A CRITIC IN PALL MALL

 BEING EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS AND MISCELLANIES

 BY OSCAR WILDE

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 METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W. C. LONDON

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 _First Published in 1919_

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 _This selection has been made by Mr. _ E. V. LUCAS

CONTENTS

 PAGE

THE TOMB OF KEATS 1KEATS’S SONNET ON BLUE 4DINNERS AND DISHES 8SHAKESPEARE ON SCENERY 10‘HENRY THE FOURTH’ AT OXFORD 15A HANDBOOK TO MARRIAGE 18TO READ OR NOT TO READ 21THE LETTERS OF A GREAT WOMAN 22BÉRANGER IN ENGLAND 27THE POETRY OF THE PEOPLE 29‘THE CENCI’ 32BALZAC IN ENGLISH 34BEN JONSON 37MR. SYMONDS’ HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE 39MR. MORRIS’S ‘ODYSSEY’ 44RUSSIAN NOVELISTS 48MR. PATER’S ‘IMAGINARY PORTRAITS’ 51A GERMAN PRINCESS 55‘A VILLAGE TRAGEDY’ 63MR. MORRIS’S COMPLETION OF THE ‘ODYSSEY’ 65MRS. SOMERVILLE 70ARISTOTLE AT AFTERNOON TEA 76EARLY CHRISTIAN ART IN IRELAND 81MADAME RISTORI 85ENGLISH POETESSES 91VENUS OR VICTORY 101M. CARO ON GEORGE SAND 105A FASCINATING BOOK 108HENLEY’S POEMS 123SOME LITERARY LADIES 129POETRY AND PRISON 143THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WALT WHITMAN 146IRISH FAIRY TALES 152MR. W. B. YEATS 158MR. YEATS’S ‘WANDERINGS OF OISIN’ 160MR. WILLIAM MORRIS’S LAST BOOK 162SOME LITERARY NOTES 167MR. SWINBURNE’S ‘POEMS AND BALLADS’ (Third Series) 173A CHINESE SAGE 177MR. PATER’S ‘APPRECIATIONS’ 187SENTENTIAE 194

THE TOMB OF KEATS(_Irish Monthly_, July 1877. )

As one enters Rome from the Via Ostiensis by the Porta San Paolo, thefirst object that meets the eye is a marble pyramid which stands close athand on the left. 

There are many Egyptian obelisks in Rome—tall, snakelike spires of redsandstone, mottled with strange writings, which remind us of the pillarsof flame which led the children of Israel through the desert away fromthe land of the Pharaohs; but more wonderful than these to look upon isthis gaunt, wedge-shaped pyramid standing here in this Italian city, unshattered amid the ruins and wrecks of time, looking older than theEternal City itself, like terrible impassiveness turned to stone. And soin the Middle Ages men supposed this to be the sepulchre of Remus, whowas slain by his own brother at the founding of the city, so ancient andmysterious it appears; but we have now, perhaps unfortunately, moreaccurate information about it, and know that it is the tomb of one CaiusCestius, a Roman gentleman of small note, who died about 30 B. C. 

Yet though we cannot care much for the dead man who lies in lonely statebeneath it, and who is only known to the world through his sepulchre, still this pyramid will be ever dear to the eyes of all English-speakingpeople, because at evening its shadows fall on the tomb of one who walkswith Spenser, and Shakespeare, and Byron, and Shelley, and ElizabethBarrett Browning in the great procession of the sweet singers of England. 

For at its foot there is a green sunny slope, known as the Old ProtestantCemetery, and on this a common-looking grave, which bears the followinginscription:

 This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet, who on his deathbed, in the bitterness of his heart, desired these words to be engraven on his tombstone: HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN WATER. February 24, 1821. 

And the name of the young English poet is John Keats. 

Lord Houghton calls this cemetery ‘one of the most beautiful spots onwhich the eye and heart of man can rest, ’ and Shelley speaks of it asmaking one ‘in love with death, to think that one should be buried in sosweet a place’; and indeed when I saw the violets and the daisies and thepoppies that overgrow the tomb, I remembered how the dead poet had oncetold his friend that he thought the ‘intensest pleasure he had receivedin life was in watching the growth of flowers, ’ and how another time, after lying a while quite still, he murmured in some strange prescienceof early death, ‘I feel the flowers growing over me. ’

But this time-worn stone and these wildflowers are but poor memorials {2}of one so great as Keats; most of all, too, in this city of Rome, whichpays such honour to her dead; where popes, and emperors, and saints, andcardinals lie hidden in ‘porphyry wombs, ’ or couched in baths of jasperand chalcedony and malachite, ablaze with precious stones and metals, andtended with continual service. For very noble is the site, and worthy ofa noble monument; behind looms the grey pyramid, symbol of the world’sage, and filled with memories of the sphinx, and the lotus leaf, and theglories of old Nile; in front is the Monte Testaccio, built, it is said, with the broken fragments of the vessels in which all the nations of theEast and the West brought their tribute to Rome; and a little distanceoff, along the slope of the hill under the Aurelian wall, some tall gauntcypresses rise, like burnt-out funeral torches, to mark the spot whereShelley’s heart (that ‘heart of hearts’!) lies in the earth; and, aboveall, the soil on which we tread is very Rome!

As I stood beside the mean grave of this divine boy, I thought of him asof a Priest of Beauty slain before his time; and the vision of Guido’sSt. Sebastian came before my eyes as I saw him at Genoa, a lovely brownboy, with crisp, clustering hair and red lips, bound by his evil enemiesto a tree, and though pierced by arrows, raising his eyes with divine, impassioned gaze towards the Eternal Beauty of the opening heavens. Andthus my thoughts shaped themselves to rhyme:

 HEU MISERANDE PUER

 Rid of the world’s injustice and its pain, He rests at last beneath God’s veil of blue; Taken from life while life and love were new The youngest of the martyrs here is lain, Fair as Sebastian and as foully slain. No cypress shades his grave, nor funeral yew, But red-lipped daisies, violets drenched with dew, And sleepy poppies, catch the evening rain. 

 O proudest heart that broke for misery! O saddest poet that the world hath seen! O sweetest singer of the English land! Thy name was writ in water on the sand, But our tears shall keep thy memory green, And make it flourish like a Basil-tree. 

 _Rome_, 1877. 

_Note_. —A later version of this sonnet, under the title of ‘The Grave ofKeats, ’ is given in the _Poems_, page 157. 

KEATS’S SONNET ON BLUE(_Century Guild Hobby Horse_, July 1886. )

During my tour in America I happened one evening to find myself inLouisville, Kentucky. The subject I had selected to speak on was theMission of Art in the Nineteenth Century, and in the course of my lectureI had occasion to quote Keats’s Sonnet on Blue as an example of thepoet’s delicate sense of colour-harmonies. When my lecture was concludedthere came round to see me a lady of middle age, with a sweet gentlemanner and a most musical voice. She introduced herself to me as Mrs. Speed, the daughter of George Keats, and invited me to come and examinethe Keats manuscripts in her possession. I spent most of the next daywith her, reading the letters of Keats to her father, some of which wereat that time unpublished, poring over torn yellow leaves and faded scrapsof paper, and wondering at the little Dante in which Keats had writtenthose marvellous notes on Milton. Some months afterwards, when I was inCalifornia, I received a letter from Mrs. Speed asking my acceptance ofthe original manuscript of the sonnet which I had quoted in my lecture. This manuscript I have had reproduced here, as it seems to me to possessmuch psychological interest. It shows us the conditions that precededthe perfected form, the gradual growth, not of the conception but of theexpression, and the workings of that spirit of selection which is thesecret of style. In the case of poetry, as in the case of the otherarts, what may appear to be simply technicalities of method are in theiressence spiritual not mechanical, and although, in all lovely work, whatconcerns us is the ultimate form, not the conditions that necessitatethat form, yet the preference that precedes perfection, the evolution ofthe beauty, and the mere making of the music, have, if not their artisticvalue, at least their value to the artist. 

It will be remembered that this sonnet was first published in 1848 byLord Houghton in his _Life_, _Letters_, _and Literary Remains of JohnKeats_. Lord Houghton does not definitely state where he found it, butit was probably among the Keats manuscripts belonging to Mr. CharlesBrown. It is evidently taken from a version later than that in mypossession, as it accepts all the corrections, and makes threevariations. As in my manuscript the first line is torn away, I give thesonnet here as it appears in Lord Houghton’s edition. 

 ANSWER TO A SONNET ENDING THUS:

 Dark eyes are dearer far Than those that make the hyacinthine bell. {5}

 By J. H. REYNOLDS. 

 Blue! ’Tis the life of heaven, —the domain Of Cynthia, —the wide palace of the sun, — The tent of Hesperus and all his train, — The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun. Blue! ’Tis the life of waters—ocean And all its vassal streams: pools numberless May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can Subside if not to dark-blue nativeness. Blue! gentle cousin of the forest green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers, Forget-me-not, —the blue-bell, —and, that queen Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!

 _Feb. _ 1818. 

In the _Athenæum_ of the 3rd of June 1876 appeared a letter from Mr. A. J. Horwood, stating that he had in his possession a copy of _The Gardenof Florence_ in which this sonnet was transcribed. Mr. Horwood, who wasunaware that the sonnet had been already published by Lord Houghton, gives the transcript at length. His version reads _hue_ for _life_ inthe first line, and _bright_ for _wide_ in the second, and gives thesixth line thus:

 With all his tributary streams, pools numberless, a foot too long: it also reads _to_ for _of_ in the ninth line. Mr. Buxton Forman is of opinion that these variations are decidedly genuine, but indicative of an earlier state of the poem than that adopted in LordHoughton’s edition. However, now that we have before us Keats’s firstdraft of his sonnet, it is difficult to believe that the sixth line inMr. Horwood’s version is really a genuine variation. Keats may havewritten, Ocean His tributary streams, pools numberless, and the transcript may have been carelessly made, but having got his lineright in his first draft, Keats probably did not spoil it in his second. The _Athenæum_ version inserts a comma after _art_ in the last line, which seems to me a decided improvement, and eminently characteristic ofKeats’s method. I am glad to see that Mr. Buxton Forman has adopted it. 

As for the corrections that Lord Houghton’s version shows Keats to havemade in the eighth and ninth lines of this sonnet, it is evident thatthey sprang from Keats’s reluctance to repeat the same word inconsecutive lines, except in cases where a word’s music or meaning was tobe emphasized. The substitution of ‘its’ for ‘his’ in the sixth line ismore difficult of explanation. It was due probably to a desire onKeats’s part not to mar by any echo the fine personification of Hesperus. 

It may be noticed that Keats’s own eyes were brown, and not blue, asstated by Mrs. Proctor to Lord Houghton. Mrs. Speed showed me a note tothat effect written by Mrs. George Keats on the margin of the page inLord Houghton’s _Life_ (p. 100, vol. I. ), where Mrs. Proctor’sdescription is given. Cowden Clarke made a similar correction in his_Recollections_, and in some of the later editions of Lord Houghton’sbook the word ‘blue’ is struck out. In Severn’s portraits of Keats alsothe eyes are given as brown. 

The exquisite sense of colour expressed in the ninth and tenth lines maybe paralleled by

 The Ocean with its vastness, its blue green, of the sonnet to George Keats. 

DINNERS AND DISHES(_Pall Mall Gazette_, March 7, 1885. )

A man can live for three days without bread, but no man can live for oneday without poetry, was an aphorism of Baudelaire. You can live withoutpictures and music but you cannot live without eating, says the author of_Dinners and Dishes_; and this latter view is, no doubt, the morepopular. Who, indeed, in these degenerate days would hesitate between anode and an omelette, a sonnet and a salmis? Yet the position is notentirely Philistine; cookery is an art; are not its principles thesubject of South Kensington lectures, and does not the Royal Academy givea banquet once a year? Besides, as the coming democracy will, no doubt, insist on feeding us all on penny dinners, it is well that the laws ofcookery should be explained: for were the national meal burned, or badlyseasoned, or served up with the wrong sauce a dreadful revolution mightfollow. 

Under these circumstances we strongly recommend _Dinners and Dishes_ toevery one: it is brief and concise and makes no attempt at eloquence, which is extremely fortunate. For even on ortolans who could endureoratory? It also has the advantage of not being illustrated. Thesubject of a work of art has, of course, nothing to do with its beauty, but still there is always something depressing about the colouredlithograph of a leg of mutton. 

As regards the author’s particular views, we entirely agree with him onthe important question of macaroni. ‘Never, ’ he says, ‘ask me to back abill for a man who has given me a macaroni pudding. ’ Macaroni isessentially a savoury dish and may be served with cheese or tomatoes butnever with sugar and milk. There is also a useful description of how tocook risotto—a delightful dish too rarely seen in England; an excellentchapter on the different kinds of salads, which should be carefullystudied by those many hostesses whose imaginations never pass beyondlettuce and beetroot; and actually a recipe for making Brussels sproutseatable. The last is, of course, a masterpiece. 

The real difficulty that we all have to face in life is not so much thescience of cookery as the stupidity of cooks. And in this littlehandbook to practical Epicureanism the tyrant of the English kitchen isshown in her proper light. Her entire ignorance of herbs, her passionfor extracts and essences, her total inability to make a soup which isanything more than a combination of pepper and gravy, her inveteratehabit of sending up bread poultices with pheasants, —all these sins andmany others are ruthlessly unmasked by the author. Ruthlessly andrightly. For the British cook is a foolish woman who should be turnedfor her iniquities into a pillar of salt which she never knows how touse. 

But our author is not local merely. He has been in many lands; he haseaten back-hendl at Vienna and kulibatsch at St. Petersburg; he has hadthe courage to face the buffalo veal of Roumania and to dine with aGerman family at one o’clock; he has serious views on the right method ofcooking those famous white truffles of Turin of which Alexandre Dumas wasso fond; and, in the face of the Oriental Club, declares that Bombaycurry is better than the curry of Bengal. In fact he seems to have hadexperience of almost every kind of meal except the ‘square meal’ of theAmericans. This he should study at once; there is a great field for thephilosophic epicure in the United States. Boston beans may be dismissedat once as delusions, but soft-shell crabs, terrapin, canvas-back ducks, blue fish and the pompono of New Orleans are all wonderful delicacies, particularly when one gets them at Delmonico’s. Indeed, the two mostremarkable bits of scenery in the States are undoubtedly Delmonico’s andthe Yosemité Valley; and the former place has done more to promote a goodfeeling between England and America than anything else has in thiscentury. 

We hope the ‘Wanderer’ will go there soon and add a chapter to _Dinnersand Dishes_, and that his book will have in England the influence itdeserves. There are twenty ways of cooking a potato and three hundredand sixty-five ways of cooking an egg, yet the British cook, up to thepresent moment, knows only three methods of sending up either one or theother. 

_Dinners and Dishes_. By ‘Wanderer. ’ (Simpkin and Marshall. )

SHAKESPEARE ON SCENERY(_Dramatic Review_, March 14, 1885. )

I have often heard people wonder what Shakespeare would say, could he seeMr. Irving’s production of his _Much Ado About Nothing_, or Mr. WilsonBarrett’s setting of his _Hamlet_. Would he take pleasure in the gloryof the scenery and the marvel of the colour? Would he be interested inthe Cathedral of Messina, and the battlements of Elsinore? Or would hebe indifferent, and say the play, and the play only, is the thing?

Speculations like these are always pleasurable, and in the present casehappen to be profitable also. For it is not difficult to see whatShakespeare’s attitude would be; not difficult, that is to say, if onereads Shakespeare himself, instead of reading merely what is writtenabout him. 

Speaking, for instance, directly, as the manager of a London theatre, through the lips of the chorus in _Henry V. _, he complains of thesmallness of the stage on which he has to produce the pageant of a bighistorical play, and of the want of scenery which obliges him to cut outmany of its most picturesque incidents, apologises for the scanty numberof supers who had to play the soldiers, and for the shabbiness of theproperties, and, finally, expresses his regret at being unable to bringon real horses. 

In the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, again, he gives us a most amusingpicture of the straits to which theatrical managers of his day werereduced by the want of proper scenery. In fact, it is impossible to readhim without seeing that he is constantly protesting against the twospecial limitations of the Elizabethan stage—the lack of suitablescenery, and the fashion of men playing women’s parts, just as heprotests against other difficulties with which managers of theatres havestill to contend, such as actors who do not understand their words;actors who miss their cues; actors who overact their parts; actors whomouth; actors who gag; actors who play to the gallery, and amateuractors. 

And, indeed, a great dramatist, as he was, could not but have felt verymuch hampered at being obliged continually to interrupt the progress of aplay in order to send on some one to explain to the audience that thescene was to be changed to a particular place on the entrance of aparticular character, and after his exit to somewhere else; that thestage was to represent the deck of a ship in a storm, or the interior ofa Greek temple, or the streets of a certain town, to all of whichinartistic devices Shakespeare is reduced, and for which he always amplyapologizes. Besides this clumsy method, Shakespeare had two othersubstitutes for scenery—the hanging out of a placard, and hisdescriptions. The first of these could hardly have satisfied his passionfor picturesqueness and his feeling for beauty, and certainly did notsatisfy the dramatic critic of his day. But as regards the description, to those of us who look on Shakespeare not merely as a playwright but asa poet, and who enjoy reading him at home just as much as we enjoy seeinghim acted, it may be a matter of congratulation that he had not at hiscommand such skilled machinists as are in use now at the Princess’s andat the Lyceum. For had Cleopatra’s barge, for instance, been a structureof canvas and Dutch metal, it would probably have been painted over orbroken up after the withdrawal of the piece, and, even had it survived toour own day, would, I am afraid, have become extremely shabby by thistime. Whereas now the beaten gold of its poop is still bright, and thepurple of its sails still beautiful; its silver oars are not tired ofkeeping time to the music of the flutes they follow, nor the Nereid’sflower-soft hands of touching its silken tackle; the mermaid still liesat its helm, and still on its deck stand the boys with their colouredfans. Yet lovely as all Shakespeare’s descriptive passages are, adescription is in its essence undramatic. Theatrical audiences are farmore impressed by what they look at than by what they listen to; and themodern dramatist, in having the surroundings of his play visiblypresented to the audience when the curtain rises, enjoys an advantage forwhich Shakespeare often expresses his desire. It is true thatShakespeare’s descriptions are not what descriptions are in modernplays—accounts of what the audience can observe for themselves; they arethe imaginative method by which he creates in the mind of the spectatorsthe image of that which he desires them to see. Still, the quality ofthe drama is action. It is always dangerous to pause forpicturesqueness. And the introduction of self-explanatory sceneryenables the modern method to be far more direct, while the loveliness ofform and colour which it gives us, seems to me often to create anartistic temperament in the audience, and to produce that joy in beautyfor beauty’s sake, without which the great masterpieces of art can neverbe understood, to which, and to which only, are they ever revealed. 

To talk of the passion of a play being hidden by the paint, and ofsentiment being killed by scenery, is mere emptiness and folly of words. A noble play, nobly mounted, gives us double artistic pleasure. The eyeas well as the ear is gratified, and the whole nature is made exquisitelyreceptive of the influence of imaginative work. And as regards a badplay, have we not all seen large audiences lured by the loveliness ofscenic effect into listening to rhetoric posing as poetry, and tovulgarity doing duty for realism? Whether this be good or evil for thepublic I will not here discuss, but it is evident that the playwright, atany rate, never suffers. 

Indeed, the artist who really has suffered through the modern mounting ofplays is not the dramatist at all, but the scene-painter proper. He israpidly being displaced by the stage-carpenter. Now and then, at DruryLane, I have seen beautiful old front cloths let down, as perfect aspictures some of them, and pure painter’s work, and there are many whichwe all remember at other theatres, in front of which some dialogue wasreduced to graceful dumb-show through the hammer and tin-tacks behind. But as a rule the stage is overcrowded with enormous properties, whichare not merely far more expensive and cumbersome than scene-paintings, but far less beautiful, and far less true. Properties kill perspective. A painted door is more like a real door than a real door is itself, forthe proper conditions of light and shade can be given to it; and theexcessive use of built-up structures always makes the stage too glaring, for as they have to be lit from behind, as well as from the front, thegas-jets become the absolute light of the scene instead of the meansmerely by which we perceive the conditions of light and shadow which thepainter has desired to show us. 

So, instead of bemoaning the position of the playwright, it were betterfor the critics to exert whatever influence they may possess towardsrestoring the scene-painter to his proper position as an artist, and notallowing him to be built over by the property man, or hammered to deathby the carpenter. I have never seen any reason myself why such artistsas Mr. Beverley, Mr. Walter Hann, and Mr. Telbin should not be entitledto become Academicians. They have certainly as good a claim as have manyof those R. A. ’s whose total inability to paint we can see every May for ashilling. 

And lastly, let those critics who hold up for our admiration thesimplicity of the Elizabethan stage remember that they are lauding acondition of things against which Shakespeare himself, in the spirit of atrue artist, always strongly protested. 

_HENRY THE FOURTH_ AT OXFORD(_Dramatic Review_, May 23, 1885. )

I have been told that the ambition of every Dramatic Club is to act_Henry IV_. I am not surprised. The spirit of comedy is as fervent inthis play as is the spirit of chivalry; it is an heroic pageant as wellas an heroic poem, and like most of Shakespeare’s historical dramas itcontains an extraordinary number of thoroughly good acting parts, each ofwhich is absolutely individual in character, and each of whichcontributes to the evolution of the plot. 

To Oxford belongs the honour of having been the first to present on thestage this noble play, and the production which I saw last week was inevery way worthy of that lovely town, that mother of sweetness and oflight. For, in spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, andthe screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisector, in spite ofKeble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford stillremains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are lifeand art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one. Indeed, in mostother towns art has often to present herself in the form of a reactionagainst the sordid ugliness of ignoble lives, but at Oxford she comes tous as an exquisite flower born of the beauty of life and expressive oflife’s joy. She finds her home by the Isis as once she did by theIlissus; the Magdalen walks and the Magdalen cloisters are as dear to heras were ever the silver olives of Colonus and the golden gateway of thehouse of Pallas: she covers with fanlike tracery the vaulted entrance toChrist Church Hall, and looks out from the windows of Merton; her feethave stirred the Cumnor cowslips, and she gathers fritillaries in theriver-fields. To her the clamour of the schools and the dullness of thelecture-room are a weariness and a vexation of spirit; she seeks not todefine virtue, and cares little for the categories; she smiles on theswift athlete whose plastic grace has pleased her, and rejoices in theyoung Barbarians at their games; she watches the rowers from the reedybank and gives myrtle to her lovers, and laurels to her poets, and rue tothose who talk wisely in the street; she makes the earth lovely to allwho dream with Keats; she opens high heaven to all who soar with Shelley;and turning away her head from pedant, proctor and Philistine, she haswelcomed to her shrine a band of youthful actors, knowing that they havesought with much ardour for the stern secret of Melpomene, and caughtwith much gladness the sweet laughter of Thalia. And to me this ardourand this gladness were the two most fascinating qualities of the Oxfordperformance, as indeed they are qualities which are necessary to any finedramatic production. For without quick and imaginative observation oflife the most beautiful play becomes dull in presentation, and what isnot conceived in delight by the actor can give no delight at all toothers. 

I know that there are many who consider that Shakespeare is more for thestudy than for the stage. With this view I do not for a moment agree. Shakespeare wrote the plays to be acted, and we have no right to alterthe form which he himself selected for the full expression of his work. Indeed, many of the beauties of that work can be adequately conveyed tous only through the actor’s art. As I sat in the Town Hall of Oxford theother night, the majesty of the mighty lines of the play seemed to me togain new music from the clear young voices that uttered them, and theideal grandeur of the heroism to be made more real to the spectators bythe chivalrous bearing, the noble gesture and the fine passion of itsexponents. Even the dresses had their dramatic value. Theirarchæological accuracy gave us, immediately on the rise of the curtain, aperfect picture of the time. As the knights and nobles moved across thestage in the flowing robes of peace and in the burnished steel of battle, we needed no dreary chorus to tell us in what age or land the play’saction was passing, for the fifteenth century in all the dignity andgrace of its apparel was living actually before us, and the delicateharmonies of colour struck from the first a dominant note of beauty whichadded to the intellectual realism of archæology the sensuous charm ofart. 

I have rarely seen a production better stage-managed. Indeed, I hopethat the University will take some official notice of this delightfulwork of art. Why should not degrees be granted for good acting? Arethey not given to those who misunderstand Plato and who mistranslateAristotle? And should the artist be passed over? No. To Prince Hal, Hotspur and Falstaff, D. C. L. ’s should be gracefully offered. I feel surethey would be gracefully accepted. To the rest of the company thecrimson or the sheepskin hood might be assigned _honoris causâ_ to theeternal confusion of the Philistine, and the rage of the industrious andthe dull. Thus would Oxford confer honour on herself, and the artist beplaced in his proper position. However, whether or not Convocationrecognizes the claims of culture, I hope that the Oxford Dramatic Societywill produce every summer for us some noble play like _Henry IV_. For, in plays of this kind, plays which deal with bygone times, there isalways this peculiar charm, that they combine in one exquisitepresentation the passions that are living with the picturesqueness thatis dead. And when we have the modern spirit given to us in an antiqueform, the very remoteness of that form can be made a method of increasedrealism. This was Shakespeare’s own attitude towards the ancient world, this is the attitude we in this century should adopt towards his plays, and with a feeling akin to this it seemed to me that these brilliantyoung Oxonians were working. If it was so, their aim is the right one. For while we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask ofthe actor to give realism to romance. 

A HANDBOOK TO MARRIAGE(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 18, 1885. )

In spite of its somewhat alarming title this book may be highlyrecommended to every one. As for the authorities the author quotes, theyare almost numberless, and range from Socrates down to Artemus Ward. Hetells us of the wicked bachelor who spoke of marriage as ‘a very harmlessamusement’ and advised a young friend of his to ‘marry early and marryoften’; of Dr. Johnson who proposed that marriage should be arranged bythe Lord Chancellor, without the parties concerned having any choice inthe matter; of the Sussex labourer who asked, ‘Why should I give a womanhalf my victuals for cooking the other half?’ and of Lord Verulam whothought that unmarried men did the best public work. And, indeed, marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all mendisagree. Our author, however, is clearly of the same opinion as theScotch lassie who, on her father warning her what a solemn thing it wasto get married, answered, ‘I ken that, father, but it’s a great dealsolemner to be single. ’ He may be regarded as the champion of themarried life. Indeed, he has a most interesting chapter on marriage-mademen, and though he dissents, and we think rightly, from the view recentlyput forward by a lady or two on the Women’s Rights platform that Solomonowed all his wisdom to the number of his wives, still he appeals toBismarck, John Stuart Mill, Mahommed, and Lord Beaconsfield, as instancesof men whose success can be traced to the influence of the women theymarried. Archbishop Whately once defined woman as ‘a creature that doesnot reason and pokes the fire from the top, ’ but since his day the highereducation of women has considerably altered their position. Women havealways had an emotional sympathy with those they love; Girton and Newnhamhave rendered intellectual sympathy also possible. In our day it is bestfor a man to be married, and men must give up the tyranny in married lifewhich was once so dear to them, and which, we are afraid, lingers still, here and there. 

‘Do you wish to be my wife, Mabel?’ said a little boy. ‘Yes, ’incautiously answered Mabel. ‘Then pull off my boots. ’

On marriage vows our author has, too, very sensible views and veryamusing stories. He tells of a nervous bridegroom who, confusing thebaptismal and marriage ceremonies, replied when asked if he consented totake the bride for his wife: ‘I renounce them all’; of a Hampshire rusticwho, when giving the ring, said solemnly to the bride: ‘With my body Ithee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou’; of anotherwho when asked whether he would take his partner to be his wedded wife, replied with shameful indecision: ‘Yes, I’m willin’; but I’d a sightrather have her sister’; and of a Scotch lady who, on the occasion of herdaughter’s wedding, was asked by an old friend whether she mightcongratulate her on the event, and answered: ‘Yes, yes, upon the whole itis very satisfactory; it is true Jeannie hates her gudeman, but thenthere’s always a something!’ Indeed, the good stories contained in thisbook are quite endless and make it very pleasant reading, while the goodadvice is on all points admirable. 

Most young married people nowadays start in life with a dreadfulcollection of ormolu inkstands covered with sham onyxes, or with aperfect museum of salt-cellars. We strongly recommend this book as oneof the best of wedding presents. It is a complete handbook to an earthlyParadise, and its author may be regarded as the Murray of matrimony andthe Baedeker of bliss. 

_How to be Happy though Married_: _Being a Handbook to Marriage_. By aGraduate in the University of Matrimony. (T. Fisher Unwin. )

TO READ OR NOT TO READ(_Pall Mall Gazette_, February 8, 1886. )

Books, I fancy, may be conveniently divided into three classes:

1. Books to read, such as Cicero’s _Letters_, Suetonius, Vasari’s _Livesof the Painters_, the _Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini_, Sir JohnMandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon’s _Memoirs_, Mommsen, and (till we geta better one) Grote’s _History of Greece_. 

2. Books to re-read, such as Plato and Keats: in the sphere of poetry, the masters not the minstrels; in the sphere of philosophy, the seers notthe _savants_. 

3. Books not to read at all, such as Thomson’s _Seasons_, Rogers’s_Italy_, Paley’s _Evidences_, all the Fathers except St. Augustine, allJohn Stuart Mill except the essay on _Liberty_, all Voltaire’s playswithout any exception, Butler’s _Analogy_, Grant’s _Aristotle_, Hume’s_England_, Lewes’s _History of Philosophy_, all argumentative books andall books that try to prove anything. 

The third class is by far the most important. To tell people what toread is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for, the appreciation ofliterature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassusthere is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning. But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and Iventure to recommend it as a mission to the University Extension Scheme. 

Indeed, it is one that is eminently needed in this age of ours, an agethat reads so much, that it has no time to admire, and writes so much, that it has no time to think. Whoever will select out of the chaos ofour modern curricula ‘The Worst Hundred Books, ’ and publish a list ofthem, will confer on the rising generation a real and lasting benefit. 

After expressing these views I suppose I should not offer any suggestionsat all with regard to ‘The Best Hundred Books, ’ but I hope you will allowme the pleasure of being inconsistent, as I am anxious to put in a claimfor a book that has been strangely omitted by most of the excellentjudges who have contributed to your columns. I mean the _GreekAnthology_. The beautiful poems contained in this collection seem to meto hold the same position with regard to Greek dramatic literature as dothe delicate little figurines of Tanagra to the Phidian marbles, and tobe quite as necessary for the complete understanding of the Greek spirit. 

I am also amazed to find that Edgar Allan Poe has been passed over. Surely this marvellous lord of rhythmic expression deserves a place? If, in order to make room for him, it be necessary to elbow out some oneelse, I should elbow out Southey, and I think that Baudelaire might bemost advantageously substituted for Keble. 

No doubt, both in the _Curse of Kehama_ and in the _Christian Year_ thereare poetic qualities of a certain kind, but absolute catholicity of tasteis not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admireall schools of art. 

THE LETTERS OF A GREAT WOMAN(_Pall Mall Gazette_, March 6, 1886. )

Of the many collections of letters that have appeared in this centuryfew, if any, can rival for fascination of style and variety of incidentthe letters of George Sand which have recently been translated intoEnglish by M. Ledos de Beaufort. They extend over a space of more thansixty years, from 1812 to 1876, in fact, and comprise the first lettersof Aurore Dupin, a child of eight years old, as well as the last lettersof George Sand, a woman of seventy-two. The very early letters, those ofthe child and of the young married woman, possess, of course, merely apsychological interest; but from 1831, the date of Madame Dudevant’sseparation from her husband and her first entry into Paris life, theinterest becomes universal, and the literary and political history ofFrance is mirrored in every page. 

For George Sand was an indefatigable correspondent; she longs in one ofher letters, it is true, for ‘a planet where reading and writing areabsolutely unknown, ’ but still she had a real pleasure in letter-writing. Her greatest delight was the communication of ideas, and she is always inthe heart of the battle. She discusses pauperism with Louis Napoleon inhis prison at Ham, and liberty with Armand Barbes in his dungeon atVincennes; she writes to Lamennais on philosophy, to Mazzini onsocialism, to Lamartine on democracy, and to Ledru-Rollin on justice. Her letters reveal to us not merely the life of a great novelist but thesoul of a great woman, of a woman who was one with all the noblestmovements of her day and whose sympathy with humanity was boundlessabsolutely. For the aristocracy of intellect she had always the deepestveneration, but the democracy of suffering touched her more. Shepreached the regeneration of mankind, not with the noisy ardour of thepaid advocate, but with the enthusiasm of the true evangelist. Of allthe artists of this century she was the most altruistic; she felt everyone’s misfortunes except her own. Her faith never left her; to the endof her life, as she tells us, she was able to believe without illusions. But the people disappointed her a little. She saw that they followedpersons not principles, and for ‘the great man theory’ George Sand had norespect. ‘Proper names are the enemies of principles’ is one of heraphorisms. 

So from 1850 her letters are more distinctly literary. She discussesmodern realism with Flaubert, and play-writing with Dumas _fils_; andprotests with passionate vehemence against the doctrine of _L’art pourl’art_. ‘Art for the sake of itself is an idle sentence, ’ she writes;‘art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good, that is the creed I seek. ’ And in a delightful letter to M. CharlesPoncy she repeats the same idea very charmingly. ‘People say that birdssing for the sake of singing, but I doubt it. They sing their loves andhappiness, and in that they are in keeping with nature. But man must dosomething more, and poets only sing in order to move people and to makethem think. ’ She wanted M. Poncy to be the poet of the people and, ifgood advice were all that had been needed, he would certainly have beenthe Burns of the workshop. She drew out a delightful scheme for a volumeto be called _Songs of all Trades_ and saw the possibilities of makinghandicrafts poetic. Perhaps she valued good intentions in art a littletoo much, and she hardly understood that art for art’s sake is not meantto express the final cause of art but is merely a formula of creation;but, as she herself had scaled Parnassus, we must not quarrel at herbringing Proletarianism with her. For George Sand must be ranked amongour poetic geniuses. She regarded the novel as still within the domainof poetry. Her heroes are not dead photographs; they are greatpossibilities. Modern novels are dissections; hers are dreams. ‘I makepopular types, ’ she writes, ‘such as I do no longer see, but such as theyshould and might be. ’ For realism, in M. Zola’s acceptation of the word, she had no admiration. Art to her was a mirror that transfigured truthsbut did not represent realities. Hence she could not understand artwithout personality. ‘I am aware, ’ she writes to Flaubert, ‘that you areopposed to the exposition of personal doctrine in literature. Are youright? Does not your opposition proceed rather from a want of convictionthan from a principle of æsthetics? If we have any philosophy in ourbrain it must needs break forth in our writings. But you, as soon as youhandle literature, you seem anxious, I know not why, to be another man, the one who must disappear, who annihilates himself and is no more. Whata singular mania! What a deficient taste! The worth of our productionsdepends entirely on our own. Besides, if we withhold our own opinionsrespecting the personages we create, we naturally leave the reader inuncertainty as to the opinion he should himself form of them. Thatamounts to wishing not to be understood, and the result of this is thatthe reader gets weary of us and leaves us. ’

She herself, however, may be said to have suffered from too dominant apersonality, and this was the reason of the failure of most of her plays. 

Of the drama in the sense of disinterested presentation she had no idea, and what is the strength and life-blood of her novels is the weakness ofher dramatic works. But in the main she was right. Art withoutpersonality is impossible. And yet the aim of art is not to revealpersonality, but to please. This she hardly recognized in her æsthetics, though she realized it in her work. On literary style she has someexcellent remarks. She dislikes the extravagances of the romantic schooland sees the beauty of simplicity. ‘Simplicity, ’ she writes, ‘is themost difficult thing to secure in this world: it is the last limit ofexperience and the last effort of genius. ’ She hated the slang and_argot_ of Paris life, and loved the words used by the peasants in theprovinces. ‘The provinces, ’ she remarks, ‘preserve the tradition of theoriginal tongue and create but few new words. I feel much respect forthe language of the peasantry; in my estimation it is the more correct. ’

She thought Flaubert too much preoccupied with the sense of form, andmakes these excellent observations to him—perhaps her best piece ofliterary criticism. ‘You consider the form as the aim, whereas it is butthe effect. Happy expressions are only the outcome of emotion andemotion itself proceeds from a conviction. We are only moved by thatwhich we ardently believe in. ’ Literary schools she distrusted. Individualism was to her the keystone of art as well as of life. ‘Do notbelong to any school: do not imitate any model, ’ is her advice. Yet shenever encouraged eccentricity. ‘Be correct, ’ she writes to EugènePelletan, ‘that is rarer than being eccentric, as the time goes. It ismuch more common to please by bad taste than to receive the cross ofhonour. ’

On the whole, her literary advice is sound and healthy. She nevershrieks and she never sneers. She is the incarnation of good sense. Andthe whole collection of her letters is a perfect treasure-house ofsuggestions both on art and on politics. 

_Letters of George Sand_. Translated and edited by Raphael Ledos deBeaufort. (Ward and Downey. )

BÉRANGER IN ENGLAND(_Pall Mall Gazette_, April 21, 1886. )

A philosophic politician once remarked that the best possible form ofgovernment is an absolute monarchy tempered by street ballads. 

Without at all agreeing with this aphorism we still cannot but regretthat the new democracy does not use poetry as a means for the expressionof political opinion. The Socialists, it is true, have been heardsinging the later poems of Mr. William Morris, but the street ballad isreally dead in England. The fact is that most modern poetry is soartificial in its form, so individual in its essence and so literary inits style, that the people as a body are little moved by it, and whenthey have grievances against the capitalist or the aristocrat they preferstrikes to sonnets and rioting to rondels. 

Possibly, Mr. William Toynbee’s pleasant little volume of translationsfrom Béranger may be the herald of a new school. Béranger had all thequalifications for a popular poet. He wrote to be sung more than to beread; he preferred the Pont Neuf to Parnassus; he was patriotic as wellas romantic, and humorous as well as humane. Translations of poetry as arule are merely misrepresentations, but the muse of Béranger is so simpleand naïve that she can wear our English dress with ease and grace, andMr. Toynbee has kept much of the mirth and music of the original. Hereand there, undoubtedly, the translation could be improved upon; ‘rapiers’for instance is an abominable rhyme to ‘forefathers’; ‘the hated arms ofAlbion’ in the same poem is a very feeble rendering of ‘le léopard del’Anglais, ’ and such a verse as

 ’Mid France’s miracles of art, Rare trophies won from art’s own land, I’ve lived to see with burning heart The fog-bred poor triumphant stand, reproduces very inadequately the charm of the original:

 Dans nos palais, où, près de la victoire, Brillaient les arts, doux fruits des beaux climats, J’ai vu du Nord les peuplades sans gloire, De leurs manteaux secouer les frimas. 

On the whole, however, Mr. Toynbee’s work is good; _Les Champs_, forexample, is very well translated, and so are the two delightful poems_Rosette_ and _Ma République_; and there is a good deal of spirit in _LeMarquis de Carabas_:

 Whom have we here in conqueror’s _rôle_? Our grand old marquis, bless his soul! Whose grand old charger (mark his bone!) Has borne him back to claim his own. Note, if you please, the grand old style In which he nears his grand old pile; With what an air of grand old state He waves that blade immaculate! Hats off, hats off, for my lord to pass, The grand old Marquis of Carabas!—

though ‘that blade immaculate’ has hardly got the sting of ‘un sabreinnocent’; and in the fourth verse of the same poem, ‘Marquise, you’llhave the bed-chamber’ does not very clearly convey the sense of the line‘La Marquise a le tabouret. ’ Béranger is not nearly well enough known inEngland, and though it is always better to read a poet in the original, still translations have their value as echoes have their music. 

_A Selection from the Songs of De Béranger in English Verse_. By WilliamToynbee. (Kegan Paul. )

THE POETRY OF THE PEOPLE(_Pall Mall Gazette_, May 13, 1886. )

The Countess Martinengo deserves well of all poets, peasants andpublishers. Folk-lore is so often treated nowadays merely from the pointof view of the comparative mythologist, that it is really delightful tocome across a book that deals with the subject simply as literature. Forthe Folk-tale is the father of all fiction as the Folk-song is the motherof all poetry; and in the games, the tales and the ballads of primitivepeople it is easy to see the germs of such perfected forms of art as thedrama, the novel and the epic. It is, of course, true that the highestexpression of life is to be found not in the popular songs, howeverpoetical, of any nation, but in the great masterpieces of self-consciousArt; yet it is pleasant sometimes to leave the summit of Parnassus tolook at the wildflowers in the valley, and to turn from the lyre ofApollo to listen to the reed of Pan. We can still listen to it. To thisday, the vineyard dressers of Calabria will mock the passer-by withsatirical verses as they used to do in the old pagan days, and thepeasants of the olive woods of Provence answer each other in amœbæanstrains. The Sicilian shepherd has not yet thrown his pipe aside, andthe children of modern Greece sing the swallow-song through the villagesin spring-time, though Theognis is more than two thousand years dead. Nor is this popular poetry merely the rhythmic expression of joy andsorrow; it is in the highest degree imaginative; and taking itsinspiration directly from nature it abounds in realistic metaphor and inpicturesque and fantastic imagery. It must, of course, be admitted thatthere is a conventionality of nature as there is a conventionality ofart, and that certain forms of utterance are apt to become stereotyped bytoo constant use; yet, on the whole, it is impossible not to recognize inthe Folk-songs that the Countess Martinengo has brought together onestrong dominant note of fervent and flawless sincerity. Indeed, it isonly in the more terrible dramas of the Elizabethan age that we can findany parallel to the Corsican _voceri_ with their shrill intensity ofpassion, their awful frenzies of grief and hate. And yet, ardent as thefeeling is, the form is nearly always beautiful. Now and then, in thepoems of the extreme South one meets with a curious crudity of realism, but, as a rule, the sense of beauty prevails. 

Some of the Folk-poems in this book have all the lightness and lovelinessof lyrics, all of them have that sweet simplicity of pure song by whichmirth finds its own melody and mourning its own music, and even wherethere are conceits of thought and expression they are conceits born offancy not of affectation. Herrick himself might have envied thatwonderful love-song of Provence:

 If thou wilt be the falling dew And fall on me alway, Then I will be the white, white rose On yonder thorny spray. If thou wilt be the white, white rose On yonder thorny spray, Then I will be the honey-bee And kiss thee all the day. 

 If thou wilt be the honey-bee And kiss me all the day, Then I will be in yonder heaven The star of brightest ray. If thou wilt be in yonder heaven The star of brightest ray, Then I will be the dawn, and we Shall meet at break of day. 

How charming also is this lullaby by which the Corsican mother sings herbabe to sleep!

 Gold and pearls my vessel lade, Silk and cloth the cargo be, All the sails are of brocade Coming from beyond the sea; And the helm of finest gold, Made a wonder to behold. Fast awhile in slumber lie; Sleep, my child, and hushaby. 

 After you were born full soon, You were christened all aright; Godmother she was the moon, Godfather the sun so bright. All the stars in heaven told Wore their necklaces of gold. Fast awhile in slumber lie; Sleep, my child, and hushaby. 

Or this from Roumania:

 Sleep, my daughter, sleep an hour; Mother’s darling gilliflower. Mother rocks thee, standing near, She will wash thee in the clear Waters that from fountains run, To protect thee from the sun. 

 Sleep, my darling, sleep an hour, Grow thou as the gilliflower. As a tear-drop be thou white, As a willow tall and slight; Gentle as the ring-doves are, And be lovely as a star!

We hardly know what poems are sung to English babies, but we hope theyare as beautiful as these two. Blake might have written them. 

The Countess Martinengo has certainly given us a most fascinating book. In a volume of moderate dimensions, not too long to be tiresome nor toobrief to be disappointing, she has collected together the best examplesof modern Folk-songs, and with her as a guide the lazy reader lounging inhis armchair may wander from the melancholy pine-forests of the North toSicily’s orange-groves and the pomegranate gardens of Armenia, and listento the singing of those to whom poetry is a passion, not a profession, and whose art, coming from inspiration and not from schools, if it hasthe limitations, at least has also the loveliness of its origin, and isone with blowing grasses and the flowers of the field. 

_Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs_. By the Countess Evelyn MartinengoCésaresco. (Redway. )

_THE CENCI_(_Dramatic Review_, May 15, 1886. )

The production of _The Cenci_ last week at the Grand Theatre, Islington, may be said to have been an era in the literary history of this century, and the Shelley Society deserves the highest praise and warmest thanks ofall for having given us an opportunity of seeing Shelley’s play under theconditions he himself desired for it. For _The Cenci_ was writtenabsolutely with a view to theatric presentation, and had Shelley’s ownwishes been carried out it would have been produced during his lifetimeat Covent Garden, with Edmund Kean and Miss O’Neill in the principalparts. In working out his conception, Shelley had studied very carefullythe æsthetics of dramatic art. He saw that the essence of the drama isdisinterested presentation, and that the characters must not be merelymouthpieces for splendid poetry but must be living subjects for terrorand for pity. ‘I have endeavoured, ’ he says, ‘as nearly as possible torepresent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoidthe error of making them actuated by my own conception of right or wrong, false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of thesixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. . . . 

‘I have avoided with great care the introduction of what is commonlycalled mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detachedsimile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice’s description ofthe chasm appointed for her father’s murder should be judged to be ofthat nature. ’

He recognized that a dramatist must be allowed far greater freedom ofexpression than what is conceded to a poet. ‘In a dramatic composition, ’to use his own words, ‘the imagery and the passion should interpenetrateone another, the former being reserved simply for the full developmentand illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God whichshould assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thusthat the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit fordramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low, and levels to the apprehension that which islofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In otherrespects I have written more carelessly, that is, without anover-fastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirelyagree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men totrue sympathy we must use the familiar language of men. ’

He knew that if the dramatist is to teach at all it must be by example, not by precept. 

‘The highest moral purpose, ’ he remarks, ‘aimed at in the highest speciesof the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies andantipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession ofwhich knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant andkind. If dogmas can do more it is well: but a drama is no fit place forthe enforcement of them. ’ He fully realizes that it is by a conflictbetween our artistic sympathies and our moral judgment that the greatestdramatic effects are produced. ‘It is in the restless and anatomizingcasuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feelthat she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitioushorror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered consists. ’

In fact no one has more clearly understood than Shelley the mission ofthe dramatist and the meaning of the drama. 

BALZAC IN ENGLISH(_Pall Mall Gazette_, September 13, 1886. )

Many years ago, in a number of _All the Year Round_, Charles Dickenscomplained that Balzac was very little read in England, and althoughsince then the public has become more familiar with the greatmasterpieces of French fiction, still it may be doubted whether the_Comédie Humaine_ is at all appreciated or understood by the general runof novel readers. It is really the greatest monument that literature hasproduced in our century, and M. Taine hardly exaggerates when he saysthat, after Shakespeare, Balzac is our most important magazine ofdocuments on human nature. Balzac’s aim, in fact, was to do for humanitywhat Buffon had done for the animal creation. As the naturalist studiedlions and tigers, so the novelist studied men and women. Yet he was nomere reporter. Photography and _procès-verbal_ were not the essentialsof his method. Observation gave him the facts of life, but his geniusconverted facts into truths, and truths into truth. He was, in a word, amarvellous combination of the artistic temperament with the scientificspirit. The latter he bequeathed to his disciples; the former wasentirely his own. The distinction between such a book as M. Zola’s_L’Assommoir_ and such a book as Balzac’s _Illusions Perdues_ is thedistinction between unimaginative realism and imaginative reality. ‘AllBalzac’s characters, ’ said Baudelaire, ‘are gifted with the same ardourof life that animated himself. All his fictions are as deeply colouredas dreams. Every mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with will. Thevery scullions have genius. ’ He was, of course, accused of beingimmoral. Few writers who deal directly with life escape that charge. His answer to the accusation was characteristic and conclusive. ‘Whoevercontributes his stone to the edifice of ideas, ’ he wrote, ‘whoeverproclaims an abuse, whoever sets his mark upon an evil to be abolished, always passes for immoral. If you are true in your portraits, if, bydint of daily and nightly toil, you succeed in writing the most difficultlanguage in the world, the word immoral is thrown in your face. ’ Themorals of the personages of the _Comédie Humaine_ are simply the moralsof the world around us. They are part of the artist’s subject-matter;they are not part of his method. If there be any need of censure it isto life, not to literature, that it should be given. Balzac, besides, isessentially universal. He sees life from every point of view. He has nopreferences and no prejudices. He does not try to prove anything. Hefeels that the spectacle of life contains its own secret. ‘Il crée unmonde et se tait. ’

And what a world it is! What a panorama of passions! What a pell-mellof men and women! It was said of Trollope that he increased the numberof our acquaintances without adding to our visiting list; but after the_Comédie Humaine_ one begins to believe that the only real people are thepeople who never existed. Lucien de Rubempré, le Père Goriot, UrsuleMirouët, Marguerite Claës, the Baron Hulot, Madame Marneffe, le CousinPons, De Marsay—all bring with them a kind of contagious illusion oflife. They have a fierce vitality about them: their existence is ferventand fiery-coloured; we not merely feel for them but we see them—theydominate our fancy and defy scepticism. A steady course of Balzacreduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to theshadows of shades. Who would care to go out to an evening party to meetTomkins, the friend of one’s boyhood, when one can sit at home withLucien de Rubempré? It is pleasanter to have the entrée to Balzac’ssociety than to receive cards from all the duchesses in Mayfair. 

In spite of this, there are many people who have declared the _ComédieHumaine_ to be indigestible. Perhaps it is: but then what abouttruffles? Balzac’s publisher refused to be disturbed by any suchcriticism as that. ‘Indigestible, is it?’ he exclaimed with what, for apublisher, was rare good sense. ‘Well, I should hope so; who ever thinksof a dinner that isn’t?’

Balzac’s Novels in English. _The Duchesse de Langeais and OtherStories_; _César Birotteau_. (Routledge and Sons. )

BEN JONSON(_Pall Mall Gazette_, September 20, 1886. )

As for Mr. Symonds’ estimate of Jonson’s genius, it is in many pointsquite excellent. He ranks him with the giants rather than with the gods, with those who compel our admiration by their untiring energy and hugestrength of intellectual muscle, not with those ‘who share the divinegifts of creative imagination and inevitable instinct. ’ Here he isright. Pelion more than Parnassus was Jonson’s home. His art has toomuch effort about it, too much definite intention. His style lacks thecharm of chance. Mr. Symonds is right also in the stress he lays on theextraordinary combination in Jonson’s work of the most concentratedrealism with encyclopædic erudition. In Jonson’s comedies London slangand learned scholarship go hand in hand. Literature was as living athing to him as life itself. He used his classical lore not merely togive form to his verse, but to give flesh and blood to the persons of hisplays. He could build up a breathing creature out of quotations. Hemade the poets of Greece and Rome terribly modern, and introduced them tothe oddest company. His very culture is an element in his coarseness. There are moments when one is tempted to liken him to a beast that hasfed off books. 

We cannot, however, agree with Mr. Symonds when he says that Jonson‘rarely touched more than the outside of character, ’ that his men andwomen are ‘the incarnations of abstract properties rather than livinghuman beings, ’ that they are in fact mere ‘masqueraders and mechanicalpuppets. ’ Eloquence is a beautiful thing but rhetoric ruins many acritic, and Mr. Symonds is essentially rhetorical. When, for instance, he tells us that ‘Jonson made masks, ’ while ‘Dekker and Heywood createdsouls, ’ we feel that he is asking us to accept a crude judgment for thesake of a smart antithesis. It is, of course, true that we do not findin Jonson the same growth of character that we find in Shakespeare, andwe may admit that most of the characters in Jonson’s plays are, so tospeak, ready-made. But a ready-made character is not necessarily eithermechanical or wooden, two epithets Mr. Symonds uses constantly in hiscriticism. 

We cannot tell, and Shakespeare himself does not tell us, why Iago isevil, why Regan and Goneril have hard hearts, or why Sir Andrew Aguecheekis a fool. It is sufficient that they are what they are, and that naturegives warrant for their existence. If a character in a play is lifelike, if we recognize it as true to nature, we have no right to insist on theauthor explaining its genesis to us. We must accept it as it is: and inthe hands of a good dramatist mere presentation can take the place ofanalysis, and indeed is often a more dramatic method, because a moredirect one. And Jonson’s characters are true to nature. They are in nosense abstractions; they are types. Captain Bobadil and Captain Tucca, Sir John Daw and Sir Amorous La Foole, Volpone and Mosca, Subtle and SirEpicure Mammon, Mrs. Purecraft and the Rabbi Busy are all creatures offlesh and blood, none the less lifelike because they are labelled. Inthis point Mr. Symonds seems to us unjust towards Jonson. 

We think, also, that a special chapter might have been devoted to Jonsonas a literary critic. The creative activity of the English Renaissanceis so great that its achievements in the sphere of criticism are oftenoverlooked by the student. Then, for the first time, was languagetreated as an art. The laws of expression and composition wereinvestigated and formularized. The importance of words was recognized. Romanticism, Realism and Classicism fought their first battles. Thedramatists are full of literary and art criticisms, and amused the publicwith slashing articles on one another in the form of plays. 

‘English Worthies. ’ Edited by Andrew Lang. _Ben Jonson_. By JohnAddington Symonds. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

MR. SYMONDS’ HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 10, 1886. )

Mr. Symonds has at last finished his history of the Italian Renaissance. The two volumes just published deal with the intellectual and moralconditions in Italy during the seventy years of the sixteenth centurywhich followed the coronation of Charles the Fifth at Bologna, an era towhich Mr. Symonds gives the name of the Catholic Reaction, and theycontain a most interesting and valuable account of the position of Spainin the Italian peninsula, the conduct of the Tridentine Council, thespecific organization of the Holy Office and the Company of Jesus, andthe state of society upon which those forces were brought to bear. Inhis previous volumes Mr. Symonds had regarded the past rather as apicture to be painted than as a problem to be solved. In these two lastvolumes, however, he shows a clearer appreciation of the office ofhistory. The art of the picturesque chronicler is completed by somethinglike the science of the true historian, the critical spirit begins tomanifest itself, and life is not treated as a mere spectacle, but thelaws of its evolution and progress are investigated also. We admit thatthe desire to represent life at all costs under dramatic conditions stillaccompanies Mr. Symonds, and that he hardly realizes that what seemsromance to us was harsh reality to those who were engaged in it. Likemost dramatists, also, he is more interested in the psychologicalexceptions than in the general rule. He has something of Shakespeare’ssovereign contempt of the masses. The people stir him very little, buthe is fascinated by great personalities. Yet it is only fair to rememberthat the age itself was one of exaggerated individualism, and thatliterature had not yet become a mouthpiece for the utterances ofhumanity. Men appreciated the aristocracy of intellect, but with thedemocracy of suffering they had no sympathy. The cry from thebrickfields had still to be heard. Mr. Symonds’ style, too, has muchimproved. Here and there, it is true, we come across traces of the oldmanner, as in the apocalyptic vision of the seven devils that enteredItaly with the Spaniard, and the description of the Inquisition as aBelial-Moloch, a ‘hideous idol whose face was blackened with soot fromburning human flesh. ’ Such a sentence, also, as ‘over the Dead Sea ofsocial putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuitical hypocrisy, ’reminds us that rhetoric has not yet lost its charms for Mr. Symonds. Still, on the whole, the style shows far more reserve, balance andsobriety, than can be found in the earlier volumes where violentantithesis forms the predominant characteristic, and accuracy is oftensacrificed to an adjective. 

Amongst the most interesting chapters of the book are those on theInquisition, on Sarpi, the great champion of the severance of Church fromState, and on Giordano Bruno. Indeed, the story of Bruno’s life, fromhis visit to London and Oxford, his sojourn in Paris and wanderingsthrough Germany, down to his betrayal at Venice and martyrdom at Rome, ismost powerfully told, and the estimate of the value of his philosophy andthe relation he holds to modern science, is at once just andappreciative. The account also of Ignatius Loyola and the rise of theSociety of Jesus is extremely interesting, though we cannot think thatMr. Symonds is very happy in his comparison of the Jesuits to ‘fanaticslaying stones upon a railway’ or ‘dynamiters blowing up an emperor or acorner of Westminster Hall. ’ Such a judgment is harsh and crude inexpression and more suitable to the clamour of the Protestant Union thanto the dignity of the true historian. Mr. Symonds, however, is rarelydeliberately unfair, and there is no doubt but that his work on theCatholic Reaction is a most valuable contribution to modern history—sovaluable, indeed, that in the account he gives of the Inquisition inVenice it would be well worth his while to bring the picturesque fictionof the text into some harmony with the plain facts of the footnote. 

On the poetry of the sixteenth century Mr. Symonds has, of course, agreat deal to say, and on such subjects he always writes with ease, grace, and delicacy of perception. We admit that we weary sometimes ofthe continual application to literature of epithets appropriate toplastic and pictorial art. The conception of the unity of the arts iscertainly of great value, but in the present condition of criticism itseems to us that it would be more useful to emphasize the fact that eachart has its separate method of expression. The essay on Tasso, however, is delightful reading, and the position the poet holds towards modernmusic and modern sentiment is analysed with much subtlety. The essay onMarino also is full of interest. We have often wondered whether thosewho talk so glibly of Euphuism and Marinism in literature have ever readeither _Euphues_ or the _Adone_. To the latter they can have no betterguide than Mr. Symonds, whose description of the poem is mostfascinating. Marino, like many greater men, has suffered much from hisdisciples, but he himself was a master of graceful fancy and of exquisitefelicity of phrase; not, of course, a great poet but certainly an artistin poetry and one to whom language is indebted. Even those conceits thatMr. Symonds feels bound to censure have something charming about them. The continual use of periphrases is undoubtedly a grave fault in style, yet who but a pedant would really quarrel with such periphrases as_sirena de’ boschi_ for the nightingale, or _il novello Edimione_ forGalileo?

From the poets Mr. Symonds passes to the painters: not those greatartists of Florence and Venice of whom he has already written, but theEclectics of Bologna, the Naturalists of Naples and Rome. This chapteris too polemical to be pleasant. The one on music is much better, andMr. Symonds gives us a most interesting description of the gradual stepsby which the Italian genius passed from poetry and painting to melody andsong, till the whole of Europe thrilled with the marvel and mystery ofthis new language of the soul. Some small details should perhaps benoticed. It is hardly accurate, for instance, to say that Monteverde’s_Orfeo_ was the first form of the recitative-Opera, as Peri’s _Dafne_ and_Euridice_ and Cavaliere’s _Rappresentazione_ preceded it by some years, and it is somewhat exaggerated to say that ‘under the regime of theCommonwealth the national growth of English music received a check fromwhich it never afterwards recovered, ’ as it was with Cromwell’s auspicesthat the first English Opera was produced, thirteen years before anyOpera was regularly established in Paris. The fact that England did notmake such development in music as Italy and Germany did, must be ascribedto other causes than ‘the prevalence of Puritan opinion. ’

These, however, are minor points. Mr. Symonds is to be warmlycongratulated on the completion of his history of the Renaissance inItaly. It is a most wonderful monument of literary labour, and its valueto the student of Humanism cannot be doubted. We have often had occasionto differ from Mr. Symonds on questions of detail, and we have more thanonce felt it our duty to protest against the rhetoric and over-emphasisof his style, but we fully recognize the importance of his work and theimpetus he has given to the study of one of the vital periods of theworld’s history. Mr. Symonds’ learning has not made him a pedant; hisculture has widened not narrowed his sympathies, and though he can hardlybe called a great historian, yet he will always occupy a place in Englishliterature as one of the remarkable men of letters in the nineteenthcentury. 

_Renaissance in Italy_: _The Catholic Reaction_. In Two Parts. By JohnAddington Symonds. (Smith, Elder and Co. )

MR. MORRIS’S _ODYSSEY_(_Pall Mall Gazette_, April 26, 1887. )

Of all our modern poets, Mr. William Morris is the one best qualified bynature and by art to translate for us the marvellous epic of thewanderings of Odysseus. For he is our only true story-singer sinceChaucer; if he is a Socialist, he is also a Saga-man; and there was atime when he was never wearied of telling us strange legends of gods andmen, wonderful tales of chivalry and romance. Master as he is ofdecorative and descriptive verse, he has all the Greek’s joy in thevisible aspect of things, all the Greek’s sense of delicate anddelightful detail, all the Greek’s pleasure in beautiful textures andexquisite materials and imaginative designs; nor can any one have akeener sympathy with the Homeric admiration for the workers and thecraftsmen in the various arts, from the stainers in white ivory and theembroiderers in purple and gold, to the weaver sitting by the loom andthe dyer dipping in the vat, the chaser of shield and helmet, the carverof wood or stone. And to all this is added the true temper of highromance, the power to make the past as real to us as the present, thesubtle instinct to discern passion, the swift impulse to portray life. 

It is no wonder the lovers of Greek literature have so eagerly lookedforward to Mr. Morris’s version of the Odyssean epic, and now that thefirst volume has appeared, it is not extravagant to say that of all ourEnglish translations this is the most perfect and the most satisfying. In spite of Coleridge’s well-known views on the subject, we have alwaysheld that Chapman’s _Odyssey_ is immeasurably inferior to his _Iliad_, the mere difference of metre alone being sufficient to set the former ina secondary place; Pope’s _Odyssey_, with its glittering rhetoric andsmart antithesis, has nothing of the grand manner of the original; Cowperis dull, and Bryant dreadful, and Worsley too full of Spenserianprettinesses; while excellent though Messrs. Butcher and Lang’s versionundoubtedly is in many respects, still, on the whole, it gives us merelythe facts of the _Odyssey_ without providing anything of its artisticeffect. Avia’s translation even, though better than almost all itspredecessors in the same field, is not worthy of taking rank beside Mr. Morris’s, for here we have a true work of art, a rendering not merely oflanguage into language, but of poetry into poetry, and though the newspirit added in the transfusion may seem to many rather Norse than Greek, and, perhaps at times, more boisterous than beautiful, there is yet avigour of life in every line, a splendid ardour through each canto, thatstirs the blood while one reads like the sound of a trumpet, and that, producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight, exults the senses noless than it exalts the soul. It may be admitted at once that, here andthere, Mr. Morris has missed something of the marvellous dignity of theHomeric verse, and that, in his desire for rushing and ringing metre, hehas occasionally sacrificed majesty to movement, and made statelinessgive place to speed; but it is really only in such blank verse asMilton’s that this effect of calm and lofty music can be attained, and inall other respects blank verse is the most inadequate medium forreproducing the full flow and fervour of the Greek hexameter. One merit, at any rate, Mr. Morris’s version entirely and absolutely possesses. Itis, in no sense of the word, literary; it seems to deal immediately withlife itself, and to take from the reality of things its own form andcolour; it is always direct and simple, and at its best has something ofthe ‘large utterance of the early gods. ’

As for individual passages of beauty, nothing could be better than thewonderful description of the house of the Phœacian king, or the wholetelling of the lovely legend of Circe, or the manner in which the pageantof the pale phantoms in Hades is brought before our eyes. Perhaps thehuge epic humour of the escape from the Cyclops is hardly realized, butthere is always a linguistic difficulty about rendering this fascinatingstory into English, and where we are given so much poetry we should notcomplain about losing a pun; and the exquisite idyll of the meeting andparting with the daughter of Alcinous is really delightfully told. Howgood, for instance, is this passage taken at random from the Sixth Book:

 But therewith unto the handmaids goodly Odysseus spake: ‘Stand off I bid you, damsels, while the work in hand I take, And wash the brine from my shoulders, and sleek them all around. Since verily now this long while sweet oil they have not found. But before you nought will I wash me, for shame I have indeed, Amidst of fair-tressed damsels to be all bare of weed. ’ So he spake and aloof they gat them, and thereof they told the may, But Odysseus with the river from his body washed away The brine from his back and shoulders wrought broad and mightily, And from his head was he wiping the foam of the untilled sea; But when he had thoroughly washed him, and the oil about him had shed, He did upon the raiment the gift of the maid unwed. But Athene, Zeus-begotten, dealt with him in such wise That bigger yet was his seeming, and mightier to all eyes, With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil. And as when the silver with gold is o’erlaid by a man of skill, Yea, a craftsman whom Hephæstus and Pallas Athene have taught To be master over masters, and lovely work he hath wrought; So she round his head and his shoulders shed grace abundantly. 

It may be objected by some that the line

 With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil, is a rather fanciful version of

 ουλας ηκε κόμας, ύακινθίνω ανθει όμοιασ

and it certainly seems probable that the allusion is to the dark colourof the hero’s hair; still, the point is not one of much importance, though it may be worth noting that a similar expression occurs inOgilby’s superbly illustrated translation of the _Odyssey_, published in1665, where Charles II. ’s Master of the Revels in Ireland gives thepassage thus:

 Minerva renders him more tall and fair, Curling in rings like daffodils his hair. 

No anthology, however, can show the true merit of Mr. Morris’stranslation, whose real merit does not depend on stray beauties, nor isrevealed by chance selections, but lies in the absolute rightness andcoherence of the whole, in its purity and justice of touch, its freedomfrom affectation and commonplace, its harmony of form and matter. It issufficient to say that this is a poet’s version of a poet, and for suchsurely we should be thankful. In these latter days of coarse and vulgarliterature, it is something to have made the great sea-epic of the Southnative and natural to our northern isle, something to have shown that ourEnglish speech may be a pipe through which Greek lips can blow, somethingto have taught Nausicaa to speak the same language as Perdita. 

_The Odyssey of Homer_. Done into English Verse by William Morris, author of _The Earthly Paradise_. In two volumes. Volume I. (Reevesand Turner. )

For review of Volume II. See _Mr. Morris’s Completion of the Odyssey_, page 65. 

RUSSIAN NOVELISTS(_Pall Mall Gazette_, May 2, 1887. )

Of the three great Russian novelists of our time Tourgenieff is by farthe finest artist. He has that spirit of exquisite selection, thatdelicate choice of detail, which is the essence of style; his work isentirely free from any personal intention; and by taking existence at itsmost fiery-coloured moments he can distil into a few pages of perfectprose the moods and passions of many lives. 

Count Tolstoi’s method is much larger, and his field of vision moreextended. He reminds us sometimes of Paul Veronese, and, like that greatpainter, can crowd, without over-crowding, the giant canvas on which heworks. We may not at first gain from his works that artistic unity ofimpression which is Tourgenieff’s chief charm, but once that we havemastered the details the whole seems to have the grandeur and thesimplicity of an epic. Dostoieffski differs widely from both his rivals. He is not so fine an artist as Tourgenieff, for he deals more with thefacts than with the effects of life; nor has he Tolstoi’s largeness ofvision and epic dignity; but he has qualities that are distinctively andabsolutely his own, such as a fierce intensity of passion andconcentration of impulse, a power of dealing with the deepest mysteriesof psychology and the most hidden springs of life, and a realism that ispitiless in its fidelity, and terrible because it is true. Some time agowe had occasion to draw attention to his marvellous novel _Crime andPunishment_, where in the haunt of impurity and vice a harlot and anassassin meet together to read the story of Dives and Lazarus, and theoutcast girl leads the sinner to make atonement for his sin; nor is thebook entitled _Injury and Insult_ at all inferior to that greatmasterpiece. Mean and ordinary though the surroundings of the story mayseem, the heroine Natasha is like one of the noble victims of Greektragedy; she is Antigone with the passion of Phædra, and it is impossibleto approach her without a feeling of awe. Greek also is the gloom ofNemesis that hangs over each character, only it is a Nemesis that doesnot stand outside of life, but is part of our own nature and of the samematerial as life itself. Aleósha, the beautiful young lad whom Natashafollows to her doom, is a second Tito Melema, and has all Tito’s charmand grace and fascination. Yet he is different. He would never havedenied Baldassare in the Square at Florence, nor lied to Romola aboutTessa. He has a magnificent, momentary sincerity, a boyishunconsciousness of all that life signifies, an ardent enthusiasm for allthat life cannot give. There is nothing calculating about him. He neverthinks evil, he only does it. From a psychological point of view he isone of the most interesting characters of modern fiction, as from anartistic he is one of the most attractive. As we grow to know him hestirs strange questions for us, and makes us feel that it is not thewicked only who do wrong, nor the bad alone who work evil. 

And by what a subtle objective method does Dostoieffski show us hischaracters! He never tickets them with a list nor labels them with adescription. We grow to know them very gradually, as we know people whomwe meet in society, at first by little tricks of manner, personalappearance, fancies in dress, and the like; and afterwards by their deedsand words; and even then they constantly elude us, for thoughDostoieffski may lay bare for us the secrets of their nature, yet henever explains his personages away; they are always surprising us bysomething that they say or do, and keep to the end the eternal mystery oflife. 

Irrespective of its value as a work of art, this novel possesses a deepautobiographical interest also, as the character of Vania, the poorstudent who loves Natasha through all her sin and shame, isDostoieffski’s study of himself. Goethe once had to delay the completionof one of his novels till experience had furnished him with newsituations, but almost before he had arrived at manhood Dostoieffski knewlife in its most real forms; poverty and suffering, pain and misery, prison, exile, and love, were soon familiar to him, and by the lips ofVania he has told his own story. This note of personal feeling, thisharsh reality of actual experience, undoubtedly gives the book somethingof its strange fervour and terrible passion, yet it has not made itegotistic; we see things from every point of view, and we feel, not thatfiction has been trammelled by fact, but that fact itself has becomeideal and imaginative. Pitiless, too, though Dostoieffski is in hismethod as an artist, as a man he is full of human pity for all, for thosewho do evil as well as for those who suffer it, for the selfish no lessthan for those whose lives are wrecked for others and whose sacrifice isin vain. Since _Adam Bede_ and _Le Père Goriot_ no more powerful novelhas been written than _Insult and Injury_. 

_Injury and Insult_. By Fedor Dostoieffski. Translated from the Russianby Frederick Whishaw. (Vizetelly and Co. )

MR. PATER’S _IMAGINARY PORTRAITS_(_Pall Mall Gazette_, June 11, 1887. )

To convey ideas through the medium of images has always been the aim ofthose who are artists as well as thinkers in literature, and it is to adesire to give a sensuous environment to intellectual concepts that weowe Mr. Pater’s last volume. For these Imaginary or, as we should preferto call them, Imaginative Portraits of his, form a series of philosophicstudies in which the philosophy is tempered by personality, and thethought shown under varying conditions of mood and manner, the verypermanence of each principle gaining something through the change andcolour of the life through which it finds expression. The mostfascinating of all these pictures is undoubtedly that of Sebastian VanStorck. The account of Watteau is perhaps a little too fanciful, and thedescription of him as one who was ‘always a seeker after something in theworld, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all, ’ seems tous more applicable to him who saw Mona Lisa sitting among the rocks thanthe gay and debonair _peintre des fêtes galantes_. But Sebastian, thegrave young Dutch philosopher, is charmingly drawn. From the firstglimpse we get of him, skating over the water-meadows with his plume ofsquirrel’s tail and his fur muff, in all the modest pleasantness ofboyhood, down to his strange death in the desolate house amid the sandsof the Helder, we seem to see him, to know him, almost to hear the lowmusic of his voice. He is a dreamer, as the common phrase goes, and yethe is poetical in this sense, that his theorems shape life for him, directly. Early in youth he is stirred by a fine saying of Spinoza, andsets himself to realize the ideal of an intellectual disinterestedness, separating himself more and more from the transient world of sensation, accident and even affection, till what is finite and relative becomes ofno interest to him, and he feels that as nature is but a thought of his, so he himself is but a passing thought of God. This conception, of thepower of a mere metaphysical abstraction over the mind of one sofortunately endowed for the reception of the sensible world, isexceedingly delightful, and Mr. Pater has never written a more subtlepsychological study, the fact that Sebastian dies in an attempt to savethe life of a little child giving to the whole story a touch of poignantpathos and sad irony. 

_Denys l’Auxerrois_ is suggested by a figure found, or said to be found, on some old tapestries in Auxerre, the figure of a ‘flaxen and flowerycreature, sometimes well-nigh naked among the vine-leaves, sometimesmuffled in skins against the cold, sometimes in the dress of a monk, butalways with a strong impress of real character and incident from theveritable streets’ of the town itself. From this strange design Mr. Pater has fashioned a curious mediæval myth of the return of Dionysusamong men, a myth steeped in colour and passion and old romance, full ofwonder and full of worship, Denys himself being half animal and half god, making the world mad with a new ecstasy of living, stirring the artistssimply by his visible presence, drawing the marvel of music from reed andpipe, and slain at last in a stage-play by those who had loved him. Inits rich affluence of imagery this story is like a picture by Mantegna, and indeed Mantegna might have suggested the description of the pageantin which Denys rides upon a gaily-painted chariot, in soft silken raimentand, for head-dress, a strange elephant scalp with gilded tusks. 

If _Denys l’Auxerrois_ symbolizes the passion of the senses and_Sebastian Van Storck_ the philosophic passion, as they certainly seem todo, though no mere formula or definition can adequately express thefreedom and variety of the life that they portray, the passion for theimaginative world of art is the basis of the story of _Duke Carl ofRosenmold_. Duke Carl is not unlike the late King of Bavaria, in hislove of France, his admiration for the _Grand Monarque_ and his fantasticdesire to amaze and to bewilder, but the resemblance is possibly only achance one. In fact Mr. Pater’s young hero is the precursor of the_Aufklärung_ of the last century, the German precursor of Herder andLessing and Goethe himself, and finds the forms of art ready to his handwithout any national spirit to fill them or make them vital andresponsive. He too dies, trampled to death by the soldiers of thecountry he so much admired, on the night of his marriage with a peasantgirl, the very failure of his life lending him a certain melancholy graceand dramatic interest. 

On the whole, then, this is a singularly attractive book. Mr. Pater isan intellectual impressionist. He does not weary us with any definitedoctrine or seek to suit life to any formal creed. He is always lookingfor exquisite moments and, when he has found them, he analyses them withdelicate and delightful art and then passes on, often to the oppositepole of thought or feeling, knowing that every mood has its own qualityand charm and is justified by its mere existence. He has taken thesensationalism of Greek philosophy and made it a new method of artcriticism. As for his style, it is curiously ascetic. Now and then, wecome across phrases with a strange sensuousness of expression, as when hetells us how Denys l’Auxerrois, on his return from a long journey, ‘ateflesh for the first time, tearing the hot, red morsels with his delicatefingers in a kind of wild greed, ’ but such passages are rare. Asceticismis the keynote of Mr. Pater’s prose; at times it is almost too severe inits self-control and makes us long for a little more freedom. Forindeed, the danger of such prose as his is that it is apt to becomesomewhat laborious. Here and there, one is tempted to say of Mr. Paterthat he is ‘a seeker after something in language, that is there in nosatisfying measure, or not at all. ’ The continual preoccupation withphrase and epithet has its drawbacks as well as its virtues. And yet, when all is said, what wonderful prose it is, with its subtlepreferences, its fastidious purity, its rejection of what is common orordinary! Mr. Pater has the true spirit of selection, the true art ofomission. If he be not among the greatest prose writers of ourliterature he is, at least, our greatest artist in prose; and though itmay be admitted that the best style is that which seems an unconsciousresult rather than a conscious aim, still in these latter days whenviolent rhetoric does duty for eloquence and vulgarity usurps the name ofnature, we should be grateful for a style that deliberately aims atperfection of form, that seeks to produce its effect by artistic meansand sets before itself an ideal of grave and chastened beauty. 

_Imaginary Portraits_. By Walter Pater, M. A. , Fellow of BrasenoseCollege, Oxford. (Macmillan and Co. )

A GERMAN PRINCESS(_Woman’s World_, November 1887. )

The Princess Christian’s translation of the _Memoirs of Wilhelmine_, _Margravine of Baireuth_, is a most fascinating and delightful book. TheMargravine and her brother, Frederick the Great, were, as the Princessherself points out in an admirably written introduction, ‘among the firstof those questioning minds that strove after spiritual freedom’ in thelast century. ‘They had studied, ’ says the Princess, ‘the Englishphilosophers, Newton, Locke, and Shaftesbury, and were roused toenthusiasm by the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau. Their whole livesbore the impress of the influence of French thought on the burningquestions of the day. In the eighteenth century began that greatstruggle of philosophy against tyranny and worn-out abuses whichculminated in the French Revolution. The noblest minds were engaged inthe struggle, and, like most reformers, they pushed their conclusions toextremes, and too often lost sight of the need of a due proportion inthings. The Margravine’s influence on the intellectual development ofher country is untold. She formed at Baireuth a centre of culture andlearning which had before been undreamt of in Germany. ’

The historical value of these _Memoirs_ is, of course, well known. Carlyle speaks of them as being ‘by far the best authority’ on the earlylife of Frederick the Great. But considered merely as the autobiographyof a clever and charming woman, they are no less interesting, and eventhose who care nothing for eighteenth-century politics, and look uponhistory itself as an unattractive form of fiction, cannot fail to befascinated by the Margravine’s wit, vivacity and humour, by her keenpowers of observation, and by her brilliant and assertive egotism. Notthat her life was by any means a happy one. Her father, to quote thePrincess Christian, ‘ruled his family with the same harsh despotism withwhich he ruled his country, taking pleasure in making his power felt byall in the most galling manner, ’ and the Margravine and her brother ‘hadmuch to suffer, not only from his ungovernable temper, but also from thereal privations to which they were subjected. ’ Indeed, the picture theMargravine gives of the King is quite extraordinary. ‘He despised alllearning, ’ she writes, ‘and wished me to occupy myself with nothing butneedlework and household duties or details. Had he found me writing orreading, he would probably have whipped me. ’ He ‘considered music acapital offence, and maintained that every one should devote himself toone object: men to the military service, and women to their householdduties. Science and the arts he counted among the “seven deadly sins. ”’Sometimes he took to religion, ‘and then, ’ says the Margravine, ‘we livedlike trappists, to the great grief of my brother and myself. Everyafternoon the King preached a sermon, to which we had to listen asattentively as if it proceeded from an Apostle. My brother and I wereoften seized with such an intense sense of the ridiculous that we burstout laughing, upon which an apostolic curse was poured out on our heads, which we had to accept with a show of humility and penitence. ’ Economyand soldiers were his only topics of conversation; his chief socialamusement was to make his guests intoxicated; and as for his temper, theaccounts the Margravine gives of it would be almost incredible if theywere not amply corroborated from other sources. Suetonius has written ofthe strange madness that comes on kings, but even in his melodramaticchronicles there is hardly anything that rivals what the Margravine hasto tell us. Here is one of her pictures of family life at a Royal Courtin the last century, and it is not by any means the worst scene shedescribes:

 On one occasion, when his temper was more than usually bad, he told the Queen that he had received letters from Anspach, in which the Margrave announced his arrival at Berlin for the beginning of May. He was coming there for the purpose of marrying my sister, and one of his ministers would arrive previously with the betrothal ring. My father asked my sister whether she were pleased at this prospect, and how she would arrange her household. Now my sister had always made a point of telling him whatever came into her head, even the greatest home-truths, and he had never taken her outspokenness amiss. On this occasion, therefore, relying on former experience, she answered him as follows: ‘When I have a house of my own, I shall take care to have a well-appointed dinner-table, better than yours is, and if I have children of my own, I shall not plague them as you do yours, and force them to eat things they thoroughly dislike!’

 ‘What is amiss with my dinner-table?’ the King enquired, getting very red in the face. 

 ‘You ask what is the matter with it, ’ my sister replied; ‘there is not enough on it for us to eat, and what there is is cabbage and carrots, which we detest. ’ Her first answer had already angered my father, but now he gave vent to his fury. But instead of punishing my sister he poured it all on my mother, my brother, and myself. To begin with he threw his plate at my brother’s head, who would have been struck had he not got out of the way; a second one he threw at me, which I also happily escaped; then torrents of abuse followed these first signs of hostility. He reproached the Queen with having brought up her children so badly. ‘You will curse your mother, ’ he said to my brother, ‘for having made you such a good-for-nothing creature. ’ . . . As my brother and I passed near him to leave the room, he hit out at us with his crutch. Happily we escaped the blow, for it would certainly have struck us down, and we at last escaped without harm. 

Yet, as the Princess Christian remarks, ‘despite the almost crueltreatment Wilhelmine received from her father, it is noticeable thatthroughout her memoirs she speaks of him with the greatest affection. She makes constant reference to his “good heart”’; and says that hisfaults ‘were more those of temper than of nature. ’ Nor could all themisery and wretchedness of her home life dull the brightness of herintellect. What would have made others morbid, made her satirical. Instead of weeping over her own personal tragedies, she laughs at thegeneral comedy of life. Here, for instance, is her description of Peterthe Great and his wife, who arrived at Berlin in 1718:

 The Czarina was small, broad, and brown-looking, without the slightest dignity or appearance. You had only to look at her to detect her low origin. She might have passed for a German actress, she had decked herself out in such a manner. Her dress had been bought second-hand, and was trimmed with some dirty looking silver embroidery; the bodice was trimmed with precious stones, arranged in such a manner as to represent the double eagle. She wore a dozen orders; and round the bottom of her dress hung quantities of relics and pictures of saints, which rattled when she walked, and reminded one of a smartly harnessed mule. The orders too made a great noise, knocking against each other. 

 The Czar, on the other hand, was tall and well grown, with a handsome face, but his expression was coarse, and impressed one with fear. He wore a simple sailor’s dress. His wife, who spoke German very badly, called her court jester to her aid, and spoke Russian with her. This poor creature was a Princess Gallizin, who had been obliged to undertake this sorry office to save her life, as she had been mixed up in a conspiracy against the Czar, and had twice been flogged with the knout!

 * * * * *

 The following day [the Czar] visited all the sights of Berlin, amongst others the very curious collection of coins and antiques. Amongst these last named was a statue, representing a heathen god. It was anything but attractive, but was the most valuable in the collection. The Czar admired it very much, and insisted on the Czarina kissing it. On her refusing, he said to her in bad German that she should lose her head if she did not at once obey him. Being terrified at the Czar’s anger she immediately complied with his orders without the least hesitation. The Czar asked the King to give him this and other statues, a request which he could not refuse. The same thing happened about a cupboard, inlaid with amber. It was the only one of its kind, and had cost King Frederick I. An enormous sum, and the consternation was general on its having to be sent to Petersburg. 

 This barbarous Court happily left after two days. The Queen rushed at once to Monbijou, which she found in a state resembling that of the fall of Jerusalem. I never saw such a sight. Everything was destroyed, so that the Queen was obliged to rebuild the whole house. 

Nor are the Margravine’s descriptions of her reception as a bride in theprincipality of Baireuth less amusing. Hof was the first town she cameto, and a deputation of nobles was waiting there to welcome her. This isher account of them:

 Their faces would have frightened little children, and, to add to their beauty, they had arranged their hair to resemble the wigs that were then in fashion. Their dresses clearly denoted the antiquity of their families, as they were composed of heirlooms, and were cut accordingly, so that most of them did not fit. In spite of their costumes being the ‘Court Dresses, ’ the gold and silver trimmings were so black that you had a difficulty in making out of what they were made. The manners of these nobles suited their faces and their clothes. They might have passed for peasants. I could scarcely restrain my laughter when I first beheld these strange figures. I spoke to each in turn, but none of them understood what I said, and their replies sounded to me like Hebrew, because the dialect of the Empire is quite different from that spoken in Brandenburg. 

 The clergy also presented themselves. These were totally different creatures. Round their necks they wore great ruffs, which resembled washing baskets. They spoke very slowly, so that I might be able to understand them better. They said the most foolish things, and it was only with much difficulty that I was able to prevent myself from laughing. At last I got rid of all these people, and we sat down to dinner. I tried my best to converse with those at table, but it was useless. At last I touched on agricultural topics, and then they began to thaw. I was at once informed of all their different farmsteads and herds of cattle. An almost interesting discussion took place as to whether the oxen in the upper part of the country were fatter than those in the lowlands. 

 * * * * *

 I was told that as the next day was Sunday, I must spend it at Hof, and listen to a sermon. Never before had I heard such a sermon! The clergyman began by giving us an account of all the marriages that had taken place from Adam’s time to that of Noah. We were spared no detail, so that the gentlemen all laughed and the poor ladies blushed. The dinner went off as on the previous day. In the afternoon all the ladies came to pay me their respects. Gracious heavens! What ladies, too! They were all as ugly as the gentlemen, and their head-dresses were so curious that swallows might have built their nests in them. 

As for Baireuth itself, and its petty Court, the picture she gives of itis exceedingly curious. Her father-in-law, the reigning Margrave, was anarrow-minded mediocrity, whose conversation ‘resembled that of a sermonread aloud for the purpose of sending the listener to sleep, ’ and he hadonly two topics, Telemachus, and Amelot de la Houssaye’s _Roman History_. The Ministers, from Baron von Stein, who always said ‘yes’ to everything, to Baron von Voit, who always said ‘no, ’ were not by any means anintellectual set of men. ‘Their chief amusement, ’ says the Margravine, ‘was drinking from morning till night, ’ and horses and cattle were allthey talked about. The palace itself was shabby, decayed and dirty. ‘Iwas like a lamb among wolves, ’ cries the poor Margravine; ‘I was settledin a strange country, at a Court which more resembled a peasant’s farm, surrounded by coarse, bad, dangerous, and tiresome people. ’

Yet her _esprit_ never deserted her. She is always clever, witty, andentertaining. Her stories about the endless squabbles over precedenceare extremely amusing. The society of her day cared very little for goodmanners, knew, indeed, very little about them, but all questions ofetiquette were of vital importance, and the Margravine herself, thoughshe saw the shallowness of the whole system, was far too proud not toassert her rights when circumstances demanded it, as the description shegives of her visit to the Empress of Germany shows very clearly. Whenthis meeting was first proposed, the Margravine declined positively toentertain the idea. ‘There was no precedent, ’ she writes, ‘of a King’sdaughter and the Empress having met, and I did not know to what rights Iought to lay claim. ’ Finally, however, she is induced to consent, butshe lays down three conditions for her reception:

 I desired first of all that the Empress’s Court should receive me at the foot of the stairs, secondly, that she should meet me at the door of her bedroom, and, thirdly, that she should offer me an armchair to sit on. 

 * * * * *

 They disputed all day over the conditions I had made. The two first were granted me, but all that could be obtained with respect to the third was, that the Empress would use quite a small armchair, whilst she gave me a chair. 

 Next day I saw this Royal personage. I own that had I been in her place I would have made all the rules of etiquette and ceremony the excuse for not being obliged to appear. The Empress was small and stout, round as a ball, very ugly, and without dignity or manner. Her mind corresponded to her body. She was terribly bigoted, and spent her whole day praying. The old and ugly are generally the Almighty’s portion. She received me trembling all over, and was so upset that she could not say a word. 

 After some silence I began the conversation in French. She answered me in her Austrian dialect that she could not speak in that language, and begged I would speak in German. The conversation did not last long, for the Austrian and low Saxon tongues are so different from each other that to those acquainted with only one the other is unintelligible. This is what happened to us. A third person would have laughed at our misunderstandings, for we caught only a word here and there, and had to guess the rest. The poor Empress was such a slave to etiquette that she would have thought it high treason had she spoken to me in a foreign language, though she understood French quite well. 

Many other extracts might be given from this delightful book, but fromthe few that have been selected some idea can be formed of the vivacityand picturesqueness of the Margravine’s style. As for her character, itis very well summed up by the Princess Christian, who, while admittingthat she often appears almost heartless and inconsiderate, yet claimsthat, ‘taken as a whole, she stands out in marked prominence among themost gifted women of the eighteenth century, not only by her mentalpowers, but by her goodness of heart, her self-sacrificing devotion, andtrue friendship. ’ An interesting sequel to her _Memoirs_ would be hercorrespondence with Voltaire, and it is to be hoped that we may shortlysee a translation of these letters from the same accomplished pen towhich we owe the present volume. {63}

_Memoirs of Wilhelmine Margravine of Baireuth_. Translated and edited byHer Royal Highness Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, Princess ofGreat Britain and Ireland. (David Stott. )

A VILLAGE TRAGEDY

One of the most powerful and pathetic novels that has recently appearedis _A Village Tragedy_ by Margaret L. Woods. To find any parallel tothis lurid little story, one must go to Dostoieffski or to Guy deMaupassant. Not that Mrs. Woods can be said to have taken either ofthese two great masters of fiction as her model, but there is somethingin her work that recalls their method; she has not a little of theirfierce intensity, their terrible concentration, their passionless yetpoignant objectivity; like them, she seems to allow life to suggest itsown mode of presentation; and, like them, she recognizes that a frankacceptance of the facts of life is the true basis of all modern imitativeart. The scene of Mrs. Woods’s story lies in one of the villages nearOxford; the characters are very few in number, and the plot is extremelysimple. It is a romance of modern Arcadia—a tale of the love of afarm-labourer for a girl who, though slightly above him in social stationand education, is yet herself also a servant on a farm. True Arcadiansthey are, both of them, and their ignorance and isolation serve only tointensify the tragedy that gives the story its title. It is the fashionnowadays to label literature, so, no doubt, Mrs. Woods’s novel will bespoken of as ‘realistic. ’ Its realism, however, is the realism of theartist, not of the reporter; its tact of treatment, subtlety ofperception, and fine distinction of style, make it rather a poem than a_procès-verbal_; and though it lays bare to us the mere misery of life, it suggests something of life’s mystery also. Very delicate, too, is thehandling of external Nature. There are no formal guide-book descriptionsof scenery, nor anything of what Byron petulantly called ‘twaddling abouttrees, ’ but we seem to breathe the atmosphere of the country, to catchthe exquisite scent of the beanfields, so familiar to all who have everwandered through the Oxfordshire lanes in June; to hear the birds singingin the thicket, and the sheep-bells tinkling from the hill. 

Characterization, that enemy of literary form, is such an essential partof the method of the modern writer of fiction, that Nature has almostbecome to the novelist what light and shade are to the painter—the onepermanent element of style; and if the power of _A Village Tragedy_ bedue to its portrayal of human life, no small portion of its charm comesfrom its Theocritean setting. 

_A Village Tragedy_. By Margaret L. Woods. (Bentley and Son. )

MR. MORRIS’S COMPLETION OF THE _ODYSSEY_(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 24, 1887. )

Mr. Morris’s second volume brings the great romantic epic of Greekliterature to its perfect conclusion, and although there can never be anultimate translation of either _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_, as each successiveage is sure to find pleasure in rendering the two poems in its own mannerand according to its own canons of taste, still it is not too much to saythat Mr. Morris’s version will always be a true classic amongst ourclassical translations. It is not, of course, flawless. In our noticeof the first volume we ventured to say that Mr. Morris was sometimes farmore Norse than Greek, nor does the volume that now lies before us makeus alter that opinion. The particular metre, also, selected by Mr. Morris, although admirably adapted to express ‘the strong-winged music ofHomer, ’ as far as its flow and freedom are concerned, misses something ofits dignity and calm. Here, it must be admitted, we feel a distinctloss, for there is in Homer not a little of Milton’s lofty manner, and ifswiftness be an essential of the Greek hexameter, stateliness is one ofits distinguishing qualities in Homer’s hands. This defect, however, ifwe must call it a defect, seems almost unavoidable, as for certainmetrical reasons a majestic movement in English verse is necessarily aslow movement; and, after all that can be said is said, how reallyadmirable is this whole translation! If we set aside its noble qualitiesas a poem and look on it purely from the scholar’s point of view, howstraightforward it is, how honest and direct! Its fidelity to theoriginal is far beyond that of any other verse-translation in ourliterature, and yet it is not the fidelity of a pedant to his text butrather the fine loyalty of poet to poet. 

When Mr. Morris’s first volume appeared many of the critics complainedthat his occasional use of archaic words and unusual expressions robbedhis version of the true Homeric simplicity. This, however, is not a veryfelicitous criticism, for while Homer is undoubtedly simple in hisclearness and largeness of vision, his wonderful power of directnarration, his wholesome sanity, and the purity and precision of hismethod, simple in language he undoubtedly is not. What he was to hiscontemporaries we have, of course, no means of judging, but we know thatthe Athenian of the fifth century B. C. Found him in many places difficultto understand, and when the creative age was succeeded by the age ofcriticism and Alexandria began to take the place of Athens as the centreof culture for the Hellenistic world, Homeric dictionaries and glossariesseem to have been constantly published. Indeed, Athenæus tells us of awonderful Byzantine blue-stocking, a _précieuse_ from the Propontis, whowrote a long hexameter poem, called _Mnemosyne_, full of ingeniouscommentaries on difficulties in Homer, and in fact, it is evident that, as far as the language is concerned, such a phrase as ‘Homericsimplicity’ would have rather amazed an ancient Greek. As for Mr. Morris’s tendency to emphasize the etymological meaning of words, a pointcommented on with somewhat flippant severity in a recent number of_Macmillan_’_s Magazine_, here Mr. Morris seems to us to be in completeaccord, not merely with the spirit of Homer, but with the spirit of allearly poetry. It is quite true that language is apt to degenerate into asystem of almost algebraic symbols, and the modern city-man who takes aticket for Blackfriars Bridge, naturally never thinks of the Dominicanmonks who once had their monastery by Thames-side, and after whom thespot is named. But in earlier times it was not so. Men were then keenlyconscious of the real meaning of words, and early poetry, especially, isfull of this feeling, and, indeed, may be said to owe to it no smallportion of its poetic power and charm. These old words, then, and thisold use of words which we find in Mr. Morris’s _Odyssey_ can be amplyjustified upon historical grounds, and as for their artistic effect, itis quite excellent. Pope tried to put Homer into the ordinary languageof his day, with what result we know only too well; but Mr. Morris, whouses his archaisms with the tact of a true artist, and to whom indeedthey seem to come absolutely naturally, has succeeded in giving to hisversion by their aid that touch, not of ‘quaintness, ’ for Homer is neverquaint, but of old-world romance and old-world beauty, which we modernsfind so pleasurable, and to which the Greeks themselves were so keenlysensitive. 

As for individual passages of special merit, Mr. Morris’s translation isno robe of rags sewn with purple patches for critics to sample. Its realvalue lies in the absolute rightness and coherence of the whole, in thegrand architecture of the swift, strong verse, and in the fact that thestandard is not merely high but everywhere sustained. It is impossible, however, to resist the temptation of quoting Mr. Morris’s rendering ofthat famous passage in the twenty-third book of the epic, in whichOdysseus eludes the trap laid for him by Penelope, whose very faith inthe certainty of her husband’s return makes her sceptical of his identitywhen he stands before her; an instance, by the way, of Homer’s wonderfulpsychological knowledge of human nature, as it is always the dreamerhimself who is most surprised when his dream comes true. 

 Thus she spake to prove her husband; but Odysseus, grieved at heart, Spake thus unto his bed-mate well-skilled in gainful art: ‘O woman, thou sayest a word exceeding grievous to me! Who hath otherwhere shifted my bedstead? full hard for him should it be, For as deft as he were, unless soothly a very God come here, Who easily, if he willed it, might shift it otherwhere. But no mortal man is living, how strong soe’er in his youth, Who shall lightly hale it elsewhere, since a mighty wonder forsooth Is wrought in that fashioned bedstead, and I wrought it, and I alone. In the close grew a thicket of olive, a long-leaved tree full-grown, That flourished and grew goodly as big as a pillar about, So round it I built my bride-room, till I did the work right out With ashlar stone close-fitting; and I roofed it overhead, And thereto joined doors I made me, well-fitting in their stead. Then I lopped away the boughs of the long-leafed olive-tree, And, shearing the bole from the root up full well and cunningly, I planed it about with the brass, and set the rule thereto, And shaping thereof a bed-post, with the wimble I bored it through. So beginning, I wrought out the bedstead, and finished it utterly, And with gold enwrought it about, and with silver and ivory, And stretched on it a thong of oxhide with the purple dye made bright. Thus then the sign I have shown thee; nor, woman, know I aright If my bed yet bideth steadfast, or if to another place Some man hath moved it, and smitten the olive-bole from its base. ’

These last twelve books of the _Odyssey_ have not the same marvel ofromance, adventure and colour that we find in the earlier part of theepic. There is nothing in them that we can compare to the exquisiteidyll of Nausicaa or to the Titanic humour of the episode in the Cyclops’cave. Penelope has not the glamour of Circe, and the song of the Sirensmay sound sweeter than the whizz of the arrows of Odysseus as he standson the threshold of his hall. Yet, for sheer intensity of passionatepower, for concentration of intellectual interest and for masterlydramatic construction, these latter books are quite unequalled. Indeed, they show very clearly how it was that, as Greek art developed, the epospassed into the drama. The whole scheme of the argument, the return ofthe hero in disguise, his disclosure of himself to his son, his terriblevengeance on his enemies and his final recognition by his wife, remindsus of the plot of more than one Greek play, and shows us what the greatAthenian poet meant when he said that his own dramas were merely scrapsfrom Homer’s table. In rendering this splendid poem into English verse, Mr. Morris has done our literature a service that can hardly beover-estimated, and it is pleasant to think that, even should theclassics be entirely excluded from our educational systems, the Englishboy will still be able to know something of Homer’s delightful tales, tocatch an echo of his grand music and to wander with the wise Odysseusround ‘the shores of old romance. ’

_The Odyssey of Homer_. Done into English Verse by William Morris, Author of _The Earthly Paradise_. Volume II. (Reeves and Turner. )

MRS. SOMERVILLE(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 30, 1887. )

Phyllis Browne’s Life of Mrs. Somerville forms part of a very interestinglittle series, called ‘The World’s Workers’—a collection of shortbiographies catholic enough to include personalities so widely differentas Turner and Richard Cobden, Handel and Sir Titus Salt, RobertStephenson and Florence Nightingale, and yet possessing a certaindefinite aim. As a mathematician and a scientist, the translator andpopularizer of _La Mécanique Céleste_, and the author of an importantbook on physical geography, Mrs. Somerville is, of course, well known. The scientific bodies of Europe covered her with honours; her bust standsin the hall of the Royal Society, and one of the Women’s Colleges atOxford bears her name. Yet, considered simply in the light of a wife anda mother, she is no less admirable; and those who consider that stupidityis the proper basis for the domestic virtues, and that intellectual womenmust of necessity be helpless with their hands, cannot do better thanread Phyllis Browne’s pleasant little book, in which they will find thatthe greatest woman-mathematician of any age was a clever needlewoman, agood housekeeper, and a most skilful cook. Indeed, Mrs. Somerville seemsto have been quite renowned for her cookery. The discoverers of theNorth-West Passage christened an island ‘Somerville, ’ not as a tribute tothe distinguished mathematician, but as a recognition of the excellenceof some orange marmalade which the distinguished mathematician hadprepared with her own hands and presented to the ships before they leftEngland; and to the fact that she was able to make currant jelly at avery critical moment she owed the affection of some of her husband’srelatives, who up to that time had been rather prejudiced against her onthe ground that she was merely an unpractical Blue-stocking. 

Nor did her scientific knowledge ever warp or dull the tenderness andhumanity of her nature. For birds and animals she had always a greatlove. We hear of her as a little girl watching with eager eyes theswallows as they built their nests in summer or prepared for their flightin the autumn; and when snow was on the ground she used to open thewindows to let the robins hop in and pick crumbs on the breakfast-table. On one occasion she went with her father on a tour in the Highlands, andfound on her return that a pet goldfinch, which had been left in thecharge of the servants, had been neglected by them and had died ofstarvation. She was almost heart-broken at the event, and in writing her_Recollections_, seventy years after, she mentioned it and said that, asshe wrote, she felt deep pain. Her chief pet in her old age was amountain sparrow, which used to perch on her arm and go to sleep therewhile she was writing. One day the sparrow fell into the water-jug andwas drowned, to the great grief of its mistress who could hardly beconsoled for its loss, though later on we hear of a beautiful paroquettaking the place of _le moineau d’Uranie_, and becoming Mrs. Somerville’sconstant companion. She was also very energetic, Phyllis Browne tellsus, in trying to get a law passed in the Italian Parliament for theprotection of animals, and said once, with reference to this subject, ‘WeEnglish cannot boast of humanity so long as our sportsmen find pleasurein shooting down tame pigeons as they fly terrified out of a cage’—aremark with which I entirely agree. Mr. Herbert’s Bill for theprotection of land birds gave her immense pleasure, though, to quote herown words, she was ‘grieved to find that “the lark, which at heaven’sgate sings, ” is thought unworthy of man’s protection’; and she took agreat fancy to a gentleman who, on being told of the number of singingbirds that is eaten in Italy—nightingales, goldfinches, androbins—exclaimed in horror, ‘What! robins! our household birds! I wouldas soon eat a child!’ Indeed, she believed to some extent in theimmortality of animals on the ground that, if animals have no future, itwould seem as if some were created for uncompensated misery—an idea whichdoes not seem to me to be either extravagant or fantastic, though it mustbe admitted that the optimism on which it is based receives absolutely nosupport from science. 

On the whole, Phyllis Browne’s book is very pleasant reading. Its onlyfault is that it is far too short, and this is a fault so rare in modernliterature that it almost amounts to a distinction. However, PhyllisBrowne has managed to crowd into the narrow limits at her disposal agreat many interesting anecdotes. The picture she gives of Mrs. Somerville working away at her translation of Laplace in the same roomwith her children is very charming, and reminds one of what is told ofGeorge Sand; there is an amusing account of Mrs. Somerville’s visit tothe widow of the young Pretender, the Countess of Albany, who, aftertalking with her for some time, exclaimed, ‘So you don’t speak Italian. You must have had a very bad education’! And this story about theWaverley Novels may possibly be new to some of my readers:

 A very amusing circumstance in connection with Mrs. Somerville’s acquaintance with Sir Walter arose out of the childish inquisitiveness of Woronzow Greig, Mrs. Somerville’s little boy. 

 During the time Mrs. Somerville was visiting Abbotsford the Waverley Novels were appearing, and were creating a great sensation; yet even Scott’s intimate friends did not know that he was the author; he enjoyed keeping the affair a mystery. But little Woronzow discovered what he was about. One day when Mrs. Somerville was talking about a novel that had just been published, Woronzow said, ‘I knew all these stories long ago, for Mr. Scott writes on the dinner-table; when he has finished he puts the green cloth with the papers in a corner of the dining-room, and when he goes out Charlie Scott and I read the stories. ’

Phyllis Browne remarks that this incident shows ‘that persons who want tokeep a secret ought to be very careful when children are about’; but thestory seems to me to be far too charming to require any moral of thekind. 

Bound up in the same volume is a Life of Miss Mary Carpenter, alsowritten by Phyllis Browne. Miss Carpenter does not seem to me to havethe charm and fascination of Mrs. Somerville. There is always somethingabout her that is formal, limited, and precise. When she was about twoyears old she insisted on being called ‘Doctor Carpenter’ in the nursery;at the age of twelve she is described by a friend as a sedate littlegirl, who always spoke like a book; and before she entered on hereducational schemes she wrote down a solemn dedication of herself to theservice of humanity. However, she was one of the practical, hardworkingsaints of the nineteenth century, and it is no doubt quite right that thesaints should take themselves very seriously. It is only fair also toremember that her work of rescue and reformation was carried on undergreat difficulties. Here, for instance, is the picture Miss Cobbe givesus of one of the Bristol night-schools:

 It was a wonderful spectacle to see Mary Carpenter sitting patiently before the large school gallery in St. James’s Back, teaching, singing, and praying with the wild street-boys, in spite of endless interruptions caused by such proceedings as shooting marbles at any object behind her, whistling, stamping, fighting, shrieking out ‘Amen’ in the middle of a prayer, and sometimes rising _en masse_ and tearing like a troop of bisons in hob-nailed shoes down from the gallery, round the great schoolroom, and down the stairs, and into the street. These irrepressible outbreaks she bore with infinite good humour. 

Her own account is somewhat pleasanter, and shows that ‘the troop ofbisons in hob-nailed shoes’ was not always so barbarous. 

 I had taken to my class on the preceding week some specimens of ferns neatly gummed on white paper. . . . This time I took a piece of coal-shale, with impressions of ferns, to show them. . . . I told each to examine the specimen, and tell me what he thought it was. W. Gave so bright a smile that I saw he knew; none of the others could tell; he said they were ferns, like what I showed them last week, but he thought they were chiselled on the stone. Their surprise and pleasure were great when I explained the matter to them. 

 The history of Joseph: they all found a difficulty in realizing that this had actually occurred. One asked if Egypt existed now, and if people lived in it. When I told them that buildings now stood which had been erected about the time of Joseph, one said that it was impossible, as they must have fallen down ere this. I showed them the form of a pyramid, and they were satisfied. One asked if _all_ books were true. 

 The story of Macbeth impressed them very much. They knew the name of Shakespeare, having seen his name over a public-house. 

A boy defined conscience as ‘a thing a gentleman hasn’t got, who, when aboy finds his purse and gives it back to him, doesn’t give the boysixpence. ’

Another boy was asked, after a Sunday evening lecture on ‘Thankfulness, ’what pleasure he enjoyed most in the course of a year. He repliedcandidly, ‘Cock-fightin’, ma’am; there’s a pit up by the “Black Boy” asis worth anythink in Brissel. ’

There is something a little pathetic in the attempt to civilize the roughstreet-boy by means of the refining influence of ferns and fossils, andit is difficult to help feeling that Miss Carpenter rather over-estimatedthe value of elementary education. The poor are not to be fed uponfacts. Even Shakespeare and the Pyramids are not sufficient; nor isthere much use in giving them the results of culture, unless we also givethem those conditions under which culture can be realized. In thesecold, crowded cities of the North, the proper basis for morals, using theword in its wide Hellenic signification, is to be found in architecture, not in books. 

Still, it would be ungenerous not to recognize that Mary Carpenter gaveto the children of the poor not merely her learning, but her love. Inearly life, her biographer tells us, she had longed for the happiness ofbeing a wife and a mother; but later she became content that heraffection could be freely given to all who needed it, and the verse inthe prophecies, ‘I have given thee children whom thou hast not borne, ’seemed to her to indicate what was to be her true mission. Indeed, sherather inclined to Bacon’s opinion, that unmarried people do the bestpublic work. ‘It is quite striking, ’ she says in one of her letters, ‘toobserve how much the useful power and influence of woman has developed oflate years. Unattached ladies, such as widows and unmarried women, havequite ample work to do in the world for the good of others to absorb alltheir powers. Wives and mothers have a very noble work given them byGod, and want no more. ’ The whole passage is extremely interesting, andthe phrase ‘unattached ladies’ is quite delightful, and reminds one ofCharles Lamb. 

_Mrs. Somerville_ and _Mary Carpenter_. By Phyllis Browne, Author of_What Girls Can Do_, _etc. _ (Cassell and Co. )

ARISTOTLE AT AFTERNOON TEA(_Pall Mall Gazette_, December 16, 1887. )

In society, says Mr. Mahaffy, every civilized man and woman ought to feelit their duty to say something, even when there is hardly anything to besaid, and, in order to encourage this delightful art of brilliantchatter, he has published a social guide without which no _débutante_ ordandy should ever dream of going out to dine. Not that Mr. Mahaffy’sbook can be said to be, in any sense of the word, popular. In discussingthis important subject of conversation, he has not merely followed thescientific method of Aristotle which is, perhaps, excusable, but he hasadopted the literary style of Aristotle for which no excuse is possible. There is, also, hardly a single anecdote, hardly a single illustration, and the reader is left to put the Professor’s abstract rules intopractice, without either the examples or the warnings of history toencourage or to dissuade him in his reckless career. Still, the book canbe warmly recommended to all who propose to substitute the vice ofverbosity for the stupidity of silence. It fascinates in spite of itsform and pleases in spite of its pedantry, and is the nearest approach, that we know of, in modern literature to meeting Aristotle at anafternoon tea. 

As regards physical conditions, the only one that is considered by Mr. Mahaffy as being absolutely essential to a good conversationalist, is thepossession of a musical voice. Some learned writers have been of opinionthat a slight stammer often gives peculiar zest to conversation, but Mr. Mahaffy rejects this view and is extremely severe on every eccentricityfrom a native brogue to an artificial catchword. With his remarks on thelatter point, the meaningless repetition of phrases, we entirely agree. Nothing can be more irritating than the scientific person who is alwayssaying ‘_Exactly so_, ’ or the commonplace person who ends every sentencewith ‘_Don’t you know_?’ or the pseudo-artistic person who murmurs‘_Charming_, _charming_, ’ on the smallest-provocation. It is, however, with the mental and moral qualifications for conversation that Mr. Mahaffy specially deals. Knowledge he, naturally, regards as an absoluteessential, for, as he most justly observes, ‘an ignorant man is seldomagreeable, except as a butt. ’ Upon the other hand, strict accuracyshould be avoided. ‘Even a consummate liar, ’ says Mr. Mahaffy, is abetter ingredient in a company than ‘the scrupulously truthful man, whoweighs every statement, questions every fact, and corrects everyinaccuracy. ’ The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, notinstruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilizedbeing than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a storywhich is told simply for the amusement of the company. Mr. Mahaffy, however, makes an exception in favour of the eminent specialist and tellsus that intelligent questions addressed to an astronomer, or a puremathematician, will elicit many curious facts which will pleasantlybeguile the time. Here, in the interest of Society, we feel bound toenter a formal protest. Nobody, even in the provinces, should ever beallowed to ask an intelligent question about pure mathematics across adinner-table. A question of this kind is quite as bad as inquiringsuddenly about the state of a man’s soul, a sort of _coup_ which, as Mr. Mahaffy remarks elsewhere, ‘many pious people have actually thought adecent introduction to a conversation. ’

As for the moral qualifications of a good talker, Mr. Mahaffy, followingthe example of his great master, warns us against any disproportionateexcess of virtue. Modesty, for instance, may easily become a socialvice, and to be continually apologizing for one’s ignorance or stupidityis a grave injury to conversation, for, ‘what we want to learn from eachmember is his free opinion on the subject in hand, not his own estimateof the value of that opinion. ’ Simplicity, too, is not without itsdangers. The _enfant terrible_, with his shameless love of truth, theraw country-bred girl who always says what she means, and the plain, blunt man who makes a point of speaking his mind on every possibleoccasion, without ever considering whether he has a mind at all, are thefatal examples of what simplicity leads to. Shyness may be a form ofvanity, and reserve a development of pride, and as for sympathy, what canbe more detestable than the man, or woman, who insists on agreeing witheverybody, and so makes ‘a discussion, which implies differences inopinion, ’ absolutely impossible? Even the unselfish listener is apt tobecome a bore. ‘These silent people, ’ says Mr. Mahaffy, ‘not only takeall they can get in Society for nothing, but they take it without thesmallest gratitude, and have the audacity afterwards to censure those whohave laboured for their amusement. ’ Tact, which is an exquisite sense ofthe symmetry of things, is, according to Mr. Mahaffy, the highest andbest of all the moral conditions for conversation. The man of tact, hemost wisely remarks, ‘will instinctively avoid jokes about Blue Beard’ inthe company of a woman who is a man’s third wife; he will never be guiltyof talking like a book, but will rather avoid too careful an attention togrammar and the rounding of periods; he will cultivate the art ofgraceful interruption, so as to prevent a subject being worn threadbareby the aged or the inexperienced; and should he be desirous of telling astory, he will look round and consider each member of the party, and ifthere be a single stranger present will forgo the pleasure of anecdotagerather than make the social mistake of hurting even one of the guests. As for prepared or premeditated art, Mr. Mahaffy has a great contempt forit and tells us of a certain college don (let us hope not at Oxford orCambridge) who always carried a jest-book in his pocket and had to referto it when he wished to make a repartee. Great wits, too, are often verycruel, and great humorists often very vulgar, so it will be better to tryand ‘make good conversation without any large help from these brilliantbut dangerous gifts. ’

In a _tête-à-tête_ one should talk about persons, and in general Societyabout things. The state of the weather is always an excusable exordium, but it is convenient to have a paradox or heresy on the subject alwaysready so as to direct the conversation into other channels. Reallydomestic people are almost invariably bad talkers as their very virtuesin home life have dulled their interest in outer things. The very bestmothers will insist on chattering of their babies and prattling aboutinfant education. In fact, most women do not take sufficient interest inpolitics, just as most men are deficient in general reading. Still, anybody can be made to talk, except the very obstinate, and even acommercial traveller may be drawn out and become quite interesting. Asfor Society small talk, it is impossible, Mr. Mahaffy tells us, for anysound theory of conversation to depreciate gossip, ‘which is perhaps themain factor in agreeable talk throughout Society. ’ The retailing ofsmall personal points about great people always gives pleasure, and ifone is not fortunate enough to be an Arctic traveller or an escapedNihilist, the best thing one can do is to relate some anecdote of ‘PrinceBismarck, or King Victor Emmanuel, or Mr. Gladstone. ’ In the case ofmeeting a genius and a Duke at dinner, the good talker will try to raisehimself to the level of the former and to bring the latter down to hisown level. To succeed among one’s social superiors one must have nohesitation in contradicting them. Indeed, one should make boldcriticisms and introduce a bright and free tone into a Society whosegrandeur and extreme respectability make it, Mr. Mahaffy remarks, aspathetically as inaccurately, ‘perhaps somewhat dull. ’ The bestconversationalists are those whose ancestors have been bilingual, likethe French and Irish, but the art of conversation is really within thereach of almost every one, except those who are morbidly truthful, orwhose high moral worth requires to be sustained by a permanent gravity ofdemeanour and a general dullness of mind. 

These are the broad principles contained in Mr. Mahaffy’s clever littlebook, and many of them will, no doubt, commend themselves to our readers. The maxim, ‘If you find the company dull, blame yourself, ’ seems to ussomewhat optimistic, and we have no sympathy at all with the professionalstoryteller who is really a great bore at a dinner-table; but Mr. Mahaffyis quite right in insisting that no bright social intercourse is possiblewithout equality, and it is no objection to his book to say that it willnot teach people how to talk cleverly. It is not logic that makes menreasonable, nor the science of ethics that makes men good, but it isalways useful to analyse, to formularize and to investigate. The onlything to be regretted in the volume is the arid and jejune character ofthe style. If Mr. Mahaffy would only write as he talks, his book wouldbe much pleasanter reading. 

_The Principles of the Art of Conversation_: _A Social Essay_. By J. P. Mahaffy. (Macmillan and Co. )

EARLY CHRISTIAN ART IN IRELAND(_Pall Mall Gazette_, December 17, 1887. )

The want of a good series of popular handbooks on Irish art has long beenfelt, the works of Sir William Wilde, Petrie and others being somewhattoo elaborate for the ordinary student; so we are glad to notice theappearance, under the auspicesof the Committee of Council on Education, of Miss Margaret Stokes’s useful little volume on the early Christian artof her country. There is, of course, nothing particularly original inMiss Stokes’s book, nor can she be said to be a very attractive orpleasing writer, but it is unfair to look for originality in primers, andthe charm of the illustrations fully atones for the somewhat heavy andpedantic character of the style. 

This early Christian art of Ireland is full of interest to the artist, the archæologist and the historian. In its rudest forms, such as thelittle iron hand-bell, the plain stone chalice and the rough woodenstaff, it brings us back to the simplicity of the primitive ChristianChurch, while to the period of its highest development we owe the greatmasterpieces of Celtic metal-work. The stone chalice is now replaced bythe chalice of silver and gold; the iron bell has its jewel-studdedshrine, and the rough staff its gorgeous casing; rich caskets andsplendid bindings preserve the holy books of the Saints and, instead ofthe rudely carved symbol of the early missionaries, we have suchbeautiful works of art as the processional cross of Cong Abbey. Beautiful this cross certainly is with its delicate intricacy ofornamentation, its grace of proportion and its marvel of mereworkmanship, nor is there any doubt about its history. From theinscriptions on it, which are corroborated by the annals of Innisfallenand the book of Clonmacnoise, we learn that it was made for King TurloughO’Connor by a native artist under the superintendence of Bishop O’Duffy, its primary object being to enshrine a portion of the true cross that wassent to the king in 1123. Brought to Cong some years afterwards, probably by the archbishop, who died there in 1150, it was concealed atthe time of the Reformation, but at the beginning of the present centurywas still in the possession of the last abbot, and at his death it waspurchased by Professor MacCullagh and presented by him to the museum ofthe Royal Irish Academy. This wonderful work is alone well worth a visitto Dublin, but not less lovely is the chalice of Ardagh, a two-handledsilver cup, absolutely classical in its perfect purity of form, anddecorated with gold and amber and crystal and with varieties of_cloisonné_ and _champlevé_ enamel. There is no mention of this cup, orof the so-called Tara brooch, in ancient Irish history. All that we knowof them is that they were found accidentally, the former by a boy who wasdigging potatoes near the old Rath of Ardagh, the latter by a poor childwho picked it up near the seashore. They both, however, belong probablyto the tenth century. 

Of all these works, as well as of the bell shrines, book-covers, sculptured crosses and illuminated designs in manuscripts, excellentpictures are given in Miss Stokes’s handbook. The extremely interesting_Fiachal Phadrig_, or shrine of St. Patrick’s tooth, might have beenfigured and noted as an interesting example of the survival of ornament, and one of the old miniatures of the scribe or Evangelist writing wouldhave given an additional interest to the chapter on Irish MSS. On thewhole, however, the book is wonderfully well illustrated, and theordinary art student will be able to get some useful suggestions from it. Indeed, Miss Stokes, echoing the aspirations of many of the great Irisharchæologists, looks forward to the revival of a native Irish school inarchitecture, sculpture, metal-work and painting. Such an aspiration is, of course, very laudable, but there is always a danger of these revivalsbeing merely artificial reproductions, and it may be questioned whetherthe peculiar forms of Irish ornamentation could be made at all expressiveof the modern spirit. A recent writer on house decoration has gravelysuggested that the British householder should take his meals in a Celticdining-room adorned with a dado of Ogham inscriptions, and such wickedproposals may serve as a warning to all who fancy that the reproductionof a form necessarily implies a revival of the spirit that gave the formlife and meaning, and who fail to recognize the difference between artand anachronisms. Miss Stokes’s proposal for an ark-shaped church inwhich the mural painter is to repeat the arcades and ‘follow thearchitectural compositions of the grand pages of the Eusebian canons inthe Book of Kells, ’ has, of course, nothing grotesque about it, but it isnot probable that the artistic genius of the Irish people will, even when‘the land has rest, ’ find in such interesting imitations its healthiestor best expression. Still, there are certain elements of beauty inancient Irish art that the modern artist would do well to study. Thevalue of the intricate illuminations in the Book of Kells, as far astheir adaptability to modern designs and modern material goes, has beenvery much overrated, but in the ancient Irish torques, brooches, pins, clasps and the like, the modern goldsmith will find a rich and, comparatively speaking, an untouched field; and now that the Celticspirit has become the leaven of our politics, there is no reason why itshould not contribute something to our decorative art. This result, however, will not be obtained by a patriotic misuse of old designs, andeven the most enthusiastic Home Ruler must not be allowed to decorate hisdining-room with a dado of Oghams. 

_Early Christian Art in Ireland_. By Margaret Stokes. (Published forthe Committee of Council on Education by Chapman and Hall. )

MADAME RISTORI(_Woman’s World_, January 1888. )

Madame Ristori’s _Etudes et Souvenirs_ is one of the most delightfulbooks on the stage that has appeared since Lady Martin’s charming volumeon the Shakespearian heroines. It is often said that actors leavenothing behind them but a barren name and a withered wreath; that theysubsist simply upon the applause of the moment; that they are ultimatelydoomed to the oblivion of old play-bills; and that their art, in a word, dies with them, and shares their own mortality. ‘Chippendale, thecabinet-maker, ’ says the clever author of _Obiter Dicta_, ‘is more potentthan Garrick the actor. The vivacity of the latter no longer charms(save in Boswell); the chairs of the former still render rest impossiblein a hundred homes. ’ This view, however, seems to me to be exaggerated. It rests on the assumption that acting is simply a mimetic art, and takesno account of its imaginative and intellectual basis. It is quite true, of course, that the personality of the player passes away, and with itthat pleasure-giving power by virtue of which the arts exist. Yet theartistic method of a great actor survives. It lives on in tradition, andbecomes part of the science of a school. It has all the intellectuallife of a principle. In England, at the present moment, the influence ofGarrick on our actors is far stronger than that of Reynolds on ourpainters of portraits, and if we turn to France it is easy to discern thetradition of Talma, but where is the tradition of David?

Madame Ristori’s memoirs, then, have not merely the charm that alwaysattaches to the autobiography of a brilliant and beautiful woman, buthave also a definite and distinct artistic value. Her analysis of thecharacter of Lady Macbeth, for instance, is full of psychologicalinterest, and shows us that the subtleties of Shakespearian criticism arenot necessarily confined to those who have views on weak endings andrhyming tags, but may also be suggested by the art of acting itself. Theauthor of _Obiter Dicta_ seeks to deny to actors all critical insight andall literary appreciation. The actor, he tells us, is art’s slave, nother child, and lives entirely outside literature, ‘with its words forever on his lips, and none of its truths engraven on his heart. ’ Butthis seems to me to be a harsh and reckless generalization. Indeed, sofar from agreeing with it, I would be inclined to say that the mereartistic process of acting, the translation of literature back again intolife, and the presentation of thought under the conditions of action, isin itself a critical method of a very high order; nor do I think that astudy of the careers of our great English actors will really sustain thecharge of want of literary appreciation. It may be true that actors passtoo quickly away from the form, in order to get at the feeling that givesthe form beauty and colour, and that, where the literary critic studiesthe language, the actor looks simply for the life; and yet, how well thegreat actors have appreciated that marvellous music of words, which inShakespeare, at any rate, is so vital an element of poetic power, if, indeed, it be not equally so in the case of all who have any claim to beregarded as true poets. ‘The sensual life of verse, ’ says Keats, in adramatic criticism published in the _Champion_, ‘springs warm from thelips of Kean, and to one learned in Shakespearian hieroglyphics, learnedin the spiritual portion of those lines to which Kean adds a sensualgrandeur, his tongue must seem to have robbed the Hybla bees and leftthem honeyless. ’ This particular feeling, of which Keats speaks, isfamiliar to all who have heard Salvini, Sarah Bernhardt, Ristori, or anyof the great artists of our day, and it is a feeling that one cannot, Ithink, gain merely by reading the passage to oneself. For my own part, Imust confess that it was not until I heard Sarah Bernhardt in _Phèdre_that I absolutely realized the sweetness of the music of Racine. As forMr. Birrell’s statement that actors have the words of literature for everon their lips, but none of its truths engraved on their hearts, all thatone can say is that, if it be true, it is a defect which actors sharewith the majority of literary critics. 

The account Madame Ristori gives of her own struggles, voyages andadventures, is very pleasant reading indeed. The child of poor actors, she made her first appearance when she was three months old, beingbrought on in a hamper as a New Year’s gift to a selfish old gentlemanwho would not forgive his daughter for having married for love. As, however, she began to cry long before the hamper was opened, the comedybecame a farce, to the immense amusement of the public. She nextappeared in a mediæval melodrama, being then three years of age, and wasso terrified at the machinations of the villain that she ran away at themost critical moment. However, her stage-fright seems to havedisappeared, and we find her playing Silvio Pellico’s _Francesca daRimini_ at fifteen, and at eighteen making her _début_ as Marie Stuart. At this time the naturalism of the French method was gradually displacingthe artificial elocution and academic poses of the Italian school ofacting. Madame Ristori seems to have tried to combine simplicity withstyle, and the passion of nature with the self-restraint of the artist. ‘J’ai voulu fondre les deux manières, ’ she tells us, ‘car je sentais quetoutes choses étant susceptibles de progrès, l’art dramatique aussi étaitappelé à subir des transformations. ’ The natural development, however, of the Italian drama was almost arrested by the ridiculous censorship ofplays then existing in each town under Austrian or Papal rule. Theslightest allusion to the sentiment of nationality or the spirit offreedom was prohibited. Even the word _patria_ was regarded astreasonable, and Madame Ristori tells us an amusing story of theindignation of a censor who was asked to license a play, in which a dumbman returns home after an absence of many years, and on his entrance uponthe stage makes gestures expressive of his joy in seeing his native landonce more. ‘Gestures of this kind, ’ said the censor, ‘are obviously of avery revolutionary tendency, and cannot possibly be allowed. The onlygestures that I could think of permitting would be gestures expressive ofa dumb man’s delight in scenery generally. ’ The stage directions wereaccordingly altered, and the word ‘landscape’ substituted for ‘nativeland’! Another censor was extremely severe on an unfortunate poet whohad used the expression ‘the beautiful Italian sky, ’ and explained to himthat ‘the beautiful Lombardo-Venetian sky’ was the proper officialexpression to use. Poor Gregory in _Romeo and Juliet_ had to berechristened, because Gregory is a name dear to the Popes; and the

 Here I have a pilot’s thumb, Wrecked as homeward he did come, of the first witch in _Macbeth_ was ruthlessly struck out as containingan obvious allusion to the steersman of St. Peter’s bark. Finally, boredand bothered by the political and theological Dogberrys of the day, withtheir inane prejudices, their solemn stupidity, and their entireignorance of the conditions necessary for the growth of sane and healthyart, Madame Ristori made up her mind to leave the stage. She, however, was extremely anxious to appear once before a Parisian audience, Parisbeing at that time the centre of dramatic activity, and after someconsideration left Italy for France in the year 1855. There she seems tohave been a great success, particularly in the part of Myrrha; classicalwithout being cold, artistic without being academic, she brought to theinterpretation of the character of Alfieri’s great heroine thecolour-element of passion, the form-element of style. Jules Janin wasloud in his praises, the Emperor begged Ristori to join the troupe of theComédie Française, and Rachel, with the strange narrow jealousy of hernature, trembled for her laurels. Myrrha was followed by Marie Stuart, and Marie Stuart by Medea. In the latter part Madame Ristori excited thegreatest enthusiasm. Ary Scheffer designed her costumes for her; and theNiobe that stands in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, suggested to MadameRistori her famous pose in the scene with the children. She would notconsent, however, to remain in France, and we find her subsequentlyplaying in almost every country in the world from Egypt to Mexico, fromDenmark to Honolulu. Her representations of classical plays seem to havebeen always immensely admired. When she played at Athens, the Kingoffered to arrange for a performance in the beautiful old theatre ofDionysos, and during her tour in Portugal she produced _Medea_ before theUniversity of Coimbra. Her description of the latter engagement isextremely interesting. On her arrival at the University, she wasreceived by the entire body of the undergraduates, who still wear acostume almost mediæval in character. Some of them came on the stage inthe course of the play as the handmaidens of Creusa, hiding their blackbeards beneath heavy veils, and as soon as they had finished their partsthey took their places gravely among the audience, to Madame Ristori’shorror, still in their Greek dress, but with their veils thrown back andsmoking long cigars. ‘Ce n’est pas la première fois, ’ she says, ‘quej’ai dû empêcher, par un effort de volonté, la tragédie de se terminer enfarce. ’ Very interesting, also, is her account of the production ofMontanelli’s _Camma_, and she tells an amusing story of the arrest of theauthor by the French police on the charge of murder, in consequence of atelegram she sent to him in which the words ‘body of the victim’occurred. Indeed, the whole book is full of cleverly written stories, and admirable criticisms on dramatic art. I have quoted from the Frenchversion, which happens to be the one that lies before me, but whether inFrench or Italian the book is one of the most fascinating autobiographiesthat has appeared for some time, even in an age like ours when literaryegotism has been brought to such an exquisite pitch of perfection. 

_Etudes et Souvenirs_. By Madame Ristori. (Paul Ollendorff. )

ENGLISH POETESSES(_Queen_, December 8, 1888. )

England has given to the world one great poetess, Elizabeth BarrettBrowning. By her side Mr. Swinburne would place Miss Christina Rossetti, whose New Year hymn he describes as so much the noblest of sacred poemsin our language, that there is none which comes near it enough to standsecond. ‘It is a hymn, ’ he tells us, ‘touched as with the fire, andbathed as in the light of sunbeams, tuned as to chords and cadences ofrefluent sea-music beyond reach of harp and organ, large echoes of theserene and sonorous tides of heaven. ’ Much as I admire Miss Rossetti’swork, her subtle choice of words, her rich imagery, her artistic naïveté, wherein curious notes of strangeness and simplicity are fantasticallyblended together, I cannot but think that Mr. Swinburne has, with nobleand natural loyalty, placed her on too lofty a pedestal. To me, she issimply a very delightful artist in poetry. This is indeed something sorare that when we meet it we cannot fail to love it, but it is noteverything. Beyond it and above it are higher and more sunlit heights ofsong, a larger vision, and an ampler air, a music at once more passionateand more profound, a creative energy that is born of the spirit, a wingedrapture that is born of the soul, a force and fervour of mere utterancethat has all the wonder of the prophet, and not a little of theconsecration of the priest. 

Mrs. Browning is unapproachable by any woman who has ever touched lyre orblown through reed since the days of the great Æolian poetess. ButSappho, who to the antique world was a pillar of flame, is to us but apillar of shadow. Of her poems, burnt with other most precious work byByzantine Emperor and by Roman Pope, only a few fragments remain. Possibly they lie mouldering in the scented darkness of an Egyptian tomb, clasped in the withered hand of some long-dead lover. Some Greek monk atAthos may even now be poring over an ancient manuscript, whose crabbedcharacters conceal lyric or ode by her whom the Greeks spoke of as ‘thePoetess’ just as they termed Homer ‘the Poet, ’ who was to them the tenthMuse, the flower of the Graces, the child of Erôs, and the pride ofHellas—Sappho, with the sweet voice, the bright, beautiful eyes, the darkhyacinth coloured hair. But, practically, the work of the marvelloussinger of Lesbos is entirely lost to us. 

We have a few rose-leaves out of her garden, that is all. Literaturenowadays survives marble and bronze, but in the old days, in spite of theRoman poet’s noble boast, it was not so. The fragile clay vases of theGreeks still keep for us pictures of Sappho, delicately painted in blackand red and white; but of her song we have only the echo of an echo. 

Of all the women of history, Mrs. Browning is the only one that we couldname in any possible or remote conjunction with Sappho. 

Sappho was undoubtedly a far more flawless and perfect artist. Shestirred the whole antique world more than Mrs. Browning ever stirred ourmodern age. Never had Love such a singer. Even in the few lines thatremain to us the passion seems to scorch and burn. But, as unjust Time, who has crowned her with the barren laurels of fame, has twined with themthe dull poppies of oblivion, let us turn from the mere memory of apoetess to one whose song still remains to us as an imperishable glory toour literature; to her who heard the cry of the children from dark mineand crowded factory, and made England weep over its little ones; who, inthe feigned sonnets from the Portuguese, sang of the spiritual mystery ofLove, and of the intellectual gifts that Love brings to the soul; who hadfaith in all that is worthy, and enthusiasm for all that is great, andpity for all that suffers; who wrote the _Vision of Poets_ and _CasaGuidi Windows_ and _Aurora Leigh_. 

As one, to whom I owe my love of poetry no less than my love of country, said of her:

 Still on our ears The clear ‘Excelsior’ from a woman’s lip Rings out across the Apennines, although The woman’s brow lies pale and cold in death With all the mighty marble dead in Florence. For while great songs can stir the hearts of men, Spreading their full vibrations through the world In ever-widening circles till they reach The Throne of God, and song becomes a prayer, And prayer brings down the liberating strength That kindles nations to heroic deeds, She lives—the great-souled poetess who saw From Casa Guidi windows Freedom dawn On Italy, and gave the glory back In sunrise hymns to all Humanity!

She lives indeed, and not alone in the heart of Shakespeare’s England, but in the heart of Dante’s Italy also. To Greek literature she owed herscholarly culture, but modern Italy created her human passion forLiberty. When she crossed the Alps she became filled with a new ardour, and from that fine, eloquent mouth, that we can still see in herportraits, broke forth such a noble and majestic outburst of lyrical songas had not been heard from woman’s lips for more than two thousand years. It is pleasant to think that an English poetess was to a certain extent areal factor in bringing about that unity of Italy that was Dante’s dream, and if Florence drove her great singer into exile, she at least welcomedwithin her walls the later singer that England had sent to her. 

If one were asked the chief qualities of Mrs. Browning’s work, one wouldsay, as Mr. Swinburne said of Byron’s, its sincerity and its strength. Faults it, of course, possesses. ‘She would rhyme moon to table, ’ usedto be said of her in jest; and certainly no more monstrous rhymes are tobe found in all literature than some of those we come across in Mrs. Browning’s poems. But her ruggedness was never the result ofcarelessness. It was deliberate, as her letters to Mr. Horne show veryclearly. She refused to sandpaper her muse. She disliked facilesmoothness and artificial polish. In her very rejection of art she wasan artist. She intended to produce a certain effect by certain means, and she succeeded; and her indifference to complete assonance in rhymeoften gives a splendid richness to her verse, and brings into it apleasurable element of surprise. 

In philosophy she was a Platonist, in politics an Opportunist. Sheattached herself to no particular party. She loved the people when theywere king-like, and kings when they showed themselves to be men. Of thereal value and motive of poetry she had a most exalted idea. ‘Poetry, ’she says, in the preface of one of her volumes, ‘has been as serious athing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing. There has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistookpleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of thepoet. I have done my work so far, not as mere hand and head work apartfrom the personal being, but as the completest expression of that beingto which I could attain. ’

It certainly is her completest expression, and through it she realizesher fullest perfection. ‘The poet, ’ she says elsewhere, ‘is at oncericher and poorer than he used to be; he wears better broadcloth, butspeaks no more oracles. ’ These words give us the keynote to her view ofthe poet’s mission. He was to utter Divine oracles, to be at onceinspired prophet and holy priest; and as such we may, I think, withoutexaggeration, conceive her. She was a Sibyl delivering a message to theworld, sometimes through stammering lips, and once at least with blindedeyes, yet always with the true fire and fervour of lofty and unshakenfaith, always with the great raptures of a spiritual nature, the highardours of an impassioned soul. As we read her best poems we feel that, though Apollo’s shrine be empty and the bronze tripod overthrown, and thevale of Delphi desolate, still the Pythia is not dead. In our own ageshe has sung for us, and this land gave her new birth. Indeed, Mrs. Browning is the wisest of the Sibyls, wiser even than that mighty figurewhom Michael Angelo has painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel atRome, poring over the scroll of mystery, and trying to decipher thesecrets of Fate; for she realized that, while knowledge is power, suffering is part of knowledge. 

To her influence, almost as much as to the higher education of women, Iwould be inclined to attribute the really remarkable awakening of woman’ssong that characterizes the latter half of our century in England. Nocountry has ever had so many poetesses at once. Indeed, when oneremembers that the Greeks had only nine muses, one is sometimes apt tofancy that we have too many. And yet the work done by women in thesphere of poetry is really of a very high standard of excellence. InEngland we have always been prone to underrate the value of tradition inliterature. In our eagerness to find a new voice and a fresh mode ofmusic, we have forgotten how beautiful Echo may be. We look first forindividuality and personality, and these are, indeed, the chiefcharacteristics of the masterpieces of our literature, either in prose orverse; but deliberate culture and a study of the best models, if unitedto an artistic temperament and a nature susceptible of exquisiteimpressions, may produce much that is admirable, much that is worthy ofpraise. It would be quite impossible to give a complete catalogue of allthe women who since Mrs. Browning’s day have tried lute and lyre. Mrs. Pfeiffer, Mrs. Hamilton King, Mrs. Augusta Webster, Graham Tomson, MissMary Robinson, Jean Ingelow, Miss May Kendall, Miss Nesbit, Miss MayProbyn, Mrs. Craik, Mrs. Meynell, Miss Chapman, and many others have donereally good work in poetry, either in the grave Dorian mode of thoughtfuland intellectual verse, or in the light and graceful forms of old Frenchsong, or in the romantic manner of antique ballad, or in that ‘moment’smonument, ’ as Rossetti called it, the intense and concentrated sonnet. Occasionally one is tempted to wish that the quick, artistic faculty thatwomen undoubtedly possess developed itself somewhat more in prose andsomewhat less in verse. Poetry is for our highest moods, when we wish tobe with the gods, and in our poetry nothing but the very best shouldsatisfy us; but prose is for our daily bread, and the lack of good proseis one of the chief blots on our culture. French prose, even in thehands of the most ordinary writers, is always readable, but English proseis detestable. We have a few, a very few, masters, such as they are. Wehave Carlyle, who should not be imitated; and Mr. Pater, who, through thesubtle perfection of his form, is inimitable absolutely; and Mr. Froude, who is useful; and Matthew Arnold, who is a model; and Mr. GeorgeMeredith, who is a warning; and Mr. Lang, who is the divine amateur; andMr. Stevenson, who is the humane artist; and Mr. Ruskin, whose rhythm andcolour and fine rhetoric and marvellous music of words are entirelyunattainable. But the general prose that one reads in magazines and innewspapers is terribly dull and cumbrous, heavy in movement and uncouthor exaggerated in expression. Possibly some day our women of letterswill apply themselves more definitely to prose. 

Their light touch, and exquisite ear, and delicate sense of balance andproportion would be of no small service to us. I can fancy womenbringing a new manner into our literature. 

However, we have to deal here with women as poetesses, and it isinteresting to note that, though Mrs. Browning’s influence undoubtedlycontributed very largely to the development of this new song-movement, ifI may so term it, still there seems to have been never a time during thelast three hundred years when the women of this kingdom did notcultivate, if not the art, at least the habit, of writing poetry. 

Who the first English poetess was I cannot say. I believe it was theAbbess Juliana Berners, who lived in the fifteenth century; but I have nodoubt that Mr. Freeman would be able at a moment’s notice to produce somewonderful Saxon or Norman poetess, whose works cannot be read without aglossary, and even with its aid are completely unintelligible. For myown part, I am content with the Abbess Juliana, who wroteenthusiastically about hawking; and after her I would mention Anne Askew, who in prison and on the eve of her fiery martyrdom wrote a ballad thathas, at any rate, a pathetic and historical interest. Queen Elizabeth’s‘most sweet and sententious ditty’ on Mary Stuart is highly praised byPuttenham, a contemporary critic, as an example of ‘Exargasia, or theGorgeous in Literature, ’ which somehow seems a very suitable epithet forsuch a great Queen’s poems. The term she applies to the unfortunateQueen of Scots, ‘the daughter of debate, ’ has, of course, long sincepassed into literature. The Countess of Pembroke, Sir Philip Sidney’ssister, was much admired as a poetess in her day. 

In 1613 the ‘learned, virtuous, and truly noble ladie, ’ Elizabeth Carew, published a _Tragedie of Marian_, _the Faire Queene of Jewry_, and a fewyears later the ‘noble ladie Diana Primrose’ wrote _A Chain of Pearl_, which is a panegyric on the ‘peerless graces’ of Gloriana. Mary Morpeth, the friend and admirer of Drummond of Hawthornden; Lady Mary Wroth, towhom Ben Jonson dedicated _The Alchemist_; and the Princess Elizabeth, the sister of Charles I. , should also be mentioned. 

After the Restoration women applied themselves with still greater ardourto the study of literature and the practice of poetry. Margaret, Duchessof Newcastle, was a true woman of letters, and some of her verses areextremely pretty and graceful. Mrs. Aphra Behn was the firstEnglishwoman who adopted literature as a regular profession. Mrs. Katharine Philips, according to Mr. Gosse, invented sentimentality. Asshe was praised by Dryden, and mourned by Cowley, let us hope she may beforgiven. Keats came across her poems at Oxford when he was writing_Endymion_, and found in one of them ‘a most delicate fancy of theFletcher kind’; but I fear nobody reads the Matchless Orinda now. OfLady Winchelsea’s _Nocturnal Reverie_ Wordsworth said that, with theexception of Pope’s _Windsor Forest_, it was the only poem of the periodintervening between _Paradise Lost_ and Thomson’s _Seasons_ thatcontained a single new image of external nature. Lady Rachel Russell, who may be said to have inaugurated the letter-writing literature ofEngland; Eliza Haywood, who is immortalized by the badness of her work, and has a niche in _The Dunciad_; and the Marchioness of Wharton, whosepoems Waller said he admired, are very remarkable types, the finest ofthem being, of course, the first named, who was a woman of heroic mouldand of a most noble dignity of nature. 

Indeed, though the English poetesses up to the time of Mrs. Browningcannot be said to have produced any work of absolute genius, they arecertainly interesting figures, fascinating subjects for study. Amongstthem we find Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who had all the caprice ofCleopatra, and whose letters are delightful reading; Mrs. Centlivre, whowrote one brilliant comedy; Lady Anne Barnard, whose _Auld Robin Gray_was described by Sir Walter Scott as ‘worth all the dialogues Corydon andPhillis have together spoken from the days of Theocritus downwards, ’ andis certainly a very beautiful and touching poem; Esther Vanhomrigh andHester Johnson, the Vanessa and the Stella of Dean Swift’s life; Mrs. Thrale, the friend of the great lexicographer; the worthy Mrs. Barbauld;the excellent Miss Hannah More; the industrious Joanna Baillie; theadmirable Mrs. Chapone, whose _Ode to Solitude_ always fills me with thewildest passion for society, and who will at least be remembered as thepatroness of the establishment at which Becky Sharp was educated; MissAnna Seward, who was called ‘The Swan of Lichfield’; poor L. E. L. WhomDisraeli described in one of his clever letters to his sister as ‘thepersonification of Brompton—pink satin dress, white satin shoes, redcheeks, snub nose, and her hair _à la_ Sappho’; Mrs. Ratcliffe, whointroduced the romantic novel, and has consequently much to answer for;the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, of whom Gibbon said that she was‘made for something better than a Duchess’; the two wonderful sisters, Lady Dufferin and Mrs. Norton; Mrs. Tighe, whose _Psyche_ Keats read withpleasure; Constantia Grierson, a marvellous blue-stocking in her time;Mrs. Hemans; pretty, charming ‘Perdita, ’ who flirted alternately withpoetry and the Prince Regent, played divinely in the _Winter’s Tale_, wasbrutally attacked by Gifford, and has left us a pathetic little poem on aSnowdrop; and Emily Brontë, whose poems are instinct with tragic power, and seem often on the verge of being great. 

Old fashions in literature are not so pleasant as old fashions in dress. I like the costume of the age of powder better than the poetry of the ageof Pope. But if one adopts the historical standpoint—and this is, indeed, the only standpoint from which we can ever form a fair estimateof work that is not absolutely of the highest order—we cannot fail to seethat many of the English poetesses who preceded Mrs. Browning were womenof no ordinary talent, and that if the majority of them looked uponpoetry simply as a department of _belles lettres_, so in most cases didtheir contemporaries. Since Mrs. Browning’s day our woods have becomefull of singing birds, and if I venture to ask them to apply themselvesmore to prose and less to song, it is not that I like poetical prose, butthat I love the prose of poets. 

VENUS OR VICTORY(_Pall Mall Gazette_, February 24, 1888. )

There are certain problems in archæology that seem to possess a realromantic interest, and foremost among these is the question of theso-called Venus of Melos. Who is she, this marble mutilated goddess whomGautier loved, to whom Heine bent his knee? What sculptor wrought her, and for what shrine? Whose hands walled her up in that rude niche wherethe Melian peasant found her? What symbol of her divinity did she carry?Was it apple of gold or shield of bronze? Where is her city and what washer name among gods and men? The last writer on this fascinating subjectis Mr. Stillman, who in a most interesting book recently published inAmerica, claims that the work of art in question is no sea-born andfoam-born Aphrodite, but the very Victory Without Wings that once stoodin the little chapel outside the gates of the Acropolis at Athens. Solong ago as 1826, that is to say six years after the discovery of thestatue, the Venus hypothesis was violently attacked by Millingen, andfrom that time to this the battle of the archæologists has never ceased. Mr. Stillman, who fights, of course, under Millingen’s banner, points outthat the statue is not of the Venus type at all, being far too heroic incharacter to correspond to the Greek conception of Aphrodite at anyperiod of their artistic development, but that it agrees distinctly withcertain well-known statues of Victory, such as the celebrated ‘Victory ofBrescia. ’ The latter is in bronze, is later, and has the wings, but thetype is unmistakable, and though not a reproduction it is certainly arecollection of the Melian statue. The representation of Victory on thecoin of Agathocles is also obviously of the Melian type, and in themuseum of Naples is a terra-cotta Victory in almost the identical actionand drapery. As for Dumont d’Urville’s statement that, when the statuewas discovered, one hand held an apple and the other a fold of thedrapery, the latter is obviously a mistake, and the whole evidence on thesubject is so contradictory that no reliance can be placed on thestatement made by the French Consul and the French naval officers, noneof whom seems to have taken the trouble to ascertain whether the arm andhand now in the Louvre were really found in the same niche as the statueat all. At any rate, these fragments seem to be of extremely inferiorworkmanship, and they are so imperfect that they are quite worthless asdata for measure or opinion. So far, Mr. Stillman is on old ground. Hisreal artistic discovery is this. In working about the Acropolis ofAthens, some years ago, he photographed among other sculptures themutilated Victories in the Temple of Nikè Apteros, the ‘WinglessVictory, ’ the little Ionic temple in which stood that statue of Victoryof which it was said that ‘_the Athenians made her without wings that shemight never leave Athens_. ’ Looking over the photographs afterwards, when the impression of the comparatively diminutive size had passed, hewas struck with the close resemblance of the type to that of the Melianstatue. Now, this resemblance is so striking that it cannot bequestioned by any one who has an eye for form. There are the same largeheroic proportions, the same ampleness of physical development, and thesame treatment of drapery, and there is also that perfect spiritualkinship which, to any true antiquarian, is one of the most valuable modesof evidence. Now it is generally admitted on both sides that the Melianstatue is probably Attic in its origin, and belongs certainly to theperiod between Phidias and Praxiteles, that is to say, to the age ofScopas, if it be not actually the work of Scopas himself; and as it is toScopas that these bas-reliefs have been always attributed, the similarityof style can, on Mr. Stillman’s hypothesis, be easily accounted for. 

As regards the appearance of the statue in Melos, Mr. Stillman points outthat Melos belonged to Athens as late as she had any Greek allegiance, and that it is probable that the statue was sent there for concealment onthe occasion of some siege or invasion. When this took place, Mr. Stillman does not pretend to decide with any degree of certainty, but itis evident that it must have been subsequent to the establishment of theRoman hegemony, as the brickwork of the niche in which the statue wasfound is clearly Roman in character, and before the time of Pausanias andPliny, as neither of these antiquaries mentions the statue. Accepting, then, the statue as that of the Victory Without Wings, Mr. Stillmanagrees with Millingen in supposing that in her left hand she held abronze shield, the lower rim of which rested on the left knee where somemarks of the kind are easily recognizable, while with her right hand shetraced, or had just finished tracing, the names of the great heroes ofAthens. Valentin’s objection, that if this were so the left thigh wouldincline outwards so as to secure a balance, Mr. Stillman meets partly bythe analogy of the Victory of Brescia and partly by the evidence ofNature herself; for he has had a model photographed in the same positionas the statue and holding a shield in the manner he proposes in hisrestoration. The result is precisely the contrary to that which Valentinassumes. Of course, Mr. Stillman’s solution of the whole matter must notbe regarded as an absolutely scientific demonstration. It is simply aninduction in which a kind of artistic instinct, not communicable orequally valuable to all people, has had the greatest part, but to thismode of interpretation archæologists as a class have been far tooindifferent; and it is certain that in the present case it has given us atheory which is most fruitful and suggestive. 

The little temple of Nikè Apteros has had, as Mr. Stillman reminds us, adestiny unique of its kind. Like the Parthenon, it was standing littlemore than two hundred years ago, but during the Turkish occupation it wasrazed, and its stones all built into the great bastion which covered thefront of the Acropolis and blocked up the staircase to the Propylæa. Itwas dug out and restored, nearly every stone in its place, by two Germanarchitects during the reign of Otho, and it stands again just asPausanias described it on the spot where old Ægeus watched for the returnof Theseus from Crete. In the distance are Salamis and Ægina, and beyondthe purple hills lies Marathon. If the Melian statue be indeed theVictory Without Wings, she had no unworthy shrine. 

There are some other interesting essays in Mr. Stillman’s book on thewonderful topographical knowledge of Ithaca displayed in the _Odyssey_, and discussions of this kind are always interesting as long as there isno attempt to represent Homer as the ordinary literary man; but thearticle on the Melian statue is by far the most important and the mostdelightful. Some people will, no doubt, regret the possibility of thedisappearance of the old name, and as Venus not as Victory will stillworship the stately goddess, but there are others who will be glad to seein her the image and ideal of that spiritual enthusiasm to which Athensowed her liberty, and by which alone can liberty be won. 

_On the Track of Ulysses_; _together with an Excursion in Quest of theSo-called Venus of Melos_. By W. J. Stillman. (Houghton, Mifflin andCo. , Boston. )

M. CARO ON GEORGE SAND(_Pall Mall Gazette_, April 14, 1888. )

The biography of a very great man from the pen of a very ladylikewriter—this is the best description we can give of M. Caro’s Life ofGeorge Sand. The late Professor of the Sorbonne could chatter charminglyabout culture, and had all the fascinating insincerity of an accomplishedphrase-maker; being an extremely superior person he had a great contemptfor Democracy and its doings, but he was always popular with theDuchesses of the Faubourg, as there was nothing in history or inliterature that he could not explain away for their edification; havingnever done anything remarkable he was naturally elected a member of theAcademy, and he always remained loyal to the traditions of thatthoroughly respectable and thoroughly pretentious institution. In fact, he was just the sort of man who should never have attempted to write aLife of George Sand or to interpret George Sand’s genius. He was toofeminine to appreciate the grandeur of that large womanly nature, toomuch of a _dilettante_ to realize the masculine force of that strong andardent mind. He never gets at the secret of George Sand, and neverbrings us near to her wonderful personality. He looks on her simply as alittérateur, as a writer of pretty stories of country life and ofcharming, if somewhat exaggerated, romances. But George Sand was muchmore than this. Beautiful as are such books as _Consuelo_ and _Mauprat_, _François le Champi_ and _La Mare au Diable_, yet in none of them is sheadequately expressed, by none of them is she adequately revealed. As Mr. Matthew Arnold said, many years ago, ‘We do not know George Sand unlesswe feel the spirit which goes through her work as a whole. ’ With thisspirit, however, M. Caro has no sympathy. Madame Sand’s doctrines areantediluvian, he tells us, her philosophy is quite dead and her ideas ofsocial regeneration are Utopian, incoherent and absurd. The best thingfor us to do is to forget these silly dreams and to read _Teverino_ and_Le Secrétaire Intime_. Poor M. Caro! This spirit, which he treats withsuch airy flippancy, is the very leaven of modern life. It is remouldingthe world for us and fashioning our age anew. If it is antediluvian, itis so because the deluge is yet to come; if it is Utopian, then Utopiamust be added to our geographies. To what curious straits M. Caro isdriven by his violent prejudices may be estimated by the fact that hetries to class George Sand’s novels with the old _Chansons de geste_, thestories of adventure characteristic of primitive literatures; whereas inusing fiction as a vehicle of thought, and romance as a means ofinfluencing the social ideals of her age, George Sand was merely carryingout the traditions of Voltaire and Rousseau, of Diderot and ofChateaubriand. The novel, says M. Caro, must be allied either to poetryor to science. That it has found in philosophy one of its strongestallies seems not to have occurred to him. In an English critic such aview might possibly be excusable. Our greatest novelists, such asFielding, Scott and Thackeray, cared little for the philosophy of theirage. But coming, as it does, from a French critic, the statement seemsto show a strange want of recognition of one of the most importantelements of French fiction. Nor, even in the narrow limits that he hasimposed upon himself, can M. Caro be said to be a very fortunate orfelicitous critic. To take merely one instance out of many, he saysnothing of George Sand’s delightful treatment of art and the artist’slife. And yet how exquisitely does she analyse each separate art andpresent it to us in its relation to life! In _Consuelo_ she tells us ofmusic; in _Horace_ of authorship; in _Le Château des Désertes_ of acting;in _Les Maîtres Mosaïstes_ of mosaic work; in _Le Château de Pictordu_ ofportrait painting; and in _La Daniella_ of the painting of landscape. What Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Browning have done for England she did forFrance. She invented an art literature. It is unnecessary, however, todiscuss any of M. Caro’s minor failings, for the whole effect of thebook, so far as it attempts to portray for us the scope and character ofGeorge Sand’s genius, is entirely spoiled by the false attitude assumedfrom the beginning, and though the dictum may seem to many harsh andexclusive, we cannot help feeling that an absolute incapacity forappreciating the spirit of a great writer is no qualification for writinga treatise on the subject. 

As for Madame Sand’s private life, which is so intimately connected withher art (for, like Goethe, she had to live her romances before she couldwrite them), M. Caro says hardly anything about it. He passes it overwith a modesty that almost makes one blush, and for fear of wounding thesusceptibilities of those _grandes dames_ whose passions M. Paul Bourgetanalyses with such subtlety, he transforms her mother, who was a typicalFrench _grisette_, into ‘a very amiable and _spirituelle_ milliner’! Itmust be admitted that Joseph Surface himself could hardly show greatertact and delicacy, though we ourselves must plead guilty to preferringMadame Sand’s own description of her as an ‘enfant du vieux pavé deParis. ’

_George Sand_. By the late Elmé Marie Caro. Translated by GustaveMasson, B. A. , Assistant Master, Harrow School. ‘Great French Writers’Series. (Routledge and Sons. )

A FASCINATING BOOK(_Woman’s World_, November 1888. )

Mr. Alan Cole’s carefully-edited translation of M. Lefébure’s history of_Embroidery and Lace_ is one of the most fascinating books that hasappeared on this delightful subject. M. Lefébure is one of theadministrators of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at Paris, besides being alace manufacturer; and his work has not merely an important historicalvalue, but as a handbook of technical instruction it will be found of thegreatest service by all needle-women. Indeed, as the translator himselfpoints out, M. Lefébure’s book suggests the question whether it is notrather by the needle and the bobbin, than by the brush, the graver or thechisel, that the influence of woman should assert itself in the arts. InEurope, at any rate, woman is sovereign in the domain of art-needlework, and few men would care to dispute with her the right of using thosedelicate implements so intimately associated with the dexterity of hernimble and slender fingers; nor is there any reason why the productionsof embroidery should not, as Mr. Alan Cole suggests, be placed on thesame level with those of painting, engraving and sculpture, though theremust always be a great difference between those purely decorative artsthat glorify their own material and the more imaginative arts in whichthe material is, as it were, annihilated, and absorbed into the creationof a new form. In the beautifying of modern houses it certainly must beadmitted—indeed, it should be more generally recognized than it is—thatrich embroidery on hangings and curtains, _portières_, couches and thelike, produces a far more decorative and far more artistic effect thancan be gained from our somewhat wearisome English practice of coveringthe walls with pictures and engravings; and the almost completedisappearance of embroidery from dress has robbed modern costume of oneof the chief elements of grace and fancy. 

That, however, a great improvement has taken place in English embroideryduring the last ten or fifteen years cannot, I think, be denied. It isshown, not merely in the work of individual artists, such as Mrs. Holiday, Miss May Morris and others, but also in the admirableproductions of the South Kensington School of Embroidery (thebest—indeed, the only real good—school that South Kensington hasproduced). It is pleasant to note on turning over the leaves of M. Lefébure’s book, that in this we are merely carrying out certain oldtraditions of Early English art. In the seventh century, St. Ethelreda, first abbess of the monastery of Ely, made an offering to St. Cuthbert ofa sacred ornament she had worked with gold and precious stones, and thecope and maniple of St. Cuthbert, which are preserved at Durham, areconsidered to be specimens of _opus Anglicanum_. In the year 800, theBishop of Durham allotted the income of a farm of two hundred acres forlife to an embroideress named Eanswitha, in consideration of her keepingin repair the vestments of the clergy in his diocese. The battlestandard of King Alfred was embroidered by Danish Princesses; and theAnglo-Saxon Gudric gave Alcuid a piece of land, on condition that sheinstructed his daughter in needle-work. Queen Mathilda bequeathed to theAbbey of the Holy Trinity at Caen a tunic embroidered at Winchester bythe wife of one Alderet; and when William presented himself to theEnglish nobles, after the Battle of Hastings, he wore a mantle coveredwith Anglo-Saxon embroideries, which is probably, M. Lefébure suggests, the same as that mentioned in the inventory of the Bayeux Cathedral, where, after the entry relating to the _broderie à telle_ (representingthe conquest of England), two mantles are described—one of King William, ‘all of gold, powdered with crosses and blossoms of gold, and edged alongthe lower border with an orphrey of figures. ’ The most splendid exampleof the _opus Anglicanum_ now in existence is, of course, the Syon cope atthe South Kensington Museum; but English work seems to have beencelebrated all over the Continent. Pope Innocent IV. So admired thesplendid vestments worn by the English clergy in 1246, that he orderedsimilar articles from Cistercian monasteries in England. St. Dunstan, the artistic English monk, was known as a designer for embroideries; andthe stole of St. Thomas à Becket is still preserved in the cathedral atSens, and shows us the interlaced scroll-forms used by Anglo-Saxon MS. Illuminators. 

How far this modern artistic revival of rich and delicate embroidery willbear fruit depends, of course, almost entirely on the energy and studythat women are ready to devote to it; but I think that it must beadmitted that all our decorative arts in Europe at present have, atleast, this element of strength—that they are in immediate relationshipwith the decorative arts of Asia. Wherever we find in European history arevival of decorative art, it has, I fancy, nearly always been due toOriental influence and contact with Oriental nations. Our own keenlyintellectual art has more than once been ready to sacrifice realdecorative beauty either to imitative presentation or to ideal motive. It has taken upon itself the burden of expression, and has sought tointerpret the secrets of thought and passion. In its marvellous truth ofpresentation it has found its strength, and yet its weakness is therealso. It is never with impunity that an art seeks to mirror life. IfTruth has her revenge upon those who do not follow her, she is oftenpitiless to her worshippers. In Byzantium the two arts met—Greek art, with its intellectual sense of form, and its quick sympathy withhumanity; Oriental art, with its gorgeous materialism, its frankrejection of imitation, its wonderful secrets of craft and colour, itssplendid textures, its rare metals and jewels, its marvellous andpriceless traditions. They had, indeed, met before, but in Byzantiumthey were married; and the sacred tree of the Persians, the palm ofZoroaster, was embroidered on the hem of the garments of the Westernworld. Even the Iconoclasts, the Philistines of theological history, who, in one of those strange outbursts of rage against Beauty that seemto occur only amongst European nations, rose up against the wonder andmagnificence of the new art, served merely to distribute its secrets morewidely; and in the _Liber Pontificalis_, written in 687 by Athanasius, the librarian, we read of an influx into Rome of gorgeous embroideries, the work of men who had arrived from Constantinople and from Greece. Thetriumph of the Mussulman gave the decorative art of Europe a newdeparture—that very principle of their religion that forbade the actualrepresentation of any object in nature being of the greatest artisticservice to them, though it was not, of course, strictly carried out. TheSaracens introduced into Sicily the art of weaving silken and goldenfabrics; and from Sicily the manufacture of fine stuffs spread to theNorth of Italy, and became localized in Genoa, Florence, Venice, andother towns. A still greater art-movement took place in Spain under theMoors and Saracens, who brought over workmen from Persia to makebeautiful things for them. M. Lefébure tells us of Persian embroiderypenetrating as far as Andalusia; and Almeria, like Palermo, had its Hôteldes Tiraz, which rivalled the Hôtel des Tiraz at Bagdad, _tiraz_ beingthe generic name for ornamental tissues and costumes made with them. Spangles (those pretty little discs of gold, silver, or polished steel, used in certain embroidery for dainty glinting effects) were a Saracenicinvention; and Arabic letters often took the place of letters in theRoman characters for use in inscriptions upon embroidered robes andMiddle Age tapestries, their decorative value being so much greater. Thebook of crafts by Etienne Boileau, provost of the merchants in 1258–1268, contains a curious enumeration of the different craft-guilds of Paris, among which we find ‘the tapiciers, or makers of the _tapis sarrasinois_(or Saracen cloths), who say that their craft is for the service only ofchurches, or great men like kings and counts’; and, indeed, even in ourown day, nearly all our words descriptive of decorative textures anddecorative methods point to an Oriental origin. What the inroads of theMohammedans did for Sicily and Spain, the return of the Crusaders did forthe other countries of Europe. The nobles who left for Palestine clad inarmour, came back in the rich stuffs of the East; and their costumes, pouches (_aumônières sarrasinoises_), and caparisons excited theadmiration of the needle-workers of the West. Matthew Paris says that atthe sacking of Antioch, in 1098, gold, silver and priceless costumes wereso equally distributed among the Crusaders, that many who the nightbefore were famishing and imploring relief, suddenly found themselvesoverwhelmed with wealth; and Robert de Clair tells us of the wonderfulfêtes that followed the capture of Constantinople. The thirteenthcentury, as M. Lefébure points out, was conspicuous for an increaseddemand in the West for embroidery. Many Crusaders made offerings tochurches of plunder from Palestine; and St. Louis, on his return from thefirst Crusade, offered thanks at St. Denis to God for mercies bestowed onhim during his six years’ absence and travel, and presented some richlyembroidered stuffs to be used on great occasions as coverings to thereliquaries containing the relics of holy martyrs. European embroidery, having thus become possessed of new materials and wonderful methods, developed on its own intellectual and imitative lines, inclining, as itwent on, to the purely pictorial, and seeking to rival painting, and toproduce landscapes and figure-subjects with elaborate perspective andsubtle aerial effects. A fresh Oriental influence, however, came throughthe Dutch and the Portuguese, and the famous _Compagnie des GrandesIndes_; and M. Lefébure gives an illustration of a door-hanging now inthe Cluny Museum, where we find the French _fleurs-de-lys_ intermixedwith Indian ornament. The hangings of Madame de Maintenon’s room atFontainebleau, which were embroidered at St. Cyr, represent Chinesescenery upon a jonquil-yellow ground. 

Clothes were sent out ready cut to the East to be embroidered, and manyof the delightful coats of the period of Louis XV. And Louis XVI. Owetheir dainty decoration to the needles of Chinese artists. In our ownday the influence of the East is strongly marked. Persia has sent us hercarpets for patterns, and Cashmere her lovely shawls, and India herdainty muslins finely worked with gold thread palmates, and stitched overwith iridescent beetles’ wings. We are beginning now to dye by Orientalmethods, and the silk robes of China and Japan have taught us new wondersof colour-combination, and new subtleties of delicate design. Whether wehave yet learned to make a wise use of what we have acquired is lesscertain. If books produce an effect, this book of M. Lefébure shouldcertainly make us study with still deeper interest the whole question ofembroidery, and by those who already work with their needles it will befound full of most fertile suggestion and most admirable advice. 

Even to read of the marvellous works of embroidery that were fashioned inbygone ages is pleasant. Time has kept a few fragments of Greekembroidery of the fourth century B. C. For us. One is figured in M. Lefébure’s book—a chain-stitch embroidery of yellow flax upon amulberry-coloured worsted material, with graceful spirals andpalmetto-patterns: and another, a tapestried cloth powdered with ducks, was reproduced in the _Woman’s World_ some months ago for an article byMr. Alan Cole. {115} Now and then we find in the tomb of some deadEgyptian a piece of delicate work. In the treasury at Ratisbon ispreserved a specimen of Byzantine embroidery on which the EmperorConstantine is depicted riding on a white palfrey, and receiving homagefrom the East and West. Metz has a red silk cope wrought with greateagles, the gift of Charlemagne, and Bayeux the needle-wrought epic ofQueen Matilda. But where is the great crocus-coloured robe, wrought forAthena, on which the gods fought against the giants? Where is the hugevelarium that Nero stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, on which wasrepresented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by steeds?How one would like to see the curious table-napkins wrought forHeliogabalus, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands thatcould be wanted for a feast; or the mortuary-cloth of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; or the fantastic robes that excitedthe indignation of the Bishop of Pontus, and were embroidered with‘lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks, hunters—all, in fact, thatpainters can copy from nature. ’ Charles of Orleans had a coat, on thesleeves of which were embroidered the verses of a song beginning‘_Madame_, _je suis tout joyeux_, ’ the musical accompaniment of the wordsbeing wrought in gold thread, and each note, of square shape in thosedays, formed with four pearls. {116} The room prepared in the palace atRheims for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy was decorated with ‘thirteenhundred and twenty-one _papegauts_ (parrots) made in broidery andblazoned with the King’s arms, and five hundred and sixty-onebutterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented with the Queen’sarms—the whole worked in fine gold. ’ Catherine de Medicis had amourning-bed made for her ‘of black velvet embroidered with pearls andpowdered with crescents and suns. ’ Its curtains were of damask, ‘withleafy wreaths and garlands figured upon a gold and silver ground, andfringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, ’ and it stood in aroom hung with rows of the Queen’s devices in cut black velvet on clothof silver. Louis XIV. Had gold-embroidered caryatides fifteen feet highin his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was made ofSmyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises and pearls, with versesfrom the Koran; its supports were of silver-gilt, beautifully chased andprofusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. He had taken itfrom the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mahomet hadstood under it. The Duchess de la Ferté wore a dress of reddish-brownvelvet, the skirt of which, adjusted in graceful folds, was held up bybig butterflies made of Dresden china; the front was a _tablier_ of clothof silver, upon which was embroidered an orchestra of musicians arrangedin a pyramidal group, consisting of a series of six ranks of performers, with beautiful instruments wrought in raised needle-work. ‘Into thenight go one and all, ’ as Mr. Henley sings in his charming _Ballade ofDead Actors_. 

Many of the facts related by M. Lefébure about the embroiderers’ guildsare also extremely interesting. Etienne Boileau, in his book of crafts, to which I have already alluded, tells us that a member of the guild wasprohibited from using gold of less value than ‘eight sous (about 6s. ) theskein; he was bound to use the best silk, and never to mix thread withsilk, because that made the work false and bad. ’ The test or trial pieceprescribed for a worker who was the son of a master-embroiderer was ‘asingle figure, a sixth of the natural size, to be shaded in gold’; whilstone not the son of a master was required to produce ‘a complete incidentwith many figures. ’ The book of crafts also mentions ‘cutters-out andstencillers and illuminators’ amongst those employed in the industry ofembroidery. In 1551 the Parisian Corporation of Embroiderers issued anotice that ‘for the future, the colouring in representations of nudefigures and faces should be done in three or four gradations ofcarnation-dyed silk, and not, as formerly, in white silks. ’ During thefifteenth century every household of any position retained the servicesof an embroiderer by the year. The preparation of colours also, whetherfor painting or for dyeing threads and textile fabrics, was a matterwhich, M. Lefébure points out, received close attention from the artistsof the Middle Ages. Many undertook long journeys to obtain the morefamous recipes, which they filed, subsequently adding to and correctingthem as experience dictated. Nor were great artists above making andsupplying designs for embroidery. Raphael made designs for Francis I. , and Boucher for Louis XV. ; and in the Ambras collection at Vienna is asuperb set of sacerdotal robes from designs by the brothers Van Eyck andtheir pupils. Early in the sixteenth century books of embroidery designswere produced, and their success was so great that in a few years French, German, Italian, Flemish, and English publishers spread broadcast booksof design made by their best engravers. In the same century, in order togive the designers opportunity of studying directly from nature, JeanRobin opened a garden with conservatories, in which he cultivated strangevarieties of plants then but little known in our latitudes. The richbrocades and brocadelles of the time are characterized by theintroduction of large flowery patterns, with pomegranates and otherfruits with fine foliage. 

The second part of M. Lefébure’s book is devoted to the history of lace, and though some may not find it quite as interesting as the earlierportion it will more than repay perusal; and those who still work in thisdelicate and fanciful art will find many valuable suggestions in it, aswell as a large number of exceedingly beautiful designs. Compared toembroidery, lace seems comparatively modern. M. Lefébure and Mr. AlanCole tell us that there is no reliable or documentary evidence to provethe existence of lace before the fifteenth century. Of course in theEast, light tissues, such as gauzes, muslins, and nets, were made at veryearly times, and were used as veils and scarfs after the manner ofsubsequent laces, and women enriched them with some sort of embroidery, or varied the openness of them by here and there drawing out threads. The threads of fringes seem also to have been plaited and knottedtogether, and the borders of one of the many fashions of Roman toga wereof open reticulated weaving. The Egyptian Museum at the Louvre has acurious network embellished with glass beads; and the monk Reginald, whotook part in opening the tomb of St. Cuthbert at Durham in the twelfthcentury, writes that the Saint’s shroud had a fringe of linen threads aninch long, surmounted by a border, ‘worked upon the threads, ’ withrepresentations of birds and pairs of beasts, there being between eachsuch pair a branching tree, a survival of the palm of Zoroaster, to whichI have before alluded. Our authors, however, do not in these examplesrecognize lace, the production of which involves more refined andartistic methods, and postulates a combination of skill and variedexecution carried to a higher degree of perfection. Lace, as we know it, seems to have had its origin in the habit of embroidering linen. Whiteembroidery on linen has, M. Lefébure remarks, a cold and monotonousaspect; that with coloured threads is brighter and gayer in effect, butis apt to fade in frequent washing; but white embroidery relieved by openspaces in, or shapes cut from, the linen ground, is possessed of anentirely new charm; and from a sense of this the birth may be traced ofan art in the result of which happy contrasts are effected betweenornamental details of close texture and others of open-work. 

Soon, also, was suggested the idea that, instead of laboriouslywithdrawing threads from stout linen, it would be more convenient tointroduce a needle-made pattern into an open network ground, which wascalled a _lacis_. Of this kind of embroidery many specimens are extant. The Cluny Museum possesses a linen cap said to have belonged to CharlesV. ; and an alb of linen drawn-thread work, supposed to have been made byAnne of Bohemia (1527), is preserved in the cathedral at Prague. Catherine de Medicis had a bed draped with squares of _réseuil_, or_lacis_, and it is recorded that ‘the girls and servants of her householdconsumed much time in making squares of _réseuil_. ’ The interestingpattern-books for open-ground embroidery, of which the first waspublished in 1527 by Pierre Quinty, of Cologne, supply us with the meansof tracing the stages in the transition from white thread embroidery toneedle-point lace. We meet in them with a style of needle-work whichdiffers from embroidery in not being wrought upon a stuff foundation. Itis, in fact, true lace, done, as it were, ‘in the air, ’ both ground andpattern being entirely produced by the lace-maker. 

The elaborate use of lace in costume was, of course, largely stimulatedby the fashion of wearing ruffs, and their companion cuffs or sleeves. Catherine de Medicis induced one Frederic Vinciolo to come from Italy andmake ruffs and gadrooned collars, the fashion of which she started inFrance; and Henry III. Was so punctilious over his ruffs that he wouldiron and goffer his cuffs and collars himself rather than see theirpleats limp and out of shape. The pattern-books also gave a greatimpulse to the art. M. Lefébure mentions German books with patterns ofeagles, heraldic emblems, hunting scenes, and plants and leaves belongingto Northern vegetation; and Italian books, in which the _motifs_ consistof oleander blossoms, and elegant wreaths and scrolls, landscapes withmythological scenes, and hunting episodes, less realistic than theNorthern ones, in which appear fauns, and nymphs or _amorini_ shootingarrows. With regard to these patterns, M. Lefébure notices a curiousfact. The oldest painting in which lace is depicted is that of a lady, by Carpaccio, who died about 1523. The cuffs of the lady are edged witha narrow lace, the pattern of which reappears in Vecellio’s _Corona_, abook not published until 1591. This particular pattern was, therefore, in use at least eighty years before it got into circulation with otherpublished patterns. 

It was not, however, till the seventeenth century that lace acquired areally independent character and individuality, and M. Duplessis statesthat the production of the more noteworthy of early laces owes more tothe influence of men than to that of women. The reign of Louis XIV. Witnessed the production of the most stately needle-point laces, thetransformation of Venetian point, and the growth of _Points d’Alençon_, _d’Argentan_, _de Bruxelles_ and _d’Angleterre_. 

The king, aided by Colbert, determined to make France the centre, ifpossible, for lace manufacture, sending for this purpose both to Veniceand to Flanders for workers. The studio of the Gobelins supplieddesigns. The dandies had their huge rabatos or bands falling frombeneath the chin over the breast, and great prelates, like Bossuet andFénelon, wore their wonderful albs and rochets. It is related of acollar made at Venice for Louis XIV. That the lace-workers, being unableto find sufficiently fine horse-hair, employed some of their own hairsinstead, in order to secure that marvellous delicacy of work which theyaimed at producing. 

In the eighteenth century, Venice, finding that laces of lighter texturewere sought after, set herself to make rose-point; and at the Court ofLouis XV. The choice of lace was regulated by still more elaborateetiquette. The Revolution, however, ruined many of the manufactures. Alençon survived, and Napoleon encouraged it, and endeavoured to renewthe old rules about the necessity of wearing point-lace at Courtreceptions. A wonderful piece of lace, powdered over with devices ofbees, and costing 40, 000 francs, was ordered. It was begun for theEmpress Josephine, but in the course of its making her escutcheons werereplaced by those of Marie Louise. 

M. Lefébure concludes his interesting history by stating very clearly hisattitude towards machine-made lace. ‘It would be an obvious loss toart, ’ he says, ‘should the making of lace by hand become extinct, formachinery, as skilfully devised as possible, cannot do what the handdoes. ’ It can give us ‘the results of processes, not the creations ofartistic handicraft. ’ Art is absent ‘where formal calculation pretendsto supersede emotion’; it is absent ‘where no trace can be detected ofintelligence guiding handicraft, whose hesitancies even possess peculiarcharm . . . Cheapness is never commendable in respect of things which arenot absolute necessities; it lowers artistic standard. ’ These areadmirable remarks, and with them we take leave of this fascinating book, with its delightful illustrations, its charming anecdotes, its excellentadvice. Mr. Alan Cole deserves the thanks of all who are interested inart for bringing this book before the public in so attractive and soinexpensive a form. 

_Embroidery and Lace_: _Their Manufacture and History from the RemotestAntiquity to the Present Day_. Translated and enlarged by Alan S. Colefrom the French of Ernest Lefébure. (Grevel and Co. )

HENLEY’S POEMS(_Woman’s World_, December 1888. )

‘If I were king, ’ says Mr. Henley, in one of his most modest rondeaus, ‘Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear; Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather; And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere, If I were king. ’

And these lines contain, if not the best criticism of his own work, certainly a very complete statement of his aim and motive as a poet. Hislittle _Book of Verses_ reveals to us an artist who is seeking to findnew methods of expression and has not merely a delicate sense of beautyand a brilliant, fantastic wit, but a real passion also for what ishorrible, ugly, or grotesque. No doubt, everything that is worthy ofexistence is worthy also of art—at least, one would like to think so—butwhile echo or mirror can repeat for us a beautiful thing, to renderartistically a thing that is ugly requires the most exquisite alchemy ofform, the most subtle magic of transformation. To me there is more ofthe cry of Marsyas than of the singing of Apollo in the earlier poems ofMr. Henley’s volume, _In Hospital_: _Rhymes and Rhythms_, as he callsthem. But it is impossible to deny their power. Some of them are likebright, vivid pastels; others like charcoal drawings, with dull blacksand murky whites; others like etchings with deeply-bitten lines, andabrupt contrasts, and clever colour-suggestions. In fact, they are likeanything and everything, except perfected poems—that they certainly arenot. They are still in the twilight. They are preludes, experiments, inspired jottings in a note-book, and should be heralded by a design of‘Genius Making Sketches. ’ Rhyme gives architecture as well as melody toverse; it gives that delightful sense of limitation which in all the artsis so pleasurable, and is, indeed, one of the secrets of perfection; itwill whisper, as a French critic has said, ‘things unexpected andcharming, things with strange and remote relations to each other, ’ andbind them together in indissoluble bonds of beauty; and in his constantrejection of rhyme, Mr. Henley seems to me to have abdicated half hispower. He is a _roi en exil_ who has thrown away some of the strings ofhis lute; a poet who has forgotten the fairest part of his kingdom. 

However, all work criticizes itself. Here is one of Mr. Henley’sinspired jottings. According to the temperament of the reader, it willserve either as a model or as the reverse:

 As with varnish red and glistening Dripped his hair; his feet were rigid; Raised, he settled stiffly sideways: You could see the hurts were spinal. 

 He had fallen from an engine, And been dragged along the metals. It was hopeless, and they knew it; So they covered him, and left him. 

 As he lay, by fits half sentient, Inarticulately moaning, With his stockinged feet protruded Sharp and awkward from the blankets, To his bed there came a woman, Stood and looked and sighed a little, And departed without speaking, As himself a few hours after. 

 I was told she was his sweetheart. They were on the eve of marriage. She was quiet as a statue, But her lip was gray and writhen. 

In this poem, the rhythm and the music, such as it is, areobvious—perhaps a little too obvious. In the following I see nothing butingeniously printed prose. It is a description—and a very accurateone—of a scene in a hospital ward. The medical students are supposed tobe crowding round the doctor. What I quote is only a fragment, but thepoem itself is a fragment:

 So shows the ring Seen, from behind, round a conjuror Doing his pitch in the street. High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, narrow ones, Round, square, and angular, serry and shove; While from within a voice, Gravely and weightily fluent, Sounds; and then ceases; and suddenly (Look at the stress of the shoulders!) Out of a quiver of silence, Over the hiss of the spray, Comes a low cry, and the sound Of breath quick intaken through teeth Clenched in resolve. And the master Breaks from the crowd, and goes, Wiping his hands, To the next bed, with his pupils Flocking and whispering behind him. 

 Now one can see. Case Number One Sits (rather pale) with his bedclothes Stripped up, and showing his foot (Alas, for God’s image!) Swaddled in wet white lint Brilliantly hideous with red. 

Théophile Gautier once said that Flaubert’s style was meant to be read, and his own style to be looked at. Mr. Henley’s unrhymed rhythms formvery dainty designs, from a typographical point of view. From the pointof view of literature, they are a series of vivid, concentratedimpressions, with a keen grip of fact, a terrible actuality, and analmost masterly power of picturesque presentation. But the poeticform—what of that?

Well, let us pass to the later poems, to the rondels and rondeaus, thesonnets and quatorzains, the echoes and the ballades. How brilliant andfanciful this is! The Toyokuni colour-print that suggested it could notbe more delightful. It seems to have kept all the wilful fantastic charmof the original:

 Was I a Samurai renowned, Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow? A histrion angular and profound? A priest? a porter?—Child, although I have forgotten clean, I know That in the shade of Fujisan, What time the cherry-orchards blow, I loved you once in old Japan. 

 As here you loiter, flowing-gowned And hugely sashed, with pins a-row Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, Demure, inviting—even so, When merry maids in Miyako To feel the sweet o’ the year began, And green gardens to overflow, I loved you once in old Japan. 

 Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields round Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow, A blue canal the lake’s blue bound Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo! Touched with the sundown’s spirit and glow, I see you turn, with flirted fan, Against the plum-tree’s bloomy snow . . . I loved you once in old Japan!

 ENVOY. 

 Dear, ’twas a dozen lives ago But that I was a lucky man The Toyokuni here will show: I loved you—once—in old Japan!

This rondel, too—how light it is, and graceful!—

 We’ll to the woods and gather may Fresh from the footprints of the rain. We’ll to the woods, at every vein To drink the spirit of the day. 

 The winds of spring are out at play, The needs of spring in heart and brain. We’ll to the woods and gather may Fresh from the footprints of the rain. 

 The world’s too near her end, you say? Hark to the blackbird’s mad refrain! It waits for her, the vast Inane? Then, girls, to help her on the way We’ll to the woods and gather may. 

There are fine verses, also, scattered through this little book; some ofthem very strong, as—

 Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. 

 It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. 

Others with a true touch of romance, as—

 Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon, And you were a Christian slave. 

And here and there we come across such felicitous phrases as—

 In the sand The gold prow-griffin claws a hold, or—

 The spires Shine and are changed, and many other graceful or fanciful lines, even ‘the green sky’s minorthirds’ being perfectly right in its place, and a very refreshing bit ofaffectation in a volume where there is so much that is natural. 

However, Mr. Henley is not to be judged by samples. Indeed, the mostattractive thing in the book is no single poem that is in it, but thestrong humane personality that stands behind both flawless and faultywork alike, and looks out through many masks, some of them beautiful, andsome grotesque, and not a few misshapen. In the case with most of ourmodern poets, when we have analysed them down to an adjective, we can gono further, or we care to go no further; but with this book it isdifferent. Through these reeds and pipes blows the very breath of life. It seems as if one could put one’s hand upon the singer’s heart and countits pulsations. There is something wholesome, virile and sane about theman’s soul. Anybody can be reasonable, but to be sane is not common; andsane poets are as rare as blue lilies, though they may not be quite sodelightful. 

 Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow, Or the gold weather round us mellow slow; We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare, And we can conquer, though we may not share In the rich quiet of the afterglow, What is to come, is the concluding stanza of the last rondeau—indeed, of the last poem inthe collection, and the high, serene temper displayed in these linesserves at once as keynote and keystone to the book. The very lightnessand slightness of so much of the work, its careless moods and casualfancies, seem to suggest a nature that is not primarily interested inart—a nature, like Sordello’s, passionately enamoured of life, one towhich lyre and lute are things of less importance. From this mere joy ofliving, this frank delight in experience for its own sake, this loftyindifference, and momentary unregretted ardours, come all the faults andall the beauties of the volume. But there is this difference betweenthem—the faults are deliberate, and the result of much study; thebeauties have the air of fascinating impromptus. Mr. Henley’s healthy, if sometimes misapplied, confidence in the myriad suggestions of lifegives him his charm. He is made to sing along the highways, not to sitdown and write. If he took himself more seriously, his work would becometrivial. 

_A Book of Verses_. By William Ernest Henley. (David Nutt. )

SOME LITERARY LADIES(_Woman’s World_, January 1889. )

In a recent article on _English Poetesses_, I ventured to suggest thatour women of letters should turn their attention somewhat more to proseand somewhat less to poetry. Women seem to me to possess just what ourliterature wants—a light touch, a delicate hand, a graceful mode oftreatment, and an unstudied felicity of phrase. We want some one whowill do for our prose what Madame de Sévigné did for the prose of France. George Eliot’s style was far too cumbrous, and Charlotte Brontë’s tooexaggerated. However, one must not forget that amongst the women ofEngland there have been some charming letter-writers, and certainly nobook can be more delightful reading than Mrs. Ross’s _Three Generationsof English Women_, which has recently appeared. The three Englishwomenwhose memoirs and correspondence Mrs. Ross has so admirably edited areMrs. John Taylor, Mrs. Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon, all of themremarkable personalities, and two of them women of brilliant wit andEuropean reputation. Mrs. Taylor belonged to that great Norwich familyabout whom the Duke of Sussex remarked that they reversed the ordinarysaying that it takes nine tailors to make a man, and was for many yearsone of the most distinguished figures in the famous society of her nativetown. Her only daughter married John Austin, the great authority onjurisprudence, and her _salon_ in Paris was the centre of the intellectand culture of her day. Lucie Duff Gordon, the only child of John andSarah Austin, inherited the talents of her parents. A beauty, a _femmed’esprit_, a traveller, and clever writer, she charmed and fascinated herage, and her premature death in Egypt was really a loss to ourliterature. It is to her daughter that we owe this delightful volume ofmemoirs. 

First we are introduced to Mrs. Ross’s great-grandmother, Mrs. Taylor, who ‘was called, by her intimate friends, “Madame Roland of Norwich, ”from her likeness to the portraits of the handsome and unfortunateFrenchwoman. ’ We hear of her darning her boy’s grey worsted stockingswhile holding her own with Southey and Brougham, and dancing round theTree of Liberty with Dr. Parr when the news of the fall of the Bastillewas first known. Amongst her friends were Sir James Mackintosh, the mostpopular man of the day, ‘to whom Madame de Staël wrote, “Il n’y a pas desociété sans vous. ” “C’est très ennuyeux de dîner sans vous; la sociéténe va pas quand vous n’êtes pas là”;’ Sir James Smith, the botanist;Crabb Robinson; the Gurneys; Mrs. Barbauld; Dr. Alderson and his charmingdaughter, Amelia Opie; and many other well-known people. Her letters areextremely sensible and thoughtful. ‘Nothing at present, ’ she says in oneof them, ‘suits my taste so well as Susan’s Latin lessons, and herphilosophical old master. . . . When we get to Cicero’s discussions onthe nature of the soul, or Virgil’s fine descriptions, my mind is filledup. Life is either a dull round of eating, drinking, and sleeping, or aspark of ethereal fire just kindled. . . . The character of girls mustdepend upon their reading as much as upon the company they keep. Besidesthe intrinsic pleasure to be derived from solid knowledge, a woman oughtto consider it as her best resource against poverty. ’ This is a somewhatcaustic aphorism: ‘A romantic woman is a troublesome friend, as sheexpects you to be as impudent as herself, and is mortified at what shecalls coldness and insensibility. ’ And this is admirable: ‘The art oflife is not to estrange oneself from society, and yet not to pay too dearfor it. ’ This, too, is good: ‘Vanity, like curiosity, is wanted as astimulus to exertion; indolence would certainly get the better of us ifit were not for these two powerful principles’; and there is a keen touchof humour in the following: ‘Nothing is so gratifying as the idea thatvirtue and philanthropy are becoming fashionable. ’ Dr. James Martineau, in a letter to Mrs. Ross, gives us a pleasant picture of the old ladyreturning from market ‘weighted by her huge basket, with the shank of aleg of mutton thrust out to betray its contents, ’ and talking divinelyabout philosophy, poets, politics, and every intellectual topic of theday. She was a woman of admirable good sense, a type of Roman matron, and quite as careful as were the Roman matrons to keep up the purity ofher native tongue. 

Mrs. Taylor, however, was more or less limited to Norwich. Mrs. Austinwas for the world. In London, Paris, and Germany, she ruled anddominated society, loved by every one who knew her. ‘She is “My best andbrightest” to Lord Jeffrey; “Dear, fair and wise” to Sydney Smith; “Mygreat ally” to Sir James Stephen; “Sunlight through waste welteringchaos” to Thomas Carlyle (while he needed her aid); “La petite mère dugenre humain” to Michael Chevalier; “Liebes Mütterlein” to John StuartMill; and “My own Professorin” to Charles Buller, to whom she taughtGerman, as well as to the sons of Mr. James Mill. ’ Jeremy Bentham, whenon his deathbed, gave her a ring with his portrait and some of his hairlet in behind. ‘There, my dear, ’ he said, ‘it is the only ring I evergave a woman. ’ She corresponded with Guizot, Barthelemy de St. Hilaire, the Grotes, Dr. Whewell, the Master of Trinity, Nassau Senior, theDuchesse d’Orléans, Victor Cousin, and many other distinguished people. Her translation of Ranke’s _History of the Popes_ is admirable; indeed, all her literary work was thoroughly well done, and her edition of herhusband’s _Province of Jurisprudence_ deserves the very highest praise. Two people more unlike than herself and her husband it would have beendifficult to find. He was habitually grave and despondent; she wasbrilliantly handsome, fond of society, in which she shone, and ‘with analmost superabundance of energy and animal spirits, ’ Mrs. Ross tells us. She married him because she thought him perfect, but he never producedthe work of which he was worthy, and of which she knew him to be worthy. Her estimate of him in the preface to the _Jurisprudence_ is wonderfullystriking and simple. ‘He was never sanguine. He was intolerant of anyimperfection. He was always under the control of severe love of truth. He lived and died a poor man. ’ She was terribly disappointed in him, butshe loved him. Some years after his death, she wrote to M. Guizot:

 In the intervals of my study of his works I read his letters to me—_forty-five years of love-letters_, the last as tender and passionate as the first. And how full of noble sentiments! The midday of our lives was clouded and stormy, full of cares and disappointments; but the sunset was bright and serene—as bright as the morning, and _more_ serene. Now it is night with me, and must remain so till the dawn of another day. I am always alone—that is, _I live with him_. 

The most interesting letters in the book are certainly those to M. Guizot, with whom she maintained the closest intellectual friendship; butthere is hardly one of them that does not contain something clever, orthoughtful, or witty, while those addressed to her, in turn, are veryinteresting. Carlyle writes her letters full of lamentations, the wailof a Titan in pain, superbly exaggerated for literary effect. 

 Literature, one’s sole craft and staff of life, lies broken in abeyance; what room for music amid the braying of innumerable jackasses, the howling of innumerable hyænas whetting the tooth to eat them up? Alas for it! it is a sick disjointed time; neither shall we ever mend it; at best let us hope to mend ourselves. I declare I sometimes think of throwing down the Pen altogether as a worthless weapon; and leading out a colony of these poor starving Drudges to the waste places of their old Mother Earth, when for sweat of their brow bread _will_ rise for them; it were perhaps the worthiest service that at this moment could be rendered our old world to throw open for it the doors of the New. Thither must they come at last, ‘bursts of eloquence’ will do nothing; men are starving and will try many things before they die. But poor I, _ach Gott_! I am no Hengist or Alaric; only a writer of Articles in bad prose; stick to thy last, O Tutor; the Pen is not worthless, it is omnipotent to those who have Faith. 

Henri Beyle (Stendhal), the great, I am often tempted to think thegreatest of French novelists, writes her a charming letter about_nuances_. ‘It seems to me, ’ he says, ‘that except when they readShakespeare, Byron, or Sterne, no Englishman understands “_nuances_”; weadore them. A fool says to a woman “I love you”; the words mean nothing, he might as well say “Olli Batachor”; it is the _nuance_ which givesforce to the meaning. ’ In 1839 Mrs. Austin writes to Victor Cousin: ‘Ihave seen young Gladstone, a distinguished Tory who wants to re-establisheducation based on the Church in quite a Catholic form’; and we find hercorresponding with Mr. Gladstone on the subject of education. ‘If youare strong enough to provide motives and checks, ’ she says to him, ‘youmay do two blessed acts—reform your clergy and teach your people. As itis, how few of them conceive what it is to teach a people’! Mr. Gladstone replies at great length, and in many letters, from which we mayquote this passage:

 You are for pressing and urging the people to their profit against their inclination: so am I. You set little value upon all merely technical instruction, upon all that fails to touch the inner nature of man: so do I. And here I find ground of union broad and deep-laid. . . . 

 I more than doubt whether your idea, namely that of raising man to social sufficiency and morality, can be accomplished, except through the ancient religion of Christ; . . . Or whether, the principles of eclecticism are legitimately applicable to the Gospel; or whether, if we find ourselves in a state of incapacity to work through the Church, we can remedy the defect by the adoption of principles contrary to hers. . . . 

 But indeed I am most unfit to pursue the subject; private circumstances of no common interest are upon me, as I have become very recently engaged to Miss Glynne, and I hope your recollections will enable you in some degree to excuse me. 

Lord Jeffrey has a very curious and suggestive letter on populareducation, in which he denies, or at least doubts, the effect of thiseducation on morals. He, however, supports it on the ground ‘that itwill increase the enjoyment of individuals, ’ which is certainly a verysensible claim. Humboldt writes to her about an old Indian languagewhich was preserved by a parrot, the tribe who spoke it having beenexterminated, and about ‘young Darwin, ’ who had just published his firstbook. Here are some extracts from her own letters:

 I heard from Lord Lansdowne two or three days ago. . . . I think he is _ce que nous avons de mieux_. He wants only the energy that great ambition gives. He says, ‘We shall have a parliament of railway kings’ . . . What can be worse than that?—The deification of money by a whole people. As Lord Brougham says, we have no right to give ourselves pharisaical airs. I must give you a story sent to me. Mrs. Hudson, the railway queen, was shown a bust of Marcus Aurelius at Lord Westminster’s, on which she said, ‘I suppose that is not the present Marquis. ’ To _goûter_ this, you must know that the extreme vulgar (hackney coachmen, etc. ) in England pronounce ‘marquis’ very like ‘Marcus. ’

 _Dec. _ 17_th_. —Went to Savigny’s. Nobody was there but W. Grimm and his wife and a few men. Grimm told me he had received two volumes of Norwegian fairy-tales, and that they were delightful. Talking of them, I said, ‘Your children appear to be the happiest in the world; they live in the midst of fairy-tales. ’ ‘Ah, ’ said he, ‘I must tell you about that. When we were at Göttingen, somebody spoke to my little son about his father’s _Mährchen_. He had read them but never thought of their being mine. He came running to me, and said with an offended air, “Father, they say you wrote those fairy-tales; surely you never invented such silly rubbish?” He thought it below my dignity. ’

 Savigny told a _Volksmährchen_ too:

 ‘St. Anselm was grown old and infirm, and lay on the ground among thorns and thistles. _Der liebe Gott_ said to him, “You are very badly lodged there; why don’t you build yourself a house?” “Before I take the trouble, ” said Anselm, “I should like to know how long I have to live. ” “About thirty years, ” said _Der liebe Gott_. “Oh, for so short a time, ” replied he, “it’s not worth while, ” and turned himself round among the thistles. ’

 Dr. Franck told me a story of which I had never heard before. Voltaire had for some reason or other taken a grudge against the prophet Habakkuk, and affected to find in him things he never wrote. Somebody took the Bible and began to demonstrate to him that he was mistaken. ‘_C’est égal_, ’ he said impatiently, ‘_Habakkuk était capable de tout_!’

 _Oct. _ 30, 1853. 

 I am not in love with the _Richtung_ (tendency) of our modern novelists. There is abundance of talent; but writing a pretty, graceful, touching, yet pleasing story is the last thing our writers nowadays think of. Their novels are party pamphlets on political or social questions, like _Sybil_, or _Alton Locke_, or _Mary Barton_, or _Uncle Tom_; or they are the most minute and painful dissections of the least agreeable and beautiful parts of our nature, like those of Miss Brontë—_Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_; or they are a kind of martyrology, like Mrs. Marsh’s _Emilia Wyndham_, which makes you almost doubt whether any torments the heroine would have earned by being naughty could exceed those she incurred by her virtue. 

 Where, oh! where is the charming, humane, gentle spirit that dictated the _Vicar of Wakefield_—the spirit which Goethe so justly calls _versöhnend_ (reconciling), with all the weaknesses and woes of humanity? . . . Have you read Thackeray’s _Esmond_? It is a curious and very successful attempt to imitate the style of our old novelists. . . . Which of Mrs. Gore’s novels are translated? They are very clever, lively, worldly, bitter, disagreeable, and entertaining. . . . Miss Austen’s—are they translated? They are not new, and are Dutch paintings of every-day people—very clever, very true, very _unæsthetic_, but amusing. I have not seen _Ruth_, by Mrs. Gaskell. I hear it much admired—and blamed. It is one of the many proofs of the desire women now have to _friser_ questionable topics, and to _poser_ insoluble moral problems. George Sand has turned their heads in that direction. I think a few _broad_ scenes or hearty jokes _à la_ Fielding were very harmless in comparison. They _confounded_ nothing. . . . 

 The _Heir of Redcliffe_ I have not read. . . . I am not worthy of superhuman flights of virtue—in a novel. I want to see how people act and suffer who are as good-for-nothing as I am myself. Then I have the sinful pretension to be amused, whereas all our novelists want to reform us, and to show us what a hideous place this world is: _Ma foi_, _je ne le sais que trop_, without their help. 

 The _Head of the Family_ has some merits. . . . But there is too much affliction and misery and frenzy. The heroine is one of those creatures now so common (in novels), who remind me of a poor bird tied to a stake (as was once the cruel sport of boys) to be ‘shyed’ at (_i. E. _ pelted) till it died; only our gentle lady-writers at the end of all untie the poor battered bird, and assure us that it is never the worse for all the blows it has had—nay, the better—and that now, with its broken wings and torn feathers and bruised body, it is going to be quite happy. No, fair ladies, you know that it is not so—_resigned_, if you please, but make me no shams of happiness out of such wrecks. 

In politics Mrs. Austin was a philosophical Tory. Radicalism shedetested, and she and most of her friends seem to have regarded it asmoribund. ‘The Radical party is evidently effete, ’ she writes to M. Victor Cousin; the probable ‘leader of the Tory party’ is Mr. Gladstone. ‘The people must be instructed, must be guided, must be, in short, governed, ’ she writes elsewhere; and in a letter to Dr. Whewell, she saysthat the state of things in France fills ‘me with the deepest anxiety onone point, —the point on which the permanency of our institutions and oursalvation as a nation turn. Are our higher classes able to keep the leadof the rest? If they are, we are safe; if not, I agree with my poor dearCharles Buller—_our_ turn must come. Now Cambridge and Oxford mustreally look to this. ’ The belief in the power of the Universities tostem the current of democracy is charming. She grew to regard Carlyle as‘one of the dissolvents of the age—as mischievous as his extravaganceswill let him be’; speaks of Kingsley and Maurice as ‘pernicious’; andtalks of John Stuart Mill as a ‘demagogue. ’ She was no _doctrinaire_. ‘One ounce of education demanded is worth a pound imposed. It is no useto give the meat before you give the hunger. ’ She was delighted at aletter of St. Hilaire’s, in which he said, ‘We have a system and noresults; you have results and no system. ’ Yet she had a deep sympathywith the wants of the people. She was horrified at something Babbagetold her of the population of some of the manufacturing towns who are_worked out_ before they attain to thirty years of age. ‘But I ampersuaded that the remedy will not, cannot come from the people, ’ sheadds. Many of her letters are concerned with the question of the highereducation of women. She discusses Buckle’s lecture on ‘The Influence ofWomen upon the Progress of Knowledge, ’ admits to M. Guizot that women’sintellectual life is largely coloured by the emotions, but adds: ‘One isnot precisely a fool because one’s opinions are greatly influenced byone’s affections. The opinions of men are often influenced by worsethings. ’ Dr. Whewell consults her about lecturing women on Plato, beingslightly afraid lest people should think it ridiculous; Comte writes herelaborate letters on the relation of women to progress; and Mr. Gladstonepromises that Mrs. Gladstone will carry out at Hawarden the suggestionscontained in one of her pamphlets. She was always very practical, andnever lost her admiration for plain sewing. 

All through the book we come across interesting and amusing things. Shegets St. Hilaire to order a large, sensible bonnet for her in Paris, which was at once christened the ‘Aristotelian, ’ and was supposed to bethe only useful bonnet in England. Grote has to leave Paris after the_coup d’état_, he tells her, because he cannot bear to see theestablishment of a Greek tyrant. Alfred de Vigny, Macaulay, JohnStirling, Southey, Alexis de Tocqueville, Hallam, and Jean Jacques Ampèreall contribute to these pleasant pages. She seems to have inspired thewarmest feelings of friendship in those who knew her. Guizot writes toher: ‘Madame de Staël used to say that the best thing in the world was aserious Frenchman. I turn the compliment, and say that the best thing inthe world is an affectionate Englishman. How much more an Englishwoman!Given equal qualities, a woman is always more charming than a man. ’

Lucie Austin, afterwards Lady Duff Gordon, was born in 1821. Her chiefplayfellow was John Stuart Mill, and Jeremy Bentham’s garden was herplayground. She was a lovely, romantic child, who was always wanting theflowers to talk to her, and used to invent the most wonderful storiesabout animals, of whom she was passionately fond. In 1834 Mrs. Austindecided on leaving England, and Sydney Smith wrote his immortal letter tothe little girl:

 Lucie, Lucie, my dear child, don’t tear your frock: tearing frocks is not of itself a proof of genius. But write as your mother writes, act as your mother acts: be frank, loyal, affectionate, simple, honest, and then integrity or laceration of frock is of little import. And Lucie, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know in the first sum of yours I ever saw there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do), and you ought, dear Lucie, to have carried but one. Is this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic but a scene of horrors? You are going to Boulogne, the city of debts, peopled by men who have never understood arithmetic. By the time you return, I shall probably have received my first paralytic stroke, and shall have lost all recollection of you. Therefore I now give you my parting advice—don’t marry anybody who has not a tolerable understanding and a thousand a year. And God bless you, dear child. 

At Boulogne she sat next Heine at _table d’hôte_. ‘He heard me speakGerman to my mother, and soon began to talk to me, and then said, “Whenyou go back to England, you can tell your friends that you have seenHeinrich Heine. ” I replied, “And who is Heinrich Heine?” He laughedheartily and took no offence at my ignorance; and we used to lounge onthe end of the pier together, where he told me stories in which fish, mermaids, water-sprites and a very funny old French fiddler with a poodlewere mixed up in the most fanciful manner, sometimes humorous, and veryoften pathetic, especially when the water-sprites brought him greetingsfrom the “Nord See. ” He was . . . So kind to me and so sarcastic toevery one else. ’ Twenty years afterwards the little girl whose ‘brauneAugen’ Heine had celebrated in his charming poem _Wenn ick an deinemHause_, used to go and see the dying poet in Paris. ‘It does one good, ’he said to her, ‘to see a woman who does not carry about a broken heart, to be mended by all sorts of men, like the women here, who do not seethat a total want of heart is their real failing. ’ On another occasionhe said to her: ‘I have now made peace with the whole world, and at lastalso with God, who sends thee to me as a beautiful angel of death: Ishall certainly soon die. ’ Lady Duff Gordon said to him: ‘Poor Poet, doyou still retain such splendid illusions, that you transform a travellingEnglishwoman into Azrael? That used not to be the case, for you alwaysdisliked us. ’ He answered: ‘Yes, I do not know what possessed me todislike the English, . . . It really was only petulance; I never hatedthem, indeed, I never knew them. I was only once in England, but knew noone, and found London very dreary, and the people and the streets odious. But England has revenged herself well; she has sent me most excellentfriends—thyself and Milnes, that good Milnes. ’

There are delightful letters from Dicky Doyle here, with the most amusingdrawings, one of the present Sir Robert Peel as he made his maiden speechin the House being excellent; and the various descriptions of Hassan’sperformances are extremely amusing. Hassan was a black boy, who had beenturned away by his master because he was going blind, and was found byLady Duff Gordon one night sitting on her doorstep. She took care ofhim, and had him cured, and he seems to have been a constant source ofdelight to every one. On one occasion, ‘when Prince Louis Napoleon (thelate Emperor of the French) came in unexpectedly, he gravely said:“Please, my lady, I ran out and bought twopennyworth of sprats for thePrince, and for the honour of the house. ”’ Here is an amusing letterfrom Mrs. Norton:

 MY DEAR LUCIE, —We have never thanked you for the _red Pots_, which no early Christian should be without, and which add that finishing stroke to the splendour of our demesne, which was supposed to depend on a roc’s egg, in less intelligent times. We have now a warm _Pompeian_ appearance, and the constant contemplation of these classical objects favours the beauty of the facial line; for what can be deducted from the great fact, apparent in all the states of antiquity, that _straight noses_ were the ancient custom, but the logical assumption that the constant habit of turning up the nose at unsightly objects—such as the National Gallery and other offensive and obtrusive things—has produced the modern divergence from the true and proper line of profile? I rejoice to think that we ourselves are exempt. I attribute this to our love of Pompeian Pots (on account of the beauty and distinction of this Pot’s shape I spell it with a big P), which has kept us straight in a world of crookedness. The pursuit of profiles under difficulties—how much more rare than a pursuit of knowledge! Talk of setting good examples before our children! Bah! let us set good Pompeian Pots before our children, and when they grow up they will not depart from them. 

Lady Duff Gordon’s _Letters from the Cape_, and her brilliant translationof _The Amber Witch_, are, of course, well known. The latter book was, with Lady Wilde’s translation of _Sidonia the Sorceress_, my favouriteromantic reading when a boy. Her letters from Egypt are wonderfullyvivid and picturesque. Here is an interesting bit of art criticism:

 Sheykh Yoosuf laughed so heartily over a print in an illustrated paper from a picture of Hilton’s of Rebekah at the well, with the old ‘wekeel’ of ‘Sidi Ibraheem’ (Abraham’s chief servant) _kneeling_ before the girl he was sent to fetch, like an old fool without his turban, and Rebekah and the other girls in queer fancy dresses, and the camels with snouts like pigs. ‘If the painter could not go into “Es Sham” to see how the Arab really look, ’ said Sheykh Yoosuf, ‘why did he not paint a well in England, with girls like English peasants—at least it would have looked natural to English people? and the wekeel would not seem so like a madman if he had taken off a hat!’ I cordially agree with Yoosuf’s art criticism. _Fancy_ pictures of Eastern things are hopelessly absurd. 

Mrs. Ross has certainly produced a most fascinating volume, and her bookis one of the books of the season. It is edited with tact and judgment. 

_Three Generations of English Women_. _Memoirs and Correspondence ofSusannah Taylor_, _Sarah Austin_, _and Lady Duff Gordon_. By Janet Ross, author of Italian Sketches, Land of Manfred, etc. (Fisher Unwin. )

POETRY AND PRISON(_Pall Mall Gazette_, January 3, 1889. )

Prison has had an admirable effect on Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as a poet. The_Love Sonnets of Proteus_, in spite of their clever Musset-likemodernities and their swift brilliant wit, were but affected or fantasticat best. They were simply the records of passing moods and moments, ofwhich some were sad and others sweet, and not a few shameful. Theirsubject was not of high or serious import. They contained much that waswilful and weak. In _Vinculis_, upon the other hand, is a book thatstirs one by its fine sincerity of purpose, its lofty and impassionedthought, its depth and ardour of intense feeling. ‘Imprisonment, ’ saysMr. Blunt in his preface, ‘is a reality of discipline most useful to themodern soul, lapped as it is in physical sloth and self-indulgence. Likea sickness or a spiritual retreat it purifies and ennobles; and the soulemerges from it stronger and more self-contained. ’ To him, certainly, ithas been a mode of purification. The opening sonnets, composed in thebleak cell of Galway Gaol, and written down on the flyleaves of theprisoner’s prayer-book, are full of things nobly conceived and noblyuttered, and show that though Mr. Balfour may enforce ‘plain living’ byhis prison regulations, he cannot prevent ‘high thinking’ or in any waylimit or constrain the freedom of a man’s soul. They are, of course, intensely personal in expression. They could not fail to be so. But thepersonality that they reveal has nothing petty or ignoble about it. Thepetulant cry of the shallow egoist which was the chief characteristic ofthe _Love Sonnets of Proteus_ is not to be found here. In its place wehave wild grief and terrible scorn, fierce rage and flame-like passion. Such a sonnet as the following comes out of the very fire of heart andbrain:

 God knows, ’twas not with a fore-reasoned plan I left the easeful dwellings of my peace, And sought this combat with ungodly Man, And ceaseless still through years that do not cease Have warred with Powers and Principalities. My natural soul, ere yet these strifes began, Was as a sister diligent to please And loving all, and most the human clan. 

 God knows it. And He knows how the world’s tears Touched me. And He is witness of my wrath, How it was kindled against murderers Who slew for gold, and how upon their path I met them. Since which day the World in arms Strikes at my life with angers and alarms. 

And this sonnet has all the strange strength of that despair which is butthe prelude to a larger hope:

 I thought to do a deed of chivalry, An act of worth, which haply in her sight Who was my mistress should recorded be And of the nations. And, when thus the fight Faltered and men once bold with faces white Turned this and that way in excuse to flee, I only stood, and by the foeman’s might Was overborne and mangled cruelly. 

 Then crawled I to her feet, in whose dear cause I made this venture, and ‘Behold, ’ I said, ‘How I am wounded for thee in these wars. ’ But she, ‘Poor cripple, would’st thou I should wed A limbless trunk?’ and laughing turned from me. Yet she was fair, and her name ‘Liberty. ’

The sonnet beginning

 A prison is a convent without God— Poverty, Chastity, Obedience Its precepts are:

is very fine; and this, written just after entering the gaol, ispowerful:

 Naked I came into the world of pleasure, And naked come I to this house of pain. Here at the gate I lay down my life’s treasure, My pride, my garments and my name with men. The world and I henceforth shall be as twain, No sound of me shall pierce for good or ill These walls of grief. Nor shall I hear the vain Laughter and tears of those who love me still. 

 Within, what new life waits me! Little ease, Cold lying, hunger, nights of wakefulness, Harsh orders given, no voice to soothe or please, Poor thieves for friends, for books rules meaningless; This is the grave—nay, hell. Yet, Lord of Might, Still in Thy light my spirit shall see light. 

But, indeed, all the sonnets are worth reading, and _The Canon ofAughrim_, the longest poem in the book, is a most masterly and dramaticdescription of the tragic life of the Irish peasant. Literature is notmuch indebted to Mr. Balfour for his sophistical _Defence of PhilosophicDoubt_, which is one of the dullest books we know, but it must beadmitted that by sending Mr. Blunt to gaol he has converted a cleverrhymer into an earnest and deep-thinking poet. The narrow confines of aprison cell seem to suit the ‘sonnet’s scanty plot of ground, ’ and anunjust imprisonment for a noble cause strengthens as well as deepens thenature. 

_In Vinculis_. By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Author of _The Wind and theWhirlwind_, _The Love Sonnets of Proteus_, _etc. Etc. _ (Kegan Paul. )

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WALT WHITMAN(_Pall Mall Gazette_, January 25, 1889. )

‘No one will get to my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literaryperformance . . . Or as aiming mainly towards art and æstheticism. ’‘_Leaves of Grass_ . . . Has mainly been the outcropping of my ownemotional and other personal nature—an attempt, from first to last, toput _a Person_, a human being (myself, in the latter half of theNineteenth Century in America, ) freely, fully and truly on record. Icould not find any similar personal record in current literature thatsatisfied me. ’ In these words Walt Whitman gives us the true attitude weshould adopt towards his work, having, indeed, a much saner view of thevalue and meaning of that work than either his eloquent admirers or noisydetractors can boast of possessing. His last book, _November Boughs_, ashe calls it, published in the winter of the old man’s life, reveals tous, not indeed a soul’s tragedy, for its last note is one of joy andhope, and noble and unshaken faith in all that is fine and worthy of suchfaith, but certainly the drama of a human soul, and puts on record with asimplicity that has in it both sweetness and strength the record of hisspiritual development, and of the aim and motive both of the manner andthe matter of his work. His strange mode of expression is shown in thesepages to have been the result of deliberate and self-conscious choice. The ‘barbaric yawp’ which he sent over ‘the roofs of the world’ so manyyears ago, and which wrung from Mr. Swinburne’s lip such lofty panegyricin song and such loud clamorous censure in prose, appears here in whatwill be to many an entirely new light. For in his very rejection of artWalt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect bycertain means and he succeeded. There is much method in what many havetermed his madness, too much method, indeed, some may be tempted tofancy. 

In the story of his life, as he tells it to us, we find him at the age ofsixteen beginning a definite and philosophical study of literature:

 Summers and falls, I used to go off, sometimes for a week at a stretch, down in the country, or to Long Island’s seashores—there, in the presence of outdoor influences, I went over thoroughly the Old and New Testaments, and absorb’d (probably to better advantage for me than in any library or indoor room—it makes such difference _where_ you read) Shakspere, Ossian, the best translated versions I could get of Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, the old German Nibelungen, the ancient Hindoo poems, and one or two other masterpieces, Dante’s among them. As it happen’d, I read the latter mostly in an old wood. The _Iliad_ . . . I read first thoroughly on the peninsula of Orient, northeast end of Long Island, in a shelter’d hollow of rock and sand, with the sea on each side. (I have wonder’d since why I was not overwhelm’d by those mighty masters. Likely because I read them, as described, in the full presence of Nature, under the sun, with the far-spreading landscapes and vistas, or the sea rolling in. )

Edgar Allan Poe’s amusing bit of dogmatism that, for our occasions andour day, ‘there can be no such thing as a long poem, ’ fascinated him. ‘The same thought had been haunting my mind before, ’ he said, ‘but Poe’sargument . . . Work’d the sum out, and proved it to me, ’ and the Englishtranslation of the Bible seems to have suggested to him the possibilityof a poetic form which, while retaining the spirit of poetry, would stillbe free from the trammels of rhyme and of a definite metrical system. Having thus, to a certain degree, settled upon what one might call the‘technique’ of Whitmanism, he began to brood upon the nature of thatspirit which was to give life to the strange form. The central point ofthe poetry of the future seemed to him to be necessarily ‘an identicalbody and soul, a personality, ’ in fact, which personality, he tells usfrankly, ‘after many considerations and ponderings I deliberately settledshould be myself. ’ However, for the true creation and revealing of thispersonality, at first only dimly felt, a new stimulus was needed. Thiscame from the Civil War. After describing the many dreams and passionsof his boyhood and early manhood, he goes on to say:

 These, however, and much more might have gone on and come to naught (almost positively would have come to naught, ) if a sudden, vast, terrible, direct and indirect stimulus for new and national declamatory expression had not been given to me. It is certain, I say, that although I had made a start before, only from the occurrence of the Secession War, and what it show’d me as by flashes of lightning, with the emotional depths it sounded and arous’d (of course, I don’t mean in my own heart only, I saw it just as plainly in others, in millions)—that only from the strong flare and provocation of that war’s sights and scenes the final reasons-for-being of an autochthonic and passionate song definitely came forth. 

 I went down to the war fields of Virginia . . . Lived thenceforward in camp—saw great battles and the days and nights afterward—partook of all the fluctuations, gloom, despair, hopes again arous’d, courage evoked—death readily risk’d—_the cause_, too—along and filling those agonistic and lurid following years . . . The real parturition years . . . Of this henceforth homogeneous Union. Without those three or four years and the experiences they gave, _Leaves of Grass_ would not now be existing. 

Having thus obtained the necessary stimulus for the quickening andawakening of the personal self, some day to be endowed with universality, he sought to find new notes of song, and, passing beyond the mere passionfor expression, he aimed at ‘Suggestiveness’ first. 

 I round and finish little, if anything; and could not, consistently with my scheme. The reader will have his or her part to do, just as much as I have had mine. I seek less to state or display any theme or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the theme or thought—there to pursue your own flight. 

Another ‘impetus-word’ is Comradeship, and other ‘word-signs’ are GoodCheer, Content and Hope. Individuality, especially, he sought for:

 I have allow’d the stress of my poems from beginning to end to bear upon American individuality and assist it—not only because that is a great lesson in Nature, amid all her generalizing laws, but as counterpoise to the leveling tendencies of Democracy—and for other reasons. Defiant of ostensible literary and other conventions, I avowedly chant ‘the great pride of man in himself, ’ and permit it to be more or less a _motif_ of nearly all my verse. I think this pride is indispensable to an American. I think it not inconsistent with obedience, humility, deference, and self-questioning. 

A new theme also was to be found in the relation of the sexes, conceivedin a natural, simple and healthy form, and he protests against poor Mr. William Rossetti’s attempt to Bowdlerise and expurgate his song. 

 From another point of view _Leaves of Grass_ is avowedly the song of Sex and Amativeness, and even Animality—though meanings that do not usually go along with these words are behind all, and will duly emerge; and all are sought to be lifted into a different light and atmosphere. Of this feature, intentionally palpable in a few lines, I shall only say the espousing principle of those lines so gives breath to my whole scheme that the bulk of the pieces might as well have been left unwritten were those lines omitted. . . . 

 Universal as are certain facts and symptoms of communities . . . There is nothing so rare in modern conventions and poetry as their normal recognizance. Literature is always calling in the doctor for consultation and confession, and always giving evasions and swathing suppressions in place of that ‘heroic nudity’ on which only a genuine diagnosis . . . Can be built. And in respect to editions of _Leaves of Grass_ in time to come (if there should be such) I take occasion now to confirm those lines with the settled convictions and deliberate renewals of thirty years, and to hereby prohibit, as far as word of mine can do so, any elision of them. 

But beyond all these notes and moods and motives is the lofty spirit of agrand and free acceptance of all things that are worthy of existence. Hedesired, he says, ‘to formulate a poem whose every thought or fact shoulddirectly or indirectly be or connive at an implicit belief in the wisdom, health, mystery, beauty of every process, every concrete object, everyhuman or other existence, not only consider’d from the point of view ofall, but of each. ’ His two final utterances are that ‘really greatpoetry is always . . . The result of a national spirit, and not theprivilege of a polish’d and select few’; and that ‘the strongest andsweetest songs yet remain to be sung. ’

Such are the views contained in the opening essay _A Backward Glance O’erTravel’d Roads_, as he calls it; but there are many other essays in thisfascinating volume, some on poets such as Burns and Lord Tennyson, forwhom Walt Whitman has a profound admiration; some on old actors andsingers, the elder Booth, Forrest, Alboni and Mario being his specialfavourites; others on the native Indians, on the Spanish element inAmerican nationality, on Western slang, on the poetry of the Bible, andon Abraham Lincoln. But Walt Whitman is at his best when he is analysinghis own work and making schemes for the poetry of the future. Literature, to him, has a distinctly social aim. He seeks to build upthe masses by ‘building up grand individuals. ’ And yet literature itselfmust be preceded by noble forms of life. ‘The best literature is alwaysthe result of something far greater than itself—not the hero but theportrait of the hero. Before there can be recorded history or poem theremust be the transaction. ’ Certainly, in Walt Whitman’s views there is alargeness of vision, a healthy sanity and a fine ethical purpose. He isnot to be placed with the professional littérateurs of his country, Boston novelists, New York poets and the like. He stands apart, and thechief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. Hehas begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. Asa man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroicand spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him. 

_November Boughs_. By Walt Whitman. (Alexander Gardner. )

IRISH FAIRY TALES(_Woman’s World_, February 1889. )

‘The various collectors of Irish folk-lore, ’ says Mr. W. B. Yeats in hischarming little book _Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry_, ‘have, from our point of view, one great merit, and from the point ofview of others, one great fault. ’

 They have made their work literature rather than science, and told us of the Irish peasantry rather than of the primitive religion of mankind, or whatever else the folk-lorists are on the gad after. To be considered scientists they should have tabulated all their tales in forms like grocers’ bills—item the fairy king, item the queen. Instead of this they have caught the very voice of the people, the very pulse of life, each giving what was most noticed in his day. Croker and Lover, full of the ideas of harum-scarum Irish gentility, saw everything humorized. The impulse of the Irish literature of their time came from a class that did not—mainly for political reasons—take the populace seriously, and imagined the country as a humorist’s Arcadia; its passion, its gloom, its tragedy, they knew nothing of. What they did was not wholly false; they merely magnified an irresponsible type, found oftenest among boatmen, carmen, and gentlemen’s servants, into the type of a whole nation, and created the stage Irishman. The writers of ’Forty-eight, and the famine combined, burst their bubble. Their work had the dash as well as the shallowness of an ascendant and idle class, and in Croker is touched everywhere with beauty—a gentle Arcadian beauty. Carleton, a peasant born, has in many of his stories, . . . More especially in his ghost stories, a much more serious way with him, for all his humour. Kennedy, an old bookseller in Dublin, who seems to have had a something of genuine belief in the fairies, comes next in time. He has far less literary faculty, but is wonderfully accurate, giving often the very words the stories were told in. But the best book since Croker is Lady Wilde’s _Ancient __Legends_. The humour has all given way to pathos and tenderness. We have here the innermost heart of the Celt in the moments he has grown to love through years of persecution, when, cushioning himself about with dreams, and hearing fairy-songs in the twilight, he ponders on the soul and on the dead. Here is the Celt, only it is the Celt dreaming. 

Into a volume of very moderate dimensions, and of extremely moderateprice, Mr. Yeats has collected together the most characteristic of ourIrish folklore stories, grouping them together according to subject. First come _The Trooping Fairies_. The peasants say that these are‘fallen angels who were not good enough to be saved, nor bad enough to belost’; but the Irish antiquarians see in them ‘the gods of paganIreland, ’ who, ‘when no longer worshipped and fed with offerings, dwindled away in the popular imagination, and now are only a few spanshigh. ’ Their chief occupations are feasting, fighting, making love, andplaying the most beautiful music. ‘They have only one industrious personamongst them, the _lepra-caun_—the shoemaker. ’ It is his duty to repairtheir shoes when they wear them out with dancing. Mr. Yeats tells usthat ‘near the village of Ballisodare is a little woman who lived amongstthem seven years. When she came home she had no toes—she had danced themoff. ’ On May Eve, every seventh year, they fight for the harvest, forthe best ears of grain belong to them. An old man informed Mr. Yeatsthat he saw them fight once, and that they tore the thatch off a house. ‘Had any one else been near they would merely have seen a great windwhirling everything into the air as it passed. ’ When the wind drives theleaves and straws before it, ‘that is the fairies, and the peasants takeoff their hats and say “God bless them. ”’ When they are gay, they sing. Many of the most beautiful tunes of Ireland ‘are only their music, caughtup by eavesdroppers. ’ No prudent peasant would hum _The Pretty GirlMilking the Cow_ near a fairy rath, ‘for they are jealous, and do notlike to hear their songs on clumsy mortal lips. ’ Blake once saw afairy’s funeral. But this, as Mr. Yeats points out, must have been anEnglish fairy, for the Irish fairies never die; they are immortal. 

Then come _The Solitary Fairies_, amongst whom we find the little_Lepracaun_ mentioned above. He has grown very rich, as he possesses allthe treasure-crocks buried in war-time. In the early part of thiscentury, according to Croker, they used to show in Tipperary a littleshoe forgotten by the fairy shoemaker. Then there are two ratherdisreputable little fairies—the _Cluricaun_, who gets intoxicated ingentlemen’s cellars, and the Red Man, who plays unkind practical jokes. ‘The _Fear-Gorta_ (Man of Hunger) is an emaciated phantom that goesthrough the land in famine time, begging an alms and bringing good luckto the giver. ’ The _Water-sheerie_ is ‘own brother to the EnglishJack-o’-Lantern. ’ ‘_The Leanhaun Shee_ (fairy mistress) seeks the loveof mortals. If they refuse, she must be their slave; if they consent, they are hers, and can only escape by finding another to take theirplace. The fairy lives on their life, and they waste away. Death is noescape from her. She is the Gaelic muse, for she gives inspiration tothose she persecutes. The Gaelic poets die young, for she is restless, and will not let them remain long on earth. ’ The _Pooka_ is essentiallyan animal spirit, and some have considered him the forefather ofShakespeare’s ‘Puck. ’ He lives on solitary mountains, and among oldruins ‘grown monstrous with much solitude, ’ and ‘is of the race of thenightmare. ’ ‘He has many shapes—is now a horse, . . . Now a goat, now aneagle. Like all spirits, he is only half in the world of form. ’ The_banshee_ does not care much for our democratic levelling tendencies; sheloves only old families, and despises the _parvenu_ or the _nouveauriche_. When more than one banshee is present, and they wail and sing inchorus, it is for the death of some holy or great one. An omen thatsometimes accompanies the banshee is ‘. . . An immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headless horses driven by a_Dullahan_. ’ A _Dullahan_ is the most terrible thing in the world. In1807 two of the sentries stationed outside St. James’s Park saw oneclimbing the railings, and died of fright. Mr. Yeats suggests that theyare possibly ‘descended from that Irish giant who swam across the Channelwith his head in his teeth. ’

Then come the stories of ghosts, of saints and priests, and of giants. The ghosts live in a state intermediary between this world and the next. They are held there by some earthly longing or affection, or some dutyunfulfilled, or anger against the living; they are those who are too goodfor hell, and too bad for heaven. Sometimes they ‘take the forms ofinsects, especially of butterflies. ’ The author of the _Parochial Surveyof Ireland_ ‘heard a woman say to a child who was chasing a butterfly, “How do you know it is not the soul of your grandfather?” On Novembereve they are abroad, and dance with the fairies. ’ As for the saints andpriests, ‘there are no martyrs in the stories. ’ That ancient chroniclerGiraldus Cambrensis ‘taunted the Archbishop of Cashel, because no one inIreland had received the crown of martyrdom. “Our people may bebarbarous, ” the prelate answered, “but they have never lifted their handsagainst God’s saints; but now that a people have come amongst us who knowhow to make them (it was just after the English invasion), we shall havemartyrs plentifully. ”’ The giants were the old pagan heroes of Ireland, who grew bigger and bigger, just as the gods grew smaller and smaller. The fact is they did not wait for offerings; they took them _vi etarmis_. 

Some of the prettiest stories are those that cluster round _Tír-na-n-Og_. This is the Country of the Young, ‘for age and death have not found it;neither tears nor loud laughter have gone near it. ’ ‘One man has gonethere and returned. The bard, Oisen, who wandered away on a white horse, moving on the surface of the foam with his fairy Niamh, lived there threehundred years, and then returned looking for his comrades. The momenthis foot touched the earth his three hundred years fell on him, and hewas bowed double, and his beard swept the ground. He described hissojourn in the Land of Youth to Patrick before he died. ’ Since then, according to Mr. Yeats, ‘many have seen it in many places; some in thedepths of lakes, and have heard rising therefrom a vague sound of bells;more have seen it far off on the horizon, as they peered out from thewestern cliffs. Not three years ago a fisherman imagined that he sawit. ’

Mr. Yeats has certainly done his work very well. He has shown greatcritical capacity in his selection of the stories, and his littleintroductions are charmingly written. It is delightful to come across acollection of purely imaginative work, and Mr. Yeats has a very quickinstinct in finding out the best and the most beautiful things in Irishfolklore. 

I am also glad to see that he has not confined himself entirely to prose, but has included Allingham’s lovely poem on _The Fairies_:

 Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl’s feather!

 Down along the rocky shore Some make their home, They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain lake, With frogs for their watch-dogs All night awake. 

 High on the hill-top The old King sits; He is now so old and gray He’s nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music, On cold starry nights, To sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights. 

All lovers of fairy tales and folklore should get this little book. _TheHorned Women_, _The Priest’s Soul_, {157} and _Teig O’Kane_, are reallymarvellous in their way; and, indeed, there is hardly a single story thatis not worth reading and thinking over. 

_Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry_. Edited and Selected by W. B. Yeats. (Walter Scott. )

MR. W. B. YEATS(_Woman’s World_, March 1889. )

‘_The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems_ is, I believe, the firstvolume of poems that Mr. Yeats has published, and it is certainly full ofpromise. It must be admitted that many of the poems are too fragmentary, too incomplete. They read like stray scenes out of unfinished plays, like things only half remembered, or, at best, but dimly seen. But thearchitectonic power of construction, the power to build up and makeperfect a harmonious whole, is nearly always the latest, as it certainlyis the highest, development of the artistic temperament. It is somewhatunfair to expect it in early work. One quality Mr. Yeats has in a markeddegree, a quality that is not common in the work of our minor poets, andis therefore all the more welcome to us—I mean the romantic temper. Heis essentially Celtic, and his verse, at its best, is Celtic also. Strongly influenced by Keats, he seems to study how to ‘load every riftwith ore, ’ yet is more fascinated by the beauty of words than by thebeauty of metrical music. The spirit that dominates the whole book isperhaps more valuable than any individual poem or particular passage, butthis from _The Wanderings of Oisin_ is worth quoting. It describes theride to the Island of Forgetfulness:

 And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow light, For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun, Ceased on our hands and faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light, And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one;

 Till the horse gave a whinny; for cumbrous with stems of the hazel and oak, Of hollies, and hazels, and oak-trees, a valley was sloping away From his hoofs in the heavy grasses, with monstrous slumbering folk, Their mighty and naked and gleaming bodies heaped loose where they lay. 

 More comely than man may make them, inlaid with silver and gold, Were arrow and shield and war-axe, arrow and spear and blade, And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollows a child of three years old Could sleep on a couch of rushes, round and about them laid. 

And this, which deals with the old legend of the city lying under thewaters of a lake, is strange and interesting:

 The maker of the stars and worlds Sat underneath the market cross, And the old men were walking, walking, And little boys played pitch-and-toss. 

 ‘The props, ’ said He, ‘of stars and worlds Are prayers of patient men and good. The boys, the women, and old men, Listening, upon their shadows stood. 

 A grey professor passing cried, ‘How few the mind’s intemperance rule! What shallow thoughts about deep things! The world grows old and plays the fool. ’

 The mayor came, leaning his left ear— There were some talking of the poor— And to himself cried, ‘Communist!’ And hurried to the guardhouse door. 

 The bishop came with open book, Whispering along the sunny path; There was some talking of man’s God, His God of stupor and of wrath. 

 The bishop murmured, ‘Atheist! How sinfully the wicked scoff!’ And sent the old men on their way, And drove the boys and women off. 

 The place was empty now of people; A cock came by upon his toes; An old horse looked across the fence, And rubbed along the rail his nose. 

 The maker of the stars and worlds To His own house did Him betake, And on that city dropped a tear, And now that city is a lake. 

Mr. Yeats has a great deal of invention, and some of the poems in hisbook, such as _Mosada_, _Jealousy_, and _The Island of Statues_, are veryfinely conceived. It is impossible to doubt, after reading his presentvolume, that he will some day give us work of high import. Up to this hehas been merely trying the strings of his instrument, running over thekeys. 

_The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems_. By W. B. Yeats. (KeganPaul. )

MR. YEATS’S _WANDERINGS OF OISIN_(_Pall Mall Gazette_, July 12, 1889. )

Books of poetry by young writers are usually promissory notes that arenever met. Now and then, however, one comes across a volume that is sofar above the average that one can hardly resist the fascinatingtemptation of recklessly prophesying a fine future for its author. Sucha book Mr. Yeats’s _Wanderings of Oisin_ certainly is. Here we findnobility of treatment and nobility of subject-matter, delicacy of poeticinstinct and richness of imaginative resource. Unequal and uneven muchof the work must be admitted to be. Mr. Yeats does not try to ‘out-baby’Wordsworth, we are glad to say; but he occasionally succeeds in‘out-glittering’ Keats, and, here and there, in his book we come acrossstrange crudities and irritating conceits. But when he is at his best heis very good. If he has not the grand simplicity of epic treatment, hehas at least something of the largeness of vision that belongs to theepical temper. He does not rob of their stature the great heroes ofCeltic mythology. He is very naïve and very primitive and speaks of hisgiants with the air of a child. Here is a characteristic passage fromthe account of Oisin’s return from the Island of Forgetfulness:

 And I rode by the plains of the sea’s edge, where all is barren and grey, Grey sands on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees, Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas. 

 Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast, Snatching the bird in secret, nor knew I, embosomed apart, When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast, For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart. 

 Till fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hay Came, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down; Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away, From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-winds brown. 

 If I were as I once was, the gold hooves crushing the sand and the shells, Coming forth from the sea like the morning with red lips murmuring a song, Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells, I would leave no Saint’s head on his body, though spacious his lands were and strong. 

 Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path, Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattle and woodwork made, Thy bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the earth, And a small and feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade. 

In one or two places the music is faulty, the construction is sometimestoo involved, and the word ‘populace’ in the last line is ratherinfelicitous; but, when all is said, it is impossible not to feel inthese stanzas the presence of the true poetic spirit. 

_The Wanderings of Oisin and other Poems_. By W. B. Yeats. (KeganPaul. )

MR. WILLIAM MORRIS’S LAST BOOK(_Pall Mall Gazette_, March 2, 1889. )

Mr. Morris’s last book is a piece of pure art workmanship from beginningto end, and the very remoteness of its style from the common language andordinary interests of our day gives to the whole story a strange beautyand an unfamiliar charm. It is written in blended prose and verse, likethe mediæval ‘cante-fable, ’ and tells the tale of the House of theWolfings in its struggles against the legionaries of Rome then advancinginto Northern Germany. It is a kind of Saga, and the language in whichthe folk-epic, as we may call it, is set forth recalls the antiquedignity and directness of our English tongue four centuries ago. From anartistic point of view it may be described as an attempt to return by aself-conscious effort to the conditions of an earlier and a fresher age. Attempts of this kind are not uncommon in the history of art. From somesuch feeling came the Pre-Raphaelite movement of our own day and thearchaistic movement of later Greek sculpture. When the result isbeautiful the method is justified, and no shrill insistence upon asupposed necessity for absolute modernity of form can prevail against thevalue of work that has the incomparable excellence of style. Certainly, Mr. Morris’s work possesses this excellence. His fine harmonies and richcadences create in the reader that spirit by which alone can its ownspirit be interpreted, awake in him something of the temper of romanceand, by taking him out of his own age, place him in a truer and morevital relation to the great masterpieces of all time. It is a bad thingfor an age to be always looking in art for its own reflection. It iswell that, now and then, we are given work that is nobly imaginative inits method and purely artistic in its aim. As we read Mr. Morris’s storywith its fine alternations of verse and prose, its decorative anddescriptive beauties, its wonderful handling of romantic and adventurousthemes, we cannot but feel that we are as far removed from the ignoblefiction as we are from the ignoble facts of our own day. We breathe apurer air, and have dreams of a time when life had a kind of poeticalquality of its own, and was simple and stately and complete. 

The tragic interest of _The House of the Wolfings_ centres round thefigure of Thiodolf, the great hero of the tribe. The goddess who loveshim gives him, as he goes to battle against the Romans, a magical hauberkon which rests this strange fate: that he who wears it shall save his ownlife and destroy the life of his land. Thiodolf, finding out thissecret, brings the hauberk back to the Wood-Sun, as she is called, andchooses death for himself rather than the ruin of his cause, and so thestory ends. 

But Mr. Morris has always preferred romance to tragedy, and set thedevelopment of action above the concentration of passion. His story islike some splendid old tapestry crowded with stately images and enrichedwith delicate and delightful detail. The impression it leaves on us isnot of a single central figure dominating the whole, but rather of amagnificent design to which everything is subordinated, and by whicheverything becomes of enduring import. It is the whole presentation ofthe primitive life that really fascinates. What in other hands wouldhave been mere archæology is here transformed by quick artistic instinctand made wonderful for us, and human and full of high interest. Theancient world seems to have come to life again for our pleasure. 

Of a work so large and so coherent, completed with no less perfectionthan it is conceived, it is difficult by mere quotation to give anyadequate idea. This, however, may serve as an example of its narrativepower. The passage describes the visit of Thiodolf to the Wood-Sun:

 The moonlight lay in a great flood on the grass without, and the dew was falling in the coldest hour of the night, and the earth smelled sweetly: the whole habitation was asleep now, and there was no sound to be known as the sound of any creature, save that from the distant meadow came the lowing of a cow that had lost her calf, and that a white owl was flitting about near the eaves of the Roof with her wild cry that sounded like the mocking of merriment now silent. Thiodolf turned toward the wood, and walked steadily through the scattered hazel-trees, and thereby into the thick of the beech-trees, whose boles grew smooth and silver-grey, high and close-set: and so on and on he went as one going by a well-known path, though there was no path, till all the moonlight was quenched under the close roof of the beech-leaves, though yet for all the darkness, no man could go there and not feel that the roof was green above him. Still he went on in despite of the darkness, till at last there was a glimmer before him, that grew greater till he came unto a small wood-lawn whereon the turf grew again, though the grass was but thin, because little sunlight got to it, so close and thick were the tall trees round about it. . . . Nought looked Thiodolf either at the heavens above, or the trees, as he strode from off the husk-strewn floor of the beech wood on to the scanty grass of the lawn, but his eyes looked straight before him at that which was amidmost of the lawn: and little wonder was that; for there on a stone chair sat a woman exceeding fair, clad in glittering raiment, her hair lying as pale in the moonlight on the grey stone as the barley acres in the August night before the reaping-hook goes in amongst them. She sat there as though she were awaiting some one, and he made no stop nor stay, but went straight up to her, and took her in his arms, and kissed her mouth and her eyes, and she him again; and then he sat himself down beside her. 

As an example of the beauty of the verse we would take this from the songof the Wood-Sun. It at least shows how perfectly the poetry harmonizeswith the prose, and how natural the transition is from the one to theother:

 In many a stead Doom dwelleth, nor sleepeth day nor night: The rim of the bowl she kisseth, and beareth the chambering light When the kings of men wend happy to the bride-bed from the board. It is little to say that she wendeth the edge of the grinded sword, When about the house half builded she hangeth many a day; The ship from the strand she shoveth, and on his wonted way By the mountain hunter fareth where his foot ne’er failed before: She is where the high bank crumbles at last on the river’s shore: The mower’s scythe she whetteth; and lulleth the shepherd to sleep Where the deadly ling-worm wakeneth in the desert of the sheep. Now we that come of the God-kin of her redes for ourselves we wot, But her will with the lives of men-folk and their ending know we not. So therefore I bid thee not fear for thyself of Doom and her deed. But for me: and I bid thee hearken to the helping of my need. Or else—Art thou happy in life, or lusteth thou to die In the flower of thy days, when thy glory and thy longing bloom on high?

The last chapter of the book in which we are told of the great feast madefor the dead is so finely written that we cannot refrain from quotingthis passage:

 Now was the glooming falling upon the earth; but the Hall was bright within even as the Hall-Sun had promised. Therein was set forth the Treasure of the Wolfings; fair cloths were hung on the walls, goodly broidered garments on the pillars: goodly brazen cauldrons and fair-carven chests were set down in nooks where men could see them well, and vessels of gold and silver were set all up and down the tables of the feast. The pillars also were wreathed with flowers, and flowers hung garlanded from the walls over the precious hangings; sweet gums and spices were burning in fair-wrought censers of brass, and so many candles were alight under the Roof, that scarce had it looked more ablaze when the Romans had litten the faggots therein for its burning amidst the hurry of the Morning Battle. 

 There then they fell to feasting, hallowing in the high-tide of their return with victory in their hands: and the dead corpses of Thiodolf and Otter, clad in precious glittering raiment, looked down on them from the High-seat, and the kindreds worshipped them and were glad; and they drank the Cup to them before any others, were they Gods or men. 

In days of uncouth realism and unimaginative imitation, it is a highpleasure to welcome work of this kind. It is a work in which all loversof literature cannot fail to delight. 

_A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and all the Kindreds of the Mark_. Written in Prose and in Verse by William Morris. (Reeves and Turner. )

SOME LITERARY NOTES(_Woman’s World_, April 1889. )

‘In modern life, ’ said Matthew Arnold once, ‘you cannot well enter amonastery; but you can enter the Wordsworth Society. ’ I fear that thiswill sound to many a somewhat uninviting description of this admirableand useful body, whose papers and productions have been recentlypublished by Professor Knight, under the title of _Wordsworthiana_. ‘Plain living and high thinking’ are not popular ideals. Most peopleprefer to live in luxury, and to think with the majority. However, thereis really nothing in the essays and addresses of the Wordsworth Societythat need cause the public any unnecessary alarm; and it is gratifying tonote that, although the society is still in the first blush ofenthusiasm, it has not yet insisted upon our admiring Wordsworth’sinferior work. It praises what is worthy of praise, reverences whatshould be reverenced, and explains what does not require explanation. One paper is quite delightful; it is from the pen of Mr. Rawnsley, anddeals with such reminiscences of Wordsworth as still linger among thepeasantry of Westmoreland. Mr. Rawnsley grew up, he tells us, in theimmediate vicinity of the present Poet-Laureate’s old home inLincolnshire, and had been struck with the swiftness with which, As year by year the labourer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades, the memories of the poet of the Somersby Wold had ‘faded from off thecircle of the hills’—had, indeed, been astonished to note how little realinterest was taken in him or his fame, and how seldom his works were metwith in the houses of the rich or poor in the very neighbourhood. Accordingly, when he came to reside in the Lake Country, he endeavouredto find out what of Wordsworth’s memory among the men of the Dales stilllingered on—how far he was still a moving presence among them—how far hisworks had made their way into the cottages and farmhouses of the valleys. He also tried to discover how far the race of Westmoreland and Cumberlandfarm-folk—the ‘Matthews’ and the ‘Michaels’ of the poet, as described byhim—were real or fancy pictures, or how far the characters of theDalesmen had been altered in any remarkable manner by tourist influencesduring the thirty-two years that have passed since the Lake poet was laidto rest. 

With regard to the latter point, it will be remembered that Mr. Ruskin, writing in 1876, said that ‘the Border peasantry, painted with absolutefidelity by Scott and Wordsworth, ’ are, as hitherto, a scarcely injuredrace; that in his fields at Coniston he had men who might have foughtwith Henry V. At Agincourt without being distinguished from any of hisknights; that he could take his tradesmen’s word for a thousand pounds, and need never latch his garden gate; and that he did not fearmolestation, in wood or on moor, for his girl guests. Mr. Rawnsley, however, found that a certain beauty had vanished which the simpleretirement of old valley days fifty years ago gave to the men among whomWordsworth lived. ‘The strangers, ’ he says, ‘with their gifts of gold, their vulgarity, and their requirements, have much to answer for. ’ Asfor their impressions of Wordsworth, to understand them one mustunderstand the vernacular of the Lake District. ‘What was Mr. Wordsworthlike in personal appearance?’ said Mr. Rawnsley once to an old retainer, who still lives not far from Rydal Mount. ‘He was a ugly-faäced man, anda meän-liver, ’ was the answer; but all that was really meant was that hewas a man of marked features, and led a very simple life in matters offood and raiment. Another old man, who believed that Wordsworth ‘gotmost of his poetry out of Hartley, ’ spoke of the poet’s wife as ‘a veryonpleasant woman, very onpleasant indeed. A close-fisted woman, that’swhat she was. ’ This, however, seems to have been merely a tribute toMrs. Wordsworth’s admirable housekeeping qualities. 

The first person interviewed by Mr. Rawnsley was an old lady who had beenonce in service at Rydal Mount, and was, in 1870, a lodging-house keeperat Grasmere. She was not a very imaginative person, as may be gatheredfrom the following anecdote:—Mr. Rawnsley’s sister came in from a lateevening walk, and said, ‘O Mrs. D---, have you seen the wonderfulsunset?’ The good lady turned sharply round and, drawing herself to herfull height, as if mortally offended, answered: ‘No, miss; I’m a tidycook, I know, and “they say” a decentish body for a landlady, but I don’tknaw nothing about sunsets or them sort of things, they’ve never been inmy line. ’ Her reminiscence of Wordsworth was as worthy of tradition asit was explanatory, from her point of view, of the method in whichWordsworth composed, and was helped in his labours by his enthusiasticsister. ‘Well, you know, ’ she said, ‘Mr. Wordsworth went humming andbooing about, and she, Miss Dorothy, kept close behint him, and shepicked up the bits as he let ’em fall, and tak’ ’em down, and put ’emtogether on paper for him. And you may be very well sure as how shedidn’t understand nor make sense out of ’em, and I doubt that he didn’tknow much about them either himself, but, howivver, there’s a great manyfolk as do, I dare say. ’ Of Wordsworth’s habit of talking to himself, and composing aloud, we hear a great deal. ‘Was Mr. Wordsworth asociable man?’ asked Mr. Rawnsley of a Rydal farmer. ‘Wudsworth, for a’he had noa pride nor nowt, ’ was the answer, ‘was a man who was quite oneto hissel, ye kna. He was not a man as folks could crack wi’, nor not aman as could crack wi’ folks. But there was another thing as kep’ folkoff, he had a ter’ble girt deep voice, and ye might see his faace agaanfor long enuff. I’ve knoan folks, village lads and lasses, coming overby old road above, which runs from Grasmere to Rydal, flayt a’most todeath there by Wishing Gaate to hear the girt voice a groanin’ andmutterin’ and thunderin’ of a still evening. And he had a way ofstandin’ quite still by the rock there in t’ path under Rydal, and folkscould hear sounds like a wild beast coming from the rocks, and childerwere scared fit to be dead a’most. ’

Wordsworth’s description of himself constantly recurs to one:

 And who is he with modest looks, And clad in sober russet gown? He murmurs by the running brooks, A music sweeter than their own; He is retired as noontide dew, Or fountain in a noonday grove. 

But the corroboration comes in strange guise. Mr. Rawnsley asked one ofthe Dalesmen about Wordsworth’s dress and habits. This was the reply:‘Wudsworth wore a Jem Crow, never seed him in a boxer in my life, —a JemCrow and an old blue cloak was his rig, and _as for his habits_, _he hadnoan_; niver knew him with a pot i’ his hand, or a pipe i’ his mouth. But he was a greät skater, for a’ that—noan better in these parts—why, hecould cut his own naäme upo’ the ice, could Mr. Wudsworth. ’ Skatingseems to have been Wordsworth’s one form of amusement. He was ‘overfeckless i’ his hands’—could not drive or ride—‘not a bit of fish inhim, ’ and ‘nowt of a mountaineer. ’ But he could skate. The rapture ofthe time when, as a boy, on Esthwaite’s frozen lake, he had

 wheeled about, Proud and exulting like an untired horse That cares not for his home, and, shod with steel, Had hissed along the polished ice, was continued, Mr. Rawnsley tells us, into manhood’s later day; and Mr. Rawnsley found many proofs that the skill the poet had gained, when

 Not seldom from the uproar he retired, Into a silent bay, or sportively Glanced sideways, leaving the tumultuous throng To cut across the reflex of a star, was of such a kind as to astonish the natives among whom he dwelt. Therecollection of a fall he once had, when his skate caught on a stone, still lingers in the district. A boy had been sent to sweep the snowfrom the White Moss Tarn for him. ‘Did Mr. Wudsworth gie ye owt?’ he wasasked, when he returned from his labour. ‘Na, but I seed him tumlle, though!’ was the answer. ‘He was a ter’ble girt skater, was Wudsworthnow, ’ says one of Mr. Rawnsley’s informants; ‘he would put one hand i’his breast (he wore a frill shirt i’ them days), and t’ other hand i’ hiswaistband, same as shepherds does to keep their hands warm, and he wouldstand up straight and sway and swing away grandly. ’

Of his poetry they did not think much, and whatever was good in it theyascribed to his wife, his sister, and Hartley Coleridge. He wrotepoetry, they said, ‘because he couldn’t help it—because it was hishobby’—for sheer love, and not for money. They could not understand hisdoing work ‘for nowt, ’ and held his occupation in somewhat light esteembecause it did not bring in ‘a deal o’ brass to the pocket. ’ ‘Did youever read his poetry, or see any books about in the farmhouses?’ askedMr. Rawnsley. The answer was curious: ‘Ay, ay, time or two. But ya’reweel aware there’s potry and potry. There’s potry wi’ a li’le bitpleasant in it, and potry sic as a man can laugh at or the childerunderstand, and some as takes a deal of mastery to make out what’s said, and a deal of Wudsworth’s was this sort, ye kna. You could tell fra theman’s faace his potry would niver have no laugh in it. His potry wasquite different work from li’le Hartley. Hartley ’ud goa running alongbeside o’ the brooks and mak his, and goa in the first oppen door andwrite what he had got upo’ paper. But Wudsworth’s potry was real hardstuff, and bided a deal of makking, and he’d keep it in his head for longenough. Eh, but it’s queer, mon, different ways folks hes of makingpotry now. . . . Not but what Mr. Wudsworth didn’t stand very high, andwas a well-spoken man enough. ’ The best criticism on Wordsworth that Mr. Rawnsley heard was this: ‘He was an open-air man, and a great critic oftrees. ’

There are many useful and well-written essays in Professor Knight’svolume, but Mr. Rawnsley’s is far the most interesting of all. It givesus a graphic picture of the poet as he appeared in outward semblance andmanner to those about whom he wrote. 

_Wordsworthiana_: _A Selection from Papers read to the WordsworthSociety_. Edited by William Knight. (Macmillan and Co. )

MR. SWINBURNE’S _POEMS AND BALLADS_ (THIRD SERIES)(_Pall Mall Gazette_, June 27, 1889. )

Mr. Swinburne once set his age on fire by a volume of very perfect andvery poisonous poetry. Then he became revolutionary and pantheistic, andcried out against those that sit in high places both in heaven and onearth. Then he invented Marie Stuart and laid upon us the heavy burdenof _Bothwell_. Then he retired to the nursery and wrote poems aboutchildren of a somewhat over-subtle character. He is now extremelypatriotic, and manages to combine with his patriotism a strong affectionfor the Tory party. He has always been a great poet. But he has hislimitations, the chief of which is, curiously enough, the entire lack ofany sense of limit. His song is nearly always too loud for his subject. His magnificent rhetoric, nowhere more magnificent than in the volumethat now lies before us, conceals rather than reveals. It has been saidof him, and with truth, that he is a master of language, but with stillgreater truth it may be said that Language is his master. Words seem todominate him. Alliteration tyrannizes over him. Mere sound oftenbecomes his lord. He is so eloquent that whatever he touches becomesunreal. 

Let us turn to the poem on the Armada:

 The wings of the south-west wind are widened; the breath of his fervent lips, More keen than a sword’s edge, fiercer than fire, falls full on the plunging ships. The pilot is he of the northward flight, their stay and their steersman he; A helmsman clothed with the tempest, and girdled with strength to constrain the sea. And the host of them trembles and quails, caught fast in his hand as a bird in the toils: For the wrath and the joy that fulfil him are mightier than man’s, whom he slays and spoils. And vainly, with heart divided in sunder, and labour of wavering will, The lord of their host takes counsel with hope if haply their star shine still. 

Somehow we seem to have heard all this before. Does it come from thefact that of all the poets who ever lived Mr. Swinburne is the one who isthe most limited in imagery? It must be admitted that he is so. He haswearied us with his monotony. ‘Fire’ and the ‘Sea’ are the two wordsever on his lips. We must confess also that this shrillsinging—marvellous as it is—leaves us out of breath. Here is a passagefrom a poem called _A Word with the Wind_:

 Be the sunshine bared or veiled, the sky superb or shrouded, Still the waters, lax and languid, chafed and foiled, Keen and thwarted, pale and patient, clothed with fire or clouded, Vex their heart in vain, or sleep like serpents coiled. Thee they look for, blind and baffled, wan with wrath and weary, Blown for ever back by winds that rock the bird: Winds that seamews breast subdue the sea, and bid the dreary Waves be weak as hearts made sick with hope deferred. Let the clarion sound from westward, let the south bear token How the glories of thy godhead sound and shine: Bid the land rejoice to see the land-wind’s broad wings broken, Bid the sea take comfort, bid the world be thine. 

Verse of this kind may be justly praised for the sustained strength andvigour of its metrical scheme. Its purely technical excellence isextraordinary. But is it more than an oratorical _tour de force_? Doesit really convey much? Does it charm? Could we return to it again andagain with renewed pleasure? We think not. It seems to us empty. 

Of course, we must not look to these poems for any revelation of humanlife. To be at one with the elements seems to be Mr. Swinburne’s aim. He seeks to speak with the breath of wind and wave. The roar of the fireis ever in his ears. He puts his clarion to the lips of Spring and bidsher blow, and the Earth wakes from her dreams and tells him her secret. He is the first lyric poet who has tried to make an absolute surrender ofhis own personality, and he has succeeded. We hear the song, but wenever know the singer. We never even get near to him. Out of thethunder and splendour of words he himself says nothing. We have oftenhad man’s interpretation of Nature; now we have Nature’s interpretationof man, and she has curiously little to say. Force and Freedom form hervague message. She deafens us with her clangours. 

But Mr. Swinburne is not always riding the whirlwind and calling out ofthe depths of the sea. Romantic ballads in Border dialect have not losttheir fascination for him, and this last volume contains some verysplendid examples of this curious artificial kind of poetry. The amountof pleasure one gets out of dialect is a matter entirely of temperament. To say ‘mither’ instead of ‘mother’ seems to many the acme of romance. There are others who are not quite so ready to believe in the pathos ofprovincialism. There is, however, no doubt of Mr. Swinburne’s masteryover the form, whether the form be quite legitimate or not. _The __WearyWedding_ has the concentration and colour of a great drama, and thequaintness of its style lends it something of the power of a grotesque. The ballad of _The Witch-Mother_, a mediæval Medea who slays her childrenbecause her lord is faithless, is worth reading on account of itshorrible simplicity. _The Bride’s Tragedy_, with its strange refrain of

 In, in, out and in, Blaws the wind and whirls the whin:

The _Jacobite’s Exile_—

 O lordly flow the Loire and Seine, And loud the dark Durance: But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne Than a’ the fields of France; And the waves of Till that speak sae still Gleam goodlier where they glance:

_The Tyneside Widow_ and _A Reiver’s Neck-verse_ are all poems of fineimaginative power, and some of them are terrible in their fierceintensity of passion. There is no danger of English poetry narrowingitself to a form so limited as the romantic ballad in dialect. It is oftoo vital a growth for that. So we may welcome Mr. Swinburne’s masterlyexperiments with the hope that things which are inimitable will not beimitated. The collection is completed by a few poems on children, somesonnets, a threnody on John William Inchbold, and a lovely lyric entitled_The Interpreters_. 

 In human thought have all things habitation; Our days Laugh, lower, and lighten past, and find no station That stays. 

 But thought and faith are mightier things than time Can wrong, Made splendid once by speech, or made sublime By song. 

 Remembrance, though the tide of change that rolls Wax hoary, Gives earth and heaven, for song’s sake and the soul’s, Their glory. 

Certainly, ‘for song’s sake’ we should love Mr. Swinburne’s work, cannot, indeed, help loving it, so marvellous a music-maker is he. But what ofthe soul? For the soul we must go elsewhere. 

_Poems and Ballads_. Third Series. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. (Chatto and Windus. )

A CHINESE SAGE(_Speaker_, February 8, 1890. )

An eminent Oxford theologian once remarked that his only objection tomodern progress was that it progressed forward instead of backward—a viewthat so fascinated a certain artistic undergraduate that he promptlywrote an essay upon some unnoticed analogies between the development ofideas and the movements of the common sea-crab. I feel sure the_Speaker_ will not be suspected even by its most enthusiastic friends ofholding this dangerous heresy of retrogression. But I must candidlyadmit that I have come to the conclusion that the most caustic criticismof modern life I have met with for some time is that contained in thewritings of the learned Chuang Tzŭ, recently translated into the vulgartongue by Mr. Herbert Giles, Her Majesty’s Consul at Tamsui. 

The spread of popular education has no doubt made the name of this greatthinker quite familiar to the general public, but, for the sake of thefew and the over-cultured, I feel it my duty to state definitely who hewas, and to give a brief outline of the character of his philosophy. 

Chuang Tzŭ, whose name must carefully be pronounced as it is not written, was born in the fourth century before Christ, by the banks of the YellowRiver, in the Flowery Land; and portraits of the wonderful sage seated onthe flying dragon of contemplation may still be found on the simpletea-trays and pleasing screens of many of our most respectable suburbanhouseholds. The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubtoften mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughedover the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. Ifthey really knew who he was, they would tremble. Chuang Tzŭ spent hislife in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out theuselessness of all useful things. ‘Do nothing, and everything will bedone, ’ was the doctrine which he inherited from his great master Lao Tzŭ. To resolve action into thought, and thought into abstraction, was hiswicked transcendental aim. Like the obscure philosopher of early Greekspeculation, he believed in the identity of contraries; like Plato, hewas an idealist, and had all the idealist’s contempt for utilitariansystems; he was a mystic like Dionysius, and Scotus Erigena, and JacobBöhme, and held, with them and with Philo, that the object of life was toget rid of self-consciousness, and to become the unconscious vehicle of ahigher illumination. In fact, Chuang Tzŭ may be said to have summed upin himself almost every mood of European metaphysical or mysticalthought, from Heraclitus down to Hegel. There was something in him ofthe Quietist also; and in his worship of Nothing he may be said to havein some measure anticipated those strange dreamers of mediæval days who, like Tauler and Master Eckhart, adored the _purum nihil_ and the Abyss. The great middle classes of this country, to whom, as we all know, ourprosperity, if not our civilization, is entirely due, may shrug theirshoulders over all this and ask, with a certain amount of reason, what isthe identity of contraries to them, and why they should get rid of thatself-consciousness which is their chief characteristic. But Chuang Tzŭwas something more than a metaphysician and an illuminist. He sought todestroy society, as we know it, as the middle classes know it; and thesad thing is that he combines with the passionate eloquence of a Rousseauthe scientific reasoning of a Herbert Spencer. There is nothing of thesentimentalist in him. He pities the rich more than the poor, if he evenpities at all, and prosperity seems to him as tragic a thing assuffering. He has nothing of the modern sympathy with failures, nor doeshe propose that the prizes should always be given on moral grounds tothose who come in last in the race. It is the race itself that heobjects to; and as for active sympathy, which has become the professionof so many worthy people in our own day, he thinks that trying to makeothers good is as silly an occupation as ‘beating a drum in a forest inorder to find a fugitive. ’ It is a mere waste of energy. That is all. While, as for a thoroughly sympathetic man, he is, in the eyes of ChuangTzŭ, simply a man who is always trying to be somebody else, and so missesthe only possible excuse for his own existence. 

Yes; incredible as it may seem, this curious thinker looked back with asigh of regret to a certain Golden Age when there were no competitiveexaminations, no wearisome educational systems, no missionaries, no pennydinners for the people, no Established Churches, no HumanitarianSocieties, no dull lectures about one’s duty to one’s neighbour, and notedious sermons about any subject at all. In those ideal days, he tellsus, people loved each other without being conscious of charity, orwriting to the newspapers about it. They were upright, and yet theynever published books upon Altruism. As every man kept his knowledge tohimself, the world escaped the curse of scepticism; and as every man kepthis virtues to himself, nobody meddled in other people’s business. Theylived simple and peaceful lives, and were contented with such food andraiment as they could get. Neighbouring districts were in sight, and‘the cocks and dogs of one could be heard in the other, ’ yet the peoplegrew old and died without ever interchanging visits. There was nochattering about clever men, and no laudation of good men. Theintolerable sense of obligation was unknown. The deeds of humanity leftno trace, and their affairs were not made a burden for prosperity byfoolish historians. 

In an evil moment the Philanthropist made his appearance, and broughtwith him the mischievous idea of Government. ‘There is such a thing, ’says Chuang Tzŭ, ‘as leaving mankind alone: there has never been such athing as governing mankind. ’ All modes of government are wrong. Theyare unscientific, because they seek to alter the natural environment ofman; they are immoral because, by interfering with the individual, theyproduce the most aggressive forms of egotism; they are ignorant, becausethey try to spread education; they are self-destructive, because theyengender anarchy. ‘Of old, ’ he tells us, ‘the Yellow Emperor firstcaused charity and duty to one’s neighbour to interfere with the naturalgoodness of the heart of man. In consequence of this, Yao and Shun worethe hair off their legs in endeavouring to feed their people. Theydisturbed their internal economy in order to find room for artificialvirtues. They exhausted their energies in framing laws, and they werefailures. ’ Man’s heart, our philosopher goes on to say, may be ‘forceddown or stirred up, ’ and in either case the issue is fatal. Yao made thepeople too happy, so they were not satisfied. Chieh made them toowretched, so they grew discontented. Then every one began to argue aboutthe best way of tinkering up society. ‘It is quite clear that somethingmust be done, ’ they said to each other, and there was a general rush forknowledge. The results were so dreadful that the Government of the dayhad to bring in Coercion, and as a consequence of this ‘virtuous mensought refuge in mountain caves, while rulers of state sat trembling inancestral halls. ’ Then, when everything was in a state of perfect chaos, the Social Reformers got up on platforms, and preached salvation from theills that they and their system had caused. The poor Social Reformers!‘They know not shame, nor what it is to blush, ’ is the verdict of ChuangTzŭ upon them. 

The economic question, also, is discussed by this almond-eyed sage atgreat length, and he writes about the curse of capital as eloquently asMr. Hyndman. The accumulation of wealth is to him the origin of evil. It makes the strong violent, and the weak dishonest. It creates thepetty thief, and puts him in a bamboo cage. It creates the big thief, and sets him on a throne of white jade. It is the father of competition, and competition is the waste, as well as the destruction, of energy. Theorder of nature is rest, repetition, and peace. Weariness and war arethe results of an artificial society based upon capital; and the richerthis society gets, the more thoroughly bankrupt it really is, for it hasneither sufficient rewards for the good nor sufficient punishments forthe wicked. There is also this to be remembered—that the prizes of theworld degrade a man as much as the world’s punishments. The age isrotten with its worship of success. As for education, true wisdom canneither be learnt nor taught. It is a spiritual state, to which he wholives in harmony with nature attains. Knowledge is shallow if we compareit with the extent of the unknown, and only the unknowable is of value. Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer thananother. That is the only result of School Boards. Besides, of whatpossible philosophic importance can education be, when it serves simplyto make each man differ from his neighbour? We arrive ultimately at achaos of opinions, doubt everything, and fall into the vulgar habit ofarguing; and it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Look atHui Tzu. ‘He was a man of many ideas. His work would fill five carts. But his doctrines were paradoxical. ’ He said that there were feathers inan egg, because there were feathers on a chicken; that a dog could be asheep, because all names were arbitrary; that there was a moment when aswift-flying arrow was neither moving nor at rest; that if you took astick a foot long, and cut it in half every day, you would never come tothe end of it; and that a bay horse and a dun cow were three, becausetaken separately they were two, and taken together they were one, and oneand two made up three. ‘He was like a man running a race with his ownshadow, and making a noise in order to drown the echo. He was a clevergadfly, that was all. What was the use of him?’

Morality is, of course, a different thing. It went out of fashion, saysChuang Tzŭ, when people began to moralize. Men ceased then to bespontaneous and to act on intuition. They became priggish andartificial, and were so blind as to have a definite purpose in life. Then came Governments and Philanthropists, those two pests of the age. The former tried to coerce people into being good, and so destroyed thenatural goodness of man. The latter were a set of aggressive busybodieswho caused confusion wherever they went. They were stupid enough to haveprinciples, and unfortunate enough to act up to them. They all came tobad ends, and showed that universal altruism is as bad in its results asuniversal egotism. ‘They tripped people up over charity, and fetteredthem with duties to their neighbours. ’ They gushed over music, andfussed over ceremonies. As a consequence of all this, the world lost itsequilibrium, and has been staggering ever since. 

Who, then, according to Chuang Tzŭ, is the perfect man? And what is hismanner of life? The perfect man does nothing beyond gazing at theuniverse. He adopts no absolute position. ‘In motion, he is like water. At rest, he is like a mirror. And, like Echo, he answers only when he iscalled upon. ’ He lets externals take care of themselves. Nothingmaterial injures him; nothing spiritual punishes him. His mentalequilibrium gives him the empire of the world. He is never the slave ofobjective existences. He knows that, ‘just as the best language is thatwhich is never spoken, so the best action is that which is never done. ’He is passive, and accepts the laws of life. He rests in inactivity, andsees the world become virtuous of itself. He does not try to ‘bringabout his own good deeds. ’ He never wastes himself on effort. He is nottroubled about moral distinctions. He knows that things are what theyare, and that their consequences will be what they will be. His mind isthe ‘speculum of creation, ’ and he is ever at peace. 

All this is of course excessively dangerous, but we must remember thatChuang Tzŭ lived more than two thousand years ago, and never had theopportunity of seeing our unrivalled civilization. And yet it ispossible that, were he to come back to earth and visit us, he might havesomething to say to Mr. Balfour about his coercion and activemisgovernment in Ireland; he might smile at some of our philanthropicardours, and shake his head over many of our organized charities; theSchool Board might not impress him, nor our race for wealth stir hisadmiration; he might wonder at our ideals, and grow sad over what we haverealized. Perhaps it is well that Chuang Tzŭ cannot return. 

Meanwhile, thanks to Mr. Giles and Mr. Quaritch, we have his book toconsole us, and certainly it is a most fascinating and delightful volume. Chuang Tzŭ is one of the Darwinians before Darwin. He traces man fromthe germ, and sees his unity with nature. As an anthropologist he isexcessively interesting, and he describes our primitive arboreal ancestorliving in trees through his terror of animals stronger than himself, andknowing only one parent, the mother, with all the accuracy of a lecturerat the Royal Society. Like Plato, he adopts the dialogue as his mode ofexpression, ‘putting words into other people’s mouths, ’ he tells us, ‘inorder to gain breadth of view. ’ As a story-teller he is charming. Theaccount of the visit of the respectable Confucius to the great Robber Chêis most vivid and brilliant, and it is impossible not to laugh over theultimate discomfiture of the sage, the barrenness of whose moralplatitudes is ruthlessly exposed by the successful brigand. Even in hismetaphysics, Chuang Tzŭ is intensely humorous. He personifies hisabstractions, and makes them act plays before us. The Spirit of theClouds, when passing eastward through the expanse of air, happened tofall in with the Vital Principle. The latter was slapping his ribs andhopping about: whereupon the Spirit of the Clouds said, ‘Who are you, oldman, and what are you doing?’ ‘Strolling!’ replied the Vital Principle, without stopping, for all activities are ceaseless. ‘I want to _know_something, ’ continued the Spirit of the Clouds. ‘Ah!’ cried the VitalPrinciple, in a tone of disapprobation, and a marvellous conversationfollows, that is not unlike the dialogue between the Sphinx and theChimera in Flaubert’s curious drama. Talking animals, also, have theirplace in Chuang Tzŭ’s parables and stories, and through myth and poetryand fancy his strange philosophy finds musical utterance. 

Of course it is sad to be told that it is immoral to be consciously good, and that doing anything is the worst form of idleness. Thousands ofexcellent and really earnest philanthropists would be absolutely thrownupon the rates if we adopted the view that nobody should be allowed tomeddle in what does not concern him. The doctrine of the uselessness ofall useful things would not merely endanger our commercial supremacy as anation, but might bring discredit upon many prosperous and serious-mindedmembers of the shop-keeping classes. What would become of our popularpreachers, our Exeter Hall orators, our drawing-room evangelists, if wesaid to them, in the words of Chuang Tzŭ, ‘Mosquitoes will keep a manawake all night with their biting, and just in the same way this talk ofcharity and duty to one’s neighbour drives us nearly crazy. Sirs, striveto keep the world to its own original simplicity, and, as the windbloweth where it listeth, so let Virtue establish itself. Wherefore thisundue energy?’ And what would be the fate of governments andprofessional politicians if we came to the conclusion that there is nosuch thing as governing mankind at all? It is clear that Chuang Tzŭ is avery dangerous writer, and the publication of his book in English, twothousand years after his death, is obviously premature, and may cause agreat deal of pain to many thoroughly respectable and industriouspersons. It may be true that the ideal of self-culture andself-development, which is the aim of his scheme of life, and the basisof his scheme of philosophy, is an ideal somewhat needed by an age likeours, in which most people are so anxious to educate their neighboursthat they have actually no time left in which to educate themselves. Butwould it be wise to say so? It seems to me that if we once admitted theforce of any one of Chuang Tzŭ’s destructive criticisms we should have toput some check on our national habit of self-glorification; and the onlything that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praisehe always gives himself for doing them. There may, however, be a few whohave grown wearied of that strange modern tendency that sets enthusiasmto do the work of the intellect. To these, and such as these, Chuang Tzŭwill be welcome. But let them only read him. Let them not talk abouthim. He would be disturbing at dinner-parties, and impossible atafternoon teas, and his whole life was a protest against platformspeaking. ‘The perfect man ignores self; the divine man ignores action;the true sage ignores reputation. ’ These are the principles of ChuangTzŭ. 

_Chuang Tzŭ_: _Mystic_, _Moralist_, _and Social Reformer_. Translatedfrom the Chinese by Herbert A. Giles, H. B. M. ’s Consul at Tamsui. (Bernard Quaritch. )

MR. PATER’S _APPRECIATIONS_(_Speaker_, March 22, 1890. )

When I first had the privilege—and I count it a very high one—of meetingMr. Walter Pater, he said to me, smiling, ‘Why do you always writepoetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult. ’

It was during my undergraduate days at Oxford; days of lyrical ardour andof studious sonnet-writing; days when one loved the exquisite intricacyand musical repetitions of the ballade, and the villanelle with itslinked long-drawn echoes and its curious completeness; days when onesolemnly sought to discover the proper temper in which a triolet shouldbe written; delightful days, in which, I am glad to say, there was farmore rhyme than reason. 

I may frankly confess now that at the time I did not quite comprehendwhat Mr. Pater really meant; and it was not till I had carefully studiedhis beautiful and suggestive essays on the Renaissance that I fullyrealized what a wonderful self-conscious art the art of Englishprose-writing really is, or may be made to be. Carlyle’s stormyrhetoric, Ruskin’s winged and passionate eloquence, had seemed to me tospring from enthusiasm rather than from art. I do not think I knew thenthat even prophets correct their proofs. As for Jacobean prose, Ithought it too exuberant; and Queen Anne prose appeared to me terriblybald, and irritatingly rational. But Mr. Pater’s essays became to me‘the golden book of spirit and sense, the holy writ of beauty. ’ They arestill this to me. It is possible, of course, that I may exaggerate aboutthem. I certainly hope that I do; for where there is no exaggerationthere is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding. It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give areally unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why anunbiassed opinion is always valueless. 

But I must not allow this brief notice of Mr. Pater’s new volume todegenerate into an autobiography. I remember being told in America thatwhenever Margaret Fuller wrote an essay upon Emerson the printers hadalways to send out to borrow some additional capital ‘I’s, ’ and I feel itright to accept this transatlantic warning. 

_Appreciations_, in the fine Latin sense of the word, is the title givenby Mr. Pater to his book, which is an exquisite collection of exquisiteessays, of delicately wrought works of art—some of them being almostGreek in their purity of outline and perfection of form, others mediævalin their strangeness of colour and passionate suggestion, and all of themabsolutely modern, in the true meaning of the term modernity. For he towhom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of theage in which he lives. To realize the nineteenth century one mustrealize every century that has preceded it, and that has contributed toits making. To know anything about oneself, one must know all aboutothers. There must be no mood with which one cannot sympathize, no deadmode of life that one cannot make alive. The legacies of heredity maymake us alter our views of moral responsibility, but they cannot butintensify our sense of the value of Criticism; for the true critic is hewho bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriadgenerations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotionalimpulse obscure. 

Perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the least successful, of theessays contained in the present volume is that on _Style_. It is themost interesting because it is the work of one who speaks with the highauthority that comes from the noble realization of things noblyconceived. It is the least successful, because the subject is tooabstract. A true artist like Mr. Pater is most felicitous when he dealswith the concrete, whose very limitations give him finer freedom, whilethey necessitate more intense vision. And yet what a high ideal iscontained in these few pages! How good it is for us, in these days ofpopular education and facile journalism, to be reminded of the realscholarship that is essential to the perfect writer, who, ‘being a truelover of words for their own sake, a minute and constant observer oftheir physiognomy, ’ will avoid what is mere rhetoric, or ostentatiousornament, or negligent misuse of terms, or ineffective surplusage, andwill be known by his tact of omission, by his skilful economy of means, by his selection and self-restraint, and perhaps above all by thatconscious artistic structure which is the expression of mind in style. Ithink I have been wrong in saying that the subject is too abstract. InMr. Pater’s hands it becomes very real to us indeed, and he shows us how, behind the perfection of a man’s style, must lie the passion of a man’ssoul. 

As one passes to the rest of the volume, one finds essays on Wordsworthand on Coleridge, on Charles Lamb and on Sir Thomas Browne, on some ofShakespeare’s plays and on the English kings that Shakespeare fashioned, on Dante Rossetti, and on William Morris. As that on Wordsworth seems tobe Mr. Pater’s last work, so that on the singer of the _Defence ofGuenevere_ is certainly his earliest, or almost his earliest, and it isinteresting to mark the change that has taken place in his style. Thischange is, perhaps, at first sight not very apparent. In 1868 we findMr. Pater writing with the same exquisite care for words, with the samestudied music, with the same temper, and something of the same mode oftreatment. But, as he goes on, the architecture of the style becomesricher and more complex, the epithet more precise and intellectual. Occasionally one may be inclined to think that there is, here and there, a sentence which is somewhat long, and possibly, if one may venture tosay so, a little heavy and cumbersome in movement. But if this be so, itcomes from those side-issues suddenly suggested by the idea in itsprogress, and really revealing the idea more perfectly; or from thosefelicitous after-thoughts that give a fuller completeness to the centralscheme, and yet convey something of the charm of chance; or from a desireto suggest the secondary shades of meaning with all their accumulatingeffect, and to avoid, it may be, the violence and harshness of toodefinite and exclusive an opinion. For in matters of art, at any rate, thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather thanfixed, and, recognizing its dependence upon the moods and upon thepassion of fine moments, will not accept the rigidity of a scientificformula or a theological dogma. The critical pleasure, too, that wereceive from tracing, through what may seem the intricacies of asentence, the working of the constructive intelligence, must not beoverlooked. As soon as we have realized the design, everything appearsclear and simple. After a time, these long sentences of Mr. Pater’s cometo have the charm of an elaborate piece of music, and the unity of suchmusic also. 

I have suggested that the essay on Wordsworth is probably the most recentbit of work contained in this volume. If one might choose between somuch that is good, I should be inclined to say it is the finest also. The essay on Lamb is curiously suggestive; suggestive, indeed, of asomewhat more tragic, more sombre figure, than men have been wont tothink of in connection with the author of the _Essays of Elia_. It is aninteresting aspect under which to regard Lamb, but perhaps he himselfwould have had some difficulty in recognizing the portrait given of him. He had, undoubtedly, great sorrows, or motives for sorrow, but he couldconsole himself at a moment’s notice for the real tragedies of life byreading any one of the Elizabethan tragedies, provided it was in a folioedition. The essay on Sir Thomas Browne is delightful, and has thestrange, personal, fanciful charm of the author of the _Religio Medici_, Mr. Pater often catching the colour and accent and tone of whateverartist, or work of art, he deals with. That on Coleridge, with itsinsistence on the necessity of the cultivation of the relative, asopposed to the absolute spirit in philosophy and in ethics, and its highappreciation of the poet’s true position in our literature, is in styleand substance a very blameless work. Grace of expression and delicatesubtlety of thought and phrase, characterize the essays on Shakespeare. But the essay on Wordsworth has a spiritual beauty of its own. Itappeals, not to the ordinary Wordsworthian with his uncritical temper, and his gross confusion of ethical and æsthetical problems, but rather tothose who desire to separate the gold from the dross, and to reach at thetrue Wordsworth through the mass of tedious and prosaic work that bearshis name, and that serves often to conceal him from us. The presence ofan alien element in Wordsworth’s art is, of course, recognized by Mr. Pater, but he touches on it merely from the psychological point of view, pointing out how this quality of higher and lower moods gives the effectin his poetry ‘of a power not altogether his own, or under his control’;a power which comes and goes when it wills, ‘so that the old fancy whichmade the poet’s art an enthusiasm, a form of divine possession, seemsalmost true of him. ’ Mr. Pater’s earlier essays had their _purpureipanni_, so eminently suitable for quotation, such as the famous passageon _Mona Lisa_, and that other in which Botticelli’s strange conceptionof the Virgin is so strangely set forth. From the present volume it isdifficult to select any one passage in preference to another as speciallycharacteristic of Mr. Pater’s treatment. This, however, is worth quotingat length. It contains a truth eminently suitable for our age:

 That the end of life is not action but contemplation—_being_ as distinct from _doing_—a certain disposition of the mind: is, in some shape or other, the principle of all the higher morality. In poetry, in art, if you enter into their true spirit at all, you touch this principle in a measure; these, by their sterility, are a type of beholding for the mere joy of beholding. To treat life in the spirit of art is to make life a thing in which means and ends are identified: to encourage such treatment, the true moral significance of art and poetry. Wordsworth, and other poets who have been like him in ancient or more recent times, are the masters, the experts, in this art of impassioned contemplation. Their work is not to teach lessons, or enforce rules, or even to stimulate us to noble ends, but to withdraw the thoughts for a while from the mere machinery of life, to fix them, with appropriate emotions, on the spectacle of those great facts in man’s existence which no machinery affects, ‘on the great and universal passions of men, the most general and interesting of their occupations, and the entire world of nature’—on ‘the operations of the elements and the appearances of the visible universe, on storm and sunshine, on the revolutions of the seasons, on cold and heat, on loss of friends and kindred, on injuries and resentments, on gratitude and hope, on fear and sorrow. ’ To witness this spectacle with appropriate emotions is the aim of all culture; and of these emotions poetry like Wordsworth’s is a great nourisher and stimulant. He sees nature full of sentiment and excitement; he sees men and women as parts of nature, passionate, excited, in strange grouping and connection with the grandeur and beauty of the natural world:—images, in his own words, ‘of men suffering; amid awful forms and powers. ’

Certainly the real secret of Wordsworth has never been better expressed. After having read and reread Mr. Pater’s essay—for it requiresre-reading—one returns to the poet’s work with a new sense of joy andwonder, and with something of eager and impassioned expectation. Andperhaps this might be roughly taken as the test or touchstone of thefinest criticism. 

Finally, one cannot help noticing the delicate instinct that has gone tofashion the brief epilogue that ends this delightful volume. Thedifference between the classical and romantic spirits in art has often, and with much over-emphasis, been discussed. But with what a light suretouch does Mr. Pater write of it! How subtle and certain are hisdistinctions! If imaginative prose be really the special art of thiscentury, Mr. Pater must rank amongst our century’s most characteristicartists. In certain things he stands almost alone. The age has producedwonderful prose styles, turbid with individualism, and violent withexcess of rhetoric. But in Mr. Pater, as in Cardinal Newman, we find theunion of personality with perfection. He has no rival in his own sphere, and he has escaped disciples. And this, not because he has not beenimitated, but because in art so fine as his there is something that, inits essence, is inimitable. 

_Appreciations_, _with an Essay on Style_. By Walter Pater, Fellow ofBrasenose College. (Macmillan and Co. )

SENTENTIAE(_Extracted from Reviews_)

Perhaps he will write poetry some day. If he does we would earnestlyappeal to him to give up calling a cock ‘proud chanticleer. ’ Fewsynonyms are so depressing. 

A young writer can gain more from the study of a literary poet than fromthe study of a lyrist. 

I have seen many audiences more interesting than the actors, and haveoften heard better dialogue in the _foyer_ than I have on the stage. 

The Dramatic College might take up the education of spectators as well asthat of players, and teach people that there is a proper moment for thethrowing of flowers as well as a proper method. 

Life remains eternally unchanged; it is art which, by presenting it to usunder various forms, enables us to realize its many-sided mysteries, andto catch the quality of its most fiery-coloured moments. Theoriginality, I mean, which we ask from the artist, is originality oftreatment, not of subject. It is only the unimaginative who everinvents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what heannexes, and he annexes everything. 

If I ventured on a bit of advice, which I feel most reluctant to do, itwould be to the effect that while one should always study the method of agreat artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of anartist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutelyuniversal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; thesecond is perfection, which all should aim at. 

A critic who posed as an authority on field sports assured me that no oneever went out hunting when roses were in full bloom. Personally, that isexactly the season I would select for the chase, but then I know moreabout flowers than I do about foxes, and like them much better. 

The nineteenth century may be a prosaic age, but we fear that, if we areto judge by the general run of novels, it is not an age of prose. 

Perhaps in this century we are too altruistic to be really artistic. 

I am led to hope that the University will some day have a theatre of itsown, and that proficiency in scene-painting will be regarded as anecessary qualification for the Slade Professorship. On the stage, literature returns to life and archæology becomes art. A fine theatre isa temple where all the muses may meet, a second Parnassus. 

It would be sad indeed if the many volumes of poems that are every yearpublished in London found no readers but the authors themselves and theauthors’ relations; and the real philanthropist should recognize it aspart of his duties to buy every new book of verse that appears. 

A fifteen-line sonnet is as bad a monstrosity as a sonnet in dialogue. 

Antiquarian books, as a rule, are extremely dull reading. They give usfacts without form, science without style, and learning without life. 

The Roman patron, in fact, kept the Roman poet alive, and we fancy thatmany of our modern bards rather regret the old system. Better, surely, the humiliation of the _sportula_ than the indignity of a bill forprinting! Better to accept a country-house as a gift than to be in debtto one’s landlady! On the whole, the patron was an excellentinstitution, if not for poetry at least for the poets; . . . Every poetlongs for a Mæcenas. 

The two things the Greeks valued most in actors were grace of gesture andmusic of voice. Indeed, to gain these virtues their actors used tosubject themselves to a regular course of gymnastics and a particularregime of diet, health being to the Greeks not merely a quality of art, but a condition of its production. 

One should not be too severe on English novels: they are the onlyrelaxation of the intellectually unemployed. 

Most modern novels are more remarkable for their crime than for theirculture. 

Not that a tramp’s mode of life is at all unsuited to the development ofthe poetic faculty. Far from it! He, if any one, should possess thatfreedom of mood which is so essential to the artist, for he has no taxesto pay and no relations to worry him. The man who possesses a permanentaddress, and whose name is to be found in the Directory, is necessarilylimited and localized. Only the tramp has absolute liberty of living. Was not Homer himself a vagrant, and did not Thespis go about in acaravan?

In art as in life the law of heredity holds good. _On est toujours filsde quelqu’un_. 

He has succeeded in studying a fine poet without stealing from him—a verydifficult thing to do. 

Morocco is a sort of paradox among countries, for though it lies westwardof Piccadilly, yet it is purely Oriental in character, and though it isbut three hours’ sail from Europe, yet it makes you feel (to use theforcible expression of an American writer) as if you had been taken up bythe scruff of the neck and set down in the Old Testament. 

As children themselves are the perfect flowers of life, so a collectionof the best poems written on children should be the most perfect of allanthologies. 

No English poet has written of children with more love and grace anddelicacy [than Herrick]. His _Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour_, his poem_To His Saviour_, _A Child_: _A Present by a Child_, his _Graces forChildren_, and his many lovely epitaphs on children are all of themexquisite works of art, simple, sweet and sincere. 

As the cross-benches form a refuge for those who have no minds to makeup, so those who cannot make up their minds always take to Homericstudies. Many of our leaders have sulked in their tents with Achillesafter some violent political crisis and, enraged at the fickleness offortune, more than one has given up to poetry what was obviously meantfor party. 

There are two ways of misunderstanding a poem. One is to misunderstandit and the other to praise it for qualities it does not possess. 

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by remindingus that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectlyuninteresting event. It is true that such aphorisms as

 Graves are a _mother’s dimples_ When we complain, or

 The primrose wears a constant smile, And captive takes the heart, can hardly be said to belong to the very highest order of poetry, still, they are preferable, on the whole, to the date of Hannah More’s birth, orof the burning down of Exeter Change, or of the opening of the GreatExhibition; and though it would be dangerous to make calendars the basisof Culture, we should all be much improved if we began each day with afine passage of English poetry. 

Even the most uninteresting poet cannot survive bad editing. 

Prefixed to the Calendar is an introductory note . . . Displaying thatintimate acquaintance with Sappho’s lost poems which is the privilegeonly of those who are not acquainted with Greek literature. 

Mediocre critics are usually safe in their generalities; it is in theirreasons and examples that they come so lamentably to grief. 

All premature panegyrics bring their own punishment upon themselves. 

No one survives being over-estimated. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the first true men of lettersAmerica produced, and as such deserves a high place in any history ofAmerican civilization. To a land out of breath in its greed for gain heshowed the example of a life devoted entirely to the study of literature;his lectures, though not by any means brilliant, were still productive ofmuch good; he had a most charming and gracious personality, and he wrotesome pretty poems. But his poems are not of the kind that call forintellectual analysis or for elaborate description or, indeed, for anyserious discussion at all. 

Though the _Psalm of Life_ be shouted from Maine to California, thatwould not make it true poetry. 

Longfellow has no imitators, for of echoes themselves there are no echoesand it is only style that makes a school. 

Poe’s marvellous lines _To Helen_, a poem as beautiful as a Greek gem andas musical as Apollo’s lute. 

Good novelists are much rarer than good sons, and none of us would partreadily with Micawber and Mrs. Nickleby. Still, the fact remains that aman who was affectionate and loving to his children, generous andwarm-hearted to his friends, and whose books are the very bacchanalia ofbenevolence, pilloried his parents to make the groundlings laugh, andthis fact every biographer of Dickens should face and, if possible, explain. 

No age ever borrows the slang of its predecessor. 

What we do not know about Shakespeare is a most fascinating subject, andone that would fill a volume, but what we do know about him is so meagreand inadequate that when it is collected together the result is ratherdepressing. 

They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study. 

Rossetti’s was a great personality, and personalities such as his do noteasily survive shilling primers. 

We are sorry to find an English dramatic critic misquoting Shakespeare, as we had always been of opinion that this was a privilege reservedspecially for our English actors. 

Biographies of this kind rob life of much of its dignity and its wonder, add to death itself a new terror, and make one wish that all art wereanonymous. 

A pillar of fire to the few who knew him, and of cloud to the many whoknew him not, Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived apart from the gossip andtittle-tattle of a shallow age. He never trafficked with the merchantsfor his soul, nor brought his wares into the market-place for the idle togape at. Passionate and romantic though he was, yet there was in hisnature something of high austerity. He loved seclusion, and hatednotoriety, and would have shuddered at the idea that within a few yearsafter his death he was to make his appearance in a series of popularbiographies, sandwiched between the author of _Pickwick_ and the GreatLexicographer. 

We sincerely hope that a few more novels like these will be published, asthe public will then find out that a bad book is very dear at a shilling. 

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out ofplace is history. In novels they are detestable. 

Shilling literature is always making demands on our credulity withoutever appealing to our imagination. 

Pathology is rapidly becoming the basis of sensational literature, and inart, as in politics, there is a great future for monsters. 

It is only mediocrities and old maids who consider it a grievance to bemisunderstood. 

As truly religious people are resigned to everything, even to mediocrepoetry, there is no reason at all why Madame Guyon’s verses should not bepopular with a large section of the community. 

A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle. 

Such novels as _Scamp_ are possibly more easy to write than they are toread. 

We have no doubt that when Bailey wrote to Lord Houghton thatcommon-sense and gentleness were Keats’s two special characteristics theworthy Archdeacon meant extremely well, but we prefer the real Keats, with his passionate wilfulness, his fantastic moods and his fineinconsistence. Part of Keats’s charm as a man is his fascinatingincompleteness. 

The Apostolic dictum, that women should not be suffered to teach, is nolonger applicable to a society such as ours, with its solidarity ofinterests, its recognition of natural rights, and its universaleducation, however suitable it may have been to the Greek cities underRoman rule. Nothing in the United States struck me more than the factthat the remarkable intellectual progress of that country is very largelydue to the efforts of American women, who edit many of the most powerfulmagazines and newspapers, take part in the discussion of every questionof public interest, and exercise an important influence upon the growthand tendencies of literature and art. Indeed, the women of America arethe one class in the community that enjoys that leisure which is sonecessary for culture. The men are, as a rule, so absorbed in business, that the task of bringing some element of form into the chaos of dailylife is left almost entirely to the opposite sex, and an eminentBostonian once assured me that in the twentieth century the whole cultureof his country would be in petticoats. By that time, however, it isprobable that the dress of the two sexes will be assimilated, assimilarity of costume always follows similarity of pursuits. 

The aim of social comedy, in Menander no less than in Sheridan, is tomirror the manners, not to reform the morals, of its day, and the censureof the Puritan, whether real or affected, is always out of place inliterary criticism, and shows a want of recognition of the essentialdistinction between art and life. After all, it is only the Philistinewho thinks of blaming Jack Absolute for his deception, Bob Acres for hiscowardice, and Charles Surface for his extravagance, and there is verylittle use in airing one’s moral sense at the expense of one’s artisticappreciation. 

The _Æneid_ bears almost the same relation to the _Iliad_ that the_Idylls of the King_ do to the old Celtic romances of Arthur. Like themit is full of felicitous modernisms, of exquisite literary echoes and ofdelicate and delightful pictures; as Lord Tennyson loves England so didVirgil love Rome; the pageants of history and the purple of empire areequally dear to both poets; but neither of them has the grand simplicityor the large humanity of the early singers, and, as a hero, Æneas is noless a failure than Arthur. 

There is always a certain amount of danger in any attempt to cultivateimpossible virtues. 

As far as the serious presentation of life is concerned, what we requireis more imaginative treatment, greater freedom from theatric language andtheatric convention. It may be questioned, also, whether the consistentreward of virtue and punishment of wickedness be really the healthiestideal for an art that claims to mirror nature. 

True originality is to be found rather in the use made of a model than inthe rejection of all models and masters. _Dans l’art comme dans lanature on est toujours fils de quelqu’un_, and we should not quarrel withthe reed if it whispers to us the music of the lyre. A little child onceasked me if it was the nightingale who taught the linnets how to sing. 

In France they have had one great genius, Balzac, who invented the modernmethod of looking at life; and one great artist, Flaubert, who is theimpeccable master of style; and to the influence of these two men we maytrace almost all contemporary French fiction. But in England we have hadno schools worth speaking of. The fiery torch lit by the Brontës has notbeen passed on to other hands; Dickens has influenced only journalism;Thackeray’s delightful superficial philosophy, superb narrative power, and clever social satire have found no echoes; nor has Trollope left anydirect successors behind him—a fact which is not much to be regretted, however, as, admirable though Trollope undoubtedly is for rainyafternoons and tedious railway journeys, from the point of view ofliterature he is merely the perpetual curate of Pudlington Parva. 

George Meredith’s style is chaos illumined by brilliant flashes oflightning. As a writer he has mastered everything, except language; as anovelist he can do everything, except tell a story; as an artist he iseverything, except articulate. Too strange to be popular, too individualto have imitators, the author of _Richard Feverel_ stands absolutelyalone. It is easy to disarm criticism, but he has disarmed the disciple. He gives us his philosophy through the medium of wit, and is never sopathetic as when he is humorous. To turn truth into a paradox is notdifficult, but George Meredith makes all his paradoxes truths, and noTheseus can thread his labyrinth, no Œdipus solve his secret. 

The most perfect and the most poisonous of all modern French poets onceremarked that a man can live for three days without bread, but that noone can live for three days without poetry. This, however, can hardly besaid to be a popular view, or one that commends itself to that curiouslyuncommon quality which is called common-sense. I fancy that most people, if they do not actually prefer a salmis to a sonnet, certainly like theirculture to repose on a basis of good cookery. 

A cynical critic once remarked that no great poet is intelligible and nolittle poet worth understanding, but that otherwise poetry is anadmirable thing. This, however, seems to us a somewhat harsh view of thesubject. Little poets are an extremely interesting study. The best ofthem have often some new beauty to show us, and though the worst of themmay bore yet they rarely brutalize. 

It is a curious thing that when minor poets write choruses to a play theyshould always consider it necessary to adopt the style and language of abad translator. We fear that Mr. Bohn has much to answer for. 

In one sonnet he makes a distinct attempt to be original and the resultis extremely depressing. 

 Earth wears her grandest robe, by autumn spun, _Like some stout matron who of youth has run_ _The course_, . . . 

is the most dreadful simile we have ever come across even in poetry. Mr. Griffiths should beware of originality. Like beauty, it is a fatal gift. 

There is a wide difference between the beautiful Tuscan city and thesea-city of the Adriatic. Florence is a city full of memories of thegreat figures of the past. The traveller cannot pass along her streetswithout treading in the very traces of Dante, without stepping on soilmade memorable by footprints never to be effaced. The greatness of thesurroundings, the palaces, churches, and frowning mediæval castles in themidst of the city, are all thrown into the background by the greatness, the individuality, the living power and vigour of the men who are theiroriginators, and at the same time their inspiring soul. But when we turnto Venice the effect is very different. We do not think of the makers ofthat marvellous city, but rather of what they made. The idealized imageof Venice herself meets us everywhere. The mother is not overshadowed bythe too great glory of any of her sons. In her records the city iseverything—the republic, the worshipped ideal of a community in whichevery man for the common glory seems to have been willing to sink hisown. We know that Dante stood within the red walls of the arsenal, andsaw the galleys making and mending, and the pitch flaming up to heaven;Petrarch came to visit the great Mistress of the Sea, taking refugethere, ‘in this city, true home of the human race, ’ from trouble, war andpestilence outside; and Byron, with his facile enthusiasms and ferventeloquence, made his home for a time in one of the stately, decayingpalaces; but with these exceptions no great poet has ever associatedhimself with the life of Venice. She had architects, sculptors andpainters, but no singer of her own. 

To realize the popularity of the great poets one should turn to the minorpoets and see whom they follow, what master they select, whose music theyecho. 

Ordinary theology has long since converted its gold into lead, and wordsand phrases that once touched the heart of the world have becomewearisome and meaningless through repetition. If Theology desires tomove us, she must re-write her formulas. 

It takes a great artist to be thoroughly modern. Nature is always alittle behind the age. 

Mr. Nash, who styles himself ‘a humble soldier in the army of Faith, ’expresses a hope that his book may ‘invigorate devotional feeling, especially among the young, to whom verse is perhaps more attractive thanto their elders, ’ but we should be sorry to think that people of any agecould admire such a paraphrase as the following:

 Foxes have holes in which to slink for rest, The birds of air find shelter in the nest; But He, the Son of Man and Lord of all, Has no abiding place His own to call. 

It is a curious fact that the worst work is always done with the bestintentions, and that people are never so trivial as when they takethemselves very seriously. 

Mr. Foster is an American poet who has read Hawthorne, which is wise ofhim, and imitated Longfellow, which is not quite so commendable. 

_Andiatoroctè_ is the title of a volume of poems by the Rev. ClarenceWalworth, of Albany, N. Y. It is a word borrowed from the Indians, andshould, we think, be returned to them as soon as possible. The mostcurious poem of the book is called _Scenes at the Holy Home_:

 Jesus and Joseph at work! Hurra! Sight never to see again, A prentice Deity plies the saw, While the Master ploughs with the plane. 

Poems of this kind were popular in the Middle Ages when the cathedrals ofevery Christian country served as its theatres. They are anachronismsnow, and it is odd that they should come to us from the United States. In matters of this kind we should have some protection. 

As for the triolets, and the rondels, and the careful study of metricalsubtleties, these things are merely the signs of a desire for perfectionin small things and of the recognition of poetry as an art. They havehad certainly one good result—they have made our minor poets readable, and have not left us entirely at the mercy of geniuses. 

Poetry has many modes of music; she does not blow through one pipe alone. Directness of utterance is good, but so is the subtle recasting ofthought into a new and delightful form. Simplicity is good, butcomplexity, mystery, strangeness, symbolism, obscurity even, these havetheir value. Indeed, properly speaking, there is no such thing as Style;there are merely styles, that is all. 

Writers of poetical prose are rarely good poets. 

Poetry may be said to need far more self-restraint than prose. Itsconditions are more exquisite. It produces its effects by more subtlemeans. It must not be allowed to degenerate into mere rhetoric or mereeloquence. It is, in one sense, the most self-conscious of all the arts, as it is never a means to an end but always an end in itself. 

It may be difficult for a poet to find English synonyms for Asiaticexpressions, but even if it were impossible it is none the less a poet’sduty to find them. As it is, Sir Edwin Arnold has translated Sa’di andsome one must translate Sir Edwin Arnold. 

Lounging in the open air is not a bad school for poets, but it largelydepends on the lounger. 

People are so fond of giving away what they do not want themselves, thatcharity is largely on the increase. But with this kind of charity I havenot much sympathy. If one gives away a book, it should be a charmingbook—so charming, that one regrets having given it. 

Mr. Whistler, for some reason or other, always adopted the phraseology ofthe minor prophets. Possibly it was in order to emphasize his well-knownclaims to verbal inspiration, or perhaps he thought with Voltaire that_Habakkuk était capable de tout_, and wished to shelter himself under theshield of a definitely irresponsible writer none of whose prophecies, according to the French philosopher, has ever been fulfilled. The ideawas clever enough at the beginning, but ultimately the manner becamemonotonous. The spirit of the Hebrews is excellent but their mode ofwriting is not to be imitated, and no amount of American jokes will giveit that modernity which is essential to a good literary style. Admirableas are Mr. Whistler’s fireworks on canvas, his fireworks in prose areabrupt, violent and exaggerated. 

‘The decisive events of the world, ’ as has been well said, ‘take place inthe intellect, ’ and as for Board-schools, academic ceremonies, hospitalwards and the like, they may be well left to the artists of theillustrated papers, who do them admirably and quite as well as they needbe done. Indeed, the pictures of contemporary events, Royal marriages, naval reviews and things of this kind that appear in the Academy everyyear, are always extremely bad; while the very same subjects treated inblack and white in the _Graphic_ or the _London News_ are excellent. Besides, if we want to understand the history of a nation through themedium of art, it is to the imaginative and ideal arts that we have to goand not to the arts that are definitely imitative. The visible aspect oflife no longer contains for us the secret of life’s spirit. 

The difficulty under which the novelists of our day labour seems to me tobe this: if they do not go into society, their books are unreadable; andif they do go into society, they have no time left for writing. 

I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply amethod of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one canunderstand. Allegory, parable, and vision have their high artistic uses, but their philosophical and scientific uses are very small. 

The object of most modern fiction is not to give pleasure to the artisticinstinct, but rather to portray life vividly for us, to draw attention tosocial anomalies, and social forms of injustice. Many of our novelistsare really pamphleteers, reformers masquerading as story-tellers, earnestsociologists seeking to mend as well as to mirror life. 

The book is certainly characteristic of an age so practical and soliterary as ours, an age in which all social reforms have been precededand have been largely influenced by fiction. 

Mr. Stopford Brooke said some time ago that Socialism and the socialisticspirit would give our poets nobler and loftier themes for song, wouldwiden their sympathies and enlarge the horizon of their vision, and wouldtouch, with the fire and fervour of a new faith, lips that had else beensilent, hearts that but for this fresh gospel had been cold. What Artgains from contemporary events is always a fascinating problem and aproblem that is not easy to solve. It is, however, certain thatSocialism starts well equipped. She has her poets and her painters, herart lecturers and her cunning designers, her powerful orators and herclever writers. If she fails it will not be for lack of expression. Ifshe succeeds her triumph will not be a triumph of mere brute force. 

Socialism is not going to allow herself to be trammelled by any hard andfast creed or to be stereotyped into an iron formula. She welcomes manyand multiform natures. She rejects none and has room for all. She hasthe attraction of a wonderful personality and touches the heart of oneand the brain of another, and draws this man by his hatred and injustice, and his neighbour by his faith in the future, and a third, it may be, byhis love of art or by his wild worship of a lost and buried past. Andall of this is well. For, to make men Socialists is nothing, but to makeSocialism human is a great thing. 

The Reformation gained much from the use of popular hymn-tunes, and theSocialists seem determined to gain by similar means a similar hold uponthe people. However, they must not be too sanguine about the result. The walls of Thebes rose up to the sound of music, and Thebes was a verydull city indeed. 

We really must protest against Mr. Matthews’ efforts to confuse thepoetry of Piccadilly with the poetry of Parnassus. To tell us, forinstance, that Mr. Austin Dobson’s verse ‘has not the condensed clearnessnor the incisive vigor of Mr. Locker’s’ is really too bad even forTransatlantic criticism. Nobody who lays claim to the slightestknowledge of literature and the forms of literature should ever bring thetwo names into conjunction. 

Mr. Dobson has produced work that is absolutely classical in itsexquisite beauty of form. Nothing more artistically perfect in its waythan the _Lines to a Greek Girl_ has been written in our time. Thislittle poem will be remembered in literature as long as _Thyrsis_ isremembered, and _Thyrsis_ will never be forgotten. Both have that noteof distinction that is so rare in these days of violence, exaggerationand rhetoric. Of course, to suggest, as Mr. Matthews does, that Mr. Dobson’s poems belong to ‘the literature of power’ is ridiculous. Poweris not their aim, nor is it their effect. They have other qualities, andin their own delicately limited sphere they have no contemporary rivals;they have none even second to them. 

The heroine is a sort of well-worn Becky Sharp, only much more beautifulthan Becky, or at least than Thackeray’s portraits of her, which, however, have always seemed to me rather ill-natured. I feel sure thatMrs. Rawdon Crawley was extremely pretty, and I have never understood howit was that Thackeray could caricature with his pencil so fascinating acreation of his pen. 

A critic recently remarked of Adam Lindsay Gordon that through himAustralia had found her first fine utterance in song. This, however, isan amiable error. There is very little of Australia in Gordon’s poetry. His heart and mind and fancy were always preoccupied with memories anddreams of England and such culture as England gave him. He owed nothingto the land of his adoption. Had he stayed at home he would have donemuch better work. 

That Australia, however, will some day make amends by producing a poet ofher own we cannot doubt, and for him there will be new notes to sound andnew wonders to tell of. 

The best that we can say of him is that he wrote imperfectly in Australiathose poems that in England he might have made perfect. 

Judges, like the criminal classes, have their lighter moments. 

There seems to be some curious connection between piety and poor rhymes. 

The South African poets, as a class, are rather behind the age. Theyseem to think that ‘Aurora’ is a very novel and delightful epithet forthe dawn. On the whole they depress us. 

The only original thing in the volume is the description of Mr. RobertBuchanan’s ‘grandeur of mind. ’ This is decidedly new. 

Dr. Cockle tells us that Müllner’s _Guilt_ and _The Ancestress_ ofGrillparzer are the masterpieces of German fate-tragedy. His translationof the first of these two masterpieces does not make us long for anyfurther acquaintance with the school. Here is a specimen from the fourthact of the fate-tragedy. 

 SCENE VIII. 

 ELVIRA. HUGO. 

 ELVIRA (_after long silence_, _leaving the harp_, _steps to Hugo_, _and seeks his gaze_). 

 HUGO (_softly_). Though I made sacrifice of thy sweet life, the Father has forgiven. Can the wife—forgive?

 ELVIRA (_on his breast_). She can!

 HUGO (_with all the warmth of love_). Dear wife!

 ELVIRA (_after a pause_, _in deep sorrow_). Must it be so, beloved one?

 HUGO (_sorry to have betrayed himself_). What?

The Renaissance had for its object the development of greatpersonalities. The perfect freedom of the temperament in matters of art, the perfect freedom of the intellect in intellectual matters, the fulldevelopment of the individual, were the things it aimed at. As we studyits history we find it full of great anarchies. It solved no politicalor social problems; it did not seek to solve them. The ideal of the‘Grand Siècle, ’ and of Richelieu, in whom the forces of that great agewere incarnate, was different. The ideas of citizenship, of the buildingup of a great nation, of the centralization of forces, of collectiveaction, of ethnic unity of purpose, came before the world. 

The creation of a formal tradition upon classical lines is never withoutits danger, and it is sad to find the provincial towns of France, once sovaried and individual in artistic expression, writing to Paris fordesigns and advice. And yet, through Colbert’s great centralizing schemeof State supervision and State aid, France was the one country in Europe, and has remained the one country in Europe, where the arts are notdivorced from industry. 

Hawthorne re-created for us the America of the past with the incomparablegrace of a very perfect artist, but Mr. Bret Harte’s emphasized modernityhas, in its own sphere, won equal, or almost equal, triumphs. 

It is pleasant to come across a heroine [Bret Harte’s _Cressy_] who isnot identified with any great cause, and represents no importantprinciple, but is simply a wonderful nymph from American backwoods, whohas in her something of Artemis, and not a little of Aphrodite. 

It is always a pleasure to come across an American poet who is notnational, and who tries to give expression to the literature that heloves rather than to the land in which he lives. The Muses care solittle for geography!

Blue-books are generally dull reading, but Blue-books on Ireland havealways been interesting. They form the record of one of the greattragedies of modern Europe. In them England has written down herindictment against herself and has given to the world the history of hershame. If in the last century she tried to govern Ireland with aninsolence that was intensified by race hatred and religious prejudice, she has sought to rule her in this century with a stupidity that isaggravated by good intentions. 

Like most penmen he [Froude] overrates the power of the sword. WhereEngland has had to struggle she has been wise. Where physical strengthhas been on her side, as in Ireland, she has been made unwieldy by thatstrength. Her own strong hands have blinded her. She has had force butno direction. 

There are some who will welcome with delight the idea of solving theIrish question by doing away with the Irish people. There are others whowill remember that Ireland has extended her boundaries, and that we havenow to reckon with her not merely in the Old World but in the New. 

Plastic simplicity of outline may render for us the visible aspect oflife; it is different when we come to deal with those secrets whichself-consciousness alone contains, and which self-consciousness itselfcan but half reveal. Action takes place in the sunlight, but the soulworks in the dark. There is something curiously interesting in themarked tendency of modern poetry to become obscure. Many critics, writing with their eyes fixed on the masterpieces of past literature, have ascribed this tendency to wilfulness and to affectation. Its originis rather to be found in the complexity of the new problems, and in thefact that self-consciousness is not yet adequate to explain the contentsof the Ego. In Mr. Browning’s poems, as in life itself, which hassuggested, or rather necessitated, the new method, thought seems toproceed not on logical lines, but on lines of passion. The unity of theindividual is being expressed through its inconsistencies and itscontradictions. In a strange twilight man is seeking for himself, andwhen he has found his own image, he cannot understand it. Objectiveforms of art, such as sculpture and the drama, sufficed one for theperfect presentation of life; they can no longer so suffice. 

As he is not a genius he, naturally, behaves admirably on every occasion. 

Certainly dialect is dramatic. It is a vivid method of re-creating apast that never existed. It is something between ‘A Return to Nature’and ‘A Return to the Glossary. ’ It is so artificial that it is reallynaïve. From the point of view of mere music, much may be said for it. Wonderful diminutives lend new notes of tenderness to the song. Thereare possibilities of fresh rhymes, and in search for a fresh rhyme poetsmay be excused if they wander from the broad highroad of classicalutterance into devious byways and less-trodden paths. Sometimes one istempted to look on dialect as expressing simply the pathos ofprovincialisms, but there is more in it than mere mispronunciation. Withthat revival of an antique form, often comes the revival of an antiquespirit. Through limitations that are sometimes uncouth, and alwaysnarrow, comes Tragedy herself; and though she may stammer in herutterance, and deck herself in cast-off weeds and trammelling raiment, still we must hold ourselves in readiness to accept her, so rare are hervisits to us now, so rare her presence in an age that demands a happyending from every play, and that sees in the theatre merely a source ofamusement. 

There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is, as a rule, the most interesting, and when one beginswith the catastrophe or the _dénoûment_ one feels on pleasant terms ofequality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of atheatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hairbreadth escapes of thehero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved. 

He has every form of sincerity except the sincerity of the artist, adefect that he shares with most of our popular writers. 

On the whole _Primavera_ is a pleasant little book, and we are glad towelcome it. It is charmingly ‘got up, ’ and undergraduates might read itwith advantage during lecture hours. 

 * * * * *

 Printed by T. And A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press

Footnotes:

{2} Reverently some well-meaning persons have placed a marble slab onthe wall of the cemetery with a medallion-profile of Keats on it and somemediocre lines of poetry. The face is ugly, and rather hatchet-shaped, with thick sensual lips, and is utterly unlike the poet himself, who wasvery beautiful to look upon. ‘His countenance, ’ says a lady who saw himat one of Hazlitt’s lectures, ‘lives in my mind as one of singular beautyand brightness; it had the expression as if he had been looking on someglorious sight. ’ And this is the idea which Severn’s picture of himgives. Even Haydon’s rough pen-and-ink sketch of him is better than this‘marble libel, ’ which I hope will soon be taken down. I think the bestrepresentation of the poet would be a coloured bust, like that of theyoung Rajah of Koolapoor at Florence, which is a lovely and lifelike workof art. 

{5} ‘Make’ is of course a mere printer’s error for ‘mock, ’ and wassubsequently corrected by Lord Houghton. The sonnet as given in _TheGarden_ of _Florence_ reads ‘orbs for ‘those. ’

{63} _The Margravine of Baireuth and Voltaire_. (David Stott, 1888. )

{115} September 1888. 

{116} See _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, chapter xi. , page 222. 

{157} From Lady Wilde’ _Ancient Legends of Ireland_.