Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13 by John Lord
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| Table of Contents | |
| Section | Page |
| Start of eBook | 1 |
| ROUSSEAU. | 1 |
| SIR WALTER SCOTT. | 1 |
| LORD BYRON. | 1 |
| THOMAS CARLYLE. | 2 |
| LORD MACAULAY. | 2 |
| SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. | 3 |
| JOHN MILTON: POET AND PATRIOT. | 3 |
| JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. | 4 |
| ALFRED (LORD) TENNYSON. | 4 |
| LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS | 5 |
| BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY. | 5 |
| SIR WALTER SCOTT. | 22 |
| LORD BYRON. | 53 |
| THOMAS CARLYLE. | 76 |
| LORD MACAULAY. | 99 |
| SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET.[3] | 117 |
| JOHN MILTON: POET AND PATRIOT.[4] | 130 |
| JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.[5] | 165 |
| I. THE MAN. | 165 |
| ALFRED (LORD) TENNYSON. | 185 |
ROUSSEAU.
Socialism and education.
Jean Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke
Rousseau representative of his century
Birth
Education and early career; engraver, footman
Secretary, music teacher, and writer
Meets Therese
His first public essay in literature
Operetta and second essay
Geneva; the Hermitage; Madame d’Epinay.
The “Nouvelle Heloise;” Comtesse d’Houdetot
“Emile;” “The Social Contract”
Books publicly burned; author flees
England; Hume; the “Confessions”
Death, career reviewed
Character of Rousseau
Essay on the Arts and Sciences
“Origin of Human Inequalities”
“The Social Contract”
“Emile”
The “New Heloise”
The “Confessions”
Influence of Rousseau
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The modern novel.
Scott and Byron
Evanescence of literary fame
Parentage of Scott
Birth and childhood
Schooling and reading
Becomes an advocate
His friends and pleasures
Personal peculiarities
Writing of poetry; first publication
Marriage and settlement
“Scottish Minstrelsy”
“Lay of the Last Minstrel;” Ashestielrented
The Edinburgh Review: Jeffrey, Brougham, Smith
The Ballantynes
“Marmion”
Jeffrey as a critic
Quarrels of author and publishers; Quarterly Review
Scott’s poetry
Duration of poetic fame
Clerk of Sessions; Abbotsford bought
“Lord of the Isles;” “Rokeby”
Fiction; fame of great authors
“Waverley”
“Guy Mannering”
Great popularity of Scott
“The Antiquary”
“Old Mortality;” comparisons
“Rob Roy”
Scotland’s debt to Scott
Prosperity; rank; correspondence
Personal habits
Life at Abbotsford
Chosen friends
Works issued in 1820-1825
Bankruptcy through failure of his publishers
Scott’s noble character and action
Works issued in 1825-1831
Illness and death
Payment of his enormous debt
Vast pecuniary returns from his works
LORD BYRON.
Poetic genius.
Difficulty of depicting Byron
Descent; birth; lameness
Schooling; early reading habits
College life
Temperament and character
First publication of poems
Savage criticism by Edinburgh Review
“English Bards and Scotch Reviewers”
Byron becomes a peer
Loneliness and melancholy; determines to travel
Portugal; Spain
Malta; Greece; Turkey
Profanity of language in Byron’s time
“Childe Harold”
Instant fame and popularity
Consideration of the poem
Marries Miss Milbanke; separation
Genius and marriage
“The Corsair;” “Bride of Abydos”
Evil reputation; loss of public favor
Byron leaves England forever
Switzerland; the Shelleys; new poems
Degrading life in Venice
The Countess Guiccioli
Two sides to Byron’s character
His power and fertility
Inexcusable immorality; “Don Juan”
“Manfred” and “Cain” not irreligiousbut dramatic
Byron not atheistical but morbid
Many noble traits and actions
Generosity and fidelity in friendship
Eulogies by Scott and Moore
Byron’s interest in the Greek Revolution
Devotes himself to that cause
Raises L10,000 and embarks for Greece
Collects troops in his own pay
His latest verses
Illness from vexation and exposure
Death and burial
The verdict
THOMAS CARLYLE.
Criticism and biography.
Froude’s Biography of Carlyle
Brief resume of Carlyle’s career
Parentage and birth
Slender education; school-teaching
Abandons clerical intentions to become a writer
“Elements of Geometry;” “Life ofSchiller;” “Wilhelm Meister”
Marries Jane Welsh
Her character
Edinburgh and Craigenputtock
Essays: “German Literature”
Goethe’s “Helena”
“Burns”
“Life of Heyne;” “Voltaire”
“Characteristics”
Wholesome and productive life at Craigenputtock
“Dr. Johnson”
Friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Sartor Resartus”
Carlyle removes to London
Begins “The French Revolution”
Manuscript accidentally destroyed
Habits of great authors in rewriting
Publication of the work; Carlyle’s literarystyle
Better reception in America than in England
Carlyle begins lecturing
Popular eloquence in England
Carlyle and the Chartists
“Heroes and Hero Worship”
“Past and Present”
Carlyle becomes bitter
“Latter-Day Pamphlets”
“Life of Oliver Cromwell”
Carlyle’s confounding right with might
Great merits of Carlyle as historian
Death of Mrs. Carlyle
Success of Carlyle established
“Frederick the Great”
Decline of the author’s popularity
Public honors; private sorrow
Final illness and death
Carlyle’s place in literature
LORD MACAULAY.
Artistic historical writing.
Macaulay’s varied talents
Descent and parentage
Birth and youth
Education
Character; his greatness intellectual rather thanmoral
College career
Enters the law
His early writings; poetry; essay on Milton
Social success; contemporaries
Enters politics and Parliament
Sent to India; secretary board of education
Essays in the Reviews
Limitations as a statesman
Devotion to literature
Personal characteristics
Return to London and public office
Still writing essays; “Warren Hastings,”“Clive”
Special public appreciation in America
Drops out of Parliament; begins “History ofEngland”
Prodigious labor; extent and exactness of his knowledge
Self-criticism; brilliancy of style
Public honors
Remarkable successes; re-enters Parliament
Illness and growing weakness
Conclusion of the History; foreign and domestic honors
Resigns seat in Parliament
Social habits
Literary tastes
Final illness and death; his fame
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET.
By Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The debt of genius to its age and preceding time.
The era of Shakspeare favorable to dramatic entertainments.
The stage a substitute for the newspaper of his era.
The poet draws upon extant materials—thelime and mortar to his hand.
Plays which show the original rock on which his ownfiner stratum is laid.
In drawing upon tradition and upon earlier plays thepoet’s memory is taxed equally with his invention.
All originality is relative; every thinker is retrospective.
The world’s literary treasure the result ofmany a one’s labor; centuries have contributedto its existence and perfection.
Shakspeare’s contemporaries, correspondents,and acquaintances.
Work of the Shakspeare Society in gathering materialto throw light upon the poet’s life, and toillustrate the development of the drama.
His external history meagre; Shakspeare is the onlybiographer of
Shakspeare.
What the sonnets and the dramas reveal of the poet’smind and character.
His unique creative power, wisdom of life, and greatgifts of imagination.
Equality of power in farce, tragedy, narrative, andlove-songs.
Notable traits in the poet’s character and disposition;his tone pure, sovereign, and cheerful.
Despite his genius, he shares the halfness and imperfectionof humanity.
A seer who saw all things to convert them into entertainments,as master of the revels to mankind.
JOHN MILTON: POET AND PATRIOT.
By Thomas Babington Macaulay.
His long-lost essay on Doctrines of Christianity.
As a poet, his place among the greatest masters ofthe art.
Unfavorable circ*mstances of his era, born “anage too late”.
A rude era more favorable to poetry.
The poetical temperament highest in a rude state ofsociety.
Milton distinguished by the excellence of his Latinverse.
His genius gives to it an air of nobleness and freedom.
Characteristics and magical influence of Milton’spoetry.
Mechanism of his language attains exquisite perfection.
“L’Allegro” and “II Penseroso,”“Comus” and “Samson Agonistes”described.
“Comus” properly more lyrical than dramatic.
Milton’s preference for “Paradise Regained”over “Paradise Lost”.
Contrasts between Milton and Dante.
Milton’s handling of supernatural beings inhis poetry.
His art of communicating his meaning through successionof associated ideas.
Other contrasts between Milton and Dante—themysterious and the picturesque in their verse.
Milton’s fiends wonderful creations, not metaphysicalabstractions.
Moral qualities of Milton and Dante.
The Sonnets simple but majestic records of the poet’sfeelings.
Milton’s public conduct that of a man of highspirit and powerful intellect.
Eloquent champion of the principles of freedom.
His public conduct to be esteemed in the light ofthe times, and of its great question whether the resistanceof the people to Charles I. was justifiable or criminal.
Approval of the Great Rebellion and of Milton’sattitude towards it.
Eulogium on Cromwell and approval of Milton’staking office (Latin
Secretaryship) under him.
The Puritans and Royalists, or Roundheads and Cavaliers.
The battle Milton fought for freedom of the humanmind.
High estimate of Milton’s prose works.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.
Germany’s greatest writer.
By Frederic Henry Hedge.
Fills highest place among the poets and prose-writersof Germany.
Influences that made the man.
Self-discipline and educational training.
Counsellor to Duke Karl August at Weimar, where heafterwards resides.
Visits Italy; makes Schiller’s acquaintance;Goethe’s personal appearance.
His unflagging industry; defence of the poet’spersonal character.
The “Maerchen,” its interpretation andthe light it throws on Goethe’s political career.
Lyrist, dramatist, novelist, and mystic seer.
His drama “Goetz von Berlichingen,” and“Sorrows of Werther”.
Popularity of his ballads; his elegies, and “Hermannund Dorothea”.
“Iphigenie auf Tauris;” his stage plays“Faust” (First Part) and “Egmont”.
The prose works “Wilhelm Meister” andthe “Elective Affinities”.
His skill in the delineation of female character.
“Faust;” contrasts in spirit and stylebetween the two Parts.
Import of the work, key to or analysis of the plot.
ALFRED (LORD) TENNYSON.
The spirit of modern poetry.
By G. Mercer Adam.
Tennyson’s supreme excellence—histranscendent art.
His work the perfection of literary form; his melodyexquisite.
Representative of the age’s highest thoughtand culture.
Keen interpreter of the deep underlying spirit ofhis time.
Contemplative and brooding verse, full of rhythmicbeauty.
The “Idylls of the King,” their deep ethicalmotive and underlying purpose.
His profound religious convictions and belief in theeternal verities.
Hallam Tennyson’s memoir of the poet; his friendsand intimates.
The poet’s birth, family, and youthful characteristics
Early publishing ventures; his volume of 1842 gavehim high rank.
Personal appearance, habits, and mental traits.
“In Memoriam,” its noble, artistic expressionof sorrow for Arthur Hallam.
“The Princess” and its moral, in the treatmentof its “Woman Question” theme.
The metrical romance “Maud,” and “TheIdylls of the King,” an epic of chivalry.
“Enoch Arden,” and the dramas “Harold,”“Becket,” and “Queen Mary”.
Other dramatic compositions: “The Falcon,”“The Cup,” and “The Promise of May”.
The pastoral play, “The Foresters,” andlater collections of poems and ballads.
The poet’s high faith, and belief that “goodis the final goal of ill”.
His exalted place among the great literary influencesof his era.
Expressive to his age of the high and hallowing Spiritof Modern Poetry.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Volume XIII.
The Young Goethe at Frankfort FrontispieceAfter the painting by Frank Kirchbach.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
After the painting by M. Q. de la Tour, Chantilly,France.
Sir Walter Scott
After the painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, R. A.
Lord Byron
After the painting by P. Kraemer.
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
After the painting by M. Q. de la Tour, EndoxeMarville
Collection, Paris.
Thomas Carlyle
After a photograph from life
Thomas Babington Macaulay
After a photograph by Maule, London.
William Shakspeare
After the “Chandos Portrait,” NationalPortrait Gallery, London.
John Milton
After the painting by Pieter van der Plaas.
Milton Visits the Aged Galileo
After the painting by T. Lessi.
Goethe
After the painting by C. Jaeger.
Alfred (Lord) Tennyson
After the painting by G. F. Watts, R. A.
Tennyson’s Elaine
After the painting by T. E. Rosenthal.
BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.
1712-1778.
SOCIALISM AND EDUCATION.
Two great political writers in the eighteenth century,of antagonistic views, but both original and earnest,have materially affected the whole science of government,and even of social life, from their day to ours, andin their influence really belong to the nineteenthcentury. One was the apostle of radicalism; theother of conservatism. The one, more than anyother single man, stimulated, though unwittingly, theFrench Revolution; the other opposed that mad outburstwith equal eloquence, and caused in Europe a reactionfrom revolutionary principles. While one is farbetter known to-day than the other, to the thoughtfulboth are exponents and representatives of conflictingpolitical and social questions which agitate thisage.
These men were Jean Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke,—oneSwiss, and the other English. Burke I have alreadytreated of in a former volume. His name is nolonger a power, but his influence endures in all thegrand reforms of which he was a part, and for whichhis generation in England is praised; while his writingsremain a treasure-house of political and moral wisdom,sure to be drawn upon during every public discussionof governmental principles. Rousseau, althougha writer of a hundred years ago, seems to me a fitrepresentative of political, social, and educationalideas in the present day, because his theories arestill potent, and even in this scientific age morewidely diffused than ever before. Not withoutreason, it is true, for he embodied certain germinantideas in a fascinating literary style; but it is hardto understand how so weak a man could have exercisedsuch far-reaching influence.
Himself a genuine and passionate lover of Nature;recognizing in his principles of conduct no dutiesthat could conflict with personal inclinations; bornin democratic and freedom-loving Switzerland, andearly imbued through his reading of German and Englishwriters with ideas of liberty,—which inthose conservative lands were wholesome,—hedistilled these ideas into charming literary creationsthat were eagerly read by the restless minds of Franceand wrought in them political frenzy. The reformshe projected grew out of his theories of the “rights”of man, without reference to the duties that limitthose rights; and his appeal for their support tomen’s passions and selfish instincts and toa sentimental philosophy, in an age of irreligion andimmorality, aroused a political tempest which he littlecontemplated.
In an age so infidel and brilliant as that which precededthe French Revolution, the writings of Rousseau hada peculiar charm, and produced a great effect evenon men who despised his character and ignored hismission. He engendered the Robespierres and Condorcetsof the Revolution,—those sentimental murderers,who under the guise of philosophy attacked the fundamentalprinciples of justice and destroyed the very rightswhich they invoked.
Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva in the year1712, when Voltaire was first rising into notice.He belonged to the plebeian ranks, being the son ofa watchmaker; was sickly, miserable, and morbid froma child; was poorly educated, but a great devourerof novels (which his father—sentimentalas he—read with him), poetry, and gushingbiographies; although a little later he became, withimpartial facility, equally delighted with the sturdyPlutarch. His nature was passionate and inconstant,his sensibilities morbidly acute, and his imaginationlively. He hated all rules, precedents, and authority.He was lazy, listless, deceitful, and had a greatcraving for novelties and excitement,—ashe himself says, “feeling everything and knowingnothing.” At an early age, without moneyor friends, he ran away from the engraver to whomhe had been apprenticed, and after various adventureswas first kindly received by a Catholic priest in Savoy;then by a generous and erring woman of wealth latelyconverted to Catholicism; and again by the priestsof a Catholic Seminary in Sardinia, under whose tuition,and in order to advance his personal fortunes, heabjured the religion in which he had been brought up,and professed Catholicism. This, however, costhim no conscientious scruples, for his religious traininghad been of the slimmest, and principles he had none.
We next see Rousseau as a footman in the service ofan Italian Countess, where he was mean enough to accusea servant girl of a theft he had himself committed,thereby causing her ruin. Again, employed as afootman in the service of another noble family, hisextraordinary talents were detected, and he was madesecretary. But all this kindness he returnedwith insolence, and again became a wanderer. Inhis isolation he sought the protection of the Swisslady who had before befriended him, Madame de Warens.He began as her secretary, and ended in becoming herlover. In her house he saw society and learnedmusic.
A fit of caprice induced Rousseau to throw up thissituation, and he then taught music in Chambery fora living, studied hard, read Voltaire, Descartes,Locke, Hobbes, Leibnitz, and Puffendorf, and evincedan uncommon vivacity and talent for conversation,which made him a favorite in social circles.His chief labor, however, for five years was in inventinga system of musical notation, which led him to Lyons,and then, in 1741, to Paris.
He was now twenty-nine years old,—a visionaryman, full of schemes, with crude opinions and unboundedself-conceit, but poor and unknown,—a trueadventurer, with many agreeable qualities, irregularhabits, and not very scrupulous morals. Favoredby letters of introduction to ladies of distinction,—forhe was a favorite with ladies, who liked his enthusiasm,freshness, elegant talk, and grand sentiments,—hesucceeded in getting his system of musical notationexamined, although not accepted, by the French Academy,and secured an appointment as secretary in the suiteof the Ambassador to Venice.
In this city Rousseau remained but a short time, beingdisgusted with what he called “official insolence,”which did not properly recognize native genius.He returned to Paris as poor as when he left it, andlived in a cheap restaurant. There he made theacquaintance of his Therese, a healthy, amiable woman,but low, illiterate, unappreciative, and coarse, theauthor of many of his subsequent miseries. Shelived with him till he died,—at first ashis mistress and housekeeper, although later in lifehe married her. She was the mother of his fivechildren, every one of whom he sent to a foundlinghospital, justifying his inhumanity by those sophistriesand paradoxes with which his writings abound,—evenin one of his letters appealing for pity because he“had never known the sweetness of a father’sembrace.” With extraordinary self-conceit,too, he looked upon himself, all the while, in hisnumerous illicit loves, as a paragon of virtue, beingapparently without any moral sense or perception ofmoral distinctions.
It was not till Rousseau was thirty-nine years ofa*ge that he attracted public attention by his writings,although earlier known in literary circles,—especiallyin that infidel Parisian coterie, where Diderot,Grimm, D’Holbach, D’Alembert, David Hume,the Marquis de Mirabeau, Helvetius, and other witsshined, in which circle no genius was acknowledgedand no profundity of thought was deemed possible unlessallied with those pagan ideas which Saint Augustinehad exploded and Pascal had ridiculed. Even whileliving among these people, Rousseau had all the whilea kind of sentimental religiosity which revolted attheir ribald scoffing, although he never protested.
He had written some fugitive pieces of music, andhad attempted and failed in several slight operettas,composing both music and words; but the work whichmade Rousseau famous was his essay on a subject propoundedin 1749 by the Academy of Dijon: “Has theProgress of Science and the Arts Contributed to Corruptor to Purify Morals?” This was a strange subjectfor a literary institution to propound, but one whichexactly fitted the genius of Rousseau. The boldnessof his paradox—for he maintained the evileffects of science and art—and the brilliancyof his style secured readers, although the essay wascrude in argument and false in logic. In his“Confessions” he himself condemns it asthe weakest of all his works, although “fullof force and fire;” and he adds: “Withwhatever talent a man may be born, the art of writingis not easily learned.” It has been saidthat Rousseau got the idea of taking the “offside” of this question from his literary friendDiderot, and that his unexpected success with it wasthe secret of his life-long career of opposition toall established institutions. This is interesting,but not very authentic.
The next year, his irregular activity having beenagain stimulated by learning that his essay had gainedthe premium at Dijon, and by the fact of its greatvogue as a published pamphlet, another performancefairly raised Rousseau to the pinnacle of fashion;and this was an opera which he composed, “LeDevin du Village” (The Village Sorcerer), whichwas performed at Fontainebleau before the Court, andreceived with unexampled enthusiasm. His profession,so far as he had any, was that of a copyist of music,and his musical taste and facile talents had at lastbrought him an uncritical recognition.
But Rousseau soon abandoned music for literature.In 1753 he wrote another essay for the Academy ofDijon, on the “Origin of the Inequality of Man,”full of still more startling paradoxes than his first,in which he attempted to show, with great felicityof language, the superiority of savage life over civilization.
At the age of forty-two Rousseau revisited ProtestantGeneva, abjured in its turn the Catholic faith, andwas offered the post of librarian of the city.But he could not live out of the atmosphere of Paris;nor did he wish to remain under the shadow of Voltaire,living in his villa near the City Gate of Geneva,who had but little admiration for Rousseau, and whosesuperior social position excited the latter’senvy. Yet he professed to hate Paris with itsconventionalities and fashions, and sought a quietretreat where he could more leisurely pursue his studiesand enjoy Nature, which he really loved. Thiswas provided for him by an enthusiastic friend,—Madamed’Epinay,—in the beautiful valleyof Montmorenci, and called “The Hermitage,”situated in the grounds of her Chateau de la Chevrette.Here he lived with his wife and mother-in-law, hehimself enjoying the hospitalities of the Chateau besides,—societyof a most cultivated kind, also woods, lawns, parks,gardens,—all for nothing; the luxuriesof civilization, the glories of Nature, and the delightsof friendship combined. It was an earthly paradise,given him by enthusiastic admirers of his genius andconversation.
In this retreat, one of the most favored which a poorauthor ever had, Rousseau, ever craving some outletfor his passionate sentiments, created an ideal objectof love. He wrote imaginary letters, dwellingwith equal rapture on those he wrote and those he fanciedhe received in return, and which he read to his ladyfriends, after his rambles in the forests and parks,during their reunions at the supper-table. Thuswas born the “Nouvelle Heloise,”—anovel of immense fame, in which the characters areinvested with every earthly attraction, living involuptuous peace, yet giving vent to those passionswhich consume the unsatisfied soul. It was theforerunner of “Corinne,” “The Sorrowsof Werther,” “Thaddeus of Warsaw,”and all those sentimental romances which amused ourgrandfathers and grandmothers, but which increasedthe prejudice of religious people against novels.It was not until Sir Walter Scott arose with his wholesomemanliness that the embargo against novels was removed.
The life which Rousseau lived at the Hermitage—reveriesin the forest, luxurious dinners, and sentimentalfriendships—led to a passionate love-affairwith the Comtesse d’Houdetot, a sister-in-lawof his patroness Madame d’Epinay,—awoman not only married, but who had another loverbesides. The result, of course, was miserable,—jealousies,piques, humiliations, misunderstandings, and the sunderingof the ties of friendship, which led to the necessityof another retreat: a real home the wretchedman never had. This was furnished, still in thevicinity of Montmorenci, by another aristocratic friend,the Marechal de Luxembourg, the fiscal agent of thePrince de Conde. And nothing to me is strangerthan that this wandering, morbid, irritable man, withoutbirth or fortune, the father of the wildest revolutionaryand democratic doctrines, and always hated both bythe Court and the Church, should have found his friendsand warmest admirers and patrons in the highest circlesof social life. It can be explained only by thesingular fascination of his eloquence, and by the extremestolidity of his worshippers in appreciating his doctrines,and the state of society to which his principles logicallyled.
In this second retreat Rousseau had the entreeto the palace of the Duke of Luxembourg, where heread to the friends assembled at its banquets hisnew production, “Emile,”—a singulartreatise on education, not so faulty as his previousworks, but still false in many of its principles,especially in regard to religion. This book containedan admirable and powerful impulse away from artificialityand towards naturalness in education, which has exertedan immense influence for good; we shall revert toit later.
A few months before the publication of “Emile,”Rousseau had issued “The Social Contract,”the most revolutionary of all his works, subversiveof all precedents in politics, government, and theorganization of society, while also confounding Christianitywith ecclesiasticism and attacking its influence inthe social order. All his works obtained a widefame before publication by reason of his habit ofreading them to enthusiastic and influential friendswho made them known.
“The Social Contract,” however, dangerousas it was, did not when published arouse so much oppositionas “Emile.” The latter book, as wenow see, contained much that was admirable; but itsfreedom and looseness in religious discussion calleddown the wrath of the clergy, excited the alarm ofthe government, and finally compelled the author tofly for his life to Switzerland.
Rousseau is now regarded as an enemy to Christiandoctrine, even as he was a foe to the existing institutionsof society. In Geneva his books are publiclyburned. Henceforth his life is embittered by constantpersecution. He flies from canton to canton inthe freest country in Europe, obnoxious not only forhis opinions but for his habits of life. He affectedlyadopts the Armenian dress, with its big fur bonnetand long girdled caftan, among the Swiss peasantry.He is as full of personal eccentricities as he isof intellectual crotchets. He becomes a sortof literary vagabond, with every man’s hand againsthim. He now writes a series of essays, called“Letters from the Mountain,” full of bitternessand anti-Christian sentiments. So incensed bythese writings are the country people among whom hedwells that he is again forced to fly.
David Hume, regarding him as a mild, affectionate,and persecuted man, gives Rousseau a shelter in England.The wretched man retires to Derbyshire, and therewrites his “Confessions,”—themost interesting and most dangerous of his books,showing a diseased and irritable mind, and most sophisticalviews on the immutable principles of both moralityand religion. A victim of mistrust and jealousy,he quarrels with Hume, who learns to despise his character,while pitying the sensitive sufferings of one whomhe calls “a man born without a skin.”
Rousseau returns to France at the age of fifty-five.After various wanderings he is permitted to settlein Paris, where he lives with great frugality in asingle room, poorly furnished,—supportinghimself by again copying music, sought still in highsociety, yet shy, reserved, forlorn, bitter; occasionallymaking new friends, who are attracted by the infantinesimplicity of his manners and apparent amiability,but losing them almost as soon as made by his pettyjealousies and irritability, being “equallyindignant at neglect and intolerant of attention.”
Rousseau’s declining health and the fear ofhis friends that he was on the borders of insanityled to his last retreat, offered by a munificent friend,at Ermenonville, near Paris, where he died at sixty-sixyears of age, in 1778, as some think from poison administeredby his own hand. The revolutionary National Assemblyof France in 1790 bestowed a pension of fifteen hundredfrancs on his worthless widow, who had married a stable-boysoon after the death of her husband.
Such was the checkered life of Rousseau. As tohis character, Lord Brougham says that “neverwas so much genius before united with so much weakness.”The leading spring of his life was egotism. Henever felt himself wrong, and the sophistries he usedto justify his immoralities are both ludicrous andpitiable. His treatment of Madame de Warens, hisfirst benefactor, was heartless, while the abandonmentof his children was infamous. He twice changedhis religion without convictions, for the advancement
of his fortunes. He pretended to be poor whenhe was independent in his circ*mstances. He supposedhimself to be without vanity, while he was notoriouslythe most conceited man in France. He quarrelledwith all his friends. He made war on society itself.He declared himself a believer in Christianity, butdenied all revelation, all miracles, all inspiration,all supernaturalism, and everything he could not reconcilewith his reason. His bitterest enemies were theatheists themselves, who regarded him as a hypocrite,since he professed to believe in what he undermined.The hostility of the Church was excited against him,not because he directly assailed Christianity, butbecause he denied all its declarations and sapped itsauthority.Rousseau was, however, a sentimentalist rather thana rationalist, an artist rather than a philosopher.He was not a learned man, but a bold thinker.He would root out all distinctions in society, becausethey could not be reconciled with his sense of justice.He preached a gospel of human rights, based not onChristianity but on instinct. He was full ofimpracticable theories. He would have no war,no suffering, no hardship, no bondage, no fear, andeven no labor, since these were evils, and, accordingto his notions of moral government, unnecessary.But in all his grand theories he ignored the settledlaws of Providence,—even those of that“Nature” he so fervently worshipped,—allthat is decreed concerning man or woman, all that isstern and real in existence; and while he uttered suchsophistries, he excited discontent with the inevitablecondition of man, he loosened family ties, he relaxedwholesome restraints, he infused an intense hatredof all conditions subject to necessary toil.
The life of this embittered philanthropist was asgreat a contradiction as were his writings. Thisbenevolent man sends his own children to a foundlinghospital. This independent man lives for yearson the bounty of an erring woman, whom at last heexposes and deserts. This high-minded idealizerof friendship quarrels with every man who seeks toextricate him from the consequences of his own imprudence.This affectionate lover refuses a seat at his tableto the woman with whom he lives and who is the motherof his children. This proud republican acceptsa pension from King George III., and lives in the housesof aristocratic admirers without payment. Thisreligious teacher rarely goes to church, or respectsthe outward observances of the Christianity he affects.This moral theorizer, on his own confession, stealsand lies and cheats. This modest innocent corruptsalmost every woman who listens to his eloquence.This lofty thinker consumes his time in frivolity andsenseless quarrels. This patriot makes war onthe institutions of his country and even of civilizedlife. This humble man turns his back on everyone who will not do him reverence.
Such was this precursor of revolutions, this agitator,this hypocrite, this egotist, this lying prophet,—aman admired and despised, brilliant but indefinite,original but not true, acute but not wise; logical,but reasoning on false premises; advancing some greattruths, but spoiling their legitimate effect by sophistriesand falsehoods.
Why, then, discuss the ideas and influence of so despicablea creature? Because, sophistical as they were,those ideas contained truths of tremendous germinantpower; because in the rank soil of his times theyproduced a vast crop of bitter, poisonous fruit, whilein the more open, better aerated soil of this centurythey have borne and have yet to bear a fruitage ofuniversal benefit. God’s ways seem mysterious;it is for men patiently to study, understand, andutilize them.
Let us turn to the more definite consideration ofthe writings which have given this author so brillianta fame. I omit any review of his operas and hissystem of musical notation, as not bearing on theopinions of society.
The first work, as I have said, which brought Rousseauinto notice was the treatise for the Academy of Dijon,as to whether the arts and sciences have contributedto corrupt or to purify morals. Rousseau followedthe bent of his genius, in maintaining that they havedone more harm than good; and he was so fresh andoriginal and brilliant that he gained the prize.This little work contains the germ of all his subsequenttheories, especially that in which he magnifies thestate of nature over civilization,—an amazingparadox, which, however, appealed to society whenmen were wearied with the very pleasures for whichthey lived.
Rousseau’s cant about the virtues engenderedby ignorance, idleness, and barbarism is repulsiveto every sound mind, Civilization may present greatertemptations than a state of nature, but these are inseparablefrom any growth, and can be overcome by the valorousmind. Who but a madman would sweep away civilizationwith its factitious and remediable evils for barbarismwith its untutored impulses and animal life? HereRousseau makes war upon society, upon all that is gloriousin the advance of intellect and the growth of morality,—uponthe reason and aspirations of mankind. Can inexperiencebe a better guide than experience, when it encounterscrime and folly? Yet, on the other hand, a pleafor greater simplicity of life, a larger study of Nature,and a freer enjoyment of its refreshing contraststo the hot-house life of cities, is one of the mostreasonable and healthful impulses of our own day.
What can be more absurd, although bold and striking,than Rousseau’s essay on the “Origin ofHuman Inequalities”! In this he pushes outthe doctrine of personal liberty to its utmost logicalsequence, so as to do away with government itself,and with all regulation for the common good.We do not quarrel with his abstract propositions inrespect to political equality; but his deductionsstrike a blow at civilization, since he maintainsthat inequalities of human condition are the sourceof all political and social evils, while Christianity,confirmed by common-sense, teaches that the sourceof social evils is in the selfish nature of man ratherthan in his outward condition. And further, ifit were possible to destroy the inequalities of life,they would soon again return, even with the most boundlessliberty. Here common-sense is sacrificed to acaptivating theory, and all the experiences of theworld are ignored.
This shows the folly of projecting any abstract theory,however true, to its remote and logical sequence.In the attempt we are almost certain to be landedin absurdity, so complicated are the relations of life,especially in governmental and political science.What doctrine of civil or political economy wouldbe applicable in all ages and all countries and allconditions? Like the ascertained laws of science,or the great and accepted truths of the Bible, politicalaxioms are to be considered in their relation withother truths equally accepted, or men are soon broughtinto a labyrinth of difficulties, and the strongestintellect is perplexed.
And especially will this be the case when a theoryunder consideration is not a truth but an assumption.That was the trouble with Rousseau. His theories,disdainful of experience, however logically treated,became in their remotest sequence and application insultingto the human understanding, because they were oftennot only assumptions, but assumptions of what wasnot true, although very specious and flattering tocertain classes.
Rousseau confounded the great truth of the justiceof moral and political equality with the absurd andunnatural demand for social and material equality.The great modern cry for equal opportunity for allis sound and Christian; but any attempt to guaranteeindividual success in using opportunity, to insurethe lame and the lazy an equal rank in the race, mustend in confusion and distraction.
The evil of Rousseau’s crude theories or falseassumptions was practically seen in the acceptanceof their logical conclusions, which led to anarchy,murder, pillage, and outrageous excess. The greatdanger attending his theories is that they are generallyhalf-truths,—truth and falsehood blended.His writings are sophistical. It is difficultto separate the truth from the error, by reason ofthe marvellous felicity of his language. I donot underrate his genius or his style. He wasdoubtless an original thinker and a most brilliantand artistic writer; and by so much did he confusepeople, even by the speciousness of his logic.There is nothing indefinite in what he advances.He is not a poet dealing in mysticisms, but a rhetoricalphilosopher, propounding startling theories, partlytrue and partly false, which he logically enforceswith matchless eloquence.
Probably the most influential of Rousseau’swritings was “The Social Contract,”—thegreat textbook of the Revolution. In this famoustreatise he advanced some important ideas which undoubtedlyare based on ultimate truth, such as that the peopleare the source of power, that might does not makeright, that slavery is an aggression on human rights;but with these ideal truths he combines the assertionthat government is a contract between the governorand the governed. In a perfect state of societythis may be the ideal; but society is not and neverhas been perfect, and certainly in all the early ages
of the world governments were imposed upon peopleby the strong hand, irrespective of their will andwishes,—and these were the only governmentswhich were fit and useful in that elder day.Governments, as a plain matter of fact, have generallyarisen from circ*mstances and relations with whichthe people have had little to do. The Orientalmonarchies were the gradual outgrowth of patriarchaltradition and successful military leadership, andin regard to them the people were never consulted atall. The Roman Empire was ruled without the consentof the governed. Feudal monarchies in Europewere based on the divine rights of kings. Therewas no state in Europe where a compact or social contracthad been made or implied. Even later, when theFrench elected Napoleon, they chose a monarch becausethey feared anarchy, without making any stipulation.There were no contracting parties.The error of Rousseau was in assuming a social contractas a fact, and then reasoning upon the assumption.His premises are wrong, or at least they are nothingmore than statements of what abstractly might be madeto follow from the assumption that the people actuallyare the source of power,—a condition mostdesirable and in the last analysis correct, sinceeven military despots use the power of the people inorder to oppress the people, but which is practicallytrue only in certain states. Yet, after all,when brought under the domain of law by the sturdysense and utilitarian sagacity of the Anglo-Saxon race,Rousseau’s doctrine of the sovereignty of thepeople is the great political motor of this century,in republics and monarchies alike.
Again, Rousseau maintains that, whatever acquisitionsan individual or a society may make, the right tothis property must be always subordinate to the rightwhich the community at large has over the possessionsof all. Here is the germ of much of our present-daysocialism. Whatever element of truth there maybe in the theory that would regard land and capital,the means of production, as the joint possession ofall the members of the community,—the basicdoctrine of socialism,—any forcible attemptto distribute present results of individual productionand accumulation would be unjust and dangerous tothe last degree. In the case of the furious carryingout of this doctrine by the crazed French revolutionists,it led to outrageous confiscation, on the ground thatall property belonged to the state, and thereforethe representatives of the nation could do what theypleased with it. This shallow sophistry was acceptedby the French National Convention when it swept awayestates of nobles and clergy, not on the tenable groundthat the owners were public enemies, but on the baselesspretext that their property belonged to the nation.
From this sophistry about the rights of property,Rousseau advanced another of still worse tendency,which was that the general will is always in the rightand constantly tends to the public good. The theoryis inconsistent with itself. Light and truth donot come from the universal reason, but from the thoughtsof great men stimulated into growth among the people.The teachers of the world belong to a small class.Society is in need of constant reforms, which are notsuggested by the mass, but by a few philosophers orreformers,—the wise men who save cities.
Rousseau further says that a whole people can neverbecome corrupted,—a most barefaced assertion.Have not all nations suffered periods of corruption?This notion, that the whole people cannot err, opensthe door for any license. It logically leadsto that other idea, of the native majesty of man andthe perfectibility of society, which this sophistboldly accepted. Rousseau thought that if societywere released from all law and all restraint, thegood impulses and good sense of the majority wouldproduce a higher state of virtue and wisdom than whathe saw around him, since majorities could do no wrongand the universal reason could not err. In thisabsurdity lay the fundamental principle of the FrenchRevolution, so far as it was produced by the writingsof philosophers. This doctrine was eagerly seizedupon by the French people, maddened by generationsof oppression, poverty, and degradation, because itappealed to the pride and vanity of the masses, atthat time congregated bodies of ignorance and wickedness.
Rousseau had an unbounded trust in human nature,—thatit is good and wise, and will do the best thing ifleft to itself. But can anything be more antagonisticto all the history of the race? I doubt if Rousseauhad any profound knowledge, or even really extensivereading. He was a dreamer, a theorist, a sentimentalist.He was the arch-priest of all sensationalism in theguise of logic. What more acceptable to the vilepeople of his age than the theory that in their collectivecapacity they could not err, that the universal reasonwas divine? What more logical than its culminationin that outrageous indecency, the worship of Reasonin the person of a prostitute!
Again, Rousseau’s notion of the limitationsof law and the prerogative of the people, carriedout, would lead to the utter subversion of centralauthority, and reduce nations to an absolute democracyof small communities. They would divide and subdivideuntil society was resolved into its original elements.This idea existed among the early Greek states, whena state rarely comprised more than a single city ortown or village, such as might be found among thetribes of North American Indians. The great politicalquestion in Ancient Greece was the autonomy of cities,which kept the whole land in constant wars and dissensionsand quarrels and jealousies, and prevented that centralizationof power which would have made Greece unconquerableand the mistress of the world. Our wholesomeAmerican system of autonomy in local affairs, witha common authority in matters affecting the generalgood, is organized liberty. But the ancient andoutgrown idea of unregulated autonomy was revivedby Rousseau; and though it could not be carried outby the French Revolutionists who accepted nearly allhis theories, it led to the disintegration of France,and the multiplication of offices fatal to a healthycentral power. Napoleon broke up all this in hiscentralized despotism, even if, to keep the Revolutionarysympathy, he retained the Departments which were substitutedfor the ancient Provinces.
The extreme spirit of democratic liberty which isthe characteristic of Rousseau’s political philosophyled to the advocacy of the wildest doctrines of equality.He would prevent the accumulation of wealth, so that,to use his words, “no one citizen should be richenough to buy another, and no one so poor as to beobliged to sell himself.” He would haveneither rich people nor beggars. What could flowfrom such doctrines but discontent and unreasonableexpectations among the poor, and a general fear andsense of insecurity among the rich? This “stateof nature,” moreover, in his view, could be reachedonly by going backward and destroying all civilization,—andit was civilization which he ever decried,—avery pleasant doctrine to vagabonds, but likely tobe treated with derisive mockery by all those who havesomething to conserve.
Another and most dangerous principle which was advocatedin the “Social Contract” was that religionhas nothing to do with the affairs of civil and politicallife; that religious obligations do not bind a citizen;that Christianity, in fact, ignores all the great relationsof man in society. This is distinct from thePuritan doctrine of the separation of the Church fromthe State, by which is simply meant that priests oughtnot to interfere in matters purely political, nor thegovernment meddle with religious affairs,—aprime doctrine in a free State. But no body ofmen were ever more ardent defenders of the doctrinethat all religious ideas ought to bear on the socialand political fabric than the Puritans, They wouldbreak up slavery, if it derogated from the doctrineof the common brotherhood of man as declared by Christ;they would use their influence as Christians to rootout all evil institutions and laws, and bring thesublime truths of the Master to bear on all the relationsof life,—on citizens at the ballot-box,at the helm of power, and in legislative bodies.Christianity was to them the supreme law, with whichall human laws must harmonize. But Rousseau wouldthrow out Christianity altogether, as foreign to theduties and relations of both citizens and rulers,pretending that it ignored all connection with mundaneaffairs and had reference only to the salvation ofthe soul,—as if all Christ’s teachingswere not regulative of the springs of conduct betweenman and man, as indicative of the relations betweenman and God! Like Voltaire, Rousseau had the excuseof a corrupt ecclesiasticism to be broken into; butthe Church and Christianity are two different things.This he did not see. No one was more impatientof all restraints than Rousseau; yet he maintainedthat men, if calling themselves Christians, must submitto every wrong and injustice, looking for a remedyin the future world,—thus pouring contempton those who had no right, according to his view oftheir system, to complain of injustice or strive torise above temporal evils. Christianity, he said,inculcates servitude and dependence; its spirit is
favorable to tyrants; true Christians are formed tobe slaves, and they know it, and never trouble themselvesabout conspiracies and insurrections, since this transitoryworld has no value in their eyes. He denied thatChristians could be good soldiers,—a falsehoodrebuked for us by the wars of the Reformation, bythe troops of Cromwell and Gustavus Adolphus, by ourAmerican soldiers in the late Civil War. Thushe would throw away the greatest stimulus to heroism,—eventhe consciousness of duty, and devotion to great truthsand interests.I cannot follow out the political ideas of Rousseauin his various other treatises, in which he preparedthe way for revolution and for the excesses of theReign of Terror. The truth is, Rousseau’sfeelings were vastly superior to his thinking.Whatever of good is to result from his influence willarise out of the impulse he gave toward the searchfor ideals that should embrace the many as well asthe few in their benefits; when he himself attemptedto apply this impulse to philosophic political thought,his unregulated mind went all astray.
Let us now turn to consider a moment his doctrinespertaining to education, as brought out in his greatestand most unexceptionable work, his “Emile.”
In this remarkable book everything pertaining to humanlife appears to be discussed. The duties of parents,child-management, punishments, perception and thebeginning of thinking; toys, games, catechisms, allpassions and sentiments, religion, friendship, love,jealousy, pity; the means of happiness, the pleasuresand profits of travel, the principles of virtue, ofjustice and liberty; language, books; the nature ofman and of woman, the arts of conventional life, politeness,riches, poverty, society, marriage,—onall these and other questions he discourses with greatsagacity and good sense, and with unrivalled beautyof expression, often rising to great eloquence, neverdull or uninstructive, aiming to present virtue andvice in their true colors, inspiring exalted sentiments,and presenting happiness in simple pleasures and naturallife.
This treatise is both full and original. Theauthor supposes an imaginary pupil, named Emile, andhe himself, intrusted with the care of the boy’seducation, attends him from his cradle to his manhood,assists him with the necessary directions for hisgeneral improvement, and finally introduces him toan amiable and unsophisticated girl, whose love hewins by his virtues and whom he honorably marries;so that, although a treatise, the work is investedwith the fascination of a novel.
In reading this book, which made so great a noisein Europe, with so much that is admirable I find butlittle to criticise, except three things, which marits beauty and make it both dangerous and false, inwhich the unsoundness of Rousseau’s mind andcharacter—the strange paradoxes of hislife in mixing up good with evil—are broughtout, and that so forcibly that the author was huntedand persecuted from one part of Europe to anotheron account of it.
The first is that he makes all natural impulses generousand virtuous, and man, therefore, naturally good insteadof perverse,—thus throwing not only Christianitybut experience entirely aside, and laying down maximswhich, logically carried out, would make society perfectif only Nature were always consulted. This doctrineindirectly makes all the treasures of human experienceuseless, and untutored impulse the guide of life.It would break the restraints which civilization anda knowledge of life impose, and reduce man to a primitivestate. In the advocacy of this subtle falsehood,Rousseau pours contempt on all the teachings of mankind,—onall schools and colleges, on all conventionalitiesand social laws, yea, on learning itself. He alwaysstigmatizes scholars as pedants.
Secondly, he would reduce woman to insignificance,having her rule by arts and small devices; makingher the inferior of man, on whom she is dependentand to whose caprice she is bound to submit,—asort of toy or slave, engrossed only with domesticduties, like the woman of antiquity. He wouldgive new rights and liberties to man, but none to womanas man’s equal,—thus keeping herin a dependence utterly irreconcilable with the boldfreedom which he otherwise advocates. The dangeroustendency of his writings is somewhat checked, however,by the everlasting hostility with which women of characterand force of will—such as they call “strong-minded”—willever pursue him. He will be no oracle to them.
But a still more marked defect weakens “Emile”as one of the guide-books of the world, great as areits varied excellencies. The author underminesall faith in Christianity as a revelation, or as ameans of man’s communion with the Divine, forguidance, consolation, or inspiration. Nor doeshe support one of his moral or religious doctrinesby an appeal to the Sacred Scriptures, which have beenso deep a well of moral and spiritual wisdom for somany races of men. Practically, he is infideland pagan, although he professes to admire some ofthe moral truths which he never applies to his system.He is a pure Theist or Deist, recognizing, like theold Greeks, no religion but that of Nature, and valuingno attainments but such as are suggested by Natureand Reason, which are the gods he worships from firstto last in all his writings. The Confession ofFaith by the Savoyard Vicar introduced into the fourthof the six “Books” of this work, which,having nothing to do with his main object, he unnecessarilydrags in, is an artful and specious onslaught on alldoctrines and facts revealed in the Bible,—onall miracles, all prophecies, and all supernaturalrevelation,—thus attacking Christianityin its most vital points, and making it of no moreauthority than Buddhism or Mohammedanism. Faithis utterly extinguished. A cold reason is allthat he would leave to man,—no consolationbut what the mind can arrive at unaided, no knowledgebut what can be reached by original scientific investigation.
He destroys not only all faith but all authority,by a low appeal to prejudices, and by vulgar wit suchas the infidels of a former age used in their heartlessand flippant controversies. I am not surprisedat the hostility displayed even in France againsthim by both Catholics and Protestants. When headvocated his rights of man, from which Thomas Paineand Jefferson himself drew their maxims, he appealedto the self-love of the great mass of men ground downby feudal injustices and inequalities,—tothe sense of justice, sophistically it is true, butin a way which commanded the respect of the intellect.When he assailed Christianity in its innermost fortresses,while professing to be a Christian, he incurred theindignation of all Christians and the contempt ofall infidels,—for he added hypocrisy toscepticism, which they did not. Diderot, D’Alembert,and others were bold unbelievers, and did not veiltheir hostilities under a weak disguise. I havenever read a writer who in spirit was more essentiallypagan than Rousseau, or who wrote maxims more entirelyantagonistic to Christianity.Aside from these great falsities,—the perfectionof natural impulse, the inferiority of woman, andthe worthlessness of Christianity,—as inculcatedin this book, “Emile” must certainly beranked among the great classics of educational literature.With these expurgated it confirms the admirable methodsinspired by its unmethodical suggestions. Notingthe oppressiveness of the usual order of educationthrough books and apparatus, he scorns all tradition,and cries, “Let the child learn direct fromNature!” Himself sensitive and humane, havingsuffered as a child from the tyranny of adults, hedemands the tenderest care and sympathy for children,a patient study of their characteristics, a gentle,progressive leading of them to discover for themselvesrather than a cramming of them with facts. Thefirst moral education should be negative,—nopreaching of virtue and truth, but shielding from viceand error. He says: “Take the veryreverse of the current practice, and you will almostalways do right.” This spirit, indeed, isthe key to his entire plan. His ideas were thoseof the nineteenth, not the eighteenth century.Free play to childish vitality; punishment the naturalinconvenience consequent on wrong-doing; the incitementof the desire to learn; the training of sense-activityrather than reflection, in early years; the acquirementof the power to learn rather than the acquisitionof learning,—in short, the natural and scientificallyprogressive rather than the bookish and analyticallyliterary method was the end and aim of “Emile.”
Actually, this book accomplished little in its owntime, chiefly because of its attack on establishedreligion. Influentially, it reappeared in Pestalozzi,the first practical reformer of methods; in Froebel,the inventor of the Kindergarten; in Spencer, thegreat systematizer of the philosophy of development;and through these its spirit pervades the whole worldof education at the present time.
In Rousseau’s “New Heloise” thereare the same contradictions, the same paradoxes, thesame unsoundness as in his other works, but it is moreeloquent than any. It is a novel in which he paintsall the aspirations of the soul, all its unrest, allits indefinite longings, its raptures, and its despair;in which he unfetters the imagination and sanctifiesevery impulse, not only of affection, but of passion.This novel was the pioneer of the sentimental romanceswhich rapidly followed in France and England and Germany,—worsethan our sensational literature, since the authorveiled his immoralities by painting the transportsof passion under the guise of love, which ever hasits seat in the affections and is sustained only byrespect. Here Rousseau was a disguised seducer,a poisoner of the moral sentiments, a foe to whatis most sacred; and he was the more dangerous fromhis irresistible eloquence. His sophistries inregard to political and social rights may be met byreason, but not his attacks on the heart, with hisimaginary sorrows and joys, his painting of raptureswhich can never be found. Here he undermines virtueas he had undermined truth and law. Here reprobationmust become unqualified, and he appears one of thevery worst men who ever exercised a commanding influenceon a wicked and perverse generation.
And this view of the man is rather confirmed by hisown “Confessions,”—a singularlyattractive book, yet from which, after the perusalof the long catalogue of his sorrows, joys, humiliations,triumphs, ecstasies and miseries, glories and shame,one rises with great disappointment, since no greattruths, useful lessons, or even ennobling sentimentsare impressed upon the mind to make us wiser or better.The “Confessions” are only a revelationof that sensibility, excessive and morbid, which remindsus of Byron and his misanthropic poetry,—showinga man defiant, proud, vain, unreasonable, unsatisfied,supremely worldly and egotistic. The first sixBooks are mere annals of sentimental debauchery; thelast six, a kind of thermometer of friendship, containingan accurate account of kisses given and received,with slights, huffs, visits, quarrels, suspicions,and jealousies, interspersed with grand sentimentsand profound views of life and human nature, yet allillustrative of the utter vanity of earth, and thefailure of all mortal pleasures to satisfy the cravingsof an immortal mind. The “Confessions”remind us of “Manfred” and “Ecclesiastes”blended,—exceedingly readable, and oftenunexceptionable, where virtue is commended and viceportrayed in its true light, but on the whole a bookwhich no unsophisticated or inexperienced person canread without the consciousness of receiving a moraltaint; a book in no respect leading to repose or loftycontemplation, or to submission to the evils of life,which it catalogues with amazing detail; a book noteven conducive to innocent entertainment. Itis the revelation of the inner life of a sensualist,
an egotist, and a hypocrite, with a maudlin althoughgenuine admiration for Nature and virtue and friendshipand love. And the book reveals one of the mostmiserable and dissatisfied men that ever walked theearth, seeking peace in solitude and virtue, whileyielding to unrestrained impulses; a man of morbidsensibility, ever yearning for happiness and pursuingit by impossible and impracticable paths. No sadderautobiography has ever been written. It is a lameand impotent attempt at self-justification, revealingon every page the writer’s distrust of the virtueswhich he exalts, and of man whose reason and majestyhe deifies,—even of the friendships inwhich he sought consolation, and of the retirementswhere he hoped for rest.The book reveals the man. The writer has no hopeor repose or faith. Nothing pleases him long,and he is driven by his wild and undisciplined naturefrom one retreat to another, by persecution more fanciedthan real, until he dies, not without suspicion ofhaving taken his own life.
Such was Rousseau: the greatest literary geniusof his age, the apostle of the reforms which wereattempted in the French Revolution, and of ideas whichstill have a wondrous power,—some of whichare grand and true, but more of which are sophistical,false, and dangerous. His theories are all plausible;and all are enforced with matchless eloquence of style,but not with eloquence of thought or true feeling,like the soaring flights of Pascal,—in everyrespect his superior in genius, because more profoundand lofty. Rousseau’s writings, like hislife, are one vast contradiction, the blending of truthwith error,—the truth valuable even whencommonplace, the error subtle and dangerous,—sothat his general influence must be considered badwherever man is weak or credulous or inexperiencedor perverse. I wish I could speak better of aman whom so many honestly admire, and whose influencehas been so marked during the last hundred years, andwill be equally great for a hundred years to come;a man from whom Madame de Stael, Jefferson, and Lamartinedrew so much of their inspiration, whose ideas aboutchildhood have so helpfully transformed the educationalmethods of our own time. But I must speak my honestconviction, from the light I have, at the same timehoping that fuller light may justify more leniencyto one of the great oracles whose doctrines are stillcherished by many of the guides of modern thought.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
1771-1832.
THE MODERN NOVEL.
In the early decades of the nineteenth century thetwo most prominent figures in English literature wereSir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. They are stillread and admired, especially Scott; but it is not easyto understand the enormous popularity of these twomen in their own day. Their busts or pictureswere in every cultivated family and in almost everyshop-window. Everybody was familiar with the lineamentsof their countenances, and even with every peculiarityof their dress. Who did not know the shape ofthe Byronic collar and the rough, plaided form of“the Wizard of the North”? Who couldnot repeat the most famous passages in the writingsof these two authors?
Is it so now? If not, what a commentary mightbe written on human fame! How transitory arethe judgments of men in regard to every one whom fashionstamps! The verdict of critics is that only somehalf-dozen authors are now read with the interestand glow which their works called out a hundred yearsago. Even the novels of Sir Walter, although tobe found in every library, kindle but little enthusiasmcompared with that excited by the masterpieces ofThackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and of the favoritesof the passing day. Why is this? Will theselater lights also cease to burn? Will they toopass away? Is this age so much advanced thatwhat pleased our grandfathers and grandmothers hasno charm for us, but is often “flat, stale,and unprofitable,”—at least, decidedlyuninteresting?
I am inclined to the opinion that only a very smallpart of any man’s writings is really immortal.Take out the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,”and how much is left of Gray for other generationsto admire? And so of Goldsmith: besidesthe “Vicar of Wakefield” and the “DesertedVillage,” there is little in his writings thatis likely to prove immortal. Johnson wrote butlittle poetry that is now generally valued. Certainlyhis dictionary, his greatest work, is not immortal,and is scarcely a standard. Indeed, we have outgrownnearly everything which was prized so highly a centuryago, not only in poetry and fiction, but in philosophy,theology, and science. Perhaps that is leastpermanent which once was regarded as most certain.
If, then, the poetry and novels of Sir Walter Scottare not so much read or admired as they once were,we only say that he is no exception to the rule.I have in mind but two authors in the whole range ofEnglish literature that are read and prized as muchto-day as they were two hundred years ago. Andif this is true, what shall we say of rhetoricianslike Macaulay, of critics like Carlyle, of theologianslike Jonathan Edwards, of historians like Hume andGuizot, and of many other great men of whom it hasbeen the fashion to say that their works are lastingas the language in which they were written? Somefew books will doubtless live, but, alas, how few!Where now are the eight hundred thousand in the Alexandrianlibrary, which Ptolemy collected with so great care,—what,even, their titles? Where are the writings ofVarro, said to have been the most learned man of allantiquity?
I make these introductory remarks to show how shallowis the criticism passed upon a novelist or poet likeScott, in that he is not now so popular or so muchread as he was in his own day. It is the fateof most great writers,—the Augustines,the Voltaires, the Bayles of the world. It isenough to say that they were lauded and valued in theirtime, since this is about all we can say of most ofthe works supposed to be immortal. But when weremember the enthusiasm with which the novels of Scottwere at first received, the great sums of money which
were paid for them, and the honors he received fromthem, he may well claim a renown and a popularitysuch as no other literary man ever enjoyed. Hiseyes beheld the glory of a great name; his ears rangwith the plaudits of idolaters; he had the consciousnessof doing good work, universally acknowledged and gratefullyremembered. Scarcely any other novelist evercreated so much healthy pleasure combined with so muchsound instruction. And, further, he left behindhim a reproachless name, having fewer personal defectsthan any literary man of his time, being everywherebeloved, esteemed, and almost worshipped; whom distanttravellers came to see,—sure of kind andgracious treatment; a hero in their eyes to the last,with no drawbacks such as marred the fame of Byronor of Burns. That so great a genius as Scott isfading in the minds of this generation may be notwithout comfort to those honest and hard-working menin every walk of human life who can say: We toowere useful in our day, and had our share of honorsand rewards,—all perhaps that we deserved,or even more. What if we are forgotten, as mostmen are destined to be? To live in the mouthsof men is not the greatest thing or the best.“Act well your part, there all the honor lies,”for life after all is a drama or a stage. Thesupremest happiness is not in being praised; it isin the consciousness of doing right and being possessedwith the power of goodness.When, however, a man has been seated on such a loftypinnacle as was Sir Walter Scott, we wish to knowsomething of his personal traits, and the steps bywhich he advanced to fame. Was he overrated, asmost famous men have been? What is the nichehe will probably occupy in the temple of literaryfame? What are the characteristics of his productions?What gave him his prodigious and extraordinary popularity?Was he a born genius, like Byron and Burns, or washe merely a most industrious worker, aided by fortunatecirc*mstances and the caprices of fashion? Whatwere the intellectual forces of his day, and how didhe come to be counted among them?
All these points it is difficult to answer satisfactorily,but some light may be shed upon them. The bulkyvolumes of Lockhart’s Biography constitute amine of information about Scott, but are now heavyreading, without much vivacity,—affordinga strong contrast to Boswell’s Life of Johnson,which concealed nothing that we would like to know.A son-in-law is not likely to be a dispassionate biographer,especially when family pride and interests restrainhim. On the other hand, it is not wise for abiographer to be too candid, and belittle his heroby the enumeration of foibles not consistent withthe general tenor of the man’s life. Lockhart’sknowledge of his subject and his literary skill havegiven us much; and, with Scott’s own lettersand the critical notice of his contemporaries, boththe man and his works may be fairly estimated.
Most biographers aim to make the birth and parentageof their heroes as respectable as possible. Ofauthors who are “nobly born” there arevery few; most English and Scotch literary men aredescended from ancestors of the middle class,—lawyers,clergymen, physicians, small landed proprietors, merchants,and so on,—who were able to give their sonsan education in the universities. Sir WalterScott traced his descent to an ancient Scottish chief.His grandfather, Robert Scott, was bred to the sea,but, being ship-wrecked near Dundee, he became a farmer,and was active in the cattle-trade. Scott’sfather was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh,—whatwould be called in England a solicitor,—athriving, respectable man, having a large and lucrativelegal practice, and being highly esteemed for hisindustry and integrity; a zealous Presbyterian, formaland precise in manner, strict in the observance ofthe Sabbath, and of all that he considered to be right.His wife, Anne Rutherford, was the daughter of a professorof medicine in the University of Edinburgh,—alady of rather better education than the average ofher time; a mother whom Sir Walter remembered withgreat tenderness, and to whose ample memory and powerof graphic description he owed much of his own skillin reproducing the past. Twelve children werethe offspring of this marriage, although only fivesurvived very early youth.
Walter, the ninth child, was born on the 15th of August,1771, and when quite young, in consequence of a fever,lost for a time the use of his right leg. Bythe advice of his grandfather, Dr. Rutherford, he wassent into the country for his health. As hislameness continued, he was, at the age of four, removedto Bath, going to London by sea. Bath was thena noted resort, and its waters were supposed to cureeverything. Here little Walter remained a yearunder the care of his aunt, when he returned to Edinburgh,to his father’s house in George Square, whichwas his residence until his marriage, with occasionalvisits to the county seat of his maternal grandfather.He completely regained his health, although he wasalways lame.
From the autobiography which Scott began but did notcomplete, it would appear that his lameness and solitaryhabits were favorable to reading; that even as a childhe was greatly excited by tales and poems of adventure;and that as a youth he devoured everything he couldfind pertaining to early Scottish poetry and romance,of which he was passionately fond. He was alsopeculiarly susceptible to the beauties of Scottishscenery, being thus led to enjoy the country and itssports at a much earlier age than is common with boys,—whichlove was never lost, but grew with his advancing years.Among his fellows he was a hearty player, a forwardfighter in boyish “bickers,” and a tellerof tales that delighted his comrades. He wassweet-tempered, merry, generous, and well-beloved,yet peremptory and pertinacious in pursuit of hisown ideas.
In 1779, Walter was sent to the High School in Edinburgh;but his progress here was by no means remarkable,although he laid a good foundation for the acquisitionof the Latin language. He also had a tutor athome, and from him learned the rudiments of French.With a head all on fire for chivalry and Scottishballads, he admired the old Tory cavaliers and hatedthe Roundheads and Presbyterians. In three yearshe had become fairly familiar with Caesar, Livy, Sallust,Virgil, Horace, and Terence. He also distinguishedhimself by making Latin verses. From the HighSchool he entered the University of Edinburgh, verywell grounded in French and Latin. For Greekand mathematics he had an aversion, but made up forthis deficiency by considerable acquisitions in Englishliterature. He was delighted with both Ossianand Spenser, and could repeat the “Faerie Queene”by heart. His memory, like that of Macaulay,was remarkable. What delighted him more than Spenserwere Hoole’s translations of Tasso and Ariosto(later he learned Italian, and read these in the original),and Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient Poetry.”At college he also read the best novels of the day,especially the works of Richardson, Fielding, andSmollett. He made respectable progress in philosophyunder the teaching of the celebrated Dugald Stewartand Professor Bruce, and in history under Lord Woodhouselee.On the whole, he was not a remarkable boy, exceptfor his notable memory (which, however, kept onlywhat pleased him), and his very decided bent towardthe poetic and chivalric in history, life, and literature.
Walter was trained by his father to the law, and onleaving college he served the ordinary apprenticeshipof five years in his father’s office and attendanceupon the law classes in the University; but the drudgeryof the law was irksome to him. When the time cameto select his profession, as a Writer to the Signetor an advocate, he preferred the latter; althoughsuccess here was more uncertain than as a solicitor.Up to the time of his admission to the bar he hadread an enormous number of books, in a desultory way,and made many friends, some of whom afterwards becamedistinguished. His greatest pleasures were inlong walks in the country with chosen companions.His love of Nature amounted to a passion, and in hislong rambles he acquired not only vigorous health,but the capacity of undergoing great fatigue.
Scott’s autobiography closes with his admissionto the bar. From his own account his early careerhad not been particularly promising, although he wasneither idle nor immoral. He was fond of convivialpleasures, but ever had uncommon self-control.All his instructors were gentlemanly, and he had accessto the best society in Edinburgh, when that city wasnoted for its number of distinguished men in literatureand in the different professions. His most intimatefriends were John Irving, Sir Archibald Campbell,the Earl of Dalhousie, and Adam Ferguson, with whom
he made excursions to the Highlands, and to ruinedcastles and abbeys of historic interest,—followingwith tireless search the new trail of an old Borderballad, or taking a thirty-mile walk to clear up somelocal legend of battle, foray, or historic event.In all these antiquarian raids the young fellows mingledfreely with the people, and tramped the counties roundabout in most hilarious mood, by no means escapingthe habits of the day in tavern sprees and drinking-bouts,—althoughScott’s companions testify to his temperateindulgence.The young lawyer was, indeed, unwittingly preparingfor his mission to paint Scottish scenery so vividly,and Scottish character so charmingly, that he mayalmost be said to have created a new country whichsucceeding generations delight to visit. No manwas ever a greater benefactor to Scotland, whose gloriesand beauties he was the first to reveal, showing howthe most thrifty, practical, and parsimonious peoplemay be at the same time the most poetic. HereBurns and he go hand in hand, although as a poet Scottdeclared that he was not to be named in the same daywith the most unfortunate man of genius that his countryand his century produced. How singular that inall worldly matters the greater genius should havebeen a failure, while he, who as a born poet was thelesser light, should have been the greatest popularsuccess of which Scotland can boast! And yetthere is something almost as pathetic and tragicalin the career of the man who worked himself to death,as in that of the man who drank himself to death.The most supremely fortunate writer of his day cameto a mournful end, notwithstanding his unparalleledhonors and his magnificent rewards.
At the time Scott was admitted to the bar he was not,of course, aware of his great original creative powers,nor could he have had very sanguine expectations ofa brilliant career. The profession he had chosenwas not congenial with his habits or his genius, andhence as a lawyer he was not a success. And yethe was not a failure, for he had the respect of someof the finest minds in Edinburgh, and at once gainedas an advocate enough to support himself respectablyamong aristocratic people,—aided no doubtby his father who, as a prosperous Writer to the Signet,threw business into his hands. Amid his practiceat the courts he found time to visit some of the mostinteresting spots in Scotland, and he had money enoughto gratify his tastes. He was a thriving ratherthan a prosperous lawyer; that is to say, he earnedhis living.
But Scott was too much absorbed in literary studiesand in writing ballads, to give to his numerous friendsthe hope of a distinguished legal career. Noman can serve two masters. “His heart”was “in the Highlands a-chasing the deer,”or ransacking distant villages for antiquarian lore,or collecting ancient Scottish minstrelsy, or visitingmoss-covered and ivy-clad ruins, famous before John
Knox swept monasteries and nunneries away as cagesof unclean birds; but most of all was he interestedin the feuds between the Lowland and Highland chieftains,and in the contest between Roundheads and Cavalierswhen Scotland lost her political independence.He did, however, find much in Scotch law to enrichhis mind, with entanglements and antiquarian records,as well as the humors and tragedies of the courts;and of this his writings show many traces.No young lawyer ever had more efficient friends thanWalter Scott. And richly he deserved them, forhe was generous, companionable, loyal, a brilliantstory-teller, a good hunter and sportsman, bright,cheerful, and witty, doubtless one of the most interestingyoung men in his beautiful city; modest, too, andunpretentious, yet proud, claiming nothing that nothingmight be denied him, a favorite in the most selectcircles. His most striking peculiarity was hisgood sense, keeping him from all exaggerations, whichwere always offensive to him. He was a Tory,indeed; but no aristocrat ever had a more genial humanity,taking pleasure in any society where he could learnanything. His appetite was so healthy, from hisrural sports and pedestrian feats, that he could dineequally well on a broiled haddock or a saddle of venison,although from the minuteness of his descriptions ofScottish banquets one might infer that he had greatappreciation of the pleasures of the table.
It is not easy to tell when Scott began to write poetry,but probably when he was quite young. He wrotefor the pleasure of it, without any idea of devotinghis life to literature. Writing ballads was thesolace of his leisure hours. His acquaintancewith Francis, Lord Jeffrey began in 1791, at a club,where he read an essay on ballads which so much interestedthe future critic that he sought an introduction toits author, and the acquaintance thus begun betweenthese two young men, both of whom unconsciously stoodon the threshold of great careers, ripened into friendship.This happened before Scott was called to the bar in1792. It was two years afterwards that he produceda poem which took by surprise a literary friend, MissCranstoun, and caused her to exclaim, “Uponmy word, Walter Scott is going to turn out a poet,something of a cross between Burns and Gray!”
In 1795 Scott was appointed one of the Curators ofthe Advocates’ Library,—a complimentbestowed only on those members of the bar known tohave a zeal in literary affairs; but I do not readthat he published anything until 1796, when appearedhis translation from the German of Buerger’sballads, “The Wild Huntsman” and “Lenore.”This called out high commendation from Dugald Stewart,the famous professor of moral philosophy in the Universityof Edinburgh, and from other men of note, but obtainedno recognition in England.
It was during one of his rambles with his friend Fergusonto the English Lakes in 1797 that Scott met Miss CharlotteMargaret Carpenter, or Charpentier, a young Frenchlady of notable beauty and lovely character.She had an income of about L200 a year, which, addedto his earnings as an advocate, then about L150, encouragedhim to offer to her his hand. For a young couplejust starting in life L350 was an independence.The engagement met with no opposition from the lady’sfamily; and in December of 1797 Scott was married,and took a modest house in Castle Street, being thentwenty-six years of age. The marriage turned outto be a happy one, although convenance hadsomething to do with it.
Of course, so healthy and romantic a nature as Scott’shad not passed through the susceptible time of youthwithout a love affair. From so small a circ*mstanceas the lending of his umbrella to a young lady (Margaret,the beautiful daughter of Sir John Belches) he enjoyedfive years of affection and of what seems to havebeen a reasonable hope, which, however, was finallyended by the young lady’s marrying Mr. WilliamForbes, a well-to-do banker, and later one of Scott’sbest friends. “Three years of dreamingand two years of waking,” Scott calls it inone of his diaries, thirty years later; and his ownmarriage followed within a year after that of hislost love.
With an income sufficient only for the necessitiesof life, as a married man in society Scott had notmuch to spare for expensive dinners, although givento hospitality. What money he could save was spentfor books and travel. At twenty-six, he had visitedwhat was most interesting in Scotland, either in sceneryor historical associations, and some parts of England,especially the Cumberland Lakes. He took a cottageat Lasswade, near Edinburgh, and began there the fascinatingpursuit of tree-planting and “place"-making.His vacations when the Courts were not in sessionwere spent in excursions to mountain scenery and thoseretired villages where he could pick up antiquarianlore, particularly old Border ballads, heroic traditionsof the times of chivalry, and of the conflicts ofScottish chieftains. Concerning these no manin Scotland knew so much as he, his knowledge furnishingthe foundation alike of his lays and his romances.His enthusiasm for these scenic and historic interestswas unquenchable,—a source of perpetualenjoyment, which made him a most acceptable visitorwherever he chose to go, both among antiquaries andliterary men, and ladies of rank and fashion.
In March, 1799, Mr. and Mrs. Scott visited London,where they were introduced to many distinguished literarymen. On their return to Edinburgh, the officeof sheriff depute of Selkirkshire having become vacant,worth L300 a year, Scott received the appointment,which increased his income to about L700. Althoughhis labors were light, the office entailed the necessityof living in that county a few months in each year.It was a pastoral, quiet, peaceful part of the country,belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch, his friend andpatron. His published translation in this yearof Goethe’s “Goetz of Berlichingen”added to his growing reputation, and led him on towardshis career.
With a secure and settled income, Scott now meditateda literary life. A hundred years ago such a lifewas impossible without independent means, if a manwould mingle in society and live conventionally, andwhat was called respectably. Even Burns had toaccept a public office, although it was a humble one,and far from lucrative; but it gave him what poetrycould not,—his daily bread. Hogg, peasant-poetof the Ettrick forest, was supported in all his earlieryears by tending sheep and borrowing money from hisfriends.
The first genuine literary adventure of Scott washis collection of a “Scottish Minstrelsy,”printed for him by James Ballantyne, a former schoolfellow,who had been encouraged by Scott to open a shop inEdinburgh. The preparation of this labor of loveoccupied the editor a year, assisted by John Leyden,a man of great promise, who died in India in 1811,having made a mark as an Orientalist. About thistime began Scott’s memorable friendship withGeorge Ellis, the most discriminating and useful ofall his literary friends. In the same year hemade the acquaintance of Thomas Campbell, the poet,who had already achieved fame by his “Pleasuresof Hope.”
It was in 1802 that the first and second volumes ofthe “Minstrelsy” appeared, in an editionof eight hundred copies, Scott’s share of theprofits amounting to L78 10 s., which did notpay him for the actual expenditure in the collectionof his materials. The historical notes with whichhe elucidated the value of the ancient ballads, andthe freshness and vigor of those which he himselfwrote for the collection, secured warm commendationsfrom Ellis, Ritson, and other friends, and the wholeedition was sold; yet the work did not bring him widefame. The third and last volume was issued in1803.
The work is full of Scott’s best characteristics,—widehistorical knowledge, wonderful industry, humor, pathos,and a sympathetic understanding of life—thatof the peasant as well as the knight—suchas seizes the imagination. Lockhart quotes a passageof Scott’s own self-criticism: “Iam sensible that if there be anything good about mypoetry, or prose either, it is a hurried franknessof composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors,and young people of bold and active dispositions.”His ability to “toil terribly” in accumulatingchoice material, and then, fusing it in his own spirit,to throw it forth among men with this “hurriedfrankness” that stirs the blood, was the secretof his power.
Scott did not become famous, however, until his firstoriginal poem appeared,—“The Layof the Last Minstrel,” printed by Ballantynein 1805, and published by Longman of London, and Constableof Edinburgh. It was a great success; nearlyfifty thousand copies were sold in Great Britain aloneby 1830. For the first edition of seven hundredand fifty copies quarto, Scott received L169 6 s.,and then sold the copyright for L500.
In the meantime, a rich uncle died without children,and Scott’s share of the property enabled him,in 1804, to rent from his cousin, Major-General SirJames Russell, the pretty property called Ashestiel,—acottage and farm on the banks of the Tweed, altogethera beautiful place, where he lived when discharginghis duties of sheriff of Selkirkshire. He hascelebrated the charms of Ashestiel in the canto introductionto “Marmion.” His income at this timeamounted to about L1000 a year, which gave him a positionamong the squires of the neighborhood, complete independence,and leisure to cultivate his taste. His fortunewas now made: with poetic fame besides, and powerfulfriends, he was a man every way to be envied.
“The Lay of the Last Minstrel” placedScott among the three great poets of Scotland, fororiginality and beauty of rhyme. It is not markedby pathos or by philosophical reflections. Itis a purely descriptive poem of great vivacity andvividness, easy to read, and true to nature. Itis a tale of chivalry, and is to poetry what Froissart’s“Chronicles” are to history. Nothingexactly like it had before appeared in English literature.It appealed to all people of romantic tastes, and wasreproachless from a moral point of view. It wasa book for a lady’s bower, full of chivalricsentiments and stirring incidents, and of unflagginginterest from beginning to end,—partly warlikeand partly monastic, describing the adventures ofknights and monks. It deals with wizards, harpers,dwarfs, priests, warriors, and noble dames. Itsings of love and wassailings, of gentle ladies’tears, of castles and festal halls, of pennons andlances,—
“Of ancient deeds,so long forgot,
Of feuds whosememory was not,
Of forests nowlaid waste and bare,
Of towers whichharbor now the hare.”
In “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” thereis at least one immortal stanza which would redeemthe poem even if otherwise mediocre. How few poetscan claim as much as this! Very few poems liveexcept for some splendid passages which cannot beforgotten, and which give fame. I know of nothing,even in Burns, finer than the following lines:—
“Breathes therethe man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himselfhath said,
Thisis my own, my native land!
Whose heart hathne’er within him burned,
As home his footstepshe hath turned
Fromwandering on a foreign strand?
If such therebreathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrelraptures swell;
High though histitles, proud his name,
Boundless hiswealth as wish can claim,—
Despite thosetitles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentredall in self,
Living shall forfeitfair renown,
And, doubly dying,shall go down
To the vile dustfrom whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored,and unsung.”
The favor with which “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”was received, greater than that of any narrative poemof equal length which had appeared for two generations,even since Dryden’s day, naturally brought greatcommendation from Jeffrey, the keenest critic of theage, in the famous magazine of which he was the editor.The Edinburgh Review had been started only in 1802by three young men of genius,—Jeffrey,Brougham, and Sydney Smith,—and had alreadyattained great popularity, but not such marvellousinfluence as it wielded ten years afterwards, whennine thousand copies were published every three months,and at such a price as gave to its contributors asplendid remuneration, and to its editors absolutecritical independence. The only objection to thispowerful periodical was the severity of its criticisms,which often also were unjust. It seemed to bethe intent of the reviewers to demolish everythingthat was not of extraordinary merit. Fierce attacksare not criticism. The articles in the EdinburghReview were of a different sort from the polishedand candid literary dissections which made Ste.-Beuveso justly celebrated. In the beginning of thecentury, however, these savage attacks were all thefashion and to be expected; yet they stung authorsalmost to madness, as in the case of the review ofByron’s early poetry. Literary courtesydid not exist. Justice gave place generally toridicule or sarcasm. The Edinburgh Review wasa terror to all pretenders, and often to men of realmerit. But it was published when most judgeswere cruel and severe, even in the halls of justice.
The friendship between Scott and Jeffrey had beenvery close for ten years before the inception of theEdinburgh Review; and although Scott was (perhapsgrowing out of his love for antiquarian researchesand admiration of the things that had been) an inveterateconservative and Tory, while the new Review was slashinglyliberal and progressive, he was drawn in by friendshipand literary interest to be a frequent contributorduring its first three or four years. The politicsof the Edinburgh Review, however, and the establishmentin 1808 of the conservative Quarterly Review, causeda gradual cessation of this literary connection, withoutmarring the friendly relations between the two men.
About this time began Scott’s friendship withWordsworth, for whom he had great respect. Indeed,his modesty led him to prefer everybody’s goodpoetry to his own. He felt himself inferior notonly to Burns, but also to Wordsworth and Campbelland Coleridge and Byron,—as in many respectshe undoubtedly was; but it requires in an author discernmentand humility of a rare kind, to make him capable ofsuch a discrimination.
More important to him than any literary friendshipwas his partnership with James Ballantyne, the printer,whom he had known from his youth. This in theend proved unfortunate, and nearly ruined him; forBallantyne, though an accomplished man and a fine printer,as well as enterprising and sensible, was not a safebusiness man, being over-sanguine. For a time,however, this partnership, which was kept secret,was an advantage to both parties, although Scott embarkedin the enterprise his whole available capital, aboutL5000. In connection with the publishing business,soon added to the printing, with James Ballantyne’sbrother John as figure-head of the concern,—atalented but dissipated and reckless “good fellow,”with no more head for business than either James Ballantyneor Scott,—the association bound Scott handand foot for twenty years, and prompted him to adventurousundertakings. But it must be said that the Ballantynesalways deferred to him, having for him a sentimentlittle short of veneration. One of the first resultsof this partnership was an eighteen-volume editionof Dryden’s poems, with a Life, which must havebeen to Scott little more than drudgery. He waswell paid for his work, although it added but littleto his fame, except for intelligent literary industry.
Before the Dryden, however, in the same year, 1808,appeared the poem of “Marmion: A Tale ofFlodden Field,” which was received by the publicwith great avidity, and unbounded delight. Jeffreywrote a chilling review, for which Scott with difficultyforgave him, since with all his humility and amiabilityhe could not bear unfriendly or severe criticism.
In a letter to Joanna Baillie, Scott makes some verysensible remarks as to the incapability of such aman as Jeffrey appreciating a work of the imagination,distinguished as he was:—
“I really have often told him that I think hewants the taste for poetry which is essentially necessaryto enjoy, and of course to criticize with justice.He is learned with the most learned in its canonsand laws, skilled in its modulations, and an excellentjudge of the justice of the sentiments which it conveys;but he wants that enthusiastic feeling which, likesunshine upon a landscape, lights up every beauty,and palliates if it cannot hide every defect.To offer a poem of imagination to a man whose wholelife and study have been to acquire a stoical indifferencetowards enthusiasm of every kind, would be the last,as it would surely be the silliest, action of my life.”
As stated above, it was about this time that Scottbroke off his connection with the Edinburgh Review.Perhaps that was what Jeffrey wished, since the Reviewbecame thenceforth more intensely partisan, and Scott’sToryism was not what was wanted.
It is fair to add that in 1810 Jeffrey sent Scottadvance proofs of his critique on “The Ladyof the Lake,” with a frank and friendly letterin which he says:—
“I am now sensible that there were needlessasperities in my review of ‘Marmion,’and from the hurry in which I have been forced to write,I dare say there may be some here also.... Iam sincerely proud both of your genius and of yourglory, and I value your friendship more highly thanmost either of my literary or political opinions.”
Southey, Ellis, and Wordsworth, Erskine, Heber, andother friends wrote congratulatory letters about “Marmion,”with slight allusions to minor blemishes. Lockhartthought that it was on the whole the greatest of Scott’spoems, in strength and boldness. Most criticsregarded the long introduction to each canto as adefect, since it broke the continuity of the narrative;but it may at least be said that these preludes givean interesting insight into the author’s moodsand views. The opinions of literary men of coursediffer as to the relative excellence of the differentpoems. “Marmion” certainly had greatmerit, and added to the fame of the author. Thereis here more variety of metre than in his other poems,and also some passages of such beauty as to make thepoem immortal,—like the death of Marmion,and those familiar lines in reference to Clara’sconstancy:—
“O woman! in ourhours of ease,
Uncertain, coy,and hard to please,
And variable asthe shade
By the light,quivering aspen made,—
When pain andanguish wring the brow,
A ministeringangel thou.”
The sale of “Marmion” ultimately reachedfifty thousand copies in Great Britain. The poemwas originally published in a luxurious quarto atthirty-one and a-half shillings. Besides one thousandguineas in advance, half the profits went to Scott,and must have reached several thousand pounds,—agreat sale, when we remember that it was confined tolibraries and people of wealth. In America, thepoem was sold for two or three shillings,—lessthan one-tenth of what it cost the English reader.A successful poem or novel in England is more remunerativeto the author, from the high price at which it ispublished, than in the United States, where pricesare lower and royalties rarely exceed ten per cent.It must be borne in mind, however, that in Englandeditions are ordinarily very small, sometimes consistingof not more than two hundred and fifty copies.The first edition of “Marmion” was onlyof two thousand copies. The largest edition publishedwas in 1811, of five thousand copies octavo; but eventhis did not circulate largely among the people.The popularity of Scott in England was confined chieflyto the upper classes, at least until the copyrightof his books had expired. The booksellers werenot slow in availing themselves of Scott’s popularity.They employed him to edit an edition of Swift for L1500,and tried to induce him to edit a general editionof English poets. That scheme was abandoned inconsequence of a disagreement between Scott and Murray,the London publisher, as to the selection of poets.
I think the quarrels of authors eighty or one hundredyears ago with their publishers were more frequentthan they are in these times. We read of a longalienation between Scott and Constable, the publisher,who enjoyed a sort of monopoly of the poet’scontributions to literature. Constable soon afterfound a great rival in Murray, who was at this timean obscure London bookseller in Fleet Street.Both these great publishers were remarkable for sagacity,and were bold in their ventures. The foundationof Constable’s wealth was laid when he was publishingthe Edinburgh Review. In 1809, Murray startedthe Quarterly Review, its great political rival, withthe aid of Scott, who wrote many of its most valuablearticles; and William Gilford, satirist and critic,became its first editor. Growing out of the quarrelbetween Scott and Constable was the establishmentof John Ballantyne & Co. as publishers and booksellersin Edinburgh.
Shortly after the establishment of the Quarterly Reviewas a Tory journal, Scott began his third great poem,“The Lady of the Lake,” which was publishedin 1810, in all the majesty of a quarto, at the priceof two guineas a copy. He received for it twothousand guineas. The first edition of two thousandcopies disappeared at once, and was followed the sameyear by four octavo editions. In a few monthsthe sale reached twenty thousand copies. Thepoem received great commendation both from the Quarterlyand the Edinburgh Review.
Mr. Ellis, in his article in the Quarterly, thus wrote:
“There is nothing in Scott of the severe majestyof Milton, or of the terse composition of Pope, orthe elaborate elegance of Campbell, or the flowingand redundant diction of Southey; but there is a medleyof bright images, and a diction tinged successivelywith the careless richness of Shakespeare, the antiquesimplicity of the old romances, the homeliness ofvulgar ballads, and the sentimental glitter of themost modern poetry,—passing from the bordersof the ludicrous to the sublime, alternately minuteand energetic, sometimes artificial, and frequentlynegligent, but always full of spirit and vivacity,abounding in images that are striking at first sightto minds of every contexture, and never expressinga sentiment which it can cost the most ordinary readerany exertion to comprehend.”
This seems to me to be a fair criticism, althoughthe lucidity of Scott’s poetry is not that whichis most admired by modern critics. Fashion inthese times delights in what is obscure and difficultto be understood, as if depth and profundity mustnecessarily be unintelligible to ordinary readers.In Scott’s time, however, the fashion was different,and the popularity of his poems became almost universal.However, there are the same fire, vivacity, and brilliantcoloring in all three of these masterpieces, as theywere regarded two generations ago, reminding one ofthe witchery of Ariosto; yet there is no great variety
in these poems such as we find in Byron, no great forceof passion or depth of sentiment, but a sort of harmoniousrhythm,—more highly prized in the earlierpart of the century than in the latter, since Wordsworthand Tennyson have made us familiar with what is deeperand richer, as well as more artistic, in language andversification. But no one has denied Scott’soriginality and high merits, in contrast with thepompous tameness and conventionality of the poetrywhich arose when Johnson was the oracle of literarycircles, and which still held the stage in Scott’sday.Even Scott’s admirers, however, like Canningand Ellis, did not hesitate to say that they wouldlike something different from anything he had alreadywritten. But this was not to be; and perhaps thereason why he soon after gave up writing poetry wasthe conviction that his genius as a poet did not liein variety and richness, either of style or matter.His great fame was earned by his novels.
One thing greatly surprises me: Scott regardedJoanna Baillie as the greatest poetical genius ofthat day, and be derived more pleasure from readingJohnson’s “London” and “TheVanity of Human Wishes” than from any otherpoetical composition. Indeed, there is nothingmore remarkable in literary history than Scott’sadmiration of poetry inferior to his own, and hisextraordinary modesty in the estimate of his own productions.Most poets are known for their morbid vanity, theirself-consciousness, their feeling of superiority, andtheir depreciation of superior excellence; but Scotthad eminently a healthy mind, as he had a healthybody, and shrank from exaggeration as he did fromvulgarity in all its forms. It is probable thathis own estimate of his poetry was nearer the truththan that of his admirers, who were naturally inclinedto be partial.
There has been so much poetry written since “TheLady of the Lake” was published,—notonly by celebrated poets like Wordsworth, Southey,Moore, Byron, Campbell, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning,Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Bryant, but also bymany minor authors,—that the standard isnow much higher than it was in the early part of thecentury. Much of that which then was regardedas very fine is now smiled at by the critics, andneglected by cultivated readers generally; and Scotthas not escaped unfavorable criticism.
It has been my object to present the subject of thisLecture historically rather than critically,—toshow the extraordinary popularity of Scott as a poetamong his contemporaries, rather than to estimatehis merit at the present time. I confess thatmost of “Marmion,” as also of the “Ladyof the Lake,” is tame to me, and deficient inhigh poetic genius. Doubtless we are all influencedby the standards of our own time, and the advancesmaking in literature as well as in science and art.Yet this change in the opinions of critics does notapply to Byron’s “Childe Harold,”
which is as much, if not as widely, admired now aswhen it was first published. We think as highlytoo of “The Deserted Village,” the “Elegyin a Country Churchyard,” and the “Cotter’sSaturday Night,” as our fathers did. Andmen now think much more highly of the merits of Shakspearethan they have at any period since he lived; so thatafter all there is an element in true poetry whichdoes not lose by time. In another hundred years,the verdicts of critics as to the greater part ofthe poems of Tennyson, Wordsworth, Browning, and Longfellow,may be very different from what they now are, whilesome of their lyrics may be, as they are now, pronouncedimmortal.Poetry is both an inspiration and an art. Thegreater part of that which is now produced is made,not born. Those daintily musical and elaboratemeasures which are now the fashion, because they claimnovelty, or reproduce the quaintness of an art soold as to be practically new, perhaps will soon againbe forgotten or derided. What is simple, natural,appealing to the heart rather than to the head, maylast when more pretentious poetry shall have passedaway. Neither criticism nor contemporary popularitycan decide such questions.
Scott himself seemed to take a true view. Ina letter to Miss Seward, he said:—
“The immortality of poetry is not so firm apoint in my creed as the immortality of the soul.”
’I’velived too long,
And seen the death ofmuch immortal song.’
“Nay, those that have really attained theirliterary immortality have gained it under very hardconditions. To some it has not attached tillafter death. To others it has been the means oflauding personal vices and follies which had otherwisebeen unremembered in their epitaphs; and all enjoythe same immortality under a condition similar to thatof Noureddin in an Eastern tale. Noureddin, youremember, was to enjoy the gift of immortality, butwith this qualification,—that he was subjectedto long naps of forty, fifty, or a hundred years ata time. Even so Homer and Virgil slumbered throughwhole centuries. Shakspeare himself enjoyed undisturbedsleep from the age of Charles I., until Garrick wakedhim. Dryden’s fame has nodded; that of Popebegins to be drowsy; Chaucer is as sound as a top,and Spenser is snoring in the midst of his commentators.Milton, indeed, is quite awake; but, observe, he wasat his very outset refreshed with a nap of half-a-century;and in the midst of all this we sons of degeneracytalk of immortality! Let me please my own generation,and let those who come after us judge of their factsand my performances as they please; the anticipationof their neglect or censure will affect me very little.”
In 1812 the poet-lawyer was rewarded with the salaryof a place whose duties he had for some years performedwithout pay,—that of Clerk of Sessions,worth L800 per annum. Thus having now about L1500as an income, independently of his earnings by thepen, Scott gave up his practice as an advocate, anddevoted himself entirely to literature. At thesame time he bought a farm of somewhat more than ahundred acres on the banks of the beautiful Tweed,about five miles from Ashestiel, and leaving to itsowners the pretty place in which he had for six yearsenjoyed life and work, he removed to the cottage atAbbotsford,—for thus he named his new purchase,in memory of the abbots of Melrose, who formerly ownedall the region, and the ruins of whose lovely abbeystood not far away. Of the L4000 for this purchasehalf was borrowed from his brother, and the otherhalf on the pledge of the profits of a poem that wasprojected but not written,—“Rokeby.”
Scott ought to have been content with Ashestiel; or,since every man wishes to own his home, he shouldhave been satisfied with the comfortable cottage whichhe built at Abbotsford, and the modest improvementsthat his love for trees and shrubs enabled him to make.But his aspirations led him into serious difficulties.With all his sagacity and good sense, Scott neverseemed to know when he was well off. It was afatal mistake both for his fame and happiness to attemptto compete with those who are called great in Englandand Scotland,—that is, peers and vast landedproprietors. He was not alone in this error,for it has generally been the ambition of fortunateauthors to acquire social as well as literary distinction,—thuspaying tribute to riches, and virtually abdicatingtheir own true position, which is higher than anythat rank or wealth can give. It has too frequentlybeen the misfortune of literary genius to bow downto vulgar idols; and the worldly sentiments whichthis idolatry involves are seen in almost every fashionablenovel which has appeared for a hundred years.In no country is this melancholy social slavery moreusual than in England, with all its political freedom,although there are noble exceptions. The onlygreat flaw in Scott’s character was this homageto rank and wealth.
On the other hand, rank and wealth also paid homageto him as a man of genius; both Scotland and Englandreceived him into the most select circles, not onlyof their literary and political, but of their fashionable,life.
In 1811 Scott published “The Lord of the Isles,”and in 1813, “Rokeby,” neither of whichwas remarkable for either literary or commercial success,although both were well received. In 1814 he editeda nineteen-volume edition of Dean Swift’s works,with a Life, and in the same year began—almostby accident—the real work of his own career,in “Waverley.”
If public opinion is far different to-day from whatit was in Scott’s time in reference to his poetry,we observe the same change in regard to the sourceof his widest fame, his novels,—but notto so marked a degree, for it was in fiction thatScott’s great gifts had their full fruition.Many a fine intellect still delights in his novels,though cultivated readers and critics differ as totheir comparative merits. No two persons willunite in their opinions as to the three of those productionswhich they like most or least. It is so with allfamous novels. Then, too, what man of seventywill agree with a man of thirty as to the comparativemerits of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, GeorgeEliot, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand?How few read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”compared with the multitudes who read that most powerfuland popular book forty years ago? How changing,if not transient, is the fame of the novelist as wellas of the poet! With reference to him even thesame generation changes its tastes. What filledus with delight as young men or women of twenty, isat fifty spurned with contempt or thrown aside withindifference. No books ever filled my mind andsoul with the delight I had when, at twelve years ofa*ge, I read “The Children of the Abbey”and “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” What man ofeighty can forget the enthusiasm with which he read“Old Mortality” or “Ivanhoe”when he was in college?
Perhaps one test of a great book is the pleasure derivedfrom reading it over and over again,—aswe read “Don Quixote,” or the dramas ofShakspeare, of whose infinite variety we never tire.Measured by this test, the novels of Sir Walter Scottare among the foremost works of fiction which haveappeared in our world. They will not all retaintheir popularity from generation to generation, like“Don Quixote” or “The Pilgrim’sProgress” or “The Vicar of Wakefield;”but these are single productions of their authors,while not a few of Scott’s many novels are certainlystill read by cultivated people,—if notwith the same interest they excited when first published,yet with profit and admiration. They have someexcellencies which are immortal,—elevationof sentiment, chivalrous regard for women, fascinationof narrative (after one has waded through the learnedhistorical introductory chapters), the absence ofexaggeration, the vast variety of characters introducedand vividly maintained, and above all the freshnessand originality of description, both of Nature andof man. Among the severest and most bigoted ofNew England Puritans, none could find anything corruptingor demoralizing in his romances; whereas Byron andBulwer were never mentioned without a shudder, andeven Shakspeare was locked up in book-cases as unfitfor young people to read, and not particularly creditablefor anybody to own. The unfavorable commentswhich the most orthodox ever made upon Scott were asto the repulsiveness of the old Covenanters, as hedescribed them, and his sneers at Puritan perfections.Scott, however, had contempt, not for the Puritans,but for many of their peculiarities,—especiallyfor their cant when it degenerated into hypocrisy.
One thing is certain, that no works of fiction havehad such universal popularity both in England andAmerica for so long a period as the Waverley Novels.Scott reigned as the undisputed monarch of the realmof fiction and romance for twenty-five years.He gave undiminished entertainment to an entire generation—andnot that merely, but instruction—in hishistorical novels, although his views were not alwayscorrect,—as whose ever are? He whocould charm millions of readers, learned and unlearned,for a quarter of a century must have possessed remarkablegenius. Indeed, he was not only the central figurein English literature for a generation, but he wasregarded as peculiarly original. Another styleof novels may obtain more passing favor with modernreaders, but Scott was justly famous; his works areto-day in every library, and form a delightful partof the education of every youth and maiden who caresto read at all; and he will as a novelist probablylive after some who are now prime favorites will beutterly forgotten or ignored.
About 1830 Bulwer was in his early successes; about1840 Dickens was the rage of his day; about 1850 Thackerayhad taken his high grade; and it was about 1860 thatGeorge Eliot’s power appeared. These stillretain their own peculiar lines of popularity,—Bulwerwith the romantic few, Thackeray with the appreciativeintelligent, George Eliot with a still wider clientage,and Dickens with everybody, on account of his appealto the universal sentiments of comedy and pathos.Scott’s influence, somewhat checked during thegrowth of these reputations and the succession offertile and accomplished writers on both sides of theAtlantic,—including the introspective analystsof the past fifteen years,—has within adecade been rising again, and has lately burst forthin a new group of historical romancers who seem tohave “harked back” from the subjectivefad of our day to Scott’s healthy, adventurousobjectivity. Not only so, but new editions ofthe Waverley Novels are coming one by one from theshrewd publishers who keep track of the popular taste,one of the most attractive being issued in Edinburghat half-a-crown a volume.
The first of Scott’s remarkable series of novels,“Waverley,” published in 1814 when theauthor was forty-three years of age and at the heightof his fame as a poet, took the fashionable and literaryworld by storm. The novel had been partly writtenfor several years, but was laid aside, as his editionof Swift and his essays for the supplement of the“Encyclopaedia Britannica,” and other prosewritings, employed all the time he had to spare.
This hack-work was done by Scott without enthusiasm,to earn money for his investment in real estate, andis not of transcendent merit. Obscurer men thanhe had performed such literary drudgery with moreability, but no writer was ever more industrious.The amount of work which he accomplished at this periodwas prodigious, especially when we remember that hisduties as sheriff and clerk of Sessions occupied eightmonths of the year. He was more familiar withthe literary history of Queen Anne’s reign thanany subsequent historian, if we except Macaulay, whosebrilliant career had not yet begun. He took, ofcourse, a different view of Swift from the writersof the Edinburgh Review, and was probably too favorablein his description of the personal character of theDean of St. Patrick’s, who is now generally regardedas “inordinately ambitious, arrogant, and selfish;of a morose, vindictive, and haughty temper, utterlydestitute of generosity and magnanimity, as well asof tenderness, fidelity, and compassion.”Lord Jeffrey, in his Review, attacked Swift’smoral character with such consummate ability as tocheck materially the popularity of his writings, whichare universally admitted to be full of genius.His superb intellect and his morality present a sadcontrast,—as in the cases of Bacon, Burns,and Byron,—which Scott, on account of theforce of his Tory prejudices, did not sufficientlypoint out.
But as to the novel, when it suddenly appeared, itis not surprising that “Waverley” shouldat once have attained an unexampled popularity whenwe consider the mediocrity of all works of fictionat that time, if we except the Irish tales of MariaEdgeworth. Scott received from Constable L1000for this romance, then deemed a very liberal remunerationfor what cost him but a few months’ work.The second and third volumes were written in one month.He wrote with remarkable rapidity when his mind wasfull of the subject; and his previous studies as anantiquary and as a collector of Scottish poetry andlegends fitted him for his work, which was in no sensea task, but a most lively pleasure.
It is not known why Scott published this strikinglyoriginal work anonymously; perhaps it was becauseof his unusual modesty, and the fear that he mightlose the popularity he had already enjoyed as a poet.But it immediately placed him on a higher literaryelevation, since it was generally suspected that hewas the author. He could not altogether disguisehimself from the keen eyes of Jeffrey and other critics.
The book was received as a revelation. The firstvolume is not particularly interesting, but the storycontinually increases in interest to its close.It is not a dissection of the human heart; it is noteven much of a love-story, but a most vivid narrative,without startling situations or adventures. Itsgreat charm is its quiet humor,—not strainedinto witty expressions which provoke laughter, buta sort of amiable delineation of the character of aborn gentleman, with his weaknesses and prejudices,all leaning to virtue’s side. It is a descriptionof manners peculiar to the Scottish gentry in the middleof the eighteenth century, especially among the Jacobitefamilies then passing away.
Of course the popularity of this novel, at that time,was chiefly confined to the upper classes. Inthe first place the people could not afford to paythe price of the book; and, secondly, it was outsidetheir sympathies and knowledge. Indeed, I doubtif any commonplace person, without culture or extendedknowledge, can enjoy so refined a work, with so manylearned allusions, and such exquisite humor, whichappeals to a knowledge of the world in its higheraspects. It is one of the last books that anignorant young lady brought up on the trash of ordinaryfiction would relish or comprehend. Whoever turnsuninterested from “Waverley” is probablyunable to see its excellencies or enjoy its peculiarcharms. It is not a book for a modern school-boyor school-girl, but for a man or woman in the highestmaturity of mind, with a poetic or imaginative nature,and with a leaning perhaps to aristocratic sentiments.It is a rebuke to vulgarity and ignorance, which theminute and exaggerated descriptions of low life inthe pages of Dickens certainly are not.
In February, 1815, “Guy Mannering” waspublished, the second in the series of the WaverleyNovels, and was received by the intelligent readingclasses with even more eclat than “Waverley,”to which it is superior in many respects. Itplunges at once in medias res, without thelong and labored introductory chapters of its predecessor.It is interesting from first to last, and is an elaborateand well-told tale, written con amore, whenScott was in the maturity of his powers. It isfull of incident and is delightful in humor. Itschief excellence is in the loftiness of its sentiments,—beingone of the healthiest and wholesomest novels everwritten, appealing to the heart as well as to theintellect, to be read over and over again, like “TheVicar of Wakefield,” without weariness.It may be too aristocratic in its tone to please everybody,but it portrays the sentiments of its age in referenceto squires and Scottish lairds, who were more distinguishedfor uprightness and manly duties than for brains andculture.
The fascination with which Scott always depicts thevirtues of hospitality and trust in humanity makesa strong impression on the imagination. His heroesand heroines are not remarkable for genius, but shinein the higher glories of domestic affection and fidelityto trusts. Two characters in particular are originalcreations,—“Dominie Sampson”and “Meg Merrilies,” whom no reader canforget,—the one, ludicrous for his simplicity;and the other a gypsy woman, weird and strange, morelike a witch than a sibyl, but intensely human, andcapable of the strongest attachment for those she loved.
“The easy and transparent flow of the styleof this novel; its beautiful simplicity; the wildmagnificence of its sketches of scenery; the rapidand ever brightening interest of the narrative; theunaffected kindness of feeling; the manly purity ofthought, everywhere mingled with a gentle humor andhomely sagacity,—but, above all, the richvariety and skilful contrast of character and manners,at once fresh in fiction, and stamped with the unforgeableseal of truth and nature, spoke to every heart andmind; and the few murmurs of pedantic criticism werelost in the voice of general delight which never failsto welcome the invention that introduces to the sympathyof the imagination a new group of immortal realities.”
Scott received about L2000 for this favorite romance,—oneentirely new in the realm of fiction,—whichenabled him to pay off his most pressing debts, andindulge his taste for travel. He visited the Fieldof Waterloo, and became a social lion in both Parisand London. The Prince of Wales sent him a magnificentsnuff-box set with diamonds, and entertained him withadmiring cordiality at Carlton House,—forhis authorship of “Waverley” was morethan surmised, while his fame as a poet was secondonly to that of Byron. Then (in the spring of1815) took place the first meeting of these two greatbards, and their successive interviews were gracedwith mutual compliments. Scott did not think thatByron’s reading was extensive either in poetryor history, in which opinion the industrious Scottishbard was mistaken; but he did justice ta Byron’stranscendent genius, and with more charity than severitymourned over his departure from virtue. Aftera series of brilliant banquets at the houses of thegreat, both of rank and of fame, Scott returned tohis native land to renew his varied and exhaustinglabors, having furnished his publishers with a volumeof letters on the subjects which most interested himduring his short tour. Everything he touchednow brought him gold.
“Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,”as he called this volume concerning his tour, waswell received, but not with the enthusiasm which markedthe publication of “Guy Mannering;” indeed,it had no special claim to distinction. “TheAntiquary” followed in May of the next year,and though it lacked the romance of “Waverley”and the adventure of “Guy Mannering,”it had even a larger sale. Scott himself regardedit as superior to both; but an author is not alwaysthe best judge of his own productions, and we do notaccept his criticism. It probably cost him morelabor; but it is an exhibition of his erudition ratherthan a revelation of himself or of Nature. Itis certainly very learned; but learning does not makea book popular, nor is a work of fiction the placefor a display of learning. If “The Antiquary”were published in these times, it would be pronouncedpedantic. Readers are apt to skip names and learnedallusions and scraps of Latin. As a story I think
it inferior to “Guy Mannering,” althoughit has great merits,—“a kind of simple,unsought charm,”—and is a transcriptof actual Scottish life. It had a great success;Scott says in a letter to his friend Terry: “Itis at press again, six thousand having been sold insix days.” Before the novel was finished,the author had already projected his “Tales ofMy Landlord.”Scott was now at the flood-tide of his creative power,and his industry was as remarkable as his genius.There was but little doubt in the public mind as tothe paternity of the Waverley Novels, and whateverScott wrote was sure to have a large sale; so thatevery publisher of note was eager to have a hand inbringing his productions before the public. In1816 appeared the “Edinburgh Annual Register,”containing Scott’s sketch of the year 1814,which, though very good, showed that the author wasless happy in history than in fiction.
The first series of “Tales of My Landlord”was published by Murray, and not by Constable, whohad brought out Scott’s other works, and thebook was received with unbounded enthusiasm.Many critics place “Old Mortality” inthe highest niche of merit and fame. Frere ofthe Quarterly Review, Hallam, Boswell, Lamb, LordHolland, all agreed that it surpassed his other novels.Bishop Heber said, “There are only two men inthe world,—Walter Scott and Lord Byron.”Lockhart regarded “Old Mortality” as the“Marmion” of Scott’s novels; butthe painting of the Covenanters gave offence to themore rigid of the Presbyterians. For myself,I have doubt as to the correctness of their criticisms.“Old Mortality,” in contrast with theprevious novels of Scott, has a place similar to thelater productions of George Eliot as compared withher earlier ones. It is not so vivid a sketchof Scotch life as is given in “Guy Mannering.”Like “The Antiquary,” it is bookish ratherthan natural. From a literary point of view,it is more artistic than “Guy Mannering,”and more learned. “The canvas is a broaderone.” Its characters are portrayed withgreat skill and power, but they lack the freshnesswhich comes from actual contact with the people described,and with whom Scott was familiar as a youth in thecourse of his wanderings. It is more historicalthan realistic. In short, “Old Mortality”is another creation of its author’s brain ratherthan a painting of real life. But it is justlyfamous, for it was the precursor of those brillianthistorical romances from which so much is learned ofgreat men already known to students. It was anew departure in literature.
Before Scott arose, historical novels were comparativelyunknown. He made romance instructive, ratherthan merely amusing, and added the charm of life tothe dry annals of the past. Cervantes does notportray a single great character known in Spanishhistory in his “Don Quixote,” but he paintslife as he has seen it. So does Goldsmith.So does George Eliot in “Silas Marner.”She presents life, indeed, in “Romola,”—not,however, as she had personally observed it, but asdrawn from books, recreating the atmosphere of a longgone time by the power of imagination.
The earlier works of Scott are drawn from memory andpersonal feeling, rather than from the knowledge hehad gained by study. Of “Old Mortality”he writes to Lady Louisa Stuart: “I am completemaster of the whole history of these strange times,both of persecutors and persecuted; so I trust I havecome decently off.”
The divisional grouping of these earlier novels byScott himself is interesting. In the “Advertisem*nt”to “The Antiquary” he says: “Thepresent work completes a series of fictitious narratives,intended to illustrate the manners of Scotland atthree different periods. WAVERLEY embraced theage of our fathers [’’Tis Sixty Years Since’],GUY MANNERING that of our own youth, and THE ANTIQUARYrefers to the last ten years of the eighteenth century.”The dedication of “Tales of My Landlord”describes them as “tales illustrative of ancientScottish manners, and of the traditions of their [hiscountrymen’s] respective districts.”They were—First Series: “TheBlack Dwarf” and “Old Mortality;”Second Series: “The Heart of Mid-Lothian;”Third Series: “The Bride of Lammermoor”and “A Legend of Montrose;” Fourth Series:“Count Robert of Paris” and “CastleDangerous.” These all (except the fourthseries, in 1832) appeared in the six years from 1814to 1820, and besides these, “Rob Roy,”“Ivanhoe,” and “The Monastery.”
With the publication of “Old Mortality”in 1816, then, Scott introduced the first of his historicalnovels, which had great fascination for students.Who ever painted the old Cameronian with more felicity?Who ever described the peculiarities of the ScottishCalvinists during the reign of the last of the Stuartswith more truthfulness,—their severity,their strict and Judaical observance of the Sabbath,their hostility to popular amusem*nts, their rigidand legal morality, their love of theological dogmas,their inflexible prejudices, their lofty aspirations?Where shall we find in literature a sterner fanaticalPuritan than John Balfour of Burley, or a fiercer royalistthan Graham of Claverhouse? As a love-story thisnovel is not remarkable. It is not in the descriptionof passionate love that Scott anywhere excels.His heroines, with two or three exceptions, wouldbe called rather tame by the modern reader, althoughthey win respect for their domestic virtues and sterlingelements of character. His favorite heroes areeither Englishmen of good family, or Scotchmen educatedin England,—gallant, cultivated, and reproachless,but without any striking originality or intellectualforce.
“Rob Roy” was published in the latterpart of 1817, and was received by the public withthe same unabated enthusiasm which marked the appearanceof “Guy Mannering” and the other romances.An edition of ten thousand was disposed of in twoweeks, and the subsequent sale amounted to forty thousandmore. The scene of this story is laid in the Highlandsof Scotland, with an English hero and a Scottish heroine;
and in this fascinating work the political historyof the times (forty years earlier than the periodof “Waverley”) is portrayed with greatimpartiality. It is a description of the firstJacobite rising against George I. in the year 1715.In this novel one of the greatest of Scott’screations appears in the heroine, Diana Vernon,—ratherwild and masculine, but interesting from her courageand virtue. The character of Baillie Jarvie isequally original and more amusing.The general effect of “Rob Roy,” as wellas of “Waverley” and “Old Mortality,”was to make the Scottish Highlanders and Jacobitesinteresting to English readers of opposite views andfeelings, without arousing hostility to the reigningroyal family. The Highlanders a hundred yearsago were viewed by the English with sentiments nearlysimilar to those with which the Puritan settlers ofNew England looked upon the Indians,—atany rate, as freebooters, robbers, and murderers,who were dangerous to civilization; and the severitiesof the English government toward these lawless clans,both as outlaws and as foes of the Hanoverian succession,were generally condoned by public opinion. Scottsucceeded in producing a better feeling among boththe conquerors and the conquered. He modifiedgeneral sentiment by his impartial and liberal views,and allayed prejudices. The Highlanders thenceforthwere regarded as a body of men with many interestingtraits, and capable of becoming good subjects of theCrown; while their own hatred and contempt of theLowland Saxon were softened by the many generous andromantic incidents of these tales. Two hithertohostile races were drawn into neighborly sympathy.Travellers visited the beautiful Highland retreats,and returned with enthusiastic impressions of the country.To no other man does Scotland owe so great a debtof gratitude as to Walter Scott, not only for hispoetry and novels, but for showing the admirable traitsof a barren country and a fierce population, and contributingto bring them within the realm of civilization.A century or two ago the Highlands of Scotland werepeopled by a race in a state of perpetual conflictwith civilization, averse to labor, gaining (exceptsuch of them as were enrolled in the English Army)a precarious support by plunder, black-mailing, smuggling,and other illegal pursuits. Now they composea body of hard-working, intelligent, and law-abidinglaborers, cultivating farms, raising cattle and sheep,and pursuing the various branches of industry whichlead to independence, if not to wealth. The travelleramong the Highlanders feels as secure and is made ascomfortable as in any part of the island; while revelationsof their shrewd intelligence and unsuspected wit,in the stories of Barrie and Crockett, show what acentury of Calvinistic theology—as the chiefmental stimulant—has done in developingblossoms from that thistle-like stock.
Scott had now all the fame and worldly prosperitywhich any literary man could attain to,—forhis authorship of the novels, although unacknowledged,was more and more generally believed, and after 1821not denied. He lived above the atmosphere ofenvy, honored by all classes of people, surroundedwith admiring friends and visitors. He had anincome of at least L10,000 a year. Wherever hejourneyed he was treated with the greatest distinction.In London he was cordially received as a distinguishedguest in any circle he chose. The highest noblespaid homage to him. The King made him a baronet,—thefirst purely literary man in England to receive thathonor. He now became ambitious to increase hislands; and the hundred acres of farm at Abbotsfordwere enlarged by new purchases, picturesquely plantedwith trees and shrubberies, while “the cottagegrew to a mansion, and the mansion to a castle,”with its twelve hundred surrounding acres, cultivatedand made beautiful.
Scott’s correspondence with famous people wasimmense, besides his other labors as farmer, lawyer,and author. Few persons of rank or fame visitedEdinburgh without paying their respects to its mosteminent citizen. His country house was invadedby tourists. He was on terms of intimacy withsome of the proudest nobles of Scotland. His variousworks were the daily food not only of his countrymen,but of all educated Europe. “Station, power,wealth, beauty, and genius strove with each otherin every demonstration of respect and worship.”
And yet in the midst of this homage and increasingprosperity, one of the most fortunate of human beings,Scott’s head was not turned. His habitualmodesty preserved his moral health amid all sorts oftemptation. He never lost his intellectual balance.He assumed no airs of superiority. His mannerswere simple and unpretending to the last. Hepraised all literary productions except his own.His life in Edinburgh was plain, though hospitableand free; and he seemed to care for few luxuries asidefrom books, of which life made a large collection.The furniture of his houses in Edinburgh and at Abbotsfordwas neither showy nor luxurious. He was extraordinarilyfond of dogs and all domestic animals, who—sympatheticcreatures as they are—unerringly soughthim out and lavished affection upon him.
When Scott lived in Castle Street he was not regardedby Edinburgh society as particularly brilliant inconversation, since he never aspired to lead by learneddisquisitions. He told stories well, with greathumor and pleasantry, to amuse rather than to instruct.His talk was almost homely. The most noticeablething about it was common-sense. Lord co*ckburnsaid of him that “his sense was more wonderfulthan his genius.” He did not blaze likeMacaulay or Mackintosh at the dinner-table, nor absorbconversation like Coleridge and Sydney Smith.“He disliked,” says Lockhart, “meredisquisitions in Edinburgh and prepared impromptusin London.” A doctrinaire in societywas to him an abomination. Hence, until his famewas established by the admiration of the world, Edinburghprofessors did not see his greatness. To themhe seemed commonplace, but not to such men as Hallamor Moore or Rogers or Croker or Canning.
Notwithstanding Scott gave great dinners occasionally,they appear to have been a bore to him, and he veryrarely went out to evening entertainments, althoughat public dinners his wit and sense made him a favoritechairman. He retired early at night and rose earlyin the morning, and his severest labors were beforebreakfast,—his principal meal. Healways dined at home on Sunday, with a few intimatefriends, and his dinner was substantial and plain.He drank very little wine, and preferred a glass ofwhiskey-toddy to champagne or port. He could notdistinguish between madeira and sherry. He wasneither an epicure nor a gourmand.
After Scott had become world-famous, his happiesthours were spent in enlarging and adorning his landat Abbotsford, and in erecting and embellishing hisbaronial castle. In this his gains were more thanabsorbed. He loved that castle more than any ofhis intellectual creations, and it was not completeduntil nearly all his novels were written. Withoutpersonal extravagance, he was lavish in the sums hespent on Abbotsford. Here he delighted to entertainhis distinguished visitors, of whom no one was morewelcome than Washington Irving, whom he liked forhis modesty and quiet humor and unpretending manners.Lockhart writes: “It would hardly, I believe,be too much to affirm that Sir Walter Scott entertainedunder his roof, in the course of the seven or eightbrilliant seasons when his prosperity was at its height,as many persons of distinction in rank, in politics,in art, in literature, and in science, as the mostprincely nobleman of his age ever did in the likespace of time.”
One more unconscious, apparently, of his great powershas been rarely seen among literary men, especiallyin England and France,—affording a strikingcontrast in this respect to Dryden, Pope, Voltaire,Byron, Bulwer, Macaulay, Carlyle, Hugo, Dumas, andeven Tennyson. Great lawyers and great statesmenare rarely so egotistical and conceited as poets,novelists, artists, and preachers. Scott madeno pretensions which were offensive, or which couldbe controverted. His greatest aspiration seemsto have been to be a respectable landed proprietor,and to found a family. An English country gentlemanwas his beau-ideal of happiness and contentment.Perhaps this was a weakness; but it was certainly aharmless and amiable one, and not so offensive as intellectualpride. Scott indeed, while without vanity, hadpride; but it was of a lofty kind, disdaining meannessand cowardice as worse even than transgressions whichhave their origin in unregulated passions.
From the numerous expletives which abound in Scott’sletters, such as are not now considered in good tasteamong gentlemen, I infer that like most gentlemenof his social standing in those times he was in thehabit of using, when highly excited or irritated,what is called profane language. After he hadonce given vent to his feelings, however, he was amiableand forgiving enough for a Christian sage, who neverharbored malice or revenge. He had great respectfor the military profession,—probably becauseit was the great prop and defence of government andestablished institutions, for he was the most conservativeof aristocrats. And yet his aristocratic turnof mind never conflicted with his humane disposition,—nevermade him a snob. He abhorred all vulgarity.He admired genius and virtue in whatever garb theyappeared. He was as kind to his servants, andto poor and unfortunate people, as he was to his equalsin society, being eminently big-hearted. It wasonly fools, who made great pretensions, that he despisedand treated with contempt.
No doubt Scott was bored by the numerous visitors,whether invited or uninvited, who came from all partsof Great Britain, from America, and even from continentalEurope, to do homage to his genius, or to gratifytheir curiosity. Sometimes as many as thirty guestssat down to his banqueting-table at once. Heentertained in baronial style, but without ostentationor prodigality, and on old-fashioned dishes. Hedid not like French cooking, and his simple tastein the matters of beverage we have already noted.The people to whom he was most attentive were therepresentatives of ancient families, whether rich orpoor.
Scott was very kind to literary men in misfortune,and his chosen friends were authors of eminence,—likeMiss Edgeworth, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Moore, Crabbe,Southey, Wordsworth, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollastonthe chemist, Henry Mackenzie, etc. He wasvery intimate with the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Montagu,and other noblemen. He was visited by dukes andprinces, as well as by ladies of rank and fame.George IV. sent him valuable presents, and showedhim every mark of high consideration. Cambridgeand Oxford tendered to him honorary degrees.Wherever he travelled, he was received with honor anddistinction and flatteries. But he did not likeflatteries; and this was one reason why he did notopenly acknowledge his authorship of his novels, untilall doubt was removed by the masterly papers of JohnLeycester Adolphus in 1821.
Scott’s correspondence must have been enormous,for his postage bills amounted to L150 per annum,besides the aid he received from franks, which withhis natural economy he made no scruple in liberallyusing. Perhaps his most confidential letterswere, like Byron’s, written to his publishersand printers, though many such were addressed to hisson-in-law Lockhart, and to his dearest friend WilliamErskine. But he had also some admirable women
friends, with whom he corresponded freely. Someof the choicest of his recently-published Letters areto Lady Abercorn, who was an intimate and helpfulfriend; to Miss Anna Seward, a literary confidantof many years; to Lady Louisa Stuart, daughter of theEarl of Bute, and granddaughter of Mary Wortley Montagu,one of the few who knew from the first of his “Waverley”authorship; and to Mrs. John Hughes, an early andmost affectionate friend, whose grandson, Thomas Hughes,has made famous the commonplace name of “TomBrown” in our own day.Scott’s letters show the man,—frank,cordial, manly, tender, generous, finding humor indifficulties, pleasure in toil, satisfaction in success,a proud courage in adversity, and the purest happinessin the affection of his friends.
How Scott found time for so much work is a mystery,—writingnearly three novels a year, besides other literarylabors, attending to his duties in the Courts, overlookingthe building of Abbotsford and the cultivation ofhis twelve hundred acres, and entertaining more gueststhan Voltaire did at Ferney. He was too much absorbedby his legal duties and his literary labors to bemuch of a traveller; yet he was a frequent visitorto London, saw something of Paris, journeyed throughIreland, was familiar with the Lake region in England,and penetrated to every interesting place in Scotland.He did not like London, and took little pleasure inthe ovations he received from people of rank and fashion.As a literary lion at the tables of “the great,”he disappointed many of his admirers, since he madeno effort to shine. It was only in his modestden in Castle Street, or in rambles in the countryor at Abbotsford, that he felt himself at home, andappeared to the most advantage.
It would be pleasant to leave this genuinely greatman in the full flush of health, creative power, inwarddelight and outward prosperity; but that were to leaveunwritten the finest and noblest part of his life.It is to the misfortunes which came upon him thatwe owe both a large part of his splendid achievementsin literature and our knowledge of the most admirablecharacteristics of the man.
My running record of his novels last mentioned “TheMonastery,” issued in 1820, in the same yearwith perhaps the prime favorite of all his works,“Ivanhoe,” the romantic tale of Englandin the crusading age of Richard the Lion-Hearted.In 1821 he put forth the fascinating Elizabethan taleof “Kenilworth.” In 1822 came “ThePirate” (the tale of sea and shore that inspiredJames Fenimore Cooper to write “The Pilot”and his other sea-stories) and “The Fortunesof Nigel;” in 1823, “Peveril of the Peak”and “Quentin Durward,” both among his best;in 1824, “St. Ronan’s Well” and“Redgauntlet;” and in 1825, two more Talesof the Crusaders,—“The Betrothed”and “The Talisman,” the latter probablysharing with “Ivanhoe” the greatest popularity.
In the winter of 1825-1826, a widespread area of commercialdistress resulted in the downfall of many firms; andamong others to succumb were Hurst & Robinson, publishers,whose failure precipitated that of Constable & Co.,Scott’s publishers, and of the Ballantynes hisprinters, with whom he was a secret partner, who werelargely indebted to the Constables and so to the creditorsof that house. The crash came January 16, 1826,and Scott found himself in debt to the amount of aboutL147,000,—or nearly $735,000.
Such a vast misfortune, overwhelming a man at theage of fifty-five, might well crush out all life andhope and send him into helpless bankruptcy, with thepoor consolation that, though legally responsible,he was not morally bound to pay other people’sdebts. But Scott’s own sanguine carelessnesshad been partly to blame for the Ballantyne failure;and he faced the billow as it suddenly appeared, bowedto it in grief but not in shame, and, while not pretendingto any stoicism, instantly resolved to devote theremainder of his life to the repayment of the creditors.
The solid substance of manliness, honor, and cheerfulcourage in his character; the genuine piety with whichhe accepted the “dispensation,” and wrote“Blessed be the name of the Lord;” theunexampled steadiness with which he comforted hiswife and daughters while girding himself to the dailywork of intellectual production amidst his many distresses;the sweetness of heart with which he acknowledged thesympathy and declined the offers of help that pouredin upon him from every side (one poor music teacheroffering his little savings of L600, and an anonymousadmirer urging upon him a loan of L30,000),—allthis is the beauty that lighted up the black cloudof Scott’s adversity. His efforts werefinally successful, although at the cost of his bodilyexistence. Lockhart says: “He paidthe penalty of health and life, but he saved his honorand his self-respect.
“‘The glorydies not, and the grief is past.’”
“Woodstock,” then about half-done, wascompleted in sixty-nine days, and issued in March,1826, bringing in about $41,000 to his creditors.His “Life of Napoleon,” published in June,1827, produced $90,000. In 1827, also, Scottissued “Chronicles of the Canongate,” FirstSeries (several minor stories), and the First Seriesof “Tales of a Grandfather;” in 1828,“The Fair Maid of Perth” (Second Seriesof the “Chronicles"), and more “Talesof a Grandfather;” in 1829, “Anne of Geierstein,”more “Tales of a Grandfather,” the firstvolume of a “History of Scotland,” anda collective edition of the Waverley Novels in forty-eightvolumes, with new Introductions, Notes, and carefulcorrections and improvements of the text throughout,—initself an immense labor; in 1830, more “Talesof a Grandfather,” a three volume “Historyof France,” and Volume II. of the “Historyof Scotland;” in 1831, and finally, a FourthSeries of “Tales of My Landlord,” including“Count Robert of Paris” and “CastleDangerous.”
This completes the list of Scott’s greater productions;but it should be remembered that during all the yearsof his creative work he was incessantly doing criticaland historical writing,—producing numerousreviews, essays, ballads; introductions to divers works;biographical sketches for Ballantyne’s “Novelist’sLibrary,”—the works of fifteen celebratedEnglish writers of fiction, Fielding, Smollett, etc.;letters and pamphlets; dramas; even a few religiousdiscourses; and his very extensive and interestingprivate correspondence. He was such a marvelof productive brain-power as has seldom, if ever, beenknown to humanity.
The illness and death of Scott’s beloved wife,but four short months after his commercial disaster,was a profound grief to him; and under the exhaustingpressure of incessant work during the five years following,his bodily power began to fail,—so thatin October, 1831, after a paralytic shock, he stoppedall literary labor and went to Italy for recuperation.The following June he returned to London, weaker inboth mind and body; was taken to Abbotsford in July;and on the 21st September, 1832, with his childrenabout him, the kindly, manly, brave, and tender spiritpassed away.
At the time of his death Sir Walter had reduced hisgreat indebtedness to $270,000. A life insuranceof $110,000, $10,000 in the hands of his trustees,and $150,000 advanced by Robert Cadell, an Edinburghbookseller, on the copyrights of Scott’s works,cleared away the last remnant of the debt; and withintwenty years Cadell had reimbursed himself, and madea handsome profit for his own account and that of thefamily of Sir Walter.
The moneyed details of Scott’s literary lifehave been made a part of this brief sketch, both becausehis phenomenal fecundity and popularity offer a convenientmeasure of his power, and because the fiscal misfortuneof his later life revealed a simple grandeur of charactereven more admirable than his mental force. “Scottruined!” exclaimed the Earl of Dudley when heheard of the trouble. “The author of Waverleyruined! Good God! let every man to whom he hasgiven months of delight give him a sixpence, and hewill rise to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild!”But the sturdy Scotchman accepted no dole; he set himselfto work out his own salvation. William Howitt,in his “Homes and Haunts of Eminent BritishPoets,” estimated that Scott’s works hadproduced as profits to the author or his trusteesat least L500,000,—nearly $2,500,000:this in 1847, over fifty years ago, and only forty-fiveyears from Scott’s first original publication.Add the results of the past fifty years, and, rememberingthat this gives but the profits, conceive the immensesums that have been freely paid by the intelligentBritish public for their enjoyment of this great author’swritings. Then, besides all this, recall themyriad volumes of Scott sold in America, which paidno profit to the author or his heirs. There isno parallel.
Voltaire’s renown and monetary rewards, as themaster-writer of the eighteenth century, offer theonly case in modern times that approaches Scott’ssuccess; yet Voltaire’s vast wealth was largelythe result of successful speculation. As a purelypopular author, whose wholesome fancy, great heart,and tireless industry, has delighted millions of hisfellow-men, Scott stands alone; while, as a man, heholds the affection and respect of the world.Even though it be that the fashion of his workmanshippasseth away, wonder not, lament not. With Mithridateshe could say, “I have lived.” Whatgreat man can say more?
LORD BYRON.
1788-1824.
POETIC GENIUS.
It is extremely difficult to depict Lord Byron, andeven presumptuous to attempt it. This is notonly because he is a familiar subject, the triumphsand sorrows of whose career have been often portrayed,but also because he presents so many contradictionsin his life and character,—lofty yet degraded,earnest yet frivolous, an impersonation of noble deedsand sentiments, and also of almost every frailty whichChristianity and humanity alike condemn. No greatman has been more extravagantly admired, and nonemore bitterly assailed; but generally he is regardedas a fallen star,—a man with splendid giftswhich he wasted, for whom pity is the predominantsentiment in broad and generous minds. With allhis faults, the English-speaking people are proud ofhim as one of the greatest lights in our literature;and in view of the brilliancy of his literary careerhis own nation in particular does not like to havehis defects and vices dwelt upon. It blushes andcondones. It would fain blot out his life andmuch of his poetry if, without them, it could preservethe best and grandest of his writings,—thatill-disguised autobiography which goes by the nameof “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,”in which he soars to loftier flights than any Englishpoet from Milton to his own time. Like Shakespeare,like Dryden, like Pope, like Burns, he was a bornpoet; while most of the other poets, however eminentand excellent, were simply made,—made bystudy and labor on a basis of talent, rather thanexalted by native genius as he was, speaking out whathe could not help, and revelling in the richness ofunconscious gifts, whether for good or evil.
Byron was a man with qualities so generous, yet sowild, that Lamartine was in doubt whether to callhim angel or devil. But, whether angel or devil,his life is the saddest and most interesting amongall the men of letters in the nineteenth century.
Of course, most of our material comes from his Lifeand Letters, as edited by his friend and brother-poet,Thomas Moore. This biographer, I think, has beenunwisely candid in the delineation of Byron’scharacter, making revelations that would better haveremained in doubt, and on which friendship at leastshould have prompted him to a discreet silence.
Lord Byron was descended from the Byrons of Normandywho accompanied William the Conqueror in his invasionof England, of which illustrious lineage the poetwas prouder than of his poetry. In the reign ofHenry VIII., on the dissolution of the monasteries,a Byron came into possession of the old mediaevalabbey of Newstead. In the reign of James I.,Sir John Byron was made a knight of the Order of theBath. In 1784 the father of the poet, a dissipatedcaptain of the Guards, being in embarrassed circ*mstances,married a rich Scotch heiress of the name of Gordon.Handsome and reckless, “Mad Jack Byron”speedily spent his wife’s fortune; and whenhe died, his widow, being reduced to a pittance ofL150 a year, retired to Scotland to live, with herinfant son who had been born in London. She wasplain Mrs. Byron, widow of a “younger son,”with but little expectation of future rank. Shewas a woman of caprices and eccentricities, and notat all fitted to superintend the education of herwayward boy.
Hence the childhood and youth of Byron were sad andunfortunate. His temper was violent and passionate.A malformation of his foot made him peculiarly sensitive,and the unwise treatment of his mother, fond and harshby turns, destroyed maternal authority. At fiveyears of age, he was sent to a day-school in Aberdeen,where he made but slim attainments. Though excitableand ill-disciplined, he is said to have been affectionateand generous, and perfectly fearless. A fit ofsickness rendered his removal from this school necessary,and he was sent to a summer resort among the Highlands.His early impressions were therefore favorable tothe development of the imagination, coming as theydid from mountains and valleys, rivulets and lakes,near the sources of the Dee. At the age of eight,he wrote verses and fell in love, like Dante at theage of nine.
On the death of the grandson of the old Lord Byronin 1794, this unpromising youth became the heir-apparentto the barony. Nor did he have to wait long;for soon after, his grand-uncle died, and the youngByron, whose mother was struggling with poverty, becamea ward of Chancery; and the Earl of Carlisle—oneof the richest and most powerful noblemen of the realm,a nephew by marriage of the deceased peer—wasappointed his guardian. This cold, formal, andpolitic nobleman took but little interest in his ward,leaving him to the mismanagement of his mother, who,with her boy, at the age of ten, now removed to Newstead,the seat of his ancestors,—the government,meanwhile, for some reason which is not explained,having conferred on her a pension of L300 a year.
One of the first things that Mrs. Byron did on herremoval to Newstead was to intrust her son to thecare of a quack in Nottingham, in order to cure himof his lameness. As the doctor was not successful,the boy was removed to London with the double purposeof effecting a cure under an eminent surgeon, andof educating him according to his rank; for his educationthus far had been sadly neglected, although it wouldappear that he was an omnivorous reader in a desultorykind of way. The lameness was never cured, andthrough life was a subject of bitter sensitivenesson his part. Dr. Glennie of Dulwich, to whoseinstruction he was now confided, found him hard tomanage, because of his own undisciplined nature andthe perpetual interference of his mother. Hisprogress was so slow in Latin and Greek that at theend of two years, in 1801, he was removed to Harrow,—oneof the great public schools of England, of which Dr.Drury was head-master. For a year or two, owingto that constitutional shyness which is so often mistakenfor pride, young Byron made but few friendships, althoughhe had for school-fellows many who were afterwardsdistinguished, including Sir Robert Peel. Beforehe left this school for Cambridge, however, he hadmade many friends whom he never forgot, being of avery generous and loving disposition. I thinkthat those years at Harrow were the happiest he everknew, for he was under a strict discipline, and wastoo young to indulge in those dissipations which werethe bane of his subsequent life. But he was notdistinguished as a scholar, in the ordinary sense,although in his school-boy days he wrote some poetryremarkable for his years, and read a great many books.He read in bed, read when no one else read, read whileeating, read all sorts of books, and was capable ofgreat sudden exertions, but not of continuous drudgeries,which he always abhorred. In the year 1803, whena youth of fifteen, he formed a strong attachmentfor a Miss Chaworth, two years his senior, who, lookingupon him as a mere schoolboy, treated him cavalierly,and made some slighting allusion to “that lameboy.” This treatment both saddened and embitteredhim. When he left school for college he had thereputation of being an idle and a wilful boy, witha very imperfect knowledge of Latin and Greek.
Young Byron entered Trinity College in 1805, poorlyprepared, and was never distinguished there for thoseattainments which win the respect of tutors and professors.He wasted his time, and gave himself up to pleasures,—riding,boating, bathing, and social hilarities,—yetreading more than anybody imagined, and writing poetry,for which he had an extraordinary facility, yet notcontending for college prizes. His intimate friendswere few, but to his chosen circle he was faithfuland affectionate. No one at this time would havepredicted his future eminence. A more unpromisingyouth did not exist within the walls of his college.He had a most unfortunate temper, which would have
made him unhappy under any circ*mstances in whichhe could be placed. This temper, which he inheritedfrom his mother—passionate, fitful, defiant,restless, wayward, melancholy—inclined himnaturally to solitude, and often isolated him evenfrom his friends and companions. He brooded uponsupposed wrongs, and created in his soul strong likesand dislikes. What is worse, he took no painsto control this temperament; and at last it masteredhim, drove him into every kind of folly and rashness,and made him appear worse than he really was.This inborn tendency to moodiness, pride, and recklessnessshould be considered in our estimate of Byron, andshould modify any harshness of judgment in regardto his character, which, in some other respects, wasinteresting and noble. He was not at all envious,but frank, warm-hearted, and true to those he loved,who were, however, very few. If he had learnedself-control, and had not been spoiled by his mother,his career might have been far different from whatit was, and would have sustained the admiration whichhis brilliant genius called out from both high andlow.
As it was, Byron left college with dangerous habits,with no reputation for scholarship, with but few friends,and an uncertain future. His bright and wittybursts of poetry, wonderful as the youthful effusionsof Dryden and Pope, had made him known to a small circle,but had not brought fame, for which his soul passionatelythirsted from first to last. For a nobleman hewas poor and embarrassed, and his youthful extravaganceshad tied up his inherited estate. He was castupon the world like a ship without a rudder and withoutballast. He was aspiring indeed, but withouta plan, tired out and disgusted before he was twenty-one,having prematurely exhausted the ordinary pleasuresof life, and being already inclined to that downwardpath which leadeth to destruction. This was especiallymarked in his relations with women, whom generallyhe flattered, despised, and deserted, as the amusem*ntsof an idle hour, and yet whose society he could notdo without in the ardor of his impulsive and ungovernedaffections. In that early career of unbridleddesire for excitement and pleasure, nowhere do we seea sense of duty, a respect for the opinions of thegood, a reverence for religious institutions, or self-restraintof any kind; but these defects were partly coveredover by his many virtues and his exalted rank.
Thus far Byron was comparatively unknown. Notyet was he even a favorite in society, beautiful andbrilliant as he was; for he had few friends, not muchmoney, and many enemies, whom he made by his scornand defiance,—a born aristocrat, withouthaving penetrated those exclusive circles to whichhis birth entitled him. He was always quarrellingwith his mother, and was treated with indifferenceby his guardian. He was shunned by those whoadhered to the conventionalities of life, and waspursued by bailiffs and creditors,—sincehis ancestral estates, small for his rank, were encumberedand mortgaged, and Newstead Abbey itself was in astate of dilapidation.
Within a year from leaving Cambridge, in 1807, Byronpublished a volume of his juvenile poems; and althoughthey were remarkable for a young man of twenty, theywere not of sufficient merit to attract the attentionof the public. At this time he was abstemiousin eating, wishing to reduce a tendency to corpulence.He could practise self-denial if it were to make hisperson attractive, especially to ladies. Nor washe idle. His reading, if desultory, was vast;and from the list of books which his biographer hasnoted it would seem that Macaulay never read more thanByron in a given time,—all the noted historiansof England, Germany, Rome, and Greece, with innumerablebiographies, miscellanies, and even divinity, theraw material which he afterwards worked into his poems.How he found time to devour so many solid books isto me a mystery. These were not merely Europeanworks, but Asiatic also. He was not a criticalscholar, but he certainly had a passing familiaritywith almost everything in literature worth knowing,which he subsequently utilized, as seen in his “ChildeHarold’s Pilgrimage.” A college reputationwas nothing to him, any more than it was to Swift,Goldsmith, Churchill, Gibbon, and many other famousmen of letters, who left on record their dislike ofthe English system of education. Among these wereeven such men as Addison, Cowper, Milton, and Dryden,who were scholars, but who alike felt that collegehonors and native genius did not go hand in hand,—whichmight almost be regarded as the rule, but for a fewremarkable exceptions, like Sir Robert Peel and Gladstone.And yet it would be unwise to decry college honors,since not one in a hundred of those who obtain themby their industry, aptness, and force of will canlay claim to what is called genius,—therarest of all gifts. Moreover, how impossibleit is for college professors to detect in students,with whom they are imperfectly acquainted, extraordinaryfaculties, more especially if the young men are apparentlyidle and negligent, and contemptuous of the collegecurriculum.
It was a bitter pill for Lord Byron when his juvenilepoems, called “Hours of Idleness,” wereso severely attacked by the Edinburgh Review.They might have escaped the searching eyes of the criticshad the author not been a lord. At that timethe great Reviews had just been started; and it wasthe especial object of the Edinburgh Review to handleauthors roughly,—to condemn and not topraise. Criticism was not then a science, asit became fifty years later, in the hands of Sainte-Beuve,who endeavored to review every production fairly andjustly. There was nothing like justice enteringinto the head of Jeffrey or Sydney Smith or Brougham,or later on of Macaulay, whose articles were oftenwritten for political party effect. Critics,from the time of Swift down to the middle of the century,aimed to demolish enemies, and to make party capital;hence, as a general thing, their articles were notcriticisms at all, but attacks. And as even anAchilles was vulnerable in his heel, so most intellectualgiants have some weak point for the shafts of maliceto penetrate. Yet it is the weaknesses of greatmen that people like to quote.
If Byron was humiliated, enraged, and embittered bythe severity of the Edinburgh Review, he was not crushed.He rallied, collected his unsuspected strength, andshattered his opponents by one of the wittiest, mostbrilliant, and most unscrupulous satires in our literature,which he called “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.”At the height of his fame he regretted and suppressedthis youthful production of malice and bitterness.Yet it was the beginning of his great career, bothas to a consciousness of his own powers and in attractingthe public attention. It was doubtless unwise,since he attacked many who were afterwards his friends,and since he sowed the seeds of hatred among thosewho might otherwise have been his admirers or apologists.He had to learn the truth that “with what measureye mete it shall be measured to you again.”The creators of public opinion in reference to Byronhave not been women of fashion, or men of the world,but literary lions themselves,—like Thackeray,who detested him, and the whole school of pharisaicecclesiastical dignitaries, who abhorred in him sentimentswhich they condoned in Fielding, in Burns, in Rousseau,and in Voltaire.
Before his bitter satire was published, however, Byrontook his seat in the House of Lords, not knowing anypeer sufficiently to be introduced by him. Hisguardian, Lord Carlisle, treated him very shabbily,refusing to furnish to the Lord Chancellor some importantinformation, of a technical kind, which refusal delayedthe ceremony for several weeks, until the necessarypapers could be procured from Cornwall relating tothe marriage of one of his ancestors. Unfriendedand alone, Byron sat on the scarlet benches of theHouse of Lords until he was formally admitted as apeer. But when the Lord Chancellor left the woolsackto congratulate him, and with a smiling face extendedhis hand, the embittered young peer bowed coldly andstiffly, and simply held out two or three of his fingers,—anact of impudence for which there was no excuse.
It is difficult to understand why Lord Byron shouldhave had so few friends or even acquaintances at thattime among people of his rank. At twenty-one,he was a lonely and solitary man, mortified by theattack of the Edinburgh Review, exasperated by injustice,morose even to misanthropy, and decidedly scepticalin his religious opinions. Newstead Abbey wasa burden to him, since he could not keep it up.He owed L10,000. He had no domestic ties, exceptto a mother with whom he could not live. Hispoetry had not brought him fame, for which of all thingshe most ardently thirsted. His love affairs wereunfortunate, and tinged his soul with sadness andmelancholy. Nor had fashion as yet marked himfor her own. He craved excitement, and societyto him was dull and conventional.
It is not surprising that under these circ*mstancesByron made up his mind to travel: he did notmuch care whither, provided he had new experiences.“The grand tour” which educated young menof leisure and fortune took in that day had no charmfor him, since he wished to avoid rather than to seeksociety in those cities which the English frequented.He did not care to see the literary lions of Franceor Germany or Italy, for though a nobleman, he wastoo young and unimportant to be much noticed, andhe was too shy and too proud to make advances whichmight be rebuffed, wounding his amour propre.
He set out on his pilgrimage the latter part of June,1809, in a ship bound for Lisbon, with a small suiteof servants. Going to a land where Nature wasmost enchanting, he was sufficiently enthusiastic overthe hills and vales and villages of Portugal.As for comfort, he expected little, and found less;but to this he was indifferent so long as he couldswim in the Tagus, and ride on a mule, and procureeggs and wine. He was delighted with Cadiz, tohim a Cythera, with its beautiful but uneducated women,where the wives of peasants were on a par with thewives of dukes in cultivation, and where the mindsof both had but one idea,—that of intrigue.He hastily travelled through Spain on horseback, inAugust, reaching Gibraltar, from which he embarkedfor Malta and the East.
It was Greece and Turkey that Byron most wished tosee and know; and, favored by introductions, he wascordially received by governors and pashas. AtAthens, and other classical spots, he lingered enchanted,yet suppressing his enthusiasm in the contempt hehad for the affected raptures of ordinary travellers.It was not the country alone, with its classical associations,which interested him, but also its maidens, with theirdark hair and eyes, whom he idealized almost into goddesses.Everything he saw was picturesque, unique, and fascinating.The days and weeks flew rapidly away in dreamy enchantment.
After nearly three months at Athens, Byron embarkedfor Smyrna, and explored the ruins of the old Ioniancities, thence proceeding to Constantinople, witha view of visiting Persia and the farther East.In a letter to Mr. Henry Drury, he says:—
“I have left my home, and seen part of Africaand Asia, and a tolerable portion of Europe.I have been with generals and admirals, princes andpashas, governors and ungovernables. Albania,indeed, I have seen more than any Englishman, exceptMr. Leake,—a country rarely visited, fromthe savage character of the natives, but aboundingmore in natural beauties than the classical regionsof Greece.”
A glimpse of Byron’s inner life at this timeis caught in the following extract from a letter toanother friend:
“I have now been nearly a year abroad, and hopeyou will find me an altered personage,—Ido not mean in body, but in manners; for I begin tofind out that nothing but virtue will do in this d—dworld. I am tolerably sick of vice, which I havetried in its agreeable varieties, and mean on my returnto cut all my dissolute acquaintance, leave off wineand carnal company, and betake myself to politics anddecorum.”
One thing we notice in most of the familiar lettersof Byron,—that he makes frequent use ofa vulgar expletive. But when I remember that thePrince of Wales, the Lord Chancellor, the judges, thelawyers, the ministers of the Crown, and many otherdistinguished people were accustomed to use the sameexpression, I would fain hope that it was not meantfor profanity, but was a sort of fashionable slangintended only to be emphatic. Fifty years haveseen a great improvement in the use of language, andthe vulgarism which then appeared to be of slightimportance is now regarded, almost universally withgentlemen, to be at least in very bad taste.How far Byron transgressed beyond the frequent useof this expletive, does not appear either in his lettersor in his biography; yet from his irreverent nature,and the society with which he was associated, it ismore than probable that in him profanity was addedto the other vices of his times.
Especially did he indulge in drinking to excess inall convivial gatherings. It was seldom thatgentlemen sat down to a banquet without each despatchingtwo or three bottles of wine in the course of an evening.No wonder that gout was the pervading disease amongcounty squires, and even among authors and statesman.Morality was not one of the features of English societyone hundred years ago, except as it consisted in ascrupulous regard for domesticity, truth, and honor,and abhorrence of meanness and hypocrisy.
It would be difficult to point out any defects andexcesses of which Byron was guilty at this periodbeyond what were common to other fashionable youngmen of rank and leisure, except a spirit of religiousscepticism and impiety, and a wanton and inexcusablerecklessness in regard to women, which made him aslave to his passions. The first alienated him,so far as he was known, from the higher respectableclasses, who generally were punctilious in the outwardobservances of religion; and the second made him abhorredby the virtuous middle class, who never condoned histransgressions in this respect. But at this timehis character was not generally known. It wasnot until he was seated on the pinnacle of fame thatpublic curiosity penetrated the scandals of his privatelife. He was known only as a young nobleman inquest of the excitements of foreign travel, and hisletters of introduction procured him all the societyhe craved. Not yet had he expressed bitternessand wrath against the country which gave him birth;he simply found England dull, and craved adventuresin foreign lands as unlike England as he could find.The East stimulated his imagination, and revived hisclassical associations. He saw the Orient onlyas an enthusiastic poet would see it, and as Lamartinesaw Jerusalem. But Byron was more curious aboutthe pagan cities of antiquity than concerning the placesconsecrated by the sufferings of our Lord. Hecared more to swim across the Hellespont with Leanderthan to wander over the sacred hills of Judaea; toidealize a beautiful peasant girl among the ruins ofGreece, than converse with the monks of Palestinein their gloomy retreats.
The result of Byron’s travels was seen in thefirst two cantos of “Childe Harold,” showingalike the fertility of his mind and the aspirationsof a lofty genius. These were published in 1812,soon after his return to England, at the age of twenty-four.They took England by storm, creating both surpriseand admiration. Public curiosity and enthusiasmfor the young poet, who had mounted to the front ranksof literature at a single leap, was unbounded anduniversal. As he himself wrote: “Iawoke one morning and found myself famous.”
Young Byron was now sought, courted, and adored, especiallyby ladies of the highest rank. Everybody wasdesirous to catch even a glimpse of the greatest poetthat had appeared since Pope and Dryden; any palaceor drawing-room he desired to enter was open to him.He was surfeited with roses and praises and incense.He alone took precedence over Scott and Coleridgeand Moore and Campbell. For a time his pre-eminencein literature was generally conceded. He wasthe foremost man of letters of his day, and the greatestpopular idol. His rank added to his eclat,since not many noblemen were distinguished for geniusor literary excellence. His singular beauty offace and person, despite his slight lameness, attractedthe admiring gaze of women. What Abelard was inthe schools of philosophy, Byron was in the drawing-roomsof London. People forgot his antecedents, sofar as they were known, in the intoxication of universaladmiration and unbounded worship of genius. Nopoet in English history was ever seated on a prouderthrone, and no heathen deity was ever more indifferentthan he to the incense of idolaters.
Far be it from me to attempt an analysis of the meritsof the poem with which the fame of Byron will be foreveridentified. Its great merits are universallyconceded; and while it has defects,—greatinequalities in both style and matter; some stanzassupernal in beauty, and others only mediocre,—onthe whole, the poem is extraordinary. Byron adoptedthe Spenserian measure,—perhaps the mostdifficult of all measures, hard even to read aloud,—inwhich blank verse seems to blend with rhyme.It might be either to the ear, though to the eye itis elaborate rhyme,—such as would severelytask a made poet, but which this born poet seems tohave thrown off without labor. The leading peculiarityof the poem is description,—of men andplaces; of the sea, the mountain, and the river; ofNature in her loveliness and mysteries; of cities andbattle-fields consecrated by the heroism of brave andgifted men, in Greece, in Rome, in mediaeval Europe,—withswift passing glances at salient points in history,showing extensive reading and deep meditation.
As to the spirit of “Childe Harold,” itis not satirical; it is more pensive than bitter,and reveals the loneliness and sorrows of an unsatisfiedsoul,—the unrest of a pilgrim in searchfor something new. It seeks to penetrate thesecrets of struggling humanity, at war often withthose certitudes which are the consolation of our innerlife. It everywhere recognizes the soul as thatwhich gives greatest dignity to man. It invokeslove as the noblest joy of life. The poem is oneof the most ideal of human productions, soaring beyondwhat is material and transient. It is not religious,not reverential, not Christian, like the “DivineComedy” and the “Paradise Lost;”and yet it is lofty, aspiring, exulting in what isgreatest in deed or song, destined to immortality offame and admiration. It is a confession, indirectly,of the follies and shortcomings of the author, andof their retribution, but complains not of the Nemesisthat avenges everything. It is sensitive of wrongsand injustices and misrepresentations, but does nothurl anathemas,—speaking in sorrow ratherthan in anger, except in regard to hypocrisies andshams and lies, when its scorn is intense and terrible.
The whole poem is brilliant and original, but doesnot flash like fire in a dark night. It was writtenwith the heart’s blood, and is as earnest asit is penetrating. It does not ascend to the highermysteries forever veiled from mortal eye, nor descendto the deepest depths of hatred and despair, but confinesitself to those passions which have marked giftedmortals, and those questionings in which all thoughtfulminds have ever delighted. It does not make revelationslike “Hamlet” or “Macbeth;”it does not explore secrets hidden forever from ordinaryminds, like “Faust;” but it muses and meditateson what Fate and Time have brought to pass,—suchevents as have been revealed in history. It invokesthe neglected but impressive monuments of antiquityto tell the tales of glory and of shame. In moralwisdom it is vastly inferior to Shakspeare, and itis not rich in those wise and striking lines whichpass into the proverbs of the world; but it has theglow of a poetic soul, longing for fame, craving love,and not unmindful of immortality. Its most beautifulstanzas are full of tenderness and sadness for lostor unrequited affections; of reproachless sorrow forbroken friendships, in which the soul would fain havelived but for inconsistencies and contradictions whichmade true and permanent love impossible. The poempaints a paradise lost, rather than a paradise regained.I wonder at its popularity, for it seems to me toodeep and learned for popular appreciation, exceptin those stanzas where pathos or enthusiasm, expressedin matchless language, appeal to the heart and soul.
Of all modern poets, Byron is the most human and outspoken,daring to say what many would fear or blush to meditateupon. He fearlessly reveals the infirmities andaudacities of a double and mysterious nature, madeup of dust and deity, now grovelling in the mire, thenborne aloft to the skies,—the football ofthe eternal powers of good and evil, enslaved andyet to be emancipated, as we may hope, in the lastand final struggle, when the soul is rescued by Omnipotence.
I have alluded to the triumphs of Byron on the publicationof “Childe Harold,”—but hisjoys were more than balanced by his sorrows. Hismother died suddenly without seeing him. His dearestfriend Mathews was drowned. He was hampered bycreditors. He made no mark in the House of Lords,and was sick of what he called “parliamentarymummeries.” His habits became more andmore dissipated among the boon companions who courtedhis society. His reputation after a while beganto wane, for people became ashamed of their enthusiasm.Some critics disparaged his poetry, and conventionalcircles were shocked by his morals. Three yearsof London life told on his constitution, and he wascompletely disenchanted. He sought retirementand solitude, for not even the most brilliant societysatisfied him. He wearied of such a woman andadmirer as Madame de Stael. He went to HollandHouse—that resort of all the eminent onesof the time—as seldom as he could.He buried himself with a few intimate friends, chieflypoets, among whom were Moore and Rogers. He sawand liked Sir Walter Scott, but did not push his acquaintanceto intimacy. The larger part of his letters werewritten to Murray, the publisher, who treated himgenerously; but Byron gave away his literary gainsto personal friends in need. He seemed to scorncopyrights for support. He would write only forfame.
At the age of twenty-seven, in January, 1815, Byronmarried Miss Milbanke,—a lady whom he didnot love, but to whom he was attracted by her supposedwealth, which would patch up his own fortunes.He had great respect for this lady and some friendship;but with all her virtues and attainments she was cold,conventional, and exacting. A mystery shroudsthis unfortunate affair, which has never been fullyrevealed. The upshot was that, to Byron’sinexpressible humiliation, in less than a year sheleft him, never to return. No reasons were given.It was enough that both parties were unhappy, andhad cause to be; and both kept silence.
But the voice of rumor and scandal was not silent.All the failings of Byron were now exaggerated anddwelt upon by those who envied him, and by those whohated him,—for his enemies were more numerousthan his friends. Those whom he had snubbed orridiculed or insulted now openly turned against him.The conventional public had a rare subject for theirabuse or indignation. Proper people, religiouspeople, and commonplace people, joined in the cryagainst a man with whom a virtuous woman could notlive. Indeed, no woman could have lived happilywith Byron; and very few were the women with whomhe could have lived happily, by reason of that irritabilityand unrest which is so common with genius. Thehabits of abstraction and contemplation which absorbedmuch of his time at home were not easily understoodby an ordinary woman, to whom social life is necessary.
Byron lived much in his library, which was his solitaryluxury. In the revelry of the imagination hisheart became cold. “To follow poetry,”says Pope, “one must leave father and mother,and cleave to it alone,”—as Danteand Petrarch and Milton did. Not even Byron’sintense craving for affection could be satisfied whenhe was dwelling on the ideals which his imaginationcreated, and which scarcely friendship could satisfy.Even so good a man as Carlyle lived among his booksrather than in the society of his wife, whom he reallyloved, and whose virtues and attainments he appreciatedand admired. An affectionate woman runs a greatrisk in marrying an absorbed and preoccupied man ofgenius, even if his character be reproachless.Unfortunately, the character of Byron was anythingbut reproachless, and no one knew this better thanhis wife, which knowledge doubtless alienated whatlittle affection she had for him. He seems tohave sought low company even after his marriage, andLady Byron has intimated that she did not think himaltogether sane. Living with him as his wife wasinsupportable; but though she separated from him,she did not seek a divorce.
Byron would not have married at all if he had consultedhis happiness, and still more his fame. “Inreviewing the great names of philosophy and science,we shall find that those who have most distinguishedthemselves have virtually admitted their own unfitnessfor the marriage tie by remaining in celibacy,—Newton,Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle, Locke, Leibnitz,Boyle, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, and a host of others.”
The scandal which Byron’s separation from hiswife created, and his known and open profligacy, atlast shut him out from the society of which he hadbeen so bright an ornament. It is a peculiarityof the English people, which redounds to their honor,to exclude from public approbation any man, howevergifted or famous, who has outraged the moral senseby open and ill-disguised violation of the laws ofmorality. The cases of Dilke and Parnell in ourown day are illustrations known to all. Whatin France or Italy is condoned, is never pardoned orforgotten in England. Not even a Voltaire, aRousseau, or a Mirabeau, had they lived in England,could have been accepted by English society,—muchless a man who scorned and ridiculed it. EvenByron—for a few years the pet, the idol,and the glory of the country—was not toohigh to fall. To quote one of his own stanzas,—
“He who ascendsto mountain-tops shall find
The loftiest peaksmost wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpassesor subdues mankind
Must look downon the hate of those below.
Though high abovethe sun of glory glow,
And far beneaththe earth and ocean spread,
Round him areicy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempestson his naked head.”
Embarrassed in his circ*mstances; filled with disgust,mortification, and shame; excluded from the proudestcircles,—Byron now resolved to leave Englandforever, and bury himself in such foreign lands aswere most congenial to his tastes and habits.But for his immorality he might still have shinedat an exalted height; for he had not yet written anythingwhich shocked the practical English mind. Theworst he had written was bitter satire, yet not morebitter than that of Swift or Pope. No defiance,no blasphemous sentiments, or what seemed to many tobe such, had yet escaped him. His “Corsair”and his “Bride of Abydos” appeared soonafter the “Childe Harold,” and added tohis fame by their exquisite melody of rhyme and sentimentaladmiration for Oriental life,—though eventhese were tinged with that abandon which afterwardsmade his latter poems a scandal and reproach.“The disappointment of youthful passion, thelassitude and remorse of premature excess, the lonefriendlessness of his life,” and, I may add,the reproaches of society, induced him to fly fromthe scene of his brilliant successes, filled withblended sentiments of scorn, hatred, defiance, anddespair.
In the Spring of 1816, at the age of twenty-eight,Byron left England forever,—a voluntaryexile on the face of the earth, saddened, embittered,and disappointed. It was to Italy that he turnedhis steps, passing through Brussels and Flanders,lingering on the Rhine, enamored with its ruined castles,still more with Nature, and making a long stay inSwitzerland. Here he visited the Castle of Chillon,all the spots made memorable by the abodes of Rousseau,Gibbon, and Madame de Stael, and all the most interestingscenery of the Bernese Alps,—Lake Leman,Interlaken, Thun, the Jungfrau, the glaciers, Brientz,Chamouni, Berne, and on to Geneva, where he made theacquaintance of Shelley and his wife. The Shelleyshe found most congenial, and stayed with them sometime. While in the neighborhood of Geneva he producedthe third canto of “Childe Harold,” “ThePrisoner of Chillon,” “A Dream,”and other things. In October, he passed on toMilan, Verona, and Venice; and in this latter cityhe took up his residence.
Oh that we could blot out Byron’s life in Venice,made up of love adventures and dissipation and utterabandonment to those pleasures that appealed to hislower nature, as if he were possessed by a demon,utterly reckless of his health, his character, andhis fame! Venice was then the most immoral cityin Italy, given over to idleness and pleasure.It was here that Byron’s contempt for woman becamefixed, seeing only her weaknesses and follies; andit was this contempt of woman which intensified theabhorrence in which his character was generally held,in the most respectable circles in England. Evenin distant Venice his baleful light was not undera bushel, and the scandals of his life extended farand wide,—especially that in referenceto Margherita Cogni, an illiterate virago who couldneither read nor write, and whom he was finally compelledto discard on account of the violence of her temper,after living with her in the most open manner.
And yet, in all this degradation, he was not idle.How could so prolific a writer be idle! Byrondid not ordinarily rise till two o’clock in theafternoon, and spent the interval between his breakfastand dinner in riding on the Lido,—one ofthose long narrow islands which lie between the Adriaticand the Lagoon, in the midst of which Venice is built,on the islets arising from its shallow waters.Yet he found time to begin his “Don Juan,”besides writing the “Lament of Tasso,”the tragedy of “Manfred,” and an Armeniangrammar, all which appeared in 1817; in 1818, “Beppo,”and in 1819, “Mazeppa.” He also madea flying trip to Florence and Rome, and some of thefinest stanzas of “Childe Harold” aredescriptions of the classic ruins and the masterpiecesof Grecian and mediaeval art,—the beautiesand the associations of Italy’s great cities.
“Istood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs;
Apalace and a prison on each hand:
Isaw from out the wave her structures rise
Asfrom the stroke of the enchanter’s wand!
Athousand years their cloudy wings expand
Aroundme, and a dying glory smiles
O’erthe far times, when many a subject land
Lookedto the winged Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice satein state, throned on her hundred isles!”
Byron’s correspondence was small, being chieflyconfined to his publisher, to Moore, and to a fewintimate friends. These letters are interestingbecause of their frankness and wit, although they arenot models of fine writing. Indeed, I do notknow where to find any specimens of masterly prosein all his compositions. He was simply a poet,facile in every form of measure from Spenser to Campbell.No remarkable prose writings appeared in England atall, at that time, until Sir Walter Scott’snovels were written, and until Macaulay, Carlyle,and Lamb wrote their inimitable essays. Nothingis more heavy and unartistic than Moore’s “Lifeof Byron;” there is hardly a brilliant paragraphin it,—and yet Moore is one of the mostmusical and melodious of all the English poets.Milton, indeed, was equally great in prose and verse,but very few men have been distinguished as prose writersand poets at the same time. Sir Walter Scottand Southey are the most remarkable exceptions.I think that Macaulay could have been distinguishedas a poet, if he had so pleased; but he would havebeen a literary poet like Wordsworth or Tennyson orColeridge,—not a man who sings out of hissoul because he cannot help it, like Byron or Burns,or like Whittier among our American poets.
It was not until 1819, when Byron had been three yearsin Venice, that he fell in love with the CountessGuiccioli, the wife of one of the richest nobles ofItaly,—young, beautiful, and interesting.This love seems to have been disinterested and lasting;and while it was a violation of all the rules of morality,and would not have been allowed in any other countrythan Italy, it did not further degrade him. Itwas pretty much such a love as Voltaire had for Madamede Chatelet; and with it he was at last content.There is no evidence that Byron ever afterward lovedany other woman; and what is very singular about theaffair is that it was condoned by the husband, untilit became a scandal even in Italy.
The countess was taken ill on her way to Ravenna,and thither Byron followed her, and lived in the samepalace with her,—the palace of her husband,who courted the poet’s society, and who afterwardleft his young countess to free intercourse with Byronat Bologna,—not without a compensationin revenue, which was more disgraceful than the amouritself. About this time Byron would probably havereturned to England but for the enchantment whichenslaved him. He could not part from the countess,nor she from him.
The Pope pronounced the separation of the count fromhis wife, and she returned to her father’s houseon a pittance of L200 a year. She sacrificedeverything for the young English poet,—hersplendid home, her relatives, her honor, and her pride.Never was there a sadder episode in the life of aman of letters. If Byron had married such a womanin his early life, how different might have been hishistory! With such a love as she inspired, hadhe been faithful to it, he might have lived in radianthappiness, the idol and the pride of all admirers ofgenius wherever the English language is spoken, seatedon a throne which kings might envy. So much havecirc*mstances to do with human destinies! SinceAbelard, never was there a man more capable of a genuinefervid love than Byron; and yet he threw himself away.He was his own worst enemy, and all from an ill-regulatednature which he inherited both from his father andhis mother, with no Mentor to whom he would listen.And thus his star sunk down in the eternal shades,—afallen Lucifer expelled from bliss.
I would not condone the waywardness and vices of Byron,or weaken the eternal distinctions between right andwrong. The impression I wish to convey is thatthere were two very distinctly marked sides to hischaracter; that his conduct was not without palliations,in view of his surroundings, the force of his temptations,and his wayward nature, uncurbed by parental careor early training, indeed rather goaded on by theunfortunate conditions of his youth to find consolationin doing as he liked, without regard to duty or theopinions of society. Born with the keenest sensibilities,with emotive powers of tremendous sweep and force;neglected, crossed, mortified, with no wise guidance,—hewas driven in upon himself, and developed an intenseself-will, which would endure no control. Unhappywill be the future of that man, however amiable, affectionate,and generous, who, whether from neglect in youth,like Byron, or from sheer wilfulness in manhood, determinesto act as the mood takes him, because he has freedomof will, without regard to the social restraints imposedupon conscience by the unwritten law, which pursueshim wherever he goes, even should he fly to the uttermostparts of the earth. No one can escape from moralaccountability, whether in a seductive paradise, orin a dungeon, or in a desert. The only stability,for society must be in the character of its individualmembers. Before pleasure comes duty,—tofamily, to friends, to country, to self, and to theMaker.
This sense of moral accountability Byron seems neverto have had, in regard to anybody or anything, hisself-indulgence culminating in an egotism melancholyto behold. He would go where he pleased, say whathe pleased, write as he pleased, do what he pleased,without any constraint, whether in opposition or notto the customs and rules of society, his own welfare,or the laws of God. It was moral madness pursuinghim to destruction,—the logical and necessarysequence of unrestrained self-will, sometimes assumingthe form of angelic loveliness and inspiration inthe eyes of his idolaters. No counsellor guidedhim wiser than Moore or Shelley. Even the worldlyadvice of Rogers and Madame de Stael was thrown away,whenever they presumed to counsel him. Nobodycould influence him. His abandonment to fitfullabors or pleasures was alike his glory and his shame.After a day of frivolity he would consume the midnighthours in the intensest studies, stimulated by gin,to awake in the morning in lassitude or pain,—forwork he must, as well as play. The consequenceof this burning the candle at both ends was failinghealth and diminished energies, until his short racewas run. He had produced more poetry at thirty-fouryears of age than any other English poet at the ageof fifty,—some of almost transcendent merit,but more of questionable worth, though not of questionablepower. Aside from the “Childe Harold,”the “Hebrew Melodies,” the “Prisonerof Chillon,” and perhaps the “Corsair,”the “Bride of Abydos,” “Lara,”and the “Siege of Corinth,” the rest,excepting minor poems, however beautiful in measureand grand in thought, give a shock to the religiousor to the moral sentiments. “Cain”and “Manfred” are regarded as almost blasphemous,though probably not so meant to be by the poet, inview of the stirring questions of Grecian tragedy;while the longest of his poems, “Don Juan,”is an insult to womanhood and a disgrace to genius;for although containing some of the most exquisitetouches of description and finest flights of poeticfeeling, its theme is along the lowest level of humanpassion.
Whatever Byron wrote was unhesitatingly publishedand read, whether good or evil, whatever were thosefollies and defiances which excluded him from thebest society; and it is a matter of surprise to methat any noted and wealthy publisher could be found,in respectable and conventional England, venal enoughto publish perhaps the most corrupting poem in ourlanguage,—worse than anything which Boccacciowrote for his Italian readers, or anything which plain-spokenFielding and the dramatists of the reign of CharlesII. ever allowed to go into print; for though theywere coarser in their language, they were not so seductivein their spirit, and did not poison the soul like “DonJuan,” the very name of which has become a synonymfor extreme depravity. That abominable poem wasread because Lord Byron wrote it, and because itsimmorality was slightly veiled by the beauty of the
language, even when a copy could not be found on thetable of any respectable drawing-room, and the nameof the author was seldom mentioned except with sternand honest censure. It is perhaps fair to quoteMurray’s own words, throwing the responsibilityon the public: “They talked of his immoralwritings; but there is a whole row of sermons gluedto my shelf. I hate the sight of them. Whydon’t they buy those?” A fair enough retort;and yet, like the newspaper purveyors of the recordsof vice in our own day, the publisher was responsiblefor making the vile stuff accessible, and thus debasingthe public taste.How different was Byron’s painting of Spanishlife from that of the immortal Cervantes, whom Lowellplaces among the five master geniuses of the world!In “Don Quixote” there is not a sentencewhich does not exalt woman, or which degrades man.A lofty ideal of purity and chivalrous honor permeatesevery page, even in the most ludicrous scenes.The whole work blazes with wit, and with the wisdomof a proverbial philosophy, uttered by the ignorantsquire of a fanatical and bewildered knight; but amidstthe practical jokes and follies of all the charactersin that marvellous work of fiction, we see also amoral beauty, idealized of course, such as was rivalledonly in Spanish art in the Madonnas of Murillo.I believe that in the imaginary sketches of Spanishlife as portrayed by Byron, slanders and lies defacethe poem from beginning to end. Who is the bestauthority for truthfulness in the description of Spanishpeople, Cervantes or Byron? The spiritual loftinessportrayed in the lives of Spanish heroes and heroines,mixed up as it was with the most ludicrous picturesof common life, has made the Spaniard’s workof fiction one of the most treasured and enduringmonuments of human fame; whereas the insulting innuendoesof the English poet have gone far to rob him of theglory which he had justly won in his earlier productions,and to make his name a doubt. If, in the courseof generations yet to come, the evil which Byron didby that one poem alone shall be forgotten in the serviceshe rendered to our literature by other works, whichcannot die, then he may some day be received into thePantheon of the benefactors of mind.
I would speak with less vehemence in reference tothose poems which are generally supposed to be permeatedwith defiance, scorn, and misanthropy. In “Manfred”and “Cain,” it was with Byron a work ofart to describe the utterances of impious spiritsagainst the sovereign rule of God. Had he notfallen from high estate as an interpreter of the soul,the critics might have seen here nothing more to condemnthan in some of the Grecian tragedies, many passagesin the “Paradise Lost,” and in the generalspirit of “Faust.” It is no proofthat he was a blasphemer in his heart because he paintedblasphemy. To describe a wanderer on the faceof the earth, driven hither and thither by pursuingvengeance as the first recorded murderer, the poet
was obliged by all the rules of art to put such sentimentsinto his mouth as accorded with his unrepented crimeand his dreadful agonies of mind and soul. Whereis the proof that they were his own agonies,remorse, despair? Surely, we may pardon in Byronwhat we excuse in Goethe in the delineation of uniquecharacters,—the great creations which belongto the realm of the imagination alone. The imputationthat the sayings of his fallen fiends were the cherishedsentiments of the poet himself, may have been onecause of his contempt for the average intelligenceof his countrymen, and for their inveterate and incurableprejudices. Nothing in Dante is more intenseand concentrated in language than the malediction ofEve upon her fratricidal son:—“May the grasswither from thy feet! the woods
Deny thee shelter!earth a home! the dust
A gravel the Sunhis light! and Heaven her God!”
Yet the reader feels the naturalness of this bittercursing of her own son by the frenzied mother.How could a great artist like Byron put sentimentsinto the mouth of Cain such as would be harmless inthe essays of a country parson? If he paintedLucifer, he must make him speak like Lucifer, notlike a theological professor. Nothing could bemore ungenerous and narrow than to abuse Byron fora dramatic poem in which some of his characters werefiends rather than men. We have no more rightto say that he was an infidel because Cain or Luciferblasphemed, than to say that Goethe was an atheistbecause Mephistopheles denied God.
If Byron had avowed atheistical opinions in lettersor conversations, that would be another thing; butthere is no evidence that he did, and much to thecontrary. A few months before he died he was visitedby a pious crank, who out of curiosity or Christianzeal sought to know his theological views. Byrontreated him with the greatest courtesy, and freelycommunicated his opinions on religious subjects,—fromwhich it would appear that he differed from churchpeople generally only on the matter of eternal punishment,which he did not believe was consistent with infinitelove or infinite justice. Perhaps it would havebeen wiser if he had not written “Cain”at all, considering how many readers there are withoutbrains, and how large was the class predisposed tojudge him harshly in everything. No doubt hewas irreligious and sceptical, but it does not followfrom this that he was atheistical or blasphemous.
There is doubtless a misanthropic vein in all Byron’slater poetry which is not wholesome for many peopleto read,—especially in “Manfred,”one of the bitterest of his productions by reasonof sorrows and disappointments and misrepresentations.It was Byron’s misfortune to appear worse thanhe really was, owing to his unconcealed contempt forthe opinions of mankind. Yet he could not complainthat he reaped what he had not sown. Some ofhis biographers thought him to be at this time evenmorbidly desirous of a bad reputation,—goingso far as to write paragraphs against himself in foreignjournals, and being filled with glee at the joke,when they were republished in English newspapers.He despised and defied all conventionalities, andconventional England dropped him from her list offavorites.
The life of Byron, strange to say, was less exposedto scandal after he made the acquaintance of the countesswho enslaved him, and who was also enslaved in turn.His heart now opened to many noble sentiments.He returned, in a degree, to society, and gave dinnersand suppers. He associated with many distinguishedpatriots and men of genius. He had a strong sympathywith the Italians in their struggle for freedom.One quarter of his income he devoted to charities.He was regular in his athletic exercises, and couldswim four hours at a time; he was always proud ofswimming across the Hellespont. He was devotedto his natural daughter, and educated her in a Catholicschool. He studied more severely all works ofart, though his admiration for art was never so greatas it was for Nature. The glories and wondersof Nature inspired him with perpetual joys. Thereis nothing finer in all his poetry than the followingstanza:—
“Ye stars! whichare the poetry of Heaven,
If in your brightleaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,—’tis to be forgiven
That in our aspirationsto be great
Our destinieso’erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindredwith you; for ye are
A beauty and amystery, and create
In us such loveand reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, havenamed themselves a star.”
There never was a time when Byron did not seek outbeautiful retreats in Nature as the source of hishighest happiness. Hence, solitude was nothingto him when he could commune with the works of God.His biographer declares that in 1821 “he wasgreatly improved in every respect,—in genius,in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness.He has had mischievous passions, but these he seemsto have subdued.” He was always temperatein his diet, living chiefly on fish and vegetables;and if he drank more wine and spirits than was goodfor him, it was to rally his exhausted energies.His powers of production were never greater than atthis period, but his literary labors were slowly wearinghim out. He could not live without work, whilepleasure palled upon him. In a letter to a strangerwho sought to convert him, he showed anything butanger or contempt. “Do me,” says he,“the justice to suppose, that Video melioraproboque, however the deteriora sequor mayhave been applied to my conduct.” Writingto Murray in 1822, he says: “It is notimpossible that I may have three or four cantos of‘Don Juan’ ready by autumn, as I obtaineda permission from my dictatress [the Countess Guiccioli]to continue it,—provided always it was tobe more guarded and decorous in the continuation thanin the commencement.” Alas, he could notundo the mischief he had done!
About this time Byron received a visit from Lord Clare,his earliest friend at Cambridge, to whom throughlife he was devotedly attached,—a friendshipwhich afforded exceeding delight. He never forgothis few friends, although he railed at his enemies.He was ungenerously treated by Leigh Hunt, to whomhe rendered every kindness. He says,—
“I have done all I could for him since he camehere [Genoa], but it is all most useless. Hiswife is ill, his six children far from tractable,and in worldly affairs he himself is a child.The death of Shelley left them totally aground; andI could not see them in such a state without usingthe common feelings of humanity, and what means werein my power, to set them afloat again.... Asto any community of feeling, thought, or opinion betweenhim and me there is little or none; but I think hima good-principled man, and must do as I would be doneby.”
Toward Shelley, Byron entertained the greatest respectand affection for his suavity, gentleness, and goodbreeding; and Shelley’s accidental death wasa great shock to him. Among his other intimateacquaintances in Italy were Lord and Lady Blessington,with whom he kept up a pleasant correspondence.The most plaintive, sad, and generous of all his letterswas the one he wrote to Lady Byron from Pisa, in 1821,in acknowledgment of the receipt of a tress of hisdaughter Ada’s hair:—
“The time which has elapsed since our separationhas been considerably more than the whole brief periodof our union and of our prior acquaintance. Weboth made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, andirrecoverably so.... But this very impossibilityof reunion seems to me at least a reason why on allthe few points of discussion which can arise betweenus, we should preserve the courtesies of life, andas much of its kindness as people who are never tomeet may preserve more easily than nearer connections....I assure you I bear you now no resentment whatever.Whether the offence has been solely on my side, orreciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased toreflect upon any but two things,—that youare the mother of my child, and that we shall nevermeet again.”
At this period, about a year before Byron’sdeath, Moore thus writes:—
“To the world, and more especially England,he presented himself in no other aspect than thatof a stern, haughty misanthrope, self-banished fromthe society of men, and most of all from that of Englishmen.The more beautiful and genial inspirations of hismuse were looked upon but as lucid intervals betweenthe paroxysms of an inherent malignancy of nature.But how totally all this differed from the Byron ofthe social hour, they who lived in familiar intercoursewith him may be safely left to tell. As it was,no English gentleman ever approached him with thecommon forms of introduction, that did not come awayat once surprised and charmed by the kind courtesyof his manners, the unpretending play of his conversation,and on nearer intercourse the frank, youthful spirits,to the flow of which he gave way with such zest asto produce the impression that gaiety was after allthe true bent of his disposition.”
Scott, writing of him after his death, says,—
“In talents he was unequalled; and his faultswere those rather of a bizarre temper, arising froman eager and irritable nervous habit, than any depravityof disposition. He was devoid of selfishness,which I take to be the basest ingredient in the humancomposition. He was generous, humane, and noble-minded,when passion did not blind him.”
About this time, 1823, the great struggle of the Greeksto shake off the Ottoman yoke was in progress.I have already in another volume[1] attempted to givethe facts in relation to that memorable movement.Christendom sympathized with the gallant but apparentlyhopeless struggle of a weak nation to secure its independence,both from a sentiment of admiration for the freedomof ancient Greece in the period of its highest glories,and from the love of liberty which animated the liberalclasses amid the political convulsions of the day.But the governments of Europe were loath to complicatethe difficulties which existed between nations inthat stormy period, and dared not extend any openaid to struggling Greece, beyond giving their moralaid to the Greek cause, lest it should embroil Europein war, of which she was weary. Less than tenyears had elapsed since Europe had combined to dethroneNapoleon, and some of her leading powers, like Austriaand Russia, had a detestation of popular insurrections.
In this complicated state of political affairs, whenany indiscretion on the part of friendly governmentsmight kindle anew the flames of war, Lord Byron wasliving in Genoa, taking such an interest in the Greekstruggle that he abandoned poetry for politics.He had always sympathized with enslaved nations strugglingfor independence, and was driven from Ravenna on accountof his alliance with the revolutionary Society ofthe Carbonari. A new passion now seized him.He entered heart and soul into the struggles of theGreeks. Their cause absorbed him. He wouldaid them to the full extent of his means, with moneyand arms, as a private individual. He would bea political or military hero,—a man ofaction, not of literary leisure.
Every lover of liberty must respect Byron’snoble aspirations to assist the Greeks. It wasa new field for him, but one in which he might retrievehis reputation,—for it must be borne inmind that his ruling passion was fame, and that hehad gained all he could expect by his literary productions.Whether loved or hated, admired or censured, his poetryhad placed him in the front rank of literary geniusesthroughout the world. As a poet his immortalitywas secured. In literary efforts he had alsoprobably exhausted himself; he could write nothingmore which would add to his fame, unless he took along rest and recreation. He was wearied of makingpoetry; but by plunging into a sea of fresh adventures,and by giving a new direction to his powers, he mightbe sufficiently renovated, in the course of time,to write something grander and nobler than even “ChildeHarold” or “Cain.”
Lord Byron at this time was only thirty-five yearsold, a period when most men begin their best work.His constitution, it is true, was impaired, but hewas still full of life and enterprise. He couldride or swim as well as he ever could. The callof a gallant people summoned him to arms, and of allnations he most loved the Greeks. He was an enthusiastin their cause; he believed that the day of their deliverancewas at hand. So he made up his mind to consecratehis remaining energies to effect their independence.He opened a correspondence with the Greek committeein London. He selected a party, including a physician,to sail with him from Geneva. He raised a sumof about L10,000, and on the 13th of July, 1823, embarkedwith his small party and eight servants, on boardthe “Hercules” for Greece.
After a short delay at Leghorn the poet reached Cephaloniaon the 24th of July. He was enthusiasticallyreceived by the Greeks of Argostoli, the principalport, but deemed it prudent to remain there until hecould get further intelligence from Corfu and Missolonghi,—visiting,in the interval, some of the neighboring islands consecratedby the muse of Homer.
The dissensions among the Greek leaders greatly embarrassedByron, but did not destroy his ardor. He sawthat the people were degenerate, faithless, and stainedwith atrocities as disgraceful as those of the Turksthemselves. He dared not commit himself to anyone of the struggling, envious parties which ralliedround their respective chieftains. He lingeredfor six weeks in Cephalonia without the ordinary comfortsof life, yet, against all his habits, rising at anearly hour and attending to business, negotiatingbills, and corresponding with the government, so faras there was a recognized central power.
At last, after the fall of Corinth, taken from theTurks, and the arrival at Missolonghi of Prince Mavrocordato,the only leader of the Greeks worthy of the name ofstatesman, Byron sailed for that city, then investedby a Turkish fleet, and narrowly escaped capture.Here he did all he could to produce union among thechieftains, and took into his pay five hundred Suliotes,acting as their leader. He meditated an attackon Lepanto, which commanded the navigation of the Gulfof Corinth, and received from the government a commissionfor that enterprise; but dissensions among his men,and intrigues between rival generals, prevented theexecution of his project.
It was in Missolonghi, Jan. 22, 1824, that, with thememorandum, “On this day I completed my thirty-sixthyear,” Byron wrote his latest verses, most patheticallyregretting his youth and his unfortunate life, butarousing himself to find in a noble cause a gloriousdeath:—
“The fire thatin my bosom preys
Islike to some volcanic isle;
No torch is kindledat its blaze,—
Afuneral pile.”
* * * * *
“Awake!—notGreece: she is awake!—
Awake,my spirit! think through whom
Thy life-bloodtastes its parent lake,
Andthen strike home!”
* * * * *
“Seek out—lessoften sought than found—
Asoldier’s grave, for thee the best;
Then look around,and choose thy ground,
Andtake thy rest!”
Vexations, disappointments, and exposure to the rainsof February so wrought upon Byron’s eager spiritand weakened body that he was attacked by convulsivefits. The physicians, in accordance with the customof that time, bled their patient several times, againstthe protest of Byron himself, which reduced him toextreme weakness. He rallied from the attackfor a time, and devoted himself to the affairs of Greece,hoping for the restoration of his health when springshould come. He spent in three months thirtythousand dollars for the cause into which he had socordially entered. In April he took another coldfrom severe exposure, and fever set in,—torelieve which bleeding was again resorted to, andoften repeated. He was now confined to his room,which he never afterwards left. He at last realizedthat he was dying, and sent incoherent messages tohis sister, to his daughter, and to a few intimatefriends. The end came on the 19th of April.The Greek government rendered all the honor possibleto the illustrious dead. His remains were transferredto England. He was not buried in WestminsterAbbey, however, but in the church of Hucknal, nearNewstead, where a tablet was erected to his memoryby his sister, the Hon. Augusta Maria Leigh.
“So Harold endsin Greece, his pilgrimage
There fitly ending,—inthat land renowned,
Whose mighty geniuslives in Glory’s page,
He on the Muses’consecrated ground
Sinking to rest,while his young brows are bound
With their unfadingwreath! To bands of mirth
No more in Tempelet the pipe resound!
Harold, I followto thy place of birth
The slow hearse,—andthy last sad pilgrimage on earth.”
I can add but little to what I have already said inreference to Byron, either as to his character orhis poetry. The Edinburgh Review, which in Brougham’sarticle on his early poems had stung him into satireand aroused him to a sense of his own powers, in lateryears by Jeffrey’s hand gave a most appreciativeaccount of his poems, while mourning over his morbidgloom: “‘Words that breathe and thoughtsthat burn’ are not merely the ornaments butthe common staple of his poetry; and he is not inspiredor impressive only in some happy passages, but throughthe whole body and tissue of his composition.”The keen insight and exceptional intellect of thephilosopher-poet Goethe recognized in him “thegreatest talent of our century.” His marvellouspoetic genius was universally acknowledged in his
own day; and more than that, so human was it thatit attracted the sympathies of all civilized nations,and, as Lamartine said, “made English literatureknown throughout Europe.” Byron’spoetry was politically influential also, by reasonof its liberty-loving spirit,—arousingItaly, inspiring the young revolutionists of Germany,and awaking a generous sympathy for Greece. Withoutthe consciousness of any “mission” beyondthe expression of his own ebullient nature, this poetcontributed no mean impulse to the general emancipationof spirit which has signalized the nineteenth century.Two generations have passed away since Byron’smortal remains were committed to the dust, and theverdict of his country has not since materially changed,—admirationfor his genius alone. The light of lesserstars than he shines with brighter radiance. Whatthe enlightened verdict of mankind may be two generationshence, no living mortal can tell. The worshippersof intellect may attempt to reverse or modify thejudgment already passed, but the impressive truth remainsthat no man, however great his genius, will be permanentlyjudged aside from character. When Lord Baconleft his name and memory to men’s charitablejudgments and the next age, he probably had in viewhis invaluable legacy to mankind of earnest searchingsafter truth, which made him one of the greatest ofhuman benefactors. How far the poetry of Byronhas proved a blessing to the world must be left toan abler critic than I lay claim to be. In himthe good and evil went hand in hand in the eternalwarfare which ancient Persian sages saw between thepowers of light and darkness in every human soul,—aconsciousness of which warfare made Byron himselfin his saddest hours wish he had never lived at all.
If we could, in his life and in his works, separatethe evil from the good, and let only the good remain,—thenhis services to literature could hardly be exaggerated,and he would be honored as the greatest English poet,so far as native genius goes, after Shakespeare andMilton.
THOMAS CARLYLE.
1795-1881.
CRITICISM AND BIOGRAPHY.
The now famous biography of Thomas Carlyle, by Mr.Froude, shed a new light on the eccentric Scotch essayist,and in some respects changed the impressions producedby his own “Reminiscences” and the Lettersof his wife. It is with the aid of those twobrilliant and interesting volumes on Carlyle’s“Earlier Life” and “Life in London,”issued about two years after the death of their distinguishedsubject, that I have rewritten my own view of oneof the most remarkable men of the nineteenth century.
Of the men of genius who have produced a great effecton their own time, there is no one concerning whomsuch fluctuating opinions have prevailed within fortyyears as in regard to Carlyle. His old admirersbecame his detractors, and those who first dislikedhim became his friends. When his earlier worksappeared they attracted but little general notice,though there were many who saw in him a new light,or a new power to brush away cobwebs and shams, andto exalt the spiritual and eternal in man over allmaterialistic theories and worldly conventionalities.
Carlyle’s “Miscellanies”—essayspublished first in the leading Reviews, when he livedin his moorland retreat—created enthusiasmamong young students and genuine thinkers of everycreed. Lord Jeffrey detected the new genius andgave him a lift. Carlyle’s “FrenchRevolution” took the world by surprise, andestablished his fame. His “Oliver Cromwell”modified and perhaps changed the opinions of Englishand American people respecting the Great Protector.It was then that his popularity was greatest, andthat the eccentric genius of Cheyne Row, so long strugglingwith poverty, was assured of a competence, and wasreceived in some of the proudest families of the kingdomas a teacher and a sage. Thus far he was an optimist,taking cheerful views of human life, and encouragingthose who had noble aspirations.
But for some unaccountable reason, whether from discontentor dyspepsia or disappointment, or disgust with thisworld, Carlyle gradually became a pessimist, and attackedall forms of philanthropy, thus alienating those whohad been his warmest supporters. He grew morebitter and morose, until at last he howled almostlike a madman, and was steeped in cynicism and gloom.He put forth the doctrine that might was right, andthat thrones belong to the strongest. He saw noreliance in governments save upon physical force,and expressed the most boundless contempt for allinstitutions established by the people. Then hewrote his “Frederic the Great,”—hismost ambitious and elaborate production, receivedas an authority from its marvellous historical accuracy,but not so generally read as his “French Revolution,”and not, like his “Cromwell,” changingthe opinions of mankind.
Soon after this the death of his wife plunged himinto renewed gloom, from which he never emerged; andhe virtually retired from the world, and was lostsight of by the younger generation, until his “Reminiscences”appeared, injudiciously published at his request byhis friend and pupil Froude, in which his scorn andcontempt for everybody and everything turned the currentof public opinion strongly against him. Thiswas still further increased when the Letters of hiswife appeared.
Carlyle’s bitterest assailants were now agnosticsof every shade and degree, especially of the humanitarianschool,—that to which Mill and George Eliotbelonged. It was seen that this reviler of hypocrisyand shams, this disbeliever in miracles and in mechanismsto save society, was after all a believer in God Almightyand in immortality; a stern advocate of justice andduty, appealing to the conscience of mankind; a manwho detested Comte the positivist as much as he despisedMill the agnostic, and who exalted the old religionof his fathers, stripped of supernaturalism, as theonly hope of the world. The biography by Froude,while it does not conceal the atrabilious temperamentof Carlyle, his bad temper, his intense egotism, hisirritability, his overweening pride, his scorn, his
profound loneliness and sorrow, and the deep gloominto which he finally settled, made clear at the sametime his honest and tender nature, his noble independence,his heroic struggles with poverty of which he nevercomplained, his generous charities, his conscientiousnessand allegiance to duty, his constant labors amid diseaseand excessive nervousness, and his profound and unvaryinglove for his wife, although he was deficient in thosesmall attentions and demonstrations of affection whichare so much prized by women. If it be asked whetherhe was happy in his domestic relations, I would saythat he was as much so as such a man could be.But it was a physical and moral impossibility thatwith his ailments and temper he could be happy.He was not sent into this world to be happy, but todo a work which only such a man as he could do.So displeasing, however, were the personal peculiaritiesof Carlyle that the man can never be popular.This hyperborean literary giant, speaking a Babyloniandialect, smiting remorselessly all pretenders andquacks, and even honest fools, was himself personallya bundle of contradictions, fierce and sad by turns.He was a compound of Diogenes, Jeremiah, and Dr. Johnson:like the Grecian cynic in his contempt and scorn,like the Jewish prophet in his melancholy lamentations,like the English moralist in his grim humor and overbearingdogmatism.
It is unfortunate that we know so much of the man.Better would it be for his fame if we knew nothingat all of his habits and peculiarities. In ourblended admiration and contempt, our minds are divertedfrom the lasting literary legacy he has left, which,after all, is the chief thing that concerns us.The mortal man is dead, but his works live. Thebiography of a great man is interesting, but his thoughtsgo coursing round the world, penetrating even thedistant ages, modifying systems and institutions.What a mighty power is law! Yet how little dowe know or care, comparatively, for lawgivers!
Thomas Carlyle was born in the year 1795, of humbleparentage, in an obscure Scotch village. Hisfather was a stone-mason, much respected for doinggood work, and for his virtue and intelligence,—arough, rugged man who appreciated the value of education.Although kind-hearted and religious, it would seemthat he was as hard and undemonstrative as an old-fashionedPuritan farmer,—one of those men who neverkiss their children, or even their wives, before people.His mother also was sagacious and religious, and markedby great individuality of character. For thesestern parents Carlyle ever cherished the profoundestrespect and affection, regularly visiting them oncea year wherever he might be, writing to them frequently,and yielding as much to their influence as to thatof anybody.
At the age of fourteen the boy was sent to the Universityof Edinburgh, with but little money in his pocket,and forced to practise the most rigid economy.He did not make a distinguished mark at college, nordid he cultivate many friendships. He was reserved,shy, awkward, and proud. After leaving collegehe became a school-teacher, with no aptness and muchdisdain for his calling. It was then that he formedthe acquaintance of Edward Irving, which ripened intothe warmest friendship of his life. He was muchindebted to this celebrated preacher for the intellectualimpulse received from him. Irving was at the headof a school at Kirkcaldy, and Carlyle became his assistant.Both these young men were ambitious, and aspired topre-eminence. Like Napoleon at the military schoolof Brienne, they would not have been contented withanything less, because they were conscious of theirgifts; and both attained their end. Irving becamethe greatest preacher of his day, and Carlyle thegreatest writer; but Carlyle had the most self-sustainedgreatness. Irving was led by the demon of popularityinto extravagances of utterance which destroyed hisinfluence. Carlyle, on the other hand, nevercourted popularity; but becoming bitter and cynicalin the rugged road he climbed to fame, he too lostmany of his admirers.
In ceasing to be a country schoolmaster, Carlyle didnot abandon teaching. He removed to Edinburghfor the study of divinity, and supported himself bygiving lessons. He had been destined by his parentsto be a minister of the Kirk of Scotland; but at theage of twenty-three he entered upon a severe self-examinationto decide whether he honestly believed and could preachits doctrines. Weeks of intense struggle freedhim from the intellectual bonds of the kirk, but fastenedupon him the chronic disorder of his stomach whichembittered his life, and in later years distortedhis vision of the world about him. At the recommendationof his friend Irving, then preacher at Hatton Gardens,Carlyle now became private tutor to the son of Mr.Charles Buller, an Anglo-Indian merchant, on a salaryof L200; and the tutor had the satisfaction of seeinghis pupil’s political advancement as a memberof the House of Commons and one of the most promisingmen in England.
About this time Carlyle, who had been industriouslystudying German and French, published a translationof Legendre’s “Elements of Geometry;”and in 1824 brought out a “Life of Schiller,”a work that he never thought much of, but which wasa very respectable performance. In fact, he neverthought much of any of his works: they were alwaysbehind his ideal. He wrote slowly, and took greatpains to be accurate; and in this respect he remindsus of George Eliot. Carlyle had no faith in rapidwriting of any sort, any more than Daniel Webster hadin extempore speaking. After he had become amaster of composition, it took him thirteen yearsof steady work to write “Frederick the Great,”—aboutthe same length of time it took Macaulay to writethe history of fifteen years of England’s life,whereas Gibbon wrote the whole of his voluminous andexhaustive “History of the Decline and Fall ofthe Roman Empire” in twenty years.
“Schiller” being finished, Carlyle wasnow launched upon his life-work as “a writerof books.” He translated Goethe’s“Wilhelm Meister,” for which he receivedL180. I do not see the transcendent excellenceof this novel, except in its original and forciblecriticism, and its undercurrent of philosophy; butit is nevertheless famous. These two works gaveCarlyle some literary reputation among scholars, butnot much fame.
Although Carlyle was thus fairly embarked on a literarycareer, the “trade” of literature he alwaysregarded as a poor one, and never encouraged a youngman to pursue it as a profession unless forced intoit by his own irresistible impulses. Its nobilityhe ranked very high, but not its remunerativeness.He regarded it as a luxury for the rich and leisurely,but a very thorny and discouraging path for a poorman. How few have ever got a living by it, unlessallied with other callings,—as a managingclerk, or professor, or lecturer, or editor!The finest productions of Emerson were originally deliveredas lectures. Novelists and dramatists, I think,are the only class, who, without doing anything else,have earned a comfortable support by their writings.Historians have, with very few exceptions, been independentin their circ*mstances.
In the year 1826, at the age of thirty-one, Carlylemarried Jane Welsh, the only child of a deceased physicianof Haddington, who had some little property in expectancyfrom the profits of a farm in the moorlands of Scotland.She was beautiful, intellectual, and nervously intense.She had been a pupil of Edward Irving, who had introducedhis friend Carlyle to her. On the whole, it wasa fortunate marriage for Carlyle, although it wouldhave been impossible for him to have or to give happinessin constant and intimate companionship with any woman.He was very fond of his wife, but in an undemonstrativesort of way,—except in his letters to her,which are genuine love-letters, tender and considerate.As in the case of most superior women, clouds at timesgathered over her, which her husband did not or couldnot dissipate. But she was very proud of him,and faithful to him, and careful of his interest andfame. Nor is there evidence from her letters,or from the late biography which Froude has written,that she was, on the whole, unhappy. She wasvery frank, very sharp with her tongue, and sometimesdid not spare her husband. She had a good dealto put up with from his irritable temper; but shealso was irritable, nervous, and sickly, althoughin her loyalty she rarely complained, while she hadmany privations to endure,—for Carlyle untilhe was nearly fifty was a poor man. During thefirst two years of their residence in London theywere obliged to live on L100 a year. He was neverin even moderately easy circ*mstances until after his“Oliver Cromwell” was published.
After his marriage, Carlyle lived eighteen monthsnear Edinburgh; but there was no opening for him inthe exclusive society there. His merits werenot then recognized as a man of genius in that cultivatedcapital, as it pre-eminently was at that time; buthe made the acquaintance of Jeffrey, who acknowledgedhis merit, admired his wife, and continued to be asgood a friend as that worldly but accomplished mancould be to one so far beneath him in social rank.
The next seven years of Carlyle’s life werespent at the Scotch moorland farm of Craigenputtock,belonging to his wife’s mother, which must havecontributed to his support. How any brilliantwoman, fond of society as Mrs. Carlyle was, couldhave lived contentedly in that dreary solitude, fifteenmiles from any visiting neighbor or town, is a mystery.She had been delicately reared, and the hard lifewore upon her health. Yet it was here that theyoung couple established themselves, and here thatsome of the young author’s best works were written,—asthe “Miscellanies” and “Sartor Resartus.”From here it was that he sent forth those magnificentarticles on Heyne, Goethe, Novalis, Voltaire, Burns,and Johnson, which, published in the Edinburgh andother Reviews, attracted the attention of the readingworld, and excited boundless admiration among students.
The earlier of these remarkable productions, likethose on Burns and Jean Paul Richter, were free fromthose eccentricities of style which Carlyle persistedin retaining with amazing pertinacity as he advancedin life,—except, again, in his letters tohis wife, which are models of clear writing.
The essay on “German Literature” appearedin the same year, 1827,—a longer and morevaluable article, a blended defence and eulogium ofa terra incognita, somewhat similar in spiritto that of Madame de Stael’s revelations twentyyears before, and in which the writer shows greatadmiration of German poetry and criticism. Perhapsno Englishman, with the possible exceptions of JuliusHare and Coleridge,—the latter then a broken-downold man,—had at that time so profound anacquaintance as Carlyle with German literature, whichwas his food and life during the seven years’retirement on his moorland farm. This essay alsowas comparatively free from the involved, grotesque,but vivid style of his later works; and it was religiousin its tone. “It is mournful,” writeshe, “to see so many noble, tender, and aspiringminds deserted of that light which once guided allsuch; mourning in the darkness because there is nohome for the soul; or, what is worse, pitching tentsamong the ashes, and kindling weak, earthly lamps whichwe are to take for stars. But this darkness isvery transitory. These ashes are the soil offuture herbage and richer harvests. Religiondwells in the soul of man, and is as eternal as thebeing of man.”
In this extract we see the optimism which runs throughCarlyle’s earlier writings,—the faithin creation which is to succeed destruction, the immortalhopes which sustain the soul. He believed in theGod of Abraham, and was as far from being a scofferas the heavens are higher than the earth. Hehad renounced historical Christianity, but he adheredto its essential spirit.
The next article which Carlyle published seems tohave been on Werner, followed the same year, 1828,by one on Goethe’s “Helena,”—acontinuation of his “Faust.” Thistranscendent work of German art, which should be studiedrather than read, is commented on by the reviewer withboundless admiration. If there was one human beingwhom Carlyle worshipped it was the dictator of Germanliterature, who reigned at Weimar as Voltaire hadreigned at Ferney. If he was not the first tointroduce the writings of Goethe into England, he wasthe great German’s warmest admirer. IfGoethe had faults, they were to Carlyle the faultsof a god, and he exalted him as the greatest lightof modern times,—a new force in the world,a new fire in the soul, who inaugurated a new erain literature which went to the heart of cultivatedEurope, weary of the doubts and denials that Voltairehad made fashionable. It seemed to Carlyle thatGoethe entered into the sorrows, the solemn questioningsand affirmations of the soul, seeking emancipationfrom dogmas and denials alike, and, in the spiritof Plato, resting on the certitudes of a higher life,—calm,self-poised, many-sided, having subdued passion ashe had outgrown cant; full of benignity, free fromsarcasm; a man of mighty and deep experiences, withknowledge of himself, of the world, and the wholerealm of literature; a great artist as well as a greatgenius, seated on the throne of letters, not to scatterthunderbolts, but to instruct the present and futuregenerations.
The next great essay which Carlyle published, thistime in the Edinburgh Review, was on Burns,—ahackneyed subject, yet treated with masterly ability.This article, in some respects his best, entirely freefrom mannerisms and affectation of style, is justin its criticism, glowing with eloquence, and fullof sympathy with the infirmities of a great poet,showing a remarkable insight into what is noblest andtruest. This essay is likely to live for stylealone, aside from its various other merits. Itis complete, exhaustive, brilliant, such as only aScotchman could have written who was familiar withthe laborious lives of the peasantry, living in therealm of art and truth, careless of outward circ*mstancesand trappings, and exalting only what is immortal andlofty. While Carlyle sees in Goethe the impersonationof human wisdom,—in every aspect a success,outwardly and inwardly, serene and potent as an Olympiandeity,—he sees in Burns a highly giftedgenius also, but yet a wreck and a failure; a manbroken down by the force of that degrading habit whichunfortunately and peculiarly and even mysteriouslyrobs a man of all dignity, all honor, and all senseof shame. Amid the misfortunes, the mistakes,and the degradations of the born poet, whom he alikeadmires and pities and mildly blames, he sees alsothe noble elements of the poet’s gifted soul,and loves him, especially for his sincerity, whichnext to labor he uniformly praises. It was the
In the same year appeared the Life of Heyne,—thegreat German scholar, pushing his way from the depthsof poverty and obscurity, by force of patient industryand genius, to a proud position and a national fame.“Let no unfriended son of genius despair,”exclaims Carlyle. “If he have the will,the power will not be denied him. Like the acorn,carelessly cast abroad in the wilderness, yet it risesto be an oak; on the wild soil it nourishes itself;it defies the tempest, and lives for a thousand years.”The whole outward life of Carlyle himself, like thatof Heyne, was an example of heroism amid difficulties,and hope amid the storms.
The next noticeable article which Carlyle publishedwas on Voltaire, and appeared in the Quarterly Reviewin 1829. It would appear that he hoped to findin this great oracle and guide of the eighteenth centurysomething to admire and praise commensurate with hisgreat fame. But vainly. Voltaire, thoughfortunate beyond example in literary history, versatile,laborious, brilliant in style,—poet, satirist,historian, and essayist,—seemed to Carlyleto be superficial, irreligious, and egotistical.The critic ascribes his power to ridicule,—aLucian, who destroyed but did not reconstruct; worldly,material, sceptical, defiant, utterly lacking thatearnestness without which nothing permanently greatcan be effected. Carlyle says:—
“Voltaire read history, not with the eye ofa devout seer, or even critic, but through a pairof mere anti-Catholic spectacles. It is not amighty drama, enacted on the theatre of infinitude,with suns for lamps and eternity as a background,whose author is God and whose purport leads to thethrone of God, but a poor, wearisome debating-clubdispute, spun through ten centuries, between the Encyclopedieand the Sorbonne.”
Carlyle’s essays for the next two years, chieflyon German literature, which he admired and soughtto introduce to his countrymen, were published invarious Reviews. I can only allude to one on Richter,whose whimsicality of style he unconsciously copied,and whose original ideas he made his own. Inthis essay Carlyle introduced to the English peoplea great German, but a grotesque, whose writings willprobably never be read much out of Germany, excellentas they are, on account of the “jarring combinationof parentheses, dashes, hyphens, figures without limit,one tissue of metaphors and similes, interlaced withepigrammatic bursts and sardonic turns,—aheterogeneous, unparalleled imbroglio of perplexityand extravagance.” There was another, onSchiller, not an idol to Carlyle as Goethe was, yeta great poet and a true man, with deep insight andintense earnestness. “His works,”said Carlyle, “and the memory of what he was,will arise afar off, like a towering landmark in thesolitude of the past, when distance shall have dwarfedinto invisibility many lesser people that once encompassedhim, and hid them forever from the near beholder.”
Thus far Carlyle had confined himself to biographyand essays on German literature, in which his extraordinaryinsight is seen; but now he enters another field,and writes a strictly original essay, called “Characteristics,”published in the Edinburgh Review in the prolificyear of 1831, in which essay we see the germs of hisphilosophy. The article is hard to read, andis disfigured by obscurities which leave a doubt onthe mind of the reader as to whether the author understoodthe subject about which he was writing,—forCarlyle was not a philosopher, but a painter and prose-poet.There is no stream of logic running consistently throughhis writings. In “Characteristics”he seems to have had merely glimpses of great truthswhich he could not clearly express, and which wonhim the reputation of being a German transcendentalist.Its leading idea is the commonplace one of the progressof society, which no sane and Christian man has everseriously questioned,—not an uninterruptedprogress, but a general advance, brought about byChristian ideas. Any other view of progress isdreary and discouraging; nor is this inconsistentwith great catastrophes and national backslidings,with the fall of empires, and French Revolutions.
We note at this time in Carlyle’s writings,on the whole, a cheerful view of human life in spiteof sorrows, hardships, and disappointments, whichare made by Divine Providence to act as healthy discipline.We see nothing of the angry pessimism of his laterwritings. Those years at Craigenputtock werehealthy and wholesome; he labored in hope, and hadgreat intellectual and artistic enjoyment, which reconciledhim to solitude,—the chief evil with whichhe had to contend, after dyspepsia. His habitswere frugal, but poverty did not stare him in the face,since he had the income of the farm. It doesnot appear that the deep gloom which subsequentlycame over his soul oppressed him in his moorland retreat.He did not sympathize with any religion of denials,but felt that out of the jargon of false and pretentiousphilosophies would come at last a positive beliefwhich would once more enthrone God in the world.
After writing another characteristic article, on Biography,he furnished for Fraser’s Magazine one of thefinest biographical portraits ever painted,—thatof Dr. Johnson, in which that cyclopean worker standsout, with even more distinctness than in Boswell’s“Life,” as one of the most honest, earnest,patient laborers in the whole field of literature.Carlyle makes us almost love this man, in spite ofhis awkwardness, dogmatism, and petulance. Johnsonin his day was an acknowledged dictator on all literaryquestions, surrounded by admirers of the highest gifts,who did homage to his learning,—a man ofmore striking individuality than any other celebrityin England, and a man of intense religious convictionsin an age of religious indifference. We now wonderwhy this struggling, poorly paid, and disagreeableman of letters should have had such an ascendencyover men superior to himself in learning, genius,and culture, as Burke and Gibbon doubtless were.Even Goldsmith, whom he snubbed and loved, is nowmore popular than he. It was the heroism of hischaracter which Carlyle so much admired and so vividlydescribed,—contending with so many difficulties,yet surmounting them all by his persistent industryand noble aspirations; never losing faith in himselfor his Maker, never servilely bowing down to rank andwealth, as others did, and maintaining his self-respectin whatever condition he was placed. In thisdelightful biography we are made to see the superiorityof character to genius, and the dignity of labor whenidleness was the coveted desire of most fortunate men,as well as the almost universal vice of the magnatesof the land. Labor, to the mind of Johnson aswell as to that of Carlyle, is not only honorable,but is a necessity which Nature imposes as the conditionof happiness and usefulness. Nor does Carlylesneer at the wedded life of Johnson, made up of “drizzleand dry weather,” but reverences his fidelityto his best friend, uninteresting as she was to theworld, and his plaintive and touching grief when shepassed away.
Carlyle in this essay exalts a life of letters, howeverpoorly paid (which Pope in his “Dunciad”did so much to depreciate), showing how it contributesto the elevation of a nation, and to those lofty pleasureswhich no wealth can purchase. But it is the moraldignity of Johnson which the essay makes to shinemost conspicuously in his character, supported ashe was by the truths of religion, in which under allcirc*mstances he proudly glories, and without whichhe must have made shipwreck of himself amid so manydiscouragements, maladies, and embarrassments,—forhis greatest labors were made with poverty, distress,and obscurity for his companions,—untilat last, victorious over every external evil and viletemptation, he emerged into the realm of peace andlight, and became an oracle and a sage wherever hechose to go.
Johnson was the greatest master of conversation inhis day, whose detached sayings are still quoted moreoften than his most elaborate periods. I apprehendthat there was a great contrast between Johnson’swritings and his conversation. While the formerare Ciceronian, his talk was epigrammatic, terse,and direct; and its charm and power were in his pointedand vehement Saxon style. Had he talked as hewrote, he would have been wearisome and pedantic.Still, like Coleridge and Robert Hall, he preachedrather than conversed, thinking what he himself shouldsay rather than paying attention to what others said,except to combat and rebuke them,—a discourser,as Macaulay was; not one to suggest interchange ofideas, as Addison did. But neither power of conversationnor learning would have made Johnson a literary dictator.His power was in the force of his character, his earnestness,and sincerity, even more than in his genius.
I will not dwell on the other Review articles whichCarlyle wrote in his isolated retreat, since publishedas “Miscellanies,” on which his fame inno small degree rests,—even as the essaysof Macaulay may be read when his more elaborate Historywill lie neglected on the shelves of libraries.Carlyle put his soul into these miscellanies, and thelabor and enjoyment of writing made him partiallyforget his ailments. I look upon those yearsat Craigenputtock as the brightest and healthiest ofhis life, removed as he was from the sight of levitiesand follies which tormented his soul and irritatedhis temper.
Carlyle contrived to save about L200 from his literaryearnings, so frugal was his life and so free fromtemptations. His recreation was in wanderingon foot or horseback over the silent moors and unendinghills, watered by nameless rills and shadowed by mistsand vapors. His life was solitary, but not moreso than that of Moses amid the deserts of Midian,—isolation,indeed, but in which the highest wisdom is matured.Into this retreat Emerson penetrated, a young man,with boundless enthusiasm for his teacher,—forCarlyle was a teacher to him as to hundreds of othersin this country. Carlyle never had a truer andbetter friend than Emerson, who opened to him thegreat reward of recognition in distant America whileyet his own land refused to take knowledge of him;and this friendship continued to the end, an honorto both,—for Carlyle never saw in Emerson’swritings the genius and wisdom which his Americanfriend admired in the Scottish sage. Nor weretheir opinions so harmonious as some suppose.Emerson despised Calvinism, and had no definite opinionson any theological subject; Carlyle was a Calvinistwithout the theology of Calvinism, if that be possible.He did not, indeed, believe in historical Christianity,but he had the profoundest convictions of an overrulingGod, reigning in justice, and making the wrath ofman to praise Him. Carlyle, too, despised everythingvisionary and indefinite, and had more respect for
what is brought about by revolution than by evolution.But of all things he held in profoundest abhorrencethe dreary theories of materialists and political economists.It was the spirit and not the body which stood outin his eyes as of most importance; it was the manlyvirtues which he reverenced in man, not his clothesand surroundings. And it was on this lofty spiritualplane that Carlyle and Emerson stood in complete harmonytogether.I cannot quit this part of Carlyle’s life withoutmention of what I conceive to be his most originaland remarkable production,—“SartorResartus,”—The Stitcher Restitched:or, The Tailor Done Over,—the title ofan old Scotch song. It is a quaintly conceivedreproduction of the work of an imaginary German professoron “The Philosophy of Clothes,”—underwhich external figure he includes all institutions,customs, beliefs, in which humanity has draped itself,as distinguished from the inner reality of man himself.“The beginning of all Wisdom,” he says,“is to look fixedly on Clothes, or even witharmed eyesight, till they become transparent.”And thus, in grotesque fashion, with amazing vigorhe ranges the universe in search of the Real.In one of his letters to Emerson, Carlyle, discussinga project of lecturing in America, takes on his sartorialprofessor’s name, and writes: “Couldany one but appoint me Lecturing Professor of Teufelsdroeckh’sScience,—’Things in General’!”This work was written in his remote solitude, yetnot published for years after it was finished,—andfor the best of reasons, because with all his literaryrepute Carlyle could not find a publisher. The“Sartor” was not appreciated; and Carlyle,knowing its value, locked it up in his drawer, andwaited for his time.
The “Sartor Resartus” is a sort of prosepoem, written with the heart’s blood, vividas fire in a dark night; a Dantean production; a revelationprobably of the author’s own struggles and experiencesfrom the dark gulf of the “Everlasting Nay”to the clear and serene heights of the “EverlastingYea.” To me the book is full of consolationand encouragement,—a battle of the spiritwith infernal doubts, a victory over despair, overall external evils and all spiritual foes. Itis also a bold and grotesque but scorching sarcasmof the conventionalities and hypocrisies of society,and a savage thrust at those quackeries which seemto reign in this world in spite of their falsity andshallowness. It is not, I grant, easy to read.It is full of conceits and affectations of style,—apuzzle to some, a rebuke to others. “Everypage of this unique collection of confessions and meditations,of passionate invective and solemn reflection,”is stamped with the seal of genius, and yet was thelast of Carlyle’s writings to be appreciated.I believe that this is the ordinary fate of trulyoriginal works, those that are destined to live thelongest, especially if they burn no incense to theidols of prevailing worship, and be characterized by
a style which, to say the least, is extraordinary.Flashy, brilliant, witty, yet superficial picturesof external life which everybody has seen and knows,are the soonest to find admirers; but a revelationof what is not seen, this is the work of seers andprophets whose ordinary destiny has been anythingother than to wear soft raiment and sit in king’spalaces. The “Sartor” was at last,in 1833-1834, printed in Fraser’s Magazine,meeting no appreciation in England, but very enthusiasticallyreceived by Emerson, Channing, Ripley, and a groupof advanced thinkers in New England, through whoseefforts it was published here in book form. Andso, in spite of timid London publishers, it driftedback to London and a slow-growing fame. In ourtime, sixty years later, it sells by scores of thousandsannually, in cheap and in luxurious editions, throughoutthe English-speaking world.In respect of early recognition and popularity, Carlylediffers from his great contemporary Macaulay, whowas so immediately and so magnificently rewarded,and yet received no more than his due as the finestprose writer of his day. Macaulay’s Essaysare generally word-pictures of remarkable men andremarkable events, but of men of action rather thanof quiet meditation. His heroes are such men asClive and Hastings and Pitt, not such men as Pascalor Augustine or Leibnitz or Goethe. But Carlylein his heroes paints the struggling soul in its deepestaspirations, and the truths evolved by profound meditations.These are not such as gain instant popular acceptance;yet they are the longer-lived.
The time came at last for Carlyle to leave his retirementamong moors and hills, and in 1831 he directed hissteps to London, spending the winter with his wifein the great centre of English life and thought, andbeing well received; so that in 1834 he removed permanentlyto the metropolis. But he was scarcely less buriedat his modest house in Chelsea than he had been onhis farm, for he came to London with only L200, andwas obliged to practise the most rigid economy.For two years he labored in his London workshop withoutearning a shilling, and with a limited acquaintance.Not yet was his society sought by the great worldwhich he mocked and despised. He fortunately hadthe genial and agreeable Leigh Hunt for a neighbor,and Edward Irving for his friend. He was knownto the critics by his writings, but his circle of personalfriends was small. He was more or less intimatewith John Stuart Mill, Charles Austin, Sir WilliamMolesworth, and the advanced section of the philosophicalradicals,—the very class of men from whomhe afterwards was most estranged. None of thesem*n forwarded his fortunes; but they lent him books,and helped him at the libraries, for no carpenter canwork without tools.
The work to which Carlyle now devoted himself wasa history of the French Revolution, the principalcharacters of which he had already studied and writtenabout. It was a subject adapted to his geniusfor dramatic writing, and for the presentation ofhis views as to retribution. His whole theology,according to Froude, was underlaid by the belief inpunishment for sin, which was impressed upon his mindby his God-fearing parents, and was one of his firmestconvictions. The French were to his mind thegreatest sinners among Christian nations, and thereforewere to reap a fearful penalty. To paint in anew and impressive form the inevitable calamitiesattendant on violated law and justice, was the aspirationof Carlyle. He had money enough to last him witheconomy for two years. In this time he hoped tocomplete his work. The possibility was due tothe intelligent thrift of his wife. Commentingon one of her letters describing their snug littlehouse, he writes:—
“From birth upwards she had lived in opulence;and now, for my sake, had become poor,—sonobly poor. Truly, her pretty little brag [inthis letter] was well founded. No such house,for beautiful thrift, quiet, spontaneous, nay, asit were, unconscious—minimum of money reconciledto human comfort and human dignity—haveI anywhere looked upon.”
He devoted himself to his task with intense interest,and was completely preoccupied.
In the winter of 1835, after a year of general study,collection of material and writing, and at last “bydint of continual endeavor for many weary weeks,”the first volume was completed and submitted to hisfriend Mill. The valuable manuscript was accidentallyand ignorantly destroyed by a servant, and Mill wasin despair. Carlyle bore the loss like a hero.He did not chide or repine. If his spirit sunkwithin him, it was when he was alone in his libraryor in the society of his sympathizing wife. Hegenerously writes to Emerson,—
“I could not complain, or the poor man wouldhave shot himself: we had to gather ourselvestogether, and show a smooth front to it,—whichhappily, though difficult, was not impossible to do.I began again at the beginning, to such a wretched,paralyzing torpedo of a task as my hand never foundto do.”
Mill made all the reparation possible. He gavehis friend L200, but Carlyle would accept only L100.Few men could have rewritten with any heart that firstvolume: it would be almost impossible to revivesufficient interest; the precious inspiration wouldhave been wanting. Yet Carlyle manfully accomplishedhis task, and I am inclined to think that the secondwriting was better than the first; that he probablyleft out what was unessential, and made a more condensednarrative,—a more complete picture, forhis memory was singularly retentive. I do notbelieve that any man can do his best at the first heat.See how the great poets revise and rewrite. Brougham
rewrote his celebrated peroration on the trial ofQueen Caroline seventeen times. Carlyle had torewrite his book, but his materials remained; his greatpictures were all in his mind. In this secondwriting there may have been less emotion,—lessfire in his descriptions; but there was fire enough,for his vivacity was excessive. Even hiswork could be pruned, not by others, but by himself.“The household at Chelsea was never closer drawntogether than in those times of trial.”Carlyle lost time and spirits, but he could affordthe loss. The entire work was delayed, but wasdone at last. The final sentence of Vol.III. was written at ten o’clock on a damp evening,January 14, 1837.This great work, the most ambitious and famous ofall Carlyle’s writings, and in many respectshis best, was not received by the public with theenthusiam it ought to have awakened. It was notappreciated by the people at large. “Ordinaryreaders were not enraptured by the Iliad swiftnessand vividness of the narrative, its sustained passion,the flow of poetry, the touches of grandeur and tenderness,and the masterly touches by which he made the greatactors stand out in their individuality.”It seemed to many to be extravagant, exaggerated, atwar with all the “feudalities of literature.”Partisans of all kinds were offended. The stylewas startlingly broken, almost savage in strength,vivid and distinct as lightning. Doubtless theman himself had grown away from the quieter moodsof his earlier essays. Froude quotes this fromCarlyle’s journal: “The poor peopleseem to think a style can be put off or on, not likea skin but like a coat. Is not a skin verily aproduct and close kinsfellow of all that lies underit, exact type of the nature of the beast, not tobe plucked off without flaying and death? ThePublic is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.”
But the extraordinary merits of the book made a greatimpression on the cultivated intellects of England,—suchmen as Jeffrey, Macaulay, Southey, Hallam, Brougham,Thackeray, Dickens,—who saw and admittedthat a great genius had arisen, whether they agreedwith his views or not. In America, we may beproud to say, the work created general enthusiasm,and its republication through Emerson’s effortsbrought some money as well as larger fame to its author.Of the first moneys that Emerson sent Carlyle as fruitsof this adventure, the dyspeptic Scotchman wrote thathe was “half-resolved to buy myself a sharp littlenag with twenty of these trans-Atlantic pounds, andride him till the other thirty be eaten. I willcall the creature ‘Yankee.’ ... Mykind friends!” And Yankee was duly boughtand ridden.
Carlyle still remained in straitened circ*mstances,although his reputation was now established.In order to assist him in his great necessities hisfriends got up lectures for him, which were attendedby the elite of London. He gave severalcourses in successive years during the London season,which brought him more money than his writings atthat time, gave him personal eclat, and addedlargely to his circle of admirers. His secondcourse of twelve lectures brought him L300,—ayear’s harvest, and a large sum for lecturesin England, where the literary institutions rarelypaid over L5 for a single lecture. Even in latertimes the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, whichcommanded the finest talent, paid only L10 to suchmen as Froude and the archbishop of York.
But lecturing, to many men an agreeable excitement,seems to have been very unpleasant to Carlyle,—evenrepulsive. Though the lectures brought both moneyand fame, he abominated the delivery of them.They broke his rest, destroyed his peace of mind,and depressed his spirits. Nothing but direstnecessity reconciled him to the disagreeable task.He never took any satisfaction or pride in his successin this field; nor was his success probably legitimate.People went to see him as a new literary lion,—tohear him roar, not to be edified. He had no peculiarqualification for public speaking, and he affectedto despise it. Very few English men of lettershave had this gift. Indeed, popular eloquenceis at a discount among the cultivated classes in England.They prefer to read at their leisure. Populareloquence best thrives in democracies, as in thatof ancient Athens; aristocrats disdain it, and fearit. In their contempt for it they even affecthesitation and stammering, not only when called uponto speak in public, but also in social converse, untilthe halting style has come to be known among Americansas “very English.” In absolute monarchieseloquence is rare except in the pulpit or at the bar.Cicero would have had no field, and would not probablyhave been endured, in the reign of Nero; yet Bossuetand Bourdaloue were the delight of Louis XIV.What would that monarch have said to the speechesof Mirabeau?
After the publication in 1837 of the “FrenchRevolution,”—that “roaringconflagration of anarchies,” that series of graphicpictures rather than a history or even a criticism,—itwas some time before Carlyle could settle down uponanother great work. He delivered lectures, wrotetracts and essays, gave vent to his humors, and nursedhis ailments. He was now famous,—aman whom everybody wished to see and know, especiallyAmericans when they came to London, but whom he generallysnubbed (as he did me) and pronounced them bores.It was at this time that he made the acquaintanceof Monckton Milnes, afterward Lord Houghton, who invitedhim to breakfast, where he met other notabilities,—amongthem Bunsen the Prussian Ambassador at London; LordMahon the historian; and Mr. Baring, afterward LordAshburton, the warmest and the truest of his friends,who extended to him the most generous hospitalities.
Carlyle was now in what is called “high society,”and was “taking life easy,”—writingbut little, yet reading much, especially about OliverCromwell, whose Life he thought of writing. Hislectures at this period were more successful thanever, attended by great and fashionable people; andfrom them his chief income was derived.
While collecting materials for his Life of Cromwell,Carlyle became deeply interested in the movementsof the Chartists, composed chiefly of working-menwith socialistic tendencies. He was called a “radical,”—andhe did believe in a radical reform of men’s lives,especially of the upper classes who showed but littlesympathy for the poor. He was not satisfied withthe Whigs, who believed that the Reform Bill wouldusher in a political millennium. He had moresympathy with the “conservative” Toriesthan the “liberal” Whigs; but his opinionswere not acceptable to either of the great politicalparties. They alike distrusted him. EvenMill had a year before declined an article on the workingclasses for his Review, the Westminster. Carlyletook it to Lockhart of the Quarterly, but Lockhartwas afraid to publish it. Mill, then about toleave the Westminster, wished to insert it as a finalshout; but Carlyle declined, and in 1839 expandedhis article into a book called “Chartism,”which was rapidly sold and loudly noticed. Itgave but little satisfaction, however. It offendedthe conservatives by exposing sores that could notbe healed, while on the other hand the radicals didnot wish to be told that men were far from being equal,—thatin fact they were very unequal; and that society couldnot be advanced by debating clubs or economical theories,but only by gifted individuals as instruments of DivineProvidence, guiding mankind by their superior wisdom.
These views were expanded in a new course of lectures,on “Heroes and Hero Worship,” and subsequentlyprinted,—the most able and suggestive ofall Carlyle’s lectures, delivered in the springof 1840 with great eclat. He never appearedon the platform again. Lecturing, as we havesaid, was not to his taste; he preferred to earn hisliving by his pen, and his writings had now begunto yield a comfortable support. He received onaccount of them L400 from America alone, thanks tothe influence of his friend Emerson.
Carlyle now began to weary of the distraction of Londonlife, and pined for the country. But his wifewould not hear a word about it; she had had enoughof the country, at Craigenputtock. Meanwhile preparationsfor the Life of Cromwell went on slowly, varied byvisits to his relatives in Scotland, travels on theContinent, and interviews with distinguished men.His mind at this period (1842) was most occupied withthe sad condition of the English people,—everywhereriots, disturbances, physical suffering and abjectpoverty among the masses, for the Corn Laws had notthen been repealed; and to Carlyle’s vision there
was a most melancholy prospect ahead,—notrevolution, but universal degradation, and the reignof injustice. This sad condition of the peoplewas contrasted in his mind with what it had been centuriesbefore, as it appeared from an old book which he happenedto read, Jocelin’s Chronicles, which paintedEnglish life in the twelfth century. He fanciedthat the world was going on from bad to worse; andin this gloomy state of mind he wrote his “Pastand Present,” which appeared in 1843, and createda storm of anger as well as admiration. It wasa sort of protest against the political systems ofeconomy then so popular. Lockhart said of itthat he could accept none of his friend’s inferencesexcept one,—“that we were all wrong,and were all like to be damned.”Gloomy and satirical as the book was, it made a greatimpression on the thinkers of the day, while it didnot add to the author’s popularity. Itseemed as if he were a prophet of wrath,—anIshmaelite whose hand was against everybody.He offended all political parties,—“theTories by his radicalism, and the Radicals by hisscorn of their formulas; the High Churchman by hisProtestantism, and the Low Churchman by evident unorthodoxy.”Yet all parties and sects admitted that much that hesaid was true, while at the same time they had nosympathy with his fierce ravings.
For ten years after the publication of the “FrenchRevolution” Carlyle assumed the functions ofa prophet, hurling anathemas and pronouncing woes.To his mind everything was alike disjointed or falseor pretentious, in view of which he uttered groansand hisses and maledictions. The very name ofa society designed to ameliorate evils seemed to puthim into a passion. Every reformer appeared tohim to be a blind teacher of the blind. ExeterHall, then the scene of every variety of social andreligious and political discussion, was to him a veritablepandemonium. Everybody at that period of agitationand reform was giving lectures, and everybody wentto hear them; and Carlyle ridiculed them all alikeas pedlers of nostrums to heal diseases which wereincurable. He lived in an atmosphere of disdain.“The English people,” said he, “numbersome thirty millions,—mostly fools.”His friends expostulated with him for giving utteranceto such bitter expressions, and for holding such gloomyviews. John Mill was mortally offended, and walkedno more with him. De Quincey said, “Youhave made a new hole in your society kettle:how do you propose to mend it?”
Yet all this while Carlyle had not lost faith in Providence,as it might seem, but felt that God would inflictcalamities on peoples for their sins. He resembledSavonarola more than he did Voltaire. What seemedto some to be mockeries were really the earnest protestsof his soul against universal corruption, to be followedby downward courses and retribution. His mindwas morbid from intense reflection on certain evils,and from his physical ailments. He doubtless grievedand alienated his best friends by his diatribes againstpopular education and free institutions. He evenappeared to lean to despotism and the rule of tyrants,provided only they were strong.
Thus Carlyle destroyed his influence, even while hemoved the mind to reflection. It was seen andfelt that he had no sympathy with many movements designedto benefit society, and that he cherished utter scornfor many active philanthropists. In his bitterness,wrath, and disdain he became himself intolerant.In some of his wild utterances he brought upon himselfalmost universal reproach, as when he said, “Inever thought the rights of negroes worth much discussing,nor the rights of man in any form,”—asentiment which militated against his whole philosophy.In this strange and unhappy mood of mind, the “LatterDay Pamphlets,” “Past and Present,”and other essays were written, which undermined thereverence in which he had been held. These werethe blots on his great career, which may be tracedto sickness and a disordered mind.
In fact, Carlyle cannot be called a sound writer atany period. He contradicts himself. He isa great painter, a prose-poet, a satirist,—nota philosopher; perhaps the most suggestive writer ofthe nineteenth century, often giving utterance tothe grandest thoughts, yet not a safe guide at alltimes, since he is inconsistent and full of exaggerations.
The morbid and unhealthy tone of Carlyle’s mindat this period may be seen by an extract from oneof his letters to Sterling:—
“I see almost nobody. I avoid sight, rather,and study to consume my own smoke. I wish youwould build me, among your buildings, some small ProphetChamber, fifteen feet square, with a flue for smoking,sacred from all noises of dogs, co*cks, and piano-fortes,engaging some dumb old woman to light a fire for medaily, and boil some kind of a kettle.”
Thus quaintly he expressed his desire for uninterruptedsolitude, where he could work to advantage.
He was then engaged on Cromwell, and the few personswith whom he exchanged letters show how retired washis life. His friends were also few, althoughhe could have met as many persons as pleased him.He was too much absorbed with work to be what is calleda society man; but what society he did see was ofthe best.
At last Carlyle’s task on the “Life ofOliver Cromwell” was finished in August, 1845,when he was fifty years of age. It was the greatestcontribution to English history; Mr. Froude thinks,which has been made in the present century. “Carlylewas the first to make Cromwell and his age intelligibleto mankind.” Indeed, he reversed the opinionsof mankind respecting that remarkable man, which wasa great accomplishment. No one doubts the genuinenessof the portrait. Cromwell was almost universallysupposed, fifty years ago, to be a hypocrite as wellas a usurper. In Carlyle’s hands he standsout visionary, perhaps, but yet practical, sincere,earnest, God-fearing,—a patriot devotedto the good of his country. Carlyle rescued agreat historical personage from the accumulated slandersof two centuries, and did his work so well that nohostile criticisms have modified his verdict.He has painted a picture which is immortal. Theinsight, the sagacity, the ability, and the statesmanshipof Cromwell are impressed upon the minds of all readers.That England never had a greater or more enlightenedruler, everybody is now forced to admit,—andnot merely a patriotic but a Christian ruler, whor*garded himself simply as the instrument of Providence.
People still differ as to the cause in which Cromwellembarked, and few defend the means he used to accomplishhis ends. He does not stand out as a perfectman; he made mistakes, and committed political crimeswhich can be defended only on grounds of expediency.But his private life was above reproach, and he diedin the triumph of Christian faith, after having raisedhis country to a higher pitch of glory than had beenseen since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
The faults of the biographer centre in confoundingright with might; and this conspicuously false doctrineis the leading defect of the philosophy of Carlyle,runs through all his writings, and makes him an unsoundteacher. If this doctrine be true, then all theusurpers of the world from Caesar to Napoleon canbe justified. If this be true, then an irresistibleimperialism becomes the best government for mankind.It is but fair to say that Carlyle himself deniedthis inference. Writing of Lecky’s havingcharged him with believing in the divine right ofstrength, he says:—
“With respect to that poor heresy of might beingthe symbol of right ’to a certain great andvenerable author,’ I shall have to tell Leckyone day that quite the converse or reverseis the great and venerable author’s real opinion,—namely,that right is the eternal symbol of might; ... infact, he probably never met with a son of Adam morecontemptuous of might except when it rests on the aboveorigin.”
Yet the impression of all his strongest work is theother way.
Certain other kindred doctrines may be inferentiallydrawn from Carlyle’s defence of Cromwell; namely,that a popular assembly is incapable of guiding successfullythe destinies of a nation; that behind all constitutionslies an ultimate law of force; that majorities, assuch, have no more right to rule than kings and nobles;that the strongest are the best, and the best arethe strongest; that the right to rule lies with thosewho are right in mind and heart, as he supposed Cromwellto be, and who can execute their convictions.Such teachings, it need not be shown, are at war withthe whole progress of modern society and the enlightenedopinion of mankind.
The great merit of Carlyle’s History is in theclearness and vividness with which he paints his heroand the exposure of the injustice with which he hasbeen treated by historians. It is an able vindicationof Cromwell’s character. But the deductionsdrawn from his philosophy lead to absurdity, and arean insult to the understanding of the world.
It was about this time, on the conclusion of the “Cromwell,”when he was on the summit of his literary fame, andthe world began to shower its favors upon him, thatCarlyle’s days were saddened by a domestic troublewhich gave him inexpressible solicitude and grief.His wife, with whom he had lived happily for so manyyears, was exceedingly disturbed on account of hisintimate friendship with Lady Ashburton. Nothingcan be more plaintive and sadly beautiful than theletters he wrote to her on the occasion of her startingoff in a fit of spleen, after a stormy scene, to visitfriends at a distance; and what is singular is thatwe do not find in those letters, when his soul wasmoved to its very depths, any of his peculiaritiesof style. They are remarkably simple as wellas serious.
Carlyle’s friendship for one of the most brilliantand cultivated women of England, which the breathof scandal never for a moment assailed, was reasonableand natural, and was a great comfort to him. Hepersisted in enjoying it, knowing that his wife dislikedit. In this matter, which was a cloud upon hismarried life, and saddened the family hearth for years,Mrs. Carlyle was doubtless exacting and unreasonable;though some men would have yielded the point for thesake of a faithful wife,—or even for peace.There are those who think that Carlyle was selfishin keeping up an intercourse which was hateful tohis wife; but the Ashburtons were the best friendsthat Carlyle ever had, after he became famous,—andin their various country seats he enjoyed a hospitalityrarely extended to poor literary men. There hemet in enjoyable and helpful intercourse, when hecould not have seen them in his own house, some ofthe most distinguished men of the day,—menof rank and influence as well as those of literaryfame.
Until this intimacy with the Ashburtons, no domesticdisturbances of note had taken place in the Carlylehousehold. The wife may occasionally have beensad and lonely when her husband was preoccupied withhis studies; but this she ought to have anticipatedin marrying a literary man whose only support wasfrom his pen. Carlyle, too, was an inveteratesmoker, and she detested tobacco, so that he did notspend as much time in the parlor as he did in hislibrary, where he could smoke to his heart’scontent. On the whole, however, their lettersshow genuine mutual affection, and as much connubialhappiness as is common to most men and women, withfar more of intimate intellectual and spiritual congeniality.Carlyle, certainly, in all his letters, ever speaksof his wife with admiration and gratitude. Heregarded her as not only the most talented woman thathe had ever known, but as the one without whom hewas miserable. They were the best of comradesand companions from first to last, when at home together.
For a considerable period after the publication ofthe Life of Cromwell, Carlyle was apparently idle.He wrote for several years nothing of note excepthis “Latter Day Pamphlets” (1850), anda Life of his friend John Sterling (1851), to whomhe was tenderly attached. It would seem that hewas now in easy circ*mstances, although he retainedto the end his economical habits. He amused himselfwith travelling, and with frequent visits to distinguishedpeople in the country. If not a society man, hewas much sought; he dined often at the tables of thegreat, and personally knew almost every man of notein London. He sturdily took his place among distinguishedmen,—the intellectual peer of the greatest.He often met Macaulay, but was not intimate with him.I doubt if they even exchanged visits. The reasonfor this may have been that they were not congenialto each other in anything, and that the social positionof Macaulay was immeasurably higher than Carlyle’s.It would be hard to say which was the greater man.
It was not until 1852 or 1853, when Carlyle was fifty-eight,that he seriously set himself to write his Life ofFrederic II., his last great work, on which he perseveringlylabored for thirteen years. It is an exhaustivehistory of the Prussian hero, and is regarded in Germanyas the standard work on that great monarch and general.The first volume came out in 1858, and the last in1865. It is a marvel of industry and accuracy,—themost elaborate of all his works, but probably the leastread because of its enormous length and scholasticpedantries. It might be said to bear the samerelation to his “French Revolution” that“Romola” does to “Adam Bede.”In this book Carlyle made no new revelations, as hedid in his Life of Cromwell. He did not changeessentially the opinion of mankind. Frederickthe Great, in his hands, still stands out as an unscrupulouspublic enemy,—a robber and a tyrant.His crimes are only partially redeemed by his heroism,especially when Europe was in arms against him.There is the same defect in this great work that thereis in the Life of Cromwell,—the inculcationof the doctrine that might makes right; that we maydo evil that good may come,—thus puttingexpediency above eternal justice, and palliating crimesbecause of their success. It is difficult to accountfor Carlyle’s decline in moral perceptions, whenwe consider that his personal life was so far abovereproach.
Although the Life of Frederick is a work of transcendentindustry, it did not add to Carlyle’s popularity,which had been undermined by his bitter attacks onsociety in his various pamphlets. At this periodhe was still looked up to with reverence as a greatintellectual giant; but that love for him which hadbeen felt by those who were aroused to honest thinkingby his earlier writings had passed away. A newgeneration looked upon him as an embittered and surlyold man. His services were not forgotten, buthe was no longer a favorite,—no longeran inspiring guide. His writings continued tostimulate thought, but were no longer regarded assound. Commonplace people never did like him,probably because they never understood him. Hisadmirers were among the young, the enthusiastic, thehopeful, the inquiring; and when their venerationpassed away, there were few left to uphold his realgreatness and noble character. One might supposethat Carlyle would have been unhappy to alienate somany persons, especially old admirers. In fact,I apprehend that he cared little for anybody’sadmiration or flattery. He lived in an atmosphereso infinitely above small and envious and detractingpeople that he was practically independent of humansympathies. Had he been doomed to live with commonplacepersons, he might have sought to conciliate them;but he really lived in another sphere,—notperhaps higher than theirs, but eternally distinct,—inthe sphere of abstract truth. To him most peoplewere either babblers or bores. What did he carefor their envious shafts, or even for their honestdisapprobation!
Hence, the last days of this great man were not hisbest days, although he was not without honor.He was made Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh,and delivered a fine address on the occasion; and later,Disraeli, when prime minister, offered him knighthood,with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath anda pension, which he declined. The author of the“Sartor Resartus” did not care for titles.He preferred to remain simply Thomas Carlyle.
While Carlyle was in the midst of honors in Edinburgh,his wife, who had long been in poor health, suddenlydied, April 21, 1866. This affliction was a terribleblow to Carlyle, from which he never recovered.It filled out his measure of sorrow, deep and sad,and hard to be borne. His letters after thisare full of pathos and plaintive sadness. He couldnot get resigned to his loss, for his wife had beenmore and more his staff and companion as years hadadvanced. The Queen sent her sympathy, but nothingcould console him. He was then seventy-one yearsold, and his work was done. His remaining yearswere those of loneliness and sorrow and suffering.He visited friends, but they amused him not. Hewrote reminiscences, but his isolation remained.He sought out charities when he himself was the objectof compassion,—a sad old man who couldnot sleep. He tried to interest himself in politics,but time hung heavy on his hands. He read muchand thought more, but assumed no fresh literary work.He had enough to do to correct proof-sheets of neweditions of his works. His fiercest protests werenow against atheism in its varied forms. In 1870,Mr. Erskine, his last Scotch friend, died. In1873 he writes: “More and more dreary, barren,base, and ugly seem to me all the aspects of thispoor, diminishing quack-world,—fallen openlyanarchic, doomed to a death which one can wish to bespeedy.”
Poor old man! He has survived his friends, hispleasures, his labors, almost his fame; he is sick,and weary of life, which to him has become a blank.Pity it is, he could not have died when “Cromwell”was completed. He drags on his forlorn life,without wife or children, and with only a few friends,in disease and ennui and discontent, almost alone,until he is eighty-five.
“To-morrow, andto-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps on thispetty pace from day to day
To the last syllableof recorded time;
And all our yesterdayshave lighted fools
The way to dustydeath. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s buta walking shadow, a poor player
That struts andfrets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heardno more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot,full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
The relief came at last. It was on a cold dayin February, 1881, that Lecky, Froude, and Tyndall,alone of his London friends, accompanied his mortalremains to Ecclefechan, where he was buried by thegraves of his father and mother. He might haverested in the vaults of Westminster; but he choseto lie in a humble churchyard, near where he was born.
“In future years,” says his able and interestingbiographer, “Scotland will have raised a monumentover his remains; but no monument is needed for onewho has made an eternal memorial for himself in thehearts of all to whom truth is the dearest possession.
“’For, giving his soul to the common cause,he won for himself a wreath which will not fade, anda tomb the most honorable,—not where hisdust is decaying, but where his glory lives in everlastingremembrance. For of illustrious men all the earthis the sepulchre; and it is not the inscribed columnin their own land which is the record of their virtues,but the unwritten memories of them in the hearts andminds of all mankind.’” [1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted by Froude from the FuneralOration of Pericles in honor of the Athenians slainduring the first summer of the Peloponnesian War,as given by Thucydides,—“their,”“they,” etc. being changed to “his,”“he,” etc.]
Thomas Carlyle will always have an honorable placeamong the great men of his time. He was pre-eminentlya profound thinker, a severe critic, a great word-painter,—aman of uncommon original gifts, who aroused and instructedhis generation. In the literal sense, he was neitherphilosopher nor poet nor statesman, but a man of genius,who cast his searching and fearless glance into allcreeds, systems, and public movements, denouncinghypocrisies, shams, and lies with such power thathe lost friends almost as fast as he made them,—without,however, losing the respect and admiration of hisliterary rivals, or of the ablest and best men bothin England and America. Although no believer inthe scientific philosophies of our time, he was a greatbreaker of ground for them, having been a pioneerin the cause of honest thinking and plain speaking.His passion for truth, and courage in declaring hisown vision of it, were potent for spiritual liberty.He stands as one of the earliest and stoutest championsof that revolt against authority in religious, intellectual,and social matters which has chiefly marked the NineteenthCentury.
LORD MACAULAY.
1800-1859.
ARTISTIC HISTORICAL WRITING.
Among the eminent men of letters of the present century,Thomas Babington Macaulay takes a very high position.In original genius he was inferior to Carlyle, butwas greater in learning, in judgment, and especiallyin felicity of style. He was an historical artistof the foremost rank, the like of whom has not appearedsince Voltaire; and he was, moreover, no mean poet,and might have been distinguished as such, had poetrybeen his highest pleasure and ambition. The samemay be said of him as a political orator. Veryfew men in the House of Commons ever surpassed himin the power of making an eloquent speech. Hewas too impetuous and dogmatic to be a great debater,like Fox or Pitt or Peel or Gladstone; but he mighthave reached a more exalted and influential positionas a statesman had he confined his remarkable talentsto politics.
But letters were the passion of Macaulay, from hisyouth up; and his remarkably tenacious memory—abnormal,as it seems to me—enabled him to bringhis vast store of facts to support plausibly any positionhe chose to take. At fifty years of age, he hadprobably read more books than any man in Europe sinceGibbon and Niebuhr; he literally devoured everythinghe could put his hands upon, without cramming for aspecial object,—especially the Greek andLatin Classics, which he read over and over again,not so much for knowledge as for the pleasure it gavehim as a literary critic and a student of artisticexcellence.
Macaulay was of Scotch descent, like so many eminenthistorians, poets, critics, and statesmen who adornedthe early and middle part of the nineteenth century,—Scott,Burns, Carlyle, Jeffrey, Dundas, Playfair, Wilson,Napier, Mackintosh, Robertson, Alison; a group of geniusesthat lived in Edinburgh, and made its society famous,—tosay nothing of great divines and philosophers likeChalmers and Stewart and Hamilton. Macaulay belongedto a good family, the most distinguished members ofwhich were clergymen,—with the exceptionof his uncle, General Macaulay, who made a fortunein India; and his father, the celebrated merchantand philanthropist, Zachary Macaulay, who did morethan any other man, Wilberforce excepted, to do awaywith the slave-trade, and to abolish slavery in theWest India Islands.
Zachary Macaulay was the most modest and religiousof men, and after an eventful life in Africa as governorof the colony of Sierra Leone, settled in Clapham,near London, with a handsome fortune. He belongedto that famous evangelical set who made Clapham famous,and whose extraordinary piety and philanthropy arecommemorated by Sir James Stephen in one of his mostinteresting essays. They resembled in peculiaritiesthe early Quakers and primitive Methodists, and thoughvery narrow were much respected for their unostentatiousbenevolence, blended with public spirit.
Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire,Oct. 25, 1800, but it was at Clapham that his boyhoodwas chiefly spent. His precocity startled everyone who visited his father’s hospitable home.At the age of three he would lie at full length onthe carpet eagerly reading. He was never seenwithout an open book in his hands, even during hiswalks. He cared nothing for the sports of hiscompanions. He could neither ride, nor drive,nor swim, nor row a boat, nor play a game of tennisor foot-ball. He cared only for books of allsorts, which he seized upon with inextinguishablecuriosity, and stored their contents in his memory.When a boy, he had learned the “Paradise Lost”by heart. He did not care to go to school, becauseit interrupted his reading. Hannah More, a frequentvisitor at Clapham and a warm friend of the family,gazed upon him with amazement, but was too wise andconscientious to spoil him by her commendations.At eight years of age he also had great facility inmaking verses, which were more than tolerable.
Zachary Macaulay objected to his son being educatedin one of the great schools in England, like Westminsterand Harrow, and he was therefore sent to a privateschool kept by an evangelical divine who had been afellow at Cambridge,—a good scholar, butnarrow in his theological views. Indeed, Macaulaygot enough of Calvinism before he went to college,and was so unwisely crammed with it at home and atschool, that through life he had a repugnance to theevangelical doctrines of the Low Church, with which,much to the grief of his father, he associated cant,always his especial abhorrence and disgust. WhileMacaulay venerated his father, he had little sympathywith his views, and never loved him as he did hisown sisters. He did his filial duty, and thatwas all,—contributed largely to his father’ssupport in later life, treated him with profound respect,but was never drawn to him in affectionate franknessand confidence.
It cannot be disguised that Macaulay was worldly inhis turn of mind, intensely practical, and ambitiousof distinction as soon as he became conscious of hisgreat powers, although in his school-days he was verymodest and retiring. He was not religiously inclined,nor at all spiritually minded. An omnivorousreader seldom is narrow, and seldom is profound.Macaulay was no exception. He admired Pascal,but only for his exquisite style and his trenchantirony. He saw little in Augustine except hisvast acquaintance with Latin authors. He carefullyavoided writing on the Schoolmen, or Calvin, or thegreat divines of the seventeenth century. Bunyanhe admired for his genius and perspicuous style ratherthan for his sentiments. Even his famous articleon Bacon is deficient in spiritual insight; it isa description of the man rather than a dissertationon his philosophy. Macaulay’s greatnesswas intellectual rather than moral; and his mentalpower was that of the scholar and the rhetorical artistrather than the thinker. In his masterly wayof arraying facts he has never been surpassed; andin this he was so skilful that it mattered littlewhich side he took. Like Daniel Webster, he couldmake any side appear plausible. Doubtless inthe law he might have become a great advocate, hadhe not preferred literary composition instead.Had he lived in the times of the Grecian Sophists,he might have baffled Socrates,—not by hislogic, but by his learning and his aptness of illustration.
Macaulay entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1818,being a healthy, robust young man of eighteen, afterfive years’ training in Greek and Latin, havingthe eldest son of Wilberforce for a school companion.Among his contemporaries and friends at Cambridge wereCharles Austin, Praed, Derwent Coleridge, Hyde Villiers,and Romilly; but I infer from his Life by Trevelyanthat his circle of intimate friends was not so largeas it would have been had he been fitted for collegeat Westminster or Eton. Nor at this time were
his pecuniary circ*mstances encouraging. Afterhe had obtained his first degree he supported himself,while studying for a fellowship, by taking a coupleof pupils for L100 a year. Eventually he gaineda fellowship worth L300 a year, which was his mainsupport for seven years, until he obtained a governmentoffice in London. He probably would have foundit easier to get a fellowship at Oxford than at Cambridge,since mathematics were uncongenial to him, his fortebeing languages. He was most distinguished atcollege for English composition and Latin declamation.In 1819 he wrote a poem, “Pompeii,” whichgained him the chancellor’s medal,—adistinction won again in 1821 by a poem on “Evening,”while the same year gave him the Craven scholarshipfor his classical attainments. He took his bachelor’sdegree in 1822, and was made a fellow of Trinity College.He did not obtain his fellowship, however, until histhird trial, being no favorite with those who hadprizes and honors to bestow, because of his neglectof science and mathematics.As a profession, Macaulay made choice of the law,being called to the bar in 1826, and at Leeds joinedthe Northern Circuit, of which Brougham was the leadingstar. But the law was not his delight. Hedid not like its technicalities. He spent mostof his time in his chambers in literary composition,or in the galleries of the House of Commons listeningto the debates. He never applied himself seriouslyto anything which “went against the grain.”At Court he got no briefs, but his fellowship enabledhim to live by practising economy. He also wroteoccasional essays—excellent but not remarkable—forKnight’s Quarterly Magazine. It was inthis periodical, too, that his early poems were published;but he did not devote much time to this field of letters,although, as we have said, he might undoubtedly havesucceeded in it. His poetry, if he had neverwritten anything else, would not be considered muchinferior to that of Sir Walter Scott, being full oflife and action, and, like most everything else hedid, winning him applause. Years later he feltthe risk of publishing his “Lays of Ancient Rome;”but as he knew what he could do and what he could notdo, or rather what would be popular, he was not disappointed.The poems were well received, for they were eminentlypicturesque and vital, as well as strong, masculine,and unadorned; the rhyme and metre were also felicitous.He had no obscurities, and the spirit of his Lays waspatriotic and ardent, showing his love of liberty.I think his “Battle of Ivry” is equalto anything that Scott wrote. Yet Macaulay isnot regarded by the critics as a true poet; that is,he did not write poetry because he must, like Burnsand Byron. His poetry was not spontaneous; itwas a manufactured article,—very good ofits kind, but not such as to have given him the famewhich his prose writings made for him.
It was not, however, until his article on Milton appearedin the Edinburgh Review in 1825, that Macaulay’sgreat career began. Like Byron, he woke up onemorning to find himself famous. Everybody readand admired an essay the style of which was new andstriking. “Where did you pick up that style?”wrote Jeffrey to the briefless barrister. Ittranscended in brilliancy anything which had yet appearedin the Edinburgh or Quarterly. Brougham becameenvious, and treated the rising light with no magnanimityor admiration.
Of course, the author of such an uncommon articleas that on Milton, the praise of which was in everybody’smouth, had invitations to dinner from distinguishedpeople; and these were most eagerly accepted.Macaulay rapidly became a social favorite, soughtfor his brilliant conversation, which was as remarkablefor a young man of twenty-six as were his writingsin the foremost literary journal of the world.He was not handsome, and was carelessly dressed; buthe had a massive head, and rugged yet benevolent features,which lighted up with peculiar animation when he wasexcited. One of the first persons of note to welcomehim to her table was Lady Holland, an accomplishedbut eccentric and plain-spoken woman, who seems tohave greatly admired him. He was a frequent guestat Holland House, where for nearly half-a-century thecourtly and distinguished Lord Holland and his wifeentertained the most eminent men and women of thetime. This gratified young Macaulay’s inordinatesocial ambition. He scarcely mentions in his lettersat this time any but peers and peeresses.
And yet he did not court the society of those he didnot respect. He was not a parasite or a flatterereven of the great, but met them apparently on equalterms, as a monarch of the mind. He was at homein any circle that was not ignorant or frivolous.He was more easy than genial, for his prejudices orintellectual pride made him unkind to persons of mediocrity.It was a bold thing to cross his path, for he camedown like an avalanche on those who opposed him, notso much in anger as in contempt. I do not findthat his circle of literary friends was large or intimate.He seldom alludes to Carlyle or Bulwer or Thackerayor Dickens. He has more to say of Rogers andLord Jeffrey, and other pets of aristocratic circles,—thosewho were conventionally favored, like Sydney Smith;or those who gave banquets to people of fashion, likeLord Lansdowne. These were the people he lovedbest to associate with, who listened to his rhetoricwith rapt admiration, who did not pique his vanity,and who had something to give to him,—positionand eclat.
Macaulay was not a vain man, nor even egotistical;but he had a tremendous self-consciousness, whichannoyed his equals in literary fame, and repelledsuch a giant as Brougham, who had no idea of sharinghis throne with any one,—being more overbearingeven than Macaulay, but more human. This newrival in the Edinburgh Review, of which for a longtime Brougham had been dictator, was, much to Jeffrey’sannoyance, not convivial. He did not drink twobottles at a sitting, but guarded his health and preservedhis simple habits. Though he speaks with gustoof Lord Holland’s turtle and turbot and venisonand grouse, he was content when alone with a mutton-chopand a few glasses of sherry, or the October ale ofCambridge, which was a part of his perquisites asFellow. He was very exclusive, in view of thefact that he was a poor man, without aristocraticantecedents or many powerful friends. Outsidethe class of rank and fashion, his friends seem tohave been leading politicians of the Liberal school,the stanch Whigs who passed the Reform Bill, to whomhe was true. To his credit, his happiest hourswere spent with his sisters in the quiet seclusionof his father’s modest home. All his bestletters were to them; and in these he detailed hisintercourse with the great, and the splendor of theirbanquets and balls.
Macaulay’s rise, after he had written his famousarticle on Milton, was rapid. The article itself,striking as it is, must be confessed to be disappointingin so far as it attempted to criticise the “ParadiseLost” and Milton’s other poems. Macaulay’sgenius was historical, not critical; and the essayis notable rather for its review of the times of CharlesI. and Archbishop Laud, of the Puritans and the Royalists,than for its literary flavor, except as a brilliantpiece of composition. It was, however, the picturesquestyle of the new writer which was the chief attraction,and the fact that the essay came from so young a man.Macaulay followed the Milton essay with others on Macchiavelli,Dryden, Hallam’s “Constitutional History,”and on history in general, which displayed to greatadvantage his unusual learning, his keen historicinstinct, and his splendor of style. He becamethe most popular contributor to the Edinburgh Review,which was beginning to be dull and heavy; and thiskept him before the eyes of politicians and professionalmen.
Macaulay’s ambition was now divided betweenliterature and politics. His first appearanceas a public speaker was at an annual anti-slaveryconvention in London, in 1826, when he made a markedimpression. He eagerly embraced the offer ofa seat in the House of Commons, which was securedto him in 1830; and as soon as he entered Parliamenthe began to make speeches, which were carefully composedand probably committed to memory. At a singlebound he became one of the leading orators of thatrenowned assembly. Some of his orations were masterpiecesof argument and rhetoric in favor of reform, and of
all liberal movements in philanthropy and education.In the opinion of eminent statesmen he was the most“rising” member of the House, and sureto become a leader among the Whigs. But he waspoor, having only about L500 a year—theproceeds of his fellowship and his literary productions—tosupport his dignity as a legislator and meet the callsof society; so that in 1833 he was rewarded with anoffice in the Board of Control, which regulated theaffairs of India; this doubled his income, and madehim independent. But he wanted an office in whichhe could lay up money for future contingencies.Therefore, in 1834, he gladly resigned his seat inParliament and accepted the situation of a member ofthe Supreme Council of India, on a salary of L10,000a year, L7000 of which he continued to save yearly;so that at the end of four years, when he returnedto England, he had become a rich man, or at leastindependent, with leisure to do whatever he pleased.In India, as chairman of the Board of Education, aslegal adviser of the Council, and in drafting a codeof penal laws for that part of the Empire, he wasvery useful,—although as a matter of factthe new code was too theoretically fine to be practical,and was never put in force. His personal goodsense was equal to his industry and his talents, andhe preserved his health by strict habits of temperance.Even in that tropical country he presented a strongcontrast to the sallow, bilious officials with whomhe was surrounded, and in due time returned to Englandin perfect health, one of the most robust of men, capableof indefinite work, which never seemed to weary him.
But in Calcutta, as in London, he employed his leisurehours in writing for the Edinburgh Review, and gavean immense impulse to its sale, for which he was amplyrewarded. Brougham complained to Jeffrey thathis essays took up too much space in the Review, butthe politic editor knew what was for its interestand popularity. Macaulay’s long articlesof sometimes over a hundred pages were received withouta murmur; and every article he wrote added to hisfame, since he always did his best. His essaysin 1830 on Southey and Montgomery, and one in 1831on Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Lifeof Johnson, were fierce, scathing onslaughts, evencruel and crushing,—revealing Macaulay’stremendous powers of invective and remorseless criticism,but reflecting little credit on his disposition orhis judgment. His Hampden (1831) and his Burleigh(1832) remain among his finest and most inspiringhistorical paintings. His first essay on LordChatham (1834) is a notable piece of characterization;the one on Sir James Mackintosh (1835) is a most acuteand brilliant historical criticism; the one on LordBacon (1837) is striking and has become famous, butshows Macaulay’s deficiency in philosophic thought,besides being sophistical in spirit; and the articleon Sir William Temple (1837)—really a historyof England during the reign of William III.—isthoroughly fine.
Macaulay’s residence in India, so far as politicalambition was concerned, may have been a mistake.It withdrew him from an arena in which he could haverisen to great distinction and influence as a parliamentaryorator. He might have been a second Fox, whomhe resembled in the impetuosity of his rhetoric, ifhe had also possessed Fox’s talents as a debater.Yet he was not a born leader of men. As a parliamentaryorator he was simply a speech-maker, like the Unitarianminister Fox, or that still abler man the Quaker Bright,both of whom were great rhetoricians. It is probablethat he himself understood his true sphere, whichwas that of a literary man,—an historicalcritic, appealing to intelligent people rather thanto learned pedants in the universities. His servicein India enabled him to write for the remainder ofhis life with an untrammelled pen, and to live in comfortand ease, enjoying the otium cum dignitate,to which he attached supreme importance,—sodifferent from Carlyle, who toiled in poverty at Chelseato declare truth for truth’s sake, grumbling,yet lofty in his meditations, the depth of which Macaulaywas incapable of appreciating.
It is, then, as a man of letters rather than as apolitician that our author merits his exalted fame.Respectable as a member of the House of Commons, oras a jurist in India in compiling a code of laws, yetneither as a statesman nor as a jurist was he in hisright place. The leaders of his party may haveadmired and praised his oratory, but they wanted somethingmore practical than orations,—they wantedthe control of men; and so, too, the government demandeda code which would exact the esteem of lawyers andmeet the wants of India rather than a compositionwhich would read well. But as an historical criticand a luminous writer, Macaulay had no superior,—afact which no one knew better than himself.
In 1838, on his return from India,—wherehe had regarded himself as in honorable exile,—Macaulayhad accumulated a fortune of L30,000, to him morethan a competency. This, added to the legacy ofL10,000 which he had received from his uncle, GeneralMacaulay, secured to him independence and leisureto pursue his literary work, which was paramount toevery other consideration. If both from pleasureand ambition there ever was a man devoted heart andsoul and body to a literary career, it was Macaulay.Nor would he now accept any political office whichseriously interfered with the passion of his life.Still less would he waste his time at the dinner partiesof the great, no longer to him a novelty. Hewas eminently social by nature, and fond of talk andcontroversy, with a superb physique capable of digestingthe richest dishes, and of enduring the fatigues andceremonies of fashionable life; but even the pleasuresof the banquet and of cultivated society, to manya mere relaxation, were sacrificed to his fondnessfor books,—to him the greatest and truestcompanionship, especially when they introduced himto the life and manners of by-gone ages, and to communionwith the master-minds of the world.
For relaxation, Macaulay preferred to take long walks;lounge around the book-stalls; visit the sights ofLondon with his nieces; invite his intimate friendsto simple dinners at The Albany; amuse himself withtrifles, especially in company with those he lovedbest, in the domestic circle of his relatives, whomhe treated ever with the most familiar and affectionatesympathy,—so that while they loved and reveredhim, they had no idea that “Uncle Tom”was a great man. His most interesting letterswere to his sisters and nieces, whose amusem*nt andwelfare he had constantly in view, and who were moreto him than all the world besides. Indeed, hedid not write many letters except to his relatives,his publishers, and his intimate friends, who werefew, considering the number of persons he was obligedto meet. He was a thoroughly domestic man, althoughhe never married or wished to marry.
It surprises me that Macaulay’s intercoursewith eminent authors was so constrained. He sawvery little of them; but while he did not avoid talkingwith them when thrown among them, and keeping up thecourtesies of life even with those he thoroughly disliked,I cannot see any evidence that he sought the societyof those who were regarded as his equals in genius.He liked Milman and Mackintosh and Napier and Jeffreyand Rogers, and a few others; but his intimate intercoursewas confined chiefly to these and to his family.
Macaulay’s fame, however, was substantiallyfounded and built. Sydney Smith’s wittycharacterization of him is worth recalling:—
“I always prophesied his greatness from thefirst moment I saw him, then a very young and unknownman on the Northern Circuit. There are no limitsto his knowledge, on small subjects as well as great;he is like a book in breeches.
“Yes, I agree, he is certainly more agreeablesince his return from India. His enemies mighthave said before (though I never did so) thathe talked rather too much; but now he has occasionalflashes of silence that make his conversation perfectlydelightful. But what is far better and more importantthan all this is, that I believe Macaulay to be incorruptible.You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, title,before him in vain. He has an honest, genuinelove of his country; and the world could not bribehim to neglect her interests.”
Macaulay now devoted several weeks of every year totravel, visiting different parts of England and theContinent as the mood took him. In the autumnof 1838 he visited Italy, it would seem for the firsttime, and was, of course, enchanted. He appreciatednatural scenery, but was not enthusiastic over it;nor did it make a very deep impression on him exceptfor the moment. He loved best to visit citiesand places consecrated by classical associations.
While at Rome, Macaulay received from Lord Melbournethe offer of the office of Judge Advocate; but heunhesitatingly declined it. The salary of L2500was nothing to a scholar who already had a comfortableindependence; and the duties the situation imposedwere not only uncongenial, but would interfere withhis literary labors.
In February, 1839, he returned to London; and nowthe pressure on him by his political friends to re-enterpublic life was greater than he could resist.He was elected to Parliament as one of the membersfrom Edinburgh, and gave his usual support to hisparty. In September he became War Secretary,with a seat in the Whig Cabinet under Lord Melbourne.Consequently he suspended for a while his literarytasks, conducting the business of his department withcommendable industry, but without enthusiasm.In the session of 1840 and 1841, during the angrydiscussions pertaining to the registration of votesin Ireland, he gave proof of having profited by thesevere legal training he had received from his laborsin India. During these years he found time towrite a few reviews, the one on Lord Olive being themost prominent.
The great subject of political agitation at this periodwas the repeal of the Corn Laws. The Whig leadershad lost the earnestness which had marked their grandefforts when they carried the Reform Bill of 1832,and were more indifferent to further reforms than suitedtheir constituents; so that, at a dangerous financialcrisis in 1841, the direction of public affairs fellinto the hands of the Tories, under Sir Robert Peel.This great man not only rescued the nation from itsfiscal embarrassments, but having been convinced bythe arguments of Cobden of the necessity of repealingthe Corn Laws, he carried through that great reform,to the disgust of his party and to his own undyingfame. I have treated of this period more at largein another volume of this series.[2]
[Footnote 2: Beacon Lights of History: EuropeanLeaders.]
Macaulay was not much moved by the fall of the ministryto which he belonged, and gladly resumed his literarylabors,—the first fruits of his leisurebeing an essay on Warren Hastings, a companion pieceto the one on Clive.
These East Indian essays constitute the most picturesqueand graphic account of British conquests in that ancientland that has been given to the public. Macaulay’sintimate knowledge of the ground, and his literaryresources, enabled him to picture the dazzling successesof Clive and Hastings; so that the careers of thosesuperb military chieftains and commercial robber-statesmen,in securing for their country the control of a distantprovince larger than France, and in enriching theBritish Empire and themselves beyond all precedentin conquest, stand splendidly portrayed forever.
Macaulay had now taken apartments in The Albany, onthe second floor, to which he removed his large library,and in which he comfortably lived for fifteen years.His article on Warren Hastings was followed by thaton Frederic the Great. His numerous articles inthe Edinburgh Review had now become so popular thatthere was a great demand for them in a separate form.Curiously enough, as in the case of Carlyle, it wasin America that the public appreciation of these essays
first took the form of book publication; and Macaulay’s“Miscellanies” were published in Bostonin 1840, and in Philadelphia in 1842. As thesevolumes began to go to England, for Macaulay’sown protection they were republished by Longman, revisedby the author, in 1843, and obtained an immediate andimmense sale,—reaching one hundred and twentythousand copies in England,—which addedto the fame and income of Macaulay. But he wasnever satisfied with the finish of his own productions;the only thing which seemed to comfort him was thatthe last essays were better than the first. Inaddition to his labors for the Edinburgh, was thepublication of a volume of his poems in 1842, whichwas also enthusiastically received by his admirers.His last notable essays were a chivalrous articleon Madame D’Arblay (January, 1843); an entirelycharming account of Addison and the wits of Queen Anne’sreign (July, 1843); an interesting review of the Memoirsof Barere, the French revolutionist and writer (April,1844); and finally a second article on Lord Chatham(October, 1844), which is considered finer than thefirst one written twenty years earlier. Moreand more, however, the project of writing a Historyof England had taken possession of him, and he begannow to forego all other literary occupation, and todevote all his leisure time to that great work.During much of the time that Macaulay had continuedwriting his reviews, at the rate of about two in ayear, he was an active member of Parliament, frequentlyaddressing the House of Commons, and earning the gratitudeof the country by his liberal and enlightened views,—especiallythose in reference to the right of Unitarians to theirchapels, to the enlarged money-grant given to the IrishRoman Catholic Maynooth College, and to the extensionof copyrights. He rarely spoke without carefulpreparation. His speeches were forcible and fine.In the higher field of debate, however, as we havealready intimated, he was not successful. In1845 Sir Robert Peel retired, the Whigs again cominginto power; and in 1846 Macaulay accepted the officeof Paymaster of the Forces, because its duties werecomparatively light and would not much interfere withhis literary labors, while it added L2000 a year tohis income. During the session of 1846 and 1847,while still in Parliament, he spoke only five times,although the House was ever ready to listen to him.
In the year 1847 the disruption of the Scotch Churchwas effected, and in the bitterness engendered bythat movement Macaulay lost his popularity with hisEdinburgh constituents. He seemed indifferentto their affairs; he answered their letters irregularlyand with almost contemptuous brevity. He hadno sympathy with the radicals who at that time controlleda large number of votes, and he refused to contributetowards electioneering expenses. Above all, hewas absorbed in his History, and had lost much ofhis interest in politics. In consequence he failedto be re-elected, and not unwillingly retired to privatelife.
Macaulay now concentrated all his energies on theHistory, which occupied his thoughts, his studies,and his pen for the most part during the remainderof his life. The first two volumes were publishedin the latter part of 1848; and the sale was immense,surpassing that of any historical work in the historyof literature, and coming near to the sale of thenovels of Sir Walter Scott. The popularity ofthe work was not confined to scholars and statesmenand critics, but it was equally admired by ordinaryreaders; and not in England and Scotland alone, butin the United States, in France, in Holland, in Germany,and other countries.
The labor expended on these books was prodigious.The author visited in person nearly all the localitiesin England and Ireland where the events he narratedtook place. He ransacked the archives of mostof the governments of Europe, and all the librariesto which he could gain access, public and private.He worked twelve hours a day, and yet produced onan average only two printed pages daily,—socareful was he in verifying his facts and in arranginghis materials, writing and rewriting until no furtherimprovement could be made.
This book was not merely the result of his researchesfor the last fifteen years of his life, but of hisgeneral reading for nearly fifty years, when everythinghe read he remembered. Says Thackeray, “Hereads twenty books to write a sentence; he travelsone hundred miles to make a line of description.”The extent and exactness of his knowledge were notonly marvellous, but almost incredible. Mr. Buckledeclared that Macaulay was perfectly accurate in allthe facts which Buckle had himself investigated towrite his “History of Civilization;” andso particular was he in the selection of words thathe never allowed a sentence to pass muster until itwas as good as he could make it. “He thoughtlittle of reconstructing a paragraph,” says hisbiographer, “for the sake of one happy illustration.”He submitted to the most tiresome mechanical drudgeryin the correction of his proof-sheets. The clearnessof his thought amid the profusion of his knowledgewas represented in his writing by a remarkable concisenessof expression. His short, vigorous sentencesare compact with details of fact, yet rich with color.His terseness has been compared to that of Tacitus.His power of condensation, aptness of phrase and epithet,and indomitable industry made him a master of rhetoricaleffect, in the use of his multifarious learning forthe illustration of his themes.
As soon as his last proof-sheet had been despatchedto the printers, Macaulay at once fell to readinga series of historians from Herodotus downward, tomeasure his writings with theirs. Thucydides especiallyutterly destroyed all the conceit which naturally wouldarise from his unbounded popularity, as expressedin every social and literary circle, as well as inthe Reviews. Like Michael Angelo, this Englishman
was never satisfied with his own productions; andthe only comfort he took in the impossibility of realizinghis ideal was in the comparison he made of his ownworks with similar ones by contemporary authors.Then he was content; and then only appeared in hisletters and diary that good-natured, self-satisfiedfeeling which arose from the consciousness that hewas one of the most fortunate authors who had everlived. There was nothing cynical in his senseof superiority, but an amiable self-assertion andself-confidence that only made men smile,—aswhen Lord Palmerston remarked that “he wishedhe was as certain of any one thing as Tom Macaulaywas of everything.” This self-confidencerarely provoked opposition, except when he was positiveas to things outside his sphere. He wrote andtalked sensibly and luminously on financial and socialquestions, on art, on poetry and the drama, on philosophyand theology; but on these subjects he was not anauthority with specialists. In other words, hedid not, so to speak, know everything profoundly,but only superficially; yet in history, especiallyEnglish history, he was profound in analysis as wellas brilliant in the narration of facts, even whenthere was disagreement between himself and othersas to inductions he drew from those facts,—inductionscolored by his strong prejudices and aristocraticsurroundings.Macaulay was not always consistent with his own theories,however. For instance, he was a firm believerin the progress of society and of civilization.He saw the enormous gulf between the ninth and thenineteenth centuries, and the unmistakable advancewhich, since the times of Hildebrand, the world hadmade in knowledge, in the arts, in liberty, and inthe comforts of life, although the tide of progresshad its ebb and flow in different ages and countries.Yet when he cast his eye on America, where perhapsthe greatest progress had been made in the world’shistory within fifty years, he saw nothing but melancholysigns of anarchy and decay,—signs portendingthe collapse of liberty and the triumph of ignoranceand crime. Thus he writes in 1857 to an Americancorrespondent:—
“As long as you have a boundless extent of fertileand unoccupied land, your laboring population willbe far more at ease than the laboring population ofthe Old World; but the time will come when wages willbe as low, and will fluctuate as much, with you aswith us. Then your institutions will fairly bebrought to the test. Distress everywhere makesthe laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclineshim to listen with eagerness to agitators who tellhim that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man shouldhave a million, while another cannot get a full meal.In bad years there is plenty of grumbling here, andsometimes a little rioting; but it matters little,for here the sufferers are not the rulers. Thesupreme power is in the hands of a class deeply interestedin the security of property and the maintenance of
order; accordingly the malcontents are restrained.But with you the majority is the government, and hasthe rich, who are always in a minority, absolutelyat its mercy. The day will come when the multitudeof people, none of whom has had more than a half abreakfast, or expects to have more than a half a dinner,will choose a legislature. Is it possible todoubt what sort of legislature will be chosen?On the one side is a statesman preaching patience,respect for vested rights, strict observance of thepublic faith; and on the other a demagogue rantingabout the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and askingwhy anybody should be permitted to drink champagneand ride in a carriage, while thousands of honestfolks are in want of necessaries: which of thetwo candidates is likely to be preferred by a working-manwho hears his children cry for more bread? Therewill be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation willincrease the distress; the distress will produce freshspoliation. There is nothing to stop you; yourConstitution is all sail and no anchor. Eithercivilization or liberty will perish. Either someCaesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of governmentwith a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfullyplundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentiethcentury as the Roman Empire was in the fifth.”I do not deny that there is great force in Macaulay’sreasoning and prophecy. History points to declineand ruin when public virtue has fled and governmentis in the hands of demagogues; for their reign hasever been succeeded by military usurpers who havepreserved civilization indeed, but at the expenseof liberty. Yet this reasoning applies not onlyto America but to England as well,—especiallysince, by the Reform Bill and subsequent enactmentsof Parliament, she has opened the gates to an increaseof suffrage, which now threatens to become universal.The enfranchisem*nt of the people—the enlargedpowers of the individual under the protection andcontrol of the commonwealth—is the Anglo-Saxoncontribution to progress. It is dangerous.So is all power until its use is learned. Butthere is no backward step possible; the tremendousexperiment must go forward, for England and Americaalike.
Macaulay himself was one of the most prominent ofEnglish statesmen and orators, in 1830, 1831, and1832, to advocate the extension of the right of suffrageand the increase of popular liberties. All hiswritings are on the side of liberty in England; andall are in opposition to the Toryism which was sotriumphant during the reign of George III. Whydid he have faith in the English people of England,and yet show so little in the English people of America?He believed in political and social progress for hisown countrymen; why should he doubt the utility ofthe same in other countries? If vandalism isto be the fate of America, where education, the onlytruly conservative element, is more diffused thanin England, why should it not equally triumph in that
country when the masses have gained political power,as they surely will at some time, and even speedily,if the policy inaugurated by Gladstone is to triumph?For England Macaulay had unbounded hope, because hebelieved in progress,—in liberty, in education,in the civilizing influence of machinery, in the increasingcomforts of life through the constant increase ofwealth among the middle classes, and especially throughthe power of Christianity, in spite of the dissensionsof sects, the attacks of crude philosophers, socialists,anarchists, scientists, and atheists, from one endof Christendom to the other. Why should he nothave equal faith in American civilization, which,in spite of wars and strikes and commercial distressesand political corruption, has yet made a marked progressfrom the time of Jefferson, the apostle of equality,down to our day,—as seen especially inthe multiplication of schools and colleges, in anuntrammelled and watchful press, and in the activebenevolence of the rich in the foundation of everykind of institution to relieve misery and want?The truth is that he, in common with most educatedEnglishmen of his day,—and of too many evenof our own day,—cherished a silent contemptfor Americans, for their literature and their institutions;and hence he was not only inconsistent in the principleswhich he advocated, but showed that he was not emancipated,with all his learning, from prejudices of which heought to have been ashamed.As time made inroads on Macaulay’s strong constitution,he gave up both politics and society in the absorbinginterest which he took in his History, confining himselfto his library, and sometimes allowing months to passwithout accepting any invitation whatever to a socialgathering. No man was ever more disenchantedwith society. He begrudged his time even whentempted by the calls of friendship. When visitorspenetrated to his den, he bowed them out with ironicalpoliteness. He had no favors to ask from friendsor foes, for he declined political office, and wasas independent as wealth or fame could make him.In 1849 he was made Lord Rector of the Universityof Glasgow, and the acclamations following his addresswere prodigious. Lord John Russell gave to Macaulay’sbrother John a living worth L1100. Macaulay himselfwas offered the professorship of History at Cambridge.In one year he received for the first edition of histhird and fourth volumes of the History, publishedin 1855, L20,000 in a single check from Longman.At the age of forty-nine, he writes in his diary:“I have no cause for complaint,—tolerablehealth, competence, liberty, leisure, dear relativesand friends, and a very great literary reputation.”
With all this prosperity, Macaulay now naturally setup his carriage. He dined often with the Queen,and was a great man, according to English notions,more even from his wealth and social position thanfrom his success in letters. Lord John Russellpressed him to accept a seat in his cabinet, but “Itold him,” Macaulay writes, “that I shouldbe of no use,—that I was not a debater;that it was too late to become one; that my temper,taste, and literary habits alike prevented.”He was, however, induced to become again a memberof Parliament, and in 1852 was elected once more forEdinburgh, which had repented of its rejection of himin 1847. But he insisted on perfect independenceto vote as he pleased. He regarded this re-entranceinto public life as a great personal sacrifice, sinceit might postpone the appearance of his next two volumesof the History. His election, however, was receivedwith great acclamation. Even Professor Wilson,the most conservative of Scotch Tories, voted forhim. It was not a party victory, but purely apersonal triumph.
A serious illness now follows,—a weaknessof the heart, from the effects of which Macaulay dieda few years afterwards. He retires to Clifton,and gives himself up to getting well, visiting BarleyWood, and driving in his private carriage among themost interesting scenery in the west of England.But he was never perfectly well again, although hecontinued to work on his History. His intimatefriends saw the change in him with sadness, but hehimself was serene and uncomplaining. Althoughhe suffered from an oppression of the chest, he stillon great occasions addressed the House. His mindwas clear, but his voice was faint. The lastspeech he made was in behalf of the independence ofthe Scottish Church. The strain of the Houseof Commons proved to be too great for his now enfeebledconstitution. “Nor could he conceal fromhimself and his friends,” says Trevelyan, “thatit was a grievous waste, while the reign of Anne stillremained unwritten, for him to consume his scantystock of vigor in the tedious and exhaustive routineof political existence; waiting whole evenings forthe vote, and then ... trudging home at three in themorning through the slush of a February thaw.”He therefore spared himself as a member of Parliament,and carefully husbanded his powers in order to workupon his book. He gave himself more time forhis annual vacation, yet would write when he couldon the subjects which engrossed his life. Hislabors were too severe for his strength, but he workedon, and even harder and harder.
At length on the 25th of November, 1855, Macaulaysent to the printer the last twenty pages of his History,and an edition of twenty-five thousand was ordered.Within a generation one hundred and forty thousandcopies of the work were sold in the United Kingdomalone. Six rival translators were engaged inturning it into German; and it was published in thePolish, the Danish, the Swedish, the Italian, the French,the Dutch, the Spanish, the Hungarian, the Russian,and the Bohemian languages, to say nothing of itsimmense circulation in the United States. Suchextraordinary literary popularity was accompanied bygreat honors. In 1857 Macaulay was created aBritish Peer and elected Lord High Steward of theborough of Cambridge. The academies of Utrecht,Munich, and Turin elected him to honorary membership.The King of Prussia made him a member of the Orderof Merit. Oxford conferred on him the degreeof Doctor of Civil Law, and he was elected presidentof the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh.He could have little more in the way of academic andgovernmental honors.
The failing health of Macaulay now compelled him toresign his seat in the House of Commons. It wasalso thought desirable for him to vacate his apartmentsat The Albany, which he had occupied for fifteen years,that he might be more retired and perhaps more comfortable.His friends, at the suggestion of Dean Milman, selecteda house in Kensington, the rooms of which were small,except the library, which opened upon a beautifullawn, adorned with flowers and shrubs; it was calledHolly Lodge, and was very secluded and attractive.Here his latter days were spent, in the society ofhis nieces and a few devoted friends, and in dispensingsimple hospitalities. His favorite form of entertainmentwas the breakfast, at which his guests would lingertill twelve, enchanted by his conversation, for hismind showed no signs of decay.
From this charming retreat Lord Macaulay very seldomappeared in London society. Years passed withouthis even accepting invitations. An occasionalnight at a friend’s house in the country, oneor two nights at Windsor Castle, and one or two visitsto Lord Stanhope’s seat in Kent in order toconsult his magnificent library, were the only visitswhich Macaulay made in the course of the year.He always had a dislike of visiting in private houses,much preferring hotels, where he could be free fromconventional life.
Macaulay was always careful in his expenditures, wastingnothing that he might enjoy the pleasure of charity,—forhe gave liberally, especially to needy and unfortunatemen of letters. Once he gave L100 to a totalstranger who implored his aid. In his householdhe was revered, for he was the kindest and most considerateof masters, while his relatives absolutely worshippedhim. At home he made no claim to the privilegesof genius; he had few eccentricities; he never interferedwith the pleasures of others; he never obtruded his
advice, or demanded that his own views or tastes shouldbe consulted; he was especially careful not to woundthe feelings of those with whom he lived. Childrenwere his delight and solace. Over them he seemedto have unbounded influence. He would spend thehalf of a busy day in playing with them, and in inventingnew games for their diversion. One of his pleasureswas to take them to see the sights of London.His sympathies were quick and generous; although apparentlyso cynical in his opinions of books, he was alwaysaffected at any touches of pathos, even to tears.It was hard for Macaulay to realize that the timehad come when he must leave untold that portion ofEnglish history with which he was more familiar thanany other living man; but he submitted to the inevitablewithout repining. He had done what he could.Even when he was compelled to give up his daily task,his love of reading remained; a book was his solaceto the last. He had no extensive acquaintancewith the works of some of the best writers of hisown generation, preferring the classic authors ofantiquity, and of England in the time of Anne.He did not relish Coleridge or Carlyle or Buckle orRuskin, or indeed any writer who seemed to strainafter originality of style, in defiance of the oldand conservative canons. He preferred Miss Austento Dickens. He felt that he owed a great debtto the master-minds of by-gone ages, who reached perfectionof style, so far as it can be attained. Even theEnglish writers of the reign of Anne, to his mind,have never been surpassed. His admiration forAddison was unbounded. Dryden and Pope to himwere greater poets than any who have succeeded them.Such a poet as Tennyson or Wordsworth he pretendedhe did not understand. He wanted transparentclearness of expression. Browning would have beento him an abomination. He despised the poetryof his own age, with its involved sentences, its obscurity,and its strange metres. His own poetry was asdirect as Homer, as simple as Chaucer, and as graphicas Scott.
In 1859, Macaulay contrived to visit once more theEnglish lakes and the western highlands, where hewas received with great veneration, being recognizedeverywhere on steamers and railway stations. Buthis cheerfulness had now departed, although he madean effort to be agreeable. In December of thisyear he ceased writing in his diary. The physicianspretended to think that he was better, but faintingfits set in. On Christmas he said but little,and was constantly dropping to sleep. His relativesdid not seem to think that he was in immediate danger,but the end was near. He died without pain, andwas buried in Westminster Abbey on the 9th of January,1860, having for pall-bearers the most illustriousmen in England. He rests in the Poet’s Corner,amid the tombs of Johnson and Garrick, Handel andGoldsmith, Gay and Addison, leaving behind him animmortal fame.
And what is this fame? It is not that of a philosophicalhistorian like Guizot, for his History is not markedby profound generalizations, or even thoughtful reflections.He was not a judicial historian like Hallam, seekingto present the truth alone; for he was a partisan,full of party prejudices. Nor was he an historianlike Ranke, raking out the hidden facts of a remoteperiod, and unveiling the astute diplomacy of pastages. Macaulay was a great historical painterof the realistic school, whose pictures have neverbeen surpassed, or even equalled, for vividness andinterest. In this class of historians he standsout alone and peerless, the most exciting and themost interesting of all the historians who have depictedthe manners, the events, and the characters of a formerage,—never by any accident dull, but fatiguing,if at all, only by his wealth of illustration andthe over-brilliancy of his coloring. He is theTitian of word-painting, and as such will live likethat immortal colorist. Critics may say what theyplease about his rhetoric, about his partial statements,about his want of insight into deep philosophicalquestions; but as a painter who made his figures standout on the historical canvas with unique vividness,Macaulay cannot fail to be regarded, as long as theEnglish language is spoken or written, as one of thegreat masters of literary composition. This wasthe verdict pronounced by the English nation at large;and its great political and literary leaders expressedand confirmed it, when they gave him fortune and fame,elevated him to the peerage, bestowed on him starsand titles, and buried him with august solemnity amongthose illustrious men who gave to England its powerand glory.
SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET.[3]
1564-1616.
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Great men are more distinguished by range and extentthan by originality. If we require the originalitywhich consists in weaving, like a spider, their webfrom their own bowels; in finding clay and makingbricks and building the house; no great men are original.Nor does valuable originality consist in unlikenessto other men. The hero is in the press of knightsand the thick of events; and seeing what men wantand sharing their desire, he adds the needful lengthof sight and of arm to come at the desired point.The greatest genius is the most indebted man.A poet is no rattle-brain, saying what comes uppermost,and, because he says everything, saying at last somethinggood; but a heart in unison with his time and country.There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production,but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiestconvictions and pointed with the most determined aimwhich any man or class knows of in his times.
[Footnote 3: Reprinted from “RepresentativeMen,” by permission of Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN,AND CO., publishers of Emerson’s works.]
The Genius of our life is jealous of individuals,and will not have any individual great, except throughthe general. There is no choice to genius.A great man does not wake up on some fine morning andsay, ’I am full of life, I will go to sea andfind an Antarctic continent: to-day I will squarethe circle: I will ransack botany and find a newfood for man: I have a new architecture in mymind: I foresee a new mechanic power:’no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughtsand events, forced onward by the ideas and necessitiesof his contemporaries. He stands where all theeyes of men look one way, and their hands all pointin the direction in which he should go. The Churchhas reared him amidst rites and pomps, and he carriesout the advice which her music gave him, and buildsa cathedral needed by her chants and processions.He finds a war raging: it educates him, by trumpet,in barracks, and he betters the instruction.He finds two counties groping to bring coal, or flour,or fish, from the place of production to the placeof consumption, and he hits on a railroad. Everymaster has found his materials collected, and hispower lay in his sympathy with his people and in hislove of the materials he wrought in. What an economyof power! and what a compensation for the shortnessof life! All is done to his hand. The worldhas brought him thus far on his way. The humanrace has gone out before him, sunk the hills, filledthe hollows, and bridged the rivers. Men, nations,poets, artisans, women, all have worked for him, andhe enters into their labors. Choose any otherthing, out of the line of tendency, out of the nationalfeeling and history, and he would have all to do forhimself: his powers would be expended in thefirst preparations. Great genial power, one wouldalmost say, consists in not being original at all;in being altogether receptive, in letting the worlddo all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to passunobstructed through the mind.
Shakspeare’s youth fell in a time when the Englishpeople were importunate for dramatic entertainments.The court took offence easily at political allusionsand attempted to suppress them. The Puritans,a growing and energetic party, and the religious amongthe Anglican church, would suppress them. Butthe people wanted them. Inn-yards, houses withoutroofs, and extemporaneous enclosures at country fairswere the ready theatres of strolling players.The people had tasted this new joy; and, as we couldnot hope to suppress newspapers now,—no,not by the strongest party,—neither thencould king, prelate, or puritan, alone or united,suppress an organ which was ballad, epic, newspaper,caucus, lecture, Punch and library, at the same time.Probably king, prelate, and puritan all found theirown account in it. It had become, by all causes,a national interest,—by no means conspicuous,so that some great scholar would have thought of treatingit in an English history,—but not a whitless considerable because it was cheap and of no account,like a baker’s-shop. The best proof of itsvitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly brokeinto this field: Kyd, Marlow, Greene, Jonson,Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele,Ford, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher.
The secure possession, by the stage, of the publicmind, is of the first importance to the poet who worksfor it. He loses no time in idle experiments.Here is audience and expectation prepared. Inthe case of Shakspeare there is much more. Atthe time when he left Stratford and went up to London,a great body of stage-plays of all dates and writersexisted in manuscript and were in turn produced onthe boards. Here is the Tale of Troy, which theaudience will bear hearing some part of, every week;the Death of Julius Caesar, and other stories out ofPlutarch, which they never tire of; a shelf full ofEnglish history, from the chronicles of Brut and Arthurdown to the royal Henries, which men hear eagerly;and a string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales,and Spanish voyages, which all the London ’prenticesknow. All the mass has been treated, with moreor less skill, by every playwright, and the prompterhas the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It isnow no longer possible to say who wrote them first.They have been the property of the Theatre so long,and so many rising geniuses have enlarged or alteredthem, inserting a speech or a whole scene, or addinga song, that no man can any longer claim copyrightin this work of numbers. Happily, no man wishesto. They are not yet desired in that way.We have few readers, many spectators and hearers.They had best lie where they are.
Shakspeare, in common with his comrades, esteemedthe mass of old plays waste stock, in which any experimentcould be freely tried. Had the prestigewhich hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothingcould have been done. The rude warm blood ofthe living England circulated in the play, as in street-ballads,and gave body which he wanted to his airy and majesticfancy. The poet needs a ground in popular traditionon which he may work, and which, again, may restrainhis art within the due temperance. It holds himto the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice,and in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaveshim at leisure and in full strength for the audacitiesof his imagination. In short, the poet owes tohis legend what sculpture owed to the temple.Sculpture in Egypt and in Greece grew up in subordinationto architecture. It was the ornament of the templewall: at first a rude relief carved on pediments,then the relief became bolder and a head or arm wasprojected from the wall; the groups being still arrangedwith reference to the building, which serves alsoas a frame to hold the figures; and when at last thegreatest freedom of style and treatment was reached,the prevailing genius of architecture still enforceda certain calmness and continence in the statue.As soon as the statue was begun for itself, and withno reference to the temple or palace, the art beganto decline: freak, extravagance, and exhibitiontook the place of the old temperance. This balance-wheel,which the sculptor found in architecture, the perilousirritability of poetic talent found in the accumulateddramatic materials to which the people were alreadywonted, and which had a certain excellence which nosingle genius, however extraordinary, could hope tocreate.
In point of fact it appears that Shakspeare did owedebts in all directions, and was able to use whateverhe found, and the amount of indebtedness may be inferredfrom Malone’s laborious computations in regardto the First, Second, and Third parts of Henry VI.,in which, “out of 6,043 lines, 1,771 were writtenby some author preceding Shakspeare, 2,373 by him,on the foundations laid by his predecessors, and 1,899were entirely his own.” And the proceedinginvestigation hardly leaves a single drama of hisabsolute invention. Malone’s sentence isan important piece of external history. In HenryVIII. I think I see plainly the cropping outof the original rock on which his own finer stratumwas laid. The first play was written by a superior,thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can markhis lines, and know well their cadence. See Wolsey’ssoliloquy, and the following scene with Cromwell,where, instead of the metre of Shakspeare, whose secretis that the thought constructs the tune, so that readingfor the sense will best bring out the rhythm,—herethe lines are constructed on a given tune, and theverse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. Butthe play contains through all its length unmistakabletraits of Shakspeare’s hand, and some passages,as the account of the coronation, are like autographs.What is odd, the compliment to Queen Elizabeth is inthe bad rhythm.
Shakespeare knew that tradition supplies a betterfable than any invention can. If he lost anycredit of design, he augmented his resources; and,at that day, our petulant demand for originality wasnot so much pressed. There was no literaturefor the million. The universal reading, the cheappress, were unknown. A great poet who appearsin illiterate times, absorbs into his sphere all thelight which is anywhere radiating. Every intellectualjewel, every flower of sentiment it is his fine officeto bring to his people; and he comes to value hismemory equally with his invention. He is thereforelittle solicitous whence his thoughts have been derived;whether through translation, whether through tradition,whether by travel in distant countries, whether byinspiration; from whatever source, they are equallywelcome to his uncritical audience. Nay, he borrowsvery near home. Other men say wise things aswell as he; only they say a good many foolish things,and do not know when they have spoken wisely.He knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts itin high place, wherever he finds it. Such isthe happy position of Homer perhaps; of Chaucer, ofSaadi. They felt that all wit was their wit.And they are librarians and historiographers, as wellas poets. Each romancer was heir and dispenserof all the hundred tales of the world,—
“Presenting Thebes’and Pelops’ line
And the tale ofTroy divine.”
The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all ourearly literature; and more recently not only Popeand Dryden have been beholden to him, but, in thewhole society of English writers, a large unacknowledgeddebt is easily traced. One is charmed with theopulence which feeds so many pensioners. ButChaucer is a huge borrower. Chaucer, it seems,drew continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, fromGuido di Colonna, whose Latin romance of the Trojanwar was in turn a compilation from Bares Phrygius,Ovid and Statius. Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, andthe Provencal poets are his benefactors; the Romauntof the Rose is only judicious translation from Williamof Lorris and John of Meung; Troilus and Creseide,from Lollius of Urbino; The co*ck and the Fox, fromthe Lais of Marie; The House of Fame, fromthe French or Italian; and poor Gower he uses as ifhe were only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry out of whichto build his house. He steals by this apology,—thatwhat he takes has no worth where he finds it and thegreatest where he leaves it. It has come to bepractically a sort of rule in literature, that a manhaving once shown himself capable of original writing,is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writingsof others at discretion. Thought is the propertyof him who can entertain it and of him who can adequatelyplace it. A certain awkwardness marks the useof borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learnedwhat to do with them they become our own.
Thus all originality is relative. Every thinkeris retrospective. The learned member of the legislature,at Westminster or at Washington, speaks and votesfor thousands. Show us the constituency, and thenow invisible channels by which the senator is madeaware of their wishes; the crowd of practical andknowing men, who, by correspondence or conversation,are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes, and estimates,and it will bereave his fine attitudes and resistanceof something of their impressiveness. As SirRobert Peel and Mr. Webster vote, so Locke and Rousseauthink, for thousands; and so there were fountains allaround Homer, Manu, Saadi, or Milton, from which theydrew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,—allperished—which, if seen, would go to reducethe wonder. Did the bard speak with authority?Did he feel himself overmatched by any companion?The appeal is to the consciousness of the writer.Is there at last in his breast a Delphi whereof toask concerning any thought or thing, whether it beverily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and torely on that? All the debts which such a mancould contract to other wit would never disturb hisconsciousness of originality; for the ministrationsof books and of other minds are a whiff of smoke tothat most private reality with which he has conversed.
It is easy to see that what is best written or doneby genius in the world, was no man’s work, butcame by wide social labor, when a thousand wroughtlike one, sharing the same impulse. Our EnglishBible is a wonderful specimen of the strength andmusic of the English language. But it was notmade by one man, or at one time; but centuries andchurches brought it to perfection. There neverwas a time when there was not some translation existing.The Liturgy, admired for its energy and pathos, isan anthology of the piety of ages and nations, a translationof the prayers and forms of the Catholic church,—thesecollected, too, in long periods, from the prayersand meditations of every saint and sacred writer allover the world. Grotius makes the like remarkin respect to the Lord’s Prayer, that the singleclauses of which it is composed were already in usein the time of Christ, in the Rabbinical forms.He picked out the grains of gold. The nervouslanguage of the Common Law, the impressive forms ofour courts and the precision and substantial truthof the legal distinctions, are the contribution ofall the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who havelived in the countries where these laws govern.The translation of Plutarch gets its excellence bybeing translation on translation. There neverwas a time when there was none. All the trulyidiomatic and national phrases are kept, and all otherssuccessively picked out and thrown away. Somethinglike the same process had gone on, long before, withthe originals of these books. The world takesliberties with world-books. Vedas, Aesop’sFables, Pilpay, Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad, RobinHood, Scottish Minstrelsy, are not the work of singlemen. In the composition of such works the timethinks, the market thinks, the mason, the carpenter,the merchant, the farmer, the fop, all think for us.Every book supplies its time with one good word; everymunicipal law, every trade, every folly of the day;and the generic catholic genius who is not afraidor ashamed to owe his originality to the originalityof all, stands with the next age as the recorder andembodiment of his own.
We have to thank the researches of antiquaries, andthe Shakspeare Society, for ascertaining the stepsof the English drama, from the Mysteries celebratedin churches and by churchmen, and the final detachmentfrom the church, and the completion of secular plays,from Ferrex and Porrex, and Gammer Gurton’sNeedle, down to the possession of the stage by thevery pieces which Shakspeare altered, remodelled, andfinally made his own. Elated with success andpiqued by the growing interest of the problem, theyhave left no bookstall unsearched, no chest in a garretunopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decomposein damp and worms, so keen was the hope to discoverwhether the boy Shakspeare poached or not, whetherhe held horses at the theatre door, whether he keptschool, and why he left in his will only his second-bestbed to Anne Hathaway, his wife.
There is something touching in the madness with whichthe passing age mischooses the object on which allcandles shine and all eyes are turned; the care withwhich it registers every trifle touching Queen Elizabethand King James, and the Essexes, Leicesters, Burleighs,and Buckinghams; and lets pass without a single valuablenote the founder of another dynasty, which alone willcause the Tudor dynasty to be remembered,—theman who carries the Saxon race in him by the inspirationwhich feeds him, and on whose thoughts the foremostpeople of the world are now for some ages to be nourished,and minds to receive this and not another bias.A popular player;—nobody suspected he wasthe poet of the human race; and the secret was keptas faithfully from poets and intellectual men as fromcourtiers and frivolous people. Bacon, who tookthe inventory of the human understanding for his times,never mentioned his name. Ben Jonson, though wehave strained his few words of regard and panegyric,had no suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vibrationshe was attempting. He no doubt thought the praisehe has conceded to him generous, and esteemed himself,out of all question, the better poet of the two.
If it need wit to know wit, according to the proverb,Shakspeare’s time should be capable of recognizingit. Sir Henry Wotton was born four years afterShakspeare, and died twenty-three years after him;and I find, among his correspondents and acquaintances,the following persons: Theodore Beza, Isaac Casaubon,Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon,Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane, IsaacWalton, Dr. Donne, Abraham Cowley, Bellarmine, CharlesCotton, John Pym, John Hales, Kepler, Vieta, AlbericusGentilis, Paul Sarpi, Arminius; with all of whom existssome token of his having communicated, without enumeratingmany others whom doubtless he saw,—Shakspeare,Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont, Massinger, the two Herberts,Marlow, Chapman and the rest. Since the constellationof great men who appeared in Greece in the time ofPericles, there was never any such society;—yettheir genius failed them to find out the best headin the universe. Our poet’s mask was impenetrable.You cannot see the mountain near. It took a centuryto make it suspected; and not until two centuries hadpassed, after his death, did any criticism which wethink adequate begin to appear. It was not possibleto write the history of Shakspeare till now; for heis the father of German literature: it was withthe introduction of Shakspeare into German, by Lessing,and the translation of his works by Wieland and Schlegel,that the rapid burst of German literature was mostintimately connected. It was not until the nineteenthcentury, whose speculative genius is a sort of livingHamlet, that the tragedy of Hamlet could find suchwondering readers. Now, literature, philosophy,and thought, are Shakspearized. His mind is thehorizon beyond which, at present, we do not see.Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm.Coleridge and Goethe are the only critics who haveexpressed our convictions with any adequate fidelity:but there is in all cultivated minds a silent appreciationof his superlative power and beauty, which, like Christianity,qualifies the period.
The Shakspeare Society have inquired in all directions,advertised the missing facts, offered money for anyinformation that will lead to proof,—andwith what result? Beside some important illustrationof the history of the English stage, to which I haveadverted, they have gleaned a few facts touching theproperty, and dealings in regard to property, of thepoet. It appears that from year to year he owneda larger share in the Blackfriars’ Theatre:its wardrobe and other appurtenances were his:that he bought an estate in his native village withhis earnings as writer and shareholder; that he livedin the best house in Stratford; was intrusted by hisneighbors with their commissions in London, as ofborrowing money, and the like; that he was a veritablefarmer. About the time when he was writing Macbeth,he sues Philip Rogers, in the Borough-court of Stratford,for thirty-five shillings, ten pence, for corn deliveredto him at different times; and in all respects appearsas a good husband, with no reputation for eccentricityor excess. He was a good-natured sort of man,an actor and shareholder in the theatre, not in anystriking manner distinguished from other actors andmanagers. I admit the importance of this information.It was well worth the pains that have been taken toprocure it.
But whatever scraps of information concerning hiscondition these researches may have rescued, theycan shed no light upon that infinite invention whichis the concealed magnet of his attraction for us.We are very clumsy writers of history. We tellthe chronicle of parentage, birth, birthplace, schooling,schoolmates, earning of money, marriage, publicationof books, celebrity, death; and when we have come toan end of this gossip no ray of relation appears betweenit and the goddess-born; and it seems as if, had wedipped at random into the “Modern Plutarch,”and read any other life there, it would have fittedthe poems as well. It is the essence of poetryto spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, fromthe invisible, to abolish the past and refuse allhistory. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier,have wasted their oil. The famed theatres, CoventGarden, Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont have vainlyassisted. Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, andMacready dedicate their lives to this genius; him theycrown, elucidate, obey, and express. The geniusknows them not. The recitation begins; one goldenword leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantryand sweetly torments us with invitations to its owninaccessible homes. I remember I went once tosee the Hamlet of a famed performer, the pride ofthe English stage; and all I then heard and all I nowremember of the tragedian was that in which the tragedianhad no part; simply Hamlet’s question to theghost:—
“Whatmay this mean,
That thou, dead corse,again in complete steel
Revisit’st thusthe glimpses of the moon?”
That imagination which dilates the closet he writesin to the world’s dimension, crowds it withagents in rank and order, as quickly reduces the bigreality to be the glimpses of the moon. Thesetricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions ofthe green-room. Can any biography shed lighton the localities into which the Midsummer Night’sDream admits me? Did Shakspeare confide to anynotary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogatein Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation?The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle,the moonlight of Portia’s villa, “theantres vast and desarts idle” of Othello’scaptivity,—where is the third cousin, orgrand-nephew, the chancellor’s file of accounts,or private letter, that has kept one word of thosetranscendent secrets? In fine, in this drama,as in all great works of art,—in the Cyclopaeanarchitecture of Egypt and India, in the Phidian sculpture,the Gothic minsters, the Italian painting, the Balladsof Spain and Scotland,—the Genius drawsup the ladder after him, when the creative age goesup to heaven, and gives way to a new age, which seesthe works and asks in vain for a history.
Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare; andeven he can tell nothing, except to the Shakspearein us,—that is, to our most apprehensiveand sympathetic hour. He cannot step from offhis tripod and give us anecdotes of his inspirations.Read the antique documents extricated, analysed andcompared by the assiduous Dyce and Collier; and nowread one of these skyey sentences,—aerolites,—whichseem to have fallen out of heaven, and which not yourexperience but the man within the breast has acceptedas words of fate, and tell me if they match—ifthe former account in any manner for the latter; orwhich gives the most historical insight into the man.
Hence, though our external history is so meagre, yet,with Shakspeare for biographer, instead of Aubreyand Rowe, we have really the information which ismaterial; that which describes character and fortune;that which, if we were about to meet the man and dealwith him, would most import us to know. We havehis recorded convictions on those questions whichknock for answer at every heart,—on lifeand death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on theprizes of life and the ways whereby we come at them;on the characters of men, and the influences, occultand open, which affect their fortunes; and on thosemysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our scienceand which yet interweave their malice and their giftin our brightest hours. Who ever read the volumeof the Sonnets without finding that the poet had thererevealed, under masks that are no masks to the intelligent,the lore of friendship and of love; the confusionof sentiments in the most susceptible, and, at thesame time, the most intellectual of men? Whattrait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas?One can discern, in his ample pictures of the gentleman
and the king, what forms and humanities pleased him;his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality,in cheerful giving. Let Timon, let Warwick, letAntonio the merchant answer for his great heart.So far from Shakspeare’s being the least known,he is the one person, in all modern history, knownto us. What point of morals, of manners, of economy,of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conductof life, has he not settled? What mystery hashe not signified his knowledge of? What office,or function, or district of man’s work has henot remembered? What king has he not taught state,as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has notfound him finer than her delicacy? What loverhas he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen?What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudenessof his behavior?Some able and appreciating critics think no criticismon Shakspeare valuable that does not rest purely onthe dramatic merit; that he is falsely judged as poetand philosopher. I think as highly as these criticsof his dramatic merit, but still think it secondary.He was a full man, who liked to talk; a brain exhalingthoughts and images, which, seeking vent, found thedrama next at hand. Had he been less, we shouldhave had to consider how well he filled his place,how good a dramatist he was,—and he isthe best in the world. But it turns out thatwhat he has to say is of that weight as to withdrawsome attention from the vehicle; and he is like somesaint whose history is to be rendered into all languages,into verse and prose, into songs and pictures, andcut up into proverbs; so that the occasion which gavethe saint’s meaning the form of a conversation,or of a prayer, or of a code of laws, is immaterialcompared with the universality of its application.So it fares with the wise Shakspeare and his book oflife. He wrote the airs for all our modern music;he wrote the text of modern life; the text of manners;he drew the man of England and Europe, the fatherof the man in America; he drew the man, and describedthe day, and what is done in it; he read the heartsof men and women, their probity, and their secondthought and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and thetransitions by which virtues and vices slide into theircontraries; he could divide the mother’s partfrom the father’s part in the face of the child,or draw the fine demarcations of freedom and of fate;he knew the laws of repression which make the policeof nature; and all the sweets and all the terrorsof human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softlyas the landscape lies on the eye. And the importanceof this wisdom of life sinks the form, as of Dramaor Epic, out of notice. ’T is like makinga question concerning the paper on which a king’smessage is written.
Shakspeare is as much out of the category of eminentauthors, as he is out of the crowd. He is inconceivablywise; the others, conceivably. A good readercan, in a sort, nestle into Plato’s brain andthink from thence; but not into Shakspeare’s.We are still out of doors. For executive faculty,for creation, Shakspeare is unique. No man canimagine it better. He was the farthest reach ofsubtlety compatible with an individual self,—thesubtilest of authors, and only just within the possibilityof authorship. With this wisdom of life is theequal endowment of imaginative and of lyric power.He clothed the creatures of his legend with form andsentiments as if they were people who had lived underhis roof; and few real men have left such distinctcharacters as these fictions. And they spokein language as sweet as it was fit. Yet his talentsnever seduced him into an ostentation, nor did he harpon one string. An omnipresent humanity co-ordinatesall his faculties. Give a man of talents a storyto tell, and his partiality will presently appear.He has certain observations, opinions, topics, whichhave some accidental prominence, and which he disposesall to exhibit. He crams this part and starvesthat other part, consulting not the fitness of thething, but his fitness and strength. But Shakspearehas no peculiarity, no importunate topic; but allis duly given; no veins, no curiosities; no cow-painter,no bird-fancier, no mannerist is he; he has no discoverableegotism: the great he tells greatly; the small,subordinately. He is wise without emphasis orassertion; he is strong, as nature is strong, wholifts the land into mountain slopes without effortand by the same rule as she floats a bubble in theair, and likes as well to do the one as the other.This makes that equality of power in farce, tragedy,narrative, and love-songs; a merit so incessant thateach reader is incredulous of the perception of otherreaders.
This power of expression, or of transferring the inmosttruth of things into music and verse, makes him thetype of the poet and has added a new problem to metaphysics.This is that which throws him into natural history,as a main production of the globe, and as announcingnew eras and ameliorations. Things were mirroredin his poetry without loss or blur: he couldpaint the fine with precision, the great with compass,the tragic and the comic indifferently and withoutany distortion or favor. He carried his powerfulexecution into minute details, to a hair point, finishesan eyelash or a dimple as firmly as he draws a mountain;and yet these, like nature’s, will bear the scrutinyof the solar microscope.
In short, he is the chief example to prove that moreor less of production, more or fewer pictures, isa thing indifferent. He had the power to makeone picture. Daguerre learned how to let one floweretch its image on his plate of iodine, and then proceedsat leisure to etch a million. There are alwaysobjects; but there was never representation.Here is perfect representation, at last; and now letthe world of figures sit for their portraits.No recipe can be given for the making of a Shakspeare;but the possibility of the translation of things intosong is demonstrated.
His lyric power lies in the genius of the piece.The sonnets, though their excellence is lost in thesplendor of the dramas, are as inimitable as they;and it is not a merit of lines, but a total merit ofthe piece; like the tone of voice of some incomparableperson, so is this a speech of poetic beings, andany clause as unproducible now as a whole poem.
Though the speeches in the plays, and single lines,have a beauty which tempts the ear to pause on themfor their euphuism, yet the sentence is so loadedwith meaning and so linked with its foregoers and followers,that the logician is satisfied. His means areas admirable as his ends; every subordinate invention,by which he helps himself to connect some irreconcilableopposites, is a poem too. He is not reduced todismount and walk because his horses are running offwith him in some distant direction: he alwaysrides.
The finest poetry was first experience; but the thoughthas suffered a transformation since it was an experience.Cultivated men often attain a good degree of skillin writing verses; but it is easy to read, throughtheir poems, their personal history: any one acquaintedwith the parties can name every figure; this is Andrewand that is Rachel. The sense thus remains prosaic.It is a caterpillar with wings, and not yet a butterfly.In the poet’s mind the fact has gone quite overinto the new element of thought, and has lost allthat is exuvial. This generosity abides withShakspeare. We say, from the truth and closenessof his pictures, that he knows the lesson by heart.Yet there is not a trace of egotism.
One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet.I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man canbe a poet,—for beauty is his aim.He loves virtue, not for its obligation but for itsgrace: he delights in the world, in man, in woman,for the lovely light that sparkles from them.Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds overthe universe. Epicurus relates that poetry hathsuch charms that a lover might forsake his mistressto partake of them. And the true bards have beennoted for their firm and cheerful temper. Homerlies in sunshine; Chaucer is glad and erect; and Saadisays, “It was rumored abroad that I was penitent;but what had I to do with repentance?” Not lesssovereign and cheerful,—much more sovereignand cheerful, is the tone of Shakspeare. Hisname suggests joy and emancipation to the heart ofmen. If he should appear in any company of humansouls, who would not march in his troop? He touchesnothing that does not borrow health and longevityfrom his festal style.
And now, how stands the account of man with this bardand benefactor, when, in solitude, shutting our earsto the reverberations of his fame, we seek to strikethe balance? Solitude has austere lessons; itcan teach us to spare both heroes and poets; and itweighs Shakspeare also, and finds him to share thehalfness and imperfection of humanity.
Shakspeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw the splendorof meaning that plays over the visible world; knewthat a tree had another use than for apples, and cornanother than for meal, and the ball of the earth, thanfor tillage and roads: that these things borea second and finer harvest to the mind, being emblemsof its thoughts, and conveying in all their naturalhistory a certain mute commentary on human life.Shakspeare employed them as colors to compose hispicture. He rested in their beauty; and nevertook the step which seemed inevitable to such genius,namely, to explore the virtue which resides in thesesymbols and imparts this power:—what isthat which they themselves say? He converted theelements which waited on his command, into entertainments.He was master of the revels to mankind. Is itnot as if one should have, through majestic powersof science, the comets given into his hand, or theplanets and their moons, and should draw them fromtheir orbits to glare with the municipal fireworkson a holiday night, and advertise in all towns, “Verysuperior pyrotechny this evening”? Are theagents of nature, and the power to understand them,worth no more than a street serenade, or the breathof a cigar? One remembers again the trumpet-textin the Koran,—“The heavens and theearth and all that is between them, think ye we havecreated them in jest?” As long as the questionis of talent and mental power, the world of men hasnot his equal to show. But when the questionis, to life and its materials and its auxiliaries,how does it profit me? What does it signify?It is but a Twelfth Night, or Midsummer Night’sDream, or Winter Evening’s Tale: what signifiesanother picture more or less? The Egyptian verdictof the Shakspeare Societies comes to mind; that hewas a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marrythis fact to his verse. Other admirable men haveled lives in some sort of keeping with their thought;but this man, in wide contrast. Had he been less,had he reached only the common measure of great authors,of Bacon, Milton, Tasso, Cervantes, we might leavethe fact in the twilight of human fate: but thatthis man of men, he who gave to the science of minda new and larger subject than had ever existed, andplanted the standard of humanity some furlongs forwardinto Chaos,—that he should not be wisefor himself;—it must even go into the world’shistory that the best poet led an obscure and profanelife, using his genius for the public amusem*nt.
Well, other men, priest and prophet, Israelite, Germanand Swede, beheld the same objects: they alsosaw through them that which was contained. Andto what purpose? The beauty straightway vanished;they read commandments, all-excluding mountainousduty; an obligation, a sadness, as of piled mountains,fell on them, and life became ghastly, joyless, apilgrim’s progress, a probation, beleagueredround with doleful histories of Adam’s falland curse behind us; with doomsdays and purgatorialand penal fires before us; and the heart of the seerand the heart of the listener sank in them.
It must be conceded that these are half-views of half-men.The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler,who shall not trifle, with Shakspeare the player,nor shall grope in graves, with Swedenborg the mourner;but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration.For knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right ismore beautiful than private affection; and love iscompatible with universal wisdom.
JOHN MILTON: POET AND PATRIOT.[4]
1608-1674.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
Toward the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputykeeper of the state-papers, in the course of his researchesamong the presses of his office, met with a largeLatin manuscript. With it were found correctedcopies of the foreign despatches written by Miltonwhile he filled the office of secretary, and severalpapers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye-housePlot. The whole was wrapped up in an envelope,subscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. Onexamination, the large manuscript proved to be thelong lost essay on the doctrines of Christianity,which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finishedafter the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner.Skinner, it is well known, held the same politicalopinions with his illustrious friend. It is thereforeprobable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may havefallen under the suspicions of the Government duringthat persecution of the Whigs which followed the dissolutionof the Oxford Parliament, and that, in consequenceof a general seizure of his papers, this work may havebeen brought to the office in which it has been found.But whatever the adventures of the manuscript mayhave been, no doubt can exist that it is a genuinerelic of the great poet....
[Footnote 4: Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de DoctrinaChristiana libri duo posthumi. A Treatiseon Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scripturesalone. By JOHN MILTON, translated from the Originalby Charles R. Sumner, M.A., etc., etc.:1825. From the Edinburgh Review, August,1825; slightly abridged.]
The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton....Were it far more orthodox or far more heretical thanit is, it would not much edify or corrupt the presentgeneration. The men of our time are not to beconverted or perverted by quartos. A few moredays, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populito the dust and silence of the upper shelf. Thename of its author, and the remarkable circ*mstancesattending its publication, will secure to it a certaindegree of attention. For a month or two it willoccupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room,and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then,to borrow the elegant language of the play-bills,be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.
We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest,transient as it may be, which this work has excited.The dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach onthe life and miracles of a saint till they have awakenedthe devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibitingsome relic of him—a thread of his garment,a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. Onthe same principle, we intend to take advantage ofthe late interesting discovery, and, while this memorialof a great and good man is still in the hands of all,to say something of his moral and intellectual qualities.Nor, we are convinced, will the severest of our readersblame us if, on an occasion like the present, we turnfor a short time from the topics of the day to commemorate,in all love and reverence, the genius and virtuesof John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher,the glory of English literature, the champion andthe martyr of English liberty.
It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; andit is of his poetry that we wish first to speak.By the general suffrage of the civilized world, hisplace has been assigned among the greatest mastersof the art. His detractors, however, though outvoted,have not been silenced. There are many critics,and some of great name, who contrive in the same breathto extol the poems and to decry the poet. Theworks, they acknowledge, considered in themselves,may be classed among the noblest productions of thehuman mind. But they will not allow the authorto rank with those great men who, born in the infancyof civilization, supplied, by their own powers, thewant of instruction, and, though destitute of modelsthemselves, bequeathed to posterity models which defyimitation. Milton, it is said, inherited whathis predecessors created; he lived in an enlightenedage; he received a finished education; and we musttherefore, if we would form a just estimate of hispowers, make large deductions in consideration of theseadvantages.
We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical asthe remark may appear, that no poet has ever had tostruggle with more unfavorable circ*mstances thanMilton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whetherhe had not been born “an age too late.”For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make himthe butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, webelieve, understood the nature of his art better thanthe critic. He knew that his poetical geniusderived no advantage from the civilization which surroundedhim, or from the learning which he had acquired; andhe looked back with something like regret to the ruderage of simple words and vivid impressions.
We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almostnecessarily declines. Therefore, though we ferventlyadmire those great works of imagination which haveappeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the morebecause they have appeared in dark ages. On thecontrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendidproof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilizedage. We cannot understand why those who believein that most orthodox article of literary faith, thatthe earliest poets are generally the best, shouldwonder at the rule as if it were the exception.Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates acorresponding uniformity in the cause.
The fact is, that common observers reason from theprogress of the experimental sciences to that of theimitative arts. The improvement of the formeris gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collectingmaterials, ages more in separating and combining them.Even when a system has been formed, there is stillsomething to add, to alter, or to reject. Everygeneration enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathedto it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmentedby fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In thesepursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie undergreat disadvantages, and, even when they fail, areentitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferiorintellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actualattainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet’slittle dialogues on political economy could teachMontague or Walpole many lessons in finance.Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applyinghimself for a few years to mathematics, learn morethan the great Newton knew after half a century ofstudy and meditation.
But it is not thus with music, with painting, or withsculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry.The progress of refinement rarely supplies these artswith better objects of imitation. It may indeedimprove the instruments which are necessary to themechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor,and the painter. But language, the machine ofthe poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudeststate. Nations, like individuals, first perceive,and then abstract. They advance from particularimages to general terms. Hence the vocabularyof an enlightened society is philosophical, that ofa half-civilized people is poetical.
This change in the language of men is partly the causeand partly the effect of a corresponding change inthe nature of their intellectual operations, of achange by which science gains and poetry loses.Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge;but particularity is indispensable to the creationsof the imagination. In proportion as men knowmore and think more, they look less at individualsand more at classes. They therefore make bettertheories and worse poems. They give us vaguephrases instead of images, and personified qualitiesinstead of men. They may be better able to analyzehuman nature than their predecessors. But analysisis not the business of the poet. His office isto portray, not to dissect. He may believe ina moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all humanactions to self-interest, like Helvetius; or he maynever think about the matter at all. His creedon such subjects will no more influence his poetry,properly so called, than the notions which a paintermay have conceived respecting the lachrymal glands,or the circulation of the blood, will affect the tearsof his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. IfShakespeare had written a book on the motives of humanactions, it is by no means certain that it would havebeen a good one. It is extremely improbable thatit would have contained half so much able reasoningon the subject as is to be found in the Fable of theBees. But could Mandeville have created an Iago?Well as he knew how to resolve characters into theirelements, would he have been able to combine thoseelements in such a manner as to make up a man—areal, living, individual man?
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoypoetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, ifanything which gives so much pleasure ought to becalled unsoundness. By poetry we mean not allwriting in verse, nor even all good writing in verse.Our definition excludes many metrical compositionswhich, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise.By poetry we mean the art of employing words in sucha manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination,the art of doing by means of words what the painterdoes by means of colors. Thus the greatest ofpoets has described it, in lines universally admiredfor the vigor and felicity of their diction, and stillmore valuable on account of the just notion whichthey convey of the art in which he excelled:—
“Asimagination bodies forth
The forms of thingsunknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes,and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation anda name.”
These are the fruits of the “fine frenzy”which he ascribes to the poet—a fine frenzy,doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed,is essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness.The reasonings are just; but the premises are false.After the first suppositions have been made, everythingought to be consistent; but those first suppositionsrequire a degree of credulity which almost amountsto a partial and temporary derangement of the intellect.Hence of all people children are the most imaginative.They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion.Every image which is strongly presented to their mentaleye produces on them the effect of reality. Noman, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affectedby Hamlet or Lear as a little girl is affected bythe story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows thatit is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that thereare no wolves in England. Yet, in spite of herknowledge, she believes; she weeps; she trembles; shedares not go into a dark room lest she should feelthe teeth of the monster at her throat. Suchis the despotism of the imagination over uncultivatedminds.
In a rude state of society, men are children witha greater variety of ideas. It is therefore insuch a state of society that we may expect to findthe poetical temperament in its highest perfection.In an enlightened age there will be much intelligence,much science, much philosophy, abundance of just classificationand subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence,abundance of verses, and even of good ones; but littlepoetry. Men will judge and compare; but they willnot create. They will talk about the old poets,and comment on them, and to a certain degree enjoythem. But they will scarcely be able to conceivethe effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors,the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief.The Greek rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarcerecite Homer without falling into convulsions.The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while heshouts his death-song. The power which the ancientbards of Wales and Germany exercised over their auditorsseems to modern readers almost miraculous. Suchfeelings are very rare in a civilized community, andmost rare among those who participate most in itsimprovements. They linger longest among the peasantry.
Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind,as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eyeof the body. And, as the magic lantern acts bestin a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completelyin a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaksin upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certaintybecome more and more definite, and the shades of probabilitymore and more distinct, the hues and lineaments ofthe phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainterand fainter. We cannot unite the incompatibleadvantages of reality and deception, the clear discernmentof truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction.
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspiresto be a great poet, must first become a little child.He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind.He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has,perhaps, constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority.His very talents will be a hinderance to him.His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiencyin the pursuits which are fashionable among his contemporaries;and that proficiency will in general be proportionedto the vigor and activity of his mind. And itis well if, after all his sacrifices and exertions,his works do not resemble a lisping man or a modernruin. We have seen in our own time great talents,intense labor, and long meditation employed in thisstruggle against the spirit of the age, and employed,we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubioussuccess and feeble applause.
If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphedover greater difficulties than Milton. He receiveda learned education: he was a profound and elegantclassical scholar: he had studied all the mysteriesof rabbinical literature: he was intimately acquaintedwith every language in modern Europe from which eitherpleasure or information was then to be derived.He was perhaps the only poet of later times who hasbeen distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse.The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order;and his poems in the ancient language, though muchpraised by those who have never read them, are wretchedcompositions. Cowley, with all his admirable witand ingenuity, had little imagination: nor, indeed,do we think his classical diction comparable to thatof Milton. The authority of Johnson is againstus on this point. But Johnson had studied thebad writers of the Middle Ages till he had becomeutterly insensible to the Augustan elegance, and wasas ill-qualified to judge between two Latin stylesas an habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster.
Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched,costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere maybe found in healthful and spontaneous perfection.The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in generalas ill-suited to the production of vigorous nativepoetry as the flower-pots of a hot-house to the growthof oaks. That the author of the Paradise Lostshould have written the epistle to Manso was trulywonderful. Never before were such marked originalityand such exquisite mimicry found together. Indeed,in all the Latin poems of Milton the artificial mannerindispensable to such works is admirably preserved,while, at the same time, his genius gives to them apeculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, whichdistinguishes them from all other writings of thesame class. They remind us of the amusem*nts ofthose angelic warriors who composed the cohort ofGabriel:—
“About him exercisedheroic games
The unarmed youthof heaven. But o’er their heads
Celestial armory,shield, helm, and spear,
Hung high, withdiamond flaming and with gold.”
We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for whichthe genius of Milton ungirds itself without catchinga glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply whichit is accustomed to wear. The strength of hisimagination triumphed over every obstacle. Sointense and ardent was the fire of his mind, thatit not only was not suffocated beneath the weightof fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent masswith its own heat and radiance.
It is not our intention to attempt anything like acomplete examination of the poetry of Milton.The public has long been agreed as to the merit ofthe most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmonyof the numbers, and the excellence of that style whichno rival has been able to equal and no parodist todegrade; which displays in their highest perfectionthe idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and towhich every ancient and every modern language hascontributed something of grace, of energy, or of music.In the vast field of criticism on which we are entering,innumerable reapers have already put their sickles.Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligentsearch of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded witha sheaf.
The most striking characteristic of the poetry ofMilton is the extreme remoteness of the associationsby means of which it acts on the reader. Itseffect is produced, not so much by what it expresses,as by what it suggests; not so much by the ideas whichit directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connectedwith them. He electrifies the mind through conductors.The most unimaginative man must understand the Iliad.Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him noexertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and setsthe images in so clear a light that it is impossibleto be blind to them. The works of Milton cannotbe comprehended or enjoyed unless the mind of thereader co-operate with that of the writer. Hedoes not paint a finished picture, or play for a merepassive listener. He sketches, and leaves othersto fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note,and expects his hearer to make out the melody.
We often hear of the magical influence of poetry.The expression in general means nothing; but, appliedto the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate.His poetry acts like an incantation. Its meritlies less in its obvious meaning than in its occultpower. There would seem, at first sight, to beno more in his words than in other words. Butthey are words of enchantment. No sooner arethey pronounced, than the past is present and thedistant near. New forms of beauty start at onceinto existence, and all the burial-places of the memorygive up their dead. Change the structure of thesentence; substitute one synonyme for another, andthe whole effect is destroyed. The spell losesits power; and he who should then hope to conjurewith it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassimin the Arabian tale, when he stood crying “OpenWheat,” “Open Barley,” to the doorthat obeyed no sound but “Open Sesame.”The miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt to translateinto his own diction some parts of the Paradise Lostis a remarkable instance of this.
In support of these observations, we may remark thatscarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are moregenerally known or more frequently repeated than thosewhich are little more than muster-rolls of names.They are not always more appropriate or more melodiousthan other names. But they are charmed names.Every one of them is the first link in a long chainof associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place ofour infancy revisited in manhood, like the song ofour country heard in a strange land, they produceupon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsicvalue. One transports us back to a remote periodof history. Another places us among the novelscenes and manners of a distant region. A thirdevokes all the dear classical recollections of childhood,the school-room, the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday,and the prize. A fourth brings before us thesplendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the trophiedlists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices,the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievementsof enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses.
In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar mannermore happily displayed than in the Allegro and thePenseroso. It is impossible to conceive thatthe mechanism of language can be brought to a moreexquisite degree of perfection. These poems differfrom others as ottar of roses differs from ordinaryrose-water, the close-packed essence from the thin,diluted mixture. They are, indeed, not so muchpoems as collections of hints, from each of whichthe reader is to make out a poem for himself.Every epithet is a text for a stanza.
The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which,though of very different merit, offer some markedpoints of resemblance. Both are lyric poems inthe form of plays. There are perhaps no two kindsof composition so essentially dissimilar as the dramaand the ode. The business of the dramatist isto keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appearbut his characters. As soon as he attracts noticeto his personal feelings, the illusion is broken.The effect is as unpleasant as that which is producedon the stage by the voice of a prompter or the entranceof a scene-shifter. Hence it was that the tragediesof Byron were his least successful performances.They resemble those pasteboard pictures invented bythe friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a singlemovable head goes round twenty different bodies, sothat the same face looks out upon us successively,from the uniform of a hussar, the furs of a judge,and the rags of a beggar. In all the characters,patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frownand sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant.But this species of egotism, though fatal to the drama,is the inspiration of the ode. It is the partof the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve,to his own emotions.
Between these hostile elements many great men haveendeavored to effect an amalgamation, but never withcomplete success. The Greek drama, on the modelof which the Samson was written, sprang from the ode.The dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturallypartook of its character. The genius of the greatestof the Athenian dramatists co-operated with the circ*mstancesunder which tragedy made its first appearance.Aeschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. Inhis time, the Greeks had far more intercourse withthe East than in the days of Homer; and they had notyet acquired that immense superiority in war, in science,and in the arts, which, in the following generation,led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt.From the narrative of Herodotus it should seem thatthey still looked up, with the veneration of disciples,to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly,it was natural that the literature of Greece shouldbe tinctured with the Oriental style. And thatstyle, we think, is discernible in the works of Pindarand Aeschylus. The latter often reminds us ofthe Hebrew writers. The Book of Job, indeed,in conduct and diction, bears a considerable resemblanceto some of his dramas. Considered as plays, hisworks are absurd; considered as choruses they areabove all praise. If, for instance, we examinethe address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return,or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, bythe principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantlycondemn them as monstrous. But if we forget thecharacters, and think only of the poetry, we shalladmit that it has never been surpassed in energy andmagnificence. Sophocles made the Greek dramaas dramatic as was consistent with its original form.
His portraits of men have a sort of similarity; butit is the similarity, not of a painting, but of abass-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but itdoes not produce an illusion. Euripides attemptedto carry the reform further. But it was a taskfar beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers.Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed whatwas excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts,bad sermons for good odes.Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly,much more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved.Indeed, the caresses which this partiality leads ourcountryman to bestow on “sad Electra’spoet” sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queenof Fairy-land kissing the long ears of Bottom.At all events, there can be no doubt that this venerationfor the Athenian, whether just or not, was injuriousto the Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken Aeschylusfor his model, he would have given himself up to thelyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all thetreasures of his mind, without bestowing a thoughton those dramatic properties which the nature of thework rendered it impossible to preserve. In theattempt to reconcile things in their own nature inconsistenthe has failed, as every one else must have failed.We cannot identify ourselves with the characters,as in a good play. We cannot identify ourselveswith the poet, as in a good ode. The conflictingingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralizeeach other. We are by no means insensible to themerits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignityof the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnityof the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melodywhich gives so striking an effect to the choral passages.But we think it, we confess, the least successfuleffort of the genius of Milton.
The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque,as the Samson is framed on the model of the GreekTragedy. It is certainly the noblest performanceof the kind which exists in any language. It isas far superior to The Faithful Shepherdess, as TheFaithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Amintato the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton thathe had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understoodand loved the literature of modern Italy. Buthe did not feel for it the same veneration which heentertained for the remains of Athenian and Romanpoetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearingrecollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italianpredecessors were of a kind to which his mind hada deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plainstyle, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancywas his utter aversion. His muse had no objectionto a russet attire; but she turned with disgust fromthe finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as therags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whateverornaments she wears are of massive gold, not onlydazzling to the sight, but capable of standing theseverest test of the crucible.
Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction whichhe afterward neglected in the Samson. He madehis Masque what it ought to be, essentially lyrical,and dramatic only in semblance. He has not attempteda fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in thenature of that species of composition; and he hastherefore succeeded, wherever success was not impossible.The speeches must be read as majestic soliloquies;and he who so reads them will be enraptured with theireloquence, their sublimity, and their music. Theinterruptions of the dialogue, however, impose a constraintupon the writer, and break the illusion of the reader.The finest passages are those which are lyric in formas well as in spirit. “I should much commend,”says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter toMilton, “the tragical part if the lyrical didnot ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in yoursongs and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confessto you, I have seen yet nothing parallel in our language.”The criticism was just. It is when Milton escapesfrom the shackles of the dialogue, when he is dischargedfrom the labor of uniting two incongruous styles, whenhe is at liberty to indulge his choral raptures withoutreserve, that he rises even above himself. Then,like his own good Genius bursting from the earthlyform and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestialfreedom and beauty; he seems to cry exultingly,
“Now my task issmoothly done,
I can fly or Ican run,”
to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathein the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale thebalmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky windsof the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys ofthe Hesperides.
There are several of the minor poems of Milton onwhich we would willingly make a few remarks.Still more willingly would we enter into a detailedexamination of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained,which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentionedexcept as an instance of the blindness of the parentalaffection which men of letters bear toward the offspringof their intellects. That Milton was mistakenin preferring this work, excellent as it is, to theParadise Lost, we readily admit. But we are surethat the superiority of the Paradise Lost to the ParadiseRegained is not more decided than the superiority ofthe Paradise Regained to every poem which has sincemade its appearance. Our limits, however, preventus from discussing the point at length. We hastenon to that extraordinary production which the generalsuffrage of critics has placed in the highest classof human compositions.
The only poem of modern times which can be comparedwith the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy.The subject of Milton, in some points, resembled thatof Dante; but he has treated it in a widely differentmanner. We cannot, we think, better illustrateour opinion respecting our own great poet than bycontrasting him with the father of Tuscan literature.
The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante asthe hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture-writingof Mexico. The images which Dante employs speakfor themselves; they stand simply for what they are.Those of Milton have a signification which is oftendiscernible only to the initiated. Their valuedepends less on what they directly represent thanon what they remotely suggest. However strange,however grotesque, may be the appearance which Danteundertakes to describe, he never shrinks from describingit. He gives us the shape, the color, the sound,the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he measuresthe size. His similes are the illustrations ofa traveller. Unlike those of other poets, andespecially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain,business-like manner; not for the sake of any beautyin the objects from which they are drawn; not forthe sake of any ornament which they may impart tothe poem; but simply in order to make the meaning ofthe writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself.The ruins of the precipice which led from the sixthto the seventh circle of hell were like those of therock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent.The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Chetaat the Monastery of St. Benedict. The place wherethe heretics were confined in burning tombs resembledthe vast cemetery of Arles.
Now let us compare with the exact details of Dantethe dim intimations of Milton. We will cite afew examples. The English poet has never thoughtof taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merelya vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage thefiend lies stretched out huge in length, floatingmany a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemiesof Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakesfor an island. When he addresses himself to battleagainst the guardian angels he stands like Teneriffeor Atlas: his stature reaches the sky. Contrastwith these descriptions the lines in which Dante hasdescribed the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. “Hisface seemed to me as long and as broad as the ballof St. Peter’s at Rome; and his other limbs werein proportion; so that the bank, which concealed himfrom the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so muchof him that three tall Germans would in vain haveattempted to reach to his hair.” We aresensible that we do no justice to the admirable styleof the Florentine poet. But Mr. Cary’stranslation is not at hand; and our version, howeverrude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning.
Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventhbook of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolgein Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details,and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendousimagery—Despair hurrying from couch to couchto mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shakinghis dart over them, but, in spite of supplications,delaying to strike. What says Dante? “Therewas such a moan there as there would be if all thesick who, between July and September, are in the hospitalsof Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia,were in one pit together; and such a stench was issuingforth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs.”
We will not take upon ourselves the invidious officeof settling precedency between two such writers.Each in his own department is incomparable; and each,we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken asubject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to thegreatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personalnarrative. Dante is the eye-witness and ear-witnessof that which he relates. He is the very manwho has heard the tormented spirits crying out forthe second death, who has read the dusky characterson the portal within which there is no hope, who hashidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, whohas fled from the hooks and the seething pitch ofBarbariccia and Draghignazzo. His own hands havegrasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His ownfeet have climbed the mountain of expiation. Hisown brow has been marked by the purifying angel.The reader would throw aside such a tale in incredulousdisgust, unless it were told with the strongest airof veracity, with a sobriety even in its horrors, withthe greatest precision and multiplicity in its details.The narrative of Milton in this respect differs fromthat of Dante as the adventures of Amadis differ fromthose of Gulliver. The author of Amadis wouldhave made his book ridiculous if he had introducedthose minute particulars which give such a charm tothe work of Swift, the nautical observations, theaffected delicacy about names, the official documentstranscribed at full length, and all the unmeaninggossip and scandal of the court, springing out ofnothing, and tending to nothing. We are not shockedat being told that a man who lived, nobody knows when,saw many very strange sights, and we can easily abandonourselves to the illusion of the romance. Butwhen Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe,tells us of pigmies and giants, flying islands, andphilosophizing horses, nothing but such circ*mstantialtouches could produce for a single moment a deceptionon the imagination.
Of all the poets who have introduced into their worksthe agency of supernatural beings, Milton has succeededbest. Here Dante decidedly yields to him; andas this is a point on which many rash and ill-consideredjudgments have been pronounced, we feel inclined todwell on it a little longer. The most fatal errorwhich a poet can possibly commit in the managementof his machinery is that of attempting to philosophizetoo much. Milton has been often censured for ascribingto spirits many functions of which spirits must beincapable. But these objections, though sanctionedby eminent names, originate, we venture to say, inprofound ignorance of the art of poetry.
What is spirit? What are our own minds, the portionof spirit with which we are best acquainted?We observe certain phenomena. We cannot explainthem into material causes. We therefore inferthat there exists something which is not material.But of this something we have no idea. We candefine it only by negatives. We can reason aboutit only by symbols. We use the word, but we haveno image of the thing; and the business of poetryis with images, and not with words. The poet useswords, indeed; but they are merely the instrumentsof his art, not its objects. They are the materialswhich he is to dispose in such a manner as to presenta picture to the mental eye. And if they are notso disposed, they are no more entitled to be calledpoetry than a bale of canvas and a box of colors tobe called a painting.
Logicians may reason about abstractions. Butthe great mass of men must have images. The strongtendency of the multitude in all ages and nationsto idolatry can be explained on no other principle.The first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason tobelieve, worshipped one invisible Deity. Butthe necessity of having something more definite toadore produced, in a few centuries, the innumerablecrowd of gods and goddesses. In like manner theancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit thecreator under a human form. Yet even these transferredto the sun the worship which, in speculation, theyconsidered due only to the Supreme Mind. Thehistory of the Jews is the record of a continued strugglebetween pure Theism, supported by the most terriblesanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire ofhaving some visible and tangible object of adoration.Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbonhas assigned for the rapidity with which Christianityspread over the world, while Judaism scarcely everacquired a proselyte, operated more powerfully thanthis feeling. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible,the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A philosophermight admire so noble a conception; but the crowdturned away in disgust from words which presentedno image to their minds. It was before Deity embodiedin a human form, walking among men, partaking of theirinfirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping overtheir graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding onthe cross, that the prejudices of the Synagogue, andthe doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico,and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirtylegions, were humbled in the dust. Soon afterChristianity had achieved its triumph, the principlewhich had assisted it began to corrupt it. Itbecame a new paganism. Patron saints assumedthe offices of household gods. St. George tookthe place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the marinerfor the loss of Castor and Pollux. The VirginMother and Cecilia succeeded to Venus and Muses.The fascination of sex and loveliness was again joinedto that of celestial dignity; and the homage of chivalry
was blended with that of religion. Reformershave often made a stand against these feelings; butnever with more than apparent and partial success.The men who demolished the images in cathedrals havenot always been able to demolish those which wereenshrined in their minds. It would not be difficultto show that in politics the same rule holds good.Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodiedbefore they can excite a strong public feeling.The multitude is more easily interested for the mostunmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name, thanfor the most important principle.From these considerations, we infer that no poet whoshould affect that metaphysical accuracy for the wantof which Milton has been blamed would escape a disgracefulfailure. Still, however, there was another extremewhich, though far less dangerous, was also to be avoided.The imaginations of men are in a great measure underthe control of their opinions. The most exquisiteart of poetical coloring can produce no illusion whenit is employed to represent that which is at onceperceived to be incongruous and absurd. Miltonwrote in an age of philosophers and theologians.It was necessary, therefore, for him to abstain fromgiving such a shock to their understandings as mightbreak the charm which it was his object to throw overtheir imaginations. This is the real explanationof the indistinctness and inconsistency with whichhe has often been reproached. Dr. Johnson acknowledgesthat it was absolutely necessary that the spirit shouldbe clothed with material forms. “But,”says he, “the poet should have secured the consistencyof his system by keeping immateriality out of sight,and seducing the reader to drop it from his thoughts.”This is easily said; but what if Milton could notseduce his readers to drop immateriality from theirthoughts? What if the contrary opinion had takenso full a possession of the minds of men as to leaveno room even for the half-belief which poetry requires?Such we suspect to have been the case. It wasimpossible for the poet to adopt altogether the materialor the immaterial system. He therefore took hisstand on the debatable ground. He left the wholein ambiguity. He has doubtless, by so doing, laidhimself open to the charge of inconsistency. But,though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot butbelieve that he was poetically in the right.This task, which almost any other writer would havefound impracticable, was easy to him. The peculiarart which he possessed of communicating his meaningcircuitously through a long succession of associatedideas, and of intimating more than he expressed, enabledhim to disguise those incongruities which he couldnot avoid.
Poetry which relates to the beings of another worldought to be at once mysterious and picturesque.That of Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque,indeed, beyond any that ever was written. Itseffect approaches to that produced by the pencil orthe chisel. But it is picturesque to the exclusionof all mystery. This is a fault on the rightside, a fault inseparable from the plan of Dante’spoem, which, as we have already observed, renderedthe utmost accuracy of description necessary.Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excitean interest; but it is not the interest which is properto supernatural agents. We feel that we couldtalk to the ghosts and demons without any emotionof unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, askthem to supper, and eat heartily in their company.Dante’s angels are good men with wings.His devils are spiteful, ugly executioners. Hisdead men are merely living men in strange situations.The scene which passes between the poet and Farinatais justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in theburning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have beenat an auto-da-fe. Nothing can be moretouching than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice.Yet what is it but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet,austere composure, the lover for whose affection sheis grateful, but whose vices she reprobates?The feelings which give the passage its charm wouldsuit the streets of Florence as well as the summitof the Mount of Purgatory.
The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost allother writers. His fiends, in particular, arewonderful creations. They are not metaphysicalabstractions. They are not wicked men. Theyare not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails,none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock.They have just enough in common with human nature tobe intelligible to human beings. Their charactersare, like their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblanceto those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions,and veiled in mysterious gloom.
Perhaps the gods and demons of Aeschylus may bestbear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton.The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked,something of the Oriental character; and the samepeculiarity may be traced in his mythology. Ithas nothing of the amenity and elegance which we generallyfind in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged,barbaric, and colossal. The legends of Aeschylusseem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves andgraceful porticos in which his countrymen paid theirvows to the God of Light and Goddess of Desire thanwith those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternalgranite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris,or in which Hindostan still bows down to her seven-headedidols. His favorite gods are those of the eldergeneration, the sons of heaven and earth, comparedwith whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart,the gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies.
Foremost among his creations of this class standsPrometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend ofman, the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven.Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblanceto the Satan of Milton. In both we find the sameimpatience of control, the same ferocity, the sameunconquerable pride. In both characters alsoare mingled, though in very different proportions,some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, however,is hardly superhuman enough. He talks too muchof his chains and his uneasy posture; he is rathertoo much depressed and agitated. His resolutionseems to depend on the knowledge which he possessesthat he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands,and that the hour of his release will surely come.But Satan is a creature of another sphere. Themight of his intellectual nature is victorious overthe extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannotbe conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves,and even exults. Against the sword of Michael,against the thunder of Jehovah, against the flaminglake, and the marl burning with solid fire, againstthe prospect of an eternity of unintermitted misery,his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innateenergies, requiring no support from anything external,nor even from hope itself.To return for a moment to the parallel which we havebeen attempting to draw between Milton and Dante,we would add that the poetry of these great men hasin a considerable degree taken its character from theirmoral qualities. They are not egotists. Theyrarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers.They have nothing in common with those modern beggarsfor fame who extort a pittance from the compassionof the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness andsores of their minds. Yet it would be difficultto name two writers whose works have been more completely,though undesignedly, colored by their personal feelings.
The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguishedby loftiness of spirit; that of Dante by intensityof feeling. In every line of the Divine Comedywe discern the asperity which is produced by pridestruggling with misery. There is perhaps no workin the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful.The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice.It was not, as far as at this distance of time canbe judged, the effect of external circ*mstances.It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neitherthe conflicts of earth nor the hope of heaven, coulddispel it. It turned every consolation and everypleasure into its own nature. It resembled thatnoxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitternessis said to have been perceptible even in its honey.His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrewpoet, “a land of darkness, as darkness itself,and where the light was as darkness.” Thegloom of his character discolors all the passionsof men, and all the face of nature, and tinges withits own livid hue the flowers of Paradise and theglories of the eternal throne. All the portraitsof him are singularly characteristic. No personcan look on the features, noble even to ruggedness—thedark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woful stareof the eye the sullen and contemptuous curve of thelip—and doubt that they belong to a mantoo proud and too sensitive to be happy.
Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and,like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition andin love. He had survived his health and his sight,the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of hisparty. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguishedat his entrance into life, some had been taken awayfrom the evil to come; some had carried into foreignclimates their unconquerable hatred of oppression;some were pining in dungeons; and some had pouredforth their blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentiousscribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothethe thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman,were now the favorite writers of the Sovereign andof the public. It was a loathsome herd, whichcould be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabbleof Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human,dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reelingin obscene dances. Amidst these that fair Musewas placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty,spotless, and serene, to be chattered at, and pointedat, and grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs andGoblins. If ever despondency and asperity couldbe excused in any man, they might have been excusedin Milton. But the strength of his mind overcameevery calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout,nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, norpolitical disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription,nor neglect had power to disturb his sedate and majesticpatience. His spirits do not seem to have beenhigh, but they were singularly equable. His temperwas serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper whichno sufferings could render sullen or fretful.Such as it was when, on the eve of great events, hereturned from his travels, in the prime of healthand manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions,and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continuedto be when, after having experienced every calamitywhich is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless,and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die.
Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lostat a time of life when images of beauty and tendernessare in general beginning to fade, even from thoseminds in which they have not been effaced by anxietyand disappointment, he adorned it with all that ismost lovely and delightful in the physical and inthe moral world. Neither Theocritus nor Ariostohad a finer or a more healthful sense of the pleasantnessof external objects, or loved better to luxuriateamidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales,the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of shadyfountains. His conception of love unites all thevoluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantryof the chivalric tournament with all the pure andquiet affection of an English fireside. His poetryreminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery.Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairyland, are embosomedin its most rugged and gigantic elevations. Theroses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge ofthe avalanche.
Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Miltonmay be found in all his works; but it is most stronglydisplayed in the Sonnets. Those remarkable poemshave been undervalued by critics who have not understoodtheir nature. They have no epigrammatic point.There is none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in thethought, none of the hard and brilliant enamel ofPetrarch in the style. They are simple but majesticrecords of the feelings of the poet; as little trickedout for the public eye as his diary would have been.A victory, an expected attack upon the city, a momentaryfit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown outagainst one of his books, a dream which for a shorttime restored to him that beautiful face over whichthe grave had closed forever, led him to musings,which, without effort, shaped themselves into verse.The unity of sentiment and severity of style whichcharacterize these little pieces remind us of the GreekAnthology, or perhaps still more of the Collects ofthe English Liturgy. The noble poem on the massacresof Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse.
The Sonnets are more or less striking, according asthe occasions which gave birth to them are more orless interesting. But they are, almost withoutexception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness ofmind to which we know not where to look for a parallel.It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any decidedinferences as to the character of a writer from passagesdirectly egotistical. But the qualities whichwe have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most stronglymarked in those parts of his works which treat ofhis personal feelings, are distinguishable in everypage, and impart to all his writings, prose and poetry,English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness.
His public conduct was such as was to be expectedfrom a man of spirit so high and of an intellect sopowerful. He lived at one of the most memorableeras in the history of mankind, at the very crisisof the great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes,liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice.That great battle was fought for no single generation,for no single land. The destinies of the humanrace were staked on the same cast with the freedomof the English people. Then were first proclaimedthose mighty principles which have since worked theirway into the depths of the American forests, whichhave roused Greece from the slavery and degradationof two thousand years, and which, from one end ofEurope to the other, have kindled an unquenchablefire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed theknees of the oppressors with an unwonted fear.
Of those principles, then struggling for their infantexistence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquentliterary champion. We need not say how much weadmire his public conduct. But we cannot disguisefrom ourselves that a large portion of his countrymenstill think it unjustifiable. The civil war,indeed, has been more discussed, and is less understood,than any event in English history. The friendsof liberty labored under the disadvantage of whichthe lion in the fable complained so bitterly.Though they were the conquerors, their enemies werethe painters. As a body, the Roundheads had donetheir utmost to decry and ruin literature; and literaturewas even with them, as, in the long run, it alwaysis with its enemies. The best book on their sideof the question is the charming narrative of Mrs.Hutchinson. May’s History of the Parliamentis good; but it breaks off at the most interestingcrisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlowis foolish and violent; and most of the later writerswho have espoused the same cause—Oldmixon,for instance, and Catherine Macaulay—have,to say the least, been more distinguished by zealthan either by candor or by skill. On the otherside are the most authoritative and the most popularhistorical works in our language, that of Clarendon,and that of Hume. The former is not only ablywritten and full of valuable information, but has alsoan air of dignity and sincerity which makes even theprejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable.Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the great massof the reading public are still contented to take theiropinions, hated religion so much that he hated libertyfor having been allied with religion, and has pleadedthe cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocatewhile affecting the impartiality of a judge.
The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemnedaccording as the resistance of the people to Charlesthe First shall appear to be justifiable or criminal....
Every man who approves of the Revolution of 1688 [whichdethroned James II., son of Charles I., on the groundthat he “had broken the fundamental laws ofthe kingdom,” and enthroned William of Orangein his stead], must hold that the breach of fundamentallaws on the part of the sovereign justifies resistance.The question, then, is this: Had Charles theFirst broken the fundamental laws of England?
No person can answer in the negative, unless he refusescredit, not merely to all the accusations broughtagainst Charles by his opponents, but to the narrativesof the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions ofthe king himself. If there be any truth in anyhistorian of any party who has related the eventsof that reign, the conduct of Charles, from his accessionto the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been acontinued course of oppression and treachery.Let those who applaud the Revolution and condemn theRebellion mention one act of James the Second to which
a parallel is not to be found in the history of hisfather. Let them lay their fingers on a singlearticle in the Declaration of Right, presented bythe two Houses to William and Mary, which Charles isnot acknowledged to have violated. He had, accordingto the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functionsof the legislature, raised taxes without the consentof Parliament, and quartered troops on the people inthe most illegal and vexatious manner. Not a singlesession of Parliament had passed without some unconstitutionalattack on the freedom of debate; the right of petitionwas grossly violated; arbitrary judgments, exorbitantfines, and unwarranted imprisonments were grievancesof daily occurrence. If these things do not justifyresistance, the Revolution was treason; if they do,the Great Rebellion was laudable.But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures?Why, after the king had consented to so many reforms,and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, didthe Parliament continue to rise in their demands atthe risk of provoking a civil war? The ship-moneyhad been given up. The Star-chamber had beenabolished. Provision had been made for the frequentconvocation and secure deliberation of parliaments.Why not pursue an end confessedly good by peaceableand regular means? We recur again to the analogyof the Revolution. Why was James driven from thethrone? Why was he not retained upon conditions?He too had offered to call a free parliament, andto submit to its decision all the matters in dispute.Yet we are in the habit of praising our forefathers,who preferred a revolution, a disputed succession,a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of foreign andintestine war, a standing army, and a national debt,to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and provedtyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the sameprinciple, and is entitled to the same praise.They could not trust the king. He had, no doubt,passed salutary laws; but what assurance was therethat he would not break them? He had renouncedoppressive prerogatives; but where was the securitythat he would not resume them? The nation hadto deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man whomade and broke promises with equal facility, a manwhose honor had been a hundred times pawned, and neverredeemed.
Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on stillstronger ground than the Convention of 1688.No action of James can be compared to the conductof Charles with respect to the Petition of Right.The Lords and Commons present him with a bill in whichthe constitutional limits of his power are markedout. He hesitates; he evades; at last he bargainsto give his assent for five subsidies. The billreceives his solemn assent; the subsidies are voted;but no sooner is the tyrant relieved than he returnsat once to all the arbitrary measures which he hadbound himself to abandon, and violates all the clausesof the very act which he had been paid to pass.
For more than ten years the people had seen the rightswhich were theirs by a double claim, by immemorialinheritance and by recent purchase, infringed by theperfidious king who had recognized them. At lengthcirc*mstances compelled Charles to summon another Parliament;another chance was given to our fathers: werethey to throw it away as they had thrown away theformer? Were they again to be cozened by leRoi le veut? Were they again to advance theirmoney on pledges which had been forfeited over andover again? Were they to lay a second Petitionof Right at the foot of the throne, to grant anotherlavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning ceremony,and then to take their departure, till, after tenyears more of fraud and oppression, their prince shouldagain require a supply, and again repay it with aperjury? They were compelled to choose whetherthey would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We thinkthat they chose wisely and nobly.
The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of othermalefactors against whom overwhelming evidence isproduced, generally decline all controversy aboutthe facts, and content themselves with calling testimonyto character. He had so many private virtues!And had James the Second no private virtues?Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselvesbeing judges, destitute of private virtues? Andwhat, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles?A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of hisson, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a fewof the ordinary household decencies which half thetombstones in England claim for those who lie beneaththem. A good father! A good husband!Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution,tyranny, and falsehood!
We charge him with having broken his coronation oath;and we are told that he kept his marriage vow!We accuse him of having given up his people to themerciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-heartedof prelates; and the defence is, that he took his littleson on his knee and kissed him! We censure himfor having violated the articles of the Petition ofRight, after having, for good and valuable consideration,promised to observe them; and we are informed thathe was accustomed to hear prayers at six o’clockin the morning! It is to such considerationsas these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsomeface, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verilybelieve, most of his popularity with the present generation.
For ourselves, we own that we do not understand thecommon phrase, a good man, but a bad king. Wecan as easily conceive a good man and an unnaturalfather, or a good man and a treacherous friend.We cannot, in estimating the character of an individual,leave out of our consideration his conduct in themost important of all human relations; and if in thatrelation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, anddeceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him abad man, in spite of all his temperance at table,and all his regularity at chapel.
We cannot refrain from adding a few words respectinga topic on which the defenders of Charles are fondof dwelling. If, they say, he governed his peopleill, he at least governed them after the example ofhis predecessors. If he violated their privileges,it was because their privileges had not been accuratelydefined. No act of oppression has ever been imputedto him which has not a parallel in the annals of theTudors. This point Hume has labored, with an artwhich is as discreditable in a historical work asit would be admirable in a forensic address.The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charleshad assented to the Petition of Right. He hadrenounced the oppressive powers said to have beenexercised by his predecessors, and he had renouncedthem for money. He was not entitled to set uphis antiquated claims against his own recent release.
These arguments are so obvious that it may seem superfluousto dwell upon them. But those who have observedhow much the events of that time are misrepresentedand misunderstood will not blame us for stating thecase simply. It is a case of which the simpleststatement is the strongest.
The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely chooseto take issue on the great points of the question.They content themselves with exposing some of thecrimes and follies to which public commotions necessarilygive birth. They bewail the unmerited fate ofStrafford. They execrate the lawless violenceof the army. They laugh at the Scriptural namesof the preachers. Major-generals fleecing theirdistricts; soldiers revelling on the spoils of a ruinedpeasantry; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder,taking possession of the hospitable firesides andhereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing thebeautiful windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding nakedthrough the market-place; Fifth-monarchy-men shoutingfor King Jesus; agitators lecturing from the topsof tubs on the fate of Agag; all these, they tell us,were the offspring of the Great Rebellion.
Be it so. We are not careful to answer in thismatter. These charges, were they infinitely moreimportant, would not alter our opinion of an eventwhich alone has made us to differ from the slaves whocrouch beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils,no doubt, were produced by the civil war. Theywere the price of our liberty. Has the acquisitionbeen worth the sacrifice? It is the nature ofthe devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body whichhe leaves. Are the miseries of continued possessionless horrible than the struggles of the tremendousexorcism?
If it were possible that a people brought up underan intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert thatsystem without acts of cruelty and folly, half theobjections to despotic power would be removed.We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledgethat it at least produces no pernicious effects onthe intellectual and moral character of a nation.We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions.But the more violent the outrages, the more assuredwe feel that a revolution was necessary. Theviolence of these outrages will always be proportionedto the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and theferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportionedto the oppression and degradation under which theyhave been accustomed to live. Thus it was inour civil war. The heads of the Church and Statereaped only that which they had sown. The Governmenthad prohibited free discussion; it had done its bestto keep the people unacquainted with their dutiesand their rights. The retribution was just andnatural. If our rulers suffered from popularignorance, it was because they had themselves takenaway the key of knowledge. If they were assailedwith blind fury, it was because they had exacted anequally blind submission.
It is the character of such revolutions that we alwayssee the worst of them at first. Till men havebeen some time free, they know not how to use theirfreedom. The natives of wine countries are generallysober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperanceabounds. A newly liberated people may be comparedto a Northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres.It is said that when soldiers in such a situation findthemselves able to indulge without restraint in sucha rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seenbut intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teachesdiscretion; and, after wine has been for a few monthstheir daily fare, they become more temperate thanthey had ever been in their own country. In thesame manner, the final and permanent fruits of libertyare wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediateeffects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors,scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism onpoints the most mysterious. It is just at thiscrisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. Theypull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice;they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks,the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity ofthe whole appearance; and then ask in scorn wherethe promised splendor and comfort is to be found.If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, therewould never be a good house or a good government inthe world.
Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by somemysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appearat certain seasons in the form of a foul and poisonoussnake. Those who injured her during the periodof her disguise were forever excluded from participationin the blessings which she bestowed. But to thosewho, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied andprotected her, she afterwards revealed herself in thebeautiful and celestial form which was natural toher, accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes,filled their houses with wealth, made them happy inlove and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty.At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile.She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woeto those who in disgust shall venture to crush her!And happy are those who, having dared to receive herin her degraded and frightful shape, shall at lengthbe rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and herglory!
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquiredfreedom produces; and that cure is freedom. Whena prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear thelight of day; he is unable to discriminate colorsor recognize faces. But the remedy is, not toremand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him tothe rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and libertymay at first dazzle and bewilder nations which havebecome half-blind in the house of bondage. Butlet them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bearit. In a few years men learn to reason. Theextreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostiletheories correct each other. The scattered elementsof truth cease to contend, and begin to coalesce; andat length a system of justice and order is educed outof the chaos.
Many politicians of our time are in the habit of layingit down as a self-evident proposition, that no peopleought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom.The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story,who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnedto swim. If men are to wait for liberty tillthey become wise and good in slavery, they may indeedwait forever.
Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conductof Milton and the other wise and good men who, inspite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in theconduct of their associates, stood by the cause ofpublic liberty. We are not aware that the poethas been charged with personal participation in anyof the blamable excesses of that time. The favoritetopic of his enemies is the line of conduct which hepursued with regard to the execution of the King.Of that celebrated proceeding we by no means approve.Still, we must say, in justice to the many eminentpersons who, concurred in it, and in justice, moreparticularly, to the eminent person who defended it,that nothing can be more absurd than the imputationswhich, for the last hundred and sixty years, it hasbeen the fashion to cast upon the Regicides....
We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles;not because the constitution exempts the king fromresponsibility, for we know that all such maxims,however excellent, have their exceptions; nor becausewe feel any peculiar interest in his character, forwe think that his sentence describes him with perfectjustice as “a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer,and a public enemy;” but because we are convincedthat the measure was most injurious to the cause offreedom. He whom it removed was a captive anda hostage: his heir, to whom the allegiance ofevery Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large.The Presbyterians could never have been perfectlyreconciled to the father: they had no such rootedenmity to the son. The great body of the people,also, contemplated that proceeding with feelings which,however unreasonable, no government could safely ventureto outrage.
But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blamable,that of Milton appears to us in a very different light.The deed was done. It could not be undone.The evil was incurred; and the object was to renderit as small as possible. We censure the chiefsof the army for not yielding to the popular opinion;but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to changethat opinion. The very feeling which would haverestrained us from committing the act would have ledus, after it had been committed, to defend it againstthe ravings of servility and superstition. Forthe sake of public liberty, we wish that the thinghad not been done, while the people disapproved ofit. But, for the sake of public liberty, we shouldalso have wished the people to approve of it whenit was done....
We wish to add a few words relative to another subjecton which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell,—hisconduct during the administration of the Protector.That an enthusiastic votary of liberty should acceptoffice under a military usurper seems, no doubt, atfirst sight, extraordinary. But all the circ*mstancesin which the country was then placed were extraordinary.The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind.He never seems to have coveted despotic power.He at first fought sincerely and manfully for theParliament, and never deserted it till it had desertedits duty. If he dissolved it by force, it wasnot till he found that the few members who remainedafter so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions,were desirous to appropriate to themselves a powerwhich they held only in trust, and to inflict uponEngland the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. Buteven when thus placed by violence at the head of affairs,he did not assume unlimited power. He gave thecountry a constitution far more perfect than any whichhad at that time been known in the world. Hereformed the representative system in a manner whichhas extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon.For himself he demanded indeed the first place inthe commonwealth; but with powers scarcely so greatas those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American president.
He gave the Parliament a voice in the appointment ofministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority,not even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments;and he did not require that the chief magistracy shouldbe hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think,if the circ*mstances of the time and the opportunitieswhich he had of aggrandizing himself be fairly considered,he will not lose by comparison with Washington orBolivar. Had his moderation been met by correspondingmoderation, there is no reason to think that he wouldhave overstepped the line which he had traced forhimself. But when he found that his parliamentsquestioned the authority under which they met, andthat he was in danger of being deprived of the restrictedpower which was absolutely necessary to his personalsafety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopteda more arbitrary policy.Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwellwere at first honest, though we believe that he wasdriven from the noble course which he had marked outfor himself by the almost irresistible force of circ*mstances,though we admire, in common with all men of all parties,the ability and energy of his splendid administration,we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power,even in his hands. We know that a good constitutionis infinitely better than the best despot. Butwe suspect that, at the time of which we speak, theviolence of religious and political enmities rendereda stable and happy settlement next to impossible.The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty,but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Miltonchose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares theevents of the protectorate with those of the thirtyyears which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgracefulin the English annals. Cromwell was evidentlylaying, though in an irregular manner, the foundationsof an admirable system. Never before had religiousliberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyedin a greater degree. Never had the national honorbeen better upheld abroad, or the seat of justicebetter filled at home. And it was rarely thatany opposition which stopped short of open rebellionprovoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimoususurper. The institutions which he had established,as set down in the Instrument of Government, and theHumble Petition and Advice, were excellent. Hispractice, it is true, too often departed from thetheory of these institutions. But had he liveda few years longer, it is probable that his institutionswould have survived him, and that his arbitrary practicewould have died with him. His power had not beenconsecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheldonly by his great personal qualities. Little,therefore, was to be dreaded from a second protector,unless he were also a second Oliver Cromwell.The events which followed his decease are the mostcomplete vindication of those who exerted themselvesto uphold his authority. His death dissolved
the whole frame of society. The army rose againstthe Parliament, the different corps of the army againsteach other. Sect raved against sect. Partyplotted against party. The Presbyterians, intheir eagerness to be revenged on the Independents,sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all theirold principles. Without casting one glance onthe past, or requiring one stipulation for the future,they threw down their freedom at the feet of the mostfrivolous and heartless of tyrants.Then came those days, never to be recalled withouta blush, the days of servitude without loyalty andsensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and giganticvices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds,the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave.The King cringed to his rival that he might trampleon his people, sank into a viceroy of France, andpocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insultsand her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlotsand the jests of buffoons regulated the policy ofthe State. The government had just ability enoughto deceive, and just religion enough to persecute.The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinningcourtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawningdean. In every high place, worship was paid toCharles and James, Belial and Moloch; and Englandpropitiated those obscene and cruel idols with theblood of her best and bravest children. Crimesucceeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, tillthe race accursed of God and man was a second timedriven forth, to wander on the face of the earth,and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to thenations.
Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made onthe public character of Milton apply to him only asone of a large body. We shall proceed to noticesome of the peculiarities which distinguished him fromhis contemporaries. And, for that purpose, itis necessary to take a short survey of the partiesinto which the political world was at that time divided.We must premise that our observations are intendedto apply only to those who adhered, from a sincerepreference, to one or to the other side. In daysof public commotion, every faction, like an Orientalarmy, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, a uselessand heartless rabble, who prowl round its line ofmarch in the hope of picking up something under itsprotection, but desert it in the day of battle, andoften join to exterminate it after a defeat. England,at the time of which we are treating, abounded withfickle and selfish politicians, who transferred theirsupport to every government as it rose; who kissedthe hand of the king in 1640, and spat in his facein 1649; who shouted with equal glee when Cromwellwas inaugurated at Westminster Hall and when he wasdug up to be hanged at Tyburn; who dined on calves’heads, or stuck up oak-branches, as circ*mstancesaltered, without the slightest shame or repugnance.These we leave out of the account. We take ourestimate of parties from those who really deserveto be called partisans.
We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkablebody of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced.The odious and ridiculous parts of their characterlie on the surface. He that runs may read them;nor have there been wanting attentive and maliciousobservers to point them out. For many years afterthe Restoration they were the theme of unmeasuredinvective and derision. They were exposed to theutmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage,at the time when the press and the stage were mostlicentious. They were not men of letters; theywere, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves;and the public would not take them under its protection.They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, tothe tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists.The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their souraspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, theirlong graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phraseswhich they introduced on every occasion, their contemptof human learning, their detestation of polite amusem*nts,were indeed fair game for the laughers. But itis not from the laughers alone that the philosophyof history is to be learned. And he who approachesthis subject should carefully guard against the influenceof that potent ridicule which has already misled somany excellent writers.
“Ecco il fontedel riso, ed ecco il rio
Chemortali perigli in se contiene:
Hor qui tenera fren nostro desio,
Edesser cauti molto a noi conviene.”
Those who roused the people to resistance; who directedtheir measures through a long series of eventful years;who formed, out of the most unpromising materials,the finest army that Europe had ever seen; who trampleddown King, Church, and Aristocracy; who, in the shortintervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, madethe name of England terrible to every nation on theface of the earth—were no vulgar fanatics.Most of their absurdities were mere external badges,like the signs of freemasonry or the dresses of friars.We regret that these badges were not more attractive.We regret that a body to whose courage and talentsmankind has owed inestimable obligations had not thelofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherentsof Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding forwhich the court of Charles the Second was celebrated.But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanioin the play, turn from the specious caskets whichcontain only the Death’s head and the Fool’shead, and fix on the plain leaden chest which concealsthe treasure.
The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiarcharacter from the daily contemplation of superiorbeings and eternal interests. Not content withacknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence,they habitually ascribed every event to the will ofthe Great Being for whose power nothing was too vast,for whose inspection nothing was too minute.To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with themthe great end of existence. They rejected withcontempt the ceremonious homage which other sectssubstituted for the pure worship of the soul.Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deitythrough an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze fullon his intolerable brightness, and to commune withhim face to face. Hence originated their contemptfor terrestrial distinctions. The difference betweenthe greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed tovanish when compared with the boundless interval whichseparated the whole race from him on whom their owneyes were constantly fixed. They recognized notitle to superiority but his favor; and, confidentof that favor, they despised all the accomplishmentsand all the dignities of the world. If they wereunacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets,they were deeply read in the oracles of God.If their names were not found in the registers ofheralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life.If their steps were not accompanied by a splendidtrain of menials, legions of ministering angels hadcharge over them. Their palaces were houses notmade with hands; their diadems crowns of glory whichshould never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent,on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt;for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precioustreasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language,nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priestsby the imposition of a mightier hand. The verymeanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysteriousand terrible importance belonged; on whose slightestaction the spirits of light and darkness looked withanxious interest; who had been destined, before heavenand earth were created, to enjoy a felicity whichshould continue when heaven and earth should have passedaway. Events which short-sighted politiciansascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on hisaccount. For his sake empires had risen, andflourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almightyhad proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelistand the harp of the prophet. He had been wrestedby no common deliverer from the grasp of no commonfoe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of novulgar agony by the blood of no earthly sacrifice.It was for him that the sun had been darkened, thatthe rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, thatall nature had shuddered at the sufferings of herexpiring God.
Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men,the one all self-abasem*nt, penitence, gratitude,passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious.He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker;but he set his foot on the neck of his king. Inhis devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions,and groans, and tears. He was half maddened byglorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyresof angels or the tempting whispers of fiends.He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or wokescreaming from dreams of everlasting fire. LikeVane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptreof the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he criedin the bitterness of his soul that God had hid hisface from him. But when he took his seat in thecouncil, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuousworkings of the soul had left no perceptible tracebehind them. People who saw nothing of the godlybut their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from thembut their groans and their whining hymns, might laughat them. But those had little reason to laughwho encountered them in the hall of debate or on thefield of battle. These fanatics brought to civiland military affairs a coolness of judgment and animmutability of purpose which some writers have thoughtinconsistent with their religious zeal, but whichwere in fact the necessary effects of it. Theintensity of their feelings on one subject made themtranquil on every other. One overpowering sentimenthad subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambitionand fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasureits charms. They had their smiles and their tears,their raptures and their sorrows, but not for thethings of this world. Enthusiasm had made themstoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgarpassion and prejudice, and raised them above the influenceof danger and of corruption. It sometimes mightlead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to chooseunwise means. They went through the world, likeSir Artegal’s iron man Talus with his flail,crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling withhuman beings, but having neither part nor lot in humaninfirmities; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, andto pain; not to be pierced by any weapon, not to bewithstood by any barrier.
Such we believe to have been the character of thePuritans. We perceive the absurdity of theirmanners. We dislike the sullen gloom of theirdomestic habits. We acknowledge that the toneof their minds was often injured by straining afterthings too high for mortal reach; and we know that,in spite of their hatred of popery, they too oftenfell into the worst vices of that bad system, intoleranceand extravagant austerity, that they had their anchoritesand their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts,their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when allcirc*mstances are taken into consideration, we do nothesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest,and a useful body.
The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainlybecause it was the cause of religion. There wasanother party, by no means numerous, but distinguishedby learning and ability, which acted with them on verydifferent principles. We speak of those whom Cromwellwas accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were,in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomasesor careless Gallios with regard to religious subjects,but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heatedby the study of ancient literature, they set up theircountry as their idol, and proposed to themselvesthe heroes of Plutarch as their examples. Theyseem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotinesof the French Revolution. But it is not veryeasy to draw the line of distinction between themand their devout associates, whose tone and mannerthey sometimes found it convenient to affect, andsometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted.
We now come to the Royalists. We shall attemptto speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists,with perfect candor. We shall not charge upona whole party the profligacy and baseness of the horse-boys,gamblers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license andplunder attracted from the dens of Whitefriars tothe standard of Charles, and who disgraced their associatesby excesses which, under the stricter discipline ofthe Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated.We will select a more favorable specimen. Thinkingas we do that the cause of the king was the causeof bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain fromlooking with complacency on the character of the honestold Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparingthem with the instruments which the despots of othercountries are compelled to employ, with the muteswho throng their antechambers, and the Janizarieswho mount guard at their gates. Our Royalist countrymenwere not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing atevery step, and simpering at every word. Theywere not mere machines for destruction, dressed upin uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valor,defending without love, destroying without hatred.There was a freedom in their subserviency, a noblenessin their very degradation. The sentiment of individualindependence was strong within them. They wereindeed misled, but by no base or selfish motive.Compassion and romantic honor, the prejudices of childhood,and the venerable names of history, threw over thema spell potent as that of Duessa; and, like the RedCross Knight, they thought that they were doing battlefor an injured beauty, while they defended a falseand loathsome sorceress. In truth, they scarcelyentered at all into the merits of the political question.It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerantchurch that they fought, but for the old banner whichhad waved in so many battles over the heads of theirfathers, and for the altars at which they had receivedthe hands of their brides. Though nothing couldbe more erroneous than their political opinions, they
possessed, in a far greater degree than their adversaries,those qualities which are the grace of private life.With many of the vices of the Round Table, they hadalso many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity,tenderness, and respect for women. They had farmore both of profound and of polite learning than thePuritans. Their manners were more engaging, theirtempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, andtheir households more cheerful.Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classeswhich we have described. He was not a Puritan.He was not a freethinker. He was not a Royalist.In his character the noblest qualities of every partywere combined in harmonious union. From the Parliamentand from the court, from the conventicle and fromthe Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchralcircles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revelof the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected anddrew to itself whatever was great and good, whileit rejected all the base and pernicious ingredientsby which those finer elements were defiled. Likethe Puritans, he lived
“As ever in hisgreat taskmaster’s eye.”
Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on theAlmighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hencehe acquired their contempt of external circ*mstances,their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexibleresolution. But not the coolest sceptic or themost profane scoffer was more perfectly free fromthe contagion of their frantic delusions, their savagemanners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science,and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyrannywith a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all theestimable and ornamental qualities which were almostentirely monopolized by the party of the tyrant.There was none who had a stronger sense of the valueof literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusem*nt,or a more chivalrous delicacy of honor and love.Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes andhis associations were such as best harmonize withmonarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influenceof all the feelings by which the gallant Cavalierswere misled. But of those feelings he was themaster, and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer,he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but hewas not fascinated. He listened to the song ofthe Sirens; yet he glided by without being seducedto their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe;but he bore about him a sure antidote against theeffects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusionswhich captivated his imagination never impaired hisreasoning powers. The statesman was proof againstthe splendor, the solemnity, and the romance whichenchanted the poet. Any person who will contrastthe sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacywith the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architectureand music in the Penseroso, which was published aboutthe same time, will understand our meaning. Thisis an inconsistency which, more than anything else,raises his character in our estimation, because itshows how many private tastes and feelings he sacrificed,in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind.It is the very struggle of the noble Othello.His heart relents; but his hand is firm. He doesnaught in hate, but all in honor. He kisses thebeautiful deceiver before he destroys her.
That from which the public character of Milton derivesits great and peculiar splendor still remains to bementioned. If he exerted himself to overthrowa forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exertedhimself in conjunction with others. But the gloryof the battle which he fought for the species of freedomwhich is the most valuable, and which was then theleast understood, the freedom of the human mind, isall his own. Thousands and tens of thousandsamong his contemporaries raised their voices againstship-money and the Star-chamber. But there werefew indeed who discerned the more fearful evils ofmoral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits whichwould result from liberty of the press and the unfetteredexercise of private judgment. These were the objectswhich Milton justly conceived to be the most important.He was desirous that the people should think for themselvesas well as tax themselves, and should be emancipatedfrom the dominion of prejudice as well as from thatof Charles. He knew that those who, with the bestintentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, andcontented themselves with pulling down the King andimprisoning the malignants, acted like the heedlessbrothers in his own poem, who, in their eagerness todisperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected themeans of liberating the captive. They thoughtonly of conquering when they should have thought ofdisenchanting.
“Oh, ye mistook!Ye should have snatched his wand
And bound himfast. Without the rod reversed,
And backward muttersof dissevering power,
We cannot freethe lady that sits here
Bound in strongfetters fixed and motionless.”
To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, tobreak the ties which bound a stupefied people to theseat of enchantment, was the noble aim of Milton.To this all his public conduct was directed. Forthis he joined the Presbyterians; for this he forsookthem. He fought their perilous battle; but heturned away with disdain from their insolent triumph.He saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished,were hostile to the liberty of thought. He thereforejoined the Independents, and called upon Cromwellto break the secular chain, and to save free consciencefrom the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With aview to the same great object, he attacked the licensingsystem, in that sublime treatise which every statesmanshould wear as a sign upon his hand and as frontletsbetween his eyes. His attacks were, in general,directed less against particular abuses than againstthose deeply-seated errors on which almost all abusesare founded, the servile worship of eminent men andthe irrational dread of innovation.
That he might shake the foundations of these debasingsentiments more effectually, he always selected forhimself the boldest literary services. He nevercame up in the rear, when the outworks had been carriedand the breach entered. He pressed into the forlornhope. At the beginning of the changes, he wrotewith incomparable energy and eloquence against thebishops. But when his opinion seemed likely toprevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandonedprelacy to the crowd of writers who now hastened toinsult a falling party. There is no more hazardousenterprise than that of bearing the torch of truthinto those dark and infected recesses in which nolight has ever shone. But it was the choice andthe pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapors,and to brave the terrible explosion. Those whom*ost disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihoodwith which he maintained them. He, in general,left to others the credit of expounding and defendingthe popular parts of his religious and political creed.He took his own stand upon those which the great bodyof his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or deridedas paradoxical. He stood up for divorce and regicide.He attacked the prevailing systems of education.His radiant and beneficent career resembled that ofthe god of light and fertility.
“Nitor in adversum;nec me, qui caetera, vincit
Impetus, et rapidocontrarius evehor orbi.”
It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Miltonshould, in our time, be so little read. As compositions,they deserve the attention of every man who wishesto become acquainted with the full power of the Englishlanguage. They abound with passages compared withwhich the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance.They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. Thestyle is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Noteven in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost hasthe great poet ever risen higher than in those partsof his controversial works in which his feelings,excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotionaland lyrical rapture. It is, to borrow his ownmajestic language, “a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahsand harping symphonies.”
We had intended to look more closely at these performances,to analyze the peculiarities of the diction, to dwellat some length on the sublime wisdom of the Areopagiticaand the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast and topoint out some of those magnificent passages whichoccur in the Treatise of Reformation, and the Animadversionson the Remonstrant. But the length to which ourremarks have already extended renders this impossible.
We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tearourselves away from the subject. The days immediatelyfollowing the publication of this relic of Miltonappear to be peculiarly set apart, and consecratedto his memory. And we shall scarcely be censuredif, on this his festival, we be found lingering nearhis shrine, how worthless soever may be the offeringwhich we bring to it. While this book lies onour table, we seem to be contemporaries of the writer.We are transported a hundred and fifty years back.We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in hissmall lodging; that we see him sitting at the oldorgan beneath the faded green hangings; that we cancatch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vainto find the day; that we are reading in the lines ofhis noble countenance the proud and mournful historyof his glory and his affliction. We imagine toourselves the breathless silence in which we shouldlisten to his slightest word, the passionate venerationwith which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weepupon it, the earnestness with which we should endeavorto console him, if indeed such a spirit could needconsolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy ofhis talents and his virtues, the eagerness with whichwe should contest with his daughters, or with hisQuaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homerto him, or of taking down the immortal accents whichflowed from his lips.
These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannotbe ashamed of them; nor shall we be sorry if whatwe have written shall in any degree excite them inother minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizingeither the living or the dead. And we think thatthere is no more certain indication of a weak andill-regulated intellect than that propensity which,for want of a better name, we will venture to christenBoswellism. But there are a few characters whichhave stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests,which have been tried in the furnace and have provedpure, which have been weighed in the balance and havenot been found wanting, which have been declared sterlingby the general consent of mankind, and which are visiblystamped with the image and superscription of the MostHigh. These great men we trust that we know howto prize; and of these was Milton. The sight ofhis books, the sound of his name, are pleasant tous. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruitsand flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sentdown from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, andwhich were distinguished from the productions of othersoils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, butby miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal.They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevateand purify. Nor do we envy the man who can studyeither the life or the writings of the great poetand patriot without aspiring to emulate, not indeedthe sublime works with which his genius has enrichedour literature, but the zeal with which he laboredfor the public good, the fortitude with which he enduredevery private calamity, the lofty disdain with whichhe looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadlyhatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and thefaith which he so sternly kept with his country andwith his fame.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.[5]
1749-1832.
GERMANY’S GREATEST WRITER.
BY FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE.
I. THE MAN.
Genius of the supreme order presupposes a nature ofequal scope as the prime condition of its being.The Gardens of Adonis require little earth, but theoak will not flourish in a tub; and the wine of Tokayis the product of no green-house, nor gotten of sourgrapes. Given a genuine great poet, you willfind a greater man behind, in whom, among others,these virtues predominate,—courage, generosity,truth.
[Footnote 5: From “Hours with the GermanClassics,” by FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE (copyrightby him in 1886). With permission of Messrs. LITTLE,BROWN, & CO., Publishers, Boston, Mass.]
Pre-eminent among the poets of the modern world standsGoethe, chief of his own generation, challenging comparisonwith the greatest of all time. His literary activityembraces a span of nigh seventy years in a life ofmore than fourscore, beginning, significantly enough,with a poem on “Christ’s Descent intoHell” (his earliest extant composition), andending with Faust’s—that is, Man’s—ascentinto heaven. The rank of a writer—hisspiritual import to human kind—may be inferredfrom the number and worth of the writings of whichhe has furnished the topic and occasion. “Whenkings build,” says Schiller, speaking of Kant’scommentators, “the draymen have plenty to do.”Dante and Shakspeare have created whole librariesthrough the interest inspired by their writings.The Goethe-literature, so-called,—thoughscarce fifty years have elapsed since the poet’sdeath,—already numbers its hundreds ofvolumes.
I note in this man, first of all, as a literary phenomenon,the unexampled fact of supreme excellence in severalquite distinct provinces of literary action.Had we only his minor poems, he would rank as thefirst of lyrists. Had he written only “Faust,”he would be the first of philosophic poets. Hadhe written only “Hermann and Dorothea,”the sweetest idyllist; if only the “Maerchen,”the subtlest of allegorists. Had he written nevera verse, but only prose, he would hold the highestplace among the prose-writers of Germany. Andlastly, had he written only on scientific subjects,in that line also—in the field of science—hewould be, as he is, an acknowledged leader.
Noticeable in him also is the combination of extraordinarygenius with extraordinary fortune. A magnificentperson, a sound physique, inherited wealth, high socialposition, official dignity, with eighty-three yearsof earthly existence, compose the framework of thisillustrious life.
Behind the author, behind the poet, behind the world-renownedgenius, a not unreasonable curiosity seeks the originalman, the human individual, as he walked among men,his manner of being, his characteristics, as shownin the converse of life. In what soil grew theflowers and ripened the fruits which have been thedelight and the aliment of nations? In proportion,of course, to the eminence attained by a writer,—inproportion to the worth of his works, to their holdon the world,—is the interest felt in hispersonality and behavior, in the incidents of hislife. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the personis not always proportioned to the lustre of the name.Of the two great poets to whom the world’s unrepealableverdict has assigned the foremost place in their severalkinds, we know in one case absolutely nothing, andnext to nothing in the other. To the question,Who sung the wrath of Achilles and the wanderingsof the much-versed Odysseus? tradition answers witha name to which no faintest shadow of a person corresponds.To the question, Who composed “Hamlet”and “Othello”? history answers with aperson so indistinct that recent speculation has daredto question the agency of Shakspeare in those creations.What would not the old scholiasts have given for satisfactoryproofs of the existence of a Homer identical withthe author of the Iliad and the Odyssey? Whatwould not the Shakspeare clubs give for one more authenticanecdote of the world’s great dramatist?
Of Goethe we know more—I mean of his externals—thanof any other writer of equal note. This is duein part to his wide relations, official and other,with his contemporaries; to his large correspondencewith people of note, of which the documents have beenpreserved by the parties addressed; to the interestfelt in him by curious observers living in the dayof his greatness. It is due in part also to thefact that, unlike the greatest of his predecessors,he flourished in an all-communicating, all-recordingage; and partly it is due to autobiographical notices,embracing important portions of his history.
Two seemingly opposite factors—limitingand qualifying the one the other—determinedthe course and topics of his life. One was theaim which he proposed to himself as the governingprinciple and purpose of his being,—toperfect himself, to make the most of the nature whichGod had given him; the other was a constitutionaltendency to come out of himself, to lose himself inobjects, especially in natural objects, so that inthe study of nature—to which he devoteda large part of his life—he seems not somuch a scientific observer as a chosen confidant,to whom the discerning Mother revealed her secrets.
In no greatest genius are all its talents self-derived.Countless influences mould our intellect and mouldour heart. One of these, and often one of themost potent, is heredity. Consciously or unconsciously,for good or for evil, physically and mentally, thefather and mother are in the child, as indeed allhis ancestors are in every man.
Of Goethe’s father we know only what the sonhimself has told us in his memoirs. A man ofaustere presence, from whom Goethe, as he tells us,inherited his bodily stature and his serious treatmentof life,—
“Vom Vater habich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstesfuehren.”
By profession a lawyer, but without practice, livingin grim seclusion amid his books and collections;a man of solid acquirements and large culture, whohad travelled in Italy and first awakened in Wolfgangthe longing for that land; a man of ample means, inhabitinga stately mansion. For the rest, a stiff, narrow-minded,fussy pedant, with small toleration for any methodsor aims but his own; who, while he appreciated thesuperior gifts of his son, was obstinately bent onguiding them in strict professional grooves, and teasedhim with the friction of opposing wills.
The opposite, in most respects, of this stately andpedantic worthy was the Frau Raethin, his youthfulwife, young enough to have been his daughter,—ajocund, exuberant nature, a woman to be loved; onewho blessed society with her presence, and possesseduncommon gifts of discourse. She was but eighteenwhen Wolfgang was born,—a companion tohim and his sister Cornelia; one in whom they weresure to find sympathy and ready indulgence. Goethewas indebted to her, as he tells us, for his joyousspirit and his narrative talent,—
“Von Muetterchendie Frohnatur
Und Lust zu fabuliren.”
Outside of the poet’s household, the most importantfigure in the circle of his childish acquaintancewas his mother’s father, from whom he had hisname, Johann Wolfgang Textor, the Schultheiss,or chief magistrate, of the city. From him Goetheseems to have inherited the superstition of whichsome curious examples are recorded in his life.He shared with Napoleon and other remarkable men,says Von Mueller, the conceit that little mischancesare prophetic of greater evils. On a journeyto Baden-Baden with a friend, his carriage was upsetand his companion slightly injured. He thoughtit a bad omen, and instead of proceeding to Baden-Badenchose another watering-place for his summer resort.If in his almanac there happened to be a blot on anydate, he feared to undertake anything important onthe day so marked. He had noted certain fataldays; one of these was the 22d of March. On thatday he had lost a valued friend; on that day the theatreto which he had devoted so much time and labor wasburned; and on that day, curiously enough, he died.He believed in oracles; and as Rousseau threw stonesat a tree to learn whether or no he was to be saved(the hitting or not hitting the tree was to be thesign), so Goethe tossed a valuable pocket-knife intothe river Lahn to ascertain whether he would succeedas a painter. If behind the bushes which borderedthe stream, he saw the knife plunge, it should signifysuccess; if not, he would take it as an omen of failure.Rousseau was careful, he tells us, to choose a stouttree, and to stand very near. Goethe, more honestwith himself, adopted no such precaution; the plungeof the knife was not seen, and the painter’scareer was abandoned.
Wordsworth’s saying, “the child is thefather of the man,”—a saying whichowes its vitality more to its form than its substance,—isnot always verified, or its truth is not always apparentin the lives of distinguished men. I find notmuch in Goethe the child prophetic of Goethe the man.But the singer and the seeker, the two main tendenciesof his being, are already apparent in early life.Of moral traits, the most conspicuous in the childis a power of self-control,—a moral heroism,which secured to him in after life a natural leadershipunattainable by mere intellectual supremacy. Aninstance of this self-control is recorded among theanecdotes of his boyhood. At one of the lessonswhich he shared with other boys, the teacher failedto appear. The young people awaited his comingfor a while, but toward the close of the hour mostof them departed, leaving behind three who were especiallyhostile to Goethe. “These,” he says,“thought to torment, to mortify, and to driveme away. They left me a moment, and returned withrods taken from a broom which they had cut to pieces.I perceived their intention, and, supposing the expirationof the hour to be near, I immediately determined tomake no resistance until the clock should strike.Unmercifully, thereupon, they began to scourge in thecruellest manner my legs and calves. I did notstir, but soon felt that I had miscalculated the time,and that such pain greatly lengthens the minutes.”When the hour expired, his superior activity enabledhim to master all three, and to pin them to the ground.
In later years the same zeal of self-discipline whichprompted the child to exercise himself in bearingpain, impelled the man to resist and overcome constitutionalweaknesses by force of will. A student of architecture,he conquered a tendency to giddiness by standing onpinnacles and walking on narrow rafters over perilousabysses. In like manner he overcame the ghostlyterrors instilled in the nursery, by midnight visitsto churchyards and uncanny places.
To real peril, to fear of death, he seems to havehad that native insensibility so notable always inmen of genius, in whom the conviction of a higherdestiny begets the feeling of a charmed life,—suchas Plutarch records of the first Caesar in peril ofshipwreck on the river Anio. In the French campaign(1793), in which Goethe accompanied the Duke of Weimaragainst the armies of the Republic, a sudden impulseof scientific curiosity prompted him, in spite ofwarnings and remonstrances, to experiment on whatis called the “cannon-fever.” Forthis purpose he rode to a place in which he was exposedto a cross-fire of the two armies, and coolly watchedthe sensations experienced in that place of peril.
Command of himself, acquired by long and systematicdiscipline, gave him that command over others whichhe exercised in several memorable instances.Coming from a ball one night,—a young manfresh from the University,—he saw thata fire had broken out in the Judengasse, and thatpeople were standing about helpless and confused withouta leader; he immediately jumped from his carriage,and, full dressed as he was, in silk stockings andpumps, organized on the spot a fire-brigade, whichaverted a dangerous conflagration. On anotheroccasion, voyaging in the Mediterranean, he quelleda mutiny on board an Italian ship, when captain andmates were powerless, and the vessel drifting on therocks, by commanding sailors and passengers to fallon their knees and pray to the Virgin,—adoptingthe idiom of their religion as well as their speech,of which he was a master.
As a student, first at Leipsic, then at Strasburg,including the years from 1766 to 1771, he seems notto have been a very diligent attendant on the lecturesin either university, and to have profited little byprofessional instruction. In compliance with thewishes of his father, who intended him for a jurist,he gave some time to the study of the law; but onthe whole the principal gain of those years was derivedfrom intercourse with distinguished intellectual menand women, whose acquaintance he cultivated, and thelarge opportunities of social life.
In Strasburg occurred the famous love-passage withFriederike Brion, which terminated so unhappily atthe time, and so fortunately in the end, for both.
Goethe has been blamed for not marrying Friederike.His real blame consists in the heedlessness with which,in the beginning of their acquaintance, he surrenderedhimself to the charm of her presence, thereby engagingher affection without a thought of the consequencesto either. Besides the disillusion, which showedhim, when he came fairly to face the question, thathe did not love her sufficiently to justify marriage,there were circ*mstances—material, economical—whichmade it practically impossible. Her sufferingin the separation, great as it was,—sogreat indeed as to cause a dangerous attack of bodilydisease,—could not outweigh the pangs whichhe endured in his penitent contemplation of the consequencesof his folly.
The next five years were spent partly in Frankfortand partly in Wetzlar, partly in the forced exerciseof his profession, but chiefly in literary laborsand the use of the pencil, which for a time disputedwith the pen the devotion of the poet-artist.They may be regarded as perhaps the most fruitful,certainly the most growing, years of his life.They gave birth to “Goetz von Berlichingen”and the “Sorrows of Werther,” to the firstinception of “Faust,” and to many of hissweetest lyrics. It was during this period thathe made the acquaintance of Charlotte Buff, the heroineof the “Sorrows of Werther,” from whom
he finally tore himself away, leaving Wetzlar whenhe discovered that their growing interest in eachother was endangering her relation with Kestner, herbetrothed. In those years, also, he formed a matrimonialengagement with Elizabeth Schoenemann (Lili), the ruptureof which, I must think, was a real misfortune forthe poet. It came about by no fault of his.Her family had from the first opposed themselves tothe match on the ground of social disparity.For even in mercantile Frankfort rank was stronglymarked; and the Goethes, though respectable people,were beneath the Schoenemanns in the social scale.Goethe’s genius went for nothing with MadameSchoenemann; she wanted for her daughter an aristocratichusband, not a literary one,—one who hadwealth in possession, and not merely, as Goethe had,in prospect. How far Lili was influenced by hermother’s and brother’s representationsit is impossible to say; however, she showed herselfcapricious, was sometimes cold, or seemed so to him,while favoring the advances of others. Goethewas convinced that she did not entertain for him thatdevoted love without which he felt that their unioncould not be a happy one. They separated; buton her death-bed she confessed to a friend that allshe was, intellectually and morally, she owed to him.In 1775 our poet was invited by the young Duke ofSaxe-Weimar, Karl August,—whose acquaintancehe had made at Frankfort and at Mentz, his juniorby two or three years,—to establish himselfin civil service at the Grand-Ducal Court. Thefather, who had other views for his son, and was notmuch inclined to trust in princes, objected; many wondered,some blamed. Goethe himself appears to have waveredwith painful indecision, and at last to have followeda mysterious impulse rather than a clear convictionor deliberate choice. His Heidelberg friend andhostess sought still to detain him, when the lastexpress from Weimar drove up to the door. Toher he replied in the words of his own Egmont:—
“Say no more! Goaded by invisible spirits,the sun-steeds of time run away with the light chariotof our destiny; there is nothing for it but to keepour courage, hold tight the reins, and guide the wheelsnow right, now left, avoiding a stone here, a fallthere. Whither away? Who knows? Scarcelyone remembers whence he came.”
It does not appear that he ever repented this mostdecisive step of his life-journey, nor does thereappear to have been any reason why he should.A position, an office of some kind, he needs must have.Even now, the life of a writer by profession, withno function but that of literary composition, is seldoma prosperous one; in Goethe’s day, when literaturewas far less remunerative than it is in ours, it wasseldom practicable. Unless he had chosen to bemaintained by his father, some employment besidesthat of book-making was an imperative necessity.The alternative of that which was offered—the
one his father would have chosen—was thatof a plodding jurist in a country where forensic pleadingwas unknown, and where the lawyer’s professionoffered no scope for any of the higher talents withwhich Goethe was endowed. On the whole, it wasa happy chance that called him to the little capitalof the little Grand-Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. Ifthe State was one of petty dimensions (a kind of pocket-kingdom,like so many of the principalities of Germany), itnevertheless included some of the fairest localities,and one at least of the most memorable in Europe,—theWartburg, where Luther translated the Bible, whereSaint Elizabeth dispensed the blessings of her life,where the Minnesingers are said to have held theirpoetic tournament,—“Heinrich vonOfterdingen,
Wolfram von Eschenbach.”
It included also the University of Jena, which atthat time numbered some of the foremost men of Germanyamong its professors. It was a miniature Stateand a miniature town; one wonders that Goethe, whowould have shone the foremost star in Berlin or Vienna,could content himself with so narrow a field.But Vienna and Berlin did not call him until it wastoo late,—until patronage was needless;and Weimar did. A miniature State,—butso much the greater his power and freedom and theopportunity of beneficent action.
No prince was ever more concerned to promote in everyway the welfare of his subjects than Karl August;and in all his works undertaken for this purpose,Goethe was his foremost counsellor and aid. Themost important were either suggested by him or executedunder his direction. Had he never written a poem,or given to the world a single literary composition,he would still have led, as a Weimar official, a usefuland beneficent life. But the knowledge of theworld and of business, the social and other experiencegained in this way, was precisely the training whichhe needed,—and which every poet needs,—forthe broadening and deepening and perfection of hisart. Friedrich von Mueller, in his valuable treatiseof “Goethe as a Man of Affairs,” tellsus how he traversed every portion of the country tolearn what advantage might be taken of topographicalpeculiarities, what provision made for local necessities.“Everywhere—on hilltops crowned withprimeval forests, in the depths of gorges and shafts—Naturemet her favorite with friendly advances, and revealedto him many a desired secret.” Whateverwas privately gained in this way was applied to publicuses. He endeavored to infuse new life into themining business, and to make himself familiar withall its technical requirements. For that end herevived his chemical experiments. New roads werebuilt, hydraulic operations were conducted on morescientific principles, fertile meadows were won fromthe river Saale by systematic drainage, and in manya struggle with Nature an intelligently persistentwill obtained the victory.
Nor was it with material obstacles only that the poet-ministerhad to contend. In the exercise of the powersintrusted to him he often encountered the fierce oppositionof party interest and stubborn prejudice, and wassometimes driven to heroic and despotic measures inorder to accomplish a desired result,—aswhen he foiled the machinations of the Jena professorsin his determination to save the University library,and when, in spite of the opposition of the leadingburghers, he demolished the city wall.
In 1786 Goethe was enabled to realize his cherisheddream of a journey to Italy. There he spent ayear and a half in the diligent study and admiringenjoyment of the treasures of art which made that countrythen, even more than now, the mark and desire of thecivilized world. He came back an altered man.Intellectually and morally he had made in that briefspace, under new influences, a prodigious stride.His sudden advance while they had remained stationaryseparated him from his contemporaries. The oldassociations of the Weimar world, which still revolvedits little round, the much-enlightened traveller hadoutgrown. People thought him cold and reserved.It was only that the gay, impulsive youth had ripenedinto an earnest, sedate man. He found Germanyjubilant over Schiller’s “Robbers”and other writings representative of the “storm-and-stress”school, which his maturity had left far behind, hisown contributions to which he had come to hate.Schiller, who first made his acquaintance at this time,writes to Koerner:—
“I doubt that we shall ever become intimate.Much that to me is still of great interest he hasalready outlived. He is so far beyond me, notso much in years as in experience and culture, thatwe can never come together in one course.”
How greatly Schiller erred in the supposition thatthey never could become intimate, how close the intimacywhich grew up between them, what harmony of sentiment,how friendly and mutually helpful their co-operation,is sufficiently notorious.
But such was the first aspect which Goethe presentedto strangers at this period of his life; he ratherrepelled than attracted, until nearer acquaintancelearned rightly to interpret the man, and intellectualor moral affinity bridged the chasm which seemed todivide him from his kind. In part, too, the distanceand reserve of which people complained was a necessarymeasure of self-defence against the disturbing importunitiesof social life. “From Rome,” saysFriedrich von Mueller, “from the midst of therichest and grandest life, dates the stern maxim of‘Renunciation’ which governed his subsequentbeing and doing, and which furnished his only guaranteeof mental equipoise and peace.”
His literary works hitherto had been spasmodic andlawless effusions, the escapes of a gushing, turbulentyouth. In Rome he had learned the sacred significanceof art. The consciousness of his true vocationhad been awakened in him; and to that, on the eveof his fortieth year, he thenceforth solemnly devotedthe remainder of his life. He obtained releasefrom the more onerous of his official engagements,retaining only such functions as accorded with hisproper calling as a man of letters and of science.He renounced his daily intercourse with Frau von Stein,though still retaining and manifesting his unabatedfriendship for the woman to whom in former years hehad devoted so large a portion of his time, and employedhimself in giving forth those immortal words whichhave settled forever his place among the stars of firstmagnitude in the intellectual world.
Noticeable and often noted was the charm and (whenarrived to maturity) the grand effect of his personalpresence. Physical beauty is not the stated accompaniment,nor even the presumable adjunct, of intellectual greatness.In Goethe, as perhaps in no other, the two were combined.A wondrous presence!—on this point thevoices are one and the witnesses many. “Goethewas with us,” so writes Heinse to one of hisfriends; “a beautiful youth of twenty-five,full of genius and force from the crown of his headto the sole of his foot; a heart full of feeling, aspirit full of fire, who with eagle wings ruitimmensus ore profundo.” Jacobi writes:“The more I think of it, the more impossibleit seems to me to communicate to any one who has notseen Goethe any conception of this extraordinary creatureof God.” Lavater says: “Unspeakablysweet, an indescribable appearance, the most terribleand lovable of men.” Hufeland, the chiefmedical celebrity of Germany, describes his appearancein early manhood: “Never shall I forgetthe impression which he made as ‘Orestes’in Greek costume. You thought you beheld an Apollo.Never was seen in any man such union of physical andspiritual perfection and beauty as at that time inGoethe.” More remarkable still is the testimonyof Wieland, who had reason to be offended, having beenbefore their acquaintance the subject of Goethe’ssharp satire. But immediately at their firstmeeting, sitting at table “by the side,”he says, “of this glorious youth, I was radicallycured of all my vexation.... Since this morning,”he wrote to Jacobi, “my soul is as full of Goetheas a dewdrop is of the morning sun.” Andto Zimmermann: “He is in every respectthe greatest, best, most splendid human being thatever God created.” Goethe was then twenty-six.Henry Crabbe Robinson, who saw him at the age of fifty-two,reports him one of the most “oppressively handsome”men he had ever seen, and speaks particularly as allwho have described him speak, of his wonderfully brillianteyes. Those eyes, we are told, had lost nothingof their lustre, nor his head its natural covering,at the age of eighty.
Among the heroic qualities notable in Goethe, I reckonhis faithful and unflagging industry. Here wasa man who took pains with himself,—liesssich’s sauer werden,—and madethe most of himself. He speaks of wasting, whilea student in Leipsic, “the beautiful time;”and certainly neither at Leipsic nor afterward atStrasburg did he toil as his Wagner in “Faust”would have done. But he was always learning.In the lecture-room or out of it, with pen and booksor gay companions, he was taking in, to give forthagain in dramatic or philosophic form the world ofhis experience.
A frolicsome youth may leave something to regret inthe way of time misspent; but Goethe the man was nodawdler, no easy-going Epicurean. On the whole,he made the most of himself, and stands before theworld a notable instance of a complete life.He would do the work which was given him to do.He would not die till the second part of “Faust”was brought to its predetermined close. By sheerforce of will he lived till that work was done.Smitten at fourscore by the death of his son, and bydeaths all around, he kept to his task. “Theidea of duty alone sustains me; the spirit is willing,the flesh must.” When “Faust”was finished, the strain relaxed. “My remainingdays,” he said, “I may consider a freegift; it matters little what I do now, or whether Ido anything.” And six months later he died.
A complete life! A life of strenuous toil!At home and abroad,—in Italy and Sicily,at Ilmenau and Carlsbad, as in his study at Weimar,—witheye or pen or speech, he was always at work. Aman of rigid habits; no lolling or lounging.“He showed me,” says Eckermann, “anelegant easy-chair which he had bought to-day at auction.‘But,’ said he, ’I shall never orrarely use it; all indolent habits are against mynature. You see in my chamber no sofa; I sit alwaysin my old wooden chair, and never, till a few weeksago, have permitted even a leaning place for my headto be added. If surrounded by tasteful furniture,my thoughts are arrested; I am placed in an agreeablebut passive state. Unless we are accustomed tothem from early youth, splendid chambers and elegantfurniture had better be left to people without thoughts.’”This in his eighty-second year!
A widely diffused prejudice regarding the personalcharacter of Goethe refuses to credit him with anymoral worth accordant with his bodily and mental gifts.It figures him a libertine,—heartless, loveless,bad. I do not envy the mental condition of thosewho can rest in the belief that a really great poetcan be a bad man. Be assured that the fruits ofgenius have never grown, and will never grow, in sucha soil. Of all great poets Byron might seem atfirst glance to constitute an exception to this—Iventure to call it—law of Nature. Yethear what Walter Scott, a sufficient judge, said ofByron:—
“The errors of Lord Byron arose neither fromdepravity of heart—for nature had not committedthe anomaly of uniting to such extraordinary talentsan imperfect moral sense—nor from feelingsdead to the admiration of virtue. No man hadever a kinder heart for sympathy, or a more open handfor the relief of distress; and no mind was ever moreformed for enthusiastic admiration of noble actions.”
The case of Goethe requires no appeal to general principles.It only requires that the charges against him be fairlyinvestigated; that he be tried by documentary evidence,and by the testimony of competent witnesses.The mistake is made of confusing breaches of conventionaldecorum with essential depravity.
That Goethe was faulty in many ways may be freelyconceded. But surely there is a wide differencebetween not being faultless and being definitely bad.To call a man bad is to say that the evil in him preponderatesover the good. In the case of Goethe the balancewas greatly the other way. It has been said thathe abused the confidence reposed in him by women;that he encouraged affection which he did not reciprocatefor artistic purposes. The charge is utterly groundless;and in the case of Bettine has been refuted by irrefragableproof. To say that he was wanting in love, heartless,cold, is ridiculously false. Yet the charge isconstantly reiterated in the face of facts,—reiteratedwith undoubting assurance and a certain complacencywhich seems to say, “Thank God! we are not asthis man was.” There is a satisfaction whichsome people feel in spotting their man,—Burnsdrank; Coleridge took opium; Byron was a rake; Goethewas cold: by these marks we know them. Thepoet found it necessary, as I have said, in later years,under social pressure, for the sake of the work whichwas given him to do, to fortify himself with a mailof reserve. And this, indeed, contrasted strangelywith his former abandon, and with the customarygush of German sentimentality. It was commonthen for Germans who had known each other by report,and were mutually attracted, when first they met, tofall on each other’s necks and kiss and weep.Goethe, as a young man, had indulged such fervors;but in old age he had lost this effusiveness, or sawfit to restrain himself outwardly, while his kindlynature still glowed with its pristine fires.He wrote to Frau von Stein, “I may truly saythat my innermost condition does not correspond tomy outward behavior.” Hence the chargeof coldness. Say that Mount Aetna is cold:do we not see the snow on its sides?
But he was unpatriotic; he occupied himself with poetry,and did not cry out while his country was in the death-throes—soit seemed—of the struggle with France!But what should he have done? What couldhe have done? What would his single arm or declamationhave availed? No man more than Goethe longedfor the rehabilitation of Germany. In his ownway he wrought for that end; he could work effectuallyin no other. That enigmatical composition,—the“Maerchen,”—according to thelatest interpretation, indicates how, in Goethe’sview, that end was to be accomplished. To onewho considers the relation of ideas to events, itwill not seem extravagant when I say that to Goethe,more than to any one individual, Germany is indebtedfor her emancipation, independence, and present politicalregeneration.[6]
[Footnote 6: (The following interpretation ofthe “Maerchen” is condensed from a laterportion of this essay, and used here as a foot-notefor the light it throws upon Goethe’s politicalcareer.)
In the summer of 1795 Goethe composed for Schiller’snew magazine, “Die Horen,” a prose poemknown in German literature as Das Maerchen,—”The Tale;” as if it were the only one,or the one which more than another deserves that appellation....
Goethe gave this essay to the public as a riddle whichwould probably be unintelligible at the time, butwhich might perhaps find an interpreter after manydays, when the hints contained in it should be verified.Since its first appearance commentators have exercisedtheir ingenuity upon it, perceiving it to be allegorical,but until recently without success.... I followDr. Herman’s Baumgart’s lead in the expositionwhich I now offer.
“The Tale” is a prophetic vision of thedestinies of Germany,—an allegorical foreshowingat the close of the eighteenth century of what Germanywas yet to become, and has in great part already become.A position is predicted for her like that which sheoccupied from the time of Charles the Great to thetime of Charles V.,—a period during whichthe Holy Roman Empire of Germany was the leading secularpower in Western Europe. That time had gone by.Since the middle of the sixteenth century Germanyhad declined, and at the date of this writing (1795)had nearly reached her darkest day. Disintegrated,torn by conflicting interests, pecked by petty rivalprinces, despairing of her own future, it seemed impossiblethat she should ever again become a power among thenations. Goethe felt this; he felt it as profoundlyas any German of his day ... and he characteristicallywent into himself and studied the situation.The result was this wonderful composition,—“DasMaerchen.” He perceived that Germany mustdie to be born again. She did die, and is bornagain. He had the sagacity to foresee the dissolutionof the Holy Roman Empire,—an event whichtook place eleven years later, in 1806. The Empireis figured by the composite statue of the fourth Kingin the subterranean Temple, which crumbles to pieceswhen that Temple, representing Germany’s past,emerges and stands above ground by the River.The resurrection of the Temple and its stand by theRiver is the denouement of the Tale. Andthat signifies, allegorically, the rehabilitationof Germany.]
It is true, his writings contain no declamations againsttyrants, and no tirades in favor of liberty.He believed that oppression existed only through ignoranceand blindness, and these he was all his life longseeking to remove. He believed that true libertyis attainable only through mental illumination, andthat he was all his life long seeking to promote.
He was no agitator, no revolutionist; he had no faithin violent measures. Human welfare, he judged,is not to be advanced in that way; is less dependenton forms of polity than on the life within. Butif the test of patriotism is the service renderedto one’s country, who more patriotic than he?Lucky for us and the world that he persisted to serveher in his own way, and not as the agitators claimedthat he should. It was clear to him then, andmust be clear to us now, that he could not have beenwhat they demanded, and at the same time have givento his country and the world what he did.
As a courtier and favorite of Fortune, it was inevitablethat Goethe should have enemies. They have donewhat they could to blacken his name; and to this daythe shadow they have cast upon it in part remains.But of this be sure, that no selfish, loveless egoistcould have had and retained such friends. Theman whom the saintly Fraulein von Klettenberg chosefor her friend, whom clear-sighted, stern-judging Herderdeclared that he loved as he did his own soul; theman whose thoughtful kindness is celebrated by Herder’sincomparable wife, whom Karl August and the duch*essLuise cherished as a brother; the man whom childreneverywhere welcomed as their ready playfellow andsure ally, of whom pious Jung Stilling lamented thatadmirers of Goethe’s genius knew so little ofthe goodness of his heart,—can this havebeen a bad man, heartless, cold?
II. THE WRITER.
I have said that to Goethe, above all writers, belongsthe distinction of having excelled, not experimentedmerely,—that, others have also done,—butexcelled in many distinct kinds. To the lyristhe added the dramatist, to the dramatist the novelist,to the novelist the mystic seer, and to all thesethe naturalist and scientific discoverer. Thehistory of literature exhibits no other instance inwhich a great poet has supplemented his proper orbitwith so wide an epicyle.
In poetry, as in science, the ground of his activitywas a passionate love of Nature, which dates fromhis boyhood. At the age of fifteen, recoveringfrom a sickness caused by disappointment in a boyishaffair of the heart, he betook himself with his sketch-bookto the woods. “In the farthest depth ofthe forest,” he says, “I sought out a solemnspot, where ancient oaks and beeches formed a shadyretreat. A slight declivity of the soil madethe merit of the ancient boles more conspicuous.This space was inclosed by a thicket of bushes, betweenwhich peeped moss-covered rocks, mighty and venerable,affording a rapid fall to an affluent brook.”
The sketches made of these objects at that early agecould have had no artistic value, although the methodicalfather was careful to mount and preserve them.But what the pencil, had it been the pencil of thegreatest master, could never glean from scenes likethese, what art could never grasp, what words cannever formulate, the heart of the boy then imbibed,assimilated, resolved in his innermost being.There awoke in him then those mysterious feelings,those unutterable yearnings, that pensive joy in thecontemplation of Nature, which leavened all his subsequentlife, and the influence of which is so perceptiblein his poetry, especially in his lyrics....
The first literary venture by which Goethe becamewidely known was “Goetz von Berlichingen,”a dramatic picture of the sixteenth century, in whichthe principal figure is a predatory noble of that name.A dramatic picture, but not in any true sense a play,it owed its popularity at the time partly to the truthof its portraitures, partly to its choice of a nativesubject and the truly German feeling which pervadesit. It was a new departure in German literature,and perplexed the critics as much as it delightedthe general public. It anticipated by a quarterof a century what is technically called the RomanticSchool.
“Goetz von Berlichingen” was soon followedby the “Sorrows of Werther,”—oneof those books which, on their first appearance havetaken the world by storm, and of which Mrs. Stowe’s“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is the latestexample. It is a curious circ*mstance that a greatpoet should have won his first laurels by prose composition.Sir Walter Scott eclipsed the splendor of his poemsby the popularity of the Waverley novels. Goetheeclipsed the world-wide popularity of his “Werther”by the splendor of his poems.
Of one who was great in so many kinds, it may seemdifficult to decide in what department he most excelled.Without undertaking to measure and compare what isincommensurable, I hold that Goethe’s geniusis essentially lyrical. Whatever else may beclaimed for him, he is, first of all, and chiefly,a singer. Deepest in his nature, the most innateof all his faculties, was the faculty of song, ofrhythmical utterance. The first to manifest itselfin childhood, it was still active at the age of fourscore.The lyrical portions of the second part of “Faust,”some of which were written a short time before hisdeath, are as spirited, the versification as easy,the rhythm as perfect, as the songs of his youth.
As a lyrist he is unsurpassed, I venture to say unequalled,if we take into view the whole wide range of his performancein this kind,—from the ballads, the best-knownof his smaller poems, and those light fugitive pieces,those bursts of song which came to him without effort,and with such a rush that in order to arrest and preservethem he seized, as he tells us, the first scrap ofpaper that came to hand and wrote upon it diagonally,if it happened so to lie on his table, lest, throughthe delay of selecting and placing, the inspirationshould be checked and the poem evaporate,—fromthese to such stately compositions as the “Zueignung,”or dedication of his poems, the “Weltseele”and the “Orphic Sayings,”—inshort, from poetry that writes itself, that springsspontaneously in the mind, to poetry that is writtenwith elaborate art. There is this distinction,and it is one of the most marked in lyric verse.Compare in English poetry, by way of illustration,the snatches of song in Shakspeare’s plays withShakspeare’s sonnets; compare Burns with Gray;compare Jean Ingelow with Browning.
Goethe’s ballads have an undying popularity;they have been translated, and most of them are familiarto English readers....
In the Elegies written after his return from Italy,the author figures as a classic poet inspired by theLatin Muse. The choicest of these elegies—the“Alexis and Dora”—is not somuch an imitation of the ancients as it is the manifestationof a side of the poet’s nature which he hadin common with the ancients. He wrote as a Greekor Roman might write, because he felt his subjectas a Greek or Roman might feel it.
“Hermann und Dorothea,” which Schillerpronounced the acme not only of Goethean but of allmodern art, was written professedly as an attemptin the Homeric[7] style, motived by Wolf’s “Prolegomena”and Voss’s “Luise.” It is Homericonly in its circ*mstantiality, in the repetition ofthe same epithets applied to the same persons, andin the Greek realism of Goethe’s nature.The theme is very un-Homeric; it is thoroughly modernand German,—
“Germans themselvesI present, to the humbler dwelling I lead you,
Where with Natureas guide man is natural still.” [8]
[Footnote 7: “Doch Homeride zu sein, auchnoch als letzter, ist schoen.”]
[Footnote 8: From the Elegy entitled “Hermannund Dorothea.”]
This exquisite poem has been translated into Englishhexameters with great fidelity by Miss Ellen Frothingham.
“Iphigenie auf Tauris” handles a Greektheme, exhibits Greek characters, and was hailed onits first appearance as a genuine echo of the Greekdrama. Mr. Lewes denies it that character; andcertainly it is not Greek, but Christian, in sentiment.It differs from the extant drama of Euripides, whotreats the same subject, in the Christian feeling whichdetermines its denouement....
A large portion of Goethe’s productions havetaken the dramatic form; yet he cannot be said, theatricallyspeaking, to have been, like Schiller, a successfuldramatist. His plays, with the exception of “Egmont”and the First Part of “Faust,” have notcommanded the stage; they form no part, I believe,of the stock of any German theatre. The characterizationsare striking, but the positions are not dramatic.Single scenes in some of them are exceptions,—likethat in “Egmont,” where Clara endeavorsto rouse her fellow-citizens to the rescue of theCount, while Brackenburg seeks to restrain her, andseveral of the scenes in the First Part of “Faust.”But, on the whole, the interest of Goethe’sdramas is psychological rather than scenic. Especiallyis this the case with “Tasso,” one ofthe author’s noblest works, where the charactersare not so much actors as metaphysical portraitures.Schiller, in his plays, had always the stage in view.Goethe, on the contrary, wrote for readers, or cultivated,reflective hearers, not spectators.....
When I say, then, that Goethe, compared with Schiller,failed of dramatic success, I mean that his talentdid not lie in the line of plays adapted to the stageas it is; or if the talent was not wanting, his tastedid not incline to such performance. He was noplaywright.
But there is another and higher sense of the worddramatic, where Goethe is supreme,—thesense in which Dante’s great poem is calledCommedia, a play. There is a drama whosescope is beyond the compass of any earthly stage,—adrama not for theatre-goers, to be seen on the boards,but for intellectual contemplation of men and angels.Such a drama is “Faust,” of which I shallspeak hereafter.
Of Goethe’s prose works,—I mean worksof prose fiction,—the most considerableare two philosophical novels, “Wilhelm Meister”and the “Elective Affinities.”
In the first of these the various and complex motiveswhich have shaped the composition may be comprehendedin the one word education,—the educationof life for the business of life. The main threadof the narrative traces through a labyrinth of looselyconnected scenes and events the growth of the hero’scharacter,—a progressive training by variousinfluences, passional, intellectual, social, moral,and religious. These are represented by the personnelof the story. In accordance with this design,the hero himself, if so he may be called, has no pronouncedtraits, is more negative than positive, but is broughtinto contact with many very positive characters.His life is the stage on which these characters perform.A ground is thus provided for the numerous portraitsof which the author’s large experience furnishedthe originals, and for lessons of practical wisdomderived from his close observation of men and thingsand his lifelong reflection thereon.
“Wilhelm Meister,” if not the most artistic,is the most instructive, and in that view, next to“Faust,” the most important, of Goethe’sworks. In it he has embodied his philosophy oflife,—a philosophy far enough removed fromthe epicurean views which ignorance has ascribed tohim,—a philosophy which is best describedby the term ascetic. Its keynote is Renunciation.“With renunciation begins the true life,”was the author’s favorite maxim; and the secondpart of “Wilhelm Meister”—theWanderjahre—bears the collateraltitle Die Entsagenden; that is, the “Renouncing”or the “Self-denying.” The charactersthat figure in this second part—most ofwhom have had their training in the first—forma society whose principle of union is self-renunciationand a life of beneficent activity....
The most fascinating character in “Wilhelm Meister”—thewonder and delight of the reader—is Mignon,the child-woman,—a pure creation of Goethe’sgenius, without a prototype in literature. Readersof Scott will remember Fenella, the elfish maidenin “Peveril of the Peak.” Scott saysin his Preface to that novel: “The characterof Fenella, which from its peculiarity made a favorableimpression on the public, was far from being original.The fine sketch of Mignon in Wilhelm Meister’sLehrjahre—a celebrated work fromthe pen of Goethe—gave the idea of sucha being. But the copy will be found to be greatlydifferent from my great prototype; nor can I be accusedof borrowing anything save the general idea.”
As I remember Fenella, the resemblance to Mignon ismerely superficial. A certain weirdness is allthey have in common. The intensity of the innerlife, the unspeakable longing, the cry of the unsatisfiedheart, the devout aspiration, the presentiment ofthe heavenly life which characterize Mignon are peculiarto her; they constitute her individuality. Wilhelmhas found her a kidnapped child attached to a strollingcircus company, and has rescued her from the cruelhands of the manager. Thenceforth she clingsto him with a passionate devotion, in which gratitudefor her deliverance, filial affection, and the loveof a maiden for her hero are strangely blended.Afflicted with a disease of the heart, she is subjectto terrible convulsions, which increase the tendernessof her protector for the doomed child. After oneof these attacks, in which she had been sufferingfrightful pain, we read:—
“He held her fast. She wept; and no tonguecan express the force of those tears. Her longhair had become unfastened and hung loose over hershoulders. Her whole being seemed to be meltingaway.... At last she raised herself up.A mild cheerfulness gleamed from her face. ’Myfather!’ she cried, ’you will not leaveme! You will be my father! I will be yourchild.’ Softly, before the door, a harpbegan to sound. The old Harper was bringing hisheartiest songs as an evening sacrifice to his friend.”
Then bursts on the reader that world-famed song, inwhich the soul of Mignon, with its unconquerable yearnings,is forever embalmed,—“Kennst du dasLand":—
“Know’st thou theland that bears the citron’s bloom?
The golden orange glows ’mid verdant gloom,
A gentle wind from heaven’s deep azureblows,
The myrtle low, and high the laurel grows,—
Know’st thou the land?[9]
Oh, there! oh, there!
Would I with thee, my best beloved, repair.”...
[Footnote 9: Literally, “Know’stthou it well?” But the word “well,”in this case, does not answer to the German wohl.]
The “Elective Affinities” has been strangelymisinterpreted as having an immoral tendency, as encouragingconjugal infidelity, and approving “free love.”That any one who has read the work with attention tothe end could so misjudge it seems incredible.Precisely the reverse of this, its aim is to enforcethe sanctity of the nuptial bond by showing the tragicconsequences resulting from its violation, though onlyin thought and feeling....
Here, a word concerning one merit of Goethe whichseems to me not to have been sufficiently appreciatedby even his admirers,—his loving skillin the delineation of female character; the commandingplace he assigns to woman in his writings; his fullrecognition of the importance of feminine influencein human destiny. The prophetic utterance, whichforms the conclusion of “Faust,”—“Theever womanly draws us on,”—is thesumming up of Goethe’s own experience of life.
Few men had ever such wide opportunities of acquaintancewith women. If, on the one hand, his loves hadrevealed to him the passional side of feminine nature,he had enjoyed, on the other, the friendship of someof the purest and noblest of womankind. Conspicuousamong these are Fraeulein von Klettenberg and theduch*ess Luise, whom no one, says Lewes, ever speaksof but in terms of veneration. No poet but Shakspeare,and scarcely Shakspeare, has set before the worldso rich a gallery of female portraits. They rangefrom the lowest to the highest,—from thewanton to the saint; they are drawn in firm lines,and limned in imperishable colors, ... each bearingthe stamp of her own individuality, and each confessinga master’s hand. These may be consideredas representing different phases of the poet’sexperience,—different stadia in hisview of life. “The ever womanly draws uson.” So Goethe, of all men most susceptibleof feminine influence, was led by it from weaknessto strength, from dissipation to concentration, fromdoubt to clearness, from tumult to repose, from theearthly to the heavenly.“FAUST.”
Goethe appears to have derived his knowledge of theFaust legend partly from the work of Widmann, publishedin 1599,[10] partly from another more modern in itsform, which appeared in 1728, and partly from thepuppet plays exhibited in Frankfort and other citiesof Germany, of which that legend was then a favoritetheme. He was not the only writer of that daywho made use of it. Some thirty of his contemporarieshad produced their “Fausts” during theinterval which elapsed between the inception and publicationof his great work. Oblivion overtook them all,with the exception of Lessing’s, of which a fewfragments are left; the manuscript of the completework was unaccountably lost on its way to the publisher,between Dresden and Leipsic.
[Footnote 10: The earlier work of Spiess (1588)was translated into English and furnished Marlowewith the subject-matter of his “Dr. Faustus.”]
The composition of “Faust,” as we learnfrom Goethe’s biography, proceeded spasmodically,with many and long interruptions between the inceptionand conclusion. Projected in 1769 at the age oftwenty, it was not completed till the year 1831, atthe age of eighty-two....
But the effect of the long arrest, which after Goethe’sremoval to Weimar delayed the completion of the “Faust,”is most apparent in the wide gulf which separates,as to character and style, the Second Part from theFirst. So great, indeed, is the distance betweenthe two that, without external historical proofs ofidentity, it would seem from internal evidence altogetherimprobable, in spite of the slender thread of thefable which connects them, that both poems were thework of one and the same author. And really theauthor was not the same. The change which hadcome over Goethe on his return from Italy had gonedown to the very springs of his intellectual life.
The fervor and the rush, the sparkle and foam of hisearly productions, had been replaced by the statelycalm and the luminous breadth of view that is bornof experience. The torrent of the mountains hadbecome the river of the plain; romantic impetuosityhad changed to classic repose. He could still,by occasional efforts of the will, cast himself backinto the old moods, resume the old thread, and socomplete the first “Faust.” But wemay confidently assert that he could not, after theage of forty, have originated the poem, any more thanbefore his Italian tour he could have written thesecond “Faust,” purporting to be a continuationof the first. The difference in spirit and styleis enormous.As to the question which of the two is the greaterproduction, it is like asking which is the greater,Dante’s “Commedia” or Shakspeare’s“Macbeth”? They are incommensurable.As to which is the more generally interesting, noquestion can arise. There are thousands who enjoyand admire the First Part to one who even reads theSecond. The interest of the former is poeticand thoroughly human; the interest of the other ispartly poetic, but mostly philosophic and scientific....
The symbolical character of “Faust” isassumed by all the critics, and in part confessedby the author himself. Besides the general symbolismpervading and motiving the whole,—a symbolismof human destiny,—and here and there ashadowing forth of the poet’s private experience,there are special allusions—local, personal,enigmatic conceits—which have furnishedtopics of learned discussion and taxed the ingenuityof numerous commentators. We need not troubleourselves with these subtleties. But little exegesisis needed for a right comprehension of the true andsubstantial import of the work.
The key to the plot is given in the Prologue in Heaven.The devil, in the character of Mephistopheles, askspermission to tempt Faust; he boasts his ability toget entire possession of his soul and drag him downto hell. The Lord grants the permission, and prophesiesthe failure of the attempt:—
“Be it allowed! Draw this spirit from itsSource if you can lay hold of him; bear him with youon your downward path, and stand ashamed when youare forced to confess that a good man in his dark strivingshas a consciousness of the right way.”
Here we have a hint of the author’s design.He does not intend that the devil shall succeed; hedoes not mean to adopt the conclusion of the legendand send Faust to hell. He had the penetrationto see, and he meant to show, that the notion impliedin the old popular superstition of selling one’ssoul to the devil—the notion that evil canobtain the entire and final possession of the soul—isa fallacy; that the soul is not man’s to disposeof, and cannot be so traded away. We are thesoul’s, not the soul ours. Evil is self-limited;the good in man must finally prevail. So longas he strives he is not lost; Heaven will come to
the aid of his better nature. This is the doctrine,the philosophy, of “Faust.” In theFirst Part, stung by disappointment in his search ofknowledge, by failure to lay hold of the superhuman,and urged on by his baser propensities personifiedin Mephistopheles, Faust abandons himself to sensualpleasure,—seduces innocence, burdens hissoul with heavy guilt, and seems to be entirely givenover to evil. This Part ends with Mephistopheles’imperious call,—“Her zu mir,”—asif secure of his victim. Before the appearanceof the Second Part, the reader was at liberty to acceptthat conclusion. But in the Second Part Faustgradually wakes from the intoxication of passion, outgrowsthe dominion of appetite, plans great and useful works,whereby Mephistopheles loses more and more his holdof him; and after his death is baffled in his attemptto appropriate Faust’s immortal part, to whichthe heavenly Powers assert their right....The character of Margaret is unique; its duplicateis not to be found in all the picture galleries offiction. Shakspeare, in the wide range of hisfeminine personnel, has no portrait like this.A girl of low birth and vulgar circ*mstance, imbuedwith the ideas and habits of her class, speaking thelanguage of that class from which she never for a momentdeviates into finer phrase, takes on, through the magichandling of the poet, an ideal beauty. Externallycommon and prosaic in all her ways, she is yet thoroughlypoetic, transfigured in our conception by her perfectlove. To that love, unreasoning, unsuspecting,—tothe excess of that which in itself is no fault, butbeautiful and good,—her fall and ruin aredue. Her story is the tragedy of her sex in alltime. As Schlegel said of the “PrometheusBound,”—“It is not a singletragedy, but tragedy itself.” ...
[The First Part ends with the prison scene, wherepoor Margaret, escaping by death, ascends to heaven,while Mephistopheles, shouting an imperious “Hitherto me!” disappears with Faust.] The reader isallowed to suppose—and most readers didsuppose—that the author meant it shouldbe inferred that the devil had secured his victim,and that Faust, according to the legend, had paidthe forfeit of his soul to the powers of hell.
But Faust reappears in a new poem,—theSecond Part. He is there introduced sleeping,as if burying in torpor the lusts and crimes and sorrowsof his past career. Pitying spirits are abouthim, to heal his woes and promote his return to abetter life....
[At the end of his hundred years of earthly life,]Mephistopheles ... fails to secure the immortal partof Faust, which the angels appropriate and bear aloft:
“This member ofthe upper spheres
We rescue fromthe devil;
For whoso strivesand perseveres
May be redeemedfrom evil.”
The last two lines may be supposed to contain theauthor’s justification of Mephistopheles’defeat and Faust’s salvation. Though a mansurrender himself to evil, if there is that in himwhich evil cannot satisfy, an impulse by which heoutgrows the gratifications of vice, extends his horizonand lifts his desires, pursues an onward course untilhe learns to place his aims outside of himself, andto seek satisfaction in works of public utility,—heis beyond the power of Satan: he may be redeemedfrom evil.
One could wish, indeed, that more decisive marks ofmoral development had been exhibited in the latterstages of Faust’s career. But here comesin the Christian doctrine of Grace, which Goethe appliesto the problem of man’s destiny. Faustis represented as saved by no merit of his own, butby the interest which Heaven has in every soul in whichthere is the possibility of a heavenly life.
And so the new-born ascending spirit is committedby the Mater gloriosa to the tutelage of Gretchen[Margaret],—una poenitentium,—nowpurified from all the stains of her earthly life, towhom is given the injunction:—
“Lift thyselfup to higher spheres!
When he divines,he’ll follow thee.”
And the Mystic Choir chants the epilogue which embodiesthe moral of the play:—
“All that is perishing
Typesthe ideal;
Dream of our cherishing
Thusbecomes real.
Superhumanly
Hereit is done;
The ever womanly
Drawethus on.”
ALFRED (LORD) TENNYSON.
1809-1892.
THE SPIRIT OF MODERN POETRY.
BY G. MERCER ADAM.
Of Tennyson what can one write freshly to-day thatwill not seem but an echo of what has been said orwritten of England’s noble singer who, on thedeath of Wordsworth, now over half a century ago, assumedthe official bays of the English laureateship?Personal homage, of course, one can pay to the illustriousname, so dear to the heart of the English-speakingrace; but how freshly or vitally can any writer nowspeak of that magnificent body of his verse which isthe glory of his age, of the nobility and knightlyvirtues of its author’s character, of the splendorof his genius, or of the breadth of intellectual andspiritual interests which was so signally manifestedin all that Tennyson thought and wrote? Amongthe “Beacon Lights” in the present seriesof volumes the Laureate of the age has not hithertobeen included, and to fill the gap the writer of thissketch has ventured, not, of course, to say all thatmight be said of the great poet, but modestly to dealwith the man and his art, so that neither his era norhis work shall go unchronicled or fail of some recognition,however inadequate, in these pages.
Tennyson’s supreme excellence, it is admitted,lies not so much in his themes as in his transcendentart. It is this that has given him his hold upona cultured age and won for him immortality. Hiswork is the perfection of literary form, and, in hislyrical pieces especially, his melody is exquisite.Not less masterly is his power of construction, whilehis sensibility to beauty is phenomenal. His secludedlife brought him close to nature’s heart andmade him familiar with her every voice and mood.In interpreting these, much of the charm lies in thefidelity of his descriptions and in the surpassing
beauty of the word-painting. In the Shakespeariansense he lacked the dramatic faculty, and he had butslender gifts of invention and creation. But broad,if not always strong, was his intelligence, and keenhis interest in the problems of the time. Thoughliving apart from the world, he was yet of it; andin many of his poems may be traced not only the doings,but the thought and tendencies, of his age. HisChristianity, though undogmatic, was real and pervasive,and his love for nature was a devotion. In nationalaffairs, as befitted the official singer of his country(witness his fine ’Ode on the Death of the Dukeof Wellington’), he showed himself the historicas well as the modern Englishman, and great was hisreverence for law and freedom. Attractive also,if at times somewhat commonplace, is the quiet domesticsphere which Tennyson has hallowed in the many modernidylls which depict the joys and sorrows of humblelife. No trait in the poet’s many-sidedcharacter is more beautiful than the sympathy he hasmanifested in these poems with the world’s toilers;while nothing could well be more touching than thepathos with which he invests their simple annals.Typical of the Victorian age in which he lived, Tennysonis also representative of its highest thought andculture. This is seen not only in the thoughtof his verse, but in its splendid forms, and especiallyin the technical equipment of the poet. In hisdialogues there is much movement and action, and hehad consummate skill in the handling of metres.Few poets have approached him in the successful writingof blank verse, which has a delightful cadence aswell as calm strength. Above all his gifts, hewas an artist in words, his ear being most sensitivelyattuned and his taste pure and refined for the delicateartistry of the poet’s work. In this respecthe is a matchless literary workman. Besides themusic of his verse, his thought is ever high, and inhis serious moods consecrated to noble and reverentpurposes. In the midst of the negations and convulsivemovements of his day his spirit is always serene,and his thought, while at times dreamily melancholy,is conserving and full of faith’s highest assurance.His sympathy with his fellow-man was keen and wide-souled;and though he stood aloof from the conflict and struggleof his day, he was far from indifferent to its movements,and with high purpose strove if not to direct at leastto reflect them. This was specially characteristicof the man, and in the conflict with doubt no poethas more keenly interpreted the mental struggles ofthe thoughtful soul and the deep underlying spiritof his time, or more beneficently given the age anassured ground of faith while conserving its highestand dearest hopes. Happily, too, unlike manypoets, his own character was lofty and blameless, andhence his message comes with more consistency, aswell as with a higher inspiration and power.Nor is the message the less impressive for the noteof honest doubt which finds utterance in many a poem,or for the intimation of a creed that is at once liberaland conservative. With the evidences before thereader that the poet himself had had his own soul-wrestlingsand periods of mental conflict, his counsellings ofcourage and faith are all the more effective, as theyare in unison with his belief in the upward progressof the race, and his unshaken trust in a higher Power.
Lacking in intensity of passion and dramatic force,Tennyson here again is but typical of his era, tohim one of reposeful content and calm, reasoning progress.Of permanent, lasting value much of his verse undoubtedlyis, but not all of it will escape the indifferenceof posterity or the measuring-rod and censure, itmay be, of the future critic. He had not thestirring strains or the careless rapture of otherand earlier poets of the motherland,—hischaracteristic is more contemplative and brooding,—yethis range is unusually comprehensive and his powervaried and sustained, as well as marked by the highestqualities of rhythmic beauty. In the idyll, wherehe specially shines, we have much that is lovely andlimpid, with abounding instances of that felicitousword-painting for which he was noted. This isespecially seen in the simple pastoral idylls, suchas ‘Dora,’ ‘The May Queen,’and ’The Miller’s Daughter,’ orin those tender lyrics such as ‘Mariana,’’Sir Galahad,’ ‘The Dying Swan,’and ‘The Talking Oak.’ In the balladsand songs, how felicitous again is the poet’swork, and how rich yet mellifluous is the strain!Had Tennyson written nothing else but these, withthe verse included in the volumes issued by him in1832 and 1842, how high would he have been placedin the choir of song, and how supreme should we havedeemed his art! In “The Princess”alone there are songs that would have made any poet’sreputation, while for music and color, and especiallyfor perfection of poetic workmanship, they are almostmatchless in their beauty.
Fortunately, however, the poet was to give us mucheven beyond these surpassingly beautiful things, andmake a more unique and distinctive contribution tothe verse of his era. In the years that followedthe production of his early writings the poet maturesin thought as his art ripens and reaches still higherqualities of craftsmanship. Recluse as he was,he moreover had his experiences of life and drank deeplyof sorrow’s cup, as we see in “In Memoriam,”—thatnoble tribute to his youthful friend, Arthur Hallam,with its grand hymnal qualities and powerful and reverentlessons for an age shifting in its beliefs and unconfirmedin its faith. In later work from his pen we alsosee the Laureate—for he has now receivedofficial recognition from his nation—inhis relations to the culture as well as to the thoughtof his time, keeping pace with the age in all itscomplex engrossments and problems. This is shownin much and varied work turned out with its author’sloving interest in the poetic art, and with characteristicdelicacy and finish. The most important laborof this later time includes “The Princess,”“Maud and Other Poems,” “Enoch Arden,”the dramas “Becket,” “Queen Mary,”and “Harold,” “Tiresias,” “Demeter,”“The Foresters,” but above all, and mostnotably, that grand epic of King Arthur’s time,—“TheIdylls of the King.” In the latter, themost characteristic, and perhaps the most permanent,
of Tennyson’s work, the poet manifests his historicsense and love for England’s legendary past,and achieves his design not only to glorify it, butto imbue it with a deep ethical motive and underlyingpurpose, the expression of his own chivalrous, knightlysoul and strenuous, thoughtful, and blameless life.In these splendid tales of knight-errantry we havethe full flower of the poet’s genius, narratedin the true romantic spirit, but with an idealityand imagination quite Tennysonian, and with a spiritualistictouch in harmony with “the voice of the age”that reminds us that,—“Our little systemshave their day;
Theyhave their day and cease to be:
Theyare but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord,art more than they.”
It is with such themes and speculations that Tennysonhas powerfully and impressively influenced his age.Beyond and above the mere artistry of the poet, werecognize his interest in man’s higher, spiritualbeing, his love for nature, and awe in contemplatingthe heights and depths of infinite time and space,ever looking upward and inward at the mysteries ofthe world behind the phenomena of sense. It isdifficult, in set theological terms, to define thepoet’s creed, though we know that he was wonby the Broad Church teaching of his friends, FrederickRobertson and Denison Maurice, and had himself manya battle to fight with honest doubts until—ashis ‘Crossing the Bar’ shows us—hefinally conquered and laid them. But while thereis an absence of definite doctrine in his work thereis no question about his religious convictions or ofhis belief in the eternal verities, the immanenceof God in man and the universe. Throughout hispoems he assumes the existence of a great Spirit andrecognizes that our souls are a part of Him, howeverFaith at times seems to veil her face from the poet,and all appears a mystery, though a mystery presidedover by infinite Power and Love. The great problemsof metaphysics and of man’s origin and destiny,we are told, occupied much of his thought, and hedwelt upon them with eager, intense interest, andtouched upon them with great candor, earnestness, andtruthfulness. No sophistry could shake his beliefin man’s immortality, for without belief inthis doctrine the human race, he was convinced, hadnot incentive enough to virtue, while all man’sinspirations were otherwise meaningless. Forthe doctrine of Evolution, in its materialistic aspect,he had nothing but scorn, though he accepted it inthe more spiritual guise with which Russel Wallacepropounded it. If we come from the brutes weare nevertheless linked with the Divine, he believed,and it was the Divine in man that was to conquer thebrute within him, and, in the upward struggle, workout salvation. So, in the realm of physical science,on the principles of which, as Huxley tells us, hehad a great grasp, the poet, while appalled by themystery, accepts and indeed rejoices in its truths,though he cannot acquiesce in a godless world or inthe denial of a life to come, in which the race, throughinfinite love, shall be brought into union with God.
But leaving here Tennyson’s speculations andbeliefs,—a most interesting part of thepoet’s analytical and reflective character,—letus look for a little at the man personally, and recordbriefly the chief incidents in his quiet though idealhome-life. To those who know the Memoir by hisson, Hallam Tennyson,—a memoir that whilepaying honor to filial reverence and devotion is atthe same time and in all respects most worthy of itshigh theme,—the events in the poet’slife will hardly need dwelling upon, though they throwmuch light on, and impart the distinction of a highdignity to, the Laureate’s work. The lifeHallam Tennyson describes was, we know, not lived inthe public eye, and was wholly without sensationalelements or any of the vapid interests which usuallyattach to a man whose name is, in a special sense,public property, and about whom the world was eagerly,and often officiously, curious. The life thepoet lived, in a popular sense, lacked all that usuallyattracts the masses, for he was personally little knownto his generation, rarely seen among large gatheringsof the people, and, great Englishman as he was, wasalmost a stranger, in his later years at least, inthe English metropolis, or, if we except the seatsof the universities, in any of the chief towns ofthe kingdom. And yet, in another and a highersense, the century has hardly known among its manyintellectual forces one that has been more influentialin its effect upon literary art, or in certain directionshas more potently influenced the ideals and more profoundlygiven expression to the ethical and philosophic thoughtof the time. Secluded as his life was, it wasone not of obscurity or of mere asceticism; on thecontrary, it was rich in all the elements that makefor a great reputation, and ever devoted to strenuous,elevating purpose, and to an ideal poetic career.
So far as his tastes and opportunity offered, Tennyson’slife, moreover, was enriched by many wise and noblefriendships, and by intimacy with not a few of thebest and most thoughtful minds of his age. Itwas spent, we rejoice to think also, in unceasingtoil in and for his high art, with a resulting productivenesswhich proved the extent and varied range of his laborsas well as the mastery of his craft.
Until the appearance of the biography referred to,we had known the Laureate almost wholly through hisbooks. Now, thanks to the authoritative recordof his accomplished surviving son, we know the poetas he lived, and feel that behind his writings thereis a personality of the most interesting and impressivekind. It is a personality such as consorts withthe opinions which most thoughtful readers of Tennyson’swritings must have had of one of the greatest and serenestminds of the age,—a poet who, aside fromthe splendor of his workmanship and the beauty andmelody of his verse, has greatly enriched the poeticl*terature of the century, and has, we feel, given
profound thought to the intellectual problems andspiritual aspirations of his era. Nor does theMemoir, as a revelation of the poet’s intellectualand personal life, fall away, on any page of it, fromthe high plane on which it has been prepared and written.There is no undue invasion, which a son’s pridemight be apt to make, of domestic privacy, and no dealingwith irrelevant topics or elaboration of those setforth with becoming modesty and restraint; far lessis there the discussion of any subject, for a trivialor vain purpose. Throughout the work we meet withno unnecessary lifting of veils or treatment of themesmerely to satisfy morbid curiosity. Everywherethere is the evidence of sound judgment, unimpeachabletaste, and a wholesome sanity. This is especiallythe case in the frank revelation of the poet’sviews on religion and his attitude towards scientificand theological thought, to which we have ourselvesreferred. In this respect, a large debt is dueto the biographer for setting before the reader, notonly the high ethical purpose which Tennyson had inview in selecting the themes of his poems and in themode of handling them, but, as we have said, in showingus what beyond peradventure were his religious opinions,and, despite a certain curtaining of gloom, how profoundlyhe was influenced by faith in the Divine life.Nor is the least interest in the Memoir to be foundin the light the biographer throws on the poet’swritings as a whole—how they were conceivedand elaborated, and on the often hidden meaning thatunderlies some of the most thoughtful verse. This,to students of the Laureate’s writings, is ofhigh value, in addition to the service rendered bythe biographer in tracing in his father’s poeticwork the influences which fashioned it and the painshe took to give it its marvellous beauty and artisticfinish of expression.It is this instructive as well as skilled and dignifiedtreatment, with the vast literary and deep personalinterest in the life, that will commend the Memoirto all who are proud of the Laureate’s fame,and wished to have nothing written that was unworthyof either the poet or the man, or that would in theleast detract from his laurels. Nor does therestraint which the biographer imposes upon himselfconceal from us the man in his human aspects, or leadhim to set before the reader an imaginary, ratherthan a veritable and real, portraiture. We havea picture, it is true, of an almost ideal domesticlife, and of a man of rare gifts and fine culture,whose work and career have been and are the prideand glory of the English-speaking race. But wehave also the story of an author not free from humanweaknesses, and though endowed with manifold and greatgifts, yet who had to labor long and earnestly toperfect himself in his art, and in his early yearshad much discouragement and not a little adversityto contend with. With all the toil and stresshis early years had known, when success came to thepoet no one was less unspoiled by it; and when sunshinefell upon and gilded his life, maturing years broughthim serenity, happiness, and, at length, peace.
Alfred Tennyson was born at his father’s rectory,Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 6,1809. He wasthe fourth of twelve children, seven of whom weresons, two of them, Frederick and Charles, being endowed,like Alfred, with poetic gifts. The poet’smother, a woman of sweet and tender disposition, hadmuch to do in moulding the future Laureate’scharacter; while from his father, a man of fine culture,he received not only much of his education, but hisbent towards a recluse, bookish career. Alfredwas from his earliest days a retired, shy child, fondof reading and given to rhyming, and with a characteristiclove of nature and of quiet rural life. Lateron he had a passion for the sea-coast, and for thosescenes of storm and stress about the seagirt shoresof old England which he was so feelingly and withsuch poetic beauty to depict in “Sea Dreams,”and in those incomparable songs, embodiments at onceof sorrow and of faith, ‘Break, break, break,’and ‘Crossing the Bar.’ Besides theeducation he received from his scholarly father, andat a school at Louth for four years, young Tennysonspent some years at Trinity College, Cambridge, where,though he did not take a degree, he won in 1829 theChancellor’s medal for the best English poemof the year, the subject of which was ‘Timbuctoo.’At college he had the good fortune to number amonghis friends several men who later in life were, likehimself, to rise to eminence,—such as HenryAlford (afterwards Dean of Canterbury), R.C.Trench (later Archbishop of Dublin), C. Merivale (historianand Dean of Ely), Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton),James Spedding (editor of Lord Bacon’s Works),Macaulay, Thackeray, and, most endeared of all, ArthurHenry Hallam, son of the historian, whose memory Tennysonhas immortalized in “In Memoriam.”With him at college was also his brother Charles,one year his senior, with whom he collaborated inthe collection of verse, issued in 1827, under thetitle of “Poems by Two Brothers.”In 1830, Tennyson made a journey to the Pyrenees withArthur Hallam, who was engaged to the poet’ssister Emilia, and in the same year he published anindependent volume, entitled “Poems chieflyLyrical.” In this, his first venture alonein poetry, and in another issued in 1832, Tennysonwas to manifest to the world his poetic powers andart, for they contained, besides much rhythmical andcontemplative verse, such poems as ‘Mariana,’’Claribel; ‘Lilian,’ ‘LadyClare,’ ‘The Lotus Eaters,’ ‘ADream of Pair Women,’ ‘The May Queen,’and ‘The Miller’s Daughter,’ In spiteof the great promise bodied forth in these works,the volumes were subject to not a little unfavorablecriticism, which stayed his further publishing fora period of ten years, though not the furtheranceof his creative work, nor his enthusiastic effortstowards increasing the perfection of his art.
It was not until 1842 that the poet again appearedin print, this time with a volume to which he appendedhis name, “Poems by Alfred Tennyson,”and which gave him high rank among the acknowledgedsingers of his day,—Wordsworth, Southey,Landor, Campbell, Rogers, and Leigh Hunt, in England;and in the New World, Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Whittier,and Emerson. The poet-contemporaries of his youth—Byron,Scott, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats—hadby this time all died, and in 1843 Southey died, whenWordsworth, whom Tennyson reverenced, became Poet Laureate.The gap occasioned by the death of these early Englishpoets of the century was now to be filled in largemeasure by Tennyson, though among the writers of songto arise were the Brownings, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold,and Swinburne. Critical appreciation of the volumeof 1842 was happily encouraging to the poet; indeed,it was most gratifying, for its many remarkable beautieswere now justly and adequately appraised, particularlysuch fine new themes as the volume contained—’Ulysses,’‘Godiva,’ ‘The Two Voices,’‘The Talking Oak,’ ‘Oenone,’’Locksley Hall,’ ‘The Vision ofSin,’ and ‘Morte D’Arthur,’the germ of the future “Idylls of the King.”Nor on this side the Atlantic did the new volume lacksubstantial recognition, and from such competent criticsas Emerson and Hawthorne; while among his Englishcontemporaries Tennyson became, if we except for thetime Wordsworth, the acknowledged head of Englishsong. At this period the poet resided in Londonor its neighborhood, his family home in Lincolnshirehaving been broken up in 1837, six years after thedeath of his father. Here, in spite of the secludedlife he led, he became a notable figure in literarycircles, and greatly increased the range of his friends,correspondents, and admirers. Among the latterwere the Carlyles, Thomas and his clever wife Janebeing especially drawn to the poet, and to them weowe interesting sketches of the personal appearanceof Tennyson at this time. Mrs. Carlyle, in oneof her delightful letters gossiping about Dickens,Bulwer-Lytton, and Tennyson, esteems the latter “thegreatest genius of the three,” adding that “besides,he is a very handsome man, and a noble-hearted one,with something of the gypsy in his appearance, whichfor me is perfectly charming.” This isthe historian, her husband’s, piece of portraiture:“A fine, large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored,shaggy-headed man, dusty, smoky, free-and-easy; whoswims, outwardly and inwardly, with great composurein an articulate element as of tranquil chaos andtobacco smoke; great now and then when he does emerge;a most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man.”Another portrait we have from the Chelsea philosopherand scorner of shams which describes the poet veryhumanly as “one of the finest-looking men inthe world, with a great shock of rough, dusky, darkhair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive, aquilineface, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown
complexion, almost Indian looking; clothes cynicallyloose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco.His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughterand piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speechand speculation free and plenteous. I do not meetin these late decades such company over a pipe!We shall see what he will grow to.” Besidesthe Carlyles and other notable contemporaries, Tennysonnumbered at this time among his intimates John Sterling,whose life was written by the author of “SartorResartus,” James Spedding, Bacon’s editor,who wrote a fine critique of the 1842 volume of poemsfor the Edinburgh Review, Aubrey De Vere, Edmund Lushington,A.P. Stanley (afterwards Dean of Westminster),and Edward Fitzgerald, the future translator of the“Rubaiyat,” or Quatrains of the PersianPoet, Omar Khayyam. These were all enthusiasticadmirers of Tennyson’s work and art, and hisclose personal friends, who have left on record manyinteresting sketches of the poet in their publishedwritings, or in letters to him, and especially inreminiscences furnished for the Memoir by the poet’sson.Nine years before the appearance of the 1842 volumeof Tennyson’s verse the poet’s bosom friend,Arthur Hallam, died at an immature age at Vienna,and his death was the subject of much brooding in noble,elegiac verse, written, as was Milton’s ‘Lycidas,’to commemorate the loss of one very dear to the poet.In “In Memoriam,” as all know, Tennysonsought to assuage his grief and give fine, artisticexpression to his profound sorrow at the loss of hiscompanion and friend; but the work is more than alabored monument of woe, since it enshrines reflectionsof the most exalted and inspiring character on theeternally momentous themes of life, death, and immortality.The work was published in 1850, and it at once challengedthe admiration of the world for the perfection ofits art, no less than for its high contemplative beauty.This was the year when Wordsworth passed to the grave,and Tennyson, in his room, was given the English laureateship.In this year, also, we find him happily married toEmily S. Sellwood, a lady of Berks, to whom the poethad been engaged since 1837. With his bride hetook up house at Twickenham, near London, where hisson, Hallam Tennyson, was born in 1852. In thefollowing year he removed to Farringford, on the Isleof Wight, which was to be his home for forty years,and where, as his son tells us, some of his best-knownworks were written. Here, in 1854, his secondson, Lionel, was born, whose young life of promisewas terminated by jungle fever thirty-two years lateron a return voyage from India,—all thatwas mortal of him finding repose in the depths of theRed Sea. To complete the chief incidents in thepoet’s personal career, we may here record thatwhile Tennyson acquired another home at Aldworth,Surrey,—where he died Oct. 6, 1892, followedsome four years later by his wife,—hishappiest days were spent at Farringford, the pilgrimage
place of many eminent worshippers of the poet’smuse, where was dispensed an unostentatious but open-handedand genial British hospitality. It should beadded that, besides the perquisites which attach tothe office of the Poet Laureate, Tennyson was givenfrom 1845 a pension of L200 ($1000) and that, whilein 1865 he refused a baronetcy, in 1884 he accepteda peerage, and had the honor of burial (Oct. 12, 1892)in Westminster Abbey.We now revert to the poet’s early, or, rather,to his middle-age, creative years, and to a resumeof his principal writings, with a brief, running commenton his message and art. In 1847, three years beforehe became Laureate, he published “The Princess,”a charming narrative poem in blank verse, which, thoughit abounds in fine descriptions and has an obviousmoral in the treatment of the theme,—thewoman question of today,—is inherentlylacking in unity and strength, as well as weak inthe depicting of the characters. In later editionsthe poem was amended in several faulty respects, andwas especially enriched by the insertion between thecantos of many lovely and now familiar songs, whichserve not only to bind together the whole structureof the poem, but to enhance and enforce its high moralmeaning. Any analysis of “The Princess”is here deemed unnecessary, since it must not onlybe familiar to most readers of the poet’s works,but familiar also in the varied annotated editionsof such editors as Rolfe, Woodberry, and Wilson Farrand.Familiar, it is believed, also, that it will be toTennysonian students in the “Study of the Princess,”with critical and explanatory notes by Dr. S.E.Dawson, of Montreal (now of Ottawa, Canada),—anable commentary which received the approval of LordTennyson himself, and elicited from him a highly interestingletter to the author on points in the poem eithermisunderstood or not discerningly apprehended by othercritics and reviewers. The purport of the poem,it may be said, however, is to frown upon revolutionaryattempts to alter the position of women, of scholasticallybe-gowned and college-capped dames, who would seekby other than nature’s ways to put the sex uponan equality with man, while repressing their own individuality,doing violence to their maternal instincts, and tramplingupon their “gracious household ways.”In the handling of the “medley” Tennysonbrings into exercise not only his far-seeing powers,which were greatly in advance of his time, but hisgifts of raillery and humor, especially in the earlydivisions of the poem, as well as his high, seriousmotives in the moral lessons to which he points inthe later cantos, where he aims at the elevation ofwomen in correspondence with the diversity of theirnatures, for, as he himself says, “Woman isnot undeveloped man, but diverse.” His idealof perfect womanhood he would attain through the awakeningpower of the affections and the transforming powerof love, rather than by ignoring the difference ofphysique, founding women’s universities, andbecoming blue-stockinged high priestesses of learning.Of the medley of characters in the poem, poet-princesin disguise at the college, violet-hooded lady principals,
“With prudes forproctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduatesin their golden hair,”
it is Lady Psyche’s child that is the true,effective heroine of the story, as Dr. Dawson aptlypoints out. “Ridiculous in the lecture room,the babe in the poem, as in the songs, is made thecentral point upon which the plot turns, for the unconsciouschild is the concrete embodiment of Nature herself,clearing away all merely intellectual theories byher silent influence.” This is the explanation,then, of the appearance of the babe—symbolof the power and tenderness of Nature—incritical passages of the poem, as well as in the unsurpassablybeautiful intercalary songs, for it is the child thatenables the poet to soften the Princess’s naturetoward the Prince, and to effect the reconciliationbetween the Princess and Lady Psyche, while impartingbeauty as well as high meaning in the recital of theincidents and development of the tale.
“In Memoriam,” as we have stated, appearedin 1850, and was unique in its appeal to the mindof the era as a stately meditative poem on a singletheme,—the death of the poet’s friend,Arthur Hallam. The English language, if we exceptMilton’s ‘Lycidas’ and ’Hymnto the Nativity,’ and Wordsworth’s grand‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality,’ hasno poem so noble or so faultless in its art as thismagnificent series of detached elegies. The highthought, philosophic reflection, and passionate religioussentiment that mark the whole work, added to the exquisitenessof the versification, place it wellnigh supreme inthe literature of elegiac poetry. Its grave,majestic hymnal measure adds to its solemn beautyand stateliness, while the varied phases of spiritualizedthought and emotional grief which find expression inthe poem seem to elevate it in its harmonies to therank of a profound psalm-chant from the choir of heaven.In the sumptuously embellished edition of the elegy,embodying Mr. Harry Fenn’s drawings, with asympathetic preface by the Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke,there is a brief but luminous analysis of the ninedivisions of the poem, or commentary on the greatclassic. To those who desire to read the greatelegy understandingly, the value of Dr. Van Dyke’swork is earnestly commended, since without this commentary,or such as are to be obtained in other critical sources,there is much of poetic beauty, of sorrow-broodingthought, and especially of emotional reflection onlife, death, and immortality, in the hundred and thirtylyrics of which the poem consists, which will be lostto even the thoughtful reader. The poem, as acritic truthfully observes, has done much “toexpress and to consolidate all that is best in thelife of England, its domestic affection, its patrioticfeeling, its healthful morality, its rational andearnest religion.”
The sentimental metrical romance “Maud”appeared in 1855 (the year of the Crimean War), withsome additional poems, including ’The Chargeof the Light Brigade,’ written after Raglan’srepulse of the Russians at Balaclava, and the fine‘Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.’The lyrical love-drama, “Maud,” we aretold, was one of Tennyson’s favorite productions,of which he was wont to read parts to his guests.As the poet has himself said of the monodrama, “itis a little Hamlet,” “the history of amorbid poetic soul, under the blighting influence ofa recklessly speculative age. He is the heirof madness, an egotist with the makings of a cynic,raised to sanity by a pure and holy love which elevateshis whole nature, passing from the heights of triumphto the lowest depths of misery, driven into madnessby the loss of her whom he has loved, and when hehas at length passed through the fiery furnace, andhas recovered his reason, giving himself up to workfor the good of mankind through the unselfishnessborn of his great passion.” The poem, whenit appeared, was reviled by some critics as an allegoryof the war with Russia, and they did its author theinjustice of supposing that he lauded war for war’ssake, instead of, as is the case, applauding war onlyin defence of liberty. Apart from this misunderstanding,due to abhorrence of the war-frenzy of the period,the poem has outlived the mistaken objections to itwhen it appeared, and is now admired in its vindicatedlight, and especially for the rich and copious beautymanifest throughout the work, and for the magnificentlyric art with which it is composed.
We now come to Tennyson’s masterpiece, the “Idyllsof the King,” an epic of chivalry, interpretedas personifying in its various characters the soulat war with the senses. These appeared duringthe years 1859 and 1872. Each of the Idylls,which has a connecting thread binding it to its fellow-allegory,takes its plot or fable from the legendary lore thathas clustered round the name of Arthur, mythical Kingof the Britons about the era of the first invasionby the English. Out of the mass of material whichwas gathered by Sir Thomas Malory for his prose historyof Arthur and his Knights, Tennyson takes the chiefincidents and noblest heroic traits of character inthe legends and blends them in a fashion of his own,steeping them in an atmosphere which his imaginationcreates, and lighting up all with a passion and gloryof knightly adventure, as well as with a chasteness,purity, and high fervor of ethical thought, that mustperpetuate the romance, as he has given it us, untoall time. The sections of the work as it now stands,in addition to its introductory dedication to the latePrince Consort, and the closing poem to the late QueenVictoria, are as follows: ’The Coming ofArthur,’ which relates the mystery of the birthof the King, his marriage to Guinevere, daughter ofLeodogran, King of Cameliard, and the wonders attending
his crowning and establishment on the throne; nextcomes ‘Gareth and Lynette,’ a tale of loveand scorn, and of the conflict between a false prideand a true ambition; to this is appended ‘TheMarriage of Geraint,’ of Arthur’s court,and a member of the great order of the Round Table.Next follows ’Geraint and Enid,’—Enid,the gentle and timid, whom Geraint had married afterwooing the haughty Lynette,—a tale of pureand loyal womanhood, darkened for awhile by the cloudsof jealousy and suspicion, yet closing happily longafter the “spiteful whispers” had dieddown, and Geraint, assured of Enid’s fealty,had ruled his kingdom well and gone forth to “crowna happy life with a fair death” against theheathen of the Northern Sea, “fighting for theblameless King.” The next Idyll relateshow the venerable magician Merlin succumbs to thethrall of the wily harlot Vivien, decked in her rarerobe of samite, and yields to her the charm which washis secret. ‘Lancelot and Elaine’follows with its conflict between the virgin innocenceof Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, and the guiltypassion of the noble though erring Lancelot. Tothis, in order, succeeds ‘The Holy Grail,’telling of the vain quest of Arthur’s Knightsfor the sacred relic. Despite its mystic character,this is admittedly one of the finest of the seriesof Idylls, and rich in its spiritual teaching,—thatthe heavenly vision is to be seen only by the eyesof purity and grace. ‘Pelleas and Ettarre’is a tale of dole, showing the evil at work at thecourt, and the wrecking effect of another woman’sperfidy. ‘The Last Tournament’ hasfor its hero the court fool, who, amid the treasonof Arthur’s knights, is firm in his loyal allegianceto the King. In contrast to him is Sir Tristram,who, despite his prowess, in jousts on the tilting-field,is “one to whom faith is foolishness, and thehigher life an idle delusion.” The climaxis reached in ‘Guinevere,’ whom, in spiteof her faithlessness and guilty intrigue with Lancelot,Arthur, with his great high soul, pityingly loves andforgives. The end comes with the sad though shadowy‘Passing of Arthur,’ the royal barge mysteriouslycarrying him out into the beyond, whence issue soundsof hail and greeting to the victor-hero“——asif some fair city were one voice
Around a king returningfrom his wars.”
In 1864 Tennyson published “Enoch Arden,”an idyll of the hearth, depicting a pathetic incidentin a seafarer’s career, of much simple idyllicbeauty. The poem has some fine descriptive passages,and many examples of the poet’s rich word-paintingin treating of the splendid tropic scenery among whichthe mariner is for the time cast. The volumecontained also some minor pieces, including the dialectpoem, ’The Northern Farmer,’ with itshumorous rendering of yokel speech. This wasfollowed (1875-84) by three dramas on English historicalthemes, which, as the poet had not, as we have alreadyhinted, the gifts of a Shakespeare, were somewhat
unsuccessful, though written, despite Tennyson’sadvanced years, with much fine force and vividnessof character delineation. These dramas (to enumeratethem in their historic order) were “Harold,”“Becket,” and “Queen Mary.”“Becket” is the best and most ambitiousof them, though not, as “Queen Mary” is,a play designed for the stage. It is a vigorousEnglishman’s closet study of a prolonged andbitter struggle—the conflict in Henry II.’stime between the church and the crown—asexhibited in the person and dominant ecclesiasticalattitude of the audacious prelate who met his tragicend by Canterbury’s altar. “Harold”strikingly realizes to the modern reader the stirringactivities of a strenuous time,—that ofthe English conquest by Norman William, opposed tothe death by Harold at Senlac in 1066. The dramais as rich in character as it is swift and energeticin action. “Queen Mary” deals withthe religious and political dissensions (the strugglebetween the Papacy and the Reformation) of Mary Tudor’sera, with her love for and marriage with Philip ofSpain, and her hopeless yearning for an heir to thedouble crown of England and Spain. An importantand prized addition to our English literature the dramaundoubtedly is, but it is not more than a careful,accurate, and elaborate historical study. Itlacks, both in spirit and movement, the characteristicsof the Shakespearian drama. Its characters, however,are vividly brought out, and its situations are oftenpicturesque and telling. The personages, moreover,are wanting in the play of creative effect, and theincidents lack the stir of inventive resource.Further, though the story of Mary’s life isessentially dramatic, and the incidents of her reignare tragic in the extreme, the poet does not seemto have extracted from either that which goes to themaking of a great drama. This evidently is theresult of following too faithfully the events of historyand the records of the time, as well as, in some degree,from want of sympathy, which Tennyson could not impart,with the leading characters and their actions.Still, much is made of the materials; and though thepersonages and incidents appear in the narrative inthe neutral tints of history, yet the period is madeto reappear with a freshness and distinctness which,while it satisfies the scholar, gives a true charmto every lover of the drama. Again and again,as we read, are we reminded of the Laureate’srare poetical fancy and fine literary instinct, andthe dialogues contain many passages of striking thoughtand noble utterance. But the work is overcastby the great gloom of its central figure,—thegloom of bigotry, passion, jealousy, disappointment,and despair which ever environs the miserable Queen;and much though the poet has striven to brighten thepicture and awaken sympathy for the weakness of thewoman, who, royal mistress though she was, could notcommand her love to be requited, the poetic measureof his lines roughens and hardens to the close, whenthe curtain falls on what is felt to be a tragic andunlovely life.We can only briefly refer to the other dramatispersonae introduced to us, who are among the notablehistorical characters that figure during Mary Tudor’sreign. They are those who take part in the incidents,religious, civil, and political, of the period, andare, for the most part, both in speech and bearing,the portraits familiar to us in Mr. Froude’shistory. Of these the most pleasing is the PrincessElizabeth, whose portrait is drawn with masterly skill,and engages our interest as the fortunes of its originaloscillates “’Twixt Axe and Crown":—
“ATudor
Schooled by the shadowof death, a Boleyn too
Glancing across theTudor.”
But, aside from the interest in the safety of herperson, which is in constant jeopardy from the jealousyof her half-sister, Elizabeth wins upon the readerby her modest, maidenly bearing, her frankness ofmanner, and by a playfulness of disposition which readilyadapts itself to the restraints which the Queen isever placing upon her person, and which endears herto the people, who, could the hated Mary be got ridof, would fain become her subjects. The civilstrife of the period furnishes material for some powerfulpassages, which are wrought up with excellent effect,and in this connection Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir ThomasStafford, the Earl of Devon, Sir William Cecil, andother historical personages appear upon the stage.The other incidents introduced are those which attachthemselves to the religious persecutions of the time,and which brought Cranmer to the stake, and give playto the papal intrigues of Pole, Gardiner, and theemissaries of the Spanish court. The second andthird scenes in the fourth act devoted to Cranmer,which detail his martyrdom, are hardly so satisfactoryas we think they might have been, though the poethere again follows closely the historical accounts.The scenes, however, give occasion for the introductionof a couple of local gossips whose provincial dialectand keen interest in the national and religious policyof the time, here as in occasional street scenes,are cleverly portrayed. This sapient reflectionin the mouth of one of these gossips, Tib, is a specimenat hand:—
“A-burnin’ and a-burnin’, and a-makingo’ volk madder and madder; but tek thou my wordvor’t, Joan,—and I bean’t wrongnot twice i’ ten year,—the burnin’o’ the owld archbishop ‘ill burn the Pwoapout o’ this ’ere land for iver and iver.”
Philip we have not spoken of; but he fills such ahateful niche in the historical gallery of the time,and the poet introduces him but to act his pitifulrole, that we pass him by, though many of the grandestpassages in the drama are those which give expressionto Mary’s passionate love for him, and her longingdesire for an issue of their marriage, which afterwardsculminates in her madness and death.
We have to speak of but one other character in thedrama, whose death, it has been said, was sufficientto honor and to dishonor an age. The beautifulLady Jane Grey appears for a little among the shadowsof the poem, and moves to her tragic fate.
“Seventeen,—arose of grace!
Girl never breathedto rival such a rose!
Rose never blewthat equalled such a bud.”
A few songs of genuine Tennysonian harmony, pitchedin the keys that most fittingly suit the singer’smood, are interspersed through the drama, and serveto relieve the narratives of their gloom and plaint.Their presence, we cannot help thinking, recalls workbetter done, and more within the limitations of thepoet’s genius, than this drama of “QueenMary.” As a dramatic representation thedrama had the advantage of being produced at the LyceumTheatre, London, with all the historic art and sumptuousstage-setting with which Sir Henry Irving could wellgive it,—Irving himself personating Philip,while Miss Bateman took the part of Queen Mary.“Becket,” we should here add, was alsogiven on the stage, and with much dramatic effectiveness,by Irving,—over fifty performances of itbeing called for. None of the dramas, however,as we have said, was a success, though each has itsmerit, while all are distinguished by many passagesof noble and strenuous thought.
Other dramatic compositions the poet attempted, thoughof minor importance to the trilogy just spoken of.These were “The Falcon,” the groundworkof which is to be found in “The Decameron;”“The Cup,” a tragedy, rich in action,with an incisive dialogue, borrowed from Plutarch.The former was staged by Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, and hada run of sixty-seven nights; the latter also was stagedwith liberal magnificence, by Irving, and met withconsiderable success. “The Promise of May”is another play which was staged, in 1882, by Mrs.Bernard Beere, but met with failure by the critics,owing, in some degree, to its supposed caricatureof modern agnostics, and to the repellent portrayalof one of the characters in the piece, the sensualist,Philip Edgar. Later, in (1892) appeared “TheForesters,” a pretty pastoral play, on the themeof Robin Hood and Maid Marian, which was produced onthe boards in New York by Mr. Daly and his company,with a charming woodland setting. The later publicationsof the Laureate, in his own distinctive field of verse,embrace “The Lover’s Tale” (1879),“Ballads and other Poems” (1880), “Tiresiasand Other Poems” (1885), “Locksley HallSixty Years After” (1886), “Demeter andOther Poems” (1889), and “The Death ofOenone, Akbar’s Dream, and Other Poems,”in the year of the Poet’s death (1892).In these various volumes there is much admirable workand many tuneful lyrics in the old charming, liltingstrain, with not a few serious, thoughtful, statelypieces of verse, “the after-glow,” asStedman phrases it, “of a still radiant genius....His after-song,” continues this fine critic,“does not wreak itself upon the master passionsof love and ambition, and hence fastens less stronglyon the thoughts of the young; nor does it come withthe unused rhythm, the fresh and novel cadence, thatstamped the now hackneyed measure with a lyric’sname. Yet, as to its art and imagery, the sameeffects are there, differing only in a more vigorousmethod, an intentional roughness, from the individualearly verse. The new burthen is termed pessimistic,but for all its impatient summary of ills, it endswith a cry of faith.”
We must now hasten to a close, delightful as it wouldbe to linger over so attractive a theme, and to dwellupon the personality of one who so uniquely representsthe mind, as he has so remarkably influenced the thought,of his age. But considering the length of thepresent paper, this cannot be. Happily, however,the fruitage is ever with us of the poet’s fullfourscore years of splendid achievement with the hallowingmemory of a forceful, opulent, and blameless life.To few men of the past century can the reflectingmind of a coming time more interestingly or more instructivelyturn than to this profound thinker and mighty musicalsinger, steeped as he was in the varied culture ofthe ages, endowed with great prophetic powers, withphenomenal gifts of poetic expression, and with asoul so attuned to the harmonies of heaven as to makehim at once the counsellor and the inspiring teacherof his time. Who, in comparison with him, hasso felt the subtle charm, or so interpreted to usthe infinite beauty, of the world in which we live,or more impressively deepened in the mind and conscienceof the age belief in the verities of religion, whilequelling its doubts and quickening its highest hopesand faith? “Tennyson was a passionate believerin the immortal life; this was so real to him thathe had no patience with scepticism on the subject.To question it in his presence was to bring upon one’shead a torrent of denunciation and wrath. Hisgreat soul was intuitively conscious of spiritualrealities, and he could not understand how littlesoulless microbes of men and women were destituteof his deep perception. Prayer was to him a livingfact and power, and some of his words about it areamong the noblest ever written. When some oneasked him about Christ, he pointed to a flower andsaid, ’What the sun is to that flower, Christis to my soul.’”
Apart as he stood from the tumult and the frivolitiesof his age, he was yet of it, and sensibly and beneficentlyinfluenced it for its higher and nobler weal.In politics, as we know, he was a liberal conservative,—aconserver of what was best in the present and the past,and an advancer of all that tended to true and harmoniousprogress. His knowledge of men and things waswide and deep; in the philosophic thought and evenin the science of his time he was deeply read; whilehe was lovingly interested in all nature, and especiallyin the common people, whom he often wrote of and touchinglydepicted in their humble ways of toil as well as ofjoy and sorrow. Above all, he was a man of highand real faith, who believed that “good”was “the final goal of ill;” and in “thedumb hour clothed in black” that at last cameto him, as it comes to all, he confidingly put histrust in Loving Omnipotence and reverently and beautifullyexpressed the hope of seeing the guiding Pilot ofhis life when, with the outflow of its river-currentinto the ocean of the Divine Unseen, he crossed thebar. For humanity’s sake and the weal ofthe world in a coming time this was his joyous cry:—
“Ring inthe nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners,purer laws.
* * * * *
“Ring in the loveof truth and right,
Ring in the common loveof good.
* * * * *
“Ring in the valiantman and free,
The larger heart, thekindlier hand;
Ring out the darknessof the land,
Ring in the Christ thatis to be!”
What our formative, high-wrought English literaturehas suffered in Tennyson’s passing from theage on which he has shed so much glory those can bestsay who are of his era, and have been intimate, aseach appeared, with every successive issue of hisworks. To the latter, as to all thoughtful studentsof his writings, his has been the supreme interpretingvoice of the past century, while his influence on theliterary thought of his time has been of the highestand most potent kind. Especially influentialhas Tennyson been in carrying forward, with new impulsesand inspiration, the poetic traditions of that grandold motherland of English song to which our own poetsin the New World, as well as the younger bards ofthe British Isles, owe so much. If we exceptthe Laureate, there have been few who have worn thesinging robe of the poet who, in these later yearsat least, have spoken so impressively to culturedminds on either side of the ocean, or have more effectivelyexpressed to his age the high and hallowing spiritof modern poetry. It is this that has given theLaureate his exalted place among the great literaryinfluences of the century, and made him the one indubitablerepresentative of English song, with all its tunefulmusic and rare and delicate art. To a few ofthe great choir of singers of the past Tennyson admittedlyowed something, both in tradition and in art,—foreach new impulse has caught and embodied not a littleof the spirit and temper, as well as the culture andinspiration, of the old,—but his it wasto impart new and fresher thought and a wider rangeof harmony and emotion than had been reached by almostany of his predecessors, and to speak to the mindand soul of his time as none other has spoken or couldwell speak. From the era of Shakespeare and Miltonand their chief successors, it is to Tennyson’shonor and fame that he has given continuity as wellas high perfection to the great coursing stream ofnoble British verse.
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