 he tries to fix it in absolute formulas4 ,the ,aids to ,reflection1 ,the ,friend1 are #gc efforts to propagate the volatile spirit of conversation into the less ethereal fabric of a written book2 and it is only here or there that the poorer matter becomes vibrant1 is really lifted by the spirit4 ,de ,quincey said of him that he wanted better bread than can be made with wheat3 ,lamb1 that from childhood he had hungered for eternity4 ,yet the faintness1 the continuous dissolution1 whatever its cause1 which soon supplanted the buoyancy of his first wonderful years1 had its own consumptive refinements1 and even brought1 as to the ,beautiful ,soul in ,wilhelm ,meister1 a faint religious ecstasy--that singing in the sails which is not of the breeze4 ,here again is one of his occasional notes3-- ,in looking at objects of nature while ,i am thinking1 as at yonder moon1 dim-glimmering through the window-pane1 ,i seem rather to be seeking1 as it were asking1 a symbolical language for something within me1 that already and for ever exists1 than observing anything new4 ,even when the latter is the case1 yet still ,i have always an obscure feeling1 as if that new phenomenon were the dim awaking of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature4 ,while ,i was preparing the pen to make this remark1 ,i lost the train of thought which had led me to it4 ,what a distemper of the eye of the mind6 ,what an almost bodily distemper there is in that6 ,coleridge's intellectual sorrows were many2 #gd but he had one singular intellectual happiness4 ,with an inborn taste for transcendental philosophy1 he lived just at the time when that philosophy took an immense spring in ,germany1 and connected itself with an impressive literary movement4 ,he had the good luck to light upon it in its freshness1 and introduce it to his countrymen4 ,what an opportunity for one reared on the colourless analytic ,english philosophies of the last century1 but who feels an irresistible attraction towards bold metaphysical synthesis6 ,how rare are such occasions of intellectual contentment6 ,this transcendental philosophy1 chiefly as systematised by the mystic ,schelling1 ,coleridge applied with an eager1 unwearied subtlety1 to the questions of theology1 and poetic or artistic criticism4 ,it is in his theory of poetry1 of art1 that he comes nearest to principles of permanent truth and importance3 that is the least fugitive part of his prose work4 ,what1 then1 is the essence of his philosophy of art--of imaginative production8 ,generally1 it may be described as an attempt to reclaim the world of art as a world of fixed laws1 to show that the creative activity of genius and the simplest act of thought are but higher and lower products of the laws of a universal logic4 ,criticism1 feeling its own inadequacy in dealing with the greater works of art1 is sometimes tempted to make too much of those dark and capricious suggestions of genius1 which even #ge the intellect possessed by them is unable to explain or recall4 ,it has seemed due to the half-sacred character of those works to ignore all analogy between the productive process by which they had their birth1 and the simpler processes of mind4 ,coleridge1 on the other hand1 assumes that the highest phases of thought must be more1 not less1 than the lower1 subject to law4 ,with this interest1 in the ,biographia ,literaria1 he refines ,schelling's ,philosophy of ,nature into a theory of art4 ,there can be no plagiarism in philosophy1 says ,heine3--,es giebt kein ,plagiat in der ,philosophie1 in reference to the charge brought against ,schelling of unacknowledged borrowing from ,bruno2 and certainly that which is common to ,coleridge and ,schelling and ,bruno alike is of far earlier origin than any of them4 ,schellingism1 the ,philosophy of ,nature1 is indeed a constant tradition in the history of thought3 it embodies a permanent type of the speculative temper4 ,that mode of conceiving nature as a mirror or reflex of the intelligence of man may be traced up to the first beginnings of ,greek speculation4 ,there are two ways of envisaging those aspects of nature which seem to bear the impress of reason or intelligence4 ,there is the deist's way1 which regards them merely as marks of design1 which separates the informing mind from its result in nature1 as the mechanist from the machine2 and there is the pantheistic way1 which identifies the two1 which #gf regards nature itself as the living energy of an intelligence of the same kind as though vaster in scope than the human4 ,partly through the influence of mythology1 the ,greek mind became early possessed with the conception of nature as living1 thinking1 almost speaking to the mind of man4 ,this unfixed poetical prepossession1 reduced to an abstract form1 petrified into an idea1 is the force which gives unity of aim to ,greek philosophy4 ,little by little1 it works out the substance of the ,hegelian formula3 ,whatever is1 is according to reason3 whatever is according to reason1 that is4 ,experience1 which has gradually saddened the earth's colours for us1 stiffened its motions1 withdrawn from it some blithe and debonair presence1 has quite changed the character of the science of nature1 as we understand it4 ,the positive method1 in truth1 makes very little account of marks of intelligence in nature3 in its wider view of phenomena1 it sees that those instances are a minority1 and may rank as happy coincidences3 it absorbs them in the larger conception of universal mechanical law4 ,but the suspicion of a mind latent in nature1 struggling for release1 and intercourse with the intellect of man through true ideas1 has never ceased to haunt a certain class of minds4 ,started again and again in successive periods by enthusiasts on the antique pattern1 in each case the thought may have seemed paler and more fantastic amid the growing #gg consistency and sharpness of outline of other and more positive forms of knowledge4 ,still1 wherever the speculative instinct has been united with a certain poetic inwardness of temperament1 as in ,bruno1 in ,schelling1 there that old ,greek conception1 like some seed floating in the air1 has taken root and sprung up anew4 ,coleridge1 thrust inward upon himself1 driven from life in thought and sensation to life in thought only1 feels already1 in his dark ,london school1 a thread of the ,greek mind on this matter vibrating strongly in him4 ,at fifteen he is discoursing on ,plotinus1 as in later years he reflects from ,schelling that flitting intellectual tradition4 ,he supposes a subtle1 sympathetic co-ordination between the ideas of the human reason and the laws of the natural world4 ,science1 the real knowledge of that natural world1 is to be attained1 not by observation1 experiment1 analysis1 patient generalisation1 but by the evolution or recovery of those ideas directly from within1 by a sort of ,platonic recollection2 every group of observed facts remaining an enigma until the appropriate idea is struck upon them from the mind of a ,newton1 or a ,cuvier1 the genius in whom sympathy with the universal reason becomes entire4 ,in the next place1 he conceives that this reason or intelligence in nature becomes reflective1 or self-conscious4 ,he fancies he can trace1 through all the simpler forms of life1 fragments of an eloquent prophecy about the #gh human mind4 ,the whole of nature he regards as a development of higher forms out of the lower1 through shade after shade of systematic change4 ,the dim stir of chemical atoms towards the axis of crystal form1 the trance-like life of plants1 the animal troubled by strange irritabilities1 are stages which anticipate consciousness4 ,all through the ever-increasing movement of life that was shaping itself2 every successive phase of life1 in its unsatisfied susceptibilities1 seeming to be drawn out of its own limits by the more pronounced current of life on its confines1 the shadow of approaching humanity gradually deepening1 the latent intelligence winning a way to the surface4 ,and at this point the law of development does not lose itself in caprice3 rather it becomes more constraining and incisive4 ,from the lowest to the very highest acts of the conscious intelligence1 there is another series of refining shades4 ,gradually the mind concentrates itself1 frees itself from the limitations of the particular1 the individual1 attains a strange power of modifying and centralising what it receives from without1 according to the pattern of an inward ideal4 ,at last1 in imaginative genius1 ideas become effective3 the intelligence of nature1 all its discursive elements now connected and justified1 is clearly reflected2 the interpretation of its latent purposes being embodied in the great central products of creative art4 ,the secret of creative #gi genius would be an exquisitely purged sympathy with nature1 with the reasonable soul antecedent there4 ,those associative conceptions of the imagination1 those eternally fixed types of action and passion1 would come1 not so much from the conscious invention of the artist1 as from his self-surrender to the suggestions of an abstract reason or ideality in things3 they would be evolved by the stir of nature itself1 realising the highest reach of its dormant reason3 they would have a kind of prevenient necessity to rise at some time to the surface of the human mind4 ,it is natural that ,shakespeare should be the favourite illustration of such criticism1 whether in ,england or ,germany4 ,the first suggestion in ,shakespeare is that of capricious detail1 of a waywardness that plays with the parts careless of the impression of the whole2 what supervenes is the constraining unity of effect1 the ineffaceable impression1 of ,hamlet or ,macbeth4 ,his hand moving freely is curved round as if by some law of gravitation from within3 an energetic unity or identity makes itself visible amid an abounding variety4 ,this unity or identity ,coleridge exaggerates into something like the identity of a natural organism1 and the associative act which effected it into something closely akin to the primitive power of nature itself4 ,in the ,shakespearian drama1 he says1 there is a vitality which grows and evolves itself from within4 #hj ,again-- ,he1 too1 worked in the spirit of nature1 by evolving the germ from within1 by the imaginative power1 according to the idea4 ,for as the power of seeing is to light1 so is an idea in mind to a law in nature4 ,they are correlatives which suppose each other4 ,again-- ,the organic form is innate3 it shapes1 as it develops1 itself from within1 and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form4 ,such as the life is1 such is the form4 ,nature1 the prime1 genial artist1 inexhaustible in diverse powers1 is equally inexhaustible in forms3 each exterior is the physiognomy of the being within1 and even such is the appropriate excellence of ,shakespeare1 himself a nature humanised1 a genial understanding1 directing self-consciously a power and an implicit wisdom deeper even than our consciousness4 ,in this late age we are become so familiarised with the greater works of art as to be little sensitive of the act of creation in them3 they do not impress us as a new presence in the world4 ,only sometimes1 in productions which realise immediately a profound influence and enforce a change in taste1 we are actual witnesses of the moulding of an unforeseen type by some new principle of association2 and to that phenomenon ,coleridge wisely recalls our attention4 ,what makes his view a one-sided one is1 that in it the artist has become almost a mechanical agent3 instead of the most luminous and self-possessed phase of consciousness1 the associative act in art or poetry is made to look like some blindly organic process of assimilation4 ,the work of art is likened to a living organism4 ,that expresses #ha truly the sense of a self-delighting1 independent life which the finished work of art gives us3 it hardly figures the process by which such work was produced4 ,here there is no blind ferment of lifeless elements towards the realisation of a type4 ,by exquisite analysis the artist attains clearness of idea2 then1 through many stages of refining1 clearness of expression4 ,he moves slowly over his work1 calculating the tenderest tone1 and restraining the subtlest curve1 never letting hand or fancy move at large1 gradually enforcing flaccid spaces to the higher degree of expressiveness4 ,the philosophic critic1 at least1 will value1 even in works of imagination1 seemingly the most intuitive1 the power of the understanding in them1 their logical process of construction1 the spectacle of a supreme intellectual dexterity which they afford4 ,coleridge's prose writings on philosophy1 politics1 religion1 and criticism1 were1 in truth1 but one element in a whole lifetime of endeavours to present the then recent metaphysics of ,germany to ,english readers1 as a legitimate expansion of the older1 classical and native masters of what has been variously called the a priori1 or absolute1 or spiritual1 or ,platonic1 view of things4 ,his criticism1 his challenge for recognition in the concrete1 visible1 finite work of art1 of the dim1 unseen1 comparatively infinite1 soul or power of the artist1 may well be #hb remembered as part of the long pleading of ,german culture for the things behind the veil4 ,to introduce that spiritual philosophy1 as represented by the more transcendental parts of ,kant1 and by ,schelling1 into all subjects1 as a system of reason in them1 one and ever identical with itself1 however various the matter through which it was diffused1 became with him the motive of an unflagging enthusiasm1 which seems to have been the one thread of continuity in a life otherwise singularly wanting in unity of purpose1 and in which he was certainly far from uniformly at his best4 ,fragmentary and obscure1 but often eloquent1 and always at once earnest and ingenious1 those writings1 supplementing his remarkable gift of conversation1 were directly and indirectly influential1 even on some the furthest removed from ,coleridge's own masters2 on ,john ,stuart ,mill1 for instance1 and some of the earlier writers of the high-church school4 ,like his verse1 they display him also in two other characters--as a student of words1 and as a psychologist1 that is1 as a more minute observer or student than other men of the phenomena of mind4 ,to note the recondite associations of words1 old or new2 to expound the logic1 the reasonable soul1 of their various uses2 to recover the interest of older writers who had had a phraseology of their own--this was a vein of inquiry allied to his undoubted gift of tracking out and analysing curious modes of thought4 ,a #hc quaint fragment of verse on ,human ,life might serve to illustrate his study of the earlier ,english philosophical poetry4 ,the latter gift1 that power of the subtle-souled psychologist1 as ,shelley calls him1 seems to have been connected with some tendency to disease in the physical temperament1 something of a morbid want of balance in those parts where the physical and intellectual elements mix most closely together1 with a kind of languid visionariness1 deep-seated in the very constitution of the narcotist1 who had quite a gift for plucking the poisons of self-harm1 and which the actual habit of taking opium1 accidentally acquired1 did but reinforce4 ,this morbid languor of nature1 connected both with his fitfulness of purpose and his rich delicate dreaminess1 qualifies ,coleridge's poetic composition even more than his prose2 his verse1 with the exception of his avowedly political poems1 being1 unlike that of the ,lake ,school1 to which in some respects he belongs1 singularly unaffected by any moral1 or professional1 or personal effort or ambition1--written1 as he says1 after the more violent emotions of sorrow1 to give him pleasure1 when perhaps nothing else could2 but coming thus1 indeed1 very close to his own most intimately personal characteristics1 and having a certain languidly soothing grace or cadence1 for its most fixed quality1 from first to last4 ,after some ,platonic soliloquy on a flower opening on a fine day in ,february1 he goes on-- #hd ,dim similitudes ,weaving in mortal strains1 ,i've stolen one hour ,from anxious self1 life's cruel taskmaster6 ,and the warm wooings of this sunny day ,tremble along my frame and harmonise ,the attempered organ1 that even saddest thoughts ,mix with some sweet sensations1 like harsh tunes ,played deftly on a sweet-toned instrument4 ,the expression of two opposed1 yet allied1 elements of sensibility in these lines1 is very true to ,coleridge3--the grievous agitation1 the grievous listlessness1 almost never entirely relieved1 together with a certain physical voluptuousness4 ,he has spoken several times of the scent of the bean-field in the air3--the tropical touches in a chilly climate2 his is a nature that will make the most of these1 which finds a sort of caress in such things4 ,kubla ,khan1 the fragment of a poem actually composed in some certainly not quite healthy sleep1 is perhaps chiefly of interest as showing1 by the mode of its composition1 how physical1 how much of a diseased or valetudinarian temperament1 in its moments of relief1 ,coleridge's happiest gift really was2 and side by side with ,kubla ,khan should be read1 as ,coleridge placed it1 the ,pains of ,sleep1 to illustrate that retarding physical burden in his temperament1 that unimpassioned grief1 the source of which lay so near the source of those pleasures4 ,connected also with this1 and again in contrast with ,wordsworth1 is the limited quantity of his poetical performance1 as he himself #he regrets so eloquently in the lines addressed to ,wordsworth after his recitation of ,the ,prelude4 ,it is like some exotic plant1 just managing to blossom a little in the somewhat un-english air of ,coleridge's own south-western birthplace1 but never quite well there4 ,in #agih he joined ,wordsworth in the composition of a volume of poems--the ,lyrical ,ballads4 ,what ,wordsworth then wrote already vibrates with that blithe impulse which carried him to final happiness and self-possession4 ,in ,coleridge we feel already that faintness and obscure dejection which clung like some contagious damp to all his work4 ,wordsworth was to be distinguished by a joyful and penetrative conviction of the existence of certain latent affinities between nature and the human mind1 which reciprocally gild the mind and nature with a kind of heavenly alchemy4 ,my voice proclaims ,how exquisitely the individual mind 7,and the progressive powers1 perhaps1 no less ,of the whole species7 to the external world ,is fitted2 and how exquisitely1 too1 ,the external world is fitted to the mind2 ,and the creation1 by no lower name ,can it be called1 which they with blended might ,accomplish4 ,in ,wordsworth this took the form of an unbroken dreaming over the aspects and transitions of nature--a reflective1 though altogether unformulated1 analysis of them4 #hf ,there are in ,coleridge's poems expressions of this conviction as deep as ,wordsworth's4 ,but ,coleridge could never have abandoned himself to the dream1 the vision1 as ,wordsworth did1 because the first condition of such abandonment must be an unvexed quietness of heart4 ,no one can read the ,lines composed above ,tintern without feeling how potent the physical element was among the conditions of ,wordsworth's genius--felt in the blood and felt along the heart4 ,my whole life ,i have lived in quiet thought6 ,the stimulus which most artists require of nature he can renounce4 ,he leaves the ready-made glory of the ,swiss mountains that he may reflect glory on a mouldering leaf4 ,he loves best to watch the floating thistledown1 because of its hint at an unseen life in the air4 ,coleridge's temperament1 aei en sphodra orexei1 with its faintness1 its grieved dejection1 could never have been like that4 ,my genial spirits fail2 ,and what can these avail ,to lift the smothering weight from off my breast8 ,it were a vain endeavour1 ,though ,i should gaze for ever ,on that green light that lingers in the west ,i may not hope from outward forms to win ,the passion and the life whose fountains are within4 ,wordsworth's flawless temperament1 his fine mountain atmosphere of mind1 that calm1 sabbatic1 mystic1 wellbeing which ,de ,quincey1 #hg a little cynically1 connected with worldly 7that is to say1 pecuniary7 good fortune1 kept his conviction of a latent intelligence in nature within the limits of sentiment or instinct1 and confined it to those delicate and subdued shades of expression which alone perfect art allows4 ,in ,coleridge's sadder1 more purely intellectual1 cast of genius1 what with ,wordsworth was sentiment or instinct became a philosophical idea1 or philosophical formula1 developed1 as much as possible1 after the abstract and metaphysical fashion of the transcendental schools of ,germany4 ,the period of ,coleridge's residence at ,nether ,stowey1 #agig-agih1 was for him the annus mirabilis4 ,nearly all the chief works by which his poetic fame will live were then composed or planned4 ,what shapes itself for criticism as the main phenomenon of ,coleridge's poetic life1 is not1 as with most true poets1 the gradual development of a poetic gift1 determined1 enriched1 retarded1 by the actual circumstances of the poet's life1 but the sudden blossoming1 through one short season1 of such a gift already perfect in its kind1 which thereafter deteriorates as suddenly1 with something like premature old age4 ,connecting this phenomenon with the leading motive of his prose writings1 we might note it as the deterioration of a productive or creative power into one merely metaphysical or discursive4 ,in his unambitious conception of his function as a poet1 and in the very limited quantity of his #hh poetical performance1 as ,i have said1 he was a contrast to his friend ,wordsworth4 ,that friendship with ,wordsworth1 the chief developing circumstance of his poetic life1 comprehended a very close intellectual sympathy2 and in such association chiefly1 lies whatever truth there may be in the popular classification of ,coleridge as a member of what is called the ,lake ,school4 ,coleridge's philosophical speculations do really turn on the ideas which underlay ,wordsworth's poetical practice4 ,his prose works are one long explanation of all that is involved in that famous distinction between the ,fancy and the ,imagination4 ,of what is understood by both writers as the imaginative quality in the use of poetic figures1 we may take some words of ,shakespeare as an example4-- ,my cousin ,suffolk1 ,my soul shall thine keep company to heaven ,tarry1 sweet soul1 for mine1 then fly abreast4 ,the complete infusion here of the figure into the thought1 so vividly realised1 that1 though birds are not actually mentioned1 yet the sense of their flight1 conveyed to us by the single word abreast1 comes to be more than half of the thought itself3--this1 as the expression of exalted feeling1 is an instance of what ,coleridge meant by ,imagination4 ,and this sort of identification of the poet's thought1 of himself1 with the image or figure which serves him1 is the secret1 sometimes1 #hi of a singularly entire realisation of that image1 such as makes these lines of ,coleridge1 for instance1 imaginative-- ,amid the howl of more than wintry storms1 ,the halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours ,already on the wing4 ,there are many such figures both in ,coleridge's verse and prose4 ,he has1 too1 his passages of that sort of impassioned contemplation on the permanent and elementary conditions of nature and humanity1 which ,wordsworth held to be the essence of a poet2 as it would be his proper function to awaken such contemplation in other men--those moments1 as ,coleridge says1 addressing him-- ,moments awful1 ,now in thy inner life1 and now abroad1 ,when power streamed from thee1 and thy soul received ,the light reflected1 as a light bestowed4 ,the entire poem from which these lines are taken1 composed on the night after ,wordsworth's recitation of a poem on the growth of an individual mind1 is1 in its high-pitched strain of meditation1 and in the combined justice and elevation of its philosophical expression-- high and passionate thoughts ,to their own music chanted2 wholly sympathetic with ,the ,prelude which it celebrates1 and of which the subject is1 in effect1 the generation of the spirit of the ,lake poetry4 #ij ,the ,lines to ,joseph ,cottle have the same philosophically imaginative character2 the ,ode to ,dejection being ,coleridge's most sustained effort of this kind4 ,it is in a highly sensitive apprehension of the aspects of external nature that ,coleridge identifies himself most closely with one of the main tendencies of the ,lake ,school2 a tendency instinctive1 and no mere matter of theory1 in him as in ,wordsworth4 ,that record of the green light ,which lingers in the west1 and again1 of the western sky1 ,and its peculiar tint of yellow green1 which ,byron found ludicrously untrue1 but which surely needs no defence1 is a characteristic example of a singular watchfulness for the minute fact and expression of natural scenery pervading all he wrote--a closeness to the exact physiognomy of nature1 having something to do with that idealistic philosophy which sees in the external world no mere concurrence of mechanical agencies1 but an animated body1 informed and made expressive1 like the body of man1 by an indwelling intelligence4 ,it was a tendency1 doubtless1 in the air1 for ,shelley too is affected by it1 and ,turner1 with the school of landscape which followed him4 ,i had found1 ,coleridge tells us1 #ia ,that outward forms1 the loftiest1 still receive ,their finer influence from the world within2 ,fair ciphers of vague import1 where the eye ,traces no spot1 in which the heart may read ,history and prophecy3444 and this induces in him no indifference to actual colour and form and process1 but such minute realism as this-- ,the thin grey cloud is spread on high1 ,it covers but not hides the sky4 ,the moon is behind and at the full2 ,and yet she looks both small and dull2 or this1 which has a touch of romantic weirdness-- ,nought was green upon the oak ,but moss and rarest misletoe or this-- ,there is not wind enough to twirl ,the one red leaf1 the last of its clan1 ,that dances as often as dance it can1 ,hanging so light1 and hanging so high1 ,on the topmost twig that looks up at the sky or this1 with a weirdness1 again1 like that of some wild ,french etcher-- ,lo6 the new-moon winter-bright6 ,and overspread with phantom light 7,with swimming phantom light o'erspread1 ,but rimmed and circled with a silver thread7 ,i see the old moon in her lap1 foretelling ,the coming on of rain and squally blast4 ,he has a like imaginative apprehension of the silent and unseen processes of nature1 its ministries #ib of dew and frost1 for instance2 as when he writes1 in ,april-- ,a balmy night6 and though the stars be dim1 ,yet let us think upon the vernal showers ,that gladden the green earth1 and we shall find ,a pleasure in the dimness of the stars4 ,of such imaginative treatment of landscape there is no better instance than the description of ,the ,dell1 in ,fears in ,solitude-- ,a green and silent spot amid the hills1 ,a small and silent dell6 ,o'er stiller place ,no singing skylark ever poised himself-- ,but the dell1 ,bathed by the mist is fresh and delicate ,as vernal cornfield1 or the unripe flax ,when1 through its half-transparent stalks1 at eve1 ,the level sunshine glimmers with green light3-- ,the gust that roared and died away ,to the distant tree-- heard and only heard ,in this low dell1 bowed not the delicate grass4 ,this curious insistence of the mind on one particular spot1 till it seems to attain actual expression and a sort of soul in it--a mood so characteristic of the ,lake ,school--occurs in an earnest political poem1 written in ,april #agih1 during the alarm of an invasion2 and that silent dell is the background against which the tumultuous fears of the poet are in strong relief1 while the quiet sense of the place1 maintained all through them1 gives a true poetic unity to the piece4 ,good political poetry--#ic political poetry that shall be permanently moving--can1 perhaps1 only be written on motives which1 for those they concern1 have ceased to be open questions1 and are really beyond argument2 while ,coleridge's political poems are for the most part on open questions4 ,for although it was a great part of his intellectual ambition to subject political questions to the action of the fundamental ideas of his philosophy1 he was nevertheless an ardent partisan1 first on one side1 then on the other1 of the actual politics proper to the end of the last and the beginning of the present century1 where there is still room for much difference of opinion4 ,yet ,the ,destiny of ,nations1 though formless as a whole1 and unfinished1 presents many traces of his most elevated manner of speculation1 cast into that sort of imaginative philosophical expression1 in which1 in effect1 the language itself is inseparable from1 or essentially a part of1 the thought4 ,france1 an ,ode1 begins with a famous apostrophe to ,liberty-- ,ye ,clouds6 that far above me float and pause1 ,whose pathless march no mortal may control6 ,ye ,ocean-waves6 that wheresoe'er ye roll1 ,yield homage only to eternal laws6 ,ye ,woods6 that listen to the night-bird's singing1 ,midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined1 ,save when your own imperious branches swinging1 ,have made a solemn music of the wind6 ,where like a man beloved of ,god1 ,through glooms which never woodman trod1 ,how oft1 pursuing fancies holy1 #id ,my moonlight way o'er flowering weeds ,i wound1 ,inspired1 beyond the guess of folly1 ,by each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound6 ,o ye loud ,waves6 and ,o ye ,forests high6 ,and ,o ye ,clouds that far above me soar'd6 ,thou rising ,sun6 thou blue rejoicing ,sky6 ,yea1 everything that is and will be free6 ,bear witness for me1 wheresoe'er ye be1 ,with what deep worship ,i have still adored ,the spirit of divinest liberty4 ,and the whole ode1 though1 after ,coleridge's way1 not quite equal to that exordium1 is an example of strong national sentiment1 partly in indignant reaction against his own earlier sympathy with the ,french ,republic1 inspiring a composition which1 in spite of some turgid lines1 really justifies itself as poetry1 and has that true unity of effect which the ode requires4 ,liberty1 after all his hopes of young ,france1 is only to be found in nature3-- ,thou speedest on thy subtle pinions1 ,the guide of homeless winds1 and playmate of the waves6 ,in his changes of political sentiment1 ,coleridge was associated with the ,lake ,school2 and there is yet one other very different sort of sentiment in which he is one with that school1 yet all himself1 his sympathy1 namely1 with the animal world4 ,that was a sentiment connected at once with the love of outward nature in himself and in the ,lake ,school1 and its assertion of the natural affections in their simplicity2 with the homeliness and pity1 consequent upon #ie that assertion4 ,the ,lines to a ,young ,ass1 tethered-- ,where the close-eaten grass is scarcely seen1 ,while sweet around her waves the tempting green1 which had seemed merely whimsical in their day1 indicate a vein of interest constant in ,coleridge's poems1 and at its height in his greatest poems--in ,christabel1 where it has its effect1 as it were antipathetically1 in the vivid realisation of the serpentine element in ,geraldine's nature2 and in ,the ,ancient ,mariner1 whose fate is interwoven with that of the wonderful bird1 at whose blessing of the water-snakes the curse for the death of the albatross passes away1 and where the moral of the love of all creatures1 as a sort of religious duty1 is definitely expressed4 ,christabel1 though not printed till #ahaf1 was written mainly in the year #agig3 ,the ,rhyme of the ,ancient ,mariner was printed as a contribution to the ,lyrical ,ballads in #agih2 and these two poems belong to the great year of ,coleridge's poetic production1 his twenty-fifth year4 ,in poetic quality1 above all in that most poetic of all qualities1 a keen sense of1 and delight in beauty1 the infection of which lays hold upon the reader1 they are quite out of proportion to all his other compositions4 ,the form in both is that of the ballad1 with some of its terminology1 and some also of its quaint conceits4 ,they connect themselves with that revival of ballad literature1 of which ,percy's ,relics1 and1 in another #if way1 ,macpherson's ,ossian are monuments1 and which afterwards so powerfully affected ,scott-- ,young-eyed poesy ,all deftly masked as hoar antiquity4 ,the ,ancient ,mariner1 as also1 in its measure1 ,christabel1 is a romantic poem1 impressing us by bold invention1 and appealing to that taste for the supernatural1 that longing for le frisson1 a shudder1 to which the romantic school in ,germany1 and its derivations in ,england and ,france1 directly ministered4 ,in ,coleridge1 personally1 this taste had been encouraged by his odd and out-of-the-way reading in the old-fashioned literature of the marvellous--books like ,purchas's ,pilgrims1 early voyages like ,hakluyt's1 old naturalists and visionary moralists1 like ,thomas ,burnet1 from whom he quotes the motto of ,the ,ancient ,mariner1 ,facile credo1 plures esse naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate1 etc4 ,fancies of the strange things which may very well happen1 even in broad daylight1 to men shut up alone in ships far off on the sea1 seem to have occurred to the human mind in all ages with a peculiar readiness1 and often have about them1 from the story of the stealing of ,dionysus downwards1 the fascination of a certain dreamy grace1 which distinguishes them from other kinds of marvellous inventions4 ,this sort of fascination ,the ,ancient ,mariner brings to its highest degree3 it is the delicacy1 the dreamy #ig grace1 in his presentation of the marvellous1 which makes ,coleridge's work so remarkable4 ,the too palpable intruders from a spiritual world in almost all ghost literature1 in ,scott and ,shakespeare even1 have a kind of crudity or coarseness4 ,coleridge's power is in the very fineness with which1 as by some really ghostly finger1 he brings home to our inmost sense his inventions1 daring as they are--the skeleton ship1 the polar spirit1 the inspiriting of the dead corpses of the ship's crew4 ,the ,rhyme of the ,ancient ,mariner has the plausibility1 the perfect adaptation to reason and the general aspect of life1 which belongs to the marvellous1 when actually presented as part of a credible experience in our dreams4 ,doubtless1 the mere experience of the opium-eater1 the habit he must almost necessarily fall into of noting the more elusive phenomena of dreams1 had something to do with that3 in its essence1 however1 it is connected with a more purely intellectual circumstance in the development of ,coleridge's poetic gift4 ,some one once asked ,william ,blake1 to whom ,coleridge has many resemblances1 when either is at his best 7that whole episode of the re-inspiriting of the ship's crew in ,the ,ancient ,mariner being comparable to ,blake's well-known design of the ,morning ,stars singing together7 whether he had ever seen a ghost1 and was surprised when the famous seer1 who ought1 one might think1 to have seen so many1 answered frankly1 ,only #ih once6 ,his spirits1 at once more delicate1 and so much more real1 than any ghost--the burden1 as they were the privilege1 of his temperament--like it1 were an integral element in his everyday life4 ,and the difference of mood expressed in that question and its answer1 is indicative of a change of temper in regard to the supernatural which has passed over the whole modern mind1 and of which the true measure is the influence of the writings of ,swedenborg4 ,what that change is we may see if we compare the vision by which ,swedenborg was called1 as he thought1 to his work1 with the ghost which called ,hamlet1 or the spells of ,marlowe's ,faust with those of ,goethe's4 ,the modern mind1 so minutely self-scrutinising1 if it is to be affected at all by a sense of the supernatural1 needs to be more finely touched than was possible in the older1 romantic presentment of it4 ,the spectral object1 so crude1 so impossible1 has become plausible1 as ,the blot upon the brain1 ,that will show itself without2 and is understood to be but a condition of one's own mind1 for which1 according to the scepticism1 latent at least1 in so much of our modern philosophy1 the so-called real things themselves are but spectra after all4 ,it is this finer1 more delicately marvellous supernaturalism1 fruit of his more delicate #ii psychology1 that ,coleridge infuses into romantic adventure1 itself also then a new or revived thing in ,english literature2 and with a fineness of weird effect in ,the ,ancient ,mariner1 unknown in those older1 more simple1 romantic legends and ballads4 ,it is a flower of medieval or later ,german romance1 growing up in the peculiarly compounded atmosphere of modern psychological speculation1 and putting forth in it wholly new qualities4 ,the quaint prose commentary1 which runs side by side with the verse of ,the ,ancient ,mariner1 illustrates this--a composition of quite a different shade of beauty and merit from that of the verse which it accompanies1 connecting this1 the chief poem of ,coleridge1 with his philosophy1 and emphasising therein that psychological interest of which ,i have spoken1 its curious soul-lore4 ,completeness1 the perfectly rounded wholeness and unity of the impression it leaves on the mind of a reader who fairly gives himself to it--that1 too1 is one of the characteristics of a really excellent work1 in the poetic as in every other kind of art2 and by this completeness1 ,the ,ancient ,mariner certainly gains upon ,christabel--a completeness1 entire as that of ,wordsworth's ,leech-gatherer1 or ,keats's ,saint ,agnes' ,eve1 each typical in its way of such wholeness or entirety of effect on a careful reader4 ,it is ,coleridge's one great complete work1 the one really finished thing1 in a life of many beginnings4 ,christabel remained a fragment4 ,in ,the ,ancient ,mariner #ajj this unity is secured in part by the skill with which the incidents of the marriage-feast are made to break in dreamily from time to time upon the main story4 ,and then1 how pleasantly1 how reassuringly1 the whole nightmare story itself is made to end1 among the clear fresh sounds and lights of the bay1 where it began1 with ,the moon-light steeped in silentness1 ,the steady weather-cock4 ,so different from ,the ,rhyme of the ,ancient ,mariner in regard to this completeness of effect1 ,christabel illustrates the same complexion of motives1 a like intellectual situation4 ,here1 too1 the work is of a kind peculiar to one who touches the characteristic motives of the old romantic ballad1 with a spirit made subtle and fine by modern reflection2 as we feel1 ,i think1 in such passages as-- ,but though my slumber had gone by1 ,this dream it would not pass away-- ,it seems to live upon mine eye2 and-- ,for she1 belike1 hath drunken deep ,of all the blessedness of sleep2 and again-- ,with such perplexity of mind ,as dreams too lively leave behind4 ,and that gift of handling the finer passages of human feeling1 at once with power and delicacy1 which was another result of his finer psychology1 #aja of his exquisitely refined habit of self-reflection1 is illustrated by a passage on ,friendship in the ,second ,part-- ,alas6 they had been friends in youth2 ,but whispering tongues can poison truth2 ,and constancy lives in realms above2 ,and life is thorny2 and youth is vain2 ,and to be wroth with one we love1 ,doth work like madness in the brain4 ,and thus it chanced1 as ,i divine1 ,with ,roland and ,sir ,leoline4 ,each spake words of high disdain ,and insult to his heart's best brother ,they parted--ne'er to meet again6 ,but never either found another ,to free the hollow heart from paining-- ,they stood aloof the scars remaining1 ,like cliffs which had been rent asunder2 ,a dreary sea now flows between2 ,but neither heat1 nor frost1 nor thunder1 ,shall wholly do away1 ,i ween1 ,the marks of that which once hath been4 ,i suppose these lines leave almost every reader with a quickened sense of the beauty and compass of human feeling2 and it is the sense of such richness and beauty which1 in spite of his dejection1 in spite of that burden of his morbid lassitude1 accompanies ,coleridge himself through life4 ,a warm poetic joy in everything beautiful1 whether it be a moral sentiment1 like the friendship of ,roland and ,leoline1 or only the flakes of falling light from the water-snakes--this joy1 visiting him1 now and again1 after sickly dreams1 in sleep or waking1 as a relief not to be forgotten1 #ajb and with such a power of felicitous expression that the infection of it passes irresistibly to the reader--such is the predominant element in the matter of his poetry1 as cadence is the predominant quality of its form4 ,we bless thee for our creation6 he might have said1 in his later period of definite religious assent1 because the world is so beautiful3 the world of ideas--living spirits1 detached from the divine nature itself1 to inform and lift the heavy mass of material things2 the world of man1 above all in his melodious and intelligible speech2 the world of living creatures and natural scenery2 the world of dreams4 ,what he really did say1 by way of ,a ,tombless ,epitaph1 is true enough of himself-- ,sickness1 'tis true1 ,whole years of weary days1 besieged him close1 ,even to the gates and inlets of his life6 ,but it is true1 no less1 that strenuous1 firm1 ,and with a natural gladness1 he maintained ,the citadel unconquered1 and in joy ,was strong to follow the delightful ,muse4 ,for not a hidden path1 that to the shades ,of the beloved ,parnassian forest leads1 ,lurked undiscovered by him2 not a rill ,there issues from the fount of ,hippocrene1 ,but he had traced it upward to its source1 ,through open glade1 dark glen1 and secret dell1 ,knew the gay wild flowers on its banks1 and culled ,its med'cinable herbs4 ,yea1 oft alone1 ,piercing the long-neglected holy cave1 ,the haunt obscure of old ,philosophy1 ,he bade with lifted torch its starry walls ,sparkle1 as erst they sparkled to the flame #ajc ,of odorous lamps tended by saint and sage4 ,o framed for calmer times and nobler hearts6 ,o studious ,poet1 eloquent for truth6 ,philosopher6 contemning wealth and death1 ,yet docile1 childlike1 full of ,life and ,love4 ,the student of empirical science asks1 ,are absolute principles attainable8 ,what are the limits of knowledge8 ,the answer he receives from science itself is not ambiguous4 ,what the moralist asks is1 ,shall we gain or lose by surrendering human life to the relative spirit8 ,experience answers that the dominant tendency of life is to turn ascertained truth into a dead letter1 to make us all the phlegmatic servants of routine4 ,the relative spirit1 by its constant dwelling on the more fugitive conditions or circumstances of things1 breaking through a thousand rough and brutal classifications1 and giving elasticity to inflexible principles1 begets an intellectual finesse of which the ethical result is a delicate and tender justice in the criticism of human life4 ,who would gain more than ,coleridge by criticism in such a spirit8 ,we know how his life has appeared when judged by absolute standards4 ,we see him trying to apprehend the absolute1 to stereotype forms of faith and philosophy1 to attain1 as he says1 fixed principles in politics1 morals1 and religion1 to fix one mode of life as the essence of life1 refusing to see the parts as parts only2 and all the time his own pathetic history pleads for a more #ajd elastic moral philosophy than his1 and cries out against every formula less living and flexible than life itself4 ,from his childhood he hungered for eternity4 ,there1 after all1 is the incontestable claim of ,coleridge4 ,the perfect flower of any elementary type of life must always be precious to humanity1 and ,coleridge is a true flower of the ennuy1 of the type of ,ren4 ,more than ,childe ,harold1 more than ,werther1 more than ,ren himself1 ,coleridge1 by what he did1 what he was1 and what he failed to do1 represents that inexhaustible discontent1 languor1 and homesickness1 that endless regret1 the chords of which ring all through our modern literature4 ,it is to the romantic element in literature that those qualities belong4 ,one day1 perhaps1 we may come to forget the distant horizon1 with full knowledge of the situation1 to be content with what is here and now2 and herein is the essence of classical feeling4 ,but by us of the present moment1 certainly--by us for whom the ,greek spirit1 with its engaging naturalness1 simple1 chastened1 debonair1 tryphs1 habrottos1 khlids1 kharitn1 himerou1 pothou patr1 is itself the ,sangrail of an endless pilgrimage1 ,coleridge1 with his passion for the absolute1 for something fixed where all is moving1 his faintness1 his broken memory1 his intellectual disquiet1 may still be ranked among the interpreters of one of the constituent elements of our life4 #ahfe1 #ahhj4 ,,notes #fe4 99,the latter part of this paper1 like that on ,dante ,gabriel ,rossetti1 was contributed to ,mr4 ,t4 ,h4 ,ward's ,english ,poets4 #fh4 ,transliteration3 ousia akhrmatos1 askhmatistos1 anaphs4 ,translation3 the colorless1 utterly formless1 intangible essence4 ,phaedrus #bdg;,c4 #hj4 ,the two passages are not indented in the original2 they are in smaller typeface that makes for difficult reading4 #hf4 ,transliteration3 aei en sphodra orexei4 ,translation3 always greatly yearning4 #ajd4 ,transliteration3 tryphs1 habrottos1 khlids1 kharitn1 himerou1 pothou patr4 ,translation3 ,of daintiness1 delicacy1 luxury1 graces1 father of desire4 ,,charles ,,lamb #aje ,,those ,english critics who at the beginning of the present century introduced from ,germany1 together with some other subtleties of thought transplanted hither not without advantage1 the distinction between the ,fancy and the ,imagination1 made much also of the cognate distinction between ,wit and ,humour1 between that unreal and transitory mirth1 which is as the crackling of thorns under the pot1 and the laughter which blends with tears and even with the sublimities of the imagination1 and which1 in its most exquisite motives1 is one with pity--the laughter of the comedies of ,shakespeare1 hardly less expressive than his moods of seriousness or solemnity1 of that deeply stirred soul of sympathy in him1 as flowing from which both tears and laughter are alike genuine and contagious4 ,this distinction between wit and humour1 ,coleridge and other kindred critics applied1 with much effect1 in their studies of some of our older ,english writers4 ,and as the distinction between imagination and fancy1 made popular by ,wordsworth1 #ajf found its best justification in certain essential differences of stuff in ,wordsworth's own writings1 so this other critical distinction1 between wit and humour1 finds a sort of visible interpretation and instance in the character and writings of ,charles ,lamb2--one who lived more consistently than most writers among subtle literary theories1 and whose remains are still full of curious interest for the student of literature as a fine art4 ,the author of the ,english ,humourists of the ,eighteenth ,century1 coming to the humourists of the nineteenth1 would have found1 as is true preeminently of ,thackeray himself1 the springs of pity in them deepened by the deeper subjectivity1 the intenser and closer living with itself1 which is characteristic of the temper of the later generation2 and therewith1 the mirth also1 from the amalgam of which with pity humour proceeds1 has become1 in ,charles ,dickens1 for example1 freer and more boisterous4 ,to this more high-pitched feeling1 since predominant in our literature1 the writings of ,charles ,lamb1 whose life occupies the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth1 are a transition2 and such union of grave1 of terrible even1 with gay1 we may note in the circumstances of his life1 as reflected thence into his work4 ,we catch the aroma of a singular1 homely sweetness about his first years1 spent on ,thames' side1 amid the red #ajg bricks and terraced gardens1 with their rich historical memories of old-fashioned legal ,london4 ,just above the poorer class1 deprived1 as he says1 of the sweet food of academic institution1 he is fortunate enough to be reared in the classical languages at an ancient school1 where he becomes the companion of ,coleridge1 as at a later period he was his enthusiastic disciple4 ,so far1 the years go by with less than the usual share of boyish difficulties2 protected1 one fancies1 seeing what he was afterwards1 by some attraction of temper in the quaint child1 small and delicate1 with a certain ,jewish expression in his clear1 brown complexion1 eyes not precisely of the same colour1 and a slow walk adding to the staidness of his figure2 and whose infirmity of speech1 increased by agitation1 is partly engaging4 ,and the cheerfulness of all this1 of the mere aspect of ,lamb's quiet subsequent life also1 might make the more superficial reader think of him as in himself something slight1 and of his mirth as cheaply bought4 ,yet we know that beneath this blithe surface there was something of the fateful domestic horror1 of the beautiful heroism and devotedness too1 of old ,greek tragedy4 ,his sister ,mary1 ten years his senior1 in a sudden paroxysm of madness1 caused the death of her mother1 and was brought to trial for what an overstrained justice might have construed as the greatest of crimes4 ,she was #ajh released on the brother's pledging himself to watch over her2 and to this sister1 from the age of twenty-one1 ,charles ,lamb sacrificed himself1 seeking thenceforth1 says his earliest biographer1 no connexion which could interfere with her supremacy in his affections1 or impair his ability to sustain and comfort her4 ,the feverish1 romantic tie of love1 he cast away in exchange for the charities of home4 ,only1 from time to time1 the madness returned1 affecting him too1 once2 and we see the brother and sister voluntarily yielding to restraint4 ,in estimating the humour of ,elia1 we must no more forget the strong undercurrent of this great misfortune and pity1 than one could forget it in his actual story4 ,so he becomes the best critic1 almost the discoverer1 of ,webster1 a dramatist of genius so sombre1 so heavily coloured1 so macabre4 ,rosamund ,grey1 written in his twenty-third year1 a story with something bitter and exaggerated1 an almost insane fixedness of gloom perceptible in it1 strikes clearly this note in his work4 ,for himself1 and from his own point of view1 the exercise of his gift1 of his literary art1 came to gild or sweeten a life of monotonous labour1 and seemed1 as far as regarded others1 no very important thing2 availing to give them a little pleasure1 and inform them a little1 chiefly in a retrospective manner1 but in no way concerned with the turning of the tides of the great world4 ,and yet this very modesty1 this unambitious #aji way of conceiving his work1 has impressed upon it a certain exceptional enduringness4 ,for of the remarkable ,english writers contemporary with ,lamb1 many were greatly preoccupied with ideas of practice--religious1 moral1 political--ideas which have since1 in some sense or other1 entered permanently into the general consciousness2 and1 these having no longer any stimulus for a generation provided with a different stock of ideas1 the writings of those who spent so much of themselves in their propagation have lost1 with posterity1 something of what they gained by them in immediate influence4 ,coleridge1 ,wordsworth1 ,shelley even--sharing so largely in the unrest of their own age1 and made personally more interesting thereby1 yet1 of their actual work1 surrender more to the mere course of time than some of those who may have seemed to exercise themselves hardly at all in great matters1 to have been little serious1 or a little indifferent1 regarding them4 ,of this number of the disinterested servants of literature1 smaller in ,england than in ,france1 ,charles ,lamb is one4 ,in the making of prose he realises the principle of art for its own sake1 as completely as ,keats in the making of verse4 ,and1 working ever close to the concrete1 to the details1 great or small1 of actual things1 books1 persons1 and with no part of them blurred to his vision by the intervention of mere abstract theories1 he has reached an enduring moral effect #aaj also1 in a sort of boundless sympathy4 ,unoccupied1 as he might seem1 with great matters1 he is in immediate contact with what is real1 especially in its caressing littleness1 that littleness in which there is much of the whole woeful heart of things1 and meets it more than half-way with a perfect understanding of it4 ,what sudden1 unexpected touches of pathos in him6--bearing witness how the sorrow of humanity1 the ,weltschmerz1 the constant aching of its wounds1 is ever present with him3 but what a gift also for the enjoyment of life in its subtleties1 of enjoyment actually refined by the need of some thoughtful economies and making the most of things6 ,little arts of happiness he is ready to teach to others4 ,the quaint remarks of children which another would scarcely have heard1 he preserves--little flies in the priceless amber of his ,attic wit--and has his ,praise of chimney-sweepers 7as ,william ,blake has written1 with so much natural pathos1 the ,chimney-sweeper's ,song7 valuing carefully their white teeth1 and fine enjoyment of white sheets in stolen sleep at ,arundel ,castle1 as he tells the story1 anticipating something of the mood of our deep humourists of the last generation4 ,his simple mother-pity for those who suffer by accident1 or unkindness of nature1 blindness for instance1 or fateful disease of mind like his sister's1 has something primitive in its largeness2 and on behalf of ill-used animals he is early in composing a ,pity's ,gift4 #aaa ,and if1 in deeper or more superficial sense1 the dead do care at all for their name and fame1 then how must the souls of ,shakespeare and ,webster have been stirred1 after so long converse with things that stopped their ears1 whether above or below the soil1 at his exquisite appreciations of them2 the souls of ,titian and of ,hogarth too2 for1 what has not been observed so generally as the excellence of his literary criticism1 ,charles ,lamb is a fine critic of painting also4 ,it was as loyal1 self-forgetful work for others1 for ,shakespeare's self first1 for instance1 and then for ,shakespeare's readers1 that that too was done3 he has the true scholar's way of forgetting himself in his subject4 ,for though defrauded1 as we saw1 in his young years1 of the sweet food of academic institution1 he is yet essentially a scholar1 and all his work mainly retrospective1 as ,i said2 his own sorrows1 affections1 perceptions1 being alone real to him of the present4 ,i cannot make these present times1 he says once1 present to me4 ,above all1 he becomes not merely an expositor1 permanently valuable1 but for ,englishmen almost the discoverer of the old ,english drama4 ,the book is such as ,i am glad there should be1 he modestly says of the ,specimens of ,english ,dramatic ,poets who lived about the time of ,shakespeare2 to which1 however1 he adds in a series of notes the very quintessence of criticism1 the choicest savour and perfume of ,elizabethan poetry being #aab sorted1 and stored here1 with a sort of delicate intellectual epicureanism1 which has had the effect of winning for these1 then almost forgotten1 poets1 one generation after another of enthusiastic students4 ,could he but have known how fresh a source of culture he was evoking there for other generations1 through all those years in which1 a little wistfully1 he would harp on the limitation of his time by business1 and sigh for a better fortune in regard to literary opportunities6 ,to feel strongly the charm of an old poet or moralist1 the literary charm of ,burton1 for instance1 or ,quarles1 or ,the ,duchess of ,newcastle2 and then to interpret that charm1 to convey it to others--he seeming to himself but to hand on to others1 in mere humble ministration1 that of which for them he is really the creator--this is the way of his criticism2 cast off in a stray letter often1 or passing note1 or lightest essay or conversation4 ,it is in such a letter1 for instance1 that we come upon a singularly penetrative estimate of the genius and writings of ,defoe4 ,tracking1 with an attention always alert1 the whole process of their production to its starting-point in the deep places of the mind1 he seems to realise the but half-conscious intuitions of ,hogarth or ,shakespeare1 and develops the great ruling unities which have swayed their actual work2 or puts up1 and takes1 the one morsel of good stuff in an old1 forgotten writer4 ,even #aac in what he says casually there comes an aroma of old ,english2 noticeable echoes1 in chance turn and phrase1 of the great masters of style1 the old masters4 ,godwin1 seeing in quotation a passage from ,john ,woodvil1 takes it for a choice fragment of an old dramatist1 and goes to ,lamb to assist him in finding the author4 ,his power of delicate imitation in prose and verse reaches the length of a fine mimicry even1 as in those last essays of ,elia on ,popular ,fallacies1 with their gentle reproduction or caricature of ,sir ,thomas ,browne1 showing1 the more completely1 his mastery1 by disinterested study1 of those elements of the man which were the real source of style in that great1 solemn master of old ,english1 who1 ready to say what he has to say with fearless homeliness1 yet continually overawes one with touches of a strange utterance from worlds afar4 ,for it is with the delicacies of fine literature especially1 its gradations of expression1 its fine judgment1 its pure sense of words1 of vocabulary--things1 alas6 dying out in the ,english literature of the present1 together with the appreciation of them in our literature of the past--that his literary mission is chiefly concerned4 ,and yet1 delicate1 refining1 daintily epicurean1 as he may seem1 when he writes of giants1 such as ,hogarth or ,shakespeare1 though often but in a stray note1 you catch the sense of veneration with which those great names in past literature and art brooded over his intelligence1 his undiminished #aad impressibility by the great effects in them4 ,reading1 commenting on ,shakespeare1 he is like a man who walks alone under a grand stormy sky1 and among unwonted tricks of light1 when powerful spirits might seem to be abroad upon the air2 and the grim humour of ,hogarth1 as he analyses it1 rises into a kind of spectral grotesque2 while he too knows the secret of fine1 significant touches like theirs4 ,there are traits1 customs1 characteristics of houses and dress1 surviving morsels of old life1 such as ,hogarth has transferred so vividly into ,the ,rake's ,progress1 or ,marriage la ,mode1 concerning which we well understand how1 common1 uninteresting1 or even worthless in themselves1 they have come to please us at last as things picturesque1 being set in relief against the modes of our different age4 ,customs1 stiff to us1 stiff dresses1 stiff furniture--types of cast-off fashions1 left by accident1 and which no one ever meant to preserve--we contemplate with more than good-nature1 as having in them the veritable accent of a time1 not altogether to be replaced by its more solemn and self-conscious deposits2 like those tricks of individuality which we find quite tolerable in persons1 because they convey to us the secret of lifelike expression1 and with regard to which we are all to some extent humourists4 ,but it is part of the privilege of the genuine humourist to anticipate this pensive mood with regard to the ways and things #aae of his own day2 to look upon the tricks in manner of the life about him with that same refined1 purged sort of vision1 which will come naturally to those of a later generation1 in observing whatever may have survived by chance of its mere external habit4 ,seeing things always by the light of an understanding more entire than is possible for ordinary minds1 of the whole mechanism of humanity1 and seeing also the manner1 the outward mode or fashion1 always in strict connexion with the spiritual condition which determined it1 a humourist such as ,charles ,lamb anticipates the enchantment of distance2 and the characteristics of places1 ranks1 habits of life1 are transfigured for him1 even now and in advance of time1 by poetic light2 justifying what some might condemn as mere sentimentality1 in the effort to hand on unbroken the tradition of such fashion or accent4 ,the praise of beggars1 the cries of ,london1 the traits of actors just grown old1 the spots in town where the country1 its fresh green and fresh water1 still lingered on1 one after another1 amidst the bustle2 the quaint1 dimmed1 just played-out farces1 he had relished so much1 coming partly through them to understand the earlier ,english theatre as a thing once really alive2 those fountains and sun-dials of old gardens1 of which he entertains such dainty discourse3--he feels the poetry of these things1 as the poetry of things old indeed1 but surviving #aaf as an actual part of the life of the present2 and as something quite different from the poetry of things flatly gone from us and antique1 which come back to us1 if at all1 as entire strangers1 like ,scott's old ,scotch-border personages1 their oaths and armour4 ,such gift of appreciation depends1 as ,i said1 on the habitual apprehension of men's life as a whole--its organic wholeness1 as extending even to the least things in it--of its outward manner in connexion with its inward temper2 and it involves a fine perception of the congruities1 the musical accordance between humanity and its environment of custom1 society1 personal intercourse2 as if all this1 with its meetings1 partings1 ceremonies1 gesture1 tones of speech1 were some delicate instrument on which an expert performer is playing4 ,these are some of the characteristics of ,elia1 one essentially an essayist1 and of the true family of ,montaigne1 never judging1 as he says1 system-wise of things1 but fastening on particulars2 saying all things as it were on chance occasion only1 and by way of pastime1 yet succeeding thus1 glimpse-wise1 in catching and recording more frequently than others the gayest1 happiest attitude of things2 a casual writer for dreamy readers1 yet always giving the reader so much more than he seemed to propose4 ,there is something of the follower of ,george ,fox about him1 and the ,quaker's belief in the inward light coming to one passive1 #aag to the mere wayfarer1 who will be sure at all events to lose no light which falls by the way--glimpses1 suggestions1 delightful half-apprehensions1 profound thoughts of old philosophers1 hints of the innermost reason in things1 the full knowledge of which is held in reserve2 all the varied stuff1 that is1 of which genuine essays are made4 ,and with him1 as with ,montaigne1 the desire of self-portraiture is1 below all more superficial tendencies1 the real motive in writing at all--a desire closely connected with that intimacy1 that modern subjectivity1 which may be called the ,montaignesque element in literature4 ,what he designs is to give you himself1 to acquaint you with his likeness2 but must do this1 if at all1 indirectly1 being indeed always more or less reserved1 for himself and his friends2 friendship counting for so much in his life1 that he is jealous of anything that might jar or disturb it1 even to the length of a sort of insincerity1 to which he assigns its quaint praise2 this lover of stage plays significantly welcoming a little touch of the artificiality of play to sweeten the intercourse of actual life4 ,and1 in effect1 a very delicate and expressive portrait of him does put itself together for the duly meditative reader4 ,in indirect touches of his own work1 scraps of faded old letters1 what others remembered of his talk1 the man's likeness emerges2 what he laughed and wept at1 #aah his sudden elevations1 and longings after absent friends1 his fine casuistries of affection and devices to jog sometimes1 as he says1 the lazy happiness of perfect love1 his solemn moments of higher discourse with the young1 as they came across him on occasion1 and went along a little way with him1 the sudden1 surprised apprehension of beauties in old literature1 revealing anew the deep soul of poetry in things1 and withal the pure spirit of fun1 having its way again2 laughter1 that most short-lived of all things 7some of ,shakespeare's even being grown hollow7 wearing well with him4 ,much of all this comes out through his letters1 which may be regarded as a department of his essays4 ,he is an old-fashioned letter-writer1 the essence of the old fashion of letter-writing lying1 as with true essay-writing1 in the dexterous availing oneself of accident and circumstance1 in the prosecution of deeper lines of observation2 although1 just as with the record of his conversation1 one loses something1 in losing the actual tones of the stammerer1 still graceful in his halting1 as he halted also in composition1 composing slowly and by fits1 like a ,flemish painter1 as he tells us1 so it is to be regretted1 says the editor of his letters1 that in the printed letters the reader will lose the curious varieties of writing with which the originals abound1 and which are scrupulously adapted to the subject4 ,also1 he was a true collector1 delighting #aai in the personal finding of a thing1 in the colour an old book or print gets for him by the little accidents which attest previous ownership4 ,wither's ,emblems1 that old book and quaint1 long-desired1 when he finds it at last1 he values none the less because a child had coloured the plates with his paints4 ,a lover of household warmth everywhere1 of that tempered atmosphere which our various habitations get by men's living within them1 he sticks to his favourite books as he did to his friends1 and loved the town1 with a jealous eye for all its characteristics1 old houses coming to have souls for him4 ,the yearning for mere warmth against him in another1 makes him content1 all through life1 with pure brotherliness1 the most kindly and natural species of love1 as he says1 in place of the passion of love4 ,brother and sister1 sitting thus side by side1 have1 of course1 their anticipations how one of them must sit at last in the faint sun alone1 and set us speculating1 as we read1 as to precisely what amount of melancholy really accompanied for him the approach of old age1 so steadily foreseen2 make us note also1 with pleasure1 his successive wakings up to cheerful realities1 out of a too curious musing over what is gone and what remains1 of life4 ,in his subtle capacity for enjoying the more refined points of earth1 of human relationship1 he could throw the gleam of poetry or humour on what seemed common or threadbare2 has a care for the #abj sighs1 and the weary1 humdrum preoccupations of very weak people1 down to their little pathetic gentilities1 even2 while1 in the purely human temper1 he can write of death1 almost like ,shakespeare4 ,and that care1 through all his enthusiasm of discovery1 for what is accustomed1 in literature1 connected thus with his close clinging to home and the earth1 was congruous also with that love for the accustomed in religion1 which we may notice in him4 ,he is one of the last votaries of that old-world sentiment1 based on the feelings of hope and awe1 which may be described as the religion of men of letters 7as ,sir ,thomas ,browne has his ,religion of the ,physician7 religion as understood by the soberer men of letters in the last century1 ,addison1 ,gray1 and ,johnson2 by ,jane ,austen and ,thackeray1 later4 ,a high way of feeling developed largely by constant intercourse with the great things of literature1 and extended in its turn to those matters greater still1 this religion lives1 in the main retrospectively1 in a system of received sentiments and beliefs2 received1 like those great things of literature and art1 in the first instance1 on the authority of a long tradition1 in the course of which they have linked themselves in a thousand complex ways to the conditions of human life1 and no more questioned now than the feeling one keeps by one of the greatness--say6 of ,shakespeare4 ,for ,charles ,lamb1 such form of religion becomes #aba the solemn background on which the nearer and more exciting objects of his immediate experience relieve themselves1 borrowing from it an expression of calm2 its necessary atmosphere being indeed a profound quiet1 that quiet which has in it a kind of sacramental efficacy1 working1 we might say1 on the principle of the opus operatum1 almost without any co-operation of one's own1 towards the assertion of the higher self4 ,and1 in truth1 to men of ,lamb's delicately attuned temperament mere physical stillness has its full value2 such natures seeming to long for it sometimes1 as for no merely negative thing1 with a sort of mystical sensuality4 ,the writings of ,charles ,lamb are an excellent illustration of the value of reserve in literature4 ,below his quiet1 his quaintness1 his humour1 and what may seem the slightness1 the occasional or accidental character of his work1 there lies1 as ,i said at starting1 as in his life1 a genuinely tragic element4 ,the gloom1 reflected at its darkest in those hard shadows of ,rosamund ,grey1 is always there1 though not always realised either for himself or his readers1 and restrained always in utterance4 ,it gives to those lighter matters on the surface of life and literature among which he for the most part moved1 a wonderful force of expression1 as if at any moment these slight words and fancies might pierce very far into the deeper soul of things4 ,in his writing1 as in his #abb life1 that quiet is not the low-flying of one from the first drowsy by choice1 and needing the prick of some strong passion or worldly ambition1 to stimulate him into all the energy of which he is capable2 but rather the reaction of nature1 after an escape from fate1 dark and insane as in old ,greek tragedy1 following upon which the sense of mere relief becomes a kind of passion1 as with one who1 having narrowly escaped earthquake or shipwreck1 finds a thing for grateful tears in just sitting quiet at home1 under the wall1 till the end of days4 ,he felt the genius of places2 and ,i sometimes think he resembles the places he knew and liked best1 and where his lot fell--,london1 sixty-five years ago1 with ,covent ,garden and the old theatres1 and the ,temple gardens still unspoiled1 ,thames gliding down1 and beyond to north and south the fields at ,enfield or ,hampton1 to which1 with their living trees1 the thoughts wander from the hard wood of the desk--fields fresher1 and coming nearer to town then1 but in one of which the present writer remembers1 on a brooding early summer's day1 to have heard the cuckoo for the first time4 ,here1 the surface of things is certainly humdrum1 the streets dingy1 the green places1 where the child goes a-maying1 tame enough4 ,but nowhere are things more apt to respond to the brighter weather1 nowhere is there so much difference between rain and sunshine1 nowhere do the #abc clouds roll together more grandly2 those quaint suburban pastorals gathering a certain quality of grandeur from the background of the great city1 with its weighty atmosphere1 and portent of storm in the rapid light on dome and bleached stone steeples4 #ahgh4 ,,sir ,,thomas ,,browne #abd ,,english prose literature towards the end of the seventeenth century1 in the hands of ,dryden and ,locke1 was becoming1 as that of ,france had become at an earlier date1 a matter of design and skilled practice1 highly conscious of itself as an art1 and1 above all1 correct4 ,up to that time it had been1 on the whole1 singularly informal and unprofessional1 and by no means the literature of the man of letters1 as we understand him4 ,certain great instances there had been of literary structure or architecture--,the ,ecclesiastical ,polity1 ,the ,leviathan--but for the most part that earlier prose literature is eminently occasional1 closely determined by the eager practical aims of contemporary politics and theology1 or else due to a man's own native instinct to speak because he cannot help speaking4 ,hardly aware of the habit1 he likes talking to himself2 and when he writes 7still in undress7 he does but take the friendly reader into his confidence4 ,the type of this literature1 obviously1 is not ,locke or ,gibbon1 but1 above all others1 ,sir ,thomas #abe ,browne2 as ,jean ,paul is a good instance of it in ,german literature1 always in its developments so much later than the ,english2 and as the best instance of it in ,french literature1 in the century preceding ,browne1 is ,montaigne1 from whom indeed1 in a great measure1 all those tentative writers1 or essayists1 derive4 ,it was a result1 perhaps1 of the individualism and liberty of personal development1 which1 even for a ,roman ,catholic1 were effects of the ,reformation1 that there was so much in ,montaigne of the subjective1 as people say1 of the singularities of personal character4 ,browne1 too1 bookish as he really is claims to give his readers a matter1 not picked from the leaves of any author1 but bred amongst the weeds and tares of his own brain4 ,the faults of such literature are what we all recognise in it3 unevenness1 alike in thought and style2 lack of design2 and caprice--the lack of authority2 after the full play of which1 there is so much to refresh one in the reasonable transparency of ,hooker1 representing thus early the tradition of a classical clearness in ,english literature1 anticipated by ,latimer and ,more1 and to be fulfilled afterwards in ,butler and ,hume4 ,but then1 in recompense for that looseness and whim1 in ,sir ,thomas ,browne for instance1 we have in those quaint writers1 as they themselves understood the term 7coint1 adorned1 but adorned with all the curious ornaments of their own predilection1 provincial #abf or archaic1 certainly unfamiliar1 and selected without reference to the taste or usages of other people7 the charm of an absolute sincerity1 with all the ingenuous and racy effect of what is circumstantial and peculiar in their growth4 ,the whole creation is a mystery and particularly that of man4 ,at the blast of ,his mouth were the rest of the creatures made1 and at ,his bare word they started out of nothing4 ,but in the frame of man ,he played the sensible operator1 and seemed not so much to create as to make him4 ,when ,he had separated the materials of other creatures1 there consequently resulted a form and soul3 but having raised the walls of man1 ,he was driven to a second and harder creation--of a substance like ,himself1 an incorruptible and immortal soul4 ,there1 we have the manner of ,sir ,thomas ,browne1 in exact expression of his mind6--minute and curious in its thinking2 but with an effect1 on the sudden1 of a real sublimity or depth4 ,his style is certainly an unequal one4 ,it has the monumental aim which charmed1 and perhaps influenced1 ,johnson--a dignity that can be attained only in such mental calm as follows long and learned pondering on the high subjects ,browne loves to deal with4 ,it has its garrulity1 its various levels of painstaking1 its mannerism1 pleasant of its kind or tolerable1 together with much1 to us intolerable1 but of which he was capable on a lazy summer afternoon down at ,norwich4 ,and all is so oddly mixed1 showing1 in its entire ignorance of self1 how much he1 and the sort of literature he represents1 really stood in need of technique1 #abg of a formed taste in literature1 of a literary architecture4 ,and yet perhaps we could hardly wish the result different1 in him1 any more than in the books of ,burton and ,fuller1 or some other similar writers of that age--mental abodes1 we might liken1 after their own manner1 to the little old private houses of some historic town grouped about its grand public structures1 which1 when they have survived at all1 posterity is loth to part with4 ,for1 in their absolute sincerity1 not only do these authors clearly exhibit themselves 7the unique peculiarity of the writer's mind1 being1 as ,johnson says of ,browne1 faithfully reflected in the form and matter of his work7 but1 even more than mere professionally instructed writers1 they belong to1 and reflect1 the age they lived in4 ,in essentials1 of course1 even ,browne is by no means so unique among his contemporaries1 and so singular1 as he looks4 ,and then1 as the very condition of their work1 there is an entire absence of personal restraint in dealing with the public1 whose humours they come at last in a great measure to reproduce4 ,to speak more properly1 they have no sense of a public to deal with1 at all--only a full confidence in the friendly reader1 as they love to call him4 ,hence their amazing pleasantry1 their indulgence in their own conceits2 but hence also those unpremeditated wildflowers of speech we should #abh never have the good luck to find in any more formal kind of literature4 ,it is1 in truth1 to the literary purpose of the humourist1 in the old-fashioned sense of the term1 that this method of writing naturally allies itself--of the humourist to whom all the world is but a spectacle in which nothing is really alien from himself1 who has hardly a sense of the distinction between great and little among things that are at all1 and whose half-pitying1 half-amused sympathy is called out especially by the seemingly small interests and traits of character in the things or the people around him4 ,certainly1 in an age stirred by great causes1 like the age of ,browne in ,england1 of ,montaigne in ,france1 that is not a type to which one would wish to reduce all men of letters4 ,still1 in an age apt also to become severe1 or even cruel 7its eager interest in those great causes turning sour on occasion7 the character of the humourist may well find its proper influence1 through that serene power1 and the leisure it has for conceiving second thoughts1 on the tendencies1 conscious or unconscious1 of the fierce wills around it4 ,something of such a humourist was ,browne--not callous to men and their fortunes2 certainly not without opinions of his own about them2 and yet1 undisturbed by the civil war1 by the fall1 and then the restoration1 of the monarchy1 through that long quiet life 7ending at last on the day #abi himself had predicted1 as if at the moment he had willed7 in which all existence1 as he says1 had been but food for contemplation4 ,johnson1 in beginning his ,life of ,browne1 remarks that ,browne seems to have had the fortune1 common among men of letters1 of raising little curiosity after their private life4 ,whether or not1 with the example of ,johnson himself before us1 we can think just that1 it is certain that ,browne's works are of a kind to directly stimulate curiosity about himself--about himself1 as being manifestly so large a part of those works2 and as a matter of fact we know a great deal about his life1 uneventful as in truth it was4 ,to himself1 indeed1 his life at ,norwich1 as he gives us to understand1 seemed wonderful enough4 ,of these wonders1 says ,johnson1 the view that can now be taken of his life offers no appearance4 ,but we carry with us1 as ,browne writes1 the wonders we seek without us1 and we may note on the other hand1 a circumstance which his daughter1 ,mrs4 ,lyttleton1 tells us of his childhood3 ,his father used to open his breast when he was asleep1 and kiss it in prayers over him1 as 'tis said of ,origen's father1 that the ,holy ,ghost would take possession there4 ,it was perhaps because the son inherited an aptitude for a like profound kindling of sentiment in the taking of his life1 that1 uneventful as it was1 #acj commonplace as it seemed to ,johnson1 to ,browne himself it was so full of wonders1 and so stimulates the curiosity of his more careful reader of to-day4 ,what influence1 says ,johnson again1 learning has had on its possessors may be doubtful4 ,well6 the influence of his great learning1 of his constant research on ,browne1 was its imaginative influence--that it completed his outfit as a poetic visionary1 stirring all the strange conceit of his nature to its depths4 ,browne himself dwells1 in connexion with the first publication 7extorted by circumstance7 of the ,religio ,medici1 on the natural inactivity of his disposition2 and he does1 as ,i have said1 pass very quietly through an exciting time4 ,born in the year of the ,gunpowder ,plot1 he was not1 in truth1 one of those clear and clarifying souls which1 in an age alike of practical and mental confusion1 can anticipate and lay down the bases of reconstruction1 like ,bacon or ,hooker4 ,his mind has much of the perplexity which was part of the atmosphere of the time4 ,not that he is without his own definite opinions on events4 ,for him1 ,cromwell is a usurper1 the death of ,charles an abominable murder4 ,in spite of what is but an affectation1 perhaps1 of the sceptical mood1 he is a ,churchman too2 one of those who entered fully into the ,anglican position1 so full of sympathy with those ceremonies and observances #aca which misguided zeal terms superstition1 that there were some ,roman ,catholics who thought that nothing but custom and education kept him from their communion4 ,at the ,restoration he rejoices to see the return of the comely ,anglican order in old episcopal ,norwich1 with its ancient churches2 the antiquity1 in particular1 of the ,english ,church being1 characteristically1 one of the things he most valued in it1 vindicating it1 when occasion came1 against the unjust scandal of those who made that ,church a creation of ,henry the ,eighth4 ,as to ,romanists--he makes no scruple to enter their churches in defect of ours4 ,he cannot laugh at1 but rather pities1 the fruitless journeys of pilgrims--for there is something in it of devotion4 ,he could never hear the ,ave ,mary6 bell without an oraison4 ,at a solemn procession he has wept abundantly4 ,how ,english1 in truth1 all this really is6 ,it reminds one how some of the most popular of ,english writers1 in many a half-conscious expression1 have witnessed to a susceptibility in the ,english mind itself1 in spite of the ,reformation1 to what is affecting in religious ceremony4 ,only1 in religion as in politics1 ,browne had no turn for disputes2 was suspicious of them1 indeed2 knowing1 as he says with true acumen1 that a man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city1 and yet be forced to surrender1 even in controversies not #acb necessarily maladroit--an image in which we may trace a little contemporary colouring4 ,the ,enquiries into ,vulgar ,errors appeared in the year #afdf2 a year which found him very hard on the vulgar4 ,his suspicion1 in the abstract1 of what ,bacon calls ,idola ,fori1 the ,idols of the ,market-place1 takes a special emphasis from the course of events about him3 being erroneous in their single numbers1 once huddled together1 they will be error itself4 ,and yet1 congruously with a dreamy sweetness of character we may find expressed in his very features1 he seems not greatly concerned at the temporary suppression of the institutions he values so much4 ,he seems to possess some inward ,platonic reality of them--church or monarchy--to hold by in idea1 quite beyond the reach of ,roundhead or unworthy ,cavalier4 ,in the power of what is inward and inviolable in his religion1 he can still take note3 ,in my solitary and retired imagination 7neque enim cum porticus aut me lectulus accepit1 desum mihi7 ,i remember ,i am not alone1 and therefore forget not to contemplate ,him and ,his attributes who is ever with me4 ,his father1 a merchant of ,london1 with some claims to ancient descent1 left him early in possession of ample means4 ,educated at ,winchester and ,oxford1 he visited ,ireland1 ,france1 and ,italy2 and in the year #afcc1 at the age of twenty-eight1 became ,doctor of ,medicine at ,leyden4 ,three years later he established himself as a physician #acc at ,norwich for the remainder of his life1 having married a lady1 described as beautiful and attractive1 and affectionate also1 as we may judge from her letters and postscripts to those of her husband1 in an orthography of a homeliness amazing even for that age4 ,dorothy ,browne bore him ten children1 six of whom he survived4 ,their house at ,norwich1 even then an old one it would seem1 must have grown1 through long years of acquisition1 into an odd cabinet of antiquities--antiquities properly so called2 his old ,roman1 or ,romanised ,british urns1 from ,walsingham or ,brampton1 for instance1 and those natural objects which he studied somewhat in the temper of a curiosity-hunter or antiquary4 ,in one of the old churchyards of ,norwich he makes the first discovery of adipocere1 of which grim substance a portion still remains with him4 ,for his multifarious experiments he must have had his laboratory4 ,the old window-stanchions had become magnetic1 proving1 as he thinks1 that iron acquires verticity from long lying in one position4 ,once we find him re-tiling the place4 ,it was then1 perhaps1 that he made the observation that bricks and tiles also acquire magnetic alliciency--one's whole house1 one might fancy2 as indeed1 he holds the earth itself to be a vast lodestone4 ,the very faults of his literary work1 its desultoriness1 the time it costs his readers1 that #acd slow ,latinity which ,johnson imitated from him1 those lengthy leisurely terminations which busy posterity will abbreviate1 all breathe of the long quiet of the place4 ,yet he is by no means indolent4 ,besides wide book-learning1 experimental research at home1 and indefatigable observation in the open air1 he prosecutes the ordinary duties of a physician2 contrasting himself indeed with other students1 whose quiet and unmolested doors afford no such distractions4 ,to most persons of mind sensitive as his1 his chosen studies would have seemed full of melancholy1 turning always1 as they did1 upon death and decay4 ,it is well1 perhaps1 that life should be something of a meditation upon death3 but to many1 certainly1 ,browne's would have seemed too like a lifelong following of one's own funeral4 ,a museum is seldom a cheerful place--oftenest induces the feeling that nothing could ever have been young2 and to ,browne the whole world is a museum2 all the grace and beauty it has being of a somewhat mortified kind4 ,only1 for him 7poetic dream1 or philosophic apprehension1 it was this which never failed to evoke his wonderful genius for exquisitely impassioned speech7 over all those ugly anatomical preparations1 as though over miraculous saintly relics1 there was the perpetual flicker of a surviving spiritual ardency1 one day to reassert itself--stranger far than any fancied odylic gravelights6 #ace ,when ,browne settled at ,norwich1 being then about thirty-six years old1 he had already completed the ,religio ,medici2 a desultory collection of observations designed for himself only and a few friends1 at all events with no purpose of immediate publication4 ,it had been lying by him for seven years1 circulating privately in his own extraordinarily perplexed manuscript1 or in manuscript copies1 when1 in #afdb1 an incorrect printed version from one of those copies1 much corrupted by transcription at various hands1 appeared anonymously4 ,browne1 decided royalist as he was in spite of seeming indifference1 connects this circumstance with the unscrupulous use of the press for political purposes1 and especially against the king1 at that time4 ,just here a romantic figure comes on the scene4 ,son of the unfortunate young ,everard ,digby who perished on the scaffold for some half-hearted participation in the ,gunpowder ,plot1 ,kenelm ,digby1 brought up in the reformed religion1 had returned in manhood to the religion of his father4 ,in his intellectual composition he had1 in common with ,browne1 a scientific interest1 oddly tinged with both poetry and scepticism3 he had also a strong sympathy with religious reaction1 and a more than sentimental love for a seemingly vanishing age of faith1 which he1 for one1 would not think of as vanishing4 ,a copy of that surreptitious edition of the ,religio ,medici found him a prisoner on suspicion of a too active #acf royalism1 and with much time on his hands4 ,the ,roman ,catholic1 although1 secure in his definite orthodoxy1 he finds himself indifferent on many points 7on the reality of witchcraft1 for instance7 concerning which ,browne's more timid1 personally grounded faith might indulge no scepticism1 forced himself1 nevertheless1 to detect a vein of rationalism in a book which on the whole much attracted him1 and hastily put forth his animadversions upon it4 ,browne1 with all his distaste for controversy1 thus found himself committed to a dispute1 and his reply came with the correct edition of the ,religio ,medici published at last with his name4 ,there have been many efforts to formulate the religion of the layman1 which might be rightly understood1 perhaps1 as something more than what is called natural1 yet less than ecclesiastical1 or professional religion4 ,though its habitual mode of conceiving experience is on a different plane1 yet it would recognise the legitimacy of the traditional religious interpretation of that experience1 generally and by implication2 only1 with a marked reserve as to religious particulars1 both of thought and language1 out of a real reverence or awe1 as proper only for a special place4 ,such is the lay religion1 as we may find it in ,addison1 in ,gray1 in ,thackeray2 and there is something of a concession--a concession1 on second thoughts--about it4 ,browne's ,religio ,medici is designed as the expression of a mind #acg more difficult of belief than that of the mere layman1 as above described2 it is meant for the religion of the man of science4 ,actually1 it is something less to the point1 in any balancing of the religious against the worldly view of things1 than the religion of the layman1 as just now defined4 ,for ,browne1 in spite of his profession of boisterous doubt1 has no real difficulties1 and his religion1 certainly1 nothing of the character of a concession4 ,he holds that there has never existed an atheist4 ,not that he is credulous2 but that his religion is only the correlative of himself1 his peculiar character and education1 a religion of manifold association4 ,for him1 the wonders of religion1 its supernatural events or agencies1 are almost natural facts or processes4 ,even in this material fabric1 the spirits walk as freely exempt from the affection of time1 place and motion1 as beyond the extremest circumference4 ,had not ,divine interference designed to raise the dead1 nature herself is in act to do it--to lead out the incinerated soul from the retreats of her dark laboratory4 ,certainly ,browne has not1 like ,pascal1 made the great resolution1 by the apprehension that it is just in the contrast of the moral world to the world with which science deals that religion finds its proper basis4 ,it is from the homelessness of the world which science analyses so victoriously1 its dark unspirituality1 wherein the soul he is conscious of seems such a #ach stranger1 that ,pascal turns again to his rest1 in the conception of a world of wholly reasonable and moral agencies4 ,for ,browne1 on the contrary1 the light is full1 design everywhere obvious1 its conclusion easy to draw1 all small and great things marked clearly with the signature of the ,word4 ,the adhesion1 the difficult adhesion1 of men such as ,pascal1 is an immense contribution to religious controversy2 the concession1 again1 of a man like ,addison1 of great significance there4 ,but in the adhesion of ,browne1 in spite of his crusade against vulgar errors1 there is no real significance4 ,the ,religio ,medici is a contribution1 not to faith1 but to piety2 a refinement and correction1 such as piety often stands in need of2 a help1 not so much to religious belief in a world of doubt1 as to the maintenance of the religious mood amid the interests of a secular calling4 ,from about this time ,browne's letters afford a pretty clear view of his life as it passed in the house at ,norwich4 ,many of these letters represent him in correspondence with the singular men who shared his own half poetic1 half scientific turn of mind1 with that impressibility towards what one might call the thaumaturgic elements in nature which has often made men dupes1 and which is certainly an element in the somewhat atrabiliar mental complexion of that age in ,england4 ,he corresponds seriously with ,william ,lily1 the astrologer2 is acquainted #aci with ,dr4 ,dee1 who had some connexion with ,norwich1 and has often heard him affirm1 sometimes with oaths1 that he had seen transmutation of pewter dishes and flagons into silver 7at least7 which the goldsmiths at ,prague bought of him4 ,browne is certainly an honest investigator2 but it is still with a faint hope of something like that upon fitting occasion1 and on the alert always for surprises in nature 7as if nature had a rhetoric1 at times1 to deliver to us1 like those sudden and surprising flowers of his own poetic style7 that he listens to her everyday talk so attentively4 ,of strange animals1 strange cures1 and the like1 his correspondence is full4 ,the very errors he combats are1 of course1 the curiosities of error--those fascinating1 irresistible1 popular1 errors1 which various kinds of people have insisted on gliding into because they like them4 ,even his heresies were old ones--the very fossils of capricious opinion4 ,it is as an industrious local naturalist that ,browne comes before us first1 full of the fantastic minute life in the fens and ,broads around ,norwich1 its various sea and marsh birds4 ,he is something of a vivisectionist also1 and we may not be surprised at it1 perhaps1 in an age which1 for the propagation of truth1 was ready to cut off men's ears4 ,he finds one day a ,scarabaus capricornus odoratus1 which he takes to be mentioned by ,monfetus1 folio #aej4 ,he saith1 ',nucem moschatam et cinnamomum vere spirat'--#adj but to me it smelt like roses1 santalum1 and ambergris4 ,musca tuliparum moschata1 again1 is a small bee-like fly of an excellent fragrant odour1 which ,i have often found at the bottom of the flowers of tulips4 ,is this within the experience of modern entomologists8 ,the ,garden of ,cyrus1 though it ends indeed with a passage of wonderful felicity1 certainly emphasises 7to say the least7 the defects of ,browne's literary good qualities4 ,his chimeric fancy carries him here into a kind of frivolousness1 as if he felt almost too safe with his public1 and were himself not quite serious1 or dealing fairly with it2 and in a writer such as ,browne levity must of necessity be a little ponderous4 ,still1 like one of those stiff gardens1 half-way between the medieval garden and the true ,english garden of ,temple or ,walpole1 actually to be seen in the background of some of the conventional portraits of that day1 the fantasies of this indescribable exposition of the mysteries of the quincunx form part of the complete portrait of ,browne himself2 and it is in connexion with it that1 once or twice1 the quaintly delightful pen of ,evelyn comes into the correspondence--in connexion with the hortulane pleasure4 ,norwich1 he writes to ,browne1 is a place1 ,i understand1 much addicted to the flowery part4 ,professing himself a believer in the operation of the air and genius of gardens upon human spirits1 towards virtue and sanctity1 he is all for #ada natural gardens as against those which appear like gardens of paste-board and march-pane1 and smell more of paint than of flowers and verdure4 ,browne is in communication also with ,ashmole and ,dugdale1 the famous antiquaries2 to the latter of whom1 who had written a work on the history of the embanking of fens1 he communicates the discovery of certain coins1 on a piece of ground in the nature of an island in the fens4 ,far more interesting certainly than those curious scientific letters is ,browne's domestic correspondence4 ,dobson1 ,charles the ,first's ,english ,tintoret1 would seem to have painted a life-sized picture of ,sir ,thomas ,browne and his family1 after the manner of those big1 urbane1 family groups1 then coming into fashion with the ,dutch ,masters4 ,of such a portrait nothing is now known4 ,but in these old-fashioned1 affectionate letters1 transmitted often1 in those troublous times1 with so much difficulty1 we have what is almost as graphic--a numerous group1 in which1 although so many of ,browne's children died young1 he was happy2 with ,dorothy ,browne1 occasionally adding her charming1 ill-spelt postscripts to her husband's letters2 the religious daughter who goes to daily prayers after the ,restoration1 which brought ,browne the honour of knighthood2 and1 above all1 two ,toms1 son and grandson of ,sir ,thomas1 the latter being the son of ,dr4 ,edward ,browne1 #adb now become distinguished as a physician in ,london 7he attended ,john1 ,earl of ,rochester1 in his last illness at ,woodstock7 and his childish existence as he lives away from his proper home in ,london1 in the old house at ,norwich1 two hundred years ago1 we see like a thing of to-day4 ,at first the two brothers1 ,edward and ,thomas 7the elder7 are together in everything4 ,then ,edward goes abroad for his studies1 and ,thomas1 quite early1 into the navy1 where he certainly develops into a wonderfully gallant figure2 passing away1 however1 from the correspondence1 it is uncertain how1 before he was of full age4 ,from the first he is understood to be a lad of parts4 ,if you practise to write1 you will have a good pen and style3 and a delightful1 boyish journal of his remains1 describing a tour the two brothers made in ,september #affb among the ,derbyshire hills4 ,i received your two last letters1 he writes to his father from aboard the ,marie ,rose1 and give you many thanks for the discourse you sent me out of ,vossius3 ,de motu marium et ventorum4 ,it seemed very hard to me at first2 but ,i have now beaten it1 and ,i wish ,i had the book4 ,his father is pleased to think that he is like to proceed not only a good navigator1 but a good scholar3 and he finds the much exacting1 old classical prescription for the character of the brave man fulfilled in him4 ,on #afth ,july #afff the young man writes--still from the ,marie ,rose-- #adc ,if it were possible to get an opportunity to send as often as ,i am desirous to write1 you should hear more often from me1 being now so near the grand action1 from which ,i would by no means be absent4 ,i extremely long for that thundering day3 wherein ,i hope you shall hear we have behaved ourselves like men1 and to the honour of our country4 ,i thank you for your directions for my ears against the noise of the guns1 but ,i have found that ,i could endure it2 nor is it so intolerable as most conceive2 especially when men are earnest1 and intent upon their business1 unto whom muskets sound but like pop-guns4 ,it is impossible to express unto another how a smart sea-fight elevates the spirits of a man1 and makes him despise all dangers4 ,in and after all sea-fights1 ,i have been very thirsty4 ,he died1 as ,i said1 early in life4 ,we only hear of him later in connexion with a trait of character observed in ,tom the grandson1 whose winning ways1 and tricks of bodily and mental growth1 are duly recorded in these letters3 the reader will1 ,i hope1 pardon the following extracts from them3-- ,little ,tom is lively4444 ,frank is fayne sometimes to play him asleep with a fiddle4 ,when we send away our letters he scribbles a paper and will have it sent to his sister1 and saith she doth not know how many fine things there are in ,norwich4444 ,he delights his grandfather when he comes home4 ,tom gives you many thanks for his clothes 7from ,london74 ,he has appeared very fine this ,king's day with them4 ,tom presents his duty4 ,a gentleman at our election asked ,tom who hee was for8 and he answered1 ,for all four4 ,the gentleman replied that he answered like a physician's son4 ,tom would have his grandmother1 his aunt ,betty1 and ,frank1 valentines3 but hee conditioned with them that they should give him nothing of any kind that hee had ever had or seen before4 #add ,tom is just now gone to see two bears which are to be shown4 ,tom1 his duty4 ,he is begging books and reading of them4 ,the players are at the ,red ,lion hard by2 and ,tom goes sometimes to see a play4 ,and then one day he stirs old memories-- ,the fairings were welcome to ,tom4 ,he finds about the house divers things that were your brother's 7the late ,edward's71 and ,betty sometimes tells him stories about him1 so that he was importunate with her to write his life in a quarter of a sheet of paper1 and read it unto him1 and will have still more added4 ,just as ,i am writing 7learnedly about a comet1 #gth ,january #afhj-ha7 ,tom comes and tells me the blazing star is in the yard1 and calls me to see it4 ,it was but dim1 and the sky not clear4444 ,i am very sensible of this sharp weather4 ,he seems to have come to no good end1 riding forth one stormy night4 ,requiescat in pace6 ,of this long1 leisurely existence the chief events were ,browne's rare literary publications2 some of his writings indeed having been left unprinted till after his death2 while in the circumstances of the issue of every one of them there is something accidental1 as if the world might have missed it altogether4 ,even the ,discourse of ,vulgar ,errors1 the longest and most elaborate of his works1 is entirely discursive and occasional1 coming to an end with no natural conclusion1 but only because the writer chose to leave off just there2 and few probably have been the readers of the book as a consecutive whole4 ,at times indeed we seem to have in it observations only1 or notes1 preliminary to some more orderly composition4 ,dip into it3 read1 for #ade instance1 the chapter ,of the ,ring-finger1 or the chapters ,of the ,long ,life of the ,deer1 and on the ,pictures of ,mermaids1 ,unicorns1 and some ,others1 and the part will certainly seem more than the whole4 ,try to read it through1 and you will soon feel cloyed2--miss very likely1 its real worth to the fancy1 the literary fancy 7which finds its pleasure in inventive word and phrase7 and become dull to the really vivid beauties of a book so lengthy1 but with no real evolution4 ,though there are words1 phrases1 constructions innumerable1 which remind one how much the work initiated in ,france by ,madame de ,rambouillet--work1 done for ,england1 we may think perhaps imperfectly1 in the next century by ,johnson and others--was really needed2 yet the capacities of ,browne's manner of writing1 coming as it did so directly from the man1 are felt even in his treatment of matters of science4 ,as with ,buffon1 his full1 ardent1 sympathetic vocabulary1 the poetry of his language1 a poetry inherent in its elementary particles--the word1 the epithet--helps to keep his eye1 and the eye of the reader1 on the object before it1 and conduces directly to the purpose of the naturalist1 the observer4 ,but1 only one half observation1 its other half consisting of very out-of-the-way book-lore1 this work displays ,browne still in the character of the antiquary1 as that age understood him4 ,he is a kind of ,elias ,ashmole1 but dealing with natural objects2 which are for him1 in the first #adf place1 and apart from the remote religious hints and intimations they carry with them1 curiosities4 ,he seems to have no true sense of natural law1 as ,bacon understood it2 nor even of that immanent reason in the natural world1 which the ,platonic tradition supposes4 ,things are really true1 he says1 as they correspond unto ,god's conception2 and have so much verity as they hold of conformity unto that intellect1 in whose idea they had their first determinations4 ,but1 actually1 what he is busy in the record of1 are matters more or less of the nature of caprices2 as if things1 after all1 were significant of their higher verity only at random1 and in a sort of surprises1 like music in old instruments suddenly touched into sound by a wandering finger1 among the lumber of people's houses4 ,nature1 the art of ,god1 as he says1 varying a little a phrase used also by ,hobbes1 in a work printed later--,nature1 he seems to protest1 is only a little less magical1 its processes only a little less in the way of alchemy1 than you had supposed4 ,we feel that1 as with that disturbed age in ,england generally 7and it is here that he1 with it1 is so interesting1 curious1 old-world1 and unlike ourselves7 his supposed experience might at any moment be broken in upon by a hundred forms of a natural magic1 only not quite so marvellous as that older sort of magic1 or alchemy1 he is at so much pains to expose2 and the large promises of which1 its large words too1 he still regretfully enjoys4 #adg ,and yet the ,discourse of ,vulgar ,errors1 seeming1 as it often does1 to be a serious refutation of fairy tales--arguing1 for instance1 against the literal truth of the poetic statement that ,the pigeon hath no gall1 and such questions as ,whether men weigh heavier dead than alive8 being characteristic questions--is designed1 with much ambition1 under its pedantic ,greek title ,pseudodoxia ,epidemica1 as a criticism1 a cathartic1 an instrument for the clarifying of the intellect4 ,he begins from that first error in ,paradise1 wondering much at man's deceivability in his perfection1--at such gross deceit4 ,he enters in this connexion1 with a kind of poetry of scholasticism which may interest the student of ,paradise ,lost1 into what we may call the intellectual and moral by-play of the situation of the first man and woman in ,paradise1 with strange queries about it4 ,did ,adam1 for instance1 already know of the fall of the ,angels8 ,did he really believe in death1 till ,abel died8 ,it is from ,julius ,scaliger that he takes his motto1 to the effect that the true knowledge of things must be had from things themselves1 not from books2 and he seems as seriously concerned as ,bacon to dissipate the crude impressions of a false common sense1 of false science1 and a fictitious authority4 ,inverting1 oddly1 ,plato's theory that all learning is but reminiscence1 he reflects with a sigh how much of oblivion must needs be involved in the getting of any true knowledge4 ,men that #adh adore times past1 consider not that those times were once present 7that is1 as our own are7 and ourselves unto those to come1 as they unto us at present4 ,that1 surely1 coming from one both by temperament and habit so great an antiquary1 has the touch of something like an influence in the atmosphere of the time4 ,that there was any actual connexion between ,browne's work and ,bacon's is but a surmise4 ,yet we almost seem to hear ,bacon when ,browne discourses on the use of doubts1 and the advantages which might be derived from drawing up a calendar of doubts1 falsehoods1 and popular errors2 and1 as from ,bacon1 one gets the impression that men really have been very much the prisoners of their own crude or pedantic terms1 notions1 associations2 that they have been very indolent in testing very simple matters--with a wonderful kind of supinity1 as he calls it4 ,in ,browne's chapter on the ,sources of ,error1 again1 we may trace much resemblance to ,bacon's striking doctrine of the ,idola1 the shams men fall down and worship4 ,taking source respectively1 from the common infirmity of human nature1 from the erroneous disposition of the people1 from confident adherence to authority1 the errors which ,browne chooses to deal with may be registered as identical with ,bacon's ,idola ,tribus1 ,fori1 ,theatri2 the idols of our common human nature2 of the vulgar1 when they get together2 and of the learned1 when they get together4 #adi ,but of the fourth species of error noted by ,bacon1 the ,idola ,specus1 the ,idols of the ,cave1 that whole tribe of illusions1 which are bred amongst the weeds and tares of one's own brain1 ,browne tells us nothing by way of criticism2 was himself1 rather1 a lively example of their operation4 ,throw those illusions1 those idols1 into concrete or personal form1 suppose them introduced among the other forces of an active intellect1 and you have ,sir ,thomas ,browne himself4 ,the sceptical inquirer who rises from his cathartic1 his purging of error1 a believer in the supernatural character of pagan oracles1 and a cruel judge of supposed witches1 must still need as much as ever that elementary conception of the right method and the just limitations of knowledge1 by power of which he should not just strain out a single error here or there1 but make a final precipitate of fallacy4 ,and yet if the temperament had been deducted from ,browne's work--that inherent and strongly marked way of deciding things1 which has guided with so surprising effect the musings of the ,letter to a ,friend1 and the ,urn-,burial--we should probably have remembered him little4 ,pity6 some may think1 for himself at least1 that he had not lived earlier1 and still believed in the mandrake1 for instance2 its fondness for places of execution1 and its human cries on eradication1 with hazard of life to them that pull it up4 ,in philosophy1 he observes1 meaning to contrast #aej his free-thinking in that department with his orthodoxy in religion--in philosophy1 where truth seems double-faced1 there is no man more paradoxical than myself3 which is true1 we may think1 in a further sense than he meant1 and that it was the paradoxical that he actually preferred4 ,happy1 at all events1 he still remained--undisturbed and happy--in a hundred native prepossessions1 some certainly valueless1 some of them perhaps invaluable4 ,and while one feels that no real logic of fallacies has been achieved by him1 one feels still more how little the construction of that branch of logical inquiry really helps men's minds2 fallacy1 like truth itself1 being a matter so dependent on innate gift of apprehension1 so extra-logical and personal2 the original perception counting for almost everything1 the mere inference for so little6 ,yes6 ,a man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city1 and yet be forced to surrender1 even in controversies not necessarily maladroit4 ,the really stirring poetry of science is not in guesses1 or facile divinations about it1 but in its larger ascertained truths--the order of infinite space1 the slow method and vast results of infinite time4 ,for ,browne1 however1 the sense of poetry which so overmasters his scientific procedure1 depends chiefly on its vaguer possibilities2 the empirical philosophy1 even after ,bacon1 being still dominated by a temper1 resultant from the general unsettlement of men's #aea minds at the ,reformation1 which may be summed up in the famous question of ,montaigne--,que sais-je8 ,the cold-blooded method of observation and experiment was creeping but slowly over the domain of science2 and such unreclaimed portions of it as the phenomena of magnetism had an immense fascination for men like ,browne and ,digby4 ,here1 in those parts of natural philosophy but yet in discovery1 the ,america and untravelled parts of truth1 lay for them the true prospect of science1 like the new world itself to a geographical discoverer such as ,raleigh4 ,and welcome as one of the minute hints of that country far ahead of them1 the strange bird1 or floating fragment of unfamiliar vegetation1 which met those early navigators1 there was a certain fantastic experiment1 in which1 as was alleged1 ,paracelsus had been lucky4 ,for ,browne and others it became the crucial type of the kind of agency in nature which1 as they conceived1 it was the proper function of science to reveal in larger operation4 ,the subject of my last letter1 says ,dr4 ,henry ,power1 then a student1 writing to ,browne in #afdh1 the last year of ,charles the ,first1 being so high and noble a piece of chemistry1 invites me once more to request an experimental eviction of it from yourself2 and ,i hope you will not chide my importunity in this petition1 or be angry at my so frequent knockings at your door to obtain a grant of so great and admirable a #aeb mystery4 ,what the enthusiastic young student expected from ,browne1 so high and noble a piece of chemistry1 was the re-individualling of an incinerated plant--a violet1 turning to freshness1 and smelling sweet again1 out of its ashes1 under some genially fitted conditions of the chemic art4 ,palingenesis1 resurrection1 effected by orderly prescription--the re-individualling of an incinerated organism--is a subject which affords us a natural transition to the little book of the ,hydriotaphia1 or ,treatise of ,urn-,burial--about fifty or sixty pages--which1 together with a very singular letter not printed till after ,browne's death1 is perhaps1 after all1 the best justification of ,browne's literary reputation1 as it were his own curiously figured urn1 and treasure-place of immortal memory4 ,in its first presentation to the public this letter was connected with ,browne's ,christian ,morals2 but its proper and sympathetic collocation would be rather with the ,urn-,burial1 of which it is a kind of prelude1 or strikes the keynote4 ,he is writing in a very complex situation--to a friend1 upon occasion of the death of a common friend4 ,the deceased apparently had been little known to ,browne himself till his recent visits1 while the intimate friend to whom he is writing had been absent at the time2 and the leading motive of ,browne's letter is the deep impression he has received during those visits1 of a sort of #aec physical beauty in the coming of death1 with which he still surprises and moves his reader4 ,there had been1 in this case1 a tardiness and reluctancy in the circumstances of dissolution1 which had permitted him1 in the character of a physician1 as it were to assist at the spiritualising of the bodily frame by natural process2 a wonderful new type of a kind of mortified grace being evolved by the way4 ,the spiritual body had anticipated the formal moment of death2 the alert soul1 in that tardy decay1 changing its vesture gradually1 and as if piece by piece4 ,the infinite future had invaded this life perceptibly to the senses1 like the ocean felt far inland up a tidal river4 ,nowhere1 perhaps1 is the attitude of questioning awe on the threshold of another life displayed with the expressiveness of this unique morsel of literature2 though there is something of the same kind1 in another than the literary medium1 in the delicate monumental sculpture of the early ,tuscan ,school1 as also in many of the designs of ,william ,blake1 often1 though unconsciously1 much in sympathy with those unsophisticated ,italian workmen4 ,with him1 as with them1 and with the writer of the ,letter to a ,friend upon the occasion of the death of his intimate ,friend1--so strangely6 the visible function of death is but to refine1 to detach from aught that is vulgar4 ,and this elfin letter1 really an impromptu epistle to a friend1 affords the best possible light on the general temper of the man #aed who could be moved by the accidental discovery of those old urns at ,walsingham--funeral relics of ,romans1 or ,britons ,romanised which had learned ,roman customs--to the composition of that wonderful book the ,hydriotaphia4 ,he had drawn up a short account of the circumstance at the moment2 but it was after ten years' brooding that he put forth the finished treatise1 dedicated to an eminent collector of ancient coins and other rarities1 with congratulations that he can daily command the view of so many imperial faces1 and 7by way of frontispiece7 with one of the urns1 drawn with a coal taken out of it and found among the burnt bones4 ,the discovery had resuscitated for him a whole world of latent observation1 from life1 from out-of-the-way reading1 from the natural world1 and fused into a composition1 which with all its quaintness we may well pronounce classical1 all the heterogeneous elements of that singular mind4 ,the desire to record these risen ashes and not to let them be buried twice among us1 had set free1 in his manner of conceiving things1 something not wholly analysable1 something that may be properly called genius1 which shapes his use of common words to stronger and deeper senses1 in a way unusual in prose writing4 ,let the reader1 for instance1 trace his peculiarly sensitive use of the epithets thin and dark1 both here and in the ,letter to a ,friend4 ,upon what a grand note he can begin and end #aee chapter or paragraph6 ,when the funeral pyre was out1 and the last valediction over3 ,and a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto us4 ,dealing with a very vague range of feelings1 it is his skill to associate them to very definite objects4 ,like the ,soul1 in ,blake's design1 exploring the recesses of the tomb1 he carries a light1 the light of the poetic faith which he cannot put off him1 into those dark places1 the abode of worms and pismires1 peering round with a boundless curiosity and no fear2 noting the various casuistical considerations of men's last form of self-love2 all those whims of humanity as a student of perpetuity1 the mortuary customs of all nations1 which1 from their very closeness to our human nature1 arouse in most minds only a strong feeling of distaste4 ,there is something congruous with the impassive piety of the man in his waiting on accident from without to take start for the work1 which1 of all his work1 is most truly touched by the divine spark4 ,delightsome as its eloquence is actually found to be1 that eloquence is attained out of a certain difficulty and halting crabbedness of expression2 the wretched punctuation of the piece being not the only cause of its impressing the reader with the notion that he is but dealing with a collection of notes for a more finished composition1 and of a different kind2 perhaps a purely erudite treatise on its subject1 with detachment of all personal colour now adhering #aef to it4 ,out of an atmosphere of all-pervading oddity and quaintness--the quaintness of mind which reflects that this disclosing of the urns of the ancients hath left unto our view some parts which they never beheld themselves--arises a work really ample and grand1 nay6 classical1 as ,i said1 by virtue of the effectiveness with which it fixes a type in literature2 as1 indeed1 at its best1 romantic literature 7and ,browne is genuinely romantic7 in every period attains classical quality1 giving true measure of the very limited value of those well-worn critical distinctions4 ,and though the ,urn-,burial certainly has much of the character of a poem1 yet one is never allowed to forget that it was designed1 candidly1 as a scientific treatise on one department of ancient culture 7as much so as ,guichard's curious old ,french book on ,divers ,manners of ,burial7 and was the fruit of much labour1 in the way especially of industrious selection from remote and difficult writers2 there being then few or no handbooks1 or anything like our modern shortcuts to varied knowledge4 ,quite unaffectedly1 a curious learning saturates1 with a kind of grey and aged colour most apt and congruous with the subject-matter1 all the thoughts that arise in him4 ,his great store of reading1 so freely displayed1 he uses almost as poetically as ,milton2 like him1 profiting often by the mere sonorous effect of some heroic or ancient name1 which he can adapt to that same sort of learned sweetness of #aeg cadence with which so many of his single sentences are made to fall upon the ear4 ,pope ,gregory1 that great religious poet1 requested by certain eminent persons to send them some of those relics he sought for so devoutly in all the lurking-places of old ,rome1 took up1 it is said1 a portion of common earth1 and delivered it to the messengers2 and1 on their expressing surprise at such a gift1 pressed the earth together in his hand1 whereupon the sacred blood of the ,martyrs was beheld flowing out between his fingers4 ,the veneration of relics became a part of ,christian 7as some may think it a part of natural7 religion4 ,all over ,rome we may count how much devotion in fine art is owing to it2 and1 through all ugliness or superstition1 its intention still speaks clearly to serious minds4 ,the poor dead bones1 ghastly and forbidding3--we know what ,shakespeare would have felt about them4--,beat not the bones of the buried3 when he breathed1 he was a man6 ,and it is with something of a similar feeling that ,browne is full1 on the common and general ground of humanity2 an awe-stricken sympathy with those1 whose bones lie at the mercies of the living1 strong enough to unite all his various chords of feeling into a single strain of impressive and genuine poetry4 ,his real interest is in what may be called the curiosities of our common humanity4 ,as another might be moved at the sight of ,alexander's bones1 or ,saint ,edmund's1 or ,saint ,cecilia's1 #aeh so he is full of a fine poetical excitement at such lowly relics as the earth hides almost everywhere beneath our feet4 ,but it is hardly fair to take our leave amid these grievous images of so happy a writer as ,sir ,thomas ,browne2 so great a lover of the open air1 under which much of his life was passed4 ,his work1 late one night1 draws to a natural close3--,to keep our eyes open longer1 he bethinks himself suddenly1 were but to act our ,antipodes4 ,the huntsmen are up in ,america6 ,what a fund of open-air cheerfulness1 there6 in turning to sleep4 ,still1 even when we are dealing with a writer in whom mere style counts for so much as with ,browne1 it is impossible to ignore his matter2 and it is with religion he is really occupied from first to last1 hardly less than ,richard ,hooker4 ,and his religion1 too1 after all1 was a religion of cheerfulness3 he has no great consciousness of evil in things1 and is no fighter4 ,his religion1 if one may say so1 was all profit to him2 among other ways1 in securing an absolute staidness and placidity of temper1 for the intellectual work which was the proper business of his life4 ,his contributions to evidence1 in the ,religio ,medici1 for instance1 hardly tell1 because he writes out of view of a really philosophical criticism4 ,what does tell in him1 in this direction1 is the witness he brings to men's instinct of survival--the intimations of immortality1 as ,wordsworth terms them1 which #aei were natural with him in surprising force4 ,as was said of ,jean ,paul1 his special subject was the immortality of the soul2 with an assurance as personal1 as fresh and original1 as it was1 on the one hand1 in those old half-civilised people who had deposited the urns2 on the other hand1 in the cynical ,french poet of the nineteenth century1 who did not think1 but knew1 that his soul was imperishable4 ,he lived in an age in which that philosophy made a great stride which ends with ,hume2 and his lesson1 if we may be pardoned for taking away a lesson from so ethical a writer1 is the force of men's temperaments in the management of opinion1 their own or that of others2--that it is not merely different degrees of bare intellectual power which cause men to approach in different degrees to this or that intellectual programme4 ,could he have foreseen the mature result of that mechanical analysis which ,bacon had applied to nature1 and ,hobbes to the mind of man1 there is no reason to think that he would have surrendered his own chosen hypothesis concerning them4 ,he represents1 in an age1 the intellectual powers of which tend strongly to agnosticism1 that class of minds to which the supernatural view of things is still credible4 ,the non-mechanical theory of nature has had its grave adherents since3 to the non-mechanical theory of man--that he is in contact with a moral order on a different plane from the #afj mechanical order--thousands1 of the most various types and degrees of intellectual power1 always adhere2 a fact worth the consideration of all ingenuous thinkers1 if 7as is certainly the case with colour1 music1 number1 for instance7 there may be whole regions of fact1 the recognition of which belongs to one and not to another1 which people may possess in various degrees2 for the knowledge of which1 therefore1 one person is dependent upon another2 and in relation to which the appropriate means of cognition must lie among the elements of what we call individual temperament1 so that what looks like a pre-judgment may be really a legitimate apprehension4 ,men are what they are1 and are not wholly at the mercy of formal conclusions from their formally limited premises4 ,browne passes his whole life in observation and inquiry3 he is a genuine investigator1 with every opportunity3 the mind of the age all around him seems passively yielding to an almost foregone intellectual result1 to a philosophy of disillusion4 ,but he thinks all that a prejudice2 and not from any want of intellectual power certainly1 but from some inward consideration1 some afterthought1 from the antecedent gravitation of his own general character--or1 will you say8 from that unprecipitated infusion of fallacy in him--he fails to draw1 unlike almost all the rest of the world1 the conclusion ready to hand4 #ahhf4 ,,notes #add4 ,in the original1 this quotation1 like several above it1 is not indented2 it is in smaller type4 ,return4 ,,love',s ,,labours ,,lost #afa ,love's ,labours ,lost is one of the earliest of ,shakespeare's dramas1 and has many of the peculiarities of his poems1 which are also the work of his earlier life4 ,the opening speech of the king on the immortality of fame--on the triumph of fame over death--and the nobler parts of ,biron1 display something of the monumental style of ,shakespeare's ,sonnets1 and are not without their concerts of thought and expression4 ,this connexion of ,love's ,labours ,lost with ,shakespeare's poems is further enforced by the actual insertion in it of three sonnets and a faultless song2 which1 in accordance with his practice in other plays1 are inwoven into the argument of the piece and1 like the golden ornaments of a fair woman1 give it a peculiar air of distinction4 ,there is merriment in it also1 with choice illustrations of both wit and humour2 a laughter1 often exquisite1 ringing1 if faintly1 yet as genuine laughter still1 though sometimes sinking into mere burlesque1 which has not lasted quite so well4 ,and ,shakespeare #afb brings a serious effect out of the trifling of his characters4 ,a dainty love-making is interchanged with the more cumbrous play3 below the many artifices of ,biron's amorous speeches we may trace sometimes the unutterable longing2 and the lines in which ,katherine describes the blighting through love of her younger sister are one of the most touching things in older literature499 ,again1 how many echoes seem awakened by those strange words1 actually said in jest6 ,the sweet war-man 7,hector of ,troy7 is dead and rotten2 sweet chucks1 beat not the bones of the buried3 when he breathed1 he was a man6--words which may remind us of ,shakespeare's own epitaph4 ,in the last scene1 an ingenious turn is given to the action1 so that the piece does not conclude after the manner of other comedies4-- ,our wooing doth not end like an old play2 ,jack hath not ,jill3 and ,shakespeare strikes a passionate note across it at last1 in the entrance of the messenger1 who announces to the princess that the king her father is suddenly dead4 ,the merely dramatic interest of the piece is slight enough2 only just sufficient1 indeed1 to form the vehicle of its wit and poetry4 ,the scene--a park of the ,king of ,navarre--is unaltered throughout2 and the unity of the #afc play is not so much the unity of a drama as that of a series of pictorial groups1 in which the same figures reappear1 in different combinations but on the same background4 ,it is as if ,shakespeare had intended to bind together1 by some inventive conceit1 the devices of an ancient tapestry1 and give voices to its figures4 ,on one side1 a fair palace2 on the other1 the tents of the ,princess of ,france1 who has come on an embassy from her father to the ,king of ,navarre2 in the midst1 a wide space of smooth grass4 ,the same personages are combined over and over again into a series of gallant scenes--the princess1 the three masked ladies1 the quaint1 pedantic king2 one of those amiable kings men have never loved enough1 whose serious occupation with the things of the mind seems1 by contrast with the more usual forms of kingship1 like frivolity or play4 ,some of the figures are grotesque merely1 and all the male ones at least1 a little fantastic4 ,certain objects reappearing from scene to scene--love-letters crammed with verses to the margin1 and lovers' toys--hint obscurely at some story of intrigue4 ,between these groups1 on a smaller scale1 come the slighter and more homely episodes1 with ,sir ,nathaniel the curate1 the country-maid ,jaquenetta1 ,moth or ,mote the elfin-page1 with ,hiems and ,ver1 who recite the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo4 ,the ladies are #afd lodged in tents1 because the king1 like the princess of the modern poet's fancy1 has taken a vow to make his court a little ,academe1 and for three years' space no woman may come within a mile of it2 and the play shows how this artificial attempt was broken through4 ,for the king and his three fellow-scholars are of course soon forsworn1 and turn to writing sonnets1 each to his chosen lady4 ,these fellow-scholars of the king--quaint votaries of science at first1 afterwards affection's men-at-arms--three youthful knights1 gallant1 amorous1 chivalrous1 but also a little affected1 sporting always a curious foppery of language1 are1 throughout1 the leading figures in the foreground2 one of them1 in particular1 being more carefully depicted than the others1 and in himself very noticeable--a portrait with somewhat puzzling manner and expression1 which at once catches the eye irresistibly and keeps it fixed4 ,play is often that about which people are most serious2 and the humourist may observe how1 under all love of playthings1 there is almost always hidden an appreciation of something really engaging and delightful4 ,this is true always of the toys of children3 it is often true of the playthings of grown-up people1 their vanities1 their fopperies even1 their lighter loves2 the cynic would add their pursuit of fame4 ,certainly1 this is true without exception #afe of the playthings of a past age1 which to those who succeed it are always full of a pensive interest--old manners1 old dresses1 old houses4 ,for what is called fashion in these matters occupies1 in each age1 much of the care of many of the most discerning people1 furnishing them with a kind of mirror of their real inward refinements1 and their capacity for selection4 ,such modes or fashions are1 at their best1 an example of the artistic predominance of form over matter2 of the manner of the doing of it over the thing done2 and have a beauty of their own4 ,it is so with that old euphuism of the ,elizabethan age--that pride of dainty language and curious expression1 which it is very easy to ridicule1 which often made itself ridiculous1 but which had below it a real sense of fitness and nicety2 and which1 as we see in this very play1 and still more clearly in the ,sonnets1 had some fascination for the young ,shakespeare himself4 ,it is this foppery of delicate language1 this fashionable plaything of his time1 with which ,shakespeare is occupied in ,love's ,labours ,lost4 ,he shows us the manner in all its stages2 passing from the grotesque and vulgar pedantry of ,holofernes1 through the extravagant but polished caricature of ,armado1 to become the peculiar characteristic of a real though still quaint poetry in ,biron himself1 who is still chargeable even at his best with just a little affectation4 ,as ,shakespeare laughs broadly at it in ,holofernes or ,armado1 so he #aff is the analyst of its curious charm in ,biron2 and this analysis involves a delicate raillery by ,shakespeare himself at his own chosen manner4 ,this foppery of ,shakespeare's day had1 then1 its really delightful side1 a quality in no sense affected1 by which it satisfies a real instinct in our minds--the fancy so many of us have for an exquisite and curious skill in the use of words4 ,biron is the perfect flower of this manner3 ,a man of fire-new words1 fashion's own knight3 --as he describes ,armado1 in terms which are really applicable to himself4 ,in him this manner blends with a true gallantry of nature1 and an affectionate complaisance and grace4 ,he has at times some of its extravagance or caricature also1 but the shades of expression by which he passes from this to the golden cadence of ,shakespeare's own most characteristic verse1 are so fine1 that it is sometimes difficult to trace them4 ,what is a vulgarity in ,holofernes1 and a caricature in ,armado1 refines itself with him into the expression of a nature truly and inwardly bent upon a form of delicate perfection1 and is accompanied by a real insight into the laws which determine what is exquisite in language1 and their root in the nature of things4 ,he can appreciate quite the opposite style-- ,in russet yeas1 and honest kersey noes2 he knows the first law of pathos1 that ,honest plain words best suit the ear of grief4 #afg ,he delights in his own rapidity of intuition2 and1 in harmony with the half-sensuous philosophy of the ,sonnets1 exalts1 a little scornfully1 in many memorable expressions1 the judgment of the senses1 above all slower1 more toilsome means of knowledge1 scorning some who fail to see things only because they are so clear3 ,so here you find where light in darkness lies1 ,your light grows dark by losing of your eyes3-- as with some ,german commentators on ,shakespeare4 ,appealing always to actual sensation from men's affected theories1 he might seem to despise learning2 as1 indeed1 he has taken up his deep studies partly in sport1 and demands always the profit of learning in renewed enjoyment4 ,yet he surprises us from time to time by intuitions which could come only from a deep experience and power of observation2 and men listen to him1 old and young1 in spite of themselves4 ,he is quickly impressible to the slightest clouding of the spirits in social intercourse1 and has his moments of extreme seriousness3 his trial-task may well be1 as ,rosaline puts it-- ,to enforce the pained impotent to smile4 ,but still1 through all1 he is true to his chosen manner3 that gloss of dainty language is a second nature with him3 even at his best he is not without a certain artifice3 the trick of playing on words never deserts him2 and #afh ,shakespeare1 in whose own genius there is an element of this very quality1 shows us in this graceful1 and1 as it seems1 studied1 portrait1 his enjoyment of it4 ,as happens with every true dramatist1 ,shakespeare is for the most part hidden behind the persons of his creation4 ,yet there are certain of his characters in which we feel that there is something of self-portraiture4 ,and it is not so much in his grander1 more subtle and ingenious creations that we feel this--in ,hamlet and ,king ,lear--as in those slighter and more spontaneously developed figures1 who1 while far from playing principal parts1 are yet distinguished by a peculiar happiness and delicate ease in the drawing of them2 figures which possess1 above all1 that winning attractiveness which there is no man but would willingly exercise1 and which resemble those works of art which1 though not meant to be very great or imposing1 are yet wrought of the choicest material4 ,mercutio1 in ,romeo and ,juliet1 belongs to this group of ,shakespeare's characters--versatile1 mercurial people1 such as make good actors1 and in whom the nimble spirits of the arteries1 the finer but still merely animal elements of great wit1 predominate4 ,a careful delineation of minor1 yet expressive traits seems to mark them out as the characters of his predilection2 #afi and it is hard not to identify him with these more than with others4 ,biron1 in ,love's ,labours ,lost1 is perhaps the most striking member of this group4 ,in this character1 which is never quite in touch1 never quite on a perfect level of understanding1 with the other persons of the play1 we see1 perhaps1 a reflex of ,shakespeare himself1 when he has just become able to stand aside from and estimate the first period of his poetry4 #ahgh4 ,,notes #afb4 99,act ,v4 ,scene ,,ii4 ,return4 ,,measure ,,for ,,measure #agj ,,in ,measure for ,measure1 as in some other of his plays1 ,shakespeare has remodelled an earlier and somewhat rough composition to finer issues1 suffering much to remain as it had come from the less skilful hand1 and not raising the whole of his work to an equal degree of intensity4 ,hence perhaps some of that depth and weightiness which make this play so impressive1 as with the true seal of experience1 like a fragment of life itself1 rough and disjointed indeed1 but forced to yield in places its profounder meaning4 ,in ,measure for ,measure1 in contrast with the flawless execution of ,romeo and ,juliet1 ,shakespeare has spent his art in just enough modification of the scheme of the older play to make it exponent of this purpose1 adapting its terrible essential incidents1 so that ,coleridge found it the only painful work among ,shakespeare's dramas1 and leaving for the reader of to-day more than the usual number of difficult expressions2 but infusing a lavish colour and a profound significance into it1 so that under his #aga touch certain select portions of it rise far above the level of all but his own best poetry1 and working out of it a morality so characteristic that the play might well pass for the central expression of his moral judgments4 ,it remains a comedy1 as indeed is congruous with the bland1 half-humorous equity which informs the whole composition1 sinking from the heights of sorrow and terror into the rough scheme of the earlier piece2 yet it is hardly less full of what is really tragic in man's existence than if ,claudio had indeed stooped to death4 ,even the humorous concluding scenes have traits of special grace1 retaining in less emphatic passages a stray lire or word of power1 as it seems1 so that we watch to the end for the traces where the nobler hand has glanced along1 leaving its vestiges1 as if accidentally or wastefully1 in the rising of the style4 ,the interest of ,measure for ,measure1 therefore1 is partly that of an old story told over again4 ,we measure with curiosity that variety of resources which has enabled ,shakespeare to refashion the original material with a higher motive2 adding to the intricacy of the piece1 yet so modifying its structure as to give the whole almost the unity of a single scene2 lending1 by the light of a philosophy which dwells much on what is complex and subtle in our nature1 a true human propriety to its strange and unexpected turns of feeling and character1 to incidents so #agb difficult as the fall of ,angelo1 and the subsequent reconciliation of ,isabella1 so that she pleads successfully for his life4 ,it was from ,whetstone1 a contemporary ,english writer1 that ,shakespeare derived the outline of ,cinthio's rare history of ,promos and ,cassandra1 one of that numerous class of ,italian stories1 like ,boccaccio's ,tancred of ,salerno1 in which the mere energy of southern passion has everything its own way1 and which1 though they may repel many a northern reader by a certain crudity in their colouring1 seem to have been full of fascination for the ,elizabethan age4 ,this story1 as it appears in ,whetstone's endless comedy1 is almost as rough as the roughest episode of actual criminal life4 ,but the play seems never to have been acted1 and some time after its publication ,whetstone himself turned the thing into a tale1 included in his ,heptameron of ,civil ,discourses1 where it still figures as a genuine piece1 with touches of undesigned poetry1 a quaint field-flower here and there of diction or sentiment1 the whole strung up to an effective brevity1 and with the fragrance of that admirable age of literature all about it4 ,here1 then1 there is something of the original ,italian colour3 in this narrative ,shakespeare may well have caught the first glimpse of a composition with nobler proportions2 and some artless sketch from his own hand1 perhaps1 putting together his first impressions1 insinuated itself between ,whetstone's work and the play as we actually read it4 ,out #agc of these insignificant sources ,shakespeare's play rises1 full of solemn expression1 and with a profoundly designed beauty1 the new body of a higher1 though sometimes remote and difficult poetry1 escaping from the imperfect relics of the old story1 yet not wholly transformed1 and even as it stands but the preparation only1 we might think1 of a still more imposing design4 ,for once we have in it a real example of that sort of writing which is sometimes described as suggestive1 and which by the help of certain subtly calculated hints only1 brings into distinct shape the reader's own half-developed imaginings4 ,often the quality is attributed to writing merely vague and unrealised1 but in ,measure for ,measure1 quite certainly1 ,shakespeare has directed the attention of sympathetic readers along certain channels of meditation beyond the immediate scope of his work4 ,measure for ,measure1 therefore1 by the quality of these higher designs1 woven by his strange magic on a texture of poorer quality1 is hardly less indicative than ,hamlet even1 of ,shakespeare's reason1 of his power of moral interpretation4 ,it deals1 not like ,hamlet with the problems which beset one of exceptional temperament1 but with mere human nature4 ,it brings before us a group of persons1 attractive1 full of desire1 vessels of the genial1 seed-bearing powers of nature1 a gaudy existence flowering out over the old court and city of ,vienna1 a spectacle of the fulness and #agd pride of life which to some may seem to touch the verge of wantonness4 ,behind this group of people1 behind their various action1 ,shakespeare inspires in us the sense of a strong tyranny of nature and circumstance4 ,then what shall there be on this side of it--on our side1 the spectators' side1 of this painted screen1 with its puppets who are really glad or sorry all the time8 what philosophy of life1 what sort of equity8 ,stimulated to read more carefully by ,shakespeare's own profounder touches1 the reader will note the vivid reality1 the subtle interchange of light and shade1 the strongly contrasted characters of this group of persons1 passing across the stage so quickly4 ,the slightest of them is at least not ill-natured3 the meanest of them can put forth a plea for existence--,truly1 sir1 ,i am a poor fellow that would live6--they are never sure of themselves1 even in the strong tower of a cold unimpressible nature3 they are capable of many friendships and of a true dignity in danger1 giving each other a sympathetic1 if transitory1 regret--one sorry that another should be foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack4 ,words which seem to exhaust man's deepest sentiment concerning death and life are put on the lips of a gilded1 witless youth2 and the saintly ,isabella feels fire creep along her1 kindling her tongue to eloquence at the suggestion of shame4 ,in places the shadow deepens3 death intrudes itself on the scene1 as among other #age things a great disguiser1 blanching the features of youth and spoiling its goodly hair1 touching the fine ,claudio even with its disgraceful associations4 ,as in ,orcagna's fresco at ,pisa1 it comes capriciously1 giving many and long reprieves to ,barnardine1 who has been waiting for it nine years in prison1 taking another thence by fever1 another by mistake of judgment1 embracing others in the midst of their music and song4 ,the little mirror of existence1 which reflects to each for a moment the stage on which he plays1 is broken at last by a capricious accident2 while all alike1 in their yearning for untasted enjoyment1 are really discounting their days1 grasping so hastily and accepting so inexactly the precious pieces4 ,the ,duke's quaint but excellent moralising at the beginning of the third act does but express1 like the chorus of a ,greek play1 the spirit of the passing incidents4 ,to him in ,shakespeare's play1 to a few here and there in the actual world1 this strange practical paradox of our life1 so unwise in its eager haste1 reveals itself in all its clearness4 ,the ,duke disguised as a friar1 with his curious moralising on life and death1 and ,isabella in her first mood of renunciation1 a thing ensky'd and sainted1 come with the quiet of the cloister as a relief to this lust and pride of life3 like some grey monastic picture hung on the wall of a gaudy room1 their presence cools the heated air of the piece4 ,for a moment we #agf are within the placid conventual walls1 whither they fancy at first that the ,duke has come as a man crossed in love1 with ,friar ,thomas and ,friar ,peter1 calling each other by their homely1 ,english names1 or at the nunnery among the novices1 with their little limited privileges1 where ,if you speak you must not show your face1 ,or if you show your face you must not speak4 ,not less precious for this relief in the general structure of the piece1 than for its own peculiar graces is the episode of ,mariana1 a creature wholly of ,shakespeare's invention1 told1 by way of interlude1 in subdued prose4 ,the moated grange1 with its dejected mistress1 its long1 listless1 discontented days1 where we hear only the voice of a boy broken off suddenly in the midst of one of the loveliest songs of ,shakespeare1 or of ,shakespeare's school199 is the pleasantest of many glimpses we get here of pleasant places--the field without the town1 ,angelo's garden-house1 the consecrated fountain4 ,indirectly it has suggested two of the most perfect compositions among the poetry of our own generation4 ,again it is a picture within a picture1 but with fainter lines and a greyer atmosphere3 we have here the same passions1 the same wrongs1 the same continuance of affection1 the same crying out upon death1 as in the nearer and larger piece1 though softened1 and reduced to the mood of a more dreamy scene4 #agg ,of ,angelo we may feel at first sight inclined to say only guarda e passa6 or to ask whether he is indeed psychologically possible4 ,in the old story1 he figures as an embodiment of pure and unmodified evil1 like ,hyliogabalus of ,rome or ,denis of ,sicyll4 ,but the embodiment of pure evil is no proper subject of art1 and ,shakespeare1 in the spirit of a philosophy which dwells much on the complications of outward circumstance with men's inclinations1 turns into a subtle study in casuistry this incident of the austere judge fallen suddenly into utmost corruption by a momentary contact with supreme purity4 ,but the main interest in ,measure for ,measure is not1 as in ,promos and ,cassandra1 in the relation of ,isabella and ,angelo1 but rather in the relation of ,claudio and ,isabella4 ,greek tragedy in some of its noblest products has taken for its theme the love of a sister1 a sentiment unimpassioned indeed1 purifying by the very spectacle of its passionlessness1 but capable of a fierce and almost animal strength if informed for a moment by pity and regret4 ,at first ,isabella comes upon the scene as a tranquillising influence in it4 ,but ,shakespeare1 in the development of the action1 brings quite different and unexpected qualities out of her4 ,it is his characteristic poetry to expose this cold1 chastened personality1 respected even by the worldly ,lucio as something ensky'd and sainted1 and almost an immortal spirit1 to two #agh sharp1 shameful trials1 and wring out of her a fiery1 revealing eloquence4 ,thrown into the terrible dilemma of the piece1 called upon to sacrifice that cloistral whiteness to sisterly affection1 become in a moment the ground of strong1 contending passions1 she develops a new character and shows herself suddenly of kindred with those strangely conceived women1 like ,webster's ,vittoria1 who unite to a seductive sweetness something of a dangerous and tigerlike changefulness of feeling4 ,the swift1 vindictive anger leaps1 like a white flame1 into this white spirit1 and1 stripped in a moment of all convention1 she stands before us clear1 detached1 columnar1 among the tender frailties of the piece4 ,cassandra1 the original of ,isabella in ,whetstone's tale1 with the purpose of the ,roman ,lucretia in her mind1 yields gracefully enough to the conditions of her brother's safety2 and to the lighter reader of ,shakespeare there may seem something harshly conceived1 or psychologically impossible even1 in the suddenness of the change wrought in her1 as ,claudio welcomes for a moment the chance of life through her compliance with ,angelo's will1 and he may have a sense here of flagging skill1 as in words less finely handled than in the preceding scene4 ,the play1 though still not without traces of nobler handiwork1 sinks down1 as we know1 at last into almost homely comedy1 and it might be supposed that just here the grander manner #agi deserted it4 ,but the skill with which ,isabella plays upon ,claudio's well-recognised sense of honour1 and endeavours by means of that to insure him beforehand from the acceptance of life on baser terms1 indicates no coming laxity of hand just in this place4 ,it was rather that there rose in ,shakespeare's conception1 as there may for the reader1 as there certainly would in any good acting of the part1 something of that terror1 the seeking for which is one of the notes of romanticism in ,shakespeare and his circle4 ,the stream of ardent natural affection1 poured as sudden hatred upon the youth condemned to die1 adds an additional note of expression to the horror of the prison where so much of the scene takes place4 ,it is not here only that ,shakespeare has conceived of such extreme anger and pity as putting a sort of genius into simple women1 so that their lips drop eloquence1 and their intuitions interpret that which is often too hard or fine for manlier reason2 and it is ,isabella with her grand imaginative diction1 and that poetry laid upon the prone and speechless dialect there is in mere youth itself1 who gives utterance to the equity1 the finer judgments of the piece on men and things4 ,from behind this group with its subtle lights and shades1 its poetry1 its impressive contrasts1 ,shakespeare1 as ,i said1 conveys to us a strong sense of the tyranny of nature and #ahj circumstance over human action4 ,the most powerful expressions of this side of experience might be found here4 ,the bloodless1 impassible temperament does but wait for its opportunity1 for the almost accidental coherence of time with place1 and place with wishing1 to annul its long and patient discipline1 and become in a moment the very opposite of that which under ordinary conditions it seemed to be1 even to itself4 ,the mere resolute self-assertion of the blood brings to others special temptations1 temptations which1 as defects or over-growths1 lie in the very qualities which make them otherwise imposing or attractive2 the very advantage of men's gifts of intellect or sentiment being dependent on a balance in their use so delicate that men hardly maintain it always4 ,something also must be conceded to influences merely physical1 to the complexion of the heavens1 the skyey influences1 shifting as the stars shift2 as something also to the mere caprice of men exercised over each other in the dispensations of social or political order1 to the chance which makes the life or death of ,claudio dependent on ,angelo's will4 ,the many veins of thought which render the poetry of this play so weighty and impressive unite in the image of ,claudio1 a flowerlike young man1 whom1 prompted by a few hints from ,shakespeare1 the imagination easily clothes with all the bravery of youth1 as he crosses the stage before us on his way to death1 coming so #aha hastily to the end of his pilgrimage4 ,set in the horrible blackness of the prison1 with its various forms of unsightly death1 this flower seems the braver4 ,fallen by prompture of the blood1 the victim of a suddenly revived law against the common fault of youth like his1 he finds his life forfeited as if by the chance of a lottery4 ,with that instinctive clinging to life1 which breaks through the subtlest casuistries of monk or sage apologising for an early death1 he welcomes for a moment the chance of life through his sister's shame1 though he revolts hardly less from the notion of perpetual imprisonment so repulsive to the buoyant energy of youth4 ,familiarised1 by the words alike of friends and the indifferent1 to the thought of death1 he becomes gentle and subdued indeed1 yet more perhaps through pride than real resignation1 and would go down to darkness at last hard and unblinded4 ,called upon suddenly to encounter his fate1 looking with keen and resolute profile straight before him1 he gives utterance to some of the central truths of human feeling1 the sincere1 concentrated expression of the recoiling flesh4 ,thoughts as profound and poetical as ,hamlet's arise in him2 and but for the accidental arrest of sentence he would descend into the dust1 a mere gilded1 idle flower of youth indeed1 but with what are perhaps the most eloquent of all ,shakespeare's words upon his lips4 ,as ,shakespeare in ,measure for ,measure has #ahb refashioned1 after a nobler pattern1 materials already at hand1 so that the relics of other men's poetry are incorporated into his perfect work1 so traces of the old morality1 that early form of dramatic composition which had for its function the inculcating of some moral theme1 survive in it also1 and give it a peculiar ethical interest4 ,this ethical interest1 though it can escape no attentive reader1 yet1 in accordance with that artistic law which demands the predominance of form everywhere over the mere matter or subject handled1 is not to be wholly separated from the special circumstances1 necessities1 embarrassments1 of these particular dramatic persons4 ,the old moralities exemplified most often some rough-and-ready lesson4 ,here the very intricacy and subtlety of the moral world itself1 the difficulty of seizing the true relations of so complex a material1 the difficulty of just judgment1 of judgment that shall not be unjust1 are the lessons conveyed4 ,even in ,whetstone's old story this peculiar vein of moralising comes to the surface3 even there1 we notice the tendency to dwell on mixed motives1 the contending issues of action1 the presence of virtues and vices alike in unexpected places1 on the hard choice of two evils1 on the imprisoning of men's real intents4 ,measure for ,measure is full of expressions drawn from a profound experience of these casuistries1 and that ethical interest becomes predominant in it3 it is no longer ,promos and #ahc ,cassandra1 but ,measure for ,measure1 its new name expressly suggesting the subject of poetical justice4 ,the action of the play1 like the action of life itself for the keener observer1 develops in us the conception of this poetical justice1 and the yearning to realise it1 the true justice of which ,angelo knows nothing1 because it lies for the most part beyond the limits of any acknowledged law4 ,the idea of justice involves the idea of rights4 ,but at bottom rights are equivalent to that which really is1 to facts2 and the recognition of his rights therefore1 the justice he requires of our hands1 or our thoughts1 is the recognition of that which the person1 in his inmost nature1 really is2 and as sympathy alone can discover that which really is in matters of feeling and thought1 true justice is in its essence a finer knowledge through love4 ',tis very pregnant3 ,the jewel that we find we stoop and take it1 ,because we see it2 but what we do not see ,we tread upon1 and never think of it4 ,it is for this finer justice1 a justice based on a more delicate appreciation of the true conditions of men and things1 a true respect of persons in our estimate of actions1 that the people in ,measure for ,measure cry out as they pass before us2 and as the poetry of this play is full of the peculiarities of ,shakespeare's poetry1 so in its ethics it is an epitome of ,shakespeare's moral judgments4 ,they are the moral judgments of #ahd an observer1 of one who sits as a spectator1 and knows how the threads in the design before him hold together under the surface3 they are the judgments of the humourist also1 who follows with a half-amused but always pitiful sympathy1 the various ways of human disposition1 and sees less distance than ordinary men between what are called respectively great and little things4 ,it is not always that poetry can be the exponent of morality2 but it is this aspect of morals which it represents most naturally1 for this true justice is dependent on just those finer appreciations which poetry cultivates in us the power of making1 those peculiar valuations of action and its effect which poetry actually requires4 #ahgd4 ,,notes #agf4 99,fletcher1 in the ,bloody ,brother1 gives the rest of it4 ,return4 ,,shakespeare',s ,,english ,,kings #ahe ,a brittle glory shineth in this face3 ,as brittle as the glory is the face4 ,,the ,english plays of ,shakespeare needed but the completion of one unimportant interval to possess the unity of a popular chronicle from ,richard the ,second to ,henry the ,eighth1 and possess1 as they actually stand1 the unity of a common motive in the handling of the various events and persons which they bring before us4 ,certain of his historic dramas1 not ,english1 display ,shakespeare's mastery in the development of the heroic nature amid heroic circumstances2 and had he chosen1 from ,english history1 to deal with ,coeur-de-,lion or ,edward the ,first1 the innate quality of his subject would doubtless have called into play something of that profound and sombre power which in ,julius ,caesar and ,macbeth has sounded the depths of mighty character4 ,true1 on the whole1 to fact1 it is another side of kingship which he has made prominent in his ,english histories4 ,the irony #ahf of kingship--average human nature1 flung with a wonderfully pathetic effect into the vortex of great events2 tragedy of everyday quality heightened in degree only by the conspicuous scene which does but make those who play their parts there conspicuously unfortunate2 the utterance of common humanity straight from the heart1 but refined like other common things for kingly uses by ,shakespeare's unfailing eloquence3 such1 unconsciously for the most part1 though palpably enough to the careful reader1 is the conception under which ,shakespeare has arranged the lights and shadows of the story of the ,english kings1 emphasising merely the light and shadow inherent in it1 and keeping very close to the original authorities1 not simply in the general outline of these dramatic histories but sometimes in their very expression4 ,certainly the history itself1 as he found it in ,hall1 ,holinshed1 and ,stowe1 those somewhat picturesque old chroniclers who had themselves an eye for the dramatic effects of human life1 has much of this sentiment already about it4 ,what he did not find there was the natural prerogative--such justification1 in kingly1 that is to say1 in exceptional1 qualities1 of the exceptional position1 as makes it practicable in the result4 ,it is no ,henriade he writes1 and no history of the ,english people1 but the sad fortunes of some ,english kings as conspicuous examples of the ordinary human condition4 ,as in a children's #ahg story1 all princes are in extremes4 ,delightful in the sunshine above the wall into which chance lifts the flower for a season1 they can but plead somewhat more touchingly than others their everyday weakness in the storm4 ,such is the motive that gives unity to these unequal and intermittent contributions toward a slowly evolved dramatic chronicle1 which it would have taken many days to rehearse2 a not distant story from real life still well remembered in its general course1 to which people might listen now and again1 as long as they cared1 finding human nature at least wherever their attention struck ground in it4 ,he begins with ,john1 and allows indeed to the first of these ,english kings a kind of greatness1 making the development of the play centre in the counteraction of his natural gifts--that something of heroic force about him--by a madness which takes the shape of reckless impiety1 forced especially on men's attention by the terrible circumstances of his end1 in the delineation of which ,shakespeare triumphs1 setting1 with true poetic tact1 this incident of the king's death1 in all the horror of a violent one1 amid a scene delicately suggestive of what is perennially peaceful and genial in the outward world4 ,like the sensual humours of ,falstaff in another play1 the presence of the bastard ,faulconbridge1 with his physical energy and his unmistakable family likeness--those limbs #ahh which ,sir ,robert never holp to make99 contributes to an almost coarse assertion of the force of nature1 of the somewhat ironic preponderance of nature and circumstance over men's artificial arrangements1 to1 the recognition of a certain potent natural aristocracy1 which is far from being always identical with that more formal1 heraldic one4 ,and what is a coarse fact in the case of ,faulconbridge becomes a motive of pathetic appeal in the wan and babyish ,arthur4 ,the magic with which nature models tiny and delicate children to the likeness of their rough fathers is nowhere more justly expressed than in the words of ,king ,philip4-- ,look here upon thy brother ,geoffrey's face ,these eyes1 these brows were moulded out of his3 ,this little abstract doth contain that large ,which died in ,geoffrey2 and the hand of time ,shall draw this brief into as huge a volume4 ,it was perhaps something of a boyish memory of the shocking end of his father that had distorted the piety of ,henry the ,third into superstitious terror4 ,a frightened soul1 himself touched with the contrary sort of religious madness1 doting on all that was alien from his father's huge ferocity1 on the genialities1 the soft gilding1 of life1 on the genuine interests of art and poetry1 to be credited more than any other person with the deep religious expression of #ahi ,westminster ,abbey1 ,henry the ,third1 picturesque though useless1 but certainly touching1 might have furnished ,shakespeare1 had he filled up this interval in his series1 with precisely the kind of effect he tends towards in his ,english plays4 ,but he found it completer still in the person and story of ,richard the ,second1 a figure--that sweet lovely rose--which haunts ,shakespeare's mind1 as it seems long to have haunted the minds of the ,english people1 as the most touching of all examples of the irony of kingship4 ,henry the ,fourth--to look for a moment beyond our immediate subject1 in pursuit of ,shakespeare's thought--is presented1 of course1 in general outline1 as an impersonation of surviving force3 he has a certain amount of kingcraft also1 a real fitness for great opportunity4 ,but still true to his leading motive1 ,shakespeare1 in ,king ,henry the ,fourth1 has left the high-water mark of his poetry in the soliloquy which represents royalty longing vainly for the toiler's sleep2 while the popularity1 the showy heroism1 of ,henry the ,fifth1 is used to give emphatic point to the old earthy commonplace about wild oats4 ,the wealth of homely humour in these plays1 the fun coming straight home to all the world1 of ,fluellen especially in his unconscious interview with the king1 the boisterous earthiness of ,falstaff and his companions1 contribute to the same effect4 ,the keynote of #aij ,shakespeare's treatment is indeed expressed by ,henry the ,fifth himself1 the greatest of ,shakespeare's kings4--,though ,i speak it to you1 he says incognito1 under cover of night1 to a common soldier on the field1 ,i think the king is but a man1 as ,i am3 the violet smells to him as it doth to me3 all his senses have but human conditions2 and though his affections be higher mounted than ours yet when they stoop they stoop with like wing4 ,and1 in truth1 the really kingly speeches which ,shakespeare assigns to him1 as to other kings weak enough in all but speech1 are but a kind of flowers1 worn for1 and effective only as personal embellishment4 ,they combine to one result with the merely outward and ceremonial ornaments of royalty1 its pageantries1 flaunting so naively1 so credulously1 in ,shakespeare1 as in that old medieval time4 ,and then1 the force of ,hotspur is but transient youth1 the common heat of youth1 in him4 ,the character of ,henry the ,sixth again1 roi fainant1 with ,la ,pucelle99 for his counterfoil1 lay in the direct course of ,shakespeare's design3 he has done much to fix the sentiment of the holy ,henry4 ,richard the ,third1 touched1 like ,john1 with an effect of real heroism1 is spoiled like him by something of criminal madness1 and reaches his highest level of tragic expression #aia when circumstances reduce him to terms of mere human nature4-- ,a horse6 ,a horse6 ,my kingdom for a horse6 ,the ,princes in the ,tower recall to mind the lot of young ,arthur3-- ,i'll go with thee1 ,and find the inheritance of this poor child1 ,his little kingdom of a forced grave4 ,and when ,shakespeare comes to ,henry the ,eighth1 it is not the superficial though very ,english splendour of the king himself1 but the really potent and ascendant nature of the butcher's son on the one hand1 and ,katharine's subdued reproduction of the sad fortunes of ,richard the ,second on the other1 that define his central interest499 ,with a prescience of the ,wars of the ,roses1 of which his errors were the original cause1 it is ,richard who best exposes ,shakespeare's own constant sentiment concerning war1 and especially that sort of civil war which was then recent in ,english memories4 ,the soul of ,shakespeare1 certainly1 was not wanting in a sense of the magnanimity of warriors4 ,the grandiose aspects of war1 its magnificent apparelling1 he records #aib monumentally enough--the dressing of the lists1 the lion's heart1 its unfaltering haste thither in all the freshness of youth and morning4-- ,not sick although ,i have to do with death-- ,the sun doth gild our armour3 ,up1 my ,lords6-- ,i saw young ,harry with his beaver on1 ,his cuisses on his thighs1 gallantly arm'd1 ,rise from the ground like feather'd ,mercury4 ,only1 with ,shakespeare1 the afterthought is immediate3-- ,they come like sacrifices in their trim4 --,will it never be to-day8 ,i will trot to-morrow a mile1 and my way shall be paved with ,english faces4 ,this sentiment ,richard reiterates very plaintively1 in association with the delicate sweetness of the ,english fields1 still sweet and fresh1 like ,london and her other fair towns in that ,england of ,chaucer1 for whose soil the exiled ,bolingbroke is made to long so dangerously1 while ,richard on his return from ,ireland salutes it-- ,that pale1 that white-fac'd shore1-- ,as a long-parted mother with her child4-- ,so1 weeping1 smiling1 greet ,i thee1 my earth6 ,and do thee favour with my royal hands4-- ,then 7of ,bolingbroke7 ,ere the crown he looks for live in peace1 ,ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers' sons ,shall ill become the flower of ,england's face2 ,change the complexion of her maid-pale peace ,to scarlet indignation1 and bedew ,my pastures' grass with faithful ,english blood4-- #aic ,why have they dared to march8-- asks ,york1 ,so many miles upon her peaceful bosom1 ,frighting her pale-fac'd visages with war8-- waking1 according to ,richard1 ,our peace1 which in our country's cradle1 ,draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep3-- bedrenching with crimson tempest ,the fresh green lap of fair king ,richard's land3-- frighting fair peace from our quiet confines1 laying ,the summer's dust with showers of blood1 ,rained from the wounds of slaughter'd ,englishmen3 bruising ,her flowerets with the armed hoofs ,of hostile paces4 ,perhaps it is not too fanciful to note in this play a peculiar recoil from the mere instruments of warfare1 the contact of the rude ribs1 the flint bosom1 of ,barkloughly ,castle or ,pomfret or ,julius ,caesar's ill-erected tower3 the ,boisterous untun'd drums ,with harsh-resounding trumpets' dreadful bray ,and grating shock of wrathful iron arms4 ,it is as if the lax1 soft beauty of the king took effect1 at least by contrast1 on everything beside4 ,one gracious prerogative1 certainly1 ,shakespeare's #aid ,english kings possess3 they are a very eloquent company1 and ,richard is the most sweet-tongued of them all4 ,in no other play perhaps is there such a flush of those gay1 fresh1 variegated flowers of speech--colour and figure1 not lightly attached to1 but fused into1 the very phrase itself--which ,shakespeare cannot help dispensing to his characters1 as in this play of the ,deposing of ,king ,richard the ,second1 an exquisite poet if he is nothing else1 from first to last1 in light and gloom alike1 able to see all things poetically1 to give a poetic turn to his conduct of them1 and refreshing with his golden language the tritest aspects of that ironic contrast between the pretensions of a king and the actual necessities of his destiny4 ,what a garden of words6 ,with him1 blank verse1 infinitely graceful1 deliberate1 musical in inflexion1 becomes indeed a true verse royal1 that rhyming lapse1 which to the ,shakespearian ear1 at least in youth1 came as the last touch of refinement on it1 being here doubly appropriate4 ,his eloquence blends with that fatal beauty1 of which he was so frankly aware1 so amiable to his friends1 to his wife1 of the effects of which on the people his enemies were so much afraid1 on which ,shakespeare himself dwells so attentively as the royal blood comes and goes in the face with his rapid changes of temper4 ,as happens with sensitive natures1 it attunes him to a congruous suavity of manners1 by which anger itself became flattering3 #aie it blends with his merely youthful hopefulness and high spirits1 his sympathetic love for gay people1 things1 apparel--his cote of gold and stone1 valued at thirty thousand marks1 the novel ,italian fashions he preferred1 as also with those real amiabilities that made people forget the darker touches of his character1 but never tire of the pathetic rehearsal of his fall1 the meekness of which would have seemed merely abject in a less graceful performer4 ,yet it is only fair to say that in the painstaking revival of ,king ,richard the ,second1 by the late ,charles ,kean1 those who were very young thirty years ago were afforded much more than ,shakespeare's play could ever have been before--the very person of the king based on the stately old portrait in ,westminster ,abbey1 the earliest extant contemporary likeness of any ,english sovereign1 the grace1 the winning pathos1 the sympathetic voice of the player1 the tasteful archaeology confronting vulgar modern ,london with a scenic reproduction1 for once really agreeable1 of the ,london of ,chaucer4 ,in the hands of ,kean the play became like an exquisite performance on the violin4 ,the long agony of one so gaily painted by nature's self1 from his tragic abdication till the hour in which he ,sluiced out his innocent soul thro' streams of blood1 was for playwrights a subject ready to hand1 and #aif became early the theme of a popular drama1 of which some have fancied surviving favourite fragments in the rhymed parts of ,shakespeare's work4 ,the king ,richard of ,yngland ,was in his flowris then regnand3 ,but his flowris efter sone ,fadyt1 and ware all undone3-- says the old chronicle4 ,strangely enough1 ,shakespeare supposes him an over-confident believer in that divine right of kings1 of which people in ,shakespeare's time were coming to hear so much2 a general right1 sealed to him 7so ,richard is made to think7 as an ineradicable personal gift by the touch--stream rather1 over head and breast and shoulders--of the holy oil of his consecration at ,westminster2 not1 however1 through some oversight1 the genuine balm used at the coronation of his successor1 given1 according to legend1 by the ,blessed ,virgin to ,saint ,thomas of ,canterbury4 ,richard himself found that1 it was said1 among other forgotten treasures1 at the crisis of his changing fortunes1 and vainly sought reconsecration therewith--understood1 wistfully1 that it was reserved for his happier rival4 ,and yet his coronation1 by the pageantry1 the amplitude1 the learned care1 of its order1 so lengthy that the king1 then only eleven years of age1 and fasting1 as a communicant at the ceremony1 was carried away in a faint1 fixed the type under which it has ever #aig since continued4 ,and nowhere is there so emphatic a reiteration as in ,richard the ,second of the sentiment which those singular rites were calculated to produce4 ,not all the water in the rough rude sea ,can wash the balm from an anointed king1-- as supplementing another1 almost supernatural1 right4--,edward's seven sons1 of whom ,richard's father was one1 ,were as seven phials of his sacred blood4 ,but this1 too1 in the hands of ,shakespeare1 becomes for him1 like any other of those fantastic1 ineffectual1 easily discredited1 personal graces1 as capricious in its operation on men's wills as merely physical beauty1 kindling himself to eloquence indeed1 but only giving double pathos to insults which barbarism itself might have pitied--the dust in his face1 as he returns1 through the streets of ,london1 a prisoner in the train of his victorious enemy4 ,how soon my sorrow hath destroyed my face6 he cries1 in that most poetic invention of the mirror scene1 which does but reinforce again that physical charm which all confessed4 ,the sense of divine right in kings is found to act not so much as a secret of power over others1 as of infatuation to themselves4 ,and of all those personal gifts the one which alone never altogether fails him is just that royal utterance1 his #aih appreciation of the poetry of his own hapless lot1 an eloquent self-pity1 infecting others in spite of themselves1 till they too become irresistibly eloquent about him4 ,in the ,roman ,pontifical1 of which the order of ,coronation is really a part1 there is no form for the inverse process1 no rite of degradation1 such as that by which an offending priest or bishop may be deprived1 if not of the essential quality of orders1 yet1 one by one1 of its outward dignities4 ,it is as if ,shakespeare had had in mind some such inverted rite1 like those old ecclesiastical or military ones1 by which human hardness1 or human justice1 adds the last touch of unkindness to the execution of its sentences1 in the scene where ,richard deposes himself1 as in some long1 agonising ceremony1 reflectively drawn out1 with an extraordinary refinement of intelligence and variety of piteous appeal1 but also with a felicity of poetic invention1 which puts these pages into a very select class1 with the finest vermeil and ivory work of ,chatterton or ,keats4 ,fetch hither ,richard that in common view ,he may surrender6-- ,and ,richard more than concurs3 he throws himself into the part1 realises a type1 falls gracefully as on the world's stage4--,why is he sent for8 ,to do that office of thine own good will ,which tired majesty did make thee offer4-- ,now mark me6 how ,i will undo myself4 #aii ,hath ,bolingbroke deposed thine intellect8 the ,queen asks him1 on his way to the ,tower3-- ,hath ,bolingbroke ,deposed thine intellect8 hath he been in thy heart8 ,and in truth1 but for that adventitious poetic gold1 it would be only plume-plucked ,richard4-- ,i find myself a traitor with the rest1 ,for ,i have given here my soul's consent ,to undeck the pompous body of a king4 ,he is duly reminded1 indeed1 how ,that which in mean men we entitle patience ,is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts4 ,yet at least within the poetic bounds of ,shakespeare's play1 through ,shakespeare's bountiful gifts1 his desire seems fulfilled4-- ,o6 that ,i were as great ,as is my grief4 ,and his grief becomes nothing less than a central expression of all that in the revolutions of ,fortune's wheel goes down in the world4 ,no6 ,shakespeare's kings are not1 nor are meant to be1 great men3 rather1 little or quite ordinary humanity1 thrust upon greatness1 with those pathetic results1 the natural self-pity of the weak heightened in them into irresistible appeal to others as the net result of their royal prerogative4 ,one after another1 they seem to lie composed in ,shakespeare's embalming pages1 with just that touch of nature about them1 #bjj making the whole world akin1 which has infused into their tombs at ,westminster a rare poetic grace4 ,it is that irony of kingship1 the sense that it is in its happiness child's play1 in its sorrows1 after all1 but children's grief1 which gives its finer accent to all the changeful feeling of these wonderful speeches3--the great meekness of the graceful1 wild creature1 tamed at last4-- ,give ,richard leave to live till ,richard die6 his somewhat abject fear of death1 turning to acquiescence at moments of extreme weariness3-- ,my large kingdom for a little grave6 ,a little little grave1 an obscure grave6-- his religious appeal in the last reserve1 with its bold reference to the judgment of ,pilate1 as he thinks once more of his anointing4 ,and as happens with children he attains contentment finally in the merely passive recognition of superior strength1 in the naturalness of the result of the great battle as a matter of course1 and experiences something of the royal prerogative of poetry to obscure1 or at least to attune and soften men's griefs4 ,as in some sweet anthem of ,handel1 the sufferer1 who put finger to the organ under the utmost pressure of mental conflict1 extracts a kind of peace at last from the mere skill with which he sets his distress to music4-- ,beshrew thee1 ,cousin1 that didst lead me forth ,of that sweet way ,i was in to despair6 #bja ,with ,cain go wander through the shades of night6 cries the new king to the gaoler ,exton1 dissimulating his share in the murder he is thought to have suggested2 and in truth there is something of the murdered ,abel about ,shakespeare's ,richard4 ,the fact seems to be that he died of waste and a broken heart3 it was by way of proof that his end had been a natural one that1 stifling a real fear of the face1 the face of ,richard1 on men's minds1 with the added pleading now of all dead faces1 ,henry exposed the corpse to general view2 and ,shakespeare1 in bringing it on the stage1 in the last scene of his play1 does but follow out the motive with which he has emphasised ,richard's physical beauty all through it--that most beauteous inn1 as the ,queen says quaintly1 meeting him on the way to death--residence1 then soon to be deserted1 of that wayward1 frenzied1 but withal so affectionate soul4 ,though the body did not go to ,westminster immediately1 his tomb1 ,that small model of the barren earth ,which serves as paste and cover to our bones199 the effigy clasping the hand of his youthful consort1 was already prepared there1 with rich #bjb gilding and ornaments1 monument of poetic regret1 for ,queen ,anne of ,bohemia1 not of course the ,queen of ,shakespeare1 who however seems to have transferred to this second wife something of ,richard's wildly proclaimed affection for the first4 ,in this way1 through the connecting link of that sacred spot1 our thoughts once more associate ,richard's two fallacious prerogatives1 his personal beauty and his anointing4 ,according to ,johnson1 ,richard the ,second is one of those plays which ,shakespeare has apparently revised2 and how doubly delightful ,shakespeare is where he seems to have revised6 ,would that he had blotted a thousand--a thousand hasty phrases1 we may venture once more to say with his earlier critic1 now that the tiresome ,german superstition has passed away which challenged us to a dogmatic faith in the plenary verbal inspiration of every one of ,shakespeare's clowns4 ,like some melodiously contending anthem of ,handle's1 ,i said1 of ,richard's meek undoing of himself in the mirror-scene2 and1 in fact1 the play of ,richard the ,second does1 like a musical composition1 possess a certain concentration of all its parts1 a simple continuity1 an evenness in execution1 which are rare in the great dramatist4 ,with ,romeo and ,juliet1 that perfect symphony 7symphony of three independent poetic forms set in a grander one99 which it is the merit of ,german #bjc criticism to have detected7 it belongs to a small group of plays1 where1 by happy birth and consistent evolution1 dramatic form approaches to something like the unity of a lyrical ballad1 a lyric1 a song1 a single strain of music4 ,which sort of poetry we are to account the highest1 is perhaps a barren question4 ,yet if1 in art generally1 unity of impression is a note of what is perfect1 then lyric poetry1 which in spite of complex structure often preserves the unity of a single passionate ejaculation1 would rank higher than dramatic poetry1 where1 especially to the reader1 as distinguished from the spectator assisting at a theatrical performance1 there must always be a sense of the effort necessary to keep the various parts from flying asunder1 a sense of imperfect continuity1 such as the older criticism vainly sought to obviate by the rule of the dramatic unities4 ,it follows that a play attains artistic perfection just in proportion as it approaches that unity of lyrical effect1 as if a song or ballad were still lying at the root of it1 all the various expression of the conflict of character and circumstance falling at last into the compass of a single melody1 or musical theme4 ,as1 historically1 the earliest classic drama arose out of the chorus1 from which this or that person1 this or that episode1 detached itself1 so1 into the unity of a choric song the perfect drama ever tends to return1 its intellectual scope deepened1 complicated1 enlarged1 but still with an unmistakable #bjd singleness1 or identity1 in its impression on the mind4 ,just there1 in that vivid single impression left on the mind when all is over1 not in any mechanical limitation of time and place1 is the secret of the unities--the true imaginative unity--of the drama4 #ahhi4 ,,notes #ahh4 99,elinor4 ,do you not read some tokens of my son 7,coeur-de-,lion7 ,in the large composition of this man8 #aij4 99,perhaps the one person of genius in these ,english plays4 ,the spirit of deep prophecy she hath1 ,exceeding the nine ,sibyls of old ,rome3 ,what's past and what's to come she can descry4 #aia4 99,proposing in this paper to trace the leading sentiment in ,shakespeare's ,english ,plays as a sort of popular dramatic chronicle1 ,i have left untouched the question how much 7or1 in the case of ,henry the ,sixth and ,henry the ,eighth1 how little7 of them may be really his3 how far inferior hands have contributed to a result1 true on the whole to the greater1 that is to say1 the ,shakespearian elements in them4 #bja4 99,perhaps a double entendre3--of any ordinary grave1 as comprising1 in effect1 the whole small earth now left to its occupant or1 of such a tomb as ,richard's in particular1 with its actual model1 or effigy1 of the clay of him4 ,both senses are so characteristic that it would be a pity to lose either4 #bjb4 99,the ,sonnet3 the ,aubade3 the ,epithalamium4 ,,dante ,,gabriel ,,rossetti #bje ,,it was characteristic of a poet who had ever something about him of mystic isolation1 and will still appeal perhaps1 though with a name it may seem now established in ,english literature1 to a special and limited audience1 that some of his poems had won a kind of exquisite fame before they were in the full sense published4 ,the ,blessed ,damozel1 although actually printed twice before the year #ahgj1 was eagerly circulated in manuscript2 and the volume which it now opens came at last to satisfy a long-standing curiosity as to the poet1 whose pictures also had become an object of the same peculiar kind of interest4 ,for those poems were the work of a painter1 understood to belong to1 and to be indeed the leader1 of a new school then rising into note2 and the reader of to-day may observe already1 in ,the ,blessed ,damozel1 written at the age of eighteen1 a prefigurement of the chief characteristics of that school1 as he will recognise in it also1 in proportion as he really knows ,rossetti1 many of the characteristics which are most markedly personal and his own4 ,common #bjf to that school and to him1 and in both alike of primary significance1 was the quality of sincerity1 already felt as one of the charms of that earliest poem--a perfect sincerity1 taking effect in the deliberate use of the most direct and unconventional expression1 for the conveyance of a poetic sense which recognised no conventional standard of what poetry was called upon to be4 ,at a time when poetic originality in ,england might seem to have had its utmost play1 here was certainly one new poet more1 with a structure and music of verse1 a vocabulary1 an accent1 unmistakably novel1 yet felt to be no mere tricks of manner adopted with a view to forcing attention--an accent which might rather count as the very seal of reality on one man's own proper speech2 as that speech itself was the wholly natural expression of certain wonderful things he really felt and saw4 ,here was one1 who had a matter to present to his readers1 to himself at least1 in the first instance1 so valuable1 so real and definite1 that his primary aim1 as regards form or expression in his verse1 would be but its exact equivalence to those data within4 ,that he had this gift of transparency in language--the control of a style which did but obediently shift and shape itself to the mental motion1 as a well-trained hand can follow on the tracing-paper the outline of an original drawing below it1 was proved afterwards by a volume of typically perfect translations from the delightful but difficult #bjg early ,italian poets3 such transparency being indeed the secret of all genuine style1 of all such style as can truly belong to one man and not to another4 ,his own meaning was always personal and even recondite1 in a certain sense learned and casuistical1 sometimes complex or obscure2 but the term was always1 one could see1 deliberately chosen from many competitors1 as the just transcript of that peculiar phase of soul which he alone knew1 precisely as he knew it4 ,one of the peculiarities of ,the ,blessed ,damozel was a definiteness of sensible imagery1 which seemed almost grotesque to some1 and was strange1 above all1 in a theme so profoundly visionary4 ,the gold bar of heaven from which she leaned1 her hair yellow like ripe corn1 are but examples of a general treatment1 as naively detailed as the pictures of those early painters contemporary with ,dante1 who has shown a similar care for minute and definite imagery in his verse2 there1 too1 in the very midst of profoundly mystic vision4 ,such definition of outline is indeed one among many points in which ,rossetti resembles the great ,italian poet1 of whom1 led to him at first by family circumstances1 he was ever a lover--a servant and singer1 faithful as ,dante1 of ,florence and of ,beatrice--with some close inward conformities of genius also1 independent of any mere circumstances of education4 ,it was said by a critic of the last century1 not wisely though agreeably to the practice of his time1 #bjh that poetry rejoices in abstractions4 ,for ,rossetti1 as for ,dante1 without question on his part1 the first condition of the poetic way of seeing and presenting things is particularisation4 ,tell me now1 he writes1 for ,villon's ,dictes-moy o1 n'en quel pays1 ,est ,flora1 la belle ,romaine-- ,tell me now1 in what hidden way is ,lady ,flora the lovely ,roman3 --way1 in which one might actually chance to meet her2 the unmistakably poetic effect of the couplet in ,english being dependent on the definiteness of that single word 7though actually lighted on in the search after a difficult double rhyme7 for which every one else would have written1 like ,villon himself1 a more general one1 just equivalent to place or region4 ,and this delight in concrete definition is allied with another of his conformities to ,dante1 the really imaginative vividness1 namely1 of his personifications--his hold upon them1 or rather their hold upon him1 with the force of a ,frankenstein1 when once they have taken life from him4 ,not ,death only and ,sleep1 for instance1 and the winged spirit of ,love1 but certain particular aspects of them1 a whole populace of special hours and places1 the hour even which might have been1 yet might not be1 are living creatures1 with hands and eyes and articulate voices4 #bji ,stands it not by the door-- ,love's ,hour--till she and ,i shall meet2 ,with bodiless form and unapparent feet ,that cast no shadow yet before1 ,though round its head the dawn begins to pour ,the breath that makes day sweet8-- ,nay1 why ,name the dead hours8 ,i mind them well3 ,their ghosts in many darkened doorways dwell ,with desolate eyes to know them by4 ,poetry as a mania--one of ,plato's two higher forms of divine mania--has1 in all its species1 a mere insanity incidental to it1 the defect of its quality1 into which it may lapse in its moment of weakness2 and the insanity which follows a vivid poetic anthropomorphism like that of ,rossetti may be noted here and there in his work1 in a forced and almost grotesque materialising of abstractions1 as ,dante also became at times a mere subject of the scholastic realism of the ,middle ,age4 ,in ,love's ,nocturn and ,the ,stream's ,secret1 congruously perhaps with a certain feverishness of soul in the moods they present1 there is at times a near approach 7may it be said87 to such insanity of realism-- ,pity and love shall burn ,in her pressed cheek and cherishing hands2 ,and from the living spirit of love that stands ,between her lips to soothe and yearn1 ,each separate breath shall clasp me round in turn ,and loose my spirit's bands4 #baj ,but even if we concede this2 even if we allow1 in the very plan of those two compositions1 something of the literary conceit--what exquisite1 what novel flowers of poetry1 we must admit them to be1 as they stand6 ,in the one1 what a delight in all the natural beauty of water1 all its details for the eye of a painter2 in the other1 how subtle and fine the imaginative hold upon all the secret ways of sleep and dreams6 ,in both of them1 with much the same attitude and tone1 ,love--sick and doubtful ,love--would fain inquire of what lies below the surface of sleep1 and below the water2 stream or dream being forced to speak by ,love's powerful control2 and the poet would have it foretell the fortune1 issue1 and event of his wasting passion4 ,such artifices1 indeed1 were not unknown in the old ,provenal poetry of which ,dante had learned something4 ,only1 in ,rossetti at least1 they are redeemed by a serious purpose1 by that sincerity of his1 which allies itself readily to a serious beauty1 a sort of grandeur of literary workmanship1 to a great style4 ,one seems to hear there a really new kind of poetic utterance1 with effects which have nothing else like them2 as there is nothing else1 for instance1 like the narrative of ,jacob's ,dream in ,genesis1 or ,blake's design of the ,singing of the ,morning ,stars1 or ,addison's ,nineteenth ,psalm4 ,with him indeed1 as in some revival of the old mythopoeic age1 common things--dawn1 #baa noon1 night--are full of human or personal expression1 full of sentiment4 ,the lovely little sceneries scattered up and down his poems1 glimpses of a landscape1 not indeed of broad open-air effects1 but rather that of a painter concentrated upon the picturesque effect of one or two selected objects at a time--the hollow brimmed with mist1 or the ruined weir1 as he sees it from one of the windows1 or reflected in one of the mirrors of his house of life 7the vignettes for instance seen by ,rose ,mary in the magic beryl7 attest1 by their very freshness and simplicity1 to a pictorial or descriptive power in dealing with the inanimate world1 which is certainly also one half of the charm1 in that other1 more remote and mystic1 use of it4 ,for with ,rossetti this sense of lifeless nature1 after all1 is translated to a higher service1 in which it does but incorporate itself with some phase of strong emotion4 ,every one understands how this may happen at critical moments of life2 what a weirdly expressive soul may have crept1 even in full noonday1 into the white-flower'd elder-thicket1 when ,godiva saw it gleam through the ,gothic archways in the wall1 at the end of her terrible ride4 ,to ,rossetti it is so always1 because to him life is a crisis at every moment4 ,a sustained impressibility towards the mysterious conditions of man's everyday life1 towards the very mystery itself in it1 gives a singular gravity to all his work3 those matters never became trite #bab to him4 ,but throughout1 it is the ideal intensity of love--of love based upon a perfect yet peculiar type of physical or material beauty--which is enthroned in the midst of those mysterious powers2 ,youth and ,death1 ,destiny and ,fortune1 ,fame1 ,poetic ,fame1 ,memory1 ,oblivion1 and the like4 ,rossetti is one of those who1 in the words of ,mrime1 se passionnent pour la passion1 one of ,love's lovers4 ,and yet1 again as with ,dante1 to speak of his ideal type of beauty as material1 is partly misleading4 ,spirit and matter1 indeed1 have been for the most part opposed1 with a false contrast or antagonism by schoolmen1 whose artificial creation those abstractions really are4 ,in our actual concrete experience1 the two trains of phenomena which the words matter and spirit do but roughly distinguish1 play inextricably into each other4 ,practically1 the church of the ,middle ,age by its aesthetic worship1 its sacramentalism1 its real faith in the resurrection of the flesh1 had set itself against that ,manichean opposition of spirit and matter1 and its results in men's way of taking life2 and in this1 ,dante is the central representative of its spirit4 ,to him1 in the vehement and impassioned heat of his conceptions1 the material and the spiritual are fused and blent3 if the spiritual attains the definite visibility of a crystal1 what is material loses its earthiness and impurity4 ,and here again1 by force of instinct1 ,rossetti #bac is one with him4 ,his chosen type of beauty is one1 ,whose speech ,truth knows not from her thought1 ,nor ,love her body from her soul4 ,like ,dante1 he knows no region of spirit which shall not be sensuous also1 or material4 ,the shadowy world1 which he realises so powerfully1 has still the ways and houses1 the land and water1 the light and darkness1 the fire and flowers1 that had so much to do in the moulding of those bodily powers and aspects which counted for so large a part of the soul1 here4 ,for ,rossetti1 then1 the great affections of persons to each other1 swayed and determined1 in the case of his highly pictorial genius1 mainly by that so-called material loveliness1 formed the great undeniable reality in things1 the solid resisting substance1 in a world where all beside might be but shadow4 ,the fortunes of those affections--of the great love so determined2 its casuistries1 its languor sometimes2 above all1 its sorrows2 its fortunate or unfortunate collisions with those other great matters2 how it looks1 as the long day of life goes round1 in the light and shadow of them3 all this1 conceived with an abundant imagination1 and a deep1 a philosophic1 reflectiveness1 is the matter of his verse1 and especially of what he designed as his chief poetic work1 a work to be called ,the ,house of ,life1 towards which the majority of his sonnets and songs were contributions4 #bad ,the dwelling-place in which one finds oneself by chance or destiny1 yet can partly fashion for oneself2 never properly one's own at all1 if it be changed too lightly2 in which every object has its associations--the dim mirrors1 the portraits1 the lamps1 the books1 the hair-tresses of the dead and visionary magic crystals in the secret drawers1 the names and words scratched on the windows1 windows open upon prospects the saddest or the sweetest2 the house one must quit1 yet taking perhaps1 how much of its quietly active light and colour along with us6--grown now to be a kind of raiment to one's body1 as the body1 according to ,swedenborg1 is but the raiment of the soul--under that image1 the whole of ,rossetti's work might count as a ,house of ,life1 of which he is but the ,interpreter4 ,and it is a haunted house4 ,a sense of power in love1 defying distance1 and those barriers which are so much more than physical distance1 of unutterable desire penetrating into the world of sleep1 however lead-bound1 was one of those anticipative notes obscurely struck in ,the ,blessed ,damozel1 and1 in his later work1 makes him speak sometimes almost like a believer in mesmerism4 ,dream-land1 as we said1 with its phantoms of the body1 deftly coming and going on love's service1 is to him1 in no mere fancy or figure of speech1 a real country1 a veritable expansion of1 or addition to1 our waking life2 and he did well perhaps to wait carefully upon sleep1 for the lack #bae of it became mortal disease with him4 ,one may even recognise a sort of morbid and over-hasty making-ready for death itself1 which increases on him2 thoughts concerning it1 its imageries1 coming with a frequency and importunity1 in excess1 one might think1 of even the very saddest1 quite wholesome wisdom4 ,and indeed the publication of his second volume of ,ballads and ,sonnets preceded his death by scarcely a twelvemonth4 ,that volume bears witness to the reverse of any failure of power1 or falling-off from his early standard of literary perfection1 in every one of his then accustomed forms of poetry--the song1 the sonnet1 and the ballad4 ,the newly printed sonnets1 now completing ,the ,house of ,life1 certainly advanced beyond those earlier ones1 in clearness2 his dramatic power in the ballad1 was here at its height2 while one monumental1 gnomic piece1 ,soothsay1 testifies1 more clearly even than the ,nineveh of his first volume1 to the reflective force1 the dry reason1 always at work behind his imaginative creations1 which at no time dispensed with a genuine intellectual structure4 ,for in matters of pure reflection also1 ,rossetti maintained the painter's sensuous clearness of conception2 and this has something to do with the capacity1 largely illustrated by his ballads1 of telling some red-hearted story of impassioned action with effect4 ,have there1 in very deed1 been ages1 in which #baf the external conditions of poetry such as ,rossetti's were of more spontaneous growth than in our own8 ,the archaic side of ,rossetti's work1 his preferences in regard to earlier poetry1 connect him with those who have certainly thought so1 who fancied they could have breathed more largely in the age of ,chaucer1 or of ,ronsard1 in one of those ages1 in the words of ,stendhal--ces sicles de passions o les mes pouvaient se livrer franchement la plus haute exaltation1 quand les passions qui font la possibilit ,we may think1 perhaps1 that such old time as that has never really existed except in the fancy of poets2 but it was to find it1 that ,rossetti turned so often from modern life to the chronicle of the past4 ,old ,scotch history1 perhaps beyond any other1 is strong in the matter of heroic and vehement hatreds and love1 the tragic ,mary herself being but the perfect blossom of them2 and it is from that history that ,rossetti has taken the subjects of the two longer ballads of his second volume3 of the three admirable ballads in it1 ,the ,king's ,tragedy 7in which ,rossetti has dexterously interwoven some relics of ,james's own exquisite early verse7 reaching the highest level of dramatic success1 and marking perfection1 perhaps1 in this kind of poetry2 which1 in the earlier volume1 gave us1 among other pieces1 ,troy ,town1 ,sister ,helen1 and ,eden ,bower4 ,like those earlier pieces1 the ballads of the #bag second volume bring with them the question of the poetic value of the refrain-- ,eden bower's in flower3 ,and ,o the bower and the hour6 --and the like4 ,two of those ballads--,troy ,town and ,eden ,bower1 are terrible in theme2 and the refrain serves1 perhaps1 to relieve their bold aim at the sentiment of terror4 ,in ,sister ,helen again1 the refrain has a real1 and sustained purpose 7being here duly varied also7 and performs the part of a chorus1 as the story proceeds4 ,yet even in these cases1 whatever its effect may be in actual recitation1 it may fairly be questioned1 whether1 to the mere reader their actual effect is not that of a positive interruption and drawback1 at least in pieces so lengthy2 and ,rossetti himself1 it would seem1 came to think so1 for in the shortest of his later ballads1 ,the ,white ,ship--that old true history of the generosity with which a youth1 worthless in life1 flung himself upon death--he was contented with a single utterance of the refrain1 given out like the keynote or tune of a chant4 ,in ,the ,king's ,tragedy1 ,rossetti has worked upon motive1 broadly human 7to adopt the phrase of popular criticism7 such as one and all may realise4 ,rossetti1 indeed1 with all his self-concentration upon his own peculiar aim1 by no means ignored those general interests which are external to poetry as he conceived it2 as he has #bah shown here and there1 in this poetic1 as also in pictorial1 work4 ,it was but that1 in a life to be shorter even than the average1 he found enough to occupy him in the fulfilment of a task1 plainly given him to do4 ,perhaps1 if one had to name a single composition of his to readers desiring to make acquaintance with him for the first time1 one would select3 ,the ,king's ,tragedy--that poem so moving1 so popularly dramatic1 and lifelike4 ,notwithstanding this1 his work1 it must be conceded1 certainly through no narrowness or egotism1 but in the faithfulness of a true workman to a vocation so emphatic1 was mainly of the esoteric order4 ,but poetry1 at all times1 exercises two distinct functions3 it may reveal1 it may unveil to every eye1 the ideal aspects of common things1 after ,gray's way 7though ,gray too1 it is well to remember1 seemed in his own day1 seemed even to ,johnson1 obscure7 or it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves1 by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from their very birth4 ,rossetti did something1 something excellent1 of the former kind2 but his characteristic1 his really revealing work1 lay in the adding to poetry of fresh poetic material1 of a new order of phenomena1 in the creation of a new ideal4 #ahhc4 ,,feuillet',s ,,la ,,morte #bai ,,in his latest novel ,m4 ,octave ,feuillet adds two charming people to that chosen group of personages in which he loves to trace the development of the more serious elements of character amid the refinements and artifices of modern society1 and which make such good company4 ,the proper function of fictitious literature in affording us a refuge into a world slightly better--better conceived1 or better finished--than the real one1 is effected in most instances less through the imaginary events at which a novelist causes us to assist1 than by the imaginary persons to whom he introduces us4 ,the situations of ,m4 ,feuillet's novels are indeed of a real and intrinsic importance3--tragic crises1 inherent in the general conditions of human nature itself1 or which arise necessarily out of the special conditions of modern society4 ,still1 with him1 in the actual result1 they become subordinate1 as it is their tendency to do in real life1 to the characters they help to form4 ,often1 his most attentive reader will have forgotten the actual details of his plot2 while #bbj the soul1 tried1 enlarged1 shaped by it1 remains as a well-fixed type in the memory4 ,he may return a second or third time to ,sibylle1 or ,le ,journal d'une ,femme1 or ,les ,amours de ,philippe1 and watch1 surprised afresh1 the clean1 dainty1 word-sparing literary operation 7word-sparing1 yet with no loss of real grace or ease7 which1 sometimes in a few pages1 with the perfect logic of a problem of ,euclid1 complicates and then unravels some moral embarrassment1 really worthy of a trained dramatic expert4 ,but the characters themselves1 the agents in those difficult1 revealing situations1 such a reader will recognise as old acquaintances after the first reading1 feeling for them as for some gifted and attractive persons he has known in the actual world--,raoul de ,chalys1 ,henri de ,lerne1 ,madame de ,tcle1 ,jeanne de la ,roche-,ermel1 ,maurice de ,frmeuse1 many others2 to whom must now be added ,bernard and ,aliette de ,vaudricourt4 ,how ,i love those people6 cries ,mademoiselle de ,courteheuse1 of ,madame de ,svign and some other of her literary favourites in the days of the ,grand ,monarch4 ,what good company6 ,what pleasure they took in high things6 ,how much more worthy they were than the people who live now6--,what good company6 ,that is precisely what the admirer of ,m4 ,feuillet's books feels as one by one he places them on his book-shelf1 to be sought again4 ,what is proposed here is not to tell his last story1 #bba but to give the ,english reader specimens of his most recent effort at characterisation4 ,it is with the journal of ,bernard himself that the story opens1 ,september #ahg-4 ,bernard-,maurice ,hugon de ,montauret1 ,vicomte de ,vaudricourt1 is on a visit to his uncle1 the head of his family1 at ,la ,savinire1 a country-house somewhere between ,normandy and ,brittany4 ,this uncle1 an artificial old ,parisian in manner1 but honest in purpose1 a good talker1 and full of real affection for his heir ,bernard1 is one of ,m4 ,feuillet's good minor characters--one of the quietly humorous figures with which he relieves his more serious company4 ,bernard1 with whom the refinements of a man of fashion in the ,parisian world by no means disguise a powerful intelligence cultivated by wide reading1 has had thoughts during his tedious stay at ,la ,savinire of writing a history of the reign of ,louis the ,fourteenth1 the library of a neighbouring chteau being rich in memoirs of that period4 ,finally1 he prefers to write his own story1 a story so much more interesting to himself2 to write it at a peculiar crisis in his life1 the moment when his uncle1 unmarried1 but anxious to perpetuate his race1 is bent on providing him with a wife1 and indeed has one in view4 ,the accomplished ,bernard1 with many graces of person1 by his own confession1 takes nothing seriously4 ,as to that matter of religious beliefs1 the breeze of the age1 and of science1 has blown #bbb over him1 as it has blown over his contemporaries1 and left empty space there4 ,still1 when he saw his childish religious faith departing from him1 as he thinks it must necessarily depart from all intelligent male ,parisians1 he wept4 ,since that moment1 however1 a gaiety1 serene and imperturbable1 has been the mainstay of his happily constituted character4 ,the girl to whom his uncle desires to see him united--odd1 quixotic1 intelligent1 with a sort of pathetic and delicate grace1 and herself very religious--belongs to an old-fashioned1 devout family14 resident at ,varaville1 near by4 ,m4 ,feuillet1 with half a dozen fine touches of his admirable pencil makes us see the place4 ,and the enterprise has at least sufficient interest to keep ,bernard in the country1 which the young ,parisian detests4 ,this piquant episode of my life1 he writes1 seems to me to be really deserving of study2 to be worth etching off1 day by day1 by an observer well informed on the subject4 ,recognising in himself1 though as his one real fault1 that he can take nothing seriously in heaven or earth1 ,bernard de ,vaudricourt1 like all ,m4 ,feuillet's favourite young men1 so often erring or corrupt1 is a man of scrupulous honour4 ,he has already shown disinterestedness in wishing his rich uncle to marry again4 ,his friends at ,varaville think so well-mannered a young man more of a ,christian than he really is2 and1 at all events1 he will never owe his happiness to a falsehood4 ,if he has great faults1 #bbc hypocrisy at least is no part of them4 ,in oblique paths he finds himself ill at ease4 ,decidedly1 as he thinks1 he was born for straight ways1 for loyalty in all his enterprises2 and he congratulates himself upon the fact4 ,in truth1 ,bernard has merits which he ignores1 at least in this first part of his journal3 merits which are necessary to explain the influence he is able to exercise from the first over such a character as ,mademoiselle de ,courteheuse4 ,his charm1 in fact1 is in the union of that gay and apparently wanton nature with a genuine power of appreciating devotion in others1 which becomes devotion in himself4 ,with all the much-cherished elegance and worldly glitter of his personality1 he is capable of apprehending1 of understanding and being touched by the presence of great matters4 ,in spite of that happy lightness of heart1 so jealously fenced about1 he is to be wholly caught at last1 as he is worthy to be1 by the serious1 the generous influence of things4 ,in proportion to his immense worldly strength is his capacity for the immense pity which breaks his heart4 ,in a few life-like touches ,m4 ,feuillet brings out1 as if it were indeed a thing of ordinary existence1 the simple yet delicate life of a ,french country-house1 the ideal life in an ideal ,france4 ,bernard is paying a morning visit at the old turreted home of the prehistoric ,courteheuse family4 ,mademoiselle ,aliette de ,courteheuse1 a studious girl1 though a bold and excellent rider #bbd --,mademoiselle de ,courteheuse1 with her hair of that strange colour of fine ashes--has conducted her visitor to see the library3 ,one day she took me to see the library1 rich in works of the seventeenth century and in memoirs relating to that time4 ,i remarked there also a curious collection of engravings of the same period4 ,your father1 ,i observed1 had a strong predilection for the age of ,louis the ,fourteenth4 ,my father lived in that age1 she answered gravely4 ,and as ,i looked at her with surprise1 and a little embarrassed1 she added1 ,he made me live there too1 in his company4 ,and then the eyes of this singular girl filled with tears4 ,she turned away1 took a few steps to suppress her emotion1 and returning1 pointed me to a chair4 ,then seating herself on the step of the book-case1 she said1 ,i must explain my father to you4 ,she was half a minute collecting her thoughts3 then1 speaking with an expansion of manner not habitual with her1 hesitating1 and blushing deeply1 whenever she was about to utter a word that might seem a shade too serious for lips so youthful3--,my father1 she proceeded1 died of the consequences of a wound he had received at ,patay4 ,that may show you that he loved his country1 but he was no lover of his own age4 ,he possessed in the highest degree the love of order2 and order was a thing nowhere to be seen4 ,he had a horror of disorder2 and he saw it everywhere4 ,in those last years1 especially1 his reverence1 his beliefs1 his tastes1 all alike were ruffled to the point of actual suffering1 by whatever was done and said and written around him4 ,deeply saddened by the conditions of the present time1 he habituated himself to find a refuge in the past1 and the seventeenth century more particularly offered him the kind of society in which he would have wished to live--a society1 well-ordered1 polished1 lettered1 believing4 ,more and more he loved to shut himself up in it4 ,more and more also he loved to make the moral discipline and the literary tastes of that favourite age prevail in his own household4 ,you may even have remarked that he carried his predilection into minute matters of arrangement and decoration4 ,you can see from this window the straight paths1 the box in #bbe patterns1 the yew trees and clipped alleys of our garden4 ,you may notice that in our garden-beds we have none but flowers of the period--lilies1 rose-mallows1 immortelles1 rose-pinks1 in short what people call parsonage flowers--des fleurs de cur4 ,our old silvan tapestries1 similarly1 are of that age4 ,you see too that all our furniture1 from presses and sideboards1 down to our little tables and our arm-chairs1 is in the severest style of ,louis the ,fourteenth4 ,my father did not appreciate the dainty research of our modern luxury4 ,he maintained that our excessive care for the comforts of life weakened mind as well as body4 ,that1 added the girl with a laugh1--that is why you find your chair so hard when you come to see us4 ,then1 with resumed gravity--,it was thus that my father endeavoured1 by the very aspect and arrangement of outward things1 to promote in himself the imaginary presence of the epoch in which his thoughts delighted4 ,as for myself--need ,i tell you that ,i was the confidant of that father1 so well-beloved3 a confidant touched by his sorrows1 full of indignation at his disappointments1 charmed by his consolations4 ,here1 precisely--surrounded by those books which we read together1 and which he taught me to love--it is here that ,i have passed the pleasantest hours of my youth4 ,in common we indulged our enthusiasm for those days of faith2 of the quiet life2 its blissful hours of leisure well-secured2 for the ,french language in its beauty and purity2 the delicate1 the noble urbanity1 which was then the honour and the special mark of our country1 but has ceased to be so4 ,she paused1 with a little confusion1 as ,i thought1 at the warmth of her last words4 ,and then1 just to break the silence1 ,you have explained1 ,i said1 an impression which ,i have experienced again and again in my visits here1 and which has sometimes reached the intensity of an actual illusion1 though a very agreeable one4 ,the look of your house1 its style1 its tone and keeping1 carried me two centuries back so completely that ,i should hardly have been surprised to hear ,monsieur le ,prince1 ,madame de la ,fayette1 or ,madame de ,svign herself1 announced at your drawing-room door4 ,would it might be6 said ,mademoiselle de ,courteheuse4 #bbf ,ah6 ,monsieur1 how ,i love those people6 ,what good company6 ,what pleasure they took in high things6 ,how much more worthy they were than the people who live now6 ,i tried to calm a little this retrospective enthusiasm1 so much to the prejudice of my contemporaries and of myself4 ,most truly1 ,mademoiselle1 ,i said1 the age which you regret had its rare merits--merits which ,i appreciate as you do4 ,but then1 need one say that that society1 so regular1 so choice in appearance1 had1 like our own1 below the surface1 its troubles1 its disorders8 ,i see here many of the memoirs of that time4 ,i can't tell exactly which of them you may or may not have read1 and so ,i feel a certain difficulty in speaking4 ,she interrupted me3 ,ah6 she said1 with entire simplicity1 ,i understand you4 ,i have not read all you see here4 ,but ,i have read enough of it to know that my friends in that past age had1 like those who live now1 their passions1 their weaknesses1 their mistakes4 ,but1 as my father used to say to me1 all that did but pass over a ground of what was solid and serious1 which always discovered itself again anew4 ,there were great faults then2 but there were also great repentances4 ,there was a certain higher region to which everything conducted--even what as evil4 ,she blushed deeply3 then rising a little suddenly1 ,a long speech6 she said3 ,forgive me6 ,i am not usually so very talkative4 ,it is because my father was in question2 and ,i should wish his memory to be as dear and as venerable to all the rest of the world as it is to me4 ,we pass over the many little dramatic intrigues and misunderstandings1 with the more or less adroit interferences of the uncle1 which raise and lower alternately ,bernard's hopes4 ,m4 ,feuillet has more than once tried his hand with striking success in the portraiture of ,french ecclesiastics4 ,he has drawn none better than the ,bishop of ,saint-,men1 uncle of ,mademoiselle de ,courteheuse1 to whose interests he is devoted4 ,bernard feels that to gain the influence of this prelate #bbg would be to gain his cause2 and the opportunity for an interview comes4 ,monseigneur de ,courteheuse would seem to be little over fifty years of age3 he is rather tall1 and very thin3 the eyes1 black and full of life1 are encircled by a ring of deep brown4 ,his speech and gesture are animated1 and1 at times1 as if carried away4 ,he adopts frequently a sort of furious manner which on a sudden melts into the smile of an honest man4 ,he has beautiful silvery hair1 flying in vagrant locks over his forehead1 and beautiful bishop's hands4 ,as he becomes calm he has an imposing way of gently resettling himself in his sacerdotal dignity4 ,to sum up3 his is a physiognomy full of passion1 consumed with zeal1 yet still frank and sincere4 ,i was hardly seated1 when with a motion of the hand he invited me to speak4 ,monseigneur6 ,i said1 ,i come to you 7you understand me87 as to my last resource4 ,what ,i am now doing is almost an act of despair2 for it might seem at first sight that no member of the family of ,mademoiselle de ,courteheuse must show himself more pitiless than yourself towards the faults with which ,i am reproached4 ,i am an unbeliever3 you are an apostle6 ,and yet1 ,monseigneur1 it is often at the hands of saintly priests1 such as yourself1 that the guilty find most indulgence4 ,and then1 ,i am not indeed guilty3 ,i have but wandered4 ,i am refused the hand of your niece because ,i do not share her faith--your own faith4 ,but1 ,monseigneur1 unbelief is not a crime1 it is a misfortune4 ,i know people often say1 a man denies ,god when by his own conduct he has brought himself into a condition in which he may well desire that ,god does not exist4 ,in this way he is made guilty1 or1 in a sense1 responsible for his incredulity4 ,for myself1 ,monseigneur1 ,i have consulted my conscience with an entire sincerity2 and although my youth has been amiss1 ,i am certain that my atheism proceeds from no sentiment of personal interest4 ,on the contrary1 ,i may tell you with truth that the day on which ,i perceived my faith come to nought1 the day on which ,i lost hope in ,god1 ,i shed the bitterest tears of my life4 ,in spite of appearances1 ,i am not so light a spirit as people think4 ,i am not one of those for whom ,god1 when ,he disappears1 #bbh leaves no sense of a void place4 ,believe me6--a man may love sport1 his club1 his worldly habits1 and yet have his hours of thought1 of self-recollection4 ,do you suppose that in those hours one does not feel the frightful discomfort of an existence with no moral basis1 without principles1 with no outlook beyond this world8 ,and yet1 what can one do8 ,you would tell me forthwith1 in the goodness1 the compassion1 which ,i read in your eyes2 ,confide to me your objections to religion1 and ,i will try to solve them4 ,monseigneur1 ,i should hardly know how to answer you4 ,my objections are ',legion6' ,they are without number1 like the stars in the sky3 they come to us on all sides1 from every quarter of the horizon1 as if on the wings of the wind2 and they leave in us1 as they pass1 ruins only1 and darkness4 ,such has been my experience1 and that of many others2 and it has been as involuntary as it is irreparable4 ,and ,i--,monsieur6 said the bishop1 suddenly1 casting on me one of his august looks1 ,do you suppose that ,i am but a play-actor in my cathedral church8 ,monseigneur6 ,yes6 ,listening to you1 one would suppose that we were come to a period of the world in which one must needs be either an atheist or a hypocrite6 ,personally1 ,i claim to be neither one nor the other4 ,need ,i defend myself on that point1 ,monseigneur8 ,need ,i say that ,i did not come here to give you offence8 ,doubtless6 doubtless6 ,well1 ,monsieur1 ,i admit2 not without great reserves1 mind6 for one is always more or less responsible for the atmosphere in which he lives1 the influences to which he is subject1 for the habitual turn he gives to his thoughts2 still1 ,i admit that you are the victim of the incredulity of the age1 that you are altogether guiltless in your scepticism1 your atheism6 since you have no fear of hard words4 ,is it therefore any the less certain that the union of a fervent believer1 such as my niece1 with a man like yourself would be a moral disorder of which the consequences might be disastrous8 ,do you think it could be my duty1 as a relative of ,mademoiselle de ,courteheuse1 her spiritual father1 as a prelate of the ,church1 to lend my hands to such disorder1 to preside over the shocking union of two souls separated by the whole width of heaven8 #bbi ,the bishop1 in proposing that question1 kept his eyes fixed ardently on mine4 ,monseigneur1 ,i answered1 after a moment's embarrassment1 you know as well as1 and better than ,i1 the condition of the world1 and of our country1 at this time4 ,you know that unhappily ,i am not an exception3 that men of faith are rare in it4 ,and permit me to tell you my whole mind4 ,if ,i must needs suffer the inconsolable misfortune of renouncing the happiness ,i had hoped for1 are you quite sure that the man to whom one of these days you will give your niece may not be something more than a sceptic1 or even an atheist8 ,what1 ,monsieur8 ,a hypocrite1 ,monseigneur6 ,mademoiselle de ,courteheuse is beautiful enough1 rich enough1 to excite the ambition of those who may be less scrupulous than ,i4 ,as for me1 if you now know that ,i am a sceptic1 you know also that ,i am a man of honour3 and there is something in that6 ,a man of honour6 the bishop muttered to himself1 with a little petulance and hesitation4 ,a man of honour6 ,yes1 ,i believe it6 ,then1 after an interval1 ,come1 ,monsieur1 he said gently1 your case is not as desperate as you suppose4 ,my ,aliette is one of those young enthusiasts through whom ,heaven sometimes works miracles4 ,and ,bernard refusing any encouragement of that hope 7the very roots of faith are dead in him for ever7 since you think that1 the bishop answers1 it is honest to say so4 ,but ,god has ,his ways6 ,soon after1 the journal comes to an end with that peculiar crisis in ,bernard's life which had suggested the writing of it4 ,aliette1 with the approval of her family1 has given him her hand4 ,bernard accepts it with the full purpose of doing all he can to make his wife as happy as she is charming and beloved4 ,the virginal first period of their married life in their dainty house in ,paris--the pure and beautiful picture of the mother1 the father1 and at last the child1 a little #bcj girl1 ,jeanne--is presented with ,m4 ,feuillet's usual grace4 ,certain embarrassments succeed2 the development of what was ill-matched in their union2 but still with mutual loyalty4 ,a far-reaching acquaintance with1 and reflection upon1 the world and its ways1 especially the ,parisian world1 has gone into the apparently slight texture of these pages4 ,the accomplished playwright may be recognised in the skilful touches with which ,m4 ,feuillet1 unrivalled1 as his regular readers know1 in his power of breathing higher notes into the frivolous prattle of fashionable ,french life1 develops the tragic germ in the elegant1 youthful household4 ,amid the distractions of a society1 frivolous1 perhaps vulgar1 ,aliette's mind is still set on greater things2 and1 in spite of a thousand rude discouragements1 she maintains her generous hope for ,bernard's restoration to faith4 ,one day1 a little roughly1 he bids her relinquish that dream finally4 ,she looks at him with the moist1 suppliant eyes of some weak animal at bay4 ,then his native goodness returns4 ,in a softened tone he owns himself wrong4 ,as to conversions2--no one must be despaired of4 ,do you remember ,m4 de ,ranc8 ,he lived in your favourite age2--,m4 de ,ranc4 ,well6 before he became the reformer of ,la ,trappe he had been a worldling like me1 and a great sceptic--what people called a libertine4 ,still he became a saint6 ,it is true he had a terrible reason for it4 ,do you know what it was converted him8 ,aliette gave a sign that she did not know4 ,well6 he returned to ,paris after a few days' absence4 ,he #bca ran straight to the lady he loved2 ,madame ,montbazon1 ,i think3 he went up a little staircase of which he had the key1 and the first thing he saw on the table in the middle of the room was the head of his mistress1 of which the doctors were about to make a post-mortem examination4 ,if ,i were sure1 said ,aliette1 that my head could have such power1 ,i would love to die4 ,she said it in a low voice1 but with such an accent of loving sincerity that her husband had a sensation of a sort of painful disquiet4 ,he smiled1 however1 and tapping her cheek softly1 ,folly6 he said4 ,a head1 charming as yours1 has no need to be dead that it may work miracles6 ,certainly ,m4 ,feuillet has some weighty charges to bring against the ,parisian society of our day4 ,when ,aliette revolts from a world of gossip1 which reduces all minds alike to the same level of vulgar mediocrity1 ,bernard1 on his side1 can perceive there a deterioration of moral tone which shocks his sense of honour4 ,as a man of honour1 he can hardly trust his wife to the gaieties of a society which welcomes all the world to amuse itself in undress4 ,it happened that at this perplexed period in the youthful household1 one and the same person became the recipient both of the tearful confidences of ,madame de ,vaudricourt and those of her husband4 ,it was the ,duchess of ,castel-,moret she is another of ,m4 ,feuillet's admirable minor sketches an old friend of the ,vaudricourt family1 and the only woman with whom ,aliette since her arrival in ,paris had formed a kind of intimacy4 ,the ,duchess was far from sharing1 on points of morality1 and above all of religion1 the severe and impassioned orthodoxy of her young friend4 ,she had lived1 it is true1 an irreproachable life1 but less in consequence of defined principles than by instinct and natural taste4 ,she admitted to herself that she was an honest woman as a result of her birth1 and had no further merit in the matter4 ,she was old1 very careful of #bcb herself1 and a pleasant aroma floated about her1 below her silvery hair4 ,people loved her for her grace--the grace of another time than ours--for her wit1 and her worldly wisdom1 which she placed freely at the disposal of the public4 ,now and then she made a match3 but her special gift lay rather in the way in which she came to the rescue when a marriage turned out ill4 ,and she had no sinecure3 the result was that she passed the best part of her time in repairing family rents4 ,that might last its time1 she would say4 ,and then we know that what has been well mended sometimes lasts better than what is new4 ,a little later1 ,bernard1 in the interest of ,aliette1 has chivalrously determined to quit ,paris4 ,at ,valmoutiers1 a fine old place in the neighbourhood of ,fontainebleau1 they established themselves for a country life4 ,here ,aliette tastes the happiest days since her marriage4 ,bernard1 of course1 after a little time is greatly bored4 ,but so far they have never seriously doubted of their great love for each other4 ,it is here that ,m4 ,feuillet brings on the scene a kind of character new in his books2 perhaps hardly worthy of the other company there2 a sort of female ,monsieur de ,camors1 but without his grace and tenderness1 and who actually commits a crime4 ,how would the morbid charms of ,m4 de ,camors have vanished1 if1 as his wife once suspected of him1 he had ever contemplated crime6 ,and surely1 the showy insolent charms of ,sabine de ,tallevaut1 beautiful1 intellectually gifted1 supremely ,amazonian1 yet withal not drawn with ,m4 ,feuillet's usual fineness1 scarcely hold out for the reader1 any more than for #bcc ,bernard himself1 in the long run1 against the vulgarising touch of her cold wickedness4 ,living in the neighbourhood of ,valmoutiers1 in a somewhat melancholy abode 7the mystery of which in the eyes of ,bernard adds to her poetic charm7 with her guardian1 an old1 rich1 freethinking doctor1 devoted to research1 she comes to ,valmoutiers one night in his company on the occasion of the alarming illness of the only child4 ,they arrive escorted by ,bernard himself4 ,the little ,jeanne1 wrapped in her coverlet1 was placed upon the table of her play-room1 which was illuminated as if for a party4 ,the illness1 the operation 7skilfully performed by the old doctor7 which restores her to life1 are described with that seemingly simple pathos in which ,m4 ,feuillet's consummate art hides itself4 ,sabine remains to watch the child's recovery1 and becomes an intimate4 ,in vain ,bernard struggles against the first real passion of his life2--does everything but send its object out of his sight4 ,aliette has divined their secret4 ,in the fatal illness which follows soon after1 ,bernard watches over her with tender solicitude2 hoping against hope that the disease may take a favourable turn4 ,my child1 he said to her one day1 taking the hand which she abandoned to him1 ,i have just been scolding old ,victoire4 ,she is losing her head4 ,in spite of the repeated assurances of the doctors1 she is alarmed at seeing you a little worse than usual to-day1 and has had the ,cur sent for4 ,do you wish to see him8 ,pray let me see him6 #bcd ,she sighed heavily1 and fixed upon her husband her large blue eyes1 full of anguish--an anguish so sharp and so singular that he felt frozen to the marrow4 ,he could not help saying with deep emotion1 ,do you love me no longer1 ,aliette8 ,for ever6 murmured the poor child4 ,he leaned over her with a long kiss upon the forehead4 ,she saw tears stealing from the eyes of her husband1 and seemed as if surprised4 ,soon afterwards ,aliette is dead1 to the profound sorrow of ,bernard4 ,less than two years later he has become the husband of ,mademoiselle ,tallevaut4 ,it was about two years after his marriage with ,sabine that ,bernard resumed the journal with which we began4 ,in the pages which he now adds he seems at first unchanged4 ,how then as to that story of ,m4 de ,ranc1 the reformer of ,la ,trappe1 finding the head of his dead mistress2 an incident which the reader of ,la ,morte will surely have taken as a presentiment8 ,aliette had so taken it4 ,a head so charming as yours1 ,bernard had assured her tenderly1 does not need to be dead that it may work miracles6--,how1 in the few pages that remain1 will ,m4 ,feuillet justify that1 and certain other delicate touches of presentiment1 and at the same time justify the title of his book8 ,the journal is recommenced in ,february4 ,on the twentieth of ,april ,bernard writes1 at ,valmoutiers3 ,under pretext of certain urgently needed repairs ,i am come to pass a week at ,valmoutiers1 and get a little pure air4 ,by my orders they have kept ,aliette's room under lock and key since #bce the day when she left it in her coffin4 ,to-day ,i re-entered it for the first time4 ,there was a vague odour of her favourite perfumes4 ,my poor ,aliette6 why was ,i unable1 as you so ardently desired1 to share your gentle creed1 and associate myself to the life of your dreams1 the life of honesty and peace8 ,compared with that which is mine to-day1 it seems to me like paradise4 ,what a terrible scene it was1 here in this room6 ,what a memory6 ,i can still see the last look she fixed on me1 a look almost of terror6 and how quickly she died6 ,i have taken the room for my own4 ,but ,i shall not remain here long4 ,i intend to go for a few days to ,varaville4 ,i want to see my little girl3 her dear angel's face4 ,,valmoutiers1 ,april #bb4--,what a change there has been in the world since my childhood3 since my youth even6 what a surprising change in so short a period1 in the moral atmosphere we are breathing6 ,then we were1 as it were1 impregnated with the thought of ,god--a just ,god1 but benevolent and fatherlike4 ,we really lived under ,his eyes1 as under the eyes of a parent1 with respect and fear1 but with confidence4 ,we felt sustained by ,his invisible but undoubted presence4 ,we spoke to ,him1 and it seemed that ,he answered4 ,and now we feel ourselves alone--as it were abandoned in the immensity of the universe4 ,we live in a world1 hard1 savage1 full of hatred2 whose one cruel law is the struggle for existence1 and in which we are no more than those natural elements1 let loose to war with each other in fierce selfishness1 without pity1 with no appeal beyond1 no hope of final justice4 ,and above us1 in place of the good ,god of our happy youth1 nothing1 any more6 or worse than nothing--a deity1 barbarous and ironical1 who cares nothing at all about us4 ,the aged mother of ,aliette1 hitherto the guardian of his daughter1 is lately dead4 ,bernard proposes to take the child away with him to ,paris4 ,the child's old nurse objects4 ,on ,april the twenty-seventh1 ,bernard writes3 ,for a moment--for a few moments--in that room where ,i have been shutting myself up with the shadow of my poor #bcf dead one1 a horrible thought had come to me4 ,i had driven it away as an insane fancy4 ,but now1 yes6 it is becoming a reality4 ,shall ,i write this8 ,yes6 ,i will write it4 ,it is my duty to do so2 for from this moment the journal1 begun in so much gaiety of heart1 is but my last will and testament4 ,if ,i should disappear from the world1 the secret must not die with me4 ,it must be bequeathed to the natural protectors of my child4 ,her interests1 if not her life1 are concerned therein4 ,here1 then1 is what passed3 ,i had not arrived in time to render my last duty to ,madame de ,courteheuse4 ,the family was already dispersed4 ,i found here only ,aliette's brother4 ,to him ,i communicated my plan concerning the child1 and he could but approve4 ,my intention was to bring away with ,jeanne her nurse ,victoire1 who had brought her up1 as she brought up her mother4 ,but she is old1 and in feeble health1 and ,i feared some difficulties on her part2 the more as her attitude towards myself since the death of my first wife has been marked by an ill grace approaching to hostility4 ,i took her aside while ,jeanne was playing in the garden4 ,my good ,victoire1 ,i said1 while ,madame de ,courteheuse was living1 ,i considered it a duty to leave her granddaughter in her keeping4 ,besides1 no one was better fitted to watch over her education4 ,at present my duty is to watch over it myself4 ,i propose therefore to take ,jeanne with me to ,paris2 and ,i hope that you may be willing to accompany her1 and remain in her service4 ,when she understood my intention1 the old woman1 in whose hands ,i had noticed a faint trembling1 became suddenly very pale4 ,she fixed her firm1 grey eyes upon me3 ,monsieur le ,comte will not do that6 ,pardon me1 my good ,victoire1 that ,i shall do4 ,i appreciate your good qualities of fidelity and devotion4 ,i shall be very grateful if you will continue to take care of my daughter1 as you have done so excellently4 ,but for the rest1 ,i intend to be the only master in my own house1 and the only master of my child4 ,she laid a hand upon my arm3 ,i implore you1 ,monsieur1 don't do this6 ,her fixed look did not leave my face1 and seemed to be questioning me to the very bottom of my soul4 ,i have never believed it1 she murmured1 ,no6 ,i #bcg never could believe it4 ,but if you take the child away ,i shall4 ,believe what1 wretched woman8 believe what8 ,her voice sank lower still4 ,believe that you knew how her mother came by her death2 and that you mean the daughter to die as she did4 ,die as her mother did8 ,yes6 by the same hand6 ,the sweat came on my forehead4 ,i felt as it were a breathing of death upon me4 ,but still ,i thrust away from me that terrible light on things4 ,victoire6 ,i said1 take care6 ,you are no fool3 you are something worse4 ,your hatred of the woman who has taken the place of my first wife--your blind hatred--has suggested to you odious1 nay6 criminal words4 ,ah6 ,ah6 ,monsieur1 she cried with wild energy4 ,after what ,i have just told you1 take your daughter to live with that woman if you dare4 ,i walked up and down the room awhile to collect my senses4 ,then1 returning to the old woman1 ,yet how can ,i believe you8 ,i asked4 ,if you had had the shadow of a proof of what you give me to understand1 how could you have kept silence so long8 ,how could you have allowed me to contract that hateful marriage8 ,she seemed more confident1 and her voice grew gentler4 ,monsieur1 it is because ,madame1 before she went to ,god1 made me take oath on the crucifix to keep that secret for ever4 ,yet not with me1 in fact1--not with me6 ,and ,i1 in turn1 questioned her2 my eyes upon hers4 ,she hesitated3 then stammered out1 ,true6 not with you6 because she believed1 poor little soul6 that444 ,what did she believe8 ,that ,i knew it8 ,that ,i was an accomplice8 ,tell me6 ,her eyes fell1 and she made no answer4 ,is it possible1 my ,god1 is it possible8 ,but come1 sit by me here1 and tell me all you know1 all you saw4 ,at what time was it you noticed anything--the precise moment8 ,for in truth she had been suffering for a long time past4 ,victoire tells the miserable story of ,sabine's #bch crime--we must pardon what we think a not quite worthy addition to the imaginary world ,m4 ,feuillet has called up round about him1 for the sake of fully knowing ,bernard and ,aliette4 ,the old nurse had surprised her in the very act1 and did not credit her explanation4 ,when ,i surprised her1 she goes on3 ,it may already have been too late--be sure it was not the first time she had been guilty--my first thought was to give you information4 ,but ,i had not the courage4 ,then ,i told ,madame4 ,i thought ,i saw plainly that ,i had nothing to tell she was not already aware of4 ,nevertheless she chided me almost harshly4 ',you know very well1' she said1 'that my husband is always there when ,mademoiselle prepares the medicines4 ,so that he too would be guilty4 ,rather than believe that1 ,i would accept death at his hands a hundred times over6' ,and ,i remember1 ,monsieur1 how at the very moment when she told me that1 you came out from the little boudoir1 and brought her a glass of valerian4 ,she cast on me a terrible look and drank4 ,a few minutes afterwards she was so ill that she thought the end was come4 ,she begged me to give her her crucifix1 and made me swear never to utter a word concerning our suspicions4 ,it was then ,i sent for the priest4 ,i have told you1 ,monsieur1 what ,i know2 what ,i have seen with my own eyes4 ,i swear that ,i have said nothing but what is absolutely true4 ,she paused4 ,i could not answer her4 ,i seized her old wrinkled and trembling hands and pressed them to my forehead1 and wept like a child4 ,may #aj4--,she died believing me guilty6 ,the thought is terrible to me4 ,i know not what to do4 ,a creature so frail1 so delicate1 so sweet4 ,yes6 she said to herself1 my husband is a murderer2 what he is giving me is poison1 and he knows it4 ,she died with that thought in her mind--her last thought4 ,and she will never1 never know that it was not so2 that ,i am innocent2 that the thought is torment to me3 that ,i am the most unhappy of men4 ,ah6 ,god1 all-powerful6 if you indeed exist1 you see what ,i suffer4 ,have pity on me6 ,ah6 how ,i wish ,i could believe that all is not over between #bci her and me2 that she sees and hears me2 that she knew the truth4 ,but ,i find it impossible6 impossible6 ,june4--,that ,i was a criminal was her last thought1 and she will never be undeceived4 ,all seems so completely ended when one dies4 ,all returns to its first elements4 ,how credit that miracle of a personal resurrection8 and yet in truth all is mystery1--miracle1 around us1 about us1 within ourselves4 ,the entire universe is but a continuous miracle4 ,man's new birth from the womb of death--is it a mystery less comprehensible than his birth from the womb of his mother8 ,those lines are the last written by ,bernard de ,vaudricourt4 ,his health1 for some time past disturbed by grief1 was powerless against the emotions of the last terrible trial imposed on him4 ,a malady1 the exact nature of which was not determined1 in a few days assumed a mortal character4 ,perceiving that his end was come1 he caused ,monseigneur de ,courteheuse to be summoned--he desired to die in the religion of ,aliette4 ,living1 the poor child had been defeated3 she prevailed in her death4 ,two distinguished souls6 deux tres d'lite--,m4 ,feuillet thinks--whose fine qualities properly brought them together4 ,when ,mademoiselle de ,courteheuse said of the heroes of her favourite age1 that their passions1 their errors1 did but pass over a ground of what was solid and serious1 and which always discovered itself afresh1 she was unconsciously describing ,bernard4 ,singular young brother of ,monsieur de ,camors--after all1 certainly1 more fortunate than he--he belongs to the age1 which1 if it had great faults1 had also great repentances4 ,in appearance1 frivolous2 with all the light charm of the world1 yet with that impressibility to great things1 according to the law which makes the best of ,m4 ,feuillet's #bdj characters so interesting2 above all1 with that capacity for pity which almost everything around him tended to suppress2 in real life1 if he exists there1 and certainly in ,m4 ,feuillet's pages1 it is a refreshment to meet him4 #ahhf4 ,,postscript ainei de palaion men oinon1 anthea d' hymnon netern #bda ,,the words1 classical and romantic1 although1 like many other critical expressions1 sometimes abused by those who have understood them too vaguely or too absolutely1 yet define two real tendencies in the history of art and literature4 ,used in an exaggerated sense1 to express a greater opposition between those tendencies than really exists1 they have at times tended to divide people of taste into opposite camps4 ,but in that ,house ,beautiful1 which the creative minds of all generations--the artists and those who have treated life in the spirit of art--are always building together1 for the refreshment of the human spirit1 these oppositions cease2 and the ,interpreter of the ,house ,beautiful1 the true aesthetic critic1 uses these divisions1 only so far as they enable him to enter into the peculiarities of the objects with which he has to do4 ,the term classical1 fixed1 as it is1 to a well-defined literature1 and a well-defined group in art1 is clear1 indeed2 but then it has often been used in a hard1 and merely scholastic #bdb sense1 by the praisers of what is old and accustomed1 at the expense of what is new1 by critics who would never have discovered for themselves the charm of any work1 whether new or old1 who value what is old1 in art or literature1 for its accessories1 and chiefly for the conventional authority that has gathered about it--people who would never really have been made glad by any ,venus fresh-risen from the sea1 and who praise the ,venus of old ,greece and ,rome1 only because they fancy her grown now into something staid and tame4 ,and as the term1 classical1 has been used in a too absolute1 and therefore in a misleading sense1 so the term1 romantic1 has been used much too vaguely1 in various accidental senses4 ,the sense in which ,scott is called a romantic writer is chiefly this2 that1 in opposition to the literary tradition of the last century1 he loved strange adventure1 and sought it in the ,middle ,age4 ,much later1 in a ,yorkshire village1 the spirit of romanticism bore a more really characteristic fruit in the work of a young girl1 ,emily ,bront1 the romance of ,wuthering ,heights2 the figures of ,hareton ,earnshaw1 of ,catherine ,linton1 and of ,heathcliffe--tearing open ,catherine's grave1 removing one side of her coffin1 that he may really lie beside her in death--figures so passionate1 yet woven on a background of delicately beautiful1 moorland scenery1 being typical examples of that spirit4 ,in ,germany1 again1 #bdc that spirit is shown less in ,tieck1 its professional representative1 than in ,meinhold1 the author of ,sidonia the ,sorceress and the ,amber-,witch4 ,in ,germany and ,france1 within the last hundred years1 the term has been used to describe a particular school of writers2 and1 consequently1 when ,heine criticises the ,romantic ,school in ,germany--that movement which culminated in ,goethe's ,goetz von ,berlichingen2 or when ,thophile ,gautier criticises the romantic movement in ,france1 where1 indeed1 it bore its most characteristic fruits1 and its play is hardly yet over where1 by a certain audacity1 or bizarrerie of motive1 united with faultless literary execution1 it still shows itself in imaginative literature1 they use the word1 with an exact sense of special artistic qualities1 indeed2 but use it1 nevertheless1 with a limited application to the manifestation of those qualities at a particular period4 ,but the romantic spirit is1 in reality1 an ever-present1 an enduring principle1 in the artistic temperament2 and the qualities of thought and style which that1 and other similar uses of the word romantic really indicate1 are indeed but symptoms of a very continuous and widely working influence4 ,though the words classical and romantic1 then1 have acquired an almost technical meaning1 in application to certain developments of ,german and ,french taste1 yet this is but one variation of an old opposition1 which may be traced from the #bdd very beginning of the formation of ,european art and literature4 ,from the first formation of anything like a standard of taste in these things1 the restless curiosity of their more eager lovers necessarily made itself felt1 in the craving for new motives1 new subjects of interest1 new modifications of style4 ,hence1 the opposition between the classicists and the romanticists--between the adherents1 in the culture of beauty1 of the principles of liberty1 and authority1 respectively--of strength1 and order or what the ,greeks called kosmiots4 ,sainte-,beuve1 in the third volume of the ,causeries du ,lundi1 has discussed the question1 ,what is meant by a classic8 ,it was a question he was well fitted to answer1 having himself lived through many phases of taste1 and having been in earlier life an enthusiastic member of the romantic school3 he was also a great master of that sort of philosophy of literature1 which delights in tracing traditions in it1 and the way in which various phases of thought and sentiment maintain themselves1 through successive modifications1 from epoch to epoch4 ,his aim1 then1 is to give the word classic a wider and1 as he says1 a more generous sense than it commonly bears1 to make it expressly grandiose et flottant2 and1 in doing this1 he develops1 in a masterly manner1 those qualities of measure1 purity1 temperance1 of which it is the especial function of classical art #bde and literature1 whatever meaning1 narrower or wider1 we attach to the term1 to take care4 ,the charm1 therefore1 of what is classical1 in art or literature1 is that of the well-known tale1 to which we can1 nevertheless1 listen over and over again1 because it is told so well4 ,to the absolute beauty of its artistic form1 is added the accidental1 tranquil1 charm of familiarity4 ,there are times1 indeed1 at which these charms fail to work on our spirits at all1 because they fail to excite us4 ,romanticism1 says ,stendhal1 is the art of presenting to people the literary works which1 in the actual state of their habits and beliefs1 are capable of giving them the greatest possible pleasure2 classicism1 on the contrary1 of presenting them with that which gave the greatest possible pleasure to their grandfathers4 ,but then1 beneath all changes of habits and beliefs1 our love of that mere abstract proportion--of music--which what is classical in literature possesses1 still maintains itself in the best of us1 and what pleased our grandparents may at least tranquillise us4 ,the classic comes to us out of the cool and quiet of other times2 as the measure of what a long experience has shown will at least never displease us4 ,and in the classical literature of ,greece and ,rome1 as in the classics of the last century1 the essentially classical element is that quality of order in beauty1 which they possess1 indeed1 #bdf in a pre-eminent degree1 and which impresses some minds to the exclusion of everything else in them4 ,it is the addition of strangeness to beauty1 that constitutes the romantic character in art2 and the desire of beauty being a fixed element in every artistic organisation1 it is the addition of curiosity to this desire of beauty1 that constitutes the romantic temper4 ,curiosity and the desire of beauty1 have each their place in art1 as in all true criticism4 ,when one's curiosity is deficient1 when one is not eager enough for new impressions1 and new pleasures1 one is liable to value mere academical proprieties too highly1 to be satisfied with worn-out or conventional types1 with the insipid ornament of ,racine1 or the prettiness of that later ,greek sculpture1 which passed so long for true ,hellenic work2 to miss those places where the handiwork of nature1 or of the artist1 has been most cunning2 to find the most stimulating products of art a mere irritation4 ,and when one's curiosity is in excess1 when it overbalances the desire of beauty1 then one is liable to value in works of art what is inartistic in them2 to be satisfied with what is exaggerated in art1 with productions like some of those of the romantic school in ,germany2 not to distinguish1 jealously enough1 between what is admirably done1 and what is done not quite so well1 in the writings1 for instance1 of ,jean ,paul4 ,and if ,i had to give #bdg instances of these defects1 then ,i should say1 that ,pope1 in common with the age of literature to which he belonged1 had too little curiosity1 so that there is always a certain insipidity in the effect of his work1 exquisite as it is2 and1 coming down to our own time1 that ,balzac had an excess of curiosity--curiosity not duly tempered with the desire of beauty4 ,but1 however falsely those two tendencies may be opposed by critics1 or exaggerated by artists themselves1 they are tendencies really at work at all times in art1 moulding it1 with the balance sometimes a little on one side1 sometimes a little on the other1 generating1 respectively1 as the balance inclines on this side or that1 two principles1 two traditions1 in art1 and in literature so far as it partakes of the spirit of art4 ,if there is a great overbalance of curiosity1 then1 we have the grotesque in art3 if the union of strangeness and beauty1 under very difficult and complex conditions1 be a successful one1 if the union be entire1 then the resultant beauty is very exquisite1 very attractive4 ,with a passionate care for beauty1 the romantic spirit refuses to have it1 unless the condition of strangeness be first fulfilled4 ,its desire is for a beauty born of unlikely elements1 by a profound alchemy1 by a difficult initiation1 by the charm which wrings it even out of terrible things2 and a trace of distortion1 of the grotesque1 may perhaps linger1 as an additional element of expression1 about its #bdh ultimate grace4 ,its eager1 excited spirit will have strength1 the grotesque1 first of all--the trees shrieking as you tear off the leaves2 for ,jean ,valjean1 the long years of convict life2 for ,redgauntlet1 the quicksands of ,solway ,moss2 then1 incorporate with this strangeness1 and intensified by restraint1 as much sweetness1 as much beauty1 as is compatible with that4 nergique1 frais1 et dispos--these1 according to ,sainte-,beuve1 are the characteristics of a genuine classic--les ouvrages anciens ne sont pas classiques parce qu'ils sont vieux1 mais parce qu'ils sont nergiques1 frais1 et dispos4 ,energy1 freshness1 intelligent and masterly disposition3--these are characteristics of ,victor ,hugo when his alchemy is complete1 in certain figures1 like ,marius and ,cosette1 in certain scenes1 like that in the opening of ,les ,travailleurs de la ,mer1 where ,druchette writes the name of ,gilliatt in the snow1 on ,christmas morning2 but always there is a certain note of strangeness discernible there1 as well4 ,the essential elements1 then1 of the romantic spirit are curiosity and the love of beauty2 and it is only as an illustration of these qualities1 that it seeks the ,middle ,age1 because1 in the over-charged atmosphere of the ,middle ,age1 there are unworked sources of romantic effect1 of a strange beauty1 to be won1 by strong imagination1 out of things unlikely or remote4 ,few1 probably1 now read ,madame de ,stal's #bdi ,de l',allemagne1 though it has its interest1 the interest which never quite fades out of work really touched with the enthusiasm of the spiritual adventurer1 the pioneer in culture4 ,it was published in #ahaj1 to introduce to ,french readers a new school of writers--the romantic school1 from beyond the ,rhine2 and it was followed1 twenty-three years later1 by ,heine's ,romantische ,schule1 as at once a supplement and a correction4 ,both these books1 then1 connect romanticism with ,germany1 with the names especially of ,goethe and ,tieck2 and1 to many ,english readers1 the idea of romanticism is still inseparably connected with ,germany--that ,germany which1 in its quaint old towns1 under the spire of ,strasburg or the towers of ,heidelberg1 was always listening in rapt inaction to the melodious1 fascinating voices of the ,middle ,age1 and which1 now that it has got ,strasburg back again1 has1 ,i suppose1 almost ceased to exist4 ,but neither ,germany1 with its ,goethe and ,tieck1 nor ,england1 with its ,byron and ,scott1 is nearly so representative of the romantic temper as ,france1 with ,murger1 and ,gautier1 and ,victor ,hugo4 ,it is in ,french literature that its most characteristic expression is to be found2 and that1 as most closely derivative1 historically1 from such peculiar conditions1 as ever reinforce it to the utmost4 ,for1 although temperament has much to do with the generation of the romantic spirit1 and #bej although this spirit1 with its curiosity1 its thirst for a curious beauty1 may be always traceable in excellent art 7traceable even in ,sophocles7 yet still1 in a limited sense1 it may be said to be a product of special epochs4 ,outbreaks of this spirit1 that is1 come naturally with particular periods--times1 when1 in men's approaches towards art and poetry1 curiosity may be noticed to take the lead1 when men come to art and poetry1 with a deep thirst for intellectual excitement1 after a long ennui1 or in reaction against the strain of outward1 practical things3 in the later ,middle ,age1 for instance2 so that medieval poetry1 centering in ,dante1 is often opposed to ,greek and ,roman poetry1 as romantic poetry to the classical4 ,what the romanticism of ,dante is1 may be estimated1 if we compare the lines in which ,virgil describes the hazel-wood1 from whose broken twigs flows the blood of ,polydorus1 not without the expression of a real shudder at the ghastly incident1 with the whole canto of the ,inferno1 into which ,dante has expanded them1 beautifying and softening it1 meanwhile1 by a sentiment of profound pity4 ,and it is especially in that period of intellectual disturbance1 immediately preceding ,dante1 amid which the romance languages define themselves at last1 that this temper is manifested4 ,here1 in the literature of ,provence1 the very name of romanticism is stamped with its true signification3 here we have indeed a romantic world1 grotesque #bea even1 in the strength of its passions1 almost insane in its curious expression of them1 drawing all things into its sphere1 making the birds1 nay6 lifeless things1 its voices and messengers1 yet so penetrated with the desire for beauty and sweetness1 that it begets a wholly new species of poetry1 in which the ,renaissance may be said to begin4 ,the last century was pre-eminently a classical age1 an age in which1 for art and literature1 the element of a comely order was in the ascendant2 which1 passing away1 left a hard battle to be fought between the classical and the romantic schools4 ,yet1 it is in the heart of this century1 of ,goldsmith and ,stothard1 of ,watteau and the ,sicle de ,louis ,,xiv4--in one of its central1 if not most characteristic figures1 in ,rousseau--that the modern or ,french romanticism really originates4 ,but1 what in the eighteenth century is but an exceptional phenomenon1 breaking through its fair reserve and discretion only at rare intervals1 is the habitual guise of the nineteenth1 breaking through it perpetually1 with a feverishness1 an incomprehensible straining and excitement1 which all experience to some degree1 but yearning also1 in the genuine children of the romantic school1 to be nergique1 frais1 et dispos--for those qualities of energy1 freshness1 comely order2 and often1 in ,murger1 in ,gautier1 in ,victor ,hugo1 for instance1 with singular felicity attaining them4 ,it is in the terrible tragedy of ,rousseau1 in #beb fact1 that ,french romanticism1 with much else1 begins3 reading his ,confessions we seem actually to assist at the birth of this new1 strong spirit in the ,french mind4 ,the wildness which has shocked so many1 and the fascination which has influenced almost every one1 in the squalid1 yet eloquent figure1 we see and hear so clearly in that book1 wandering under the apple-blossoms and among the vines of ,neuchtel or ,vevey actually give it the quality of a very successful romantic invention4 ,his strangeness or distortion1 his profound subjectivity1 his passionateness--the cor laceratum--,rousseau makes all men in love with these4 ,je ne suis fait comme aucun de ceux que j'ai sus4 ,mais si je ne vaux pas mieux1 au moins je suis autre4 ,i am not made like any one else ,i have ever known3 yet1 if ,i am not better1 at least ,i am different4 ,these words1 from the first page of the ,confessions1 anticipate all the ,werthers1 ,rens1 ,obermanns1 of the last hundred years4 ,for ,rousseau did but anticipate a trouble in the spirit of the whole world2 and thirty years afterwards1 what in him was a peculiarity1 became part of the general consciousness4 ,a storm was coming3 ,rousseau1 with others1 felt it in the air1 and they helped to bring it down3 they introduced a disturbing element into ,french literature1 then so trim and formal1 like our own literature of the age of ,queen ,anne4 ,in #ahae the storm had come and gone1 but had left1 in the spirit of young ,france1 the #bec ennui of an immense disillusion4 ,in the last chapter of ,edgar ,quinet's ,revolution ,franaise1 a work itself full of irony1 of disillusion1 he distinguishes two books1 ,senancour's ,obermann and ,chateaubriand's ,gnie du ,christianisme1 as characteristic of the first decade of the present century4 ,in those two books we detect already the disease and the cure--in ,obermann the irony1 refined into a plaintive philosophy of indifference--in ,chateaubriand's ,gnie du ,christianisme1 the refuge from a tarnished actual present1 a present of disillusion1 into a world of strength and beauty in the ,middle ,age1 as at an earlier period--in ,ren and ,atala--into the free play of them in savage life4 ,it is to minds in this spiritual situation1 weary of the present1 but yearning for the spectacle of beauty and strength1 that the works of ,french romanticism appeal4 ,they set a positive value on the intense1 the exceptional2 and a certain distortion is sometimes noticeable in them1 as in conceptions like ,victor ,hugo's ,quasimodo1 or ,gwynplaine1 something of a terrible grotesque1 of the macabre1 as the ,french themselves call it2 though always combined with perfect literary execution1 as in ,gautier's ,la ,morte ,amoureuse1 or the scene of the maimed burial-rites of the player1 dead of the frost1 in his ,capitaine ,fracasse--true flowers of the yew4 ,it becomes grim humour in ,victor ,hugo's combat of ,gilliatt with the devil-fish1 or the incident1 with all its ghastly comedy drawn #bed out at length1 of the great gun detached from its fastenings on shipboard1 in ,quatre-,vingt-,trieze 7perhaps the most terrible of all the accidents that can happen by sea7 and in the entire episode1 in that book1 of the ,convention4 ,not less surely does it reach a genuine pathos2 for the habit of noting and distinguishing one's own most intimate passages of sentiment makes one sympathetic1 begetting1 as it must1 the power of entering1 by all sorts of finer ways1 into the intimate recesses of other minds2 so that pity is another quality of romanticism1 both ,victor ,hugo and ,gautier being great lovers of animals1 and charming writers about them1 and ,murger being unrivalled in the pathos of his ,scnes de la ,vie de ,jeunesse4 ,penetrating so finely into all situations which appeal to pity1 above all1 into the special or exceptional phases of such feeling1 the romantic humour is not afraid of the quaintness or singularity of its circumstances or expression1 pity1 indeed1 being of the essence of humour2 so that ,victor ,hugo does but turn his romanticism into practice1 in his hunger and thirst after practical ,justice6--a justice which shall no longer wrong children1 or animals1 for instance1 by ignoring in a stupid1 mere breadth of view1 minute facts about them4 ,yet the romanticists are antinomian1 too1 sometimes1 because the love of energy and beauty1 of distinction in passion1 tended naturally to become a little bizarre1 plunging into the #bee ,middle ,age1 into the secrets of old ,italian story4 ,are we in the ,inferno8--we are tempted to ask1 wondering at something malign in so much beauty4 ,for over all a care for the refreshment of the human spirit by fine art manifests itself1 a predominant sense of literary charm1 so that1 in their search for the secret of exquisite expression1 the romantic school went back to the forgotten world of early ,french poetry1 and literature itself became the most delicate of the arts--like goldsmith's work1 says ,sainte-,beuve1 of ,bertrand's ,gaspard de la ,nuit--and that peculiarly ,french gift1 the gift of exquisite speech1 argute loqui1 attained in them a perfection which it had never seen before4 ,stendhal1 a writer whom ,i have already quoted1 and of whom ,english readers might well know much more than they do1 stands between the earlier and later growths of the romantic spirit4 ,his novels are rich in romantic quality2 and his other writings--partly criticism1 partly personal reminiscences--are a very curious and interesting illustration of the needs out of which romanticism arose4 ,in his book on ,racine and ,shakespeare1 ,stendhal argues that all good art was romantic in its day2 and this is perhaps true in ,stendhal's sense4 ,that little treatise1 full of dry light and fertile ideas1 was published in the year #ahbc1 and its object is to defend an entire independence and liberty in the choice and treatment of subject1 both in #bef art and literature1 against those who upheld the exclusive authority of precedent4 ,in pleading the cause of romanticism1 therefore1 it is the novelty1 both of form and of motive1 in writings like the ,hernani of ,victor ,hugo 7which soon followed it1 raising a storm of criticism7 that he is chiefly concerned to justify4 ,to be interesting and really stimulating1 to keep us from yawning even1 art and literature must follow the subtle movements of that nimbly-shifting ,time-,spirit1 or ,zeit-,geist1 understood by ,french not less than by ,german criticism1 which is always modifying men's taste1 as it modifies their manners and their pleasures4 ,this1 he contends1 is what all great workmen had always understood4 ,dante1 ,shakespeare1 ,molire1 had exercised an absolute independence in their choice of subject and treatment4 ,to turn always with that ever-changing spirit1 yet to retain the flavour of what was admirably done in past generations1 in the classics1 as we say--is the problem of true romanticism4 ,dante1 he observes1 was pre-eminently the romantic poet4 ,he adored ,virgil1 yet he wrote the ,divine ,comedy1 with the episode of ,ugolino1 which is as unlike the ,aeneid as can possibly be4 ,and those who thus obey the fundamental principle of romanticism1 one by one become classical1 and are joined to that ever-increasing common league1 formed by men of all countries1 to approach nearer and nearer to perfection4 ,romanticism1 then1 although it has its epochs1 #beg is in its essential characteristics rather a spirit which shows itself at all times1 in various degrees1 in individual workmen and their work1 and the amount of which criticism has to estimate in them taken one by one1 than the peculiarity of a time or a school4 ,depending on the varying proportion of curiosity and the desire of beauty1 natural tendencies of the artistic spirit at all times1 it must always be partly a matter of individual temperament4 ,the eighteenth century in ,england has been regarded as almost exclusively a classical period2 yet ,william ,blake1 a type of so much which breaks through what are conventionally thought the influences of that century1 is still a noticeable phenomenon in it1 and the reaction in favour of naturalism in poetry begins in that century1 early4 ,there are1 thus1 the born romanticists and the born classicists4 ,there are the born classicists who start with form1 to whose minds the comeliness of the old1 immemorial1 well-recognised types in art and literature1 have revealed themselves impressively2 who will entertain no matter which will not go easily and flexibly into them2 whose work aspires only to be a variation upon1 or study from1 the older masters4 ',tis art's decline1 my son6 they are always saying1 to the progressive element in their own generation2 to those who care for that which in fifty years' time every one will be caring for4 ,on the other hand1 there are the born romanticists1 who start with an original1 #beh untried matter1 still in fusion2 who conceive this vividly1 and hold by it as the essence of their work2 who1 by the very vividness and heat of their conception1 purge away1 sooner or later1 all that is not organically appropriate to it1 till the whole effect adjusts itself in clear1 orderly1 proportionate form2 which form1 after a very little time1 becomes classical in its turn4 ,the romantic or classical character of a picture1 a poem1 a literary work1 depends1 then1 on the balance of certain qualities in it2 and in this sense1 a very real distinction may be drawn between good classical and good romantic work4 ,but all critical terms are relative2 and there is at least a valuable suggestion in that theory of ,stendhal's1 that all good art was romantic in its day4 ,in the beauties of ,homer and ,pheidias1 quiet as they now seem1 there must have been1 for those who confronted them for the first time1 excitement and surprise1 the sudden1 unforeseen satisfaction of the desire of beauty4 ,yet the ,odyssey1 with its marvellous adventure1 is more romantic than the ,iliad1 which nevertheless contains1 among many other romantic episodes1 that of the immortal horses of ,achilles1 who weep at the death of ,patroclus4 ,aeschylus is more romantic than ,sophocles1 whose ,philoctetes1 were it written now1 might figure1 for the strangeness of its motive and the perfectness of its execution1 as typically romantic2 while1 of ,euripides1 it may be said1 that his method in #bei writing his plays is to sacrifice readily almost everything else1 so that he may attain the fulness of a single romantic effect4 ,these two tendencies1 indeed1 might be applied as a measure or standard1 all through ,greek and ,roman art and poetry1 with very illuminating results2 and for an analyst of the romantic principle in art1 no exercise would be more profitable1 than to walk through the collection of classical antiquities at the ,louvre1 or the ,british ,museum1 or to examine some representative collection of ,greek coins1 and note how the element of curiosity1 of the love of strangeness1 insinuates itself into classical design1 and record the effects of the romantic spirit there1 the traces of struggle1 of the grotesque even1 though over-balanced here by sweetness2 as in the sculpture of ,chartres and ,rheims1 the real sweetness of mind in the sculptor is often overbalanced by the grotesque1 by the rudeness of his strength4 ,classicism1 then1 means for ,stendhal1 for that younger enthusiastic band of ,french writers whose unconscious method he formulated into principles1 the reign of what is pedantic1 conventional1 and narrowly academical in art2 for him1 all good art is romantic4 ,to ,sainte-,beuve1 who understands the term in a more liberal sense1 it is the characteristic of certain epochs1 of certain spirits in every epoch1 not given to the exercise of original imagination1 but rather to the working out of refinements of manner on some #bfj authorised matter2 and who bring to their perfection1 in this way1 the elements of sanity1 of order and beauty in manner4 ,in general criticism1 again1 it means the spirit of ,greece and ,rome1 of some phases in literature and art that may seem of equal authority with ,greece and ,rome1 the age of ,louis the ,fourteenth1 the age of ,johnson2 though this is at best an uncritical use of the term1 because in ,greek and ,roman work there are typical examples of the romantic spirit4 ,but explain the terms as we may1 in application to particular epochs1 there are these two elements always recognisable2 united in perfect art--in ,sophocles1 in ,dante1 in the highest work of ,goethe1 though not always absolutely balanced there2 and these two elements may be not inappropriately termed the classical and romantic tendencies4 ,material for the artist1 motives of inspiration1 are not yet exhausted3 our curious1 complex1 aspiring age still abounds in subjects for aesthetic manipulation by the literary as well as by other forms of art4 ,for the literary art1 at all events1 the problem just now is1 to induce order upon the contorted1 proportionless accumulation of our knowledge and experience1 our science and history1 our hopes and disillusion1 and1 in effecting this1 to do consciously what has been done hitherto for the most part too unconsciously1 to write our ,english language as the ,latins wrote theirs1 as the #bfa ,french write1 as scholars should write4 ,appealing1 as he may1 to precedent in this matter1 the scholar will still remember that if the style is the man it is also the age3 that the nineteenth century too will be found to have had its style1 justified by necessity--a style very different1 alike from the baldness of an impossible ,queen ,anne revival1 and an incorrect1 incondite exuberance1 after the mode of ,elizabeth3 that we can only return to either at the price of an impoverishment of form or matter1 or both1 although1 an intellectually rich age such as ours being necessarily an eclectic one1 we may well cultivate some of the excellences of literary types so different as those3 that in literature as in other matters it is well to unite as many diverse elements as may be3 that the individual writer or artist1 certainly1 is to be estimated by the number of graces he combines1 and his power of interpenetrating them in a given work4 ,to discriminate schools1 of art1 of literature1 is1 of course1 part of the obvious business of literary criticism3 but1 in the work of literary production1 it is easy to be overmuch occupied concerning them4 ,for1 in truth1 the legitimate contention is1 not of one age or school of literary art against another1 but of all successive schools alike1 against the stupidity which is dead to the substance1 and the vulgarity which is dead to form4 ,,notes #bda4 ,transliteration3 ainei de palaion men oinon1 anthea d' hymnon netern4 ,translation3 ,praise wine for its age1 but the song in first bloom4 ,pindar1 ,odes1 ,book ,o1 ,poem #i1 ,line #dg4 #bdd4 ,transliteration3 kosmiots4 ,liddell and ,scott definition3 propriety1 decorum1 orderly behavior4